Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 150

A book cover for Pen Pal

Thanks to everyone's good advice, I decided to go with a photo for the book cover. I did have one more idea for a drawn cover, but what I'm realizing more and more is that in some cases my own instincts are just . . . dead wrong. And while one of the delights of self-publishing is being able to do things as you like, on the other hand, there's that huge hurdle of trying to reach people. A savvy self-publishing friend of mine put me on the trail of a very friendly, very talented cover designer...

(Brief observation)

I kept a calendar of events for Pen Pal as I was writing it--I set the events in 2013--so that I could be sure things would work out (in terms of time it would take for letters to get to places, news to travel, etc.)

Now on iCalendar they keep on popping up. It's unnerving. Tomorrow a plot-central event happens.

more about Anaïs Mitchell's Janet and Tam Lin

I had so much I wanted to say, and instead I merely went through the lyrics...

But here is what it is: it's the wildness of both of them, he, the wild shade, she, the fiercely independent girl.

Here's what I said to sovay :

Can't you just imagine Janet at home? Moody, sharp-tongued, full of undirected desires. And him--a mere conjuring, a mere echo. A self-proclaimed tutelary spirit of rose bushes that aren't his. But they find a way to come together. I find that so moving.

And I was saying to c...

A Wild Shade

I’ve been wanting to talk about Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer’s “Tam Lin” for some time. It’s got an absolutely beautiful, melancholy melody, but it’s the words--the poetry Mitchell has used for her retelling--that gets to me.



The story of Tam Lin is well known: the seeming fairy lover who’s actually a human captive of the fairies, whom the heroine rescues by holding him tight through terrifying transformations. It’s often retold or riffed on--one of my favorite updating/retellings of it...

A remarkable 50-year pen pal relationship

In 2006, an LJ friend of mine was going through papers that had belonged to her mother, who had passed away. She came across two letters, written in 1980 by a woman searching for my LJ friend’s mother. The letters, addressed to the mayors of towns where the woman thought my friend’s mother might be, said

In 1933 I received a letter from an 11 year old girl ... who wrote, ‘Though I’m not an American, I hope that the bond of faithfulness will ever link our hearts.’ Thus a beautiful friendship b...

Back handsprings, sun songs, and doorknobs

On the lawn of the church, a girl, maybe ten, maybe twelve years old, was doing back handsprings. It was such a joy to watch. One two three! And then cartwheels. I was on my bike, heading in a different direction, but I detoured up beside her.

"Can you do another of those back handsprings?" I asked. Melanie, the protagonist of Majestico's Pocket Circus, a trunked novel of mine, learns to do back handsprings. (Do you know who wants to be able to do a back handspring? ME!)

"How do you know what...

B-Town Fair 2013

Alas, I'm working this weekend and can't spend as much time at the fair as I'd like to, but I did get up to see the high school band perform at the library and in front of the judges' stand on the parade route, and I snapped a few pictures.

Kids waiting for the parade to begin



He has his hoodie on in reverse, so he can catch the candy that the parade participants throw out to the kids along the route



The draft horses are waiting for the pulling event



Before the parade, the high school band always...

on the other hand....

A few thoughts on The Act of Killing

Last night I went to see Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary The Act of Killing, which invites death squad executioners from Indondesia's 1965 mass murder of those identified as Communists to reminisce about their deeds. It was a pretty surreal experience.

Anwar Congo (right), who killed hundreds, getting made up to look like one of his victims



I came to it with maybe slightly more background than most American viewers because I'm interested in and have read about Indonesian history, but only in...

Vigilante Espresso: If only

Vigilante Espresso, like many impetuous novice poetry writers, seems to think that a ragged right margin = poetry. Not quite, VE, not quite. Don't read his poem as complacency with regard to other people's suffering--he's Vigilante Espresso! He's angry that people suffer! He would definitely like see people's burdens lightened. Not just poets' and artists' burdens, though, so that they can get on with creating art. No, it has to be everyone's burdens. And I don't think he'd think there was an...