Apologies for missing my Friday post deadline last week! I’ve been working like crazy to find a new job. Filling out dozens of applications, revising and re-revising my resume, drafting bunches of cover letters… I’ve had a handful of phone interviews that haven’t gone anywhere, and I have an in-person interview tomorrow (fingers crossed, friends!).
I’ve also been doing a little bit of freelance lesson writing for a study website, AND I’ve been trying to submit a short story I wrote to some literature magazines. So… I just got very busy the week whizzed past me without my even really noticing. I’ll have a full blog post up this Friday on schedule, though!
A couple updates: *I just finished reading a couple great novellas I will try to write up reviews for soon. *Currently re-reading A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske (for the fifth time!) in preparation for the sequel A Restless Truth releasing on Nov 1st. *Also planning to re-read the very witchy sapphic romance Payback’s a Witch later this week in the spirit of the Halloween season!
I’m an Old (™). This is a fact. I’m what the internet affectionately calls an “elder millennial.” I have had teens and 20-somethings treat me like I should, in fact, be crawling into my own grave of my own volition by now. And somehow, I find myself getting into tabletop gaming for the first time in my life, at my age?
I have been a nerd, or a geek, or whatever my whole life. I have at least dabbled in most nerdy pursuits at some point or another. But I never got into tabletop gaming (whether it be card games, or co-op board games, or RPGs) as a kid/teenager, when most nerds are getting into that kind of thing. It wasn’t that I avoided them on purpose. I was just never really exposed to it at any point in K-12. My mom was not a gamer of any kind. My younger brother was a gamer, but only video games and Pokémon cards (which I dabbled in a bit, for his benefit, but didn’t really play). Being a military brat, I didn’t have many friends and didn’t keep any for very long, and none of them were tabletop gamers of any kind. So, I just didn’t really know anything about them.
Even in college, when some people might get into it if they missed out on it the first time around, I managed to accidentally avoid it by virtue of not living on campus and getting the full “college experience.” My best friend did live on a college campus, and so dabbled in a few things. Through her, I played my one and only RPG campaign one summer between semesters (and it wasn’t even D&D, it was the much simpler Mage series of RPGs by White Wolf).
Now, somehow, through a twist of brain-weirdness, and because of my abominable habit of picking up new habits the way some people catch a cold, I find myself getting into several varieties of tabletop gaming for the first time ever. I have picked up a couple board games (and I don’t mean your more traditional family board games like Clue or Monopoly). I started with one that seemed accessible and easy to learn for a newbie (and also appealed to me as a Disney nerd): Villainous. Then I grabbed Azul, because it had such great reviews on gaming sites. I also bought one of the Hunt a Killer murder mystery games: Mystery at Magnolia Gardens. And now I’m considering the much more massive (and expensive) game Descent: Legends of the Dark by Fantasy Flight Games. I’ve been considering this one after doing a lot of research on games I play on solo mode. I’ve dragged my mother, and once my brother, into playing Villainous with me. And my mom really enjoyed the Mystery of Magnolia Gardens game, but mostly I’m on my own for this new stage in my nerd development, lol!
In addition, I bought a game (also by Fantasy Flight Games) called Legacy of Dragonholt. It’s a bit like a cross between a full RPG (such as D&D) and a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book on steroids. I have managed to drag my mother into doing this one with me as well, lol! We do a couple hours on the weekends. It’s not as flexible as I would like (and as I would no doubt get from a full RPG game), but it is entertaining and it’s a good stepping stone into other, bigger things.
I have ALSO started buying Magic the Gathering cards for the first time in my life! And this bad habit I can entirely blame on Twitter. Particularly, the artists I follow on Twitter. Several artists I love and follow on social media started sharing the pieces they painted for one of the new MtG expansions: Streets of New Capenna, and I was in raptures! It’s a mix of magic and 1920s Jazz Age aesthetics! I am obsessed with 1920s history/style right now! It was made specifically for ME. How could I resist?
I am trying (with middling success) to teach myself how to actually playMagic the Gathering. I even downloaded the MtG: Arena app to play that way, since I have no one to play with IRL. But so far the intricacies of the rules and the various card functions is proving rather opaque to me. So… *shrug*
This has all happened in just the last three or four months. Will it STICK long term? I don’t know. I’m ADHD. Jumping from hyperfixation to hyperfixation is just part of my mental makeup. But maybe. If I can figure out what the hell I’m actually DOING? And if I can find actual people IRL to play any of these things with? Then maybe.
If you are an expert in any of these things, and care to offer sage advice, I am all ears. If you are brand new to the world of tabletop gaming and want to muddle through these things with me in a blind-leading-the-blind sort of scenario, please also chime in! If you want to just point and laugh at The Old (™) muddling her way through all of this, feel free. I am well aware how silly I look, and I’m at peace with it.
I suck! I know! I’m sorry! I keep trying to keep this blog alive and then I keep disappearing. In my defense, it has been a really weird and difficult few months. I quit my job, I went on a big trip, and I’ve been sick with covid for the last TWO WEEKS (which is so frustrating! I’ve been miserable and zombie-fied for two weeks and it just keeps lingering and lingering!)
But let me backtrack to the beginning: In the first week of July, I officially left my position as office manager and book curator for the book sub box company I’ve been working for the last four years. I spent all of June working like an absolute MADWOMAN to prepare everything for the transition. I worked ridiculous hours, under quite a lot of stress, and all by myself. (I will add it was a perfectly amicable split. The owner and I were, and remain, good friends. It was just time for me to move on to other things).
I then spent most of July on a little vacation, enjoying the rare privilege of being voluntarily jobless. My plan was to give myself the month to relax and recharge, with the understanding that I would need to start looking for new work in earnest in August. I’d already been applying to some jobs (I’ve been trying to get my foot in the publishing/editing door) to little avail, but if that proved unsuccessful I was content to go find some wage work in retail somewhere just to pay the bills. In the meantime, I wrote some, I read a lot, I slept a good amount (I’d more than earned it). And I prepared for August.
Because August was going to be a big deal. You see, I’d been accepted to the Futurescapes Writers’ Workshop taking place Aug 8-12th, in Snowbird, Utah.
In an effort to take my writing more seriously, I applied to several workshops and writer’s residencies in the first half of the year. Futurescapes was the smallest/most affordable of the bunch, which made it a really good starting place for me. Some workshops (like the very famous Clarion and Clarion West workshops) are multiple weeks long and cost several thousand dollars. Futurescapes (like Clarion) is a workshop exclusively for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, BUT it’s a condensed high-intensity four-day event, and costs $1600 (which included the workshop itself as well as room & board).
Futurescapes had been running on a purely virtual model the last couple years because of the pandemic, and this was the first in-person workshop they had done since 2019. I thought it would be a good first outing for me, as I had no previous experience in any kind of writing workshop outside of a couple classes in my undergrad several lifetimes ago. And unlike most other workshops, the Futurescapes mentors are mostly publishing professionals such as agents and editors rather than authors (which offers some really great insider insight to getting the first publication).
This year’s workshop took place at a ski resort (off-season right now, of course) called Snowbird, up in the mountains about 45 minutes outside of Salt Lake City. The scenery was beautiful. The weather was shockingly gorgeous. When I left Houston it was 101 degrees. Up in the mountains it was about 69 degrees. I could barely contain my absolute glee over the cool temperatures. However, the altitude change was pretty brutal the first day. Houston is about 70 ft above sea level (in some spots its actually below sea level). Meanwhile, Snowbird was approximately 8100 ft above sea level! With the altitude difference, and the air being thinner and much drier than I’m used to, I was pretty ill the first day — headaches and dizziness and all that. And even after I acclimated, I still had to drink water NON. STOP. I jokingly told my mother I’d discovered I was so used to Houston humidity that I was, in fact, a fish. I had a huge 32 oz water bottle with me, and I emptied and refilled the thing around 6 times per day! Still, it was absolutely glorious up in the mountains, and a very large part of me did not want to leave!
Snowbird Resort (one of several hotel/lodges at the location)
The basic setup was this: accepted applicants are placed into groups of 6-7 and assigned a “primary mentor” (mostly in accordance with our previously-stated preferences of first choice). Most of our feedback comes from that primary mentor. However, on each day of the workshop, the groups also rotate to working with the other mentors, so that we all have an opportunity to receive feedback from and network with the other professionals in attendance. One day is spent critiquing a manuscript excerpt for each member of the group (not the whole manuscript, but a sizable opening chunk). The next day focuses on the draft of a query letter we would send out to prospective agents. And the third day focuses on the synopsis of the full novel (easily the most evil genre of writing in the business). And then there is always time for Q&A sessions, social activities, and general mingling/networking.
My primary mentor was Dongwon Song (they/them), an agent with Morhaim Literary and by far my top choice. I’ve been following Dongwon on Twitter since 2011. And I have told multiple people over multiple years that they would be dream agent if/when I ever got published. Dongwon was just as amazing in person as they are online and it was such a delight to be able to meet them and work with them and chat with them over multiple days. In addition, the other writers in my group were all amazing. I loved having the opportunity to read their manuscript excerpts, and get their feedback on my writing (I was probably the weakest one in the bunch if I’m being honest), and just talk with them all. One of the writers in my group actually had the amazing good fortune of landing an agent just before the workshop started! I was very impressed and happy for them, and of course, a tiny bit jealous.
Me, at the top of the mountain at Snowbird
One of the highlights, however, was actually being “adopted” by one of the other groups. Lol! For context, the workshop started with an open hour for breakfast in the morning, with coffee and muffins and such provided. You were not required to attend,so people came and went as they wished before things officially started each morning. Most of my group, just by coincidence, tended not to show up til right before we were starting our sessions, whereas I was usually one of the first down for breakfast (I’m just neurotic that way). So I would grab a table and a couple other early birds would join me, and before long the table would be filled with mostly people from one of the other groups. So we chatted a lot in between official events. And just as a matter of course, I ended up hanging out with the people in this other group rather a lot during meals and break periods and such. So much so that on our free unscheduled morning we all decided to take a tram the resort provided up to the top of the mountain where the skiiing starts in winter. And then, the group invited me out to dinner with them on the last evening, and announced they were “officially adopting” me. It was ridiculously touching. I really adore all of them. And were are all keeping in touch via email and discord (which is true of my actual critique group as well, of course).
View from the top of the mountain (note the rain in the distance!)
The actual critique sessions themselves were hugely helpful. I learned so much about both craft issues and the business-side of the publishing world. I got a bunch of really useful feedback and suggestions on my manuscript. This feedback did, unfortunately, result in me feeling like I probably need to explode my entire manuscript, dismantle it, and try to put it back together again (better this time). And it was valuable feedback to receive particularly because I write mostly in a vacuum — I don’t have a writers group to routinely talk to or share work with, and I had gotten to a point where i just could not tell what was, and was not, working. So it was information I needed. Did I hope I was a little better off than I apparently am? Sure. But that’s the nature of the beast.
My critique group, with Dongwon Song (in the navy shirt and yellow shoes)
It was an absolutely wonderful experience. I learned a ton. I had a lot of great conversations with interesting people. And I had the opportunity to spend time in an environment I would never otherwise have had access to. If you are a genre writer looking to learn more about the publishing business and your own craft, I highly recommend checking out Futurescapes.
Hello, first of all I wanted to share an update about my baby boy, Mr. Erasmus Flattery. He had his surgery last Friday, and we picked him up from surgery that evening. The surgery was extensive and, frankly, horrifying to hear about. They quite literally made him a new urethra and the vet said he will essentially “pee like a girl” now. But the vet said the surgery went very well. He woke up from the anesthesia just fine, purring and being his adorable self, and all the vet techs were enamored with him (as they well should be! He’s the sweetest thing!).
He is NOT happy about the cone.
The real trick is going to be the next 2 weeks. We have to keep a cone on him for 2 whole weeks (cat owners will know how difficult this is!) and keep him from running around too much (we have a large crate for him for at least the first few days). It is vital that he not have any infection or pull his stitches. If he licks his stitches it could cause an infection or cause the new urethra to close up, which would be almost certainly life-threatening. So the next 2 weeks are going to be stressful. But if we get him safely past the next 2 weeks he should be totally fine, excepting for a permanent diet change to a prescription urinary health food.
My mother and I crunched the numbers, and we figure that between the two of us, with three cats with various medical issues, we have paid the vet approximately $10k in the last month. So, budgets are very very tight right now.
I won’t harp on it much more, I promise, but I would like to share my new kofi again, just in case. If you can spare even a couple bucks toward the care and feeding of 12 cats, including several sick kitties, it would be greatly appreciated. My kofi is at https://ko-fi.com/nightforestbooks
In other news, I’m in a bit of a reading slump right now. I’m still reading, but it is going very slowly right now, and I’m also doing a lot of RE-reading. When my stress and anxiety levels are really bad, re-reading all my comforting favorites is about all I can handle. So I will definitely still have posts up the next couple weeks, but they will probably not be for new and upcoming releases. In the works, I have a book review of a few middle-grade graphic novels by Ethan M. Aldridge, a reminiscence about reading Tamora Pierce’s Immortals Quartet, and perhaps a discussion of some romance novels I’ve been devouring the last year or so.
I also wanted to hear everyone’s thoughts on something I’m planning on: I’ve been thinking about doing a big read-though and discussion for The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir in preparation for the release of Nona the Ninth in September. I’ve already read Gideon, so that would be a re-read for me, but I had not yet gotten to Harrow so that would be new for me. So my thought is that I would re-read and discuss Gideon the Ninth throughout the month of July, and then Harrow the Ninth in August, and finally jump into Nona when it is released in mid-September. I would invite people to read along with me and split each book into about fourths (a fourth for each week of the month), and then I would do some in-depth discussion and some guesses for what might be coming in Nona. Is this something anyone would be interested in? Would people like to join me on a read-through?
Relatedly, have you seen the full Nona the Ninth poem that Tor.com revealed? Here it is:
One of my best friends (who first badgered me into reading The Locked Tomb books) and I were freaking out over this poem, trying to figure out what it MEANS, what clues are in it, or what clues are in the previous books that might explain it! Our reactions pretty much looked like this:
If you had any reactions to the poem, please feel free to share! I’d love to know we’re not the only ones freaking out. Also, any thoughts on the possibility of a Locked Tomb read-through? Let me know!
Hello folks, I have a personal post here today, and I am asking for a little assistance if anyone is so inclined. I have started a ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/nightforestbooks
I had initially envisioned as a place to perhaps receive tips to support this blog, and I have plans to print and sell a little zine/chapbook thingy I wrote last year. These are still in the works, but for the moment I have had to pivot to requesting donations to support the work my mother and I do to care for 12 rescue cats.
I had been thinking about doing that for awhile as well, just to help defray the costs of the general upkeep of feeding and caring for 12 cats. But I have finally gone ahead and set it up now, because my mother and I could really use some assistance right now.
In the span of about a month, we had three different cats develop medical issues, that have continued to compound.
First, Erasmus got sick, and developed a severe bladder issue, resulting in crystals forming in his urethra, blocking it, and causing a major infection. He was in the care of the vet for four days, had to have all kinds of procedures, catheters, meds, etc. But he seemed to have made a full recover when we finally brought him home.
Then, Freya developed a fever and vomiting, and when we got her checked out, we discovered that she is starting to develop kidney issues due to her age, that might result in kidney failure. She’s on a medication for that now, and a diet change, but we have to monitor it carefully to make sure it doesn’t get worse.
And THEN, our old man Grady stopped eating. We already knew he had hyperthyroidism, and he’s been on meds for that for about six months, so we assumed this was a sign that his thyroid was worse and we needed to change his medication. But it turned out a lot of his teeth had gone bad. He had to have nine teeth surgically removed, which was not a cheap procedure!!!!
And THEN, Erasmus got sick again. We took him back to the vet, and the crystals have already reformed after only 3-4 weeks, which means it is a chronic issue that is going to require a very serious major surgery.
He is scheduled for the surgery on Friday. I have had to take out a $4500 loan to pay for that. And for all the vet visits and procedures of the past month, my mother and I paid somwhere around $3-4000 in total.
AND we are going to have to shift to prescription diet can food for all three of these cats, so the budget of their general care is going to go up as well.
Long story short (too late, I know!): we need all the help we can get. Any help at all is greatly appreciated. If you are so inclined, you can donate at the ko-fi link here: https://ko-fi.com/nightforestbooks and you can also see a full “Cat Roll Call” with photos and descriptions of all 12 cats we currently take care of. Thanks everyone!
(And don’t worry, there will still be an actual book-related post on Saturday as scheduled.)
Bonus post this week! I didn’t want to skip a book-focused post for Saturday, but I also wanted to just chat with you all for sec, so… extra post it is! And I’m here to talk about what we have all be up to lately. On one hand, it feels like none of us have been up to much of anything since the pandemic started. On the other hand, it feels like everything is so crazy and stressful that surely we’ve all be doing SOMETHING or another, right?
So I’d love to hear what everyone has been up to the lately. I mentioned in my first post coming back that I’ve been reading quite a bit, I’ve been writing (a lot), and I’ve been working like crazy. And, of course, all the hobbies keep piling up. I collect hobbies almost as much as I collect books, apparently.
I’m still working on cross-stitch, a new crafting hobby I started at the beginning of hte pandemic in March 2020. I was really proud when I finished this pattern of the Disneyland Castle:
I kept up with the cross-stitch habit pretty consistently in 2020 and the first half of 2021, but it started to fall apart in the second half of last year. BUT! I have started on another pattern, and I’ve bought far more patterns than I will possibly be able to manage this year. Hopefully I can get back into the habit and it’ll be fun to see how far I get.
I’m trying to relearn how to draw and paint. I took a couple art courses a lifetime ago when I was in community college (mostly in pencil drawing), and I’ve never had any actually training in painting. I was never a great artist even though I love art. I’m… okay, I guess. Still, I’ve decided this is the year I just say “fuck it” and just start making art when I feel like it, and the skill will hopefully come as I go along. Here’s a couple of the pencil drawings I’ve done recently:
And, my very first attempts at acrylic painting EVER, which I did last month! –
Last August, I flew to Omaha to visit my best friend. It was a bit of a risk, of course, though when I bought the plane tickets it had been looking like things were finally starting to quiet down a bit (boy, what a false alarm THAT turned out to be). But I hadn’t seen my best friend since 2018 and I was desperate to see her. And we were very careful and I managed to avoid catching covid, thank goodness.
In other news, I have applied for the Clarion West Summer Writer’s Workshop. I’ve been wanting to do this for ages, and never felt ready, either in terms of skill or in terms of the necessary free time and financial support. I don’t know that any of those three categories are really ready this year, either, but I decided it was time to finally TRY. Most people don’t get accepted to Clarion West on the first attempt, so I’m not holding my breath. But I figured, if I can’t get accepted until my third or fourth (or whatever) application attempt, that still means I have to START APPLYING eventually. So. I did. I should be hearing about acceptance/rejection (let’s be real, I’m just waiting for the confirmed rejection) by the end of March.
In addition, I’m hoping to write a couple short stories this year and start shopping those out to lit magazines. I have just finished second revisions of my novella, and I’m thinking about finding a few beta readers to see what more needs to be done with it before I start thinking about querying for an agent.
The long and the short of it is that I’m DONE WAITING. It’s time to gain some forward momentum SOMEHOW.
So how about you, dear readers? What have you been doing during all the craziness of the last couple years? Just surviving is more than enough, of course! I applaud everyone who has gotten through the last two years with even a modicum of sanity left. But if you’ve been keeping yourselves busy with anything interest or fun, I’d love to hear about it! Or if you’ve been doing nothing but working and watching Netflix, I’d love to hear about that too! (My own tv-viewing habits are sporadic and idiosyncratic, so feel free to tell me what good things you’re watching!)
Please tell me you get this reference? Don’t make me feel old…
I keep trying to do this, and I keep failing, but here we go again. One last time. I swear, if I fail to keep up with the blog this time, I should probably just wave the white flag.
The problem is that the amount of free time I have is very limited (between work, family obligations, and all those stupid grown-up things like house-cleaning and grocery shopping), and I have a LOT of hobbies. I have so far been unable to find a balance that allows me to fit the maximum number of hobbies into my very limited store of free time.
But of course, my main goal has been to write more. If I have only one or two hours of free time all week, and I want to write, I am going to choose fiction writing over blog writing. Just a fact of life. And that actually WORKED(!) for me last year. I wrote more in 2021 than I have ever written in a single year in my life. Over 200,000 words! I finished the first draft of one novel I started in Nov 2020, wrote the entire first draft of a novella, and then about ¾ of the first draft of ANOTHER novel in the second half of the year. So, writing has been going SHOCKINGLY well lately (*knock on wood*) (well, I say that, it HAD been going well until December and I haven’t been able to get back into it the last couple months), and I don’t want to mess that up.
That said, I also read a lot. And I do want to share what I read, and write reviews, and promote the books and authors I really love. I talk a lot about the books I’ve been reading on Twitter, but it’s not the same as writing a full review, and I know it. I want to do that for the authors I think deserve more attention. It’s just so hard to find the time! And yes, I know I could post reviews on Goodreads. But the amount of time it takes to write a semi-decent review is going to be the same whether I post it here or on Goodreads, and frankly, I don’t LIKE Goodreads, so…
In any case, I’d like to try again. I want to make this work. So, here’s my plan. I am going to try to give myself a strict schedule, and block out time specifically for blog writing/posting once a week. And I am going to wait to start posting until I have a few pre-written and ready to go to give myself a bit of a buffer (for instance, I’m writing this in mid-February but I probably won’t post it until I’m ready to get the weekly-schedule going). And am I going to try to keep myself to a weekly post schedule… I’m thinking every Saturday evening, for the moment.
Alright alright alright!
Not every post will be a book review, of course. You’ll notice from my old posts that I did sometimes talk about other things, that will no doubt remain true. But I will be focusing most of my energy on book reviews, both of books I read last year and kept MEANING to review, and of books I’m reading this year. And I suppose… (*grumble grumble grumble*) I could maybe possibly make a new Goodreads account and cross-post reviews there. Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t like Goodreads interface, or the attitudes of some of the readers/reviewers there, or the weird amount of power Goodreads has acquired over authors… Anyway… not my point, moving on.
So, I guess if I have any readers left (not likely, I realize, but one never knows…), this is your heads-up to start expecting posts from me again.
Hello all! I apologize for the long silence. It’s been a busy couple of weeks. After the freak snowpocalypse down here in Texas, I had a rough week without electricity for nearly five whole days, and water off and on as well. It was very cold and very stressful, particularly because my mother and I rescue strays (we have 10 cats and 7 dogs right now!) and it was far more difficult to keep THEM safe and warm than it was to keep ourselves warm. But we all survived, and by the following weekend the temperatures were going back and it almost felt like the whole experience had been some insane fever dream.
It kinda feels like the week didn’t even happen. Like the whole week was some kind of strange black hole.
In any case, after that I had a ton of work to get caught up on and last week and this week I’ve just been working my ass off to make sure I stayed on schedule. Which I did, thank goodness. But it’s been a very exhausting couple of weeks, and I haven’t had the energy to do much reading or writing by the time I get home, so I usually just end up staring blankly at the tv for a couple hours before passing out.
Right now, I’m trying to finish a handful of books, and then I’ll start putting together some reviews. I’m also debating whether or not I want to pay for the premium access (or whatever it’s called) on Disney+ so I can watch Raya and the Last Dragon without having to wait god knows how long. If I do, I’ll make sure to do a review of that as well, so stay tuned!
In other news, I’ve been writing more consistently of late and I started posting a fanfic on Ao3 (Archive Of Our Own). I haven’t written, let alone publicly shared, a fanfic since 2005, so this is a very big deal for me. This fic is also the longest sustained bit of writing I’ve managed to keep up with since 2011 (I’m currently at around 60k words and still going!). I’ve been debating whether I wanted to share a link to the fic here or not because, frankly, I am far more comfortable with people reading my stuff when they can’t attach it to ME personally. Only my two best friends and one or two Tumblr friends even know what my Ao3 handle is. So how about this, if anyone is REALLY curious, its a new fic, and its in the Dresden Files (tv-verse) fandom. If you find it, congrats. DON’T TELL ME, I’ll die of embarrassment.
Oh yeah! And I finally finished this cross-stitch project I’ve been working on for months. So I’ve got that going for me, I guess.
Ok, that’s all I’ve got for now. Hopefully I’ll be back shortly with a book review or two. I hope you’re all doing well! Bye!
Please indulge for a few minutes as I go far off theme (I do mention a book though!) and allow me to express my love for tennis.
I love tennis. More specifically, I love to WATCH tennis. I don’t play tennis. Everyone always asks me this. Have you ever noticed that pretty much the only sports people assume if you like to watch it, you MUST play it, are tennis and golf? Every two out of three people in the United States are probably football fans, baseball fans, or both, but when someone says they were enjoying watching the Super Bowl last Sunday, you pretty NEVER assume they must PLAY football as well. Right? But apparently the only people who enjoy watching tennis (or golf) must be people who also play it?
So let me get that out of the way: no, I don’t play tennis. I think, now, that I might have enjoyed it when I was younger (perhaps), but I was never given the opportunity to learn it as a kid. And as I got into high school it became very clear that I was never going to be the athletic type. I have absolutely HORRENDOUS hand-eye coordination, so even those physical activities I enjoy are NOT the kinds that involve either catching or hitting balls out the air. (I’m reasonably fit and stay that way with other things: walking, swimming, some light weight training, etc.)
But I LOVE TENNIS. I watched it intermittently as a kid because my dad liked to watch it for awhile. I didn’t watch a ton, just sort of catching a match here or there, and I only knew a handful of the very well-known names in the early 90s. I liked it, but it wasn’t something I focused on or obsessed over.
It was in college that I found myself watching it again, with more focus and interest. Within a year I had gotten hooked. I understood all the basics of the game, I was learning all the major (and not so major) players, and I was beginning to see the nuances. NOW, twelve or thirteen years on, I am kind of an expert, if I do say so myself. I’m pretty sure I could commentate if I really wanted to. I know almost every player in the top 100 of both men’s and women’s by name AT LEAST, and I’ve seen most of the play at least once. I can analyze styles and tactics. I know stats. I just KNOW THIS SHIT.
And my god I love it. I have never much cared about the usual sports people watch. I find baseball extremely boring. I don’t mind basketball or football, but I’ve just never CARED. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why I liked tennis, but not those other more commonly-watched sports. I think it simply comes down to the fact that I much prefer solo sports, over team sports. I find solo efforts far more impressive and compelling. So I love tennis. I also love a bunch of other less-than-common sports: motorcycle racing, gymnastics, figure skating (yes, figure skating is a sport, I DARE YOU TO DO A QUADRUPLE AXEL OFF A KNIFE SLICING THROUGH ICE).
I cannot do justice to the wonders of tennis. The speed, the agility, the power, the grace, the endurance. Few athletes of other sports are in such amazing physical shape as a good tennis player. Few other sports require the constant running and moving and endurance that a Majors match in tennis requires (no baseball player is running back and forth and smashing 100 mph balls for two or three or four hours STRAIGHT with almost no breathers). A good tennis match is a little like ballet (and ballet dancers are also athletes, I will fight you on this).
You know who else loved tennis and could absolutely do justice to its beauty: David Foster Wallace. (Side note: unlike me, Wallace did actually play junior’s tennis, and by all accounts he was pretty damn good.) He wrote a whole series of essays about tennis, and they are fantastic! Poetry! About tennis! Probably his most famous is this essay about Roger Federer published in the New York Times: “Roger Federer as Religious Experience.” You can read all five of his essays in this collection: String Theory: David Foster Wallace On Tennis. He says it when I never could. I just love it.
Like David Foster Wallace, Roger Federer is definitely my favorite player. He’s the first player I really remember watching as a kid, even. He is… magical. He’s probably nearing the end of his career now — he’s 39, which is getting up there for a tennis player, and he’s had a couple knee surgeries — but even if his record is eventually broken (it always happens eventually because sports just keep evolving and people keep finding new limits for the human body), I will still believe is the greatest men’s tennis player ever. I say MEN’S tennis player, because of course, there’s always Serena Williams.
And, I mean, need a say more? Serena Williams has won 23 Majors. She won her last Major while PREGNANT. Can any athlete beat that? No, probably not. The woman is power incarnate. End of story.
I could go on about all the other players I love… (I even named one of my cats Petra, after Czech women’s tennis player Petra Kvitova), but I won’t. You get the picture.
All of this has been brought on by the fact that the first major of the season, The Australian Open, started on Sunday (at the same time as the Super Bowl, so you can guess what I was doing while the rest of my family was watching football). Last year was rough for those of us who are obsessed with tennis because most of the season was canceled due to COVID (which was absolutely the right decision, but I still missed it!). The season is still going to be… different… this year because of the continuing pandemic, but tournaments are finding ways of dealing with it, and hopefully the vaccine will allow more tournaments to return to mostly-normal throughout the year. But in the meantime, I have the Australian Open right now! I have tennis again, and all’s right with the world.
Hello all, and welcome to my first blog post of the new year! We are now nearly a week into 2021 and, unsurprisingly, it mostly just feels like more of the same. I don’t really DO New Year’s resolutions, per se, but I do have a few goals in mind, most of them book-related, of course!
I first wanted to share my overall reading progress for 2020! I had a goal to read 50 books in the year. I didn’t quite make it, but I read 46 which is still very good (for me at least! I have a friend who routinely reads between 175-200 every single year, but we won’t go there…) I keep a log of my total reading hours in my bullet journal, color-coded for format (print, audiobook, ebook, comic/graphic novel, and fanfiction). My total reading hours was 458 hrs, which is approximately 19 days! My highest total hours per format was, unsurprisingly, audiobook at 294 hours. Most of my reading is done by audiobook these days — and for the record, I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with this, or that it is substantively different from print reading in any way! Still, I am hoping to work a bit more print-reading into my schedule this year. I think I’ve mentioned this on the blog before, but I USED to read voraciously, and severe depression killed my ability to read for nearly a decade. Audiobooks saved my life, but I am hoping to work my way back up to something at least resembling my old reading habit. It’s slow progress, but it is progress…
I am also going to continue on with the “Finish the Series” Reading Challenge I joined last year. For last year I finished three series that I had previously started: the Artemis Fowl series, the Old Kingdom Series, and the Wayward Children series (at least until the new one comes out later this month!)
For this year, I am going to try to finish the Percy Jackson series, which I started last year (so this year it counts as “previously-started”!), and possibly the Redwall series. I want to do a massive Redwall re-read, and I own and read MOST of the series — having read them all during the HEIGHT of my reading days in high school and the first couple years of college — but as I got more and more busy with college and part-time jobs, I lost track and never finished the last five books in the series: High Rhulain, Eulalia!, Doomwyte, The Sable Quean, The Rogue Crew. I could, of course, just read those five and have done with it. But I think it would be fun, if a tad ambitious, to try to do a re-read of the whole series from the beginning (and yes, I prefer to read in publication order, don’t @ me).
I also intend to continue trucking along on my way through the Dresden Files books, though I have little illusion of finishing the whole series this year… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I also have several writing goals, of course. Last year I continued work on one novel, and started a second, while also tinkering with planning/outlining for a novella and (possibly) a screenplay. I participated in both Camp Nanos in April and July, and actual Nano in November, though I didn’t “win” them. All told, between all projects (and the blog) I wrote 123,132 words! I would like to have a similar total word count for 2021, and better if possible. I am hoping to finish the one novel (Holes in Your Coffin) and make significant progress on the second (Onyx Seal), and I would REALLY like to have one short story or novella done. I am INFAMOUSLY bad at writing SHORT and CONCISE, but I think it would be good practice for me, and might also give me a (albeit very small) chance to maybe get something published while I continue to try to finish a whole novel. But who knows…
I have other goals as well, of course: saving money, continuing to improve my exercise routine, that sort of stuff, but that’s boring so we won’t get into that here.
I’d love to hear about your goals for 2021! Books to read, things to write or make or do! Please share in the comments!
Amanda Haimoto Rudd 