Raised on a diet of Star Wars, Monty Python, and In Search Of, Allison Thurman has always made stuff, lately out of words. She lives in a galaxy far, far away (well, the DC metro area) with too many books and not enough swords.
Next week I’ll see my fiction in print for the first time.
And look, there’s my name on it!
No, it’s not my first publication (check it out!) but this is the first time there’s going to be a hard copy version. Something physical, with my name on it.
It feels more real and permanent than digital which is both exciting and intimidating.
My story is in very good company. Every single one of the stories in this anthology comes at the 1518 dancing plague from a wildly different angle and I love the way all the writers have played with the history.
I’ve tried to write this post a dozen times but I can’t say much that hasn’t been said before. Roe v. Wade was the law of the land all my life and while the religious righties chipped away at the right to abortion at the state level I never in my wildest dreams did I think Roe could be struck down.
Toss the question back to the states, sure—states in which Republicans are gerrymandering Democrats into irrelevance are the ones most likely to end legal abortion, if they didn’t have trigger laws on the books already.
And if the Republicans get a majority you better believe they’ll go for a nationwide abortion ban, and they won’t stop there. What constitutional rights will they go for next? Same-sex marriage, certainly, trans rights, and contraception—that might sound unthinkable but oh yes they will because crushing women’s autonomy was always part of the conservative plan.
My state is safe…for now. I have it easier than some as my reproductive years are almost behind me. Doesn’t make me any less furious that in some states I now have fewer rights than a fetus or a corpse.
I am LIVID for younger generations who are still at risk for unplanned pregnancy. We’ve just set this country back for multiple generations.
If you’re inclined to whinge that I’m “getting all political”—well, yeah. What, you think I can just accept this?
I’m doing all I know to do-give to abortion funds, call my representatives, grind my teeth to powder but it’s not enough and I don’t know what will be. After all, the people who decided this don’t have to worry about being voted out.
Not much more to say, and no interesting pictures to make you click through. I’m writing and working on all my other extracurricular projects that make this timeline bearable, so if I sometimes seem flip I’m just trying to cheer myself up. I hope you’re all finding your ways to deal with [gestures broadly at ALL THIS].
Last weekend I went drank from the firehose, renewed some friendships, and took a hit to my ego. First the good stuff:
The costume conference was my first costuming event in six years and one I desperately needed. Due to both The Book* and covid I’ve not made anything in an age and needed this spark to make me want to make things again.
Being around other people as interested and excited as I am about the subject matter helped too. I lurve me a good online conference, but there’s something about sharing interests and projects face to face that gets lost on Zoom. I renewed friendships and made new ones with a variety of intelligent, creative, and inspired people who get why the correct sort of thread and the right tools for the job matter.
There’s also something about the tactile aspect. To my pleased surprise, most of the conference was hands-on creation, which is great because I learn best by doing. Also, not to malign writing, but between it and my day job I spend a lot of time pushing pixels around. It’s nice to get the physical feedback and a material object I can refer to and use.
Speaking of which…
This was a historic costuming conference so most of the sewing was by hand, and the classes included a variety of small or otherwise hard-to-see things: sewing dark on dark, a needle lace sampler a couple of inches wide, embellishing round button blanks smaller than the end of my thumb, and gold thread so delicate I was afraid of breaking it.
Choosing black velvet for my pleated hat was possibly not the best choice.
Between lack of practice and declining eyesight, these projects were as frustrating as they were interesting. I kept losing my grip on pins and needles and spent half of these sessions with my glasses off just to see what I was doing.
I’ve hand sewn since I was a teenager. I assumed I was good at it and always would be. Turns out my skill is not as permanent as I thought it was.
I can re-learn hand sewing – bright light, magnification, and practice, practice practice! Still, discovering I’m not as good as I thought was a bit of a slap to the face.
On another upside though, I finally figured out what to do with my author’s Instagram! I don’t have any research trips coming up but I do have some sewing projects planned so I’ll be updating that more often.
*Re: The Book: I’ve devoted most of my writing time to book reviews and short stories over the past few months, but I’m getting back on the Fool’s Gold wagon. For the first time since winter I can stand to look at it and make the continuity tweaks I’ve been avoiding. More news forthcoming.
Like many of 80s/90s kids I spent a lot of time making mixtapes for my friends. Combined from records, tapes, and (if I had good timing) the radio, these were a way to share my favorites with my friends…whether they liked it or not. Music was everything to me as a teenager, and if my friends didn’t like or know about a certain band they sure as hell would when I was done with them!
But it’s fair to say the mixtape for all time is the Voyager Golden Records.
I geeked out over the Voyager mission long before I learned about the Golden Records because of the beautiful photography that came back from the Jupiter and Saturn flybys. As a child I’d flip through my father’s coffee-table book of the photos repeatedly. I watched a recorded fragment of a NOVA episode featuring the discovery of Io’s volcanoes until I wore the videotape out. I think I became aware of the Golden Records much later, probably as a music-obsessed teen. But it wasn’t the music itself that appealed to me.
That’s partly because I hadn’t heard it. Sure I’d heard snips here and there in documentaries but it’s not like the Golden Record was released to the public. Its audience is very specific: any civilization advanced enough to understand the transition of a hydrogen atom* will be able to decode the instructions on the cover to access the sounds (and images!).
That the Record was created to communicate with extraterrestrials is ambitious enough, but for me the most amazing thing is its permanence. NASA designed the probes to survive long enough for the Saturn and Jupiter flybys – about five years.** After that they were expected to drift in interstellar space unless and until someone intercepted them.
Five years is impressive in a world where you phone doesn’t even last that long! But JPL gold-plated the copper records to protect against radiation damage and embedded a bit of uranium-238 in the aluminum covers so that anyone who found could date it based on the level of degradation. Uranium-238 has a half life of 4.468 billion years. That’s built to last.
Each Record is encased with its own cartridge and needle, so aliens won’t even have to deal with the vinyl-tape-CD-mp3-??? progression of endless format changes we’ve been hop-skipping through for the past 40 years. Lucky devils!
Ozma Records finally released a box set of the Golden Records for us ordinary mortals a few years ago; the picture above is from my copy. It doesn’t include the embedded images but the sounds include musical pieces from all parts of the world and a spectrum of natural sounds (weather, animals). I find the greetings in 55 languages to be the most touching though, because the first step of any new acquaintance (terrestrial or extra-) is just saying “hello.”
Like most of us I’ve been watching the news for the last few days with my heart in my throat.
Nothing I can say is really adequate. I’m not a foreign policy expert, and while I’m a history buff I don’t have fancy letters after my name. All I can offer are a collection of vague thoughts:
This feels like the beginning of WWIII and I really hope I’m wrong about that.
We do not need a world war with nukes. I think this is why Biden is insisting the U.S. won’t send active troops into Ukraine itself- one nuclear power in direct conflict with the other nuclear power (run by a dictator who has already threatened to use them) makes an already horrific situation worse.
It is a horrific situation. I can’t imagine what the people of Ukraine are going through, either hiding and hoping they don’t get shelled or fleeing to another country. I gather that the Russian invasion wasn’t expected until the very last minute so it’s not like most of the country was sitting around with a gun or go bag.
The Ukrainian people are badasses on so many levels. You’ve read all the stories (the Snake Island defenders, the granny with the sunflower seeds) so I won’t repeat them here. I think what amazes me most are people signing up for militias despite no experience and real risk.
These new Ukrainian militias make the U.S. militia movement look like a bunch of frat boys looking for a fight over petty grievances. Not to say homegrown militias aren’t dangerous (they are) but no Americans within living history have experienced a land war in their own country (Pearl Harbor and 9/11, as terrible as they were, were not full scale invasions by a foreign power). While the Oath Keepers and 3 Percenters get wound up over the culture wars, Ukrainian militias are fighting for their lives.
Zelensky is the biggest badass of them all. The sensible thing to do would be flee and set up a Ukrainian government in exile a la de Gaulle but instead he’s chosen to stay and fight for his country. George VI’s refusal to leave London during the Blitz and Elizabeth I’s vow to “live or die amongst you all” in the face of the Spanish Armada spring to mind (look, British history is my wheelhouse – these may not be great comparisons but they’re what I’ve got).
Ukraine has won the media war, hands down.
Biden’s sanctions may seem weak/vague in comparison to sending in troops but see above re: a war between two nuclear powers. I don’t think Putin will be deterred by sanctions, but without resources he can’t do very much.
I think this is largely Putin’s war. Based on the huge number of Russians protesting despite the risks it appears most of them aren’t in favor.
No idea what the oligarchs thought they would get out of invading Ukraine, if they were consulted at all. As their assets dry up I imagine they’re going to be less and less keen to support Putin’s war, if they ever were to begin with.
No idea how to discuss the war with Ukrainians, so I just…haven’t. I’m thinking particularly of an acquaintance who was born in Ukraine but grew up under the Soviet system, so I don’t know what to say or how to say it.
Too many Republicans are still kissing Putin’s ass but I’m pleased that at least a few are condemning his actions. They’re trying to paint Biden as “weak” but as usual don’t have much to back that up.
Yes, this is the definition of “witnessing history”, being aware of seismic changes even as they’re happening. I’m not sure I like it. History feels safer when viewed through a buffer of a few decades. Day to day waiting to see if Zelensky has survived the night or whether Putin still has his nukes on alert isn’t all that fun.
So I stepped into this one:
I’m not (currently?) writing about biblio fakes but given my enduring fascination with the Voynich manuscript they’re not completely outside my wheelhouse. My favorite is the one I first encountered on my Dad’s bookshelf as a kid: the Vinland map.
Purported to be the earliest documentation of pre-Columbian Viking presence in America, its written on 15th century parchment and bound with a genuine 15th century document (the Tartar Relation). Yale University acquired the map in the 1960s and was sufficiently convinced of its authenticity to write the academic tome I found in my Dad’s library, though experts had doubts from the start. After multiple studies and analyses over the years, Yale confirmed it as a fake just this past fall: the ink is dates to the 1920s at the earliest.
As (bad?) luck would have it, Yale published their book in 1965 at about the same time that archaeological finds in L’Anse aux Meadows confirmed a pre-Columbian Viking presence in the Americas.
In my rush around the internet to put together this post, I didn’t find anything on on who specifically forged the Vinland Map or why. I can only guess that someone in the 1920s was so desperate to prove the Vikings got to America first they were willing to invent evidence to “prove” it. So what we wind up with is a forgery created to prove something…that turned out to be true anyway. I love the irony.
Even so, I keep my Dad’s battered copy of “The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation” for sentimental reasons.
And about damn time – I’ve been writing about writing for the past 7 years but didn’t have a scrap of fiction to share…until now.
Some context: the latest round of edits on Fool’s Gold slowed (further) over the summer due to burnout. I needed to get the creative juices flowing again, and what better way than with a short story? Something with a simpler plot and less time/emotional investment.
I queried through the fall. Of twelve publications, six rejected me, five didn’t reply, and one accepted. This, I gather, is par for the course. Persistence really does pay off!
My put-upon animal trader, Janek, is entirely made up. And goddamn, it was freeing to write a fully fictional character! No timelines or documentation to work around! I based his curmudgeonly attitude on Rowan Atkinson’s character Edmund Blackadder, a long-suffering servant to idiotic royals in a series of 80s British comedies. My logline for “The Zolo Hound of the Newly Found World” was “Blackadder runs a zoo”.
Laurenciana Pylmannova, however, was completely real. What little I could find of her was fascinating and still left me enough room to make up a personality.
Please read and let me know what you think, either here or over at Tall Tale TV.
Janek and Laurenciana WILL return, along with Felipe.
Esoterica [YouTube] – doctor of religious studies and philosophy Justin Sledge produces videos on the history of magic, alchemy, and the occult and digs through all the jargon to make it accessible to the layperson. His video on Edward Kelley is one of the more even-handed biographies I’ve seen, and emphasizes Kelley’s alchemy over his mediumship.
Regency (the early 1800s) is self-explanatory. So is Ancient Rome, medieval Europe, the Tudors – all the stereotypical time periods one thinks of when someone mentions “historical fiction” are so far in the past
World War II is another obvious and popular time period. One of the first big WWII novels, “From Here to Eternity”, was written in 1951 by an author who was at Pearl Harbor, so though it appears on historical fiction lists it’s really just contemporary fiction from an earlier time.
But then consider Wouk’s “Winds of War”, written in 1971, less than 30 years after the end of WWII, is arguably more a war novel than a historical fiction novel, yet is described as a great work of historical fiction now.
To a history buff 30 years doesn’t seem like much but it still jarred me to realize that the Ramones first album (1975) came out only 30 years after World War II ended (1945).
By that logic, punk, which happened over 40 years ago(!), is now ripe fodder for historical fiction.
I think it depends on the person. “Within living memory” is a long range of years – to a teenager the 1990s maybe ancient history but to me it feels like barely a few years ago. To my mom’s generation I imagine it feels like last week (surely the 1990s aren’t historical fiction yet. Surely not).
I’m researching a new novel to set in the 1970s or 80s, and it does appear that I can do so while staying within my genre though. It’s risky, though, because one of the hazards of writing in settings within living memory is that a lot of readers will get thrown out of my book if I get the slightest detail wrong.
So my research will be long and difficult, though I have no doubt I’ll love every minute of it.The
Once upon a time (the 90s), I was a college radio DJ.
In high school, music was everything to me. I spent every waking hour finding it and listening to it. Because I could never do anything halfway, I ran down the rabbit hole of local indie record stores (not the local chain store-my tastes were too obscure for that) and went to record shows to hunt for the real rarities. I discovered new music through 120 Minutes, European penpals, and, yes, college radio.
My obsession extended to the (probably annoying) habit of sharing what (very little) I knew about music with anyone who would listen and many who wouldn’t. Starting around age 14, I constantly made unsolicited mixtapes for friends because “you need to hear this!” If someone didn’t listen to the same cool stuff I was, it was my duty to enlighten them. No fellow fans? Convert them. No scene? Build it.
Or as much as one can when one is in the exurbs with no car and a record collection never exceeding 150ish records, because I traded in as much as I bought. And my collection was primarily records, not the then-newer CD format. Proto-electronic dance music was my preference, and most remixes were (still are?) released in 12″ vinyl.
So my extracurricular trajectory once I hit campus was obvious.
By sophomore year, I played the dance show every other Tuesday in addition to my regular shift. Taking my own records meant dragging a heavy crate up four flights of stairs (the station had no elevator), but it was ok because I was sharing the Good Stuff. The occasional appreciative call assured me I was on the right track.
The next logical step was spinning at clubs and parties. I booked time in the station’s second studio to practice mixing, and when raving (finally!) hit Atlanta I grabbed it with both hands. But I never dragged my records into a club DJ booth.
Several things derailed me. I took a summer off and so lost seniority at the radio station, and with it, the dance show. I spent more time going out than working on my DJ skills. Worst, I dated a guy who discouraged my interest.
By the time I figured out this guy was a jerk, my collection had fallen out of date (then as now, new stuff comes out constantly) and it was too expensive and time-consuming to get back to where I’d left off.
Years passed. I pursued a variety of creative outlets. I broadened my musical horizons and learned just how narrow and shallow my musical “expertise” was. I’m hitting middle age as a reforming music snob who throttles down her recommendations in favor of just letting people enjoy things.
But I still have the records. And now I have a USB turntable.
A Technics 1200 it’s not, but it’s mine and I dug it out of storage and made it work.
I’m finally digitizing everything because much as I love vinyl, I still think digital music is one of the goddamn triumphs of modern media. Yeah, I lose a little sound quality but I’ll cheerfully take a flash drive over a heavy a milk crate of records! I doubt I’ll get back to teenage-level obsession but it’s been nice to revisit old favorites and discover the occasional new (or, at least, new to me) track.
