Hello, this is Against Everyone with Connor Habib.

Friends, continuing on with my series of episodes about work, I wanted to consider the work that I love the most that's often the most exciting to me, which is the work of writing.

I want to consider not just writing itself as the craft of writing stories and novels, but being a writer.

That is what writing takes and takes from you, that work of being a writer.

It's different than just writing.

And I wanted to do it with another working writer who writes in the genre-define and genre-defining modes.

So I asked Sarah Maria Griffin back onto the show.

Sarah was last on episode 93 when we talked about dark fantasy, dark imagination,

and then it was the first time I met Sarah. She came over to the house, and all the lights on

the block went out as soon as we finished. So talk about dark. And then we did tarot readings

for each other because she's also an excellent

terror reader and we do a lot of tarot pop-up events on the Patreon. She's the author of poetry,

zines, memoir, and dark fantasy novels, including her masterful weird novel, other words for smoke.

She has two upcoming horror novels, so please keep an eye out.

I'm not allowed to announce all the details yet, but they're coming not too long from now,

and she is also a teacher. She understands, therefore, the life of not just writing, but being a writer and all that requires,

the mediating of the forces of dark and difficult realms. I mean it. The contending with the darkness

of the imagination, but also the darkness of the economy and the political interactions of

publishing in all different

forms.

She understands the frightening endurance that is required of writers, the tedious quotidian

tasks, and the managing of the expectations of readers.

...