#Free for All: The Public Library (2025)

[costarringyourlocallibrary]

Various interiors and exteriors of various libraries in Lucie Faulknor and Dawn Logsdon's Free for All: The Public Library (2025)

[Watch the entire film on PBS's YouTube channel or the website for their program Independent Lens.]

[luulapants]

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/dastar-dly-deeds/#roast-in-piss-sonny-bono

In 1976, Congress set fire to the country's libraries; in 1998, they did it again. Today, in 2024, the flames have died down, and out of the ashes a new public domain is growing. Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate!

For most of US history, copyright was something you had to ask for. To copyright a work, you'd send a copy to the Library of Congress and they'd issue you a copyright. Not only did that let you display a copyright mark on your work – so people would know they weren't allowed to copy it without your permission – but if anyone wanted to figure out who to ask in order to get permission to copy or adapt a work, they could just go look up the paperwork at the LoC.

In 1976, Congress amended the Copyright Act to eliminate the "formality" of copyright registration. Now, all creative works of human authorship were copyrighted "at the moment of fixation" – the instant you drew, typed, wrote, filmed, or recorded them. From a toddler's nursery-school finger-painting to a graffiti mural on a subway car, every creative act suddenly became an article of property.

But whose property? That was on you to figure out, before you could copy, publish, perform, or preserve the work, because without registration, permissions had to start with a scavenger hunt for the person who could grant it. Congress simultaneously enacted a massive expansion of property rights, while abolishing the title registry that spelled out who owned what. As though this wasn't enough, Congress reached back in time and plopped an extra 20 years' onto the copyrights of existing works, even ones whose authors were unknown and unlocatable.

For the next 20 years, creative workers, archivists, educators and fans struggled in the face of this regime of unknowable property rights. After decades of well-documented problems, Congress acted again: they made it worse.

In 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, AKA the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act, AKA the Copyright Term Extension Act. The 1998 Act tacked another 20 years onto copyright terms, but not just for works that were still in copyright. At the insistence of Disney, Congress actually yanked works out of the public domain – works that had been anthologized, adapted and re-issued – and put them back into copyright for two more decades. Copyright stretched to the century-plus "life plus 70 years" term. Nothing entered the public domain for the next 20 years.

So many of my comrades in the fight for the public domain were certain that this would happen again in 2018. In 2010, e-book inventor and Project Gutenberg founder Michael S Hart and I got into a friendly email argument because he was positive that in 2018, Congress would set fire to the public domain again. When I insisted that there was no way this could happen given the public bitterness over the 1998 Act, he told me I was being naive, but said he hoped that I was right.

Michael didn't live to see it, but in 2019, the public domain opened again. It was an incredible day:

https://archive.org/details/ClosingKeynoteForGrandReopeningOfThePublicDomainCoryDoctorowAtInternetArchive

No one has done a better job of chronicling the fortunes of our fragile, beautiful, bounteous public domain than Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Every year from 2010-2019, Boyle and Jenkins chronicled the works that weren't entering the public domain because of the 1998 Act, making sure we knew what had been stolen from our cultural commons. In so many cases, these works disappeared before their copyrights expired, for example, the majority of silent films are lost forever.

Then, in 2019, Jenkins and Boyle got to start cataloging the works that were entering the public domain, most of them from 1923 (copyright is complicated, so not everything that entered the public domain in 2019 was from that year):

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

Every year since, they've celebrated a new bumper crop. Last year, we got Mickey Mouse!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/15/mouse-liberation-front/#free-mickey

In addition to numerous other works – by Woolf, Hemingway, Doyle, Christie, Proust, Hesse, Milne, DuBois, Frost, Chaplin, Escher, and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/20/em-oh-you-ess-ee/#sexytimes

Now, 2024 was a fantastic year for the public domain, but – as you'll see in the 2025 edition of the Public Domain Day post – 2025 is even better:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2025/

So what's entering the public domain this year? Well, for one thing, there's more of the stuff from last year, which makes sense: if Hemingway's first books entered the PD last year, then this year, we'll the books he wrote next (and this will continue every year until we catch up with Hemingway's tragic death).

There are some big hits from our returning champions, like Woolf's To the Lighthouse and A Farewell to Arms from Hemingway. Jenkins and Boyle call particular attention to one book: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, its title taken from a public domain work by Shakespeare. As they write, Faulkner spoke eloquently about the nature of posterity and culture:

[Humanity] is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance…The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The main attraction on last year's Public Domain Day was the entry of Steamboat Willie – the first Mickey Mouse cartoon – into the public domain. This year, we're getting a dozen new Mickey cartoons, including the first Mickey talkie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse_(film_series)#1929

Those 12 shorts represent a kind of creative explosion for the Disney Studios. Those early Mickey cartoons were, each and every one, a hybrid of new copyrighted works and the public domain. The backbone of each Mickey short was a beloved, public domain song, with Mickey's motion synched to the beat (animators came to call this "mickey mousing"). In 1929, there was a huge crop of public domain music that anyone could use this way:

Blue Danube, Pop Goes the Weasel, Yankee Doodle, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Ach Du Lieber Augustin, Listen to the Mocking Bird, A-Hunting We Will Go, Dixie, The Girl I Left Behind Me, a tune known as the snake charmer song, Coming Thru the Rye, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Auld Lang Syne, Aloha ‘Oe, Turkey in the Straw, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, Habanera and Toreador Song from Carmen, Lizst’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and Goodnight, Ladies.

These were recent compositions, songs that were written and popularized in the lifetimes of the parents and grandparents who took their kids to the movies to see Mickey shorts like "The Barn Dance," "The Opry House" and "The Jazz Fool." The ability to plunder this music at will was key to the success of Mickey Mouse and Disney. Think of all the Mickeys and Disneys we've lost by locking up the public domain for the past half-century!

This year, we're getting some outstanding new old music for our public domain. The complexities of copyright terms mean that compositions from 1929 are entering the public domain, but we're only getting recordings from 1924. 1924's outstanding recordings include:

George Gershwin performing Rhapsody in Blue, Jelly Roll Morton playing Shreveport Stomp, and an early recording from contralto and civil rights icon Marian Anderson, who is famous for her 1939 performance to an integrated audience of over 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson’s 1924 recording is of the spiritual Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.

While the compositions include Singin' in the Rain, Ain't Misbehavin', An American in Paris, Bolero, (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, Tiptoe Through the Tulips, Happy Days Are Here Again, What Is This Thing Called, Love?, Am I Blue? and many, many more.

On the art front, we're getting Salvador Dali's earliest surrealist masterpieces, like Illumined Pleasures, The Accommodations of Desire, and The Great Masturbator. Dali's contemporaries are not so lucky: after a century, the early history of the works of Magritte are so muddy that it's impossible to say whether they are in or out of copyright.

But there's plenty of art with clearer provenance that we can welcome into the public domain this year, most notably, Popeye and Tintin. As the first Popeye and Tintin comics go PD, so too do those characters.

The idea that a fictional character can have a copyright separate from the stories they appear in is relatively new, and it's weird and very stupid. Courts have found that the Batmobile is a copyrightable character (Batman won't enter the public domain until 2035).

Copyright for characters is such a muddy, gross, weird idea. The clearest example of how stupid this gets comes from Sherlock Holmes, whose canon spans many years. The Doyle estate – a rent-seeking copyright troll – claimed that Holmes wouldn't enter the public domain until every Holmes story was in the public domain (that's this year, incidentally!).

This didn't fly, so their next gambit was to claim copyright over those aspects of Holmes's character that were developed later in the stories. For example, they claimed that Holmes didn't show compassion until the later stories, and, on that basis, sued the creators of the Enola Holmes TV show for depicting a gender-swapped Sherlock who wasn't a total dick:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/22/lawsuit-copyright-warmer-sherlock-holmes-dismissed-enola-holmes

As the Enola lawyers pointed out in their briefs, this was tantamount to a copyright over emotions: "Copyright law does not allow the ownership of generic concepts like warmth, kindness, empathy, or respect, even as expressed by a public domain character – which, of course, belongs to the public, not plaintiff."

When Mickey entered the public domain last year, Jenkins did an excellent deep dive into which aspects of Mickey's character and design emerged when:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/

Jenkins uses this year's entry of Tintin and Popeye into the public domain to further explore the subject of proprietary characters.

Even though copyright extends to characters, it only covers the "copyrightable" parts of those characters. As the Enola lawyers wrote, the generic character traits (their age, emotional vibe, etc) are not protected. Neither is anything "trivial" or "minuscule" – for example, if a cartoonist makes a minor alteration to the way a character's pupils or eyes are drawn, that's a minor detail, not a copyrightable element.

The biggest impediment to using public domain characters isn't copyright, it's trademark. Trademark is very different from copyright: foundationally, trademark is the right to protect your customers from being deceived by your competitors. Coke can use trademark to stop Pepsi from selling its sugary drinks in Coke cans – not because it owns the word "Coke" or the Coke logo, but because it has been deputized to protect Coke drinkers from being tricked into buying not-Coke, thinking that they're getting the true Black Waters of American Imperialism.

Companies claim trademarks over cartoon characters all the time, and license those trademarks on food, clothing, toys, and more (remember Popeye candy cigarettes?).

Indeed, Hearst Holdings claims a trademark over Popeye in many traditional categories, like cartoons, amusement parks, ads and clothes. They're also in the midst of applying for a Popeye NFT trademark (lol).

Does that mean you can't use Popeye in any of those ways? Nope! All you need to do is prominently mention that your use of Popeye is unofficial, not associated with Hearst, and dispel any chance of confusion. A unanimous Supreme Court decision (in Dastar) affirm your right to do so. You can also use Popeye in the title of your unauthorized Popeye comic, thanks to a case called Rogers v Grimaldi.

This all applies to Tintin, too – a big deal, given that Tintin is managed by a notorious copyright bully who delights in cruelly terrorizing fan artists. Tintin is joined in the public domain by Buck Rogers, another old-timey character whose owners are scumbag rent-seekers.

Congress buried the public domain alive in 1976, and dumped a load of gravel over its grave in 1998, but miraculously, we've managed to exhume the PD, and it has been revived and is showing signs of rude health.

2024 saw the blockbuster film adaptation of Wicked, based on the public domain Oz books. It also saw the publication of James, a celebrated retelling of Twain's Huck Finn from the perspective of Huck's enslaved sidekick.

This is completely normal. It's how art was made since time immemorial. The 40 year experiment in life without a public domain is at an end, and not a minute too soon.

You can piece together a complete-as-possible list of 2025's public domain (including the Marx Brothers' Cocoanuts, Disney's Skeleton Dance, and Del Ruth's Gold Diggers of Broadway) here:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

[redgoldsparks]

Has your name every appeared in the credits of a book, or is it likely to in the near future? Then you should join AUTHORS AGAINST BOOK BANS! Transcript below the cut. A version of this zine formatted for print is available to download on my patreon.

Do you make books? Yes? I want YOU to join Authors Against Book Bans! By Maia Kobabe

WHAT IS AABB? 

A coalition of writers, illustrators, editors & other book creators, standing united against the unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read. We support the availability of diverse voices in our libraries, in our schools, & in our culture. We pledge to band together against the oppression of literature, to speak when our voices are silenced, to go where our bodies are needed, & to fight to ensure this freedom.

Our concern is not only for the books, but for the children, families, educators, librarians, & communities who suffer when the freedom to read is challenged and taken away.

WHAT CAN AABB OFFER YOU? 

- Regional groups working on legislation to protect authors & the freedom to read state-by-state

- Online trainings on digital security, public speaking, & how to counter book challenges in your community

-Affinity groups for BIPOC authors, queer authors, authors with disabilities, indie, nonfiction, romance writers & more

-Support if your book is challenged!

-A very active discord community

Author: What if my book hasn’t been challenged? 

Maia: JOIN!

Author: Ok, but what if I’m really busy and can’t do much organizing right now? 

Maia: JOIN ANYWAY! 

Even if all you do is sign up, your membership will help lend weight to the letters AABB sends to publishers & legislators. As of January 2025, AABB has 3500+ members. Check out the recent open letter to publishers on AABB’s socials & feel free to share it with your contacts. 

An Open Letter to Our Publishers- instagram.com/p/DCzYmKcR8uq

Maia: I’ve been facing intense challenges to my book since 2021. Knowing that I am not alone in the fight against censorship is what keeps my spirits up! 

Watching the folks in AABB share information, co-write legislation, show up to library & school board meetings, & speak up to publishers about the need to protect diverse books & minority authors has been amazing! 

This is a weird & scary time to be an author, but you are not alone! Join thousands of us fighting for the freedom to read, the freedom to write, the freedom to teach, the freedom to learn, & the freedom to share our stories!

AABB on instagram / AABB on bluesky

[reasonsforhope]

"In neighborhoods across the globe — yes, even in Antarctica — it is not uncommon to find a Little Free Library, or a book-sharing box filled with a collection of free books to take, share, and enjoy.

If a location on the South Pole wasn’t enough, Little Free Library is celebrating a major milestone: Its 200,000th box. 

The nonprofit that manages these 200,000 mini libraries works to increase access to literacy in urban, suburban, and rural communities all over the world. This includes programming to expand access to books among BIPOC communities, as well as efforts to fight book bans across the United States.

In sticking with this mission, the landmark 200,000th library was donated to and installed at Benjamin E. Mays IB World School, an elementary school in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

The donation also marks the first of 200 Little Free Libraries that will be given to Title I schools across the U.S., in an effort to expand access to books in low-income areas...

The 200,000th library is exclusively for students and is designed to resemble a one-room schoolhouse. This pays homage to the very first Little Free Library, built by the organization’s founder Todd H. Bol in 2009.

“The future where all of us, no matter our age, economic status, or residence, have the opportunity to readily access a book that can inspire, motivate, and empower,” Metzger continued. 

“Working together locally as a community, a community connected through Little Free Libraries, we hope to make this opportunity a reality for all.” 

The worldwide network of Little Free Libraries spans all 50 states, 128 countries, and all seven continents. 

Next, 199 more Little Free Libraries will be installed at Title I elementary schools, and each of these will be stocked with 200 brand-new books.

The donated libraries are sponsored by Books Unbanned and the donated materials come from a 40,000-book donation from Penguin Random House. ..

Schools receiving these libraries and books were selected through an application process, and all students in the schools are welcome to take the books home at no cost.

“Many of our students have little to no books at home, and transportation barriers prevent families from reaching the public library,” a representative from participating school Somerset Lakes Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida, said in a statement.

“A Little Free Library will serve as a crucial bridge, providing ongoing access to literature for students, their siblings, parents, and the community.”

Back in St. Paul, the 200,000th library is already set to be well-loved by the 340 students who attend Benjamin E. Mays IB World School. All students received gifted books, and 50 select students who excelled in a recent reading challenge attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“Freedom is the road seldom traveled by the multitudes; however, literacy is the gateway to learn one’s past, present, and shape the future,” said the school’s principal, Dr. Kenneth O. Turner Jr. 

“Through literacy, one can travel the world, reading and learning about historical figures who have shaped the world. Literacy can take you into space and travel the galaxies far away. Through literacy all is obtainable.” 

Anyone interested in joining the “take a book, leave a book” movement of Little Free Library can build or buy their own box and register it online to be part of the official network."

-via GoodGoodGood, March 13, 2025

[bubblyernie]

Hello my silly geese :) I am here to announce a POETRY CALL!! I want to make a poetry collection inspired by Urban Voices/L'echo de la Ville, a TDSB publication that I read when growing up.

I will be running it both here and @thespacebetweenmyfingers-poetry so feel free to keep an eye out there if you're interested in that project only. The form is a google form for any submissions, and the specs will be on it. I will be drawing based on submissions and then posting them together in august-sept.

Let me know if you have questions here, or on that blog! Instagram is thespacebetweenmyfingers for any insta users

art tag // commission info // submission form

Text version below for accessibility:

FAQ (Additional questions in the questions tag!): 

What is it?

A poetry collection with accompanying artwork! It’s an homage to Urban Voices/L’echo de la Ville, a TDSB youth-submitted annual collection I used to read in elementary school.

How does it work?

You submit a poem (or several, but I can only do 1 per person) based on the prompt “The Space Between My Fingers” (interpreted however you see fit) and I draw one postcard design + a spot illustration to accompany it. The final will be shared as a collection with everyone else’s. 

How many are you taking in?

Up to 20 for now, but if there aren’t too many, then it’s first come first serve :P 

Who can submit? 

Anyone is welcome to, but due to the inspiration and location, I will encourage those from North America/Canada to submit. Be aware, some of the poems may involve heavier subjects, since it’s open ended for the age range.

Is this paid? 

No, this is a submission based project. I will be putting up my own donation/ko-fi link as a means of support to organizing and doing all the artwork, but I plan for it to be non-profit unless a third party publisher gets involved — if it gets printed, I only plan to give it to local shops/libraries to get eyes on it.* Copyright to the poetry remains with the writers, and the art to myself. 

*anything of the sort will be run by the contributors first.

-----

Timeline:

April 15 2025: form opens

May 31st: form closes

Late Summer - early Fall: collection gets posted to social media!

[breelandwalker]

Willow Wings Witch Shops - July 2025 Newsletter

Visit the Shop

Grab your library cards and your favorite backpack, it’s time for Summer Reading! This month, we’re celebrating those pillars of education and community, our local public libraries. While the weather outside may be frightful (in multiple ways), this is the perfect time to visit a quiet, comfortable, temperature-controlled sanctuary full of free books, music, and movies. Need to find a library to visit or need accessibility options? Here are some places that can help you look!

Find Your Library (National Library Service, USA)

Libraries.org (World Library Directory)

Little Free Library (World)

Library Finder (U.S. Dept of Labor)

Library Landscape (Latin America & the Caribbean)

Canadian Library Directory (Canada)

Lighthouse Libraries (EU)

Library Resources Outside the U.S. (Brown University Library resource)

Project Gutenberg (free public domain digital books)

Global Grey Ebooks (free public domain ebooks supported by donations)

Librivox (free volunteer-read public domain audiobooks)

Open Culture (online archive of free media)

Libby (app)

Scribd (app)

Everand (app)

And here in the Willow Wings Witch Shop, I’m following suit by discounting ALL of my books, including the money-saving Book Bundle! Add some magic to your personal library this month with Grovedaughter Witchery, The Sisters Grimmoire, and Pestlework. (They’re all based in practical, secular witchcraft so no matter what path you’re on, there’s something you can use!)

Use code READMORE for 20% off new and featured items all month long!

Don’t forget to check out the Upcoming Events page for my full schedule of local markets and workshops. Tune in to this month’s episode of Hex Positive on your favorite listening app and check out the Redbubble shop for fabulous podcast merch.

Stay Safe and Happy Witching! 📚

Upcoming Events:

The Witches Table Discussion Group: Williamsburg Chapter (First Wednesday of each month) Next Gathering - Wednesday, July 2 2025, 6pm-8pm Upcoming Dates - August 6 | Sept 3 (Location TBD) Alewerks Taproom (Williamsburg Outlets) 5715 Richmond Rd, Williamsburg VA (USA) Hosted by The Witches Table (And check out the Richmond chapter too!)

The Witches Table - Spellwriting Workshop Wednesday, July 2 2025, 6pm-8pm Alewerks Taproom (Williamsburg Outlets) 5715 Richmond Rd, Williamsburg VA (USA) Hosted by The Witches Table

Spellwriting Workshop Sunday, July 13 2025, 630pm-830pm Fallout RVA, 117 N 18th St, Richmond VA (USA) Hosted by Fallout RVA and The Witches Table Tickets via Eventbrite

Spellwriting Workshop Saturday, July 19 2025, Time TBD 10369 Warwick Blvd, Newport News VA (USA) Hosted by Styx & Stones

As Above, So Below - Grand Opening Sunday, July 20 2025, 12pm-4pm 25 E. Mellen St, Hampton VA (USA) Hosted by As Above, So Below

This Month on Hex Positive:

Ep. 057 - Three Gremlins In A Trenchcoat - Battling Imposter Syndrome with Bree, Lozzie, and Lulu Check it out on your favorite listening app!

Imposter Syndrome, or the feeling of being unqualified for the position you’re in and undeserving of the accolades you receive, is something that’s usually applied to high-pressure industry jobs and creative circles. But it can turn up in plenty of other areas of our lives, including in our witchcraft. This month, Bree sits down with returning guest host Lozzie Stardust and newcomer-to-the-show Lauren Goodnight to discuss this insidious feeling, how it affects our lives, and how we can combat it, even on the days when we feel like three gremlins in a trenchcoat.

(And check out Bree’s guest spot on the latest episode of BS-Free Witchcraft!)

[slapdashboard]

Queer Liberation Library 2025 Pride Fundraiser

For those who still don't know, Queer Liberation Library (QLL) is a free, donation-funded, digital library of LGBTQIA+ books and resources. Since it is not a tax-funded public service like public libraries (also very important services, go get a card from your local library to support them!), it is open to all U.S. mailing addresses. You can read QLL's e-books and audiobooks on the Libby app or the Overdrive website.

They are having a Pride Month fundraiser. As of 6/15/25, they are at ~$26,000 out of $50,000. They have the next two weeks of Pride Month to make it to their goal.

If it is safe for you to, and you can afford it, consider donating. You can donate any amount, you can donate once or monthly, and you can donate anonymously. If you can't donate, consider sharing the fundraiser instead!

"Queer Liberation Library fights to build a vibrant, flourishing queer future by connecting LGBTQ+ people with literature, information, and resources that celebrate the unique and empowering diversity of our community." - QLL

[haladriel-fluff-week]

Introducing Haladriel Fluff Week 2025, April 6-12!

Announcing an event celebrating fluff works in the Haladriel/Saurondriel ship! This year, each day's prompt will be themed around a song lyric, with the last day being a free day. The event will be run from April 6-12, and to participate in the event, use the hashtag #haladrielfluffweek2025. An AO3 collection will open closer to the start of the event.

The week of April 6-12 is also National Library Week, so I also encourage people to do something nice for a librarian at your local public library.

What Are the Content Expectations?

You can submit fanfiction, fanart, gifsets, and any other type of fan-created work to the event. The work must focus on the Sauron/Galadriel ship in some way, though if you want to focus on an OT3 with them and someone else, that will be accepted. All ratings will be accepted. What I won't accept are works created using AI.

That being said, we also do not gatekeep the definition of fluff here, and recognize that the fluff genre can contain many aspects outside of just wholesome fluff. So long as the fic ultimately has a happy ending, I do not care if your fluff contains some angst.

Who Can Participate?

Anyone, even people who don't normally write for this ship! If you are blocked, though, you will not be reblogged and I will likely remove your work from the collection.

What are the Prompts?

Day 1: Honey, just put your sweet lips on my lips/We should just kiss like real people do.

Day 2: If you by then have forgiven me/When push comes to shove/We don’t have to be enemies.

Day 3: You’re a hard soul to save/With an ocean in the way/But I’ll get around it.

Day 4: You’ve got a way to keep me on your side/You give me cause for love that I can’t hide.

Day 5: I don’t know you but I want you/All the more for that.

Day 6: There's nothin' sweeter than my baby/I'd never want once from the cherry tree.

Day 7: Free day

[beatingdrumspouringwine]

The US Election and the Future of Queer Media

To start this off, I'd like to say that if this post leaves my side of the Internet, this is primarily a religious blog. You won't see takes like this again from me, but I majored in history and have a passion for the preservation of queer culture, so here I am.

I want to start this out by giving my heartfelt condolences to everyone who will be negatively impacted by this election. I'm lucky enough to live in a part of the country where I will likely not experience the negative side of the new administration for at least a year or two. But I know for many, it will come much faster.

The current Republican party has approached queerness with fearmongering, labeling it as "pornography," and attempting to eradicate public expression of it with book and drag bans. While the past 4 years have seen this slow creep, I believe the next 4 years will be much faster, and wider-reaching. I would not be surprised if the Trump administration attempts to ban queer media and public displays of queerness on a federal level, likely under some sort of "anti-porn" law, where queerness will fall under that umbrella of "porn". And with Project 2025 very much existing, and with so many anti-queer people who have the potential to end up in very important positions, we need to get cracking on preserving the queer literature which we do have.

Now would be a good time to start getting USBs, or organizing Google Drives, and trying to get as much queer media onto them as possible. I'm not going to explicitly say that we should all just start pirating stuff at random. If we can buy books, buy art, legally watch movies, donate to organizations etc., then for the love of all that is good, do that. But with the very real threat of our existence being labeled as obscenity on a federal level, it's better safe than sorry. If a time comes where we're unable to access the resources that we need and the stories that we love on the internet, their survival offline will be crucial.

At the end of the day, we will survive. We have the rights that we do have at this moment because our predecessors fought for them. They lived through worse than this, and while it will likely get bad again, we'll survive just as they did.

Linking to two resources that I think are perfect right now, while nothing is falling apart yet:

The Internet Archive, which is a glorious free library, entirely online, with almost anything you could hope to find

The Queer Liberation Library, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit with a collection dedicated primarily to queer literature

[route22ny]

Parks, libraries, museums: here’s why Trump is attacking America’s best-loved institutions

by Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian

The president’s funding cuts and bullying are about dividing Americans and tightening his grip on power

Mon 2 Jun 2025 08.00 EDT

The author and environmentalist Wallace Stegner called our national parks “America’s best idea”.

Certainly, these jewels – 85m acres of parkland throughout all the 50 states – are beloved by the public. So are America’s public libraries, arts organizations and museums.

But that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from threatening or harming them.

These institutions are under siege. They are hurt by deep funding cuts, the loss or bullying of public employees and, in some cases, by threats of extinction.

Why would any politician – especially one as hungry for adulation as Donald Trump – go after such cherished parts of America?

It seems counterintuitive, but this is all a part of a broad plan that the great 20th century political thinker Hannah Arendt would have understood all too well.

Take away natural beauty, free access to books and support for the arts, and you end up with a less enlightened, more ignorant and less engaged public. That’s a public much more easily manipulated.

“A people that can no longer believe in anything cannot make up its mind,” said Arendt, a student of authoritarianism, in 1973. Eventually, such a public “is deprived … of its ability to think and judge”, and with people like that, “you can then do what you please”.

That’s what Trump and company are counting on.

It’s also part of the effort to divide Americans into two tribes – the elites and the regular folks, the blue and the red, the drivers of dorky hybrid sedans and the drivers of oversized pick-up trucks.

The arts and nature, by contrast, serve to unite us. When you’re admiring a redwood or gazing at the Grand Canyon, you’re neither Republican nor Democrat. The same goes for listening to a beautiful piece of new music or choosing library books to read with your children.

But division and grievance serve Trump better. And so, we have the attacks on marginalized people, on university research, and the performing arts, often in the guise of eliminating waste or discriminatory hiring practices.

“The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive attack on knowledge itself, a war against culture, history and science,” Adam Serwer wrote in the Atlantic recently in a much-discussed piece describing “the attack on knowledge”, putting in broad context Trump’s defunding of universities and attempts to discourage international scholarship.

What’s really going on is a longterm power grab.

In crippling learning, beauty and culture Trump and his helpers “seek to make the country more amenable to their political domination”.

When it comes to the parks, as the Guardian’s Annette McGivney reported recently, the harm is well under way.

Thousands of staffing cuts mean that many parks lack adequate supervision, that campgrounds are closed and that the care of precious natural resources is neglected.

Again, it’s by design, as the former national parks director Jonathan Jarvis told McGivney.

“There are ideologues who want to dismantle the federal government,” Jarvis said. “And the last thing they need is a highly popular federal agency that undermines their argument about how the government is dysfunctional.”

Mark Nebel, a longtime manager of a program at the Grand Canyon, and a true believer in the value of national parks, spoke about the personal toll.

“The Trump administration says this is all about efficiency, but it is nothing of the sort,” said Nebel, who became demoralized at the harm being done and abruptly resigned.

Reducing government waste may sound good but it looks more like willful destruction.

Among the many agencies that are under attack are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. These organizations provide crucial support for public libraries and museums, grants to artists and writers, and much more.

They make us better as a people. They uplift us. Like the parks, they can bring beauty into our lives. And as the poet John Keats wrote, beauty and truth are inseparable.

But truth is only trouble for the would-be autocrat.

And truth itself is under attack, as Trump – a prolific liar – tries to control the message to the public by controlling the reality-based press. That’s how successful propaganda works.

Toward that end, his administration is trying to defund public media, including NPR and PBS, and – partly through lawsuits against media organizations including CBS News and ABC News – to intimidate journalists and their corporate bosses.

A more ignorant, less enlightened, more divided electorate is far easier to manipulate. And the power grab, after all, is the larger aim.

Once that power is fully secured, there is no one left to challenge the endless grift and self-dealing that is a hallmark of this administration – the sale of meme coins, the pay-to-play pardons of criminals and the cultivation of rich guys and their fat wallets.

The diminishment of truth and beauty is part of a long game, but one that doesn’t have to prevail.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/02/national-parks-libraries-museums-trump

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

[bookwyrminspiration]

Hey Quil, I have a question, did you ever figure out what with book you were reading a while back where the audiobook was different from the physical book

!!! I didn't think anyone else cared!! Now this is conjecture, but yes, I think I've figured it out.

For those unaware, the book in question is The Resurrectionist by A Rae Dunlap, published December 24th, 2024. I was listening to it on audio, but purchased a physical book about 3/4ths into my read and intended to continue from there. However, upon trying to find my place, I discovered a scene in the physical book that did not exist in audio, which then changed a few of the surrounding scenes.

I, thinking I was losing my mind, tracked down several copies to compare content--my book, an official digital version, a library book, multiple pirated digital copies. None of them matched the audio version.

The audio version was published January 21st, 2025, a little less than a month after the physical. I'm not overly familiar with publishing and recording, but I'm going to guess it takes longer than a month to create an audiobook.

And while the added/altered scenes do disrupt some of the original flow (I'm considering the audio the original), they also solve a crucial hole in one of the original plot's tensions--in theory. I think it could've worked regardless, but that's just me.

So! My hypothesis is that the version on audio is the original, which was provided to those making the audiobook before publication. But there was then a relatively last minute edit to patch the supposed hole, meaning all versions published on Dec 24th are consistent and updated, but the audio was too far in production to fix :)

(I've rec'd the book to a few people, so I'll put the actual changed contents under a cut, as they're far into the book and contain several major spoilers)

In the original audio version, the two main characters, James and Aneurin, are walked in on while having sex. It's James' sister, Edith, who he hasn't seen in months, and she demands he speak with her over dinner later, then leaves. James goes to Aneurin who is mid packing to flee the city to prevent being executed, as he's been condemned to death for queerness once before, but he's talked down by James, who assures him his sister won't report them to the authorities. Later at dinner, Edith holds knowledge of James' queerness over him to try and pressure him into returning to the family, as it's the 1800s and queerness is an executable offense, and James leaves dinner early. He later sends a letter vaguely agreeing to Edith's terms to prevent her going to the authorities for Aneurin's sake, but intends to wiggle out of it.

In the other versions, James and Aneurin run into Edith the day before, and they meet for dinner and exchange pleasantries. She then walks in on them the next morning, and she and James' have their conversation right there in the bedroom; he leaves having cut ties, he feels, and is now free. He then finds Aneurin packing to flee and talks him down, reflects on the danger of being found out as queer, and realizes he's not as free as he thought.

I think the reason for this change is because Edith can't report Aneurin in the original version--he's just some boy in her brother's bed she got half a look at as he fled the room. She doesn't know anything about him, which takes the steam out of the threat and Aneurin's reason to flee. having met for dinner the day before, now she can make an actual report should she want

However. I think, given Aneurin's past history with being condemned to death at 14 for being queer, it's entirely reasonable for him to lose all rationality and try to flee anyways out of sheer panic and trauma. But that's just my opinion.

Anyways. Again, conjecture, but this is my supposition as to what's happening with the different versions!!

[brain-rot-central]

If you ever wanted to know how bad the illiteracy crisis in America is, I work with people who are native English speakers, grew up going to public schools in areas that aren't necessarily poor or underfunded and they use AI grammar checkers in order to check how they speak/type on a daily basis.

Now, granted, they could have dyslexia.

I'm definitely some degree of dyslexic, but by exposing yourself to reading and listening to various different audio recordings, you start to develop a sense of "hmm this doesn't sound/look right;" almost like a type of pattern recognition.

I knew from a young age that I had difficulties with reading/writing/speaking. I STILL speak backwards and will often jumble the order of words in a sentence, to the point where I have to stop and restart. It's much easier for me to sound coherent through writing than speaking, and even then I sometimes struggle to get my point across.

My parents didn't want to admit I had a problem, so I took it upon myself to read/write as much as I could. I hated when it was my turn to read a passage from a book out loud during class, but I did my best to go over the passage as long as I could before being picked to read it, that way the words were already familiar in my mouth. If that makes sense.

What my point is though is that we neeeeeed to start encouraging people to read again. If you can't spend time reading because of kids or school or a busy schedule, by God pop on an audiobook and just listen. Not saying that all media should be free, but it really should be a lot easier for people to access books and other works. I think that would really help improve literacy rates nationwide.

I'd love to one day see local libraries have delivery services. Like order a book from your library online and they deliver it with a package slip to send it back through the mail after 2-3 weeks; however long they let you keep a book. If you want an extension maybe they make you pay an extra $1-5, something like that, which would cover the cost of packaging in most cases.

To see people using AI grammar checkers on the daily because they either did not have any help with reading/writing when they were younger or grew up impoverished breaks my heart and should not be the standard going forward.

Popping a sentence into a grammar checker will help you in the short-term, but if you want to get to a point where you never have to rely on such a device in the future, you need to practice that skill. And the only way you're going to do that is by putting the effort in to do so.

Not only does it benefit you by way of being able to convey yourself better, but it also helps keep your brain active. There have been multiple studies done that show people who read/play crosswords puzzles have a lower chance of developing memory loss as they age.

There really is truth in the statement, "you use it or you lose it."

I think this is something important to focus on because in a time where book bans are happening across the nation and there's widespread demonization of higher education, we have to realize that our ability to develop critical thinking skills is directly linked to how often we exercise our brains.

By keeping us illiterate, it becomes easier for oppressive governments to spoon feed us bullshit while no one bats an eye. I like to refer to the days of Medieval England and Europe when only those who had money and status were taught how to read. The Church basically ran everything and would very often spin the truth in their favor knowing the masses were illiterate and uneducated.

That's not something I would like to see in the year 2025, and I don't think most people want to see it, either.

Education is not the problem. Knowledge is truly power, and one of the best ways you can obtain knowledge is by reading.

Even if you struggle and you can't read something beyond Dr. Seuss, start there. Read as much at that level as you can, and slowly work yourself up. Keep challenging yourself.

If you need to write words down so you can look them up later, do it. Write them out in a book or a text note document on your phone with the definition next to them.

Do not let them strip your ability to gather information from you. Do not let them make you believe that to have knowledge or the desire to seek out knowledge is a bad thing.

Reading comprehension is one thing that can save you. You can read between the lines of whatever bullshit is being spun and thrown at you. Do not let them take that from you.

[johannestevans]

A Queer Indie Author’s Experience of 2024

Looking back on my top stories, sales stats, and best experiences of the year past, and looking to the year ahead!

Hello hello!

I’ve just been in the process of attending to my yearly tradition, ordinarily attended to in the last days of December and the first of January — I sit down with my new year’s calendar, and I write down all the vital dates and pieces of information. 

On the current calendar in front of me — a charming Peter Rabbit family planner with a little attached whiteboard, as I wasn’t able to get the Discworld calendar this year — I’ve transferred over the birthdays of all my friends and loved ones, written down some of the main conventions of 2025 I’m planning to attend like TeratoCon, and other already established professional and social plans, as well as deadlines for different submissions. 

As I’m looking ahead, I thought it would be worth looking back a little bit as well, for a nice bit of contrast!

Statistics for 2024:

Total Books Sold Through KDP (Amazon) in 2024: 1,548

1,265 of those units were eBooks and 283 were print books — my top performer was my first novel, Heart of Stone, which sold 637 units (396 eBooks, 241 paperbacks), and after that was Touch-Starved, which sold 209 total units, then Powder and Feathers, at 82 total units. 

Approximated royalties are at $2,288.42.

Total Books Sold Through Draft2Digital in 2024: 13,529

Draft2Digital is the company through which I publish to several platforms, particularly Kobo and Kobo+, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Everand, Smashwords, and then library programs like BorrowBox, Hoopla, CloudLibrary, etc. 

The sales are so incredibly high because it was the Smashwords End of Year sale, and all of my 99c shorts were discounted to free for most of December, so 12,548 sales were in December, and I only had 981 sales for the rest of the year. 

I unfortunately have absolutely no idea how to look at the breakdown between eBooks and paperbacks for D2D, but my top sellers were Touch-Starved, at 464 units sold, Sweet On, at 400 units sold, and Hitting the Books, at 369 units sold. 

Approximated royalties are at $1,117.56, with $354.52 of those royalties being in the last month. While obviously ten thousand books were free books sold, my advertisements for the free books and the freebies themselves drove a lot of traffic to my other works like Heart of Stone or Strange Liberty, etc.

Total Royalties from Medium in 2024: $1073.92

Medium pays out royalties based on views of subscribers and how much time subscribers spend reading each work. I normally tock up my top story for each month on Medium, but Medium has helpfully taken away the option to do that for months January through July, thinking that only the last six months are useful in the stats block for the Partner Program rather than the last 12. 

Nonetheless, for the months I can see:

August’s Total Earnings on Medium: $64.39 September’s Total Earnings on Medium: $47.33 October’s Total Earnings on Medium: $56.25 November’s Total Earnings on Medium: $57.27 December’s Total Earnings on Medium: $57.08

August 2024’s Top Performer was Yentl: A Trans Man Studying Talmud is Distracted by Gay Thoughts. It earned $3.80 that month, and its lifetime earnings, having been published in July 2023, stand at $163.36. It was also September 2024’s Top Performer, earning $3.79. It was also November 2024’s Top Performer, earning $3.71.

August 2024’s Top Fiction Performer was The Devil’s Mark, which earned $2.76, having been published that month, and has managed $3.12 lifetime earnings since publication. 

September 2024’s Top Fiction Performer was Street Trade, which earned $1.15, and has managed $1.81 lifetime earnings since publication.

October 2024’s Top Performer was Passing Privilege: Through My Eyes, as a Trans Man Who Passes, earning $11.64 that month, and its lifetime earnings, having been published in June 2023, stand $138.04.

October 2024’s Top Fiction Performer was Bred & Betting, which earned $2.09 that month, and has managed $3.10 lifetime earnings since publication. 

November 2024’s Top Fiction Performer was Divine Service, which earned $2.52 that month, and its lifetime earnings, having released on Medium in May 2024, stand at $32.99. It was also December 2024’s Top Fiction Performer, earning $2.21.

December 2024’s Top Performer was A Transphobe Ruined His Own Night Because I Was Existing Next to Him, which earned $13.42 and was actually a new piece, so that’s its lifetime earnings. 

Total Income from Patreon in 2024: $16,502.38

Of course, Patreon is always the bulk of my income, and I’m very grateful for my Patreon subscribers! 

On my Patreon, I publish all of my short stories and essays, barring a handful that due to Patreon’s guidelines can’t be cross-posted there, and the new benefit I’m going to be offering my patrons is going to be giving them voucher codes so they can always buy eBook versions of all my works on Smashwords as an additional benefit. 

I try not to look at my general new subscriber and unsubscription rate on Patreon each month, but my Active Subscribers currently stand at 420 (noice), with 104 new subscribers and having had 102 cancelled subscribers in the past year. 

People regularly unsubscribe on Patreon and come back later when they can afford it, or go between Medium and Patreon, depending on what works best for their income at the moment. 

What I Did in 2024

This year has been really good for me, and I’ve been absolutely delighted with the results, but the past few months particularly have been especially good, and I’m really excited with some decisions I’ve made and what they’re gonna look like for me in 2025. 

Firstly, in February I accompanied Dalton Harrison, author of The Boy Behind The Wall, and Kirsty from Bi+ Leeds to HMP Askham Grange to run a Q&A and read from some of our pieces in Transmuted to the prisoners there. 

It was such a privilege to be able to talk to some of the prisoners incarcerated there, especially other queer and trans people, and to advocate for prisoners’ queer identities to guards and staff in a way that prisoners often don’t feel able to approach in the same way for themselves, but mostly just to spread a little joy and talk about creativity and art to the prisoners in place there. 

In April, I delivered a talk with Romancing the Gothic about Crimson Peak as a modern Gothic Romance, and I of course ran my usual Monstrous May prompt event, although I don’t think I did enough promotion for it in 2024 and I don’t think my prompts were necessarily that enticing. I’m hoping to drum up more excitement and interest in 2025. 

 I went to WorldCon in August, and I had an excellent time, it felt really fulfilling as a creative professional, I loved being on several panels and also being able to moderate a panel, and I’m very excited to further cultivate my skills in the next year or two in interviewing and moderation for Q&As and panels alike! 

I didn’t unfortunately get to any other conventions in 2024 because WorldCon was very expensive between con tickets, travel up to Glasgow, and the AirBnB, but more cons is absolutely the goal. 

I also got involved in a few other projects that are going to be published in 2025 — I contributed a short story to Dudes Rock: A Celebration of Queer Masculinity in Speculative Fiction, edited by Jay Kang Romanus and published by The Circus Collective, and the anthology is currently open for preorder, due for release on January 10th! 

I’ve also contributed to SLAKE HOUSE, an erotic horror Choose-Your-Own-Ending anthology presented by Noah’s Ark and Radha Kai Zan that’s due for release in the next few months, and I’m very excited for that as well, it was such a cool project to be a part of, and I was so delighted to work along so many splendid and deliciously fucked-up creators, both other authors and amazing visual artists!

I made some changes to my social media presence — most notably swapping the bulk of my activity from the dying-a-swift-death X, née Twitter, to BlueSky, which has now added threading — enabling me to write my first ThreadFic on the platform — and publishing more actively to Reddit, especially in the fantasy, romance, and queer subs, as well as making a Threads account. 

And finally, the biggest change I’ve made in 2024, I went through my back catalogue of longer shorts, those that were in the 5k to 30k range, and made each of them available as 99c shorts, with new eBooks published in the 5–10k range to be published as 99c shorts, and ones closer to the 20k range or above to be priced at $2.99, apart from my serials that get re-edited and published as extended novels.

For a long time, I was quite reticent to publish shorts in this way, convincing myself that I absolutely had to publish shorts in big collections or otherwise I was somehow cheating the reader by giving them such a short piece, but I’m so glad I managed to shake off that anxiety. 

The response to all these 99c shorts has been overwhelmingly and absurdly positive, and I’ve reached a huge swathe of new readers even before the Smashwords sale where I sold off 10k of these shorts for free. Quite a lot of readers have been really excited at the short story, novelette, and novella formats for a lot of these pieces, especially because they’re so varied in their subject matter, genre, and characters, and obviously like…

Each of these books individually can work up its own popularity and readers who have affection for it, each of them individually being recommended on their own strengths, but having so many shorts available, people often recommend a handful in the same breath, especially those that play with similar topics or themes. 

Going from having a back catalogue of seven or so eBooks and paperbacks to 50 eBooks and 20 paperbacks makes a big difference, and it’s going to be great to be able to pick out paperbacks to bring along to sell at conventions and so on that exactly match the brief or the theme!

As each of these shorts and novelettes gain reviews, I’m excited for them to gain more of an audience over time as readers find them as their favourites, similar to the response Heart of Stone has received over time, and that I hope Powder and Feathers and other long novels in future to receive, such as the next expected release, An Uncommon Betrothal. 

I’ve come on leaps and bounds with my own ability to design book covers, working with a pared back vintage style that incorporates a lot of public domain etchings, sketches, and block prints, the sort I grew up seeing in adventure novels and so on, and also in editing and formatting my books for paperback on KDP! 

My Goals for 2025

Most of what I want to achieve in 2025 is more of the same.

I definitely feel that because I was working on a lot of longer pieces this year, and then because I was working on making eBooks and paperback versions of various pieces available, that I didn’t publish as many fiction pieces overall, but I’m very proud of what I have published!

I want to attend more conventions, as I’ve said, and involve myself in more literary and author-run events where I can, as well as maybe selling books and merch at pride events. 

I haven’t focused that much on merchandise this year, but now that my printer is up and running, I’m excited to design new badges in a few months, as well as maybe make some bookmarks, postcards, stickers, and similar. Depending on how my income looks in the next few months and how significant a difference my back catalogue makes, I think I’d also like to have some business cards printed.

I’ve definitely made more money business-wise this last year than I ever have before, and I’m keen to keep those growths doing, but we’re hoping to get a cat this year as well as do some home repairs, so I want to be modest about how I’m reinvesting that new income as I keep it building up. 

I want to be more creative about how I’m advertising to new readers and meeting new people — I actually put up some posters around Leeds last month to advertise the Smash sale, and I definitely think I want to get into the habit of regularly putting up posters advertising my work in queer spaces around Yorkshire, both around Bradford and Leeds, but also if I’m going out in York, or even if I’m going farther afield to Manchester or Bristol or London. 

And my biggest goal I think is that when I finish An Uncommon Betrothal, I want to do an official in-person launch for the paperback and do an event where I’m reading from it, selling copies, and signing them as well! 

That would most likely be in Leeds, and I just think it would be a really fun event if I can do it, and would drum up a lot of support and sales both online and in paperback. 

Thank you so much for all your support, and wishing everyone a happy new year! 

[redgoldsparks]

Maia Kobabe April & May events!

Hello friends, I have one virtual event and several in-person events coming up in the next two months so I wanted to share all of the information I currently have!

The virtual event is on Thursday April 3 starting at 4pm PT/7pm ET. It's hosted by Garden State Equality and OutFront Metuchen, and I will be talking about Gender Queer but also about Breathe and my next forthcoming book. Free to attend but you have to register here.

On Saturday April 5 at 7:30pm I'll be speaking on a panel about banned books with rockstar Bay Area authors Laura Gao and Maggie Takuda-Hall at the San Francisco Public Library as part of their 2025 "Night of Ideas" event. You can read up on the concept of the event here; it's free to attend but space is limited so you need to register here.

On Friday May 30 at 7pm I'll be speaking with my Breathe co-author Sarah Peitzmeier at Copperfield's Books in Santa Rosa (775 Village Court). Event information here.

On Saturday May 31 we will also be speaking at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, CA. This event does not have its full programming/schedule up yet, but you can keep an eye on the website here and I will update when I know more.

insta / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books / print store / bluesky

[naeshira]

Fuckin. A. The White House is now targeting the Institute for Museums and Library Services (IMLS), as well as a whole host of other good services, and I have a few thoughts I need to share. 

First of all, as someone who has worked in libraries for half her life, let me tell you: me, you, and most every person in the US have benefitted from the IMLS since its formation in 1996. If you have been to a museum, a library, a zoo, a botanic garden, a historic house, a nature center, a university, and even that little library room in your elementary school, You Have Benefitted From The IMLS. They’re an agency that provides funding for most museums and libraries in the country, they fund research and projects through grants, and there are whole jobs in my field that are fully dependent on IMLS funding. 

I’d like to remind you all that the library’s role has been expanding over the years into numerous social services, including being used as voting centers and as resources for public health - remember that masks and COVID tests were being handed out at public libraries to protect each other. For free. Libraries do not generate profit. They are not meant to. And that is a problem for the people who want to run our country like a “business.” 

Here is the statement from the American Library Association: https://www.ala.org/news/2025/03/ala-statement-white-house-assault-institute-museum-and-library-services

Support your local library.