Posted on by JenniferShelby

Battling for Charity

Happy spring, Side Questers!

The annual charity battle that I’ve been joining over the past three years has come and gone, an exciting and much-needed boost of fun and silliness right when it’s needed most.

It was a unexpectedly dramatic battle, perhaps because the rest of the world is in such turmoil and we were all desperate for something positive. At its essence, we are meant to create memes to get people to buy our team’s sticker, and all of the money raised goes to predetermined ecological efforts. This year there were two projects in the Amazon rainforest to fund, as well as a habitat project for frosted elfin butterflies.

At the end of the battle, the team who has raised the most money through these stickers is named the champion and has bragging rights forevermore. But to keeps things fun, the organizers throw in some chaos. If someone on your team happens to be online when the buttons go live, they can race to buy the button, and, once bought, a mystery goals is revealed. For instance, the team who raises the most money over the next seven hours will get a larger, or holographic sticker. That’s going to give the team a huge boost over the competition, so everyone scrambles. Other times, it’s a riff on a inside joke, like the button that hid each teams behind a crab. It’s absolutely chaotic and fun.

My team has been named Ice Pack for five or so years, and our animal characters are all best on ones that live at the North and South Pole. But this year, in order to not retraumatize any members or risk having any viral memes co-opted by baddies, we were told to change our name. And yeah, there was drama. Some people made very good arguments and walked away. There was tension between members when people started bringing forth new potential names, enough that I had to remind myself that this was meant to be fun. After a vote, we were the Frosty Fiends and we never looked back.

At one point, Pickles the cat flopped over on my keyboard mid-meme, quickly doubling, tripling, quadrupling a meme-story I was working on. The musk ox caught in the middle caught my eye. I cropped him out, doubled, tripled his length again, and the muskoxipede was born.

And sure, the muskoxipede is not a real animal, but we also have a fictional Pedro Pascal as the Mandalorian and Joel from the Last of Us in our gang as “Frost Daddy” because Claire the polar bear fell in love with him three years ago. Sometimes you just have to run with this stuff when your cat flops onto your keyboard.

The difference between writing my stories and the ones I meme for the battle is the team factor. Things move quick in the charity battle, and I wouldn’t get a second chance with the muskoxipede, so I ended up crowdsourcing his personality, and presenting the responses in meme format. And that just exploded. Note to self, when you have an audience, use them.

This ridiculous critter was the highlight of the battle for me, especially when Animalia Marginalia, a team based on the animals found in medieval illuminations, tried to steal him. Fortunately our bloodthirsty stoat, Nat, was on hand to rescue him.

The Frosty Fiends were neck and neck with the Goth Gang for first place for the last half of the battle, but the Frosty Fiends had some allies who stepped in with donations at the zero moment, and somehow, we won!

More importantly, the conservation projects won, with all the gangs raising over 180K USD. You can learn more about the individual projects and charity battle here if you’re curious.

a golden key with a green ribbon tied into a bow sits as a page break

Charity battle side quest aside, work continues on my novel, A Binding of Spellwork and Story, made possible by a creation grant from artsnb. I knew this book would be a challenge when I first applied for the grant, but I did underestimate just how much of a challenge. I’m glad for the freedom to pursue that the grant provides, but as the due date looms, I will also be very relieved to finally complete the first draft.

Sometimes you hear of authors saying “this was the hardest thing I ever wrote” and, for me, that is this book (so far, of course). It’s usually followed by a paragraph on why it was worth it. I really really hope that paragraph happens on the other side of this.

For now, I persist.

a golden key with a green ribbon tied into a bow sits as a page break

That’s it for this month, Side Questers. Hopefully next month I’ll be excited proclaiming The End on this novel and diving head-first into one of the projects I’ve had to put on ye olde backburner. Hopefully the extra burst of energy we get from spring boosts us all.

Don’t forget to take a break from all the terrible to do something for your creative soul. Joy is resistance too.

Take care,

a signature line has a picture of a woman wearing glasses in front of a writing desk. The words Jennifer Shelby author entangle a stick with a green butterfly resting on it
Posted on by JenniferShelby

Printing with the sun

Hello Enchanted Side Questers,

I’m afraid this month’s side quest got a little… obsessive. It might have been the heat, which shuts down my brain in many ways, or stress, or just not having enough time to devote to creativity. In fact, it was an awesome creative outlet that really only took a few minutes a day.

My friend Aimee set me the video that started it all, showing someone making anthotype sunprints (like a cyanotype) with turmeric and fixing it with Borax. “Huh,” I thought, “I have that in my cupboard.” Then I did some internet sleuthing to find the full recipe, which you can find here.

It ended up being the most soothing, lovely bit of creativity. There were just so many variables and things that I couldn’t control that I didn’t have any choice but to let go and enjoy the process. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the chemical reaction of the borax + water developer is an immediate and thrilling bit of magic when you brush it on.

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I’ve spent August printing stories with the sun
Jennifer Shelby
Aug 21

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Hello Enchanted Side Questers,

I’m afraid this month’s side quest got a little… obsessive. It might have been the heat, which shuts down my brain in many ways, or stress, or just not having enough time to devote to creativity. In fact, it was an awesome creative outlet that really only took a few minutes a day.

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My friend Aimee set me the video that started it all, showing someone making anthotype sunprints (like a cyanotype) with turmeric and fixing it with Borax. “Huh,” I thought, “I have that in my cupboard.” Then I did some internet sleuthing to find the full recipe, which you can find here.

It ended up being the most soothing, lovely bit of creativity. There were just so many variables and things that I couldn’t control that I didn’t have any choice but to let go and enjoy the process. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the chemical reaction of the borax + water developer is an immediate and thrilling bit of magic when you brush it on.

I soon dug out my old microwave flower press (a terra cotta beast I picked up at a yard sale decades ago because it was pretty) and put it to use, drying pressed flowers and vegetation in minutes rather than months or years.

I started appreciating the shape of things in a new way. My eyes tend to hunger for colour and texture, but caterpillar damage and flaws were suddenly beautiful because they could create such visual interest in the prints. A pristine feather is beautiful, but a raggedy one has drama. Yesterday’s squash flowers became candles, petunias became dresses, and a skeletonized leaf became one of my most prized treasures.

“What are you going to do with those?” asked my youngest, as my pile of prints got unweildy.

And… I don’t know. I want to frame some of them. I want to look at them. Like drying herbs, storing squash, pickling cukes, and the flowers I grow because they dry so pretty, it’s another way to save a bit of summer for the dark winter days when you need the reminder of green plants and flowers and a sun that can print a story on a page.

a deer with flowers on his antlers sits beside words that read Jennifer Shelby's nature notes

We’ve been in an extreme drought with forest fires cropping up left and right. The trees are suffering, the bottom leaves shrivelled green and falling off in gentlest breezes. It’s been hard, and autumn is happening very early as trees are choosing dormancy over the risk of remaining for what little summer is left.

I have checked the springs in the enchanted forest, and some are still holding out, providing much needed water for the wild critters. We put out an extra hummingbird feeder after the population at ours exploded. I researched why and it turns out flowers can’t produce as much nectar in a drought, natch. Wow are they entertaining, aggressive little creatures.

Since our rain barrels went dry, we’ve been loading the truck with containers and filling them at the river for the garden, which it has been thriving on. And because it is a little oasis of green, the bees are bumbling happily, pollinating everything without any help from us.

Still… we would very much appreciate some rain. Days of it. Just pouring on the roof while I stay inside and read or write and do lovely, forgotten rainy day things.

a golden key with a green ribbon tied into a bow sits as a page break

Work continues on my Binding novel, made possible by a grant from artsnb. It has grown and stretched and tells me “I think I’d like to be a duology” now. I think it might be right.

The ‘fictional essay’ I mentioned in July’s newsletter, written from the perspective of Binding’s main character, has been accepted for publication! I will share those details as soon as I am able. It’s a nice little boost for my novel, and also a lovely marketing opportunity.

Happily, they don’t require an exclusivity period, so I can also include it in my short story collection that I’ll be putting out to coincide with the Polaris launch of the Lunar Codex in (hopefully) December 2025, in which some of my short stories are being archived on the Moon. The Binding book should be done by then, so it will give me the chance to share that world with a wider audience. I’m also hoping to tuck a Little Banned Bookshop short story in there, the reason being that I think some local reporters will be interested in a local author’s work going to the Moon. Fingers crossed!

a golden key with a green ribbon tied into a bow sits as a page break

That’s all the news I have to share in this letter, friends. I hope you are able to get away from the news cycle and make some magic to protect your heart and creative spirit. Did you find any new side quests this month? I’d love to hear about them!

Talk soon,

a signature line has a picture of a woman wearing glasses in front of a writing desk. The words Jennifer Shelby author entangle a stick with a green butterfly resting on it
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Shh… don’t scare the story

Do you ever decide to ignore that little voice in your head that says “I’m not sure this is how the story is supposed to go” and plough ahead anyway? I know better, but I do it anyway. Sometimes I think I need to shake the story loose, but all it seems to do is make the story hide deeper in the shadowy depths of my mind.

That’s what happened with my “Binding of Spellwork and Story” novel that I’ve committed to write AND received a generous grant from artsnb to do just that.

I wrote about 22 000 words, hemming and hawing, poking and prodding. Maybe it’s too writerly. It probably is too writerly. This is a word I use that intend the same way that the art world uses “painterly” for techniques that makes the painter real and present in the final artwork. Painterly gets a whole term in art, while writers are not supposed to present in the finished “product” (here the quotations are to represent me cringing because I referred to art as a product). Writers are told things like “never break the fourth wall.” As a reader and a writer who delights in any sort of authorly asides, I co-opted the word painterly back in grade 11 art history class and wrote things are writerly as my rogue heart desired. Look at my brush strokes! An author was here, a human, a (gasp, horror) WRITER wrote this.

Then I had to stop that if I ever wanted to get published. There’s a whole thing about this, “first you have to learn the rules before you can break them,” but you also have to PROVE you know the rules, which is a whole other thing.

Then along comes AI and I’m thinking it’s time to get writerly AF. Forget about creating a story where the writer is ignorable, now is the time to make writers a FEATURE rather than a bug.

So when it came up when I workshopping those early chapters, I got quiet and paid attention to what was being said. “I’m not sure how appealing this will be to non-writers,” one writer told me, “but I like it.” This gave me pause, because that’s the trick isn’t it? Convincing non-writers to like something deliciously writerly.

And I think I need a challenge like that to really lose myself into a project. So these past weeks, I’ve been dismantling the story that was starting to feel forced and stalled, and instead, I’ve been gently coaxing the story it wants to be, and I want it to be, to come out of hiding. Some writers call this plotting, but it feels more like trying to soothe a feral cat so they come out of the hole they’ve hidden themself in after I tried to pick them up before they were ready.

Which requires I put my ego aside and learn oh so much patience. Bless the writers who don’t need to plot before they write; they clearly sacrifice to very different gods than I.

As I write these words, the feral story has started responding to my pleading mews and is revealing itself, however slowly. It nibbles the food I’ve left out for it when I’m sleeping. Patience. We’ll get there.

Last month I mentioned that my first ever book fair was coming up and on this side of time, I’m happy to report that it was a smashing success.

It wasn’t without its tense moments. The first few hours, as readers trickled past, not interested in me or my book and the smile on my face started to ache, my heart began to sink and oh gods what if I don’t sell a single book. But then the cozy fantasy readers, who had apparently just slept late (very cozy of them, if I’m honest), arrived and everything got much better after that.

I was especially thrilled when an academic of banned books picked up a copy of Care and Feeding of Your Little Banned Bookshop. I hope they leave a review!

The real stars of the spring ephemerals are the fawn lilies (aka trout lilies or dogtooth violets) and trilliums, followed by the tiny white violets that grew in the Lover’s Lane of the woods where I grew up and now, my lawn. But this year, I was all about the inedible cinnamon fern fiddleheads.

As they grow, they huddle together, a tightknit little fern family. Encouraging each other, no doubt, as they gather their bravest thoughts and slowly unfurl.

My family’s been doing a lot of this this spring. Leaning on each other, supporting each other through difficult things. It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve got each other.

And of course I have one of those brains that sees faces everywhere and cheerfully assign characterhood to just about everything so the horsey little fella eyeing us in the picture above while his hair flops downward and a line of drool escapes him unbeknownst, well, that’s just joy.

That’s my news for May. The leaves are just about half-sized here and I get a lovely gasp of green delight still when I look out a window or go outside. The hummingbird feeder is up and my laundry basket is full of tomatoes and petunias traveling inside and back out again while we get through the final frosts of the year. I’m excited to get the garden in and welcome the fireflies this June. What are you most looking forward to this summer?

Until then, keep writing, keep reading, keep dreaming.

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Care and Feeding of Your Little Banned Bookshop

You know that phenomenon where you don’t hear from your writer friend for a while and then they suddenly show up and announce they’ve written a book?

I wrote a book.

A novella, actually. It felt like it was time to write about some of my experiences as a cult survivor with everything happening in the world and then this book just sort of poured out of me. I wrote it in a summer workshop, and next came edits, then four amazing beta readers and now… I’ve hit publish on the ‘zon.

Here is my blurb so you don’t have to squint at the cover photo:

Be the magic bookshop you want to see in the world.

Gabby has moved on since she escaped the fundamentalist cult she was raised in 25 years ago, but when an evangelist accuses her of grooming because of the LGBTQIA+ books in her Little Free Library, her life begins to fall apart. Gabby finds solace in the pages of a slim book entitled Care and Feeding of Your Little Banned Bookshop, which details how to look after a living, magical bookshop. But a magical bookshop that gives out banned books to those who need them couldn’t be real… or could it?

Find out in the book readers are calling “Studio Ghibli meets Roald Dahl-for grownups.”

Links! I should share links!

Amazon Canada

Amazon U.S.

Ingram is coming for you Chapters and Barnes&Noble fans.

And I will say that writing something so deeply personal is terrifying, exhausting, and ever so meaningful. The feedback I’ve received from early had reduced me to tears more than once. One of my beta readers told me that “this is the book needs right now” and that it reminded her that she should be the main character in her own story. Another told me that she knew “this book will stay with me for a long time.” This is the stuff that FEEDS writers, I swear.

That’s all for now, I’ve been going full speed and need to have a lil nap before I wake up and tackle the marketing aspect (gulp!).

Talk soon,

Posted on by JenniferShelby

The Second Form of Ginny Elder

I’m delighted to let you know that my story, The Second Form of Ginny Elder, is now available in the inaugural issue of Hearth Stories.

Ginny calls herself a failed human, but she’s also a grandmother, a hermit who looks after the ghosts of the animals who live in her wood, and maybe a leshy????

You can read all about her in the Winter Solstice 2023 Issue of Hearth Stories, available to download here.

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notes on imposter syndrome

I started writing this as a note to my writer friend and critique partner, but decided to make it a blog post instead, because maybe it might help another writer, too.

Something kind of big is coming up for me (of which I will make an announcement when everything is off and running) and this something involved me writing an essay of what this upcoming thing means to me. When I sat down to write the essay, the words just poured out of me in that rare, magical way they do sometimes. When I finished the first draft, I was so excited by what I’d created, just a feeling of pure joy that those words existed in the world now. I was proud of what I wrote.

Then, I stepped away, I did some chores and cooked a meal, and noticed I was developing more of an edge towards that essay. Rather than acting on it, I left it alone, went to bed, and came back to the document in the morning.

By then I was horrified by what I’d written. I sounded like I thought I was a real writer, someone who’d worked hard and accomplished things and expected people to treat them as such. I knew this creeping, gutsick feeling, because I get it whenever I try to market myself. The difference, this time, seemed to be that I was pushing back. If I didn’t believe in myself, I definitely believed in that essay and I was too proud of it to just discard the draft and start over. I wouldn’t be able to rewrite anything equal to it.

Instead, I pulled up my writer’s journal and started writing about the feelings I was having, hoping I’d be able to pin them down and understand them better. Here’s what I wrote:

I keep thinking I should really tone this down, I’m not a real writer, I don’t deserve this accolade and here I’ve leaned into it like it’s important, everybody’s going to know! They’ll roll their eyes and laugh and kick out me out of {redacted}. Which does, now that I’ve written it out, seem a bit silly. But also probable? Yikes, this is brutal.

Wait. This… is imposter syndrome?

I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t recognize the feeling as imposter syndrome until I wrote it down. I simply didn’t. Not at all. I might have if it was a friend coming to me with these feelings, but I didn’t recognize it in myself. And seeing them there, on the page, got my attention. I mean, I have two books in the world, twenty-five short story publications, and a handful of writing accolades, nothing fancy or huge, but still things that I’ve earned and have a right to be proud of. It shouldn’t feel like a falsehood to consider myself a “real writer” just because I still have goals I have yet to meet (and don’t get me started on shifting goalposts).

Which leads me to why I thought I’d write up this blog post. The next time you’re feeling uncomfortable about promoting your work, marketing your work, preparing a speech, or writing an essay, take a moment to write down what’s running through your mind so you can see it for what it is. Read it like you’d read a message from a friend, because sometimes things look different when they’re on the page.

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

If you want more resources on imposter syndrome and working past it, I recommend the book Fearless Writing by William Kenower. I picked it up a few months back after hearing an interview with Kenower on The Creative Penn podcast and it helped me fix a few mental blocks that were holding me back (linking that episode here). I keep it close to my writing desk because I expect I’ll fall back into old habits and need to reread it from time to time.

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my writing box

My eldest kiddo used some gift cards to get herself an art kit that came inside a wooden box. Inspired, she decorated the outside of the box with washable marker, was unhappy with the result, went to wash it off and it… didn’t.

“Mom, if you can do anything with this box, you can have it,” she told me.

I noticed that my favourite Blueline notebooks fit into the box perfectly and wondered if I could turn it into a little writing box to carry my writing around while I’m watching the kids play outside. Then I poked around the internet for a while, looking at other writer’s toolkits to figure out which features I would like best. And then I got a little creative.

I “upholstered” the wood with spray glue and wool felt. Some leftover mask elastic stretched from side to side and stapled in gave me a place to stuff in some quotes, notes, and little inspirations. A few stitches and some folded felt made holders for two of my favourite Lamy fountain pens. It wasn’t quite crammed full of magic yet for my taste so I sewed another little pocket to store my post-its, some paper clips, and a skeleton key (because a childhood filled with Nancy Drew taught me that you never know when you might need one).

The butterfly is from an art kit years lost and the TVA Loki sticker is from this shop on Etsy. The picture in the top left corner is something I pulled out of Backpacker magazine circa 1999 that reads “Plant a flag, climb a mountain, be that mythic earth hero you always said you would be.” The handwritten quote in green ink is from Maria Dhavana Headley’s Beowulf: A New Translation (which you should absolutely read, btw).

One day, when the kids are older, I dream of having a table at a convention filled with books I’ve written and I think bringing something like this along might be more inviting to passersby than seeing me clickety-clacking away at my laptop. Or maybe I just want to show it off a little?? Time will tell.