a little bit of madness for March, coming your way
serializing American Mary and expressing some gratitude for our literary community
Hey there! How are you? It’s been a while, right?
If you’re new to my little substack, talk about it, then welcome! Thank you for taking a chance on me and I hope not to disappoint. All of my posts are public, though I do have a paid option for those who want to support my writing pursuits. I don’t expect any payment, and if you’d like to support me in other ways the best method is to share any post that you enjoyed or recommend talk about it to a friend (or your own readers, if you also have a substack).
The last time I posted was to share some excitement about A Writers Party, a local and online literary festival I was planning and producing. I feel a combination of gratitude and relief. If you attended any of the events, if you performed, if you were a panelist, if you hosted, or if you contributed in any way then I seriously thank you. You made the whole thing feel magical and reminded me what it means to be a part of a literary community. If you missed out this year, no worries! We will more than likely do it all again (and then some) next year. The feedback that I received was extremely positive and reinforced my belief that access to literary events and workshops should be open and available to anyone who wishes to participate. If you have any ideas for an event or panel or workshop for next year, please leave a comment here and we can chat!
For a while I felt like I was really pumping out substack posts, at least at a pace that felt abnormal for me. Three posts a month is my usual, and I do think that’s pretty good. For whatever reason, the past few months I just really haven’t been feeling it. I had my efforts focused on other things. I have been trying to write and edit some larger projects, and I have been writing more poems than I had been the past few years. Around Thanksgiving I got really into making poetry macros with Canva and posting them on my Instagram but recently I’ve also kind of fell off doing that too.
Part of it I think had to do with planning A Writers Party and just feeling nervous and a little stressed out about all the details that went into those events. Since it went so well and it’s over now I can kind of take a deep breath and relax and focus my energies on other things. I am trying to put the finishing touches on a poetry collection together as well as make final tweaks to my second novel. But I also want to write on here. I know this is kind of like a casual space for sharing thoughts and my writing and I shouldn’t put pressure on myself to post more often than I’d like to. But I do want to do some thing a little bit different and I’m planning on using the entire month of March to do it.
As you may know, my first novel American Mary is out of print and the press that originally published it is now defunct. I have thought about sending it out to another publisher to see if they want to take it on for a second edition, but I think what I’d rather do post it here on talk about it in short chunks for anyone to read, for free. Serialize it, you know. My plan is to post short excerpts from it every day during the month of March until I run out of novel to share. I hope that sounds good to you.
To start off with, below are some reviews and interviews I did surrounding American Mary back when it came out in 2016.
Brooklyn Rail: 'Boy Problems’ Alexandra Naughton with Catch Business (May, 2016)
The Establishment: Alexandra Naughton Writes The Things She Wishes She Could Say (March, 2016)
Heavy Feather Review: Eric Nguyen on Alexandra Naughton’s American Mary (March, 2016)
SF Weekly, Lit Seen: American Mary by Alexandra Naughton (March, 2016)
I can’t believe that was eight years ago. My life was such a mess during that era and I did not properly promote the book and I failed to tour with it which I regret so much. Especially now since my life, while less messy, is a lot more complicated now seeing as how I have a toddler to care for. Going on tour these days would be a herculean task. I would like to do that eventually though, for a different project, and when the time is right.
Anyway, enough daydreaming. See you tomorrow for the first installment.
Mary Madness