Iz a Newsletter #6

IZ BOOK!

Hello. This is the most exciting announcement I’m going to ever get to make until the hypothetical birth of my theoretical children. And in some ways, this book is like a child, in that we are about ten months away from it officially existing.

TLDR: North Americans, you can now preorder SUBLIMATION wherever books are sold.

AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, INDIGO links for purchase here, and the official pitch (which, my god did we work hard on) is below:

A lot of people have kindly said some very nice things (Scott Westerfeld! Vajra Chandrasekera! Anton Hur! Jade Song! Ai Jiang! Stephanie Feldman! Seth Dickinson!) which you can go look at but would take too long to list here.

And, finally, with all the pathos in my heart, please preorder my novel so I do not have to return to the law firm. I would love to keep writing books for you guys instead of writing contracts for the rest of my life.  

IZ CONTENT: WORLDCON

I’ve never been to Worldcon until this year! I was going to go last year to Glasgow, and then I had a bunch of work/deadlines around the time, alas. This year, I planned better and had this in my schedule from like… January.  So! We made it! It was exhausting and exhilerating and I didn’t even really go to any parties because I kept falling asleep! 10/10 experience.

My first impression of Worldcon was that the whole damn endeavor struck me as an interesting patchwork relic being ship-of-theseus’ed into the future. The structure of Worldcon—a new site, a new committee—each year does make it feel like the community is consistently having to relearn the same lessons, with all the issues that entails. On the other hand, its remarkable to me that this convention is held every year organized by fans for fans.

It’s also interesting seeing “old” fandom meet “new” fandom. Compared to NYCC or SDCC or any of the big pop culture / anime conventions, it’s a lot older, but there were a surprisingly large number of twenty-somethings which was cool to see, on account of my also being a twenty-something. And like with a lot of other spaces, the older generations tended to be less diverse, and the newer generations tended to be more diverse—I’m saying this mostly without judgment, I think in general an Increase In Diversity Over Time is good, even if There Was Less Diversity In The Past . Very curious what Worldcon will look like in another ten years.  

Another crossover I hadn’t expected to be so apparent was that Worldcon is half professional con (lots of authors/editors/publishing ppl etc etc), half fan con (filk/costumes/fandom), and it’s weird seeing all of this in the same place. It’s reminiscent of the way that doing Writer and Publishing stuff is very much a hobby…until it’s not.  

Final verdict: Weird and fun. I would go again.

Things I did for the first time while I was there:

1. Was on a panel with a large enough audience that it overflowed the room. The other writers on that panel? No big deal. Just John Scalzi, Becky Chambers, and George R.R. Martin. It was a lot of fun and totally not intimidating at all. I’ve done panels before, but never one this large. Would I do it again? Yeah. Probably won’t jumpscare GRRM this time, though—if you want to read about that, I talk about it on bluesky here.  

2. Signed stuff! Two people were wearing Wow if True merch, and I owe them my life. My editor also surprised me with an ABM to use as a prop for my table, too, and truly that made the experience feel more authorial.  

3. Was “in conversation” with my friend Tim for his book launch at Hugo House! I’d never been the guy doing the “hey man hows the book” stuff before. Hopefully I did a good job. If you like murder mysteries, semi-sentient boats, and Florida sinking into the ocean, then Salvagia is the book for you.

4. Had a table talk! I was lowkey nervous because having a conversation with a bunch of strangers is actually not my forte (my forte is sitting at my desk, making Posts), but it was cool to talk with people in a setting that wasn’t “a big room.” I actually like talking about writing every once in a while, so I had a good time and I hope everyone who came had a good time too.

5. Was up for a Hugo & went to the ceremony! This was a great excuse to get dressed up, I met a bunch of cool people at the pre-ceremony reception, and I liked how the other finalists for short story and I were all dressed essentially in very fancy prom dresses. Afterparty? Also fun, although by then I was desperate to take my contacts out so left a little early. I also have some opinions about the Hugo Awards ceremony this year, but I will refrain from commentary other than to say that I was not unhappy to lose, if it meant I didn’t need to participate, and that I think the khoreo team and Kamilah Cole were shafted during the ceremony.  On the other hand, I’m very psyched for Neil Clarke for his win!

6. Ran a workshop! About twice as many people as I expected showed up, so I kind of had to pivot on the fly on how I was going to run it. It ended up being more of a lecture / Q&A session, but people seemed to like it. Hopefully everyone came away from it with something they could turn into an actual story.

Advice I’d have for first time participants, from another first time participant:

1. Go with a posse. I brought J, which was great, because J’s good at talking to people and also will carry things for me (thank you J…) and I spent most of the convention hanging out with people I knew in little groups, which was good because My God Is The Convention Full of People!

2. Ancillary to the above, arrange meetups with people you know online but not IRL. This was one of the highlights of the experience for me, meeting people who I had talked to online for months & years and seeing them in the flesh. A special shout out to the Short Fiction Book Club, it was so cool to meet y’all.

3. Don’t go looking to “network.” Go in looking to make friends. If things come up organically, they do, and if not, hey, at least you made a friend. I kind of broke this rule because I came in with ABMs to hand people—but in my defense, for every ABM I gave someone, that was one less ABM I needed to cart back home. So really, everyone who got one was doing me a huge favor.

4. Most authors are just some guy, especially if they’re not “famous.” You can talk to them regular style. I was intimidated a couple of times when I went to go talk to someone and then I was like oh. You’re just some guy! (And if you’re intimidated talking to me? Dude. I am just some guy.)

5. Pick panels based on who’s on them, not on the topic of the panel. Things go off the rails more often than not, topic-wise, and you’re probably here to see specific authors, not hear about a specific topic.

6. Backpack + sneakers. I brought way cooler boots and cooler clothing and ended up never wearing them.

7. And generally, the barcon / all the ancillary stuff around the “official” convention is more fun than “official programming.” But hey, that’s true of every event, right?  

ok. enough of my thoughts. Please preorder my book, which contains my other thoughts. Bye!