Hi. It's me. I'm starting this thing.

I have a lot of feelings.

Jan 30, 2023

Welcome to my substack, or the place I said I’d go when twitter spontaneously combusts. Since it’s more of a slow burn…

First, some news: Cost of Living comes out in paperback on Feb 7. I am really excited. Please preorder it, because nobody preorders paperbacks and I would be thrilled if someone did. If you preorder it and send me your receipt and address and Venmo me $11 for shipping (@Emily-Maloney-4), I will send you a book cup (continental US only, sorry; Canada Post is outrageous). If you want a signed copy of the hardcover (or want to preorder the paperback locally), there are books available (last I checked) at Bookends and Beginnings, Women and Children First, Volumes Bookcafe, and Squeezebox Books (which is now selling some new releases in addition to their extensive used selection! Check ‘em out). Most of these places are happy to mail it to you if you are not local! Or order from your own local, independent bookstore.

You can also check out more of my ceramics work at emilymakeherfeelings.com. My grief is free with purchase.

If I added you to this and you hate email, no hard feelings! Just unsubscribe at the bottom. Most of this newsletter will be about the book(s), ceramics stuff, hot writing tips, books I’m reading, and gratuitous photos of my dog and my friend’s horses.

Why Burn This House Down?

In 2018, my brother burned our parents’ house to the ground and was booked for felony arson. There are a few things you should know. It happened after my brother had gotten into an argument with our parents, earlier that week. He bought a lot of motor oil at Farm and Fleet on the secured credit card they’d gotten for him to pay for his gas, medication, food, and other essentials, and trashed the place before torching it. My husband and I arrived about fifteen minutes after the fire was set. The house was in rough shape: there’d been a fire in the garage some years before. Some smoke damage. It was a 1960’s tract house out in the country that had served as home base for decades in between many renovation projects. Sometimes we lived there full time, like when my parents rented their townhouse and moved out there. Sometimes not. My parents had moved to Florida a few weeks before, after selling their townhouse in the city. They weren’t living at the house. Marcus didn’t want to move to Florida with them, so they set him up here, out in the country. Maybe he’d renovate the house, over time, develop a plan for it. Decide what to do next. My brother was 29 years old. He had lived with our parents in the townhouse in the city for seven years, since his band broke up and his fiancée left. Out in the country, there was no mortgage and the utilities were covered. If you thought about this from a different angle, you might blame my parents for leaving my brother there. But he’d been abusive towards them. They didn’t know what to do. They needed to get away. He’d grabbed my mother by the back of her neck. He’d told my dad he wanted to kill him.

Six months prior, my brother had gotten angry at my dad and trashed his woodshop. He threw a chainsaw on the dining table my father was making as a wedding gift for my husband and me, ruining it, and so it had to be planed and finished a second time. My dad kept things just so: his Bonne Maman jelly jars full of screws. The collection of hand planes for making things smooth, and the curlicues of wood that accumulated on the floor beneath. Special stains and finishes for furniture. Clamps hanging from the ceiling. He was really into his Festool, a company that made very precise saws and other equipment that cut without generating dust. At one point he owned a small collection of Japanese hand saws, which he’d taught me how to use when I was very small. There was a precision to the way he worked. When we were kids, Dad had a lathe, now out at the house in the country. He’d made bowls, candlesticks. My father was supposed to be a shop teacher when he graduated from Mizzou, and then he’d gone into real estate instead, though at one point, my parents ran a company where they bought the molds for Westinghouse refrigerator pitchers from the 30s and sold them in department stores. We still stumbled over these pitchers whenever they moved. In the months prior to their sale and move of the townhouse, in the basement, I’d find broken glass from the jelly jars. Nobody told me until I’d found a lot of glass and screws in mixed containers and asked them what had happened: I’d been at a writing residency at the time. They didn’t want to bother me.

A handful of books I’ve read & loved recently:

Also super excited about/hope to read next:

Burn This House Down

Hi. It's me. I'm starting this thing.

I have a lot of feelings.

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