And so, we start the year...

Some of it is pretty amazing, so let's start there:

• Weightless Books is now stocking Queen of Swords Press titles! Weightless was started some years back by Gavin Grant, co-founder of Small Beer Press, back in 2010 as a DRM-free indie ebook distribution platform. They haven't been open to new publishers for the last couple of years so we're super excited to be part of the new group of adds!
• I have great audiobook news that I can't announce yet.
• Target has deigned to pick one of our titles up for the online store! They used to have most of them listed, but we got delisted about a year ago. They just added Last Car to Annwn Station by Michael Merriam. For the record, Walmart lists all our books for sale, just saying.
• I'm making good progress on a new pirate/spy story for Heather Rose Jones's LHMPodcast! You can find the earlier ones in the series, plus a few extra fun things, out here.
• Heather Rose Jones's terrific novella, The Language of Roses (Queen of Swords Press, 2022) is up for the ALA's Rainbow Roundtable Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Awards today, has made the British Science Fiction Association Awards Longlist (members can vote for it!) and just got submitted for the World Fantasy Awards! It is also eligible for the Nebulas and the Hugos, FYI. Go, Heather, go!
• Other cool things I can't announce yet placeholder.
• I went to the most amazing show at the Cowles Center in Minneapolis last night. Back in 2021, I was on the grant reviewing committee for a local art funder and this incredible proposal came in for a multicultural, multi-artist dance show, based on Invisible Cities by Italian fantasist Italo Calvino and created by dancer Ashwini Ramaswamy (Ragamala Dance Theater) working with artists Kevork Mourad and several local dance troops. This weekend was the big debut - it was absolutely gorgeous and magical and my friend and I loved it! 
• Had a good check in with my small business attorney and a needed check in with the social worker who's working with me to plan for Jana's care, etc.

The not great parts:

• I haven't taken our local light rail in about a year and half and there's been a huge hoopla about crime, etc. on the trains so going downtown for an evening performance, then back again, on a super cold night was kind of a thing. My friend (another middle-aged white lady) and I didn't feel threatened and people were perfectly polite and pleasant (even the inebriated gentleman) under the circumstances, but between the person coughing up a lung in the far end of the car and the people clearly forced to basically live on the trains because they have no other decent options in dead of Minnesota winter, it was a disturbing trip. The doors open all the damn time and it's freezing cold, not to mention the safety and sanitation issues. This is still too rich a city for this to be acceptable and it's been demonstrated that drop-in centers and warming centers can be made available and people can use them to get additional help, but Boy Mayor and his minions aren't prioritizing that and people are going to die as a result.
• I'm in the process of turning an author loose from their book contracts. It's not a situation that I sought or welcome, but you either want to work with us and be published by us and have some faith that we're trying to do the best we can by everyone or you don't. If the latter, there's no point in hanging around. So not great, but it is what it is.
• J is definitely getting worse. We're going to look at adult daycare next, but I'm very worried that memory care is looming and all the ways I can think of to tackle that are dire. Fingers crossed that my next eldercare attorney meeting brings something more promising.

Onward and more news soon.