Mermaids

I have had two songs on repeat this week, and the first one is Florence + The Machine’s “Mermaids”, which is about young women finding freedom, glory, and “cheerful oblivion” through dancing and drinking with each other.

Florence Welch is known for her interest (one might say, obsession) with the ocean and water, and the folktales associated with it. Honestly, I’m right with her; I love liminality and vastness and sirens and selkies. Apparently their producer told Florence she was forbidden to write any more songs about water. In response, she named their next album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (technically, this references the sky, but we see what you’re doing, Flo) and included the absolute banger “Ship to Wreck”.

My creative association with water is less transcendental and more practical. BFF Robyn and I have a joke that inspiration is water-soluble, but also we’re not joking.

Solubility

Sometimes, I need to put my mind to a plot knot and do some concentrated untangling. Sometimes, I need to do anything other than think about it, so that the knot will relax and fall apart by itself. Often that anything else involves water.

I have solved plot conundrums, or come up with an important setting detail, or realised the thing that gives life to a character a truly extraordinary number of times by doing one of the following:

• Taking a shower
• Brushing my teeth
• Walking along the Ōtākaro
• Lying in bed and listening to rain
• Chugging a litre of water after exercising
• While exercising (sweat counts)
• Peeing (ditto)
• Washing the dishes

I wash a lot of dishes. My kitchen is large and cheerful and has everything I need, but it does not have a dishwasher. I complain about it, but this may be for the best; I’m writing more and faster, which means the more time I spend with my forearms immersed in suds and getting through those narrative chokepoints, the better.

I have a lot of dishes to wash, because I make almost every meal myself. I’m a decent home cook and a better home baker. Last night’s project was chocolate chip cookies and gluten-free, vegan brownies to take to various picket points around the city for the teacher’s strike today.

Solidarity

The other song I’ve had on high rotation this week is Billy Bragg’s “There is Power in a Union”, which I first heard as the closing theme of the movie Pride.

Pride is about the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign in the mid-80s, and it’s one of my favourite films about what solidarity and fellowship can do in the face of grinding hardship and blatant injustice. It’s poignant without being saccharine, and if you haven’t seen it, I do recommend.

I’m not currently a member of the PPTA (Post-Primary Teachers Association), which is striking today. That’s because I’m a relief teacher. I can still join the PPTA, but my pay is precarious, and I need every penny. However, the PPTA is fighting to make relief teaching less precarious, and therefore more attractive to relief teachers, who are a dwindling pool of desperately needed labour. They’ve got my back; I’ve got theirs.

So last night I baked, and this morning I hauled myself out of bed and visited picket points, sharing out baking among the chorus of honks supporting the strikers. It was a fiddle, but I’m glad I made the vegan and gluten-free option, because the people who couldn’t have the cookies were delighted.

I’m an agnostic living in a city now, but I grew up Irish Roman Catholic in small town Aotearoa, the daughter of teachers (and staunch union members). When times are hard, I feed people. When there are knots in my stomach, as well as in my plots, I go to the water. When the world feels messy, I can always wash some dishes.

Small things add up. That’s why there’s power in a union.

Book Stuff:

• If you are subscribed to this newsletter, the free novelette Penelope Pops the Question is in your BookFunnel library! Go to http://my.bookfunnel.com, sign in with the email you used to subscribe, and it’ll be there.

• Penelope Pops the Question got a lovely review from That Healey Girl reader CB:

  I loved this lil novella with its extremely competent leads. I enjoyed the “retelling” part and dredging up ancient knowledge of the namesakes and the way that this is subverted and repurposed to serve more modern sensibilities as well. The world building of Olympus Publishing and glimpses of other characters has made me super excited for more in this series. I hope we get to spend more time with these leads too because they are truly delightful! Cannot wait for more! Thank you for this delicious morsel!

• Good news! Odysseus and Penny both feature in Persephone in Bloom, the first full-length novel in the Olympus Inc. series. Pre-order now!

• In more good review news, Bespoke and Bespelled got this review from fellow author and indie publishing star, Tansy Rayner Roberts:

  Plus-sized, 40+ heroine matches with a grumpy but hot film star. A lovely cast of quirky support friends for them both. Interesting magic system. And two of my favourite tropes -- an entirely fictional but feels-so-real-so-many-details media property for everyone to be obsessively fannish about AND a heroine who knows how to craft, in both senses of the word.

  (Secretly, I love those tropes too.) (It’s not a secret).

Have a good week, everybody! Solidarity forever! I’ve got to go wash these dishes.