Filter This

Please consider donating to Doctors Without Borders “From Palestine and Israel to Sudan and Ukraine, civilians and hospitals should never be a target of war.”

Hey, you(s),

If you live in the US, I hope that you had a nice holiday weekend. It’s okay if it wasn’t nice and you spent the time planning revenge. If you live outside the US, I encourage your revenge fantasies and/or baking the cookies of revenge. I just had a cookie and it’s top of mind (oatmeal chocolate chip; no damn raisins in my cookies, although I like raisins when not stuck in the middle of a cookie). The cookie of revenge is so top of mind I’m trying not to have a second, and then a Fibonacci sequence of them.

Speaking of math (that’s the sound of mouse clicks closing this newsletter), an impromptu contest. I’ll send a signed copy of either Horror Movie or The Beast You Are to the first person to email me with the next number in the following pattern (no Internet searching and no AI…you are on your considerable honor)

1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, ________

Hint: you don’t have to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and when you know the next number, you’ll know the pattern.

(NOTE: an email newsletter subscriber already won the contest)

Okay, no more math, I promise.

GIVE THE HOLIDAY GIFT OF TREMBLAY

Nothing says happy holidays than a cup signed book of good cheer, especially mine! If you want signed/personalized copies of my books for a special someone, Pam Carr of Mad Mama Vintage (she and her former storefront was Tuckerized at the end of my book Another) is taking signed book orders for me. You can order and give personalization instructions at her website. The cutoff date for orders is December 7th to give us time to sign and mail before Pam goes on a holiday trip.

DEAD BUT DREAMING OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, THE COPYEDITING

In mid-November the copyedits for DbDoES landed. I am incredibly lucky to have Rachelle Mandik helping my writing read less stupid (my newsletters, by comparison, do not get such care). Some writers dread the copyedits, but I love them. It’s my last chance to go through the book line by line as well as seeing and hopefully learning from mistakes and de-clunkified sentences. Rachelle does an amazing job differentiating between what is style/voice and what is my dumbassery. I also get a kick out of the index-like summary and lists of proper nouns etc used.

As always, pre-orders are encouraged!

MOREVEMBERING: MIAMI BOOK FESTIVAL AND FAILING AT FURNACE

With Halloween in the rearview mirror, the only travel I had in November was a recent trip to Miami for their Book Festival. Lisa joined me on the trip. Neither one of us had been to Miami before and while the stay was short (we arrived on Friday evening, left on Sunday morning) we enjoyed our time.

On Saturday afternoon, I was on a panel with Stephen Graham Jones and Quan Barry. In the week before the trip, I read Quan’s THE UNVEILING; I loved it, though, be warned, it’s hardly the feel-good read of ’25. It is a book that feels like 2025. It’s purposefully difficult, messy, confrontational, yearning, and genuinely unnerving too. The panel had no moderator, which, apparently, is what Miami Book Fest does. It was a bit unmooring at first (and proof that I didn’t or don’t read my emails too closely, as I didn’t know there wasn’t a mod until I showed up), but the conversation was definitely more natural and free-flowing than the standard question and then the panelists dutifully take turns answering. Thank you to everyone who came to the panel and signing after.

Instead of coming to the panel, Lisa wisely lounged at the hotel pool while drinking mimosas. Stephen, Nancy, and I returned from the festival with a smuggled green room sandwich for Lisa, then we walked around the area near the hotel and had great Cuban food. Later that night, there was an author’s party on or near Miami beach, which involved drink tickets and a lovely view.

Pictures! (Including my new favorite photo of Stephen).

Meanwhile…prior to leaving for Miami I changed, or attempted to change, the air filters in my furnaces (there are two, one in the basement and one in the attic). The furnaces are less than a year old as we’d replaced the originals in February. The filters are supposed to be changed every three months, give or take a month when I remember I’m supposed to change them. This was going to be the second time I was changing the filters. Lazily, I ordered two new ones from the monstrous online place.

I probably don’t have to preface any of this by writing that I am not a very handy person; to wit the Ikea bookcase with the top piece on backward that I then sharpied black to match (you can’t tell!). I can teach math, taunt the non-mathematical with numerical patterns, write stories, and shoot the three. But that’s it. That’s my skill set.

Anyway, armed with the large (compared to what I used to put in the old furnaces), expensive filters in hand, I attempted to fulfill my furnace duty, but I couldn’t get the suckers to go all the way in. I could get them in to a certain point, but got stuck with another five inches or so of filter hanging out. When I’d changed the filters at the start of the summer, there was resistance, and but I got them in. But not this time. And there’s a limit to how much pressure one can apply to the cardboard framed filters, push too hard and they accordion into themselves, which, in a fit of pique, did happen at the end of the filtering attempt.

Instead of going wilding around the neighborhood, I took a few deep breaths and inspected further. I found that the filter guards (little rudders of metal) were crooked within the ducts. Validated that the filtering (or lack thereof) wasn’t a me problem, I gave up (er, with one filter accordioned into place) and emailed pictures of the crooked guards to the place that installed the furnaces. They offered to send a tech that weekend, but otherwise, they were booked through and beyond Thanksgiving. My son Cole (nice guy that he is) offered to meet the techs at my house early on Saturday morning while Lisa and I would be in Miami.

To make this long saga into a long story, my validation withered when the tech showed up. Or half-validation withered. He did fix the bowed/bent filter guards, but also, I’d purchased the wrong filters. The ones I bought were 20 X 25 inches when they were supposed to be 20 X 20. In my defense, they are 20 X 20 X 5 and I transposed the 5 and/or I thought I’d reordered the same filters I’d ordered last time. Yeah. Anyway, I was extra thankful I was in Miami and not having to explain my sorry self to the furnace tech. I have the proper filters in now, though, they still were a giant ass pain to get into the space.

ELSEWHERE

--I’m honored that Another made the prestigious Bluebonnet Award List.

--Speaking of Another, it’s on Bloody Disgusting’s Holiday Gift Guide.

--Podcastery! Always Bring a Book

--I’m currently reading Wreckage, Peter Straub’s final and unfinished novel, published as a limited edition by Subterranean Press. It’s a wonderful if not melancholy reading experience, particularly after reading the family’s touching introduction.

--I’m watching the ten-plus year old show The Leftovers. It’s Lisa’s favorite show. She created her podcast TV IS AWESOME just to talk about it. Her podcasting partner is a college friend of ours, Ken Cornwell; the Ken in A Head Full of Ghosts is named after Ken. If you know me long enough you end up in one of my books. Sorry, thems the rules. I resisted watching the show because I’d read the book by Tom Perrota, and because it made Lisa mad. But mad in a fun way! I’ve finally succumbed to the great Leftover pressure and it’s excellent. I’m almost done with season 1. It’s some wild shit, and it’s hard to believe that this was written/made before 2020 because it feels so much like how so many of us lost our minds during and post-Covid.

I’ll check in again before the end of the year, or at the start of the year. In the meantime, I hope your revenge plans come to fruition, unless it involves me.

Paul