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Fairies Wear Boots | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/works-in-progress/fairies-wear-boots

A bird that was not a bird fluttered up from the studio’s rooftop patio, made a haphazard flight to nowhere, then dropped to land on the tiles once more. Then changed: transmuted in an instant to cat form. The cat that was not a cat shivered, skittered sideways, tracing a random parabola across the patio. Wasting time. Avoiding the inevitable. Swallowing the flutter in her throat. One last rehearsal. Tomorrow Elementals would leave for the set of the reality show. If she was really going through with this.

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jessica gruner | Page 2

https://jessicagruner.me/page/2

Eight stories for EI8HT, continued. March 8, 2016. May 18, 2016. I come into the studio and he’s tearing old photographs of me to shreds and mixing them with his saliva,. Masticating them into a sticky pulp which he is then using to sculpt his own likeness. And I don’t know whether to slap or kiss him. So I just laugh nervously and pick my nose. He kind of ducks his head like he’s embarrassed to have me see the unfinished. Before all his lats and deltoids are sort of fleshed out and bulging. And he backs...

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Heartened by the failures of great people | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/2016/05/18/heartened-by-the-failures-of-great-people

Heartened by the failures of great people. May 18, 2016. That may sound mean-spirited. I don’t intend it that way. There’s just something wonderfully uplifting about successful people’s failures. Here’s my latest example. I had the great good fortune to get a tour of the Pixar campus (thanks Jonathan! And a handy synopsis of Pixar’s history, which was all news to me. (Errors and omissions are mine.). Cue gleeful cackling and the rubbing together of palms. Them for their failures. [Insert some blah bl...

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Positive ways to deal with post-election grief, shock, and horror | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/2016/11/10/positive-ways-to-deal-with-post-election-grief-shock-and-horror

Positive ways to deal with post-election grief, shock, and horror. November 10, 2016. November 10, 2016. If we learned one thing from the Bush years, it’s that incessant fantasizing about the gory death of the monster in the White House (or in this case, the monster-elect) does little to mitigate said monster’s impact on the world. Here are a few suggestions for more productive avenues for our energy. If you have a kid, enroll them in some kind of apocalyptic survival camp. Writer friends: Keep writing!

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Eight stories for EI8HT, continued | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/2016/05/08/eight-stories-for-ei8ht-continued-7

Eight stories for EI8HT, continued. May 8, 2016. May 18, 2016. My favorite aunt breezes down the highway in her Audi TT. Little and blithe and pink, she’s returned from spinning her lipstick on snowy slopes; now she’s on a collision course with the tanks of green, and who can blame her? Those boys in huge fur coats? Those girls with very little on underneath? Stagger to the kitchen, he says, and get me the gasoline. Friday, feelin’ cocky. Heartened by the failures of great people →. You are commenting us...

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Aw, we’re learning and growing | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/2016/04/22/aw-were-learning-and-growing

Aw, we’re learning and growing. April 22, 2016. April 29, 2016. Happy Friday from someone who *hates* to update her blog. I hate it so much I feel my body clench up at the thought. That’s ridiculous, because I love to write. I just don’t want to write the damn blog. This makes me sad. Learning is fun. It’s fucking exciting. It’s sexy. Reading this article. Here are a few recent reads that made this cranky old grump feel awesome about learning again:. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,. You are comment...

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The beautiful freedom of relinquishing power, or, How I learned to love #OwnVoices | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/2016/09/19/the-beautiful-freedom-of-relinquishing-power-or-how-i-learned-to-love-ownvoices

The beautiful freedom of relinquishing power, or, How I learned to love #OwnVoices. September 19, 2016. September 19, 2016. I need to stop pretending that this isn’t annoying. It is. It’s super annoying. It’s annoying that more and more agents and editors are looking for writers who aren’t me. It’s annoying that there is an increasingly large readership who will criticize my books if I write from a white perspective AND if I write from a non-white perspective. THAT’S NOT OPPRESSION. In front of you, your...

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Friday, feelin’ cocky. | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/2016/04/29/friday-feelin-cocky

Friday, feelin’ cocky. April 29, 2016. I am not your child! 8221; Of course she got up in my face and threatened my death. No one around us reacted. I had stopped reacting. (I really do know better than to engage.) She eventually got off the bus, still screaming, “Bitch, come get some of this…I’ll kill you, bitch…” And again, no one made a comment. No one said a thing. Amazing. So fuck you, AC Transit, your surly drivers, your erratic schedule, and all your crazy-ass riders. 8221; Can you beat it? I had ...

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The Bone Children | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/works-in-progress/the-bone-children

Wilder was holding Riesen down for a beating when the new girl walked in. Everyone froze at the sight, even Darvin, who was doing the actual beating. You might think he’d stopped because of the guards who stood in the doorway. But you’d be wrong. Guards didn’t mess with the Scars. He’d never seen anything like her. The rest of them, sixty or so, clustered near the back of the classroom, tending to their own business. Mostly that meant staring at screens. Some kids squatted in circles, playing dic...The u...

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editing services | jessica gruner

https://jessicagruner.me/editing-services

Whether you need high-level feedback on your storyline or brutal line edits, I am here for you. Quick turnaround, reasonable rates, sharp insights. Yeah, baby. My philosophy: Your job as a writer is to find, exploit, and perfect your unique genius. Conforming to others’ ideas of what your writing should look like might get you published, but I’d encourage you to form higher goals. I aspire to meet each writer on their own terms. I look for your unique genius and help you polish it. Enter your comment here.