Stone Soup Digest 09.23.22

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.

Dream Foundry Writing Contest

I’m a judge for this year’s Dream Foundry Writing Contest! They interviewed me about what makes work stand out, how to find joy in your craft, and what I have in common with a jellyfish. (Okay, I added the last part without them asking me to.) Go check it out!

Eternally Yours, edited by Patrice Caldwell

This anthology features a When Harry Met Sally-inspired story I wrote about gorgons, a shipwreck, and a kind of love that can defy fate.

Vampires and merpeople, angels and demons--the stories in this anthology imagine worlds where the only thing more powerful than the supernatural, is love.

A girl in a graveyard goes on an unexpected date, a shipwrecked sailor makes a connection on a forbidden island, a piano melody summons a soul mate. Creatures of folktales and legend, of land and sea, of centuries past and life after life, all wrapped into one spellbinding compendium. Once you sink into its pages, it'll never let you go.

Add Eternally Yours 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 Eternally Yours 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.

How to help Puerto Rico

Hurricane Fiona recently made landfall in Puerto Rico. The storm, communities across the island are without water and power, and a huge portion of the population has been isolated by flooding, landslides, and destroyed infrastructure. Here are some organizations working to help those affected:

  • AgitArte is an organization of working class artists and cultural organizers who work at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and ideology. AgitArte is currently mobilizing resources for mutual aid centers.
  • Direct Relief is a disaster aid organization currently maintaining backup power systems at health facilities, as well as distributing emergency medicine, backup power sources, and mobile health units across the island.
  • Techos Pa’ Mi Gente is a  housing rehabilitation organization with a specific focus on rebuilding homes that have been destroyed by hurricanes.
  • Taller Salud is a mutual aid network oriented towards women’s health and wellness. They are currently collecting and distributing toiletries including menstrual products, food, solar lanterns, water filters, and other essentials.
  • Brigada Solidaria Del Oeste is a mutual aid network that is currently collecting and distributing water purification tablets, solar lanterns, water filters, first-aid kits, non-perishable foods, and other essentials.
  • Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico is a local hunger relief organization. They run the Centro de Apoyo Mutuo, a community support center and community kitchen.

Cover reveal for The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

Girls Make Movies by Mallory O’Meara, illustrated by Jen Vaughn

Preorders are now open for O'Meara's upcoming book about working in the film industry!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mallory O'Meara (@malloryomeara)

Hurdle

Apparently word games are my new solace and you had better believe Hurdle has become the highlight of my day. In this one, you play Wordle four times in a row, then use the solutions to those four puzzles as clues for a final round. Deeply satisfying.

Visit a Neighbor: Bad Astronomy Newsletter by Phil Plait

Phil Plait is an astronomer, science communicator, and generally tubular person. His newsletter is a great way to learn about space and the ever-expanding universe we inhabit. Newsletter subscribers get meteorites sometimes!

Check out the most recent installment of the Bad Astronomy Newsletter here, and subscribe here!

I’m Reading: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess's future hangs entirely in the balance.

Middle school is the worst, especially for David Bravo. He doesn't have a single class with his best (okay, only) friend, Antoine. He has to give a class presentation about his heritage, but he's not sure how – or even if – he wants to explain to his new classmates that he's adopted. After he injures Antoine in an accident at cross-country practice, he just wishes he could do it all over.

He doesn't expect his wish to summon a talking, shapeshifting, annoying dog, Fea, who claims that a choice in David's past actually did put him on the wrong timeline... and she can take him back to fix it.

But when their first try (and the second, and the third) is a total disaster, David and Fea are left scrambling through timeline after timeline – on a quest that may lead them to answers in the most unexpected places.

Here’s what Mark had to say about their experience working on this book:

I worked with Stephanie Stein to write my first story from the point of view of a transracial adoptee like myself, and I’m so thankful to have had a guide in her as I attempted something so personal. The cover is yet another banger from Helder Oliveira, who also did the cover for The Insiders. And this one has a number of little Easter eggs in it, too!

You Only Live Once, David Bravo has gotten starred reviews from both Kirkus Reviews and Publisher’s Weekly!

Add You Only Live Once, David Bravo 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 You Only Live Once, David Bravo 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.

Eleven-year-old Ruby is a Black girl who loves studying insects and would do just about anything to be an entomologist, much to the grossed-out dismay of her Gramma. Ruby knows everything there is to know about insects so when she finds the weirdest bug she’s ever seen in her front yard, she makes sure no one is looking and captures it for further study.

But then Ruby realizes that the creature isn't just a regular bug. And it has promptly burned a hole through her window and disappeared. Soon, random things around the neighborhood go missing, and no one's heard from the old lady down the street for a week. Ruby and her friends will have to recover the strange bug before the feds do.

Ruby is the science hero we’ve all been waiting for!

Add Ruby Finley Vs. the Interstellar Invasion 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 Ruby Finley Vs. the Interstellar Invasion 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