Does anyone want postcards from Florida?

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taste_buds
Holidays provide a built-in excuse for indulgent entertaining. This all-purpose foodie community covers everything from homemade hangover cures to dinner party menus. Need quick advice? Get five-minute snack suggestions, low-fat ingredient substitutes, and even measurement conversions. Delicious recipes garnished with humorous advice. Yum.

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

From Innsmouth Free Press .

The wrapup from Orrin Grey:

I could discuss individual stories all day, but to wrap up, Lovecraft Unbound is a fine and fascinating anthology full of very good stories, and it’s well worth your time and attention, so long as you don’t go into it expecting to find too many of the usual trappings of Mythos tales.

According to the Computer, I rock the spirit world.

I blame the low friends/family score on my family, rather than my friends. No offense, Mom.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.9
Mind:	6.2
Body:	5.5
Spirit:	8.6
Friends/Family:	4.3
Love:	6.9
Finance:	7.2
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

..but a mention of the typeface on the cover... I love this commentary by On the Shelves

Apparently, most people have love as their lowest score.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	9.1
Mind:	8.1
Body:	8.3
Spirit:	9.6
Friends/Family:	6.8
Love:	10
Finance:	9.3
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

So, first I wrote: "We can make the brain do all kinds of things with drugs, both natural and unnatural. The consequences, for our species, will never be better than what nature has given us. Other than for those with injury, illness, or disability, I do not believe that brain altering substances are going to somehow make the human race better or happier."

Can I imagine a case where this would not be so?

I'm not sure. I'm trying.

If I could give every 5-year-old an enzyme that would make them 25% smarter, for the rest of their lives, would I?

No, I would not. For who is deciding that "smartness", however you measure that (as if you could), is somehow better for the human race? Maybe we are smart enough. Maybe increased intelligence would actually decrease overall happiness, the ability to work together, the survival of the species, or whatever other benchmark you are measuring for "success".

The same goes for longevity, or even for happiness itself. Maybe the human race is as happy as it should be, and the remaining fears, depressions, and ongoing mental challenges are a necessary part of what prompts us all to action. In other words, cure the disease of depression, and maybe the human race would die out in a thousand years.

I doubt it. But I can't know. So while I encourage us to mess around with the human brain, with tweaking our genetic code, and with other awesome corners of science, I am very, very skeptical about the long term benefits. Yes, let's unravel the mysteries of nature. But let's not get all excited about getting high. Getting high might be a really, really bad idea.

We can't know what the long term effects will be, first of all, and second of all... well, we haven't really figured out how to define "benefit" yet. Our dominant moral philosophers keep crumpling up the pages and starting over. We don't even know what "good" is, from moment to moment.

It makes effective arguments about these issues maddeningly difficult.

Michael Arnzen will be a guest lecturer at this summer’s Odyssey workshop. He has been publishing outrageous horror fiction, SF, poetry, literary criticism, instructional essays on writing, and offbeat humor since 1989. Across his career, Arnzen has won four Bram Stoker Awards, an International Horror Guild Award, and several "Year's Best Horror Story" accolades and reprints. His novels include Play Dead and Grave Markings. The best of his short stories and poems are collected in Proverbs for Monsters, which won the Bram Stoker Award in 2007. Always the experimentalist, his writing has appeared on Palm Pilots and postcards, short art films ("Exquisite Corpse") and creepy online animation. His novel Play Dead even inspired a deck of custom-designed playing cards.

When he's not writing, Arnzen teaches suspense and horror writing fulltime in the MFA degree program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University, near Pittsburgh, PA. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Oregon, where he studied "the uncanny" in popular culture, as well as an M.A. in English from the University of Idaho, where he wrote his second novel. Arnzen sits on the editorial board for two literary journals associated with genre fiction (Paradoxa and Dissections) and has edited college literary magazines and more. He is presently working on a guidebook for authors, a book of literary criticism, and several horror titles.

Arnzen taught humor in fantasy at Odyssey in 2007 and students had a lot of laughs. Look for "Stripping Away the Mask"—his essay on crafting horrifying scenes in fiction—in the recently published book, The Writer's Workshop of Horror (Woodland Press, 2009).

Once you started writing seriously, how long did it take you to sell your first piece? What were you doing wrong in your writing in those early days?

I started taking my writing seriously when I was in college, I think, because whenever I wrote for my teachers, they started taking it seriously and that surprised me. I always just told stories and wrote poems because I enjoyed splashing around in the kiddie pool of language. But teachers were rewarding me with praise and healthy comments about how I could improve, and it made me sit up and take notice: hey, I thought, maybe I really can do this just like all those people I have been reading all these years!

But I think we make a mistake just calling ourselves "writers." What really happens -- though this is metaphorical -- is that we join the larger conversation that our genre is having with ideas. We start to talk back to books, through books. We join a "groupthink" tank called genre fiction. And so if I was doing anything wrong in the very early part of my career, it was thinking that writing was all about me. My sales took off once I started realizing that I wasn't just writing for myself: my audience's needs mattered just as much -- if not more -- than my own. And you have to earn it. You can't just walk up to a group at a cocktail party and start yapping; you sort of have to respond to someone first, or fill a silence. That's what getting started is sort of like in this business. It isn't so much that we have to take our writing seriously: it's that we have to take our reader seriously.

Why do you think your work began to sell?

I think editors have this intuition when they read manuscripts: they don't analyze stories as much as we think they do (on the first read anyway): they just listen to the author and trust their gut reactions to the author's voice: does it sound genuine? does it read like already published work? is this writer someone the average reader will really trust to tell a good story?

Most people would say it takes "talent" to produce writing that sounds that genuine, to have a voice that crafts stories instinctively into mature vistas that sweep readers off their feet. I think it takes a combination of good luck and hard work to produce that talent.

Studious research and making a lot of happy mistakes through trial and tribulation -- and having the stamina to keep stumbling forward -- is the key to success when you're getting started. Research is probably where most new writers fail, because it takes a lot of time. You have to research not only the background of your stories -- but the whole literary landscape. It takes a full immersion in the culture you hope to address as a writer to join the wider literary conversation of our world. You have to go to the library and read everything. Take college classes in literature if you can, or download a booklist and force yourself to read through all the classics. Rent every movie you can with your genre's markings on it, even if you can't stomach it, and force yourself to understand what it is that makes your genre what it is. Talk with as many writers as you can, through conventions and workshops like Odyssey. You have to absorb the "groupthink" I was talking about before, and this is the only way to really get the "deep structure" of storytelling, genre, and the marketplace. Once you do that, you pick up on literary strategies more naturally, and you adopt the voice of the writer -- a voice that is at once your own, and yet also an echo of the other wise voices you've listened to over the years.

What's the biggest weakness in your writing these days, and how do you cope with it?

I'm too prone to substitute fiction for facts. If I don't know something I'll make it up rather than research it. This is not so much laziness as it is a time-saver. I should know better. I cope with it by letting my manuscripts cool down for a few days after I write them. Then I scrutinize them, playing the role of "skeptical reader" and anything that sounds like b.s., I will mark and try to flesh out with more research to see if my b.s. holds water or not. What inevitably happens is that I get excited about what I discover during my research, which starts giving me more and more ideas I can put into my fiction, and it makes the revision process as much fun as the writing process was the first time.

Your CD, Audiovile, is an hour-long spoken-word performance of 16 short stories and poems set to dark and quirky music. Where did this idea come from? How do you encourage writers to express themselves in other ways besides with pen and paper?

Shortly after my book of flash fiction, 100 Jolts, came out, a few readers inquired about whether or not there was an audiobook version available. My publisher -- the great folks at Raw Dog Screaming Press -- had seen me read stories at conventions, and asked if I would be willing to narrate some of the short stories. I immediately realized that if I did that, I would want to avoid doing it the way most audiobooks are done, because I frankly feel they are sort of boring. So I jazzed the stories up with background music (relying on some old instruments my wife and I had gathered over the years). And the more I experimented with audio, the more the background music moved into the foreground. I started rehearsing the stories to the beat and using some of the lines like a chorus in a song. And something really unique came out of this process.

I won't say it's better than Led Zeppelin, but anyone who has listened to Audiovile has responded with enthusiasm over how quirky it is. The harshest critique I heard was from my dad, who grinningly said "It sounds like you're having too much fun."

But that's my goal! I could have bombed and made a complete idiot out of myself, and maybe some people think I'm nuts for doing something so over-the-top in the first place, but I think writers need to take these kinds of risks, and to push themselves into trying out different artistic forms. Writing is art, even when you're expressly doing it for professional pay, and you need to cultivate the artist inside of you. It might lead to finding a new or unique audience, too. You have to think of yourself as a genre entertainer to some degree, while also earning merit in the eyes of your audience. But experimenting with different arts -- even if they take the form of doodles in a notebook margin or poems you scratch out on cocktail napkins -- are all forms of expressed dreamwork and it will always pay back in your writing on some level. Creating Audiovile made me work my brain in ways I never had to before, and now I'm far more conscious of the cadence of my prose and the sound of my "voice" and the structure of my stories than I ever dreamed possible. And it renewed my love of performing at readings, which I always try to enjoy. I got into this business because it's fun for me, and Audiovile was a sheer creative burst of experiment that really renewed me. It took me a year of hard work to cobble together something of quality, but it was joy all the way. And it renewed my love for music, something that was waning in my life, along the way, making me a happier person.

With works like Rigormarole: Zombie Poems and Gorelets: Unpleasant Poems, how do you fuse horror and humor in only a few words?

This is a really difficult question. Part of it is just instinct. Horror and humor both have to feel spontaneous to work. But another part of it is really loading your language so that the assumptions and meanings and implications are all doing the work -- so that what's not on the page matters as much as what is there. I could go on and on about this, but your interview would wind up reading like a dissertation on death, the implosion of the universe, and everything.

Your e-mail newsletter “The Goreletter” actually won a Bram Stoker Award for Alternative Forms. What are your thoughts about having a Web presence? Do you feel it’s necessary for a writer to maintain a Web site and/or blog? Are there advantages and/or disadvantages?

It is necessary. It's like having a shelf in pubic to display your books -- only you're also displaying other things around those books too -- all of which serves to draw a reader's attention to your work. But I have to say: too many writers get sucked into this game of drawing attention, but never really having anything to say once the spotlight is really on them. You need to make your writing and storytelling central to your identity to be a writer, and if you're going to be using the web as a "platform" for your career, you have to provide writing on your website somehow -- whether in the shape of a free story, a giveaway book, whatever. I try to treat the web as a "sketchpad" and place to practice my creativity, since I would imagine that's what readers are really wanting from me, whether new to my work or old fans. I make "The Goreletter" the "takeaway" from my site because it helps me to think of my work on the web as generating an end product -- a newsletter that features the best of all those "sketches" I put in my blog and in my gallery and on twitter. Beyond that, your website is the doorway into your publishing history and your other books, so use it to display your titles (but don't be too arrogant about selling them).

As a guest lecturer at this summer's Odyssey Workshop, you'll be lecturing, workshopping, and meeting individually with students. What do you think is the most important advice you can give to developing writers?

I have two. The first is a mantra you should adopt: THERE ARE NO WASTED WORDS. Believe it. Everything you write makes you stronger. Even the garbage you wad up and toss in the trashcan.

The second bit of advice is at once quite simple, but more difficult to explain. But it is imperative, I think, to remember that writing needs to be genuinely creative. A genre allows you to take a certain degree of license -- a certain degree of freedom to experiment with things without fear of censorship or reader skepticism. In horror, it's license to get nasty. In fantasy, it's license to dream up settings or invent impossible forms of power called "magic." In science-fiction, that magic is called imaginary "technology." There's more to it than that, but those are just snappy examples. But my point is this: FLAUNT YOUR CREATIVE LICENSE. It's the only way to generate something truly original and unforgettable. Do not get too concerned with publishing or making the rest of the world happy with "correctness" when you're drafting. You can always edit it later. If you experiment and fail, well see advice #1 (there ARE no wasted words!). Even the most polished and perfect piece of genre writing will fail if it does not entertain, and if you do not let your genre freak flag fly you will never truly win over an audience. Try to write something no one else is doing in that genre; the sort of book you wish would be on the shelves, but isn't, and you'll be moving in the right direction. It takes courage to do new things like this, and it's risky, but your genre permits it. Readers pick up genre books because they want the writer to meet certain needs and one of those needs is originality of concept. You'll never be original if you don't take advantage of the freedom to experiment that your genre offers you!

What's next on the writing-related horizon? Are you starting any new projects?

A new novel is always in progress, but I'm never comfortable discussing work in progress until it's close to publication, because I hate to giveaway surprises. I've got my writing fingers in lots of pies right now, though: short stories will be out in anthologies in the year ahead -- like Darkness on the Edge (tales inspired by Bruce Springsteen songs!) from PS Publishing, or Armageddon Lightshow (stories about lightning!) from Bloodletting Books, or the wonderful He is Legend, a Richard Matheson Tribute Anthology which was just picked up for mass distribution by Tor Books. You'll likely see my non-fiction project, The Popular Uncanny, out before too long.

I hope interested readers will drop by my website, http://www.gorelets.com, to see whatever I'm up to lately.

---

For more information about Odyssey, its graduates and instructors, please visit our website at http://www.odysseyworkshop.org.

Sorry this is so late, but this past week as been INSANE and I've not been in the right frame of mind to do much at all, let alone book reviews. But here's the list, in all of its glory. As always, reviews are always found at calico_reaction.

Finished Books: November

Give Up the Ghost (2009)
Written by: Megan Crewe
Genre: YA/Paranormal
Pages: 244 (Hardcover)
My Review: Worth the Cash

Magic Bites (2007)
Written by: Ilona Andrews
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 260 (Mass Market Paperback)
My Review: Give It Away

Boneshaker (2009)
Written by: Cherie Priest
Genre: Steampunk/Alternate History
Pages: 416 (Trade Paperback)
My Review: Worth the Cash

Indigo Springs (2009)
Written by: A.M. Dellamonica
Genre: Fantasy/Contemporary
Pages: 317 (Trade Paperback)
My Review: Worth the Cash

Ash (2009)
Written by: Malinda Lo
Genre: YA/Fairy Tale/Fantasy
Pages: 264 (Hardcover)
My Review: Worth the Cash

Racing the Dark (2007)
Written by: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Pages: 368 (Trade Paperback)
My Review: Worth the Cash

Wake (2008)
Written by: Lisa McMann
Genre: YA/Paranormal Romance
Pages: 210 (Trade Paperback)
My Review: Worth the Cash

The Heart of the Beast (1994)
Written by: Dean Motter & Judith Dupré
Genre: Graphic Novel
Pages: 96 (Hardcover)
My Review: Worth the Cash

Stolen (2002)
Written by: Kelley Armstrong
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 468 (Mass Market Paperback)
My Review: Worth the Cash

Bitter Angels (2009)
Written by: C. L. Anderson
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 438 (Mass Market Paperback)
My Review: Give It Away

Foxfire (Trickster's Game #3) (2009)
Written by: Barbara Campbell
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Pages: 628 (Mass Market Paperback)
My Review: Give It Away

Give Up the Ghost (2009)
Written by: Megan Crewe
Genre: YA/Paranormal
Pages: 244 (Hardcover)

This is ridiculously late, and for that, I apologize. :)

If you read the book bag where this book was featured, you know I picked it up because I enjoyed Megan Crewe's guest-blogger stint over at Tor.com. I cited it as an example of how being smart, intelligent, and not an ass can bring people over to your work, even though they may not have been interested otherwise. I know I wasn't. Sure, the cover had caught my eye, but it turned me away too for reasons I'll explain at the end of the post, and the premise itself never really grabbed me. So for Crewe's features on Tor.com to win me over, that's saying something (for those of you wondering what she wrote about, it mainly focused on how our psychology effects the way we read and why we like what we do). So to "reward" the author for being such a smart, interesting blogger, I picked up her book. And read it in, like, a single day.

The premise: from BN.com: Cass McKenna much prefers ghosts over “breathers.” Ghosts are uncomplicated and dependable, and they know the dirt on everybody…and Cass loves dirt. She’s on a mission to expose the dirty secrets of the poseurs in her school.

But when the vice president of the student council discovers her secret, Cass’s whole scheme hangs in the balance. Tim wants her to help him contact his recently deceased mother, and Cass reluctantly agrees.

As Cass becomes increasingly entwined in Tim’s life, she’s surprised to realize he’s not so bad—and he needs help more desperately than anyone else suspects. Maybe it’s time to give the living another chance . . .

Review style: expect spoilers, simply because it's a short book and the things I want to talk about are directly related to the more spoilerific aspects of the book. If you want to remain clean, just skip to the "My Rating" section of the review.

( GIVE UP THE GHOST: spoilers )


My Rating

Worth the Cash: which isn't bad for a hardcover. Crewe has a tendency to twist expectations a bit, and every time I thought something major was resolved in the book, Crewe turned that resolution n its head and let it lead into more interesting territory. It's a good story for anyone who's ever felt out of place, especially in high school, because Cass's story is about not just finding her place (and trust me when I say it's NOT about finding her place in the normative social cliques), but about Cass finding a way to interact with the real world again, instead of just the world of ghosts. I personally would like to see Cass's story continue, because while she grows and changes in this book, I feel like it's time for her to make a change in her world, and her ability to interact with ghosts is just the way to do it. This is an incredibly fast, fast read. I finished it in less than a day, and I'll be very happy to pick up Crewe's next offering, whatever it might be. As a writer, Crewe shows a lot of promise, so it'll be exciting to see what she does next.

Cover Commentary: here's the thing: it's a great cover. The coloring is awesome, and it's a cool and appropriate image to have a ghost whispering in Cass's ear (the back cover has a ghost boy leaning against the lockers, also appropriate). However, I just don't like it. It's too bright, colorful, cheerful, and PRETTY, and that just doesn't fit the book at all. Cass is SMILING on the cover, for goodness's sakes, and unless that's a devious smile because she's gotten some good dirt on someone, it just doesn't fit. That said, this is most obviously my opinion, and I feel the cover works well, but it just doesn't speak to me personally. I do like the cover model they picked for Cass, though I tend to prefer those cropped faces/heads that so many people complain about, as it allows me to imagine the protagonist as I'd like. :) Fortunately, the model fit the description of Cass quite nicely.

Next up: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

My friend zombie_dog recently said some very nice things about a lot of nice people (myself included), and it inspires me to do the same.

Comment here and I will reply with something good about you*.

Something I like about you, something you do well, something about you that impresses me. No matter how well or poorly I know you, there will be something to say and I will say it.

*Offer only valid in this universe. Supplies technically unlimited as positive energy is self-renewing, subject to a continued supply of orgone and linear time. Offers of positive energy not under any confidentiality agreement - all positive statements may be shared by readers of Livejournal and/or other forms of social communication. Positive energy supplier not liable for any acts of awesomeness inspired by this post. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Dance.

I missed all the bad weather yesterday when my connecting flight was changed from Phillie to Charlotte, NC and arrived home the exact time I was originally supposed to. I left the hospital at noon for the airport and my dad was moved to rehab facility about five minutes drive from their condo, so it'll be easy for my mom to get there every day. I was told that he stood for the first time in the morning. Last night and today I've been unpacking, catching up on email, regular mail, and catching up with friends. Had lunch in an Irish pub near Penn Station with Paul and Pam then came home and a friend put together my new DVD player (which has a beautiful picture). My sister's home from Montana and we talked about our parents today. My mom's very worried about my dad and I've got to call her tomorrow morning to reassure her that the things my dad is going through (not eating, sleeping a lot, etc) are normal for the major surgery he had just about a week ago. Thanks so much for everyone's kind support over the past week. I appreciate it. I love you all. Btw, I haven't been able to get my embedding html to work --(so you see all the coding) --has something changed in dreamwidth and lj?

Tweaks and enhancements

• As a number of you reported, a service interruption impaired sending and receiving notifications for a couple of days. This was due to an avalanche of snowflake cookies. We've removed the free snowflake cookie and unclogged the pipeline. Timely notifications should resume shortly. Please note that there's a backlog in our queues, so you'll be getting earlier notifications first. For more details, check out this post at lj_maintenance.
• In anticipation of the new year, we've embarked on a self-improvement kick to boost our backend (pun semi-intended). This will allow us to offer you a holiday promotion in the next few weeks (yes, we're listening and working very hard to make it happen). We sincerely appreciate your continued patience and support.

Holiday vgifts are here!

We've added some fantastic new vgifts to help you spread holiday cheer. We also hope you'll honor AIDS Awareness Month by purchasing virtual red ribbons. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine.

Introducing: LJLimericks

We cordially here do invite you
To craft a fine limerick. Might you?
Each week, a new theme,
Then a poll, that's our dream
Winner posted on news to delight you!

In honor of all the brilliant writers on LiveJournal, we've created a brand new community: ljlimericks! Each week, we'll enter a handful of limericks into a poll (which we'll tuck snugly under an LJ-Cut). The winning poem will be published in the following newsletter. In addition, the author will receive a virtual blue ribbon! If you have the time, come drop us a rhyme. Please keep the "Nantucket" stuff on the downlow, since this is a youth-friendly community. Our first prompt is: Insomnia in winter.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible images from our global photography community. Congratulations to sempre_marseeya, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our second lj_photophile poll.

We hate to squelch your creativity, but, as a courtesy to other users, please post only one photo at a time and keep the main photo no larger than 350x350 (so images display properly via mobile and on friends pages). You can link to a larger image and/or post photos under a cut. Just so you know, we select photos for the poll blindly, based on user comments and staff feedback. Please continue to vote, comment, and, of course, enjoy. You can check out the week in pictures and view more awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay warm and safe out there!

I posted last night on Facebook about my dog, Maggie’s death. It happened a week ago today, and I wanted some time on my own to process stuff before I “went public”, there were some people I didn’t want to just read about it on Facebook.

Reading everyone’s messages today made me remember just how special she was, people from all over the country, now, posted memories of her and expressed their condolences. Before I moved to Vermont, she went everywhere with me. To classes, to work, to hang out. In high school, every day my friend Jenn and I would walk to my house, get Maggie, then walk Jenn home through the woods. In college I’d bring her to light hangs and build days, camping and to the ocean. She even got to go on a cross country road trip. I always felt a little guilty that she didn’t make it all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Maggie loved the ocean more than anything. (Except maybe food.)

In 2006 I made the decision to join the Peace Corps. Maggie was 11 then, and I took her to Connecticut to live with my Aunt Sue (who lives right by the ocean). When I came back from the Peace Corps a week later (that’s another story) whether I was staying or going back was up in the air, and I just let Maggie be in CT. I didn’t want to bring her home only to send her back in six months. Aunt Sue spoiled Maggie rotten, she had cats to play with, my grown cousins were always in and out to play with her. Since I gave her up I’ve moved seven time. Her arthritis medicine was very expensive those last few years, and I am not equipped to pay for it. I feel guilty that I didn’t have to make the decision last week, but I think Aunt Sue’s was the best place for her.

I got to see her in October, and I got the feeling that she was coming to the end of her road. When we put our dog Alex to sleep in 1993 my eleven year old self was consumed with anger and confusion, and I’ve been dreading Maggie’s passing because I didn’t want to feel that again. I don’t. I’m sad, and I miss her, but I know that this was the right thing. I know she isn’t hurting any more, she doesn’t have to deal with her knees not working, not being able to see, hear or run like she used to. I hope wherever dogs go there is an ocean and lots of tolerant cats to play with.

backpacking
Want to embrace your wanderlust on the cheap? If you're tall on adventurous spirit, but short on funds, this community can help you plan a trip to anywhere. Offering plentiful tips on how to travel light, you can post about bargain hotels and hostels if you're into urban exploration or discuss camping gear and mosquito netting for the great outdoors. Hitch your backpack, pitch your tent, and carpe diem!

Some questions I outlined to ask myself before spending money.

1.) Is (item in question) a need or a want?

Pretty obvious.

2.) Will (item in question) make me happier?

Splurging is a form of therapy in and of itself. But splurge therapy is exponentially more effective when the target of splurgination is something that will be a long-term source of happiness. For instance, the joy that I feel every time I pull on my leather jacket was TOTALLY worth $45.

3.) Will (item in question) be a positive investment?

I can spend $20-1500 on a tool for a job. But if I am unlikely to need it again, it may be a poor investment. Or if I can use it to make me money in the future, perhaps I can view the expenditure as a profitable investment. Something that I don't NEED, and won't really make me happier, but will actually make me money is probably worth buying.

4. Do I need to spend this much?

Why buy the $450 air compressor when I can get a similar model for $300? Do I need to actually spend hundreds, when I could rent a compressor for $60? Why buy new jeans for $70 when I can get a year-old pair for $7?

None of these questions are solidly "if I can't say yes to this question, this is not worth buying." a bottle of wine doesn't necessarily satisfy any of these questions, but I'll still spend the $8. I think they're worthwhile as a way for me to think critically about my financial choices.

I've actually been pondering this theme for a while, and rather than going the obvious route for February and choosing Romance (and therefore annoying all you singles in the crowd), I decided to "riff" off Black History Month instead. I think that's fair. :)



The theme: Black Women Writing Spec Fic

Black History Month aside, these are books that, if I don't already own (I own 3 out of 4 of them, but I'm not telling you which ones are which!), I've been interested in for a while. The sad truth is I've just never gotten around to reading them. So here's an opportunity to get at least one of these under my belt, and introduce you to authors/books you may not have heard of yet. Sometimes it seems that unless you're writing urban fantasy, women writing spec fic feel a little scarce (sometimes, not always). Now couple that feeling of scarcity with being an author of color, and that's quite a combination! Aside from Butler, which of these authors have you seen on the shelves, let alone heard of?

Go on, take a look. :)

Octavia E. Butler: Kindred
L. Timmel Duchamp: Alanya to Alanya
Nalo Hopkinson: The Salt Roads
Carole McDonnell: Wind Follower

Remember, pick the book that interests you the most. Even if this isn't your genre of choice, the idea is to challenge yourself. Read something new. You never know, you might like it. :)

Know what you want to read? Then it's time to vote!

Poll #1496959 February Challenge
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

Which of the following would you most like to read for the month of February?

Please note, I will not vote unless it is to break a tie.

You've got until midnight, Wednesday December 16th to make your decision. Vote for the book that YOU want to read the most, and if you're torn, tough. You gotta pick one. :) If you've already read ALL of the books, pick the one you'd most like to re-read. If you're not participating, then maybe next month will bring something more to your liking. :)

I'll announce the official winner on December 17th, so don't pick up your copy (whether you buy or borrow) until I make it official. Unless, of course, all of these books are so appealing to you that you must have them all. In that case, have fun and start reading! :)