what I'm watching and reading

The next chapter: May 2024 update

/ Melanie Marttila

Every month is poetry month. For now, at least.

Picture of the waxing moon above trees.

Life in general

The sinusitis hasn’t relented. On the 5th, my right ear was completely blocked, and I was half-deaf. I literally could hear nothing out of my right ear. It was the weirdest thing. On the afternoon of the 6th, something popped, and I could hear again, but another night of steam treatment and restless sleep, the ear was clogged up again. At lunch on the 7th, the ear opened up again, but by then, I was beyond the 15 days the second antibiotic was supposed to stay in my system.

Wednesday was, once again, clinic day. This time, the doctor figured the infection had been cleared up (after the two courses of antibiotics) and that it was just inflammation resulting from the prolonged infection that was the issue. I left with a prescription for antihistamines and recommendations to begin using a neti pot, mineral oil in my ear to help clear up the blockage, and to make an appointment with my doctor in two weeks in the event that the new course of treatment didn’t take hold.

Fortunately, my doctor’s office is next door to my pharmacy and while I was waiting for my prescription to be filled, I went up to the receptionist’s desk and asked if there were any openings in two weeks. There was exactly one availability. I took it. More on the results of that appointment, below.

Phil got the tires changed and a tune up for the car in advance of my trip to North Bay (see below). We had to get new summer tires, the ones that came with the car having worn to the nubs. In the past few years, we’ve had issues with air leakages. We should be good for another few years, now.

At work, I’m moving toward another deadline in the project I’ve been working on since spring 2022. Of the four courses in the curriculum I’ve been working on, one has been updated and posted to our learning management system, one is in the process of being re-written and won’t be ready for design, accessibility, or posting until later this year. Of the two courses I’m working on, one has been completely redesigned and the other has been updated. I’m in the process of finishing the accessibility (alt-text, long descriptions, etc.) on the redesigned course. A colleague has done most of the work on the other.

I didn’t finish the work before my six-week leave with income averaging (LIA) started, but guess what? The deadline isn’t hard this time! My colleagues can finish the work while I’m off.

Also, I received some great news. After two years of budget challenges, my division finally has some wiggle room for staffing. After I return from my leave, I’m going to have an acting instructional designer position with another design team for a year (!) It will be a nice bump to my pay (now reduced by my LIA) and a lovely break from the project that’s occupied me for so long. The final course for that project should be completed in my absence.

It also opens up the opportunity for other, younger colleagues to progress in their careers and make room for me to move back to my existing team as an instructional designer instead of a courseware developer next summer. Or to stay with my new team. We’ll see where the future takes me.

Spring has sprung and I’m enjoying the scents despite not being completely recovered.

The distinctively astringent smell of poplar sap has given way to the pollen, seeds, and general messiness. In past years, the pin cherry blossoms emerged on Victoria Day long weekend, followed a week later by the lilacs, and then the honeysuckles. This year, they’re all coming out at once. It’s glorious! And then the mountain ash blooms come out and muddle the lovely scents of spring with their odd, musty odour.

The bumble bees have been very active in the honeysuckle. I’ve even seen one crawling into a hole in the ground next to a paver driveway. Weird, the things you see when you pay attention 😉

Another pleasant discovery was that when I walked Torvi out on the boardwalk behind Moonglow toward Robinson Lake, the missing bridge has been replaced! This now expands our walking options.

The month in writing

The first part of May was dedicated to recovery, to be honest. I’m burning out, professionally, creatively, all of it. It’s why I wanted to take another leave with income averaging. It’s not that I haven’t been writing at all, but I’ve been focusing on commitments, stories for anthology calls and open submission periods, poems as I have the spoons.

But I returned to Reality Bomb on the 7th, in anticipation of resuming work with Suzy Vadori in what should be my final book coaching package.

On the 26th, I made my first of the last 6-submission package working with book coach Suzy. This should complete this revision of the novel (!) We met the following Thursday, May 30th. The session was very much the same old, same old. I still haven’t managed to master Suzy’s lessons despite working with her for the better part of a year and a half and participating in her developmental editing mentorship.

I’m trying to be kind to myself because we’re resuming work after two months of me focusing on The Art of Floating. It’s going to take me time to get back into the swing of things. I’m still feeling resistance. I am a slow cooker …

I attended the launch of my friend Emily De Angelis’ YA novel, The Stones of Burren Bay on May 5th, which was a beautiful, sunny day. The launch was at the Northern Water Sports Centre and was packed. So happy for Emily and her new book!

On the 8th, I was informed that “Cedar Waxwings” would be published in Commuter Lit on May 16. I had submitted the poem to their contest last month but didn’t place. It was a pleasant surprise.

On the 14th, I zipped over to North Bay after work for the Conspiracy of 3 reading series. You may have seen my post on Facebook and Instagram about it. In case you didn’t, it was a lovely evening.

First, Denis Stokes offered a brief reading from Alice Munro and we held a minute of silence to honor her passing. Then, Ric Desmuelles read from Pity the Minotaur. I read from The Art of Floating. And several lovely people shared their work in the open reading.

I got to catch up with old friends, not just Denis and Ric, but Natalie Wilson, Tim and Karin Robertson, and Barry and Jen Grills.

I brought seven copies of the collection with me, well, eight with the copy I read from, just in case, and ended up going home with only my reading copy (!)

This event conflicted with the launch of Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline, in which I have a creative non-fiction piece, that took place the same night in Sudbury at the Steelworkers Hall. I was sad to miss it, but such is the life of a professional author.

But I was able to arrange to pick up my contributor copy, honorarium, and my new Sudbury Writers’ Guild bunny hug and the May SWG meeting at the end of the month.

Picture of the back of a Sudbury Writers' Guild forest green hoodie and the cover of Sudbury Superstack: A changing skyline.
The back of the hoodie (actually, a bunny-hug) showing the SWG logo and the Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline anthology.

My interview with rob mclennan came out on his blog on May 18th. It was fun answering his 12 or 20 questions 🙂

In the realm of the business of writing, there were a trio of TWUC meetings around the AGM. On the 16th was the pre-AGM town hall. Then the AGM was on the 25th, followed by a post-AGM networking event.

And on the 28th, there was the quarterly board meeting for SF Canada.

Filling the well

Beltaine (I spell it the way I spell it, ok?) was May first. Unfortunately, I was in recovery and used all my spoons for the day, so I didn’t get my altar lit. Not on the 2nd, either. Managed it on the 3rd.

The new Willow moon in Taurus 🙂 was on the 7th. It was overcast, as usual.

On the 10th, the mass coronal ejection hit our atmosphere, and while we didn’t get more than pale wisps here in town (too much light pollution from the streetlights, etc.), we got to see the aurora borealis. It wasn’t bright enough to take pictures, but other friends in other parts of the Sudz were able to see a spectacular display. Just grateful to have seen something.

And I have seen the aurora before, so I wasn’t terribly disappointed. When I was still in my teens (can’t remember the exact year, honestly), Mom, Dad, and I went down to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ camp near Parry Sound with my cousin Margot and her family, and we got to see the aurora and a lovely display of the Milky Way.

The full Flower/Budding moon in Sagitarius was on the 23rd. I got to see the moon after it rose that night, but I’ve given up trying to take decent pictures at night.

Waning fingernail moon and two planets visible in the daytime sky.
Not related to the full or new moons, but this cool shot of the waning fingernail moon and two planets visible in the daytime sky.

The FOLD online concluded on May 1st. I had to watch several sessions in replay and returned to watch the live sessions that were added after the fact. But the FOLD remains one of the best conferences, online or live, that I’ve attended.

On the 9th, I attended the TWUC webinar featuring the Danuta Gleed finalists about “Constructing a Story Arc.” Kim Fu, Saeed Teebi, and Gillian Wigmore shared their experience construction short story arcs.

Later that same night, was Janice Hardy’s “How to write characters with agency” presented by Free Expressions. I watched the replay ‘cause spoons.

There was another Free Expressions webinar on the 16th with Donald Maass on “Advanced Voice.” Again, watched the replay.

And I signed up for a three-part poetry workshop with Ariel Gordon called “Dispatches from the World.” The first session was on the 28th. We did some freewriting that I hope to be able to use in another project and workshopped almost everyone’s submissions. I have another assignment for our next workshop on June 11th that’s due on June 3rd.

The last of the spring session Finnish classes was on the 6th. While I am learning a lot, the intermediate class was verra challenging.

In terms of health/mental health, I had my last (for now) session with my therapist. I figured I’d just need some extra support to get through the first few months of the year with the launch and work deadlines and trying to manage my energy level/executive functioning/mental health. Again, it was an amicable parting.

My support group met on the 22nd. The topic this month was meltdowns and shutdowns.

On the 23rd, I had two appointments. The first was the follow up with my doctor about my persistent sinusitis, mentioned above. I came away with the recommendation to continue with the antihistamines and neti pot, and another prescription for antibiotics. Back to the amoxicillin, but for two weeks this time. Though I was asked to make an appointment in a month, the earliest I could get on was July 2nd.

I have already seen some improvement. Not as many headaches or sore teeth, though both still occur. Not as many feverish times. And the persistent tickling/feeling there’s something in my sinus has abated. So, I seem to be heading in the right direction.

The second was an appointment with my RMT. It was good to get some self-care in after the hectic of the last month and a half.

And the BIG news this month is that I started a six-week LIA after the Victoria Day long weekend! I’m off until July 2nd!

What I’m watching and reading

I watched Palm Springs (Amazon). Interesting take on the Groundhog Day trope. Nyles has already be stuck in the time loop—for years?—by the time Sarah finds her way to a mysterious glowy cavern. They’re both revealed to have made terrible choices, both in the real world (Sarah) and within the time loop (Nyles). Though they both grow during their time in the loop, that’s not what breaks the “curse.” I won’t spoil it because it’s a worthwhile watch.

Then, I finished watching The Other Black Girl (Disney +), a thriller based on the novel by Alyssa Cole. An uncomfortable and surreal parable about internalized racism and the lengths some people are willing to go to change the system.

I finished watching Bodies (Netflix). This limited series was an interesting take on time travel and I’m sorry, but some spoilers are necessary to explain. In the future, an anomaly called “the mouth” allows time travel into the past. The antagonist uses it to create an empire that will eventually allow him to create the post-apocalyptic utopia/dystopia he now controls in the future. Another character is splintered when he is shot while attempting to foil the antagonist, and ends up in four different times, 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053, the last mere days before he leaves. The story follows the investigations of Detective Inspector Alfred Hillinghead, Detective Sergeant Karl Weissman (Charles Whiteman), Detective Seargent Shahara Hassan, and Detective Constable Iris Maplewood as they discover the body in each of their times.

Next, Phil and I watched the second season of Extraordinary (Disney +). I’d watched the first season myself, but as I was watching the second season, Phil decided he liked it and binged the whole of the first season in a couple of days. We finished watching the second season together. At the end of the first season, Jizzlord (Rob), the amnesiac cat-shifter, went to the shop to get some milk and is recognized by his son and wife just after he and Jen decided to date. The main through line of season 2 is Jen’s conflict with Nora (Rob’s telepathic wife) over Rob while she embarks on a treatment program that should result in her developing her latent powers. It’s hilarious and I highly recommend.

I finished watching my one and only reality TV show, So You Think You Can Dance (network). With Paula Abdul accusing Nigel Lithgoe of sexual harassment and the death of Twitch, the show has undergone a slight format change. They decided to include what happens in the house where the contestants stay during the competition, so it’s like SYTYCD and The Real World had a baby. And the dance competitions are now focused on real world challenges, like making ads, being back up dancers, and the like. Not as thrilled with this iteration of the show, I must say.

Then, I watched the whole of Our Flag Means Death (Crave). A bit late to the game with this one, but I’m glad I decided to check it out. Queer pirate love conquers all. Loved! Watch it if you haven’t.

Will Trent (network) completed its second season on May 21st. I really like this series and the second season finally was a gut punch. I can’t say anything without spoiling the season and you really should watch it if you can.

On the same night, The Rookie (network) also had its season finally. Short because of the writers’ strike, but pretty solid. Ended on a cliffhanger with several familiar past villains on the run and/or gunning for Nolan. Some of the Rookie Feds team showed up as well.

I also caught up on Only Murders in the Building (Disney +). I have now watched all three seasons and I’m enjoying this cozy podcast murder show. In season 1, the crew investigated the murder of one of the Arconia’s residents who had history with Mabel. No sooner had that mystery been solved when the second occurred in the season 1 finale, and Mabel was under suspicion. In the third season, Oliver and Charles are distracted because Oliver is trying to direct his off, off (possibly several more offs) Broadway comeback and Charles is in the production. When the leading man is murdered on opening night (yes, in the Arconia), you’d think Oliver and Charles would jump back on the mystery-solving bandwagon, but Oliver’s trying to save his show by turning it into a musical and Charles is in another messy relationship, which leaves Mabel in the lurch. Season 3 ends with another murder in the Arconia, which will be solved in the fourth (and I think final) season.

Then, Phil and I watched The Dead Boys Detective Agency (Netflix). It has the flavour of Lockwood and Co., but the plot is delightfully inverted and twisted. It’s also set in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman universe. Two young ghosts, evading Death their assigned afterlives, set up the titular detective agency, solving the mysteries of other ghosts so they can move on. A psychic trying to evade her demonic ex joins them in Port Townsend, Washington, where all kinds of supernatural shenanigans ensue. Loved.

I finished watching the short season of Grey’s Anatomy (network). A new batch of interns and troubles for the whole team. Looks like almost everyone has been fired or is in danger of being fired at the end of the season finale. I keep watching, just ‘cause.

And, finally, I also finished watching the final season of Star Trek: Discovery (network). The series wasn’t cancelled until after filming wrapped, and they had to make some hasty last-minute changes to wrap things up. The season’s arc was about finding the Progenitors’ tech, a call-back to The Next Generation. Racing Burnham and the crew are Mol and Lok, who want to trade the tech to the Breen in return for their freedom.

The series finale was two hours and though satisfying in some respects, was disappointing in others. [SPOILERS!] For example, after finally activating the tech and being named its new guardian, Burnham decides that it’s too dangerous for any one person to control and sends it off into a black hole. This invalidates the whole season. The Federation brass, even Kovacs, who sent them on this “red directive” mission in the first place, agree. So, off she goes. I get it, but it was deeply unsatisfying. The revelation of Kovacs as Agent Daniels (a callback to Enterprise) was cool, I guess. It was nice to see the happy endings, but to have Burnham fly Discovery and Zora out to a predetermined point in the galaxy to wait for some mysterious contact with no human crew … strikes me a cruel. Hardly the send-off either the ship or the AI deserved. So, a mixed bag.

My first read of May was Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera. A has-been band is chosen (last on the list—the rest of the candidates are dead) to defend Earth in a pan-galactic music competition. A loss will result in the annihilation of the planet. No pressure. Info-dump central, a bit deus ex machina at the end, and the climax was rushed, but enjoyable just for Valente’s voice-y prose.

Then, I read Piers Anthony’s Wielding a Red Sword. It’s the fourth book in his incarnations of immortality series. It was okay. A lot of objectification of women. A prince of Gujarat with a stutter disguises himself and joins a travelling circus as an acrobat and mime called Mym. He falls in love with Orb, an Irish musician, but is precipitously recalled home when his brother, who was to become Raj, dies. His father forces his marriage to Rapture, a princess, but because of his ability to become a “controlled” berserker, Mym becomes the incarnation of Mars, the god of war. He is then tempted by Lilith/Lila and must defeat Satan. There is a dead princess he must save from hell, too. Like I say, there’s a LOT of objectification.

Next, I finished Ada Hoffmann’s The Infinite, the third in her Outside series. The cruel AI Gods have abandoned Jai and the Chaos Zone to the Keres, but Yasira Chien and the Seven discover that the Keres and Nemesis are one in the same. The Keres is the bigger stick the Gods use to keep humanity in line. Allies are gathered but they won’t be enough to save humanity, and Dr. Evianna Talirr returns to ask Yasira to make the ultimate sacrifice. A satisfying conclusion to a series that centres neurodiversity, trauma, and the healing power of found family.

I also read Cathrynne Valente’s The Refrigerator Monologues, a fabulous collection of connected vignettes about women superheroes or girlfriends of superheroes who all end up in hell (why hell? It’s never explained) after they’ve been killed or lost everything to advance the character arcs of the men in their lives. A lot of critique of DC superheroes (the fridging trope arose when the body of Green Lantern’s girlfriend was literally stuffed in his fridge by a nemesis) but great snarky fun.

Then, I finished The Better Part of Valor by Tanya Huff. It’s the second novel in her Confederation series, the first book of which I read last month. This time, Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr is separated from her team and sent on a top-secret reconnaissance mission. A big, yellow ship that reads as part organic has appeared out of nowhere and Torin finds herself contending with the civilian salvage officer who found it and wants dibs on the salvage, the Others, who also show up to investigate, and Big Yellow itself, which seems to have plans of its own. I’m really enjoying this series.

I followed this up with Nancy Kress’s If Tomorrow Comes, the second in her Yesterday’s Kin series (I have not yet read the first book—reading a series out of order, I know!). It’s part military SF, part first contact, and part disaster/thriller. Years ago, a ship came to Earth from World, a alien-transplanted human colony, to warn of a space-faring spore cloud that is deadly to humans. Now, Earth is sending a mission to World with a crew of scientists carrying the vaccine for the spore cloud and a team of rangers as military escort. Things go to hell pretty quickly.

World is not as technologically advanced as Earth and its people work hard to keep it that way, living in balance with the planet and its resources. They have not developed a vaccine and the ship was a gift left for them by the advanced species that transplanted them to World over a hundred thousand years ago. When another contingent from Earth arrives and bombs three of the four World cities and the other Earth ship, the survivors have to figure out how to synthesize the vaccine because the spore cloud is only weeks away. Fascinating worldbuilding. Well-developed, if derivative, characters.

Then, I read The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey. Tarma is sword-sworn and bound to the goddess. Kethry is a sorceress of the white winds and the bearer of the sword Need, that directs her to women under dire threat. The two are bondmates, and Kethry has promised to help rebuild Tarma’s murdered clan. At first, the novel seems to be an unconnected string of adventures, but eventually, everything comes together in a final confrontation. Quite good.

Finally, I read Terran Tomorrow by Nancy Kress, the third in the Yesterday’s Kin trilogy. At the end of the last book (above) [SPOILERS!] a colony ship is recalled. There are no World survivors, but the ship is filled with the purple, naked, and smelly World-equivalents of mice who survived the spore cloud thanks to a virophage. The virophage is released on World and saves most of the population. So, a team of Earth and World humans return to Earth to find it devastated. Though Earth humans were mostly immune to the spore cloud virus, it combined with avian flu virus and wiped out most the people on Earth. There are now about 120 million humans world-wide and in America, two factions are fighting for supremacy, the remnants of the US military, and New America. And then, people affected by the virophage and infected with the mutated r. sporae avovirus (RSA—how prophetic was that?) fall into comas. More science and military hijinx. Interesting series. And now I’m reading the first book in the series to find out how it all started (!)

And that was the month in this writer’s life.

Until next month, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

The next chapter: a month in the writerly life. melaniemarttila.ca

The next chapter: July 2023 update

/ Melanie Marttila

Welcome to August, everyone! Enjoying your summer?

A picture of clouds.

For me, the answer to that question is yes … and no. I am enjoying the summer in the sense that I still get out twice a day to walk Torvi and I enjoy the light and the warmth and the activity. The no part of the answer comes in with the long stretches of higher-than-seasonal temperatures we’ve been having.

It’s too hot most days to enjoy the patio/summer office during the day and, by the time it cools off in the evening to the degree I could enjoy the office, the insects emerge and cause a whole new kind of misery.

And the days when it isn’t unseasonably hot, it’s overcast and raining.

Have picked raspberries, though. It’s a decent crop this year.

The other complication to my summer is work. I should really learn to take more time off in the summer. I could avoid a lot of aggravation if I did. Unfortunately, I need to take more time off in the fall and winter. I’m a hibernator. And I’m not due more vacation for a few years yet. Almost when I’ll be thinking about retirement. Le sigh. First world problems. Privileged white woman first world problems.

And, as July ends, we’ve had a lovely break in the weather. Maybe I’ll be able to get out and enjoy the rest of the season 🙂

The month in writing

In general, I’m keeping on. I’ve narrowed focus to Reality Bomb, which I’m revising in 20-page chunks with Suzy Vadori’s guidance.

I have a side project in the form of revising a short story, but there’s no deadline for it. It’s just something I can dip into from time to time when I need a change of pace.

In other news, I’m really enjoying not curating content and moving back to monthly updates (with the odd addition of posts about writerly news, which tend to be short). It’s been a relief, which tells me that it’s been more onerous than I thought. It also gives me more time to write, which is what I really need to be doing right now.

Also, work is kicking my butt with another big project. This seems to be the way of things in the summer over the past few years. We may need to do some strategic thinking about workload. What this means in practical terms for my writing is that I’m often out of spoons by the end of the workday and weekends are focused on recovery. When do I write? When I can, which is not as often as I’d like, but often enough to make progress.

I’m trying to have compassion for myself. It’s harder than it sounds.

Welp, I was informed by email on July 5th, that while my Access Copyright Foundation Professional Development Grant application was recommended by their assessment committee, there were not enough funds to award all the applicants who were recommended. I did not make the cut. So, a bittersweet notification.

I will definitely apply again in the future. Maybe not for the PD grant again, but we’ll see what else is on my creative horizon the next time I wade into the grant waters.

On the 5th, I also met with a professional photographer, Gerry Kingsley, and we discussed getting a shoot together. We’re starting with a vision board but hope to have the shoot scheduled by the end of the month/early next month, and the photos ready for use by mid-August.

Unfortunately, another project took precedence for him and we’re kind of in limbo.

I had my second session with Suzy on July 6th and my third on the 19th. Things are progressing. I still feel that I’m not picking up on her methodology as quickly as I should. But that’s on me. She reassured me that I’m doing fine.

I have over 150 pages of revised novel now, though (from the work I did with her Oct 2022 to Jan 2023 and now). I don’t know if I’m actually going to cut any words/pages in the end. Most of Suzy’s suggestions have me adding words, not cutting them, or cutting and then adding in more 🙂 I’ve currently overcome the cutting I did earlier in the year, and I’ve added more than 3,000 words (!) It was the middle and the ending that were bloated, though, so I could end up cutting a bunch later on. We’ll see how it goes.

On July 31st, I received an email that I’ve been accepted into the League of Canadian Poets as a full member! So now I’ve dipped my toes in (almost) all the professional associations. Updated my website and CV. I am now qualified as all get out 🙂

Filling the well

I enrolled in a longer Writing the Other course, Crafting Diverse Relationships, which ran July 1st to the 23rd. It was awesome, and I’m beginning to think I may be asexual, or maybe grey ace. I’ll have to delve into it more. It was also helpful for interracial relationships, polyamory, and character arcs in general.

I met with my publisher on the 2nd, and we discussed the publishing process for The Art of Floating from here out. I have some time to work on some of the promotional materials she requested, but I had already taken a run at it and I’m not sure how much of what I submitted is usable and how much I’ll have to rework and resubmit.

I signed up for a webinar on the 11th about writing characters intentionally and respectfully by Jenny Kleiman through Chill Subs. It was good, but WTO is the premiere purveyor of this kind of content.

I also registered for a Tiffany Yates Martin webinar through Jane Friedman. How to Write Powerfully in Deep Third POV was on July 12th. Because it was during the workday, I watched the recording. Excellent, as always.

Augur Magazine presented Writing YA in SFF with Sarah Raughley on July 15th. Very good.

Over on Free Expressions, Tiffany Yates Martin presented Five Steps to an Airtight Plot on the 20th. The work/spoons situation I realized that I’ve actually taken this course before, through Jane Friedman. Ya know what? Repetition is reinforcement. I clearly still feel the need to absorb more information from this one.

I signed up for another Mary Robinette Kowal webinar on Middles and Try/Fail Cycles. That was on July 23rd. This is kind of what I need right now as I wade into the middle of RB.

On the 26th, it was Author Platform Building with Catherine Baab-Maguira. I’m still trying to figure out platform, especially now that I’m moving toward the launch of The Art of Floating.

Also on the 26th, but in the evening, Graeme Cameron, publisher of Polar Borealis and Polar Starlight, who’s published one of my short stories and quite a few of my poems, offered a CAA/SF Canada webinar on getting published.

The next in the Free Expressions series of Don Maass webinars was DIY Archetypes on the 27th. It was all about how characters become iconic.

Then, thanks to my virtual attendance of the Nebula conference weekend, I was able to attend a Connecting Flights Panel on Sticking the Short Story Landing on the 29th.

Good Company interviewed me for the new facilitator position, but ultimately went with another candidate. To be honest, this is a good thing. As I mentioned last month, I may have been taking on more than I should.

Due to stresses at work, I’ve stalled a bit in my smoking cessation journey. I’d made it as far as 6 or 7 cigarettes a day, but then couldn’t hack it. I’m back up to 12 a day, which is about half of what I was smoking. I might hold here until the big project is done.

Füm released three new citrus flavours for their cores. I quite like the orange vanilla, but don’t care for the sparkling grapefruit or the raspberry lemon flavours. Think it’s going to be orange vanilla, crisp mint, and maple pepper from here on out.

I had a massage on July 20th. Desperately needed relaxation, that.

On July 27th, I saw my doctor about a mole on the side of my nose. It’s right under the nose pad of my glasses, and there are issues. He chose to freeze it, and now it’s swollen worse than before. The swelling subsided by the end of the month, but now the problem is that the nose pad of my glasses rubs on the scab and keeps on tearing it open.

On the 29th, I took Torvi for a Furminator bath and brush. The house is basically wall-to-wall fur right now. In her absence, I de-furred the house (AKA vacuumed).

What I’m watching and reading

Before I start in on the month in viewing, I would like to express my solidarity with the Writers’ Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild strike. They deserve better pay, protections, conditions, and job security. Like many other employers, the Hollywood machine seeks to maximize profit and disenfranchise their most vulnerable workers.

Having said that, most of what I’ve watched this month was written and produced long before the strike began, and none of it is paid promotion. Just my own opinion 🙂

I watched Nimona (Netflix). A movie based on a comic property I’ve never read. It was awesome. A futuristic world, but still based in magic. A young knight is set up for the murder of the queen and only an immortal shapeshifter can help him prove his innocence.

I finished the first season of Shrinking (Apple +). Entertaining. Harrison Ford is surprising as an embittered therapist with Parkinson’s trying to help his colleagues sort their sh*t out as a means of avoiding his own. And there’s a lot of sh*t to be sorted. The cliffhanger promises an entertaining second season, too.

Then, Phil and I watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Netflix). I didn’t think it was as bad as the reviews imply. It’s the best of the D&D-related films I’ve seen. The whole Hasbro/Wizards fiasco (which is still ongoing) may have contributed to the poor reception, but we enjoyed it.

I started off the month by reading Mira Grant’s (Seanan McGuire’s) Rolling in the Deep. It’s pretty much straight up horror, which I’m not a super fan of, but it was well-written and short 🙂 A research ship is sponsored by a “reality” TV channel when it travels to the Mariana Trench to find evidence of mermaids. Unsurprisingly, the “mermaids” find the ship and its crew, first.

Next, I listened to the Audible Original, The Original, by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal. Holly wakes up and is informed that she is a Provisional Replica, or PR, and that she is tasked with finding and killing her Original for the murder of her husband, Jonathan. She has four days to do this, or the nanites in her system will kill her for her failure. Very cool SF thriller.

Another short Audible Original was John Scalzi’s Murder by Other Means, the second of his Dispatcher novellas. It’s set in a world where people who get murdered tend to wake up, naked, in their beds (or wherever they feel safe). Natural deaths, accidents, and suicides seem to be the exception to the rule, but there is a small chance that you actually stay dead when someone kills you. Enter the Dispatchers, a service to fit the times. Dying of cancer? Call the dispatcher and have a second chance at life. Accident leave you in a coma? Your spouse will call the dispatcher to set things right.

But after 12 years, it’s getting harder and harder for dispatchers to find legitimate work. And Tony, the protagonist, has taken to accepting questionable jobs to pay the bills. When several people he’s recently worked with start committing suicide, one by one, Tony’s implicated, and he has to find out what’s really happening and who’s responsible before he’s murdered by other means.

Then, I read Passing by Nella Larsen. Irene encounters an old friend, Clare one afternoon and, before long, Clare has insinuated herself into Irene’s life. Both light-skinned Black women, Irene embraces her Black identity, while Clare has chosen to pass and has married a racist white man. As the relationship progresses, Irene has to face some tough truths about Clare … and herself.

Passing was one of the novels to come out of the Harlem Renaissance.

As part of my WTO course, I read ACE: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen. Excellent. Well thought out, compassionately argued, and hella interesting.

I read another of Adrian Tchaikovsky book: Walking to Aldebaran. A ship and crew are sent out to investigate an anomaly in the Oort cloud beyond Pluto. Told in alternating timelines, the sole survivor of the ill-fated landing crew wanders “the crypts” meeting aliens, stumbling upon gateways to other worlds, and eating just about anything he stumbles upon … or kills, and recounts the events that brought him to this juncture. A fun/weird/horrific read.

Then, I read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. It is a classic, but I found it just a bit boring.

Next, I listened to the third novella in the Dispatcher series, Travel by Bullet, in which Tony gets himself into a lot of trouble trying to help his friend Mason. The title is a conceit used in both Scalzi novellas I listened to this month. If you’re far from home and want to get back there, fast, or if you need to escape a difficult situation while far from home, you just have to get someone to shoot you in Dispatcher world. If you’re not one of the small percentage of people for whom death is permanent, you wake up, naked, at home.

Another book I read for my WTO course was Stant Litore’s Write Characters Your Readers Won’t Forget. Solid craft advice about characters and character arcs. I’d purchased this book the first time I took Stant’s Character Arcs Course through WTO, but hadn’t actually read it until now (!)

Then, I read Sarah Gailey’s Upright Women Wanted. In a future American Southwest, Esther stows away in a librarian’s wagon, escaping the horror of her father hanging her beloved, Beatrice. Gailey’s librarians draw on the history of the packhorse librarians, who were hired by Roosevelt Franklin to distribute reading materials in Appalachia during the depression (remember The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek?), but she subverts them by also making them queer activists who distribute non-approved reading materials and escort persecuted queer people to safety.

Finally, I listened to Erin Macdonald’s The Science of Sci-Fi, a Great Courses course offered through Audible Originals. Absolutely fabulous! Lots of help/ideas for my current work-in-progress.

And that was the month in this writer’s life.

Until next month, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

Image of an open book with mist rising from it. The Next Chapter: A month in the writerly life. melaniemarttila.ca

The next chapter: June 2023 update

/ Melanie Marttila

I should have posted this on the weekend, but I was having trouble getting into my WordPress account. Turns out all I had to do was delete cookies and history on my browser. Sometimes it gets backed up like that. My apologies.

Picture of clouds with crepuscular rays.

And welcome to July! The year is passing so quickly.

Let’s backtrack a bit.

This has been a weird spring. After a brief few days of above-seasonal temperatures (I wore shorts in March!) it got cool and rainy. Then there was the strike (more news on that in a bit). Soon after, the temperatures began to rise again, and the last part of May was essentially a heat wave. The first part of June was seasonal, but just in time for the Solstice, we got our second heat wave, and now a third. Thanks, global warming.

Since we don’t have central air conditioning, this meant closing up the house to the degree possible during the day in an attempt to keep things cool. After the first week, the house got hot no matter what we did. And I started to get heat edema (swelling of the extremities due to heat). This meant that I wasn’t keen to go outside and do things except to make sure Torvi got her walkies.

This year has also meant something completely different for me—seasonal allergies (!) I’ve never been so stuffed up before. Complicating this may be the smoky haze blown into the area by the surrounding forest fires.

So, I haven’t been posting/reporting on the seasonal changes as much as I have in past years.

Rest assured; the monstrous rhubarb is still monstrous. We’ve been inviting everyone to come and take what they want. There’s always more than we can use.

The pin cherries blossomed at the end of Victoria Day long weekend. The lilacs followed a week later, and the honeysuckles bloomed a week after that. The pines candled brilliantly. The Finn rose is thriving.

Phil dug up and replanted our strawberries in the fall and, while we lost a few, we had flowers, and the berries began to set. Unfortunately, birds and chipmunks got to them before we could harvest one berry. I’m so disappointed.

The raspberry patch survived the winter and should produce fruit. Now if we can only remember to get out and pick the berries!

And Phil has planted our garden again this year. Swiss chard, beets, some carrots, and radishes, and he’s even giving peas a chance 🙂 We have one tomato plant and hope to soon have more.

Phil’s also set up the patio set and solar panel. He had to rework some of the ‘lectrics, but my summer office is technically open for business. Now if I can just pry myself away from my desk and get out there.

In an update from last month, the tentative contract was ratified by the membership. We’ll get out retro pay, etc. in about six months. So, either a nice Christmas present or a fabulous start to the New Year.

The month in writing

Second round revisions of The Art of Floating (yes, my poetry collection has a name!) were completed by the 4th, and I sent the revised manuscript off to Heather at Latitude 46. She wanted to read it through before we discussed next steps.

On the morning of June 5th, I received an email from one of the granting bodies I applied to informing me that the status of my grant application had changed. I figured I’d been screened out, and logged into the site, hope and dread warring in my gut. But it was good news! My application is moving forward to the assessment process! There’s still no guarantee. I just made it past the initial screening and my application may ultimately not make the grade, but I think moving on to formal assessment by committee is impressive for a first-time applicant (!)

Later that same day, SF Canada member and Aurora Award recipient Graeme Cameron reviewed Pulp Literature 38 in Amazing Stories and had some lovely things to say about my story, “Psychopomps Are Us.”

Sorry, but I just have to copy from the review:

“Premise: Psychopomps are guides leading souls into the afterlife. Leave it to science to add the profession to the ranks of social workers. Not an enviable job.

Review: This story has interesting concepts to express about astral forms, ghosts, spirits, and how they interact. All quite plausible, given the premise.

What is particularly interesting is that the job involves a certain amount of B.S. in that no one has any actual experience of what the afterlife offers, such that all promises made to the reluctant departed as to why they should continue their journey are pure speculation. Can’t tell the “client” that, of course, as it would fail to convince them to get on with it. So, a series of no nonsense and hopefully convincing lies are in order.

The story is a delightful exercise in extrapolation of certain implications in the underlying belief system of modern spiritualism.  Turns out the job of Psychopomp is more akin to that of a psychiatrist than a social worker. You not only need to understand the newly dead, but also how to manipulate and motivate them. Challenging, to say the least.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but their point of view, if they were to exist, is well laid out and makes for an amusing contest of wills. I quite enjoyed this story. I believe you will, too. Just plain fun to read.”

Needless to say, June 5th was a very happy day.

On June 10th, I applied to the League of Canadian Poets on the advice of my publisher, whom I met at Ann-Marie MacDonald’s event (see below). I was a member, back in the 90s. We’ll see if they accept my application (again) in 6 to 8 weeks.

I also sent out some initial enquiries about setting up some writers-in-the-schools visits in the fall and winter. I got a response from a teacher in the Catholic board pretty quickly and she arranged to firm things up with me later in June after the crazy ended. She’s now been in touch and firmed things up. Now, I’m just waiting to hear if anyone in the public board is interested. The application is due on July 17th.

My first submission to Suzy was due June 11th and we met on the 15th. It was a good session, but I was frustrated with myself because I’m not internalizing Suzy’s methodology as quickly as I’d like. I’m trying to be gentle with myself, treat myself like I would a good friend. I can do the thing! I will be successful! It’s hard, though.

I finished another creative non-fiction piece for a call on the 15th and submitted it. Again, as I’m such a noob in the CNF sphere, I have no idea how I’ll do. The good thing is that the more I write in the genre, the better I’ll get. Practice makes better. So, no pressure on either of these CNF pieces. It’ll be great if something happens, but I think it’s more likely they’ll both be rejected.

Screenshot of an Excel tracking sheet showing my writing and revision progress.
As in recent months, you may peruse if you wish.

The Canadian Authors Association scheduled its annual general meeting (AGM) on the 24th.

Then, the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association’s AGM was on the 25th.

Think I’m AGM’d out, now.

On impulse, I applied for a facilitator’s position with the therapist who organizes my support group. Eep! I’m beginning to feel like I’m taking on too much. Again.

At the end of the month (26th), Heather sent me the first of the next step emails with respect to The Art of Floating. This one was about filling in the marketing information for the collection, including supplying a headshot.

I promptly started querying photographers.

And … I delivered my #ActuallyAutistic Author webinar on the 28th! I think it went well. The feedback I’ve received so far has been positive.

Filling the well

I went to an in-person (!) event on June 5th. Ann-Marie MacDonald came to Sudbury for the Canadian University Women’s Federation’s Celebrate Women 2023. It was wonderful. MacDonald is hilarious. And, of course, I got a signed copy of Fayne.

Free Expressions offered a webinar by Eric Maisel, “Writing Your Book from Beginning to End,” on June 8th. Due to a big project at work and relatively few spoons, I watched the replay. I have several of Maisel’s books and wanted to see what one of his webinars was like. It was good.

I signed up for the video only option for Stant Litore’s “Write Characters Your Readers will Love,” a Writing the Other offering. It was a full day workshop over June 10th and 11th and I needed the weekend to myself to recover. I watched the workshop in parts from the 13th to the 19th. Stant’s one of those presenters with an absolute wealth of knowledge. I took the workshop in the pre-times and just wanted to brush up.

I signed up for another Free Expressions webinar by Janice Hardy, “Make the Most of Your POV,” on the 15th. I didn’t think I’d have the spoons to both meet with Suzy and attend the webinar on the same day (and I was right), so I once again watched the replay. It was one of Janice’s posts on Fiction University that twigged me to the real meaning of show, don’t tell (a lesson I’m still learning). Her webinar on POV was just as valuable.

The Locus Awards weekend was from the 21st through the 24th. I had to miss the readings on the 21st (see below) and 22nd but caught the Friday readings and attended the sessions on Saturday leading up to the Locus Awards ceremony. It was my first time attending virtually and I think their first time producing a hybrid conference. There were some technical glitches, but it was good overall.

The second of Donald Maass’s Free Expressions Webinars took place on the 22nd. Our World in Your Nutshell was a bit more of his usual fare. Making the specific universal.

Then, on the 28th I attended a TWUC webinar called Intersectionality Tomorrow with Tanis MacDonald, Nisha Patel, and Carla Harris. It was fabulous.

I went to Little Current to attend friends’ 25th anniversary celebration on June 21st. They renewed their vows with family and friends. It was a lovely evening.

It was too hot (see above) to light up all the candles on the altar for the solstice, but I took an eerie-cool picture of the moon and Venus through the haze.

Picture of the crescent moon and Venus through smokey haze.

The Sudbury Writers’ Guild’s summer social was at College Boreal on June 29th this year. Met up with several friends.

In health news, I’ve purchased a Füm. I’ve finally had it with cigarettes. I hate the taste and the way they stain my teeth and fingers. Füm is a habit alternative. A metal and wood holder for essential oil infused cores. They taste much better than cigarettes and still allow me to satisfy my oral and fidget fixations as well as to satisfy my need to do something socially with Phil and my mom when they smoke.

I’ve been doing some thinking and I didn’t start smoking until I was 25 and away trying to make it through the coursework requirement for my master’s degree. My mom smoked throughout my childhood, and I didn’t start smoking. Phil smoked when we started dating (and still does), and I didn’t start. I’m pretty sure that I started smoking not only because of the stress of my degree, but also because I needed a substitute for stimming.

When I was a kid, I’d chew pencils and pens (and pen caps) to pieces. I think this was one of my stims. But in university, I stopped using a pen outside of lecture notes and started using a computer. The clack of the keys occupied my fingers but did nothing for my oral fixation. Enter smoking.

After the first week with the Füm, I managed to halve my cigarette consumption. And I haven’t had a major nicotine fit … yet. Think I’m going to hang here for a while before I take the next step. A 27-year habit is not broken in a week. And there is a component of addiction that has to be overcome.

Phil had his bone scan scheduled for June 2nd. It went without a hitch. He was advised that they’d be in touch if there was anything of note in a few days. He’s heard nothing, so we’re assuming no news is good news.

What I’m watching and reading

I watched Judy Bloom Forever (Amazon). She’s had a fascinating life! Loved.

Then, I watched Avatar: The Way of Water (Disney +). I remember the first Avatar. At the time, I was blown away. Then I became aware of the problematic nature of the story (white saviourism) and remembered is a bit less fondly. TWoW suffers from some of the same issues, compounded by the fact that despite being in an avatar, Jake Sully’s managed to transfer enough human genetic material to his kids that they all have four fingers. Worse is that Quaritch, killed at the end of the first film by Neytiri, has been cloned into a Na’vi body and his son, left behind with the scientists who were allowed to stay on Pandora, is a kind of adopted son to Jake, though Neytiri can’t forget his origins and rejects him as a part of their family.

I enjoyed the movie, but not as much as I might have if I didn’t know what I know, know what I mean?

Next, I watched Women Talking (Amazon). Based on the novel of the same name by Miriam Toews and on real events (!) In a Mennonite community in Latin America, women and girls were drugged and raped for years. The real case resulted in seven of eight charged men convicted of rape. In the movie (and, I assume, the book) the women gather and decide to leave their community to protect themselves and their children. It’s compelling and terrifying and totally worth watching. The performances are amazing.

I finished the second (and final) season of Warrior Nun (Netflix). All loose ends were tied up. Ava may or may not be dead as she was taken to the other side, halo and all, after defeating Adriel. Fans are apparently trying to revive the series, but I don’t know if they will be successful.

I watched Moonage Daydream (Amazon), a surreal documentary about David Bowie. It was interesting to hear from Bowie in his own words. The last part of his career wasn’t covered in as much depth, which was disappointing because that’s the part of his career I was most interested in.

I seem to be in a docu-mood. My next watch was Stan Lee (Disney +). A fascinating look at a fascinating life in a fascinating industry 🙂

Next, I watched the season three finale of Superman & Lois (network). Lois gets cancer (and survives), Clark and Lois try to take down Bruno Manheim (and they do), and, in the last two episodes, Lex Luthor is released from prison and comes after Lois, but he starts by stripping her of her protection. He gets the General out of the way with a honey pot, and then finds the now-feral Bizarro, torturing him until he becomes Doomsday, and sends him after Clark. It was quite a cliffhanger.

Finally, I finished the first season of Gotham Knights (network). I think this is the best of the DCEU series to come out recently. But of course it got cancelled. Bah.

In reading, I finished Kate Heartfield’s Armed in Her Fashion. In this historical weird, the devil’s wife, only known as the Chatelaine, traps her husband deep within the hellbeast that is their living home. She takes over and brings the hellbeast to the surface in the hope of becoming a ruler in a time when women cannot rule. Enter Magreit and her daughter Beatrix, trying to survive in Bruges after the Chatelaine and her forces attack. The Chatelaine is doing this to win the favour of the French King and win the city as her own kingdom.

Her main force is composed of chimeras, people combined with beasts or objects, or both, in the hellforge to become her faithful warriors. The rest are revenants, killed by the chimeras but somehow brought back to half-life. Magreit’s husband is a revenant, and when she discovers him taking a hidden chest from their home, she demands her rights, and her daughter’s. He is dead. What’s in that chest belongs to his family. It could mean the start of a new life for Magreit and Beatrix.

Though she has contracted the Grief, a wasting sickness that infects revenants’ loved ones, Magreit will go to any lengths before she dies to get her daughter’s inheritance, even into the bowels of the hellbeast.

Next, I read Nalo Hopkinson’s short story collection Skin Folk. Soundly entertaining and a wonderful peek into the Caribbean diaspora by one of our best storytellers.

Then, I finished my re-read of Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater. I realize I’ve just been raving about how much I love the series and not offering anything in terms of the plot. Let’s fix that now, shall we?
The Raven Boys — Blue Sargent, who’s always been told that if she kisses her true love, he’ll die, is drawn into the orbit of Gansey and his friends Ronan, Adam, and Noah, as they search for a mythical Welsh king who Gansey suspects is buried somewhere in Virginia. In order to find Glendower, they must revive the ley line, but someone else is on the same quest and wants to beat them to the punch.
The Dream Thieves — Ronan Lynch is a dreamer, that is, he can pull things out of his dreams and into reality, like his pet raven, Chainsaw. The ley line is awake, but still needs to be healed, and Adam made a deal with the mystical forest Cabeswater to be its eyes and ears. But someone called The Gray Man’s come to town in search of an artifact called the greywaren which has the power to make dreams real, and Ronan learns he’s not the only dreamer in Henrietta. They’re both in danger.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue — Blue’s mom has disappeared and left a cryptic note: Glendower’s underground and so am I. The Gray Man’s employer has come to town determined to find the greywaren, and Gansey’s mentor Mallory has come to help the gang finally track down Glendower. Blue doesn’t care about any of that unless it helps her rescue her mother.

And now it’s onto The Raven King!

Next, I finished William Gibson’s Idoru. Rez, of the rock duo Lo/Rez, has declared his intention to marry an idoru (idol, in Japanese) an AI entertainer. No one understands how this is supposed to happen, including his staff. So, they hire Colin Laney, a man with an uncanny and inexplicable ability to find nodal points in any data stream to find out if anyone is manipulating Rez. At the same time, Chia Pet McKenzie, a member of the Seattle chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club is sent to Japan to investigate.

The next book I read was Patricia Briggs’ Fire Touched. It’s number nine in the Mercy Thompson series. I’ve only read the first book in the series before. Mercy and her werewolf mate Adam must protect a human changeling who has escaped Underhill, where he lived for a very long time and was imbued with the elemental power of fire. The Gray Lords of the fae want Aiden, though, and some of them will stop at nothing to get him.

I also read Nalini Singh’s Angel’s Blood. It’s a steamy paranormal, so be aware of the potential of explicit sex. The world building’s a little weird, but in Singh’s world, angels create vampires as servitors or slaves. Humans, trained or with innate hunter talents, hunt rogue vampires for the angels. Elena is a born hunter and one of the best in her field. She’s called upon by the archangel Raphael to hunt not a vampire, but a corrupted archangel whose bloodlust could consume every mortal in existence.

Then, I read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Once again, I am struck by how much I like Dickens. Just in general.

Finally, I read The Prynne Viper by Bianca Marais. Bianca’s the co-host of The Sh*t No One Tells You About Writing podcast and I was curious. Solid courtroom drama set in a futuristic world in which predictive algorithms determine who gets to be born. Naomi Prynne has been to court three times and lost. Now, she’s pregnant again and desperate not to lose.

Intriguing worldbuilding, most of which I can’t tell you without spoiling the story, but I will note the use of Prynne as the protagonist’s last name (harkening to Hester, methinks), and let you know that viper is a short form/portmanteau of viable person.

And that was the month in this writer’s life.

Until next month, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

Picture of a book with mist rising from it. The Next Chapter A month in the Writerly Life melaniemarttila.ca

The next chapter: May 2023 update

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Welcome to the next chapter monthly update for May 2023. It’s going to be another epic update. Actually, it’s epic-er. Lots of stuff to cram into this month.

I woke up May 1st to the news that a tentative deal had been reached and the strike was over (for now). The deal still had to be formally announced, information sessions held, and members vote on whether to accept the offer or not. And if the membership doesn’t vote to accept, we could be picketing again if further negotiations fail.

CRA workers were still walking the picket until their bargaining team had an agreement they could present to their members. This happened within the week.

Our ratification kit was sent out on May 10th. The ratification vote was called on the 24th, but the voting period doesn’t close until June 16th, so you (and I) will have to wait until next month to learn the results.  

Two people in Incledibles costumes on the PSAC picket line.
Two of our superheroic picketers on a very rainy day.

In the meantime, life threw us another curve ball. Our break line blew, and the car was out of commission until we could find an appointment at a repair shop, which was more difficult than you’d think. The garage we’ve been with for 20+ years was booked solid for six weeks. Our dealership was booked for three. Ultimately, we found a garage that could help us, got the car towed there, and the necessary repairs completed in five days.

It was interesting living without a car for those few days. I hope that the universe doesn’t have any further surprises in store for us. With Phil’s broken shoulder, the strike, and the car, that’s three. Things have to turn around soon.

The month in writing

I worked on a creative non-fiction piece and finished it (I think) on May 6th. Actually, I gave it a few more passes and submitted it on the 8th. There is such a thing as editing the life out of a piece. It’s my first CNF. I have no idea how it will fare.

I continued to edit my poetry collection, work on notes and acknowledgements. I sent it back to Tanis (who was having fun in Finland—I’m so jealous) over the Victoria Day long weekend. She’ll have final notes back to me in June.

Actually, she returned the second round edits May 29th. I’ll work on it on the weekend (June 3rd and 4th) and then forward it to my publisher, Heather, for final copyedits, formatting, cover, and all that jazz. April 2024 is getting closer!

I revised a short story for an anthology call due May 31st. That, too, I finished (after several passes) and submitted on the 28th. And then the call was extended until July 31st. Oh well.

And I finally got back to Reality Bomb. I reviewed the chapters I’d done before, added a stack of Post-it notes to my map, and generally prepared to dive back into editing with Suzy in June. I officially contracted her on the 24th and paid my fee. It’s happening!

Mellie's writing and revision progress for May.
Once again, I’ll just leave this here for you to peruse.
Mel holding up the CSFFA Professional Development Grant letter.

Related to that: My ah-MA-zing news (that I alluded to last month): I received the CSFFA Professional Development Grant! W00t!! Now the first session with Suzy will be mostly covered! I was informed by email on April 30th but asked to hold back on announcing the news until the CSFFA made their official announcement. Now they have, and I can! You may have seen my blog post about it earlier in the month. I thought it bore mentioning again 🙂

I submitted my application for my first Ontario Arts Council Northern Arts Grant on May 1st (again, for better or worse). There was a lot more to it than the OAC grant I applied for last fall. I have no idea how well I did (or did not). I’m still committed to applying for every grant I can. The more grant applications I submit, the better I’ll get at writing them. That I worked on this one while in the midst of the strike … let’s just say it probably wasn’t my best work. But I have no objectivity, so who knows?

I read my poetry at the TWUC Ontario region virtual open mic on May 2nd. It was good to share my poems again.

On May 3rd, I received an email from Odyssey Workshops notifying me that my application to Your Personal Odyssey was not accepted. Each year, the email’s a little longer and this year, Jeanne Cavelos said she enjoyed reading my writing sample. There were even more applicants than last year, and the competition was fierce. I’ll see it as a “one step closer to yes” rejection 😉

On May 12th, I received the package from the K. Valerie Connor Memorial Poetry Celebration contest and judging was underway. More than twice as many poems as were predicted, but I managed.

I attended a CAA board meeting on May 23rd. It will be one of my last. I’m stepping down after two terms to focus more on my writing.

Filling the well

I virtually attended the FOLD from April 30 to May 7, watching most of the sessions in replay. Always a great literary festival.

I watched the first of the Donald Maass series of Free Expressions webinars on May 5th, the Eight Lacks that Torpedo a Good Manuscript. Thought-provoking as ever.

I signed up for another Tiffany Yates Martin webinar through Jane Friedman and watched it on May 7th. The Power of Dialogue in Fiction was a different offering than I’ve seen from her before. Excellent, as always.

The TWUC Webinar, Construction of a Story Arc, featured past winners of the Danuta Gleed Award. Interesting insights into process.

I attended Writers Read for Dawn Walker on May 10th. I’d already signed and shared the petition through change.org and when I was notified of the reading, I decided to show my support. Also, Kim Fahner was one of the readers (and Alicia Elliott and Louise Bernice Halfe and Dawn herself). It was a compelling and heart-wrenching evening. I’ll encourage you to support Dawn’s legal defense fund.

I signed up for Your Novel’s Four Key Scenes with Susan DeFreitas, once again, through Jane Friedman. And once again, I watched the replay. She got into the neuroscience of story. Mirror neurons. Semantic and episodic memory. All the good things.

From May 12th to 14th, I attended the virtual version of the Nebula Conference and Awards Ceremony. There were a lot of great panels including one on revision and one on neurodivergent writers 🙂

I registered for Cece Lyra’s Putting the Hook in Your Book webinar on the 18th. I had a conflict and watched the replay. Full of insight. Cece introduced me to a new way of thinking about story in terms of pitch or query.

Then, I signed up for Carly Watters’ Preparing Your Pitch Package for Literary Agents webinar on the 24th. A bad couple of days at work meant that I had to watch the replay. I did not have the gas. But it was an amazing webinar that covered both fiction and non-fiction queries/packages. And the resources!

I watched a Word on the Street virtual webinar on creating time & space to write on the 25th. It’s not that I don’t already have time and space to write, it’s just that I can always learn something new, and Melissa Yuan-Innes (Yi) was on the panel 🙂

I’m just signing up for all the things 🙂 On the 31st was Jean-Louis Trudel’s “To Enter the Writing Multiverse,” another CAA/SFC webinar. An excellent presentation on creating a diversified writing career.

I had a lovely massage booked with my RMT on the 24th. Much needed respite.

Phil actually got to see the endocrinologist on May 9th. He received a year’s worth of prescriptions, a referral for a bone scan, and an appointment for next year.

He had another appointment with Dr. Vokey on the 12th and this was his last. Unfortunately, the x-ray technician asked him to contort his arm into a weird position and then Vokey manipulated the joint as part of her final exam. He was so sore, he bailed on Mother’s Day dinner.

Speaking of which, my sister-in-law hosted Mother’s Day dinner at her place. It was a lovely weekend for it. Super-delish pasta and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Torvi stayed home with Phil.  

He also had another physio appointment on the 29th. This, too, would be his last. There’s really not much more they can do for him. He just has to keep up with his exercises and see how things go.

Picture of the moon in a cloudy sky over trees.
One of my favourites of the last month.

What I’m watching and reading

It’s finale season. Just warning you now, there are a lot of shows I’m going to be running down.

Phil and I watched Seven Kings Must Die (Netflix), the movie finale of The Last Kingdom series. It basically covers Bernard Cornwell’s most recent novel in the book series the BBC/Netflix series and movie are based on. The series benefitted from being able to cover the events of each novel over up to ten episodes. The movie suffered from having to cram everything into less than two hours. It felt like several novels crammed into one movie. We enjoyed it, but not as much as the series. I have yet to read the books (though I have purchase several).

Season five of The Rookie (network) ended with a wild conspiracy that had all the LAPD and their partners on edge. Riddles, masks, ambush attacks, home invasions, abductions … it was a lot. And at first, I was worried they were going to kill of another Black character. But it all worked out and in the last moments of the episode, the mysterious mastermind of the attack drives out of town, his own goal accomplished and the LAPD none the wiser. I guess that’s setting up next season.

The Rookie: Feds (network) completed its first season. There was a lot of crossover between The Rookie and its spinoff throughout the season. I like Feds, but not as much as The Rookie. The finale was a win-lose scenario. Moral grey area. They’re waiting to hear if they’ll be renewed.

The first season of Will Trent (network) was excellent, however. I really like the series and will have to check out the books it’s based on by Karin Slaughter. The finale involved a serial killer with links to Will’s past.

The next seasonal domino to fall was True Lies (network). I liked the movie, so I figured I’d give it a shot. The series was nothing like the movie. Mission briefings were slick, digital cheese. It wasn’t as funny as I hoped, either. The season and series finale (it’s been cancelled) sets up a second season that will never happen. Unless one of the streamers picks it up.

I watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy (network). I don’t know how much longer the series will go on. Everyone’s leaving. And now that Ellen Pompeo has stepped back … I mean is there a Grey’s Anatomy without Meredith Grey? I like the new interns well enough, but it’s becoming a lot of the same old, same old.

Phil and I watched Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania (Disney +). I enjoyed it, and Phil was interested enough to actually watch the whole movie with me in one sitting. Jonathan Majors is a tour de force. Hank’s ant farm! “I have holes! Rawr!” >munch, munch, munch< Much fun.

Then, I watched Still (Apple +), the Michael J. Fox documentary. It was amazing.

I needed a little mindless entertainment toward the end of the month, and Jolt (Amazon) fit the bill. Kate Beckinsale plays Lindy, a woman with intermittent explosive disorder who’s just trying to live in the world without harming anyone. She connects with Justin, on the advice of her therapist, but shortly after their third date, Justin is killed, and Lindy decides to use her disorder to find the murderer.

Onto the reading. And, as kismet would have it, I finished reading a lot of books this month, too.

I read Brian Staveley’s The Emperor’s Blades. Solid epic fantasy, but there was a continual stream of objectification and fridging going on, which robbed what might otherwise have been thoroughly enjoyable of the thoroughly part. The emperor is murdered, and his three children have to contend with the fallout while trying to step into their own destinies. I enjoyed Kaden and Valyn’s journeys, but Adair’s was not as well-developed, another reason I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I could have.

Then, I finished Austen Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist. It’s not a long book, but it’s filled with pithy common sense that every writer needs to read interspersed with clever blackout poetry and nifty sketches. Yes. Every creative needs to read this book. That is all.

Next, I turned my attention to some shorter works.

I read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Depressing story. Before he woke up a giant cockroach, Gregor was the sole provider for his family, but they took him for granted. He had ambitions to send his sister to the conservatory, so she could pursue her talent with the violin. After, his mother, father, and sister all get jobs. His father has some savings, but he decides they should only be used in an emergency. Like his son turning into a cockroach isn’t an emergency. All the while, poor Gregor wastes away as his family withdraws their love and support, the only “food” he really wants. When they finally decide they must get rid of him, Gregor dies, almost as a favour to them. And life goes on.

I also finished my re-read of Maggie Stiefvater’s The Dream Thieves. Not a shorter work, but this was the order I finished it in … I don’t know how to be objective about this series. I love it so much. And I can only hope some of her brilliance might rub off on my as I study her work. Now, it’s on to Blue Lily, Lily Blue.

Another short piece I re-read was “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving. I have a story idea that plays with Sleepy Hollow, but I haven’t been driven to actually write it, yet. I like to keep in touch with the story from time to time. This was one of those times.

Next, I read Penric’s Fox by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’d only read Penric’s Demon before, but I don’t think it matters what order you read these tales in. This is apparently the fifth novella in the series and involves Penric investigating the death of another temple sorcerer whose demon may have made its way into a fox. I liked it a lot.

I finished Aliette de Bodard’s In the Vanishers’ Palace. Yên, a failed scholar, is sold into the indenture of Vu Côn, one of the last dragons, to pay her village’s debts. The dragon takes her to a reality-bending palace, where death waits around every tessered corner. Yên expects to be killed, but Vu Côn makes her teacher of her twin children. Another surprise: Yên begins to have feelings for Vu Côn.

The Wild Wood by Charles de Lint was another short read. It was originally published in 1994 when concern for the environment wasn’t so much a part of our daily lives. The author even composed an introduction to this anniversary edition in which he apologizes for the overt “we have to care for our environment” vibe. Eithne is an artist who lives near a marsh and forest just outside of Ottawa. When faerie begin to appear in her artwork and dreams asking for help, she has to decide whether her desire to help is worth the sacrifice she’s been asked to make.

Then, I dove into Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir. It’s a delightful, queer riff on the Rapunzel fairy tale. The witch who traps Floralinda is overzealous. And very experienced. She traps princesses all the time, but artistry is her thing. In Floralinda’s tower, there’s a different monster on every floor, starting with a diamond-scaled dragon. In the first months of her imprisonment, hundreds of princes try to rescue her … and the dragon is very well fed. As summer turns to fall and winter threatens, Floralinda decides she has to rescue herself. LOVED!

I read “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El Mohtar, a shot story from The Starlit Wood anthology of fairy tale retellings. A woman cursed to walk until she wears out seven pairs of iron shoes meets a woman who volunteered to be sealed away in a glass cage. A lovely, sapphic tale of two women discovering how they misogyny of their loved ones has caused them to suffer and the freedom they find when they choose one another.

Next (I did warn you—I read a lot this month), I read Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon). A lovely retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Gardener Bryony and her beleaguered pony Fumblefoot are caught in a blizzard on the way back from getting rutabaga seeds. As she begins to lose the feeling in her extremities, Bryony finds a mysterious estate. The estate is sentient, and the beast is in trouble. Fabulous.

Then, I read The King of Elfland’s Daughter, by Lord Dunsany. A prince wins the hand of the king of Elfland’s daughter. They have a child, but the king misses his daughter and lures her back to Elfland where she pines for her husband and son. So, the prince, now a king, goes in search of Elfland to retrieve his bride, while his son, who hears the horns of Elfland, but does not heed their call, hunts unicorns with trolls and will ‘o’ wisps. Happily ever after isn’t … until the king makes a sacrifice that will change both the Kingdom of Erl and Elfland forever.

Finally, on May 31st, I finished Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. A novel and a movie are necessarily two different things, but, with the exception of a few details, which the author is careful to note in his foreword, the novel evoked Kubrick’s movie quite well.

And that was the month in this writer’s life.

Until next month, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

Image of mist and light rising from an open book. Test: The Next Chapter: A month in the writerly life.

The next chapter: April 2023 update

/ Melanie Marttila

Welcome to the first next chapter, back in its monthly format. This means it will be epic. Sorry, not sorry.

The month in writing

I’ve had to completely revamp my annual plan. Well, not completely, but mostly 🙂

My original plan had been to finish mapping out Alice in Thunderland in January and finish the first draft in February and March while continuing to work with Suzy on Reality Bomb. But a budget situation at work and the attendant loss of income meant I couldn’t continue working with Suzy. We parted ways at the end of January.

I then thought I’d continue working on my own and sign up again once my position and salary had been restored, but Phil had his accident (on Valentine’s Day, I’ll remind you), and all writing work was suspended until such time as he recovered.

In the interim, I got the hare-brained idea to start applying for grants. All of them.

Now that Phil’s recovered, I’ve committed to …

  1. Finish my #ActuallyAutistic Author presentation script and resources,
  2. Revise my poetry manuscript from now through June (in progress),
  3. Write a creative non-fiction (CNF) piece for a call due in early May (in progress),
  4. Work on another CNF piece,
  5. Revise a short story for an anthology call later in May (started),
  6. Start working with Suzy again (come hell or high water, as they say),
  7. Revise another short story for a potential project,
  8. Apply for more grants in May and June (working on one, now),
  9. Deliver my #AAA presentation in June or July,
  10. Revise yet another short story for future submission,
  11. Revamp my web site (some of it’s already done—just bits and pieces left),
  12. Work on new poetry,
  13. Work on a CNF project,
  14. Start work on my new fiction project in September, and
  15. Apply for more grants, September through November.

You can see why I’ve decided to cut back on blogging in the interim.

Alice is taking a back seat, for now. I think it was a good project, but I don’t have the head space or energy to get back to it right now. I do have the outline finished and a solid idea of where I need to head when I do get back to revisions. So, it’s in a good place.

That was the only big change from my original plan, aside from pushing out some timelines because life is what happens when you may other any plans.

So far, the experiment in rearranging my creative life (i.e., giving up curation and returning to monthly updates) seems to be working. I’m a lot less stressed out, that’s for sure. Or I was.

Just gonna let the Excel speak for itself.

Unfortunately, the universe couldn’t take it easy on me. An added stress is that a general strike was called on April 19, 2023. I’m showing up and showing solidarity, but the first day was bitterly cold and I had to take a nap after I got home (which I never do) to warm up and recover. Subsequent days weren’t any easier, though I planned a bit better each day.

My executive function is definitely compromised. Meltdowns each morning, naps most afternoons, and I’m having trouble functioning on any level. At least I didn’t have to picket on the weekends. As of today (April 30, 2023) there’s a new offer on the table, but I haven’t heard anything yet. I expect we’ll be back on the picket line tomorrow.

In other developments, I’ll be one of three judges for the K. Valerie Connor Memorial Poetry Celebration contest held by the Leacock Museum in Orillia this year. I’m honoured to have been considered.

I received another bit of amazing (ah-MA-zing!) news this morning, but I’ll have to wait a bit before I make that announcement. Stay tuned! And yes, I’m a tease.

Filling the well

Just picking up from where I left off in my next chapter weekly updates. I’m not recapping the whole month (!) As you’ll see, it’s been a month FULL of events.

I attended the online book launch for Fonda Lee’s The Untethered Sky on April 10th. A great conversation between Fonda and Andrea Stewart about all aspects of the creative process.

I had signed up for a FOLD Academy webinar with Liselle Sambury on April 8th, but was unable to watch it live, because recovery. I watched the replay once it was posted to their YouTube channel. It’s an interesting method, and Sambury offered a lot of alternatives for outlining and tracking your novel.

I signed up for an Authors Publish webinar on a new (to me) poetry form, the zuihitsu, with Eugenia Leigh. Because it was held during the workday, I watched the replay. Zuihitsu is a fascinating form, but I don’t know if I could manage the consciously disordered nature of a zuihitsu collection. It does track with some of the ideas I’m hoping to play with poetically, though. We’ll see where it leads.

I met with my poetry editor, Tanis MacDonald, on the 12th. It was less fraught than I thought it would be (and that would have been on me—Tanis was lovely). Now I have my marching orders and some work to do 🙂

I attended the Writing Success Series Discovery Night on April 13th. I’ve signed up for the Donald Maass six-webinar package and will return for individual sessions by Eric Maisel, Janice Hardy, Tiffany Yates Martin, and Beth Baranay.

I signed up for another Dan Blank webinar about defining your identity and creative voice on April 14th. Again, because it was during the workday, I watched the replay. Dan has a lot of good information about how to engage with social media on your terms and it all begins with defining your identity and creative voice.

On April 15th, my friend and former poet laureate of Sudbury, Vera Constantineau, launched her poetry collection. Enlightened by Defilement is a collection of haibun inspired by the 108 defilements of Buddhism. It was a lovely afternoon at the Hilton Garden Inn, good food, and a lot of familiar faces that I haven’t seen in a while 🙂

That was a big week of writing-related events, I realized, and dialled it back a bit. Yeah, all of the above was in one week. I might have overdone things a bit.

Just four more writing-related events in the month.

I purchased a Rambo Academy webinar on revision that I could watch at my leisure, which I did.

I attended Mary Robinette Kowal’s Barriers to Writing webinar on Sunday, April 23. It was extremely helpful in a few different ways.

Finally, I registered for a TWUC webinar on marketing and self-promotion presented by Rod Carley and Ali Bryan, which I also watched in replay. With my debut poetry collection coming up next year, it was very helpful!

I almost forgot! The FOLD started on April 30th, but as the bulk of the event is in May, I’ll leave the details until next month’s update.

In the self-care department, I had an appointment with my doctor because of a bump on the inside of my wrist. It’s a ganglion cyst and nothing to worry about unless it gets bigger and/or starts causing pain or impeding my range of motion. Something to monitor for now.

Phil had another physio appointment and an appointment with an endocrinologist for his type II diabetes. Unfortunately, the diabetic clinic is being shut down. It’s disappointing because he was finally getting the treatment and support he needed. And then his appointment with the endocrinologist was cancelled. Super frustrating.

I took Torvi to the vet for her annual exam and flea/tic/worm medication. An expensive trip, but she was her crazy, adorable self for Dr. Andrews, and she’ll be protected for the coming year.

What I’m watching and reading

I finished watching The Witcher: Blood Origin (Netflix). An interesting origin story for the witchers, with great characters, fight scenes, and a tie-in to the main series. Also, it was only four episodes, so it didn’t have time to fall prey to some of the gaffs other series suffer from.

Next, I watched The Wonder (Netflix), based on the novel of the same name by Emma Donoghue. Mystery and pathos. Lib Wright is a nurse who is called upon, with a nun, to perform a 14-day watch on a girl is a small Irish village who hasn’t eaten in four months. Ah, my heart.

I finished watching the first season of The Peripheral (Amazon). Bizarre and brain-twisty, but I loved it. Virtual reality isn’t just VR. It’s time travel and the creation of alternate realities called stubs. A VR gamer and her ex-military brother are inducted into a program with new technology, and a whole new world of complex future and present political and corporate intrigue changes their lives.

I also finished off the first season of Extraordinary (Disney +). In a world where most people develop powers (some of which are bizarre, and others, totally useless), protagonist Jen is powerless. She’s also a horrible person who has no money to pay for the expensive treatment that could rectify the situation. Growth happens. British series. British humour.

Then, I watched Ghosted (Apple +). It was the fun escape I needed after three days of picketing. Lots of cameos by popular action actors. I was laughing out loud. It might have been the dysregulation, but I enjoyed it. There was some problematic content, though, like the white male protagonist getting all stalkery (repeated texts, tracking her, a surprise trip to see her) on his love interest after she apparently ghosts him. Unfortunately, the stalking is critical to the plot. Like, there would be none without his intrusive and unwanted behaviour.

In reading, I finished T.J. Klune’s Wolfsong. The protagonist, Oxnard, or Ox is clearly autistic coded. And bisexual (pan?). I loved the book for that alone, but it was a love story between a human boy and his wolf pack. Correction, packs. There are some explicit sex scenes if you’re not into that kind of thing. My heart (again)!

Then, I finished The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michelle Richardson. A fascinating historical fiction based on true events. Look up the blue people. They were an actual thing. And the packhorse librarians. Loved it!

And that was the month in this writer’s life.

Until next month, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

The next chapter weekly: April 2-8, 2023

/ Melanie Marttila

Welcome to week 14, and, sadly, the last next chapter weekly for a while (see below). I’ve enjoyed this experiment and think I’ll return to it when I have more time or more spoons or what have you.

An image of The Moon tarot card.

From the tarot this week, I drew The Moon, which represents dreams, mystery, deception, illusion, fears, and the unknown. Something is not what it seems. So, am I delusional to think I’ll be able to devote more time to my writing and make significant progress toward my goals? I don’t know.

I’d like to hang my hat on the dreams alone, because dreams (the ones you have when you’re asleep) are cool, and aspirations (the dreams you have when you’re conscious) are a motivating force.

An image of The Mound of Wonders card from the Shaman's Pack.

From the Shaman’s pack I drew The Mound of Wonders, which represents the empowerment of earth. So, a faery mound. There’s another tale from the Mabinogion about when Pwyll met Rhiannon—you guessed it—at a faery mound. This card seems to be more about elemental power rather than mythic significance. And that’s fine because I love me some elemental magic. Earth is a good place to start, with grounding and steadfast intention.

This week also saw the Pink full moon in Libra on the 6th. That was the night the graupel (I’ve been calling it gropel—yeesh) started, and it was overcast. She’s been out the nights since and has been glorious. I formulated my full moon release and did a guided meditation.

The week in writing

Just blogging again.

I wrote 1,954 words for the week, and 2,535 words for April so far.

A screenshot of an Excel sheet showing writing progress of 2,535 words for April 1 to 8, 2023.

Last weekend, Pulp Literature did the cover reveal for issue 38, and—my name’s on the cover! First time ever! Eeeee! And the cover is gorgeous, am I right?

An image of the cover of Pulp Literature 38, spring 2023.

Early in the week, I emailed my poetry editor, Tanis MacDonald, and work will begin on my poetry collection, verra soon.

I got my first Canada Council Grant application submitted! I have no idea how any of these grants will work out. Will wait and see and report back when I have something to report.

I’ve given some thought to what I’m going to do with blogging and social media now that work on my poetry manuscript will be starting and my work with Suzy will be resuming. Rather than a complete hiatus, I’m thinking of something more strategic.

I’ll be giving up curation for the foreseeable and moving these next chapter updates to monthly ones again. So, no weekly tarot draws or other paganish stuff. I’ll still do that for myself, but I won’t be sharing it.

As I mentioned off the top, I’ll probably return to the weekly format at some point, but something else has got to give before that happens. Phil is mostly recovered now and has resumed most of the household responsibilities. This frees up some time, but I’m still working full time, and I only have so much vacation.

Something Phil’s accident and recovery has taught me is that I can’t do it all.

Curation isn’t a burden, per se, but it does take up a good chunk of time that I could be using to write or revise, or really, do anything creative. And there are others out there who are doing a more comprehensive job, like Elizabeth Spann Craig with her Twitterific links.

I also remember how much I enjoy my curation breaks for NaNoWriMo. Not having to do curation has actually made it possible for me to do NaNoWriMo in past years, in any capacity.

I’m going to use the break to rework my website. I have to update some pictures and messaging, redo the header to reflect my more recent publications. I have some decisions to make, as well. The site might become more static, especially if I turn my next chapter updates into a newsletter.

I won’t be as active on Twitter. Not that I was very active before. Other than my blog, the two main places you’ll find me will be on Facebook (just my personal account—I don’t intend to make an author page) and Instagram, where I post all my pictures. I may try doing more on Insta, but not right now.

Again, all these activities cost time and energy, and I only have so much of those, less as each year passes. If anything, I’m my autistic traits are becoming more prominent as I age, not less.

Filling the well

On Tuesday, I attended another TWUC Ontario Region Open Mic. Heard some poetry and some short fiction. It was nice to sit back and enjoy the work of other writers.

On Wednesday, the Sudbury Writers’ Guild Poetry Inner Circle brought in the lovely Tanis MacDonald (yes, my poetry editor) for a brief poetry workshop. Useful tools were shared. I’m sure I’ll be using some of them in the coming months 🙂

I also took Torvi for her grooming last Sunday, and Phil to his next physio appointment on Monday. He’s now starting strength training and his traumatized muscles are sore.

What I’m watching and reading

Phil and I finished watching the second season of Shadow and Bone. Neither of us enjoyed it as much as the first. Again, combining two book series that were never intended to happen at the same time means that each episode is packed with so many things happening, the show seems to hurtle toward its conclusion in a frenzy. And now it looks like they’re adding in the King of Scars duology as well. They’ve also had to make significant departures from the books and move events around. It’s really its own thing now and can’t be compared to the books that were its inspiration. It’s not bad, but I’m nervous about what future seasons will look like.

I watched the end of the first season of the new Quantum Leap. I like it. Ben Song is another kind, gentle soul who just wants to help everyone. I think the season finale ended the way it did in case it’s not renewed. We don’t know who’s coming back. So, they could move in either direction, or even bring Scott Bakula back for a limited run. They’ve made it very clear (repeatedly) that Sam never returned. Maybe part of Ben Song’s plan was to make it possible for Sam to stop leaping. I’ll watch the next season. If it’s renewed.

In reading, I finished Guy Gavriel Kay’s All the Seas of the World. It’s a sequel to A Brightness Long Ago and features many of the same characters. What can I say? Kay’s another author I’m completely unobjective about. I’ll read everything he writes, and I’ll love it.

I also finished reading K.M. Weiland’s latest writing craft book, Writing Archetypal Character Arcs. I’ve posted my review. Unsurprisingly, I loved it. This is a reference every writer should have on their desk. In print.

And that was the week in this writer’s life.

Until next tipsday (which will be the last for a while), be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

A hand holds a book with mystical energy floating up from it. The next chapter. A month in the writerly life. melaniemarttila.ca

The next chapter weekly: March 26-April 1, 2023

/ Melanie Marttila

It’s lucky week 13, finishing off March and ending with April Fool’s Day. Which I don’t observe. I’ve never enjoyed practical jokes. Now that I know I’m autistic, this isn’t surprising.

From the tarot, I drew the Hanged Man, which represents ordeal, introspection, fate, acceptance, momento mori, stoicism, and stagnation. Well, I’ve certainly undergone an ordeal, but I’m on the other side of it, emerging from the overwhelm of work and household responsibilities. I have accepted it, but I haven’t been particularly stoic about it. I’m certainly not stagnating. So, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Not too sure what it means. More changes coming?

From the Shaman’s pack, I drew the Mother, who is Modron (literally Mother). Once again, from the tale of Culhwch and Olwen and the search for Mabon (the child of Modron). This card represents conception. When contemplating new projects, she can provide wise and loving advice. Well, there’s a lot of contemplation happening, and new projects are on the horizon.

The week in writing

Once again, just blogging. And grant applications (which I’m not tracking).

I wrote 1,306 words for the week and 7,084 words for March, total. That’s 109% of my goal. I wrote 581 words on April 1st, essentially this update. And again, the week’s visual tracking is broken into two parts.

I submitted my application for the Access Copyright Foundation’s Professional Development Grant on the 29th! Two down. Two to go (one due in the coming week and one in May).

Filling the well

I finished out the Perfect your Process Summit on Sunday and Monday. It’s usually a good variety of presenters.

I took Phil to his appointment with Dr. Vokey on Friday. The bone is healed! All that’s left is the soft tissue damage, which always take a long time. Phil’s resuming most of his former responsibilities around the house, but he can’t lift heave things yet, so laundry, shopping, etc. are still my responsibility.

What I’m watching and reading

I finished watching RRR. It took me three days with the run-time of 3 hrs 5 minutes. It was an epic tale. A young girl named Malli is abducted by the governor’s wife, and her village’s protector, Bheem, goes to Deli to rescue her. While there, he helps a man named Ram rescue a boy and the two become friends. Bheem is unaware that Ram is the police officer assigned to find and stop him from returning Malli to her village.

That’s just the set up. There are Bollywood numbers, romance, bromance, and tragedy. The fight scenes are over-the-top. Wild animals as distraction! Ram on Bheem’s shoulders, fighting as one! Ram dressed as Arjuna! The two men taking down an army of special forces and then destroying an entire compound!

So. Much. FUN!!

I read Annalee Newitz’s The Future of Another Timeline. A timely (sorry, not sorry) novel about an alternate world in which abortion was never made legal and reproductive rights are severely restricted. In the future, women called Queens have their hands amputated so they can focus on procreation.

But in this alternate reality, there are time machines that were discovered in the Earth. A whole new field of study, chronogeology opens up, and the protagonist wants to edit the past to make a better world. Compelling.

And that was the week in this writer’s life.

Until next tipsday, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

The next chapter weekly: March 19-25, 2023

/ Melanie Marttila

It’s week 12 already?! Holy cow! Spring has sprung and I’m feeling good 🙂

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 90

From the tarot this week, I drew the eight of cups, which represents abandonment, withdrawal, and escapism. It’s kind of a negative card, but I’m thinking of it in a positive way. Specifically, this is about my purposeful and temporary abandonment of my writing while Phil recovers.

My creativity will out in weird ways, though. I’m working on grant applications and still playing around with my presentation for the SF Canada & Canadian Authors webinar.

From the Shaman’s pack, I drew The Inworld, which is the Third Circle, or Anwwn, the underworld. If you remember, I drew the Circle of Nine, or the Second Circle last week, and Arawn, the Lord of the Underworld the week before. It seems to be a thematic sequence. The Inworld represents accessing the wisdom of the ancestors.

This is interesting, because the third grant I’m applying for will be for a new project which will involve research into Finnish pre-Christian spirituality and history. Maybe my Finnish ancestors will have some wisdom for me.

The week also saw the spring equinox on Monday. I lit up my altar to welcome spring.

On Tuesday, it was the new moon, and I took some time to set my intentions for the next lunar cycle.

The week in writing

Once again, it’s just blogging. I’m not tracking the grant applications or the presentation.

I blogged 1,824 words for the week and 6,359 words for the month to date.

Work on the grant applications is going slow. I think I’m just intimidated. But … the CSFFA grant application is sent, for better or worse. One down. Two to go!

The presentation has taken a back seat while I focus on grants.

Another piece of excellent news: I was accepted into the SFWA as an associate member! Whee!

Thinking of something radical: a blogging and social media sabbatical while I work on revisions for my poetry collection and on Reality Bomb. It might mean several months (like five or six) incommunicado, but I think it’s what I have to do if I really want to get some work done.

Will keep you apprised as things develop.

Filling the well

This week, I registered for a Tiffany Yates Martin webinar through Jane Friedman on mastering point of view. I watched the replay. Tiffany is an amazing instructor and I always learn a lot from her.

I also signed up for an Authors Publish webinar with Book Publicist Isabella Nugent on setting yourself up for success. Again, I watched the replay.

Finally, I signed up for Daniel David Wallace event about perfecting your process. It runs from the 24th to the 27th, so I’ll be mentioning it again next week.

I took the week off work (vacation planned, prior to Phil’s accident) so I could rest and observe both the equinox and the new moon as my pagan heart desires.

I also wanted to accomplish a couple of things, just for me, this week. I wanted to gather all our tax info and send it to our accountant (done!). And I wanted to spring clean my office (also done!). It’s been a while and I decided I wanted to reorganize my bookshelves, cull some outdated filing, and generally tidy up the space. It’s been good for me, getting ready to dive back into writing in a more serious way when Phil’s shoulder is healed.

I had a blissful massage on Tuesday. My parasympathetic nervous system activated, and I got into “rest and digest” mode 🙂 And yes, that means my stomach was growling like ten.

Phil’s also feeling recovered enough that he’s cooking again! Physio is going well, and he’s found a position to sleep in that allows him to get a full night’s rest. He still can’t lift or push anything, though, so I’m still doing the groceries (with him, though, for the most part), laundry, clearing the steps of snow, taking the dog out (she pulls), etc., but progress is being made 🙂

On Wednesday, he went for a walk. On Thursday, he went for a drive. There’s still some awkwardness associated with that activity. He can’t reach with his left arm to turn on the headlights or the turn signal, but he can reach over with his right to flip the switches. He has an appointment with the doctor next Friday (March 31st), so we’ll find out more then.

What I’m watching and reading

I didn’t finish watching any series or watch any movies this week. Well, I started watching RRR, but the three hour and five minute run time meant I couldn’t finish it in a single sitting.

I read Ada Hoffman’s The Outside. I’ve had Ada’s work on my radar for a while because she’s another #actuallyautistic author. Her novel features autistic characters in a world that, while not built for them, willingly makes accommodations for them, and accepts them as part of society. There are still misunderstandings, but it’s a better world than the one we have.

The story’s good, too. Humanity has colonized the galaxy, but AI has become sentient, and something called the Morlock War has Ais installed as gods with cyborg angels doing their bidding. Outside the galaxy, the titular Outside, is heretical, and the god Nemesis has chosen to bring all heretics to justice.

In this milieu, Yasira Shien, a highly intelligent autistic, has completed her doctorate and created a revolutionary reactor that promises to provide for all the energy needs of a new space station, the Pride of Jai, which orbits her homeworld. But something goes wrong, and the reactor sets off some Outside cascade, which consumes the Pride of Jai and 100 of its crew. Yasira is now a heretic and at the mercy of Nemesis and her angels. If she’ll help them track down her mentor, Dr. Evianna Talirr, an even worse heretic, she might be shown mercy.

And that was the week in this writer’s life.

Until next tipsday, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

The next chapter weekly: March 12-18, 2023

/ Melanie Marttila

It’s week 11! Spring is just around the corner, and it really feels like it. More mild days of melting snowbanks and mixed precipitation that’s more rain than snow. We may not see the snow plough again this year. Crossing fingers, knocking on wood, and all that jazz.

Onto the esoterica!

From the tarot, I drew The Lovers. The Lovers represents relationship, choice, perpetual bond, cooperation, love versus infatuation, and trust. This very much where my head is at these days. I’ve settled into a kind of new normal, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of Phil as he continues to heal.

With regard to that, there’s good news and bad news. Thanks to an online search, Phil’s finally found a comfortable way to sleep in the bed that supports his arm and shoulder. So long, La-Z-Boy! He’s also been helping some with meals and even coming in for hugs (!) I’m gentle. The exercises from physio are helping, as well. He’s got a new set to add to what he’s already doing.

The bad news? Those same hospital web sites advised that it could be up to 18 MONTHS for him to fully heal, and even then, he might not have full range of motion. We’re thinking that the 18 months is for the soft tissue damage associated with the break, though, rather than the break itself.

I’m sure he’ll be nominally functional by mid-May. If not earlier.

And here’s a retcon. What I’ve been calling the Celtic oracle is actually the Shaman’s Pack. Oops. This week, I pulled the Circle of Nine. The Circle of Nine represents the second circle. It’s a veilish place where the mundane world yields a portal to elsewhere. The key word is experience.

Sorry about the lighting ….

Do I have enough experience to cross over and surrender to the other world? I don’t know, but it’s nice to have the opportunity presented, even if I ultimately decide to decline. Yaknow, due to life stuff.

The week in writing

Again, it was just blogging for the week. I did a little work on my presentation, but I’m not tracking that.

I blogged 1,875 words for the week and 4,535 words for the month to date.

My early-bird application for Your Personal Odyssey was rejected again. Though I’m still in the running for the remaining spots, I’m not hopeful. Once again, they’ve been inundated with applications. It’s their most popular program yet, I think.

But … my applicant profile to the Canada Council for the Arts, which I submitted on Sunday, was approved! I’ll be focusing for the remainder of the month on submitting a few grant applications.

The first will be to the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA AKA the Aurora Awards). They have a professional development grant, and the application seems fairly straightforward. That deadline is March 31st. The next will be to the Access Copyright Foundation also for a professional development grant (due April 1st) and the third (and more intimidating, TBH) will be an Explore and Create grant from the CCA, due April 5th. It will be my first attempt at all three, so I don’t anticipate success, but you can’t win if you don’t play, and the experience will be worthwhile. I’ll have documentation I can use for future applications, even if I have to change out the specific details.

Next month, I’ll be shifting gears for the next Ontario Arts Council Northern Arts Grant, due May 2nd.

Maybe this is the new world I’m entering? The next phase of professional writing life?

I’ve been thinking that if my webinar goes well, of starting up a podcast about neurodivergent creatives (which may be the focus for a future grant application).

Yeah … maybe this is a new world I’m entering. Frightening, yet exciting.

Filling the well

I had no writerly events scheduled this week but did watch the replay of Dan Blank’s Find Your Ideal Audience, which I signed up for last Friday. I try to keep at least one toe in the social media/marketing/promotion pool 🙂

I had a dentist’s appointment and had a very thorough cleaning of my teeth.

And I took Phil to his physio appointment on Friday. Progress is being made. The physiotherapist and Phil are very pleased.

What I’m watching and reading

I finished watching The Flash, season 8 (Netflix). This poor show. It long ago jumped the shark (which is sad because the actors are good) and nearly every season treads familiar ground. Season 9 episodes are already populating. Fortunately, there are only 13. The completionist in me wants to see this thing through. If you want a thorough critique, I’ll refer you to Friendly Space Ninja’s analysis of the series 🙂

I also watched the last episode of season 1 of The Last of Us (HBO). I haven’t played the game and honestly don’t want to. The series was great, though. I love Bella Ramsey as Ellie and Pedro Pascale as Joel. There’s a lot of tragedy and a lot of violence, but there’s also a lot of pathos. Loved.

Then, I finished watching the third and last (ever—the series has been cancelled) season of Pennyworth (HBO/network). As bloody and wacky as ever, but the series ends on a weird cliffhanger. Alfie’s about to say “I do” to Sandra after the main cast and a group of PWEs (read enhanced—this is DC) have escaped a London gone mad on milk laced with Lullaby (a psychoactive drug with murderous side effects) when a mushroom cloud erupts in the distance. The Waynes have one child at this point. A girl. Where’s Bruce? And I don’t remember Batman having a sister ….

Next, Phil and I finished watching the second and last season of Carnival Row (Amazon). It was clear they changed tack partway through the season, eliminating the political thread in a bloody massacre. Vignette can’t decide what she wants, a life with the Ravens, with Philo, or with Tourmeline. Philo almost gets himself killed every other episode. And our runaway lovebirds are quickly corralled by a revolutionary group called the New Dawn, which has a nefarious plan that fizzles in the final episode when the main agitator kills herself rather than be taken into custody. It was all very rushed. They probably could have used a few more seasons to tell the various stories properly, but they did manage to tie things up in the end. More or less ….

Finally, I watch Three Thousand Years of Longing (Amazon). Based on A.S. Byatt’s short story collection, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, the movie focuses on a narratologist, Alithea Binnie, who releases a djinn from a bottle and resists the temptation to make her wishes because every wish tale is a cautionary one. Beautiful, lush, and emotionally devastating. It’s too bad it didn’t do better in NA theatres. Loved!

In books, I finished Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, a long-ago recommendation from Gabriela Pereira.  Good, but repetitive. The principles can be applied to both my day job and my writing business, as well as the writing itself.

And that was the week in this writer’s life.

Until next tipsday, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

The next chapter weekly: March 5-11, 2023

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Welcome to week ten of 2023! Yes, I’m going to keep counting them. I hope you’re enjoying these #actuallyautistic, paganish author-in-progress check-ins.

This week, I drew The World card from the tarot. This card represents realization, triumph, closure, attainment, reward, and fulfillment. Seems an odd card to be pulling now, when I’m consciously uncoupling from my writing to focus on other things.

Maybe that’s the realization. That this pause/retreat/whatever is necessary, and that I will return with renewed fervour when the time comes. I can always hope.

In the Celtic oracle, I pulled The Lord of the Underworld. That’s Arawn. The card represents unpredictability, the cyclical ceding of power, and transformation.

Again, from the Mabinogion, Pwyll enters into an agreement with Arawn to exchange places for a year and fight Arawn’s enemy Hafgan (lord of another underworld kingdom). This battle can be thematically tied to the battle between the Holly and Oak kings at the solstices when they each cede to the other protection of the world for the coming six months.

Arawn, with his antlers and red-eared hounds, is also associated with the Wild Hunt and Herne the Hunter/Cerunos.

So, again, if I’m not misinterpreting, I’m ceding my power (writing) for a season (the 8-12 weeks it will take Phil to heal), and it will be transformative. Gonna try to channel that wild power and see where it takes me.

This week also saw the full worm moon, or the moon of the crusted snow (and boy, is it ever crusted!) in Virgo. Still struggling with sleep hygiene, though I’m generally getting to be by midnight, and I’ve managed 11:30, which is my goal bedtime once or twice. Yay, me! I added to that continued goal the gentle release of my guilt for not writing.

The week in writing

While the only tracked writing I did was on this blog, I did get a couple of projects organized.

I started working on my presentation for SF Canada and Canadian Authors on being The #ActuallyAutistic Author. It won’t be scheduled until sometime in June or July, so I have time. Not much progress yet, but the PowerPoint is started. I have a rough outline that I’m working from. This is something I can do in dribs and drabs.

I also grabbed a bunch of old blog posts and combined them in one document. I’ve been mulling a creative non-fiction/hybrid project (including some poetry) re-envisioning my creative life through the lens of my autism diagnosis. So far, it’s only been copy and paste (copypasta) work, but soon, I might shape it into something a little more robust.

I blogged 1,543 words for the week, and 2,660 words for the month so far.

Filling the well

TWUC held its monthly Ontario open mic night on Tuesday. I didn’t read, but I enjoyed the work of those who did. I may read at a future TWUC open mic. I need to start getting out there again. My debut poetry collection is just over a year from publication (April 2024!).

On Wednesday, SF Canada held its special general meeting (again). This time, we got quorum, and a fifth member of the board was acclaimed. W00t!

I signed up for a Susan DeFreitas webinar, “The Heart of Story,” through Jane Friedman and watched the replay. Excellent, as ever.

On Saturday, I attended a webinar on grant writing with Lindsay Zier-Vogel sponsored by The FOLD Academy. It was awesome. I’m going to be diving into the grant app trenches again shortly.

What I’m watching and reading

My brain is a sieve. Forgot that I’d watched The Shape of Water (Amazon) Saturday last week. It was lovely, every inch of it. I’ve been wanting to watch it for years.

This week, I watched a documentary. Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me (Apple +). She’s lived a fascinating life. Beiber, leukemia (twice), and mental health struggles. It was inspiring to see that she addressed her issues with connection and good works.

I also finished the first season of The Winchesters (network). An interesting look at the origins of John and Mary Winchester and their hunting lives. Love Carlos and Lathika. The big bad of this alternate reality of the Supernatural universe was overpowered, though, and the finale was a little Dean x machina 🙂 but it was enjoyable.

I listened to a fun paranormal romance, Witches Get Stuff Done by Molly Harper (Audible Originals). Light and tropey and a little explicit (for those who might object to such content). The audiobook is a relaxing listen, but it’s not well written …. For example, “I heard the squeak as the ghost silently loosened the screws on the chandelier.” Or the guy hit in the head by said chandelier, blood pooling as he bleeds out, having the wherewithal to speak coherently and throw an important piece of paper into a lit fireplace. I mean, have you ever tried tossing a bit of paper, even folded up, from a prone position? Physics will frustrate the effort. Despite that, it was about the speed of my brain this week, and I enjoyed it.

And that was the week in this writer’s life.

Until next tipsday, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!