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4 short stories written and turned in in 4 weeks. So much Shadowrun and Titanskeep admin to do. I’m a busy-busy person. Gen Con is at the end of the month!! AIYE! Time is running away with itself. Here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you.
Conventions: The Gen*Con schedule of events is live! If you would like to be in my workshop, The Art of the Verbal Pitch, there are still slots available. This one sold out before the convention started last year.
eBay and Signed Books: If you would like signed books from me, we now have them up on eBay. This will remain on eBay until all of my books are gone. All money goes to me.
Publication: The Cthulhu FhCon anthology from Impulsive Walrus Books with my short story, “Observations of a LARP in Three Acts” is live!
Publication: Another short story release! “No Matter the Shape” in Permutations: a Well World anthology (co-written with Samantha Chalker) is live!
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.
Mourning a Life that Never Was
When we’re young, we believe we have complete control over our lives. Everything we dream of achieving will happen, if for no other reason than we want it. We’re told good people are rewarded, so as long as we’re good, we’ll get the life we deserve.
But that isn’t how the universe works. At the age of nine, I decided I was going to be a ballet dancer. But after fifteen years of lessons, I finally had to accept that I had neither the talent nor the body required to dance professionally.
Years later, I was introduced to the concept of grieving non-events, also called non-finite grief, the grieving of things desired but never achieved. My disappointment and resentment now had a name.
It’s hard to accept that we’ve been denied the life we so desperately want. Valentine’s Day and Mother’s and Father’s Days come around every year to remind us that we are alone and/or childless, and how unfair it is that everyone else seems to be celebrating what we can’t.
While friends and family might be inclined to tell us to buck up and get over it, it’s not that simple. We have to go through a grieving process as painful as the loss of a loved one, because we have lost a loved one. We’ve lost that part of ourselves that was going to be a parent or homeowner, marine biologist or dancer.
In A Dark Death, the second book in my Meredith Island Mystery series, my amateur sleuth, Kate Galway, shares with her best friend her dream of becoming a university professor. “I had a whole different life planned out for myself. I was going to get my doctorate and teach English to people who not only knew George Eliot was a woman, but had read all her books and could discuss them with some reasonable degree of insight.” But while finishing her Master’s degree, Kate became pregnant. When her daughter was born, she gave up her graduate studies and taught high school to help support her family. Not becoming a university professor is Kate’s non-event.
Instead of moving on, Kate has held onto her grief for almost thirty years. In her mind, she settled for a career which is second-best, and therefore she is second-best. Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach university, teach spotty, moody adolescents, she believes.
When she meets a visiting archaeology professor, Kate learns about the often ruthless competition and politics of the job. “It isn’t all Jane Austen conferences, believe me,” she is cautioned. Later, her friend tells her that there is no guarantee she would have been happy teaching university, and that she could just as easily have spent her life wishing she’d taken a high school job instead. It’s then that Kate realizes that the perfect life she envisioned is a fantasy, and she can begin to heal.
How do people grieve their lost selves? “Grieving the Life You Expected: Non-finite Grief and Loss,” posted on the What’s Your Grief website, lists some actions you can take. These are my favourites. I hope they help.
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Alice Fitzpatrick has contributed various short stories to literary magazines and anthologies and has recently retired from teaching in order to devote herself to writing full-time. She is a fearless champion of singing, cats, all things Welsh, and the Oxford comma. Her summers spent with her Welsh family in Pembrokeshire inspired the creation of Meredith Island. The traditional mystery appeals to her keen interest in psychology as she is intrigued by what makes seemingly ordinary people commit murder. Alice lives in Toronto but dreams of a cottage on the Welsh coast. To learn more about Alice and her writing, please visit her website at www.alicefitzpatrick.com.
The 2025 Hugo Award voting closes in 36 days (July 23).
I debated on whether or not I would post this because of reasons (everything going on in the world and more), but as an editor/seminar instructor, I frequently instruct my students/authors not to self-reject. Their job is to do the thing. My job (and the job of all editors out there) is to see if the thing fits what they need. “Don’t do my job for me,” I say.
“Physician, heal thyself.” Or, in other words, “Editor, take your own counsel.” Thus, here I am.
What would a Hugo win mean to me and for my career?
Career: I have not (yet) won a Hugo award. I would really like to. For many reasons. But, I think, most of all, it would help my publishing career. Already the second nomination has allowed me to land a freelance job I wanted at a per hour rate my skills are worth. This is huge for me.
The Husband no longer works in tech. In fact, he’s just been accepted into UW’s graduate program for a Masters in Library and Information Sciences (MLIS). I am so proud of him. However, this means he has school for the next two years, and money will be tight. I need/want my publishing career to continue to level up.
Personal: As an editor, I have been nominated for the Bram Stoker, the British Fantasy, and multiple Hugo awards. While it is an honor (no, really, it really-really is), I would love to win one. Much like qualifying for HWA, IAMTW, and SFWA, it is one of those publishing career goals/milestones. For those in the know, it is an immediate reputation boost. Even outside the publishing industry, many people know what a Hugo is.
Emotional: In my blog post, The Second Nomination is the Best, I mentioned that I burst into tears when I read the email telling me that I was a finalist again. There was relief in knowing the first time wasn’t a mistake. It’s been a joy to hear from people that they were glad to see me on the ballot again.
I think winning a Hugo at a Seattle Worldcon would be the best. It would make me feel like “Hometown Girl Does Good.” There would be relief in finally winning one of the “big ones.” It wouldn’t matter if I was never nominated again. (Of course it would matter, but maybe not as much…)
Is a Hugo win a guarantee to a better publishing career? No. But it can’t hurt. (Unless someone stabs me with it—and what a way to go out!) Do I want to give an awards speech? Absolutely. Do I want to hold the Hugo trophy in my hot little hands and flush like I’ve been drinking all night? You betcha. Do I want to let Seanan put mantises on my head? I’m a little iffy on this one, but I did promise to let her do it if I won (a promise made before I was nominated, and I’m a woman who keeps her promises). Besides, Paul said he’d take pictures, and he takes a really good picture.
Why I was Afraid to Engage with the News
Sometimes I worry that reading the news is above my paygrade, or that I’m being pushed to believe that it is.
Here’s an example: I was reading articles about Trump’s invasion rhetoric, then was surprised when it suddenly stopped. Our then provisional, now permanent PM called him, reporters said. Whatever happened in that phone call convinced him to lay off the 51st state threats, they said. Carney was a banker. He understands financial levers. He probably threatened something to do with bonds. That makes sense, I said in subsequent conversations with friends, although it didn’t really make sense to me. I’ll level with you. I don’t know that much about bonds. I certainly don’t know anything about global financial levers. I started by looking up the terms. The AI loaded without my consent on all my devices chimed in, offering to help, to explain, to summarize the hard stuff for me.
I’m concerned about environmental costs of AI. I’m worried about errors and hallucinations, too. But, I have to admit, I was so overwhelmed that I considered taking it up on its offer. But then I paused.
Reading is more involved than just unlocking words. Reading comprehension, real understanding, means figuring out context too. Reading well requires deep dives.
How I Almost Ruined Reading Ten Years Ago
Let’s rewind a decade. When my son was little, I worked at night so that I could be with him during the day.
The days themselves were joyful, fun, frenetic and fast moving. We went to park to class to park together, and as we walked from place to place, he pointed at signs and asked me to read them to him. I loved those times because they gave me a bit of a breather too. He pointed, I read out mechanically, and I let my thoughts wander. Eventually, he started pointing and telling me what was written on all the signs. I remember looking down at him in wonder: he’d memorized some but was audibly sounding out others. It became clear that he was teaching himself to read this way.
Cool, I thought. I then consulted parenting books just to make sure. Not cool, said the manuals. Parents shouldn’t teach reading haphazardly, or they run the risk of confusing their kids. They should have a plan. OK, I thought. I could do that.
The books themselves didn’t agree with what I was doing, but they didn’t agree with each other either, so formulating a plan was rough. Kids should learn to read by being presented with books, said some, like some kind of literary osmosis. Kids should learn by sounding out words. Kids should learn with phonics, or flash cards, or diphones. I went out and tried it all. My child is a sweetheart and put up with all of it, all the while still asking me questions and teaching himself to read on his own, in his own time, thank goodness.
The one thing all the parenting books did agree on was that I shouldn’t just teach decoding words, that I should teach him to read to understand context and subtext and to read between the lines as well. That required background information. That was advice that I could get behind, and not only because it seemed harder to make a mess out of than reading itself.
The books’ advice, everyone’s advice, was to read as much as you could to your child, as widely as you could, and present as much material as possible. Dive into as many subjects as you can. Dive often, and dive deep. That’s the guidance that I remember most from that period.
I also recognized that it was advice that was relevant to my own life. When I read the news, I remembered, I often worried that I was missing stuff. The more info you have, the books all pointed out, the more you can read between the lines. Be sure to fill yourselves with information. This, I realized, meant me too.
How I Live the Deep Dive Method
Luckily, my child has loved this strategy. He’s a deep diver by nature. He’s one of the completist kids for whom “collect them all” makes sense and becomes a fun and hilarious life mission.
Plays, books and TV shows have become fun entry points. We saw The Three Sisters by Inua Ellams, a phenomenal adaptation of The Three Sisters set in Nigeria during the Biafran War, and we took deep dives into Nigerian history. My son read Time Atlas by Robert Hegarty and History as It Happened: A Map by Map Guide published by DK. His parents are reading The Fortunes of Africa by Martin Meredith and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rooney. We watched Young Sheldon and have been reading entries into the world of Physics like The Elegant Universe by Brian Green and Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Sometimes questions inspire other questions, and sometimes missions just materialize. We’ve been reading about code breaking during the second world war, the history of video game consoles, the history of US elections, the history of all of soccer, and all histories and timelines of all Zelda games, to name a few deep dives.
My son lets experiences inspire him, and, when he has a question, he works to answer it completely. I’m so inspired by that. I’m trying to live that way too.
I took a deep dive into the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and that inspired a whole novel. I’ve read a ton about the Covid epidemic and climate change and children’s development, and those deep dives are inspiring the next one. I’m trying to do it more often. I’m trying to do it more widely. When I have a question, I try to find a way to dive deep.
Deep Dive with Me
I’m still fighting through the news. I want to understand this situation that we’re all in, and I’m not going to ask an AI copilot to do it for me.
So even though it scares me, I’m learning about economics. I’m reading The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson and Dr. Strangelove’s Game by Paul Strathern. Those books have led to other questions, so I’m also reading about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the life of Ignaz Semmelweis, the history of asbestos, etc. I’m also reading about the French Revolution. Maybe I’m going back too far. Maybe I’m filling gaps that I shouldn’t have had before. I’ll level with you again. There are gaps in my knowledge, and I’m afraid they might be nig ones.
I’m going on more deep dives besides. I’m getting in on dives with friends. I have a friend interested in music, so I’m reading The World in Six Songs and I Heard There was a Secret Chord by Daniel Levitin.
I’m enjoying the process. I’m getting in on friends’ deep dives. I’m giving myself the confidence that even if I’m doing it imperfectly, even if I don’t understand every little thing, I’m engaging in the news and world events, and I’m protecting my organic intelligence.
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Alexis von Konigslow is the author of The Capacity for Infinite Happiness. She has degrees in mathematical physics from Queen’s University and creative writing from the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto with her family.
Life. She be busy. I would say, “as per usual…” but that would be a lie. Right now, life is more busy that usual with appointments outside the house, taking on mentees from both SFWA and HWA, as well other stuff, my organized schedule is much more tightly regulated. As Marie and I say, “Our schedules are not trash fires. We are just in high demand.” A mark of progress or schedule, yes? In any case, here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you.
Auction: SFWA’s Annual Silent Auction is live! I am part of the Career Session on Games & Media Tie-In: John Helfers & Friends.
Conventions: The Gen*Con schedule of events is live! If you would like to be in my workshop, The Art of the Verbal Pitch, there are still slots available. This one sold out before the convention started last year.
eBay and Signed Books: If you would like signed books from me, we now have them up on eBay. This will remain on eBay until all of my books are gone. All money goes to me.
Publication: Augment, issue 2, Summer 2083, is live! Get your cyberpunk with magic magazine right here! The physical copy of the magazine is lovely.
Publication: Single author collection by me! Tales from the Hucked Tankard is live! Brawls happen. No blades. No magic. You pay for what you break. Every author starts somewhere. This is where I started.
Twitch: I am participating in Cats! The Conspurracy – The Nine Lives of Mrs. Bouvier – A Chaos Gerblins Actual Play on AlphabetStreams twitch channel during the month of June (Wednesdays!). You can see the first episode 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.
Every year, author Greg Wilson AKA Arvan Eleron runs a charity stream on his twitch channel to support the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. Here’s a quick Bluesky thread about ArvCon from Greg. Our goal this year is to raise $5000 for them.
While ArvCon run all Memorial Day weekend, I will be streaming with my Eberron crew all day on Sunday, May 25, from 9am to 5pm Pacific. If you donate on Sunday, we get the credit. Of course, we are competing against the other games on the ArvanEleron channel. Of course, any donation in the channel’s name is a good one.
This year, I am gifting two tuckerizations in the donators’ raffle on Sunday, May 25th, that will be going on during the weekend stream. Tuckerization: I use a name you give me in a story.
This year, I have two different aquatic-themed anthologies I’m writing for. One is about pirates. One is about water based monsters. I decided to write one story from two different perspectives: The pirates’ POV (“More than Blood in the Water”) and one from the monster’s POV (“On Risks and Rewards”). You can be named for one of the pirates or one of the deep ones. Male or female. Don’t expect to make it out alive, and remember, I only kill those I like.
Logline: A pirate ship fishing for food after being lost for weeks, accidentally catches a young deep one hybrid. When they reveal themselves (shifting from aquatic form to human form) to be the child of someone important, the pirates attempt to do what pirates do in such a situation: demand a ransom for the hybrid’s release.
This is my third or fourth (fifth?) year I have participated in ArvCon. The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation is worth your time, money, and attention.
eBay: Decluttering and eBaying continues with a set of vintage Gerber steak knives.
Event: I will be in conversation Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) for her novel, Overgrowth, at Third Place Books (Seward Park), 7pm on May 13. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP is highly recommended in advance.
Pre-Order: The pre-order UBL for Augment, issue 2, Summer 2083, is live! Get your cyberpunk with magic magazine right here!
Pre-Order: Surprise! Single author collection. Tales of the Hucked Tankard by me is up for pre-order! Brawls happen. No blades. No magic. You pay for what you break. Pre-orders are love. Release date: May 15.
Seminar: LEVEL UP: The Business of Writing. Four weeks of workshops and talks to level up your writing career. I am teaching 7 Steps to Better Self-Editing on Jun 3.
Signed Books: If you would like signed books from me, we now have them up on eBay. This will remain on eBay until all of my books are gone. All money goes to me.
Social Media: Sometimes, your favorite authors do your work for you (or are better at social media than you are). For example, here’s Marie Bilodeau talking all fabulous things she’s doing with Shadowrun, that I happen to be involved in, too.
Vaccines: A rare TikTok recommendation. This one is on vaccines from a smart, erudite man, definace13.
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.
Of Dire Wolves, Heirloom Wolves, and Tentacles
When news broke a few weeks ago about extinct dire wolves being resurrected by a biotech start-up with some very cool genetic engineering science, I was not delighted. I did not happily envision a way to bring back lost species and otherwise re-populate our ecosystems under threat. I did not see a way we could now stop trying to save ecosystems and threatened species because we can just bank their DNA now, no harm no foul. I did not see “all the potential” in the newfangled gadgetry of bringing back the dead from fossils a la Jurassic Park. When I set out to write The Midnight Project, a science fiction thriller that explores genetic engineering gone wrong in a near-future when global agriculture is collapsing and ecosystems dying, I did my research. My book is intended to be a cautionary tale. For folks in the back, this means: Do Not Do This, It Is Bad. Like, Capital B Bad.
Let me explain. By combining a few strands of genetic code salvaged from a fossil with a modern wolf, they have not, in fact, resurrected a dire wolf. They have created a new hybrid wolf. So nothing has actually been saved or resurrected. Something new has been created. In The Midnight Project, there are many genetically engineered hybrids. The hoppers, for example, are a hybrid that combines human, frog, and predator, and let me tell you, it does not go well for the hoppers or the communities they live in. Creating hybrids and introducing them into ecosystems that have not evolved to support them, is incredibly risky. What happens when they release the cute little dire wolf-hybrids into a national park? They might out-compete the existing wolf population (threatening their survival), or interbreed with them (destroying their unique genetic makeup), and then over-consume whatever they prey on (threatening those species), because they’re genetically inclined to eat woolly mammoths and we don’t have those anymore. There is a scenario where a hybrid dire-style wolf and an “heirloom” wolf both exist at once.
It’s easy to see where scientists may have very good intentions in this. The Midnight Project scientists certainly do–they want to save humanity by genetically altering humans to live in the ocean depths and escape the bee catastrophe on land. But good intentions are only intentions, and the consequences of certain technologies can long outlast the people who invent them. At least in my pre-apocalyptic near-future, there have been a few decades for the law, regulations and ethics on genetic engineering to evolve. The commodification of science is still horrifying but there are more guardrails than we have today. This does not, in fact, prevent our heroes from getting into trouble. But it wouldn’t be a good story without some trouble, would it? Of course, in The Midnight Project, there are no wolves, but there are lots of tentacles.
So, to summarize:
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Christy Climenhage was born in southern Ontario, Canada, and currently lives in a forest north of Ottawa. In between, she has lived on four continents. She holds a PhD from Cambridge University in Political and Social Sciences, and Masters’ degrees from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University (International Political Economy) and the College of Europe (European Politics and Administration). She loves writing science fiction that pushes the boundaries of our current society, politics and technology. When she is not writing, you can find her walking her dogs, hiking or cross-country skiing.
As per usual, many things are happening in my life. I’m getting good at lining up my ducks and knocking them down. So, here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you. Events, publications, and pre-orders, oh my!
Event: I will be in conversation Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) for her novel, Overgrowth, at
Third Place Books (Seward Park), 7pm on May 13. This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance.
Podcast Publication: “Not Birds of a Feather” has been released on , narrated by Elizabeth Guizzetti of The Paper Flower Consortium podcast.
Pre-Order: The pre-order UBL for Augment, issue 2, Summer 2083, is live! Get your cyberpunk 
with magic magazine right here!
Recommendation: Marie Bilodeau is a smart author. Rights Reversion – A Checklist
Seminar: LEVEL UP: The Business of Writing. Four weeks of workshops and talks to level up your writing career. I am teaching 7 Steps to Better Self-Editing on Jun 3.
Video: Trans rights are human rights. I am in this video, loud and proud.
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.
I am so pleased to see that I have been nominated for the Best Editor, Short Form Hugo award. It is such an honor to be nominated. This is my second time for the Hugo award, and I have to say, at least in my eyes, the second nomination for any award is the best nomination. Not gonna lie: I burst into tears when I read the email telling me that I was a finalist again.
Like many creatives, I sometimes have imposter syndrome that can be hard on the ego and the creative soul (for example, in this last week I had 3 short story rejections). The first time I was a finalist for an award, I was shocked. I wondered if someone had made a mistake. The first time I was nominated for one of the big awards, the Hugo, I had all kinds of feelings. The next time I was nominated for another big award, the Bram Stoker, I had even more feelings.
But, the second time I was a finalist for the Scribe, the Bram Stoker, and the ENnie, there was a sense of “it’s not a mistake/I’m not a hack/I know what I’m doing/let me enjoy this moment.” Complicated feelings to say the least. Now, after ten years, I am a finalist for the Best Editor, Short Form Hugo award again. I have a certain sense of terror and relief. Relief because I was nominated again. Terror because, maybe, just maybe, I might win.
At this point in my publishing career, I have edited (or co-edited) 25 published anthologies, 2 magazines (including the currently ongoing Augment magazine), become an editor-at-large for Catalyst Game Labs, edited numerous short stories, novellas, and novels for CGL, owned my own small press, Apocalypse Ink Productions, that produced a dozen+ novels for myself and other authors, and the list goes on. Being a decent editor in the publishing industry is one that has kept my kitties in kibble.
I think I have earned some of my professional confidence. My editing has earned me nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award—now multiple Hugo Awards. Also, I’m the only American (that I know of) who has won the Australian Shadows Award for Best Edited Publication for the Grants Pass anthology that I co-edited with the ever-talented Aussie, Amanda Pillar.
Thank you to everyone who has already wished me congratulations. I sincerely appreciate it. I’m so chuffed at who my competition is. I mean, look at them: Scott H. Andrews, Neil Clarke, Jonathan Strahan, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, and Sheila Williams! It makes me so proud to be in such good company.
There you go. I’m a Hugo Award finalist again. I’m honored and pleased beyond words. I won’t lie. I want to win. If you have any questions about my work, please let me know.
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 multiple Hugo Awards. 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.
