Welcome to Novella November!

some dear friends encouraged me to run this event so here we are. it's one I've wanted to host for a few years but I was either too busy or just plain forgot until December 1st 🤣

the only goal is to read however many novellas you can manage in the month of November, with a novella being defined as a novel 200 pages long or shorter. we'll be using "#Novella November" as our event tag

you don't have to read every novella you have, you don't have to read a certain number to "win", I just want us to get together and read a bunch of short books and actually put the community spirit back in booklr <3

Anyway I attended my first pride event!

It was a book event about the importance of Queer bookshops. It was so affirming to be surrounded by queer people and having queerness be the default for once in conversation and not the bit added on.

And I met the authors and got my books signed and one of the authors, June Thomas wrote in my book something that has two meanings both of which hit me hard in the chest.

David with Gregg Hurwitz at Diesel bookstore Brentwood. Feb 10th 2026

Pics above from @aimsies-mctaymellburg

Pic above from this account

Patricia Lockwood joined Women and Children First and conversation partner Lindsey Hunter at Haymarket House on Sunday to talk embarrassing reading experiences, an early attraction to ewoks, and her new autobiographical novel, Will There Ever Be Another You?

Lockwood was one of the first to be diagnosed with Covid-19 in 2020, and afterwards, came down with a strange and bewildering condition that doctors were puzzled by (or simply dismissed). She didn’t know what was going on, but knew to write it down. Even if, for a long time, writing was something she did almost to try and find herself again—this disconnection, familiar to many chronically ill people, between old self and new, inspired her daring decision to alternate 1st and 3rd in the book.

“I wrote it crazy and edited it sane,” she said. She had to wait and see if it actually hit, if it was actually funny where she hoped it would be. She was later (years later) diagnosed with a condition where you experience migraine with no head pain, and the book dives deep into aura states. She found inspiration in madness narratives.

During and after Covid, there has been a push to avoid writing about it (she even got pushback for marketing of this novel) but Lockwood hopes people have and will record pandemic stories. Avoiding it is “not good for literature. That’s not good for art.”

If you are local to Cleveland—Launch is Feb 15!