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Month of Joy: La Alegría del Lenguaje by Cassandra Rose Clarke

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A year ago, I decided to embark on a not-exactly-new endeavor: teaching myself Spanish. I say not-exactly-new because I had attempted it before with a dubiously-acquired copy of Rosetta Stone, which I used for about a month in 2013 before giving up. My failures with Rosetta Stone hadn’t killed my desire to learn Spanish, though. Spanish is a language I grew up around without ever actually learning—I’m from South Texas and now live in Houston, so it’s been a part of the sonic and cultural landscape my entire life. However, I went a Classics route with my formal language learning in high school and college (Latin and Ancient Greek, respectively) and so Spanish was firmly lodged in a strange space of being both familiar and unknown. This frustrated me. How could I see and hear a language almost every day and not understand it?

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Month of Joy: Cooking and a Recipe by Cora Buhlert

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A few weeks ago, I chanced to read this article at the Guardian about the history of the premade sandwich. It’s a fascinating article and you should definitely read it. But what struck me was this quote by one Roger Whiteside, head of Marks & Spencer’s sandwich department in the 1980s: “Once you are time-strapped and you have got cash, the first thing you do is get food made for you […] Who is going to cook unless you are a hobbyist?” This quote not just made me bristle, it also baffled me. It baffled me as much as the lawyer from New York City whom I met online in the early days of the Internet and who told me that his family never cooks, whereupon I blurted out, “But what do you eat then?”

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Month of Joy: Of Flying and Baking: How Researching Novels Changed My Life by Claudie Arseneault

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One of the greatest joys of writing is how it can make you look at something new, push you to research it, and discover new passions. When one of my characters really loves something, I tend to not only read on it, but to experience it myself. So in 2011, while I was still in the process of drafting Viral Airwaves (and learning how to write at all, too), I went on a hot air balloon flight, and it was amazing. It was early in the morning, and as I held the balloon’s envelope while huge fans pushed air into it, I could hardly believe my luck. The sun shone, the pilot was funny and easy to approach (my boyfriend asked him tons of questions about everything because I was too shy), and the flight remains one of the most peaceful moment of my existence. I was up there, a tiny notebook in hand, scribbling observations while a choir of angels sang in my head. And a lot of it made it into Viral Airwaves, too, notably the description of forests as broccoli, and the use of the thick red emergency rope.

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Month of Joy: Kindred Spirits by Jason Sanford

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Like all science fiction and fantasy fans, the spirits speak to me. They whisper with visions of impossible worlds and distant galaxies. They spin dreams of the future and past and even of times that never were. The spirits speak through stories and books, films and TV shows, comic books and video games. The spirits whisper in the words and creations of authors and artists and dreamers from around the world. And the spirits bring me joy.

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Month of Joy: Scotland! by Betsy Dornbusch

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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.

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Month of Joy: Translation by Rachel Cordasco

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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.

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