Titles by Kij Johnson are available for purchase online

This is going to be a busy but terrific summer. May ended with a flurry of things: a grad student defending his dissertation (and passed; congratulations, Dr. Jaskowski!). Last weekend was a benefit auction for the Ad Astra Center, held at ConQuest, the KC SF convention, this was fantastic fun: we had a great team of six people, and ended up with more than 300 auction items, and made (we think) close to $3000, which is pretty extraordinary, considering this was a small con this year. (I also was on panels with Fonda Lee, Katherine Forrister, and other cool people.) Chris McKitterick and I had a chance to talk about what Ad Astra is looking forward to doing, and I am ever more excited by what’s going to be possible.

I’ll have a few visits here and there over the summer, as well as workshops live and online, and two books to do final revisions on, plus some followup with readers — and then there’s the prep for a campus visit in September, which is exciting and should be a wild time. There was a date in the early spring when I thought that this summer would sound a little hollow and empty, footsteps echoing and the barely audible hiss of dust settling. Allow me to snort derisively.

There’s a lot of scary stuff going on right now, seriously scary, world-changing scary. It’s weird to feel strong and happy in the middle of all this, yet here I am. I don’t want to burble when so many people are struggling, so I’ll just say, I’m doing well. I hope you are, too.