I look into Connie Willis's time travel novel Doomsday Book with suspension of disbelief toward the omniscient time travel machine that somehow knows whether there’s a contagion in the past that present people are immune to (seriously, come on) because it’s phenomenal ANYWAY. Amazing characters, a tight and complex plot, a pandemic before our real one happened, and a lot of questions about hope, despair, and whether we can change a single thing.

I also talk about my novel The Nerve that I published this week—so much fun, that book—and the great progress on the draft of Forty Days and Forty Nights, which is giving me flashback conniptions and making me really happy.

End of year chair summary! Twinkly lights! Did I get anthrax from my Federal era sofa? Unlikely!

Happy liminal spacemas, couches!