Hello! Welcome to KM’s blog, on KM’s website. It’s a place to collect everything I feel worth collecting and to share things I feel worth sharing. A landing page. A home base. A fortress of solitude. Etc.
I’m a librarian, poet, artist, reader of comics, player of games, and many other things. I’ve been making things for a long time, but in 2023 started submitting in earnest out of a desire for connection, community, and all those things that make art less solitary. Eventually, submissions lead to publications, and eventually with enough of those I wanted a portfolio. I also just like taking things and putting them into little groups and lists and such, so you can expect a lot of those here.
I liked the idea of doing a “get to know me” post by answering some questions, but I couldn’t think of any so I stole these from the NYT “By the Book” interview series. Enjoy!
What books are on your nightstand? My nightstand is just a small bookshelf, so there are a lot. Mostly comics, some stacks of books on a theme or topic I wanted to read more about. But I don’t read in bed as much as I used to, so those stacks end up under other stacks which end up under other stacks which get compressed until they become part of the furniture.
What’s the last great book you read? The Unbroken by C.L. Clark is great both in quality and epic scale. It’s the first in a fantasy series that takes place in a colonized nation. Touraine, a soldier in the empire’s army who was taken as a child, is for the first time facing the true horror of what her beloved military did to her home and her people. Luca is the future queen of the empire who is constantly struggling with the decisions she believes are best for her country–a struggle that comes to a head as she grows closer to Touraine and learns that she can be the one to break the status quo. It’s complicated, full of moral gray areas and impossible questions, and queer as hell.
What’s the last book you DNF’d? I DNF books all the time. Not because they’re bad, but because I am easily distracted and bounce between books frequently. Most recently was The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, which is embarrassing because it’s short! I was listening to it and enjoying it, but I often fall out of audiobooks very easily when I’m overwhelmed and in need of quiet time. Not the fault of the book at all, and I hope to revisit it soon.
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of? Medea by Christa Wolf. Before Madeline Miller and Emily Wilson revived the most recent wave of retellings of Greek mythology, Christa Wolf was giving Medea a fresh voice that was long overdue. It’s brief and poetic, and Wolf’s language captures both her despair and her fury. If you liked Circe for its compassionate attitude towards a complicated and condemned woman, you will love Medea.
What were your favorite books as a child? I read a lot of those fantasies growing up where the trope is “magic comes for the misunderstood child.” I read Harry Potter and Madeleine L’Engle just like everyone else growing up in the late 90s thru 2000s, but my favorites were the Avalon: Web of Magic series, So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane, The Dark Hills Divide by Patrick Carman, and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. I also regularly reread my collection of Shel Silverstein poetry.
What book do you think should be turned into a movie or TV show? I’ve been obsessed with the Locked Tomb books lately. I started listening to them not long after I watched a bit of Arcane with my partner, and now all I can think is how cool it would be to have the series adapted by that team.
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