Stone Soup Digest 09.09.22

Sarah Gailey -

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.

This week I am thrilled and delighted to announce KNOW YOUR STATION, a brand new five-issue limited series I’m creating with the brilliant Liana Kangas, from BOOM! Studios!

KNOW YOUR STATION #1 features main cover art by Liana Kangas, with some amazing variant covers by Becca Carey, and Jenn Woodall! Check out the full announcement here, and let your local comic shop know you’ll be picking up your copies starting this December!!

The Vampire Slayer #5 is available wherever you get your comics!

After a demonic culinary encounter, Buffy, already hurt after being sidelined by the rookie slayer who's supposed to be her friend, is even more emotionally injured by Faith keeping secrets. But even worse, Buffy goes to Xander for antiparasitic medicine, because she may have contracted something far worse than food poisoning…

Find it at your local comic book shop, or get it online from Kindle/comiXology or Barnes & Noble. Check out the preview here!

Shing Yin Khor’s Fake Games for Real People

Shing Yin Khor creates some of my favorite art anywhere. This week they had a gallery show in New Mexico. You can buy pieces from the show, and I strongly recommend you do – having Shing Yin’s art in your home is profoundly life-enhancing.

The Little God of the Staircase by Meg Elison for The Dark

Meg Elison’s new short story is deeply unsettling in a truly delicious way. Readers who generally avoid content relating to self-injury or sexual assault should be advised that this story contains both and handles them with appropriate care. Elison brings the goods, as always.

Tales from the Trunk with Neon Yang

Friend of the newsletter Hilary Bisenieks has released a new episode of their fabulous podcast Tales from the Trunk highlighting author Neon Yang, whose upcoming book Genesis of Misery comes out September 27th.

Visit a Neighbor: devils & fools from @3am.tarot

This truly unique newsletter features longform tarot writing, spreads, and essays about divination. An excellent subscription for anyone looking to become more familiar with tarot.

Here is the most recent installment, on fairness. Sign up here!

I’m Reading: Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese – and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby – and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it – Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family – and raise the baby together?

An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.

After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life.

But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives.

Add The Weight of Blood to your tbr here. Order it from your local independent bookseller, or order it via Bookshop.org to support independent booksellers throughout the US and the UK. For international shipping, you can try Barnes & Noble. If you prefer audiobooks, here’s a Libro.fm link. You can also request The Weight of Blood from your local library — here’s how to get in touch with them. And if you need to order from the Bad River Website, here’s a link that will leverage your order for good.

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