AN invITation LOoms!

[Max Magee]

I tried to come up with a clever title for this email. I hope you enjoyed it.

TL;DR: We're kicking off this year's October read-along of A Night in the Lonesome October on Sunday, September 28th at 2pm Central Time (to last about an hour).

Brew your favorite autumnal tea to drink (this is a crossover event with the Cauldron Club Brew & Book a.k.a. The Tea Brokers of Mincing Lane). This will be a virtual meeting to chat, meet new folks, and to decide on how folks would like to interact with the book club this year.

I've got a couple of items up my sleeve that are new and fun this year.

That's right, it's time for us to gather to communally—yet remotely—read A Night in the Lonesome October (ANitLO) by Roger Zelazny. From the blurb:

Boldly original and wildly entertaining, A Night in the Lonesome October is a darkly sparkling gem, an amalgam of horror, humor, mystery, and fantasy. First published in 1993, it was Zelazny’s last book prior to his untimely death. Many consider it the best of the fantasy master’s novels. It has inspired many fans to read it every year in October, a chapter a day,

Sherlockians, in particular, will be entertained by the take on The Great Detective and his "rotund companion."

This year our night sky will experience full moons on October 7th and November 5th (which is the closest they've been in concordance with the book since 2020, when they were perfectly aligned), so it's ripe for the reading.

In previous years, I've posted (scheduled a post to be sent after midnight my time, actually) a kickoff email each day of October with some thoughts, research, and observations—particularly about strategies to optimize your enjoyment, based on my own previous experiences. I was considering posting a couple of leading questions and topics this year instead, to let others lead the discussion. I may copy snippets of previous year's articles in response to questions or when appropriate.

Karen Ellery, who maintains our ANitLO website (https://www.anitlo.com/) says we should advertise our whiz-bang guest reader: Harry Turtledove has expressed interest in reading/emailing along this year. I've enjoyed reading his posts on Bluesky and for some reason I thought he would be interested—he replied that he would, as his schedule permits.

Please let me know if you'd rather not receive additional information or emails about this (even if it's just not going to work for you this year) and I'll do my best to respect your wishes and remove you from future mailings.

Why am I sending this out so early? Well, I want you to be prepared for October AND this is the perfect time to reserve your copy of the book from the library, order it from your favorite local bookstore or see if you can score a cheap-o paperback from Half-Price Books!

More information will be sent out about the live video chat opportunity as we get closer to October.

Max

[Max Magee]

Karen Ellery has kindly created a Zoom registration link for this event. Folks are already registering, don't miss the boat (and I hope to see you Sunday for the Joint Cauldron Club event!)

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/h6pS09zEQUC2v0m-KfmPNw

Max

[Max Magee]

Since there were a couple of questions already about this Sunday's meeting, I wanted to address those:

1.) No, you don't need to have read anything/even have the book in hand by Sunday. The Sunday virtual tea-party is just a meet-and-greet opportunity for folks to introduce themselves and to talk about how they would like to participate in the book club event.

2.) I'll send out a reading schedule after that meeting (if/when we come up with a consensus about how folk would prefer to read and discuss this year), but there's no homework due this Sunday.

3.) If you didn't see the invitation or just haven't gotten around to it yet, please register for the Zoom (we're running a tight ship after some unfortunately zoom-bombing shenanigans occurred at the Norwegian Explorers' meeting this past summer) at this address:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/h6pS09zEQUC2v0m-KfmPNw (once you register, we will send you a link to join the Zoom meeting this Sunday at 2pm Central time)

4.) I'm currently in the middle of Equal Rites, the first book in the Witches Discworld series by Terry Pratchett—I hadn't realized how timely and appropriate that would be, but that's a fun introduction to the holiday season. If you haven't given those a shot, you might want to, they're fun.

https://www.discworldemporium.com/product/the-witches-collection-discworld-collector-s-library

Max Magee (he/him)

On Mon, Sep 8, 2025 at 9:28 AM Max Magee <maxp...@gmail.com> wrote: