Weekly Wrap-Up

Finding Wonderland had a great first Craft Chat on Wednesday. Our beginning was on ‘beginnings, and we had quite a lively discussion.

We talked mostly about what worked for us in terms of books we loved, and how the best books had a beginning hook that involved something colorful to interest us right away. Some of the best hooks mentioned were Sue Limb’s funny little ‘horrorscopes’ and ‘parent commandments’ at the beginning of her chapters in the Girl, 15 series, Scott Westerfeld’s instant action in his Uglies series (Hey, look – a hoverboard!), and of course, the playing cards from I Am the Messenger.

Quiet books often have a hard time finding an audience, but we found in our discussion that it wasn’t quietness that caused us to have a hard time getting into a novel, but a lack of originality. If we felt like we were being “gimmicked” into reading the book, we were more resistant that open to reading it. We discussed how that might differ for tweens and teens than it would for us, as many of the things had to do with personal pet peeves (like text messages and novel elements like ending with a big dance or having the character able to travel anywhere in the world — never mind passports or things like, oh, money and parental permission).

Hope next time you can all join us! We plan to do another Craft Chat maybe in mid-June — more information to come!

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In more Web Wanderings I found a piece on Henry Winkler, who talks about dyslexia, and his Hank Zipzer series. Hard to believe it, but he and Lin Oliver (yes, of SCBWI fame) are on their 11th book in that series.

Other Heroes: African-American Comic Book Creators, Characters & Archetypes” is the name of an art show at Mississippi’s Jackson State University. The show focuses on racial representation through the media of graphic novels and comic books, which should be interesting, as African Americans and other ethnicities are generally unrepresented in comic books. The show lasts through the month of April, and has already been put together in coffee table book form, for the graphic art aficionados in the house.

One of my favorite public radio programs, put out by the University of Florida’s Center for Children’s Literature and Culture is called Recess! The World of Children’s Culture Every Day, On Monday this great little show is celebrating its 2000th episode in six years (yay for all their good work!). Their celebration of National Poetry Month this April has been full of whimsical readings, one of which was the famous all-English-majors-must-read rainbow poem by Wordsworth. Thinking about all the good things that we should not lose from our childhoods seems as good a way to look forward to a weekend sleeping late and playing in the dirt (yay, Sunday! Yay, gardening!) as any.

The Rainbow
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.
– William Wordsworth

Flickr Fiction Friday: The Power of Eve

His face was red.

Their faces always got red, or, sweat flushed and ruddy if their skin was dark.

They always sputtered, blinked, protested, entreated, hands clenched and angry or limp and defeated. They always groveled, begged, a time or two they’d threatened, but it hadn’t gotten them anywhere, hadn’t changed a thing for any of them, didn’t shift a pebble from the ton of gravel that was the power of Eve when she’d made up her mind.

“No.” She’d said it coolly, or as coolly as one could say no when one was caught by surprise, lying in the yard, reading, trying to snatch a cool breeze from this overly warm evening. Why her mother hadn’t warned her, she had no idea. It was irritating, how Mom and Dad were always trying to surprise her, to get her to be spontaneous, come “out of her shell,” act more her age. And now this boy was kneeling on the edge of her blanket, and she’d had to close her book, make nice and talk to him, and now turn him down cold.

His face was red, but for once it seemed to come more from shame than from anger. He raked his thick fingers through his hair, and it stood up like rust colored exclamation points. He scratched his ear, and furrowed his fuzzy eyebrows.

“Oh.” He nodded a bit, swallowed. “Well, okay. Sorry I asked.”

“Don’t be sorry.” She sighed, fastened a button on her shirt and rolled over onto her back. Above was the fractal formation of the tower, the sky a smudged and fading yellow-orange.

It was weird to have a power line in their back field. Almost every house in the subdivision had one next to their back fence, high voltage wires zapping their pace-makers and making them fear brain cancer, but Eve’s folks had one right on their property. The city gave them a whole three acres because of it, and because of it, they had a bigger house (to go with their bigger chance of brain cancer) than anyone else on the block. Nobody wanted to live there, underneath the high-voltage lines snapping and sparking, but everyone in Rancho Heights envied Eve’s family. They envied them their swimming pool, the pergola with the kiwi vines off the back porch, the mini-golf course, their gazebo with the wisteria and the water feature, and their great big rose and vegetable garden. Eve and her sisters had been the most popular girls at Rancho High forever, and Eve was in even higher demand with every boy on the football team. This boy cleared his throat.

“I wouldn’t have asked, but… well Conan said…”

“Conan is, who? The nose tackle guy? Black hair? Ski-jump nose?”

“Yeah. Conan… he said you were really good.”

Eve sighed, and pushed her hair back from her forehead. “Well, I appreciate the compliment, but ‘good’ is not the point. It’s not fair to me, you know.”

“I know. I mean, I think I know. But…if it’d help, I could pay you…?”

Eve rolled her eyes and sat up, waving her arm at the house, the yard, their possessions. “I don’t need money, really.”

He nodded, chagrined, rubbing his damp palms on his jeans. “Yeah. I kind of got that.”

Eve looked uncomfortable. “Well, the district pays me anyway. Look, I’m not trying to be mean. I do it because I love to. It’s just – every year, it’s the same thing. The whole football team starts talking about me, and then it’s a mad rush, and everybody wants me at once. It’s almost the end of the semester. I can’t, really. I just don’t have time.”

He stood, brushing invisible grass off of his knees with big hands. “Yeah. Coach said you’d say that.” His face is plainly regretful, but a smile crinkles his eyes, and uncovers an unexpected flash of humor. “Maybe next semester?”

“First week?” Her eyebrows arched above the metal frames of her glasses. “It won’t help to have this conversation all over again at the end of next semester.”

“First week,” he promised. “Coach said you’d say that, too.”

She stood and slid her feet into her sandals. “You’re a defensive guard, aren’t you?”

He blinked, then grinned. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“You’ve got to be the biggest guy in the whole high school, and you’re new. Where’d you transfer from, Texas?”

“Montana.” He looked down at her, smiled and tried to speak quietly as she walked him to the gate. “I hear you graduated when you were thirteen.”

“Fourteen,” Eve shrugged and pushed up her glasses. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Seems like a big deal to me.” He looks properly impressed, then his eyes light with a flash of humor. “Senior year must’ve sucked though, huh? Couldn’t even drive yet!”

Eve winced. “Thanks for reminding me.” She held open the gate.

He paused, his big hands suddenly awkward. He studied his nails, shoved his hand into his pocket. His face was red.

“We’re playing Calistoga Sunday night. Probably the last game I’ll be in for awhile, Coach is gonna bench me when he gets my semester grades, but… maybe you wanna come? Grab some tacos at Tito’s after?”

“Me?” Eve, glancing around the empty yard, at the pergola, the gazebo, hears only the soft splash of the water from the fountain and feels immediately silly at her own question – And her hackles rise. She hates sounding stupid. She hates feeling like the world is laughing at her. She hates kids her own age, hates their little in-groups and code words. “You aren’t going to get anything out of me with tacos and football games. I’m still not going to do it.”

He took a step back, stung by the frost in her voice. “No. We said next semester. I’m just asking about the tacos for no reason. I mean, I mean, I’m asking for a reason, I mean, I have a reason, but not that one.” His face is redder now, and his ears glow like live coals. He hasn’t run away, though, hasn’t taken his eyes from her face.

“Oh.” Eve blinked, glanced back toward the edge of the yard where her blanket and her books lay stacked beneath the power lines. “I… sorry. Yeah. That might be really fun.” She looked up at him, pushed up her glasses and tried out a smile. “Thanks.”

Eve watched him shamble down the drive with that particular loose-limbed, football player walk, and was surprised how good she felt. Hope had the uncanny power of making Eve feel like a ton of gravel had been lifted from her shoulders. She wandered back to her blanket and flopped down on her back, dreaming bigger dreams than the tower above her.


This week’s picture(entitled Power) was taken by Flickr photographer Michael Nagel, and will likely be Flicktionated by the usual suspects: The Gurrier, Ms. Teaandcakes, Elimare, Chris, Aquafortis, Valshamerlyn, and Miss Mari.

Ruminations on Art & Crusty Old Men

Mac laughs at this (frequently, and with disbelief, I’m afraid), but I am strangely attracted to …antiquarians. Alan Alda on Scientific American is awfully cute, and he’s, what, seventy? And I think Patrick Stewart is running neck and neck with Sean Connery these days in the field of distinguished relic hottiness. (How bizarre that 007 is older than my grandma.) Richard Peck I practically stalked at a writing conference one year, and I got all swoony when he smiled at me (He was probably thinking, “Where is there a house line so I call security? There’s a short Colored girl following me…)(and YES, “Colored” is probably from his era [Negress? – that one always makes me think of tall white birds!], though I am joking. He probably thought I was someone’s kid wanting an autograph.). Yes, my bad boys are all old boys recalling their glory days, maybe that’s why I like them… at least it means I won’t stray when Mac is old and wrinkled (ha! Which I shall be BEFORE him, I am sure).

Another of my favorite old men is …Garrison Keillor. He’s not really old enough yet to be on the Old Men of Awesomeness list, but he’s …Garrison Keillor, which is enough. If you haven’t gone to his website for A Prairie Home Companion, you’ll at least want to check out his Writer’s Almanac which this month has a daily poem, and lists birthdays of the greats, and comes in a handy podcast.

This snippet of Mr. Keillor‘s thoughts on attitude of artists (and poets in particular) makes me laugh.

Conviviality is no small achievement. Back when I was young, most major American writers seemed to be alcoholic or suicidal or both, and we students absorbed the notion that the true sign of brilliance is to be seriously screwed up. The true poet is haunted by livid demons, brave, doomed, terribly wounded, and if one was (as I was) relatively unscratched, you concealed this and tried to impersonate doom.

The prime minister of high culture was T.S. Eliot, who suffered from a lousy marriage and hated his job and so wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a small, dark mopefest of a poem in which old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers. This poem pretty much killed off the pleasure of poetry for millions of people who got dragged through it in high school. The first line of “Prufrock,” as you may recall, was “S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse” — he opened with six lines of a language 99 percent of his readers do not understand! How better to identify yourself as a serious poet than to be incomprehensible?

When I grew safely past adolescence and started getting published, my mother actually encouraged me to be weird. Every strange hat or striped and spangled pair of tights my mother would nod and say, “You look just right. Artistic.” I’ve had people take me aside and exhort me never to let Mac cut his hair or lose his piercings. “Don’t tame him too much,” has been the (elderly person) comment. How bizarre that some believe we must be ponderous and obscure to serve Art.

Equally how bizarre that some people are living vicariously through our weirdness, but that, friends, is another post entirely…

ps – There is one cute old man in this picture. It’s not the Gubernator, despite the fact that he, too, is older than dirt.

Artists and Moneymakers

Fuse #8 Kelly from Big A little a (I stand corrected, thanks B.) has had the great idea of redesigning the Cybils symbol into something sticker-worthy for books which garner the Cybils Award Stamp of Approval. (This is a subtle nudge to Aquafortis, because obviously what with her manuscript edit, her job, the end of semester grading, our summer project and our Craft Chat she doesn’t have enough to do? But just so you know: she’s more than our sly Thursday cartoonist. Let’s all bug her so her art degrees don’t get too dusty…)

And just so you know? Star Wars never ends. Never, people.

Speaking of science fiction, according to Wired, some people will do anything to avoid the label. (And when I think about it, there has been a spouting of so-called ‘speculative fiction.’) I don’t know about that… I mean, we don’t just have a bunch of fabulous short fiction magazines and a small section in the library anymore. We have a channel…

Oh my, it’s the dreaded question over at Blue Rose: Can you make a living doing that?”
Those of us who wanted to work with books and writing for a career… absolutely loathe that one. When I was younger, a dear old minister gentleman asked me if I’d written a book all by myself. Meaning, I suppose, that either God had to write it for me, or Mac spoke, and I typed like a good secretary. Nowadays it’s, “So, you’re a stay-at-home, and Mac …?” And there’s the implication that this is just a hobby, and eventually I’ll come to my senses and go back to teaching. Although I must admit, it’s been a good four years since my father asked me when I was going to get a job.

Yes, people can make a living from writing. Not a very monied living, no, not at first, but a living. Ask someone like Justina Chen Headley, who has created an entire Livejournal about her experiences in marketing her first and second book. (And she’s just left it as a public resource for the rest of us. [Platinum Karma Points going into the stratosphere.]) When you look at it, you see how much work, networking, and savvy marketing it takes, but it can happen. So, yay for the affirmation from the Blue Rose Girls, and here’s to making it happen.

Nikki Giovanni is a poet and thinker, but more recently her role as a teacher at Virginia Tech has been in my mind. Today’s poem is hers.

CHOICES

if i can’t do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don’t want
to do

it’s not the same thing
but it’s the best i can
do

if i can’t have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i’ve got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want

since i can’t go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn’t lateral

when i can’t express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that’s why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry

Yolanda Cornelia Nikki Giovanni

Prayers, Poetry , Art: In War

Having done a lot of research lately into the 40’s, WWII, and the lives and times of Americans in that era, I ran across a poem — well, a prayer, really — that is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, and is on display at the FDR Library and Museum. She carried it in her wallet throughout the War, on her visits on behalf of the war effort as a Red Cross spokesperson, wearing the blue uniform all the other girls did.
This is her poem:

Dear Lord
Lest I continue
My complacent way
Help me to remember
Somewhere out there
A man died for me today.
– As long as there be war
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?

A fascinating find on display at the Oakland MOCHA (Museum of Children’s Art – the show runs through June 3rd.) chronicles the same war from a child’s point of view. The pictures were painted at a day care for children whose parents worked in the war effort. This is one of the paintings, which obviously shows a mind well aware of the world around them.

It’s amazing how children are marketed to these days, with big sound and flash, as if they’re dumb and won’t take in what Madison Avenue manufacturers want them to beg for without all the noise. Here lies the simple untruth of that belief: most parents would try to keep ugliness as far away from their child as possible. However, it is apparent that nothing keeps out the reality of war.

Another poem-prayer from the same time period, first published in January 1943 in a “Colored” newspaper.

“Draftee’s Prayer”

Dear Lord, today
I go to war:
To fight, to die.
Tell me, what for?
Dear Lord, I’ll fight,
I do not fear,
Germans or Japs
My fears are here
America!

History. It leaves one so much to think about.

Well Met by Kismet

Friend of Mac’s: My son Jesse would like to interview your wife for a school project. Would that be possible? He chose his own topic for this project, which was to interview an author. He’s a bit of a budding author himself, as I think I’ve mentioned, and has aspirations to continue in that vein. And he has read a good deal of Young Adult Fiction. So I think he would really enjoy talking to you and your wife. He’s 11 yrs old.

Mac (sheepish): “Um…”
Tad (busybusybusy): Thinks: Aaargh! Bad timing! Bad timing! Deadline! Angst! Angst! ANGST!
Says: “Oh, okay. Fine…No problem.”

Tad: Hi. Ask away!
Jesse (confidently):11 Questions, via email, one of which is ‘Does your husband help you write?’
Tad (Er? Makes notes to never ask anyone she interviews that one.): 11 Answers as concise as possible, still fills three pages
Jesse: (Thinks:) Whoa. Says: “Okay. I’m putting it on my blog. All our core classes have a blog. I’ll send you an invitation.”

Tad peruses blog of 11-year-old smart guy, reads his short funny poems; sees a teacher comment.
Tad:Jesse, I looked at your funny blog.
You mentioned that your teacher’s name is Mr. Septka. I went to school with a Mr. Septka. Wouldn’t it be funny if it was the same person? Is his first name Rod?

Looong pause.
Jesse: My teacher is Rod Septka. That’s weird.

###

I do believe I have traumatized that poor child by knowing his teacher since he’s suddenly not speaking to me anymore, but hey, these things happen. Meanwhile, three cheers for Rod Septka, a rising star in the Marin school system, who was always one of the canniest and funniest people at Mills College and who worked harder than many of us getting his MFA while also getting his MA, if I recall correctly, and teaching middle school full-time the whole time.

Whether he knows it or not, Jesse is one lucky kid.

Just so you know…

“I Aten’t Dead”, good people, just a tad overwhelmed! I’m editing, avoiding finishing a manuscript despite the May 4 deadline I’ve been given (!!!!!), and reading like a crazy(ier) person, getting prepared for a series of summer treats that I know everyone will enjoy. (Trust me, you will. I’m enjoying it, and it’s not really even started yet!) It’s a privilege to read, and to get to talk to the intelligent, creative and thoughtful people who write (and aren’t stuck like I am). More to come on this great reading and writing thing!

Speaking of great reading… the Disco Mermaids have once again elevated the Great Art of Lit’triture. You must check out the winning celeb book… many, many hilarious entrants, only one winner. Stay tuned for their next crazy contest!

Via A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy comes the question at of how much we can know about an author based on their books (thanks to Lectitans for a great question). As a writer currently reading other writers and thinking about how they write, I’d have to say… maybe not that much.

I had the very odd experience of hearing comments ( a few years back when I first published) such as “Oh, I know who that was!” and “Oh, you were writing about Bobbi Ann and James, weren’t you?” that were frankly ludicrous, and set me wondering “What part of the word fiction don’t you understand?” Acquaintances were positive they could find some hidden truths about my real life, and it turned out to be pointless to tell them differently.

In truth, each and every piece of my work reflects some small part of me. Whether it’s my love of cooking (or eating, to my everlasting despair), reading, singing or artwork; my borderline incompetence with numbers and following directions, my fascination with minutiae and arcane facts — any or all of that and more will appear somewhere in my writing. In that fabulous alchemy which occurs between readers and writers, however, whatever someone may take and interpret from my work only brings something bigger to the work itself. But! not even from the writing on my blog can you know more than even a little bit about the essential me. The reason for this, I think, is that many writers are, in equal parts:
a.) thieves
b.) mystics
c.) hermits

We’re slippery, live in the gradation between light and dark, and tend to be on the outside of the ring around the campfire, watching, listening, and biding our time to put down the tales we see and hear. What is safe to assume about a writer from their work? Nothing. Writers are mostly observers, and they do observe … but an impartial, introverted observer doesn’t always impart that much of themselves.

(And now that I’ve made writers sound very magical-mystery and shadowy, I’ll go back to my grouchy, sweats-wearing-slouching-before-the-keyboard-mundane self.)

Tick… tick… tick… That sound you hear is the Second Coming of the 48 Hour Reading Challenge! Once again, MotherReader is trying to kill me. My brother graduates from the 8th grade the selfsame weekend of the Reading Challenge, coming June 8–10, 2007, but I had an excuse last year too, and this year: no excuses. (And no reading The Book Thief, either, which is so long it could have counted as four books.) The way things are fixed, you can take the whole weekend and read for a consecutive 48, but start on your time. Head on over to MotherReader’s and read the rules and join the game!

Via Bookshelves O’ Doom, a fabulous piece by Sara Zarr at AS IF! which reminds me why I read Chris Crutcher when some others who profess a Christian faith avoid him with rabid dismay.

Chasing Ray’s existential crisis on reviewing is a tangent of some of my own thoughts these days. In the wake of The Curious Incident with the Reviewer in the Daytime, a lot of us are feeling skittish. I feel like going to our book reviewing site, and removing the word ‘review.’ To be honest, I don’t review books, I …discuss them. As a writer, my books are simply one person’s perspective of the world around them. But now that, in a way, my integrity as a person who discusses books has been challenged, I wonder in what ways, if any, that will or should change how I talk about books. Do I now have to say “I got this book from the library/the bookstore/ the author/ a friend of a friend who works for a publisher? Do I, like some others, trim out personal information about my interactions with said publishers or authors (not that I’ve got a lot of that, but it’s something to consider!)? It bothers me, in a way, that I’m still thinking about this, as if I have to justify my own existence… but I can’t stop.

A Word Is Dead
A WORD is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
– Emily Dickinson

Flickr Fiction Friday: Good Girl

Saudé backs into the corridor, the pressure seal ‘shusshing’ quietly behind her. Martrith had warned her they would come, asking, and she shudders at the implication behind the simple question she’s been asked.

When the Egelloc-Sgod stumbled across their galaxy, Earth had believed itself in a position of dominance against the plump, placid creatures. There had been illuminating discussions on technology and medicine, covert discussions of weaponry and cultural aggressions. So much of their world was known that it was thought that they were, in fact, natural allies; that they were in fact meant to be best friends. The Egelloc-Hsorf were humanoid in appearance, with warm, intelligent eyes, slightly lugubrious expressions, bellies which were sleek and bodies which ran to fat. Their blunt clawed hands were clumsy and eager, and only their elongated necks and double rings of sharp teeth destroyed the illusion of cute helplessness. As they aged, their skin produced more hair, then took on a mottled appearance, tingeing a slight brown with cream and black as their years progressed.

Earth was caught off guard when the first of the Egelloc visitors, so droll and witty, changed. How was she to know that this alien race was only in the first of their developmental stages? Egelloc-Hpos were carrion-eaters. Egelloc-Roinuj were flesh eaters. Egelloc-Sroines played deadly games and consumed their prey on the run.

Many had died before a solution had been found.

“You will let us… take your genetics, you know?” Noel, urbane in his ribbed cowl neck and reeking cigarillo had inclined his head, irises expanding and contracting in that nauseating ripple pattern which indicated inquiry. Saudé had known what he meant, even as she had arched a pierced brow in his direction.

“Genetics?”

“You are simply… so lovely. Such a lovely specimen, really well… marked.” The hair on Saudé’s nape lifted as Noel took her drink, then lifted her arm and peered at the capillaries snaking along its length.

“So well marked…” Noel had leaned over her arm, drawn his tongue down the lines, and she’d shuddered, masking revulsion with desire. His laughter coming in soft pants, Noel had looked up, and his irises had flickered once, twice. Saudé had swayed, feigning dizziness while breaking eye contact. The Egelloc-pack could hypnotize with their eyes, but Saudé was not novice enough to hold their gaze overlong. She counted to fifteen in Uzbekistani, refocused. If she did not respond with at least dizziness, Noel, and the few others of the pack hovering on the edge of the conversation would press in, exposing their throats where their poison apertures were secreted. It would take but the lightest puff, and she would be mind-wiped, forgetting who they were, why she stood there, what’d she’d set out to do that day. They were notoriously paranoid for a species which appeared to be so servile.

Saudé brushed a trembling hand over her face. “Genetics. A specimen. Yes.”

“Good girl.” Noel had bowed a little, given her the canine-tipped smile she hated. “Such a good girl. Such a good girl deserves a treat.”

And now, Saudé had slipped away from the party, was making her way to the stall where she Martrith had secreted the vial. Her hands shook, as she un-taped it from the back of the commode. Chocolate, 100% pure Dagoba Theobroma cacao, and she would ingest it…intravenously.

The Pack would not kill her, not today. Her genetic sample would be safely housed in a lab, where, cell-by-cell, it would grow, the rapid-fire mitosis taking place which would create the clones which would be bred and cloned again to sustain the pack. In their kennelships and in their homes, clones of Saudé would wait on them, they would lick her hands, nuzzle her throat, and whimper as she stroked them. She would scratch the bellies of the young ones, luxuriate in their fine hair with sharp-bristled brushes. And then, when they had finished toying with her, they would bite.

And then the methylxanthenes would flood their systems. And then, it was hoped, they will die.

Martrith was NSA, had told Saudé that she would likely be contacted, that she would likely be held up for blame, might die. This action might jeopardize the future of Earth, but it had to be done, now, and ever after, Earth would be more careful in its first contact situations with alien nations.

After tonight, Saudé will go into protective custody, change her name, undergo painful dermabrasion to remove every freckle, sclerotherapy to disguise the veins in her arms which had so attracted the Egelloc-pack to begin with.

Saudé holds out her arms, looks at them in the flickering fluorescent light of the impersonal bathroom stall Slowly, she pulls the thin rubber sash from her pocket, tightens it around her upper arm, frowning slightly at the brief discomfort as the hairs tug. She taps her arm with cold numb fingers, wishing for a junkie’s self-possession, or a diabetic’s steady hands. Martrith has left her only four needles; she needs to do this right. She abrades her arm with the alcohol prep pack, fingers her arm to be sure, then lets the thin hollow of steel bite her arm.

*** *** ***

“Saudé. What an interesting name. Sow-dee. Or is it Show-day?

“Sow-uday.” She smiles pleasantly. “Doesn’t really matter how you say it, though. I know who you’re talking to.”

Noel, standing in the doorway, grins, his laughter coming in silent pants. “Didn’t I say she was a treat? Isn’t she a little beauty?”

“Oh, she is, she is. Well, hop up on the table, won’t you, Saudé, that’s a good girl. And you’re sure you don’t want anything? A little sweet perhaps, or some protein? I know your Red Cross used to give sugar ampoules when humans donated their lifeblood, way back before the synthetics. This isn’t at all the same, but I want to give you something… a treat. Come on, you want a treat, don’t you? Don’t you girl?”

Saudé looks up with a lazy smile. “Treat? I’d like a treat. I’m a good girl. I’m a good girl.”


Spending time with people who mistake their children for pets, and require tricks out of them brought this story to mind. As for the rest – well, I’m always up for a discussion of chocolate and psychosis…just don’t forget that chocolate and artificial sweeteners, will kill a dog, all fictions aside… In other news, the photograph(entitled Blue Nile) is part of hanna.bi’s set, and will likely be riffed off of by the usual Flickr suspects: The Gurrier, Ms. Teaandcakes, Elimare, Chris, Aquafortis, Valshamerlyn, and Miss Mari.

Thoughts On a Reaction

I read an article today that was absolutely grim. It had to do with the terrible recent tragedy in Virginia, and the reaction of many of the Asian American students when the ethnicity of the gunman was announced. As soon as the commentators said “Korean-American,” 18-and-19-year-old students jumped into cars and raced away from campus. They were running home — not because of the threat of an insane and armed hateful student, which was by then, over, but because of the additional fear of angry and vengeful fellow students. The word they used is “backlash.”

What really floored me was the reaction of many other Asian Americans who said, “Whew. At least the shooter wasn’t ______-American.” Fill in the blank with the ethnic group of your choice.

Was I surprised because I felt like the reactions were insensitive and beside the point of the real issue at hand? Yes. But, also, No. I was surprised because it was, once again, one of those reactions that you never articulate, but when you’re an ethnic minority in this country, it’s one of those reactions you have.

When we talk about writing and the right of representation that every child and young adult should have in the literature they read, it seems to me that we’d better be real when we write for these kids: really real.

Sometimes it is a strange, sad world.

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NPR’s National Poetry Month selections have been great! The other day they read what has become a new favorite. People always dream of lost cities and adventures. Maybe Irish poet Eavan Boland has the right idea.

Atlantis — A Lost Sonnet
Eavan Boland

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city — arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals — had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.