Monday, May 23, 2022

Behind "A Special Theory of Circus"

A few years back, I wrote on this blog about the importance of getting a hobby. I recall I was feeling particularly burned out by writing at the time and found solace in, among other things, doing something that had nothing whatsoever to do with books: circus arts. At the time, I'd been taking aerial silks classes for about three months and was still a little in disbelief over the fact that I, a perennial couch potato, was voluntarily showing up at a studio that made me climb things and do, like, exercise.

Wellp, fast forward three years, and I'm still obsessed with circus - not just silks, but also hoop, rope, and flying trapeze (static/dance trapeze, I'm coming for you next!). And what started out as "this is going to have nothing to do with writing" has turned into "okay I really want to write circus stories now."



So when Paige Daniels and I decided to do another volume of Brave New Girls, our YA sci-fi anthology series about girls in STEM (with proceeds donated to the Society of Women Engineers scholarship fund), I knew right away I wanted to do something set at a steampunk-y circus.

One of the instructors at the Trapeze School of New York, where I take classes, often took the time to explain the physics of flying trapeze to students -- how lifting the bar higher on the platform gives you more potential energy for the swing, for instance. There you have it: STEM plus circus!

In "A Special Theory of Circus," my contribution to the upcoming Brave New Girls: Chronicles of Misses and Machines, a bookish girl goes to visit her trapeze artist sister and uses her knowledge of physics to relate to the the sister's art form. Then things become more eventful than expected when a rival circus attempts to sabotage the show...

The artist who did the illustration for "A Special Theory of Circus," Adriano Moraes, really wanted to highlight the contrast between Hallie, the bookworm, and Lulu, the trapeze artist:



I thought Adriano would be a good fit for this story because I actually met him because of circus arts: One of my instructors was performing, and Adriano was live drawing the performers and selling the pictures. Of course I had to buy one featuring my teacher. A few months later, he live-drew me at a student showcase:


Suffice it to say that my circus and book worlds have totally collided now. What started out as a hobby to get away from writing has ended up inspiring and informing my projects (my story for Bad Ass Moms was also about an aerialist, and I also have a work-in-progress fantasy whose main character is a... you guessed it... circus artist).

Meanwhile, I actually had to learn a bit more physics to write "A Special Theory of Circus," and even though it was all pretty elementary, it actually helped to understand the forces at play during a swing.


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