June 2025
Hello, poppets! Sorry for the delay in updating this newsletter. There’s been, as they say, a lot going on:
University of Kansas: I have officially retired from KU and am now an associate professor emerita, which, combined with a $5 bill, buys me a cup of coffee. I started this phased retirement process more than two years ago when the world was less unsettled-feeling and I wasn’t as concerned about not having a regular income—but once begun, phased retirement is an inexorable and irreversible process so, nervous or not, here we are. It may be scary but I am still so very glad to be out. Universities in general and KU in specific are in freefall. There are ways I can make a difference to the world, but my skillset is elsewhere.
Teaching/Novel Architects: However, I am still teaching, just not within the postsecondary world. My Novel Architects workshops are a Go again this year: a two-week workshop on structuring the SF/F/H novel (14-28 June), and another for previous attendees, called the Repeat Offenders (29 June-12 July). The novel workshop is never more than ten; this year we have eight, which means my coteacher Barbara Webb and I have a lot of time and focus for the attendees. Because of my recent game design, I’m thinking about structure and plot from a new angle and very excited to share this. And of course I’ll be doing this next year, so if you are interested in attending in a future year, keep an eye out for an announcement here, on Bluesky, or on my website.
RiverBank TTRPG: The Kobold Press Backerkit for my tabletop roleplaying game design went well: we collected $155,000! This doesn’t change my financial state in the least, but it does make the book nicer and also funds a post-release gamemaster’s product. The book and other materials will probably be going out to donors in October, then to game stores in November and for general release 1/1/26. I am pretty sure you can preorder the book still. https://riverbankrpg.com/
During the fundraising month, we got several good interviews, but my favorite is probably from Rascal: https://www.rascal.news/farce-and-sitcom-are-the-heart-of-kobold-press-animal-rpg/. I like to write enjoyable things, but you know me: I can’t not think about what I wrote from the outside as well as from the inside. I have wondered whether my mechanic for the game is (a) functional, (b) worth playing, and (c) significant in any new way. Jury’s still out on (a) and (b)—though reports are good—but Rascal made me think that I may have achieved my goal with (c). Kobold has asked me if I want to do more work with them, and the answer is yes! News as I think more about this.
The American Tour crowdfunding. Remember The American Tour? My sequel to my novel The River Bank? I worked on it for years, but put it aside (and struggled to write again) after the publisher orphaned it. I had hoped to sell it to someone else, but unsurprisingly a sequel to an oddball book published years ago by a small press is not red-hot auction fodder. But I love this book, and I want it out. Having watched Kobold do a crowdfunded project, I think I can do it, too. I’ll spend this year putting together sample art from Kathleen Jennings and finding publishers, binders, etc., so that I can put together the pitchI. ’ve been a production editor or managing editor for four different publishers, so I am sort of looking forward to this.
Fiction. And I started writing fiction again! Finishing up a short story, and I know the next one I will write. I don’t know what exactly comes after that one, but I’ll let you know.
***
In other news, life goes on: new flesh-and-blood friends, good (if hard) thinking about health and life. It feels complicated to be happy in the middle of a world afire, but I remember something I learned last year and then forgot, and then remembered again:
Order and beauty radiate.
For the last few years I have been saying that if I could have any superpower, I would pick capybara-power: the ability to radiate calm and peace. But even if I am not bitten by a radioactive rodent, I can do that. So: Capybara Powers, Activate!
Love, Kij
Kij Johnson | creating lies, damn lies, and fiction. | Patreon
creating lies, damn lies, and fiction.
