On the far side of the world

Happy Disability Pride

I have made a little disability pride flag calendar out of audio fiction to celebrate. This is the first of three. Yep yep yep, with some help I've found enough pods to release three of these through July, isn't that exciting? Plus templates if you want to build your own or play BINGO

Information (= sometimes spoilers) below

Absolutely No Adventures: (fantasy) A young baker is the chosen one of about a dozen prophecies. He's happy to help out, on the condition that he will be going on absolutely no adventures.

Community Cat News: (Comedy) A radio show by cats, for cats

The Far Meridian: (Slipstream/magical realism) An agorophobic young woman wakes up to find her lighthouse home has moved somewhere completely new overnight. As it continues to travel, she uses the opportunity to look for her missing brother.

Middle:Below: (Supernatural/ Urban Fantasy) Two humans, a ghost, and a cat go on various adventures together to fix ghostly problems.

Sidequesting: (fantasy, adventure, all-ages) Rion is an adventurer like no other: they only do side quests! A wholesome show about avoiding the plot

Skyjacks: Courier's Call: (TTRPG, fantasy, adventure, all-ages) In a world of magic, sky pirates, and giant, rideable birds, three teens become apprentices aboard a flying postal ship.

Starfall: (Fantasy, adventure) A runaway swordswoman finds a place to escape her past with a travelling acting troupe, and discovers the literal and metaphorical magic of the theatre.

Stories From Ylemore: (Fantasy, all-ages) In a modern magical world, three kids (a witch, a werewolf, and a curse-bearer) go on adventures together and make a podcast about it.

The Vesta Clinic: (Sci-fi) Patient records from an interspecies walk-in doctor's clinic on the edge of human space.

Wizard Seeking Wizard: (Comedy, fantasy, romance) A dating show for wizards, hosted by a match-mage to pass the time after being trapped in an orb by his apprentice. Every episode, hear from four wizards looking to go on a romance, friendship, rivalry, or collaborator date, and then next episode hear from the two that got paired up about how their date went.

Me & AU - a sweet sapphic romance set in a fandom for a CW-ish fantasy tv series

Unprescribed Journeys - guided meditations that get a little weird

Travelling Light - a sci fi travelogue with a narrator whose voice and style is like a warm blanket

October Jones & Fish With Legs - a fantasy adventure that is just as fun as the title implies

Waiting For October: Follow along as Karo introduces their girlfriend, Yvonne, to a parallel world from which we draw our stories, and some of the many (perfectly lovely) monsters within, all while they try to understand their own place in October.

Wanderer's Journal: Two strangers each find a magical journal that allows them to record their voice, which can then be read or played back by the other. They each go through their own journey while trying to understand these journals that link them.

The Sound Museum: Follow along with Paris as they seek out and record impossible sound artifacts for their museum.

StarTripper!!: Join Feston Pyxis on a roadtrip through the cosmos, as he goes off in search of the best and wildest experiences the galaxy has to offer!

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

This week I reached the 30k words mark in my next novel and made lots of notes on a new nonfiction book I’m planning to pitch. It was a very writer-y sort of week.

Wonder

I recently met fantasy author Jim Butcher. It was important to me to thank him in person for writing a series I love AND for getting my dad into reading for pleasure. I gave him a copy of Strange Animals and a week later he kindly posted a recommendation of my novel. I also recently reached out to Justin McElroy. I’ve loved Justin’s work for over a decade. I asked if he would do a book event with me in West Virginia in August and he said yes. The wonder here is just that people will surprise you with kindness. I often forget this. And… wonderfully… I’m often reminded that there’s more kindness in the world than I expect.

Whimsy

If you lace your fingers over your head, you have become your own hat. If you think of your body as dangling from your arms, then your entire body is now a hat. But not your head. The moment your head is part of the hat, then your hands are no longer atop a head and you are no longer a hat. And that’s basically philosophy. More or less.

Writing Prompt

Think of a commonplace object or moment and frame it as fantastical or legendary. The trick is to lend the exercise an element of truth. For example, a candle is a tiny pet god because it lets us tame a grand, devouring force and stick it in a little jar on our coffee table.

Consider: what is a cup of coffee? How is the sun involved in that cup (the coffee beans)? How is the earth involved (the clay in your mug)? What else? Keep going.

Bonus for Supporters: A Poem (unlock on my Patreon or Substack)

@post-brahminism check it