Introducing:

Saturday Morning Serial!

Crunch into it in front of classic cartoons.

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The exploitation of adjunct faculty is one of academia’s nastiest little secrets. And it wasn’t until twenty years of hard teaching labor had passed that I began to realize: in my career there was no next time, like I’d been promised. No promotions, no raises, no opportunities. No health insurance. It also hit me at this same time that my husband had been doing the exact same thing to me that my academic and theatrical careers had been: expecting me to give everything, returning nothing but empty promises of a Next Time that never existed. 

Next Time draws parallels between the gaslighting abuse I’ve suffered through the same twenty years by a husband, the theatre world, and a career in academia. Throughout the dozen sections of this memoir, I weave together the abuses of three central and powerful forces in my life, draw out the common themes that unite them, and reflect on how this sort of thing can happen even to a strong, interesting woman. I then tell the story of my own emergence from these abusive systems, and offer a narrative of hope for other people caught in similar, intertwined cycles of personal and institutional abuse.

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As much as I plan on continuing to send the above pitch, my complete book proposal, and whatever bits of completed manuscript of this memoir are asked for into the void off to agents, I have decided that concurrently with this traditional publishing effort, I will serialize my book here on Substack.

Why? Well, since late 2022 when I first started posting some of my more beloved old blog posts and essays and lectures into my shiny new newsletter, I’ve found such a rich and bountiful (not to mention generous) community of writers and readers here, who engage with my work more than any of my bot followers blog readers ever have. 

More: as much as I comedically complain about not having been selected to a Substack Reader showcase yet, the numbers of cross-pollinations and collaborations I’ve been a part of here have been so empowering and phenomenal. From

Joshua Doležal

and

John Halbrooks

cross-posting some of my work that’s relevant to their own Musings, to true collabs with stellar Substack figures like

𝐏𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐅𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐔𝐒

, I’ve found this writerly soil so incredibly rich that, beyond my memoir becoming a book (which I do still want), I can’t think of anyplace else (besides that) I’d rather put it than here.

Plus, to speak selfishly for just a moment: I have noticed more and more projects like this are being snapped up from online platforms by traditional publishers and agents. The story of Geraldine DeRuiter’s If You Can’t Take the Heat has many more of these types of tales embedded within it, let alone it being how she got her start. The book of beautiful words I wrote about in Vemödalen is another one of these ‘success’ stories. Each day, it seems, I find more tales of a book that got ‘discovered’ by being online, like the modeling agents who first saw Norma Jean working at a factory. So I’m serializing this book for all those reasons. Call me Marilyn Monroe.

Really, though, for the most part, I want to share this book with people that need to hear it—people for whom this tale of oppression and escape might be life-saving, or at least reassuring that they’re not alone. I’ll still continue throwing my pitches into the ghostly agented ether, but in the meantime, please enjoy this work of mine, that I concocted from 2020 through late 2021, under the aegis of an expert and generous writing coach (more about him to come), and through the Covid-spanning hours on The Balcony of Sanity. (More about that also later.)

A selfie of my academic labors, from back in the days when I collected papers on actual paper from my students. This looks like it must have been from 2016-ish. Fun fact: I never use red ink when grading. I use green or aqua or purple, mostly.

Those of you who’re already subscribed to Zuko’s Musings will get this serial delivered to you just like Zuko’s Musings already is. Make sure you’re checking your junk mail—since I’m already sending you stuff 3X a week, your inboxes may get suspicious. Those of you who are Following me instead of actually subscribed, you may want to hop on this and take the plunge, since this is some of the most polished and ready-for-prime-time work I’ve accomplished, and I feel like, in my very modest opinion (!), that it’s a story many of you will find you need. 

Starting Saturday June 1st, then, look to find your first installment of Saturday Morning Serial, aka Next Time, delivered to your inbox. I’m gonna start with something fun and a little special. I’ll see you then.