Uasdátú! Update!
Lots of exciting events on the horizon, discounted rates on subscriptions, and more!
Is fada an lá ó chuala sibh uaim! You deserve a much needed update on this newsletter. As many of you know, I spent the first part of my summer at the Oillscoil na Gaillimhe for an Irish studies program. Bhí sé go hiontach! It was amazing, and I have too many stories to share here in this moment. Suffice it to say, living in the city for a month on my own was at first terrifying, but quickly it became like home. There will be many tales to weave in the coming months about those adventures, the Irish I got to speak, and the people I met.
Obviously, there has been a lot to catch up on since coming home: side hustles to work at, writing to do, submissions to get in, etc. So, in that vein I have exciting news to share.
While in Galway I got to read at the Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, a dream of mine that I didn’t think would happen so quickly, but hopefully I’ll be back to do it again soon. I read the first two pages of my forthcoming piece in “Smut,” an anthology from Folly Journal. You can preorder the anthology from Folly directly here. It comes out September 5! You can watch part of the reading on Instagram:
To intrigue you, “Fin de Siècle,” tells of an evening in a Paris brothel in the 1890s. Our narrator, Clare, along with her companion Mr. Lis, confesses her desire for women, particularly that of another woman she grew up with on the Curragh of Kildare. Through the unfolding evening with a brothel worker, we learn of Clare and Mr. Lis’s sordid pasts, their shared trauma and desire, and get glimpses into the patriarchal and colonial world that produces a woman like Clare—angry, repressed, but yearning for a different world. Rest assured, you’ll be getting many more stories about her from me.
But that isn’t the only piece coming from me this fall. On September 20, I will have another short story, “The Archer,” coming out as an online exclusive in Gnome & Bone Magazine’s “Vermilion Cinders” issue. This is a piece that I lovingly crafted a few years ago now, but finally came together in recent revisions. It’s high fantasy—think Elves, magic, and adventure. What happens when the adventure is over? When the one thing that brings a group of strangers together ceases to be? Maylene is a former adventurer and savior of the realm. Now, she wanders the world seeking out new wonders after a romance with her former companion, Amaril, didn’t end in a happily ever after as the stories would have you expect. An unexpected encounter with this man has her reflecting on their relationship, how it always falls apart and gets stitched back together just to crumble again, and rebirth both physical and metaphorical. Gnome & Bone will be releasing pieces online every Sunday this summer, so give that a follow as well because this issue is bound to be out of this world.
I can’t believe I’m sharing both of these stories with you so soon, and I hope you enjoy them and all the work in these collections.
If you would like to get a peek into my craft (both writing and divinatory) I’m teaching a “Tarot as Storytelling” workshop for Lit Match Collective. We’ll do a very brief introduction to tarot as a divinatory practice before diving into using a three-card spread to suss out a characters conflict, motivations, plot, etc. This event will take place in the LMC Discord, which is free, on August 23 at 8pm EST.
Lit Match Collective is a community of writers led by Autumn Watts (ex-Guernica) and Steve Chang, fiction editor of Okay Donkey magazine. You can join LMC for free with the button below. We have tons of content and events for writers—workshops, author Q&As, accountability sessions, and much much more. If that doesn’t sell you, I can personally say that the revisionary feedback I received on “Fin de Siécle,” took it over the publishing finish line. Tá súil agam go bhfeicfidh mé thú ansin. I hope I will see you there!
Finally, as a thank you for all your support over the last year, you can up your subscription to this newsletter with a discount below! Your support keeps me doing this while I continue my career pivot. It allows me to do things like study in Ireland, collaborate with LMC, and pay my bills. Besides, just look at that cute baby kitty face we started this update with!
Slán go fóill,
Sam
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