Brittany Maresh

writer

Infinitus 2010 was a bit like walking on a white, sandy beach that just happens to have a thriving knife population–overall fantastic, but not the sort of place you want to walk without some thick shoes.

I’m not going to talk about the programming or the structure anyone’s ability to cope or communicate- – they’re all knife blades, left scattered about at random.

But the other people, strolling along on that same sunny beach? To quote Bartok, the Magnificent: “Wow! I tell you what, wow!”
Before the convention, I’d befriended a hodgepodge of interesting characters. We’d banded together to form a group, calling ourselves “The Lemniscates.” Pretty much fulfilled my life-long urge to join a secret club, without having to actually join one. We even have a hand sign greeting and matching t-shirts, and in-jokes, like a real secret society.
Of the characters, the most notable was Cee, from Spain, with her silent partner, Debbie. Cee’s a musician, of the broken heart string variety. Beautiful, slightly exotic, and absolutely self-depreciating. Debbie was a dark-haired enigma, someone talked of but less real. I had no concept of her. Together, they were exotic, beautiful, and a bit distant, not just in miles but in feeling.

In reality, they are much as they were online, only more inclined towards kissing and hugging people. Still, I can now snap my fan open, all sharp and feminine.

Which is how I’d describe Cee, knowing her better.

She’s also got this spark. Think Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Molly Mahoney—that little prickling of talent, that interior light that alerts you that there’s something more there, and even if all it ever becomes is a sad girl playing her harp alone in her room, it’s there, and you can see it, waiting for a chance to really come to life.

And then there’s Chel. A pink-haired theater kid with a thing for Wrock. She’s a flittering sort, and so much more brave than I’ve ever been. She was there with her family (who I adore) and within five minutes seemed to know everyone, and every thing, but not in a bragging sort of way. So casual, as though she absorbed things from the air and just happened to come upon ideas like that.

I can’t not mention Bree. She was a strange sort, with an inclination towards “creeping.” I’m not sure it was appropriate at all, and probably borderline stalker behavior, actually, but she had guts. She wasn’t afraid to walk up to people she liked and say “hey, take a picture with me,” or “hi, I love your CD!” Which, well, I am. Way too shy. Like, really.

There’s Bonnie, who was my co-conspirator for AVPS in Ann Arbor, for Infinitus, and especially for organizing the Lemniscates. I wish I’d seen more of her, because I miss her like mad and feel that my having four roommates to schedule around really impacted our ability to hang out. On the other hand, she brought Vernor’s and Michigan chips, and she made me smile when we WERE together.

There are so many others. Ashley, who had a Deathly Hallows tattoo and works an awful lot. Joe, who is Sonic, whose team won the Quidditch match. Agostina from Argentina, Beverly who was so excited over the HPA winning $250,000, Zach from Florida, Megan, Sarah, Lindsey-with-a-sonic-screwdriver.

That’s them. The Lemniscates. And I really hope it is “To Infinitus, and Beyond!” with them, because they’re that beach party that welcomes any random passerby, and sometimes I do feel a bit like that’s me, some sort of drifter.
And there were many a non-Lemniscate passerby worth noting, too–Marina, and Gretchen, and dozens of others that didn’t stick around nearly as long. They were just out having fun, and knowing each of them made the trip happier for me. Christina, Volunteer coordinator, was so sweet. I was alone a lot, and she always stopped to exchange kind words. It was a relief, since I was really actually a little bit afraid to BE in Florida.

Team StarKid gets mad points for being there, too. They’re always fun to watch (and with A Very Potter Sequel recently online, I recommend doing just that: http://www.teamstarkid.com ). Major props to them for being that amazing treat that just makes everything better, like snow cones on the beach. And especially to their costume guy, Corey L-not-even-going-to-try-to-spell-it, because $5.00 hasn’t brought me that much amusement since the days of play dough, glow-in-the-dark army men, those foam “grow your own dinosaur” pills, and bouncy balls (alternatively: pogs, warheads, and pokemon cards).

To kill the beach analogy, since I’ve never actually GONE to the beach, I’m back home and settling back into the whole camp/archery thing.

One week until I’m cut free from that, and then who knows?

Semester starts soon enough, but if things go according to plan, it’ll be my last. The novel’s in pieces, my focus is shot, and NaNoWriMo is creeping up on us, slowly but deliberately. The people I care about are thousands of miles away, and before I know it, snow is going to be choking out all the sun and green and color. And I think I need to find a real job. You know, the sort that pays regular wages and sucks out your soul, or something.

But really, who knows? At this point, the future is a blank piece of paper, waiting to be filled with words. And even if I don’t know where my story’s going, right now at least, it’s going.

Long nights and late mornings to you,

Brittany Maresh,

Every Halloween I go down the road and visit Anne, a great older lady whose grand daughter was in my class in 6th grade, and has off and on been a friend of mine ever since. She’s always got some silly new thing for me, and we sit and talk about books. She reads the same things I do, and I love hearing her stories. She likes mine too, which is why I visit her, and why I count her as one of my friends. I love baking things for her (though I have to be careful—I know she can’t have a lot of sugar).

She’s always so glad to see me, and tells me how proud she is about how I’m growing up, and hopes I’ll continue to be a good influence for her granddaughter. She laughs, and smiles, and she beads things, and she loves her animals, and she thinks the world is a great place, if you just know how to look at it right.

I found out last Friday that she’d been in the hospital, that she wasn’t doing well, and that she was unconscious and had been for several days. Today, I found out that they have scheduled her death.

She has a will, and we all know it’s what she would have wanted, but it seems so strange to me, to have a time of death for someone who is still alive.

I’m going to miss her enthusiasm and her joy, and her support. She was always so positive, and she’s had so many reasons not to be. It doesn’t seem like just a year ago that we were at her great-grandson’s funeral.

I know I should be positive, like she’d want me to be. She’s not suffering, and she’s leaving us all while we will still remember the good times, with her healthy and happy.

But I can’t help it. I’m sad. I want her to be there to e-mail when I finally get around to reading the new Dean Koontz novel, and for our silly Halloween tradition, and for when I bake too many cookies. She liked oatmeal raisin.

And mostly I want her to be there because she’d always be so glad about whatever stupid little thing I’d accomplished, and I’m not sure I know another person on the plant who could make you feel like three new words on a novel or having pulled out the scissors so you can get started cutting out the pattern for a sewing project is actually making major progress.

Sincerely,

Brittany Maresh

On a leap of faith (trusting that both it would be worth it and the people I would be staying with would be who I thought they were) I flew down to Michigan to see the opening of A Very Potter Sequel last weekend.

From the moment I stepped off the airplane to the moment I stepped back on it, the weekend was simply magical.  Bonnie, Sami, and Chrissy treated me like a long lost friend.  We sang Disney songs at the zoo, and ate the most delicious food I’ve had in ages, and even the parts where we were just driving from Point A to Point B were filled with laughter and music.  Honest to goodness did not know I could have that much fun, or be that happy. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did.

Darren Criss told a lame Alaska joke, except when he was telling it, it hardly seemed lame.   Joe Walker was about as nice as it got, and he even signed my Slytherin tie.  Lauren, Bonnie, and Jamie were all patient, and Devin had about THE biggest smile I have ever seen.  They all looked like they’d just had the time of their life. And I guess I get that, because it looked a bit like I felt after the Clumsey Custard show we put on in high school, only a hundred times more powerful.  In short, I suppose, they all looked so happy it was basically contagious.  I feel really fortunate to have had a chance to be there.

Not to say there weren’t mishaps during my adventure.  Such as a small hiccup in the parking garage in Ann Arbor (it’s possible to get lost anywhere), to a major hiccup on the streets of Ann Arbor (it’s even easier to get lost when all the streets are one way), to a major case of “turn off the music, Brittany has lost her voice and that’s not going to stop her from trying to sing along!”

I suppose there were more bad things, things that should upset me more than they do, but honestly? It was so amazing it’s hardly worth noticing the bad things.

Except the blank CD thing.  I got home and the CD I’d purchased was blank.  I think it was fate’s way of saying “welcome back to reality, Brittany.”  Sobering reality, oh how cruel and heartless you can be!  …wait, no, still deliriously happy.

Also, Giraffes are huge! If I can get Jean to help me figure out how, I shall be posting a few pictures from my journey. Because that much fun is only hinted at in the 300+ pictures I took.

Sincerely with love and maybe a gold star or two,

Brittany Maresh <3

Dear World,
I have three younger sisters and they’re all really very pretty.
One of them has this amazing curly hair, and another has the most toned body ever–she’s an athlete and in amazing shape and has these wide light brown eyes. The last looks a lot like our mother. They all take after my mom, if I’m honest.
My mom was the pretty PTA mom that is on half a dozen committees and makes her husband the envy of all the other men in the room, when I was growing up, and my sisters all inherited some permutation of that gene.
I’ve always felt that all I got was her bad eye sight, instead. Being told that I’m awkward or write horrible monster crap has kind of been my thing for the past twenty years or so. Being pretty was theirs.
Just now, I’m not buying that, though.
I’m going on an adventure to Michigan on May 12, and just now I think the world is amazing, and I feel really cool for being part of it. And if I got my awesomeness gene anywhere, it’s from my mom. She’s pretty much amazing.
Some time in there I theoretically might get to FEED A GIRAFFE! Which is way more exciting than anything else I an even comprehend right now.
I had always kind of thought of them as being a lot smaller than Wikipedia tells me they are. I was judging my idea of how big things in Africa are off of Indian elephants, which, come to find out, are tiny compared to African elephants. I sort of thought Zebras were Shetland Pony size, lions were snow leopard size, and that really made Giraffes Clydesdale size, except skinny, so smaller than that, even. In my head, it worked. African trees, I thought, were really sort of small.
I can’t wait to see it. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s going to be like, not really. I can’t wait to share the adventure details, and to let you know how very wrong I was.
And to write about it.
Because while I’m a horror writer, most of the time, and I’m not any of my three pretty little sisters, I’m still a writer.
And sharing the amazing parts of life is just as important as sharing the parts that make me uncomfortable or provoke my muses into gray-scaled disaster. It’s all part of that human condition thing.

Sincerely and Delightfully Yours,

Brittany Maresh

Dear World,

Lately, I have been working on a secret project. I haven’t discussed it with anyone. Not my family, not my friends, not either of my fantastic critique groups, nobody on Absolute Write, not even my own journals.
I have felt really out of touch with writers, lately, too. Isolated, like there was nobody to talk to about plot problems or character issues. It’s been very weird flying solo on this project after so many years of working with fantastic critique groups. I’ve had to think things through on my own, to rely on my judgment in ways I’ve been avoiding by using my critique group like an easy crutch.
I think, also, that it has been good for me. The writing is rough. The project is rough. The ideas are rough. But for the first time in three years or so, they’re also all mine. I can look at it and assess it as my own. The mistakes are mine, the good parts are mine. It’s all mine.
Still, I hope I finish this project soon.
I am starting to miss hanging out and talking to other writers.

Sincerely,

Brittany Maresh

Over on Rath & Ruins we were discussing character flaws–specifically, what our favorite character’s biggest flaws were. How did these relate to each of us, individually? Why were these flaws important? What made them stick with us?

Many of us chose people we identified with. Characters of a certain type that spoke to our own faults, be it overemotional reactions, easily hurt feelings, or lack of courage. These faults become the character’s strengths, or something to be overcome. If we can overcome our faults alongside a book character, does it make us feel like we’ve accomplished something, too?

Is that why we like dynamic characters the most? Because we grow and change with them, as we read?

-Brittany Maresh

Today I saw the cover for Rachel Caine’s second Outcast Season book, Unknown. (I love Rachel Caine). There’s a blond girl in black on a sportsbike on the cover.  She’s nothing like Alexis—high heels? And no helmet? And blond?—but it evoked New Rochester so strongly that I was stopped dead on my Forever Fifteen progress, possibly for the whole night.

I went to my webpage (oh, that’s here!) to consider updating it, since Forever Fifteen wasn’t going well, and I saw the fall colors, and what little non-New Rochester thoughts were left disappeared. It would be winter in the city just now, and their holiday seasons are spectacular. I was daydreaming but still intent on doing something other than writing a New Rochester holiday short, and then Alexis’s song came up on the radio.  I won’t say which song, beyond it being Linkin Park, though, for fear of being laughed off the internet.

To get to the point, a New Rochester Holiday Short is in the works. I don’t know what will become of it, but if you ask nicely, it might go up on my website as a holiday gift for you all.

I guess holidays are home time, and for me, that includes New Rochester.

Sincerely,

Brittany Maresh

Tomorrow, I’m going to be another year older. A good time, I think, to consider what progress I have (or haven’t) made this year:

• I wrote a book so unlike me that it made others laugh just at the mention of it. It was probably the best book I’ve ever written, or at least it will be once I’m done editing.  It makes me happy, too, just thinking about it, and I think it will appeal at least to my writing groups.
• I wrote a great NaNo novel, albeit a messy one, and one that is much more my style–it was horror, dark, and had no romance–as well as some not so great Nano novels. What can I say, 50,000 words just isn’t a challenge.
• I’ve helped edit several novels, from people all over the scale–published authors, new writers, and so on. I’ve attended writing conferences and writing meetings, some virtual, others not.
• I picked up Twitter, Facebook, and Mafiawars.
• This year I joined Absolute Write, and I think it’s a fantastic resource.  I also keep poking at joining Melissa Marr’s fansite, but I’m easily intimidated so we’ll see if I ever get over it and just jump in.
• I moved upstairs so my sister and her fiancee could move in while my soon-to-be-brother-in-law went through chemotherapy–he’s been declared cancer-free and we had a party to celebrate this weekend.  His hair’s growing back, too, though right now it’s still thin fuzz, and they’re getting married in July.
• One of my best friends is also getting married in July.
• I made some amazing new friends–Heather, Shauna, and Christina definitely require mentioning.
• Bridget and I are working on a shared novel.  I’m having a lot of fun with it, even if it does include some romance.
• Did I mention that novel that floors me, but perplexes everyone who knows me?  It really is a shocker.

This weekend was the Alaska Writers Guild Conference 2009. Even without Janet Reid, this weekend was more fantastic than my favorite episode of Doctor Who.

This weekend a multitude of amazing things happened:

• I found Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue at the bookstore. It’s not out yet.
• I found Diana Peterfreund’s Rampant at the same bookstore. Also not out yet.
• Literary Agent Paul S. Levine said of my query letter “good,” and may have used the word “perfect,” before throwing in his “I don’t do/know fantasy, however.” I learned that a lot of agents want to know if you have written book two, since it shows you have more future potential as a funds source.
• I had a really useful discussion with my face-to-face writing group about my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. It was possibly the most informative thing this whole weekend (though there was so much information this weekend that I’m unable to say for certain).
• I went to some amazing panels on a wide array of topics.
• I was informed to save any advance I might get and use it on marketing.
• I was also informed to blog wide and often
• Getting blurbs is important—if you can get a good one, the agent will want to know ahead of time.
• Conferences and recommendations get you bumped up the piles in the agent’s office, but if you fake it, they’ll know!

They’re all silly little things, but they made up for all the mishaps of the conference. And there were a crazy amount of mishaps. Nothing preventable, nothing anyone’s fault, but man, it was like there was a curse hanging over my plans. It worked out so well that I couldn’t even find it in me to be miffed, though.

I love the fall–from the start of the fair through the end of November is my favorite time of year. I’m lucky that my friends are similarly minded, because otherwise NaNoWriMo wouldn’t be as fun. I was glad to see the new participant badges go up early. I’ll be participating again this year, and I’m changing my goal a little.

I’m tired of beating Sri Lanka, trying to out-write Anchorage, and writing like a mad woman. I don’t get to enjoy the story that way, I just vomit it up on the page. This year, I want to write 80,000 words instead of 200,000 or 300,000. I don’t want to look back on the manuscript and only have a hazy idea of what writing it felt like. In Stephen King’s On Writing he laments that he cannot remember writing… Cujo, I think it was. Not remembering writing a whole book? That kills me.

This year, I already know what I’m going to write. I’m excited about this story, and I can’t wait to delve into the main character’s world. It’s third close, I think (though it may end up first, for sloppy first draft).

This is everything I know about this year’s upcoming NaNo:

North has read minds as long as she can remember, but she didn’t start using her power to make money until she met her soul mate. Dex is a thief, a con, and the only one who can help her when her latest money-making scheme goes over her head. Dex is also the only other person she’s ever met with supernatural abilities. North agrees to get rid of a demon in exchange for a massive pay-out. However, while she may not believe in ghosts and demons, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

It’s not much, but I can’t wait to get started. And I’m going to take my time this November. I’ll take long walks out in the fallen leaves, crunch over frozen grass, and maybe build a snowman out in th early piles of snow. I’ll enjoy it, instead of rushing through it.

And no taunting on the part of Sri Lanka, Hawaii, or Anchorage can change my mind.