Monthly Mayhem in the life of a first-time convention presenter (6.25)

This month, I went to Archipelacon 2 / Eurocon 2025 to talk about the state of fantasy media...

Jul 01, 2025

Thanks for still reading Monthly Mayhem!

I had but one project this month, really, which was to write a very long presentation for a convention where I was accepted as a presenter! Otherwise, I spent a lot of time in my garden and enjoying the summer. It’s been very chill compared to the endlessly social summer of 2024, which is an admittedly nice change of pace.

Bean snoo chilling with a chin rest, so friggin cute...

CREATIVE PROJECTS & ARTICLES

Alrighty, so I actually did a lot this month and I’m going to probably talk about why in an article in July, but to make this brief, I had a really intense emotional/spiritual/whatever moment this month and it quite literally changed my physiology in some way, and possibly my mentality as well.

The result of this was that I finally decided that it’s time to start writing about my late adoptive son. I haven’t done it before now for a lot of reasons. One is because I just wasn’t ready, and I knew that it would come out if/when it wanted to. The other was because I didn’t even know where to begin or how to start.

But I did know that it would probably relate to the Book of Balance, so this is where I started publishing. Here are the first three installments of our story:

My Son Died Because of Me, And it Was Entirely Not My Fault
You Could Have Done Everything Right, But They Still Would Have Died
You Were a Great Liar, Kid… Not a Great Actor

If you’ve happened to read these? Thank you! Very sincerely. It’s very hard to talk about, but I think it’s important to share this journey because it had such a profound effect on me and I think there’s a lot to learn about grief in there.

The next installment will explore all of the ways that I fucked up in that relationship, but from then on out I hope to steer more toward the stuff that made alllllll of the pain worthwhile, so stay tuned!

Unfortunately, I did have to pass up on the opportunity to go to the Netherlands with my friends to see Eye of Melian’s debut show, but fortunately I was able to find a home for my ticket with a friend of a friend. However, my friend Kathy Criswell did go and she wrote about the show, so once again, her guest blog is up on my website! I’m so glad she wrote this, so I could live vicariously through her.

Cry of Melian, International Edition

Note to Substackers: Once again, these articles are all also available here (except Kathy’s)!

Archipelacon 2 / Eurocon 2025

As I mentioned last month, I was approved to do a talk at Archipelacon 2 / Eurocon 2025, which is a convention that took place in Åland from June 26-29th, 2025.

My talk — and by talk, I really more or less mean essay, or even thesis — was called Do We Need a Better Fantasy? and I am actually very proud of what I put together. My dry run was overwhelmingly positive and I was delighted that about 35 people showed up (I guess that’s good for a nobody?), I got some laughs and murmurs of agreement/approval, and about four or so people came to me afterwards to thank me for the presentation and tell me how much they liked it. Another lady on Sunday was asking when my books were coming out so she could link them on Facebook, which was so lovely. And even my friends (who I trust to be critical) just called me a rockstar, so that felt like an overall pretty solid win… one that’s been overdue for me for a long time.

I actually had such a good time of it that I’m hoping to bring it to a few more conventions over the next year or two. Perhaps this is a thing I could keep doing to promote myself…

I truly don’t know why I look so drunk, but I retook this a few times and it didn’t change so I gave up

And if you’re not a convention-goer but you are interested, I’m going to record it at home as well, so you can check it out probably sometime next week on my website, YouTube, or here on Substack.

The Vitmar Chronicles

I have decided, at long last, that I will be aiming to release The Vitmar Chronicles, Volume II: Three Oracles, A Dance, & A Song on August 22nd, 2025! That should give me plenty of time to polish it up the way I want it, though knowing me, it’ll be another interesting month, to say the least.

Oh and hey, here’s a casual advanced cover reveal for all you readers! I just finished this up on the 29th (thanks to Kathy for doing 99% of it!), but I haven’t put it online just yet. The artwork has definitely leveled up this time!

If you haven’t checked out “The Vitmar Chronicles, vol. I: An Ending & A Beginning,” click here to learn about the series and click here to read the first fifteen pages!

Off the Record

I actually have an interview with Auri on July 2nd for the release of their upcoming third album, “Candles & Beginnings,” which is also coming out in August. I enthusiastically look forward to it, as these are some of my favorite people to interview!

Note to Substackers: you can also listen to these interviews here!

Merch Mischief

I did, however, go to Tahko (a ski/sport resort) with Merta. I haven’t been to Tahko since 2010 — my Au Pair host family had a place in Tahko and owned a restaurant there that’s apparently still around called Tahkon Kunkku. It was closed, so I couldn’t go inside and check it out, but it was a nice blast from the past.

The event was called Crawl Thru Finland and seems to involve people decking out their crappy old vans and cars Mad Max-style (minus the weaponry) and driving around the country, ending at Tahko for a party, where Merta and Uniklubi were performing, alongside some awards for best cars and that sort of thing. It was weird, in that very Finnish sort of way.

And shout-out to the Uniklubi guys for generally being quite friendly! I’m not used to getting hugs from strangers in this country, and they were unnecessarily helpful at times too, so I really appreciated them.

Next was an Enemies Everywhere show at On the Rocks. I haven’t seen them since they had to replace their singer, so it was fun to get an update. Their new singer suits them well.

I then went to the first ever Hyvinkääfest to represent Tyrantti, who are generally just some of the most fun guys I’ve had the pleasure of working with. It seemed like a nice little festival, even if it was all local bands and no one that I personally considered very interesting, though Tyrantti put on a very fun show — always a pleasure to work with them!

My last event of the month was for a Japanese artist named Ichiko Aoba, who was playing in Finland for the first time ever, at the stone church no less. I’ve never heard of her but she played very soft, ambient, mellow music, all by herself with some traditional instruments. She did a beautiful job and her fans were very enthusiastic. I was a bit sorry, however, because there was another Japanese artist that night — playing music that’s a bit more up my alley — who had Rabbit Cult opening for them… it would have been cool to go to that one, but the request for a merch seller came after I had already agreed to the other show. Bummer timing!

PHYSICAL & MENTAL HEALTH

I actually don’t want to get into this because it’s very personal, but my mental health has been very poor recently.

However, I will mention in brief the physical change that happened this month. I’m going to tell the full story about this in an article, because I find it very interesting, but suffice to say I had an experience that, after looking up what happened, I can explain only by saying my heart chakra opened.

I know all of you non-spiritual/non-hippy folks out there are already probably rolling your eyes so far back that they’re pure white by now, but everything I was feeling was explained pretty much perfectly by this phenomenon.

And during this event, I asked my partner if he would crack my back for me. Remember the angry wife in my spine? Well… I think she’s gone, at least for now. That specific spot in my spine cracked so loud that I felt it throughout my entire body and there was a second very audible crack that felt like it was inside the first crack.

Needless to say, I think a huge part of me realigned. That spot in my spine feels fragile now, like I could slip a disc easily if I try to move it much. I’m not all better, by any means, but something definitely changed.

And of course, my osteopath is on vacation for the summer (presumably), so unless there’s a cancelation in early August, I won’t see him before the 21st of the same month, which sucks. But… suffice to say, I’m very excited to see him again ASAP to see if he’ll give me a read on these changes.

GENERAL BEARSNESS

First, and obviously most importantly… we seem to have a supikoira (raccoon dog) that wants to eat our gooseberry bushes. It’s really cute and I don’t know what to do about it. After seeing it the first time, I hoped it would move on, but alas, we saw it again recently.

I digress… perhaps the most fun and interesting thing from this month — apart from seeing a friend that I haven’t seen in a good 10+ years since she moved up to Kuusamo — was actually getting to go to Åland for the first time. Conventions give good excuses for travel, I have come to realize.

I’ve wanted to visit Åland pretty much since I moved to Finland, ergo for about 16 years by now. I also didn’t sleep very well, so I was able to get up early on Saturday and go for a little drive through the islands by myself for half an hour or so, which was really lovely. It’s got a very Nordic-Mediterranean feel, like if Corsica was Finn-Swede.

It would have been cool to explore some more, but time was what it was and I wanted to see some other panels at the convention, since I was there. We enjoyed Mikko Seppänen and Elisa Wiik talking about shows of interest from 2024-2025, Jukka Särkijärvi (whom I used to hang out with in university!) talking about roleplay in movie and film, Mikko Järvinen’s talk on the history of Finnish horror, and we went to the cosplay masquerade as well, where Ada Palmer showed up as a secret special guest to sing.

It was fun, a little chaotic, and ultimately really nice convention… apart from the fact that both of the panels we wanted to watch on Sunday — one about toilets in fantasy series (haha) and one publishing Q&A — were canceled.

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

— Roy Batty, Blade Runner

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Coming Next Month…

July’s going to be dedicated to polishing and perfecting The Vitmar Chronicles, Volume II for its August release! However, there will also be Kosmos Festival and I just got my accreditation confirmation, so I’m excited as can be to go for the fourth time.

My Best of 2025 playlist can be found here… I’m not listening to a lot of new music this year. I’m not even keeping up, so at this point I should probably just say that you shouldn’t expect this playlist to grow significantly this year, heh: