C.S.E. Cooney's Blog, page 14
April 17, 2023
when the mud comes
the pallid house, the livid house
it ate the proud, it ate the young
it reached out with its scarlet tongue
or were those roof-tiles, gleaming?
those fine, fat lawns, those glossy shrubs
their roots like squirming worms and grubs
the tennis courts, the swimming pool
clear as vodka, warm as drool
the Maserati on the drive
with scarlet leather stitched in black
seamless, keyless, gazing back
sharkskin-poison-mercury
glass wine cellars, marble halls
Möbius sculptures, mirrored walls
cat’s cradle for a chandelier
sinewy and trochlear
years it feasted, years it tasted
the smooth and luminous, silken-fleshed
they entered lavish, left in debt
no more backward glancing
and now the house is grown with mold
the fungal house, the charnel house
the fly and rat, the luckless mouse
these are for its wasting
and on the mountaintop it rots
and on the mountainside it slumps
and down the mountain slope it slides
when the mud comes, when the mud comes
4-17-23
Sitzfleisch Poetry Hour–“anyone can write poetry for one hour a month!”
***
I wrote something more personal at first, but it made me cry, and also it wasn’t very good. So I deleted it.
Then I wanted to write something fun, but it ended up being this. Gwynne had a successful night of turning a failed short story into a good poem. That made me want to try something like that. But not, I thought, tonight. Too late for that.
So then I wanted to write something reverse-Gothic. Not like “girl-running-from-house” gothic (thank you, Kathleen Jennings), but “old woman-running-to-house” gothic.
But this came out instead. Just a monster house. It started out fictional. Then I started reading about houses, and now it’s half-based on a true story of a house called The One.
Anyway. It’s all very silly. I need to write more poetry so that I can write something I really like and also really mean. In the meantime, at least the process remains interesting.
April 10, 2023
Roots of Enchantment: Theodora Goss and C. S. E. Cooney at Pandemonium Books and Games
Great news! Towards the end of the month–on April 23rd!–I get to take a train up to Boston and be on a panel with Dr. Theodora Goss!
Pandemonium Books and Games will be hosting us, thanks to a gracious invitation from Kat Pavlovich, whom we met at this year’s Boskone. Of their store, their website says:
Pandemonium Books and Games has resided in Boston for over 30 years. Our community is for anyone interested in enriching their life through play, literature, and imaginative storytelling. We have the largest event space of its kind in the Boston area, where we strive to create a comfortable and welcoming place for folks of all ages and identities
…which just… makes me want to buy ALL THE DICE from them!
Looks like there’s a sign-up for the event on their website, so go check out their ROOTS OF ENCHANTMENT EVENT and come see us if you’re in the Boston area!
It’s always terribly exciting and fun to be on a panel with Dr. Theodora Goss. Half of it is that we both like to play dress-up, and the other half is, I just think she’s so great and smart and is such a good talker, so it’s like going to see a panel she’s on for my own pleasure, and occasionally talking too.
For those of you who don’t know, Dora and I were in a writing group together for a hot minute, way back in the beforetimes.
It was she–from a casual remark about wanted a rose named after her–who inspired the character of Dora Rose in my novella “The Bone Swans of Amandale,” which can be found in my collection Bone Swans.
The cover of Bone Swans: Stories. Art by Kay Nielsen. We both got to release our books from Mythic Delirium at Boskone two months ago–her The Collected Enchantments, and my The Twice-Drowned Saint.
I think Dora and I both love Mythic Delirium so much, and feel such gratitude for a small praise whose entire aesthetic is “beauty and strangeness.”
If you haven’t seen or read or heard of The Collected Enchantments yet, it is a gorgeous collection of many Theodora Goss short stories, and best of all–POEMS!–(I know, that’s just a personal preference; I love her stories too, I just love ANY collection with POETRY in it).
Like this other one of hers that Mythic Delirium put out, Snow White Learns Witchcraft.
As you can see, it’s so beautiful, with powerful cover art by the internationally renowned Catrin Welz-Stein and internal illustrations by the great Paula Arwen Owen.
I believe that Pandemonium Books will have copies of our books–and we shall be there to sign them!
Saint Death’s Daughter, cover art by Kate Forrester.
The covers of Dark Breakers and The Twice-Drowned Saint, art by Brett Massé and Lasse Paldanius respectively.
Playing D&D–For Cancer Research!
HUZZAH, my nerds!
On May 25th, at 6 PM, in Bridgeport, CT, Carlos Hernandez (writer, professor, game designer), Zac Clay (voice actor, educator, professional DM), Robert Austin James (voice actor, audio/video editor, singer/songwriter), myself (YOURS TRULY, C. S. E. COONEY!!!!) and a yet-to-be-Chosen One/High School Student from Connecticut will all be playing D&D live for charity!
We will be at the historic Klein Auditorium, rolling under the awesome DMing powers of Gregory Wilson (academic, author, musician, and regular Twitch streamer on his own ArvanEleron channel!).
$5 entrance fee! Buy tickets HERE!
That’s the same price both for an IN-PERSON ticket, or a VIRTUAL ticket.
Watch a game! Support cancer research!
April 4, 2023
New Newsletter: Stars of a Distant Star
Friends, I have started a newsletter!
You can subscribe here, and get it right in your email box.
It’s sort of exciting. I used to write “newsletters” to friends and family in my early twenties… until I discovered LiveJournal. And then I never looked back.
I will still blog here, because I love a blog! But I will be more focused in my newsletter about specific projects and appearances, particularly: Ballads from a Distant Star, Negocios Infernales, The Devil and Lady Midnight, and Lamp. Or whatever else, as it comes!
Here’s a sneak peak of some of cast photos taken by the wonderful Nelson Luna (also, find him on Instagram!). More to come!
Cast photo for Ballads from a Distant Star, courtesy of Nelson Luna. Left to right: Amanda Baker, C. S. E. Cooney, Miriam Grill, Carlos Hernandez, Tim Rodriguez, and Carla Kissane.
February 24, 2023
Random Thoughts on Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle”
Carlos and I watched the anime “Belle” by Mamoru Hosoda, as rec’ed by a friend on Twitter. We had MANY THOUGHTS and frequently paused the movie to share them with each other.
All in all, I have zero regrets… BECAUSE MY DREAMS LAST NIGHT WERE HALF-ANIME, HALF-MUSICAL THEATRE, and far more entertaining than they’ve been in a while. WHICH MAKES ME WANT TO WATCH MORE ANIME MUSICALS BEFORE BED.
A few thoughts:
– This movie was really eight movies trying to be one two-hour movie. Very ambitious. Kind of a glorious mess. Lots of emotional whiplash. Perhaps unintentionally comedic because of this whiplash in parts.
– The grief narrative of losing/finding one’s voice and the abuse narrative (both domestic and cyber) were the emotional and moral hearts of the story. When the movie was working its deepest metaphorical magic, it was here. The cloak of bruises. The relationship between the tiny, fragile angel and the dragon beast. Ah! My heart.
– The re-telling of Beauty and the Beast part (which was one of the eight movies this movie was trying to be) was essentially DISNEY’S Beauty and the Beast–both in emotional beats and narration style–almost at the level of pastiche. Not parody. It took itself far too seriously for parody, and I think was done in a spirit of homage not plagiarism, but it came really close.
The re-telling was actually one of the things that didn’t work for me, because “Belle” was using an adult romantic-love narrative to overlay/explain an essentially platonic rescue narrative among child characters. Kind of squicky?
– I kind of wanted the world–both the real world and its cyber counterpart to be a sandbox-style VR experience, so I could just wander around and LOOK AT THINGS. Sometimes it was so visually stunning I almost cried. Sometimes the CGI and normal animation were not… very well integrated. At all. But when it worked, IT REALLY WORKED.
– The music-video-concert-style parts were unexpectedly moving and catchy. They were set pieces, and could stand alone. And might have worked better that way.
– I don’t watch a lot of anime, and looking at some of the intentionally comic moments made me think of the history of Japanese theatre/clowning vs a more Western commedia dell’arte/vaudeville history of theatre and clowning. So much of our (Looney Tunes) early cartoon style comes directly from the vaudeville–slapstick, stock characters, situations.
I think some of the things I don’t connect to emotionally in anime comedy–the stylistic cartoon changes in face and posture, the long pauses, the emotional hyperbole–are simply things I don’t key into historically or culturally. BUT I WANT TO LEARN!
– What was up with the choir ladies? I mean, I LOVED THEM. But they were almost in a whole other movie. CHOIR LADIES, HOW I LOVE YOU. Choir ladies ex machina FTW.
February 14, 2023
Shearing Season
for Carlos Hernandez, on February 13th
come here, my curly-headed ram
come lean against my belly, in trust
and in full blissome, give the blossom
of your head unto my shears
tentative at first, then all too ardent
my bladework leaps alive at you
you sit and hum your secret smile
content to barter proficiency for intimacy
then shall I lop at you and chop at you!
hack and whack and saw at you!
snip and clip and rip at you–and only when
I’m through, will I run my fingers
warm over your skull, and shake
your loosened winterfall away
the day before this day, I play
at mourning: extoll the thing
I must, by your request, annihilate
your medusa mane of brown and gray
I tug your curls taut, then let them sproing
and sproinging, think of spring
as you scrub the shrub about your ears
eager to be tidy, greedy to be clean
now shorn, my ram, you move to get the broom
I wrap the clippers and reset the room
you stop me in the middle, as if by chance
“ah, my kindness!” you whisper, and we dance
February 2, 2023
Eight Items of Interest
On Sunday, February 5th, 7 PM – 8:30 PM EST: a night of 10 readings by authors who will make you kermit-flail, muppet-scream, and MEME ABOUT!
Featuring: Zig Zag Claybourne, Linda Addison, Charlie Jane Anders, Martha Wells, Patty Templeton, LaShawn Wanak, Maria Dong, Michael W. Lucas, Carlos Hernandez, and yours truly, C. S. E. Cooney!Readings are virtual! Registration is free! Register here at Eventbrite.
2.) Both Saint Death’s Daughter and Dark Breakers made it to Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading List–and what a list it is! That list! Those authors! Their books! I’m so excited! The ones I’ve already read, I want to read again. But then, when would I read all the other ones!
In honor of this, and the forthcoming release of my novel The Twice-Drowned Saint as a standalone book in a couple of weeks, Mike Allen at Mythic Delirium writes:
From now through the official Feb. 7 debut date of The Twice-Drowned Saint, and likely for several days after; we’re offering a two-for-one e-book deal: pay half-price (($7 + $6)/2=$7.50) and get both (Dark Breakers and The Twice-Drowned Saint), in the format of your choice, delivered to your inbox.
3.) The wonderful team at Solaris Books made me this great video and graphic for the forthcoming release of the SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER paperback. (In my head it is always THE PINK PAPERBACK! ALLCAPS!)
Here’s a link to the video on my Instagram page! And here’s the graphic!
4.) I did my first by-myself AMA on Reddit!I’d done one before with the A Sinister Quarter group, but this was the first I set up on my own. One of the r/Fantasy moderators was reading Saint Death’s Daughter with her book group and invited me to show up so they could ask questions. It was really fun!
Here’s the link if you’re interested in reading the archives!
5.) I finished my outline for SAINT DEATH’S HERALD!It’s almost 10,000 words! That’s, like, writing a novelette to tell me the story of a novel. It has snatches of dialogue, even a footnote. It’s basically like writing a mini-draft! IT MAY HAVE SAVED ME A DECADE OF WRITING! It’s very EXCITING!
I made a GRAPHIC! It’s very cheerful!
6.) On PoetryThis was sort of a banner week for poetry! On Friday, Patty Templeton and Carlos and I had our second-ever session for writing LAMP, our shared-world poetry anthology about a troupe of actors, fleeing the city Lamp after disaster, trying to find haven in the Grays–the salt marshes–in a little town called Porthole. VERY EXCITING.
Then, on Monday night, we had our Sitzfleisch Poetry Hour (“Anyone can write poetry for one hour a month!”), and I whipped the first movement of “The (Future Former) King of Elfland’s Printing Press” into tolerable first-draft shape!
And also, sometime either last week or this week, I applied for a grant. That was unexpected. I was encouraged by a friend. It’s a lotto ticket, a flare in the dark, but it gave me a new look at my poetry collection, and made me glad I’d put it together at the beginning of January, sort of on a whim!
7.) On Ballads from a Distant StarOur first get-together/rehearsal is on Saturday! I’ve been learning how to book rehearsal space in New York City, hot damn! I had a meeting with Carla Kissane at Alice’s Tea Cup yesterday, and learned so much. I really want to treat my cast right, and for all of us to have great fun!
Carlos made us this initial graphic. We’re thinking there will be a series of “Missing” posters of each of the miners mentioned.
8.) Negocios Infernales–coming soon!I know we keep saying that, but we’ve been seeing bits and shimmers of the card layout, and we’re so excited about the rulebook.
Our last Infernal Salon, hosted by the Virtual Gumbo Fiction Salon in January, went so well! (Carlos wrote a new song for Ballads from a Distant Star! In 20 minutes!)
I hope we’ll have more concrete news for you soon!
January 15, 2023
Mythic Delirium Zoom Reading with Theodora Goss & C.S.E. Cooney
This event is FREE! And VIRTUAL!
Register at EVENTBRITE (link embedded below) for the email with the Zoom link and Password on the day of the event!
Register on EventbriteBoskone 60 Schedule
Harbor 1 – Hybrid
Fiction, Literature
Panel
Sat 11:30 AM
Duration: 01:00
Description Many beloved versions of fairy tales we tell our children are sanitized versions of grim stories, including Grimm ones. We can write the graphic violence and debauchery out of these tales, but should we? What gets lost when we blunt the sharp edges of Cinderella’s story? There’s much to learn about the human condition from these rich sources of psychological drama. And some fine authors have mined the unexpurgated stories. Let’s discuss tales, especially those that may have been overlooked.
Greer Gilman mod
John Langan
Katherine Arden
Bruce Coville
C. S. E. Cooney
Marina 3
Writing / Publishing
Panel
Sat 4:00 PM
Duration: 01:00
Description Death shouldn’t be easy. Killing characters within a story shouldn’t just glorify death or play to prurient interest. How, when, and why should you end a character so that it serves the greater purpose of the story? Is anyone really safe within a story? Does the audience or their expectations matter to whether killing a protagonist or significant character is appropriate? Does wiping out spear holders matter, and should it?
Max Gladstone mod
Bracken MacLeod
Brenda Clough
P. Djèlí Clark
C. S. E. Cooney
Galleria – Autographing
Fiction, Literature
Event
Sat 5:30 PM
Duration: 01:00
Many authors!
Group Reading: Mythic Delirium Books
Griffin
Fiction, Literature
Reading
Sun 11:30 AM
Duration: 01:00
Mike Allen mod
Theodora Goss
C. S. E. Cooney
Community / Fandom
Galleria – Kaffeeklatsch 2\
Kaffeeklatsch\
Sun 1:00 PM
Duration: 01:00
Carlos Hernandez
C. S. E. Cooney
January 6, 2023
Recent Publications and Upcoming Appearances!
My newest short story “How the Statue Learned to Dream,” was published by Air and Nothingness Press, in their gorgeous quarterly newsletter AaNPX, Volume 4.
The newsletter is described as:
“Limited edition (First Printing) – 8 pgs. full color, tabloid newspaper sized edition, 100 numbered copies. All orders come wrapped in an archival poly bag with an acid free backer board. $12.00US + $2.25s/h (US Orders) or $5.25s/h (Foreign Orders). How The Statue Learned To Dream features a new story in C.S.E. Cooney’s Desdemona and the Deep/Dark Breakers collection of stories.”
The artwork is by Sarah Marshall, and the whole thing is just truly a beautiful piece of ephemera in the world. I dedicated my story to MaryAnn Harris and Charles De Lint, and donated half my earnings to the Harris/De Lint Recovery Fund. You can read the summary of MaryAnn’s story here at the GoFundMe page.
All my best hopes go to the Harris/De Lint family. This story was trying to return a little of the magic of community that they do so well during this time.
INFERNAL SALON: The Gumbo Fiction Cafe Edition, Thursday January 12th–Virtual
Here are a few details about our show, from our host Tina Jens at the Virtual Gumbo Fiction Salon (find them on Facebook).
Register in advance for the show to get a Zoom EMAIL PASSWORD & LINK:
https://tinyurl.com/Gumbo-Salon
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with a link to join the meeting.
C. S. E. Cooney and Carlos will be giving every writer a prompt of one or more cards from the very spooky deck that we and artist Rebecca Huston invented for our TTRPG “Negocios Infernales.” Once every writer has their prompt, we’ll set a timer for 15 minutes.
SHOW DEETSWhen the timer dings, the writers who want to will share their infernally-inspired works with all of us! Much revelry will be had by all.
ADMISSION–we encourage a donation from those who can afford it. We recommend $2 for students/teachers, $4 for others, though any amount is appreciated: paypal.me/TinaLJens, Venmo: @TinaJens
We’ll open up 15 minutes before showtime. Our show is geared toward the commercial genres, but all forms of writing are encouraged.
Galatica Philadelphia Literary Salon: Wednesday, January 18th–in person
From the Galactica Philadelphia website. Please visit to register for this event!
For the first time, the Rosenbach Museum & Library is partnering with Galactic Philadelphia for a speculative fiction literary salon. Hear from Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and C.S.E. Cooney as they read from their latest work and converse with them and other guests in an informal and engaging salon-style conversation. Before the readings, you’ll get the chance to explore the Rosenbach with a tour of Dr. Rosenbach’s library or the Programs Gallery special exhibition. We’ll convene for readings at 6:15 p.m., get books signed by the authors and be entered into a raffle for the chance to win a free book! Finally, although the Rosenbach will close at 8 p.m., the audience is invited to continue their conversation at a nearby pub.
The authors’ books will be available for sale throughout the evening. Every attendee will receive one raffle ticket (included in your ticket) for a chance to win books of recently published or about to be released books by various authors.
Boskone: February 17-19–in personI will post Carlos’s and my respective schedules over at hernandooney.com sometime during the next month!
