How It’s Mid-August Already (mirrored from my newsletter)

So, first off, I’ll start with this week. Carlos and I are running a workshop—”Playful Storytelling: Fresh Ideas from Other Genres”—on Thursday with the fine people at Meet Your Apex, an offshoot of Apex Magazine. 

The code DOON10 will get you $10 off the registration for live or recording-only, if you’re interested. Find us at reachyourapex.com/playful.

Coupon for our “Playful Storytelling” workshop.

The description is thus:

No matter what genre you’re writing, one of the hardest things to do is to come up with ideas that editors haven’t seen a thousand times before, written with language galvanized by verve, novelty, and identity. Join award-winning authorsCarlos Hernandez and C. S. E. Cooney as they explore writing in different genres through exercises that will show you the transferable skills you already have while giving you delightful new tools to add to your repertoire.

C.S.E. and Carlos will cover forms you may never have tried, such as game writing and comic book writing. Even if you never intend to work within these forms, experimenting with different genres will give you fresh perspectives on your writing and creative new ways to re-envision it.

In this class, you’ll get an overview of different genres and conventions, and learn about the underlying skills that connect them all. You’ll engage in exercises that:

invigorate your language on the sentence levelcenter solid worldbuildingexperiment with different genre structures

Claire and Carlos have over 50 years combined experience in fiction, poetry, comics, game writing, and drama. They have won awards for their writing and have published with major publishing houses. They’re also very different writers from each other. This unique dual perspective provides a wide panoply of ideas applicable to your own writing practices.

You’ll leave this workshop inspired, brimming with ideas, and with the spirt of play that is bound to feed your creative self.

DATE: August 14, 2025 – Thursday

TIME: 1PM ET | 12PM CT | 11AM MT | 10AM PT | 17:00 UTC

I also started a different newsletter, what was it, a week ago? Two weeks ago? But I never finished it.

I was going to tell you all about how our summer con circuit went. I’ll attempt a quick summary now.

We attended the Origins Game Fair, CONvergence (where I was a Guest of Honor!!!), CONfluence (where we were MUSICAL guests, in our band-persona of “Brimstone Rhine”), and GenCon.

C. S. E. Cooney at CONvergence 2025, Minneapolis, MN

Highlights of Origins? I got to sell my books, talk to a lot of readers, but my favoritewas a young person named Trinity, maybe 11 or 12 years old, who had an imagination as big as the sea, and who stood at my table for two hours telling me about sirens and mermaids. She came to one of our panels on Worldbuilding and asked the most interested questions. I was so glad to have met her!

Highlights of CONvergence? SO MANY! Everything! 

My mama flew out for that one, as did my friends Patty Templeton and Brett Massé. My friend Sara Logan, who is local, was also there! And darling Carlos. So I felt surrounded with community.

Also? The CONvergence volunteer staff is the number one staff of anystaff anywhere, and my handler Kyle Dekker was a dream of care and solicitude. He was also a great moderator for all my “solo” panels. 

Also! Tina Connolly and Dr. Mary Crowell came, and we gave our first public review of some of our “The Devil and Lady Midnight” musical theatre podcast! 

(Left to right: C. S. E. Cooney, Dr. Mary Crowell, and Tina Connolly onstage at CONvergence 2025 for the “The Devil and Lady Midnight” concert.

GenCon—where our TTRPG, Negocios Infernales—had its debut! People who pre-ordered through the store have already gotten their games, and Outland is working on fulfillment for our Kickstarter backers. We found five of our backers at GenCon and gave them their games and neoprene maps!

C. S. E. Cooney and Negocios Infernales backer Kathy Brown, making the game fulfillment at GenCon 2025

All copies of our game sold out. Next time, we’ll bring more. Studio 2 Publishing is Outland Entertainment’s distributor, and they were amazing!

Carlos ran three Negocios Infernales games at GenCon through Games on Demand, who were also wonderful, as usual. Games on Demand is an “open gaming event” organization that facilitates finding players for indie games at conventions such as Origins, GenCon, Pax Unplugged, and many more.

“Every game begins unwon,” as the Deck of Destiny likes to say. This is a Negocios Infernales table before the game is played.

We’ve had so many houseguests this summer, including Mike Allen of Mythic Delirium, on his book tour for Black Fire Concerto, and WorldCon’s first Poet Laureate Brandon O’Brien. 

I got to see my beautiful mama several times (she flew out for TWO of my cons!) And my brother Jeremy, who sang with us at CONfluence. And my dad and stepmom, whom we visited in Chicago on our way home. And my brother, sister-in-law, and niece and nephews in Pittsburgh, though we did that masked, outside, and from a distance, due to a minor illness on the poor kiddos’ part.

The band Brimstone Rhine at CONfluence 2025, Pittsburgh PA. Left to right: Jeremy Cooney on vocal and guitar, C. S. E. Cooney on vocals, and Carlos Hernandez on ukulele and cajon.

This is day four of being back, day two without houseguests, and the first day I get to sit down and write. So I’m here. 

And now I will go to my fiction. More soon for you, I hope!