a moment in the day: stream

Evening, and I'm sitting on the futon bed upstairs with Nicholas, watching the live stream, on my phone, of the celebration of life for Darcelle XV at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. I hadn't meant to, didn't know there'd be a live stream, but I sat down to rest after helping Stephen move the furniture around in the living room downstairs, and glanced at my phone for a moment, and there it was, and so I clicked in.

The celebration is tiny in my hand, a little square on the screen, most of that square just the bright amber color of theater lights. A tiny figure in the center, a man giving reminiscences on stage.

Years back, when Portland was newish to me, my aunt Kathy was all about going to Darcelle's. I kind of loved that it became our family tradition, that for a while whenever someone came to visit from out of town, we'd go to Darcelle's. Kathy always getting us front-row seats and shoving our hands full of dollar bills, especially for when Darcelle came out in the assless chaps to sing "Rhinestone Cowboy."

Sometimes in the early part of the pandemic, I'd think, when all of this is done with, I'm telling Kathy we have to celebrate by going to Darcelle's again.

It's been just over a year, now, since Kathy's been gone.

I lay my head back against the wall and look up through the skylight to the block of evening light that hangs just over my head.

Stephen's voice from the bottom of the stairs, calling my name. I get up and go over to stand at the top and look down.

He says, "I had an idea."

He draws out the word idea. And the smile on his face is sheepish and hoping. He wants me to help him move the furniture again.

He tells me he thinks the table in the basement would fit perfectly in that one empty spot by the couch and if I wouldn't mind, just a little more...

I say, "Sure!" Somehow this tiny square of tribute on my phone feels too sacred to turn off or leave behind, so I take my phone with me. Down the stairs. Down into the basement, where we heft the table and carry it carefully up and out the back door, into the evening air, through the backyard gate and heading to the front of the house, the Portland Gay Men's Chorus singing from my back pocket.

Choir Boy at Portland Center Stage

On Friday, Stephen and I went to see a play for the first time since before the pandemic began. Gosh, how I've missed the live theater experience: the sets and lighting, the satisfaction of watching real bodies on stage, the feeling of laughing in a theater filled with laughter and applauding in the shared thunder of an audience.

The show was Choir Boy, and it's playing now at Portland Center Stage. It's the story of a handful of teens who sing in the venerated choir of an elite Black boarding school—and in particular Pharus, the group's star singer and choir leader. The play opens with Pharus, a junior, singing a solo at the commencement ceremony for the senior graduating class. His performance is interrupted by the homophobic taunts of Bobby, fellow choir boy and nephew of the school's headmaster. When, later, Pharus is called into the headmaster's office and admonished for getting distracted during the song, the boy refuses to rat out the guilty party out of loyalty to the schoolyard code that says you don't snitch on a classmate.

Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the play that became the film Moonlight, Choir Boy explores themes of race, class, sexuality, coming of age, striving for connection, and most of all, trying to hold onto one's pride of self.

Pharus starts out with plenty of that. He's confident, ambitious, conspicuously queer, effervescent. He's got a light inside and somehow, even in this all-boys school full of rules and expectations, he isn't afraid to put on the high beams. You get the sense he can't not shine as bright as he does. At first. Many coming of age stories are about a character starting small and growing, starting quiet and finding a voice. In Choir Boy we watch Pharus's already-present shine dip and dim against the shadows of events that threaten his sense of self.

Within this tension, though, and the creeping darkness, the show is funny and clever. And actually: infused with joy. Because of the music.

Drawing on gospel and spiritual music, including the traditional songs known as Negro Spirituals, the music in Choir Boy is wonderful, sung in gorgeous harmony, often a cappella, by Isaiah Reynolds (Pharus), Luther Brooks IV (Bobby), Gerrin Delane Mitchell (Junior, Bobby's sidekick), Delphon "DJ" Curtis Jr. (David, a bookish classmate who wants to become a priest), and Wildlin Pierrevil (AJ, Pharus's roommate). Every song made me euphoric. Even when the music was there to evoke less joyful feelings—melancholy, longing—the beauty of it still made me euphoric. I'd find myself sitting up straight in my seat, leaning forward, as if to get closer to it. At the end of one song, the man directly in front of me raised his arms and made jazz hands, or maybe praise hands, as the applause erupted. 

I liked the minimal set, the towering columns and brick-wall background that made you feel like you were inside the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys. When we were in the shower room (where the boys wardrobed in nothing but towels made for opportunities for both tension and vulnerability), they rolled in a big tiled half-wall structure to denote the shower. When we were in the dorm room shared by Pharus and AJ, they rolled in two beds, Pharus's decorated with warm white Christmas lights, maybe alluding to that don't-hide-it-under-a-bushel light of his character.

This dorm room is the scene of some of the most important moments in the show, exchanges between Pharus and his roommate AJ that open up Pharus's character and gift him with some of the understanding and connection he needs as that bushel comes down. 

Watching Choir Boy, you do notice that the source material could use just a little more meat on its bones—the other boys are drawn a bit broadly and the premise isn't new—but this is made up for by the transcendent joy of its music, and the deep meaning of the power and tradition of that music. With clever dialogue and the always-skilled stagecraft of Portland Center Stage, it's a thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking show. It was a great production to experience after my pandemic-induced three-year theater dry spell. 

And truly, I'd see it again just for the music.

And it occurs to me as I say that last thing: this isn't what I should be getting out of going to see Choir Boy. This statement comes from a place of privilege. Me as a white woman, sitting at the edge of my seat enjoying the euphoric rush of beautiful sound. This music was not created for my enjoyment. The play goes into some of its true importance—and it's not my place to whitesplain it—but if you're interested in learning more about the amazing music the play draws from, Portland Center Stage wrote a great article about it here. 

Or hold off on the article and save it for reading in your program from your theater seats, Choir Boy runs through May 14, and more information is here.

Photo captions:

1) L-R: Gerrin Delane Mitchell, Isaiah Reynolds, Luther Brooks IV, Wildlin Pierrevil, and Delphon "DJ" Curtis Jr. in “Choir Boy”; photo by Jingzi Zhao/courtesy of Portland Center Stage.

2) L-R: Luther Brooks IV, Gerrin Delane Mitchell, Isaiah Reynolds, and Delphon "DJ" Curtis Jr. in “Choir Boy”; photo by Jingzi Zhao/courtesy of Portland Center Stage.

Poster design by Nick Orr.

Three moments in three days: dream

In the dream, I'm walking out of the theater and into another large space, open, like a convention center or an airport, high ceilings. And coming toward me going the other way is Kathy. She looks the way she used to look except her hair is pure blond, no pink. She's waving hello to someone in the crowd around us, still coming at me but not like she notices me or not like she wants to see me. 

When she passes, I follow. "Kathy, I want to talk to you!" 

It's coming up on a year since she died, and both of those facts are unbelievable to me.

As I follow, the space around us draws wider and emptier, the people disappear. Nothing all around, just Kathy and me.

I don't know what I want to say to her when she turns. I ask her how she is. I ask for a hug. I ask if she's seen my dad.

"Oh yeah," she says. "He comes here, too."

***

Next night, I try to go there again. I lie in bed and picture the place, the high ceilings, the nothing all around. Try to dream my way back there, but it doesn't work.

***

Next night, I try to go there again. I lie in bed and picture the place, the high ceilings, the nothing all around. Try to dream my way back there, but it doesn't work.

Book cover: Soul Jar

Soul Jar, the next Forest Avenue Press anthology, is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories written by disabled authors. When I first started mulling cover concepts, I was a little stymied by the question of how best to depict science fiction and fantasy and disability all in one effective image. Disability is a huge, varied subject, and it felt wrong somehow to squeeze it all down into the single object of, say, a wheelchair or a container of pills or a hearing aid. And what about all the invisible disabilities that are also very real? Publisher Laura Stanfill said, don't try to find a simplified visual symbol; disability will be front and center in the subtitle. Instead, she suggested that I think on the stories and find my imagery there, as I did with the giant octopus on the cover of City of Weird.

She sent me a list of some possibilities that stood out to her. A cranberry bog monster. A pizza delivery guy on Mars. A "geyser pterosaur" that squirts great streams of water from its mouth. A girl born in the sea.

I was particularly intrigued with the sea girl whose story is lush and melancholy and magical. And the geyser pterosaur, whose story is light and clever. I spent some time building a pterosaur, which I thought I could eventually add shading and detail to if I liked how it was working...

...but it wasn't working. Although I share this image of the creature in progress, mostly because I'm happy with the tongue.

I moved on to the sea girl, playing with moody greens and hints of yellow. My idea was a blurred-out seascape background overlaid with all the text: title, subtitle, editor name, blurb. For the title, I found a font I liked and turned it into an outline you could see the sea through, then adjusted the J to add the swirl. My hope was that those text elements would be what you see first, and then in the next second you'd discover that in that seascape behind hides the woman.

But at the same time, when I was doing my image search for seascapes I liked, I found this great picture of a jar with lights coming up out of it.

Which led me down another concepting rabbit hole. The question of whether or not, and how, to use the object of the jar from the title in the actual imagery was something I mulled a lot. The term soul jar appears in one of the stories as a metaphor, but Laura told me, "to me it speaks of the body and how we are and aren’t our bodies." I liked that a lot. And for me, soul jar also spoke of the head, specifically—the jar, the head; the soul, imagination. I pictured that jar sitting on the cover but instead of the blurred-out spheres of light rising from it: a dragon. The ultimate symbol of fantasy.

I started by taking the picture of the jar, adjusting the color, and using Photoshop's smudge tool to push the lights around so that it looked kind of... firelike.

Then I built a stylized dragon in Illustrator and used the firelike blob to create a clipping mask.

I went back to Photoshop and did some cutting and pasting and painting and erasing and feathering and blurring until it began to look more and more like a rising, glowing, fiery...

...phantom chicken?

The feather (no pun intended) effect and blurring I was using to soften edges and make this dragon look less chunky and more ethereal (and okay, maybe my original drawing?) made the head look way less dragony than I'd been hoping. And I also started to think: Why did I not make this dragon with its mouth more open? Why did I not make this dragon with its head up? It’s bursting out of the jar, bursting into life; why is it doing it so... casually?

I spent a dragon's age tinkering with that head to try to get it right. Fighting with the effects I needed to keep it looking magical. Work, work work—now it's a chicken. Work, work work—now it's a pig. 

When I had a cover sample I liked...

...I sent it, and the sea girl, and the pterodon for good measure, to Laura. (Well, there were a couple versions of some of these, but who's counting?) Laura chose the ones she thought were working best to send to editor Annie Carl for a look.

Annie's reaction made me happy: "I think I love the dragon and mermaid equally!!! The green is so pretty. But I have a soft spot for dragons! I’d love to have a dragon cover!"

She seemed to lean toward sea girl at first. Then she showed the samples to some friends and family for their thoughts, and consensus drifted toward the dragon, particularly because of the jar. One beta tester noted that the dragon's teeth might be too scary for readers—granted that tester was Annie's six-year-old son. I started getting excited for the dragon jar cover, but then Annie said: "I personally would like the dragon to look more dragon-like, less dinosaur."

Argh! I had a chicken, then I had a pig, now I had a dinosaur. I swear I can make a dragon. 

One of the difficult things about tinkering with that dragon head was the soft edges and, particularly, the blur effect behind it. It was very difficult to make any changes without messing that up, making it look very cut-and-paste and not smooth at all.

While considering all this, I went back to the sea girl and thought, why don't I just add a jar?

That same jar from the dragon jar cover worked well.

Happily, Laura and Annie liked this addition. Laura shared Annie's latest comments:

"So now I’m torn because I love both the dragon/dino and the underwater for different reasons. I think the underwater one is more meditative and hints at something a bit sinister. While the dragon one is obvious about the fantasy elements and potential for sinister stories. It’s also more playful and hints at the humor in the anthology."

Laura said maybe I could add one playful element to the sea girl cover. "I’m thinking of how Richard Scarry books had animals fishing and they always caught an old wet boot. Something like the boot. Just amid the scene, nestled in, to say STORY THIS WAY."

Ah ha. The boot made me wonder about a fishing hook hanging in the water. When I mentioned that to Laura, she came back with a frog. Orchids. A golden ring. All elements from different stories.

I tried adding a swimming frog because it seemed the funniest, but then, as I was sending this latest sample off to Laura, I thought, no. Not frog. You know what this cover needs. A dragon.

No, really, I could do it. I just had to start over and create a completely new dragon. 

I started with shapes and lines.

And I built my details on top of it, using mostly blobby shapes to get the sense of the lizardy-bumpy skin dragons have. I knew I could go high-contrast on my details because in the end this dragon was going to be blurred out and softened a lot, so I'd need sharp details to keep everything from disappearing.

It wasn't an old, wet boot, but I hoped it would do.

With some added bubbles and tweaks to the text, I sent along another sample to Laura. She was happy with it and sent it along to Annie and then sent back Annie's thoughts:

"I. LOVE. IT! This is it! This is the cover!!"

I was thrilled. I'd come full circle with jar and dragon, and had given Annie what she'd wanted, all in one.

Soul Jar will be out on October 17, 2023. More information is here. And here's a short, and fitting excerpt. From "The Rising Currents of Ocean Fire in My Blood" by Bethy Wernert.

My body adapts. Scales become flesh. Gills become lungs. Fins become limbs. Transforming, I grow into girlhood. My coral-strung hair deepens into the earthen volcanic red of lava, and my algae-green eyes become the emerald of moss.

I look just like them. Humans. The only remnants of my squamous body is the slight, coruscating hue my skin reflects in the crescent of the Harvest Moon.

My mother calls me “a gift from the ocean,” her “oyster,” her “pearl.” And like a pearl, she must keep me safe. Safe from the cavernous mouths of those hungry enough to eat mermaids.

She locks me in an aquarium. A large room painted the abyssal blue of the ocean. In the corner of the room is a dresser, the pink hue of anemones. In the other corner sits a simple wooden bed, seaweed green. From the ceiling hangs a mobile, dangling carved shards of mother-of-pearl and glass figurines composed of various sea creatures. A dolphin, a whale, a sea turtle, an octopus, a fish, a squid, a sea star. All dangling precariously on strings.

I spend hours wading through this room. Wandering and exploring its individual nooks and crevices. But it feels too small.

Contained.

Book Cover: Mythwakers: The Minotaur

One of the funnest projects I've had lately has been for Kate Ristau's new series Mythwakers. 

Anyone who knows Kate or reads Kate knows that any project having to do with Kate is going to be fun. Like her graphic novel Wylde Wings (with artist Brian W. Parker of Believe in Wonder Publishing). She hired me to basically be her last set of eyes on the interiors of the book, making sure it looked as good as it could look, and even being just that tiny part of that project, I felt blessed... blessed with fun. 

Going through that book, I was so drawn into the story and the voice, not to mention the fabulous artwork by the actually magical (no, I'm pretty sure he is) Brian W. Parker. It made me want, more than ever, to be able to get my own hands into a Kate book—and then abracadabra, it happened!

I love the concept behind Mythwakers. It's a series of books that teach kids (grades 3-5) all about mythology, through the point of view of its characters. The first in the series spotlights the minotaur. It's Asterion himself, telling his story from his own point of view. How fun is that? 

Designing for a series is a very particular experience. Book cover design is about puzzling—taking all the elements (title, subtitle, author name, blurb, relevant imagery, genre, tone) and fitting them together perfectly—but with a series, you're building something that will live beyond the initial book. That's a whole separate kind of puzzling.

Now, I should mention that Kate Ristau, along with being fun, is a person who knows a heck of a lot about not only writing but creating, concepting, designing—really, all the aspects of putting together a really good book. So she came to me with clear ideas of what she wanted. She had comp titles for me (books that are comparable to hers), ideas on color, thoughts on layout... she even made me some quick sketches to show what she was thinking.

I loved her ideas of the scrollwork connecting things together. And then I started thinking about the idea of Mythwakers. How best to portray the idea of myths waking. Coming up out of sleep. Bursting back to life. I pictured the magic of myth coming up out of an open book.

Really, once I'd spent some time thinking it through, the visual concept for Mythwakers burst out much like that mythly magic bursting out from the book: quickly, happily, and fairly fully formed. Kind of like Athena bursting from the head of Zeus, but that's a different myth. 

Usually I send more than one sample-in-progress, but I was so happy with what I'd come up with that I sent that single sample Kate's way. And she really liked it too. Then we made one big change. From a book to a scroll, which brings an element of antiquity into the design. I sent Kate three versions of this for her to choose from.

She chose her favorite, and we had our cover!

The Kickstarter Pre-Order for Mythwakers: The Minotaur launches today, November 1st, and goes until November 17th. There are lots of fantastic rewards too—including, I'm told, a Minotaur meeting! If you want to check it out and even help bring this book to life, you can find that here.

More info on Kate and all her books is here.

And here's an excerpt!

*

Hi! My name is Asterion! I am a minotaur. You may recognize me from such books as Clockbreakers by Kate Ristau, or from old-timey poems and epic stories written by guys like Ovid and Plutarch. Those authors got some things right, but they got more than a few things wrong, and I’m here to set the historical record straight.

 

My life is pretty a-maze-ing. Get it? 

 

That joke never gets old, even after all these years. I mean, you could almost get lost in it. 

 

Like a maze. 

 

Moving on, I am so glad you are here. I am a Mythwaker — a legendary character from an ancient myth that has come to define an entire generation. What? You don’t know what a myth is? You are totally going to love this. Pull up a chair, get comfortable, and we’ll explore myths, mazes, and most importantly: me.

Myths

A lot of people use myth to mean a fake story. That’s one meaning of the word myth, but the kind of myths I am talking about are mythology — the foundational narratives, or stories, of a particular culture. 

 

Sorry. I used a lot of big words there. All those centuries trapped in the labyrinth were SUPER BORING, so I read a lot of scrolls. 

 

Back to myths — just think of them as the important beginning stories of a group of people. 

 

The group of people — or culture — that we will be talking about today is the Greeks, and a little bit about those Minoan dudes too.

 

Here’s an important thing for you to know: people argue a lot about my story. Some people think it happened. Other people think it didn’t. Some people think Theseus was a hero, while smart people know that he is a ding-dong.

 

That’s the thing about myths — they are around for a long time, passed down from one person to the next, so not all the versions are the same. Think about if your best friend told you a story, which you turned around and told your grandma. Would you tell the same exact story your friend told you to your kind, gentle grandmother? Would you keep all the bloody parts or would you clean things up a bit? You would probably make a few changes, right? Most of us do, and that is why myths are never told the same way twice.

Best friend story, now featuring:

•   Blood and guts!

•   Nasty villains!

•   Mean kids! 

•   Burps and farts!

•   Tacos!

Grandma story, politely exploring:

•   Talking animals.

•   Snuggly kittens.

•   Flowers and smiles.

•   Five guys named Alfred.

•   Hard candy.

Stories change depending on who is telling them and who is listening to them. If you’re talking to your best friend, you might be shouting about fiery salsa and guacamole. If you are sweetly sitting beside your grandma, you could be whispering about butterscotch and rainbows. 

 

That’s the thing about myths: the audience matters. 

 

How we remember myths has a lot to do with who was telling the story and who was listening. The stories were constantly changing, but the ones that hung around were the ones that people remembered. They appealed to the culture. They mattered to the listeners. In this way, the audience and the storytellers can change myths for the good, for the bad, and for the tacos.

 

Ten Years of Forest Avenue Press

It seems unimaginable to me that this October is Forest Avenue Press' tenth anniversary. Ten years ago this month we published our first book, Brave on the Page, very DIY style, printing it on the Espresso Book Machine that used to be housed in the Purple Room at Powell's City of Books. We hosted reading events, one of which took place one floor up from the Espresso Book Machine, in Powells' Pearl Room, a coveted spot for writers of all types to present their books.

I say "we" because I'm of a handful of folks who are involved with the press, including readers, copy-editors, proofers, and our editor-at-large Liz Prato—but really Forest Avenue Press is mainly all Laura Stanfill.

Star Laura Stanfill—a star the way stars are just before they become black holes: compact and more stellar than you can imagine. That's a weird metaphor and I don't mean to say Laura is compact, or about to turn into a lethal sucking vortex of some kind. I just watched a show about black holes before starting to work on this. Anyway, I'm trying to say there's no one who contains so much energy and so much shine.

And because it's our tenth anniversary, I just wanted to take a moment to honor her and the press she built and the community she helped grow and the books she brought into the world.

But here's the thing about Laura Stanfill. Above, I was talking about how this press is mainly all her. But for Laura, it's all about all of us. She never thinks about Forest Avenue Press as her press. Her aim is helping writers get their stories into the world, helping readers find each other, helping people find community. She's constantly using her very limited free time to give advice to new writers. She's always looking for opportunities to bring people together.

For my part, I don't think I can adequately express how much better my life is because of her and Forest Avenue Press. I wouldn't have loads of lovely friends I have, and so many amazing experiences, I wouldn't have the wonder that is City of Weird, I wouldn't be a book designer today, if not for the moment she and I stood on the sidewalk after our writing group ten years ago and I said, are you really thinking of publishing a book, and she said yes, and she said, were you serious in there when you said you'd make me a cover, and I said yes. What a ten years it's been. It's made my life infinitely more rich. I say that for myself, but I know it's true for so many other folks too. Happy anniversary*, Forest Avenue Press, and happy anniversary, Laura. Here's to the years to come.

*OK, I'm not sure which day in October to call the actual anniversary. But I think we should celebrate all month long.

a moment in the day: news

Just up from taking Nicholas out and putting the coffee on, I sit down in front of the computer for some morning work. I wake up my old iPhone, which for some reason is the device I use to stream NPR, and I put it down next to me on the desk to catch the news.

It snaps on in the middle of some story. Or, at the end of it, I quickly figure out.

"—and there's much that still needs to be known, but the community will be dealing with the effects of this tragedy for a long time to come."

The reporter signs off and the filler music starts, and I think, oh god, what now.

Click over to Google. And the sad thing is—well, the other sad thing is—I know all I need to do to find out what happened, here in the good old U. S. of A.

I google shooting.