K.R. Gastreich's Blog, page 8

My WisCon Schedule

[image error]Unbelievable – in just under 2 weeks, I’ll be at WisCon! I’m very excited! So is EOLYN! This will be our first time at the Madison-based fan con that focuses on discussion of gender, race, and class in the context of science fiction and fantasy. Overall, the programming looks very interesting. Based on the panel descriptions I’ve read so far, we’re going to be planning the next revolution.

I decided to be brave and sign up for a couple panels as well as a reading; my schedule is listed below. The WisCon organizers made my life easy by putting all my stuff on a Saturday, but I plan to be around all three days (more-or-less) attending panels and chatting with people. If you know me or my work, please seek me out – I’ll be looking for friends! Here’s where you’re guaranteed to find me:

PANEL: Women, Practical Folk Knowledge, and Magic in Storytelling. Saturday, May 26 at 10am, Conference 5

In the South, the Ozarks, Appalachia, or wherever women reside in our big beautiful world, women are the keepers and the carriers of humanity’s knowledge. According to musicologist Anjali Capila, “there are no facts without value, no reason without emotion, and no knowledge without experience.” Women’s knowledge is a culmination of our shared experience. Its transmission across generations and geography, in spite of active suppression and denigration in patriarchal cultures, is a testament to its strength and ingenuity. Gather with us as we discuss some of the different folk knowledge and magical, spiritual practices of healing and creation that are in some of our favorite stories. Bring a snippet of your own work or of another writer you love.

READING: Blood and Resistance, Saturday, May 26 at 1pm, Michelangelos 

Stories from various subgenres celebrating the power of blood and resistance. In CrossTown, vampires, carnivorous goddesses, and bounty hunters displaced in time navigate boundaries of possibility, and resistance to oppression is the heart’s blood of a life well-lived. Daughter of Aithne blends love, honor, betrayal, and vengeance in a conflict between powerful women, in opposition yet destined to shatter a thousand-year cycle of violence and bloodshed. In The Persistence of Blood, Selemei unbalances her repressive caste-based society when she refuses to continue having children despite pressure to carry on the blood of the noble Race; in Vampire Cabbie, a scheme to hypnotize Uber drivers ends with an encounter with the biggest bloodsucker of all.

PANEL: Female Friendships in Our Stories, Saturday, May 26 at 4pm, Caucus

Women are often portrayed as competitive and territorial in media. In science fiction, this can be even stronger as the Smurfette principle often rules, and many of the women characters fill the “not like other girls” trope. It’s rare to see genuine female friendships flourish in our stories. For many of us, the “mean girl” trope does not reflect the reality that we live in, and we’re hungry for better depictions of our lived experiences. More stories are digging deeper into what female friendships can and do look like, however. Shows like Big Little Lies, Grace and Frankie, and Insecure; as well as female-led movies such as the new Ghostbusters and the Pitch Perfect series are some examples. Few of these are SFF-related though – we need more!

See you at WisCon!

EOLYN is on Sale

If you haven’t discovered the magic yet, now’s your chance. EOLYN, Book One of the award-winning Silver Web trilogy, is available in all ebook formats for just $2.99 – that’s 25% off the regular list price. The sale will last through the end of the week. You can download a copy in your preferred format at the following links:

Kindle      Barnes&Noble      iBook      Kobo      Smashwords

About EOLYN

[image error]Last daughter of the magas and sole heiress to their forbidden craft, Eolyn struggles to restore women’s magic against forces of betrayal, persecution, and war. Book One of the critically acclaimed Silver Web Trilogy will thrill you with dark, lyrical imagery, timeless love, and heart-wrenching loss. Read more…

“Vigorously told deceptions and battle scenes, with a romantic thread.” – Publishers Weekly

A “dreamlike, fairy-tale ambiance…immersive political machinations and grand-scale battles.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Headstrong, hopeful, and fiercely loyal to her roots, Eolyn is a character you can’t help but stand behind.” –Apex Reviews

“Magnificently written.” –Kindle Book Review

Available in Ebook and Paperback

Happy Star Wars Day!

Paying homage to the franchise that launched my childhood fantasies with the franchise that now feeds the child within.

May the 4th be with you!

Don’t hit it, press it gently to start the hyperdrive! #MayTheFourthBeWithYou #MayThe4thBeWithYou #StarWarsDay pic.twitter.com/vkcVXhEhdV

— Lego Loki (@Loki_Lego) May 4, 2018

 

May Giveaway: THE STONE SKY by N.K. Jemisin

[image error]I haven’t had a chance to read this one yet, but N.K. Jemisin is one of my favorite authors, and her latest novel THE STONE SKY has been nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for 2018, so it must be fantastic.

Amazon has changed the rules on Kindle giveaways. The maximum amount of time they can run is 7 days, so don’t poke around on entering if you want your chance to win. It’s easy, and there’s no purchase necessary. Just visit the Amazon giveaway page and click the yellow button.

Want to know more about THE STONE SKY before testing your luck? Here’s the blurb:

The shattering conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with The Fifth Season, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016, and The Obelisk Gate, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2017.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother’s mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS… FOR THE LAST TIME.

Enter for your chance to win a free copy – no purchase is necessary. The winner will be chosen in just 7 days!

Day One at VAB

[image error]Sunrise at Virginia Beach

It’s been two years since I’ve made it back for Dollbaby Week at VAB – a magical seven days of writing with ten of the best women I know. We come from all walks of life and write across several genres. Together, we create a sacred place of laughter, conversation, mutual support, and inspiration.

My goals for this week are always ambitious. I rarely meet them all, but I always come away satisfied. Day One has given me so much already – a beautiful sunrise, a newly designed web site, time with friends, a walk on the beach, and best of all, a good old fashioned howl at the moon.

I’m pleased with my updated website – I hope you are too! My intention is to bring visitors immediately to my journal and make it easier to navigate the full range of topics covered by my most recent posts.

Within the new framework, you’ll find much of the same content plus a few extras. In addition to traditional information about my fantasy novels, I’m now including – for those interested – a page about my research in ecology and conservation. Links at the top of the site will also take you to my other social media pages. Take some time to explore and enjoy!

I have two writing projects I’d like to work on this week: One fiction and one non-fiction. I’m going to try to divide my time between both of them; we’ll see how that goes. Stop by later this week for updates if you’re curious.

My April giveaway for Philippa Gregory’s The Last Tudor ends tonight, so if you haven’t already, visit my giveaway page at Amazon for your chance to win. Good luck – and don’t forget to check back for my May giveaway in just a few days!

Daughter of Aithne wins the OZMA Award

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My award-winning book on display at CAC 2018. The cover art, by Thomas Vandenberg, received many complements.

I’m very excited to report that Daughter of Aithne, Book Three of The Silver Web, has received the 2017 OZMA Award for fantasy fiction!

A division of Chanticleer’s International Book Awards, the OZMA Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works of fantasy. Winners were announced last weekend at Chanticleer’s annual authors conference in Bellingham, Washington. It was a wonderful finish to a long creative journey, and fitting, I think, that Daughter of Aithne received this honor on April 21, the eve of Earth Day. Eolyn would have been pleased.

As the saying goes, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. As much as I’d like to bask in my current glory, I feel compelled to move forward. Eolyn’s journey of discovery is still in the future for so many readers, and yet for me, it has somehow shifted to my past. This project, which commanded my creative life for so many years, has reached its moment of closure. Eolyn’s world may call me back someday, but for now I must set it aside and turn to other callings.

 

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Me, just before I became an award-winning author.

This is all part of the same reboot I talked about last week, and over the coming months, you’ll see the shift in my life reflected on this web site. Not just in what I talk about through my blog, but in the platform itself.When I established this site several years ago, it’s primary purpose was to market Eolyn and The Silver Web. I will continue to do that, but I also want to open up a broader world to my visitors. This includes sharing more of my life as a scientist and biologist, as well as the new creative projects that are taking root in my heart.

 

There’s a mantra in the blogosphere that you should never depart from the primary theme of your blog; that such careless wandering is far too confusing for our readers. But I have faith in my readers. I know they are smart and daring and always open to exploring a larger universe.

So what do you say, readers? Are you ready for this journal to stretch beyond fantasy, romance, and a smattering of life wisdom? Shall we spice it up with a little biology and natural history as well? I hope the answer is yes, because that’s my plan!

To accommodate changing themes, you’re going to see changing formats. Please don’t be alarmed the day you stop by and discover a new color scheme or altered images or an updated menu. No matter what the cosmetics, it’ll still the same old me. Rebooted, of course: As an award-winning author, dedicated ecologist, and life-long wanderer of worlds.

Don’t go away – the adventure has only just begun.

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This is the other thing I do. I know you’ve heard about it before, but get ready to hear more – and to see my web site restructured to accommodate a broader journey. Photo by Amy Milakovic

Midlife Reboot

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Celebrating the reboot.

Sunday I came across this article in the Washington Post that talks about what we traditionally call the “midlife crisis.”

Turns out it’s not a crisis at all. It’s a “psychological and emotional reboot” where “our values, our priorities, even our brains…shift away from competition and social striving and toward connecting and giving to others,” The transition is followed by a rebirth of positivity, wisdom, and renewed energy that characterizes late adulthood.

I read through the article and thought, “Wow! This is exactly what I’ve been going through these past few years!” 

Midlife (as I’ve discovered) is much better described by the term “reboot” than “crisis.” This stage of life is about breaking down old patterns and building new projects from the bottom up. The process can happen across multiple dimensions – personal, professional, emotional, spiritual, financial, geographical… Of course, not all of these dimensions have to shift at once, but many of them do, often in tandem with each other.

Yes, it’s scary, and yes, it feels like a crisis – but part of the reason it’s scary (and the article talks about this) is that more often than not, we aren’t properly warned, prepared, or supported during the transition.

There’s real neuroscience behind this, folks. Our brains have apparently been wired through evolutionary time to undergo metamorphosis around fifty. Among humans, each individual experience is unique, but the fundamental patterns hold across multiple cultures and countries. Even our close cousins, chimpanzees and orangutans, have their version of a midlife reboot. It’s all detailed in the book The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After Fifty by Jonathan Rauch, who also wrote the Washington Post article.

As with so much else, we’ve structured society in such a way that we’ve no real means of accommodating this transition. To borrow Rauch’s words:

“If you wanted to design a society that exacerbated midlife misery and squandered the potential of later adulthood, you might deliver education in a single lump during the first two decades of life, load work into the middle decades, and then herd healthy, happy and highly skilled older adults into idleness. In other words, you would do more or less what we have been doing for the past century or so.”

Apparently, ours is the generation that’s striving to change that. In private industry, higher education, and through grassroots organizations, people all across the country are exploring creative ways to make the midlife reboot a recognized and productive axis of transition.

I’ve experienced this among my own circle of friends, as well. While we have all faced extraordinary challenges in recent years, not one of us has succumbed midlife with an attitude of decline. Instead, we’ve tackled challenges head-on and are rebooting our lives in unique and amazing ways, embracing each other and the future with a shared sense of renewal.

Part of what’s made this possible is the support we’ve given each other – a core theme of Rauch’s work: that if we’re to fully leverage the positive power of midlife, we cannot expect mid-lifers to get through the transition alone.

To read more, visit the Washington Post article or check out Rauch’s book.

Making Facebook (Almost) Fun Again

 

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Spring is trying to break through on the Missouri River.

Long before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, I started drifting away from Facebook. Or rather, Facebook started drifting away from me. The old platform where I’d check in to hang out with friends all but disappeared. My newsfeed morphed into an endless stream of advertisements, angry memes, and links to news articles I wasn’t interested in reading. I’m not alone in this experience. I believe it’s direct consequence of the commercial model Facebook has adopted.

 

Ten years ago, I joined Facebook to stay in touch with friends scattered across the globe. Even now – despite disappointing changes to the platform – this remains an important function of the network. As much as I’m occasionally tempted to #DeleteFacebook, I really don’t want to until I can arrange something else to maintain those contacts.

So rather than quitting Facebook altogether, I’ve tried to be more conscientious about how I interact with the platform. Here are some of the steps I’ve taken in recent weeks in hopes of making my Facebook experience more pleasant:

Remove the Facebook App from Your Phone

One of the most effective decisions I’ve made is to access Facebook only from my computer. This not only limits the time I spend on Facebook, it makes the newsfeed more tolerable (see below). On the smart phone screen, you’re forced to scroll through endless ads, but with a wider computer screen, at least some of the ads are relegated to the side bar. This allows you to better maintain the happy delusion that your Facebook experience has not been entirely co-opted by commercial interests.

Avoid the News Feed

If there were such a thing as a happiness index, I’d say mine goes up by about 20 points on days I avoid the Facebook newsfeed. Seriously. The only purpose the Facebook newsfeed seems to serve any more is to annoy the user. Who needs that? 

Avoiding the news feed does not mean avoiding the news. After all, there are other more reliable news sources like…Well, journalists. Nor does it mean avoiding contact with friends. In fact, by avoiding the newsfeed, I’ve been able to spend more time with friends, as I rarely see updates from friends on my newsfeed anymore. I interact with friends in groups or by visiting their pages. If I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I even text, call, and in the case of friends in Kansas City, get together with in person. Yes, that can still be done, and it is much more fun than scrolling through the newsfeed.

If You Must Look at the News Feed, Time Yourself 

Now, if the newsfeed is something you can’t live without, or if – like me – you’re tempted to dive in every so often no matter how painful it is, try this: Every time you start scrolling, set the timer on your phone. You decide how long: 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes…But when the timer goes off, STOP.  Set the phone aside and actively choose something else to do. Trust me. You’ll be happier for it, and don’t worry: you won’t miss a thing.

Create Small Groups for More Meaningful Engagement

I now interact with many of my friends primarily through Facebook groups. Groups are great because you can adjust privacy settings so that they are closed or even secret. You can also designated whether members are only added by invitation.

Keep an Eye on Those Privacy Settings – But Assume Everything is Public

If you were hoping all of this would lead to advice on how to keep your data private, I’m sorry. I can’t help you with that. I wish I could. From the first rumblings of privacy concerns some 7 or 8 years ago, I think the writing was on the wall. Privacy settings have become so convoluted, it’s almost impossible to track them perfectly. Over the years, I’ve tried to set boundaries, but I’ve always assumed everything that goes into the platform is fair game for data miners. Whenever we interact with Facebook, we leave something they can sell to their clients. Until someone establishes an alternative platform that guarantees our privacy (one can dream, can’t one?), this is the devil’s bargain we’re forced to live with.

April Giveaway: The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory

 

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April’s giveaway features one of my all-time favorite authors.

This month’s ebook giveaway is a novel by one of my all-time favorite authors, Philippa Gregory.

 

One of the questions I’m most often asked, as an author, is why I write fantasy. The truth of the matter is I came to fantasy through the back door. Before I began working on Eolyn, I’d read very little sf/f beyond the blockbuster classics that broke the barriers of traditional fandom. Classics like Lord of the Rings and Dune had graced my nightstand and inspired my imagination, but beyond these big titles, I wasn’t particularly drawn to fantasy or science fiction as a genre. (At least, not in my reading – we’ll talk about film another day.)

What I couldn’t get enough of was historical fiction. I discovered the genre in high school and have been reading it ever since. My interest in historical fiction led naturally to an interest in history; the more I engaged with characters in novels, the more I wanted to know about the facts behind the fiction. I was particularly drawn to historical accounts of medieval and Renaissance women, fascinated by the many powerful female figures that ruled during a period that according to popular imagination, was supposed to belong exclusively to men. By the time I began writing The Silver Web trilogy, it was these stories drawn from real women in history that inspired the magical saga of Eolyn and her cohorts.

And so much of it began with stories like those told by Philippa Gregory. In The Last Tudor, Gregory does what she’s always done best: revives the lost history of extraordinary women while underscoring the simple fact that bitter and violent struggles for power were never exclusive domain of men. I haven’t had the opportunity to read The Last Tudor yet, but I’ve never come across a Gregory novel I didn’t like, so I’m sure this one is great like all the others.

Entering the Amazon giveaway is easy – just visit the giveaway page and click the yellow button. No purchase is necessary. The winner will be chosen on May 1. Good luck, and happy reading!

Spoiler Alert: Change is Possible

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close-up macro of Agapostemon “metallic green bee” on dirt

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The metallic green bee was the star of the show at Girl Scout STEM Day.

Saturday was Girl Scout STEM Day at Avila, a yearly event hosted by our Tri Beta biology student club. Several of our science faculty participate, and this year, I brought out the bees.

Thanks to my growing collection and somewhat more secure knowledge of our local fauna, I was able to show our area Girl Scouts a lot of great bees from their hometown. The girls were a little wary at first, but then they got really excited. By far the most popular bees were the metallic green Agapostemon;  a coloring session at the end of our lab yielded lots of green bees and several conflicts over the green crayons!

Girl Scout STEM Day took me out of the game for direct participation in the March for Our Lives – unlike Hermione in the Harry Potter series, I have yet to discover a magic that will allow me to be in two places at once. But I did get home in time to catch some of the media coverage of the nationwide event. Rarely have I seen speeches as moving as the ones televised from Washington D.C., and while I knew this march was going to be big, to see just how big was truly inspiring.

As the marches began to draw to a close and protesters dispersed, television reporters snagged a few here and there with the proverbial set of questions for the audience at home. The one question I heard repeated several times was this: Do you really think change is possible?

I found the question annoying; representative of the sort of vapid reporting that characterized the pre-2016 era when journalists had all but forgotten what their job is really about. After all, how did these journalists expect the protesters to respond?

Well, actually I got up at 6 am (or rode that 18 hour bus) and spent all day on my feet carrying this sign and shouting until my throat was raw because of a firmly held conviction that change is NOT possible. 

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Change is possible. Never give up.

Given that the answer to the question was pretty obvious, one can’t help but wonder why reporters kept asking it. It was as if they were intentionally trying to seed doubt into the situation.

This has been the narrative of the gun debate in the news media since Parkland: That change is unlikely and that in a couple weeks ‘everyone will forget.’ Some newscasters have the grace to express frustration at this professed ‘truth,’ but here’s thing: Change can in fact happen, and we have not in fact forgotten.

No one I know has forgotten Columbine or Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech or Orlando or Las Vegas or any of the mass shootings that have taken so many innocent lives over all these years.  (If you’re looking to be depressed, check out the complete list from 1982 to 2018 on Mother Jones.) Mass shootings are now burned into the psyche of an entire generation, and yet still they are silenced by the news cycle, by the payrolls of the NRA, and in the blunt-edged minds of our politicians.

So with all due respect to those television reporters, I don’t believe it’s the American people who are short on memory or who have lost their faith in change.

You ask if change is possible? My mother wasn’t allowed to go to college because she was a woman. I not only went to college, but earned my doctorate. Now I teach and mentor other young women as they lay the foundations for another generation of successful and fulfilling careers.

You ask if change is possible? My father grew up in an era of segregation. I proudly voted for an African American president, who also happened to be the greatest president of our time. A man of intelligence, integrity, and vision; a faithful husband and dedicated father. Cool-headed and a true leader of nations. Remember what it was to have a president like that? What I wouldn’t give to have another.

You ask if change is possible? When I was in high school, we didn’t even know what the word ‘homosexual’ meant. Now people who used to live in hiding can express themselves openly and gay marriage is legal across the nation.

Of course, change can cut both ways, taking us places we don’t want to go. We saw that happen in 2016. So the question is not whether change is possible; it’s what kind of change do you want to see?

If the change you want to see helps us build a more peaceful and less violent world, then let’s do it. I’ll be marching with you all the way.