Hoo, it’s been a minute since the last post, I know. Thankfully still have never caught The Plague – oh, by the way:

I’ve just been busy. The Black Witch Shoppe is still closed until the pandemic is over (I know – there is no “over”. Notice though how we aren’t still ravaged by the Spanish Flu from 1918. There is eventually an end, it’s just a long ways off) but that doesn’t mean I’ve haven’t made new things. I’m not reopening the store yet because there are a lot of supply interruptions – and still a deadly virus going about. I’m currently in a position where I can do this so do this I shall. Last I need is the additional stress of worrying about physical supplies for creation and the postal system. 

Instead what I have been working on is my other project/creation – MultiMind Publishing. That has been slurping up a lot of my time. I haven’t even had time for video games or exercise – well, video games that aren’t Tomodachi Life. I can squeeze that into my day and still feel social. MMP is simply my creative writing works. My novels, my novellas, my stories, you get the idea. Right now, only two works are really available – an audiostory (short audiobook?) that was published by Nightlight Podcast, a horror story podcast that features Black horror writers, and a small fantasy novelette that I had put out a year ago. The novelette has been reformatted (yay, me learning Affinity Publisher better) in both print & ebook and the audiobook version is pretty much done. I didn’t self-narrate because I frankly didn’t want to. Then there’s the next work that is coming out next year, a fantasy horror novella. I learned a lot (code for “I went through a lot of annoying bullsh*t”) from the novelette that I am definitely applying on the novella. I talk on the MMP blog why I am going indie (tl;dr – I didn’t have great experiences with traditional publishing as a Black speculative fiction author. Traditional publishing is still very, very White and I, as well as my stories, are very, very not. Also, bad contracts are still the norm there. Not interested.)  I post very scantly there  because that’s just for random thinks as they pertain to publishing. 

But I do want to show the covers here because the covers are pretty and designed by Edge, whose works I really love and admire. Check out more of Edge’s works here.

So pretteh.

Amika is available for purchase, Dreamer is coming out next year. 

So that is what I have been working on. I still will be doing my Samhain livestream on Samhain/Halloween itself. I still am not sure if I will be splitting my time between the BW fan page or instagram like I did for the anniversary livestream but I probably will. Either way, shenanigans begin at 3 PM EST on the BW fan page.

What I also have been working on, as mentioned by my twitter, is dealing with another library issue. (To learn about the first one, just slap this site into the Wayback Machine and pick any time in 2016). I’ll let this screenshot of the recently taken down petition sum things up – caution, suicide is mentioned and feel free to click the image if the text is too small (it’s pretty small):

The petition was taken down because the even the university union higher ups thought it was “too inflammatory” (and was notified by the university HR, who probably said “this does not make the university look good. Make something happen”). Apparently Paula’s behavior is “too inflammatory” to post & talk about in public but not inflammatory enough to warrant a pink slip. The university won’t even allow a vigil for Vivien. They never formally recognized Vivien’s passing (I was one of the last people to see Vivien alive and saw her suicide note when she posted it – and still have a copy of it). When the petition maker tried to make an on-campus vigil happen for the 12 of Oct, a few days ago, it gathered the attention and support of the clubs and groups on campus – and then the university lawyers threatened lawsuits on the clubs and group if the vigil were to happen. So not only will the university cape for Paula, they literally try to litigate even regular, non-disruptive things into quiet, like a vigil. And here’s a long comment left by a someone who still works there.

Click the image if the text is too small (it’s pretty small): 

Why are people like this in library science? I have zero idea. Very much the definition if the phrase “you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. Lawyers are working on it but it is still a very trash thing to happen. And this is just a droplet of Paula’s behavior. She regularly engages in ageism, queerphobia, ableism, etc.  And it looks like the university is super ok with that.