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Thank you Maud. And once again, you have gifted us with so many amazing ideas and resources! A treasure trove of ancestral wisdom!

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Thank you, Sebene—your newsletter is a continual gift!

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So many great references! The January mystery bookshop event is enticing! Thank you for all these posts. How is that bat house working? Is it providing housing?

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Thank you, Carolita! How's your green stuff doing? The milkweed is doing well here, though spotted lanternflies are sadly also flourishing. The house in the photo is a birdhouse, and it's pretty old (we moved here seven and a half years ago and it was old then!) but does the trick for the sparrows.

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Ah! I thought it was a bat house! It's a grand bird house!

My stuff is at the stage where I've finished going over my first draft (right on schedule, by September 1, as I promised myself) and I am now just trying to see if I can interest my agent in reading it. I'm worried it's not what she wanted or expected from me ten years ago when we met. I'm dying for an editor, and my most cherished hope is that I find one with Afro-Latine or at least Latine chops. I have my fingers crossed.

As for the milkweed and the spotted lanternfly, SAME! I have discovered that the lanternflies are a little overconfident and that if you fail to stomp them by your third try, the fourth usually catches them while they gloat, ha ha ha! So, keep at it.

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Oh this is wonderful news about the draft! Please keep me posted–I have confidence in your project and am excited to read it and am happy to brainstorm with you (to the best of my ability) if there's any way that might be helpful. And ooooh, that is good to know about the fourth try! I usually give up on the third attempt, as they swoop up to yet another thing out of my reach. I'm also sending pages to my agent after Labor Day, also fiction, though I don't have a full draft yet, only about 80 pages. Solidarity!

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Yes, solidarity! 💝 and the offer is mutual if I am competent in any way to be of use to you!

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I was going to mention All Our Families to you, such a small world!

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I love this! And I also owe you email!

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Your dogs are so cute!

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They say thanks and wonder if you have any treats!

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Great to hear from you, Maud. I just saw that there's an art installation at Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, closing on Sept. 4, that memorializes the many unmarked graves in pauper's sections of the cemetery: https://www.green-wood.com/the-perimeter-path/. Have you been to see it? It sounds incredible.

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Hi Beth! I didn't know—thanks!

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Fabulous links today, thanks! the Atlantic piece especially is a must-read!

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