Bodies of salt

As always, we begin with housekeeping. I’m trying to find my groove again after the chaos of a book release, and it’s strange to be in this echoing silence after weeks of frantic work and worry. I feel slightly forlorn, even a little bit lost although I understand the reason for that desolation: post-launch blues are a thing across all mediums.

• NPR gave The Salt Grows Heavy a micro-review, and I’m just ridiculously delighted by it. Having your book called ‘a silver-tongued little nightmare’ is incredibly pleasing.

• BiblioLifestyle says it is one of the best horror books of 2023 (so far), and I’ll take it. (I also got to do an interview with them and there was this utterly delightful lightning round of questions. You can listen to that here.)

• Goodreads declared it one of their Big Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror books of Summer. Woo!

• Amazon(?!) reviewed it on their Book Review blog and selected for their science fiction & fantasy book club, which I’m really chuffed about. (I have always wanted to be an Editor’s Pick and while this isn’t actually an Editor’s Pick, it’s close enough to delight me.)

• Gizmodo reviewed The Salt Grows Heavy. Oh my god. I am still floored.

• I also got to speak with some truly lovely people about my processes. Here is my interview with Lee Mandelo on Tor.com and Tobias Carroll (I completely missed that this interview went up somehow, wagh) on Vol 1. Brooklyn.

• Last but not least, the fucking highlight of my last few weeks is something not entirely related to The Salt Grows Heavy, but is everything I’ve ever wanted to inspire in a stranger. Cassandra Khaw Books, Ranked By How Clearly I Understood Why the Characters Were Eating Human Flesh; or, Gobbets Tomorrow and Gobbets Yesterday But Never Jam Today Just read it for me, okay? It’s a joy.

I have been feeling extraordinarily grateful as of late for certain people in my life — notably the community in my gym over at LES, and the friends I made through Sleep No More. It’s no secret that I suffer from a truly horrendous amount of body dysmorphia. But lately, I haven’t felt any of that familiar hate. When I look upon my body these days, I feel instead both a certain sense of fierce commitment and an enormous tenderness. Here is raw material for the future. Here is the vehicle of my thoughts. Here is the easy endless endurance that lets me walk for hours without tiring. Here is a growing strength, a returning grace. I’m constantly amazed at how the body can be honed by consistent work, how it can be whetted by loving attention.

If this was a feel-good Hallmark movie, this would be where I tell you it is because these people have taught me to love myself, but that isn’t the case. Instead, what they’ve taught me is to see the body as a home. Sure, I can leave the dishes piling in the sink for weeks. No one can stop me from letting my plants die and the dust rime my floor with gray.

But it’d suck.

It would suck to be constantly uncomfortable just because I don’t want to attend to my chores. Sure, there will be days when I’m overwhelmed and can’t do more than flop on the couch eating pizza, but there is always tomorrow, always the day after, always a moment when things ease enough to rebuild that rhythm.

Pushing the metaphor even further, I’m starting to equate this focus on my health to home improvement. I can absolutely survive on the bare minimum but cozier is always better; no one needs new throw pillows but they sure pull the living room together. Likewise, I can do the bare minimum to maintain my body but I’m happier when it looks, acts, and moves a certain way.

So, I make that choice*. Every week, I try to make the choices that will allow me to become even happier with this body I inhabit.

And again, it is so much to do with the people I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with. I’m thankful to the fucking monuments of muscle that are the gym-goers in Gym NYC who respond to my every ‘I am an absolute potato’ next to you with gentle shakes of their heads and reminders that it is about time, about work, about patience. I am thankful for my dancer friends -bird-souled, fae-boned wonders that barely skim the ground when they move— and their candor in discussing their own insecurities, and their own ambitions for self-improvement. Through them, I’ve learned to respect this body better.

Anyway, as always, a cat photo:

*You can’t always make that choice, of course. Much like our residences, the body sometimes arrives or is hit with insurmountable problems and there’s nothing to do but work around those limitations as best we can.