Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 52

It's here! Please share w/anyone needing a fairy tale pick-me-up

The Gown of Harmonies is now live!



All money raised will go to THE FOOD BANK OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS, which serves the western Massachusetts counties of Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire (my county), and Hampden (home of two cities with very high poverty rates: Springfield and Holyoke).

Many of you have probably read this story already, back when it came out in It Happened at the Ball, but if you know anyone who'd like a pleasant, novelette-length distraction of the balls-and-fairies sort, maybe...

coming soon: "The Gown of Harmonies" ebook

"The Gown of Harmonies" was a story of mine that was included in Sherwood Smith's anthology It Happened at the Ball--various stories centering on or involving a ball. The exclusivity period is over, so I thought I'd offer it as as an ebook. (Actually, I had wanted to do a paperback too, but that turned out not to be possible, or at least not possible using the store of energy that I have available to pursue the matter.)

Here is the cover!



Any minute now... or anyway, in the next couple of...

What to do with 66,000 pounds of surplus dragon fruit?

I heard this story on BBC World News, but the online links I could find with the best images were from this Business Insider story by Kate Taylor.

The founder of ABC Bakery in Ho Chi Minh city found that thousands of pounds of red dragon fruit were going unsold out in the Vietnamese countryside because Vietnam had closed its borders with China, the main buyer. So this bakery began buying the fruits and using them in their baked goods:

pink baguettes

(photo: Kate Taylor)

pink buns

(photo: Angela...

my amabie

I did her as a celphalopod, sort of. My thought was that her three legs were arms, and her arms were arms, and her long hair was also arms. But I gave her hands on her arm-arms. Why? I don't know.



Also here are some flying amabie to bless your day.

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Draw the amabie!

Wakanomori introduced me to the Japanese legend of the amabie. Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

Amabie (アマビエ) is a legendary Japanese mermaid or merman with 3 legs, who allegedly emerges from the sea and prophesies either an abundant harvest or an epidemic ... An amabie appeared in Higo Province (Kumamoto Prefecture) according to legend, around the middle of the fourth month, in the year Kōka-3 (mid-May, 1846) in the Edo era. A glowing object had been spotted in the sea, almost on a...

a propos of a recent preoccupation

One thing about all this, though--it's something shared by people around the world. You can watch the cute PSA video from the Vietnam (with English subtitles), or the TikTok dance to the same tune, or a Lagos, Nigeria, video to the same effect; you can share feelings and tips and news with people ... from all over. People encouraging or supporting one another, all on this one theme.

PS I should add that it was green_knight who introduced me to the Vietnamese video.

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Jolene, Lovecraftian version

From a Twitter friend, this link. The singer introduces it:

There's a meme that's been floating around on Facebook lately that goes along the lines of, "The song, 'Jolene' but the singer never stops describing Jolene, going into more and more details and getting more and more disturbing until you're not sure what Jolene is except that you're afraid of her."

And so he and some friends created this!



"JOLENE (HP LOVECRAFT VERSION)" - Music written by Dolly Parton
Lyrics written by Shelby Tzimiskes,...

Wednesday Reading

Recently finished: The Boy Who Was Mistaken for a Fairy King, a novella by H. L. Fullerton. You know the meme "Did . . . did a [X] write this?"? Well this story is best described by that meme: "Did . . . did a fairy write this?" Truly. Charming is charming but odd is also odd. Anyway, give it a try! I'd like to see what other people think.

Currently reading: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I loved Children of Time, and I'm enjoying this sequel just as much. In Children of Time you...

what the street says to the wheels or the path to the feet that tread it

I was saying to malorys_camera that a switch has flipped in my brain and now I'm tired of thinking about COVID 19. The other day I went several tens of minutes without thinking about it at all, and that was great! (Don't mistake me; I'm not saying that it's not serious--not saying that at all--I'm just saying that having my thoughts chained to it feels like being Alex in Clockwork Orange when he's got his eyes stuck open and is being force-fed Beethoven's Ninth. You could be exhausted by...

Taint

(I was working on this earlier in the night. Believe it or not, I was *not* thinking of COVID 19; I was thinking more about moral purity or moral contamination--but then just before posting I read this poem that sovay linked to and thought, heh.)


Taint

dirty hands &
turbulent mind
body & soul
blotched bruised
inflamed infected
counter contra
devious double
greased palms
blind eyes
hangdog hangman

the brightest, purest sword
can’t sever sin from sinner
every chunk of flesh contains the germ

o drowning soul
if...