life goal: infamous recluse
The thing I can't possibly stress enough about why, exactly, reconstructing Early Modern recipes totally belongs in the field of game design is that for all there is the joy and satisfaction and some kind of mystic cross-time connection with creators of the past OR WHATEVER--
I have a new flash SF story out from Lightspeed Magazine, "How to Win Against the Robots," along with an accompanying audio performance!
It's that time again: My schedule for Readercon 34 has dropped, and I am *in love.*
Back in the summer of 2023, I had been pouring through the Early English Books Online database (as one does), and came across William Salmon's Polygraphice (1673)--within which I found the following: "VI. To rectifie the Breath..."
Here's how the IndieCade-nominated, live-action, cozy, not-an-escape-room location-based experience MEMOIRSCAPE managed to host a full, remote playthrough for an international audience of players.
There's this thing people talk about after conventions: "con crud." You get home, you're exhausted, sleep-deprived, hollowed out, your skull is full of snot and regrets, there's a high-pitched eeeeee where sound should be and somehow despite every sign and portent of the vast universe conspiring to signal that you ought to crawl into a deep dark crevasse and become one with the light-shunning lichen until both God and man forget your previous life among the mortals-- *you still have to go to work.*
The thing about trying to Frankenstein a lavender soap out of bits and pieces of a bunch of historical recipes...
I had for some time wondered what would happen when my various apothecary nonsense things went bad. I sometimes had things that turned out strange, and some things that didn’t set right and turned out gross, but eventually the day did come when I had something TURN BAD from OLD AGE.
The time has come for some actual pomatum and 100% less fun with fire (as the prophecy foretold).
So remember that time. When I thought it was a good idea. To try and make a new soap in the later hours of my evening.
Katherine Crighton 