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Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Book Review: Brine and Bone, by Kate Stradling

Well, it’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it. But I’m here again, with a book review! Try to contain your excitement, please.

Today’s book: Brine and Bone, by Kate Stradling

TL;DR: This is the Little Mermaid retelling that I never knew I always wanted. The book is short (I believe it’s novella length), sweet, and completely not what I expected. The author’s preface begins with “Stop. If you’re expecting a clone of a certain redhead underwater songstress... prepare for disappointment.” But if you’re interested in a Little Mermaid retelling that actually addresses the foot-knives, the seafoam, and the rather unsatisfying ending—read it.

Rating: 4.5

What I liked:

The outstanding part of the story is how the perspective switch makes everything just work so well. It seems like such a little change, but it just made me love it. Stradling’s writing is also lovely and spare and really fits the fairy tale tone.

I enjoyed getting to know the main character, Magdalena, and learning about her backstory and her future. I liked the prince. I liked the magic involved—just enough to add excitement and some pretty severe problems without feeling like it was also going to be a deus ex machina.

Also, let’s just admire that pretty pretty cover for a minute. It fulfills one of my reading bucket list items for the year (a book with a typographical cover), and it’s fancy, so I give it extra imaginary points.

What didn’t work for me:

Two minor things come to mind.

I wish I understood a bit more about the characters’ backgrounds. They come with some pretty frustrating baggage attached, and while we get to see bits and pieces of how it all happened, I just wanted more.

The POV switch from first to third to first. I’m not sure if this was done to stay in keeping with other books in this series (it was my first Kate Stradling, but it won’t be my last), or if there was some other reason that is unclear to me as a reader. But... well, it was unclear to me as a reader, and I found it distracting. Still, it was only the bookends, so my brain will just pretend that it didn’t exist at all, and that works for me.

Clean rating: PG. There’s some pain and stabby-stabby feelings, but there’s no gore, no sex, nada. It’s a light read. I’m subtly trying to convince my 15yo to read it.

Last thoughts: Enjoyed it, LOVED the perspective switch, bought another one.

 

 

 

Monday, August 9, 2021

Adventuring Again

Warning: Very mild spoilers for “Forged in Iron and Blood” herein. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it in the Best of Deep Magic anthology 2, along with a bunch of other wonderful stories.

 


Ever since I wrote “Forged in Iron and Blood” a couple years back, I have had in my head this vision of fan art for the story. In my head, Lina and Seelah are setting off on another adventure.

But you can’t really force fan art, you know? So I just sat on that thought and hoped that magically someone would just create it (because I have totally realistic dreams). But last year, I turned forty, and as part of my celebrations, I decided I was going to go out and buy some lovely arts and crafts from my friends and seek out artwork that would bring even more beauty and joy into my household (we already have what I call my “wall of happy,” which is covered in bits of art and family photos and such—but I wanted to add to it!).

Around that same time, I saw someone in one of my Facebook groups asking for illustrator recommendations. I checked out the illustrators suggested and found just the person I was looking for: Bethany Crandall. I decided that it was silly to wait around for someone to create what I wanted; I was going to make it happen myself.

So I hired Bethany to make the picture I wanted. I told her about my characters,* their personalities and descriptions, and I gave her the overall idea that I was looking for. Then she just went to town.

And here it is! It’s not what I imagined, but to me it’s actually a lot better. I originally imagined a much more somber picture, to suit the original story, but I love the cheerier mood of this piece so much. As I think about it, this is what I hope for Lina going into the future—I want her to be off on buddy adventures with Seelah. They’ll go into an area where a dragon has been ravaging the hillsides, and they’ll have a chat with the dragon (and maybe a cup of tea) and settle things happily. They’ll visit a town with a bully mayor, and they’ll help the villagers rebel. Seelah will pull a giant ball of yarn out of her basket and knit a scarf for a troll with a cold.

I want them to have fun, exciting adventures without the fate of the world at stake. I want Lina to eventually stop having nightmares. I want them to keep making peace everywhere they go but not be burdened quite so heavily.

So I wanted to share this artwork with you. It’s going in a special place on my “wall of happy” (along with an epic family portrait that we also commissioned from Bethany—which we have turned into a huge canvas on our wall and it is soooo fantastic!), and maybe (I hope) someday it will inspire me to write up some of the continuing adventures of Lina and Seelah.

 

* Seelah has to have a basket!

** I love love LOVE the scarring on Lina’s arms, from all the blacksmithing work.

Monday, August 2, 2021

Lina and Seelah, On the Run


Warning: Major spoilers for “Forged in Iron and Blood” herein. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it in the
Best of Deep Magicanthology 2, along with a bunch of other wonderful stories.

I wrote this micro-story in response to a prompt—500 words or less, a secret, and the word “serendipity.” It needed to stand alone, so it kind of rehashes a bit of what happens in “Forged in Iron and Blood.” But it also hints at the future for them.

I wish I could say that I have more stories written for Lina and Seelah; that’s always the first thing people ask after they read the story—what do they do next? I love that there’s so much interest in these two lovely aging women. I still want to write their stories, but for now, nothing has really resolved into a plot.

Next week I’ll be sharing some artwork I commissioned about them, and I’ll be talking about how I see them in the future. But for now, I hope you enjoy this little tidbit.

 

***

 

Seelah leaned over and lit the kindling, blowing on it gently as it caught the nearest twigs. In the last weeks of travel, they’d discovered that Seelah was the better campfire starter—ironic, given that Lina had spent the decades as a blacksmith and before that as a traveling soldier.

“I’m truly the only other person who knows who you are?” Seelah asked, leaning back slowly, her back creaking. “Too old to sleep on the ground like this,” she muttered to herself, and Lina agreed. Her every muscle protested every morning.

Then she shrugged. They’d already covered this ground, multiple times. “It wasn’t safe.” She gestured back the way they’d come, back to the village they’d been forced to flee. “You already saw what happens when someone comes too close to the truth.”

Seelah nodded. Lina was on the run, and Seelah had willingly joined in to protect her—and that was before Lina had revealed who she was. Now she seemed even more determined to help keep Lina safe, in whatever small, grandmotherly ways she could. “I suppose you’re right.”

For what seemed like the thousandth time, Lina whispered thank you. It had been pure serendipity that Seelah had been in Lina’s blacksmith shop when the men arrived. And then it had been Seelah’s sheer brilliance and bravery that had helped Lina escape, right under their noses. Lina owed Seelah her life, of that there was little doubt.

Seelah waved the thanks away. “Couldn’t let them hurt my dearest friend, could I? Even if I didn’t know how important you are to the kingdom.” She shook her head. “There’s still part of me that can’t believe I didn’t guess it years ago.”

Lina smiled. “To be fair, you guessed most of my other secrets.”

Seelah laughed and poked at the fire with a long stick. “True.”

They both went quiet again, each counting down the days to an unknown future when they’d have to stop running and somehow get Lina back into hiding, in a new life, safe again from the men who would kill her so they could start a war. For now, though, there was a friendly silence in listening to the crackle of the fire as darkness descended around them. They were as safe as they could manage, Seelah’s basket was filled with delicious pastries they’d bought in the last town, and the future would have to wait.

“Lina?” Seelah finally said into the quiet.

“Yes?”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Lina released a short bark of laughter. “Please. I’m pretty sure I can keep it.”

“I feel so silly about it. I’ve loved my life, you know. My dear Himleh—he was the best husband a woman could ask. And the children and grandchildren have made may days so full...”

“But?” Lina prompted.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to travel. See the world. Experience new things...”

Lina sat in stunned silence for a minute. “Your secret is that you wish to travel?”

Seelah chuckled. “Well, yes.”

Lina looked around. The campfire warming them, the open road waiting before them, the skies above them. She’d thought she’d need to settle somewhere again, build up a life where she hid her connections to the war like she had before. But maybe she didn’t need that. They had the money, and a moving target was always harder to find. Maybe they’d just stay two silly old women, traveling the world, nothing at all to hide. “Seelah, I think we can accommodate that. Where should we go next?”

 

 


Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Big Announcement!

I’ve been sitting on this announcement for a while now, for various reasons, but I am so very pleased to announce that I have joined the Board of Deep Magic Ezine! You can see it looking all official right here.

via GIPHY

I have been so pleased to work with Deep Magic, their first readers, and their Board members for the last couple of years. It’s solidified even more for me something that I relish participating in—finding and bringing to light stories that are filled with awesomeness, joy, good people, and wonderful writing. I feel especially passionate about this place where I can almost always happily share the stories with my voracious 13yo and where I myself end up loving the majority of our publications. As a slush reader, I always waited with anxious excitement to see what stories the Board would choose from those that I had loved in the slush pile, and I always cheered when something I adored got published.

I love getting to work with all the people I’ve met through this process—the fun, funny, and helpful first readers, and the brilliant, hardworking, and encouraging Board members that I now get to work even more closely with. And of course the authors, who put their art into the world in the hopes that it will find a home.

It’s also been humbling to see this business from behind the scenes. I continue to be amazed by how many wonderful writers are out there. How many great stories get written. How many beautiful new worlds come to life through these words. The lovely stories—sometimes silly, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes joyful—that we get to accept! And sadly, how many fantastic stories we have to reject.

I have loved being part of the slush process, and I’m even more excited as I settle into my Board member duties. I look forward to finding more incredible stories and more authors to publish. I look forward to helping shape this magazine that I love. This is a place where I know I belong right now, and I see a thousand little steps that brought me here. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.


Sunday, November 15, 2020

Turning Forty

This is the year I turn forty.

via GIPHY

I’m rather excited, and I have plans that I need your help with. But first, the explanation:

***

On the way home from another woman’s fortieth birthday bash recently, my husband turned to me and asked, “What do you want for your fortieth birthday?”

And I wasn’t sure what to answer.

I can usually buy for myself most of the “stuff” that I want. And the things that I can’t buy—time, patience, sleep, etc.—can be carefully worked in to life but can’t really be given as gifts. (Though my husband, Brice, is always excellent at working in extra time for naps and alone time around my birthday.)

Parties? Gifts? What did I really want?

***

A couple years back on Twitter (I think) I saw someone make a comment about how women turning forty come into their powers and should celebrate by running wild with the wolves, that sort of thing. And for a while I kind of envisioned doing something immense and wacky for my fortieth. But to be honest, I’m not a run-naked-in-the-moonlight kind of gal (plus, egad, all the prickles here! and the summertime snakes! no running naked in the bush, thankyouverymuch).

I spent a lot of time wondering what I really did want to do. What would make me the happiest? I have lots of swirling thoughts, but I have condensed some of them down to a few actionable items, and I need your help to make them happen.

 

So what do I want?

I want to support my friends in their creative endeavors.

I want to support the creation of things that bring beauty into the world.

I want to support things that bring joy into the world.

I want to be a creator of some of that joy—or at least contribute to its creation.

 

 

Here’s how you can help:

via GIPHY

 

1. Sell me something beautiful. Or charming. Or quirky and fun. Are you a maker of something? Crafts? Art? Photography? ... Something else? (Not books, we’ll get to books in a minute.) I want to know about things that you (or your children or spouse) make. Or I guess I’d also accept things that someone you know makes, if you think they’re wonderful (but I want to stick to people I’m closely connected to; don’t just tell me about a cool creator you ran across on Youtube).

Tell me about the thing you make. Give me a link (if you don’t have an online store, send me a picture!). I can’t buy everything, of course, but I can buy some things. So tell me so I have lots of options to choose from! As a sidenote, I’d especially love to hear about why you create what you do—this isn’t a sales pitch, I am just excited to hear your stories.

2. Author friends: Tell me about your favorite book by a different author friend. I have no doubt your books are amazing (and, given that I buy a LOT more books than I ever manage to read, I probably have already bought one of your books), but I want to hear you brag about books by your friends this time around.

3. Tell me about a mutual friend who could use a gift. In theory, I could be buying several items, and I may not be keeping them all. Who knows? (Not me. I have no idea if this idea is going to really explode or totally tank.) But, as my 13yo decided this year for her birthday, I want to at least sort of celebrate “hobbit style” (by giving gifts to other people). So who needs some extra love via a silly small gift? (Tell me this privately please, via messenger or email or something).

4. Make a video and share your love of simple things! Are you a pet rock enthusiast? Do you love telling people about your favorite dinosaur? Have you just been waiting for someone to ask you about how to ___________? Now’s your chance! Pretend I asked, and send me a short video (1–3 minutes) about something you adore, something that excites you, something you think is just plain wonderful.

It doesn’t have to be professional or fantastically edited or anything nifty. Just something you love. I really, really want to hear about it.

 

So, if you are inclined to help me celebrate my fortieth birthday in the way that would make me ever-so-happy (and will hopefully make you happy too), then help me out! I would appreciate it a lot.

via GIPHY

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Give Me Alice Springs


As of today, my family and I have been a year in Alice Springs, Australia. There are so many things I could say about this time so far. I could tell about the growth my kids have experienced, the walks through the bush behind our neighborhood, the different things I’ve noticed about life while living out of the US for my first time. So many things.

But in the end, what I did recently was write a poem, which is very much not my medium. I started it out as a kind of essay about my experience of the natural world here and how life here has forced me to change, but it didn’t feel right and it wasn’t working. So I condensed and altered, and this is what is left. It’s not complete. I actually kind of hate the idea of sharing it because it feels both too personal and not personal enough. Plus, it is poetry, which—I cannot stress this enough—is not my thing. But I’m trying to be brave. 

It doesn’t take into account a lot of the joys and wonder. It doesn’t tell you about the months when I thought, “I will never step out into cool weather and no flies again; I will never be cold again,” and then suddenly, within about a week, all the jumpers and long sleeves and jeans came out again and I remembered that there was cold in the world.

It doesn’t tell you about the hike we took one day that led us past a strange combination of objects—old tin cans, a whole lot of golf balls, little paddymelons, and a kangaroo carcass that had probably become food for dingoes or at least kites. How what might have been disgusting was merely fascinating—a part of the natural world, a part of real life. How we examined its bones and remains, appreciating a kangaroo’s incredible structure and adaptations for the life it leads.

This poem doesn’t explicitly mention that this experience is so very specific to my life, here, as a white woman transplanted into a world I have never lived in before. It doesn’t discuss what it would be like to actually live off this land, and it only skims the surface of some of the beauty here. It also only skims the surface of how I have changed in the last year—both so much and so little at the same time. And how there’s still so much to learn. So it feels so incomplete in some ways, but hopefully it captures at least a moment or a feeling or just a tiny bit of what life has been here for me.

And so, without further ado (because that was definitely plenty of ado already!):

“Give Me Alice Springs”

Some people love

the lush, bright greens,
the wet humidity,
of lands where rain is plentiful and gardens grow
a rainbow of color
even in neglect.

I have loved them too.

But for me, for now,
give me the granite, the gneiss,
the red rock rising in ridges and crags,
the dust and dirt,
the sand that stains every white
a perpetual pale rust.

Give me the greens of the desert,
a thousand shades of muted sage.
The restrained reds and softened yellows
in the grevillea, the bottlebrush, the wattle—
flowers that know
how to grow in drought.

Give me a land
stripped down.
Give me the sturdy strength that survives—
flourishes—
in the searing of a too-close sun.
Give me the sky as wide as eternity,
as sharp as certainty.

Let me search,
work,
dig deep to find
infinitesimal treasures
buried in the rubble
of broken rock and hard-packed earth.

And then,
after I’ve gathered piles of pebbles,
let me spend a day in the sun,
trickles of mud pouring down my arm
as I hold a sieve full of hope
to the sunlight,
seeking the tell-tale glint
of garnet red.

Here I have been forced to strip away
what would not grow.
Felt weak things wither painfully.
Felt myself held up to the
scorching sunlight,
searched desperately for value that came
not from trappings or titles or tasks
but from me—
the garnets of who I am among the dross
of what I thought I was meant to be.

Here,
when the rain comes,
it must come for days,
for weeks,
before the river flows.

When it flows, the land wakes.
We flow to the water as the water flows into the land,
we come to splash
and wade
and expand.

The night silence is broken
by the croaking of frogs,
singing their mating songs, celebrating new life,
then burrowing and laying their eggs
once again
as the river shrinks and disappears.

The eggs will hatch
when the next rain comes.

Someday I will return to a land
of brilliant greens,
a land where I must ever work to weed
what is not wanted,
not carefully cultivate
what I wish to keep.

But for now, I am content
to be refined in the heat of this sun,
to let my chaff blow away in the searing desert wind,
to soak and splash in the water that heals, that makes everything live where it goes.

For now, I am content in Alice Springs.



Mormon Lit Blitz Semifinalist


A month or two ago, I went into a rather unusual productivity spike for me. The deadline for submitting to the Mormon Lit Blitz was approaching, and I really wanted to submit. Most years, I struggle to come up with even one idea for this competition, even though I love it—and even if I do get an idea, I struggle (more than just the usual) with how to put it into words. This year, I had about six ideas, and I found myself actually pulling some of them together and getting them into words.

The results: One story that started out as a tale of midwives and took a slight turn, requiring a lot of editing and revision to bring it a place that (to be honest) I’m still not entirely happy with. One story that popped into my head, almost fully formed based on a prompt from an episode of Writing Excuses. One poem. You read that right—a poem.

Pieces for the Lit Blitz are always excruciatingly difficult for me to have beta readers for. As I mention in this previous post, I can’t even let my husband read them—and he beta reads everything for me and is an incredible help. But somehow it’s too weird.

To make a long story short: I submitted all three pieces (three are allowed), and two of them were selected as semifinalists (interestingly, the two that I thought were weaker, but sometimes you just don’t know what’s going to work). However, when the finalist list came out, both were dropped. This honestly doesn’t surprise me. I pretty much expected it; they’re just not as good as I would have liked them to be (though they are the best I could make them for now). So while it was a bit sad, like I said, not surprising.

And then came the next tricky bit. Would I share them now? The nature of the Lit Blitz is such that my writing for it really won’t fit in any other market. There’s no point in keeping them locked up because they’re never going to sell anywhere else. It’s Lit Blitz or Bust! But if I couldn’t share them with my husband, how could I do it here? Well, to make another long story short, I’m just gonna do it. I’m going to post one now (for reasons you’ll see when you read it), and then I’ll take a break because the actual finalists for the Mormon Lit Blitz are going up, and I want to just pay attention to them. Then I’ll post the others later, provided I still have the courage.

Regardless of my pieces, though, I hope that some of you will take the time to read the finalists when they come out. So many of the stories are wonderful every year, and though many speak specifically to an LDS audience, a lot of them also transcend that border and speak to human experience in general.