Good morning, Readers!

I apologise for not posting yesterday.  I thought I had something scheduled.  Turned out, I didn't.  I'm sorry.  I also did not post anything because I was not at my computer.  I was sitting for an artist.

I made that sound fancy.  I was out getting a tattoo.  It is, thus far, the largest tattoo I have.  And it's gorgeous!  I'm so thrilled with it.  Not for the first time, I'd like to recommend Living Colour Tattoo Studio.  The artist this time was Alicia, and I absolutely adored my experience with her.  I might just work with her for all my tattoos in the future.  She's awesome fun and very talented.  I will post photos of the tattoo for Friday's post.

It was a mammoth session.  I went in at 10:00am and left 5:20pm or so.  Apparently, I sat really well.  Also, my skin behaved really well.  Apparently, my pale skin and freckles led Alicia to believe that my skin would swell and get extremely red.  It did not.  It took the ink really well and didn't welt much at all.  For that reason, I was able to get the whole tattoo finished in one sitting.  Thank goodness.  I didn't want multiple sittings.

The art is beautiful.  I'm really thrilled with it.  I got a little reflexive after the tattoo.  I love tattoos.  I think they're beautiful.  I've always loved tattoos.  Since I was a wee one, I've been thinking about getting tattoos.  I joke that it's a hold-over from a past life (I was a woman of some import in bronze age Insular Europe, you see), much like my obsession with the bronze age and iron age cultures of the Atlantic Façade.  Still, I've always loved tattoos and found them beautiful.  Yesterday, it made me think about all the reasons why they're so dear to me.  I've struck upon two main reasons.

The first, and paramount, reason is that they're beautiful to me.  Of course, this does depend on the art in question.  I've always been drawn to tattoos of cultural significance; traditional Polynesian tattoos on Polynesian people, for example.  I'm also following with much love a young woman who is up north, reviving traditional Inuit tattoos.  While I wouldn't get those tattoos for myself - those are not my cultural heritages - my tattoos all draw from my own cultural heritage done in the style of those cultures.  I have a Pictish hare on my right chest just beneath the collarbone.  This latest tattoo celebrates my Viking heritage, with direct iconographic links to early Viking relief carvings.  My next three tattoos will celebrate my Insular Celtic heritage (when I save up enough to get those done).  For me personally, cultural tattoos of this kind have always sparked my interest more than modern-style tattoos, though those are also beautiful.  There are some hideous pieces, though.  We've all seen them.

The second, less lovely reason, is reclaiming myself for myself.  Most of you know by now that I am a survivor of sexual assault.  Someone tried to wrest ownership of my own body from me.  They weren't the only one.  Men in suits are trying the same constantly; fighting to wrest ownership of all women's bodies from women.  They're fighting to legislate away our independence, our right to decide for ourselves when and with whom we decide to have children, or even if.  How and for what reason we might seek medical care is also under the gun.  The autonomy of women everywhere, the right to our own lives and bodies is constantly under attack.  My tattoos are a way of marking myself as claimed territory.  I wear my flag for all to see.  I am my own mistress.  I will fight you if you try to take that from me.  And then I will get a tattoo to celebrate my victory.

Related: it also helps to serve as a douche canoe repellent.  So many butt-hurt articles from morons claiming tattooed women are broken/unattractive/attention whores/sluts/crazy/pick your favourite pejorative.  Such articles advise that men of similar mind avoid tattooed women at all costs.  So... good.  Let me get a few more just to make sure those twists steer clear of me and make my life easier.

Anyway, those are a couple of reasons why tattoos are my thing.  The first is really the greatest reason.  But mostly, it's the past life thing.  Definitely that.

Where do you stand?  Tattoos?  No tattoos?  Why?  It interests me.

Right, i have to go now.
​
Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

So, I've been doing a tonne of work for Outcast, but none of it is the actual writing of the manuscript.  It's alright.  I'm waiting for feedback from book one, and I will be revisiting that one quite soon.  In the meantime, I'm getting my thoughts of the world in which this series takes place all organised and fixed up.  It's actually pretty fun, but also quite exhausting.  My brain is quite fried.

Still, it's super nice to be getting this stuff in order in a way that makes the information I need easy to find and search for.  It also helps with things that aren't written in the book that may be referenced in passing or provide a background to the current state of affairs but is never directly mentioned.  It helps me keep things straight.

What is it?  Why, it's a wiki, of course.  I'm creating a wiki of everything The Great Man related, and I'm having too much fun with it.  I'm writing it as if it's a collection of notes from a scholar in the same world some three thousand years after the events of The Great Man, who is trying to prove that the stories aren't just myth, but are actual history (think how we deal with King Arthur in academia today), and those notes are being translated by someone else another thousand years or so later.  It's a pretty silly thing, if I think about it too much, but I am having an absolute blast doing this.  I've even created maps, images of artefacts, and plan to do a few paintings and sculptures that I can photograph and put in as "proof" or "artist's concepts of" things.

Honestly, I think that maybe this fake academia is my happy place.  Maybe I really should have gone in for a career in academia.

For real, though, it's stupid fun building this thing, and it's even useful work, even if it's not writing.  It's what I've been doing all week, and how I'll be closing out the week.

Speaking of, I should get to work.  I have to write about the Barony of Vis.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

So... the Aurora Award nominations are now open.  I have an eligible work.  Skylark.  It's in the novel category.

If you want to, you can nominate it by going to the Aurora Awards page, registering as a member (it's $10.00 for the year, and you get to have a bundle with all the nominated works for you to read/enjoy.  That's a damned steal, thank you very much).

Look, I don't have a snowball's chance in hell.  I mean, have you seen the works on that list?!  But I thought I'd just let you know that it's there and can be nominated if you're so inclined.

Right, I'm off.  I have a tonne of work to do.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

It seems a week for celebrating other people.  I don't mind.  It gives me something to talk about.  So, awesome folks and people I much admire have banded together to create a podcast.  They'll be talking all kinds of things related to SFF, from what I can gather.  Given the name of their podcast, and their current twitter, it seems they'll be doing so from a post-apocalyptic world, which, frankly, is a really fun premise.

I'm not sure that's what they're really doing, but it certainly seems like it, and I am here for it.

Anyway, I don't have a website for you at the moment, but you can show your support for this new podcast by following them on Twitter.  Their first episode should be coming out soon, and I'm really looking forward to it.  They're a clever pair, and it's sure to be good.

Right, I'm off to do some work.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Hi all!

This is a bit of a different post.  I'm here to promote a friend of mine, whose art deserves to be known.  She's really very good.  Last week, she finally created a website for her art.  And I hadn't even nagged her about it in ages.

Portraiture is her specialty, and she really is very good.  She'll even do portraits of pets.  You can check out her stuff.  Here is her website.  FYI - it's kinda borked for mobile, but you should be able to see it okay on a PC.

Right, now I have work to be getting on with.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I'm labouring a bit under burnout.  And by a bit, I mean a lot.  Today is not a great day.  I vote we dedicate one week a month as a mandatory mental health week, where we all just goof off, sleep, or otherwise do very little.

I would like that very much.

Not least of all because my computer has crashed twice this morning already, and I'm too exhausted for this kind of frustration.  I think I'm going to disappear into musical YouTube for a bid.

See you on the other side!

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I can finally announce it!

*clears throat*

I am writing for Black Gate Magazine, an online e-zine specialising in SFF topics.  I'm posting there once a fortnight, and I'm kinda excited about it.  My first ever post went live yesterday afternoon, and so it's going to also be this morning's blog post.  In fact, because I'm lazy AF, every time I post to Black Gate, that will be the following day's post.

Anyway, this fortnight, I talked about escapism and how it is valid, even if it doesn't engage the most intellectual part of ourselves.  Read it here.

I'm off to contemplate the next blog post.  I think I have it.

​Ciao!