I’d written this speech twice and was about to write it again when my husband Carlos suggested I just do the Napoleon Dynamite dance for you instead.
*executes exactly two moves from the Napoleon Dynamite dance*
[What I didn’t plan, and what happened: my oak leaf crown flew off backward. But that’s okay: Sam J. Miller said it was a feature not a bug. And a good clown “sits in the mistake,” or some such phrase. So I just went with it.]
That’s as far as I got. Then I realized I didn’t have pockets. Also, the Napoleon Dynamite dance is harder than it looks.
[I had prepared two speeches for the alternate universes in which I won in either Collections or Novel, but we’re in this AU, so you get this one.]
I didn’t know, starting out, that writing what I thought was a light cartoonish NaNoWriMo satire about a protagonist in a fantasy novel who literally cannot use violence to solve any of the problems of a fantasy novel, would evolve, over the years—after many a workshop, and great beta readers, and awesome agent edits and awesome editor edits—into writing about a culture of glamorized violence, toxic family dynamics, a lifetime of bad pedagogy that needs to be re-assessed in maturity, found family, and an idea of death that even I, the author, might turn to for comfort in times of loss.
[What I didn’t plan, and what happened: I started crying at this point, but kept going, because what are you gonna do?]
I didn’t know, in all those years, over all those drafts, and all those near moments of giving up—except I’d already poured so much time into it—that my friend would be listening to the audiobook of Saint Death’s Daughter on her way to her sister’s funeral, or another friend would read it after losing her beloved pet, and another in her own year of grief. What I didn’t think about consciously, while writing, was that a book about the world’s friendliest necromancer, who so intensely loves and reveres her gentle god of death, might provide some peace and connection in a time of loss.
I did believe books could be holy. I just didn’t think my book could be. That it is had been, for some, makes me so grateful.
That’s my feeling, too, reading the works of my fellow nominees. Gratitude. That sense of holiness. Of deep music playing. Of pristine sentences building out bastions of beauty in my mindscape: new places to visit in the quiet, and be reverent for a while. There is a certain buoyancy and playfulness in great prose that is its own kind of holiness in our dark times.
My favorite line from the movie Charlotte Grey is: “There must be something to set against all this.”
I made this book, in part, as my “something to set against all this.” I didn’t make it—by any means—quickly (it took 12 years). I didn’t make it alone. I devoted a whole chapter of acknowledgements to all the people who helped me, and it’s practically longer than the book—which is saying something.
And I didn’t make this book in a vacuum of art. We are in a blazing age of SFF. The world is aglow with the work going on right now—every year more rich and wild and worthy of the world we are reflecting, the world we are warning against, and the world we are helping to envision. I am in awe of this age, and this symphony of voices, and I’m so glad to lift my voice with yours. Thank you.
The Infernal Salon: 11:00 AM – 12:50 PM, Empire A/B
A fun, low-stakes writing workshop that uses spooky cards for writing prompts, a timed writing session, and an impromptu open mic at the end for people to share what they’ve written.
C.S.E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez
FRIDAY
Kaffeeklatsch: 01:00 PM – 01:50 PM, The Dragon’s Den (Terrace)
C.S.E. Cooney
Signups at Registration!
Reading: 05:00 PM – 05:25 PM, Chouteau A
C.S.E. Cooney
Reading: : 05:30 PM – 05:55 PM, Chouteau A
Carlos Hernandez
SATURDAY
Panel: Kickstarter – the Ins and Outs: 11:00 AM – 11:50 AM, Empire A/B
Individual authors, artists, and even small press publishing companies are using Kickstarter more and more in order to fund new projects. What kinds of projects do or don’t work well on the platform? And what are the strategies a publisher can use in order to make the launch as strong as possible?
Joshua Palmatier (M), Blake Hausladen, Carlos Hernandez, Jennifer (J.M.) Landels
SUNDAY
Panel: Art Generating Story, 10 AM (tentative)
(I’m told I’m on this one, but it’s not on the schedule that can be found online yet, just in an email. I will update as I know if this is on or not, and if so, where and with whom!)
There are so many readings I do not want to miss! And so many lunches and dinners and breakfasts I want to have with friends. AND BRANDON O’BRIEN IS RUNNING AN OPEN MIC, I think on THURSDAY NIGHT AT 10, and HOW CAN I RESIST??? It is so late though. So, so late. BUT ALSO, HOW CAN I RESIST???
We are staying with our friends Amal and Stu, who have provided LO! all the sourdough bread and smoked salmon a girl could desire!
We are here to hang out with them after too long a pandemic separation, but also… to attend our first Can*Con!
Here is my schedule:
Saturday, October 14
10:00am EDT: Writing Speculative Poetry
Poetry offers a different kind of exploration for speculative subjects and worlds. It has also been instrumental for a long time to add flavour to existing works, adding art and song to fantastical worlds. How do we approach storytelling and writing when working on poetry, if it differs from writing prose? How does building worlds, establishing tone, and exploring themes work different in poetry?
1:00pm EDT: Reading
Sunday, October 15
10:00am EDT Bonds of Sisterhood in SFF
Sometimes sisters just get each other – or drive each other up a wall. Or both! Like with other types of familial relationships in fiction, sisterhood carries a particular sort of nuance, whether it’s enemies-to-family like Gamora and Nebula, having only each other to rely on like Revenger’s Adrana and Fura, or growing together over decades and longer. Our panelists discuss their favorite fictional sisters (either blood or found) and why their relationships are particularly compelling, and the various ways notions of sisterhood can be explored in stories.
Join us for our launch week FULL GAME live-play of NEGOCIOS INFERNALES!
Carlos will be hosting on twitch.tv/arvaneleron, from 4-7 PM EST on Wednesday the 11th for Part 1, and Wednesday the 18th for Part 2!
We are so excited about our starry, starry cast!
Cassandra Khaw
CASSANDRA KHAW is the USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth and the Bram Stoker Award-winner, Breakable Things. Other notable works of theirs are The Salt Grows Heavy and British Fantasy Award and Locus Award finalist, Hammers on Bone. Khaw’s work can be found in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Tor.com. Khaw is also the co-author of The Dead Take the A Train, co-written with bestselling author Richard Kadrey.
Brandon O’Brien
Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, and teaching artist from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing, the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions, and the 2020 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry, and is published in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Reckoning, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is the former Poetry editor of the Hugo Award-winning magazine FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. His debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle?, available from Interstellar Flight Press, is the winner of the 2022 SFPA Elgin Award.
Will Sobel
Will Sobel (he/him) is the co-designer of Astro Knights and Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd Edition, as well as providing writing and design work for The Expanse RPG: Ships of the Expanse, The Expanse RPG: Abzu’s Bounty, and several other tabletop RPGs. He is the designer and writer of the upcoming campaign-driven game Fire for Light by Greenbrier Games. You can find his short stories in the For Hart and Queen anthology, as well as the narrative assistance provided on several other legacy and campaign driven board games.
As a game developer you can find his credits on Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, Aeon’s End Outcasts, Aeon’s End: Legacy of Gravehold and dozens more, providing product development, character and worldbuilding development, and gameplay development. He provides developmental assistance for publishers and designers on all scales from mass market games to unpublished games for hobby.
With a background in the sales and marketing channels of the game industry, Will brings experience from running a local game store, a mass market retailer, a hobby distributor, and several board game and RPG publishers. All this makes his experience in product design and development invaluable to his clients.
Anna Russell
Anna Russell is a writer and game designer based in Indianapolis. She earned her degree in English and Creative Writing from Kenyon College, and her writing has been featured in several games, including Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd Edition and Aeon’s End: Past and Future. During the day, she manages shipping logistics and distribution for dozens of board game publishers, and during the evenings, you can find her in a coffee shop, working on her latest story until they kick her out to close up.
Carlos Hernandez, your game designer, host, and living rulebook!
Carlos Hernandez (he/him) is the author of The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (winner of the 2020 Pura Belpré Award), Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe, several Marvel comics—including the Strange Academy’s “Solve for X” trilogy—and numerous short stories, poems, plays, other speculative works.
Carlos earned his Ph. D. in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing, from Binghamton University in 2000. He is currently Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches Composition, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, and other courses at BMCC. He has been on the faculty of Western Colorado University’s MFA Program, and a Writer in Residence and Guest of Honor at various schools and cons throughout the United States.
At the CUNY Graduate Center, Carlos teaches in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Program, where his academic interests have centered around game-based learning in postsecondary environments, which has led him to work extensively game writing and game design.
He has served as lead writer on the CRPG Meriwether, as a writer and designer for the installation art of Mary Miss, and as literary curator on the Apple Arcade game Dear Reader, among other video games. As a co-founder of the CUNY Games Network and of the Board Game Designers Group of New York, he’s contributed to the development of many board and card games, both educational and commercial.
Ah! Our beautiful Dr. Mary C. Crowell is making music off OF our Infernal Prompts! I AM SO HAPPY!
I wanted to post these links here, even though I already posted them in my Substack newsletter, and elsewhere as ephemera. But at least here they’ll stay put!
SoundCloud Link to “Octimbre 2023” playlist:
Mary C. Crowell’s SoundCloud “Octimbre 2023” playlist!
Today, I wrote a newsletter about the absolute BOUQUET of responses we’ve been getting for our Infernal card prompts, Days 1-3. We have songs! We have poems! We have stories! We have NAIL ART!
And so, if you want to read all about it, look to my SUBSTACK!
I drafted this on 5/8/23 in my notebook, after a visit to my father in April. But I just now got to sit with it and type it out, and work on it.
red-bellied woodpeckers, photo by Rory Cooney
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
for my papa
the preserves are hushlands, their paths mud and a grayness hazes over the leafing sandhill cranes dodder like two-legged fawns while whooping cranes unfold like wet origami and rosy-eyed white pelicans put on their yellow fins: plate their breeding beaks for the season
The branches are bold with invisible stirrings he finds robins obvious, dismissible but listens, head cocked, for the red-bellied woodpecker churr-churr-churr, thrra thrra thrra, brrrrr hear that? he asks
but all I hear are robins, all I see is what I’ve seen before: bluejays and blackbirds a startling pair of electric swallows, nesting sometimes, more elusively, a mote in my periphery like dust in my eye, backlit by sky
there! I say, pointing where to point his lens I don’t know what it is, but it’s something you will like.
it is, it is, it always is a thing he dotes on— every rara avis another exclamation bluebird! flycatcher! ruby-crowned kinglet!
these flecks I barely see, he knows by sight and sound though forever prophesying, peering around for the red-bellied woodpecker
that dot, that speck, that prick-your-finger red somewhere overhead
there! I say where? he asks just there.
got him, says my father good spotting, he tells me praising me for pointing out a bird I cannot see until he shows me with his camera zoomed in
Here’s the Eventbrite link! You don’t need tickets for this, but if you sign up for the “free” ticket, that means you’ll get email reminders about the event in your inbox. Since there’s SO MUCH going on all the time!
What it is:
Wilson, Cooney & Hernandez host writers & poets for an Infernal Salon: a literary event to support Arvan Eleron’s sub-a-thon!
What is an Infernal Salon, you ask?
C. S. E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez have made a roleplaying game! It’s called Negocios Infernales. Unlike other RPGs, however, Negocios Infernales uses a spooky deck of custom cards to determine success and failure, inspire improvisation, create characters, and create mayhem in the collaborative story you are telling.
For our Infernal Salon, we give every writer a prompt of one or more cards from our Negocios Infernales deck, la Baraja del Destino (“the Deck of Destiny“). Then we set a timer for 20 minutes.
Whilst our guests are inspired to write great and/or goofy works of fiction, poetry, memoir, or creative laundry lists, Greg and Carlos and Claire will introduce the writers, banter about all things nerdy under the sun, talk about the Arvan Eleron Stream, and gabble about Negocios Infernales’s forthcoming Kickstarter in October!
At the end of it all, the writers will share their infernally-inspired works with all of us! Much revelry will be had by all!
The Evening’s Entertainment:
Every time someone in theChatsubscribes to Arvan Eleron’s channel, we will either:
– draw another Destino card to help inspire our writers (the more cards, the merrier! or the more… macabre)
OR(theChat decides!)
– add one more minute to the writers’ timer (thereby shaving a minute off their stress)
The chat is also welcome to use those extra card draws for their own prompts. Join in the fun! Write something wild and new–something you never would have written otherwise!
Join us for an evening of creative writing, reading, and supporting the wonderful Arvan Eleron Twitch stream: a place for games, speculative fiction, and a great community!
Who is Arvan Eleron?
Arvan Eleron (né Gregory Wilson) is a Twitch broadcaster, Dungeon Master, gamer, author, musician, podcaster, and professor. Every week he streams games, interviews, tabletop roleplaying sessions, and more, all with the best community on the Internet: the Arvanauts!
MEET OUR WRITERS!
Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of the ‘Beneath the Rising’ series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found at her website at www.premeemohamed.com. Join her Patreon at www.patreon.com/premee
Kate Maruyama is the author of Harrowgate, Halloween Beyond: A Gentleman’s Suit, Bleak Houses and the upcoming The Collective from Writ Large Projects and Alterations from Running Wild Press. She is a writer of horror and the real horror: realism. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles where she lives. She serves on the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee of the Horror Writers of America and on the working board of Women Who Submit Lit a group for women identifying and nonbinary writers that works toward promoting gender parity in publishing.
Find her new novella Bleak Househere and a triptych of Halloween novellas Halloween Beyond: Piercing the Valehere.
Marie Bilodeau is a French Canadian author and storyteller who writes mostly in English because, as her family would say, she’s contrary. Her speculative fiction has won several awards and been translated into Chinese and French (to her family’s delight, though they still believe her to be contrary). Marie is also a storyteller and has told stories (in both languages!) across Canada in theatres, tea shops, at festivals and under disco balls. Find out more at http://www.mariebilodeau.com. Find her at her website!
Valerie Valdes’s work has been featured in Uncanny Magazine, Fit for the Gods and Nightmare Magazine. Her debut novel Chilling Effect was published by Harper Voyager in September 2019 and Orbit UK in February 2020, with starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was also named one of Library Journal’s best SF/fantasy novels of 2019. The trilogy is now complete with Prime Deceptions and Fault Tolerance. Her space fantasy novel, Where Peace Is Lost, was released in August 2023
Valerie is co-editor of Escape Pod, and currently works as a freelance writer and copy editor. She is a graduate of the University of Miami and the Viable Paradise workshop and has taught classes and given lectures for Writer’s Digest, Clarion West and Georgia State University. She has also served as a Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month since 2006. She lives in Georgia with her husband, children and cats. Find her at her website!
Deborah J. Brannon dedicates her nights and weekends to scribbling furiously and reading so much and so fondly that it’s certainly turned her brain. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Faerie Magazine (now Enchanted Living), Stone Telling, and Cabinet des Fées, while her original work can be found in Human Tales (ed. Jennifer Brozek), Scheherezade’s Bequest, and more.
Current projects include a poetry chapbook called The Beltane Verses written with her brother, a card game inspired by Hanahaki Disease, and even more mysterious and startling delights to be named soon.
Martin Cahill is an Ignyte Award-nominated science fiction and fantasy writer living in Hell’s Kitchen, NY and works as the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Erewhon Books. He’s a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop of 2014 and a member of the NYC-based writing group, Altered Fluid.
You can find his fiction work in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Shimmer Magazine, Fireside Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and forthcoming with Tor.com and Sunday Morning Transport. His short story, “Godmeat,” appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 anthology. He was also one of the writers on Batman: The Blind Cut from Realm Media. Martin also writes, and has written, book reviews, articles, and essays for Tor.com, Catapult, Ghostfire Gaming, Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and the Barnes and Noble Science Fiction & Fantasy Blog. You can find him online at @mcflycahill90.
Keep an eye out for his two forthcoming stories:
“We Will Witness,” coming on the Sunday Morning Transport on 10/22/23: A story of two young people, a millennia apart, meet. For one of them, it is an important moment of their life. For the other, it is the moment of their death.
&
“The Moment Before The Moment”, forthcoming from LightspeedNovember 2023: Azahn (Uhz-on) spent his entire life earning the role of Imperial Foresight, precognitive bodyguard to his divine ruler. But now, forcibly retired 3 weeks into the role, what will become of the life of a young man who can see a tomorrow for everyone but himself?
Carlos Hernandez (he/him) is the author of The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (winner of the 2020 Pura Belpré Award), Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe, several Marvel comics—including the Strange Academy’s “Solve for X” trilogy—and numerous short stories, poems, plays, other speculative works.
Carlos earned his Ph. D. in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing, from Binghamton University in 2000. He is currently Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches Composition, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, and other courses at BMCC. He has been on the faculty of Western Colorado University’s MFA Program, and a Writer in Residence and Guest of Honor at various schools and cons throughout the United States.
At the CUNY Graduate Center, Carlos teaches in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Program, where his academic interests have centered around game-based learning in postsecondary environments, which has led him to work extensively game writing and game design.
He has served as lead writer on the CRPG Meriwether, as a writer and designer for the installation art of Mary Miss, and as literary curator on the Apple Arcade game Dear Reader, among other video games. As a co-founder of the CUNY Games Network and of the Board Game Designers Group of New York, he’s contributed to the development of many board and card games, both educational and commercial.
C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a World Fantasy Award-winning author, a Rhysling Award-winning poet, the singer-songwriter Brimstone Rhine, and an audiobook narrator of over 120 audiobooks.
Her books include Saint Death’s Daughter (on Kirkus Review’s list of Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022), The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, Desdemona and the Deep, and Bone Swans: Stories.
Her plays have been performed in several countries: most recently “Ballads from a Distant Star,” at Arts on Site in New York City in 2023. Her albums Alecto! Alecto!, The Headless Bride, and Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir are all available for purchase or streaming on Bandcamp. Her short fiction and poetry can be found in many speculative fiction magazines and anthologies.
Gregory A. Wilson is a speculative fiction author, podcaster, college professor, and TwitchTV channel host.
In the world of fantasy fiction, Greg’s first novel, an epic fantasy called The Third Sign, came out in 2009, and his first graphic novel, the 2021 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award Silver Medalist for Graphic Novel-winning Icarus, was published in 2020 as two graphic novels; his third novel, the 2023 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy Finalist Grayshade (Book One of The Gray Assassin Trilogy), was published in 2022.
Greg has short stories in a number of anthologies, is the lead writer for the video game Chosen Heart, and has written flavor text and character treatments for several other card and board games. He is also the co-host of the long-running and critically-acclaimed show Speculate!, now an actual play podcast which features tabletop role-playing games with professionals from the speculative fiction field. Finally, he hosts a successful TwitchTV channel under the moniker Arvan Eleron, focusing on story and narrative and featuring a number of tabletop role-playing campaigns, several of them sponsored.
C.S.E. Cooney 