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Spending a few days in Seattle after my last school visits of the year. Making cards on the road is always a bit of a challenge, but here is one from after yesterday's cruise around the emerald city!
Today marks 20 months since I moved to Seattle. After the first year, I stopped counting, stopped taking a moment to observe that it was the 5th and counting back to July of 2013, doing the math. But I’ve never stopped observing that I’m here. I still don’t take it for granted. I still have several moments each day where I marvel to myself, “I’m here. For real. This city. It’s mine.” It starts when I look out the living room window and see the sunrise, the mountains, the rain or the fog. It continues when I walk to the bus stop, observing the contrast in the colors between the water and the sky—blue, gray, sometimes with a hint of pink—watching the boats move across the Sound. Then I walk onto the campus where I work and am delighted by the smells—the flowers, the greenery, there is something no matter what the season. I watch the sky change out the window all day. Sometimes blue, sometimes gray, sometimes changing back and forth. Sometimes there are rainbows. In the winter, darkness begins to fall before I leave. In the summer, it’s still bright as noon at five pm. On my walk home, sometimes I see the Mountain. I always see the skyline from the Jose Rizal bridge. Sometimes it’s already dark, sometimes the sun is setting, sometimes the sky and the Sound are unbelievable shades of blue, sometimes shades of misty gray. Every time I think, “This is perfect.” Every time I take a photo. I have hundreds of photos from my living room window, from my bus stop, my walk home. I have hundreds and hundreds more from our walks and hikes during the weekend, from the parks, the forests, the mountains, the beaches. On the surface, they many of them may seem the same—trees, beach, gray waves, blue sky, sunset, skyline—but look closely and each is different. Each is perfect. I can’t pick a favorite.
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| Afternoon from my bus stop |
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| Sunset from my bus stop |
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| Puget Sound from Lincoln Park |
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| A gray but beautiful day at the beach |
From eighth grade through most of high school, I had periods when I was so depressed that I saw the world in shades of gray sometimes. I told people this and I’m pretty sure they thought I was exaggerating, but it’s real. I have a bunch of gray memories. I also have a bunch of black holes where memories should have been but I was too sad, too angry, too broken, so my brain replaced moments and feelings with a scrawl of black ink. After high school and into my early twenties, those black holes were my own fault; they were blackouts. I worked through all of this. I worked hard. With therapists, with pen and paper, with painful and uncomfortable conversations with friends and family, with love from friends and family and the man who would become my husband. Things got hard again in 2010. Life is hard. It throws things at you. Sometimes all at once. There’s grief and illness, there’s money woes, there’s major disappointments in your career. It happens to everyone. It’s hard to handle for everyone. But when you are a person who saw in shades of gray, who cut open her arms and/or drank heavily to cope, who is full of self-blame and hatred, hard can start to feel really scary. Hard can start to feel like a trap or even a death sentence. By 2012, I was desperate and scared. I was seeing gray, feeling suffocated by my mistakes and self-perceived mistakes. I also knew people were whispering about me, things like “Debbie Downer,” and it hurt. I was mired in the gray and I didn’t want to be, but as anyone else who has been there knows, it’s not easy to escape. I went back to therapy, to the difficult conversations. I worked and I thought and I weighed out what I had to do. I knew I had to take a risk. I don’t like risks. But I had to. So I did. And here I am.
I am home.
Two years ago,
I wrote about why Seattle. I called it my heart city and tried to explain what that meant. I’m not sure if I got it quite right. I seem to keep redrafting it in blog posts and essays and a chapter of my memoir and maybe that’s sort of what I’m doing here, but just with new terminology; now I am trying to explain why Seattle is home. I’m going back to Chicago for a visit in a couple of weeks. Some friends and family members refer to this as me “coming home.” I haven’t corrected them because I didn’t want to hurt feelings, but a little voice inside of me always pipes up, “No, Seattle is home.” Chicago is where I’m from. It’s where many of the people I love reside. But Seattle is home now and here is why:
This year has been hard so far. Last month in particular. Another one of those periods where things are thrown at you all at once. So much stress on so many fronts plus the flu. That’s why I haven’t blogged in a while, not here or even to
my Seattle photos Tumblr. But in the middle of it all, I took an afternoon to myself. I went downtown and saw this:
(*Whispers* This, all of this, is mine.)
I also noticed the daffodils in full bloom in front of my building. In the middle of February.
The trees, too.
I had a mountain view from my window when I was sick. Sometimes I even see eagles there. I can get out for fresh air and sunshine without freezing to death in February. I can run year-round. I walk everywhere. I am surrounded by so much natural beauty that it isn’t hard to pull myself out of my thoughts and worries and say, “Hey, look around! This is yours. This is yours.”
Seattle has helped me find and practice gratitude. It has helped me work on calm and inner peace. I’ve made friends here more easily than I have anywhere else or at any other time in my life. And that’s not just about the people (though they are awesome), that’s about me and what I’ve found within. I’m still shy. I still worry. I still get sad. But this city centers me. No, it allows me to center myself. When the stress and the bad and the sad descend, I look out the window, I breathe the air, I wait for the bus, I stare at the sky, the water, the flowers, and I center myself. I say, “I am here, I am grounded, and I brought myself to this place. I can keep going through anything.” It was the missing piece that I needed. It was the challenge I had to set for myself to find my own strength. Seattle has given me what the girl who saw in shades of gray thought she would never have: happiness and hopefulness. That’s why Seattle is home.
By: dianalevinart,
on 2/26/2015
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I meant to have a new blog post in January, but after doing Knott’s and going to see family, I was a bit worn out to be honest. But that is neither here nor there, I have a few shows coming up soon, plus working on new art along with commissions. Without further ado, let us begin with some shows.
Long Beach Comic Expo is coming up on February 28 and March 1st at the Long Beach Convention Center. I love doing show and hope to see everyone there.
Then it is off to do the 3rd Annual Spook Show on March 7th at the Halloween Club in La Mirada. I did this show last year and had a blast; great music, horror, and food.
Finally I will be ending March with two big shows. First up is Monsterpalooza on March 27th-29th at the Marriott Burbank Hotel and Convention Center. Well I won’t be there, but Shawn will be there representing me. So please stop by and say hello to him.
And the reason I won’t be there is because I shall be going to Emerald City Comicon on March 27th-29th for my second year at the Washington State Convention Center. I had an amazing time last year and can’t wait to go back, maybe this time I will get a chance to look around.
Now for a quick look at a new piece I have of a dark fairy with wings and horns. She playfully sits on a stone block in front of a doorway. Is she here to stop you from entering or to entice you to your doom? Available as a print at my store.
That is it for now, I am off to pack up for the shows. Take care and keep creating.
–Diana
The post Short blog to let you know I am alive… appeared first on Diana Levin Art.
By: Michelina Ouellette,
on 10/31/2014
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From the Toy Box, Ltd Gallery
I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be participating in Ltd Art Gallery Seattle’s show “From the Toy Box”. It’s my first piece in a gallery and I was lucky enough for Ltd to choose my illustration for the poster representing some really, really, REALLY awesome talent! I’m so honoured to be in this show amongst these fantastic artists. You can see the event here:http://www.facebook.com/events/769836919741028 and if you’re in Seattle and happen to go, I’d love to hear about it!
Finishing up some #sketches from our trip! #seattle #artstagram #illustration #watercolor #ink #journal
A year ago today at around 3:30 in the afternoon, we drove through this tunnel and arrived in our new hometown.
It was a moment I'd been dreaming of for nine years, ever since I'd visited with a group of girl friends in 2004 and knew-- just knew the very moment I glimpsed Seattle on the bus ride into downtown from the airport that this was the city of my heart.
It's scary though to take a leap of faith, to believe that just because you want something, because you feel it is part of your soul or your destiny or whatever, that you can go for it and it will work out. It was scary for me in particular because I've always been anxious, a worrywart. For years I focused on the many reasons I couldn't move--the townhouse I couldn't sell, the sorry state of my finances after my last leap of faith leaving full-time work to write (and bartend... and freelance... and teach...), and especially the overwhelming fear that I would fail.
I’m a perfectionist, a straight-A student, a Lisa-Simpson type. My failures and perceived failures haunt me. I was not supposed to be the girl who dropped out of college after a year, but I did. Then, my first attempt to live on my own failed when I completely lost sight of myself and the drive I’d had throughout childhood and high school and was forced to crawl back home to Chicago at 21 with a drinking problem, an alcoholic boyfriend, tons of credit card debt. Then there’s that relationship with the alcoholic that lasted years longer than it should have because I didn’t want to admit I’d failed by being with him. And let’s not talk about my writing career and all the missteps and failures I feel I made there (whether or not that is truly the case.)
But dwelling on these failures and letting my fear hold me back was killing me. In 2012, I found myself as depressed as I had been in the worst phases of my life—eighth grade, junior year of high school. I had to make a change. I went back to therapy and found a brilliant social worker named
Liz Ledman, who pretty much saved my life.
She was the first person who really asked me, “Why not? Why can’t you go to Seattle? Just GO and see how it all works out.” It was part of her way, I think, of teaching me to live in the present. Forget my past failures, forget my future fears of jobs, financial security, housing markets. Just go.
Fortunately, my incredible husband, Scott was on board with this. So at the beginning of last year, we started planning. In June,
we came out to Seattle to rent an apartment and then we went back to Chicago to pack. On the morning of July 2
nd, we set off on a three-day drive across the country through the Badlands, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and into Washington with our two cats. There were some not so fun moments like right across the Wisconsin border when Kaspar freaked out and pooped all over his carrier, but for the most part it was one of the most incredible, scenic trips of my life and I hope we can do parts of it again (without cats and an overpacked car). It was the beginning of what would be the best year of my life and my marriage.
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| Me and Scott at the Columbia River in Washington |
I keep a five-year journal—a notebook where each page is divided into five sections so you can write a few lines about each day. I’m currently on year three. It has been incredible to track the difference in my mental health between 2012 and now. I’m a different person, a healthier and happier person than I ever thought possible. It’s also been funny for the last month or so to revisit all of my anxieties about moving: those days in Seattle when our housing prospects looked grim until we found a place in a prime location with a gorgeous view of Rainer and the Cascades; my OMG there is so much stuff to pack followed by procrastination followed by pure panic; my deep and horrible anxiety about the delivery of our moving containers (god, what a trainwreck it was to get those into the driveway next to our house) and then the fear that all of my precious, precious things would break in the process; my tearful but sweet goodbyes with friends and especially my mom and niece; and of course the horrible, all-consuming “must get a job and/or sell a book” state that I know will fill my journal entries until mid-August. Depending on my mood, these entries either ended with giddy hope or prayers to the universe that this leap of faith would be worth it.
Even though the job anxiety lasted for six weeks after we moved (and through several heartbreaking “But that was the perfect job! Why don’t they want me?” moments), I knew almost immediately that my leap was worth it.
My fears big and small were for naught. Packrat that I am, I was able to whittle down our stuff, pack it up, and though there were a few headaches with arranging the transit, it all arrived completely safe and sound. Seriously, not a single thing broke. (And therefore I can highly recommend Mayflower’s container move.) The drive across the country went well, even with the cats (though as I noted in my July 2
nd, 2013 journal entry, “We should have brought baby wipes.”) and I even drove a few stretches on the highway (though admittedly I have hardly driven at all in Seattle because I’m intimidated by the hills and the traffic, something I should work on.). I have a great hairstylist (Danielle at Bowie Salon on Capitol Hill), great health care (Group Health), a great dentist (Smiles on Madison), a great vet (Jet City Animal Clinic) and neighbors in my apartment building to swap cat care with. I didn’t lose my local support network—I keep in touch with my best friends in Chicago the same way I have with my best friends that live in Denver, St. Louis, and San Francisco—and I found an amazing set of friends in Seattle, some who I’ve known for a long time, some who are brand new but it feels like we’ve been friends forever. Though my husband changed jobs once after we got here, he loves his current job and I love my job at Seattle University, a gorgeous campus that’s an easy walk or bus ride from my home where I get to work surrounded by people who share my same passion for books, learning, and social justice.
I did not fail. I succeeded in all of the best possible ways, in ways I didn’t even dare to dream about.
It’s weird to think about being here a year. Part of me feels like I’ve been here forever—maybe because this is where I belonged or this is where I finally came into myself, like the real me—the happy, joyous, capable of living in the moment me was born here. On the other hand, it does still feel so new. I’m constantly in awe of the view of skyline I get every time I go over Jose Rizal bridge on the way to or from home, in awe of the mountain, of the Sound, the long summer days, the changing sky, the many, many flowers. I’ve never lived somewhere with so many flowers.
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| Washington Arboretum |
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| Washington Arboretum |
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| Washington Arboretum |
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| The garden behind my office building where I eat lunch |
But I don’t think that awe will ever fade or go away. That awe goes hand-in-hand with my gratitude, which I've also started recording in a notebook this year. Each night I make a list of at least five things I'm grateful for and it always includes Seattle or some aspect of it--vegan pizza, delicious vegan food, hikes, legal weed.
I am so grateful to be here. To wake up to smell of rain or the dampness that never seems to fade even when the sun has been shining for a week. I’m grateful for cloudy days, foggy days, sunny days, rainbows, gray mornings that turn blue, gray mornings that stay gray. For the drizzle in the winter that makes it feel so good to go home, cook a warm meal and cuddle with your partner and furkids. For the glorious, glorious return of the sun.
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| December Fog |
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| Seattle Skyline from Alki Beach on sunny spring day |
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| Golden Gardens |
I’m grateful for the view from my bus stop:
The view from my apartment window:
The view from the trail I regularly run:
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| Downtown as seen from the I-90 trail |
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| Mount Rainier and Lake Washington as seen from the I-90 trail |
And the spectacular sunsets I can walk down the block to see:
I'm grateful that all the places that I loved when I visited Seattle are mine now. I can spend time at the waterfront, at Pike Place Market or Viretta Park anytime:
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| Viretta Park on April 5, 2014 |
I'm grateful to keep discovering new parts of the city and surrounding area and taking part in Seattle traditions that make me feel like I'm a real resident:
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| Fremont Solstice Parade |
I'm grateful that I'm surrounded by so much nature. By water:
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| Saltwater State Park |
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| Canoeing in Mercer Nature Slough |
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| Alki Beach |
By waterfalls:
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| Snoqualmie Falls |
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| Wallace Falls State Park |
By trees:
By mountains with amazing views:
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| The view from the top of Little Si |
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| The view from the top of Rattle Snake Ledge |
By eagles and ducks and deer and slugs and snails and turtles:
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| Mercer Nature Slough |
And I see those on our Sunday hikes, we have also taken a slew of long weekend adventures since we've been here--probably as many trips as we have taken together in the course of our marriage and I am very grateful for that!
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| San Juan Islands Anniversary Trip |
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| We saw a fox |
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| and alpaca |
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| and Mount Baker on the ferry ride back to Anacortes |
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| Olympia in fall |
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Tacoma, Defiance Point Park, New Year's Day
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| Valentine's Day trip to the magnificently rain WA coast |
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| And the spectacular Hoh Rain Forest where we saw our first eagle! |
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| Easter Weekend |
Above all, I'm so grateful for the ways that this move has made me physically and mentally healthier and closer to my husband than ever.
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| Fully vegan Thanksgiving for two |
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| Crossing the finish line of my first 5K |
That’s a large chunk of my year in pictures, but if you want to see more (and all of the adventures to come), check out
my tumblr.
I’m proud, ecstatic, and beyond grateful to call Seattle home. I miss my Chicago people (and am thrilled that my mom and niece are coming to visit soon!), but this is definitely where I belong. I feel centered, whole, focused, and inspired on a daily basis. Even on the dark days, I am able to find beauty and peace. I can’t wait for all of the adventures in the years to come. Great risks do lead to the greatest joy. I highly recommend taking them.
By:
dianalevinart,
on 5/30/2014
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Creative Zen
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We ain’t afraid of no dinosaur!
I realized that I have not posted in a while. With all the shows I have been traveling to, I barely had time to keep up with my blog. Since I have posted, I was writing about the Wild West Fest at the Calico Ghost Town in Yermo, California. All around it was a fun show; we stayed with my in-laws at a nice hotel in Barstow for the weekend of the show. It was also my birthday so we all went out to eat the legendary Peggy Sue’s Diner on Sunday night.
Then it was off to Seattle again for Emerald City Comicon. It was an amazing show, with wonderful people. I have to give a big thank you to Sarah for the help at my booth (allowing me a few moments of rest to stretch my legs). The atmosphere was electric and everyone has my gratitude for making me feel so welcome up there. One of these days I will get Shawn up there so that I can leave him at the booth and go explore the city hehehe.
But that will only happen if the infamous Monsterpalooza does not fall on the same weekend as ECCC, like it did this year. Here is Shawn to tell you more. Shawn here and I have three words: It… was… awesome! I had a great time, though I wished Diana was there so that I could have walked around to check out more things. Oh well, there is always next year. All the fans were amazing and thank you to everyone for supporting Diana. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Beware the Gotham Bunnies
Thank you Shawn, so following those two shows was Wondercon. Oh how I love this show and it is one of my favorites. Not only did I get to see all my regular fans from SoCal, but Shawn being there allowed me to leave my booth from time to time to browse the artist alley. I got to catch up with some friends and meet some amazing artist for the first time. This was also the debut of my latest in the Terrible Trio series… the Gotham Bunnies, so cute, yet so evil.
Then I had a rare weekend off, and then it was time to get ready for Texas Frightmare Weekend. I was excited as I had never been to Dallas-Fort Worth, so this was a great opportunity to reach a new fan base. After a less than sterling start of the day (looking at you American Airlines) I made it to the show with only a half hour to set up. But after that it was one of the best weekends I have ever had at a show. It was intense, amazing, overwhelming at times and I can’t wait to go back next year. I may even bring Shawn along for this trip, I think he would enjoy the show very much.
Back to Southern California the following week for the Bat’s Day in the Park Black Market. This is always a fun show to do where I tend to pick up some great little pieces. It is only a one day show, so a bit more laid back and relaxing compared to the multi-day shows. Though being so close to Disney makes me want to go buy a ticket and go on some rides.
Finally last but not least was another trip up to Seattle (seriously, maybe I need to rent a room out there) for Crypticon. This was a great little horror convention with some pretty cool guests. I am starting to recognize a few people that have seen me at some of the area shows and meet some new fans. Thanks once again to Tamara of The Mystical Apothecary for being my traveling buddy once again.
Whoa, I was a bit more behind on this blog than I realized. Mid year resolution, I shall be better about updating my blog in a more timely manner. I have four more shows to do before I take some time off to do some more art and work on some upcoming projects, one of which is a book.
Keep on creating and have fun–
Diana
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By: Mike Cressy,
on 4/27/2014
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This is in front of the Tacoma History Museum. Happy to see my art up so big. I'm starting to get excited about the opening on May 17th. If you are in the Seattle/Tacoma area, you are invited! Hope to see you there! :D
I am researching the setting and background for a new novel, which I hope to set near Seattle, WA. I’m going there next month for a week and am trying to sort out what I need to know by the end of the week.
What I Need to Know
Sensory Details. I’ve written about the importance of vivid sensory details here, and here, and again, here. As a young writer, I heard over and over, “Show, Don’t Tell.” When I finally made that more specific–use vivid sensory details–my writing took off. I can’t over-emphasize the importance of great sensory details. I consider it the basic writing exercise for fiction.
That means, I need to walk around the proposed setting and be a fully-present human. I need to soak in the smells, tastes, sounds, sights and what it feels like to move around in this place. I remember a couple years ago, I was at a conference on Puget Sound and a salmon was swimming up a tiny stream. Thrashing, 3-foot long salmon, powerful tale, the smell of salt water and the bacon I was eating at a restaurant, the stream only 2 inches deep, the salmon like a Gulliver in Lilliputia.
When I write details, I don’t care about whole sentences. I’m just creating a word bank so that later, I can draw from the memory what I need. I also need to be able to extrapolate. If it’s like this on Bainbridge Island, would it also be like this in the San Juan Islands far north of there? I need specific enough, yet general enough details so that the story comes alive, but isn’t bogged down by details so specific that I can’t move around the area.
Port Townsend, WA. My husband took this photo when we were in the Seattle area a couple years ago for a sailing trip. Photographs are great research tools. Click to enlarge and see just how spectacular this photo really is. Copyright 2008, Dwight Pattison.
Oh, dear. There are so many facts that I need to know about the Seattle area. Volcanoes, Puget Sound, school system, boats and on and on. I can absorb lots of that just by visiting the area, but fortunately, I do have long-time residents who can vet the story for me after the first draft. I need to know enough to get the STORY right, and then details can be tweaked.
Logistics. Of course, this is another category of facts, but slightly different than what I meant earlier. For this, I need to know transportation details. How long does it take to go–walk, bike, drive a car, swim, take a ferry–from point A to point B. This is crucial to developing a reasonable time line. Part of this is understanding maps, of course, but mostly it’s about physically moving a person around the landscape.
Culture. Now, here’s a fuzzy one. What cultural elements will impact the story I am planning. Attitudes, beliefs, institutions, dialect/slang unique to the area, how people here DO something–so many subtle and not-so-subtle things need to be taken in (and again, vetted by long-time residents after the first draft).
Whether you create your setting from historical details, contemporary details or create a a fantasy world, this is a crucial step in creating a believable story.
Tomorrow marks twenty years since Kurt Cobain's death, but this is less about him and more about me because with that anniversary comes another one that is harder for me to explain, a personal turning point that is just as significant—no, maybe more significant.
I've tried on many occasions to put what Kurt Cobain and Nirvana's music meant to me into words. I think my story is similar to a lot of Nirvana's fans no matter when they discovered the music—in the thick of when it was all happening, like me, or a decade or so after Kurt's death. I was lost, broken, and angry. I'd been bullied, and even though I had a few good friends, I was so depressed that I still felt like an outsider, an alien. Above all, I felt voiceless. And then along came this man, this band, who understood all of that, who knew what it was like to be trapped in school with no recess, to "miss the comfort of being sad," who channeled it into noisy, distorted guitars and gave those difficult feelings a voice. That, in turn, gave me the courage to use my voice because if Nirvana could do it and change the entire world, surely I could do it to empower myself.
Then April 8, 1994 happened. The day we learned that Kurt's depression and addiction had won out over his voice, silenced it with a shotgun blast. I heard about his suicide from the girl who'd been my best friend since third grade and she delivered the news is a nah-nah-nuh-nah-nah sort of sing-song. She didn't like Nirvana, saw them as one of the new differences that had been cropping up between us. And I would learn later, she was pissed at Kurt, thought him a selfish coward for taking himself away from his family on purpose when just a year earlier, cancer had taken away her grandmother, her family without giving anyone a choice. I was pissed, too. I called him selfish in my journal, asked him how he could do it to his wife and his baby. I didn't write, but I remember thinking, "And how could you do it to me?"
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| Me in my bedroom at 14, November 1993 |
This is probably where my story differs from other Nirvana fans. My story is so tied to the fact that I was fourteen when Kurt killed himself and I was a pretty fragile/angry/depressed fourteen. His suicide flicked a switch inside of me, it dialed my self-destructive, "oh, fuck it" feelings up to eleven. It made me want. Desperately want. I wanted a tribe. I wanted mosh pit bruises. I wanted to taste and try everything. I wanted to live. Not all of this was bad. It was time for me to come out of my shell and when I did many of the friends I found were amazing and so was the music and the shows and those mosh pit bruises. But since self-destruction lurked underneath it all, there was a lot of ugliness, too. A lot of mistakes. A lot of pain. A whole fuck-ton of anger. I emerged with scars and foggy memories as well as crystal clear ones I wished I could erase—especially that day almost exactly a year after Kurt's death when a boy who idolized him taught me that saying yes once means saying yes forever. (God, why do so many boys who idolize Kurt get it so fucking wrong? "He's the one who likes all our pretty songs... But he knows not what it means...")
In my early twenties, I started to come out of that.... Well, I started trying at least. I was still drinking too much sometimes, still in a fucked-up codependent relationship, still feeling married to my past. I'd taken a bit of a break from Nirvana in my late teens; sadly, they reminded me too much of that asshole boy. But when I was ready to crawl out of that bloody, angry, booze-drenched hole I'd dug myself into After Him, I turned to those songs again. Kurt's howl reminded me that I could howl and I needed that more than anything. I became obsessed. I spent hours on message boards, talking to other fans, trading bootlegs and memorabilia, trolling eBay for the limited edition vinyl and mint copies of the magazines I'd cut up and collaged my bedroom with as a teenager:
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| A piece of the Nirvana collage between my windows that I started in eighth grade |
In retrospect, I think I was trying to go back and fix it. I still didn't have the strength to get out of my alcoholic codependent relationship, so instead I avoided it by locking myself in my office and trying to time-travel back to 1994. Maybe with enough bootlegs, enough vinyl, enough magazines I could do it. Maybe in alternate 1994, Kurt wouldn't die, or even if he did, I would do a better job of living through it, of surviving high school, of being punk and artsy and weird without being destructive. I would just have a bunch of really cool friends, which is what I did find on the message boards. More specifically, I found them on the Hole message board because that's where the girls were and I didn't really want to talk to boys about Nirvana. I'd spent real 1994 listening to boys talk about Nirvana. It was old. It was boring. And half the time, thanks to my 1995 boyfriend, I didn't trust male Nirvana fans. I wanted to talk about them with girls. Girls like me who heard something in the music, heard the respect they'd never gotten from male artists before and turned it into self-respect, heard a voice that made them feel understood, that made them feel invited to create and did create something—something far more interesting than all the boys who picked up guitars to emulate Nirvana. ("I like the comfort in knowing that women are the only future in rock and roll."- Kurt Cobain)
Even though so much of my obsession seems silly now, like some weird version of therapy that I feel uncomfortable talking about most of the time (the fact that I'm blogging about it now might seem to indicate otherwise but I'm basically pretending this is my journal), I don't care because those months—no, those
years, really—locked in my office trying to time travel back to 1994 brought me my girls, Jenny and Eryn, two of my very best friends in the entire world:
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| Jenny, Eryn, and me at Viretta Park, Seattle, April 5, 2004 |
After exchanging emails, letters, and packages, Eryn and I started talking on the phone. She's a couple of years younger than me, but her heart broke like mine had when she heard about Kurt's suicide, and like me, she'd watched the news coverage of the vigil in Seattle and wished she was old enough to go. She'd promised herself that she would one day. I had too at some point, but I'd forgotten about it and while talking to her, I wondered if maybe that forgotten promise had fucked things up for me. Maybe if I made the pilgrimage, I could let go of my teenage baggage. So Eryn and I started planning our trip and recruiting people to accompany us to Seattle in April of 2004 to pay homage to Kurt on the tenth anniversary of his death. This was the beginning of a real transition for me—from trying to time travel to trying to find closure.
I was home sick a couple of weeks before we were to meet in Seattle, me coming from Chicago, Jenny and another friend of hers from St. Louis, Eryn from Denver with another friend of ours from the message board who'd come all the way from Australia. While zoning out on the couch to the bootleg Nirvana videos that were my greatest comfort then I realized how significant the trip was. Ten years. A part of me had needed to do this for ten fucking years. So if I was going to do it, I should DO IT all the way. I pulled all of the Nirvana biographies I owned off the shelf.
Heavier than Heaven by Charles Cross was the most detailed, giving exact addresses or solid descriptions of locations. I tore up tiny pieces of paper and marked each important mention: childhood homes, recording studios, concert venues, shady motels where Kurt escaped to shoot heroin, the morgue where he was cremated. I wanted to see it all. I NEEDED to see it all. I took the book upstairs, shut myself in the office and painstakingly Mapquested everything. Yeah, Mapquest. These were the days before Google maps with street view and integrated public transportation schedules, before GPS and smart phones. Or at least before I could afford them. I was still in college and had saved for a year to go on our week-long trip. We were renting a car for a day, but reliant on public transit for the rest, so I went back and forth between Mapquest and the King County Metro transit website trying to locate everything and fit it all in to our schedule. Eventually I came up with a full itinerary. Eryn was as excited as I was. The others might have been a bit freaked out by the depth of my obsession, but they didn't show it. Jenny, who'd volunteered to drive the rental car, exhausted herself so we could do it all: the bridge and the childhood homes in Aberdeen, Hoquiam, and Montesano, the site of Nirvana's first show at a house party in Raymond, the Pear Street apartment in Olympia, and even McLane Creek where Charles Cross described Courtney, Wendy Cobain, and Frances spreading some of Kurt's ashes.
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| Me under the Young Street Bridge, Aberdeen, Washington |
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| Jenny, me, and Eryn at McLane Creek, Olympia, Washington |
Last week, Eryn sent me a link to a
New York Times article by a dude who had gone to all of these places and wrote an ultimate guide. Not gonna lie, I was a little bitter. We did that ten years ago back when Aberdeen was not into celebrating Kurt Cobain
at all—when there was no park by the bridge and people at gas stations misdirected you because they didn't like Kurt or his fans. I pitched the story of our journey to every major publication I could think of, but had no takers. Maybe ten years wasn't long enough. Maybe the interest in Nirvana is extra high now because of their impending induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Maybe I didn't have enough writer cred yet. (Okay, I definitely didn't; I was still four years away from publishing my first book and seven from writing for
Rookie.) Maybe writing about Nirvana has long been dude territory and no one wanted to hear a woman's point of view on Kurt Cobain and how he transformed her life twice—once as a junior high misfit and again when she went to Seattle at 24 to retrace his footsteps and light up his name.
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| Our tribute to Kurt at Viretta Park on our last night in Seattle, April 10, 2004 |
But that's okay because I
wrote it anyway and for an essay site created by a woman named Hillary Carlip, who'd inspired me as much as Kurt did when I was teen. Hillary helped me shape it into the thing I wanted it to be: less of a Nirvana travel guide, more of the story of a personal journey. Go ahead and read it if you want because I don't really want to rehash it. It was a huge moment for me, the moment I finally started to let go of my past, but it happened ten years ago. That's why after a little bit of bitterness and venting that someone else got to write the
piece I'd researched, lived, and wanted to write ten years ago, I quickly realized that I didn't care. Now any Nirvana fans, old and young, who still need to go on that journey have
a guide and that’s a good thing. Hopefully it will lead them where it led me: to blaze their own path.
This brings us to that other anniversary, the one I am far more focused on than the twentieth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death. Ten years ago around this time I found the place where I belonged and something clicked inside of me—maybe that self-destructive switch turning off?—and I started to set myself free. It was definitely a process. Even though I had the giant “It was” revelation on April 10, 2004 that I documented in my “Ten Years Gone” essay, disentangling from ten years of damage wasn’t that simple. I didn’t go straight home, break up with my alcoholic boyfriend and move to the city I’d fallen in love with on my ten-day trip. In fact, I stupidly bought a house in the city I knew I didn’t want to live in anymore with the guy I knew I shouldn’t be with. But I was changing on the inside. I was thinking non-stop about Seattle—not about Kurt, but about my experience there. That was and still is the hardest part to explain, the way I fell in love with Seattle and drew strength from it sort of in the same way I did from Nirvana’s music. Sort of but different. I did my best to explain it
here and also
here and now I explain mostly in pictures
on my Tumblr. I have to admit that I feel self-conscious sometimes about its connection to Nirvana. It’s not just because the depths of my obsession in my early twenties was strange and personal, but because that makes it less mine somehow.... Or worse, it keeps me tied to my past, and my love for Seattle, my moving here, is not about my past—quite the opposite. When I fell in love with Seattle, I started fighting to live in the present and to give myself a future.
My trip to Seattle in 2004 was the farthest I’d gone from home on my own, without the boyfriend, without any link to teenage me (well, besides the Nirvana fandom). The girls I was meeting up with were new friends, internet friends. They became best friends, people who knew and understood me as well (and better in some ways) as those who’ve known me most of my life, but that bond was forged during our trip. In some ways that week was more intense than spending four years of high school or four years of college together. And though Nirvana brought us there, our friendship was so much than that. The shit that we’ve gotten each other through and that we’ve celebrated together over the past ten years proves it.
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| Me, Eryn, and Jenny on my wedding day, October 3, 2009 |
My relationship with Seattle is quite similar. Nirvana may have brought me there, but the old venues where they played or recorded, the house where Kurt died and the park next to it is not what made me fall in love with it. Much as I loved grunge and 90s music, I’d never thought of the city as some sort of Promised Land—that’s probably why I’d forgotten my fourteen year-old promise to go there someday until I talked to Eryn. It was just a faraway place, a rainy and gray place from what I’d heard. Just a place. Except from the moment I arrived at the waterfront, I knew it wasn’t a place. It was the place. My place.
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| My first glimpse of the Seattle waterfront, April 3, 2004 |
But like I said, it was a process to get there—a process that involved a lot of visits. I took my boyfriend there in December of 2004, partially because I already missed Seattle so much after six months and partially as a test. If he saw the city the way I did, maybe our relationship would be worth salvaging. He didn’t. The two of us finally broke up after I took another trip to Seattle with Eryn in April 2005. It quickly became a tradition for the two of us, sometimes Jenny joined us, too, and once we went with a couple of other message board friends and one of my best friends from college. That was the fifteen year anniversary of Kurt’s death, so we did Nirvana-themed things then, but for the most part my trips with Eryn or Eryn and Jenny had changed—we went in June or August instead of April, we always visited Viretta Park, but we spent most of our time exploring the rest of the city, especially the parks and beaches, the places I had nothing similar to back in Chicago.
I stopped hanging out on message boards and collecting. I’d found my girls, and once I’d started ridding myself of the damage and baggage from my past, I didn’t need it anymore. Actually, I didn’t have room for it anymore. I was too focused on my own art and building my first healthy romance with a guy I would eventually marry. I did still buy the music—the reissues of
Bleach, Nevermind, and
In Utero as they came out, and I had to have them on vinyl. The music will always be my everything and to paraphrase Britney, one of our diarists at
Rookie, when your favorite band is no longer, has been no longer for more than a decade, and will never create anything new because the frontman is dead, you take what you can get. You listen closely to remastered songs to hear something new, you relish lives tracks and the scraps of partially written songs. (I’m sure that Britney actually said this much better. She writes insanely insightful diaries for Rookie. You should
read them.) But aside from the music and a recent impulse buy of a special edition commemorative Nirvana
Rolling Stone, I’ve stopped collecting.
I didn’t even see
Hit So Hard, the documentary about Hole’s drummer Patty Schemel until it had been out on DVD for a while, and when I did, I reacted to the old video footage of my teenage idols in a surprising new way. Instead of wishing I could time travel back to the early 90s and live forever in the period before everything went wrong, instead of being pissed at Kurt for leaving behind the baby girl he clearly loved and the people who clearly loved him, I felt that
empathy he'd written about over and over again in his note. I remembered being 24, still grappling to understand teenage me, something he must have been grappling with too and during his meteoric rise to fame. I remembered being 26, right after that long, codependent relationship finally ended and struggling to find the ground beneath my feet. Even after I found it, I still battled depression. Hell, at 32, just a couple months before I watched
Hit So Hard, depression and severe artistic blocks combined in such a way that I was regularly writing journal entries wishing for my own death. If this has happened to 26 or 27 year-old me, I might have picked up a shotgun (or my version of it, which would have been a razor blade and a cocktail of pills) but instead I picked up a phone and made an appointment with
a sliding-scale, feminist therapist who helped me remake my life. I survived. It was surreal for 33 year-old survivor me to watch 26 or 27 year-old Kurt, the man I’d always thought of as my savior, and want to go back and tell him that it would be okay. It could have been okay. He could have survived. Not for me, not for his art, but for the people who loved him. Yes, outliving and outlearning your idols is a very strange experience indeed.
Right around that time April 2014 became a different sort of anniversary in my mind—my ten-year anniversary with Seattle. In late 2012, I started to grow anxious. I told my husband that I felt pathetic for wanting to live in this place for almost ten years, but not being brave enough to go for it. I had to be there by the ten-year anniversary. Had to or I’d feel like I failed myself. This is when the biggest change in me happened, bigger than “It was,” bigger than my break-up, bigger than publishing my books and becoming an artist in my own right. It’s still so fresh that I haven’t been able to fully unpack it yet, though I tried in
this Ms. Fit Mag series. All I can say is that I feel like a fully-formed person now, one who let go of fear and self-imposed limitations to become brave and assertive enough to go after what she wants and live how she wants to live. I am new in this new city. I am the person that I dreamed of being ten years ago when I was still trying to time travel to fix it. Time travel wasn’t necessary.
Fixing wasn’t necessary, processing was and I did that through cross-country travel, through friends, and through art.
It’s still a work-in-progress. It was only a couple of months ago through a conversation with Anaheed Alani, one of my brilliant editors at
Rookie, that
I realized how connected to my past I remain in my art. I expect that settling here in Seattle, living fully in the present and dreaming of the future, will change that immensely over the next ten years (or hopefully over the next year or two!). It’s a little bit scary, seeking inspiration in new places, but mostly it’s exciting and hopeful.
So what does tomorrow bring? April 5th, 2014, the twentieth anniversary of the death of my teenage hero, the man who sort of brought me here, the man who I outlived, what does it mean to me now? It’s been a little bit bizarre because ten years ago and especially twenty it felt like it meant as much if not more to me than it did to the rest of the world, but not this time. There’s been a frenzy of stories—the creepy, crying statue in Aberdeen, the newly released photos from the suicide scene, all of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame hoopla, and that New York Times piece that briefly stirred my writerly jealousy. I’ve clicked on them, skimmed, and then closed the browser window and glanced out the real window at the Seattle sky that I consider mine now.
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| A Seattle morning as seen from my house |
What tomorrow brings for me—what tonight brings actually—is my girls. Jenny and Eryn as well as my college best friend Jenny and Lynn, a message board friend turned real-life friend when she came to Seattle the first time five years ago. We will go to Viretta Park and I’m sure I’ll bring flowers and light a candle to pay tribute and say thanks because I’m still very grateful for what Kurt and his music did for me. He helped me find my way to this path. I do still wish he could have found his way to one that helped him, but mostly I'm just grateful that I did survive. I made my way here to this beautiful, healthy life that is fully mine and I don’t need to retrace footprints, I’m leaving my own and so are my girls. That’s what we will really be honoring and celebrating this weekend and I think Kurt would have appreciated that.
Last Thursday, September 5 marked two important anniversaries: it was the two-year anniversary of Rookie Magazine, which I've had the honor of writing for since the beginning (in case you want to revisit it, here's my excited post about Rookie's launch) and the two-month anniversary of my arrival in Seattle.
Actually scratch that. It marked three important anniversaries. It was also the two-day anniversary of me feeling that happiest I've been since 2009.
I haven't been wholly and completely miserable since 2009. Some really wonderful things have happened. Like this:
And this:
And even this:
But that last thing was kind of where the trouble began. About three weeks before Ballads was to be released, during a horrible week when I'm guessing but can't be bothered to check that Mercury was in retrograde because we were having the kind of killer heat wave that made me hate Chicago, my air conditioner was broken, and I was having so many problems with my home internet that I'm surprised I didn't bomb Comcast, my then-agent called to tell me to STOP EVERYTHING and promote
Ballads because the publisher wasn't really doing anything for it and the print run and sell-through numbers were half of what they'd been for
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone.
Since they are sorta like children, I don't think you are supposed to love one book more than another, but I did love
Ballads more. It was the book I felt like I was born to write--or that I'd survived my teenage years to write. I'd poured so much of myself into it that the ulcer problems that I'd had at sixteen resurfaced and were worse than they'd ever been.
And with the way my agent was talking it sounded like that book had failed before it even hit stores because my publisher had already written it off. I don't know how much of that is true and how much of that was my emotional response. What I do know is that I did everything I could. I was actually
already doing everything I could. I mean, if high school had majors, mine would have been "Punk Rock D.I.Y." I'd taken everything I knew to support both of my books. With
Ballads, I'd even hired a publicist.
But, to this day, it's sold only a third of what
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone sold. I don't know why. It's the better book. Up until I finished The Grief Book in May, I was pretty sure it was always going to be the best thing I'd ever written. I think that it is always harder for second books, even when the publisher is giving them a big a push, and when the publisher isn't, well... But I don't want to play any sort of blame game. I still have nothing but love for my editor and the people I worked with at MTV Books. I honestly don't really know what happened. All I do know is this:
It was out of my control.
But it has taken me four long years to come to grips with that.
I'm a perfectionist. An overachiever. Even when I was a stoner fuck-up, I was a straight-A student (aside from gym which doesn't count toward your G.P.A., so um, it doesn't count). I couldn't shake the idea that I had failed somehow. I had this big dream of "making it" as a writer, but instead I was (barely) supporting myself on bartending income, which was not at all where I envisioned myself with my fancy MFA degree at the age of 30. I beat myself up for months, for
years thinking I wasn't good enough, my writing wasn't good enough.
My writing suffered as a result. There was the whole saga of The Bartender Book. I spent two years on that book, going through paralyzing periods of writer's block, ignoring so many people's gentle advice to just let it go--advice that maybe I should have taken because it hasn't sold--because I felt like I needed to prove that I could finish a book. I thought things would get easier after that, but then there was The Modern Myth YA that I couldn't finished and
my biggest crisis of faith about my writing, which came in the middle of writing The Grief Book.
Other Hard Things were happening too. I had friends who were going through Terrible Awful Things. I was still reeling from the death of my friend Marcel in 2008. My house kept flooding because the weather in Chicago was pretty much constantly wretched. My beloved cat, Sid, who'd been my best friend and companion since my awful junior year of high school got really sick and then last November, he passed away.
Out of his death came the decision to move, though. I felt like he was setting me free. Like he knew I wouldn't go anywhere with him sick because it was too risky to be away from our trusted caregivers. But when we were saying goodbye, I felt like he was telling me to make myself happy.
My therapist definitely was. I went back to therapy in July of last year because I knew my depression was the worst it had been in fifteen years. I was thinking about cutting. I was even sometimes thinking about suicide. I felt very much like I had at sixteen, but I knew more. I knew I didn't want to hurt the people I loved and that
I didn't want to keep hurting. I knew that I could help myself. So I did.
In therapy I quickly had a bunch of revelations, especially about control--what I could control, what I couldn't and why I was so obsessed with it (the still-lingering effects of the controlling/abusive relationship I was in as a teenager).
There are many things about my writing career that I can't control, namely who buys my books, meaning both publishers and then how many people buy them after they come out. I can only write the very best book I can, promote it in the ways I know how, and hope for the best. I can't base my happiness on this. So I needed to be proactive and do the things I knew would make me happy. That thing was moving to Seattle and starting fresh in a city that I love.
It was absolutely petrifying because it meant relinquishing a lot of control, which I wrote about in part two of my series on making the move for Ms. Fit Magazine
here. I came out here without a job aside from the work I do for Rookie and Ms. Fit and an online teaching gig, which all together would pay maybe a month's worth of bills. I had savings and a credit card with a high limit. I have a very supportive mother. I had to trust that this would be enough and that finding my own happiness would be worth the gamble.
My friend Marcel wrote his Instructions for Life on a paper towel and after his death, another friend had them printed on paper towels for a bunch of us. I keep mine in a shadow box above my desk. This is his first instruction:
"Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk." My friend, the one who had the paper towels printed for us, reminded me of this before I set off. I insisted that the shadow box with the paper towel accompany us in the car, that it be the first thing in my new home because I believed that knowing me as well as he did, Marcel would know that for me, a person who has struggled with depression for most of her life, a greater achievement than publishing a book would be learning how to make myself happy. In fact, I'm sure if I'd been able to call or write him during my struggles in the past four years, he would have said something like that. I know that he would have been proud that I finally figured it out on my own.
My third piece for Ms. Fit, which I hope will be published soon, was written a month after we arrived in Seattle. When I was mostly happy because,um, well, I live in a place where I regularly see views like these:
But I was also freaked because I still hadn't found a job and/or sold a book, which I thought would click right into place if this whole moving thing was meant to be.
Deep breaths.Great Risk.It'll be worth it.You can do it.
Job hunting is a slow process, especially in this economy. But much like when my husband and I found the right apartment, when I found the right job, everything sped up and it happened fast. I started last Tuesday as the administrative assistant in the English Department of a local university, one that is only a 15 minute bus ride or a a half an hour walk from my house. It's a gorgeous campus in one of my favorite parts of the city. Yes, it's office work. Yes it's full-time. Yes, this is a huge change from the past four years or so of my life. But it is an English Department and the people I've met so far are inspiring and amazing. For the first time in a long time, I feel stable, secure, hopeful,
happy.
I know there will still be challenges, the biggest being how to fit writing into my life. I know for sure that I will keep writing for Rookie because that is writing that has brought me nothing but joy for the past two years. I've always written fiction, but I've been writing essays and rants and zines since high school and I take just as much pleasure from that. Also, the Rookie staff has become my best support network. Even though it is an online publication and we work from all over the world, we take good care of each other. It really is one of the best parts of my life.
Of the two projects I
mentioned in my last blog, I'll probably focus on the essay collection/zine thing because Rookie has given me the most joy as of late and because it will be the easiest to piece together while I'm learning to juggle writing and a full-time job. However, The Grief Book
is the best thing I've written. It's better than
Ballads. It's what I survived my teens and twenties and early thirties to write. I believe in it with all of my heart and soul. I'm finally ready to set free all of the old guilt and pain and stress I've felt about my writing career for the past four years and I hope that will unlock the universe somehow and the right editor will read it and want it and you all will get to read it soon. That would definitely take my happiness to the next level, but right now I'm just happy being here, in my heart city with the love of my life, the support of incredible friends all over the place, and knowing that I've done some damn fine work for the coolest magazine on the planet and I've written books both published and unpublished that I'm very proud of.
I was intrigued and delighted to discover a local neighborhood 'Little Free Library' had appeared on my street... just steps from my studio! The premise of these little free libraries is that books are free to be borrowed and returned. What a charming idea! There are half a dozen of them around Seattle.
Anyhow I immediately signed off a couple of my own very local books and added them to the 37th Ave. N.E. 'Little Free Library' with great pride. They were both written and illustrated just a half block away... so it's hard to get more local than that! lol!
I have a hard time giving away my books to neighbors for some reason. I find the idea a bit embarrassing... not sure why. But to give away books to the neighborhood is easy and fun.
Saturday morning talk – lovely crisp winter day, with Mt Rainier rising above the city, the beautiful harbour, and ready to go Starbucks coffee cartoons
- LOVED TALKING TO THE FABULOUS AUDIENCE
- sharing my books and life experience and the importance of opening discussion for young people on what matters to them.
Just love the Kane Miller Books’ representatives – they are passionate about their books reaching kids.
I hear Sally Rippin is coming later this year to tour – she’ll love it too.
Saturday afternoon was off – free time to explore Seattle and I hit Pike Market -
choas with a myriad of alleyways, arts, fish markets, chewing gum alley …. and a rest stop looking out over the harbour with Seattle’s favourite food stop – soup in a roll! Delicious.
Ending with Starbucks – Seattle is the home of Starbucks- warm coffee as it was getting cold at night.
Pike Place welcomes the librarians
The last weekend in January offered a few cold and rainy days in Seattle—doesn’t it always?—but we Overlookers didn’t mind as we fled New York City’s plummeting temps and sidewalk snow for balmier weather in order to attend the American Library Association’s annual midwinter conference.
We were thrilled to represent our hottest titles of the season and
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By: Dain Fagerholm,
on 12/11/2012
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| ©2012 DAiN8) |
By: Dain Fagerholm,
on 9/7/2012
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| Two creatures seated at table with gem. ©2012 Dain Fagerholm |
|
| Reading Level: | Mature Young Adult |
| Format: | EBook |
| Publisher: | Gallery Books 11/6/12 (Paperback) Ebook out now |
| Parasols: | 4 |
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S.C. Stephens series Thoughtless, is a roller coaster, heart palpitating, pants wetting book. It might be a bit cliched with the theme and plot, but she manages to overcome some of those cliches by really getting into the emotional aspect of the story. Stephens is by far becoming one of my favorite indie authors (although she has gotten a publishing deal), her books are phenomenal. She writes angst better than anyone I've ever read. And angst isn't easy to do. I absolutely adore this book and I highly, HIGHLY, recommend it to anyone who loves a great love story and one that will cause palpitations.
Kiera and Denny, are moving 2500 miles away from Ohio because Denny (who is Australian) has just graduated college and has a job at a very respectable ad agency in Seattle. Kiera is leaving her family for her boyfriend of two years. She's madly in love with him and will be transferring to the University of Washington with a pretty decent scholarship in tow. Luckily, Denny did a year exchange from Australia in high school, so he's staying with his friend Kellen Kyle. He, who happens to be a local rock star.
Although Kiera is not a virgin, Denny has been her first and only. Living with him is glorious. When Kiera first meets Kellen, she thinks he's extremely good looking, his band is fantastic, but he seem to overdo the whole sexuality when he's performing. He flirts with every woman in the audience and the women consider him their rock god. Denny, Kiera and Kellen have a really good relationship. Everything works out well. Kiera even gets a job at the bar that Kellen's band has a standing weekend gig. Plus, the it's the band's home away from home, so she sees the D-Bags a lot. (The band's name is The Douchebags, but if they want to go mainstream that will need to change.) Denny's job as an intern is going so well the company asks him to help start up an office in Tuscon, AZ. Kiera is crushed. He'll be gone for two months (they moved to Seattle in June). She tries to keep a brave face, but she's despondent. Kellen does try to get her out of her funk, by including her in band activities or watching a movie with her. Having dinner with her. Their friendship becomes stronger. His glances last a bit longer as does hers.
While attending and arts & music festival, Kellen stays close to Kiera, wrapping his arms around her waist. She rests her head on his chest. He holds her hand during crowds. Wins her a stuffed puppy, which he gives to a crying child whose ice cream has fallen. Kiera notices something changing. With Denny calling less and less, Kiera relies on Kellen to help her through her funk.
When Denny finally does call, Kiera is unhappy, missing him, not sure what is going on between her and Kellen. However, Denny drops a bombshell. The agency has offered him a permanent position in Tuscon and he's accepted. Kiera is livid. One because he took the job days ago, two, he didn't consult her, and three she couldn't just leave school, Seattle, etc. Denny tells her that he'll wait for her to finish school and then she can come to Tuscon. Pissed off she ends the relationship.
And then comes the drinking. And the tears, and more drinking and more sobs. Kellen arrives home and seeing Kiera in a state, questions her. She refuses to tell him, but then he manages to get it out of her. The only thing to help a broken heart? Tequila, and more tequila. Then there is touching and licking, oh, and don't forget the kissing. Kiera wakes up the next day, naked, hung over and not in her bedroom.
Trying to remember the night before it comes back to her in painful flashes. But the one thing she remembers is that it was amazing. Kellen is a bit of a man whore when it comes to women. When we learn how many women he's been with (in the biblical sense it's mind blowing). Kiera manages to get to work and being unable to do anything leaves work early. To wallow over her break up with Denny and her night with Kellen. While sound asleep, her bedroom door opens and Kiera is petrified that Kellen will be kicking her out. But it turns out to be Denny who has given up his dream in Tuscon to be with Kiera.
Kiera is devastated that Denny gave everything up for her, that she cheated on him with his best friend. (and her best friend as well.)
Although there are ups and downs in the strained relationship with Kellen and Kiera; Denny remains oblivious. Kellen has given Kiera the cold shoulder; turns out Kellen came home the night Denny did and heard the two of them making love. As much as Kellen has been an ass to Kiera, he finally comes to the realization that he has to change things. So he invites his two roommates out to listen to another local band at another local pub. Denny has accepted another job that he hates so he's been moody and listless, Kiera is miserable. During the night out, Denny gets a call from his boss (who has him on constant speed dial), and goes off to take it. Kellen turns to Kiera and tells her he's leaving. Sensing what he means, she follows after him begging him not to go, that she needs him. Needs his friendship. It all comes to head in the parking lot when they crash together, lips, arms, legs. They fuck right there in the open espresso stand. It's rough, it's passionate, it's crazy and nuts. It takes them to great highs that it all comes crashing down as soon as they finish.
Kiera more confused then ever finds herself drawn more and more to Kellen. She's not that gorgeous beauty that he's used to, but she's pretty enough. Kiera and Kellen sneak kisses, and hugs and holding hands. Brushing against each other.
Kellen's man whore comes out and he starts bringing women home after Kiera explains that she can't stop making love to her boyfriend. During one heated exchange, while Denny is asleep in the next room, Kellen and Kiera make love. Yet, she slips back to Denny feeling horrible and unsure.
It all comes to a head, when Kellen finally tells Kiera that he's fallen in love with her and she has to make a decision. Kiera wants steady and safe, but she wants the thrill that is Kellen. The passion that she feels for Kellen she doesn't feel for Denny. Kellen give Kiera a simple necklace of a guitar with a diamond in it. Knowing that Kellen is leaving again she begs him not to. And again they give in to the basest of desires, but this time, they get caught. Denny has witnessed the whole exchange.
Denny was never the bad guy. Kellen was never the bad guy and Kiera was never the bad guy. Sometimes, things happen for a reason and we just can't argue with the way things pan out. Kiera felt guilty that Denny gave up everything for her, but she did the same. Kellen didn't mean to fall in love with Kiera but she brought out feelings in him that he'd been searching for many years. The one thing that Denny noticed was the love between the two. When Denny originally left for Tuscon, he warned Kellen to keep his hands off of her. She was his. But how was he supposed to know that it would go both ways?
After everything is said and done and Kellen gets a pretty good beating from Denny, just as Denny is about to kick Kellen while he was down, Kiera jumps in front of Kellen, getting a very heavy toe-steeled boot in the head.
Denny is devastated that he injured her, Kellen is all broken up (literally, broken ribs and arm), he refused to fight back. Unfortunately for Kiera who has been out for days, both guys break up with her. Thankfully her sister has come back (Kiera thinks her sister and Kellen slept together) and finds an apartment, and ironically gets a job at Hooters.
Kiera had an affair, she loved two guys but one perhaps a bit more. Although the sex is a bit more explicit in this story, I still don't see why it couldn't be for mature ya. There's a passing mention of pot, but none of the characters really do drugs. They drink and have sex. Lots of sex.
Sex is portrayed in this story as a way to get close to the other person, to express their love for each other. Kellen, Kiera and Denny are great characters and each have flaws.
There is also a sequel to this Effortless and I just found out the other day that a third book will be coming out in March of 2013 called Reckless.
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5 Stars All ALASKA: Cooper visits Alaska with the help of his new friend and guide, Kodi the Moose. Follow the two on their Ultimate Alaska Adventure as they explore Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan. From the Mount Roberts Tramway and the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, to Skagway’s White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad, and finally [...]
By: Mark Miller,
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We are talking today with the author of Story Eight: God’s Counterpoints of the One series. Crystal Linn writes both fiction and non-fiction, as well as being an award-winning poet. In her story she shares an emotional journey of her husband’s ordeal with Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma, a rare form of cancer.
MM: To start things off Crystal, what inspired you to share this story?
CL: There were so many people involved and so many miracles preformed that it was incredible.
MM: It was a harrowing journey, but I was touched how all those people came together right when you needed them most. I imagine they support you in your writing as well. How long have you been writing?
CL: I’ve written all of my life and in the year 2000 decided to get serious about it.
MM: I get your meaning. It takes a lot of discipline. You and I both know that writing is not always serious. We have to find outlets for our creativity. What is one of your writing habits that helps you deal with the work?
CL: I color-code my writing projects. Yellow is the color for my fiction projects, blue is for non-fiction, pink is for my children’s projects, purple is for my journal/memoir-type projects and my poetry projects are multi-colored.
MM: That sounds fun. Your writing space must be a rainbow even on dreary days! Speaking of your w
Don’t pass up a chance to see brand new work by Ryan Heshka at his new solo show “Instinction” at Seattle’s Roq La Rue gallery. It’s in two days!
At Pike Place Market, the oldest farmers market in America, it's as if someone tipped the city and diverted all of the color here.
Summer is full of lots of field trips - so it seems that's what most of my posts are lately :)
This is the ferry from Fauntleroy (West Seattle) to SouthWorth (across the Pudget Sound), it sometimes has a stop on Vashon Island. Something about taking a ferry is magical (maybe because I don't commute on one). Sunset sort of amps up the magic. Here are some shots from our trip.
Numbers sure are powerful, and it’s evident in this print by Seattle based illustrator Matthew Hollister. This print, created for the Chicago Art Department’s Power in Numbers show, stacks magic, bad luck, and high times in a fresh and direct style. Matthew’s portfolio is chock full of editorial illustrations employing an array of grainy textures and straightforward imagery, reminiscent of vintage Czech matchbook labels and folk art.
To see more of his work, visit his website and also take a peep at his shop. Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter too!
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Congrats to our winners in the Bike Print giveaway: Gianluigi Farnetti, Brian_HF, brianjbarron, Adrienne Wu
Grain Edit recommends: Karel Martens: Printed Matter. Check it out here.
Isn't there something amazingly summery about swimming in a lake? Maybe it's the Rocky Mountain Canada girl in me. If you were going to swim in a lake where I grew up it better be smokin' hot on shore, or you would be in danger of hypothermia!
Luckily the lakes around here are refreshingly cool and Lake Washington itself has some great family beaches. This is a favourite in Bellevue,
Clyde Beach. Great grassy hill, fun "pirate" playground, a dock, roped off swimming area for the little ones and even a lifeguard!!!
Clyde Beach Park
Address: 2-92nd Avenue NE
Contact: Picnic Reservations: 425-452-6914
Hours: Dawn to dusk
Beach Lifeguard Schedule
Amenities: Swimming, lifeguard on duty late June through Labor Day. Rediscover Clyde Beach Park- this expanded beach park features an enchanting boathouse that will evoke memories from the past. Restrooms, picnic and a play area. 2.23 acres.
Directions: From I-405, take the NE 8th Street exit going west. Turn left onto 92nd Avenue NE. Park is at the end of the street.(The only downside is parking spots are limited)
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Wonderful and honest and true. Great post.
Teri
<3
Always such an inspiration!!
<3
Stephanie,
I love your blog...well writing in general because it is so honest and raw. You are so inspiring to me personally, because you have helped me understand myself and to be myself regardless of what other people may think. Especially because I am an older fan, almost 30. I know you have been an inspiration to so many other people and I hope you realize that. I was watching Tavi's speech on youtube she did in Australia about being a fangirl and it's safe to say you have fangirls/boys out there too. I look forward to reading anything you write so never stop! xoxo
Thank you all so much <3 And Megan, Tavi's speech is amazing, and thank you so much, you totally made my day by saying what you did :)
Thank you! I can't say it enough. I started out my writing journey with a partner. In the end three books in, I discovered they wouldn't be published. The partnership was a bad apple from the beginning and dissolving that tie, created problems. I now have three books to rewrite, recreate that are all me.
The last was my most promising.
Then I lost my working dog for the deaf to Luekemia...3 days after she was diagnosed. A year later I'm still struggling, she was my muse. Kind of the reason I started writing before the rotten partnership. (There is more to this story.)
It helps to know I'm not the only one life threw a punch at, the one who forgot to duck. (Hugs)Indigo