May/June 2023
As you may have noticed, I skipped the last newsletter. I needed a bit of a break from many things for my mental health, but I am doing a bit better now and want to keep this newsletter going!
Where am I?
I have finally landed back in California for the Southern California Renaissance Festival. This faire has always taken a back seat to what I truly enjoy in the spring: Santa Barbara. It’s beautiful, friendly, and I feel, the quintessential California town. I love being able to pick a different café every time I go out to write.
By the end of May I will be returning home to northern California for a couple of weeks (maybe) before heading to Idaho for my Morris Dance troupe’s summer intensive. Essentially, we’ll be meeting up to practice new tunes, write new dances, and, yes, even have a couple shows at a renaissance festival nearby (You can take the Morris Dancer out of the Ren Faire but…). After which, I will be heading to Colorado to open that show and my whole circuit starts up again!
So What’s Going on with the Book?
Writing is hard. It never gets any easier, in fact, it seems only to get harder, but oh! Is it satisfying to go back and read something you created with only your mind and see the glory of it all. I have had to take some time off of writing recently. Ok, I wanted to write, I tried to write, but I didn't have the spoons to be able to do it, so here we are. I am trying to be kind and patient with myself and sometimes I just need to accept that I won’t always be a writing machine, that’s not how my brain works.
The way my brain works makes me a pantser. What that means is that, though I work with a basic outline (more like a list of scenes I think I will need), I am making it all up as I go. This makes things exciting for me as a writer as I don’t alway know what might come up as I write. Recently I have found a new avenue to add more tension to the middle part of my story and am working on integrating it into the scenes I have already written, because of course I don’t write scenes in order!
So What’s Going on with the Website?
I have added several more book reviews as well as my playlist! If you have missed any of the past newsletters, you can now read them all from my website. Go! Explore! Let me know what you think!
What am I reading?
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sarafi by Shannon Chakraborty
I came across this book by way of the Book of the Month that I am signed up for. In fact it is THE BOTM, the one that’s been around since the 30s! It was one of my March choices and, well, a feisty female protagonist in the Middle Ages is really all you need to get me hooked. (Ok, not ALL but it’s likely to catch my attention over other books if it is).
The story starts out with an intriguing introduction by the “scribe” of the tale, much in the way a chronicler would have begun their tales in the Middle Ages. They interrupt the story (much to Amina’s annoyance) several times to interject stories around the central stories. Now, Amina al-Sarafi is a retired pirate. She has hidden her family away in a secure location off the central coast of Oman for reasons we learn about later. Unfortunately, the mother of one of her previous crew members finds her and hires her for one last gig: Find her granddaughter who has been kidnapped. With the temptation of a world changing amount of money and not a few threats, Amina begins to gather her old crew members for the job. We meet Timbu, her Indian first mate; Majel, her Somalian navigator, and Dalila, her Christian, well, poisoner. As they continue their journey, they begin to have more and more encounters with witchcraft and magic. Amina will do anything she can to make sure her family stays safe, and her crew survives their journey, but this job may have been one she wasn’t prepared to handle.
I was taken away with the world building in this story. I have a very vague knowledge of the cultures of the Indian Ocean in the 12th century (hilariously, this story takes place a mere year after mine does, in 1143!), so it was a delight to dive into such a well-researched book, and one with an amazing story to boot! Amina is a force to be reckoned with. She is a woman in a man’s job as a ship’s nakhuda. But one way this book differs from many other pirate kinds of book, is that Amina is well aware of the advantages of being a woman in such a job. She can be overlooked in a crowd, pretend to be nothing but just another old widow, or even be completely ignored by those who would never see her as a threat. She never insults other women (well, not just because they’re women) and doesn’t see any problem with a flashy bobble or nice garment. The book ends with the possibility of more to come, which I certainly hope there will be!
Where can I get this book?
I have opened up an affiliate shop on Bookshop.org! If you want to read this one or see another recommendation from me, check out my own curated bookshop and support, not only small, independent bookshops around the country, but your soon-to-be favorite author as well! (Me, that’s me.) Keep checking in as I add new reads and old favorites!
If you liked this newsletter or want to know about something specific, let me know!
