The never ending content hose
On the never-ending slog of defending what we love, book recommendations, and a publishing year in review
Yo! I always sit down to write one of these things, all, lemme just bang this out!!! And then…and then…so please do pardon the length of this one. I almost subject lined this, “Splash me with the content hose, daddy” but I suspect that would have sent me straight into your email provider’s trash dungeon. And maybe into hell.
In this issue:
- What I published in 2024 and beyond
- Pep talk (?): The never ending content hose
- What I read in 2024
What I published in 2024 and beyond
I published three stories this year. I’m grateful for each one. Summaries and links follow below if you missed them, and have the desire to read.
Or! To be read to. 2/3 have audio versions—one by non-me, even! A professional narrator!
Read A Superior Knot in Lightspeed
Read Slipstream in Ecotone
Read A Proper Vessel, A Perfect House in Apparition
Amplitudes
I am also overjoyed to have a story forthcoming in Lee Mandelo’s stunning science fiction anthology, Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity. Its release date is May 27, 2025. Just check out that ToC! Even knowing what would likely happen with the election, I did not anticipate our collective rumination to become so transgressive quite so quickly.
So go ahead and stick it to the orange and the extra-pale man: pre-order it today for yourself or a friend (more on why that matters below)! Mine is the feral cats story, and it’s maybe the only happy story I’ve ever sold.
Pre-order Amplitudes here ~
The never ending content hose
Probably ten years ago, one of my coworkers sent me the link to a novelty hat shop. I dearly wish I could find it. My favorite one said something akin to “Splash me with the content hose”. I didn’t buy the hat because that’s too much to put on a body, and I obviously can’t even remember it properly. But I think of it often.
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Do you want to see my TBR? It’s kind of embarrassing, and currently taller than me. Well I’m only 5’1” ha ha ha so it’s fine it’s fine. I keep it in my closet because my bees-for-brain thinks that’s a Nice Place to put it.
Peep at aaaaaall thaaaaaaat baaaaaaaacklist. Does it stress you out, too? …Ehhhh—as I’m writing this I realize there are actually stragglers floating around my home. So the TBR is guaranteed to be taller than you as well!
I’m aiming to read ~40 pages a day in 2025, which by a magical ?? formula should net around 40 books. I’d like to put a dent in this stack, but I’m not hopeful.
Because I keep buying books!! The big old hardcovers with the painted edges if I can! And I can’t stop. Not only because the book is one of the most glorious human artifacts and I am a magpie.
It’s because if we don’t buy (nay, preorder!!) the books the instant we hear about them, it's likely the books we love won’t get made anymore.
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I’m sure you’ve felt pressure as a media consumer. You start that series all excited, something weird! Something new! Something that stirs your heart! Something that makes you think! and then it’s canceled before you even finish it. The questions artfully arranged in one installment become a permanent mystery.
Of course I also watch comfortable things, trashy things, things I don’t even really like in the end. I am tired just like everyone else. But I know people will support those things. I don’t feel personally responsible for this content. (Sidenote, why do we all watch the hot-but-toxic influencer man lose his cool, and scream alone on a grainy secret apartment camera, all because his hot-but-toxic ex is now dating a different hot-but-toxic influencer man, who threatens his masculinity?)
Did you know, according to The New York Times, 11% of books published by Big 5 in 2018 were by non-white authors? My eyes legit bugged when I read this. I would have guessed a paltry 31% or something, and I would have been big mad about that. Maybe it's a little better now. In my little corner of the Internet there are tons of beautiful gay, brown, Black, neurospicy, dragon-tiger-mommy books running amok. 11% BIPoc is just astounding. And not to be a total doomer? But that neighborhood of number might be the best it’s gonna be for a while. It’s undoubtedly heading down in the next decade, as ‘alternative’ content is legislated away and right-wing imprints are proudly opening their doors.
He’s not even in office yet!!! Anyway
I want the shouty reality tv man, but I also want content that exists outside of the shouty reality tv man. I want marginalized folks to be able to tell their own truths instead of always and only “perhaps one or two of the dark fae bat boys are a little melanized”. I am tired of crying inside when that series or show has been cancelled. I hear a lot of people say (understandably!), I’ll watch/read it when all the seasons/books are out so I don’t have to wait. I don’t want to get invested just for the series to get canceled.
But this results in the series getting canceled, completing the cycle.
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The contract between publishers and creators has become absolutely cut throat. An NYT-bestselling friend told me her next book was given, like, 4 weeks to hit list before the publisher shrugged and said, you’d better go ahead and just send us the next one, this one isn’t gonna make it.
Why is it like this? Brutal efficiency, I guess. I want to of course caveat that lots of amazing, passionate, underpaid (!) people work for publishers. Many of them are truly working for the love of the craft. However, mainstream publishing as a system is not an institution aiming to make American culture interesting, cool, or meaningful. It's an institution that exploits our collective love of art to make returns on investments.
I would guess most large publishers are tuned like machines. They take a calculated ‘risk’ on 10 pieces, and quickly snip away resources from the 9 that don’t rocket into runaway hits. Even if a little more investment might make some of those slow burn classics as well. There’s little incentive to bother. Probably cheaper to buy another ten and bank on that one runaway funding ten more. In this kind of system, there’s not as much efficient money in making something new. Safer to rely on beige bets with proven markets, or invest as little as possible to create a hit.
It feels miraculous when a book or show breaks away now. I suspect this will feel even moreso soon.
Like everything else in this American day and age, the onus of maintaining culture has been pushed onto the consumer. Yes, there's an element of democracy to this, but it's democracy overlaid onto a behemoth of a system that is entirely undemocractic—that is, books that do not get marketing and publicity are not even seen, let along judged by viewers.
If I don’t want an artist to vanish into the ether, banned to vapor publicity and marketing budgets, unlivable wages, and being forced out of the industry in favor of a grueling dayjob, it sometimes feels like it’s now my sole responsibility. To invest immediately and loudly. If I want diverse books and challenging stories that push my boundaries, I must buy all of it before it’s even released.
We as consumers therefore must increasingly front more money, and even act as lowkey publicists, to show whoever bought the rights that a story garners returns right away. And we do not have time to even consume what glugs out of the content hose, much less to research and fund it all.
It would be an amazing problem to have, if it didn't result in creators disappearing.
I know it’s always been this way to an extent, but the creative patron ecosystem of yore—one where a publisher fosters a quality work, and tries to get eyes on it—feels like it’s compacting into an increasingly greige little cube.
Stressful, dude. I'm sure you’re feeling this, too.
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I wish I had a better solution for this high stakes consumption. I wish I had any solution. It’s just another force driving disruptive culture underground, and so I guess I’m going underground, too, a little. I always got ick at that very specific Gen X/elder millennial counterculture vibe that was like, I was listening to that band before you were born lol. Now I’m staring down the barrel of a modern and twisted variant of it.
It’s hard for me not to look to our near future and not feel a bone level exhaustion as a consumer, and a deep frustration as a creator.
I guess I wanted to put all this down if you’re feeling it, too. Yes, things are hostile and harrowed and too high stakes, and they are going to get more hostile. I want to name the vibe so we’re not all sitting here, like, is this really so much harder than it was? Or do I just suck worse than before?
Lots of great work dies every day, underseen or unseen. And that actually sucks, likely not you. But I hope you can also find some degree of surrender in it and land somewhere bittersweet and communal, and not entirely sour. I really believe everyone has an audience scattered across space and time. I do find the strength to continue in the fact that a lot of us are here fighting to be heard, tuning into the voices that might get buried in the current of a growingly hostile mainstream.
So, stay. Please. I plan to, and I want to hear what you have to say.
What I read in 2024
Oh boy! I feel great shame around my reading numbers, because reading is the best! I only read 18 books this year. I’m trying to be gentle about it. Ya girl’s got a lot going on now, and had a lot going on earlier in the year. I’ll probably round that up in a larger year in review post.
For now I’ll just recommend a few favorites as this is getting lengthyyyy.
The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar by Indra Das
When I picked this up I was already feeling a bit tender about the limited access I have to my ancestral history. I have a lot of questions, and the answers I’m even comfortable getting aren’t the type of thing that got kept or recorded. I have to accept I’ll probably never know. So this one (very beautifully, very gorgeously) kind of slapped me in the face. Tears were shed. It was awesome. The thing I always love about Indra’s work is that he deftly takes fantastical tropes (werewolves! dragons!) we often shorthand and turns them back into these visceral, sinewy experiences that edge us back into reality. Back into meaning. This novella is stunning, and I’m happy to own a hard copy. However FYI there’s an ebook version that is less spendy.
Filterworld by Kyle Chayka
If you felt yourself nodding along above, get this. It’s so good I’m reading it again right meow. Twice in one year! This book tackles the consequences of algorithms and how they are flattening and controlling our culture—and lays out a case for a life that resists this. He muses on curation, taste, and novelty in a way that encapsulates all the gunky feelings I’ve personally had floating around in my skull. I left the book feeling really empowered, and have started to regain the habits I used to so enjoy before I farmed out my influence to The Feeds. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, or you want to kick the tires a bit, Kyle Chayka has done tons of interviews. If you search for him in Podcasts, you can settle in to get a preview.
Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
This book had me sighing wistfully every chapter. A lovely mix of nostalgic line-level beauty, romance, and scary ass vampires. Not the sexy kind, though you would not leave disappointed if you were looking for some breathless !!! vibes. Totally engrossing historical worldbuilding, romantic tension you’d have to cut with a chainsaw, and a significant subversive undertone that asks who the real monsters were in this era of Mexican history, even in the face of literal flesh eating vampires. Maybe do not read this one waiting on jury duty in a room with like a hundred people, though. Not a great place for that finger bite scene.
Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohammed
Haunted creepy forest! Late 30s protagonist who’s skilled and tired of this shit! And bonus, a page count I could grapple with in just a few sittings! The cover is such a great encapsulation of the vibe of this little gem of a book. This one ended a dry spell for me, and made me want to read again. I was a bit nervous wading into this one, as I’m fairly sensitive to graphic child harm and this is a horror about royal kids getting lost in cursed woods. While mentioned, what’s on the page is not super graphic and I was absolutely enraptured by the voice of this, the pacing, and the magical world within.
That was a loooooong one. Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. IDK about you, but there are so many moments I’m playing with my own kids and laughing and then just absolutely devastated at how much heartbreak and loss wartorn parents and children must be enduring right now—especially Palestinian and Sudanese parents. If you’ve gotten any enjoyment or ease from this, please consider re-upping a donation to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, Doctors Without Borders, or another organization of your choice.
Happy New Year, y’all. I really hope this is a kind and gentle one for you.
In solidarity,
Ash