Interviewed a candidate, which was not a terrible experience, although of course I cannot say anything about them.

I finally read a bunch of stories from Apex Magazine that I had bookmarked, and they were pretty uncheerful. Content warning for death, despair, slavery, animal death, and assorted misery.

Read: “Nine Theories of Time” (Spencer Nitkey): Sadness about humans.

Read: “Hank in the South Dakota Sun” (Stephanie Kraner): Sadness about trains.

Read: “The Fruit of the Princess Tree” (Sage Tyrtle): Surprisingly, not unmitigated sadness. One character manages to emerge from the slough of despond.

Read: “On The Day You Spend Forever With Your Dog” (Adam R Shannon): Sadness about dogs.

Read: “Copper, Iron, Blood and Love” (Mari Ness): Sadness about ravens.

Read: “Lazarus and the Amazing Kid Phoenix” (Jennifer Giesbrecht): Another story in which the characters can change things, although it’s not clear how much they do. Also less abstract than a lot of the others. Definitely my favorite of this lot.

Written: 566 kitten words (one block over from the Beast), 1843 so far this week.