A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Your inner 12-year-old wants to read this novel. That child is still there, so don’t be put off by the fact that this is a middle-grade book. The hero, Mona, is 14 years old, and she has some magical sourdough starter. She also has a brave, magical gingerbread cookie, which you can see depicted on the cover art of the book holding a sword. Then things go very wrong (long story; it’s a novel, after all), and she has to save the city where she lives.

Mona is self-aware, a little snide, and more than a little resentful that such a heavy burden falls on her young shoulders. She gets wise advice and help along the way, and she winds up a hero.

The pacing is fast. The story is sometimes silly, sometimes serious, and sometimes even a bit dark, because kids — including your own inner child — want to grapple with life’s big challenges. The vocabulary might be simple, but the story explores complex themes. One of them: Is it actually good to become a hero?

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Se abre el plazo para la convocatoria “Todos los demás planetas” desde el 12:00 a.m. del 30 de septiembre a las 11:59 p.m. del 31 de octubre de 2021, (hora de España).

Las escritoras españolas Sofía Rhei y Cristina Jurado y yo buscamos ficción especulativa con perspectiva sociopolítica de género, o sea, relatos que utilicen lenguaje de una manera creativa y no conformista respecto a los roles binarios de género. Se valorarán las formas de lenguaje neutro en todas sus variantes, femeninos genéricos, expresiones lingüísticas de sociedades con más de dos géneros, géneros originales y cualquier otra opción diferente a la normatividad del masculino plural por defecto. Las narraciones que aporten términos reales de culturas nativas en las que los roles de género se entiendan de manera diversa serán extraordinariamente bien recibidas.

Entre los relatos enviados se realizará una selección que será publicada en la revista SuperSonic. Asimismo, se elegirá un relato ganador que será traducido al inglés y enviado a diversas publicaciones internacionales.

Hasta 5.000 palabras, un relato por persona, textos inéditos y escritos en español.

El resultado se anunciará en la web de la convocatoria y en las RRSS de las convocantes el 1 de febrero de 2022.

Toda la información sobre esta iniciativa se puede consultar en la web https://todoslosdemasplanetas.com.

You may have heard about “writing in the zone.” It’s a creative state where the writer or artist becomes one with the work, in the flow, totally focused. Athletes can experience this, too.

Having been a writer for a while, I can say that this rarely happens. Most of us work distracted, even if we’re trying not to multitask. The computer advises you about a program update, the dog wants your attention, you’re out of coffee, and what’s that funny smell?

Still, it can happen. I remember one time vividly. Actually, what I remember is when it ended. I’d been working on the novel Interference, which takes place on a distant planet called Pax. I felt like I was there, living in the odd and wonderful sights, the cacophony of sounds, and the scents that carried meaning.

Then I looked up. Where was I? Not on Pax. So what planet was this? A blue sky, an oxygen atmosphere, and lots of clear signs of homo sapiens dominance. Yeah, this was Earth. In fact, pretty soon I recognized the city, the building, and the year, and remembered what I was doing there.

I still had one wisp of a question. Why was I on Earth? Why not somewhere else or some other time? The answer was obvious — but not entirely satisfying. Do I really have to be here?

Here’s a bit of my family lore. When my great-grandmother was a young girl, her family fell on hard times, and she had to get a job. They were living in Milwaukee, and Pabst Brewery had recently won a blue ribbon at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, the Chicago World’s Fair. The brewery was tying blue silk ribbons on every bottle.

That was her new job. (In those days, children could work in factories that made beer.) After her first week, tying countless ribbons, she got her pay envelope. She could tell by feel that it contained only one small coin. A dime! She’d worked so hard and wanted to be so proud of the help she could give her family, but she’d earned only ten cents.

She cried all the way home on the trolley and gave the envelope to her mother, who opened it. The coin was a ten-dollar gold piece.

The disaster of Hurricane Ida in Louisiana and other southern states reminds me of an unexpected heartbreak I witnessed in 2018.

I was traveling, and on September 10, I was in Michigan eating breakfast at a Best Western motel. I was up very early, and everyone else in the breakfast room was obviously a tradesman: construction workers and truck drivers. These were strong, tough men used to going from job to job and working with their hands.

Television screens on the walls played the CNN morning news, and at one point the news ran a segment on Hurricane Florence. The mammoth storm was about to hit the Carolinas coast and cause catastrophic damage.

The room became silent and every man watched somberly. On their next job, these men, or their friends and coworkers, might be called on to haul supplies and to repair and rebuild the storm damage. They looked grim, not joyful, at the prospect of plentiful work.

Their jobs would bring them face to face with loss and grief, and the future could be hard on their hearts as well as their hands. They’d seen it before, and they were going to see again.