Mirandom Reviews

I piss into a plastic cupand lower the little white stickinto everything I am still stupid enough to hope for.Three minutes.I have learned how long three minutes can be.Long enough to picture his handsholding the back of a newborn’s head.Long enough to imagine a facewith his eyesand my stubborn mouth.Long enough to build a bedroom,choose a name,hear a laugh from the end of a hallwaywe do not…

My student loan payment increased by more than 1,800%. That is not a little higher. It is not an adjustment. It is not “tightening the budget.” It is almost twenty times the payment. And I do not have it. That is the part that gets lost in every political conversation about student loans. People talk about debt like it is an abstract moral failure. They talk about borrowers like we bought…

I don’t think I realized how badly I needed to leave until I was already gone. There’s something strange about vacation as an adult. You plan it, pay for it, pack for it, worry about it, overthink it, and by the time you finally get yourself onto the ship, you’re almost too tired to remember that rest was the point. But somewhere between Seattle and Alaska, somewhere between the gray water and…

There are shows with bigger budgets. There are shows with stronger performances. There are certainly shows that have generated more cultural buzz. Yet after four seasons, The Way Home remains one of the most fascinating examples of storytelling currently on television. Not because it is perfect, but because it understands something many modern series seem to have forgotten: story is built on…

I do not think now is the time to stay quiet. I think silence is being manufactured and rewarded. I think there are powerful men in this country who are counting on people being tired, scared, distracted, and isolated enough to keep their heads down while cruelty is dressed up as policy. I think they want our silence because silence is useful to them. Mine is not for sale. So let me be plain…

I had one of the strangest, funniest, most clarifying realizations at Norwescon this year. I was sitting on a panel, talking about romantasy, talking about genre, talking about the kinds of stories readers reach for and why. Very normal panel behavior. Very writerly. Very “I know what I’m doing here.” And then somewhere in that conversation, it hit me. Oh no. I write romance. Not only do I…

Most people who know tarot know her work, even if they do not know her name. Pamela Colman Smith, the artist behind what is now commonly called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, created one of the most influential visual languages in modern mysticism. For decades, the deck was usually discussed under Waite’s name and the publisher’s name, while Smith herself was pushed to the edge of the story.…

I’ve been following the Epstein case, and something I’ve seen referenced over and over is Lolita. I first read the book more than twenty-five years ago. It took me many more years to understand the book, the films, and why we should be talking about this story more carefully than we often do. Because Lolita is not a romance. It is not a story about a precocious girl who outsmarted an older man.…

Today, I ate the cookie dough. Peter makes really good cookie dough. Like, suspiciously good. Weaponized good. We use injectables in it and then make cookies, pop them in the freezer, and they mostly just live there waiting to be our yummy little bad decisions. Usually this is all very organized and responsible-adjacent. Except. Peter also “accidentally” leaves some leftover dough in the…

There is a very specific kind of irony in being an author in the modern age. You spend months, sometimes years, writing a book. Bleeding onto the page. Obsessing over plot holes. Rewriting scenes at midnight. Falling in love with fictional people. Screaming into the void over chapter endings. Pouring your whole weird little heart into something you hope will matter to someone else. And then,…

There are some jobs you leave. And then there are some jobs that never fully leave you. Before I was an author full-time, before publishing became my world, before I built the creative life I have now, I was a 911 dispatcher. And even now, all these years later, that job is still part of me in ways I do not think will ever fully fade. Leaving dispatch was one of the hardest things I have ever…

There is something a little ridiculous about being 41 years old and still thinking about landlines, but here we are. I’m an elder millennial, which means I grew up in that weird in-between era where technology was exciting, but not yet glued to our bodies. We had landlines. We memorized phone numbers. We stretched the cord into another room for privacy and whispered dramatic teenage…

There’s something a little surreal about finally getting to say this: Restraint is almost here. This book comes out this week, and I’m so excited to finally share it with you. Restraint has lived in my chest for a long time. It’s sharp-edged and tender. It’s messy, aching, complicated, and full of the kind of chemistry that shows up at the worst possible time and refuses to be ignored. It’s a…

There are some shows you watch casually, half-scrolling your phone, half-paying attention, letting the plot wash over you while you fold laundry or answer emails. And then there are shows that grab you by the face within the first ten minutes and demand your full, undivided attention. For us, this week, that show is Smigadoon. My husband and I started it for the first time tonight, and I still…

Content warning: childhood sexual abuse, rape, family betrayal, trauma, suicidal ideation. There is a sentence that still lives in my bones: No one will believe you. I was told that as a child. And for years, I believed it. I said no. I said stop. I said I didn’t want this. I was six years old. Six. Before I had words for sex, I had words for fear. Before I understood violence, I…

Happy New Year, beautiful. This is usually the time of year when I write a long post about everything the last year brought me and what I’m excited for in the next one. But if I’m honest? The world feels heavy. Fascism is rising in my country. Systems are broken. I’m tired in my bones. Some days I feel sick to my stomach just trying to exist inside it all. So this year, I’m choosing to focus on…