October 2023 Dispatch

In-person book signings, Kickstarter, con appearances, and more!

It’s spooky season again! Hope that most of you are getting the cooler temps and bright foliage and tasty treats that come with fall. Here we actually had rain one morning and my run was much wetter than usual. There will come a day in the not too distant future when it’s raining too hard to run—but that day is not yet here.

Anyway, I had a productive September, getting some feedback on the current draft of the second Wolftown book and a clear idea of where the revisions need to go. I was totally going to start on those revisions, but then I had the idea that I needed to know a character’s backstory better, so now I’m writing a short story in advance of a revision. It’s necessary and not just procrastination.

Also, if you checked out Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” essay from Wired that I linked to last month, there’s a video of a speech he gave at DEFCon in which he explains the systemic factors that lead to it, and proposes changes that could help solve it for the future. I found it a really interesting listen, and I think keeping up on those policy changes is something that even we who live in progressive areas should do and should contact our representatives about. Usually when people say “call your representatives” about progressive issues, I don’t bother because I live in urban California and my reps are all already on board with those issues. But for things like “break up Meta and Google,” it’s likely that they may not be, so it’s worth calling them. Did you know there are multiple ongoing attempts to do that?

All right COOL STUFF TIME. Kit has been working overtime to get lots of publicity in advance of the Price of Thorns launch (November 14!). If you’re an advance reader, thank you! Your review will help a lot.

We’ve arranged for two in-person book signings. One in Salt Lake City, UT on Saturday, November 4 (technically ahead of the publication date but we’ll have books there) at Under the Umbrella Bookstore from 1-3 pm local time, and the other at Books Inc in Mountain View, CA on November 16 (Thursday) from 7-9 pm local time. If you’re local to either one, we hope to see you there!

I’ll also be at BLFC at the end of the month and I’m doing some panels there. Monday at 10 am there’s a Sneak Peek into The Price of Thorns, Wednesday at 11 there’s a Historical Fiction panel, and Wednesday at 3 there’s a Novel Writing panel and Q & A. If you’ll be at the con, swing by and say hi! We don’t have a dealer table there to sell books but we are trying to see if we can mooch off someone’s space…

And I’m confirmed for MFF as well. I’ll be at the FurPlanet table helping out and signing books, so I hope to say hi to somewhere between 1 and 13,000 of you that weekend!

Lastly, we’ll be launching a Kickstarter in the coming month or so to help fund the audiobook, among other things. We’re still hammering out details but keep an ear perked for that!

Books:

Audiobooks: Winter Games is done and available now! Check it out. We’re very happy with this new recording and hope you’ll enjoy rediscovering that old title. As Kit read through it, he kept coming back to me with little bits we’d both forgotten about and enjoyed remembering.

Several years back I sold a story to Lightspeed for their Queers Destroy Science Fiction anthology, and I just today learned that there’s an audiobook of it out! So cool. No idea who narrates my story, but it’s a good collection of queer stories, so check it out!

As for the others: We are working on getting The Mysterious Affair of Giles and Titles and Love Match 2 done and available to you. All three have been recorded and are now under our review to send back to the narrators for minor corrections. And we are working on a Price of Thorns audiobook! It looks like it won’t be at the print release date, but maybe in December or January. This is partly what we’ll be trying to fund with the Kickstarter.

Return From Divalia is available everywhere now. If you have read and liked it, writing a review is one of the most helpful things you can do for it, and it’s free! (It doesn’t have to be on Amazon, but that’s still where most people go for their books.)

Other upcoming releases:

The Price of Thorns: Scheduled for November 2023, some pre-release copies available at conventions, pre-order and review at Amazon. In a fantasy world where stories are woven into the fabric of magic and life, Nivvy the thief is hired by a mysterious woman, and this job will change his life in ways he could never have anticipated.

Squeak Thief: Complete but not scheduled yet, maybe early 2024. A rich mouse hires a fox thief to steal from his own family, but the job quickly spirals out of control.

In progress: Robin Hood fanfic and Ty Game sequel (on Patreon), Wolftown 2, horror novel, untitled fantasy world project.

Streaming stuff:

I’m A Virgo (Amazon Prime): Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You) has crafted another wild, weird, funny, progressive and provocative show in this seven-episode gem of a series. It has a real heart to it and was a joy to watch, and I would just be happy if everyone listened to the final ten minutes or so of it, but if you did that you’d be missing out on some fantastic satire, some hot sex, and some pretty funny gags. Highly recommend this.

Physical (Apple+): The third and final season finds Sheila battling her outer inner demons once again, this time in the form of a competitor in the exercise arena. It’s another wonderful cringefest as she fucks up several times on the way to doing the right thing, but the series finale is pretty great and I do love the series overall.

Columbo (Peacock): Oof, we’re into the new run of Columbos in the late 80s/early 90s, and these feel like soap opera episodes that Peter Falk happened to wander into. Sometimes they make admirable efforts to subvert the formula, but that doesn’t really ever pan out. What does work (mostly) is bringing back old stars like Patrick McGoohan and executing the old formula well.

CODA (Apple+): I watched this again with my family and I’m even more impressed at how it balances several stories around the central character of Ruby, a high school girl who’s the only hearing person in her family. When she takes up choir—a hobby her family can’t appreciate—and neglects her part of the family business, things get tense. But that’s just the main storyline and it’s explored in several facets. Her deaf family feels real and so well-realized that they’re a joy in every scene. And also Ruby can flat-out sing.

We’re watching Only Murders in the Building season 3, but I’ll hold off on reviewing that until we’re done. Loving it, though.

Happy Halloween everyone! See you at BLFC!