Mary Anne Mohanraj's Blog, page 2

February Newsletter

Hi everyone, and happy new year!

For the first newsletter of the year, I would like to start by thanking everyone who contributed to the MRAH Kickstarter for helping us reach our goal of $1500! For those who haven’t heard, this Kickstarter was for a podcast I’m co-hosting with Benjamin Rosenbaum: Mohanraj & Rosenbaum Are Humans! A podcast about science fiction and fantasy, writing and publishing, community and culture, and what it means to be human. The first few podcasts will be released in March.

At the end of 2020 I also decided to run for the Oak Park River Forest High School District 200 school board. My four year library board term will be finishing in April. I’m in the process of setting up my website, and will have more info soon!

PUBLICATIONS:
As a writer, there’s a lot of stuff going on for me in 2021. First, I sold a story! “Wake” will be appearing in Scott Gable’s anthology titled Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird (Kickstarter here). Also very thrilled to announce that Constellation Press will be bringing out a collection of my Jump Space stories, including The Stars Change, later this year.

I also plan an ebook release of my very first book, Torn Shapes of Desire, an anthology of internet erotica, and to re-release A Feast of Serendib on its one-year book birthday on March 6th! Look out for more info on that soon. After that, we’ll be seeing Vegan Serendib in the second half of 2021.
To keep up with all of these things, news, events, and any of my day to day posts, head to maryannemohanraj.com.

SERENDIB:
A Feast of Serendib is still getting press! It was included in “Books I Embraced, Devoured, and Loved in 2020” on the blog whenlooseendsmeet.com and featured in Chicago Mag's Holiday Gift Guide for Foodies, and I was invited to be a guest on The Larry Meiller Show podcast to talk about it as well!
Just before January ended, I led two Ceylon Curry cook-alongs for Fiber World’s Spice Night. Were you there? Did you like it? I really enjoy doing them, and it’s a creative way of connecting with people after trying to responsibly social distance for almost or over (I can’t really remember) a year now.

March 6 marks a special date for A Feast of Serendib, which turns *drum roll* one-year-old since its official release! We’re planning a virtual cook-along and some other special events for Feast’s book birthday. Look out for more info on this coming soon!

PATREON
For Patreon 2021, I’ve added new goals and rewards for every $500/month I make from Patreon. My big goal is that I can get to a place where I’m making $3k/month from Patreon, can drop one class, and focus more on writing. I’m very close to reaching my current $500 goal, where I’ll post 30k words of a Jump Space novel-in-progress, untitled, for Patrons to read and even share feedback with me on.

Alongside these writing focused goals, I’m trying to add more writing into my already pretty crafty Patreon. As of last month, I’ve added a $3 Story Bits subscription level where patrons can get snippets of whatever I’m working on at the moment, be it fiction or gaming related. For 2021 specifically, I plan to release a Jump Space RPG with new adventures and short stories released every month or two.

Don’t worry though, if you’re here for crafts and snacks! I’ve begun including more crafts into my Patreon treat boxes (one coming up in March), like candles, tea towels, and of course lots of sweets.

As always, thanks for subscribing to my newsletter, and thanks for reading as well. Connect with me over social media!

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-Mary Anne

Patreon Update!

I am trying to get myself to write a little more (making sweets is distracting), and to help with that, have set a new goal on Patreon.
Now, I feel a little bad because the last goal, I promised to write another scene of a particular story, but instead, as I was writing, that story morphed into the Jump Space RPG, which is not quite the same thing, but hopefully my patrons enjoy that too?
But for this goal, I am only promising something I've already written, so there will be no opportunity for it to sneakily morph into something else. Did you know that I drafted 30K words of a Jump Space novel at one point, following on directly from the "Jump Space" short story? I did! And then I got distracted, and started working on something else (probably a cookbook).
So if I get sufficient patrons to get me to $500 / month (we're actually pretty close right now), I will send all the patrons those 30K words, and they can tell me what they think. Maybe they'll love it so much they'll convince me to start working on it again? 🙂
• If people join at the $1 / month level, they get the knowledge that they are helping to motivate me, and I appreciate them greatly! You too can be a patron of the arts!
• If people join at the $2 / month level, they get new recipes e-mailed to them pretty close to weekly
• If people join at the $3 / month level, they get the recipes + "Story Bits" -- various writerly things sent pretty regularly, including new adventure scenarios for the RPG
The "Jump Space" short story is here, if you want to read it before deciding if you want more: http://maryannemohanraj.com/science-f...
*****
Currently at $457.83 of $500 per month: If we make this goal, not only will I get a load of serotonin from accomplishing a goal, BUT I'll post 30K words of a Jump Space novel-in-progress.
Not yet titled (would love feedback).

(My patreon is here: http://www.patreon.com/mohanraj )

So much to do...

Well, I was up working 'til 2 a.m., so unsurprisingly, slept 'til 10 a.m. I sent a note at 10:30 to my SLF team to let them know that I wouldn't make it to the 11 a.m. meeting, and they wrote back to tell me the meeting was actually at 10, and they'd met without me. Oops. In my defense, it was wrong in my calendar -- now fixed. (I mean, I had put it in wrong, so it was still my mistake, but a different KIND of mistake than just sleeping through the meeting...)
I managed to get myself coffee, meds, and breakfast (Sri Lankan fish curry on a hamburger bun, yum, not quite malu paan, but not a bad substitute), and then went to finish the last bits of the writing project that was due yesterday. Finished now and sent in, whew.
In theory, I'd now spend the next two hours frantically drawing to try to get a design in for the next Spoonflower challenge before the 2 p.m. deadline, but we have Anand's annual IEP meeting at 1:15, so that seems a little implausible. Well, we'll see what I can do in an hour -- maybe I can submit something, even if it's far from the version in my head? Year of the Ox, hm. I don't think I've ever tried to draw an ox before...

Mohanraj and Rosenbaum are Humans!!!! (

Hey, folks, it's Giving Tuesday. I will try to do a proper SLF-related post soon (we'd love for you to become members!), but for the moment, let me remind you that there's just 8 days left on our podcast Kickstarter! Eep.
We've raised close to $500, but have $1000 left to raise in the next 8 days, and Kickstarter is all-or-nothing funding -- if we don't make the full amount by the deadline, we get nothing.
If you're at all interested in throwing a dollar or two at a project designed to help provide free creative writing and lit education, WORLDWIDE, please check it out here.


The podcast also offers quite a lot of Ben and me talking about various aspects of culture, society, race, gender, parenting, and more -- as an example of that, here's our first full episode. Or actually, probably 2 or 3 episodes -- when Ben and I record, we tend to record for a long, long time. That's why we need an editor. 🙂

Link to the Video!

At this early point, we were still not quite sure what the podcast would become, and we were recording in May, so still very much shaken by the pandemic and trying to make sense of it all.
As it evolved, we started including more writing craft instruction, lit discussion, editor expertise, author interviews, so there's all of that plus a lot more coming. Assuming we actually manage to fund this Kickstarter (fingers crossed)!

Announcement!

I think I may not have announced that I'm thrilled that Jed Hartman's Constellation Press will be bringing out a collection of my Jump Space stories next year. Working title: _Jump Space_, because titling is hard.
I admit, it does feel a little odd announcing it as a publication, given that I've been dating Jed for 20+ years. 🙂 But he has a very critical eye, which is why he did such an amazing job as senior fiction editor at Strange Horizons for so many years, and already, as we discuss the order of the reprints, and what new stories I'll be writing for this, I feel tremendously relieved that he'll be editing this book. He's going to make it beautiful, and much better than I could have made it on my own. All hail excellent editors.
Constellation Press only does digital editions, so I'll be shopping the book around to small presses who do print when I have the chance. If I don't find a publisher there, we'll bring it out ourselves at Serendib Press. But regardless, I'm super happy about it all.
The road to writing and publishing a novel in this universe has been a slow and bumpy one, interrupted by cancer and a pandemic. But I think this story collection will be a coherent and solid project, and I'll be very glad to have it out in the world.

An Open Letter to Those Who Don't Pay Attention to Politics

An Open Letter to Those Who Don't Pay Attention to Politics
Four years ago, I had a conversation
with an older man, an immigrant
with a serious, demanding job,
a job where he saved lives, a man
who didn't pay a lot of attention
to politics. He asked me if I wasn't
getting a little hysterical, when I said
people would die if we elected Trump.
(He didn't actually say hysterical, but
I think that's what he meant. Silly woman,
worrying her head about silly things.)
Back then, we didn't know Covid was coming
around the corner, though if we'd been paying
attention, we'd have known a pandemic lurked;
the CDC had been warning us, for years.
Many of us weren't paying attention, though.
He and I, we definitely didn't know that Trump
would gut the CDC. That wasn't on our radar.
I didn't know we'd start putting children
in cages. I didn't know we'd start
sterilizing immigrant women. I didn't know
we'd start dismantling the very rule of law --
and whatever criticisms you may have
of America's legal system, and there's plenty
to criticize, I am absolutely sure
we'd be far worse off without it.
I didn't foresee every particular nasty
iteration of the last four years. I didn't realize
that every morning for months I'd wake,
read the news, and think, 'what fresh hell is this?'
I didn't know that it would get so bad that
the national park service would go rogue.
The park service, people.
Even the trees protest.
But I knew refugees would be turned away,
forced to take children back to war-torn homelands.
'No one puts their children in a boat,
unless the water is safer than the land.'
I knew hate crimes would rise, that people of color
and women and queer folks would all be at greater risk,
the vicious emboldened by their president's rhetoric.
I knew services to the poor would get cut,
even though one of the best investments we can make
as a country is feeding each other. Food stamps
return a dollar and thirty cents for every dollar spent,
almost immediately. Unemployment pay is almost
as effective. (I didn't know Covid was coming, that
we'd need unemployment on a scale
far greater than before.)
It matters, who runs the country. In small ways
and large, it matters. Every day, the decisions they make
cost lives or save them. That's what it is, to be president,
to set priorities. And in a time of global disaster,
the scale of what they can affect is magnified immensely.
As of today, America has lost 231,000+ people
to Covid-19. We are notoriously bad, we Americans,
at looking outside our own borders, but the briefest glance
at New Zealand, at Vietnam, at my own homeland
of Sri Lanka, tells us that we have badly mismanaged
this pandemic. The economy suffers for it too,
and as a result, even more people will lose their homes,
their livelihood, their families, their lives.
Presidents can't control everything --
but at the end of the day, they're responsible.
We live, and die, based on the priorities they set,
the choices they make.
Today is election day in America.
America, it matters.
Choose better.
*****
Mary Anne Mohanraj
11/3/20

Finding the safe line

There's a lot of heightened language going around in America right now, due to the pandemic and the election. I've been wanting to write something about the election for weeks -- I have a big megaphone on Facebook, with close to 10K friends and followers, and it seems like I ought to say something in this run-up to election day. I've had a hard time fixing on exactly what, in part because the thought of moderating many days of potentially hostile / abusive conversation is frankly exhausting. I'll post something, probably tomorrow.
But today is Halloween, and I wanted to talk a little about holidays and the pandemic. My local friends here in Oak Park tend to be on the science-based, conservative side of health practices. Ditto my college and academic friends across the country (and the world). But I have a lot of readers in other situations, and I know many of them haven't hunkered down quite as much as my family has.
I see a lot of rhetoric flying these days. 'Plague rats' is a term I've seen more and more, for example. I don't love it. I understand where that heated language is coming from, the frustration when you see people who appear to be willfully taking irrational risks, risks that put you and your family at greater risk, and that lead to you needing to restrict yourself even further, for even longer. I have friends who are seriously immunocompromised, or who are living with elderly relatives, who have to be so careful.
How can people be so selfish? It's easy to get angry in response.
But I see the flip side too. I have a lot of healthcare worker friends and family (lots of teacher friends too), essential workers who have to go into work. At the start of the pandemic, it sort of startled me to see how often, they were actually more willing than my husband or I have been, to be in company with other people.
Because these essential workers have to go in to work and be in close contact with other people, because they know how to take precautions, and because they're intimately familiar with the science, perhaps they're actually a little more comfortable with things like going for a masked outdoor walk on a breezy day with a friend (which really is very low risk, especially when community case load is low).
I think for lay people like me and my husband, it's relatively simple to just 'shut it down,' especially since we're lucky enough to have jobs that allow us to work remotely. So many people don't have that option, and when I look at communities with lots of people who work shoulder-to-shoulder in factories, for example, doing work that's essential to preserving the food supply that my family depends on, it's not so surprising to me that they spend their days in that environment and then don't see why anyone would balk at something so much lower risk, like outdoor trick-or-treating.
I'm assembling little teal-wrapped treat packages this morning. We did the orange-wrapped candy ones yesterday; teal is for the allergen-friendly non-food treats.
It's labor-intensive, but you know, the holidays generally are. If this were normal times, I'd be decorating the house and cooking all day for a party tonight. We put in all that labor because life is hard, and holidays are important.
It matters, pausing the daily wheel of drudgery, to create a little fun and joy. That's what I think about when I'm baking fruitcake in the middle of the night, or icing yet another batch of sugar cookies. And especially, ESPECIALLY now, when people really are suffering all around us, I think it's important to look for (safe) ways to create a little joy.
I guess that's my request for all of us. That we extend a little grace to each other, as we all try to navigate this coming week, which will likely be extra difficult in a variety of ways. Trust that people are trying their best, with the knowledge that they have, to keep themselves and their families and their neighbors safe.
And if they clearly aren't -- well, there are probably a host of cultural and societal reasons that have led to the choices they're making. It's not really likely that all the terrible, selfish people were born in particular places, is it? When you look at the map of America, the big stretches of red and intense puddles of blue, the simple fact that there's clearly geography at play also tells us that there must be a host of societal factors leading people to their political (and community health) choices.
Sadly, I have to believe that if I'd been born and raised in one of the hotspots of anti-vaccine, non-mask-wearing, throwing parties willy-nilly in the midst of a pandemic communities, there's a really good chance I'd be going along with all of that, and might even believe it wholeheartedly. People are sheep, I'm afraid. There's tons of research that shows that mostly, we believe what the people around us believe, and it's really hard to break free of that.
So where does that leave us? I think all we can do is try to educate ourselves a little beyond just chatting over the fence (which is likely to just echo right back to you), then yes, talk the options out with your family and neighbors and community, and then do what you decide is right, modeling that behavior for others.
We can and should argue about where the safe line is, exactly, but in the end, we all have to make our own best judgements.
I'm going to set up a table on the sidewalk, put out treats and a sign, refill it periodically from the porch. If friends want to stop by between 1-5 and say hi, I'd be happy to see them, and have a little socially distanced & masked chat outdoors. I could use a little extroversion, for my own mental health. It's going to be a beautiful sunny autumn afternoon, and winter is coming.
I hope to see lots of smiling eyes above costumed children's masks this afternoon, and some parents escorting them who are taking a little pleasure in the day.
There's a reason why there are so many winter holidays, I think. They help get us through the dark days.

If you missed it

If you missed the Tasveer panel about South Asian speculative fiction, it was really a great conversation, and is available here:
https://youtu.be/fsy1ps3av_c

Rough night

I had a rough night -- got up around 5 in too much pain to sleep, went to get more ibuprofen and re-wrap my wrist in ace bandage, but wrapping it myself, was hard not to jostle it some, and every movement like that causes stabby pain.
I actually passed out, which was dramatic. Never done that before; I've heard of passing out from pain, but where cancer didn't get me, apparently, a strained wrist can. I'll be having Kev re-wrap my bandage from now on.
Wrist got worse over the course of yesterday; today, I'm going to try not using left hand at all. Typing one-handed is very slow. If it's not better tomorrow, I'll be calling my doctor to get it checked out. I still think it's a sprain, but could be a micro-fracture.
I do want to take a moment to say I'm thrilled that Publisher's Weekly has included Feast in its holiday gift guide! Very bright spot in a sea of unpleasantness.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/.../......
"Mohanraj, a literature professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, introduces readers to the comforting cuisine of Sri Lanka in this illuminating collection of more than 100 recipes. Waves of immigration from China, England, the Netherlands, and Portugal influenced the unique cuisine of Sri Lanka, Mohanraj writes, as evidenced by such dishes as Chinese rolls (a take on classic egg rolls in the form of stuffed crepes that are breaded and fried) and fish cutlets (a culinary cousin of Dutch bitterballen fried croquettes). Given Sri Lanka’s proximity to India, curry figures heavily. Throughout, Mohanraj does a superb job of combining easily sourced ingredients with clear, instructive guidance and menu recommendations for all manner of events, including a Royal Feast for over 200 people. This is a terrific survey of an overlooked cuisine."
I hope this injury doesn't slow down the release of Vegan Serendib, which I'd really wanted to have out in time for Christmas -- the internet tells me it can take 2-10 weeks (!) to heal a wrist injury. Maybe I can get Kevin and Kavi to do all my test-cooking for me...
Okay, let's see how long it takes me to grade mid-term quizzes left-handed...and maybe I need to look into what's available these days for speech-to-text.

This morning

This morning, I was listening to The Sporkful while weeding and planting autumn crocus bulbs. I really like the combo that I've discovered this year, of podcast + garden. It gets me exercising lightly, it makes otherwise tedious weeding tasks fly by, often I learn something. It's funny, though -- in this episode, I'm listening to David Chang being interviewed about his memoir, _Eat a Peach_, and a piece of it is about being a workaholic, and yes, I recognize some of myself in there.

Recently I've discovered that Spoonflower's weekly contests get me making art more regularly, and that is great, because I've always vaguely wished I could draw, and never managed to sit down and practice enough to actually get better at it. Now I'm practicing, and it's turning into products (with Kavi's help) that are actually things I might even want to use myself or sell (pictured, some fabric that we drew together, I think I'm turning it into napkins, and yes, of course I will blog that process), and that is great.

It's relaxing, half-watching TV and drawing, and it's satisfying, finding something productive that I can do while watching TV, because obviously, writing and watching TV don't actually go together, a great flaw in my chosen primary career. So that's another productivity win. (Three movies I really liked that I watched on TV in the last few days: Tortilla Soup, East Side Sushi, Enola Holmes. All on Netflix, I think.)

I love efficiencies. Podcast + gardening. Drawing + TV. Life is short, and getting to do more of what you love is good. Efficiencies are satisfying.

But there's a dark side.

The positive side to turning domestic work into part of my career -- cooking, then writing about cooking, for example -- is that a good part of the domestic stuff I need to do, like help feed my family, ends up also doing double duty, as productive career-work. That's a HUGE positive -- it helps make this impossible capitalistic system manageable for me, even in the midst of a pandemic. I can take care of my family and still be working at something that will produce income.

That is honestly so valuable, and makes me wish that everyone who is struggling to manage household labor and a day job and supporting their kids' e-learning and all the stresses of a pandemic had this option.

If we had basic income, maybe many more people could make that shift, take 5-10 years while their kids are small, or while they have eldercare responsibilities, or while they're dealing with their own health issues, and let the domestic sphere be their primary one without money worries. Then come back to the secretarial work or the lawyering or whatever later, when they're not so intensely working at other things too, and thereby not drive themselves into an early grave. That part, obviously, is super valuable to me.

(I'm a little worried that writing this out, it ends up sounds like 'poor little rich girl,' but oh well, here it is.)

The negative part is that I've gotten SO GOOD at working all the time, that it's incredibly difficult for me to find anything to do that's purely relaxing, that isn't work. I said this to Kevin a week or so ago, that I'm kind of working ALL THE TIME, morning to night.

- if I'm making myself a snack, I usually photograph it and post it to Facebook, and my social media team propagate it outward to Instagram, Twitter, my cooking blog

- if I'm puttering in the garden, I'm pausing to take photos, and then ditto on the posting; I'll often write up notes along with them, and there's a tentative garden book in the works that these all go towards (I think about creating a garden from scratch, and all the decisions and missteps that go into that)

- if I'm reading a book or magazine, well, reading is basically always research for me; ditto watching TV or movies. I mean, if I read something that's WAY outside my subject matter, then maybe it doesn't feel like work, but I almost can't do it, because I feel so guilty about the huge stack of relevant books that I should be reading, that I do actually enjoy, like Benjamin Rosenbaum's about-to-come-out novel, _The Unravelling_, that I'm supposed to blurb, or David Chang's memoir, which will help me with food writing and memoir writing, etc.

I'm not complaining, exactly? I have a great, great life, and have managed to get paid for doing what I love, we should all be so lucky. But at the same time, I HAVE to do what I love A LOT, in order to get paid and support my family, and there's a weird tension there. We could cut back and slow down in various ways -- Kevin would support me in that. Stop buying stuff, stop getting takeout at all -- we might even, just barely, be able to afford to let me stop teaching.

But I don't really want to stop teaching. I love teaching. I love my students. I love taking photos and posting them here, I love doing sketches and writing little notes about the plants and flowers, I love developing and sharing recipes, etc.

I think I just need to figure out some more ways to do things without immediately turning to 'how can I make this productive?' Maybe I need to sing more. I'm not a good singer, I'm never going to be a great singer, a professional singer, but I do love singing, and I don't see any way I can professionalize it, so maybe I can keep that for relaxation? Playing the piano, ditto.

In pre-pandemic times, I might've gone for a massage, but we're still sheltering-in-place pretty strictly here, so that's not happening. Massages do let me shut off my brain for an hour, because all I'm supposed to do is lie there and let them work.

Heh. Maybe this long ramble is really just the product of not having taken any vacation this summer, due to pandemic. Usually we spend a few weeks in California, visiting Kevin's family (plus Jed and Alex and other old friends), and there's a lot of sitting around, chatting, eating, playing board games.

I was working on my novel revision right up to the last minute before the semester ended, and even though we'd talked about taking a few days in the woods in late August, the novel just ate up all that time, and then it was diving into the semester and e-learning so there wasn't much of a chance to catch a breath.

We did say we might take a vacation a little later in the semester, once things calmed down. The kids can do e-learning mid-week from a cabin in the woods, and maybe I can actually take a few days off. (Do you have a cabin in the woods you want to rent me? Must be dog-friendly, ideally within 3 hours drive of Oak Park, with a lake we can kayak on, and good WiFi.)

Honestly, I'm not sure what 'off' really looks like. If I'm reading, or drawing, or cooking, I'm still working. I dunno. I had stopped seeing my therapist that I was talking to over the summer, because it seemed like I was doing okay. But maybe workaholic is something I should be talking to her about?

It's weird. If I am a workaholic, the main consequence of that is doing well at my career, which is, you know, a good thing? I don't want to stop. If I can just figure out how to ramp down a LITTLE.

I'll be announcing the Kickstarter for the new podcast with Ben in a few days, and a Patreon for a comic I'm doing with Margaret Treanor Frey, and then there's the magazine I'm supposed to start with Rosa María Quiñones, and there are various other things in the works. Ramping down doesn't seem to be on the agenda...

I leave you with no conclusions. That memoir sounds pretty good, though. I probably should read it. A cautionary tale, perhaps.


#serendib