Between now and midnight tomorrow, Elise is having a sale. She has asked those of us who have favorite or particularly inspiring shinies to talk a bit about them. As it happens, I’m wearing one right now–it’s reversible, it’s one of the rare things Elise has made with words actually visible in it, and the side I have out now says “make beauty,” and the other side says, “learn secret.” It is silver and broken shell and subtle purple glass. It was a gift from my godzillas*, and it makes me feel that I am loved very individually, that the things I do are valued as my things and not just as generalities.
I will tell you another Elise-thing story! I have had this necklace called “Eleven Words for Home” for awhile. It is a set of ocean jasper cubes of various colors on thick silver links. And I have been working on bits of it as a mosaic novel. And then I was sitting in the audience waiting for a Josh Ritter show, talking to Tim and Sarah and Mr. Sarah, and my brain said, “IT’S A TRILOGY.”** And lo. Lots and lots and lots of lo. So I texted Elise right that very minute and got “Playing Dice With the Universe,” which will probably also be called Nine Planets I Found Along the Way, and it goes with “Eleven Words for Home” and “Ten Reasons She Loved Science,” and it makes a set, and I have sold bits of them to Tor.com and Analog and–like I said, very much lo. They just keep coming, these stories. They have silvery bits and blue and black and shiny bits and little stars. And they feel cool and smooth, and I pet them while I am working, and they are something solid when I am trying to put words on stardust.
*Doesn’t everyone have this as a collective noun for “godchildren and their parents”?
**If you read on, you may notice that there is room for more than a trilogy in this titling scheme. Timprov has pointed this out to me already, and I said NO, but y’know. It’s quite a lot of lo.