Dracula was right.

I have the luckiest and strangest life. I have an inflated unicorn on a speakeasy stage life. I have a do the Time Warp with George R. R. Martin life. A charmed and charming life. I wake up every day excited to be myself. I never thought that I'd get here. I never stop noting it, which is why I guess I keep writing things down. I have to prove that it was real, somehow. 

I went to WorldCon in San Jose in August. It was a much better con than a lot of us expected, thanks mostly to the last-minute efforts of Mary Robinette Kowal and her army of helpers who swooped in to fix what was destined to be a disastrous affair. That's where I got to do the pelvic thrust with the man behind the iron throne. I also got to hang out with friends old and new in the science fiction world, see N.K. Jemisin triumph with a rocket-shaped middle finger upraised to the racist fools who are losing their grip on our shared genre. Everything I have to say about the weekend of WorldCon sounds like I'm bragging, which is a pretty great review considering it's the equivalent of a work conference for people who write for a living. Another string of lucky days in a series that look like diamonds, if you squint a little. 

The inflatable unicorn comes from the Cliterary Salon: Beach Bodies show. We told stories about bodies and the way they give us the best and worst parts of our existence. I talked about Guy Branum and what it means to have your first time and how the queer kids in my high school taught the straight kids to get off without PiV sex. I hope that's a piece I can share with you soon. Another reader performed her own baptism with Flamin' Hot Cheetos and red wine. Oh, and we all performed in beachwear. If you haven't joined us for one of these shows yet, you are missing out. 

Charmed and charming: I visited my former mentor on his ranch in Elkins, Arkansas this week. He's an astronomer and he took us out into the bugsong of a warm night and showed us the swan, the dolphin, the jealous queen, the black road between the stars. He showed me the moons transiting the face of Jupiter and the pointed muzzle of a coyote watching us through the trees. I'm writing to you now from a hotel in Springfield, Missouri. Getting out my liberal bubble and badly missing the smell of the sea.

Some charms work on your whole life. Others only work when you're touching your home soil. Dracula was right. 

Here's a story I wrote about Elizabeth Barrett Browning in a heaven I dreamed up for writers. Here's a list of literary misogynist dystopias, ranked by how likely they are to come into being. I saw how close my own book was to the top and I'm still shuddering. Here's a triptych of encounters with a god who cannot be trusted. Here's the rundown of the best stuff I read in August, and some yelling about why I liked it. 

I went to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco to see the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood show and ran into Flora there. I stood before her a long time, trying to decide what I hope for in my next book cover. I'd love to see an artist's depiction of what my prettiest character would look like. But I imagine this cover will be like the first two in the Road to Nowhere series: figureless, ominous, beautiful in isolation. Still: behold Flora in all her glory. 
I am writing about witches. I am writing about my hometown. I am writing about the way people disappoint one another, even when there is love. I am flying home tomorrow. I am going to inflate that unicorn again. I'm going to do more dope shit and then write about it. I hope that's what you signed up for, because that's all I want to do until I die. 

and even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue but
hallelujah. 

It doesn't matter which you heard. Dracula was right. And the light in the words beats the sun, every time. 

Meg