September 2025: Newsletter. Finally.
I didn’t do one last month, and my excuses, while many and various, don’t make me feel better about it. Briefly:
Oddball health things. In August I had weird severe pain from...well, no one knows what, but it went away, and got put on the list of things I’ll take to my doctor as soon as she gets established at her new practice. (Because every health issue at the moment is complicated by the fact she’s leaving one system, and couldn’t do anything for the new practice until the clock ran out. Which it now has.) Still, it took a bit to recover. And then I had the worst attack of vertigo in my life, so bad that it did not go on a list, it went straight to the ER. Some shots, some tests, and now physical therapy. I am informed that the serious concerns are off the table, and now that I am not taking medications that put me to sleep for sixteen hours a day, I am starting to have actual linear thoughts again.
Life after the University of Kansas. Not working in a toxic environment does make the rest of life easier, but I have been surprised at how much KU, destructive and unreliable as it was, shaped everything else. The days committed to school gave meaning to the days that weren’t: I had limited opportunities that I could write, create a newsletter, or research story markets. I didn’t always do the things I wanted to in the time I had, but I knew that if I didn’t spend Sundays catching up (for instance), I couldn’t just slide the work to Monday, because Monday was a work day. Without external constraints, it gets very floppy, and I haven’t sorted this yet.
Life. Well, yeah. How do any of us find calm, find fun, find safety, make art, make plans, in all this? In a world literally designed to make it impossible to keep ownership of these parts of our lives? Like everyone else, I am wrestling with this. One useful tool I am finding is to treat life like vacation snapshots: it’s all about what you leave out of the picture. Yes: the sunset sandy beach. No: the ratty parking lot next door. The parking lot is no less or more part of the reality than the beach, but at the moment you take that picture, it’s not the part you are looking at, and that’s fine. There are also times for concentrating on the parking lot.
Writing & publishing
The RiverBank tabletop RPG drops next month! People who supported the Backerkit will see theirs first, but everyone else can preorder at https://riverbankrpg.com/
I have heard nothing about the various flash stories I sent out in late July. The third of them—which has about ten titles, none of them good—will be available on my Patreon as soon as I finish up this newsletter.
Things I can’t say anything about because they’re underway: three. But one of them is work for hire under a nondisclosure agreement, so I won’t ever be able to talk about it, so does that count?
Teaching
I’m doing some fun classes and talks at Collin College in the Dallas area, 11/12-13.
I’m planning an online class for Spring 2026: Fit & Finish for Writers. This will be across several sessions in March, though I haven’t quite decided whether it’s a once-a-week thing or several nights in a row. It will be the opposite of the structural approach I take to novels in the summer class: we will be talking about all the tiny elements that contribute to vivid and well-paced storytelling: word choice, sentence and paragraph organization and tempo, rhetorical techniques, etc. Again, drop me an email if you are interested. And you’ll of course see more here and on my website, once I determine dates.
I will be teaching the Novel Architects workshop in Lawrence KS again next summer. This two-week intensive workshop will probably be 7/5-17/2026 (with the invitation-only Repeat Offenders before that). We open apps in January; drop me an email if you want on a mailing list to be told when they open. Details will also be on my website.
Appearances
Next thing is the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo in January (https://phillyexpocenter.com/events/philadelphia-area-gaming-expo/). Next year, I’ll be at least one SF con and another gaming con.
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Stay kind, be cool, support artists.
Join me over on my Patreon! This is more important than ever for me, as I no longer have a job or regular income, and my biggest donor had to withdraw for hewalth reasons. https://www.patreon.com/c/kijjohnson
Or check out my website! https://kijjohnson.com/