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Recently, I had the honor of attending WorldCon in Glasgow, a weekend-long sci-fi/fantasy celebration that is equally, if I’m honest, delightful and exhausting—because there are so many things to be part of! From panels to the Hugo Award ceremony, WorldCon is a whirlwind of SFF fans and writers, all gathered to geek out on the things we love about speculative fiction. One of the best parts is getting to meet authors of books I’ve loved and chat to them about the work we all do. And what I wanted to know most was how they viewed the changes and trends that are happening within SFF right now, and where they hope to see things go.

Here is how they responded.

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What is your favorite trend or theme in speculative fiction from the past 10 years?

Amal El-Mohtar: Favorite is hard because, the one that is top of mind is the one that is most recent and current for me. What I’m enjoying is what I’m calling, like, in Spotify day list language: queer millennial multi-versal crisis. I am just really enjoying it. It’s basically anything that involves looking at one’s life in terms of, like, missed connections, sliding doors, a sort of, like, who could I have been if? Why am I who I am? Those kinds of things are really, really animating me right now. And I see it in Aimee Pokwatka’s Self-Portrait With Nothing, which I adored, I see it in Emmett North’s In Universes, in Jo Harkin’s Tell Me An Ending —oh, there was another one—oh of course! Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds. Many things that involves that sort of like, ruminating on why are things the way they are and what could they be if. It’s a very Hadestown thing of, like, the way the world could be, the way that it is. I love seeing those things together. That is the most recent thing. Other than that, like, my broad answer is lesbians. When I think back 15 years, I remember very specifically being like, I just feel a dearth of books where women talk to each other, and where specifically friendships between women are really important and stuff. And now I feel like there is this beautiful, thriving circuit of that, and I’m dwelling in it. I am thriving, I’m living in it. It’s like, you know, clearing my skin, watering my crops, I love it. And the other I wanna be very clear about this: part of what’s exciting to me about it is dirtbag lesbians. Like, I wanna see lesbians being bad. I’m also enjoying a lot more horniness, I guess! I’m here for it. It makes me very happy. So, yeah, I guess that’s where I’m at. You know? It’s like queer, multi-versal, midlife crises, and lesbians.

Arkady Martine: In a weird way, queer norm worlds because I’m just bored of having to deal otherwise, and I’m way more interested in just…people are people. 

Catriona Ward: What I really love is the the explosion of new voices and diversity because, particularly in horror, there was a conception that there’s just one kind of thing that people are afraid of, and now because you understand that there are so many different kinds of people who put so many different challenges with people and different kinds of circumstances in life. There are so many fears. I mean, Get Out is the ultimate like, ur-text for this. But what we’re living in is this almost deconstructed type of fear, where you realize that fear is more universal and also more particular than you it’s ever been, I love that.

Constance Fay: I like the growing accessibility of sci-fi for women. Not that it wasn’t before, but there’s just so much more now that it’s opening up for everyone. It’s not just like an old white man’s genre now.

Em X. Liu: Can I go broad and say more lesbians? I feel like there’s been more, you know, a little niche that’s been carved out that’s, you know, specifically speculative fiction featuring both heavy plot and also fun. Like, not necessarily romance, but just like, you know, very very interesting, complicated, messy, ruthless female protagonist. A lot of those are, you know, sapphic or queer. Mhmm. And I think that’s really great because you don’t really see that little niche anywhere else.

Holly Black: I think that the best thing in that, you know, last 10 years is the expansion of science fiction and fantasy to encompass more ethnicities, more diversity across every different platform. You know? Like, it’s just the thing that has changed for the better and is so wonderful.

K. M. Szpara: I’m trying to get fucking weird, and I love that people are getting weird.

Kathleen Jennings: Haunted highways, haunted highways.

Kerstin Hall: Female presenting characters who are not necessarily trying or motivated by wanting to rescue people or do the right thing. Actually – and I think, like, gestalts, like people sharing one body. And not just because I wrote it myself, it’s in Gideon the Ninth. Definitely that. That’s coming up my mind. People doing shared body stuff, that’s very cool.

Joe Abercrombie: Oh, my days. That’s a different difficult one, there are so many. I mean, I like werewolves, to be honest. The most recent book I’ve written is heavy on the werewolves. I mean, I, myself, have never done werewolves before, so I was excited to be able to indulge my wildest werewolf fantasies. That’s what I’ve done mostly. Scandinavian werewolves, specifically, Viking werewolves. I’m not into the rubbishy German ones. You know? Proper blood and lightning, Norse werewolves.

John Scalzi: Let’s see. Actually, romantasy has been really fun. Because it’s just cracked the whole thing open and people are like, you can do this in science fiction and fantasy? Cool. So I think that, just the fact that it is now realigning what people think fantasy and science fiction is is exactly what we should be doing.

Naomi Kritzer: Okay. That’s a hard question. Let me think about it. I really love the way, today’s fiction is reexamining and reinterpreting some of the tropes and ideas from, like, the previous generation of fiction. So, for example, Emily Tesh’s novel [Some Desperate Glory], and it’s reexamination of Ender’s Game. I think this is a particularly clear example of that, but I do think it’s part of a larger trend where people look at books, classics, or tropes and ask new questions about them.

Neon Yang: I love that there’s lots and lots of queer fiction. Yeah. Like, more queer fiction is great!

Nghi Vo: A real appreciation of enemies to lovers and seeing a lot more queer people become enemies to lovers.

Samantha Shannon: I’ve got to admit, as someone who is a big fan of them, I love that dragons are so in fashion at the moment. I mean, I think they’re very timeless, so I think they’ll always be around in some capacity. But I love that there’s such a huge hunger for dragons at the moment. Because to me, I think they represent they represent fantasy in a way. It’s like the the desire for magic, the desire for wonder, but it can also represent evil and a source of great dread. I just love that they’re back at the moment.

Sarah Beth Durst: Cozy fantasy!

Sung-Il Kim: Oh, I’m not sure if I can recognize anything. But what I really like is, for the past 10 years, a lot of cultural diversity. That is probably my favorite thing. Even the, you know, non-BIPOC writers, they are trying to dig into previously obscure myths or invent new. Because it’s different from the 80’s and 90’s. So that’s probably my favorite thing.

T.L. Huchu: I’m gonna say African SFF and Afro SFF, but closely followed by cozy sci-fi. Like, you give me that TJ Klune or Travis Baldree, Legends and Lattes, that stuff. It just tugs at the heartstrings.

What would you like to see more of in the next 10 years?

Amal El-Mohtar: That’s such a good question, the next 10 years. You know, I’m aware that when I find myself wanting to answer this, I don’t want it to come from a place of nostalgia. And I’m aware of the fact that I’m at an age where some of the things that are delighting me, the most are things that revisit stuff from my childhood in, like, weird, interesting new ways. And I know that I’m at the age where I’m being marketed to by that specifically. So seeing Interview With the Vampire delights me. Seeing X-Men ’97 delights me. But I don’t want to be pandered to in that specific way in the next 10 years. I don’t know if this is too froofy an answer but I really want to be dazzled and surprised, you know? To me, wanting to see more queerness means not just box ticking categories of, like, how many chocolate box kinds of queer can we see in a book representation-wise. I’m really interested to see books that queer shit, like queer as a verb. Maybe that’s what I’d say, I want to see queer as a verb more in books. I wanna see genre boundaries blurred at the same time that I wanna see really unapologetic deep dives into genre furniture to be like, give me the most melodramatic shit. Give me, like, the most maximalist iteration of the genre that you want and stuff. I think I just wanna see a lot more unabashed… something that is activating and lovely. It also feels very selfish and inchoate to say I just wanna be dazzled. I wanna be charmed. I think she also wanna see just, like, more I would love to see more SF digestion of other modes of writing. How can I put this? I just I wish I want people to read outside of genre so that they can bring into genre things that are exciting in other places. I wanna see cross-pollination. I just wanna see people being dazzled and excited by other stuff and then, like, bringing it in and exchanging. That’s where I thrive, I find. That’s why people get mad at my column a lot because it’s like, ‘where’s the science fiction and where is the fantasy?’ And I’m like, it’s here, it just looks different. It just looks different than what you have read.

Arkady Martine: Complicated explorations of sociological theory.

Catriona Ward: I’d like to see less of women falling down in [horror] movies when they run away. Like, every time. They never do it to a man. They always fucking fall down. I just think it’s just incredible how that’s the one trope that remains. Like, you know, Tom Cruise is, like, pounding away like a 1000 miles an hour. And then someone equally fit and wonderful just for some reason…maybe it’s their boobs are too heavy. Who do you know? Of course. Their boobs are too heavy, their hair is too high. I would like to see less of women falling down. 

Constance Fay: I would say fun. There’ve been a lot of focus on gritty and dark things, and so I’d really like there to be a lot more effervescence.

Em X. Liu: Yeah. I think more different speculative futures. I feel like we get stuck in that dystopian route. There’s been some interesting things with, like, more solarpunk, hopepunk type worldbuilding. But more different ways of imagining the potential futures. And also, I think more, like, modernity and magic mixed in. Because everyone’s raving about The Saint of Bright Doors this year, which I think is genius because it so effortlessly mixes together the modern sort of apparatus that we’re used to. But also, it’s, like, deeply, deeply, deeply speculative, so more of that.

Holly Black: I mean, more of the same. You know, we’ve come up we’ve come some way, right? A significant way, but, obviously, we’re not at parity. We’re not there yet.

K.M. Szpara: Weirder, gayer shit. I feel like we’ve been doing so much making up for lost time, and now I’m like, can we let’s get beyond that and go 5 levels in advance.

Kathleen Jennings: Oh, I can’t say haunted highways, I assume. I have a specific request — I want all of the alternate history people to do is to explore what a world would look like if corporations hadn’t developed the way they have. A world without corporations. I really want to read it, no one’s written it yet.

Kerstin Hall: Weirdness. Definitely more weirdness.

Joe Abercrombie: Werewolves. And I suppose just more Joe Abercrombie books, generally. I’m a big fan, you know, I really like those. They’re exactly the kind of thing I like so, the more of those I can see out there in the marketplace, the happier I’ll be for sure.

John Scalzi: One of the great things in the last 15 years, there’s been so many more diverse authors and I want more of that.

Naomi Kritzer: It’s a hard one. What do I want to see more? The obvious answer is, like, more good books. Right? Like, it’s just not a good, that’s not a useful way to describe it. I actually sometimes struggle to even tell people what I’m looking for in books, but my my favorite books in the last couple of years have been, like, had really had really immersive worldbuilding, like, Fonda Lee’s Jade series. I loved how incredibly real that world felt. And, Lois McMaster Bujold’s fantasy is an also another one where it just has a really immersive, detailed world. I also really love Ursula Vernon’s work, both as Ursula and as T. Kingfisher. And, like, I love Ursula’s cranky old ladies. I really love her cranky old ladies. I love her, I love the World of White Rat. I love the the I love the idea behind the the the Church of the White Rat providing, like, divinely called warriors to defend the indigent and all that. I don’t even really know how to sum up what it is I love, more cranky old ladies. I love more cranky old ladies in my fiction.

Neon Yang: More queer fiction.

Nghi Vo: I’d love to see more stuff coming out of Southeast Asia. I’d love to see some more Eastern European spec fic. And I’d love to see some more slipstream stuff. I’d love to see some more nonlinear, non-sequential features.

Samantha Shannon: Oh, gosh. This I think the great thing about spec fic is that it’s only limited by the author’s imagination. So there’s so many places it could go just based on each individual person’s imagination being so rich and broad. I think I would love to see the genre continue to diversify. I would love to see, just mostly the way that it’s trending right now continue. There’s so many more women in fantasy, there’s so many more people of color, there’s so many more mythologies from across the world being brought in to it, so I’ve just really like to see that continue.

Sarah Beth Durst: Cozy fantasy.

Sung-Il Kim: Next 10 years. I want the breaking down and rebuilding all of the tropes. One of my pet peeves is that I really don’t like the chosen ones. We can be done with that. We’ve done it. They come up a lot, but I think this time people put a different spin on it.

T.L. Hutchu: I suppose if we go back to some, like, action adventure-y type stuff, I would love to see that. Something that will kickstart my nostalgia. I’m an 80s kid. So anyone who can do that will will get me.

[end-mark]

The post Eighteen Authors, Two Big Questions: What Is the Best Thing Happening in SFF Right Now, and What Do We Need More Of? appeared first on Reactor.

Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we continue Stephen King’s Pet Sematary with Chapters 27-29. The novel was first published in 1983. Spoilers ahead!

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Louis figures out that Church has been getting into the house through a broken basement window, and has it fixed. Gage recovers from his virus, then he and Ellie and Rachel all catch bronchitis. Gradually Ellie gets used to the new Church, though she still won’t let him sleep with her. Rachel will push Church away, perhaps without even realizing she does it. Louis tolerates Church better now, though he still misses his living grace.

Christmas Eve passes pleasantly for Louis and Rachel as they assemble toys and arrange presents under the tree. Louis gives Rachel her first piece of “serious” jewelry: a sapphire pendant from Tiffany’s. She’s moved and thrilled. As she goes upstairs, Louis puts Church out, only to discover a Christmas present of mutilated crow. Louis kicks Church hard, then cleans up the mess.

After he and Rachel make love, he lies awake. He imagines Church reminding him of the burial ground and its consequences. Church was alive, then dead, then alive again, come back with his purr-box broken and a taste for the hunt. Louis must remember: Church is now part of what his stony heart must grow, along with his family.

Louis must “remember the secret and tend [his] garden well.”

* * *

On New Year’s Eve, Jud and Norma join the Creeds. Louis can’t help mentally examining Norma. His grandmother would have said she’s “beginning to fail.” Her arthritic hands are swollen and liver-spotted. Her hair looks thinner. She and Jud leave the get-together early.

Louis is glad to get back to the infirmary, where a flu outbreak keeps him working overtime. Then Rachel calls, crying. She manages to tell him that Norma Crandall has died. Jud came looking for Louis. He looked so lost, dazed, old. Though shocked for the Crandalls, it’s Rachel Louis thinks about, and her conviction that death is “a secret, a terror…to be kept from the children.” She asks him to come home—his friend Jud needs him.

Louis and Jud are more than friends, considering what they’ve done together. In spite of Church’s weirdness, Louis thinks, Jud’s decision to take Louis to the burial ground was mostly right—or at least compassionate.

* * *

Louis finds Jud looking all his eighty-three years. It was a cerebral accident that killed Norma, Louis learns, not another heart attack. After a brief struggle, Jud breaks down. Louis embraces him, cries with him, drinks with him, listens to him. He’s thinking about married people who die soon after their spouse’s death, as if anxious to follow, but Jud’s calm and orderly handling of funeral arrangements reassures Louis that he’s in no immediate danger. Louis feels great admiration for Jud, and yes, his heart confirms, love.

Rachel won’t talk about Norma’s death. Ellie, however, comes to Louis to ask if Norma will go to heaven. With Rachel a nonpracticing Jew and Louis a lapsed Methodist, Ellie’s ideas about the afterlife must be vague. He explains that people have many beliefs. A shadow on the dining room wall tells him Rachel is furtively listening, but he goes on. Ultimately, either a person’s soul survives death and moves on, or it doesn’t. Ellie asks what Louis believes. Louis used to hold that “dead’s dead,” but after Church…

He says he thinks people go on, but he doesn’t know to where. Do animals go on, Ellie asks. Yes, Louis says, almost adding especially cats. Ellie says she’s sorry she got upset thinking Church might die. Now she could take it.

Later, in bed, Rachel admits she eavesdropped. She’s not upset about what Louis told Ellie. It’s just that she gets scared. She tells him finally about her sister, Zelda, who died at ten of spinal meningitis. The family cared for Zelda at home. Her decline was an agonizing process, shriveling her beyond recognition. In her suffering, she became demanding, “hateful.” Rachel began hoping Zelda would die, a reaction Louis assures her was normal. The end came when Rachel’s parents were visiting friends for Passover, leaving eight-year-old Rachel alone with Zelda. Rachel witnessed her sister choking, but didn’t know what to do. When it was over, Rachel ran from the house, crying—or was she laughing, with relief? No wonder she long imagined Zelda coming back, a twisted ghost bent on revenge.

Louis comforts Rachel, even through the rage he feels at her parents for leaving her alone with her dying sister. A Valium calms Rachel. She feels as if she’s “sicked up something that’s poisoned part of [her] for years.” Even so, she can’t go to Norma’s funeral. But she concedes that, if Louis thinks it best, Ellie can attend.

What’s Cyclopean: Church playing with the dead crow makes a “tenebrous rustling sound”.

The Degenerate Dutch: Rachel offers Louis an “early present” on Christmas Eve, to which he responds jokingly, “that is mine by right.” This is less funny given that it would remain legally true in Maine until 1985.

Libronomicon: Rachel’s sister Zelda has a picture of Oz the Great and Terrible on her wall while she’s dying, because it was her favorite book. What’s behind the curtain?

Madness Takes Its Toll: Louis guesses that Zelda was “probably clinically insane” by the time their parents left her alone with Rachel. And Rachel spent a while afterward convinced that Zelda gave her spinal meningitis as revenge for her death—a terror that the attending doctor treats as a “childish play for attention” rather than trauma.

Anne’s Commentary

Reading fiction, I often venture into the teeming gut-biome of the internet to fact-check anything from major plot points to tiny details. Perhaps the most shameful waste of time was my quest to figure out what kind of snake Voldemort’s Nagini was, anyway. A la David Byrne, I may ask myself, “What is this niggling compulsion?” And I may say to myself, “Nobody’s paying me to edit this.” Oh well, same as it ever was, might as well take a brief peek at my search results…

This week I was moved to ask whether Rachel’s sister Zelda could have died from spinal meningitis over weeks, maybe months, instead of the days or even hours in which an untreated case of bacterial meningitis might run its course. There’s also viral meningitis, the most common form of the disease but evidently the least dangerous, tending to resolve on its own. Other causative pathogens include fungi and parasites. Fungal meningitis can be fatal; even with treatment, it can recur. Parasitic meningitis can be caused by tapeworms, Plasmodium (malarial) species, and freshwater amoebas, all rare infections. A culprit in chronic (long-duration) meningitis can be Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Slow-developing tuberculous meningitis can be hard to diagnose, delaying treatment and increasing the risk of fatality.

So, hmmm. Was spinal meningitis a good pick for the illness that would kill poor Zelda over a period sufficient to traumatize her family? Maybe. I don’t know. Why can’t I tell myself, Self, stop quibbling and just wince along with Louis at Rachel’s long-withheld story! What matters to the novel per se is that King’s description of Zelda’s death is so vividly unsparing that we can begin to understand Rachel’s thanatophobia.

Let’s move on before I lapse into full-blown hypochondria.

Chapter 30 marks the high point of the Creeds’ Ludlow life. They’ve gotten past those ill omens of their arrival, when Ellie cut herself and Gage took a bee sting. The new house seemed “strange and even hostile” to them then, but with the Christmas season, it “had never seemed more like home.” Church, odorous and graceless and a slayer of small things, remains to remind Louis of his post-resurrection obligations. Yet everyone in the family has learned to tolerate the cat’s weirdness, even Louis, who knows Church died on Thanksgiving Day.

Then Norma Crandall dies. Though Louis saw she was “failing,” it’s a shock, not least because he senses a coming crisis for Rachel. Jud grieves in Louis’s arms, but then tackles funeral arrangements with a competency Louis admires. Rachel called Louis with the news, distraught. By the time Louis gets home, she’s refusing to talk about Norma. It’s Ellie whose reaction leads to Rachel’s necessary breakdown/breakthrough.

Compare the conversations Louis has with Ellie and Rachel in Chapter 32 to the conversations he had with them in Chapter 9. Following the family’s pet sematary visit, Ellie has a meltdown in Louis’s office. She’s realized that, like the animals in the little graveyard, Church will someday die. Apart from glossing over the fact that tomcats often meet premature ends, Louis avoids comfortable lies—he remembers how he grew to resent the ones his mother told him. So he addresses the subject of death from a physician’s standpoint. All living things have metabolisms, internal clocks that run faster for some, slower for others. Eventually, the clocks run down and stop; while Louis would let Church live forever, he doesn’t make the rules. Ellie snaps back: Who does make the rules? God? Louis can’t speak to God. He can only speak to the Clock, as later, in his argument with Rachel, he can only insist that death is “the most natural thing in the world,” not a secret to be politely avoided by adults.

After Norma’s death, Ellie again turns to Louis for answers. Without any formal religious education, she’s still gleaned enough about the whole God thing to ask if Norma will go to heaven. After his trip through Little God Swamp to the Micmac burial ground, Louis can’t fall back on his Clock explanation. He’s achieved—or suffered—an overturning of his rationalist worldview and must allow for the supernatural, or at least occurrences beyond the natural as science understands it.

He has started to entertain the fluidity among three critical states of mind, knowledge and belief and faith. When people say they know something, he tells Ellie, they may actually believe or have faith in it. Religious people believe all kinds of things about the afterlife, but what “we” know is that one of two possibilities follow death: The “soul” survives, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, death is the end, like “having ether,” as he puts it. Pressed by Ellie about which possibility he has faith in, the once strictly “dead’s dead” Louis must say that he believes “we go on.” He just doesn’t know where to.

As for whether animals go on—that he does know. Church went on, somewhere, and came back changed. So changed that Ellie has subconsciously decided that death might not be so bad compared to an unnamed, or unnamable, alternative.

To Louis’s surprise, Rachel isn’t angry about his discussion with Ellie. She “sicks up” her trauma over Zelda. Her secrets about death and guilt are finally on the marital table, addressable, and she’ll let Louis decide whether Ellie should attend the funeral. Ironically, her disclosure leaves Louis the one with a cankering death-secret.

And it’s one that must be kept.

Ruthanna’s Commentary

Louis and Rachel are acting more like grownups this week, and I’m feeling considerably more sympathetic. Rachel’s trauma makes considerable sense of not only her phobia, but her kneejerk conviction that children should be protected from death. Given the alternative she experienced… yeah, go ahead and take a dip in the Nile.

Rachel’s parents, on the other hand, earn no points. “It’s Passover” is not an excuse for leaving an 8-year-old alone with a dying adolescent. Not even in the ’60s when no one had heard of hospice care, and a sick child was a shame to be hidden in the back room.

This is a season when these themes sit heavy with me: Saturday would have been my mother’s 80^th birthday, and from there through Thanksgiving is a stream of anniversaries of last times, extra yahrzeit candles marking a mournful path. Even in the 21^st century, even with trauma therapy and in-home hospice and organizations that will send a nurse to help out, end-stage caregiving is a physical and emotional nightmare. It’s a nauseating balance between the knowledge that you can’t sanely do this forever, and the knowledge that you absolutely won’t be doing so. It’s exhaustion and strained muscles and breakdowns and petty exasperation and guilt.

Louis gets a lot of credit for letting Rachel know that it isn’t just her. She clearly needed, very badly, to learn that.

Jud and Norma get a relatively easy version of something that’s impossible to make easy—no slow decline, and time together with their full hearts and minds until the end. Maybe that’s what gives him the strength to deal with the surreal bureaucracy of funeral home arrangements.  Maybe that’s what makes it possible for Rachel to hear Ellie get a kinder explanation than she did, and to support Jud with neighborly baked goods if not presence at the funeral.

And here’s where we see what Church’s resurrection has taught Louis. He’s gotten used to the undead cat, though he’s cruel in a way I hope he wouldn’t be to any fully-living thing. But he’s also gone through a “sea-change,” questioning everything his medical career has taught him about dying. He’s never felt a soul pass when someone dies—but this year he’s seen a soul (or something) enter a dying body, and seen the difference between a living cat and a reanimated one. He knows that death isn’t just turning off the lights, but beyond that? His lapsed Methodism doesn’t provide an answer that matches what he’s seen, nor does Rachel’s non-practicing Judaism. (In general, Judaism doesn’t offer clear answers on this topic, though I would enjoy a bonus chapter where an informed Rachel brings this whole business to the nearest rabbi.) The odds of him checking in with the local Micmac community are slim. But he’s been given an insight that most people have no chance at, and I respect that he takes it seriously as a spiritual as well as practical challenge.

Especially given that what he’s learned doesn’t exactly lend support to the rainbow bridge theory. (Apologies to everyone else who’s had to deal with that bit of glurge following a pet’s death. It sucks.) “…I’m here to tell you that you come out the other side with your purr-box broken and a taste for the hunt”. Maybe Church’s trauma comes from the resurrection process itself, from having to dig out of his own grave alone in the middle of the woods. Or from being back in a body that no longer fits, no longer connects to all the dangling soul-wires. But maybe it comes from something else: from a heaven worthy of “fear not” angels, or a hell that takes what it can grab, or the spirit that tends the burial ground for its own cannibalistic purposes.

Maybe what’s missing is what it eats.

I gotta admit, I’m not thrilled by any of these possibilities. And neither, I imagine, is Louis. Even for an experienced doctor, it seems like the sort of thing that could make death feel rather less natural.

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Next week we summon up a classic: M.R. James’s “Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.”[end-mark]

The post We Go On: Stephen King’s <i>Pet Sematary</i> (Part 10) appeared first on Reactor.

The finalists for the 2024 World Fantasy Awards, which are given to works published in 2023, have been announced! The awards will be presented at the 2024 World Fantasy Convention, which takes place October 17th-20th in Niagara Falls, New York. The Life Achievement Awards, given to individuals who “have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field,” will be given to Ginjer Buchanan and Jo Fletcher.

This year’s judges are Douglas A. Anderson, Stephanie Feldman, Pat Murphy, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, and Angela Slatter.

Congratulations to all!

Best Novel

• The Reformatory, Tananarive Due (Saga; Titan UK)
• The Possibilities, Yael Goldstein-Love (Random House)
• Starling House, Alix E. Harrow (Tor; Tor UK)
• Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW; Gollancz)
• Looking Glass Sound, Catriona Ward (Viper; Nightfire)
• Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Best Novella

• The Crane Husband, Kelly Barnhill (Tordotcom)
• Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
• “Prince Hat Underground,” Kelly Link (White Cat, Black Dog)
• “Half the House Is Haunted,” Josh Malerman (Spin a Black Yarn)
• A Season of Monstrous Conceptions, Lina Rather (Tordotcom)
• Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)

Best Short Fiction

• “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub,” P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny 1-2/23)
• “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont,” P. A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23)
• “John Hollowback and the Witch,” Amal El-Mohtar (The Book of Witches)
• “Waystation City,” A. T. Greenblatt (Uncanny 1-2/23)
• “The Sound of Children Screaming,” Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23)
• “Silk and Cotton and Linen and Blood,” Nghi Vo (New Suns 2)

Best Anthology

• Christmas and Other Horrors, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Titan UK)
• Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volume One, Stephen Kotowych, ed. (Ansible)
• The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023, R.F. Kuang & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Mariner)
• Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, Jordan Peele & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Random House; Picador)
• The Book of Witches, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)

Best Collection

• The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volumes 1 & 2, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)
• The Fortunate Isles, Lisa L. Hannett (Egaeus)
• White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link (Random House; Ad Astra)
• No One Will Come Back for Us and Other Stories, Premee Mohamed (Undertow)
• Jackal, Jackal, Tobi Ogundiran (Undertow)
• Jewel Box, E. Lily Yu (Erewhon)

Best Artist

• Audrey Benjaminsen
• Rovina Cai
• Stefan Koidl
• Charles Vess
• Alyssa Winans

Special Award – Professional

• Bill Campbell, for Rosarium Books
• E. M. Carroll, for A Guest in the House (First Second)
• M. John Harrison, for Wish I Was Here: An Anti-Memoir (Serpent’s Tail; Saga; 9/24)
• Stephen Jones, for The Weird Tales Boys (PS)
• Liza Groen Trombi, for Locus

Special Award – Non-Professional

• Scott H. Andrews, for Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Trevor Kennedy, for Phantasmagoria
• Brian J. Showers, for Swan River Press
• Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny
• Julian Yap & Fran Wilde, for The Sunday Morning Transport [end-mark]

The post Announcing the 2024 World Fantasy Awards Finalists appeared first on Reactor.

Why do we love “Beauty and the Beast” so much? I mean, the evidence is clear—we DO love it. There are hundreds of retellings to explore, and if you somehow make your way through all of those, there’s “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” or “Cupid and Psyche,” or “the Green Serpent” (all similar tales) to explore. So what is it about this girl going off to live with a monster that we find so resonant and fascinating? Perhaps the best-known variation (aside from the Disney version) is Madame de Villeneuve’s original “La Belle et la Bête,” from 1740, from which most modern retellings stem. Scholarship suggests that the story may have been intended to prepare young ladies for the realities of arranged marriages in the 18^th century, assuring them that even if they found themselves wed to a stranger who seemed old, unattractive, or otherwise aberrant, with time and patience, they might find someone worthy beneath the surface.

If you’re somehow not familiar with the tale, here’s my helpful recap: A trio of sisters loses their fortune when their merchant father’s business collapses. However, the merchant gets an opportunity to redeem the business and replenish their fortune, and asks his daughters what gifts they’d like him to bring back. The elder two wish for fancy clothes and jewels, but the youngest only wants a fresh red rose. The merchant is gone far longer than expected, and when he returns at last, it is with a harrowing tale; he did not succeed in his venture, and he became lost on the way home. He found himself in a mystical forest, and finally made his way to a strange enchanted castle, where invisible servants saw to his every need. Rested and refreshed, he prepares to leave the castle, but on his way out he saw a lovely rose and decided to bring it home for his youngest daughter, Beauty. This act infuriated the master of the palace, the Beast, who made himself known to the merchant, and when the man tried to explain about his daughter, the Beast demanded that she return in her father’s place.

The merchant is upset about sacrificing his youngest daughter to a monster, but regardless, she accepts the deal and goes to save her father’s life. Beauty finds her way to the same magical palace staffed by invisible servants, and meets the master of the estate, a hideous but gentle beast. As they spend time together, Beauty grows fond of him, but every evening after dinner, the Beast asks her to marry him, and every evening she refuses. Eventually, she returns to her family for a short visit, and for one reason or another, delays her return. She arrives back at the palace only barely in time to save the Beast’s life by declaring her love for him, at which point he is transformed into a handsome prince, his curse finally broken by Beauty’s affection.

Pretty sweet, right? It’s not one of those “love at first sight” situations. These romantic partners have had time to get to know each other, look beyond the surface level, and have come to appreciate each other as people and friends.

Plus, they both love books! That’s a lot to be said for a relationship right there…

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley

This is one of the earliest versions of “Beauty and the Beast” I ever came across, and certainly one of the earliest fairy tale retellings I ever read; it was definitely a formative reading experience. (Surely I’m not the only one who discovered that fairy tales could be retold and reimagined—and not just by Disney!—thanks to this book.) McKinley gives us a luxurious retelling of Beauty’s early life, her family’s financial loss and relocation, and her father’s bargain with the Beast, who does not appear until halfway through the novel. Beauty finds the Beast and his palace strange and wonderful, and grows fond of her life there. When they use the Beast’s mirror to check in on her family, they also discover that her sister’s long-lost fiancé is still alive, and Beauty returns to her family to let them know. She barely makes it back to the Beast in time to save him from his curse, but when she realizes that she does love him, she won’t let anything stop her from returning to his side. A sweet and lovely retelling.

“Beauty” by Tanith Lee, from Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer

This glorious sci-fi retelling follows Estár, the youngest of three sisters and the least exceptional: eldest sister Lyra is a musical prodigy and Joya is a wonder with words. Estár longs for something more, something she can’t quite express. When their father, Levin, goes to wrap up some business dealings, she asks him for a single rose, plucked by his own hand. Levin, however, receives the rose in a box: it is a summons from an alien species that has arrived to share its technology with Earth. Once a generation or so, they send these alien roses to their chosen humans, asking the humans to send a member of the family to come live as their companions. Lee hits on all the major notes of the original tale and manages to recast them all in new light, delivering an utterly mesmerizing story.

Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier

When Caitrin flees a meddling distant relative after the death of her father, she finds herself at Whistling Tor, a mysterious fortress inhabited by a cursed lord and his strange retinue. She finds work translating and scribing for the young lord Anluan, and she begins warming to him when she sees how he cares for his people in spite of his gruff manner. After a childhood disease left his limbs shortened, Anluan considers himself no fit chieftain of his people and throws himself into scholarship in an attempt to break the curse on his lands. Marillier is always at her best when showing how self-acceptance and love can heal trauma, and her retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” is no exception. Caitrin and Anluan have to learn to truly see and accept themselves as much as they do each other in order to break the curse and find happiness.

In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard

Young scholar Yên is sent to live with the dragon Vu Côn in exchange for the dragon’s healing skills. Although she initially expects a quick and painful death, it seems Vu Côn actually wants her as a tutor for her children, unruly creatures who know little of the world as most of their experience has been within the palace prison where Vu Côn rules, and where any doorway can lead to danger. As Yên learns to navigate the palace and her young charges’ temperaments, she and Vu Côn develop an understanding that slowly leads to trust. But Yên starts to fall ill from a magical virus created by the vanishers, and when she discovers her students’ true nature, her trust and understanding are put to the test.

La Belle et la Bête (1946), directed by Jean Cocteau

This French classic is a delightful bit of cinematic history, a visual feast of costume and (archaic but still fascinating) special effects. We meet Belle along with her two sisters, who leave Belle to do all the housework after their father’s financial misfortunes leave the family in dire straits. Belle has a persistent suitor, Avenant, but she’s not interested because she doesn’t feel she can leave her father. Of course, when it turns out that she must leave him in order to save his life, she goes to live with the Beast in his enchanted castle. They spend a lot of time together, have some strange smoky encounters, and when she goes home and sees him dying through the magic mirror, she realizes she loves him.

Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

Twenty years after her novel Beauty was released, and having gained a great deal of rose gardening experience in the meantime, McKinley decided to revisit the tale of “Beauty and the Beast,” and I, for one, am so glad she did! Beauty is the youngest of three sisters; eldest sister Lionheart is known for her courage, middle sister Jeweltongue for her gift with words, and Beauty, lacking other distinguishing features, is simply Beauty (though we may disagree with her own assessment of herself). After their mother’s death and the loss of their family’s fortune, the young women and their father find refuge at Rose Cottage, which they mysteriously inherit. They come to love the place as they inhabit it together and spend more time being a family than they did as rich city folks. Beauty is inevitably drawn into the Beast’s enchantment and finds a dying rose garden, which she takes responsibility for even as she delves into the Beast’s curse. This is a generous and warm retelling that just may inspire you to spend more time in your own garden (or at least, with your house plants)!

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You’ll notice that most of these retellings tend to focus on the positive aspects of the original story, with the protagonists finding adventure, freedom, love, and a better life after embracing the unknown. Next time, I’ll have a list of works that offer darker, twistier versions of “Beauty and the Beast”—using the familiar narrative to question and complicate the original tale, and upend our own assumptions and expectations in the process. In the meantime, please share your own favorite versions and adaptations of this fairy tale classic, whether book or short story, animated or live action![end-mark]

The post Six Enchanting Retellings of “Beauty and the Beast” appeared first on Reactor.

Pedestrians throughout San Francisco have noticed what appear to be random incidences of the grinding down of portions of sidewalks. The patches of polished cement are sometimes adjacent to trees. They often appear nearby unresolved cracks, bumps, and uplifted pieces of cement. 

The polishing is being executed through StreetTreeSF, managed by the San Francisco Public Works’ Bureau of Urban Forestry. Under the program street trees are pruned and sidewalks are supposed to be repaired, with a focus on uplifts caused by plants and dead roots. 

StreetTreeSF was launched in 2017 to help maintain roughly 125,000 street trees and adjacent sidewalks. Funds are supposed to be spent as needed, principally to address pedestrian safety issues. Repairs focus on areas with vulnerable populations and high perambulator traffic, including sites near hospitals, senior centers, schools, and transit stops.

“Public Works urban forestry inspectors are our first line of defense. If sidewalk uplift is not tree-related, we cannot use tree maintenance funds for the repair. If it is tree-related, the inspectors flag it as a priority for our Precision Concrete Cutting, our slicing contractor, and Public Works cement crews,” said Christopher Heredia, Bureau of Urban Forestry public information officer.

StreetTreeSF repairs trees and sidewalks in zones identified as high-injury corridors by Vision Zero, the City’s road safety policy. In addition, StreetTreeSF reviews 311 calls about tree-related sidewalk uplift, some of which are forwarded to Precision. Under company, rather than municipal, policy, Precision completes jobs within 24 hours Monday through Friday. 

Heredia said repairs needed in high-traffic pedestrian corridors or near vulnerable populations are flagged as top priority. 

Typically, Precision’s work involves horizontal sidewalk slicing, a process of cutting through cement grids. Slicing reduces trip hazards from one-quarter inch to more than two inches in height. StreetTreeSF contracts with Precision to repair spots with sidewalk uplift of two inches or less. Areas that exhibit uplift of more than two inches go into queue for repair by Public Works’ cement shop, restored as time and resources allow. 

“Slicing versus demolishing and replacing sidewalks around street trees saves millions in taxpayer dollars yearly. Slicing is better for the environment. It eliminates the need for demolished concrete to be transported to and disposed of in landfill,” said Heredia.

A 2021, Board of Supervisors Budget & Legislative Analyst performance audit of StreetTreeSF found that while the overall condition of the City’s streets improved between 2011 and 2021, pavement condition varied across neighborhoods. In 2019, close to 30 percent of District 10’s street segments were ranked as failed, poor, or at risk, with the highest percentage of failed sections in San Francisco. Less than 10 percent of District 11’s segments were categorized as failed, poor, or at risk. District 6 had no failed street segments at all. Redistricting in 2022 may have altered district-specific findings. 

StreetTreeSF completes 25,000 to 30,000 repairs a year, at a typical cost of $75 per restoration. The City allocated $7.3 million for a two-year contract with Precision, which expires June 5, 2025. Precision was selected through a competitive bidding process. Monies for tree-related sidewalk repairs come from the City’s tree maintenance fund, a $19 million general fund set-aside. 

“What I find notable is that the sidewalk may be ground down a few feet away from areas that remain quite rough, with tripping hazards,” said former Potrero Hill resident, Debbie Findling, who now lives on Liberty Hill. “It’s as if the City pays to pick up specific pieces of litter, and not others. Plus, often the grinding seems nowhere near a tree.”

“Sidewalk slicing is a practical solution to a sidewalk lifting from tree roots. It’s far less costly and disruptive than replacing sidewalk pavers. I speak from experience since I repaired many sidewalks in my career as a contractor,” said Keith Goldstein, Potrero-Dogpatch Merchants Association president.

The post City Shaves Sidewalks as Part of Repair Program appeared first on Potrero View.

Have you ever been so excited about a book, you’re actually kind of nervous to start it?

That’s been happening to me a lot lately. One of the weird things about loving books and having a bird’s-eye view of publishing timelines is that I hear about things way in advance—but only whispers of a thing, rumors and snippets and buzzwords that sit like a drop of honey on the tip of my tongue. Sometimes I’m left waiting an entire year for the rest of it, sometimes even longer. It’s an agonizing process that drives me, a person who gets incredibly excited about books, into madness. By the time the book actually gets into my hands, I’ve hyped myself up to the point where I’m anxious, my hands are shaking, and I’m screaming into my pillow just from the first page. Is this normal? Maybe not. Maybe you ought to be worried about me. Lord knows what I’m going to be like by the time the next Nghi Vo novel comes out.

The problem stems from the fact that I really let books into my heart. I think there are a lot of people who enjoy reading, but read very casually—the emotions stay at the surface, and they’re just in it for a good time, not a long time. I, however, have a soft heart that yearns and aches and weeps, a childlike wonder inside me that is still wondering when I’m going to pass through a doorway into another realm (or, these days, the more adult version, which involves a sexy fae princess coming to seek me out, but let’s not get into all that now). I know I am deeply affected by the stories I read, which means opening a new book that I’m hopeful about, a book that I believe will fit me just right, is like being on a first date and knowing you’re going to fall in love with the person sitting across from you. It’s like teetering at the edge of that cliff. I know the fall is going to be beautiful, that I’ll see wonderful things, get to know wonderful people—but the moments before I let myself go are intense. Oddly enough, I look forward to this feeling, but it also means I procrastinate starting books that I believe might mean a lot to me. It is never about worrying the book might be bad. It’s always about worrying the book will be so good that I won’t be able to handle it emotionally. But the big feelings are always worth it.

That’s what makes writing this list twice a year so difficult, but also so much fun. I love sharing these stories with you, and I can only hope that you’ll be just as excited about them as I am.

Let’s dig into it.

There are a couple of major releases you might already know about, but let’s make sure these babies are on your calendar, okay? We ARE getting something new from Patrick Rothfuss, which is an insane sentence to type, and it’s a novella set in the Kingkiller universe called The Narrow Road Between Desires (November 14, DAW). Christopher Paolini’s Fractal Noise came out in May, and later this year he returns to the world of Eragon with Murtagh, a dragon riding spin-off (November 7, Knopf Books for Young Readers). The third of Brandon Sanderson’s secret projects comes in the shape of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, a Cosmere novel (October 3, Tor Books), and John Scalzi’s latest, Starter Villain, will be out in the fall (September 19, Tor Books). We’re also getting a new Jim Butcher, the next entry in the Cinder Spires fantasy series, called The Olympian Affair (November 7, Ace), and two new ones from Nnedi Okorafor—a duology that begins with Shadow Speaker (September 26, DAW) and ends with Like Thunder (November 28, DAW). The new Cory Doctorow, Lost Cause is out in the fall (November 14, Tor Books), as is the next T. Kingfisher, a fairy-tale fantasy titled Thornhedge (August 15, Tor Books). Olivie Blake’s Masters of Death is all set to be your end-of-summer beach read (August 8, Tor Books). Plus, we’ve got Jacqueline Carey returning to the world of Kushiel’s Dart from a new POV in Cassiel’s Servant (August 1, Tor Books), and Nicola Griffith’s sequel to fan favorite Hild, entitled Menewood (October 3, MCD)—which I’m including here because there’s so much love for Nicola Griffith in the SFF space even though Hild isn’t technically speculative. Both Cassandra Clare and Garth Nix are making their adult debuts this year, with Sword Catcher (October 10, Del Rey) and Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch Knight and the Puppet Sorcerer (August 22, Harper Voyager) respectively. And to round it all out, we’ve got a new Murderbot, System Collapse (November 14, Tordotcom) to pair with the updated reissue of Martha Wells’ fantasy epic City of Bones (September 5, Tordotcom).

If the book you’re anticipating the most this season is the next in your favorite SFF series, you’re in luck my friend! This fall, we’ll see the release of Bookshops & Bonedust, the follow up to Travis Baldree’s smash hit cozy fantasy (November 7, Tor Books); a new entry in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series called Light Bringer (July 25, Del Rey); T. L. Huchu’s third Edinburgh Nights book The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle (August 29, Tor Books); the second in M. J. Kuhn’s Tales of Thamorr series, Thick as Thieves (July 25, Gallery/Saga); Wesley Chu’s The Art of Destiny, the next in his War Arts Saga (September 26, Del Rey); the hotly anticipated sequel to She Who Became the Sun from Shelley Parker Chan, He Who Drowned the World (August 22, Tor Books); the second in Cat Rambo’s The Disco Space Opera series, Devil’s Gun (August 29, Tor Books); Warrior of the Wind, the next in Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s epic Nameless Republic series (November 21, Orbit); Maurice Broaddus’ next space opera, Breath of Oblivion, volume 2 of the Astra Black series (October 17, Tor Books); Traitor of Redwinter, the followup to Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald (October 24, Tor Books); and the next Tithenai romance from Foz Meadows, All the Hidden Paths (December 5, Tor Books). On the YA side, we’re got the next in Adalyn Grace’s dark romantic fantasy series, Foxglove (August 22, Little, Brown BYR); Erin A. Craig’s next one in the Sisters of Salt series, House of Roots and Ruins (July 25, Delacorte); Never A Hero, Vanessa Len’s follow up to Only a Monster (August 29, HarperTeen); the sequel to Foul Lady Fortune from Chloe Gong, Foul Heart Huntsman (September 26, Margaret K. McElderry Books); the next in Omar Epps and Clarence A. Haynes’ urban fantasy series, Nubia: The Reckoning (September 26, Delacorte); plus a new entry into the Daughter of the Pirate King universe from Tricia Levenseller titled Vengeance of the Pirate Queen (November 7, Feiwel & Friends), and the next Dragonlance Destinies book from Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Fate (August 1, Random House Worlds). We’ll get to read Under the Smokestrewn Sky, which will be the last one from Seanan McGuire writing as A. Deborah Baker (October 17, Tordotcom), plus L.L. McKinney completes the Nightmareverse with A Crown So Cursed (September 19, Feiwel & Friends), and Freya Marske rounds out the Last Binding trilogy with A Power Unbound (November 7, Tordotcom).

Please also note that while I raved about S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws in the first half of the year, the publication date has moved to August 22, so make sure you snag that when it shows up at your local indie bookstore.

Here are 30 more books to look forward to in the latter half of 2023.

 

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (July 11, Tordotcom)

First of all let me say, the prose in this book is absolutely insane. Lyrically, The Saint of Bright Doors is this year’s Light From Uncommon Stars. Chandrasekera’s efforts here are mind-blowing, the words come to pull you away on the wind, let you drift easily into a world of devils, prophetic cults, and unwanted destinies. Fetter is raised by Mother-of-Glory to kill his father, a maybe-prophet-maybe-cult leader called The Perfect and Kind (the vibes here are very The Library at Mount Char), but eventually grows up and moves to the city to live a (somewhat) normal life. What he finds there is a support group for the unchosen—others like him who abandoned their fates or had more powerful siblings and are now learning how to live in the real world. There is also political upheaval, refugees that need help, and romance to be had. Where Fetter’s world was once small and pointed, it is now full and chaotic. He learns to become a full person within it. This book is an experience—if you’re looking for a simple A to B to C plot with familiar stock characters, you won’t find it here. The Saint of Bright Doors is otherworldly in every sense of the word, and you’ll need to let yourself go there completely. But the returns are exquisite.

 

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (July 11, Saga)

If you want one surefire way to get me to read a book, tell me that the characters are tea drinkers. As an always-tea-never-coffee person, I feel SEEN I feel VALIDATED I feel REPRESENTED by Enitan, who wants nothing more than to quit her day job and become a full-time tea specialist. She’s growing her own little plants and tending to the leaves, which just seems like an ideal way to spend your time if you ask me. Unfortunately, the cottagecore vibes get all fucked up when Enitan’s sibling, Xiang, gets kidnapped—and when Enitan runs to find help from Ajana, her ex-lover/the governor of her city, Ajana turns up dead the next day and Enitan is left on her own. The only opportunity to make it off her small, provincial planet to investigate the whereabouts of her sister pulls her deep into political turmoil between two warring empires. The Splinter in the Sky is an ambitious space opera—a little bit Star Wars, a little bit Studio Ghibli (there is lots more tea)—with Kemi Ashing-Giwa poised to become an exciting new player on the SFF scene. Get in on the ground floor of her career—it’s only going to go up from here.

 

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle (July 18, Nightfire)

You can imagine the shriek of joy I made when I heard Nightfire had acquired a horror novel by Chuck Tingle—who, if you’re unfamiliar, is the two-time Hugo Award-nominated, karate-gi-wearing, weird-satirical-erotica-writing king of the internet and grand buckaroo. I simply cannot imagine what the inside of Chuck’s brain (and hard drive) must look like, between this novel and all the iconic poundings that made him famous, but I sure am glad he exists on this planet and is writing for us all. Chuck, through all of the humor and spicy content and now horror, seeks to prove that love is real, and that love can save us. Camp Damascus is a queer horror novel that unpacks the cruelty of conversion camps and that particular brand of religious fervor that actively harms people who are different under the guise of godliness. The titular Camp Damascus boasts a 100% success rate. You can imagine what it takes to keep that success rate going, and you can imagine what the folks of the Kingdom of the Pine do to their children to avoid having them sent there. When strange things start happening to Rose Darling (actual strange things, not just her being gay and autistic, cuz those things aren’t strange at all), she is set on a path to discover the terrible truths behind her ultra-religious upbringing, and through it all, find connection and community. It is genuinely horrifying—those with religious trauma should proceed with caution. It is also beautiful and affirming. Chuck Tingle is a very special writer and a very special human being, and I do hope this book finds its way to the readers that need it most. And also every reader everywhere. Cuz you all need it. Do you hear me? You need it. Because I said so and I’m right.

 

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (July 18, Del Rey)

Make no mistake, Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a titan of this industry. She has been steadily publishing banger after banger, and slowly gaining more and more attention as she goes. Silver Nitrate is her latest, a horror novel set in the film industry, that follows three friends as they come into contact with a famed Mexican horror film director. Abel Urueta is old now, but has one project yet unfinished—a masterpiece film that he believes to be cursed, and perhaps the only way to get away from the curse is to finish the film. Urueta recruits the three young people into helping, and at first, they believe the curse to be broken—but whatever magic was in that original film has long since twisted and broken free of its original intention, and all involved are doomed to face horrors, dark magic, ghosts from their past, and more. Moreno-Garcia shows brilliant expertise when it comes to referencing Mexican cinema and popular culture, as well as creating her now signature spooky atmosphere. While the cursed piece of media (films, books, songs, etc) is a staple of the horror genre, Silver Nitrate takes the idea and runs head-first into darker, more vicious places, with Moreno-Garcia’s genre-blending style shining all the way through. Grab popcorn, sure, but you might want to keep the lights on for this one.

 

The Sun and The Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz (July 25, Orbit)

Prepare yourself, you’re about to discover a book so good and so intricate, you’ll want to forget all your stale old fantasy series—actually, you know what? I’m not going to do this book the disservice of comparing it to what’s come before. The Sun and The Void feels like such a fresh breath of air, a full world entirely of its own. We begin with Reina, a be-tailed nozariel, who is on her search for her estranged grandmother only to be attacked and left for dead by vicious monsters on the way. She’s rescued and brought to the palace, fortunate that her grandmother is the only person capable of healing her. Meanwhile in another kingdom, Eva, part-valco and concealing her antlers, is on her own search for estranged family, all while trying to hide her aptitude for magic. Inspired by the landscape and mythology of Venezuela, this book deals with complex family dynamics and the experience of being mixed-race and living on the margins. There’s love, there’s danger, there’s a fantasy world so big you’ll get lost in it. In my opinion, this is the epic fantasy book of the season. I have been waiting for this one for a very long time, and it was everything I dreamed of and more.

 

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi (August 8, DAW)

Just personally I think there should be more succubi in contemporary speculative fiction, just for me. Because I absolutely fell in love with Nneoma. (It’s impossible not to, the powerful and extremely hot succubus who made herself a man to eat people’s souls with. Can I be her? I want to be her.) The man is, of course, not exactly a man. Shigidi is a former nightmare god, turned incubus at her hand, and now he and Nneoma spend their days as freelance spirit entities fucking and eating humans. Which is the dream. Unfortunately this dream life gets derailed when the lovers are tasked with retrieving a stolen totem, which contains the power of an orisha. Failing to complete the task means almost certain death. Success means a new chance at life, with protection and freedom they have long been without. Of course they say yes, and what follows is a fast-paced rollercoaster ride filled with angry gods, old debts, dark magic, and revenge. This book has everything you could ever ask for, including a reverse Indiana Jones situation (!!!) and a global adventure that is both sexy and dramatic. Wole Talabi has been a star of short fiction for some time now and a favorite of speculative fiction insiders, and his debut novel does not disappoint.

 

More Perfect by Temi Oh (August 15, Saga)

If you’ve been paying attention to media at all lately, you might be thinking a lot about A.I., social media, and how freakishly accessible the internet makes people nowadays. I am an extremely online person, always have been, and even I am starting to rethink just how much I share with the digital world. In Temi Oh’s More Perfect, her first novel since 2019’s fan favorite Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, the internet is directly implanted into the brain, connecting people to The Pulse, or the Panopticon. It stores your memories and allows you to watch the memories of others, it allows you access to all the world’s information, connects you to others without the need for physical speech, and more. Moremi is a young teenager who has just gotten the implant and finds herself thrilled by the possibilities—but when a massive flood destroys London, she is unable to find her Pulse-less mother despite all the other information in her head. Orpheus is a young boy when we meet him (you guessed it, we ARE in a retelling), living with his father on a remote island where they are disconnected and hiding from the authorities—but is captured and forced to have the Pulse implanted. More Perfect is a deeply character-driven dystopia that explores memory, connection, and controlling the narrative, with vibes sort of like V for Vendetta mixed with Inception.

 

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas (August 15, Berkley)

You cannot imagine the ring of joy I feel at the sight of the words “Latinx” and “vampires” together. Do you feel it too? It’s exquisite. Now, I have to warn you, the vampires of this book are not sexy vampires—they are vicious creatures, there’s some real body horror in here. But that doesn’t make them any less exciting. Our story begins with Nena and Néstor, childhood sweethearts living on her father’s ranch. When Nena is attacked late one night, Néstor believes her dead and flees. They each grow up, apart from each other—Nena on the ranch, learning to become a curandera like her abuela, and Néstor working other ranches—both of them working hard for the future they dream of, both of them trying to prove themselves. They’re brought back together when the Yanquís come to invade the territory—bringing disease and vampires along with them. Vampires of El Norte is a sweet, slow burn romance over a brutal tale of colonialism and violence.

 

The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord (August 29, Del Rey)

Dr. Karen Lord is one of our greatest, and in her latest novel, The Blue Beautiful World, she shows us exactly why that is. Dr. Lord is looking at the big picture here. This is not simply a cli-fi book, it is not simply a first contact story, nor is it just a space opera. It is all of these things, it is so much more than these things. We follow Owen, a mega popstar with an uncanny ability to draw a crowd and make people fall in love with him—he is described as being the “hometown hero” of every city, because he sings in every language and appears to be everywhere at once. What exactly happens during his shows is anyone’s guess, but he seems to have the world in his hands, as if by some ultra-human force. Owen and his team find themselves at the center of intergalactic attention, and Owen’s abilities might be the key to helping humanity. The Blue, Beautiful World is tied to others in Dr. Lord’s Cygnus Beta but stands alone brilliantly, with fully fleshed-out characters that you’ll become more and more invested in as the story unravels—the story zooms out to galaxy level and deals heavily with A.I. and cutting-edge technology, but its cornerstone is the relationships between characters and their individual growth throughout. In the way that all great speculative fiction is, it is a story about what makes us human, and how the connections we form with each other are vital to our survival, and it’s told in the most exquisite prose.

 

Where Peace is Lost by Valerie Valdes (August 29, Harper Voyager)

If you’ve not been reading Valerie Valdes, you’ve been missing out. Valdes is queen of the bold, exciting space romp, and Where Peace is Lost is a new stand-alone novel, coming off of the back of her Chilling Effect series. Where Peace is Lost is the perfect combination of drama and adventure—we follow Kel, who has been living in recluse after a traumatic war experience. When an enemy war machine appears on the isolated outlier planet Kel has made home, she finds herself unable to stay out of it. At a town meeting, the mysterious (read: very sus) Captain Vyse and her partner proclaim they’ve got something to deactivate the war machine–for a fee—and Kel plus her young friend Lunna volunteer (sort of) to join them as local guides. But the further they go, the more it looks like Kel’s past is catching up with her, which might put everyone in danger. Kel’s “I’m too old for this shit” attitude pairs perfectly with Lunna’s naive go-getter spirit, and all of the characters come beautifully alive over the course of the novel. Where Peace is Lost is a high-octane story that you will absolutely fly through because you’re simply having too much fun to stop.

 

The Phoenix King by Aparna Verma (August 29, Orbit)

I’m not gonna lie to you, I was totally surprised to open this book and find there are sci-fi elements to this story! It’s a brilliant blend of sci-fi and fantasy, which in my personal opinion, more books need to do. Good thing The Phoenix King is here to say GENRE IS FAKE, and the only thing that matters is a great plot and characters to love. In this one, we follow Elena, who is set to ascend the throne of Ravence, following her father Leo, a power-hungry man with the ability to wield the holy Eternal Fire. Elena is young, idealistic, yet terrified of her upcoming coronation because she cannot yet withstand the Fire. On the other side of the kingdom, the skilled assassin Yassen Knight comes to meet with his old friend Samson, who has grown from a small-time thief to an independent militant leader—whose forces are hired to help protect the realm, a deal to be solidified by a marriage between Samson and Elena. This is only the beginning of the intricate political intrigue of this book—there are assassination plots, a prophecy that tells of a powerful new prophet, potential war from neighboring kingdoms, and more. And never does the prophecy-giving holy fire feel out of place next to holo communicators, magic and religion and technology are woven seamlessly together to create a world that feels like a fresh sandbox to play in. The Phoenix King is one for the readers who like intense, imaginative worldbuilding and a dynamic plot.

 

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (September 5, Peachtree Teen)

Just so you know going in, this is an intense one. As all good horror does, The Spirit Bears Its Teeth will make you feel both uncomfortable and emotional, with its beating heart being the trans experience and the pain of becoming yourself in a world that wants you to be something different. Silas is a young boy with violet eyes—a unique trait of those who can communicate with spirits. The Royal Speaker Society, of which Silas’ family is a part, is an all-male order of spirit workers with some very fucked up rules. Girls with violet eyes are married off to men (married off young, I might add) in the hopes of producing male children with the gift, and any woman who dares attempt to practice spirit work is put to death. When Silas dresses in masculine clothing and pretends to be someone else in order to receive the Speaker seal that will allow him to go off into the world on his own and avoid an arranged marriage, he is discovered and sent to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium, a place where young women are sent to be “fixed”. You can imagine what that means, and the horrors that have been done to the students there. You’ll recognize from the first instant this is a character with autism—there are very relatable moments where he struggles with sensory processing and communication—and I do want to warn you that Silas goes through a lot of shit. There’s quite a bit of deadnaming and physical violence. But it’s also about being determined to live the life you dream of, and finding tenderness amongst all of the terrors of the world. The Spirit Bears Its Teeth will horrify you and hold you, and is a completely unforgettable reading experience.

 

Rouge by Mona Awad (September 12, Simon & Schuster)

Full honesty—this is the only one on this list I haven’t been able to actually read yet, and normally I would hesitate to recommend something without having gone through at least a little bit of it myself first, but I will never hesitate to shove Mona Awad into your hands. She is a writer of unbelievable talent, who exposes the darkness behind modern womanhood in a way that is both bloody and saccharine. 2019’s Bunny is a personal favorite of mine (the first book which prompted me to e-mail a publicist my favorite question, are they actual witches or do they just kill a dude—the answer was: both), and Rouge looks like it’s about to take that vibe to the next level. Described as a gothic Snow White that takes on the beauty and wellness industry (complete with a creepy cult and creepy mirrors), I can only imagine the unhinged depths to which this book will take us. Mona Awad, I will read everything you ever write. The more fucked up, the better.

 

A Hundred Vicious Turns by Lee Paige O’Brien (September 12, Amulet Books)

There’s a certain sub-sub genre of fantasy novel, typically YA but not exclusively, written by largely queer and trans authors who grew up reading That Series and are now wielding their own magic. Themes like friendship, stepping into ones own power, and loving the library shine through, and there are clear narrative wrongs being righted. Now, I don’t know if this is Lee Paige O’Brien’s intention, but it sure does feel that way—and with great success, honestly. A Hundred Vicious Turns caught my heart immediately. We follow Rat as they begin their studies at Bellamy Arts, an academy for magic, following a tumultuous summer. You see, Rat has a knack for finding hidden doorways and passages, some of which lead to other worlds. And someone from another world is trying to come after them. Rat now has to fear for their safety and deal with the fact their ex-best friend, Harker, is also at Bellamy this year—the same Harker was with them when they found the thing that is now chasing them. It’s an emotional thriller following these friends-to-enemies-to who knows what, with dark magic and lost secrets. If you’re looking for a book to get deeply fucking obsessed with, it’s this one.

 

Fall of Ruin and Wrath by Jennifer Armentrout (September 12, Bramble)

As a young girl, Lis—an orphan with psychic intuition—had an encounter with the Hyhborn that both scared her and intrigued her (read: he’s hot). Now as a young woman, she is getting ready to attend the Feasts for the first time (a celebration that may or may not involve an orgy) when she finds herself rescuing the same Hyhborn man who rescued her from her abuser all those years ago. You know, the one with the strange eyes, the one she felt so connected to, the one she thinks of as hers. Fall of Ruin and Wrath is the first offering from Tor Publishing Group’s new romance imprint, Bramble, and it does not disappoint on either the romance side or the speculative side. I’m not a huge category romance reader, granted, so some of the tropes and plot beats still surprise me. But I was completely captivated and delighted by the equal blend of fantasy and sexy tension. The world of this book is very stratified, but even amongst the background of political upheaval and class warfare, love and connection can be found. And we all need that reminder every now and then.

 

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner (September 12, Harper Voyager)

Are you ready to be transported? Are you ready for some Wheel of Time level worldbuilding? Are you ready for a bisexual with a sword?? Of course you are. You’re a Tor.com reader, you’re always ready for queer ladies with swords. Our girl Kissen’s family was favored by the sea god—an idyllic life, for a time, until followers of the fire god killed her family. She was the only one to survive. Now, after the god wars and the King’s ruling that outlawed worship, Kissen spends her days hunting the remaining gods for the realm and flirting with hot barmaids. She is in the midst of flirting with said barmaid when Inara, a noble girl, seeks her out with a problem — a small god of white lies is attached to her (it’s giving Lyra and Pan), and they cannot be separated. Thus begins a quest (naturally) to find a way to help Inara and her god separate without harming either one of them. Along with former-knight-current-baker (and also possibly love of my life) Elo (who also has some weird romantic tension with the king), Kissen and her new crew set out across a country marked by war and divided politically. Look, are we doing a hero’s journey here? You bet. But do I care that it’s kinda tropey? No I do not, because it’s fun and intricate, and feels like a fresh take on high fantasy. Plus, we get detailed descriptions of food and clothing, which fantasy can never have too much of. Godkiller is an adult novel but will appeal to fantasy fans of all ages—put it on your shelf next to The Unspoken Name and The Queen’s Thief series.

 

The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu (September 12, Solaris)

I love it when a book starts off with a murder, honestly—and in Em X. Liu’s The Death I Gave Him, that murder kicks off a tense, emotional series of events that will keep you flipping pages. Hayden Lichfield’s father is dead, his body left on the floor of their laboratory. The lab immediately goes into lockdown mode, and everyone trapped inside is a possible murder suspect. Before anyone can get to it, Hayden scrambles to preserve his father’s work—the Sisyphus formula that might be the key to immortality. Together with Horatio, the lab’s (incredibly charming) A.I. and Hayden’s closest confidant, Hayden’s got to hide the secret formula from his father’s assailant, whoever that might be, and navigate all the complex personal relationships. Liu has written a propulsive locked room Hamlet retelling with clever sci-fi elements and vibrant characters, deep emotional resonance, and incredible twists and turns. If you like drama and big emotions, you won’t be able to put this one down.

 

Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian (September 19, Nightfire)

So, you don’t need to know this about me, but I am deep into a Western kick right now. I’ve been gobbling up speculative westerns like nobody’s business, so I sure as shootin’ had Red Rabbit on my list. It’s an incredibly atmospheric novel, almost like you can feel the dust kicked up by your horse from the very first page. There is a witch living outside Riddle Kansas. The witch Sadie Grace has been—apparently—causing trouble with the crops and making children sick enough to die. Now it’s easy to believe that these men are accusing a woman of being a witch simply because they don’t like her or because she lives alone, because that’s what men do, but Sadie Grace is, in fact, a witch. She’s just not doing the things they’re accusing her of doing. When a bounty is put out for her capture, many come to answer—including a man named Old Tom who claims to be a witch hunter. But Old Tom’s failed attempt to kill the witch from afar brings together an unlikely group of people: traveling cowboys Moses Burke and Ned Hemingway, and Rose Nettles, who is living alone on a farm after her husband’s death. Along with a child called Rabbit (whose gender is somewhat up for debate), the group of them make their way across the west, encountering all kinds of horrors and dangerous strangers on the way. There isn’t any other way to phrase this so please forgive me for saying the vibes are impeccable—Red Rabbit is a completely immersive experience. With a perfect blend of weirdness, carnage, and unlikely friendships, this is an absolute riot of a book.

 

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid (September 19, Harper Teen)

Around this time last year I was sitting in a restaurant alone, with a glass of wine, reading Juniper & Thorn. I remember being unable to control my face as I reacted to the prose and plot of Ava Reid’s last novel—and being so aware that people around me were noticing. But it’s impossible not to have a full reaction to Reid’s work. Her writing is, simply, breathtaking—evocative, poetic, so good it’ll snatch your soul right out of your body—and she has quickly become one of my favorite authors. So much so that I was genuinely nervous to start this because I knew I was going to feel so many things. I am the definition of “screaming, crying, throwing up” about this book. A Study in Drowning is what I’m going to call an elevated dark academia—because while it is very much about academia (and get this, they aren’t humanities students!!!) and the psychology of obsessive scholarship, it is so much more than that. Vibes-wise, it’s definitely more on the Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell side of things than the Secret History side, but is as much about fairy kings as it is about trauma and sexism and taking control of one’s narrative. Reid does not shy away from darkness in her work, and to great effect—the depth of emotion in this novel is so deeply effecting that you, too, might find yourself unable to control your reactions. Approach with an open heart—let it be broken, let it be mended again.

 

The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab (September 26, Tor Books)

Magic has returned to White London. And so we return to the worlds of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series, set some years after the first trilogy and introducing a new set of characters amongst old favorites. I found the Shades of Magic series at exactly the right time in my life—I devoured the series, imprinted hard on Lila Bard (she is my girl, I love her, would take a dart in the eye for her), and spent all my money that summer on the rest of Schwab’s back catalogue. Her work is, in no insignificant way, the reason why I have this job and am writing this to you today. But that’s not why you should read this book. You should read this because Schwab is a one-of-a-kind storyteller. The worlds are immersive, the characters are witty and bold and sexy and lovable even when they’re being idiots. This new installment deals with magic and power—who has it, who it’s being taken from, and how it’s affecting the new generations—with new characters to enrich the story alongside our familiar favorites. It is Schwab at her best. Be ready to fall in love all over again.

 

Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig (September 26, Del Rey)

Listen, I am an apple bitch. Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I get excited for apple season the way others get excited for the return of the pumpkin spice latte—I fill my fridge with them, I consume little else for the few months when apples are in peak season. So you best believe that I am here for Chuck Wendig’s horror novel about people going absolutely feral for apples. And the apple is such a key figure in our shared cultural knowledge—poison apples, tempting apples, sinful apples—it’s no wonder that the citizens of Harrow become transfixed with these luscious, near-black, extremely haunted apples from the Paxton family’s orchard. It’s a miracle for the struggling farm, but of course, there is darkness under this cottagecore dream. Black River Orchard, at its core (I’m clever), is the story of a farm, the story of a family, the story of a town. It is an expansive novel that will thrill you and disgust you. And I won’t judge you if you leave it still craving an apple.

 

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu (October 3, Tordotcom Publishing)

Just be warned, you are about to fall in love with a robot monkey. His name is Bador, he’s the brother of political rebel Lina, and he’s got eyemojis that change with his mood and a bot companion of his own who serves as our narrator. Lina, Bador, and Moku are in Shantiport, a once-great city turned surveillance state ruled by the Tiger Clan after several eras of political turnover, fighting to liberate the people from oppressive rule. Basu sets up a world in which one hero is not the be all and end all of the story—Lina’s parents were involved in the resistance, and not only is there a vast network of people involved, but the entanglement she gets into feels like part of their legacy. Lina is on the hunt for a ring that may help her in the fight against the Tiger Clan. Her plan is to befriend the Not-prince Juiful and seek an invitation to the palace so she can snoop around there, which she successfully obtains. Meanwhile, Bador is getting into trouble, which eventually leads them to the discovery of the wish granting Jinn-bot. The story is complicated by political turmoil and the possibility of a dying planet, but the heart of it is the central three characters, all of whom are brilliantly unique, beautifully messy, and wonderfully brave. The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport is just fucking delightful from start to finish. Also, Bador wants to fight in a bot tournament. Also I love him.

 

The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker (October 3, Inkyard)

In a world where the rich get richer (literally, they’re eating gold nuggets to stay young forever), and the poor are left to die, Zilan and her cousins will resort to practically anything to survive—including raising the dead. Until they’re able to pass the exams that will allow them to seek work with the government, Zilan’s alchemical skills are putting food on the table, and the dead back in their loved ones’ arms. Of course, she won’t have to do that any more if she becomes a royal alchemist, following in her father’s footsteps, but passing the exams and finding a place amongst the elite won’t be easy. Never mind the fact that the royals are keeping a close eye on her for an impossible task. In The Scarlet Alchemist, Kylie Lee Baker creates a world where science is magic and class disparity has become violent. Baker pulls from the real history of alchemists during the Tang dynasty as the basis for this, which means there’s lots of details that are heightened through fantasy elements—and it is, quite simply, very cool. But the centerpiece here is the ambitious Zilan, whose no-bullshit attitude and determination to better her circumstances leads her into some deep, twisty palace intrigue. Yet she’s brilliant throughout, and you can’t help but root for her. The Scarlet Alchemist is one to pick up if you love an immersive atmosphere and smart authorial choices that will leave you turning pages until the very end.

 

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow (October 3, Tor Books)

The town of Eden is, like many impoverished American towns, marked by decay. So too is the once grand Starling House that sits back from the road, now cloaked in mystery, vines, and known only by its intricate gated fence. Opal dreams about the house—despite having no connection to it beyond a favored childhood book by E. Starling—and it might just be calling to her. When she is offered a job cleaning the house, she takes it, both because of her interest in the house (and its “Boo Radley-ish” guardian, Arthur Starling, with his special sword) and because it’s paying her enough to send her brother to a good school. The latest from Alix E. Harrow is a gothic wonderland, fitting somewhere in-between The Hazel Wood and Coraline, complete with footnotes (!!!) and a dash of inside publishing jokes (a longtime Tor.com friend makes a little cameo). This book has so many things I love: fairy tales, a sentient house, a hidden world, weird happenings, dark secrets—things I know you’ll love too. It’s a contemporary southern gothic fantasy coming just in time for spooky season that feels both familiar and deeply unsettling.

 

Beholder by Ryan La Sala (October 3, PUSH)

Athan has the Sight, which allows him to see things others can’t. When he goes into a bathroom at a party, the Sight activates in a mirror—and something comes to attack the partygoers. Something dark and violent has taken ahold of them, and it’s searching for Athan. He steps out to find bodies, artfully arranged bodies, and believes he has brought this on somehow. Events have begun whether he likes it or not, events that involve his family and perhaps the entirety of New York City. Ryan La Sala’s Beholder starts off with a bang and does not let up. The mystery twists and turns, taking you on a fast-paced rollercoaster—complete with a cute mysterious boy who goes all, “come with me if you want to live”. It is also a very New York novel, a horrific ode to this town and all its shitty landlords and pretentious art dudes and many ancient secrets. If this hasn’t sold you, I will also tell you that this book has THE. SALTIEST. DEDICATION PAGE. OF ALL TIME. It is truly a work of art.

 

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle (October 3, Margaret K. McElderry)

“Do not go down to the caves,” the students of Aldryn College for Lunar Magics are warned. “Remember those who have drowned”. Emory’s best friend Romie was amongst the group of students who died in the mysterious Dovermere caves last term, and now Emory is left alone to navigate the choppy social waters of their magical school. Not only that, but she still has no idea what Romie and her new, more talented friends were attempting to do in the caves that night. When the body of one of the drowned students washes up on shore during a start of term party, it kicks off a series of events involving Emory’s magic, Romie’s studious brother, and a lost story about drowned gods and trickster spirits that might just solve the mystery behind the drownings. Curious Tides is a magical dark academia with a unique magic system with its own mythology, evocative of a world much bigger than the school on which this story is centered (and extremely good library content). Lacelle has written a poetic story about harnessing one’s power, dark forbidden magic, and complicated relationships that feels very much like Victoria Lee’s A Lesson in Vengeance and Novik’s Scholomance series.

 

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw & Richard Kadrey (October 3, Nightfire)

Let’s get down to it: This shit is gruesome. There is plenty of gore and body horror and weird shit to keep all you sickos satisfied, if that’s what you’re into. And listen, I live in New York, I have seen some pretty disgusting stuff. But this book pulls no punches. When the least cringe thing is your protagonist walking barefoot through the Village, you know you’ve got something interesting on your hands. Julie is a freelance demon hunter, taking on jobs that involve a lot of blood and guts. Meanwhile, her ex, Tyler, is a corporate douchebag (read: a sell out) for a company serving a tentacle-y cosmic entity. When said entity tasks Tyler (the douchebag) with an assignment that will surely kill him, of course he tries to outsource the work to Julie. What follows is a mess—literally, I mean, within the context of the story. It’s gross. Fun! But gross. Gross to a point that demands respect. Khaw and Kadrey are a powerful team of genre-blending mad geniuses, and The Dead Take the A Train is a gore-covered cake for horror lovers.

 

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee (October 17, Astra House)

Full disclosure: I am friends with the author of this book, but that doesn’t negate the fact that it’s incredible, and doesn’t negate the fact that I had to offer to seduce someone in exchange for a copy of it. Jonathan Abernathy is a novel very much of its time—a critique of capitalism, unfair working conditions, the debt cycle, and all the ways the American financial system harms the people working so hard within it. With devastatingly stark prose, McGhee places the titular Jonathan Abernathy at the bottom of the financial food chain—riddled with debt and unable to work himself out of it. This brings him to Archival Office 508, a branch of the government forgiveness program in which recruited workers (one of which Jonathan becomes) work as dream auditors, venturing into the sleeping minds of white-collar workers to remove anxiety. In exchange for creating a more dedicated, clear-minded work force, auditors get incremental loan forgiveness. You can imagine what spending night after night watching anxiety dreams is like. Throughout all this, Jonathan still has to try to be a person, which as a lot of us know, is incredibly difficult under the circumstances. This is not an escapist novel. This is a look-our-problems-in-the-face novel. McGhee’s work here is not to be ignored, with inventive prose that perfectly captures the feeling of trying to keep trying even when capitalism makes you feel worthless. I am in awe, and will be first in line for everything she writes after this.

 

Jewel Box by E. Lily Yu (October 24, Erewhon)

A man asks an angel to bring him to America to see the son he hasn’t seen in three years. A streetlamp lights up for a pretty boy. Wasps make intricately detailed maps on the inside of their hives. Just in general I think people should be reading more short story collections, especially weird ones, and Jewel Box should be at the top of everyone’s list. E Lily Yu is absolutely a writer to watch, a master storyteller who is poised to become a force to be reckoned with. She follows 2021’s On Fragile Waves with a collection of stories that are wondrous and surreal, but also filled with a much needed sweetness. Each story shines, with Yu’s stark prose perfectly suited to these magical realist tales. Read one as a treat. Read the whole thing in one sitting. However you like to consume story collections, make sure you spend time with this one.

 

Sun of Blood and Ruin by Mariely Lares (November 7, Harper Voyager)

Mariely Lares, you had me at “speculative Zorro retelling”. And listen, a Zorro story, by nature, has got to be anti-colonialist—Zorro is a vigilante, after all, fighting to protect the native people of early California from Spanish colonialists. Sun of Blood and Ruin absolutely shoves this in your face. Here, our Zorro is Leonora, aka Pantera—a powerful assassin who uses tonalli (a magical life force) and her sword to strike fear into the hearts of the Spanish nobles seeking to wipe out indigenous cultures. The Spanish have outlawed witchcraft in addition to their efforts to erase native languages and religions, which means the people of New Spain (Mexico) are suffering. Outside of the mask, Leonora is the daughter of a powerful family being forced into an engagement with the Spanish prince. It’s not easy to keep up her charade, and of course with all the political turmoil, her carefully constructed personas start to blur. But Leonora is a determined, capable heroine driven by the love for her culture, so it won’t be easy to stop Pantera from fighting for the people. Sun of Blood and Ruin is an exciting adventure with plenty of swordplay and magic, but is also a beautiful love letter to pre-colonialist Mesoamerican cultures.

We’ve only gotten snippets of what’s been going on with the Netflix adaptation of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem. We know that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are spearheading the series, and that they’ve cast at least 12 actors in unknown roles. And that’s about it!

Until today: A recent interview with the show’s costume designer, Michael Wilkinson (currently at work on Andor) shed some additional light on the production.

In an interview with /Film, Wilkinson shared his experience of working on The Three-Body Problem set:

“It was a huge challenge. It’s full of really interesting, complex ideas, both philosophical and scientific. But I feel like the filmmaking team has really succeeded in bringing lots of humanity, and it’s now a very engaging and thought-provoking story.”

The Three-Body Problem trilogy (check out the first three chapters of the first book here) takes us from the 1960s to the end of time and has been called one of the most ambitious sci-fi series in recent history. The books explore big ideas, arguably at the expense of character development. The fact that Wilkinson said that Benioff and Weiss have brought “lots of humanity” to the story is intriguing. What that actually looks like, however, remains to be seen.

No official word on when the Netflix adaptation will make its way to the streaming platform, though it’s likely to premiere sometime next year.

The nominees for the 2021 Shirley Jackson Awards have been announced! The awards recognize “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.”

This year, the winners will be announced October 29th at an in-person ceremony at the Boston Book Festival that is presented in partnership with Readercon. Elizabeth Hand and Paul Tremblay will host the ceremony.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Novel

• All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter (Titan Books)
• Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer (MCD)
• My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press)
• No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone Publishing)
• Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (Nightfire)

 

Novella

• Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom Publishing)
• Dirty Heads: A novella of cosmic coming-of-age horror by Aaron Dries (Black T-Shirt Books)
• Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn (Tordotcom Publishing)
• A Rose / Arose by Michael Bailey (Written Backwards)
• The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate, translated by David Bowles (Innsmouth Free Press)

 

Novelette

• House of Crows by Lisa Unger (Amazon Original Stories)
• “The Nag Bride” by A.C. Wise (The Ghost Sequences, Undertow Publications)
• The Night Belongs to Us by Jess Landry (Independent Legions Publishing)
• “We, the Girls Who Did Not Make It” by E. A. Petricone (Nightmare Magazine, February 2021)
• The Women by Margaret Jameson (F(r)iction)

 

Short Fiction

• “Dizzy in the Weeds” by L.D. Lewis (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness)
• “Forward, Victoria” by Carlie St. George (The Dark Magazine, April 2021)
• “Gordon B. White is Creating Haunting Weird Horror” by Gordon B. White (Nightmare Magazine, July 2021)
• “Human Reason” by Nicasio Andres Reed (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness)
• “You’ll Understand When You’re a Mom Someday” by Isabel J. Kim (khōréō magazine, August 2021)

 

Single-Author Collection

• Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons: Stories by Keith Rosson (Meerkat Press)
• People from My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen (Soft Skull Press)
• Sometimes We’re Cruel by J.A.W. McCarthy (Cemetery Gates Media)
• We are Happy, We are Doomed by Kurt Fawver (Grimscribe Press)
• Where All is Night, and Starless by John Linwood Grant (Trepidatio Publishing)

 

Edited Anthology

• Giving The Devil His Due: A Charity Anthology, edited by Rebecca Brewer (Running Wild Press)
• Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, edited by Eric J. Guignard (Dark Moon Books)
• Stitched Lips: An Anthology of Horror from Silenced Voices, edited by Ken MacGregor (Dragon’s Roost Press)
• There Is No Death, There Are No Dead, edited by Jess Landry & Aaron J. French (Crystal Lake Publishing)
• Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness, edited by dave ring (Neon Hemlock)

 

Special Award

Presented to Ellen Datlow, in recognition of the anthology When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson (Titan Books, 2021)

Rib and Cricket cause existential dread!

A best-selling author and Newsweek correspondent has a book coming out on President Donald Trump and the women in his life.   Gallery Books announced Thursday that Nina Burleigh's “Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump's Women” will be published October 16. Burleigh, Newsweek's national political correspondent, will draw on investigative journalism and feminist analysis, according to Gallery Books. She will write about Trump's mother, his three wives, his...

I love the natural colour of this kuih. It consists of three layers. They are made with tapioca and sago. You can coat the kuih with some freshly grated coconut just before serving too.





Kuih Talam Ubi Kayu & Sago

Ingredients

Bottom Layer
300 Grated Tapioca/Cassava (from 1 Medium Size)
60 to 80 grams Cane Sugar
A Big Pinch of Sea Salt
120 ml Coconut Milk
30 ml Water
1 tsp Tapioca Starch

Middle Layer
100 Grams Sago, soaked an hour & drain well
50 ml Water
1/4 Cup Grated Coconut
100 to 120 Grams Palm Sugar/Gula Melaka
2 Pandan Leaf, knotted

Top Layer (Coconut)
100 Grams Sago, soaked and hour & drain well
60 ml Coconut Milk
60 to 80 Grams Cane Sugar
1/4 Cup Grated Coconut
5 Pandan Leaf, pounded
A Big Pinch of Sea Salt

Equipment: 8 inches Pan, lined with Banana leaf
A Steamer

Method

Bottom Layer: Combine the tapioca, water, coconut milk, cane sugar, sea salt, and tapioca starch. Cook on moderate heat until the mixture has thickens.

Pour into the baking tin and steam on high heat for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, make the second/middle layer.

Middle/Second Layer: Add water, palm sugar & pandan leaf. Bring it to a boil and simmer until sugar dissolves. Discard the pandan leaf, and strain the sugar mixture into the sago. Then pour into the tapioca layer and steam for another 15 minutes.

Bottom/Third Layer: Combine coconut milk and pandan juice, strain into a small pot. Add sugar and simmer until all the sugar has melted. Then add sago, grated coconut and a big pinch of sea salt. Pour everything into the Palm sugar sago layer. Steam for 20 minutes.

Remove and let cool completely before serving. The tapioca kuih can be slice into any shape of your choice and coat with grated coconut, if desired.

You know, I almost didn’t think I was going to do one of these this year! After a year of quietly working away on various secret projects, it felt like I didn’t have a lot to show. And the world after November 8th feels like waking up from a hopeful dream to realize that everything’s been fucked for a long long time, and it’s likely to get worse. So how could 2016 have been a good year? But to be honest…2016, while complicated, was one of the happiest years I’ve ever had.

Literally the first thing I did in 2016 was fall in love with someone I shouldn’t have. Still, as someone historically terrible at being in love, it was easy to push aside any misgivings and self-preservation instincts I might have and just fall, hard.

I’d always had an idea of myself as a very emotionally tough person who was at best incredibly skeptical of romance. I liked being single, and I was good at it.

But something had started to change in me. After throwing myself entirely into my work for several years and seeing it pay off in a big way in 2015, I was tired. And I was scared. And it was hard to see exactly what I was working towards when it seemed like I risked going up in flames when I’d only just begun.

It turned out I wanted more. I loved my work, but I wanted something that could love me back. 

I started losing a lot of sleep - partially from stress, and partially because what had started as an uncomplicated crush was quickly spiraling out of control.

January seemed to last a million years. Nothing that happened next was pretty.

And then, it was over.

Except it wasn’t. Because we just weren’t smart enough to let it be.

January was finally over, and suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore. And cautiously, we made our way forward.

The next few months were some of the happiest that I can remember.

Also in that time, I visited Skywalker Ranch, won an Eisner, and got a new job, one with my very own office, working on something that I am SO SO excited for everyone to see!

But as 2016 has shown me in so many ways, nothing is ever simple.

It had always felt like I’d inherited a good world, a world that had no choice but to keep getting better, and I would surely benefit. As the year wore on, that illusion was shattered again and again.

So here we are. 2016 is over, and no one knows what’s going to happen next. It may be that 2016 is the best year I’ll see for a while, but I’m not giving up, and I’m not alone.

Thanks, everyone, for coming with me this far. It’s time to wake up and it’s time to fight. I hope we’ll all be okay in the end, but I won’t leave it at hope anymore. I’m grateful for the good things I have, and whatever 2017 has in store, I’ll try to be ready.

Still looking for the perfect pie recipe? Look no further! This Double Chocolate Cream Pie recipe is easy to make and is completely from scratch!

When I sat down to write this post I thought, I should write about that pie in The Help. And then I realized I just did that a few weeks ago. #foodbloggerproblems

Are you still looking for recipes to make for Thanksgiving? I am. Kind of last minute, we decided to host dinner for my parents and us. We’ve been traveling so much the last few months I just cannot leave my house one more time, you know?

There will be 5 of us for dinner. I’ll make a turkey and all the trimmings, which means we will have more side dishes than turkey. I always make cornbread stuffing (it’s the only thing Jordan likes), my dad will make Knoepfle (although I am making a vow to actually help him this year so I can learn how), and I’ll probably make mashed potatoes, because what’s another starch?

Honestly, to me, Thanksgiving is all about the sides. Forget the turkey, just give me side dishes!! Also: pie.

We don’t have a big family, so even if we all do get together there’s at most 15 people. Normally I make my famous crumb apple pie and some other desserts (like cheesecake!), and my mom makes her pecan pie and pumpkin pie. With only 5 of us…well, if I’m being honest, we’ll probably still make all that. One pie per person, that’s a good ratio, right? #justsayyes

Growing up I never really liked pudding pie, most likely because I’m not a huge fan of pudding. But the reason I’m not a huge fan of pudding is because I never had the real thing until a few years ago. (By “real thing” I mean from scratch pudding.)

From scratch pudding is da bomb.

Continue reading and get the recipe: Double Chocolate Cream Pie

The post Double Chocolate Cream Pie appeared first on Crazy for Crust.

advent calendar - day 1

heirloom apple

(BTW: this post has some cool videos, so best to look at on computer rather than mobile device I reckon)

The next stop for us after La Paz was to go down south to the salt flats in Uyuni:

I’ve seen lots of pictures of these salt flats before we went there and even though I had heard nothing but rave reviews from anyone who had been there, obviously I’m still always skeptical of what it would really be like.  But as you will soon see, this area was absolutely incredible.  Never have I ever been so taken back by a landscape before.  It was an awesome place to visit and see with your own eyes for sure.

Even from the plane, I thought I was just seeing more clouds, but no – it was the salt flats beginning and the white extending out until the horizon.  (Btw it was soooo much better to fly there – 45min direct, rather than a 12hr bus)

 

First things first…pizza! And because the owner was an American dude, he had a cool salad bar option too which we loved.  Great to have salad.  Got to try some spicy llama pesto pizza too which was nice.

We started our three day/two night tour into the bolivian wilderness the next morning.

Just outside the town of Uyuni is this train cemetery, which I was skeptical about visiting at first because how exciting can train junk be? But actually turned out to be a cool place to explore.

Now for the best part of all – the actual salt flats.  It had rained that morning so our first stop was a bit soggy, but it made it nice to walk around barefoot – but of a salty pedicure and foot massage.

We stopped at a nearby town where they actually process the salt into a saleable item – they have to process thousands of kilos a day or something in order to even make any money from it, since it is such a cheap commodity.  Pretty hard living I reckon.

Next was the first (and now illegal) salt hotel that was built in 1983.  They are built out of bricks of salt and looks kind of cool, but they are very damaging on the ecosystem, so they banned them from building more of the same on the actual salt flats themselves.  Later that night we did stay in a different salt hotel but it was not on the flat itself, so it is fine we were told.

Emily getting in the Malaysia representation there, with the bolivian and awesome bolivian version of the Incan flag there.

Driving over the salt flats was such a cool experience – I had no idea how expansive the salt flats would be.  It was mesmerising.

The salt flats originated from the remains of ancient lakes that were in the area, and soon enough we hit upon one of the islands that used to be amongst the lake.  It was called Incahuasi (inca house) and walking to the top of it gave us a great vantage point across the whole salt flats area.

It is also covered in thousands of years old cacti which was also pretty cool.

Now for the fun stuff!  We only had a few hours to play around with the perspective thing here so we just ran around trying a few things here and there, some of them working out better than others.  I sort of didn’t really get why these perspective photos are a thing out here on the salt flats before I got here – but being out there you totally get it.  It’s literally that there is nothing between you and the horizon to disrupt line of sight and the land and horizon just merge into one.  I don’ know…actually it’s still hard to explain, but it just works for whatever reason.

Our guide was a total pro (it’s like he had done this before or something)….and he directed us all into making this cool video.  Check it out:

My favourite picture of them all for sure:

You had to really get down and lie on the salt to get these perspective shots, and I couldn’t get these salt stains out for the next few days.  Oh well.  Totally worth it.

We drove on….and on…and on over the salt flats – they just seemed never ending.  And then we hit this awesome patch that had just a thin layer of water over it which provided a perfect mirror surface to reflect the sky.

 

The scenery out there was some of the most beautiful I have ever seen and it was so hard to stop taking photos.

I confess that I stole this next photo from one of the couples in our group who had gone out on a sunset tour the night before, and they did some magical tricky things with their SLR and managed to get this amazing shot with the stars and sunset.

I thought our tour was going to be nothing but salt flat goodness, but turns out that afternoon stint was all there was going to be and it was onwards and upwards (or downwards actually) towards other Bolivian goodness.  We started out the second day with apple flavoured soy milk…so weird.  Closing my eyes, I would have sworn it was just apple juice alone.

Bolivia is beautiful and we drove through and past so many amazing mountains and scenic views.  We drove down to the Bolivian/chilean border (as demonstrated by Jason and Emily there) and stopped for crucial refueling (all up the total round trip was 1000km and we had to carry all the petrol we’d need with us on the roof)

The tree-like rock:

Awesome lakes and mountains:

The perfect vantage point for Wile E. Coyote to watch out for the Road Runner, I thought.

Really bizarre, random green mossy thing that just seemed to pop up out of nowhere around these rocks.  It only grows 1mm a year! So these huge mounds are thousands and thousands of years old.  Craziness.

One of the biggest lakes in the area – the Red Lake – where thousands of flamingos migrate to.  Hard to tell, but there are huge flocks behind me in the lake scooping up all the briney shrimpy goodness of the lake.  On a sunny day, the lake would have been as red as my jacket apparently.

We then reached the highest point any of us had ever been to in our lives – 5000 metres high! (16,400 feet!!!)

There are these sulfuric hot spring geyer things up there – it was a strange mix of being absolutely freezing walking around there, but then feeling heat radiating out of these volcanic hot springs bubbling furiously away next to us, spewing out massive clouds of sulfur.  So other-worldly.

Jason and I decided to play the highest game of tag ever – we got puffed basically instantly, but I figure that a 10second game up at 5000m is equivalent to an hour game at sea level, so we definitely did our exercise for the day.

Our accomodation for this second night, turned out to be the next best highlight of our tour aside from the salt flats.  That’s because..well first of all, as you can tell from these photos..the surrounding landscape was ridiculously beautiful.  But secondly, there was a hot spring pool right in front of that little house there that we went to later that night.

First though Emily dished us all out some tasty soup for dinner, and then we rugged up to go swimming, as one does when you’re in Bolivia.  The winds and general outside temperature was close to zero degrees so the walk to get down to the hot spring was kind of freezing…but the water then was close to 40 degrees and it was unbelievable.

It was a completely cloudless sky, with a new moon – meaning there was no extra light to diminish the stars.  So the milky way was out in full brightness, and we saw heaps of shooting stars.  To boot, there was even a crazy lightning storm happening right in front of us on the horizon that just added to the drama and brilliance of the whole experience.

Ok…last day of our tour which was basically stacks and stacks of driving to get us back from where we were deep on the border with Chile…and then to drive back up north to get back to the town of Uyuni.

These are called the Salvador Dali mountains, not because he visited them (which he didn’t), but because they look like they’re a painting, with all their varied colours.  It was so true – they are so beautiful.

This area has also been used by NASA to simulate their Mars projects, because it really is like the surface of mars out there.  It’s crazy.

A group “evolution of man” photo

An andean fox getting up close and personal with our car

Then what we thought was going to be our lunch when we arrived at the nearest town – these ladies had literally just finishing killing a fresh llama and were grilling it all up while we waited for our lunch.  But alas, turns out we had tinned tuna instead.  Bummer.

Hard to tell our exact path from that map there, but we followed the red loop line from Uyuni down to the southern part and then back.  For 1000km trip on super dusty rocky roads, I thought it was amazing that we only got one flat tyre.  Our driver was pretty great.

We flew back direct again (love it) to La Paz the night our tour finished and stayed in another great city apartment with a great view, with a conveniently placed korean restaurant right on the ground floor.

And then with our last day in the area, we went on a day bike trip out to at the “Most Dangerous Road in the World”  aka the Death Road.  I thought it was called that not necessarily because it was going to be that dangerous for us as riders, but because of its history – some stories of which include the fact that Paraguayan prisoners of war were brought to build the road and they either died building it or were all executed at the end of it.  Also there is a story about Bolivian opposition leaders being brought out there to be given the choice of either jumping off or join the government, and they chose to jump.  Turns out it’s all of those above stories plus the fact that it is actually a “death road” for cyclists too.  Yay…..

Every year some cyclist or two rides off or slips off the edge and we saw crosses and memorials all the way down.  Hmm…definitely turned out to be more dangerous in hindsight than I had thought when we were starting that day.  But we began it all with a shot of 96% alcohol (I just let it touch my lips, but I didn’ drink any…seemed like a ridiculous idea to be tipsy and ride down this rollercoaster of a mountain) and then drain some out over out tyre to the earth to thank Pachamama (mother earth) and bless our ride.

But the good thing was that our company, Gravity Bolivia, was highly rated and they gave us great bikes to use:

So the whole ride is basically a 4hour non-stop downhill ride, going total 60-ish kilometres, from an elevation of 4,700m to 1,200 m!  Quite a fast drop.  And as you can tell from the fog behind Jason and Emily on the left, we started in freezing conditions (it had been snowing there only two days before), and then ended in the hot humid jungle below.  Crazy.

I had an icecream headache to start and my fingers were freezing! But we soon warmed up.

There is a section where one can choose to do an uphill section of 8km – but I loved the fact that our entire group was like “nah..screw it” and we sat instead on the bus which drove us up it, and we chowed down on sandwiches instead.  Best decision ever.  Using those super heavy-specifically-designed-for-downhill bikes, in that altitude, to go uphill for 8km?! Forget about it.

This was the first bike tour I have ever done where I didn’ attempt to take my own videos or long-arm photo shots while riding.  I instead gripped on for dear life, focusing like a hawk on every divet, rock, puddle, curve and edge on the road so that I literally did not die.  But one of our tour guides had a camera and he took the good photos and videos for us.

 

It was an awesome experience, and we definitely went faster down that road than I had anticipated especially given the rockiness, dustiness and overall slippery-ness of it.  Our guide would pepper the trip down with stories of people falling to their death, slipping and breaking their backs – and we always felt very un-pepped after his “pep” talks, but I think it did help make us more focused and careful and not take anything for granted.  And so we all made it to the bottom safely! (except one girl did fall and potentially maybe get a minor wrist fracture…but I’m sure she’s fine wherever she is now…)

Driving back I have to admit, I was nervous because we go back up the very same road we cycled down, but this time in a bus! And even though we cut it close to the road’s edge so many times, I just couldn’t look away.  The driver was super skilled though and we obviously made it back all good.  Still a very nerve-wrecking drive.

Phew…and so brings us to the end of Bolivia!  So glad we went there – it’s an amazingly beautiful place that still seems very untouched and under explored.  I would highly recommend it to anyone going to south america for sure.

I love a good orzo salad, and this is one of my favorites because it’s tangy and fresh and there are approximately fourteen million fun ingredients…so it goes with pretty much everything!

You know what Confucius always said: “There’s just something about that orzo!”

 
 
First, make the delicious dressing (alliteration alert): Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper in a jar…

 
 
 
And shake it for approximately 38.5736222 seconds to combine. Give or take a year.

 
 
 
Place the cooked, cooled orzo into a large bowl with all the other ingredients. As you can see, there are so many “other ingredients” that you can barely see the poor orzo, but trust me…it’s there! You can see it peeking out from beneath the tomatoes.

I added tomatoes (yellow and red), red onion, garbanzo beans (yum!), pitted kalamata olives, feta cheese, and parsley! But you can add cucumbers, other olives…anything you want.

Oh, and a note about orzo. It grows when it cooks, man! Seriously, you can start with just a tiny little container of the stuff and pretty soon you have to move out of your house because the orzo has taken over. So just be sure to gauge how much orzo you have relative to the other ingredients, and adjust according to your taste or mood or astrological sign.

 
 
 
Pour over the dressing and toss it all together, making sure it’s all combined. Then it’s always nice to pop it in the fridge for at least an hour, just to let all the flavors meld. Oh, and give it a taste.

 
 
 
When you serve it, throw a little more feta on top for good luck. Or good measure. Or good will. Or all of the above!

 
 
 
And a little extra parsley makes it even purtier.

 
 
 
Variations
• Add Parmesan shavings
• Add diced grilled chicken
• Add sliced cucumbers

 
 
 
Serve with:
• Burgers
• Grilled Chicken
• Grilled Vegetables
• Roasted chicken legs for a picnic

Here’s the handy dandy printable!

Hate violence 'hot spots' include New York City, New Jersey, Chicago, Southern and Northern California



This week, as the nation observes the 13th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together), released Under Suspicion, Under Attack, a report that documents over 150 incidents of hate violence and xenophobic political rhetoric aimed at South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Middle Eastern and Arab communities over the last three years.

SAALT's analysis, spanning incidents from January 2011 through April 2014, found that these communities are increasingly depicted as un-American, unwelcome and disloyal -- and community members and institutions are too often targeted with violence, vandalism and harassment. Many continue to face a post-9/11 backlash, including racial and religious profiling, unwarranted surveillance, and the threat of violence and intimidation.

According to the report, over 80% of documented hate violence incidents were motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment. Similarly, an overwhelming majority -- over 90% -- of xenophobic political comments were characterized by anti-Muslim bias. Hate violence 'hot spots' included the New York City/New Jersey metropolitan area; Chicago and its outlying suburbs; and Southern and Northern California.

Here are some of the report's key findings:

Read more »

"Room available (Asian American NBA point guard preferred)"



Now that Jeremy Lin is packing his bags and headed for Los Angeles, he's going to need a place to hang his hat. While I'm sure he'll have plenty of choices among the swanky downtown lofts, if he's interested in saving a few bucks, and is feelin' something a little more humble and homelike, there's an offer on the table...

Room available (Asian American NBA point guard preferred)

Here's one Chinese American mom -- a former schoolteacher and "a HUGE Lakers fan" -- who is offering up a room in her house to Jeremy Lin, free of charge. This Craigslist posting, directed specifically to Jeremy, describes an awesome room in a house located in Redondo Beach, with all the comforts and conveniences that an Asian American NBA player might just be looking for. But you'll have to do your own laundry.

Here's the listing:

Read more »

Browned butter is one of life’s pure pleasures, whether it’s spooned over fish, tossed with popcorn, or sipped with a straw. Just kidding on the straw thing. I think.

Browned butter cookies, as you can imagine, are one of the most miraculous uses of browned butter there is. Whether it’s oatmeal cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, or chocolate chip cookies, subbing browned butter for all or some of the butter in whatever recipe you use will catapult your cookie into another dimension. Try it sometime! You’ll be hooked for life.

I made M&M cookies yesterday and because I was feeling saucy, decided to go the browned butter route. I used the recipe I usually use for any incarnation of chocolate chip cookies, but rather than brown all of the butter in the recipe, I did what Joy the Baker does in her browned butter cookie recipe, which is to use half browned butter, half softened butter. Worked like a charm. (Hi, Joy! I love you.)

Here’s the step-by-step recipe! I should add before we continue that I made the cookies at 4:00 yesterday. As of 8:18 this morning, they are all gone.

*Burp*

 
 
 
First, brown the butter: Add a stick of salted butter to a medium skillet over medium heat.

 
 
 
Let it melt…

 
 
 
All the while resisting the urge to dip in a chunk of warm, crusty bread and eat it as as a snack.

I love butter.

I love bread.

Amen.

 
 
 
Once the butter is totally melted, there’ll be foam on top and it will start to sizzle. Start gently swirling the butter around to pan to keep everything moving, and keep a watchful eye on the butter. Once it starts to brown, it can brown very quickly, so time is of the essence!

 
 
 
I took the pan off the stove when I could see that the color of the butter was deep golden brown.

 
 
 
You want the butter to be deep golden brown, and the solids at the bottom to be an even deeper brown…but definitely not black! If they’re black, the butter is burned, and it’s best to start over with a new stick of butter.

 
 
 
Pour the butter into a separate bowl pretty quickly after you get it off the stove, as the butter will keep cooking/browning in the pan. (And scrape in all the solids that get left behind. That’s the good stuff, baby.)

 
 
 
You don’t have to do this step, but I did: Skim the excess foam off the top. Again, totally optional. I just did it because I needed a little exercise.

Then—very important—just let the butter cool almost completely—at least 30 minutes or so!

 
 
 
Then get everything else ready for the cookies: another stick of butter (softened), brown sugar, regular sugar, flour, instant coffee, baking soda, salt, vanilla, eggs, and M&M’s. (The browned butter has been transferred to a glass bowl in this pic because evidently I didn’t have enough dishes to do in my life.)

 
 
 
Cookie time! Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, then add the softened stick of butter to the bowl of a mixer.

 
 
 
Add brown sugar…

 
 
 
And regular sugar, and mix it together for a minute, scraping the bowl once to make sure the butter and sugars are all incorporated.

 
 
 
Next…it’s brown butter time! With the mixer on medium-low, very slowly drizzle in the browned butter. Stop halfway through and scrape the bowl, then keep going. (It’s obviously important here for the browned butter to be totally cooled down, so don’t skip that step or you’ll regret it the rest of your life.)

 
 
 
And I hate to be a broken record…but be sure all that good stuff makes it in.

 
 
 
Then mix it until the brown butter is all mixed in. It should be a little runnier than regular chocolate chip cookie dough at this stage…but that’s normal, man.

 
 
 
Crack in 2 eggs, one at a time, and mix them in.

 
 
 
Then get the dry ingredients ready! Flour, baking soda, salt.

Amen.

 
 
 
Stir it together…

 
 
 
Then add the instant coffee…

 
 
 
And stir it in.

Now, for the coffee haters out there: Don’t worry! You won’t even taste it. My husband has never ingested a cup of coffee in his entire life, but he loves my chocolate chip cookies…and that’s because he has no idea there’s coffee in them. The coffee just adds a nice depth of flavor and a richness, but definitely not an overwhelming coffee flavor. Cross my heart.

 
 
 
Oh…I forgot the vanilla! (Add it in with the eggs.)

 
 
 
Mix in the dry ingredients in 3 additions, stopping and scraping the bowl after each addition.

Scraping the bowl is big in this recipe. You just want to make sure everything has a chance to mix in evenly.

 
 
 
Glory be. Will you look at that? Complete lusciousness. Little browned bits all over the place—some are from the coffee, some are from the browned butter. I almost didn’t want to add anything to it. I almost didn’t even want to bake it. I just wanted to climb inside the bowl and live there the rest of my days.

But I didn’t.

(I wouldn’t have fit anyway.)

 
 
 
Next, I added M&M’s!

 
 
 
Then I mixed them in.

And I’ll just tell you this now: After tasting the finished cookies, which were heavenly, I determined that I wished I would have done a mix of M&M’s and chocolate chips. Using only M&M’s resulted in a super sweet cookie, and I thought they could have used just a little semi-sweet chocolate to take away a little of that milk chocolate sweetness.

So 1 cup of M&M’s and 1 cup of chocolate chips. Perfect!

 
 
 
So here’s what I did: Scooped out teaspoon-sized helpings…

 
 
 
Then I pressed 2 or 3 extra M&M’s on the top so the cookies would be extra colorful and crazy.

After that, I stuck the pan(s) into the fridge for about 10 minutes before baking them…but this is totally optional.

 
 
 
They only took about 7 minutes to bake.

 
 
 
Beautiful! Now, if you don’t want them quite so toasty brown (I like them that way), you could bake them at 350 for a tiny bit longer. Just play with it and see what you like.

 
 
 
Serve them with a cup of cold milk.

 
 
 
Enjoy these, my friends! They’re a treat.

Here’s the handy dandy printable.

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July 31st, 2014: Remember me fondly when you are sitting on a mountain of only the most viral content!! – Ryan

IC 4603: Reflection Nebula in Ophiuchius

sachinteng:

30 Day Challenge // Day 23 // Something That Makes You Happy

I’ve learned how to cook since I moved out to California. It’s therapeutic. And delicious~ I garnish everything with a fried egg, and I never regret it.