Bookwild - Haunted Houses and the Horrors of Domestic Motherhood: Aimee Pokwatka's Accumulation

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

This week, I talk with Aimee Poktwatka about her hew horror book Accumulation! Listen to hear about: Aimee's unconventional path to becoming an author—from anthropology and veterinary work to creative writing—and how curiosity has shaped her storytelling.   How Accumulation was inspired by Aimee’s real 18th-century home, a creepy doll her husband found in the yard, and her fascination with haunted house stories as metaphors for domestic life.   How the novel blends haunted house horror, psychological suspense, and social commentary to examine motherhood, invisible labor, and the slow erosion of self.   Aimee's “inefficient” writing process—heavy outlining followed by intuitive drafting—and how revision uncovers deeper emotional truths.   Why horror, especially domestic and psychological horror, can uniquely explore trauma, gender roles, and the unsettling transformation of everyday spaces into something terrifying. Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

This week I got to talk with Amy Piquotka about her new horror book accumulation. It is a very, very psychological horror, basically that takes place in a haunted house. Here's the short gist of it. When former documentarian Tennessee Cherish moves her family into their dream home, the promise of a fresh start quickly curdles as eerie disturbances, her children's increasingly disturbing behavior, and sinister repeating loops transformed domestic life into a waking nightmare. As the house's haunting secrets unravel, 10 must confront the terrifying cost of motherhood, isolation, and the illusion of perfect family life before the forces consuming her home destroy them all. This is a really fun conversation with Amy.

She moved into a new house and feels like that house or like immediately felt like that house was haunted. And so a lot of this book took inspiration from that. house that she happened to move into. She does clear up the fact that like the strained relationships in the story are not indicative of her life, but it's just wild thinking about like how people get inspiration from so many different places. And in this one, it was literally the house she moved into. So anyone who enjoys horror, psychological horror as a way to examine the horrors and sometimes monotony and sometimes time loop feel of motherhood, this one's going to be for you. That being said, let's hear from Amy. I am super excited to talk about

accumulation. I'm such a fan of horror, especially horror with motherhood. But I did want to get to know a little bit about you first, Amy. So what was your journey to writing like? The first time I knew that I wanted to be a writer, I was in the third grade. We were assigned to write the story of the frog prints. I wrote it from the point of view of the frog. My entire brain lit up and I was like, this is, this is it for me. You know, this is what I want to do. But as I was growing up, I actually never really considered being a writer like a job option. You know, that was never something that I saw people, you know, doing for a living. So I went to college. I studied anthropology and I wanted to go study primates. I spent some time studying human skeletal remains. We had a collection.

of archaic period, human skeletal remains, which comes into play in my first novel. And then I was really thinking about going to vet school. I worked at a veterinary hospital for several years. But the whole time I thought, you know, I'm going to be a veterinarian, and then I'm going to come home at night and write my novels, you know. But the longer that I worked at the veterinary hospital, I saw how hard the vets worked and they were coming in on nights and weekends, and I realized that this was not a realistic goal to have. And I ended up going to a writing conference, the Bread Loaf Writing Conference. And that was the first time in my life that I was like, oh, this is a thing that people actually do. It would like people make their lives around stories.

So at that point, I ended up going to grad school for creative writing. And then it still took a very long time for me to get a book published after that. I, you know, I was 28 when I finished grad school and I was 40 when I sold my first book. So it was, it was a long time and two books that didn't sell before I finally sold one. But, yeah, it's a journey to get there for so many authors, at least from the ones that I talk with.

That is such a fascinating trajectory, though. I don't think I've had anyone talk about, like, being a vet or even wanting to study primates. So I kind of like that. Yeah, you know, you just kind of followed your interest. Yeah, you know, I always tell people, like, the great thing about being a writer is that

I get to be professionally curious. So, you know, you get to go down so many different rabbit holes and I, you know, people know that I love. That's how I feel about reading. That's why I was reacting so strongly around like, you can just like even like nonfiction. That's what it started like happening in the last like year. I've really noticed how like nonfiction, it, in fiction too, obviously. But a lot of there's like a lot of nonfiction where like clearly someone got really curious and intrigued by something and was like, I'm going to like really learn everything there is to know about this. Yes, that's like the huge benefit. And, you know, my friends are all like, oh, I just met somebody who used to work for Cirque to Soleil. Amy needs to meet her, you know.

Oh, that is awesome. Well, this one, accumulation has, oh, no, no, no, that was about my other question was. How did your writing process develop? So like, do you outline, do the vibes come to you, Is it different with every book for you? Yeah, I will describe my writing process as workmanlike and inefficient. So I'm not naturally good at plot. This is something that I know about myself. If I just sit down and start writing, there will not be a plot in the story. So I spend a lot of time outlining before I start writing.

I use kind of like a beat sheet that I have developed over the years. And then it depends. Because my work kind of runs the spectrum of genre. You know, I've written books that have mystery elements. I have this book is horror. So I kind of just customize that first outline to the kind of story that I'm writing. If it's a mystery story, I kind of think of like, what are the most important beats in a mystery story? My second novel has a dark fairy tale in it. I use the hero's journey. You know, so the outline, I spend a lot of time developing it and then I start writing and everything goes off with.

Um, yeah. You know, my first novel, I was 60,000 words into the first draft before I felt like I had a handle on who the main character is. So I feel like you can really plan a plot, but once the character starts to like live on the page, then things generally turn out differently than I expect. So by the time, and then, you know, by the time I get to the end of the first draft, everything is different. So I reverse outline and then I re-outline what the second draft is going to be. And sometimes it's, uh, pretty similar like sometimes it's not that different but you know the i just finished a second draft of a book and the second draft was basically like a brand new first draft i just had to kind of the whole arc of the story changed by the you know in the writing and i really you know i think it's kind of freeing it's very inefficient but it's also very freeing i really love linda berry who is a cartoonist and she wrote a great book called cruddy and she also teaches and teaches drawing and writing classes and she has this class on writing the unthinkable and her idea is that we're trying to access the dreaming part of our brain while we're awake when we're writing we're trying to let the subconscious

do do the work for us so yeah when I write my first drafts I really just kind of try not to think I write fast and dirty and I let I try to let whatever is simmering in my subconscious come out onto the page and then as you're writing you're like oh what breadcrumbs has my subconscious left for me so you know a lot of the time you know in my outline i'm very hand wavy about the actual climax you know they they defeat the monster or whatever and i don't know how i'm gonna get there but hopefully by the time i do get to that point in the writing my brain has left me enough breadcrumbs that i can figure it out that's really cool it's a cool way to approach it and like you're saying like just like get it out what has been perc like kind of percolating in your head basically

but it is cool i've heard some authors talk about that too or they like go back and read and they're like oh i did kind of know where i was like headed with this i'm like that's so magical yeah i mean and i think all of the real work is done in revision so i you know i think that's it's it's a helpful approach for me because i don't have to be as precious about that first draft yeah that's a good point too like just get through yeah there's no like writing block it's just like if you know i have a plot point i need to execute like just put some garbage on the page and that's future Amy's problem. Yes. You're like, I can come back. Well, with accumulation, I kind of mentioned it earlier, but there's there's kind of like domestic suspense. There's like psychological horror.

There's definitely some social commentary. What kind of came to you first and like how did you kind of end up with like all of those genres kind of together? Yeah. So accumulation is a haunted house novel based on my house. So the house came first. We moved into this house in 2019. And, you know, I loved those stories, but I didn't move into this house thinking, like, I'm going to write a haunted house novel based on my house. However, first of all, the house is really old and weird. The main part of it was built in the 1750s. It's full of personality. People keep asking me, like, how did you come up with all this stuff about the house in the book? And I'm like, it's real. This is, much of it is very much based on my house. I knew some of it was. I didn't realize.

how much. And shortly after moving into the house, my husband found in the yard a doll. And it's like a really creepy doll. Like we really found this doll in the yard. It is about the size of my hand. It's bald. Its outfit is gray. It's just like the... It's like the first instance of your book. Yeah. Yeah. No, we found this doll. And as one does, upon finding an obviously cursed object in one's yard, we started hiding it for each other. So he would put it in my underwear drawer. And then I'd be like, now it's my turn and I would put it in the grill for him to find or whatever. So we were playing this little, you know, some people were like, see the doll and they're like, burn it immediately.

But I found this doll and I was like, this is an opportunity to do something hilarious. So we were really having fun with our doll and the idea basically came from that. What if this family moved into the house and was so busy playing with this doll that they failed to notice the house was actually haunted? So the frame of the haunted house was kind of. the scaffolding that I was able to hang the rest of the story on. But as I started writing, it really was like a snowball rolling down a hill because it just started picking up all of the, every part of my life basically, kind of just got swept into it.

Yeah. It also, the title itself, so the accumulation, there's kind of like, there's an accumulation of, of horror elements happening. Like there's scary stuff starting to happen. But it also feels like it's also kind of like how much can the main character accumulate emotionally and psychologically and like take on. And there's definitely some conversation about motherhood going on as well. So was that something that kind of came to you as you were writing it that those two would go

together? Yeah. And I, you know, it's really. a story about a woman's kind of the slow erasure of her identity, the accumulation of these small choices that we make. You know, when you're in a marriage or a partnership and one person is the artist and the flexible parent, then you make that you say, okay, yeah, I'll be the person to run the errands or I'll get the kids or I'll do this, I'll make the sandwiches. And it's not one dramatic incident, but it's slowly over time, you can really lose yourself

in that the domestic labor and especially the caring of the mental load that usually falls disproportionately on women. So I was looking at the way that those small, those small sacrifices and those small resentments add up over time and become really, you know, can be annihilating for people. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it absolutely can. I was just thinking of you writing it about your house though because the house does feel like a character so i'm not i'm not surprised that people were asking like how did you come up with all of this did you ever scare yourself while you were writing it and living there then well i did have an incident when i was writing it where i saw a ghost so and it's actually like my zoom nook where i do all my interviews is the exact spot in my house

where i saw a ghost so and like i don't know you know i consider myself i did not consider myself even spiritual before, you know, but one night I was coming to bed. I had been up late reading. My husband was asleep and I was walking through this little room between the bathroom and the bedroom. And exactly where I'm sitting now, I saw a silhouette head and torso, nothing below it, just against the wall. And in that moment, my brain was just like, that's a ghost. You know, even though that's not what ghosts normally look like in stories, like it was just this kind of moment where my brain was so sure that it was a ghost and I ran into the bed and I pulled the covers up and I was trying to convince myself that this ghost couldn't hurt me. It doesn't have a body.

You know, it felt that real in that moment. So yeah, I definitely, I'm not sure if I like conjured out into my imagination in the process of writing, but it definitely affected, you know, it worked its way into the book too. So my gosh. Yes. The, so it's kind of, it's a really cinematic story too which is kind of fascinating since she's going from being a filmmaker to essentially a housewife who's stuck in this haunted house. Was there something that made you want to write about her? I mean, we don't spend tons of time with her as a filmmaker, but was there

like a reason for choosing that? Yeah. So actually in the initial draft, she was not a filmmaker. She worked. She did like metal work and made jewelry and things. But, you know, I was. thinking a lot about attention and what pulls our attention and her husband also works with film. So over time, it just made the most sense that she, you know, I wanted her to be an artist in some way.

But I felt like working as a filmmaker, we would learn so much about where her attention goes. What's drawing her attention to certain details. So I thought making her filmmaker was a good way to let us see that. Yes. Yeah, that's a great point. the other thing that kind of starts to happen. And if this is kind of spoiler territory, you can let me know. But there's kind of some like very repetitive events happening as well. And in a very horror way. But it was also making me think about like going from, especially like from being a filmmaker where I bet your job is not too repetitive. There's like a lot of like spontaneity and like different things going on versus the,

I've heard some moms even talk about the monotony and the repetitiveness of motherhood, especially like day in and day out. So was that something you were kind of like aiming for or did it just kind of develop as you were writing it? Yeah, absolutely. You know, domestic life is repetitive and boring. It's easy to kind of get lost in that. But I think it's also like we're so used to unloading the dishwasher and taking the trash out those aspects of domestic life, feel very safe. And so I wanted to kind of take these things and weaponize them because it's like the, you know, I think one of the reasons that haunted house stories are so enduring and appealing to people is that the house is supposed to be a place where we feel safe. And when the house no longer feel safe, then like our foundation is gone. You know, we don't have a safe space. So I was really trying to take those kind of boring, monotonous tasks and then weaponize them. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There was a book that I read last year, and I can't remember what the author's name is now, but it's called A Scream With Me. And it is, it's nonfiction where she breaks down how kind of like the domestic horror and suspense that started kind of proliferating movies in like the 80s up to the 90s. So like she was even talking about like alien, Rosemary's baby, lots of movies in that vein. it it like the they kind of like gothic horror so frequently has to do with a female who like is even stuck in a house like of some sorts is like the way that that genre was even developing at the time um and i think it was reminding me basically of that book that i read as i was reading this because i was just like it's so isolating like what what do you do and it all like this is your entire world now when that like wasn't the case previously. So yeah, it felt it felt it felt very like compelling and also reminded me of like the horror like how horror has been able to kind of express that. Yeah. And I think you know, we have so many amazing women in horror right now. And I think the haunted house is often about women because it's the domestic sphere belongs to women. Yeah. But it's also, you know, I always talk about this Kelly Lincoln interview I read years ago where she's talking about the vampire as a flexible metaphor. And I think haunting is also a

flexible metaphor. So any kind of woman's trauma, mental health issues, you know, it's, it's flexible. It can contain whatever we want to put in there. Yeah. That's the other thing is I feel like there's like very much the external plot happening in this book. And those are like that that's kind of what you were saying like scaffolding wise for stories. There's that external part. But it is really mirroring her internal experience as well. Yeah. And was that kind of something you were kind of like plotting and thinking about ahead of time? Because it did pair really well.

Yeah. So, you know, the house is kind of deteriorating as our main character, 10 is deteriorating as well. Or her sense of reality is deteriorating. And, you know, I was really playing with like the, a lot of this could be a metaphor, you know, the crumbling foundation, the cracks in the walls. And a lot of it feels at times like it could be a physicalization, a manifestation of the internal drama, but the house is actually falling apart too. So it was really fun to tie those two things together because, you know, the house itself is haunting 10. But the occupants of the house are haunting the house as well.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's also the relationship when you're talking about cracking foundations with Tinn and her husband as well. And so there's a lot about their relationship that you really get into. Was there anything like you kind of like research to get there? Like there's definitely a toxic dynamic that starts to emerge.

Yeah. Was there anything you kind of like research for that or was it kind of just. like you knew that the relationship would probably have to be in trouble for all these other things too. Yeah, I know. I keep saying like the husband is not the greatest husband and he's not based on my own husband. Like you can't. My husband is lovely and supportive, but that's not a plot. Stories require conflict. So, you know, I knew that I had to have the marriage in trouble. At the same time, you know, I think that the husband, Ward, has good intentions. And I think a lot of haunted house stories or horror stories, you know, the husband is terrible,

and then he dies in a terrible way. And it's so satisfying. But that was not the kind of story that I wanted to write. I wanted to write a story about two people who have good intentions who are trying. But sometimes in a long relationship, especially, like, things just kind of go off the rails. and you have to decide, you know, it's not always just like, let's burn it all down. It's like, let's actually do the work of putting the train back on the tracks. Yes, yeah, definitely. The other thing that kind of stood out to me, too, is, like, you are kind of probing, like,

what is, what is the proof of success or, like, what defines success, kind of both through how culture views it, but even on, like, an individual level like is it financial is it like that kind of wealth that kind of security is it like possessions being able to like show stuff off too um so was that kind of like also like tied in to the fact that like she does like leave her career for this too so it's like she's in a really unique position where like what what would she do on her own if she was too right yeah and you know i think that leaving her job is so important because, you know, 10 is an artist, and I have always thought about this book as being about what happens when an artist stops making art. You know,

for me, as a writer, I have had to put my own work aside at various points in my life because my family, my kids were young and needed attention. But as a writer, I process, I think through writing. You know, writing is a thinking process. So when you lose that outlet, it becomes really hard to be yourself, you know, to even process what's happening around you. So yeah, that loss of the ability to do her work is key. Yeah. Yeah, totally. You were talking about also like a little while ago with the like structuring of the plot or like some of the planning that you also kind of like found beats for different types of stories. And obviously this one was like the haunted house one. is there um was that like what is there anything that like stands out to you in the like

structure of the haunted house story hmm i mean the the thing about the haunted house story is that there's so many like little iconic things that we associate with ghosts and haunting especially you know the house usually is in disrepair um it's usually a fractured family that's occupying it but just like you know i really had fun playing with the little creepy details, you know, the doll, the faucet that keeps turning itself on. Those kinds of elements were really fun to play with. Yeah. I was just, I read The Caretaker here recently by Marcus Cleaver and talked to him about that book as well. And some of what's really scary in that book is it's things like lights turning on on their own. And it's like it's those little things kind of like

you're saying with the faucet too where you're like it actually like that really mundane domestic stuff like having something turned on is actually a little scarier than like a light going out yeah yeah so it is like there are all these different ways that like domestic life can seem so scary yeah like doors i feel like you know right the greatest thing about working on a haunted house novel is that everybody tells you their ghost stories i've heard every kind of ghost story imaginable but it's kind of amazing how often doors come into play doors opening and closing on their own and i think maybe it's just like a something entering or exiting kind of yeah or it's kind of like doors are like portals essentially like kind of the symbolism with that sometimes yeah it's fascinating did you what's like

what's like the craziest like secondhand ghost story you heard or people were just telling you oh my gosh i hear so many the other day i was i was i know i know at the post office and I was like, I was just mailing copies of the book and I was talking to the woman at the thing. And she said, oh, yeah, my family has a ghost named Sarah that followed us to New York from South Carolina. And I was like, I don't like that. I don't like a ghost following you across state lines. Oh my gosh. That is wild. And I talked to one woman who is a bookseller and she told me that she, like, her family's Irish and she goes to Ireland often and people know her, but she doesn't know them because like they know her family. And they're like, oh, tell your aunt I said hi and she's like okay stranger I will and this happened to her once and she went back and they were like oh that was your uncle Jimmy or whatever he died 20 years ago and she looked at the picture she could describe him like she met this man he was like tell your family I said hi and it was like her long dead uncle like she went home and she saw the picture of him and she was like oh yeah that's who it was wow that is wild I also just thought um it was I was I incorporated Irish folklore. That's why it just made me think of it. But there's a movie in theaters right now called Hocom and it has so much of that like folklore. And then there's there's also very much like ghostly elements, but in a in a psychological way too. Which is it's always so fascinating the way that you can kind of like weave a character's like past trauma into

all of it, which is what happens here too. Obviously. that is crazy though do you has it have you ever wanted to move out of your house if it has all of these things going on no you know i you know it's funny because i have never i have felt scared a few times and my i asked my kids recently and they're like i feel scared sometimes but i honestly i feel fairly safe in my house like i feel comfortable here you know people are like did you get really scared while you're writing this. Like, no. And so I have to, I actually have done a lot of research on the past owners of the house. And because someone who lived here for like about 30 years from like the 80s to 2000 brought me all of her research about the house because she heard

from a neighbor that I was writing a haunted house story about it. So I was able to like trace the house back to like owners from the 1800s. And weirdly like I could find very little evidence of people dying here. The only evidence I could find was one baby who died here in like the 1850s. But this woman who used to live here said that she had had someone come to the house and said, yes, they're definitely ghosts there, but they're all like benign, benevolent ghosts. Yeah. So I do think our ghosts are, you know, they're pretty chill, which I think is the case for most hauntings, actually. People say they have a ghost and it's like they just coexist with them.

Right. and it's probably not especially in this case where you're just moving in there it's not like it's vengeful which is there is that a different word is that like is a specter vengeful that's why i don't know why i'm like just now thinking of this i feel like yeah i don't know we were actually talking about this last night because my kid was like i think that's a poltergeist if it's like no yeah and i was like yeah i'm not sure i kind of love that there's different classifications For worse, ghosts, which makes sense. Like, not all humans are scary.

So, like, maybe they're just chilling there. That it is fascinating because I think there are obviously, I think a lot of people fall into two camps where either, like, if they did feel like there was a ghost in their house, they're like, I have to leave here immediately. And then I feel like kind of what you're saying too, though, where I'm like, well, is it just like an essence here? And like, it's not, it's not bothering me. like my husband um does some work in charleston and like one of the places he stays he's like people have said that it's haunted and so he he psychs himself out a lot every time oh my gosh that he goes and i'm like but nothing happens to you i feel like i was just talking to someone about being in charleston and they like hated the city immediately because it felt so haunted to be there that's but i think

he does kind of like it feels kind of dark yeah yeah but i think like ghosts are scary right like Ghost stories are generally considered to be scary. But I think one of the reasons that they're so popular is that there is something comforting about the existence of ghosts too. Like Ross Gay has a thing in an essay where he talks about how annihilation is part of the program. Like, we're going to die. Everyone that we love is going to die. But I think ghosts, even when they're scary, are a way for us to imagine that the people that we love still go on.

and we still will have some sort of presence after we're gone. So I think that it's kind of a double-edged situation where they're scary, but it's also providing us with like a deeper comfort. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Is there anything about horror that kind of, I mean, it sounds like you moved into the house and like that's where like kind of the muse of it all was anyway. But is there anything that kind of like draws you to horror as a genre?

Yeah, you know, I was not like a, I came to horror late. I did not like horror when I was younger. I was forced to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 when I was a kid. And I was just so terrified and believed 100% that Freddie was under my bed and going to get me when I fell asleep. And it wasn't until like, I think it was around 2014 when the Babaduke and it follows came out. And all of these kind of woman-centric, horror stories. that where the monster was really a metaphor for grief or something else. And that was the first time that I was like, oh, my understanding of horror as a genre is completely wrong.

But I think horror does give us this like playground where we can explore the scariest things in it from a safe distance. And I was already kind of, that was, you know, my first novel is about the disappearance of a painter who may or may not paint people out of alternate universes. and it's kind of like there's hijinks with doppelgangers. It's not a scary book. But that idea came to me from asking myself what I was afraid of, you know, and especially like what I'm afraid to write about. And for me, you know, I had already written something about child loss, which is the scariest thing I can imagine.

The next scariest thing that I could think about was dealing with my own mother. So that became the source of the novel. But, you know, I was already asking myself questions about what scary. me before I like moved more into horror but I also think like the world that we live in is horrific you know it feels increasingly horrific so I feel like to me horror seems like the correct lens to examine that through yeah I completely I agree I also I didn't even really start like reading horror as much until about like a year a year and a half ago um and it's like part of what I've been learning through reading more of it too is that like so many genres there's actually so many subgenres

within it so it's like body horror like really gory body horror is like not enjoyable for me more power to everyone who it is um but like psychological horror or even like social horror even like historical horror i'm like these are kind of interesting for all all the reasons that you are talking about is like it is a way to talk about like other things that are happening essentially. Yeah. I have become such a such a horror fan now. And I'm like, okay, I've unlocked the whole other genre. Yeah. My second book had some horror elements to it, but this book is the first book that's like really, I think, firmly in the horror genre. And I'm discovering that the horror community is just full of the loveliest, nicest, most fun people. So yeah. Yeah. And you know, you would have that about horror and

thriller authors where like some authors have mentioned like there are other genres like authors who write multiple genres will be like the thriller and horror people are so nice though they're so nice they're so generous yeah yeah it's pretty i love that part well i obviously love the book like you can tell um and so i think anyone who has also been going on this horror journey with me or already did like horror um i think you guys would love it and as a now when it airs you can go get a copy of it now um but i do always want to ask at the end if there are any books you've read recently that you really loved or if there are books that you you could also just be books you always recommend to people well books that i always recommend to people um i always

recommend the trees by percival everett percival everett i think is one of our best and funniest writers i think a lot of people are most familiar with james but the trees is i and i say this sincerely it's the funniest book that you'll ever read about lynching it's it's it's so good uniquely you know he's so funny but he he really writes like the most pressing stories as well um i love the trees i'm always happy to recommend that um i love miriam taves is one of my favorite writers her last name is t o e w s um but she um most people i guess know her from women talking which was turned into a film. She is from a Mennonite community in Canada, and so that plays into a lot of her books, but she has a novel called All My Punei Sorrows. That's one of my favorite all-time books.

It's about two sisters, one of whom wants to die, and it really changed the way I think about what it means to love another person, but it's also very, very funny. So I just, you know, I really love books that are, deal with heavy things, but with humor because, you know, that's one of my honestly pet peeves is like when you read something that's just like a torture porn you know it's like characters who are living miserable lives and have no sense of humor well that's not how most people react to hardship you know people are actually cope with humor quite a lot so and then the book that i just finished reading that i have been recommending to everyone is lauren graff's matrix which is about 12th century nuns who kind of create this like almost utopia that they live in and the writing

is so lush and like knowing and you want to live in it forever but it's also so sexy I highly recommend Matrix if you want to read about sexy 12th century nuns well I mean that is the most unique pitch I've heard in a little bit so I'm on board oh my gosh the cover is really cool too Yes, and I did it on audio and it's gorgeously read, so. Okay. I endorse the audio version. I love the audio version. Yeah.

Well, my TVR is growing, which is the nature of having this podcast. Where can people follow you to stay up today with everything? Instagram, I think, is the best place. I usually post all my events and essays and things like that. Yeah. Perfect. Well, I will put a link to that in the show. show notes for everyone.

But otherwise, thank you for coming on and talking with me about it. Thank you for having me.