Busy Summer
Right now I’m working on a lot of different projects in different stages.
My short story, Shades of Green, is polished and ready for publication. I’ve been submitting it to literary journals and contests, hoping for a nibble, and am continuing to submit it when I have time.
I’ve got a manuscript, currently titled Drops of the Ocean, which I thought was a final draft. But of course, after I started querying agents my brain got to spinning, and now I’ve got another round of revisions to work on.
Then there’s the short piece I wrote for Substack a month ago, but decided to hold back and potentially publish traditionally. It’s going through early revisions right now.
There’s the middle grade animation project I’ve mentioned before. We took a break after the chaos of getting our pilot episode ready for the Austin Film Festival contest, but we’re gearing up to start on the next phase of that project.
I mentioned last week that I’m working on a series of essays about my experiences with Rotary Youth Exchange—as a host sister, as an exchange student, as a volunteer with the program—to confront the issues right now regarding student visas.
I’m also starting work on another project that I’ve been steeping in for a while: a dystopian short story and novella centering around feminine rage. That project has been guiding a lot of my reading choices lately, including Lilith by Nikki Marmery, The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath, and Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. I want to have a strong foundation of the current feminist canon before diving in myself. My plan is to write the short story this summer, and write the novel during the 3-Day Novel Contest during Labor Day weekend. Which means lots of character development, plot outlining, and research to do in the meantime.
Finally, I’m thinking ahead. The projects I’m planning to focus on this summer are important to me because of the message I’m trying to share. But the work I’ve always enjoyed most is long-form fantasy, and boy, do I have a backlog of ideas I want to get to eventually. Those characters—those worlds—are always stewing in the back of my mind. I think about them in the shower, developing a backstory for a side character. I work through a plot point while I’m out for a walk. I notice something on the side of the road that piques my interest and fits in perfectly with a particular scene. I’m figuring out what I’m going to work on next, and generating breadth and depth for these projects when I finally get around to them.
All this to say: I’m staying busy. Between all of that and keeping up with Substack, it should be a productive summer.
The Wedding Could Have Been Worse
A 25-minute free write about Murphy's Law... sort of
Free-writes are short scenes that come out of a short stint of writing time on a program called FlowState, which deletes everything I’ve written if I stop writing. I go into them blind, can’t stop to think while I write, and don’t edit them before they’re posted here beyond correcting any typos or punctuation. Basically: I don’t know what this is about, either!
Well. The wedding could have gone worse. Merida wasn’t sure how, but surely it could have. A meteor could have struck, she thought, picking at a spot of blood on her bodice. She glanced nervously at the suspiciously calm sky. No sign of any meteors.
Yet.
It started beautifully. All the vendors arrived on time, the flowers were perfect and lush and spilling across every surface. The violinists began warming up, their instruments tuned with precision. The caterer had the cocktail hour appetizers ready, mouth-watering smells spilling across the pristine patio. Everything had been going exactly according to plan, and Merida had thought she could finally let out the breath she’d been holding since being dubbed Maid of Honor and unofficial wedding-planner almost a year ago.
And then it had all gone to hell in a handbasket. All it took was one teeny, tiny little misstep. It wasn’t Merida’s misstep. It wasn’t even the bride’s misstep. It wasn’t, in fact, anyone in the wedding party’s misstep.
It was the roommate.
The college roommate, some blonde they’d run into at the third bar during the bachelorette party a week before. The bride greeted her like a long-lost sister, so Merida had presumed it was all good. Of course, by that point the bride was more than a little drunk. She probably would have bestowed the same enthusiastic greeting on her mail carrier. But the girl hadn’t stayed long, and they’d all moved on.
It wasn’t until the guests were starting to take their seats, admiring the brilliant bouquets decorating the aisle at the end of each row while the violins played a classical rendition of “I Want it That Way,” that the misstep was revealed.
It turns out that Miss Blonde-Former-Roommate was engaged to the bride’s ex-boyfriend’s little sister. So, naturally, she’d gone home and told Little Sister about running into the bride at her bachelorette party, and for some never-to-be-known reason, Little Sister decided that was pertinent information to pass along to Ex-boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, font of wisdom that he clearly is (and really, Merida thought the bride had dodged a bullet on that one), had elected to get properly drunk—truly, properly, fall-on-your-face drunk—and show up at the wedding. Ten minutes before the bride was scheduled to walk down the aisle.
And what an entrance he made! He burst through the doors like some kind of stumbling, slurring jack-in-the-box, reeling back as soon as he’d shouted “I object!” Apparently realizing the wedding hadn’t actually started yet, he stood blinking stupidly at the guests, who were all staring at him in varying degrees of alarm or amusement. Then he stumbled forward, presumably intending to take a seat and pose his objection at the proper moment. But he was so terribly uncoordinated in his efforts that he kept stumbling into the seats, knocking them askew and flattening the bouquets. He jostled the bride’s great aunt, spilling her cup of water across her lap, and fell into the groom’s uncle just as he was taking a swig from a flask, making him cough and splutter and swallow far more of his whiskey than he’d intended. He finally made it to the front, and made to sit down.
Now, all of this Merida had heard second-hand, as she’d been upstairs helping the bride finish getting ready until one of the flower girls had come in giggling about a silly man making a mess of things. What happened next she’d unfortunately had the perfect vantage point to witness for herself, because just as she came out onto the patio to handle the problem, Ex-boyfriend lost his balance, stumbled into the arbor, and knocked it over. This in-and-of-itself wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but lanterns around the edge of the patio had been tied off at the back of the arbor. It toppled, tugging on the cord, and one by one the Command hooks popped off, the lanterns each swinging wildly as they dropped. One knocked the bride’s aunt on the head. Another collided with the groom’s mother just as she was fixing her lipstick, drawing a magenta line across half her face. Another caught one of the cousins between the legs, dropping him instantly to the ground. And Merida watched in horror and the two final hooks popped off, and the lanterns swung simultaneously in her direction. She ducked, covering her head with her hands, as they collided with the windows on either side of her, shattering the glass. As it rained down around her, she heard screams, and the bride shouting out an open upstairs window.
“I object!” Ex-boyfriend declared again, slurring but no less passionate for it. “You’re the love of my life!”
“You idiot,” the bride shrieked. “We dated for a month! In eighth grade!”
Merida peeked up, her arms stinging with tiny cuts, to see Ex-boyfriend grinning unrepentantly, utterly doe-eyed. “It was the best month of my life.”
Then the groom appeared, marching quickly down the aisle with a glare, flanked by his groomsmen. The best man was suddenly at Erida’s elbow, helping her carefully navigate out of the mess of glass shards. The crowd gasped, and Erida twisted around to look. The groom was bent over, face-first in the three-tier cake that a gaping caterer had been moving into the dining room. The groom slowly straightened, wiping frosting out of his eyes. Before he or his groomsmen could retaliate, the uncle with the flask gripped Ex-boyfriend by the shirt and socked him hard enough to knock him out.
“Enough out of you,” the uncle growled.
Hesitantly, a few people clapped.
Erida looked around at the ruined patio, the disheveled guests, the destroyed cake.
It could have gone worse.
Somehow.
Book Review
The Raven and the Crow: Dark Storm Rising by Michael K. Falciani
Well, I stayed up until almost 2 am to finish reading the book, and then immediately ordered the next two from Barnes & Noble. I can't really pay a book any higher compliment than doing damage to both my sleep and financial health in pursuit of its conclusion. Dark Storm Rising just kept getting better.
Despite multiple strong hooks built into the plot from the get-go, including a mysterious assassin, a quest for a life-saving flower, and a murderous mage out for blood and power, the book has somewhat of a slow start. I was curious, absolutely, and wanted to see how it turned out. I was hooked enough to want to keep reading. But the characters all hold their cards close to their chests, and some main characters don't get introduced until much later in the story. Since I didn't feel connected to the characters right off the bat, I wasn't worried about whatever danger they might be in. I wasn't invested.
That said, Falciani completely hooked me as I got to know the characters better. It happens very gradually. No one in this novel is willing to give an inch. By the end, everyone is still a mystery... but they're lovable mysteries. Their personalities come through brilliantly. There are one or two places where someone seemed out of character (there's a particularly drawn out scene where Kildare, the 'clever' one, seems almost deliberately obtuse), but all in all I was quite impressed with the depth of Falciani's characters.
Falciani breathes life into an entire world. The sheer number of kingdoms, cities, landmarks, and people are incredible, but what makes them standout is how real they are. Falciani shows us these places and people experiencing life. Not just the action, not just the fantastical details, but the things that tend to get overlooked. A childhood nemesis turned coworker. A rivalry between fruit-sellers at the market. Seasickness. We encounter parts of the Crystalline Sea that even the heroes overlook. It's truly an immersive experience, and never boring.
By the end of the book, my one frustration is that Falciani is utterly ruthless and completely leaves us hanging. Throughout the story, there are many, many mysteries hinted at. Little clues that leave you guessing, thinking you're on the right track but not quite sure. With so many mysteries looming, you'd think Falciani could spare one and throw us a bone by the end of the book... but no. None of the major questions get answered. Ruthless.
Overall, this is an excellent read, and one I would recommend to anyone who loves fantasy. It's easy to get drawn in, and delightful to uncover the brutal world of violence and political intrigue Falciani has crafted.
