Amethyst Qu
Bio
Seeker, traveler, birder, crystal collector, photographer. I sometimes visit the mysterious side of life. Author of "The Moldavite Message" and "Crystal Magick, Meditation, and Manifestation."
https://linktr.ee/amethystqu
Stories (56)
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Lights Out, Nobody’s Home, and the Absinthe Green Schnapps Keep Calling
It was 1999, maybe early 2000. Under the influence of multiple green apple martinis, I had wandered alone into a mostly empty theater showing The Blair Witch Project. Drunk when I stumbled in, drunk when I stumbled out, I found myself walking lost and long through dark, strangely empty streets.
By Amethyst Qu3 years ago in Fiction
How Long Do Cockatiels Live?
Boobear the Cockatiel is pleased to wish himself a twenty-sixth birthday. The lovely and talented Nyota the Peach-faced Lovebird, Boobear’s long-time girlfriend, would like to remind all visitors to pin their donations of fresh-cut millet spray to her favorite play gym. She will taste-test them personally before passing on the very best to the guest of honor.
By Amethyst Qu3 years ago in Petlife
‘The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World’
I don’t read a ton of biographies but once in a while, I’ll take a chance, especially if it’s somebody in the natural history field. And, thus, for Pride Month, I have embarked on, “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World” by Andrea Wulf. The outgoing Prussian explorer sounded like an interesting guy who did a lot of interesting things — and, from the start, his adventures exceeded all my expectations.
By Amethyst Qu4 years ago in Pride
A Secret Sand Dune in a Green World
When we turned in the direction of the sun and sand, a gust of wind blew two startled Burrowing Owls across the road in front of us. How we laughed to see their wide eyes as they tumbled head over heels before they caught themselves to fly back into the trees. Then the road opened, and our eyes went just as wide, albeit with a different kind of wonder.
By Amethyst Qu4 years ago in Wander
Write a 50,000-Word Pulp Novel Before Breakfast
To kick start my self-publishing business, I wrote a novel a month for three years. That doesn’t make me special. Lots of people do the same thing. Writing a novel a month is a very common business model for full-time author/publishers.
By Amethyst Qu4 years ago in Journal
What a Cockatiel Teaches Me About Life, Love, and Neediness. Top Story - November 2021.
My white-faced cockatiel Boobear has turned 25, and he’s still going strong. The normal life expectancy of these small domestic parrots is roughly 15 to 25 years, but some senior birds live into their thirties. I have high hopes this chubby little character will do the same.
By Amethyst Qu4 years ago in Petlife
Some Things I Remember About the Cedar Fire
That time it was the biggest fire in California history. That time the guy stood in the popcorn room of the refugee hotel. (In October 2003, we were still called refugees.) That stunned look on his face I already knew too well. That awkward elbow-out way he held the phone at his ear because we still thought you had to hold your cell phone to your head. What he said: “My house is gone, my folks’ house in San Bernardino is gone, I can’t get them on the phone, I’m done with southern California, that’s it, it’s over.” What my friend’s voice shouted from my phone: “Mom’s great-uncle is in San Bernardino. We can’t find out if he’s alive or dead. You’re closer, you can get through, can you please call him, he’s blind, he just made a hundred.” Yes, two fires at the same time. More than two, come to that. But the Cedar Fire and whatever they called the one in San Berdoo are the only two I remember now. At this hotel, the refugees were allowed to bring their pets. Most were floof dogs, big-eyed and curious and a little hushed as they looked up and down the check-in line. One woman held an Amazon parrot. You couldn’t go outside because of the smoke. But everyone spilled out of the popcorn room with their plastic cups of complimentary wine because the popcorn room was too confining, too red and yellow, too bright somehow. And also it felt rude to sit there while this guy called everyone he knew who still had service. So into the lobby and across to the lounge where there was a seventies-style glass patio door overlooking the famous pool. It had a heavy plastic cover on it. The guy was stuck on repeat, something I’d noticed before from victims of shock: “I didn’t even have time to get my wallet. My house is gone, my folks’ house in San Bernardino is gone, I can’t get them on the phone.” A woman somehow out there in a jogging costume. Ponytail jaunty. A pink sweatband. Pink sweat shorts. White running shoes. She thought she was doing something healthy. The look on the man’s face before he went out too: “Somebody has to tell her to get inside.” The way he pulled his shirt up high to cover his nose and mouth. All the times a robot voice picked up when I called the great-uncle: “That number is not in service.” Eyes dazed, phone out of battery, the guy told me the same story in the same words: “My house is gone, my folks’ house…” Had I repeated myself like this when my little house was crushed under 20,000 pounds of red pin oak? I must have. The sense of looking in a mirror was too strong. That time a few weeks later when I read they had more fire trucks in low-income New Orleans than wealthy San Diego. There was public corruption somehow somewhere. There would be an investigation. Although maybe it was Orleans Parish that was corrupt, and somebody was putting relatives in all those jobs. Who remembers that part now? I don’t. That time later yet in the open-air bar near Villa Tunari, Bolivia. Wet and green and who knows how many thousand miles away. Here I sat, drinking wine with the old frenemy who still lived in San Diego after all that. Well, I was drinking it. He said Bolivian wine was undrinkable, and anyway he didn’t need to drink to share his endless yarns about the endless fires, and finally I said, “We were stuck downtown during the Cedar Fire,” and he paused for a beat, and then he said, “Hmm. The Cedar Fire? I don’t remember that one.” By then, there had been too many. It was October 2009.
By Amethyst Qu4 years ago in Earth
The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Is Officially Extinct. Top Story - October 2021.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has called the game. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct. Well, my friends, the referee’s whistle has been a long time coming. The slow-rolling deliberate killing of this bird in the 1930s and ’40s is a terrible story of human greed — and a very well-documented one.
By Amethyst Qu4 years ago in Earth
