September by any other name, would be a different month.

There's not a lot of update on the book at the moment. It's still out for review by two of my three beta readers. The first reviewer has completed his review and sent me his comments. As expected, the level of detail that this reviewer provided was perfect. He caught things that were missed when I did a basic copy edit, asked some good questions, and seemed really excited for me to complete and publish the book. That made me feel pretty good about moving forward.

The other two reviewers have a couple more days to complete their work. Once I have everyone's feedback, I'll compile it into a single document, review all of their comments, and start making changes. I'm not sure how long that will take because I don't know how many changes I need to make.

For those of you following along with my job hunt, I had an interview this week with the senior recruiter at a company. The position is for someone to own the product education part of the business. The interview must have gone well because I have a follow-up interview first thing next week with the hiring manager. I feel really good about this position and about the company. Assuming I get the role, I'll tell you more about it in a future newsletter.

I've been thinking about a Storycraft essay to include with this week's newsletter, but nothing is really grabbing me. I thought about revisiting the concept of first lines of a story and pairing that with the last lines of a story. But I was afraid I'd be treading on spoiler territory if I did that.

Next, I thought about writing on the topic of intent. This week I read an excellent essay by Edgar Allan Poe. In the essay, he talks about the construction of the poem "The Raven." It's a fascinating read as he walks you through his process for building "The Raven" in terms of constraints. The essay starts with him covering the importance of intent before a single word hits the page. It's this that I considered writing about. But I'm still digesting the whole essay and I'm not ready to write about it.

Finally, I thought about the nature of storytelling, about the value of the story versus the medium. We've been telling stories since we've been sitting around campfires. And we've found all sorts of ways to express those stories. I thought about how medium impacts the message. For example, for me, the poem The Cremation of Sam McGee will never carry as much impact as when it was read to me around a campfire when I was 12. It's still a fabulous story. But without the smoke of a fire stinging my eyes while somebody reads it to me in the dark, it just doesn't carry the same weight.

Also on the concept of the medium impacting the message, the Apple TV show Sugar is doing some interesting things visually that tell you how the character sees himself versus how the world around him actually is.

I may come back to this concept at some point. But I don't have any fully formed ideas yet.

So rather than an essay, this week I'm going to give you some recommendations. These are things that I'm currently reading, watching, and listening to, and enjoying. Maybe you'll find something that you like.

I know I talked about short stories last time. Here are just a few that I really want to recommend.

Have you got recommendations? Send me a note or drop them in the comments below. I'd love to hear what you're reading and watching.