Month-in-Review Highlights: April 2026

The cultural highlight of my April 2026: The annual Quais du Polar festival of crime fiction in Lyon, France. April 2, 2026.

I postmortem each month shortly after it ends. Previously, I used these posts to hold myself accountable on progress toward my annual goals. Starting in January 2023, I broadened these posts to address more generally my observations and experiences for the month. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

I kicked off the month with a third trip to the Quais du Polar literary festival in Lyon, France, an annual event celebrating crime fiction that brings in authors from all over the world who write in French or who have had their work translated into French.

It’s a stunning event.

This year, the festival felt even more packed than in previous years. Despite a bevy of events on offer, most didn’t have anywhere near enough space to accommodate all the people who wanted to attend, including us. If we go again next year, we’ll have to strategize better about how to organize our time.

Still, we had so much fun. It’s a treat to get out of town for the weekend, mill around with so many eager readers and book lovers and authors, and have some concentrated time together exploring and experiencing after a long late-autumn and winter without much by way of wandering away from home.

Otherwise, though I saw a good friend here in Lausanne once for lunch—also at the top of the month—April was all about deep focus ahead of the summer season, when I tend to have a lot more happening that keeps me a lot more scattered.

I worked hard to get as far in front of my work and administrative and life-maintenance efforts. I kicked off the beginning of the year’s annual check-ups (more of those to go—yay), thrashed my way through endless tax-season back-and-forth (still not done with that, either), and trudged forward dutifully on overall home and financial obligations. All of that in addition to the work-work and the writing work. (Lots of good progress made on planning out the new novel. That’s energizing, at least.)

Maintaining all that diligent focus amid a gloriously sunny April—we had very few of the proverbial showers this year—wasn’t easy. As eager as the beautiful days made me to get outside and engage with the world, the ever-shorter number of weeks between now and the summer chaos kept me in line.

We’ll see if I can keep myself in check for at least a few more weeks.