Jess Zafarris

Decaf coffee is a cruel joke you play on yourself when you crave failure

Next week in Austin:

3 public talks
3 book signings
1 mentor session
4 video recordings

At the same time, a 55-speaker conference that I produced will be happening without me in Orlando

Before I go:
Speak on a virtual panel
NPR interview
podcast recording
3 writing deadlines

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I had only heard about it a few years earlier, and only because I happened to attend a talk that addressed it.

Which is to say, the federal-level push to do so is the most visible and public federally sanctioned effort to erase nonwhite history in a few decades, AND it's also been happening at state and community levels during recent times when we were said to have been making progress on this front.

A few years ago, my mom dug up some historically significant patents, property details, etc. from her grandparents' rural Arkansas property.

She asked the local archive if they were interested; they were, but only because our family is white. They'd been instructed not to accept records from POC.

This red onion has a wee heart at its heart

I would be interested in watching them try because I'm petty like that.

The book in question is How High We Go in the Dark, which has some comedic and science fiction elements to it, but they definitely don’t buffer any of the tragedy

Good god

I haven’t recovered from the first time I read it

Plus now I have a big boy dog and a little girl dog, so I’m not sure I’d emerge from the experience intact

me: i feel mentally stable enough to read a sad book right now

narrator: reader, she was not

This is the highest honor I could imagine

@jesszafarris.com - I hope you will be pleased to know that WORDS FROM HELL occupies the role of honor as "Emergency Back Up Book" in the car, in case I ever forget to bring whatever book I'm reading & am stuck in a waiting room or wherever with nothing to read. "In case of emergency, crack spine!"

No, this is fantastic!

Yesss I am so happy with the covers. Chambers is wonderful to work with.

I finished editing my fifth book last night!

INTO THE WORDS is my not-terribly-barbaric yawp about the words English uses to describe the natural world, and all the ways we have invented (and in some cases violently taken) them.

Arriving October 2026.

Look - /lʊk/
Book - /bʊk/
Luck - /lʌk/
Buck - /bʌk/

Oo neat. Isn't it interesting that adding the N at the end even makes it look more like it's based on a person's name?

Seems to be the temptation to pronounce -sia as -zhuh or -zhia (like Asia or ambrosia), especially in US English, that trips us up. And some words we still hit the 'i' harder.

Yes, yes, comparisons to 1984 are wildly overplayed, but at what point do we acknowledge that "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength" would make a pretty tidy slogan for the current administration?

Latinization of species names has its (frequently Germanic) speedbumps haha

And orange, lol

In fuchsia, we are similarly altering the S because we don’t know what to do with the ch before it. In the early 18th century when the plant was first described, it’s unlikely that there was much anxiety about potential lewdness, especially given that it’s a Latinized multilingual genus name.

I stand by it. It isn’t a common combination of sounds in English, which often dictates pronunciation via phonotactics.

We can pronounce a P and a T next to each other, but it’s comfortable for the P in words like pterodactyl to be silent, though it wasn’t in Greek and is pronounced in helicopter.

The pronunciation of fuchsia is so funny

Like we’re fairly comfy correctly pronouncing its namesake, German botanist Leonhart Fuchs (fooks, like books and looks)

But the minute you Latinize it with that -ia ending, English phonotactics does its best and then goes “fuch it, that says FYOO-shuh”

🫡

oh lookee we gave the solar system a colonoscopy

Chuck…

Hey...what is the world we use for content creators who make stuff that is informative? Like, broader than "science communicator" because they might make videos about hospice care or history or solar panel technology?

Do we really not have one?

A dog looking at the camera with resplendent sparkles in her perfect brown eyes

I do a lot of fact-checking for a living, and I don't consider myself an overly credulous person, but if a malevolvent force of any kind were to appear as my dog and look at me like this, with the little frosties in her fur and the sparkles in her eyes… well, slap me damned and call me Mrs. Fausta.