I don’t usually fangirl like this. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I just can’t help myself this time. (Actually, I’ve long wanted to begin a regular feature on this blog, writing public fan letters to my favorite writers. Maybe this could be the impromptu inauguration of that tradition. Fan Letter Friday, anyone?)

Anyway. “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” by Cat Rambo. Whoa. I can’t believe I’ve had this story in my possession since Worldcon in Chicago and not read it until tonight! I can’t believe it’s been available free online since Christmas Eve, and Cat said she felt it was her best story this year (and I’ve loved so so many of Cat’s stories), and even then, I still only just got around to it. In my defense I’ve been swamped. I had to retreat to the bathtub with the book to finally make time to read it. But I wish I’d read it months ago. I want to read it again, right now.

I loved this story SO much. I want to say that I love it so much I have no words, the way people sometimes do, but it’s not true at all. I have tons of things I want to say. About how the first page or two made me think perhaps this one wasn’t going to be a story I’d love, probably wasn’t really going to be my kind of story at all but that was okay I’d read it anyway. After all, I can enjoy a story that’s well-told even if I don’t fall in love with it. But then it snuck up on me, made me sit up out of my bathwater at the end, my heart beating fast and almost painfully because of a thing I didn’t see coming. Because some lessons in life—my life anyway—have to be learned over and over and over again, apparently.

I don’t know why I was so surprised.

Cat’s done this to me before with other stories. She has this way of writing things—situations and characters—that feel so true, almost more true than real life sometimes, as if the stories are a distillation of real world experience, sort of like perfumes or essential oils, and I want to stick them under people’s noses. “Smell this! It’s so intense! So good!” and “I know this feeling! Do you? People are really like that, aren’t they? That really happens! Have you felt this emotion too? She gets it exactly right, doesn’t she? Amazing!”

But I can’t have these conversations with people unless they’ve read the stories too, particularly because I can’t ever seem to summarize Cat’s stories to anyone and do them justice. I certainly couldn’t do it for this one. All I can do is tell people to read it. Read it.

I have more I want to say, but I don’t want to spoil the story for those few folks who are likely to read this post. Go read Cat’s story “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain.” Read it all the way to the end. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. I read it in her collection Near + Far, but you can read it on her website here.

Lots to talk about and no time to write it all up, but I did want to make a quick post to link to my end of the world story at InterGalactic Medicine Show. It seems appropriate to post a link to it today, since the end of the world is all everyone’s been talking about.

Although it’s worth mentioning that this story’s not about the kind of end of the world that you’re probably thinking of.

Here’s the link:

Paper Airplanes into the Void

at InterGalactic Medicine Show

           The end of the world was pretty much what Jared had been told to expect, which was rather disappointing, all things considered…

P.S. If you are eligible to nominate or vote for the Nebulas or Hugos and would like to review the story, please feel free to drop me an email request and I’ll send it out to you. My email address is my name at gmail dot com. Or you can comment on this post with your contact information, if you’d prefer.

I returned the contract today, and am happy to announce that my story “Chasing Unicorns” will be appearing some day soon in Daily Science Fiction.

I’m super pleased by this. Friends who’ve read this story seem to remember it, and often ask me about it. One person who read an early draft—definitely not a friend—even did a shoddy job of ripping off some particularly unique imagery from a moment in the story that she said she’d found striking and memorable. (Flattering, but not cool. Please don’t do this, writers. You have your own striking and unique imagery and stories inside you; look there and you will find them. I have faith in you.)

Anyway! I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a lot people who, when I might have given up on this one, encouraged me to keep working and revise it again. Thank you, you know who you are.

I don’t know anything about this quote except that Jim Rohn was some sort of self-help guru, but the words resonate with me. I wanted to share them.

Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now but haven’t been doing is: write in this blog. A variety of complicated reasons compelled me to stop. Now I regret the silence.

I write posts, sometimes, but I never post them. It doesn’t really matter why I don’t. I’m going to try to change that starting today.

I have no agenda and no special plans as to what I’ll be writing about. Probably, I’ll write about whatever I’m feeling passionate about at any given time I make a post.

Right now that’s (in no particular order):

• Things I’m reading. (But only the good stuff.)
• Things I’m eating. (I like to cook.)
• Things I’m making. (I don’t paint much anymore, but I’ve been doing lampworking for about a year and a half, off and on, and I want to start hand-making books again. I’ll probably post process photos of that.)
• Things I’m growing. (I’ve been enjoying gardening a lot, as a part of my writing process. It keeps my hands busy but leaves my mind free for creative daydreaming.)

I probably won’t write about writing, except to announce publication of my work. The more I read, and write, and read about writing, the less interested I am in talking about my process. I may occasionally share links to other people’s process posts if I find them exceptionally interesting or unique. (That’s a pretty high bar, though. With only a few exceptions, the people writing about writing seem to be regurgitating the same stuff over and over again that other people writing about writing have already said.)

I know pretty much no one reads the blog on my website (why should they when I’ve so rarely posted anything to it?) and my lack of visible participation at Livejournal likely means anyone who see this on their flist is trying to remember who rarelytame is. (Terra LeMay – rarelytame is an anagram of my real name.) In any case, that’s what you can expect in future posts from me if you decide to stick around after you’ve scratched your head (“Terra who?”) and gone to my profile page or my bio page to jog your memory.

Writing on my blog is something I want to do, and I’m trying hard to make time for all the things I want to do.

How about you? Anything you’d like to make time for?

I’m very pleased to announce that my story “A Midnight Carnival at Sunset” has been selected by editor Alex Shvartsman for Unidentified Funny Objects.

The story will appear free on the site in January, as promotional content for the anthology. I’ll post a link here when it goes up.

In the meantime, check out that table of contents! What a great list of contributors. I can’t wait to read the other stories.

I’ll be attending Chicon in Chicago in August/September (Labor Day Weekend). I hope to see some of you there.

This is my first Worldcon, so I haven’t volunteered for any programming, hoping to keep it low key so I can enjoy myself as a fan and tourist. (I lived in a Chicago suburb as a child, but I haven’t been back in twenty years.)

In any case, I’ll be around. If you will too, I’d love to meet you. Send me a tweet (@rarelytame) or an email (check my contact page) or comment on this post, and we’ll work out the particulars.

In the meantime, I’ll try to periodically update this post with information about where I’ll be during the convention.

Confirmed Appearances:

Thursday, August 30th — Not Just Rockets and Robots: Daily Science Fiction Year One, the book, official launch. An author reading panel and discussion and signing. [I’ll be signing and possibly doing a reading at this.]

My story “Paper Airplanes into the Void” is now available for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

My story “Arrhythmia” is now available in the latest issue of Penumbra.