Albion

But it's a strange thing; my memories of him are tied into the memories of my life and my family. They'll be filtered. They'll be him, his essence, by altered by this. But maybe this isn't so bad; my father had a great impact on Nemo, just as my father had a great impact on me.

The first thing I'll tell his wife is that purely by his very existence Nemo made my life less lonely.

That's right--deep down inside I'm a romantic sap, no matter what I'd like the world to believe.

We live in the future and the future rocks.

Under CC I give you free fiction. ( Read more... )

maryrobinette

Here are your rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to maryrobinette's blog (your tagees will post to mine, etc.) once you've posted your three sentences.

The nearest book is The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, and here are my sentences:

"And now the moon was high over the woods, touching their summits with yellow light, and darting between the foliage long level beams; while on the rapid Garonne below, the trembling radiance was faintly obscured by the lightest vapour. Emily long watched the playing lustre; listened to the soothing murmur of the current, and the yet lighter sounds of the air as it stirred at intervals the lofty palm-trees.

"'How delightful is the sweet breath of these groves!' said she."

And that will certainly teach me to have a copy of some sort of Dick and Jane omnibus nearby, just long enough to have 123 pages :).

Thanks, Mary--much fun.

Now, for my tagees:

alphawolfguide
eric_mayer
haddayr
mroctober
mznetta

I'm worrying about cultural appropriation again.

I'll warn you now--there's some navel gazing here, and this isn't well thought out and written clearly, per se, and there's some anthrogeeking here. But if you stick with me and have any feedback I'd love to hear it.
( Read more... )
I feel that my family's stories belong to me, in a sense. They are their stories, but they are a part of me, who I am, my identity.

Recently a friend (who works at the museum where I used to work) suggested I write and explore Native American stories/myths/legends and redefining them in a post-modern age, and making their cultural beliefs accessible to a broad audience. It was funny she brought this up now--I was already pondering this.

In some respects that's some of what I have done. I don't know about making all of their cultural beliefs accessible to a broad audience--I fear we're verging on white shamanism ground there....

I don't want to culturally appropriate material inappropriately. I don't want to write about coyote or put Native American stories into my stories to be cool and make a buck. I want to write something that means something to me, and hopefully to others as well. I want to explore my past, who I am, my family's past, and who they are. And there's a lot of fascinating material there (and I'm not purely speaking autobiographically here, either), a lot of ground to search through. And I want to do it right.

And I still worry about taking advantage of the situation and the whole cultural appropriation thing.

And yes, I know about Coyote Road, and while good, that's not what I'm going for.

I'd also like to add this by Alex Wilson.

Here's to Jamie.

1) Because they rock in amazing and wonderful ways Small Beer Press is giving away free Creative Commons Licensed copies of John Kessel's new collection. WOO! (Not like I have time to read it or anything right now...)

2) Avadore gets to go visit the first grade for the whole day tomorrow. You know what this means, don't you? Yeah, my little boy is growing up :( and :) and *weeps* and WOO AVI! Also, and I've probably mentioned this before, my boy can read! My kid! And he loves it. He says it's his favorite. Oh, yeah. He also adores Captain Underpants, which is a good thing to adore when you're six.

It's going to be a hard week for a lot of people. Give someone you love a hug.

Peanut Butter Snickers

Pilot BetterGrip Medium ballpoint pens in black... I should order some of those

My favorite pencil

memory39, whom I always miss when I can't find the right writing implement, but at other times, too

Pulp

My dad

Every so often I run into someone talking about one of my stories, and it's always good. And that's part of the point of all this--not only to write because it pleases me, but to write stories that others will enjoy, too. It's a fabulous way to connect.

I think of all the stories that I've loved and adored and how they've influenced my life. Someday I would really like to give a little of that back, to have some kid in nowhere somewhere read something I wrote and say, "Yeah, exactly." That would be cool.

And what else is cool? Growing up in nowhere somewhere I never thought I would have anything to say that anyone who wasn't directly connected to me would care about. But that's one of those stories for another time... perhaps my next post.

When I was in elementary school and junior high my favorite part of the school week was usually Friday afternoons. This was the time when our teachers let us write stories or creative essays or participate in dramatic exercises.

Sixth grade, academically, was awful¹. I can't look back on it and find much of anything that I enjoyed during the school week, other than some units in social studies and the last period of Friday afternoons. This is when I had English and the English teacher (whom many referred to as Mrs. Earwig) had us write stories.

I spent many Friday afternoons working on the story of a young human boy who was left in a graveyard when he was a baby. He was reared by dead parents, had dead friends, and dead relatives. According to his tiny shoes his name was "Nike". There were squirrels and crows and lots of trees, and the occasional human visitor. He played amongst the tombstones and the giant old trees with his ghoul friends. But it was a bit twisted, you see, and I thought this was horribly creative of me--Nike was the odd one in the graveyard, and the ghouls and the dead and the usual cemetery inhabitants were the normals. Nike had lots of adventures growing up in the graveyard, and I knew that at some point he would probably have to leave his graveyard home and venture out into the human world. This thought, of course, broke my heart.

I didn't finish, and not because my story horrified Mrs. Earwig or because I got bored with Nike, or even because I dreaded writing the end where he would leave his family. I quit because I ended up running into Ray Bradbury's Elliot family and realized that my idea wasn't exactly new or different. I felt as if I'd ripped Nike off of Bradbury, and so I left him be. Looking back on this I realize this isn't the case--some of Nike's story is similar to Bradbury's Elliot family (the normal in the family of monsters), but not entirely.

Sometimes I think about going back to Nike and rewriting his story again; I would really like to know what happened to him. I doubt the original story still exists; I think I trashed it, along with the wish-fulfillment novelette I wrote that year in a teal-colored spiral bound Mead notebook. If nothing else I suspect Avadore and LD might like it ... someday.

1 But, as Michael Ende would say, this is a story for another time.

Have I mentioned how I love this book? Well, if not, I adore this blasted book. Totally and utterly adore it. And instead of reading it I have to finish rereading Doomsday Book. And then a bunch of books after that. Ah, hell. I'll probably fit The Shell Seekers in there somewhere.

Why can't my life always have these sorts of problems?

By the way, I finished rereading Passage last night. Have I mentioned how I am absolutely and positively in love with Connie Willis? Well, I am. And have I mentioned how it's good I am as nuts about Rice as I am? Well, it is--otherwise I might try to talk Connie Willis into running away with me.

Saturday night procrastination...

Of all the things I expected the 21st century to bring this wasn't one of them.

And how could you do "Satellite of Love" and not do "Life on Mars"? I mean seriously? Not entirely sure how "Born Free" found its way in, but that's cool. I can go with that.

I must be a complete person now, yeah? Yeah...

I have never understood the words before.... I wonder if they're into doing "Yellow Ledbetter"?

Actually, I gotta admit--I'm really quite charmed. Can ya dig it?