Hello, Rays and Skies;
First, I wish a happy summertime to all who qualify. And a happy non-season-specific time to all who don’t. (Yes, I am too lazy to google what seasons are currently taking place in other parts of the world. Don’t judge me.) After the launch of my latest collection of stories, Transfiguration, last March—Easter, to be specific—I’ve had a lot of time to catch up on my “to be read” list. And boy am I catching up.
I’ve been reading a few books on mushrooms: Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World by Paul Stamets, Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest by Steve Trudel, and How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying by Frank Hyman. For those interested in foraging for wild edible (culinary, not psychedelic) mushrooms and looking for a place to start their schooling, I’d highly recommend the latter tome. Frank Hyman has a friendly and lighthearted style of writing that casually integrates his own tales of the hunt for tasty fungi. He also opts to provide down-to-earth descriptions (or sometimes in a tree; that’s a bit of mushroom humor for you) and recommendations for hunting, harvesting, cooking, and storing the twenty-nine mushrooms in the book.
I’ve also been reading Sunset Gun and Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker. The sharpness of these poems satiates my playful, wisecracking soul.
And to top off my summertime word salad, I’ve been reading Drawing the Head & Hands by Andrew Loomis to improve my art and illustration skills.
But enough about me. Let’s talk about, erm, me. (This is my newsletter, after all.)
I just released a book, remember?
Yes, I am still shamelessly plugging my book. (I’ve gotta eat, you know!) Transfiguration is a collection of fourteen science fiction and weird fiction stories about transcendence and rapid change, for better or worse.
For anyone looking for a varying collection of weird, uplifting, brutal, tragic, and happy science and weird fiction, give it a look!
PLEASE NOTE that some of these platforms (examples include: barnes & noble, Amazon) have physical book and audiobook options available when you select them from the page you’ll see after clicking the button below.
I was a guest on Arts Calling
To promote Transfiguration, I was lucky enough to be a guest on the Arts Calling podcast. My cat Millie made a guest appearance! I discuss my approach to stories in Transfiguration, how I tackled narrating and producing the audiobook myself, and, like, just life stuff, man…
It’s episode 145; check it out!
I’m taking a step back from social media
Several steps, in fact. I’ve decided to stop posting on most social media platforms for the foreseeable future. I want to focus less on “networking” and “pleasing the algorithm” and focus more on writing and publishing. I will still deliver the occasional newsletter, post to my author site (and board game site for those who peruse the otherworld.games site), and I’ll remain semi-active on Mastodon (@neutrinoburrito@mastodon.art), mostly posting stream of consciousness writing excerpts from my, uh, river of consciousness—or whatever.
My social media accounts won’t be deleted, for now, but will grow stale with inactivity. And that’s okay.
Here’s a list of my upcoming projects
I have goals, y’all. I’m just going to toss these out in a concise bullet-pointed list:
- Write six new short stories
- Submit those six stories to at least 50 different publications
- Work on The Aether 2nd edition
- Write the sequel books to The Aether
- Write a new scifi novel series set in deep space
- Write a new literary fiction dark comedy book
I’m taking these on in a specific order, but you might notice the lack of deadlines, which brings me to my final update in this newsletter…
I’m not putting deadlines, even loose ones, on any of my shit anymore—so there!
Look, I’m working on it, okay? It’ll come out when it comes out. This may make me seem like a more unreliable writer, but know that I publish something at least once a year, so expect that to be my average cadence!
I want to focus on writing creative, weird, experimental, and boundary-pushing works of literary art—not content to be consumed and forgotten about until it’s time to pop the next one like a pill.
I don’t want folks to get the wrong idea. The folks who maintain the fine-tuned motor of constant content releases have a talent I could never possess. I can’t, don’t, and won’t do a “weekly” or “monthly” or “guaranteed annual” thing, aside from this mostly consistent newsletter.
That also means, as you may have noticed, that I won’t be publishing a lot of poetry or short stories to my author site. I found that, honestly, the quality of me trying to release my works as “content” doesn’t meet the bar. So I’m only releasing something when it’s ready.
That doesn’t mean I’ll never release things for free on my site. It means I’ll release fewer things, definitely. It also means those things will be better. I’m still working on determining what gets released for free to my site, what gets submitted somewhere, and what I decide to publish for cash money.
That’s all for now! Until next time. Stay cool out there, Rays and Skies…
Shaine Greenwood 