Stone Soup Digest 04.28.23

Welcome to the Stone Soup Weekly Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

I’m sick! I’ve tried to write a decent introduction to this newsletter about twenty times, and every single time, my brain has slid off it like a pat of butter hissing away in a ripping hot pan. Being sick all the time is boring but I guess it means the immunosuppressants are doing their job. Anyway, I’ll leave you with this, and it’s not just the cold-y flu-y crud in my system talking: I think savory carrot cake should be a thing. Sure, carrots are sweet, but that doesn’t keep them from bringing their A-game to roasts and soups. Why shouldn’t carrot cake have herbs and chicken powder in it? There are people from our planet living in outer space right now. Surely carrot cake can join us in this, the future.

Anyway, let’s do a newsletter.

Join the Fight Against Book Bans

Book bans are a dangerous and fundamentally evil tool of fascism, and at this point, they feel overwhelming. If you’re like me and you want to know what to do in the face of what feels like a rising threat, here’s a huge thread with links to resources and actions you can take, plus an article from Tor.com with ways you can help.

Awards Nominations

The window to nominate folks for the Hugo Awards closes this weekend! If you’re looking to complete your ballot, check out the Stone Soup eligibility round-up, which features hundreds of links to amazing work from folks all around the world. You may note that this newsletter is eligible for Best Fanzine—if you’ve got room on your ballot, I’d be honored to take up a space.

Fit For the Gods Cover Reveal on Tor.com

Featuring stories by a bestselling, cross-genre assortment of some of the most exciting writers working today, Fit for the Gods is an anthology of gender-bent, queered, race-bent, and inclusive retellings from the enchanting and eternally popular world of Greek myth. It’s available August 1st from Vintage and includes my a reprint of my short story Wild to Covet. Go check out the cover and an exclusive excerpt!

Personal Canons Cookbook Highlight: Shing Yin Khor

This week’s Personal Canons Cookbook author is Shing Yin Khor. Shing Yin is the Eisner-winning and National Book Award finalist cartoonist of The Legend of Auntie Po. They are also an art chaos machine making strange and beautiful games, fish marionettes, fortune dispensing capsule machines, and large scale immersive installations.

Shing Yin has written a gorgeous essay about how to feed a large group of people with simplicity and abundance. The essay is accompanied by their recipe-ratio, which, when prepared, can feed as many people as you want it to. Go check out Porridge, and nourish the people you care about.

I’m Rereading: The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

In a world divided by colonialism and threaded with magic, a desperate orphan turned pirate and a rebellious imperial lady find a connection on the high seas.

The pirate Florian, born Flora, has always done whatever it takes to survive—including sailing under false flag on the Dove as a marauder, thief, and worse. Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, a highborn Imperial daughter, is on board as well—accompanied by her own casket. But Evelyn’s one-way voyage to an arranged marriage in the Floating Islands is interrupted when the captain and crew show their true colors and enslave their wealthy passengers.

Both Florian and Evelyn have lived their lives by the rules, and whims, of others. But when they fall in love, they decide to take fate into their own hands—no matter the cost.

Barnes & Noble | Local Library | Bad River Website | Find an Indie Bookstore

Featured New Release: Happy Place by Emily Henry

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.

They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

Barnes & Noble | Local Library | Bad River Website | Find an Indie Bookstore

If you’re a paying subscriber, come by the Stone Soup Supper Club for our weekly chat! I can’t wait to find out how you’re doing.

—Gailey