Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
Yammerings and Babblings
Contrary to my desires last week, I did not get to scoot around the house looking for interesting macro photo opportunities, and instead we spent time playing in the snow that fell. Which means I have a new surplus of POOCH PHOTOS of our two dogs, Snoobug and Loa, to post.
So, I’mma post them below.
No, they’re not macro photos, but feel free to pretend the dogs are somehow microscopic and that I’ve just captured them up close with my magic camera.
Please to enjoy, humans.
THE CHOICES HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.
Last week I said, hey, gimme a three-word title, and a lot of you complied. I randomly chose ten, and here are those ten (in parentheses is the creator of the title).
Your job now:
Choose one either freely or with a random number generator.
Then, write a story using that title.
Length: ~1000 words
Due by: 2/17, noon EST.
Post at your online space. Give a link in the comments so we can read it.
Go write.
Amberlough is a vintage-glam spy thriller, set in a world with all the glamor and terror of 1930s Berlin. The economy is faltering, the government is riddled with corruption, the shadow of fascism is creeping across the political landscape, and the populace is partying hard enough to ignore their precarious situation.
Secret agent Cyril DePaul has betrayed his country to protect his lover, black market kingpin Aristide Makricosta, but when he gets in over his head he turns to street-smart stripper and drug dealer Cordelia Lehane for help. As the twinkling lights of nightclub marquees yield to the rising flames of a fascist revolution, these three will struggle to survive using whatever means — and people — necessary. Including each other.
* * *
I learned a lot writing Amberlough. These five things are just the things that changed me the most. Some changed the way I approach writing. Some changed the way I evaluate relationships, the way I consume media, the way I see the world. Some of these things feel eerily, unfortunately timely.
This is technically cheating, because it’s something I learned as I moved on to my next project after Amberlough. I remember Amberlough coming out in a giant surge of joy and inspiration and furious typing. That is not what happened. What happened is I struggled and moaned and gave up a few times and then came back, and tweaked, and reordered, and killed off some characters, brought some back to life, and ascribed different actions to different people.
I was really, really beating myself up, wondering why the next project wasn’t as easy, why it wasn’t coming out as effortlessly. The truth is: human brains are bad at remembering pain and unpleasant experiences with clarity. My brain wrapped the difficult process of novel writing in a clever disguise. Well, brain, I have news for you: it just makes the second novel harder.
Amberlough is an anachronistic novel — I based a lot of the culture on late 1920s and early 1930s Europe. Which meant I kept defaulting to familiar norms. Female secretary, male boss, white people everywhere, etc. for no particular reason. But I knew I wanted the book to be about the forcible streamlining and homogenization of a messy, diverse place. And I couldn’t do that if I didn’t start with messy diversity.
Creating a diverse fantasy world full of fair representation is a worthy pursuit, but it’s also an excellent narrative tool. Diversity instantly creates tension. For instance: Cyril, one Amberlough’s main characters, is an affluent white man from a politically-powerful, old-money family. His boss Ada Culpepper is the daughter of two black immigrants—asylum seekers from a nation essentially destroyed by Cyril’s family. Though the race and gender politics in Amberlough are different than those in our world, and even though Cyril and Ada’s differences don’t contribute directly to the plot, they don’t see the world quite the same way, and this colors every interaction between them.
Similarly, Cyril’s beard Cordelia is an orphan from one of Amberlough City’s worst slums, who works as a burlesque dancer and drug dealer. She and Cyril become close friends, but there are certain things they will never, ever understand about each other. Those things create excellent opportunities for character development. For instance, when Cyril is telling Cordelia how he became a spy:
“When I was younger,” he said, ignoring her, “it seemed so exciting. Everything was a game, and ruthlessness had a kind of . . . romantic appeal.” Then, he looked up, and his eyes widened, flashing like mercury. “I’m sorry. You’re from the Mew. I wasn’t thinking.”
She licked her teeth, tasting good tobacco and clean gin. “Nah. I ain’t pinned. We’re all idiots when we’re kids. Only difference is, I stopped being a kid a lot sooner than you.”
The shame was plain on his face, and satisfying.
Ian Fleming did a great job convincing us all that spies are sexy, and Amberlough follows in those scandalous footsteps. Very seldom do spies act like James Bond. Far more often they are like le Carré’s Smiley, or even less assuming. They’re usually just normal people, gathering information that might be useful handlers who hope it’s relevant. Intelligence is built on a foundation of thousands of separate, simple reports that make one complex picture.
One of the sexiest things about espionage is that important secrets are traded among people who generally have access to them by virtue of their position in life. This means ambassadors and their families (or their lovers); old money, society journalists, high stakes gamblers; well-known authors, actors, and other famous people who travel around the world in wealthy and elevated circles.
These aren’t generally the same people who are trained in Krav Maga or sharp-shooting. More often, they’re in the camp of people reporting on seemingly banal overheard conversations that, in the context of a larger operation, can become vitally important. During World War II, for example, one man was selected as an agent for Operation Doublecross simply because he bore a startling resemblance to General MacArthur. He had no training in tradecraft whatsoever.
When I sent a draft of this book to my mom, she called when she was done and asked me where I’d learned to write such awful characters. And, more than that: how had I made them so likeable?
The people in this book are not good or nice. They are scheming, manipulative, devious, selfish, secretive, meddling, violent, and destructive. They commit horrible crimes and destroy other people’s lives to save their own. But my beta readers loved them. I loved them. I reveled in coming up with new ways for them to connive and conspire. It’s amazing how invested you can become in someone’s awfulness, if you’re sympathetic to their motivation. Amazing, and a little scary.
Reading history, it’s easy to point to a juncture and say, “That’s where things went wrong. I would notice something as crazy as a rigged election, or a fascist coup, or the dismantling of democracy.” But not if it looks like business as usual. And usually, it does.
For instance, I did a lot of research about rigged elections, though much of this information didn’t end up in the book. Mostly because, like spy work, the details are a little boring.
Rigging an election is as simple as workers at certain polling places saying, “Did you bring your ID?” Or people “losing” ballot boxes. Or candidates telling bald-faced lies, saying they’ve won when they haven’t, and steamrolling any objection. Or, I don’t know, making a stink about some emails at a critical point one week before people head to the polls.
As I read my research material (sent to me by a friend who consults on electoral conflicts) I remember wondering, “That’s it? Why didn’t people…do something?” If rigged elections were decided by one momentous handshake in a dark, smoky room, I could understand—no one would see the problem to stop it. But these weren’t cloak and dagger operations. These were the end result of many banal injustices, piling up in the open.
There is no moment of “This Far and No Further.” These things happen by slow increments, a current growing swifter each moment as the river approaches the falls. Change is wrought by small actions, multiplying and metastasizing into something huge.
* * *
The all-singing, all-dancing Lara Elena Donnelly is a graduate of the Alpha and Clarion writers’ workshops. Her work has appeared in venues including Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Nightmare, and Mythic Delirium. Her debut novel, vintage-glam spy thriller Amberlough, drops on February 7, 2017 from Tor Books. A veteran of small town Ohio and the Derby City, Lara now lives in Manhattan. You can also find her online at @larazontally or laradonnelly.com.
Lara Elena Donnelly: Website | Twitter | Facebook
Amberlough: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Goodreads | Book Trailer
I am never not in awe of Kameron Hurley’s writing. Whether we’re talking about her essays (ahem) or her fiction — like, say, her newest, The Stars Are Legion — I’m always eager to get my hands on the next Hurley book. Further, I’m always excited to have her here, because one day she’s going to be a literary rock motherfucking superstar, and I can say, I KNEW HER WHEN.
* * *
My grandmother grew up in Vichy France, under a regime propped up by and answerable to the Nazi regime. These last few months, I’ve wished she was still alive more desperately than any time since her death. I wanted to ask her how you coped when terrible things were happening all around you.
While we understand the necessity of writing during these times, figuring out how to persist in one’s writing when everything around you is so incredibly uncertain is tougher. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, and anxiety can kill your ability to do anything but go through the motions of bare bones survival. It’s in realizing that it was the anxiety unleashed by the sudden uncertainty in this country – when will the government declare martial law? Will we become a Russian puppet-state? Did a city explode in nuclear fire overnight? – also helped me figure out how to address it. If we can’t control the world around us, at least we can control the work we do in the face of it.
So here are my coping strategies. Hopefully some of them will help you too:
Ration your news. This may seem counter-productive. We all want to stay informed! The resistance needs us! But staring at a screen that’s beaming nightmares into your eyes for hours on end isn’t helpful; it’s actively harmful, because it will convince you that the problems out there are too big to address. I subscribed to The Washington Post, which I now read once a day. That’s news enough. I use Tweetdeck to view Twitter, which allows me to mute keywords from both my feed and mentions. I’ve muted, easily, over 200 keywords at this point, and I generally add a new one or two every day or so. This has also reduced the likelihood I’ll get suckered into a fake news meme. I also don’t have a personal Facebook account, which is a blessing. I recommend that you trim and mute there as well if you want to stay on it. But, again: Facebook is where fake news and your racist Uncle Joe are, so. I dunno. Your call.
Take up a hobby you don’t need to be good at. Like many writers, writing started out as my relaxing side gig. It was something I did in my spare time, and I found it deeply soothing. When I turned pro, the mad crash of deadlines and the need to level up my writing game to compete in a crowded market made the writing, well, less soothing. Sure, it’s still fun sometimes. But it became work. I needed something else to do with my brain that didn’t require angst. Then Netflix started streaming old episodes of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, and I found them so relaxing to watch that my spouse got me an oil painting set for Christmas. I’ve now painted something like 16 paintings, and it’s OK that they aren’t good! I don’t owe them to anyone. No one is paying me for them. I can just enjoy getting better at a new skill. It’s deeply satisfying to watch your skills level up from one painting to the next. Painting, like learning a new language, has also changed how I view the world. I’m starting to look at the angles of things when I look at building and mountains. I pay attention to the play of dark and light. I’ve also moved on to watching other painting shows. While watching a show by William Alexander on YouTube, he says, “You must add dark. You can’t have light without the dark,” and it was what I really needed to hear right then. Find something you enjoy that you don’t have to be good at, and go do it.
Chillax on the booze and other drugs. I spent a couple months post-election drinking way too much. Bad for my health and bad for my wallet. I cut myself back to once a week again, largely by replacing the booze behavior with the painting behavior. Watch your intake and reliance on drugs right now, legal or illegal, clearly. It’s easy to make “just one more because the government has imploded” into a habit, because the government is going to be imploding for a good long while. Caffeine isn’t great for anxiety, either, so stick to those two cups of coffee a day, or go cold turkey (I’m still working on this).
Get a dog. I mean, I’m a dog person. Dogs love you unconditionally. Pets make great therapy for folks suffering from depression, anxiety, PTSD, or any combination thereof. So you could get any kind of animal: a cat, a chinchilla, a turtle. When you want to just lie around in bed and not get up, knowing that you have to get up because you’re responsible for the care of another living thing is pretty motivating. Dogs also remind you that there is love and loyalty and pure joy in the world, even if you have lost your faith in humanity. Dogs have the added bonus of making you get up to take them outside for walks, which will get you out of your chair and increase the amount of exercise you get. Recent studies even found that people with dogs tend to get more exercise, and as a result, are healthier, than non-dog owners. It’s science, people.
Do what you can. Listen, yeah, resistance is great. Change the world! We need it. But we can’t do everything, and this is going to be a long, long haul. Pace yourself. Figure out what you can do, and do that. I subscribed to 5calls.org’s newsletter, which sends you a list of five issues every week to call your representatives about. I make my calls and check the local Ohio Resistance (yes, really) calendar to see if there’s a protest downtown that I can attend. So far I haven’t made it to one of those, but it’s on my radar now. Persist.
Write your way out. The world has not fundamentally changed. Only our understanding of it. The sun still comes up. There is still the work to do. Certainly, I’ve found that my own writing has shifted in tone and scope now that my view of the world is altered. I want to write more hopeful futures, futures where bad things happen, sure, but there are still good people out there doing good work. I want to be one of the people who makes a little more light in all this dark.
Rage against the dying of the light. Listen. When I’m feeling REALLY bad, and the dogs are curled up with me in bed and the booze is gone and I don’t want to get up, I remind myself that this is what the bad guys WANT. They want me to hide in bed, to get weary, and most of all: to shut up and stop working. On the very worst days, it is pure, blinding spite that gets me out of bed, because fuck those guys. If the only way you can get out of bed and put ass in chair to work is to yell “FUCK YOU!!” repeatedly at the clouds every morning, do it. I often say aloud, “Get up, Hurley” in the same cadence one would say, “Get up, Trinity.” And it helps. It really, really does.
So get up, folks. And get back to work.
* * *
Kameron Hurley is the author of the space opera, The Stars are Legion and the essay collection The Geek Feminist Revolution, as well as the award-winning God’s War Trilogy and The Worldbreaker Saga. Hurley has won the Hugo Award, Kitschy Award, and Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer. She was also a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, and the Gemmell Morningstar Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Popular Science Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and many anthologies. Hurley has also written for The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, Bitch Magazine, and Locus Magazine. She posts regularly at KameronHurley.com.
Kameron Hurley: Website | Twitter
The Stars Are Legion: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N
So, ICYMI, in the last 24 hours:
– The GOP voted to confirm DeVos because they were unabashedly paid by DeVos
– The GOP voted to censure and rebuke Senator Warren, thus stopping her from reading the Coretta Scott King letter about Senator Sessions — they voted to silence her unanimously, which means even the so-called “maverick” McCain has fallen right in line at the feeding trough
– On CNN, Ted ‘the President called my wife ugly and said my Daddy killed JFK and I stood up to him by sitting on his lap’ Cruz told a woman with MS, “Congratulations on dealing with MS, it’s a — it’s a terrible disease, and congratulations on your struggles dealing with it.”
– On Twitter, Trump continues — with all the subtlety of a blue whale dropped out of a C-130 onto a school bus — to point the finger at the judicial branch as an enemy in need of a culling.
Soon, the GOP will just unmask themselves, revealing moist vortices of twitching fangs, and they will wantonly eat kittens and babies on live TV. They will outlaw birds and mixtapes and hope before fucking off to their moonbase while the rest of the Earth burns.
So, with this Age of Heinous Fuckery unfolding, I continue to get emails or tweets from writers who are just saying, I can’t do it, I can’t commit words to the page, I can’t muster the feeling that any of this is worth a damn. Especially with education being one of the roots of the American tree that the madmen continue to hack at, why write? Why do it? What’s the fucking point?
On Twitter, I attempted to answer that question, and I’m putting those tweets here for you to read. (You can also just click through to the full Storify post, if that’s easier for you.)
Okay, I don’t know that this fried rice recipe will make you want to marry the fried rice and have its fried rice babies, and honestly, I don’t know what “fried rice babies” would look like, except that they’re probably mushy and really gross. But you will want to marry me for giving you this recipe. But I can’t marry you. I’m married to my work. Also, my wife. Also, I’m having an affair with a cup of fried rice. You shut up. Don’t you judge me.
*whispers to the cup of fried rice, it’s okay, baby, it’s okay, shhh*
And yes, I know that picture up there is of a pea pod and not of fried rice, but whatever. I tried taking a nice photo of fried rice and it doesn’t look nice, because fried rice isn’t a nice-looking dish. It tastes great, but it looks like, you know, food garbage.
I AM TIRED OF YOUR JUDGEY-FACED JUDGEYNESS.
*stares*
*stares longer*
*stares so hard, eyes begin to dry out like grapes gone to raisins*
*blink blink*
Yes, we can now begin the recipe.
So.
In Hawaii, many breakfast places serve breakfast options that are not traditional here in the Upper 48. The loco moco, for instance, is a miracle health food, and by “health food,” I mean “food that will lodge itself in your heart and, provided that it does not kill you with a massive myocardial infarction, will provide you with a steady stream of nutrients for at least 60 days.” The loco moco is: a bowl of rice, topped with a hamburger patty, topped with an egg, topped with brown gravy because hey why the fuck not just dump some gravy on it. It is delicious. I was in Maui in November and I still have a loco moco clogging my aorta right now.
Another thing you might get on Hawaii for breakfast is:
Fried rice.
(For triple death points, you can get a loco moco made with fried rice.)
As such, I have brought that tradition home with me, and sometimes I make fried rice for breakfast. It is a surprisingly warm and comforting start to the day — the food equivalent of a cozy Christmas sweater. Except now I’m imagining eating a sweater? Which is not appetizing at all, is it? I am not very good at this writing thing, I apologize.
POINT IS, IT’S FUCKING SCRUMPTIOUS.
My family loves it. And they’re not just saying that because of the trap doors underneath their chairs that trigger whenever they say anything negative about me or my food.
Here now, is how you make my version of breakfast fried rice.
First, you need some rice. And you need some old rice. I don’t mean that you need ancient, antediluvian rice. I don’t mean you need moldy rice stuffed in a dirty gym sock and left to ferment. I mean that you need to have cooked rice on hand, rice that has cooled all the way, where the starch has settled down, where its texture is firmer and ensures that your fried rice won’t be gummy, like you’re eating something that was pre-chewed. I either make the rice the night before, then pop it in the YETI CLOSET to cool down, or I just say fuck it and I used the rice from last night’s Chinese dinner. I like to use a quart (two pints) of rice, or maybe two cups if I’m making it here. And two cups of uncooked rice becomes around six cups of cooked rice, I guess because rice is basically some kind of wizard food.
Next up, you need the SAUCE. Except it’s not really sauce, because — well, I dunno, it doesn’t sauce the rice, it just blends in with it because each grain of rice is cooked. Whatever. Shut up. I’m not a chef. I don’t know the magical chef words like saucier and mirepoix and cocaine. Point is, you need some goddamn liquid to flavor the rice, and here is the liquid blend I make: two TBsp soy sauce, two TBsp fish sauce, one TBsp oyster sauce, two TBsp sherry vinegar. If you want it a little sweet, substitute hoisin for the oyster, or use a sweet balsamic vinegar instead of the sherry. Also add in: three garlic gloves, minced, and about an equal amount of ginger, also minced.
Sometimes I add in a splash of mirin, because I’m wacky like that.
WHISK IT. WHISK IT GOOD. /devo
Now it is time for
BACON.
Okay, bacon is overused culinarily, I get it, but bacon — a good, smoky bacon — adds a nice layer of flavor, so clap your trap and get out four or five slices of bacon, chopped.
Put it in a pot, medium-high heat.
(Technically, a wok, but I don’t have a wok, I have a pot.)
Cook the bacon until its precious bacon essence begins to fill the room.
Then, as the bacon cooks (you don’t want it hella crispy, you just want it where it has begun to yield its unctuousness to the bottom of the pot), add in either one bigger onion or two smaller onions. Chopped, obviously, don’t just thunk it in there like it’s a fucking softball — do I need to tell you all this? God, you’re the worst. This is why I won’t marry you, I swear.
Now, it is time for the second meat.
And I want you to know, the second meat is Spam.
Yes, the pink quivering can-shaped ham-blob.
Yes, it is a canned meat.
No, it is not some kind of scrapple-based offal.
Yes, it might be a gelatinous cube from D&D.
Yes, it has enough sodium in it to mummify your internal organs.
AND YES, IT IS GODDAMN DELICIOUS.
Okay, listen, my Mom-Mom used to fry Spam in lard. It was stupidly, disgustingly amazing. I stopped eating Spam at one point because I became convinced it was something gross, as if it was just, I dunno, a can full of pulverized pig anuses or whatever, and hey, maybe it is. Though honestly, the can says it’s basically just ham made from pork shoulder, and it tastes mostly like ham, and also, did I mention it’s goddamn delicious? Sure, yes, you have to sometimes scrape off gelatin, and that can seem off-putting until you realize that gelatin is a natural byproduct. The gelatin makes it fancy! Just think of Spam as hillbilly terrine. Sidenote: my grandmother lived till she was 89, and she was tough as a brick wall. I credit the Spam in lard.
So, you need a can of Spam.
Just do it. Just go buy the Spam.
Cube it.
Put it in the mix with the bacon and the onion.
You can drain off some bacon fat at this point if you really want, or you can just leave it in there. I don’t care. I’m not your Mom. I don’t control what you do. I tried to control what you do but the bio-chip I inserted in your brain through your nose while you sleep is presently malfunctioning, and every time I push the reboot button, you pee yourself.
(Oh, uhh, yeah, P.S. I’m the reason you keep peeing yourself? Sorry.)
Lower heat maybe at this point? Medium heat.
Once that cooks down a little bit, I make a little room in the center of the pot, I scramble a couple of eggs, then I put them right in there. I scramble them real quick, then mix them up with the rest of the business.
Now: rice.
Dump the rice in.
That’s all you do with it. Nothing more complicated than that. You don’t need to whisper secret entreaties to it, there are no safe words, no gentle caresses are required. Just dump it in there unceremoniously, as if it has offended you and you are discarding it, unloved and disregarded.
Mix-a-mix-a-mix.
I like to let the rice settle for a couple minutes, till it starts to stick a little to the bottom of the pot — not burned, not exactly, but so some of it starts to get crispy.
Then: dump in your liquid.
No, not your pee, GOD, YOU’RE SO GROSS AND WEIRD —
I mean the soy sauce business. With the garlic and the other stuff.
Get it in there, mix it around, use a hard metal device (not a sex toy or a hunting knife) to scrape up the rice bits from the bottom so it’s all starting to incorporate.
Now, you’re saying, CHUCK, WHERE ARE THE VEGETABLES.
I NEED HEALTH, CHUCK. I’M DYING. WE’RE ALL DYING. SCURVY IS RAMPANT.
And I answer: THE VEGETABLES WERE IN YOU ALL ALONG.
Then your heart glows gold and your chest opens up and maaaaagical vegetables fly out, and they sing a hymn to your greatness. Also, I may have dropped acid. Or maybe you dropped acid. Did we both drop acid? What a coinkydink.
Okay, you also need to add some real vegetables into the mix, and here’s where it gets pretty nicely customizable: you can add in whatever goddamn vegetables you want. Frozen is fine. Leftovers are great. Get cuckoo with it. I tend to like to add in a mix of frozen peas and corn. Carrots, too, though if I don’t have frozen, I’ll grate fresh carrot into the mix. If you want some greens, add in spinach. Or some pre-cooked broccoli. I don’t care what you put in there. It’s your fried rice. Mix in some kiwi fruit and marbles. Elk teeth and crickets. Don’t care. It’s your food. I’m not the one who has to eat it afterward.
Again, I let that go a little while until the vegetables are nice and green but have not yet lost that brightness and color. Now, it is time for the finishing touches.
First, take either some unrefined coconut oil (it must be unrefined, like a dockworker) or some sesame oil, and mix it around. The coconut will lend an almost-sweetness. The sesame oil will lend a sesame-ness. Or you could just use motor oil, but I’m pretty sure that’s poisonous.
Second, some chopped scallions are nice. Or cilantro. Or bean sprouts.
Finally, I then fry up an egg or two — sunny side up — and pop it on top of each bowl.
And that’s it.
That’s all she wrote.
I don’t know who “she” is but literally, that’s all she wrote.
What now? Shut up and eat it, I guess.
AND THEN THANK ME IN THE FORM OF CASH AND ADORATION.
*stares*
*waits for cash*
*waits for adoration*
