1. Animatic for The Audacity Gambit
2. Sewing: clothes
3. Embroidery
4. Ink comic from last February (Richard III)
5. Nails
6. Photography: make sets, pick direction
7. Next book
8. Library
9. Garden
10. Cooking
11. Painting
12. Fashion blogging
13. The unfinished/begun monographs
14. Final Space Goth chapter
15. Chase and Brenna collabs
16. Miniatures
17. Get rid of old art
18. Printmaking
19. Papier mâché
20. Old photos

Finished:

• Ma-me’ branding
• Airbrush
• Sewing: mending & Old work archive/organise
• Secret show production

I’d been hoping embroidery would come up. I miss it, that four-hour commute window I had every day is gone, since we now live near where I work.

I have embroidered a lot of things.

I like doing it, I still think in stitching.

I like its time-consuming uselessness.  Hella zen, right?

I like the work Chase and I make together and I like just doing production a lot. It’s been a good month, with a birthday in it and everything.

Being as April has my birthday in it, I wanted the focus to be fun.  And as last April I ballsed up the focus projects and had to call it quits in May, I wanted something that I would do, would finish.

Chase is having a show at Rocks Box gallery in the fall, I’m more or less his production team.  I like working with him (which is nice, since I also live with him) and he’s got a pretty big project that I need to make headway on creating.  So that’s what April will be, working on this piece for Chase.

But.  Because we are both paranoid, superstitious and like surprise, I don’t get to show you progress images as I go.  I am taking some and, after the show, I’ll share.  Be assured, things are getting done this month, I just can’t show them to you.

At the beginning of the month I made a little to-do list for myself of what I wanted to get done. I’ve crossed off what I’ve done so far:

• Darn socks
• Drawer of old drawings
• Bind W mags
• Go through closet
• External drive
• Blue bin
• Mending basket
• Go through old journals
• Bind old journal leavings
• Mend pants

I knew I wasn’t going to get to the external drive.  There’s nine years worth of files on there, a good four years worth that were saved when I was having some problems, so the naming and organisation of them is not good.

But! I got to the blue bin.  Here is the thing about the blue bin.  It was, originally, a place that held clothes that needed mending (overflow from the mending basket), assorted clothes to be used as sources of fabric, stuff from Project Runway Play-Along that I didn’t integrate into my wardrobe and then a mess of other stuff.  It had a lid, see. And when you can put a lid on something a lot of stuff goes in that shouldn’t.  But I took it all out and figured out what was going on and got rid of things and bundled things and here is what it looked like before I took it back upstairs to the studio.

And then the fabric swaths got put away and the smaller bits got put away and currently the only things it holds arePRPA costume, full clothing to be used for fabric and clothing that needs to be taken in (which are similar things). I think I’ll be moving my more costume-y costume into this bin as I continue to mend and tailor everyday costume/clothing and work it back into the closet.

I am not a superman and did not think I’d be able to tailor and mend EVERYTHING. I just want to know what needs what.  Speaking of which, the mending basket. Which is a basket.

I went through that thing and made the call on what is scrap and what should be mended and what should be mended and given away.  Hooray. There are pants in there I have NO memory of. It is living downstairs so I will actually mend these things (most of it needs hand work).

I am taking a more casual ride this year in focus months, but dang, it is so great. I am getting things done at least 90%, instead of a scattered 20-95%, which is wonderful.  What am I doing in April? I will tell you in April. Which is soon, right?

From his balcony carved out of living rock, Teags watched the Great Burn eat its way across the world. Huddled around his coffee in the crisp mountain air, he saw flames licking at the borders of Second Hope. His sister, along with the rest of the township, had been evacuated on schedule according to the proctor’s evaluation of the fire’s path through their sector. It hadn’t been a panicked evac, a full month’s notice gave the people of Second Hope plenty of time to close up and clear out. Teag’s sister had told him before they left that the mayorship predicted an 80% property recovery on return.

“It’s not like the bad old days before we understood the mirrors, Johhan,” her face flickering warmly on the screen. “We’re well-prepared and have plenty of warning.” She smiled and Teags smiled back at her, even though it was a recorded message. “Besides, all thirty-five towns before us in the path have evacuated safely.” Teags sing-songed the familiar joke along with his sister, “fifty years since the last Great Burn death!”

Up in his cliff wall eyrie, Teags had a different evac date than the forest below. He’d built the house into the rock, on the edge of the cut sliced into the mountain by untold cycles of the sun’s fire. The contractors had given him a 98% property recovery rate. His own calculations placed him closer to 90%, but most of the damage would be from dust and extreme radiant heat, rather than forest fire and direct flame. He touched the leaves of a bush growing from a sculpted hollow in the rock. His plants would die, but the things inside the house would stay relatively cool and protected in their man-made cave.

Inside, the phone chimed insistently. Teags stayed on the balcony, watching the fire and finishing his coffee. He listened to the familiar automated message. It reminded him of each individual person’s value to the community, the importance of prudence and safety and gave him the evacuation route for his sector. There was a human-like pause as the program checked its calendar against his position. “The Great Burn will reach your location in one day.”

Teags went inside to make himself a meal, but brought it back out to eat. The air was growing slowly warmer, the first flakes of ash landing on his arms. At night, trails of smoke occluded the stars, reflecting back the light of the flames, pierced by the colourless ray of sunfire chewing its way towards the mountain.

In the morning, Teags ran another systems check. Everything that could be damaged by heat had already been moved deeper into the rock. Satisfied, Teags went back to the balcony, watching from behind dark glasses as the light edged its way into the ravine burned over millennia. Chiming sounded again from inside, the message calm but insistent. Teags had grown to admire the automated system. It had just enough AI to send out notifications and warnings independent of the proctor’s calculations.

With a last look at the fire, Teags closed up his home and followed the winding stairs down to the sub-basements. At the bottom he stumbled in the dark and panicked, worrying about the security’s power grid. His glasses slid down as he shook his head, the soft backup lights shining around the lenses like dawn. Grimacing, he took them off.

Bundled in a heavy coat against the chill, he ran a final check of the air system, already yawning in anticipation of sleep. He never could get used to sleeping under the fire-lit clouds. Finally assured that if he died, it wouldn’t be through suffocation, Teags fell onto a cot under a pile of blankets and slept.

He’d set the lights to dim at night, in an attempt to fend off the timelessness of evenly reflected, constant illumination. They were dialling back up as he woke, sweating, the calendar telling him he’d slept a full day, but no more. Slurping an emergency ration, Teags settled in at the rickety camp table, reviewing charts. He didn’t need them to see that the mirror cycles were speeding up at a geometric rate, the last Great Burn had come through only a month before, the one before just a half year before that. He didn’t want to project when the next one would be.

He gazed blankly at the stack of papers. The sector map was now useless, the last few towns he’d caught radio signals from had gone quiet over the last week. His home-made weather station data gave him nothing helpful. If the world was spinning faster or if only the mirrors had gone insane he didn’t know.

When the lights dimmed again he was still at the table, twirling a dried twig in his fingers. No matter how quickly the new growth was burned off, the native plants on the mountain burst back into fruitful bloom as soon as the temperature dropped below oven-hot. Teags wished he was a botanist, or that a botanist was still around to appreciate what the plants were doing.

He’d stripped to his underwear and slippers, wishing for a shower to take the edge off the pervasive heat. With deliberate movements, he set out the last of the emergency rations and tried to make a banquet out of them, mixing elements the best he could without a kitchen. He decided against watching his sister’s message again and put on a pair of pants and the dark glasses. With a shrug, he started up the stairs.

• Darn socks
• Drawer of old drawings
• Bind W mags
• Go through closet
• External drive
• Blue bin
• Mending basket
• Go through old journals
• Bind old journal leavings
• Mend pants

So, I went through my old journals, notes from high school (!!) and college (which I left um, seven years ago?), photocopied inspiration things, loose old drawings, etc.  A lot got recycled, some got rebound, complete art class journal/sketchbooks that I felt were a good window into my brain and/or a decent complete object were kept, even if they were from when I was 19.

Some things stayed more or less loose sheets, but were sorted into labeled folders and envelopes. Everything, including sketchbooks that I’d rebound a couple of years ago, got put into two plastic file boxes. Try to get in THERE, silverfish.

By doing all this, I’ve turned un-organised and intermixed photos, collections, journals, notes, personal ephemera that filled about seven small to medium boxes into two easy to go through boxes of things that are useful (some things got integrated into my ephemera, multiples and found item stores, which need themselves to be re-organised).  I also ended up with a single medium box of photos that should be gone through and albumed some time.

Now for the last three, huge things. If I don’t get to my external drive I won’t cry about it.

• Sometime after my birthday in April, re-read it as a whole and edit it. That should be enough time to give my brain some distance to look at the thing more objectively.

And yeah, that’s all the plan I got. Did you read The Audacity Gambit? Did you like it? Hate it? Could you tell me?

I mean, for realsies folks. I wrote this thing to get it out of my head, but now what. I don’t know if I should go the self-publishing route or if something serialised online like this is worth shopping around to real book people. Or should I just leave it sit here and call it good?

So what do I do next? No idea.

Even the Terrin’s double-wide trailer was too small for everyone and their kids. A loose group milled in the common yard around the arbour, exhaling visible puffs of breath in the chilling air. Lawn torches were staked around the edges of the grassy area, adding a hellish tiki light to the gathering.

Emily realised she’d instinctively ushered the others before her, counting heads. She spotted the two younger girls, Mathilde and Hannah, looking small and concerned. As soon as Hannah saw Ian, she rushed over, starting in on a barrage of words before her brother was fully in earshot. Mathilde, who Emily had last seen toddling, was now one of those sturdy middle school children that have no hint of the adult they’d start to look like in five years. She wore her bulky headphones with an unconcerned air, but Emily remembered the tiny wrinkle between the eyebrows that meant she was worrying.

Grabbing her hand, Hannah dragged a reluctant Mathilde up to Emily. “Gosh dammit, I knew something was up. Matty, do you remember Emily?”

The younger girl shrugged and shifted her headphones to expose an ear. “I was a baby, Hannah. And I mean, like, you were too. You just remember her from pictures.”

Janice spotted Emily and motioned her over. Smiling wanly, Emily excused herself from the now-arguing girls and moved to her aunt’s side.

“Go drop your bag off at the trailer. And get your knife.” She saw Emily’s panic. “Hon, just for show and just in case, don’t be squeamish, just do it. Mrs. Hill is going to start soon”.

Emily jogged to their trailer. In her room, she dropped her backpack next to the lumpy bags of things she’d outgrown. The ache of worry growing beneath her ribs settled as she buckled on her knife belt. There was a glimmer of guilt. She still hadn’t cleaned it. Not that it really mattered, it wasn’t as if it was some named blade that had saved her life in a fairy book. Though it had become a sword again when she confronted the court. Emily wondered where it got the magic to do that. On a hunch, she checked the envelope of cash.

Her mouth went dry and she tried to swallow, as she counted the bills a second time. The amount she’d given Michael had been replaced. Checking the tobacco pouch, she couldn’t tell if the level was the same as when she’d arrived or not. With a deep breath, she replaced the envelope of money in her backpack and decided that right now was a very good time not to think about it.

Mrs. Hill was calling everyone to attention as Emily slipped back into the crowd next to her aunt. Brusquely, Mrs. Hill outlined the basics—the Sidhe, fairy-kind, thanks to Amelia for opening the way back. She directed her words at the court’s children, who stood in a tight huddle off to the side of the yard. Emily exchanged glances with a couple of them, but most of the teens were trying in vain to make eye contact with their parents All of the adults were looking to the arbour, their faces masks in the torchlight.

“Amelia has bound us to provide for you children, in return for what she’s done. You’ll find that in each of your homes is a packet of documents; bank information, the paperwork for the trailer, that sort of thing. You’ve each been added to your parent’s bank accounts. Those of us with no children have deposited our money into the Royal Oak Court common fund. As Amelia will be the only one legally of age once we leave, the information for that account has been left for her as well.”

The old woman grimaced. “We forged your signatures and from now on you’ll have to forge ours. We’ve voted. Our half of the bargain is fulfilled. The rest of your lives are yours to make.”

Moving as a group, the adults walked up to the arbour while their children stared after them, open-mouthed.

“Mom?” Hannah started after Mrs. Terrin, but Ian caught her by the arm. The girl’s shoulders fell when her mother didn’t look back.

One by one, the court walked into the arbour and didn’t walk out the other side. Janice and Becky were the last to go. They faced the court’s children. Mathilde was quietly sobbing, her headphones still askew. Becky leaned in to hug her and the girl hit her in the face.

Rocking back, Becky rubbed her cheek. She looked at Emily. “I left you a lot of documents and information. I was the treasurer, you know. Anyway,” her hands fumbled blindly, searching for words. “You guys will be fine. And I have this for you.” She handed Emily a folded slip of paper.

Janice pulled her niece in for a hug, but Emily was stiff against her arms.

“I’m sorry.” Janice was crying, tears smearing through her makeup. “Honey, I did what I could.”

Emily shrugged, feeling empty except for a knot of anger burning in her throat. “Whatever. It’ll work out.”

The two women went through the arbour, leaving the group of kids and teens in silence. Emily opened the paper Becky had given her. In her round, girlish handwriting it said, “I lied. I’ve always known your name.”

Emily read it twice, then held the paper to the flame of the nearest torch. She lit a cigarette with it, feeling something between terrified and badass. She turned to look at the others. The flickering torches picked out shining tracks of tears on more faces than Mathilde, who had wound down to sniffling.

“You shouldn’t smoke.” The girl was mindlessly rubbing her wrist.

Emily exhaled, looking at Mathilde out of the corner of her eye. “And you should keep your wrist straight if you’re going to punch someone.” She touched her lightly on the shoulder.

Ian cleared his throat. “So it’s just us, we’re the court?”

Emily looked up at him and nodded. “And we’ll be fine.”

We’ve got money, she thought. And I’ve got my name.

At the beginning of the month I made a little to-do list for myself of what I wanted to get done. Some entries will seem vague, but I’ll explain them in context.  I’ve crossed off what I’ve done so far:

• Darn socks
• Drawer of old drawings
• Bind W mags
• Go through closet
• External drive
• Blue bin
• Mending basket
• Go through old journals
• Bind old journal leavings
• Mend pants

Darn Socks/Mend pants:

I hate darning socks. We have sooooo many and my hands cramp up after a while.  This ended up being sock triage.  Chase’s favourite socks are the B Chevrons and you know what? They’re five dollars (before my employee discount, even). I am not darning that shit. They last a good long time, especially for what they cost.  So I darned everything else, chucked socks that were becoming more darns than knit, re-paired up Chase’s B Chevs and called it good.  How long that bag of socks has been growing I am not going to share with you.

I mostly wear soft trousers or slacks any more, and there were some basic mending (buttons, fly, wtf hole in leg) tasks that needed done. All it took was sitting down with needle and thread while watching a movie and now I have all my pants in active rotation, hooray.  This really seems to be the crux of mending. It’s all easy tasks, but you have to actually sit down and do them.

Drawer of old drawings/Bind W mags:

I had a drawer of old illustrations, pencils, things from back when I was super active in drawing.  In that same drawer (and stacked near it) were pages torn from old W magazines and issues that needed to be gone through. I like to re-bind things worth keeping, magazine pages and my old work, because they’re easier to store and reference.

Luckily, past me had already sorted out that drawer, I’d just forgotten.  So all I had to do was sort through the magazine pages, clip everything together and do a dirty perfect bind.

Go through closet:

I have too many clothes, I know this.  In my defence, we only do laundry every two weeks. I also sweat a bit, so even though I am not a personality who ALWAYS has to wash everything after one wear because soap is what keeps society working, I am forced to be.

I am pretty proud of myself for how I went through everything. Yes, I like to have a wide range of lady to dude clothing options for various occasions, but that does not mean I need to keep stuff I never wear, don’t like or is falling apart.

Oh, I am holding on to a bunch of shit tank tops because I don’t have that many? Well I recently availed myself of a sale and have new ones that fit better. And now Chase has painting rags.  What, this top/these jeans are stupid on me and I only wear them when there is nothing else? Whatever, they will be adorable on co-workers.

Okay, onward and forward and whatnot. I have mending baskets to go through and things to unearth. I have the feeling that when some of this stuff is mended, I will be getting rid of more clothes.  Being able to sew adds such a danger, because you hold on to things that “just need [x] fixed and they’ll be perfect.”

Bored and restless, Emily started cleaning her room while she waited for school to let out. She was surprised at how much detritus a person could accumulate in the short span of a childhood. Most things held little more than hollow twinges of nostalgia for her, which was more surprising.

She’d sorted out a couple bags of toys and clothes in good enough condition to donate and was picking faded posters off the wall when her alarm went off at three. She grabbed a notebook threw it and a pen in her backpack with the envelope of the king’s money and headed to the coffee shop.

Dawn was with the group this time, homework on the table. Emily smiled at the pair she and Tank made. Where he was all hair-in-eyes surfer affecting a punk toughness, Dawn emanated a slicked-back ponytail competency of perfect grades and varsity sports. Emily still felt awkward around the group, but the happy swiftness with which Ian grabbed a chair for her helped somewhat.

“Wow, you do look exactly the same.” Dawn raised a perfect eyebrow as she gave Emily a once-over. “Only, I guess, shorter.”

“Still older than you though,” Emily grinned. “Just not by as much.”

“Our parents were acting super weird last night.” Ian spun his empty cup idly. “What’s the news?”

“It’s good and it’s bad. They have to figure out what to do with you guys—how to provide for you, what to tell you—”

“Have to?” Abby interrupted sceptically.

“The folk are bound by promises and deals, I’m sure you know your fairy tales. I’ve got them by the nuts on this, because they owe me. They may not do much, but they’ll do more than abandon you in the night, which is what they were going to do.” The group tensed. Emily guessed they hadn’t really thought out what the consequences of who their parents were. She moved to the next point before general gloom could fully settle.

“I’ve also arranged it so that if any of you ever want to go the Sidhe you can. But there’s kind of a hangup.”

“Why would we want to go anyway?” Dawn sneered.

“It’s better if we have the option, who knows what we’ll want to do when we’re grownups. Besides,” Abby cocked her head as she thought. “It’d be way better, or at least different, than backpacking Europe, or whatever people in their twenties do now.”

Emily nodded. “Sure. But the payment is something I guess they don’t make anymore, so I tried to use the internet to help and that didn’t work.” She looked at her hands, embarrassed. “I figured, you guys might be able to help?”

“What will you give us?” Tank demanded. Dawn punched him in the arm.

Michael piped up. “I’ve got an eBay account, I bet I could find you whatever this is.”

“It’s Polaroid instant film. I promised the hare I’d get him more to experiment with. In the Sidhe it works like a magic mirror.”

Everyone looked incredulous besides Michael, who had pulled out his laptop and was typing.

“I’ve been buying and selling comic books mostly. I’m not that interested in them, but you can turn a hella profit—especially if you pretend to give a shit about them. Folks’ll totally give discounts to kids buying longboxes, think they’re investing in my cultural literacy or something.” Michael’s face was intent, lit blue by the screen. “It’ll be a nice boost to my feedback, I’m still trying to balance out a negative from some butthurt bitch.” He smiled and thumped the table.

“Yeah, camera nerds are total hoarders, I can get you good prices even, despite the scarcity panic. Which film did you want?”

“Uh, what was the regular one?”

More keystrokes. “It looks like 600 was the most common film.” Michael lifted the laptop and angled it so Emily could see the screen.

“That’s it!” Emily squinted at the webpage, pretending confidence. “And if you could find one or two cameras to go with, that would be perfect.”

“No big, how high do you want to go? I won’t charge you a handler’s fee or anything, since you’re doing us a favour, so you don’t have to figure that.”

Emily dug the money out of her backpack and thumbed through it under the table. She gave Michael a number and he whistled low. The others, who’d gone back to homework and gossip, perked up.

“Is that fairy money?” Ian tried to peek into the envelope as Emily returned it to her bag.

“Wait, yeah, is it gonna disappear when I deposit it?” Michael scowled.

“I was promised that it was perfectly good money for the mundane world.” Emily shrugged. “Once it’s a money order it’s good as gold anyhow.”

“It’d be faster if I just front you and you give me cash.”

Ian almost tripped as he got up to get a refill. “Shit Mike, how much have you made?”

“It’s Michael and none of your business, Julian.” The boys made faces at each other.

Emily fished out some cash and handed it over to Michael. “That should be enough for now.”

The boy kept his face admirably calm as he slipped the thick wad of bills into his pocket. He turned back to the laptop and hit more keys. “Okay.” He smiled at Emily in triumph and she saw a flash of the six year old he’d been. “Purchased, confirmed and will ship tomorrow.”

Ian came back with his refill and a drink for Emily, carefully balancing the to-go cups while checking his phone.

“Time to go, guys. Hannah just texted me. There’s an all-court meeting.” He bit his lip, chewing on the edge of his already struggling moustache. “Highest priority. Looks like we’re about to see what the fuck is up.”