Status Updates From The Privilege of the Happy ...

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe: Reread. The reverse of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

Noah's Raven: Noah's a dick, I guess.

Crows Attempt Human-Style Riddles, and One Joke: Animal POV.

The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall: Wind in the Willows fanfic, but also quite amusing.

The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary: Listing animals for an apartment dweller.

The Apartment Dweller's Stavebook: Listing magic runes?

The Apartment Dweller's Alphabetical Dreambook: Listing dream elements. Okay...

Tool-Using Mimics: Octopuses are this.

Butterflies of East Texas: A train going somewhere, and an unticketed passenger with butterflies.

Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers: The mother/daughter relationship can be tough, huh.

Ratatoskr: Reread. A young girl sees Ratatoskr, and it changes how she sees things.

Mantis Wives: What if they didn't have to eat their husbands, what art would they make?

Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead: An interesting take on the "land-of-the-dead" idea.

The Privilege of the Happy Ending: A girl and her chicken make their way in a world (or a story).

'New clothes in a dream signifies new love. Why are you having this dream? You have your spouse; you have already made all these compromises. Maybe it only means that you are sick of those jeans with the coffee stain on the thigh that has never quite gone away. Surely, that's at least equally likely.'

'They had exhausted their discussion of all the benefits attendant on a Christmas spent with friends, instead of (for instance) returning to one's childhood home to be judged by one set of relatives whilst sleeping on the narrow bunk beds from which another set had been ousted...'

Creative writing 101 : woman as animal, goddess and more.
Expect nothing as you enter these pages but prepare to be
amazed.

"A collection of speculative and experimental fiction exploring
animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories."
Multi-award winning Kij Johnson's short fiction from the last 10 years.
Her previously collected short fantasy fiction was published under
the title AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER OF BEES. One of my all time
favorite books.

I got a little distracted by a line about how the toad was wearing a sealskin parka, given that he is a talking animal and all of his friends are also talking animals. It feels a little like if you saw a person wearing a human skin parka.

Reading a Kij Johnson book is a bit like wading through knee-deep sour cherry syrup. It’s dark and viscous, slow at times and persistently melancholy, but if you reach down, dip your fingers in, and taste, it’s really quite good.