And more of a proverbial mixed bag of a week...

Good parts first!

• Paul Weimer has relaunched the Mind Meld, a group interview in which a bunch of authors is asked the same question and makes book recommendations based on it at Nerds of a Feather. I got to be one of the first group of participants! Please check it out for our recommendations on where to start reading in genre.
• My story, "Hunger," got a nice shoutout in this new review at Runalong the Shelves of American Monsters Part 2 edited by Margrét Helgadóttir.
• I've got a couple of upcoming online classes at Cat Rambo's writing academy (please tell your friends! I'd really like to see these carry!)
• The Kickstarter for Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives edited by John Linwood Grant has blitzed past its original goal and only has 10 hours left. My new story, "The Raini's Dream," appears in Vol. 2. Sherlock crosses paths with a woman who's an Anglo-Indian inquiry agent who specializes in the supernatural and she is putting up with none of his guff. :-)
• Smashwords Authors Give Back Sale. Lots of fun stuff out here for free or half off this week, including my own Silver Moon and Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) and Alex Acks's two steampunk collections.

Now the crappy bits:

• WisCon 44 is officially cancelled. They're exploring doing some online programming and there will be an up date on Monday the 30th. Kinda gutted about this one, but I'm sure that there were financial and staff considerations as well as concerns about the ongoing pandemic health and other impacts. Sigh. More bulletins when I have them, and in the meantime, please consider buying some books if you can.
• Pretty much everything is on fire. If you're local to Minnesota and in a position to do so, please consider donating to funds like Springboard for the Art's Artist Emergency Fund, the Seward Cafe fundraiser, the May Day Cafe fundraiser or any of the other various fundraisers for our beloved cultural institutions. If you're not local to me and you can, please contribute where you live.

In other news, it's my birthday on Monday and I normally throw a wandering birthday party that moves through my favorite restaurants, bookstores and other fun places and people join in as they want. Clearly, that ain't happening this year, so I'm prepping by buying things from various small businesses: chocolate, tea, books, a couple of DVDs and planning on ordering in. We also got a mason bee house and a pollinator station and are going to cover the yard in clover seed and wipe out the lawn. So it's not all terrible. At any rate, love to you all and hopes for great improvements soon.