Carrie Vaughn's Blog, page 3

February 2024 Update!

Reminder that this is mirrored on my Patreon.

Here we are, sliding into the real slog of winter here in the northern hemisphere. How are we doing?

February’s lesson will be: Verisimilitude. “The appearance of being true or real.”  What does this mean in fiction?

Work stuff: I wrapped up the copyedits on The Naturalist Society. I always think I’m going to be able to write something else while I’m working on copyedits, but in twenty years I’ve never been able to. Something about spending several hours a day thinking hard about verb tenses and prepositions and kicking myself for spelling that same name five different ways without noticing makes it just about impossible to funnel creative energy elsewhere. I’ve been making notes on the next short story and that’s about it.

Crafts: A few years before she died, I collected fur from my pupper Lily, just pulling stuff out of the brush for six months or so. I wanted to try an experiment. Well, last month, I finally did the experiment: I spun her fur into yarn. It’s lovely. The fibers were long and grippy enough to take a nice twist. I now have dog yarn and I love it. I think I’ll knit some little memorial tokens, to give to people who knew and loved her.

Media: While I’m still struggling a bit with reading novels – gave up on one eight pages in and am stuck halfway through another — I’ve been watching a bunch of new TV shows and movies. And some old ones – I haven’t seen Northern Exposure since it was on the air, but it’s streaming now and I’ve started from the beginning. It’s sweet and wonderful, and strange even by today’s standards. I’d forgotten just how strange. In episode #5 there’s a Twin Peaks riff that I wouldn’t have gotten at the time because I hadn’t seen Twin Peaks but now that I have it made me fall off the sofa. That’s something I love about Northern Exposure – if you don’t get the references, the show doesn’t care, it’s just going to keep going. That’s how I feel about making references in my own work.

I watched a new movie every day for almost two weeks, I think. A few superhero flicks I missed last year, some small art films, some Oscar bait. Maestro, the Leonard Bernstein biopic, is probably a must-see if you’re a music fan, but I was struck by how it’s the same general story as the Cole Porter biopic Delovely: a genius of American musical theater carries on affairs with men while his long-suffering wife looks on. I think this says less about geniuses of American musical theater and more about what movie makers think is interesting to tell stories about.

I love this quote that Stephen Sondheim wrote about Leonard Bernstein and their time working on West Wide Story: “All the mistakes he made, if indeed they were mistakes, were huge–he never fell off the lowest rung of the ladder.”  (From Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981)) In other words: go big or go home.

The movie that’s really stuck with me is The Eight Mountains, which hit my radar because it stars Luca Marinelli, who plays Nicky in The Old Guard. (I’m at the stage of my Old Guard obsession where I’m tracking down other movies the actors have been in.) It caught my attention further because…mountains. Beautiful scenery. Rugged men and nature. It’s sort of a coming-of-age story, and the interesting thing is I think there are two sets of coming-of-ages. The boys growing up, and then the men…also growing up, I guess you could say. A transition from youth to adulthood, and then another from confusion to understanding. Pietro matures, Bruno doesn’t. It’s a quiet story, artfully done.

The film this most reminded me of is A River Runs Through It, which is also a story about two men rooted in a specific wilderness. A River Runs Through It is one of my favorite films, and The Eight Mountains hits the same emotional beats. Plus all that gorgeous scenery.

I’m now wondering what this kind of story – a deep friendship between two people rooted in wilderness – would look like with two women. Storytelling convention says wilderness is masculine. Stories about women and friendship tend not to also be about landscape and nature. At least, I can’t think of any versions of this about women. (Famous movies about women and friendship, like Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias, and Beaches are rooted in specific places, but not wilderness, you know? Gah, there must be some more recent movies about women and friendship I should catch up on. Barbie? Is that one? Quick, someone recommend some great movies about women and friendship from the last dozen years!)

And now I’ve got a story seed snugged away in my hindbrain. Let me water it a bit and see what happens.

January 2024 Update!

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Welcome, New Year!

I often try to do a recap of the previous year and mull over thoughts on the new year, but I’m finding this year my impulse is to just let it all go. Don’t dwell. 2023 was strange. Not necessarily bad, for me, but definitely strange, chopped up into different phases marked by big projects and trips. For 2024, I want to slow down a bit. We’ll see how that goes, ha! A writer friend and I were talking about a “word of the year” – a word that encapsulates the tone we want to set for the new year. We had both chosen “renew” as our words, which I think says something about 2023 for a lot of us.

So that’s it, that’s my word: renew. Do you all have a “word of the year?” Share, if you feel the urge!

Along those lines, this month’s lesson is going to be: Self Help for Creatives. Seems timely, right? It’s not really a lesson or advice, but a meditation on this whole string of self-help and creativity/productivity books I’ve read over the last few years because I’m not really sure why. I’m going to get kind of meta here, deconstructing this genre a bit.

News! As you can see in the image above, I have a new Cormac and Amelia novella for you! Broken Roads is available for preorder and due out in a couple of weeks. This is just shy of novel length, so it should be good and juicy for you all who’ve been wanting a bit more heft to these. Kindle link is here. Nook link is here. Others as I get them. 

I’ve been in a bit of a reading rut. I stalled out on three or four novels, quitting halfway through. This means I hadn’t actually finished a novel since October? Been reading nonfiction, but fiction has been making my eyes cross. Finally, on January 1, I finished one: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Gotta be honest, it’s a rough read, an openly Dickensian tragedy (ala David Copperfield) set in the rural/Appalachian coal country of Virginia and all that entails. It’s 500+ pages with a vivid first-person narrator where things just keep getting worse and worse, right up until the last couple of chapters. It’s also one of those books with an epiphany toward the end, but you have to get through the rest for the epiphany to mean anything. Beautifully written. But I may be done with beautiful and depressing literary writing for a while. Time for the new Murderbot novel I think.

Media consumption: I saw Godzilla Minus Zero. I reiterate my love for the current string of Monsterverse films and TV that started with 2014’s Godzilla (my review of that film is here). These somehow capture the aesthetic of the beloved early films, but with modern sensibilities. The best way I can describe it is that the monsters in these look like spectacular CGI versions of guys in rubber suits. This isn’t a criticism, it’s great, it totally works. 

I finally dived into the new season of For All Mankind, Apple TV’s alt history where the space race never ended. The first two seasons are brilliant. The third and fourth seasons are…less brilliant. Equal parts great and WTF melodrama. I started Blue Eye Samurai but haven’t finished. My list of things to watch keeps getting longer rather than shorter. Hrm.

And with that, I’m going to sign off and write some words and craft some crafts. Get some of that sweet, sweet inspiration going. Happy New Year!

2023 Publication Year in Review

Here it is, all the stuff I published in 2023:

Wild Cards: Now and Then, July 2023. Graphic Novel: My first graphic novel, as part of the Wild Cards series! And I guess according to new Nebula rules it’s eligible under the novella category? (It’s 133 pages)

Water Fire Fae: Stories:  August, 2023. Collection: My new short story collection! It includes one original story, “The Outlaws of Barnsdale.”

And now the short stories! It was a banner year for short stories for me:

“A War of Dust and Feathers”, Brigid’s Sisters: The Art of Elizabeth Leggett, 2023.
“Not the Most Romantic Thing,” Tor.com, October 2023.
“The Tyrant’s Heir’s Tale”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2023.
“The Queen of Copies Meets Her Match”, Analog, July/Aug 2023.
“Dara Needs a Better Job”,, Sunday Morning Transport, June 2023.
“Vast and Trunkless Legs of Stone”, Clarkesworld, June 2023.
“Learning Letters”,, Lightspeed, Feb 2023.
“Time: Marked and Mended”,, Tor.com, January 2023.

If I had to pick one, “Vast and Trunkless Legs of Stone” is probably the best thing I did this year. But I also had two Graff stories, and I do love Graff to bits.

Onward to next year…I’ve already got I think three short stories in the hopper, plus a new novel. Yup, I got confirmation, The Naturalist Society will be out later in 2024. Here we go!

December 2023 Update!

Reminder that this is mirrored from my Patreon page!

Do you know what I did yesterday? Absolutely nothing. I’m on a mini-vacation, visiting my brother and his family as a holiday preview. Already delivered their gifts and everything!

I’m still a bit scattered after the chaos of the last couple of months so bear with me. Another round of edits on The Naturalist Society arrived. This is pretty typical, along the lines of “Okay, all the structural problems are fixed, now here are all the fiddly thematic and character details we didn’t notice while you were fixing the structure!” Friends, there were tears.

There’s a happy ending: the manuscript is now headed to copy editing. Whew. What this means is it’s about time to start on something new.

As I mentioned, I did absolutely nothing yesterday except a little bit of yoga and reading. Comfy sofa and tea for the win. My brother’s yard also has hummingbirds, and I watched them for awhile.

I’m in a bit of a reading slump. I’ve started something like four novels and stalled out halfway through on all of them. I either need to find some cool nonfiction — or pick up Martha Wells’ new Murderbot novel, which I know will suck me right in.

On the other hand, I’m watching a ton of new shows and movies and am happy that part of my brain seems to have turned back on.

I caught up on Star Trek: Lower Decks, which I absolutely love. It’s possibly my favorite Trek. Which is interesting, because the only way it works is if you know Trek very, very well, because the inside jokes and references are nonstop and often deep cuts. It’s deconstructing everything you ever scratched your head about in Star Trek. Every problematic detail, it just lays it out there, but it’s done with so much love. And then this past season… They did all that, and then also threw us a poignant, heartbreaking gut punch of a detail that left me in tears. (Hint without spoilers: When Mariner tells us who her best friend at the Academy was. OMG. It brings the whole show back around to its source material. Just beautiful.)

Anyway, this — deconstructing a thing while also expressing deep love for a thing — is a difficult and neat trick. Another thing that does it very well is my favorite episode of The X-Files: “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.” It’s masterful.

I’m halfway through the new season of Strange New Worlds and it’s okay. The characters are great, the stories are kind of meh, but the Lower Decks crossover episode was a thing of beauty. I have not yet watched the musical episode because it kind of scares me though people I trust have reassured me that it’s ok.

What else…

The Marvels: absolutely loved it. LOVED it. I laughed so much, and there was so much hugging. Kamala is the best and I love her. Something I really liked about it is how it brought us quickly up to speed on the back stories of the three main characters, without resorting to opening scrolls or infodumps or awkward conversations telling us things we already know.

Great British Baking Show. YES, more quirky Britishisms and accents and weird bakes that Americans know nothing about. I need to start up my “If I want to taste that thing on the GBBS I guess I need to make it myself” project again.

A big surprise for me: how much I’m enjoying Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV. It’s part of the series of recent Godzilla-Kong films, which have quietly built up this amazing continuity and franchise without people really noticing. The movies have been kind of great — cheesy, but in exactly the way a big overblown kaiju movie needs to be cheesy. Lots of great action, tight plotting. Knows what the assignment is, gets an A.

The TV show is the same. We’re getting the history of Monarch, the organization that has been studying the Titans like Kong and Godzilla for the last sixty years or so. Once again, it knows the assignment: very earnest characters, and amazing monster action in every episode. If that’s not enough to draw you in, Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell play old and young versions of the same character. I love it when actors and their kids do that. My other favorite one of those is when June Lockhart and Anne Lockhart played old and young versions of the same character in the 1986 film Troll. Not making that up!

Speaking of, there’s another Godzilla film in theaters right now that’s getting fantastic reviews. Not sure when I’m going to get to it, but I really want to.

Oh my gosh y’all, it’s December. It’s the holidays. I don’t currently have a deadline. I get to start thinking about new things — like the new Cormac and Amelia novella I’ll be publishing in January.

Onward!

Stay safe this holiday season. Now, I think I need to go find some new cookie recipes to make. Any recommendations?

November 2023 – Snow!

Cross posted from my Patreon page!

We had our first snow of the season during MileHi Con last weekend!

And here we are. The homestretch. Barreling toward the end of the year and all the usual accompanying stress. This is the time to remind myself that like so many things, the holidays are a process, and I want to enjoy the entire thing, not just the endpoint. Waiting until the end to relax always seems to lead to disappointment, so let’s not do that.

This month’s lesson: I found something of an intellectual/philosophical exercise about creativity via the newsletter of Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like An Artist, which I read last year as part of my big and ongoing self-help creativity binge. (One of these days I’ll attempt to synthesize my thoughts about that, which include a bit of meta-commentary on the whole concept of self help and that industry. But never mind that for now.) I’m curious and thought I’d work on it and see what happens. Come join me, if you’d like!

Current Work:

I’ve already gotten editor’s notes back on The Naturalist Society, with a fairly quick turnaround, so I’m working on that. It’s a bit more than I was expecting and I had to sit with the notes for a few days to absorb and ponder. But I think I have a plan now for revising. *rolls up sleeves, cracks knuckles*

I’m still low-key obsessed with the eight short stories I wrote all in a rush in the first part of the year. I can now report that I’ve sold seven of them. This is a really good run. Still haven’t submitted the eighth one, but I think I might go ahead and polish that up and get it out soon. If I wait for the associated project to be done, I might be waiting a while. I should just kick that baby out the door. I’d like to write a big Seminar post about the eight stories, the process of writing them, the process of submitting them, and what happened next. Mostly this is a debriefing for my own edification, but it might be illuminating for you as well.

Following up, I haven’t written a short story since May. That’s just how it goes sometimes. I’ve pretty reliably written 6 or so short stories a year for most of my career, and that still seems to be the pattern, whether I write them all at once or spread out. I think that’s interesting.

Stuff watched:

Bodies. Sci-fi murder mystery on Netflix. It’s great. Really emotionally engaging with a classic science fiction premise and structure, but with modern sensibilities. I enjoyed it. Only eight episodes and a complete story.

I’ve been catching up on a lot of movies. Maybe my brain has finally unlocked enough to let in some new stories, to move past the reliance on comfort watching. I’ve got a list. It struck me that browsing through the various streaming platforms, looking at what’s new, or what I’ve missed, or what looks intriguing, reminds me a lot of walking through the video store finding something to rent. I say the same things I did back in the day: “Oh, I’d meant to see that, it’s out on video now!” “Hm, that looks interesting, I should check it out.” How strangely recursive is this?

Still haven’t been to the movie theater in a couple of months now, but I think we’ll manage it for Marvels. I’ll let you know how it goes.

October Update! Just a quick word

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This month’s lesson: A different way of looking at genre categories. Writers and readers sometimes spend a lot of time defining and worrying about various genres. I take a different approach.

I have a couple of autumn conventions coming up:

 MileHi Con, my local stomping grounds.  I’m an Author Guest of Honor at the very first GalactiCon, here in Denver over Thanksgiving weekend. 

I did a difficult thing a couple of weeks ago: I pulled out all my SCA/medieval garb that no longer fits and started the process of giving it away. It’s tough because I have a lot of memories connected to these outfits. Not to mention, I made most of them myself. Making them taught me about costuming. It needed to happen – I wasn’t going to wear them anymore, and they should be out in the world instead of stuffed in my closet. Bonus: more closet space. Also, I picked a couple of pieces that I’m going to try to alter/rehab, which will be a good challenge.

TV: The show Britannia has been on my list for awhile and I finally started on it. Y’all, I love it. Really love it. It’s violent and bloody and over the top. It’s also gonzo and has some interesting things to say about mythology and faith. It’s full-on fantasy. A lot of historical-adjacent shows will play cagey with the supernatural and religious beliefs – maybe it was a curse, or maybe it was just bad luck, maybe the prayer worked, maybe it was just good luck, we don’t know, it’s all fuzzy! Britannia is all in with the magic – it’s all real, it works, it’s doing crazy stuff, the Druid king takes you to the underworld you really go to the underworld, your rite-of-passage has you going into the sacred pond to turn into a fish you really turn into a fish. It’s GREAT! And it pushes the consequences of all that. It’s also doing this thing with a big epic story of prophecy and several different religious practices and cultures converging, but at the same time telling several really individual, personal stories, and the individual stories are their own things but they’re also weaving seamlessly in and out of the epic story. It’s a neat trick that I’m going to be thinking about. I still have season 3 to watch, we’ll see where the show takes us.

Ahsoka: I’m just letting it all wash over me. The live-action versions of the characters are the ones in my mind now.

It’s autumn. It’s October. The nights are cool, the leaves are turning, and for me, this is all coming with a sense of relief, of rest. I’m not a huge fan of autumn like some people, but my instincts are telling me I need to slow down a bit, clean up my house, reset my brain, and the changing season is a good excuse to do that.

I hope you’re finding some restful moments.

Update: September 2023, Kinda Worn Out Edition

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This month’s lesson: A final (for now) post about Voice – this one will be writing exercises, a little bit of homework to help us think about word choice and how that affects the reader.

August always seems to go a bit crazy. I’m looking back on old posts and journals, and the month always seems to race by, to the point where I don’t often remember what the hell just happened. Big conventions happen in August. I don’t seem to travel in August otherwise, but I do seem hyper-aware of activities/chores that I’ve been meaning to do all summer and haven’t.

Or maybe it’s all in my head and it just feels that way. Something about the heat and seeing the mountain of school supplies at Target makes my brain go fuzzy. That reminds me, I need to stock up on spiral notebooks.

I’m curious to go back to the start of this year, January and February, to see what I was planning and what I thought the year was going to be like – because not much has gone to plan. That’s okay. This year at least, things have gone better than I expected, so that’s good. But I’ve been scrambling a bit to keep up. I’m hoping to chill out for the rest of the year. I don’t actually need to make up a whole new list of projects, you know? But I do need to clean my office.

To recap, one of the unexpected things that happened was I sold a novel, The Naturalist Society. It’s a different version of the novel than the one I originally wrote, so I’ve spent the summer entirely reworking it. I’m on the last revision pass now, beefing up some plot points before I turn it in at the end of the month.

Next project: I have a rough draft of the next Cormac and Amelia novella finished and ready to revise. It’s been sitting since about March/April, so it should be good and fermented and ready to work on.

My Kickstarter project is basically wrapped up. I have a few stragglers who still need to get their books, but I think I can say that I successfully completed the campaign. Check that off the list.

The same week that I had the roof on my house replaced, my car needed new tires and a new windshield. That tells you how things have been going this whole summer.

Reading: I really enjoyed Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work by Mark Ellison. On the surface it’s a memoir about his work as a carpenter/renovator for very high-end clients in Manhattan (think multi-million dollar remodels as a matter of course; his stories are off the rails). But more than that it’s a meditation on living a creative life, carving your own niche in the world, the necessity of practice, the meaning of mastery – I’m relating to a lot of what he writes. It’s also exquisitely well written.

Other media: Went to the theater to see Blue Beetle, which I hadn’t planned on doing but a friend wanted to go. This was earnest but had some problems. On one hand, it felt like something of a throwback, in a good way – kind of an 80’s superhero vibe. I mean, when was the last time you saw the credits at the start of the film? On the other hand, the execution of the story wasn’t great. The plot was busy, messy, and missed some important beats. On the third hand (it’s superheroes, we can have multiple hands) I may really be burned out on superhero movies.

Ahsoka is finally here. I like it. While the overall tone feels a bit muted (I think I wanted the energy of Rebels, and it doesn’t quite have that), I’m enjoying it as a fan of these characters. It’s capturing a certain aesthetic within Star Wars that I love, but is hard to describe – old school, is maybe the best way to put it. Star Wars, pre-prequels. It’s got the old cut scenes and fades, a cinematic score reminiscent of Williams but that adds in threads from The Mandalorian – woodwinds, a tribal beat. The color palette is a little softer than the other TV shows have been. Maybe the best way to put it: it feels like something out of the old Expanded Universe, and I’m here for it. I’m intrigued by the villains. I’m obsessed with details. (Shin has a padawan braid – anyone else catch that?) The duels and dogfights have been fantastic.

For those of us watching this as Rebels Season 5…lots of speculation going on! I’m refraining and waiting for the story to unfold. I have a couple of things I’d like to see, but I don’t want expectations to affect my viewing. At any rate, I think we’re in for some big reveals one way or another. Let’s see where it goes!

August 2023 Update!

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This summer is kicking my ass a little. Half my brain is still in pandemic times, and half is trying to remember that having multiple things scheduled on the same weekend, several weekends running, used to be normal. How do I plan! Where did my energy go! Argh!

This month’s lesson: I’m still on the topic of voice. This month I’m indulging myself with a close-reading exercise I’ve never done before: What does it look like when the same author writes very different kinds of stories? Can you still “hear” the voice? How does the setting/genre change the voice, if at all? Let’s find out!

I appear to have survived San Diego Comic Con without catching covid, which I was actually really worried about. I know at least one person who did get it, and I’ve been hearing stories of more. I masked up except when I was doing my program items. Most people didn’t. Don’t know if it helped but it certainly didn’t hurt. I haven’t had covid at all and I’m not sure how realistic it is to keep it that way. But if I’m going to be in a convention hall with 100,000 of my closest friends, I’m wearing a mask. I’ve also had exactly one cold in the last three years, and that’s sure a plus. Hand sanitizer FTW!

Work: I’ve been working on my current novel, The Naturalist Society, and nothing else for two solid months. I’ve almost got a complete draft. I have a few more sections I need to add. I’m compiling all my notes and outlines to see what I missed and what needs rounding out. Then, I’ll read it over, make even more changes, then print it off, read it and mark it up, and then…maybe then it’ll be done. At least until the editor gets a hold of it and gives me notes.

But I’m starting to feel like it’s time to work on something else. I’ve got that itch.

I’m going to be Co-Guest of Honor at Bubonicon in a couple of weeks. Then MileHi Con in October. Then it’s time to start thinking about 2024, holy cow.

Reviews:

Caught Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny right before it left theaters. Great third act. Terrible first and second act. Which is weird, right? The first two acts didn’t really have any puzzles—they weren’t very clever, and that’s what we actually like about Indiana Jones. The action scenes went on way, way too long and were kind of boring, frankly. But then… That third act. I started getting surprised. There was a moment when anything could happen. It got really crazy, in a fun way. Indy’s profound character moment (trying to avoid spoilers) really got to me. (“I’m staying,” he says, with a look of such longing. Realizing that maybe this was what he’s been chasing all along. I could feel that.)

Barbie: Surreal, hilarious, there’s never been anything quite like this. (Except maybe something like Joe versus the Volcano or various Coen Brothers flicks? Visually I mean, not thematically.) It feels a little like that first gender studies class you take in college that gets you all fired up and you stop shaving your legs and start wearing cargo pants but then summer rolls around and you realize you actually like having shaved legs and BEACHING in your swimsuit and maybe you can do that and still be a feminist… Anyway.

The MCU finally lost me with Secret Invasion. I don’t plan on finishing it. I mean, it’s basically the same plot as Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and what happened to Carol finding the Skrull a homeworld and –

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*** I’m very, very angry about what they did to Maria Hill, who was one of those great reliable side characters, likeable and competent, someone I was always happy to see. And now she’s gone. Fridged, even, to motivate Nick Fury’s arc. One reviewer pointed out that the MCU has now killed off seven recurring women characters in the last five years: Gamora, Natasha Romanoff, Jane Foster, May Parker, Wanda Maximoff – and let’s not forget they didn’t just kill her off but destroyed her entire character arc from WandaVision — Queen Ramonda, and now Maria. This is a pattern. A very unpleasant, bad pattern. It’s either “We can’t find stories to tell about women” (I’ll give you a hint, it’s the same stories you tell about men, it’s just that the main characters are women, ta-da!), or “Killing off a woman side character is a great plot device because it makes the main characters – i.e. the men – feel bad.” I’m willing to bet this isn’t being done consciously by the writers and show runners. I bet in each individual instance it feels like good, powerful storytelling. But you line them all up like this and, whew, yeah. It’s like that moment I realized Joss Whedon almost always shockingly impales someone at the bottom of the second act to get a rise out of the audience. It’s like looking behind the curtain. Once you see it you can’t unsee it. I’m angry and tired.

I’ll go see Marvels for sure, and maybe the next season of Loki just to ogle Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson (I never claimed to have any dignity on that matter). After that, I might be done with the MCU.

Meanwhile, we’re at the tail end of summer and I still haven’t been to Rocky Mountain National Park, which is practically in my backyard, and I haven’t been kayaking and… it’s always this way, isn’t it?

July 2023: Summertime!!!

Reminder that I’m primarily blogging over at Patreon these days.

This month’s lesson: I’ll talk more about voice, with examples. I love examples! I love picking apart texts! (I’ll never forget walking out of The Lion King with my family and I went on and on about how it’s just like Hamlet and my brother yelled, “Stop it, you’re ruining it!” and I yelled back, “No I’m making it better!” Ah, memories!)

Reminder: I’ll be at San Diego Comic Con this month and Bubonicon next month. The convention circuit is back in full swing, looks like. I’ll try to keep up.

Shameless Self Promotion: I have a story in the July/August issue of Analog. You know what this means? I’ve got the Trifecta: I’ve had stories appear in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Analog. These are the three premier print magazines, the ones that have been around for decades, that have published all the authors you know and lots of classics of the genre. Appearing in any one of them is a victory. Appearing in all three is one of those big pie-in-the-sky goals for a lot of SF&F writers.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever accomplish it – I stopped sending stories to Analog for a long time, because I decided I just wasn’t an “Analog author.” I didn’t write the kind of hard SF, problem-solving stories they have a reputation for. Lots of other places were publishing my work, so I didn’t try. But then I had a story that I thought might fit, and thought…why not? Why not indeed.

The story is a short flash piece called “The Queen of Copies Meets Her Match.” I think it’s a lot of fun.

I’m still growing more ambivalent about metrics like this, but as milestones go, this is a nice one. And it’s nice to know that at this stage in my career I still have milestones to hit and goals to strive for. Goals make me happy.

Got a lifer bird on a camping trip last week: a Cassin’s Kingbird. A nice sighting because I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Cassin’s Kingbird. At first I thought it was a Western Kingbird, but it didn’t look quite right (this one was just a bit darker overall) and definitely didn’t sound like a Western and this is exactly why we have field guides.

A lot of movies out now, and I haven’t seen a-one. The new Indiana Jones movie is getting good enough reviews I’ll probably try to go see it. A few years ago I got to see Raiders of the Lost Ark with the soundtrack played live by the Colorado Symphony, and that was a fantastic experience. It’s one of those nearly perfectly constructed films, so if you haven’t seen it in a while, you might check it out with an analytical eye.

Next week, the Colorado Symphony is showing Tim Burton’s Batman with a live soundtrack. I’ve got tickets and I think it’ll be a hoot.

Speaking of voice, I read a book last month, We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian. It’s m/m romance set in late 1950’s New York, which is not an era I normally associate with historical romance. I’ve read and enjoyed Sebastian’s Regency romances, so I was intrigued. (I’ve got an upcoming story for Wild Cards set in 1961 New York, and seeing the bits of overlapping research was fun. Not to mention my recent Frank O’Hara deep dive deals with the same time/place. Every now and then I read a novel and recognize a book the author used for research, and that happened here.) I liked it a lot, partly because of the voice, which captured a kind of mid-century modern bustle and anxiety. Some romance I’ve read tends toward the sentimental and overly-emotional, and this wasn’t that at all and I found it engaging.

Update: June 2023

Reminder that this is cross posted from Patreon.

Welcome to June! It’s been a strange but good year so far. The trend looks to continue. Buckle up!

This month’s lesson: I’m going to save the continuation of my discussion about voice for next month, because I’ve started a revision project that’s totally different than anything I’ve done before and is kicking my ass in all the best ways, so I’m going to talk about that.

Keeping the tally: I’ve written eight stories since December. Five have sold. I’m ridiculously happy about this. Apparently, I can still write. In what may be the fastest turnaround I’ve ever had from first draft to publication, one of those stories, “Vast and Trunkless Legs of Stone” is available in the June issue of Clarkesworld.

Announcement: I’ll be at San Diego Comic Con this year, promoting my first graphic novel, Wild Cards: Now and Then. I haven’t been at SDCC since 2011, and I’m very excited to tackle the mayhem once more, and see lots of folks face to face. I’m still kind of feral after pandemic times so we’ll see how that goes.

TV/Movies: I’m starting to get back into watching new things. It’s nice. But I’m also on my third or fourth viewing of The Old Guard so clearly I still need some found family comfort viewing, too.

American Born Chinese:  I’ve only seen three episodes so far but I like it. It makes me so glad I’m not in high school. Yeah, 32 years on and I still think about how glad I am that I’m not in high school. This is a Monkey King story, and I’m a big fan of Sun Wukong. I wrote about him myself in Kitty’s Big Trouble.

The English. I have a rant about this one. I wanted to see this because the previews made it look like “Emily Blunt kicking ass in a western,” which sounded great. But…it’s not really that. The character only occasionally kicks ass, and the rest of the time is kind of a mess. It has some good moments but is terribly inconsistent. I really liked the other main character, Eli, a Pawnee tracker for the US army, played by Chaske Spencer. He was a delight.

It’s a pretty standard western. Our characters move through the desolate landscape of the Great Plains, where life is cheap, honor rare, and only the strong survive by their guns. They ride across unmarred expanses of grass. No roads, no towns, just lonely buildings stuck in isolation, trying to survive.

The problem is we’re told this takes place in 1890.

In the first episode, the characters are in the middle of nowhere, the Kansas Oklahoma border I think? She says she’s going to Wyoming. He says it’ll take her a month to ride there. And I’m thinking: Or…you could just go back to St. Louis and take the train and be there in a couple of days? The transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869. Telegraph lines were finished in 1861. But this show that takes place in 1890 would have us believe that there’s absolutely nothing—no roads, no telegraph poles, no towns, no nothing west of the Mississippi. Guys, the University of Wyoming was founded in 1886. Four years before the desolate barely inhabited Wyoming depicted in this show.

This happens a lot:  the mythological Old West ended a lot earlier than a lot of people realize. But the imagery of the classic western: desolate, living by the gun, yadda yadda, is so pervasive, it gets used without any thought. Argh, it makes me mad.

I was still in the mood for westerns so I watched a movie on Netflix that it turns out is not a western because it takes place in Ireland, but has some of the mood of a western. This one, I really liked. The Wonder starring Florence Pugh. I have to warn you: there’s a point in the film where you’re sure that everything is going to turn out very badly. 19th century gothic bingo is in play, and some terrible stuff happens along those lines.  But y’all, it ends well. I was crying, the shred of hope the film gives us at the end is so unexpected and welcome.

I can’t recommend The English but I’ll recommend The Wonder. Weirdly, both things had Toby Jones and Ciarán Hinds in bit parts. I can’t explain it.

Meanwhile, it’s high summer and I gotta figure out how I’m going to get out of the house and enjoy it.