L.S. Johnson's Blog, page 11

Nicolette Barischoff and Problem Daughters

Image © 2013 Eric Asaris, from The Future Fire no. 26

A bright spot in this dark year is Problem Daughters, an anthology of intersectional feminist SFF stories that’s now being crowdfunded. Over the past two weeks I’ve had the pleasure of talking with Nicolette Barischoff, who will edit the project along with Rivqa Rafael, about intersectional feminism, religion, and agency. What began as wanting to support a great anthology now feels almost uncanny in its timing—uncanny and urgent. Now more...

Yes, we did.

I marched in Oakland. I was still sick but it wouldn’t wait. We were too many for the train station, too many for the route, too many. It was beautiful. There were children and the elderly, there were folks of every color, there was music and singing and zingy signs and pink hats as far as the eye could see.

For the record, no one paid me to do this.

I’ve been talking a lot about current affairs in therapy. I suspect everyone is. My therapist, who protested the Vietnam War in the ’60s, gave...

everything is story

We said goodbye to her a week ago. Since then I have been working, working, with occasional forays into grief—the conversation with the crematorium, the sympathy cards, looking through photos. I had forgotten about this picture. There are still brown nests in the front grass from where she would curl up. The stray cat who loved her looks for her daily.

As we’ve talked to people, over and over, about losing her and what it means, I realized that the story we’re telling about her is less and l...

Back.

I have hit the ground running. Finished revising the first act of the novella (4 to go), working on an interview, working on some short pieces, working . . .

***

This weekend I am mailing a check for $256 to Planned Parenthood and I am pleased as punch about that. I was going to do it in Pence’s name but fuck him, he doesn’t deserve it. Every penny from our hearts, mine and yours. He doesn’t fucking deserve it.

***

Right now as I type these words my oldest cat, a difficult, crotchety, Persian...

end of the year

I am writing these words a little early, because I just looked at what I still have to do and what is left of December and thought oh crap.

This year. This YEAR.

A long time ago I read Cosmos and Psyche and it talked about the first two decades of the 21st century and how the planetary conjunctions would mirror other periods of great unrest, but as with all things, it’s one thing to read about it and another thing to live through it, and I say this from a position of privilege. I’m still in...

from The Making of a Story

Here’s what not to do: Don’t try to solve these mysteries. As writers, we’re not looking to provide a lesson, or a moral; we’re not therapists looking to cure our characters of pain or neurosis. Our job, as writers, is simply to render what is using precise, concrete detail.

Don’t tell us why something is, show us how it is.

Don’t give us easy answers. Rather, help us understand the precise nature of the questions.

This notion of rendering mysteries that are deliberately left unresolved can b...

A Sale + Planned Parenthood

I had planned for some time to put Vacui Magia on sale for the month of December; after the election results this seemed like a good opportunity to make a small gesture to one of my favorite organizations. Planned Parenthood helped me several times when I had no health insurance, and I have taken friends there for every reason from the wondrous to the horrific. I am overdue to repay them, and to invest in their future in these uncertain times.

So this December:

all proceeds from Vacui Magia...

caring

I could not sleep the night of the 8th. On the morning of the 9th, when I stumbled from bed to try and go to work, I was the sickest I’ve been in years. I was also covering for someone at work, so I couldn’t stay in bed, I couldn’t do anything with my despair and my grief but get up and act like it was any other day.

It is now November 20th, and I am still sick, and I’m starting to wonder when I will feel truly well, if ever.

I have been alive long enough now to feel tired. Tired of inching f...

Americans: please, please vote tomorrow . . .

. . . if you haven’t already done so.

This will be the seventh presidential election that I am eligible to vote in, and I have to say that never has so much felt at stake, as if our very future is at stake. I don’t think the world will end in January, whatever the outcome; but I believe we risk skewing our collective compass, and undoing that damage will be the work of generations. Do we inch forward or swing back? Do we choose the difficult path of upwards and outwards, or do we recoil into...

Vacui Magia part of Kobo Bonus Days

If you’re a reader in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand, Vacui Magia is part of Kobo’s Bonus Days promotion this weekend! You get 5x the Super Points when you spend $25 or more on select titles, including Vacui Magia. It’s a great deal – why not check it out!

https://store.kobobooks.com/p/bonusdaysoct