Dear all,

Welcome! It is my inaugural newsletter-ing, after all, so it seems appropriate to begin with a greeting. Thank you for joining me on my journeys, and I hope I can entertain you as we go.

It is the middle of June, and Pride is in full swing here in the US (and other-such culturally influenced places). Which is why it particularly delights me to share with you all my poem, obsolesce, on what happens when one stops being Of Use (it is also about robots in love), recently released by that magnificent magazine of queer-authored speculative prose and poetry, Otherside!

You can find it online for free here, in the $4.99 epub of Otherside 2 here, or even - if you are feeling particularly fancy - for purchase with the rest in physical form (if you’re in the UK or US)! (The magazine was facing some technical difficulties on that front, last I checked, but hopefully Ingram will at some point re-enable the order form.)

Book Update: This month began with Blood of Queens safely back in editorial hands, having undergone a very thorough developmental edit in which it gained all sorts of exciting new features, such as ‘politics,’ ‘actual explanations for how the magic works,’ and ‘mildly risque in-universe doggerel about Henry VIIIth.’ Since it also weighs in at an impressive 143,869 words by Scrivener’s count, I’m sure I can anticipate more edits to come. Also possibly I owe my editorial team a drink.

I am also told that Saga’s art department is hard at work, contemplating several different ideas for a cover, which is unspeakably exciting. Soon, BoQ will be a real book! With a face and everything! Possibly its face will involve people’s faces! Possibly even with skin on! One can never know.

Travel: In other news, next month will see me flying out to Boston for Readercon from July 9th to 12th, where I’ll be reading as part of the Reckoning 10th Anniversary Panel Sunday at noon, but otherwise just hanging out. If any of you are attending, please come say hello - I have fun new business cards featuring masked regency necromancers to show off >:D

Reading Corner: Right now I am reading many history textbooks because Book Two is looming at me, which I shan’t bore you with in detail (Rites of Peace by Adam Zamoyski, Dancing to the Precipice by Caroline Moorehead). However! I am also (finally! belatedly!) devouring ‘She Who Became the Sun’ by Shelley Parker-Chan, whose protagonists make the worst life choices, which is a great tactic for an author and a highly entertaining one for a reader. Love a protagonist who sees a Great Destiny go floating by and yanks it up like a chicken they intend to strangle for their dinner. I’m positive this can only end well.

Hopefully you are all reading, listening to, or watching equally delightful things out there on this the longest day (or night, if you are Southerly-inclined!). Do feel free to tell me about them, if you feel like it - I always love recs.

Yours in bibliosolidarity,

Macey