Killian's Blog/Website/Whatever

Polish your magnifying glass and dig up your obscure monographs on cigar ash, because PREORDERS ARE OPEN for TUDOR CLOSE: A MYSTERY ANTHOLOGY  This is the second book in the Apiary's collection. We'll have ebooks and print copies available! Preorder for $20 before November 20th to receive a print copy, ebook, and an audio recording of the story of your choice from the collection! Seven authors, seven mysteries. For preorders, contact me @ killian.czuba(at)gmail.com. After preorders close (Nov. 20), the book will be  available for $20 print (+ free ebook), $5 ebook only, $1 per audio download, and $5 for the "audio book." Authors: H.E. Bilinski Tabitha Blankenbiller Leigh Camacho Rourks Stephen Cox Sherri Hoffman Moye Ishimoto Gina Mulligan For more info, podcasts, blog posts, etc, you can visit our website: apiarylife.org  ! We also have a few copies left of the The Egret's Crossing: A Collection of Adventure Stories, so if you're intere...

Today I officially joined Giving What We Can (a long time coming, I know!) and took the pledge to donate at least 10% of my income for the rest of my earning life to eliminating extreme poverty on a global scale. We are all humans, we are all family, and (being a Gryffindor with strong loyalty tendencies) I'd do anything to help my family. If you're interested in evidence-based giving (charity + science!), you should check out the Giving What We Can website , and also check o ut GiveWell for charity evaluations. And if formulae aren't your jam, look at charities like Deworm the World and the Against Malaria Foundation , which save lives (and promote education as a result--you don't miss important days of class if you don't have to deal with malaria) in a super tangible way that will give your heart warm fuzzies. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org http://www.givewell.org/ And here's John Green talking about these feelings in the context of Syria and the r...

The two peer groups I interact with most are:  1. Rationalist Utilitarians (or those who identify generally in one or both of those terms) 2. Existentialists who Do Art This makes my brain a mashed potato of feelings. If forced to pick a Philosophical Camp, I'd definitely identify as an Existentialist, but I've spent a ton of time with (and am married to an) utilitarian(s). They rub off on you. You start to incorporate  effective altruism with your more heart- or passion-motivated giving. You consider your political biases and think "wait, but WHY do I feel this way, and what does the EVIDENCE say?" And then sometimes you change your mind. It's awesome! However, my Existentialist brain promotes thoughts like "TAKE CHANCES, MAKE MISTAKES, GET MESSY!" My existentialist brain says: "You want to live in the woods by the water? Go move to the woods. Go live by the water. Pete did it. Pete is a beautiful writer. Pete is probably sad, because ...

Sources close to me have said that it takes a good nine months to adjust after a big move. Nine months is enough time to make an entire human, so I guess it makes sense that rebirthing yourself would take about as long. The gestation period is, however, frustrating. Lots of barf feelings, and none of the magically clear skin/"glow" you hear about. I had this dream last night that I made friends with a cute bat, and then the bat turned into a person, and the person was mean and terrible. Thanks, subconscious brain. Totally difficult to decipher that. No easy way out, man.

Yesterday, I stood outside the front of my new building waiting to let a few of my friends inside to see our place. As I was standing there, checking my phone, a beat-up 90's Corolla drove past me on its way across the St John's Bridge. It honked. I looked up. The passenger flipped me off. The duo was white, probably in their 20's. Male or female, doesn't matter. I want to say I flipped them off right back, but my reaction time to aggression is never fast. I just stood there. There's a lot of hate among native Portlanders for Invaders. Housing prices have gone up exponentially, so we say "All those Californian's are buying up our houses, and we can't afford to live here." An influx of young professionals means old houses are torn down and apartment complexes are put up. It's natural growth, and it has major problems, but it's also bound to happen. If you want to live in a West Coast city and you're not in tech, Portland is really th...

Everything is packed into three suitcases and two small carry-ons. Moving feels real weird, man.

If you like writing and you like mysteries (or if you make totally sweet commix), you should absolutely apply to be in this collection. If you are chosen to take part, you get paid at least $40 (more based on profits made from selling the collection). Read the directions, and apply the heck out of this. Tudor Close, a Collection of Mysteries The Apiary invites you to submit your work to Tudor Close, a collection of short mysteries. Please read guidelines carefully, because the instructions are very particular!      Our short story collections are unified around a single element – for example, the stories in our adventure collection,  The Egret’s Crossing , all mentioned a bar in Tangier. In this collection, all stories will mention a mansion called Tudor Close.      We know that there’s a limited market for mystery shorts, so to submit to this collection, please send a sample of 1,000-2,000 words, written in a style that ref...

I have new prints up on Society6 ! They come with or without the pithy greetings. They are dirty Portland pigeons--for all the PDX natives who can never find the right visual representation of their city. Print 1: Portland Pigeons enjoy trash outside of Big Pink. Print 2: Pigeon enjoys its perch/poop spot on the top of the Kvinneakt (or "naked lady") statue, made famous by of Bud Clark and his "exposure" to art . Prints 1.5 and 2.5 have greetings and welcomes. CLASSIC PORTLAND. Special thanks to Hobart and Aaron Burch for inviting me to make these for an interview piece that will be coming out soon. I'll link to that as soon as it's out. You'll definitely want to read it. You can buy my prints (mugs, t-shirts, stationary, etc etc etc) here .

We're moving back to the US of A. It's been a long time brewing (I'd say three years, really), and as of today (fingers crossed), we have an apartment locked down. We'll load ourselves and our cats onto a total of three planes and travel for a disgusting 25-or-so hours and when we lay us down to sleep, it will be in Portland. It's difficult for me to describe the emotions that come with this move. There's the people I'm excited to see and the people I'm sad to leave.  I can't wait to get out of a prestigious town I don't fit into, but nervous about returning to a homeland that has changed so much since I was a baby, a kid, a teenager, a college student. Five years is a long time to be away from a place. I've visited, of course, but that's not the same. Visits are spurts of excitement full of action and activity. Living? Living a place is different. I'm not going back to my Portland (forever 2003 in my heart), or even the Portland I ...

Someone needs to write a guide for me. Two guides, actually: 1. How to gauge the badness of pain 2. When to go to the doctor My experiences with medical doctors has been generally good. (I'm not going to talk about insurance here. I've had the whole range of experiences with that, being a US citizen in a time of healthcare transition. That can be a top for another time.) Most of my life has been spent with the same doctor--a family practitioner in Portland who treats every member of my immediate family--which makes me very fortunate, because she is an amazing doctor AND knows all of my hereditary red flags because she is extremely well acquainted with my family history. As a kid, I was lucky enough to pretty much never need a doctor. I can remember only one instance that required a doctor visit, outside of physicals and booster shots, and that one instance was cutting the tip of my thumb off. (It reattached). The downside to being healthy and hardy as a kid is...

I did a short podcast about what tabling at AWP in Minneapolis was like! So if you're curious about this insane writers conference, give it a listen. (It's 37 minutes.) Speaking of AWP and writing updates: 1. We totally sold out of The Egret's Crossing print editions. Seriously. We printed 150, and they are all gone. But you can still get ebook editions --and we're considering a second run, so let me know if you're interested (comments, twitter, email, facebook, however you want to hit me up). It felt so good to pay everyone who contributed, and I'm stoked to get to work on the next project (stay tuned, etc). 2. Cactus Heart (an awesome lit mag I help out with, led by the charming and sassy Sara Rauch) did amazingly well, too. It was the first AWP for CH as an exhibitor, and--in addition to selling many sexy t-shirts and back issues--we sold out of print issue 10.5. !!! Thea ,  Sara , and I celebrated heartily: 3. Barrelhouse is the...

Aww, shoot. The wait is over! (Well, almost--they'll start appearing irl the first week of April.) If you're interested in preordering a copy, send me an email or purchase the book through paypal via this handy link on the Apiary site . 

I generally consider myself to be a pretty low-key tomboy. Some of it is natural inclination, some of it is lack of experience with mysterious rituals like 'contouring,' and some of it is possibly (probably) a result of dating at least one guy who hated when I wore makeup. However, I've learned something important about myself--particularly after being sick for a week and a half and feeling like a lump dump every time I look in the mirror: I like how I look when I wear makeup. I like it a lot. It makes me feel more beautiful and confident. Like many of us, I grew up under the impression that, as a girl, I could like pink, or I could like dirt. I chose dirt. But in the past few years, I've realized that I kind of like pink. Yeah, I almost exclusively wear jeans and I still get into who-can-punch-harder fights with my brothers, but I also love Justin Timberlake and Covergirl's Lash Blast mascara. I used to view my occasionally well-manicured nails as a sign of fragi...

I don't usually share my creative writing online, because the way that the publishing world works is so insane and I fear the plagiarists. But (1) I am becoming less uptight and more rebellious in my attitudes towards publishing, and (2) this is a finished poem and not a piece of fiction that is still in-progress. So, here you go. A rare gift of artful (not just spontaneous) words from a month or so ago, which I am finally presenting to you on a day that's been a little too heavy for me. Untitled In the grass, there are white stones small enough to swallow. Bitter powder. Don't let them touch your tongue. Saint Joan, I was only twelve and already pinning windows shut to keep the eyes out. Telephone poles, pulling hair out by the roots. Teach me how to bear the pain of the burns on my back-- I never learned my lesson about sitting in the sun. Eight legged creatures crawling into me, For Every Car You Pass You Must Lift Your Left Shoulder (feel the wing bo...

Daniel was telling me last night about how "like" is probably going to be an official part of speech, as in "My dad was like:..." or "Her boss was like:..." At first, he was like "I don't know about this." Oh, shoot--you see what I did there? I actually think this is a useful distinction in English. When you say "X person said Y," then you are basically relaying a quote. Even if it isn't a quote, that objectivity is what you're going for. It's straightforward. It's the reliable narrator. If you say "X was like 'Y'," then there's some implied wiggle room. The "like" suggests that what comes next will probably be an approximation  of a quote that is [slightly/majorly] changed to fit the mood of the story or the storyteller's agenda. It's less reliable, and a lot more conversational. So there you go! Don't feel bad about "like"! Embrace it! It's the unreliabl...

Having a bit of a difficult time connecting to books right now. I'm not worried, it happens sometimes. Mood, taste, whatever it is, sometimes all I want are comics, sometimes all I want is TV. Occasionally, it's novels written by Russian authors in the 1950's. Desire is a fickle beast. Anywho, right now I'm in a Music Place. Less music than lyrics, I guess, though that's complicated. I can't hear all the separate instruments doing their independent thing when I listen to music. Daniel can; he'll be like "That piano reminds me of X," and I have to listen for a minute and disassemble all the sounds before I can hear what he's talking about. However, as a person who is not tone deaf, good lyrics don't automatically make for good listening. I do have a soft spot in my heart for boys who don't sing pretty, though. The thing is, I don't write music. I never have, and I don't have any particular desire to. I mean, sure, if I could ...

I'm adapting this short story into a comic right now (more on this at a later date), and I'm looking up photos of Kent, WA, and I am so, so homesick for the Pacific NW.

Yesterday I posted a picture of a haircut I gave myself.* It was fine and everything, but not super exciting. I mentioned my cautious optimism regarding 2015, but I really wasn't planning on making myself any promises. Then, while I was watching Homeland and eating a can of pea soup, I was struck by a resolution idea: I will shave my head, and--apart from very minor upkeep--will not cut it again until a draft of my novel is actually finished. This is a fun experiment. I can't really promise I'll see it through, because haircuts have, historically, been my go-to form of self-soothing and catharsis. But I am actually going to try, because it's good to have an incentive, and I think long hair makes me look like a teen baby. Plus, bonus: Daniel's iPad has one of those cool photo-a-day apps that takes a picture of your face in the same frame every day, and then you can make a video out of the year's worth of photos. It'll be pretty rad to see just how fast my...

Hey everybody, lots of updates today (finally?). 1. It's a new year, etc. It is (cross my fingers and pray to your deity of choice) the year we move back to the USA, and for that reason I am hopeful. I miss my friends and my family, and I will never complain about domestic travel ever again. Ideally, I will have a long and prosperous life that will never again include dealing with Heathrow. I'm also pretty nervous. Even if we do get lucky and move back to the west coast, it's not like everything will be the same. We're never going to have such a massive contingent of friends in Seattle, all of us within walking distance of each other. No matter where we live, we'll be far away from people we love. Add to that: it's not actually the case that the number of unknowns goes down at the end of one year and bubbles up again at the beginning of the next, but it sure feels like it sometimes. Cross your fingers for us, please? 2. I'm not going to spend too much ...