blog – Page 47 – Kelley Eskridge

Blinking at the weather…

Right now it is snowing with lightning and thunder.

Soon the comet will pass overhead and we’ll all turn into zombies (and sexy points to anyone who has seen that movie…)

The movie. May 8. ‘Nuff said. Bring on the Oh-Oh Theme Girl! (Yes, I have just dated myself as someone who grew up on the Star Trek TV show, yes, that one, with James T. Kirk and the green-skinned dancing girl… and the theme song of a woman’s voice singing oh oh oooooooo).

Being there

Today — as I write this — the California Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Proposition 8. The outcome is very important to me, and even moreso to the thousands of people in California whose marriages may be invalidated as a result.

We won’t know that for a while. Not so long ago, we wouldn’t even have known what arguments were being made until it was reported in general in a newspaper, followed perhaps weeks or months later by more detailed reportage/analysis in a magazine.

Ah, but today… today we have the internet, webcams, blogging, instant messaging, twitter, digital cameras that fit in the palm of a hand, video cameras in mobile phones, PDAs… and we have the social media networks to use them. And so, you and I can be at the hearings through live blogging. Here’s a blogger providing a detailed picture of the argument as it proceeds, one post at a time. Here’s another blogger (friend and author Malinda Lo) giving us minute-by-minute reportage on which any of us may comment at any time — thereby turning the Court hearing into an international conversation.

These things are amazing. Amazing. We can be present in our world in ways we never have before. We can be connected. We can observe or participate. And, of course, we can be observed, we can be the object of participation whether we want it or not. Connection is never a clean issue. It’s rarely exactly the way we want it to be. But I believe in social and political and business transparency, and I am grateful to the inventors, the technology producers, and the people on the benches and in the trenches who share what they are seeing and hearing with the rest of us.

I’ve been thinking about these issues for a little while; and screenwriter John August wrote a thoughtful post recently that made me think more. Today, I am struck anew by the power — the occasional ferocity — of the human desire to know and to participate. Millions of us took ourselves to Washington D.C. to see Barack Obama inaugurated. Millions of us can, if we choose, take ourselves to court today. What next?

Life, really

Here’s a post I like from writer JA Konrath. The topic is writing, but really it’s about Life in the Real World.

I would love to talk more about all the ways these writing truths are also life truths, but I’m in Duck Mode today (as opposed to Daffy Duck or Duck on Fire modes)… Oooooh, duck metaphors! I’ve always enjoyed watching ducks swim — so graceful, so smooth. Then when I was little, I found out that underneath the water they’re whap whap whapping with those webby feet, working like hell for the forward motion. So that’s me today, places to go and things to do, and paddling like hell. Moving forward, I hope, with a certain duck-on-water grace. The other duck modes are not so pretty (grin).

Quack quack to you all.

Get dangerous…

Many thanks to Rich Rennicks of Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville for this lovely review of Dangerous Space.

I’m grateful to everyone who has blogged about the book or left a review on amazon or on a literary social network. There is nothing better for a writer than good word of mouth. Human enthusiasm is a powerful force. I heart all of you who read books, sell them, talk and blog and podcast about them, lend them, and give them as gifts.

Which brings me to Today’s Special Dangerous Offer: a book-loving person has offered to send a copy of Dangerous Space to the first two people (anywhere in the world) who request it here in comments. I’ll get your mailing information privately — for now, just leave a comment and let me know you’d like a copy. And send a little general love vibe to the generous soul who wants to give you a brush with danger today.

And here’s a little general love from me to all of you. Thank you for letting my work into your minds and hearts. I’m very grateful to you all.

Right now the sun is shining, although the forecast was for unrelenting gray and rain all week. Microscopic buds have appeared as if by magic on the tree outside my office window. I think, I hope, that things are beginning.

Towanda!

I love Fried Green Tomatoes — book, food and film, but today let’s focus on the movie (although here’s a recipe to placate the hungry and an amazon link for the readers among us).

I’ve always liked this film. I laugh, I cry, and I enjoy very much the company of the varied, interesting, complex women in this story. The movie makes some people grumpy because it chooses not to make explicit the relationship between Idgie and Ruth, but honestly, it’s all there on the screen, in every moment between them. It’s lovely. And then there’s phenomenal Kathy Bates, whose work I adore.

So here’s my Monday treat for you. Evelyn (Kathy Bates) isn’t exactly the most assertive woman on the planet. But lately she’s been listening to stories of a mythical mighty woman called Towanda….

Find your inner Towanda! And give her a hug from me.

Ice weasels and angels

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
— Matt Groening

No, no, Nicola and I aren’t grumpy at each other, and this isn’t me being bitter and twisted. This quote is just the laugh-out-loud truth about love that no one ever tells us when they’re giving us the Barbie and Ken Dream Wedding Set (and if you’re a guy, trust me, the world gives you the Dream Set too, just in different ways).

There are so many ways that love tests us — all love, from friendship to parenthood to marriage to… whatever. At some point in all these relationships, the ice weasels come and we have to decide if we will lie there while they chew. We have to decide whether the love is worth it.

Why am I thinking Deep Ice Weasel Thoughts on a slow Sunday morning? I have no idea, although perhaps it’s because I am also seeing in the world the kind of love that doesn’t always get much airtime: the love of human beings for the humanity of others. I see it in JobAngels, where people are helping strangers find jobs. I see it in the woman who barters handywork for office tasks that she could easily afford to pay for — she has the money, but she knows things are tight for others and she wants to help. I see it in the people who every day give strangers, including me, a kind word or a reassuring comment on a blog post.

The ice weasels are certainly with us right now. But the angels are too. I’m not religious, so I don’t mean stern beings with wings and white robes. I mean people who commit acts of human love in spite of their own fear and their own struggle, whether it’s a small kindness to a stranger or the sometimes-wrenching choices we make for those we love most closely. All those things we do for love. If we let it, love makes angels of us all.

Secret journey

It’s not surprising to find me reflecting on writing the day after the Nebula news. So many stories of writing! Nicola has told the story of the first Nebula (when we were both nominated the same year) when we stopped in the middle of working on our new house and went out to a restaurant with paint in our hair. And last night we drank a bottle of pinot gris in front of the fire and then ate leftover spaghetti, partly because we can’t really afford to go out right now and partly because, well, there are lots of ways to celebrate. After more than 20 years together, we’re good at making just about anything feel special if we want to.

That skill to turn a moment to our own purpose — to alter the emotional dynamic (or to cement it), to step into a new perspective, to feel fully and then move on, to find the next thing to say that will turn us down a different road — that’s a writing skill as well as a life skill. I can’t imagine either life or work without it.

I wrote my first serious story — the first that I conceived and started and finished though I knew it wasn’t very good, because it was the finishing that mattered — at age 20 or so. I had returned to Florida after four wonderful years at boarding school and one disastrous year at Northwestern University. I was living with my mother; she worked two jobs (one full-time), I worked two or three part-time jobs and carried a full course load at the University of South Florida to keep the grants I’d earned. I was in the theatre program, so I spent many nights rehearsing for classes or shows, performing, building sets, tearing them down…

We were always tired. And sometimes, in the middle of washing the dishes that had piled up over days because I just couldn’t face the kitchen (it was an old house, it was Florida, there were bugs, it was just no fun), I would find myself feeling the particular hopelessness of youth, the angst of I want things to be better but I don’t know how, I don’t have the money, and it all takes so long… That’s where my first real story came from, and it was appropriately, y’know, angsty, about a lonely dying woman who smuggles herself onto a rocket so that when it re-enters the atmosphere and burns, she will be the streak of light that people see overhead.

Sometimes I still get angsty about writing, about life. But I have better strategies now. I know how to change those moments, how to feel and move on, how to turn down a different road. I no longer must eradicate the tiny biting voices that sometimes speak from under my breastbone. They’re like the bugs in Florida, resilient and good at hiding in the cracks, and you just can’t win at their game. The trick with bugs and voices is to just smile and say, Oh, you again, yeah, yeah, hello, go away now.

When I was washing those millions of dishes all those years ago, I often listened to music on my headphones. Standing over the dirty water, I would play a movie in my head: the sink was a set, behind me were the cameras and the director, and we were all telling a story about a woman on a secret journey of struggle; but she was determined, and she would triumph, and everyone in the audience would be glad.

It was only later that I came to see that what I really wanted was my own secret journey, whose wanderings (occasionally off the map) would be fully mine, not just a “story” to please other people. And that’s what led me to Clarion, and Nicola, and Solitaire, and screenwriting, and “Dangerous Space,” and this lovely third-time “movie moment” of a Nebula nomination that I can celebrate any damn way I please. Because it’s not some character who’s feeling good. It’s me.

click here if you can’t see the player

“Dangerous Space” is a Nebula finalist

I’m delighted to announce that “Dangerous Space” is a finalist for the Nebula Award.

My thanks to the SFWA members who have supported the story — the approval of other writers is very special to me, and I appreciate it more than I can say. This is my third time as a Nebula finalist, and the thrill never goes away. Congratulations to all the finalists. I’m honored to be in your company.

And my special thanks to Aqueduct Press for publishing the collection and giving me the chance to tell another tale of Mars, of all my characters the one who most compels me.

The Nebula Awards will be presented the weekend of April 24-26 in Los Angeles. I hope that Nicola and I will be there — it would be lovely to meet new people and reconnect with old friends. Speculative fiction writers know how to party (grin).

I invite you to read “Dangerous Space” (in PDF format), and let me know what you think. And thanks to all of you who have let me know in the past that you enjoy my stories: this moment in the spotlight is lovely, but nothing compares to the immense pleasure I get knowing that I’ve told you a story that has touched you.