Organizing My Ink Samples

Here's a project I recently completed which made me very happy. Since the fall of 2021, I've been exploring fountain pens and inks. I feel a draw toward color, so I've been gathering ink samples at a decent rate, helped by gifts and sales. I found myself with 131 unique colors in my sample collection, and decided to organize them. 

Here's the sample vials after my sort. I put a white label dot on top of each vial and swipe the ink across the dot with a paintbrush. 

The color that goes onto the dot isn't always a good reflection of how the ink will look in a pen. For a better reference—and because it would be a beautiful creation in itself!—I used a dip pen to write out the name of each ink. The paper is Tomoe River within a Sterling Ink notebook. 

This project took me several weeks, and, of course, included many judgment calls! 

I hope you enjoy the pictures! With all my best wishes, Anna

A Romcom with Zombies?

I was a little nervous when I saw that Olivia Dade's next romance was called Zom Rom Com. Although an occasional book pulls it off, zombies are not easy to make attractive.

Fortunately, the zombies are a challenge that the heroine and hero face together. Soon after other supernatural types reveal themselves, an experiment in creating supersoldiers goes terribly wrong, creating mindless, hungering creatures with a contagious bite. Each for their own reason, our heroine and hero are living in the second containment circle when the zombies escape. They quickly find they have to work together to survive. 

All of Dade's usual skills are here: well-rounded and attractive characters, humorous moments, a believable journey for the heroine and hero to learn more about each other and deepen attraction into love, good dialogue, and excellent pacing. She's put the love scenes in focus and the violence a little hazy, which I appreciated. And she added a new venture into world-building, and did well with it. The set-up of the various supernatural beings made enough sense to keep me in the story, and she's thought about the consequences of the changes she's made to the world. I could believe in how the world worked. 

I was immediately engaged with the story, and I enjoyed it all the way through. There were a couple surprises that I won't spoil here. The twists kept the story fresh. The main characters have a happy ending, and the world clearly has more stories to tell. I will be eager to see the next book! 

I received an early copy of the book in return for my offer to write honestly about it in a timely fashion. I was happy to have it! I read all of Olivia Dade's books, and having a deadline helped me emerge and write something. So, thank you, Olivia Dade, for the book, for all the stories, and for bringing me out to blog. 

My Latest Encounter with the Cat Distribution System

I’d decided I didn’t want to replace our cats. Pumpkin had died and Pike was getting old. We could see stiffness in his morning stretches, and at night, he became confused and cried. 

So when a white, scrappy, and feral cat began parading two kittens through our back yard, I resisted.

I was working! That backyard view was to make my professional hours more productive!

Sometimes, I would go as far as chasing away the cats. 

The one who lingered the most was a tortoiseshell fluffball. I’d go out and open the back gate, and approach her, and she would run. She always took the same path—down the side yard to the closed gate, then swirling and zipping back past me to the far corner, then to the open gate and out into the alley. 

Then I’d close the gate and go back to work.

Doug consented to the idea of no more cats, and tried to help by naming the black boy cat Nightmare. That kitten was quite a charmer. He’d come right up to us and stretch the top of his head toward our hands, which Doug would narrate as, “You can pet my head if ya wanna.” He’d rub against our legs and purr. 

Doug’s parents came to visit, and they started calling the white, feral cat Momma Cat. Momma Cat would nudge Nightmare toward us, then lurk in the alley to watch. It was like she was interviewing us to see if we would be good parents. 

The final straw came one day as Doug and I were watching through the window. The two kittens, now adolescents, were lounging across the yard, Nightmare relaxed and elegant and the fluffball with resting tortie face. When Momma Cat came in, the girl kitten raised her tail, obviously happy, and approached to nurse. Momma Cat looked right at us, and batted her away. “She’s your responsibility now,” she told us.

So ten years ago, I lost a battle of will with the cat distribution system. We started feeding the kittens. The black kitten was far too sweet to keep calling Nightmare, so we renamed him Banichi. With her swirls of grey, tan, and orange, we named the girl Caramel. 

Doug died almost two years ago. Caramel and Banichi have been immense, ongoing comforts to me.  I really should have known all along: cats are more important than work.

 

A Long Gap

Hello, world. 

I see my last post was in late 2021. I looked at that date, and suddenly I forgave myself for not writing. The harbingers of the pandemic had whispered through the airports and supermarkets for two years. Time had gone weird. No wonder I suddenly found myself too distracted and depleted to find a first sentence inspiring. 

Then, in 2023, Doug, my husband of 37 years, died. We were like two trees grown together, entangled roots and branches, so that when one fell, the other was left unbalanced, showing gaps, and listing. At a tree's pace, I extended my roots and spread my branches into some of the gaps. My future, which whited out as all the visions I had of us doing things together erased themselves, is beginning to have shapes and colors again. 

I've received an outpouring of support I never expected over these past years. The best learnings of incredibly difficult times are discovering that people will help. Doug's family, my closest co-mourners, never blinked at continuing to include me. I discovered safety nets I didn't know existed until I needed them. I'm very appreciative, and I wish for all other people to find the same support when they need it. 

So, here I am. I'm once again helping people write better books. I'm once again having story ideas. And I'm once again posting some thoughts to the Internet. 

I wish you well. 

A Closed and Common Orbit

 

I first read Becky Chambers' work when her story, "To Be Taught, If Fortunate," was a Hugo nominee. I liked it, and planned to read more. Her most recent book, A Psalm for the Wild Built, was lovely and reassuring, and I went on to read all of the Wayfarers series. 

Of these works, the first sentence that interested me most came from A Closed and Common Orbit, book two of the Wayfarers series: "Lovelace had been in a body for twenty-eight minutes, and it still felt every bit as wrong as it had the second she woke up in it."

There's a lot to unpack here. We have a character, Lovelace. She has a problem – something feels very wrong. Character plus problem is a first sentence formula that can fit any genre. 

Lovelace's specific problem, however, takes up the rest of the sentence, and shows us that the world is not our own. 

First, she "had been in a body" – this is a curious way to relate to a body. Lovelace is drawing a very clear line between the body and herself. Since she has only been there "for twenty-eight minutes," she is accustomed to not being in a body. Lovelace is a person – giving her the personal pronoun "she" in English implies that, as does giving her a name – yet she is a non-bodied person. It's not just that she's unaccustomed to this body; "a body," with the indefinite article "a," implies that there's nothing special about this body – any body would feel wrong to her. 

Next, that length of time – "for twenty-eight minutes" is both precise and short. Lovelace doesn't call it half an hour. Also, she expects that half an hour is enough for her to start feeling better about the body. If she were a newly born human, she wouldn't measure time that closely, nor would she expect to become comfortable that quickly. Her consciousness is well-developed before having a body, and she expects half an hour to make a noticeable difference to her. 

We see that from the word "still" – after half an hour, the body "still" feels wrong. In fact, it feels "every bit as wrong as it had the second she woke up in it." In other words, she was aware of the body from her first second in it, and she is painfully aware that her discomfort in it hasn't changed at all. 

This sentence promises us a world in which an intelligence can move into a body and a close examination of how that person feels about living in that body. A Closed and Common Orbit delivers on those promises. 

I hope, wherever you are, you are comfortable in your skin. Whether you are or aren't, Lovelace's story reflects on bodies and selves in an illuminating mirror with a twist. Such mirrors are one of the strengths of fiction set in other worlds. 

Graphic elements by Ken Silbert

Another Vacation Day!

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. And I am thankful for all of you who read this.  

The Best Thing You Can Steal

This week's first sentence is another library find, a recent novel from a prolific English author. I found The Best Thing You Can Steal by Simon R. Green rollicking and clever. The first sentence begins building a world with a strong dash of style: "There is a world beneath the world, where magic and horrors run free, wonders and miracles are everyday things, and the dark streets are full of very shadowy people."

It's a lovely sentence to read aloud. It's long, but thoughtfully divided into sections by the commas. It has an understated rhythm, not quite falling into an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. It reminded me of poetry, and I went looking for why. I found this attractive pattern: in a sentence divided into four by the commas, the first phrase has eight syllables, the second phrase has eight syllables, the third and fourth phrases both have twelve syllables. 

Now, let's look at the words. 

The first phrase is an elegant definition of the secret history genre: "There is a world beneath the world." The conventions of that genre are that on the surface, we see the world we know. Beneath it, known to only a few, the rules are different. Men in Black, stories of worlds through secret doors, and most vampire novels belong to this genre. 

The remaining phrases describe the hidden world. "Where magic and horrors run free" – since magic is often appealing, while horror is frightening, this phrase suggests that the hidden world is a place of both wonder and dread. 

"Wonders and miracles are everyday things" – both "wonders" and "miracles" have positive connotations. The contrast in this phrase is between the heightened, uncommon, and magical experiences and the bland and common "everyday things." 

The fourth and final phrase leans to the hidden: "and the dark streets are full of very shadowy people." Both "dark" and "shadowy" suggest things that are hard to see. "Shadowy people" can also mean criminals. This is another case of loading the most ominous words at the end of the sentence. 

Until I wrote that paragraph, I hadn't noticed the association in this sentence between dark and dangerous. That's a point worth considering. Many people feel more vulnerable when it is harder to see. Many White people also feel that Black or brown-skinned people are dangerous. It's difficult to become aware and stop making that second association when the language is ubiquitous yet unexamined. I'm glad that looking at this sentence reminded me of that point. 

Reading a wide variety of viewpoints helps develop broader empathy and stronger reading skills. I recommend it. 

Graphic elements by Ken Silbert

Photo by Dale Nibbe on Unsplash