So I’m working on getting the listings updated and the pictures on the website will reflect that, but at the same time, I will not be deleting or editing past promo pictures here or on IG. They’re also me, if not the whole me, and they’re part of my writing journey. Sone of them also contain some of my earliest reviews, and that’s very dear to me. Long story short, I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been there first. I just expect y’all to be understanding and respectful, and not use the name on these pictures going forward. Just so we’re clear.
Quick note about the past
2022.11.04KDP update
2022.11.03As you may have noticed, my books went offline yesterday as I’m the process of republishing them under my real name. This means that the ISBN, listing and URL will be new. This also means, unfortunately, that I am losing the ratings and reviews that I had so far.
The new books have been sent and the links will be updated as soon as the review process clears. For now both TDR and TKC will be only available as ebooks. I need to locate the source files for the paperback covers and this is going to take some additional time. The companion PDFs will be updated accordingly as soon as the books are live at the latest.
The French translation of TDR was scheduled for publication in time for the end-of-year holidays but I am no longer sure I can make the schedule, sorry. There’s been a lot more change behind the scenes than the transition and I barely had time to review it.
That’s all for today. Later folks!
And the chrysalis opened…
2022.11.01So the secret’s out, at long last! No, this is not a joke. The time has finally come for the world to know.
My name is Rachel, I’m transgender. I have been quietly working on transitioning for several months now. What does this mean? It means that, while I was born with a boy’s body, I have always felt like a girl wearing an ill-fitting “boy-suit”. This is something that I’ve been feeling on some level for my entire life, even though it took me until my late 30s to realize what those feelings meant.
I won’t go into the details of transition, but starting HRT last year was a like a fog lifting after a dark night. It was as if I could suddenly see everything in a bright, clear new light. See in full, bright colors, after years of grey. I suddenly cared about my body and what I put into it, about my health, and appearance… I’m happier in my own skin now than I have ever been.
What does this mean going forward? Well, to start with, there will be the obvious adjustments in names and pronouns when talking to/referring to me. My name is Rachel Louise Relat. You can call me Rachel or just Chel, feel free to find whatever is most comfortable and easiest for you to adjust to. My pronouns are she/her.
Other than that, I’m pretty much the same person I’ve always been, just happier and more open about myself. I still like writing and photography and video games and reading and old planes and sailing. I’m still working on the Uncertain War trilogy and on the third book in the Ascalon series (and way behind schedule on both!). I’ll need a bit of time to get the listings updated on Amazon and I haven’t quite decided if I’m keeping the site as is or if I’ll change it, but that’s about the only small delays I can foresee…
Most of all, I’m glad to finally have this out in the open so I can start 2023 as myself!
If you got this far, thank you for taking the time to read this. If you want to find out more about Trans people in general, check out this website http://transwhat.org/confused/, or feel free to ask me!
Love
Chel.
Transition
2022.10.31Some pretty big changes are coming this week that are going to shuffle things around quite a bit, be ready to update your bookmarks… and maybe some assumptions! It’s something that’s been a long time coming and I’m very excited to finally be able to share it!
The Babadook
2022.10.24This isn’t really a mini-review, but I saw The Babadook (2014) again for the first time in years. I don’t quite remember my take back then, but I really liked it now, probably one of the best representation of grief on screen that I’ve seen, blending the imaginary with the real to show how utterly destructive and annihilating unchecked emotions can be… and a poignant final message that sets it apart from others in the genre.
Beautifully done.
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Coincidentally, as I post this, I realize I saw it on the 23rd, meaning it was seven months to the day since Dad left us. Seems oddly fitting…
The Prince
2022.09.24
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What an absolute blast it was to be this evening at the Southwark Playhouse in London to see The Prince by Abigail Thorn (of Philosophy Tube fame). It’s clever and weird and witty and oh so funny, folks, it’s been a delight from start to finish. Congratulations to Abigail and her fellow cast members and crew, and thank you for a thoroughly unforgettable performance. 💜👏
rambling
2022.06.23Just realized today’s three months since my dad’s gone. Coincidentally, for the last couple of nights I’ve had dreams where he was and we talked. Nothing special, the kind of everyday stuff when I visited my parents, except in one where they wanted to sell the house. I didn’t want them to sell the house. I think I’m afraid my mom might want to sell the house at some point, I was gutted when they sold my grandpa’s house in Spain a few years back, I keep dreaming of buying it back some day. I’m very attached to things I guess. Anyway in the haze of semi-wakeness, where the dream continues but it starts to break down because I know it’s a dream… I was glad I could see him again.
Mini-review: a double feature
2022.06.20Here’s something for a change: Yesterday’s movie yield was a double feature 😎
(mild spoilers ahead)
Let’s start with Tenet: I finally saw it after noticing that it had landed on HBOMax. I went into it without knowing anything more than it being about a cop and some kind of time travel… I liked it a lot, and that feeling was from the get go, not from analyzing it afterwards, and it makes it probably my favorite Nolan flick after Inception. I liked the twist on time travel and the way it goes about narration, reminded me of Memento in several ways. (Incidentally, it also completely ruins one of my WIPs called Tempus Fugit that had very similar time travel elements with a cop investigating crimes then traveling in time and realizing it was him doing it, leading to interesting confrontations, thank you so much Nolan for showing me I’m not that original…) It’s well thought and runs on other proven time travel tropes that tie everything together neatly, and of course being a Nolan movie the cinematography and SFX are exceptional.
Later that day, I had scheduled a showing of Everything Everywhere All At Once: I also went in blind, only knowing it was a comedy with multiverse stuff and it had Michelle Yeoh in it. This thing is absolutely bonkers, I loved it. It’s fresh, full of inventiveness and so well written, it’s hilarious and it’s emotional, and it’s also so profoundly human at its core, putting its characters first and letting them deal with the increasing absurdities of the premise. It’s a breath of fresh air and what cinema always aspired to be: a mirror, a dream, a glimpse of magic, a window through which we watch reflections of ourselves do what we can’t… Pure joy.
It’s funny that I ended up seeing both of those on the same day because they’re so diametrically opposed, and somewhat complementary, visions of sci-fi. Both deal with EOTWAWKI but one is frantically world-spanning, serious and heavy with big speeches and moral conflicts and secret organizations, while the other remains centered around a single family that doesn’t quite know how it got into this mess but just rolls with it. One deals with humanity as a whole, more a concept that needs to be saved than actual people (Kat and her son excepted, I suppose, giving the Protagonist a moral anchor of sorts), while the other deals with the human, bending genres to play with more intimate themes so universal that anyone can relate: the greener grass just beyond one’s grasp, the roads not taken, regrets, and love. And, for some reason, hot dogs and googly eyes.
Yesterday was a very good day.
100 reasons to go to the movies…
2022.05.22I came across a list I had made in 2003 of 100 reasons why I loved cinema. My love of the silver screen still stands, but I had to refresh a few entries with some recent refs before I could present it below 🙂
1 – “What have you been doing all these years?” – “I’ve been going to bed early.”
2 – You want to move to Montana to learn fly fishing
3 – “I am your father, Luke”
4 – Steward Granger and Edwige Feuillère in “Woman Hater”
5 – The pale face of Alec Guiness when he first appears in “The Lady Killers”
6 – Anita Ekberg wades into a fountain and you want to be Marcello Mastroianni.
7 – Tiffany’s will never look the same at dawn
8 – “We’re gonna need a bigger boat”
9 – Monsters do exist in movies
10 – Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration
11 – “We have all the time in the world.”
12 – You still hope Steve McQueen is going to make it in “The Great Escape” even though you’ve already seen the movie a zillion times
13 – The race in Ben-Hur
14 – James Stewart discovers that life is wonderful, and it’s wonderful
15 – The bridge scene in Sicario
16 – You know who is Kaiser Söse and wish you didn’t so that you can find out again
17 – “I am Wind In His Hair! Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?”
18 – “So, I hear you, like, ran into these things before? – “Yeah.” – “What did you do?” – “I died.”
19 – You want to spend your next holiday in Rome
20 – “My name is Lymon Zerga”
21 – You can prove that Sherlock Holmes made a cameo in Star Wars
22 – Peugeot will still make cars in 2049
23 – You are not afraid of witches provided there’s some water nearby
24 – “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!”
25 – The mere reference to Groundhog day makes you laugh
26 – You never take showers in motels anymore
27 – Taming leopards is nothing more than knowing the right song
28 – “Oh, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
29 – You know who Wong Fei-Hong is, and you just don’t want to mess with him
30 – “Ooh, I’m really scared. Help! There’s a peck with an acorn pointed at me!”
31 – Tiny bits of burning paper flying in the night in the name of the father
32 – You know the names of the magnificent seven by heart
33 – Communication with aliens is nothing more than knowing the right tune
34 – “You jump, I jump, remember?”
35 – “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”
36 – You’d like to know if that smoke shop really exists in that special corner of Brooklyn
37 – What the heck is in Marcellus’ briefcase?
38 – “Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”
39 – Youth pills elaborated by monkeys work too well
40 – “Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself. It always ends bad!”
41 – “I’m the guy telling you the way it is.”
42 – You’ll still wonder if Totoros really exist
43 – You know the names of the seven samurais by heart
44 – Fantasy fight: Captain Vallo vs Captain Jack Sparrow
45 – “Me fifth element – Supreme being. Me protect you.”
46 – “Death is… whimsical… today.”
47 – Paula Alquist is right to be afraid of gaslights.
48 – “Truth is, I help horses with people problems.”
49 – There are some fish that cannot be caught. It’s not that they are faster or stronger than other fish, they’re just touched by something extra.
50 – The mere reference to Groundhog day makes you laugh
51 – Richard Gere proves that statement #40 is not always accurate
52 – Vincent Pryce’s escape in ‘Brazil’
53 – 12 monkeys are not always what they seem
54 – Al Pacino’s TV in “Heat”
55 – You know where snow comes from
56 – The milk and the cookies in “Man on the Moon”
57 – Painting a whole town in bright red and renaming it “Hell”
58 – Lessons from the past: in “Star Trek” there are no flies in teleport rooms
59 – You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter…
60 – Skynet bugged on August 29th 1997
61 – When you’re on acid, Las Vegas looks… different
62 – Father Gabriel’s clarinet in “The Mission”
63 – Wayne’s guitar in “Wayne’s World”
64 – Christopher Walken’s haunting eyes
65 – “My house, My rules, My coffee”
66 – The cow boy in “The Big Lebowsky”
67 – The way of the samurai is honorable but deadly
68 – Note to self: a cross won’t work against a Jewish vampire
69 – “The bartender never gets killed.” well, sometimes, he does
70 – Lefty in “Donnie Brasco”
71 – Tim Roth’s hoax to be admitted in the gang in “Reservoir Dogs”
72 – “You ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?”
73 – “Grease” is the word
74 – “I am a man of constant sorrow” is in your top 10
75 – “There can be only one.” Sequels not accepted.
76 – William H. Macy in “Fargo”
77 – Everyone says “I love you”
78 – John MacLane’s bare feet
79 – Greta Garbo’s laugh
80 – Spock is allied with the body snatchers
81 – Nobody puts Baby in the corner
82 – “War’s first casualty is innocence”
83 – You can watch “Mulholland Drive” fifty times and still understand nothing
84 – You know that “the rain is Spain stays mainly in the plain” and you pronounce it perfectly
85 – William Munny is the best cow boy character ever
86 – Saturday nights will never be the same
87 – You learn all the prime numbers in case there’s a cube somewhere
88 – The plastic bag in “American Beauty”
89 – Perhaps “nobody’s perfect”, but some movies are
90 – You can tell the difference between “Rio Bravo” and “El Dorado”
91 – Tyler Durden has a funny way to tell stories
92 – Marty MacFly’s car really can fly
93 – Harrison Ford’s hat in “American Graffiti”
94 – A piano left on a beach for weeks can still make good music
95 – Rick nods in Casablanca, and everything changes
96 – “I have very fond memories of that dog.”
97 – Cross over: you just know that Captain Nemo’s real name is Lidenbrok.
98 – The Untouchables will always be four, even in the end
99 – Yul Brynner is a terrific terminator
100 – Life is like a box of chocolate, and sometimes it’s the kind you like