“Sci-fi magic smut survivor memoir.”
“Desire Hope Despair.”
“Not everybody is good at their body.”
“You must forge yourself into a weapon.”
“There will be no new colony.”
Cyborg Memoirs first existed as the personal website of me, Magus Monk bka M. Téllez fka number18, back on the FREE BANDWIDTH days of the mid 90s dial-up internet. In 2003, I registered the official domain CYBORGMEMOIRS.COM and my longstanding URL was born.
Over the years I’ve emerged from cyberspace to produce a slow burning litany of anti-imperial storytelling, from fiction writing and performing, to network organizing and space making, workshops, self-publishing, and merch slinging. Who can keep track of it all!
Finally, we have a subscription service for YOU to enjoy:
- my latest releases of my writing & recording work
- news of events I’m doing
- special release printed matter ✨NEW✨
- earlybird offers on workshops & gear ✨NEW✨
- previews of my works in progress
- receive writing & thinking prompts ✨NEW✨
- get snail mail! ✨NEW✨
- hang out in the virtual Clubhouse ✨NEW✨
- show a nerdy enthusiasm for one of your favorite living sci-fi writers by ~patronizing~ my ongoing practice of critical media production!
WHO IS MAGUS MONK bka M. TÉLLEZ?
I’m a storyteller, editor, network connector, and book designer. I’m a trans working class white-mixed-race person, born and raised in the once-British colony/post-industrial American city now called Philadelphia, on land originally known as Lenapehoking. I write and perform sci-fi fantasy tales and spellwork about desolation/intimacy, class/objectification, borders/land-based memory/media control, and the violence in relying on binaries to order the world. I’m a founding member of METROPOLARITY, a corner store sci-fi & thought collective that’s been using speculative thinking as a shield and wand against standing empire since the imperial linear year 2012. Those who have seen me or my crew perform know—the work we do can’t be duplicated. People tell us its necessary work, and we make it out of necessity, but in pandemic-wrecked 2021 we can no longer wait on big money institutions to throw us some bones (or spend all our precious energy applying to rigorous once-a-year opportunities for funding)—we need patrons!
The CYBORG MEMOIRS FAN CLUB is my subscription service for better connecting to supporters of my work & practice. As I continue to struggle with increasingly disabling chronic pain while working full time, I’m looking for this kind of direct fan support so I can work towards my goal of completing the novel manuscript and audiobook of my All That’s Left series, about disabled cyborg workers living and fucking in a flooded out near future.
The CMFC is just the latest iteration of my cyber-presence in this current age of social media slop. Years ago, if there was a “number18” on an anime forum or chatroom, it was very likely me. When Twitter usurped LiveJournal in the mid 2000s, and Tumblr succeeded LJ by the mid 2010s, I started going by “cyborgmemoirs” instead. (The username as concept rather than a specific character had emerged.) This was in the time before we noticed social media decimating vast swaths of cyberspace, when Instagram was yet fledgling and we all couldn’t wait to get it on Android because it had the best toy camera filters.
And now we are in a full-tilt hurtling cyberpunk reality. Post-SESTA/FOSTA. Biden’s “I will not defund the police!” America. I hear cool teens don’t even fuck with social media. The behavior modifying 24/7 data-gathering shopping mall Internet fries the nerves. Cyberspace is a memory occurrence from another spacetime, and now I’m offering my wares in the marketplace Internet.
Join the CYBORG MEMOIRS FAN CLUB for the next phase of …whatever it is we’re all living through—and the art, offerings, and services I’ll render out of it. I’m nervous ~and~ excited to see what can be accomplished with YOUR support. Membership starts are just 2 dollars a month.
Shout out to my many friends and fans, neighbors and internet mutuals, who have made sure to encourage and interact with me and what I make over all these years. Watch me now and be sure… to
Some Reminders:
My Mercury Intensive Fall edition is still accepting applications, due October 1st.
Be sure to check out the also newly launched Patreon of the inimitable Ras Cutlass Mashramani.