It's not quite the thick coating we see in Northern Indiana, but for Redmond, this is a decent amount of snow.It’s snowy out, the sort of snow I grew up with in Northern Indiana. A clumpy snow, a little wet, so it clings to branches in inch thick lines, making some more snow than branch. Last night I watched it drifting past the light in the parking lot, which illuminated a sphere of falling snow, like an open-air snow globe, the good kind without sparkles or glitter, just evocative white bits that make us think of quiet nights, growing quieter as the snow muffles sound.
Sometimes writers need to stop and look and figure out what makes a scene real, what distinguishes it from one of the many movie backdrops in our heads, so that when we recreate it or take a piece from it or somehow incorporate it into a piece of writing, we can convey that quality. Karen Joy Fowler mentioned that often the most unique detail of a landscape is one of the most transitory: a busker, the shape of a cloud, the noise of the rock concert next door. Right now it’s snow for me. So, I ask you – what’s the most evocative detail of your current landscape?
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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The New Place, and Other Recent News
Recently spotted in Value Village. I believe this is the god of pumpkin spice.We are mostly unpacked and settling into West Seattle. The construction across the way continues, and they’re working frantically to get the place done before the rainy season sets in. I give them a 50/50% chance of making it.
The high ceilings here make the place feel enormous, as does the extra 300 square feet we’ve picked up. We’ve also got substantially more closet and cupboard space. The view from the kitchen window remains a thing of wonder; every night it gives me a beautiful sunset with sound and mountains. Yesterday there was sunlight coming in through the leaves and flickering on the cabinet so beautifully that I had to call Wayne to come and look. The cats like the new place, particularly the carpet in the study.
Downsides are small so far — we’ll definitely need to get a portable AC for at least one room next summer in order to survive. We certainly can hear the restaurant — but the hours are such that it’s hasn’t been bothersome at all and it means we never need to worry that our TV or music is too loud in turn. There are raccoons who like to come up the back stairs and trip the motion detector driven light. Garbage is much more complicated than it was in Redmond: here we have to separate out food waste and there’s no handy dumpster.
Taco says the sunlight is good here but the pillows are too small.The best feature, for me at least, remains the location. A few dozen coffee shops are within my walking range. The library is a six minute walk away. If I wanted to, I could take the water taxi into Seattle. Also within walking distance: multiple thrift stores, several parks, an antique mall, four large grocery stores, a 24 hour Bartells Drug Store, two bookstores, an art supply store, a post office, a pet food store that carries the cans of gold that are the only thing Raven can eat, and some of the most beautiful views around. The Unitarian Church is a hour walk, but a ten minute drive isn’t too bad.
Saturday we finished up cleaning the condo. A friend just moved to the area, so we’re happy to be able to have him staying there and making sure no one sets up a meth lab or tiger breeding facility or something like that while we’re gone.
I turned in my story, “The Curious Peregrinations of a Goat Herder,” for the Champions of Aeltalis book, and Marc Tassin liked it.
“He Knows When You’ve Been Sleeping” will appear in Naughty or Nice, edited by Jennifer Brozek. This is a humorous story that edges into R realms and is also the first Christmas story I’ve written, which is a slightly odd combo.
Two collaborations are forthcoming: “The Mermaid Club” with Mike Resnick and novella “Haunted” with Bud Sparhawk.
A notable recent reprint is “Tortoiseshell Cats are Not Refundable”, which originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, and will be reprinted in The Best American Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Joe Hill with series editor John Joseph Adams.
Other upcoming stories include “Tongues of Moon Toad” in The Bestiary Anthology, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer; “Preferences” in Chasing Shadows, edited by David Brin; “Red in Tooth and Cog” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; novelette “The Threadbare Magician” in Genius Loci, edited by Jaym Gates; “As the Crow Flies, So Does the Road” in Grendelsong, edited by Paul Jessup; and “Call and Answer, Plant and Harvest” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
The kitchen is airy and light; it makes a more compelling argument for buying fresh flowers than the old place.Recent teaching news:
I have just finished up converting the Character Building Workshop class to the on-demand form for Fedora and I am very pleased and proud with how this one turned out and how my little online writing school is growing. Once I’m done converting them all, I will go back and update the first one, based on a lot of the lessons I learned working with this particular class.
I’m finishing a third and final installment of my How to Teach Workshops series for the SFWA Bulletin; you can find installment one and installment two in the Bulletin, the most recent of which is available on Amazon.
Taken during World Fantasy in San Diego, 2011, by On Focus Photography.Since 2006, I’ve dyed at least part of my hair pink, usually a few locks near my face. The dye comes in a kit from L’oreal and doesn’t require bleaching beforehand ““ brush it on, wait thirty minutes, and wash it off. Voila, cartoon-bright streaks among the (once-prematurely) graying strands.
The first time I dyed it, I was about to head off to my first Wiscon ““ a large feminist science fiction convention held yearly in Madison, Wisconsin. As I’ve found the case at sf conventions since then, I wasn’t the only person there with an odd hair color; I glimpsed rainbows of pink, blue, and green. And I realized it was becoming. Complete strangers would lean over and whisper, “I like your hair,” including two flight attendants on the way home.
After the con the color faded, softer and softer, until finally, when I went to get a haircut, the hairdresser was cutting away dusty rose tips. I looked in the mirror and saw a middle-aged woman with a short, practical cut.
I bought a new kit on the way home and re-pinked my hair that afternoon.
Since then it’s become a ritual following each haircut. I go in and see it trimmed away until only the faintest hint of color remains. Sometimes I take advantage of this time to do my shopping in sedater department stores like Macy’s or Nordstroms, excursions that I think of as “passing for surburban.” Then I go home and re-dye my hair. I’m always a little self-conscious those first few days of screaming fuchsia, when I have to sleep with a towel over the pillow to keep the pink from leaving traces on the pillowcase. I try to time these days to coincide with a science fiction convention or some similar event.
I use that as an excuse when people ask me why I dye it. “I’m a sci-fi writer and it helps fans identify me at cons,” I say. That’s the partial truth. It’s part of my brand. But it’s also more than that.
Sometimes people interpret it for me. When my mother was recovering from surgery for colon cancer one year, I visited the hospital every day and used the valet parking they provided. “I know why your hair’s pink,” the elderly valet confided to me one day as he took the keys from me. “Are you a survivor or is it a relative?” I realized that he thought I was part of the flood of pink that month against cancer. I couldn’t bear to disillusion him, so I said something to him about my mother, and he went on to tell me about the women in his life who had struggled with cancer.
That’s another reason why I dye it pink. People talk to me. There’s something about the color that draws them to ask about it or say that they like it. The only person I’ve ever found who disapproved outright was a relative’s girlfriend. She didn’t last. My hair color has.
But more than that, the pink forces me to talk to people as well. I’ve habitually toed the line between introvert and extrovert, depending on which Meyer Briggs results you look at, and I like the fact that the pink pushes me outside myself, makes me be socially brave in a way I’ve sometimes retreated from.
The pink’s a favorite with people. I tried purple one year, a vibrant, almost fluorescent purple that required bleaching the hair beforehand, a painful process I will never repeat. Some nuance of the purple made it seem more confrontational, less welcoming than the pink. Fewer people came up to say something about it, although I was startled at one point when a man behind me began stroking it. “I couldn’t resist the color,” he said.
I have been advised to avoid blue. “It ages one,” a friend said, although I’ve admired the turquoise shading of Camille Alexa, a fellow speculative fiction writer, at several cons.
I worry that L’oreal will stop making this particular brand. I’ve got five boxes of it stockpiled under my sink. I figure I’ll commit to the color until the year or two that the boxes represent are past. After all, who knows what advances in hair color may have been made by then?
It took a while for my mother to get used to it. Finally one day, when we were coming out of a store, she chuckled. “Did you see that man?” she said. “He smiled at your hair. I guess anything that makes people smile is okay.”
And I agree. If I’m making people smile, I’m doing something right.
I’m lucky to live in Seattle, where hair is often not its natural shade. I’ve found when I visit the East Coast, particularly in the southern areas, people are not quite as welcoming of the color. They’re more likely to surreptitiously (or so they think) point it out to each other. I haven’t traveled abroad with it yet.
And I’m lucky to work at home as a writer, with no boss to object to the pink. More than once someone has wistfully said, “They would never let me do that at work.” That seems a shame to me, much like seeing the trainers at my gym wearing work-mandated band-aids over tattoos lest they shock the sensibilities of the patrons.
The hair color also lets people spot me in a society where being a middle-aged woman is often a cloak of invisibility. Sometimes that’s unwelcome. I’d rather fade into the crowd, which is much harder to do when pink-topped. That’s why I love sf conventions so much, why they feel like coming home to my spiritual tribe. At Penguicon I rubbed elbows with a woman whose wheelchair was tricked out like a Victorian mechanical contraption, complete with sporadic puffs of steam, a strapping young gentleman costumed as Thor, and a woman whose baby was dressed up as a miniature robot, complete with blinking lights. Indeed, at Norwescon, a local convention that’s particularly costume heavy, I look positively sedate.
It’s strange that I engage in this particular cosmetic practice. I’ve always resisted make-up. I put it on and, despite the best teachings of my mother the former Mary Kay representative, I see a clown-faced stranger in the mirror. The pink hair allows me to feel like I’ve managed some effort to dress up. Combine it with the right shirt, and people assume I’ve carefully color-coordinated outfit and hair.
But I cringe, just a faint recoil, when I look at those shirts in my closet: the crisp peppermint striped or hibiscus and butterfly printed shirts gleaned from the local Talbots outlet. Because here’s a secret: I’m not particularly fond of pink. I was never a Barbie girl. I like deep purples, turquoise, and emeralds.
In fact, I resent the way pink’s been mandated for little girls. I worry that I’m doing this to make myself less threatening to men, that I’m saying, “Look! I’m a feminist, but a fluffy pink harmless one.”
But I tell myself to stop over-thinking it. It’s a color, not a lifestyle. I embrace my pink and claim it. Which adds another dimension to it for me: it’s ironic statement as well as fashion one. It says I don’t give a damn about what other people consider age-appropriate. “This is me,” my hair says. And I look damn good in pink, or so I think.
Or maybe that’s just ego talking, an overly healthy one bolstered by all those strangers telling me they like my hair.
One Response
A songbird and a bluejay conducting a contest outside my window. 😀
Ah, such snow. I guess we had ours three-ish weeks ago. Yesterday I laid out sunbathing. Go figure.
Best!