This was another exceptionally busy week, but relief is on the horizon. And no, I don’t mean the inevitable heat death of the universe or the more imminent fascist takeover and destruction of the United States. I have some breathing room, and I intend to spend that time breathing, and also reading and writing.

Reading

I pulled the first issue of New Edge Sword & Sorcery off the shelf and am reading my fill of, well, sword and sorcery stories. They are quite good! Widely varied in tone and voice, and all are fun. I found a couple of editing issues, but no more than in any other first issue of a magazine.

In more in-depth reading, I am a few pages into Efraín Kristal’s Invisible Work: Borges and Translation, which I picked up on a whim after reading a Metafilter thread about, well, Borges and translation. I loves me some Borges, and I love reading works in translation, so this book is my catnip.

But John, I can hear you thinking, What about all the other books you were reading a few weeks ago?

I am still reading them. They are still on the “currently reading” pile. They just are not currently at the top of the pile.

Writing

For That November Thing, I have settled on a repeat of what I did a couple of years ago, being a pile of flash fictions and short story fragments. This format seems to work for me in times of uncertainty.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Revenge, Environment
Setting: Subterranean
Genre: Procedural

Listening

The Kinks, “Destroyer,” from their 1981 album Give the People What They Want.

Interesting Links

• “ICE Raids Are Only Half The Story” (Farm to Taber, YouTube) – Brief overview of how MAGA farmers are using the H2A visa as a legal form of slavery. This is an open secret among MAGA, and is so endemic that the basic assumption must be at any farmer who voted for Trump did so because they want slaves to work their farms.