Happy November! Happy colorful leaves and ginger smells and fuzzy sweaters! I kind of always expect this time of year to look and feel like this:

Until I remember that it’s usually more like this:

But whatever! That sort of imagination is big for us this month, as November’s theme is INVENTION. Making things, making things up, lying, science, photography, more DIYs than usual, and paying respect to people who consistently churn out new stuff we love, from Beyoncé to Chris Ware. For some reason, the way people in the past imagined the future—now the present—has been on our minds, too, Jetsons-style. I’d like to think that those people of yore would be super impressed by all our technology, but I dunno if I myself would be that stoked about Angry Birds if I were expecting hovercrafts and robot maids. Wait: WHY DON’T WE HAVE HOVERCRAFTS AND ROBOT MAIDS? I am so disappointed in you, present day. I need more tools to enable my laziness! I need to be able to Facebook stalk from bed, guilt-free!

One thing the present day does offer is the ability to, um, run the website you’re reading this on. Even better is when we get to bring this all to life, and everyone gets to meet one another and hang out in person. If you’re in or near Los Angeles, we are hosting three Rookie events in your area this month:

Friday, November 9th, 7-9 PM: a reading and signing at Diesel in Brentwood (225 26th St.)
Saturday, November 10th, 2-5 PM: a zine-making workshop, reading, and signing at the Nerdist Showroom at Meltdown Comics (7522 Sunset Blvd.)
Saturday, November 10th, 7-10 PM: a dance party with a performance by Best Coast at Space 15 Twenty (1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd.)

Join us, will you? Not many people know this, but zine-making workshops and Best Coast were actually listed in a rare outtake of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, and if they’re good enough for Julie Andrews, they’re good enough for us. I can’t wait to see everyone who came to our Strange Magic events again, and to meet new Rookies, too!

Thank you for being here, and I hope school and friends and loved ones and life and things are going OK.

Love,
Tavi

P.S. December’s theme is Faith. If you’d like to send in a piece of writing, an illustration, or a photo album about beliefs of all kinds (not just religious), what gets you through the day, what helps you sleep at night, what it takes to believe in yourself and others, etc., and moments of disillusionment, too—[email protected] is your email destination! (And we’re still taking scans of journal pages for a gallery we’re running this month, too.)