Or, you know, a new journal. And some other things.
November is here.
The portion of Halloween decorations that we don’t keep out all year round have been tucked into their beds for the long wait until next October, and 2018 is starting to feel a bit creaky and stiff. She’s got leaves in her hair. Her fingers are icy. The whole place yawns toward winter, and dreams had within these walls now take place in underground museums and odd, subterranean banquet halls with platter after platter of mysterious delights carried in by snappily attired waitstaff who aren’t quite human. It’s a good time of year. We’re alive. Stories are making themselves known, demanding attention in the way that stories do.
In addition to writing lots of short fiction and constructing the skeleton of a new novel, in November I am preparing to do something I’ve never done before. I’ll soon launch a Patreon featuring the short, serialized science fiction and fantasy adventures of gastronomic critique columnist and speculative fiction bon vivant Astrid Ata, a character I enjoy writing about. My first Astrid Ata story was published by Daily Science Fiction, where it received a respectable 4.6 rocket dragons. I've written a few more of Astrid’s exploits since then. I hope you’ll visit my future Patreon to read "The Unusual Adventures of Astrid Ata, Gastronomic and Otherwise". Coming soon.
I can’t finish a First Journal Post Ever without mentioning Clarion West. It’s been three and a half months now since my return from Clarion West 2018, and every day I am struck by the number and variety of ways the place, the time, the experience changed me. I am delirious with both anguish and relief because I can never, ever go back. To that time. That place. Those people. That one, unique circle of faces. I hope to see them ringed around me again in different places, in times to come.
I’ll say more about Clarion West in future journal posts. The experience is a lot to process, and I find the memories difficult to coax down and wrestle into words.
I’ll get there.
Until December.