Now we're on buttondown!
Hi friends,
Same newsletter new host - now on buttondown. I was able to import my subscribers and even old posts, so hopefully this will be seamless for you and easy to keep going in the future.
I did not mean to go so long since the last letter, but this winter sure has been a lot, huh?
In this letter let's have some poems. For music, something quiet and chill, say "Happiness" by errnois. If you want more ambience, I've been enjoying Blue Turtle's videos on YouTube.
By me:
New, old, and upcoming - I have sold another poem already this year, and a short story that sold last year is nearing publication, so more to come as well.
This week I have a poem in Strange Horizons. "You Are Entitled To Your Pain" is for everyone gaslit out of complicated reality into pleasantness for others' sake.
This is not my first publication with SH and conveniently they list all works by author, so if you want to find "When you read this debris" (short unsettling poem) from last year, or "Perihelion" (a scifi queer romance poem) from 2016, or short story "Renovation of a Finite Apartment" from 2020, or the podcast episodes that included some of these, you can!
Last fall my disability-surrealist poem "Night Tides" was published in the (offline) local lit mag ZigZag and it will be going up on my Patreon in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out. (Most recently my patrons got to see the photos from my aerial barn shoot last fall!)
It's been a year since I released my zine What Cannot Be Held and it is if anything more relevant than ever. I am heartbroken and enraged and frightened by the world; I am overwhelmed and depressed. We deserve a livable planet; we deserve safeguards against recurring pandemic infections; Palestine deserves to be free; trans kids deserve to be cherished, and to grow up. You deserve to be free, you deserve to be safe, you deserve to be cherished.
By others:
A few things from recent bookmarks. I can't remember when I last did a reading roundup so there may be duplicates. Oh well!
"Speaking Tree", Joy Harjo, arboreal heartache
"The Creature from the Black Lagoon is Your Father", Brandon O'Brien, in Strange Horizon's Caribbean SFF special issue, a thorny one on monsterhood, masculinity, and changing generational patterns
"The Magician's Foundling", Angel Leal (we're in the same writing group!), a tender choice of family
"How a Xenomorph Knows", Annika Barranti Klein, rather whimsical space biking lesbians
"Some Pointers on Dating a Were-Hare", Laura Theis, exactly what it says in its title, and very resonant as a flight-freeze creature
I think I'll call it here. I seem to run out of words quickly lately. Next month maybe I'll tangle with photos again, embedding on the new platform - for now if you want quilt or dance or garden updates (since it's all growing very very early...) your best bet is instagram. I recently posted my finished Passacaglia top, and various day to day photos go in my stories.
Onward and ongoing,
toby