Important Writing News First
I should've updated my blog a lot sooner, so this news is slightly belated, but, as of February 18th, my little flash fiction "Small Spirits and Squirrel Leather" is available on Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight! The story was inspired by a flattened-to-the-point-of-being-unrecognizable I found on the sidewalk in Eastport, Annapolis, in 2016. I think about that squirrel all the time, even before I got this piece published.
I also am excited to announce that I recently got an acceptance letter on another flash fiction, this one in the horror genre. But for the moment, I will have to keep mum on the exact details.
I should also mention officially on my blog, not just on Twitter, that I am no longer just working on the WIP about depressed teenagers who can turn into dragons, but I'm also slowly putting the pieces together for a simpler, hopefully more publishable WIP.
This one's about a teenaged (I am me, after all) faery girl who is just trying to steal some shoes when she accidentally discovers a dark secret beneath the city, a secret which could result in the city's collapse. Chased across continents and into the sea, she must decide the fate of this city, whether it should survive or sink into the sands. Here's the (preliminary) moodboard I made for it:
I don't have many concrete names yet, and I'm not 100% decided on which details should be in such an early stages pitch, but there's the basic premise. I do know that the world involves scattered small continents, a fae realm, merfolk, and a prehistoric-esque sea full of massive crinoids (I haven't picked a specific geologic period yet -- Carboniferous? Cambrian? Ordovician??). And I know that this will be a standalone novel with series potential...very widespread series potential that could branch out into like four more POVs...because I am me.
But Yeah, Been a While...
I obviously haven't updated the blog in several months. Honestly, I haven't been doing too great. This winter hit hard, society at large has given up on doing anything about Covid which only drives me deeper into my isolation because I have so little health to risk, bad news and stressful situations wind up in my lap...
I was planning on my next blog post being about the subject of self-loathing. I have written a fair bit of it, but it is lacking in structure to a painful degree, intensely meandering and morose. It's a hard subject to write about, especially when I'm so nuts deep in it. Without any public wallowing, I'll simply say that I'm not right with myself lately, and since it's not so simple as just deciding to be fine with myself, I'm a little stuck.
I've more or less abandoned the formal writing quotas that have dominated the past year. Too often I sit down to do some editing or writing and my brain won't touch it, or I'll spiral, or both. So, I've "given up," for the time being, and am just doing what I can -- reading, typing up old notes into digital documents, taking notes on the book I wrote in 2009 (it's bad), stuff like that.
It's telling that I can only give myself a break if I consider it "giving up," a last ditch effort when all other possibilities are depleted. It's almost like I attach my self-worth to my writing or something.
So the self-loathing post will probably come eventually, and other than that who knows? Maybe I will have interesting news in the future, maybe I won't.
Tedda
One of the recent events is that our dear Tedda died this past weekend. She had several mammary tumors which we didn't anticipate causing real problems for a while yet, but she suddenly started showing neurological symptoms on Saturday and we had to take her to an emergency vet to be put to sleep. It was unexpected to say the least, but a least we kept her from suffering long. That's an essential part at getting good at rat ownership -- knowing when it's time.
Tedda and her sister, Fee, have been some of the sweetest rats we've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Fee is still around, but she has her own crop of mammary tumors (that's rat genetics for you) so she probably won't be around for long. For the moment, it's strange to think of them separated after having been together since conception, but somebody had to go first.
Tedda liked to chew on things in the recycling, and she would wiggle her tail vigorously when feeling happy, when she was trying to decide if she wanted to jump off the couch, or when she was considering getting into a fight. In the last six months or so of her life, she developed a mania for nesting, and gathered every bit of paper she could find (sometimes trying to steal my plot outlines) to tear up and sleep in. She wasn't always interested in being petted, but nonetheless she would come up to us and grab our hands to give them a good grooming, chewing gently at the nails and licking all over. An affectionate creature with a broad, soft tummy.
I feel strange making announcements about rat deaths for several reasons, the simplest one being that it happens so often. They only live about two years, and since we try to keep about 3-5 rats in the mischief, the result is about two deaths a year. The first time, it was a life-altering incident, and I posted on Facebook about it and cried a lot to Julianna Barwick's Florine. Getting sympathy from people made sense.
Now, with rat number seven, I can only imagine people wondering what's new about this, and getting tired of hearing about this so often. And, in any case, sympathy feels less necessary, because I'm more used to it.
When you tell people this grim fact about rat ownership, how frequently you have to deal with death and digging graves in the backyard and how you know exactly what you want from a euthanasia (down to what chemicals should be used), people always say they couldn't handle it. But, on the other hand, you could own a cat or dog and have one big death every 10-20 years or so, which doesn't sound much better to me.
So, yes, you do get used to it. We have rituals -- the clay paw print, the Nick Cave albums, the reminiscence, bundling the rat with her favorite foods, taking pictures, the deep hole by my writing shed, repainting all the rat grave stones and adding a new one, and so on. When the anxiety for the rat's suffering relents into relief and sadness, I feel like I am practicing for when a person in my life dies.
That's the other big reason I don't talk about this much publicly: it's so personal and thoughtful, almost transcendental. I love each rat so much, even the ones that are standoffish (looking at you, Dorothea). When they die I feel the depth of my unique relationship with each one.
Every six months or so, the subject of death is opened up wide. I think about how she was here one day and tomorrow gone, how she is under the earth and I will never get to look at her or touch her again, how part of the point of fostering such a creature was giving her a good life for as long as possible, how I despise the idea of an afterlife except if I get to see them all again. And so on, into so many corners I can hardly remember it all once I've exited Rat Death Mode.
I get anxious that people will think "It's just a rat." Indeed I sometimes feel ridiculous getting so deep in my feelings over a rodent. But they live so much life in those two years they have, in those tiny bodies, and each one is so distinct that I write several thousand words about each one's life when she dies, full of stories and mannerisms and our peculiar little methods of communication.
Death is death, also. It will always be a deep subject. It bothers me now when rodent deaths are played for laughs in television. Their deaths are as big to them as they will be to us. I see the mirror of my future death in each rat. So no, it is never just a rat. Each rat is so much more than that.
It will never be easy, but it's getting less difficult.
