Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 45

latest adventures in chalk drawing

You know when you photocopy something from a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy--you know how generations down from the master, the results get a little weird-looking? The image or text is shrunken, and bits have somehow ceased to transfer, and other bits get blobby, and maybe the whole thing is streaked or gray, or misaligned now? That's what my mind-on-pandemic-and-Trump feels like. In an effort to get back to the master copy, I've been doing things like ....

New chalk drawing! I copied th...

reading...

I"m going to have to ration Murderbot. For one thing, I don't want to rush through all the books and be all done. For another... I'm not in the habit of buying books as if they were iTunes songs, and $10+ is a lot for a novella, even a good one. So I'm going to wait to get the next Murderbot book until September. I did spend money on a book though--I just got the ebook of If You Can Get It and will enjoy that, I can tell.

sleeper hit of the month

This morning, since I have a dearth of paid work, and since the topic is tangentially related to something I'm writing, I watched a simply fabulous 47-minute video on Singapore's transshipment port.

I've always been fascinated by ports--or as fascinated as a person can be who's never actually hung out at any. They're such complex systems, and so important! So much going on. And the port in Singapore is especially so--the video claims it's the world's busiest.

Oh man, the video was just so well ...

map of a land I'd like to visit

I realized that the charming watermelon I'd bought at a farm stand came with a map imprinted on its rind--I guess all watermelons do; how did I not notice?



It's a map of a wetland, rivers threading through buoyant land--the dark green is the rivers, the light green is the land, but you can see how streamlets are woven right into the land. You can travel by boat along the rivers, and the marshgrass is so high no one will see you the next river over.

Watermelons keep these maps on their rinds becau...

Reading Wednesday ON A WEDNESDAY YESSSS

I zoomed through All Systems Red, the first of Martha Wells's Murderbot stories, and enjoyed it as much as I'd hoped I would, which was enough that I've already bought it for half my children. Among other things, I love the *competence* of Murderbot. Competence, suppressed or understated emotions, loyalty/dedication--OMG so my jam.

The action centers around Murderbot, a SecUnit (human-bot composite person created as a security unit) assigned to protect a planetary survey team. Murderbot has no g...

Wednesday reading, once again on Thursday

I finished up Consolation Stories--a strong finish with "Of a Female Stranger" by Jeannelle M. Ferreira and "Love, Your Flatmate" by Stephanie Burgis.

It's hard to talk about "Of a Female Stranger" without giving key information away that you might enjoy coming upon yourself, but two things I can mention: one is that the protagonist, Theo, moves these days through the world with her gender disguised, or maybe not recognized, and more significantly, that's not the only thing about her that's not a...

divine kiss

I dreamed I was in a foreign country (it started out as Timor-Leste, but what followed was not like anything I experienced there or that I've ever read about Timorese tradition, so let's just call it a foreign country), and I stumbled across an outdoor festival/spiritual event. People were standing in a big circle, singing, and tall, tall (on stilts?) costumed beings were in the center.

They beckoned me into the ring and said something about gods or spirits or wisdom or such-like, and I had a vi...

Wednesday reading: the Thursday edition

So those two stories in Consolation Stories that I mentioned last entry--I think I’m going to write about them one at a time. Today will “This Is New Gehesran Calling,” by Rebecca Fraimow (on here as skygiants , though I have had the hardest time linking that name and her author name in my head).

I *loved* this story. I was so absorbed by every detail of it—it was truly wonderful, and perfect for the anthology. It’s about a pirate radio broadcast to a very far-flung set of refugees, and how the br...

No power--ETA: it came back! A whole day and couple of hours early!

The tropical storm
Or almost. We have a solar battery (long story for another day...), which we got for just such an eventuality, and it gives us electricity for *some* ci...

added to the mandala

I added another ring of leaves and sealed everything in with some blue:



Here are some details. I love the step down and the crack:

( details )

Maaaaybe, colorwise, I preferred it when I ended with the yellow, but that's okay. Things grow and change. It's supposed to rain at around 2 pm today; I wonder what it will look like after that.

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