Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 19
January 29, 2014
Snippeting from the shadow book
The sunwings have followed me onto the deck and they hover around my shoulders like large, bright wasps, their wings a humming blur. I try walk carefully, one foot neat in front of the other, with the shawl of birds streaming out behind me. I’m thankful that they take some of the attention off my awkward lander’s walk. Already the women of Yuliu boat find me pitiful and strange – an old maid at twenty-seven given to raging headaches that leave her bedridden for days. A pathetic thing, What skills does she bring, they ask themselves,
What skills indeed. I embroider. It’s a quiet art, suitable for land-locked virgin aunties in stone towers. But it’s also a valuable skill, given to those with magic in their hearts.
This is why they tolerate me on their ship. Their ship. It’s hardly mine. The elders of Yuliu are swapping my brother out to Song and I am the burden that travels with him. Poor little Pil. There are enough herders here and he is young and small of a weak green tendril of the Yuliu clan. The girl coming from Song is a good hand with the beasts, they say. The swap is a convenient one. Song gets a new apprentice-driver in exchange for the girl Galeka, and Yuliu can be rid of me in the bargain.
Aunty is dead and my protection is gone. And Pil is just a boy who cannot yet see that the old men and women are trading him off to get rid of the bad luck I will bring.
“Kara!” Pil says. “Look!”
And I do. I have never been to the Island of Shadows. The crescent bay is heaving with estate-boats, like a vast pod of black oil-whales coming to shallow water to calve. They are decked out in tribal flags, family colours and talent-crests, waving bands of bright-dyed silk rectangles that hang from braided sisal ropes. There are iron and ivory bells, some as big as pots and others like strands of little thimbles, and their clanking and calling mingles with the cheers and shouts of the people greeting long-left cousins, exclaiming over growing children, woven cloths, new strings of silvery-grey pearls, beaten gold earrings. Over it all comes the occasional sudden high trumpeting of waders entering their mating season, the thrash of water as a fight begins.
People are making bets, handing out ivory tokens, mother of pearl tokens, the white disks of kreukel-doors.
The shallow waters of the bay are a startling blue like the breast feathers of an island quail-finch in spring, but they are also still and clear, and the bronze shadows of fish dart between the boats as they scavenge for fallen food. Behind the clatter of the boats, a ridged beach rises white-gold to a a low dune forest thick with gnarled little trees and tough grasses. A tower of cliff juts up behind the forest, its black-wet stone studded with moss green and ringing with the high screeching calls of gulls and terns. Their teeming white wings circle the mountain shoulders.
My feet itch to be on stone, not polished wood over water. I take Pil’s hand and let him lead me through the throng. My other hand presses the amulet under my shift, pushing the ridges against my skin. The dead are all asleep and locked away in their iron-lined kists. I am as safe as stone towers. “Tell me which is to be ours.” I say. I have studied flags from the ink-drawing scrolls in Aunty’s house, but they were never that interesting to me. I always preferred her bird scrolls, her leaf-and-flower scrolls – things I could use when I embroidered the hems and sleeves of the robes Aunty brought me.
Yuliu’s flag at least holds my interest a little: a leaping silver-and-black marlin on silk dyed sky-cerulean. Song – Song I do know, but with a million rippling squares of silk in every shade, I cannot spot them. I still myself, like I do when I want the island birds to come to me. The sunwings settle soft on my shoulders and sleeves, their claws like beetle legs through the silk.
“There.” Pil points to a vast ebony estate-boat as long as a southern sea-drake and half as wide again, approaching from the sea. Song. Mighty Song, where Pil and I will just be two useless tokens; kreukel-doors, common as kelp.
Squirry the Squirrel goes neep neep neep
Yesterday I went to go hang out in town with Tammy February, Discordian Kitty and Cherry Blossom Boutique
Much fun was had, though it was very amusing to be towered over. I felt vaguely threatened by Ms. Cherry Blossom as she had just bought herself a new pair of heeled boots and was probably scraping 6’4” or so. I would love to be that tall. Let’s swap a foot or so, yeah?
Before we met up, I took the spawn to go feed squirrels in the Gardens (and spotted The Boy returning from lunch) and much fun was had holding out nuts for fluffy-tailed rats and winged rats.
I’m sure I should know what this building is called seeing as how a) I live here, and b) it’s pretty distinctive, but I confess my ignorance. Someone enlighten me?
Elder Spawn became The Bird Girl of the Gardens, and had people trying to film her. She did look rather striking surrounded by pigeons. There’s also something quite spectacular about how they will all suddenly take flight at the same time and wheel and arc in a great silvery -grey flock. Pigeons: surprisingly magical.
January 26, 2014
Lamb curry made from real vegans.
My kids have become increasingly distressed by the realisation that chickens and lambs etc were once actual cute little animals, and aren’t grown in a vat somewhere… (Margaret Atwood, that chicky nobs franchise is looking good 
) So every now and again I make the effort to buy vegan replacements, but generally the selection in South Africa is limited when it comes to the kind of food I enjoy making.
So it was with great yayness I discovered that Fry’s has been expanding its range, and they now have lamb for curries.
Herewith today’s curry. Please note that this curry is about as authentically Indian as I am. It’s also pretty simple and you can go play around with ingredients etc. I still need to do a proper shop so I just used what I had on hand.
Ingredients:(ie: what I had in my fridge)
1 packet Fry’s lamb pieces
4 medium potatoes
curry powder (however you like it)
1 yellow pepper (red would probably look nicer, whatever suits you.)
4 cardomom pods
1/2 a lime
3 spring onions
1/2 can coconut milk
minced garlic
oil for cooking
Incredibly Difficult Recipe:
Cook Fry’s lamb pieces according to packet, + a few extra cracked cardamom pods and a teaspoon of medium curry powder, plus a few squeezes of lime, set aside.
Peel and cube 4 med potatoes, shallow fry until golden, drain off oil
cut up a yellow pepper, add to potato, toss in the fake lambkin, add 3 chopped spring onions.
Add some more lime juice and ½ cup coconut cream. (I would add more next time, to give this a “saucier” feel)
add in garlic/chillies/whatever seasonings you want (I just used garlic because the spawn are not big on heat.)
Stir through to cook – about 2 – 3 minutes
I served this over aged basmati, with a dollop of peach chutney on top
TADA!
January 23, 2014
Super-easy coconut sago pudding
I am trying to “eat down” my grocery cupboard before we move, which means I am occasionally throwing together leftover things and hoping for the best.
This very quick “pudding” came out really tasty, and I’m kinda bummed I didn’t think to take a pic. I will definitely make it again though. Because it’s all the last bits of bags and stuff like that, I dont have any actual measurements, but with a recipe this simple you cna adjust to taste anyway.
Here’s what I had:
Some sago
2/3 can coconut cream (CREAM, not milk)
an egg
sugar
a lime.
Here’s what I did with them:
I boiled up the last of the sago, then rinsed it clear, drained it and added sugar, about half of the remaining coconut cream, stirred in an egg (in retrospect, though I like the golden colour it turned, if you wanted to keep the cream white, then just use beaten egg white), grated in some lime zest, and cooked for a few minutes over low heat.
Served in a bowl with a dollop of cold coconut cream melting on the top.
Yeah, I said it was easy.
I can imagine this looking really pretty served as tiny portions in small clear glass tumblers, with a bit of extra lime grated on top of the dollop of coconut cream.
January 21, 2014
Jealous, much?
Professional jealousy. It’s a horrifically unproductive state, and one that many if us seem to still get occasionally trapped in. Or maybe you don’t, but I certainly do.
Things will be going okay, I’ll be working on the stuff I love that makes me happy, ignoring the hype that is the sea in which authors drown, and suddenly I’ll see a picture of That Really Annoying Author I Can’t Stand and they will be waffling on about their awesomeness, and their success will be oozing from their pores, and the urge to go and throw myself and all my work off a cliff becomes rather strong.
Jealousy about the success of others is pretty normal, I think. Feeling guilty about it isn’t going to make me any less jealous. So I have to tackle what it is that really upsets me – loads of people are more successful than me; that’s a given and it always will be. Is it because every personal interaction I have had with this person has left me wanting to bash their brains in? Closer. Is it because I can’t stand what they write? Probably.
And there you see the heart of how utterly pointless professional jealousy is. I’m upset because someone I don’t like, who writes stuff I don’t enjoy, is successful? Can you see any logic there, because I can’t. If they were vaguely nice, and wrote stuff I enjoyed, then I’d be okay with their success, (and I know this for a fact because this perfectly fits my usual attitude to other people’s success in writing.)
Seriously, guys, let me repeat the key fact here: I’m upset because someone I don’t like, who writes stuff I don’t enjoy, is successful.
Short of taking handfuls of porridge and smearing it on my face while giggling maniacally, I can’t think of anything more childish.
So, I will laugh at myself, shake my head, and carry on writing the stuff I enjoy, and work on letting stupid shit go.
January 8, 2014
Meeting goals, doing things, watching hawt vampires
I’m doing pretty well on my writing goals, and I did a little #januaryshort twitter exercise yesterday (don’t know how many people may have participated, but I know at least one person besides myself came up with some ideas for something to work on, which is nice to find out.)
The whole thing was inspired by my goal to write and sub one short a month. Now I tend to have this cumulonimbus-like fear of not being able to ever come up with a story idea EVER AGAIN and then I roll around in despair telling myself I am Made of Teh Suck, and drinking wine-glasses filled with tears. Which, bizarrely, is not *as* helpful as you might think. Crazy, I know.
So in order to stop my rollaround before it could begin, I made myself accountable to others. See, if I go and say Do This! It Will Totes Help with Your Creativity! and then don’t actually do it myself, I will be the worst kind of liar. So I set myself a little exercise. I stepped away from the computer for ten minutes, and wrote down ten opening lines to stories. They didn’t have to have plots, or involve deep complicated thoughts as to where they were going, they didn’t have to be good, or sound cool, or anything. I just had to write them.
And then I had to pick the one that sparked, and do something with it. It’s a throw-away line – I don’t have to keep it, it has done its work. What I need to do is write the story that spills from that one line.
Most of my lines were pretty shit (okay nine of them were pretty shit), but one clicked something, and I’m now 1200 words into a story. Which is a pretty great feeling when you’ve convinced yourself you’ll never write again, let me tell you. This technique has really helped me, and three of my last five stories have come from doing that little exercise.
In other news, I started watching Dracula yesterday, mainly because well JRM (shut up I am allowed to crush on that filthy filthy man), but hey, I am liking and so it will be my reward now for having met today’s writing goals. *fangs* (Also, Lucy is so familiar…is she…Morgana from Merlin? Because UNF YES)
January 2, 2014
Beast- and plantkeeping
After the general insanity of the festive season, I am doing a final sweep through Beastkeeper before I send this round of revisions off to my editor. I realised I quite like Alan and Sarah’s interactions. I would totally be drawing cute manga pics of them if I could draw cute manga pics.
I also had a little trawl through the garden to check the figs. Sadly, still not ripe. But closer closer closer yes!
And I must be watering my plants again because this little guy is looking more green and less red (they turn red when they are Dying of The Thirst. I have no idea what it is, but I would put good money on Nerine Dorman being able to tell me its common and Latin name off the top of her head. Woman has mad botanical skills, yo.
January 1, 2014
Book-keeping 2013
I’m missing a book and I can’t work out which it is….
My favourite reads of 2013 are bolded:
1: Mistwood – Leah Cypess
2: The Hobbit – Tolkien
3: The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
4: Where Things Come Back – John Corey Whaley
*5: From Where You Dream, The Process of Writing Fiction – Robert Olen Butler
6: The Pattern Scars – Caitlin Sweet
7: Household Stories – Grimm
8: Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
*9: Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll (my fave of the two, I can read it all the time. Aloud. To other humans, while I laugh)
10: Something Like Normal – Trish Doller (ngl i loved it)
11: Teeth – Hannah Moskowitz
12: Charmed Life – Diana Wynne Jones
*13: Sexing the Cherry – Jeannette Winterson
14: Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
15: The Magicians of Caprona – Diana Wynne Jones
16: Queen’s Hunt – Beth Bernobich.
17: The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells.
18: The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells (That was actually pretty hilarious most of the way. I’ve never read Wells before so I dunno what I was expecting, but not so much humour.)
19: The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury.
20: A Certain Slant of Light – Laura Whitcomb
21: A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs
22: Herland – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
23: Feed – M. T. Anderson
24: Malinda Lo – Huntress
25: Witch Week – Diana Wynne Jones (reread)
*26: Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula Le Guin (I enjoyed it much more this time. Also it made me cry.)
27: Little Brother – Cory Doctorow (reread)
28: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me – various (Kate Bernheimer, editor)
29: The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes
30: Heaven Eyes – David Almond
31: Undercover – Beth Kephart
32: Sister-Sister – Rachel Zadok
33: Flaming June – Amanda Coetzee
34: The Program – Suzanne Young. 
35: The House of Many Ways – Diana Wynne Jones *snuggles*
36: In the Night Garden – Catherynne M Valente
37: Speechless – Hannah Harrington
38: Captive Prince 1 – S.U. Pacat
39: Captive Prince 2 – S.U. Pacat Omg these were sheer crack. I need book 3 stat
40: Beasts – Joyce Carol Oates
*41: Farundell – L. R. Fredericks
*42: The Broken Lands – Kate Milford. (OMG SO MUCH LOVE, must read more of her work
*43: The Palace of Illusions – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
44: A Spy in the House – Y.S. Lee
45: Don’t Bite the Bridesmaid – Tiffany Allee
46: The Book of Atrix Wolfe – Patricia McKillip
*47: Alif the Unseen – G Willow Wilson (on my shortlist for the year. Hmm I should star those so I remember them)
48: Monstrous Beauty – Elizabeth Fama
49: The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
50: The Fox Woman – Kij Johnson
51: Code Name Verity – ELizabeth Wein
52: How to Suppress Women’s Writing – Joanna Russ
*53: Under the Poppy – Kathe Koja (nnnngghhhhhhhhhhhhhh i am made of jealousy right now)
54: Spin – Robert Charles Wilson
55: On a Red Station, Drifting – Aliette de Bodard
56: The Secret History of Moscow – Ekaterina Sedia
57: Wolves and Witches – Amanda C. Davis, Megan Engelhardt
58: Sharp Edges – S.A. Partridge
*59: The Palace of Curiosities – Rosie Garland. (LOVED this one.)
60: The Big Stick – Richard de Nooy
61: Open City – Teju Cole
62: Fire and Thorns – Rae Carson
63: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson
64: House of Sand and Secrets – Cat Hellisen (lol gr added it to my read book list. I’m like, okay, that’s legit, I guess.)
65: Midsummer Night – Freda Warrington (nnggghhh soppppppy lushy pretty romantic fantasy, exactly what I needed)
66: Harbinger – Sarah Wilson Etienne
67: Junk – Melvyn Burgess
68: Infidel – Kameron Hurley
69: Wolf at the Door – J. Damask
70: Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
*71: Allegiance – Beth Bernobich
*72: Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
73: Cold Magic – Kate Elliott
74: Virtual Light – William Gibson
Beachifying
Compensating for my terrible memory by actually writing things down. So here we go…
Last night was probably the most laid-back New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had. Normally the boy and I make a plan to go clubbing or to a party, but none of that sounded appealing. Instead we stayed home with the Spawn and had a mini braai, watched Strange Days (I forgot how much I enjoyed that movie) and then toasted each other at midnight. It was wonderful and perfect.
It also meant that this morning The Boy and I could go walk along the beach with the hounds, and it was glorious and warm, with cold water foaming and swirling about our ankles while the hounds chased each other through the waves and the whelks skated underfoot. On the way back I bought spanspek, mangos and strawberries from the side of the road and we ate that for lunch, washed down with last night’s champagne. And it was while I drank that bubbly that I sent off my first sub of the year, so that felt pretty good.
Later that afternoon we ventured to Muizenberg beach with the kids, armed with rubber gloves to help pick up rubbish, which I think provided the beach-goers with much amusement.
(pic by Lauren De Vos)
I have a vague goal for 2014 to try one new recipe a week, so tonight I made a tomato tart with olive pastry, served with basil, crottin, and a sweet & sour pepper jelly.
This one’s a hit.
December 31, 2013
32 points make a year
1. What did you do in 2013 that you’d never done before?
Went to a literary festival and sat on a panel, went to World Fantasy Con and creepily stared at a bunch of fabulous writers, put out House of Sand and Secrets with Folded Wherry, judged a teens short story competition, kinda accidentally illustrated a book of children’s short stories, ran 5 kilometres.
2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Eh, I can’t even remember what they were, but next year’s a re pretty chill, I’m feeling good about them.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My friend Kat who moved to Oz had a sone, who I shall soon be meeting
4. Did anyone close to you die?
no
5. Where did you travel?
UK! It was the first time The Boy had been overseas so it was extra fun. We were in Brightin, then London and I could move to Brighton and live there forever! Also, omg can I move into the Tate Modern? And the National Museum.
6. What would you like to have in 2014 that you lacked in 2013?
Confidence. I’m working on that.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Running 5 km? Giving up smoking (mostly ). Buying a house.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Failure to communicate. But mostly it wasn’t big failures, just little learning experiences.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Discovered, much to my sadness, that I am now allergic to rats.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
The house.
14. Where did most of your money go?
er, the house again. And food.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Going overseas. The last time I travelled overseas I was 20….
16. What song will always remind you of 2013?
Wrecking Ball.
17. Compared to this time last year, you are:
Happier?
Yes. MUCH.
Richer?
Yes and no (see: house)
Thinner?
I keep telling myself it’s muscle weight *nods*
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Waking up to dreamstrorm during sunrise, walking the dogs, birdwatching, painting
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Doubting myself, looking at goodreads ever.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it with family as always.
22. Did you fall in love in 2013?
Yes, always.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No, my list of people to hate has stayed pretty constant, and now it’s more exasperated eyerolling pity than hate.
25. What was your favorite TV program?
Hmm I quite enjoyed Teen Wolf, but this year was actually pretty meh tv wise for me.
26. What was the best book you read?
I read a bunch of great books, but more than a favourite, I’ve found some new authors to add to me Buy Always pile.
27. What was your favorite film of this year?
I didn’t watch many movies.
28. What was the best thing you ate this year?
I ate a lot of wonderfully tasty food, the worst was jellied eels though…..
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 36 and I had a cupcake party which devolved into drunken trampolining, absinthe shots and glowstick cupcake sculptures. it was brill.
30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2013?
Scrub and Proud.
31. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Hmm JLaw and Misha Collins, and my raging hard-on for Patrick Wolf remained rampant so I guess that’s it really..
32. Whom did you miss?
All my distant friends 
