Category: Literary Matters

March 2023 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

March was a quieter month than usual, as winter dragged on and on and on, sucking the energy out of the world and making it difficult to stay awake during my usual reading times.

Point of interest: This is the first month, since I started tracking things back in 2015, in which I have only acquired one book or book-like object. The previous record for smallest monthly haul was 3.

Acquisitions

The Boston Review #2023.1: Speculation

  1. Boston Review #2023.1: Speculation [2023.03.04]

Reading List

Books I read to completion in March 2023.

Books and Journals

  1. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Writing Across the Landscape [2023.03.13] – This was an interesting read. Ferlinghetti wrote beautifully about the many places he visited, and I enjoyed seeing how his artistic eye evolved over the five decades captured in this book. Highly recommended. May cause wanderlust.
  2. E. Catherine Tobler, The Kraken Sea [2023.03.15] –
  3. Jordan Kurella, I Never Liked You Anyway [2023.03.18] – A modern-day re-imagining of the story of Eurydice and Orpheus. I loved it!
  4. Shenaz Patel (Jeffrey Zuckerman, translator), Silence of the Chagos [2023.03.19]
  5. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.21] – As always, this was an excellent issue. I think my favorite story was A.B. Young’s “Vain Beasts.”
  6. David Albahari (Ellen Elias-Bursać, translator), Checkpoint [2023.03.23] – This was a weird, brilliant, discomforting read. The cover blurbs are right: Definite hints of Catch 22, Waiting for Godot, and (in my opinion) a little bit of Blood Meridian. Checkpoint is absurd and weird and ultimately futile.
  7. Neon Yang, The Ascent to Godhood [2023.03.26] – This was pretty good. Not quite as good as the first two novellas in the series, but I have yet to be disappointed by any of Yang’s work.
  8. Xu Zechen (Eric Abrahamsen, translator), Running Through Beijing [2023.03.28]

Short Prose

  1. Ellen Rhudy, “The Remaining”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.08]
  2. James L. Cambias, “René Descartes and the Cross of Blood”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.19]
  3. Nicole Kimberling, “Comfort Food”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.19]
  4. Emily B. Cataneo, “Bears at Parties”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.20]
  5. A.B. Young, “Vain Beasts”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.20]
  6. Sarah Monette, “The Oracle of Abbey Road (Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night), Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.20]
  7. Joanna Ruocco, “Stone, Paper, Stone”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.20]
  8. S. Woodson, “Lime and the One Human”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #38 [2023.03.21]

IWSG, March 2023: I Wish I’d Written That

John Winkelman

The past month was kind of hectic due to a new project at work coinciding with my girlfriend and I, after three years, finally contracting COVID. It wasn’t serious for either of us, thanks to both of us being fully vaccinated and boosted, but it was a boring two and a half weeks of being stuck in the house waiting for the home and PCR tests to come up negative.

Fortunately, we had the cats to keep us entertained.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for March 2023 is: Have you ever read a line in novel or a clever plot twist that caused you to have author envy?

Well, I mean, YES!!!!!!! All the time. Almost every book I read has a turn of phrase, a scene, a twist, or something like that, which makes me say, “Well, dang! I wish I wrote that.”

The first one that comes to mind is a scene from Neil Gaiman‘s most excellent American Gods. One of the characters, let’s call him “MS,” is killed, and a few of the other characters hold a sort of wake for him, trading stories back and forth. After a little while MS is there, laughing along with the other characters and adding his own comments to the stories. It is handled so subtly that I had to go back and check that I was reading what I thought I was reading. The scene was so well written that there was no sense of disconnect, just a realization that “Well of course MS is going to show up at his own wake. That’s the kind of person [sic] he is!”

This description does scant justice to the scene.

Another is Mary Oliver‘s poem “The Poet Goes to Indiana” from her collection Why I Wake Early. In particular, this section:

…and there was once, oh wonderful,
a new horse in the pasture,
a tall, slim being-a neighbor was keeping her there—
and she put her face against my face,
put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets,
against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me,
to see who I was…

Remarkable! In the fifth line, “soft as velvet” would have worked, but it would have been mundane. Ordinary. There are a million things as soft as velvet. But soft as violets? That is something unique, and enduring.

I could go on and on. Almost everything I read has at least one sentence which is noteworthy (and hopefully more than one, but not always). The moments of awe and revelation are infrequent, and valuable in their rarity.

(Also rare, fortunately, are the lines, plot twists, and scenes which make me think, “Thank the heavens I didn’t write that.” Uncommon but not unknown.)

I will repeat one of my guiding principles, as related by author Karen Lord: “Read well.” Reading well is as much a skill as writing well.

 

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and supporting insecure writers
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January 2023 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

Starting in 2023 I am combining my annual book acquisition list and my monthly readings lists into a single monthly post. Ideally my rate of reading will be greater than my rate of book acquisition. This month, however, I went to ConFusion, and while I did not grab as many books as I usually do, I still picked up four new titles.

Acquisitions

Acquisitions for the month of January 2023

  1. Hieu Minh Nguyen, Not Here (Coffee House Press) [2023.01.08] – I picked up Not Here on a whim, during a visit to Books & Mortar.
  2. Adrain Collins and Mike Myers (editors), The King Must Fall (Grimdark Magazine) [2023.01.10] – This is from a Kickstarter.
  3. Sheree Renée Thomas (editor), Sorghum and Spear (Outland Entertainment) [2023.01.12] – This is from a Kickstarter
  4. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #46 [2023.01.16] – Published by the excellent Small Beer Press.
  5. Catherine Stein, Eden’s Voice (self-published) [2023.01.21] – Acquired from the author at ConFusion 2023
  6. Catherine Stein, The Courtesan and Mr. Hyde (self-published) [2023.01.21] – Acquired from the author at ConFusion 2023
  7. Rami Ungar, The Pure World Comes (self-published) [2023.01.21] – Acquired from the author at ConFusion 2023
  8. Todd Sanders (editor), The Librarian (Air and Nothingness Press) [2023.01.21] – Acquired from one of the authors, Storm Michael Humbert, at ConFusion 2023.
  9. Shalash the Iraqi (Luke Leafgren, translator), Shalash the Iraqi (And Other Stories) [2023.01.24] – This is an arrival from my subscription to And Other Stories
  10. Johanna Hedva, Your Love Is Not Good (And Other Stories) [2023.01.24] – This is from my subscription to the catalog of And Other Stories.

Reading List

Books and Journals I read in January 2023

Books and Journals

  1. Dreamforge #1 [2023.01.02]
  2. Poetry [2023.01.03]
  3. Nicole Sealey, Ordinary Beast [2023.01.04]
  4. Kathe Koja, Velocities [2023.01.12]
  5. Ananda Devi (Jeffery Zuckerman, translator), Eve Out of Her Ruins [2023.01.15]
  6. Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel (Jethro Soutar, translator), The Gurugu Pledge [2023.01.23]
  7. Ho Sok Fong (Natascha Bruce, translator), Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.31]

Short Prose

  1. Sarena Ulibarri, “The Spiral Ranch”, Dreamforge #1 [2023.01.01]
  2. Terra LeMay, “Glass Roses”, Dreamforge #1 [2023.01.01]
  3. Barbara Barnett, “Z-Spot”, Dreamforge #1 [2023.01.01]
  4. Steven Brust and Skyler White, “Smith’s Point”, Dreamforge #1 [2023.01.02]
  5. Kathe Koja, “At Eventide”, Velocities [2023.01.05]
  6. Kathe Koja, “Baby”, Velocities [2023.01.06]
  7. Kathe Koja, “Velocity”, Velocities [2023.01.06]
  8. Kathe Koja, “Clubs”, Velocities [2023.01.08]
  9. Kathe Koja, “Urb Civ”, Velocities [2023.01.08]
  10. Kathe Koja, “Fireflies”, Velocities [2023.01.09]
  11. Kathe Koja, “Coyote Pass”, Velocities [2023.01.09]
  12. Kathe Koja, “Road Trip”, Velocities [2023.01.10]
  13. Kathe Koja, “Toujours”, Velocities [2023.01.10]
  14. Kathe Koja, “Far and Wee”, Velocities [2023.01.11]
  15. Kathe Koja, “The Marble Lily”, Velocities [2023.01.11]
  16. Kathe Koja, “La Reine D’Enfer”, Velocities [2023.01.12]
  17. Jim C. Hines, “144th Contact” (Patreon story) [2023.01.12]
  18. Kathe Koja, “Pas De Deux”, Velocities [2023.01.12]
  19. Ho Sok Fong, “The Wall”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.25]
  20. Ho Sok Fong, “Radio Drama”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.26]
  21. Ho Sok Fong, “Lake Like a Mirror”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.28]
  22. Ho Sok Fong, “The Chest”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.29]
  23. Ho Sok Fong, “Summer Tornado”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.29]
  24. Ho Sok Fong, “Aminah”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.29]
  25. Ho Sok Fong, “Wind through the Pineapple Leaves, through the Frangipani”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.29]
  26. Ho Sok Fong, “October”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.30]
  27. Ho Sok Fong, “March in a Small Town”, Lake Like a Mirror [2023.01.31]

IWSG, February 2023: Indie Book Covers

John Winkelman

Lindemayer system experiment

Happy February, O my pixel pushers and ink rearrangers!  And for those who observe the Lunar New Year, happy Year of the Water Rabbit! I am feeling re-energized after a weekend at ConFusion 2023 where I volunteered to help run the ‘con, participated on a couple of panels, and hung out with and talked to many many many great writers and artists. ConFusion is my favorite event, and a great way to start the year.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for February 2023 is:

If you are an Indie author, do you make your own covers or purchase them? If you publish trad, how much input do you have about what goes on your cover?

I have played around with making covers for a couple of chapbooks, but never for an actual book, on account of I don’t have any actual books for which to create or commission cover art.

That being said, were I to commission a cover, I would make sure it was created by a human artist, with minimal or no use of any of the AI [sic] image generators (Midjourney, DALL-E 2, etc.) which have been recently in the news for, among other things, copyright infringement of the artwork on which the image generator’s base neural network was trained. Call me old-fashioned, but any art I pay for will be created by actual artist. And I say that as someone who has played around with generative art for over two decades.

More information on this issue here:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557098/generative-ai-art-copyright-legal-lawsuit-stable-diffusion-midjourney-deviantart
https://www.polygon.com/23558946/ai-art-lawsuit-stability-stable-diffusion-deviantart-midjourney
https://petapixel.com/2022/12/21/midjourny-founder-admits-to-using-a-hundred-million-images-without-consent/
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/midjourney-founder-basically-admits-to-copyright-breaching-and-artists-are-angry

Speaking of computer-generated art, I created the above image with my Lindenmayer System Explorer. If you want to duplicate this and play around with it, enter the following bolded text into the “import/export” field, click “Import Data”, then click “render.”

{“iterations”:”4″,”lineLength”:”4″,”initialAngle”:”270″,”angle”:”30″,”angleTaper”:”0″,”lineWidth”:”2″,”lineScale”:”1″,”lineTaper”:”-1″,”lineColors”:”222222,000099,990000,999900″,”backgroundColor”:”000000″,”axiom”:”[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+[F]+”,”grammar”:”F:[FF[F+F]F]F!fF[F-F]”}

Happy writing, everyone!

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is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

 

Thoughts on ConFusion 2023

John Winkelman

My badge and ribbons from ConFusion 2023

Last weekend I attended ConFusion 2023 with my partner Zyra, from Thursday morning through Sunday afternoon. This was my ninth ConFusion, and Zyra’s second. Her first experience was last year, still in the middle of the pandemic. 2022 was not, through no fault of their own, the best year in ConFusion’s history by a long shot. Fortunately 2023 was much improved, and though still small by the standards of many of the previous years, it was a lot of fun and felt like the ConFusions of old.

This year I volunteered as part of the Operations team and as a general dogsbody, taking care of those things which needed taking care of and lifting heavy things, as well as sitting at the Ops table in the early morning hours of Saturday and Sunday. I am used to waking up at 5:00 to feed the cats, work out, and write, so waking up at 5:00 to sit at a table in a mostly-empty hallway was not difficult, except when it came to staying awake.

I participated on two panels this year, “What do Trends in Artificial Intelligence Generated Art and Writing Mean for Artists and Authors?” on  Saturday with Jason Sanford, Rick Lieder, and Bill Higgins, and “Creativity in the Age of AI” on Sunday with Jason Sanford, Rick Lieder, and John Scalzi. I moderated the first, and Jason moderated the second. I had a great time on these panels, and will be posting about the content therein over the next couple of weeks.

The best part of conferences, of course, is the people. I spent most of my non-panel, non-Ops time hanging out in the bar area, talking to many wonderful people, and this experience filled my heart to near-bursting! Over the course of the long weekend, I spent time talking to, among others, Dave Palmer, Kathe Koja, Jason Sanford, Patrick Tomlinson, Maurice Broaddus, Rick Lieder, Jordan Kurella, ZigZag Claybourne, Saladin Ahmad, Catherine Stein, Rami Ungar, and Storm Michael Humbert. Many of these people I already knew, and the rest I met for the first time this past weekend. In both cases, my life was enriched by their presence.

I also spent a lot of time hanging out with the members of the ConFusion ConCom, talking about the history of ConFusion, the day-to-day tasks, the unexpected issues when working with hotels and bars, and the scores of other details which must be dealt with as they arise. These were fascinating discussions and only increased my respect for the volunteers who run fan conventions of all sorts.

So what’s next? At the moment I plan to be more involved with the next ConFusion in January 2024. That means that, after a few weeks off for rest and recovery, I will be sitting in on meetings with the ConCom and figuring out where I may be of the most assistance. And I am very much looking forward to this experience. ConFusion is one of my favorite events of the year, and I am happy – nay, eager – to contribute to its continued success in any way I can.

And before I forget, I treated myself to a new fountain pen, courtesy of Brad, the Pen Guy. It is beautiful to see, and a joy to write with.

IWSG, January 2023: The Word of the Year

John Winkelman

Poe (left) and Pepper eyeballing each other

The week before Christmas I was struck down by the flu. I worked from home for that week, and just when I started to feel better the Great Christmas Blizzard of 2022 covered West Michigan with a ridiculous amount of snow. Throughout these two weeks of isolation, Poe and Pepper (pictured above) were a wonderful source of amusement and affection for Zyra and I.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for January 2023 is:

Do you have a word of the year? Is there one word that sums up what you need to work on or change in the coming year?

For this year, I think my word will be Attentiveness. That point where attention meets engagement. I had little enough of either over the past (checks notes) five years, since I went on hiatus from Caffeinated Press at the beginning of 2018. The last three years have been a fugue of reacting to or recovering from outside world events. Now that we are through the holidays and already the daylight hours are growing noticeably longer, I feel a renewed energy.

Attentiveness, to me, means not just noticing the parts of my life which need attention, but then doing something about it. Whether it be my relationship with my partner, my health, the martial arts class, my family, my writing, our house, or anything else in my life, I think I am ready to re-enter the world and take care of the things which need taking care of.

 

Insecure Writer's Support Group BadgeThe Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

Happy New Year, etc.

John Winkelman

New arrivals in the week of December 25, 2022

Welcome to 2023! 2022 was overall a good year, but also exhausting, and so I am kind of happy to see it in the rearview mirror.

Two book arrived here at the house in the last week of the year. On the left is the January 2023 issue of Poetry, which  came as something of a surprise, as I thought my subscription ended with the previous issue. I guess I was mistaken.

On the right is Apex Magazine 2021, the printed collection of the stories which appeared in the electronic editions of Apex Magazine, from their successful Kickstarter. This book has the honor of being the last book to enter the Library at Winkelman Abbey in 2022, in that it arrived in the afternoon of December 31. Excellent timing!

In reading news, I made some progress through the first issue of the new incarnation of Dreamforge, but my brain is so fried from *gestures at everything* that I couldn’t motivate myself to do much more than watch The Blacklist and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and play Stardew Valley.

In writing news, there is no writing news.

Starting in the new year, I will combine the “books I acquired” weekly posts with the “stuff I read” monthly posts, so now everything will be monthly. I plan to still do weekly (-ish) posts, but they will be both general and topical, and no longer exclusively about book stuff.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Merry Christmas, and All That

John Winkelman

New books for the week of December 18, 2022

I am typing this on my new Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 Chromebook, which I purchased to replace my aging ASUS Chromebook, which was good while it was good, but now is old enough that Google stopped pushing updates, and every month it was noticeably slower. Like with any new technology upgrade, it is fun and exciting for the moment, but at the end of the day it is a Chromebook, and I will use it mostly for writing, either creative work or blog posts like this one.

I picked up a couple of new books, VeloCities: Stories, and Dark Factory, both by Kathe Koja, who will be the Creative Guest of Honor at ConFusion 2023 in a few weeks.

In reading news, with Crime and Punishment completed I next finished the remaining volumes from my now-cancelled subscriptions to Poetry Magazine and The Paris Review. Now I am meandering my way through my backlog of issues of Pulphouse and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Not much to report on the writing front. My brain is mush from end-of-year burnout and also from a case of The Crud, which hit me a little over a week ago. I just bought a new fountain pen from Dryden Designs, with a fine nib. So far, I like it. We will see how the writing goes throughout the next few days.

The Last Week of Autumn

John Winkelman

Pepper giving Poe a bath.

The last week of Autumn has brought with it a case of the creeping crud, which fortunately is not COVID, but is also not much fun. I don’t feel overly terrible; just exhaustion, some sinus issues, and a scratchy throat. So of the many viruses colonizing the population right now, I have one of them.

No new books arrived this week, so here is a photo of some domestic tranquility.

After three weeks of intense concentration, I have finished Crime and Punishment, which I really should have read about 30 years ago. Better late than never, I suppose.

And in writing news, there is nothing to report. My brain is sprained.

The Year is Winding Down

John Winkelman

New books for the week of December 4, 2022

As we reach the midpoint of December I feel, for the 22nd year in a row, a profound sense of relief that I no longer work in retail. When the owners of a store yowl, from their expensive house in an expensive neighborhood, that the workers making barely more than minimum wage need to work both smarter AND harder, I begin to understand why the plans for home-made guillotines are proliferating across the internet.

Anyway.

Two new journal arrived at the house this week. On the left is the latest issue of The Boston Review. On the right is the latest issue of The Paris Review. Both are the last issues I will see of these publications, as I have let both subscriptions lapse. Despite my earlier misgivings I am sticking to my guns, and from now on will only purchase books intentionally, rather than subscribing to a dozen periodicals and catalogs and letting the arrivals sit unread for years at a time.

It’s also cheaper that way, which is always a concern.

In reading news, I am well over halfway through Crime and Punishment, and still expect to complete it before Christmas.

In writing news, other than journaling, I haven’t written anything since the end of November. Too many things going on all at once.

I think I am about due for another Great Simplification, the first since January of 2013. Ten years is probably slightly too long to go between Simplifications, but for the past several years I have been both happy and content, and haven’t felt the need to change things significantly. I am still happy and content, but entropy is making itself felt in several areas of my life, and in order to focus on those areas I need to let some other things in my life recede into the background.

So it goes, as always.