Blog Posts

Month of Joy: Scotland! by Betsy Dornbusch

/

Hi! I’m Betsy Dornbusch, author of Archive of Fire, Books of the Seven Eyes, and The Silver Scar (forthcoming June 2018 from Skyhorse) and lots of novellas and short stories. I’m so excited to participate in the Month of Joy at Skiffy and Fanty! My first happy place is writing, but my desk is dull and messy, riddled with whisky bottles, teacups, pens, maps, bullet casings, and the random sword. (Don’t judge, I’m on deadline.) So I thought I’d go with my second happy place: which is basically everywhere I travel. I spent three weeks last June in Italy with my family and hanging out with a friend in Scotland. Yes, packing for Scorching to Rather Chilly in a carryon was a challenge.

Blog Posts

Month of Joy: Translation by Rachel Cordasco

/

Many things bring me joy: books, chocolate, my kids (when they’re behaving), languages, books, opera, embroidery, and did I mention books? One thing that has recently been bringing me joy is translation. I’ve always loved languages, going back to when I was 6 or 7 and watching “Pepe le Pew” whisper sweet faux-French nothings into the ears of very uninterested cats. I started buying dual-language dictionaries around that time and never looked back. I’ve studied Hebrew, French, Russian, and Italian, and would have learned Chinese next but life got crazy and I’ve had to postpone it until…probably retirement.

Blog Posts

Month of Joy: My Favorite Books of December 2017 by Martha Wells

/

This was an incredible year for SF and fantasy, both in long and shorter fiction.  There were outstanding debut novels and incredible new work by established authors.  So much new work was original and innovative and outside the box, it was hard to pick a favorites list. Back in November, I did a book rec list for the year on the Book Smugglers blog: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2017/12/books-year-smugglivus-post-martha-wells.html and I wanted to take this chance to add a few books to it that I read in December.

Blog Posts

Month of Joy: Finding Joy in a Fountain Pen by Keith A. Manuel

/

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2018 is to take up writing by hand again. I bought my first ever fountain pen, a Pilot Metropolitan, and the most un-holiday-ish Christmas cards I could find on after-holiday discount at my local big retailer store. I also picked up a nice journal and some color pencils. My tools are ready for a year of putting pen to paper. I’ll see how it goes, one page and one day at a time. It seems a retro, nostalgic thing to write this way, but I’m not alone. The Internet of all places is a good place to find pen pals. The prospect of having to wait a week or more for a response to a message when we have multiple, popular direct messaging platforms, Twitter and Facebooks public posts, email, and blogs for instant communication, whether to whoever is interested to read it or to a more restricted audience.

Blog Posts

Month of Joy: Pens and Ink by Anne Lyle

/

When I was eleven years old I started at the local girls’ grammar school, where it was mandatory to use a fountain pen for “neat work”: homework, tests and so on. My parents bought me a Parker 45 Flighter, a pretty swanky pen for a kid, and I felt very grown up using it. That pen served me well through school and university, and for years it was the only fountain pen I owned, apart from a battered vintage Conway Stewart that I sadly lost somewhere along the way.

Blog Posts

Month of Joy: Connection and Collaboration by Julia Rios

/

I love it when people connect with each other to spread joy and love, to create new things that couldn’t exist with one person’s efforts alone, and to generally be awesome to each other. Here are a few examples that give me great joy: Star Wars Okay, so the world loves Star Wars. Many of us grew up with it. It’s a giant part of our global culture at this point. What I especially love in recent years is how much the creators are also the fans. Talking with Ken Liu about what Star Wars means to him when we interviewed him about The Legends of Luke Skywalker was excellent, but I think maybe the best example of this is Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose in The Last Jedi. She’s a giant Star Wars fan who was super excited to be in the movie, and she’s done all kinds of awesome things like introducing herself to fans in a pub because she overheard them talking about her character. I love that so many people are excited about Star Wars. I love that this brings happiness to millions of people, and I especially love that it’s bringing people together.

Scroll to Top