September 2025 Newsletter
It has been a time, my friends! Such a time that I very much thought I had sent a newsletter out in August, but I definitely did not. So, we’ve got some catching up to do!
News
The past two months have been full of travel and excitement! First up: Seattle WorldCon, where Worldbuilding for Masochists lost another Hugo! By the most incredibly slim of margins this year, so please expect me to be even more persistent in encouraging folk who are so inclined to vote next year. 😅
We did, however, look amazing:
On the whole, I enjoyed the convention, mostly for the opportunity to see all the folks that I generally only get to see at WorldCon.
Many of them, however, I also got to see at ArmadilloCon the following weekend! WorldCon, despite being the larger convention, very much felt to me like the pre-game for ArmadilloCon. The programming there was fabulous: I got to be on a number of really wonderful panels and have some amazing conversations. I also did “Satisfied” from Hamilton at karaoke and participated in an impromptu reading of the opening scene of Much Ado about Nothing at the end of the Shakespeare panel!
And then… I turned forty!
To celebrate, I was extremely indulgent, and I had a marvelous time.
I do, however, have a sad announcement regarding upcoming travel, which is that I will no longer be attending Halcy-Con in October.
Why? Well, the folks who run Halcy-Con have redefined their goals and vision for the convention, and I was asked to step down as Programming Coordinator. They also decided to prioritize other immersive events, and so the Crescent Station experience that I’ve been working on will no longer be a part of that convention.
This is all, obviously, a huge bummer for me. Y’all who follow me know how much of my heart and soul, to say nothing of time and effort, I had put into both the programming and immersive projects. But, since it would seem that the services I can provide are no longer aligned with the vision for the con, all I can do is respect that and wish them the best.
That said, I have no intention of letting The Crescent fade away. It’s simply too much fun to stop playing with, the community response had shown intense interest in the project, and since the gaming mechanic was always intended to be something of an interpersonal scavenger hunt, I would still like to be able to make manifest that celebration of this amazing community. I don’t know how or when yet, but I have some amazing creative partners who are just as determined as I am to find a new way to bring this concept to life. We’ve already had others in the community reach out to offer their assistance — so stay tuned for future updates!
And I still have other travel to look forward to: I’ll be going to NYC for a couple of days to see Heathers and Masquerade, both of which I’m very excited about.
What I’ve Been Reading
I’ve fallen a bit behind in my reading! Partly because one of the books I was working on was an absolute chonker (and delightful for it)!
Medieval Myths & Mysteries, Dorsey Armstrong
Sisters of Fortune: A Novel of the Titanic, Anna Lee Huber
Last Dance Before Dawn, Katharine Schellman
Silver and Lead, Seanan McGuire
Queens of the Age of Chivalry, Alison Weir
Disney Adults, AJ Wolfe
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, Sangu Mandanna
The AI Con, Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
Inventing the Renaissance, Ada Palmer
Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins
As always, these are affiliate links from which I will earn a small commission should you use them.
Inventing the Renaissance is gonna be the book I can’t shut up about for a long time. It’s absolutely wonderful. It’s also the chonker I mentioned above! The audiobook was 30 hours — but such a delight to listen to. It explores both the time period itself and the mythologizing of it over the centuries. It’s incisive but also quite earnest and emotional. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny in places — at least, if you have the sort of dry sense of humor I do. It goes into such beautiful detail about the lives of many individuals, some famous and some far lesser-known.
If my next hyperfixation — and the aesthetic inspiration for my next novel — is the Italian Renaissance, we will have Ada Palmer to blame/credit.
I also really enjoyed Sunrise on the Reaping! I confess I never read A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes because I just did not feel compelled by Snow as the key character, but Haymitch’s perspective was well worth spending some time in.
The AI Con is the book to throw at your friends and relatives who don’t quite get why you hate genAI so much. (And if you don’t hate it… I’m not sure why you’re following me.) It does a wonderful job unpacking why this tech is just a grift: incapable of doing what it promises, making its users dumber, and stealing from creative workers.
Wrapping It Up
And with all of that… I’ve also been writing! The WIP is approaching something resembling completion. With September’s travels over, I’m looking forward to buckling back down and focusing on that work.
