When the lovely team at Solaris Books learned that I was fording the wild waters of NaNoWriMo this year, they encouraged me to write about my LAST NaNoWriMo experience…

…which was 2009, when I wrote the first draft of what would later be titled SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER, but which was titled, at that time: MISCELLANEOUS STONES: ASSASSIN. (It was meant to be ironic.) (LOL.) (I like the new one better, so thanks, Team Solaris, for saving me from m’self!)

Here’s the link, for those of you who might be interested! They got the article placed at Writers Online in the UK, which was just DARLING of them.

And what, you ask, am I doing posting about this when I ought to be finishing my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo??? Not to mention my ACTUAL and REAL novel deadline for which I was PAID??? (And for which… shhh… I have already SEEN the COVER ART, but I can’t show you yet AAAUGGGHHH!!!!)

And my answer is…

>.>

<.<

GLITTERBOMB!

It occurred to me after doing it a few times that posting constantly about NaNoWriMo word count progress could make the whole thing NaNoWriMo experience less fun for some people. I’m not really super competitive, and I really hate when other people feel like they’re doing less in comparison with me.

I want to tell this circle of friends and colleagues: you know, I don’t have kids. I don’t have full time work; I’m an audiobook narrator with no book on the books till December! I have a lot more time to write than a lot of people, and I still find it hard to write! I re-joined NaNoWriMo for the incredible energy of knowing THOUSANDS OF WRITERS are just… MAKING STUFF UP this month!

ME TOO YES PLEASE!

Now, I’m not doing too badly. Not on POINT exactly with my desired 2000 words a day, but still, very pleased, and making progress. I’m super pleased that my new friend Ben, whom we met this year at GenCon, is ROCKING his first NaNoWriMo. Talk about word count–and he’s doing it on his lunch breaks and early in the morning, like a BOSS! I sort of live vicariously through him.

This last week’s work on Saint Death’s Herald (or “Harold” as my mom, Clarence, and J9 are calling it) has been a pretty big set-piece battle scene. Like Hamlet is a seven-soliloquy play that the rest of the plot sort of dangles from, Saint Death’s Herald seems to have a 4-battle structure, with all my favorite bits happening in between the fighting. The limestone bridge chapter, for example, is my favorite chapter so far. But I like any scene where my characters sit, eat, and chat. Maybe play some music if their fingers aren’t too cold. You know?

But, so, as I’ve been writing and trying to make word count, I seem to be falling into habits of my twenties, which I graciously, um, aged out of in my mid-thirties and forties. Like staying up till 1 AM writing. >.>

But, look. It’s also so exciting, in some ways, to stay up till my brain is befogged and my mind is bedazzled. I can’t think in linear lines anymore. There comes a point in the night where I can’t edit any of the text anymore. I just have to… jump. Think: “Oh, I’ll make sense of it later. Because I literally can’t right now.’

It starts to go more like… “Oh, I think there’s a sentence about six sentences ahead that I haven’t written yet, so I’ll write this sentence now and fit it in later.” Or, “Hey, I think this is the next thing that that other character does, even though I don’t know the rest of the thing THIS character that this character is doing, but everything’s boring, so I’m just gonna leave this boring character here mid-sentence and go write that other more interesting and shiny paragraph for a while.”

The results of this week’s writing are, therefore, what I’ve started calling, just now, “an archipelago draft” of a chapter. There are OH SO MANY islands of unconnected text that are now my solemn duty, by the light of day, to string together into a (as Desiree says in A Little Night Music) “sort of coherent existence after so many years of muddle.”

And by years, I mean “nights,” of course.

The fact that my sleep schedule is now whacked, that I go through my days a bit dozy and ditzy, and that when I’m not writing all night, I’m up till 3 AM–last last night–reading Holly Black’s Folk of Air series is all a part of NaNoWriMo’s collateral damage. Or maybe collateral bonus?

Hurry up, NYPL; I need my Queen of Nothing book stat! Don’t make me wait 4 AGONIZING weeks for the third movement of a frikkin trilogy!

On this, the last day of our NEGOCIOS INFERNALES Kickstarter campaign, Carlos & I:

• threw ourselves a pizza party
• watched some Critical Role
• kept pausing it to flip to our KS tab and gawp in astonishment as our campaign’s numbers kept creeping up in the last 4 hours until it reached $20,000!

$20,147.10 to be exact. That’s more than 200% of our goal, and just a DREAM COME TRUE. Years in the making.

We captured the last of the countdown for you. BONUS CONFETTI!

After that, we turned on our eyeball lights and bubble machine and had ourselves a slow dance, so we could dictate a love note for you, our backers.

In case the butterscotch schnapps didn’t say it loudly enough: THANK YOU.

We hosted an Infernal Salon on Thursday morning at World Fantasy. I had a few false starts with my prompts, but I managed to squeeze this out by the very end of our 25 minute timer!

I don’t know what it means, or where it belongs, so it probably belongs to that glorious category of nonsense rhymes.

And, as we all know, all nonsense rhymes are really spells.

I think these were my prompts, but I can’t remember! The suits are right, anyway. (Also, I don’t know why they uploaded vertically. Weird!)

Remember, our Negocios Infernales campaign–which includes this deck of 70 oracular cards: la Baraja del Destino!–is running until Friday, November 10th! Check it out here: NegociosInfernales.com

Some Kind of Spell

by C. S. E. Cooney

October 26th, 2023

orrery oracle
candlelit coracle
needle and artery
glimmering thread

face in the solar flare
starry eyes everywhere
bloody tongue hungry
for uncanny bread

stitch me up, stitch me up
cut after glassy cut
how the world’s woefulness
salts every wound

map of uncharted sky
lift up your shadowed eyes
write on the silver wall
ink of the moon

sit on the opal shore
facing the golden door
eating the spoiled fruit
washed on the tide

nettle cloth, mermaid broth
prophecy every thought
pierced through, revealed
morning-dawn shy

Well. This has been an exciting week. But do you know what’s EVEN MORE EXCITING?

Tomorrow–Halloween!–Carlos, Gregory A. Wilson, and I are hosting one of our INFERNAL SALONS for Halloween.

Really quick run-down of what happens, if this is your first time.

1. Greg, Carlos, and I will draw SPOOKY CARDS from “la baraja del Destino” (the DECK OF DESTINY!) for our guest artists. The Destino deck is a 70-card deck of images and strange adages from our RPG Negocios Infernales, meant to inspire all kinds of art and provoke wild roleplay!
2. Next, we set a timer, and send our artists off to create. They mute us, and we in turn, spend the next 25 minutes introducing them and praising them to the skies.
3. When the timer dings, our artists read to us–or sing to us–or show off their art, in whatever form it takes!
4. DISMISSED! WE ALL GO TRICK-OR-TREATING AND EAT CANDY!

You know where. It’s on that GREAT TWITCH STREAM twitch.tv/arvaneleron!

AND it’s an afternoon celebration, from 3:30-5:30 PM EST, so you’ll be out in time for trick-or-treating.

…oh, and we have some special overseas guests—but thankfully, for them, it’ll be WELL after supper!

FEATURING

Kenesha Williams is an author, screenwriter, and essayist. As an, essayist she has written for, Time Magazine’s, Motto and Fireside Fiction. She has been a panelist and speaker at StokerCon, the Horror Writers of America convention; Boskone, ECBACC, the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention; the 2017 African Americans Expo, and MECCACon. You can catch up with her on her website www.keneshawilliams.com

LaShawn M. Wanak writes fiction, essays, and poetry and is the editor of the speculative magazine GigaNotoSaurus.

Rhiannon Parker-Cooney is a licensed Esthetician, self-taught make-up artist, Dungeon Master, nail art addict, and Co-Owner of Sun and Moon Wellness in Phoenix, Az. Book her services at vagaro.com/sunandmoonwellness. She does everything from facials, lashes, and full-body waxing.

Kyle Kratky  is a writer and director living in the Midwest. He has written and directed over 200 plays and several short films. He is a seasoned solo performance artist, having performed all across the USA. He also makes ice cream and goes backpacking. He is currently producing two short films and The Reconcile, a new podcast about apologies and what “I’m sorry” really means. 

Dr. Mary Crowell (she/her) is a geeky musician/songwriter/teacher from north Alabama. Her doctorate is in music composition, and she teaches music theory, composition, music appreciation, and piano and sometimes yoga. Mary writes songs about gaming, coffee, beagles, mythology, and zombies. Check her out on Patreon (Drmaryccrowell) and her website: http://marycrowell.com or follow on Twitter (@)DrMaryCCrowell. Mary’s latest gaming album is available here: I Have Missed You at My Table! 

Lynn Emery is the author of thirty-plus novels. Her third novel, After All, became a movie produced by BET (Black Entertainment Television). She has authored twelve romantic suspense novels, two paranormal mystery series, a sci-fi mystery trilogy, and a cozy mystery trilogy. In her other career, she is a licensed clinical social worker. She has worked in a secure psychiatric hospital, in a correctional facility, as a child welfare investigator, and has been designated twice as an expert court witness. 

J9 Vaughn is a badass librarian, witch, writer, and memoirist, who fosters kittens like a boss, and has just celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the No-Shush Salon, their library-based gathering space for writers at the Glen Ellyn Public Library.

Emma J. Gibbon Described by NPR as “Shirley Jackson meets Johnny Rotten,” Emma J. Gibbon is an award-winning horror writer, poet and podcast writer. Her debut fiction collection, Dark Blood Comes from the Feet, was one of NPR’s best books of 2020 and won the Maine Literary Book Award for Speculative Fiction. You can find her at emmajgibbon.com.

Steve Toase is a British born horror writer living in the Franconian Forest in Germany. His collection To Drown in Dark Water is published by Undertow. He is also a regular contributor to Fortean Times, and loves classic motorbikes and vintage cocktails. 

Eden Royce is a writer from Charleston, South Carolina now living in England. She’s a Shirley Jackson Award finalist for her adult short fiction, and her debut middle grade novel, ROOT MAGIC is a Walter Award Honoree, a Nebula Award finalist, a Mythopoeic Fantasy award winner, and an Ignyte award winner for outstanding children’s literature. She loves tea, coffee, bookstores, and roller skating – not always in that order.

Carina Bissett is a writer and poet working primarily in the fields of dark fiction and fabulism. Her debut collection Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations is forthcoming from Trepidatio Publishing in Spring 2024. Links to her work can be found at http://carinabissett.com.

Elijah Woodruff (he/him) is a high school English teacher who doesn’t do it for the money but wouldn’t mind being paid a little more. He spends his time drinking too much coffee and hanging out with his wife.

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.

THURSDAY

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???

I am in Ottawa with my mama!

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.

12:30pm EDT Signing

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 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 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 (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 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 (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.

Find him at https://hernandooney.com

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:

Public Patreon with Process Notes:

Oct 1 “Cold Blows the Sweetest Cloud” (“The Soul Loves All, the Mind But Some”—the Aire suit)
Oct 2 “The Muse, She Rides” (“The Artist Would Possess You”—the Sangre suit)
Oct 3 “It’s Not Love” (“Desire is the Reason of Reasons”—the Rayo suit)