I'm glad to read that your sleep seems to be improving. I have been genuinely worried. Fingers crossed that it's a new trend.

I'm impatient with books: I stop reading a novel, when it bores me, I don't waste the precious shelf-space to books I know I will never read again. Yesterday Beneath an Oil Dark Sea arrived and I put it on the shelf to your other books and suddenly I realized, that this is my 16th Kiernan-Book and that your books fill a lot of space on my shelves. To be precise: On the way to the top, there are only the Collected Works of Goethe ahead. This is weird. I'm german. I read a lot of german books over the decades - and there are great german authors. But now, there is you, American authoress, writing in English, and I don't want to give away only one of your books. What comes on top: reading your prose is a very masochistic pleasure. On every single page I feel the frustration about the limitations of my English skills. I'm not with Powell: Reading german, I can 'see' texts. I see the layers, the subtle puzzle of semantic fields, structure, whatever … this is part of the joy. That does not function so very well in english: Reading your prose is like swimming on the surface of an ocean. I can see, that it's deep, I see, that there is a lot worthwhile exploring down there - but I will never be able to really grasp anything of it. As I said: frustrating and masochistic - and great and full of joy. I'm glad, I stumbled over your work two years ago. Thank you for it. I hope for a lot more to come.

i've been reading False/Starts II because my hands are too fucked to hold the main event. it's a beautiful little book, and i love it.

while it is maybe a function of my memory fail or perhaps that i've been reading you stories for what seems ages now, but the trail offs don't feel unnatural or unfinished to me. shorter than your usual short stories, but the characters, worlds, and emotions are there if i read with a fraction of the care you put into the writing. thank you.