You know it’s summer when you lose track of the date, then look over and realize you missed sharing your newsletter to the blog until it was almost time to write the next one *nervous laughter*
Anyways, there’s owl pics in the Nature Notes this month, so don’t skip that. I’ve mostly spent my month tearing my hair out over my Binding of Spellwork and Story book, which I’m writing thanks to a lovely creation grant from artsnb.
I’ve rewritten my first chapters multiple times and just couldn’t get them right. The typical advice I get in this situation is that I should just leave them and go back and fix them later, and that’s good advice that never works for me. When I get blocked and start mentally fretting over a section, there’s a reason. And until I figure it out I’m that ridiculous fly that keeps bumping into the window when there’s an open door right beside him.
So after a solid week of fretting, I took the problematic character by the arms, shook him, and begged him to tell me what he wanted. “I wanted [REDACTED] to remain a secret until a later part of the book,” he admitted, mid shake.
“Oh.” I said. “Huh.” I crossed my arms. Paced a little. “You know, that could work. It would take care of that cringe-y part that was bothering me, too.”
“I know.”
My eyes widened. “Oh, wow, you know, that adds so much potential drama to your connection with that other character, too.”
“I know.”
So now that I’ve got THAT figured it out, I took the original and the rewritten chapter, and sort of frankensteined the best parts of them together into a new chapter, without revealing character’s secret. All the fretting evaporated and my mind has given me the green light to proceed. Phew.
had a bit of a mini side quest when I wrote a writerly advice article written by one of my witch characters in the Binding book. It was actually a really fun little exercise that let me push the envelope of my theme. It was inspired by a submission call, and I sent it in, so we’ll see what happens. If it’s not accepted, it will absolutely be a fun freebie to send out with the book, as bonus contact, and I’m thinking it could also be a fun little tiktok series that would give me a fun excuse to dress up like witch to promote the book.
The typewriter is a lawn ornament at my friend Tiffany’s house. Someone welded the old beast to a base with legs, which is a pretty creative use of an old typewriter. But I’m not showing this to my beloved old Underwood just in case it gets offended.
I got to see a barred owl up close and learned that they are absolutely fascinating:
Those grippy feet! I’m going to imagine dragon skin is textured like this from now on. Also, these owls have feathers with hearts on them:
I wrote a poem about barred owls a while back. Rattle Poetry has a “Poets Respond” feature whereby a poet can submit a poem based on a news article released in the past week, and every Sunday, they publish the best one online. I’ve never had one published with them, but I like that the possibility gets me writing a poem about a news article that strikes me in a particular way.
The following poem was written in response to a news article about a culling of barred owls in the U.S. It’s a bit of a complicated conservation subject, but when I read the number, half a million barred owls to be culled if this plan was approved, the number just staggered me. Here’s the poem I wrote, unpublished as it was except for on my social media, but heed the subject matter as a CW:
Half a Million Owls
Barred owls call back and forth across the forest
And something inside me stills
Something reverential, primal, superstitious,
That insists this is a mystical moment
Maybe it’s the darkness, the gleaming of the stars,
The way the rummaging sounds in the leaf litter cease.
“Half a million owls will be culled…”
My mind stumbles over the number. Glitches.
Stops rummaging through the litter of my thoughts.
“Hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo,” call the owls, all unknowing.
“Who cooks for you?” I learned as a child,
The same barred owl call I’ve taught my children,
“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for y’all?”
Half a million dead barred owls. Shot.
I try again to grasp the scale and fail
Instead, I imagine feathers scattered across a clearcut
“Who kills for you? Who kills for y’all?” the corpses call
And something rummaging through bullet casings stills.
That’s it for this month’s newsletter, Enchanted friends. I’m currently working on a quilt square for the Nova Scotia Grief and Solidarity Quilt for Palestine, a bit outside my wheelhouse, so hopefully I’ll be able to share that next newsletter. I’m stitching a poem onto it, which is proving the most challenging aspect, naturally.
Welcome to the not-quite summer solstice edition of Enchanted Side Quests. Summer is arriving a little late hereabouts and we’ve only been spotting the fireflies for the past two-three nights, while off the coast, they’ve been out for weeks. I was relieved to see them, worried some unseen pollutant had disappeared them like so many insect populations you hear about. They’re an important source of magic for children and writers.
I am steadily plotting A Binding of Spellwork and Story, for which I received a grant from artsnb to write, and I know what you’re thinking, “Still?” and yeah, I am not fast at this. Plotting for me includes multiple notebooks filled and every scene broken down to the very best version of itself. I end up with a very messy not-draft of some 50 000 words, and then I get to writing in earnest.
I started taking photos of my plot board so I can SEE some progress beyond notebooks filling up. The one below is from a few weeks back and wow, it’s very heartening to know how much fuller it is already. And maybe I can sequence them all in a video for social media purposes? Like a time lapse of a slow motion plotter.
There is no rhyme or reason to the colours involved, I just like chaotic colour. What DOES matter is the order. Here you can see I have a lot of beginning, a bit of a middle, and some ending stuff.
Life is still chaotic and some family members are still in crisis, but I’ve forced myself to spend a few hours every morning working on my writing despite it all, and it’s helped a lot. My mental health is better and my anxiety lower, which makes me an all-around better parent and better equipped to handle the day’s crises as they come.
I felt a nice inner glow when I saw someone post about my book Care and Feeding of Your Little Banned Bookshop on social media with a caption that read “I think of this book whenever I see a little free library.”
Now I’m grinning again, thinking of all the little library magics in the book and outside of the book, like when a friend of mine took a copy of Bornstein’s Hello Cruel World that I sent them to put in a Little Free Library in Florida during a visit. That book plays a pivotal role in Care and Feeding, so this felt like making magic. I’ve also had friends buy copies of the book specifically to put inside Little Free Libraries, knowing how magical it would be to read this book if that’s where you found it.
Writers, I tell ya. We can’t get enough of that magic.
Which brings us to this month’s side quest: my chipmunk rescue adventure.
So. We all know (one hopes) that if you have a big tub to collect rainwater in, that you put a stick in it in case any critters or bees fall in, they can climb out. For some reason, I put in one of the kids’ snow shovels this year, thinking it would suffice. It didn’t, I think the plastic was too slippery for wet paws. This is important.
I was on the phone with my friend from BC (because I am old and still use the phone for such things) and outside because we tend to get loud and silly when I wandered to our rainwater tub. And there, floating, was a drowned chipmunk.
My heart got heavy with dread. (Please put a stick in your tubs if you haven’t already).
I put the phone down, cursing the shovel for not doing it’s job, and then I took the shovel to remove the small, furry corpse before the kids could see it, which is when the little fella blinked.
Shovel be damned, I scooped the little critter up in my hands and put him on the grass, where he lay there, shivering or maybe shaking with shock. I told my friend I’d call her back and picked him back up to hold against my chest in case he was cold and went around to the front door to ask my partner for help finding something to put the poor thing in.
The chipmunk was moving significantly more already, which was a really good sign.
Mike brought out a box with a t-shirt to hold him and the chipmunk immediately flopped over, probably from exhaustion.
Then came the internet searching of nesting material and food. The kids picked him some wild strawberries to eat while Mike found some clean sawdust and old grass. Little chippy was started to move more still, made himself a cozy nest to hide in, and rested.
Its hard to get closure with stuff like this, because it does have deep affect on the mind to experience this with a wild critter. Last summer I found a baby snowshoe hare in rough shape that we took to the wildlife vet and I still wonder what happened to her. This time, success is waking up to an empty box and a hope that our chipmunk returned to his forest home.
But when nature give you the opportunity to be kind, you also get the chance to rescue yourself a little bit, too.
It has been a WILD month. The hummingbirds have returned, the garden is planted and happily growing, and the critters are out and about.
You can imagine my shock when I was at my desk, working through my morning plotting hours, when I saw something dark through the window, out of the corner of my eye. Was that a bear?
I went around to the front of the house, going out into our mud room which has the only place with windows facing the direction the bear went in. Sure enough, there was the bear, sauntering over to our compost barrel. And then INTO our compost barrel.
Where he pulled out the remains of a half-rotten squash rind covered in coffee grounds.
He then lost interest in the rotten squash rind and compost entirely, choosing to saunter over the vehicles, give them a sniff, then wandered up the driveway and into the woods.
While cautious, I’ll admit it was exciting to be able to watch a young, wild black bear explore from a safe location. It was also a good opportunity to teach the kids some safety stuff and while I was worried we’d have to stop composting, the bear hasn’t come back a few weeks in. We do live in nature’s home, and big wild animals come with the small ones.
That said, I do prefer the smaller ones when it comes to my kids, who have asked to keep thousands of snakes and toads as pets so far this summer.
And with this flurry of pet requests, there is a small feeling of finally. THIS is why we wanted to raise them here, amid the fireflies and the toads and the sometimes bears. My youngest is terrified of snakes, UNLESS the snake is being held by my eldest, who has suddenly started channeling Steve Irwin for reasons unbeknownst, but welcome.
That’s it for this month’s newsletter, Enchanted friends. What adventures have you been having? Have you read any books I should add to my TBR?
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.
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.
It has been a difficult month. I hope you are well and finding escape in art or music or something that lets you escape. Escape is Resistance!
I’ve been deep into research about Germany in WWll, and specifically the way everyday people resisted. The similarities are brutally astounding
I’d always known that people hid Jews in secret places, but I didn’t realize that they had nowhere else to go. That even the ones who made it out of Germany were turned back. I didn’t know the Pope granted them asylum in the Vatican and even encouraged the creation of false identity papers to help some families remain safe. It makes me realize the plight of refugees everywhere, that even now refugees and immigrants are looked down upon, hated and feared (even in Canada). Its not something that will change when we become the refugees, fleeing fascism and authoritarianism. Is it better to hide in someone’s attic for four years or risk escaping, only to be sent in some official capacity that ensures the baddies catch you and put you in your camps.
It’s a lot. But I do believe reading is resistance. I think we can learn from the past. Even fictionalized accounts of WW2 resistance, of which I’ve realized there is a LOT of. Our imaginations appear to have been collectively caught by the Holocaust in a way that leads to me to wonder, did we know this would happen again?
In contrast, I have a very well-educated friend in the U.S. who mentioned having just learned about the Reichstag fire. Our educations have not been the same, which sent me digging to discover where I learned so much about the Holocaust, because it wasn’t in school.
The weird thing? It was actually from growing up in the fundie cult. This was a big part of their story, and part of this was based in proving faithfulness via enduring persecution. This is a big part of cult psychology, making you separate and “better” than the rest of the world. It’s BIG red flag that’s been showing up in contemporary mega-churches in the U.S. and, increasingly, in Canada.
Okay, getting back to the point. They held up the cult members destroyed in the concentration camps as the example we needed to follow. We needed to suffer for our faith, so that the deity would love us. Job, all the way down. Thus, little bits of persecution were just practice for the Big Persecution to Come and over time, this gets embedded into your identity and whoopsie, turns out that’s exactly how socialization and propaganda works.
As a result, we had buckets and buckets of historical literature about the Holocaust that I was allowed to access (my reading was fairly restricted so this is a big deal). I’m struggling to realize that not everyone received this education, and I think it’s a big part of why this level of fascism-and following the exact same goshdarn pattern-has come ‘round again.
Remember during the BLM protests in the States when Antifa became a bad word and a lot of us were wondering how “antifascist” could possibly be considered a bad thing? Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
At this point, you must be wondering, cool Jenn, so are you writing some sort of historical WWll fiction? Sort of. The Little Banned Bookshop is being pulled very strongly in that direction, though possibly not in the way you’d expect. I think if Gabby and the Bookshop are going to learn how to resist, they might need to visit the past. Maybe meet a German Shopkeeper and their Little Banned Buchladen.
I usually have this rule where I never talk about my works-in-progress, but this feels different. The Little Banned Bookshop feels, in a lot of ways, something that belongs to us rather than me, that it exists to give us some hope as we journey through troubling times. The human mind is wired to learn through story, and maybe, through stories like this, we can learn how to survive this together, with our humanity intact.
If we can still call it that in the face of what is happening…again.
I’m also escaping. Not outside to the woods, we keep having ice storms and there’s a terrible crust on the snow currently bashing in my shins. It’s the party pooper of the whole winter… until it starts melting, the sap running…
BUT I’m a member of the facebook group Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends (it’s one of the few groups that’s keeping me on the site) and every year around this time we have this event called the Charity Battle. There are several different animal or nature “gangs” and they all battle (by making increasingly unhinged memes) to raise the most money for conservation efforts (these are all visible at wildgreenfuture.org).
I joined character-based IcePack last year about midway and had an absolute blast. So many deep belly laughs. And I’m so glad that it’s come around again because I forgot how much fun it is and what a lovely antidote it is to all the horrors while also helping nature.
These memes are so embedded into gang and group lore that they rarely make sense to outsiders once the battle is more than few days in, but here is a silly sampler of mine to give you some idea of the unhinged nonsense we’re up to.
I don’t have much meme skill, so I mostly make 20-frame comic stories that keep me giggling as I make them, and then doubled over in laughter when the other fiends start commenting on them.
It’s the most fun you’ll ever have helping frosted elfin butterflies! Check it out here and if you want to help, please donate to my gang, IcePack: We have the LORE!
Like many others, the anglerfish recorded by National Geographic that surfaced into the light, only to die, captured my heart this past week. This has resulted in enough daydreams that it is firmly lodged in my imagination, but I’m not sure what that will come to, creatively, just yet. I have been enjoying this song by Paris Paloma about the same.
That’s all for this month, Side Questers. Fingers crossed that the first signs of spring will have sprung by next month, the sap will be running, and maybe we’ll all have something to smile about.
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.”
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!).
Dear Side Questers, It’s the most colourful time of the year! I hope you’ve had a chance to kick around some autumn leaves, enjoy the colours, and attempt strange leaf crafts that never quite work out. Oh, oops, is that last one just me?
I may have attempted maple leaf faeries.
When I first made them, they looked like this:
The girls thought they were weird. Then a few days passed and they got weirder. Me too, faeries, me too.
But this month’s biggest side quest has been A Binding of Spellwork and Story, the book I received an artsnb grant to write this year. I’m writing the chapters in tandem with a writing class/workshop’s assignments, which is working very well to keep me motivated.
I took a similar course with the same teacher (writer Matthew Ledrew) to get my Care and Feeding of Your Little Banned Bookshop novella drafted as well. In fact, I’m quietly debating taking this course again already. Its helping me get out of my head and I don’t feel so overwhelmed by the larger projects. It’s also giving me the autumn novel writing community that I used to get from NaNoWriMo.
Anyway, back to Binding. It’s a story in which I’m exploring the role of a writer’s manipulation of story from within the story, where it looks more like a sorceress wielding magic. Part of me keeps expecting people to laugh at this entire premise, but it turns out that it’s just as much fun to write as I hoped it would be when I first proposed it. With any luck, it’ll be fun to read as well!
Gratuitous mushrooms!
Between sick kids and a brother in hospital, I took to walking my local Ducks Unlimited marsh in an attempt to save my sanity (and avoid hunters in the woods). There are few birds left at this point, though the dragonflies are plentiful. The dying vegetation has taken to revealing secrets. Following a game trail, I happened upon an almost shockingly intact cormorant skull.
There’s a whole spiritual aspect to finding bones like this in nature that I’m never entirely certain if I should unpack. I did touch on the subject in my short story The Second Form of Ginny Elder. There’s something very sacred to the discovery that sits a sense of quiet in my chest. Other people feel a sense of disgust. With that in mind, I’m sharing a photo of the kind of skull I found from the internet, since skulls in nature can be a bit yuck:
Cormorants are common along the Bay of Fundy and they always tug at the memory of reading Island of the Blue Dolphins when I was young. I don’t remember much else about the book these days, but somehow the skirt she made from the cormorant feathers-and especially the way they took it away at the end of the book to put it in a museum-always stayed with me.
Speaking of books – this week marks the publication of my friend Nancy SM Waldman’s debut novel, Every Rule Undone. I had the pleasure of reading an ARC, so I thought I’d share my review:
This story follows the lead character of Aza Gen, that last name indicating which magical clan she belongs to and thus, her loyalties and abilities. The Gen in this world act as a submissive partner to the Puraples, the leading magical clan. In contrast, their enemies, the Cruiks, have their own submissive clan, the Besin healers. The Puraples and the Cruiks spend their time tossing magical curses at each other, and their submissives scramble to clean them up. If this sounds like an endless cycle, it is, and revolution is brewing when a full-on magical curse plague breaks out. Added to these four clans is another set of people, folks whose parents broke the law by cross-breeding between magical clans and abilities. If they manage to escape execution, these Undones have no place in society.
Aza leads the reader through this world as unrest grows and builds, becoming the sort of delicious revolution story where unexpected heroes emerge simply because of the situations they find themselves. It is a pleasure to read how Aza and her friends grow, change, and become different people across the events in the book.
I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll leave it at that. If you enjoy a character-driven story filled with difficult decisions that change their worlds forever, this needs to go on your TBR!
Every Rule Undone can be found everywhere, but if you’d like a link, here you are.
That’s it for this month, Enchanted friends! Wishing you a lovely Halloween, fuzzy socks on chilly mornings, and your favourite warm beverage in the perfect mug.
As some of you know, I started up a newsletter a year (two?) or so ago. That’s what writers do for marketing, they say, and that tracks. But then they just sort of disappear forever, so I’ve a mind to start sharing them here as well, where at least the content remains visible for future readers. And me, when I went to rummage through last summer’s adventures.
So, without further ado, let me introduce to you Jennifer Shelby’s Enchanted Side Quests.
Dear Side Questers,
I’m DELIGHTED to write that I’ve had an essay accepted into The Journal of L. M. Montgomery Studies. I wrote my essay, Of Daydreams and Influence, when I saw a call for submissions to a “Writers and Artists Respond” to L. M. Montgomery for what would have been her 150th birthday this year.
As a girl growing up in Atlantic Canada, it meant a lot to me that L. M. Montgomery was from this area. That she was a writer. That she was FAMOUS. She was my hero. I read and re-read all of her books, especially the Emily trilogy, over and over growing up. My parents put very strict limits on what I was allowed to read (no dragons or fairies on the cover, as they might bring demons into the house, etc., etc.). But I was always allowed to read LMM.
It would be easy to write another essay here, which I’ll avoid for now, but I can trace my life through which LMM book was most important to me at the time, and that’s where I focused my essay. Even The Blue Castle was there for me when I was excommunicated and disowned by my parents.
I’m not entirely sure when this is coming out, but you can be sure I’ll share it here when the time comes.
Last month, I watched a robin build a nest in a yellow birch tree from my hammock chair. Since then, I’ve been keeping an eye on mama. She didn’t leave the nest until after the first little ones hatched, which is when I snuck over and snapped this picture.
A few years ago, we had a junco bird build a nest in our woodshed behind a few cans of spray paint, and the girls and I spent a wonderful June watching them grow into fledgelings. Every time we see a junco in the garden, one of us always wonders if they’re “one of our babies.” So this robin family is definitely bringing up memories of that summer.
Here are some more pictures, taken a week later because I can’t help myself.
All three fledged a week after this picture was taken, looking very much like small robins by then. I’m looking forward to remembering their dinosaur-looking selves whenever I see a robin from here onward.
I’m writing this month’s missive while waiting for the wildlife rehab to call me back over another of this season’s babies, a lil snowshoe hare we found lying, hurt but alive, in our driveway early this morning. It means something, in a world that feels very cruel and chaotic right now, to have the chance to show kindness. To take that chance whenever we can. To remember that kindness is still a big part of what it means to be a human. I hope everyone is getting the chance to enjoy the short, sweet summer while it lasts. Soon the girls will be out of school and chaos will be queen! I love the unstructured days of summer and the freedom it offers for creativity.
Until next month,
If you’d like to sign up to receive my newsletter on the 21st of every month (before I post it here), you can do that here.
I’m trying to write more book reviews, the reason being that I’ve never been comfortable writing them. Imposter syndrome and all that. But I’m never going to get comfortable writing reviews if I don’t write more of them. Towards that end, here are two books I enjoyed this week.
In Darker Corners
5/5 Stars – Indie
I was excited to receive my copy of Peter Gillet’s second collection of short works, In Darker Corners, as I enjoyed his first, Mind Full of Prose. This collection has a blend of narrative nonfiction, album reviews, and dark fantasy stories.
Finding a sequel to the Beards and Bearability story, Tests and Testimonies, deep into the book was a delight. Fans of the original will not disappointed. Marked by Death, an essay about a tombstone that fell on the author as a child gave me the best kind of chills. No wonder Gillet’s horror works well, in particular the creepy Dimensions of Mediocrity and Viral. In Darker Corners is a wonderful collection to dip into for a story before falling asleep.
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You
4/5 stars – Tor Books
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore follows a music blogger who comes across a transcendent new band that quickly becomes an obsession. The music starts controlling people’s emotions and soon sacrifices some listeners to open interdimensional portals. Alien monsters tumble into Earth. The protagonist denies all evidence in front of him and keeps plunging deeper into the music-caused danger like a hapless teenager in a horror movie, pulling the reader along for the ride.
Moore perfectly captures the annoying aloof quality of your music snob friend and then blows it into another dimension. This book is like the movie Almost Famous collided with the crack in Amelia Pond’s wall (Doctor Who) during a Sharknado and Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You climbed out of the wreckage fully formed. It’s a fun, campy read and I can honestly say I’ve never read anything like it. I’m hopeful for a sequel. Let’s take this ride off-world.
I read something the other morning which triggered a memory of my favorite bookstore. The memory came with a longing and a deep sense of nostalgia. How I love my bookstore.
I realized, with some surprise, that this bookstore exists in my dreams, and that I have visited this bookstore many, many times over the years. It is possible that this blog post marks the first time I’ve considered it in my waking life.
There are clues pointing to it as a dream, if my dreaming self cared to know. The bookstore is set in a far corner of an empty, or abandoned but well-maintained, shopping complex. It takes a few specific twists and turns to find the bookstore.
Once there, the bookstore is well-lit by floor to second story ceiling windows along one exterior wall. The windows look out upon an ocean grey enough to be mistaken for a parking lot with a careless glance.
My section, where I know all my favorite books are yet to be discovered, is set upon a raised, rounded stage that looks over the rest of the bookstore. All the shelves in this section are wooden and black, in contrast to the beige metal shelves below. The flooring of each matches the shelves.
There is a large cabinet against the wall with glass doors. Inside this cabinet are second-hand, out-of-print books, all of which I know I’ll love. I handle them like fragile treasures.
The employees know me by name, and spend their shifts behind counters, usually nose-deep inside a book. There is a swirl of magic in the air and the scent of cinnamon mingles with the book smell. The air is heavy, like it’s raining outside, but cozy, as if the atmosphere is carefully curated to make it easy to slip inside a story and read and read and read.
I’m half-sad to discover this beloved bookshop exists in my subconscious, but the feeling is mixed with a curious sense of pride and protectiveness. Do you ever dream of a place that seems more real than the waking world?
Looking back over the book lives I lived this year, five particular books stood out (note: they weren’t necessarily published in 2017, just read by me in 2017). Here they are, in no particular order:
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
I’m a sucker for books about books. Books about bookstores are a special treat. This one is about a bookstore on a barge whose owner faces a personal crisis that sends him, his bookstore, and a young writer down the river in search of the owner’s lost love. Full of book nostalgia, hope, and deep thoughts, this was a treat to read.
Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy
Thrill Me is a craft book on writing speculative fiction. As a writer, I consume a lot of craft books … and most of them get left unfinished, because they’re as dry as my ninth grade math text. My personal philosophy about craft books is if they aren’t written well enough to keep my interest, I shouldn’t be letting them teach me how to write. This is where Thrill Me shines: it grabbed me in the beginning and thrilled me to the end. I devoured it, yearning to get back to it each time I put it down. It reminded me why I love speculative fiction and why I write it. An inspiring book for all writers in the genre.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
A Monster Calls is a powerful middle grade fantasy about grief. As he sorrows and rages against his mother’s imminent death and all the changes this brings, Conor’s grief is physically manifested in a terrifying, Ent-like monster. It is a beacon to the genre in that it never preaches, it never sugarcoats, and it never holds back. The raw power of Conor’s grief is a punch to the gut the reader won’t soon forget. I’ve rarely been so moved.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
This middle grade fantasy is a beautifully written, fantastical romp into the bog home of a repressed people forced to sacrifice the youngest child in their village every few years to a mysterious witch. The witch, on the other hand, cannot figure out why these silly folk keep regularly abandoning infants in the forest. She rescues them, feeding them starlight and finding them homes beyond the bog, past the sleeping volcano that seethes beneath the story. Then one night, the witch accidentally feeds one of the foundlings moonlight instead of starlight and enmagicks the child, whom she names Luna and raises as her own. As Luna grows, the real evil demanding the babies be sacrificed becomes clear as Luna, the witch, a dragon, a swamp monster, a desperate new father, and a mad woman embark on a journey that will bring them together and change their world forever. This adventure is a wonderful romp I never wanted to end. I’ll be reading this one again soon.
Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
This one makes it to the list because of its originality. A prequel to Every Heart a Doorway, this novella in the Wayward Children series follows Jack and Jill through their portal into a dark and frightening world. One of the twin sisters is adopted by the local vampire to a life of luxury and blood, while her sister Jack is apprenticed by the vampire’s nemesis, a mad scientist. They come of age beneath the burgeoning knowledge that they are destined to become the next generation of an ancient rivalry, and on opposing sides. But deep within Jack’s heart stirs an impossible loyalty to her sister. It’s a heck of a story that brings the mad scientist of old spooky movies into the new millennium.
*
That finishes my list and as the old year closes I’m excited to see what books 2018 will bring … in January alone I’m counting down to the release of Seanan McGuire’s Beneath the Sugar Sky (the third in her Wayward Children series mentioned above) and the English translation of Ahmed Saddwi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad.
What were some of your favourite books this year? Any you’re looking forward to?
Jennifer Shelby 
