My next published short story--Trapped on Tragodia

For some reason, I thought I had already shared that one of my short stories was published this year! It's called Trapped on Tragodia and it's an exciting tale of friendship, adventure and journey into the unknown!

Odie is just a regular space trucker until a forced landing changes everything. I don't know how much to reveal about the story without spoiling it, LOL! I spotted the submission call from < a href="https://www.perennial-press.com/">Perennial Press in fall 2021, which seems forever ago. The anthology would contain stories and poems about arthropods--kind of a unique subject, IMHO. Now, this is why you always hang onto rejected ideas, because there could be a day when they fit perfectly. The idea I had hanging around was from a horror anthology submission call. I enjoy mild horror and tried my hardest, but liking something and creating something are two different things. I cannot write a horror story to save my life. However, I have a strong belief in the power of friendship and just let my authentic voice speak.

Inspired by childhood memories of movies like Mysterious Island, I changed the setting to a wild place where giant insects rule. If you know me, you'd be seriously surprised I wrote a story that doesn't contain birds or horses, but I was up for the creative challenge. Arthropoda was edited by JW Stebner, who also edits Hexagon, a speculative fiction magazine.

It was a long wait until I had a physical copy in my hands, but it was such a great moment to open the box and see my ideas made real, especially the gorgeous cover by Stephanie Lane Gage of Martian Press. Order your copy today--you won't be disappointed.

Cover Reveal--Arthropoda!

My adventures in publishing so far have been quite interesting! I saw the call for entries for Arthropoda by Perennial Press in summer 2021.

I was thrilled when it was accepted and it was a pleasure working with JW Stebner of Hexagon to edit the story and add the extra bit of polish.

Then came the waiting...the waiting...and wait no more! Pre-orders for this speculative fiction anthology are open right now!!.

Being a horse and bird lover, well, I just never imagined I would be writing about insects, but here we are! :-)

FINA450 - Under the Skin

Watching movies for homework is usually fun, except when it’s not fun!

Our weekly reading selection came from The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher and focused on a book, Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, and a movie, Under the Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer.

I downloaded Surfacing as an audiobook and haven’t finished listening to it yet, but I thought a movie would be a nice way to wrap up my weekend. Hehehe...well, not this movie! Under the Skin stars Scarlett Johannsson as an alien who roams Scotland, preying on men. There are a lot of interesting binaries in the movie such as pleasure/pain, known/unknown, civilization/wilderness, alien/human, physical/mental etc., in addition to the gender reverse of predator/prey. This would be a very different movie if it starred a male alien killer.

Visually, the film is very dark, mostly taking place at night. Audibly, there is very little dialogue and the Scottish accents are hard to decipher. There’s also a droning background track. The whole movie is designed to be unsettling and I get that. I’m usually okay with horror movies (and this one is rated R) and what not, but I didn’t like feeling unsettled and noped out of the movie after 39 minutes. It took me a few hours to feel right again afterwards!

Catching Up! ENGL400

I can't believe last semester was months ago...but taking three classes while working full-time was a handful. It's also hard to delay life for eight months. Here are some notes from my English 400 class. It's the last liberal studies class that I will ever take at ACAD/AU Arts. The theme of the class was "Our You My Mother?". We read short stories and selections from a psychology book every week. Our main text was In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondatjee. I'm not a big Ondatjee fan--I like his poetry best--but I find his novels just plod on.

The final exam was really fun. The exam sounded simple--a seven sentence micro essay in MLA format on a surprise mystery question. Y'all want to know what the mystery question was?

No one knew either, even the instructor, until he brought out a child's game called Play With Your Food. A flick of the spinner and it landed on the Mixed Vegetables category. Another spin revealed the number 11. He thumbed through the cards.

The eleventh card in the stack was "It is a snow day. What do you want to do the most?"

I laughed! It was hilarious. Here I was prepared for all sorts of brainy, high-brown questions and chance had made a mockery of those plans :-D

I had some fun with it though. Every sentence started with a letter from SNOW DAY and I used every grammatical trick I knew to make every sentence count.

We also had fun clips to watch--thank goodness for education in the age of YouTube! As diarists and bloggers, we never know if anyone reading out there and this clip hits home.



Another cool thing about the class was the instructor used children's books to explain complex concepts and show how narrative can be reduced to simple steps. It may sound childish (heh!) but it actually isn't. One piece of free advice I give out frequently is grab a kid's book if you don't understand something. The text is clear, easy to read and there's plenty of pictures. In the Skin of a Lion refers to the epic tale of Gilgamesh and we looked at a children's version of that. Since I can't share the book, here's a video that clearly explains it.



I received an A+ in the class, by the way--the perfect way to end the semester!

The Ringed Giant Sci-Fi Anthology

Hi friends, it's been a while! It's been almost two months since the last semester ended, but, when you defer life for eight months, there's a lot of catching up to do!

About this time last year I was so hyped to participate in the 2nd Annual Zombie Pirate Publishing Writing Week. 168 hours, 101 participants, 15k words! It was an absolute creative marathon that I would love to do again!

Although my story made the long list and the short list, it didn't make the final list. Aw! However, you can buy the anthology, The Ringed Giant as an eBook or paperback through Amazon. Enjoy eight novelette length science fiction stories for one great price!

Yet more waiting...

It's been a long wait since Zombie Pirate Publishing's writing week back in May and a longer wait since I found out that my story, SATURN RETURNS, made it to the long list of submissions for their anthology, THE RINGED GIANT. Well, holy cow, I found out yesterday evening that it made the short list. This isn't the final list, but to be in the top nine is quite an accomplishment in itself. There were 101 participants and 57 entries.

Wish my story luck! I was so excited when I saw the email that I jumped and screamed. Then, later, I threw up dinner.

If horror is more your style, you can check out their new anthology, Full Metal Horror 3 which launched this week!

Waiting is the hardest part

If it seems like I'm doing more writing than art these days... it's true! A couple of months ago I participated in Zombie Pirate Publishing's Zombie Pirate Writing Week. Imagine NaNoWriMo but condensed down into a week and you have one heck of a time trying to cobble words, ideas and some editing into a cohesive novelette. There were 101 participants, 57 submissions annnnnnnd I'm amongst the 22 titles on the long list. The short list will be announced soon, so please wish me luck!

It was a real challenge to barf out almost 15,000 words in a week while working full-time, sniffles, screaming birds and other obstacles. If it's one thing that art college has taught me it's that you can do anything in a week. The result surprised me. I accidentally wrote a YA story about some crime-solving young people on a spaceship. It's not as ridiculous as it sounds :-)

I'm an author!

Soooo this is super exciting--I'm a published author! My short story, SECOND ACTS, was one of 80+ submissions and one of 20 stories chosen for inclusion. I'm tickled. If you like retro style science fiction--think Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Isaac Asimov--this collection is for you!

Power up your portal gun and set the dials for the golden age of science fiction as we step back in time and space to where the genre really took flight. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Vonnegut, Dick, Herbert, and Bradbury: these are some of the names which inspired a generation, creating visions of space travel, alien civilisations, advanced technology, and future worlds which still resonate with us today. Their visionary legacy lives on in RAYGUN RETRO, a collection of stories by some of the best up and coming authors in the genre, expanding upon the styles and themes which laid the foundation of science fiction as we know it.

Click on the image to buy on Amazon!

How I Spend My Tuesday Nights

Certainly not league bowling :). This English class is all about graphic novels and we're looking at a bunch of them - it helps that I own most of them too. I'm just missing Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan:

The first one we're looking at is Alan Moore's Watchmen, which is one of the most influential graphic novels of all time. It's an extremely well planned book and it would be possible to vastly under read it. There are a lot of repeating themes and motifs, and even though I have read it a few times now, there was still a lot of things I missed, including some atrocious puns. It is a violent book, but the themes of nostalgia, comics history and pastiche are very interesting. It's funny to be able to put something usually considered "low culture" into such elevated terms as "post-modern narrative of multiple voices". I better stop before I sound more like an essay instead of a blog post :-) Stay tuned for some notes on my other class!

A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings

Part of the fun of coming to a series late is not having to wait in agonizing anticipation for the sequels to arrive. This happened with Harry Potter and now it has happened with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Somehow this series was totally off my radar until it gained more publicity with the HBO TV series, so it was a huge surprise to me that the first book was published in 1996. I worked at the public library then, so I'm sure it must have gone through my hands at some point!

On a whim I bought the four book eBook bundle at Christmas time and started reading when I came down with a wicked cold last month. It was a good thing too, because I could literally not stop reading. I probably would have taken a day off just to finish it. I was expecting a typical, cliched fantasy saga, so I was amazed that it is more about political intrigue, mystery and deception instead.

To be honest, I didn't think there was anything exceptional about Martin's writing style. In fact there is something flat and repetitive about it - I noticed certain word pairs used over and over again which always kinds of grates on me. His descriptions of meals are always insanely detailed. But there is still some great craft going on as he divides the saga by the view points of different characters which allows parts of the story to be revealed in a very cunning way. It lets him avoid going the route of the info dump so common in science fiction and fantasy. And the cliffhangers! Wow!

I almost feel that describing any little part of the book would give away too many spoilers. It would be hard to condense the thick tomes, but basically the peace of the Seven Kingdoms is threatened in many ways and finally comes undone as characters are executed, kidnapped or accused of crimes. In the second book, A Clash of Kings, focuses on the conflicts between the many who declare themselves king of all the realm. There were some very exciting action scenes in the sequel and now I can't wait to get started on the third one, but I really do need a break from the series! Martin is unflinching in his depictions of medieval life and after a while all the killing and maiming and destruction does become onerous. I could almost pick up a romance novel before getting around to the third one.

Happy New Year!

The first day of 2012 is a bright and sunny one here. Most people would probably not guess it, but Calgary is one of the sunniest places in Canada with an average of 333 sunny days a year. We spent New Year's Eve with friends watching movies and playing games, and a birthday dinner for my mom. Yup, she narrowly missed out being a New Year's baby! I imagine that many people are eagerly beginning new Painting/Drawing/Whatever A Day today. I tried to do this once and I don't think I got past February. I'm not sure how successful I'll be either as I go back to school next week. But I'm going to give it a good try with a book I bought a couple of years ago called The Crafter's Devotional by Barbara R. Call. It's a bumper book of 365 creative ideas that are coded in different ways such as Monday-Sunday, 1-365 and by category such as ideas, journalling and collaborating. In fact day #1 is journalling. I do keep a paper journal, but I often prefer the online ones. I buy cute little notebooks and then usually they get misplaced around the house :-D Maybe I'm just an idea squirrel at heart. Sometimes I find half-filled journals from when I was younger and it makes me glad the Internet wasn't around back then. We don't really get a feel for how we grow and change. Don't rely on your memory either, because even after five years things can get fuzzy. I was only laid off a year ago and have trouble remembering the name of some co-workers.

The activities are pretty free-form and a variety of genres and techniques are represented, which must have been hard to do. Beads, wire, collage, stamping and mark making are just some of the things to be explored. Sometimes it's easier to just have an "assignment" to try instead of thinking up something on your own. The inclusion of personal and family history was interesting to me because I took several unsuccessful stabs at genealogy a long time ago. This book will definitely keep crafty types busy all year long!

The Woven Bag

I'm all registered for school next year and I even got into the beginner weaving class. I'm so excited! It's a small class and has a limit of four students. But in the meantime I wanted to learn more about my new found crafting love, so I went to the library. It seems that weaving is really a niche thing because there aren't a lot of books about it. There are many times of looms, so that's probably part of the reason.

The Woven Bag by Noreen Crone-Findlay by showing off the versatility of lap looms and potholder looms.

Surprisingly, the potholder loom is not something I have in my craft cabinet! I think I will buy a metal one the next time I'm at Fort Calgary as Michaels just has the plastic ones. The potholder loom is usually a kids toy, but Noreen shows off how to weave with yarn on them and stitch the squares together. Naturally a square is also a triangle when folded in half or a diamond when rotated the right way.

This book had great pictures of the projects and lots of good close up pictures of how to warp looms. It's funny how weaving is such a basic skill - and doesn't even require yarn. Some projects are made from upcycled materials such as VHS tape and t-shirts! Down the road when I'm working more I'll probably add this one to my own personal library.

In The Land of White Death

It seems like forever since I have a read a book. Usually I like reading young adult books (they're really good these days!) but I was sidelined yesterday with vertigo that is either an ear infection or was triggered by the abrupt warm winter wind we get called a chinook. The pressure will drop suddenly as temperatures rise and it leaves a lot of people with migraines.

The book was In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic and is basically an almost-forgotten diary by the navigator of the ill-fated Saint Anna, Valerian Albanov.

If you like perilous true adventure stories like Into Thin Air, you'll probably love this book. It is so full of natural suspense. When the St. Anna becomes trapped in Arctic ice, Albanov decides to leave the ship and finds that about half the crew wants to go with him. They fashion sleds and kayaks and start their journey in a blizzard. After many months, only Albanov and one other crew member were rescued. The others succumbed to illness or were lost. I find it truly amazing that he was able to navigate southward using seemingly low-tech tools and a badly drawn map. But even high-tech gear is no match for the fickle force of nature.

Usually diary formats bore me, but it's because they can be so contrived. Albanov has a real talent as a writer and is incredibly honest in his frustrations and joy. The weather changes so quickly that as soon as you are relieved that they were able to shoot seals for dinner, you feel crushed as two of the men make off with equipment and supplies the others needed. He spares no detail in describing just how harsh the lives of the crew had become, as well as how harsh life was on the boat that rescued them. It was suffering as well and anything that could be fed to the boiler, including the masts, panelling and decks were sacrificed. The diary is such a vivid portrait, and if it had not happened to Albanov in real life, I don't think anyone else could have invented it.

Workin' on it

I read an article online that today is "Blue Monday", which is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. Today was a bummer, but mostly due to a long company wide meeting in the afternoon. After sitting for two hours in a dark theatre, I was quite ready to go back outside again or take a nap.

Apparently by now a lot of New Year's goals are abandoned as well - and personally I can't believe it's January 18th already! Whoa! Put the brakes on 2010 someone! So far I'm doing really good with one of my Mission 101 goals, which is to make Sundays truly a day of rest. I resisted the urge to vacuum and my sole housework was cleaning the bird cage. I went to the Alliance church behind our house and enjoyed a very thoughtful sermon on faith and good works (as opposed to just good works or faith), then I played cards with our neighbours and later my husband joined us for dinner. A blessed, relaxing day indeed!

Whatever you do though, we all need a day of rest, whether it's on a Sunday or Monday or other day of the week. That was one of the lessons I took from a book called How Did I Get So Busy? by Valorie Burton which I highly recommend. When you get too busy, you start ignoring not only your own physical and spiritual needs, but those of others too. Burton is a warm and sincere author whose gentle advice can put anyone back on the right track for what matters most to them. I have read many a book about "getting things done" but she's the first to address the whole person, not just how many things you can cross off a list :-)