Every summer, San Diego hosts the San Diego Comic Convention (Comic-Con International), a massive celebration of all things nerdy: comics, yes, but also other “popular arts,” including science fiction and fantasy movies, shows, games, and literature. Many attendees dress up as their favorite characters from such media (an activity known as “cosplay”). The convention hosts panels and events galore, a veritable feast for fans of superheroes, aliens, anime, and more.
This year, the event began on Thursday and ends today. I didn’t obtain a badge (I wasn’t aware that I would be in San Diego this summer when they went on sale in the fall!), but I went downtown for a while on Friday to check out the scene, snapping a quick photo of this sign at the San Diego Convention Center:
I also glimpsed this advertisement for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (the text on the left reads “Strange brought you here. Curiosity keeps you.”):
Witnessing Comic-Con (even from afar) has made me reflect upon stories I’ve loved over the years, of which I have called myself a “fan”: books like the Harry Potter series and The Lord of the Rings, shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who, games like Night in the Woods and Undertale, and multimedia franchises like Pokémon. What elements made me (and so many others) fall in love with these stories? What makes a story resonate and endure, even gaining a massive following?
Two big factors (for me) are characters and worlds: characters I care about, and worlds I want to explore…and maybe even live in for a little while. A third, less tangible factor that I also love to see is an element of hope: the idea that we can work together to make the world a better place. I am typically not a big consumer of horror or dystopian fiction (nor plots that resolve themselves purely through violence) for that reason; I prefer to imagine brighter futures and believe in the magic of possibility.
What about you? What are the stories (in any medium) for which you proudly identify as a “fan” (or have in the past)? What do they have in common? What are elements you wish you saw in stories more?
Happy New Year, everyone! This year, I’m committing to posting here at least once a month (finally!), sharing musings and news with you all more regularly. I appreciate your support, and I want you to know that I’m still here, trying my best to spread light from my little corner of the world.
Where are you headed this year? For my part, I have no idea! I’ve applied for wildlife biology jobs in California and a PhD program in the UK, but I won’t know if I’m getting an offer on any of them for a while. I’m still plugging away at my second interactive novel for Choice of Games (this one’s about unicorns, pegasi, and kelpies!)…
…but I don’t know yet when the game will come out (hopefully sometime this year!). I’ve submitted a play based on folklore about a Christmas witch to a short play festival, but I won’t know whether the play has been accepted to be produced until the end of March. In short, as usual, my future is full of unknowns.
I do know one thing, though. Whatever happens next, I will give thanks to God for the many blessings in my life and strive to follow Jesus with love, kindness, and courage. Faith is the wind in my sails, buoying me through the storms and keeping me afloat and moving forward. Faith is my lighthouse, guiding me through the darkness. The world is filled with rancor, fear, and despair these days, but those forces will never have the final say. I hope you will strive to see the light in these oft-dark times yourself, and to be a light to others. Blessed be.
Hi, friends! I found a helpful article today that shares resources about how we can all make a difference to reduce the impacts of climate change. As a wildlife conservationist, I strongly believe that we should all do our part to keep our lovely planet healthy and thriving…and as a teaching assistant, I understand the need to empower our students, rather than demoralizing them. Here’s the article: https://simbio.com/tackling-climate-change/ Cheers!
My first kiss happened when I was ten years old. It was wet. It was soft. It was tender. It was from a beluga whale.
Her name was Ruby.
All my life, I’ve loved animals. As a kid, I doted on our family dogs and cat, and I also cared for a hamster, mice, fish, and a succession of pet snails. I was a budding entomologist, collecting caterpillars and roly polies in little plastic terrariums and supplying them with leaves and soil and water. I was never afraid to get my hands dirty, and when I wasn’t reading, writing, drawing, or playing video games, I spent most of my time outside, playing games of make-believe with my friends as we explored the world around us and the creatures we shared it with.
I was blessed to have loving, supportive parents who were able to encourage and nurture my interests. They gave me books about animals that captivated me, including nonfiction and works by Jean Craighead George, Jack London, and Gary Paulsen that left me with a deep and abiding love for wolves and Arctic landscapes, though we lived in the Mojave Desert in southern California. They signed me up for summer camps, including the wonderful SeaWorld Camp in San Diego (site of the aforementioned kiss). My mom and I swam with dolphins, a humbling experience I will never forget. We visited and volunteered at Wolf Mountain Sanctuary in Lucerne Valley, where I had the incredible privilege of meeting and getting to know real-life wolves.
Me and one of my wolf friends, investigating each other. Heck yes, that’s a wolf shirt.
While still in elementary school, I had a fateful encounter on a field trip to a college fair in Los Angeles. (Perhaps it sounds presumptuous, taking elementary kids to a college fair, but I was part of the GATE program at my school so this was par for the course). I met two friendly women tabling for a school in northern California called Humboldt State University. They told me all about HSU’s programs in wildlife and marine biology. Long story short, I fell madly in love.
I was determined to one day study biology at this mystical place, drawn by swirling daydreams of massive redwood forests, rugged coastlines, and myriad opportunities for learning and adventure. And then, in a stroke of miraculous good luck, my family moved to Humboldt County when I was thirteen years old, when my mom accepted a job offer in Arcata: home of Humboldt State University, my dream school. My Hogwarts!
I entered Humboldt State University as an undergraduate in 2011. College was a marvelous adventure, everything I had dreamed it would be but even MORE and BETTER. I took a graduate-level marine mammalogy course. I chased peacocks around a monastery with a parabolic dish, attempting to record their grating squawks. In the summers I did internships all over the States, studying fishers (handsome tree weasels), wolves, and even honey bees.
Yep, I did research on honey bees. Look up their waggle dance!
I also traveled with our Wildlife Conclave Team, attending research conferences in other states. I did my honors thesis on mesocarnivore foraging activity on our university’s campus relative to human activity levels, which involved putting out boxes baited with cat food and getting raccoons to leave sooty tracks in them. In short, I was in heaven, and I loved every minute of it.
Me on an HSU Wildlife Conclave trip to Wyoming. The coyote was sedated, not dead. Don’t worry.
I received my Bachelor of Science in Wildlife (Conservation Biology/Applied Vertebrate Ecology) with a minor in English Writing in 2015. Later that year, I became a field crew leader for a professor at Montana State University, studying wolf and coyote vocalizations in Yellowstone National Park. Through that project, I grew even more enamored of animal communication research, which has long been a field that fascinates me. And I met wonderful people who are still my good friends today. I worked with some of those people again in 2019, on a project studying wolf, coyote, and dog vocalizations in Wisconsin.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Between Yellowstone and Wisconsin, I went other places. First and foremost was Kenya.
A lion I saw in the Mara.
I studied spotted hyenas for eight months in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya with the Michigan State University Mara Hyena Project. Hyenas get a bad rap, but they are absolutely AMAZING animals, with complex societies and communication and unique adaptations to help them survive. They are intelligent, playful, nurturing, adaptable. I fell MADLY in love with them. I highly recommend Sy Montgomery’s book, The Hyena Scientist, which includes gorgeous photos and accessible scientific information that dispels the toxic myths that these creatures are ugly, stupid, evil, or boring (they are ANYTHING BUT those things!). Sy wrote the book while visiting us in Talek Camp, so I happen to be featured in it too. There’s even a two-page spread about me, actually. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073XCQ3YP
Obligatory cute hyena picture.
Anyway, enough about my past adventures. The real, important question is WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEXT?
And I have exciting news about that. I am absolutely THRILLED to announce that I’ve been offered a MSc position in Behavioral Ecology! Pending a few regulatory steps involving the admissions process of the university and my admittance to the country, I will soon be studying the vocalizations and behavior of wild rock hyraxes with Dr. Lee Koren at Bar-Ilan University in Israel!
For me, this is the natural culmination of a lifelong passion for animal communication studies that began when I was a kid, reading books by Temple Grandin (motivated in part by my desire to connect with my mostly nonverbal autistic sister, Kristy), John Cunningham Lilly (who was admittedly kind of a crackpot, but had some interesting ideas), and others, fantasizing about becoming Dr. Dolittle in the flesh and cracking the code of animal languages. I’ve learned a lot since then, namely that “language” is a loaded term and that animal communication is too complex and heterogeneous to be neatly deciphered into words à la Google Translate, but everything I’ve learned has sparked still more questions in my mind and strengthened my enthusiasm for these topics. In short, I am completely OVER THE MOON about my acceptance to Dr. Koren’s lab, and I can’t wait to start! I look forward to delving even deeper into my chosen area of research and experiencing the culture and sights of Israel along the way!
And if you don’t know what a hyrax is, go look it up right now. They are freaking adorable.
Today is Valentine’s Day. I encourage you to spend time today reflecting upon a gift that runs much deeper than shallow, ephemeral effects like candy hearts and flowers: a love that permeates our very being and transcends the bounds of space and time.
My favorite Scripture passage, 1 Corinthians 13, says it better than I ever could:
“13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Today, I invite you to consider ways in which you might live a more loving life, a life of compassion and kindness and service to the greater good. Unconditional love brings out the best in us. Blessed be.
My research teammate said this repeatedly over the past few days as we braved the ice and snow of central Wisconsin, following gray wolf tracks through the forest. We examined scent markings wolves had used to announce their presence, set up acoustic recorders to collect their howls. We listened with bated breath to the silence under the stars, hoping to hear them sing.
On Christmas Eve, my teammate got her wish.
The night began with a howl survey. Such surveys involve driving a road in an area of likely wolf activity, howling into the darkness and waiting for replies. This was our third night of conducting such surveys, and no one on our team had yet received a response. For the first time, I was the howler, and I was incredibly nervous. I had practiced earlier that day, howling to myself while alone inside our team’s living quarters. I was worried I sounded like Scooby Doo with laryngitis, afraid I’d be the reason we wouldn’t find the wolves.
At the fourth stop along our route, I called out to the wilderness. My broken voice carried through the crisp, cold air. We listened intently to the perfect silence, waiting for an answer.
From across the distance, a chorus of coyotes cried out to us, their eerie, beautiful sounds giving us a glimpse into their wild, wandering lives. For a while, we relished the music.
And then the wolves sang too.
Low, mournful howls sent shivers down our spines. My teammate pointed a microphone in their direction as the songs rang out through time and space, connecting us briefly to a world that will never be ours. My heart soared as I savored the moment. For the rest of the night, I was floating on air.
Based on the direction of the howls, we placed a recorder at a new site in the forest. After a rendezvous with the rest of the team, we headed home. My teammate drove us carefully through the shadows and mist. And then, all of a sudden, she stammered and pulled over.
She’d seen a wolf. A wolf on Christmas Eve. Standing by the side of the road, staring right through her. We turned around and drove back, but we never found the wolf again. It vanished like a ghost. But it was there.
A Blackfoot legend refers to the Milky Way as the Wolf Trail. For the past year, I’ve wondered frequently about my place in the universe, whether I’m walking down the right path. But I think, like the wolves, we forge our own paths, carving trails through the snow to where we’re meant to be.
Sometimes, the stars align to reward us with a blessing that takes our breath away. Some call this God, or else fate, the auspices of the universe, or a mere result of stochastic events. Throughout the world, for thousands of years, humans have celebrated the triumph of light over darkness, the presence of hope and community amidst the loneliness of winter. Life’s myriad ways of persisting against impossible odds never fail to astound me. I will never forget Christmas Eve 2019, when the wolves sang to us. And I’ll never forget how my friend got her lupine miracle.
You’ve reached a crossroads in your life. A fork in the road. A tipping point. What you do today, this hour, this minute, will change you…and the world.
I think we all can remember an epic moment like this, a big decision we made that altered our course and transformed us into someone new. But what most of us fail to realize on a regular basis is that even the seemingly small choices we make add up to something huge over time.
This is why I love interactive fiction. In interactive fiction, we, the readers/players, are main characters, and the choices we make, even ostensibly small ones, tend to have consequences down the road: for our environment, for our societies, for our relationships, for our personal success and happiness. We get to explore how the priorities we set and the means by which we pursue them affect us–and the world.
Does this sound familiar? I hope so. “An unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates said. I appreciate how interactive fiction challenges its writers and readers to think critically and live intentionally as we work to solve the puzzles of our lives.
The Interactive Fiction Competition, an annual event to celebrate and promote interactive fiction, is allowing IF authors from around the world who registered (for free) to submit their entries for the 2019 competition until 11:59 pm Eastern Time tonight. If you’re curious about the world of interactive fiction games, please consider becoming a judge! Anyone, no matter their level of past experience with IF, can create an account to play and rate games during the competition. Judging goes from October 1 to November 15. If you’re interested in judging IFComp entries, please read the rules (https://ifcomp.org/rules#judges), guidelines (https://ifcomp.org/about/judging), and FAQ (https://ifcomp.org/about/faq#judginggames) for judges and make an account on the website here: https://ifcomp.org/user/register. I hope you, like me, will fall in love with these fun and thought-provoking games. And I hope you will consider how whatever you choose to do after you finish reading this blog post will impact the rest of your life.
Today marks the official theatrical release of the live-action remake of Disney’s animated film The Lion King in the United States.
Check out these majestic jerks.
I have a bone to pick with The Lion King. As a kid, it was one of my favorite movies. It remains a beloved, classic film, using a wonderful score and beautifully animated talking animals to tell a tale of self-discovery and social responsibility. I still enjoy the original movie, to a certain extent. There’s just one problem: The Lion King did (and continues to do) deplorable damage to the reputation of my favorite creatures, hyenas.
Tell me I’m ugly. I dare you.
Back when I studied spotted hyenas, I wrote a whole post for the research project’s blog about The Lion King‘s misrepresentations of them. That blog post can still be read here: http://msuhyenas.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-trouble-with-lion-king.html Please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends who’ve been blinded to the truth about hyenas by The Lion King, as I was for so many years.
I for one will not be buying a ticket to the remake of The Lion King. If you’d prefer more hyena-positive media instead, please check out Sy Montgomery’s award-winning nonfiction book The Hyena Scientist (and not just because I’m in it!): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0544635116/ And if you have an interest in anthropomorphic animal fantasy à la Watership Down, feel free to also take a look at my hyena novelette Beyond Acacia Ridge: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1949768899
I hope you will do your best to spread hyena love, not hyena hate. I will step down from my soapbox now. Thank you for your time.
Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone! Since it’s important to think about where you’ve been and where you’re going, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my accomplishments this year and my goals for next year.
Accomplishments: Wildlife
-I worked as an intern for the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program in Alpine, Arizona for six months. I tracked wolves with radio telemetry, helped to care for pups and release a young adult into the wild, monitored carnivores with trail cameras, investigated tracks and scat in the woods, and more!
A cute Halloween decoration in Alpine. It reads, “Just RAVEN about how much fun we had in Alpine.”
-I was listed as a coauthor on a scientific paper for the first time, an article about feral cat vocalizations, with some amazing colleagues I met while working as a field crew leader at Montana State University:
-My first novel, Mist, was published by Thurston Howl Publications.
-I made my first professional, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America-qualifying fiction sale, my short story “The Moon Fox” to the zine Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.
-I had three other short stories and two poems published. At least three more of my short stories will appear in anthologies sometime next year.
-I won NaNoWriMo in November, wrote 17 new short stories and various poems over the course of the year, and significantly rewrote an older story (“The Moon Fox”) which was then accepted for publication.
Wildlife Goals: Gain new experiences with animals, whether that means seabirds, dolphins, foxes, elephants, or dogs!
Writing Goals:
-Keep writing and submitting and improving my craft! I plan to write at least one new novel, start a visual novel, and hopefully get some more pro sales under my belt!
-Become an active member of Codex (my application is currently being processed).
-Keep learning more about the art and science of editing! My aforementioned positions as editor and editorial assistant are the first ones I’ve ever had in this field, so I’m still learning and growing, and I’m eager to do the best job I can!
Personal Goals: Become a more loving, compassionate, enlightened human being.
Thank you all SO much for following my updates and progress this year! Here’s to all of us learning and adventuring and growing together more next year!
I just became an editorial assistant for the ezine Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores. As part of my duties, I have to craft decline notices to certain authors after the editor has chosen to turn down their stories. I give them a short critique expressing what did and didn’t work for our team, summarizing the views of the various editors, editorial assistants, and first readers who have read and commented on the story, and notify them that their work has been declined.
As you can imagine, this is a delicate and rather difficult task. We strive to be as polite, open, honest, and encouraging as possible through the messages we send to writers, letting them know what we liked about their work as well as what we didn’t, in the hopes of giving them a boost and pointing them in the right direction to grow and improve their writing. Even so, as I submit a decline notice, I can feel in the back of my mind the sadness and disappointment I myself have sometimes felt after receiving a rejection in my inbox.
So this is my love letter to all the writers struggling to make their voices heard. I just wanted to write a little note to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your stories with people like me. It is a privilege to read your words, to get a glimpse of your dreams.
Whether or not your work is accepted by whatever publications to which you submit it, whether or not it is understood and liked by the editors at those publications, take heart. You are doing a brave thing just by trying. Creating something uniquely your own, in an age of passivity and consumption, is an act of courage. Submitting your work to complete strangers is an act of courage. Responding to setbacks and disappointments like rejection with resilience, hard work, and an even greater determination to improve and succeed is an act of courage. It makes me smile to know that there are people like you in the world, out there trying their best.
Thank you so very much for your stories. I wish you the best of luck.
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Amy Clare Fontaine 