Dear friends,

This month's new story was Person, Place, Thing in Clarkesworld, which is just one of those stories that felt fierce coming out. I had a lot of fun with it--I generally do with the fierce ones--and I hope you do too. One of my friends said that a theme of my work is "here's something weird, let's make friends with it," which is absolutely true and I own it. Also, though, my friendship is enthusiastic but not indiscriminate, and that's definitely in this story.

As usual, I have work at all stages of the publishing pipeline. Honestly it's more comforting that way than having gaps, and it means that there's variety in my task list: work on new essay and new novel, prep for an edit letter on another project, eagerly await page proofs on the novella that's coming out later this year (A Dubious Clamor, coming later in 2026 from Horned Lark Press! Sorry, I have to get better at saying that specifically), figure out what I'm going to say to promote the poem that comes out next week….

I've also gotten to see the dust jacket for A Dubious Clamor, and it's…friends, it's a real dust jacket with flaps and all that. It doesn't have the blurbs on it yet, but it has everything else. It has a pretty picture with the title integrated with the pretty picture, it has a lovely base color that will stand out as a spine, it has teaser text about what you might like about this book. The thing where there's a picture of the author on the back flap and a little bio saying nice things about the author, it has that! Except the author is me. "Your mom can whack people with it, it is an entire book all its own," I told one of my oldest friends on Monday. I wish his mom had less need to whack people, but the world being what it is, at least I can provide the assist in this matter. And so can my publisher. What a life! In the face of all the things that are wrong with the world, some of them getting worse instead of better, I get to write fiction that--I hope--makes people think and laugh and cry and--again, I hope--keep going.

As for cooking, I've been improvising a lot of bean- and other legume-based soups this month, a little bit for myself and mostly for friends who are having one kind of rough time or another. They're mild variations on previous newsletters' recipes, so I'm not posting them here. The exciting new recipe I tried was this Miso-Maple Chicken and Brussels Sprouts thing but without the cumin. (I like cumin. It just didn't feel like it needed cumin.) It's similar to things I've done before but just that next step better. Here in Minnesota, we're still in need of hot meals right now. By next month's newsletter it may be salad time, so I'm working on that. As always, stay tuned and take care.

Excelsior,

Marissa