Angelia Sparrow's Blog, page 5
October 14, 2015
Let's talk about depression
Depression runs in my family. Not virulently, just a low-grade background for the women of the Tanner line.
Melvina Tanner my great-great-great grandmother died in the state asylum. She was a psychopath.
Grandma Jones, her daughter, spent a year in bed after losing two children in the same year.
Grandma O'Neill had low grade depression all her life. She coped, supported herself after being widowed and even enjoyed a late second marriage.
Grandma Wymer would have denied she was depressed, She carried on with frantic energy, cleaning, cooking, working, always busy, always on the run from silence and being alone.
My mother fought it. She didn't always win. The baseline memory of my childhood is coming home and mom was in bed. She did not work outside the home after she got pregnant with my sister in 73, until 1983, when she went back to nursing.
I fight it.
Some days I cope. I adult. I go to work, I handle the house. Some days I accomplish much, above and beyond the basics. Some days, I sit in the recliner with kittens atop me and crochet my way through too many episodes of the TV show du jour. Some days I lie in bed and stare at the walls. Sometimes I can harness the depression and write books.
But always, the depression lies to me. Always, it tells me I can't. Always, it and chronic pain steal my energy, my enthusiasm. The only question is, how hard am I fighting today? How loud is it? Sometimes the lies are whispers and the pain is low. On these days I accomplish much. Sometimes it shouts and the pain is high. On these days, we eat too many hot pockets.
I make things.
Beautiful things come off my hooks and needles, and yet, all I hear in my head is jokes about the ugly homemade sweaters and mental words about how old-fashioned and tacky crochet is. Because I can make the afghan, but I can't do the painting. (My grandmother did the painting in the photo) I can't draw. I can't sing. How can I consider myself artistic?
The depression lies. I know it lies. And yet, it is so pervasive, such a mental background noise, that I have to be alert to it every minute or it gets me.
My daughters fight it.
Oli wears a semi-colon tattoo to remind her that she needs to keep going. She battles chronic pain and sometimes it all gets the better of her.
I got her this for the bad days:
Yeah, it's a celebrity based t-shirt (the guys from Supernatural).
Knowing that other people have this--even famous people-- and that she isn't alone seems to help more than anything.
Remember, if you have it, if you love someone who has it, we're listening to a voice that lies to us constantly. A voice that tells us we're second rate, useless, worthless. And some days, we can't hear you loving us over it. And we don't love ourselves. How can we? If you knew what we were, you wouldn't love us either, the depression tells us.
So we fight. And the volume changes day by day, minute by minute. Sometimes, we can change this ourselves. Sometimes we find our Guide who helps us learn to dial it down. (Yes, "Sentinel" reference) But we keep going, minute by minute sometime.
I don't know if it ever ends. I don't know if I'll ever get better, But I do know, I want to see if it does.
Melvina Tanner my great-great-great grandmother died in the state asylum. She was a psychopath.
Grandma Jones, her daughter, spent a year in bed after losing two children in the same year.
Grandma O'Neill had low grade depression all her life. She coped, supported herself after being widowed and even enjoyed a late second marriage.
Grandma Wymer would have denied she was depressed, She carried on with frantic energy, cleaning, cooking, working, always busy, always on the run from silence and being alone.
My mother fought it. She didn't always win. The baseline memory of my childhood is coming home and mom was in bed. She did not work outside the home after she got pregnant with my sister in 73, until 1983, when she went back to nursing.
I fight it.
Some days I cope. I adult. I go to work, I handle the house. Some days I accomplish much, above and beyond the basics. Some days, I sit in the recliner with kittens atop me and crochet my way through too many episodes of the TV show du jour. Some days I lie in bed and stare at the walls. Sometimes I can harness the depression and write books.
But always, the depression lies to me. Always, it tells me I can't. Always, it and chronic pain steal my energy, my enthusiasm. The only question is, how hard am I fighting today? How loud is it? Sometimes the lies are whispers and the pain is low. On these days I accomplish much. Sometimes it shouts and the pain is high. On these days, we eat too many hot pockets.
I make things.
Beautiful things come off my hooks and needles, and yet, all I hear in my head is jokes about the ugly homemade sweaters and mental words about how old-fashioned and tacky crochet is. Because I can make the afghan, but I can't do the painting. (My grandmother did the painting in the photo) I can't draw. I can't sing. How can I consider myself artistic?The depression lies. I know it lies. And yet, it is so pervasive, such a mental background noise, that I have to be alert to it every minute or it gets me.
My daughters fight it.
Oli wears a semi-colon tattoo to remind her that she needs to keep going. She battles chronic pain and sometimes it all gets the better of her.
I got her this for the bad days:
Yeah, it's a celebrity based t-shirt (the guys from Supernatural).Knowing that other people have this--even famous people-- and that she isn't alone seems to help more than anything.
Remember, if you have it, if you love someone who has it, we're listening to a voice that lies to us constantly. A voice that tells us we're second rate, useless, worthless. And some days, we can't hear you loving us over it. And we don't love ourselves. How can we? If you knew what we were, you wouldn't love us either, the depression tells us.
So we fight. And the volume changes day by day, minute by minute. Sometimes, we can change this ourselves. Sometimes we find our Guide who helps us learn to dial it down. (Yes, "Sentinel" reference) But we keep going, minute by minute sometime.
I don't know if it ever ends. I don't know if I'll ever get better, But I do know, I want to see if it does.
October 10, 2015
My Sexy Saturday: All About the Sexy
This week, a bit from "Blood Roses" in Hungry Hearts
Hungry Hearts Ebook from Inkstained Succcubus
Your Seven Sexy Paragraphs:
“My mother's roses. My father did the same when he proposed to her, years ago. I started the cuttings when I knew I wanted to marry you. I've planted five of them, for five is a magical number,” he told her. “Solomon's Seal of Truth had five points. It has the five senses. It has the four limbs and the heart, for what is conceived in the heart is done by the hands and feet. It is the five wounds of our Blessed Savior. It means I love you.” He pricked his index finger on the first bush and let five drops of blood fall on the disturbed earth at its base. “I will be true to you.” He pricked his middle finger and let five more fall at the base of the second bush. “I will be chaste for you.” His ring finger bled for the third. “I will remember you.” His smallest finger put its five drops at the base of the fourth. He held up his thumb. “I will return to you.” That bled on the earth of the fifth rosebush.
Lilah watched, her hands pressed to her mouth, feeling faint at the sight of her fiancé’s bloody fingers. She pulled out her kerchief, took his hand, covered in dirt from the planting and blood from the vows, and wiped it clean.
“When they bloom, I am on my way home to you and we shall be wed, dearest,” Michael said.
Lilah smiled. “That will be lovely. I'll carry them in my wedding bouquet.”
Michael held up his unhurt hand, one finger raised. “But, love, if they wither and die, despite the best of your care, the vows I have made are broken. I will be dead or unable to return to you.”
Lilah covered his lips with her own two fingers. “Hush. That's bad luck. Say a prayer quickly that it will pass you by.” She mumbled under her breath, begging God to not have heard Michael's words. Part of her considered the words silly superstition, a relic of the middle ages, in this day of railroads and telegraphs.
His voyage would be dangerous and there was every chance he might not return. She wanted him back. She wanted to hear his voice in the night, telling her all was well, to see his dark eyes look back from the face of her son, or brush out his fair curls on her daughter's head, before tying a ribbon around them
The Other Sexy People:
Hungry Hearts Ebook from Inkstained Succcubus
Your Seven Sexy Paragraphs:
“My mother's roses. My father did the same when he proposed to her, years ago. I started the cuttings when I knew I wanted to marry you. I've planted five of them, for five is a magical number,” he told her. “Solomon's Seal of Truth had five points. It has the five senses. It has the four limbs and the heart, for what is conceived in the heart is done by the hands and feet. It is the five wounds of our Blessed Savior. It means I love you.” He pricked his index finger on the first bush and let five drops of blood fall on the disturbed earth at its base. “I will be true to you.” He pricked his middle finger and let five more fall at the base of the second bush. “I will be chaste for you.” His ring finger bled for the third. “I will remember you.” His smallest finger put its five drops at the base of the fourth. He held up his thumb. “I will return to you.” That bled on the earth of the fifth rosebush.
Lilah watched, her hands pressed to her mouth, feeling faint at the sight of her fiancé’s bloody fingers. She pulled out her kerchief, took his hand, covered in dirt from the planting and blood from the vows, and wiped it clean.
“When they bloom, I am on my way home to you and we shall be wed, dearest,” Michael said.
Lilah smiled. “That will be lovely. I'll carry them in my wedding bouquet.”
Michael held up his unhurt hand, one finger raised. “But, love, if they wither and die, despite the best of your care, the vows I have made are broken. I will be dead or unable to return to you.”
Lilah covered his lips with her own two fingers. “Hush. That's bad luck. Say a prayer quickly that it will pass you by.” She mumbled under her breath, begging God to not have heard Michael's words. Part of her considered the words silly superstition, a relic of the middle ages, in this day of railroads and telegraphs.
His voyage would be dangerous and there was every chance he might not return. She wanted him back. She wanted to hear his voice in the night, telling her all was well, to see his dark eyes look back from the face of her son, or brush out his fair curls on her daughter's head, before tying a ribbon around them
The Other Sexy People:
October 7, 2015
Let's talk about Post Apocalypse
I got asked, "Can't you envision a post apocalypse that doesn't turn into a rape-ridden hellhole? Are you so limited that you can't believe men and women might work together to survive?"
I looked at my questioner. "Serbia. Rwanda. Pitcairn Island. The Beta Boys. MRAs. And every shooter who did it because 'he didn't have a girlfriend.' I believe some men and women will work together. I believe more men will revert to might makes right and start noticing they have 5 inches of height, 30% more upper body strength and a lot more aggression."
And they thought I was the sad one.
Another week, another campus shooting by a man who was upset that women would not acquiesce sexually as he thought they should. (Shakesville has a good article listing these) More attacks on women's bodily autonomy and health care from terrorists on the street and from our lawmakers.
All I have to do is look and I see a lot of men who don't think women are people, but rather objects for their comfort.
An apocalypse won't change this.
If anything, it will reinforce it.
In Stephen King's The Stand, the character of Fran comes to realize she is not protected by laws and society any more. The only thing standing between her pregnant self and the depredations of the lawless is her own gun and possibly a man of good will. "Women got pregnant and a pregnant woman was a vulnerable human being."
So yes, when I write post-apocalypses, there are going to be horrible people. There are going to be people who set up groups designed to oppress other people. Unless the group has strong female leaders, it will revert right back to male dominance and possibly chattel within a generation or two.
There's a scene in Brian Keene's Dead Sea, where the survivors on a boat are discussing how to negotiate with an oil rig crew. One suggests offering the women as trade goods. A couple agree with him but the captain shuts that down fast.
If one person is thinking like that within less than a month of civilization being gone, more will follow the longer the crisis goes on.
Even in my own post-apoc, the circuit-riding bikers sell women between settlements and get a higher price for pregnant ones. In my zombie apoc, the lady trucker mentions some places are using women as currency.
And because I follow the news and reality and I see the pushback and hate, THAT'S why I write post-apocs as horrible places. Even without the zombies.
I looked at my questioner. "Serbia. Rwanda. Pitcairn Island. The Beta Boys. MRAs. And every shooter who did it because 'he didn't have a girlfriend.' I believe some men and women will work together. I believe more men will revert to might makes right and start noticing they have 5 inches of height, 30% more upper body strength and a lot more aggression."
And they thought I was the sad one.
Another week, another campus shooting by a man who was upset that women would not acquiesce sexually as he thought they should. (Shakesville has a good article listing these) More attacks on women's bodily autonomy and health care from terrorists on the street and from our lawmakers.
All I have to do is look and I see a lot of men who don't think women are people, but rather objects for their comfort.
An apocalypse won't change this.
If anything, it will reinforce it.
In Stephen King's The Stand, the character of Fran comes to realize she is not protected by laws and society any more. The only thing standing between her pregnant self and the depredations of the lawless is her own gun and possibly a man of good will. "Women got pregnant and a pregnant woman was a vulnerable human being."
So yes, when I write post-apocalypses, there are going to be horrible people. There are going to be people who set up groups designed to oppress other people. Unless the group has strong female leaders, it will revert right back to male dominance and possibly chattel within a generation or two.
There's a scene in Brian Keene's Dead Sea, where the survivors on a boat are discussing how to negotiate with an oil rig crew. One suggests offering the women as trade goods. A couple agree with him but the captain shuts that down fast.
If one person is thinking like that within less than a month of civilization being gone, more will follow the longer the crisis goes on.
Even in my own post-apoc, the circuit-riding bikers sell women between settlements and get a higher price for pregnant ones. In my zombie apoc, the lady trucker mentions some places are using women as currency.
And because I follow the news and reality and I see the pushback and hate, THAT'S why I write post-apocs as horrible places. Even without the zombies.
October 1, 2015
Halloween 2015: Lovers and Other Monsters.
Today's post is LOOOOOOONG
It has the music and pictures, but also an excerpt from "Persephone is bleeding" and the full text of "Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogene."
So, the video and a link.
Lovers and Other Monsters
It has the music and pictures, but also an excerpt from "Persephone is bleeding" and the full text of "Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogene."
So, the video and a link.
Lovers and Other Monsters
Halloween 2015: Kitchen Witch Wednesday
Sounds of the season:
Recipe:
I like to drizzle this with white candy coating.
Creepy Pics of the Day:
Hosted by Midnight Margaritas.
Recipe:
I like to drizzle this with white candy coating.
Creepy Pics of the Day:
Hosted by Midnight Margaritas.
September 30, 2015
Notes from all over
It's been busy around here, so just a few things.
I hope you're enjoying the Halloween content. There will be Christmas/Winter Holiday content as well.
We're off to New Orleans this weekend. ConTraFlow is a very good time. After that is Festival of Souls, ConTraception and Geekonomicon.
Terror of the Frozen North got a very good review.
http://thenovelapproachreviews.com/2015/09/19/review-terror-of-the-frozen-north-by-angelia-sparrow-and-naomi-brooks/
At a Glance: Check your reality at the door and immerse yourself in a really good book – this one!
A political note: check your voter registration! If you plan to vote in a primary, now's the time to make sure you are registered.
I hope you're enjoying the Halloween content. There will be Christmas/Winter Holiday content as well.
We're off to New Orleans this weekend. ConTraFlow is a very good time. After that is Festival of Souls, ConTraception and Geekonomicon.
Terror of the Frozen North got a very good review.
http://thenovelapproachreviews.com/2015/09/19/review-terror-of-the-frozen-north-by-angelia-sparrow-and-naomi-brooks/
At a Glance: Check your reality at the door and immerse yourself in a really good book – this one!
A political note: check your voter registration! If you plan to vote in a primary, now's the time to make sure you are registered.
Halloween 2015: Tuesday Witch-crafting
Sounds of the Season:
Witch-Crafts:
These are one of my favorite decorations. You can see many of them at any Literary Underworld room party.
http://theanticraft.com/archive/samhain08/dollarstoredeath.htm
The Angel
Primed
Basic beginning fill. She'll get facial features and highlights soon.
Your Creepy pic of the Day
Because there is no end to the talent of the mentally warped.
Witch-Crafts:
These are one of my favorite decorations. You can see many of them at any Literary Underworld room party.
http://theanticraft.com/archive/samhain08/dollarstoredeath.htm
The Angel
Primed
Basic beginning fill. She'll get facial features and highlights soon.
Your Creepy pic of the Day
Because there is no end to the talent of the mentally warped.
September 29, 2015
Guest Post: Elizabeth Donald on horror
We're pleased to have a guest here, taking tea in the Gazebo. I've known Elizabeth for 11 years now, and have enjoyed her work. She's blog-touring right now, to get the word out about Nocturne Infernum.
Take it away, EKD. And mind the raisins, one's trying to crawl off the muffin.
Horror is all about subverting people’s expectations. In most fiction, readers expect certain structures to remain in place. The good guys will stay good, the bad guys will stay bad, the couple in love will end up together and evil will be properly punished.
Horror turns all that on its ear. Sometimes the good guys are doing the worst things imaginable, while the bad guy’s argument has a solid point to it. Sometimes the couple in love gets separated by fate and never gets back together again. And sometimes, evil wins, and everyone left standing has to figure out what to do with themselves.
To that extent, horror is sometimes a more true representation of real life than any other form of fiction, even if it is the genre that focuses on snarly beasties and things that go chomp in the night. Real life is messy, and sometimes the ending sucks. Such as it is in horror.
Sometimes the horror is based on another reality, a fantasy world that operates by its own rules.
Magic exists, goblins lurk in the corners and if something’s out of place, a wizard did it. That can be fun, because any time you get bored, you can invent something to shake things up. Your monsters are wholly your own creation, and if you decide that they can change their shapes and fly as well, that’s your world.
Then there’s the horror based in our own world. It’s the icky germ that turns people into flesh-eating zombies, or the serial killer that skulks through the alleys outside the bars.
In either case, the rules matter. Even if a wizard did it, the rules governing the magic must be consistent. If the spell doesn’t work on dogs in Chapter 3, it can’t work on dogs in Chapter 15 unless you’ve got a solid non-cheating reason why. Nothing causes a reader to throw a book across the room faster than a writer who’s cheating.
And what’s more, we writers know when we’re cheating. We just hope nobody notices.
My favorite kind of horror is the kind that falls in between real-world horror and the fantastical reality. By day, I write about real horror. I write about murders and car crashes and the mundanity of the real world. Most real-life violence is brutish and stupid, drunken fury that ends a life and leaves a perpetrator standing over the mess wondering what the hell just happened. It doesn’t make for good fiction, just nightmares.
But I never can get completely away from the real world. These days, horror likes to hide under words like “dark fantasy” or “urban fantasy,” as though the horrors skulking in city alleys need softer words to describe them. The Nocturne series lies between absolute fantasy and the real world by imagining an alternate version of reality: what if vampires walk among us, but they’re considered second-class citizens without the same legal rights as humans?
They work the night shift. They work the jobs humans don’t want because they’re too messy or too dangerous. They can’t get sick and they never die, but they’re very strong, so they make the perfect workers. And because they don’t have the same rights as the rest of us, you don’t have to worry about how they’re treated.
Melinda Snodgrass wrote it 26 years ago in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, calling them “disposable people.” Of course, she was writing about androids – or was she? Haven’t we always had disposable people, doing the hard jobs on the night shift?
I based my alternate Memphis in the Nocturne books on the Jim Crow laws of the 20th century. Those laws created a legal structure in which two races had two different systems of justice, of society, of life and death – systems we are still unraveling today. And those stories don’t always have a happy ending, as we all know.
Horror is about more than the thing crawling under the bed or the guy with the knife in the alley. Horror tells us things about ourselves, often things we don’t want to know. And if you can’t guess the ending, we have done our jobs as horror writers.
Elizabeth Donald is a dark fiction writer fond of things that go chomp in the night. She is a three-time winner of the Darrell Award for speculative fiction and author of the Nocturne vampire mystery series and Blackfire zombie series, as well as other novels and short stories in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. She is the founder of the Literary Underworld author cooperative; an award-winning newspaper reporter and lecturer on journalism ethics; a nature and art photographer; freelance editor and writing coach. She lives with her husband and her son in a haunted house in Illinois. In her spare time, she has no spare time. Her latest release is Nocturne Infernum, a trilogy of vampire mysteries set in a dark alternate Memphis.
Website: www.elizabethdonald.comBlog: literaryunderworld.blogspot.comTwitter: @edonald
Take it away, EKD. And mind the raisins, one's trying to crawl off the muffin.
Horror is all about subverting people’s expectations. In most fiction, readers expect certain structures to remain in place. The good guys will stay good, the bad guys will stay bad, the couple in love will end up together and evil will be properly punished.
Horror turns all that on its ear. Sometimes the good guys are doing the worst things imaginable, while the bad guy’s argument has a solid point to it. Sometimes the couple in love gets separated by fate and never gets back together again. And sometimes, evil wins, and everyone left standing has to figure out what to do with themselves.
To that extent, horror is sometimes a more true representation of real life than any other form of fiction, even if it is the genre that focuses on snarly beasties and things that go chomp in the night. Real life is messy, and sometimes the ending sucks. Such as it is in horror.
Sometimes the horror is based on another reality, a fantasy world that operates by its own rules.
Magic exists, goblins lurk in the corners and if something’s out of place, a wizard did it. That can be fun, because any time you get bored, you can invent something to shake things up. Your monsters are wholly your own creation, and if you decide that they can change their shapes and fly as well, that’s your world.
Then there’s the horror based in our own world. It’s the icky germ that turns people into flesh-eating zombies, or the serial killer that skulks through the alleys outside the bars.
In either case, the rules matter. Even if a wizard did it, the rules governing the magic must be consistent. If the spell doesn’t work on dogs in Chapter 3, it can’t work on dogs in Chapter 15 unless you’ve got a solid non-cheating reason why. Nothing causes a reader to throw a book across the room faster than a writer who’s cheating.
And what’s more, we writers know when we’re cheating. We just hope nobody notices.
My favorite kind of horror is the kind that falls in between real-world horror and the fantastical reality. By day, I write about real horror. I write about murders and car crashes and the mundanity of the real world. Most real-life violence is brutish and stupid, drunken fury that ends a life and leaves a perpetrator standing over the mess wondering what the hell just happened. It doesn’t make for good fiction, just nightmares.
But I never can get completely away from the real world. These days, horror likes to hide under words like “dark fantasy” or “urban fantasy,” as though the horrors skulking in city alleys need softer words to describe them. The Nocturne series lies between absolute fantasy and the real world by imagining an alternate version of reality: what if vampires walk among us, but they’re considered second-class citizens without the same legal rights as humans?
They work the night shift. They work the jobs humans don’t want because they’re too messy or too dangerous. They can’t get sick and they never die, but they’re very strong, so they make the perfect workers. And because they don’t have the same rights as the rest of us, you don’t have to worry about how they’re treated.
Melinda Snodgrass wrote it 26 years ago in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, calling them “disposable people.” Of course, she was writing about androids – or was she? Haven’t we always had disposable people, doing the hard jobs on the night shift?
I based my alternate Memphis in the Nocturne books on the Jim Crow laws of the 20th century. Those laws created a legal structure in which two races had two different systems of justice, of society, of life and death – systems we are still unraveling today. And those stories don’t always have a happy ending, as we all know.
Horror is about more than the thing crawling under the bed or the guy with the knife in the alley. Horror tells us things about ourselves, often things we don’t want to know. And if you can’t guess the ending, we have done our jobs as horror writers.
Elizabeth Donald is a dark fiction writer fond of things that go chomp in the night. She is a three-time winner of the Darrell Award for speculative fiction and author of the Nocturne vampire mystery series and Blackfire zombie series, as well as other novels and short stories in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres. She is the founder of the Literary Underworld author cooperative; an award-winning newspaper reporter and lecturer on journalism ethics; a nature and art photographer; freelance editor and writing coach. She lives with her husband and her son in a haunted house in Illinois. In her spare time, she has no spare time. Her latest release is Nocturne Infernum, a trilogy of vampire mysteries set in a dark alternate Memphis.
Website: www.elizabethdonald.comBlog: literaryunderworld.blogspot.comTwitter: @edonald
September 28, 2015
Halloween 2015: Monday miscellany
Mondays have no theme. Tuesdays are crafts. Kitchen Witch Wednesday will resume. Thursdays are an open day. Pie Friday continues. Saturday is story time with links to free reads. Sunday is movie rec day. Hope you enjoy this year!
Sounds of the season:
Creepy pics of the Day:
Hosted by Pusheen
Sounds of the season:
Creepy pics of the Day:
Hosted by Pusheen
Halloween 2015: Let's get the party started
(this is yesterday's post from LJ. I'll keep up from here on)
Sounds of the Season:
Your Sunday Cinema rec:
Your Creepy Pics of the Day:
Sounds of the Season:
Your Sunday Cinema rec:
Your Creepy Pics of the Day:
