That awards eligibility post that seems to be de rigueur these days...
Does what it says on the tin.
Learned helplessness is a toxic meme
tl:dr pinkertons breaking strikes something something gilded age.
Cheap ebook of THE STONE IN THE SKULL! Locus Recommended List appearance by THE ORIGIN OF STORMS!
Hey folks! It's a great week in Lotus Kingdoms news--not only is The Stone in the Skull available for $3.99 at your favorite ebook retailer (Barnes & Noble)...
When your brain won't brain like a good brain should
Hey folks, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve been dealing with burnout, anxiety, autoimmune bullshit, and a whole lot of resurgent c-PTSD for the...
The Origin of Storms trade paperback is on sale for pre-order at Barnes & Noble RIGHT NOW.
You know how to handle this.
Toxic Smurfette Syndrome and how to avoid it.
THERE CAN BE ONLY... lots and lots, actually.
Book Club post for Monday, January 16, 2023
Happy Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. Day! I finished reading Vivian Shaw's GRAVE INTENTIONS last night and found it charming and satisfying. Witty...
Avoidance is a trauma response
So sometimes I have a hard time making myself do things. Sometimes it’s because there are Too Many Things and I am tired. Sometimes it’s because I am sick....
Horse update
It's been a while, but Ormr is doing great. His rehab seems to be working (again) and that persnickety ankle is sound at walk, tolt, and canter and nearly...
Book club for Monday 9 January 2023
Hey, folks, what are you reading? I haven't finished anything new except a buttload of Atlantic Monthly and newspaper articles, and I listened to the...
Typing is easy. Telling stories is hard.
More on metrics.
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...
Obligatory Tom Waits Reference Here!
Somehow it seems like Sunstack never sent this out? Sorry, folks, it was meant to go out Sunday the 4th, and I didn’t notice because I was at Worldcon! I...
A view from a high place
We're in Dublin briefly before heading off on a writing retreat in an undisclosed location (It’s Kerry) for a few days, where we plan to do nearly nothing...
Sort of an everything update
Hey, folks, It’s been kind of a zoo around here lately, and the only reason I’m finding the time to actually update this newsletter is because I hurt my...
I seem to have a WorldCon Schedule.
How weird is that? ?
Signed book sale!
Signed copies of my work (and anything in the store that's not already on sale!) are available through V. J. Books at a 50% discount for the month of August...
June and July Book Club! And horse update!
Whew, I have not done as much reading as I wanted to do, either on our travels or since I got home. I’m starting to get a little unstuck from fiction, at...
Author points
One of the most useful analogies I’ve come up with over the course of my career is something that arose out of an epiphany I had approximately 20 years ago,...
Booksigning at Odyssey Books Thursday July 21!
7 pm! South Hadley! Does what it says on the tin! Sign up here! https://www.odysseybks.com/event/elizabeth-bear-person
Fashion changes the way we see.
I am an 80s kid through and through. I mean, I was born in the 70s, but all of my awareness that there is a larger world out there basically starts with the...
The reader doesn't owe me anything.
I’ve been seeing opinions in the social medias lately from certain writers that I find a little puzzling and entitled. To wit, the idea that readers owe the...
Make room, make room
As some of you have doubtless noticed, I spent Pride month building a rec list of books containing LGBTQA rep on twitter. I’ve been using a specific set of...
My Favorite Bit and I will be at Pandemonium tomorrow!
Hey folks! Here’s the essay I wrote for Mary Robinette Kowal’s MY FAVORITE BIT feature on friendship and The Origin of Storms. Also, I will be doing my first...
The system is broken because it was built that way.
First off: Book Club will return next month, because I am traveling! Second, a little rant about civics: If it seems like it’s really hard to get anything...
THE ORIGIN OF STORMS! It's new book day! Here's a link!
Hey, folks! THE ORIGIN OF STORMS is out today. I’m sure by now everybody knows how vital first week sales are to a book’s prospects, so if you think you want...
T-1
THE ORIGIN OF STORMS comes out tomorrow! snarky talking pen big fight on a volcano walking cities wizards sciencing the shit out of things giant gentle metal...
We're calling it a "curated" book tour...
Hey everybody! In something that feels VERY weird, I will actually be doing a couple of in-person appearances next month to launch THE ORIGIN OF STORMS. (On-...
Being snobby about rice might make you a bad artist
Hey, folks, So as those of you who have been around for a while know, one of my hobbies is watching cooking videos on youtube. I’m kind of picky about it,...
THE ORIGIN OF STORMS ONE WEEK FROM TODAY
ONE WEEK FROM TODAY! The shattering conclusion to The Lotus Kingdoms trilogy, the culmination of the series begun with The Eternal Sky trilogy, THE ORIGIN OF...
A rising tide lifts all boats, but not everybody sees it that way.
I’m a little late to the party here (been traveling, helping run a convention, plague year, you know) but the recent flap about that one guy and his Hot Take...