You're invited to come hang with me and Jessica Knoll on February 3rd

Introducing "Conversations on Creativity"

Hello, lovers!

Writing to you from the most insane six-bedroom villa at Four Seasons Resort Los Cabos at Costa Palmas with my SmartFlyer colleagues, straight off an absolute whirlwind of a work week. If you’re a reader of Nadine @ The Stanza here on Substack, you know we just finished up our annual CORE summit in Santa Monica with back-to-back days learning amongst some of the finest in the hospitality. More to come over on our channels about the gathering soon! Be sure to subscribe to Stay Awhile with SmartFlyer to get the skinny sent straight to your inbox.

To be honest, amidst this hectic ten-day work trip, I wasn’t exactly sure I had anything left in the tank to show up here today. But I’ve been so encouraged by the growth of our The Sunday Series over this past month, and it felt like sacrilege not to pop into your inbox…albeit with a highly condensed send from our usual TSS cadence. That said, there’s sooooo much content in my back catalogue—particularly for those with their eyes on summer trips that may benefit from consulting with one of my guides.

As a reminder, paid subscribers have access to my entire library of 100+ (!!!) issues of The Sunday Series, including Your Local’s Guide to West Village, A No-Gatekeeping Guide to Mallorca, A Mini Formentera Guide, Your Ultimate Paris Guide, Your Guide to Bozeman, Your Guide to Nantucket, My Holy Grail Rules for an Overnight Flight, 31 Ideas for Your Next Birthday Trip, A Playbook for How to Make Friends As An Adult, 16 Prompts for a Personal Quarterly Review, My 25 Favorite Books of 2025, 155 Hotels So Special They Are the Destination, and The Packing Method that Changed My Life.

Now, straight into what I’m in your inbox to share! I’m over the moon to be partnering with Murray’s Cheese on this first event in our “Conversations on Creativity,” a quarterly community event where we’ll bring in an author to chat about their work with our West Village Book Club crew. That said, this first one, of course, needs to go well in order for us to keep them going!!!! It would mean the world to me to have you join us. Grab a ticket and invite a friend to come along. There will be wine, cheese, and lots of fun conversation.

And because we truly are aiming to support the author community with our in-person events and content creation, I’m thrilled to share that we’ve also partnered with McNally Jackson to do a special signed pre-order of Jessica Knoll’s forthcoming novel, Helpless. So even if you can’t make it to the event next Tuesday, you can secure a signed copy of her July 7th release—an option currently exclusively available to our WVBC community.

Signing off with this bookish send by sharing both my top reads of the year above, as well as our entire book club’s fave books of the year here.

Considering I’m currently on my laptop in the middle of our kitchen while our crew sips on nightcaps (which is wildly inappropriate!!!!) I’m going to sign off thanking you for the grace in making today’s edition short and sweet. I’ll check back from New York next week with lots of fun updates! In the meantime, please let me know in the comments if I can expect to see you at Murray’s—can’t wait. xxKD