Samantha Bryant's Blog, page 32

Our Disney+ Project: Part One

I'm ambivalent about Disney.

The company has created a lot of stories that I've enjoyed in my life, but they have also helped feed a narrative of women either as helpless and needing rescue or objects of censure for being anything not considered "wholesome."

Even as a little girl, I chafed at some of the underlying messages. But there's a magic about this films, especially when they get you at a young age.

I'm a sucker for a musical, and Disney has more than a few out there that made up the soundtrack of my childhood. Even if I don't always like how the "princess" narrative goes--Disney has a long history of female led stories that garnered huge audiences, crossing generational lines. The cultural significance of that can't be ignored.

Since Disney now owns Star Wars and Marvel--two fandoms that dominate our household, we got the new Disney+ service.

So, I've decided to watch the Disney animated features in chronological order with my younger daughter. She's into animation, and hasn't seen some of the older ones at all, so I think it'll be an interesting view on the body of work.

So, that starts us out in 1937, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We'll need to watch 11 films to get to 1950, the year my parents were born.


Those first five I know well. I've seen them all many times, starting in early childhood, and moving through VHS and DVD and streaming services with my cousins and friends and eventually my elder daughter. We don't think our youngest has seen any of them before, though she's seen a lot of Disney's more recent movies.

I don't remember ever seeing Saludos Amigos, Make Mine Music, or Fun or Fancy Free, at least not by title. The Three Cabelleros, Melody Time, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad ring only vague bells.

At this writing, the youngest Bryant and I have watched Snow White and Pinocchio.

Some thoughts:

Snow White is weird-looking. She is portrayed as neither a woman nor a child, but some sort of hybrid: adult-sized and apparently considered marriageable drawn as if she is wearing eye makeup and lipstick, but with a chubby baby-fat kind of look more like a toddler, no womanly curves, and a very childish voice.

It's disconcerting. The animation on the dwarves is more expressive than on our princess.

We noticed that sometimes when Snow turns her head, something strange happens to the planes of her face, as if it does not actually have three dimensions. It reminded us of hieroglyphic art in that the face was always to the front, no matter what. We began to wonder if there were any ears under her hair because of all the moments when her movement made us expect to glimpse them, but none were seen.

Obviously animation of human-appearing characters has come a long way since this first feature film.

The Blue Fairy has a similar plasticity, but it is less disturbing since she's a supernatural character: a
fairy who lives in a wishing star. Pinocchio always looks "real" for a couple of minutes at the end, so there wasn't time for him to pull us too far into the uncanny valley.

Story-wise it was interesting the parts of the story that weren't portrayed.

My daughter and I are very familiar with Snow White in thousands of iterations, from the Grimm fairy tale telling through hundreds of reinterpretations in books, movies, and other media.

In the Disney animated feature, we never see Snow White interact with her stepmother until the stepmother comes to the dwarves' cottage disguised as the apple peddler. That's an interesting storytelling choice that really adds to the stepmother/witch's malice.

Neither of us has read The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, however. When we talked it through, we realized that the only other version of Pinocchio either of us could remember seeing is the character in the Shrek movie series. We did both feel like we already knew this character well, though, despite exploring him far less thoroughly. We must have absorbed him through cultural osmosis.

In the movie, we wondered why we didn't get to see Geppetto get swallowed by the whale. His whole adventure happened off screen. Both of us agreed that would have been interesting than the whole Pleasure Island sequence that went on too long.

Some parts of the stories didn't age that well.

The ick-factor of Snow's awakening by a kiss from a complete stranger is alleviated by having the prince meet her early in the movie with the wishing well scene. Thank goodness. It really did help with that moment.

The evil gypsy puppeteer Mangiafuoco in Pinocchio definitely made the movie feel old, and not in a good way. Racial stereotypes like that don't play as simply as they once did and we both felt squiggy watching that part. And the cartoon logic of having a pet cat that acts like a cat in the same movie as a talking fox who acts like a human is something we don't often see any more. 
Also, is Geppetto the worst dad ever? He sends a boy who was literally a block of wood yesterday off to school alone and wonders why he doesn't get there? I mean, I don't like the helicopter parenting we see these days either, but a little preparation and leading the way might have been a good idea. 
"Heigh-Ho", "Whistle While You Work",  and "I Got No Strings" still had our feet tapping. Those songs hold up well. The warbling love bits, less so. 
I'd love to hear what you memories and experiences surrounding these films are like and hope you'll come back to talk about the rest of the project. There are more than 50 movies in the list, so it might take us a year or so to watch them all!

Why I NaNoWriMo

A writer friend asked me the other day why I would bother with NaNoWriMo. She meant it as a compliment since I'm a "real writer" now. "Isn't every month novel-writing month for you?" she asked. 
She has a point. I write every day, come hell or high water. My daily writing chain is now over six years long and along the way I've seen three novels through to publication and written three others that I hope to publish someday. 
So, in that sense, I don't "need" NaNoWriMo. 
I'm going to write, regardless of what month it is, and I generally write 50, 000 or more words per month. But there is something special about participation, something that pushes me to regard the work differently, at least short term and that shift of perspective can be refreshing and reinvigorating. What it's doing for me this year is keeping my energy focused on my novel, rather than spread between the novel, blogposts, articles, short stories, proposals, promotional work, and other kinds of writing. This month, at least, I'll neglect all the rest of my writing life in favor or writing words on one novel. 
The first time I did NaNoWriMo was 2013. I was working on a historical women's fiction novel, working title Cold Spring. As I remember it, I kept getting bogged down in research details, which made it hard to move the story forward. 
A challenge of writing historical fiction is having enough detail to capture the era believably, but not forget that the thrust of the story is the characters and what happens to them. I actually really enjoy research and it was easy to let all my writing time slip by in research and not actually add anything to the story. 
So NaNoWriMo was good for me in that way, letting me get down the story and trust to the revision process for the details. I often found that the detail I longed to go research didn't matter in the end and all that time would have been wasted. 
The next year, I wrote something I intended to be a Middle Grades novel, Rat Jones and the Lacrosse Zombies. It was a brand new idea, begun on the first day of the challenge. 
I still found that NaNoWriMo was good for keeping me from overthinking, but I'm not pleased with what I ended up with. 
It's the wrong tone for the age group and genre and rewriting it will not be simple, which is why it keeps getting back-burnered even though I really love Rat and want to tell her story. 
I used the challenge in 2015 and 2016 to work on Face the Change , the third of the Menopausal Superhero novels, losing once and winning once, but ending up with a novel that has since been published and received good reviews. So, definitely a win overall!
In 2017, I used to get a chunk of work done on a new novel, Thursday's Children (currently shelved, because I don't have the heart to write dystopian right now). The nice thing about failing NaNoWriMo is that even a writer who doesn't write 50,000 words still wrote words, so they still win. I have some 80,000 words on that project waiting for me when I can find the heart for it again. 
I didn't play along in 2018. But I'm back in 2019, with The Architect and The Heir, a gothic romance. As I write this, I'm seventeen days in, which means that I should have written 28,399 words, to stay "on track." I haven't. I've written 18,204. But they're good words, ones I'll likely keep. The story is finding its footing. It feels good and right and the daily focus is helping me sort out some of the issues and work out the intrigue. 
In past NaNoWriMo outings, I've felt a little like I was tumbling downhill, barely able to keep my feet under me. It's exciting, but it's not sustainable. That's why it's National Novel Writing Month…once a year, not a technique to undertake as the day to day method of operations. At least not for me. A breakneck pace all the time would eventually…well, break my neck. 
But for one month? I can handle being a little breathless for the life it brings to the work. 

Nightmare Fuel: The Collection

For the past few years, I've participated in an October Flash Fiction Challenge called The Nightmare Fuel Project. Fellow writer Bliss Morgan gathers pictures and posts one each day, inviting other writers to compose creepy flash fiction based on what they see.


I usually need a boost in my writing life at right about this time of year, and this challenge is perfect, letting me remember what it's like to play in my writing life and create pieces without worrying about their publishing potential. It has the side benefit of being thematic to my favorite holiday: Halloween. Each day, I wrote a story and posted it. I wrote each in less than an hour, so they are good practice on pushing my efficiency too!

I really enjoy this challenge and some of the stories are seeds I will come back to and grow into full plants, um, stories.

So, here's my favorite one of the ones I wrote this year. Below you can find links to all the posts on my author Facebook or on pluspora (in case you're not a Facebook user). I'd love to hear what you think about any of them, or about your own experience with writing challenges and what they bring to your creative life in the comments!
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Lantern Man:

Emily sat on the sand, weeping. She’d gotten separated from the rest of the kids on the way back from the pier and she was pretty sure she’d been walking in the wrong direction for an hour now. Exhausted and scared, she watched the last of the sunlight turn orange, then amber, dreading the darkness to come.

Her mother was going to be so mad. At least she hoped she’d have the chance to be yelled at by her mother. The alternatives were too scary to contemplate.

Then, she spotted the man. An older man, by his walk, wearing a hat and carrying a lantern in each hand. “Mister!” she called out, hoping he might at least tell her which way to walk, or help her get to a phone. She didn’t know the phone number of the hotel, but at least she could get to someplace dry and well lit to wait for help.

She chased after the man, but he didn’t slow his pace. Maybe his hearing wasn’t that good, or maybe the wind was blowing away her cries. She redoubled her pace, but never seemed to narrow the gap between them. The ground grew rougher, rockier and more uneven under her sand-filled sneakers, but she was afraid that if she stopped to empty her shoes or rest she would lose track of the lantern man.

It was totally dark now. The lanterns were the only light in the starless, moonless, and Emily could make out only the outline of the man. “Please!” she cried out again. She rested only a moment, bending to rest her hands on her knees, gasping for air. When she looked back up, the man seemed impossibly far ahead.

“Wait!” she cried and ran as fast as she could. She never saw the cliff’s edge. When they found her body, three days later, she was lying next to a much older body and the remains of two old fashioned lanterns. _____________________________
#31: Untitled Facebook Pluspora
#30: Foggy Morning Facebook Pluspora
#29: Vengeance Facebook Pluspora
#28: Jeannie Facebook Pluspora
#27: The Neighbor Facebook Pluspora
#26 Lantern Man Facebook Pluspora
#25:The Museum of the Macabre Facebook Pluspora
#24: Play with me? Facebook Pluspora
#23: Rumour in the woods: Facebook Pluspora
#22: Out of Darkness: Facebook Pluspora
#21: The Sand Mother: Facebook Pluspora
#20: Dead Man's Apartment: Facebook Pluspora
#19: Phantom Shrapnel: Facebook Pluspora
#18: Jean's Escape: Facebook Pluspora
#17: The Inheritance: Facebook Pluspora
#16: Hurry Down Doomsday: Facebook Pluspora
#15: Urban Exploration: Facebook Pluspora
#14: Nessie of the North: Facebook Pluspora
#13: Reggie: Facebook Pluspora
#12: Cursed: Facebook Pluspora
#11: Widow Jane: Facebook Pluspora
#10: Icy Death: Facebook Pluspora
#9: The Doll: Facebook Pluspora
#8: Virtual Reality: Facebook Pluspora
#7: My Sister's New Face: Facebook Pluspora
#6: Unfixed: Facebook Pluspora
#5: Helen's Heat: Facebook Pluspora
#4: Digging: Facebook Pluspora
#3: The Other Jack: Facebook Pluspora
#2: Anubis in Hakone: Facebook Pluspora
#1: The Stairs: Facebook Pluspora

IWSG: Lowered Expectations

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

The awesome co-hosts for the November 6 posting of the IWSG are  Sadira Stone, Patricia Josephine, Lisa Buie-Collard, Erika Beebe, and C. Lee McKenzie! I hope you'll check out their blogs as well as some of the others on this blog hop after you see what I have to say.
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My insecurities are beating me up right now.

I finally have to admit I bit off more than I can chew.

I'm not good at that. I think I can do everything.

That can-do stubbornness serves me well on some fronts, keeping me from caving to pressure or giving up just because something is difficult, but it's a two-edged sword that cuts back sometimes, too.

And Stories from Shadow Hill has been postponed, which breaks my heart.

I planned to release my first all-indie project for Halloween. It's a collection of thirteen weird tales called Stories from Shadow Hill, set in an imaginary suburban neighborhood with suspicious similarities to the one I live in, but with more interesting (and supernatural) causes for the weirdness.

I thought I had planned it out well. I'd done a lot of research and had what I thought was a good understanding of what exactly I needed to do and what it would cost.

I hired an editor for proofreading, found a book cover designer, and taught myself the layout software (Vellum is super easy, at least at a base level, by the way).

But then I ran into two problems: money and time.

Indie publishing can be expensive, especially for your first project, when you don't already a system in place.

My expenses:

Buying layout software: Vellum $249.99 for unlimited ebooks and paperbacksHiring a cover made: $100 from a freelancing friend who gave me her "friends and family" discountHiring proofreading: $620 from a freelancer who approached me through Facebook some months ago. Getting a logo made for my imprint: $25 from a freelancing friend, giving me a "friends and family" discount againBuying ISBN numbers: $295 for 10 (they're a better deal the more you buy at once, and I intend to put out more indie projects in the future, so I thought I'd start with 10). I managed 1-4 over the course of a few months by living spare and robbing Peter to pay Paul. But when it came time for #4, I was out of money. My hot water heating needed sudden replacement, my summer teaching paychecks were light, and there went my Bowker money. My parents gave me my holiday money early (thanks Mom and Dad!), but I needed most of that to get copies of my already-published work for my fall and winter author events. 
Couple this with my time problems, and you see my dilemma. 
I was trying to keep my regular writing life going. Doing my October tradition of writing one piece of flash fiction every day as part of the Nightmare Fuel Project AND processing my edits from that proofreader was just too many hours work for the hours I was able to devote (I can get 1-2 hours a day for writing life during the school year, tops). 
And I was stubborn, not wanting to let anything go. Maybe I could have done it if I had given up Nightmare Fuel, but I *love* Nightmare Fuel. Maybe I could have let that Instagram October Author Challenge go, but I was enjoying it and it was increasing my reach on social media. Maybe I could have given up my day job, but I like eating and having a roof over my head. I tried giving up sleep and just ended up with a crick in my neck from falling asleep in my chair.
In the end, I had to admit I couldn't get the project ready by October 31. Especially since I had only a basic understanding of Vellum and might still need to seek advice and help from more experienced colleagues if I run into snags. 
So, now I don't know exactly when I am going to get this project out. October came and went and I still have a distressingly long to-do list: Process the other half of the edits (complicated by grammar differences between my Canadian editor and my American writing style--lots of second guessing and researching whether what she marked is an error or a national preference)Format the book in Vellum (which has subset jobs of #3 and #4 below)Finalize the print version of the coverFinalize the imprint logoBuy ISBNsLearn to navigate uploads to AmazonMake my decisions about exclusivity to Amazon or going widePromote the book
November is supposed to be for NaNoWriMo, finishing the first draft of the Gothic romance I started writing this summer, so I can get it out in 2020.

I'd love to hear from other creatives about how you manage all the demands of indie creation, especially if you, like me, manage it with a day job and keep your sanity. How do you keep heart when you have to lower your expectations?

Halloween Viewing: Tim Burton Favs

My youngest daughter is even *more* into Halloween than I am, so we are both so gleeful the entire month that it's a wonder the rest of the Bryants can deal with us at all.

One way we're enjoying is by watching Halloween movies. We're on a Tim Burton kick right now. His aesthetic is right there in that middle ground between whimsical and disturbing…which could probably describe us as well (though there's less mascara and lace involved for us). She's already seen and loved The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, 9, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland. I'm planning to share a few more Burton favorites with her across the season.

But, the youngest Bryant had never seen The Corpse Bride (at least not that she can remember), so we kicked off our season with that.  I found it slower than I remembered (thought still good), but she really enjoyed it.

My take: I had forgotten the lovely wedding vows. Really some of the most romantic ones I've heard. It was also very sweet how the two misfit children whose families were trying to use them for social gain actually had a connection and some hope of making each other happy in the end. A more romantic story overall than I remembered.

Her take: She loved Scraps, Victor's dead dog (who reminded her of Zero from Nightmare Before Christmas), but agreed with me that the Peter Lorre aping worm was grosser than funny. She knew almost from his entrance that Barkis Bittern was going to turn out to be the long lost "love" of the Bride. Kids these days, so steeped in tropes it's hard to surprise them.

Next we tried on Sweeney Todd.

I fell in love with this musical as a college student, listening to the Broadway recording with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett and Len Cariou as Sweeney. So, when this movie version was announced, I was hyped. I was pretty sure the youngest Bryant would love it too.

My take: Visually, it's quite a treat, gritty and atmospheric. I quite enjoyed Helena Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett both in singing and acting, and she has great onscreen chemistry with Johnny Depp. Johnny's Sweeney was better in visuals and speaking than singing (I loved the way he held his jaw--so stiff, seething with suppressed emotions). He was "not bad" on the singing. If I didn't already know the music as voiced by Cariou, I might have liked his take better (much like I felt about Hugh Jackman's Valjean) . The best moment in Depp's performance, in my opinion, is when Todd snaps the rest of the way and goes from wanting specific vengeance to decide that "they all deserve to die."

Her take: She's becoming quite a Sondheim fan, having been enamored of Into the Woods for a year or two now. She loved the lyric complexity. She wasn't as sure about the obviously fake over-red blood for the gory scenes. She said it pulled her out of it too much, but she conceded it might have been "too horrible" if the blood had looked realistic. We agreed at the end that poor Johanna and Toby were damaged for life by the trauma of having wandered into this story.

Next up, I'm planning to show her Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, both of which I enjoyed when they were new and haven't really seen since. My girl likes Winona Ryder, both in Stranger Things and in some of her younger roles (Heathers, Beetlejuice), so I think she'll enjoy them.

Any other Tim Burton fans out there? Which ones are your favorites and why? Any that you don't recommend?

October Frights: Nightmare Fuel: The Other Jack

Welcome to the October Frights Blog Hop! I'm Samantha Bryant. If you visit here regularly, you already know that I'm a Halloween fan (if you're new here: Welcome to the Madhouse!).

Last year at this time, I posted a blog series on 31 days of Halloween. My *favorite* thing the past few years though, has been #nightmarefuel

The Nightmare Fuel Project is the brainchild of Bliss Morgan, a talented friend whose work you should definitely check out!

Each day in October, she posts a creepy picture prompt and invites anyone who wants to play along to create something macabre or magnificent and post it for the group to enjoy. This is my third year playing along, writing creepy flash fiction each night in celebration of spooky season.

Here's my favorite of what I've written so far this year. You can check out all my creepy flash fiction for the project on my Facebook page.

The Other Jack
Jimmy’s room wasn’t really a room, it was more like a partition. His mother had found some smoky plexiglass somewhere and used it to divide the space into two tiny bedrooms, each barely big enough for the bed and a narrow chest of drawers that was also the desk and the nightstand. It wasn’t much, but it gave him and his brother a little illusion of privacy, something that mattered more now that his brother was older.

Jimmy had to pretend he didn’t hear a lot of things these days, especially if Mom wasn’t home. He’d never tell, of course. Brothers didn’t rat on each other, even if the girls were mean or the smoke smelled weird.

But he missed the nights when Jack would turn a light on the plexiglass wall and make shadowpuppets for him or press his face against the wall smooshing it comically and getting them both in trouble for wild laughter.

Laying on his bed drawing, Jimmy heard a tap on the glass. He jumped. He hadn’t thought Jack was home. He looked over his shoulder and saw a hand laying against the glass. He laid his own over it on his side of the wall and Jack spread his fingers wide so Jimmy could compare the size of his hand to his brother’s. Jack was almost ten years older than Jimmy, so catching up was taking a long time, but he felt sure his hand was bigger than it had been the last time. Pleased he knocked three times, their secret signal for happiness. Jack didn’t respond.

The hand moved away and Jimmy went back to his drawing. The cat-man he had invented was having an undersea adventure this time and Jimmy was having a hard time getting the bubble helmet to look the way he wanted to. After a few tries, he threw the wadded up paper at the wall in frustration.

There were two hands on the wall now, pressed flat enough that Jimmy could trace the lines in the palms. Jack was pushing hard, like he wanted to come through the plexiglass wall instead of climbing over his bed to get to the narrow hallway like a normal person. The makeshift wall scraped against the ceiling, groaning like a train car. “Stop it Jack! You’ll get in trouble if you break it.”

The pressure released. Jack could be crazy sometimes, but Jimmy could usually get him to stop before it got too bad. Just as he was thinking about picking up his drawing again, the hands were back, clenched into fists this time and pounding against the wall, making it scrape and groan and shake ominously. Jimmy yelled “Stop it Jack! Stop it!”

At the foot of his bed, the door opened. “Stop what, Squirt?” Jack leaned in, still wearing his fast-food tee shirt.

“J-J-Jack?” Jimmy pointed at the wall behind him, wordlessly. The Other Jack still pounded the surface again and again and when Jimmy turned to look, he thought the fists might be bleeding. His mouth went completely dry.

Suddenly, Jack had him by the armpits and was pulling him out of the trailer into the chilly night, barefoot. The two of them got into the car and Jack was backing away, driving before Jimmy had even put on the seatbelt. “Where are we going?”

Jack didn’t answer him. He was on the phone, talking fast to someone, He said their address and said there was an intruder. He said he didn’t know where their mother was. He said other stuff, too, but Jimmy couldn’t understand--it was hard to hear over the squealing inside his head. Then, his brother was shaking him, telling him it was okay.

There were blue lights flashing and a woman with a flashlight and a clipboard. There was yelling and a loud bang. An ambulance that took away someone. Jimmy wasn’t allowed to see. Jack held him too tightly, kept Jimmy’s head pressed against his chest.

It was years before Jack got the full story of the night his mother died and he almost died, too. They told him his mother was a hero, that he was lucky. She’d trapped the man in Jack’s room with her. If Jack hadn’t gotten home when he did . . .
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Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please check out the rest of my site to see what else I'm up to, or subscribe to my newsletter (no more than one email per month). I've got a collection of Weird Tales coming out at the end of the month! Stories from Shadow Hill is a series of weird and macabre tales that take place on the dark side of a suburban neighborhood suspiciously similar to the one I live in . . . Details will be forthcoming in my next newsletter!





Be sure to also check out Deadman Humour, my most recent publication. This creepy anthology is a collection of stories about what scares clowns. My story "The Gleewoman of Preservation" shows that there are things scarier than clowns in the woods near Preservation.






If ghost stories are more your style, you can read my daylight ghost story, "The Girl in the Pool" in Off the Beaten Path 3 from Prospective Press, alongside some excellent ghostly tales from other fabulous authors. 



Remember to hop on over to check out the other participants' offerings as well.
Are You Afraid of the Dark?The Word WhispererHawk's HappeningsCarmilla Voiez BlogM'habla's!CURIOSITIESFrighten MeWinnie Jean HowardAlways Another ChapterJames P. McDonaldgreydogtales

Wording Wednesday: Arcachne and Her Sisters

The new season of Wording Wednesday is underway. Fellow author Andy Brokaw collects a set of prompts and puts them out there for the world to use for inspiration.

You can check out my stories for Season 2 (weather) here: Cloudy, Clear, Sunny, Rain, Wind, Snow

And for Season 1 (beginnings) here: Infancy, Morning, Travel, Meeting, First Snow, Ceremony

For Season 3, the theme is creatures and this week's inspiration is a friendly arachnid by Rose Tursi, whose work can be found at: www.tursiart.com My post from last week can be viewed here.

Check out the links and play along if you'd like, or just enjoy reading.
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The nicest thing about having been transformed into a spider was all the extra limbs. All eight of her appendages were dextrous and agile, strong and useful for a variety of tasks, from weaving to climbing. 
The worst thing had been the revulsion. Arachne couldn't really blame her sisters for their reactions. She had once felt the same way about spiders, skittering, skulking creatures watching you with far too many eyes. When her sisters returned to their chambers and found her clinging to the massive glittering web she had constructed in her first few hours as a spider, the screaming nearly brought down the house. 
Luckily, her youngest sister, Alethea, had witnessed the entire contest with Athena and was able to keep their eldest sister, Ademia, from squashing her with a shoe. Ademia still screwed her face up like she'd been eating lemons every time she looked at her once-favorite sister, but she left Arachne in peace, so long as she constrained her weaving to designated areas. 
The webs she wove now put her earlier creations in tapestry to shame. Thread was so thick and clumsy in comparison to spider silk. And she could work so quickly! 
Alethea had been such a dear, waiting patiently while Arachne wove her messages in webwork and doing her best to get the things that her sister wanted for her happiness in her new life. 
Only today, she'd managed to find the tiniest of teapots and to assist Arachne in brewing lemon olive tea. Drinking it was almost like being human again. 

IWSG: Writers Who Don't Read

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

The awesome co-hosts for the October 2 posting of the IWSG are Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Mary Aalgaard, Madeline Mora-Summonte, and Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor! Be sure to check out what they have to say, too.

This month's question: - It's been said that the benefits of becoming a writer who does not read is that all your ideas are new and original. Everything you do is an extension of yourself, instead of a mixture of you and another author. On the other hand, how can you expect other people to want your writing, if you don't enjoy reading? What are your thoughts?__________________________________
Okay. I don't take many hard stances in my life. 
I know that nearly every circumstance is smeary and gray in the boundaries rather than crisply clear with lines delineating "good" and "bad." 
Ambiguity is where the interest lies, in life and in fiction. 
But here, I draw a line. A firm, bold, uncrossable line. 
Writers must read. 
Reading is the number one best method to improve your craft, and every writer I've met who has told me they don't read has disappointed me on the page if I got that far. 
Generally when I meet a writer who tells me they don't read, they spend a lot of time talking about other kinds of story: film and television mostly. 
Film and television are lovely. I enjoy both a great deal, given the time. 
But they are not books and if you are trying to write books that are like film and television, you are ignoring the bulk of the magic, limiting yourself to visual, cinematic view and losing out on all the other senses, and interior life. 


As for the argument that not reading means your ideas are new and original? 
Hogwash, I say. 
Not reading just means you're influenced by non-literary things (film and television, mostly). 
Unless you go full-on hermit and shut out the world entirely, you are a human moving through the world and are influenced by it. 
There's no purity of vision to be had, immaculately contained in a bubble of only your own making. We're all made of and by our experiences, both literary and other. 
Now, "I'm not reading much right now" or "I don't read in the genre I'm writing while I'm writing it" are not the same thing as "I don't read." 
Lulls happen. Everyone has to find their own process. 
But not reading at all? 
Sometimes I miss the way I read before I was serious about my writing. It was easier to lose myself in the world and not analyze what the author was doing while I read. But that doesn't mean I'd ever give up reading! When I *do* get that truly immersive feeling, I know I've found a wonder of a book because it made it past my writer-vision and got all the way to my underlying story-loving brain. 
What do you think, friends of the internet? Do you have an example to prove me wrong? A writer who doesn't read but still writes compelling fiction themselves? I'd love to hear form you in the comments. 

Wording Wednesday: At Least There's Still Coffee

The new season of Wording Wednesday is underway. Fellow author Andy Brokaw collects a set of prompts and puts them out there for the world to use for inspiration.

You can check out my stories for Season 2 (weather) here: Cloudy, Clear, Sunny, Rain, Wind, Snow

And for Season 1 (beginnings) here: Infancy, Morning, Travel, Meeting, First Snow, Ceremony

For Season 3, the theme is creatures and we begin with "Warm and Fuzzy" by Mateo Dineen. This piece and others can be seen on the artist's website at https://www.mateo-art.com/

Check out the links and play along if you'd like, or just enjoy reading.

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Herbert hadn't been sure what to think when his transformation had begun. It had started as a strange patch of green fur on chest, there among the wiry white wisps standing out against his brown skin He noticed it one day in the shower and scrubbed at it, but didn't worry too much when it didn't wash away. In his years as a contractor, he'd stained his skin and hair a variety of colors. It always wore off eventually.

He'd never been good about going to the doctor, especially for ailments that seemed more like nuisances than real problems. What did he care what color his chest hair was? But, it hadn't remained a change he could hide under a flannel shirt. One morning he woke to find it had spread down his arms and back. The next, on his cheeks. His body seemed to be shifting as well, flattening in some areas and broadening in others.

He decided to try the walk-in clinic early the next morning. Generally, if you went early enough you didn't have to wait that long. He could probably still make it to his kitchen rehab job on time. Chances were they'd just take his blood and tell him they'd call him about the results later anyway.

He liked to tease the pretty young phlebotomist about her relationship with Vlad the Impaler. The girl was always nice enough to smile at his poor attempts at humor, even though she probably heard some version of that joke from every older man she stuck.

Thinking about the phlebotomist, he didn't take notice of the number of cars in the parking lot until he'd walked into the waiting room and realized with a start that it was jam-packed with a crowd of colorful characters.

Colorful not in the sense of big personality, but literally in rainbow hues. A woman with pink fur sticking out in tufts around the neck of her white sweater had an arm around a child whose flesh was a startling, vibrant blue. A group of purple, roundish women gathered around the coffeepot. A forest green man leaned into a corner and snored loudly. Herbert rubbed his eyes, but the scene didn't change.

"Herbert?" a voice called. "It get you, too?"

Herbert turned and saw a man standing over by the window, thumbs hooked in the belt loops on his jeans and suspenders holding up the pants. "Jimmy?" It couldn't be, could it? But who else wore suspenders like that?

"Yep," he answered. "It's me." He brushed a long, white forelock off his furry pink face with an equally furry paw-like hand. "I thought I'd had too much to drink at first, but I've been sober almost a week now, and I'm still pink."

Herbert nodded, his gaze bouncing across the room. He tried to identify people he knew among the muppet-like creatures that waited in the cheap plastic chairs, but it was no easy task. "They know what's going on yet?"

Jimmy shook his preternaturally large head, making the wisp of white hair wobble like a horse's mane. "Not yet."

Herbert headed for the door. "Come on then. Let's go to the diner. We might as well get some coffee while we wait." He scanned the room again, meeting set after set of strange eyes, oblong, slitted, and distorted. "I think the doc will be a while."

Literary vs. Genre Fiction: Are We Still Arguing About This?

www.tomgauld.comAs a speculative fiction writer, I run into the literary vs. genre fiction divide often.

Literary sorts can be dismissive of spec fic, suggesting that it's "just entertainment" and doesn't "enrich the mind."

Genre fiction sorts can be dismissive of literary fiction, suggesting that it's "navel-gazing" or "boring" or "self-indulgent."

They're both right and they're both wrong.

The worst of genre fiction can lack depth (though sometimes, a lack of depth is just what I need: I'm all for a good escapist read from time to time) and the worst of literary fiction can be eye-rollingly self-important.

Luckily, I try to read the best of both instead.

When I introduce myself as a speculative fiction author, people are often surprised how "well read" I am. That's another term that gets on my nerves, as it places a judgment on the value of what people read, suggesting that some books make you "well read" and others--well, I guess the opposite would be "poorly read"?

I help run the First Monday Classic Book Club at my library with another speculative fiction writer, , and more than one attendee has been surprised to discover kinds of things we write.  James and I can talk with you about Les Miserables or Wolverine, whichever you'd prefer, or about how Jean Valjean and Logan share loner/hidden hero characteristics, as well as harboring secret physical gifts.
www.tomgauld.comJames Maxey

I was an English major, and my Master's degree is also in English. But, even before I started climbing that ivory tower, I was already a voracious reader.

I like to think of myself as omnivorous when it comes to books. I'll try reading anything. I wish more people would be a little more open to considering the value of other kinds of art.

I love comic books AND classic literature and this doesn't feel like a dichotomy to me.

Good story is good story. Compelling writing is compelling writing. A story about non-realistic things is just as likely to make me ponder deeply as one about realistic things. Maybe even more likely because it won't feel pedantic and un-artistically direct.

And *so much* classic and literary fiction plays with speculative elements. Isn't "magical realism" just literary speak for "speculative fiction"? Isn't Margaret Atwood, Guggenheim Fellowship and Booker Award winner, also a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the author of one of the best dystopian works ever written? (Handmaid's Tale). Didn't Jane Eyre have a gothic moment when she heard her love cry to her across the distance? Isn't Mary Shelley's Frankenstein read by genre and literary fiction fans?

Isn't it time we set this one aside folks? Different strokes for different folks and my preferred reads aren't better than yours. There's no objective scale for measuring these things, and if we're going by the test of time and seeing what endures? There's a lot of both kinds of literature still kicking after all these years.

Do you find you have biases against certain kinds of books? Or regard them as lower quality because of genre alone? Do you run into those attitudes in your reading circles? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.