🗣️ The below is a “transcript” of this episode, cleaned up for clarity and readability. I’m testing out various ways to make this podcast as accessible as I can for people, so please be patient with me as the dust settles.
어서와, 친구들, and welcome to Creative Alchemy: After Hours, a subscribers-only podcast about untangling creativity from capitalism, and the intersection between art and commerce. There, I figured out the tagline!
I’m your host, S. Jae-Jones, but please call me JJ. I’m the New York Times bestselling author of the Wintersong duology and the forthcoming YA fantasy series, Guardians of Dawn, the first installment of which will be published August 2023.
Anyway, how as it been, 친구들? A lot has happened for me since the last time I recorded an episode. Let’s see, the last time I recorded was two weeks ago? All right, so since then, the boys got their balls removed. And because I’m extra and also my mother’s daughter, I made them 닭죽, or chicken congee, for their meals. Koreans make 죽 as recovery food if you’re ill, in much the way westerners have chicken soup. So aside from the cooking, there was also the making sure they didn’t rile each other up and rip their stitches, so the vet sent me home with a bunch of sedatives.
They sort of worked.
The problem with having two dogs from the same litter isn’t actually the littermate syndrome problem; it’s the fact that they always have someone to play with, so therefore it is always play time. Castor and Pollux had a grand old time bonking into furniture and corners with their cones of shame before I replaced them with those inflatable ones that look like airplane pillows. They were really cute in them, not gonna lie. That lasted until Bear’s nurse suggested we put them in these surgical recovery suits for dogs. Those actually worked really well, and had the added benefit of looking like long johns for dogs, complete with butt flaps and tail holes. The cute, I could not.
The boys have recovered fine, by the way.
Anyway, this past weekend, Lemon and I drove down to Atlanta for the launch of Roshani Chokshi’s adult debut novel, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride. The book’s great, by the way, so I highly recommend people go buy that immediately. Side note: I got the audiobook in addition to the hardcover, and it’s narrated by Steve West. If you don’t know, Steve West is an audiobook narrator with a very deep and sexy voice, and I had to stop listening because every time he got to the sex scenes, I started giggling and throwing a blanket over my head.
Anyway, that’s beside the point.
The point is Lemon and I had a lot of time to talk about what we usually do on long drives: art, commerce, and industry. You know, nothing too heavy. One of the advantages of having writer friends is the ability to talk shop, but the advantage of having Lemon as your friend is the ability to talk about the philosophy underpinning...everything.
One of the things we ruminated over on that five hour drive was whether or not publishing was getting harder. Not just getting published, but being published, and staying published. If the online discourse is anything to go by, then the answer is yes to all three. But is there any truth to that?
