May 2024 Newsletter
It's been a whirlwind month, y'all
Hello, Dear Readers!
Well, May has been a rather wild month! It started with my favorite holiday, Beltane, and then I got to spend several days at Disney World. I had a whirlwind trip to New York, during which I saw a great show and assisted with my company’s event at the Met Opera. I became a landowner! And then, I decamped to the Outer Banks.
So. Yeah. Wild!
News
I sometimes struggle to remind myself that I am, in fact, a working writer. It can be challenging sometimes, when I see friends putting out multiple novels in a year, when my most recent release was January 2023 and I have nothing in the pipeline.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not a writer. It doesn’t mean I’m not writing. It’s just that, these days, a lot of that creative energy goes into my day job. And that’s awesome! It’s amazing that I have job that pays me to be a creative worker. But it doesn’t leave a lot left over for my own projects, and sometimes that’s an emotionally twisty thing.
So, I’m taking a moment to brag on the work I do for Mythik Camps!
The thing I am proudest of right now is the new World of Mythik website. This is an interactive area of exploration for our campers (and, possibly, other mythologically-inclined explorers). They can discover more about their demigod identity, get clues about the season's theme, contribute to a theory board, find at-home Forge and craft projects, explore our digital library, and listen to the Myths & Muses podcast (which is also my baby)!
I am certainly not solely responsible for that website or its content, but… I’m a lot responsible for it! And I’m very proud of that. The basic design sprang out of a concept for a platform I’d put together last year, and I’m delighted that we were able to re-envision it to work within our company’s existing website.
The two things on there I’m the most jazzed about are the theory board and the digital library. Our campers have been contributing to the theory board for a few weeks now — there was a QR code leading to it in the boxes that they got with their camp t-shirt, sword, and the first breadcrumbs leading up to this season’s stories: a letter and a prophecy. I was hoping at least a few kids would follow through and engage, and wow have they ever! Checking for (and moderating) new submissions has become the first thing I do each morning. If I don’t, I can’t keep up! It’s wonderful to see how they’re interpreting the clues and using what they know from the Percy Jackson books and other sources to try to figure out what’s going to happen. (It also lets me know how close or far away they’re guessing — and the fact that they’re hitting a real sweet spot means I think the Quests will pay off to great satisfaction!)
So, if you’re interested in what I do as a creative professional, check out that page! It’ll give you a taste of my everyday. The rest of it is, well, what gets built out and fully realized once it’s in motion during the summer and the campers take hold of the stories!
Random Current Thoughts
Earlier this week I shared a post about Twenty-Sided Tavern, an interactive theatre experience I enjoyed in New York — but I’m working on a much bigger post about immersive entertainment in general. I’ve been thinking a lot about the sliding scales of immersive environment and immersive story, and the different purposes and audience that each of those components of an immersive experience serves.
I’ve actually been working on this post, at least in my brain, for a couple of months now, since reading Margaret Kerrison’s Immersive Storytelling for Real and Imagined Worlds, and going to Disney World at the start of May really fired things up (to the extent that I was dictating voice memos to myself while I was still in the parks!). So, be on the lookout for that!
Upcoming Events
On June 22nd, I will be at FandomFest at the Massanutten Regional Library in Harrisonburg (the city where I was born!). I’ll be delivering my Choose, Don’t Presume workshop.
Glasgow WorldCon is August 8-12, and while I don’t have a schedule for that yet, I’ll be doing something.
And, of course, the reason I’m there is because Worldbuilding for Masochists is up for the Best Fancast Hugo. If you haven’t voted yet but would like to, you’ve got until Saturday, 20th July 2024, 20:17 GMT. All you need is a WSFS membership — you do not have to be attending WorldCon to vote! And that membership gets you the full voter packet, which… y’all, it’s massive. I just recently downloaded mine, and there is so much stuff in this thing. Including two full-length movies! As well as an abundance of books, novellas, novelettes, short stories, poetry, and more.
What I’ve Been Reading
I haven’t done as much reading this month since I had so much action going on! But — I did get through a few audiobooks, and since being at the beach, I’ve even made it through a couple of actual paper books!
Race to the Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse
Pride and Prejudice in Space, Alexis Lampley
The Ghosts of Sherwood, Carrie Vaughn
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, S.A. Chakraborty
Queens of the Crusades, Alison Weir
These are affiliate links; if you use them to buy a book, I’ll get a small commission!
Wrapping It Up
I think June is going to have fewer Big Things in it — certainly it has less travel, which will be restful! But, the camp season is also getting started, and I’ll be on-site some. I’m hoping, though, to have both time and brainspace for some writing of my own. For the first time in a long while, I’ve got an idea nibbling at me. I’m not ready to talk about it yet — because sometimes doing that releases a pressure valve in an unhelpful way — but it’s fun to have a story starting to take shape in my mind again. So I’d like to have room to explore that.
Hope your summer kicks off well!