Ash Vale Updates: August 2024
Things that Happened
I went to When Words Collide (a writing conference) in Calgary, Alberta in August! It was great fun. I met lots of lovely people, hung out with friends, watched some excellent panels, and of course bought books I didn’t need that made my backpack very heavy. Yay!
My garden this year has produced approx. six strawberries, 30 cherry tomatoes, a bunch of small eggplants and a metric shit-ton of zucchini. I just needed to tell someone
Writing
Out Now
I pushed this newsletter back a few days just so I could include that my short story “I Met My Wife in the Woods” is now free to read at Heartlines Spec!! It’s a short 5-6 min read with creepy fae, an unreliable narrator, and sapphic yearning. It’s also my first publication! If you like it, maybe share it with your friends? Your pets? Your enemies? https://www.heartlines-spec.com/i-met-my-wife-in-the-woods/
In Progress
I haven’t written as much short fiction this month but I got a few things sent out:
Dystopian climate change story where midwives bury a placenta to heal the earth
A speculative poem told by Mother Earth as wildfires take her trees (there’s a theme to much of my stuff lately, and the theme is climate change)
A weird little short piece about a devil woman and her harpy partner who take in abandoned children in the woods by turning them into animal-children. It’s more wholesome than it sounds
When Words Collide really re-sparked my love for my novel! I got some great feedback on it, and talking to other people about it and seeing their excitement just reminded me how much I like what I have so far and how much I want to see it out in the world one day. All the feelings!
My Recs
Books
I read a few things this month but nothing has stuck out as much as How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis. This may seem like an unusual rec (non fiction, who are we?!) but it’s just such a graceful, kind, conscientious approach to care tasks and tidiness. She takes into account culture, neurodivergence, and disability when giving gentle ways to shift your mindset around “being dirty”, and also just reminds people that your home isn’t a reflection of your personhood. I think it’s going to stay with me for a long time.
Short Stories
Fairy tales for drowning girls by Bree Wernicke in The Orange & Bee is a really fascinating flash piece about girls being sacrificed to the sea. It’s folkloric and haunting, and really brought up these feelings of internalised misogyny and the harm that women do to other women in the name of tradition. Loved it, I keep thinking about it!
The drowned are usually quick to wash back up, poor fools, and then we blink back our salt tears and collect as many pieces of them as we can.
Cicadas, and Their Skins by Avra Margariti, in Strange Horizons. This short story is one of my faves I’ve recently read, it’s a truly bizarre story about a young person borrowing the skins of animals and bugs to become them, and bringing their whole small town into an uproar because of it. It’s got queer awakening, chronic illness, and a wee bit of gore but who’s counting? Also maybe the most banger opening line ever
I spent my first summer as an orphan watching cicadas fuck, scream, and molt.
Rachel Is at a Protest, by Esther Alter for The Deadlands. I don’t say this lightly - please be in an okay headspace if you’re going to read this. It’s a very dark story about a Jewish trans woman grappling with her ancestry and the Palestinian genocide. It’s absolutely beautiful, and made me cry, but it’s heavy.
She hasn’t slept more than a few hours a night because she keeps having nightmares of Nazis breaking into her house.
One more creepy one (sorry not sorry): Butter by Erin Brown in Nightmare Magazine. Truly not even sure how to describe this—equal parts disgusting body horror, nihilism, defeat, and hopelessness. I had to look away a few times but then ultimately read it again so make of that what you will!
The butter’s meaty, smoky stink filled Kayla’s howling mouth.
Music
In a little café recently I heard this song playing and I absolutely loved it?? It’s from a Japanese rock band called Ulfuls and it’s just catchy as hell, so now I’ve listened to the whole album and highly recommend
Something Extra
I hemmed and hawed over talking about ‘celebrity culture’ here but then I was like you know what, fuck it, it’s my newsletter!
So here’s an interesting article ruminating on Chappell Roan and parasocial relationships and how it’s fucked up that we think people whose art we consume owe us hugs, and photos, and their time
The Eeriness of Fame - by eliza mclamb - words from eliza
on chappell roan, celebrity, and the parasocial lifestyle creep
Thanks for reading, and don't let the monsters under your bed get you, unless you're into that! I don't judge!
Ash Vale (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent cryptid writing short stories in horror and fantasy, and working on a sapphic romance novel.