Catherynne M. Valente

September Experiment--Control Group

Since we've been doing these experiments for a few months now, I thought I would open the subject up to you guys. What would you like to see me cover this month? Business? Craft? What do YOU want to hear about? Leave a comment and let me know. I want you guys to get the most out of this!

Glass Town Game Winners!

Congratulations, Vladimir Barash, Ann-Marie O'Connell, and Cass Morris, you've won signed copies of The Glass Town Game! Message me with your addresses and I'll get your books in the mail before I leave on tour!

The Glass Town Game is out today!

Greetings, Laboratory folk! 

My new middle grade book, The Glass Town Game, an adventure featuring the Bronte children, two sentient suitcases, and Napoleon riding a giant flaming chicken, is out today! Please do pick up a copy and come to one of the tour stops if you can!

In the meantime, we can make this a tradition. Leave a comment and I'll choose three people at random to receive signed copies!

Show Me On the Doll Where You're Afraid You'll Never Be Good Enough: Dealing with Insecurity

Show Me On the Doll Where You’re Afraid You’ll Never Be Good Enough

Greetings, Citizens of the Laboratory. Autumn is upon us, which means cloudy days, hot fruit pies, apple cider, crisp leaves, and pumpkin-spiced awareness of our own mortality. It’s an early one here in Maine; the first cold snap snapped before the tomatoes finished ripening. I fear it will be a particularly gnarly winter. We’ve had a mild run of it for two years now—New England doesn’...

August Rewards

Hi everybody! 

August rewards will be going up tomorrow as I scramble to adjust to wicked jetlag and get back on my feet & catch up after exhausting travel. And now that things have (relatively) calmed down a tiny bit, I'll live-tweet X-Men: Apocalypse over the weekend. 

Thanks for your patience!

August Excerpt: A Fall Counts Anywhere

Hi everyone! This month, an excerpt from a short story that will be published this winter in an anthology called Robots vs. Fairies. We were meant to choose one and write a story arguing for its superiority...but instead I accidentally wrote a full on WWE robot/fairy wrestling story and I can't wait for it to come out I am so excited. It's easily one of the weirdest and funniest things I've done, not least because the WWE is already full of fairies and robots, you barely have to change anything....

Glass Town Game Winners!

Jason Beck and Jeremy Brett, message me with your addresses! 

I'll be giving more away, so don't worry if your name didn't come up this time!

Stealth Giveaway!

Look what new beastie just arrived at the Lab!

Yes, it's The Glass Town Game, my middle grade fantasy about the Bronte siblings, out in just three short weeks! You can pre-order it here, and if you can, please do. Pre-orders can make a huge difference for a new book--publishers and bookstores pay attention. 

But.

I have this here box of copies and it's so looooong ti...

Q & A Livestream

Here's hoping this works!

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/q--a-livestream-patreon

Q&A starting at 8:30pm tonight!

Live-streaming the answers to your questions and more. Come join me!

And patrons at the Appropriate Level or Above - feel free to add more questions right up until showtime.

And the Mutants Have It!

Well the polls are closed for this month's Live Tweet and it looks like "X-men: Apocalypse" is the winner BY A MERE 1%.

Thanks for voting, and stay tuned tomorrow Thursday the 10th at 9pm-ish EST for the tweeting.

July Recipe: Passionfruit Syrup!

Passionfruit Syrup

So I was going to post the recipe for linguine with white wine jalapeno sauce this month, but I ate it all up so fast I forgot to take a picture of the stuff, so that will have to wait a bit. In its place is one of my secret summer essentials.

I thought I hated passionfruit most of my life. Then I went to Australia where they’re everywhere and discovered that what I actually hated was artificial passionfruit flavoring. Passionfruits them...

July Experiment: What's My Motivation, Mr. Director?

What’s My Motivation, Mr. Director?

Greetings from the Mad Fiction Laboratory! It is high summer here in New England, which means that all my little green and growing experiments in the garden are starting to grow up big and strong and I can’t honestly say whether or not cucumbers this size are capable of achieving sentience but you just can’t discount the idea completely. One must always be careful with cucumbers. It’s been a mild summer in Maine which IS...

Live-Tweet Poll-de-fol-rol.

Okay lab partners.  What shall it be this month? Get clicking.

(Note - I did not include Overwatch as was suggested as I do not own that game and the $60 pricetag is little much for a one-off. Will keep it in mind for the future though, thanks Sian!)

July Excerpt: Not an Excerpt! An Entire Story! Two and Two Is Seven

Greetings, Mad Laboratory Assistants!

This month, you get an entire short story that's never been published anywhere else. Why?

Well, because last year, I was asked to contribute to a Stanislaw Lem tribute anthology to celebrate one of his birthdays. It was to be published first in Polish, which I've done before and is pretty exciting. I was allowed to use his characters free and clear for the piece. I love The Cyberiad, so I got a little carried away and turned out a novelette....

The Return of Live-Tweet Poll!

Now comes that time when the children gather round the burning fire of cultural criticism and choose a new beast for me to feast my angry eyes upon! 

Please suggest movies, an episode of television, video game, or other screen-focused event (current events and sports are fine) and I will make an easy poll for everyone to vote in. 

A side note: Heath would like to use his Ultimate Lab Partner Powers to insist the choice be Krull this month. I would like it to be X-Men: Apocalyps...

Q & A Livestream #1

Here's the livestream for the Q & A, available to all my Patreon supporters due to the generosity of the Mad Post Doc Students!

God I hope this worked. It is NOT intuitive.

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/q--a-livestream-1

Q&A Livestream #1

Here's the livestream for the Q & A, available to all my Patreon supporters due to the generosity of the Mad Post Doc Students!

God I hope this worked. It is NOT intuitive.

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/q--a-livestream-1

June Recipe: The Lord's Potatoes v. 2.0

The Lord’s Potatoes v. 2.0

Some potatoes (however much you want, really, the recipe is very flexible)

3-6 cloves garlic

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

1 tsp curry powder or potato sprinkle (Australian spice combo)

5 tblsp Olive oil

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Salt and pepper to taste

Potatoes are amazing miracles and I am always looking for the best way to make them. I had a "melting potatoes" reci...

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death Live Tweet Starts 9 pm!

Just what the title says. Come on over to Twitter (@catvalente) and watch along with the hashtag #avocadojungle

This is probably a perfect movie for the monthly livetweeting, in that I have seen it, but not for ages, and all I remember is I HATE IT LIKE FIRE. So let's get out the marshmallows.

Experiment #4: Cat's Convention Commandments

Cat's Convention Commandments, or, How to Be a Good Panelist

Greetings, Laboratory Folk! I write this from the most wonderful, peaceful, aesthetically pleasing and definitely not-at-all soul crushing spot in the world—after hours in the departure terminal at Denver International Airport. I’ve just spent a long weekend being authorial at Comic Con and while my brain is a churning river of slush and nonsense and questions which are really more comments than ques...

Updates and Changes to Q&A Format

Hey everyone! Do not fear, the experiment is incoming shortly, as is the winning livetweet--Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death!

Time at Denver ComicCon is proving more scarce than I'd like, and my dog's cancer surgery devoured the better part of what free time I had during this month of constant touring, but I'm scrambling to get it all done for you. 

To that end, I'm announcing a change to the Q & A format. It's proving next to impossible to get everyone together at ...

Vote for the Live-Tweet Victim!

Sorry for the long gap between suggestions and poll--there is a severe locked room mystery afoot, in that my laptop charger vanished from a literal locked room while I was on tour, rendering me computerless for the last week. CLEARLY I BROUGHT A PIECE OF INFERNAL VOID FROM THE LAB KITCHEN AND IT ATE MY CYBERPOWER. Still waiting for the new one to arrive before I head out again in two days. 

As the end of the month is super tight and I'm still on a book tour, I'm trying to get everyone's r...

June Live-Tweet Poll! Choose the Form of the Destructor...

The Mobile Mad Fiction Lab is currently reporting in from Kansas, where I just won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and watched an amazing prairie thunderstorm all night afterward. It is surprisingly beautiful here--my previous experience of Kansas was during a blizzard, so I had a bad impression. 

Anyway.

I deeply appreciate all the support and love you guys have poured out over our recent animal troubles--it means the world. 

Now for something less sad.

Now comes the h...

Everything's Going To Be Okay: 2017 Commencement Address

Happy June, Laboratory supporters!

I was asked to give the commencement address for the graduating class of 2017 at Kimberton Waldorf School outside Philadelphia. Here is what came bubbling out of the beakers.

 (The text of this speech, may be reproduced, with credit, for free.)

Everything's Going To Be Okay

Words cannot express how good I wanted to make this speech for all of you. I wanted to make it perfect. I wanted to make it a towering ...

Refrigerator Monologues Winners!

The winners of signed copies of The Refrigerator Monologues are...

IllustriousIllusionist and Hallie!

Send me your addresses so you can get your loot!

We'll do other giveaways here as the year goes on, the odds on Patreon are way better than on Twitter. Thank you all for your support. 

Much more to come in the next few days in the Lab--I'm headed to Philadelphia this weekend to give my first commencement address, and I'll post the text here afterward. It's been a secret ...

We Can't Be Sad Today, Not on Book Day

Hello, beloved members of the Mad Fiction Laboratory!

Today one of my mutant creations, The Refrigerator Monologues, shambles out into the world. It's essentially The Vagina Monologues for superheroes' girlfriends. Funny, punky, pissed off, postmodern, chilled in the crisper drawer. 

You've probably seen me babbling about the book elsewhere, but I wanted to do a special giveaway just for you guys, since my loyalty is as ever to the Lab. So leave a comment on this post to be entered ...