miatsai

[miatsai]

The Memory Hunters is officially out!

Launch day was pretty great; I spent so much time on socials, then followed that up with an appearance at my local library with good friend LD Lewis and organizers Charis Books (shoutout @shmooshberry) and the GA Center for the Book. Went out for Taco Tuesday, got my bartender to finagle a Blood Chalice (well, we had to sub some things in), then came home, got ready for bed, and jumped back on the computer to work on ConCurrent.

By the way, ConCurrent funded a couple of days ago, and it's all because of our donors and the support we've gotten for our mission. GenAI is detrimental to us in so many ways and it's incredibly toxic for the environment; Elon is currently poisoning Memphis, TN, in order to power Grok. Human lives are not worth shitty generative AI, whether that's xAI or OpenAI or any other tech company trying to push bad tech on us. And so ConCurrent will stand with the rest of convention-organizing history in relying on manpower and manpower only.

We've got some fun swag coming at ConCurrent! One of the things is a hand fan because lord knows it can get hot no matter how good the AC is, and on the back of the fan is a blank space where you can write notes or ask people to sign your souvenir fan for you. I could only order 70, though, so if you want one, you've gotta register and show up!

Tomorrow I get to chat with @jennlyons about The Memory Hunters. It's gonna be a fun time.

[miatsai]

she's gayer than my firstborn, so she had to be chonkier

@miatsai, your second born is so big 💗

[miatsai]

glam metal modern but also your contractor is going to jail dawg

Sometimes a house is so ugly, disgust boomerangs back into a form of respect.

This is a rare phenomenon, one which should be treated seriously. I've been looking at ugly houses professionally for almost a decade now and I can say with confidence that there are only a handful of true goose eggs that meet the mark. This house -- this remarkable, revolting house -- located, of all places, in Randolph County, North Carolina, is perhaps the finest goose egg a rogue and most certainly confused contractor could possibly lay.

Yeehaw, man. For the curious, the house is on the market for over 500 grand despite being badly sited and measly 2600 square feet. Most of that is devoted to the lawyer foyer which is not the choice I would personally make, but hey, to each their own.

Most of the houses on McMansion Hell these days are submissions from members of the McMansion Hell Patreon, either in our discord server or on our livestreams. This one, however was a total fluke. I came across it by accident because my brother is looking to move to the area in order to be closer to my folks. (I doubt he'd be interested in something this, uh, unique.)

Now, in all these years, I've never devoted an entire post to the exterior of a house. As they say, there's a first time for everything. There is so much going on with this house, all of it in direct opposition to the concept of taste, it requires a deeper investigation than the initial exterior image usually allows. (Also the entire interior is, as one might expect, entirely dark gray, complete with that awful washed out laminate flooring.)

(here is a sneak peek inside. the rest is not really important nor interesting.)

Anyway, without further ado, let's hit it from the top.

First off, no, I don't know what is inside this house's giant, hammerhead-esque forehead. It's not supported by anything so my assumption is, well, nothing. They put this in there for the sheer aesthetic love of the game.

Second, we have to talk about the siding. It's vinyl, and $500 grand is firmly in Hardie®™© Board territory. You can already start to see it ripple against the cornice, which is probably fine. The cornices are painted black in a cartoony, Roy Lichtenstein fashion, that is, if Roy Lichtenstein was drunk. The can lights are a nice touch. They help highlight important parts of the facade, such as:

The vinyl siding and black trim will continue until morale improves. Also, I zoomed out here to include the forehead (fivehead?) just because the scale is INSANE -- that's like a 50-50 wall-to-fivehead ratio. Honestly, even though things in the world are pretty dire, I wouldn't trust that cantilever with my life.

The window layout on this thing makes me wonder if the people who put it together have eyes that can see and a brain that connects to them. Now, I'm not going to invoke the Greek orders or anything, but I am going to say that every single architectural rule is being brazenly broken here. Total impunity. The window and door don't line up at the top, which is the bare minimum of common decency. Then there's that little guy pulling a Leeroy Jenkins up in the corner. You go dude.

The trim on these masses is starting to look AI generated but it's probably just the HDR every realtor uses. The FaceTune of the field. Anyway, I think it's a bad idea to put what looks like builder grade wood flooring on the outside of a house. It's giving mold. It's giving sunbleaching. It's giving Etsy.

As we can see, another familiar McMansion Hell enemy has also made an appearance: the prairie mullion window. There is no reason to use this window unless it involves building a fake bungalow, but the worst possible place to use it is in this particular situation. It's the only window with white mullions, it looks weird with the siding, and it's not exactly """modern""" or whatever this house is supposed to be.

(Often I wonder if some people believe that modernism is just "doing some stuff with squares" and the more squares there are the more modernist it is. Probably not true, but then again, I'm not the one pulling massive profit on houses that look like doo doo so jokes on me.)

Zooming out again because context still matters even in the most nonsensical situations. The funny thing about this house is that the only normal part of it is the front door and even then... what?? Also, look at that siding-less patch of brick on the right. As though to say: haha! Finally, I love how the stairs lead down into a bunch of rocks. Serves you right!

Thanks to advanced screenshotting technology, we can see that there are also prairie mullions on these other windows, it's just that they're a more reasonable black. Don't worry though, the windows are still offensive. They're two windows stuck together in order to give the impression of a single continuous one. (Remember the inside shot?) Nice try, bucko. Second, why don't the two windows meet where that little band of siding is? Well, we all know the answer to this question. (We don't, in fact, know the answer to this question.)

This is my favorite part of the house. It's almost good, to me, which is why I saved it for last. I have no idea what the hell that glossy composition book siding is but I love it. I've never seen it before. I also like how they're doing a weird entablature-quoin combo thing with it, but only on the right side of the house. There's some great five-cornice action going on but, thanks to the precedents set by truly mid postmodernism, it works.

Unfortunately there are some downsides here. What's the deal with that tiny, skinny stone? brick? veneer? Second, why is the siding just hanging off the edge like that? That whole little section where the three (four?) cladding meet is precipitous. The cheapo off-white developer special garage door with the little trad elements is a nice gesture, one that tells you life has no meaning. Why bother?

Anyway, after all that, if we put it all together again, we get this:

If you like this (unusual) post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams. (Don’t worry! This doesn’t adjust for inflation! Now’s the perfect time to join!) By the way: new subscribers can buy a year of McMansion Hell for just $12!

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! McMansion Hell stocks, much like mortgage-backed securities only ever go up!

[miatsai]

please look at the name of this drink i saw at a boba place the other day

[miatsai]

6 days to go until The Memory Hunters releases!

I'm not screaming on the inside or anything (I'm not because I'm too tired). The sophomore book release is so very different from the debut, not the least because I dropped my debut without being on deadline for another novel and I am definitely on deadline while releasing The Memory Hunters! Plus, there's this whole ConCurrent Seattle thing. Which I work on every day in an elaborate procrastination exercise to avoid writing.

If you're like, "Wow, I still want to see Mia even though she's kind of like Eeyore," I have good news for you! I am a stuffed donkey.

Okay, no, I'm not.

But I am going on tour both now and later. Here's my schedule!

I'll be starting in Decatur, GA, right outside Atlanta. Then I head over to Suwanee to chat books with @jennlyons (helloooo go get The Sky on Fire or any of her excellent books). Thursday, I'll be in Augusta at the Book Tavern, and Friday, I'm back home for the virtual event with my dear friend @inkcurlsandknives (GO TELL HER HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY, Daughters of Flood and Fury dropped today!). Saturday I'll be in North Charleston at the incredibly charming Itinerant Literate, and I cap things off with a visit to Story on the Square in McDonough.

That's just the first week. My calendar from August to October is kind of wild, but that's how book release works, sometimes. Other times, as my agent says, it's a Tuesday. Next Tuesday will be a Tuesday, but it'll also be sapphic mushroom anthropologists doing a speculative historiography Tuesday, and it's not often one gets to say that.

If you want to see what else is on the schedule, head over to my mailing letter archive - and maybe hit "subscribe"?

[miatsai]

6 days to go until The Memory Hunters releases!

I'm not screaming on the inside or anything (I'm not because I'm too tired). The sophomore book release is so very different from the debut, not the least because I dropped my debut without being on deadline for another novel and I am definitely on deadline while releasing The Memory Hunters! Plus, there's this whole ConCurrent Seattle thing. Which I work on every day in an elaborate procrastination exercise to avoid writing.

If you're like, "Wow, I still want to see Mia even though she's kind of like Eeyore," I have good news for you! I am a stuffed donkey.

Okay, no, I'm not.

But I am going on tour both now and later. Here's my schedule!

I'll be starting in Decatur, GA, right outside Atlanta. Then I head over to Suwanee to chat books with @jennlyons (helloooo go get The Sky on Fire or any of her excellent books). Thursday, I'll be in Augusta at the Book Tavern, and Friday, I'm back home for the virtual event with my dear friend @inkcurlsandknives (GO TELL HER HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY, Daughters of Flood and Fury dropped today!). Saturday I'll be in North Charleston at the incredibly charming Itinerant Literate, and I cap things off with a visit to Story on the Square in McDonough.

That's just the first week. My calendar from August to October is kind of wild, but that's how book release works, sometimes. Other times, as my agent says, it's a Tuesday. Next Tuesday will be a Tuesday, but it'll also be sapphic mushroom anthropologists doing a speculative historiography Tuesday, and it's not often one gets to say that.

If you want to see what else is on the schedule, head over to my mailing letter archive - and maybe hit "subscribe"?

[miatsai]

Hi, I noticed your story has conflict in it, and I was wondering why you didn't just write people who are right doing everything correctly with a note saying "I enthusiastically co-sign everything in this story"? Must be some kind of mistake haha

[miatsai]

i demand the romance books to both of these scenarios immediately. op and person in tags, i hope y'all enjoy writing

i was at an event last night in california and i went to the bar to order wine bc wine was like, a thing, and i looked at the menu and saw i was completely out of my depth bc idk any wine names, so i turned to my right and there was a man in a gorgeous suit standing at the bar beside me and i said “do you know anything about wine?” and he said “a little, yes!” i told him i liked white and dry wines and asked if he’d order for me. he asked the server for two glasses and had one poured for each of us and then he clinked his glass on mine but he didn’t take a sip, he just watched me taste mine and then he asked what i thought and i said “it’s pretty good, but like i said, i wouldn’t know.” he laughed and told me to have a good time & i walked away. fifteen minutes later i found out he’s the winemaker.

[miatsai]

The Stardust Grail - Yume Kitasei

[miatsai]

HONEYEATER, a haunted subtropical tale (by me! also @girlfleeshouse), comes out September 2025 and can be preordered now.

PREORDERS are open now from your favourite bookstore or via the publishers: Tor (US), or Picador (Australia), or put in a request with your library!

A richly imagined dark fantasy that pulses with the beautiful destruction of a town reclaimed by the natural world.'An elegant cocktail of floodwater and gum trees and secrets that refuse to stay safely drowned.' - T. Kingfisher, author of Swordheart Subtropical Bellworth is founded on floodplains and root-bound secrets. And Charlie, remarkable only for vanished friends and a successful sister, plans to leave for good, just as soon as he deals with his dead aunt's house. Then Grace arrives, desperate, with roses pressing up through her skin, and drags Charlie into the ghost-choked mysteries of Bellworth, uncovering the impossible consequences of loss and desire - and a choice Charlie made when he was a boy. But peeling back the rumours and lies that cocoon the suburb disturbs more than complacent neighbours and lost souls. And Charlie and Grace are forced to a decision that threatens not only their lives, but all they believed those lives could be...

Also by me: Flyaway (Australian Gothic, won a British Fantasy Award); Travelogues: Vignettes from Trains in Motion; Kindling: Stories (shortlisted for Aurealis, Locus and World Fantasy Awards).

[miatsai]

in my bag:

wallet

keys

small notebook

hand sanitizer

mask

lip balm

pencil case with multiple pens, pencils, brush pen refill, a couple of capybara figurines, eraser, and pencil lead refill case

phone

spare sharpie, you never know when you need it

sunglasses

napkins

maybe a book? sometimes a book

water bottle

collected miscellany: spy museum card, hair tie maybe, parking slips, rogue receipts, a pack of granola, a mini protein bar, lactaid

@ people who carry bags everywhere what do you put in them what is there to bring other than chapstick, keys, phone and maybe a tampon why are you packing a suitcase to be outside for 5 hours

[miatsai]

the old guard 2

i don't want to talk about it.

[miatsai]

WHAT ARE YALL READING RN you must tell me

[miatsai]

The Memory Hunters tour!

Leg one of the tour is upon us in two weeks! Here's a list of my assassination coordinates for book launch and the week after.

I'll also be in Seattle in August, Austin in September, will sneak into DragonCon in late August/early September, and will be bouncing around the Northeast in October. It's going to be several months of juggling tasks, for sure.

[miatsai]

Hey, uh. What was this

[miatsai]

ConCurrent Panel Schedule!

I meant to post this last week but kept getting delayed, and wouldn't you know it, WorldCon stepped on a rake yet again. Seeing as this post was going to happen regardless, I can't pretend that it's in response to WorldCon, but it certainly was an added impetus to get me to post about the schedule.

Which is up, by the way. Here is a handy-dandy graphic, and all the panel descriptions are on the website.

https://concurrentseattle.weebly.com/schedule.html

Registration is now open for everyone! As always, we are committed to no genAI and to no culture war weirdness. Click below to register and visit us.

https://concurrentseattle.weebly.com/register.html

Oh, and we're so close to our funding goal! Just a bit more and we'll be fully funded! 525 USD to go.