Oh my goodness! Is summer over yet? I’m so ready to say good-bye to summer 2012.
It’s been a rough week. My husband was in a rollover accident coming home from work last Wednesday. He is fine, amazingly, but the car was totaled. Kory stayed home from work on Thursday, went to the doctor at my insistence, and made the necessary insurance phone calls. I went about my normal day, but I kept thinking, “I could be in the hospital with him right now.” I couldn’t bear to think of the worst-case scenario.
Then came the tragic events in Aurora on Friday, July 20th. It’s mind-blowing to think that my husband survived a rollover and twelve people didn’t survive a night at the movies. This is not the sort of thing you can make sense of. Everything we tell ourselves—that God had a plan, that death is part of life—none of it reconciles the gut-wrenching wrongness of a psychopath murdering innocent people.
The outrage and grief stirred in our hearts is the only natural thing about such a tragedy. The heated debates about gun laws and access to mental health care are examples of our need to express the splitting deep within our souls. We have a collective need to cry, “This is wrong! This is not how it should be!” We point to different reasons for the tragedy and offer scenarios of how it could have been avoided. But all of the words and the arguments can’t fill in for what we can’t express.
The truth is that death is at odds with the eternal nature of our souls. Death was never in the design. Yes, I truly believe human beings were created to live forever. Death entered our world with sin, but before that, we were immortal. Of course C.S. Lewis put it best. “Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.”
This juxtaposition of our condition is one reason I’m drawn to paranormal stories. I think the genre allows for that schism we all feel. It’s a relief for me to read and write books with both human and supernatural characters. My mind fits more easily into a story containing elements outside of the normal “human” experience.
I sometimes wonder if there are components of speculative fiction that are more real to our souls than anything found in realistic fiction. But no matter what we write, read, say or experience, we are not much more than tadpoles navigating our world in awkward bodies while peering through the water’s surface at an existence we can barely imagine.
This summer I deliberately put my work in progress on hold with the intention of establishing a healthy summer routine for my boys. I mostly failed. I am handicapped in the area of organization. We’ve been going to the pool, reading sporadically, and practicing math facts on a sort of penance model. And I’ve been drifting. Every writer is familiar with that evil voice that whispers, “Who do you think you are, pretending to be a writer? You don’t have anything worth saying.” At one point, I realized I couldn’t even remember the name of one of the main characters in my current project.
Then I went to bed one night last week and I couldn’t sleep. I suppose it was either Wednesday or Thursday because it was after Kory’s accident. To my surprise the characters from my WIP started speaking. The antidote to that pesky voice of doubt is a character who pops into your head every time you close your eyes. In my case, he’s a boy with high cheekbones, brown eyes, and copper wire woven into his dreadlocks. His name is Blaise, and he’s trapped in a city full of beautiful porcelain people and wind-up creatures called Tocks. He tugs on my imagination, begging me to leave behind one level of existence in order to explore another. And so I guess I’ll return to the life of a writer, wriggling and flopping along in between story world and reality. Not fully at home in either. A tadpole. A human. A spirit. Something in between. Something other.
Where are you this summer? When do you feel split? What experience causes you to slide between the two planes of existence? Is it uncomfortable? Terrifying? An awakening of sorts? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
For info on how to help the Aurora victims, click here
Showing posts with label Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Costumes and Creativity
What do you get when you cross Tron with Steampunk? This guy!
What do Doctor Who fans wear on weekends? This!
What happens when you ask a red clone trooper to pose for a picture? He hands over his gun, apparently.
The GalaxyFest convention was fun, exhausting and at times a little scary. We attended both as authors and vendors. We did a Dragon and Turtle story hour and Mom was on a Christian YA panel, but we also sold books and Dragon Lady Shoppe jewelry. Our table was right down the hall from the bathroom (good) and the body-painting room (not so good.) To say I wasn’t quite prepared for the amount of decorated skin I saw would be an understatement. Not to diminish the artists or their chosen canvases, but I did have the urge to grab Cat Lady or Poison Ivy, haul her over to a person in an elaborately crafted Steampunk outfit and say, “Ok, honey, THIS is a costume. What you have on is underwear. Costume. Underwear. Questions?”
But to each her own.
We met some of the nicest people. Stationed across the hall from us were a couple and their little boy who do gun modding for conventions. They provide squirt guns and Nerf guns, paint and do-dads for attendees to trick the guns out to look sci-fi or steampunk. They were awesome, and we traded goods so my boys got to make guns. They both loved it, but Monkey really spent time on his. Here’s his gun.
I’d been looking forward to the steampunk tea party on Sunday afternoon, and ended up being asked to help serve. I was happy to fill in and even happier that I didn’t spill anything on my clothes.
I got to hear the dark fairy band Pandora Celtica which got me jonesing to get back to my fairy stories. My writer friend, Brandi Boddie, presented me with The Steampunk Bible, a gorgeously illustrated book that will come in handy as I work on my dystopian/steampunk YA novel.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, I’m addicted to the creativity that zings around these gatherings. It makes me want to go home and write! As we head into March, notorious in Colorado for blizzards, I'm hoping to hideaway with my imaginary people.
What are your plans for March? Is there a creative project you're hoping to work on or finish this spring? And if you could dress up as a favorite character, who would it be?
What do Doctor Who fans wear on weekends? This!
What happens when you ask a red clone trooper to pose for a picture? He hands over his gun, apparently.
The GalaxyFest convention was fun, exhausting and at times a little scary. We attended both as authors and vendors. We did a Dragon and Turtle story hour and Mom was on a Christian YA panel, but we also sold books and Dragon Lady Shoppe jewelry. Our table was right down the hall from the bathroom (good) and the body-painting room (not so good.) To say I wasn’t quite prepared for the amount of decorated skin I saw would be an understatement. Not to diminish the artists or their chosen canvases, but I did have the urge to grab Cat Lady or Poison Ivy, haul her over to a person in an elaborately crafted Steampunk outfit and say, “Ok, honey, THIS is a costume. What you have on is underwear. Costume. Underwear. Questions?”
But to each her own.
We met some of the nicest people. Stationed across the hall from us were a couple and their little boy who do gun modding for conventions. They provide squirt guns and Nerf guns, paint and do-dads for attendees to trick the guns out to look sci-fi or steampunk. They were awesome, and we traded goods so my boys got to make guns. They both loved it, but Monkey really spent time on his. Here’s his gun.
I’d been looking forward to the steampunk tea party on Sunday afternoon, and ended up being asked to help serve. I was happy to fill in and even happier that I didn’t spill anything on my clothes.
I got to hear the dark fairy band Pandora Celtica which got me jonesing to get back to my fairy stories. My writer friend, Brandi Boddie, presented me with The Steampunk Bible, a gorgeously illustrated book that will come in handy as I work on my dystopian/steampunk YA novel.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, I’m addicted to the creativity that zings around these gatherings. It makes me want to go home and write! As we head into March, notorious in Colorado for blizzards, I'm hoping to hideaway with my imaginary people.
What are your plans for March? Is there a creative project you're hoping to work on or finish this spring? And if you could dress up as a favorite character, who would it be?
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
I Kissed a Nerd
“I think you’re a fantasy writer and you don’t even know it.” My friend and critique partner, Steampunk Beth, lobbed this morsel at me over tea at Montague’s, a Victorian coffee shop guaranteed to soak away writer’s block.
Her pronouncement startled me. I’ve always been a romance writer, first and foremost. True, I prefer that romance with a fairy or an immortal or perhaps a phoenix or two, but until recently I considered my paranormal dabbling as a distant cousin of the mighty Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre.
I really should’ve known better. I grew up on Star Wars and Star Trek and have a brother who’s a dungeon master to this day. Case ran D&D in our basement for years. As a teen, I’d hide in my room or squeeze by the table they’d set up on my way out for a date with a complete jerk.
The boys hanging out with my brother had odd obsessions with dwarves and wizards, trolls and vampires. They wore shirts with slogans I didn’t understand. And they left pizza out for days. But the ones capable of speaking to a member of the opposite sex were always polite. They treated me with the awed respect peculiar to socially awkward males with Tolkien in their veins. I thought they were nice. And weird.
It took me way too long to realize that I should be looking for a boyfriend among their midst and not on the football team or in a garage band. But I did wise up. I got me the Holy Grail of nerds. I married an engineer. And if I had a daughter I’d tell her, “Ignore every cool boy you meet. Hang with the computer geeks and the gamers. Then marry an engineer as soon as humanly possible.”
Why?
1. They value intelligence.
2. They can’t believe a female would ever talk to them and are so grateful when one does that they’ll do almost anything to repeat the experience.
3. They appreciate both creativity and technical acumen.
4. They happily eat culinary accidents.
5. They won’t make fun of you for having a degree in fine art, music history, or philosophy. Well, probably not.
Despite being raised with a nerd, marrying a nerd, and producing tiny nerds of my own, I didn’t realize that I was myself a nerd. But Steampunk Beth’s comment wasn’t the first sign.
I recently attended my very first sci-fi convention, a tiny con here in town, and was surprised by how comfortable I felt. No, I didn’t know all the lingo. I don’t read sci-fi at all, and I read very little traditional fantasy. But it didn’t matter. I was accepted. I particularly enjoyed the panel on Steampunk that discussed the genre’s “anything goes” approach to the very concept that inspired its name. I’d always thought that if I wrote anything technical, even if that technology involved automatons and steam computers, I’d have to make my inventions plausible. No so. Steampunk is nothing if not tongue-in-cheek.
And I think, for the most part, that’s typical of fans of any of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy subgenres. While they’re passionate about their fiction, art, and hobbies, they retain a collective sense of humor that allows for unique acceptance and originality.
I have to say, I’m hooked on the idea of writing fantasy, whatever that means for me. And I can’t wait to hang with the fanboys and fangirls again.
This weekend Mom and I are heading to GalaxyFest, a joint Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Literacy event. We’ll be doing a children’s story hour with The Dragon and the Turtle and participating in panels, but I’m most looking forward to soaking up the passion for story and creativity that swirls around these imaginative folks. If you’re in the Colorado Springs area and you enjoy dragons, elves, aliens, gears and steam, or entertainment with the word “star” in it, I hope you’ll join us.
Her pronouncement startled me. I’ve always been a romance writer, first and foremost. True, I prefer that romance with a fairy or an immortal or perhaps a phoenix or two, but until recently I considered my paranormal dabbling as a distant cousin of the mighty Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre.
I really should’ve known better. I grew up on Star Wars and Star Trek and have a brother who’s a dungeon master to this day. Case ran D&D in our basement for years. As a teen, I’d hide in my room or squeeze by the table they’d set up on my way out for a date with a complete jerk.
The boys hanging out with my brother had odd obsessions with dwarves and wizards, trolls and vampires. They wore shirts with slogans I didn’t understand. And they left pizza out for days. But the ones capable of speaking to a member of the opposite sex were always polite. They treated me with the awed respect peculiar to socially awkward males with Tolkien in their veins. I thought they were nice. And weird.
It took me way too long to realize that I should be looking for a boyfriend among their midst and not on the football team or in a garage band. But I did wise up. I got me the Holy Grail of nerds. I married an engineer. And if I had a daughter I’d tell her, “Ignore every cool boy you meet. Hang with the computer geeks and the gamers. Then marry an engineer as soon as humanly possible.”
Why?
1. They value intelligence.
2. They can’t believe a female would ever talk to them and are so grateful when one does that they’ll do almost anything to repeat the experience.
3. They appreciate both creativity and technical acumen.
4. They happily eat culinary accidents.
5. They won’t make fun of you for having a degree in fine art, music history, or philosophy. Well, probably not.
Despite being raised with a nerd, marrying a nerd, and producing tiny nerds of my own, I didn’t realize that I was myself a nerd. But Steampunk Beth’s comment wasn’t the first sign.
I recently attended my very first sci-fi convention, a tiny con here in town, and was surprised by how comfortable I felt. No, I didn’t know all the lingo. I don’t read sci-fi at all, and I read very little traditional fantasy. But it didn’t matter. I was accepted. I particularly enjoyed the panel on Steampunk that discussed the genre’s “anything goes” approach to the very concept that inspired its name. I’d always thought that if I wrote anything technical, even if that technology involved automatons and steam computers, I’d have to make my inventions plausible. No so. Steampunk is nothing if not tongue-in-cheek.
And I think, for the most part, that’s typical of fans of any of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy subgenres. While they’re passionate about their fiction, art, and hobbies, they retain a collective sense of humor that allows for unique acceptance and originality.
I have to say, I’m hooked on the idea of writing fantasy, whatever that means for me. And I can’t wait to hang with the fanboys and fangirls again.
This weekend Mom and I are heading to GalaxyFest, a joint Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Literacy event. We’ll be doing a children’s story hour with The Dragon and the Turtle and participating in panels, but I’m most looking forward to soaking up the passion for story and creativity that swirls around these imaginative folks. If you’re in the Colorado Springs area and you enjoy dragons, elves, aliens, gears and steam, or entertainment with the word “star” in it, I hope you’ll join us.
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