Moving Without Travelling
Hi y’all,
this entry begins a couple of weeks ago, and as I’ve had some major changes come my way. It is kind of a ‘previously, on…’ sequence.
I am writing these first sentences to you just before Easter, from the bustle of a café not only by, but on the water. I am sat on a long pontoon decked with chairs and tables. It’s nippy. The sky is overcast with some milky sunshine, but the throng of people queuing for food and drinks is so thick I have to queue for a half-hour for my non-alcoholic beer and coffee. I am in the middle of a prolonged move—no not to the UK, more’s the pity, though election results have long come in as I edit this so maybe it’s all for the best—and was supposed to be spending my days off with family. But I had to reschedule short-term to let someone in to take measurments for the kitchen. So now that is done I am stranded in the city where I live without plans. The aftereffects of my last-minute re-scheduling is making me surprisingly frustrated. I was prepared to spend my days in another place, with people closest to me. Now, still living in my old place but constantly planning for the new one without actually having an all-clear to just shift a load of stuff from A to B, I still could do many things: pack my things, paint a wall or two. But I want something else. Just some light-hearted fun, like the people next to me patiently queueing for their drinks, smiling into the spring air. I want to feel joy, and I don’t immediately know how to get there from this point where I am, a little lost, somehow marooned in the in-between.
When I was younger, I thought this restless and anxious feeling was boredom. That I only had to move to a bigger place with more people and I would find my tribe, days of never-ending joy, and a woman to settle down with and I’d be right as rain. So I did move, to a very big place. I found my tribe and it is now scattered across the globe. And I still got that feeling. Now that I’ve ended up in a middling kind of city and am looking out across the river on this cold spring day, while my mind is still on my family of blood and friendship, I finally realise I am not bored, per se. That this feeling is part of how my loneliness says hello. An uninvited, unwelcome, obnoxious visitor. A vampire leering on my doorstep. Sometimes it seems it is eating me alive.
When my closest friend invites me to stay with her, her partner and parents for Easter, the extent of my grateful relief is almost embarrassing to me.
***
Moving is such an opportunity to let go, of the urge to direct, control, influence, the obsession to “not slip up” in terms of avoiding letting people see the predicament of being sometimes not organised to within an inch of my life. Of drowning in tasks and feeling overwhelmed. Of Not Getting Stuff Done In Time. It has been a revelation to me to see how compulsive or anxious I can turn over some objectively minor issue. Interesting.
I don’t have internet yet apart from mobile hotspots, work continues unabated, with some difficult finance and budgeting obstacles to sort out right now, and all I want is to go see my mates in other countries and spend time in the sun just being me for a while.
Many friends have helped me with this move, sometimes people I do not know that well. My club has been very supportive. I try to consciously switch the channel on my mardy moods radio and tell myself that I have help when I finally manage to get over myself and ask for it. That I am liked despite my temper shining through at times. That I may even be short with them or irritable, still my friends will not just decide I am too difficult to invest their time in and leave. Of course they won’t. I allow them plenty of opportunity to be cranky too when they are, so why should I not be permitted to be sometimes less than controlled? Not that we should neglect courteousness, that’s not what I am saying. But maybe it is alright if we snap at each other sometimes.
My thoughts are jumbled just like my things. So many books, some of them still unpacked from my last move, which was desperate. This now is different. I feel like I have agency, at last. I choose this.
Breathe. Drink coffee in the sun. Scribble down that intense longing to leave, when work gets irritating again over budgeting problems. That I am really ready to let go if nothing else but mostly my job holds me here… going in circles over Should I Stay Or Should I Go. Again. My friend has told me emphatically that she is really glad if I am staying at least two times over the last months. She is very explicitly not telling me not to leave. She is simply, cannily, informing me of her feelings.
I miss having proper internet for home office and doing this blog, but, as you can see, it’s working out mostly fine. I hardly stream anything these days, apart from podcasts and audiobooks, or my favourite radio station (the real radio, here’s a shoutout to FM4, you guys are the best to get up with and go to sleep to) and that works well enough too. I managed some impressive DIY feats, like drilling a massive hole through a wall with a masonry drill in order to pull through the connecting hoses and cables from the washing machine stood on the other side. Then I also managed to connect said machine despite very narrow spaces available under my sink and aggravating circumstances regarding said connector. Very Corky of me. I even wore a ratty white cotton top (but I had a dear friend over to help and support me morally, and not a Violet in sight). Honestly, sometimes, I believe I fucking rock.
The days of the really big haul, one with proper movers and seriously, thank the stars for professionals, I turn sick with a mean cold. I lug and paint, drag and drill my way through a week of carrying moving boxes and furniture and trying to restore the walls in the old place to an impersonal white, and still try to work, desperate for some semblance of structure. At the end, I am exhausted.
When I eventually get to see the full effect of the paint I picked on the new walls, after me and two mates finished up the paint job, another realisation washes over me. This new flat is making me happy. Moreover, it fits me, my height, my size, it’s much cosier, the rooms sometimes seem to enfold me even. It’s like this place is saying, hi, I am yours, and because the city is the owner it is highly unlikely that my new “landlady” is going to make me move out again soon. If I want to, I may stay here for a while and decide by myself if and when I want to move on. It will help me save money once all the moving investments are paid off. Money which I urgently need for books, as you well know. I rewarded myself for all the effort. booked some exciting gigs this year, which is why I will see you, Manchester and environs, in October. I can hardly wait, my love. I can hardly wait to see my favourite bookstore in all of the world again. And my favourite towns.
***
I still do not have internet. German telecommunication laws and companies are so much fun. It is like selling your soul. Must say, I am interested to watch the chaos unfold. But what I finally do have for you is a
Book! Recommendation!
During the winter of 20/25 I mentioned to you enjoying a raunchy, funny pirate novel on my long Driving Home For Christmas. Remember? Well, because the world is sometimes still beautiful, there is of course a sequel out. If lesbian pirates, lesbian witches, lesbian goddesses, dragons AND lesbian mermaids do not make you happy, friend, I don’t know what to tell you, but you are very unwell. Seek help. I do not think there is more lesbian per word count to be had than in Britney Jackson’s Pirates of Aletharia series. I think that would actually require several extra dimensions. Meet book two of this delightful series, Goddess of the Sea.
First off, take a moment to appreciate the cover. I do not think I have seen anything as classy since Tanya Chalkin’s The Kiss. It really gives us everything, the passion, the tempest, the azure sea (the Azure Sea of the book!), the frigate (is it a frigate?), the shark. ‘Tis very fine indeed, is what I’m saying.
Do not read this before having read the first part of the series! Spoilers ahoy, matey!
We left the fearsome, arrogant, currently and increasingly enchanted (no, not literally) Captain Maria Wells and her ‘sweet surgeon’, who is actually a dragon-riding witch, Emilia Drakon, finally setting foot on Em’s home island and seeing her reunited with her beloved dragons at last. The crew of Maria’s ship, the Wicked Fate, had just escaped Em’s genocidal (literally), manipulative ex, Catherine Rochester. She is a power-hungry and, as Maria observes, ‘glory-starved’ Admiral who mutineered against Maria when both still were in the royal navy. Maria became Aletharia’s most feared pirate. And Catherine became her nemesis. (A word to the book-wise: We know to never trust a Rochester, especially not those who hide their sort-of-still-wives in the attic of their mansion…creep.) Because, of course, Catherine has not only almost led Maria to the gallows. She also seduced and betrayed Em, slaughtered her people, and nearly got Em to do the hemp fandango as well. If not for a magical dagger and some spontaneous incineration of her captors and the expectant execution crowd, there would be no surgeon on Maria’s ship, or tied to the post in Maria’s cabin, or helping Judith the ship cook to chop potatoes—or contradicting, standing up to, defying at every turn, and eating Maria out in the galley one night…
But now Em has not only escaped King Eldric’s dungeon and Catherine’s grasp, she has also made her villainous descent to pirate ship doctor complete. This has been alleviated somewhat by Maria throughout book one, who is as mesmerising and funny as she is arrogant and, allegedly, very wicked indeed. (She does get cranky if she has to eliminate her enemies without using at least one of her two swords to gut them like fish. But, as her best friend and ship cook Judith explains, who wouldn’t get morose? It’s just not enough blood without swords! Is that truly so hard to understand?) Em has been quite convinced that kissing Maria’s soft lips does not necessarily contradict her fervent urge to stab (not a euphemism) her utterly annoying, arrogant, constantly power-playing captain at the next opportunity. Maria, for her part, is in urgent need of an upgrade of her attitude after very, very good and raunchy sex with her surgeon. She also really needs to know more about her than that she is a fugitive. Sheltering Em without knowing the full extent of who she is and what her crimes are is a serious threat to Maria’s captaincy. Yet she chooses to do so, again and again. But they do eventually confess to themselves and each other that yes, they have fallen for each other ages ago. Quite possibly from the first line of murderous banter. This is where the sequel picks up, the two of them meeting Em’s dragon friends and getting distracted by each other traipsing over Em’s home island, while the navy is shooting at the Wicked Fate offshore and the island with some serious canons. Catherine Rochester, proud, vengeful and career-focused, is of course chasing them personally and on foot all over the island’s mountains. Maria, Captain Maria Wells, is urgently needed back on her ship. And Em, and her dragons, are more than willing to help Em’s new crew.
The ensuing switch from fluff and spice to actually quite violent scenes, when Catherine does manage to corner them and tortures Em to force Maria’s hand, came as somewhat of a surprise regarding intensity. But we get some background about Em’s childhood full of maternal abuse and neglect in the vein of, ‘must harden the child of prophesied doom who forever falls behind maternal expectations and if she is killed (again, she already managed once) well, then the child is not tempered enough’. So at this point, in between the lightness, we have already been primed for some psychological and visceral violence. For me, the painful moments of misunderstandings and perceived betrayal between our newly found pirate lovebirds were the most agonising parts of the scene. Although, the rest is not for someone who cannot stand some gore, consequences of dragon fire, descriptions of torture and some impressive auditory injury detail. When things seem to get terminal, luckily, Em’s dragon friend Emryn finds them and saves the day by some ungentle roasting. Once more, the admiral flees, adding another one to her last-minute escape in the first part of the series. Em, whose own healing powers are not sufficient to treat her own injuries, is healed by dragon magic. Despite Maria’s protest and futile attempts to pull rank, Em decides it is time for her to do a bit of day-saving as well. So she mounts Emryn and proceeds to burn and sink the fleet haranguing the Wicked Fate with the help of all her dragon friends. Maria has to trust Em’s judgement that she and Emryn are capable of those dangerous flight manoeuvres under enemy fire, and look to her own duties as captain aboard her prized vessel meanwhile. We consequently embark on the Wicked Fate’s flight from first the remainder of Catherine’s fleet, and the admiral herself, then a brewing storm that is actually Aletha, the goddess of the sea, getting her freak on with Aria, the goddess of air. All to help Aletha’s favourite mortal, the Dragon Child, to escape. And of course, chronic outsider Em now has her dragon family back as well as her newfound family among the crew, to support her. Judith is struggling with probably more than liking her fuck-buddy, gunner Helen, quartermaster Zane is in deep exasperation about his captain, and about Em, Em talking to the ship cats, Em being all-round weirdly witchy, Em backing her captain when a difficult revelation about Catherine’s escape during book one becomes obvious to the quartermaster. Furthermore, the ghost of Em’s b… witch of a mother (Maria’s words, not mine) keeps on tormenting Em even from the afterlife. Much to Maria’s rage. Shenanigans ensue! Mermaids and kraken make appearances, and finally, when the sinister omens and mysterious threatening allusions by goddesses, ghosts and dragons keep piling up and a deathly sickness afflicts a crew member, Em eventually goes against Maria’s express orders and does summon her beloved goddess Aletha to ask her for aid. Or clarification, at least.
I will not bother taking you through the whole plot, this eye-winkling, at times plot-what-plot merry pirate raunchfest. But I do want to highlight, as always, what stands out to me and endears this series to me personally.
First, can we talk about the insane top energy Maria valiantly and menacingly tries to bring, only to be met with Em’s outright refusal to just give in to her, which completely wreaks havoc on Maria’s whole power play? I never knew I could have so much fun with that sort of dynamic. I adore you, Captain Maria Wells, I lift my tricorn to you, you are definitely one to learn a great many things from. But I so enjoy that Jackson made these two fools bond over their commonalities, with one extremely violent, completely full of herself, domineering (at least, as long as a certain witch does not simply refuse to play along), inconsistent and just sometimes bullheaded as all get-out, the other literal, heartbroken, wrecked by her perceived guilt, but still utterly stiff-upper-lip and absolutely refusing to be kicked about by anyone but herself, and unfailingly adorable.
It is a great pleasure to watch Em confound Maria again and again, but also to watch Maria try to assert herself again and again, until they realise their feelings for each other (sometimes feelings of intensely wanting to stab one another). While the second book explains more about their pasts, and fleshens out their characters and motivations based on their previous experiences, we do not lose the spicey momentum these two have gathered since their first meeting. I deeply enjoy Maria behaving like a bit of an ass but absolutely throwing herself into trying to do better when she notices she is upsetting Em. Contrite, chastened evil character turning cute is, after all, a wonderful trope for a reason. Just as much as I enjoy Em standing her ground again and again in the face of, well, Maria. This is not a captain who believes in sharing power, or has any qualms about getting people to do as she says. This is not a ‘Kathryn, in a pinch’, sort of leadership. It is ‘Captain Maria Wells’. Almost always. So it is a fine line to walk with this character and not to make her actually abusive. The wonderful thing is, Jackson does manage to walk that line with ease. So instead of a toxic person, we get a wonderful, arsey, but fun, teasing, dangerous but not endangering, and, ‘occasionally kind’, as Em puts it, awesome powerful pirate lesbian with a filthy mouth and mind.
As for Em, she is never but exactly who she is, she cannot hide or change her personality, and deception is a concept she simply cannot adapt for herself. Possibly her refusal to engage in duplicity is not only due to her recent deception by Catherine, but also a result of being shoved around by her mother, with whom she has a severely skewered power dynamic. The (now deceased and vigorously haunting) former chieftess of Drakon Isle, who is as abusive with Em in death as she was in life, has made Em expect little in life. Em has already endured immense pain, loss and betrayal. She has sworn she will not make the same mistake twice. And I admire her for staunchly clinging to that and never submitting to anything or anyone just to make her own life easier. Because here really is a character who deserves to get an easier, lighter way out of everything. But her mother does drop a useful hint for once. The ship and crew are in grave, grave danger from something Catherine has put in motion, but that is much bigger than human fights over dominion of the wine-dark sea.
Enter Aletha. And for Maria, meeting her divine mother-in-law holds more than one challenging surprise. Because, it turns out, in order to survive what’s coming for them, the Wicked Fate’s surgeon and captain will have to consult some top predators of the oceans. One of whom happens to be Em’s first crush. And another powerful mother figure. Off to the mermaids it is!
End of book two.
Loving this dynamic duo, their power play, their banter and fluff! And all the swords!
I will speak to you again soon.- That is, with a much shorter interval and with more coherence to my day-to-day. Enjoy the spring sunshine if you are in the northern hemisphere of this troubled ball in space. Remember kindness, and good things, and that it is important to try and be good yourself especially in the face of everything else. Like Em do.
As always, Mia.
