Yesterday, we made our characters for a short-shot DND game my sister-in-law is DMing for us over the next few weeks. I’d never played a Druid, so I chose that class–Circle of Spores, baby! BECAUSE MUSHROOMS! (And decay!) (Thus, I named my character “Golden Chanterelle.” Possibly “Chant” for short. Or “Goldie.”)
And I love Changelings, so that’s the race I chose. I like shapeshifting, not only into animals but other things as well.
Background is “Feylost”–also a first for me. I love a girl who falls through a mushroom circle. And it’s sort of backwards for Changelings, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
So anyway, I figured I’d write today’s FAWMling song à la D&D, in the manner of my people. (My people being specifically… Dr. Mary Crowell, of “I Have Missed You at My Table” and “I Put My Low Stat.”)
I think I’ll spend the first half of the month writing lyrics, and then the second half of the month working up melodies or collaborating for them.
Golden Chanterelle
Whiff of nectar, golden-sweet Smell of honey, dripping mead Draw too near, you might find more Breathing in her cloud of spore
She is Golden Chanterelle Coat of moss and fairy bells Fell asleep and fell through worlds Now she walks, a wild girl
Under hemlock, under fir You might find a trace of her Look again, she’ll disappear Misty-stepping far from here
She is Golden Chanterelle Coat of moss and fairy bells Fell asleep and fell through worlds Now she walks, a wild girl
Giant boar and wild bear Tiger, spider, goat, or hare Chanterelle is girl and beast Isn’t anybody’s feast
She is Golden Chanterelle Coat of moss and fairy bells Fell asleep and fell through worlds Now she walks, a wild girl
BRIDGE
What can she protect? What can she preserve? Whom is she looking for? Whom will she serve?
Hungry to connect Afraid to be seen Shy in the shadows She hides in the green
She is Golden Chanterelle Coat of moss and fairy bells Fell asleep and fell through worlds Now she walks, a wild girl
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:
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!
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
An Infernal Salon is a fun, low-stakes writing workshop. Participants are given spooky card prompts, and then we set a timer for 25 minutes. Everyone writes something (or draws! Or composes!). Then everyone who’s comfortable with it shares their infernally-inspired works!
Saturday 2-2:50 PM, Brimstone Rhine Concert
With Carlos Hernandez and Jeremy Cooney
Saturday 5 pm: Writing SF and Fantasy Poetry [Commonwealth East]
Mary Soon Lee, Herb Kauderer, Mary Turzillo, C.S.E. Cooney
Logo for C. S. E. Cooney’s Twitch channel created by Brett Massé
Dear Community,
Recently, my friend Liz Pino Sparks and I slid into our DMs to share some of our local joys and goings on, and also to lament the world horrors we all have been witnessing. We wanted, so badly to do something.
So we decided to host a night of poets reading their work: to raise our spirits, and more: to raise awareness and funds for World Central Kitchen, which does such great and good and beautiful work in communities “impacted by natural disasters and humanitarian crises.”
We named a night: Friday, June 27th, from 8 PM to 10 PM, Eastern. (7 PM-9 CENTRAL, 6 PM-8 Mountain, 5 PM-7 Pacific.)
I’ve known Liz and their spouse Ethan since our high school days at Arizona School for the Arts. Ethan and Liz know many poets from their years of art and education. I, too, know many poets–mainly speculative ones!–and we reached out broadly to ask them to read with us.
I’m so happy to be meeting some of these wonderful people for the first time on Friday, June 27th, and so excited to introduce my poet friends to Liz and Ethan and their poet friends!
And I am so, so fiercely glad that we are setting a goal: to raise $500 for World Central Kitchen that night.
I set up a page–https://donate.wck.org/poetsforwck–since WCK is so kind and made it so easy, both through their website, and a lovely responsive email to my query.
Look! We’re already a 10th of our way to our goal!
We will stream this event live on my twitch channel: twitch.tv/csecooney, and you don’t need a twitch account to stream us. But! If you want to join the chat, and applause in words and emojis, and type out all your favorite lines as you hear them (I love doing this), please grab yourself a twitch handle, and join us!
And now, I am pleased to introduce you to our poets!
Erik Amundsen is an author and poet whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Apex, and Jabberwocky. He has been removed from display for being biologically improbable or terrifying to children.
Allisa Cherry, author of An Exodus of Sparks and the 2024 Wheelbarrow Books poetry prize winner, has work in journals such as EcoTheo, The McNeese Review, TriQuarterly, and The Penn Review. Based in Portland, she teaches classes and workshops for immigrants and refugees and is a poetry editor at West Trade Review.”
Drs. Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman are folklorists, teachers, and writers who co-founded The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, where they teach creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales. They also write an absurd amount of poetry together, which you can read in Uncanny, Star*Line, Clarion, and many others.
Gerald L. Coleman is a philosopher, theologian, poet, Science Fiction & Fantasy author, Co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, and a Fellow at the Black Earth institute. His poetry and essay collections include Nappy Metaphysic, On the Black Hand Side, and the forthcoming Incendiary. His novels include the epic fantasy series, The Three Gifts. Follow his Patreon and his website. Patreon: https://geraldcoleman.com/patreon-and-projects Website: https://geraldcoleman.com/
C. S. E. Cooney is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author whose books include Saint Death’s Daughter, Saint Death’s Herald, Dark Breakers, Desdemona and the Deep, The Twice-Drowned Saint, and Bone Swans: Stories. Her Rhysling Award-winning poem is found in her poetry collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes. She is also game designer, an audiobook narrator, and the singer-songwriter Brimstone Rhine. Find her on social media via her LinkTree https://linktr.ee/csecooney.
Jennifer Crow‘s poetry and prose have been published in a wide range of venues over the past quarter-century. Her poems have appeared in Analog, where two were finalists for the AnLab reader awards; Asimov’s Science Fiction, Uncanny Magazine, and others. Curious readers can learn more about her and her work on Patreon, where she posts under “Poetry from a Crow.” Find here: https://www.patreon.com/c/poetrycrow/posts
McKenna Deen (she/her/hers) is the Editor-in-Chief of boats against the current, a poetry magazine that highlights the voices of women, LGBTQ writers, and poets from underrepresented backgrounds. Her chapbook Ever Yours, Vincent — about the life and art of Vincent van Gogh — was published by dancing girl press. Her poems have been published in several journals and poetry magazines, including The Poet, The Los Angeles Review, and Ekphrastic Review, among others. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two cats and loves photography, fresh flowers, and wine.
Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission (Fernwood Press). He has work recently in Poetry International, Thrush, Puerto Del Sol, Alchemy, Broken Lens Journal, and South Dakota Review, and has a chapbook called Carry On (Elegies). He’s a Professor in the English Department at Grossmont College and is the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books. He lives with his spouse and child in San Diego, CA. AdamDeutsch.com
Gwynne Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of a novel (Can’t Find My Way Home) and two collections (Sinking, Singing and People Change), all published by Aqueduct Press. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in such publications as Strange Horizons, Fantasy, Uncanny, and Escape Pod.
Tina Hyland holds a Ph.D. in Literature, an MFA in writing and teaches at the Culture, Art & Technology program at UCSD.
Grant Leuning is a poet and visual artist. He is the author of two books of poetry, I Don’t Want to Die in the Ocean and Little Bird, among other things.
Caitlyn Paxson is a writer, performer, and historical interpreter. She has worked as an artistic director of storytelling performances, a book reviewer for NPR Books and Quill & Quire, a fiber arts consultant, a legal document and poetry transcriber, a 19th century jack of all trades, and a shepherdess. She currently interprets haunted historic house museums on Prince Edward Island and moonlights as a fake spirit medium. Her debut novel, A Widow’s Charm, is forthcoming from Del Rey, Doubleday Canada, and Quercus Books in 2026. You can also find her on Instagram or join her monthly newsletter, Book & Bramble.
Silvatiicus Riddle (He/They) is a 4x Rhysling-nominated Dark Fantasy/Speculative Fiction Writer & Poet haunting the bones of an old amusement park on the edge of New York City. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Enchanted Living, Eternal Haunted Summer, Spectral Realms, and Creepy Podcast, among others. He combats despair and entropy with his newsletter, The Goblin’s Reliquary. For all available works, please visit: http://linktr.ee/silvatiicusriddle
Julia Rios (they/them) is a queer, Latinx writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator whose fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Lightspeed, and Goblin Fruit, among other places. Their editing work has won multiple awards including the Hugo Award. They’ve narrated stories for Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders. Find out more at juliarios.com.
David Sklar is thrilled to have survived this long but isn’t sure what to do next. His work has appeared in some journals you’ve heard of, some journals you haven’t, and some that might somehow be both. You can learn more about David at http://davidsklar.blue
Ethan W. Sparks is a graduate of the UCSD writer’s graduate program, a graduate of the USC Rossier School of Education, and a public school teacher practicing inclusive and activist methodologies of teaching. They are a father of five, a published poet and musician, and a survivor of homelessness spanning the cityscapes of Los Angeles, CA, Cleveland, OH, and Phoenix, AZ. Their writing focuses on the human diasporic moment of separation from safety in personal and collective apocalypses, on the injection of love as decolonizing affect into education, and on the personal growth that surviving traumas inspires. Ethan’s work has been featured in The Allegheny Review, UCSD’s New Writer’s Series, Now That’s What I Call Poetry reading series, Amor Forense: birds in shorts city, una antologia de cuerpos escribiendo en san diego, and is the author of the chapbook, How to Home from Boats Against the Current magazine.
Liz Pino Sparks is a cross-genre writer, legal scholar, teacher, musician under the name Liz Capra, and a parent of five. They have made homes in: Post Soviet Russia, next to the steel mills of the Cuyahoga River, in the Sonoran Desert, and next to the Pacific Ocean. Liz is a proud grandchild of an Isleta Pueblo grandmother, a Sicilian immigrant grandmother, and generations of New Mexican Rancheros. They hold an MFA from San Diego State University, a JD from CWRU School of Law, and an LLM from CSU. Find their recent collection Generic American Household at Boats Against the Current.
Adam Stutz is a neurodivergent poet whose work has appeared in various print and online publications including The Equalizer: Second Series, White Stag, The Cultural Society, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Prelude, Be About It, Deluge, Dum Dum Zine, The Pinch, Where is the River, Dream Pop, Cover, and Ghost Proposal. He is the author of the chapbook Transcript (Cooper Dillon Books, 2017) and The Scales (White Stag Publishing, 2018). He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.
Hanna Tawater is the author of the poetry collections VOID (White Stag, 2022) and Reptilia (Ayahuasca, 2018). She completed her MFA in writing with focus on interdisciplinary poetry at UC San Diego, where she now teaches. Her work has appeared in various publications, both online and in print. She lives in San Diego with entirely too many cats.
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, and her 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. She currently lives in Westerly, Rhode Island.
Mary Soon Lee is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and winner of the AnLab Readers’ Award, Dwarf Stars Award, Elgin Award, Rhysling Award, and Utopia Award. An illustrated edition of her epic fantasy The Sign of the Dragon was published in January 2025. She hides behind a cryptically named website (marysoonlee.com) and BlueSky account (@marysoonlee.bsky.social).
We Demand Stories about Non-Tolkien Fantasy Worlds (Physical)
Terry Pratchett once said that ‘J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints.” But the world is bigger than Middle Earth and many artists write stories from a perspective where, instead of Mt. Fuji, they see Mount Kilimanjaro, Mauna Kea, the Andes, or other landmarks. We demand stories that expand their worldbuilding beyond Tolkien- to Asia, Africa, the Americas and elsewhere. We demand stories that take us out of fantasy’s comfort zone.
C. S. E. Cooney & Mike Allen in Conversation (Virtual)
Authors C. S. E. Cooney and Mike Allen are long-time friends, with an adventurous history in publishing.
At various times in their careers, they’ve co-written poems, edited each other’s work, workshopped each other’s stories, and Cooney pretty much blames Allen for most of her publishing successes: including Bone Swans: Stories, a Mythic Delirium publication (Mike Allen, publisher), and World Fantasy Award-winning collection.
Now they’re in conversation about their latest novels: C. S. E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Herald (Solaris Books) and Mike Allen’s Black Fire Concerto (Ruadán Books). Years ago, Cooney was editor of a much earlier edition of Black Fire Concerto, and this year, she was honored to narrate Mike’s deeply revised, and wildly macabre Ruadán edition.
In this book talk, Cooney and Allen will be interviewing each other about process, plot, and publishing. (And probably more!) (Not necessarily in that order!)
Stream us LIVE at twitch.tv/csecooney on May 30th, 8 PM Eastern—and join us in the chat, if you happen to have a Twitch account.
Two parents and their recently-bitten-werewolf daughter try to fit into a privileged New England society of magic aristocracy. But deadly terrors await them – ancient prophecies, remorseless magical trials, hidden conspiracies and the PTA bake sale.
New York Times best-selling author Caitlin Rozakis writes fantasy with a satirical twist and a cozy heart. Her debut novel is Dreadful, but turned out not to be dreadful at all. Her contemporary romance novella Leah’s Perfect Christmas, written as Catherine Beck, was adapted as the Hallmark Channel Original Movie Leah’s Perfect Gift. After graduating from Princeton, she has had too many career changes, including mechanical engineering (cut short after the murderous robot incident), finance (amortizing tequila receivables is not as fun as drinking tequila), the American Museum of Natural History (who knew emus had birth certificates?), and a number of marketing positions, some at companies you may have even heard of. Her latest book is The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association.
In conversation with…
C. S. E. Cooney is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author, a Rhysling Award-winning poet, a game designer, an audiobook narrator, and the singer-songwriter Brimstone Rhine. Find her on social media via her LinkTree https://linktr.ee/csecooney
This one is mirrored from my Substack newsletter, so… enjoy it twice! Or pass it on by…
Last month’s book launch
I’ve said this in a couple of places already, but it bears repeating like a prayer: my book launch weekend of April 24th-27th was so dear.
My mind was weirdly uneasy in the days preceding the launch, assiduously working its hamster wheel. Would my busy New York friends make it out all the way to Queens? Would any of my Rhode Island or Connecticut friends have the time to come to Westerly? Would anyone show up to the virtual launch? What if I didn’t get the calendars done in time? What if the weird Costco cake ordering method didn’t actually work, since there’s no way to VERIFY IT??? Aaaugghhh! (Et cetera, ad infinitum.)
But each of the three book launch events was pretty much perfect. Friends not only came in from the far reaches of New York City, they came from out of state (and Su Bristow came from England!) to attend the physical launches. (Su is abroad to tour her own book, The Fair Folk, but she came way out of her way to attend my launch in Queens!) Some friends came whom I hadn’t seen in years—because of the pandemic. I got to HUG THEM! And so many, many sweet comments from folks I knew in the chat during my virtual launch.
Oh, and then! The care and love and time and thought that Cass Khaw, Christa Carmen, Caitlyn Paxson, and of course Carlos Hernandez poured into their interviews with me felt like the most profound gift. I loved that best of all. I never want to do a launch where I’m the only one on stage ever again. It’s just BETTER in CONVERSATION!
It was like three birthday parties in a weekend, and it wasn’t even my birthday! It was Herald’s! We even had cake. And, hobbit-like, we gave everyone presents: calendars, featuring Phoebe Ashcroft’s fan art of the 12 gods of Quadiíb. Carlos helped do the graphic design, and Carla Kissane came over on Wednesday to help me staple everything, which was so joyful and playful. I’m so happy.
First, Contact: a new 10-minute musical at the Sound Bites XII Festival
At Boskone this year, Carlos and I did a Brimstone Rhine concert. He played ukulele and auxiliary percussion with the occasional solo (some “glub glubs” some “snicker snicker snacks” that sort of thing), and I sang the set we’d done at Heliosphere:
Apex Predators (Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir) – always good to START with this one, because it’s FUNNY, and it’s cute, and it’s a good story about Carlos and me.
The Lysistrata Strut (Alecto! Alecto!) – this one can be practically CHANTED, but it’s more fun with some kind of drum or percussion; we’ll see if Carlos wants to bring his cajon.
Scylla on the Rocks (Alecto! Alecto!) – this is REALLY fun with the audience singing the “blub-blubs” on the refrain. A STANDARD!
Sisters Lionheart (Ballads from a Distant Star) – a good chorus to sing along to! Also, I get to talk about the project!
The Jub-Jub (Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir) – always good to END with this one: ROUSING FUN for the WHOLE ROOM!
We also stayed long enough to hear Romie Faienza’s set. Romie is a self-described “mild-mannered nerd bohemian,” screenwriter, director, and poet (she’s the poetry editor for Strange Horizons), and—as we found out in February—a WONDERFUL musician!
We got to talking after the concert and she says, “Hey, I may have an interesting opportunity for you in New York in April. Let me check on a few things and get back to you.”
Then she GOT BACK TO ME. And the opportunity was a role (“Social Media 3”) in a short musical called First, Contact, a collaboration between Romie and a composer named Chris Blacker.
For all that I had a play produced in the Estrogenius Festival in NYC years before I moved here, and mounted our own SFF folk musical in 2023, I’ve not done any other theatre here myself . The most theatre I’ve ever done in my life was during the time I lived in Rhode Island and worked with Connecticut’s Flock Theatre. And that time is now (gulp) eight years gone.
But in New York, I’ve seen a lot of theatre. I’ve supported/workshopped other people’s new work. I’ve been to Broadway shows, and off-Broadway shows. And I’ve been filled with all the concomitant longings.
But though I am a professional actress (I keep telling myself that), I’m a voice actor. And not even one who does, like, commercials and video games. I’m an audiobook narrator. It’s a… distinct genre. Kind of like the one I write in.
So I feel like I’ve been, you know, batting out of my league this last month. My co-actors are all much closer to their theatre training (mine’s 20 years in the past), and have put it into practice much more often and recently. And their voices are huge and laser-like and soaring. And they take to choreography like gorgeous bendy things.
Theatre always makes me feel big, raw feelings, and dang. Have I been feeling them. Two days ago I came home crying. Which is not to say I haven’t been wildly happy, engaged, beamed in. I want to do this every night.
I’ve been thinking about how being in a play in New York City is like being in two plays: one is the play I’m in. The other is the play in which I’m an actor going to rehearsal in New York City. The whole city’s like a set piece. Or maybe it’s just that we’ve seen it used that way so much, as well as set pieces made to look like it. Reality and unreality collide in the hyper-real, I guess.
I’ll write more about these individual events later, but this month, we have two virtual events on my Twitch platform. (twitch.tv/csecooney)
Friday May 16th, 8-10 PM Eastern: Combined Reading and Interview with Mike Allen.
Mike Allen, editor and publisher of Mythic Delirium, has been a friend for a long time. He and his wife Anita are also responsible for publishing my books Bone Swans: Stories, Dark Breakers, and The Twice-Drowned Saint, in addition to my short stories “Braiding the Ghosts,” and (with Carlos, our first collaboration) “The Book of May” in Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 5 respectively. Not to mention lots of poems, back when Mythic Delirium was also a ‘zine.
Mike’s also a poet and writer—mainly, of horror—in his own right. Oh, and a journalist. The man does it all. And this year is such a year for him! He had his novel Black Fire Concerto (revised and reissued) come out with Ruádan Books, and he has another—Trail of Shadows—in the pipeline with Broken Eye Books. A banner year for him!
Since I got to NARRATE the audiobook of Black Fire Concerto a few weeks ago, and since Mike was so kind as to read Saint Death’s Herald over the last few weeks, we’re going to be interviewing each other as long-time friends and, I guess, co-workers/collaborators. And we’ll be reading from our work! It would be lovely to see you!
Then, on Monday May 19th, from 7-8 PM is our next Fiction: Impossible, this time with the poet novelist Mary Soon Lee! Definitely more on that soon!
Thank you for reading. Take care of yourselves and each other out there. There’s howling all around us. And so many teeth.
C.S.E. Cooney 