We Have Scraps At Home

Dear Friends,

A curiosity about Ghost, this newsletter software I use, is that every time I log in to write something in it I'm haunted by past selves.

From my dashboard, I click on "posts," and there appears a list of posts begun but not finished; I've just counted and there are 27 drafts, the earliest going back to 2013 (an artifact of having merged my website blog with the newsletter). If I click on any of them, I somewhat collapse the wave-form; the draft will be freshly dated to the moment I interact with it, instead of standing in dubious testament to the day it was abandoned. I attempt to observe the past, and in so doing, destroy it.

The drafts are an odd mix. Attempts at convention reports from a decade ago, containing mentions of people whose company I no longer keep; attempts to speak about Palestine in various phases of the ongoing genocide, a grim catalogue of my diminished capacity to speak truth to idiots. It's funny to contemplate the fact that "attempt" and "essay" mean the same thing, but here too are abortive attempts at essays; a thought I wanted to pin down and in so doing, killed, or an idea barely articulated before I left it in a digital drawer to languish.

Their moments are largely past, the circumstances of their halting composition vanished. But/therefore, I find myself wanting to pick up these scraps and stitch them into something, a catalogue or quilt; bring some intention to them by surrounding them with a frame. Collect them and in so doing, recollect something, maybe.

It feels like a project, an opportunity for curation. And maybe I'll find that some of these dropped threads I can pick up again, weave into their own thing. Who knows. It's spring, and this is one way of cleaning my house: clearing out its cobwebs, and with them, maybe banishing a few ghosts for good.

Postscripts of News:

• Today (April 15) is the last day to apply for the Banff Science Fiction 2025 Residency! I'm one of the faculty this year alongside Ai Jiang and Premee Mohamed! If you're eligible and interested, don't self-reject – applications can be daunting and dispiriting but I genuinely believe the work you put into making them is valuable whether or not they net you the desired result. I personally find it good to touch base with oneself about one's projects and artistic desires periodically and these sorts of residency applications are good opportunities to do so.
• Today (April 15) is the first day of Strange Horizons' submission call for AfroSurrealist stories! The submission window is April 15-30! Tell your friends!
• Crashlands 2 is out! This is a delightful "surthrival" resource game that I've been looking forward to it for a while; I was privileged to help beta-test it and deeply enjoyed the experience. I wasn't able to finish it in the time I had but I loved playing it and am eager to get back to it. If you play it, do be sure to leave a review – just like with books, word of mouth really helps!
• If you're in Chicago and missed my signing at C2E2, you might still be able to find some signed copies of This Is How You Lose the Time War and The River Has Roots at Unabridged Bookstore!
• If you're in Ottawa and want to find signed copies of either book, you can do so at either Perfect Books or Books on Beechwood at time of writing! I'll try to hit up a few more indies ahead of next week's Indie Crawl (which I will sadly miss due to being in the UK)
• If you're in the UK – come find me on tour! I'll be doing events in London, Leeds and Glasgow! Make sure to book your tickets in advance!
• While I was on tour last month I was very pleased to be interviewed by Tammy Bobrowsky for What We're Reading about The River Has Roots, and the interview's now up. Apologies for the hotel-internet-audio on my part!