In 2022, when I got to record Saint Death’s Daughter the audiobook, I realized it was my moment to celebrate. Twelve years of writing that thing. Twelve drafts. The great agent hunt. My late twenties. All of my thirties. All those other works I wrote while writing it, each of them making that work better. All of the headaches. The teeth-on-concrete feeling of “this will never end, and it’s still not good.”
Whatever the book ended up being–big, weird, flawed–it was done. And it was mine.
All these celebrations were in the making, all these reviews and blurbs were coming in, but I didn’t quite know how to feel about it. My feelings rocketed around, wouldn’t settle. It was hard to feel like it was all real.
But my friend Mike Allen–the Mythic Delirium publisher who helped me make Bone Swans, and Dark Breakers, and TheTwice-Drowned Saint a reality–taught me this phrase: “I stand by the work.”
Those two weeks in the studio, recording Saint Death’s Daughter, were my time to step back from a decade (plus) of doubt and despair and struggle–with this thing that I always loved but often didn’t like. Now was the time to look at work and say, “Thank you. I stand by you. Here, I pledge my voice on it.”
There’s some hoopla attending a book launch. Some press. A launch. A few signings if you’re lucky. You also get a lot of, “I always knew you’d do it,” or “I always had faith” or “it was obvious to me you’d be a success.”
It’s very sweet. It’s also… as if all those moments where I very nearly did not do it, all those fragile threads on the verge of tearing, somehow didn’t count. Were somehow, I don’t know, rendered negligible in the face of an inevitability.
What that book did not feel like was inevitable. But at some point, about midway through the 12-year process, I looked at all the years I’d already spent on it, and I thought, “If I don’t finish, what a waste of my own resources. Of my time and energy.” It would have been perfectly fine for me to trunk that manuscript. I’d trunked several others, juvenilia that I was (and am) still quite fond of). I had other books in me.
But for this one, even though I was still years away from publication, I couldn’t bear the idea of waste.
Anyway. 12 years of this kind of thinking, this back and forth, and I could finally rest. The book was being published! INCONCEIVABLE.
In early 2022, I was just only starting to recover from my deep internal fatigue since turning in the final galley proofs for Saint Death’s Daughter. What I wanted then was a celebration more intentional, more private, and much longer-lasting than a book launch and a few readings. Readers, after all–for whom I wrote this book to begin with!—could read, in a few days, what had taken me years and years to write. And then ask for the next one.
So, when I went into the studio to start recording the audiobook, I did my best to elevate the experience. My dad talks about the difference between “feast days” and “mundane days.” On a feast day, a holiday, how do you know it’s different than any other day? You dress up. Not just yourself–you decorate the space around you. For example: there’s regular dinner. And then there’s the table you spread for a holiday dinner: you use a different tablecloth. Cloth napkins. Maybe a candelabra or a bouquet of flowers or fancier dinnerware. You dress up in your best. Special shoes. Maybe you put a hat on. You make the day different. You endow it with meaning.
That’s what I did to record that week. I thought about the chapters I’d be recording that day, and I dressed to match. Now, no one looking at me would know that was what I was doing. After all, I still had to wear quiet clothes. (I call them my “ninja clothes,” but another audiobook narrator took one look at me and accused me of wearing pajamas).
But I’d put on a piece of “endowed” jewelry (Carlos got me bone jewelry to celebrate my book about necromancers), or wear a perfume oil that had a citrus note as its base (since citrus is the smell of the god of death). Every day as I walked to the studio, I’d reflect on how I was so grateful to be doing this. That I couldn’t have imagined the privilege of recording this audiobook, even though I read countless drafts of it to countless friends and family.
Today, in a few minutes, I’ll get ready to go to work. I’m recording the audiobook of Saint Death’s Herald. Funny, it doesn’t feel like it’s three years since Saint Death’s Daughter came out. But at least it wasn’t TWELVE.
The studio I’m recording Saint Death’s Herald in is in Times Square–not the one I normally go to in Elmhurst. My commute will feel different. I picked out my clothes. I’ll wear felted tiger rug earrings that Caitlyn Paxson made me, based on the character of Stripes, and a bronze raven pendant that Carlos recently got for me at Boskone. There aren’t many blackbirds in the sequel, but the shadow of the Blackbird Bride is ever with Lanie. If I get to write book 3, she’s a major player there. My shirt will be orange: one of the colors of necromancy.
It’s raining today. In the first chapter of Herald, it’s also raining. Solidarity with my protagonist… though I shan’t be raising any sweet yearling does from the dead today. Well, I will. But only with my voice, all alone in a little black box. Talking to myself. Tell future-you a story that past-me wrote for you.
It’s pretty badass.
There’s a lot of text. I have six days to do it. I’m going to be very tired by the end of the week, but I’ll have the weekend to recover and finish up next week. Wish me luck.
I’m so happy. And I’m so nervous. And so happy.
As things get darker outside the landscape of my own head, I want to share some of the things I’ve been reading:
I did have a few things published in 2024. But mostly I was… “finishing the hat.” I mean the novel.
Some pieces were exclusive releases, like my story in the Origins Game Fair Anthology Trove of Legacies, as well as the memorial anthology All in Among the Briars that Julia Rios edited in order to help a dear friend in our SFF community with her mama’s funeral expenses. Fathoms in the Earth is a gorgeous print anthology, but Orange and Bee Issue 2 is online!
I would love to find a reprint home for “With Wings of Crystal” one day. It was one of my stories–like “Catharsis” from Rogue Artists, soon to be re-released in Carlos’s and my collection Infernal Bargains–inspired by the world of Negocios Infernales. I didn’t write “With Wings of Crystal” in time to include in our collection, alas! It inspired a romantasy novel idea that my friend Caitlyn really wants me to write.
Oh, yes. And in December 2024, after I initially wrote this, a whole new collection came out—a collaboration between Carlos and me: INFERNAL BARGAINS, short stories and poems inspired by the Deck of Destiny!
Dear friends of Speculative Fiction, Indie Presses, the Weird, the Wild, and the Wonderous, greetings!
It is the 26th Anniversary of Mythic Delirium Books, a micropress run by Mike and Anita Allen, that specializes in speculative fiction and poetry, with a penchant for writing that’s challenging to classify.
In the past, the imprint provided homes to Mythic Delirium, a digital journal of fiction and poetry, and Clockwork Phoenix, a critically-acclaimed anthology series that showcased stories that don’t easily fit within standard market boundaries.
Please join us! Free tickets available on Eventbrite for our Celebratory Zoom Reading! Free! Virtual! 2 years with an Indie Press specializing in the Beautiful and Strange!
Sign up at our Eventbrite page below to receive reminder emails and the Zoom link!
Guess who’s reading? Nah, JK. You don’t have to guess! I’ll just tell ya!
Mythic Delirium 26th Anniversary Author Bios!
Born and raised in upstate New York, Amy Aderman enjoys fairy tales, research, and tea. Her fantasy short stories have most recently appeared in the “From the Lockdown” contest by Rochester Speculative Literature Association, Mythic Delirium, and the anthology “Ain’t Superstitious.”
Anita Allen is an enigma. She is a small Press publisher, editing books and short stories with her husband for Mythic Delirium books. She has a handful of writing publications. She is also an artist who has had her own shows and sold work internationally as well as done illustrations and cover art for several small press magazines. She is a semi retired competitive costume designer holding the rank of craftsman.
Given her druthers she would prefer to spend her days listened to rain on a tin roof or breezes through the pines, painting, sculpting and creating things with fabric all while living in a stone cottage deep in the woods growing moss, studying philosophy, drinking tea and playing with her pets. Instead, she lives in a tiny house beneath giant oak trees in the heart of the city. Somehow managing all of the aforementioned things while occasionally filling in as an adjunct reader for various writing projects her beloved is working on.
Mike Allen has written, edited, or co-edited thirty-nine books, among them his new horror collection, Slow Burn. His first two volumes of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Story Collection, and his dark fable “The Button Bin” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. As an editor and publisher, he has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Ruadán Books intends to publish Mike’s sidearms, sorcery, and zombies sequence The Black Fire Concerto and The Ghoulmaker’s Aria in 2025 and 2026, respectively. With his wife, Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, based in Roanoke, Virginia. Their cat Pandora assists.
Marie Brennan is the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-nominated author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent, the Onyx Court, other fantasy series, several poems, and over ninety short stories. As half of M.A. Carrick, she’s also written the Rook and Rose trilogy. Find her at swantower.com and on Patreon.
Edith Hope Bishop writes fiction, poetry, and music. She grew up in South Florida and spent several years in the Northeast, but her home for more than twenty years now has been the Pacific Northwest. She proudly holds degrees from both Harvard and Columbia Universities. She’s worked as a public school teacher, curriculum developer, and school volunteer. She’s mom to two teens and one schnoodle. With her partner, Edie publishes music as Foulweather Bluff. She loves to make elaborate costumes for her whole family and is fond of photography, beachcombing, gardening, and live theater. When she isn’t making art, volunteering in her community, or spending cherished time with family and friends, she can usually be found on, in, or near a body of salt water. Edie is currently hard at work to launch Songborne & Seabound Press in 2025.
Novelist, poet, and community organizer Leah Bobet works where climate fiction, the counterfactual, and food sovereignty meet. Her latest novel, An Inheritance of Ashes, won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Prix Aurora Awards and was an OLA Best Bets book; her short fiction is anthologized worldwide. Her poetry has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, and Canthius, and has shortlisted for the Prix Aurora Award and the Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize. She edited poetry for the Utopia Award-winning 2021 issue of Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice, read for Grist’s Imagine 2200 contest, and is studying food security policy at Toronto Metropolitan University. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds grassroots infrastructure projects, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at leahbobet.com.
Beth Cato is the author of the Chefs of the Five Gods duology with 47North and The Clockwork Dagger series and the Blood of Earth trilogy with Harper Voyager. She was a 2015 Nebula Award finalist in the novella category. Her short stories and poetry can be found in hundreds of publications, including Fantasy Magazine, Escape Pod, Uncanny Magazine, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Beth hails from Hanford, California, but now resides in beautiful Red Wing, Minnesota, with her husband and two feline overlords. For more information about her writing and to explore hundreds of free, delicious recipes, visit www.bethcato.com.
C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: for novel Saint Death’s Daughter, and collection Bone Swans, Stories. Other work includes The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep. Forthcoming in 2025 is Saint Death’s Herald, second in the Saint Death Series. As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, and short fiction for podcasts like Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Tales to Terrify, and Podcastle. In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads from a Distant Star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. (Find her music at Bandcamp under Brimstone Rhine.) Forthcoming from Outland Entertainment is the GM-less TTRPG Negocios Infernales (“the Spanish Inquisition… INTERRUPTED by aliens!”), co-designed with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez. Find her website and Substack newsetter via her Linktree or try “csecooney” on various social media platforms.
Francesca Forrest is the author of the novellas The Inconvenient God and Lagoonfire, both from Annorlunda Books, the novel Pen Pal, and a number of short stories—most recently “Semper Vivens,” from Andromeda Spaceways magazine. For many years she was a copy editor for the Mythic Delirium zine and helped out with proofreading a couple of Mythic Delirium’s Clockwork Phoenix anthologies. She was super honored when Mike asked her to write the intro to Yukimi Ogawa’s short story collection Like Smoke, Like Light, which Mythic Delirium published. Mike, Anita, and Mythic Delirium are the center of a great writing community!
Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of the Athena Club trilogy of novels, including The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Her other publications include short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting, Songs for Ophelia, Snow White Learns Witchcraft, and The Collected Enchantments, as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She is currently a Master Lecturer in Rhetoric at Boston University. Visit her at theodoragoss.com.
New York Times best-selling author Carlos Hernandez wrote the critically acclaimed short story collection The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria (Rosarium, 2016), the novel Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (Disney Hyperion, 2019), which won the 2020 Pura Belpré Award, and its sequel, Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe. He’s also written dozens of short stories, poems, and works of drama, usually in the SFF mode. Carlos is Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches Composition, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, and other courses at BMCC. His work at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Program, where his academic interests have centered around game-based learning in postsecondary environments, has led him to work extensively game writing and game design. He has served as lead writer and a game designer 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. Negocios Infernales, a GM-less roleplaying game designed by Hernandez and his wife, author C. S. E. Cooney, will be published by Outland Entertainment later this year. You can find him on socials at @writeteachplay.
John Philip Johnson has published literary and spec poetry in numerous journals and reviews. In 2021 he won a Pushcart Prize for a spec poem he had dedicated to Mike Allen, who had inspired the poem in 2011. His comic book of graphic poetry, The Book of Fly, won an Elgin Award. He’s proud to report he’s still off drugs and out of jail. He hopes to live long enough to see people on Mars and would go there himself if he could, but only if his wife, Sue, went with him.
David C. Kopaska-Merkel, a retired geologist, won the 2006 Rhysling award for best long poem (for a collaboration with Kendall Evans), and edits Dreams & Nightmares magazine (since 1986). He has edited Star*line, an issue of Eye To The Telescope, and several Rhysling anthologies, co-edited the 2023 Dwarf Stars anthology, has served as SFPA president, and is an SFPA Grandmaster. His poems have been published in Analog, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and more than 200 other venues. Some Disassembly Required, a recent collection of dark speculative poetry, won the 2023 Elgin award. Unwelcome Guests (2024) is his latest book. Find his blog at https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/
Barbara Krasnoff has had over 40 short stories appear in a variety of publications. Her story “Sabbath Wine,” published in the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 5, was a Nebula Award finalist, while “Baby Golem,” from the anthology Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World’s Oldest Diaspora, was a finalist for the 2024 WSFA Small Press Award. She also has a mosaic novel, The History of Soul 2065, published by Mythic Delirium Books. A full list of publications can be found at BrooklynWriter.com. When not writing genre fiction or hanging out with her partner, WBAI radio host Jim Freund, Barbara earns a living as Reviews Editor for The Verge.
Rich Larson was born in Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and is currently based in Canada. He is the author of the novels Annex and Ymir, as well as collections Tomorrow Factory and The Sky Didn’t Load Today and Other Glitches. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, among them Polish, French, Romanian and Japanese, and adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS.
Sandi Leibowitz writes fantasy fiction and poetry, often based on myths and fairy tales. Author of the poetry collections Eurydice Sings, Elgin-nominated The Bone-Joiner, and Ghost-Light, her speculative poems have garnered second- and third-place Dwarf Star awards and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Rhysling and Best of the Net awards. Her poems and stories for children appear in Cricket, Highlights, Ember, Spellbound, Orbit and other magazines; Her picture book for older children, Magotu and the Leopard, illustrated by Christiane Krömer, has been published by Library for All. A native New Yorker, Sandi also sings classical, folk, and cabaret music. Don’t ask her to dance for you, however, as a recent vigorous cha-cha ended with her breaking her wrist. If you ask nicely, she will say something to you in Gaelic.
Virginia M. Mohlere was born on one solstice, and her sister was born on the other. Her chronic writing disorder stems from early childhood. Other than Mythic Delirium, Virginia has emerged infrequently from her fort built of yarn and fountain pens to publish works in venues such as Jabberwocky, Fireside Fiction, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Cicada, and Through the Gate. She was the 2019 winner of the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story, “The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change,” which appeared in Luna Station Quarterly.
Yukimi Ogawa lives in a small town in Tokyo, where she writes in English but never speaks the language. She still wonders why it works that way. Her fiction can be found in such places as Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. Her debut collection, Like Smoke, Like Light, was selected as one of Publishers Weekly‘s best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror books of 2023.
Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers. Poetry. Hia stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Star*Line, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, Apex, Bestiary of Blood horror anthology, and Clockwork Phoenix 5!!! Daydreamer, his debut middle grade novel, came out from Random House in August and his solarpunk noir novelette Ice Like Honey comes out in Lightspeed magazine in early 2025.
Kenneth Schneyer’s short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Sturgeon awards, found its way into various Years Best anthologies, and been translated into five other languages. His second collection, Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices (featuring an introduction by Mike Allen!) received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal in 2020. His most recent stories are “Tamaza’s Future and Mine” (Asimov’s Science Fiction) and “Winding Sheets” (Lightspeed Magazine). By day, he is a professor of humanities and legal studies, teaching courses as varied as advanced Shakespeare, criminal procedure, and introductory logic. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with his spouse, occasionally his grown children, and something with fangs.
Sonya Taaffe reads dead languages and tells living stories. Her short fiction and poetry have been collected most recently in As the Tide Came Flowing In (Nekyia Press) and previously in Singing Innocence and Experience, Postcards from the Province of Hyphens, A Mayse-Bikhl, Ghost Signs, and the Lambda-nominated Forget the Sleepless Shores. She lives with one of her husbands and both of her cats in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she writes about film for Patreon and remains proud of naming a Kuiper Belt object.
Jessica P. Wick is a writer, poet, and editor. She co-founded Goblin Fruit with Amal El-Mohtar, a quarterly e-zine of fantastical poetry, and is a passionate advocate for the reading aloud of poetry and fiction. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. Her short fiction can be found scattered across the internet; recently, her novella “An Unkindness” appeared in Mythic Delirium’s A Sinister Quartet. Jessica’s experience as an editor runs the gamut, from full-length novels to short fiction, poetry collections to magazine articles, academic papers to audio works. She also reviews books for NPR.
I just ended my newsletter experiment on Substack, so I’m back to my website being the main source for all things C. S. E. Cooney-esque.
Of course, whenever Carlos and I collaborate, we post the news on hernandooney.com, so if you’re a follower/fan of Negocios Infernales, that’s the place to be… though I do like to re-blog it here, and vice versa. Same with conventions we’ll be at, appearances, etc, etc.
If for some reason you have trouble following WordPress blogs, but you want to get all our news right in your inbox, as you would with other newsletter services, I found a how-to here.
Oh.
By the way…
HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS!!!
I have so much to tell you!
Carlos and I have been sending out updates to our Kickstarter backers, along with Google polls in order to arrange the Roll20 games of Negocios Infernales and the Infernal Salons that we promised as rewards. We also sent our edits for our little collection Infernal Bargains to our editor, Alana J Abbott, at Outland Entertainment.
All that’s left is to sign the contract, heh heh heh… >.>
This is the collection of all the works Carlos and I wrote and/or published based on card draws from Negocios Infernales’s DECK OF DESTINY (la Baraja del Destino). It was a stretch goal that we sort of BLEW RIGHT THROUGH. So I’m excited to have a new COLLECTION out soon! AND WITH MY DOCTOR HUSBANDPANTS NO LESS!
Right now, I’m working on my sequel to Saint Death’s Herald. It’s due at the end of February. I have a couple exciting books I’ll be blurbing, as well. AND I get to write three short stories for upcoming anthologies that I’m so excited about. Maybe I’ll do a whole other blog on that!
I’ll also be writing more about the cons we’ll be attending this year. We’ll be attending SFF book cons as well as game cons, so we’ll be out and about a lot this year. Carlos and I will both be Guests of Honor as HELIOsphere this year–along with Clarkesworld’s NEIL CLARKE. That’s in New Jersey.
Our first con of the year, though, will be PLANET (the Kansas City Comic Con), the local con for our game publishers, Outland Entertainment. We were so busy traveling for the holidays, getting sick from traveling, and recovering from travel (and from last semester/end of last year) that we skipped Boskone this year for our mental health. It was a great decision, but we also missed everybody.
This Saturday, I’m scooting over to Boston for a quick day trip for one reason only:
TO WATCH A HALLMARK MOVIE AT A FRIEND’S HOUSE.
But not just ANY Hallmark Movie, friends.
This Hallmark movie is the FILM DEBUT of my friend, the brilliant playwright (and now SCREENWRITER!) Reina Hardy! It’s part of Hallmark’s February “Loveuary”–all Jane Austen movies, all the time. Reina’s is called PAGING MR. DARCY, and it looks adorable.
But mostly, mostly, for the whole next month, till LEAPDAY, I’ll be finishing my novel, Saint Death’s Herald. (Or as my mom, J-9, Carlos, and I have all taken to calling it, “HAROLD!” in a bad New York accent.)
I’ve been using the new cover as my screensaver on my phone, and the wallpaper on my laptop, but it’s not public yet so I can’t show you how PRETTY IT IS! But it is. SO PRETTY. So cheerful. I look at it whenever I want to re-inspire myself.
It’s, like, a book cover. Of a finished book. So I have to finish!!!
More soon! About the short stories in these awesome upcoming anthologies, and the D&D event we just played in public at the Klein Auditorium, and playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with Carlos–my first video game as an adult!!!! I mean…
Life is very full. And, locally, very sweet indeed.
C.S.E. Cooney 