Pumpkin Spice Flavored Rage

It's been a month of collectively re-processing old traumas and offering to hold other people's hurt and asking them to hold mine. There were a couple of days at the end of September that seemed to go on for years. October is always my favorite, and as it begins I am trying to switch gears to the fun kind of screaming and the clanking of chains that don't hold any mortal bodies down. The best I can manage so far is a sweet, pumpkin spice flavored rage. So let's go with it. 

The best thing I read this month was Kiersten White's monster retelling, "The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein." It's quite something to impose a woman's point of view into a woman's tale of the hubris and cruelty of men, and to use it as a vehicle to talk about the survival mechanisms that are native to a woman's experience. It's a conversion of an inversion and it swaps (as the ill-fated doctor insisted) the positive and negative charges on this story. It's a riveting book in its own right, and builds beautifully on the legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, to whom the volume is dedicated. Big goth mood. 

I read a smattering of good fiction and essays this month, as I always do. I have skimmed the cream off it for you here.

I also got to see Colette, the Keira Knightly vehicle about the eponymous infamous bisexual French author and her editor/husband. Despite the star power, the film is only showing in limited release so it may take a little tracking down for you to see it. However, it is most worth the search. The script handles the marital relationship quite fairly, and takes some pains to properly contextualize queer and trans people in history. If you do go, pay close attention to the use of reflections in the cinematography, the way the focus always shifts to Colette no matter what the framing, and the way she is always dressed in black and white like a written page. It's a gorgeous film, and every writer should see it. 

The cover for my third published novel, The Book of Flora has been revealed (as you can see up top.) I am riotously pleased with the art for this one. I love the way it echoes the rest of the series, while also being very different. I think it reflects Flora's own journey, the increasing queerness of the narrative, as well as the way the road goes on and on, even when it becomes a river. I can't wait for you all to meet her. You can pre-order now, or wait until April when I start telling everyone I see to buy my book. 

I have some fun events coming up in October. I'll be at Archon in St. Louis from the 12th to the 15th. I'm performing at Literary Death Match on the 17th, as part of the San Francisco LitQuake. Cliterary Salon will have its last secret speakeasy show on the 19th, and you are absolutely invited. If funds are a problem, slide into my DMs and I will put you on the list. The speakeasy space has been really good to us and we're sorry to lose it, but we're very excited about our November show and being in a new spot with fewer secrets and better accessibility. Can't wait to see you there!

Finally, I have decided that it is time to launch a Patreon. I'm offering stories once a month, writing advice, and some other perks that might interest folks. I don't know how this will go. I hope some people read my work or listen to my recordings there and find that it was worth a dollar. I have some stories that I won't get to tell any other way. This month's offering is a story of rape and revenge. It seemed fitting. 

It fits our screaming times. It fits the feminist, fall-scented rage I keep picking up on the streets. It fits the witch-hunters who think themselves the hunted. It fits the ghosts who don't sleep, who wear out their shrouds, who shriek forever in a frequency that the men who run this country have got permanently tuned out.

Here's to a loud October, full of witches who go steadfast to the pyre. Full of ghosts using the human megaphone so that we do not forget. Full of stories that don't just scare us, but hold within them the instructions on how to make it out of this haunted house in which we live. 

With a shadow of blood on the moon, 

Meg