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Short stories and essays |
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About Me: I love travelling and book collecting (generally with relevance to where I am at the time). I have an Associates of Science in Intelligence Operations and a B.A. in English Literature, focused on Medieval Studies. Working on an MLIS, I hope to work in an archive with a decent collection. I’ve been writing all my life, and it’s gotten me through many tough times. For the last decade, I’ve worked on a rather complex series of fantasy novels. No, I’m not published. Yes, I write anyway, because I want to. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, from writing in my prayer journal, to a regular journal, and this blog. I’m a bit of a blunt person, so forgive me if anything I say sounds brash or offends your sensibilities. I attended a fine arts, college prep school most of life and hated most every second of it. Loved the music bits, hated the people bits. I’m an introvert and going to a school that prided itself in its grand, musical productions wasn’t really my cup of tea. My senior year was nice though, because I was the assistant director of the pit, and therefore only had to talk to select people. College happened, then the military happened, then broken hips happened, college happened again, and now I’m here on this blog to tell you that no matter what life throws at you, you can learn to throw it back at life a hell of lot harder than you did before. I got married about seven months ago to the greatest man to ever live (you can try to fight me on this, but you will lose), and it’s been the smoothest seven months of my life so far. People tell you not to get married while you’re in college, but those people can suck it. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. I digress. I live in a one room apartment with awesome husband and out five birds: Winry, Jimothy, Benjamin, Leslie, and Christopher. Winry is a baby Indian Ringneck who enjoys chewing on literally anything in front of her and taking ridiculously long baths in her drinking water. Jimothy is a cockatiel that was in a store for a little too long and therefore took awhile to get used to humans. He’s a cuddle monster now, unrepentant. He’s also a horndog, unfortunately, with a heart for anything. He will do the mating dance for one bird, Benjamin, but also for the top of the fan, a picture on top of one of the book cases, and his own reflection. Benjamin is a smol, opaline parakeet who can fly even with clipped wings and enjoys preening, lusting after Leslie, and following Jimothy around. Leslie is a blue parakeet who loves everyone even when they don’t want her to. She like preening herself and others, being carried on the Human’s shoulders, and hijacking Benjamin from Jimothy. Lastly, a soft spot goes out to Christopher, God bless his tiny little heart. He was rescued from a grocery bag that someone was trying to throw him away in. We won’t talk about that idiot though, instead we will talk about the idiot that is Chris. He was missing many many feathers when brought home, but he’s grown them all back in shiny, fluffiness. He is a yellow parakeet who likes to think he’s a bat. He gets along with everyone and everyone loves him (I think it’s because they all know he’s an idiot). That’s my life thus far, the crazy bird lady who also happens to be able to do more push ups and sit ups than her husband (I go to the gym more than he does though, so???). I enjoy sparring and writing, mainly writing, but I do enjoy watching someone’s face when they realize that they’ve lost to a 5’3”, 107lb female. I also enjoy memes and Broadway musicals. In fact, I’ve written on memes as they relate to the latest pidgin language growing around the world, and musicals as they relate to the status of each generation. Well, That’s it for this column! Thanks for reading, Yours truly, Estelle Noire |
| “There is not a more unthinking way of talking than to say such and such pains and pleasures are only imaginary, and therefore to be got rid of or under-valued accordingly.” — Leigh Hunt Everyone’s heard the phrase: it’s okay, just forget about it. Just don’t think about it. It really isn’t that big a deal. For me, the phrase spoken was: “It wasn’t even really a baby yet, just a pea.” From what I’ve gathered, miscarriages aren’t that uncommon, on the contrary, they happen more often than not. Doctor’s will tell you that it isn’t a problem until you’ve had two in a row. I discovered I was a little over two months pregnant three weeks prior to a major training exercise, one that “no one is exempt from.” I was in the process of moving from Georgia to Texas, had been married for a couple months, and my younger sister was having a major spinal surgery, one I wouldn’t be able to make. A day before we left for the exercise, I had some heavy bleeding and began vomiting. By the time we arrived at the location for training, I couldn’t keep anything down: water, a granola bar, tea, nothing. Everything went out or up, ten pounds in three days. My NCOIC was aware of what was going on, he had thought I was pregnant before it had even occurred to me. He had been the person to send me to have a test done. But now, it wasn’t good news. A chaplain and a panic attack later, I found myself in an ER room with a male nurse telling me I’d miscarried. Complications had occurred. Infection was bad. I’d be on major antibiotics and anti-nausea pills for three weeks on top of two shots I’d get then and a week into the pills. Suddenly, I was seen as a suicide risk. I looked healthy enough, nothing was broken. I was placed in a bunk next to a kid that had snapped his spine and another that had broken his knee. Despite requesting to not speak to a mental health specialist, she talked at me anyway. It’s not a real baby, you know. You could’ve gotten abortion. Just a pea. I’d never been happier to see a Catholic chaplain until that moment. The mental health specialists always assume they’re smarter than you. After all, they have degrees, you know. Their job requires one. They won’t ask you about that. They have no patience for patients. Would you like some water? Chaplains, most of them anyway, know soldiers. They are soldiers. They deploy with us, keep correspondence. Encourage. Don’t pretend your pain has no weight. I wasn’t even able to tell my husband until two days later. I wouldn’t be sent home. I’d do four hours of errands a day for a sergeant first class and then sit in my bunk mindlessly going over what had happened. My family would tell me that I shouldn’t be upset. I shouldn’t have told my NCOIC in the first place. I shouldn’t have to talk to anyone. Then, my mother-in-law was calling me to ask if I needed anything. Telling me it was alright for me to be upset. My husband’s unit asked if I wanted them to send him out to me. It seemed the army had more care for me than anyone else, and that upset me. I’ve seen the army dismiss injuries. Change your socks. Drink water. I’d been on that side of the fence too until it turned out that my pelvis was broken in twelve places, my femur split, knee fractured, and a big toe broken. Due to the assumed amount of “butt-hurt” soldiers, leadership many times dismisses all parties. I’ve been lucky to have had decent leadership at every unit I’ve been a part of. There was no apology for my having been brought to the exercise. After all, I still was a number and on the board, that mattered. They made sure that I was on one of the first buses to go home. I was home two days before my husband was pulled away from gunnery. I don’t write this as some excuse or some odd rant about the medical systems of the Army. They took excellent care of me. I never had any suicidal thoughts, though I know many going through the same have had such thoughts. It’s not absurd. I’ve always leaned on God in times of hardships, and I know He has his reasons. My faith and my stance on abortion doesn’t matter. In the end, what matters is that I had had a complicated miscarriage and that a woman had the gall to look me in the eye and tell me I shouldn’t be upset. Pain is real: physical and mental. It isn’t dismissable. I write this to say, no one’s pain in inconsequential. Yours truly, Estelle Noire |
| I'm watching Netflix's latest show, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. It's a decent show, a bit cry-y for my tastes, and absolutely nothing like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which is what I was hoping for. Instead, it's some weird mix of American Horror Story and a teen drama. Honestly, I'd probably like it better if they had never called it anything related to Sabrina. Where is that something that made Sabrina so popular? Where's the sass? the humour? the three dimensional characters? All in all, it's certainly something worth watching, but not if you're wanting any of the nostalgia of the original Sabrina. Sorry this post is so short, but I'm not feeling the greatest today, and wanted to make sure to post something. |
| Joan of Arc “is the only person, of either sex, who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen,” (Alden 1). A quote from the introduction of my favourite book, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc represents everything I strive to be as a person. That said, I’m certainly biased in my choosing this quote to kick off the fresh start to WarriorAfterthoughts. If you don’t know the tale behind the Patron Saint of Soldiers, I recommend you discover it as she’s a great figure for anyone to look up to, especially in this day and age. I enlisted at eighteen. While at training, thre wasn’t much in the way of a weird ‘battle of the sexes,’ that happened when I came back to college to finish my BA in English Literature. Suddenly, it was either I was too masculine or too feminine to be soldier. I generally get between a 270-300 on my PT test; I enjoy working out. However, I’m generally wearing dresses and skirts and pearls and heels anytime I’m not in uniform. On top of that, I was President of the Lutheran Student Fellowship. My congregation was behind me as were those in the club. Still, people would stop me and ask how I could be a Christian and a female soldier, because ‘of course’ you can’t be both. You know, just ignore the same Scripture that has females stabbing people in the head with tent pikes and females founding Churches and whatnot. So, Joan of Arc represented, to me, something to emulate. She was a general, a top soldier, but she also is shown enjoying feminine wiles. She isn’t vilified for ‘abandoning her sex.’ In this age where everything is sexualized, Twain’s Joan is shown as an individual and an innocent in a radically sinful world. She retains her womanhood vocally and uses her wits to navigate the world of French courts to keep her soldiers strong and motivated. She’s a strong and independent woman that uses her faith to her advantage, dying a martyr’s death, and in death, motivating her troops to victory. She presents a strong balance between the feminine and masculine, a balance today’s society seems to dislike. Yours truly, Estelle P.S. – You’ll note the citation as Jean Frances Alden; this is because Samuel Clemens originally published the work under such name so the work wouldn’t be criticized as un-Twain-like. It was anyway due to its un-satirical nature and the serious manner in which the novel is written. |
| “I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it.” — Chinua Achebe The first book on writing I ever bought was a small, 32 page pamplet like thing called Arrow Writer’s Handbook. I bought it at a school book fair sometime in my fourth grade year, and got in huge trouble for it. I can’t quite remember what I was supposed to spend the money on, but I spent it on this little guide book instead. I still have the little book, all these years later; it sits on my shelf between a copy of The Norton Anthology of American Literature Fifth edition Volume 2 and The Bedford Reader (which I got from a professors free book box during my BA years and which is missing most of the title page and is held together with OD green duct tape). It’s far from being the best of any genre, but by god did it create a foundation of my outlining skills. I’ve had worse books as textbooks before, expensive ones that some professor always seemed jived about, but I certainly never got anything out of it. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace was a book I bought for the class and rarely opened, even for the class. Books on writing are great, and some really have helped me as a writer. On Writing Well by Zinsser and Master the Craft of Writing by Wilbers are two of my favourite go-to references for when I get stuck or just want some help. Without a doubt, though, is that my writing never got much better from reading these reference guides and self-help books. What helped was writing. Writing in NaNoWriMo for nearly a decade (it’ll be ten years of NaNo this year) has helped me with shoving through bricked up writers’ blocks. Taking a course in my Junior year of an English Lit degree that required a 500wd essay due in class three times a week alongside four 2000wd essays and a creative writing final, that’s what markedly made me better as a writer. I wrote more in that semester than I did in my entire college career. My last year in college, I shoved a small school desk into my bathroom so that I could force myself to find time to write, even if it was while I was otherwise occupied. If the toilet desk could work for Martin Luther, it could work for me. And it did! There weren’t any distractions in the bathroom and I could knock out hundreds of words of drafts in there. Everyone may laugh at such methodologies, but if it’s stupid and works, it’s not stupid. Reading helped my writing, but reading helps every aspect of life, regardless of what you’re using those books for. Fanfiction helps, despite its reputation. Look at 50 Shades of Grey. It started off as a Twilight AU fanfiction and is now a bestseller with movie deals! Discovering Chaucer was the highlight of my BA studies. The professor was always ridiculously enthused to give the lecture, the students were into everything, because Chaucer is relatable, forgive my French, AF. Chaucer is the OG of feminist studies. He wrote for females in Court and then he wrote for the People. He survived religious purges. He belonged to a newly developing Middle Class. The Knight’s Tale, the first of the Canterbury, has two knights imprisoned in a tower where they lust after the maiden free down below. It’s like reverse Rapunzel! Chaucer wrote some of the best fanfiction of all! God knows the poor man couldn’t get enough of his perfect in every way, Mary Sue of a Hector. All of his early works, though, led up to the Canterbury Tales. His writing does get better, stays on task, as he progresses from writing dream visions to writing his epic (even if he didn’t finish before he died, the lousy quitter). At the end of the day, books are great, but it’s writing that makes the writer better. Setting goals and writing nonsense until your eyes are bleeding just looking at how much you know you’ll have to edit later, that’s what makes the writer. Even if the only writing you can fit in is the writing you have to while you latrinate, get it done. There’s always some time in your day to write. You just have to find it, and utilize it. |
| “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” — Franz Kafka My dad wrote a rather lengthy novel while he was in college, but you wouldn’t know anything about it, because he put it in a three ring binder and left it on a shelf for nearly two decades. I discovered it while being an over curious seventeen year old, rooting around the garage. There was a title page, a title I can’t at the moment recall, but I remember that it was fantastic. Acknowledging that it was a manuscript, I asked my dad if I could read it (never read someone’s writing without first asking; I know that’s a pet-peeve of my own). He said it wasn’t good. He wrote it in college. Had a chick type it up on a typewriter because he couldn’t type (he still can’t type). Said that I would be bored within a chapter. But I wasn’t. There were a few plot holes (i.e. the dragon changed sizes depending on where in the story you were), and some sensual bits that I am not ashamed to have avoided at all costs because I have zero desire to know anything about that side of my father. Overall though, it was fantastic. It was truly something that could only have been written by a Dungeon and Dragons’ Dungeon Master that had become far too enthused. I still remember the plot well, it was just so enrapturing. I read the 700+ pages within two days. All that to say this, there’s always fads in literature. I remember getting so fed up with YA dystopian novels in the early 2010s, especially with The Giver and Hunger Games series so popularized. It seemed like any new work was just another dystopian work that had been rushed to publication in order to fill some need they felt teenagers wanted. Tolkien wrote fantasy when it wasn’t something anyone really wanted, and he wasn’t all that popular until his books were piratized in the US. Now, one would be hard-pressed to find someone who has never heard of the name J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. I’ve worried in the past about what I write. How could be received well if the world was already so over-saturized with YA fantasy? What if no one reads my work? Honestly though, I love writing, and for that, I do. If my work never gets picked up, so be it, at least I’ll be able to say that I wrote something. Coming up on my tenth year of NaNoWriMo, I feel more prepared than ever to be writing. I love fantasy, so I’ll continue writing fantasy because that’s my love. Yours truly, Estelle Noire |
| “A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.” – Lemony Snicket I’ve moved several times through my life so far, as most people do, but I’m never home until my books are with me. My most recent move brought me from Georgia to central Texas. I had intended to just rent a trailer and haul everything in one go, but my father wouldn’t hear it. He volunteered himself to cart all of my books sans a couple shelves. All of this was done despite my warnings of his possibly not acknowledging just how many books there were. Queue a week later, two days before the original ETA of his arrival with my small library of books to my apartment, he’s calling asking if I’m wanting to donate any of them. The answer: no. I had just culled what I didn’t want, had too many older novels that might be misplaced. So, more than two days later, my father has arrived with the five book cases worth of books and my collection of swords (though that seemed much easier to transport?). They hadn’t been packed in the order in which they had been shelved, but I was thankful they had arrived nonetheless. Unfortunately, an completed collection of a musical encyclopedia has been lost somewhere along the way, but seeing as how that’s the only thing lost in the move, and that my much older books (two first editions of Twain) survived in the same condition in which I had left them, I count the move as a success. Now my apartment is more homey, at least to me. My birds like it anyway. I like Snicket’s library, especially as I look around myself. A decent mixture of both mine and my husband’s books, I’ve got books new and old and everywhere in between. At the moment, my Chaucerian section is tied with the Tolkien for most shelf space, Chaucer winning by half a shelf. I certainly use the Chaucer section more than the Tolkien, but between the husband’s rather expansive collection and my own, the Tolkien section is the most interesting to view. The theology section is an ode to having gone to a Christian fine arts school for most of my adolescent years and the desire to learn having never faltered. Most of my papers being around the topic of medieval and English renaissance periods, theology has presented an excellent source of background knowledge. Being a lover of library’s, most all my books were purchased due to having read a book on loan from a local library and wanting to add it to my own collection. All that said, always support your local library! I wouldn’t be where I am today were it not for the public library in Peachtree City that always had space for teenagers and a collection for everyone. Yours truly, Estelle |
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