New Worlds: Eunuchs
As you can imagine, this essay will continue with a frank discussion of genitalia and modifications to same.
The No Longer Littlest Black Belt Takes the Next Step
Nine years and eight months ago, I earned my black belt in shōrin-ryu karate.
Today, I became a second degree black belt.
It was supposed to happen sooner. But right when the head of my dojo began saying that maybe it was time for me to prep for testing, a pandemic started. Which put a dent in my training. And even once classes began again, various factors meant I wasn’t able to go regularly. And then 2024 was, in hindsight, a rather abysmal year for my health. And and and, spring of this year rolled around, and I realized I was in danger of it being ten years since my previous test, and dammit, I did not intend to let that milestone pass without me at least trying to take the next step.
There were more than a few hurdles along the way. I’ve had wrist problems for years that meant I hadn’t been doing kobudo (weapons training), but you’re expected to do that as part of your test. So starting in August I began a crash course, scraping the rust off the sai kata I was expected to perform — not too bad; it was one I used to know well — and, uh, learning from scratch a long and difficult bo kata that I did not know in the slightest. I went so gung-ho on that, in fact, that I managed to give myself a repetitive stress sprain in my right ankle five weeks before the test (bear in mind that sprains take about six weeks to heal . . .). And then, to put the cherry on top of that sundae, I caught my big toe against the mat nine days ago and basically re-activated the hellacious sprain I had in that joint some years previously.
As I put it to several people, by the time I got to the test, I felt like I was being held together by chewing gum. Not even duct tape: that would have been an upgrade.
But these higher-level tests can only be done when our dojo’s founder is in town (he moved back to Okinawa a few years ago), and his next visit will likely be for the seminar in April of next year. That would be past the decade mark I was determined to beat. So, come hell or high water, I was going to drag my sorry carcass through the test — and I did! And, barring a couple of utterly bone-headed errors brought on by nerves (which got knowing nods of “yep, that happens” from other black belts later), I did acceptably well. I faced down literally an international panel of seven sensei — Shihan being in from Okinawa, and also we have a contingent of Germans from one of our sister dojo here for the fall seminar — whose collective belt rank totaled well over forty degrees, and I achieved ni-dan status.
You don’t get a new belt, of course. It’s still the same black belt as before. But there’s kind of a joke that a truly experienced black belt becomes a white belt again, because over time the black threads fray and break, revealing the white canvas core underneath, so that a truly high-level sensei’s belt can be tattered indeed.
And this afternoon, after I passed my test . . .
. . . I glanced down at my belt . . .
. . . and I found a tiny frayed spot on the corner of one end where the white canvas is peeking through.
I consider it my ni-dan badge. ^_^
New Worlds: Circumcision
Nearly all of the essays for the New Worlds Patreon this month are going to be talking about genitals or other explicit topics, beginning this week with circumcision. You have been warned; now comment over there!
Electric Sheep online reading!
On November 12th, 8 p.m. Eastern (5 p.m. Pacific, 1 a.m. UTC), I’ll be the Guest of Honor for a session of the Electric Sheep online reading series — for poetry! Yep, I’ll be reading my Hugo poem, “A War of Words,” and possibly something else if time permits. But I won’t be alone: my fellow finalists Mari Ness, Ai Jiang, Angela Liu, and Oliver K. Langmead will be joining us, along with Brian U. Garrison (the president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association) and Brandon O’Brien, who was Poet Laureate for the Seattle Worldcon. So it’s a heck of a lineup!
Attendance is free, but you do have to register in advance, and space is limited. If you’re interested in joining us, sign up now!
New Worlds Theory Post: Real Biology Is Stranger Than Fiction
It seems fitting for Halloween that the traditional fifth-Friday New Worlds Patreon theory post should focus on weird critters — but in this case, real ones! Let’s talk about drawing inspiration for science fictional and fantasy species from the aliens we share a planet with: comment over there . . .
New Worlds: The Retired Life
How many people have ever been able to afford to retire, and what has “retirement” meant through the ages, anyway? The New Worlds Patreon has some thoughts — comment over there . . .
New Worlds: Are You Insured?
Insurance is rather a hot-button topic these days, especially (but not only) in the field of healthcare. How did it even get started? That’s the topic this week at the New Worlds Patreon — hint, it involved ships sinking at sea. Comment over there!
New Worlds: A Good Investment
I’ll admit up front that I am not the best person to talk about investments and the history thereof in any real depth. But it’s a topic I want the New Worlds Patreon to address, even if only briefly — so comment over there!
New Worlds: Greasing Palms
For October, my loyal patrons in the New Worlds Patreon have voted for a turn toward the field of economics! Though what we’re talking about this first week could potentially have gone into the “law and crime” category instead, as we’re talking about bribery . . . comment over there!
New Worlds: Quartering (No Drawing)
Every U.S. schoolchild learns about the Bill of Rights, but how many of us remember why the Third Amendment — the one about the quartering of soldiers — was so important to the Founding Fathers? The problems with housing soldiers, in war and in peacetime, is the topic of this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay; comment over there!
New Worlds: Camp Followers
As part of its current tour of military topics, the New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at all those other people involved: not the soldiers, but the secondary army of people who support and/or profit off them. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Foraging (and Pillaging)
The counterpart to the New Worlds Patreon‘s discussion of supply lines last week is “living off the land” — usually meaning off the backs of the civilian population. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Supply Lines
My New Worlds patrons having voted for a set of military topics this month, we’re taking a look at the logistical side of warfare! Not to the depth that an officer or military historian would study it, of course, but we can at least manage a top-level overview of how worldbuilding factors shape the way armies get fed. Comment over there!
Two poems!
I have not one but two new poems out this week! Putting me up to double digits in the number of poems I’ve had published so far, whee.
The first is in Merganser Magazine: “Hallucination,” about AI, linguistics, and the wish for a better world.
The second, “Cutting the Cord” in Small Wonders, is probably the closest to straight-up science fiction I’ve ever written? It’s got aliens and a space elevator in it, anyway.
Both are free to read online, so enjoy!
New collection: A Songbooks of Sparks!
Years ago, I formed the idea of making novella-sized short story collections organized around particular subgenres. Sorting through the stories I had at that point, I determined that there should be six of these (or, well, seven, but one of those I set aside for a slightly different plan; it turned into Driftwood).
Today, the last of those six is finally published at Book View Cafe!
I was able to publish Maps to Nowhere and Ars Historica almost immediately; it took a little longer to do Down a Street That Wasn’t There and to decide that, really, I wasn’t going to write any more short stories set in The Nine Lands, so I could go ahead and publish that one. Because I became determined to balance out the regions featured in A Breviary of Fire, the fifth of the set came out only last year. And then secondary world fantasy lapped the pack with The Atlas of Anywhere a few months ago.
But it took a while to complete the sixth of the original set, A Songbook of Sparks, because its requirements were very particular. As the cover and title suggest, this is a follow-up of sorts to A Breviary of Fire (as Atlas is to Maps), likewise consisting of stories drawn from traditional folklore — but in this case, it’s specifically folksongs. Ballads and the like. And after a spate of writing those while I was in graduate school, I just kinda . . . stopped. Without having quite enough material to cross my minimum threshold for making one of these books. So it’s only quite recently that I wrote and published the last story needed to complete this set!
But now it is done, and out in the world: you may buy it in ebook or print, as you prefer. Within you’ll find nine stories, one unpublished poem that mashes up sources half a world apart, and — a bonus specific to this collection — the lyrics of the traditional songs that inspired the stories. Enjoy!
New Worlds Theory Post: The Worldbuilding On-Ramp
In obedience to long-standing tradition, in a month with five Fridays, the New Worlds Patreon turns its attention to matters of theory and craft! This time, we’re taking a look at the worldbuilding on-ramp — which is to say, the vital questions of how much to explain at the start of your story, and how choosing the right entry point can ease the reader’s way in. Comment over there!
It’s heeeeeeere!
Apparently I did not hallucinate a couple of weeks ago . . .
(I opted for the shot where I’m looking pensive rather than trying to smile, because I am atrociously bad at smiling for the camera. There’s a reason my author photo features me looking like I’m about to stab somebody; it was preferable to any of the alternatives.)
So, yes: my award came!!! I could have opted to take it with me, but the logistics of getting it packed up — especially the fragile glass part — and handed over to me before I left on Sunday were complicated enough that it was simpler to just have them ship it to me. The downside, of course, was that I had to wait a whole WEEK AND A HALF to put my shiny new rocket on display!
. . . hilariously, a rejection for a packet of poems hit my inbox while I was reassembling this.
It’s going to live in my office for at least a while, so that I see it every time I come in. Eventually I think I’ll move it downstairs to our front room, where visitors to the house will see it, but for now — nope, it’s mine, my preciousssssss.
New Worlds: Responses to Crisis
This week, the New Worlds Patreon pivots slightly from human migration and cultural contact to the question of how societies respond to crisis — a question whose list of possible answers unfortunately includes “turn on any perceived outsiders” among its historical and present-day options. Comment over there . . .
Hugo!!!!!
There once was a writer who wrote,
and wound up with an odd anecdote —
how it happened, who knows,
but she won a Hugo,
for being, of all things, a good poet!
. . . and with that atrociously bad limerick (I decided not to bother trying harder; it accurately reflects the state of my brain right now) [edit: ffs, even in this state, I reflexively went back and revised it to make it scan better], I announce that last night I won the Special Hugo Award for Best Poem! My acceptance speech should have thanked Fluevogs for making heels I could actually walk onstage in without falling over out of shock. I still feel like a newbie in poetry; I only started writing it about four and a half years ago — January 2021 — and so to have my fourth published poem ever earn this major of an award is still making me reel. I would have woken up this morning thinking it was a delusion were it not for all the congratulatory messages I’m getting from various directions, which at least assure me that it’s a mass delusion, if so.
As I said in my speech, I hope I’m the first person to win this award, not the only one. It’s a special award right now because each Worldcon can choose to create a temporary category of its own, but I’m one of the sponsors of the Speculative Poetry Initiative, which has cleared the first hurdle in passing a proposal to make this a permanent category in the awards. So it already feels historic to get the special award, but it’ll be even better if I can describe myself as the start of a longer line!
If you have not read the winning poem, “A War of Words” — or if you would like to read it again — you may do so for free at Strange Horizons! My heartfelt thanks to Romie Stott, the editor who acquired it, for making this possible.
New Worlds: Cultural Mixing
The New Worlds Patreon can’t do more than touch on the incredibly complex topic of how cultures influence each other and hybridize — but even that brief touch is worth taking a moment for! Comment over there . . .
