I spent my Saturday night watching Philly Roller Derby, the second time I’ve attended one of their matches. My writer friend Jennifer Stevenson got me re-interested in this sport. Check out her story in the Jam! anthology.
I didn’t have much success with taking clear pictures with my small camera and the available lighting, but I kind of like the way these turned out, blurring and all.
Nous Autres
We never feel the lust of steel
Or fury-woken blood,
We live and die and wonder why
In mud, and mud, and mud,
And horror first and horror last
And Phantom Terror riding past.
We hear and hear the hounds of Fear
Nearer and more near.
We feel their breath….
Only the nights befriend
And mitigate the hell;
Of those who ponder, see and hear,
Too well.
The nights, and Death –
The end.
We feel but never fear
His breath.
Day after weary day,
In vain, in vain, in vain,
We turn to Thee and pray,
We cry and cry again –
“O lord of Battle, why
Should we alone be sane?”
We stifle cries with lightless eyes
And face eternal night;
We stifle cries to sacrifice
Our eyes for Human Sight.
And many give that men may live,
A life, a limb, a brain,
That fellow men may understand
And be for ever sane.
What matter if we lose a hand
If others wander hand in hand;
Or lose a foot if others greet
The dawn of peace with dancing feet;
What matter if we die unheard
If others hear the Poet’s Word?
Because we pay from day to day
The price of sacrifice;
Because we face each dreary place
Again, again, again.
Lord, set us free from Sanity –
Who feel no fighting thrill;
Must we remain for ever sane
And never learn to kill?
No answer came. In very shame
Our long-unheeded cry
Grew bitterly more bitterly,
“O why, O why, O why.
May we not feel the lust of steel
The fury-woken thrill –
For men may learn to live and die
And never learn to kill?”
–Geoffrey Dearmer
Where are all the sporty women in romance? The female professional athletes, or the ones who played basketball in college? Is there no Title IX for romance heroines?
For a romance with male athletes, I know to look up Susan Elizabeth Phillips or Kayla Perrin.
But women athletes? Aside from various equestrian skills (most common in historicals, but also not unusual in contemporaries), where are the professional female athlete heroines?
And when they are there, how often are they actually still involved in their sport, rather than having angst because they’ve been forcibly retired due to injury or being attacked by a serial killer?
Anybody have recommendations for me?
1. Games of Free Cell are much more satisfying when you’re only allowed one game, and then you have to start writing.
2. When you’re feeling the urge to be a hermit, writing is the perfect excuse.
3. When writing is going really well, and often even when it isn’t, it can be like a little, cozy cave where it’s just you and your imagination. I call it “the happy place.”
4. Finishing something—a short story, a novel—is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world. It’s even more satisfying if you print the whole thing out and then drop it from a height to get a very satisfactory thump.
5. Revising can be very satisfying, too. Each stroke of the red pen is like ripping off a scab.
6. Starting something new is also one of the best feelings in the world. It’s all blue skies and possibility.
7. Once you’ve sold a story, no one can take that back. From then on, you are always a professional writer.
Workshop Summaries for this summer’s International Association for the Study of Popular Romance conference are now available.
I’m attending, as an audience member–let me know if you’ll be there, and we can say hi!
I’m particularly interested in these papers:
–Jonathan A. Allan (University of Toronto): The Fetish Commodity of Virginity in Popular Romance Novels
–Len Barot/Radclyffe (Author, editor, publisher, Bold Stroke Books): Queering the Alpha
–Sarah S. G. Frantz (Fayetteville State University): The Rapist Hero and the Female Imagination
–Jayashree Kamble (University of Minnesota): Temptation and the Big Apple: Bollywood romance goes West in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna
–Jennifer Kloester (University of Melbourne, Australia): Creating a Genre: The Power of Georgette Heyer’s Regency Novels
–Linda Lee (University of Pennsylvania): The Illusion of Choice: Problematizing Predestined Love in Paranormal Romance
–Catherine Roach (University of Alabama): “I Love You,” He Said: The Money Shot in Romance Fiction as Feminist Porn
Today you can check out my post on “a romance for the ages, Kermit and Miss Piggy” over at Heroes and Heartbreakers.
2011 is the centenary of International Women’s Day!
Joyce Stevens’ history of IWD in words and images.
A brief history of the holiday at the United Nations’ website.
A 1920 socialist proclamation: “But Women’s Day did achieve something. It turned out above all to be an excellent method of agitation among the less political of our proletarian sisters. They could not help but turn their attention to the meetings, demonstrations, posters, pamphlets and newspapers that were devoted to Women’s Day. Even the politically backward working woman thought to herself: “This is our day, the festival for working women,” and she hurried to the meetings and demonstrations.”
Women’s Information Network celebration.
You can search for other events here.
Alert! I should have a new post at Heroes and Heartbreakers about one of my all-time favorite romantic couples.
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I’ve been more careful about buying fiction lately. My To Be Read piles are so frightening that I probably couldn’t complete them all within the next decade unless I don’t do anything but read.
However, that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped buying books.
Here are a few of my recent choices, that I think deserve more attention:
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells. This is Wells’ first novel in a while, and I pre-ordered it without even knowing what it’s about! Though it looks like it might be Young Adult. Wells is one of my favorite fantasy writers, whom I buy (or bought) without blinking in hardcover, an honor she shares with fewer than a dozen other authors.
The Ninth Daughter by Barbara Hamilton, which is a pen name for Barbara Hambly. I didn’t realize this book existed until a couple of weeks ago, and I bought it promptly because I love Hambly’s historical Benjamin January mysteries as well as her fantasy novels. This book and its sequel feature Abigail Adams as a detective; I’ve never been a big fan of the “real historical person as detective” thing, but for Hambly, I’ll give it a try.
By the way, I’m looking for recommendations of other historical mystery series.
Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston sounds really awesome and really different. The publisher is offering a $5 discount if you order before March 15th. Review in The Village Voice. From the description, I’m betting fans of Edwardian/1920s romance might like this, and steampunk fans as well.
“At the turn of the 20th century, minstrel shows transform into vaudeville, which slides into moving pictures. Hunkering together in dark theatres, diverse audiences marvel at flickering images. This “dreaming in public” becomes common culture and part of what transforms immigrants and “native” born into Americans. Redwood, an African American woman, and Aidan, a Seminole Irish man, journey from Georgia to Chicago, from haunted swampland to a “city of the future.” They are gifted performers and hoodoo conjurors, struggling to call up the wondrous world they imagine, not just on stage and screen, but on city streets, in front parlors, in wounded hearts. The power of hoodoo is the power of the community that believes in its capacities to heal and determine the course of today and tomorrow. Living in a system stacked against them, Redwood and Aidan’s power and talent are torment and joy. Their search for a place to be who they want to be is an exhilarating, painful, magical adventure. Blues singers, filmmakers, haints, healers, and actors work their mojo for adventure, romance, and magic from Georgia to Chicago!”
She To Him
The day you died, my Share of All
My soul was tossed
Hither and thither, like a leaf,
And lost, lost, lost,
From sounds and sight,
Beneath the night
Of gloom and grief.
But –
(Hush, for the wind may hear)
Soon, soon you came in solitude:
And we renewed
All happiness.
Now, who shall guess
How close we are, my dear?
(Hush, for the wind may hear.)
Yet –
Other women wait
Their doors ajar;
And listen, listen, listen,
For the gate,
And murmur, “Soon, the war
Will seem a far,
Dim agony of sleep.”
May I be joyful, too,
That day,
For love of you
May I not turn away
Nor – weep.
–Geoffrey Dearmer
From ‘W’ Beach
The Isle of Imbros, set in turquoise blue,
Lies to the westward; on the eastern side
The purple hills of Asia fade from view,
And rolling battleships at anchor ride.
White flocks of cloud float by, the sunset glows,
And dipping gulls fleck a slow-waking sea,
Where dim steel-shadowed forms with foaming bows
Wind up in the Narrows towards Gallipoli.
No colour breaks this tongue of barren land
Save where a group of huddled tents gleams white;
Before me ugly shapes like spectres stand,
And wooden crosses cleave the waning light.
Now the sky gardeners speed the hurrying day
And sow the plains of night with silver grain;
So shall this transient havoc fade away
And the proud cape be beautiful again.
Laden with figs and olives, or a freight
Of purple grapes, tanned singing men shall row,
Chanting wild songs of how Eternal Fate
Withstood that fierce invasion long ago.
–Geoffrey Dearmer, 1915
