Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 74

Thoughts on No-face

... Normally I'd be at the jail now, but I cancelled because I was nervous about driving in the snow... and so instead I'm sharing thoughts on No-face, from Spirited Away.

In the film, Chiriru lets No-face into the bathhouse, thinking it's one of the gods who've come to relax there, when really it's literally a nameless no-face.



No-face is apart from everyone, but wants to be included. Its early attempts at friendship are transactional--it gives Chihiru a precious bath token she needs to clean...

macabre collections

Somewhere in the archives of the Bibliotèque nationale de France is this collection of ever-blooming sound-flowers.



(Photo by Joseph Redon, originally posted on Twitter , and sent to me by Wakanomori)

And in the tower Great St. Mary's Church, in Cambridge, England, someone has stashed a collection of hangman's nooses! Or so it seems, but actually those are the bell pulls, for ringing the church bells. Still. Who knows what nefarious things may have happened in the tower while the bells were bei...

"On the Highway" story links

"On the Highway" is available for purchase now. Here's the first paragraph:

One moment the little Hyundai’s fishtailing on black ice, then there’s air, three bone-shaking bounces, and stillness. Jolene has a faceful of airbag and a tidal wave of adrenaline tingling in her fingertips, lips, and toes. Slowly it recedes, and she gingerly tests her arms and legs, twists . . . yes, her back is fine, her neck is mainly fine. Above her right eye, her forehead feels tender, but that’s probably from th...

a cold day

I had to walk back to the house along the highway this morning, after dropping the car (the remaining car...) off for scheduled maintenance.

It was so cold, penetratingly cold, killingly cold, and windy--but it was morning, and the sun was out.



This afternoon, walking that same route back to the mechanic's, it was a race between me and darkness. The clouds were rosy when I set out, and there was incandescent golden-orange brilliance behind the supermarket. But the light was dying and the wind...

And the verdict is--now ... or as close to now as possible

Thank you to everyone who responded yesterday to my question about when to release "On the Highway"--I really appreciate it.

In terms of the story, it made intuitive sense to me to release it between Christmas and New Year's--after all, it's a story set on New Year's Eve! When would people want to read that story? When they're thinking of New Year's Eve--or so my logic went.

But the arguments for releasing it as early as possible made good sense to me too, and that's what I've ended up going wi...

When should I make this short story available?

I have a short story that I'm going to self-publish--it's a New Year's Eve ghost story. Here's the cover!



The photo is by Mary Gordon, a Wyoming-based photographer. You can see more of her work on Flickr; she's gebodogs there. I searched on "ghostly highway" and her photo was perfect. (The original photo is horizontal rather than vertical--check it out here .)

Here's the very brief blurb (it's a very short story--about 3,880 words)

After catching her husband in the arms of another woman on New Ye...

as quiet as smoke

In the creative writing workshop I'm doing, I did a version of "what is taller, higher, softer, smaller?" Some of the answers are beautiful. You can read all of them here , but here are a few highlights:

As quiet as a fish, moths, smoke (Victor D)
I'm not brave enough killing spider (Lilliana)
I am empty like a cup of juice when I drink it (Abraham)


(photo of smoke by Nur Uretmen: Source)

And I promised to link to some of the stories they'd written, too. This one is written by Victor M, who's not a...

asakiyume @ 2017-12-01T12:07:00

I'm a copy editor by profession, but even though I can see copyediting errors in other people's work, I still make those same mistakes myself, and it's much harder to catch them in a reread of my own work than it is in others' work. That's natural--when it's your own stuff, you know what it's supposed to say, and that's what your eyes or mind tends to see.

Same with beta reads: I can notice things about narrative flow, voice, character--whatever--in another person's work and be much too close...

almost murmuration, pearl, colors

The starlings over the cornfields of Hadley, Massachusetts, sometimes achieve murmuration levels--I saw them do it Saturday, them moving together like a great whale at play. It was breathtaking. I went back yesterday with a camera but came too late in the day, and then again today, and was only a *little* too late, or they weren't in a mood to all rise (ALL RISE) and swoop, and then settle.

Also, maybe if I had turned the phone sideways it would have made a wider video? I am very new to the wa...

early morning, Thanksgiving Day

When I went out this morning, the sun was just leaving its nest of trees on the horizon-woods, shining golden white. Stretched across the sky were the white ghost-bones of some giant fish, an ancestor fish--the waters of morning revealed those bones. At the houses playing host this Thanksgiving Day, cars were clustered quietly, like sleeping pups or kittens. High up in a tree somewhere, one bird was calling; on the ground, just a few leaves and chipmunks were scurrying.

I found a golden fairy...