June is Coming.

Things I am doing in June:

1. Kickstarting Mother of Invention with Rivqa Rafael & Twelfth Planet Press

This one is such a passion project for me, I can’t wait to get stuck into all those stories about robots and hyper-intelligent computers and gender and feelings. It’s the most ambitious crowdfunding project I’ve ever been even tangentially involved with, so. Excitement.

2. New Product Line at Alice & Austen

I’ve been building up inventory for my new literary gift shop over this year. May brought the new Shakespeare line, including a William Shakespeare Deepings Doll, finger puppets and hand-stitched bookmarks among other things. June is all about Alice — specifically this one gorgeous Alice in Wonderland design by Kathleen Jennings. Pre-orders are underway now for silk scarves and art pouches featuring these beautiful illustrations. I really hope this line is a success because I want to be able to produce MORE Kathleen art as pretty gifts. We all know that she would happily draw Jane Austen characters all the live-long day, so it would be cool to make that happen. Pre-order discounts for The Alice Scarf & The Alice Art Pouch apply until 16 June. Those ordering the Alice Bundle before 31 May get a free gift.

3. The Bromancers

A new podcast serial at Sheep Might Fly is always exciting, but this one is turning out to be EPIC. I’ve just put up the first episode and am busily writing away on the story as a whole. It’s gonna be big. The theme of The Bromancers (#3 in the Belladonna University/Fake Geek Girl series) is friendship & fandom (as they interact with magic), and with so many characters to look at & so many combinations, even with leaving most of the romantic narratives aside (cough, some of them won’t go quietly), the story is definitely growing beyond my original parameters. I hope you all like it, because it’s going to take over the podcast for at least three months!

4. Continuum!!!

I’m going to be there with the entire Galactic Suburbia crew! We’re doing a three hour Galactic Suburbia/Twelfth Planet Press extravaganza including a book shower for Luminescent Threads, the awesome Octavia Butler book shortly to be released! I’m gonna be on SO MANY PANELS. Also btw the Monday of that weekend is my first wedding anniversary AND 21st relationship anniversary with the Silent Producer.

5. Eighteen Days

Yeah, so this one is awkward. I’m just going to slip it in here. I have a very small, very treatable form of lymphoma, and I’m going to be undergoing radiotherapy in June. As far as I can make out from the very advanced medical science that has been explained to me (so basically magic then), a robot arm is going to shoot rainbows at my head and by August my cancer will have completely disappeared. It all seems very improbable, but there you go. The part that really gobsmacked me is that radiotherapy is not, apparently, like having laser eye surgery. I have EIGHTEEN appointments, daily, for around 12 minutes each (5 of the actual treatment).

So this is going to be a big theme of my June and I kind of want people to know it’s a thing that’s going on without having to have That Conversation with them because I’ve had so many versions of That Conversation over the last year and I’ve hit a wall with that. Also, the effects are likely to become visible over the course of the month, another reason for giving people a head’s up. I’m going to lose a little hair, but only because the area of treatment is so close to my hairline. I have been promised a month of something that feels like really bad sunburn, irritable skin and a whole lot of boredom/inconvenience which. Yeah. I’m OK with. I know how lucky I am.

Which brings me to…

6. HIDDEN MERMAID HAIR

I’m going to be celebrating the end of my treatments with some serious hair colour action. I have been longing for hidden mermaid hair since I learned that was a thing. I never experimented with hair colour as a teenager because mine was so dark, and then it started going silver while I was still young enough to not really be bothered about it, and I have embraced that as part of my identity now. Once upon a time, before I went silver all over, I had a single silver lock underneath my dark hair, and I loved the effect, so I’m excited to get that back in complete reverse order.

Anyway. I’ve made my appointment. Before the end of June unless the radiotherapy makes me too miserable to want anyone touching my hair for a while. But it’s happening. Robot arm > Magical rainbows shot at face > mermaid underlights.