September Update: A Report from Worldcon

I feel like the last month absolutely evaporated. If you’ve been following my monthly updates this year, you may be sensing a theme. I sure am!

Fruits of Our Labor is out now!

Our fourth Shiraki Press novella, the near-future sci-fi Fruits of Our Labor by Ian Patterson, launched at Worldcon on August 25!

It’s near-future speculative fiction about a world in which women have achieved parthenogenesis: the ability to become pregnant and give birth on their own, with no involvement from men. It examines what that future looks like, how power shifts and society changes, through three POVs: a woman who yearns for a child of her own; later, the child herself, among the first parthenogenic births; and still later, a future historian looking back on this period of seismic social transformation. It’s deeply thought-provoking and a strong conversation driver.

Fun fact: this is our first cover made entirely in-house by yours truly! You can read about the design process right here, and order your copy direct from Shiraki Press.

We’re back from Worldcon!

We went to Worldcon (AKA LAConV) in Anaheim at the end of August and participated on seven panels between us—six for Brianne, one for me—while also running a full-time booth on the expo hall, while also having our three-year-old with us the whole time. It was good, but exhausting, and while we sold enough to (mostly) cover our expenses for the trip, we didn’t turn a profit. Attendance was down significantly compared to last year’s Worldcon in Seattle, and I think three factors contributed to that:

The Trump administration has made the US unsafe for non-citizens to visit. Who wants to travel internationally for a convention and risk getting thrown in a phone booth-sized cell by ICE?
The Anaheim Convention Center is directly across the street from Disneyland. Consequently, everything is so expensive. (And our inflation-addled economy isn’t helping, either.)
Due to the way the convention center is laid out, the expo hall was split off in a separate building from many of the panels, events, and author signings, and there was no clear or natural direction to it.

All that being said, conventions are still always great for meeting new people, and we made several new connections in the small press world. Among them: Strange Matter Press, Fairwood Press, Space Wizard Science Fantasy, Spud Publishing, Borderlands Bookstore, Fox Fern Books, Liminal Fiction, and others I’m likely forgetting.

It’s always fascinating to compare notes and share ideas. And of course, since I’m a book designer now, I can’t resist comparing our covers and layouts. 😂

We also got to have our first four published authors this year come by the booth to sign books, and we did dinner and a launch event with them all to celebrate our first year titles as a group. It was surreal and so lovely to spend the week with them all in person!

Lastly, I joined a panel called Writing A Way Out of This Mess, where we discussed various approaches to keeping up our writing practice even as the world burns around us, and how we might channel hope and optimism into that work. The topic is near and dear to me as a cofounder of Shiraki Press, where we focus on hopepunk stories that imagine better futures. I’m also an author of horror and hope, and I talked about how I see the relationship between them: horror is unsurvivable without hope, and hope is unnecessary without horror.

The TBR is a menu, not a to-do list

I haven’t done much reading lately—aside from submissions to the press—because of all the travel and business disruptions around Worldcon, among other things, but I did go through Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings, which is extremely cool for when you’re obsessed with writing stories about hunting monsters (couldn’t be me… 👀). I also read Sandra Tayler’s book Structuring Life to Support Creativity, which is so timely to my current struggle to prioritize my writing.

I did pick up quite the book haul from Worldcon, which I’m really looking forward to getting into:

And I sadly had to walk away from this signed first edition of The Dispossessed, but reader, when I tell you I seriously considered putting $2,000 on a credit card in a fit of irresponsible pique… 😰

Enough with this AI shit, already

I’m deeply frustrated—but not exactly surprised—to see the US government intervene in a major legal case on behalf of AI (Words & Money):

The U.S. Department of Justice this week filed a “Statement of Interest” in a closely-watched copyright infringement case filed by the New York Times against Open AI, urging the court to find that the use of copyrighted works for AI training is fair use, and rejecting the “market dilution” claims at the heart of two recently filed lawsuits filed by book publishers.

More surprising, and no less dismaying, is seeing the EFF do it too (Reason):

Tori Noble, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, disagrees. She says training AI models on copyrighted works is “squarely what transformative use is.” These are “general purpose tools” and “exactly the kind of creation that copyright is designed to foster,”

Everything is on fire, and the bucket brigade is ferrying gasoline. 💀

Not that I need another distraction…

…but there’s going to be a Paradox Interactive-published, LEGO-themed city builder?! Be still, my heart. 😍 (LEGO Skylines)

(In the meantime, if you’re looking for city-building goodness without a bunch of bullshit, TheoTown is pretty lit.)

Upcoming events

We’re at the PNBA Fall Tradeshow in Portland September 27-29.
We’re at Third Place Books Ravenna on September 29 for Ian Patterson and Inez Ray — Fruits of our Labor & Buzzard.
We’re at World Fantasy Con October 22-25.
We’re at the Edmonds Holiday Market on December 11