...and you can download it for free here.

My piece is on page 64, illustrated beautifully by Miss Allison Healy. I have never met Miss Healy, but I am going to find her online and send her an e-mail personally thanking her for being freaking amazing. Seriously, it's fantastic. My writing is pretty good, too, but you should at least go check out the art.

DO IT NOW.

<3, Spiffy

Here are the things I'm excited about!

My Theatre Design Class: In general, I like to think I have no artistic ability to speak of when it comes to paints and drawing and that nonsense, and then I ended up in a class with an art supply list a mile long. Wow. I even had to ask someone what a #8 paintbrush was. But I'm really, really looking forward to getting to try some of this stuff out, especially the unit on costume design! And besides, though I have no skill at it, I do really like painting; there was an Open Canvas at a cafe downtown where anyone could go up and paint, and I had a lot of fun adding my little bit to one corner and watching what everyone else did.

Poetry: Of all the ridiculous things to be excited about! But I have these two pieces I'm working on, one posted here, and I plan on being a lot more thorough than what I usually do. My typical method of writing poetry is "Oh look, I have a pretty phrase in my head, let me write it down and see what happens," which has worked pretty well, but for this one I want to get into some of the more technical, detailed elements, and I'm really excited to try it!

Steampunk: Duh. But the story project with Steampunk Magazine is underway, with the first story up, and I'm the third one... and I found out the second one is John Reppion, Alan Moore's son-in-law and Dr. Who comic writer! Aah! And the other authors are really awesome too - Magpie Killjoy, Catastrophone Orchestra - so I really can't wait to see how the whole thing comes together. Beyond that, I've been invited to blog for SPM, so you may see me shamelessly promoting that soon!

Guitar: Yes, I still suck at it, with my 3 or so songs... and I hate the F chord. But the few songs I can play are starting to sound good, and I'm going to look into taking lessons next semester, so life is good! I saw a guy play at the Underground on campus a few nights ago, and he was super-awesome, and I ended up coming back to my dorm and playing guitar until quiet hours started.

YAAAY! UMW is pretty awesome, I am full of inspired and excited, and classes start tomorrow! Good times abound!

Hello, universe.

I think I've been a bit creatively stuck lately... I want to write or draw, and my sketch journal is filling up more than ever thanks to work (5 hours of empty time leads to a LOT of doodling), but so far I haven't gotten very much done. I tried to work on my novel and couldn't get past 100 words, and I keep half-thinking of poems or stories and then not writing any.

On the other hand, I'm making progress on my shiny new guitar (I learned how to play the Harry Potter theme, because I am a nerd), and I'm planning on taking a bunch of pictures of all my sewing projects from spring/summer that I never took photos of, so it's not like I'm being completely unproductive. Coming soon: Two slightly slutty dresses, a steamy tank-top, and three old skirts, oh my!

Steampunk Magazine issue 6 [link] comes out soon, and my piece "Corset Manifesto" is in it - I'll post it here when the magazine comes out. Issue 7 is going to be a collection of short stories by a bunch of different steampunk authors, one every month, and I was invite to do the September story, so wish me luck with that! I'm actually rather worried about it, I hope I do well!

I'm going to college in exactly a month! Aaaah! Wish me luck!

Hope everyone at Otakon this weekend is having fun!

So I'm thinking about getting a cheap guitar on Craig's List and trying to learn how to play it.

I asked a bunch of people at SpringCon to teach me, but there wasn't exactly time to sit down and launch into a lesson.

But I miss making music. And I feel like my artsy kid credentials would be more legitimate if I could sit on my front porch and annoy the neighbors with poorly played acoustic emo music. And as far as the learning-how-to-play goes, well, that's what the internet is for.

Thoughts? Advice? Words of warning?

I spent all weekend at a Unitarian Universalist event, so my brain was on religion when I set about my latest project today - Display portfolio! (I know, I know, I still haven't posted all my creations from my last art portfolio thing. But this time, it's a presentation piece, not something I'll actually wear, so pictures will come faster. But I digress.) So I was working on my display portfolio and somehow ended up mentally listing words that I related to art ("messy hands" and "geeky" were two,) and the word "unforgivable" came to mind.

This is weird, right?

The reasoning behind it, I decided, was this Bible verse, and several similar ones:

Isaiah 45:9 (New International Version)

9 "Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker,
to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
'What are you making?'
Does your work say,
'He has no hands'?

Basically, God is Creator and as creations, we have no business questioning him. Since art is taking the act of creation into one's own hands, it seems to me there is serious theological reason to consider making art subversive. After all, a lot of art questions the way the world works and if it ought to work that way - that's part of the philosophy behind Steampunk - and what right do we have to question?

Then again, in Gnosticism even the Creator God is evil and the good God is above all these petty creation-things, so this idea isn't new.

I like it, though. And I like my new project. My routine for this week now includes after-school paper mache-ing sessions, and I have to buy fabric at some point. So exciting~!

</religion geek>