I made this awhile ago, but I don’t know if I ever actually posted it. It’s just a little bit about each of the Twelve Gods from Quadiíb in the Saint Death Books.
I’ve recently been tangling with some of these gods (and ALSO a NEW one, from a DIFFERENT PANTHEON) in SAINT DEATH’S HERALD, which is so close to being done I can TASTE it
Anyway, I saw this on my desktop, and thought you might enjoy it. I’m in Brooklyn today, having my writing day at a friend’s house. WISH ME LUCK!
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I’ve donated a COZY NECROMANCY PACKAGE to the current Locus Magazine’s fundraiser. It’s sort of a collabration with two other amazing artists: a signed copy of my book SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER, a signed bookplate with art by Shannon Potratz and a SKULL MUG by Elizabeth Paxson of Skybird Arts!
This way you can have your necromancy AND DRINK IT TOO.
I LOVE LOCUS SO MUCH. It is one of the nexuses of our genre: for publishing news, community updates, reviews and more. Ogle my UNDEAD donation (AND SO MANY MORE) at Locus’s fundraiser==-and if you can, give what you can! OR SPREAD THE WORD!
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I will tell you something darling that happened first thing this morning. I’m in the bathroom, “performing my morning ablutions,” and Carlos comes to stand outside the door with music blasting.
He gets up earlier than I do, often to watch an hour of Contagious Laughter on Reddit and laugh his butt off. Like Beatrice he “hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked (him)self with laughing.”
But this morning he was watching a little video by the composer of the Baldur’s Gate 3 soundtrack: specifically, the really big Disney-villain-esque song during the Devil’s combat in Act III, House of Hope, called “Raphael’s Final Act.”
So many interesting things about the composition, not least of all the fine tradition of Sprechstimme, or speaking the tones in a song rather than singing them (my musician friend Mary told me, when the subject of singing devils came up in our collaboration a few months ago, that, in opera, the Devil never sings, because music is too beautiful, and he is always ugly; when his parts come, he only chants), and all kinds of other tidbits, but…
BUT! What you really have to know is this: it was 7:30 in the morning; I had just rolled out of bed; my eyes were still crusted over like a newborn puppy’s; and this song was full-out OPERA-EPIC, and playing at full blast.
And Carlos was standing outside the bathroom door, holding his laptop aloft in the air, trembling with the warm aliveness coffee, and playing the Devil’s song for me, because he thought I needed to hear it.
It was totally our “Say Anything” boombox moment, Carlos in the role of John Cusack.
Speaking of Carlos, this is happening this July:
My beloved shall is going to be one of this year’s GUESTS OF HONOR at CONvergence!!! They posted it on their Instragram today, so I wanted to share it with you. Let us know if you’ll be attending! It’s in Minneapolis! I can’t wait!
I’ve never been to a CONvergence before, but I’ve been in love with it ever since they had Amal El-Mohtar as GoH, and she glowed about the experience afterwards. It was her first time as GoH, and she said it really set the bar.
(And speaking of AMALFACE! She’s one of the Guests of Honor at READERCON this year! AAUGH I AM SO HAPPY! AAAAUGH JULY! IT IS SO FULL OF CONS AND FRIENDS! Which means… SO MANY FANCY DRESSES! We have bought fancy new luggage. Just today. Yes, yes. All our other luggage fell to pieces last year.)
Since Carlos and I are doing double-duty cons this year, both SFF writing cons AND gaming cons, I decided to give myself a break and not try to do programming at Convergence. My job, as I see it, is to follow Carlos around in FANCY FLOUNCY FUN FESTIVAL CLOTHES, and take ALL THE PICS of him being ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. What a load off.
But that reminds me: must fill out panel stuff for GenCon. Origins is coming up fast. Aaugh, wait, Cooney. Just pay attention to your novel deadline: WHICH IS TOMORROW. (But my editor’s giving me the weekend to do a bit of a spit polish on it, and read it out loud to Carlos and my mama, so that I can at least get some of the typos ironed out. But I’m TRYING to finish by tomorrow so I can TAKE THE WEEKEND to do that!)
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Here’s a StoryBundle for YOU! “The Twisted Folklore Histories StoryBundle!”
Here is the blog with all the relevant details ($5 for 4 books, $20 for all 12), which books are bonus, and so on. It is curated by none other than our own Mike Allen of Mythic Delirium!
I read Shadow Atlas in 2022 and thought it was so beautifully put together! I’ve read several Eugen Bacon stories, and loved every one. I’m gaga for anything Angela Slatter aka AG Slatter, as you probably know by now. And that ISOBEL YAP COLLECTION OMG.
And look–in addition to some of my books, there are my Mythic Delirium publishing buddies: Theodora Goss, Barbara Krasnoff, and Yukimi Ogawa! Also very excited to see Elwin’s collection! I mean! AMAZING STUFF!
HERE’S THE FULL LIST OF WHAT YOU’LL GET!
Chasing Whispers, Eugen Bacon (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas, Carina Bissett, Hilary Dodge and Joshua Viola, eds. (Hex Publishers)
Dark Breakers, C. S. E. Cooney (Mythic Delirium Books)
The Twice-Drowned Saint, C. S. E. Cooney (Mythic Delirium Books)
Dance on Saturday: Stories, Elwin Michael Cotman (Small Beer Press)
The Collected Enchantments, Theodora Goss (Mythic Delirium Books)
The History of Soul 2065, Barbara Krasnoff (Mythic Delirium Books)
Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn, eds. (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
Like Smoke, Like Light: Stories, Yukimi Ogawa (Mythic Delirium Books)
A Feast of Sorrows, Angela Slatter aka AG Slatter (Prime Books)
Blood Mountain: Stories, Brenda S. Tolian (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
Never Have I Ever: Stories, Isabel Yap (Small Beer Press)
Don’t forget to pick up your own Storybundle here: https://storybundle.com/folklore
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One: I have a new poem out at Uncanny Magazine. It is called “fowlskin.”
Some of you may remember last August, when I wrote about attending the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic’s free workshop called Everyday Magic Challenge. (I wrote about it here.)
Well, during that week, we met three times, one hour each, and Dr. Warman and Dr. Cleto would talk so lovingly and dazzlingly about fairy tales, feminism, power, beauty, poetry, fashion, and give us little challenges to sparkle up our days. One of those challenges led to the first draft of “fowlskin.”
Two: Serendipitously, the Good Doctoras of Carterhaugh (as I like to refer to them in my head) are hosting ANOTHER Everyday Magic Challenge NEXT WEEK.
And I just thought, if you needed some additional charm in your life, sign up and be NOURISHED. One week. Three challenges. It’s free, m’dudes.
Three: Oh, well, I have a secret, but it’s not my secret to tell. A friend of mine is getting such radically great news in their career life that it makes my stomach turn MORE CARTWHEELS every day! So that’s improving my mood all week. MAY ALL YOUR FRIENDS KNOW SUCH SUCCESS AFTER SUCH HARD WORK! AND YOU TOO!
Four: I’ve got to get back to novel writing. This was just my one-hour break. Keep wishing me luck, love, and ingenuity. And most of all… SPEED. Where’s my HASTEN SPELL when I need one???
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(Warning: Spoilers, darling. Also, mildly lurid. Read no further if you want neither.)
The Emperor
by C. S. E. Cooney
the emperor is slick as silk
vein-purple, exposed, ascended
the emperor is vulnerable, sinewy
he is unblinking, ready for me
the emperor knows he is beautiful
the emperor thinks I am beautiful
in this nowhere-sea of buoyant gravity
broken moons, osseous chips of divinity
where the emperor is, is starlight
when the emperor speaks, is velvet
when the emperor rises, I rise to meet him
lean in, caress him, he doesn’t expect me
what we share, you might share too
this connection: phrenic, electric
his manipulation, my capitulation
you yet may unravel, if you ask the right questions
it is a matter, only, of open-mindedness
it is a matter, just, of mind-wipèdness
it is a matter of splendor and predator teeth
of appendages, flexible and erotic
you who know–yes you–you know what I mean
how we sleep, and how we dream
how spent, how unrelenting, how consuming this thing
all in hushed secrecy, all-in consent
in secrecy, until our rotting curtain rips
and our spending outspills, the dream dispelled
no, do not turn away: distrustful, betrayed
the emperor could yet love us all
he could yet love us all
bodymindsoul
if only we just
let him
in
What I wrote later about this poem on Instagram:
Just posted this poem on my blog at csecooney.com, LOL. I put ONLY the title on the first page here, in case you’re not into spoilers, or, you know, the mildly naughty bits. I mean… IT’S A FAN POEM! FOR BALDUR’S GATE 3!!!
Swipe if you wanna.
Jeez, the last fan poem I wrote in love-letter form was after I read BEOWULF. I wrote “Love Song to Beowulf” because that book definitely fell into the THIS BOOK IS SO HOT I HAVE TO WRITE IT A POEM category.
This time, in Baldur’s Gate 3, it was the EMPEROR, of all characters, who got me. THE EMPEROR! WHAT???
…Though I could literally write poems about ALL the Baldur’s Gate 3 main party characters… AHEM most notably, about Karlach and Halsin, so there. And I may yet. I MAY YET. I haven’t finished playing the game yet!
Poor poets. What do we do when we’re so strung out on our first video games as adults that we turn to poetry to VENT OUR WHATEVER?
I mean, the last video game I played with either Atari’s Frogger in the late 80’s, or maybe Oregon Trail, or maybe Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago?
People. You know this already, but. VIDEO GAMES HAVE COME A LONG WAY.
That’s all. Who knows? I might be embarrassed about this tomorrow.
…nah.
Later, in comments:
We save-scummed the interaction, because we wanted to see what would happen, but didn’t actually think our character would go through with it. Still, in some alternate timeline, they DID. But then we wiped the interaction out of existence… JUST LIKE HE WOULD HAVE DONE! WHO’S THE EMPEROR NOW???
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Tonight is our Sitzfleisch Poetry Hour–the first of the New Year.
It’s the one night a month a group of poets I know (all sorts! they might be different every month!) gather for a silent zoom and dedicate that hour to writing poetry. I’d love to make it a weekly occurrence, but maybe this is what I can manage for now.
I just drafted a very early idea for a poem called “The Victorian Hair Metaphor” longhand in my journal. Now I think I’d take the rest of the hour to type out here a poem I drafted long-hand in my journal last August. There are a few things in it I like.
And… I’m thinking of both my grandmothers today.
We had news last Thursday that my father’s mother passed away. There’s probably a poem in there too, but not now. And maybe not here. In fact, I will pause and text my papa here, just to let him know I love him.
Teasdale in the Mist
I read a poem today, too quickly
a Teasdale, on Sappho
no lines remain, just a fragrant mist
I retain no elegant mechanics–
nothing of what worked on me
until my heart turned puppetry
the poet, some Geppetto
next, my mother texted a self-portrait
all lines and shadows in her face engaged
all grays and rainbows
and that shocking crone’s corona
awesome as platinum
dark eyes her own mother would recognize
from her cradle days
my mother, today, is a poem
her mother might forget tomorrow
the mist is seeping, the matriarch sleeping
her long mornings through
and though the books she reads are fewer
and her birthday cards are in my mother’s hand
all is not lost, all is not yet lost
her past is deep, will disappear last
our well-documented beginnings
safe in their dusty boxes
our origins and old photographs
her daily prayer
a year from now, I will have forgotten
writing this
encounter it abroad, in some online mist
count myself lucky, perhaps,
to read that old Teasdale poem again
(started August 2023, finished(?) January 2024)
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I just ended my newsletter experiment on Substack, so I’m back to my website being the main source for all things C. S. E. Cooney-esque.
Of course, whenever Carlos and I collaborate, we post the news on hernandooney.com, so if you’re a follower/fan of Negocios Infernales, that’s the place to be… though I do like to re-blog it here, and vice versa. Same with conventions we’ll be at, appearances, etc, etc.
If for some reason you have trouble following WordPress blogs, but you want to get all our news right in your inbox, as you would with other newsletter services, I found a how-to here.
Oh.
By the way…
HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS!!!
I have so much to tell you!
Carlos and I have been sending out updates to our Kickstarter backers, along with Google polls in order to arrange the Roll20 games of Negocios Infernales and the Infernal Salons that we promised as rewards. We also sent our edits for our little collection Infernal Bargains to our editor, Alana J Abbott, at Outland Entertainment.
All that’s left is to sign the contract, heh heh heh… >.>
This is the collection of all the works Carlos and I wrote and/or published based on card draws from Negocios Infernales’s DECK OF DESTINY (la Baraja del Destino). It was a stretch goal that we sort of BLEW RIGHT THROUGH. So I’m excited to have a new COLLECTION out soon! AND WITH MY DOCTOR HUSBANDPANTS NO LESS!
Right now, I’m working on my sequel to Saint Death’s Herald. It’s due at the end of February. I have a couple exciting books I’ll be blurbing, as well. AND I get to write three short stories for upcoming anthologies that I’m so excited about. Maybe I’ll do a whole other blog on that!
I’ll also be writing more about the cons we’ll be attending this year. We’ll be attending SFF book cons as well as game cons, so we’ll be out and about a lot this year. Carlos and I will both be Guests of Honor as HELIOsphere this year–along with Clarkesworld’s NEIL CLARKE. That’s in New Jersey.
Our first con of the year, though, will be PLANET (the Kansas City Comic Con), the local con for our game publishers, Outland Entertainment. We were so busy traveling for the holidays, getting sick from traveling, and recovering from travel (and from last semester/end of last year) that we skipped Boskone this year for our mental health. It was a great decision, but we also missed everybody.
This Saturday, I’m scooting over to Boston for a quick day trip for one reason only:
TO WATCH A HALLMARK MOVIE AT A FRIEND’S HOUSE.
But not just ANY Hallmark Movie, friends.
This Hallmark movie is the FILM DEBUT of my friend, the brilliant playwright (and now SCREENWRITER!) Reina Hardy! It’s part of Hallmark’s February “Loveuary”–all Jane Austen movies, all the time. Reina’s is called PAGING MR. DARCY, and it looks adorable.
But mostly, mostly, for the whole next month, till LEAPDAY, I’ll be finishing my novel, Saint Death’s Herald. (Or as my mom, J-9, Carlos, and I have all taken to calling it, “HAROLD!” in a bad New York accent.)
I’ve been using the new cover as my screensaver on my phone, and the wallpaper on my laptop, but it’s not public yet so I can’t show you how PRETTY IT IS! But it is. SO PRETTY. So cheerful. I look at it whenever I want to re-inspire myself.
It’s, like, a book cover. Of a finished book. So I have to finish!!!
More soon! About the short stories in these awesome upcoming anthologies, and the D&D event we just played in public at the Klein Auditorium, and playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with Carlos–my first video game as an adult!!!! I mean…
Life is very full. And, locally, very sweet indeed.
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The Mythic Delirium team (Mike and Anita Allen) is celebrating their 25th anniversary as a publishing company! It is also honoring Yukimi Ogawa’s debut short fiction collection Like Smoke, Like Light landing on Publisher Weekly’s short list of Best Science fiction/Fantasy, Horror of 2023. How are they celebrating? By putting 20 ebooks on sale for .99 in a book bundle!
Three of the titles Mike mentions are mine: Dark Breakers, The Twice-Drowned Saint, and Bone Swans, but I also have stories in Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 5 (in this anthology is the first story Carlos and I ever collaborated on, back when we were first becoming friends: “The Book of May”), and A Sinister Quartet.
My story in A Sinister Quartet is an earlier version of our later standalone release The Twice-Drowned Saint, but the anthology as a whole is amazing, with dark fantasy/fairy tale retelling novellas by Jessica P. Wick (“An Unkindness”), Amanda J. McGee (“Viridian”), and a horror novella by Mike Allen (“The Comforter”).
Back in 2020, when A Sinister Quartet first came out, we did a bunch of fun things, which I blogged about:
Mike says:
“The recognition won by Yukimi’s book inspired us to hold one more celebratory sale to semi-officially close out Mythic Delirium’s 25th anniversary year. One more time in 2023, we’re discounting e-books to 99 cents on most all major platforms — and not just Yukimi’s collection, but twenty titles that together span the most recent fifteen years of Mythic Delirium’s twenty-five years of existence in some form.
For the record, these twenty titles together account for: one World Fantasy Award win, one Mythopoeic Award win, one Kirkus starred review and Best of the Year listing, one Publishers Weekly Best of the Year listing, one Theodore Sturgeon Award nomination, one WSFA Small Press Award nomination, one Aurelius Award nomination, two Library Journal starred reviews, three Locus Award nominations, three World Fantasy Award nominations, four Shirley Jackson Award nominations, five Nebula Award nominations, ten PUBLISHERS WEEKLY starred reviews and at least sixteen stories reprinted in various “Best of the Year” volumes. (Yes, I count these things, obsessively. And that’s not the full list! That’s just for the twenty books included in this bundle.)
We’re proud of all our books. By no means is creating and showcasing art all about awards — but you can take it as an indicator of our dedication to quality as we pursue our quirky art.
Some of these titles have been discounted within the past year or two, multiple times even, but others I’ve not offered in a discount sale for over half a decade, so get them while they’re hot!”
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…IS LIVE ON SUBSTACK!
Please do scooch on over there if that’s interesting to you!
Yours truly,
C. S. E. Cooney
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C.S.E. Cooney 