C. G. Browning

Posted by Cynthia on September 2, 2009

C. G. Browning, otherwise known as Carrie to all who loved her, was one of my best friends, writing buddy and cattle prod. She was also my sense of balance and clarity, when it came to my episodes of “writerly neurosis” as we called it. That sense of doom, failure and never being good enough to get published that assails all writers, any artist for that matter, from time to time. OK, for some of us, most of the time! The “Eris Rant”, as we call it, is a classic Carrie rant designed to get the neurotic rantee to pay attention to reality and get back on track with projects. She had a fine ability to see through one’s unfounded behavior and call it as she saw it, often with much more astuteness than one would imagine. It was scary sometimes!

 Carrie passed away unexpectedly on June 2, 2008 from complications of diabetes, which she was diagnosed with as a baby and was insulin-dependent ever since. The diabetes and a medical misdiagnosis took her sight when she was in her early 20s, but that didn’t stop her one bit. She continued to write, and write with an ability to “see” things that many of us don’t.

She was also an accomplished dancer and choreographer as you see in the pictures posted here. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in Creative Writing and all the while was lead and accompanied around campus by her dog, Folio. We always thought how apropos it was that he came with that name.

Like me, Carrie grew up playing make believe. We were always surprised to find out that most people don’t do this, or do it on a very limited basis for a very short time in their lives. Perhaps that is what makes writers what we are–we never stop playing make believe and creating stories in our minds. She was always the great sleuth solving the nearly unsolveable crime, or the special ops guy in some wild and exciting scenario.

We discovered much later in life, in bellydance class of all places, that we had actually gone to the same high school at the same time. She came as a sophomore the year I was a senior. We never had any classes together and thus never really met though we did have a few friends in common. We often wondered what would have happened had we met all those years ago…

In any case, we did create some stories and worlds together that are now up to me to bring to completion and with any luck will some day be published. The pen name for these stories is as wacky and grandiose as anything we ever thought up–Caliope Azzura. Caliope for the Greek Muse of writers and poets, and Azzura, a name for a brilliant shade of blue, one of our high school colors of blue and gold.

What I have posted here are a few of my favorite stories written by Carrie in the last few years of her life. In my opinion, she was really starting to come into her own as a writer and it is a tragedy for all of us that her pen has gone silent. It is my hope that you will enjoy her stories and the scope of her story telling abilities–classic rant and all!