Michelle Browne's Blog: SciFiMagpie, page 2

This post has been incredibly hard to write, but here we are.

So, before I get into the career necromancy, some housekeeping.

Who tf are you?

If you've never heard of my ass before - uh, hi. Thanks for reading this far! I'm an artist and writer; you can call me Magpie or Michelle. She/her or xe/xer. I'm queer and poly, and I live with my two spouses, our son, and three cats in southern Alberta, Canada. I make jewelry and knitwear and sometimes sew; I write science fiction, fantasy, literary fiction - and maybe romantic and gothics?! Ideas are cooking. I even have a non-fiction research project I want to work on and publish.

I got married in 2022, moved houses in 2023, and moved again in 2024, the same year my wife had our son. It's been exciting and busy and packed, and life keeps happening - but it's been pretty hard on my non-fiction writing output.

Also politics and mental and physical health issues have been a thing happening to me, so you know, those take time, too.

The rundown

So, what can you expect from this space? How often can you expect it?

I'm hoping to post biweekly (every two weeks) or more.

Content will vary between poetry and articles, with fiction excerpts or short stories, brain permitting, plus occasional publishing news.

I may re-publish some of my best old articles from the blog archives. Re-published articles may be edited or rewritten, and both their vintage status and any alterations to the original content will be noted.

Expect typos. Sometimes I need to say things more than I want to say them perfectly. I'm also going to be writing on my phone a lot.

I'm going to sunset my MailChimp newsletter and switch to publishing on Substack and on Patreon. I may still publish on Medium and Tumblr, but I'm considering sunsetting my OG Blogspot blog for traffic reasons. (SciFiMagpie is my handle on pretty much every site you can think of.)

Regardless, the same content will be accessible at each of these social media locations. I'm probably not ever going to do exclusive or paywalled content. At most, paywalled content might be early releases.

I'm also sunsetting my editing work. I'll be doing the occasional book for friends, but 11 years is a good run. I haven't always been as reliable or prompt as I would have liked, mostly from mental health, and it's time for me to let editing go. I need to make stuff.

However, if you like my fiction and non fiction, or my artisan stuff, this is probably good news. I'm also going to be posting more on my Instagrams, so follow @rainbowbazaarartcollective or @SciFiMagpie on Instagram or even Tiktok to see what I'm up to. Theoretically, I might be on Bluesky, but I'm more of a long-form or group-chat bitch, so I can't promise much.

I also want your opinion on all this! If you're familiar with my previous writing, chime in. Where do you want to see me?

If you've read all this way, leave me a 👍or ❤️ the post.

See you all soon - for real this time. Change is scary, but I have too much in my head, and I'm tired of closing my mental cupboards on half-finished ideas. Time to start releasing them into the wild.

***

A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern AB with xer family and their cats. Xe is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find xer all over the internet: *Website * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Tumblr * Mastodon *Facebook * Medium * Twitter  * OG Blog* Instagram * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Mortuary Files

 

I put on the locket

that I bought when my parents nearlydivorced

and mourned you

although you had not died

 

I don’t rank the people I’ve lost

they’re just an archipelago of scars inmy mind

 

In no particular order:

 

There’s K, the former stripper and aerialist

full of storms and fighting wit andpain

 

O, wry and small and deep-voiced

with beautiful insincere eyes

 

A different K, her fragrant hair likea summer storm

and shifting brown eyes

and heady cigarette kisses, her greyhalo

 

T and L, a milkmaid and a fairy taleprincess

one a competitor and one

a lost love

 

S, with hard firm eyes and

strong opinions;

tea, and tobacco, and a warm laugh

 

Some were friends, some were lovers—

or something like it—

 

I haven’t counted every fallen robin

(to steal from a better poet)

but the strafes and near misses scoremy heart anyway

 

And now my regard and respect for you

adds a headstone to the rows

perhaps I should have known better,but

 

whisper networks are like telegramswere; they travel fast

but sometimes, not fast enough

and when you need them, they’re toolate

 

So the things that other people knewbefore

are things that I’m only learning now

 

If I’d known them then, would I everhave

seen the magic in your words

or just the plywood and glue and nailsand paint

of hollow setpieces

 

Burning it all wouldn’t scour yourfingerprints from my clay

I guess I’ll forever have to say “goodart, bad person”

but now I wonder how good the artreally was in the first place

 

All the awards in the literary world

don’t add up to therapy

 

(and on its own, therapy

Is not always good, or enough)

 

I don’t need for the people I love andadmire

to be perfect

or even to know who I am

 

But I wish I’d trusted the madwomanin the attic

because you made your father’smistake

and I guess it

Runs in the Family

 

I have my own stories and poems towrite

and a beautiful new child to attendto

and beloveds

and friends

and an art collective

and an online community

and an immense, overflowing stack ofbooks to read

by people that aren’t you

 

but the people I’ve lost pull me backto

grey and ashes and sepia

 

and sometimes, it’s important

to count what has been lost.

An Open Letter to Neil Gaiman

The day I found out what you didSilver lockets might as well have been piles of ash flowing between my fingersNothing was beautiful in my basement,  I curled up on a beanbag chair full of stuffing And slept until it hurt less It wasn’t just the assault allegationsThose were pretty bad, sureIt was the quiet whispers and casual mumbles that You’d slept with fans Young onesAnd even if everything was above board, I couldn’t help but thinkIf I had lined up for hours or run into you in the right kind of clubWith padded walls and restraints on the benchesWould you have ignored me because I wasn’t pretty enoughOr worse, paid attention because I wasWe are not strawberries to snatch from the roadsides of life And now that I am older and past what Orwell called “the wild rose beauty” stageAnd I am a rosehip If ever I was a rose, which is doubtfulAll I can see are the lines and rows of beautiful tough mysterious Fey young women that Keep cropping up in your work and kept swirling in adoring eddies around your table at conventions You knew better You had the power You could crush any one of them in the palm of your hand Who would believe a young nanny over a famous author You used to be the person I most wanted to have lunch with Now all I want Is to write better than you.I may never be as famous; odds of that are high and stacked against me But I can push myself harder and climb higher and feel something deeper And if I can’t, well,I’m at least going to try.

Update

Hi! I'm not dead! In fact, the opposite. My wife had our baby, and he's beautiful and perfect, but also keeping me *very* busy. We're also planning to move soon. Yes, with a new baby.

Add to this - my brain is like, what if we had a bunch of new plot ideas for romantasy projects?

me: but brain, we have editing to do on our existing projects. Like Prairie Weather, and The Foundling City, and Monsters and Fools...brain: BUT NEW SHINY SPARKLIES!

Where are y'all at?

[image error][image error]GIF by kuro-von-shitsuji***

A writer and professional freelance editor, Michelle Browne lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: *Website * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Tumblr * Mastodon *Facebook * Medium * Twitter  * OG Blog* Instagram * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Why Haven't I Posted Since July?

 Well - to be honest, I've been too busy!

 a) writing the Prairie Weather trilogy, which is now finished and on submission to publishers - wish me luck! It's 155K, and if you want to beta-read it, pick your favourite social media and contact me. 

and b) - finally, finally, finishing Monsters and Fools, the sequel to the Underlighters. That's right, that sequel. Yes, it really did take ten years. I'm also 13K into The Foundling City, the final book in the trilogy, and given the outline, I'm expecting to be finished that book some time in 2024. 

c) We're preparing for our first child (River, due in early March!) and I have no idea what that will do to my writing or publishing schedule. 

d) I haven't been writing many essays for a while, but I HAVE been posting lots of snippets and updates over on my Tumblr! Tumblr is definitely my most active platform, and it's unquestionably one of the best ways to contact me these days, as well as the best way to find out what I'm working on. 

So, yeah! Hit me up over there, or possibly on Facebook. I may get back to writing essays in the new year as well, but I plan to spend a bunch of time actually reading political theory, which may also result in a lot more essays and thinkpieces. We'll see! 

***

A writer and professional freelance editor, Michelle Browne lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: *Website * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Tumblr * Mastodon *Facebook * Medium * Twitter  * OG Blog* Instagram * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Back on Ash Tree Lane: Revisiting House of Leaves

Art by Michelle Browne, 2023. Yep, I'm back on my bullshit.
An abbreviated version of this appears as a review for the book on my Amazon and Goodreads accounts, but I realised I had more to say. 

Beware, because 

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

for this 23-year-old book (jeez) abound.

 I first read House of Leaves years and years ago, and then some friends suggested reading it for a book club this year. Naturally, I figured it was a good time for a revisit; it's probably been fifteen years or more since I picked it up. Maybe closer to twenty. (Jeez, I'm old.) 

Vibe Check

As much as parts of the book do genuinely deliver a dizzying thrill ride, the beginning of the book actually didn't quite hold up for me. But I have to admit, this is a book you have to binge - try to read it in long sessions. Also there's a ton of content warnings for this book - child abuse, sexual assault mentions, sexual harassment, mental illness, animal harm and death, infanticide, attempted child murder...plus some good, old-fashioned gore and body horror. Lots of horrible, excellent, spooky stuff, and it's generally treated with some respect. 

Once you start to "get" the book, the labyrinthine page formatting and the distracting footnotes - they're there for vibes most of the time, and to instill a sense of authenticity and realism - it's amazing. 

Is this book the most accessible thing I've ever read? Probably not. I don't even know how it is from a disability perspective - I'm not even sure how you'd make an audiobook that captures the vibe. (Maybe with lots of sound effects and clever editing tricks? Actually, if that exists somewhere, someone send it to me.)

And yet, the overall story, about the mental health issues of Johnny Truant, and the possibility of the entire thing being his invention? Or the invention of his mental health? And the subtle nested story meta-structure thing - is really sad and really cool. There's something very visceral about this sad, sad guy's lonely wandering and search for answers. 

A lot of people are tempted to skim Johnny's segments for some reason, but if at all possible, don't do that. Johnny's mother's institutionalization when he was young, his persistent struggles with poverty, mental health issues, substance use, and intimacy, as well as possible ADHD (just to take a few wild guesses), and the death of his "godlike" pilot father and the subsequent abusive monstrousness of his stepfather Raymond, are all essential parts of the narrative. 

Some griping

Yeah, it's at least borderline "dick lit," i.e. a book about man-pain bordering on the fetishistic (i.e., your On the Road, most Hemingway books, Crime and Punishment, Catch-22, Fight Club, plenty of other literary fiction titles - those are just some I've read that fit the bill). But this is "dick lit" that actually shares something scared, vulnerable, and alone, and shows the holes in toxic masculinity - as well as the dangers of mythologizing male figures in one's life. 

The creepy Oedipal stuff with Johnny's mother, as revealed in her letters from the mental institution, and the meta-fictional portrayal of Karen, as well as all the hookup girls, definitely fit too well into that Madonna/whore dichotomy. And it's worth saying that the book is extremely white and quite straight - for someone in LA, Johnny never seems to even encounter a queer person or drag queen/king, and homosexuality is only mentioned in a context of denigrating Will Navidson's masculinity, and questioning the fidelity of his wife, Karen. Even the book metatextually commentating on the mother/whore dichotomy, and having Johnny speculate on the inner lives of his hookups, does not succeed in fishing the book out of basic sexism. 

I can only speculate about ableism a little bit, but the character Reston felt like pretty good representation, and the mental health stuff - well, at least for me, it worked. The visceral horror of developing a family member's mental illness and recapitulating the cycle of trauma? Compulsive lying or avoidance of personal history to hide the horrors within? Yeah, I get it. Not all representation has to be Perfect (TM), and the institutionalization horror of his mother probably has some problems to unpack with it, but the cloying and suffocating nature of her attachment, as well as her desperate hunger for connection with the outside world, also shone through. 

I'll be honest - this is also a book that benefits from skimreading certain sections. I'm just not sure all the physics stuff actually adds to the narrative. I'm not a crunchy enough scientist to take value from it, personally. A lot of people hate Johnny, who is definitely not a Good Person, but I felt sympathetic towards the scrappy young man. I'm surprised Tumblr isn't all over House of Leaves, because he has "scrungly" disaster vibes for sure. (And possibly, considering how much he idolizes his friend Lude, a hint of coded bisexuality? For a book with a central focus on Greek mythology, it's agonizingly straight.)

The good stuff

My favourite sections are definitely the actual explorations of the house. It's no surprise that these are the segments that have resonated the most in pop culture - fans of the SCP (Secure, Contain, Protect) universe and HP Lovecraft have almost certainly run into the main concepts of this book already. 

I guess I'm a sucker for a good gothic novel, because there is something decidedly gothic about this one - it's a House, and it's Spooky, and it's about a Family and their mental illnesses. But in this case, the house is something that travels with Johnny, not just the physical location on Ash Tree Lane. The problems with the house for the Navidsons are all part of the baggage they carry with them. 

I've been sitting with the whole structural thing about the Minotaur, Theseus, Minos, and the whole stepson/stepfather hate thing, for a bit. There's this thematic element about Johnny being emotionally and mentally ill, and his mother being ill as well - that does seem like an intentional parallel? But there's also a thing about Zampano as Daedalus and a father figure, and Johnny as Icarus, soaring too high on his father's creation, only to be killed by it.

Is the entire thing an elaborate delusion? Is Zampano real? Who is this mysterious genius, this Daedalus-like figure whose invention - the book - ensnares and entraps Johnny, our humble Icarus and Minotaur? We certainly don't get answers, but he appears to be lonely, remote, and ripe for idealization. 

Is the Navidson Record meant to be real, or all Johnny's invention? The "editor" character is particularly interesting, especially because at no point do they clarify the reality or unreality of the manuscript.

When, throughout his extended mental breakdown, did Johnny possibly have time to pen this missive? It certainly seems possible that he was doing little else. But when was it accepted and submitted to a publishing company? The book definitely wants to give the vibe of just "appearing" in print. It's very "done" nowadays, but at the time, it was particularly revolutionary. 

Why does House of Leaves still work?

Well - in my opinion, HoL commits to the gothic and keeps you invested, but it also goes deep into the mental health issues that make up the backbone of both cosmic horror and the gothic novel. 

This, then, is probably why military takes on Lovecraftian fiction and the SCPs all kind of suck. I've watched a couple of Youtube videos and listened to a few Actual Play podcasts of Call of Cthulhu games with a Delta Green focus (that's a special forces take on Call of Cthulhu), and all of them just left me absolutely cold. (Maybe other people will enjoy these live-action takes on SCPs more than I did.) In addition to the fact that I'm just not much into jingoism, and I'm kinda critical of that whole carceral-state structure and the military industrial complex, conservative politics really don't work with cosmic horror or gothic novels. 

Sure, military elements can work great - in Lovecraft's Monsters, there's a rather good take on the story of Innsmouth that involves a military intervention - but it's also inherently critical of the role of said military. I do have some fondness for the Warhammer 40K universe as well, but that's also morally complex. 

Any kind of military apologia in the face of cosmic horror just absolutely sucks the scare factor right out of stuff. It's too objective and impersonal, when it should be intimate and invasive. And above all - really good horror must come from empathy. 

If you crave more

T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's What Moves the Dead, the HP Lovecraft stories "The Color Out of Space" and "Dreams in the Witch House" as well as the Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle are pretty excellent classic read-alikes; I haven't read Grady Hendrix's How to Sell a Haunted House yet, but I loved Horrorstor, and that's another decent read-alike for building-based horror. The "Endless Ikea" SCP is available on Youtube in multiple reading formats, as well as videos, and of course, there's always the original version on the website. 

The podcasts Welcome to Night Vale, TANIS, and the Rusty Quill Archives also all offer some good horror content if you want to savour the visceral fear of something breathing down your neck, too!

***

A writer and professional freelance editor, Michelle Browne lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: *Website * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Tumblr * Mastodon *Facebook * Medium * Twitter  * OG Blog* Instagram * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Oops, I accidentally a whole book. Is that bad?

 Forgive that absolute blast from the past of a title. (For those going, "huh?", it's an obscure, out-of-date meme. Don't worry about it.)

But - yeah. One of many reasons this blog has been immensely quiet over the last few months, apart from that book bundle including The Meaning Wars, is that I've been completely obsessed with a new project, called Prairie Weather.

Back in university, I had a short story column in The Meliorist, the U of L's school paper, and I wrote a series of one-off shorts with loosely connected characters. I'd always toyed with the idea of writing a whole novel about these interconnected characters - and well, for some reason, around October of last year, I just got up and did it.

So now the connected stories of a group of university students trying to deal with friendship, romance, and all the resulting drama has become not one book, but two - or three, depending on whether I go indie with this or get picked up for trad pub (traditional publishing). It's set in 2011, right here in Lethbridge, and it's a love letter to the city and the university - both of which are beautiful, and underutilized as settings. If you like feminism, queer love, heartbreak, stabbings, and bomb threats, you'll probably be into this book.

Now, I'm actually going to try and send out some queries for Prairie Weather, and see if I can get it traditionally published. That's a thing I haven't really done before, and it might go absolutely nowhere, but I thought I'd take a shot at it. At worst, I get to improve my query-writing skills, mess around with Querytracker, sorta learn how to write a synopsis, and that sort of useful thing.

I was also going through my blog archives and stats, and I noticed a huge surge in traffic last month. So, thank you for the views! I didn't realise just how much I used to write on here.

But unfortunately, Blogger is a pretty dead platform, and all the cool kids are on Substack and Patreon these days. So while I do plan to continue posting over here, if I don't get anywhere with Prairie Weather, I'm going to try serialising that publication on Ream, Substack, and Patreon. We'll see if I get any traction. In the meantime, if any of y'all somehow know an agent who's hunting for contemporary fiction or literary fiction, hit me up!

And yes, I am still planning to try and get Monsters and Fools out this year. It's at about 63 of roughly 80k, give or take. There's a few big plot twists left to write, and then this dark sequel to The Underlighters will finally, finally be ready to release into the world. The sequel is more of a dystopian, noire-toned piece, and will focus on what happens when activism fails in the face of a conspiracy...

If you thought it was dark before? It's only going to get darker.

***

A writer and professional freelance editor, Michelle Browne lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: *Website * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Tumblr * Mastodon *Facebook * Medium * Twitter  * OG Blog* Instagram * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

It's almost over - 18 books for 20 bucks!

Hey, everyone!

If you didn't hear about the Storybundle I'm in, it's not too late to snag my book and works by Kevin J Anderson and Scott Coatsworth for cheap!

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Get it now before it's gone - there's less than 20 hours to go!

(Yes, I know this is my first post in months - we moved homes recently and I've been busy with work. Ooooops. Check out my Tumblr for more regular updates!)



for you page :)

I'm slightly above average at a handful of things
Not good enough for brilliance but 
Too good to ignore
In an era where skills must be monetized 
But the effort of monetizing work is a hidden burden 
Lurking behind a hill, blotting out a sunset
I'm coming to hate my art

I can string bright glowing glass and sparkling stones 
With iridescent shells to make a necklace 
It's not good enough

I can knit fluffy soothing yarn or soft chenille or 
Perky daring colorful novelty fibers into
Improbably cosy sweaters
 It's not good enough

I weave descriptions and worlds from dust 
And imagined shadows into aching glory
It's not good enough
I can sing trembling lines of poetry and melody
from silence and stillness into colour
It's not good enough

To survive under capitalism 

What happened to the starry future skies 
We used to dream up,
With mechanized wonders and lives of leisure
 And brilliant new attractions and follies
Everything is either popular, for rich people, or carefully faked

I hate my art because
I'm not famous on tiktok
Because at some point art has started to feel like
Palliative care for the soul 

And regardless of skill I'm too ugly to go viral 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.Find her all over the internet: *Website * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Tumblr * Mastodon *Facebook * Medium * Twitter  * OG Blog* Instagram * Paypal.me * Ko-fi 

i sent u my verse, pls respond

 laying out a tender organ

between unskillful fingers;

hands shaking as I offered up a blurry picture of

something intimate, naked, vaguely expressed—

I immediately wished I’d played it off as a joke

instead I feel the creeping slinking regret

the cold drops of sweaty fear in the hollow of my back

because I revealed something private

in public

 

have I made a terrible mistake

and i i i i i

cannot take it back because the internet is forever

 

i am not afraid of being naked in public

that’s a nightmare i’ve had many times over

but i am afraid of being naked on the internet

 

perhaps i wish i could re-coil these tender delicate organs

back into the cavern of my hideous yellow roiling belly,

beneath layers of flesh

hide them beneath the layers of obscenity

 

this is just to say that if u saw my poem

i cannot tell whether i want u to respond

or not to respond

 

but i know enough to be ashamed