Titles by Kij Johnson are available for purchase online

(Here’s the latest locked Patreon post.)

Many things going on! But a few loom larger than others:

Handed in a draft of the short story collection to my publisher, Small Beer Press. I didn’t include any of my non-SF/F real-life stuff, so there’s no “Attempt at Exhausting my Deck” and no “Attempt at Exhausting An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Perec,” and almost all the flash fiction is not included. I’m a little sad, but I just had too many different things going on: lengths between 17 and 36,000 words; topics ranging from realist relationship stuff to myth; everything from lists of lists to classic naturalism (or as close to naturalism as I get). I left out about 20k of published experimental real-life stuff…and learned that working in multiple modes really slows down the accumulation of words toward a collection.

School started last week. I love the graduate workshop I’m leading, as always. It’s four new people and two I have worked with before. This also means regular meetings with a lot of other students: people finishing their dissertations and theses, first-year grad students; the three undergrads I said I would help with their honors theses. And I am on a search committee. And I am learning about grant-writing for the Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction and the Speculative Imagination. And I am on 50% leave this semester, to be more helpful for my mom.

Next week, I am doing something I have not done in a lot of years: a family vacation. My brother and his family have invited me to hang out at a cabin in the Wisconsin Dells for a few days — lots of food and lolling about, which seems ideal. Since I am writing the talk(s) for West Virginia, I appreciate the down time.

And my University of West Virginia visit 9/12-16 just gets more interesting and exciting! I am there for a full week: I’ll be giving a talk (or maybe a talk and a reading? unclear) and meeting with lots and lots of interesting people, everyone from a PhD candidate working on SF to the president and provost.

The image for this week’s blog post is mine! A few weeks back, I got a tablet and for the last couple of weeks I have been drawing a cartoon a day, inspired by Jennifer Omand’s moribund but charming Squarecat Comics journal from some years ago. This is the most fun I have had in ages! I may make them a tier over on my Patreon.

1 thought on “Fiveish things, late August edition.

  1. I’m glad you have so many wonderful things going on, Kij! (I WAS wondering when and where the Perec piece was going to appear….)

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