Here's a shot of more of the Fly Agaric I saw last month. It gives a better idea of how many of them there were and how big they can get, the way they change shape.

This week's volunteer shift started off a bit more lively with two calls coming in as soon as I switched on -- one possible juvenile quail found on the outskirts of the city centre (apparently there's native quail that live there!), and one Australian magpie caught in a shopping mall. The busy start is in contrast to how shifts have been mostly going lately... as well as life more generally.

Locally, the snow has remained on the hills. It's unusual for it to linger like this. Generally, it tends to be there for a day, then melt the next day, before returning in a week or however long. It has probably been facilitated by some grey weather. But today we got back to our classic winter weather: crystal blue sky, sunshine and utterly freezing. The snow has been pretty to look at, but I'm glad to have finally got some washing dry (like a decreasing proportion of the Australian population, we only line dry and don't possess a clothes dryer).

Lots of bits and pieces continue to get cancelled due to various people coming down with illnesses of various sorts. I was supposed to be running an RPG on Saturday that has been cancelled. I admit I'm a little disappointed, but the quieter weekends have been rather lovely. My reading has been flagging a bit lately and I have a pile of library books due back soon, so I might bundle up on the couch with the dogs.

Tomorrow night, my sweetheart is out with friends, so I signed up for another, longer volunteer shift. I had thought I'd do some RPG prep in that time, but with that cancelled I'm especially glad for the shift, since I think it will help combat any loneliness that might sneak in.

Just a heads-up that my latest review can be found over at Nerds of a Feather.

Octavia Cade offers a short but brilliant meditation on humanity's relationship to nature in The Impossible Resurrection of Grief.

I'm hoping that with the EGE blog wrapped up (again), I might find the time to post and interact here on Dreamwidth more often. That said, I'm not holding my breath, given the number of times I've said the same thing in the past and it has come to nothing.

Brewing Community is a series of guest posts in which readers, writers, artists and fans are invited to share their experiences of community. Whether online or in person, these groups bring a great deal of support and sometimes stress to their members. The aim of Brewing Community is to share the joy and find ways to brew stronger communities.

The series first ran in 2015. In returning to it after several years, I wanted to focus on how these experiences of community may have changed in recent years, and how people would like to see them change, as well as delving into what books and media have brought comfort in difficult times.

Today’s guest is Tansy Rayner Roberts. These days, she’s primarily a writer of cosies (both the SFF and the mysteries kind… sometimes both at once). However, she’s also a co-host of the Verity podcast and formed one third of Galactic Suburbia.

( Interview with Tansy Rayner Roberts )





Tansy Rayner Roberts is the author of the Teacup Magic novellas (cozy gaslamp fantasy), and The Creature Court Trilogy (dark, blood-spattered gaslamp fantasy). Under the pen-name Livia Day, she also writes mystery novels set in her home of Tasmania.

Tansy’s recent releases include From Baby Brain to Writer Brain (Brain Jar Press), Dyed and Buried, and Spellcracker’s Honeymoon.

Until the perfect social media platform to rule them all is invented, you can find her on Twitter & Instagram as @tansyrr, or subscribe to her newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/tansyrr

Brewing Community is a series of guest posts in which readers, writers, artists and fans are invited to share their experiences of community. Whether online or in person, these groups bring a great deal of support and sometimes stress to their members. The aim of Brewing Community is to share the joy and find ways to brew stronger communities.

The series first ran in 2015. In returning to it after several years, I wanted to focus on how these experiences of community may have changed in recent years, and how people would like to see them change, as well as delving into what books and media have brought comfort in difficult times.

Of all the people I’ve met at SFF cons over the years, one I count myself most fortunate to have met is Rivqa Rafael. She is a talented writer, insightful editor, stalwart friend and fierce advocate for justice and compassion. Today she offers something a bit different to the usual interview.

( Balancing Burnout and Connection: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying* and Skip Online Cons )

* Statement may not be true.





You are what you write, which is why most of Rivqa Rafael’s fiction is about queer and/or Jewish women. Her award-winning and shortlisted stories have been published in Strange Fire (Ben Yehuda Press), Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and elsewhere. Rivqa lives in Sydney, where she studies psychology, works as a science editor, and dabbles in kitchen alchemy. She can be found online at rivqa.net or on Twitter as @enoughsnark.

Although I’m not a big fan of King Arthur and the legends of Camelot, I could not resist the promise of a queer retelling. Which is a good thing for me, because Spear was a book I genuinely savoured.

It retells the story of the knight Percival, referred to here as Peretur which is the sixth century Welsh version of the name. However, the issue of a name is a fraught one. She was raised in the wild by her mother, a mentally unstable woman who nevertheless has great magical ability and who knows that there is power in names. So for a while, the main character has no fixed name, but is referred to in different ways, depending on whether her mother is having a good day or a bad one.

Eating daily from one of the treasures of the Tuath De, Peretur grows up strong. Knowing how to speak to the animals and insects helps her to learn how to hunt and fight. One day, she saves a group of knights and knows that it is time to leave her home and meet her destiny: to become a knight and to answer the call of the Lake.

It is strange to me that this is such a short book (coming in at under 200 pages, it’s really an oversized novella) because it has the feel of an epic. The language is rich, the initial shock of it seeming almost purple before I acclimatised to its beauty. It paints a natural world that is vibrant and alive, filled with its own secrets and companions, which contributes to a sense of the mythic.

This is shored up by the interweaving of Celtic legend into the traditionally rather Christianised tales of Camelot. Although the Celtic deities nominally remain in the Overland, away from mortals, their presence and the consequence of their actions remain very present. Likewise, the four treasures of the Tuatha De Danann — the stone, the sword, the spear and the cauldron — are material items fought over by immortals and mortals alike. This interweaving brought a new angle to the story for me, making it of more interest, and was so neat it seems surprising it hadn’t been thought of before.

(Although, perhaps it has. The author’s note humourously comments on the time-honoured tradition of stealing and reworking elements, common not only to the creative process in general, but in renditions of the legends of Camelot in particular. I’m very unfamiliar with the source material and therefore not in a position to judge definitively.)

Another relatively fresh approach to the tale was the diversity of the cast. While Peretur did not read to me as trans (her pronouns were consistently she/her and there was no indication of gender dysphoria; cross-dressing seemed mostly a matter of practicality and a way of being socially acceptable in the kind of role she wanted to fill), she was most certainly queer. The king’s Companions include knights with a range of skin tones; notably, white is not the assumed default and is explicitly described where present. Nor are the knights necessarily able-bodied. Delightfully, this makes Lance a brown, disabled, bisexual man (thus subverting the love triangle I always hated by making it a triad). The author herself puts it best:

“Most importantly for me, historical accuracy also meant this could not be a story of only straight, white, nondisabled men. Crips, queers, women and other genders, and people of colour are an integral part of the history of Britain — we are embedded at every level of society, present during every change, and part of every problem and its solution. We are here now; we were there then. So we are in this story.”

Spear was the very first book I read in 2022 and it set the bar high. I was captivated by the magic of it, and its poignant longing to belong even after having the door shut in one’s face (multiple times). In the end, I don’t know whether to hope for a sequel or to simply relish this compact slice of epic.

In my TBR report for January, I mentioned getting sucked in to Kobo’s subscription service. One of the ways that happened was through Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall. The book is currently being offered as a Kobo exclusive and since I’ve very much enjoyed what I’ve read of Hall’s work to date, I couldn’t resist.

Murder Most Actual is, unsurprisingly, a murder mystery. Liza and Hanna’s marriage is going through a rough spot, so Hanna books the couple in for a weekend at a secluded castle-turned-hotel in the Scottish Highlands. The lack of internet and mobile phone reception seems ideal for giving Liza some distance from her work as a popular true crime podcaster… until they get snowed in. And the bodies start to drop. Literally: the first victim is a guest that falls from the castle tower.

Of the books by Alexis Hall I’ve read so far, Murder Most Actual reminded me most of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter. Both are books in which the author is messing about with genre in a fun way that is at times rather meta (though I note he does a bit of this in Boyfriend Material as well). In Murder Most Actual this takes the form of bringing together both murder mystery and true crime, then looking at the gaps between them, and bringing some critiques of those genres.

The murder mystery elements come out most strongly in the characterisation. Fans of Cluedo will immediately pick up on the colour-coding of the other guests: the reverend wearing a green sweater, the colonel in the mustard tie. Not only was this an entertaining nod to a landmark work of the genre, it also helps immensely to keep track of the large cast of characters. There are also nods to other giants in the field; Agatha Christie’s mark can be seen on the short inspector with the dubious foreign accent who is hot on the trail of a criminal mastermind. These characters are ridiculously stereotypical in a fun way that helps to point out how over-the-top murder mysteries can be.

Although the secondary characters are not exactly well-rounded, Liza and Hanna certainly are. The author used this technique previously in Boyfriend Material and it works here to good effect. Their relationship has nuance; both of them love each other a great deal and want to make things work, but have grown apart over time and have coping mechanisms that make things worse. Insecurities come up and although they are dealt with in the course of the story, it is acknowledged that they will more than likely come up again.

One of the key conflicts that comes up between them is that Hanna just doesn’t get Liza’s interest in true crime. This is one of the ways in which the genre gets critiqued. Hanna has reservations about the ethics of the genre and while she agrees that Liza behaves ethically for the most part, there are times when Liza crosses the line by asking inappropriate questions and harassing other guests — who, Hanna is at pains to point out, are people. It also sends Liza running off into danger when the most prudent choice would be to head in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, I found Liza’s obsession with solving the puzzle she’s presented with to be relatable.

Murder Most Actual is definitely not the most subtle of the author’s work, with a tendency to lampshade his points. It also felt overly long, with the middle dragging. Given the number of characters, a novella form might have done it a disservice and cutting the number of characters reduces the pool of suspects. Still, I could feel my attention wandering at times.

But on the whole, it was a fun book and an entertaining read.

Published: November 2021 by Kobo Originals
Format reviewed: E-book (epub), 302 pages
Genres: Mystery
Source: Kobo
Available: Kobo

Brewing Community is a series of guest posts in which readers, writers, artists and fans are invited to share their experiences of community. Whether online or in person, these groups bring a great deal of support and sometimes stress to their members. The aim of Brewing Community is to share the joy and find ways to brew stronger communities.

The series first ran in 2015. In returning to it after several years, I wanted to focus on how these experiences of community may have changed in recent years, and how people would like to see them change, as well as delving into what books and media have brought comfort in difficult times.

Today’s guest is Catherine Lundoff. I know her best as the driving force behind Queen of Swords Press and a fellow tea aficionado, but she’s also an author of speculative fiction and erotica, as well as a LGBQIA advocate. When it comes to building community and putting one’s money where one’s mouth is, Catherine is a shining example.

( Interview with Catherine Lundoff )

Catherine Lundoff is an award-winning writer, editor and publisher. She owns and operates Queen of Swords Press, a Minneapolis-based genre fiction publishing company and is a recipient of a 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Writing Grant. Blood Moon is the second volume in her Wolves of Wolf’s Point series. Her other books include Silver Moon, Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories and Unfinished Business: Tales of the Dark Fantastic and as editor, Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space). She is also the author of over 100 published short stories and essays which have appeared in such venues as Fireside Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, the SFWA Blog, Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives, American Monsters Part 2 and such World of Darkness anthologies and games as Wraith: Haunting Shadows, Vampire the Masquerade: The Cainite Conspiracies and Wraith: Ghosthunters. In addition, she teaches writing classes at the Rambo Academy and Springboard for the Arts and she will be the Author Guest of Honor at Marscon 2022 in Minneapolis. Websites: www.catherinelundoff.net and www.queenofswordspress.com

February was the month of short: two short story collections, a book of short poems and a couple of novellas. Perhaps that’s fitting for a short month.

My reading has continued to be slower this year than it used to be. I’m doing my best to roll with it, but it trips up my planning from time to time.

Mt TBR Status

Mt TBR @ 1 January 2022: 360
Mt TBR @ 31 January 2022: 388
Mt TBR @ 28 February 2022: 389

( Items Read )

( Acquisitions )

Brewing Community is a series of guest posts in which readers, writers, artists and fans are invited to share their experiences of community. Whether online or in person, these groups bring a great deal of support and sometimes stress to their members. The aim of Brewing Community is to share the joy and find ways to brew stronger communities.

The series first ran in 2015. In returning to it after several years, I wanted to focus on how these experiences of community may have changed in recent years, and how people would like to see them change, as well as delving into what books and media have brought comfort in difficult times.

Today’s guest is Kat Clay. She is one of the organising forces behind the Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Association, a talented writer, charming host of award ceremonies, snappy dresser and a partner in adventures involving tea and cake.

( Interview with Kat Clay )




Kat Clay is a writer, critic, and content producer from Melbourne, Australia. Her short story ‘Lady Loveday Investigates’ won three prizes at the 2018 Scarlet Stiletto Awards, including the Kerry Greenwood Prize for Best Malice Domestic. Kat’s short stories have been published in Aurealis, SQ Mag, and Crimson Streets. Her non-fiction and criticism has been published in The Guardian, The Victorian Writer, Weird Fiction Review, and on her YouTube channel.