Sorry for the lack of updates, all. Don’t know if you noticed, but it’s been a hell of a year.
First – my wife and I are indeed pregnant. She’s eleven weeks along now, and we found out yesterday morning that we’ll be giving birth to a baby girl. My wife’s (and daughter’s) Jewish tradition prevents us from revealing the name yet, but rest assured, we have one in mind. I addressed her in French by her name, and felt power there. I don’t want to loose that upon the world until she’s ready.
Until then, we’ve been calling her la Pousse: the Sprout.
If you’re interested in helping us out, my wife has a registry together here: Our BabyList Registry. If you’re American, I’ve got quite a list of French books over at Amazon.com.
We call her the Sprout because the day before the strip turned blue, my seeds sprouted. I started an autumn garden, un jardin potager, of Japanese and Chinese greens I ordered out of Kitazawa. And that day, the komatsuna greens and the hidabeni radishes pushed their first tiny leaves out of their Dixie cups.
They’ve grown a bit since, the komatsuna and hidabeni in particular bursting out into huge shaggy growths I had to harvest back just to give everyone else room.
That harvest ended up in here:
My wife’s first Japanese meal since the morning sickness started, and she used my own greens for it.
And she’s getting a story published! Her first in SF/F/H. She’s been beaming around, “just like my hubby!” The story is called “Yerushalmi,” about a family in genderqueer future Jerusalem, and it’ll be published in Solarpunk Sunscapes in 2022.
And …oh yes.
I’m writing again myself.
I was able to wring a first draft of a short story out in August, but it needs time to heal before I go after it again. In October, my friend in London recommended The Screwtape Letters to me. “Interesting,” I said as I closed the book, “but I wonder what it would be like with Buddhist mara instead of Anglo-Catholic devils?”
So, for NaNoWriMo, I worked on what I’ve worktitled The Gandharva Letters. Tahna, who is Thirst, sits on high in the divine realms, instructing her two sisters Raga, who is Desire, and Arati, who is Aversion, in the proper tempting of the Soul. The Soul might escape, you see, from the cycle of death and birth, and their father Mara would be most displeased to lose even one small soul.
I did not follow the 1667 words/day NaNoWriMo plan, though. Still healing. So I promised myself “just one sentence.” Because that one sentence always becomes more. Just one sentence per day. A different stint …but a good one. I keep writing sentences, you see.
And last, I am practicing again. Not Roscoe Learns to Think, not yet, but…getting there. As with everything, more on our story as it develops.
My friends diagnosed burnout, and that’s definitely how it feels: grey, ashy.
Which is why I was surprised when, on a whim, I decided to watch Heavy Metal, and colors came back. My beloved wife and I had watched other things the past few months, and none of them really struck the same chord.
I kept experimenting, seeking out the sense of what I can only call “trippy wonder”. So far, this is what I’ve found that really brings the colors out, that creates mindscapes, that awes. I would love to find more, if you have recommendations. (And if you have a better word for what these things all share than “trippy wonder,” that would help, too)
If not, enjoy this sampling. It’s trippy. And pretty wonderful.
Music:
Kate Bush (especially her earlier albums, such as Hounds of Love)
WARNING: MAY CONTAIN KATE BUSH.
Pink Floyd (though each era has its own flavor)
Barrett
Waters
Gilmour
Movies:
Istvan Banyai’s Zoom
The Mind’s Eye series
Heavy Metal
Fair warning: Heavy Metal. NSFW.
Disney’s Alice in Wonderland
Literature:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry
Nezahualcoyotl’s poetry
Things I’ve experimented with and didn’t quite work:
It was not for the reasons I feared, but because everyone who knows me needed to alert me all at once to the fact that a TikTok phenomenon of people singing “The Wellerman” had exploded on social media, leading to a surge of interest in sea chanties. Which was amazing, even with the blowing-up of my inbox.
In spirit of having been “the shantyman” on both ship and shore, I share with you this short essay on the nature of sea chanties. I wrote it in response to a question on the National Novel Writing Month forums about writing airship chanties, and I hope you enjoy:
My interview with the French Canadian Legacy Podcast is now live! With Jesse, I discuss “Glâcehouse”, No Time: The First Hour, and life in California, China, and the future.
(for a bonus, I got a bit more off-the-cuff about the Lady Washington and my time in the slaughterhouse for the preview…)
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
Winston Churchill
Everyone’s heard of a masterpiece – some great tour de force of art or craft. Fewer folks, but some, have heard of an apprenticepiece – now a miniature work of cabinetry, originally a kind of final project to prove the apprentice was ready to graduate to journeyman. Today, I’m going to talk about what I call a mistresspiece.
I call it a mistresspiece partly for the wordplay, and partly because the writer friend I was talking to and I could not for the life of us think of a masculine or gender-neutral term for “mistress,” as in a dedicated long-term lover, even though she thought it was mainly straight women writers that cultivate mistresspieces.
As for me: I love Doña Ana Lucía, I do. She’s been my main project for the better part of three years. I love the sheer, silly, solarpulp joy. I love the prose and the two-fisted action and the excuse to pull out another Cool Thing because that’s half the point. I look forward to many years and many books with her. But at this point, I also detest Doña Ana Lucía. Three years is a long time with one book, even a fun one. You get tired, you get bored, you get stifled. You need something different.
And your eye starts to wander. Ideas drift in front of you, one catches your eye, and it’s an idea that can work, and idea you like, an idea that likes you. It’s exciting. It feels illicit. And you promise you’ll just take a couple notes now and dutifully return to your current project, maybe call the idea back when you’re done…
…and then you wake up one morning with a chapter of the other project drafted, and it was the most fun you’ve had writing in months.
It always starts out fun, but slowly becomes more serious as you become more committed to the other project, almost as much as you are to your main project. Suddenly, you have two parallel serious writing projects: your masterpiece and your mistresspiece.
Here’s where the metaphor splits, because while cheating on your flesh-and-blood partner(s) is never not going to hurt them, cheating on your book is sometimes the best thing that could happen to it. I came back to Doña Ana Lucía after writing “Glâcehouse” renewed, and produced one of the best scenes of the novel. That was a short story, a winter fling, a stolen kiss of sweet prose. The effect goes double for mistresspieces – Doña Ana Lucía Serrano and Marybeth Delilah Potter influence and rejuvenate each other, although the two heroines and their two books could not be more different.
So if you’re getting tired of your current book, you might take a break, work on something else for awhile…even if it feels naughty. Just be sure to keep giving your main project love and care. And if that something else turns into something serious, too, you’ve found yourself a mistresspiece.
Tomorrow is the first day of the Nebula Conference.
When I signed up, I thought I’d be getting on a train today bound for Woodland Hills after requesting time off from work. I don’t have to tell you how much can change in two months. Now I’m testing audio equipment and my internet connection and teasing my friends about going to John Scalzi’s virtual dance party.
It took me some time to decide whether or not I still wanted to go. Especially when I couldn’t write for weeks, it made little sense to go to an SF/F writing convention. And while I am sad I can’t walk into the ballroom with a completed draft of Doña Ana Lucía Serrano …To The Future! in hand, I have started making progress again and made it to the place in my notes marked [CLIMACTIC BIG ENCHILADA BATTLE ROYALE WITH CHEESE].
So why go?
Because at heart, it’s still a convention. There’s still a lot to learn from the panels and discussions, and you never know who you’re going to meet in the common areas. The focus on small groups in the common areas means we’ll be able to hear each other talk (at least, once I have my mike set up). And cons keep me in touch with what’s happening in SF/F publishing, and usually spurs me into action.
And if you’re coming too, come say hi to me! I’ll be at the following panels all weekend. If I’m not at one of these, I’m probably hanging out in the Vorkosigan Suite. See you there!
May 29 8:00-9:00 Crowdfunding for Authors 9:30-10:30 Being a Creative in 2020 10:30-11:30 Mentorship Meeting 2:00-3:00 Blades and Badasses 3:30-4:30 Managing Choice in Games and Interactive Fiction
May 30 8:00-9:00 Urban Development 11:00-12:00 Writing Multiply Marginalized Characters in SFF 2:00-3:00 Making Video for Authors 3:30-4:30 Spending Money to Make Money as an Indie Author 5:00-8:00 55th Annual Nebula Awards
May 31 8:00-9:00 The Landscape of Audiobook Production for Authors 9:30-10:30 Who and Where I Am 11:00-12:00 The Second Life of Stories 2:00-3:00 Moving the Line 3:30-4:30 Forming and Sustaining a Successful Writing or Critique Group
I have never been able to make empanadas quite so perfect as my mother’s, even with all those long monsoon afternoons helping her make batches on batches of them. However, I perfected a recipe of my own as a college apprentice that serves me in good stead now as a professor myself. I like to gather a small group of people interested in Latin culture together in my kitchen to make a whole batch together, with enough for everyone to take home.
My favorite filling involves some of the best of three separate worlds, with a nice tail of slig and golden Buddha-potato from Prithvi, lagoon-olives and sea vegetables from Parvati, and spices and velociraptor eggs from my native Sati. However, I have adapted it to what I believe the original Serrano recipe was on Earth, with Earth ingredients only.
Ingredients: Pastry
1L all-purpose flour (if you can’t find quatrotriticle)
10mL baking powder
5mL salt
250mL olive oil
250mL warm milk (cow will do, goat is better)
100mL cornmeal, or enough to cover baking sheet(s)
1 egg (to brush with)
Filling
500g beef, ground or chopped to approximately 11mm (the size of one of Doña Ana Lucía’s iron slugs)
1 onion, chopped
250g cubed potatoes, boiled
3 hardboiled eggs, rough chopped (duck eggs for more of a Devi flavor, chicken eggs for more of an Earth flavor)
200g red and green peppers, chopped
1 can of olives, chopped
1 bulb garlic, minced
dash cumin
dash paprika
dash achiote powder
sprigs parsley
Instructions Mix together flour, salt, and baking powder, then mix in oil and milk until dough forms a ball. Knead on cornmeal, then let stand 30 minutes. Open can of olives, drain, transfer olives to rice bowl. Boil potatoes.
Fry the beef with the garlic and onions in a little olive oil until onions translucent, then add potatoes, cumin, chili, achiote, red and green peppers, and enough potato water to cover. Cook, covered, until the meat is tender. Take off heat and add parsley, olives, and chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Roll out dough with pin until 5mm thick, then cut out circles with wide-mouth olives can. If too large, cut into working pieces first. Preheat your oven for 180*C. Take each circle, ladle a generous helping of filling in the middle, fold over and fold it repulgue-style with your fingers. Brush with the egg to help seal and set a shiny finish, then lay on a cornmeal-lined baking sheet. Repeat until you run out of either filling, dough, or baking sheets.
Bake at 180*C for 15 minutes or so, or until the scent drives your blood to unspeakable things. Enjoy with crisp dry rice lager or sips of good rum.
A hat trick, according to The Guardian, was when the cricket club would present a member a new hat upon completing three wickets in one game. I originally heard it in terms of hockey, when a player scored three goals in a row. But my hat trick has nothing to do with sports.
I don’t remember when I started calling it that, but I’ve been calling it that ever since. For me, a hat trick is a day with three, very different, accomplishments in it:
10 minutes of waiting worship
1,000 new words
3 Sanchin kata
If you’re a little confounded by these, let me break them down.
10 Minutes of Waiting Worship
As a (Liberal) Quaker, my worship of God and awareness of the Presence do
not involve set prayers, or songs, or pew aerobics. Some folks, even some
Friends, find these things bring them
closer to the Light, and I’ve sung for joy or repeated a mantra before. But the
beating heart of my religious life is sitting in silence among Friends on
Sunday morning, praying stillness into my soul so that I can hear, and heed,
the still, small voice of God. Outsiders call it silent worship, but among
Friends, we call it waiting worship. It’s not so much that we are
silent, as that we are waiting for God and waiting on the Presence of God among
and between us.
The early Quakers had a practice of retiring daily, or as often as possible, which I understand to be a Friends’ Meeting “in good order” that happens to have only one Friend in it. Each Friend sits down, settles down, and centers down, letting God’s Light illuminate them and enlighten them. Not quite meditation, not quite prayer, it seems to be the Quaker experience par excellence. And I do not retire nearly often enough.
1,000 New Words
Jack London (my problematic patron saint) called it his stint. Ray Bradbury
sat down on Monday and wrote a few thousand words of new story, editing Tuesday
and submitting Wednesday, every week for most of the 1950s. Stephen King
cruises on about 1,200 a day.
And like these working-men before me, I lay down 1,000 more words on my latest project (or blog post) before I can rest for the day. Edits don’t count, research don’t count, revisions only count if I add a scene or a character. It’s laying down raw first-draft wordcount, the most sacred of writerly tasks, the holiest of holies. Everything else is just publishing.
It started out as a minimum bar to keep my production up. It’s become so
much more. I used to think of the words of my stint as like rail, something we
lay down and leave behind, always moving forward. Now I think of the thousand
as ballast, weight laid by my keel that makes me more stable and better
able to weather high seas and sudden storms. I am happier and healthier each
day I meet my stint, and exactly the reverse the days that I don’t.
Of the three components of my hat trick, I easily hit 1,000 new words more
often than I hit 10 minutes in waiting worship or 3 sanchin kata.
3 Sanchin Kata
If you practice Uechi-ryu karate, this is self-explanatory. If you don’t practice Uechi-ryu but practice karate, you might know what a kata is, but not know Sanchin. If you took one look at that and said “can you eat it?” then read on.
Kata (or, in other martial arts, forms) are the set solo practice exercises used to teach technique in East Asian martial arts. If you’ve ever seen old people in the park doing t’ai chi, they’re all doing the same form (probably Beijing 24-Step Form). Individual karate styles are strongly defined by their kata, which kata they teach and how they practice. My tradition, Uechi-ryu karate (Uechi family style), rests on a kata called sanchin or “the three battles.” Here is an Okinawan grandmaster showing us all how it’s done.
Sanchin has acquired a semi-mystical status and no small amount of
superstition. Master Uechi himself often said “all is in sanchin.” At my dojo,
growing up, we did one each of the other eight kata…
…and three sanchin.
To do three sanchin requires going through the other five Uechi-ryu kata that I know, stretching, probably also doing my daily core regimen. At the gym, I might even play with the kettlebells or dance or hit the heavy bag. But if I accomplish nothing else physically, all is in sanchin.
Bringing It All Back Home
Straightforward enough, but it’s become more
over the years. I mentioned how writing ballasts me. Extending the nautical
metaphor, writing is ballast, sanchin is maintenance, and waiting worship is
trimming the sails. “I laid down a thousand words today” is so many pounds of
ballast along my keel, weighing and centering me, allowing me to weather storms
that should otherwise have tossed me over. But it’s ballast of grain or
sawdust, and soon grows sodden and slips away, and I have to lay more down. Sanchin
is maintenance, the bo’sun’s trade, tarring line, scraping barnacles, mending
sails, making baggywinkles. In port, I can work deeper, but even out at sea, I
can lean her over and scrape away all the barnacles that built up as long as
there’s a sand drift that’ll hold her …but however I do, I need to keep
ship-shape and Bristol-fashion. Waiting worship, though, is easiest to
understand: it is to find the prevailing winds from God, and rather than fight
it, adjust my sails to better work with wind and water to get where I need to
be.
Days I do the hat trick, I feel balanced, well-kept, and agile. I feel the
most R. Jean Mathieu I can be, like
I’ve lived up to some inner standard. Do you have anything like that? Some task
or series of tasks that make you feel the most yourself? Tell us about them in
the comments!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to center down and listen for the still,
small voice…
Over on the NaNoWriMo forums,we had a prompt to write a letter FROM one of our characters to us during quarantine. I chose everyone’s favorite aristocratic Latina space archaeologist, Doña Ana Lucía Serrano, and here’s what she had to say…
M. Mathieu,
You and your peoples have built for us, your children, a utopia. Plagues here are contained within hours, tamed and woven into the ecosystem around them. Quarantine is a matter for ships and domes, in some tragic cases for cities. The worst I have seen in my life was the Crisis of Prithvi, and even then, mate could reach out to mate and clasp hand, shoulder, cheek, lip.
I suppose it would be declassé to ask for your experience and feelings, even for anthropological science.
These “are the days worth living for,” as your Edith Keeler says. And they are indeed coming, the days when the deserts bloom and the hungry are fed and their diseases cured, and all souls share hope and a common future. Even now, the people of Earth are clever and kind, and can solve their problems as long as they retain hope that problems can be solved.
And where human talent alone will not do, there is the bounty of nature…a partner with you, not an enemy. You know this: your sourdough bubbles on the table, your cabbage becomes sauerkraut, and your first instinct when cooped up at home was to plant a garden. To plant a garden, to raise seeds to be planted out of doors in a few short weeks! I do not need to spell out the metaphor for you, writer, or my admiration of the hope it suggests in you and all my ancestors. Fungus, plant, animal, and human are all family together, and they are more than willing to help us if we help them. We are earthclan, we all live in abundance together, or all die alone.
Ah, does it all seem so large? Yet the plague is so small, a microscopic machine that is almost alive. And in weight, it and its rancid cousins weigh half the beetles of the world, that’s all. But only remember your L’Engle, and her lights. Every small victory against the darkness is a victory for light. Every strike for human potential and earthclan harmony are strikes toward the future. Your worlds upon worlds of community gardens are not so far off. Only practice your hanzi, practice your karate, water your plants, ranch your yeast, love your wife, and ask “let me help” (as Allende de Mars so beautifully said).
Use this crucible to forge the things you could not before. Begin training at home, begin making cheese, begin a systemic course of reading. I care not what, only narrate it to me as you can.
Because out of such buds do blossom the days worth living for.
On January 1st, I did not expect to have 500 Twitter followers by the end of the year, much less by March 6th! But as of @svnsxvi Thank you all for your follows and for your attention.
And, in thanks, I’m offering everyone a present.
Courtesy Melissa Weiss Mathieu.
I’m giving away free copies of my Kindle short, “Hull Down”, from now until Thursday. All you need to do is head to Amazon, search for “R. Jean Mathieu” and grab your free Kindle edition.
(While you’re there, you could even follow me on Amazon!)
So what’s it about? I’ll tell you:
“The room pulsed around him, its fetid breath almost palpable even through the helmet. The bodies of Commander Wu Suzhen and Major Sam Harris were woven into the wall, a superimposed lovers’ embrace developed in resin and red light. Their shapes were fuzzy; the inside of Matt’s helmet sticky with condensation like his hair was sticky with sweat. His inner ear couldn’t find north or down, his eyes stung and he could taste something salty, but whether blood, sweat or tears, he couldn’t tell.
Why did you live?”
From “Hull Down”
Pvt. Matthew LeWald is surprised when a Navy officer leads his Marines on the Search and Rescue operation. He’s even more surprised to be the only survivor of a mission gone disastrously wrong, when better men than him died left and right. Why did he live? But there are stranger things afoot than war, things like love and things like enlightenment.
The reviewers are saying it’s “not your Dad’s military SF” and calling it “strange [and] haunting.”
Whether you’ve known me for years or just followed me yesterday, this is for you, and you have all the way until Thursday, March 12th to claim it.
Thank you again for the follows. Here’s to 500 more.
PS – If you still can’t get enough of my work (and yay!), there’s still time to become mon patronin time to see the teaser for “Doña Ana Lucía Serrano y la Caja de Venuswood (Lady Ana Lucía Serrano and the Venuswood Box)!” Just head over to Patreon and sign up for the price of a cup of coffee per month.
Recent Comments