Wren Handman's Blog, page 5

Upcoming Readings!

I’m thrilled to have two upcoming readings, one at the end of September and one at the beginning of October! I’ll be reading from In Restless Dreams and Anthology of Dreams. Please join me if you’re in town! Both events are totally free, and you can stick around before and after to hear other amazing authors.

September 28 – 3:30pm

Join me at the Fleetwood Library in Surrey for this reading series from Arts4All.

After traditionally publishing two novels, Wren Handman decided to take the plunge into self-publishing. She wanted to know what it took, what skills it would use, and most importantly… how hard it would be! In Restless Dreams is the product of that experiment. Join Wren for a reading from the young adult urban fantasy novel, and then ask her anything you want about the strengths and challenges of traditional and self-publishing.

Wren Handman is a published author of fiction, novels, and television. She has published three novels (two traditionally, one self-published). The Switch (a TV sitcom for which she was the lead writer) aired on OutTV in Canada. Wren is currently working full-time as a freelance author.

October 5 – 7:00pm

It’s VCON in Vancouver, which means a celebration of all things fantasy and science fiction! They’re hosting a multi-author book launch as part of their opening ceremonies. There will be food, drink, music, breaks for mingling, book signing, adoring fans talking to amazing authors, and a secret theme in keeping with the British Invasion theme of this year’s VCON. Reading blocks are expected to be up to 10 minutes for full-length works, 5 minutes for short stories, to give people a good taste of the writing. I don’t have an assigned block yet, so why not come for the whole evening!

These are the Books of My Life

As I was lying in bed the other night, I started thinking about books that lived as “firsts” in my mind. The first chapter book I could remember, or the first time I read an “adult” book. This list ended up being more interesting than I expected. Some because it seems so arbitrary which books I now remember. They surely weren’t the first. They likely weren’t the only. They stand out for reasons I can’t quite explain. So here they are: the books of my life.

1. First Picture Book – Each Peach Pear Plum

My parents were incredibly avid believers in the power and importance of the written word for children, so I had a veritable library of books as a kid. Also the actual library, where we went all the time. So picking out just one picture book is hard. But for some reason this one sticks in my mind. Part of it is probably because I rediscovered it as an adult and was both pleased and alarmed to realize how much of the rhyming poetry I remembered twenty-odd years later. This book takes well known nursery rhymes and weaves them together into a delightful find-and-seek picture book where you have to spot the characters. Plus hidden extras like a spider and a cat. It’s a classic that doesn’t get old—check it out.

 

2. First Chapter Book – The Crystal Drop

This one is tied with the Day of the Triffids, but I actually remember a little bit about the plot of this one, whereas the only thing I remember about the other one is that aliens land and their spaceships (or possibly them?) have three legs.

Crystal Drop is a chapter book that my mother read to my brother and I. Long before we had the patience to sit and read an entire chapter book on our own, my mother would read them to us, usually a chapter a night.

This book is about a post-apocalyptic journey across the country. A girl and her brother are making their way to… some family members? I can’t remember if it’s their parents, or if their parents are dead and they’re trying to find grandparents or aunts and uncles or something. But there’s definitely a dangerous cross-country journey, and she has a necklace that her mother gave her that’s a crystal drop, which features prominently in some way.

 

 

 

 

 

3. First Chapter Book By Myself – The Golden Compass

I would like to be clear: this is definitely not the first chapter book that I read on my own. I probably read this book about four years after I started (voraciously) reading on my own. So it’s a strange phenomenon that this is the one I think of when I think of my first experiences with chapter books.

Maybe instead I should say that this is the first book that I was proud of reading, because it was a little outside of my age range—I was nine when I read it, and it was in the options for the next grade to read as part of their free-reading period. I asked my teacher if I could read it anyway, and she said of course.

My best friend Paula told me I HAD to read this book. She then proceeded to tell me the shocking ending, so this was also my first experience with spoilers. I think it’s part of why I’m so spoiler adverse now! But this book held up despite the fact that I knew what was coming. It even added a certain level of dread and bitter sweetness to scenes where the characters thought everything was going to turn out okay, so I liked it.

 

 

 

4. First Shocking Book – Ender’s Game

I will always remember being ten years old and thinking I was reading a very mature, adult book, because one of the characters said, “That Bean is so careful, he could piss on a plate and not spill a drop.”

I googled it to see how accurate my memory was. Not bad! “Bonzo, he pre-cise. He so careful, he piss on a plate and never splash.”

Anyway, apparently to a ten year old the occurrence of the word ‘piss’ in a novel was shocking in the extreme, which goes to show my parents were incredibly strict about what TV they let us watch as children. I’m unsure if this has had any appreciable impact on my personality, though I’m still not a huge fan of body humour, so maybe that’s why!

In other news, I tried to read the sequel to this, also at ten year’s of age, and that book is way more complicated and developed than this one. I definitely understood nothing and gave up part way through.

Also, Orson Scott Card is a horrible human being and if you’re going to read this book I recommend stealing it from the internet, or borrowing it from a friend, or buying it from a local used bookstore to make sure he gets none of the money.

 

 

5. First Book with Sexy Bits – Interview with a Vampire

I read a whole lot of Anne Rice when I was going through puberty. At the time, I thought that they were chalk-full of sex. To the point where I got into an argument with my friend about it when she said the vampires in these books can’t have sex. So I checked, and it turned out she was right! I guess they just had a lot of sexual themes? All I know is there were times I was embarrassed to read them on the bus, and I would make the gap in the pages as small as possible so people couldn’t read over my shoulder.

I also read her Witches series at roughly the same time, and that one not only had sex, it also had weird horrifying incest rape, so probably not appropriate content for a twelve year old. Funny my parents wouldn’t let me watch The Simpsons but it didn’t occur to them to check what I was reading! But I turned out okay so it must not have done any lasting damage (she says with hope in her voice….).

 

 

 

 

 

Well, that’s the list! I’m sure there are other firsts (first book I hated?), but these are the ones that stand out in my mind. So what are your favourite firsts?

 

I’ll Meet Her Someday

She’ll be a scientist – a chemist, maybe, or a neurologist. Her hair will be black and her eyes green, with a smattering of freckles across her nose. Emelia, her parents call her, but she’ll go by Emmy with anyone she’s really close to, and she’ll have no idea how beautiful she is. Maybe because she has curves society has taught her to hate, or because the bulk of her beauty comes from an inner light that’s impossible to photograph; so when she looks at herself, it’s invisible. She’ll be the kind of woman who draws you in to listen to her soft voice, the kind who spreads enthusiasm across her life like a kid spreads butter on toast, messily but honestly. I won’t be able to resist loving her, though I’ll have reasons to try. She’ll keep me at a distance, slow to trust, and it’ll be a year before she introduces me to her parents. She’ll say it’s normal for it to be hard to say I love you, and I’ll be afraid I’m alone in it. Sometimes I’ll feel that. Alone, even beside her, when she slips away into a dream and I know she’s thinking complex equations that I can’t share. But then she’ll turn to me and smile, and I’ll know I never have to be alone again. That’s the kind of woman I’ll love, when I meet her someday.

The Horse

This moment is insignificant.

She is standing by the study door, the carpet plush between her small toes. In one hand she holds the broken remains of a wooden horse; the other curls around the hem of her dark blue nightgown. Though it is her parents on the other side, she is afraid.

The horse was a gift for her fourth birthday, but she was sternly told not to play with it. Not a toy, her mother explained, but a piece of art. Let it sit here and watch over you, her father suggested, and they left the horse on the table beside her bed as the nurse finished tucking the blankets in.

When her nurse’s snores filled the room with familiar comfort she slipped her toes into the cold and reached across to draw the horse into bed beside her. She cradled it against the pillow, tucking it under the warm cover, and whispered it stories of hay and sunshine. Her guilt got the better of her, though, and she reluctantly she kissed the stallion goodbye.

As she reached to put it back on the table, its weight pulled hard against her small fingers, and it dropped. It hit the stone floor just to the left of the carpet that might have saved it. The horse’s strong neck snapped just below the muscles of its broad chest; one leg caved in against the regal flank, and the tip of the tail went flying, lost in the shadows of the room. Her tears woke the nurse, who chided her soundly.

With one large hand wrapped around her small arm, the nurse marched her out of the bedroom, past chuckling guards, and towards the study door. The older woman knocked, and turned to her small charge with both hands planted on her hips.

“Well? In you go,” she said.

She opened the door, and stared into the study. Her parents were turned towards each other; there was a private smile on her mother’s face. Their heads were bent together, and the firelight turned a few strands of her father’s hair to molten silver.

This is it: the moment. He reaches out, before he knows the door is already open, and trails his fingers softly across his wife’s cheek. In that moment, their daughter is no longer afraid. The broken horse is almost forgotten in her hand, and she takes a step, to run towards them, to join the picture. To be caught up in her father’s arms, sandwiched between them so all there is in the world is them, each other, and the static warmth of the look they exchange.

Of course the moment will be gone before she arrives; private moments are by their nature fragile, and her father will see the broken horse, and there will be admonitions and tears and objections and surrender and regret and apology. But for just a moment, as she lifts her foot and before she puts it down, she exists purely in that moment.

And she is not afraid.

This Moment

This is significant, this moment.

Not all moments are. Some are forgotten, even in the middle of them; some simply slip away, drifting through memories like echoes of moments that have come before. Some stick, though. Some draw lines in the sand and declare themselves, some say, “This is who you will be.”

The edges of her toes are curled around the banister railing. The wood is cool beneath her feet, autumn-touched, full of secrets. Her eyes are open wide, taking in the drop beneath her, the sweep of railing to her left, the rich texture of the carpet below. She does not tremble, steady with the ease of fearlessness.

Her mother has warned her not to play on the balcony, but she know she will not fall. She believes. From below she hears a startled shout; her name is almost a question.

She takes a step off the balcony. She is smiling.

The floor comes up fast, and everywhere is blood, and screaming, and most of one is her own, and little of the other, and she does not feel the pain so much as the bitter disappointment.

She believed.

She believed, and yet she fell.

Life Can Be A Story

“Once upon a time, the world was a lawless place. Beautiful people nursed evil in their hearts, and ugly children grew into ugly adults, no matter that they were pure of heart. Girls who wished upon a star might never find true love, and a peasant born would a peasant remain. A person might have said, ‘Life’s not fair,’ and meant it. People told fairy tales to while the time away, dreaming of better lives they would never have.

“Until one day, the Godmothers came. No one knows from where they appeared, and no one knows when they might go, leaving us alone, again, in an unfair world. The fairies brought with them the stories we had always told; magic to turn a peasant into a princess, true love’s kiss, evil witches and coal-red shoes.”

“Will I be a princess?”

“You’re already a princess, sweetheart – but who knows which princess you’ll be.”

“Can I be the one who goes to the ball?” Elodie asked. “I want to dance – and dance and dance…”

“You could be the one who walks through the woods and meets – A WOLF!” Her mother pounced, tickling, and Elodie shrieked and squirmed.

“No, mama, if I’m the one with the wolf he’ll eat Grammy.” She looked sad, suddenly, her seven year old’s face transformed. “I don’t want to be a princess, mama, if it means someone eats Grammy.”

“Not the one with the wolf, then,” her mother quietly agreed. “There are so many princesses, sweetheart, and so many stories. You could be anything.”

“Mama?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Why are all the stories sad in the middle part?”

“Well – because, that’s how you get a happily ever after.”

“I don’t think I want one,” her daughter said. In her small dark eyes were thoughts still raw and untested. Her mother bent and kissed her forehead, knowing she was supposed to say how wonderful it was to be a hero, how love was worth any challenge. Stories weren’t things anyone was taught to protect themselves from.

“Your life doesn’t have to be a story, Elodie,” her mother whispered instead. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

Bash with Wren in Virtual Reality!

My company has just launched an awesome new VR experience called Bash. It lets friends watch concerts or attend shows together, in live 360 video, from anywhere.

You grab a group and you all attend together, and the only people you see is your group of friends and the person you’re watching; no matter how many people attend, you get this cool intimate experience! If you sign up in the next TWO WEEKS, the price of admission ($5 for my show) includes a free VR viewer to keep forever! Plus, you get to listen to me reading some of my work, which I’m told I rock at.

Sometimes, Love

Sometimes love

is not enough.

Sometimes you need to

stand up!

Shake – something.

Love

with your whole body,

love things you understand and things you don’t and things

that scare you.

Those specially, the things that make you

shake

someone! Something.

Change the world, change a piece of it because sometimes

love is

and sometimes love is challenged,

love is dangerous,

love breaks something, or someone breaks something for love, for lack of it, for who you hold in your heart and your arms and at times like these sometimes

love

is not enough.

We need it. We need your love, need your voices, too, need your votes, need your faith, we need your arms

wrapped

around us.

Sometimes

love is.

Love is.

Deadpool’s Shaky Feminism

(warming! spoilers ahead. please, I’m serious, don’t read this if you don’t want to be spoiled. k thanks)

As I left the theatre with my friends last night, I eagerly turned to them for my favourite part of every movie (especially movies I enjoy): tearing it to shreds. “So! Didn’t you think the feminism was a little shaky?” I earned blank looks and a few half-hearted efforts at defense. “I mean,” one of my friends said, “if you compare it to any other Marvel movie it did really well.”

It’s during moments like this when I really miss my family. No matter how good something is, no matter how much we liked it, after a few comments about how great it was in order to assure the group that we did, in fact, enjoy it, we dive like sharp-taloned vultures onto the carcass of our joy and rip it into teeny tiny bits. I love this process. I don’t just want to be a consumer – I want to engage with my media.

Obviously, this isn’t for everyone. A lot of people find my attitude towards the whole thing overly critical, ruining the fun, and, if those facial expressions were any indication, kind of confusing and annoying? – and I respect that. Everyone is going for a different thing when they walk out of those black walls (remember when movie theatres looked cool? now they just look like a badly painted university black box theatre). To each their own and more power to us all! BUT, since I didn’t get to gleefully tear Deadpool apart last night – I’m going to do it now.

So first off, blah blah blah, I liked Deadpool. I think you figured that part out. Now, on to the matter of shaky feminism! This movie felt like a first year university class after the teacher suggested that while writing the script, they should keep an eye out for issues like representation of women. Weirdly, I think the fact that it IS so much better than other Marvel movies (as my friend asserted) has pretty much made the entire internet go, ‘yay! progress!’ and kind of ignore the problematic elements. I can’t find a single article (even Mary Sue) pointing out the Feminism 100 issues with this movie.

So, you want to write a feminist movie, I imagine the film 101 professor saying. (The professor is a white man, obviously.) Figure out who your main characters are. Obviously they are men. Okay, now give each of them a female sidekick. Adding more female sidekicks makes it better! Okay, cool, now you have three female characters so it’s totally cool if you kidnap the girlfriend in the most stereotypical “chick on a railroad” plotline ever because no one will notice because the super awesome woman over there is kicking butt against that man (and seriously, let’s take a moment to admire how super awesome Angel was. Except for how she had no agency and followed Ajax’s commands like a pitbull and had no story of her own or even lines. did she have lines? She might actually have been mute, I can’t remember. I think she was mute).

The thing is, having women isn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, it is definitely progress, and I’m glad for it. We’re moving in the in the right direction. Vanessa was a good character (until for no reason at all they stuck her in fishnets and a garter belt) with actual dimensions and purpose (until they made her a prop for Wade, almost literally, by tying her to train tracks while cackling maniacally), and Angel Dust was physically refreshing (incredible fighter, really different body build than the cutout women we usually see).

The issue for me (other than the afore-mentioned cackling idiot girlfriend kidnapped plotline, which should not be glossed over in terms of how pathetic it was) was that every woman was paired up and subservient to a man. We had Angel Dust, who followed orders to the point where it seemed at times like she wasn’t even capable of autonomy (grab him! hold him! no shit sherlock). Then we had Negasonic, who didn’t necessarily act subservient the way Angel did, but who was a trainee to Colossus – literally subservient to him, though not in a demeaning way. Add to that the total lack of a single female soldier (not that this is uncommon) and finish with the cherry that was Vanessa’s complete lack of autonomy (really, in a Deadpool movie, we don’t even get a beat where she has to take a moment to be okay with his face? or even better, a fake out screaming fit? that would have been hilarious. but is probably off topic).

Speaking of off-topic, how does broken glass that isn’t strong enough to survive a single sword hit strong enough to survive being tossed like four stories? But I digress.

On topic again, the lack of autonomy manifested as Vanessa ultimately being nothing but the prize at the end of Deadpool’s journey. Really, at this point, is that a good ending for her? Deadpool is broken in a whole new way. He is mentally ill, in a way he wasn’t before: homicidal and deranged. Sure he loves her, but he also talks to invisible people and tells cab drivers to murder their romantic rivals. This is all funny to the audience (we know we aren’t invisible), and he makes a great anti-hero… but a person with a relationship? Uhhhh… yeah maybe no? RUN VANESSA RUN!!!!!

Ahem.

So, anyway. I had fun tearing that to shreds! I hope you’re like me, and had fun reading it, because the internet is all about people who like (and hate) the same things coming together to complain about how their friends don’t get them. Wait, no, that might just be me. (I love you! my friends, I mean, not you the strangers of the internet. well, I love you too).

Verge

I dreamt of you last night.

We were lying by a river (have we ever done such a thing in all our lives?) in the shade of a weeping willow. Your head was in my lap, and you wore a white dress that spread out across the grass like a bride’s train. The warmth was soothing, the sun and your heartbeat making sweet potion (as if we ever listen to each other’s hearts beat, except in dreams). Your eyes snapped open, and you seemed to know; clouds chased across the preternaturally blue sky like a time lapse photograph. Your face crumpled, and for a moment I thought you might scream, or cry. Your breath came faster, but when you opened your mouth it was only to whisper, ‘run.’

I did. I rolled to my feet and though the dream shattered, I ran from the building and down the derelict streets like a madman. It was ten blocks (maybe five) before my lungs betrayed me and I stumbled to a stop.

I have these moments, you see. Where I remember that you’re gone.

You would think it would be impossible, remembering, as forgetting seems so impossible a task. Yet I do, in tiny moments, in unconscious gestures. I will find an old power bar in the remnants of some sky scraping office tower and think, Emmy will be so happy; or I will hunt deer in the park where we used to jog on Sunday mornings, and I will turn to you to laugh and say, See, I’m finally sticking to your damn fitness routine.

The remembering steals my breath. Strange how something so fundamental to life is so fragile – breathing. How easily we can forget the mechanics of it.

There are times I curse the dreams. They leave me melancholic, and in this new world a moment of distraction can mean the end. As much as I miss you (love you love you love you) I am not quite ready to join you, something I know you will forgive me. It takes precious time for me to wipe the fog of dreams of you away. To accept once again the world as it is. They say hope can be poison, and I know dreams can be the same.

Yet there are times when the dreams are all I live for. I need them. I need to remember what I’m striving for, what life can be (the smell of your hair). Survival needs a purpose, needs more than just waking up tomorrow. Hope can be the difference between lying down in front of a rift and letting it claim you, or running til your lungs bleed (nineteen blocks) and you take in one more breath, one more that’s not your last.

Tonight I will sleep under stars grown more beautiful from the loss of us (at least we have done this much – we have returned to Earth its starry sky), and I will search for dreams of you. I lost you and the world on the same day, but I think you should know (it would make you smile) – I dream of you the most.

 

 

Image by the astounding Julia Roncesvalles! Julia is an art enthusiast from Vancouver, BC, currently adrift in the wilds of Florida (okay, she’s at school, shhh). She primarily creates figure and portrait style pieces using pens and inks.