Flung Back Into the Universe

Wow! That was fast. I mean, after nearly eighteen months of hardly going anywhere and seeing only the people in my bubble, you'd think I'd be ready for some travel, some parties and gatherings, etc. But I feel like Wile E. Coyote just after the giant rubberband has snapped, realizing that I've got no control over my speed and trajectory: 

I know, I know. I'm in charge of me and I can say no, but it's not that easy to do. Can I really say no to all my family when they want to see the hubby and me and our kiddos in person at long last? Can I really turn down chances to get back out there at live-in-person author events building some momentum for my life's dream of living off my writing? 

I can . . . but I probably won't. 

That won't stop me from whining a little bit though. I was out of pocket 11 days in June and I'll be out another 9 in July by the end of things. Thankfully, the July stuff is a little more spread out and I'll get 13 days in a row of being close to home between things. 

The tricky bit for me is that I WANT to see all the people and take all the opportunities, but I also rely on time at home during these non-school months to make some serious progress on my writing goals during days with fewer commitments than school-year days. 

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I'm also finding that I'm seriously out of practice. I've always need a bit of introvert recovery time after a big get-together, but my recovery period is longer now, like my social muscles have atrophied. I had barely recovered from my mother's birthday party when it was time to hit the road again to welcome a new baby into my husband's family. 

Thank G-d for coffee. At least my drug of choice is legal. 

As always, I'm seeking balance, because the truth is that I want it ALL but there are only so many hours in each day and only so much Samantha to go around. 

So how are you guys managing the world opening back up? Is it a relief or a new kind of stress for you? 

I'd love to hear about how you're doing in the comments! 

Short Month, Short Reads

 

How was your month for reading? 

I started strong with The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, a wonderful portal fantasy story. 

But then started to suffer from short attention span--probably due to the stress of my school district suddenly changing the plan and sending me back into the classroom six weeks earlier than planned, and four days before I had the chance to get immunized. (I'd roll my eyes, but I've been doing that so much, they might fall out). 

I hate that when I'm under stress, it gets harder to enjoy my favorite escape . . .just when I need it most. So, I decided to try listening to some of the shorter works in my Audible collection that I hadn't listened to yet. 

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle was a delight. I've read some Sherlock Holmes before and have enjoyed modern interpretations of the famous detective in film and television, so I was happy when my First Monday Classics book club chose this one, and handed me the impetus to revisit the characters in their original form. It made me want to read other ones, and also scratched my Gothic romance itch with the fantastic description of Baskerville Hall and the surrounding moors. 

I picked up I Hate Men because I was curious where that provocative title might take me. As a fifty year old woman, I didn't find much in it I hadn't considered before . . .but I did think it thoughtful and articulate on issues of gender and equality. Unfortunately, the title means that the author will only be preaching to the choir.

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Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World by Michael Pollan was a fascinating read, covering caffeine's development, especially as tied to tea and coffee, and effect on society, as well as some exploration of the physiological effects. It didn't convince me to cut myself off, but it did make me more cognizant of keeping control of my habit. 

A Mind of Her Own by Paula McLain was my most disappointing read of the month. In trying to straddle fiction and nonfiction, it ended up pleasing me on neither front. I recommend The Half-Life of Marie Curie by Lauren Gunderson instead if you're interested in learning more about Madame Curie. 

Authentically Mexican: A Family History in Six Dishes by JP Brammer was a quiet memoir about a man who grew up straddling two cultures: white and Mexican. 

I'd heard of A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, but didn't really know much about it. I was surprised by the passion and anger of the essay, written in second person, addressed to "you: a white tourist." Highly recommended!

Sherman Alexie is on my list of disappointing men who got a little power and privilege and used to abuse women, so I probably wouldn't have read his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, except that my daughter was assigned it for class and she wanted me to read it with her so I could help her if she got stuck on the schoolwork. It really is quite a good book, touching and honest-feeling (and thankfully not full of nasty attitudes about women). Great voice. 

A Theft Most Fowl by Nicole Givens Kurtz is the second in the Kingdom of Aves series. I LOVE this creative speculative mystery series, set among bird-people and following Hawk Tasifa, our detective who is literally a hawk-person, able to see what is not seen. I look forward to more in the series. 

The last book I finished in February was The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. I'm really becoming quite a fan of her work! (I also loved Magic for Liars) I actually don't want to tell you much about it because I think it's better to go in blind and just enjoy the ride in this one, but I will say that it left me thinking and got me in the feels on more than one front. 

The Echo Wife wasn't a short-short like most of what I read this month, so maybe I'm over my short-attention-span problems for the time being. Hoping so! 

So, what did you read this month? Tell me about it in the comments below! 

Car Dates

 One of the casualties of pandemic life at la casa Bryant has been date nights. As people who have never been married without children (I already had a daughter when I married Sweetman), date night has been essential to us from the get-go. We work to make sure we get some quality us-two time alongside work and family responsibilities, even when we can't afford anything fancy.

We have a teenager still at home, and while we do all try to give each other some space here during the pandemic, we've only been home without her about three nights in the past year (when she had a sleepover with her college-student-sister). It's not an option to send her on a sleepover, or even just to a friend's house for the afternoon like we're used to. 

Most of our favorite dating options, such as movies, restaurants, and theater outings have either been unavailable, or have not be available in a way that we feel safe about utilizing. So, what's a couple to do?

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Sweetman and I value our date time, and though we try to capture a bit of it at home by getting special takeout and watching movies at home, playing games together, and banishing the teenager to her room for a while so we can feel alone, it's not the same. 

We're both bad at separating from the to-do lists and practicalities when we're at home, so it's hard for us to capture a sense of fun and romance without going somewhere. 

Some months ago, though, we came up with the car date. 

Basically, we pick something to go see, and a scenic route to get there, hop in the car and drive (leaving the teenager home with the dog to YouTube unfettered for a a few hours). 

Along the way we talk, play songs for each other, hold hands over the gear shift and seek new experiences together. 

While we have a destination, it's generally something we found on Atlas Obscura, involving driving by something or getting out and looking at an oddity, not something with tickets and timetables, so it's okay if we stop anywhere along the way just because we saw something interesting or if we fail to find the thing we were looking for. 

If the weather is nice, we get some takeout and find a place to picnic. If it's too cold or rained too recently, we get some takeout at the end of things, and take it back home to enjoy. 

This week's date took us on a lovely sunlit drive through muddy storm-bedraggled countryside to Shangri-La…the miniature stone village built by a retired farmer and available to admire and explore for free. It's adorable! A series of small buildings made of stone and brick, arranged in a tiny village. Toys strewn throughout add to the whimsy and crocus sprouts were just poking out their heads, so I intend to come back soon to see them in bloom. 

We were both completely charmed by the project and the results. Along our drive we found a local cider producer we didn't know about and found out where exactly a nature area I'd heard about was located. So future small adventures are afoot!

How about you, people of the internet? How do you keep a little romance in your lives under current circumstances? 

Whiplash and Tire Tracks on My Back: Teaching During the Pandemic

 In my day job, I teach middle school Spanish. My school, like many in the United States, closed its doors in March 2020, expecting that we'd all stay home for a couple of weeks while the wave of Covid-19 rolled over the country and that we'd be back to finish the school year. That's not what happened, of course. It didn't go away in a couple of weeks. 

We finished the 2019-2020 school year from home, with an ineffective program cobbled together in six minutes with no clear expectations and guidelines for teachers or students. We had some things in our favor since my school district already provided laptops to students, so we could at least guarantee that students had a device to use to access school materials, but we had no plan for offering instruction without the in-person element.  

Teachers were told that they were not allowed to teach new material, nor give any grades, and kids quickly figured out that there would be no consequences for failure to perform, so they disappeared in droves. I doubt that much learning of significance happened for anyone between March and June 2020.

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During this first bit of school-from-home public rhetoric was full of realizations of how difficult teaching really is. We were called heroes. Parents talked about how much they admired us for handling this every day and praised our creativity in finding ways for our students to keep learning.  

That lasted a month or two, then parents began to feel the wear of providing educational support and supervision for their children while trying to juggle their work responsibilities. 

So they began to throw teachers under the bus. The public rhetoric shifted to how teachers were overcautious at best, selfish for worrying about their own survival instead of what's "best for kids." 

NCAE and other teacher groups fighting for basic precautions and accommodations for teachers with underlying conditions putting them at high risk began to be accused of trying to get paid for "nothing" even as teachers worked harder than they ever had before to try to make learning possible despite huge obstacles. 

My personal favorites are the people who argue that teacher need to suck it up because other people did--the same argument people use to argue against student loan forgiveness and other social programs, like we can only be united by suffering the same fate, instead of learning from what happens to one group and preventing suffering for others. Now *that* my friends, is a particularly bitter brand of selfishness. 

Come 2020-2021 school year, and we BEGAN the school year at home. It was better though, at least in my neck of the woods. 

We had worked on a program all summer, and we had a plan involving scheduled and required live zoom classes, online asynchronous learning opportunities, and even offering limited in-person learning centers for kids/families in high need. Work would again be graded, giving back that traditional tool of accountability and measure of participation and effort. 

It hasn't been perfect, but it's been functional. My students mostly show up to live zoom class, or communicate about why they can't. I have about the same percentages of kids struggling and excelling that I always have had (I've been doing this for 26 years, and though I try to reach every kid, I'm enough of a realist to know that isn't realistic). My 6th graders, who had never attended middle school in person struggled the most, and my 8th graders, veterans of our school, handled it the best. Some kids have truly thrived, loving the release from bullying situations and uncomfortable social pressure.

The district found creative ways to bridge technology access problems. They provided wifi hotspots to families in rural areas or who didn't have regular internet access at home. They transformed school busses into rolling wifi stations and drove into high need neighborhoods and parked during agreed upon hours, so kids could use that access. The foods programs kicked into high gear, trying to make sure that no one went hungry and making it as easy as possible to get meal boxes for our families. The librarian arranged for curbside book pickup and drop off. In a lot of ways, it was working. 

So, of course, we can't just enjoy the fruits of our labor and stick with the system a little longer. Because the people who lost the earlier argument keep coming back and leadership folds because their decisions are based on external pressure rather than any independent analysis of facts and consideration of what's actually best for the students and teachers. Jelly for backbones. 

My district has changed plans so many times now that I've lost track. I feel like I've been watching high speed tennis and got whiplash in the process. 

I remember that, at first, we were due to come back to a sort of in-person school in January, but the pushback was HUGE, especially given that that the projected return date wasn't even 2 weeks past Christmas--which was the epicenter of a new spike of cases across the country. We won, and the return date was set for April--after Spring Break, and after the date we expect that teachers will have been offered the chance to be immunized. I was so relieved, I felt like my shoulders dipped below my ears for the first time in months. 

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That brings us to now: 

Teachers, even teachers with ADA accommodations like me, are being forced back into the classroom next week in my school district, thanks to a legislative push that our governor opposes but is not expected to veto. So, my first day back in the classroom with kids will be February 22 (just in time for the Superbowl spike of cases). It's either that or quit--four years too early for retirement, with a kid in college to support. 

February 22 is an arbitrary selection that ignores all the safety measures we've been discussing for months. The immunization becomes available for teachers in my state on February 24, and the new HEPA air filters are scheduled to be installed in mid-March, but we're being shoved back in the classroom early, which I find especially frustrating when immunizations and filtered air are both right there just barely over the horizon. What do two weeks matter in the face of a safer transition? 

There I am, back under the bus again. 

It's not that my district isn't doing anything. They do have clear mask policies and requirements with zero tolerance for noncompliance. They do ask the questions and take the temperatures of anyone entering the building, so we at least have the performative security measures like taking off your shoes at airport security. 

But my BIG question right now is: what do we gain from this that is worth what we lose? 

Here's what in-person instruction will look like at my school: 

Roughly 50% of my students will continue to learn-from-home because that is what their families have selected--parents get the right to select based on nothing more than personal assessment of comfort/safety, but staff is not afforded the same consideration. The other 50% has been divided into group A and B, which will attend school from 8:30-2:00 four days a week on alternating weeks. 

So, if you're a parent hoping for day care help, you get 4 shorter-than-usual days every other week with no options for pre or post-care. Not sure how helpful that will be for your own work concerns. 

The students will be masked and kept 6 feet apart at all times, including while walking through halls, waiting in line, using the bathroom, etc. They will get very little of the social benefit of time spent with other kids because they are not allowed any close contact and will have to eat their lunches in silence because they are limited to 15 minutes with masks off and may not speak during that time because of concerns of germ spread. They cannot play their instrument in band or sing in chorus, and the rules seem to change by the moment for physical education.

So, if you're a parent hoping this will give your kiddos the benefits of social interaction, you're not really getting that either. 

I will be pinned to my desk because I have to offer instruction to the 1/4 of my students IN the room, and the 3/4 of my students NOT in the room at the same time. This means that the kids in my room, will still pretty much just be getting a zoom class. Also, I'm not allowed any nearer to them than 6 feet. Also, I will be stressed out and frazzled by managing all that at the same time and probably much shorter tempered than I ever allow myself to be in the classroom. 

So, if you're a parent hoping this will give your student the benefits of in-class live-teaching experience, you won't really get that either because the teacher's focus is divided and physical distancing limits our interactions with the people present with us. 

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Meanwhile, people will get infected. 

Maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe our cases will be mild. 

Maybe your kid and your kid's teacher won't be the one who dies or suffers lifelong health implications. 

But many among the staff and students will spend a fair amount of mental energy worrying about it and anticipating disaster, and that takes a mental health toll in and of itself. 

Teachers will quit. 

Many already have--left teaching, taken early retirement. Classes will be supervised by substitutes while the teacher quarantines after exposure, which means they'll still be taking zoom classes or participating in asynchronous learning, but now they'll also be worried about their teacher and getting limited feedback. 

So, I'll let you know how it goes, but my prediction: poorly. And if I die from Covid because my district wouldn't wait two weeks to get me immunized? Y'all better pray ghosts aren't real, because I'll be back to haunt with a vengeance. 

I Read 75 Books This Year!

IKR? Guess all that extra time at home had me scrambling for travel via literature. Each year, I set a goal of 52 books a year, averaging out to one per week. I include in that paper reads, digital reads, and audiobooks, but not the unpublished beta reads I do. 

More and more of my reading these days leans to the audiobook format. Of the 75 books I read this year (Goodreads says 80, but it looks like it counted some books more than once), about 40 were audiobooks, 12 were e-books, 15 were paper (the other 8, I honestly can't remember). 

I read a lot fewer e-books this year than is usual for me, probably due to my zoom life. When it was time to read, I just didn't want to spent yet more time on screen. But audiobooks were great for my nervous energy in that I could read while I matched socks and handled the mundanities of life. 

I've fallen into a comfortable pattern in my reading, reading some things for book clubs, some things because I'm curious about the buzz surrounding them, some things because I know the authors, and some just because they caught my interest.

For my classics books club this year, I read ten books. (There was an 11th selection I didn't manage to fit in). 

Of these, I'd read three before: Wide Sargasso Sea, The Hobbit, and And Then There Were None. It's always interesting to read something again, and see how the experience changes for you over time. 

The rest were new to me. I got impatient with some of them--too much slow storytelling, outdated attitudes, etc.--but I loved The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I wish Anne Brontë had lived longer and had the opportunity to continue to grow as a writer. She would have earned her spot beside her more famous sisters. Reading classic literature is a sideways view into history--teaching you as much about the context the author created in as about the stories themselves. 

Looking back over the rest of my list, here are some standouts: 

I found Lydia Kang at the end of the year. I fell hard for the mixture of romance and mystery, with historical settings and exploring social classes. She's likely to stay on my watch list as a favorite author. 

Earlier this year, I fell equally hard for Cherie Priest's Borden Dispatches. Yes, that Borden, alongside Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Looks like my sweet spot as a reader this year intermixed violence and history, with a touch of romance.

In that vein, I also loved these four books. 

Captured by the Alien Vampire Highlander is an unapologetic romp through romance tropes and a delightful confection. Perfect if you need an escape. 

The Sixth Gun series of graphic novels fits firmly in the "weird wild west" subgenre, following six mystical guns that grant special abilities to those who carry them. 

Chasing the Dragon takes place in the Sherlock Holmes universe, creating a romance that fits in the holes left in the original work. Alexandra Christian is GENIUS with this era, and brings such spark and humor to her dialogue. 

Kill Three Birds created an original speculative fiction world, featuring bird-people in a wonderful tight little mystery story. I'm looking forward to more in this series. 

I also continued some series and genres I'd been reading in the past few years: 

Carmilla is a classic vampire novel I had missed hearing about until recently--it predates Stoker's more famous work Dracula, and it's easy to see the influences on that story in this one. I listened to it as a wonderfully produced Audible original and was enthralled throughout. Highly recommended for fans of classic European vampires (if you want edgier, less familiar vampires, try Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire. I have a retelling of the Passover story in there that will startle you, and the other stories are blowing me away!). 

In An Absent Dream is part of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series, which follows children who find portals into magical worlds. Though I recommend that entire series, it's not necessary to read the others to enjoy this one thoroughly. Of all I've read so far, this one is my favorite. 

The Relentless Moon continues Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut series, following a secondary character from previous books into a locked room mystery set on a fledgling moon colony. Satisfyingly thorough realistic science seen through very human stories. I love this series so much!

Record of a Spaceborn Few is part of Becky Chambers's Wayfarer series, an optimistic vision of the future, exploring inter-species relations through aliens and AI characters, alongside humans. I continue to love the way Chambers explores epic sagas by focusing on small, slice-of-life stories. Not quite as tense and exciting as the previous entries in the series, but still moving and well worth the read. 

I could talk for days about good books, but I'll stop there. I'm happy that I found so many good reads this year, and I'm grateful to all the authors who provided me comfort, escape, and inspiration during a very hard year.  Art is so important when times are hard. 

I'd love to hear about what books you read and loved this year, so hit me up in the comments! And if you like my reviews, you can follow me on Goodreads or check out my year in books there to see what else I read.  

My Publishing Year: A Horror Show with Unexpected Heroism

2020, man. Whew. Don't those numbers just wear you out every time you see them? Between the pandemic, the social unrest, and the politics, I've never been so happy to see a year end. 

Oddly, it was an excellent publishing year for me, though. I guess there's balance in that? 

Seriously, though. I had eight works published in books this year! Holy-freaking-cow, that's a lot. 

Since time was this weird warped thing this year where days could last for years and months go by in a blink, I didn't really realize so much of my work had made it out there into the universe until I took a moment to look back and reflect. 

I am greatly amused to realize that I published 4 super-heroic works and 4 works of horror. That's 2020 in a nutshell isn't it--a horror show with unexpected heroism. 

Long time readers might remember that I had some publishing turmoil in late 2018, early 2019, when I had to reclaim my rights from a failing publisher and seek a new home for my work. The story has a happy continuation though, in that my Menopausal Superhero work is now housed with Falstaff Books, a thriving mid-size publisher out of Charlotte, North Carolina, full of the "Misfit Toys of Fiction." 

Because their publishing schedule didn't allow for seeing a fourth Menopausal Superhero novel into print until 2021, we decided to release short works in the series this year. Friend or Foe, a novella that bridges book 1 (Going Through the Change) and book 2 (Change of Life) came out in March of 2020. 

The Good Will Tour, a stand-alone adventure for Flygirl and Fuerte came out in May. 

And Through Thick and Thin, a collection of short stories set in the Menopausal Superheroes universe came out in August. 

Finally, all the short works were collected into an omnibus edition in Agents of Change, which includes all these works in a single volume and came out in November. 

While all this was happening, I was busy writing Be the Change, the fourth Menopausal Superhero novel. I'm in the last of my self-edits/revisions right now, with plans to send the finished book to Falstaff by January 1st. I think you're going to love this one--I know I fell in love with my character all over again writing their stories here. 

Then came the horror! Although horror was one of my first loves as a reader, I didn't start out writing it. In the past few years, though, more and more of my short work has leaned toward the weird and frightening, and this year, four of my horror short stories made it into anthologies. 

Stories We Tell After Midnight, Volume 2 from Crone Girls Press has been described as traditional horror. These are the kinds of horror stories that drew me into the genre in my youth--stories that give you a good shiver and might make it a little harder to fall asleep at night. That's not to say that they are staid, boring or without humor and innovation. My story, "The Cleaning Lady," began as part of a Halloween flash fiction challenge proposed by writing-friend Bliss Morgan and might have been influenced by the fact that I was watching Downton Abbey at the time and thinking about servant-master relationships. 

Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire from Mocha Memoirs Press asked for vampire and vampire-slayer stories set in the African diaspora and featuring black characters. My daring little tale, "His Destroyer", is a retelling of the Passover story, about the 10th plague of Egypt during which the first-borns of Egyptians households were slaughtered. The story as I learned it never specified who exactly His Destroyer was, and how exactly the children were killed. So, I wrote this story imagining those details for myself. I gave myself the chills, so hopefully you'll get them, too, if you read it. This is a giant collection--with 29 stories of HUGE variety. I'm so excited to have my work included among such giants of the genre. 

Hindsight's 2020 came about when a group of writers who used to share a publisher came together as a support and recovery group for each other (yes, *that* publisher--see link above). Our theme was regret, or hindsight, and I wrote a wonderfully creepy little thing called "I Should Have Known" set in the Victorian era about love, sacrifice, and monstrosity. So much fun to write! 

Outsiders Within from Abstruse Press just came out yesterday! It's a collection of cosmic horror stories and you might enjoy your trip through madness with Margaret in my story, "Margaret Lets Her Self Go." This is the same press that published Deadman Humour: 13 Fears of a Clown in late 2019, which includes my bit of Lovecraftian horror, "The Gleewoman of Preservation." 

And if that's not enough of my work yet, you can also support the Kickstarter for Ravencon to read my story, "If the Moon is Real." Hear an excerpt here, on YouTube. 

Since Ravencon, a small Virginian convention close to my heart, had to cancel the 2020 and 2021 live events, they've put together this collection of short stories featuring corvids--a class of birds that includes the eponymous Raven of Ravencon. 

The hope is that the Kickstarter will earn enough money to keep the organization afloat and "in the black" until we can gather again as an unkindness or conspiracy of ravens in person. 

Because support has been so strong, they're already working on a stretch goal to create a second volume of the anthology! The Table of Contents includes some pretty impressive names as well as some new writers just establishing a foothold in the industry. Well worth the few dollars, AND you get to support a small convention at the same time. 

I've already got a few more works in the pipeline for 2021, so despite the weirdness of this year, I'm feeling pretty successful on the publishing front. If you've read any of these works, please drop a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Even just a few words is enough to help the visibility of my work. Just "I liked it" or "that woman writes some crazy stuff, yo!" is the best gift you could give me. 

Repost: "We Value Teachers" and Other Lies

Note: This post first appeared on my teaching blog a week ago, but I felt strongly enough to seek a wider audience for these thoughts. Apologies to anyone who follows me both places. 

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I lost another colleague yesterday. Thankfully not to death (though I worry about this daily now), but to retirement. That makes three already this year and I don't blame them a bit. I've looked at retirement myself, though it's complicated for me because I don't have the optimum number of years (having spread my career across four states) to get full benefits yet and I'm too young. The calculus of life vs. livelihood is complex when you have others to support by your work. 

Besides the three who retired, I know of one who is leaving the profession and another seeking a transfer, in hopes that another school will value her work and treat her better. I've thought about both of those options, too. I love teaching, but I also love being able to protect myself and those I love from infection and death. 

Lots of us are in the crisis decision moment right now, as our district is sending staff back to the buildings on Monday and students back in January (don't get me started on the lack of faith in us this shows). I expect to see more and more talented educators making the hard choice to leave the work they love. 

I keep getting messages from my district, my state, and my country playing lip service to the idea that they value teachers. But I don't see it. Saying thank you is easy; showing actual support and appreciation is much more difficult. 

If we were valued, our voices would be at the forefront of conversations about how to handle education under the current crisis. Instead, there's barely even performative attempts to include teachers--the workers with the most expertise and most at risk--in the conversation at all. 

I fill out all the surveys I am sent and participate in all the meetings, but there's no evidence so far that it is worth my time. The results send a clear message, one that is ignored in favor of what's easier for the institution. Though we allow our students' families to choose to stay home and continue virtual education, teachers will not be afforded the same right, even though we are more at risk than our students, especially the veterans. You don't become an experienced teacher without getting old, and you rarely get old without developing some underlying conditions that put you at additional risk.  

If we were valued, the communication from above would show that those above me in the hierarchy know what I am doing and are looking for ways to make it easier and more sustainable. Even though I work in a small school district, where you would think it would be easier to keep track of who is here and what we're doing, there's little sign that anyone who isn't a direct parallel colleague understands what I actually do. It's like being a baker whose supervisor last used an oven when you had to stoke an actual fire inside to bake.   

And this is America, after all, so if we were valued, our country would put their money where their mouth is. Money would have flowed towards resources to make safe education from home tenable--providing infrastructure and tools as well as paying attractive salaries to bring our country's brightest and best to the fight. Internet access would have become free and fast for any household with a student in it. You can always tell what a capitalist REALLY values, by looking at the bottom line, and education is far too near the bottom across the board. 

So, thanks for saying you value me and my work. But if you really do, then prove it. 

September Reads

In August, I didn't ready very many books. Now, partly, this was because one of the books I *did* read was Look Homeward, Angel, which clocks in at more than 600 pages or 26 listening hours (I read that one by moving back and forth between audiobook and Kindle editions). In fact, I didn't really even finish the Wolfe novel until a day or two into September. 

So, I promised myself options in September. Sometimes I pin myself in with promises--agreeing to read and review certain books or signing on for discussions that mean I have to read a book on a certain timeframe. As much as I enjoy the book clubs, sometimes the obligation takes the joy out of it. 

So, I started with two books that I had a strong desire to read based on what I'd heard about them: 

This was my third read by Cherie Priest. I first found her novel Boneshaker a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it, and I do intend to go back for more in the series, but I haven't made it yet. 

After I read Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, I had a hankering for more Lovecraftian horror and ran across Maplecroft, which blends alternate history with Lovecraftian mythos through the character of Lizzie Borden. Right up three of my favorite alleys! I devoured that one last month. 

Chapelwood is a second book in the series, picking up some thirty years after the events of the first book, with a now-elderly, but still formidable Lizzie Borden traveling to Alabama to face another dark threat to humanity. I loved it almost as much as the first one, so it started off my September happily. 

My Dark Vanessa was not nearly as fun. That's not to say it wasn't good. It was terribly good, the kind of book that lingers with you a long time, but the subject matter is awfully real and dark and heavy and September 2020 was maybe not the right time for me to take on that kind of book. I found it un-put-downable, and also wished I had never picked it up. While I thought it was wonderful, I'm not sure I'd recommend it without a series of trigger warnings. My short take is: Lolita, as told by Lolita instead of Humbert Humbert. Complex, riveting, and…harrowing.

My Dark Vanessa was also quite long. So, I decided to choose my next few books based on a different criteria: length! 

I wanted short books. Things I could read in one to three days. Short-term commitments. Luckily, I already had a bunch of such things waiting for me from past purchases on my Kindle and in my Audible collection. 

Hero by Susan Hill, a short story intended to introduce readers to Simon Serrailler, a police detective character featured in a ten book series. Hill's writing was stellar, but I think I'd walked in expecting something like The Woman in Black, a book by Susan Hill that enraptured me, and I found instead a quiet, thoughtful policeman's tale. Good, but not my favorite sort of book.

The Half-Life of Marie Curie by Lauren Gunderston was an Audible original I picked up sometime when it was free with my membership because I thought I'd like to know more about Marie Curie. I definitely got my wish in this fabulous performance of a play featuring Kate Mulgrew and Francesca Faridany. In fact, I have a new woman scientist to look into: Hertha Ayrton.

Pluck & Cover and Hide & Chic, two novellas of the Zombie Cosmetologist series by JD Blackrose. Light and fun, a truly original take on zombies (not mindless shamblers or brain-hungry monsters, but something entirely different).

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. While there is truth in this self-help book for creatives, it's buried in a lot of tough talk that feels a lot like bullying. Turned me off. 

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy. I picked it up for inspiration, especially since our government has me dipping between disappointment and despair these day. Unfortunately, it left me feeling depressed at the vast chasm between politicians of the past and the self-serving rich assholes we're stuck with these days. I have a hard time believing anyone currently in power would risk their own position or sacrifice their power to make a stand on a moral decision in 2020. 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I'd heard of this book, but had only the vaguest idea what it was about. It ended up being a very personal story of grief and survival. My summary: "Heart-rending. A little self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing here and there, but worth it for those incandescently honest moments laid bare and shared by anyone who has ever lost someone they loved dearly."

Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen. Now *this* was what I was hoping for from the Kennedy. I picked it up because I wanted to remember how wonderful and important Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been, fresh from the surprisingly personal feeling of loss that struck me when I learned of her death. I was already in love with this woman, and I only love her more after reading these interviews and understanding the massive restraint, forethought, and gentle persuasion that cut a swath through our country's legal system and made it tolerable to be female in America. I can only pray her legacy will live on in the hearts of the women she has inspired and lead to a better tomorrow. 

Certain Woman of an Age by Margaret Trudeau. Another Audible original I picked up for free some time ago. I'd describe it as sort of half-standup-act, half Ted-talk. I found I enjoyed myself, even though the book detailed her experiences in learning to live as a bi-polar woman. It was good to see someone come out on the other side of a mental health struggle with humor and confidence. 

So, in number of books, I more than made up for my meager August pile. In fact, I've now met my yearly goal. I always set a goal of 52 books a year, or one a week. Some years, that's hard to reach. 

This year, it's looks like I'm going to demolish it, and I don't feel too guilty about "cheating" by reading so many short books. 

That shorter commitment of 1-3 days per read was exactly what my brain wanted this month, while I dealt with the stress and worry about learning to teach effectively in an all-digital environment and keep moving forward in my own writing. I got that gold-star feeling of accomplishment over and over again, while giving a lot of things I've been meaning to read a chance. I'll call this a win!

I'd love to hear about what you've been reading and how your COVID life has affected your choices in reading material. Tell me about it in the comments below! 

Repost from my teacher blog: Starting School Digitally

 

The Practical Pedagogue: Things I Learned Today: Starting the Schoolyear di...:  1. It's easier with the students I already know than with new ones.  Because I am the entire Spanish department at my school, I often g...

May Reads

Reading has always been my escape, well, as long as I can remember anyway. But like a lot of readers I've talked to recently, falling into a story has been harder than usual for me during quarantine. 

That got worse here at the end of May with police violence leading to protests that became riots. My low-level restless anxiety and imagination full of what-ifs whipped into something larger and harder to ignore. I know a lot of creatives are struggling similarly, with creation as well as consumption of art. I'm managing slow forward progress on my writing still, and am hopeful I can pick up my pace again when the school year ends here in a couple of weeks. 

Despite my struggles, I still read eight books in May, and I really liked six of them. 

I read three books written by friends and colleagues: Gidion's Hunt by Bill Blume, Chasing the Dragon: A Sherlock Holmes Romantic Mystery by Alexandra Christian, and The Reckoning by DM Taylor. 

I've read other books by Alexandra, and I know from being there for some of her readings that her work is clever, sexy, and spiked with humor. Chasing the Dragon: A Sherlock Holmes Romantic Mystery was no exception. Her imagined love story for Sherlock Holmes plays beautifully in the known world of those stories while bringing Alexandra's strengths into play. I hope she writes more in this universe! 

Bill and I have been on panels together at conventions for a few years now, but I hadn't yet read any of his work. Gidion's Hunt  was sweet in a wholesome sort of way, especially considering that it's a story about a teenaged vampire hunter. I loved the family relationships and it looks like Bill has a great foundation for future books in the series in this first volume. 

DM Taylor is a writer I know from Instagram. The Reckoning is a time travel thriller with elements of women's fiction. I enjoyed it quite a bit! It took me a little longer to read this one because I read it as a Kindle edition, and I'm suffering from screen-time overload right now, which is making me prefer paper and audiobook reading to ebooks. 

I also read three graphic novels this month. Graphic novels can be read quickly, often in a single sitting, and the combination of art with narrative really works to suck me in when my attention is scattered. The Sixth Gun, Volume 3: Bound really pleased me. I read the first two in this series last month and loved the way this volume took the focus to Gord and deepened his backstory. I'm looking forward to reading more in this series!

Newprints and Endgames by Ru Xu were passed my way by my thirteen-year-old daughter who loved them. She's a huge fan of Blue, the main character, and I can see why--she's so forthright, scrappy, and determined. Unfortunately, the storytelling disappointed me in that the narration pulled back from hard emotional moments, avoiding conflict that the story really needed. 

The second volume in particular felt rushed, like two books worth of story had been crammed into only one. Still, it evokes a Little Orphan Annie feel in a wonderful steampunk setting and there's a lot to recommend them, especially to younger readers. 

My last two reads were disappointments. I'd been looking forward to reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I loved the cover and the premise of a secret society surrounding story and books intrigued me. I had positive memories of The Night Circus, so thought I might enjoy another book by the same author, but it really just didn't grab me at all. All atmosphere (gorgeous, beautifully rendered atmosphere) and no substance. Too light on plot and characterization to keep me, especially under current circumstances. 

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse was my First Monday Classics Book Club choice for the month and it was a slog for me. I kind of had a feeling it was going to be, just remembering the kinds of people who touted its praises back in my undergrad years--almost exclusively entitled young men I didn't like all that much. But, still, I tried to go in without bias and give it a go. 

I found some beauty and insight in the text, but was left with the overall yucky feeling that I get from reading literary representations of male academics having midlife crises which they overcome by having affairs with far younger women. 

There's nothing for me in a story like that. I can't sympathize with the main character, and often can't sympathize with the young woman either because she's a manic pixie dream girl or a complete cypher. Maybe this one was the first novel of this type? I don't know. But it didn't feel innovative or interesting. I've seen this story many times and it's irritated me every time. 

Luckily I'm finishing May in the middle of two good books I'll tell you about in June: Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and The Haunting of the Tenth Avenue Theater by Alex Matsuo. 

What did you read in May? What's next on your list? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 

Art is Essential: Shakespeare in Quarantine

Critical Read put out a call recently for short nonfiction posts about art that is seeing you through the pandemic. They rejected my submission, but were kind about it and invited me to submit something else, with a focus on an American artist. I probably will. In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out the posts on their site (and, of course, mine below).

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Shakespeare in Quarantine

I often turn to poetry when my soul is troubled, especially older, metered poetry. The rhythm soothes me while the language pulls me out of my here and now and transports me to another time and place. This time, it’s Shakespeare seeing me through the quarantine.

Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, is also the day that my husband and I had our first date, on which we watched a movie production of one of the Bard’s plays, 10 Things I Hate About You. We’ve made a tradition of celebrating our anniversary with a Shakespearean performance every year since as near to the day as we can manage, live when possible, recorded when not.

So, it seems apropos that it is Shakespeare in a thoroughly modern context that is pulling me through right now. Each day, I wait for Patrick Stewart to upload his daily sonnet video to social media and I find a quiet space to sit and listen alone, just me and Sir Patrick and the day’s verse. As I write this, he’s been recording a sonnet a day for nearly two months.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Patrick Stewart (@sirpatstew) on Mar 21, 2020 at 4:25pm PDT

He began with Sonnet 116 “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments” which of course, I already loved. I fell in love with it when I first read it as an undergrad, and again when Kate Winslet’s Marianne of Sense and Sensibility quoted it breathlessly, and yet again when Sir Patrick Stewart read it to his wife who held a phone to record the moment for us.

Words written more than four hundred years ago are performed for me by a spaceship captain in the privacy of my own home. What a gift!

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What art is seeing you through quarantine? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

April Reads

In March, when our quarantine began, I found it hard to read. Every time I sat still, I felt guilty. Surely there as some kind of preparation I could be making to shelter my family against the coming storm. There must be someone in need I could be supporting. Restless energy made it difficult to lose myself in story, but eventually, I returned to my roots as a reader and picked up short, escapist works.

I continued that theme in April and it's working for me.

I began with a few light romances. K Leigh and Ashley Cade are authors I befriended on Instagram. It was a great escape to lose myself with characters in danger of having their hearts broken instead of worrying about paying their bills or avoiding illness.

Something That Could Last is a world's collide kind of story, about a young man and woman from very different backgrounds finding ones another. Four Day Prince Charming is an older woman-younger man romance with a save-the-world theme I really loved. One Week Queen is a hate-into-love story with dogs! (He's a veterinarian). All three were short, sweet, and distracting. Just exactly what I needed and wanted.

That's not to say that everything I read was short. I also read The Annotated Alice and Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. I confess though that I wouldn't have read either of those this month were it not that I had committed to do so for my First Monday Classics Book Club, which I help run for my local library.

You might think the giddy silly attitude of Alice in Wonderland would have been perfect escapism, but it didn't jibe with my mood at all. Then again, I've never been that fond of Alice. There's not enough story to her story, and the humor is so self-congratulatory in its cleverness that it doesn't make me laugh. Not my cup of tea, with or without dormouse.

In contrast, An American Tragedy worked pretty well for me. While the story certainly goes dark  enough to earn its dire title, the story is not relentlessly sad. In fact, the ending is all the more effective because so much of the book is about hope and ambition and striving for something more. Even though I feel the book is flawed, I can see how it has earned its place in the canon of great works, and I'm glad I finally read it.

I can't entirely say I *enjoyed* Dreiser's classic tome, but I did stay engaged with it, and I'm still thinking about it several days after finishing reading it, trying to decide exactly how I feel about it. I even sought out the 1950s movie adaptation, A Place in the Sun.

I don't think I would have stuck with it if I were reading it in paper or on Kindle though. I listened to it as an audiobook over the course of six weeks, in 10-20 minute increments while I cooked or took care of household tasks. It wasn't the kind of book wanted to sit down and devour.

For both these longer works, I was happy to get off screen. Now that I'm teaching from home, I feel like I'm on screen time 20 of every 24 hours--for the day job, for fun, and for writing. I was glad to read Alice on paper and Dreiser by listening.

That might be why my next five reads were all short and why I read them in paper editions.

Dreadful Penny and Unsettled Spirits by J. Matthew Saunders, and two graphic novels: The Sixth Gun: Book 1: Cold Dead Fingers and The Sixth Gun: Book 2: The Crossroads by Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt, and Bill Crabree.

Interestingly, these also all came to me via family members. My sister lent me Dreadful Penny and Unsettled Spirits, having purchased it at a convention sometime last year where Matthew and I were both convention guests, as well as sharing Raven. My husband suggested The Sixth Gun series.

All were violent, but non-realistic, with magical elements and interesting heroes. I read all of them sitting on a swing in my yard, in the sunshine, too. Quite a contrast to the content. (I must have really liked The Sixth Gun, because I immediately ordered Book 3. Looking forward to reading it when it arrives!)

I finish the month in the middle of three more books, but I'll tell you about them in May. I'm about 1/3 of the way through Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea on audio book, 3/4 of the way through Bill Blume's Gidion's Hunt on paper, and just started The Reckoning: A Time Travel Thriller by DM Taylor on Kindle.

How is your reading life going?

Did you read my latest yet? Friend or Foe came out in late March. It picks up literally moments after the end of Going Through the Change: Book One in the series (book one is on 99¢ sale, too, BTW).  It's a novella, available in digital or paper formats, so you can choose your poison.

I'm also excited to announce that you can get the next in the series on May 7, 2020!  The Good Will Tour fits in the Menopausal Superhero universe right after book 3, Face the Change, but can be enjoyed as. stand alone story as well.