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Showing posts from October, 2017

Light a Small Lantern

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Reproduced by kind permission of the artist, Hassan Massoudy. "Instead of railing against the darkness, it's better to light a small lantern." Chinese Proverb. Hassan Massoudy on Instagram My husband just got back from working for six months in the Yukon Territory of Canada, very far removed from U.S. politics, natural disasters, hate crimes, mass shootings, and the growing sense of powerlessness among people who wish for something different. He'd been home only a few days when he pulled me away from the hearing of our children. "Where did all your possibility go?" His question was a direct punch to the solar plexus, and I knew exactly what he meant. I just hadn't put it into words because it had crept up slowly and insidiously, like a thin, poisonous darkness slipping under the door. Somehow, in the past nine months, my own sense of powerlessness in the face of all the negativity had become something smaller and more personal. Somehow, that po

An Apology, A Confession, and An Excerpt

I've been hiding. At first it was politics. The election and subsequent scandal upon horror upon disaster have left me feeling scraped raw and staked out on the mountaintop for buzzards to eat my intestines. So, yeah. I started hiding from Facebook and Twitter, because most days it felt like the news was just pouring acid into open wounds. I've read blog posts by other authors who said that they've had trouble writing in this political climate - they've had trouble feeling like anything they do could possibly make a difference. It's a sentiment I totally get, and something I struggle with too. I wasn't writing - or at least, not seriously or with any kind of intention. Maybe politics had something to do with it, maybe it was because I'd finished a series into which I had poured heart and soul, or maybe I was worried I wouldn't be able to pull off something new. In any case, I have 20,000 words of Bas' novel, the first couple of chapte