Do We Need More Side Quests?

And other shit that made me smile this week

Reminder to check out the GoodReads Parisian Heist giveaway. Enter here to win a galley. And if you’re in Philly come see Spruceton Inn / Casey Scieszka and I talk about my favorite book of the year so far The Fountain at Barnes and Noble in Center City on Tuesday.

I needed to send out a bunch of gifts this week to people who have done me some really important favors and I had these totes made at Bluebird. Flannery put them up on the website so you all can get them too if you want. A perfect thing to order when you get a personalized copy of Parisian from one of my favorite woman-owned bookshops.

Get I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie here.

Get Bring on the Matriarchy here.

I came across the below Instagram reel at just the right time. Sometimes the algorithm knows what you need (damn you). I wasn’t sure what it meant by side quest, but then I realized it was just mini-adventures and I was hooked. They are things like:

Go to a bookstore, close your eyes, and buy the first book you touch.
Spend three hours in a public library without looking at your phone once.
Take a 30-minute drive in complete silence.
Visit three different local cafes in one morning and rank their atmosphere.
Go to a movie alone in the middle of a weekday while the rest of the world is in meetings.
Find a safe body of water and jump in to reset your nervous system regardless of the temperature.
Buy air-dry clay and spend an hour making something tiny.
Get on a random train or bus, ride it for 20 minutes, and explore whatever stop you land on.
Wake up at 4 AM to catch the sunrise at a location you’ve never been to then go back to sleep.
Find a vinyl record based solely on the cover art and listen to it from start to finish.
Identify three weeds or plants in your neighborhood that are actually medicinal or edible.

Let’s make a list of more! Add them in comments.

I am also being served so much eighties and nineties nostalgia in my feed and I am here for it. This one made me snort laugh.

I’m actually writing this in a coffee shop right now that is playing the best nineties/2000s soundtrack including Vogue, Kiss Me, Champagne Supernova, Creep …I am in heaven….

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it. More hilarious things below the pay wall.