Get a free story when you subscribe
Menu
I have a love affair with footnotes.
Maybe it’s because of all the academic papers I had to write throughout my career as a teacher, but I think I fell in love with them before high school and college, back when teenage me was devouring speculative fiction books at a rate of one or two per day.
Books like Robert Asprin’s MythAdventures series were a mad mix of fantasy and humor, where footnotes were used as a way for the author, the characters, or both to leave commentary on what was happening aside the plot line. Asprin used footnotes as a comedic schtick, one that worked well for his various series.
As a young writer, I took his example to heart. This was something real writers did. Imagine my surprise when adult writer me found very few footnotes used in fiction at all. (Though this is changing thanks to the LitRPG genre.)
Many people hate footnotes because of their association with MLA citations and research papers, two topics often considered tedious, but who says they have to be? Why can’t authors use them in their fiction? Why can’t a story about dragons have footnotes, too?
While I haven’t gone so far as to use footnotes in my fictional work as of yet, they came in handy during the writing of my first memoir. Because the book covers everything from gender identity, sexual orientation, and transphobia to medical gaslighting and abuse, I found myself needing to clarify most of what I was talking about, if for no other reason than to insure I was educating folks rather than confusing them.
For example, it’s challenging to discuss demisexuality if the reader has no idea what that is or why it’s important. More than that, the footnotes served as a way for me to insert humor and my own wry sarcasm in between the sentences of some very serious topics. As I wrote, I found myself escaping into the footnotes like they were their own substory within the story I was framing.
More importantly, they reminded me of what it was like back when I was twelve. Nothing in the life of an adolescent is simple. Between hormones and peer pressure, the life of a teenager is complicated and messy. Toss in figuring out whether or not your queer, child abuse, and poverty and well… let’s just say there’s a reason child-me escaped so frequently into the worlds of speculative fiction.
Tapping into those feelings and the joy I found in so many tales helped me remember the good inside of the bad that has often been my life. It’s easy to get lost in the trauma, or to believe the depression and anxiety when its roars are sometimes deafening, but the footnotes were a reminder that humor has always pulled me out of the darkness.
Just like speculative fiction, humor has always been a means of escape.
Voices Carry may be a non-fiction memoir, but in the writing of it, I rediscovered the importance of humor…and footnotes!
—
Multi-international award-winning speculative fiction author Raven Oak (she/they) is best known for Amaskan’s Blood (2016 Ozma Fantasy Award Winner, Epic Awards Finalist, & Reader’s Choice Award Winner), Amaskan’s War (2018 UK Wishing Award YA Finalist), and Class-M Exile. She also has many published short stories in anthologies and magazines. She’s even published on the moon! Raven spent most of her K-12 education doodling and writing 500 page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet.
Besides being a writer and artist, she’s a geeky, disabled ENBY who enjoys getting her game on with tabletop games, indulging in cartography and art, or staring at the ocean. She lives in the Seattle area with her wife, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach. Her hair color changes as often as her bio does, and you can find her at www.ravenoak.net.
So much is going on. Travel. Fun secrets. Work, work, and more work. Here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you.
Bookfair: November 23rd. I’m one the spotlight authors for the new Written in the Northwest Bookfair, along with Seanan McGuire, Sno-Isle Libraries, and Krampus!
Interview Series: I am Book 101 podcast’s October Author of the month.
– Interview #1: This one is more about me and how I work. YouTube and LinkedIn.
– Interview #2. We talk about Last Days of Salton Academy. YouTube and Babyboomer.org. (I learn about new places with every interview.)
– Interview #3. We talked about the Melissa Allen trilogy omnibus Never Let Me. YouTube.
– Interview #4: We talked about Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run in this one. YouTube.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Writing Contest: Worldcon Seattle 2025 is having a writing contest with some fabulous prizes! One for teen authors and one for adult authors. I’d love to see your work!
YouTube: I don’t know why I hadn’t done this before…but I searched for myself on YouTube. There were a lot more videos out there than expected. So, I created a playlist of me videos—interviews, fiction, live plays. That sort of thing. The oldest one is from 17 years ago taken by Cherie Priest at an Abney Park concert.
Some gentle, general reminders about me.
If you’re here, on my website, and not signed up for my MailerLite newsletter, please sign up for it. It averages once-a-month because my PA (the GlitterMinion) makes me do it. You get to hear about what I’m doing, where I will be, and what open calls I have. Plus you get free fiction. Who doesn’t love a bit of free fiction? (Also, if you are on my Googlegroup newsletter, that group will be deleted 1 Feb 2025.)
If you would like to send me an email, I have a contact form for that. If you would like to send me something in the post, I have a P.O. Box for that. Email is checked more regularly than the P.O. Box. Please don’t send time sensitive stuff in the post without giving me an email ping.
For social media, I am most active on BlueSky and Facebook. I do have an Instagram account and it mostly has stuff about cats and books. Occasionally, there may be other stuff, too.
I am a full-time working author and editor. This means: I am very busy—I never have less than three projects going at any one time. That I appreciate it when you buy my books, review my books (even something as simple as “I really liked this book!” helps), and/or support me on ko-fi. That said, I am always happy to answer questions or lend a helping hand—if time, funds, and schedule permits.
I adore my cats beyond all reason. They rule the roost. I love the Husband even more than writing and I’m so grateful he supports me. He rules my heart. I appreciate my house, my books, my stuff, and my home office that much more since the pandemic started. I have a lot to be grateful for, and I will always try to keep things on the lighter side of life.
I am a Democrat who believes Love is Love. I am a gamer who is happy you are my neighbor no matter where you are from. I am a woman who believes trans rights are human rights, trans women are women, trans men are men, and all women should have the right to choose what happens with their body. I’m a former latchkey, semi-feral Gen X, 50+ year old woman with occasionally colored hair not normally found in nature. Sometimes I am fed up. Sometimes I am tired. Sometimes I’m trouble. Just so you know what you’re in for.
How is it almost October? So much is happening in the background. I’m not overwhelmed by what’s on my plate, but I am a bit whelmed. Travel, novel writing, anthology editing, magazine managing, SFWA President running, and more…. It’s a lot. So, here’s a Bubble and Squeek to entertain you.
Bookfair Spotlight: I’ve been announced as one of the spotlight authors for the new Written in the Northwest Bookfair along with Seanan McGuire and Krampus!
Cover Reveal and buy links: Shadowrun: Magic, Machines, and Mayhem.
My 24th anthology, co-edited with John Helfers. I am so pleased with this anthology.
eBay: We are decluttering again! The Husband is selling stuff on eBay. Here’s his sell page. There’s some good stuff there, but we just don’t need any of it.
Interview: This one is with Gerald Ford from The Corner of Story and Game podcast. YouTube Link and Spotify link.
Interview: Cat Rambo and I were interviewed by D.M. Needom on The Better To Podcast. Buzzsprout link and YouTube link. I had so much fun here and the Instagram snippets are hilarious.
Recommendation: Shadowrun: Dark Synergy by Russell Zimmerman. I was the editor on this one and it was very, very satisfying.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Oops, I tripped and dropped a short story collection…
Sometimes the thing to get you out of a funk is to get back to your roots. And sometimes what comes out of that is everything you never knew you needed.
Or at least that’s what happened to me.
I didn’t set out to write Afoul & Affairs. Much like many of my other projects over the years of my career (See: the Femmes Fatale series), this collection was an accident. All of my deadlines were met, and I didn’t feel ready to dive into writing another novel. But I wasn’t happy with the notion of professional inertia setting in the way I know it will when I let myself spend too long away from my office. I knew I needed to be writing, but I didn’t know what to work on. I was annoyed with myself. And then it hit me.
Do what you used to do when writing was just for fun.
I started out my [adult] writing life in fanfiction. And my bread and butter was always missing moments. As a teen, I would type up pages of could-have-plausibly-been-cut-scenes from the X-Files on my Panasonic typewriter for my high school best friend to input on her home computer and send into the MSR mailing list on Yahoo.
In college, it was Star Trek: The Next Generation and the occasional Josh/Donna vignette from The West Wing. Then there were the years I spent in that British magic school—especially in the era when I worked in a related exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. And always, peppered within these fan works, were the stories of Han & Leia from the Star Wars films and the novels we now call Legends.
Missing moment fic is my wheelhouse—my area of, if not expertise, then certainly ample experience. It’s what I’ve always done best and a thing that has forever brought me joy.
When I started writing novels, one of the most difficult things to wrap my brain around was what to leave off the page. Suddenly I was not the one to fill in the missing moments, but rather the person charged with supplying missing moments to be filled by fanfic writers in the future.
That. Was. Weird.
With my debut, it took a lot of help from my editor (shout out to Dawn at DefCon One!) to tighten up the book’s pacing. The work I did left, in its wake, many missing moments, and I had to be okay with friends and fans making up their own scenarios to fill those in. It was definitely an adjustment.
Fast forward to 2024 and the 20th anniversary of Cobalt City. This year is chocked full of releases from half a dozen authors working in and adjacent to the Cobalt City IP. That got my wheels spinning. All these books are connected, and the way we all work together means characters are moving in and out of different authors’ custody. And since not everything being released this year is in chronological order, we’re all having to take into account things that have happened that readers won’t know about yet. It’s absolute IP/Crossover/Collaborative heaven, but it also left room for more missing moments than I could possibly let lie.
The decision as to where to end Time & Again was tough, as there was so much more I wanted to make happen between these characters. But the book was already a chonky 120,000 words and ending it with the bad guy defeated, the team disbanded, and the lovers happy for now made all the practical sense in the world.
Sea Change came first, giving Ruby and Angel the time they needed to begin forging the bond that’s going to carry them through some tough times another author has coming down the pike. Then I wrote Sidekick Business, because I wanted to play with the idea. Finding Out actually takes place before Time & Again and I mostly wrote it to tell myself what went on between those two characters. I’d been poking at the idea for Goals for a while, because I found the whole scenario delightful and Settling the Score was mostly the result of having season tickets to the Seattle Kraken.
And this being an election year, I couldn’t help myself but to spend some time playing with Ruby and co.’s plan to foul the plans of a fascist President seeking re-election. In The Arena emerged as the longest piece in the collection and I’m particularly proud of the new heroes I was able to introduce in hopes of future fans picking them up for fic of their own.
One of the most amazing things about writing in a small press IP is how encouraging and supportive everyone is. The idea that these stories, which had come into existence over different timelines and for different reasons, should be collected and published was never in question to anyone but me, apparently.
To my surprise and delight, the 45,000+ words in this collection also put the Ruby Killingsworth series in Best Series contention for the 2025 Hugo Awards, part of Seattle Worldcon, for which I was already excited as a local to the area. My desire to add the words “Hugo Nominated” to my bio and to attend the storied Hugo Losers Party in Seattle are things I’ve never made a secret of, and I find it so very fitting that this collection is the thing that could make that happen.
Writing these stories, these missing scenes, these tight exchanges and moments of instant but important growth for my characters and their relationships, felt like home. And it was just the thing to get me in the chair and writing again after all my novel deadlines had been met and starting another novel felt like too much. These are the kinds of stories I’ve always written, the kinds of stories I’m perpetually drawn to. Giving myself permission to return to the art of writing short fiction and to playing with the possible has been a joy and a delight and I am so excited to be sharing that joy with readers.
—
Amanda Cherry is a Seattle-area queer, disabled nerd who still can’t believe people pay her to write stories. She is the author of five published novels as well as TTRPGs, screenplays, and short fiction, and a cast member with the Dungeon Scrawlers on Twitch. Her nonfiction writing has been featured on ToscheStation.net, ElevenThirtyEight.com, and StarTrek.com. Amanda is a member of SAG-AFTRA, SFWA, & Broad Universe. Follow Amanda’s geekery on Twitter, BlueSky & TikTok @MandaTheGinger or visit www.thegingervillain.com
Shadowrun: Magic, Machines, and Mayhem, co-edited with John Helfers, is my 24th edited anthology. The pre-order link for the anthology is live. (Released on 20 Sep 2024.) This anthology is also my first official edited thing as an Editor-at-Large for Catalyst Game Labs. What a beautiful cover and just look at that Table of Contents!
Introduction by John Helfers
“An Apple a Day” by Bryan CP Steele
“Beer and Waffles” by R. L. King
“Licensed to Die” by Bryan Young
“Night Shades” by Jason M. Hardy
“To Fix a Broken Heart” by Marie Bilodeau
“The Price of Art” by Andrew Peregrine
“A Tale for Munchausen’s Merriment” by Jennifer Brozek
“Life at 9000 RPM” by RJ Thomas
“Out of Dodge and Into the Fire” by Ken’ Horner
“A Casual Glance” by Dylan Birtolo
“Dog Days” by Aaron Rosenberg
“One Night in Bellevue” by Crystal Frasier
“Can’t Trust a Trickster” by Alina Pete
“The Wastelands Speak” by Jaym Gates
“Where the Heart Is” by Michael A. Stackpole
“Incidents, Accidents, and Consequences” by Russell Zimmerman
I will note that I am not usually in the ToC of an anthology I’ve edited but I wrote the story and got it accepted before John brought me on as an official co-editor.
I am running like mad in the background: writing on a new novel, finished edits on one anthology, starting edits on another anthology, editing/managing a new Shadowrun magazine, prepping for travel, and so much email. Here’s a Bubble & Squeek to keep you up-to-date
Awards: Wow! Shadowrun: Auditions: A Mosaic Run Collection won the Scribe award for best YA/MG tie-in novel 2024. I’m thrilled! Some articles on it in here: File770 and downthetubes.net.
Bookfair Spotlight: I’ve been announced as one of the spotlight authors for the new Written in the Northwest Bookfair along with Seanan McGuire and Krampus!
GoFundMe: One Booth to Record Them All. Pretty Please. Trendane is on tap to record the Shadowrun: Elfin Black audiobook. Help him get to it faster!
Interview: Tea Time with Miss Liz (YT link). Cat Rambo and I were interviewed by this fun podcast. It was a blast. This was a casual conversation that followed Miss Liz’s T-E-A format.
Interview: Tech for Founder podcast. Cat Rambo and I were interviewed by Panida Wayrojpitak about The Reinvented Detective anthology. This was a very fun interview with some excellent questions.
Open Call: Do you love Shadowrun? Would you like to write for it? We have an open call for original fiction for our official in-world Shadowrun magazine! “Augment your life with Augment Magazine!” Submission guidelines here.
Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.
Today, Tamara Kaye Sellman tells me how her vivid imagination is augmented by her dream life and how both inspire her writing.
It’s funny that I should sit down intending to write to you about how my dream life serves such an active part in my writer’s toolkit today. I just found out a flash fiction of mine has been accepted for fall publication. I based this story on real-world events related to a prescient dream I had as a teenager.
That dream occurred on the night of the day of the Jonestown Massacre. This was November 1978, back in the days before the Internet, when people still read newspapers and watched day-old TV news. There was no way for me to know this had happened until the following morning, when I sat down for Sunday breakfast. My family spent those mornings wrapped up in the Sunday Oregonian, which had only just begun to sport four-color ink on the front page, and only on Sundays.
That particular Sunday, the pictures of the Jonestown Massacre screamed from both above and below the fold of the front page. When I saw those pictures, and read the story, I threw up.
This wasn’t necessarily unusual for me; my parents chain smoked. Between the smell of cigarettes, pancakes, Mrs. Butterworth’s, rank coffee, and burnt bacon, I had reason enough to feel queasy like any other Sunday.
So I used that as my excuse for going back to bed because what could I do with this information? Share it? In 1978, I was a slight girl in a boy-heavy family; my thoughts and feelings were routinely rejected. I was always told I was too sensitive, I needed a thicker skin, I had a vivid imagination that might get me into trouble.
Fast forward a couple decades later. My toddler daughter, in her car seat, keeps saying something about a house we’ve just driven past on our way to the grocery store. It makes no sense to me then. Not until I read the news in the paper about a horrible crime committed at the very same house. And then what she told me made perfect sense: she basically knew where the evidence was. (Suffice it to say, F*ck yes, I believed her.)
Fast forward another 25 years, and the story I wrote, “Early Childhood Education,” will appear in the Lowestoft Chronicle this fall. It’s my third? fourth? fifth? rendering of this story. I’ve written it as a straight up personal essay, as a script for a storytelling festival, as a prose poem, as a full-fledged short story, and now, as a flash fiction. What’s been my problem? Figuring out how such a story might end.
No version ever fit until this last one. I ran it by my critique group; it seemed to work well enough, so I went fishing (that’s what I call submitting). And now my true story wrapped up in flashy packaging will see the light of day.
My dream life isn’t vivid in this way very often, by the way. Rarely prescient. I’ve had a few dreams that predicted moments that came true, none of them significant. Several involved loved ones recently passed, as if they were saying au revoir.
Now, most of my dreams come as little movies with story arcs. Sometimes I find myself in serial landscapes: dreamscapes I return to again and again, to experience different, fully formed adventures.
I chalk all this up to a few things. First, it’s probably just genetics: my dad and his brother had rich dream lives also, so I think it’s just something I
inherited. Second, because I’ve written and told stories my whole life, my brain naturally ascribes meaning as it happens in the events that unfold in my dreams. Third, I’m also a lucid dreamer, which perhaps throws fresh dimension into things, though I try not to mess with the stories that unfold.
And another thing. I’m looking at my new dark speculative collection coming out in July 2024 from Aqueduct Press: Cul de Sac Stories. Checking out the TOC, I’d not noticed until well after the book had gone to press those six of the eight stories in there either originated through dream narratives, or they actually use dreams and nightmares as plot devices.
All I’m saying is this: those nightly adventures you sometimes remember, sometimes can’t? That’s rich material, right there. Nurture it, even if it scares you. Even if nobody believes you. There’s a goldmine in there.
—
Tamara Kaye Sellman is author of Cul de Sac Stories (2024; Aqueduct Press), the experimental novelette, Trust Fall (2024; MCR Media), and Intention Tremor: A Hybrid Collection (2021; MoonPath Press). She is the other half of the BENEATH THE RAIN SHADOW podcast with Clay Vermulm. Her collaborative horror collection with author Clay Vermulm, Rain Shadows, will be released in 2025. Other recent or forthcoming appearances include Lowestoft Chronicle, Lurking (from the Dark Decades Anthology Series), Quibble, Cirque, Turtle Island Quarterly, Verse Daily, MS Focus, and the WRPN Womens International Film Festival (her debut poetry film, LOOK UP, earned bronze laurels there in 2024). Tamara’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and earned other awards. She is currently at work on two novels (magical realist cli-fi and post-apocalypse), two poetry chapbooks (Pacific Northwest gothic and tributes to esoterica), a New Weird flash fiction collection, an inspirational essay collection titled RootLeaf Stories, and more experimental poetry films.
Gen Con is always an exciting time. This year was no exception. Between the panels, workshops, and business meetings, there is no way I could summarize everything that happened. However, my “To Follow-up On” list is about a mile long. So many good memories. Among them may be the following…
The kitties took last night to be mad and today they are loving, needy, and shedding all over me. There is nothing like travel to make you appreciate what you have at home.
My next convention is Can-Con where I will be an Editor Guest of Honor. This will be my first time in Ottawa, Canada.
I will be spending most of my time in the Gen Con Writers Symposium area in the Downtown Marriott. You can catch me between panels or workshops. Friday and Saturday, I will be signing books in the Dealers Room at Cat Labs booth (1611).
Also, The Husband and I came home from Origins Game Fair with Covid. I am over it, though, my brain is still not working as fast as normal. The Husband is over it, but Covid aggravated his asthma something fierce. He’s still coughing because of it. That said, we both will be masking all Gen Con except in specific circumstances. I’m also limiting myself to fist-bumps and elbow-bumps in greeting. Still, come say hello!
Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her YA tie-in novels, BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: Auditions, have both won Scribe Awards. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, Well World, and Predator.
Jennifer has been a full-time freelance author and editor for over seventeen years, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to teach writing classes and volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree.
