Averil Dean's Blog, page 11

Bricks and Mortar

I thought I’d have time for some preamble here, to explain that my mom is in town to start the house hunt. For years we’ve been talking about buying a property for all of us, with everyone kicking in something for a big family place we can share. My mom loves it here as much as we do, but because my sister is still in Vegas, she’s not ready to sell her house and make this a permanent move. So she came to stay and scout the territory, maybe meet with a realtor and get the lay of the land. Howe...

The Bird

Yesterday I got a tattoo. It’s bright and elaborate and it’s right there on my forearm: a bird stringing beads as I do with words, beads escaping the ends of the string but ready to be picked back up and eventually restrung. The bird is masked, and there are three rhododendron blossoms, which, according to the farmers almanac, indicate a warning. One which that fierce little bird is clearly disregarding.

It’s hard to explain why this tattoo was important to me. Maybe it’s part of an ongoing se...

Plenty

My husband and I took a drive along the Sound this weekend. Today is our 13th anniversary, so to celebrate we got a room in Silverdale and spent a couple of days together, exploring the area and getting silly. It always feels festive to me when the leaves brighten and explode all over the sidewalks, when the tea roses surprise us with a final bloom and the geese start in with the party horns from far overhead. Everywhere we went this weekend felt like exactly where I wanted to be.

Now, home ag...

Traffic Jam

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media these days. All the different avenues we take to reach one another, all the winding, twittery roads. The pins and pages and blogs and links. We’re all looking for ways to connect—and for people with something to sell, I suppose we’re looking for buyers. Isn’t that the point, underneath it all? We’re supposed to build a platform that will raise us far above the crowd and the noise of all that traffic, and to do that we need to have something to say a...

Twenty More

Who’s the last person you spoke to?
What’s the farthest you’ve ever walked in a day?
What color are your eyes?
Favorite breakfast food.
Labels you assign to yourself.
The name of the first album/tape/CD you remember buying?
Ever been to a doctor or hospital in a foreign country?
Do you like piña coladas?
Getting caught in the rain?
Pocket inventory.
Can you whistle?
Where do you go when you want to be alone?
Other than whatever you’re typing on, what’s the nearest object to your hand? (Note to boys: not...

Peas and Chocolate

When I started writing, I marveled at the words. I’d jot down a few paragraphs, go back and play with them, write a few more and so on. I was having fun with it, just messing around. There were no word counts or fast drafts. There was no pressure. I loved writing a page and then immediately rewriting it, over and over sometimes, with the whole story still in the background waiting to be discovered. I’d go for long walks when I got stuck and I’d think about what might happen next, imagining th...

Frailty

A woman came into the clinic yesterday. She was beautiful once; I scanned her driver’s license and saw the photo. Though she’s still very young, her teeth have gone pewter and she fills the room with the chemically scent of a new sofa. She’s cut off her hair, scraped at her skin, she’s lost inside her clothing: she’s breaking my fucking heart. Tweaker, someone says of her, and this is undeniably true. Daughter, also. Sweet, frail human being whose mind must surely have been wrecked somewhere...

Canyon

ambition |amˈbiSHən|
noun
a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work: her ambition was to become a model | he achieved his ambition of making a fortune.
• desire and determination to achieve success: life offered few opportunities for young people with ambition.
ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French from Latin ambitio(n-), from ambire ‘go around (canvassing for votes).’

I’ve been thinking about ambition. What it means, how its presence or the lac...

Unfurl

I am writing to you from the lap of luxury—aka, a brand new bed. Two burly men delivered this baby yesterday morning and hauled off our old two-trough backbreaker, which often left me so twisted after a night’s “sleep” that it would take me an hour or more just to unfurl. Not so this morning. The new bed has a movable platform underneath to raise and lower the head and feet. It’s made of firm but smooshy foam. It’s guaranteed to last twenty years, starting now. It’s making me so fucking happy...

The Empress Chronicles

Congratulations to my dear friend Suzy Vitello. She’s written a fantastic new YA novel called The Empress Chronicles (and by YA, I mean that it’s the sort of book you buy for a young friend, then fall in love with yourself so that you have to purchase a second copy just to keep around the house for moments when you need a dose of writerly inspiration). Suzy has a wonderful knack for voices, and in this story she really gets to let it rip. I loved both halves of the alternating narrative but w...