Book club post for Monday, January 2, 2023
I finished my first book of the New Year last night: Elizabeth Hand’s Hokuloa Road (Gift link to a thoughtful Washington Post review there) and it was really...
Fuck multitasking and fuck metrics, too
I got up this morning, did some morning chores (filling humidifiers, emptying cat boxes) and checked the mail not because I forgot Monday was a holiday but...
What would this look like if it were easy?
My friend Elise Matthesen asked this the other day somewhere on the socials. (I can’t remember where and I can’t find it to link, but here’s a link to her...
Some peripheral thoughts on The Peripheral
We’ve finished watching The Peripheral, and I’ve been thinking about how amazing and hopeful it is that this wildly successful mainstream hit is entirely...
Fascism is a fandom, and people leave fandoms all the time.
I mentioned parasocial relationships a post or so ago, and that got me thinking about what those relationships provide and how they function and that led me...
Kirstie Alley died last week, and I am having some feelings about it.
I've never been somebody to pretend that the connection we feel in a parasocial relationship isn't real: of course it is, and in some ways it's both the...
Jenny Casey, Audiobook Edition
Well look at this. I'm thrilled to announce that all three Jenny Casey books are available for purchase or pre-order as audiobooks in the US... finally. :D...
Behind the times on the book club again
But I did actually manage to read a few things this month. One was How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis, which I recommend to everybody feeling...
I have a new hobby
It's stealing "No Geese Allowed" signs. Sometimes, the best way to deal with overwhelm is to be goose, do crimes. The sign beside the sidewalk sale is too...
Cancer is the gift that keeps on giving (no terrible news, don't worry.)
Well, I think I mentioned here that my last mammogram came back clear. However, I had a real fucking adventure on the way to Viable Paradise, which was that...
Book club! I got NOTHING read in October.
Nothing I can talk about anyway, it was all student manuscripts for Viable Paradise. What did you read that was amazing? I have about seven books I’m halfway...
I'm not leaving twitter just yet but I am branching out. Also, anthology!
Hey folks, just wanted to stick a flag in the fact that I have resurrected my camped but ignored counter.social account (it’s @matociquala, surprising...
New Story Day!
Not only is Tasting Light, edited by A.R. Capetta and Wade Roush, out today, featuring ten new hard SF stories for teen readers (and adult readers too!)...
Horse updates: all is chaos!
Ormr is fine, first off—but everything has been a lot lately. We’ve managed to find a new farrier, but Ormr, after 15 years barefoot, is not on board with...
An actual book club post despite my abject failure to read almost anything lately
So I have managed to finish three whole books in the last two months, which may be an all-time low. (I’ve been reading a lot of articles and news coverage,...
There's no such thing as a free lunch, and other bullshit lies we tell each other.
Trust me, I'm 9/10ths of an anthropologist
A poignant anniversary
It’s one of my personal holidays today. Long-time readers of my old livejournal and even occasionally Twitter willl have heard me speak of this before, but...
Virtuosity
How does a best-seller happen, anyway? This post is brought to you by several overlapping sets of ripples in the Discourse, obviously, but it’s not a...
OCCUPY GONDOR: A Virtual Panel with Katherine Addison, Scott Lynch, C.L. Polk, Arkady Martine, Max Gladstone, and me!
Join me and five of the smartest, funniest people I know on September 30th at 9 pm Eastern/6 pm Pacific to talk about all the different ways speculative...
The unbearable everywhereness of hustle culture
I’m writing this to you from the sunny (for now) patio of a rental cottage as far from civilization as it’s possible to get, and still be in Ireland. My...