1. Same year, new me?
What About Words: a (re)introduction
Dear reader,
Guess who’s back and with a brand-new name, logo, and homepage to boot? (For those of you wondering who the designer is, who else would it be if not for Shivani?)
Anyway, I’d been feeling for a while that the newsletter was ready for its next evolution, and the return from this hiatus seemed like too good a chance to pass up, aligned as it was with me working on brand-new fiction for the first time in nearly two years—and realising that I not only had to get reacquainted with the writer I am at present and the stories I want to write (even if some of the older ideas have to be let go; others just refreshed), but that I already had hints in the way my reading tastes have evolved over the past few years. More about that in future newsletters as I navigate this new phase of my creative process.
Today is all about catching up.
So, What About Words. When I first created an Instagram account just for books, my original username was whatarewords, before it became booksinboston once I moved. The latter is the name that has defined me since August 2017 and I retained it even after I moved back to India in August 2021 because my visa status was still in progress. It remains so to this day, but I’m not who I was back then and unless something changes drastically, I don’t see myself returning to Boston as anything more than a visitor. This feeling had been creeping up on me in tandem with the one I’ve voiced earlier about the newsletter needing to change.
Now, if there’s anything I appreciate, it’s synchronicity and signs. So I am now anushreenande on Instagram. I’ve also taken my time to think about what I’d like this space to be like going forward.
Hence, What About Words, a slight tweak on my original username.
In it, Anu Recommends will very much continue to be a thing, as will Story Sunday, but these will be sections incorporated within the issue.
The rest? It’s going to be a more chatty (“oh no” I hear many of you yelp), free-flowing and in-the-moment letter about my life, about the creative process, about the wonders and intricacies of reading and stories and the places it leads us and the things it teaches us. What I’m trying to say is that it’s going to look different every time, the kind of freedom and flexibility I need at this point in my writing life—this growing community has been wonderfully receptive to all the changes the newsletter has seen, and I hope you’ll continue to be with me on this journey. If not, then no hard feelings, I promise!
While I’ve been away…
I finally got my editor’s copy of More Than Maradona, a book I’d briefly mentioned for having just gone up for preorder in my 2023 round-up issue.
In the summer of 2021, @kirsten_lives_belgrade asked me if I would edit the book she had been working on. My answer was an immediate yes. It’s now a core memory 💙 It’s pertinent to mention that is Kirsten is one of my favourite editors—she edited Summer Melody, and both the personal football essays I've written for Unusual Efforts, her website—so her faith in my involvement with her book baby means all the more. If you’re a football fan, I urge you to click on the More Than Maradona hyperlink above and order yourself a copy of this first English-language history of one of Italy’s most popular teams that reveals the reasons so many are smitten with SSC Napoli, even before they won their third title.
Over the past few months I’ve been involved in another football-related project: this time an Arsenal poetry anthology!
Early this summer, @goonerdave66 asked me if I would contribute a poem/poems to this Arsenal-related poetry anthology he was putting together. He then asked if I would consider coming on as a creative adviser and editor. It was an immediate yes and an honour, the bonus being able to work closely with a dear friend.
It’s great to see the mix of styles, content, and writing experience in the 70 poems written by 30 Gooners, which cover topics like being a fan, football origin stories, player tributes, matchday experiences, international fandom, comic poems, and more.
The anthology wouldn’t be quite so good-looking without the gorgeous photos clicked by @susana_rf for @arsenal who were kind enough to give us permission to use them. Even better, £1.50 from each sale goes to @arsenal_foundation and the fantastic work they do.
Welcome to the Goonerverse has just gone to print and I cannot wait to hold it in my hands ❤️🤍
As mentioned earlier, I’ve also been working on new fiction. Well, one old flash fiction that was missing a little something and was finally updated before being sent off to a competition, and one brand-new fantasy short story written for a specific submission call. This time I’ve also kept detailed process notes that I’ll share more about in an upcoming issue. Let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to know!
Anu Recommends
I hope you’re seated because I’m about to reveal that I’ve not read a single book in the month of October. No, your eyes don’t need checking.
My reading always plummets when I’m working on my own fiction, so it’s no surprise to me, but this is just to say that even someone who reads as much as I do has spells when a book isn’t opened, and that’s okay. That said, I’m excited to get back to my preciousesss.
I did read some great books in August and September though. Some I’m going to talk about at length in issues to come; for now, here are the others.
We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian
“But he also wants that feeling he had earlier, that feeling of being seen for who he is, and of being liked anyway.”
Who’d have thought that I would fall so deeply into the lives and loves of queer midcentury New Yorkers?
I read @catswrites’s We Could Be So Good in July and was not expecting to delight in it as much as I did. It felt like a warm hug, one with heft, comfort, sincerity, and empathy. Characters that almost immediately felt like friends—bright, beautiful, flawed, real folks wanting so much to be loved and accepted for who they are. A world that feels true and well lived in.
You Should Be So Lucky takes place in the same world, with Nick, Andy and others making very welcome appearances. Mark Reynolds, the journalist and writer we already know from the first book, is one of the protagonists of this book. The other of the pair is Eddie, professional baseball player who is in a major funk after being traded to a New York team already going through its own tough times. They are clubbed together for a series of columns that Mark is assigned to write on Eddie's behalf. But neither is expecting to fall for the other.
Mark is not over the grief of his own loss and has promised himself that he would never be someone's secret ever again. Eddie has his own battles to fight, but one thing is clear: he can't be out as a professional athlete.
“Now he knows who he is exactly and what he wants, and he knows exactly how high a price he’s willing to pay for those things. He’s tired and he’s angry, and his contentment is something heavy and sharp, a prize that he fought for. He wouldn’t exchange it for anything.”
Coming in at 300+ pages, these are books to luxuriate in and yet they never feel long; in fact you're left wanting even more time with characters who are so easy to love and want happiness and all the best things for.
And I can attest to Cat’s incredible writing that she made me care so much about baseball, when I've never once felt even a sliver of that inkling in real life.
Cannot wait for the next book!
The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
What was the last thing you read that was unlike anything you've ever read?
This standalone fantasy novella by @nghivowriting, out today, was definitely that for me, captivatingly original.
There is the demon Vitrine and her precious city of Azril that she has nurtured for decades. Then come the angels who raze it to the ground.
All she has left with her is a book of the names of everyone she has lost (and everyone she will lose to the ravages of time), her memories of the glory of the past...and the angel who becomes bound by Vitrine’s grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he destroyed, ostracised by his fellow angels.
It won't be for everyone, mind you. This is light on the plot (though it is there) and heavy on character, flitting between Vitrine’s memories of the Azril before and her hopes and dreams for the city she is rebuilding. And there is of course the angel and all of their interactions with each other across the vast canvas of centuries. And there is Azril which is a character in its own right. Though I would have liked more than we get about the wider world beyond its shores.
The narrative style has a distinct sense of the otherworldly, there are some very lyrical parts, and the discussions about what the passage of years, love, life, death, destruction, and redemption means to eternal beings were very organically embedded into the narrative.
I wouldn’t have been able to guess how it ends, but when it arrived, it felt like this was always how it was supposed to be.
“They would reckon what they had lost. They would find out what was left, and they would mourn what had gone. Sooner or later, they would begin to repair what was broken.”
Thank you @netgalley and @torbooks for the chance to read this early!
Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles
“Who are you to decide which books people should enjoy?”
Jessie Carson asks this of a male French professor and librarian who scoffs at her way of organising a library and questions the necessity to “guide” her rural patrons on the literature “best suited” to them.
Miss Morgan's Book Brigade is a wonderful historical fiction by @jskesliencharles, one that I perhaps enjoyed even more than her debut, The Paris Library.
It is 1918 and Jessie Carson, a librarian at the New York Public Library, goes to offer her assistance to the American Committee for Devastated France (or CARD), a group of international women working to rebuild communities very close to the war front.
It is 1987 and Wendy Peterson, a librarian at the New York Public Library, catches a passing reference to Jessie Carson in the archives and is determined to find out what happened to her.
Jessie Carson is a real-life figure, as are most of the CARD members in this book, including founder Anne Morgan (father: J.P. Morgan). And you can see the rigorous research that's gone into this story, just like you can feel the fondness the author has for her characters. Miss Carson revolutionised French libraries by not only bringing children and the working class, two completely ignored groups in France at the time, into the magic of storytelling fold, but by also helping train French women to be librarians.
It’s a fascinating story filled with fascinating women who I wish I could have spent more time with. This is a dual narrative that switches between Jessie and Wendy, but I could have easily spent a whole book with just Jessie and the other CARDS, and now want to look them up more. For that I thank Janet. These women deserve the spotlight and the book shines it on them with love and warmth.
Bookish references abound, as do discussions about books, readers, libraries, and the power and hope present in these connections, these bridges that link us all through time, place, language, and story.
This is a story of ordinary women doing quiet, brave, consistently extraordinary things at an unprecedented time against all odds.
“From the ashes of the war, the headlights of the book mobile.”
The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner
Do you like cozy murder mysteries with a healthy splash of the supernatural? Then I’ve got the perfect recommendation for you!
I was lucky enough to read and enjoy @c.m.waggoner's perfectly titled The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society in advance.
Sherry Pinkwhistle lives in Upstate New York's Winesap, a quiet town that’s like any other other quiet town...except for all the murders, that is. And though Sherry is a librarian by trade, she is also a super sleuth. But after one murder too many, she is getting suspicious that something else is afoot. And she would be right too, but before she can do anything about it, the next murder victim is a little too close to home and she's a prime suspect. Can she solve this latest murder, clear her name, AND find out what's plaguing Winesap? With a motley group of fun characters to aid her, of course, and a demon that begins to haunt her marmalade cat, Lord Thomas Cromwell.
I don't remember reading a cozy murder mystery combined with fantastical elements before (and it took some while for me to adjust to the co-existing elements of unease and cozy), but it was exactly what I needed even if I didn't know it when I picked it up. It’s fun and funny, and what surprised me most in a delightful way was the author’s use of popular tropes in plot and character archetypes only to subvert them, all while keeping the spirit of such narratives alive. Cheeky self-awareness for the win. Murder, She Wrote x Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the perfect tagline!
I really hope that this turns into a series; the sequel is already well set up by the end of the first one.
Lesson of the day? Never mess with a librarian 🤓.
Thank you @acebookspub @berkleypub for the chance to read this early.
Before I close today’s chapter, I want to share that October 31 was the one-year publishing anniversary for my standalone fantasy flash fiction, ‘Ruby Whispers’.
This little story, probably the most magical story of mine that’s been published (so far), started off as a way for me to retrace the joy of writing and of writing for myself in 2022, before it eventually made its debut as a standalone flash fiction on October 31, 2023. It’s free to read via Kindle Unlimited and a nominal amount to purchase via your country's Amazon. For those without a Kindle, you can read it via the free Kindle app for your phone or tablet. If this isn’t possible and you really want to read it, email me, and you can buy a protected PDF directly from me.
India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0CLVNMS5L
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLVNMS5L
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ruby-Whispers-Anushree-Nande-ebook/dp/B0CLVNMS5L
Synopsis: A fantasy flash fiction set in modern-day Salem on All Hallow's Eve. Are you ready to meet John and Ruby Noble, and discover their fated love story?
To those who have read and shown this love over the past year, thank you, as always! It means the world. 💙
That’s all for today—I don’t know about you, but it’s so good to be back and writing to the lovely people who make up the What About Words community. Please tell me how you’ve been doing and what I’ve missed!
Please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on. Let me know what you’re currently reading and watching, send me rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue. Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it. I always enjoy hearing from you 😊.
Take care and I’ll see you next on November 17!
Anu
You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @anushreenande. You can support my work at https://buymeacoffee.com/anushreenande.