romiesays - Tumblr blog

[romiesays]

I just won a Hugo award (alongside the rest of the editorial team).

Best Semiprozine Strange Horizons, by the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective

Glasgow 2024 Worldcon

(go read the magazine)

[romiesays]

https://locusmag.com/2024/07/a-c-wise-reviews-short-fiction-analog-khoreo-and-clarkesworld/

Locus put "A Reclamation of Beavers" on its recommended stories list (June 2024 issue) (reviewer: A.C. Wise)

[romiesays]

You can now enjoy the "director's commentary" for my short story "A Reclamation of Beavers" on Analog Magazine's blog. I talk about all kinds of stuff (including one of the rare times I talk about my day job) and I link to a lot of cool research on what happens to depleted land set aside for rewilding.

Read it here: "Fire Ecology, Public Land Management, And AI Sidekicks: The Research Behind “A Reclamation Of Beavers”

[romiesays]

The March/April issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact must be read right out of the mailbox, because I'm in it - a story about a wildfire and a beaver AI. Peep the table of contents here.

[romiesays]

I'll be on a few Boskone panels next weekend (Feb 9-11).

Friday:

5:30 - "Our Air! Our Water!" Space Independence

7:00 - Write My Doctoral Thesis: Science Edition

Saturday:

11:30 - The Magic and Science of Scriptwriting

4:00 - 1,779 Miles to Mordor (hiking advice for fantasy adventurers)

Sunday:

11:30 - Real Estate in Space

Hope to see you there.

Unrelatedly, I forgot to mention that a story of mine, "Breath," was in issue #76 of Not One of Us.

It's a short piece about a microbotanist starting to terraform Mars, and is mostly me getting excited about the existence of injectable oxygen (experimentally trialed at Boston Children's Hospital a few years back). Not too late to buy a copy. The old-school way. Through the mail.

[romiesays]

The official music video for "Darkest of the Days" is now available on YouTube. Watch it here. You can still buy the song on Bandcamp, or stream it anywhere.

Ciro Faienza and I shot this last February during two of the very few snow days Massachusetts had in 2023. But we waited to release it until we once again neared the winter solstice.

The festival of lights is over now. It's dark from here on.

[romiesays]

I wrote "Do They Have Christmas in Canada?" a couple of years ago and decided to finally make a proper recording, with singing, piano, jingle bells, and a recorder with so much reverb it sounds like it's drifting across the Bay of Fundy.

Does it satirize the UK-centric viewpoint of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Yes. Is it written by someone with deep appreciation for Ylvis's "Massachusetts"? Also yes.

Are you allowed to perform it, remix it, sample it, and feature it in the background of movies? Totally. It's under an attribution-only creative commons license.

Have I sincerely never been to Canada? Indeed, I have never visited Canada. It really seems like I have, or like I might be from there, but that whole place is a mystery. Everything I have written in the song is plausible.

[romiesays]

I illustrated a poem in this week's Strange Horizons, "Sunflower Astronaut" by Charlie Espinosa, selected and edited by Lisa M. Bradley.

When I read the poem in its galley state, it reminded me of an old grizzled sunflower I saw about a decade ago, at the end of a season. It had already dropped most of its seeds, and its petals and leaves had dried into complex curls. It looked simultaneously tough and fragile.

Coincidentally, I'd been looking at the cross-pollinating popularity of Meiji-era Japanese and Chinese floral prints in Victorian England, which I suspect germinated the career of textile maker William Morris—whose repeating patterns often featured sunflowers.

Last but not least, the illustrations of our art editor Dante Luiz inspired me to be bold and playful with my use of color.

[romiesays]

Fantastic Cadaver

Earlier this month, I wrote and co-directed a one-minute segment of a Surrealist film project for Butthead Films, called Fantastic Cadaver. I'm not allowed to say or show much about it, because the film is an exquisite corpse—a style of art or writing wherein a series of creators adds to it without knowing much about what has come before. I created minute 22 having seen only minute 21. Since the project is still in progress, I can't show things that would tell filmmakers for minutes 24 and beyond anything consequential about what I did.

Someday it will be revealed.

However, I can disclose that I wrote an original song as part of the soundtrack; expect Stopwalk to release a variation sometime in the next six months. It's beautifully sleazy triphop.

[romiesays]

Readercon 2023 - Schedule

I’ll be at Readercon this weekend. If you want to catch me for a conversation, probably easiest to ambush me after one of these panels:

THURSDAY

Worldbuilding: From the Mundane to the Fantastic, Thursday, July 13, 2023, 9:00 PM EDT, Salon A

Some of the most beloved speculative fiction worlds have foundations based in the mundane. Examples include Stephen King's horror fiction, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and works by William Gibson. These worlds are both recognizable and Other. What makes them so successful and memorable? Are there similar worlds that tried and failed? What can authors learn from these worlds when creating their own?

FRIDAY

Meet the Pros(e) Party, Friday, July 14, 2023, 10:30 PM EDT, Salon 4

SATURDAY

Celebration and (Mis)Interpretation, Saturday, July 15, 2023, 2:00 PM EDT, Salon 4

Every now and then a book will explode in popularity among exactly the people its author meant to malign. What does it mean for a work when it is praised for supporting everything it stands against? Are the readers (always or ever) wrong? How do authors navigate acquiring fandoms that they meant to condemn?

SUNDAY

Celebrating Speller's Editorial Impact on SF/F, Sunday, July 16, 2023, 12:00 PM EDT, Salon B

As an editor for multiple presses, a prolific critic, and a passionate advocate for the field, Maureen Kincaid Speller was instrumental in promoting and sustaining the speculative fiction scene in the UK and beyond. From her reviews and essays to her convention committee work, she amplified the voices of emerging SF/F authors and encouraged critical discourse. In this panel, we'll explore Speller's influence on the field and discuss the ways her efforts have shaped the world of science fiction and fantasy.

BookTok and Bookstagram: Reading Culture on Social Media, Sunday, July 16, 2023, 1:00 PM EDT, Salon A

Recent years have seen an explosion in the influence of social media communities, often made up of hobbyists rather than professionals, in the publishing market. How does influencer marketing affect the industry? How are authors and editors thinking about these communities?

It is also very possible I will be doing some karaoke and/or jamming more generally. If you hear keyboards and singing, reasonable odds I’m near where that sound is.

[romiesays]

Micro-podcasting is Swell

Week one-and-a-bit of the Romiesays micro-podcast includes the following one-to-five-minute episodes:

Closet before lunch - closets as spaces for transformation, with references to lizards and Sailor Moon.

Not my house, not my cat - pet-sitting, homemade pies, and gift economies between friends

Conventioneering: clothing considerations and hotel buffets - figuring out what makes a good outfit for a day where I’m talking on stage about being a filmmaker and talking about being nonbinary, plus tips to make sure you get a piece of the good cake

The Thing about electronic music - the differences in how sci fi and fantasy films use electronic anecdotes with a focus on Ennio Morricone’s score for John Carpenter’s The Thing, plus a part two about how “Tubular Bells” wound up in The Exorcist

Poem: People Yelling In German - a reading of a poem published by the now-defunct magazine Punchnel’s in 2009, about a conversation I overheard while living in a hostel in downtown London

Dreams within objects - embodiments of the past-future, including stovetop espresso, steampunk, theremins, turntabling, and finally discarding an outdated save-the-date magnet

Recipe: Bootlegger Beans - a cheap and easy campfire meal that lets you pretend you’re a rum runner during Prohibition

Machiavelli, wordplay, snow on the ground - why Machiavelli is my dream dinner guest, and whether it is or isn’t better to be feared than loved

If you get proactive and browse the main link to find my conversations with other people, you can also find me discoursing on the similarities between the food cultures of Texas and Louisiana, very early experiences of mid-90s internet chatrooms, and how the Three Musketeers resemble the Golden Girls. I also read an unpublished poem of yearning from a couple decades ago, “Subpoeta.”

[romiesays]

I’m currently at Boskone 60, my first visit to this convention (the oldest in New England). These are the programming items I’m part of:

Friday

4:00-5:00 pm - Burroughs - Serving Up a Tasty World (food in speculative fiction) 5:30-6:30 pm - Marina 2 - Electronic Music and SFF Film 7:00-8:00 pm - Griffin - Horror on Friday (Reading)

Saturday

1:00-2:00 pm - Marina 3 - SFFH Films That Changed Everything 2:30-3:30 pm - Virtual 1 -  Gender Fluidity & Identity in SF

Sunday

1:00-2:00 pm - Marina 3 - Running a Magazine or Small Press

[romiesays]

In Review

Like fish hooks caught in the mind resurfacing during quiet moments

A poem of mine appears in Strange Horizons’ end-of-January special issue - a long patchwork of lines from my colleague Maureen K. Speller’s reviews, reworked into a picture of our staff’s collective grief about her death - an incomplete portrait of what she did while she was here.

I believe it’s the first time in our more than 20 year weekly publishing history we’ve made an exception and published a poem or story by a current editor; I believe it is also the first time we’ve had to mourn like this.

[romiesays]

My band has released its second single to help you through your winter celebrations and their aftermath. Come, crunch through the digital snow with me and Paul. Let yourself fuzz out. Be an ethereal girl waltzing through the 1982 horror classic The Thing while you have a conversation with Gustav Holst.

It sounds good on bad speakers and amazing if you want to get audiophile about it. There are secrets in the layers.

Currently only available on Bandcamp; it’ll release wide in early December.

Listen/purchase: Darkest of the Days by Stopwalk

[romiesays]

I have a poem out now, “Clawing Through Mud as More Leaves Silt Down, as Plastic Bags, as Cast-Off Bottles,” and it starts like this:

Three sisters, dead in a bog: one a deer, one a man, one tumor, one torpor; the bog a single stinking toilet stall, quagmire watershed suctioning river to gulf.

Look back and you’re out to sea without a memory of leaving land; no moment to point to, crossing over.

To read the rest, you’ll have to buy the book.

[romiesays]

I’ve got a poem in here: “Death Opus” is nominated for a Rhysling Award in the long poem category. So are several poems which I didn’t write, but did publish as an editor at Strange Horizons.

The Rhysling is the most prestigious award for speculative poetry, and some years the only award, although that’s changing. You can’t tell from my photo how thick this book of nominated poems is; it’s substantial. And the quality of the poems nominated is high. I’d say the state of speculative poetry is strong, particularly compared to when I entered the field. I take some pride in my role helping make that happen.

I’m never wholly comfortable bragging about my nominations for awards I don’t expect to win, even though I’ll get starry-eyed over other peoples noms. Double standard, I guess. In the last few months, I’ve also reached (and stopped at) the semifinalist rounds for:

The National Music Theater Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center  (as the librettist of The Lady Takes the Mic)

The National Alliance for Musical Theater’s Festival of New Musicals (as the librettist of The Lady Takes the Mic)

The NYX Horror Collective’s Stowe Story Labs fellowship (as the screenwriter of the monster movie Radiance)

I’m proud to be at a level where I’m going up against the best. But also, oof. It sure would be nice to find a little pond to be a big fish in. I’ve heard about those. Still haven’t run across one.

[romiesays]

Today An Accumulation

Today is a caffeine-powered bulb stuttering leaves or beams through fog or ground and intermittent cold. Today is anxious awakening before dawn certain I slept through my alarm; a back that won't unclench; a frayed body tenting bodies more threadbare.

read more in Moist Poetry Journal