Risa's End-of-Summer Bash
A quick update, another 'AI doesn't work' story, & triple the puppies
Hello Hey Happy Friday
It’s been QUITE a time over here at Killerpuppytails HQ. August started with an amazing writing retreat, but then took a turn with some family health scares. The health scares are better, but still require some monitoring, and that’s why this newsletter is late.
Sorry, all. You get extra puppyness this month.
Writing News
I don’t have any short story publication news, but I still have some updates.
First and most important - the writing retreat! Folks, if you ever get a chance to have a writing retreat with your writing group, DO IT. I roadtripped to Chicago, driving 12 hrs to to meet up with all of the folks I’d been writing with for 5 years. I had such an amazing time. It wasn’t what I expected… it was better. And since I can’t go to most of the conferences out there, it really filled my creative well to be with people I utterly trusted, creatively. I highly recommend it.
Second, earlier this month I set a goal to finish the 1st draft of the next book in the Nora Shear Descendants series, No Sky Like Midnight, by 8/23. I specifically set it for that date thinking that I’d miss that deadline & could use the following week to finish, but I actually made it! :cheers and dancing: I mean, it’s a very lacy (vs drafty) draft, but the basics are covered, end to end. Now I get to do the fun work of filling out all the necessary foreshadowing.
I’m going to be writing a bit about this process in my first Nora Shear newsletter, which I’ll be sending out on Aug 31st!
Finally, I’ve been working on updating my Patreon and my website, and that leads me to…
A Ridiculous AI story
I was searching for an old review of my story “The First Promise We Break” for the purposes of writing a ‘Story Behind The Story’ for my Patreon. I use Brave as one of my browsers because they’re committed to not tracking users, and originally I also chose it because they don’t use AI.
But unfortunately, they have JUST started to use AI in their browser-native search, so this weird thing came up:
(If you somehow can’t see the alt-text, here, I’ve replicated the text below.1)
Most of the content in the AI summary is meh. (I mean, aside from misspelling Erao’s name.) I see why someone would get these themes and ideas from the reviews out there that missed some stuff.
But a Hugo award nom?? HARDLY.
It took me a while to figure it out, & it turns out someone out there just added me to their Hugo ballot that year2 & posted about it. I’m not at all surprised that an AI couldn’t discern between someone listing what they added to their individual ballot and an actual, honest-to-goodness Hugo nom.
Yet again, the biggest eye-roll to AI.
Recommendations this week
I’ve been reading quite a lot, & have been itching to share with you.
Boys of the Fellwood by David R. Hoffman is devastating yet sweet. It did not go how I expected, and it is vastly the better for it. CW for body horror.
The Last Optician by Ann Calandro has aa fantastic dystopian perspective while also being a sharp insight into US health care.
Priya Sridhar’s How to Lose to Death is fierce and cathartic. CW for death & manipulation.
Finally, go pre-order The Upper Tentacle!
And, the Best Part
You get three puppies today, since I’m so late with this month’s newsletter.
With Love and Weirdness,
~Risa
The text of the image reads: "The First Promise We Break" is a short story by Risa Wolf published in Apex Magazine Issue 130 (March 2022). The narrative reimagines the myth of Cupid and Psyche, featuring a protagonist named Seula and a god named Era (Eros), exploring themes of racism, compromise, and the divergence between human and divine understandings of promises. Key details include: Themes: The story contrasts human intuition with divine expectations, centering on the first promise humans break when forced to act against their nature, specifically regarding trust and family. Plot: Seula, a princess, marries an invisible husband, Era, after being cursed to wed a beast. She breaks her promise to him by revealing her inability to see him due to pregnancy, leading to a series of trials imposed by gods to earn forgiveness and secure her child's place among them. Recognition: The story was nominated for a 2023 Hugo Award and received mixed reviews, with some critics noting it mixes fairy tales with mythology in ways that create tension between the genres. Author: Risa Wolf is a nonbinary writer whose work also appears in anthologies like 99 Fleeting Fantasies. ↩
Still an honor, though. An IMMENSE honor. ↩