Hi Scribblers!
We've made it one month into 2026, which to me feels wild. My parents always warned time would move faster the older I got and now I get it, Mom and Dad. (They'd better be reading this).
But, for all of the horrors out there, there have been some stunning victories as well. Communities across the country have come together and stood up and against ICE and the terror they are exacting from Minneapolis to West Valley. The noise that was raised around the Strike on January 30th is not going away, and even our Congresspests seem to be listening. At least a little bit.
I've got some local and national resources listed at the end of this and I hope you take the time to check them out. They do good work, and we need all of the good work we can get right now. I want to give a special shout out to the work that Under the Umbrella and the Legendarium are doing right now to build and educate community.
Writing Adventures
Not only are we one month into 2026, but I'm now two weeks into dedicating my full time and energy to writing. Since I started this journey, the iconic essay from Virginia Woolf about how to be able to write, women need a room of their own has been racing through my head. Because it's true. Writers are so rarely able to just sit and write on one project. If you haven't had the privilege of reading the essay, the Gutenberg Project has it up on their website.
Things I have learned over the last couple of weeks from my room of my own:
- I still am not sure which of the myriad of webhosting options will work best for me and I'm playing with them and I wish there was an easy option, but right now they all have good things, bad things, and way too much AI nonsense. (AI is bad, people.)
- Reading grant applications carefully is super important. Even more than that, reading the submission page for the grant application is even more important. That way you don't get halfway through submitting before realizing that the literary art funding option is already closed and you have been filling out the application for visual arts. (well that was a waste of a day!)
- But, sharing opportunities with your friends and community is what makes the world go round!
Where Can You Find Me This Month:
I will be leading a workshop at the Salt Lake Community Writing Center on February 7th from 12-2! We will be talking about character creation concepts using TTRPG (Table Top Role-playing Games) and building our own character bibles using TTRPG character sheets.
The workshop is free! But you do have to register. Come and join me!
Writing!
If you haven't already headed over to my patreon, it is one of the best ways to help build this room of my own. You will get access to short stories, recipes, a discord community of folks celebrating creativity, and the chance for me to send a postcard to an elected official of your choice on a monthly basis. Additionally, a portion of every monthly subscription goes to support Salt Lake Community Mutual Aid.
As an incentive (I hope!), the following story can be found over there. This one was first published in The Nature of Cities: A Flash of Silver Green, which was an anthology focusing on what cities would look like in the year 2099.
Category Ten
In between storms, steady rain fell. Never in sheets, never dripping, just steady. Enough to keep the ground wet, not enough to give the impression that it would ever stop. Warm enough to make you sweat, cool enough to need a jacket. Emmie imagined this was what life would be like if you lived in the juncture of someone’s hip and thigh. At least, that was what it smelled like.
She moved through the wet of downtown with familiar steps, not even bothering to look any more at her hazy reflection in the fiberglass walls that stretched up toward the sky. Everything looked the same - designed to absorb what little energy came through the thick layers of clouds, and to keep heat inside. Everything was foggy, covered in condensation. Everything was uniform.
At night, at least, there was color. Colors rose once the day turned from gray to black. Pink and yellow and green flashed at entrances to pubs and dance halls. Emmie slipped through a side door and down dark stairs to the sound proof basement.
Some traits of humanity persisted from generation to generation.
Up on stage, four punks thrashed to the sounds of their own egos. Light bounced off the spikes in their ears, their jackets. Emmie sat back and watched, preferring to observe the chaos than participate.
Outside, the wind beat against the walls. In just a few hours, the shutters would come down on the buildings and the grates in the street would open, alleviating flood waters that would climb the sides of sealed buildings. Every six weeks, like clockwork, the clouds built to a terrifying green and black front, unleashing fury upon those the Earth could care less for. Wherever you were when the rains came down, there you stayed until the eye of the storm passed overhead. During the calm, if you needed to change locations, you could. But if you were caught on the street when the deluge began again, you risked your own life. No one could be expected to venture out for you.
These punks did. They performed nightly, but on the night before the storm, the team all gathered. There was food here. Fresh water. Supplies they donated between storm cycles. They bedded down together, waiting it out, until the storm’s eye siren sounded. Then, they scattered, finding those still clinging to light poles and half drowned in sewer grates. They’d bring the survivors back, give them water and blankets and wait out the rising waters.
The dead were left to the ocean.
Above the noise of the screaming guitars, the water walls ground into place. The torrents had begun. The ground shook with the vibration of the streets opening to reveal the plumbing that would help absorb the flood waters. A week in the front of the storm. A day in the calm. A week on the back end. Cycle. Rinse. Repeat. There was never time to dry.
While the band on stage thrashed, booze was locked away. Caps were placed on faucets. Rations appeared. Two water bottles a day, no water from the tap allowed during the storm surges. Ablutions to be done in the chemical toilet. No showering. Food was quartered out - energy bars for breakfast and lunch. They ate rice as a group for dinner.
In apartments around the city, Emmie knew, the rituals were different. Families settled - two or three parents, one child, and they told stories and counted out the days and camped in the living room of the small, energy efficient apartment.
In the basement, the howl of the wind was blocked out by the thick walls, the slosh of the water that they knew was already running down the street, flooding at corners. The first dead would come floating by within moments.
One week of waiting. One day of hope. And then one more week of waiting. Six weeks of preparation and the storm would hit again.
There was one landing with a translucent window. The dark screen had ripped away years ago and never been fixed. They took turns standing, staring out at the darkness made void by the rain that fell. Sometimes, the water rose past the window and the vigil became anticipation - waiting for the fiberglass to, finally, spring a leak.
It never did.
They slept the week away. Told stories. Listened to mythologies of a time before the clouds, when the sky was blue and the storms unpredictable. More people died then. The cities had not been ready for the rain or the wind. The inhabitants then didn’t believe in preparation because they believed Terra was subservient to them, not the other way around.
The siren sounded.
Outside, waters receded. People emerged, some to stretch their legs, others to hunt for survivors. Stores opened their doors for only a few hours, and people raced for water and supplements.
Emmie found two corpses, bloated and bruised from the debris in the water. She shoved them from their perches into gutters that opened and swallowed them whole. At the door to the club, a bedraggled rat asked for help and she helped the girl down the stairs and into some dry clothes. Before she could head out again, the alarm sounded, signaling the beginning of the second thrust of the storm.
They hunkered down for another week of wet, of stories, of vigils at the window, marking water lines. The levels rose higher than ever before and Emmie was sure that the building would float away. She’d heard stories of it happening in other cities.
And then. As always, it ended. The rush of the water past the building receded in a roar. The torrent become steady become the everyday rain they existed in. Six more weeks until the next one.
Emmie gathered her bag and went home.
Community Resources:
Salt Lake Community Mutual Aid: Salt Lake Community Mutual Aid is a 501 (c) 10 organization that practices harm reduction and works to build resilient community structures in the Salt Lake Valley. We were founded in March of 2020 in response to COVID-19. Initially we provided grocery delivery, direct financial aid, and protest support. In early 2021 we restructured into a horizontal consensus-based model, and shifted from COVID- specific support to broader community harm reduction. Currently our efforts focus on unhoused community distro, supporting our local community freedges, and hosting community events.
The ACLU dares to create a more perfect union — beyond one person, party, or side. Our mission is to realize this promise of the United States Constitution for all and expand the reach of its guarantees.
See you next month, Scribblers!
Thank you for your support!
