This may be a pinnacle in quirky thrift shop finds. I look forward to traveling and finding worlds as wonderful as this one.My story, “English Muffin, Devotion on the Side,” is up on the Daily Science Fiction site. Please let me know what you think, and spread the word if you like it!
I’m finishing up my essay and the story edits for the Women Destroying Fantasy issue of Lightspeed, as well as some other articles, trying to get those finished before hitting the road. Stories coming out soon include pieces in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 3-Lobed Burning Eye and Shattered Shields (edited by Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt).
I’m going to be setting up a Patreon campaign, because I’ve got a big backlog of stories and figure releasing them on my own while on the road will probably work as well as worrying about keeping them submitted. If you might be interested in subscribing to get two short stories each month, please sign up for my mailing list, and drop me a comment here to let me know what sort of things you might like to accompany that. What sort of cost would be appropriate for a subscription that lets you supply a prompt or get a Tuckerization, for example?
In three days, I become Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. I look forward and am somewhat daunted by the prospect.
Today I am putting down linoleum as the next part of the great remodel while Wayne does some sanding. We’re still on track to leave July 15, +/-3 days. We’ll be heading eastward, with stops planned in Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana, and Philly-area, arriving towards the end of July. August we’ll spend some time knocking around on the eastern seaboard, and towards the end of that month, we will go somewhere. Just not sure where, but Australia, Europe, and South America are among the strong contenders, continent wise.
“English Muffin, Devotion on the Side” was a good read — good enough, in fact, that it prompted me to buy “Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight” immediately afterward. It also reminded me how much I had enjoyed reading other stories by you in the past. I’ve now subscribed to your e-mail list, so I hopefully won’t wander too far astray again.
Keep up the great work!
Daryl
PS: I’m not sure where the avatar photo on this message came from! It did prompt me to try to upload my own, though.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
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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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Nattering Social Justice Cook: Celebrating Rainbow Hair
One place recent culture wars have been being played out has been the virtual space occupied by Twitter and its adjacent social media. Examining a particular hashtag or recurring phrase often provides insight into what the topic of the moment is, as well as what tropes and memes are being deployed.
A common adjective in many of the more conservative, alt-right, and other theater-of-outrage rants I’ve seen in the past couple of years is “rainbow-haired,” never in a positive sense. It’s usually paired with some form of “social justice warrior,” and often accompanied by an emotional catch-phrase or verbiage like “feels” or “drinking the tears.” There’s a lot of interesting stuff built into that particular fixation. So let’s dig around to find what’s contained in the phrase and its use in this pejorative sense.
The rainbow itself has plenty going on, symbology-wise. In many mythologies, it’s the bridge between heaven and earth, used by gods, heroes, and shamans. In the Christian allegory of Noah, it’s the sign of God’s covenant with humanity. Leprechauns hide their gold at the rainbow’s foot, Indra uses it for his bow, and in the Australian Dreaming, it adorns the scales of the Rainbow Serpent who created the world. It’s also got a maxim built into it: something positive that cannot appear without something negative happening first. There are no rainbows without rain, at least a little of which must fall into every life.
In 1978, this metaphor for something containing a multitude of variations became associated with gay pride and diversity, through the efforts of artist/drag queen Gilbert Baker, who said of it: “We needed something beautiful, something from us. The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things. Plus, it’s a natural flag””it’s from the sky! And even though the rainbow has been used in other ways in vexilography, this use has now far eclipsed any other use that it had.”
And we should not forget Skittles and the slogan “verb the rainbow.”
What happens when it becomes hair color that makes it particularly hate-worthy for dour conservatives? It’s something I’m fairly familiar with, since I started dying my hair with streaks of pink in 2006 when I found Loreal’s Color Rays on a Bartell’s shelf. The dye requires no pre-bleaching; it is alarmingly, wonderfully bright when it first goes on, and fades over the course of the next couple of months. While it only comes in three colors rather the multitudes other lines hold. I have yet to find another dye that lasts as long and well. I’ve tried plenty over the years, including Manic Panic, Ion, Arctic Fox, and Vibes. I wrote at length about the (over a decade-long now) experience in The Pink Hair Manifesto so I’ll avoid saying anything other than it’s something I anticipate continuing to do, particularly since it’s become part of my authorial brand.
Let’s ground the recent phenomenon of chemically-colored hair plumage historically, since it happened a few decades earlier than my decision. Fabulous colors required science to make it possible, but the earliest adopters were the punks, particularly Cyndi Lauper. This was considered pretty shocking; I can remember a girl at my high school dying a small patch of hers blue and having her father threaten to kick her out of the house as a result.
Rainbow hair, rooted in a counter-culture movement, revels in individuality and a certain DIY spirit (there is no shame in going to the salon for it, but I find it much more fun to do my own). It celebrates one’s appearance, draws the eye rather than shrinking away from it. It is something beautiful that those who don’t fit inside normal standards of beauty can have. It is playful, joyful, delightful at times.
Very recently it has spread like wildfire, and many of the people adopting it are millennials. This gives the anti-rainbow hair sentiment a double-whammy, providing an “oh these kids nowadays” moment while slamming anyone older for acting overly young. (Which implies that’s a bad thing, which isn’t a notion I agree with).
Here’s something that I think also often makes conservative minds bristle: it confuses gender norms. In traditional thinking, men aren’t supposed to care about or celebrate their appearance in the way women are. But rainbow hair appears all over the gender spectrum. Pull in the strand of meaning associated with gay pride, and the objectionability quotient increases.
There’s a reason alt-right and other manifestations of conservative trollish rhetoric so often focuses on appearance, on fat-shaming or fuckability or even how a new Ken-doll wears their hair. It’s a reversion to the schoolyard insult, the way insecure children will be cruel to others in order to try to build their internal self-worth, a behavior many, but sadly not all, outgrow. Worthy of an essay in itself is the fact that it’s also behavior advantageous to advertisers: anxious consumers who want to fit in are willing to spend money in the effort.
This strategy of playground taunts based on a) something most people have little control over and b) a rigid set of norms is curious when we go back to the associated ideas of emotion and “feels” (I do want to talk about what additional stuff is built into the latter, but let me return to that in a second.) Emotion is traditionally seen as the domain of women and children; men keep a stiff upper lip and a silent heart of winter. Often emotionality is built into the verbs used to describe speech: shrill, shriek, and scream are favorites.
It would be nice if pointing out the gender and other biases BS built into such language defused it entirely, but certainly it’s easier to keep it from affecting you if you’re aware of it. Life for many non-mainstream groups is a constant course of avoiding the particular lumps of low-level radiation scattered throughout our daily landscape. I’m aware I’ve got some shielding from that denied others.
So what’s built into “feels” beyond that? It’s a denigration of the memespeak and emoticons of the millennials, as far as I can tell, a curious mockery of Tumblr and lolcat culture. And there’s a reason that they fear that group, which is better (IMO) at seeing through the clouds of Internet argument than some of the other generations.
Literally four decades ago, when I was a kid, we saw football player Rosey Grier singing that it was all right to feel things:
Which leads me to my conclusion, which is that it seems like an ineffective and overly dour point to hammer on. Overall, I can’t read any of the negatives being packed into rainbow-haired as actual negatives. Celebrate the rainbow connection, I say, and close accordingly with that.
Who said that wishes would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star?
Someone thought of that and someone believed it.
Look what it’s done so far.
What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing and what do we think we might see?
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
2018 in Retrospect Plus Here Comes 2019: Ever Onward, Ever Hopeful, Ever Joyful
There’s only one day left of this year in which to reflect upon it, and one thing I’ve been urging students to do is sit down and reckon up some of their accomplishments as well as planning out next year’s goals. So here I am, practicing what I preach.
Fiction-wise, the biggest thing published was my fantasy novel, Hearts of Tabat, in May. (If you’re one of the folks who enjoyed it, please think about putting up a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or wherever.) While it’s book two of the Tabat Quartet, it functions as an introduction to the series as well as the first book, Beasts of Tabat, does, and maybe they actually read better in that order, I dunno.
I finished up writing two novels, one of which (You Sexy Thing, a space military fantasy) is off with my agent, another (The Five of Us, a MG far future space story) of which I’m currently editing, and got halfway through two others: Exiles of Tabat (the sequel to Hearts of Tabat) and Devil’s Gun (sequel to YST).
The anthology I edited, If This Goes On from Parvus Press, will come out in spring of 2019, and is chockfull of good stuff. So will the little collection that’s intended as a reward for Kickstarter backers, Rambo on Rambo. Thank you to Parvus as well as my rocking team of slush readers, who heroically tackled (literally) hundreds of stories.
The Patreon effort continued to grow, and I hope in 2019 to get it to the point where I can start my own monthly magazine. One helpful thing I started doing was using the software Airtable, which came recommended by Pablo Defendi, and treating the effort as though it were itself that magazine, with weekly features like Tasty Thursdays, in which I provide and talk about a recipe, and Friday Questions, a mini Ask-Me-Anything where conversations can range all over the place. I also hooked in my Discord server for $5 and up patrons and coaching clients and also recruited some other writers and Rambo Academy faculty in order to create a community where people could encourage and motivate each other as well as trade story and novel critiques,
The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers overall gained a few more teachers, and continues to grow, which is frickin’ awesome, and lets me sit in on classes by the likes of Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire and Rachel Swirsky, along with a host of other great folks. We had our first gamewriting-related class, High-Speed Worldbuilding for Fiction and Games with James L. Sutter. Check out the latest version of the faculty list. Speaking of teaching, over a thousand students have come through the Rambo Academy now, which is awesome, and I added several new live classes to the roster. I expanded the number of free slots in each class from one to three.
I went to the usual round of conventions, including International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, Norwescon, Emerald City Comic Con, GenCon, WorldCon, DragonCon, GirlGeekCon, Surrey International Writers Conference, and Pacific Northwest Writers Association. I got to both tell Peter S. Beagle he was the new SFWA Grand Master and then give him the award — and I get to do the same with another personal hero this coming May. I was a mystery muse for Clarion West this summer and some of the students from there took me up on my offer of a coaching call (If you’re one of them reading this and sad you didn’t, the offer is still open.)
I made my Twitch TV debut as part of the crew playing Esper Genesis. My name is in the rulebook as a playtester, which makes me proud and happy. One ball I’ve dropped is getting SFWA set up with a Twitch effort, but that requires figuring out what form that might manifest in as well as assembling the right volunteer team to care for it.
SFWA continued and continues to make strides forward into the 21st century, despite various small contretemps along the way, and I expect it to break the 2,000 member mark in 2019. Things that got implemented or that kept surging along in 2018, in no particular order:
I’ve been working on prodding the SFWA Youtube channel into existence since I was Vice President, and this year it really started to find its feet under the adept leadership of Diane Morrison. Some highlights include. Please check it out and subscribe – lots of good stuff is in the pipeline including gamechats with Jason Stevan Hill and James L. Sutter.
The mentorship program was launched. That’s been a long and painful struggle because we wanted to make sure we got it right, but the first wave of mentors and mentees got matched and the results (and numbers) are terrific. I’m mentoring someone myself — if you’re interested in participating in one or the other (or both) sides of that the next time they open up to matches, keep an eye on the website. You do not need to be a member to serve as mentor or mentee.
The Givers Fund created by outgoing SFWA CFO Bud Sparhawk continues to roll along disbursing money to efforts promoting fantasy and science fiction. Much of the money raised for this comes from our partnerships with HumbleBundle and Storybundle, which we have worked with in the last 2 years to create Nebula-themed offerings as well as efforts throughout the year, including two SFWA-author Storybundles.
The first Nebula Awards weekend I ever went to was a hotel banquet plus a handful of desultory panels. Nowadays it’s a bajillion times busier, bigger, and full of requested features. At some point it deserves a blog post all its own, detailing all the cool little features it’s acquired, like the Alternate Universe Acceptance Speeches. In 2019 (and 2020), it’s in Woodland Hills, California.
The Partners and Spouses party at the Nebulas was another thing I’ve pushed for, an event honoring the folks who often make it possible for writers to write, hosted by the inimitable (and SFWA Ombudsman) Gay Haldeman. In 2018 there was even programming aimed at those folks, assisted by Michelle Appel.
Indie members have been one of my foci all along and I continue to see them shaping the organization with their enthusiastic, energetic, and above all market-savvy input. We continue to be the only org of this kind letting people qualify with crowd-funded projects. Efforts associated with them include the NetGalley program and the New Release Newsletter.
Finally that frickin’ Game Nebula plus revised membership requirements for game writers are in place. Check out the SFWA Recommended Reading list to see some of the games SFWA members are playing and recommending.
The continued growth of the SFWA volunteer program under Derek Kunsken’s adept hand continues to please, and the volunteer breakfast that we implemented three years has (I hope) become a mainstay, along with the cool thank you certificates handed out there.
Kate Baker helped organize Six Sigma training for the Board at the Nebulas this year and the extra day of that was so well worth it that we’ll be doing it again in 2019.
SFWA Ed is rocking along under Jonathan Brazee’s able hand, they’ve got several claases up already, and I’m working on a mini-project for them right now.
Publications are getting sorted out. The Bulletin continues to lurch towards a more regular production schedule and has some things it previously lacked, like submission guidelines. The Singularity, originally intended to solve the problem of people getting a piece of mail from SFWA, going “I don’t want this,” and unsubscribing not realizing that meant no more e-mails from SFWA at all, including stuff about the Nebulas and the SFWA elections, has a regular schedule and is always full of great stuff, with people using it, which is a nice sign. Moving the Forum (and once and for all ending the confusion between its name and the electronic discussion forums) to electronic form only and re-shaping it into the Binary, a twice-yearly members-only formal writer-up of votes, committee and board member reports, and budget numbers, has been another effort that has been successful and helped turn something a little retro looking into an entity for this century.
Social media has gotten more of a focus in the past few years, and I see the SFWA Twitter account currently bubbling up all sorts of good content from past years on the SFWA blog, including a number of my own pieces.
Another of my visions, the SFWA First Chapters project, designed to help with the perennial question, how do I sift through the kerjillion novels that come out in a single year, is off and running!
Undoubtedly I have forgotten a kerjillion things that I will remember right after posting this; I will edit them in as they occur to me.
Some SFWA moments, like writing up a requested statement on what a SFWA President does for the Elections committee, are a little bittersweet because it’s the last year of my Presidency. While I am REALLY looking forward to putting more time and mental bandwidth into writing, I know I will miss a great many of the interactions. I will continue to work with the org as a volunteer — that sorta goes without saying, I think, but I’m still figuring out what I want to do. I got to make my final round of picks for the next SFWA Grandmaster, the recipients of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, and the Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service Awards, and they’ve all been Board-approved and notified, and I am super happy with the chance to acknowledge them all. This will be my last Nebulas as SFWA President, the closest I’ve gotten to playing prom queen in this life, and so I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to out-do last year’s banquet dress.
A nice highlight, coming in late fall, was that I got a helper! The daughter of a friend, Molly Louise, has been working hard at putting together a more regular social media presence, doing some writing for the blog like To France and Beyond and What Happened to Sabrina?, helping put together the newsletter, and creating some fun graphics. It’s been a big help and I look forward to working with her in the New Year.
Sadder notes of 2018 included losses like Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Rosenblum, and my friend K.C. Ball. I was touched that Orycon asked to reprint my tribute to her in its program.
I had bought a lot of 4 horses for the sake of the Stardust Unicorn in it, and decided to modify one of the excess ones.This is still in progress.The pictures illustrating this write-up show a new obsession: Breyer horses. Throw in the availability of used toys and memorabilia on eBay and you have a recipe that sates my inner 12-year-old. Here’s the one I’ve been working on customizing. It’s a fun rabbit-hole, and my BFF and I are planning a trip to Breyerfest in the middle of the year.
I’m looking forward to that as well as to a lot of projects in 2019. A lot of last year’s productivity was spurred by finding a new writing process last September, one which is painful yet productive, and which involves getting up at 5:30, hitting the gym, and then denying myself Internet until I’ve hit my wordcount mark. It’s based on Chris Fox’s 5,000 Words an Hour.
What I am looking forward to in 2019:
Turn in Exiles of Tabat, the MG novel, and the next few books in the space series, which is planned on as a somewhat insane ten book story arc.
On-demand versions of the flash fiction class, the all the -punks class, and the Stories that Change the World class.
Frequent visitors will have noticed more guest blog posts on here. I’m hoping that eventually I can grow it into a monthly magazine of sorts since the Patreon continues to gain traction. If you’ve got something you’re promoting that you want to guest blog about or are interested in talking about some sort of semi-regular column, please drop me a line. By the end of 2019, I hope to have made significant progress towards that goal.
Moving the Chez Rambo household to a new place – we’re looking for new digs, probably still here in West Seattle, and I know that’s going to be a major effort.
Upcoming/planned appearances include Confusion in January, Norwescon, the Nebulas, GenCon, WorldCon (Dublin!), Cascade Writers, PNWA and Surrey International Writers Conference. I’ve also booked a treat for myself in the form of a trip to Breyerfest with my best friend in July, which should be a hoot and a half. Neither of us have ever been and I’m working on booking us an Airbnb that will let us interact with live horses too. If you have suggestions of things we should see while in the Lexington area, let me know!
Resolutions aren’t usually something I formally do, but I am going to try to be better about keeping up with my journal/notebook this year, because I find recording things like word counts for writing sprints or tallying gym visits makes me more mindful of and better about doing them. I like to jot down “10 Things About Today” in my daybook on a regular basis because I like looking back at those small details and remembering incidents, like seeing two little girls in purple ballerina skirts purposefully making their way up a hill yesterday or talking to a woman in the gym about the book she’s reading. I’d like to pick up the habit of meditation, because my mind is a monkey-mind, constantly distracted, worrying, and busy puzzling things out and composing pretty phrases in my head.
I hope to be better about both maintaining existing ties as well as establishing new ones, much of that in the form of letting my amazing friends and family know how much I appreciate them. To be a little more tidy in my daily existence for the sake of my own sanity, since an orderly environment is so much nicer than living on the edge of creeping chaos. And finally, to make more art for the sake of making art, like my notebook doodles or the masks I make every once in a while or my little Breyer customization project.
To continue to work on thinking before speaking, to encouraging other voices to talk — and listening to them, and to be mindful of the impact of my words. To continue to work at being able to go to bed knowing I’ve made an effort to make good things happen in the world, that I’ve cultivated love rather than spread hate, and that, above all, that I’ve been true to myself.
There’s only one day left of this year in which to reflect upon it, and one thing I’ve been urging students to do is sit down and reckon up some of their accomplishments as well as planning out next year’s goals. So here I am, practicing what I preach.
SFWA continued and continues to make strides forward into the 21st century, despite various small contretemps along the way, and I expect it to break the 2,000 member mark in 2019. Things that got implemented or that kept surging along in 2018, in no particular order:
Some SFWA moments, like writing up a requested statement on what a SFWA President does for the Elections committee, are a little bittersweet because it’s the last year of my Presidency. While I am REALLY looking forward to putting more time and mental bandwidth into writing, I know I will miss a great many of the interactions. I will continue to work with the org as a volunteer — that sorta goes without saying, I think, but I’m still figuring out what I want to do. I got to make my final round of picks for the next SFWA Grandmaster, the recipients of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, and the Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service Awards, and they’ve all been Board-approved and notified, and I am super happy with the chance to acknowledge them all. This will be my last Nebulas as SFWA President, the closest I’ve gotten to playing prom queen in this life, and so I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to out-do last year’s banquet dress.
Resolutions aren’t usually something I formally do, but I am going to try to be better about keeping up with my journal/notebook this year, because I find recording things like word counts for writing sprints or tallying gym visits makes me more mindful of and better about doing them. I like to jot down “10 Things About Today” in my daybook on a regular basis because I like looking back at those small details and remembering incidents, like seeing two little girls in purple ballerina skirts purposefully making their way up a hill yesterday or talking to a woman in the gym about the book she’s reading. I’d like to pick up the habit of meditation, because my mind is a monkey-mind, constantly distracted, worrying, and busy puzzling things out and composing pretty phrases in my head. 
One Response
Hello Cat,
“English Muffin, Devotion on the Side” was a good read — good enough, in fact, that it prompted me to buy “Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight” immediately afterward. It also reminded me how much I had enjoyed reading other stories by you in the past. I’ve now subscribed to your e-mail list, so I hopefully won’t wander too far astray again.
Keep up the great work!
Daryl
PS: I’m not sure where the avatar photo on this message came from! It did prompt me to try to upload my own, though.