On Wednesday, I performed a live reading of “An Operatic Tour of New Jersey, With Raptors” at ChiSeries Toronto. It was a lovely and unexpectedly musical event. I sung the sung parts in my opera-themed story; Charlene Challenger played several types of music including a traditional Maltese insult song; Kelly Robson sang a theme song for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, to the tune of the music from “Gilligan’s Island”; and, of course, Kari Maaren was there to serenade us with filk. (It’s been final exam season lately. The academic-themed song was VERY RELATABLE.)
Bakka Phoenix Books was kind enough to bring copies of each reading author’s book for sale. I counted four copies of MONSTERS IN MY MIND on the table when I came in; by the end of the evening, all were sold, even though they were marked up to like 37 dollars. That made me happy.
Here’s some other fiction news:
- “I Sing Against the Silent Sun” – a novelette co-written by me and A. Merc Rustad, set in the Principality Suns universe – will appear in Lightspeed‘s June issue. I’ve seen mock-ups for the issue’s cover art, which is based on this story, and let me tell you, it is going to be FABULOUS.
- Another opera story of mine, called “Variations on a Theme from Turandot,” will appear in Strange Horizons at some point in the next few months (possibly also June). I am immensely proud of this one. More later.
- My story “Minor Heresies,” which appeared in Ride the Star Wind last fall, will be reprinted in Transcendent 3: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction.
And poetry:
- My Patreon hit the $75 monthly goal, so I released a group of short computer-generated poems dedicated to my backers. You can find them here: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
- My poem, “Nightmare II,” will appear in Kaleidotrope sometime in 2019.
- I’ve also released a Twitter bot, @uwtwitsong, as part of my PhD research. It’s a computer program that generates (semi-coherent) quatrains based on the news. I’m going to continue posting @uwtwitsong’s poems for several more weeks before the project is complete, so please do check it out!
Hi! Congrats on all the successes. I just wanted to say thank you, both for writing your piece on emotional labor and autism, and for including my article “A Modest Proposal for a Fair Trade Emotional Economy” as an article you thought had a good take on care labor. I didn’t talk about being autistic in the piece, just physical disability. but I am, and I got so much out of your piece. (Didn’t see a comment field on it or contact email.) Thank you so much for writing this.
Hi Leah, thank you so much for the comment and for the kind words! I’m glad you got a lot out of the emotional labour piece, that means a lot to me.