moon_custafer | Reading

Hmm, let's see. I really liked Conspirituality's "Dems Ask: What Is a Man?" episode. In general they've been doing a lot of coverage of Masculinity Crisis stuff lately and this episode, which focuses on quite pathetic attempts from the less-right wing of the American Party to re-capture the young male vote, via...studies and focus groups.

Well, fuck.

You can look to the wonderful example of New York to see a good counter-example of how to do it right, though this episode dropped before Zohran Mamdani's inspiring victory. If I were a more conspiratorial thinker, I'd say that the less-right wing of the American Party loses on purpose, and you need look no farther than their attempts to sabotage Mamdani's campaign for evidence. At any rate, the analysis in this episode lines up with what actually happened—we don't need a Joe Rogan of the left, we need people who can speak to frustrations and channel popular anger, not just for young men but for all genders.

Actually the temperature crashed by a solid thirty degrees Fahrenheit and with any luck will stay this moderately cool and dampish until everyone has rehydrated. Or we could just skip the next heat dome entirely.

I had worked up an entire rant about the scaremongering of this article and especially its anti-intellectual characterization of Zohran Mamdani as automatically out of touch because his father teaches at Columbia and his mother has directed films in Hollywood as if he were a Cabot who talks only to God when both of these professions especially in these days of DEI demonization mean something very different without whiteness and then I discovered that the author's big shtick is that she "came out" as politically conservative while an undergraduate at Harvard, at which point her already tenuous right to slate anyone for attending Bowdoin fared poorly on the pot-to-kettle scale. Anyway,

spatch liked Monsoon Wedding (2001).

The Europeans (1979) turns out to have been the first foray of Merchant Ivory into costume drama and its modest budget gives it a slight, wonderful ghost-look of New England, nineteenth-century carriages on twentieth-century streets, the tarmac dirt-roaded over, telephone poles discreetly out of shot, the dry stone walls tumbledown in the picturesque rather than practically maintained day. I got such déjà vu from the Federal style of its historic houses—and the occasionally more modern construction of their neighbors—that I was reassured to see it actually had shot in Waltham, Concord, and Salem which I recognized from the red-bricked back side of the Customs House. Its autumn is the sugar-red drift of maple leaves, the pale punctuation of birches. Its actors have an indie air with their precisely characterful period clothes doing half the worldbuilding. Robin Ellis sports a moss-bronze corduroy coat and a waistcoat in pheasant paisleys I should like to bid for and a creditably mid-Atlantic accent, cast ironically on the colonial side of the plot of two sets of American cousins and their entanglement with a third, European set. I have not read its particular source novel by Henry James, but it has the light, sharp, not overly mannered observations, a sweet-sour bite in the chocolate box. In light of the setting, variations on "Simple Gifts" and "Shall We Gather at the River?" may have been unavoidable contributions to the score.

Because I had showed

spatch a clip of a trumpet played into Jell-O, my attempt to explain Chladni figures netted us a 1989 Christmas lecture by Charles Taylor, after which we went through Delia Derbyshire's "Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO" (1967), Belbury Poly's "Caermaen" (2004), and finally thanks to what must have been a very confused sidebar landed on Les Luthiers' "Rhapsody in Balls" (2009). Today has been generally breaking-down-tired, but during the part of the evening where I was still working on implementing a bagel for dinner, WERS had the decency to play the Dead Milkmen's "Punk Rock Girl" (1988).

Current Music: The Chats, "Smoko"

The temperature dropped outside. It's now in the 70s. As Breaking Bad put it - night and day outside today.

At work, I ran into a neighbor in the lobby of my building (it's all Crazy Org).

He saw me, first. Told me this was his last day - he was retiring. (I honestly thought he was retired. He is definitely older than me.) We pass all the time in the laundry room and elevator - he lives across the hall from me with his family. He has a dog, and a neurodivergent son, who I think has either Touretts or Ausbergers?

Apparently he was a legal investigator for one of the agencies in Crazy Org since roughly 1993. I was somewhat envious - it sounded more interesting than editing legal documents and financial analysis and negotiations. I'm admittedly bored and frustrated at the moment. It's making me cranky? Well that and struggling with sleep, lingering chest congestion, and brain fog.

Below is a photo of Crazy Org today, standing tall against a gray sky.

It was bound to happen - that I'd run into a neighbor as they are retiring, considering Crazy Org employs over 75,000 New Yorkers.

I took a walk at lunch - it was mild, pleasant even, and overcast - also the last day of school in New York, apparently, so not that many tourists wandering about mucking up the works. Or many bikes for that matter.

And I saw a wild turkey in Battery City Park. Breaking Bad and I decided that the turkey probably escaped from Staten Island via the Ferry. [ETA: Where the turkey came from was/is a joke. We've no clue. We were just joking that it escaped a farm in Staten Island and came by ferry. (Which didn't happen). And since the photo is horrible - no I did not approach the wild turkey.]

( bad photo of a turkey )

Other than that the day was slow. So slow, I worked on my novel, played with spreadsheets, and played on my phone. Art History Major is off to see her family in Ohio.

***

Some good news?

The Senate Parliamentarian managed to take a hatchet to the Big Shitty Bill. Apparently you can't just add everything you like to a reconciliation bill which is meant to balance the government's budget. It's basically an accounting bill - that gets quickly passed because it's needed to balance a budget. They tried to add a bunch of stuff that had zip to do with that to the bill, which is in violation of the Senate's rules.

Parliamentarian removes medicaid cuts from Reconciliation Big Beautiful Bill

Violations Continue to Mount on Big Beautiful Bill

As one commentator aptly put it - adding the things the Republicans did to the Bill would be akin to balancing your household budget and adding a fancy new car for yourself.

For those who have raised valid concern following the Parliamentarian rulings knocking out some of the worst aspects of the GOP’s budget bill, Thune has reiterated no overruling.

***

R.I.P Bill Moyers

"Legendary journalist Bill Moyers has died at age 91. Moyers was the former White House press secretary under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and leaves behind a distinguished legacy in American journalism. Over five decades, he became known for his in-depth interviews and thoughtful documentaries on programs such as Bill Moyers Journal and Now with Bill Moyers. A champion of public broadcasting, Moyers received more than 30 Emmy Awards, nine Peabody Awards, and the National Humanities Medal for his contributions to civic discourse. Rest in peace, Bill."

Hello, all, it's time for Thursday recs!

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

And don't even ask me about my email!

Also: Comicsrss got a cease and desist from Gocomics, so now all my gocomics feeds are borked. I should see if I can find those comics hosted somewhere else and get their RSS feeds, but ugh.

Also also: What to know about the COVID variant that may cause ‘razor blade’ sore throats

**********************

( Read more... )

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

**********

Link

He's the patron saint of gardeners, and also taxi drivers (unofficially). See, an early and popular cab stand was at Hôtel de Saint Fiacre in Paris, and the carriages themselves began to be called fiacres, and it just spiraled from there.

What makes this even stranger is that he's an Irish saint.

*********************

( Read more... )

Fic: Third Lifetime
Fandom: 度华年 | The Princess Royal (TV)
Rating: T, CNTW
Length: 1244
Summary: Su Rongqing gets another life and another chance. Although this time, he'll need a different strategy.

*

That I watched all forty episodes of this drama earlier in the year can only be ascribed to the fact that I spent most of the winter/early spring feeling absolutely rubbish. It starts out with the potential for an intriguing story with imperial princess Li Rong reborn as an 18 year old after being murdered by her ex-husband, or so she thinks, and determined to manage things better this time. Fortunately/unfortunately for these intentions, the ex-husband she had murdered as revenge has also returned to his youthful body, as has her other love interest, who has spent almost the past two decades as a eunuch. Alas, the potential is wasted in overly-complex and yet rather shallow plotting that doesn't add up very well, and an increasingly nauseating romance that balances the premise of having an ambitious and intelligent female lead who wants power and is obviously the best-suited for it of any of the main characters, rather poorly with the apparent need for her also to be Protected by a Man who, for all his claims of respect and admiration for her, is basically Jack Maynard in hanfu. The second male lead's former status as a eunuch feels rather symbolic. don't Nonetheless, I did watch to the end, and having done so had to write fic.

Also, the title is suddenly making me think that it would be very entertaining to see a cdrama based on the House of Windsor. A sort of period drama/fantasy remake of The Crown...

As far as musical biopics go, they tend to be more of a miss than a win in many cases, with the plus side that at least you, potential watcher, get to listen to some good music even if the script fails. There are exceptions, i.e. films where both the music is good and the film doesn’t feel like a visualized wikipedia entry, for example, Love & Mercy, which escapes the formula by picking two distinctly different and important eras of Brian Wilson’s life instead of his whole life, with 1960s Brian on the verge of creating his masterpiece and having a mental breakdown played by Paul Dano and 1980s Brian, in the power of a ruthless exploitative doctor but about to freed via encountering his second wife, by John Cusack. The performances are great, the different eras are poignantly commenting on each other, and even were Brian Wilson a fictional character, the film would be worth watching. If Love & Mercy wins for originality with the template, Walk the Line (about Johnny Cash) wins for doing the formula expertly, in fact so well it became endlessly copied and parodied thereafter. James Mangold, who directed Walk the Line to a lot of commercial and critical success back in the day, waited for near two decades before going near another musical biopic again, but he did last year, resulting in A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan, which courtesy of the Mouse channel I have now watched.

( You who are so good with words and at keeping things vague )

All in all: good, very good, though not great. But it’s the first film in a while where I absolutely want to have the soundtrack.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: On the train

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/25/trans-westminster-lobby-ehrc/

The organizers are estimating circa 900 people showed up, putting it on a par with the biggest LGBTQ+ lobbies ever (against Section 28).

Outstanding work from the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, who also organized the legal briefing for MPs in May:

https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/trans-legal-experts-warn-supreme-court-ruling-could-be-breaching-human-rights-in-parliamentary-briefing-483801/

You can support them and get the "Maybe I'm trans?" badges or just support them without badges:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/maybe-im-trans
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/solidarity-projects-campaigns-fund

Read Finding Hester by Erin Edwards, about the making of the musical Operation Mincemeat, the group of fans whose crowdsourced research discovered that the MI5 secretary identified as Hester Leggett in Ben Macintyre's nonfiction account of Operation Mincemeat (and subsequent adaptations, including the musical) was actually named Hester Leggatt, and her life story that they uncovered, as well as biographical details about the other real-life figures featured in the musical. (In one particularly charming note: Ewen Montagu's descendants are fans of the musical, with one of them actually participating in the fan Discord that hosted the #FindingHester research efforts.) This is a love letter to online fandom at its best - finding people to collaborate with on a passion project - and to archival research, and a delightful tribute to one of history's proverbial forgotten well-behaved women. ( Is it still a spoiler if it's real life? )

Made some progress in Caroline Fraser's Murderland, which continues to be less focused on serial killers of the 1970s Pacific Northwest than I had expected; instead, the most recent chapter I finished touched on Dune (which I've also been neglecting), the Vietnam War, and Fraser's childhood daydreams about killing her abusive father. So, yeah, still pretty grim and intense.

1. How do we overthrow a dictatorship?

Apparently by hiring a bunch of extremely smart constitutional law attorneys and judges who can give the dictatorship just enough rope to hang itself, while at the same time protecting the rest of us. It's highly more productive than how they overthrew the Nazi's in WWII, which didn't exactly end well for anyone - it resulted in an extremely high cost of human life - which we can all agree that we do not want to repeat at any point. [Note the Star Wars approach - we do not want. Star Trek yes, Star Wars no.]

I'm following a bunch of constitutional and immigration attorneys of FB, and they are amusing me to no end, also keeping my spirits up.

My favorite is Ann P. Mitchell - whose an attorney based out in California, and is quite logical. Also, she was at one point asking people for a humane way to get rid of katydids from her garden, which further endeared her to me.

Per Mitchell:
( The Government asks a Judge to put a Stay in the Kilmer Abrego-Garcia case - to basically save the federal government from itself - since it may suffer irreparable harm completely of its own making )

That's the long one, here's the gist: A federal judge in Tennessee just denied the government’s request to keep Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia locked up while it appeals his release. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. upheld the magistrate’s order to free Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month, while he awaits trial on human smuggling charges (fake charges cooked up by the Trump administration).

FB is finally paying me back for joining it back in 2008 to follow political issues and social justice. Who knew?

2. So, the Mayoral Primary race resulted in an upset, of sorts?

"This was supposed to be former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s fifth act, his triumphant return to New York politics after a long stint in the wilderness. Instead, New York City delivered an electoral shocker by choosing a socialist Muslim immigrant as its Democratic mayoral candidate, immediately making Zohran Mamdani the front-runner in this heavily Democratic city.

And it wasn’t even close. With 93 percent of the precincts reporting as of this morning, Mamdani leads Cuomo by over seven percentage points."

It was 44% to 38% this morning.
( commentary and concern over the evil Republican Candidate )

3. Now, I know why the heat is zapping me.

If you are on any of these medications - the heat will affect you more than most.

Heat affects everyone, but did you know some medications cause patients to have a higher intolerance to heat?

Be sure to increase hydration and decrease full exposure to sun if your medication is on the list. [I have three on the list - it's my high blood pressure medication - it means I'm intolerant to head now. Lovely.]

4. Big ~~Beautiful~~ Ugly Bill - the Budget Bill that the Trump Administration wants passed by July 4.

Per Anne P. Mitchell:

"Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has struck down the clause in Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' that tried to hamstring the courts from holding defendants (read as "Trump and others in his administration") in contempt. (Ironic as Trump clearly holds the courts in contempt.)
Remember when I told you that clause would never have passed constitutional muster anyways? (That's also incorporated in my pinned post.) Meaning that *had* it passed, the courts would have struck it down faster than you can say "nice try". But it's good that they won't have to deal with those shenanigans, as they already have their plates full with holding the rule of law against the onslaught that is the Trump administration.
Parliamentarian MacDonough held that the clause, along with some others, including withholding the already-approved funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the larger cuts to SNAP, violate the Byrd Rule. You see, budget reconciliation bills, such as the Big Beautiful Bill, only need a simple majority to be passed, which is *why* the BBB was introduced as a budget reconciliation bill.
BUT, the Byrd Rule says that any budget reconciliation bill must deal with, and *only* deal with, you know... *the budget*. No policy items dressed up as budgetary items allowed! Sneaking policy into a budget reconciliation bill so that the policy only needs a simple majority to be passed and enacted, rather than a 60+ vote majority of the full senate, is a no no. And so the Parliamentarian has told the Republican senators "No, no."

Senate Parlimentarian's No List - 12 Things Struck from the Big Beautiful Bill per the Hill

( excerpts )

Off to watch my soap. I'm trying to get my living room lower than 80 degrees and failing. I'm not sure if I need another A/C or if I need to get a new one. The one in the bedroom - is keeping the bedroom at whatever temperature I set it. So I may require two. But I'd rather not.

Oh well, the heat wave is breaking tomorrow. NYC is not set up for blistering heat. It's used to milder temperatures - it's like London in that respect.

Returned from the optometrist's, I have nocturnal eyes and mirrorshades. When

spatch informed me that Zohran Mamdani is Mira Nair's kid, I remarked that it was a little like discovering that Madhur Jaffrey the author of cookbooks and children's books is the actor who introduced Ismail Merchant to James Ivory. I feel I really should have seen this video coming.

Current Music: Mr. Cardamom, "Nani (feat. Madhur Jaffrey)"

Ooof, I do not know how people do it who do this for early voting as well!

Just finished: A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher. I ended up really loving this one. Reading all these award-nominated books has been a fascinating experience tbh, because (with a few notable exceptions) it's all pretty high-quality, but it's just off enough from what I'd normally read that I get to speculate about where my taste deviates from other people's. Also, because this has the worst book cover I've seen in awhile—to be clear, I've seen three covers for this and they all suck—but imo is much better than the other things I've read by her so far.

Anyway, as to the actual content. This is a dark retelling of the Grimm Brothers' "Goose Girl," which I had never heard of before, and which is already quite dark, seeing as it features the severed head of a murdered horse. It actually doesn't have much to do with the original story beyond involving a horse, a flock of geese, and some unfortunate marriage proposals. But the fairy tale frame and vaguely Regency setting is one of its strengths—Kingfisher is free to do a lot of interesting character work within that structure.

Case in point: Hester. I mentioned that the story was about Cordelia and her mother Evangeline, the aforementioned sorceress, but Cordelia is really a decoy protagonist, and the heroine of the story is Hester, the sister of the man that Evangeline intends to marry. Hester is 51 with a bad knee and a cane and has refused marriage to the man she's loved for years because she values her independence. She plays cards with a group of other badass middle-aged ladies and takes zero shit. I love her. The story is really the story of solidarity between women, from Hester and her friends, to Cordelia pushing back in any way she can against her mother's abuse and expectations of marriage for her, to the maids and servants of the household. Also it has the right level of darkness for something like this—there was a genuine sense of peril that I haven't seen in a lot of the horror-adjacent works I've read lately.

Currently reading: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I think (unless the last book I have to read is amazing), this is going to end up being a Tchaikovsky-vs-Tchaikovsky decision for me with the Hugos. So far this one is edging out Service Model on concept alone, but I'm under halfway through, so we'll see. It's about a dissident scientist exiled to one of three newly discovered exoplanets, called Kiln. Earth is ruled by the Mandate, which believes in strict social control and scientific orthodoxy. Arton is an unreliable first-person narrator, so while he initially seems to have been exiled for following the scientific method to is logical conclusions, he quickly reveals that no, he was also a political revolutionary.

The journey from Earth to Kiln takes 30 years and is one-way for the prisoners sent to work there, which means that the Mandate is able to tightly control information about it—namely, that there are alien ruins on the planet, so not only does it have life, but it had at least at one point sentient life. Also, the life that they do find is Jeff Vandermeer-level fucked—each organism is made up of a bunch of other organisms that live in parasitic relationships, making taxonomy a nightmare. Arton occupies a difficult position where, as a biologist, he has a certain level of privilege amongst the prisoners and is exposed to less danger than most, but also he's linked up with the more revolutionary elements and has nothing to lose but a nasty death by rebelling.

Anyway, this is really cool and I'm into it.

but I still wasn't prepared to pop into a pizza shop on my lunch break only to find that it was cooler in the pizzeria than the outside. If that's not terrifying I don't know what is.

102 °F, said the forecast this afternoon. 106 °F, said the car when I got into it. I have no difficulty believing it felt like 109 °F. The sun clanged. The electric grid of the Boston metro area was not designed to run this many air conditioners at once.

I followed Ally Wilkes from her short fiction into her debut novel All the White Spaces (2022) and I mean it as a recommendation when I say that I came for the queer polar horror and stayed for the bildungsroman. Externally, it follows the disintegration of an ill-fated Antarctic expedition over the austral year of 1920 as it comes under the traditional strains of weather, misfortune, the supernatural, mistrust. Internally, it follows the discovery of its seventeen-year-old trans stowaway that masculinity comes in more flavors than the imperial ideal he has construed from war cemeteries and boy's own magazines, that he can even invent the kind of man he wants to be instead of fitting himself fossil-cast into a lost shape. No one in the novel describes their identity off the cutting edge of the twenty-first century; the narrative resists an obvious romantic pairing in favor of one of the less conventional nonsexual alliances I enjoy so much. I am predictably a partisan of the expedition's chief scientific officer, whose conscientious objection during the still-raw war casts him as a coward on a good day, a fifth columnist on a bad, and makes no effort to make himself liked either way. It has great ice and dark and queerness and since I deal with heat waves arctically, I am pleased to report that it holds up to re-read.

Kevin Adams' A Crossword War (2018) is a folk album about Bletchley Park, a thing I appreciate existing.

Current Music: Alabaster DePlume, "Who Is a Fool"

The heat (it was 101 degrees today, and tonight has not dipped past 95 degrees with a high barometric pressure, and moderate air quality) - resulted in a sick nauseous headache by the time I got home, which is still lurking in the background. I felt dizzy, wiped out and off. Most likely the hangers on from my bout with COVID last week.

So instead of walking the fifteen to twenty blocks to the voting place, which is about a twenty minute walk in the heat, not helped by my sciatic nerve, I copped out. I feel really bad about it. But it is what it is. It's not like I have anyone I really want to vote for anyhow. I really did not like any of the people running. I'd landed on one, but I wasn't happy with the choice. I'll vote in the actual election - possibly by mail. This has taught me to try mail in voting from now on.

Heat and menopausal bodies are not mixy things. I also think my blood pressure was a bit off. I took the additional meds, it's seems to have leveled off a little now.

21. What is your favourite salad dressing?

Right now, it's usually lemon juice. I rarely use it. But if I do use it - I live olive oil and vingear, or Cesar Salad Dressing (with anchovies flavoring it).

22. Have you owned an aquarium or had a pond in your garden/backyard?

Don't have a backyard. So no on the pond. Parents had a lagoon for a bit.
And brother has a pond in his backyard, but not sure that counts? I owned an aquarium when I was a child - but not since then, too high maintenance.

23. Where is your favourite holiday destination – have you been more than once?

Don't really have one? I grew up with the view that you go somewhere different every year. I go to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina (it's a nice island off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, that has sandy beaches, and is large enough to have a town, etc. It's not a small island.) But I only go to visit my mother, previously my parents, whom I'm exceedingly close to.

24. In 1911 French couturier Paul Poiret held his infamous 'The 1002nd Night' costume ball to launch his “Parfums de Rosine", the first signature scent linked to a design house. Have you a favourite scent?

I am allergic to most perfumes, unfortunately. They give me headaches. But I do like Lavender - doesn't bother me. (Note - most people with scent allergies or who are sensitive to perfume, have no problems with lavender for some reason or other). I also like lemon or citrus, euclyaptus, and pine.

Cinnamon now makes me sneeze. And Vanilla can make me queasy at times, weirdly.

I adore the scent of coffee.

***

More on what comforts me?

Songs or musicians that I find comforting?

* Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan, The Magnetic Stripes, Sand Sheff, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, Sondheim's Into the Woods, The Stones, David Bowie, Janis Ian, Suzanne Vega, Joan Jett and the Runaways/ also that other band - basically anything with Joan Jett, Brenda Carlyle, the Indigo Girls,
and Pink Floyd

Mostly Folk and Classic Rock, also classical music - anything by Yo Yo Ma, or John Williams movie themes. I have a fondness for Gershwin and Jazz. Jazz reminds me of my Dad, who adored it, that and Frank Sinatra.

**

Smartbitches tempted me to buy another couple of books on Kindle, both were a $1.99. Went to get the first one, Hench, only to discover I'd already purchased it a year ago and forgotten about it. At least Amazon will inform me, other places aren't as considerate.

***

A picture of the fountain outside my workplace. It's finally working. No, no one was climbing into it. They can't without hurting the flowers. It's not a swimming fountain.

People were threatening to open up fire hydrants today - which is illegal. The city parks and the city has fountains folks can play in.

cover art for THE ATLAS OF ANYWHERE, showing a cool, misty river valley with waterfalls pouring down its slopes

Well over a decade ago, I first had the idea of reprinting my short fiction in little collections themed around subgenres. When I sat down to sort through my existing stories, I found they fell fairly neatly into six buckets, each at or approaching roughly the cumulative size of a novella: secondary-world fantasy, historical fantasy, contemporary fantasy, stories based on folktales and myths, stories based on folksongs, and stories set in the Nine Lands.

Five of those six collections have been published so far: Maps to Nowhere, Ars Historica, Down a Street That Wasn't There, A Breviary of Fire, and The Nine Lands. The sixth is coming out in September, but it's not surprising, given the balance of what I write, that secondary-world fantasy has lapped the rest of the pack -- more than once, actually, since The Nine Lands is also of that type (just all in a single world), and also my Driftwood stories hived off to become their own book.

So yes: as the title and the cover design suggest, The Atlas of Anywhere is a follow-on to Maps to Nowhere! Being short fiction collections, they need not be read in publication order; although a few settings repeat (both of them have a Lady Trent story inside, for example), none of the stories are direct sequels that require you to have read what came before. At the moment it's only out in ebook; that is for the completely shameless reason that replacing the cover for the print edition later on would cost me money, and I have my fingers crossed that in about two months it will say "Hugo Award-winning poem" rather than just "Hugo Award-nominated." ("A War of Words" is reprinted in here: my first instance of putting poetry into one of these collections!) But you can get it from the publisher, Book View Cafe; from Apple Books; from Barnes & Noble; from Google Play; from Kobo; from Indigo; or, if you must, from Amazon in the UK or in the US (that last is an affiliate link, but I value sending readers to other retailers more than I do the tiny commission I get).

Now, to write more stories, so I can put out another collection later!

The Big Bundle of Queer Awesomeness is 100 books for $100 - you can also scroll down on this page for the smaller bundles, sorted by genre.

Itch.io gives authors a larger portion of the royalties, which is why I've been giving them some promotion. My lesbian erotica reprint collection, "Spicy Sapphic Treats," is in the Contemporary and Historical bundle as well as the big one.

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Page Summary

sabotabby - podcast friday
sovay - It's two in the afternoon and thirty-four degrees
shadowkat - On a quiet and somewhat dull Thursday...
soc_puppet in queerly_beloved - Thursday Recs
conuly - Welp, I've got way more tabs open than I can handle
conuly - The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
conuly - My mother's favorite saint probably was St. Fiacre
nineveh_uk - Fic: Third Lifetime (The Princess Royal)
selenak - Film Review: A Complete Unknown
rydra_wong - Looks like the mass lobby got NUMBERS \o/
troisoiseaux - Reading Wednesday
shadowkat - How do we overthrow a dictatorship? With a lot of lawyers...not sure about getting rid of heat
sovay - Don't know me now, then you'll never know me later
conuly - Came home and passed out
sabotabby - Reading Wednesday
conuly - The air today went from "walking around in soup" to "walking around in an oven"
sovay - Do you believe a person should be some kind of answer?
shadowkat - More June Questions...and memage
swan_tower - New collection: The Atlas of Anywhere!
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Stuff and Moonshine

Reading

podcast friday

It's two in the afternoon and thirty-four degrees

On a quiet and somewhat dull Thursday...

Thursday Recs

Welp, I've got way more tabs open than I can handle

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

My mother's favorite saint probably was St. Fiacre

Fic: Third Lifetime (The Princess Royal)

Film Review: A Complete Unknown

Looks like the mass lobby got NUMBERS \o/

Reading Wednesday

How do we overthrow a dictatorship? With a lot of lawyers...not sure about getting rid of heat

Don't know me now, then you'll never know me later

Came home and passed out

Reading Wednesday

The air today went from "walking around in soup" to "walking around in an oven"

Do you believe a person should be some kind of answer?

More June Questions...and memage

New collection: The Atlas of Anywhere!

Pride Book Bundles

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June 2025

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