It’s been another sort of slow week for me in terms of writing, primarily because I’ve been playing a lot of the new World of Warcraft expansion. I hadn’t even planned on buying it, to be honest, but it turns out that it’s really good, the most fun I’ve had playing WoW since probably Wrath of the Lich King. However, it also hasn’t helped that I think I’ve been slightly depressed lately, and nothing kills motivation like clinical depression. Last weekend, I didn’t even get around to doing my regular weekend links.

Instead, I’ve been engaging in a lot of self-care, and I think I’ve managed to head off anything more serious. After rushing to max level with my druid in WoW (Bigmamapain on Dalaran server, if you want to say hi), I’m sure to be spending less time in the game going forward. I’ve been working on wrapping up the last bits of what I’ll be able to finish from my summer reading list, and I should have my autumn list out this week, along with some kind of plan on how to accomplish my goals with a little more regularity going forward. I hate to say, but I think I’m going to have to start giving myself deadlines. This summer (and, really, the whole year before that, what with breaking my foot and all) saw some major disruptions to the routine I had gotten myself into, and I need to figure out some way to get back into a reasonable groove of exercising, eating healthy, reading and writing. I was much happier and healthier when I was doing those things in reasonable proportion to each other.

I’m currently reading Nisi Shawl’s new novel, Everfair, which was one of my most anticipated new releases this fall. So far, it’s excellent, and I’ve also been enjoying her posts and interviews around the internet this week:

• The Book Riot Live Interview: Nisi Shawl
• “Representing My Equals” at Tor/Forge Blog
• SFF in Conversation: Nisi Shawl, Everfair, and “About What I Did” at Book Smugglers
• The Big Idea: Nisi Shawl
• Nisi Shawl Discusses Everfair, Diversity in Publishing, and Giving a Voice to Those Silenced by History at Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog

The other big news of the week was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek:

• The Kickstarted documentary For the Love of Spock is now available through iTunes and Vimeo, with DVD and Blu-ray available for pre-order. It is excellent, and I highly recommend at least renting it.
• Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana was interviewed at the Daily Dot.
• Happy 50th Birthday to Star Trek at the Wertzone (includes links to all the previous posts in Adam Whitehead’s Star Trek at 50 series as well)
• The Making of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Greatest Episode, “The Inner Light” at io9
• “What Deep Space Nine does that no other Star Trek series can” by Annalee Newitz at Ars Technica
• For Star Trek‘s 50th, NASA Interviews Nichelle Nichols & George Takei About Fiction Inspiring Reality at the Mary Sue
• “This is Our Work: What Star Trek Asks of Us” by Mary Anne Mohanraj at Uncanny Magazine
• “All True, Especially the Lies–Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cardassia” by Una McCormick at Uncanny Magazine
• “To Boldly Imagine: Star Trek’s Half Century” by Andrew Liptak at Kirkus

The winners of the 2016 Aurora Awards have been announced.

The African Speculative Fiction Society has announced the creation of a new award for African writers of SFF, the Nommos.

If you like Lady Business, you’ll be happy to learn that you can now support them on Patreon.

N.K. Jemisin was interviewed at The Atlantic. As always, everything she says is worth reading.

On the eve of publishing her anthology, Women of Futures Past, editor Kristine Katherine Rusch has a lot of feelings.

At LitHub, Gabrielle Bellot writes on the magic of Miyazaki’s literary imagination.

Foz Meadows answers eight questions at Tor.com. At her own blog, Meadows wrote a great post this week about the plausibility of diversity.

Feminist Frequency looks at body diversity in video games:

I read Charlotte Ashley’s “La Héron” months ago when it was included in the Up and Coming anthology of work by Campbell Award-eligible writers, and it’s definitely a story that has stuck with me. This week “La Héron” showed up on Podcastle. I highly recommend it.

I know I’ve talked many times about how much I love Tor.com’s novellas. If you are still on the fence about them, you can now download a sampler for free.

Finally, I haven’t started reading it yet, but I’m really excited about this new free anthology from Islam and Science Fiction, Islamicates.