Here is a recap of my 2021. You can either listen, or read the transcript below, which I have also added links to! The TL;DR version is that everything I wrote and many things I edited are awards eligible. In addition to all the individual pieces being eligible for any genre awards you might know of, for the Hugo Awards, Mermaids Monthly is eligible as a magazine in the Semiprozine category, and I am eligible in the Best Editor Short Form category. To the transcript!Welcome to the OMGJulia podcast, where we talk about creative lives and processes. I’m your host, Julia Rios, and this time we're going to be talking about specifically my creative life in 2021, and all the things that I did. So this is just a little recap and review. You can listen to this episode, and if you check the show notes (which should display in your podcast app, but also you can find them at omgjulia.substack.com), they will have links to all the things that I am mentioning. So, you may know that I do many different things, from writing to podcasting to editing to a little bit of translation, and here are the things that came out in 2021 that I did. So first, as a writer, I had two stories come out in 2021. The first was “Alma y Corazón” in Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, a story about twin sisters who are about to have their quinceañera, turning fifteen, and three years ago they helped fight demons. Now it looks like maybe there's more demon trouble… Question Mark? That one came out in SeptemberThe next story that I wrote that came out in 2021 was called “Xtabay”, and that was in Shadow Atlas. That came out from Hex Publishers in November, and it is a gorgeous book. It's so cool! They basically have it all laid out as case files with lots of illustrations. There are poems, there are stories, and there are so many different legends and stories represented from different parts of both North and South America as well as, of course, Central America. My story takes place in the Yucatán Peninsula which is the area of Mexico where my father came from, and it’s about a young man who encounters Xtabay, a legendary creature / woman from there, and it's… um, it doesn't go too well for him… We'll leave it at that for now. Later this month I do plan to do a process post about that story. So, if you're a paid subscriber to my newsletter, then you will get to see how I wrote this story, and I will include some visual aids about my process because I think it's sometimes interesting to see how people actually do work through the creation process, and for me it can be different from time to time, but I do have some very concrete things that I can show you, and I'm excited to do that in a little bit. So those are my two stories, “Xtabay” and “Alma y Corazón”. As you may have noticed, both of them draw on my Mexican heritage, which is something that's very important to me, though not the only aspect of my identity that's important to me. But it does come out in my writing every now and again, and a lot in 2021. I also got to translate one of the poems that was in Shadow Atlas, so that was really wonderful. It's called “Waay Chivo” and it's about a really terrifying sort of goat monster. So yeah, that's super cool. It's by Jimena Jurado, and I hope that you'll also check that out. There's also a poem by my fellow Mexicanx Initiative friend, Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, who is known as the person who brought cyberpunk to Mexico originally, but this poem is not cyberpunk. It's an ominous poem about an ominous ghost pyramid, and it's great. Beyond that, though, there are so many awesome stories in this I can't even tell you. I can't even pick them out because there are too many that I love, basically. I really highly recommend you check it out. It's fully illustrated, and it's beautiful. I have the hardcover version and I love it. Okay, editing wise…I am an editor, and I edited first, most notably, 12 issues of Mermaids Monthly from January to December. That was a wonderful project that I did with Meg Frank and Ashley Deng and Lis Hulin Wheeler, and there are so many things that I want to call attention to specific things, but, at the same time, whenever I try to do that, again, there are too many that I love! I love all of them. They're really wonderful. But I will say that you can find (almost!) every issue for free at this point online and I will link to every single one of them here. If you click on the months, they will take you to the webpage index for that month. I’ve also included the direct links to PDF and ebook versions here in case you want to jump straight to one of those versions. January 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiFebruary 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiMarch 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiApril 2021: PDF, EPUB, MOBI May 2021: PDF, ePub , mobi  June 2021: PDF, ePub, mobi  Bonus June story! “Personal Histories Surrounding La Rive Gauche, Paris: 1995-2015” by Jordan Kurella. Web PDFJuly 2021: PDF, ePub, mobiAugust 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiSeptember 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiOctober 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiNovember 2021:  PDF ePub .mobi December 2021: PDF ePub .mobiThe PDFs are the prettiest because Meg designed the the magazine with those in mind. But also you can read them just on the web or you can download ebook versions, which won't have the same careful design as the PDFs, but will still be totally readable on your ereader of choice.Mermaids Monthly is wonderful. It's got lots of art. It's got comics. It's got poems. It's got essays. It's got stories. It's got a few original artist covers that we commissioned and got to have artists create something just for us, and then a bunch of other amazing art covers that already existed that we got to use, and I can't say enough good things about it. So I really highly hope you'll check it out. If you're thinking about awards season and you have the power to nominate things for awards, I will let you know that everything in Mermaids Monthly that is a story is a short story for the purposes of awards categories, except for “The Incident at Veniaminov” by Mathilda Zeller, which is a novelette for awards purposes, and all of the things that are reprints will say at the top of the page “This originally appeared in [whichever thing it appeared in]” so if it doesn't say that at the top of the page. You know it's not a reprint. It's an original story. So it's eligible to be nominated for an award, and if it's not the one novelette by Mathilda Zeller, then it is a short story — and, of course, poems are poems if you want to nominate those anywhere. If you DO, I thank you very much! I really love all of the stories in there, and I hope to see the authors get some recognition, so it's very exciting! Beyond Mermaids Monthly, I also edited some things that I put up on my newsletter or on Patreon. And those included:“The Only Worthwhile Human Cargo” — a short story by Valerie Valdes. That one was super fun and under 1000 words, so a short read. I highly recommend it if you want to have a good time. “How to Defeat Gravity and Achieve Escape Velocity” — a short story by Miyuki Jane Pinckard. That one's a bit longer. It's about 6000 words, but it still counts as a short story for awards purposes. Also, it's got a queer romance, which I love. “Million Year Elegies: Dimetrodon” — a poem by Ada Hoffmann. Ada Hoffmann writes a ton of wonderful poetry and stories, and Million Year Elegies actually is a whole collection that she released in 2021, and she allowed me to release this poem at the same time as her collection came out. It's a lovely poem. “The Galaxy I Found in My Bowl of Phở” — a short story by Allison Thai. That one was another short one. It’s about a young man who finds that aliens are going to communicate with him via the soup that he is eating. It's lots of fun. If that premise is intriguing, I recommend you check it out! “16 Poemas Después de la Muerte” by Héctor González — in English, 16 Poems After Death. Héctor took a series of images by a really famous Mexican artist named José Guadalupe Posada, who was active in the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, and did a lot of images of skeletons wearing clothing and doing things, and Héctor took these images and then wrote a bunch of small poems on postcards, physical postcards, which he then sent to people, but he also scanned them and sent them to me and I put them all up online. So that was a super fun one. It's very colorful and the poems are lovely. “When the Beautician Thinks of Herself as a Healer” — a poem by Michelle Tracy Berger. It is a poem about how beauty is self-care and how someone at a hair salon can help particularly black women to feel beautiful and find the right look for them. Which is a kind of magic in and of itself. Mid-Autumn Mice illustration from Joyce Chng, who is a wonderful Singaporean writer and artist, and they made me some mid-autumn mice and gave me a little write up about what the mice were doing. And also a little illustration of a mooncake. Those are charming and delightful. “Stovetop Gods” — a short story by D.A. Vorobyov, which came out at the very tail end of the year, and it is a heartwarming story about a young man who is just moving into a new apartment. It’s also got a beautiful cat in it, and a domovoy, which is a Russian household spirit.So, I highly recommend all of those. Those appeared on my personal either substack or Patreon, and I will link to all of them so you can follow those links and see any ones that you didn't already catch up on. If you are a paid subscriber, you'll be seeing more things like that because that's mostly what I've been doing with the money I get from my subscribers. It's pouring back into paying creators to create more exciting things. So those are the things that I edited in 2021. Also in 2021, I did some podcasting. I did a few episodes for this one, although it's pretty catch as catch can. I also did episodes for This Is Why We're Like This, the podcast that I do with Geoffrey Pelton, where we talk about movies that we (or our guests) have seen in childhood, made a big impression on us, and affected who we grew into as adults. What we do is talk about what we remembered about the movies and also how they stood up to a rewatch, and it's a comedy podcast. It's also not safe for children or the workplace. There's lots of swearing and things like that, so be mindful of that.One of my favorites was probably when we had Eugenia Triantafyllou, who is a wonderful speculative fiction writer from Greece, come on to discuss two different things with us. One was an episode of Goosebumps, and the other one was a thing that was on international broadcast that she saw in Greece growing up: The Forbidden Door, which sounds a lot scarier, perhaps, than it actually is. It's more like a fairytale/folklore kind of retelling thing. But it was really fascinating to talk with her about what Greek television was like when she was growing up and how all of this influenced her. And then also of course to bond over Goosebumps, that R. L. Stine popular classic. So yeah, that was a really fun two-parter. We had a lot of other really fun times as well. I encourage you to check out any of the episodes that you'd like to check out. I think that does it for me for 2021, but if you are looking to nominate for awards, all the stories I edited and the stories I wrote are eligible, and I am eligible as best editor short form for the Hugo awards. For other awards, I don't know that there's really an editor award that they give out, but yes, if you would like to nominate these for any awards that you know of, all of these things are award possible, and, especially for the things that I put out by other people, I would love to see some of those things get recognized, and just get read more widely. So if you read any of the things that I edited and you like them, please tell everyone! I've worked hard to make sure that, as far as I know, everything I edited this year is actually available for free for people to read online, so anyone can. I would love to see more people reading and loving them, because the reason I do this is because I love these things and I just want to share them with everyone.I hope your 2022 is getting off to an okay start. I know it's a rough time. Globally, we're having a hard time, and I can only hope that we're all hanging in there and that things will get better. In the meantime, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, which is work on creating things and helping other people share their work with the world. I am no longer doing Mermaids Monthly. There will be one more issue, at least, that is done by the new team, and then they may have their own fundraiser for more content, but none of the new issues of Mermaids Monthly will be edited by me. I will be putting things out under my own steam, and there's also Bridge to Elsewhere, an anthology that I co-edited for Outland Entertainment with Alana Joli Abbott. That one will be coming out later this year, and I think there are a couple of other things that should be coming out in 2022 that I contributed to. I'll let you know about those when they come up. And we'll just take it as it comes! I will definitely still be doing This Is Why We're Like This, though. So if you want to tune into that, you can hear me talking about movies that are sometimes good and sometimes terrifying, from my childhood or other people's childhoods, and that will be an ongoing situation.I'd love to hear all about the things that you did in 2021, or that you're looking forward to doing in 2022, so if you'd like to share those please do! Until next time, thank you for listening/reading. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

OMG Julia!

All the Creative Work I Did in 2021

Hello!Today I have a really cool project to share! This is the latest thing my subscribers and patrons have sponsored. It went out to them first, and now it’s time to share it with the world for free! If you think this kind mode of story and poem sharing is cool, consider subscribing here or become a Patron! This is the second of my two Texas creator pieces. The first was a story by Allison Thai. I came up with the idea to ask specifically Texan creators back when Texas was facing major ice storms and crumbling energy infrastructure. I wanted to send a little money directly to Texan creators AND to donate to a charitable organization they personally found meaningful. Of course as time passed the ice storms were over and the acute crisis related to them was over, but Texas still has plenty of things it could use help with. Allison specifically asked for my matching fund to go to the VCSA, an organization for Vietnamese immigrants in Texas, and Héctor asked for my matching funds to go to RAICES. Here’s what Héctor has to say about RAICES:RAICES is an organization constantly fighting for immigrant families. Since the start of the concentration camps in the border, their team has fought to help all the immigrants, protecting their human rights. I truly believe in their compassionate efforts.If you enjoy these poems, do consider making a donation of your own! You can listen to Héctor read each of these poems and give a few extras in the podcast episode. 16 Poemas Después de la Muerteby Héctor GonzálezOn my last trip to Mexico City, I found these postcards with the art of José Guadalupe Posada. These images depict skeletons, not as frozen reminders of our mortality but as vivacious and lively entities. Posada’s art celebrated our dearly departed as the people we knew. His work would influence Diego Rivera and lead to the iconic calavera catrina.In México, we see death not as finality but another path in a person’s life. We mourn, but we also celebrate. We regularly joke about our final day. One of the most imaginative traditions around our Día de Muertos celebration are calaveras, rhymes with fun themes, where we create scenarios about the death of others. Sounds grim? These are very tongue in cheek with insights on the person “memorialized.”Partially inspired by calaveras, I chose a postcard at random. I saw the image and created a small poem. I did this across a series of days. I sent these also to many friends. Some expect these, some will not.In a year where we all have either experienced or seen tremendous loss, some of us grieve with stories.1Dejamos atrás a cadapersona de nuestro pasado.¿Deseas ser mi amada?Quiero vivir a tu ladoTranslation to English:We leave behind eachperson from our past.Do you want to be my beloved?I want to live with you2Un tenorio yo fuihiriendo los corazones,mas yo nunca conocía quien calmara mis pasiones.Translation to English:A tenorio I waswounding hearts,but I never knewwho will calm my passions.3El sindicato de esqueletosmuy feliz esta,vistiendo por completoa todos en la ciudad.Translation to English:The Skeleton UnionWas full of joy,they were making clotheseveryone in town.4Corriendo con su cuchilloel machote se anunció.¡Qué triste es este chiquillo!Un corazón que no maduró.Translation to English:Running with his knifethe macho was announced his arrival.Sad little boy!A heart that did not mature.5Una heroina divina,la soldadera del pasado.¿Sabe lo que ella opina?Muerte al patriarcado.Transation to English:A divine heroine,the soldadera of the past.Do you know what she thinks?Death to the patriarchy.6“El tabaco no me mató,”me dijo mi abuelo.“Lo que la vida me arrebatóllenó de tristeza mi duelo.”Translation to English:"Tobacco didn't kill me,"my grandfather told me."What life took from mehas filled my grief with sadness."7Me enterraron vistiendo elegantepues siempre he sido importante.¿Por qué mi cráneo es gigante?Guarda mi ego, que es abundante.Translation to English:They buried me wearing fancy clothesas I’ve always been important.Why is my skull so huge?To store my ego, which is abundant.8Aun después de morirbailamos hasta el amanecer.Contigo no me voy a aburrir,tu eres mi placer.Translation to Enligsh:Even after dyingwe dance until dawn.I will not get bored with you,you are my pleasure.9Las flores de mi sombrerohonran a mi querido arriero.De cempasúchil me cubrióel día de mi entierro.Translation to Enligsh:The flowers in my hathonor my dear muleteer.Of cempasúchil he covered methe day of my funeral.10Este aguardiente benditolo uso para olvidar.Mi dolor, un grito inaudito.Maldecido a vagar y vagar.Translation to Enligsh:This blessed firewaterI use it to forget.My pain, an unheard-of cry.Cursed to wander and wander.11Descubrí a mi hermano gemelosolo después de mi muerte.Ambos morimos en un arroyuelo.¿Quién creyera nuestra suerte?Translation to Enligsh:I discovered my twin brotheronly after my death.We both died in a stream.Who will believe our luck?12Solo aprendi la guitarradespués de mi deceso.¿Mi favorita? Pat Benatar.Su catálogo está grueso.Translation to Enligsh:I only learned the guitarafter my death.My favorite? Pat Benatar.Her catalog is dope.13Emiliano nunca murió.Está libre, en nuestras mentes.Aunque por balas sufrió.Su lucha eterna, vive por siempre.Translation to Enligsh:Emiliano never died.He is free, in our minds.Although by bullets he suffered.His eternal struggle, lives forever.14¡Qué belleza es el tamal!Historia envuelta en hojas.Deliciosa nube de nixtamal,manjar para todas las bocas.Translation to Enligsh:What beauty is the tamal!History wrapped in leaves.Delicious cloud of nixtamal,delicacy for all mouths.15Un ratón, el pulque nos dió.Un hombre lo fermentó.Un pueblo lo disfrutó.Una nación lo adoptó.Translation to Enligsh:A mouse, the pulque gave us.A man fermented it.The people enjoyed it.A nation adopted it.16En vida nos amamos,más juntos no pudimos estar.Ahora muertos bailamospor los besos que no te pude dar.Translation to Enligsh:In life we loved each otherbut together we could not be.Now dead we dancefor the kisses that I couldn't give.Héctor González (he/they) is a queer nonbinary México-born speculative writer living in Austin, TX. They pair their love for food with their passion for stories and finding more about the secret origins of your favorite dishes. You can find their latest thoughts, cooking and writing as @mexicanity on Instagram, Twitter and Medium. Their motivational ASMR 4 Writers recordings can be found under Abuelita Héctor on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/abuelitahector/). This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

16 Poemas Después de la Muerte --Poems by Héctor González

Happy New Year!Here’s an awesome interview with Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award winning author, Sam J. Miller to start your 2021 off on a fun and interesting note! We talk about his latest book, The Blade Between (a horror/thriller novel about ghost whales, activism, and mayhem in Hudson, New York), Sam’s day job as a community organizer, his creative process, and some of the questions sent in by my paid subscribers!Come for the murder and mayhem, stay for the questions about craft, what it’s like to win awards, and perhaps most importantly, whether Sam would rather face 30-40 feral hogs or one ghost whale! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

An Interview with Sam J. Miller

The Mermaids Monthly Kickstarter is in its home stretch! We’re almost to 75% funded, and we have 6 days to get all the way there! In this episode of the OMG Julia podcast, I asked one of our awesome contributors, Patty Templeton, to join me and talk a bit about the limited edition art she created, and about her half of an Each to Each collaboration with her partner, Brett Massé.The Each to Each feature series in Mermaids Monthly is going to be a series of collaborative works by creators who have deep personal connections, and also by creators who have never met before. I talked in depth about the whole idea, and how anyone can submit to be part of a collaboration in our latest Kickstarter update, so go over there to read more if you are curious! Patty’s art piece is called “So Alive” and you can get it as a limited edition, numbered linocut print, or you can back us at the sticker level and get it on a sticker. Patty tells us all about her inspiration for the piece, and the process of creating linocut prints. Long story short, the stamp degrades during the printmaking process, so there will never be more than 25 of these original prints! Image description: “So Alive” by Patty Templeton. A black ink print from a linocut of a live, weird mer-creature inspired by the Fiji Mermaid advertised in old side shows. It’s ugly and weird and magnificent, and Patty envisions it as having evolved this way naturally rather than being a sewn-together dead monster. Stickers and limited edition prints are available through the Mermaids Monthly Kickstarter until the 12th of December, 2020.Patty also tells us a bit about the story she’s writing, which I haven’t yet read, so you get to hear my first reaction to it. Spoiler alert: it sounds so fun! I can’t wait to read the whole story! And she talks a bit about collaborating with her partner, Brett, and about the different kinds of art they’ve both made. Here’s a short list of places to find their work:Patty did the cover for the Brimstone Rhine Album, Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir. Brett did the layout and interior design for Mythic Delirium’s novella anthology, A Sinister Quartet. Patty wrote a historical fantasy novel about Sarah Winchester called There Is No Lovely End. Brett did the cover art for C. S. E. Cooney’s The Witch in the Almond Tree. Patty interviewed Zig Zag Claybourne for Black Gate Magazine about finding joy and Zig Zag’s new book, Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe.Brett has a zine called Ghoul, and Patty contributed a story to the first volume!And of course, to get Patty’s art and story, and Brett’s art in response to Patty’s story, back Mermaids Monthly on Kickstarter! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

Patty Templeton Talks Creative Process With Me!

Hello! Here’s my first podcast episode for November (notably NOT a podcast month challenge time!), in which I’m talking about what I’m up to these days. I mentioned before that I have a new project called Mermaids Monthly. Right now that is Kickstarting, and we’re just over the 25% mark of our funding goal. I’ve also drawn a silly mershark. Once our Kickstarter reaches 200 backers (we are currently at 183), I am going to be picking a random winner from those 200, and that person will get this drawing! I will fold it up and mail it in a letter sized envelope anywhere in the world!Click here to support our Kickstarter!In other news, I have a critique (that also comes with a video chat) up for your bids in the Romancing the Runoff auction! This is an auction organized by romance writers, and all the proceeds go to the Georgia senate runoff campaigns. What you get: one story critique (up to 10k words), and a video chat with me after I send the critique notes. You can use the video chat to talk about your story or to ask me any questions you have about the craft or business sides of writing. This is something I usually don’t offer, and right now it’s at a very cheap price point of only $53.50. If I were to offer this kind of one-on-one chat and critique for sale, it would definitely be priced way higher! Click here to bid on my critique!Finally, I hope you’re staying safe out there! I know that this pandemic is really tough emotionally, and I am sorry for everyone who is missing family and friends right now, especially, if, like me, you live in an area where it’s getting colder and darker every day. I’m being really careful because I definitely don’t want to risk getting or spreading COVID, and I hope you’re being careful as much as you can, too. Even though we think I had it in the spring (and I was sick for literally months), I do know a few people who have had it twice now, so I am not at all considering myself immune. That’s it for this time! please do check out those links and spreadthe word to anyone you think might be interested! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

Mershark! Plus how you can score a critique from me!

I just watched the new version of Rebecca on Netflix, and it got me thinking a lot about adaptations. I personally love them! I love seeing different versions of stories I love. I talk a little about Rebecca in this, but I don’t give away the plot, so if you absolutely don’t want to hear spoilers, this should still be okay. I do love a creepy gothic house story, though! How about you?Image description: a creepy gothic mansion (but not the one from Rebecca). How do you feel about adaptations? Love them? Hate them? Have you watched the new Rebecca? Do you plan to? What about Bly Manor (which is an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw)? This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: On Adaptations and the New Version of Rebecca

Today, I completely lost myself in… not the work I should have been doing, but rather what we might (extremely charitably) call research. Namely I spent ALLLLLLL day reading newspapers from a hundred years ago. In this episode I share a couple of gems including a Halloween ad from 1919 and a prediction for the future of skyscrapers from 1914—which I mistakenly say is from 1919 or 1920 in the podcast. Oops!Image Description: A newspaper ad from October 30th, 1919 featuring a jack o’lantern and assorted ghouls hilarioursly chasing a terrified child.Here’s the text of the ad: What To Eat On Spooks’ Night. Come, enjoy this hilarious once-a-year festivity. Tomorrow night is Halloween, the night of spooks, witches, goblins, and, above all, of whole, good-hearted laughter. Make out your list now, and telephone, or drop in the store early tomorrow — we deliver. Big 9 inch Pumkin Pies. Corn for Popping. La Crescenta Molasses. Red crisp Jonathan Apples. Jevne’s Golden Brown Doughnuts. Ginger Bread. Fresh sweet Cider. Budded Walnuts (new crop.) California Fancy Almonds. Jevne’s Fuint Nut Cake. Fort Canned Pumpkin. Salted Nuts all Varieties. Jevne’s Supreme Chocolates. Jevne’s Marshmallows For Toasting. Grinning, grotesque ghost masks; funny owl faces to slip over the head. Our Art Paper Dept. carries an extensive assortment of Halloween caps, favors, decorations, etc. H. Jevne Co. Two StoresCor Sixth & Broadway208-10 Spring StreetHome 10651Broadway 4900Do you consider pumpkin pie a Halloween food? Or any of these foods, for that matter. I think of them as more generally autumn foods, I think, and the food I most associate with Halloween now is candy, but I do think of bobbing for apples and eating doughnuts on strings as old fashioned Halloween food activities. Popcorn falls roughy into that category for me, too. But for some reason I don’t think of pumpkin pie as a food for a specific time until US Thanksgiving in the end of November. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: 100-year-old Newspapers

Today we had a clothing historian come to take my great grandmother’s wedding dress from my mother’s house. We all met up in my mother’s back yard to see the dress and find out more about it from the clothing historian. It was basically impossible to get a full picture of the dress, but I’m including some detail shots here. Image description: The bottom of the skirt of the dress (plus some of the extremely voluminous veil). Here you can see the linen lace overlay, the satin underskirt, and the beaded fringe at the hem. My great grandmother married in 1920, so this is a hundred years old! We don’t know what color the dress or the lace were to begin with. Were they much whiter? Or more of a champagne color? Our clothing historian said champagne was a popular color at the time. She also suggested that the lace could have been taken from an older gown, for instance the bride’s mother’s. This is a theory that makes sense to us since my great great grandmother would have married in probably the 1890s, and also died when my great grandmother was a young teen (12-14ish, I think). We can’t know for sure, but it would make sense for her to use some of her mother’s gown as a way of including her. Image description: a closeup of the lace overlay and the satin underskirt. The lace has a decorative scalloped edge, and there’s also a layer of tulle between the lace and the satin. Having the chance to touch this fabric made me think about how indistinct and colorless the past can seem. It’s easy to see black and white photos and assume the whole world at that time was somehow not as colorful as our present. Even with color images, we can lose touch (pun unintentional, but I’m leaving it in) with the physical sensations of life. Creative assignment for those of you who want to play along at home:What is a piece of clothing that is important to you or a character in your work? What does it look like and feel like? How do you expect it to age? Where will it be in 5, 10, 50, 100 years from now? This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: Texture and History

Moss has taken this week off of work, so we’ve been trying to do some fun vacation type activities. Of course we can’t go on an actual vacation, and we’re not even going inside anywhere other than essential trips to places like the supermarket. All of this makes vacation a little more challenging, but luckily for us we live in an area where autumn means gorgeous foliage, so we’ve been exploring the local scenery on drives. Earlier in the week we went to Gloucester and walked on the beach and saw some dahlias. Image description: variegated red and yellow dahlias with the ocean in the background.Today we drove to the west and looked at leaves. We didn’t stop anywhere so we have no pictures from today, but the reds and golds of autumn were definitely out in full force. While we were out we passed a working farm that is open to the public during normal times, and it started us wondering about field trips.We both grew up on the other side of the country, so our field trips were much different than the ones kids who grew up here get. In this area, there’s lots of focus on Massachusetts as a colony and as part of the American Revolution. So: a little creative prompt, if you want one!Memoir/creative non-fiction: Write about a typical field trip for you as a kid. Did you grow up in a place where field trips happened? Did you call them something else? If you didn’t have field trips, was there a particular place or part of local history or current profession that you would expect people to learn about? Moss remembers going to a working dairy on a field trip, for instance. Fiction: What kind of childhood experiences did your character have? Were field trips part of it? Were they fun and educational, or full of drama like the camping trip I remember taking in middle school where one of the girls claimed to have been possessed by the devil?Visual art: create a picture of one of the places you remember visiting as a child, or a physical/visual representation of something associated with that place. If you decide to do this one, let me know! I’d love to hear all about it! If you don’t want to do a prompt, but do want to tell me about your childhood excursions, I’m up for that, too! P.S. I spent all day today before our leaf drive working on my wizard’s date recap for the Wizard Seeking Wizard podcast! I also backed Constelación Magazine on Kickstarter because I am extremely excited to see this bilingual magazine! If you want to subscribe, you’ll get a capybara sticker as well as bilingual (Spanish and English) stories! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: Field Trips

Hurray! Speculative Fiction For Dreamers has funded! It’s going to be a real book! If you’re reading this before Wednesday morning, there are still a few hours left to back the Kickstarter and order a copy for yourself! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: A Celebration!

Hello! Welcome back to another October Podcast Month episode! If you’re a free subscriber, you might have noticed you didn’t get an episode on Friday. This is not because I stopped podcasting after one brief reappearance; it’s because I made Friday’s podcast for my paid subscribers! I spent all day Friday practicing for a live reading to promote the Kickstarter for Speculative Fiction For Dreamers. That Kickstarter ends Wednesday, and I’m reeeeeally hoping it meets its funding goal because I haven’t read all the other stories and poems and plays and things in the book! I need it to be real so I can! Image description: a screenshot of the Speculative Fiction for Dreamers Kickstarter as of 7:25pm Eastern time on Monday, October 19, 2020. It still needs almost $4000! Click on the image to go to the Kickstarter page and back the project! ANYWAY! Because that’s what I was focused on Friday, I decided to read that excerpt for my paid subscribers. Then for the rest of the weekend, I didn’t release podcast episodes because my original plan was always to take weekends off. And it’s a good thing, too, because I was Very Busy! This episode is all about the stuff I did and the ways I have seen people coming up with creative ways to hold social events and performances during a time when it’s not really a great idea for most of us to go out and meet each other in person. I talk about FIYAHCON and The Ignyte Awards, which were wonderful, and recognized so many awesome creative works and people. I am particularly excited to see Strange Horizons recognized with an award at long last after being nominated so many times in the past for other awards, but not winning. The team there truly does so much work to make the science fiction community more rich and inclusive. But seriously, every person and work that won an award is amazing, and I encourage you to check all of them out!I also captained a trivia team for Clarion West and attended a cold read of a new play by Liz Duffy Adams. So many cool ways to connect with people and experience art online! Tell me some of your favorite virtual events, or how you’ve seen them go poorly. I think both sides of it are interesting and important to consider as we forge ahead in pandemic time. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: How do we pivot all our creative events to virtual settings?

Hello there! Whew, I got a little sidetracked and missed a few days! This episode is all about that kind of thing, and how to deal with it when it inevitably happens to you at some point in your creative journey. I explain how I got there (I didn’t want to talk about much on Monday after the White House issued a white supremacist statement about that day, I wasn’t feeling very well on Tuesday, on Wednesday I got caught up in a weirdly stressful quest for cat litter…), how tempting it can be to just throw in the towel and abandon a challenge, and why I’m back! I also mention that tomorrow (Friday, October 16, 2020), I’ll be part of a reading for the Speculative Fiction For Dreamers anthology. It will be streamed live at 7pm Eastern time on Matt Goodwin’s Facebook page. Image Description: A flyer for the Speculative Fiction For Dreamers reading events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: On getting off track

I just bought some candy corn today, and OMG is tastes SO GOOD. I realize candy corn is one of those polarizing foods. People love it or hate it. You may hate it, and that’s fine! You’re wrong, but also I’m cool with it and I will totally take any candy corn you want to offload!Image Description: A porcelain pumpkin box with candy corn artfully scattered around it.Yesterday we talked about taking a walk for inspiration. Today, I’m running with the candy corn idea. Assignment if you want to play along at home:Think of a seasonal food you associate with this time of year. If you can get some, take a bite! If you can’t, just imagine it in as much detail as possible. What does it taste like? What’s its texture? Is it hot or cold? Where do you imagine typically eating it? What kinds of memories do you attach to it? What kinds of moods and stories would you assume would feature it? Consider how it would feel to subvert the typical mood. I mentioned a couple of stories I could think of involving candy corn, and how it seems to lend itself to light and fluffy fun stories. What would it be like to use it in a sinister context? I don’t really want to because I’m happy with it being fun and fluffy, but maybe you DO want to! Let me know what seasonal foods you think of and what you come up with! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: Can We Talk About Candy Corn?

In today’s podcast, I talk about podcasts! I start by talking about podcasts that I am currently involved in, and then explore some podcasts I am currently enjoying. First, my main podcast is This Is Why We’re Like This, which I cohost with Geoffrey Pelton. It’s all about rewatching movies and tv shows we saw as children and seeing how they hold up to an adult rewatch. We’ve done a ton of these, starting about one year ago, but our most recent ones are on The Land Before Time and a made for TV retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night called Motocrossed. I’m currently working on editing a more serious discussion of Alex Haley’s Queen for this one. Next, I recently played a wizard named Flora Bunnyhop on a fiction podcast called Wizard Seeking Wizard, and I just got word that Flora got picked to go on a wizard date, so another episode of that one is in the works! Podcasts I mention that don’t involve me: Arden is a fictional true crime investigation audio drama podcast (with humor and some supernatural elements). Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet is podcast where the hosts critique one star Yelp reviews.My Friend Chuck is a podcast by erotica author Chuck Tingle and comedian McKenzie Goodwin, which is a lot of fun.You Must Remember This is a documentary podcast by Karina Longworth about the history of Hollywood. She breaks hers into seasons, and I particularly recommend tho ones on The Song of the South. Very Amusing is a podcast by theme park journalist Carlye Wisel, where she digs into questions like where theme park food comes from. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: All about podcasts!

In this fourth installment of my October Podcast Month challenge, I talk about getting inspiration for stories or other creative works by taking walks. Assignment if you want to try this yourself:Go on a walk around your neighborhood and pay attention to what you see, hear, feel, etc. Really embrace the physicality of being in this place. What are the seasonal themes you notice? Plants? Decorations? Weather? What emotional tones can you imagine going with these? To go one step further into character development, pick a particular thing your pass by and imagine what kind of person would be associated with it. Today I passed this origami pterasaur mobile in someone’s front yard, and it made me smile and also wonder about the person who made it. Image Description: three pterasaurs fly in a mobile made of twigs. Maybe these are actually just supposed to be cranes? I don’t know. I just saw pterasaurs! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

October Podcast Month: Caught in the Rain

Whimsy and insight from an award-winning editor omgjulia.substack.com

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