Last month I was invited to be a panelist at StokerCon by a writer I greatly respect, and the convention was in my home city—so no travel costs, no hotel costs, just the convention itself. It would have been—should have been—perfect. And, in a time before Covid, it would have been. Probably. But I suffer from anxiety, and with the addition of a pandemic I ended up not going to the convention. It wasn’t just anxiety; there were other factors involved. But I have to admit not getting myself to go to an enclosed public space (where there were indeed Covid cases cropping up) was in large part due to anxiety.

This wasn’t a new issue for me; I have had anxiety and OCD nearly as long as I can remember. And it isn’t a new issue for a lot of people. Sometimes it’s better, other times worse; for the most part, for me, I have found ways to handle it or to mitigate it. And much of that is through writing.

In this issue our first article in a long while is about that very thing: Can we use creativity (as in writing, but also art or even interactive role-playing games) as way to help ourselves? Can it be used as a therapeutic tool in a professional setting? And has it been successful?

This June issue is also full of amazing work (as always! :) ). While the incredible cover art (Civilization by Tim Hildebrandt) works well with our article’s theme (I think; it works for me), it also reminds me of some of the stories herein, principally “Slobbering Sevillano” by C. I. I. Jones, which gives us both civilization and myth. We also get into the mythic with Ngo Binh Anh Khoa’s “The Little Joys of Sisyphus” (with which Fragile Rock by Elby Rogers pairs nicely), Colleen Anderson’s “The Toad Stone,” “A Provincial Exorcism” by Joshua Grasso, Occult Red by Ritiksha Sharma, and “Only the Devil Played Fair” by Alex De-Gruchy. You can also see the mythic (and mystic) in Elemental by Nicola Brayan and Christina Sng’s “History of Our World.” And then how we encounter the mystical in James Rumpel’s “The Oracle” (and, somehow, Denny E. Marshall’s Swiss Army Mars Lander).

“It wasn’t an Autumn Day, as one might expect when encountering a scarecrow story” could be our sentiments as well as those in Carl Taylor’s “The Final Straw”; we kinda already wish it were autumn, and we’ll give you a hankering for that season as well with Taylor’s story, as well as Kaitlyn Lynch’s “Straw Man” and “The Crow-People” by Adele Gardner. You’ll also get a hint of it in the background of Shikhar Dixit’s The Angel’s Wish. (Although perhaps I am misunderstanding the word “hankering.”) For those who prefer many seasons, we’ll give you a more varied climatic view in Kurt Newton’s “Moonlight Apocrypha” and Bryan Miller’s “Unquiet Planet.” For those who are not as much into the seasons as what can be grown in them, sample Deborah L. Davitt’s “Through the Garden, Unseen,” Carl Scharwath’s Meditation, and Jennifer Silvey’s “The Shack and the Plums.”

All this scrumptiousness is followed by a future on Mars with the continuation of Jesper Nordqvist’s Mondo Mecho.

I seem to have wavered (“woven”?) from the mythic to a strange understanding of how seasons work to food ... all of which do connect (I insist!), but also give you more understanding of how my mind works. When it’s working.

Enjoy, and we’ll see you in August, where you’ll be able to harvest even more ... Oh, I should stop now.

Jeff Georgeson
Managing Editor
Penumbric