June 27, 2022

live from the forest, it's e.m. anderson! - this is the bad place

I know you're scared. I am, too.

if you're panicking about all the scotus decisions that dropped last week, you're not alone. you're not overreacting. you're not crazy. you're not worried about nothing.

don't let anyone tell you you are.

roe v. wade is the tip of the iceberg. the straw that broke the camel's back.

idk about you, but I'd already decided I never wanted to leave my house again before that decision dropped. there are fewer protections from cops than ever. fewer protections for disabled & chronically ill people. fewer gun control laws.

it's a lot all at once, & it's terrifying.

you're probably scared & exhausted. you probably feel helpless. angry. despairing. you probably already felt that way, after buffalo, after uvalde, after all the attacks on trans people, especially trans youth. & now you feel it more.

you may not think so, but it's okay to take time for yourself. log off. rest. hydrate. eat. pet a dog. stop doomscrolling for a while. the doom will still be there when you get back.

tomorrow, when you've rested & taken care of yourself a bit, when your head is enough above water not to drown in despair right this minute, start looking into what you can do to help.

I won't say "we've survived this before."

so many people didn't.

so many people won't.

but we've fought it before. many of the people who died fought for it, too, for all these things: civil rights, women's rights, bodily autonomy, right to privacy, and so much more.

and so many people have been fighting all along. & we can keep fighting.

next month's newsletter will include action items in case you're either american and freaking out or non-american and looking to help. if you have any favorite organizations to donate to or information about action items that can be done by anyone, anywhere, contact me with links and information so I can include it in july's newsletter.

in the meantime, here are some things I'm finding helpful:

• this clip from lord of the rings, in which sam gamgee offers words of wisdom in these trying times

• this clip from cloud atlas, which reminds us that no action we take, however small, is useless

• these quotes from SJ Whitby's debut middle grades novel The Mutantsitters Club

"There's always someone more powerful than me. It doesn't mean I can't beat them" (202)

"I'm in a situation like this again. I'm the one who can save the people I love. I can do this again" (206)

"My small acts of rebellion...seemed so small, but the shadows they cast were large" (210)

"'It's always worth fighting,' I say" (210)

book things

the remarkable retirement of edna fisher

edna is now available for preorder, as a hardcover, no less. right now, she's only available directly from hansen house, but links from other sellers will be available as we get closer to release date.

on that note, we have an official release date: april 21, 2023.

save the date, especially if you want to potentially join a launch event either in person or virtually, because I'm sure as heck having one some way or another.

edna is also on goodreads, in case you want to wait for later links but don't want to forget you'd like to read about her. if you prefer a non-amazon-owned alternative, she's on storygraph, too, although she's tagged as "dark" there, which,,,no.

I mean okay fine yes, for a story with a premise that sounds humorous, it does get very, very very angsty you have been warned because, well,

like, it does have dragons flying around destroying shit. and close relatives who died far too young. and oodles of unresolved trauma.

but still! it's not dark! you'll laugh! I swear!

want to see a bunch of shitposts & shares about this novel? check out #ChosenGrandmaWIP on twitter! keep up with (additional) buy links & (future) preorder campaigns by watching my Linktree!

the many buried things of peter shaughnessy

my sad-on-purpose ghosty gay novel about an old man cursed with immortality, found family, and a vengeful spirit, started its querying journey in #pitchdis on thursday and got yeeted at its first agents the same day.

my first rejection came in a day later, but by then scotus had hurt me so much that the rejection didn't hurt even a little. right now I'm like "COME AT ME BRO" @ agents who might reject me, because lol what are they gonna do??? strip me of my rights and security and bodily autonomy??? I DON'T THINK SO.

(okay, sorry, turns out there was a little horrible-u.s.-current-events talk down here in this section.)

anyway, this story means so much to me: it was an ambitious project that I wasn't sure I could pull off, but it turned out beautifully. it does what I meant it to do. beta readers overwhelmingly reacted better than I'd even hoped. and it got me into author mentor match (round 9), where I revised it with the help of cozy-mystery author CJ Connor.

fingers crossed that an agent, like so many friends and beta readers, sees what I wanted to do with it and takes a chance on it <3

CJ Connor's debut novel, Board to Death, also releases in 2023 and can be added on goodreads. it's a queer cozy mystery about the owner of a board game shop who falls in love with a bookstore owner while solving a murder. so I mean. what's not to like there, yeah?

writing & whatnot

there's absolutely no point to this alignment chart, it's just something I thought of several weeks ago and immediately decided to add to this newsletter for no reason whatsoever except that it describes me pretty well.

obligatory new york pictures

I literally finally started this newsletter because I figured if nothing else I could just include pictures of my new york trip for several months, and then I barely included any new york pictures in the last issue.

(sorry, fareedah and victoria. my bad. ily.)

I should really just do an issue about new york, but it feels like it'd be very silly to do that the farther we get from the actual trip. so instead I will simply keep sharing a few pictures at a time for the foreseeable future, until I run out of pictures.

sorry not sorry about all the pictures from the central park zoo. I took so many you'd think I spent all my time there. which I did not.

I did go two days in a row, though.