A Superstitious Manicure
Superstition
I mentioned last month that it had been a rough winter in my household. This wasn't the weather, but a wild string of bad luck. Just a few days after I sent that newsletter out, I decided to get an evil eye manicure, for warding, just in case.[1]
Photo by my excellent manicurist.
I wasn't raised to be superstitious at all, and haven't been for most of my adult life, buuuuut I figured, you know... it couldn't hurt.
And, well, the next few weeks were a roller coaster, for sure, but it often did feel as though my luck had improved. Including with one piece of great news that I can't announce publicly yet![2]
Whether my getting a manicure changed the fabric of reality, or just my outlook on that same reality, is ultimately immaterial.[3] Outside of the fantasy stories we all love, magic is imprecise and hard to pin down even for those who really believe in it. For now, I'm not saying that I do, but I'm also not saying that I don't. Who would I be to turn down a little extra help?
Besides, imprecise and hard to pin down magic happens to be central to Kalyna the Cutthroat, so it's been on my mind a lot in the last year or so. You'll get to learn more about that in the fall/winter of 2024, barring the sorts of delays Soothsayer ran up against.
Next Week: I'm in Conversation with C. L. Clark!
Register: C.L. Clark In Conversation With Elijah Kinch Spector
If you vibe with stories that combine exciting adventure and queer characters with the interrogation of oppressive systems—and if you liked Soothsayer, you probably do—then you should definitely check out Clark's books. The Unbroken is great. Its new sequel, The Faithless, is also great: come listen to us to talk about it!
Violet
One of the pieces of bad luck that struck this winter was learning that our beloved cat, Violet, was dying. I'm now writing this a few days after we paid a kind soul to come and put her down in our home. Violet had a good, long life—by God, we got her when George W. Bush was president—and basically taught/forced my spouse and I to become adults.
Like any doting, queer, childless pet owner, I could write you pages and pages about Violet and how perfect she was,[4] but that would be boring to anyone other than me. So, if you've read this far, I ask that you only remember this one fact: Violet was not only shockingly smart and emotionally intelligent, she was also, emphatically, not a TERF.
You see, Violet hated all men except me (whom she loved). It wasn't nice, it wasn't fair, it wasn't reasonable. Even objectively wonderful men she'd known for years, who had fed her and watched her while we were away, were barely tolerated, and often mistreated. But, God bless her, this never extended to AMAB people who weren't men, because that's not what gender is.
Her brain was the size of a walnut, yet she was smarter than the most successful fantasy writer in the world. Go figure.
After doing some research to see if it was a practice I had any right taking part in, culturally speaking.
God, I've always been irritated when authors say that shit. But now it's me that gets to do it!
Unless I began believing that a magical ward could protect me better than, or to the exclusion of, say... a vaccine.
According to my personal journal, at least 20 handwritten pages.