I had a good week at Nationals. As in, surreally good:
I won a shiny…
…fenced a team event as the “anchor” (though I was always the kid picked last for kickball). On the elevated finals strip, no less, though not a gold medal bout
…and even placed the highest I ever have (80th) in a large (150+) competition of mostly spry teenagers.
Additionally, querying and other networky/researchy things revolving around The Book™ are going better than expected. Don’t really feel like I can go into detail yet but it’s all very promising.
So why, when everything is coming up roses, does it all feel a little…wrong?
Part of it is straight-up homesickness. I lived out of a suitcase for half of June. I don’t usually travel this many places in quick succession. While the people I’ve met and events I’ve participated in have been wonderful, I’m unused to such rapid changes of place and I’m left disoriented.
Some of it is exhaustion – all that travel, plus full time job and Life that never stops on top of my seeming inability to get more than 6 hours sleep a night has taken a toll.
But more than anything else it’s my bad wiring.
I have anxiety and depression. I don’t like to dwell on it so I don’t talk about it very often. Due to my great good fortune in having decent mental health care they are mostly managed, most of the time.
But sometimes my brain just won’t let me have nice things, as it did towards the tail end of last week. It has this chemical rebellion that results in feelings that it’s all going to backfire any minute, or that it’s all luck and not the result of long hours of hard work.
As I type this I’m bouncing back, but it’s a long, slow bounce. The best I can do is rest, get back on a regular schedule and avoid caffeine like the plague (ask me about my celebratory slice of chocolate pie. No, best not). When I’m in such a state, rejoining the workaday world where I am not an [insert activity here] rockstar is paradoxically easier than enjoying my successes.
So: big girl panties yanked up, laundry done, early bed tonight.
By the time this posts I’ll be on my way to the Historical Novel Society conference. Or, at least, I’ll have my query typed, my elevator pitch memorized, and my manuscript grammar/spellchecked to within an inch of its life.
I’m as prepared as I can be. Hell, I’m overprepared, but while I’m excited about the conference, the stakes feel higher than before because I’m pitching to an agent and an editor.
Not that I haven’t pitched before. I did at my first HNS back in 2015 because I didn’t realize I wasn’t ready. Ah, the bliss of ignorance!
This past Sunday afternoon I finished my third draft.
I am still unhappy with parts of the book but apart from a few tweaks in the proofreading/spellchecking stage the bulk of rewriting is done. It’s as good as I can make it without professional help, so I’m going to fulfill my personal goal of pitching this thing at the Historical Novel Society conference in just over two weeks.
[gulp]
I’m really trying not to think about that.
Fortunately I’ve got some distractions.
That’s what part of 8 yards of silk habotai looks like-it extends a good few feet beyond the frame. Photo author’s own.
I promised myself a sewing project or two during the initial query process/before I start research for the next book* and what you see above is the raw material for a long-standing plan to make a silk pleated gown in the style of Fortuny’s Delphos. I made a polyester version years ago but it does not move or drape the same way natural silk does.
I dyed this with natural indigo at a friend’s house back on a cold, chilly day in May and set it aside though I wanted to play with it so much! But I’ve learned I can only do one project at a time if I want to do it well.
In addition to the HNS conference I have a family trip and Nationals this month so my June is well tied up. Hopefully I’ll get back on my weekly blogging schedule as well.
What have you got planned for this summer?
*I’m deciding between two plot bunnies and will get nose back to grindstone this fall.
I came late to this news story. I’d been away from my desk for an hour and came back to find my Facebook feed blowing up with the most horrible, unbelievable photographs. I spare you links to the same here – I imagine everyone will see those photos many times in the next few days – so I include a 29 year old set from a childhood family trip to Europe.
A photo album so old they’re actual photos. Author’s own.
I don’t think we went in. Our stop in Paris was so short, and we were trying to see so much in just a couple of days. As a teenager my interest in history competed with my interest in clothes and records, and I always thought something like the Notre Dame was perennial, permanent. I mean, it had survived over 800 years and umpteen wars. Something like that could never be destroyed, not really. I’d see the rest someday.
I guess I’ll never see it now, or at least, not as it was.
The last news report I heard before I typed this was that the structure had been saved but the spire and roof are lost, and the fate of much of the artwork and wooden interior is as yet unknown. I watch updates in a kind of morbid fascination, if only because I keep thinking this is the last time, the last time I see any of this, and I don’t want to miss it.
Happily, no one was injured in the fire. Human life is paramount, and this tragedy would have been all the worse if there were fatalities. But art and architecture aren’t trivial. I’m not religious myself but humanity’s beliefs in their deities of choice have inspired outstanding, unique artworks that I fear we’ll now never see again.
Not sure where I was going with this, just that I felt I couldn’t let this moment pass without saying something. Remember, someday is now.
If want to share your own feelings about the fire, or if you have any memories of Notre Dame, please feel free to share them in the comments.
Travel enriches us. It allows us to not only see new places but let go of assumptions and clichés about those places. And while I know there’s no way that one day in Belgrade makes me an authority on the city, it does give me some things to ponder.
Take Tito’s mausoleum.
This is in the middle of an extensive park.
Can’t really be a dictator without at least one self-aggrandizing statue of oneself. At least Tito’s is only life-size.
Contemporary news and culture taught me that all Communist dictators were oppressive monsters who kept their citizens in perpetual fear and despair. Our guide wasn’t a fan, but insisted that, like many things in Serbia, Tito’s legacy is “complicated”.
Yes—Tito was a dictator who ruthlessly sentenced political opponents to forced labor and constrained human rights when it suited him. Yet he is still held in some regard (by my guide, and I’m guessing she’s not alone based on the large crowds at the mausoleum) because he kept Yugoslavia together, kept the Russians out, and allowed open (by Eastern Bloc standards, at least) borders.
Within sight of the this secular shrine—actually, within sight of much of Belgrade—is the astonishing Orthodox cathedral of St. Sava.
Construction started in the 1930s and though interrupted by war, invasion, and politics, is still crawling towards completion. It’s among the largest Orthodox churches in the world, but it doesn’t need size to impress. I’d seen pictures of Orthodox iconography and frescoes, but nothing compares to the three-dimensional reality.
If I remember correctly St. Sava’s icons and frescoes are made using medieval materials and techniques. The reason we see more gold than blue here is because while lapis lazuli was expensive and rare hundreds of years ago, it really isn’t anymore. To show wealth/prestige gold is now the obvious way to go.
Gilt everywhere. Photo by Charlotte Dries.
Belgrade has been destroyed and rebuilt around 40(!) times in its long history, and much of the city center is still rebuilding after the wars of the 1990s that broke up Yugoslavia. Right across from a restored 19th century train station are the ruins of the Yugoslavian Ministry of Defense, bombed out by NATO.
Photo by Charlotte Dries.
I felt a little weird viewing it, though our guide pointed this out without any apparent ire (surprising [or not?] given that most of us were from NATO countries). I was even reluctant to include it in this post, but decided to leave it in because my reaction reveals some of the complicated facets of being a tourist. History is often a series of violent events, but I think the recentness of the violence got to me. The bombing was only 20 years ago, and even though this building was on the tour and the decision to leave it a ruin is deliberate I still felt like an ugly American enjoying a morbid thrill at Serbian expense.
After a very long day walking around Belgrade we walked a bit further to our one off-schedule stop: the Tesla Museum.
It was a leeetle underwhelming, but to be fair we were also quite rushed (when the boat leaves it leaves, whether you’re on it or not). It’s only about three rooms (or at least, that’s all we had access to) and we stepped in between English-language tours. They have his ashes, as well as the safe he used in his rooms at the Waldorf Astoria and some of his characteristic gloves and hats.
Of course Tesla’s urn looks like an atom.
The very safe from which the U.S. government took Tesla’s papers upon his death.
Not sure if these are reproductions or the genuine article, but Tesla was a natty (and germaphobic) sort.
As near as we could tell most of our fellow patrons spoke English but Serbians hold him in high regard as well – he appears on their 100 dinar note and every souvenir shop we passed had a Tesla-themed something. The museum itself emphasized his technical achievements to the point that even the gift shop has scientific monographs and collections of Tesla’s correspondence instead of magnets and coffee mugs.
What followed was a mad dash back to the boat in a very fast, very economical taxi. I left Belgrade intrigued, a bit uncomfortable, and thinking of some questions to ask.
This is my last post before I take a break from the blog. I’m not sure for how long. These take a long time to write and research (even the link dumps) and between the holidays coming up and a real need to make some headway on my book, something has to give. I hope you’ll check out the archives and/or join me on social media (Twitter | Facebook | Mastodon).
Sparing personal details, it’s been a rocky summer. Illness and money/day job-related stresses marred fun social and creative activities. Even writing and fencing became habits, and I grew (and remain) frustrated with both because I can’t get out of my own spiraling head to do them as well as I have in the past.
I’ve recovered physically and the money and day job stressors are resolving themselves but the pile-on was the mental equivalent of a broken leg, and like a broken limb the brain doesn’t just bounce back either.
I can’t remember the last time I had a proper vacation. Wait, yeah, I do: the Puerto Rico trip that inspired my vejigante post. A week of doing nothing save fencing, reading, and sightseeing.
Ten days in sunny (?) Bucharest through Budapest on a family river cruise down (up?) the Danube. I didn’t plan this (thank doG, because I can’t plan effectively at my best) but it comes along at the perfect time. Also, I don’t know much about any of the places I’m visiting, so I don’t have any expectations to be dashed. What is certain is that 1) I don’t have to plan much beyond “be on the boat by this time” and 2) I won’t be bored.
As such this blog will go silent for a couple of weeks. My social media likely will as well because most of my traveling companions don’t Tweet or Facebook. Watch this space on October 24th for tales of my trip.
Journaling from the time they could pick up a pencil. Every creative writing class they could find in high school and college. Previous careers in editing, journalism, tech writing, etc. Though I’ve met exceptions most writers seem born to this.
I’m one of the apparent few who took a while to get here.
Mind, I always wrote. My parents gave me a diary at around age 11 and I pedantically wrote something every day, even when nothing happened. This probably gave me the idea I had nothing to write about.
Also I was really into animals as a kid. I idolized Jane Goodall and figured any job that let me watch animals all day sounded good. But wildlife tended to live outside, where there weren’t any bathrooms or climate control. So that was out.
In high school I considered graphic arts and kept a sketchbook, but there wasn’t much writing involved. Nonetheless by college I’d somehow landed in the journalism school, mostly because of my love for college radio. I ended up doing the odd record review for the college newspaper, because I wanted to be the next John Peel and tell people about wonderful music they’d never heard of. Maybe that gave me a hint that I did have something to say, after all.
I finally graduated in fashion merchandising-not design, because while I loved clothes and making them I wanted to put food on the table.
And then the internet blew up, and I got into tech through the side door of self-taught HTML. Over time the internet moved from the IT department to communications, but it’s still not really writing, is it?
Sometime in my twenties I started writing fanfic and playing in a text-based role-playing game. Feedback was instant and usually positive, and my fellow RPGers were fantastic at chasing my characters up trees, which forced me to invent ways to get them down. But I didn’t think of it as writing, not really. Just fun with friends. Nothing to interest anyone outside our small circle.
And then I read about John Dee and Edward Kelley.
Not for the first time, probably – with my lifelong interest in Tudor history I’d likely run across them before. But for the first time I read a biography of Dee and realized the extent and duration of his and Kelley’s “angelic” seances. And I got to wondering how it could have gone on so strange for so long?
I think that was the tipping point: asking “what if?” finding no ironclad answers, making up some of my own, and thinking other people might find my answers interesting and fun.
All of the sudden so many “what if?”s sprung to mind. I keep a file of them, for the next book. And the next…
I don’t know yet if I’ll ever get the Dee/Kelley book or any of my other ideas published but for the first time I think I’ve got something to say. So I’ll keep writing until I don’t.
I had a nice post set up for y’all about my long, winding trek towards becoming a writer. I never expected to write professionally and I’ve done (and continue to do) a lot of different things.
This isn’t that post. Nor did I ever see myself writing about this. Others already have with greater cogency and eloquence while I tend to get all stuttery and repetitive. But it’s frivolous and oblivious to let this week past without commenting on current events.
As I type this ICE agents are separating kids from their asylum-seeking parents at the U.S. border. There’s no law mandating this and the UN and a slew of others in power oppose this policy but the Trump administration justifies it, denies it, and blames it on others in turn, per usual. You can Google your news source of choice to double-check me; if it doesn’t bother you I imagine you’ve quit reading by now anyway.
For some reason this latest outrage puts me on alert in a way that previous Trump excesses haven’t. I can’t articulate why. Maybe it’s the corralling of people in prison-like facilities when they’ve done nothing wrong (asylum-seeking is perfectly legal). Maybe it’s that ICE won’t tell them–or us–what they plan to do with these children in the long term. Maybe it’s that ICE agents are blatantly lying to detained parents about where their kids are and when/whether they’ll see them again.
There’s more than a whiff of Japanese internment about this and it makes my skin crawl. It reminds me of other corralling done in the past as well, and that makes my blood run cold (and that sounds so paranoid that I can’t believe I typed it).
I could make righteous noises of “this isn’t America” except it demonstrably is, historically and ongoing. But it’s not what America aspires to be, and a country should aim for its ideals, however lofty.
I’m sure some of y’all are bothered that I “got all political”. To each their own; I hope you come back for the craft and weird next week. But please understand that some of us can’t afford to ignore what’s going on. I could spout clichés about “canaries in the coal mine” and “this is how it starts” but really: this is how it starts.
I’ve called my representatives for all the good it will do: in a blue state it amounts to little more than an “attaboy”, and when my senator’s already working against child detainment and it’s still not enough it’s disheartening as hell.
And before you accuse me of histronics let me say: I hope I’m wrong. Hopefully by the time this post goes live one of the bills reuniting families will have passed. Maybe the Powers That Be will listen to the protesters at the border. Perhaps public outrage will count for something.
But I’m scared none of this will make a difference.
I want to go back to my cheery posts about weird history and editing, and will most likely next week. But I can’t afford not to pay attention or pretend everything’s ok. It’s not.
Occult Voices – Paranormal Music, Recordings of unseen Intelligences 1905-2007: includes “trance speech, direct voices, clairvoyance, xenoglossy, glossolia including ethnological material, paranormal music, “rappings” and other poltergeist manifestations as well as so-called “Electronic voice phenomena”. Of note: Aleister Crowley speaking in Enochian.
Map of Florida engraved by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, published by Theodor de Bry in Frankfort, 1591. Note sea serpent slinking around the Gulf of Mexico. If that’s Altie its way out of its usual haunt. Via Wikipedia Commons.
