Ian Pierce

Category: Uncategorized

  • how i spent my saturday

    I had a pretty eventful Saturday, and I figured it might be nice to share some photos from it. As I’m sure people are aware, the No Kings protest went on across America, from massive cities to tiny hamlets, and Seattle was no exception. I went to check it out and show my support in the fight against fascism, and it was a great time. I’m so glad that across the country and the world, there were no violent incidents at all. I worried that if some idiot tried to start some shit, the right-wing media (and probably a lot of the mainstream media too, let’s be honest) would be trying to paint this movement as a violent insurrection no matter how small the incident was. That’s how they did after George Floyd’s murder, after all. The fact that they decided to drop the “scary violent Hamas Antifa Marxists” angle for a “these are just a bunch of old white people” argument just shows how successful we were in puncturing their bubble.

    First off, before heading to the Seattle Center for the protest, I had to get there. The Link was already crowded by the time I got on, and got more and more crowded with every stop.

    After I got off at Westlake and grabbed donuts and coffee at Top Pot, I made my way up 5th Avenue towards the Seattle Center. By that time the speeches had been going for about an hour, but there were still plenty of late arrivals.

    Then I finally arrived at the west lawn of the Seattle Center, where the speeches were being held. Back in April, I went to an earlier protest at the same site. There had been a lot of people there: tens of thousands.

    This put all of that to shame.

    I literally couldn’t fit through the crowds of people to see my representative, Pramila Jayapal, speak. I have been in mosh pits with less density. It was glorious.

    But we had only barely begun. It was time for the march down 5th Avenue towards downtown. The atmosphere was excellent. It was like a parade, which is exactly what it should have been. The best way to fight anger and hatred is with love and joy, and there was so much of both in that march.

    Even my axolotl brethren came out of the canals to join in the fun!

    We passed under the monorail tracks, waving and cheering every time a train went by. I sang verses from the Monorail song from the Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail”, much to the amusement of nearby fellow nineties kids.

    As we approached the convention center, I broke away from the crowd because I had plans to hang out with a friend at the Oddities and Curiosities Expo. When I arrived at the convention center, it was easy enough to follow the steady stream of alternative kids to the show floor, where plenty of strange and wondersome artifacts were on display for our purchasing enjoyment, from the bones of beasts…

    …to snakes in jars and butterflies in boxes…

    …to beautiful art and apparel in any color you want, provided it’s black…

    …to taxidermized beasts of many varieties.

    I ended up buying a shirt with the Sigil of Baphomet and the legend “KEEP ABORTION LEGAL”. My friend wasn’t quite so lucky. She ended up spending nearly $200 on fox skulls and various other bones. Still, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Seattle Saturday, from coffee and donuts in the morning to bottled snakes in the afternoon, together with friends old and new.

    ~ Ian (listening to Psychotic Banana by Hand of Juno)

  • portraits of a seattle autumn

    Growing up in California, I was always told that my home state didn’t have seasons. I knew that wasn’t true. California, especially the Central Coast where I spent my childhood, has seasons that can largely be determined by the color of the hills. Roughly, the three seasons are when the hills are green, when they’re yellow-brown, and when they’re orange and smoking.

    Still, here in a more northerly city, the changes in seasons are more dramatic, with flowers in spring, red leaves in fall, and even a scattering of snow in winter, on occasion. And autumn in Seattle is a special time. People claim that summer is the most beautiful season in my city. I admit that the clear blue skies, warm temperatures, and endless evenings have their charm. They certainly trick tourists who visit in July, all of whom are confused that they don’t need an umbrella or a rain jacket.

    (Side note: carrying an umbrella, especially for only slight rains, is one of the most telling signs that you’re a tourist in Seattle. The only more obvious indicator that you’re not from here is calling it “Pike’s Place Market”.)

    But in my opinion, Seattle is at its most beautiful in the rain. With the sharp edges of the world blurry and smeared by mist and rainfall, the streetlights reflected in puddles, the subdued colors… it may not be the sort of weather that gets put on the postcards, but it’s ours. And when the clouds crack and kindle the red and gold and green trees into bright fire… it’s enough to make you think this place is magical.

    Autumn is the perfect time for spookums and spectres. It’s a time for leather jackets and big boots. It’s a season for sitting inside a cafe with a nice beverage and a book, staring out the window and thinking about death. Since all of these things are my favorite, it stands to reason that fall is as well.

    Plus, this fall feels especially charged with meaning in Seattle. There’s a mayoral election, and to the shock and delight of many in the city, the Mariners are one game away from the World Series. They say autumn is the dying time of year, but somehow everything feels more alive than ever.

    ~ Ian (listening to Holocene by The Ocean)

  • do you ever just think about HOLES?

    Due to a combination of apathy and shame, I haven’t been to the dentist in years, and as such, my teeth are extremely fucked. That’s always my problem. I go for so long without visiting the dentist that I build up this extreme paranoia about going in for a routine cleaning, perhaps because I think the dentist will judge my moral fiber and overall value as a person based on my teeth’s decrepitude (and naturally, the opinion of a medical professional who I see every six months or so should naturally be valued more than those of my family, friends, or coworkers). At the point where carelessness tips over into embarrassment, it’s impossible to stop, until my teeth are riddled with holes like worms in the timber of an old-fashioned sailing vessel and beginning to fall out of my head.

    Intelligent design is a dumb concept for a lot of reasons, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that whatever creator god you believe in is a terrible engineer, and any reasonably clever eleven-year-old could build a better solution for the given problem. I wonder what proponents of intelligent design must think their creator’s thought process must have been when making teeth. I imagine it must have gone something like this:

    INT: GOD’S WORKSHOP UPON THE SIXTH DAY OF CREATION

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: I have developed “teeth”, which the beings that I have created in My image shall use to crush and render the organic matter that they require to sustain their metabolism. They shall be made of the hardest material in their bodies, and will last for tens of thousands of years, provided that they are not wet and covered in food residue, which is exactly the environment in which they shall primarily be utilized. If damaged, they cannot be healed or replaced, and injuries to them can result in intense pain, dismemberment, or death.

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: …

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: Fuck it; let’s ship it.

    It’s especially frustrating because there are so many other animals that have far better dentition than us idiot humans. For example, if we were really intended to be the culmination of the Creator’s design for the cosmos, maybe they could have chosen one of the following other options that they have provided for other organisms:

    1. Have teeth that are constantly being lost and replaced over the course of our lives, like our friend the shark do
    2. Have very long teeth that are continuously extruded from our gums and worn down as we chew our food, like our friend the horse do
    3. Have enamel reinforced by LITERAL IRON, like our friend the beaver do

    In addition, if we chose that latter option, we would have dental appendages in a vibrant shade of orange, which in addition to being evolutionarily practical, would be stylish in a vintage, midcentury sort of way.

    I have many other bug reports to give to the creator of the universe, if I turn out to be wrong and I will not be consigned to endless oblivion if I happen to breathe wrong for, like, two minutes. Currently the teeth stuff is highest priority, but I’m sure that might change the next time I play soccer and line up to block a free kick. Unless there’s an absolute cosmic necessity that my testicles cannot produce sperm unless they are several degrees COOLER than my core temperature, thus requiring me to carry them around in a sack outside my body for my whole life. But I shouldn’t question. It’s probably all part of God’s plan.

  • i take a whisky drink, i take a lager drink

    I’m trying to get back into the swing of blogging, now that I have a website again. It’s been something like ten years since I’ve done anything approaching a blog, and those ten years have been filled with a lot of things: moving to Seattle, starting and ending a podcast, getting a house with a friend (which subsequently led to the end of that friendship, but that’s a story for another time), teaching English in Madrid, writing and sending out thousands and thousands of pages of fiction, not to mention world events like the pandemic, war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, and the creeping spread of fascism in the United States… A lot of history can happen in ten years. Besides, even in the last few days, a lot has gone on with me personally. I started a new job, and literally one day later, I broke a tooth and ended up needing several emergency dentist visits. Needless to say, things have been stressful lately.

    When I was in college, from about 2012 to 2015, I had a blog. I was a kid then, and yet I thought that what I had to say to the world was so meaningful and profound. When you’re a teenager, there’s a weird combination of arrogance and doubt intertwined in your personality. Your thought process goes something like “Yes, the world sucks and everything is scary, but I’m awesome so I’ll be fine.” The thing is, the arrogance runs out faster than the doubt. For me, that arrogance was depleted by about 2014, when I had a moderate nervous breakdown that delayed my graduating and led to a period of time when I was sort of a hermit, living at my parents’ house and sleeping all day so I didn’t have to interact with people any more than was absolutely necessary. If it weren’t for the fact that I love going to coffee shops for caffeine and snacks, I might not have left the house at all. 

    I got out of that state after a few years of angst, medication, and meeting with a shitty therapist. That doubt was still there, however. I didn’t blog for a lot of reasons, mostly because I felt like I’d be some kind of imposter if I did. Maybe when I’m published, I thought, people will take me seriously. I guess the reason I waited was because I didn’t take myself seriously. I craved external validation, and only when I got that would I give myself permission to actually make a website. 

    Really, I had a classic case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome. The less you know about a topic, the more you overestimate your own skills. When I was in college, I thought I was shit hot, that I was only a few months, or even weeks, before I broke through the publication ranks and became the award-winning, bestselling author that I knew was my destiny. A decade and hundreds of rejections dissuaded me from that notion. Instead of being a transcendent literary genius, I was just another kid with big dreams, writing checks with his mouth that his ass couldn’t cash. 

    Maybe that’s a sign of how much I’ve progressed in my writing skills. The fact that I have so much doubt about whether I’m any good or not – whether there even is such a thing as good writing – means that I’ve actually hugely improved over the past decade and a bit. I have to tell myself this: that hubris is the worst thing for any creator. Once you think you’re untouchable, that’s the moment you’re ripe for a fall. 

    Still, beneath all that doubt, there’s a sliver of arrogance left in me. Maybe the ratio of doubt to arrogance is about 90/10. Maybe it’s even 95/5. Still, as long as there’s that remnant of arrogance left – combined with its cousin, sheer bloody-minded determination – I’ll keep going. As famed anarcho-punks Chumbawamba said, “I get knocked down, but I get up again.” Maybe a little arrogance isn’t entirely a bad thing. 

  • the meteor story

    Last summer, I went on a trip with my parents to Vancouver Island. It was an epic ten-day road trip. My mom would fly to Seattle, where she’d stay in my apartment for a couple days, then my dad would pick us up in his F-150. We’d take the ferry from Port Angeles, then, with a group of other overlanders, we would drive across the island, camping by lakes and rivers, enjoying the serenity of nature and the challenge of navigating difficult back roads. 

    The day after my mom arrived in Seattle, she got a text from her brother that her mother, who everyone in the family calls Muz, wasn’t eating. The nursing home where she lives would keep an eye on her, but we should be prepared, just in case her condition got worse. 

    Concerned but undaunted, my parents and I continued with our plans. We drove to Port Angeles, camped for the night in a provincial park, and set off on our road quest. On our first day, we were driving along the northern shore of Lake Cowichan, looking for a place to camp, when my mom got a phone call from my uncle. Muz had entered a transitory state – the sort where they didn’t expect her to ever come out. If my mother wanted to say goodbye, she had to do it now. 

    The next day, we drove my mom all the way back to Victoria. She got on the Clipper to Seattle, where she’d spend the night in a hotel and fly to California the next day. My dad and I, still wanting to complete our trip, headed back up-Island to catch up with our group. 

    Muz died several days later. 

    * * *

    I’m a night person. I always have been. The early-to-bed mentality of the other campers didn’t suit me, so I would often stay awake late at night, sitting by the campfire, drinking a beer and staring at the stars, alone with my thoughts. The night Muz died, I sat by the shore of a lake, gazing at the night sky, feeling a lot of very big feelings. As I turned my head upwards, a meteor so bright it cast shadows streaked across the heavens, seemingly from horizon to horizon. I don’t know what possessed me in that moment to make a wish. But I figured it wouldn’t do any harm. 

    I wished that I had some sign, no matter how insignificant or small, that my writing career was moving forward. I’ve been writing since middle school and querying my novels for nine years, getting close several times but never quite reaching that next step. After the fire died to embers and I finished my beer, I went back to my tent and fell asleep. 

    The very next morning, I got an email from Lezli Robyn telling me that my short story, “Tales from the Sub-Ocean: or, Video Game as Metaphor for Mental Illness”, had been nominated for the Mike Resnick Memorial Award. 

    I didn’t expect that result. I had submitted the story to the contest back in January, fully expecting to get rejected, as all my stories had already been. I am not a superstitious person. I believe in a quantum universe of random chance and coincidence. Yet if there are such things as shooting star wishes, I had no idea that the ROI was so fast. 

    Now I had decisions to make. I had to get a flight to Atlanta, where the Resnick Award would be presented along with the Dragon Awards at DragonCon, along with a hotel room, a convention pass… I don’t want to say it was overwhelming, but it was definitely a surprise. 

    “Don’t worry about it,” my dad said. “I know that you can’t afford it, but we’ll get you there. It’s for your writing career. It’s important.” I’m so grateful to him for this gift – this, and so many others. 

    Five weeks later, I was on a morning flight from Seattle to Atlanta, preparing myself for DragonCon. 

    * * *

    If there’s a polar opposite of a nighttime lakeside in rural Canada, it’s probably DragonCon. The lines, the noise, the colors blaring from the vendor booths, the amazing costumes… There were times my autistic brain couldn’t handle it and I had to calm down the main way I know how: hiding in a corner by the elevators and blasting progressive death metal on my headphones. 

    Yet despite the overstimulating chaos, it was amazing to meet people in the actual publishing industry, who said that my writing was good and that I had a bright future ahead of me. Even more amazing was meeting my fellow nominees: C.E. Singer, Anaïs Godard, Tara McKee, and Jason Boyd. We shared stories, and theirs were all so amazing that I was sure that I would place something like fifth or sixth in the judges’ estimation. I didn’t care. I’d been rejected so many times that the cliche statement “it’s an honor just to be nominated” was entirely accurate. 

    Satisfaction is reality divided by expectations, and since my expectations were low, when I heard my name being called as first runner-up, you can guess I was extremely satisfied. I assume there’s video out there of the 2025 Dragon Awards showing me running up to the stage, giving a giant hug to Tara, the second runner-up, then hugging the winner, Anaïs, as she came up the stairs. We gave huge goony grins as we got our picture taken. I’m not sure what the biggest moment of my life was. Hopefully there are a lot bigger moments in my future. I’m just so glad it happened, and that I got to share it with such awesome people and writers. 

    That night, I took the MARTA back to my hotel, the dopamine rush of the last few hours had faded into a blissful serotonin haze. A thought came to me in that moment. I think I can do this, I thought. I think I can actually be a writer. 

    The idea of a writing career had always been somewhat hypothetical: a cool dream, but not one that had any tangible reality. Yet as the train sped through the dark, for the first time, I felt genuinely confident. I had been struggling for so long on a journey through territory that never changed no matter how far I struggled, like a thick forest that opposed me at every step. Now I was stepping out of the forest, under a vast, open sky, able to finally see the stars.