I’m pretty old, so I’ve experienced a lot, including all the usual boomer angst. (And, yes, the music was much better in the sixties, so we can get that out of the way.)
I learned to read as I sat in my dad’s lap, following his finger while he read Joseph Campbell’s science fiction magazines aloud to me. I wrote my first sci-fi story when I was in sixth grade. Fifty years later, I wrote my second one. Not exactly prolific, but the intention lived on.
I always wrote, though, and also spent lots of time with camera straps draped around my neck. Every school newspaper listed me in the masthead and in high school, I specialized in photographing and writing about school personalities and the “Heap of the Week” (peoples’ cars). And I managed to take photographs of games that drove the sports editors mad. After college (more mastheads), marriage, children and the occasional “real job” sucked up my time for a decade or two, I went back to reporting. I worked free-lance for local newspapers in California, Texas, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil and Berkshire, England.
In Rio, I reported on American business interests for the American Chamber of Commerce magazine and wrote reviews of various aspects of Brazilian life and business for the English language newspaper, The Brazil Herald. A story on an important futebol (soccer) game won me a position as a stringer for the Time/Life correspondent. So, I wore my dented cameras and carried my ballpoint pens and notebooks around the country for years. I reported on wrestling, boxing (blood splatters a long way,) art exhibits, crimes, and restaurants. The UPI bought some of my photographs and a few stories. A Brazilian company hired me to cobble together a tech newsletter from American sources, and I learned how stupid someone else’s translation can make your own writing sound.
In England, I edited and wrote for a club magazine which was eagerly read by every foreign lady who expected to be mentioned, or who wanted access to the “American Leaving” want ads. Urged on by several advertisers, I started another one based on photographic essays, but alas, we, my husband and I, were transferred back to the States. So, after starting out in Berkeley, and after eight years in Rio, two years in Dallas, six years in the Santa Cruz mountains, some time off and on in Davis for me, and four years in Berkshire, England, we settled in the Seattle area. We arrived in the rainy season. I remember watching children play between the large puddles in a very damp park and wondering if I would ever live in a moderate climate where sunshine and wetness equaled each other.
And so, fiction called in dulcet (whatever that means) tones and I took the genre fiction classes at the University of Washington, figuring I was not cut out for the more elitist literary fiction sequence. Altor was born in those shabby classrooms, and I submitted the first three chapters of Altor: Stranded on Earth to the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association competition. Actually, three chapters was all I had. And the book placed first in the sci-fi/fantasy category! Surprise! That meant I had to finish it, which I eventually did.
Next comes Nazca Lines, Theory and Fantasy, which is pretty much finished, and Altor: Alien Barista. In this continuation of his story, we learn a lot more about Altor’s parents and his origin world.
A collection of short stories, Chick Sci-fi and Fantasy is waiting impatiently for completion.
Then what? Well, I still haven’t figured that out, but I’m moving on, hoping for the best. Maybe a history of UFO sightings in the U.S.?
