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Bowen Yang
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Margaret Killjoy
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Bowen Yang
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Margaret Killjoy
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Podcast Host
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Bowen Yang
This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers from the very same podcast. And guess what? It's the holiday season and you know what that means. Holiday parties. Beau holiday parties. They're the best. But there's always the stress of what to wear, what to bring. Easy solution. Okay, bring a bottle of Casamigos. Casamigos. Wow.
Margaret Killjoy
That is the move you could make.
Bowen Yang
Casamigos Mules or Casamigos Espresso Martinis or Casamigos Cram. And don't forget about Casamigos Margaritas. A Casamigos Mar margarita is the perfect cocktail all year round. Casamigos is just the perfect gift that keeps on giving. And as the saying goes, anything goes with my Casamigos. On second thought, a holiday party might be in order. That's a great idea. Please drink responsibly. Imported by Casamigos Spirits Company, White Plains, New York. Casamigos Tequila 40% alcohol by volume.
Margaret Killjoy
Coal Zone Media Book Club Book Club Book club. Book club. Solstice Book Club. That's what people always call this. It's Solstice Book Club. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only podcast where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week and next week I have a story that I wrote. Happy Solstice, everyone. To honor the dark, to celebrate the return of the light, and to indulge ourselves in the legacy of storytelling and gift giving. I'm going to share first of two parts of one of my own stories next week. You'll get the second half and this story means a lot to me. This story, it's called Everything that Isn't Winter, which is a. Okay, look, it takes place in Beltane, but it's called Everything that Isn't Winter and it's about how one relates to the season of winter. And I don't know this one. It means a lot to me because I wrote it at the end of the Clarion west workshop for short story writing and it was kind of my like I have learned so much about craft and I'd been writing at a somewhat professional level for a little while before that, but this story was still like on a craft level really important to me. And also it was one of my first big short story sales. It sold to Tor.com in I think 2015 and really kind helped set my career up. So this is a different kind of Christmas story. But what are we here? If non traditional? It's still got found family. It's got self actualization and enough winter to justify the choice. And I hope you all enjoy it. Everything that Isn't Winter by Margaret Kiljoy the evening sky was a spring gray, which is different than a winter gray. And the soft light that came down through the clouds lit up the festival. Fires danced and people danced and my boyfriend was dancing with a woman who was there to work the harvest. They were hitting it off. It looked like everything was perfect in what was left of the world. At the in between lodge, we picked most of our tea leaves on Beltane. Traditionally the first flush is in March and the second is in June, but traditionally tea was imported from Asia and obviously we hadn't had contact with anywhere that far away in decades. So while we do a modest first flush and second flush. Most of what we grow is what you'd call jarling in between. We grow it in the middle of what used to be called Washington State, so it's not really jarling at all, just in between. I sipped from a ceramic cup of mushroom tea, weak enough that it just sharpened me up, made me aware of patterns of bodies and light. I wasn't on duty, but I was on call, and my rifle was stacked at the guard post by the eastern gate, so I didn't get any further into another realm than just the one cup of tea. We'd adulterated the mushroom with oolong from the first flush, and the pleasant and revolting tastes fought in my throat a little war between caffeine and psilocybin. The band played war songs on guitars and fiddles and drums. The handsome men of the choir sang the songs I'd fought to, songs I relish, songs that transport us from the world of the living to that liminal space of both battle and sex where we make and take life. My bare feet were in earth, the mountain wind in my hair. My boyfriend's dance partner wandered to the edge of the crowd, and I went to stand beside her. You must be Aiden. She turned toward me. I am. Khalil was just talking about you. Khalil was still dancing, now alone, thick legs kicking out as he spun. He was awkward and completely in his element. I love him, I said. I gathered as much, she said. She was watching him the same way I watched him. You should sleep with him, I said. She turned toward me. The spark's gone, I said. Has been for years. I can get laid easily enough, but it isn't as easy for him. She was just staring at me. I've never been good with reading faces. I saw myself in the firelight, reflected and dancing in her green eyes. That's how it works for me, anyway, I went on. Whenever I sleep with someone else, it just makes me want him all the more. You should sleep with him. An autumnal smell broke my train of thought. Autumnal smells had no place during Beltane, but there it was, amidst the ambient scent of the tea fields, the iron sweat of the dancers, the pine smoke. A voice carried through the evening scents. Fire. Burning tea plants. The smell was burning tea plants. I ran for my rifle, snatched it up, and went into the Rose, toward the growing pillar of smoke. It started off as a Doric column, shifting to Atlas, holding the world on his shoulders. By the time I reached it, it was Yggdrasil, the world tree thick and ropy and holding up every one of the worlds. There was no lightning, no likely cause but arson. I ran toward the edge of the forest beyond the fields to search for culprits. At night we see movement. In the day we see shape, but in the gloaming we see nothing. I saw Nothing. It took 50 of us to cut a fire break to keep the blaze from spreading, tearing into tea plants with machetes while the fire tore into our livelihood. The band played because what else can you do? Of the hundred rooms in the lodge, ours was in the northeast corner, closest to the fields and the forest. The poster bed was ancient, had been ancient before the apocalypse. It had been through worse than we ever had. The tea had worn off, but spring nights have their own magic. I'll never understand or forgive, and there was no cell in my body that was feeling sober or responsible. Khalil was on his side, staring out the window at the burned fields lit by the moon and the dark woods the moon couldn't light. I stood in the door. I'm sorry, he said. It's fine, I said. It wasn't. It's just that it's Beltane. It's spring sex and flowers and all that shit. I should want you. It's fine, I said. It wasn't. I've never much cared for spring. That part was true. You look beautiful tonight, he said. But he was looking at the forest. He didn't look at me much anymore. What about that woman? The one you were dancing with? I asked. The one who avoided me after you scared her off? That one is fine, he said. There wasn't much more to say. I left our room and I left him there and I went to go sleep at the guard post. But do you know what won't leave you on a cold night to go to sleep alone in the barracks and deal with their attachment issues because they are loving and steadfast and forever. That's right. It's the goods and services advertised on this show. Unless it's gambling. Please don't do that. Gambling does not love you back.
Podcast Host
This holiday season give the gift. Everyone will gather around a Vizio Smart TV now available at Walmart. From a super sized 100 inch TV to QLED TVs of all sizes, Vizio delivers breathtaking color and crystal clear picture quality that takes entertainment to the next level. Plus with Watch Free plus built in they can enjoy free live and on demand TV right out of the box. Have a music lover on your list. They can stream their favorite music on the iHeartRadio app ready to go on every Vizio TV. The perfect gift is waiting. Head to Walmart.com and discover Vizio TVs today.
Bowen Yang
Honestly, honestly, Honestly.
Health Advisor
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Podcast Host
Face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental health breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.
Margaret Killjoy
This is where mindset comes in.
Podcast Host
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down.
Bowen Yang
Trainer Games on Prime Video January 8th Watch the trailer on Trainer Games dot.
Margaret Killjoy
And we're back. First light found me in the forest with Bartley. Our scout Sword fern grew up from the ground. Maidenhair fern grew out of the rock walls of gullies, and usnia hung from every limb of every tree in handsome gouts of green. We walked along down cedared trees in the wet fog. I didn't follow Bartley's footsteps, not exactly because one person leaves tracks, but two people leave trails. The forest is something I know. A rifle is something I know. Violence I know. We stopped to break our fast under the boughs of an old growth black cottonwood that towered over much of the rest of the forest. We ate jerky, tough but fresh, and we passed a thermos of tea. Just tea. You lost the trail, didn't you? I asked. Never was one, bartley said. Bartley had a lazy eye, was always looking out to the side like she was a prey animal. Gray and white ran through her otherwise black hair, and she was old enough that she should have remembered the Old World. She always swore she didn't, that the first thing she remembered was being alone in the woods, barely post pupescent as she cut up a deer. Her life had begun at the same time so many lives had ended. A lot of people her age are like that, Khalil and I. Our lives begun with our births the next year. In the post collapse baby boom. A lot of danger meant a lot of kids got born. What are we doing then? I asked. If I was going to raid us, I'd have camped up this hill, bartley said. There's a spring up there, one you can drink from, and a few open cliff faces that let you spy on us. Why do you think they did it? I asked. Bartley shrugged. People don't like it when other people have nice things. The In Between Lodge was nice. There was no denying that we were a collective of 55 adults, 40 children, and another 16 people halfway between those two categories. We'd raised up the lodge 10 years back, just as the New World settled into place and drew its political borders, just as I'd left my teenaged years. We grew tea, and we played our part in the New World's mutual aid network of a few interdependent city states, communes, and hamlets. We sold, gave, or traded provisions to people passing through the old railway tunnel, and we guarded Stampede Pass, the eastern edge of the New World. Well, mostly Bartley and I guarded Stampede Pass. Everyone could fight. Everyone stood watch in rotation, but Bartley handled terrain and tracking while I ran tactics. Who made this jerky? Bartley asked. And what the hell kind of not tasty animal died to make it? You grumpy? I asked. Damn right, bartley said. I'm hungover. And I didn't even get to sleep between drunk and now. She shook the thermos. And we're out of tea. We caught him with his dick in the wind. It wasn't luck. We'd been waiting around for almost an hour for him to do something like fall asleep or get up to piss. Bartley had been right. He'd been camped up on the ledge, camouflaged by a bush, watching the in between with glare free binoculars. He was underfed, or maybe he was just built that way, and he kept scratching at his scalp like he was lousy. Younger than me, less than half Bartley's age, and he had all the bushcraft of a city kid. His clothes were wrong for the west side of the mountains. Too urban. Too old world. There he was pissing off the cliff when I walked out from behind the tree with a rifle leveled at him. I saw him think about dropping his dick and going for his rifle and I saw him realize that wasn't going to work. He put his hands in the air. If he was smart and his gang could afford it. He had a radio set to automatic voice activated transmission and there was someone listening on the other end, but he was too dumb to shave his lice infested hair. I was pretty sure we'd got him cold. You're going to tell me a lot of things, I said. You tell me those things and you'll get supplies and a one way trip on whatever caravan you want. I wouldn't tell you the color of the lips of your mother's cunt. I shot him. The rifle slammed into my shoulder. The report scattered birds and hurt my ears. The bullet hit him in the neck and sent him tumbling over the edge of the cliff. You kidding me? Bartley asked. Well, I wasn't going to torture the kid and he didn't want to talk nice. Bartley shook her head. Now we've got to go find him, you know, she said. Search his body. Maybe he'll have some tea. We eventually found the wreckage of the man at the base of the cliff, his ribs sprouting from his chest. The noon sun and I both kept watch over the forest while Bartley combed over the body. Help me lift him, bartley said. I got my hands under what was left of the bandit's armpits and lifted his insides stripped down my leg. I'm getting too old for this. The new world is getting too old for this. I said it because it was what people were supposed to think, but I didn't really feel it. Peace didn't work for me. Battle is a thing that gets into my gut, makes me desperate to live. Love is a thing that gets into my gut, makes me wish I were dead. Bartley went through his pockets. She pulled out a pack of cheap naked lady cards, threw them off into the forest. In another pocket she found a topo map. Last she pulled out a radio. She clicked it off. Hell, I said. They heard all of that? Hell indeed. What's the map tell us? I asked. Nothing's marked on it, but it's pretty zoomed in. Doesn't cover more than about 35 square kilometers. Since the in between isn't the center of it, I figure their camp might be. Puts it halfway between here and the tunnel. They know where we are? I said. But we don't know where they are. And do you know who else knows where you are? It's the third parties that sell ads on our podcast. And just a reminder, you can sign up for Cooler Sun Media at any time for an ad free listening experience. Here's ads.
Podcast Host
This holiday season Give the Gift Everyone will gather around a Vizio Smart TV now available at Walmart. From a super sized 100 inch TV to QLED TVs of all sizes, Vizio delivers breathtaking color and crystal clear picture quality that takes entertainment to the next level. Plus with Watch Free plus built in, they can enjoy free live and on demand TV right out of the box. Have a music lover on your list. They can stream their favorite music on the iHeartRadio app ready to go on every Vizio TV. The perfect gift is waiting. Head to Walmart.com and discover Vizio TVs today.
Bowen Yang
Honestly, honestly, Honestly.
Health Advisor
No one wants to think about hiv, but there are things that everyone can do to help prevent it. Things like prep. Prep stands for Pre Exposure Prophylaxis and it means routinely taking prescription medicine before you're exposed to HIV to help reduce your chances of getting it. Prep can be about 99% effective when taken as prescribed. It doesn't protect against other STIs though, so be sure to use condoms and other healthy sex practices. Ask a healthcare provider about all all your prevention Options and visit findoutaboutprep.com to learn more.
Advertiser/Brand Representative
Sponsored by Gilead Crunchy crafts high performing skincare and makeup using only the safest clinically backed ingredients, all wrapped in sustainable packaging. It's beauty that delivers results without compromising your health or the planet. Now through January 1st, save up to 30% on crunchy seasonal gift sets curated for intentional gifting or for treating yourself to a little self care. Visit crunchy.com to give the gift of real clean beauty this season. That's C-N C-I.com crunchy the real clean.
Podcast Host
Beauty 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an ice IFIT contract for $250,000.
Margaret Killjoy
This is where mindset comes in.
Podcast Host
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down.
Bowen Yang
Trainer Games on Prime Video January 8th. Watch the trailer on trainergames.com.
Margaret Killjoy
And we're back. They might hit us tonight. I bet the fire was just to flush us out. I said they set this kid here to see how we organized our defense. What's the plan? You know, I'd hate for you to go out alone, but maybe I've got to go out alone, bartley said. I'll go warn everyone, set patrols, get children to shelter, and I'll make it back up here into range and call it in once I figured out where they are. We started down the hill. The sun was halfway to the horizon. It was cutting into my eyes and baking that kid's blood into my clothes. We stepped out from the trees and scrambled down to the railroad tracks about a kilometer east of the in between. Bartley came with me. The half a kilometer or so our paths overlapped. I always liked walking tracks, Bartley said. Yeah? I asked. I wasn't really curious, but I preferred to listen to her speak than listen to my heart beat arrhythmically like it always did after I shot somebody. Doc says it's just jitters, what some of the old books call generalized anxiety. I say it's me getting off light, karmically speaking. Roads are hell, bartley said. Because they're easy. It's easy to make a road, right? You just get a bunch of people to walk somewhere a lot. That'll make a road. You walk a road, it's easy. Lulls you to sleep and there's some asshole hiding with a gun and you don't even notice it because you're lost in your head. Roads are hell. Sounds like. Me and Khalil. We fell into habit. Made a road. Railroads, though. Railroads are great, bartley went on. They're hard to make. They're hard to walk. They're so specialized. And the best part is that they're specialized for something that doesn't exist anymore. These things weren't made for our cow drawn boxcars or our little rail bikes. They were made for kilometer long chainsaw of cars pulled by the sheer strength of coal. When you're using something specialized and you're using it wrong, that's the beauty in life. I thought you were grumpy, I said. I was grumpy, Bartley said. But now I'm walking on railroad tracks. We built the in between in the narrow valley below the pass. The Green river guarded our north, the mountains our south. A road from the west met its end at the door to the lodge, and a railroad ran the whole of our land. We were unwalled. We were unwalled for a thousand reasons. We were unwalled because we were peaceful. We were unwalled because, though increasingly rare, mortars and grenades and rockets were still a part of this world. Even some helicopters had survived the electromagnetic waves that had wiped so much technology from the earth. As I'd heard it, and such vehicles have no respect for walls. We were unwalled because a stone wall blinds the defender as much as the attacker. We gated the road and the railway, but those gates remained open during daylight. Khalil was waiting by the gate for me when I got back. He had that pick in his short Afro, the one the traitor had told me was tortoiseshell, and who was I to say it wasn't the one Khalil had told me was lucky, and who was I to say it wasn't? He saw me coming and a smile split across his beard. The smile got bigger the closer I got, until I was in his arms. We heard a shot, he said. Hours ago I shot somebody, I said. I was so small in his embrace. He was one of the only people in the world who was large enough to make me small. He kissed my forehead and I tilted my neck up and looked in those black brown eyes behind his glasses, those eyes the same color as mine, and I kissed him on the mouth. You all right? He asked at last. I'm all right. It took hours. I've been waiting for you for hours. I pulled away, set my rifle down at the guard post. The crows stood sentinel on the gate. I can't handle you worrying about me, I said. It was the right thing to say because it was true. It was the wrong thing to say because I loved him. He lifted his glasses, rubbed at his eyes. I know, he said. He walked away. My eyes lingered on his back and I still felt small. The wind wailed across the fields of tea. I got the children and the infirm into the bomb shelter, a hundred year old relic of a paranoid generation that had been right about the apocalypse, just wrong about its timing, then set out organizing an all hands watch. 15 people were on at all times, no able bodied adults exempted from taking a shift. No one liked it, but no one complained. I don't tell the cooks what to feed us and I don't tell docs how to sew us up, and I don't tell Khalil or the other horticulturalists when to conscript us into the fields for a harvest. It was late enough in spring that the sun lingered low in the sky and I found myself cleaning rifles and counting bullets, which left me with nothing to do with my brain but to run my conversation with Khalil over and over in my mind like I was locked in the computer room in the basement with a video running on an endless loop. I could turn my head away, but I could still hear everything. Watching a video, though, I could wait until the sun went down and the solar stopped and the computer died. There wasn't such an easy way out of my head. Dun dun dun. What's gonna happen? What's going to happen to the In Between Lodge? There's people who are maybe attacking it. Or was it just the one kid who knows? You'll know in a week. Or if you go and find this story and read it elsewhere, like for example in my book We Won't Be Here Tomorrow and other stories available from AK Press or honestly, it's free on Tor.com who first published it, but you could also wait for a week. And Hazel, who helps me pick out the stories, suggested we do this one this week because it's one of their favorites and they relate a lot to Aiden trying to navigate love and hypervigilance. Quote to quote Hazel I know this one is set during the springtime, but I hope you enjoy the world building and that the story still feels on brand for the season. And tune back in next week for the second half of the story as we finish Everything that Isn't Winter by me, Margaret Killjoy. You can find me online searching my name on Bluesky and Instagram. Those are the only social medias I still have. I dream of the day where you go and look and I'm not there because I've quit. But I haven't yet. And you can also find me on Substack. I have a newsletter there I post almost every week and almost all the posts are free. And from all of us here at Cool Zone, we hope you have a cool, good holiday season and that you stay warm, stay safe and stay on your in laws. Good sides, happy solstice, glad tidings and may the coming light find you with peace and solace for the New year. All right, bye.
Podcast Host
It Could Happen Here as a production.
Margaret Killjoy
Of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media.
Podcast Host
Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us.
Margaret Killjoy
Out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for It Could Happen Here.
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Bowen Yang
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Podcast Host
This holiday season Give the Gift Everyone will gather around a Vizio Smart TV now available at Walmart. From a super sized 100 inch TV to QLED TVs of all sizes, Vizio delivers breathtaking color and crystal clear picture quality that takes entertainment to the next level. Plus with Watch Free plus built in they can enjoy free live and on demand TV right out of the box. Have a music lover on your list. They can stream their favorite music on the iHeartRadio app ready to go on every Vizio TV. The perfect gift is waiting. Head to Walmart.com and discover Vizio TVs today.
Bowen Yang
This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names Fantasy football can be exhausting. I mean that literally. You're so anxious over your lineup you can't fall asleep. Best way to deal with it is unisom. There's a reason it's the number one doctor recommended over the counter sleep aid brand. It helps you fall asleep faster, wake up less and feel refreshed in the morning. Plus unisom sleep tabs are clinically tested and proven effective and completely non habit forming. So make the ultimate sleeper pick and put it to bed with unisom. Use as directed. This is Bewen Yang from Lost Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang and I'm Matt Rogers from the very same podcast. And guess what? It's the holiday season and you know what that means. Holiday parties. Beau Holiday parties. They're the best. But there's always the stress of what to wear, what to bring. Easy solution. Okay, bring a bottle of Casamigos. Casamigos. Wow.
Margaret Killjoy
That is the move you could make.
Bowen Yang
Casamigos Mules or Casamigos a Espresso Martinis or Casamigos Crab. And don't forget about Casamigos Margaritas. A Casamigos margarita is the perfect cocktail all year round. Casamigos is just the perfect gift that keeps on giving. And as the saying goes, anything goes with my Casamigos. On second thought, a holiday party might be in order. That's a great idea. Please drink responsibly. Imported by Casamigos Spirits Co. White Plains, NY Casamigos Tequila 40% alcohol by volume.
Podcast Host
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Podcast: It Could Happen Here
Host: Margaret Killjoy (Cool Zone Media)
Episode Release: December 21, 2025
Episode Theme: Solstice Book Club – Reading and exploring the post-collapse short story "Everything that Isn't Winter" by Margaret Killjoy (Part One)
This special Solstice Book Club episode features Margaret Killjoy reading her acclaimed post-apocalyptic short story, "Everything that Isn't Winter." The episode weaves together themes of community, love, defense, and survival in a world remade by collapse. Listeners are introduced to a rare, intimate narrative of found family and the emotional complexities of self-actualization against the backdrop of an encroaching threat. The storytelling is immersive and heartfelt, reflecting both craft and the personal significance of the piece for the author.
[02:30]
"It's Solstice Book Club. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only podcast where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you."
"...this story means a lot to me because I wrote it at the end of the Clarion West workshop... and it was one of my first big short story sales. It sold to Tor.com in I think 2015 and really kind helped set my career up."
[03:30 – 06:00]
[06:01 – 08:00]
"You should sleep with him, I said... The spark's gone, I said. Has been for years. I can get laid easily enough, but it isn't as easy for him." (Margaret Killjoy, 07:12)
[08:01 – 09:20]
"...the band played because what else can you do?" (Margaret Killjoy, 09:20)
[09:21 – 10:00]
"It's just that it's Beltane. It's spring sex and flowers and all that shit. I should want you. It's fine, I said. It wasn't." (Margaret Killjoy, 09:40)
[12:22 – 15:35]
"People don't like it when other people have nice things. The In Between Lodge was nice." (Bartley, 13:15)
[15:36 – 17:50]
"I wouldn't tell you the color of the lips of your mother's cunt. I shot him." (Bandit & protagonist exchange, 16:20)
"I'm getting too old for this. The new world is getting too old for this. I said it because it was what people were supposed to think, but I didn't really feel it." (Margaret Killjoy, 17:45)
[17:51 – 19:00]
[21:09 – 24:30]
"...when you're using something specialized and you're using it wrong, that's the beauty in life." (Bartley, 22:45)
"He was one of the only people in the world who was large enough to make me small." (Margaret Killjoy, 23:10)
[25:10 – 26:22]
The episode ends on a cliffhanger as the community waits for an attack, with Margaret encouraging listeners to return for part two:
"Dun dun dun. What's gonna happen? What's going to happen to the In Between Lodge? There's people who are maybe attacking it. Or was it just the one kid who knows? You'll know in a week." (Margaret Killjoy, 25:28)
She shares a note from Hazel, who selects stories for the Book Club—emphasizing the relatability of Aiden's struggle with love and hypervigilance:
"Hazel... relates a lot to Aiden trying to navigate love and hypervigilance." (Margaret Killjoy quoting Hazel, 26:30)
Margaret invites listeners to connect with her online and wishes everyone a "cool, good holiday season."
"...may the coming light find you with peace and solace for the new year." (Margaret Killjoy, 26:45)
Margaret Killjoy (on unconventional stories and tradition)
"But what are we here if non traditional? It's still got found family. It's got self actualization and enough winter to justify the choice." (02:55)
On post-apocalyptic community:
"We built the in between in the narrow valley below the pass. The Green river guarded our north, the mountains our south. A road from the west met its end at the door to the lodge, and a railroad ran the whole of our land. We were unwalled. We were unwalled for a thousand reasons. We were unwalled because we were peaceful." (Margaret Killjoy, 23:28)
On love, trauma, and leadership:
"Love is a thing that gets into my gut, makes me wish I were dead." (Margaret Killjoy, 18:00)
On the story’s personal meaning:
"...this story... was still like on a craft level really important to me. And also it was one of my first big short story sales. It sold to Tor.com in I think 2015 and really kind helped set my career up." (Margaret Killjoy, 02:50)
This Book Club episode of It Could Happen Here delivers an evocative, emotionally rich reading directly from Margaret Killjoy. It beautifully balances worldbuilding and personal struggle, winding together the everyday struggles of rebuilding society and maintaining intimate bonds in the aftermath of collapse. Listeners are left eager for the conclusion in next week’s episode.
For those interested:
Stay tuned for Part Two and Happy Solstice from the Cool Zone Media team!