General updates and a Cleveland event

or: I’ve been writing more.

I’ll be speaking tomorrow night in Cleveland, Ohio, interviewing Madeline ffitch about her new book Avalon, Rise (that’s an affiliate link, but at a queer-owned, worker-owned bookstore). The talk is at Loganberry Books, 7pm. Madeline is one of the best authors I know, and this is the second time we’ll be talking together.

Madeline is maybe the bravest author I know, because she writes stories about antifascists and cool rural lefty people while almost aggressively making them human and flawed. In an era of overly polished, propagandistic work that is designed to not ruffle feathers, Madeline just writes people how they are: fucked up. In her new book, a messy crew of fuckups organizes to counter the rising fascist threat in their small Appalachian town.

So yeah we’ll be talking about radical fiction and signing books tomorrow night, and I’m excited to see her, and any of you who come out.

For people living elsewhere, I’ve been dreaming of touring again. I’ve got a few projects finally coming together, and at some point they’ll be published, and at some point I’ll take them on tour.

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For people who follow my podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, I have a positive update for the first time in forever: the Drug User Liberation Front won in court in Canada. To an American, this is absolutely shocking: some people who bought and distributed clean “hard” drugs to users in Vancouver have proven that their work was lifesaving and essential.

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Sometimes when it feels like the world is ending, it makes it hard to write. Sometimes all I can do is focus on getting ready. Organizing with my friends. Gathering supplies. Learning skills. Studying social movements and occasionally trying to help out with modern ones.

Sometimes, when it feels like the world is ending, it makes me want to do nothing but write. When I was younger, my bucket list was more expansive and more physical. These days, my bucket list is books I want to have written before I die. I’ve probably got decades to go, of course, but, well, I might not. So I’d better write.

Lately, I’ve been writing.

I remember years ago, talking to a speculative fiction writer a decade or two older than me, I found out she’d been in a punk band. “Why aren’t you still?” I asked.

“Because I have to focus on my writing,” she answered.

That didn’t make any sense to me when I was 30. Why not just do both? Surely there’s enough time in the day.

Now I understand. It’s not that I have fewer hours in my day these days, it’s that when you’re doing something at a more professional level, it takes more of your attention. Being kinda randomly in a band and putting out music, that doesn’t take much work. But taking it seriously means shows, means touring, means handling merch, means navigating interpersonal conflict, means promotion, means networking, means, well, work. A lot of work.

The same with writing. When I wrote zines here and there, it didn’t take too much of my time or energy, even if it was one of the things I was quite passionate about. I still had time to travel and riot and party, to organize, to do so many things. But a 3,000 word story once every few months is just an entirely different thing from trying to put out 80,000 word novels, or even 25,000 word novellas.

I’ve written one of each of those in the past three months.

Which means setting other things aside. Which means specializing. That’s not my natural instinct. I’ve been teaching myself to not do everything, so that I can do certain things better. We’ll see what comes of it.

And I’m looking forward to touring on it, because I love reading to an audience, because if there’s only so much time we have in this world, I’d love to spend it that way.