Guest Post: My Take on Critique Groups (C.M. Michaels)

This post marks a change-up in my Patreon campaign – I will post content publicly. If you’re enjoying it and want to make sure it continues, please consider supporting my ongoing attempts with this publishing model! There are several levels of possible support, but you can do it for as little as a dollar a month.

I’m enjoying on retreat in California right now, which will explain what provoked this piece.

California Ghosts

When you walk in the hills in southern California, through stands of pine and tall grass, up shaly mountains where the sides fall away steeply and the rock splinters rather than crumbles, you can hear the sound of the wind in the treetops, making them sway, making them creak. Stand still and you will hear the little noises, the sound of a deer’s delicate steps, far away a Stellar’s jay scolding some interloper, the click and tap of falling rocks.

There are ghosts out there in the hills, walking the ridges, slipping among the trees, but they are mostly animal ghosts, the memories of deer and mountain lions, a flicker of rattlesnake among the grass stalks, an eagle’s shadow floating over the earth.

If you find a human ghost alone out there while walking, approach it with caution. Groups of ghosts are left behind by villages and tribes, and many of them died peacefully, among those they loved. Solo ghosts are usually ghosts who came to a violent end, blade or bullet or even bared teeth, and they do not want to be disturbed.

If such a ghost blocks your path, stand still enough to hear the protests of the pines, the slide of dust downhill. Do not look them in the eye, but at a point past their shoulder. At first they will know this for a ruse, but give it time and they will falter. Finally they will turn away and vanish, because you can never see the back of a ghost, and you will be free to move further.

There are other dangers in the hills, but you know if you keep walking towards the sunset, eventually you will find the ocean ““ perhaps cliffs dropping down, perhaps sand and rock sloping. There are more ghosts in the ocean than anywhere else, but that is because it is so very large, and most of them are fish and gulls, whose ghosts pay no attention to humans. Sit on the shore and listen again. You’ll hear it say, Why go on walking? and Who knows why the wind blows?

And when you realize that the only sounds you cannot hear are your breath, your heart, your body, you will know you are a ghost yourself, ready to go down to the sea, and swim there in the water, in the waves alive with noise.

It’s the day after the last day of Chicon 7, and I have caught up a little on sleep. I had one of the best times I’ve ever had at a convention, and the book launch party went (IMO) swimmingly. Lots of people showed up, people really loved the jewelry and the stickers, and everyone seems to think the book design almost as cool as I do.

Some people who helped make it the most awesome of cons were: Al Bogdan, who’s provided some lovely party pics; the enigmatic Folly Blaine/Christy Johnson, who is always good con company; Randy Henderson, who pitched in when needed and also kept everyone from taking things too seriously; Stina Leicht, whose book And Blue Skies From Pain was also being promoted at the party and who was an excellent co-host as well as providing a vicarious experience of being on the ballot 😉 ; Vicki Saunders, who trekked and fiddled and above all, kept me from stressing (too much); Dallas Taylor, bartender extraordinaire and always, always, always Tod McCoy for being one of the prime instigators of all this madness.

Various highlights:

1. Watching the Hugo Awards from the bar with Folly Blaine, Gio Clairval, and Tod McCoy and supplying what John Scalzi was saying since we didn’t have any sound.
2. Lovely lunch with Kay Kenyon and all too brief Louise Marley time.
3. Several people thanking me for personalized rejections from Fantasy, and one young man saying that rejection was one of the reasons why he was still writing.
4. As always, meeting many people I knew from correspondence or social networking and getting a chance to put faces and voices to the icons and screen names. Two I was particularly excited to meet were Gio Clairval and Jay Caselberg.
5. Getting to squee like a fangirl upon meeting Sharon Shinn.
6. A stint at the SFWA table and getting to stroke Catherine Lundoff’s lovely book cover for Silver Moon, which is a kickass novel about menopausal women turning into werewolves, which I’m downloading onto my Kindle asap.
7. The Broud Universe Rapidfire Reading, which was jampacked with great stuff, including a closing filk song, which was about the nicest way to end a reading that I’ve seen or heard in a long time.
8. Getting to see Rachel Swirsky in full and beautiful glitter.
9. A lot more which is still full of happy, giddy blur, so if I’m overlooking you, it is because my memory is still aswirl. 😉