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shanmonsterI have another reading coming up. I'm a featured performer at the Huron Multicultural Festival in Goderich, Ontario on June 28. I'll be taking the stage at 12:15 and this time, I will be prepared for cringey 12-year-olds, screechy feedback, and noisome gusts of wind. Prepare yourself for some spooky tales!
In other news, I've received dozens and dozens of rejections. For all the publications I get, folks are mostly unaware of how many things do NOT get published. I haven't done a specific count for a year, but I did count in May. I sent out 61 submissions. I had I had 23 rejections. I had three acceptances. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of years to hear back from any particular magazine/anthology. Sometimes they never respond at all. And sometimes, things will be accepted, and then they never get around to sending a contract or responding to any further communications. Publishing can be a very frustrating endeavour.
All that being said, I've had three rejections since last night, and a couple of publications so far this month.
Flash Flood published my tiny tale of terror Overdrawn.
Terrain.org has published my short story If You Listen, a cautionary tale from the POV of Sedna, mother of the sea.
As I mentioned before, my poem "Angakkuq," as published by On Spec Magazine, is a finalist for the Aurora Awards. Voting is now open to members of the CSFFA (Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. You do not need to be an author to be a member. Membership is only ten bucks, and for that low price, you get a voters' package which includes all of the finalists for the year. This includes full-length novels, short stories, poetry, illustrations, and more. You don't have to vote for me (although I won't complain if you do), but I'd love to have you read my poem as well as check out the amazing work by Canadian writers and illustrators. The money supports speculative fiction in Canada.
Tenebrous Press has shared a mini interview with me. My story "The Snow Hath No Queen" is a winner of their Brave New Weird award, and will be published later this month in their anthology. It looks fantastic! You can order it here.
marthawellshttps://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2025-06-13/murderbot-episode-6-alexander-skarsgard-noma-dumezweni
Leading a TV series is a first for Dumezweni, who has previously been cast in smaller roles. She wasn’t convinced by the initial pitch at first because sci-fi hasn’t traditionally had a lot of major roles for actors of color.
“Usually I’d come in and play the receptionist,” she says. “I love to watch sci-fi. But I wondered: Who am I going to be in this sci-fi world?”
However, once she learned more about the world and the character, the actor changed her mind.
“It was an absolute joy to discover that there was nothing that Chris and Paul had to change to make it representational,” Dumezweni says. “It’s lovely not to have to fight for people’s positions in the world based on their skin color.”
ETA: Wanted to add this one real quick from BlueSky:
Vestal Magazine: Noma Dumezweni -- Off Canvas
https://www.vestalmag.com/noma-dumezweni
Set in a near future where the line between machine and human is increasingly blurred, Murderbot explores themes of identity, autonomy, and what it truly means to be alive through the eyes of a self-aware security android. Adapted from Martha Wells’s beloved The Murderbot Diaries novels, the series blends gripping sci-fi action with sharp, witty humor. At the heart of the story is Noma Dumezweni’s portrayal of Dr. Ayda Mensah, the thoughtful leader of a pacifist civilization struggling to uphold her community’s ideals amid a universe dominated by corporate greed and political tensions. Noma brings to the role a grounded strength, embodying the delicate balance between idealism and pragmatism as her character wrestles with the burdens of leadership and moral compromise. The parallels between Noma and Ayda run deep: both choose to lead with heart, courage, and conviction. “Your head will try to talk you out of that feeling of expansion. It will tell you, ‘You can’t do this,’” Noma says. “Trust your body, trust your instinct. Your body knows the truth.” That instinct and bravery have guided her career, from becoming the first Black actress to portray Hermione Granger on stage, a landmark moment for representation in theater, to winning two Laurence Olivier Awards and becoming a beacon of inspiration for a new generation of actors. Like Ayda, Noma has forged a path not only of leadership, but of quiet, transformative power.
Lovely photos in this!
marthawellshttps://filmstories.co.uk/news/murderbot-designing-a-future-world-that-doesnt-look-like-alien/
“I started out by taking the most ancient societies on each continent – Etruscans, Asian, European, and African cultures,” Chan tells us. “I looked at the most fundamental motifs and gathered them into a bible, then asked my team to imagine 100 generations from now, when the diaspora of Earth have chosen to live together in society. How would they evolve a unified set of symbols? A language that really honours where they came from.”
This informed the alphabet that can be seen in the decoration painted across the otherwise grey, corporate habitat the PresAux crew are leasing. At the same time, acknowledging how much of the crew is queer and polyamorous, the colours of the rainbow are also entwined into their decorations.
“All of that is mashed up but it has a fundamental logic to it,” says Chan.
* Interview with Akshay Khanna (Ratthi):
https://squaremile.com/style/akshay-khanna-murderbot-actor-interview/
I’m incredibly excited for people to watch Murderbot on Apple TV+. Sci-fi has been my favourite genre by a country mile forever, and being on a show like this has always been a career goal of mine. Frankly, I had too much fun filming that show, and getting paid to do it constantly felt like I was getting away with something on set.
And the show is just so good. I can confidently say it’s fantastic – and if you don’t like it, then I would gently tell you that it’s OK to be wrong sometimes.
* Interview with Sabrina Wu (Pin-Lee):
https://www.autostraddle.com/sabrina-wu-interview-murderbot/
And then once I got the role, I read the books and I was legit just blown away at how funny the books were. I just haven’t seen such a dry sarcastic sensibility with this kind of hero sci-fi stories. And then I also just really liked that it was in the tradition of I felt like Octavia Butler, where it’s like, “oh, this is a queer imagining of the future.” So I don’t know. I just thought it was a really sweet, funny, different world. I also, obviously every comedian who becomes an actor, their dream is to get to work on something with action to move beyond an It’s Always Sunny kind of comedy. I believe there was already an opportunity for me to be in a spaceship and shoot guns, and it just made me happy that it was genuinely funny source material.
* Video interview with Tattiawna Jones (Arada) and Tamara Podemski (Bharadwaj):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NllgfEekw9s
* And a video interview with Noma Dumezweni (Mensah)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZpigqUqZXQ
* and a video interview with Noma and David Dastmalchian (Gurathin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=361cKOujISE
* And a video interview (with a transcript) with Alexander Skarsgard, Jack McBrayer, and Paul and Chris Weitz:
https://collider.com/murderbot-alexander-skarsgard-jack-mcbrayer-creators-paul-weitz-chris-weitz/
* And there is a profile of me in The New Yorker (!!)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/do-androids-dream-of-anything-at-all
* ETA: In ‘Murderbot,’ an anxious scientist and an autonomous robot develop a workplace-trauma bond
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2025-06-13/murderbot-episode-6-alexander-skarsgard-noma-dumezweni
Leading a TV series is a first for Dumezweni, who has previously been cast in smaller roles. She wasn’t convinced by the initial pitch at first because sci-fi hasn’t traditionally had a lot of major roles for actors of color.
“Usually I’d come in and play the receptionist,” she says. “I love to watch sci-fi. But I wondered: Who am I going to be in this sci-fi world?”
However, once she learned more about the world and the character, the actor changed her mind.
“It was an absolute joy to discover that there was nothing that Chris and Paul had to change to make it representational,” Dumezweni says. “It’s lovely not to have to fight for people’s positions in the world based on their skin color.”
*
ETA: Wanted to add this one real quick from BlueSky:
Vestal Magazine: Noma Dumezweni -- Off Canvas
https://www.vestalmag.com/noma-dumezweni
Set in a near future where the line between machine and human is increasingly blurred, Murderbot explores themes of identity, autonomy, and what it truly means to be alive through the eyes of a self-aware security android. Adapted from Martha Wells’s beloved The Murderbot Diaries novels, the series blends gripping sci-fi action with sharp, witty humor. At the heart of the story is Noma Dumezweni’s portrayal of Dr. Ayda Mensah, the thoughtful leader of a pacifist civilization struggling to uphold her community’s ideals amid a universe dominated by corporate greed and political tensions. Noma brings to the role a grounded strength, embodying the delicate balance between idealism and pragmatism as her character wrestles with the burdens of leadership and moral compromise. The parallels between Noma and Ayda run deep: both choose to lead with heart, courage, and conviction. “Your head will try to talk you out of that feeling of expansion. It will tell you, ‘You can’t do this,’” Noma says. “Trust your body, trust your instinct. Your body knows the truth.” That instinct and bravery have guided her career, from becoming the first Black actress to portray Hermione Granger on stage, a landmark moment for representation in theater, to winning two Laurence Olivier Awards and becoming a beacon of inspiration for a new generation of actors. Like Ayda, Noma has forged a path not only of leadership, but of quiet, transformative power.
Lovely photos in this!
![[desperately] Maybe this is from some country where they use commas as decimal points, and also as digit separators after the decimal, and also use random other characters for decoration???](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/reading_a_big_number.png "[desperately] Maybe this is from some country where they use commas as decimal points, and also as digit separators after the decimal, and also use random other characters for decoration???")
valkryor
This is Beans. He was adopted from the Humane Society on Thursday. He's 2 months old and so very wee. We took him to the vet on Friday to a) get him registered, and b) get his left eye checked out, since it was red-rimmed and leaking (his eye is fine - no scratches and we have drops that are clearing up whatever irritation he had). On Saturday, we went and splashed out on a new cat tree as our previous one was at least eight years old. (Beans was asleep on top of the condo until I spoke to him. Now he wants cuddles.)
He is full of kitten-y mischief, like going behind the stove and into the warming drawer. Exhibit A:
Sunny is warming up to him. It's a process, but there hasn't been aggression. He has hissed, growled, swatted once that I saw (and only one time), and has found places to be that Beans cannot get to. It's been more of, "Go away, kid, you bother me," and less, "I must defend my home from invaders." Beans wants to play with his new cat-shaped friend SO BADLY, but Sunny isn't there yet. I observe their interactions, but will only interfere if it gets dangerous; Beans needs to learn that the older cat has some very reasonable boundaries and won't if I'm constantly pulling them apart.
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wwdn_feedThis thing has been happening to me since I built my first blog about 25 years ago, and you’d think that by now it would have stopped, but here we are.
The longer I go between posts, the more SUPER IMPORTANT the next post becomes. This is especially gross after I’ve been promoting something. I feel like I’ve bombarded the world with my promotional stuff, so I ought to give the world something to offset that.
…only when I sit down to do that, the part of me that creates those things is like, “Oh hell no. I’m on vacation.”
So I come in here, day after day, get to about this point in a post just like this one, and then I get frustrated, delete it, and go play video games.
I have to break that cycle, so here’s a little bit of a roundup to put something new here.
Yesterday, I finished building the LEGO Batmobile, which I started months ago. It has some adorable little details that were a lot of fun to discover, but holy shit was it tedious most of the time. It turns out that building vehicles, even one that I have been obsessed with since I was a little kid, is not something I enjoy.
I think I’m doing the Haunted House next.
If you’d told me a year ago that the Stanley Cup final in 2025 would be the same teams from 2024, I never would have believed you, and once again I am cheering for Florida because Edmonton is literally the only Canadian team I just can’t abide. Sorry, Oilers Nation, but fuck Corey Perry.1
Remember Trek Side of the Moon? It’s back, in T-shirt form.
I loved the movie, but am very late to the What We Do In The Shadows series party, so I’m only now getting into its third season. A couple nights ago, I watched an episode that takes them to Atlantic City. Nandor gets completely hooked on a Big Bang Theory slot machine, and is delighted to discover that there is a television series that is “faithful to the slot machine.”2
The thing is … because The Big Bang Theory canonically exists inside the What We Do In The Shadowsverse, that means I exist inside that universe. This feels like an achievement that should come with a badge, and it makes me stupidly happy.3
Late last week,I saw that Loretta Swit passed away. We worked together when I was a kid, and I remembered some things about her.
A friend of mine observed that we are slowly becoming the Elders, and that’s just really weird. I have been thinking about that, and it turns out there is a lot about that I’m not really ready to embrace, like accepting that people I love, who mean so much to me, are getting older (and elderly) with all that implies. It’s just … it’s really weird. At the same time, it feels really good and … gentle? … to embrace a position in life that allows me to be a kind, patient, supportive, and encouraging person in the world for anyone who needs it.
I’m thinking a lot about how I can talk about things from a place of experience, in a way that younger me would have been able to hear and internalize. I want to be a Helper so much, y’all.
I had a meeting with my team to discuss next steps on It’s Storytime. The audience is small but passionate, and growing steadily. I think we’ve found a way to make it break even, or slightly better, while the audience continues to grow. Thank you to everyone who is supporting the show on Patreon, to everyone who has liked and subscribed and whatnot. It looks like the audience is right around 20,000 listeners which seems like a lot to me, and something I feel really good about! But you know what’s crazy? In the podcast world, it’s tiny. Isn’t that nuts?
When I was walking Marlowe, I came across this weirdly bent spoon in the street, so I posted it in my Instagram stories with the caption “If anyone sees Uri Gellar, tell him I found his spoon.”4
I think this is a pretty good joke.
I watched a fantastic film a couple nights ago, about the post-punk scene in West Berlin from 1979-1989, called B-Movie: Lust & Sound. It’s streaming all over the place, and if you like the same kind of music and aesthetics that I do, it’s probably worth your time.
I think that’s all for now. Have a good day, friends.
- Also, Florida sent 9 players to Four Nations, and Four Nations was the most exciting and satisfying hockey tournament I have ever seen. So there’s that.
︎ - I love how this show keeps surprising me like this. The first time, it was throwing the bone off the roof in the werewolf fight. I never saw it coming, and it just killed me. ︎
- I also exist inside Tommy Westphal’s snow globe, but that doesn’t feel as exclusive. They’ll let anybody into that thing. They let me in there! ︎
- If you get this reference, that means it’s time to schedule a colonoscopy, if you haven’t already. And make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D, because our aging bodies need it. ︎
