July Updates and Links

This month, I made a few long-overdue updates to the website to better feature my publishing and writing work, and I finally saw my writing group for the first time since, I don’t know, March? I’ve really missed that crew. 💖 (BTW: You should pre-order the Saturday Mourning Television anthology, which one of our members is published in!)

I’ve lately been working on some kind of interactive narrative thing, kinda in the background. I don’t really know concretely what it’s going to be yet; what I have right now is an idea, a pile of design documents, and a browser-based, JSON-backed homebrew database editor for content. TBH, I’ve probably spent more time in code this month than in the rest of this year combined. More on this… later? I think?

My writing remains stalled, in part because I redirected my energy to said interactive narrative thing—for reasons that look awfully suspiciously like ADHD—and in part because I remain quite busy with my work for Shiraki Press, but I’m trying very hard to pull that back into focus as we move into August.

Publishing

Our last two titles for 2026, feminist speculative drama Fruits of Our Labor by Ian Patterson and cozy folk horror Light & Earth & Marrow by Jeannie Marschall, are coming up in August and September. I designed a couple of ads for them for Locus Magazine, which I’m quite proud of:

I also just finished my last developmental editing pass on our cozy comic fantasy The Most Terrible & Wicked Evil Dark Lord Accidentally Invents the Public Library by Misha Maxwell, and received the final cover illustration from the as-yet-unannounced artist whose work you have definitely seen before. Design is still in progress on the title treatment, but look out for this very exciting cover reveal soon!

In other publishing news:

• Our 2026 titles are now listed in the LGBTQIA+ Book Collection!
• Shiraki Press has joined the Indie Press Webring!
• We recently started using Publisher Rocket to optimize our Amazon listings with metadata research and improvements, which should then ultimately enhance our catalog’s presence across all our distribution platforms.

And last, but not least: it’s #SmallPitch time again! This event focuses on connecting authors with small presses, and I love it every time it comes around. We just finished reviewing this season’s queue and invited roughly two dozen submissions; those submissions are rolling in and being reviewed now. Here’s hoping we’ll land another title or two for our 2027 slate!

Around the web

Some really good pieces on AI dropped this month:

• The AI Apocalypse is Already Here explores the socio-political arguments against AI in a deeper and more thoughtful way than I’ve seen most anywhere to date, going far beyond the common copyright theft and environmental damage arguments and deep into the humanities, sociology, and philosophy. It’s thinky, challenging, and well worth the read.
• The Machines Are Coming For Your Masthead is a detailed report by Bona Books about how they’re managing AI submissions in their slush pile, learning to spot AI without relying on faulty “AI detection” software, and investigating AI accusations with fairness and empathy. It’s a genuinely excellent piece of work on a problem that continues to frustrate the entire publishing industry.
• OverpAId is hysterical, top-tier satire, lampooning both corporate executive culture and AI labor replacement in a brilliantly-conceived “critical art installation”. This one really made my day. 😂

And here are a couple of solid pieces on writing craft:

• The Protagonist Problem discusses how our modern focus on singular protagonists loses something of community, connection, and cooperation in our stories, and ponders what that means for our culture. Not a new piece, but new to me, and extremely relevant to the work we’re doing with Shiraki Press.
• Writing Short Without Shortchanging Readers describes how Accelerated Growth Environment author Lauren C. Teffeau approaches writing satisfying climate fiction at novella length.

And finally, because I’m me, here’s what’s pissing me right off this month:

• Everything Hurts and No One Knows When the Pain Will End is the video game industry’s primary journal talking about how bad it’s gotten and why the whole space has been absolutely trashed by mismanagement and greed. This is essentially a record of what killed my 20-year game dev career.
• The FCC approved Reflect Orbital’s bullshit, because what could possibly go wrong with a gigantic orbital mirror that reflects sunlight onto vast swathes of the night-time side of the planet? Surely nothing. (Also, the American Astronomical Society is, rightly, furious.)
• I recently discovered that Reason, the absolutely delightful software I’ve used to make digital music for most of my life, was acquired by an AI company earlier this year. I am so tired of this fucking moral hazard. 😡

Upcoming events:

• We’ll be vending at Stanwood BookFest on Saturday, August 8
• We’ll also be at Puget Sound Book Festival on Sunday, August 9
• We’re vending at LAConV August 27-31, and may also have more news coming soon on that front
• We’re vending at the Edmonds Night Market in September and again in December
• We’ll be at the PNBA Fall Tradeshow in Portland in September
• We’re vending at World Fantasy Con in October

This month’s closing thought: