The title of this post only barely merits the plural.

Bayou Arcana: Songs of Loss and Redemption, various authors and artists. A graphic novel, collecting stories by a slew of (male) authors and (female) artists, all centered around a Louisiana bayou, “one of the seven sacred hearts” of the world. (According to the afterword, some of the other hearts are in the Outback, the Amazon, and Tibet, and there will be volumes for them, too.) I felt a few of the stories in here were a bit too brief and/or elliptical for their punch to really hit me, and I’m kind of meh on some of the art — but then, that is frequently my feeling on graphic novels as a medium. I liked this one enough to want to read the next volume, now that the core characters have been set up, to see where they go from here.

Deeds of Men, Marie Brennan. Yeah, my own novella. A quick re-read for the purposes of refreshing my memory on a few things.

. . . and we’re done.

So where did this month go?

A lot of it went to illness. Not to delve into the gory details, but I had a minor procedure done early this month that will hopefully address a chronic issue that is possibly at the root of my sleep problems (and therefore my generalized fatigue); it is, unfortunately, the sort of procedure that makes things worse before it makes them better. If it does the latter at all. I should know one way or the other by the end of June. And then copy-edits landed on my doorstep, and there was KublaCon (at which kniedzw and I ran our LARP), and then con crud.

I started a number of books this month, some of which I abandoned, some of which I hope to finish soon. But the only ones I actually finished were a graphic novel and my own novella. Which is pretty pathetic. Next month I start seriously noveling again, and I also have Fourth Street — but as far as leisure reading is concerned, my count pretty much has nowhere to go but up.