Some Russian and a short delay...
Hey, folks, and welcome to the newsletter I’ve been procrastinating on all week!
Email is a thing that I tend to put off and put off some more, especially when I’m trying hard to focus on work. I’m probably as far down the introvert curve as it’s possible to be without actually becoming an anchorite, and maintaining contact with people takes up a lot of emotional energy for me—especially when **waves at 2020 as if that expains everything**.
But I have got some news, and you know, I might as well share it!
First of all, a fun bit of translation news! SF World, China’s premier science fiction magazine, will be publishing translations of both “Dolly” and “Lest We Forget.” And Darkness, a Russian magazine, has an online version of “Shoggoths in Bloom” that you can read right here, if you happen to read Russian.
In other vaguely Lovecraftiana-related news, My long-awaited (at least by me—it took me thirty years to write!) novelette “On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera” is coming out at Tor.com in October or thereabouts. Actual details to follow.
Also in October, in the US and the UK, Machine makes its debut! Ebook publication is October 6th in the USA and ebook and print are October 8th in the UK. Because of Covid-related printing delays (only so fast you can run those presses and maintain social distancing) the US hardcover will not ship until October 20th. Sorry about that, but it’s important to keep everybody safe.
I am afraid I still haven’t finished The Origin of Storms, as my focus and concentration and creativity all seem to be busy having conniptions since about the time George Floyd was suffocated, and I’m honestly only just starting to get my head back in the game. Nothing is more important than protecting the lives and liberty of human beings. Black lives matter, and indigenous lives matter, and America has, as I’ve previously written, run out of road in which to make things right and take responsibility for four hundred years of evils hidden under rhetorical sleight of hand and self-justification.
It is hard to write fantasy in these times. It’s hard to feel like it matters.
However, I’m trying. I’ve taken a break to finish a novelette I got hopelessly stuck on last spring (it feels like decades ago) which was therefor not part of Jonathan Stahan’s Dragons anthology, an opportunity that I am heartbroken to have missed. The damn thing is nearly done now, though—I spent the last two days writing Nordic-style riddles, and I think I can write the denouement tomorrow.
Since I get all my satisfaction in writing from finishing things, I am hoping that getting this thing out of my head will make space for figuring out how to make The Origin of Storms feel like something I know how to write again.
As an apology, here’s a poem that Liz Bourke showed me today.
Now I’m off to pick up the farm share. I hope this finds you and yours well and safe.
Best,
Bear