Home Articles posted by Siri Paulson (Page 6)

Eating Seasonally

Apparently we’re all thinking about plants right now. Back to nature? Planning for the apocalypse? Both? I don’t know about you, but the pandemic has left me feeling very much adrift in time. What day of the week is it? What month is it? How many months has it been since the last time I walked out of my office building? (Answer: six months as of next weekend, although there are murmurs that we might be going back sometime before December. Dunwanna.) How many years has 2020 lasted? One thing that’s helped me reclaim a sense of time is really digging into seasonal eating – that is, eating what’s in season in my area (on the Great Lakes). My spouse and I have a smallish vegetable and herb garden, and we’ve been buying local more and more…(1) to help out our local farmers and small businesses during the pandemic, and (2) for environmental reasons, which got a boost due to (1). In spring (May-June here), we ate a lot of arugula (rocket), our favourite salad green, peppery and crisp. We grew radishes and ate those, mostly with the arugula. We got introduced to garlic scapes – like green onions except for garlic. If you’re a garlic farmer, you have to cut them off so the garlic head will get nice and big, so you might as well sell them… In early summer, there was basil (all links are to my Instagram) and mint, the beginning of the cherry tomatoes and…

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The Little Things

It’s Week Twenty since everything shut down here in Toronto. We’re still tiptoeing towards reopening…as a city, that is. Personally, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. As I’ve written before, I’m finding the pandemic hard to deal with, even if my personal situation is about as lucky as it’s possible to be. I mean, it’s a freaking PANDEMIC (with a side of dumpster fire). Hard not to be glued to the news; hard to find equanimity. My job has also been really intense for just about the same length of time, meaning I haven’t been getting a chance to rest or process the torrent of news. Still, there are things that are helping, a bit. Here are a few of them… Sunsets. My home office (where I both work and play) faces west, with a fairly unobstructed view. When the sky starts to change colour, I try to remember to stop what I’m doing and watch. We’ve had some gorgeous sunsets this summer…or maybe it’s just that I’m noticing them more. Duolingo. I started using this language-learning app back in November, to brush up on my university Norwegian…for a family trip we were going to take to Norway this summer. Obviously the trip didn’t happen, but I’m over 240 days in and still going. (I have missed a day here and there, but Duo lets you accumulate points that you can use if you skip a day, so my streak looks unbroken.) I’m really enjoying learning a language again, and…

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Week Sixteen

Following on KD’s post from last time, here’s an update on the state of me… It’s Week Sixteen since everything shut down here. My part of the world is doing well (according to our top scientists) and a gradual reopening is underway, but our case numbers are far from zero, so I’m continuing to behave as if it isn’t. Going into places of business makes me really anxious, even though I wear a mask and am careful about hand hygiene. So no restaurant patios, minimal public transit use, and I haven’t been more than a ten-minute walk from home in I don’t know how long. As an introvert and highly sensitive person, I’m perfectly happy not going downtown to work three or four days a week – I used to crave being at home more, and the traffic noises and public transit annoyances used to wear on my nerves. (I’m very lucky in being able to ride out COVID: homeowner, my own home office, able to work remotely, no kids, so-so AC, plenty of green space in the backyard.) I’m also reasonably happy keeping in touch with friends online. (I have dear friends I’ve never met, including the other three members of Turtleduck Press.) But I haven’t been doing a good job of *actually* keeping in touch. All the suffering right now is very hard to bear, plus I miss contra dance (and contra hugs) a lot…so I’ve kind of withdrawn from peopling. Still having trouble finding words, too. I…

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Announcing The Best of Turtleduck Press, Volume II

We have news to share with you this week! But first, I need to pause and acknowledge that the news outside the book world is spectacularly crappy right now, between the new wave of BLM protests and the ongoing pandemic. If you’re feeling the same, we send solidarity your way. Our own news is more cheerful (we hope). Just to remind you, this year is our tenth anniversary here at TDP. (We can’t believe it either!) To celebrate, we’re releasing a new anthology…with a couple of twists. Way back in 2013, we released The Best of Turtleduck Press, Volume I. It featured, as usual, one piece from each of us (a poem by Erin Zarro and three stories by the rest of us). We voted on our favourites of all the short pieces that we had posted monthly on our website since our launch in 2010. It was lovely to pull out the works we had liked the most and give them another chance to shine. So for our tenth anniversary, we decided it was high time to do it again. For The Best of Turtleduck Press, Volume II, we’re doing doubles. First we read through our old stories from the past seven years (everything after Volume I was eligible, except for serials that aren’t finished yet) and reminisce about them all. Then we each voted on our favourites of each other’s works…AND we each picked a favourite from our own pieces. So this anthology will feature eight stories, of…

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Week Seven

We’re into Week Seven of pandemic life here in Toronto. More than that if you count the weeks of constant hand sanitizing, before schools closed and most workplaces were declared non-essential. I’m counting from when my workplace told us to start working from home full-time, and I started living my best life as a hermit. Okay, I’m kidding about that last part. The stress is taking its toll. My will-power and short-term memory are shot. Keeping the kitchen stocked with groceries is taking way too many brain cycles. I’m turning inward – I keep needing naps at odd times, I don’t want to talk to people (except my spouse, he’s allowed…), and going outside for walks is too much effort (though to be fair, we’ve had a cold and miserable spring). Yet I have no desire to watch TV, and I’m having trouble concentrating on books (!). And no, I am definitely not spending this time learning new skills or reorganizing my house. I live with many of these symptoms from depression, but I don’t think I’m depressed now. I think it’s just freakin’ hard to live through a world-altering era of massive uncertainty. (And that’s even with all the privilege I have: I’m not an essential worker, I haven’t been laid off, my workplace is set up to allow us to work from home (just in the last few years…how timely is that?!), I don’t have kids, my home is big enough that my spouse and I and his…

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Coat of Scarlet: A Clockpunk Tale, Part 6

by Siri Paulson Read previous installments: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 True to his word, Niko did not approach Marius for the next three days. The airship gained her distance from the busy skies around the city and settled into what Marius learned was cruising height – below the clouds, yet above the birds. They were high enough that he couldn’t look down without wanting to evacuate the contents of his stomach. It was unjust, he thought; there was insufficient motion to merit seasickness, and yet here he was feeling weak-kneed and queasy regardless. Marius found himself a succession of out-of-the-way corners to curl up in, often with the justacorps coat on his lap for lack of a table. Several of the niches had the advantage of allowing him to watch Niko at work. The captain’s confidence and swagger had dominated Marius’s little shop. Here aboard ship, among his crew, Niko’s airs seemed not only fitting but necessary. Small wonder he had been so anxious for the return of his scarlet coat. Everyone on the ship seemed to have an outsized personality, from Gloriana on down to the little cabin boy who spouted facts about airships – and this one in particular – at every opportunity. Everyone, that is, except Marius, who could not help but wonder what Niko had seen in a plain, unassuming tradesman like him. He had asked for time to settle in; now he began to fear…

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Life in the Time of Pandemics

One month ago, I was in here writing about imperfect friendships. Then the world entered a time warp called COVID-19, and ten years later, here I am again. What a surreal month it’s been, and from all accounts, things are going to get less like reality before they settle down into…well, whatever our new normal is, anyway. Last month, I was gloating about having had four weekends of contra dance in a row. I didn’t know then that our Leap Day dance would be our last for the foreseeable future, or that I would soon be really glad I decided to attend that dance weekend in February again. (For one thing, I bought a twirly skirt that weekend and wore it to one dance before everything ended. It’s the only contra dance skirt I can stand to wear right now. It cheers me up because it’s teal with purple patterns and swishes beautifully when I walk, but it’s not loaded with memories like my other skirts.) Four weeks ago, the dance organizing committee I’m on was debating whether it would be smart to cancel our March 14 dance. We could see what was coming, but hoped we could squeeze in one last event. But I’m glad we didn’t know we were saying goodbye on February 29…it would have been too sad. Three and a half weeks ago, all the schools here in Ontario closed, and we knew we had no choice but to cancel the entire rest of the dance…

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An Ode to Imperfect Friendships

Media depictions of friendship are a funny thing. Everyone in the movies or on TV seems to have one best friend, or maybe a tight-knit group of three or four (carefully chosen to be complementary, of course), who will be there to help out when you’re moving, mourning, celebrating, or anything in between. If you’re anything like me, not having a circle that looks like that can lead to feelings of inferiority. It certainly did when I was getting married in 2012 (and didn’t have a nice tidy squad of bridesmaids), when I’ve asked for in-person practical help and nobody volunteered, when I’ve been fighting depression and everything feels worse. But… I have a tight-knit community of online friends (including my fellow Turtleduckers) who cheerlead for my writing, listen patiently to my daily worries and complaints, and much, much more. I have a tight-knit community of contra dance friends who give the best hugs, belly laughs, moments of “flow” and play, and much, much more. (I got to dance four weekends in a row in February, including one entire weekend away that involved a hilarious carpool of 40something women, a hotel suite full of geeks, and lots of folks I only get to see once or twice a year. Those weekends got me through the month.) I have friends who come when I throw a party, even though I still feel like an awkward host. I have friends who invite me over to their messy house so we can order…

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Adulting II

This time last year, I was writing about how I accidentally became a community leader when all I meant to do was make some appointments (aka adulting) and clear the junk out of my home office. In the intervening year, I have: made those appointments — dental, medical, and financial things that needed doing, all sorted continued being a community leader, or at least organizer survived the shift from cubicles to an open office at my day job (being able to work from home part of the time has been essential to my sanity) turned 40 (I have not, however, cleared out my home office. Much.) 2020 started with some more big changes at the day job. Retirements and a shrinking team meant that a few colleagues and I needed to step up and acquire some new skills, fast. At the same time, we’ve got our hands full with a big, tricky project, which doesn’t help matters. I’ve spent all of January feeling waaay out of my depth. …and yet nothing has exploded, we’re keeping on top of things (so far…ask me in a month or two, ahahaha), and I think I’m impressing my manager and colleagues. It’s really not a comfortable spot to be in. I’m stressed and tired, and I’d much rather go back to my happy little status quo. But…I might just be rising to meet this challenge. In related news, last weekend my spouse and I had a house party, just a small gathering of friends.…

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2019 at Turtleduck Press

Happy 2020, faithful blog readers! Here’s hoping you’ve had some time off (check), are feeling rested (well, I was until I finally caught the death!cold that’s been going around, and I still can’t sleep a full night without coughing), and are heading into the new year with at least a tiny bit of optimism (check). We’ve had a busy year here at Turtleduck Press writing stuff for your enjoyment… We returned to the world of our fantasy novel City of Hope and Ruin with an anthology called Love Shines Through, featuring romance stories from not just Kit and me (the authors of the original novel) but also KD and Erin, who kept asking us hard questions about the world that they needed answers to in order to write their stories. (Note to self: next time, write a story bible or a wiki while you’re writing the novel. It’s much easier than doing it after the fact, when you’ve forgotten all the details.) The four stories have a wide variety of pairings, because that’s how we roll: two queer (F/F and M/non-binary) and two straight (M/F). Our full-length novel release for the year was by KD Sarge, a lighthearted fantasy adventure called Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate, featuring a runaway elf named Flame, a party of adventurers on a quest for untold riches, a priest who won’t tell them where they’re going or why, and one very annoying ex-betrothed. (Free sample.) We’ve also been putting out free fantasy serials:…

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