Costuming and Cosplay, Part 1: Concept

So I've been having a gap year between college and graduate school, and I'm...not good at taking time off. I tend to find myself new projects. 

I've dabbled in costume and cosplay, severely constrained by a lack of time. I have, at this point, two full steampunk outfits. The first is an entomology-themed outfit, which I made in high school, and which most foully betrayed me at the last convention I took it to by shedding a good bit of trim and a large metal butterfly very loudly onto the floor in the midst of a panel. 

The second I made soon after Weather was published. I based it on a necklace that my godparents gave me for my eighteenth birthday; the necklace is gold with a garnet and pearls, a beautifully designed traditional Victorian pendant. I fell in love with the necklace when I received it, and halfway through undergraduate decided that I absolutely needed to graduate in a dress based on it, both because of its beauty and because of the significant role my family played in my life throughout college.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Ever since I was introduced to this song on my most recent road trip, I've been unable to stop listening to it. 

For the first time since I was five, I'm not returning to school in the fall. Oh, I certainly plan to next year, but the fact remains it is entirely my choice, and that is stunning and exciting. And I am fully aware that this song is relevant, because it's right now I choose what I want to do. It's terrifying, because I'm scared I'm going to fail horribly, but I know I have to choose, and there's a certain confidence in that.

The other thing that just happened is I finished another novel. I am thrilled with this one, but it's another instance of change. Even though I'm going on directly to write the next installment in the series before the characters pack up their bags and move out of my head, it's not going to be the same. Again, exciting, new, and absolutely terrifying. 

So I've been taking lots camping trips this summer. My middle school's outdoor program instilled in me a desire to flee to the wilderness when there are decisions to make or difficulties to heal from, and heading on my long first trips without my parents or school with me has seemed a deeply appropriate way to mark the transition from college to the great big world. It's scary, but being that independent (constrained only by my car's tiny gas tank) is one of the best feelings I've ever had. There's a thrill to knowing that everything you need is with you, that you can go anywhere you want. 

After a long hard year in which a lot of things went very wrong--as wrong as they possibly could have gone, in some cases--that is an enormous comfort.

Hiatuses and Road Trips

I should say right off the bat that the timestamp on my last post took me by surprise. I thought I'd neglected this blog for a year, not a year and three months!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that college students must necessarily start planning a graduation road trip sometime early in freshman year. Toward the end of last month, one of my elementary school friends and I managed to actually depart on a road trip. 

We started in Santa Barbara, and after a fairly uneventful drive, spent the first night at Pinnacles State Park, just outside King City. We had exciting weather the whole trip, though that first night it just gloomed at us. 

The local fauna were also impressive. I was in the middle of making dinner when my friend let loose a noise I had not thought her capable of producing, and pointed behind me. I turned to find a fox walking through our camp, completely unconcerned. We also had raccoons, deer, turkeys, and an enormous moth. 

 The enormous moth

The enormous moth with hand for scale

The next morning we packed up and headed for Lakes Basin campground, in Plumas County--an eight hour drive north. Along the way, we celebrated that finest of road trip traditions; lunch in a parking lot. 

We fed the car around then, too. Don't let its hopeful expression fool you.

After a day full of scattered thunderstorms and watching semi trucks passing each other--something that I will never not find amusing--we arrived in Lakes Basin, where we got the tent up to the sounds of distant thunder and happy dogs. We only intended to stay one night... but wound up taking two, enchanted by the campground and the abundant hiking in the area.

Hiking...

 The campsite, looking particularly winsome

The morning we realized there were no forks in the cook kit, only chopsticks. Didn't prevent us from enjoying pancakes and bacon...

Driven out by previous reservations (our high esteem of Lakes Basin is, apparently, widely shared), we headed south along the Eastern Sierras, to Bishop and Inyo National Forest, to see if we could rediscover a campground that I had fond memories of from my childhood. Unfortunately, things change, and the campground was entirely different from my memories. To top things off, we got major weather--dinner was partially rainwater, and never have I tried to cook a chili faster. We were wet and cold, so of course, we broke out the booze.

I don't think I've ever appreciated hard cider to such an extent in my life.

The drive was spectacular, however.

The next day, we drove home through Sequoia National Forest, and arrived in time for dinner, smelling to high heaven. A later reading of the car's odometer showed us that we'd put over 1200 miles on it. Looking at a map, that seems about right.

Now, staring at a the pile of study materials for the GRE, being cold and smelly sounds strangely attractive...

Stuff! It has happened!

So I've wound up renewing my learner's permit yet again (this makes time number three). You know you're behind the ball when the nice lady at the local DMV looks over the counter at you and tells you you should just take the test sooner rather than later. 

Other than that, I've been doing fieldwork and labwork (insert "Yeah, Isobelle, what's new about that?" comment here)--lots of swabbing tiny organisms that strenuously object. And then there's been writing. I've gotten distracted by about three different projects, and all of them are way too much fun. 

And I need to write the weekly book review. Heh, about that... Honestly, we'll be lucky if I manage to write it about something other than the California Driver's Handbook. (Informative but dry. The authors displayed a masterful sense of the pure idiocy of the human species--oops did I just type that?) 

Grumping aside, things have been a lot of fun. I managed to go off and see Pacific Rim and absolutely adored it. It's a smart giant robot movie. Can Del Toro please please please direct the Transformers franchise from here on out? Mako is the best female character I've encountered in mainstream cinema in a long time, and I am fully intending on going to go see it again with my mother as soon as possible. 

Chez Winter has also been the stage for an excellent rotation of houseguests. As the only home with an actual bed available, we've become the popular stopping place for all of our friends coming up to visit during the summer. Much food and delight has been had. 

And with that ridiculously mundane blog post, I take my leave. The writing calls to me. (Mostly calling me a slacker, let's be honest...)

The Writing Process

...because I hear this is a common question.

Never actually been asked it, but I hear about it a lot.

I don't have one 'writing process', a routine I sit down and follow every day. I have two: the ideal, and the real.

My ideal writing process would be this: get up at an hour that makes my parents and housemates cringe, have something tasty for breakfast, make a pot of tea (black tea, for preference) and arrange it on a tray with milk and sugar and other tea implements, and drag the whole thing back to my room. Then sit and write and have tea all morning, then go off on a bike ride to burn off the remainder of said caffeine before lunch.

My real writing process (during the school year) usually involves getting up at an hour even I think obscene, going to lab or class, running around and doing massively important things for the rest of the day, crawling into bed at something approaching midnight and writing until I fall asleep on the keyboard. It works--I'm far too tired to self-edit, and if we're to be entirely honest, the ideal writing process usually ends in me getting stuck on Tumblr for three hours instead of writing. I have been known to sit in a tree with my computer to get out of range of the router, but that's been an unpleasant prospect ever since the ants took over my favorite orange tree.

...This turned out to be a much sillier post than expected. Oh well. Such is life!

Summer Reviews: Podkayne of Mars, by Robert A. Heinlein

One of my big goals this summer was to become better acquainted with the classic novels in the genres I write. For my fantasy works, this means a lot of Tolkien, historical novels, and Shakespeare. But I have been dabbling of recent in science fiction--which is a long-winded way of making an excuse to read more Heinlein. 

Mom introduced me to Heinlein early on, and I have grown only more fond of his works as I've gotten older. Despite the accusations of misogyny leveled at his works (more on this later), I find them highly enjoyable. It is something to do with his voice. Though he establishes truly alien worlds and future societies, the things people do, think and say are as immediately familiar and understanding as the actions of, say, your next-door neighbor. Perhaps more so; neighbors can be weird. 

Before I progress further into the discussion of sexism in Heinlein, I must also confess that I have not read much of his  later writings, which I am informed are the most problematic. I did indeed have some problems with some of the remarks he made about important jobs women have--but while reading anything, it is important to take into account the world in which it was written. You do not pick up The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the expectation that Esmerelda will pick up a poker and beat the stupid out of Claude Frollo; similarly, you do not expect something written in the 1960s to live up to modern expectations of strong female characters. While I might object to that offspring-raising ought to take precedence especially for women, I love the fact that Podkayne wants to be a spaceship captain, and is accordingly good at math.

Another thing I enjoy about Poddy: while she wants a traditionally masculine career, she also enjoys being girly--dresses and all that. I like this; too often I've seen strong female characters who aren't allowed to enjoy looking female or being proud of being female. I don't like this trope, as it conflates femininity with weakness. Having a character who is cheerfully, enthusiastically fond of dresses and socializing at the same time as being good at math (I'm not and I wish I was!) and determined to succeed in her chosen field? Yes please. We need more of this, thanks. 

And yes, Podkayne hides how smart she is most of the time so she doesn't scare off the men. I understand that this is easily seen as sexist in our modern day and age, but this is less a recommendation that women do this than a depiction of a coping mechanism that a smart women might use in a society that is still sexist--which Poddy's is. Heinlein isn't scared of Poddy's smarts--after all, he wrote her. 

In Podkayne of Mars, Podkayne and her little brother, Clark (a menace to civilization as we know it) join their Uncle Tom on a trip from Mars to Earth with a stop en-route to Venus, a result of Uncle Tom's marvelous abilities in blackmail and a host of unexpected babies. The trip...doesn't go exactly to plan (and I'm not saying more because of spoilers). 

My biggest complaint is that little brother Clark keeps stealing the show. It is Clark who resolves the conflict, rather than Poddy, which I found annoying. Indeed, Clark has a far more active role in the conflict than Poddy, the main character, does, so I cannot say much about the plot, as we, and Podkayne, are largely ignorant of it. 

But there is Podkayne's world to distract us, and here Heinlein shines. Woven into the prose are loving descriptions of how this world works, how spaceships avoid solar storms, how the recycled air while on a spaceship becomes a problem, the necessary inoculations for traveling, different biological reactions to different substances... It is a new world, but one that makes sense, the alienness of it tempered by the very human eyes we see it through. I have found this consistent with other novels by Heinlein, and this is why I love his books so much. To depict the strange in such a way that it is immediately recognizable is a skill I desperately want to learn.

Summer Reviews: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

It being summer, I am trying to get caught up on all those books I wanted to read during the school year, but didn't manage to. And since I've been being dreadfully lazy about posting to my blog of recent I decided I'd better start writing up reviews for said books--that way I can't weasel out of blogging by whining "But I don't know what to blog about!"

The first book I'll review is Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers. I read this some time ago, but it was so delightful that I wanted to write a review of it--especially since many of the reviews on GoodReads claimed it was boring, which it most certainly was not. 

Grave Mercy's backcover copy:

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

I picked this book up at random during our annual Christmas Eve run to the local bookstore, tentatively hopeful of a good period piece that was a little dark. I got exactly what I'd hoped for and more.

Grave Mercy was a delight, a deftly woven tapestry of strong characters and complex intrigue. At frirst I was hesitant--it is all too easy for a book handling some of the themes this one does to slip into melodrama--but the elegant and deliberate pacing do not waste time wallowing in angst. The world is meticulously constructed and introduced, and I found myself reading for the worldbuilding almost as much as the characters (I love strong characters--unsurprising that mine run my life...), a rare occurance for me. 

The characters in Grave Mercy are wonderful. I did not like Ismae much at first; her devotion to her convent was irratating at times, though realistic, given her past. But she won me over in the end; her journey from a fanatic follower to an independent force with her own understanding of her relationship with her god was beautifully handled. So too was the romance. I was afraid that we'd get a plot in which the older, wiser hero gentles the fierce and unreasonable heroine. Not so--Ismae is not easily gentled, and when she and her love interest come to an understanding, it is a meeting of equals and based on a deep friendship and hard-earned trust. 

Yes, Grave Mercy is dense and slow, but this is not a bad thing. I enjoyed every moment of it, the complete immersion in a totally different world. When, visiting the bookstore on my birthday, I found Dark Triumph (its sequel), I bought it without hesitation.