monthly digest: april 2025
haunted dolls, sayaka murata, and more
I said in the post announcing that I’m working on a book (dunno if you heard but: I’m working on a book…) (a book? I’m working on one?) that one possible future change was doing a monthly digest post. So I’m going to experiment with that idea. Here’s Experiment No. 1.
The monthly digests are partly an attempt to think in a slightly longer time frame. Up until now, the way I’ve done things is that I just send newsletters out whenever I feel they’re done. But now, ideally, I’d like to have some things ready in advance if they are already-recurring features—like the capsule reviews—because I want the newsletter to stay “general interest” and active even if I’m busy (while incorporating Weird Sisters stuff too).
I have made these digests their own “section” so that you can opt out of receiving them. We love an opt out at BDM Industries.… You can see how to navigate sections here.
April in fiction
This ghost story about how nobody respects haunted dolls got a bit stomped on, I fear, because my book deal announcement showed up the same day. Just goes to show you… it’s true, nobody does respect haunted dolls. Not even me:
April in posts
I sold a book, watched a sad little cartoon, stood on the shoulders of other brunettes with glasses, accepted my no longer curly hair, buried Katy Perry, crunched some numbers, and considered the aggregate dateable prospect.
April in writing abroad
April in perfume
April in Evangelion
Episode 24:
Episode 25:
Tayvangelion:
April in sad archive pulls:
RIP, Jane Gardam.
April in anecdotes that made me stare long into the middle distance
April showers bring May… posts…?
Both the end of March and almost the entirety of April were dominated by trying to get grant applications done before the deadlines passed. These are submitted and out of my hands now, which means we at BDM Industries can relax slightly.
What can we look forward to in May?
Well, my birthday…
…which will be a national holiday one day, I’m sure. But other than that? Let’s see.
A May ghost story.
This one is a bit bloody.
Some books I’ve got pre-ordered:
I’m quite excited for Bora Chung’s Red Sword (I wrote a little about her collection Cursed Bunny here). Also on pre-order for May: Donald Niedekker’s Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost, Helen Wolff’s Background for Love, Matthew Gasda’s The Sleepers, and Lincoln Michel’s Metallic Realms.
Will I write about them?
Bora Chung, eventually, but maybe not next month. Depends a lot on some other things, and she actually has TWO BOOKS coming out this year. But my copy shipped about a month early, so I, in fact, already possess it. The others, I’m not sure. It always depends on when I have time to read them and if I have something to say.
Some books I’ve been reading:
Reader
recently suggested listing some books that will probably get capsule reviews next month:Doing this requires… a level of planning in advance that I may not actually be capable of. But let’s try it. Here’s some stuff I’ve been reading this month.
Weird Sisters–adjacent:
Tales of the Dying Earth (Jack Vance)
In the Land of Time, and Other Fantasy Tales (Lord Dunsany)
The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (Clark Ashton Smith)1
Capsule reviews drafted:
This is Midnight (Bernard Taylor) (👎)
Territory of Light (Yuko Tsushima) (👍)
Quicksand (Junichiro Tanizaki) (👍)
Some Weird Sisters–related material I might write up:
I’ve been collecting memoirs / personal histories from various SFF or pulp figures: Once Around the Bloch (Robert Bloch), It’s Me, Jack Vance! (Jack Vance), The Futurians (Damon Knight), The Way the Future Was (Frederik Pohl), The Book of the Dead (E. Hoffman Price), The Pulp Jungle (Frank Gruber), and Other Spaces, Other Times (Robert Silverberg).… All of these are books I’m just reading for background material, but I think they might make a fun post down the line. I’m also still collecting them! So my guess is that this is more of a July or August post than a June post.
Movies going up on the Criterion Channel in May that I’m like oh yeah totally totally I should watch that yeah about yeah I’ll do it totally definitely:
Paper Moon, The Keep, Strange Days, A Woman of Paris, and just about everything in the “Noir and the Blacklist” series. None of these are what I’d call “hard to watch,” I’m just either in the mood to watch a movie or I’m not and lately I’m not.
Other stuff:
That In the Mouth of Madness post will be out next month.
In Evangelion, we will finally reach the end of Evangelion (not to be confused with End of Evangelion) in May. Current plan is to take a short break, then have a newsletter or two about the manga and other curiosities, and then move into End of Evangelion.
In perfume, most of the rest of the Cirrus catalog is coming up. Big, big fan of this brand! I’ve written about them here and here.
In Taylor Swift Studies, we are at the mercy of the God Empress and will dance to her tune whenever she cares to pipe it. However, Maggie Nelson wrote a chapbook or something about Taylor and Sylvia Plath, and I may or may not have a copy of it. Is there a reason to write about something almost none of you can read? Sound off in the comments, my TSS people.…
I haven’t read much Clark Ashton Smith but for some reason the two stories I have read—“The Holiness of Azédarac” (which is in the same Weird Tales as “Shambleau”) and “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” (the first story in this collection)—both have a very slapstick comedy quality to them that I did not expect at all. In “Azédarac,” for instance, a Benedictine monk named Brother Ambrose gets tricked into going back in time, where he means a sorceress named Moriamis. She seduces him by arguing with him that “when you return, anything that you have done during your stay with me will have happened no less than seven centuries ago . . . which should be long enough to procure the remission of any sin, no matter how often repeated.”
Hey that's me. Oh no Jack Vance.
Tales of the Dying Earth is like the novelization of a Frazetta airbrushing on the side of a van (complimentary)
Looking forward to that review too!