Pre-orders are open for The Green Man's Debt. Thanks to enthusiastic readers sharing their enjoyment, we've reached the ninth book in this small press series!
Find purchase links for your preferred vendor here - with others added as they go live.
https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-juliet-e-mckenna/the-green-mans-debt/
The Green Man’s Debt will be published on 10th September 2026.
A friendly reminder: I maintain a list of space opera novels by cisgender women, trans, and non-binary authors. Suggest works via the link, & share with everyone who might find it of use!
You can find the list right here:
Enjoy! #books
this is a good response to the attack on ADHD by Channel 4 in the UK
The media is route marching us on the path to totalitarianism
(yes I have just worked out precisely what this means. Oh to not live in a society that provides a practical lesson on such a thing. And Yes I WILL be mentioning this a lot now I understand it properly)
https://theneuroscienceofeverydaylife.substack.com/p/some-questions-for-channel-4-about
Ebook pre-order links for The Green Man's Debt are starting to appear. Paperback and hardcover will follow next week. A few lucky people have just got review copies. If you think you should be on our reviewer list, please let us know.
https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-juliet-e-mckenna/the-green-mans-debt/
my stupid phone company splits my bill into loads of small "accounts" all of which I have to pay individually. HOWEVER the "we are just about to cut you off" message has a link that lets you just pay the whole lot!!!!!!
ha well that's going to serve them right (until my finances are stable enough to cope with direct debits anyway)
if, at that time, being trans was a broader church than "you need to live as a woman (whatever that means - is that something I'm doing now even??) and marry a man" perhaps I'd have gotten somewhere but bloody hell
Dysphoria is a complicated thing!
(AND if you'd have asked me just prior to starting HRT I'd have told you "oh no it doesn't really effect me" - blimey was I ever wrong (and I have been VERY wrong about a LOT of things ;-) ) )
As I slowly process my gender feelings now I'm on HRT I am realising just how insidious it has all been:
in my 30s I "decided" to suppress ALL the crap I was dealing with. Not least because prior to that I'd been pretty unstable. A. points out it would have been likely I'd have gotten a BPD diagnosis in my late 20s!!
This lead to years of depersonalisation
prior to that it had been all over the place & far more noticeable but I just had no concept of what to do about it
right - hopped up on gender hormones* and ready to face the day!!
* the most amusing thing is: My biggest reaction after starting HRT - "OMG is this what cis people feel like all the time?....Some kind of normal without a constant sense that something is not right??"
another day another middle class cis het white man surprised that Labour are a bunch of illiberal authoritarian you know what's......
THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN POINTING THIS OUT FOR AGES!!!!!
maybe think about people that aren't you
Noted TERF Kathleen Stock has written a piece in The Times calling out "Gen-Z females" for daring to be ambulatory wheelchair users.
And I need yous to understand that this is what TERFs are. This is what they've always been. They are not left-wing, or feminist. Sure, they pretended to be, when it was convenient for them, but now they've won their big victory, they're letting their masks slip, and showing clearly their misogyny, ageism, ableism, racism, anti-Semitism, and every other "ism" in the book.
Yous all know that the anti-trans "LGB Alliance" is headquartered in Tufton Street, right? Same address as all the other shady right-wing orgs with uncertain funding sources.
Yous all saw the Amnesty report before said organisation was legally threatened into a grovelling apology, showing that "gender critical" orgs are funded by American right-wing money?
"Left-wing" and "feminist" arguments against trans rights have always been a false-flag operation to divide and conquer, and undermine progressivism more generally. Trans people have known that for many years, but a lot of cis people haven't heard us or believed us.
It's time to start hearing us.
SO. Ignorance alert machine learning is not “ai”
Charli xcx used Rob Clouth tech on her recent (excellent) album and is now getting grief for it
Clouths concatenative synthesis is really interesting. Hoping to release something ourselves in this line. Something my son is super interested in (& how I know about Clouth in the first place)
All those books I read as a youth were political concepts just seemed abstract & distant.
I’m now going back to as practical handbooks
(Prompted by reading the first preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism)
Growing up last century. When the year “2026” seemed like it would be a distant sci-fi future
Who would have thought we would just be tackling all the same issues that led to the world wars. Nothing learned. Nothing really changed
Life is held together by cheap duct tape. None of us have any idea just how long it'll hold. Could be tomorrow, could be fifty years from now. But one thing is certain: when it finally gives, there's going to be a sticky, gooey mess.
That seems like a cycle that needs to be broken. We can't keep fighting this Youth vs Age battle forever. It's such a fucking waste of time.
Yes, younger people can be hard to understand. Yes, they probably think about things differently from you & define their values in a different way. That's just how fucking time works. They weren't raised by your parents during your childhood.
We're going to have to stop hating the young for being young at some point. Time passes.
RE: https://mastodon.art/@junklight/117042179463361419
I'm also finding the continuous "spacex has crashed" narrative rather amusing - if you ignore all the noise - it's been around 112ish for the last week or so - now tomorrow might see a shift ('cos loads more shares will be for sale) but right now it does actually seem to have found it's level
The thing I didn't understand as a child was that all the mechanisms for abuse, injustice, & fucking genocide were already built into the power structures of our society. I didn't yet know that the fascism was already here: quiet, bureaucratic, & largely hidden from the eyes of the middle class whites.
I certainly didn't have context for previous times, such as the Civil Rights movement, when much of the country WAS engulfed in turmoil.
Some things have gotten clearer in recent years.
There is no "safe" way to live where you can avoid harm & disruption. Following the rules won't make you safe, but it sure could make a lot of other people less safe.
Being obedient & compliant means that you are one less problem they have to deal with, one less spanner in the works. Don't you want to be a problem? Don't you want to make the job of enforcing authoritarian control more difficult? I do.
RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/117043353279434264
This is the same with abusive people (who we do not recognise/understand enough in our culture)
The rules are for YOU to follow (& their breaking them isn't hypocrisy -it's a demonstration of power). Compliance is the point - they can & will change in order to increase harm & demonstrate ongoing power
You CAN NOT win within the system. You can only make yourself smaller and smaller
The only winning condition is not playing
The appeal of rule-following is the idea that there is a way to never have to take risks. Sure, the rules may be unfair, but you come to feel that your rule-following will protect you.
It will not. There is no amount of rule-following that will stop an oppressive system from doing what it was built to do.
People are going to get hurt. There is no way to avoid that because that's what authoritarian systems do: they harm people, & the only way to stop it is to do things that aren't allowed.