Kat Spada 🖼️ is querying

I can't hear any of the music from Phantom without thinking of that little elephant shrew video

I have to say, this may have been the most fun I've had recording an episode of FFR...

Rewatching even a single episode of the most Obama-era cultural artifact is a psychologically challenging exercise.

(This episode was recorded before the Creative Arts Emmys were held, so we didn't yet know that Julianne Nicholson would, in fact, win an Emmy for playing Dance Mom on Hacks.)

I had so much fun talking about ~the self-destruction of masculinity~ for this episode! I can't wait until I get the chance to watch ALL THAT JAZZ on the big screen some day.

Finished another revision on my novel and submitted to SmoochPit. Now, back at work on something I haven't looked at in over three months. Going from editing one day to drafting the next is so strange!

For the first full ep of our new "Musical Mayhem" season, we watched (or rewatched) GUYS AND DOLLS. The gender dynamics in this movie feel like they'd be right at home in today's "trad wife" resurgence... Listen at patreon.com/posts/137177....

ICYMI: #FemFreqRadio is returning for a new season! In addition to the Musical Mayhem main feed episodes, Patreon supporters get weekly bonuses, like our latest chat about #FantasticFour and this year's summer blockbusters. Subscribe and listen at www.patreon.com/posts/ffr-bo...

WAY too many things postponed the recording of this new season of #FemFreqRadio, but I'm so glad to be back podcasting again after all these months!

The library program illustrates the books with stock images, sometimes changing character names or details to match what graphics they can acquire. So I only wrote the text, but I loved seeing what vocab words and tutor tips the librarians put together to pair with my story!

As part of my library volunteering, I wrote a book for adult literacy learners through the CA State Library. They're not cheap, because they're made to be durable for use by tutors at the branches, but if you want one, you can scroll through and pick up a copy here: www.mixbook.com/photo-books/...

A hatchling condor on a white towel. it has downy feathers and it's head skin is kinda wrinkly

With everything LA has gone through in the last few months (and couple of years), let's celebrate the hatching of:

TEN CALIFORNIA CONDORS!!!!!!!!!

Congrats to the team at the Los Angeles Zoo!!!

Photograph of dozens of tanks on a train, next to I-295 in Washington, DC.

In preparation for next week’s parade/demonstration, tanks are being moved into Washington, DC today. Unprecedented.
(Photo from a colleague in DC)

Excuse me?

I don't *love* this bit of website traffic...

I was having a great daydream about being rich and having a backyard with a pizza oven and having people over to make pizzas, and then I remembered that my dad won't be there (at the fictional pizza party), and then I started to cry. This was like, fantasy to grief sads in under 60 seconds.

The comment period for this ends in 3 DAYS. Please leave a comment telling them EVERYONE should be able to get covid boosters.
www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

There is no literary world. There is, however, this interconnected mass of people who made similarly poor choices to pursue their dreams and are now pitching the emotional damage as art

A purple graphic of Kat Spada beside Alvin (of The Chipmunks) under the header, "Gelée 'Taste Making'"

A text graphic that reads: Everyone Should Care About... The music video for "KFC Santeria" by Cain Culto. The incredible costume design on the new sitcom "North of North." Ludwig Göransson going the way of Hans Zimmer instead of Max Martin. The trailer for "The Smashing Machine." Libraries.

A text graphic that reads: No One Should Care About... The Data Explorer feature on QueryTracker Premium. If you're an author seeking representation, it's only $25/year but it's really not doing you any good to imagine what abstruse self-reported behavior might mean you're in an agent's "maybe" pile. BRB gotta go refresh my QT list for profile updates.

A text graphic that reads: Only I Care About... The audiobook experience of "Putting it Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park with George" by James Lapine at 2x speed. Random narrators reading Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters' words, but not in their voices. Sondheim by way of The Chipmunks. Thrilling.

Excited to be Currant Jam & Gelée zine's taste maker for the month of May. Check out the spotlight at www.instagram.com/p/DJcWRTtRH1F

#AmQuerying update... got my first R&R request from an agent today! It doesn't seem like a huge lift, so I'm definitely going to give it a try. It would involve a drastic change to the opening chapters, which of course throws me into a tailspin thinking about all the other queries out there. Nerves!

A #QuestPit peek at one of my WIPs… I've been deep in research on my historical romance, but currently #AmWriting a novelization of this pilot inspired by my own career shift from Hollywood to the zoo! ANIMAL INSTINCTS: this rom-com is much simpler and more grounded than my previous novel!

#W #A #R

A graphic introducing the Agent's Guide for PAINTED FLOWERS NEVER DIE, 90K words, book club ready, speculative fiction. By Katherine Spada. @katexmachina on Bluesky; @kat_ex_machina on Twitter

A text graphic with The Pitch for PAINTED FLOWERS NEVER DIE, which reads: Maria and her husband have known fame from a young age, her as a dancer and him as a Grammy-winning music producer. When he dies in a headline-dominating plane crash, Maria spends twenty years unable to wrench her life out of the ashes of grief. Her career stalls as she becomes a celebrity known only for her proximity to tragedy. Until the night her husband’s portrait is debuted at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the midst of drunkenly humiliating herself, Maria sees an apparition that offers her a chance to escape her misery. She chases it through the museum and leaps, piercing the veil of real life and plunging into the worlds beyond the canvas. Believing she can reunite with her husband if she finds his portrait, Maria searches within the museum’s collection, navigating the exciting and often dangerous scenes of well-known paintings, helped and hindered by the figures within them. She encounters others like her, teaming up with Liam, a professor from London with a troubled past, to help save him from being stuck in the paintings forever. Their growing bond opens Maria up to the potential of new love, challenging her goal of reunion with her long-dead husband. As she and Liam explore 19th century Paris, pop art, and Pollock, confronting the past and pursuing a violent art thief, Maria rediscovers the vibrant, empathetic person she was before loss. Ultimately she must decide whether to embrace an unknown future in the real world, or hide behind the painted fantasy of a static existence in her husband’s portrait.

A graphic with comp titles that reads: Like THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY by Matt Haig, it captures the hopefulness of a woman's journey through different worlds, which forces her to face the question, "What makes life worth living? Fans of V.E. Schwab's THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE will appreciate its elements of romance kindled within fantastical circumstances. There are also cover images for A LOVE SONG FOR RICKI WILDE by Tia Williams, Akira Kurosawa's DREAMS, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, and Lucy Dacus performing "Ankles."

A text graphic that reads: The Black List PAINTED FLOWERS NEVER DIE by Katherine Spada Professional Evaluation Excerpt PAINTED FLOWERS provides an interesting perspective on how we memorialize and remember those we've lost, and what moving on means for different people; watching Maria interact with other [crash] victims' loved ones offers some deeply humanizing context. The world of high art is painted with delicious specificity—the posturing, the inflated sense of self-importance! The paintings are magical and exciting, so lush and sensory-driven, especially with the built-in game of trying to identify the paintings before the book itself does. [Spoiler]'s cameo in particular is entertaining yet thematically relevant, without being too in-the-weeds so as to alienate the reader. The prose operates in two modes: more familiar, commercial-leaning women's fiction, and then these detailed, immersive descriptions. This is also illustrative of what the book is doing as a whole: offering a simple, emotional, book club-friendly narrative, and layering magical realism over it. This novel straddles the worlds of contemporary and fantasy fiction in a similar way to Matt Haig's mega-bestseller THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY, or V.E. Schwab's equally popular THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE, though the magic here operates on a smaller scale. Magical realism has been gaining momentum since these comparative novels were published, and PAINTED FLOWERS' unique combination of both adventure novel and character-driven healing novel give it strong commercial appeal.

For #QuestPit I'm sharing part of the Agent's Guide for PAINTED FLOWERS NEVER DIE, plus an excerpt from @theblcklst.bsky.social's professional manuscript evaluation, which described the novel as having "strong commercial appeal."

I #AmQuerying this book club-ready spec fic w/ romance.
#Q #A #S #R

Trying to watch Taskmaster for the first time, bc Zouks...

(idgi)

Her self-titled CD was so important to me when I was growing up. The song "The Jig Is Up" transported me through time when I listened to it. 💔

Two DVD cases sit beside each other: SPLASH (Ron Howard, 1984) and A BIGGER SPLASH (Luca Guadagnino, 2015)

I just love sequels!

I couldn't possibly post a picture of my disorganized workspace! #CRPBees

Recommend NORTH OF NORTH on Netflix for a sweet new sitcom!

I'm excited to share that in just a few weeks, I'll be participating in the Yale Writers' Workshop! This will be my first writing intensive, and I can't wait!

All Lillian can think to want is the safety and happiness of her young daughter. It's not until she meets Edith that she discovers she can want happiness for herself, too.

#CRPBees

I am managing to work on my submission to a literary magazine while wearing ear plugs about ten feet away from where my family is catching up on the latest episode of TLOU; please clap. (I've already watched)