I have a confession to make.
I subscribe to several fashion magazines.
I keep them in the bathroom, mostly. Sometimes I take them on airplanes.
But, see, they are good for my writing. Really.
Fashion magazines are very image-heavy. They make a nice break from reading prose, and (unlike comics) let my mind wander a bit while I look at them. Fashion photography is often very strange, juxtaposing languid women in sleek outfits with bizarre settings, such as a lipstick factory. Even the more ordinary photographs sometimes, to me, seem bizarre, like science fiction. They spark weird ideas in my mind, unlikely connections.
They take me into a different world. Sometimes, that’s what you need.
About Victoria Janssen
Victoria Janssen [she, her] currently writes cozy space opera for
Kalikoi. The novella series A Place of Refuge begins with
Finding Refuge:
Telepathic warrior Talia Avi, genius engineer Miki Boudreaux, and augmented soldier Faigin Balfour fought the fascist Federated Colonies for ten years, following the charismatic dissenter Jon Churchill. Then Jon disappeared, Talia was thought dead, and Miki and Faigin struggled to take Jon’s place and stay alive. When the FC is unexpectedly upended, Talia is reunited with her friends and they are given sanctuary on the enigmatic planet Refuge. The trio of former guerillas strive to recover from lifetimes of trauma, build new lives on a planet with endless horizons, and forge tender new connections with each other.
I’ll take your subscriptions and raise you newsstand purchases as well! (Dare we say addicted?) Love fashion magazines and your excuse works for me! But I do think that when you work with words all day, you enjoy switching to images. At least, that’s what I tell myself…
We need images to renew our words, or something fancy like that.