C.S.E. Cooney

First letter of the New Year. (Mirrored from my Substack Newsletter.)

The Burger Meme Personality Test

Dear Readers,

I will begin by upholding the shining beacon of mi esposo, Carlos Hernandez—YEA EVEN HE OF SAL AND GABI FAME! HE OF MARVEL AND DISNEY AND THE ASSIMILATED CUBAN’S GUIDE TO QUANTUM SANTERIA—who currently has a bonkers, hilarious game currently entered into the “Interactive Fiction Short Games Showcase 2025.”

It’s called “The Burger Meme Personality Test.” It’s a satire.

You can play it here on itch.io and rate it on the showcase here!

So far my favorite responses to his game are “I think it was designed by three Harvard Lampoon students in a trenchcoat.” And “LMAO what did I just play?”

You can play—AND RATE!—this game—AND OTHERS—at the links above! Go! Play! Have fun!

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“body my house
my horse my hound”

Without, the world is afire.

Within, we strive to remain engaged, stay informed, do our work, help where we can.

I’m still getting back into work habits that hosting for almost a month of (wonderful) holiday house guests (I include my birthday as the first holiday) had interrupted.

I work on my novel. I read books to blurb, and also for pleasure (when I can!). I narrate audiobooks when the work comes my way. I love it all.

I had been taking voice lessons the past two years with Kiara Duran of Sing by Feel. She’s given me so many incredible tools to enrich this curious instrument of mine! So many joyful noises we make. So much breathing into the strange sea creature of our secret selves. I’m on pause for the moment, but I love taking all I was taught and trying to apply it, not just to singing, but being in the world.

But also to singing. Trying to sing old songs in new ways.

What does the year look like from the vantage of January?

Of note: I am officiating two weddings, one in May, one in December. (It’s like a TROPE!)

I have a book due in August—the third of the Saint Death trilogy. The completion of eighteen (?!) years’ work.

BEST! Some of our darling, erstwhile Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours—Amal and Caitlyn!—BOTH have books coming out!

Amal El-Mohtar, C. S. E. Cooney, and Caitlyn Paxson: an iteration of the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours at Ottawa’s The Mercury Lounge in 2014

The books? Amal’s collection Seasons of Glass and Iron from Tor, and Caitlyn’s A Widow’s Charm. I’m gonna hop over to Canada and be Caitlyn’s conversation partner for some of her DEBUT TOUR!

I think Amal will be traveling abroad at the time, and her US tour is mostly West Coast this year, but we live in hope of crossing paths at some point. FaceTime must sustain us!

Oh, and…

We are taking Negocios Infernales on tour!

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The INFERNAL TOUR!

Don’t know about Negocios Infernales?

It’s diceless, GM-less collaborative roleplaying game! The tagline: “The Spanish Inquisition… INTERRUPTED by aliens!”

You can find it at Outland Entertainment: https://outlandentertainment.com/products/negocios-infernales?variant=43864282497160

Or… you COULD bat your eyes at your local game store and ask THEM to carry it?

Would you? Would you, please?

Carlos and I are hoping to make a lot of mini-road trips this year on our Infernal Tour, traveling to places where we have gamer friends who have even MORE gamer friends, and ALSO hopefully a good relationship with their local game stores.

We’d love to RUN Negocios Infernales for them (for YOU? Potentially?) as their (YOUR?) sort of Living Rulebook

In Negocios Infernales, there’s no GM, as the game is collaborative, but we can guide people through their initial play. And, hopefully, get local game stores excited to carry it and talk about it!

I’m taking a break from cons this year—with the exception of the GenCon Writers Symposium. We’ll be doing writing SFF panels by day, running Negocios Infernales by night.

Therefore, the Midwest portion of our Infernal Tour will probably both precede and follow GenCon. It’ll probably consist of something in that general Indiana area, as well as the Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul areas, where more community (and game stores!) abound!

Plans are still fluid. If you’re in those areas, and love to game, let’s talk!

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Falling in Love with Reading, Again and Again

Currently reading: an arc of Rym Kechacha’s The Apple and the Pearl, out at the beginning of next month from Penguin Random House.

I am so moved by it! The time signature of it—an interwoven character-and-mood pace that builds the plot out of many small tensions and drives!

And the weird, interstitial magic of a road-world, a train-track-world, that picaresque place between the Earth we know and all the realms we don’t.

And the Crow! And the ghosts! And the hungry Fae! The smell of peaches…

And the deep-dive into each character so you think THEY’RE the protagonist—and they are! It’s a TRUE ensemble piece!

And the whole phantasmagorical MIASMA of its ineffable ambience.

This book is INFUSED. Like HBO’s Carnival meets The Night Circus meets Something Wicked This Way Comes, but like none of those. Like nothing else!

I’ve also just finished Haralambi Markov’s The Language of Knives and other Bodily Ruins, forthcoming from our beloved Mythic Delirium.

Cover reveal is TBA! (Publisher Mike Allen cheated and showed me early though. I know. I’m SO LUCKY.) I do have my blurb I wrote for it, and that is this:

“Haunted and horny, melancholy and mysterious, Haralambi Markov’s The Language of Knives and Other Bodily Ruins is occasionally like being flayed on the inside of your eyelids, but in a good way. So weird. So queer. So nauseating. And so, so beautiful.”

And so, with that, I leave you, friends—

Yours Truly,

C. S. E. Cooney