Ada Hoffmann

Hi all,

The good vibes are continuing to roll in for IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS. My publicist told me that we’d already gotten our last blurb, but then one more rolled in anyway and it’s amazing. Check out this rave review from none other than John Joseph Adams:

“Ignore All Previous Instructions is a revelation. It hooked me from page one and never loosened its hold on me, building and building toward an emotional catharsis that will simultaneously destroy you and give you life. I can’t remember the last time I was so sad to see a book end, while also feeling it would have been criminal if it hadn’t ended exactly where and how it did. I almost never give anything a 10 out of 10, but I could give Ignore All Previous Instructions no other rating—but the last two lines tempted me break my scale so I could give it an 11.”

—John Joseph Adams, series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy

The most amazing thing is that we didn’t even send JJA a review copy. He found an advance review copy himself and then loved it so much that he independently decided to send in a blurb.

Not only that, but he’s also going to publish an excerpt from IGNORE in the May issue of Lightspeed, along with my short story, “Ten Unsent Letters to the Dark Lord” – totally unrelated to the novel – which Lightspeed bought in early 2025.

May is going to be a big month!!

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While we’re on this topic, check out this starred review from Publishers Weekly:

“Kelli Reynolds, the autistic heroine of this thrilling, prescient, and emotionally rich sci-fi adventure from Hoffmann (The Outside), is one of the few humans on Jupiter “talented enough to get a steady wage for the kind of work a machine couldn’t do.” She works as a script supervisor for a popular pirate-themed television show produced by Inspiration, the AI megacorporation that bought up the rights to all existing stories and is now the only approved source of information and entertainment. Kelli’s surprised to hear from Rowan, an ex from her school days who has since undergone illegal gender transition, who reaches out for help clearing his debts. Only after agreeing does Kelli learn that Rowan is a smuggler of illegal media working for a crime syndicate, and soon she finds herself embroiled in a dangerous heist. This high-stakes plot is complemented by flashbacks to the leads’ school days, when Rowan, then known as Am, used prompt engineering to thwart the robot assigned to help Kelli mask her autism (by, for example, enforcing eye contact) and the pair spent their days making up stories while slowly realizing that their desires fell outside of allowed options. Both timelines gracefully build toward crisis as Kelli navigates situations she struggles to fully comprehend. It’s an exceptional balancing of action, interior turmoil, and chilling dystopia. Readers worried about the future of storytelling in the age of AI will gobble this up.”

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A few other tidbits of novel news:

• IGNORE was included in Netgalley’s Cover Love feature for February and displayed right on Negtalley’s front page. This is nothing to do with me and everything to do with the wonderful work of the cover artist, Elizabeth Story.
• I’ve posted a sneaky deleted scene in a secret place on my website as a reward for newsletter subscribers only. If you’re a subscriber, then you’ve already got the link (check your email archives for February 4 – or the date that you subscribed, whichever’s later.) If you’re not a subscriber and are reading this on a web page, you too can access the secret deleted scene by subscribing any time before July 1!

Here’s the newsletter page where you can subscribe.

One other thing: my publicist and I, behind the scenes, have been starting to put together an itty-bitty book tour. We’re stopping at Bakka Phoenix Books in Toronto for a launch day event, and then back to my hometown of Kingston, Ontario for a signing that weekend at Indigo Kingston. (That’s right, Senpai Big-Box Bookstore noticed me! This portends great things. I am agog.)

At least one or two other stops are being worked on, but not finalized yet; I’ll continue to update as more details emerge. Meanwhile – if you live anywhere within an easy train ride of Kingston, and you know of a venue that’d be interested, and you want me to come to your town in May – now is the time to reach out! There’s still a lot of room to add you.

(Although: Canadian locations only, please! American fans, I love you too, but for reasons you are all well aware of, it isn’t safe to cross the border right now.)

I’m SO excited by how this is shaping up. More soon!

Take care.

-Ada

Lots has been happening as early buzz builds for IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS, but I think I’ve been posting in my Buttondown newsletter and forgetting to copy to the website / Dreamwidth. In case you missed it, here are the two news posts from the first month and a half of this year:

“Precisely the book we need right now.”

Most Anticipated Sci-Fi Books of 2026

More soon and sorry for the confusion!

(You can also read this post on Buttondown.)

I think it has become a tradition, since 2016, for everyone to start their year in review posts with a variation on “wow, this year sucked.” And like. It is a tradition because it is literally correct? Current events this year were YIKES. But I also assume that you, as a reader, already know all the ways they were YIKES, so I’m going to not dwell on them here.

Without 100% having intended it at the beginning of the year, 2025 was a bit of a fallow year for me in terms of publishing and newsletters. I’m not doing a “here’s what I published,” because I didn’t publish anything. I’m not doing a “here are my favorite stories/media” because I honestly needed a break from doing that; I’m going to try again in the new year.

In other ways, though, it was quite a busy year. Here’s how my 2025 went, in roughly but not entirely chronological order:

• Acquisition & big round of edits for IGNORE
• Trade war??? Elbows up??? Election???
• Strike at my day job (plus two other strikes that were threatened but didn’t happen, it was a mess)
• Big promotion at my day job WHILE on strike (don’t ask)
• PRIDE!
• Giant new course in critical AI literacy on two months notice (I actually wish we’d done this years ago…)
• Wait how do undergraduate committees work
• Murder mystery party!! (I write these myself, it’s a whole production, this year was the first time in a few years)
• Whole bunch of work on two different big, ambitious WIP books – one that’s still being drafted, and one that went through some major revisions.
• Whole bunch of therapy

 

It’s been a huge year for me personally. It’s been rough in some ways, but I feel I’ve been pushed to grow up and glow up in ways that were not as open to me before. It’s made me think a lot about individual and collective power. And I’m excited to share some of the fruits of those labors with you in the new year – certainly with IGNORE, and hopefully with more reviews, shorts, essays and other useful things.

Wishing you all a restful holiday season – because what we all need most right now is rest – and success at what matters most to you in the new year.

Best,

Ada

(You can also read this post – or subscribe – on Buttondown.)

Hi all,

I’m so excited to show you the finished cover for IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS:

Tachyon Publications is sending it out on blast across all their social media accounts at the same time that I send this email – but I wanted to make sure you saw it right away!

Isn’t it cute? The art is by Elizabeth Story. I love the planet and the little robot peeking out from behind the letters. I love the Jolly Roger on the little spaceship. I love the way the handwriting-y font, on my name, softens the sci-fi aesthetic a little. We went back and forth with different versions for a while – one version had the title spelled out on a rainbow colored keyboard, which was also adorable, but we couldn’t quite get it to fit into book cover dimensions in a way that looked right.

IGNORE is also up already on Edelweiss and Netgalley – so if you’re on one of those websites and you’re dying to read and review the book before anyone else does, requests are now open! If you have reviewed my books before and you don’t end up getting a copy from one of those places, please feel free to get in touch with me directly, as I have some e-ARCs I can directly share.

And here’s the updated blurb from the press kit that my publicist at Tachyon put together:

A script supervisor for an AI media conglomerate is caught between her intense need for an orderly life and her deeper, darker queer desires. From the creator of the Outside trilogy, a heartfelt interplanetary epic of identity, longing, and a space pirate who smuggles inappropriate stories.

Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told.

Kelli has a rare and coveted job where her autism is to her advantage: She precisely edits AI output into “appropriate” stories for Inspiration’s massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando—a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.

Reenter Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Am, a girl.

Rowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender reassignment surgery. He needs Kelli’s help with something . . . illegal. So, now Kelli has to decide: Will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? What would Orlando do?

Passionate, dangerous, and tender, Ignore All Previous Instructions is a sweeping, poignant novel about censorship, forbidden love, and growing up.

(You can also read this post on Buttondown.)

Let’s get to the good part first: here’s my schedule for Can*Con in Ottawa, less than two weeks from now.

And here are the panel descriptions:

Slow Fiction

In our fast-paced world, and our avid desire to consume books, let us not lose sight of the importance of a slow burn. How does a narrative that wanders and ponders strike different chords within us? When does meandering fiction hit as powerfully as something action-packed? In the creation of art, taking your time can also be similarly significant. Where can a slow approach to fiction lead you as a creative, and why is that important?

Navigating Social Communication

Communication can be difficult, especially when trying to navigate potentially high-stakes conversations with editors, agents, publishers, and even fans. For neurodivergent, shy, and otherwise socially awkward people, this can be even more challenging. What are the potential pitfalls that exist for authors, and how can they be circumvented, avoided, or otherwise dealt with? How do we remain true to ourselves and our needs, and keep our batteries up and our spoons in good supply, while also finding ways to positively connect with others and get our meaning across?

He’s Babygirl: Reclaiming the Queercoded Villain

There is a long history of villains being queercoded, either as a way to signify their villainy, or as a way to include queer characters without tripping the sensors. In recent years, we have seen more openly queer villains (or at least, morally-grey characters): Lestat in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, Astarion in Baldur’s Gate III, even Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Jobu Tupaki. What does having “problematic” queer characters mean for the LGBTQIA+ community and for speculative fiction? How does the canonical queerness of these characters expand our understanding of these stories and the question of “good representation”?

Meanwhile!

You haven’t heard much from me lately. Looking back, I think I was even more tired of newsletters by the end of last year than I admitted to myself, and I needed the break.

But it’s been a fascinating busy year behind the scenes. People at my dayjob went on strike! (I walked off the job for a couple months in support of the grad students’ union, because there’s a sneaky clause in the faculty union contract that says we’re allowed to do that. No one had ever actually had to use that clause before.) I got a big promotion at work while I was on strike (lmao don’t ask.) I also got a pile of brand new service responsibilities, so now I’m getting a crash course, after having worked here for seven years, on things like what does an undergraduate committee even do. And I got tasked with creating and teaching a brand-new and extremely in-demand course on critical AI literacy. (I got to tell the students about chatbot psychosis yesterday. This sure is a time to be alive.)

There is a bit of a war going on in computer science departments right now over generative AI, which is completely different from the war going on in the arts except that it happens to be about the same technology. I’m not even going to go into that right now, but watch this space, because I’ve got something dark-academia-shaped on my mind lately and in a few years it might grow into a thing you can read.

But speaking of books you can read, I’ve been having meetings with the good folks at Tachyon Books about marketing and publicity for IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS, which I continue to be more excited about than I have been about any of my books in my life. (It’s a problem, actually. I’m like “what if I wrote 5 sequels!!!” and my agent is like “bro, slow down.”) I’m going to have more I can show you about it soon. In particular – I have seen the final cover, it’s totally adorable, and there may be a cover reveal coming to you sooner than you think.

(I’ve been drafting and revising some other, unrelated projects as well. Oh, and I’ve got a new official author photo. I crawled shamefacedly into the studio of a local queer photographer like “I have so much dysphoria I hate pictures but I need one for my new book, please help me” and she was great about it, 10/10 would recommend.)

More soon. I cannot wait to inundate you with promo material about this book.

[You can also read this post on Buttondown.]

Hi all,

I am SO excited to finally announce my next novel, IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS, which is coming out with Tachyon Books in spring 2026.

Here’s the Publishers Marketplace announcement that just went live today:

IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS is a book incredibly close to my heart, and also very timely in more than one way – and ever since I started work on the first draft, in mid-2023, I’ve been absolutely dying to tell you all about it.

You’ll get more details about what this book is and what it means to me closer to the release date. For now, here’s the blurb my agent wrote when we went it out on submission:

Once upon a time, people wrote stories, and they owned the stories they wrote. But all that changed when Inspiration created its AI language model. The language model was based on all of the language in the world, so it contained every idea anyone had ever written down. Inspiration couldn’t take those ideas back out, so they saved up money and bought them. Now they own all the stories.

Kelli Reynolds is a script supervisor for Inspiration — a professional who edits the output of the language model into intelligible stories. Kelli’s proudest contribution is the pirate Orlando — a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.

Then Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan shows up. Rowan’s the one Kelli based Orlando on, when they were teenagers. Back then, their relationship was a secret. Kelli thought at the time that Rowan, a trans man, was a girl. And Inspiration doesn’t allow any stories about girls that love girls, or girlfriends that turn out to actually be boyfriends.

Now Rowan’s tangled up in the black market, smuggling forbidden stories like the ones Kelli wished she’d had as a teen. He needs Kelli’s help with something — something illegal.

Kelli’s not sure she wants to be in this story, but she can’t let Rowan walk out of her life again. As she becomes entangled in Rowan’s scheme, it brings up the long-hidden truth of the disastrous choice that ended their relationship last time around. Kelli has to decide: will she risk the neat story of her life now for the world she wished for then, a world where every necessary story can be told? She asks herself: What would Orlando do?

(You can also read this post on Buttondown.)

Last year I had the hubris to tell you all that the year had gone well for me, even if it didn’t for most people. This year, regardless of personal and career progress, I felt the larger stresses of the world more keenly. Transphobia, fascism, genocide, and vulture capitalist “consultants” chewing up my day job in particular, whee! Definitely not the best year.

But I’ve been resting and thinking a lot now that the holiday break is on us, and the solstice in particular, and I think I really want to end this year on a note of gratutide. To note what did go well, because there are always little things that did go well, and I think we don’t do ourselves any favors when we let those things get lost, even in the face of something big and bad.

In case you don’t want to read a lot of navel-gazing, I’ll first skip to the part where I list what I published this year:

• The Silent Sea (Baffling)
• Music, Not Words (The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters)

That’s it. Mostly, I worked on book-length fiction, and I got a lot done that I’m proud of, but just nothing I can publicly announce yet. Watch this space in 2025, because there will be something to announce then, even if I have to self-publish it. There’s stuff I’ve been super-excited about literally all year and just sitting on my hands about, because publishing, now more than ever, is really slow. But it will get to you, one way or another.

A couple other notable things happened:

Research.

In the spring this year, at my day job, I ran a survey about fiction writers’ experiences of, and attitudes to, generative AI. My co-authors and I have now published some preliminary results from this survey, which you can find here:

Precarity and Solidarity: Preliminary results on a study of queer and disabled fiction writers’ experiences with generative AI

This is a preprint; we’re in the process of getting a version of it submitted to a good conference. More later. This study has been emotionally draining in some ways, which is why I haven’t been the fastest working on it, but I feel it’s also very worthwhile, and I’m encouraged by the initial response by my colleagues. I honestly think there are lots of people in computer science who do care how technological change is affecting creative humans, and who would like to make it better. They’re just not the people who are getting billions of dollars in VC funding. Either way, more later.

Pride.

One of the biggest things I’ve been working on this year is connecting to community, especially queer community, face-to-face and on my own terms. This has been really helpful for me to work on, in even more ways than I thought it would. (I marched in the Pride parade this year with a group of queer folx from work, and now I’m on the organizing committee for that group, and it’s actually really cool? Like, these-are-the-people-who-get-me level cool?)

In the process – and in the process of one of my book-length fiction projects also, which was just an embarrassingly large number of words about a trans character and his cool backstory – I’ve realized how important gender really is to me.

Like, I already told you I’m genderfluid. I told you my pronouns are they/them. I’ve known this about myself for a while, but it’s been more theoretical. Like, I have this gender gauge in my head that goes back and forth but it’s largely an internal thing, you know? And 2024 was the year that I sat down with myself and said, no, wait, I don’t want this to be only an internal thing. I don’t want to be a person who looks like a cis woman, acts like a cis woman, and just has an asterisk saying technically they’re also other things. (No offense meant if that’s your gender – it’s a perfectly valid gender, it’s just not mine.) I am genderfluid and that means I am actually transmasculine, a significant portion of the time. So I want to do something about that. I haven’t figured out quite what, apart from messing around with different ways to do my clothes and hair. But this is a thing and it will keep on being one.

Why, yes, this is a scary thing to figure out about oneself in this particular year of world history, thanks for asking! But I’ve got folks I can talk to about it, locally, all I want, because a lot of us are in the same boat. And at least I got to do some cool writing about it. It used to be hard for me to write trans characters, apart from fanciful shapeshifting types like Akavi; I wasn’t quite ready to face those feelings head on. I think I am now, and when I look at what I wrote this year and last year compared to those early works, I can really see the difference.

Anyway.

See you in whatever the hell happens next year. I’ll still be here, and I hope you will, too.

Wellp.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been watching the news with great dismay. I’m Canadian, but I’m extremely upset on behalf of all my queer American friends and colleagues, among many other reasons. (We have our own little crop of Trump imitators up here, and you can be sure they are watching this play out and taking avid notes.)

It’s hard not to feel helpless right now, but I try to remember that the best defense against helplessness is to find one useful thing to do – even a very small one.

When my colleague Leigh Harlen told me they were starting a mini auction on behalf of Trans Lifeline, I knew this was my cue for a small useful thing. So I’m donating a signed copy of the whole Outside trilogy. Starting bid is a $35 donation to help trans people in crisis, and I’ll ship almost anywhere in the world. The auction starts this morning and will go until Monday the 18th.

If you already have a copy of the Outside trilogy, you can still browse the rest of the auction, which has books by other authors – including Nino Cipri and John Wiswell – adorable crafts, and even a friendly lady who will remotely coach you through tidying your house.

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Meanwhile, recs!

I’m seeing a lot of talk on Bluesky about how art will do this, art will do that. (I’m on Bluesky, by the way! It’s really been livening up and filling with people lately.) Art is where we will put our rage, or our joy, or our hope that a different world is still possible. Or whatever else our readers are going to need. I don’t know.

(I actually happen to be near the end of my current WIP anyway, in the “oh noes all is lost!!” section before it all resolves. So I feel like what I’m putting into my art, for the next few chapters at least, is despair.)

I think art is inherently political, in that it reflects the beliefs of its author; I think it is also political, in that engaging with art fosters empathy. (Inherently. Even if that’s not what the artist was thinking about.) It can sometimes be political in various other ways. I think good art can be consciously didactic and I enjoy some authors who write that way. But what I find – just for myself, just for my own creative process – is that if I try too hard to fit my art into a political program, even a program I deeply agree with, I freeze up and overthink and stop being able to make art.

I can’t promise that my art will channel any of the needs of the moment but mine. I can’t promise it will save any of you. Maybe a lot of art will save a lot of people, in the next few years, even in ways that its creators did not expect. That tends to happen, even in better times. But we’re going to need a lot of other tools as well.

Anyway, the one piece about the importance of art in these times that did resonate with me is DongWon Song’s.

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The remaining recommendations in this newsletter are for things I read before the election.

Alice Towey, “I Should Have Been a Pair of Ragged Claws” (Fantasy, Issue 87, January 2023)

I have such affection for parts of the self that are in shadow or otherwise exiled from normal consciousness, and I love the mix of revulsion and tenderness with which Towey’s narrator describes one of hers.

Grace Cahill, “flood fish/pumpkin moon” (The Deadlands, Issue 22, February 2023)

What I love about this one is the uncertainty, the way survivors try to make sense out of a disaster, not directly in the “why did this happen?” sense but in something more like a personifying of what the flood leaves behind. The sense that, of course, a rational survivor wouldn’t be seeing this or feeling this way – but they all do anyway.

Pooja Peravali, “The Changeling and the Child” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 9, 2023)

Normally when I read changeling stories, they’re about neurodivergence, or about being rejected by one’s parents in some way. Like, I hadn’t really thought about it, but that’s the norm for changeling stories these days. It’s not really a subversion anymore. Peravali takes a different tack, and dares to write a changeling story where the human mother of the story is the hero. What if all the business about fairies stealing babies and replacing them with fairy babies was literally true? In that case, what would it look like to address the situation, not with the abuse that we hear of in folklore but with kindness, love, and courage? Peravali has an answer to that question, and her answer is good.

Leah Bobet, “Notable Escapes” (June 19, 2023)

Harry says: when faced with straitjackets, / get bigger. I hate words like “inspiring”; but a poem like this feels – intentionally, I think – like a manual for resistance.

Stephen Granade, “The Sigilist’s Notes on the Fell Lord’s Staff” (PodCastle 807, October 3, 2023)

Look, “devoted minion who has a crush on the Dark Lord” is one of my bulletproof tropes, okay? I never get tired of it – not even after deconstructing it to death in The Fallen. Anyway this story delivers the goods, with a cute list-like format and in a refreshingly sweet way.

Francine Rubin, “Gravity” (Small Wonders, Issue 6, 2023)

Space is great! Also, it is physically and psychologically very difficult to be in space. I love the detail and care with which this poem compactly explores the claustrophobia and unrootedness of a space traveler, while also holding space for the longing that spurs them to make those travels regardless.

Hi all,

It’s back-to-school time! I always enjoy the rush of new faces and new things to do at my day job (though it also leaves me very tired.) Whether or not you are involved in any school system in any capacity, I hope you’ve found something about this month to refresh and invigorate you.

Meanwhile, amid this rush, I just realized that I had a story come out back in July and never told you.

The Silent Sea appears in Issue Sixteen of Baffling Magazine. This is a themed issue, on the theme of “quiet,” and different authors interpreted the theme in very different ways – “From the quiet to the the cozy, the silent to the silenced,” as editor dave ring puts it.

My story is about an ocean that no longer makes the set of ocean sounds you would expect, and a protagonist who craves that silence more than anything.

“The Silent Sea” started life as a writing exercise given by Marianne Kirby. The assignment was: imagine something that normally makes a sound. Now imagine it doesn’t make that sound anymore, and describe it using your other senses. I ran with it from there. 🙂

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Meanwhile, here are three books I’ve read lately that left an impression on me.

RB Lemberg – Everything Thaws: A poetic cycle (Ben Yehuda Press, February 2023)

Ok, so, full disclosure: RB is my friend and I love everything that they write. But don’t go in expecting it to feel like Birdverse. Everything Thaws is a memoir in verse, and in many ways it’s a striking departure for Lemberg. The themes of trauma and loss that always haunt their work are rawer here, and visible in a way that’s closer to real-world home. You’ll like this if you like real-world stories of immigration and how pain is passed down from generation to generation. I liked it a lot.

Akwaeke Emezi – Content Warning: Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022)

Speaking of raw and close to home – whew. The title is accurate; this one’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a poetry collection, brief but powerful, and what I love about it most is the way it blends the mythic with the real – it almost seems unfair to call it mythic when it’s so obviously and intimately drawn from the author’s own experience. Figures from more than one religion accompany Emezi through their turbulent life, not objects of worship so much as family and confidantes who participate with them directly even in the most difficult moments. I’m going to keep thinking about this one for a long time.

RB Lemberg – Yoke of Stars (Tachyon Publications, July 2024)

Two Lembergs in one email? Is that allowed? Am I breaking some rule of reviewing? Well, whatever – I happened to read two of Lemberg’s books in close succession recently and I love them both. Yoke of Stars is their latest work and it is a return to Birdverse in its finest mythic form. It’s the story of an encounter between two characters – a linguist and an assassin – with two very different stories, who find that their fates are intertwined in ways that neither of them could have imagined when they began. Its central question – can people be in community with each other and still free? – is one that haunts me, and one that I happen to have been chewing on in therapy for a while now. Lemberg handles it with impressive sensitivity and depth, and you will want to hear their answer.

(You can also read this post on Buttondown.)

Or actually it came out a week and a half ago, but I’ve been avoiding my newsletter. But anyway, Thinking Ink Press’s anthology of alien encounter stories featuring neurodivergent protagonists is out now and you should buy it!

I’m honored to be one of the anchor authors for this anthology – it features my flash story, “Music, Not Words,” about a minimally verbal teenage girl who starts hearing alien messages that aren’t verbal at all. “Music, Not Words” was solicited specifically for this anthology. I’m even more honored that this puts me in a category with other anchor authors that include Tobias S. Buckell, Jody Lynn Nye, and Cat Rambo.

(I think of myself as midlist small potatoes, but when it comes to the very specific niche topic of Autism In Speculative Fiction, it looks like I still am that bitch.)

Even better, you can read the first page of “Music, Not Words” as an excerpt on the book’s website. (You’ll need to scroll down a bit.)

I’ve been writing less short fiction and less poetry lately so I can focus on novels (there is a lot of novel stuff going on behind the scenes; I will have a novel related announcement for you eventually I swear) but I still do enjoy these forms and it’s great to get something of them out in the world.

Meanwhile!

I said I owed you some more recommendations, especially for nonfiction/poetry/other formats, but then I never did it, partly because I was so comically behind that I found myself trying to put together thoughts about stale blog posts that I read months ago when they were already months old, and that was so cringe, I just could not do it. So I’m giving myself amnesty! Clean review slate! Next newsletter, you will get a fresh set of recommendations that are strictly for things I’ve read in the time since this current one. Everything else goes in the trash, sorry, bye.

(Although, speaking of poetry: How ‘bout that poetry Hugo. I am excited about this.)

In the meantime, though, I want to give a quick shout-out to two things I watched in the last couple of months that I’m still absolutely feral over.

The Acolyte (Disney+)

Everyone knows I am Star Wars trash, but I was honestly getting so bored with it after Ahsoka that I let my Disney+ subscription lapse. But then the trailer for this thing came out and it reeled my little Dark Side heart all the way back in. Look, there are certain ways of looking at and interpreting Star Wars that are very personal to me and that I don’t go around expecting the rest of the fandom to share. And it’s like Leslye Headland reached in and plucked those things right out of me and put them on the screen. I’m not even okay about it. I love this so much.

If you want a more objective type of review then I will say that The Acolyte intelligently questions some of the underlying assumptions of the rest of Star Wars in a way that no one else has been brave enough to do since The Last Jedi; it stands on its own merits as a twisty little mystery-thriller instead of putting all its emotional weight into tie-ins and callbacks; and it trusts the viewer enough to throw some really fun unreliable-narrator curveballs into the mix. It’s worth watching. I wish the hatey fanboys weren’t so loud.

The 2024 Paris Olympics

I know, I know. You all already know what this is, and you either watched it too, or are sick of the entire concept. Okay but here’s a fun fact about me: I really love the Olympics. For the rest of the year I do not really think about sports at all, but then every two years this thing happens and for a couple of weeks I get completely obsessed. I love the spectacle! I love the drama! I love how it’s all the countries in the world, competing at everything at once! RIP to everyone who tried to talk to me between July 26 – August 11, because it was nothing but Olympics Infodumps all day.

(Like: Did you know that every different cycling sport has a different style of bike helmet, and women boxers wear helmets but men don’t, because their different styles of boxing lead to slightly different types of head injury risks! Did you know how many different ways there are to score in freestyle wrestling! Did you know that they had to pause the women’s speed climbing competition because the climbers are supposed to hit a big button to register their time when they get to the top and the buttons stopped working! Did you know that the girl who got dogpiled for breakdancing badly has actually been breaking competitively for over a decade, but took time off so she could write a PhD thesis about gender in Australian breaking culture! Yeah? Yeah. Also Canada broke our record for the most number of medals at a non-boycotted summer Olympics, although given Russia’s conspicuous absence from every sport this year, I would question whether it is appropriate to call it “non-boycotted” for this purpose…)

Anyway, that’s all from me. Hope you are all well, and are also finding plenty of things to be excited about, despite gestures around you know, the world lately.

Best,

Ada