From my desk to yours …
Good morning! Happy Monday! It’s chilly enough here this morning that the furnace is on, which means it was a good thing that I brought the tomato plants + the new hibiscus and the geraniums I moved out of their winter pot into the house last night.
The lady across the street has all her tropical trees that she puts out on her porch shrouded in sheets still this morning, keeping them safe from frost. It is only the middle of May, I guess, so I shouldn’t be surprised that there are still frosts in the forecast, but I’ll admit that the touch of sunburn I got on Saturday afternoon did make me think that we were done with the cold temperatures.
Happily, the daytime temperatures are warm enough that the plants are safe outside in the sun, so they’ve all gone back out this morning into the sun to photosynthesize.
We’ve had some other interesting weather over the last week of so, including a day of very hazy skies due to the wildfires out in Alberta.
I shared this photo on twitter, and it got picked up by the Weather Network in their articles, which made me very pleased. We had smoke haze on Wednesday morning as well, but it cleared out over the day, and hasn’t been back. We did have some pretty spectacular sunsets over the last few days, which is usually due to particulates (like smoke!) in the air, so I definitely think we’re still being affected by the smoke coming in on the jet stream from Alberta.
Wildfires are the one sort of weather-related disaster that I am actually very afraid of. Most everything else, I have a handle on how to manage the fear for myself, but a fire is just — well, fire consumes, indiscriminately. It’s sort of a primeval kind of scary. We aren’t prone to them here, so this is an irrational fear (mostly) but we don’t get to decide what we are scared of, do we.
Aside from worrying about fire, I’ve been doing a lot of gardening over the last week. My mother in law is happy to go to local greenhouses and garden centers with me and look at plants and not judge me for buying fourteen things. I did resist temptation this weekend, and only bought a hibiscus and a bee balm, but I could have come home with so many more things. I’ve planted the bee balm under the shepherd’s hook that is going to hold the hummingbird feeder once it finally gets warm enough for the hummingbirds to come out and investigate. The plan is to eventually dig a wildflower/pollinator garden into the space under my kitchen window, so I will be working on adding things to it over the next couple of years, to see what I can get to grow.
I’ve successfully kept up a daily practice of drawing a tarot card each morning, and it’s been really interesting for me to dig into the card meanings and chat through my daily card with a friend who is also a daily card reader and is very familiar with the interpretations and the meanings. The cards don’t tell the future, but they do offer us different ways to look at the world or the problems that face us on a daily basis. I’ve picked up a Morgan-Greer deck, which has gorgeous art — very Arthurian in vibe, which is extremely me.
Today’s card was the six of Rods/Staves/Wands, which I also pulled last week after pulling the ten of Swords, since that card is very dramatic and needed more context. The six for today is the rider returning in triumph, brandishing his laurel wreath. A card of accomplishment, a card of not hiding my light under a bushel. All good things for a Monday morning.
Writing (or the lack thereof) …
Forgot to include this section in the previous newsletter, so let’s have a think about writing this week.
I’m still working at the anthology piece that I handed a draft in for at the end of April. It was WAY over word count, and my editor has provided me with some extremely helpful notes that I need to incorporate into my third attempt at this. I’ve got to knock it to down to under 6k, which will mean lopping off a lot of the the backgrounding I wrote for myself at the beginning.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference of writing fanfic vs writing original fic. It feels different for me in several different ways. Original writing feels more vulnerable, so I often struggle with sharing it in the way that I share my fanfic which is all the time and with whoever will listen to me for longer than fourteen seconds. Original writing feels more like I’m asking someone to care about stuff that only I really care about and I don’t want to bother people with it, usually.
The other thing that I noticed while I was working on this piece is that while in fanfic I would be totally fine with just jumping right into the sexy bits, with original work, I have to really do the lead in, which is why my anthology piece is so much over word count, I think. It’s a good piece though, and I’m looking forward to working on it over the next week.
Other projects that I have begun regarding writing this week include creating and filling out a spreadsheet to keep track of my works in progress, which has been extremely fun as I go through my many, many, many WIP docs, and look at what they are and what they might want to be.
What am I listening to?
Not much is new this week! I’ve been doing a lot of shuffle on my spotify library, and just putting music on as background noise.
I am currently, at this very minute, listening to Episode 58 of Foul Puck, which had a rousing discussion about the baseball rule changes for this season. I always enjoy listening to this podcast. I learn something new each episode.
What am I reading?
Finished Legends & Lattes on Friday night. Cute book! Very easy read, accessible prose, uncomplicated story, and a lot of ways for this story to expand across the universe that the author has created.
I began The Winter Sea yesterday evening, and spent a long while reading last night in bed before turning off the light. I picked it up because it sounded like my kind of book, and I’m enjoying very much the Scottishness of it, and also the tie in of the history. Good setting, as well. Looking forward to getting back into it in the evening today.
What am I watching?
Still working on Disco, as forever.
My partner and I are coming to the very end of our watch through of Golden Girls, and I’ve got to say, I’m kind of sad that we’ll be done very soon. These gals have become my friends who I eat dinner with, and I’ll miss them. We’ve been stretching it out by watching Bob’s Burgers as well as episodes of Iron Chef from the 90s.
I do love the old Iron Chefs, there’s something about them that the newer iteration does not have, a particular vibe.
And, thrillingly, this past weekend, I was able to take in some live theater. I took my friend to see RENT at Stratford on Saturday and we had a very, very good day. RENT is a show that I have wanted to see live forever, and this particular friend is who showed me the movie version initially. The show was beautiful, and glorious, and I cried, as you do. It was very well done and it’s moving as fuck to be sitting in an audience who gets on their feet before the final reprise is even finished. So glad we went.
Miscellany …
More Space Fruit Press books up on Amazon! Go. Buy. Them. And. Review. Them. Also we have a new anthology coming in July, so I will be yelling about that soon.
Watcher has a new show coming out this week - Mystery Files - and the Patreon got to see the first episode last week and it was GREAT. Watch it on Friday.
AO3 has had an interesting week, and while I have revised my initial reaction of shock and horror down to something closer to a sort of suspended concern, I do think that the discussions around AI scraping vs AI writing being considered fanfic are intriguing. There’s obviously legal ramifications to deciding what counts and doesn’t count as transformative work that could, potentially, limit what can even be published as fanfic, notwithstanding whether it is written by an AI or not. I await further discussion from the OTW on this.
With that, I’ll leave you. I hope you have a productive and useful week, doing whatever things bring you the most joy.
Love this! Big aww to finishing the Golden Girls. Such a great show.
I will also say that with our blurb sharing, sometimes it can be easier to get into original stuff as a reader because we don't have to know the canon backstory to understand it (or, I guess like my AUs, where it's basically original fic because I am basically taking the characters out of their canon entirely and using them for my own purposes. haha).