… sees frost and fire and wind and rain and winter’s cold
Yesterday was Samhuinn, one of the turning points of the year. As the Beltaners have it, the Winter King defeats the Summer King, and the Cailleach, the winter witch, brings in the cold. Different Winter Kings have different themes; this year’s is about warmth and hearth and celebration, something we sorely need this year.
What I’ve been up to…
I was stunned to realise it’s been more than a month since I updated this newsletter. Lots of things have been happening, so much so that I’ve been flattened by them for that time.
Adventures in Local Politics: I’ve been selected by the Scottish Greens as a council candidate for 2022, standing in Southside Central. This has the delightful outcome that I’ll have Category Is bookshop in my constituency. The work starts now, and normally it would be knocking doors. This is what politics is at its root - talking to people. It’s not romantic or glamorous, it’s getting out the vote. The people who are in it to be figureheads are feeding their own egos.
This year, given that we’re going into another four weeks of lockdown, talking face to face is out of the question so phone banking is the order of … possibly the rest of the year. Calling members and people who are interested in the SGP’s take on policy and asking them to help turn out the vote and to contribute to the campaign. Yes, that does also mean asking for money - the SGP is funded by the members, not business interests who buy politicians and kickbacks.
Adventures in Academia: I’ve gone back to school, studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the OU. SAAS agreed this week to fund (90% of) my fees, Yay! I had to fight them for it, their first response was “you’re not ordinarily resident in Scotland”, I have no idea why. My response was, my home address has been in Glasgow for fifteen years, what part of ‘ordinarily resident’ am I missing? They replied with a grant.
So I’ve been studying money, and justice, and rights. My first essay is due in a couple of days, 700 words (bless… each of these newsletters comes in at over 1k words) on how studying money allows us to look at inequality. I have notes. In the textbook there is a phrase - “the arts can be viewed as production and consumption”… well yes, they can if you squint hard enough, but should they? That statement is just dropped in there with no reference or justification; to me it’s a massive unconscious bias towards consumerism. Ironically, in the previous week’s module there’s a TED talk about how boiling everything down to transactions is degrading to society.
I can see I’m going to be having fun with this…
Adventures in Gaming: one of my major relaxation pursuits right now is watching YouTube videos of miniature painting tutorials. Enough of those prods me into sitting at my painting table, Ruby cat permitting (she always wants to help…). I have no idea when I’ll be able to sit with friends and play board games, but when it happens the gaming pieces will be very pretty. In the meantime it’s a focused meditative practice.
Reading
… has been re-reading, comfort reading, and junk reading for the most part this month. I did get lots of Netgalley books and bought a couple of books I’d really been looking forwward to, notably:
Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott - The early life and politics of Alexander the Great transplanted into space opera and gender-swapped. I enjoyed this; the characters are fallible and interesting and the court and worldbuilding are in-depth and intricate. It’s also queer AF without making any kind of an issue of it. Start of a series, I’m looking forward to the next one.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik - Battle Royale in Hogwarts; magical beasties from parasites to monsters prefer to hunt magical adolescents, so the kids are confined in a fortress school on their own where they train up to fight their way back out past the swarms waiting for them at the gate. The book has diversity issues but the story of an isolated girl building a community of friends caught me and kept me reading. That and it’s a massive fuck-you to JKR…
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix - A girl searches for her father through weird London, aided by a cabal of magicians. The genderqueer supporting characters are lovely but while the book starts out spooky it very quickly becomes mundane; the Booksellers have a Special Branch liaison and a rapid reaction squad. The Man From Uncle with magic. Charlie Stross did it better, starting with the spooks and making it weird.
Dead Lies Dreaming by Charles Stross - Speaking of which… A spin-off from (the projected end of) the Laundry series; the stars have come right, the blood has been spilled, and Nyarlathotep is resident in 10 Downing Street. This is a caper story, and a take-off of well-loved children’s fiction; in this case Peter and Wendy, the original and much darker version of Peter Pan. The Lost Boys are a lovely collection of broken queer geeks who look out for each other, Tinkerbell is a murderous household god, and the throwaway details of life under the New Management are appropriately horrifying.
Writering
I’m into the long haul now, to-ing and fro-ing with my editor on the details of $GAME and in between turn-arounds keeping going with $NOVEL. I’m finding it easier to work on the game outline - it’s a yarn that I’m spinning and it’s fun for that. I’m making heavier weather of the novel outline because I keep losing my view of it; I haven’t quite figured out why I should be writing it, what I want or need it to be saying, or why the characters matter to me. Which, you might wonder, why does that matter? But unless I’m actually engaged in the story I’ll be constructing it like a finger exercise and it’ll have no heart.
So I’ll keep plugging at it until I figure that out and then I’ll be able to write it for reals. In the meantime the game is a learning curve in plotting and outlining and going into depth of detail.
Also - turns out that my body of work so far qualifies me for full membership of the Society of Authors, which I’ll join just as soon as I have money for the dues. Unions are good.
Which is a writing prompt: the world we’re living in is a disaster capitalist paradise, self-centred profiteers buying out businesses and properties on the cheap as their owners go under because Brexit or COVID. But the establishment story of people’s response to disaster - of violent anarchy, everyone for themself and damn the stragglers - is not the truth. In the face of disaster, people come together to look after each other… if they are allowed, and not attacked by ‘peacekeepers’. Write about people coming together to survive a disaster; a mega-storm or a zombie apocalypse or an oligarchic coup.
And I’ll write more often. Look after yourselves and each other…
E x