I Do Dope Shit

On Friday I turned in my first poetry review column to Sheree Renee Thomas at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I can’t stress how important this milestone is to my career. I first started submitting to F&SF waaaayy back in 1999, I think, back when Gordon Van Gelder was still editing it. For many years, publication in that magazine represented a brass ring for me—and I often had a hard time understanding what the editor was looking for in a piece of fiction. I never stopped to consider that nonfiction might be my way in at some late date.

As my career grew my goals and dreams changed—sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically, but selling to F&SF was something I always wanted to do. I never gave much thought to appearing in its pages with any regularity, but my Chapter and Verse column will allow me to do that.

Ever since Sheree invited me to do this work during a breakfast phone call on our final day at Under the Volcano, the development has felt surreal and unexpected. Now that my first column is in, at a whopping 1,500 words, I still feel that way. I still don’t consider myself particularly qualified to give writing or career advice but looking around at the changed circumstances of my life, I can’t help thinking how many of the good things happening for me are the result of a baseline refusal to stop writing and submitting.

The launch date for The Ballad of Perilous Graves (June 21, US, June 23, UK) draws ever closer, and I’m planning a celebration with my family here in New Orleans, as well as a launch event. Most of my extended family have never been to New Orleans, and I look forward to showing them around. The World Fantasy Convention will also take place here next November and I’m excited to attend after the release of my book. My brother who is the basis for a major character in my novel and I will be attending WisCon together in May, and I hope to attend Chicon, as well. I don’t list these things to brag, I list them because during what has been a difficult time, an inventory of things I’m grateful for has helped me keep my head above water as we approach the grim milestone of one million Americans dead from Covid-19. At times, the terror and despair of the pandemic made me feel buried alive. I knew when we reached 500,000 that I had to stop feeling that grief and loss so immediately if I hoped to continue to function and meet my professional and personal obligations. The pandemic isn’t over, and I worry what it’s doing to us to try to move on without truly acknowledging the enormous loss we’ve borne in these past couple years, but there’s nothing I can do about that on a large scale. Instead, I have to figure out how to process these emotions myself in a way that is sustainable and healthy. It’s a struggle, but it's one worth undertaking.

I’ve said before that I intend to blog more often, and I’m not sure how well or how long I’ll meet that goal, but I do know a couple things: I’m still here, my life is full of love and joy, and I’m happy for the overwhelming privilege of sharing my stories and ideas with the world. As Kanye once said way way back when he was a rising star, “My life is dope, and I do dope shit.”