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Cat Rambo

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Snow

Snow in Redmond
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?

One Response

  1. 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!

    Reply

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Reflecting on the Past Year

Overall, 2010’s been a much better year than 2009, although it’s had its less pleasant moments, such as special assessment convulsions in my condo complex, my Grandmother’s death in November, and the usual array of rejections implicit in being a writer and sending stuff out. 🙂

On the bright side, my collection was a 2010 Endeavour Award finalist and I had fourteen stories published in 2010. Here’s the list, with a notable reprint and two podcasts to boot:

  1. 2020 VISIONS, edited by Rick Novy. Therapy Buddha.

    2. A dark story of data herds and contraband foods, edited by a fellow Codex writer.

  2. CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3, 2010, edited by Mike Allen. Surrogates.

    3. An R-rated absurdist story telling of Belinda and Bingo’s love.

  3. TRIANGULATION: END OF THE RAINBOW, 2010, edited by Bill Moran. In Order to Conserve.

    4. A reprint from the collection, which also appeared as a podcast on Podcastle. A slim little political fable.

  4. M-BRANE, January, 2010. Fire on the Water’s Heart.

    5. Far flung tragedy of alien species interacting and sparking a doomed romance.

  5. MOOT MAGAZINE, April 2010. Biosapiens.

    6. Who is V-man, what does he want, and why does he glow under certain conditions?

  6. MOOT MAGAZINE, April, 2010. The Strange Case of Maya Andaluz.

    7. Graduate student and artist Maya is abducted by a strange alien light, leaving behind a fishbowl filled with desiccated fish and half-melted glass pebbles.

  7. EXPANDED HORIZONS, June, 2010. Coyote Barbie.

    8. Contains a favorite line of mine, “Barbies who run with the wolves”.

  8. EXPANDED HORIZONS, July, 2010. Swamp Gas.

    9. This was originally written for the Apex magazine contest asking writers to combine urban legends with UFOs – it’s my version of the vanishing hitchhiker.

  9. EVERY DAY FICTION, August, 2010. The Investigation.

    10. Flash fiction detailing events in a mythical location that I think of as vaguely French.

  10. PODCASTLE, August, 2010. Sugar.

    11. A Tabat story that originally appeared in the first Fantasy Magazine sampler and was later reprinted in my collection.

  11. LIGHTSPEED, September, 2010. Amid the Words of War. (Kindle version)

    12. One of my Clarion West stories, the first set at the brothel The Little Teacup of the Soul.

  12. DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, September, 2010. Seeking Nothing.

    13. 2010 was a year for dark SF, and here’s another example of that.

  13. CROSSED GENRES, September, 2010. Centzon Totochin.

    14. Horror set in a small Mexican town.

  14. EVERY DAY FICTION, September, 2010. Love Affair.

    15. Written during my grad student days at Indiana University.

  15. TOR.COM, October, 2010. Clockwork Fairies

    16. Perhaps my favorite of the 2010 publications, this is my attempt to talk about some of the problems implicit in the steampunk genre. I -love- the accompanying artwork by Gregory Manchess.

  16. REDSTONE SCIENCE FICTION, November, 2010. Not Waving, Drowning

    17. A final dark story of a marriage between telepath and non-telepath to finish out the year.

In 2011, I have stories coming out from ABYSS & APEX (Bots d’Amor), BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES (Love, Resurrected), BULL SPEC (The Coffeemaker’s Passion), GIGANOTOSAURUS (Karaluvian Fale, which Armageddon players should note is set in Allanak), DAILY SCIENCE FICTION (Pippa’s Smiles), LIGHTSPEED (Long Enough And Just So Long), SHADOWS AND LIGHT II (Aquila’s Ring, another story that Armageddon players will be interested in, since it takes place in Allanak and Tuluk). Podcastle will be doing an audio version of my collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon’s Tale.

I got a Kindle and discovered the joys of e-readers, and even converted my collection, EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT, into a Kindle version, as well as one for other e-readers.

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Pilot's Varsity Disposable Fountain-Pens

I do a good bit of writing by hand, usually in a large hardbound sketchbook, although I sometimes like the feel of a nice narrow yellow-lined pad or the sprawl of an enormous expanse of drawing paper. And to write on these, while sometimes I’ll wander over into glitter gel pens or fine-point felt tips, my favorite is the Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen.

Depending on where you’re getting it, the price varies from $3-10, with the high range of that usually appearing in fancy stores aimed at writers, which will strategically place a mug of them near that stack of leatherbound, gilt-edged journals locking with tiny moon and star clasps whose splendor will prove so intimidating to live up to that you will never actually use it. Overall, it will prove much cheaper to buy yours at an art supply store, which is where I get mine, since I go through at least a few each month.

I like writing with this pen because it never feels as though the nib and paper are dragging at each other. The nib could best be described as medium, somewhere well between broad point and narrow. The pen comes in a variety of shades and shows clearly what color it is at both the top and the bottom. For me, the availability of the color depends on how recently the store’s restocked, but the web tells me it comes in black, navy blue, red, green, pink, purple, and turquoise blue.

My only quibble with the pen is a small one that may not apply to many people’s experience. I am tough on pens. They end up jammed in purses, pockets, lost in coat linings, moved from one book bag to another. And so if your treatment of your possessions is overall gentler, which it probably is, you may not experience the same results I do, which is that about one in twenty pens ends up not exploding so much as getting a bit drippy to the point of ink-stained fingers.

You can read this review at http://thegreenmanreview.com/what-nots/making-words-flow-with-pilot-varsity-fountain-pens/

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