Links: Kickstarter, Cosplay, & Witches

Workspace with computer, journal, books, coffee, and glasses.It’s Wednesday! But man, I wish we were closer to the weekend. My fall allergies have made a resurgence and Benadryl reduces me to a useless, blanketed lump. Hopefully your week is going better!

The Book Smugglers have started a Kickstarter campaign! Sarah has already backed the project and I probably will as well:

In 2018, The Book Smugglers turns 10 years old—and it’s now time to level up!

We want to do more. We want to increase how much we pay our authors (from $0.06 per word to $0.08). We want to invite new, paid, regular contributors to our website, and we want to make our website bigger and better than ever—which means we need help with ongoing maintenance and performance. We want to be able to commission some freelance help with all aspects of our ebook development line, including proofing and production work. The more help we get, the more we can do.

At the end of the day, this is what our Kickstarter campaign is all about—more cool stuff from your friendly neighborhood Book Smugglers.

Any Book Smugglers fans out there?

From Reader Elizabeth S. – Tor is testing out the new Basic Witches spellbook. I’ve seen this book all over social media and it sounds kind of kickass.

Jaya Saxena and Jess Zimmerman have collaborated on the perfect book for our times: Basic Witches: How to Summon Success, Banish Drama, and Raise Hell with Your Coven. It sounds silly, right? But it’s a great guide to useful everyday spellcraft like “How to Clothe Yourself in Literal Darkness,” “A Spell to Ditch Friend Envy,” and “A Spell for Embracing Failure.” And just when you think it’s a fluffy novelty book, you try one of the spells and discover that they’re actually helpful? And that you feel better after working them? It’s pretty cool.

The book sounds like a great way to kickstart some self-care!

On Twitter, there was some hubbub about a male-directed, female-remake of The Lord of the Flies. The idea garnered some hefty criticism, especially from author Libby Bray who wrote Beauty Queens – a novel where a group of beauty queens are stranded on an island. Her response on women in entertainment is truly amazing:

We don’t often get women, though. Real women.

We don’t often get Amy Adams in Arrival. Or Parminder Nagra in Bend It Like Beckham. Viola Davis in How to Get Away with Murder. Ruth Negga in Loving. Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. Or the sublime Issa Rae in Insecure which is, to me, hands-down the best, most multi-layered, laugh-out-loud and moving show on TV about women right now. That it was created and shepherded by Ms. Rae every step of the way can be felt in each lived-in beat.

That’s what I long for: movies and TV shows with complicated women who have rich inner lives, flaws, strengths, surprises, and frustrations. Women with doubts, fears, longings, petty moments, and philosophical and existential struggles just like those Romanticized Smoking French Dudes™ and Bukowski Wannabes™ are allowed to have. Women who get their periods in the grocery store and have to go into the sketchy back bathroom/mop closet so they can shove a wad of purse-Kleenex into their panties. Women who don’t always know what to say to their spouses or kids because they fear if they let it out, there’ll be no stopping the vomitous flow they hold back most of the time. Women who fantasize about sex with strangers on the bus because they’re bored and it’s a way to pass 10 minutes. Women advised to “try shopping at Chico’s!” who respond, “Why? Did my vagina die in the night?” Women trying to get taken seriously at a professional party full of dick. Women who have to mirror-pep talk themselves into doing what feels scary. Women who drop everything and race for a cab when a friend texts, “It’s cancer.” Women like all of the women I personally know.

I’m not crying, you’re crying!


Laptop Cord Winders

I have one of these from Above the Fray, and it's great for keeping my MacBook cord contained and safe from being pulled or frayed. There are earbud winders, too! -SW


In more witch & sexism news, two entrepreneurs created a fake, male co-founder to deal with developers:

Ms Gazin and Ms Dwyer said they came up with the idea for Keith Mann because they were struggling to get the services they needed from graphic designers and web developers.

Potential collaborators in the male-dominated tech world were slow to reply and sometimes rude, Ms Dwyer told the BBC.

“The responses were cold and we were not taken seriously,” she said, adding: “Developers didn’t use our names in their emails; one used the term ‘ok girls’.”

I wonder how the developers feel now that they know “Keith Mann” was actually two women.

….

If you need a dose of cuteness, have your heard of the Cosplay Parents?

Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!

Comments are Closed

  1. Crystal says:

    I have to say, my favorite cosplay I’ve seen in awhile was the 85 year old lady at Dragoncon that dressed as Olenna Tyrell from GoT. She even carried a sign that said “IT WAS ME” and had on “Deal With It” sunglasses. Icon status.

  2. Msb says:

    I’ve got to look up Libby Bray’s work. This is the second impressive thing I’ve seen.

    I used to suffer badly from allergies in spring and fall but found great relief from eating 1 spoonful of locally made, NOT heat-treated, honey every day. Heat treating kills the pollen in honey, as well as making it runny. The effects took about 9 months to peak, but I noticed improvement much sooner. Instead of loving on antihistamines for several weeks per year, I now just get a little sniffly at peak pollen season. Sorry to hear you’re having such a bad time!

  3. Emily A says:

    “Women who get their periods in the grocery store and have to go into the sketchy back bathroom/mop closet so they can shove a wad of purse-Kleenex into their panties. ”

    Uh… no! this movie was made and not particularly well. please no.

  4. Crystal says:

    @Msb, her Diviners series is excellent.

  5. marjorie says:

    I just want to testify that Beauty Queens is superb. Hilarious, feminist, pointed, imaginative, weird as fuck (I kept thinking Jonathan Swift would be so into this if he were not, y’know, dead) and so thoughtful about what it means to be a girl in a patriarchal world. It’s one of my go-to gifts for teenage girls with a sense of humor.

  6. Vicki says:

    @Msb As a pediatrician, I often recommend local honey for allergies. Seems to help plus a tsp at bedtime coats the throat and the child (or older) sleeps much better.

  7. Melissa says:

    My dad was a beekeeper and swore by honey for allergies. I’m not sure about how sound the science behind it is but unless you’re diabetic it can’t hurt. I did just find out that the world health organisation says honey is as good or better than most cough drops /syrups for sore throats. It coats it and is a mild antiseptic.

  8. Leena says:

    I’ve loved Libba Bray’s work since the “Great and Terrible Beauty/Gemma Doyle” series. It’s beautiful , gothic and feminist. I absolutely hated Beauty Queens. It’s clearly satire but it was applied so heavily…and tongue in cheek I couldn’t take it seriously. It’s like watching a horror movie and thinking you’re going to get satire like the Scream movies and instead getting the Scary Movie franchise. But Hollywood if you’re listening I wouldn’t mind someone buying the rights to Gemma Doyle and actually doing something with it. Someone buys those rights literally every few years but nothing ever comes of it.

  9. Crystal F. says:

    Feel better! *sending over lots of tea, honey, and good books*

    My mother had to avoid going into the backyard this summer because every time she set foot back there her allergies almost literally knocked her out cold. Good thing it was cooler this year because we couldn’t even have the backdoor open.

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