Liz Argall

I answer some questions about writing, creativity, and how it intersects with roller derby and Aikido!

Uncanny Magazine is a shiny new magazine from the uber creative team  Lynne M. Thomas (Three-time Hugo Award-winner, Apex Magazine, Chicks Dig Time Lords, Glitter & Mayhem) and  Michael Damian Thomas (three-time Hugo Award nominee, Apex Magazine, Queers Dig Time Lords). I love their vision of what fiction can be and it’s exciting to see what they’ll do with an ongoing magazine that is entirely theirs (bahahahahahahahaah). Michi Trota will be the managing editor and while I have not had the pleasure of meeting her in meat space all my online interactions with her have led me to conclude that she’s one of those hella capable, smart, thoughtful and funny ladies who knows her way around a sword and sets fire to things (literally). What’s not to love?

From everything I have gathered it will be a magazine with gorgeous art, stories and poems that speculate, explore and have fun within and running over genre lines (who wants to colour in within the lines ALL the time?). They’ve deliberately structured it to make sure there’s space to discover amazing new voices as well as provide certainty (and a feel for the creative vibe of the magazine) with a nifty range of creators committed to contributing to the first year. This list has some very impressive names.

This list also has ME on it! I am on this list! I LOVE working with Lynne and Michael and I love creating in service of something I believe in.  They want to publish stories that make you feel and linger on the palate. All I want from a story is to fall in love and be transformed, I think we share the same values.

To make Uncanny Magazine come to life they’ve created a Kickstarter. This is exciting for me as well, as it gives me an opportunity to give people unusual gifts. I offered two tangible gifts, a pack of kind things and a pack of even kinder things. Both have sold out! There are still dinners at conventions and google hangouts available , but things are selling out pretty fast. This too is exciting, to see all the good will and care flowing around.

24 hours into the Kickstarter and Uncanny is half way to it’s goal! Many of the higher tier awards have already sold, so if you want a pair of handcrafted earrings made by Rachel Swirsky or a manuscript critique or go to dinner with folks or tell Amal El-Mohtar what to blog about it’s probably good to move sooner rather than later. Let’s keep up the momentum through this mid-section of the campaign, get us to some stretch rewards and such!

Check out these authors!

• Charlie Jane Anders (“Six Months, Three Days”)
• Liz Argall (“Mermaid’s Hook”)
• Paul Cornell (Doctor Who, London Falling)
• Amal El-Mohtar (“The Green Book”)
• Maria Dahvana Headley (Queen of Kings)
• Kat Howard (“Breaking the Frame”)
• Hao Jingfang (Ken Liu, translator)
• Mary Robinette Kowal (Glamourist Histories series)
• Ken Liu (“Paper Menagerie”)
• Scott Lynch (Gentlemen Bastards series)
• Sofia Samatar (A Stranger in Olondria)
• Rachel Swirsky (“If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”)
• Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)
• E. Lily Yu (“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”)

Showcasing original poetry by

• Neil Gaiman
• Emily Jiang
• Rose Lemberg
• Mari Ness
• Sonya Taaffe
• and Bryan Thao Worra

… and essays by

• Jim C. Hines
• Kameron Hurley
• Sarah Kuhn
• Julia Rios
• Diana Pho
• and Tansy Rayner Roberts.

Uncanny will also feature cover art by

• Carrie Ann Baade
• Julie Dillon
• Galen Dara
• Tran Nguyen
• Matthew Dow Smith.
• Special thanks to Katy Shuttleworth, who created Uncanny’s logo.

If anyone asks you why you’re a writer just play them the song, over and over. They will understand, eventually they will understand. Or at least they will stop asking.

I am so tired! I’m glad I finished my story in a little over three hours and was able to spend the last bit writing other things in long hand. I’m not sure I would have had the energy to write a whole new blog post! Since completing my challenge at around 5pm I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping, eating and gazing blankly into space.

Here is what I wrote after I finished a whole story!!!!! Shatner still blaring in the background, just as Shatner continues to play in the silence of my mind.

Wow! So that was a thing, still is a thing as I write this with 40 minutes to go! I had three hand written pages when I started my epic four hour Shatner experience. Now I have a complete story and it’s not super short either. BOOM, Clarion write-a-thon challenge complete with days to spare! Words can’t express how amazing and marvelous it is to have people come hang out on google with me while I obsessively write and listen to Shatner until my head started to pound (and beyond!).

Three hours of constant writing with no pause bigger than 30 seconds and precious few of those (My bladder is invincible! Thank you salted popcorn!). I did need to paus at one moment to refill the ink in my fountain pen.

Seeing people’s facing turn up was electrifyingly wonderful! I could FEEL parts of my brain lighting up with joy and had momentary pauses to blow kisses at people and waving freshly written hand written pages at folks (not to mention waggling my ink stained fingers at them). I’m super pleased that other people enjoyed the hangout and got stuff done too. Difficult novel chapters were written, 700 words (including editing), 1200 words, computer code, marvelous things. It made me feel luminescent looking at everyone’s hard working faces.

Big big love to everyone who popped in

• Simone T. Cooper
• Stina Leicht
• Sara Mueller
• Curtis C. Chen
• Dotstry Dolemout Jackson
• Katherine Nyborg
• Mishell Baker
• Nancy Etchemendy
• Manny Frishberg

Because I finished my story with so much time to spare I also drew a somewhat scratch things comic, wrote a long hand version of this blog post, wrote a long hand version of a blog post about Uncanny Magazine and in the final moments to spare tried to draw the Things by holding the page at the web camera and being guided by what was on the screen (it did not go well, I shall do it again).

Oh so many pages. 23 pages in total and I think I like most of what I wrote! I want to do this again, it was so wonderful, it made my heart sing… but perhaps another nap first.

It’s crazy to see how fast time has passed. For the Clarion Write-a-Thon I pledged I would write three stories in six weeks. Two stories are done, now I just have to write the third. I’ve started the story, but I’m going to finish this story in style.

On Tuesday 29 August from 1pm to 5pm PST I am going to do nothing but work on my story while listening to the four hour version of Shatner of the Mount.

I will make this mind bending experience available to watch via google hangout. If you’re not already a sponsor you can send some love and egg me on here.

I’ve been an alien long enough that I can’t vote in my homeland. I’m still an alien so I can’t vote in my adopted country. Throughout the world we’re seeing what a critical difference our elected leaders make and how grass roots activism can alter the priorities of politicians, can define what is news and what simply doesn’t get reported. We’ll always be pushing shit up hill, but better a hill that trying to survive shit being thrown down on us from a cliff top.

I can’t quite believe I got to be part of a roll out to vote promotion with a bunch of fricken amazing Rat City All Stars (who play their last big home game of the season on August 9, just sayin’), but life is weird and wonderful sometimes. Go to and vote. It’s an important voice to exercise and don’t let anyone tell you it’s not important.

Women Destroy Science Fiction and Women Destroy Horror will be holding a group reading from 6-7pm on Saturday July 12 at Readercon! Come listen to the dulcet tones of:

• Amal El-Mohtar
• Sarah Pinsker
• Holly Schofield
• Kameron Hurley
• Liz Argall
• Livia Llewellyn
• Gemma Files

Danny Ngan took some great photos of the double header roller derby bout last Friday. Jet City Bombers vs. Arch Rival Roller Girls and Jet City B-52s vs. Rat City’s Grave Danger. Grave Danger invited a bunch of people to skate with them and I got to skate with Danger. It was a fun bout and I think we did pretty well given we were all getting to know each other as skaters.