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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1TeJJ2k:
I am keenly aware that I have been exceedingly fortunate in my family, for my whole life, both my biological family and others. Mostly my biological family.
We’re Irish only on Dad’s side; all four of his grandparents emigrated in the early 20th century, so, I mean, we’re pretty Irish, but– only half. On Mom’s side, we’re from Pilgrims and Puritans, and that grandmother was a genealogist so I have 350 years of excruciatingly-detailed data about literally anything you could want to know. Mom is a passionate historian and is constantly in the process of writing books on her various research. Her writing is very dry, though; we keep joking that I should take various of her topics and expand them into novels, because she managed to make an axe-murder boring. (1790ish, in the history of our small town, dude thought the devil was talking to him, killed his whole family and his dog, showed up naked at the neighbor’s house covered in blood and said uh, i think a bad thing happened. and mom told this story and it was somehow boring. I was like, pacing, Mom, pacing. Don’t lead with the thing about the dog.)
Mom has a grand total of one Irish ancestor in that entire forest of a family tree, by the way. (I once wrote up little notecards and made a wall-sized family tree tracing the various bloodlines. Gram did *a lot* of research.) This Irish ancestress was a wealthy merchant’s daughter who came over from Cork in 1646, so– I mean, Mom was like, oh good, I’m Irish, and literally anyone who understands how linear time works was like, uh, that was eleven generations ago, and she was like whatever. I do what I want.
(if it were really possible to DNA-test someone by country of ethnicity I think I’d be like 80% Dutch by volume, but like– those dudes also came over in the 1640s so it’s not like we have any cultural connections. OH ALSO Mom is super pleased that we are inbred as hell and I really wish I didn’t know that and also that she wasn’t so pleased about it and didn’t tell so many of her genealogy workshops all about it. Her great-grandparents! Were first cousins! What the heck!)
AAAAANNNNYWAY But I think about this a lot, and it’s part of why I really like to write about families– biological and found families alike are really central in a lot of my stories, and I am just obsessed with the different ways in which people who love each other can hurt each other. I also really like them to fix it, though. So that’s the most fundamental impetus I have underlying the Kes and Poe dynamic: they love one another so thoroughly, and it’s not enough.
Also, for an unrepentant smut writer, I write a lot of non-romantic love relationships, because that’s important to me too. One of the reasons I wind up writing such long stories is that i can’t resist the siren call of supporting characters.
I am keenly aware that I have been exceedingly fortunate in my family, for my whole life, both my biological family and others. Mostly my biological family.
We’re Irish only on Dad’s side; all four of his grandparents emigrated in the early 20th century, so, I mean, we’re pretty Irish, but– only half. On Mom’s side, we’re from Pilgrims and Puritans, and that grandmother was a genealogist so I have 350 years of excruciatingly-detailed data about literally anything you could want to know. Mom is a passionate historian and is constantly in the process of writing books on her various research. Her writing is very dry, though; we keep joking that I should take various of her topics and expand them into novels, because she managed to make an axe-murder boring. (1790ish, in the history of our small town, dude thought the devil was talking to him, killed his whole family and his dog, showed up naked at the neighbor’s house covered in blood and said uh, i think a bad thing happened. and mom told this story and it was somehow boring. I was like, pacing, Mom, pacing. Don’t lead with the thing about the dog.)
Mom has a grand total of one Irish ancestor in that entire forest of a family tree, by the way. (I once wrote up little notecards and made a wall-sized family tree tracing the various bloodlines. Gram did *a lot* of research.) This Irish ancestress was a wealthy merchant’s daughter who came over from Cork in 1646, so– I mean, Mom was like, oh good, I’m Irish, and literally anyone who understands how linear time works was like, uh, that was eleven generations ago, and she was like whatever. I do what I want.
(if it were really possible to DNA-test someone by country of ethnicity I think I’d be like 80% Dutch by volume, but like– those dudes also came over in the 1640s so it’s not like we have any cultural connections. OH ALSO Mom is super pleased that we are inbred as hell and I really wish I didn’t know that and also that she wasn’t so pleased about it and didn’t tell so many of her genealogy workshops all about it. Her great-grandparents! Were first cousins! What the heck!)
AAAAANNNNYWAY But I think about this a lot, and it’s part of why I really like to write about families– biological and found families alike are really central in a lot of my stories, and I am just obsessed with the different ways in which people who love each other can hurt each other. I also really like them to fix it, though. So that’s the most fundamental impetus I have underlying the Kes and Poe dynamic: they love one another so thoroughly, and it’s not enough.
Also, for an unrepentant smut writer, I write a lot of non-romantic love relationships, because that’s important to me too. One of the reasons I wind up writing such long stories is that i can’t resist the siren call of supporting characters.
