Oh, who would have guessed? Needing to make a separate post all of my own because thirty tags is never enough for all that I have to say, for all that I have to, that I must type out? Me? Nooooo... lmao.

Anyway, here's my tags (and more of course there's always more) that were originally gonna be on silverformymonsters' gifset post of Astarion post-BG3 events sadly reaching his hand into sunlight, about a little imagined moment between him and my tav, Rose, now reformatted into a text post for all of yours' heartbreak and enjoyment.

--

I know this is a scene after everything. But I like to imagine it's a scene with not just him but also Rose. Not immediately after BG3 events. Not immediately after losing his ability to be in the sun. A bit of time after all that. Some personal quest of their's they're undertaking. Maybe to help him be in the sun again? Maybe something else, like for the 7000 vampire spawn in the Underdark? Maybe to find out more about his past, when he was alive? Of who he was, who family was etc.

Regardless, it's them underground in a cave. Rose is busy with something else. She's talking to Astarion while doing whatever she's doing. And mid-talking she finishes and turns around to see this. To see Astarion back turned to her, facing the sunlight peaking through from above. She stops talking immediately and just watches.

Watches as he reaches his hand out into the sunlight. Watches as he holds his hand out for as long as he can before it clearly hurts too much. Watches as his hand nearly fully turns to a gray ashy stone color, all too ready to crumble and drift away from a slight breeze. Watches as it shakes until he can't anymore, until he suddenly pulls his hand back. His hand immediately changes back to its normal color and appearance once as he does so but the moment is heartbrokenly seared into Rose's mind.

He half turns back to her. Eyes still on his hand. Mind surely still sadly reminiscing about when he very well could be in the sun. After a moment he looks up at her. Eyes staring back in… question, she takes it. As if to wonder why (and when) she stopped talking.

Although, he quickly realizes why. He frustratedly sighs and looks away for a moment (back to the sunlight) before turning back to her. Tells her about how 200 years in shadow he became all but used to the fact he would never see the sun again. Never feel its warmth on his skin. And then he had (a month? a few months? how long is bg3 supposed to take place? lmao) of it. It makes it all the more terrible to go back.

He knows they're looking for a way for him to be in the sun again. He knows that she'll search until her last breath and even then some. And, of course, he greatly appreciates it. She always has given him nothing but marvelous gift after gift. She is a marvelous gift. One that he will always cherish and be grateful for.

…But that doesn't mean he doesn't miss it. Miss the warm embrace of the sun. Miss being out during the day in the sun. ('You can forget just how much colour there is in the world.' She remembers well that odd out of the blue moment while they were in the city. It killed her then as does hearing him speak now about it breaks her heart completely.)

This is the price of his freedom though. Of their happy little life that they have now. He supposes it was well worth it. Even if he does miss the sun terribly. He tries to move the conversation back to why they're here in the first place but Rose refuses to let go of it.

She's immediately got her hands on his face, mouth on his (surprising him - what else is new lmao), fiercely kissing him with all the passion and heartbreak in the world, in the universe. And then wraps her arms tightly around him in a tight hug full of all her heartbreak and love for him.

She knows she's already done so before, but she pledges once again to him that they will find a way for him to see, to be in the sun again. She promises. She swears it.

Every time she's like this- With this fierce determination. This passionate loyalty (especially with him). It always somehow manages to surprise him. Even after all this time.

After a chuckle, he jokes about how she better (keep her word), he does terribly miss their little trysts, seeing her cheeks flush under the sunlight as he-

Okay! Okay. Oooh-kay. That's- That's enough. She immediately lets go of him and she's now changed the subject back to their job at hand.

As much as he doesn't wish to let go of the moment himself either, he still does. He knows she means it. She always has. And always will. And one day... He can't wait to see the sun again, to feel its warmth again, yes. But he can't wait to to see it, be under its rays once again with her. One day they- she will figure this out and he'll get see her beam just as bright as the sun above them. And he cannot wait to see it.

top 5 horror book recommendations? it's spooky season and i need to get my read on...

Hell yeah! Gonna break this down a little. First an obligatory rehash of books I always recommend for this, these are like all-time faves for me

Wounds/North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud - can't choose between these two, so they're tied for my favorite single author short story collection. Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite writers of all time

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado - a very very close second for my favorite single-author short story collection. Machado is a beautiful writer and finding an author writing such powerful horror from a queer woman's perspective was world changing for me.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - COME ON!!!! You might have already read this but consider reading it again! Absolute classic.

The Cipher by Kathe Koja - dark, fucked up meditation on art and addiction and toxic relationships. I think about this book all the time. A guy finds a weird hole in his apartment basement and then everything goes wrong (first slowly and then very very quickly)

Red X by David Demchuk - talked about this a lot before too but I really do love it. Fictional story inspired by real life serial killings that took place in Toronto's gay village over decades. The author inserts essays throughout the book that makes it part memoir as well. A supernatural story about real queer trauma.

--

Okay with that out of the way, here's some recommendations for stuff I think would be fun for Halloween specifically

Echoes edited by Ellen Datlow - OKAY CHEATING I ALSO RECOMMEND THIS ALL THE TIME BUT IT'S A PERFECT OCTOBER BOOK!!! Fuck-off huge ghost story anthology. Huge range of tones, pretty diverse group of contributing authors, it's my all-time favorite anthology.

Slewfoot by BROM - this one's got major autumn vibes. It's a story of a woman in Puritan New England who's accused of witchcraft. It's also a story about the devil. Kind of. The print version has really amazing paintings by the author, but I've heard this is also good in audio.

Come Closer by Sara Gran - this is a great little novella. Possession story that really packs a punch. I can't really say much more than that, but it's not a huge time investment and I think it's really worthwhile.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu - if you can, get the version edited by Carmen Maria Machado (she adds in some great footnotes and it has some neat art too). This is a classic and also quite a brisk read. The original lesbian vampire story.

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - here's a new release for you! I always watch a ton of horror movies in October, and if you're anything like me maybe you'll want to read a horror novel about horror movies. This story follows a female film editor in 90s Mexico and her washed up actor friend as they help a retired filmmaker complete his famously unfinished last film, which he had been making with a former Nazi occultist before strange misfortunes and the occultist's mysterious disappearance forced production to shut down.

Okay that was double the amount of recommendations requested so I'm stopping here. Haha don't look in the tags don't worry about it there's nothing there you're crazy

I know you've done a lot of critique of HOTD, but I wonder if you have any main criticisms of the main series. I am genuinely curious as to your thoughts on GRRM's writing, plotting, characterizations, etc.

oh hello & thank you first of all! ☀️ i have a few more general metas that veer into asoiaf territory on my tagged meta post like my Sansa as Queen in the North mini-essay, a couple of posts on Dark!Aegon and my take on how it would fit into the wider narrative, a more general House Hightower post and a few pieces on Targaryen exceptionalism, the dragon problem and targcest. sometimes in these commentaries i veer a little into what i think the general themes of the series are and how i interpret them + a couple of posts where people asked me about my favourite (or other random) characters.

hotd was more accessible for me to write meta as i procrastinated in writing my thesis to avoid going insane (😅), because the show was fresh and also it's a simpler, contained story that could make up a novella or a shorter novel. i keep postponing writing asoiaf meta because i would really want to do a proper re-read first. i'm sure there are a lot of things i've forgotten or didn't catch the first time........ one glorious day, anon 🙏

Hey mutuals, followers and p0rn bots, 

Its my blogs 3rd birthday! 

I’ve been lurking, posting, ranting in the SJM fandom on tumblr for three years and that’s kinda Crazy to me. 

So here are some fun Facts that kinda evolve into an appreciation post… and then an anecdotal history of this fandom I’ve been a part of. So thanks for hanging round and talking shit with me. :D

if ur tagged it’s just like a thanks or when I met you - lol you don’t have to read the whole thing... 

and the rest is under the cut.... 

I only liked posts for the First month, I never reblogged. It was my first time on tumblr.

I’ve had the same URL since the start

The first post I reblogged and commented on was @miladyaelin ‘s post about a Volcano in the Frozen Wastes - such a wasted opportunity for World destruction that was not used to full potential at all in KoA hahaha - maybe a spin off series? joke.

The first person to reply to one of my asks was abookandacoffee or @bookofmirth 3 months after I joined tumblr and that’s kinda scary because that means we have been speaking longer than we realised. 

@propshophannah​ thanks for letting me go nuts about theory with you!

The Big blogs in the SJM fandom change, and it's cool that being in the fandom for so long means that I get to talk with all these people and make some real friends.

I made read friends from reading books and talking about them - How Cool Is That!

I had fun making shit posts about Dorian’s couch, Rowan’s relationship status after EoS and seeing my friends come up with some pretty clever memes too. 

The Art is amazing, and actually getting to talk to artists about their art is something I didn't think would happen ever. So I’m so grateful to tumblr for that.

I want to tag a lot of people but - having been here so long means that urls change and I lose touch - plus I think I would go over the “50 tag limit” easily. 

The first kiwi blog who I talked to was @verifiefangirl and we bonded over the Old El Paso advert of “why not both”. 

I want to thank those who encouraged me to write my theories, and I did that for the first year on here. 

I want to say thank you to the people who told me “You know, you can write your theories as fic and people don't get as angry.” Because you were right! And so that started my writing of fan fic, and thank you to those people who wanted to be tagged and let me know what was up - sorry I haven’t written in a while. 

Thank You to @faenet and my Faenet Fam. I joined to share theories, switched it up to write fic, and then evolved into Edits. I was able to learn how discord works and be a part of a team and learn new photo editing skills - I knew nothing before I joined and it's so cool to have become a part of that community.

Thanks to my BookClub brotp - It’s been the best getting to know you all over the last year, discuss books and life. And just have fun. I honestly wouldn't have connected with you guys if we just relied on tumblr because it often requires me to say something first, and i'm not good at that. @theyretheirthere​ sorry I had to tag you twinnie. :P 

Some Fandom History for those who have been here a while ... (well for as long as I have been in the fandom, I know there was a time before this).

Phase One - POST EOS Theory and Beach Scene Debate, Elorcan exists now even tho People still HATE Lorcan (not me but lots of people did). ACOMAF love, nickname of Tam the tampon takes off. 

Phase Two - PRE ACOWAR, Moreil Hype, Fandom super excited, Acomaf love, Rhysand love.

Phase Three - ACOWAR IS AWFUL - Dumpsters on Fire, lots of fandom people left. The ones who stayed had discourse about Moriel, Mor’s sexuality, Nessian, the ending and how it was rushed, Azriel is a smol cinnamon roll who deserved better - lots of Az fics and the birth of Elriel started here. 

Phase Four - TOG FANDOM ARE MAD because Chaol’s novella turned into a Novel. Cyber bullying of Chaol lovers in fandom led to a lot of blogs leaving - just be kind to one another, you can talk about stuff without personal attacks.   

Phase Five - WE ARE ALL GOING STIR CRAZY, Someone released a TOD mock cover and there was a lot of ableist stuff going on. Bad time in fandom. 

Phase six - TOD Came out - Lots of people refused to read, other people felt vindicated about theories, other people were shocked about Maeve. Praise and Hate towards the book and for how SJM handled race and disability. Was she being sensitive or appropriating? Mixed Reviews, again fandom got a little smaller. Acotar Fandom was taking off in terms of fics. 

Phase Seven - Acotar Fandom PRE ACOFAS Fan Fic Mania. Most of us re-read acotar, acomaf, acowar and Fix-it fics, Nessian Fics, Feysand Fics, Lots of Fics. Lots of Art. I noticed the ACOTAR fandom kinda took off while the TOG one floundered.

Phase Eight - A New Novella for ACOTAR, ACOFAS - lots of hype. Lots of mixed reviews - “it had no plot” or “I love it” or “I don't like how the first pov changed depending on the character” or “Yay christmas!!!” or “boo wall scene” or “yay Wall scene!!” Again - more fics and art came from it. Snowball fight was a highlight, art was gorgeous, Amren as a snowball was also good. Fandom was flourishing again, yes we lost some people but we also had a resurgence in creative content.

Weird non-phase - Catwoman: Soul Stealer, was released but wasn't a “must read” for many people.

Phase Nine - Pre KoA, Fandom was Hyped! We were all doing our re-reads, theories came out again, discussions about favourite quotes of things we had forgotten were shared. Again - Some good ToG fic came out because people had it fresh in their minds again  - we were preparing. Edits were great, lots of Edits, Lots of Art. 

Phase Ten - KoA Came out and destroyed us. Fandom was relatively quiet while people abandoned tumblr to read it. Anti’s came out in force, they had more to say about it that the fans did. Fans didn't see this immediately because they weren't on tumblr. About a month after release, We got Meta and discourse on KoA and what it means and what Aelin’s story has meant to us personally. Edits started taking off again. This Phase is still ongoing even a year later. Personally I am in Awe of that book and what it managed to achieve, I wanted to re-read it straight away but it still has so many parts that HURT to read. 

New people slowly trickle into fandom, or pick up the books, its sweet, but as a veteran sometimes seeing the same arguments gets tiring and so I dont comment as much as I used to. I’m still here reading, but I don't really want to write another essay like the ones I've previously written to defend a point so i’m quiet. 

Where I think it will go next? 

Most of the people who remain in the fandom are good at looking at things with a critical eye but saying “I can still enjoy a book”, which I like. 

We will get hyped as a fandom for Crescent City which was pushed back to March 2020, even if we are unsure it’s what we want, I don't think we can help ourselves. 

ACOTAR 4 is in the works with no confirmed release date, just vague mention that it was being pushed back - twas supposed to be 2020 but I'm doubtful, especially if other titles are pushed back first like CC:HOEAB - it was by three months from Jan to March. 

WOTOG was also pushed back, first from release with EoS, then from release with ToD and now from release with KoA (those are all goodreads dates as I was waiting for it and keeping an eye out, but we also had novels added and other books like acofas - goodreads also isn't the best at staying on top of release dates)…. we have had mention of it that it will include art and is co-authored by Lynette Noni, so It is still being made at least - I mean I don't have to cry about it being cancelled just yet. And So I have to stay around for those. I became invested in the World building of TOG to not wait for WOTOG. 

So yeah, it’s been a wild 3 years. <3

A writing tag game

Tagged by my fave cool stuff finder, @marauders-groupie Thank you! <3

i. How many works in progress do you currently have? one second draft scifi novel, one fanfic novella to be finished, 3 fanfic stories to start, that I’m kind of stuck on. So 5. And do we count the finished urban fantasy novel that I now have to query?

ii. Do you/would you write fanfiction? didn’t discover writing fanfiction until 3 years ago. before that, I didn’t write fanfiction because I thought it was a waste to not own your own writing. but now i know differently because for me it takes the pressure off of writing and lets me do it just for fun again. iii. Do you prefer paper books or ebooks? no preference. both have their drawbacks and benefits. iv. When did you start writing? first story when I was 12 in english class. It was a teen horror story about an ancient ring that possessed a girl leaving her twin to defeat the demon. When I was 15, I decided to start writing novels because I had run out of books to read on vacation. v. Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with? idk. i think i need to start sharing more. vi. Where is your favourite place to write? My comfy writing chair with lapdesk vii. Favorite childhood book? LIttle House On The Prairie. Laura Ingalls Wilder viii. Writing for fun or publication? Publication, but that makes everything too high stress. I need to write or fun too or my brain gets all clogged up. ix. Pen and paper or computer? Journal and poetry on pen and paper. Novels, short stories and essays on computer. x. Have you ever taken any writing classes? Senior year in HS i took my first creative writing class, and then I majored in English with a concentration in creative writing for my bachelors, so I took lots of writing classes, fiction, poetry, personal essays, playwriting. I also started and joined writing workshops, and taught writing to both adults and teens.  xi. What inspires you to write? idk. when I have something to say. but sometimes, for a real, good story, I have to sit on that “something” and let it percolate, until new ides bubble up. And sometimes, I need to take an entirely DIFFERENT idea and mix it up with the first idea and BOOM, something new and exciting that I now have all sorts of ideas about just growing all over the place becoming something alive. 

Yeah, when an idea doesn’t thrill me, that generally means I need an opposite and unrelated idea to spark the fire that gets me going. Hey! That means the fanfics I’m stuck on need some extra ideas to rev me up.

@mareebrittenford @lianabrooks @hawthornewhisperer @tracylorde @the-ships-to-rule-them-all

Most and Least Popular Stories

I was tagged by @maedhrosrussandol​ to look at my stats and identify my most and least popular stories according to those stats. But I’m changing the rules a bit! The original post asked for stories to be ranked by number of kudos on AO3; since only a small fraction of my work is on AO3, then I’m going to go by number of comments and favorites on the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild instead. (All but a handful of my stories are there.)

I am not counting collections of ficlets posted as a single story.

Most Popular Stories (starting with most comments on the SWG)

1. Another Man’s Cage (63 comments) 2. The Work of Small Hands (31 comments) 3. The Sovereign and the Priest (17 comments) 4. The Election Farce of Nargothrond: Of Dumbness, Treachery, and Brotherly Love (14 comments) 5. The Bearer of Light (12 comments)

The picture looks a little different if I go by the number of people who have marked a particular story as a favorite.

1. Another Man’s Cage (12 favorites) 2. By the Light of Roses (8 favorites) 3. The Work of Small Hands (6 favorites) 4. Hastaina (6 favorites) 5. There are a bunch of stories with 4 favorites: When the Stars Smile, Return to Me, Salt, The Dance,  Essecarmë

Least Popular Stories

There is one lonely story of mine with no comments and no favorites on the SWG:  To Dream of Fire

All of these are stories with just one comment and no favorites on the SWG: Teler, A Woman in Few Words: The Character of Nerdanel and Her Treatment in Canon and Fandom, Statues, The Choices of Spirits, Forgotten Lore, The Puppet,  Mercy

Are your surprised?

Not terribly, no.

For one thing, any metric of popularity is complicated enough to keep a clear picture from forming using that single metric alone. In my case, it’s extra complicated because I do crosspost most of my work--so those stories have comments, likes/kudos, and favorites on sites outside the SWG--and I’ve also been writing for a long time, longer than the SWG archive has been around (and certainly longer than AO3 has been around much less popularly used by Tolkienfic writers). I also have a sneaky habit on the SWG of archiving my own work by posting it late at night, then using my moderator powers to go into the archive and backdate it so that no one knows it exists. Some of the “least popular” stories were stealth-posted like that; back in the day, they probably would have gotten their fair share of attention on LiveJournal, where they were initially posted.

There are also stories that are written for events that necessarily get more attention as part of those events.

Some observations: My older work is overwhelmingly the more popular. None of the “most popular” stories were written within the last three years.

Part of me always wants to despair at this: I’m not as good of a writer as I once was! I’m washed up! No one wants to read me anymore! Then the common-sense realization that some of those stories have had a decade to receive the comments and favorites they have catches up to me. Two of the stories (”The Bearer of Light” and The Sovereign and the Priest) were stories done within the past five years, so newer things can catch up, it just takes time.

I’m also in the odd position of having been part of not what I term the first wave of Silmarillion fanfic--that which was written before the LotR films and at the outset of online fandom/Web 2.0--but coming on-board at the beginning of the second wave: Tolkien fanfic written around the time of the LotR films (and their immediate aftermath) and at the rise of Tolkien-specific archives and LiveJournal as the primary means of sharing fanfic. (Versus multifandom sites like fanfiction.net or early social media platforms like Yahoo! Groups.)

As a bit of a historical tangent, there was a strange exodus of first-wave writers in 2005. If you look at the posting history on Silmfics, activity dwindled in 2004, then plummeted in 2005. I’ve never fully figured out why this was. A first-wave author who didn’t leave the fandom around this time once told me that the feeling was that everything there was to be discussed had been discussed. Of course, we second-wavers--some of us, like me, brought in by the LotR films--were eager to start all over again, and I wonder if that didn’t have something to do with it too. (I know that there were similar feelings around the time of the Hobbit films among more veteran Tolkien fans: that new fans had exploded on the scene, ready to reinvent wheels that we’d been happily rolling along with for the better part of a decade, and that these veteran fans were not only unappreciated for their contributions but didn’t want to get involved again at square one.)

Anyway, as someone who came on at the start of the second wave, I was in the unique position to put my stories before a very large and enthusiastic audience of Tolkien fans (even if most of them were not Silmarillion fans) and also to use my writing to address issues concerning canon that were huge at the time. Another Man’s Cage, which was not surprisingly my most popular work (and is also one of my oldest, having been posted in 2005, at the time of the first-wave exodus), was in many ways as much a work of meta as fiction, at least in my mind. I wrote it, never intending to share it, with the express purpose of correcting what I saw as wrongheaded interpretations of the characters and approaches to canon. It’s no surprise, now that AMC was posted more than 12 years ago, to hear people sometimes say that they felt it gave them permission to write Silmfic differently than it’d been done to that point. I don’t think this is because its ideas were that original--I was pretty new to the fandom and most of the ideas in it were being discussed in circles of fans who discussed The Silmarillion, and it was my fictional contribution to that discussion--but because it happened to appear at the right place at the right time: in a vacuum left by the first-wavers and with a strong canatical sentiment acting to censor (sometimes explicitly so, through archive/group policies) content that was deemed “noncanonical”--and that was a pretty broad designation in those days.

There was a whole constellation of shorter works associated with AMC and written around the same time, many of them among the “4 favorites” in position #5 on the most popular list. Anyway, I will never recreate the historical circumstances within the fandom--circumstances that, looking back, were both tumultuous and often partisan--that made those stories as important as they became. I am grateful that my voice was heard at that time and that my work did its part to shape the fandom as it is now (which is far from perfect but also not as openly homophobic and intolerant as it was at the outset of the second wave either).

Longer works are also among my most popular, occupying the top four and top three positions on the two most popular lists. This isn’t terribly surprising either, since longer works tend to allow characterization and worldbuilding that, in my opinion, allow a good writer to create an exceptional story. Unlike the above observations about older works (and how I feel my Silmarillion writing will never be as important as my earliest--and worst-written!--work was), this is encouraging because I prefer longer works, and there has always been angst among writers of novellas and novels that longer works don’t get the attention and aren’t, therefore, worth the significant time spent crafting them. (This is also not the first time I’ve made this observation, using different data.)

On the least popular list, not surprisingly, two works aren’t even fiction: There is a poem and an essay on there, both of which tend not to receive the attention that fiction does. In addition to stealth-posted stories, quite a few stories on there (including the least of the least popular) were written to the specific requests of friends, some of them rather niche requests less likely to appeal broadly to readers (and possibly not something I would have ever written either, if not asked to do so, which begs the question of whether I even put in the full effort to make those pieces my best work). Of the stories there, only “The Choices of Spirits” really surprises me, as I do like that story--but it is also older and was stealth-posted, so people either had likely commented on it years prior or don’t even know it’s there. I don’t feel like “Statues” is a bad story either but, likewise, it was stealth-posted.

Today’s Date: August 12, 2017 (in case you do this again in a year’s time)

My SWG Author Page: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/archive/home/viewuser.php?uid=1

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do this. :)

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/26/books/26paul.html

BOOKS

On the Road and Between the Pages, an Author Is Restless for Adventure

By ANNE GOODWIN SIDESAUG. 26, 2006

WHITE OAKS, N.M. — “I can’t live in towns anymore,” Gary Paulsen says, enjoying the view from his 200-acre ranch on the outskirts of an old ghost town in the Jicarilla Mountains, 40 miles from the nearest grocery store.

Living like a fugitive from society, the 67-year-old author says, is the only way he can think clearly. “I bought a house in a town near here, and a nice guy, a neighbor, came over to say hi,” he says, wincing. “It was too close.”

For generations of young, mostly male readers, Mr. Paulsen is one of the best-loved writers alive. With more than 26 million books in print, his name is practically synonymous with the wilderness adventure genre. He has won three Newbery Honor awards: for “Dogsong” (1985), “The Winter Room” (1989) and perhaps his best-known work, “Hatchet” (1987), about the only survivor of a plane crash in the Yukon.

“Gary Paulsen’s writing is very authentic, and kids sense that,” said Margaret Tice, coordinator of children’s services at the New York Public Library and a member of the Newbery committee. “He’s always lived his life on the edge and survived true adventures, but he’s not just an action man; he also knows how young people feel and think.”

Teri Lesesne, who teaches children’s literature at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex., has noted a special power in Mr. Paulsen’s work. “If I have a kid who’s a reluctant reader, all I have to do is hand him one of Gary Paulsen’s books,” she said. “It’ll change his life.”

Continue reading the main story

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Mr. Paulsen receives hundreds of letters a day. But his publisher can barely keep track of where to forward them, since Mr. Paulsen restlessly ricochets around the globe: training horses in New Mexico, running dogs in Alaska, riding his Harley across the American West, gunkholing around the South Pacific in his beat-up sailboat.

It’s deliberate: Mr. Paulsen is an unapologetic misanthrope, children excepted. “I don’t have anything against individuals,” he says. “But the species is a mess.” His throat tightens. “The last time I was up in Santa Fe, I wasn’t there 20 minutes before I brewed up, almost slugged a tourist on the steps of my wife’s gallery.” Ruth Wright Paulsen, his third wife, illustrated four of his picture books and a prose poem about an early American farm. “Now I try to be alone,” he says, pointedly.

Compulsively prolific, Mr. Paulsen produces a fresh book for young adults every few months, the vast majority of them novellas. His latest, “The Legend of Bass Reeves,” was published this month by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House. It is identified as “the true and fictional account” of a slave who became the most successful federal marshal in American history.

“He’d ride alone into the center of hell and bring the men out, alive, if possible, or, if necessary, draped dead over a horse,” Mr. Paulsen writes. “He did this 3,000 times. Miraculously, he was never wounded. He rejected countless bribes, and when his own son killed his wife, he tracked his son down, brought him to justice and sent him to prison for life.”

All true. But Mr. Paulsen’s book is a novel, and he openly fictionalizes his protagonist, imbuing Bass Reeves with some of his own traits and experiences. The best writing, he says, is “like carving pieces off your self.” An outcast who survives abuse and a hardscrabble upbringing, Reeves is an expert shot with a sixth sense for tracking and a shamanlike kinship with animals. “Reeves was honest and honorable, and just flat tough,” Mr. Paulsen says, as if he’s fiercely defending a friend’s good name.

Compact, with wolf-blue eyes set in a grizzled face, Mr. Paulsen strongly resembles Ernest Hemingway. There are other parallels. Mr. Paulsen’s prose is spare and well acquainted with death. At various points in his life, he has been tormented by Papa-like demons: too much anger, too much drink, too much emphasis on virility, too many wives, too much loneliness.

Receiving the first overnight guests he’s allowed onto his desert ranch, Mr. Paulsen seems wary but not unfriendly. He wears tall boots and walks gingerly along the overgrown path beyond his door, pointing out rocks and crevices where he’s spotted five rattlesnakes in recent days.

This is bear and mountain lion country, which is why he often carries a snub-nosed .38. “Cats kill you before they eat you,” he says. “Bears like to hold you down and rip your buttocks while you’re still alive.”

All right then.

“Shall we eat?” Mr. Paulsen asks, pulling a few bloody steaks and a plastic vat of potato salad out of the fridge and opening a can of beans.

He is wearing the Iditarod belt that he earned in 1983 on his first try at the brutal 1,049-mile dog-sled race across Alaska, when he finished 42nd in a field of 73. Since then, his love affair with sled dogs has been one of the few constants in his peripatetic life.

“The dogs have affected me in all ways,” he says. “In my understanding of people, in my understanding of love and hate. Once you break down the interlock between species, it’s astonishing.”

Mr. Paulsen also keeps a 40-acre spread north of Willow, Alaska, where he breeds and trains dogs for the Iditarod (which he ran for the third time last March). “From the northwest corner of my land, there’s nothing for 4,000 miles,” he says, his voice quickening with excitement. “There’re no towns, no roads, no people all the way to Siberia.” And few of the provocations of modern society that make him “brew up.”

Mr. Paulsen is a prodigious ranter of the Luddite persuasion; it takes little to set him off. The Internet: “It’s just stupid, faster.” Lawyers: “Miserable human beings.” Organized sports: “Mindless dreck!” Television: “Intellectual carbon monoxide, but hey, TV’s are fun to shoot!”

He grew up poor and lonely in the small town of Thief River Falls, Minn. “My folks were the town drunks,” he says. “We lived in this grubby apartment building. My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace.” He pretended to sell newspapers in pubs, raking the drunks’ money off the bar into his pockets when they were good and juiced. “I became a street kid,” he says. “Occasionally I’d live with aunts or uncles, then I’d run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.”

He said he was 13 when he stepped into a library for the first time. It was a frigid winter night. The library stayed open until 9 p.m., and its gold-tinted windows looked invitingly warm.

“The librarian typed my name on a card,” he remembers. “I looked at it and somehow that made me somebody.

Mr. Paulsen became a voracious reader, but not much of a student. “School didn’t work for me. I hated it,” he says. At 17, he forged his father’s signature to join the Army. Once, while he was testing missiles at White Sands, N.M., a Nike Ajax missed its target, locking onto a tagged buzzard instead.

In early 1965, he packed his Volkswagen Bug and drove to Hollywood, where he helped write dialogue for the television series “Mission: Impossible,” and the 1969 Steve McQueen film “The Reivers.” Then Mr. Paulsen left. “I started to like it too much,” he says.

In 1966, he checked himself into a cabin in the Minnesota woods, where he wrote his first book, “Some Birds Don’t Fly,” a collection of humorous essays about the missile industry.

Mr. Paulsen has lost count of how many books he has written since then. His Web site, garypaulsen.com, puts the tally at more than 175. Whether his subject is a slave who risks his life to teach others to read in “Nightjohn” (a book he adapted for a 1996 television movie), or an orphan on the streets of Juárez, Mexico, in “The Crossing” (a film version is now in preproduction), Mr. Paulsen is always writing to conquer his own dark, painful experiences.

“I’m a teller of stories,” he says. “I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I say what the hunt was like. It’s not erudite; it’s not intellectual. I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I’ve been through. And I’m still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.”

Mr. Paulsen stopped writing for adults 10 years ago. “It’s artistically fruitless,” he fumes. “Adults are locked into car payments and divorces and work. They haven’t got time to think fresh. Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I’ve got left, I intend to write artistic books — for kids — because they’re still open to new ideas.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: On the Road and Between the Pages, an Author Is Restless for Adventure. 

Mun Tag

Tagged by: @midshipmanhollom and @luckycaptainaubrey Tagging: who hasn't done this? I haven't been on much the past few days bc of moving. If you haven't pls do and tag me in it! 1. How old are you?: 19, which, being in Canada means its legal to drink. 2. What's your current job?: I work as a cashier at Save On Foods, which sucks. I don't human interaction with strangers. I also work as a tutor and do freelance editing and am currently working on a few novellas/novels I would like to publish one day which is sorta technically a job? 3. What are you talented at?: I can bang out a B grade essay in about a half hour with limited knowledge of the material I'm working off. So bullshitting basically. I also like to think I've got a good writing style and am good at that? I let a lot of people read my writing bc feedback makes me feel good. Also I play piano, tenor saxophone, trumpet, mallet percussion and bass drum. Piano is the one of those I'm best at, I've been playing since I was about five. I also like to think I've got good makeup skills and the like. I do all my own diy face masks and soap and stuff and those usually turn out good. Oh and I'm a good baker bc I stress bake...a lot. 4. What is a big goal you are working toward or have already achieved?: I'd like to be published mostly. I don't even really want to be popular I just want to be...published. In like a formal sense. Other than that, making enough money to bring Ally up here in December and later to live with me. 5. What is your aesthetic?: Oh god um...English professor crossed with Jekyll and Hyde gothic crossed with queer and here. And then there's my huge history aesthetic which contains age of sail, ww1 and ww2 and also like the absent minded professor with papers all over the fucking place. Got a bit of that witchy vibe too with plants and crystals and stuff. My kitchen however screams of stay at home heterosexual mom doing diys and baking for the cookie sale. 6. Do you collect anything?: Rocks and crystals, plants, all...my terrible old writing that gets purged once a year...I'm a sucker for candles. Love me some candles. 7. What's a topic you always talk about?: Age of Sail is a big special interest for me, however if you want me to really rant being up Thomas fucking Cochrane. I also love Star Wars and Canadian History. Drag is also a topic I'll talk about a lot and I've been getting a bit into drag makeup and the like on my own too. Also gothic era writing. Bring up Jekyll and Hyde and I will go on for hours. It's a big favourite of mine. 8. What's a pet peeve of yours?: Chewing with your mouth open. Pisses me right off. Loud noises and bright lights but that's more bc of sensory issues. Invansion of privacy. Like physically. I don't like people in my space without permission from myself. 9. Good advice to give: I don't really have any general advice...I'm v good at specific advice I personally think people tell me I'm a good listener. Oh but on that note listen to people. Like actually genuinely listen to them and care about what they say. If you can't find it in yourself to be 100% listening when someone needs you, don't expect the same from them and either work on that or maybe you don't really want to be close to them in a personal way. This isn't to say you can't do other things while listening (Lord knows I stim when I talk to people) but relationships are a lot easier when you process what people say and respond accordingly. No empathy is actually needed, just your ability to process and understand. 10. Three songs you'd recommend: A Little Wicked by Valerie Broussard War of Hearts by Ruelle Sick of Losing Soulmates by Dodie Bonus Three: Anything song from Alestrom Almost anything from Flogging Molly And A Drop of Nelsons Blood by literally anyone is great