Author Archives: Autumn

Quick Post-Trip Update

Hullo world; we are back safe and sound. I have much cello news to jot down, but it will have to wait until Monday, most likely. Other than that: lovely trip, am proud of the boy in general for behaving very well, loved seeing the parental units. We got a bike trailer. The car trunk has been officially dubbed The Trunk of Extended Holding, because there is no way it could possibly have held all our bags, the bike trailer, a box with a printer inside it, assorted things we bought there (like a bike helmet for the boy and a couple of toys to be put away for Yule), and a cello.

Did I say a cello? I did, didn’t I. Oops.

Okay, all you get until I have the proper time to post is this: No, I did not buy one of the 7/8 Jay Haides I tried out, although they were lovely and smooth and dreadfully easy to play and had nicely balanced tone throughout the complete range, especially the second one. I came home with a turn of the century German-made one instead.

That’s all the explanation you get till early next week. Maybe sooner, if I have the time. Muah-hah-hah.

Checking In

We have been here in the cultivated wilds of Southern Ontario for a day now. The drive was very good, made even better by passing Fearsclave and exchanging waves with him as he entered and we left his local Tim Horton’s drive-through, where we had stopped for a late breakfast. I find it very amusing that we ran into the one person we know in Alexandria.

The boy traveled wonderfully. The new car traveled very well too, although we are very close to exchanging these high-performance (and loud) tires for the regular Goodyear ones we used on the station wagon. It didn’t rain, nor did we encounter construction or ludicrous traffic across Toronto as we usually do. We are suspicious but thankful.

And now for a week of not answering phones, checking e-mail and news and journals only sporadically, and likely not posting often, if at all. Have fun. Don’t break the internet while we’re gone.

(Three more sleeps till 7/8 cello!)

Mailbox Joy!

I just got my long-awaited delivery cheque for the hedge witch book! I am solvent again!

I could actually buy a Jay Haide 7/8 cello next week. Not that I’m going to, but I could. I feel much relief.

I have to make this last as long as possible, though, because I don’t know when I’ll be doing another book, what with the imprint I worked with being closed down and the publisher’s focus going vague and basic. Or if I’ll ever get around to finishing one of the several YA books on the go and shopping it around to agents so that they can shop it around to publishers. (Or, you know, get paid by the Big Corporation for whom I did work last May. Ahem. Not that the amount is large at all, but it’s all money and bills don’t stop coming just because a client doesn’t pay me.)

Vroom!

So. much. work. done. today.

I am dizzy at the mound of stuff I’ve accomplished. And yet when I look at the file I’ve just built it doesn’t seem like much. Still, I’ve verified or updated a bunch of out of date contact info, tracked down new contacts and their info, written a press release and a supra-condensed version for free listings, added the finished touches to a two-page edit I did on Monday, and handled a bunch of communication/e-mail stuff. I am much further along than I expected to be. I can remember when writing a press release took me a whole day.

Whoa. I am mighty.

Also? I have crossed not one, but SIX things off my to-do list.

I like meeting new people. I got an e-mail this morning from someone who had found the Court via a Google search for cello-related things, and we have been chatting back and forth since then. Hello, new readers who have alerted me to their presence via e-mail or a recent comment, and readers I don’t know about who have been reading stealthily for a while! I declare this a temporary delurking thread. If you read the journal and have never commented, just say hi so I can say thanks and welcome in a way that feels more personal. I could always make a pot of virtual tea to share. I promise, you never have to prove you were here in any other way unless you want to.

In Which She Muses About ‘Celebrity’

Despite the fact that I have worked in the book business for mumble-mumble years (good gods, has it been seventeen!?) and I know perfectly well that Editors and Authors Are Real People, I still have to work through the ‘yikes Famous Person’ veil that descends over my eyes when I meet one. I am, as previously mentioned, deathly shy, which makes self-promotion a challenge to say the least. It also means I have a permanent inferiority complex.

Brendan Cathbad Myers is someone whose work I’ve read since he published essays about druidry in Wiccan Candles, a now-defunct Canadian publication. (You can still read his articles, though, on his web site here.) His articles demonstrated to me that there was a deeply philosophical and ethical aspect to Paganism, above and beyond the basic foci (and petty arguments) that seemed to resurface again and again.

I tend to write and publish material that has a practical application focus to it. His work is on a completely different level academically and intellectually. (His work is stuff I wish I could write. And maybe did, once upon a time in university, before I was swayed by the need for not-101 books about alternative spirituality.) So when we finally came face to face on Saturday night in the resto-bar where we were waiting for a table, I was expecting someone different. Instead, he was excited to meet me.

(Funny story: I walked into the dark and crowded area with Blade and Silly Imp and waved at everyone, including someone who I knew was Brendan from his author photo. Brendan turned to another friend of mine and said, “Who did I just wave back to?” “That would be the famous and best-selling local author Autumn!” t! replied enthusiastically and on purpose because he knows how uncomfortable I am with having fuss made about me.)

We were both excited and a bit nervous. I admire his books immensely, and he appears to like mine. Which boggles my mind, because they’re so simple as compared with his own. Apples and walnuts, I suppose; you can’t really compare such different things. We were both thrilled to meet a fellow Canadian and pagan author, and we began to chatter away. He has such wonderful experiences to share, and a sense of wonder and appreciation pervades his conversation when he shares stories and thoughts.

We talked a lot about our experiences publishing, which isn’t a surprise. We shared our frustration about the very real needs of the intermediate to advanced readership within the alternative spirituality market that aren’t being met because publishers are more interested in putting out basic books that appeal to a broader cross-section of the market. I can’t argue with their reasoning; it makes sense on a piece of paper. There will always be more people in the beginner stages of study than those who choose to continue through. At the same time, however, one of the most common requests in esoteric bookshops is “Do you have something that’s more advanced than this?” He told me about his current publisher, about whom he has nothing but positive feedback to share, and I’ll certainly look into them as I develop ideas that the publisher I’ve worked won’t touch.

We talked about the festival experience, and the need for people who have more experience under their belts to hook up and share their own experiences and thoughts. It’s hard to find stimulation when you’re the one teaching all the time. And we talked a lot about responsibility and ethics and values and other cultural themes related to his most recent book, The Other Side of Virtue (which I glowingly review in the upcoming Summer 2008 issue of WynterGreene Magazine. The short version: Brilliant, insightful, valuable. Read it.).

At the end of the evening it was hard to leave someone I’d just met and with whom I’d made such a wonderful connection. And it was truly wondrous to meet someone whom I consider an established and respected authority only to discover that he was just as eager and nervous about meeting me. I am an idiot. There is a lesson here, if only I’ll absorb and remember it. On the way to the restaurant Silly Imp told me she’d met and worked with Thorn Coyle recently, and that she thought we two were a lot alike. This was another source of ‘yikes’, as Coyle is another huge name who I respect immensely. I suspect that I will never shake the feeling that I’m a kid masquerading as a confident and qualified adult.

Apart from Brendan fitting into the group remarkably well, it was really, really good to (a) be out after dark, and (b) be out with friends deliberately ignoring what time it was. I’m paying for it now but it was good at the time, and I’d do it again (just not any time soon). We all have such a hard time scheduling things that it was remarkable to have us in one place to begin with. The only downside to the evening was that HRH couldn’t share it with us. I know he and Brendan would have hit it off rather well.

I’m feeling even more excited about the Hamilton festival now that I’ve met Brendan.

Warp And Weft

I am now the owner of a 24-inch four-harness table loom. It’s missing the shuttle and I believe a heddle hook, but apart from that it’s in usable shape. It’s very similar to this model, only older and a bit more rustic. An elderly friend of the ADZO family passed away recently and left no local family. She was a weaver, and had three (three? two?) full-size looms set up in her split-level home. She was a member of the Lakeshore Weavers Guild, who came in and took the full-size looms. The ADZO family went over yesterday and was told to take whatever of her things they liked. One of the things they mentioned seeing was a tiny loom in a back corner of the storage room.

My maternal grandfather was a weaver. I have a set of curtains he wove hanging in my office (which can be seen in these pictures). One of the atmospheric things I remember the most clearly about his house in Farnham was the entire room he had upstairs filled with his floor loom, his wools, and his equipment. Over the past couple of years I’ve planned to at some point learn how to use a drop spindle to spin my own wool, as part of a spiritual and meditative practice. Ideally, once I’d worked on that for a while, I’d move into weaving with the yarn I’d created. I like the sense of taking up a craft that’s been in my family.

It seems that the universe has decided to switch things up for me a bit.

Jen called and told the executors that she’d found someone who wanted the table loom if it was still available, and so ADZO and I went over this morning to collect it. There was a member of the weavers guild there too, and she asked me if I was interested in joining. I told her quite honestly that I had no time at the moment but a beginner’s workshop at some point would definitely interest me, so I got as much information from her as I could. Before we left she rummaged through some bags and gave me three huge spindles of synthetic yarn to dye and play with.

A 24-inch loom is tiny. You can’t do huge projects on them, unless you intend to patch your work together somehow. They’re pretty limited to table runners, place mats, scarves, that sort of thing. But it’s not the products I’m interested in so much as the process. There is so much spiritual metaphor and simile encapsulated in the process of weaving, as well as the attractive notion of doing something meditative with the hands that doesn’t feel like a waste of time. And as I said above, there’s the family connection that makes it all the more special for me.

I suspect that I’ll invest in a stand with treadles when I get around to using it seriously, because using hand levers to shift the harnesses slows you down a lot. You only have two hands, after all, and they’re already passing the shuttle back and forth and operating the beater.

So I have a whole new set of things to research and read about. (Plant dyeing! Patterns! Techniques! History!) It’s not pressing. I’m looking forward to it.

(What am I talking about? Wikipedia has entries on looms, heddles (which are set in a harness), and weaving in general to help you out.)

Quick Recap

So much has happened this weekend that I need to splash it all down in point form, to be expanded upon later:

1. Finally, finally I got to meet Brendan Myers! We’ve been missing one another at events for the past couple of years. It was a bad fibro day yesterday so I had to pass on the first part of the day, which would have entailed attending his reading and workshop, because I would have used up my available daily energy and ended up bailing on our planned evening out, which would have been dreadful. So at dinner time I met him and a group of dear local people (none of whom I see nearly often enough) in Old Montreal, and only got home at midnight. (People, that’s unheard of for me these days.) It was wonderful. Bren is sweet and thoughtful and quirky and thought-inspiring and has crammed more living into his life than most people our age have. I clicked with him right away, and I’m so looking forward to maintaining and cultivating this special new friendship. This gets a whole blog post of its own very soon because there’s a bunch of ideas to put down.

2. HRH cleared out the garage yesterday. Ye gods. There is space. Also, the garage door now works again. Huzzah!

3. I’ve been reading my fifteen year old issues of Strings magazine. Reading about music makes me want to play it (as if I haven’t been obsessing about it enough what with the 7/8 issue eating my brain lately) so after a couple of hours of reading I sat down and played forty-five minutes of pizzicato cello this morning while the boy played with his trains. Gave myself a blister on my middle right finger doing it, too. I played through dozens of pieces at about the RCM grade 5 level, things I’d been playing before I stopped with my lessons, messing about with them position-wise and intonation/tempo/vibrato-wise. Very satisfying.

4. We had a delightful visit with the ADZO family this afternoon. The kids are at an age where they can safely play in the next room on their own and either interact or parallel play doing their preferred thing, and it was so good to just sit and talk about anything and everything while they enjoyed themselves. (And eat. Ye gods, when we go over they just keep casually putting food in front of us, blueberries and watermelon and tea and cheese and crackers and yum. Then there was dinner. They spoil us dreadfully.) As a result of this meandering chat something extremely special might be coming into my possession, via a stroke of serendipity. More news as events warrant. ADZO and I have a date tomorrow morning to explore the situation.

5. Local freelance work. Yay! Small projects, but comfortable ones. Every dollar counts towards the 7/8. Which is important, because the second-level Jay Haide celli I’m going to be looking at in Toronto (confirmed date with the shop: Tuesday July 29!) are twice as expensive as the entry-level Eastman 7/8s I’ve been testing locally. If I like them/one enough I might right rent one/it for two or three months; it’s an affordable option with the shop I’m primarily interested in visiting.

Right. As wonderful as this weekend has been, I have used up all my spoons and have run out of available energy. I’m going to have to be careful over the next couple of days.