A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

It's my birthday! I intend to spend it doing pottery, reading, and working on a very special secret project which I will announce shortly.

If you would like to make my birthday extra happy, please chip in to support the cats of 10th Life. This is a cat rescue and trap/neuter/release operation in Bulgaria. They will send cats anywhere in Europe, and can probably send them outside Europe as well. I have visited it multiple times, and can personally vouch for it.

I was there earlier this month, and got to pet lots of rescue cats, many of them disabled or otherwise special needs, and even got to live with a rescue kitten for a while!

Meet Ezra, the very bitey pointy-tailed kitten. He was rescued from attacking dogs, and was too young to go into the general shelter.









If you donate to 10th Life, please comment or email. I will update this post with an adorable cat photo for every comment and email I receive, so keep watching this space.

10th Life particularly needs recurring monthly donations. A small monthly donation would be better than a large one-time one, as then they know how much money is coming in and can plan. They are really in need of money now, as they spent a lot on a massive trap/neuter/release operation which was followed by a cat who needed extremely expensive emergency surgery. (He made it!)

If you have already given to 10th Life and have some left over and really want to send something personal, which I may or may not review in a timely fashion or ever, here's my Amazon wish list.

And, of course, birthday art, fic, and general wishes always happily accepted.

On October 29, I will be 50! I spent my twenties and thirties feeling sixteen, and now I feel about thirty. Maybe I'll actually feel fifty when I'm eighty.

I always wanted to be one of those tough older women who lives alone in a cool little house and does crafts and knows the names of all the wild plants and lets the neighborhood kids pick her berries and pet her cats, and now I am. It's everything I imagined it would be.

If you would like to help me celebrate, here are some possibilities.

1. Donate to Tenth Life. This is a small neighborhood no-kill cat rescue and trap-neuter-release nonprofit in Varna, Bulgaria. I personally vouch for it. If you click on the "cats" tag, you will see photos of my visit (plus a bonus rescue hedgehog). A monthly donation, even small, is ideal as it allows them to plan ahead.

2. Write me some fic! Draw me some art! Make me something cool! Mail me something delicious! (This possibility is why I'm posting in advance.)

Here is my Amazon wishlist. If you get me something off it, you may get to read a review of it. Eventually.

Kalikoi, the new publisher for books about women who love women, has launched with Watercat Cafe!

This is a reprint of my novella originally published in Her Magical Pet. If you reviewed the anthology, it would be lovely if you could review my story separately.

If you'd like an epub copy, please PM or email me.

Love cats and cake and cottagecore? This book is for you.

Ruthie is this close to achieving her life’s dream: launching the first cat cafe in her post-apocalyptic world. But the mysterious, wounded stranger she rescues could doom her dream--or save it.

In a dangerous yet cozy world where pet watercats fish for their dinner and vines can grab you by the hair, Ruthie was inspired by an ancient book to revive the lost tradition of the café. But all her careful plans are upset when Fern crashes into her life. Fern is a wary stranger with an arrow in her shoulder and a mysterious but friendly animal tagging at her feet. She’s clearly trouble, but the chemistry between them is irresistible. Can two lonely women risk everything to open their hearts to love?

Watercat Cafe is a short lesbian romance, perfect for reading on your lunch break. Make sure it’s a good lunch, though, because it will make you hungry.

Unicorn Vet launched at # 61 in the Amazon store! Yes, that does indeed mean that out of every ebook on Amazon, it was the 61st most-read. That is my all-time record and I am thrilled that so many people also want to read about vets caring for magical creatures.

(This doesn't make me as rich as you might think. It's a very short book and you can borrow it through KU in which case I get paid per page, so it won't make me as much money as a longer book with fewer readers. But as a signal of enthusiasm for vets vaccinating flying kittens (yes that is an actual scene in the book), it warms my heart.)

I woke up this morning inside a snow globe. Huge snowflakes whirling silently, settling down and blanketing the ground in white. I love snow and there hadn't been any predicted.

Today, the sky itself is celebrating.

I am delighted to present Her Magical Pet, an anthology to benefit OutRight Action International, which fights for the rights of LGBTIAQ people across the world. All profits will go to OutRight in perpetuity.

The anthology includes a new Liavek novelette by Pamela Dean, a novelette I wrote featuring a post-apocalyptic cat cafe, and short stories by Yoon Ha Lee, Zoe Chant, Aster Glenn Gray, Damkianna, and many more!

Have a shot of concentrated joy, with fourteen stories of women in love... and their adorable magical pets!

In this enchanting collection, a flying cat transports love letters, a fox-dog and a pair of watercats help two lonely women launch a post-apocalyptic cat cafe, a baby griffin brings unexpected love to a runaway troll woman, and much, much more!

“Deep Spring Farm,” by Romana Clifton. Can Melanie and a friendly ghost dog help a beautiful farmer protect her lettuce from spirits that stomp in the night?

“Lucky Day,” by Yoon Ha Lee. Which is harder, hiding a crush on the gorgeous woman in your role-playing game group, or hiding the unicorn figurine that just came to life?

“Beach Dirt on Bare Feet,” by Louise Long. It’s hard to trust humans when you’re a selkie, especially when a beachside ice cream date could lead to so much more.

“Cute as Hell,” by Caia Winter. You’d think two vampires would be a match for an adorable hellhound puppy, and yet...

“Watercat Cafe,” by Rachel Manija Brown. Ruthie intends to open the first cat cafe in her post-apocalyptic world, but the mysterious, wounded stranger she rescues could doom her dream--or save it.

“How to Get a Girlfriend (When You’re a Terrifying Monster),” by Marie Cardno. Trillin has no corporeal form, no mortal cultists ready to tear reality asunder in her name, and no girlfriend. It's tough being an eldritch entity.

“Pawprints in the Snow,” by Zoe Chant. A lost cat leaves a path to love for a lonely snow leopard shifter.

“As if the Sun Came to Shine,” by Damkianna. An injured baby griffin catalyzes the relationship between a lovely changeling and a troll woman in hiding.

“Uncontrolled Variable,” by Sara Joiner. It's hard to investigate magical seagrass when your mischievous teleporting cat keeps becoming part of the data.

“That Magic Touch,” by Hailey Thorne. Vanessa's ex-BFF wants to tear a hole in reality, and it's going to take all of Vanessa's magic--and the help of a gorgeous Demi-Fae with a sword, not to mention a telepathic dog--to stop her.

“Memories of Magic,” by Elva Birch. An emergency vet gets an unexpected visit from a Christmas elf (not really) with a living plastic toy pegasus (really!)

“A Dog’s Chance,” by Celia Lake. Magician Anna keeps crossing paths with the mysterious dog-walking Una while investigating a case of magical hedgehogs on Hampstead Heath.

“Five Quests and the Oracle,” by Pamela Dean. A new Liavek novelette. Dri’s first acting role in a children’s play is complicated by her obstreperous cat, a pair of menacing wizards, and another first-time actress who wants to do more together than just practice their lines.

“The Mating Call of the Teleporting Warbler,” by Aster Glenn Gray. A winged cat flies love letters back and forth between a professor and a naturalist studying teleporting warblers.



It is available on Amazon only for three months, after which it will go into wider distribution. A paperback will be available shortly (also through Amazon.) If you can't afford a copy but want to review it, please contact me. If you want a non-Amazon copy now, please PayPal me the price of the book to Rphoenix2@hotmail.com (NOT gmail).

The companion anthology, His Magical Pet, is also available!

Please signal-boost this if you feel so inclined.

It feels horribly absurd to say, "Have a sweet new year" right now, when everything is the opposite of sweet. I have a story about the last time I felt that way.

After spending two years getting sicker and sicker and losing more and more weight, while utterly failing to convince any doctors that I had a problem that was not psychosomatic, anxiety, hypochondria, or anorexia, I made a Hail Mary and flew to Bulgaria to get some tests done that doctors wouldn't do here, because they thought the problem was my head and I thought it was somewhere in my abdomen.

eglantiere had offered to put me up for a couple weeks while I got the tests done. But once I got there, things got complicated, and I ended up staying in her bedroom for three months. Possibly the single lowest point of my entire life was waking up after surgery and being informed that Leonard Cohen had died, my cat had died, Trump was now President, and the surgeon showing me an abnormal growth he'd removed, then saying, "But I don't think it could have caused all your symptoms, so clearly it's all in your head. You should see a psychiatrist."

In the middle of all this, Rosh Hashanah happened. I honestly don't think I'd have even remembered it, let alone cared, but I got sat down in the kitchen and fed apples and honey. I weighed eighty pounds - I'd lost a third of my starting body weight by then, enough to make doctors stop telling me I wasn't actually underweight and start accusing me of having an eating disorder I was refusing to cop to. I ate a slice or two thinking how utterly, horribly absurd it was to say, "L'shanah Tovah" - "Have a sweet year" when I was absolutely not going to have a sweet year, ever again.

What happened in the next year is a long, complicated story. But, more or less as a result of the data from the Bulgaria trip, mildred_of_midgard got an idea for a medication I might try, one for inflammatory bowel disease - which is what the Bulgarian scans suggested I had, even though the doctors later said that actually, they showed I had a head problem.

And it worked.

And it's still working.

The doctors still mostly believe I'm delusional and the fact that an IBD medication makes my symptoms vanish is proof of the placebo effect. I now avoid doctors as much as possible, and in my case I think that's the better of two evils.

So I did have a sweet new year after all, or at least a year with sweet parts, which was something I hadn't had for two years. And the next year was sweeter still. And I went back to Bulgaria, sixty pounds heavier and a thousand pounds of misery lighter, and stayed with eglantiere and swam and explored and ate and had a wonderful time. It was very, very sweet.

Even this year, which has been objectively horrible in every way, has had a lot of sweet parts for me personally. When your point of comparison is "the years that I was dying in agony and kept getting abused by authority figures who had the power to help me but refused to because they thought I was an obnoxious lunatic," a lot of objectively bad things look good in comparison.

I did Passover over Zoom and it was depressing. Jewish holidays shouldn't be celebrated alone. But I've formed a bubble with Halle, so I'm going to her place to eat and drink (heavily, for me anyway) and celebrate and watch the Emmys and wish each other a sweet new year.

I've been thinking of my horrible Rosh Hashanah in Bulgaria all day, because it was so bitter at the time and even imagining anything getting better felt like a cruel lie. It feels the same way today, though then the stakes were very small and personal (one life, my own) and now they're very big and communal (one nation, maybe one world).

I don't know what's going to happen, but because of those sad apples a few years ago, I now know: I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe there will be surprising sweetness to come. It's no less impossible than me surviving and being happy again.

L'Shanah Tovah! May you have a sweet New Year.

Who says investigative journalism is dead?

A Slate journalist got curious about why John M. Ford's books were all out of print. The science fiction community said it was because his family held the copyright and had deliberately buried them. The journalist got in touch with the family, and in doing so, not only helped arrange for the books to get back in print, but also located another person who had apparently dropped off the face of the Earth and was, at least by some, presumed dead.

The Disappearance of John M. Ford

Against Entropy

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days—
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

—John M. Ford

For my birthday, I treated myself to the 70-minute Kitten Extravaganza at the cat cafe and adoption site, Crumbs and Whiskers.

It was utterly delightful. There were 27 cats and kittens, all healthy, lively, and happy. They could leave any time they wanted (through the pink curtain). Zero smell. The floor rugs were extremely comfortable. Everyone there was in heaven, including me. (It was with great difficulty that I left without adopting Knox (a mini-Alex) and Firecracker (the black and white kitten I'm cuddling on the cat tree.)





Click to see more! ( Read more... )

Afterward, I got a slice of crack pie at Momofuku Milk Bar, a Chubby Pork Belly Bowl at Kogi Taqueria, and retired to my sofa where I read Stephen King's The Institute with both my own cats napping on me.

Truly a perfect day.

With brand new beautiful hair! Something Alex appreciated very much:









Last night her flight was delayed, so we went to Daikokuya, an all-night ramen place. It was freezing cold (Layla found it no more than brisk) but the rest of LA agreed with me, because the place was packed. During our 45 minute wait for a table, we ate half each of a Beard Papa chocolate cream eclair and a Beard Papa strawberry cheesecake tart, then bought Melty Kiss and yatsuhashi at the Japanese market, before finally diving face-first into giant bowls of comforting hot ramen with perfectly soft-boiled eggs.

This morning my friends Halle and Ian and their son, and Layla's friend Jen and I went to NBC Seafood, where there was no line! That was a first. We feasted on sticky rice in lotus leaves, fried taro dumplings, char sir bao, slippery rice wrapped noodles, taro pudding, black sesame pudding, egg yolk buns, egg custard tarts, fried lotus paste balls, steamed sausage rolls, shrimp wrapped in nori and fried, steamed Chinese broccoli, chicken fried rice, shrimp in bell pepper cups, ube buns, and hot black sesame mochi which were so good I wish I'd had twelve of them.

On the way back we stopped at a grocery and were waylaid by small, adorable Girl Scouts. I guess we need some snacks for the plane later on...

The grocery clerk asked if we're sisters. I don't know, what do you think?