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Queens in Wonderland

Happy Unbirthday!

Hi!

Queens in Wonderland is coming out later this month – but the ebook preorders are up TODAY! Happy unbirthday, indeed!

Queens in Wonderland Announcement Graphic

Queens in Wonderland is an anthology edited by Theresa Halvorsen & Chris Bannor and it will be out on February 28! All the stories are based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass, with queer characters. It contains 19 stories, including my own “Good-Natured Anxiety for the Queer Creature” and LS Reinholt’s “Oosh Lea in 1D Land”.

Starting today, a new video will be posted every few days on the Semi-Sages of the Pages YouTube channel to promote this anthology. There will be lots of author interviews, episodes about the wondrous world of anthologies, a Wonderland immersive, and celebrations of the upcoming release.

Today’s video is an author interview with K.R. Cervantez: check it out!

The interview with LS Reinholt and me will be up on March 7.

And as I’m looking forward to these wonderful stories, I steadily keep working on several projects that you’ll hopefully be hearing more about soon…

Sending Hearts and Spades, Clubs and Diamonds,

Minerva

And also, Paranatellonta

Happy 2024!

Happy New Year!!!

I wish you lots of cosiness, inspiration, and wonderful stories for 2024!

Handdrawn holiday card with a magical Christmas wreath

May the day be full of fun traditions or marvellous new discoveries.

It’s also the first day of the month, so of course there is a new edition of Paranatellonta! You can read the 369th edition here.

Love,

Minerva

And also

Cards for the holidays!

Hi!

The Christmas cake is baked and waiting in an airtight box to get its weekly shots of booze before it will be wrapped in marzipan and fondant icing just before its first cut on Christmas Day. Plans are being made for decorations and lights. Cosy meet-ups with friends are happening. And my cards for the December holidays are ready!

Kerstboom - holidays2 - small-glazed-intensity29-render3-V1 with watermark

I will be selling this handpainted, handdrawn design on folded A6 cards (that is 10.5 x 14.8 cm, when folded) for the holidays! The inside of the card will be blank so you can add your own message to your loved ones.

Table of prices: please feel free to contact me for a price calculation if you can't see the table.

Orders can be placed directly via my Paypal. Don’t forget to specify how many cards you want and whether you want envelopes. If no other address is specified, I will assume your Paypal address is the correct address for shipping.

If you want to place an order of 50 cards or more, best get in touch with me first so we can look into the best shipping option for your area.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or want me to calculate the exact price for your order. Just let me know how many cards you want, whether to include envelopes or not, and your address. (Please don’t forget to include your country!)

I hope my cards will bring a little cheer around the world!

If you can’t get enough of art cards, don’t forget you can still buy my colourful set with 10 different designs from 2023! Take a look and read all about them here.

Here for the books? Remember, if you live in my area, you can support local bookshop Grim by getting my novella The Dragon of Ynys there, and of course small indie publisher Atthis Arts is open for everyone to support. Don’t miss their big announcement today!

I hope you’ll have a cosy, friendly winter!

Hugs,

Minerva

Rise, the dragon of ynys

Rise has risen!

The Rise anthology came out yesterday!

Cover of Rise: Queer Sci Fi's Tenth Annual Flash Fiction Contest

This anthology is packed with 120 stories under 300 words each, all with a speculative element and queer characters. One of these stories is my little piece “Ace-tral Projection”, and the book also includes L.S. Reinholt’s “Flood”.

You can buy the book in ebook, paperback, AND hardcover format. Find all the info and buy links via the publisher’s website, and add the book on Goodreads here.

The winners of this edition were Aidee Ladnier’s “Getting The Proper Rise” in third place, Sorren Briarwood’s “Dead Name” in second place, and Meghan Hyland’s “So High Up We’ll Never Hear Them Shouting” in first place. Congratulations!

The winner announcement can be found here, judge’s picks were announced here, honorable mentions were announced here, and the full list of stories in the book is on this page.

And we’ll continue celebrating today, because I have great news for everyone in Belgium who wants to buy The Dragon of Ynys at an independent bookshop: it is now available at Boekhandel Grim in Hasselt!

Happy autumn, and happy Ace Week!

P.S. My postcard sets are still available! Read about them here.

And also, Paranatellonta, Queens in Wonderland, Rise

Order a set of cards!

Hi!

See these cool cards?

2023 set of 10 postcards

These are ten of the designs I’ve drawn this year (plus my business card at the bottom right). I made them into a postcard set, which, if you like them, YOU can buy right now!

These are the prices for 1 set of the 10 different postcards, printed on high-quality paper, including shipping (via bpost):
to Belgium: €13 per set
to the rest of Europe: €17 per set
to the rest of the world: €18 per set

To order them, please send the correct amount to my PayPal, specifying how many sets you would like to order and to which name and address I can send them. If you have questions or would rather get in touch before ordering, please send me an email to minervacerridwen@gmail.com so I can help you out!

For a better look at some of the illustrations, I refer to the Illustrations page on my website.

Some more news:

  • The cover of Rise, the anthology that will include my flash story “Ace-tral Projection”, has been revealed. You can take a peek here! The book will release on October 25, in paperback, hardcover, and ebook format.
  • It’s the 15th today, so there’s a new edition of Paranatellonta! Enjoy number 364, titled “Autumnal Company”, here.
  • And last but not least: my brand-new short story “Good-Natured Anxiety for the Queer Creature” has been accepted for publication in Queens in Wonderland, the queer Alice in Wonderland-themed anthology from No Bad Books Press! I’ve seen summaries of some of the other stories that will be included (and even got to read one full story…) and I really look forward to this collection myself!

Queens in Wonderland Announcement Graphic

Have a nice Sunday!

Minerva

Banner for "Refuge" - 10 years of Paranatellonta
Paranatellonta

TEN YEARS of Paranatellonta!

Hello!

It’s a day of celebrations: Paranatellonta is 10 years old!

The little project in which Fie takes a photo twice a month to inspire a ten-sentence story by me is still going strong! Back in 2013, we were inspired by Erin Morgenstern and Carey Farrell’s Flax-Golden Tales, of which there were 261. That sounded like quite a lot when we started, and to be honest, it still does—but today we are at our 360th edition!!!

Of course, we have a special edition for you to mark this anniversary. Just like for the fifth anniversary, we have asked none other than Ava Kelly to be our guest photographer and author. Ava’s photo inspired my 10-sentence story “Scrutiny”, and Fie’s photo inspired Ava’s 10-sentence story “Refuge”.

Banner for "Refuge" - Paranatellonta

Banner for "Scrutiny" - Paranatellonta

Click on the banners to be taken directly to both new Paranatellonta pieces, or click here to see all three of today’s new posts, including the introduction of our anniversary edition.

The banners were also created by Ava Kelly.

Ava Kelly is a nonbinary speculative writer and engineer. Secretly a pile of cats in a trenchcoat, Ava’s goal is to bring into the world more tales of friendship and compassion, dedicated to trope subversion, stories that give the void a voice. Romanian living in Norway, Ava is an avid explorer of culture and its reflection upon life and creativity, both in art and in tech design. Among their works are the award-winning novel Havesskadi, the short story A Sudden Displacement of Matter (part of the Lambda-nominated anthology Trans-Galactic Bike Ride: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories of Transgender and Nonbinary Adventurers), and the illustrated dual language book of nonbinary fairy tales Alia Terra – Stories from the Dragon Realm.

Thank you for yet another wonderful collaboration, Ava!

You can always read and watch all editions of Paranatellonta for free here. Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

Paranatellonta, Rise

Flash Fiction: Rise!

Hi!

It’s that time of the year when the stories are being announced that will be part of the Queer Sci Fi Flash Fiction Contest anthology. The theme this year was “Rise”, once again prompting authors to write a story of 300 words, and I’m proud to say I submitted a story called “Ace-tral Projection” and it was selected. This is the fifth year in a row I have a story in the contest anthology! Everyone who’s friends with me on Duolingo knows I do love a good long streak.

You can read the full list of anthology picks via this link – and you may notice that my friend and co-writer LS Reinholt’s story “Flood” made it in there too! *high fives*

In other news, Fie and I posted the 359th edition of Paranatellonta yesterday—remember there’s a new post on the 1st and 15th of every month. Our next edition, on August 15, will be very special, and not just because 360 is a nice round number—we will celebrate that Paranatellonta will have existed for 10 years!!! Keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, you can go read the latest editions via the main page (click on the “[time] ago and x notes” line under a post to enlarge both its photo and text, or click the “Random post” button at the top to be catapulted up to ten years back in time). As ever, everything Paranatellonta is free to read. Enjoy!

Love from rainy Germany, where I’ve been having a very cosy autumnish holiday in the middle of summer (but also some sunny hobbit adventures on mountains),

Minerva

And also

A Bookstr Interview and Lots of Art

Wow, have I really not written any blog posts since February? Oops…

Well, hello! Time sure is flying, and lots of things are in the works, though none of them have come to the point of any Big Announcements yet. If anyone is making lists of skills writers need, don’t forget to add “having patience”.

I’m writing to you today because I gave an interview! Book website Bookstr asked me and 4 other asexual authors all the same five questions about the reasons why we write and our experiences, and I found it very interesting to read the answers of the others as well. You can read the full interview via this link. Enjoy!

I also wanted to tell you that I participated in Workshop Week last week and made quite a lot of art! You can see all the results on my Instagram; I learned new techniques for handlettering, watercolour painting, portraiture, and sketching flowers, and had a lot of fun with all that! I’ve already been applying what I learned to some new cards today.

Tonight I participated in the end-of-schoolyear performance of my spoken-word Storytelling class, and I’m very happy with how it went. I can feel how much I learned and improved since we started last September, and can’t wait to see how our skills will evolve as the class continues. Even in my writing, I can feel its influence.

I hope to be back soon with some publishing news. Fingers crossed!

Love,

Minerva

And also, Paranatellonta

Dutch Poetry Week – Poëzieweek

I’m writing this post in Dutch for once, to talk about Dutch poetry!

Hoi!

Het was deze week Poëzieweek. Op Gedichtendag leek het me wel leuk om heel snel een gedicht te schrijven en te posten op Twitter. Dat beviel me zo goed dat ik het de hele week volgehouden heb! Het was leuk om weer wat meer verbinding te voelen met het Nederlands en door mezelf te beloven dat ik de gedichten snel en ongepolijst zou posten, bleef ik er ook niet eindeloos over dibben. Een gedicht aan iemand tonen voelt veel meer als loslaten dan een verhaal, omdat de interpretatie nog zoveel vrijer is. We gaan mij dus allemaal heel dapper vinden omdat ik ze hier toch kom tonen! Hier is het resultaat van een week vol poëzie.

Dag 1 (Gedichtendag)

Ik wil ergens heen
een punt maken
duidelijk zijn

Ik wil ergens heen
om nieuwe dingen te ontdekken
de horizon verkennen

Het avontuur opzoeken
zodat iedereen wijst van “Kijk,
díé heeft er niet omheen gedanst.”

Maar ik blijf thuis.
Waar ik naartoe werk
is geen helder reisdoel.

Dag 2 (27/01/23)

Koekjes met de post uit Amerika –
Dat leek ons wat onpraktisch.
Vriendschap was een veel mooiere beloning
Gesprekken over gebak en chocola
Ervaringen met queerness en neurodivergentie.
Vorige week wist ik nog niet dat je bestond
Vandaag maak ik jouw pindarotsjes.
Het schermpje op het keukenblok straalt
Je gezicht een goedkeurend kunstwerk
Van postpakketjes data.

Dag 3 (28/01/23)

Later krijg ik een cactusbaard
met hele lange naalden
Niet om iemand pijn te doen
maar omdat m’n haar steeds faalde
te groeien waar ik het graag wou
en ik daarover baalde
kwam op een dag de goede fee
en bracht me stekelgenen
Ze plantte ze in mijn gezicht
en is daarna verdwenen
Sindsdien wacht ik met ongeduld
tot de pinnen uit mijn wangen
ver genoeg gevorderd zijn
om er bloempjes aan te hangen.

Dag 4 (29/01/23)

Een knuffel van een boek
Een blad langs links, een blad langs rechts
Ze vouwen om je heen
Een veilige cocon

Als nachtmerries tóch komen
Je wakker schrikt ver weg van rust
Verbeeld je je de vrede
Van weides in de zon

De stad der fantasieën
Verwarmt je hart met woordenthee
Je angst zakt weg in zacht
Een nieuwe droom begon

Dag 5 (30/01/23)

De grote oranje octopus
heeft hele lange armen.
Ze kronkelen steeds zo en zus
want hij wil de eindjes warmen
aan iemand met een zacht, droog vel
hij legt een koude zuignap
tegen de mensen aan, maar, wel,
zij delen niet zijn blijdschap.
Ze zetten zeven stappen terug
zo kan hij hen niet raken
en leert de octopus al vlug
dat zij de kou niet kunnen smaken
Dus wendt hij zich – na lang gedub
tot andere kameraden:
een beetje kou op dik geschub
kan vuurdraken niet schaden.

Dag 6 (31/01/23)

De zee klotst langs de kleurenboot
Het veel te blauwe water
Het grijs op weg naar later
De masten blozen rood

Een duikboot cirkelt door de lucht
Om onze tocht te stoppen
Het grijs kan hen niet foppen
Ons bootje zucht, maar vlucht –

Ooit zal de paarse wereld fier
Vol groene stippen staan
Het grijs vrolijk saffraan
Geen reis naar waar jij mag bestaan
De horizon een regenboog, te zien van elke pier
Geen land vol verf, maar overal, en zelfs gewoonweg hier.

Dag 7 (01/02/23)

Aftiteling

Wanneer een aarzeling weerklinkt
knikt het marktplein minzaam toe
Vrolijk om de mensen heen
weeft de klarinettist zijn avontuur
De toonladders, de dansers, de vlammen van het vuur
Alles hier beweegt op zijn ritme alleen
De lente komt, niemand wordt moe
Het lied een diep instinct

Diepzwart zakken de credits
Zijn feest kent nooit een eind.


Welk gedicht spreekt jou het meeste aan? Ik kom het heel graag te weten in de comments.

Liefs,

Minerva

P.S. Uiteraard is er ook een nieuwe post op Paranatellonta vandaag. Happy February!

And also, Paranatellonta

Happy 2023!

Happy New Year!!!
This was my holiday card this year. Wishing you a year of creativity, cosiness, and inspiration!

Christmas Card 2023

The first edition of Paranatellonta for 2023 is already online – click here if you’re in the mood for some gingerbread or speculaas. On to a new year of stories!

Lots of love,

Minerva