July 2025
So much coming to a pause (or an end), so much starting! At the end of the second workshop, when I am usually wiped out, someone said that I seemed happier and calmer than in previous years. We are in a terrible world right now, but she was right anyway: KU is gone, only a few bits and bobs left, and this means I have emotional and psychic energy I didn’t have this time last year. I don’t mean to waste this gift.
2025 Novel Architects was a dream. Barbara Webb and I taught, ably seconded by Jo Hempelman and Vince Vasudevan. This was one of the best years for productivity, and almost everyone came up with something viable for a novel (or novella) plot. Chris McKitterick’s Ad Astra workshops also went well, though we both lost some overseas people who were (understandably) unwilling to travel to the US at the moment. These summer workshops are magic for us both, the air filled with excitement and creativity. It is like throwing the most delightful party. https://kijjohnson.com/teacher/
And I have been writing! Workshop felt so energetic that I finished a draft for a new short story and a couple of flash pieces in the six weeks since it started. One of the flash pieces, “Tardigrade Dance Party,” is going up on my Patreon. The other two stories need a bit of rewriting and then I’ll be looking for homes for them.
RiverBank TTRPG (https://riverbankrpg.com/) is typeset and off to the printers. I saw the final pdfs, and it looks charming. It’s not exactly the way I would have done it, but then, I’m not the book designer. Expect it in October if you were on the Backerkit; otherwise Kobold Press (https://koboldpress.com/) tells me they’ll have it on their website in November. But the best news for me this month is that the publisher asked whether I had any other ideas for RPGs that could use the same eccentric game system I designed, Haphazardry. And it turns out, there is! I’ll drop an announcement about a new Haphazardry game as soon as I have a contract in hand.
Appearances: I’ve actually cut way back on this for the rest of 2025. No World Con for me! However, I’ll be at the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo in January (https://phillyexpocenter.com/events/philadelphia-area-gaming-expo/), and then a run out west. Next year, I expect I’ll be at least one SF con and another gaming con.
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And life moves into its next stage for me. In spite of knowing this was coming for two years, I don’t suppose I visualized what it means not to have a day job. When I could afford it, I’ve taken time off in the past, sometimes a year or even two at a time, so I casually assumed that it would be like that. I would get the house clean, and maybe sort some photos, and there’d be some writing, and then...well, then what? Because there’s no end-date built into this. I did expect to write more, and that is turning out true: I have a list of stories I want to do, and I look forward to having the time to do them all. But writing was always the other thing I did, not the way I filled my days or even my evenings but the pretty guitar I played sometimes. I want writing to be the new way I fill my days. What is the new pretty guitar?
Stay kind, be cool, support artists.
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