Meet Rose Shababy: This Week's Treasured & Tipsy Timeslip Traveller
When I think of Seattle, I think of rain, grunge, and hippies but today's guest is going to show us it's more than just a cool city filled with coffee shops where musicians and artists bleed their truth. Although that doesn't sound too bad. Please join this week's guest, Author Rose Shababy, a savvy woman who can hang in a museum in the morning and take in a live, local band at night. As an author, she was told to write what she knew. She didn't know a lot of places, but she did know Seattle. Let's tour with her, shall we? #Travel #AuthorInterview #TreasuredTipsyTimeslip #RachaelStapleton #Seattle #PikePlaceMarket #BethsCafe #Bainbridge #Bewitchingbooktours
I spent most of my youth in the wilderness of north Idaho
and I love it, but the truth is I’m kind of a city girl. I love the amalgam of
people, the culture, the food, the low hum of humanity at night when you think
all is quiet. I like being able to find an open restaurant at two a.m., or
going to a concert without driving 200 miles, having an art community of artists, actors, filmmakers, writers. It seemed like a pretty good idea to stick to the landscape I know, so I set my novel, The Blue Effect in Seattle, a city I’ve become more and more acquainted with as the years go by.
The Blue Effect is an urban sci-fi superhero novel with a hint of romance and a dash of Noir styling, which fits well, as most Noir fiction takes place in the dirty city.
1. Pike Place Market
Right under the Public Market sign, you’ll find Pike Place
Fish Market, where you can buy everything from cod to lobster to oysters, and
the fishmongers toss huge fish back and forth.
A few feet away you can take a narrow staircase down to Post
Alley and check out the fascinating, albeit disgusting, gum wall and make your
own donation.
Walk down the main plaza and you’ll find rows and rows of
fresh, seasonal flowers, a beautiful and colorful sight.
You can buy produce from local farmers, some items you’ve
never even heard of.
You’ll find a gourmet Italian food store, a comic book and
novelty shop, a tea shop, a candy store, and dozens more.
And you can sit in one of the little restaurants, order up
some crab cakes and chowder, and watch as the most eclectic group of people
walk by. You’ll see men in suits, new age kids with dreadlocks, women in
stilettos carrying dogs in purses, old hippies in cotton smocks, punk rockers,
homeless people, black, white, Asian, Indian, Native American, you name it,
you’ll see it, and they all come together to coexist in one marvelous,
fantastic place.
2. Beth’s Café
One of the most interesting things about Beth’s is that the
walls are covered in drawings from the customers. From silly to interesting to
strange and disturbing, at every skill level, you’ll spend as much time
studying the walls as you will eating and talking to your companions. And every
time you go in, it’s different.
Oh, and did I mention
it’s the home of the 12 egg omelet? My
favorite, The Triple Bypass, which contains bacon, sausage, ham, double Swiss
cheese and double American cheese. It comes with unlimited hash browns, and
they serve the behemoth on a pizza platter. Beth’s has been featured on a
variety of TV shows, including Man vs. Food. He lost, by the way.
3. The Troll Under the Bridge
If you’re looking for a fun photo op, you have to go check
out the Troll Under the Bridge, also known as the Fremont Troll, under the
north end of the Aurora Bridge. As legend has it, he likes to snack cars, as
evidenced by the Volkswagen firmly grasped in one hand. He’s an interactive art
piece, so it’s alright to climb all over him. And, if you’re like me, when
you’re ready for that picture, you can stick your head up his nose and pretend
you’re a booger. 4. Teatro ZinZanni
Teatro ZinZanni is a dinner theater/cabaret/vaudeville show in across from the Seattle Center. With only one other location in the world (San Francisco), it’s truly unique to the Northwest.
The building is a European cabaret tent, known as spiegeltents (mirror tents), consists of over 4000 pieces, and can be broken down by three or four people in a single day. Of course, this theater has been in one place for years.
They have singers, acrobatics, comedy, dancing/singing wait staff, you name it. They serve a delicious 5 course meal while you enjoy the show, and sometimes if you’re lucky, or unlucky depending on your perspective, they pull an audience member up on stage to participate. The tickets are a little pricey, but if you can swing it, it’s worth every penny.5. The Ferry to Bainbridge
And finally, when you head back to Seattle on the last ferry
of the night, make sure to go out on deck and check out the skyline as the
lights wink on one by one. The beauty of the city truly takes my breath away.
Dirty city? Maybe.
But not through my lens.
Renegade
Heroes
Rose
Shababy
Genre: Adult Urban Sci-fi/Fantasy
Now a 3 Part Serial
Blue Brennan is as
intelligent as she is beautiful, but she knows when people look at her, all
they see is a pretty face. With no family or friends, she also knows she’s
alone in the world. She tells herself she’s fine with that, after all, the only
person you can trust is yourself.
Kasey insists that Blue
is one of them, but she resists, too scared to let herself become part of
something.
Going back to her lonely
existence, she finds herself more alone than ever. When her emotions take over
in one terrible moment, the powers she denied rage out of control, and she
realizes the only person who can help her is Kasey.
But finding him means
finding herself. Is Blue ready to face the truth about who, and what, she is?
Episode
1: Paper Dolls
Episode
2: The Revelation
Episode
3: The Last Dance
Excerpt:
“How
do you do that?” I asked, finding my voice. I looked around the dance floor, at
all the people frozen like 3D photographs. It didn’t make sense that I wasn’t
scared by the situation at hand, but fear didn’t factor into my emotional state
at all. I also wondered what it would be like to walk through the crowd and
note all their bodily contortions and facial expressions, but I held back. At
the moment I was more interested in hearing what this man had to say. “How did
you make everything stop?”
“As
to how I do what I do, I can only tell you that I do it. I know someone that
can explain the how better than I. As to this,” he waggled a finger toward the
still figures in the room, “this is all you. I can only help you … amplify what
you had inside you to begin with.”
It
was my turn to laugh, but it was humorless and harsh. “What are you talking
about?”
“You
have felt different all your life, no?”
“Sure.
But doesn’t everybody?” I answered with an eye roll and looked around the room
again. “Look at these morons. They’re all playing dress up, hiding their real
selves from each other. But the truth is they’re desperate to find someone to
love them. Hoping they’ll be important to someone, anyone, because they sure as
hell don’t feel important to themselves. Hoping they’ll actually matter. Hoping
that someone can take away the emptiness they feel every time they look in the
mirror.”
He
shook his head. “You are talking about yourself, not them. And they are not all
like that. They are not the lifeless paper dolls you think they are, not even
the ones trying so hard to stand out. And neither are you.”
His
words confused me, and I felt myself growing angry. “Who are you?” I didn’t
like the things he made me feel anymore, and I longed for the simplicity of the
liquored-up daze I’d enjoyed earlier. I wanted to run away from him, but in the
same moment I realized that nothing could have made me turn away from this
strange man.
“My
name is Kasimir Korsak. My friends call my Kasey. I would very much like to
include you in that group.”
I
shook my head. “If you know so much about me, you would know that I don’t have
friends.” I put as much disdain into the last word as I could. I might want to
find out more about the things that were happening, but that didn’t mean I
trusted him. “Besides, what possible reason do I have to believe anything you
say?”
His
eyes were still steady on mine when he spoke. “You already trust me, Blue. You
do not want to admit it because I am a stranger, but deep down you believe me
because you hear truth in my words. You look around the room and see truth. You
are different. Special.” He held out his hands, palms up in a gesture of
openness. “You are like me, only you have not learned how to use your abilities
yet.”
Abilities?
I gaped at him. What the hell does that mean?
We
stood in the strange, echoless silence, neither of us taking our eyes off the
other. I wanted his words to be true. I wanted the differentness I’d always
felt to be something special, wanted it with an urgency that pierced through
the numbness. In the few moments I’d spent with this man I’d felt more emotions
than I’d felt in years.
The
realization finally brought forth fear, but it also brought excitement, and I
wanted more. If his words were true, and he and I were alike, maybe that meant
I actually belonged somewhere.
“I
can show you if you let me.” He smiled again and as we stared at one another,
thoughts that weren’t mine raced through my head.
Give
me a chance to show you. There are others like us. You do not have to be alone
anymore.
“Why
should I?”
“What
are your options?” He smiled. “Someone once said, ‘I may never be what I want
to be, what I ought to be, but how will I know unless I try?’ That is all I am
asking you to do, try.”
“Who
said that?”
He
grinned wider. “A superhero.”
I
rolled my eyes. “You’re kidding, right? This isn’t a fucking comic book.”
About
the Author:
Rose Shababy and her family
reside in eastern Washington State. Rose grew up in the Northwest but swears
she’s going to move to warmer climates someday. She’s claimed this for over 20
years, however, and has yet to move more than 75 miles away from her mother.
Rose has a deep love of all
things Star Trek and yearns to travel the heavens, as well as an intense desire
to be bitten by a radioactive spider.
Unfortunately she sucks at
science and math so she hasn’t been able bring her dreams to life, instead
living vicariously through books, comics, television and film. She hopes to
someday make a million dollars so she can afford to buy her way to the
international space station, but she’d settle for being able to fly around the
world and leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Rose also loves to cook and
worked for years in a gourmet Italian grocery and deli where she learned to
hone her skills. She prepares culinary masterpieces for her family, but
fervently wishes the dishes would wash themselves. Especially now that her
dishwashers/children are nearly grown and only one still lives at home.
Rose likes to use her free time
wisely. For instance, she likes to daydream, will often read for hours until
she falls asleep on the couch with an electric blanket and a warm tabby cat
curled up on her hip, as well as spending cozy weekend days watching Syfy
movies like Sharknado and Mega Piranha with her husband.
If Rose were a cartoon animal,
she’d prefer to be a wise old owl or a sleek and sexy jaguar, but in reality
she’d probably be a myopic mole with coke-bottle glasses.
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Thank you so much for hosting today. I really had a lot of fun putting this together. I like your unique slant on the guest post!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great book, thanks for sharing and I enjoyed the posts
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