Sea Change appears in October Issue of Penumbric

Put Rapunzel, the Jovian moon, Europa, the NASA mock “Space Tourism” posters, and octopuses together in a story and you have Sea Change. In this case, the prisoner is a genetically modified intelligent octopus designed for the underwater seas of Europa and the Prince is a researcher at the laboratory studying the environment.

The story takes the bones of the fable, the imprisonment of a dependent for her own good, an interloper who discovers the captive and works to free her, the discovery and blinding of the helper, and the final redemption thanks to the now-freed captive.

The story is part of a collection of sixteen. Each story starts with one of the humorous “Space Tourism” posters created by NASA and JPL. The posters apply the art deco style of the great steamship travel posters of the early 20th Century to imaginary escapes to the planets and moons of the solar system as well as to exoplanets first discovered in the 1990s.

I decided to pair each poster with a fable or fairy tale. The idea was to take the playful and emblematic imaginings of the visual designs and apply it to stories that are themselves timeless. Most are funny because that’s the way my imagination usually works. This story, however, is more serious than silly, like the poster it is paired with.

The Demon's Debt, a Kindle Short Read Fantasy

I’m beginning to experiment with ebooks on Kindle for my short stories. There are a lot of reasons for this. Partly, it is financial. Short story publishers can’t pay more than a few dollars these days, and if I sell even 20 short read books online, I make as much as I would from a periodical.

In addition, there is some hope of building and audience over time so that ALL my books sell better. My novels and book-length nonfiction have mostly found homes with reputable publishers. I have gotten many of my short works published too, but the time spent submitting and keeping track and submitting again and again after rejections is just wayyyy tooo much work for the return.

Sure it’s nice to see my stories put forward by someone else. It’s very validating. But none of the publications have resulted in an uptick in my social media following or sales of my books, so I plan to take the reins in my own hands, bit by bit, as I have time.

The Demon’s Debt is the first of what should be many books that I plan to sell myself though online and POD booksellers.

Dragonfire in a Fun Dragon Story Anthology, Crunchy With Ketchup

Crunchy With Ketchup is Wolfsinger’s latest fantasy anthology. Carol Hightshoe edited the collection full of dragons serious and silly, friendly and destructive, for those who can’t get enough of the mythical beasts.

My own contribution is set in a world ruled by dragons, a world where humans are their slaves. Some believe in a mythic past when humans had technology and created marvels equal to their serpent masters. Some, like teenager Peor, consider the believers fools, Even when those believers are his parents.

Flash Nonfiction Piece, The First Fire, in AIOTB Magazine

As It Ought to Be Magazine included a flash nonfiction essay of mine titled, Story, in its current issue. The painting that is paired with it is one of my Pareidolia series of ink on paper works.

Jinx, a Short Fable, Was Published in Short Story Town

A short story I wrote a while ago, Jinx, just went live on Short Story Town. You have to scroll down to 5/12/21 to read it as the site doesn’t create separate pages for each story, but keeps a running sequence of tales.

Self-Portrait in Gaze Journal

One of my Year in Miniature paintings, a “selfie” of myself lounging in a pool, ink on polyvinyl panel, was included in Gaze Journal’s “Self Portrait” feature.

Covid Art and Poetry Featured in Pine Hills Review

Thrilled to have one of my covid poem One Day at a Time in the Pine Hills Review F*ck 2020 special feature along with paintings from the housebound quarantine times. There’s one that runs with the poem, but others are scattered throughout, paired with other poems and essays in the special feature

Flash Memoir "Esso Station" Published on The Dewdrop

Thrilled that this piece for a home on The Dewdrop. It’s a short read. Click the link below and let me know what you think.

Esso Station by Susan diRende

Susan diRende Guest Interview on LET'S TALK Podcast

I had a great conversation with Eric Schieber of Sheeb Entertainment about writing and living the creative life.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE

Keeping a Tablet Journal with Nebo

I always have journaled on basic white paper with blue lines.

For years, I’ve had a morning ritual of journaling. Over time, I accumulated piles of notebooks that I packed and carried around whenever I moved. Then came my decision to sell everything and hit the road for a nomadic life. Some stuff was easy to get rid of: give it to the Goodwill. Some sold on eBay. Some went into the trash. But my journals. What to do with all my journals?

I started going through them and most of it was drek written to work things out in my life. Still, about ten pages or so in each book was really good stuff. I set to work transcribing those pages and got about 50% done before I decamped. The rest I packed away as ripped out pages in one of the few boxes I stored in my sister's basement. Transcription turned out to be a real drag and while I tell myself I’ll get to them someday, part of me is hoping for some serious water damage to absolve me of guilt for failing my creative oeuvre.

I headed out with my two suitcases for a year of wandering. I ditched the paper for a Macbook Air figuring to skip the whole transcription purgatory at the end. Huge fail. Typing is not the same as scribbling. I lapsed. I only journaled now and then. When I did, the writing was very "thinky" which happens when I write on a computer.

When the regular iPad came out with the Apple Pencil capability, I sprang for it. I bought it for making digital art but as a bonus, thanks to the Nebo handwriting app, I got my journaling groove back.. Nebo’s clean design of blue lines on a white background evokes the familiar feeling of writing paper. It’s easy to learn and pretty intuitive.

With the iPad, I can journal with images as well as words.

The app has surprisingly good recognition of my very messy handwriting. The translated text appears above the paragraph so you can proof as you go. If you spot a mistake you can scribble on top of the word to fix it. Sometimes dotting an" i" will fix a problem.

If overwriting doesnt work, you can erase and redo with a line through a phrase that is a total mess, or by blacking in over whatever your want deleted.

There are other commands such as inserting spaces, changing text style, stuff like that. Mostly secondary, if you ask me. Paper isn’t full of bells and whistles after all..

What Nebo does have is "convert to text" which means that when I 'm done, there is a text document ready to go. No transcribing.

So here I am writing in "pencil" on an infinite "page" of lined white "paper" in the morning. When I'm done, I save the file to my cloud storage where it takes up no space and is there wherever I am if I need it.

When you write with the Apple Pencil on the lines, Nebo also shows you the printed text above it.

LA THIS WEEK Interview: Susan diRende

Here’s the full interview on LA THIS WEEK where I talk about founding the Broad Humor Film Festival back in 2006 for comedic films written and directed by women. It may seem today like female + comedy go together, like unicorns + rainbows, but back in 2005 when I got the idea for BROAD HUMOR, it was dismissed by others in the biz as impossible. They argued, “Comedies by women? You must be joking!”

LA THIS WEEK VIDEO

Susan diRende Interview LA This Week - short cut

Thanks to all the great folks at LA This Week, especially Editor Michelle Clay and Interviewer Maria Hall-Brown. Will post the longer version when i get it.

Author Reading at Max10 Performance Laboratory

The monthly performance laboratory in Venice Beach, Max10, held a special women’s humor edition on March 3, 2019. I was invited to participate and pulled out a fantasy short story I’ve been working on called, Knife Witch. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with audience members coming up and wanting more of the character and world. A thousand thanks to the folks at the Electric Lodge for running this great experimental space for the last 15+ years.

For Female Heroes on and off the Page

I want to turn the world upside down by getting women to see themselves as heroes in all its guises. I checked the synonyms for hero in the Oxford dictionaries online:  brave man, champion, man of courage, great man, man of the hour, conquering hero, victor, winner, conqueror, lionheart, warrior, paladin, knight, white hat. male protagonist. 

Notice all the “man” qualifications that Oxford specifies. The word “hero” has until recently meant only a man, something that makes no sense to me since it is a woman’s name from Greek mythology. Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite who, okay, drowned herself because her lover died trying to reach her. Suicide is not the best basis for a modern day hero, but maybe she was bound to die for love if she served bloody Aphrodite. Whatever the origin of the word, once it got associated with all sorts of admirable qualities, the default became male, and some references are stuck in that swamp. It smells to me of rotting, decomposing dead ideas, however, and I think it's time for a dredging.

Thesaurus.com has a better list, using gender neutral synonyms: adventurer, celebrity, champion, conqueror. Even better are secondary synonyms, the ones connected to the synonym adventurer:

    charlatan    daredevil

    entrepreneur    explorer

    fortune-hunter    gambler

    globetrotter    madcap

    mercenary    opportunist

    pioneer    pirate

    romantic    speculator

    stunt person    swashbuckler

    traveler    venturer

    voyager    wanderer

Now we’re in business. These are the kind of female protagonists I want to write about. Female heroes. These are characteristics for XX-ers I want to encourage with my creative work and with my life. This list is the closest I’ve seen to the females - and males -  I like to read about and fantasize about being in my dreams. This is my raison d’être, to be this kind of hero and to open the door to the possibility of being one to other women and girls. 

A Little Distance Is Sometimes Needed to See Your Work

Miniature in my Year of the Dog Dog-a-Day project. ©2018 Susan diRende

It is always a surprise to me how different a painting looks the next day. Sometimes a favorite suddenly looks out of whack, and I hurry to fix it, upset that I posted something so off. The real kicker though is how many I post thinking they are middling to bad only to realize the next day that I captured something alive and really lovely. I apparently need distance from the work and my intention for what it should look like to be able to see the work that it is.

Sensory Detail Is the Way into the Reader's Body

Putting sensory detail in writing connects the reader’s body to the character’s, puts them inside the story, triggering the very same associations that they would have in life on, say, hearing a cricket or needing a tissue for a dripping nose. That is what makes a story real for the reader. Don’t crowd out the reader’s associations by writing in too many of your own. This came to me as I was reading “Still Writing” this morning over coffee, so thanks due to Dani Shapiro.

For example, you could write, “she’s tired.” Or you could go for a sensory detail: ache in the feet, inability to catch her breathe, noise making her grind her teeth. Each one invokes a different kind of tired. And sure, you could explain the tiredness more clearly as from walking or running or from machinery. But a single image of feeling the stones underfoot lets the reader try on the sensation and come to the fatigue inside her virtual body. You get out of the way so the reader can live the story, and sensory detail is the key. I mean, readers must irl shut down sensory input to read. And since it is by our senses that we know the world, you have to give it back to them so they can live the story. Of course, every rule can be broken. But I suddenly understood the writer’s task on behalf of the reader is more than getting the story on paper. It’s letting go of author-focused telling and giving it to the reader to live it.

From the Wayback Machine: Freud and Box Envy

Skateboard Curses

Most dogs hate skateboards.
 
Or skateboarders. The distinction is unclear, because I am way too busy controlling my dog to make detached observations.
 
My dog goes ballistic at the first sound of those tiny wheels rolling over the concrete. Even before the board and rider are in sight. This leads me to suspect that the dog hears in the rumble-and-clack some unspeakable threat or insult. I listen for it, and sure enough, I can imagine the board is flinging a stream of curses — fukyoufukyoufukyoufukyou — and what animal brain would not attack back under such insane and senseless assault.
 
 For my animal brain, it is not skateboards that speak so, but honking car horns. If I am calmly waiting for a pedestrian to clear the crosswalk before turning and the car behind me starts honking, my only desire is to put my vehicle in park, get out of the car, and attack his tires. Or piss on them. Or both.
 
 It’s no good telling me to ignore the idiot. How do you ignore someone honking his horn at you? Impossible. How do you not attack. Well, when there are skateboards around, I keep my dog on a very short leash. And since I have my own version of a leash that began with toilet training and continued at least through driver’s education, I would no more get out of my car on a busy street than I would piss on the fire hydrant on the sidewalk. Much as I might want to.

Guest Post Women's Film Activism Blog

For writer/artist/filmmaker Susan diRende, Hollywood movies retain elements from the days where men played all the roles, male and female.

As the director of a women’s film festival, Broad Humor, my taste in female screen characters went through a profound change. I hadn’t known how skewed my perceptions were until I didn’t see anything but movies by women for nearly 10 years. I was like those people who are colorblind suddenly getting the glasses that let them see the full spectrum. It find most Hollywood movies unwatchable because they’re so obviously missing an essential element: women as they actually are.

Read the whole post here:

https://medium.com/womens-film-activism/the-hollywood-cure-7e06a72fbad5

Women, Science, Sexism, and Humor

I enjoyed this video by Emilie Graslie of The Brain Scoop talking about the bullying aspect of sexist comments on the internet and how it affects women. I also like how she is both serious and full of humor at the same time. 

If you like this, check out the article on Upworthy and scroll down to the links at the bottom where you can find a great list of women's science videos on YouTube.