Afterthoughts

 Posted by at 1:48 pm  Personal Schmersonal, Rant Rant Rave, SquirrelTerror, Writing
May 122013
 

So yeah. That happened.

It was, I told a writer friend, like coming home and finding someone had broken in and filled my bed with offal. I felt sickened, physically nauseous. At the time, I didn’t know that the plagiarist was a big name in the Kos community, or in a certain area of fandom. I didn’t know who the hell it was, or even if it was a she or a he. All I knew was that the stories about Neo and the gang–bits of my life, hysterical little tales I’d written through a very dark time and continued to write afterward because I liked the critters so much–had been taken and were being passed off as someone else’s work. I probably should have waited until Skyla (gods bless her) put together the spreadsheet’s worth of proof before I said anything. I apologize for that. I still stand by my decision to post the links and invite people to see for themselves.

First, I owe some thanks.

* Thanks first and foremost to Skyla Dawn Cameron, who brought this to my attention and spent time out of her busy day compiling the evidence in a way I doubt I could have. I was so sickened by the whole thing I could barely look at the proof myself, other than simply to verify it. She was also incredibly supportive and reassuring. If I can ever write another SquirrelTerror story–if I can ever bear to chronicle the second half of Le Napoleon Amorous, Interrupte, for example, or write more Canine Tales–it will be because of Skyla. I’m not sure I ever will, but if I do, well, thank her. (Preferably with kale. Or, you know, booze.)

* Thanks to my Readers. Without you asking repeatedly for the SquirrelTerror stories, and without the Readers who had printed them off or kept them to read (a perfectly valid use for them, and one I applaud), I would never have been moved to start compiling them again. I would never have had the material, because going back and combing through the Wayback Machine for them just was not something I had time for. I would never have even known plagiarism had happened. All in all, I am glad I found out, even though it was sickmaking. Thank you.

* Thanks to the users at Kos who posted side-by-side comparisons, exposing and publicizing the evidence. Thanks also to the admins at Kos for their swift but measured response to the whole situation. Thanks especially to the two lone members of the Kos community who messaged me through their system to offer support and invite me into the comment threads, if I chose to return. (I don’t, but your kindness means an incredible amount to me.) Thank you especially to those Kos users who were initially skeptical but took the time to look, and once they realized the evidence was there, set about convincing their fellows. It takes a special kind of courage, as Dumbledore said, to stand up to your friends. I appreciate that, even if I haven’t replied to your comments. Thank you.

* Finally, thanks to the many who, online and off, contacted me privately and publicly to offer support. I am glad to call you my friends, acquaintances, fellow writers, and Readers. Thank you.

Am I still going to bring the SquirrelTerror book out? I don’t know. When this first started happening I felt as if the stories had been utterly violated and that I couldn’t bear to read through them to proof them, let alone…I just ran out of words and sat here and stared, just thinking about it. Bottom line: I’m still unsure. I’m receiving lots of advice, and when I can reach a decision I feel good about, I will execute it. Skyla still intends to finish the work I paid her for, at least, so I have the luxury of choice.

There have been several questions on Kos about why I didn’t “stick around” in the comments, why I just put up links, etc., etc. The first avalanche of comments made me very glad I did not stick around. Partly my own fault, because I was too distressed to be thinking clearly. On the other hand, if you had time to write a nasty comment, you had time to look through the links and perhaps think a little. But that’s not why I didn’t “stick around”. For one thing, I sincerely thought that the plagiarist, seeing that she’d been caught, would quietly remove the posts and I would delete my own and say no more about the matter, the end result being not perfect but the best I could hope for on the Internet. For another, the proof was so overwhelming I didn’t think I needed to vomit it all up when I was shaking and sick inside. And lastly, I had not visited Kos for a number of years, despite having a lifetime membership and having dabbled in writing diaries there for a little while those long years ago. I had not earned the right to go jousting in comments, later, when it became apparent that the plagiarist was a “big deal” on the site and comments started to pile up elsewhere, I didn’t feel it would be proper for me–a virtual stranger in that community–to push farther. All I could in conscience do was bring the matter to their attention, since it was on Kos the plagiarism occurred, and me commenting afterward would have been impolite. Not to the plagiarist, but to all the others who were the fabric of that community and did not need an interloper tromping around in their living room and telling them what was what.

Also, I did not trust myself to stay classy during such high emotion. (I still don’t, really.) So I refrained. I am ashamed to admit this was not a bigger factor in my decision to leave the Kos comments alone, but at least it was there.

As for the plagiarist…well.

Her long rambling Kos message to me was not an apology. I have not received an apology from her, publicly or privately, and I certainly have not come to any “agreement” with her, as she has implied publicly.

Now, an apology that satisfies John Scalzi’s requirements would have been accepted, had she chosen to deliver it. Even if she had sent me the rambling non-apology that she did through Kosmail, if she had still satisfied Scalzi’s requirements when she made her public non-apology on Kos, I would have called it good enough. An admission that she fucked up, that she was sorry, and that she would accept consequences for her actions would have not only been welcome, but appreciated by me, and I could have forgiven her freely and would have said so stridently, openly, and repeatedly.

That is not what happened, and I almost resent that she had the gall to intimate that she had made some sort of reparation or that some sort of “agreement” had been reached. I said I was done, and done means I am not wasting more time on you, not gee, everything’s swell now! The window for a proper apology and free and full forgiveness has somewhat passed. At some point in the future, if said apology is made to me, I’ll decide how to handle it then. Personally, I think I will be waiting a long while.

I am also very sorry for the plagiarist. It must be horrible to steal, to be desperately convinced you don’t have words of your own and you must therefore take others’ by deceit. I pity the desperation, and the way this person has harmed herself. She robbed herself of a community that was willing, when the evidence was first brought to them, to close ranks against an outsider on her behalf and presume her innocence. She robbed herself of a community she spent a large chunks of everyday time interacting with. I am told she is a member of fandom as well and part of some conventions, I don’t know how those communities are going to react to her choices.

She stole from me, yes. She violated my stories. I’m saddened, sickened, upset over that, of course. She robbed herself of more. There really is no punishment like that we mete out to ourselves, very simply, by choices we make.

I’m guessing that’s all. This has been hideous, horrid, crazymaking, and terribly stressful. All this, and yet I realize that I had the benefit of clear and incontrovertible evidence as well as Skyla’s mad spreadsheet-making skills. I fully realize that this series of events could have been so much more tangled and awful and long-term and messy and complicated and oooooh my GOD. I was lucky. At certain points I didn’t feel it, but damn, I was lucky.

Now it’s time for me to get back to work. Thank you all, and I’m hoping to move on from this. Comments will be open until the usual shutoff date, but please do be civil and remember the comment policy. (Also taken from Scalzi. What a marvelously useful man he is.)

Over, and out.

UPDATE 5/12/2013: After much thought I have closed down the SquirrelTerror posts both here and at my LiveJournal. The WayBack Machine and the SquirrelPlagiarism doc still have all the relevant screencaps. I just…I can’t have them out there anymore. I’m sorry.

Running, Vulnerable

 Posted by at 7:43 am  Deep Thoughts, Life, Miscellaneous, Rant Rant Rave
May 062013
 

In search of the Matese Falcon #15 - African Fish Eagle, Malta Falconry Centre Yesterday was my long run for the week. I didn’t take Miss B, because it was over 10K and I worry for her paws. Also, I knew I would need most if not all of my resources to keep going, with little left over to deal with her being interested in other dogs or chasing buses or whatnot. Plus, at about 8K she sort of gets the idea that we’re not going to catch anything, so she slows waaaaay dooooooown. Which is fine, normally I’m running for endurance, not speed. Still, anything near or over 10K is not for my running partner.

It struck me, while running through a park near the Little Prince’s burned-down school, that I was feeling odd. Not breathless, it was just a steady run, not a tempo or anything. It took me about a kilometer to figure it out.

Without Miss B, I felt…vulnerable.

I don’t just run with her to take the edge off her working drive so she can rest. I run with her because she’s good protection for a lone woman. Odd Trundles is so sweet-natured he’d probably be useless in a tussle, but not so my Aussie. Besides, Odd’s a sprinter. Dangerous over short distances…if you’re a bit of kibble. Miss B is fully capable of chasing someone down, and keeping them on the ground until I can get there.

Miss B alerts me to people walking ahead on our route, or odd things in bushes. She once flushed a guy hiding in some blackberries by lunging. (To this day I don’t know what the hell he was doing in there, since there were no berries. *shrug*) When I run alone, my “space” is invaded far more frequently. Males get a lot closer. Some of that is just the social training men receive to “own” a bigger chunk of sidewalk real estate. Other female joggers instinctively give me a wide berth, as I do in return. A woman with a stroller and a small kid will try to get off the pavement when she sees me coming, before I swing off into the grass or the bike lane. A lone man will sashay down the middle of the sidewalk, taking it all up as a matter of course, ninety-five percent of the time.

In a perfect world I’d be able to run without thinking about my chances of being assaulted. Since I don’t currently live with a man I’m emotionally involved with, I realize I’m statistically safer than a lot of other women. While I run, though, there’s the yelling out car windows. The inappropriate comments when I jog by guys doing yardwork or unloading their cars or even just walking by. About the only guys that don’t make some sort of comment when I pass–usually rating my attractiveness or getting pissy with me when I don’t respond to their greeting, because of course I exist to make nice at your sallies even while I’m doing a tempo run, right?–are themselves jogging or cycling and apparently saving their breath for other things. Even when I used to run at 5am there would be, at least once a week, a car horn or a scream out a car window, usually a comment of a sexual or suggestive nature.

You’d think, at 5am, everyone would be too tired to be assholes. Apparently not.

In a perfect world I wouldn’t feel vulnerable while running (except when I’m crossing the street because some people just don’t look where they’re piloting their tons of moving metal, OMG) or have to give my daughter the “if you set your drink down and take your eyes off it, GET A FRESH ONE, get into the habit of doing this now” when she attended her first school dance. In a perfect world I’d run with Miss B because she loves it and it gives her a job to do, because she’s happiest right next to me. In a perfect world I wouldn’t have to feel that tightness all through me when I’m in my own neighborhood enjoying the sunshine and I see a male human approaching from whatever direction.

We don’t live in a perfect world. We can work like hell for a better one, but we can’t afford to overlook how the world actually is at present.

Do I feel ridiculous sometimes, because I have to make this mental calculation whenever I go anywhere alone, or even when the doorbell rings? Yes. Do I wish it wasn’t necessary? Yes. Am I going to stop making these calculations? No. I realize I am relatively privileged, that I do not live in a war zone, so on, so forth. Does it mean I feel less vulnerable while doing something so simple as jogging alone, during daylight, wearing long pants and long sleeves (and how ridiculous that I have to note what I’m wearing, really?) and not doing a blessed thing to anyone?

No. It does not.

I run anyway, but the consideration of my vulnerability, trained into me by the society we live in and bolstered by the fact that I am a survivor of abuse, does not ever go away. How much faster and further could I run if I wasn’t forced to spend energy on that? I suspect I’ll never know, and that it will only get better slowly and incrementally over my lifetime, my children’s lifetimes, their children’s. (If they choose to have any, that is. OH MY GOD, SO NOT READY FOR THAT THOUGHT.) Still, I do the work for change that I can, investing in a better and safer world for my daughter, for everyone’s daughters. Taking what steps I can to have a full life and reasonably protect myself at the same time.

But I still feel vulnerable when I run.

photo by: foxypar4

Hunter’s Instinct

 Posted by at 7:11 am  Life, Miscellaneous, Pennyworth Advice, Writing
Mar 272013
 

Happy EasterWhat is it with reclusive rich people and constant house renovations? My sister once visited the Winchester House; she said it was fascinating but only mildly creepy. As a Shirley Jackson fan, I expect more from my old freakishly-renovated mansions.

Good morning! Dawn is rising as I write this. Having to get up at six to get the kids to school is…interesting. For a night owl, having to keep an early schedule means I’m trying to wind down just as my body is wanting to wake up and move, and I’m waking up just when my body wants to be in deep slumber. I feel halfway awake most days.

This morning the Selkie and I are dissecting a recent read for our teensy little book club. As usual, I went and beat a metaphor to death:

He has no hunter’s instinct, which a writer has to have–you have to hunt down the plot bunny, flay it, see how it works internally, put it back to together, resurrect it, and then kill it again and hang the trophy. Or keep killing it and resurrecting it a little more perfectly each time. (From email.)

A hunter’s instinct is necessary if you’re going to tell a story the way it wants to be told. You must also be willing to have your characters suffer consequences. This becomes a million times harder if one of them is an authorial self-insertion. A certain measure of brutality is necessary, and it hurts, because it must be balanced by absolute compassion for your characters. Even the ugly, nasty, foul ones. Or the ones who possess your own character flaws. This balance–bleeding heart and brutality–is incredibly difficult.

Nobody ever said this job was easy.

Over and out.

photo by: AlicePopkorn

A Thousand Stars

 Posted by at 1:44 pm  Life, Miscellaneous, Wonderment
Feb 272013
 

12 segundos de oscuridad Today I visited the Little Prince’s class again, both to see how they were getting along after the fire…and to read to them.

First, though…the ELEW’s Evil for Crestline Auction raised over $5000. (That’s not a typo.) I am slack-jawed with amazement, at Skyla and Dina for arranging and running the whole thing, at those who contributed time, effort, books and various other goodies to be auctioned off, and at those who bid and bought. Your graciousness, hard work, and amazingness has a cumulative impact on the lives of about 500 students, their teachers, and other staff who take care of them on a daily basis. I saw firsthand some of the initial results of your efforts, guys–books in a fourth-grade classroom, bookshelves, teaching aids, posters, donated supplies used by people who lost years of accumulated work and effort when the school burned down. YOU have made a huge difference the lives of 500 children, an effect that will ripple out through them and their teachers. You’ve been the very best kind of shiny bad guys. Thank you so much.

You might remember that right before the fire I visited the Little Prince’s class. I did write a story for them, since every time I picked up the Prince after school I was pestered with “Miss Lili! When are you going to write US a story?” and big shiny hopeful eyes. But I didn’t want it to be a regular story, so I hit upon the idea of a sort of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure alien “book”. I would write the alien’s landing, and the ending, but in between there would be many blank pages for each kid to write in their version of what the alien looked like, why it had landed, what the problem with its ship was, and how they would solve it. I formatted it (Jesus, anyone who works in publishing production, I have so much respect for you) and got copies printed over at Kinko’s, spiral-bound so they could lay flat.

And today I went in and read it to them. They were amazed. “My favourite thing is the blank pages!” most of them said, “Where I can write my own bits! My alien’s going to be _____!”

I only had to hold back tears once, reading the dedication. (Can’t have a book without a dedication.) There may have been pictures taken of the event, and if there’s one that doesn’t make me look like a DERPing moron I’ll post it.

I would list the names of the kids in the class, just to put faces on the people you have helped. I can’t, because of privacy concerns, but I wish I could. Suffice to say I’ve known a great many of them since the Prince was in second grade, and seeing them grow with him is so exciting. I wish I could name names, tell you all about how you’ve helped the jug-eared kid who loves dinosaurs or the boy with attention problems who works so hard to stay still and learn some impulse control, the quiet little girl who likes drawing trees, the cat-eyed girl who every time she sees me gives a huge grin and announces “I don’t know you!” so I can give the follow-up line, “But I’ll still tell you to sit down!” (Long story, she was in my group during a field trip.) Every day when I pick up the Little Prince, I see those shining faces, and I am reminded of so many things–including, now, awe and amazement at seeing so many people pull together in the face of a disaster.

Even if that wasn’t enough to make my black little heart grow a few sizes, I only have to look at my baby, the Little Prince. His classroom has school supplies, new books, and too many other things to count, directly because of people like Skyla and Dina and Danielle K. and those I can’t list because this post would grow to gargantuan proportions. People in the community who volunteered to organize supplies and helped with childcare arrangements, who went to work and organized fundraising drives, who donated auction items or bid on them, people who dealt with overwhelmed and tangled bureaucracy to get things done…

Thank you. You have directly, materially helped not just my child, but all his classmates. The ripples of all these small (and large) kindnesses will echo for a long time to come. Thank you so much.

In the words of the late and much-missed Leslie Banks, “a thousand stars in your crown.”

A thousand indeed. Thank you.

photo by: Libertinus

Paying For Libraries

 Posted by at 7:01 am  Pennyworth Advice, Rant Rant Rave
Feb 252013
 

growup THIS.

I don’t use my local library like I used libraries when I was younger. But I want my local library, in no small part because I recognize that I am fortunate not to need my local library — but others do, and my connection with humanity extends beyond the front door of my house. My life was indisputably improved because those before me decided to put those libraries there. It would be stupid and selfish and shortsighted of me to declare, after having wrung all I could from them, that they serve no further purpose, or that the times have changed so much that they are obsolete. My library is used every single day that it is open, by the people who live here, children to senior citizens. They use the building, they use the Internet, they use the books. This is, as it happens, the exact opposite of what “obsolete” means. I am glad my library is here and I am glad to support it. –John Scalzi

Libraries are not obsolete, Mr. British Author Who Shot His Mouth Off And Is Getting Publicly Schooled By Scalzi, Among Others. (Who I am not going to link to because 1. he is an ass and 2. he won’t get any traffic from me.)

This is also how I feel about public education. Even if you don’t have children, if you are able to read this (i.e., if you are literate) you are a product of public education. (If you’re homeschooled–who do you think pioneered the textbooks/teaching aids you used, and made them economically viable for companies to produce on a mass scale? Even private schools suckle at the tax teat, and if you don’t know that, YOU SHOULD.) If you are able to read, to balance your checkbook, or attempt any of a hundred daily tasks, you have not reached the end of what public education has given you. You still owe to the public who invested in you, whether in schools or libraries or crosswalks.

Which reminds me. You use the roads? You rely on postal or package delivery services that use the infrastructure? You rely on public health (drinking water delivered reliably that doesn’t sicken you, for one) or public safety (stop signs, sidewalks, city or county contracts with ambulance companies, I COULD GO ON AND ON) at all? These things cost money (i.e., taxes) and if you don’t like your tax burden, are you paying attention to where the money goes and writing to your Congresscritter or state legislature representative, or calling the city hall to politely but firmly register your opinion? If you are, great, keep it up, if you’re not, well, why are you bitching? You’re the one in charge here, and if you use the services, well, you owe. Unless you’re homesteading in a shack out in the middle of nowhere. (Even then, if you can read this, you’re using the infrastructure that brings the Internet to you.)

Infrastructure is not free. Just like ebooks aren’t free to produce, but some jackasses feel entitled to steal–thinking you don’t owe for libraries or schools the same jackassery, writ large. Libraries and schools are not free either, and you know what? If you even start the right-wing bitching about poor or brown people (don’t think I don’t know all your dog-whistle words, I grew up in a household of bigots, I know them) using the schools “I’ve paid for”, shut your pie-hole. We’re goddamn America, and we invest in the poor and huddled masses because when they’re given a chance, they work just as hard as the rest of us and make everyone’s life better. (I grew up blue-collar and ended up poor for most of my adult life, I worked my ass off, and now I don’t complain about paying my goddamn taxes for this very reason.)

And we also invest in libraries and schools because it’s the forward-thinking, fair, just, and goddamn smart thing to do. We owe and we pay back, because we haven’t reached the end of the help that schools and libraries built by others has provided us.

Lili OUT. *drops mic, does fist-jab, walks away*

Conlang, And Using What You Have

 Posted by at 2:20 pm  Writing
Feb 202013
 

Another dimension. Crossposted to the Deadline Dames. Check us out!

I am no stranger to constructed languages. I’ve read Tolkien, and Orwell, and others too numerous to list. The first novel I ever finished had two complex tongues that needed to be channeled and described–to me, making a language was something you did when you were writing epic fantasy, just because. (No, don’t ask about that book. Really, don’t.) It even has to happen in other genres, sometimes. Lit-fic, YA, suspense, you name it, making up a language is something writers can’t seem to stay away from. We deal with words and grammars all day, it’s our job and our fascination to express. Some are built more carefully than others, some are inserted as jokes or puns, others are to illustrate a principle. Sometimes a conlang is a procrastination trick for a writer–I’ve met several who sink so much time into inventing a fictional tongue they don’t have time for little things like craft or plot or learning punctuation.

The above rather-rambling paragraph is brought to you, dear Reader, by this New Yorker article. (Hat tip to Particle P, who sent it to me.) It started a chain of thought in my head having to do with language–when to construct a tongue, as a writer, and when not to. (I seriously recommend you go and read it, the moment when they realize exactly where they are is PRICELESS.)

When do I construct a language? Mostly when the characters tell me they’re speaking one I can’t think in. The process of construction isn’t very conscious for me, it tends to be rather organic. There is the language hellbreed speak in the Kismet series, which Jill only describes the sound of; there’s a demon tongue (full of k’s and z’s because, well, nobody would take a strictly vowel-speaking demon seriously, would they?) in the Valentine series; Steelflower of course has several tongues from the flowery, case-specific, punning tongue of Kaia’s homeland to the tonal song of Hain and the rolling horse-warrior-conquerors-turned soft-overlords of Rikyat Ammerdahl’s people, with its many loan-words from the conquered. And of course the almost-French of the Hedgewitch books, which I do not apologize for, because it was a loving homage to my high-school French teacher who, one day, got a soft misty look in her eyes when she spoke to us about how a language was a living thing. Each of these grew specifically out of the story; there’s never a point where I outright decided “hey, I’m going to make a tongue up!” Generally it’s the characters telling me about the peccadilloes and fiddles of their particular language. I’m certain I make horrendous mistakes in translation, but oh well.

The point, for me, is never in setting out to construct a language, and I don’t think it ever will be. I’m no Tolkien, and linguistics fascinates me but its theory can only go so far before my eyes glaze over. What I love, what really lights me up, is simply this:

How can I take the language I already have and make it work?

It’s one thing to start from scratch and build a language to your needs. It’s another thing to take an existing tongue, with its messy democratic (or imperialist-repressive, if you find that strand in it) vitality and tickle it into accomplishing what you need. English is lovely for this, because it’s a thieving little language that steals from anywhere it can with utterly ruthless, pragmatic, and conscienceless abandon. Coining neologisms, playing games with structure inside a sentence or paragraph, sliding a hand up the skirt of conventional usage and gently squeezing–this is the stuff that makes me light up with glee.

Part of the mad joy of writing, for me, is having the rules internalized so I know better how (and when) to break them. The words and how they fit together are my playground, and the fun lies in doing a trick, climbing a rickety staircase, performing a dive that hasn’t ever been done before. My very favourite copyediting comment ever–I think it was in a Kismet book–said something to the effect of “this passage plays so many games with semantics, rhythm, sound, and meaning that I doubt a normal reader will ‘get’ it.”

My response was to gleefully stet. Mostly because the normal reader is waaaay smarter than me or any CE, but that’s (say it with me) another blog post. I don’t know if anyone will like the games I play in the thickets of words and usage and grammar; I don’t know that my little in-jokes or out-takes will be funny to anyone. But I do think that my sheer joy in playing may come through occasionally to the reader, and it is with that hope I keep at it.

Well, that and the hope of feeding my mortgage and kids. Still, the joy is nice.

What about you, fellow writer or dear Reader? What constructed language do you love? How do you build ‘em? What do you think of them? (I’d add something in Klingon here, but I don’t think it would work…)

photo by: Insomnia PHT

A Teaching Shelf

 Posted by at 1:25 pm  Life, Miscellaneous, Wonderment
Feb 192013
 

I was going to write about Odd Trundles this morning, but I’m having trouble settling. The ballad of Odd Trundles and Napoleon!Squirrel’s fair lady Joseph/ine!Squirrel (that’s not a typo, I can’t even begin explaining right now) will have to wait.

The long weekend held a couple milestones for me. I actually asked for help, and I threw a party. Both centered around a shelf.

There was this lovely large space above the three kitchen carts I have end-to-end (counter space is your friend when you like to bake) and I had acquired and put together the perfect shelf to go above them. Two shelves actually, and a rail with hooks! It was awesome except for one thing.

I didn’t know how to put it up.

Well, to be absolutely fair, I had a good idea of how to…but I was afraid of doing so. The vision of yon bonny shelf and assorted breakables collapsing in a shattered heap atop kitchen carts (and my tile dining-room floor, big fun) danced before my eyes like a ghost of Christmas Whatevers. Intellectually I knew it was ridiculous. Intellectually I knew that finding the studs wasn’t that hard and the guy in the hardware aisle told me the wood screws I was about to purchase should hold it up, of course. Intellectually, I knew I was being an idiot. So I did the proper and adult thing.

Yes. I procrastinated.

Eventually I got tired of moving the assembled shelf around the house, and screwed up my courage. First, I asked Wonder Woman–the mother of one of the Princess’s best friends–if her big Strapping Cajun of a husband knew how to put up Ikea shelves.

“Shit yeah,” she said, “you got one? He’ll come over and put it up for you, no problem!”

I was not prepared for such generosity. During my childhood (not my fault) and several relationships (half my fault, I think, because I WAS THERE TOO) it was never safe to ask for help. As a child and adolescent, asking for anything showed a vulnerability to be exploited by frightening, inconsistent adults. Later, I dated (and married) people who raised unreliability (emotional or otherwise) to an art form. It’s taken me years (and therapy, but let’s stay on topic) and hard work to get to the point where I don’t immediately scramble away in terror when someone offers some kind of assistance. (The Selkie can attest to this.)

So I gulped, really hard, and said “Let me look at my schedule. I’d love to offer something in return.”

We negotiated that Wonder Woman, Strapping Cajun, and their brood would come over for Sunday dinner. The shelf would get put up, I would make coq au vin, we would have some wine and nosh and socialize.

I realized, belatedly, that I had undertaken to throw a party. Cue total panic.

Besides my natural, rather introverted bent, there’s the fact that growing up, family get-togethers were not safe. The pressure to have everything “perfect” was intense, and any fault or mistake, real or imagined, was a potential bomb that would detonate after the guests had gone home. Later, I rarely if ever lived in a place where I could host even if I wanted to; I gave birthday parties for the kids and only realized later how breathless with anxiety I’d been, waiting for someone to yell at me for not doing it right, or “ruining” the whole event “for everyone”. In fact, it was my daughter’s blissful assertion that every party she attended, her own or someone else’s, was the best EVER that made me start cautiously thinking maybe I wasn’t doomed to eternal ruination of every event I was present at.

So I fretted. I paced. It was too late to back out. I decided to plunge through it. Wonder Woman, with her usual perspicacity, knew I was nervy and reassured me several times before the event. The Princess and her friends who stayed the night (including Wonder Woman’s daughter) pitched in to help clean the house. The Prince ran back and forth, fetching and carrying and thrilled to be a part of it all. The guests arrived bearing flowers and a vegetable tray, and I…

…I had a good time. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I had a great time. Everyone laughed and had fun. The kids played downstairs, the shelf was on the wall in less than twenty minutes, and we all sat around and ate, and drank (except the Strapping Cajun, as he was the designated driver for the evening), and had an absolutely marvelous time. I was worried they wouldn’t enjoy themselves, but they did. Odd Trundles and Miss B were excited, the Strapping Cajun’s bulldog was brought over and had a wonderful time playing and sniffing (though Odd was in Durance Vile for some of that visit, because he would not stop screaming “MAH HOUSE! MAH HOUSE! MAH HOUSE!”) and, well, it went fine. Everything went fine.

Nobody screamed at me afterward, or pinched me viciously and said just wait until they leave or you’ve ruined everything, why are you even alive? There was no explosion, no raging, no sobbing, no breaking things. Instead, Wonder Woman is volunteering the Cajun for other household repairs. (I think she likes my cooking. And our giggly wine-fests. Heh.) I was tired afterward, but not overly so. I had thrown, and survived, an actual party.

IMG_1267

Now every time I look at that shelf, I can take a deep breath and remember that progress is possible. I’m never going to be a social butterfly…but I think, sometime in the future, maybe soon, I might have another gathering. And it might, just might, turn out okay too.

Rebuilding A School

 Posted by at 3:50 pm  Life, Miscellaneous, Wonderment
Feb 072013
 

Genesis Today was the Little Prince’s first day back at school since the fire. The semi-controlled chaos was intense, but the kids are bouncing back quickly. They have their teachers and classmates with them, and that helps a lot. Plus, now it’s a matter of building routines in a new space. All the organizing and volunteering and sorting and frantic activity has begun to take effect.

The kids at the schools around the district are uniformly welcoming and kind. Even the high-schoolers volunteered to help get students on the buses at the central collection point, which was their campus.

Now some of the hardest work begins. Rebuilding.

I can’t keep track of all the fundraisers, so I’m going to concentrate on just three of them.

First: the Evil for Crestline Auction. The ELEW got together–the fabulous Skyla Dawn Cameron and Dina James organizing like mad organizing things–and put together a simply bang-up auction. It includes things like three signed copies of Nameless–that’s the first book in my new YA series, and it isn’t out until April, so you’ll be getting it before anyone else and signed to boot. A signed copy of Jim Butcher’s Small Favor, isn’t that incredible? And there’s stuff like manuscript critiques, a lawyer’s reading of your manuscript to give your portrayal of legalese proper depth and verisimilitude, being able to name a character in upcoming novels, drink and chat at a convention with an industry pro, a package of treats (including Tim Tams!!!!) from Australia–the list goes on and on and on. A custom My Little Pony! Query letter critiques! All proceeds will go directly to Crestline.

If you can’t bid, but you have even just five bucks (because even the price of a latte would help), you can donate to the Crestline Fund at the Evergreen School District Foundation. (Just choose “Crestline Elementary” in the drop-down menu.) The Foundation is a nonprofit, so the donation may be tax-deductible. How cool is that?

There’s a book drive going on as well, since the school library and all the in-class libraries were burned to ash. You can send your (non-manky, K-5 appropriate) contributions in to the drive; if you have a small box or so you can send it to my PO box and I will schlep it to the Little Prince’s teacher, who can distribute it among her colleagues from there.

If you can’t do any of those things, but you can boost the signal about the auction, I would really appreciate it. Every tiny bit helps, especially when you have to build a school from the ground up. Already the outpouring of love and support has been overwhelming, and I hope that at least some small good will come out of this–as I keep telling the Little Prince, people are pulling together to help, and just the fact that they are helps too.

I’m pretty exhausted from helping set up the classroom and run herd on twenty-odd kids, not to mention getting the Prince to the new place and catching up on all the work that I haven’t had a chance to touch since Sunday. So I’m going to go hug my little warrior and look over the paperwork he brought home, and count my blessings to be so, so lucky.

Thank you. Thank you all. It’s rare for a writer to be without words, but I am speechless with gratitude, and I wish there was another term stronger than “thank you” so I could use it. There isn’t, so I’m left with repeating it: thank you. Thank you from the Little Prince, and his teacher, and her colleagues, and the 500 Crestline kids who your goodwill and generosity has had such an impact on already. Thank you.

Thank you.

photo by: Indy Charlie

After The Fire

 Posted by at 10:22 am  Event, Life, Miscellaneous
Feb 052013
 

The Little Prince’s school burned down on Sunday; the district scrambled like hell and we found out yesterday that all the classes will be kept together. That means the Little Prince will have his teacher and his classmates for the rest of the year. I’m heading out today to pick up some supplies for his classroom; they’ll be back at school with their teachers and friends come Thursday. It will be in different buildings, but at least the grades will all be together too–fourth and fifth graders in one school, third graders all together at another, and so on. The school district really deserves kudos for keeping the kids together and getting it organized so quickly. We were at the church near the school yesterday; there were TIP volunteers providing counseling and the kids visibly relaxed when they saw teachers and their classmates safe and sound. The place was pretty much packed all day.

It will take at least a week to figure out what happened, they say. *sigh*

If you’d like to make a donation–even $5 would help–you can do so through the school district’s nonprofit foundation. Those donations are tax deductible, just choose Crestline Elementary from the drop-down menu. There’s a list of other places you can donate here, including donations for school supplies. There’s a book drive going on, and you can donate for books here. You can also, if the spirit moves you, send books to my PO box and I will get them to the Little Prince’s teacher for distribution.

I always feel kind of weird and squidgy asking people for donations, it’s something I very rarely do. And if the fire had been smaller, I suppose I wouldn’t be asking now. But the entire school is leveled. The portables escaped the inferno, but they’ve been soaked and heat-warped, so we don’t even know if they’re usable. *sigh*

I’m going to pin this post to the top of my blog for a week or so, and update it with other fundraisers as I can. Before I close for today though, I want to say one thing:

Thank you.

People’s responses have uniformly been “how can I help?” Other writers and people in publishing have contacted me to ask what they can do, to offer help and support. The TIP volunteers at the church yesterday were simply incredible. There were teen volunteers who sat down and played games with the kids, there was one particular woman who had just come back from a cruise the night before when the call went out. We need everyone who can possibly show up, they said, so she didn’t even unpack, she just got her stuff together and showed up. All the school district staff have been working overtime figuring out who can spare some room and how to keep the kids together.

If this keeps up I might have to reconsider my misanthropy. *tired grin* But really, all of you, really…thank you. You are incredible.

 Older Entries