E.B.'s Notes & News: October 2025 👻🖤🎃📚🪦🧡🐶💀🌈🐢
GOOD GRIEF will be out in paperback in LESS THAN A MONTH!
Less than a month until Good Grief is out in paperback!!!!!
Have you not preordered your copy yet? Well then have I got a deal for you! In the spirit of giving Good Grief as a gift, since so, so, SO many people I know have generously bought copies of the book to give to friends and family who have lost pets, and then often those people go out and buy their own copies of Good Grief to give to their friends and family who have lost pets, etc. etc. etc. let’s do this:
If you preorder a paperback copy of Good Grief from Newtonville Books (and you can choose to have it shipped or you can pick it up in person) and leave a note in the “order comments” section saying what you’d like me to write, I will inscribe your copy to you or the person of your choice in memory of a beloved pet along with some special limited edition Good Grief swag!
Did you already preorder your paperback copy from somewhere else? Email me the receipt and I will mail you some special limited edition Good Grief swag!
Great! Now get to ordering!!!
xoxo,
E.B.
Hope Notes & News:
I feel so overwhelmed these days by everything awful going on that I’m trying to focus on the places where I can make a concrete difference in my local community. This month’s cause is particularly close to home.
Richie’s and my friends Matt and Julie and their kids Maddi and Chip (a.k.a. Bobby) recently experienced a devastating fire in their home in Southie. The four humans are all okay, but they lost everything: all their belongings, the house is a total loss according to insurance, and both of their cats, Bill and Ted, died in the fire.
And here’s the kicker: Julie was 37 weeks pregnant with twins when all this happened, and less than a week after the fire, she gave birth to two healthy boys, Alex and Jack.
Any one of these events — any kind of house fire let alone a total loss level fire, the death of a pet let alone the death of two pets, having a new baby let alone having twins — would be a lot to handle, but having all these things happen at once is truly overwhelming for me to even think about. So I was glad to see that there is now a GoFundMe to support the Kennedy-McCarthy family.
Thank you so much for even considering a donation! I’m sure any amount would be appreciated.
P.S. Do you have any causes that are close to your heart that you’d like me to share? Let me know via email, in the comments below, or in the subscriber-only chat.
Writing Notes & News:
I mean, Good Grief will be out in paperback in less than a month. That’s pretty much all I can think about right now. Did you preorder a copy yet?? Don’t forget my Good Grief limited edition swag promise!!! How annoying am I being about this???
Good Grief got another shoutout from reporter John Leicester, who interviewed me for this AP News story back in February. He recently wrote an article for The Independent about the death of Formula One star Lewis Hamilton’s bulldog Roscoe, and he quoted me again. Thanks, John! (And thanks to Liz Good for making me aware of Roscoe’s death in the first place!)
Also, thanks to Haley Young for another Good Grief shoutout in her newsletter:
Events Notes & News:
—> Tuesday 10/14/25, 6:30pm: Tomorrow night, I hope to see you at All She Wrote Books for my conversation with Elizabeth MeLampy about her awesome new book Forget the Camel: The Madcap World of Animal Festivals and What They Say about Being Human. Plus this will be your last chance to snag a hardcover copy of Good Grief courtesy of my very own secret stash! More info here: https://www.allshewrotebooks.com/events-1/all-she-wrote-x-elizabeth-melampy
—> Saturday 11/8/25, 6:00pm: The Head of Circulation and Adult Services at the Holliston Public Library, Taylor Hodge, reached out to me to ask if I’d be part of the library’s second annual Local Author Expo, and you know that there is absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for a librarian, so obviously I said yes. Then imagine my delight when I saw that my pal Theresa Okokon would also be part of the event! Plus, get this: even though the expo is three days before the official paperback pub date, I got permission from HarperCollins to sell paperbacks of Good Grief at this event — so come to Holliston on November 8th if you want an early paperback! More info here: https://hollistonlibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/second-annual-local-author-expo/
—> Saturday 11/15/25, 11:00am: This is my official paperback launch party and it’s going to be a turtle-y terrific event featuring Sy Montgomery and her new picture book, The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle. The event will be organized by Newtonville Books and hosted at the West Newton Cinema (if my name ends up on the marquee my high school self will absolutely die from joy) and it will feature a meet-and-greet with the famous Terrence and Twyla, author presentations followed by a Q&A with me and Sy, a silent auction fundraiser for Turtle Survival Alliance, and a screening of a documentary about turtles! More info coming soon!
—> Wednesday 11/19/25, 7:00pm: A literally awesome literary animal conversation with Sangamithra Iyer, author of Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed, which is coming out on 11/4/25! We’ll be at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition (in the Seaport!) and can’t wait to see you there! The last time Sangu and I were in conversation together was at the Boston Book Festival in 2019 a.k.a. another life. More info here: https://portersquarebooks.com/event/2025-11-19/sangamithra-iyer-author-governing-bodies-conversation-eb-bartels
—> Saturday 11/22/25, 1:00pm: This event will be a doggone delight! I’ll be in conversation with Karen Fine, author of The Other Family Doctor, and Ellen Finnie, author of The Ten Perfections: Spiritual Lessons from a Life with Dogs at Tatnuck Bookseller in Westborough, where we will talk about the great canine loves of our lives. More info coming soon!
Reading Notes & News:
Luca is so obsessed with books right now, it’s awesome. In the morning when we are trying to get ready to leave for Wellesley, he follows me around with a book saying “Book! Book! Book!” until I stop and sit down on the floor and read it to him. It’s always worth being a little late to daycare/work if we get to read together.
I’ve been doing a little of my own reading too these days! I’ve been reading and loving all of the books by the authors I’m doing events with this fall, including Forget the Camel: The Madcap World of Animal Festivals and What They Say about Being Human by Elizabeth MeLampy and Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed by Sangamithra Iyer. For my dark books book club, I read Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin which was interesting but, honestly, very hard to read as the parent of a young child, and I’m about to start Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser.
In audiobook news, I started listening to Susan Choi’s new novel Flashlight, which I really like so far, plus I listened to both books in the Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers and I started rereading (relistening? but I haven’t listened to them before, only read them with my eyes, so Idk what the right term is here) the Time Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle.
Friend Notes & News:
Oh man where to even start?! My friends have been up to so many cool things!
I will read all of Matt Alston’s takes on Star Wars LEGO sets any day.
Congratulations to Matt Patterson and Sy Montgomery — their new picture book The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle was accepted into the Original Art Show at the Society of Illustrators in NYC!
Haley Young had an essay (“Diary of an adventurous homebody”) published in The Amazine!
Dorian Fox’s travel story “Wading In” won gold in the U.S./Canada Travel category in the 2025 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition!
Plus, this is an oldie but goodie for McSweeney’s by Sara Shukla.
Menagerie Notes & News:
This month we’ve been dogsitting Honey for my parents while they were traveling in France to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary (congrats, KK and Rich!) and Luca has been so excited to have her in the house. Honey, however, I think is less excited to constantly be stuck with a very enthusiastic toddler haha. She is very patient though and Luca is learning to be gentle — though he always wants to sit on Honey’s bed with her which she does not love. We’re working on it!
Also, in the spirit of spooky season, Luca’s latest obsession is this dog skeleton Halloween decoration, which he has been carrying around and sharing his meals with. As if there was any doubt he was my son.
I always enjoy your posts, E.B.! I hope the weeks leading up to launch are good ones!