Francesca Forrest's Blog

I have a flash story in the current issue of Not One of Us, and what a great issue to be in! I'm sharing the table of contents with Patricia Russo, Sonya Taaffe, and Jeannelle Ferreira--all writers I've loved for a long time--along with Devan Barlow, whose work I've only gotten to know recently, but I enjoy, and others whose work is totally new to me but whose literary acquaintance I'm pleased to make, like Zary Fekete.

Let me share a little (and then a lot!) about my own story first, and then so...

Yesterday I was responsible to get R to a first English class, only I was late.

(  go slow  )

Any time we can slow stuff down and humanize it, even if it's only for a little bit, it feels like a victory.

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This past weekend I was doing errands, and there were a bunch of kids, maybe four, ages about nine to twelve, at a T-junction of a road into a development and the more general-use road. They were waving and gesticulating at passing cars the way high school kids do when they're trying to get you to come to their fundraiser car wash, but there was no place to wash cars, and these kids were definitely younger than high school age.

So maybe they were selling lemonade? Or cookies? Or --?

I came back a...

I just found out that Joyce Carol Thomas, the author of Journey, which I just finished reading thanks to rachelmanija 's review, is no longer with us! This is too bad because I wanted to write her a note telling her how much I loved her use of language and that she includes so many beings and perspectives beyond the human, and one very sweet interaction between the protagonist and a boy who likes her.

It was a kind of a strange story--there were a lot of observations from different characters' poi...

There is a cardinal pair in our yard, and I love them very much. I drew them having a cup of tea.

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A mi me enseño a cantar la calandria y el cenzontle,
la calandría y el cenzontle y el pájaro cardenal
la calandría y el cenzontle y el pájaro cardenal

--Biomigrant & El Monte Adentro: "Voz emplumada del monte"
calandría = chalk-browed mockingbird (Mimus saturninus)
cenzontle = northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottus)
pájaro cardenal = northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

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Ah, four good things on the docket right now, two of which were recommended to me by other people.

1. Journey, by Joyce Carol Thomas

I was intrigued by rachelmanija 's write up , and when I said so, she said, "You specifically would enjoy it." And I DO. The language is gorgeous, and the story moves along. Rachel quotes the final line of a sermon in her post, but man, that entire sermon! Here's more from it:

"Death dealing is the devil's duty.

"The devil's still swishing his long reptilian tail, hoodi...

I went to a show the sea spirit (spouse of the tall one, mother of my little grandson) was in (show was a queer BIPOC group--the sea spirit's piece was about being nonbinary but claiming the title of mother), and before the show, there was music playing, and one piece had this really powerful chorus:

Aquí estamo', siempre estamo'
No nos fuimo', no nos vamo'
Aquí estamo' pa' que te recuerde
Si quiere' mi machete te muerde

(We're here, we're always here
We haven't left, we're not leaving
We're here to re...

Spent some time walking along the side of the highway today. I always feel strange and liminal when I do that because it's not something people generally do. The shoulders can be narrow, cars and trucks can be going fast--it's not set up to be walked along. It's a strange sensation to move through space in a way that no one is expecting you to. It can make me feel like I have superpowers: since I'm covering the space at a different speed, from a different vantage point, I'm able to notice thing...

On Mastodon they have various hashtags with various writing-related questions, and today, a question on one of the hashtags was "On a scale of from 1 to 10, how safe is your world?" (by which they meant the world of your writing project).

Several people pointed out that you can't really average out safety over a whole world, and still more people pointed out that safety is always going to be a matter of "for whom?" No matter what genre you're writing, if you have multiple characters, they can't a...

I let a lot of milkweed grow in my yard. In part it's for the monarch butterflies, in part it's so I can harvest the fibers, in part it's because I like the scent of the flowers. I've also enjoyed eating the young pods (carefully cooked) sometimes.

This year, the milkweed's been afflicted by a bright orange-yellow aphid called the oleander aphid.

(  beneath a cut in case seeing a whole lot of aphids isn't your thing  )

My approach to minor infestations of things has been to try to wash them off, but ...