M.E. Kinkade

March 27, 2014 · 9:45 am

Review: Transmetropolitan (all)

Transmetropolitan V. 1-10 by Warren Ellis

Transmetropolitan is a comic book, and anyone remotely interested in dystopias needs to immediately stop what she is doing, go buy all these books, and read them before continuing with life. Yes, it’s that good.

This is a review for ALL 10 collected volumes. I’m going to write the review in the style of the comics, so if you’re ridiculously sensitive to explicit language, you’d better stop reading now. (But it’s really your loss.)

To say Spider Jerusalem is a muckraking journalist is to put it lightly. No–Spider does not just rake muck; he wallows in it while tripping on sixteen kinds of heroine pumped directly into his veins through the City’s sewers while he ejaculates into the ensuing muck. He is dirty, foul, horrible–and the only goddamn person left in the entire City who has the balls to take on the corrupt government and the injustices of a city of the future.

He is a despicable, low-down uncaring asshole because he cares too much to let the city (and the country) destroy itself through ignorance and petty distractions.

So: Transmetropolitan follows journalist Spider Jerusalem as he gets reacquainted with the City, a (not far enough) far-future metropolis swarming with all the problems of real cities, if the problems were turned to 11 and injected with a form of swarming AIDS. In the style of many brilliant authors before him, Ellis is working with hyper-exaggerated features of the real world to show us the many problems with our own–and it’s unnerving.

First, be impressed with the level of deranged thought Ellis has put into his City: of course there is porn for children! And people commonly eat the meat of endangered animals–or heck, try out some food from Long Pig (don’t worry, they’re only clones!). “Maker” technology allows you to create pretty much anything at home, and journalists sometimes employ “source gas” to record info from unwitting sources while still managing to make it past security. While you’re enjoying the future, make sure you get one of the many DNA splices–try the one that allows you to take massive doses of drugs and alcohol without dying. Or maybe you’re totally past the human experience–why not join the Transients and splice with alien DNA? Or really embrace the cloud and become nothing more than a bunch of floating molecules. Groovy.

It’s amazing, and immersive, and simultaneously plausible and disgustingly far-fetched.

Much like Spider Jerusalem. It’s like the Deadpool of journalists, seemingly throwing normal tactics out the window. But really, he’s just good. In fact, I know journalists like him. Spider is, if anything, alarmingly realistic. He’s devoted in a time when many reporters seem like shills. He’s dogged and willing to take risks. He has a gift for it, something that can’t really be taught and must come from some burning fuel within. He’s addicted to the thrill of the chase–and sometimes that puts people he talks to in the line of danger. But mostly, that makes people want to open up to him. Because he loves them, even while he hates them to the core.

In other words, Spider Jerusalem is my hero. I want to give Warren Ellis a hug for writing something so transgressive, so daring and truly sickening, and I want to make this series required reading for EVERYONE. The world would be better for it if more people paid as much attention to goings-on as Spider does.

Go buy these books. You may find it hard to read them sometimes, but don’t you dare fucking stop. You need to take your medicine, world.

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Query Conundrum

Fellow authors–I need advice.

If you have a nontraditional story format, how do you handle page requests?

Both of the novels I’m currently querying for are–unusual, to say the least. I actually think that’s a strength of them, but I’m worried now that it is handicapping my querying. One, Undead Rising, is a gamebook, in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure books.

The other, Alt.World, is told through the eyes of two main characters–but “news” articles illuminating the pre-dystopian past, as well as cryptic messages, are folded in. All these pieces make complete sense by the end of the book, but at the beginning, it’s pretty open-ended and…well, a bit weird, if you’re expecting the normal “Chapters 1-3.” (It’s not unlike Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin or The Handmaid’s Tale or maybe even Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. The pros do it! But then again, they’re pros, they can do whatever…)

I recently had a page request for Alt.World, and while there was praise in the response I got back (“Solid writing!” *swoon*), she was (understandably, perhaps) confused by the interspersed news articles and the preliminary far-too-cryptic-to-be-yet-understood messages. And she passed on it.

So I’m wondering what I should do: send in 50 pages, excluding the news articles/messages, etc. to make an easier read for agents by putting it in a format they expect? Or continue sending it as it is, as the story truly is, and hope to eventually find an agent who “gets” it–and possibly creating a harder path for myself in the meantime?

Anyone have any experience in this situation?

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Tagged as agent, publishing, query, science fiction, writing

March 20, 2014 · 9:23 am

Review: MaddAddam

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Margaret Atwood clearly enjoyed writing the conclusion to her most recent post-apocalyptic trilogy. Her enthusiasm is sometimes palpable. There are mini-jokes and obscure references, and at times you can almost hear her snort with amusement at a turn of phrase. It’s a fascinating conclusion to a possible future, but the story is uneven and ends with a fizzle rather than a bang. (Perhaps that’s the way a story about “life finding a way” should end, however.)

MaddAddam completes the story begun with Oryx and Crake and continued with The Year of the Flood. The post-human creatures known as the Crakers are developing in ways their mad-scientist creator hadn’t anticipated, but they are still fundamentally helpless against hostility and don’t truly comprehend fear. The group of former cult members known as the God’s Gardeners and the big-brained MaddAddam scientists who helped create the Crakers are the only (known) humans left: except for the delirious Jimmy and two less-than-human Painballers, men who survived a man-eat-man prison game and now feel nothing but a need for violence.

The story mostly follows Toby–the ultra-practical former God’s Gardener to whom the Crakers gravitate–and Zeb, the man who bridged the gap between the God’s Gardeners and the MaddAddamites. Frustratingly, even though this feels like it truly ought to be Toby’s story outright, much of the interesting action is left to Zeb. The reader finally understands (most of) what happened with Jimmy and Crake and God’s Gardener leader Adam One.

It turns out that the day-to-day mechanics of survival are pretty mundane, and though that is the part o the story left for Toby to recount, there’s just not a lot that hasn’t already been covered. Besides, unlike Jimmy/Snowman in “Oryx and Crake,” Toby and Zeb are pretty good at basic survival. Though it isn’t glamorous, the basic needs are met. That leaves Toby with little to actually tell the reader.

Zeb, on the other hand, turns out to be a bountiful mine of information, as he (beyond believability) was present for just about every critical juncture in the Story of How The World Bit It. Zeb is not just Adam One’s right-hand man; he’s his brother. From their twisted abusive childhoods up through the discovery of super-genius Glenn/Crake and the founding of the God’s Gardeners cult, Zeb knows everything interesting, and he recounts his life story to Toby as they slowly allow themselves to fall in love.

For an otherwise intense and compelling story, the touches of romance between the two come off as cloying and unnecessary. Toby frets over “does he love me or not” more than I cared for. Frankly, it seemed a bit unlike her–though of course that could be the point. It felt like the romance was not there because it developed naturally, but because Toby needed something else to talk/think about beyond “are we going to survive today?” (Personally, survival alone would have been enough reason for me to read more.)

The best parts are undoubtedly when Toby recounts watered-down versions of Zeb’s stories to the incredulous and trusting but incredibly naive Crakers. Here we see one way myths could have been founded: trying to understand something that is beyond our scope. These parts are hilarious and frustrating and awe-inspiring all at the same time.

(Some spoilers below)
Personally, I’m frustrated with the way historically feminist writer Margaret Atwood handled the female characters. Sometimes it seems like Toby is the only useful female in the whole story, and that, apparently, is only because she is post-menopausal and otherwise, apparently, useless. Rebecca, who–while certainly a secondary character–at least had a distinct personality in “The Year of the Flood,” was reduced to scenery. Ren and Amanda are vehicles for other peoples’ trauma; they were not only assaulted by the Painballers, but raped by the Crakers, in a confusing scene that is later referred to only as a “cultural misunderstanding.” I didn’t even BELIEVE a rape had actually happened until Amanda turned up pregnant; some clearer, less vague, writing at that pivotal scene would have been helpful. And then, in a final affront, when it comes to the critical battle, ALL the women–except for Toby, who as we said “did not count”–are excluded because of concerns over their well-being. It is ridiculous, to me, that so many would have spent their time getting pregnant, and all at roughly the same time.

And after the final battle, the story just…sort of stops. Toby loses all her voice, and the story shifts over to one of the Crakers, a character who grows from a boy to a man during the novel. While this transition is perhaps inevitable, as the Crakers represent the “next phase” of humanity, it is unsatisfying. This is Toby’s story, and for it to be passed off without her even having a say in it feels incomplete and unfair. Rather than the “drop the mic” ending we got in “Oryx and Crake,” this ending feels like sneaking offstage while the audience isn’t looking. It feels like Atwood just didn’t know what to do so she just…stopped.

The book isn’t bad–certainly not–but I admit to being a touch disappointed in this final story in this rare post-apocalyptic survival story. I’d give it 3.5 stars.

This book could probably be read alone, but you’ll get a lot more out of the series as a whole if you read them in sequence. Or you could just read “Oryx and Crake” and be satisfied; that’s the best of the series, anyway.

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Tagged as books, dystopia, good fun books, review, science fiction

March 18, 2014 · 10:07 am

Someone To Rely On

This time last year, a friend of mine was breathing with new lungs. His life was held in the balance, and it was yet to be seen if his body would accept someone else’s organs or if he would die. (I wrote this short story in his honor.)

My friend/former teacher has cystic fibrosis, and medical science said he should have died a long while ago. But he was lucky enough to live in a part of the country where researchers were actively studying CF, and was employed as a teacher with understanding bosses who made it work even when he was struggling.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder where the lungs slowly, inevitably, fill with mucus and fluid. Essentially, it’s drowning from the inside out. It was terrifying to watch. Just over a year ago, my friend was knocking on the pearly gates. His skin had a grey pallor; he hauled an oxygen tank around with him everywhere he went and had a bone-rattling cough; he was so thin his pants sagged where the belt was tied and his bones showed under his skin.

But David received a miracle: he was given the gift of new lungs, via a “risky” lung transplant.

And the reason he got those lungs, those incredible, life-saving lungs, was because he had a community.

This Sunday he told the members of the church we attend that it was our contribution that helped get him the lungs. See, there are a lot of people who desperately need a second chance, but for some stupid reason you have to opt-in to be an organ donor, rather than the much more logical and efficient opt-out method (seriously: sign up to be an organ donor. You won’t need those parts after you are gone, and you could literally save a life). So to pick who will get lungs, in this case, there is a long list of criteria, and those on the list are ordered in terms of crisis. You can’t get on the list unless you will literally die without a transplant, but you have to be really close to dying to actually get it. It’s crazy, and frightening to watch.

But one of the criteria was a support group. And my church was that support group for David. Even though his family lives out of town, our church was there to help him. After a lung transplant, you can’t do a lot. They pried his chest apart and took out organs, then slapped some new ones in there. It’s not an easy recovery. But the hospital is too dangerous a place to stay, since David has to take a battery of drugs just so his own body won’t attack the new lungs. Basically, it was all too easy for David to get sick.

So David needed someone to care for him but couldn’t be at the hospital. His parents did eventually make it to town, and they did a lot of the day-to-day stuff. But members of our church filled in the gaps, provided meals, provided company, wrote notes, prayed, sat with him in the hospital, and–recently–took him to and from his 1-year anniversary checkup (he has 103% lung capacity now!)

It really hammered home, for me, how important it is that we build a community for ourselves. It’s so easy–so incredibly easy–now to live in isolation. Self-imposed isolation where we connect mostly online and don’t have a lot of face-to-face interaction. And I get it: I’m home alone now as I write this, and I’d be annoyed as heck if someone else where here. I need space to think.

But we need balance, too. Because someday, God forbid, we might need help. We might need that community. And that’s the kind of help you can’t find at the last minute. You have to plant those seeds early.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always good at that. But I am grateful for David’s reminder: not just that there are miracles in this world, and that we can’t take a single breath for granted, but also that we need other people. I’m going to work on my community. I hope you’ll take a moment to show your appreciation for yours.

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Tagged as community, friendship, life, organ donation, science

March 15, 2014 · 11:49 am

Imaginary Books From Real Books

This is a pretty fun list: pretend books mentioned in real books. It’s designed as a “library,” so (rather inconveniently) organized by imaginary author, alphabetically (personally, I’d prefer to have them listed by the real book in which they are included).

It looks like the curator of this rather impressive and oddball list hasn’t read Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic books, which is a pity. Sandman has a whole library of pretend books, the premise being it’s a collection of all the books the authors dreamed of writing but never actually got around to. It’s a fascinating list, and shows an interesting peek at sigh authors’ (imagined) psyches.

Still, take a moment and peruse the books that only exist as a figment of someone else’s imagination. It’s sort of fun.

You’re Incompetent and You Know It (Clap Your Hands)

I discovered a really awesome model of learning recently. It’s known in psychology circles as “The Four Stages of Learning” and is frequently shown as a little four-part box. (Personally, I prefer a list, because it’s a progression, not a hopscotch situation.)

The four stages explain what it is like to learn something new: you move from not knowing how much you don’t know to eventually being completely proficient.

The four steps are:

Unconsciously Incompetent- You have no idea how hard something is because you’ve never tried it.
Consciously Incompetent– You’ve tried something and found out it’s actually not that easy. This is a potentially embarrassing place to be.
Consciously Competent– You’ve worked hard and now you know you’re actually doing it pretty well.
Unconsciously Competent– You’re so good that you don’t even have to think about it anymore, it just happens naturally.

As a writer, my guess is you spend at least some time feeling Consciously Incompetent, especially when there’s a deadline approaching and you have writers’ block and it all sucks. But with time and practice, you’ll be Consciously Competent, and that’s sort of an amazing and magical feeling.

I feel like Ira Glass’s quote about creativity strongly reflects this growth (I’ve marked the stages in brackets):

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.[Unconsciously Incompetent] But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. [Consciously Incompetent] A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, [Consciously Competent] and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Plus I have a feeling the folks who hear you’re a writer and say something idiotic like “oh, well you just stay home and write stuff all day, that’s not real work at all!” are just Unconsciously Incompetent. If they ever dared sit down and try to do it, they’d quickly realize that gap, too.

It’s good for our brains for us to move through these steps by trying new things. It’s also really hard. Do you make an effort to stretch yourself and learn something new? (I’m taking swing dance lessons. I am SO consciously incompetent right now!)

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Tagged as learning, writing

March 11, 2014 · 9:44 am

Amtrak to Offer Free* Trips for Writers

This is one of the wonders of social media, folks: someone has a good idea that involves a large organization, large organization hears about it and agrees it’s a good idea, makes it happen. Incredible.

The idea is that trains are particularly good for inducing writing. This story doesn’t explain further, but I have theories:

Trains get you out of your comfort zone
You’re trapped for hours, which halts many avoidance techniques
You can look at the window to see things pass by. The changing view is nice to look at when your brain needs a break.
Internet is spotty, if available at all (at least in my area). No hours of “research” (ie. looking at cats being silly)
No one wants to talk to strangers, so people pretty much leave you alone.

I don’t know if this is something I would do. I rode the train to and from college a few times, and it was a weird anachronistic experience. That probably has a lot to do with my routes: Texas to Missouri doesn’t get a lot of traffic. (It was somewhat more busy on the St. Louis to Chicago route. Chicago was absolutely bustling; the Texas stops were very much out of an old Western.)

I wasn’t actively writing at the time, but it would have been a good place for it; I got a lot of reading done, and met a really sweet little old lady from a very small town, and a young family from Wisconsin (they said the cheese thing was true.) It was nice to be forced to interact with strangers in that way, if a little weird. It was only exciting to be on a train for about 2 hours, then the rhythm got a little sleep-inducing. (I quite liked buying food from the little restaurant, even if it wasn’t very good. I felt like I was in Harry Potter.) And falling asleep while sitting upright in a chair you’ve been stuck in all day sort of sucked, especially when the train stopped at 3 a.m. to pick up more passengers (goodbye sleep!).

It was an odd experience, but not a bad one. I wouldn’t be happy to get to a place then instantly leave again; I’d want at least a day or so in the new place. It probably would be productive, and at least makes for an interesting story in and of itself.

Would you want an Amtrack residency? Does writing on a train appeal to you?

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Tagged as amtrak, residency, trains, writing

Video

Zombie Love Song

In which we ask the age-old question, “Is there room in your undead heart for me?”

Plus it’s quite catchy.

Need more zombies? Go buy Undead Rising: Decide Your Destiny, available in print and on Kindle. Your choices shape the story! When you die in the book, sometimes you rise again as a zombie, unlocking new adventures.

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March 8, 2014 · 10:49 am

March 6, 2014 · 10:15 am

Review: South Beach Diet Supercharged

The South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for Life by Arthur Agatston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don’t read a lot of diet and fitness books, so I’m approaching this review not as an expert but as a ‘regular joe’ reader. I started the diet as a New Years’ resolution at the recommendation of a doctor. I’m glad I had the book because I referred to it many times, but you could probably get away without buying it if you were already pretty dedicated.

It’s divided into three sections: first, an explanation of why this diet is supposed to work. Second comes a breakdown of the three phases of the diet, with an explanation, food list, and sample menu. Third is a workout routine, with drawings of how to complete the workouts and generally why it’s a good idea.

I found the first section, the explanation, sufficiently detailed to convince me that Arther Agatston is a real doctor who believes in the science behind his diet. The nerd in me would have liked some annotations of studies to look up research on my own, but Agatston used medical terminology where appropriate and made the language relatable but not overly simplified. I like that. I found the argument mostly compelling and had confidence that South Beach was not some crazy fad diet but was a plausible way to eat for a short period of time for weight loss purposes.

The actual breakdown of the three phases of the diet was helpful. I liked the sample meal plan in particular, even though it was quickly apparent that there was no way I was going to have that much diversity in my diet: if I made a snack one day, odds were good that I was eating that snack for the next four days, so I had better like it. So I wouldn’t say the sample was necessarily realistic or practical, but it was a good model to work off of. The three phases are broken down well, easy to understand, and I really appreciated that Agatston goes out of his way to insist that the most restrictive phase, while the fastest at inducing weight loss, is no practical way to eat all the time. Indeed, this gave me a lot more faith in him as a doctor, too.

I mostly ignored the exercise portions. It quickly became obvious that the target audience for the book as a whole was middle-aged people who had never performed exercise and who were much more overweight and out of practice than I am. Because I had already completed a Couch to 5K running program in addition to weekly dance classes, I feel like I’m advanced pretty far past this baseline group and the exercises were not relevant or useful to me. So I skipped that whole section.

Also, the book is shiny. This was probably floated as a great marketing idea, because it certainly draws attention, but if you’re like me and a little embarrassed to admit that you’re on a diet, this basically means you don’t want to take the book anywhere or read it in public because it is SO eye-catching that everyone is sure to know. I have the paperback version, and that nicely fits in a purse or maybe even a pocket, so I took it to the grocery store once, but the distracting cover made me self-conscious and uncomfortable.

As for the diet itself: I found it was successful, but difficult. I did not “cheat” in the critical first phase, but that also meant I spent far more than my normal food budget in order to prepare the approved foods and was not able to eat at any restaurant. Even in the later phases, eating at a restaurant is ridiculously challenging and it’s hard to not inadvertently “cheat.” While that’s plausible in an ideal dieting world, in real life a lot of social interaction happens in restaurants. Not eating there meant skipping a lot of social time.

It also meant devoting a great deal of energy and focus on what the heck I was going to eat. I had to plan more intensely for every single meal; there are no shortcuts on this diet. Be prepared to spend a lot of time chopping vegetables. In fact, this diet is the one thing that has made me really want to get a food processor. I struggle to imagine what this would be like for someone who also had to cook for a family.

That’s my other criticism of the diet: though Agatston claims that it is workable on any budget, I have a hard time believing that is true. I blew my typical grocery AND restaurant budget out of the water on grocery items alone, and that was even when I looked for bargains. For some things, you practically are required to shop at a store like Sprouts or Whole Foods just to find something (please, no one makes wheat tortillas. That’s just crazy, man), and those types of stores are not cheap.

It may be plausible in theory to stick to this diet on a low-income budget, but you’ll be eating the same thing every single meal, which doesn’t sound like a recipe for success to me. This is very much a diet dreamed up by a middle-aged, wealthy man. Who maybe as a personal chef to spend all day laboring over difficult to prepare, multi-step recipes. Or at least has an hour to cook a lunch from scratch rather than trying to pack something.

I have found the diet successful and am mostly continuing on phase 2 until I meet my goal, but after completing the initial 8 weeks I broke and let myself eat a burger. And it was delicious, proving that Agatston’s premise that food from “before” wouldn’t be as appealing is absolutely crazy. Besides, I needed a mini “food vacation,” just to relax from some of the rigor of trying to maintain such a restrictive diet. I’ll continue, and it was successful, but I don’t know that I’ll worry about following it to the letter.

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How To Make Paper Roses

Because I am a foolish and cheap person, I am making paper flowers for my wedding. For what? I’m not sure exactly; I just know I want them. For centerpieces, for bouquets, for boutonniere, for whatever.

But they are $7 each to buy! (Though there are some really beautiful bouquets for sale on Etsy, if you’ve got more money than time).

I have a dictionary I rescued from a trashcan, and I like crafty things anyway, plus I figured making paper flowers would be a good way to get to do wedding things in the months before I could do anything practical.

As it turns out, it’s good that I started early. That $7 isn’t for supplies or difficulty: it’s for TIME. These suckers just take awhile. I can typically make two or maybe three during a movie; that’s about 30 to 45 minutes per flower.

So if you are brave, have some time on your hands, and want some cheap but pretty decorations, here is how to make them (cobbled together from several online tutorials and my own screw-ups).

1. Gather Supplies

I have my dictionary (circa 1970, a very good year), floral tape, scissors, Tacky Glue, and floral wire. I bought the Tacky Glue, floral wire, and floral tape at the craft store for less than $5. You could probably use Elmer’s glue or something similar instead, but this is NOT a craft for hot glue unless you have very burn-resistant fingers. Tacky Glue works great and dries pretty quickly.

With just these supplies, you’ll be able to make 30 flowers with stems. (You could make far more if you just need short stems).

2. Cut Out Petals

You’ll want petals in about 4 sizes: itty bitty; sort of roundish; large; and giant. They look sort of like Hobbit-hole doors or church windows. For the littlest ones, you’ll want the flat bottom bit to be at least 1/4 of an inch or you won’t have enough paper to work with. The big ones can be up to 3 or 4 inches, but you need them to be less wide at the base; anything more than an inch, inch and a half or so gets really unwieldy.

I don’t use a template, and I don’t really think you should either. Some oddity is useful for a project like this, and makes them look more like real flowers. Just get a range of sizes and you’ll be set.

I find I work best conveyor-belt style, so I cut out all the petals first. You’re going to need more petals than you think you will, so just make a bunch. With thin dictionary paper, you can cut out 4 pages at a time; just stack them together and cut away. I prefer to cut from the bottom edge and work up, so all my words are left-to-right, but this really doesn’t matter in the end. It’s just easier for me.

3. Crumple

Now that you have painstakingly cut out all those petals, you need to crumple them up. Take a few in your hand at a time and wad them up into little balls. Then uncrumple them a bit. You want your paper to be wrinkly; it makes the flowers look a little more realistic (trust me, it really does). I find it useful to sort of push the petal into my palm with the thumb of my opposite hand because this gives them a bit of a natural curve, but as long as you crumple them up, it doesn’t matter much. Crumple, then smooth out again.

4. Roll Edges

Now that you have crumpled them, you’re going to gently roll the edges back. Just the top, and for the smaller ones you may just make one roll; use your judgement. To roll the edges, I just fold the desired edge over a piece of floral wire and roll it between my fingers a bit until it takes the curl. This becomes the BACK side of the petal, the side that will face out.

Do this on all your petals. See how they lay differently now? They’re a tad more dynamic.

5. Prepare Your Floral Wire

Ok, so your petals are complete: now it’s time to get your floral wire ready. If you’ve got the long kind like you see here, bend it in half, then cut with your scissors (it make take a bit of work, but it’s doable). Bonus points if you have wire cutters.

This is an important step, one that I didn’t find in other tutorials! If you may be moving your flowers around at all (or, um, if you have cats like mine who will immediately pull any flowers out of a vase), you need to now put a little loop in the top of your wire. Just bend the pointy bit down on your newly shortened piece and fold it into itself. It doesn’t have to be very big at all; you’re just making a place for the petals to “grip” so that when you drop your flowers (or your cat knocks them all off the counter), you don’t also lose your bud off its stem.

6. Glue On Petals

Time to glue on your petals! Start with a dot of glue on one of your small petals. You’re going to place your wire loop right in that glue dot and then fold the petal over it, left to right. Basically just pinch it. Count to three. Your Tacky Glue should then be dry enough for you to keep going.In order for your rose to look like a real flower, you need to alternate your petal “start points.” Basically, don’t stack them all up behind each other. At this point, the project is less science than art; just do what feels right (bonus points if “what feels right” is a Fibonacci sequence, like in nature. I…am not that good).

Work small to big, using just a bit of glue on each petal. When you get to the bigger petals, your dot of glue will be some a thin line–just run your glue along the bottom, then pinch it around. Keep going until you feel like your flower is flower-like. Like this:

7. Tape It Up

Next, you’ll need your floral tape. Cut yourself a piece about an inch and a half long.

The tape should be slightly tacky but not actually sticky at this point, and it should be pretty easy to roll off. Cut it with scissors; tearing it is hard (on purpose).

You’re going to pinch your floral tape at the base of your rose. You’ll then slightly pull on your floral tape, causing it to stretch and become sticky. Wrap it around and slightly up onto the paper. This, for our horticulturalists in the crowd, will be how you make your sepal calyxes (everyone else: this is the thick green bit at the bottom of your flowers.)

It should look kinda like that. It will be thicker at the top, and naturally thin out toward the green floral wire.

8. Ta-Da! You’re Done!

Stick ’em in a vase and enjoy them! You may find the stems don’t “sit” well in the vase; the paper can be a bit too heavy. I just twist several wires together and that holds them in pretty well. If you’re using them for display, you could now put in some pretty stones or otherwise camouflage the floral wire, but mine are only temporarily in a vase, so this is perfect for me!

Good luck on your paper flowers! Let me know what you use them for.

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Filed under Crafts

Tagged as books, crafts, paper flowers

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How To Make Paper Roses

1. Gather Supplies

2. Cut Out Petals

3. Crumple

4. Roll Edges

5. Prepare Your Floral Wire

6. Glue On Petals

7. Tape It Up

8. Ta-Da! You’re Done!

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