Rachel A. Rosen

#scribesandmakers 22 May
Which book world would you like to live in for a week, and why?

The Culture, and I'd stay there, and the Ships would help me stay there. Why? Because it's the best world.

#ScribesAndMakers 24 May
Warp?

I apparently use it a lot, and not for Star Trek reasons:

The linoleum sizzled and warped where she’d left the spittle too long, a ring of black rot spreading from its perimeter.

#ScribesAndMakers 23 May: if you were going to tell a story about a cryptid, which would you choose?

Technically my demons are cryptids, and not like other demons, having once been real people and creatures corrupted by exposure to magic, and now they look like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

#ScribesAndMakers 21: What medium would you choose to depict a visual image of a lake?

Turner-esque oils

#writersCoffeeClub May 24: What do you need in order to finish your current WIP?

Time, cocaine, or some combination thereof.

#WordWeavers 6. What writing-related challenges have you encountered recently?

Beyond the usual time factors, I've had to plan for three author events, four podcast episodes, and two panels, all within a three-month period or so. Which is great, as it gets me out there, but as much as speaking to an audience is my favourite thing, prepping for that is not.

#WordWeavers: If your MC came with a warning label, what would it be?

Caution: Explosive. Contains toxic masculinity.

I got a mention on CBC along with serious authors: https://www.cbc.ca/books/canada-reads-authors-silvia-moreno-garcia-and-kate-beaton-shortlisted-for-canadian-sci-fi-and-fantasy-award-9.7176443

#writersCoffeeClub 22 May: How well would your current WIP work as a play?

Well, there's a lot of dialogue, so that's good. You could do the bone tentacles with giant puppets. It's quite long, though.

#WordWeavers 5/21: "How do you make your MC likeable or relatable to in the 1st chapter?"

I try not to. Ian is introduced as the villain of Cascade, and the viewpoint character, Tobias, is on a mission to end his reign of terror.

#PennedPossibilities 993 — As we are approaching Prompt 1000 and there’s been a lot of reflection on this project (for the host, floofpaldi), let’s reflect on our writing journeys, how far we’ve come, friends we made, what we’ve learned along the way, etc.

*raises a glass to @floofpaldi@mindly.social * Thanks for providing this space. It's weirdly an important part of my routine that gets me thinking about my project every single morning. And of course it's let me meet a ton of cool new folks.

#ScribesAndMakers April 9: Our next featured creator is a professor. Does any of your work involve professors and/or universities?

Yes, Blythe is Dr. Blythe Augustine, a professor of environmental science at UVic. By Blight, the department is in a bit of a state, but it's still there, albeit under occupation by libertarian techbros.

#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 9: What is your favourite way to introduce a character's appearance?

Almost always by someone who does not find the character attractive and notices all their weird features.

#writersCoffeeClub 23 May: C&R: Share a current creative frustration. Everyone: Prescribe a 'creative antidote', not as a solution, but as a disruptive exercise.

Too many distractions, too little time.

#WritersCoffeeClub May 21 - What targets do you set for yourself? To what frequency?

My usual target is 1000 words a night, two nights a week. That has been hard to impossible lately.

#WordWeavers 20: Does your MC enjoy haircuts or hair styling?

It's something that he mostly hasn't had to think about, given that there's been an illusionist around. Now no one cares. His hair is curly, floppy, and unruly, and does what it wants regardless of his own wishes.

#WritersCoffeeClub May 20 - If not your current genre, what genre would you write?

My next story ideas are for folk horror, historical fiction, and something that could absolutely be slice-of-life realism but may have genre elements.

#PennedPossibilities⁩ 1023: "Who would you personally trust the most out of your cast of characters?"

JFC none of them. Kenny, I guess, if I had to. He's pretty honest and ride-or-die.

#ScribesAndMakers 8 April: Victuals?

I was about to type that no food after the Blight could be described as Victuals but then I remembered that there are scenes set in a decaying mansion held by Quebec separatists and one of the leaders is actually quite a good cook and feeds everyone.

#WordWeavers 4/7—Look around and describe an object as if it were a mysterious item (no name, no idea of it's purpose).

The weight of it was heavy, but a soft kind of heavy, and it vibrated audibly. It could not stay still. shifting and stretching and thudding against my arm, insistent on my attention. Occasionally sharp bits would emerge from the void, a talon or tooth, before retreating into the roughly pear-shaped, hairy ball.

#WritersCoffeeClub 8: Do you do warm-ups before or cool-downs after a writing session?

No. I have so little time that it's right into it.

#WordWeavers May 24 - If your characters were pets, what would they be and how would they react?

They are all cats that resist herding.

#WordWeavers: If your antagonist came with a warning label, what would it be?

Sweet but deadly.

#PennedPossibilities 1020 — Does your MC consider themselves to be outdoorsy or do they prefer to stay inside?

Ian is weirdly outdoorsy for someone who appears to never leave his office. He'd rather be walking in the woods than either in Parliament or living in a tunnel, anyway.

#PennedPossibilities 1019. Has your SC ever been bullied? By who, and for what reason?

Absolutely and for whatever reason children bully other children—weird ears, glasses, being of Arab (and specifically Syrian-Palestinian) descent during periods of global tension. It means, however, that Shadi can easily shrug off Ian's general tendency to bully everyone around him, as nothing he's capable of saying really hits that hard.

#WordWeavers Apr 9: One of your characters is seeing something unbelievable. What is it & why are they seeing it?

I'm not sure what would be unbelievable to my characters at this point. They've been through it.

#PennedPossibilities 979 Tell us about something that disgusts your SC.

When people make their password easy to guess. Come on.

#ScribesAndMakers April 7: Would your current creative project make a good game?

I think it could work as a strategy/TTRPG, but only for massive nerds. It vaguely inspired Disaster Wizards: https://radiantfracture.itch.io/disaster-wizards

#PennedPossibilities 980 — Have you ever had your work plagiarized or stolen?

Cascade and Sad Bastard are in the LibGen database, which means that the works of my heart have definitely been used to train the world-destroying plagiarism machine and I hope it choked on them. Less catastrophically, Kalle Lasn of Adbusters copied one of my graphics from a small anarchist 'zine and I'm still mad about it.

#WordWeavers 8. Do you characters tell jokes? If so let them tell us a joke, please.

My favourite joke is from Blight and is told by Ian.

"What do you call a magician who's lost his magic?"

#pennedpossibilities 1022 — How would your MC like to be remembered after their death? What sort of legacy would they want to leave?

Listen, he wants a goddamn statue and a national day of mourning, he wants Jonah and Maya to leave flowers on his grave, he wants tragic biopics with an actor who is much hotter than he ever was, he wants at least a dozen Sicilian mourners. Because he did what he had to do, goddamn it.

#PennedPossibilities 1021 — Have you ever co-written a story before?

Yes, which I was reminded of recently. I kind of dropped the ball on it, tbh. It's a good story, due for a rewrite. Co-writing nonfiction is much easier, though.

#WritersCoffeeClub April 6: Do the plots or characters in your work converge towards a single point?

Nah you gotta force them into it.

I'm speaking at the Don Mills branch of the Toronto Public Library on June 3rd. Come out for a cheerful discussion of writing dystopias in a dystopian present. The event starts at 7, tickets are free but the organizers would love it if you could register in advance. https://tpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/events/69d7adc78ddc1caf5f1bc962

#WritersCoffeeClub 4/7. Do you combine poetic fragments and prose paragraphs in your work?

Depends on the work and the POV. Mostly not; I read a lot of poetry but I am not myself much of a poet.

#PennedPossibilities 978 — MC POV: Write about three realistic goals you would like to achieve in your lifetime.

B'y, my lifetime's measured in weeks at this point. Realistic is 1) holding on long enough to thwart Felipe's inevitable coup, 2) causing as much damage to the Dominion forces between Ontario and Quebec as possible, and 3) thinking up some epic last words.

#PennedPossibilities 977 Have your characters ever travelled outside their country of birth? If so, when and where did they go, and why did they go there?

Almost all of the adults have had to for work at some point. The farthest any of them have gone geographically is Sujay, who went to Sri Lanka multiple times.

Come out to hear Su J Sokol and I discuss the role of art — and speculative fiction in particular — as a tool of community organizing and social justice imagining, and fighting fascism.