Liner Notes #20: Preparation
We are now ten—TEN?! WHAT—days from the launch of The Memory Hunters, and boy, I shouldn’t have done the math because that activated a fight-or-flight reaction in me. I can’t believe it’s in ten days. I don’t even have a launch outfit yet! I’ve got to lock myself in the studio and sew like a demon.
First things first: Here’s my tour schedule. I’m calling this the Southeast Tour because I’ll be other places later in the year to promote this book. Behold!
Registration link to the Charis event with L, whose novella from Neon Hemlock, The Dead Withheld, just dropped: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-memory-hunters-mia-tsai-in-conversation-with-l-d-lewis-tickets-1384294033719?msockid=2595b45d1c0460872666a7d81d1361fe
Registration link to the virtual event with Gabriella, who is an absolute delight and you should buy her books: https://loyaltybookstores.com/bubaandtsai
(Check out L’s novella here: https://www.neonhemlock.com/books/the-dead-withheld And preorder her novel out next year with Saga, Year of the Mer! Y’all like mermaids? L’s got mermaids. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Year-of-the-Mer/L-D-Lewis/9781668060957
Pick up book one of Gabriella’s Stormbringer Saga, Saints of Storm and Sorrow, then follow it up with Daughters of Flood and Fury! Smashing the colonizers never looked so good. https://loyaltybookstores.com/book/9781803367804
https://loyaltybookstores.com/book/9781803367828)
And if you’re a fan of Jenn Lyons’s books, you should grab them at the bookstore or library, of course. I’m particularly fond of The Sky on Fire (https://read-it-again.com/book/9781250342027) and I’m looking forward to Full Negative, her first fully indie project, a SPACE OPERA in a time when the only space opera we acknowledge is Star Wars. Do you like space opera and spies? Yes, you do. Support Jenn! Pick up Full Negative! https://full-negative-a-novel.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
My other appearances haven’t been put on a nice graphic yet (that’s on me, I am now the marketing/pub director of this campaign, and the short of it is that my publicist, Marty Cahill, who is the sweetest man and a big part of why I wanted to be at Erewhon in the first place, left Kensington this week) but I’ll list them here real quick.
Aug. 4 & 5: NVNR, Atlanta (I think this one is for booksellers only, but if you’re a bookseller and you’re going to NVNR, I will be there!)
Aug. 13-17: WorldCon, Seattle. But really the star of the show is
Aug. 14: ConCurrent Seattle. COME SEE US, it’s basically gonna be a sweet li’l party with some cool people geeking out about their specific subjects, plus masks are a must and we’ll have filters and a quiet space to just chill in and it’s free to attend and we’re only 285 USD away from funding!!! https://paypal.com/donate/?campaign_id=VF885NW7Y7KGY
Sept. 11-15: Armadillocon, Austin
Oct. 4: Futurescapes, virtual workshop. I’ll be teaching my Texas Hold ‘Em structure. Yes, it does bother me that there’s no option to make the apostrophe go the other way. https://futurescapes.ink/2025-fall-addons/p/craft-mia-tsai
Oct. 21-24: The Traveling SFF Festival with Yume Kitasei, Emily Jane, Elaine U. Cho, and JR Dawson
Oct. 21: New Haven, CT, at Possible Futures
Oct. 22: Northampton, MA, at Smith College
Oct. 23: Norwich, VT, at Norwich Bookstore
Oct. 24: Boston, MA, at Brookline Booksmith
I’m still hoping to get into the Decatur Book Festival and the Louisville Book Festival, but we’ll see. It’s a bunch of travel while also on deadline, and I have to juggle traveling with family stuff and the dayjob, but at least I’m not on the hook for IP work! This is me saying I didn’t get the IP gigs. Would have been nice because one book would have paid my rent for the year. Alas. Once I have more time, I’ll audition again. In the meanwhile, the scrounging for money continues.
In the last week, The Memory Hunters has gotten great reviews from Charlie Jane Anders at Washington Post and Christina Orlando at Reactor (Christina’s “this fuckin rules let’s gooooooo! [sic]” made me laugh and appreciate them even more). Apparently there was also a Library Journal review that was favorable to go with the Publishers Weekly review. The buzz is building at the right time.
Speaking of the book I was already speaking of, finished copies are here, and I’m not going to lie, I might have gotten a tiny bit emosh when I saw them for the first time. These are my first hardcovers, so it was a treat to hold one and discover for myself the details. The dust jacket is embossed and partially glossy, there’s interior art, and the cover itself is a beautiful mustard yellow with shiny red lettering.
If you come see me/preorder from Charis, you’ll get a signed custom bookplate and the Key and Vale character cards, and I’ll emboss a page of your choice! And I’ll personalize it if you want (some people don’t want personalizations and that’s perfectly fine; I don’t always want them either).
This mailing letter was supposed to be about preparation, and everything up until now was the preparation for the preparation, I guess. I’ve been in a state of prep since summer hit, what with traveling and learning and teaching. In June, I went down to Florida to help a friend prep for her own book; July so far has been spent partially in Pittsburgh at the Dalcroze workshop, which prepped me for teaching Dalcroze at the ASO earlier this week. And now I’m prepping for launch and trying my best to bend my brain toward my edits.
The thing about orchids is that they hang out for a while, months or years, and when they’re ready, they bloom. With some of them, you can tell they’re preparing—dendrobiums will often drop their leaves as they’re setting buds, then bloom off a naked cane. Sometimes, phalaenopses will drop their lowest leaf before a spike (their lowest leaf, not their topmost leaf. Phals belong to a class of orchids described as monopodial, as in they grow from one “foot” or stem, and healthy phals and vandas can and will drop their lowest leaf. If they start dropping top leaves, you’ve got a problem). But just as often, you water your plants day after day, and one day there’s a spike, and two weeks later, the plant is in full bloom and will stay that way for two months or so.
That dendrobium glomeratum in the header? That’s the first time it has ever bloomed for me in the, what, seven or more years I’ve had it. And it was a small bloom. The glomeratum can produce dozens of thickly clustered blooms on one cane, and I got, like, five total across two canes. I didn’t even notice it setting buds. It was nude one week. The next week, it had buds and I was in shock. I thought I hadn’t found the right conditions for it, but it adapted and showed me its gorgeous self. The leaves are described as, no joke, sparkly. Confirmed: They glitter in the sunshine.
My life feels like an orchid right now. So much is looming on the horizon: launch, tour, school (start date: July 31), ConCurrent, deadline, day job, moving, and probably things I haven’t anticipated (like spraining my ankle, or catching my first cold in at least a year, or car accidents). Things will bloom soon and with shocking suddenness and I just have to hold on and be open to things happening. This is the Dalcroze life philosophy in general, but it seems especially relevant now. Life is a series of quick reactions; life is improvisatory. Let’s settle into the pocket and groove.
Until next time. See ya on the B-side.
What I’ve been listening to:
K-Pop Demon Hunters. Who isn’t listening to this? Even my husband is playing “Golden” and bopping along.
Relatedly, because I’m an old K-pop fan, I went back to listen through H.O.T.’s first two albums. H.O.T. was basically the first idol group, so I feel I came in on the ground floor of all this. I was a Jae-won girly!
I also listened through everything K/DA has because Riot understands how to put a girl idol group together and “Pop/Stars” was a moment.
Discovered Altın Gün, a new-to-me band, as part of my virtual wanderings for the Music League group I’m in. They’re a Dutch-Turkish Anatolian folk rock/Turkish psychedelic rock band and they basically scratch three itches at once. If you love Khruangbin or Thai psychedelic rock, give Altın Gün a listen.
Speaking of bands I love, Polyrhythmics is FINALLY coming to Atlanta, so I picked up tickets to their show! Gonna have myself a grand time.
Picked up a CD of William Bolcom symphonic works. I thought his symphonic music would be closer to the works I was already familiar with (his rags, especially the “Graceful Ghost Rag”). Wow. Not even close. His symphonic works live more in the atonal and serial traditions.
A ton of Led Zeppelin in my quest to find another song for Vale.
Haven’t listened to it because it’s not out yet, but I’m getting my body ready. Kenna, now reintroducing himself as KNA, is dropping a new album after over ten years of being out of the spotlight. Can’t wait to see how he’s metamorphosized since Make Sure They See My Face.