Amusing Things and Cancelled Events

A short list of things that have amused me today:

• A Facebook writing thread where someone referred to their graveyard of unfinished projects, and I’m so tempted to write a blog post titled “All Writers are Necromancers”
• The email sign-off “With Kindness,” which seems like an aspiration act in 2020.
• The emerging wave of apocalypse marketing showing up in my social media feed, advising me to transfer all my assets into Gold and Diamonds (I’m, like, dude, your targeting is off-base…)
• Folks starting to ponder their two-week lockdown reads.
• My cat trying to play with the cat in the mirror.
• Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet having a weird, print-only resurgence of sales over the last four weeks.

In less amusing news, this twitter thread from SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowall is worth a read:

I’ve run big events a few time in the past, working for both profits and non-profits, and I’ve got a lot of empathy for this situation.

The profit margins on events are small and don’t have a lot of buffer space at the best of times. Cancelling a GenreCon on short notice would have effectively killed the possibility of any future conference, and left a huge black hole in the operating budget of the parent organisation.

Basically, I’m very, very glad I’m not running any kind of event right now, and feel awful for the folks who need to make those calls.