Paper Fruit

What did I publish this year? Not a whole heck of a lot. And that’s okay.

In the early months of 2020 I realized I was experiencing textbook symptoms of burnout. Writing–my refuge, my obsession, my passion, my life!–felt hard and sometimes even aggravating. I avoided it for no reason. I wasn’t happy. I was looking forward to seeing my trilogy conclude once and for all, given how fraught it had been for me creatively, emotionally, and publishing-wise. I started working on my dream project (still am), but it wasn’t gelling. I pivoted to working on a novella, which I set aside. And then the pandemic hit, and nothing felt good… except for when I turned my eyes to my manga adaptation work. There, I could let go. I could freely compose and correct without the same sort of anxiety I was experiencing when working on my own stuff. It was glorious weightless, like floating in a warm deep bathtub.

It was hard not to get angry with myself. “I used to have so much to say, what happened!” “What’s wrong with me, everyone else is cranking out pages and pages of prose!” “I have so much time on my hands, what am I even doing with it all!?” These sorts of thoughts did not help me at all, of course. And they weren’t even true, not really. When things clicked, when I was hard at work on my new novel, I felt great. But I couldn’t stay in that place. I fell out of it so easily. The world was the world, endlessly distracting and dismaying.

It wasn’t until I hurt my high hamstring that I finally realized I’d been missing a piece of it all. To rehabilitate my hamstring, I had to take time off to let it heal, and then I had to get back into yoga slowly, gently, compassionately, without judgment, without pressure. I had to notice when I was in pain and back off immediately, baby the injury, and then try again when it felt better. Because I did all that, I’m back on the mat–with caution–and feeling good. My high hamstring still gives me guff, but I can work with it and work around it. And I’m doing better at incorporating supportive therapies too, like walking and pilates.

Thinking about all of this made me wonder if I could apply this process to my brain, too. At first, I resisted a little–my hamstring is a physical part of my body, it can’t be reasoned with. But the truth is, my mind is a physical part of my body too.

I have a lot of things coming out next year–the re-release of my backlist through Word Horde, a novelette in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a bunch of manga adaptations. I hope to finish my ongoing novel, and to get back into regularly working on shorter fiction. But we’ll see what happens. I thought I had plans for 2020 but really it was 2020 that had plans for me. So I’m approaching 2021 with caution.

Anyway, my two original fiction publications this year were:

Creatures of Charm and Hunger. John Joseph Adams Books/Mariner, April 2020.

“Summer Camp Would Have Been a Lot Cheaper.” In Evil in Technicolor, edited by Joe M. McDermott. Vernacular Books, October 2020.

Manga-wise, you’re seeing it. The Drifting Classroom, vols. 2 and 3, Levius/est vols. 6 and 7, and Super Mario Manga Mania.

See you in the future, y’all.

Trump won. America voted for him. People I know voted for him—people who know me, and knew my father; who claimed to love us, who are familiar with our Jewish ancestry: they still voted for someone who has declared intent to start a registry of people based on their faith; someone who has threatened mass deportation based on ethnicity. I am sure people you know voted for him—people who claim to love you, whether you are queer, brown, Trans*, black, a woman, poor, or just a decent human being who tried to explain to them the importance of voting against someone who stands for white supremacy, “braggadoccious,” and actually literally sexually assaulting women and girls.

People we don’t know voted for him too. Lots of them. Enough to put him in the White House.

I watched it happen at the world’s worst election night party (through no fault of my lovely hosts). Early in the night it had been full of excited, if nervous people, chatting happily of this and that, eager to see a win for the most qualified presidential candidate in recent history, whose victory was all but assured. We quickly went quiet as Rachel Maddow began to lose her shit on MSNBC. The results came in—or rather, didn’t—for long enough that we all sensed it in the wind. People split into other areas of the house, glued to phones or laptops or the TV. We were silent, shocked. In tears I called a friend, who told me to be patient, to wait, that it would be all right.

It was not all right. The next morning, I saw the same friend had messaged me at 1 AM MT, after I’d given up and gone to sleep, with just one word.

“sorry.”

In the wake of it, I have not been well. I am grieving. Something has cracked deep inside of me; some part of me is leaking out. I think it is my civility; my willingness to swallow my sighs and my anger and instead speak calmly. Maybe it’s my lifelong goal of being the approachable, easy going feminist who takes the time to explain issues patiently and who endures sexism with a smile and a handshake because you win more flies with honey.

On Wednesday afternoon after the election, as I was working at the coffee shop, a young white man elected to explain to me all about HRC’s “flaws.” I stopped him at some point, which surprised this entitled bastard, in order to say, “Actually, I’m a big fan,” which shocked him.

“You can’t possibly mean that!” he said, in mock astonishment.

“No, I really do,” I replied.

At that point he decided to explain to me how “corrupt” HRC was, and that if I was a fan, I couldn’t possibly have read much about her, or be informed about what she really is. I stared at him, standing next to my friend and boss, who was also too angry, too tired from fighting tears all day, to tell him what we really thought about him and his white male opinions—about his certainty that his thoughts were more reasoned, more valid than my own. About his feeling that in the wake if this defeat, I should be listening to him, not he to me.

It sent me to a dark place, out of which I have not yet crawled. Why didn’t I tell him to shut the fuck up? My boss would have supported me. I know that under normal circumstances she would have sent his ass packing with his fucking iced coffee, no room for cream.

I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel; what to do. When I go outside now, I see white men and white women, who overwhelmingly voted to put Trump in the White House… and I wonder, what are they thinking? Are they enjoying having told American women that they’re garbage; that they actually can’t be anything they want, ha ha? Do they see Trump’s victory as a sign that their Islamophobia, their racism, their misogyny, their hatred, is “correct” and “moral” and “just” now? Are they feeling anything at all, or are they able to just roll their eyes and say to themselves, “it’s just politics, what’s the big deal?”

It’s no longer just politics. It never was, of course, but it’s more obvious than ever before.

To anyone who says “don’t be angry” or “this is a time to set aside our differences and work for unity,” reflect on this… feeling as if the people around you hate you because of who you are is depressing, and it is terrifying. This is not a time for unity. It’s a time to say “I will never ally myself with fascism, or with those who support it.”

I will also never join with those who are pointing fingers specifically at women and saying, “it’s your fault.” Yeah, the “bitch” there is silent, but it’s still loud and clear. It’s doubly hard to know who your friends are these days. The Right can obviously go fuck itself; they have spoken and spoken loudly on behalf of bigotry, misogyny, and violence, and fear. The sad thing is, the Left seems just as willing to paint women public servants as harlots or sell-outs, whether it’s the so-called Radical Left or just moderate fair-weather Democrats who just didn’t feel “inspired” enough to vote for HRC because they were too busy throwing a tantrum that their magic grandpa Bernie Sanders lost the primary. Yesterday I saw a prominent radical Leftist magazine sneering at HRC’s graceful concession speech (the radical left is just as disgustingly sexist as any other group, and will as far as I can tell never acknowledge/give two shits about the unique struggles of women when it comes to navigating the public eye), as well as willfully misrepresenting the brave and fiery Elizabeth Warren’s remarks on “compromising” with President Elect Trump (read what she really said here, without the sexist spin). I wish I were surprised, but it’s of course the divided left that lost the election for HRC as much as it’s the fascist alt-right, shrug-n-vote Republicans, and “fuck yeah” bigots who won it for Trump.

To whom can anyone turn? I just don’t know. There’s a movement, riffing on Brexit, where some of us are putting safety pins on our clothes as a way to signal being a safe person to talk to in these dark times. I admit I liked the idea, and dug one out of my sewing box. Just as quickly, of course, I see an article tearing down the idea and sneering at those who might be looking for a way to do something instant and meaningful and good. It’s just us “embarrassing ourselves,” apparently. Hatred and violence are tearing us apart, but so, apparently, are love and small actions that seem like an immediate way to stand up for what is right and kind while we plot and plan bigger things down the road.

I’m angrier at the Right than the Left right now, true. But the truth is, we all need to take responsibility. We all need to look at ourselves. We all need to figure out who we are, what we stand for—and what we stand against.

I don’t know. I don’t have answers. I wish I did, but all I have right now is grief and a desire to do my best for my piece of shit, abusive country—yes, even now, when they’ve told me and my friends that I’m trash undeserving of basic human rights and human decency. I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish I did.

But I do know I’ll be looking for answers, and looking for them quickly. I’ll try my best to do the right thing at a time when most of the country is reveling in supporting the rhetoric of violence, hatred, and evil.

We have turned down a dark path, and it will not “be okay,” as so many people are saying. We will have to make it okay. We will have to take action. I just don’t know what, yet.

The end of the year is fast approaching, and as usual it has inspired me to make a fruitcake and do a little housekeeping, taking stock of what this year has meant for me as a writer, a reader, and just a person, too.

I confess that 2014 has been a difficult year for me. Sort of like Longfellow’s little girl with a curl right in the center of her forehead, when this year was good, it was very good indeed, and when it was bad it was horrid.

I struggled with personal relationships this year, with both friends and with my family, but I also reconnected with several old friends, and was privileged to witness a truly amazing event in my immediate family—my uncle surviving a bone marrow transplant from my mother.

After enjoying performing lion dance over Chinese New Year I decided to take a leave of absence from my kung fu studio for personal reasons both physical and mental. And while I felt less fit overall this year since 2011 (the year I committed myself to taking time for fitness) I ran my first triathlon and achieved the times I wanted.

I wrote a novel that is a total mess, that I may trunk forever, but I also wrote one that I believe may be my best yet.

As is apparent from that last point, I struggled with my writing this year, aesthetically and emotionally, but I also sold a handful more short stories than usual, ones that I like more than usual, even, and I also sold my first novel, my second novel, and a novella.

Though I struggled with feelings of career stagnation, I achieved some other firsts this year. I edited my first ever magazine edition (in spite of being Managing Editor/Assistant Editor of several magazines over the years, I was never invited to take part in actual fiction-selection), and was invited to edit two more projects, an issue of another magazine, due out next year, and another project which has not yet been announced.

Though I did not have a book come out this year, I saw seven short stories published, one of which earned me my first-ever mention in Publishers Weekly, and I sold seven more. I also began (and completed, more impressively for me) a blog series for Pornokitsch, where I am now a regular contributor.

For the first time since 2009 I did not attend a single con, but I was invited to be a guest—an actual guest, not just a participant—at a con next year, a first for me. I turned down cons for good and bad reasons this year, a learning experience, but I also traveled to Japan, which was an amazing experience.

I read more this year than I have in many, many years, in part due to a concerted effort to do so. I kept track of my adventures on Goodreads, which was enlightening. After beginning the year at a good clip I had hoped to read 75 books this year. I’m currently at 65 and I’m not sure I’ll be able to squeeze in ten before the new year, but I’ll try–and whatever I achieve will be extremely rewarding, I’m sure.

I also played video games for the first time in years—Dragon Age 2, and I just started Dragon Age: Origins. As this was also a rewarding experience, I hope to play more games in future, as I am woefully ignorant of the state of gaming, having never owned a video game system that wasn’t Nintendo. Onward to Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect, and more!

2015 should be an exiting year. Having my first novel come out, and my second, is already a thrilling but intimidating prospect. I’ll be doing two other blog series for Pornokitch, which I hope to complete with the same or greater level of success as the last. I’m enthusiastic to do more races, to have new adventures (didn’t get to my annual 14er this year), and to begin new writing projects with more confidence and self-assuredness in what I do best, rather in what I wished I did better.

I hope you all had wonderful years, and if you didn’t I hope your 2015 is better. Cheers!

Aw man. Left it too late again…

October’s been a crazy month. In spite of two major deadlines looming, I went to Japan for two weeks, which was awesome! More on that when I have time to upload a thousand pictures of temples and deer and stuff.

As my deadlines seem a lot closer on this side of the trip (and my birthday—I’m 33 now, righteous), here’s a quick update of things I’ve been doing:

• I’m now a regular contributor over at Pornokitch.com! This is super exciting. Now my posts have my name beside them, like this, my latest Roald Dahl blog on his short stories. Roald Dahl hated beards. Who knew?

• Speaking of Pornokitsch, I had a new short story go up over there. Co-authored with Jesse Bullington, it’s called “Four Seasons in the Floating World™“. You can also buy it for 99 whole cents and read it on your e-reader.

• I wrote a short piece on doing my tri for Josh Vogt’s ongoing blog series Write Strong.

• I blind submitted a short story for the first time in several… years? And it was accepted! More details as I can share them.

That’s about it. Except… am I forgetting something?

Oh! That’s right!

One week from tomorrow…

What could it be??

Up on the A.V. Club today is another of those AVQ&As, the topic this week being “What Entertainment Did You Unfortunately Inflict on Your Parents?” It got me thinking, as two films I regrettably showed my parents (and then a third) immediately sprang to mind. As it gave me a laugh I figured I’d share.

I will never forget showing (or rather, trying to show) my parents Tank Girl. As I recounted years

what was i thinking

and years ago when Jesse and I were still doing Films of High Adventure, I saw a piece on probably Good Morning, America! or some shit about Tank Girl, wherein Lori Petty told the tale of how when she looked a the script she immediately shaved her head, went in, and screamed “I am Tank Girl!” at the casting director or whatever. I was breathless watching the clips; drooled during every preview. But I was not of age to see Rated R movies and there was no effing way my parents would take me to see Tank Girl in the theatre. But when it came to VHS I rented it.

They turned it off right after the scene where Malcolm McDowell quotes some poetry at an unimpressed Tank Girl. “No,” I remember my father saying. “No way.” My mom did not argue. She was sort of shell-shocked by what we’d watched, if memory serves, and as an adult I can’t really fault her reaction. I mean, I still love you, Tank Girl, but… damn.

I finished it the next day, on my own, as I had been completely enchanted by everything about the film. And really, I’m pretty grateful we didn’t finish it, because the sexual weirdness of watching Lori Petty and Naomi Watts getting sexy with kangaroo men was nothing I really needed to experience with my folks.

don’t get strung out

The second film I recall “unfortunately inflicting” on my parents was more of a success with them, which in some ways was far worse. I really, really wanted to go see a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show because that was what one did in the 90s in West Palm Beach, FL. My mom and dad wanted to vet the film before agreeing, and in my early teenage desperation I agreed, having really no idea what it was about, just that going to see it was supposed to be cool, and I wanted to do it. So we rented it.

Uhhhhh… yeah! So, sitting through that, with my parents, at maybe 14 years old… it was agonizing. I was mortified by the content, as any teen might be sitting on a couch next to one’s parents, watching Tim Curry strut erotically around the cheap sets in fishnets. I was perhaps more mortified, however, by the fact that my dad in particular thought the film was SUPER AMAZING. Maybe it was that he, too, used to watch crappy old scifi films at the late night double feature picture show, but he got really into it. I distinctly remember him jumping up, delighted, to put on the subwoofer and the rest of his expensive enormous mid-90s sound system to get the full effect of the music, which he thought was “a scream.” He even did a little dance, as it was during “Time Warp” I believe. Yeah… I’m re-embarrassed remembering this, even though it brings a smile to my face. Miss you, dad.

In a fit of madness, even after watching the film my parents agreed I was allowed to go to the midnight showing, where I was promptly shoved on stage by one of the handlers and forced to chant an obscene song and then eat whipped cream off of an inflatable sex doll’s breasts before the movie went on, as will happen. I remember enjoying that viewing much more, as I was surrounded by anonymous creeps and weirdos, not my parents.

Oh jeez, writing this I now remember I also went to see Interview with the Vampire in the theatre with my dad. That was hella awkward, as well, as you might imagine!

Good times!

John Langan, that illustrious author of quiet horror, was so good as to nominate me to be part of a Writing Process Blog Tour. I goofed and did not get to it in within a week, and as it’s sort of a chain letter, I guess I’ll be cursed or something. But, hey, first-hand curse experience isn’t such a bad thing in my field, I guess?

1) What are you working on?

Currently I’m working on a short novel. It’s been sold but not announced, so I don’t feel comfortable revealing the title yet. I will say it’s a period piece, and one with a limited speculative element. I hop it will please anyone who enjoyed the title novellas in A Pretty Mouth and Rumbullion.

2) How is your work different from others’ work in the same genre?

I tend to be a lot goofier, I guess. And I often write in historical settings. Horror/Weird/Lovecraftiana these days is very often Very Serious, or quiet and meditative, and largely modern. (I’m not dismissing any of the above; I love quite a bit of that stuff, most recently this story by Simon Strantzas, but you asked how I was different!) My most popular works, by contrast, tend to be ridiculous, and set in the past. For example, the first chapter of A Pretty Mouth (the novella), which is set just barely before the Restoration, involves a pudgy loser writing a poem honoring a schoolmate, not realizing it’s full of homoerotic entendre, getting shamed for it in front of his class, tripping, farting loudly, and then getting kicked in the ass by his professor. Not really deep, serious stuff. “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” got a lot of attention because it has twincest and… okay, probably because of the twincest. And “Herbert West in Love,” another story that has been reprinted and will be reprinted again (announcement when I can!) is just ridiculous.

3) Why do you write what you do?

I write stories I’d like to read.

4) How does your writing process work?

With short fiction, sometimes a title comes first; sometimes an anthology has a theme that calls to me. Most often these days, someone asks me to write something for a project, and I try to produce something that I think will be different from everything else they’ll get, and that (again) I’d like to read if I picked up that anthology. I write so slowly it’s been a long time since I’ve just written a story “because.” I’m not bragging; I hope once I clear my plate of my current obligations I can write some short fiction just for fun, but I came up with an exciting new idea for a novel a few weeks back so I’ll probably go down that hole once I’m a bit more free.

I don’t know if I have a writing process, when it comes to getting words on paper. I sometimes just blart out things and then go over them, revising and reworking until the story I want takes shape. Sometimes, especially with longer projects, I’ll use Scrivener to organize myself. I wrote the first draft of Vermilion, my forthcoming novel, in Scrivener. But I wrote A Pretty Mouth in Word, so, who knows?

As most of what I write is historical, I tend to make a trip to the library to research before I put down a single word. Like with what I’m working on, I grabbed such books as Developments in the History of Sexualities, Disorderly Women in 18th Century London, and How to Create the Perfect Wife. (So that’s a clue as to what I’m working on!)

Then I just spit on my hands, pray to Dionysios, and hope for the best. Sometimes it works; sometimes not. I junk a lot of biz.

Okay! Thanks again to John Langan, whose trust I squandered. I think I’ll tag… Simon Strantzas, as I mentioned him above, and Ross Lockhart, who is a writer as well as an editor. Huzzah!

I’ve only once ever followed a print comic during its actual run (The Maxx, back in the day) until sometime last year my friend Oliver put me on to the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics. They’re… super-great. Gene Luen Yang is an amazingly talented writer (and artist; his American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints are both awesome). So when I saw that Dark Horse was releasing an Avatar short for Free Comic Book Day I figured I’d check it out and have my first ever Free Comic Book Day experience.

Well… my experience was that Free Comic Book Day involves a lot of waiting on lines for free comic books. I kind of knew that going in, though. Even so, it was fun. I saw some cute kids in costumes, and I picked up the free Avatar short, and some stuff I paid for.

Anyways, as I said, I really like Gene Yang’s writing, so I figured I’d enjoy the short—when I learned about the release, I looked up last year’s free Avatar comic by him and it was great. This year’s was, as well, but man… it was also an awesome call-out of some biz that’s been going on in geek/comics culture for way too long.

From the tiresome handwringing within the nerdosphere over the perceived threat of Fake Geek Girls, to the much darker, recent othering-plus-horrifying-rape-threats debacle surrounding Janelle Asselin’s reasonable remarks about Wonder Girl’s representation on the cover of the Teen Titans #1, fandom—be it comics, literature, cartoons/anime, films, shows, whatever—is a often a troubling and difficult space to negotiate if you’re a woman. Which is why it’s so awesome that this was Gene Yang’s chosen subject of the Avatar short for Free Comic Book Day:

Omg. Right?

So yeah, the whole thing is fairly transparently about the bogusness of snooty exclusivity in fan culture, done Avatar-style, and the solution is… okay, spoiler alert…

It’s solidarity. And sisterhood. And allies being fine with taking a back seat while those with the actual experience drive, so to speak.

Also kung fu. Shockingly enough, I really liked it!

The original Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of my favorite shows because it is sweet and thoughtful and very, very sincere. It also improved via adaptation in response to critique—after the first season where Katara was more or less The Girl Main Character, they introduced a bunch of super-interesting main female characters. I’m all about content creators hearing “you did an awesome job—now do better!” and instead of doubling down and saying “eh, whatever,” striving to improve… by listening. The Avatar creators could easily have become part of the “eh, whatever” culture that makes comic/geek culture so frustrating. But they didn’t.

It’s awesome that Gene Yang is continuing that tradition not only by writing engrossing, fun scripts for the Avatar comics, but actively making the point that comics, and fandom in general, is for everyone. While I don’t need my artistic heroes to also be nice people, it’s pretty wonderful when that actually happens.

My two weeks in England were both exciting and exhausting. I think I’m over the worst of the jet lag and thus reality seems a bit clearer.

my mom stands on london bridge, across from tower bridge.

My first week abroad I spent with my mom, in London, doing like… everything touristy in London. It was wonderful. I hadn’t done a lot of the big deal, famous stuff to do the last time I was in town, being on more of a budget. But this time, mom and I decided to do the whole London Pass thing. Man, we used it! Some, but not all of our adventures involved the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, the Aspley House, All Hallows at the Tower, The Soanes and British Museums (I went twice to the British—once with mom, and once during my last day in England, as there was an amazing exhibition of shunga that’s well worth the £7, imo), Windsor Castle and Eton, the Royal Mews… awesome. I have some pictures on Facebook, but there are far too many to put here. Also I’m not much of a photographer.

We also did some fun shopping around town, including a semi-traumatizing trip to Harrod’s (so busy! so snooty!) and a lovely walk around the Borough Market, which was just as fun as I remembered, having done that with John when we went six years ago.

My birthday occurred during the trip, and that night I got to do something very special: attend the book release party for The Book of the Dead, the anthology of mummy stories where my piece, “Mysterium Tremendum” appears alongside work by such authors as Will Hill, Den Patrick, Louis Greenberg, David Thomas Moore, Glen Mehn, and Jenni Hill—all of whom I met that night (and was lucky enough to spend more time with at the con down in Brighton). They are all extremely awesomely nice, as are Jared Shurin, the project’s editor, and Anne Perry, his partner and editor in her own right. And I’m sure the other contributors are fabulous too; having briefly met Gail Carriger once, and knowing Jesse Bullington well, it seems more than likely. Also: I wore a ridiculous dress, which you can almost see in this picture—sparkly and one-shouldered! I know, right? I figure turning 32 means I should spend more time wearing prom dresses intended for 16 year olds, not less. Anyways, pick up your copy of The Book of the Dead in ebook or paperback at Amazon or Spacewitch! It’s worth it! You’re worth it. 

The next day was equally exciting, as I got to see my second book! Yes, I held Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations in my hands for the first time. That was a serious thrill. This book… the texture of it! It feels like parchment under the fingers, the black letters shine like wet ink, the paper is creamy and smooth. And I like to think what’s inside matches the outside. Um, meaning the prose is pretty, too. Anyways! You can order your copies either via Amazon or through Egaeus Press. (Also, check out our bordello-like hotel room in the background.)

I confess that after all the excitement of London, I was a bit apprehensive about heading to World Fantasy Convention in Brighton. I’d met a few attendees at the release of The Book of the Dead, of course, and knew others from the internet, but it was, on the whole, an intimidating prospect.

I needn’t have worried. Everyone I met was completely lovely. Things started off well when I was both delighted and terrified upon seeing Jonathan Howard had come to my reading (Jonathan is the author of the Johannes Cabal books which I adore). For some reason I was already feeling like I might faint… that didn’t help. So weird—I do readings all the time, and usually I’m totally cool about them, but that one threw me for a loop. Thankfully, everyone who attended was willing to make eye contact/talk to me after I gave what was undoubtedly the worst reading of my entire career—including Damien Walter, the chap who gave me that review in The Guardian that I squeed all over the place about earlier this year.

After I regained most of my color, Damien was kind enough to enquire if I wanted/needed a drink and dinner. Which I did. This chirked me up immensely, and began what proved to be extremely fun weekend at a con where I got to (among other things) discuss whiskey and matters sartorial with Mark Newton, eat the worst dinner I’ve ever eaten seated between Glen Mehn and David Moore, meet Nathan Long, and… uh fangirl out over Joe Abercrombie this one time. These are just a few highlights among many, many exciting moments.

Sometimes… to be honest, many cons have the effect on me where during and afterwards I want to /ragequit writing. Forever. This WFC, however, left me feeling enthusiastic about being part of a vibrant community of interesting people whom I like and respect. I won’t name everyone here who contributed to this sense of well-being, as I’d surely leave out someone, but I hope you know who you are. Many are already named above. Seriously though, damn. I won’t list all my theories as to why this was a better con for me. Suffice it to say that it was, and I feel like a changed, happier person in the wake of WFC ’13.

Oh! Oh! And if all that wasn’t enough, I totally took myself to Perfect Nonsense, the Jeeves and Wooster play now at The Duke of York’s, in London, on my last night in town. It ruled! I mean, there was little dramatic tension, as anyone who knows their Jeeves knows the storyline from The Code of the Woosters, but the clever staging of the production makes it more than worthwhile.

As I said, whew! 

Now I’m back. And writing.

Yesterday I saw a bunch of vegans I know online sharing this article, “The 19 Most Annoying Things About Being Vegan,” and it was pretty good for a laugh. It’s sadly true that most vegans I know (including myself) have experienced most it not all of the items on that list, including dealing with the hand-wringing of people who become suddenly concerned with our protein intake, or obviously take some sort of bizarre pleasure in playing “gotcha” by pointing out that abstaining from cheese and meat is (allegedly!) pointless because there’s pig fat in tires and animal by-products in plywood. It’s also an amusingly self-aware article about veganism, for friggin once, since instead of taking the but why do you refuse to think about the screaming of murdered baby pigs and cows you omni asshole tone so rampant in internet articles about veganism, even the “funny” ones, it instead points out that yeah, some of us do miss the taste of cheese sometimes, and yeah, we do laugh at jokes aimed at vegans because we do have a sense of humor, and yeah, while it’s frustrating to be fed plate after plate of grilled veggies at catered events, it’s super-nice of people to ensure there’s a vegan option.

But another reason that Buzzfeed piece made me laugh so much was that last week I saw at least (at least!) fifteen thousand people posting and reposting a Guardian article called, absurdly, “Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?” Upon seeing it for the first of far-too-many times, I immediately felt my expression becoming frown-cat face because I’ve been vegan for nearly 7 years at this point and I can smell a finger-pointing, smug-but-misinformed locavore article a million miles away. It’s a talent, what can I say?

Anyways, the article starts out with a description of quinoa, a grain-like seed native to South America, and talks about how it’s become increasingly globally popular in recent years because it’s good for you and tastes pretty okay too. It’s also a “credibly nutritious substitute for meat” (reputable nutrition journalists without an obvious bias against vegans would simply call quinoa a “good source of protein”, btw).

It then talks about how the global appetite for quinoa has begun to affect Peru and Bolivia negatively, alleging that farmers in those areas no longer can afford their staple food and are eating less healthy, more processed alternatives. If accurate, this is obviously extremely distressing. I say “if accurate,” as it turns out that NPR ran a similar article in November of last year, but there has been some question about the truth behind some of their claims, which are similar to the concerns raised in the Guardian article. I don’t know for sure which side of the story is true; both sides raise interesting issues. Regardless, this concern for Bolivian and Peruvian farmers is certainly something I’ll be considering when making future food purchases.

Yet, setting aside the core of the article for a moment, I think it’s fascinating that the finger in the Guardian article is pointed directly at vegans. Vegans, it basically says, can you handle the truth that you’re also morally suspect when it comes to making ethical dietary choices?

Yes?

Duh?

Protip: That’s exactly why many of us vegans are vegan in the first place! (Shockingly enough, it’s not just that we hate fun and bacon and also really enjoy being a giant pain in the ass to everyone when traveling or deciding where to go to dinner!) Thus, the finger-pointing (and finger-waggling) the author utilizes to make the various points she’s trying to make beyond the whole quinoa thing that defined the first part of her exposé is kind of … stupid. Like this, for example:

Soya, a foodstuff beloved of the vegan lobby as an alternative to dairy products, is another problematic import, one that drives environmental destruction. Embarrassingly, for those who portray [soy] as a progressive alternative to planet-destroying meat, soya production is now one of the two main causes of deforestation in South America, along with cattle ranching, where vast expanses of forest and grassland have been felled to make way for huge plantations.

What’s actually embarrassing is that even the Guardian, who ran that dumbass article, can’t even stand behind the author’s claims—they have, since publishing the piece, added a footnote to the above quote I cited clarifying that, in their own words, “while soya is found in a variety of health products, the majority of production – 97% according to the UN report of 2006 – is used for animal feed.” Yep, it’s not actually those pesky vegans ruthlessly destroying the rain forest with our appetite for fake bacon bits and plant milks! Because—again, another protip—as vegans, we eat neither the animals fed with soy beans nor do we consume the products of animals fed with soy beans. (We just eat the soy beans. Yum!)

Additionally, the notion that such a small group of people out there—vegans are, I think, less than 2% of the population in the U.S.—could be the ones responsible for this problem is deeply silly. The bias in the Guardian article is so absurd, so obvious, so pointlessly, misguidedly accusatory, that it’s pretty cringe-worthy that this was presented not as an op-ed but as environmental/world news. Because, despite our efforts to vote with our dollars, vegans simply don’t have enough economic clout, enough large-scale buying power, to impact such an enormous change on the world. (The reason there’s ten jillion kinds of plant milk at the natural food store isn’t the vegan clientele—it’s that vegetarians and omnivores also like hemp milk.) While it’s true that I bought one bag of Bob’s Red Mill Quinoa a year and a half ago, and I have genuinely no idea if it’s South American or not … I’m still using it. Compared to, say, Whole Foods’ (omnivorous) salad bar, or the Boulder yuppievore restaurants around here who serve it alongside elk steaks and farm-to-table chicken and whatever else, I’m statistically insignificant. Not that my insignificance excuses my actions—like I said, I’ll be considering this issue whenever I think about buying quinoa in the future—but as a vegan, I simply don’t matter as much as the vastly larger population of rich omnivores who control the market for “health foods.”

Why am I bothering to point out this article’s bias against vegans? Surely the issue as regards farmers in South America is more important? Yes, definitely! And because of that, I feel that it’s important to note that the author’s ridiculous sputtering over those people who make different ethics-based dietary choices than she does is so extreme that she herself gets away from her point, wasting valuable space and time ranting about those troublesome vegans instead of doing actually good investigative journalism on what seems like a major issue. Instead of keeping her focus, her article devolves into an attempted ha-ha about soy, and asparagus, and how locally-raised meat and dairy are so much better for the earth and for humans (though she is just plain wrong about that … at least, so says the extreme leftist vegan propaganda engine called, uh, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.)

Anyways. I guess my overall point is that when it comes to talking about global food markets, shortages, economics, and the ways we can be better people … unless one’s goal is simply to get as many hits and comments as possible, surely focusing on the truth behind what our appetites are doing to the planet and the people living on it—and what we can do to change things for the better—is probably a better way to raise awareness about those issues?

Things have been both slow and hectic in my life of late. I’ve finally—finally—completed a piece of fiction, a short story around 5k words. It’s the first I’ve managed to write since Dad passed away. Not sure if my lack of writerly vim and vigor is related to his passing or to some anxieties regarding such heady, nebulous things as My Future that I’ve been feeling of late, but hopefully the worst of the drought has passed.

In more exciting news, last week I turned in my final proofreading pass on A Pretty Mouth, and I came away feeling very confident and enthusiastic about the project’s imminent publication. I still love the title novel as much as ever—maybe even more than when I wrote it, now that I have some distance from typing The End. Not sure about the hard date it will be available, but it will be mid-Octoberish, and I’ll definitely have copies to give away at MileHiCon. I’ll also be doing a few readings in Boulder and Denver, which I’m excited about. I really enjoy readings.

As I’ve been battling writer’s block (barf!) and proofreading A Pretty Mouth, other people have been doing cool, less navel-gazey stuff. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles of Innsmouth Free Press are trying to fund a new anthology, Sword and Mythos which … well, the title should tell you everything about the theme you need to know. I think this is an amazing idea, selfishly (I write S&S and Lovecraftiana, and would love to see a market open up for that combination), and also more in a general sense of What The Community Needs.

Why? Well, because Silvia and Paula are two editors who really care about not just including, but featuring alternative takes on established genres in their anthologies. That means it’s awesome they’re attempting this project, because if you like S&S, but desire fresh, new entries into that genre, it can be challenging to get your fix. Not impossible, by any means, but definitely challenging. And when you throw in the monkey wrench of S&S plus Mythos fiction … yeah.

I think that’s why Silvia, in particular, seems incredibly passionate about, in particular, the S&S aspect of this project. Over at her blog, as a way of drumming up excitement for Sword and Mythos, she’s been writing essays about why fresh new takes on S&S/mythos fiction are important. So far she’s talked about people of color in S&S (and did a separate piece on racism in the genre), the prevalence of beef/cheesecake in S&S, princesses and regular ladies in S&S, and a few more.

So yeah! Read Silvia’s stuff; consider throwing them some cash if you can spare it. I know those dollars will be well-spent. Plus, you can get cool rewards for donating, like free e-books/paperbacks, a hardcover copy of Fungi, the forthcoming all-fungus release from Innsmouth, a coffee mug, and lots of other treats.