Author name: Skiffy Fanty

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Month of Joy: The Smell of Masa in the Morning by Sabrina Vourvoulias

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There is a particular smell to corn that has been soaked in wood ash lye, then washed and hulled and ground into a fine meal. It is the aroma of freshly made tortillas, of tamales as they steam, of my mother’s huipiles. Really. No matter how freshly laundered, no matter how many cedar balls or lavender sachets have been thrown in the drawer to keep the moths away, the distinctive hand-woven Guatemalan blouses my mother wore retain the smell of a grain turned more aromatic, more flavorful, more nutritious by the nixtamalation process.

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Month of Joy: Sharing Pop Culture by Tansy Rayner Roberts

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Something that has brought me a great deal of joy over the years — but particularly in 2017, a year that has us grasping for crumbs of joy among the embers and the schrapnel — is sharing pop culture with my kids. My eldest turned 12 last January. It hit me that I remembered exactly what I was reading at 12 — Stephen King’s IT, for one, along with a whole bunch of other adult texts. So… my policy on reading matter, always fairly casual, meant that I removed all filters and left R to it. My policy on other media shifted a bit too, especially when I realised that 12 is an awesome age to experience teen media that didn’t come along until I was… well. Older than 12.

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Month of Joy: Podcasts by Adam Callaway

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I’d like to talk about one of the main things that got me through 2017. Beyond all of the horrible real world shit that was going on in the real world, I was diagnosed as bipolar in March of 2017. It wasn’t a huge surprise; I had been dealing with depression and anxiety for years up to that point. It was nice to have a firm diagnosis though. It helped narrow down the possible medications I could take to help me. And, after maybe six months, I finally hit on a combo of meds that have significantly improved my life. But before that, and still to this day, I’ve used art both to  escape my own mind, as well as to help control my moods. Of all the art forms that I consume, that one that provided the most consistent relief was: podcasts.

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Month of Joy: Agents, Adepts, & Apprentices by Kathryn Sullivan

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I am excited that Zumaya Thresholds released my short story collection, Agents, Adepts, & Apprentices. This is an expanded version of the collection previously published by Amber Quill Press, with a few more stories about my interplanetary agents, as well as additional fantasy and science fiction stories. Some stories appeared in anthologies by other publishers, and I’m really excited to have those – as well as four new stories – gathered together in one place. I am especially pleased with the new cover by the wonderful April Martinez. She really captured my wizard Salanoa.

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Month of Joy: On Joy, Sorrow, and Cats by Beth Cato

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We know joy in contrast to sorrow, and my past two months have been a blur of sorrow. My sweet cat Porom succumbed to kidney failure in late October after blessing us with over 17 years of purrs. Yes, she was named for the character from Final Fantasy IV. Her twin brother Palom died from cancer in 2012. For the first time since I was seven, I have no cats. But I am here to celebrate Porom, and to look at January 2018 as a month where I will find new joy. I am adopting new cats. I write these words in December, and truth be told, I have never felt so impatient for the holidays to be over. I want January. I want new furballs to love and cherish for decades to come.

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Month of Joy: Settings of Silver and Gold by Kate Heartfield

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I live in a cold part of the world, so you might think that at this time of the year I’d be looking for escape in stories set in the tropics. But I find the books that bring me joy in the winter tend to be set in this season, in the Middle Ages in Europe. One of them is Connie Willis’s 1992 time-travel novel, Doomsday Book. Another is Umberto Eco’s first novel, The Name of the Rose, published in 1980.

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