The General(ists): July 2025

The sixth installment of the newsletter with bits and bobs of everything.

It’s my birthday month, so get ready—there’s lots of goodies here and on the way, and I’m finding my stride in a publishing schedule (which is challenging for me!). The past two weeks, though, have been a complete whirlwind. With Theatre on Ice Nationals, showing a dear friend around my home state of Oklahoma, and visiting with family, there has been little time for me to decompress and really relax. My body is feeling it, and I need to take care to not overdo it.

I know others may experience the same sense of urgency to cram as much as possible into a finite amount of time, but I’m trying to take it slow and to really appreciate the travel and to look at familiar places with new eyes. I had a friend come and stay with me a few days as I visited home—Oklahoma isn’t quite a travel destination even though it wants to be—and while I grew up there, I still have quite a bit of the state to explore. So, on a whim, we drove up to the Great Salt Plains up in the northern half of the state, where visitors can spend a few hours getting their hands dirty and playing in the sand searching for treasure (in this case, selenite crystals). It’s the only place you can find these crystals formed with an hourglass shape out of various sand, red dirt, and miscellaneous debris, and we found it fascinating to look over our finds and wonder about the formation of them.

I hope there are moments this summer where you stop and let your curiosity lead you. I have no doubt you’ll find something worthwhile in doing so.

Writer’s Workshop

• Not a ton of fiction writing this month with the end of the school year and TOI Nationals coalescing. I’ve jotted down snippets and ideas, though. I’ve recently thought of and started a new reading project to keep that balance of reading and writing: the Reread Diaries.

  • The point of this series is to revisit novels and stories we’ve already read or experienced, and to look at them with a fresh perspective (and especially as a writer). What makes these stories so compelling that they end up in the canon of English curriculum in the United States?

• New Sections:

  • I’ve added a “Novel Intrigue” section to head beyond home so there’s a place to serialize some of the novels on backlog that have not found a home elsewhere. They will be for subscribers-only, and I’ll try not to weigh down your inboxes with them.

  • Dear Esther, a novel I wrote in month in my early twenties, is not necessarily a commercial fit. As such I’ll begin posting it in installments here on Substack. It is a tale of love and loss, but also more importantly a story of homecoming. Since this is a novella, rather than my flash fiction series, subscribers only (but still free!). Regardless, the first chapter(s) will be available to everyone here.

Bookish Delights

As always, a few of my more recent favorites:

The Spellshop | Sarah Beth Durst

I love the cozy fantasy genre — I need a little bit of stakes, but just enough to keep me on my toes — and Durst delivered with heaping spoonfuls. I love reading, especially in libraries, and felt an immediate kinship with the novel’s narrator, who is forced to flee her home and job as a librarian to seek political asylum on her parents’ hometown. The only catch? She stole her favorite books. More than just a sweet, homespun tale, I related to her homecoming in a much more personal way. Finding one’s place in the unlikely, going back to your roots—it hit just beneath the ribs.

The Dutch House | Ann Patchett

I listened to Tom Hanks’ reading of this in the audiobook version of the novel, and while it was much more slow-paced compared to some of the other novels this month, I really enjoyed it. Two siblings grapple with the loss of their father and their home not long after his marriage to a stepmother who throws them out unceremoniously after his funeral. The Dutch House is more of an exploration of place, of how loss and grief can come from an unmooring of our childhood as much as it comes from losing someone important to us.

Pachinko | Min Jin Lee

Daniel Puzzo

recommended this title to me (after having been recommended it, himself), and I can say that I was not at all disappointed. In fact, I’ve been recommending it to my entire circle of reading buddies and am now waiting for them to finish so I can talk about it! It’s a story not often told of an entire generation of a Korean family—spanning from the Japanese occupation of Korea before and during World War II all the way to more present day. It is beautifully written, direct in its assessment of the human condition, sharp with its dealings of racism, and heartbreakingly tragic. It was a wonderful read, and I do recommend it if you love historical fiction.

Children of Time | Adrian Tchaikovsky

If you have been following this newsletter since the beginning, you’ll know that I read Tchaikovsky’s newest novel Alien Clay and found the weird, body-horror adjacent science fiction novel a real treat. So, when the first installment of this series landed in my little free library, I snatched it up and finished this monster within a week. The Old Empire of Earth has fallen, and the last vestiges of the human race have spread out to seek a place to survive as a species. The problem is the only planet that seems inhabitable is guarded by madwoman preserved by ancient systems, who has closely watched the evolution of a new sentient species arise from a failed experiment of the old regime. Really fascinating look at evolutionary science fiction, and I loved the throughlines.

Let me know if any of you end up enjoying some of these reads! I love talking shop with others.

The Reread Diaries: A Book Club

As I mentioned earlier, I’m trying out something new—I know that rereading a novel is incredibly important to understanding it on a deeper level, and I’m making an effort to look at literature as a writer again. Not to dissect it, exactly, but to think about author’s intent and execution. I mentioned this when I reflected on my routine rereading of Kurt Vonnegut’s A Breakfast of Champions.

• The first novel on the docket is Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, a classic who-done-it mystery. This week is our first week of reading, and so I invite you to join us. I’ll be posting extra content for subscribers only on Saturday, so feel free to join us here at head beyond home.

Substack Features

I’ve started a new section here on the newsletter, as I mentioned last month, because I’m trying to branch out and read new voices here on Substack. I got the idea from

Anne-Marie Hubert

, who started sharing the work she enjoyed reading and she’s helped build out some of our community around creative fiction here.

The Little Fiction Fairy |

Kate Dalby

Kate has been a subscriber here at head beyond home for a while, and I just had time this month to read through several of her short stories. Her writing is usually funny, sharp, and sometimes inspired by her own experiences. Many times, I’ve found myself laughing aloud. It is clear she loves the craft, and so I encourage you to check out her work.

The Heir and the Answer |

Abigail BW

I’m always on the hunt for new voices, and this month I ran into Abigail, who just joined Substack and is already killing it. She’s posted the first chapter of her fantasy novel, which had me hooked from the beginning—it introduces the main heroine Danya and a mysterious prophecy. I’m a sucker for a good puzzle or riddle, and I’m looking forward to reading more from her as she continues to share her work.

TOI Nationals

I’m a big believer in adults discovering or renewing interest in hobbies, especially as we move into our late twenties and thirties. With the vanishing or consolidation of physical third spaces, I find it incredibly important to seek out connections through shared interest. I see this all the time in my classroom: built-in teams or groups that see one another regularly, and the friendships borne of close proximity that may not have happened otherwise. But when we’re adults, where does that passion go? What happens to the burgeoning friendships we made space for based on our own personal interests and passions? They didn’t go anywhere—we just have to search for them rather than waiting for them to come to us.

If you’ve been around head beyond home long enough, you know that I am a self-declared amateur figure skater. I didn’t skate when I was a kid, and I even though I skated recreationally (and that’s a liberal use of the word), I didn’t actually start learning skills and tricks until I was twenty-four and going through what I affectionately think about now as a quarter-life crisis. But the joy it’s brought me? The opportunities? Worth every second of it.

I am so fortunate to compete with a lovely group of people from all ages and walk of life and to find joy on the ice in a way that reflects some of the same joy I had when I was a marching band kid in high school. We have teachers, nurses, scholars, students, writers, and more, all coming together to tell a story. That camaraderie and kinship was something I sorely missed. So I encourage you to find something new, something old, and to connect to others with that same interest.

Let me know what you find.

Until next time,

Sam

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