Will there be any stars in our crowns?

"Because We Are All So Royal" is my contribution to Aqueduct Press's WisCon Chronicles 2; it's about making crowns at the Carl Brandon Society's annual party.  This year CBS co-founder MJ Hardman and her husband Dimas Bautista bought the tinsel and flowers and plastic fruit and giant moths and toy motorcycles partygoers used to construct crowns.  Health issues (cancer, embolisms) have kept them at home for the last two years, but they support the event and commissioned the creation of a crown because they love being part of the creativity.

Here's what I came up with for them.  To a circular base of fluttering white hearts I added a silver purse begemmed with multi-colored plastic, a golden candelabra, and a huge honkin hibiscus.  Someone took photos of me wearing this crown, but I can't find them at the moment.  Still, you get the idea, right?  All the elements I used here are symbolic of something I wish for MJ and Dimas to have.  I'll mail the crown tomorrow and hope they get what I want to send.

Occult wisdom says you get back what you put out.  So helping others externally concretize their inherent noblesse makes MJ and Dimas true royalty. The kind without armies.  The kind we love.  The kind we can become.

Here's MJ at WisCon 33, ready to work it.

Here's Dimas with Margie Peterson at WisCon 33, enjoying their handiwork.

I wrote a picture book called "The Secret Princess" about how to do what MJ and Dimas have done.  It starts out this way:

Once there was a secret princess: Princess Herminutia.  She was a secret princess because nobody knew about her royal status.  Her mama and daddy called her Minnie and made her take out the garbage.

With the assistance of a wise costumer, her neighbor Mizz Cherry, the secret princess constructs crowns for all her family and finally receives the respect she deserves.  She gets what she gives.  What I want for us all.

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 6: Futures of Feminism and Fandom

I'm pleased to announce the release of the The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 6:  Futures of Feminism and Fandom, edited by Alexis Lothian. This volume of the WisCon Chronicles celebrates, challenges, and discusses the varied faces of WisCon 35—including the pre-con controversy surrounding an invited Guest of Honor and the revocation of that invitation, as well as the history and ethos of WisCon, memorial tributes to Joanna Russ, Steampunk, and other issues and subjects. Its contributors include a mix of writers, scholars, and fans, among whom number Nalo Hopkinson, Nisi Shawl, Liz Henry, N.K. Jemison, Jeanne Gomoll, Debbie Notkin, Amar El-Mohtar, Andrea Horbinksi, Eileen Gunn, and others. As with previous volumes, it does not shy away from controversy.

''We are all stories,'' Nisi Shawl says in her Guest of Honor speech included in this volume, and ''changing stories changes everything.'' What will the stories we tell ourselves about feminism, about science fiction, and about fandom change? How will--and how should--we change those stories? This volume of the WisCon Chronicles documents the conversations, the dramas, and the joys that shaped the world of feminist science fiction fandom before, during, and after WisCon 35. From founders' recollections of the excitement and conflict of the con's origins, to many different, difficult conversations about intersections of race, culture, class, and gender, to new forms of fannish engagement that changing media landscapes make more visible, the contributors explore feminism and fandom's past, present, and future.

You can purchase the volume through Aqueduct's website, here.