Toss a coin to your Witcher!

Hello, dear readers!

This is the week of exciting news and I'm so glad y'all are with me on this wild ride. I've decided to start a ko-fi ("coffee") page so that there is a place for y'all to support my projects and help me keep creating. 

I have several future plans for this page including q&a videos, special requests, readings that will be available specifically to my ko-fi supporters. I'm also interested in your ideas for what you'd like from this support page! I don't want to detract from the big projects I'm working on, though, so I want to start small and build what we can make work with my writing schedule. 

What projects would you be supporting right now? 

• Weekly (at minimum) blog posts.
• A queer fantasy trilogy (not currently available, still in rough rough draft phase).
• a new chapbook of new poetry that will be posted to this blog as I go, then collected together for publication!
• a podcast that will be revealed and revealing very soon.

I have a couple other projects that I want to get to, but these are my current babies. The others, mere twinkles in my eye.

Here's a little video I made that describes it more fully. Check it out! It was made in reverse land.

Right now it's set up so you can only make a single donation, but there will be a way to do this as a monthly contributor in the future!

You can support me by clicking here or clicking anytime on the button on the right toolbar of this blog. Toss a coin to your Witcher, y'all. 

Questions? Let me know. I probably have answers!

Much love & gratitude,

Kit Steitz

More fabulous updates!

Hello, readers!

It's a rainy, warm summer day in Columbia. The sky is dark with clouds and the pups are searching for places to hide from the booming thunder.

Here is a random spider web from my backyard, just for you!

So here's the update- Amazon updated my name so my author page and book are listed under my actual name! That feels pretty affirming and stuff. Check me out...

• Kit Steitz's Amazon author page
• The 2020 revision of a record of night, with my correct name, and a brand new cover!

BIG NEWS! Audiobook coming!!!

Okay, y'all!! BIG ASS NEWS!!!

The fabulous E.m. Knowles accepted a contract to narrate and produce 

AN AUDIOBOOK 

of a record of night!!!!!! 

I am so honored and stoked!

More updates as we go!!! We can't wait to share this with y'all. 

Dog days of summer, Pandemic edition

Dog Summer~

Kiera in a sunbeam,
ear twitch, joy,
nose wiggle,
so many smells!

Hello, my readers! It's days away from August and we're hip deep in a Pandemic. Here in Missouri, very few people have given any fucks and we are left with rocketing numbers of positive Covid-19 cases, so our family is very home-bound. Between furlough and telecommuting, our family has created 2 new flower beds and installed our first victory garden! I have phlox and gladiolas blooming, tomatoes ripening, and a new sense of general okayedness. As I write this, I'm sitting in the afternoon shade on my back porch- Keira is begging to be let in and the air conditioning unit is louder than my music, but all and all, it's pretty alright.

There are a few big creative projects on the horizon that I'm excited to share SOON. Not yet, but SOON.

One is a silly podcast that can best be described as lowfi, low key, and low-brow. But shhhhh! That's not public yet!!

I've slowly updated my various writing profiles to include my new name, pronouns, and information, and working on republishing my chapbook a record of night. I'm an OKAY novelist, but I'm a damn good poet, so keep alert for the big reveal! New name, new cover, new forward, same love <3

And a project so hush hush I can't even hint about it, but I AM SO EXCITED I WILL LEAVE THE CAPSLOCK ON. I can't wait to share it with y'all.

Hope y'all are doing your best during this shitty period in our history.

Love and future vaccines,
Kit

It's been awhile...

It's been awhile since I posted. My blog goes through this every now and then, but this time feels different. Everything stopped for me when mom passed. I've definitely read or heard somewhere that the cruelest part of grief is that the world keeps going, and I've just needed to stop, but it wouldn't. Apparently the theme of 2019 was grief. I lost my friend in a car accident in February, my mom passed 2 months later, then in October, another dear friend died.  This is the most grief I have experienced in such a small stretch of time and I'll admit, I've struggled. The anniversary of mom's birthday came around, I celebrated my first holidays without her, then without my friend/s... now spring is coming and I feel like I'm ready to step back into the moving world, but just a toe. Just a little spin. I still have days where I just want to curl up in a ball and cry, but those days don't outnumber the mostly-okay days, and I count that as a win.

I also came out as non binary this year, and I guess now in my invisible blog to the void. Some days I regret coming out. Some days, the level of ma'aming, girling, sheing, that goes on just buries me under. Some days I'm invisible. Some days being visible makes me a target. Some days are okay.

Also, did you notice?
The
world
is
on
fucking
fire.

I have no idea what to do about that whole fucking shit.

But I started writing again. I picked up my art again. I started skating again. I joined an orchestra and started playing my cello again. I don't just want to live in suspension until everything crumbles. I want to go into that void knowing I lived the best life I could, that I helped where I could and rested when I needed, and loved with all of my heart.

So this is me, now. My name is Kit. I'm non binary. I have lost, been lost, and now I think I'm okay with that.

So if you're following my journey, which is mostly just me not letting anybody read my writing, well, thanks. I swear I'll let folks read my work when it's ready.

Grief, a personal narrative

I wrote this blog a few weeks ago and didn't publish it. I needed time to sit with it before hitting that button. So here is a personal essay for you. I hope if you're working through loss right now, you find comfort and some time to soften your focus.

All my love,
K. Steitz

...
This past week has been pretty intense in my personal life. I'm glad I had a few blog scheduled to go up over the weekend and this week, because my life has been a whirlwind of happenings and feelings, and posting was at the bottom of my list.

You know that feeling you get when you just wake up: the world is in soft focus, you're burrito-ed  in your blankets, maybe a small chihuahua mix who goes by the name of Chicken Nugget is nestled in the crook of your lower back. Everything is quiet and warm and soft.

I relish this moment. I want to live in this soft focus. I know it's not reasonable, but damn, does it feel good. Instead of relishing this moment, this weekend I lost two people. This was just mundane, daily moment of everything coming back into focus. Instead of dealing with this sharpening, I tried to maintain my break-neck speed. I didn't miss practice, I made meals for myself and my family, I went with my mother to her appointments and helped do some meal prep, I picked up my house and cleaned another, I prepared for another round of winter weather, I worked out. I didn't miss a day of work.

But I haven't processed it. I can feel the grief like a wet blanket on my chest. Grieving posts on social media slip through and I catch my breath at my dead friends' names.

I'm using this blog, right in the here and now, to process. I know it's a two sided coin, but in this moment, within the context of my here and now, it feels like life is about thriving through loss. I know there will be loss in my future, because that's just the nature of life. I expected a numbness to come with this loss, but instead I've felt like a raw nerve, exposed to the elements. I need to stop moving and be present with these feelings.

I acknowledge my grief.
I honor our time together.
I honor our imperfections and our light.

There is no craft talk in this post and no poetry. I hope that if you are also experiencing a loss like this (or if you are familiar with those who've passed, and you share this feeling), you have somebody dear to hold. That's my plan, tonight.

In the words of Michelle McNamara,
It's chaos. Be kind.

Rambling about Greek Myth Podcasts and other things...

Okay, so I've binged all of the Nightvale Presents that I can and I'm currently listening to a podcast called Let's Talk About Myths, Baby. This podcast is delightful. The podcaster, Liv, is hilarious and I love hearing interpretations of mythology that read into the very dudely narratives. I just listed to her mini myth about Daphne and rant about Theseus. Let me tell you, I was giggling over my salad, by myself, in a room filled with colleagues.

This was probably the least weird thing I did today.

During her retelling of Daphne, I made some connections that I'm sure I'm not the first to make. Current theory: The Goddess Diana? SUPES GAY. Her "virgin" followers? SUPES GAY. My next story perhaps based on her or Daphne? Possibly. Alternate interpretation? Supes Ace!

While I was thinking these thoughty thoughts, it sparked a memory. Long, long ago, when I was in JCL (that's Junior Classical League to you non-nerds), I did submitted a painting of Daphne for a contest. It did not win. I was really butt hurt about it. But apparently I really resonate with that myth, so I think that alone warrants more exploring.


So anyway, listen to that podcast. It rocks. Hope everybody is having a marvelous Monday! May inspiration strike you before the first cup of coffee!