Since last we met...
November passed in the twitch of a tired eye...
Yesterday afternoon, I finally got to watch the movie Polite Society by Nida Manzoor.
I was moved to howling laughter, spontaneous applause, and lots of winces at various points. There’s this dance scene, where traditionally feminine gestures become weaponized, and I almost fell onto the floor. I loved the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon poster in the teenager’s room, the many bows to Bollywood, and the Get Out levels of social satire embedded in the text.
I put Polite Society right up there with (and maybe a little higher than) The Spy Who Dumped Me, Birds of Prey, and Ghostbusters: Answer the Call—aka, movies with unapologetically kick-ass women, working together to make their world cooler.
I don’t normally like movies that make me wince, but movies about sisters? About best friends? About generational trauma, domestic tyranny, expectations and pressures, feelings of inadequacy and failure, and women rescuing women—but make it FUNNY???
That perfect moment, near the end, when the older sister says, “I’ll have to have a mull on that.” Like, not everything is resolved. Some things need time to process. Not everything is going to work out perfectly—no matter how much one’s little sister believes in one. But you can still dance on a mother&*#%ing rooftop!
I love the use of the soundtrack, but even more, I loved the whole sound design—it was so exciting. Like a very cheeky sidekick, always present, always with a great one-liner. A hawk’s cry, a crack of thunder, a rising wind. I also loved how every eye roll, every grimace, every hand gesture was as perfectly comedically choreographed as the actual (amazing) fights. What a frikkin gorgeous work. It made my face hurt, I laughed so much.
Elsewise in November… I wrote about 38,000 words on my new novel Saint Death’s Herald during NaNoWriMo. So I didn’t win, but I did do a significant amount of staying up till 2 AM until my eyeballs started twitching, so I call that SUCCESS NONETHELESS!
And I’m now at about 100,000 words for my book total, and closing in on the ending. I just want it to be OVER, so I can REVISE it. You know???
YOU know.
Also, I have seen the cover. No, I can’t show it to you yet. But aaaaugghhhh I want to.
But you know what my beloved buddy ZigZag Claybourne sent me in the middle of the maelstrom of November novel writing???
He sent me my very own STRIPES THE UNDEAD FLYING TIGER RUG from my Saint Death books! He commissioned textile artist Allison M. Dickson to make it for me!
What else?
Oh, I have a poem, “fowlskin,” coming out with Uncanny Magazine later next year. I just signed the contract. It has been a hot minute since I’ve published a poem, so that’s nice.
I started it during the The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic's "Every Day Magic Challenge" back in August, and finished up during one of our Sitzfleisch Poetry Hour nights. I dedicated it, therefore, to Brittany Warman and Sara Cleto, for being so gosh darn inspiring all the dang time.
Speaking of Carterhaugh, I’ll be speaking at their bookclub later in December! They chose Saint Death’s Daughter! I’m so tickled!
My friend Amal wrote a few amazing things lately, and shared them with our aching world. One, a poem called “Qahr,” you can read on her Instagram page, both in English, and her baba’s Arabic translation. And one, a guest piece in Sarah Gailey’s Stone Soup newsletter, part of their Personal Canons Cookbook, is an essay called “Sour Milk and Bitter Herbs.”
It is just so holy. And it ends in many fine links for how to help Gaza.
Personal Canons Cookbook is “a series of free-to-read essays that will… range from reflections on a favorite childhood snack to explorations of funeral-reception staples, with lots in-between and beyond. Each piece will end with a recipe that invites readers to connect with the essay in their own kitchens.”
Carlos and I just went to PAX Unplugged this year. We got to see Matthew Mercer’s keynote speech, because we’re huge Critical Role fans. And it was just as much a sweetheart slideshow experience of darling nerdy kid pics and practical jokes and awesome costumes as you can imagine.
And we got to meet the cospayer/influencer Ginny Di, and maybe we got her calendar, okay, because, like, you know, whatever, we’re fans, and also maybe I got a big pink 20-sided dice, okay??? LIKE I NEEDED ANYMORE DICE! (I always need more dice.) (And it was PINK!!!) Yadayada Ginny Di was super great, so friendly and warm and generous, and so was her partner Josh.
We also playtested Topher Hernandez’s tableau time-machine-building game called “Rewind.” I think the only other “tableau-style” game I’ve ever played was Wingspan? Anyway, I didn’t do too shabbily at all. Which surprised me, because I was nervous the whole time!
We also playtested an expansion of Joshua DeBonis’s (and Nikola Risteski’s, but Josh is the one we know) DICE MINER.
DICE MINER, MY PEOPLE! Carlos says we even OWN THIS GAME, but I had NEVER EVEN PLAYED the NORMAL version! AND IT IS SO GOOD! IT IS SO FUN! I WANTED TO PLAY IT FOREVER!
It was totally the sort of game a complete n00b or a child can pick up and have a blast playing, but oh, there is so much STRATEGY one can learn. And it’s so JUICY!
It was fun almost from the very first second. I don’t even remember getting antsy learning the rules, because they were so easy, and yet… yet, I could feel myself learning new things the whole time. I need to play more and get GOOD!
I recommend getting the delux version, because then you get the molded mountain thing and it’s so SATISFYING. Anyway. We are totally bringing it to my family’s house for HOLIDAY GAME PLAYING.
When is the expansion coming out, Josh??? I’m serious, man! (Josh doesn’t read this newsletter, so my words go out to air and nothingness.)
Playtesting is so fun, because it’s everything from construction paper and 3X5 cards to fully mocked-up prototypes. But it’s also kind of like a secret only a few people are in on.
Like this new competitive card game PREDATOR, designed by our beloved Ryan Collins.
Speaking of playtests, we had several great playtests for Carlos’s new cooperative boss battler “Danes are Delicious.” Everyone likes to take Grendel’s limbs. Talk about juicy! I’d not yet played with some of the new mechanics Carlos has been testing since reiterating in August, and I love the FLANKER and the MARTYR so much! SO MUCH! Almost as much as the BERSERKER. Can’t wait till a publisher picks this up and makes bank on it. In the meantime, I can play all I want!
I’m sure there’s more. It’s December already. My birthday is on Tuesday. We’re seeing a Medieval Folly play called “Adrift,” where all the characters are based on Hieronymus Bosch paintings. And my agent is taking me out to lunch.
I’ve turned in two of the blurbs I owed: for Kathleen Jennings’ Honeyeater, forthcoming from Tor.com, and for Caitlyn Paxson’s A Widow’s Charm, which is about to go out on submission.
Here’s what I said about each of them:
Thorn-hard, sap-full, and totally creeptastic. In Honeyeater, Kathleen Jennings delivers her fiction like a full-body possession, a drowning dizziness of the senses
and
Magical criminals who are reluctant heroes? Practical heroines with impractical emotions? Adorable dogs? Rapier wit? Awesome egg recipes? Caitlyn Paxson’s A Widow’s Charm is hair-raising, dead-raising, and totally high stakes—but make it cozy and sexy. What even is this book? It’s like everything I ever wanted to read!
I’m rooting so hard for their various successes! Keep an eye out for both in the world!
There is beauty, too, here.
Yours truly,
C. S. E. Cooney
STRIPES!
Danes are delicious sounds HILARIOUS and many people I know will need it.
And thank you!
Oh hey! <3 <3 <3