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Month: July 2023

Even Happier Camper

Did I think June’s camping trip was amazing? Well, yes, I did, and yes, it was. July, though? July blew it right out of the water. Okay, it’s not really a competition. And also, I should go back a bit. February, 2021. I’d meant to go see what camping around Mount Graham was like for a while, but never got it done. Then I found the cabins at Roper Lake, and spent a weekend looking at the beauty of Mount Graham, learning my way (a little) around the area. One day heading back from maybe breakfast to the lake, we took a detour and drove up Mount Graham a bit. It’s a steep narrow mountain road with lots of switchbacks, though, and I was driving a 14-year-old Toyota Corolla and couldn’t remember if my tires had been inspected recently. And there was ice. I decided I would absolutely like to camp up there, but for that day I turned around before we reached any campgrounds. I had Plans. I was going to camp So Much. But Life Finds a Way–to smack the carp out of all one’s plans. I didn’t make it happen. This year, though, I’ve been camping on Mount Lemmon, and it’s becoming more familiar. Load the car, buy the food, buy the ice, go. It’s not so hard. We went in May. We went in June, and I wanted to go in July. June on my beloved Mount Lemmon, though, had been right on the edge of…

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Lessons from the Alleyman’s Tarot

So, my latest obsession is the Alleyman’s Tarot, which is a Tarot deck I backed on Kickstarter last year. It’s a bit different than the usual Tarot deck in that it’s not standard — it has the standard cards in it, but it has even more — non-standard cards and suits. It’s literally made up of cards from different Tarot decks. A patchwork or “magpie” deck, as it’s being called. It funded at over one million dollars and made history. And I am in love! It’s a bit tricky, I will admit, as I have to look up the non-standard cards in the guidebook when they come up. And sometimes I can’t tell what’s what even with the standard cards. They are all different. There’s no unifying theme or any rhyme or reason to it. It just…is. And that’s the beauty of it, I think. It forces you to expand your ideas of “normal” Tarot, of a “normal” reading, and what these cards are telling you. And there is a myth about the Alleyman, too, which I have not, regretfully, dug into yet. But apparently it’s really, really cool. He goes around collecting cards and gives them away to people. A singer was recently visited by a man who could have been the Alleyman…who gave her the exact Tarot card she needed to see on that night. The power of Tarot and universe, yo. So lately I’ve been tweeting #advicecards from the Alleyman’s deck and have been having fun. And…

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Creating a Serial

Hi friends! Hope you’re doing well! I’m not, we got hit by a TORNADO what the hell, but we persevere anyway. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice you’re getting a section of Across Worlds with You each month. There will be 7-10 parts in total (not sure exactly where I’m breaking it up yet) so we’re good for the rest of the year, and then, in theory, it’ll get consolidated and released in book form. This is the fourth serial I’ve done. Hidden Worlds (one of our launch titles, recently received a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite) started as a serial, many many years ago, and I had a scifi one that I wrote for a prompt community over the course of 10 years. (That one is a mess and will never see the light of day, unless I am very bored one day and feel the need to rip a project to shreds.) Last year I had Deep and Blue here, if you’d like to read over that, and now we’re onto Across Worlds with You. I actually outlined Across Worlds with You something like seven years ago. I’ve found that, sometimes, it’s better to outline a story (or at least write down important parts) even when you know you’re not going to write it right then. Brains are stupid; they forget stuff all the time. I don’t know how many stories or parts of stories I’ve lost over the years because I was like “Oh, yes, that’s amazing,…

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Re-entry, Part 5

[CW: pandemic, mental health] It turns out there’s no clean way to exit a pandemic. Not for the world at large, and especially not for individuals who have been deeply affected for one reason or another, like me. So I’m still edging back into a new kind of normal life, still taking steps and hesitating to take other steps. I’m still wearing a mask on public transit and sometimes other places indoors, gradually getting looser (and going out to restaurants more). I have some travel coming up later this month and don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize it, but after that I plan to push myself gently to drop the mask more often. Though I have to say I don’t miss the constant colds and occasional flus…so I intend to keep wearing it on public transit. The travel I have planned will be my first contra dance trip, first non-family trip, and first cross-border travel since February 2020 (let’s just say we were very very lucky that time). It’s a road trip and then a week-long dance camp (!!!) at a summer camp venue in MA. The pandemic precautions for the camp are pretty robust, and people mostly stay on-site all week, so I felt safer going there than to a typical urban dance weekend with everyone eating in restaurants and such. Plus, it will satisfy my annual craving to get out of the city once summer hits. In the meantime, though, I’ve been gradually increasing my in-office…

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Across Worlds with You, Part 2 by Kit Campbell

Across Worlds with You, Part 2 by Kit Campbell Part 1 “Will? Will? Can you hear me?” Oh. He wasn’t dead. At least, not if the aching in his body meant anything. Gingerly, Will raised his head. He was lying on a tiled floor in a large hall of some kind where he’d definitely never been before. Beside him another man, his same age, knelt. He, like the hall, was also new. But, hey, not dead. And the dragging, hissing noise was nowhere to be heard. But, oh hell, his final. Dr. Frobisher had probably burned it. The man beside him wrung his hands. He was a lanky fellow who looked like a strong breeze would probably best him in a fight. “Can you hear me?” “Where am I?” Excellent, his voice worked too. The tile beneath him, and, indeed, all of him, was drenched. “Did you drag me in from outside? Which department is this?” “Oh, well,” the other man said. Then, instead of saying anything useful, he ran his hands through his hair, which served to make it stand up straight. Will managed to push himself up into a sitting position, only having a hand slip out from under him once. The hall was easily four stories tall, made out of a deep red stone that he hadn’t seen elsewhere on campus. Several stone columns held up the ceiling, and other archways led off, well, somewhere. It was fairly dark past the archways, making it hard to tell…

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