new home, who dis (also: Hugos screaming, podcasts galore, and con stuff)

welcome back (!) to honest to blog (working title), a newsletter with thoughts about writing, movies, music, science fiction and fantasy, and general creative process blah. if you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe (and read the full archive) here.

greetings from honest to blog’s new home on Revue. while being owned by twitter is not necessarily the absolute best, at least it’s the devil we all know, without all that weird paid bigot/shady VC bs. (confused? i talked about this in my last issue on substack - check your spam if it’s not in your inbox! or read this as a tl;dr)

i have successfully migrated everyone on my list, so your experience should be smooth :) you can add the newsletter’s email address in your contacts or on a filter for extra good measure.

i’m looking forward to being able to import my past issues onto here in due course as Revue work on their archive features–but for now, let’s take this as a fresh start, with issue #1 of the renewed honest to blog.

my narrator debut on Podcastle (… only my favourite short fiction podcast, no big deal) went live today!! i really enjoyed reading this slipstream story about a woman who keeps her memories (and magic) in stones, and may or may not have an ex-girlfriend who is also a crow. it’s beautiful, and i hope you’ll listen :)

on the tv side of things, i got to discuss a couple of my recent favourites (The Expanse season 5 and Wandavision) with the kneel before blog crew; i also got to chat film news on all the stuff that’s come out in the last month:

over on strange horizons, our special palestine issue went live on march 29th, and our podcasts are trickling in slowly but surely. most of the podcasts are narrated by the authors themselves, with our fiction editor rasha abdulhadi stepping in for the last one. give them a read (and a listen, when those episodes are out) here:

strange horizons is a Hugo finalist this year in the semi-pro zine category!!! and uhhhh no big deal /wheezes/ but–

it is such a tremendous honour to be part of this team to begin with; i often pinch myself because i can’t believe i get to make podcasts for one of my favourite SF mags… literally every time i post a new episode to the website and see my name up there, tbh!! so to be on the Hugo ballot (!!!!) alongside this kickass team is absolutely everything, and knowing all the stuff we have in store for the rest of the year as well… your vote would not be misplaced, is what i’m sayin’.

the voting timeline will be shifted since worldcon is moving to december dates, and you do need a supporting/virtual attending membership in order to vote, so i recommend locking in the earlybird prices if you haven’t snagged a membership yet.

so if you want to support ya gal and make her a Hugo winner (!!!!!)… this is how! (plus you get to be part of the worldwide SFF community, and vote on all the other categories like best novel, best short story, best films and video games of the year… it’s cool. go on. do it.)

i was on a couple of panels at eastercon a couple of weeks ago; i moderated the discussion on the new star wars era, and spoke on “what’s not getting published” in mainstream SFF, where i semi-ranted about how hard it is to make the greek language as soft and malleable as english (and how that affects writers of speculative works), and also how ridiculous it is that genre literature is not considered legitimate in my home country. a topic for a non-fiction piece or two down the line, i’m sure.

the highlight of the con had to be the social space, gather.town. using a little pixel avatar, you’d walk around the spaceship known as ConFusion, and when in close proximity with other people’s avatars, your webcams would connect and you could talk to each other. thus this became the first con where the experience of running into old friends, or meeting people outside the panel rooms, was successfully replicated. had a lot of fun meeting old friends and making new ones, and really felt like i was “at a con”, which can be a tricky thing with everything being virtual right now.

overall, eastercon managed to retain its cosy atmosphere in its virtual space; i even attended a couple of kaffeeklatches where i made new friends, and got some great writing advice (elizabeth bear totally called me out on my bullshit re: getting stuck on all my manuscripts)! it wasn’t without its teething problems, particularly on friday as the programming streams weren’t working at all - i’d say “things to learn from for next year”, but who knows if there will even be a virtual component next year! either way, i’m already looking forward to Reclamation, the 2022 eastercon.

if you are in the business of making art or commentary (or podcasts or games or streaming or comics) in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and you haven’t registered for FoF yet… what are you waiting for?? it’s free, and there will be programming around the clock so there’s bound to be stuff you’ll find interesting and useful.

i’m not on any panels this time as i’m helping out with promo, but i’ll be attending a few, plus some workshops, throughout the weekend. you can catch me on the Dream Foundry Discord, or on twitter of course.

my partner and i have been really getting into this youtube channel that covers extinct theme parks, disney history, and kids’ entertainment shows now long gone. all their videos are very well-researched and put together, and peppered with bits of dry humour commentary that is just *chef’s kiss*.

not sorry if this sends you down a rabbit hole of obscure theme park/disney trivia!! i can promise you it’s a good time.

until next time, stay safe and creative.

xK