ISO... Community

There's a free book in here too 😮💖

Hiya sweet pea,

I have a feeling this is going to be a long newsletter so let’s get to the fun stuff first: My next novel, Well, Actually is READ NOW for the next 72 hours on Netgalley! That means you can get an advance reader copy of WA for freeeee woohooooooo!

I also started a silly little merch store if you want to get some book related gear 💜 (there’s also some non-book related random gear too)

Upcoming Events

To all my North Carolina friends: Want to sip some bubbly and giggle about romance books while also supporting a local library on Galentine’s Day?? Then join me and Alissa DeRogatis on February 13th at The Bottle Factory in Monroe, NC for a panel and some fun! I am so excited for this event, and so thankful to Union County Library for inviting me! You can get tickets here.

Now on to the emotional ramblings:

For lack of a more subtle way to start this, I need to admit that I feel lost. Or maybe the right word is stuck? Stagnant? Whatever the word, my soul won’t settle and my mind won’t slowdown and I feel this numb, tingly type of not-right-ness about everything from my work to my life to the world at large, and I imagine at least some of you are feeling it too. The only way I can think to actively combat sinking into this feeling entirely is to cultivate community.

Way back when (2018) I also felt lost like like this. I was living in a new city, starting dental school, and losing my mind with stress and anxiety. During a time I felt incredibly lonely and ineffective, I found so much joy and purpose and community in books. I started a bookstagram account and screamed about books and rambled about my feelings and met my best friend through it. I connected so deeply with others about the power and beauty and FUN that comes with reading.

And then, as yet another victim of side hustle culture, I monetized my hobby and wrote a book. I joke… for the most part. But, while writing and dreaming are the single greatest gift I’ve allowed myself and I wouldn’t change a thing (even my painful use of crutch words in my novels, who am I to edit that baby author??) there’s no denying that transitioning from a book reviewer to an author does change the way you exist in the reading community. I take reader spaces very seriously, and I never want to infringe on that, but I’ve also realized that it’s required me to change how I engage, and I miss parts of the community I once was able to cultivate in an online space and I want to figure out how to get back that feeling.

Doomscrolling has never felt like a more appropriate term, and I’m falling into the habit of it with greater frequency. Then, this week, I was moved and jarred by this message from Hank Green:

“Take back your attention. Stop giving it away. Be intentional with what gets put into your brain. This idea that the TikTok algorithm is something you curate—No. It. Is. Curating. You.”

As social media destabilizes and morphs daily, I feel like the most effective way I can actually connect and share my thoughts/feelings is through this newsletter, which means you will probably be hearing from me more frequently on here (sorry) and my hope is that I can hear more from you too. I want to get back to reckless honesty and sharing that I had in my early bookstagram days and worry less about engagement and aesthetics and content creation. Don’t get me wrong, I know there is immense value in the latter and as an author, marketing my books requires much of that, but I’ll be reprioritizing my brain space to engage more on here and discuss the things that are bringing me joy, making me think, and feeding the little creative monster in my head.

What I’m Eating

I’ve gotten pretty in to cooking over the past year, and while I’ve never exited a kitchen without it looking like a bomb went off, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve been making! I even started a recipe book, and when something is a winner, my husband and I agree it gets immortalized in the Yes, Chef Cookbook. (immortalized is used very graciously here because most of the pages of this cookbook are waterlogged and illegible from the ink smearing but it is what it is)

I made risotto for the first time and not to brag or anything but it might just be the best risotto in the world idk. Find the recipe here.

What I’m Reading

I did a reread of Fahrenheit 451 at the start of the year, and while I loved it in high school, it was astonishingly poignant this time around. One quotation that really stuck with me: “The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.”

The demands on our efficiency, our hustle, our grind are higher than ever. There is value in pausing. There is value in sitting in the discomfort of our quiet thoughts. When we take the time to stop thinking about work, we can think about what we really want, and that should never be squeezed out of our schedules.

In the afterward of this edition, Ray Bradbury also said, “There’s more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

Personal Anecdote

So, in the spirit of all that rambling up above, here’s a personal anecdote from the other side of my double life: dentistry 😬😬😬😬😬

How you do one thing is how you do everything

As a dentist, I see a lot of emergency patients. Their chief complaints have infinite range in an emergency situation, but the one thing that’s almost always the case: Emergency patients are not happy to see me.

And I can’t blame them. They’re in pain, they’re stressed, and an estimated 36% of the population have some sort of dental fear or anxiety adding to the pain and stress. These anxious and fearful patients are my favorite patients to see. A huge reason I became a dentist is to empower patients and help them feel safe in what is objectively a vulnerable and weird part of their overall health.

Regardless of if I’ve seen a patient hundreds of times or if this is the first time, I approach every appointment with the same questions in my head:

1. How can I address their most pressing need?

2. How can I make them feel heard, empowered, and comfortable?

These questions run in my head on such a constant loop, they aren’t even conscious thoughts, but habits. I saw an emergency patient this week that got put on my schedule in an already busy hour with other patients and other needs and I felt very stressed and pulled in a million directions, but I did what I always aim to do: I left that stress at the door and did everything I was able to get them out of pain and on their way.

It wasn’t until later though, when one of the staff members approached me and told me how the patient stated that they’d never felt so cared for in a dental chair that the appointment really struck me.

I don’t share this as some weird dentist brag by any means—on the contrary, I know there are endless ways I can be a better practitioner and I think about it constantly. But a mentor of mine recently said in passing, while adjusting a crooked lampshade, “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” I haven’t been able to get that out of my head, and I realized how true that is in not just caring for patients, but in our interactions with anyone and everyone throughout our days.

Every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Every interaction we have is an opportunity to remember our humanity, and the humanity of those we share this world with.

To quote and echo Bishop Budde, I wish us all “…the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other…”

The [Horrifying] GIF

Here’s this thing:

The End 🤡

All my love,
Mazey ❤️🧠🦷