Mar 6, 2023 3 min read

Letter of News: Early March Link Roundup

Dear Friends,

I'm writing this from yet another white-out day of constant snow and craving a little more colour in my life, so I thought I'd throw this together in between staring out the window at all the birds I cannot see.

Promo image featuring, on the left-hand side, the cover to DEAD COUNTRY: Book One of the Craft Wars Series by Max Gladstone. On the right-hand side are two headshots cropped into circles, one of Max Gladstone (a white bearded man wearing glasses and a hat against a background of cloudy grey sky and sandy beach) and one of me (a semitic woman with dark hair in an up-do wearing dangling earrings, red lipstick, and with a dark red jacket collar visible against a background of green leaves.)

First: on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 6 PM PT / 9PM ET, Mysterious Galaxy Books is hosting Max Gladstone and me in conversation about Dead Country, the beginning of the end of Max' amazing Craft Sequence. I feel very close to this book, because I was reading it in chunks as Max was writing it, and I'm thrilled to get to be part of its launch into the world. If you buy the book from Mysterious Galaxy you can also get a signed bookplate – just write "bookplate" in the "order comments" area before you check out. Sign up for the event directly here!

Promo image for a piece of theatre. Text in a left-hand column reads as follows: "Parry Riposte Productions, with Margo MacDonald, directed by Mary Ellis, written by A. M. Dellamonica, Amal El-Mohtar, & Kelly Robson, sound by Alli Harris, lights by Laura Wheeler, March 7-18, Red Sandcastle Theatre." To the right of that is a photograph of Margo, a white middle-aged woman with blue eyes, short white hair, and wearing a white shirt, holding up her hands to her chin as if hiding behind them. Behind her is a blown up ghostly image of her with her hands raised to obscure her face completely.

Next: on the very same night, Dressed As People opens at the Red Sandcastle Theatre in Toronto! It runs from March 7 to 18. Ghosts, scary fairies, mysterious encounters at sea – this triptych of uncanny abductions performed by Margo MacDonald is, in my completely unbiased opinion, tremendous, and I can't recommend it enough. I hope you can make it out! I'm also very glad that the theatre has a mandatory masking policy.

A diagonally angled shot of three tarot cards lined up over a pair of sewing scissors, a paintbrush, and a skein of brown thread. The cards are the Four of Swords (a fluffy beast with rabbit-like ears and a lion's tail reclining on a cushion while four threaded needles are poked upright into the central mass of its body), the Five of Coins (a serpentine, salamander-like creature encircles five sand dollars) and the Eight of Cups (a little blurred out, but a spotted reptile-like creature perches atop a stack of colourful tea cups.)

Last: My good friend Shing Yin Khor is currently crowdfunding an amazing new Tarot deck called The Strange Beasts Tarot. I love Shing's art utterly, and the project's already funded and has hit its first stretch goal, so this is mostly by way of saying you have a scant few days left to get in on this extremely cool thing!

THAT SAID – if the project hits its final remaining stretch goal, Shing will also design and edit

an accompanying zine of tarot games and writings from designers, poets and writers such as Caro Asercion, Emerald Barkley, Kate Dollarhyde, Amal El-Mohtar, Emily Friedman, Sarah Gailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Jeeyon Shim, Alyssa Wong and more.

These works will be compiled in a mailed zine supplement that will be automatically included for everyone who pledges for a complete deck of cards, and be supplemented by my behind-the-scenes notes and art on making this deck.

All I can tell you is that when Shing invited me to take part in this project my brain lit up with an idea for a Tarot-based game for this specific deck, and it floods my head with sunshine whenever I think of it. I really want to share it with you in this specific context, so I hope you'll take a look! The fundraiser closes at 11:59 PM PST on March 9.

That's it for now!

Wishing you all the very best,

Amal

PS: Welcome to new subscribers! In case you missed it, I recently shared this keynote talk I gave at AugurCon in November; meanwhile here was the previous Letter of News.