Happy Passover and happy Easter for those who are celebrating this week! I’m almost too bloated on deviled eggs and mini-cheesecakes and ham to write tonight, but I’m working through it.

It’s been an uneventful and moderately productive week for me, both in writing and otherwise. This coming week, my goal is to finish several book reviews, as I’ve finished a few things lately that I really enjoyed. After about a week-long reading slump (mostly due to getting stuck on a title I didn’t like but that had a concept too good for me to quit it right away), I just started an ARC of Wicked Wonders by Ellen Klages (out May 2 from Tachyon Publications). I’ve only read the first story, but I’m already really excited about the rest. I’ll probably be reading that in tandem with the new John Joseph Adams edited anthology, Cosmic Powers, which has my favorite table of contents of the year so far and is out this Tuesday, April 18, from Saga Press.

The finalists for this year’s Eugie Award have been announced.

The World Fantasy Awards Administration unveiled the new award statuette that will be replacing the bust of old, gross racist H.P. Lovecraft. It’s gorgeous, and finally addressing the Lovecraft problem built up a lot of good will. Which was then swiftly squandered when everyone learned that they’re keeping Lovecraft on as a pin for all award nominees. Apparently there’s a bunch of pins left over from previous years and they want to use them til they’re gone, which is thrifty, but still ill-advised considering how much people don’t want to look at some nasty old racist’s ugly face anymore. Still, that new stature really is lovely.

Word is that Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels are being adapted for film and television, and I’m full of mixed feelings about it. I read and loved the shit out of those books when I was in middle school, but I realize as an adult that Xanth is best enjoyed when you’re just old enough to appreciate puns but still young enough that Piers Anthony’s creepily unfortunate gender politics is all going to go right over your head.

It turns out that I’m still not okay about Carrie Fisher. This tribute video made me cry. A lot.

I felt slightly better on reading the announcement of a new Star Wars anthology. Coming October 3, From a Certain Point of View will consist of 40 new stories told from the perspectives of background characters from A New Hope. While there’s no table of contents yet, there’s already an impressive list of authors donating work to the collection, from which all proceeds will go to benefit First Book, a non-profit that provides books and other learning materials to educators and organizations helping children in need.

Fantasy Book Cafe’s Women in SFF Month continued this week:

• Gail Carriger wrote about why she writes queer characters
• Danya from Fine Print wrote about menstruation in fantasy novels
  
• S. Jae Jones wrote about identity and being an Asian American writer who doesn’t write about being Asian American
• Yangsze Choo wrote about the houses that have inspired her books
• Kat Howard wrote about being asked why there are so many women in her stories
• And the Week 3 schedule is HERE.

Dianna Gunn’s novella, Keeper of the Dawn, is out on April 18 from Book Smugglers Publishing, and this week she talked about her inspirations and influences for the book.

Aliette de Bodard wrote a guest post over at Skiffy and Fanty about writing vibrant, unexpected characters.

Margaret Atwood was profiled in The New Yorker.

Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together is still pumping out their Dystopian Visions series, which I am still loving. It’s a great mix of posts on stuff I know well and things I’m less familiar with. This week, they covered:

• V for Vendetta
• Dead of Winter
• Brazil

At Strange Horizons, Erin Horakova wrote an amazing essay on what she calls “Kirk Drift”–the disconnect between the popular imagination of James T. Kirk and the actual, textual reality of the character.

Aidan Moher kicked off a new blog series at Tor.com, The Art of SFF, with a post about Richard Anderson.

My favorite free-online short fiction of the week was Kate Lechler’s “The Hulder’s Husband Says Don’t” over at Fireside.

I loved Ana Lily Amanpour’s first feature-length film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (on Netflix if you haven’t seen it!), so I’m pretty stoked about her new movie, The Bad Batch, which is being described as “a horror-romance (with cannibals).”

I’m fairly certain that Atomic Blonde is going to be a problematic mess, but I am really excited for it. There’s a new trailer, and it looks AMAZING: