Dusty website, lovely website

Snow White cleaning house, with some help from her friends

I have been neglecting this space rather shamefully the last little while. I have no idea if my good intentions will stick or not, but here I am now, and I’m ready to catch you up with what I’ve been doing!

One of the niftiest things I’ve done recently was to help found a non-profit. The Dream Foundry is a shiny organization dedicated to making the speculative arts industry an even better place. We do a lot of cool things – discussion groups! A contest for writers and artists! – and I have poured a lot of time and energy and love into it, and will continue to do so for quite a while yet. The Dream Foundry website speaks for itself pretty well, so I won’t try to reinvent the wheel (or the mission statement) and explain the organization in detail here. I’ll just say that if you’re making or refining weird stuff – podcasts, stories, editing, art, games, translations – the Dream Foundry aims to have resources to help you, connect you with other professionals across the industry, and it’s well worth checking out.

In point of fact, our very first contests are running RIGHT NOW.

Kermit and Animal are both excited. Animal is just more expressive.

Cash prizes, no entry fees, no rights signed away, and professional critiques for winners and finalists. It’s pretty dang great. We’ll be open for art and stories until October 13th, and the guidelines are here.

So that’s Dream Foundry stuff. What else have I been doing, you hypothetical person reading my barely-ever-updated blog asks quite sincerely. Well, I’m helping out behind the scenes with a literary class, which you can check out with this newsletter right here. There are free and paid options – obviously you’re gonna get more with the paid stuff, but the free stuff is still worth looking at. The course is being taught by a friend of mine, and I’m doing a lot of editing, adding silly images, scheduling, and other administrative tasks. I really enjoy doing the little things that help keep a project on track.

Am I still writing? Yep. I’ve had a story out at Diabolical Plots, and two poems at Strange Horizons. I’ve got more than 100 finished stories and 50 finished poems that I’m working to find homes for, and I’m creating more all the time.

This is exactly how I write. Only not at all, actually.

I’m also still a submissions editor (aka slush reader) at Uncanny Magazine, which has just recently won yet another Hugo award (whooo!). I still love being a first reader and finding new and fabulous stories to send up to the senior editors.

Are my cats still fluffy, you ask, because of course that is a priority burning question in your hypothetical mind. I have good news for you, because YES, they most certainly are. Here is Blizzara cat being particularly adorable. Bonus and Bubbles are also great and fluffy, but Blizzara is the most fluffily photogenic of the bunch.

Blizzy’s belly: never a trap.

There’s probably more to update about, but I think that’s sufficient for now.