Today in ~u serious bro~ energy
Residency news, publication recognition, sappiness, and happiness.
In this installment
Oh, hello! It’s been a while since I sent one of these, so I apologize for the length. Here we go ~
- Publications and news
- Unsponsored sappiness break
- Pep talk: Happiness
Publications and news
Games of the Monarch's Eye
I am briefly opening the timespace portal between me and my game writing persona. You can play the first three chapters of Games of the Monarch's Eye today! The full game launches on Thursday. Here's an author interview with the link. This is likely the last time I’ll speak of this, so if you are interested in interactive fiction, open up a tab:
Duel your greatest rival to win back your honor—or spark a revolution! It's a tournament of steel, strategy, sabotage, and forbidden magic in a fantasy world inspired by the Silk Road. Games of the Monarch's Eye is an interactive "silk and sorcery" fantasy novel by Saffron Kuo. It's entirely text-based, 238,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Friends of the SFPL Resident
I’m a 2025–26 Brown Handler Friends of the SFPL Resident! I am incredibly honored to serve more deeply in my local community, and carry forward the vital work that libraries do in SF. And, have access to a space where probably no one (however much I love them) will scream at 100 decibels because they have literally spilled milk. I will be coming at you soon with some fun local events.
Panel at Worldcon
If any of you will be at Worldcon this week, I am on the ‘Writing and Publishing in Different Genres’ panel on Saturday, from 3–4pm, moderated by Coral Alejandra Moore, with Gail Carriger, Sandra Tayler, Van Hoang, and Victor Manibo. Otherwise, you can spot me by my daisy chain mask holder, say hi if you see me.
ECO24
I’m delighted to share that Slipstream was shortlisted for ECO: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction 2024. I encourage you to check out the selected ToC as well as the other shortlisted pieces. I’m certainly using this as a summer reading guide.
Amplitudes is a USA Today Bestseller
Since last newsletter, Amplitudes has debuted on the USA Today Bestseller list! Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered this anthology and continues to read it today. Absolute honor to be included amongst these super talented folks.
I want to share Lauren Bajek’s response to this news, as I think it is a real balm in these times:
Unsponsored sappiness break
This is my newsletter and no one can stop me. So I am going to be an embarrassing and petulant boy-king and spend this entire section shouting my amazing agent and literary partner, Hana El Niwairi, my publishing ride or die, editorial and contractual sharpshooter of my dreams. As of last month, we’ve been officially hurtling through publishing space together for TWO YEARS. I’m so so so thankful. Send thoughts of cake!
If you are also a writer, you know how incredibly lonely the journey can be, and how full of doubt. A great partner is invaluable.
And now, the pep talk.
Happiness
I’ve had John Cage’s 10 Rules next to whatever slab of furniture is functioning as my desk since I was in my early 20s. Here it is today in my office:
Different rules have resonated with me over the years, but lately I’m fixated on Rule 9.
In a study that kinda makes my eyebrow twitch (like, it consists entirely of observing the recorded RBFs of Olympic athletes), silver medalists apparently look much grumpier than bronze medalists, who are just happy to be on the podium at all.
(Remember McKayla?)
The argument is, the closer you get to the gold, the more obvious it is that you ‘lost’ first place, versus with bronze, ya made it! You squeaked by, you got onto the podium.
This study is not sound or replicable. But medals do bring up other conversations.
There is a saying I can’t find the source of, that my beloved angel of a crit partner deigns to (lovingly, gently, affectionately) attack us with from time to time, which is, poorly paraphrased, ‘if you aren’t happy before the bronze, you won’t be happy with the gold’.
As a non-athlete only in competition to be crowned the clumsiest woman alive, I have no business w sports metaphors. However I think this is something anyone who ‘performs’ or makes culture can struggle with.
It is the easiest thing to be tough, unyielding, perfectionist, and grumpy. Conversely, I get the vibe ?? that it is annoying, rare, and almost indecent to appear happy.
I’m sorry if this is catching you at a poor time. Really, just close the tab with all of my fervent well wishes if you have no patience for conversations about happiness. I also struggle to think of a vibe that’s more u serious bro??? than ‘try to be happy in 2025’.
I also think we will all go batshit boonanas if we don’t do this, and leave this era much worse off than it even already is.
So first, let’s talk about the overall cringe that is joy-in-2025.
At a large scale
Yep, hard agree, what’s there to be happy about, we live under a regime that is literally opening concentration camps for our neighbors, gleefully encouraging great harm on our trans siblings, decimating the next generation of arts by defunding every fount of culture while funding a genocide/concentration camps abroad in Palestine, drilling up the land, creating a homegrown red white blue gestapo, stripping people of already shitty healthcare, yes, I know, we know, everyone knows. Anyone who is happy all of the time in our day and age is, indeed, a fool at best! with no internet connection and no neighbors.
I am actually a great partaker of doomerism in this moment because it’s appropriate for such a serious era. Many people (even if not you) seem to still think we are one election away from whatever folks are deeming “normalcy” these days.
wild laughter
Anyway. Even as doomers, maybe especially as doomers, we must be stubborn. We need to maintain critical reason enough to distinguish between do not let the flame go out and let them eat cake. They are not the same, and anybody who labels them the same is actively doing harm to all of us. We have to resist kneejerk reactions to poohpooh any happiness. That’s why this phrasing, try to be happy when! you! can! manage! it, resonates so so hard for me lately.
Realism must cut both ways. Let’s be honest, most of us have some degree of privilege, and our ancestors have lived through worse. Look our moment in the eye; do something about it—but also cultivate the ability to be happy in the spare moments you can. We are not just an election away from roses, and this is going to be a long haul. This era is ruining so many lives. There’s no magical ‘after’ that you can save all your glee for unless you perhaps are planning to live to 200??????
You need to make your own meaning from this moment. You need to be well enough to share what wisdom you’ve found with others who might be helped by it. As you were made by what surrounds you, you must help make others. Any of us who works in culture needs to cultivate something in ourself and our communities that will not be taken, however we can.
At a personal scale
If you aren’t happy with the bronze…
Some would call this, ‘goal-posting’ or ‘moving the goal posts’. (I apologize; you must suffer more of my sports metaphors. Why the sports metaphors today.) Goal-posting is this: you make a goal that will surely make you finally feel secure, or be happy. Then when you hit the goal, the goal posts seem to move much further down the line as if by magic, and all you can do is focus on the distance between.
Now, there are times when hitting a milestone does make you happy, perhaps because it unlocks some tangible result. A livable wage! A meaningful connection to a person you never would have met! An award or badge (NYT bestseller!!) no one can ever take away from you! Etcetera.
What seems the more common indulgence, however, is goal posting. And look—society always wants more. It’s not anybody’s fault we’re all built and trained this way, like little mice in a trillion dollar industrial maze. Ambition is often how we survive.
But ambition unchecked is consumptive. It is ravenous and never-ending. If you persevere long enough, even in writing where the odds are markedly longer than getting into Harvard, you will get something. You will be seen. And how horrible would it be to get something that was beyond your wildest dreams five years ago, and not enjoy it at all? Wouldn’t that feel like betrayal? Isn’t that pretty damn mean to your younger more innocent self? And what did that fool ever really do to you? Not wear quite enough sunscreen? Ruin your brows by overplucking them? Something really bad? Forgive her anyway.
Happiness usually doesn’t come with the goal. Truly. If you’re not happy before the bronze, the gold won’t help. Happiness is often available right now! Practice being happy when no one is looking, today, so that when people are looking, you will know how it feels in your body. That’s something that can’t be taken.
If you need more horsepower to lovingly fight your brain:
NO: “Welp. What’s next.” Are you the type who never celebrates anything because you’re already onto the next thing? Be ridiculous. Buy yourself a little cakie when you finish that draft. Watch the movie you’ve been saving when you finish 50 sketches. Whatever! It feels awful! It feels excessive! But do it anyway.
YES: “Isn’t it so wild…” Isn’t it so wild someone paypal’d you money to put your story on their website? Isn’t it so wild someone recognized you in public and complimented you on your work? Isn’t it so wild you can just sit down and create an entire universe from scratch in this empty document and nobody can stop you? Isn’t it so wild you met two people at this disaster of a con and now they’re your bffs? Etcetera. Recognize the wildness of your life right now.
NO: “I should be farther along…” No no!! Take your time and do your work! It is all you have control over. It took me like 12 years of serious writing to get an agent. Thousands and thousands of pages. And that’s by far not the longest I’ve heard, I consider myself so so so lucky! There are those ingenues, but almost every overnight success you see is ten+ years in the making. Try to see this time as preparation. Trust me, even when you think you are ready for something and want it with your whole heart, if you keep working, you will probs look back in five years and be like, wow, I was SO not ready, lol, glad my dreams didn’t come true when I asked them to.
YES: “I dream of…” Engage in beneficial time travel. Absolutely let yourself want things; this is the kindest act of self love. Wanting things is vulnerable. I understand. I can’t even look my own dreams in the eye half of the time. Just because something is not happening now doesn’t mean it will never happen. Gnash your teeth and whine to your group chat about how hard this is (we love to give and support a whine). Trust yourself so much, and trust that if you stay and have faith and work and work and work, you will find a path.
Yours in solidarity, also trying to be happy and light when I can manage it,
Ash