It’s been approximately an age since I last posted here, and frankly I don’t see myself writing anything again soon.  Part of that is that my life is very full right now.  Some good stuff, like a new job, lots of friends, a brief spate of dating.  Some bad stuff, like an unutterably terrible thing that just went down that’s left me running on coffee, nerves and emotion.  I will be running on coffee, nerves and emotion for the foreseeable future, while we’re at it.  This too, unsurprisingly, is taking up a lot of time.

I haven’t written anything in…months, actually.  I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been busy, or a bit low, or what.  I don’t particularly miss it — I do a fair bit of writing for my job, so it’s not like that itch isn’t being scratched.  I don’t feel any particular pull towards romance anymore either, if I’m being honest.  I’ve been reading a lot of classic SF, some really good fantasy, lots of fiction, things along those lines.  Maybe this will spark something; maybe not.  I’ve got a lot of other creative outlets.  Rest assured, if I write again, I’ll leave another note here.

Until then!

Sophia

A bit of a (belated) announcement first:  The anthologies as part of the summer UK authors/fans meet have release dates!  They are:

British Flash – to be published on 16th June as a free ebook
Contributing authors: Alex Beecroft, Stevie Carroll, Charlie Cochrane,
Erastes, Elin Gregory, Sandra Lindsey, Clare London, JL Merrow,
Josephine Myles, Zahra Owens, Caroline Stephens, Lisa Worrall and
Serena Yates. (And ME!  Although I am a very late addition, I’ll have a short-short story entitled “They Who Come After The Stories End” in this volume.  I still hate short titles.  More details yet to come, and more authors too!)

Tea & Crumpet – to be published by JMS Books on 3rd July as an ebook. Print copies should be available in time for the Meet. All profits to future UK meets.
Contributing authors: Alex Beecroft, Stevie Carroll, Jennie Caldwell,
Charlie Cochrane, Elin Gregory, Clare London, Anna Marie May, JL
Merrow, Josephine Myles, Zahra Owens, Jay Rookwood, Chris Smith, Lisa
Worrall and Serena Yates.

This is proper short stories.  As a result of my not having had time to bathe regularly in the last few months*, I don’t have anything written for it, but, obvy, I’m buying a copy anyway and so should you.  No, really, it means we can keep doing this every year/every few years!

*I am not joking.  There were  a few weeks there where I honestly had to struggle to remember the last time I’d jumped in the shower.  My hair doesn’t need washing more than once or twice a week, so it took awhile to notice I’d turned into a human oil slick…

***

And for the nattering portion of this…I’ve been thinking a lot about who I surround myself with, and I’m very lucky.  First because I have awesome, loving, forgiving friends, but also because I have managed to find a place in which I can surround myself with creative people.  I have friends who are musicians, dancers, photographers, thinkers, writers — artists all, both professional and non-.  And it is magnificent.  (And not just because I get to feel more bohemian than I actually am.)  We egg each other on, and I know it damn well lights a fire under me when I’m out having a drink and someone asks me what I’m writing.  (The fact that I then mumble and offer to buy a round need not be remarked upon, thank you.)  They inspire my knitting, and make my writing legitimate in ways that even publishing can’t.  I have no idea if it works at all in return, but if nothing else, I’m there to think and talk and compare creating styles, and what we make, with.

I have to wonder if there’s a downside to this, because I’m that type of person, and because this is life — there are downsides to everything.  Part of it is probably things that are naturally me, saying that I’m just a knitter, or I just write genre fiction (let alone committing the great sin of writing erotic fiction!), because these things aren’t art the way music and ballet and photography are.  I would love to work as an artist’s model because then I can be a part of something higher than myself, by becoming a canvas, a projection of a vision.  It’s not fair that I dismiss what I do, but there it is.  I make things, but how creative am I, really?  This is a small downside, and I think I’d wonder these things no matter what, but it is there nonetheless.  It’s also easy to grow lazy, to excuse myself from working hard, both because I don’t rate myself so well and, weirdly, because I am so surrounded by people who work hard.  When I get into intensive discussions on queer space at dinner parties, it’s awfully easy to feel bohemian, and excuse not writing, or not designing, or things like that.  And that’s a big part of me too, the way I think about things, but it means I push away writing, which is pretty much a net bad thing.

So, it’s a balance.  But mostly — and this is why I love reading Kyle Cassidy‘s blog so much, because I think he feels the same way — I am so freaking lucky.  My life is amazing, and I’m so happy with how I’m living it.  And that is enough, to look around and comment on how awesome everything is.

***

And, finally and most seriously, Wouter Weylandt was laid to rest today, at far, far too young an age.  108, remembered always.  I’ll think of him and all my lovely boys on Team Leopard Trek when I hit the trail tomorrow.

Love and Kisses,

Me

I’ve looked at the moon through a reasonably strong telescope, and seeing the craters, the shadows, the way it moves so quickly out of view because of the Earth’s movement, it is a revelation how real it is.  To stand on land that is wholly new and see an earthrise can only be several orders of magnitude more amazing, more shattering of your own ego.  (Seeing Saturn’s rings was even more amazing.  When Mars is visible, I’m going to be a wreck.  I love that strange red planet more than I can say.)

And there were more people who followed, who aimed for the night and the nothingness, and some of them died and some of them lived, and the planet dreamt below them.  I work on an old Portuguese fishing ship when I’m back in Philadelphia; her last sailing season was 1969.  She and her green-and-white hull and her huge white sails had come to the Grand Banks every year for over sixty years, and that August they had come to fish for the last of the cod as men set foot on land that was not their own.

And people dreamed.  People had always dreamed, but now those dreams were going farther than the horizon, and there was a reality to go with them.  There was funding, there were infinitely clever people who made amazing things out of it.  There was Sally Ride, grinning under a mop of curly hair and making one of my earliest memories.  There was Mae Jemison on an episode of Star Trek, and there was Star Trek itself to show us the culmination of our dreams.  (Later, there was the gentle pointing-out that the Federation could be pretty creepy, but that’s a story for another time.) There was the ISS, and video of people goofing off in zero-g (another early, early memory), and there was knowing that of course we would go farther, that of course we would explore.  We would explore, we the human race, we’d learn the Moon and go on to Mars, and go beyond in that widest horizon.

And I couldn’t help but cry a little on Saturday, watching the beginning of that reality realised, now that we are at the end of that reality.  Endeavor was supposed to take off on Friday; it’s been delayed due to mechanical problems.  If it had taken off, there would be one more shuttle flight to go, and there would end the US involvement in manned spaceflight, and a huge part of manned spaceflight period.  The shuttles would be put in museums, for me or someone like me to clean, care for, display.  They would become relics of my early memories and the dreams of not enough generations of people.  SETI is shutting down (hopefully temporarily), and hopes for spaceflight lie with commercial enterprises.  Which are not inherently bad, but why have we stopped looking at the sky?  Why have we stopped looking around us?  Why can’t we spare that half a penny per person anymore?  What is more important than remembering that we are only one small part of the cosmos, the small blue dot?  We are no longer explorers, no longer reaching for the horizon, and seeing that strange August day when man walked on the moon hurts, because it means that we’re ending that era.

No one will stop dreaming of other worlds; but the loss of that possibility, the loss of momentum and the decision that space travel, real travel, is no longer important, will have an impact.  I hope it will; perhaps it was right that the birth of space travel, happening so near the death of it, was part of a science fiction show.  But mostly, all I can feel is mourning, and a little anger, and bewilderment that we would cut ourselves off from so much, to gain…what?

Particularly since that absence is now ended?

…or is the resounding chime of crickets a sign that you did not shrivel and dry up without my deathless prose?

Because I am back, my darlings.  It’s been a very bad few months for me, and the writing was excised from my life (alongside a measure of sanity) for its and my own good.  I’ve thought a lot about it, and wound up talking about writing with a lot of people, so I have some ideas of things to do soon.  Mostly things that are not romance, although that won’t be wholly abandoned, not at all.  But it is getting a touch dull, so I shall be venturing into other genres.  (Okay, yeah, just SF, but we can pretend, right?)  I’ll also be blogging every Wednesday again; sometimes about writing, sometimes about any of the frankly millions of other things going on in my life that are often more interesting.  Pretty often I’ll feature stupid photos of myself, so be forewarned!

The really big things I’ve missed announcing, though:  I Reach Through Time and Touch the Other Side has, of course, been long released now!  Dreamspinner Press, speculative fiction, blokes getting it on and a stunning cover by Paul Richmond, which seems to be my usual thing these days.  Lots of fun to write and think about, and a love song to the industrial towns of northern Pennsylvania.  It should come as a surprise to no one that Diane Arbus took at least one photo in Levittown.

And Erastes wrote an absolutely sparkling review of Young Man in Paris over at Speak Its Name!  And thank fuck for that, because I have rarely been so nervous waiting for a review to go live.  I’m absolutely chuffed that it was so well received, and particularly that she picked up on the role Paris plays as very much a character in the story.  I keep forgetting how much it’s influenced by A Movable Feast, and by a trip to Paris I took about a million years ago.  (It’s a story a few years in the making.  Apparently half of what I write takes considerable percentages of my life, and the other half gets banged out while waiting for my flight to be called…)  Paris couldn’t be anything other than a character in her own right.  (And while I don’t have anything planned for Michael and Alex specifically, this world will probably get visited again — there are two characters mentioned in passing who really need their story told.)

And, of course, there is my own self.  I’ve spent the last few days tooling around London and Oxford with a friend of mine from America, and it’s shocking to see how much I’ve assimilated here.  Although my accent is still pretty noticeably American, if I don’t say much and speak carefully, it’s harder to tell.  And even aside from not regularly getting mown down in traffic, or the fact that I know how to order a meal in a pub, or any of the billion other little things I’ve had to learn here, it was startling.  I appreciate things that are greatly old, but I don’t feel the need to loudly comment my amazement.  (Er, this could just be my personality…)  I’m not British, but I’m not American either.

I thought about this a lot when I first moved here.  Of course, then I was figuring I’d be moving back in just under three years, and now I’m worrying about visas and jobs, and I have a beautiful house to live in with friends, and a whole circle of beloved people around me.  I worried a great deal about what I’d be when I was done here, and of course though I’m not done here, I am something and someone different.  I like that I’m not quite one or the other; just like I can’t be reduced to solely being a sailor, a conservator, someone with long legs and red hair.  I don’t think I’m a dilettante, but I hope I’m complex.

I found this in a book of writings by Welsh women who had travelled or moved abroad, and copied it into my diary when I first moved here:

“Final beach walk.  Final sunset.  Overhead the sky’s blue-black, paling towards the horizon.  A strip of orange fading to yellow reaches up to touch the blue.  The intersection between yellow and blue – that’s the point that fascinates me.  It produces a colour which has no name – not green, as you might expect, but a blue-yellow.  A colour that’s not quite yellow and not quite blue.  A colour that has something of both, but is neither.  A colour which, while drawing from its two contrasting origins, is uniques and entirely itself.”  (Susan Richardson)

I think I’d hoped at the time, when I was deeply confused and scared, that it would come true.  I think it has, but this is just a point on a timeline, so who knows what I’ll be writing about it, this time next year!

It’s a story about not quite where I grew up, about a place that can’t quite exist.  I hope you enjoy it.

*Michael Swanwick is waging a one-man protest against SF stories with one-word titles.  It’s now a one-man, one-woman protest.  Long, lyrical titles are what made classic SF what it was!

***

And from the proud daughter of a union city, and the sister of a union member, to the government of Wiscosin:

The workers will triumph!

So.  New novella, and reading week coming up, so life takes a bit of an upturn.  Also, I’m beginning to plan for summer, so I have something to look forward to…

Love,

Me

Yeah, not quite dead yet.  But frankly, about 95% of my life violently blows right now, and I’m a fairly miserable human being.  So, not so much blogging.  You do not come here to listen to me be dead inside, which is how things are right now, frankly.

In writerly news, though, Dreamspinner will be releasing a novella of mine set in 1920′s Paris very soon, which happens to have a cover that makes me feel all happy in the tummy.  I’ll be pimping that far and wide; it’s a story I started writing six years ago, and though it’s undergone massive changes, I’m so proud that it’s really a story now.  I’ve got another novella slated for…sometime later than that?  I’ll let you know when I do.

I’ve also got dozens of ideas for posts and fun things to write about and stupid videos to make (I invented the frantic, semi-drunken beehive updo on Saturday night!), so hopefully at the end of April, when my life has meaning again, those things will start to go up.

Oh!  And!  Barring last-minute crazypantsness, I’ll be at the UK Author’s Meet in July.  Sweet.

xoxo,

Sophia

So!  I am very nearly 29 (in two hours or so, EST).  I think I am more worried about freaking out over nearly being 30 than actually nearly being 30.  28 should be pretty nifty.  I’ll graduate (well, presumably), hopefully get a job, visa, and a new flat in Cardiff.  Basically, I will get to start the life that’s been on hold for two and a half years, and I’m honestly so happy about it.  (When I’m not having panic attacks.)

28 was pretty neat too, I guess.  I managed to meet Tommy Bowe, do some really fun metalworking stuff, and publish for the first time.  Which is my really awkward segue into the meh review I managed to find here. (It’s an old entry, it’s just the way her site is constructed, with every new post, I get a google alert oh god I just told the internet I have a google news alert on my nom de plume fuuuuuuck.)

It’s strange and not really hurty* because 1) Christ sakes it’s a review the woman’s entitled to her opinion 2) it’s kind of all true.  Except what she doesn’t like, I liked writing!

I think it’s because it’s not like a lot of short story romances that are out there, so I just wasn’t expecting it.

Okay, seriously, that’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said about my writing.  Seriously.  It’s not a backwards compliment, it’s just…yes!  Yay!  That’s what I want!

The entire thing has a distant storyteller quality to it, much like some literary fiction or older works. [...] I can’t engage with it, which is why I don’t enjoy a lot of what is considered classical literature.

There are two ways to view this:  Life is too short to read a Henry James sentence.  (Well it is.)  And that at first I was sort of backwards-compliment pleased, and then I remembered that I don’t actually like most classical literature, I just like pretending I do (see Henry James joke above).  So, heh.

The rest of the review points out some of the flaws, but I think what I liked best was that the author just kind of admitted that it wasn’t her kind of story, which, fair do’s.  (Dear Book Utopia Mom:  if you happened to find this, I really am sorry you didn’t like it much.  It’s a style I’m really moving away from (HAY GUESS WHY IT’S NOT COS IT’S DEATHLESS), so I hope you give another of my stories a try someday, if the description appeals to you!  But thank you for taking the time to read it, and review it.  Seriously, it’s good feedback.)

So I have survived my first non-tactful “er…no.”  Cool.  I shall now go count down the days until I’m plunged back into the UK where I hear you remember what warmth is.

*Not to say it was fun to read, but I wasn’t in tears or anything.  I can feel plenty glum about my writing with no help, really.

One of the first, if not the first word I learned in Welsh was hiraeth, which doesn’t have a good English translation.  The guy who taught it to me admitted that it might come close to homesickness or the feeling you get when you listen to really good blues, but that doesn’t cover it.  It’s just a feeling of being wrong, subtle but there, as soon as I cross the Severn bridge.  It’s inexplicable, and not necessarily painful (maybe because I know I’m going back?), but its’ so very much, powerfully, there.  I wasn’t expecting that, although I keep meeting people who tell me that I’ll feel hiraeth now, essentially, forever.  Wales gets under your skin.

(So does the terrible, terrible history of the country my mother lent me to read, but that’s a post for another time.  For now, let’s just say that it’s pretty rare that I’ve ever wanted to actually shoot a book.)

Aaaanyway, this all has a slightly funny (I hope) and inappropriate ending, because I was whinging to the patient Charlie Cochrane about all of this, stating that I wanted a mince pie, a sheep, and Alun-Wyn [Jones, of course!], and she pointed out that that scanned perfectly into Bread of Heaven.  So, with abject apologies to everyone, especially the sheep:

[annotations below]

The coach did cross the Severn Bridge
And it was not much fun.[1]
I did not want to go to Heathrow,
And I don’t want to be here.

I miss Welsh things;
I miss Welsh things!
Mince pie, a sheep[2], and Alun Wyn[3]!
Mince pie, a sheep, and Alun Wyn!

Don’t forget the
smell of Metros[4]
and the violent footy fans!
And the rugby our boys lose.[5]

[1] This could be because it took two hours to drive from Cardiff to Newport.  No, I don’t want to talk about it.
[2] Mind out of the gutter, please.
[3] Alun-Wyn Jones, the very lovely forward lock who needs to shave that wombat off of his face.
[4] Metros is this awesome club that’s basically located in a basement, and is pretty much the only place on earth that got worse after the smoking ban.  See, because it’s underground, the smell of human fug doesn’t ever dissipate.  And when it’s really full, moisture gathers on the walls and ceilings and drips down on you!  The reek is infamous and no matter how drunk you are, it’s like getting slapped as soon as you walk in.  It’s my favorite club.
[5] SOB

Before I begin, I think I should let you have a peek into the exotic life of your average romance writer.  I am sitting here, having completed my chores for the day (including the fastest re-soleing and re-heeling of a pair of boots in the world I love you Timpsons on Queen St!), dying my hair with Lush’s henna bricks.  This has many advantages over chemical dyes in that it gives me a nice, auburn shade that’s actually found in nature, it doesn’t make my eyes water, and my hair is nice a soft and yummy afterwards.  (Also, it lasts more than 4 #$%^ weeks.)  The downside is that I spend five hours with what is essentially a curry-scented cowpat wrapped in an argos bag, covered in a sacrificial towel, on my head.  I SUFFER FOR MY BEAUTY.

(It does force me to stay inside and get work done, though.)

AAAAAAANYWAY, for many of you (I hope!), that deathless prose is your welcome to my blog from the Speak Its Name advent calendar.  My short story “For the Benefit of the Public” is published today as part of their lovely seasonal (and now annual!) gift to the world.  It was great, great fun to write, because it gave me an excuse to research the state of the British Museum in the 1860′s, smack in the middle of the Victorian movement towards education as something that is for the benefit of all, and should be accessible to all.  (Oh the fucking irony, Mr’s Clegg and Cameron, the irony.)

See, before the British Museum (and Sir John Soane’s museum which is a gem too many people miss), there really was no thought of public access to works of art, artefacts, or representative items, particularly from the classical world.  (Representative items from a community’s own history were, of course, Right Out until fantastic museums like St Fagan’s started in the 1950′s, and quotidian life began to be preserved and presented by those who had lived it.)  Very, very wealthy people who could afford to go to the Continent, Egypt, or the Classical world did so, brought curious items back with or without permission, and put them in Wunderkammers to show their friends — literally, cabinets of wonder.  Of course, these could be genuine cabinets, or they could be whole rooms, and they were so delightful I cannot find the words to tell you how awesome they were.  The Pitt-Rivers museum isn’t a million miles away from the photos I’ve seen, and if you’re near Swansea, they’ve got a kind of wunderkammer room in their city museum that is absolutely worth going to.  (If you’re in Philadelphia, The Rosenberg Museum also isn’t a million miles away, and is equally worth visiting, and we are now out of cities whose museums I know inside-out and upside-down.)  As much as I adore these wunderkammers and, frankly, want one as soon as I’ve got a spare room, they were not accessible to…well, anyone, really.  Perhaps if the nobleman was very nice and understanding, and the scholar came from the right sort of people, aforesaid scholar could have access to things, but for anyone else — unthinkable.

Until this Victorian movement towards educating the working-class.  The BM has many, many problems, but you’ve always got to give them this: anyone could visit.  You had to apply in writing in advance, and prove you were of good character and not show up drunk (although I believe they served alcohol there which, frankly, is brilliant and all museums should do so), but you could get in, even if you didn’t have a title or a double-barrelled name, or weren’t an Oxbridge student.  This was huge.  This is huge.  I can go to museums and do whatever research I like, or enjoy art, or just walk around and absorb whatever I want?  Yes, please.  Yes, a thousand times please.  And anyone else who wants to can do the same; I think this, this access to education and art and culture, was the great gift of the Victorians.  As the song says, one cannot live on bread alone, but one must have roses as well.

So, you can see why I leapt at the chance to write a little love story in amongst some dusty (and, frankly, questionably-sourced) objects in a grand building in Russell Square.  I hope very much that you enjoyed it.

Love,

Me

PS  Lee and Daniel were borrowed from a story I started yoinks ago.  Don’t think you’ve seen the last of them!