Hot and rainy and hot and rainy and the occasional pop-up thunderstorm thrown in: we are definitely in the peak of summer! It’s such a tantalizing time of year, with its long, drawn out days and late sunsets, but it’s also just too sweaty to be out and about as much as I might like.
Outside
The gardens are a little hit or miss this year, unfortunately. My pollinator garden out front has some plants that are doing well (the mountain mint and bee balm in particular are over my head!) and some that are being heavily munched (I’ll be shocked if any asters make it to bloom). I don’t particularly begrudge the rabbits their meals, but I do wish they’d focus on the grass instead.
My partner’s watermelons are absolutely thriving, but none of my vegetables seem to be doing much of anything. I keep telling myself it’s still early in the year (plus we put the tomatoes out so early I think they got shocked by a late frost) but we’ll see if we get much of anything. The porch railing planter full of lettuce was wonderfully prolific, at least. A small win, but I’ll take it.
We’ve also been experimenting a lot with the bird feeder, trying to strike a balance to attract native, non-nuisance birds and avoid the flocks of grackles and house sparrows. The downy woodpeckers are my favorite frequent visitors. I think we have five or so living around us, three males and two females. Once I watched two of them on a ‘lunch date’ which was incredibly cute, but more often they try to claim sole possession of the suet or seed bell, sounding out their little ‘bip bip bip’ calls.
The coolest bird encounter by far was the red tailed hawk we saw a few weeks ago! It perched on one of the dead branches in our sycamore, right outside the attic window, and proceeded to eat an entire rabbit. So gross. So awesome. Once it was finished eating it cleaned off its talons and rubbed its beak clean on the branch, which was unexpected and kind of adorable to watch.
Inside
Boston, we have colors!
After a decade of living in beige and grey walled apartments, I finally took the leap and started painting the rooms in my house colors that make me happy. The library nook is a sunny yellow, the living room is a deep forest green, and the bedroom is a dark, dusky purple. I’m planning to paint more rooms once the weather cools off, but these are the places I spend the most time and it’s so nice to look around the spaces I live in and have them be exactly the way I want them.
Other than painting, I’ve continued on my spree of reading lots of things this year. Some of my recent favorite books have been Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach and The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I also loved The Rider, The Ride, The Rich Man’s Wife by Premee Mohamed, a fantastic Wild West – Wild Hunt fusion that focuses on the relationship between twin brothers.
Currently in-progress reads include:
– I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou. A classic, one that I’ve never gotten around to before, but I’m about halfway through and it’s incredible. I’m listening to the audiobook, which is narrated by Angelou herself, and I highly recommend it.
– A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. I’ve read a couple other books by Solnit already this year, and each has been very interesting. This one is about how people come together in a crisis and covers several historical events, starting with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire and ending with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
– The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown. Recommended by a good friend of mine, this is a mostly nonfiction, somewhat historical fiction account of the Donner party. As you can imagine, it’s a very stressful read.
Creative Endeavors
I’m quite pleased with how my story for the ficwip anthology turned out. The worldbuilding is fun, the characters are neat, and the plot stayed nicely contained with a defined beginning and end point. Often I have to kind of guess at the endings to my stories, but that one was something I knew I was building toward from the beginning. Turns out that makes a big difference! Who knew.
Buoyed by how well that went, I’m planning to submit short stories to two open calls in September. If accepted, these would be paid and published and official and I’m kind of nervous about the process, but you never know if you don’t try! And if they don’t get accepted, I’ll post them here instead. One is for an Ace in Space anthology, similar to the one I pitched to back in March. That pitch got rejected, but I really like the story idea so I’m going to write it how I want it and see if this other anthology wants to publish it. The other is for an anthology focused on ‘the last fifteen minutes’ of the story, which I think is a really cool concept!
Narration for the audiobook I’m contracted for is well under way! I’m a little less than a third of the way through, and on pace to finish in time. One nice thing about starting to listen to professional audiobooks this year is that I’m less concerned with minor imperfections in my own narration. I’m really excited for how this turns out!
On the fannish side of things, I’ve written a couple shorter ficlets and posted a couple of podfics for events. I also just concluded the bang I was running singlehandedly and writing a story for and making artwork for. Phew! Huge weight off my shoulders now that that’s over. I think it went really well and most if not everyone had a good time.
I only have two larger writing events left this year: another bang that I’m writing for (about 80% finished) and the annual ficwip 5k AU event (also about 80% finished). After that it’ll be ‘do whatever you want forever’ season. Maybe I’ll actually finish one of my longer drafts. A friend has also talked me into trying a fic-a-day month so that’s a challenge I’m looking forward to!
***
I’ve never really considered myself a seasonal writer, but this summer feels a lot like I’ve set creative projects in motion and now I’m working towards bringing them to ripen. Not a lot of harvest yet, but not every season needs to be prolific. Sometimes you can just sit and watch the birds outside your window.
Love,
CC
CC Lurae 