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Month: November 2019

Go-To Movies

Life’s been…a bit rough lately. While commiserating with friends, someone asked on Twitter about “go-to” movies. The ones you watch when you just want to enjoy yourself for a while. That you trust to do that for you. I followed the thread a bit, looking for some new additions, but in the end I stuck with my own. Which, I guess, is how that works. So, while it may not be of use to you, there’s always a chance, so here’s my list in almost no order. I’ll link some of my favorite bits, in case you want to check them out. Armageddon I can’t help it. Bruce Willis at his gruffest and grumpiest? A whole team of uncivilized men being ridiculous and caring about each other? Teamwork and banter, lots of things blowing up? I am so there. “The money’s good, the scenery changes, and they let me use explosives.” The Fifth Element More Bruce Willis! Also multi-pass. And a fun DJ, and lots and lots of fun and fighting and explosions. Love Leeloo. SO MUCH. “Weddings are one floor down, my son. Congratulations.” Godzilla (1998) I love me a good monster movie. This is another one with a great team and lots of banter. The part where they are fleeing Godzilla in a cab, arguing over the best route? Just fills me with delight. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that is really..that is…large.” Twister Dr. Jo Harding, awesomesauce. Bill “the Extreme” Harding, estranged hubby still in love. A great…

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Thankfulness

Every year around Thanksgiving, I write my post on thankfulness. I’ve been doing this for years: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 I skipped, 2013, and 2012. You’d think I’d run out of things to be thankful for. Not so. On the thirteenth anniversary of the day my husband and I met, he was in a head-on collision. He was at work, making deliveries in Ohio when a driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit him. The airbags deployed, and I’m positive that they saved his life. Much how my sister’s did when she was involved in an accident several years ago. He called me around the usual time he checked with me — lunchtime — and I had every reason to believe that it was business as usual. When he told me he’d had an accident, I was stunned. He was talking to me on the phone, yet shaken up, so it couldn’t have been that bad. But still — the writer/researcher/worrier in me freaked out. Head injuries. Whiplash. Messed up knees (which actually happened to me two weeks after I started going to college. I had tendonitis in both knees for a very long time). Anything could be wrong and not obvious. But he was talking to me, which meant his brain was okay. He didn’t break any bones. No whiplash. You have no idea how relieved I was. We were supposed to go out to dinner for our anniversary. First, we made a trip to urgent care per…

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Is it Nano if There are not Dinosaurs?

Happy November, friends! ‘Round these here parts, it’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which I am doing for the first time in five years. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month. (I’m at 19,000 as of yesterday.) The idea behind Nano is that, instead of letting yourself get bogged down in worries about the quality of your writing, you focus on quantity, and, in theory, unleash your inner creativity that would never come out under normal circumstances. I love Nano, but Nano is not always the right solution for where I currently am in my writing career. But when they do line up–why not go in, feet first, with all the reckless abandon I can manage? The story I’m working on this year is one that I had a vague idea for that never gelled. So I stole it and stuck it in Hidden Worlds. Then, of course, after Hidden Worlds was published and released into the wild, the story gelled. About five years ago, I did a ton of research for the story and wrote the first chapter. And then I put it away, to be worked on when I got around to it. Well, I’ve gotten around to it. The story is a kind-of Odyssey-ish voyage across an ocean, focusing on themes of redemption, knowing and trusting yourself, and discovering your worth. Which is all lovely. Sounds like I know what I’m doing, doesn’t it? But it also gives me leave to make a bunch…

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Contra Dance Love

This time last year, I was writing about contra dance and all the things I love about it, inspired by a weekend of dancing that I’d just gotten back from. Well, that’s an annual weekend, so the more things change… Since I wrote that post, I set in motion a big change to make my home dance community more LGBTQIA+ friendly, and turned into a community leader (!!!) in the process. The change was painful in some ways, but it’s completed now and the community is thriving, with lots of new energy from some younger, newer dancers who would not have felt so welcome before. Right now, I’m a committee member-at-large, because shepherding that process AND doing our twice-monthly newsletter was too much. So instead I’ve been rewriting parts of our website, networking with organizers of dances in other cities, going to the occasional committee meeting, and posting dance-related memes from our Facebook page. Every once in a while it hits me that this isn’t just an activity I do, this is my community. At the dance two weeks ago, a friend and I were floor managing–doing setup and tear-down, and monitoring things during the event–and a couple of minor crises popped up. (They were both related to the fact that for a while during the event, nobody in attendance had a key to the venue.) We nabbed the other committee members who were there and solved the crises, then worked together to set up new systems so they wouldn’t…

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Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate — Sneak Peek

You may think you’ve read this, but actually you haven’t. Please enjoy the expanded adventures of Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate. The full novel will be available for purchase December 15th. Scampering through the treetops, never worrying what was happening on the ground—squirrels knew how to live. Flame ran among them, heart thudding and brisk air in her lungs, the sun shining through yellow- and red-edged leaves. All that and a deep blue sky, the wind in her face, the ground far below—it had been far too long since she’d run through a mountainside forest. A squirrel dropped onto a branch beside her and flicked its tail. Flame accepted the implied challenge, running past it. The beast bolted past her and leaped and Flame followed as best she could, ran along a branch and leaped again when the squirrel did, but even she couldn’t leap where it did, so it gained on her with every tree. Off in the forest, something screamed. Flame hesitated. The sound came again. Well, she was losing anyway. Flame tossed a salute to the squirrel and slowed, listening. The sound came again. Something in distress, that much she could guess. Flame took her bearings from the sound and trotted on. A frantic rustling at the foot of an oak brought her down to a young fox, wrapped nose to back legs in a cord tied to a sapling. The animal saw her and opened its lips to growl at her. It couldn’t do…

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