5 Awesome Things Make A Tempest Happy

  1. Apex Magazine’s special Arab/Muslim issue is now live and is full of brilliant, beautiful, amazing writing. Go read.
  2. Cat Valente — editor of Apex Magazine — celebrated the release of her book this past weekend. The Habitation of the Blessed: A Dirge for Prester John vol 1 is available in many fine bookstores and in eBook form. I have a copy of this book and have been clinging to it jealously ever since it was handed to me.
  3. If the name Cat Valente doesn’t get you excited, and you’re all: WTF is Prester John, then partake of this video that explains it all with action figures. It is the best thing on the Internet right now.
  4. The other book I got my hands on this weekend is M. K. Hobson’s The Native Star. People, you need this book.
  5. The 50th issue of Clarkesworld Magazine is out and, lo, it contains fiction by two people who I am not only proud to call friends, but who regularly shake me to the core with how wonderful their fiction is: Genevieve Valentine and N. K. Jemisin. That is too much awesomeness for one issue, right? Read it, anyway.

Fashionista

Fashionista

I think that Genevieve and I are probably the only people in our circle of friends who will find her column today (Fantasy’s Guide to Holiday Fashion) uproariously hilarious. Back in the day we both worked for S/h/e/F/i/n/d/s, though she was a writer and I was a web monkey. We actually first met at a holiday cocktail party for the in-NY cadre of employees that featured some of the most expensive (tiny portions of) cheese ever.

Genevieve perfectly captured the style and tone and feel of our holiday fashion guides with her piece. I mean, really, if those clothes were actually in style, this seriously would have been published at SF. I’ve leave you to determine what that says about the state of our culture.