Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 36

Season of change

I love autumn. For me it’s a season of change—slightly melancholy but also, always, deeply and fundamentally exciting. To me autumn is the real new year. The riotous blooms and leaves of our planters and pots on the decks are beginning to change—becoming more sparse and more intensely green as the more sensitive ad brightly-coloured annuals like petunias stop blooming. The nights are cooler and quieter. Even the air whispers of change: it smells different, more briny, more alive, and it sounds different as the leaves become papery. The squirrels are fiercer and faster and less afraid of predators because they know winter is coming and they have to gather their supplies. Right around this time, too, hummingbirds morph from instant food-territory belligerence, particularly with each other, to mellow appreciation—sometime next month I’ll see two, or even three, who in June might have fought half to death, sitting together companionably drinking from the same feeder.

One change for me this autumn is finally getting a ramp built. And once it’s in, for the first time in six years I won’t worry whenever there’s a storm. When there’s a big storm here we lose power. When we lose power, my wheelchair lift won’t work. When the wheelchair lift won’t work I can’t leave the house—or enter the house if I’m already out when the storm hits. We’ve been lucky so far, in that storms have hit while I’ve been at home, and the power hasn’t been out for more than a few hours. But I worry. Every time. And soon I won’t have to worry anymore.

Meanwhile, we’ve had to shove all our plants together in a pile on the deck so the carpenters can get to work. So, for while, the pots look abundant again especially after it rains.

Image description: pots and planters shoved together on a deck: jasmine, petunias, million bells, fuchsia and marigoldVideo of rain pouring down on a deck soaking planters and pots full of jasmine fuchsia, salvia, herbs, palms, petunias, million bells, geraniums, and marigolds

This year, for the first time in three years, the season marks the beginning of another round of book publicity. The first of my 2022 books, Spear, won’t be out for another six months but my first official gig is scheduled in less than two weeks: attendance at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association in Portland. While I’m there I’ll sign a couple of hundred galleys, meet booksellers, and give a presentation about the book at the big group breakfast.

Until Hild I’d never given a breakfast speech. I’m not at my sparkling best first thing in the morning so voluntarily eating socially while trying to blink myself awake would never have occurred to me. And wanting to listen to a speech while I ate my eggs? Eyebrow-raising. As for giving the speech, oh ha, ha ha ha! But then eight years ago the kind people at the PNBA asked me go down there to talk about Hild, so I did, and I had a lovely time. (Despite the day before being the first day of the Eight-Month Nightmare That Was Tecfidera-Induced Pain, and so being in shock for the whole thing.) And I think it made a big difference to the sales of the book. I mean, how can you not feel fondly towards those you’ve shared breakfast with? I certainly feel kindly disposed towards those who happily munched their eggs and muffins while I enthused about Hild.

So this year I’m actively looking forward to it. And I’m pretty sure this year there will be no nerve pain. And then I will come back to Seattle and happily zoom up and down my very own ramp, just because I can.

When accidents become icons

I’m guessing most readers are familiar with the classic ringed or Celtic cross: originally large, standing stone crosses with what many have described as a stone ‘nimbus’ around the arms.* These standing crosses ranged in height from about 3m to 5.5m. Here’s a generic vector drawing to illustrated what I mean:

Vector drawing by Petr Vodicka of an original in the public domain

There are now millions of these nimbused crosses in miniature: on tattoos, t-shirts, and tarot cards; woven in hanging cloths, painted on Christmas cards, and hammered from bronze and pewter and silver and gold and hung on neck chains. There’s lots of rumination among academics, religious, antiquarians, and historians about where and how that so-called nimbus developed. Perhaps it comes from the cosmological cross, an “important motif in Coelius Sedulius‘s poem Carmen Paschale,” composed in the fifth century and, according to Wikipedia, “known in Ireland by the 7th century.” (You will forgive me if I call bullshit, or at least an unseemly stretching of probability.) Or maybe St Patrick combined the cross with pagan symbols (such as the Neolithic and Bronze Age wheel cross—see footnote) to appeal to the heathen. (We have absolutely zero indication of this, but, hey, anything’s possible.) Or, gosh, it could represent Christ’s dominance over the sun god. (Well of course it could; it could represent a prescient seventh-century mystic’s representation of a lunar module on top of Apollo 13.) And on it goes. It’s always been clear to me that all these pedantic old white men were basically talking through their beards.

So I was absolute delighted last month when I read an article in the September issue of Current Archaeology, “Iona’s Archetype,” that gave a much more likely explanation: the shape is a useful accident resulting from at least two sets of damage and an eight-century repair. And for this eminently sensible suggestion there is some evidence—circumstantial, of course, but something tangible.

On the island of Iona (that Hild knows as Hii) there were several large standing stone crosses. Most now standing are replicas, or are in pieces—or parts of a larger, reconstructed whole—in museums. One, the eight-century St Martin’s cross, still stands in its original position on Iona:

St Martin’s cross. Original mounted photograph annotated by Erskine Beveridge ‘ St Martin’s Cross Iona – (from east)’. From the RCAHMS Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Collection MS/36/209.

Note how short the arms are, how small the upper surface area is relative to the width of the long central arm. Iona is a windy island. Any top-heavy structure, especially if the top part has a large surface area, will be prone to being blown down. My guess is that the size of those arms explains the St Martin’s cross’s survival.

The Current Archaeology article, though, examines St John’s cross, originally 5.3m tall (about 17.5′), carved in the early eight century and apparently the progenitor of all Celtic crosses. Here’s what the partially reconstructed cross looks like.

Photo via Canmore

This is very high and very top-heavy. That central boss and outstretched arms would have acted rather like a sail, tipping the top-heavy thing over. The stone, particularly the arms, would most likely break under its own weight—and in fact there’s evidence of more than one such break and subsequent repair. There’s also evidence that sometime after the cross fell over it was re-erected, this time jammed into the central slot of an old mill stone to provide stability.

More interestingly, from my perspective, the circle appears to be a latter addition, introduced during one of the repairs, along with an extra piece at the top and at the neck—the shaded bits in the diagram below.

Here’s a more detailed look at the structural repair and stability improvement.

Photos again courtesy of Canmore

It is an elegant solution.

So, that beard-tugging rumination about the origins of the circle in the Celtic cross? Just-So stories resting on wishful thinking.

Finally, just for grins, here’s a photo of the concrete replica of St John’s cross that stands today on Iona.

It must have been an awe-inspiring sight, particularly if it was painted. Was it painted? We don’t know. I’m not aware of evidence of polychromatic decoration but, there again, I’m not aware of any evidence that they weren’t. And why would you go to all the time, trouble and expense of creating such an amazing thing and then not make it as striking as possible? Maybe we should have a colouring competition…

*I am not talking here of the white supremacist hate symbol, usually with four equal arms rather than the long vertical axis of a standing cross. The hate symbol very possibly could be a direct descendant of the wheel cross—which is a cross inside a circle (and if you break that circle just before its join to the cross you get the beginnings of a swastika)—but it’s also just possible it could be connected to the nativist national origin myths that neo-nazis love to co-opt.

More on the enamel pin for Spear

Image description: A round enamel pin in the shape of a red shield with raised rim and embossed rivets held between a white woman’s the finger and thumb. On the shield are entwined forget-me-nots, with blue-and-yellow flowers and deep green leaves. Lying over all is a broad-bladed boar spear.

I promised an update on availability. Here’s what I know.

The pin will be available during a pre-order campaign which will begin much closer to the publication date. (Publication date is 19 April 2022. So perhaps after the holidays? I’m just guessing.) When that does happen, there’ll be an online form and readers can upload their receipt (from any retailer) to get a pin. So no need to cancel any pre-orders now, just file the receipt until the form is live! And I’ll be sure to let you know when it goes up.

If you want to be ready, pre-order the book now:

IndieBound | Amazon.com | Bookshop.org | Barnes & Noble | Amazon.co.uk

Or see this enormous list of independent booksellers in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.

Meanwhile I’ve been happily futzing about making pretties of the ARCs. More on that later.

Happy Birthday to Kelley

Kelley in her office last autumn

Today is Kelley’s birthday. Once again I feel so glad we met and that she took a chance on me. She is the queen of my heart.

Nicola Griffith 101

Graphic of Nicola Griffith novels sowing six arranged in a repeating zigzag diagonal pattern

A nice piece today by Jonathan Thornton up on Tor.com, all about my books, in order, with short, sharp, thoughtful analyses of each. It’s good to feel seen (mostly—there are a few awards missing but he got the main things).

Now if only someone would fix my Wikipedia page…

A spear and a shield

Spear package: two postcards, an ARC, and an enamel pin. Photo by Theresa DeLucci.

This is the package being sent out this month to early readers and influencers. The book in the middle is the Advanced Reading Copy of Spear. On either side is a postcard featuring one of the interior illustrations. I’ll talk about each of those things in depth in future blog posts. Today I want to talk about the fourth item, an enamel pin.

Enamel pin for Spear, designed by Forensics and Flowers

When the marketing folks at Tordotcom told me they were commissioning an enamel pin as part of their sales and marketing campaign, I wasn’t sure how I felt. Obviously, Yay! that there would be a marketing campaign. But also Eh? because what if it was some cheap, lightweight tchotchke—a mile from the kind of thing a Spear reader might be interested in?

So, yeah: I needn’t have doubted. The pin turns out to be a rather splendid, substantial, lovely-in-the-hand object. Beautifully coloured, gorgeously designed, and astonishingly textured. It feels weighty and handmade.

When I opened the box the first thing that struck me was the size. That round shield is about 4 cm in diameter, and the two prongs on the back—like sharp earring posts—are held in place by two sturdy black rubber stoppers, big enough to need their own raised grip. You could pin this to canvas, leather—a belt, a book bag, the lapel of a winter topcoat—and it will stay secure. Equally, you could pin it to a t-shirt (which is what I did to test it; it looked very handsome against black).

The second thing is that the pin will stick to a magnet—as I found out when I put it on the table and click, it stuck to my iPad. So for those of you who wear expensive clothes, you could file the posts off and just stick a magnet behind your material. That way you needn’t be afraid of poking holes in your cashmere or silk or suede, or the beautiful wool cloth of your Armani jacket :)

Third, the detail. Look at the banding around the shield, and those tiny individual rivets. The shading and texture on the petals. The cross-piece below the leaf-shaped blade. Not to mention the yellow centres of the forget-me-nots.

Which brings me to the fourth thing, the amazing colour—and how beautifully it matches Rovina Cai’s artwork. (which I’ve already talked about elsewhere and will talk about more soon.)

Fifth, and best, is how perfectly it encapsulates the spirit of the book: spear—specifically a boar spear—shield, forget-me-nots, and red red red. It honestly couldn’t be better.

How can you get hold of one of these pins? I’m not sure yet. I think (again, I’m not sure yet) they’ll be used as part of some kind of campaign though I’ve no idea if it will be pre- or post-publication. I can promise you that when I know, you’ll know. So if you want one, stay tuned.

Wedding anniversary x 2

Ringshots from 1993 (top) and 2013

Image description: Two photos of two white women’s hands. The top photo is in colour; each woman wears a single gold band on their ring finger. The photo below is in black and white; each woman wears two gold bands on their ring finger.

On this day 28 years ago Kelley and I got married for the first time—in our back garden in Atlanta surrounded by about fifty of our family and friends. WE gave each other a 14ct gold wedding band. The marriage had no legal force.

Exactly 20 years later we got married again, this time before a judge and attended by fourteen family and friends. WE gave each other an 18ct gold wedding band which we wore next to the first. And this time it was a legal ceremony, and our marriage was—and is—valid all over the world.

That second wedding was possible because just a few months earlier, on June 26th, 2013—on the 25th anniversary of when Kelley and I met—we got the best anniversary present of all time: SCOTUS struck down the Defence of Marriage Act.

For us here in Seattle, today, life is good. I hope it’s good for you wherever you are.

My MS resume

If you’re here because of my recent interview for theMSGuide.com, hello and welcome. I’m a novelist—this website and blog is mostly about my life and work: I talk about books, book research, cats, SARS-CoV-2, queer issues and disability issues. MS is often peripheral to my interests. Obviously, feel free to fossick about in my essays and blog posts, but if you’d rather just focus on MS then here’s a short resume of me, my interests in and thoughts on MS and disability.

I have MS. I was diagnosed in 1993. I started using a cane in 1999, elbow crutches in 2004, and a manual wheelchair with power assist in 2016. I was one of the first people with MS on beta interferon but switched to Copaxone after bad reactions. I’ve always been a researcher, and in 1999 I came *this* close to persuading my neurologist to give me complete immune system reboot via ablation with cyclophosphamide or something similar. In the end he chickened out. Even today I am still sometimes angry about that. I then tried mitoxantrone which was amazing at first (almost like a miracle cure), then terrible (really bad rebound effect, plus I needed marrow-expanding rescue shots—and let me tell you, that shit hurts) and now, of course, means I have to have annual echocardiograms to look for heart failure and alert to the signs of leukaemia. I’m fine so far. After mitoxantrone I moved on to a variety of other immunomodulatory drugs until Tecfidera utterly crippled me for almost a year with the kind of pain that will drive people to kill themselves. Fortunately my wife is smart and realised it was the drugs causing the pain, not MS. I stopped the drugs and within 24 hours I stopped all the opioids. A week later I had my life back—and that is the closest I’ve ever come to a medical miracle. My only meds now are dalfampridine (a potassium channel blocker—and yes it makes a difference) low-dose naltrexone (ditto) and the occasional pregabalin (GABA analogue, that is, a nerve pain reducer) when an old ulnar nerve injury acts up.

In terms of activism and social justice around MS and disability I joined the the Multiple Sclerosis Association in 2002 as a volunteer and was soon spending 20 hours a week organising things like publicity, marketing, and yoga classes. I joined the board in 2004—and resigned in 2005 when I finally realised the organisation was more interested in perpetuating itself (paying staff—none of whom had MS—and fattening their pension plans) than actually working for people with MS. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

I started writing about disability and MS with posts such as “Lame is So Gay,” and “Coming Out as a Cripple.” I’ve offered my thoughts on MS beginning with faulty lipid metabolism, I write essays and Op-Eds, give lectures, and spent some time pointing out the awful imbalance in crip representation in books and film. I’ve given talks to organisations about disability access and inclusion, consulted on a Hollywood tentpole film in development about a disabled protagonist, and advised individual authors on disability representation.

In 2016 I founded #CripLit and with Alice Wong co-hosted a series of Twitter chats for disabled writers and editors. In 2017 I started collecting a list of books that pass the Fries Test—and the numbers were, frankly, so disheartening that I no longer bother. Though having said that, in the last four years there’s been an absolute explosion in CripLit and if I had to guess I could quadruple that list overnight. Having said that, even if I could multiply the list by a hundred, representation statistics would still be woeful: there would still be 1,250,000 disabled voices missing.

In 2018 I wrote my one and only novel about disability—So Lucky, a short thriller about a woman diagnosed with MS. It won the Washington State Book Award and got good reader reviews—and some appallingly ignorant reviews from nondisabled critics. Ableism is alive and well in all parts of the literary ecosystem.

There’s more to tell of my MS and disability journey, but for now here’s a list of some things I’ve written you might find relevant.

Lame is So Gay: A Rant — A not-safe-for-work manifestoHuge News: Multiple Sclerosis is a Metabolic Disorder — Some research from ten years ago that will one day lead to drugs (currently in development) that could very well change the MS equationFlying Internationally With A Wheelchair — Travelling while a cripComing Out As A Cripple — Talking about the social model of disability, disability culture, and finding communityThe Fries Test for Disabled Characters in Fiction — It’s a low bar and still so few books pass itThings Disabled People Do — Another bit of a rant this time for Disability Pride MonthNew Car: An Accessible Minivan — All the minutiae you could possibly want about the working of a specially adapted Honda minivanRewriting The Old Disability Script — An Op-Ed I wrote for the New York Times on ableism, internalised ableism, and critical bias in publishingNeither Dying Nor Being Cured — The Ethel Louise Armstrong Lecture on disability culture and ableismMy Health — A personal post about the physical, mental, and emotional cost of Tecfidera So Lucky  — My award-winning novel about a woman with MS. See also my two-years-later retrospective post about the publishing experienceKitties! — Because honestly no blog is complete without photos, videos, and stories of two ferociraptors tabbies called Charlie and George

Two years of Çaturdays

We’ve now had the pleasure and privilege of living with kittens Charlie and George for two years. They’ve given us delight, terror, irritation and, again—and mostly—delight. We brought them home on 10 August 2019. They were about 12 weeks ago. They were small for their age: the only survivors of a litter of six, rescued and brought back from the brink (at one point Charlie weighed just one pound) by the heroic efforts of Seattle Area Feline Rescue and, particularly, their foster parent, Cody. Now they are happy and healthy and utterly in charge of their world. Here are a few pictures of their journey.

12 August, 2019: George (left) and Charlie meet the sofa for the first time—

—but it doesn’t take them long to become lords of the sofa, just indefatigable. Here they are, exactly one week later, running round and round and round. At this stage they have not yet discovered the joys of scratching the sofa to pieces.

A month later: a bouquet of sleeping kittens. Now all they do is eat and sleep.But it doesn’t take long for them to begin adolescence—Charlie sort of dreamy and George frownyAnd now they are fully adult, kings of their world (and ours)—both a little grumpy here in this June photo because it was 108 degrees and we wouldn’t let them outside

So today, two years and four days after meeting two tiny kittens for the first time, we’re all having a Happy Çaturday. We look forward to hundreds more with these fine beasties.

If you want more pictures and videos—a lot more—take a look at two years’ worth of Kitten Reports. And meanwhile, enjoy your Çaturday.

Spear updates

Image description: A cropped version of the Notecard Rosette (see image description below) designed to look very much like an ammonite, or a giant eye with a dark blue pupil, with writing—”Spear” in big black letters, and, beneath that in smaller red letters, “Nicola Griffith,”—are prominent in the upper right corner. 

Spear, my short novel set in a sixth-century Britain of demi-gods and legends, will be out in 9 months. The publishing process proceeds apace. Here are some updates.

Today I got the first pass proofs—I hate proofing, it’s my least favourite part of the process—but I’m also delighted by these proofs because I’m finally getting a sense of what the book might look like. The finished length is 192 pages—which is actually 184 pages if you discount the title page, copyright page, half-title pages, etc, but include the Author’s Note. It’s a juicy note, long enough to need 19 footnotes. (I love writing footnotes; they’re an opportunity for sly jokes and generally things not to be taken too seriously—though of course some of these footnotes are Very Serious and Weighty Indeed.)

As well as the fabulous cover illustration, Rovina Cai has created five luscious and evocative black and white line drawings as interior illustrations. One in particular will stop your heart (especially if you’re sneaking peeks ahead of our reading, tsk tsk), but I’ll say no more for now.

Rovina has added colour wash and animated two of those illustrations to make lovely GIFs which we’ll be using for Very Special Promotions. More on that later, too.

And speaking of Special Promotions we also have a specially-designed enamel pin—the kind of thing that would look good worn on a lapel in all walks of life, as well as pinned to a book bag etc. We also have notecards which look like this:

Notecard spread, based on cover illustration by Rovina Cai

Image description: Six notecards fanned out on a wooden table. The main body of the card is white, with a red, black, bronze and white illustration in a long strip down the left hand side. Across the bottom of the white part is printed, in big black letters, “Spear,” and beneath that in smaller red letter, “Nicola Griffith.“

Or if, like me, you get obsessed with patterns, like this:

Notecard Rosette: I got fed up of the cats trompling on my pretty patterns and fucking them up so ended up cheating and doing this rather clumsily in Photoshop

Image description: Dozens—at least 50—SPEAR notecards arranged like a rosette so that it looks very much like a fan or kaleidoscope or even wheels spinning within wheels of white, red, bronze, and black against a black background. The final card is arranged at the one o’clock position, but hanging perpendicularly, so the writing, “Spear” in big black letters, and, beneath that in smaller red letters, “Nicola Griffith,” are clearly displayed.

Or like the image at the top of the post (which, yes, is deliberately made to look like an ammonite—I’ve talked about my fascination with phi before).

I have made a map which I’m pretty pleased with. I made it too late for inclusion in the book, and it needs some tweaks before it’s ready for prime time, but—again—more on that soon.

I just got confirmation that I’ll be doing the audio narration. I’m thrilled about this! I love reading aloud, love to perform my own work, and this book in particular was written to be read aloud. It has a rolling rhythm that I can’t wait for you to hear. Excitingly, I’ve finally found an accessible sound studio that doesn’t charge obscene rates. Jack Straw Cultural Center is a venerable community organisation and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to working with them. Assuming it goes well, it will mean much more audio from me in the future. That won’t be happening until February, at which point I’ll blog about the process, as I did with So Lucky. Meanwhile, you can listen and watch my 3-minute reading of the beginning of Spear and can pre-order the audio, hardcover, and ebook editions now from most book retailers:

IndieBound | Amazon.com | Bookshop.org | Barnes & Noble | Amazon.co.uk

Finally, I have my first two blurbs and an advanced reader review and I am hugging myself and grinning. Those, too, will appear at the proper time but for now let me just say—they are pretty fucking good

That’s about it for Spear, for now. I hope to have some sort of MENEWOOD update soon.