Ash Vale Updates: April 2025
Where the fuck did April gooooo
Pierre Poilievre (failed Member of Parliament and leader of the Conservative Party) eating an apple in a spectacularly masculine, anti-woke way
That picture is me if April was an apple. Because it's…I ate it aggressively? It was gone too quick? I’m not sure where I was going with this uh oh
For anyone who somehow missed the gloating on social media, Canada has elected a Liberal minority government! Which is certainly better than a Conservative one, but also not a great time for anyone who doesn't really support the Liberals or the CPC (ie. me). Wearing my ‘formerly taught intro to Canadian politics’ hat for a second - a minority government with a Conservative opposition, and weakened NDP, means the government might topple in like a year. Also, despite losing, Poilievre will likely kick an MP out of their seat so that he can run a by-election in their riding and get elected that way. So that's fun!
But at least for a little while I'll just be here laughing at Pierre's face, knowing he lost in his own riding. And that's really funny.
Other things that happened this month: drag bingo! Haircut! My kid ate chocolate she thinks a bunny crapped in our backyard! Launched a whole freaking short story magazine! And I’m sure there’s things I’m forgetting.
Writing
Sales/Updates
Well, for the first time since I’ve been submitting things places, I’ve officially had a poem accepted!!! Moist Poetry Journal (yes that’s really the name) accepted my poem “live” for their summer edition so it’ll hopefully be out in a few months on their site! Genuinely so, so excited. I’d sort of stopped submitting my poetry anywhere because it wasn’t getting any traction so this felt really awesome.
In June, my short story “Hope Carried on an Ancient, Isolated Back” (free to read now at DreamForge) will also be out in their print edition, which is awesome! My publications so far are 4/4 for having print editions which isn’t something I was actively seeking out, but is pretty cool.
In Progress
Did you know writing a book is hard? Turns out it’s hard! Do people know this? Can we tell people this? Maybe we can tell them in a course that costs 200 dollars or something?
I had a big revelation about the direction of my book as I’ve been writing the second draft, which is awesome because I think it will make the story more cohesive and gives me a great secondary plot. The downside is that it changes a bunch of my scenes, and also the direction of some of the things I already have written. So I’m in this weird place where I’m at about 12k words into the second draft and just have to push through, even though I know, once again, I’m going to have to change the first 6k words or so quite a bit. C’est la vie, I guess. It’s moving along, though! I’d love to have this second draft complete in the summer, if I can, so that I can get into the next draft which will (hopefully) be cleaner and then get some eyes on it that aren’t mine, which are suffering.
My Recs
Books
I go back and forth so much on my interest in reading, but this month I was on a huge roll and read a lot of things I liked!
Listen, it’s NHL playoff season. And that’s a thing I don’t care too strongly about (go Oilers), but I figured if I was going to celebrate, I’d celebrate my way, which was reading gay hockey romance. Light up the Lamp was surprisingly (to me) emotional for a M/M hockey romp! It’s very sweet, featuring childhood best friends/boyfriends who drifted apart when one of them was drafted to an NHL team, and how they come together again (hehe) as adults.
This is the biggest “hear me out” I’ve had lately. Flesh of the Sea by Lor Gislason and Shelley Lavigne is a short (like, very short!) romance/horror novella written entirely in letters sent by sea between two Englishmen. This book is what happens when you realise you’re in love with your bestie, don’t get accepted into the academic program you want, and then run off to be a pirate but the ship you end up on has something going on. Something goopy and wrong, even! It’s sort of like if “This Is How You Lose the Time War” had Rosemary’s baby with “The Blob”, and I loved it.
Someone in a discord server I’m in recommended this to me and I really enjoyed it! It’s a YA graphic novel about a young woman who has a dark secret in her basement that she has to feed, or face terrible consequences. She keeps her head down and lives a quiet life taking care of her grandmother, until someone from her past comes back and throws wide the gates on everything going on. Really heartfelt, full of queer characters, and just such a page-turner.
If you, like me, have a Western understanding of Middle Eastern conflicts (which means one guided by Western media and generally incomplete), this book is a really great read. Rashid Khalidi does a beautiful job of weaving his family’s personal history in Palestine with official reports, news articles, and any sources he can find dating back to WWI and the creation of what is now Israel. He details the conflicts and the oppression of the Palestinian people in a way that gives you a clear picture of a bloody, colonial history.
Short Stories/Poems
Intensive Care Unit For These Painful Times by Sumitra Singam, in Bending Genres Magazine is a flash story that I don’t want to talk about too much because I think it’s better digested if you go in cold, but it’s a story of neo-nazi hatred and conversion through softness. It’s stunning and made my heart ache.
We talked in our own accents, used our own language, told them our creation stories, fed them laksa and posole and bamya.
Rukman Ragas’ To Kill a Language in Apex Magazine is a story of colonial violence and the power of language; the oppression of your own history made physical. It’s absolutely haunting, and the prose sticks to your teeth.
Do not outlaw music but forbid storytelling; forbid remembrance.
My friend TJ Rowley has a piece out at 100-Foot Crow called Self-Driving Utopia!! It’s an examination and criticism of self-driving cars and their damage, both societal and immediate.
I’d have to sell my good knee to hire a car.
Music
Oh man I'm so divorced from online music discourse that I had no idea there's a huge community who thinks Sleep Token are bad and make fun of their fans! I accidentally stumbled on that this week and then I laughed because like…it's just not that serious??? It's some boys in masks singing about their feelings and there's guitars and drums, you know?
Anyway here's a new Sleep Token song!
Something Extra
Someone I’ve followed for awhile, Cree Nomad, recently started a podcast called The Neechie Mindset and the first episode is so sweet and encouraging! They’re a two-spirit Métis Cree creator from right here in Edmonton, Alberta and they’re starting the podcast as a way to talk about Indigenous culture, issues, and also get some ears on the Cree language.