Going on Tour with Absolute Genius CAITLYN PAXSON! Plus other stuff!
February is over, and with it all emergencies, surgeries, and recoveries. I am almost, in fact, full recovered. Which is good. Because a lot of stuff is coming up!
For FAWM—February Album Writing Month—I wrote lyrics to 9 songs (9 of the 14, so I didn’t “win” FAWM), and two of them garnered musical collaborations! But I’m into it! I want to do it again next year, possibly with my brothers, if they’ll agree!
I also passed 50K on my novel wip, Saint Death’s Doorway. Trying to amp up the writing in March and get the greater part of the REST of it done.
Meanwhile, things are happening! This week, even. And beyond! BEHOLD!
Wednesday, March 11—Fantastic Fiction at KGB
A night of Fantastic Fiction with guest writers Kristina Ten and yours truly, C. S. E. Cooney
Saturday, March 21st—Negocios Infernales at Shore Gamers!
TTRPG game: 1-5 PM Infernal Salon: 6-7:30 PM Play the new TTRPG Negocios Infernales, run by game designers Carlos Hernandez and C. S. E. Cooney, at Shore Gamers in Red Bank, New Jersey! This will be followed by an Infernal Salon, open to all!
What is Negocios Infernales?
A DM-less, diceless, collaborative ROLEPLAYING GAME: “the Spanish Inquisition INTERRUPTED by aliens!” Play a desperate wizard who’s made a devil’s bargain: but the “devils” are ALIENS just trying to save humanity! Instead of dice, use weird, spooky cards to determine your fate!
What is an Infernal Salon?
A fun, low-stakes creativity workshop. You’ll draw one or more cards from the very spooky, PG-13 deck from the TTRPG Negocios Infernales. Then, we set a timer for 25 minutes, and everyone shares what they’ve made! Great for writers, DMs, musicians, and creatives of every stripe.
Monday, March 23—The Power of Poetic Imagination in Our Time
( RESCHEDULED from snowpacalypse)
A panel of poets at Saint John’s University: with Connecticut Poet Laureate Antoinette Brim-Bell, Rhysling Award-nominated poet Ali Trotta, and yours truly, C. S. E. Cooney.
APRIL 7 – APRIL 20th
CAITLYN PAXSON’S BOOK LAUNCH TOUR FOR A WIDOW’S CHARM!
Caitlyn starts her tour in Charlottetown, P. E. I. on March 31st at 7 PM, with Haviland Book Club at Bookmark P. E. I. She writes:
But then I have the UNUTTERABLE pleasure of joining her on the rest of her Canadian and U. S. book launch tour! I get to be her conversation partner and BASK IN HER GLORY!
Caitlyn writes:
I am so excited to chat with Claire at all the Ontario and US tour stops – besides talking about A Widow’s Charm, you can expect us to cover topics such as writer friendships and how they sustain us, creating loveable necromancers, and many other topics!
About A Widow’s Charm
In this witty fantasy romance, a widow attempts to resurrect her dead husband by blackmailing her rakish necromancer neighbor—only to find herself falling for him instead.
“Witty, whimsical, and deeply kind, A Widow’s Charm is beyond charming—it’s wholly enchanting.”
—Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Everlasting
Lady Hildegarde Croft is accustomed to changes in position. After all, she rose from maidservant to lady of the manor when she married Lord Thorgoode Croft. But when he dies unexpectedly, the plans that would have protected her and the people of Croftholde die along with him. What’s a widow to do?
Potential salvation arrives in the form of Lord Elmwood, who is fleeing the consequences of using his forbidden Charm to raise the dead. Now he’s injured, destitute, and hiding out at the neighboring estate.
For Hilde, blackmailing Lord Elmwood to resurrect Thorgoode seems like the perfect solution. For Elmwood, beautiful Lady Croft seems like the ideal distraction from his troubles. The problem is, all she wants from him is the horrifying power he knows he can never use again.
My blurb for A Widow’s Charm?
“Caitlyn Paxson’s A Widow’s Charm is hair-raising, dead-raising, and utterly arousing. Sexy, absurd, cozy, lovable, hold-on-to-your-pants thrilling. The whole thing charmed the hell out of me. What even is this book? It’s everything I want to read!”
—C. S. E. Cooney, author of World Fantasy Award-winning Saint Death’s Daughter
About Caitlyn Paxson
Caitlyn Paxson has a degree in writing and cultural history and has worked as the artistic director of storytelling performances, a harpist, a book reviewer, a nineteenth century jack-of-all-trades, a shepherdess, and a fake Victorian spirit medium. She lives on Prince Edward Island with her husband and three orange cats. A Widow’s Charm is her first book.
Dear friends, in little over an hour, at 2:30 EST, as the blizzard conditions set in, Carlos and I will be hosting a virtual reading on my twitch channel–twitch.tv/csecooney!
Our Eldritch Horror line-up is amazing. Read more about our readers here!
Mike Allen writes spooky things — a Publishers Weekly reviewer once called his stories “nightmare fuel.” Two of his collections of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were nominees for the Shirley Jackson Award. To Mike’s delight, his newest novel, Appalachian horror yarn Trail of Shadows (Broken Eye Books, 2025), has been named a finalist for the 2026 Webster Award — founded to honor the memory of his dear departed friend Bud Webster. Mike’s other novels include the post-apocalyptic swarming-undead sidearms-and-sorcery adventure The Black Fire Concerto. Other stories and poems of his have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Best Horror of the Year, Interzone, Nebula Awards Showcase, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and more. With his wife Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, home to numerous award-winning and award-nominated sci-fi and fantasy volumes that defy categories and expectations. As an editor and publisher, Mike has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Follow him on Instagram @mythicdelirium and Bluesky @mythicdelirium.bsky.social.
Christa Carmen is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, “Through the Looking Glass and Straight Into Hell,” & the forthcoming Beneath the Poet’s House. Find her at http://www.christacarmen.com.
Sarah Hans is an award-winning writer whose stories have appeared in more than 50 publications, including Apex Magazine and Pseudopod. A former special education teacher, she has written numerous books, primarily in the horror and dark fantasy romance genres. You can read along chapter-by-chapter as she writes her newest book at patreon.com/sarahhans. She lives in Ohio with her husband, a varying number of teenagers, more pets than she can afford, and enough craft supplies to keep her busy for the next 200 years.
Nicholas Kaufmann is the Bram Stoker Award-, Shirley Jackson Award-, Thriller Award-, and Dragon Award-nominated author of numerous works of horror and suspense, including the bestsellers 100 FATHOMS BELOW (co-written with Steven L. Kent) and THE HUNGRY EARTH. His latest is the collection MONUMENTS IN DARKNESS, which celebrates his 25th anniversary as a published author. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
CASSANDRA KHAW is the USA Today bestselling and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Library at Hellebore, Nothing But Blackened Teeth, The Salt Grows Heavy, Breakable Things, and coauthor of The Dead Take the A Train with Richard Kadrey. They are an award-winning game writer.
Haralambi Markov is a Bulgarian fiction writer and editor with a background in content creation. In 2014, they became the first ever Bulgarian accepted to attend the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Their short story “The Language of Knives” was long-listed for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story, and their essay “My Father, My Private Monster” made it onto the Bram Stoker Award long list for non-fiction in 2025. Their work has appeared in Reactor, Uncanny Magazine, Evil in Technicolor, Weird Fiction Review, Stories for Chip, Eurasian Monsters, and Fractured Reveries. They were part of the team of BonFIYAH 2021. Mythic Delirium Books will release their debut collection of short fiction, The Language of Knives: Stories, in July 2026. Follow them on Instagram at @somethinghaunted.
S.P. Miskowski’s stories appear in many anthologies. She’s received two NEA fellowships, multiple award nominations, and This Is Horror Novel of the Year 2017. Recent works: If You Knew Me (Thomas & Mercer), Daughters of Catastrophe (Grimscribe Press), and The Skillute Cycle (Broken Eye Books).
Jeffrey Thomas’s books include Punktown, Deadstock, Blue War, The American, and The Idol. He has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award and John W. Campbell Award, and his stories have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor, Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors, Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). Thomas lives in Massachusetts
A Horror Reading with “The Sinister Six” authors from Ruadán Books’ anthology Sinister Societies: Six Novellas of Secrets and Horrors
Who is?
Cindy O’Quinn is an Appalachian writer. She grew up in the beautiful mountains of West Virginia. She writes fiction, nonfiction, and speculative poetry, which all lean heavily into the horror genre. She is the author of Dark Cloud on Naked Creek. It was Cindy’s fifth Bram Stoker Award nomination that garnered her the prestigious award. Her poetry has been nominated for the Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Star awards.
Errick Nunnally was born and raised in Boston,Massachusetts, he served one tour in the Marine Corps before deciding art school would be a safer—and more natural—pursuit. He is permanently distracted by art, comics, science fiction, history, and horror. Trained as a graphic designer, he has earned a black belt in KravMaga/Muay Thai kickboxing after dark, and first prize in one hamburger contest. Errick’s writing includes: the novels Blood for the Sun, All the Dead Men, and Lightning Wears a Red Cape; a comic strip collection, Lost in Transition; and a short novel The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile from upstart publisher Clash Books. The following are some magazines and anthologies that he has appeared in: Galaxy’s Edge; Fiyah Literary Magazine; Lamplight; and Nightlight, a Black Horror Podcast. Eventually, Errick came to his senses and moved to Rhode Island with his two lovely children and one beautiful wife. Visit erricknunnally.us to see more of his work.
Mercedes M. Yardley is a whimsical dark fantasist who wears red lipstick, and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of numerous works including Darling, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls, Detritus in Love, and Nameless. She is a three-time Bram Stoker Award winner for Little Dead Red, Love is a Crematorium, and “Fracture.” Mercedes lives and works in Las Vegas. You can find her at mercedesmyardley.com.
Michael Burke is the co-founder of the Eisner-award-winning comic and collectible store Comicazi in Somerville, MA. When not sorting the comic stacks at work, Michael can be found at home, releasing the hobgoblins of his mind into story form. He has had several short stories published both online and in print, including The Horror Zine, Monster Fight at the O.K. Corrall, and the ‘80s-themed anthology, Totally Tubular Terrors. He also has a weird western novella, Last Sunset of a Dying Age, in Crystal Lake’s Dark Tide series and a small sword and sorcery collection, Fragments of a Greater Darkness, from Tule Fog Press. Michael is a member of the New England Horror Writers’ Association and lives outside of Boston, MA with a patient wife in a house with more books than he can possibly read, which doesn’t stop him from acquiring more. He continues writing every chance he gets.
Tom Deady‘s first novel, Haven, won the 2016 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. He has since published several novels, novellas, a short story collection, and the first book in his middle grade horror series. Most recently, he released The Rack II, a follow-up to the popular anthology The Rack, themed around celebrating the bygone days of mass market horror paperbacks. He has a master’s degree in English and Creative Writing and is a member of both the Horror Writers Association and the New England Horror Writers Association. You can find out more about Tom and his work at www.tomdeady.com.
Sarah Read is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, Out of Water, Root Rot & Other Grim Tales, and The Atropine Tree. She lives in northern Wisconsin where she works as a public librarian, knits, and collects stationery and pretty rocks. Visit her at authorsarahread.com.
A Horror Reading with many of my Dark-Arts Friends! With bonus COVER REVEAL of Haralambi Markov’s upcoming short story collection The Language of Knives
Who is?
I’ll post their full bios later as we get closer to the event, but here are the stars:
St. John’s University’s second Storytelling event: The Power of Poetic Imagination in Our Time, a discussion moderated by me featuring poets Ali Trotta, C. S. E. Cooney, and Antoinette Brim-Bell
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.
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!
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.
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 Ironfrom 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!
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!
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!
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.”
But if you don’t, I’ll tell you again, with GREAT GLEE AND WHIMSY AND HUMOR AND WISDOM AND AWE.
Oh, wait. I’m just describing Zig Zag’s writing now!!!
And THIS MAN? ZIG ZAG? He’s gonna be our next guest star on FICTION: IMPOSSIBLE. Stream his glory live—Monday night, December 22nd—at 7 PM EASTERN! On my Twitch channel: twitch.tv/csecooney
I love him as a human, as a leader/teacher/poet/master of the SFF community, and as an artist. Even his Facebook posts are art. Even his Bsky posts. He’s just like that. He just walks the Earth like one of those giants you read about other people standing on the shoulders of.
Oh, and?
Sometimes I dress up like his books:
Do join us—either live, in the chat! Come with questions! Come with enthusiasm! Or watch later on YouTube!
You wanna catch up with previous Fiction: Impossibles? This is where they usually land:
It is dove-blue dawn, and I’ve just come from the monstrous turquoise tome that is my handwritten journal, having bulleted out the events of the last several months, possibly in an effort to explain to myself why it had been so long since my last entry.
The list did the work; I was satisfied that it wasn’t laziness, at least. I would like to do better. More handwritten journal entries, more letter-writing, and more writing and reading poetry. These carved-out pleasures. These slow-glass tasks. Things that take space and can’t be crowded. Things that require fewer piles at the periphery.
Meanwhile, awards eligibility posts abound, as they should at this time of year. A friend (Cat Valente? Amal El-Mohtar? One of “them goblin girls.”) once called such posts “good housekeeping,” which tickled my fancy at the time. I would’ve been in my mid-twenties, and learning more about the chores of a career, versus a life in art.
But housekeeping? I could do that. Somewhat cheerily, even. If sloppily.
What’s the best, best line from Howl’s Moving Castle? It’s about Sophie, housecleaning: “She was remorseless, but she lacked method.”
Re-framing an awards post as a necessary chore, rather than an unsightly boast was helpful.
(Just like re-framing a selfie as an act of, I don’t know, honesty, self-expression, feminism, the female gaze. That was helpful. One would hear a lot of grumbling about solipsism and self-concern and “kids these days.” But that was long ago, at the start of smart phones. Ha—like Charlotte from A Little Night Music: “Dear Miss Armfeldt, do regale us with more fascinating reminiscences from your remote youth.”)
I suppose I could just stick the “awards post” housekeeping here, in the middle.
The only thing that came out this year from me was Saint Death’s Herald.
THE THUNDER SAY TA-DA!
This fall has been a waterfall of travel: Phoenix for my Mima’s 95th birthday, New Mexico to house/dog/cat/guinea pig-sit for Tiffany Trent, New Orleans for Penny Shaw’s wedding, Philadelphia for PAX Unplugged; and of welcoming guests to New York: my aunt and uncle and cousins in September, Will Alexander for his Sunward tour, Jessica Wick’s visit to see Patrick Wolf in concert for his Stations of the Sun tour; and of events—readings, panels, running games.
Then, in late November I was hospitalized for acute pancreatitis.
I say “late November” like it wasn’t just a few weeks ago.
I feel like it was a life-changing event, but of course it’s too soon to say.
Let’s say then, I have been intent on making life changes. And the follow-up appointments aren’t done yet. So… we’ll see. How kind everyone has been. How sweet and urgent and supportive. How I love this community of friends and family and far-away folks I only know through the net. (The great spider weaves us all.)
Tonight my mother arrives—at midnight, the Witching Hour. The heat turned off in our apartment last night. The hot water tap ran icy cold. Of course, on the coldest day of the year. When else should it fail? I hope it returns for her visit. If not, the electric blanket! The hot water bottle!
I’m more than a third through writing the first draft of Saint Death’s Doorway. Such a different experience from writing either of the first two books in this series!
I’ve been trying to make it as LUDIC as possible, and taking delight in the weird process of writing rather than, as I’ve done in the past, being tortured by it. Ah! Writing in my 40s! What a difference!
I challenged myself to write a locked-room murder mystery/courtly politics drama thing. But then it got MUCH weirder than that. Keeping myself entertained, at least!
My friend Carla recently brought me a Literary Oracle Deck, with each of the cards being characters and their archetypes. (For example: Jo March as “Passion.”_
The one I drew for Saint Death’s Doorway? Frankenstein’s Monster as “Creature.”
It was such a perfect card for this absolutely bonkers book that I laughed out loud. And yet, for all my knotty plotty machinations, I’d never even CONCEIVED of the major Mary Shelley vibes running through this book.
But of course they must! As they must through any major work of necromancy in fantasy and horror! Ha!
Thank you, Saint Mary Shelley, Maker of Monsters. You deserve a Secular Saint candle for this one. And a prayer of your own.
As for upcoming events, dear New Yorkers and New York-adjacent. There’s next week:
In Person: Brooklyn Books & Booze at Barrow’s Intense
Where? Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liqueur NY Tasting Room: 86 34th Street Brooklyn 11232 (Industry City)
When? Tuesday December 16
What Time? 7-9 PM
Readers: Yours truly C. S. E. Cooney, Georgia DAy, David Gerrold, and Keith R. A. DeCandido
Virtual: The Bravery of Hope, with C. S. E. Cooney and Caskey Russell
Where? Crowdcast! Watch FREE wherever you are in the world. Live or on catch up geni.us/SPCSECCK
About the Author:
Caskey Russell is from Seattle Washington, and has lived in Oregon, Iowa, Wyoming, and New Zealand. He is a father, a professor, a musician, and an enrolled member of the Tlingit Nation (Eagle / Kooyu Kwáan) of Alaska.
The first in a new fantasy series inspired by the folklore and culture of the Tlingit tribe of Alaska, The Door on the Sea is the Indigenous answer to fantasy epics such as Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, in which a bookish young man must lead a mismatched crew on an adventure to retrieve a weapon that could save the future of their people.
There’s a poetry festival in New Jersey I’ve never even heard of. But now I want to go to it. This big deal poetry festival. Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Carlos said he went once in the 90’s. I have FOMO. For something he did in the 90’s. I met a poet tonight who used to help run it. Looks like there’s a lot more to it these days: https://www.njpac.org/series/dodgepoetry/ Maybe there’s not even a festival like there used to be. But it does remind to me to see what the Nuyorican Poets Cafe is up to.
I’ve been having more thoughts like that recently. Things I want to do. Idle fantasies.
Like, I want to go bowling. It happened suddenly, like the way I hated salt and vinegar chips until one day, I just wanted them. Like, my mouth watered for them. Bowling. I mean, I’ve never actively desired to go bowling before. I’ve been a few times over my four decades, and I generally had fun, but I never actively sought it out. And now I want to.
But I don’t want to go Manhattan bowling. I want to go New Jersey bowling. Or Westerly bowling. (The last time I did that, we all got dressed up in costumes and face paint for my friend’s birthday, and bowled like that. Just a bunch of grown-up goofballs partying in bowling shoes.) I just want to go somewhere where they’ve had a bowling alley for, I don’t know, 50 years at least. And you take your kid there for a birthday party. And there are bowling leagues. And a cup of coffee doesn’t cost NINETEEN DOLLARS. Or whatever the going rate is. Not that I drink coffee. But you see what I mean?
A friend of mine’s husband was a part of a stand-up comedy night in Manhattan, and we went to see it while a friend was visiting a couple weeks ago. All three of us had had varying degrees of experiences with stand-up comics, very few of them good. But, you know. THIS time might be different. And we’d all been watching Dropout TV, which really gives you high hopes and expectations for improv and comedy and gaming and just joy in general.
And the stand-up night was… fine. Just fine.
My friend’s husband was the best part, we thought. Didn’t punch down. Wasn’t just flat-out depressing. Or mean. Or meh. He just talked about fun, queer, sexy stuff–the comedy of self, of family, of identity–and it was nicer than being made fun of.
That’s the thing about stand-up comedy: half of it is belittling the audience for not being a better audience, or for being weird-looking. More than half maybe. (Even Dropout’s new stand-up show “Crowd Control” is not innocent of this.) (Not that it needs to be; comedy is many things, many flavors.) (It’s just, I don’t like most of the stand-up that I’ve seen for the aforementioned reasons.)
But I don’t regret going. It broke the pattern of NOT going out. It was something new. Something at night. I like that.
I’m off to a friend’s wedding in New Orleans this weekend on a whirlwind visit, then taking an early, early flight back, and–if all goes well!–hopefully be in time to see the Shakespeare SlayFest that my play is in. Mine is the last show in the line-up, so I may even have some wiggle room to be late. But I hope I’m not.
I was telling Carlos that there are times I feel like I’m having a very “New York Moment.” And I can never tell when I’m going to have one, usually. It often has to do with seeing a show. Or, in this case, being in one. I say this as I’m having a Queens moment: writing in my blog at night, looking out the window, thinking of the city that never sleeps, about 7.1 miles to the west.
Happy eve of All Hallow’s Eve. It’s a blustery, silvery one out there today.
I’ve been looking forward to this day for more than a month, because my best friend Mir and I have been trying to find a way to see each other in her busy, busy schedule and tonight is the NIGHT!
We are going to the Great Jones Spa, which my friend Judy the Engineer introduced me to earlier this year. I love it because it has WATERFALLS. And a HOT TUB. And Mir is a MERMAID, so I like to give her water things whenever I can. Especially when she’s been working one billion hours a week.
Also, because… one of the reasons Mir’s so busy is that she’s DIRECTING MY PLAY!
Well, that and she ASLO works two incredible jobs: at LaMama Experimental Theatre Club as Community and Educational Coordinator; and at DVP—Dances for a Variable Population—as Program and Events Manager. (DVP, by the way, has one of my favorite mission statements of all time. I love what they do.)
Oh, Mir’s full name is Miriam Grill, by the way. The Notorious, Infamous, ILLUSTRIOUS Miram Grill. She’s a hotshot director. Yeah, baby. And a genius. So that’s awesome.
Mir and I went to high school in Phoenix together lo these 20 years ago. Then we both had many adventures and lived many places. Me, in Chicago and Rhode Island. Her, in China and Taiwan.
Back in the 20-teens, Mir moved to NYC to go to graduate school at Columbia University for Directing, and I moved here to marry Dr. Doctorpants (Carlos Hernandez). So for the last eight years, we’ve FINALLY been living in the same city (and country). We even lived together during the heart of the pandemic, which was hilarious—in its idiosyncratic, often difficult, but very dear way.
But even living in the same city, it’s STILL super hard to see each other, because these little islands with their little boroughs are actually QUITE VAST and MISCHIEVOUS, and they often like to tangle with the space/time continuum IMHO.
But back to my play!
I wrote Hey Nonny Nonny! off a prompt from the Red Bull Theatre short play festival, on the theme “Defiance.” While it didn’t make the cut there, it still brought me great delight to defiantly take the only four female characters from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and give them a little something more to do.
(Something more interesting than wallowing in virginal victimhood and furious helplessness.)
Call it a missing scene. Call it a feminist revision. Call it an invocation of Diana the Huntress 400 years later. As you like it.
In 2024, the SlayFest won New York City’s “BEST SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL” award. This year, it’ll be held at the Atelier at TheatreLab NYC.
It’s sexy. It’s subversive. It’s SKULLDUGGALICIOUS. What can I say?
It’s also free. Tickets have SOLD OUT. This is great. You know what’s also great? DONATIONS! If we get enough, we can mount FULL PRODUCTIONS, not just staged readings, NEXT YEAR.
Now, I know you’re sad that you won’t be able to make it this year. Well, some of you can’t. Probably most of you. That’s okay. Like Delia Sherman likes to say, “We cannot live all lives”—a phrase I’ve found VERY USEFUL as an adult, and also as a New Yorker.
But I wanted to say that one of the other playwrights from the SlayFest—Martin Jude Farawell—as well as Grant Leopold Cartwright, the SlayFest’s Artistic Director, and the FABOOSHIEST Carla Kissane, Producing Director—will be joining me on my TWITCH CHANNELthis coming MondayFOR A PANEL!
You know all the info from our previous invites—but Imma tell you anyway!
This is Carla Kissane’s and Isaac Raz’s “Sonnets and the Self” show, another jewel of the SlayFest—and NOT to be missed!
I can promise you the panel will be be lively and informative, and possibly HILARIOUS. I’ve not yet met ANY of my fellow playwrights, so it’ll be a treat for me to chat with Martin.
Also? I ADORE Carla and EVERYTHING she does. And I’m pretty sure I love Grant too, though I’ve only met him a few times. But I mean, come on. WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE???
I hope to see you there on Monday night! If not, I’ll report back after the SlayFest and tell you ALL!
Plus: Plus a “Catch-Up” date, Upcoming Appearances, and William Alexander in New York!
(This is mirrored from my newsletter, so please forgive the repetition if you get both of them.)
Dear friends—
Goodness, how the month has flown!
The Storyteller event in Baltimore’s Ivy Bookshop, and Marty’s launch of Audition for the Fox at the Thespis Theatre. were equally really lovely.
Baltimore
I took the Amtrak in to Baltimore and walked from there to the Baltimore Museum of Art . The onboarding experience there was very ludic, with “social sculptures” of usable gaming spaces, encouraging interaction and participation, all while being surrounded by images and objects from the history of human games.
But my favorite thing was the special exhibit there called Black Earth Rising. There’s an article about it here: https://artbma.org/exhibition/black-earth-rising, if you’re interested! I loved the work of Firelei Báez and Teresita Fernández particularly, but everything made me stare until my eyes hurt.
There were also two side-by-side exhibits: one, Malcolm Peacock’s “A Signal, A Sprout” (it looks like a massive redwood trunk made of all hand-braided synthetic hair); the other, “Heavy with History: Devin Allen and the Baltimore Uprising,” featuring the throat-catching, heart-hammering photography of Devin Allen.
I followed all kinds of new artists on their various platforms after my visit! And I left the musuem incredibly impressed by BMA’s collection: their beautifully and ethically curated African art room, especially.
The Fox LAUNCHES
Marty’s book launch took place at the Thespis Theatre—which is SUCH A PLACE! It resides within the Hellenic Cultural Center, which has so many statues of Greek Gods—anatomically correct, ahem, except for those few missing a few… pieces—a Greek Orthodox chapel the size of a parlor, completely with full stained glass windows, a theatre, and a black box! I loved this place. I want to live there.
Marty himself was wonderful; he said he’d been nervous all day, but had decided to view the book launch as a warm hug. He actually knew everyone in the audience by name—except for our friend Ben, whom Carlos and I had invited. We read an annotated section of his novella together, and then I did a Q&A with Marty before we opened it up to questions from the audience.
Oh, and we had Matt Kressel as our virtual guest on Fiction: Impossible, which is now archived on YouTube here! (In case you missed it and you want company some night while you’re, you know, doing dishes.) (Dishes are endless. Good news is: so is short-form entertainment!)
THE MOST EXCITING NEWS EVER!!!
My darling, beautiful, wonderful BRILLIANT FRIEND, Caitlyn Paxson, has her DEBUT NOVEL out NEXT YEAR, and this week they did the COVER REVEAL!
BEHOLD IT AND TREMBLE! (Tenderly!) (Ardently!) (Amorously!) (For it is a ROMANTASY! With Necromancy! So it is, as we like to call it… NECROPANTASY!)
Here are the two covers: one is Canadian and one is United States. It’s also coming out in the UK but I don’t know what cover goes with that. DON’T YOU WANT TO EAT IT UP! WITH THE SKULLS AND EGGS AND THE POISONED MUSHROOMS AND THE CANDLES AND THE PISTOLS OF IT ALL???
Here is the synopsis:
Here’s some alt-text for that description from Del Rey:
“In this witty fantasy romance, a widow blackmails her rakish necromancer neighbor to bring her husband back to life and save her home-only to find herself falling for him instead.
“Witty, whimsical, and deeply kind, A Widow’s Charm is beyond charming—it’s wholly enchanting.”—Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Everlasting
Lady Hildegarde Croft is accustomed to changes in position. After all, she rose from maidservant to lady of the manor when she married Lord Thorgoode Croft. But when he drops dead quite unexpectedly, the plans that would have protected her and the people of Croftholde from her malevolent brother-in-law die along with him. What’s a widow to do?
Fortunately, potential salvation arrives in the form of Lord Erol Elmwood, who is fleeing the consequences of using his forbidden Charm to raise the dead and save his own life. Now he’s injured, destitute, and miserable, stuck hiding out at the neighboring estate.
For Hilde, blackmailing Lord Elmwood to resurrect Thorgoode seems like the perfect solution. For Elmwood, beautiful Lady Croft seems like the ideal distraction from his troubles. The problem is, all she wants from him is the horrifying power he knows he can never use again.”
AAAUGGHHH I CANNOT WAIT OMG OMG OMG! And Alex frikkin HARROW blurbed it? Couldn’t you just GOAT FAINT??? I could!!!
Upcoming Virtual Appearance
This Saturday, September 27th, I get to be a guest poet for the Science Fiction Poetry Association! I shall read you SO MUCH POETRY! But I won’t be the ONLY ONE! It’s an OPEN MIC, yo!
I think you need a membership to Nebula Conference 2025 online, or be a SFWA member!
Tachyon’s 30th Anniversary Virtual Reading and Q&A
Oh, and I wanted to remind you of THIS, coming up on Thursday October 2nd! ALSO VIRTUAL:
ACCLAIMED GENRE PRESS TACHYON PUBLICATIONS CELEBRATES 30 YEARS IN 2025
Join us for a night of virtual readings and Q&A on Twitch TV with some of Tachyon Publications’ team: Jaymee Goh(editor), and authorsAuston Habershaw, Josh Rountree, Kimberly Unger, Naseem Jamnia, Mary G. Thompson, Mia Tsai, Pat Murphy, Sam J. Miller, andSamantha Mills.
We’ll be hosting our friend, National Book Award Winner William Alexander for the New York leg of his tour. He’ll be doing one virtual and three in-person events that I know of.
Who is William Alexanders?
Well, you probably already know Will, but for those of you who DON’T:
William Alexander is the author of Goblin Secrets (McElderry) and other unrealisms for young readers. His work has won the National Book Award, the Eleanor Cameron Award, the Librarian Favorites Award, the Teacher Favorites Award, two Junior Library Guild Selections, and two CBC Best Children’s Book of the Year Awards. Most recently he wrote Sunward—his first novel for grownups, forthcoming from Saga Press in September of 2025—and co-edited the middle grade anthology Starstuff: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Celebrate New Possibilities. As a small child he honestly believed that his Cuban-American family came from the lost island of Atlantis.
Will’s New York Tour!
Monday, October 20th, 7-8 PM: online, on Fiction: Impossible!
Carlos and I will be hosting Will Alexander as our Guest Star on Fiction: Impossible. Will will read a bit from Sunward, we’ll ask him some LEADING QUESTIONS, and then we’ll all talk about books and games we’ve liked recently. Join us on my Twitch stream twitch.tv/csecooney
After that, Will’s coming down from Vermont, and we get to HOST him at our HOUSE! “The Week of Fantastic Fish” we’re calling it, since we’ve decided to ONLY EAT SUSHI while he’s here.
Simon and Schuster describes Sunward thus:
A cozy debut science fiction novel by National Book Award–winning writer William Alexander, this story of found family follows a planetary courier training adolescent androids in a solar system grappling with interplanetary conflict after a devastating explosion on Earth’s moon.
Captain Tova Lir chose a life as a courier rather than get involved in her family’s illustrious business in politics. Set in humanity’s far future, hiring a planetary courier is essential for delivering private messages across the stars.
Encouraged by friends, Tova begins mentoring baby bots, juvenile AI who are developmentally in their teens, and trains them how to interact within society essentially becoming their foster mom. Her latest charge, Agatha Panza von Sparkles, named herself on their first run from Luna to Phoebe station. But on their return, they encounter a derelict spaceship and a lurking assassin, igniting a thrilling chase across the solar system.
Tova and Agatha’s daring actions leave Agatha’s mind vulnerable, relying on Tova’s former AI pupils for help. As Tova starts gathering her scattered family around her, she is chased through the solar system by forces who want her captured and her family erased. This debut science fiction novel by National Book Award–winning author William Alexander is a must-read for fans of Becky Chambers and Ursula K. Le Guin. Lovers of poignant science fiction, where the bonds of found family, the evolution of AI, and the building distrust of centuries of bias, come together in this visionary look at humanity’s future.
Meet Will Live!
Thursday, October 23rd at 7pm Kew & Willow Books Authors Will Alexander, Carlos Hernandez, and C. S. E. Cooney discussing Will’s new SF novel Sunward, as well as writing in the SFF genre ! (More info on this as it comes) 81-63 Lefferts Blvd. Kew Gardens, NY 11415-1728
Friday, October 24th at 6pm Books of Wonder Authors Carlos Hernandez, Eliot Schrefer, and Will Alexander discuss Starstuff: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Celebrate New Possibilities.
Saturday, October 25th at 2 PM-3:30 PM King’s Bay Library: authors Carlos Hernandez and Will Alexander discuss Sunward, Starstuff, the state ofadult SF and kidlit, for the edification of ALL OF BROOKLYN! 3650 Nostrand Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11229
In a thrilling follow-up to Tasting Light, ten best-selling and award-winning masters of the form use the possible—and the premise of hope—to explore how science and technology can reshape our world and defy assumptions.
At once a collection of hard science fiction for curious middle-graders and an antidote to despair in the face of dystopian uncertainty, these ten horizon-bending stories may seem unreal, but all follow the rules of physics and biology as we understand them today. These tales of space junk, multiverse navigation, an asteroid named Doomsday, and bees and marmots in space pulse with honesty and optimism. Whether home is a planet, a moon, a space station, or a fleet starship, relatable protagonists of different genders, classes, nationalities, ethnicities, and orientations face challenges—some harrowing, some hilarious—true to their moment in time and space. Brisk plots, resonant themes, and scientific rigor define these forward-facing stories by leading middle-grade authors. Taken together, the tales champion youth agency through characters who approach science in adventurous ways, underscoring that we are all, indeed, made of the same luminous stuff.
That’s all for today’s newsletter, friends! Beautiful work is pouring out into this world. “Something,” to quote Charlotte Gray, “to set against all this.”
TONIGHT! Tonight, friends, Carlos and I are so excited to present the newest episode of FICTION: IMPOSSIBLE, our monthly Twitchcast (except when it’s, you know, summer) featuring authors with new books out this year!
We host it on my Twitch channel, twitch.tv/csecooney, in a virtual space we like to call The Phoenix Quill Tavern.
Why the Phoenix Quill Tavern?
Because, friends, we want STORIES WRITTEN IN FIRE!
We hope to make this a space for sharing all kinds of stories—fiction, games, music, art—and all the delicious, liminal spaces between!
Tonight’s guest star on FICTION: IMPOSSIBLE (hosted by writer and game designer Carlos Hernandez and yours truly, C. S. E. Cooney) is our good buddy Matthew Kressel—author of Space Trucker Jess!
Who is Matthew Kressel? HOLD YOUR HOSSES! I’m about to TELL YOU!
Matthew Kressel is a multiple Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated author and coder. His many works of short fiction have appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Tor.com/Reactor, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other publications and anthologies, including multiple Year’s Bests. Eighteen of his stories are included in his debut collection, Histories Within Us, which came out earlier this year from Senses Five Press. And his far-future adventure novel Space Trucker Jess is just out from Fairwood Press. His Mars-based novella The Rainseekers is coming from Tordotcom in Feb 2026. Alongside Ellen Datlow, he runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in Manhattan. And he is the creator of the Moksha submissions system, used by many of the largest fiction publishers today.
We will be TOTALLY GRILLING him about his SF book, Space Trucker Jess, which we both read and loved, and about what he’s been reading and playing lately.
He’ll also read an excerpt, which, my friends, will truly BLOW (THE SOCKS OFF) YOUR MIND(FEET)!
What’s Space Trucker Jess, you ask? I (and the person who wrote the back cover copy) HAPPILY answer:
Jessian Urania Darger is a kick-ass take-no-shit foul-mouthed too-smart-for-her-own-good sixteen-year-old girl with a chip on her shoulder. She and her daddy have been grifting their way across the verse for years. But when her daddy gets arrested for running crypto-credit scams, Jess is forced to get a job on Chadeisson Station as a roachrunner, fixing starships to survive.
She dreams of a better life, away from her corrupt daddy, so she’s been saving up to buy a Spark Megahauler, a huge cargo ship, ever since she saw one in a printer catalog. She wants to run the long hauls, to sail alone into the black and never look back.
But when her daddy goes missing from prison, Jess realizes she just can’t let him go, and she makes it her life’s mission to find out where he’s gone. In an odyssey that takes her across the galaxy, Jess encounters vanished planets, strange societies, inscrutable alien gods, and mind-bending secrets that may change humanity’s path forever.
When is this amazing show?
Why… TONIGHT! Monday, September 15th, from 7 PM–8 PM Eastern!
I already know you’ll love Matt, because he’s smart as hell, incredibly community minded, and just an all-around renaissance mind. You can also subscribe to Matt’s newsletter here, if you can’t get enough of him tonight!
“If Philip K. Dick had a vision of a protagonist as gutsy Katniss Everdeen hyperdriving her way through a Gibsonesque cyberpunk galaxy, he might have imagined Space Trucker Jess—minus the humor and voice that are singularly Matt Kressel’s. Wild, philosophical, inventive and totally unpredictable, Space Trucker Jess is a recklessly paced slow burn that will take you on a journey through a warts-and-all universe where the stakes couldn’t be higher, nor nearer to the human heart. — Carlos Hernandez, author of Sal & Gabi Break the Universe
Here’s what I wrote:
“Like its titular protagonist, Space Trucker Jess is foul-mouthed, funny, hungry, lonely, and tripping balls. It’s poetry and philosophy and science and religion and friendship, streaking by at light speed, a radioactive burn in the black. Matthew Kressel’s slangy prose sucks you in like a black hole, and like a black hole, is singular in the ‘verse.” — C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter
C.S.E. Cooney 