Kestrel Casey's Blog, page 2
October 13, 2021
SFWA StoryBundle!
I can finally talk about this now: I’m in the SFWA Storybundle!
It’s pay-what-you-want, but if you choose at least $15, you get Phaethon and all these other wonderful books.
THE SFWA MAGIC AND MAYHEM BUNDLE
Every fantasy lover knows the basic rules of magic. It always comes at a cost and it never quite gives the expected results. Then it should come as no surprise that the magic in our stories has many explosive consequences! Demolish your way through fourteen novels that span the sub-genres of fantasy while showcasing magic-induced mayhem, from the hilarious to the horrible and everything in between.
SFWA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting, advancing, and supporting science fiction and fantasy writing in the United States and elsewhere. This year the SFWA Self-Publishing Committee cast a wider net when seeking submissions and received substantially more novels to evaluate than ever before. We enjoyed sorting through so many excellent books but faced a doubly difficult task as we narrowed our selections down to these fourteen special stories.
Some of our favorites in this Bundle:
• Darkmage – ML Spencer’s award-winning debut novel filled with epic battles, flawed heroes, and a brutal struggle
• Playing with Fire – R.J. Blain’s snarky romantic comedy with a body count, featuring a fire-breathing unicorn on a mission of destruction
• Phaethon – Rachel Sharp’s tech fantasy that weaves computer hackers, faeries, and corporate greed into a twisted tale
• Ragnarok Unwound – Kristin Jacques’s story of a young woman tangled up in a prophecy that sets her off to save the world with the help of a brownie, a Valkyrie, and the goddess of death herself
• Cutie and the Beast – E.J. Russell’s novel pairing a former Queen’s Champion of Faerie’s Seelie Court with a cheeky yet adorable human temp worker, as they prove, once again, that when fae consort with humans, it never ends well
• 9 Tales of Raffalon – Matthew Hughes’s intriguing mosaic novel combining nine stories of an enterprising thief as he grapples with crooked guild masters, ghosts, spies, ogres, and a talented amateur assassin
– The SFWA Self-Publishing Committee
Visit the website at storybundle.com, connect on Twitter at @storybundle and like StoryBundle on Facebook .
March 18, 2021
…So, how ’bout this pandemic, huh?
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so this entry will serve mainly to tell you that:
I am alive, I am still actively writing on occasion, and I have hope that we’re going to get out of this somedayIf that checks all your boxes, you can stop reading here.
Otherwise, I’ve been doing some mask sewing and home renovating and activist organizing to pass the long year. Since I qualify for the vaccine (on multiple fronts, thanks to my complex disability), I’ve made an appointment to get my first jab. I expect that even after I’m fully vaccinated, I will have some difficulty adjusting. A year of conditioning is hard to shake. Maybe especially because this thing will have no one day of victory, no sirens suddenly falling silent, no declarative moment when the state of emergency is over. Getting back to normal is going to be like walking rolling hills in tall grass. But at least we’re on the path now.
Hope to see you all at the top.
December 3, 2020
Gay Apparel
Last year, I edited Gay Apparel, a queer holiday flash fic anthology available only from the authors in exchange for donations.
This year, one of our writers, Corey Alexander (who wrote under the pen name Xan West), passed away.
To get a copy from me this year, please donate to @savelyonmartin to honor their memory. The clinic helped our friend, and we’re going to help the clinic.
Learn more about Gay Apparel here.
If you donate, just send me your email and I’ll send you the book in all digital file formats.
If you cannot afford to donate, that’s okay. Social media boosts of the authors & their chosen charities are accepted in lieu of donations. Then just contact me and I’ll send you a digital copy.
P.S. In author news: NaNoWriMo is over, and I successfully completed it this year. Phantasma, book three of Phaethon, is now 50k words, about 80% finished.
November 14, 2020
It’s #NaNoWriMo Again
Once a year, I hole up in my whatever-I’ve-got-at-that-moment to write a book. My first novel was written during NaNoWriMo, a month of writing 1,667 words per day. So, too, were most of the subsequent ones. I “win” (write 50,000 words) most years, but some books take longer than others. And some years are harder.
I “lost” NaNo in the last presidential election year. I may yet lose it in this one. It’s hard to focus; politics, pandemics, and chronic pain are unhelpful. That’s an understatement, but you’re living on the same planet I am (I assume), so you know damn well what it’s like right now.
Usual sources of ideas, like listening to people talk at the bar while I work, are not happening. Long drives are my best time to think, but there’s nowhere safe to go. I needed to reallocate time from somewhere, and since I still have to eat and sleep and do laundry, the hours I spend writing are taken away from sewing masks, which feels wrong, but I’ve been at it for months now and made more than 300 masks, so something was going to have to stop me sooner or later. And, since my current project is the last book in a trilogy, I’m trying to juggle three books in my head and keep track of what everyone has in their pockets at the same time, working with only the brainspace not occupied by the aforementioned politics, pandemic, and pain.
That said, I am trying. I want you all to get a new book next year. I know you waited patiently for the last one.
Here’s hoping next year is better than this one.
October 7, 2020
Pharos is here!
Pharos, book two of Phaethon, is now available.
Hackers, faeries, screaming rockabilly neighbors.
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August 30, 2020
Pharos: Cover Reveal, Playlist, & Paperback Preorder
Some of you will have already seen the cover reveal, but for those who haven’t, here it is!
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And here’s the music that sets the mood:
And if you just can’t wait to get your hands on the paperback, you can order directly from the publisher. If you order before October 1st, use code PHAROSLAUNCH to get 15% off.
August 25, 2020
June 16, 2020
Pandemic! At the Sewing Machine
Well, this is all pretty terrible, huh?
Since COVID-19 started getting serious, I’ve been sewing masks.
Writing is work, but it’s also a luxury. (Please see Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs before leaving angry comments.) My publisher is still hard at work doing their thing, so Pharos still has a chance of coming out this year, but the making of new words is on hold while I do things that are more important right now.
I learned to sew as a kid, but hadn’t done it much since, so in the last few months I’ve rediscovered the 10,000 ways to make a rats nest in a bobbin case on my way to getting good again. The sewing machine and I are finally on mostly friendly terms. I’ve made almost 100 masks since I started counting, a tally that leaves out all the early experiments and those made for myself and my immediate circle. I’m actually getting pretty good at it now. Each mask is shipping with an info sheet and extra paper filters. People have donated enough supplies for me to keep making masks for months and giving them away to anyone who needs one, so that’s what I’m going to do.
If you need one, you can email masktheplanet@gmail.com with a size (s/m/l) and a masc or femme preference for fabric. I’ll make you one as soon as I can.
Click to view slideshow.
March 16, 2020
A Game to Play in the Mean Time
I’m stuck at home for a while, and if you’re doing your part for public health, so are you. So I decided to share a road trip game my friends and I have played for as long as I can remember. It’s a song game, so if you know a lot of songs, this is for you.
The Basics:
One person chooses a word or topic. The next person sings at least one full line of a song containing that word or topic. Everyone playing then takes turns until someone runs out of ideas and a new word or topic has to be chosen. All players are encouraged to sing along if they know the words.
An Example:
Rosie: The topic is “Modes of transportation.”
Jack: “Something something something on a horse with no name-”
Rosie: Cheater! You need the whole line.
Jack: Okay, okay. Uh…
“Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy
Won’t you look down over me
Yeah, I got a first class ticket
But I’m as blue as a boy can be
Then I’m walking in Memphis”
Rosie: Double points! Planes and feet. Hm.
“Yeah you don’t even need to know the reason why,
Just shut up and get rad,
cuz’ now it’s time to skate or die.”
Jack: Interesting. How about
“Visions of you on a motorcycle drive by
The cigarette ash flies in your eyes
And you don’t mind, you smile
And say the world doesn’t fit with you
I don’t believe you, you’re so serene
Careening through the universe
Your axis on a tilt, you’re guiltless and free
I hope you take a piece of me with you”
Rosie: Do you know any songs written in this century?
Jack: Probably not. Your turn.
House Rules:
Like any good game, you and your players can just make things up. Some example house rules:
No repeats of a word on the theme (In “Modes of Transportation,” for example, “train” can be used only once.)
Bands instead of lyrics (“Bands that have animals in their names.” Arctic Monkeys, the Yardbirds, Wolfmother. But you still have to be able to sing a line from one of their songs.)
Genre limits. (“Punk songs about anarchy.” “Country songs about beer.”)
Starter Categories:
Modes of Transportation (“Leaving on a Jet Plane”)
Articles of Clothing (“Blue Suede Shoes”)
Mammals (“Eye of the Tiger”)
Units of Measurement (“I Can’t Drive 55”)
Life and Death (“Living on a Prayer,” “Die, Die, My Darling”)
First Names (“Jolene”)
Literary (“Paperback Writer,” “Every Day I Write the Book”)
Manual Labor (“Workin’ on the Highway,” “Far Away Boys”)
Holidays Other than Christmas (“Saturday in the Park,” “This is Halloween”)
Colors (“Little Red Corvette,” “The Black Parade”)
Settling Disputes:
If it can’t be decided by participating parties (Does this song count? Was that the whole line?), it can be settled with rock paper scissors. I can also be found on Twitter to arbitrate if you’re really stuck.
Enjoy!
February 23, 2020
On Disordered Living
I didn’t set out to write a punch-in-the-heart post, but this may or may not contain one, so if you’re not feeling up to that kind of emotional voltage, please set this read aside for another time.
***
I promised myself that I would try to go out and see friends once a week. It doesn’t come as naturally as it used to. I used to live in a smallish city, and at night, you could go sit on top of a bridge and howl and five other nocturnal weirdos from your friend group would come racing down the street to see what you were up to. Now I can’t even climb the bridge. But I have been through a lot of changes lately, and in light of the others, I tried to make one more. On karaoke night, we go out. We have two (2) drinks. We have fun.
Tonight I went out. I had two (2) drinks. I sang three (3) songs. I talked to some of my oldest friends and brushed off men I didn’t know who tried to talk to me, in some cases, being, I admit, a bit eccentric (“What do they call you?” “Oh, all kinds of things!”) and causing one of my oldest friends to positively lose it. I sang “Punk Rock Girl” and made strangers shout “Anarchy!” which brought me joy. I did talk to one man I didn’t know, but he was in no way hitting on me, he just wanted to talk about Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys, so I was there for it. I sang “Beer” and people sang along. I tried to dance, but its hard to skank with a cane and I can’t pogo without falling down, so it was a lot of hair whipping. My hair, though short, is fluffy and good for this. I drank a lot of water, closed out the bar sober, and drove home.
At first, there was a definite charge coming off of my extrovert battery. I sang loudly and badly and shouted “Sorry not sorry, ya poor fuckin’ FBI agent!” at my phone. I put on an older AFI album, a favorite, a trusty old friend with a crooked smile and all-black tattoos. I was working on a line in my head (“Oh, babe, I don’t know, every time I put on mascara the night ends in tears”) which doesn’t belong in any of my books and may become a painting.
This is where it went sideways.
The lyric is “Oh please believe/ I’m doing just fine.”
My voice cracked.
The song is not sad.
And I thought, Uh-oh. A Feeling is trying to get out.
Let’s back up a little bit.
***
A lifetime ago, I took a misfit turn. Every teenager feels poorly understood, but some of us go all the way out. Too many black tee shirts. Wild hair colors. Letting casual conversations turn to pain or mortality. I didn’t have any coherent reason for this at the time. I didn’t know that things were harder for me than other people. I didn’t know other people didn’t hurt all the time, didn’t feel sick when they ate, didn’t have trouble sleeping. I knew they had healthier skin and teeth. I knew I didn’t look right. But I didn’t know any other way to physically feel, so I thought I was the only one struggling under normal circumstances. The results were, if anyone had understood the conditions, predictable. Kurt Cobain said it most succinctly; I hate myself and I want to die.
I made it to college, where I caught every cold and flu that came within ten yards of me. I worked. It hurt. I tried to take my weirdness and make dark art out of it. The pain persisted. So did I. Until I was about 27.
That year, the barely-stable body I had been working with went downhill fast. I lost weight I couldn’t afford to lose. The pain got worse. My hair started falling out. I couldn’t lift things. I had no idea why this was happening, but the mixed blessing of it was, I could finally look at my physical condition and definitively declare not normal.
Getting properly diagnosed took years. One doctor used the phrase “an interesting constellation of symptoms.” Another told me it was all just stress. I had to move to New York City and see some of the purportedly best doctors in the world, and even then, I had to push: Something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong. Bouncing from specialist to specialist took all my time and energy. I was 103 lbs and nearly dead by the time I was taken seriously. A geneticist diagnosed me with EDS, the incurable explanation for so much of my suffering. I threw a party.
More than a year ago, I moved to Vermont to start my life over and applied for Social Security Disability Income (SSDI). Rejected. Appealed. Rejected. Went before a judge, the first person in the entire process to physically see me. Granted.
The entire year that went on, I had been working weekends in a bookstore, which I loved dearly, but it was costing me to do and and to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t very good at it. I knew a lot about books, but I failed in the little things. Remembering names though the fog of pain and meds. Dropping quarters when trying to make change. The boss-ladies were accommodating, but my body was not. I recently experienced a collision of unusual flares and asked for a sabbatical. If my health doesn’t improve in the next month, I most likely won’t be able to return to work.
And recently, I’ve been dealing with more heart trouble than usual. I take medication for arrhythmia and palpitations. I take extra water and salt for my extreme low blood pressure. But feeling your heart hitch brings mortality to the forefront. And when it happens driving home from a great night out with your friends, it makes you think things like I would be sorry to leave these people, but I would not be sorry to go.
***
I would be sorry to leave these people, but I would not be sorry to go. I’ve been in variable pain my entire life. I know now that it isn’t normal. As far as I’m concerned, if my heart stops sputtering tomorrow, I had a good run. That’s all we can ask for.
But I intend to keep going until one of my vital processes gives up the ghost, and this leads me to the problem of disordered living.
In disordered eating, a person’s relationship with food becomes anxious and sometimes adversarial. For many, the result is bingeing, purging, and/or avoidance. And it has recently occurred to me that I have this same relationship with…everything. When I feel momentarily up for it, I will overdo everything I used to do. My house will sprout sheet music and easels and concert tickets, acquired in a rush of THE LEGS ARE WORKING, LET’S GO. Then my fingers will fail to press strings, my body will fail to roll out of bed in the morning because I’ve pushed myself too hard, and all these things go to dust. Binge and purge. Disordered living. From grinning like a fool, playing Killer Queen on the ukulele, to waiting to die.
This is how it is.
The only ending to this wobbly arc is the one we all get.
And the good news is that, in those brief but glorious reprieves, I have the same chance as everyone else to live my life.
