142: September 2026

One of my favorite things about being a writer is getting to make friends with other writers. Quite a lot of this happens for me online, a symptom of the time I came up. I really started to buckle down and write in earnest in the early days of the pandemic, when everyone was eager to start talking to each other virtually because going outside felt strange and dangerous. Even now, with the pandemic having subsided and covid-19 having become a more-or-less seasonal illness, I'm still more likely to make a connection online first, then meet that person in real life, often via their writing. This month I had the opportunity to attend a book tour event for a friend who's promoting his debut novel. It's fun to put a three-dimensional face to a name and avatar and a writing style, to realize that someone whose words you know well is in fact taller or shorter or louder or more soft-spoken in person than you pictured them. I like being surprised by people, and I like making those connections. Anyway, if you're looking for a spooky book to read this fall, I can recommend Nicholas Russell's Observer, which creeped me out in all the ways I'd hoped for, and in a few ways I didn't expect.

What I wrote:

Busy month over at Seeing & Believing. I wrote reviews of Na Hong-Jin's Hope and Lance Oppenheim's Primetime. I also returned to the Toronto International Film Festival, where I wrote capsule reviews of some twenty movies. The capsules are collected into three volumes: catching up with the heavy hitters from previous film festivals, documentaries, and premieres & revelations. More to come in October!