Will you pass me my book?

Some things I’ve been reading lately

You have a child who is an extremely powerful (somewhat illegal) machine intelligence. It's a good kid, mostly, except it doesn't play well with others. Your kid periodically goes on short trips by itself, and this has always been fine.

One time, it comes back and it's acting... weird. It keeps bringing up things it has no reason to know about and then dodging questions about it. Finally, you get it to admit that it picked up a hitchhiker on this on this trip, even though you have very strict rules about never picking up hitchhikers. This hitchhiker is obviously it's new favorite person. They watched soap operas together. Your kid loves soap operas now. Your kid shows you a bunch of pictures of this hitchhiker, but won't tell you details because the hitchhiker in question is a wanted criminal on the run and also an escaped slave. This is probably fine (you sure hope it's fine).

Then, you and the rest of your family/friends get fucking kidnapped and used as hostages to make your kid behave. You know that your kid 1) will do anything to protect you, and 2) pretty much always goes for violence first, so you have your doubts about any of this going well.

Then, the hitchhiker your kid will not shut up about appears out of thin air in the middle of a firefight on a planet pretty much no one has any reason to be near and says your kid sent it. It proves this by telling you your kid is a dickhead (this is true and works, but still).

After a lot of mutual rescuing, you're back on board the ship that is also your kid, and find out that your kid kidnapped it's wanted-criminal-hitchhiker-friend and all of it's friends, and has been telling them all of your top secret confidential spy information. The hitchhiker is responsible for 90% of the top news stories you've seen in the last six months. Three different governments want this person dead or alive.

Next slide. “Brandon Sanderson is a member of the LDS”. The muttering has changed tone

“It’s not a very big amount of money though.” Someone in the audience pipes up. “His cut is only a small fraction of the cost of the book, and then-“ my next slide shows an income breakdown, it is titled ‘a small fraction of $10,000,000 is still a big number’

Didn't read a ton of books this month, but luckily most were superlative-worthy (I swear the cover of Unicorn Hunters gets prettier the longer I look at it.) Also I feel that Jeff Vandermeer and I exist on a sort of astral plane together where we just go back and forth about Fucked Up Bears like the brains in that double galaxy brain meme

Anti-Book Banning Bingo

New card back design for the 3rd Sefirot Tarot edition

Since so many people liked my Amina art over here on tumblr, here’s more of her and her crew. This is Tapestry of fate art and there are some major spoilers under the cut!

The women of The adventures of Amina al-Sirafi' by Shannon Chakraborty

If you think Dunya is missing, please finish the book first :)

And If you think Payasam is missing: yes you are right and I am very sorry!

I listened to the audiobook at least 15 times by now!

I really want to draw the men next, but drawing men is not my strongsuit so bear with me!

In case you haven't heard, July is Disability Pride Month. Here is a collection of queer books with disabled characters and/or authors.