When I was younger, birthdays seemed to be a second Christmas. With food, gifts, guests, and a day of fun and play. But as I grew older, birthdays became less of a celebration than an evaluation. And it's not that I am against birthdays. Salads are very much welcome. Yet somewhere between the greetings, food, and polite inquiries sharpened into social measurement, I feel less like a celebrant than a person pending review. I say this because birthdays sometimes require you to

There are evenings which arrange themselves so neatly around one’s work that it becomes difficult not to suspect the weather has a mind of its own. I had been editing a collection of light academic, Austen-adjacent short stories: domestic, observant, faintly severe in its manners, and much concerned with tea, weather, illness, and characters who express affection through correction. One of the stories was set in a small English coastal town, and involved the particular betray

A Lesson in Balance started one hot summer with a very general idea: I wanted to try writing a dark academia story. At the time, I didn’t have the whole plot yet. I had the atmosphere first. A prestigious school. Fancy students. Academic expectations. A little mystery. A little danger. The usual dark academia ingredients were there, but the story itself was still loose. My first instinct was to look up philosophy quotes. Which, honestly, feels like a very normal starting poin