Last week I participated in SFWA’s #ThePanel YouTube live videocast, Episode 4 – “Cli-fi” and Solarpunk, with panelists Sam J. Miller, Dr. Laurel J. Standley, J.K. Ullrich, and moderated by Diane Morrison. As readers of this blog and followers of my social media feeds know, I feel strongly about environmental causes and averting the worst predictions of climate change. I do this by bringing attention to our common fatalism. What I mean is that we are so often used to pessimistic thinking about the future — that climate change is inevitable — that we don’t work to bring about potential solutions. In my (recent) fiction and on social media, I work to counter this pessimistic force. I am not a head-in-the-sand Polyanna. I don’t believe that a positive future is the only outcome. But I believe that with hard, concerted effort, we can mitigate the worst predictions of climate change and perhaps even bring about an abundant future for humanity.

In this panel, I and my co-panelists speak about the reasons we each write and are concerned about climate change, and some ways our fiction may address the issue. It was a really interesting panel, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Also, this weekend I’ll be attending the Milford Readers and Writers Festival in Milford, PA, where I’ll be doing a reading, a signing, and a panel alongside Chandler Klang Smith, Karen Heuler, and Mercurio D. Rivera. Plus I have new fancy schmancy full-color cosmic business cards to show off. If you are in the area, I hope you can come by! 

Hello! So, after a brief hiatus where my wife and I traveled around the Southwestern U.S. visiting the National Parks, I’ve been back at the keyboard since the beginning of September. Since then I’ve revised and sent out a short story, and have been revising the YA novel.

I’ll be attending a few conferences & writing festivals in the next several months, so if you happen to be at one of these, please come say hi. I don’t bite (often).

My conference schedule:

• The Milford Readers and Writers Festival, Sept 28-30, 2018, Milford, Pennsylvania
• New York Comic Con, Sept 7, 2018, New York, New York.
• The World Fantasy Convention, Nov 1-4, 2018, Baltimore, Maryland
• Arisia, Jan 18-21, 2019, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Hope to see you soon!

So you might recall me mentioning that my Nebula-nominated story “The Last Novelist” is currently up for a Eugie Award. Well, I’ll find out if I win this weekend at Dragon Con in Atlanta*!

I’ll be attending Dragon Con from this Thursday, Aug 30th – Sunday, Sept 2nd, and I’ll be on several panels while I’m there. My tentative schedule is below. Hope to see you there!

*I used to go to school in Atlanta. I studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech, but I haven’t been back since ’99. It will be weird to revisit my old stomping ground to see how much has changed. If you happen to be at Dragon Con and want to connect, message me on Twitter at @mattkressel.

Title: Realms of the Dead: Ghosts and Spirits in UF
Description: Our panelists discuss the various types of ghosts and spirits found in their work, and in the genre.
Time: Fri 11:30 am Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Leanna Renee Hieber, David B. Coe, E.J. Stevens, A. J. Hartley, Matthew Kressel, Gail Z. Martin)

——————-
Title: Faith in Science Fiction
Description: Many times authors create religions for their societies. Many times they use established faiths to inform their characters and their actions. Our panelists discuss when this works, when it doesn’t, and is it absolutely necessary to make a good story.
Time: Fri 07:00 pm Location: Embassy AB – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Fr. Bryan Small, Damien Patrick Williams, Matthew Kressel)

——————-
Title: Secondary Characters to Die For
Description: Developing extraordinary secondary characters that push the plot forward and create extraordinary fiction.
Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Clay and Susan Griffith, Nancy Knight, Robert J. Sawyer, Zac Brewer, Joshua Palmatier, Matthew Kressel)

——————-
Title: Tooting Your Own Horn: Marketing Yourself
Description: Indie writers and those who self-publish need to really market themselves to get their work known and out there. Our panelists discuss what they do and how they do it.
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Embassy AB – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: John G. Hartness, Cecilia Dominic, Gray Rinehart, Kal Spriggs, Courtland D Lewis, Quincy J Allen, Matthew Kressel)

If you’ve ever felt that too much of your personal, private data has made its way out into the net, then have I got a story for you. My story “Love Engine Optimization” appears in Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018 Edition. Lots of great stuff in this volume, including stories from Rich Larson, Charlie Jane Anders, Michael Swanwick, Kameron Hurley, Sofia Samatar, Linda Nagata, and many others. Check it out here.

The full table of contents:

“Time Travel is Only for the Poor” by S. L. Huang (Analog)
“Emergency Protocol” by Lettie Prell (Analog)
“Persephone of the Crows” by Karen Joy Fowler (Asimov’s)
“Cupido” by Rich Larson (Asimov’s)
“Winter Timeshare” by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s)
“Soulmates.com”, by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s)
“Red Bark and Ambergris” by Kate Marshall (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
“Whatever Knight Comes” by Ryan Row (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
“Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” by Charlie Jane Anders (Boston Review)
“The Significance of Significance” by Robert Reed (Clarkesworld)
“The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld)
“The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse” by Kathleen Ann Goonan (Extrasolar)
“Marley and Marley” by J. R. Dawson (F&SF)
“The Hermit of Houston” by Samuel R. Delany (F&SF)
“Rings” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (F&SF)
“Starlight Express” by Michael Swanwick (F&SF)
“The Sacrifice of the Hanged Monkey” by Minsoo Kang (Fantastic)
“ZeroS” by Peter Watts (Infinity Wars)
“Ugo” by Giovanni de Feo (Lightspeed)
“Love Engine Optimization” by Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed)
“This is for You” by Bruce McAllister (Lightspeed)
“One Hour, Every Seven Years” by Alice Sola Kim (McSweeney’s)
“Montreal, 2014” by Madeline Ray (Mothership Zeta)
“Sidewalks” by Maureen McHugh (Omni)
“Shoggoths in Traffic” by Tobias S. Buckell (Patreon)
“The Fisherman and the Pig” by Kameron Hurley (Patreon)
“Utopia LOL?” by Jamie Wahls (Strange Horizons)
“An Account of the Land of Witches” by Sofia Samatar (Tender)
“Extracurricular Activities” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com)
“The Martian Obelisk” by Linda Nagata (Tor.com)
“Hexagrammaton” by Hanus Seiner (Tor.com)
“Though She Be But Little” by C. S. E. Cooney (Uncanny)
“And Then There Were (N – One)” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny)
“Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny)

My horror / dark-fantasy story “The Words That Maketh Murder” * has been released as a podcast over at Tales to Terrify, narrated by Maurine McLean. The podcast also includes the story “Real People” by T. R. North. 

Kimmy, a former software developer for government black ops weapons projects, moves into a Queens, New York neighborhood and begins hearing strange voices coming from the old train yard behind her apartment. Parts of my story are true, and I’ll leave it to the listener to decide which!

Listen here.  

* Yes, it’s a PJ Harvey reference!