Apologies for those who have been expecting a cup of tea this month–the past few weeks have been particularly intense, what with travel literally bookending my September, plus making significant headway in my writing and other work. There was literally a newsletter I had planned for two weeks ago; I remain eager to geek out with you all about the wonderful experience I had as the Poet Laureate of NecronomiCon Providence, how I'm so excited to take the energy I discovered there with me to Seattle WorldCon next year, and how community encourages the growth of the art forms we want to appreciate.

But between being busy and being overwhelmed, I hadn't gotten to it yet.

I've been re-evaluating the platform I'm presently using as well. Ghost has been treating me well (breaking all my Spotify links in the email newsletters notwithstanding), but leaving my ability to have an author website up to the whims of any singular brand or company during the rapid enshittification of the internet is obviously unsustainable. It doesn't help that I would love a newsletter platform that would allow me to branch out into new visual elements and possibly offer a paid version so I can offer more to the people who have supported my writing, but so many of the solutions I have in mind to resolve that latter problem are stuck with the Stripe payment platform, which doesn't operate in Trinidad and Tobago.

[This is your not-so-subtle reminder that if you like this newsletter, my poetry and fiction, my tabletop roleplaying games, or anything else I do, your support via Ko-Fi and Patreon would be genuinely life-changing and much appreciated! Also, in the interest of trying out what it would look like, a version of this exact same newsletter should be on beehiiv later today with only a few test subscribers, so I profusely apologise if you end up getting two emails.]

A lot of the overwhelm is also about another kind of stock I've been taking: the amount of work that is required to keep myself alive. Suffice it to say that while my current level of maintenance is remarkably low, the writing I'd have to produce and sell in order to merely meet it would require, among other things, the freelance writing game to not be as... temporally volatile as it is. While this is not me saying I'm in dire need, being able to take care of debt, plan for the future, and live in the now definitely means somehow being the kind of writer who can sell a short story once every other month.

It turns out that there are so many little imperfect things that have gummed up the works in terms of making more work happen. My credit card limit is both low and wonky, but PayPal is the only way I can get paid in a timely fashion without asking SFF outlets how they feel about Western Union; as previously mentioned, so many payment platforms do not offer their services in my region, and the creative platforms that I use which rely on them for payment often can't even adequately answer questions about how to work around them; on those creative platforms, growth is often slow and challenging.

That means a lot of the time I'm doing the work that I can do there–the work other people can get paid to do–for fun or for free or not at all through no fault of anyone's but the systems in place around them. And that... kinda sucks. It is in fact kinda demoralising. It's almost like a coded way of saying my work has no value for no other reason than because of where I live.

I'm still trying to find ways to work around that. Some of them are just finding new ventures (did you know I am willing to GM a game for you over at StartPlaying.Games? Because I would love to do that for you!), but the other is simply to... keep doing the thing. To never forget that my work has value. That there is a way to get that value out: not only out there to you, but to get the value out of it and into me, so I can keep making these things that I love.

I have you all to thank for giving me the opportunities that I have to keep creating, to share it with you all both here and in many impossible physical public spaces, and to find the ways that we have to keep discovering that value and drawing it out in sustainable ways. Thank you for your patience.

We just need to count some tea bags for a bit.

Tasting Notes

It's weird to have a Tasting Notes for an issue that doesn't have a name or current-events theme, but in the interest of keeping true to the format, here are some things worth reading/watching if you have some time to spare:

• Sarah Z has a wonderful video out this week about the social media rabbit hole of narcissism-spotting that is very astute about the ways in which neatly constructed narratives of good and evil can catch out even the otherwise most thoughtful of us;
• in a similar vein, the latest Skip Intro interrogates the inherent issues of vigilante justice and tactless reporting about sex offenders, how it doesn't resolve the root problem and actually causes new safety concerns to emerge–as evidenced by the time To Catch A Predator led to the loss of a life;
• a very neat video from Core-A Gaming about the apparent taxonomy of fighting games dropped last week--but I share with the caveat that it includes a lot of AI images, which writer/presenter Gerald addressed in a Twitter post clarifying that he will never rely on the tool in future and giving disclosure of each frame which includes AI. That one failing notwithstanding, the rest of the video is indeed well-read and impressive;
• Former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. is back on TV–now as the host of CNN's American version of the hit British game show Have I Got News For You, alongside team captains Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black--the fourth time the US has tried to kick this off. It is actually quite a lot of fun, even if you have a bias for the British OG--maybe not as biting as having Ian Hislop be your cap'n, but with two of the three names I've just mentioned, I fully expect it to get its groove with enough time. Here's an example from the third episode so far;
• the trailer for the upcoming video game Sorry We're Closed is hard as hell. That's all. It's just fucking rad.

Today's Tunes

Atarashii Gakko did a thing, so you know it has to be here:

But far more important and worth your listen (and your download) is 'HIND'S HALL 2', Macklemore's second pro-Palestine track, featuring Anees, MC Abdul and Amer Zahr. It strikes me as particularly poignant coming out at the tail end of the Big Bad Boycott recently having its demands met, as one pair of lines hit me like a shot the very first time I heard it:

If I'm not allowed to say
'from the river to the sea'
then from the rind to the seed
Palestine will be free

The Leaves

A reminder that you can help keep this newsletter and the rest of my work afloat by supporting me on Patreon, buying me a coffee on Ko-fi or sending a donation via PayPal, or by buying one of my small game projects over on Itch!

Among some of the cool things I’ve recently made includes The God of Spite and Violence, a two-player tabletop roleplaying game about hyperviolence, fierce vendettas, and bisexual mood lighting. Getting a copy also helps me meet my current goal to deal with some credit card expenses, but I also hope this will be something you’d be hype to play!

My next cons are World Fantasy in Niagara Falls and Big Bad Con in CA–I'll talk more about what I'll actually be doing there soon–and if you're going to be there, feel free to say hello!

Until next time... I promise there'll be tea next time.