a choir of caresses

My recent reading life takes place mostly on the subway. This week's B/Q train book has been Three Messages and A Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris N. Brown. 

In "Future Nereid," by Gabriela Damián Miravete, translated by Michael J. Deluca, these two lines lines about reading jumped out at me:

"In your belly something will shrivel at the thought of the unfortunate distance which sometimes separates us from souls attuned to our own."

"You'd like to underline the words in this book as a substitute for a choir of caresses."

And something shriveled in me, and something else bloomed.

///|||\\\

And this is why I give my heart to authors that find the combination of words that describe a part of me, of my life or my thoughts or give me new places to go to. I relentlessly recommend them, I buy their books, I think of them often. Sometimes I write them letters. It is why I keep reading. I keep reading because they love me through the page, a special, wide-spectrum, im/personal love ray.

Who has caressed you?

get in my ears

Authors like Catherynne M. Valente, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Bucknell, Lavie Tidhar, Genevieve Valentine and more populate Clarkesworld. I'm not sure how I missed the way there for so long, especially with all of the recasts by my favorite scifantastic podcasts. Anyway, I subscribed to the podcast a few days ago and haven't really stopped listening since. As you know, I love closing my eyes, just me and the story. Podcast director Kate Baker reads many of the stories and she brings a lot to each. Here are some to start out with:

If you've ever known a true believer: Semiramis by Genevieve Valentine

If you've hated on your body: Worm Within by Cat Rambo

If you've ever played a player: Clockwork Chickadee by Mary Robinette Kowal

Check out the magazine for more stories, cover art, essays and interviews. They pay their authors--another reason to support them.

((((((((())))))))

I've also been listening to 99% Invisible, hosted by Roman Mars. Ostensibly an architecture podcast, the short episodes almost always get into culture and personality, too. I loved to episode on Galloping Gertie, the killer bridge!

((((((((())))))))

Are you generally a genre lover? Do you like smart artists? If so you should also subscribe to the woefully under-updated Make Believers podcast, hosted by Alexa Rose and Ming Doyle. Even though they sometimes they talk about astrology and superhero comics, I am always excited for a new episode. Hat tip to friend of try harder Simon Häussle for recommending it to me!

today, with partial punctuation

Today, or maybe yesterday (time has been broken for years) is the anniversary of my brother's death. Today it has been nine years since I lost him. Today I try to figure out how that is even possible but no calculations make sense. Today I am happy that I am marked forever by love even though it is inconvenient. Today I eat strawberries. Today I host a good friend. Today I make jokes about not wanting to leave the house. Today I do work for a few hours until my eyes get tired from the screen. Today I don't tell anyone about today until right now. Today I smell a phantom dead mouse and gag a little. Today I take a nap until I have a nightmare. Today I finally vacuum the rug. Today I miss you, and you, and you. Today I am angry about all that's been taken from me. Today that thought does not eat me alive, only nibbles on the edges. Today I cried while using Photoshop specifically the rotate canvas button that I could not get to rotate us right-side-up. Today I wear safety orange shorts because it is hot and I am lazy and you would have loved them too.

Check out this process post by the intellectually ravishing Anne Emond. Be sure to click through to her tumblr for the final product: Motivation!

I like to see how the sausage is made. If you can't think of something to update your blog with, a process post is always appreciated.

I am 100% (1000%?) delighted that she recently started having comics on The Rumpus, the font of many of my recent obsessions.

^^^^^

Friend of try harder, Marguerite Dabaie, is not only a cartoonist, but a professional copy editor to boot. And, lucky lucky, she wants to help you. Here's what she says:
"Cartoonists, zinesters, and good ol' fashioned writers: I will soon be offering my copy editing services at a very affordable price. My specialties will be in self-published and small-press publications. I have been employed for the past five years as a copy editor at an internationally renowned institution in New York City, and I'm more than happy to use my experience to make your work stronger."
Take her up on it! mdabaie AT margoyle DOT net

^^^^^

Visiting me this week is the fabulous Amanda Welltailored.  I am being a terrible host as usual but I love having a friend in the yellow room, making life fuller and more interesting. I promise by her third visit I will have this "being fun" thing down.

this would be better or different

Roxane Gay is the best essayist around. She is also one of the most interesting pop cultural critics working today. She recently wrote this list-a-say about female friendship that struck me as deeply important, as well as informative, for everyone: How to Be Friends With Another Woman

I've been thinking a lot about friendship recently, and as Gay is a writer that helps me think, I am glad she is thinking about it too. Thanks, the hairpin for sending me towards her tumblr.

&&&&& 

NEWS: Got my first subscription shipment from Oily Comics. It made me happy. 

ADVICE: You should listen to Robin's interview with artist and publisher Charles Forsman on inkstuds where he talks about what led to Oily, why it feels good to charge $1 for comics, and family. He also reveals that his new book will be about Wolf, a character I loved in a mini I loved.

BRAG: All of you who didn't subscribe really missed out.

This is exactly what I look like.

&&&&&

I write to a six-year-old regularly. We are not related. When I started, she couldn't read the letters herself but now I choose words that I hope she finds delightful. I do hope that our little correspondence, even when likely forgotten, inspires her to be a lifelong letter writer. If I wanted to up those chances considerably, I'd pressure her parents to buy her the Rumpus Letters for Kids subscription. Writers writing letters to kids? Yes, please.  I get the adult version and overall it has been an amazing experience.

I was walking in the woods with my main man. The trail was narrow and beset by deer flies or it was wide and sandy, I promise that it doesn't matter which, and we couldn't hold hands because it was too hot or I was too sick or that sort of thing simply wouldn't fit. I thought about all of the trees I know the name of and at the same time how soft a bed pine needles can make when you are too young to get home on your own and no one is going to pick you up any where near on time. The tiny frog I caught waited just until her close-up to hop off of my hand and into an inkberry bush or a beech tree grove with all the other frogs I didn't step on and some memories that flood flood flooded my brain while we watched our feet. My shoulders swung like a weather vane and I pointed out things I knew and wanted to know, all the while trying to avoid shit-in shorts and more embarrassing things because you never know which one will be too much. Why have maps when you can get lost in a paradise is a nice thought but my body never wants to sit down and let such ideas have an orderly hike by. I blew mosquitoes away with loud, huffing breath—all the better to not talk with. But that sort of thing never works, does it? Still, mishearing a woodpecker is better than never even considering one, never even looking and trying to find the culprit.

It was that kind of walk.

mail enhancement

A treat from Amanda WellTailored:

My first piece of mail in my P.O. Box from Melissa at Viva Snail Mail, which goes to prove that if you want mail, you simply have to write to the right person.

And some outgoing mail:

Send me stuff! Including review books--I know, I know, it has been awhile, but I plan to start writing comics reviews again.
Carrie Try Harder
P.O. Box 170293
Times Plaza Station
Brooklyn, NY
11217-9997

"lazy shut-in"

If you, like me, love horror movies, then Final Girl Theory by A.C. Wise will unsettle you for several excellent reasons. It is a great, scary, story about obsession, entertainment and complicity. It is narrated by John Meagher over at Pseudopod, #287.
“The woman screams. The screen dissolves in a mass of spinning color, and the opening credits roll.
You know what the worst part is? The opening sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It is what it is; it exists purely for its own sake.”

!000!

Let's talk about subscriptions. If you make minis regularly or have any other kind of regular publishing schedule, please make a subscription option available. It helps lazy shut-ins like me get your comics when they come out AND you make more money upfront--all the better to plan your lavish vacations and yacht purchases with. Kus does it, Retrofit does it and Oily Comics has been talking about it. Who else?

!000!

!000!

Dear comic book store guy,

When I come into your store, head straight for the mini comic section, pick out a few things and come to the register money in hand, do not tell me that you'd rather pay highX amount of dollars for the item that you have displayed on your counter, no matter how cool it is, than the regularX dollars for the comics I have chosen. I am standing at the register. I could still walk away. (I should have walked away).

You are not only drastically lowering my opinion of you, but you are insulting me, the work I am interested in, a genre that I love and your own store's selection. This does not make you seem cool or informed--it makes you seem like a preteen braggart all alone on the playground.

Best,
Carrie

Looking for a safe space to have a vagina

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I love to let my eyes leave the screen for a while and let my brain grapple with information in another way. It’s generally a very enjoyable way to spend time.

As I recently prepared my place for guests, I clicked on the science fiction cast StarShipSofa #240 to make the cleaning go faster. Everything was going great, as usual, until J.J. Campanella’s Science News. His intro to the first story began, as you may remember like this: “The first story of the night may make the male part of the audience a bit uncomfortable because it has to do with, well, female plumbing, so to speak. So if you have kids listening or are just uncomfortable about the topic you may want to skip ahead about five or six minutes to get beyond this particular story. So what is this anti-macho, squirm-inducing story?”

The answer to that is: a very technical story about the human microbiome, specifically that of the vagina.*

This embarrassing intro not only undercut the cool science of the story but it also made me feel incredibly angry and sad. Here’s why:  First it suggests that male audience members are so immature as to find a rather dry (though interesting) story about vaginas somehow unlistenable. StarshipSofa often includes stories where men and women fuck each other, most often, vaginally—including the story before this one. So imagining a vagina is cool if we’re talking sex, but if we are talking science, it’s gross? Way to reinforce negative stereotypes of science fiction fans, Dr. Campanella, while undercutting your own science reporting at the same time! At its most innocuous, this kind of intro panders to the immature and close-minded, more insidiously, it provides support to the idea that it is totally reasonable to think that women’s bodies are gross, that it's okay, if you are a man, to be ignorant of the non-sexual aspects of the vag.

And, worse than gross, apparently “the topic” is unsuitable for children. Considering half of those hypothetical kids have vaginas themselves, this idea is absurd at best. It is definitely a pretty terrifying statement about how many people conceive of reproductive organs, especially those of women, as shameful, embarrassing, and most importantly, a dirty secret. If you, as a parent, are not comfortable with your kids knowing about their own bodies, or them hearing the correct terms used for their parts, then you are failing in your job. Frankly, any parent listening to a podcast aimed at adults, full of violence and other adult situations, with their children better be prepared to answer much more challenging questions than “What’s a vagina?”

Even though the terms “anti-macho, squirm-inducing” are thrown out a with a little cheek, it is still incredibly disappointing to hear SSS’s science correspondent use those words to describe a story about a part of half of the population’s bodies. Why do I have to hear this shit on a podcast dedicated to the world of the fantastic, fiction or fact, where anything is supposedly possible?

* Here's the article: P. Gajer, R. M. Brotman, G. Bai, J. Sakamoto, U. M. Schütte, X. Zhong, S. S. Koenig, L. Fu, Z. (. Ma, X. Zhou, Z. Abdo, L. J. Forney, J. Ravel, Temporal Dynamics of the Human Vaginal Microbiota. Sci. Transl. Med. 4, 132ra52 (2012).

"archive dust"

An excellent essay about letters, choices, writers, grandmas and Martha Gellhorn over a The Millions by friend-o-tryharder, Amy Shearn: A Goofy State of Mind

<<<>>>

The Vatican, yes that Vatican, has opened, and is sending out, a portion of their massive "Secret" archive. The real, live items will be exhibited in Capitoline Museums in Rome, but you can see some very intriguing tidbits here: Lux In Arcana

<<<>>>

I started buying magazines. So many subscriptions bought, forgotten about, then appearing, regularly in the mail. B did the same during the contagious fugue state where credit cards flashed to the sound of glossy pages flip flapping. It was a good idea: Cabinet, Gastronmica, wax poetics, bitch, BOMB, The Coffin Factory, and more now come to our door.

<<<>>>

I grew these and now they are gone.

The rest of the summer is waiting.

half a good ship MoCCA: 2012

An inexplicable sea theme for the post? Yes, and? Help me fill in the question marks in the comments.

Salty sailors Kenan Rubenstein and Neil Brideau

Three Armed Squids Kim Ku, Alexandra Beguez and Alden Viguilla. Their tablemate, Estrella Vega, is unpictured because I apparently don't know how to use a camera. I remembered Kim and Alexandra  from the SVA table last year and was happy to see all their new stuff.

Prism Index, editor Jeffery Bowers, handmade paper, music, movies, and a vast collection of conch shells. Jeffery told me that I looked miserable which is always nice to hear.

CCS castaways Denis St. John, Matt Aucoin and ???

Idiot's Books' co-captain Robbi Behr.

Alabaster sails into the storm with The Complete Talamaroo.

The Hic & Hoc table, helmed by Matt Moses. His triton is hidden. Guess where!

Jensine Eckwall, Lily Padula, ????, Lindsey Richter were gracious, for sea witches.

MariNaomi, one of my favorite crew members of The Rumpus, signs my book and makes me feel like a million pirate golds.

Box Brown, with booty from the holds of Retrofit Comics.

Requisite (and terrible) crowd shots:

Because of my looming surgery and general malaise, I wasn't sure that I would make this MoCCA. I was only able to circulate for about two hours. I saw many fewer iPad displays than last year and seemingly more handmade work by youngoes and oldies alike. Along the left wall there was a large group of antipodean folks, under the banner of Caravan of Comics and I popped in long enough to check out Mandy Ord's books and buy her collection, Sensitive Creatures. I wish I had been able to spend more time at the Caravan since meeting authors from other places is one of my main reasons to go to shows. I was happy to pick up two Retrofit comics that came out before my subscription started. By the time I made it all the way to the right of the space, I couldn't afford any Nordic beauty, but it was cool to see the contingent present again this year.

The show felt more attuned to my interests than last year, which meant I spent a ton of money. There seemed to be fewer melting neon faces in the mix but perhaps my rose-colored glasses were acting up. Hooray! But the usual looming question still hung heavy on the day: who is making money at this thing? The price of tables needs to go down and/or the door fee has to go. More attendees and more, and more relaxed, contributors could only make the show better. With a venue like the Armory, walk-ins could be an powerful audience--especially with an extra 15 or so dollars in their pocket. I know that the fest is in fact a benefit for the MoCCA museum, but as I said last year, the high price of doing MoCCA might feel a better value if they actually did a much higher ratio of programming highlighting the small press comics community.

the haul

I also hit up Sean Ford's long-awaited book release party at Bergen Street comics. It was great to see all the CCS folks and other interested parties. When I checked out, the dude asked me if it was my first time "coming out" and I wanted to punch him in the face, but instead I just said "no." Sigh.

items of interest

I finally got a new P.O. box. Yes, I braved the absolutely terrible Atlantic Station office with my two sets of I.D. and glistening neck scar and picked up the keys today. Here is the address:

Carrie Try Harder

P.O. Box 170293

Times Plaza Station

Brooklyn, NY 

11217-9997

%%%%%

An exciting essay on pregnancy and the importance of controlling one's own information (and body) over at The Rumpus: On Pregnancy and Privacy and Fear by Aubrey Hirsch.
Even if you have never been pregnant, or noticeably pregnant, it will make you angry, perhaps nod in recognition and hopefully remind you to check yourself around pregnant, and all, women.

%%%%%

Catching up on my podcast listening and heard the Inkstuds interview about RUB THE BLOOD with editors Ian Harker and Pat Aulisio. If you want to hear some serious Philly-style accents, check it out.

%%%%%

And what's happening over at the hairpin you ask? Well, they finally have an Ask An Archivist column.

what I've been doing

Feels worse than it looks, but better than it sounds.

But don't worry, I may have lost a few lucrative neck-modeling contracts, but my new gasping talent has triggered several voice-over opportunities in the horror and pharmaceutical industries.

&&&

I hope to be back to writing by next week. I hope everyone hasn't decided to stop bitching about MoCCA by then.

narfles

Readers know how I feel about Lynda Barry. An interview of the lady herself at The Rumpus by Anne Elizabeth Moore: "It doesn’t matter what their days were like before, their lives. Lynda Barry is in the room with them now so everything from this moment on will be amazing."

From Barry: "The one thing I can say about images and work with images, if I can put their function into one sentence: it’s the thing that gives you the feeling that life is worth living. Which is step one, I’m not saying it’s really worth living or it’s fantastic. I’m saying it’s also the thing that will keep you from killing yourself and others. So it’s a public service, I think [laughter], to engage in images."

unununununununun

This weekend I got an tour of East Coast former-Pennsylvania Railroad stations via an unexpected trip to Charm City. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is my one and only love, but I also got to see Frank Furness's little brick Wilmington station (twice) and spend an anticlimactic hour and a half in Baltimore's beautiful Penn Station. 

B and I relaxed into acceptance by the time the train back North arrived and on the way back we sat across from some drunken New Yorkers. We talked about Sodastream and running. Well, they talked about running. The lady half of the couple already googled me and found this blog, which proves she is much better at drinking than I.

unununununununun

Saveur magazine is making the world a better place by asking amazing comics folks to make one of favorite things: recipe comics. The most recent one is from Corrine Mucha and includes "choi butts." 

Photo from Saveur 

Other contributors include Dorothy Gambrell, Jillian Tamaki and Anthony Clark. And it is a great place to see work from criminally under-read Laura Park.

Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler

Since reading the collection of short stories What I Didn't See, I've been going through Karen Joy Fowler's back catalog and snatching up anything that didn't have Jane Austen in the title. This book sounded great for a fun bit of a mystery reading, hopefully with Fowler's trademark emotional smarts.

And, in some ways, that is exactly what I got. Wit's End includes many of the elements that appear in Fowler's other work, such as an immortality cult with one surviving member whose founder was mysteriously exempt from the group's celibacy vow (the sweet and funny "Always"), mystery writers and their foibles ("Private Grave 9") and the strange ways that people do a number on one another (too many to mention). The plot centers around the mystery surrounding the relationship of godmother, famous mystery writer Addison Early, and her father—how exactly it began and what soured it. There are descriptions of meals that made my mouth water, images of Santa Cruz that jarred my memories of the place and lots of creepy letters. These parts kept me engaged and excited like a good genre book should.

But what I am gracelessly dancing around here?

I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that the main character, Rima, is twenty-nine and an orphan. She is grieving for both her mother and father, as a unit and separately. Their deaths color her life and make her feel set apart from other twentysomethings, apart from everyone. The thing is that not only are her parents dead, but her little brother is dead, too. He died at the same age as my little brother, from essentially the same cause. This worried me for many reasons--was this not going to be the light read I craved and what if the author got it wrong?

Fowler gets it right, that spectrum of feelings and experiences when someone (or everyone) you love dies. She shows how a person can live with those things and not be permanently broken through the voices of both Rima and Addison. The parts about grief sang with truth while being both simple and in service to the story. It felt good to read even as I shook with angry recognition:

"Rima was perpetually offended by the suggestion that luck should be graded on a curve. Of all of the false comforts she'd been recently offered, the most poisonous one was the one that told you to be grateful that you were better off somehow."

"There'd been an undertone in Scorch's* blog, maybe even in a few comments Addison had made had made, or maybe Rima had imagined it. You weren't supposed to love your brother more than anyone else in the world..."

"In telling the story to Rima and Tilda, her point was a different one. Sometimes something happens to you, she said, and there's no way to be the person you were before. You won't ever be that person again; that person's gone. There's a little freedom in every loss, no matter how unwelcome and unhappy that freedom may be."

I was also really into the idea that runs through the book that we make our own families. This was the subtle message that pulsed under all the loss--inspiring without any saccharine promises.

*Oh how I hate this character's name. Every time I would see it on the page I'd scoff a little then dive back in. I get the whole Santa Cruz, self-invented and kinda stupid young person name but it just didn't sit right.

one piece of the story

So of course I got a subscription to The Rumpus' Letters in the Mail. I've been enjoying it immensely, especially the missives from Padma Viswanathan and Matthew Specktor. Sari Botton's essay about participating in it talks about her letter writing friendship with a guy called David. It reminded me a little about the one I have with my friend R—what's encapsulated in our correspondence is how we became ourselves and how we become over and over. It's a maddening record but I love it. 

As you may remember, I have a problem with poetry. I don't read it. When Adrienne Rich died many of the people that I respect were expressing their feelings of loss and I've got to say that every single excerpt of Rich's poetry bled with truth and made me want to read more. Here is a lovely illustration of some Rich lines by Lisa Congdon.

Several people have asked me over the years what comics got me into the genre. At 15 I was volunteering at a thrift store on South Street to fulfill the delightfully named "community service" requirement of public schooling in Philly. One day I was working in the basement in the book section and came across a comics anthology about abortion. I stopped working and read it through. I had never really experienced that kind of storytelling before--angry, smart, feminist and utterly human. Each story looked different and I could understand each one. For almost 16 years I've been unable to remember the title and all my googling was in vain until moments ago. The book: Choices: a pro-choice benefit comic anthology for the National Organization for Women. The extreme ugliness of the cover was instantly identifiable. Click the link to see all the heavy hitters that contributed work.

Dear Christian,

I do not care to think about how old you would have been today. It has been too long and it is too hard. I am farther and farther away from being my favorite thing: a sister. This cannot be helped and I need all the help I can get.

Since the idea of creating a ritual around your birthday just never felt right, I'll simply tell you what I decided to do today:

1) I read selections from the collected Sugar columns by Cheryl Strayed on my subway ride home from work. These columns inspired me to write again with their "radical empathy," as Steve Almond called it, and the sheer love of life and words that jumped out at me when I clicked over every Thursday--a new ritual for a new life. I think "The Black Arc of It" helped B understand me better and I could never thank Strayed too much for that.

2) I began, and hope to finish, a review of Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler. The book had a secret dead brother, who died at 19, just like you. The protagonist is incredibly angry, just like me. The handled this so well that it mitigated my sad shock at finding us on the page when I was just trying to read a good summer book.

3) When I finish my work I will play Skyrim and forget a bit.

4) You were so full of love that it inspires me to make more every day. So, today I will love B harder, even if he doesn't know it.

Sorry you got a list letter for your birthday, baby boy. I am all out of other ideas for today.

Miss you always,
Your sister

tids

"'Hello Aimee, it’s your dad. I was just calling to say hello to you and your family. I miss you. I love you. When will you come see us again?'"
The Disciples of Memory by Aimee Phan over at The Rumpus is beautiful and vicious essay about parents and Alzheimer's.

For all you academics and responsible writers out there, the MLA has answered an important question: How to cite a tweet.

I've been spending a lot of time on 50 Watts recently checking out the gorgeous book art and illustration. It used to be called A Journey Around My Skull--this one, not this one.

1. The light through the schefflera is not as charming as it should be.

2. My nose is dripping onto my upper lip and the dust is thick on the walls and I smell mold and other things, mostly gross things, like butts and fish and it makes me want to take off my face and put it away for the night.

3. There is a space in my life where Scrabble used to be.  Remember when we played?

4. I'm thinking about an essay that started in a half-dream in my friend Ray's guest room. In my mind I was running through the halls of my dead grandmother's L-shaped home in California. Everything was eye-level and I was going really fast. I am writing this on a tablecloth brought from her place that I never saw before. It is possible that it was never used while she was alive.

5. I don't feel like writing about what I've read. Sorry.

Did I tell you that I got some great mail?

Award winning!