August 2025 Check-in
Coming soon: Bay Area Queer Zinefest!
LotusCarp is tabling virtually and in-person at the Bay Area Queer Zine Fest! The in-person fest is at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center on September 14th. I will be offering an assortment of Buddhism, communism, and other gay nonsense, such as:
The Littlest Red Books: selected snippets of Marxist writing that speak to our present moment, with brief forewords by me.
A Labor Organizer’s Primer for Chaos: what I wish I knew before I helped unionize a retail store.
The Camellia and Her Sun: an excerpt from my upcoming webnovel 1000 Lotuses. There are lesbians and they are up to some stuff.
For more information about the venue, see the following pages on the Oakland Asian Cultural Center website.
Please note that all guests and tablers are required to wear KN95 masks or better at this event. Masks will be provided at the door.
1000 Lotuses
This fall, 1000 Lotuses will be released as an online serial in EPUB and PDF format, downloadable on lotuscarp.itch.io.
I worked in traditional publishing for a time. I’ve also been acquainted with self-published authors. I’m very familiar with the pros and cons of both routes, so this wasn’t a simple choice, but going completely feral is what feels right for LotusCarp, for now. That makes your continued support all the more precious to me. Thank you.
Pricing/monetization
1000 Lotuses will be released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Anyone who purchases the files on itch.io can share them freely without fear of takedowns or any other legal repercussions, so long as that individual properly credits LotusCarp as the creator of 1000 Lotuses.
If you plan to share/redistribute 1000 Lotuses content, all I ask is that you also share a link to my Ko-fi so anyone who enjoys it can leave an optional donation.
All other terms of the license are applicable. I expressly forbid the use of my work for generative AI training.
This policy is one of my biggest reasons for breaking with the traditional publishing industry. If I work with a publisher, I won’t have any control over when and how they choose to enforce copyright. I have less than zero interest in chasing down and punishing people who want to share my work. The world is on fire and I just want to tell stories to help us get through it.
The first arc (Feather Lotus/羽蓮卷), will be free to download forever. Subsequent arcs will be released for $3 each.
Purchasing an installment of 1000 Lotuses on itch.io also gives you access to updates and corrections, forever! “Patch notes” will be announced via itch.io and this newsletter.
Email a receipt of a recent donation contributing to the aid of Palestinians under attack by the genocidal settler state of Israel, such as a contribution to an appropriate nonprofit/crowdfunding campaign or the purchase of an eSIM, to thepond@lotuscarp.com to receive a one-time use itch.io link that allows you to download your installment(s) of choice. This way it can show up in your itch.io account and you’ll be able to re-download files on your own if updates/corrections are issued.
Minimum $3 donation per installment. Receipt must be dated within 1 week of the email.
Release Schedule
1000 Lotuses has a tentative launch date of 9/9/25. The first arc, Feather Lotus/羽蓮卷, will be uploaded and made available to download on itch.io for free. The second arc, Seamstress/裁縫姐卷, will be made available to purchase on itch.io on the same day. From that point forward, my goal is to release another arc every four months. There may be delays, and there may be hiatuses, but “every four months” is the shining guiding light for now.
Thanks for reading. Time to go fold some more zines :’)
— Zaozao 藻藻 (she/they/他)