Tag: fiction
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How’s it been going?
Excellent!
Joe signed ever so many Executive Orders. The White House dogs have their own official Twitter account. Jill Biden posed with her dogs in a gorgeous white dress with pinafore sleeves. Janet Yellen was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury. A guy named A. Blinken is US Secretary of State. 45 GOP Senators are cowards. Despite last night’s storm, self’s garbage cans were all present and accounted for. And she is still finding her current read, High as the Waters Rise, by first-time novelist Anja Kampmann, engrossing.
The MC’s finally managed to get off that blasted oil rig in the middle of the Atlantic, but he’s suffering from full-on melancholy because he had an unorthodox relationship — friends with benefits? — with a co-worker who got swept off the rig in a storm.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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New COVID Reading, post-Expanse:
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From her novel Blue Water, Distant Shores, which she is re-naming Camarote de Marinero: Voyages
(Also, self is considering not going to AWP, for it would be such a distraction. No kidding. All she would end up doing is hole up in her hotel room, writing. Which she can very well do at home. But ooops, she’ll be charged a penalty. Aargh)
Trigger Warning: Run-On Sentence
To Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth I
From Martin de Rasa, Viceroy of New Spain
June the 8th, 1579
A Relation of the Circumstances of the Loss of the Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion
80 pounds of gold, 26 pounds of silver, 13 chests of silver coins, and jewels (pearls, jades, rubies, and other precious stones) for which the residents of Manila demand restitution. For that cargo was intended for the Audiencia, and other vital instruments of government in these Islands. And now the soldiers must go unpaid, and are close to mutiny.
But, truly, Viceroy of New Spain, why should Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth I care if Spanish soldiers are close to mutiny? lol
Self has just introduced SIR FRANCIS DRAKE into her narrative.
Stay tuned.
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Self is constantly tweaking her reading list. She likes to binge-read by theme. One year, she read nothing but travel books. Another year, she read only books written by women. Last year, she limited her reading to books written about, or on, islands.
Right now, self is interested in houses. Houses exude such a sense of permanence, they are wonderful to read about, especially during the holidays.
Currently reading: The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
A Very Short List: Novels About Houses
- André Dubus’s House of Sand and Fog
- Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (Manderley!)
- Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle
- E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End
- Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
- Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey
- Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows (Toad Hall!)
- Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm
- V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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from self’s novel:
- It has a circuit of nearly a hundred leagues and a length of about fifty leagues, for it is very narrow. At the two extremities it is, at the widest place, about twenty leagues wide. All along the coast are to be found bays that curve in different directions.
This, dear blog readers, is self’s mythical island in the central Philippines. The place where her ambitious MC (a priest!) lives out his life, in the 18th century.
Stay tuned.
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Grace Loh Prasad curated, Roy Kamada’s Grey Matter has just posted.
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.
More goodness — from Caroline Kim Brown and Grace herself — to follow.
Grace’s introductory essay, here.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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From the Introduction by Grace Loh Prasad:
A hand or patch over one eye. A rainbow flag. A kneeling athlete. An eggplant emoji. A thumb pointing down.
What do these have in common? They are all symbols, representing something more than what is literally pictured. A symbol is a kind of sign — at its simplest, a unit of meaning. Whether they’re labels for places or ideas, indicators of prestige or health, or warnings of what’s ahead, signs operate at a level deeper than language. A sign is like a boat, but instead of water it navigates through meaning, through a shared set of references within a community.
Read the rest of the introduction, here.
Stay tuned.
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Excerpt, work-in-progress
Genre: Fantasy/Horror
Status: 52 pp.
Working Title: The Rorqual
It began with the discovery of a ship, sailing languidly along the ice-clotted harbor. It seemed meandering, yet sure of purpose. It drifted toward shore, riding high in the water.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 