On Wednesday, I performed a live reading of “An Operatic Tour of New Jersey, With Raptors” at ChiSeries Toronto. It was a lovely and unexpectedly musical event. I sung the sung parts in my opera-themed story; Charlene Challenger played several types of music including a traditional Maltese insult song; Kelly Robson sang a theme song for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, to the tune of the music from “Gilligan’s Island”; and, of course, Kari Maaren was there to serenade us with filk. (It’s been final exam season lately. The academic-themed song was VERY RELATABLE.)
Bakka Phoenix Books was kind enough to bring copies of each reading author’s book for sale. I counted four copies of MONSTERS IN MY MIND on the table when I came in; by the end of the evening, all were sold, even though they were marked up to like 37 dollars. That made me happy.
Here’s some other fiction news:
- “I Sing Against the Silent Sun” – a novelette co-written by me and A. Merc Rustad, set in the Principality Suns universe – will appear in Lightspeed‘s June issue. I’ve seen mock-ups for the issue’s cover art, which is based on this story, and let me tell you, it is going to be FABULOUS.
- Another opera story of mine, called “Variations on a Theme from Turandot,” will appear in Strange Horizons at some point in the next few months (possibly also June). I am immensely proud of this one. More later.
- My story “Minor Heresies,” which appeared in Ride the Star Wind last fall, will be reprinted in Transcendent 3: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction.
And poetry:
- My Patreon hit the $75 monthly goal, so I released a group of short computer-generated poems dedicated to my backers. You can find them here: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
- My poem, “Nightmare II,” will appear in Kaleidotrope sometime in 2019.
- I’ve also released a Twitter bot, @uwtwitsong, as part of my PhD research. It’s a computer program that generates (semi-coherent) quatrains based on the news. I’m going to continue posting @uwtwitsong’s poems for several more weeks before the project is complete, so please do check it out!