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Month of Joy: Connection and Collaboration by Julia Rios

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I love it when people connect with each other to spread joy and love, to create new things that couldn’t exist with one person’s efforts alone, and to generally be awesome to each other. Here are a few examples that give me great joy: Star Wars Okay, so the world loves Star Wars. Many of us grew up with it. It’s a giant part of our global culture at this point. What I especially love in recent years is how much the creators are also the fans. Talking with Ken Liu about what Star Wars means to him when we interviewed him about The Legends of Luke Skywalker was excellent, but I think maybe the best example of this is Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose in The Last Jedi. She’s a giant Star Wars fan who was super excited to be in the movie, and she’s done all kinds of awesome things like introducing herself to fans in a pub because she overheard them talking about her character. I love that so many people are excited about Star Wars. I love that this brings happiness to millions of people, and I especially love that it’s bringing people together.

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Month of Joy: Audio Commentary by Alex Bledsoe

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As both a full-time writer and stay-at-home parent of three children, two cats, and a dog, my days tend to be packed. There is joy in my responsibilities, to be sure, but it’s often balanced by stress, doubt, and the sense of futility experienced by all artists (and parents). However, there is one tiny area where I do find moments of absolute unqualified joy: the audio commentary. I discovered my love for movies – and stories – simultaneously: with the 1977 release of STAR WARS, followed by years of magazines and books that picked over its sources and influences. And to this day, I love movies almost as much as I do books. They’re both ways to tell stories, after all, and the things that make a good story apply in both forms. And just as I learn from every book I read, I pick up things from movies as well.

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Month of Joy: The Order of the Air by Trish Matson

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Last month, I reread the five existing books of The Order of the Air series by Melissa Scott and Jo Graham. These are some of my favorite comfort reads. Parts of these period adventure-fantasies are very cozy, but aside from the wonderful characters’ mutual support, love, and humor, there are also some tense and exciting action sequences, with almost ordinary people teaming up to resist evil and try to make the world better.

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Month of Joy: Summer Holidays by Elizabeth Fitzgerald

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I like to think that finding small joys is a strength of mine. So, when I was asked to write this post, I wasn’t quite sure where to start. There’s the obvious: books and tea. Food is something that consistently brings me joy. So do cuddles from my dogs. However, I wasn’t sure I could write a full post on any of these things (except books… and, well, you can hear my thoughts on that here every other month of the year).

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Month of Joy: Sharing My Joys with My Son by Maria Turtschaninoff

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This year, my husband and I have introduced roleplaying to our son. He was 6 at the beginning of the year, so we thought it was time. I never got to role play as a kid. I had the games, and I would have loved to play, but I had no-one to play with. I was the only nerd in my class (not that I even knew the term). I spent hours making characters, drawing maps, and planning adventures. It was difficult to plan the adventures, though, as I did not really grasp how the game was supposed to work, never having tried it for real. It wasn’t until I met my (nerdy) husband, who DM-ed for me, that I got to play. I love that we did that together! I even got to DM for him.

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Month of Joy: Music by Mike Brooks

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There are, actually, many things that give me joy, despite the rather unfortunate state the world is in at the moment. My wife, my friends, my cats, reading and writing science fiction and fantasy… the list just goes on and on. However, another of the most prominent and important ones is music. As a child, I learned to play the recorder (because that was what one did in primary school), the piano (briefly, badly) and the cornet (allowing me to claim with technical accuracy that I am a “classically-trained musician”, which is mildly hilarious). However, I never had much time for music on the radio. It wasn’t until I was about thirteen and heard The Offspring’s “Self Esteem” when Jamie Dreher snuck a battery-operated tape player along to Scouts summer camp that I realised that songs could actually have a point to them. I didn’t look back.

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