Morgan Richter

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.❤️

Absolutely love this piece by @4nikkolas.bsky.social; great to know that prints are available on his site.

Last month, I got covid + flu + shingles (dose #1) shots all at the same time! The next day, I did stay in bed and cry a lot (I hear that's mostly the natural effect of the shingles vax), but I will say in all seriousness: worth it.

I've lived in Seattle for eight years now, and I still have to pause and think before saying "Alki" or "Leschi." I'm never 100% sure on those final "i"s.

If you're wondering about it, you quite possibly are! The "kane" part is pronounced like "can" instead of "cane." It's counterintuitive.

I once chatted with a friend who mispronounced "Spokane," i.e. he pronounced it as it's spelled. I told him the correct pronunciation, and he said, "When I visited there, I heard it both ways." No. No! No, sir, you did not, unless you were talking with someone who was messing with you (possible).

The Anti-Prime Sale at bookshop.org. 17 more hours.

Bookshop.org (the best Amazon alternative) is having an anti-prime sale today. Free shipping on books including mine :P bookshop.org/a/88357/9781...

Paperback editions of A Natural History of Empty Lots in a box

The paperback edition of A Natural History of Empty Lots is out today from Timber Press @hachetteus.bsky.social! Thanks to all the readers who have picked up the hardcover and ebook over the past year (or listened to the audiobook) and spread the word 🙏📖💚

Yes, it's the perfect meal if you need to get a week's supply of sodium in a single serving!

Canned corn beef hash. Fry it up and pile it high on a buttered English muffin, and it is a god-tier breakfast item. Few agree with me on this. I was rereading Chandler's The Little Sister last night, and way back in 1949, Philip Marlowe was complaining that canned hash is disgusting.

Authors beware! I've been bombarded with AI-based scams this week -- the book club one John Scalzi mentions below, plus I've been targeted by a whole bunch of scammers offering to write Amazon reviews in exchange for cash. I'm sending them all straight to the trash.

SCAM ALERT!

I've been contacted by several authors; someone is impersonating me, offering to make their book an official selection of our club in exchange for a small fee.

No reputable book club charges authors a fee.

Thank you for mentioning this! Got one yesterday and meant to post about it, because I'd never seen this scam before -- very glad you're exposing this absolute nonsense for what it is. (First email seemed legit, I emailed back, and they hit me with the "tiers of engagement" I could buy. Asswipes.)

AUTHORS: It’s time to submit your claims for the Anthropic copyright settlement.

1. Look yourself up here: secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

2. File your claim here: secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

Form asks for ISBN and copyright reg # for each work. Can find in step 1.

Thank you! 😀

Good to see you here, Matt!

I can't say enough good stuff about Morgan Richter and her very exciting books!
If you enjoy a mystery and you haven't checked out THE UNDERSTUDY yet, you are missing out!!

Q&A with Morgan Richter about her new novel, THE UNDERSTUDY.
tinyurl.com/4a46f3z3
@morganrichter.bsky.social

Interior of Broadway Books in Portland, where I'm signing copies of The Understudy at a table while the fantastic Wendy N. Wagner stands nearby. Quick plug for Wendy's eco-horror book Girl in the Creek: It's wonderful, and everyone should read it.

Had a great time at Broadway Books in friendly, peaceful, quirky, lovely Portland chatting with the amazing @wnwagner.bsky.social. The crowd may have been small (my sister, my second cousin, my old friend Dave, Wendy's spouse, and one cool stranger), but everyone was lively and engaged.

Portland people, what are you doing tonight? Why not join me and @morganrichter.bsky.social at Broadway Books at 6 pm to talk about mystery, murder, opera, and Jane Fonda????
broadwaybooks.net/event/2025-0...

I'm really looking forward to Thursday! This is going to be so much fun!!!

Great review of @wnwagner.bsky.social's very cool novel, which has stuck with me long after reading it. Her book is ecologically-minded body horror, a microgenre I didn't know I needed until I read it.

Random gymnastics routines in '80s videos: one of my favorite things.

Excerpt from a blog post I wrote on "Take On Me": "The video for “The Sun Always Shines on TV” is a direct sequel to “Take on Me,” transforming “Take on Me”’s romantic optimism into bitter tragedy: At the start of “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” Bailey and Harket’s characters experience momentary bliss in the real world, and then Harket is sucked back into the comic book, presumably for eternity, leaving Bailey bereft. Because Americans by and large don’t know much about A-ha, I got into an argument on this very subject with some random dude at a bar in New York a small handful of years ago: “Take on Me” came on over the sound system, his girlfriend and I started gushing about the video, I mentioned the existence of the sequel, and he jumped into our conversation to angrily insist that I must be talking about some kind of fan-made project, because the “Take on Me” video has never, ever had a sequel. I am not the kind of person who gets into arguments at bars, to put it mildly, and this experience—having my calm factual knowledge flat-out refuted by some dude who didn’t know a blasted thing about the subject matter but was nonetheless absolutely certain he was more qualified to weigh in on it than me—was a unique one to me at the time. Then I started a YouTube series devoted to analyses of Miami Vice episodes, and I quickly became accustomed to angry dudes yelling at me about how I am wrong, wrong, wrong."

I remember! I got into a weird fight in a bar with some random angry dude on this very topic! From my blog: morganrichter.net/blog/todays-...

As the great @morganrichter.bsky.social once wrote, "Between Napoleon’s tendency to flirt with anyone within winking distance and Illya’s ability to inject a jolt of freeform polysexual chemistry into everything he does, simple scenes between them can turn complicated very fast."

Happy anniversary, Man from U.N.C.L.E., and yes, Sarah's right -- every time I rewatch, I'm struck anew by the utterly delightful flirtatious chemistry between Illya and Napoleon. That series was a treasure.

Yeah, I think the whole pre-credits sequence, very much including the Fat Boys, is pretty strong. Everything that comes after that quickly falls apart, but Annie Golden is good.

🤣

What Happens When a Grown Woman Wears Axe Body Spray for a Week? I confess that it was hard to choose a fragrance.

Many years ago, I started using Axe body spray myself because I liked some of the scents, and I felt very ashamed. And then in 2013, the great @dahlialithwick.bsky.social wrote a piece for Slate about her own Axe usage, and I felt immediately vindicated. slate.com/human-intere...

For some damn reason, my sole Wikipedia citation comes in the entry for "catfight."