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| Monday, April 30th, 2012 | | 1:54 am |
All the rest....
The horrible hard letters are horrible and hard, so I'm lumping them all together in one post, which coincidentally lets me finish the A-Z challenge on time....Totally coincidental, I tell you. ( W )( X )( Y )( Z )Whew. The end of the alphabet. | | Friday, April 27th, 2012 | | 8:48 pm |
V is for...
Seriously, who decided to lump all the hard letters at the end of the alphabet? V? X? Z? Oh, god, X is coming up. Alright, we're taking another loose stab at letters: V is for the Various places I want to Visit. This is really not even a wishlist, since I am a terrible traveler. It's more of a wistful list. Places that I would like to see if some wonderful scientist ever developed teleportation technology. I've done lots of travel, but it just gets trickier and trickier. So, my top ten places (today's top ten, and in no particular order): Hawaii, in its entirety. This despite the fact that I've been there as a child and have some very vivid memories. I'd love to see the islands as an adult. Black sand beaches, volcanoes, amazing scenery, etc.... All the picture postcard reasons to go are pretty much right on. Cuba. I feel some guilt about this one because... well... Castro. But at the same time...the history! Small island, amazing impact. And that's before you even start talking touristy things like food and music. Greenland. One of the few cold places on my list. I don't know why I want to go there. I just sort of do. I think it's because it's just so different from anything I've seen. Plus I find the images of the brightly painted houses wonderful. The US Southwest. Don't ask me how I've missed New Mexico and Arizona. I've traveled to 90% of the US states, but somehow, I never landed there. California, Nevada, Texas, Colorado, Mexico... I've been there. But not those two. London. Never been to London. Seems like everyone should go at least once. Again, it's a history thing for me. It may also be a BBC side-effect. The Bahamas. I've hit some of the other Caribbean islands but this one is a mystery. I don't know why. It's so close to Miami, and yet... we always went to Sanibel instead. Probably because my parents despaired of flying with such squirmy children, and by the time we were in high school my parents were reluctant to let us fly over in our friends' planes for unsupervised weekends. Ditto, Bermuda. My father used to fly there frequently for business, and he always brought Beatrix Potter figurines home as souvenirs. Apparently Beatrix was very popular there. Thailand. Different architecture. Different landscape. Different everything. But still with a beach. Egypt. The Nile! The pyramids! I may have read too many Amelia Peabody mysteries, because all my images of visiting Egypt come with sailing the Nile on a dahabeeyah. The last one is amorphous. Basically, I want to stay in one of these eternally promised underwater hotels. Not one of the scary, tiny pod ones currently active, but the sprawling glass complex beneath the sea. I have doubts about their viability: too shallow and all you'll get is wave churn, and too close to a reef is just "no" for environmental reasons, but too deep starts to raise issues of its own. Any especially awesome places y'all have been? Or want to go to? | | Thursday, April 26th, 2012 | | 6:25 pm |
U is for Utterly Ridiculous
Yes, I know it's a stretch. But we're in the end game and my brain is tired of thinking about letters. This is a pic post. And it is about cats. Cats have this reputation for being elegant, graceful, dignified, or if you're scared of them, terrifying and full of sharp bits. Many times they are just flat out silly. This is Sammy. And Sammy's preferred sleeping position. Note the irritable "what!?" on his face as I catch him sleeping. His brother Dean is also prone to the belly sprawl. But I nudged Sammy awake and moved him because I was about to vacuum.  He retreated to the futon.  Oh, that's much more dignified. Not. Well, at least there's my father's cat Diego. (That is his whole name, btw. "My Father's Cat Diego". Alternately known as "Your Father's Cat Diego" and, from the man in discussion, "My Cat Diego". He is also occasionally called Day-Glo, since my mother is all "I do not approve!" of bright orange cats. We don't know why. )  That's ... sort of dignified, right? He always sits with his paws propped up on things, exposing his belly, hiding his lower paws with his tail. He is a strange cat, my father's cat Diego. Well, at any rate, at least they're not the dog.  Daisy says, what's dignity? Can I eat it? No? Come back when you have french fries. Let me nap. | | 7:35 am |
T is for Terminus
This should have gone up yesterday, but a tricky internet connection decided otherwise. (While my IP is mostly quite satisfactory, every so often it gets into these crazy spurts of YOU NO CAN HAS INTERNET, wait! Quick! GO NOW! Ooops, j/k.) But honestly, there are days when I'm still amazed the internet even exists so I allow it to be difficult and don't call to complain.) Anyway, T! T is for the last Sylvie book. I think this isn't a surprise. I've talked to various people about it openly here and on FB. What it basically comes down to is Ace has decided not to continue the series. And you know what? That's okay. I've loved Sylvie; she's been a blast to write, but I'm fine with moving on. For one thing, I'm a slow writer. (I'm working on trying to get just a little faster!) If I really push it, I might get two books a year drafted, but mostly I'm a nine month booker, from conception to discovery draft to polished draft. Maybe longer if I'm starting something new/particularly complex. What this means is that for the past four years, it's been the All Sylvie All the Time Channel in my brain, with a very few other stories squeezed in. It's not that I've grown bored with her, but... it'll be nice to meet someone new. Ace has been nothing but supportive and wonderful throughout Sylvie's run. They gave me plenty of notice so I could wrap this fourth book up, if not in a giant sparkling bow, at least in a very comfortable stopping place. (I've never really trusted giant bow books anyway, I always preferred the kind of books where this adventure has been finished, but you know that the characters are going to continue on, having new ones, even without your attention.) I suppose I could focus on the negative if I wanted to, and it's a fairly big negative!--that people just didn't find Sylvie likeable, or despite solid marketing for the books, they just didn't find her at all--but that starts to lead me down the path of publishing despair and the crazy numbers and how on earth do you catch lightning in a jar, and the ever-crazy-making "did I do it wrong?", and no one wants that. Honestly, book series come and go. We can't all be Butcher or Vaughn, keeping a series thriving and vital for ten books or more! I think Sylvie's had a good run: she's gone from someone on the edge of a nervous breakdown, unremittingly suspicious and trigger-happy, to a ... slightly less paranoid trigger-happy person? Um. But a slightly less paranoid, trigger-happy person with a team of allies! And a more stable outlook! Instead, I'm enjoying the chance to pick up the second world fantasy pen again, to get to build not only monsters and a magic system but the whole damn world. :) I don't have to suffer the weird guilt for smashing real cities and honest-to-god treasured landmarks. And honestly? I don't have to say a forever goodbye to Sylvie. Her world is ideally suited for short adventures and longer novellas, which are much easier to fit in my writing schedule. And with the advent of ebooks, novellas are so much easier to market! So thanks to all of you who read her adventures! And thanks to Ace for letting her have them in the first place! | | Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 | | 1:28 pm |
| | Monday, April 23rd, 2012 | | 11:38 pm |
R is for R & R
In this case, not rest and recuperation (or rest and recreation or whatever that acronym is) but for reading and reviewing. And yes, this is a self-serving post, I freely admit it! But I've been thinking a lot about reviews of late and why they're so important to us authors. They can make a difference in marketing (many of the online stores adjust how often your book is shown to store-browsers, depending on the quantity of reviews), they make a difference in your career to some extent (a book that sells poorly but gets decent reviews is better for your career than a book that simply sinks out of sight), but most of all, reviews remind us that we're not just shouting into the void. Writing is a crazy solitary business, even when we hedge ourselves 'round with other writers and go to cons and workshops. Ultimately, it's still you, the voices in your head, and the pen/computer. Reviews, be they good, bad, inbetween, let us know that someone has noticed all our work. And by god, that means something to us. As for reading: I've read two books back to back that were rather more themed than I meant. Two urban fantasies about heroines with a substance abuse problem. Stacia Kane's UNHOLY GHOSTS and Stacey Jay's DEAD ON THE DELTA. It's actually been amazing to read both of them back to back, because talk about a writerly challenge! You're going to write a book about a pillpopper and an alcoholic. And you're going to make them sympathetic. My brain locks up just thinking about it. I'm fairly brittle on certain subjects--substance abuse being one of them--but both these books grabbed me by the collar, shook me, made me care about their heroines, and more, actively root for them. Part of it is due to world-building. Both of them have a changeover moment: in Stacia Kane's world, ghosts rose up and slaughtered 2/3 of the living, and now people are kept safe by the Church of Truth and their ghost-hunters; in Stacey Jay's world, fairies mutated and became a) visible and b) plague vectors. Sort of like mosquitoes carrying viruses. Wonderful idea. Good execution. I believed in the changed world, believed in both of them, and was fascinated by them. Which helps with the heroines who might make bad decisions that sets the reader groaning. The world is so interesting that you keep reading even when the heroine does something that makes you want to shy away. And both of these books are mystery-based urban fantasies (my god, the labels are getting kind of crazy), which I tend to love. These heroines may fall down, but they always fall forward. Stacey Jay's heroine, Annabelle Lee, is probably more damaged since she is still refusing to admit her problem; Stacia Kane's Chess Putnam is probably a bit more functional. Just a bit. Right now, I'd recommend both of these series. Besides having fascinating worlds, good mysteries, and tricky heroines, both these authors can write! Stacia Kane has a downside dialect for many of her characters, which would normally make me twitchy. Here, the dialect works, is both distinct and easily readable. And Stacey Jay has a really nice hand with descriptive moments. I'm fascinated to see how long their balancing act can hold. It's the biggest problem with writing a junkie heroine (that I see. I'm sure Stacia Kane and Stacey Jay have a whole list of the pitfalls at this point). How long can you watch someone struggle and not get better? I'll be interested to see how they manage. If anyone's read on, I'd love to hear. | | Saturday, April 21st, 2012 | | 7:30 pm |
Q is for Questions
Q is for Queensryche and Questions. I figured you didn't really want a thousand words on how awesome Queensryche was in the day, and there's just not a lot to do with Q, so I'm opening up Q for Questions. Ask me stuff! You know, if you want to. Otherwise, here's a few Queensryche videos for you all.
Three of my favorites:
The title track from Promised Land: bitter and lost and angry. And wonderful. More angst from the Empire cd: Anybody Listening? And because I can't ignore Mindcrime: here's The Mission. | | Friday, April 20th, 2012 | | 10:05 pm |
P is for Pastry
Hey, I'm impressed it's taken me to P to start talking about food I love. :) My family pretty much lives by the motto "An army marches on its stomach". We have old, outdated road atlases that have handwritten addenda that say things like "Surprisingly good Mexican food here." Or "Warning! BBQ sauce mustard-based in this state!" Or "Major gambling hall with amazing grilled cheeses!" Every year for four years, my father and I drove from Miami to Beloit, Wisconsin (which, btw, is a hellishly long drive for two people who don't care for road trips. Irish folk music will only take you so far.) and we religiously updated our atlas with unexpected food stops, good, bad and indifferent. But, I digress. See, FOOD! It turns my brain off. The point being: Pastry. I love my sweets. I really do. But I try to be responsible about them, which mostly translates as I don't buy pastries that I can make myself. (It's a lot cheaper to make them myself, and I'm a stress baker, so it's not like it adds anything but a focus to my baking.) What I'm left with then are the pastries I can not or will not make myself--some of these things are so time-consuming. Which really narrows it down to cheesecake, opera cake, and napoleons. And for the latter two, I am utterly insane. For multiple years, it seemed like I would go insane. My city is a small city; it is a fairly lovely city, but it lacks a honest to god patisserie. It had one, briefly, but the owners moved their business to KC. And I fell into despair. No napoleons. No opera cake. I had to go out of town for those things. And as you know, anything you crave and are denied, becomes a NEED. (I may have an addictive personality.) I went to Vegas for a week, and they had a patisserie in the hotel! Opera cake daily for a week! I would not be denied. It was a goal for each day. Gambling? No way; I could spend that money on pastry! What we do have locally is Wheatfields Bakery, which makes artisanal bread of extreme deliciousness. And sometime a year or so ago, they started slowly adding pastries to their counters. Real pastries, not just the random selection they'd had before. They brought in napoleons. Their pastries have apparently done well enough to warrant a pastry chef. The other day I went in, and they had opera cake. Classic opera cake: almond-rich dense sponge cake and ganache and coffee cream.... I made a bit of a spectacle of myself. Luckily they are used to me in there and took it well. It occurs to me as I write this, that I have to be downtown tomorrow, and Saturdays are napoleon days. It isn't a healthy breakfast, espresso and napoleon, but it is the one I'm going to have. Without guilt or remorse. | | Thursday, April 19th, 2012 | | 10:07 pm |
N was apparently for Nope, No way, No how. My brain exploded yesterday while looking at Numbers and that's all she wrote. Since I don't want to be dragging Z all the way through May, I'm just going to call N done. And so today (totally coincidentally!) I want to talk about something I don't have but love dearly: Organization! I have this perfect shadow-self who lives a life that runs smoothly and beautifully. She gets up every morning on schedule, exercises effectively, dresses in work casual, goes into her perfectly organized study and settles down to work. Her study is an office dream and the words always come easily. So, obviously, I am not her; I stagger out of bed routinely later than I intend to, tripping over cats, fumbling through my first cups of coffee. I put on whatever clothes are near, usually yoga pants and a tee, and then I fail to exercise in them. Then I hit my study, and start excavating the piles of paper, looking for the all important notes that are always lost when I want them. I create endless typos, and the word count ticks up excruciatingly slowly, while the cat eats my notes. But I make these desperate attempts to become the Organized Lady on occasion and they always end up leaving me in the middle of Office Depot buying crap, because if you just have the right color post-it-notes, everything will fall into place! Yeah, I wish. So chastened and some dollars poorer, I head home, and browse through home and garden sites, imagining other things she would have perfect. Then, to make myself feel better, I clean off my desk, color sort my post-it notes, track down all the random pens, and enter all the scrappy information into data files. This is always a mistake, because I tend to label them appallingly useless things and when I need that info, I remember the piece of paper it was originally on, and spend hours looking for it. Finally, I remember that I entered it into the computer, then I have to sort through the files. Usually, I give up and assume if it's REALLY important, I'll rediscover it. I know who I am: slightly scatty, cluttered of thought and surroundings, easily distracted by shinies. And yet, every night, I write myself a complicated and carefully timed schedule that would require me to be a robot. Sigh. The dream lives on. | | Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 | | 1:28 am |
M is for Monsters
I have two scientists and an artist for parents (one of them does double duty). What this means is that I got steeped early on with a love of strange and wondrous creatures. First, it was dinosaurs. Then it was the wonderful chapter book series (though they called them Step-Up books in my generation) by Leonora Hornblow about The Strangest Things various life forms did. Then, somehow, I wandered all unwitting into cryptozoology by the time I was in third grade. And it was like all the Strangest Things books amped up to eleven. Skunk Apes! Nessie! Ogopogo! The Beast of Gevaudan! The terrifying Black Shuck! The Jersey Devil! Mothman! Actually, now that I list the familiar names, I know exactly where they hooked me. All those Pecos Bill tales we were fed in first grade. A book full of improbable and wonderful monsters. The snake that rolled with its tail in its mouth. The hillside goats who had legs that were shorter on one side than the other. The Hide-behind. The Tailypo. (Though that was a separate book and a thing of horror in its own right. Shudder. I am quite happy without a tailypo in the world.) And the other books I read were full of stories about Spring-heeled Jack and mythical creatures like the Kelpie and the selkie, the roc and the gryphons. And of course, living by the sea, mermaids were always popular. My parents, trying to do scientific damage control brought me books about hoaxes, about sea monsters in history, about mermaids that were really rays or dugongs. But all they did was sharpen my interest, and give me a scientific frame to hang things on. Fine, so lake monsters were probably a seiche wave, or sturgeon surfacing en masse. But that was just as cool! By sixth grade, my inevitable science project was about scientific explanations for monsters. I debunked Nessie and a whole series of lake monsters. With pictures! Thus beginning a long and sad career of "science" papers that were considered (wrongly! darn it!) to be unscientific or, (more fairly) not to the point. (I am still bitter about my paper on invasive species as a problem worsened by modern technology getting a D from my peers in college. They did not find that invasive species had anything to do with technology. May zebra mussels devour them all!) But I do love cryptids. I love to think about them; the plausible, the now-actual (like the colossal squid), the totally ridiculous, the ones that bring a shiver down my spine. One of the best things I ever saw was during an internship at a magazine called Sea Frontiers in, oh 89, I think, where some research scientist sent us a tape via the mail. My job was to view these things. It was footage of a live coelacanth swimming in the deep. Black and white, grainy as hell. Amazing. At that point, there wasn't much footage of them at all, and what footage there was, was of dead ones being hauled onto boats. The dead ones were exciting enough. But this... it was like watching one of my cryptids come to life. It was wonderful. And while I know that the wild and crazy cryptids like the Jersey Devil are not, in fact, out there, Agent Mulder, I do love the sense of possibility that cryptozoology brings to the table. The sense that as known and as studied as our world is, there may still be parts of the map fairly marked "Here be dragons." | | Monday, April 16th, 2012 | | 10:42 pm |
L is for the Losers
It's getting harder to find things to talk about! Who knew so many of my likes were centered on certain letters? So my letters are going to get increasingly random and/or trivial. You have been warned. Anyway. The Losers. I'm talking about the 2010 movie, not the graphic novel, which I have not read. (I know, shameful.) This is not a great movie. It is tonally freaky, one moment fairly standard action-adventure, the next a bizarre satire of that genre. I presume that one or the other of the tones is directly from the comic, and the rest is Hollywood. Sad to admit, but the part I like is probably the Hollywood part. Max is ...too odd, too over-the-top evil to be plausible as a governmental power. (I hope!) The point being: for a movie that is not great, a movie that I picked up in a $5 bin, I have watched it far more often than there is any reason to. I bought it because I have a weakness for action movies and because it had Papa Winchester in it. I keep watching it because? Because it's fun. Because I like the team dynamics. Because the soundtrack is clever. Because the characters are charming. (Minus Max, of course, but he's not supposed to be anything but repellent and a little funny.) Because even though the trailer gives away all the best parts, they're still good in situ. Because, occasionally, there are awful moments where you can see how hard the director is trying, and even while you roll your eyes, you sort of feel like saying, "but you tried! and that's the important thing!" And because, for some reason, I love to watch it and imagine it with an all female Losers team. I like to try to figure out the differences that would require (have to move it to the future a bit, to account for enough women in enough active combat that there could be a special ops group composed entirely of women, but that's okay--the weapon they're trying to contain is futuristic. And oooh, they're already disliked by elements of the government, how would that play genderwise? Innnnnteresting. And what about Pooch, with the expecting wife? Would I switch it to a child waiting on her mama? Or, given the future setting, the elimination of DADT, just leave it as is?). It's fun to play with. I believe that 5 women could be an efficient and lethal, slightly off-kilter and inventive, special ops team. (And probably none of them would wear a mini-skirt, Hollywood, or bitch about whether their camo pants make their asses look fat. Just FYI.) But they'd probably do some things differently, and I like trying to tease out where those changes would be. And to be honest, I like assembling a dream team of action heroines. I still haven't figured out who would play who, but I have a bunch of candidates. The Losers are: Clay, the suit-wearing leader. Oddly mellow, moral, and with a taste for dangerous lovers. Roque, the badass to end all badasses. Likes blades, himself, and money. Dislikes his boss's habit of sleeping with dangerous women. Pooch, the uber-competent mechanic and driver. He's like... the best dad ever. Full of "I can fix that!" and wanting people to get along. Cougar, the mostly silent sniper who doesn't say much, but seems to feel everything. And wears a cowboy hat! (Happy sigh. Yes, I'm shallow.) Jensen, the class clown and tech guy. So.... actresses. Milla Jovovich. Michelle Rodriguez Gina Torres Christina Cox All of whom could play any of the top four. Then my brain grinds to a halt. I want an actress who can be funny, wisecracking, and still super competent, and oddly, hollywood doesn't much like women in that mold. They like sexy and competent (any Angelina Jolie action role ever) and funny and clumsy (most rom coms). The only wisecracking and competent women I can think of are tv characters, but admittedly, I don't see very many movies in the theaters. Maybe Kate Beckinsale? Who did funny beautifully in Cold Comfort Farm (though it was deadpan funny), and apparently does action in the endless Underworld series.... Any ideas? Or am I just insane? | | Saturday, April 14th, 2012 | | 11:55 pm |
| | Friday, April 13th, 2012 | | 10:40 pm |
J is for Jabberwocky
Scratch a fantasy writer deep enough and odds are, you'll find an Alice in Wonderland fanatic. Not all of us, but a good portion. And then there's Jabberwocky. There's something remarkable about that nonsense poem: whether it's simply the mouthfeel of the words, or the bloody story beneath--kids learn that poem and remember it. I had one of those poetry classes in elementary school where we had to memorize a new poem every week. I loved the class, loved the poems, but... only remember Jabberwocky. It's a family poem in so many ways; we've encoded it into our family language. My absent-minded professor father has days where my mother shakes her head and says, "oh, he's Uffish, today." The cake that appeared when I sold Maledicte may or may not have had Callooh Callay written across it. (It did. Of COURSE it did.) What I've come to learn is that the poem got into everyone's head. I know lots of fantasy writers who, when startled and pleased, might grin and say, "Oh Frabjous Day!" And of course, there's Zelazny's acid-tripping Signs of Chaos where the world-shifting princes manage to bring the Jabberwock to life. I almost never wear jewelry; but some years back I stumbled over a silver brooch of the Jabberwock done to the Tenniel illustration. It comes out for special occasions, and there's always a moment when a stranger double-takes and then starts telling me why they loved Jabberwocky. It's everywhere! And each time I run into it, I stop and smile. (argh. I was going to embed a youtube link, but apparently that technology is beyond me tonight. If you've got some time to kill, go hunt up Jabberwocky on youtube. There are choir versions, heavy metal versions, endless people reciting the poem. It's quite fun.) | | 2:58 am |
I is for iPod
How dull is that for a topic? But it does begin with an I; it's something I love far more than I should; and I'm brain-fried. I love my iPod. I do. I'm one step away from proselytizing about it (and mp3s in general.) which is amusing because I... didn't want one. Thought they were irritating. Too easy to lose; who needs music with them all the time anyway?; too annoying to keep charged; and so forth. My friends sent me a little mp3 player one holiday. I shrugged. Put some songs on it. Attached the earbuds. I was housesitting for my parents at the time, and rapidly got attached to the little device. My parents live in a valley; the radio reception is not to be relied upon. My parents have many animals; I spent a lot of time in the barns, in the paddocks, and away from the stereo system. When I dropped the mp3 player and the donkey promptly stepped on it, I looked at the broken bits and thought, hell with that. I went into town and bought myself an iPod. I've been addicted ever since. I can play music! Anywhere! While I write in public! In hotel rooms while I stave off insomnia and my roommate is trying to sleep! I can watch TV on it (microscopically! but there!). It's one of those pieces of technology that just slips in under your notice and becomes indispensable. Could I live without it? Of course. Would I miss it? Oh hell yes. I was going to give you a list of my top played musical groups, but honestly that's not very interesting (to me. I know what my favorite groups are!). So instead, you're getting a list of my singles. The songs I would never have bought without the digital age. I remember too vividly buying cassettes and listening to just the one song until the tape died. And then having to face buying the damn thing again when I only wanted the one song. It's wonderful, also, when you're trying to get a soundtrack together for a book. I used to think that was indulgent behavior but it really works--a mental shortcut that helps put you in the right mindset. Even if that mindset involves country music. I don't know why that one character wanted alt-country but... thank god I didn't have to buy him entire albums! ( song list ) | | Thursday, April 12th, 2012 | | 12:10 am |
H is for Heroine
So I started reading early and often. And though it seems like my parents let me read anything, there must have been some selection happening because my young books were chockfull of Girls Doing Things. Girls solving mysteries, facing ghosts, defeating bullies, using magic.... Tons of them. I got into the habit early. I liked heroines. It's not like I didn't read books about boys doing things; I did, of course I did. There are a million books full of boys doing things. But, between the era (70s! Women's Lib!) and my parents, I actually got to wallow in heroines. And that's something I've continued to this day. I love books, almost all books. I don't require that all of them be populated by women-in-charge, but if they're totally absent? Or a bare sketch? I miss them. ( Ten awesome heroines ) | | Monday, April 9th, 2012 | | 11:59 pm |
G is for Gift of the Gab
I love talkative characters: be they audacious, arrogant, blatantly rude, intelligent, witty, or wild in their manner. I'm just easy that way. TV shows with fast repartee hooks me instantly. Moonlighting! due South! (Especially the third season with Callum Keith Rennie as the fast talking Ray K.) Mulder and Scully, who weren't always funny, but were always a pleasure to listen to when they argued with each other. Rodney McKay in Stargate Atlantis. Sadly, I think I watched that show primarily to watch him rant at people. Doctor Who, especially the Tennant incarnation and of course the new Sherlock. It's trickier in books. Vast chunks of prose become much less natural on the page. But when it's done well, it's so satisfying to me. It's the kind of thing that makes me find some poor soul and start reading aloud to them. Neville Fletcher from Georgette Heyer's A Blunt Instrument, who takes his uncle's murder with a high dose of sang froid and airy unconcern, and spends much of the book annoying the long-suffering policemen. Bertie Wooster from PG Wodehouse. A champion blitherer. Alec from Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, who always says the worst thing he can think of, in the worst way, at the worst time. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know indeed! There's a whole slew of regency romances that require witty banter between the heroine and hero. Maybe that's why it's my favorite genre of romance! Either way... give me your talkers. I'll be listening. And giggling. | | Sunday, April 8th, 2012 | | 11:12 pm |
March reading
I read a lot of books in March. Too many to want to discuss even in brief all at once. So, you're just getting the highlights. My favorite of the bunch? Somewhere Beneath Those Waves by Sarah Monette. I'd been drooling over this book before it even came out, and luckily, got gifted it. While I enjoyed the Melusine series, I really adore Monette's short fiction. The Bone Key is brilliant and entertaining. This book, a wider assortment of stories, is brilliant, entertaining, and sometimes insanely powerful. There's a little bit of everything here stylistically: urban fantasy adventures, poetry, stories that are cloaked in style. I loved a lot of the stories here, but my favorite is probably the closing story "After the Dragon" which I first read online. I was immensely glad to see it again. ( Read more... )All of these were entertaining, but if you can only read one? Sarah Monette's short story collection. No question. | | Saturday, April 7th, 2012 | | 10:10 pm |
F is a day late
F is apparently for Fail.
But it's also for First Lines which is a meme I see go 'round LJ every so often and always want to play, and rarely get organized enough to do so.
I, like every writer, have a gazillion ongoing projects (there is not enough time in the world!). The big. The small. The fun. The challenging. The long overdue. The pet projects with dubious genetics and wonky, sharp teeth--projects only a mother could love. The projects of doom that I will be working on from my deathbed.
But, here are a dozen first lines from reasonably "active" projects, ie. the ones I am racking up the word count on, attempting to rewrite, or just opening the file and sighing with longing over.
Z Pendrach stirred his milky cereal, trying to wake a listless appetite, and stared across the kitchen.
(Oooh. Cereal. Exciting. Not. Pity of it is, I still can't find a better opening and I'm on draft 3.) The sea breathed below, a glossy, lazy surge of twilight blue, dark enough even by day that the few clouds in the bright, summer sky left no reflection on the waters. (Starting with weather. Well, better than cereal.) Delphine limped toward the abandoned watermill in the abandoned village, long skirts dragging through the dirt.(I like this one. Lots of repeated sounds.) Inside the small cemetery, there were eight, dark, oblong holes in the midst of the manicured grass: Eight disturbed graves. (A zombie story. Yay! I hate zombies.) Michael Demalion was back from the dead, back in Chicago, and nothing was going as he'd planned.(I like this one, too. Mostly because I like Demalion.) Princess Jessilix rode out from the palace and wondered how long it would be before the six guards assigned to her by her brother killed her. (yeek. A lot of not good here. Terrible name. The sentence is too long, and the end not sharp enough.) They both saw the sails, blue against the sunset, as if the day had chosen to linger that much longer, and while Gilly opined that the speed of the ship's approach argued the new steam engine and important passengers, neither of them gave the ship any thought beyond that, which was why Miranda reacted so badly to the Antyrrian child-king walking calmly into her garden with only a single soldier beside him. (And I said the one above was too long?) She knew he was trouble the first moment she saw him.(and...too short?) 3 AM found Cyn sitting in her darkened bedroom, shivering in her tank top and micro-mesh shorties, thinking about love gone bad.(Just right... pity the rest of the story's such a stinkin' mess.) Alain, Cook's boy, had a knack for small acts of revenge. (This is a doom story.) The night after his father's funeral, David found himself on the run with a man he had just met. (I want to write this one. But the backstory is soooo complicated it makes my head explode trying to map it out.) When she'd joined the freelance troubleshooter's union, she'd done so with the rep's murmurs still warming her ears, promising her a sense of community, someone she could talk to, support structures, and the holy grail... Affordable Personal Healthcare.(I REALLY want to write this one. It's a rare foray into silly humor.) That's it! | | Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | | 10:14 pm |
E is for ebooks
I bought my e-reader almost exactly a year ago, and I was leery. I wasn't sure I would like it at all. Now I'm a junkie. It's not my preferred way to read: I still love the weight of paper in my hands. But, I still seem to be racking up the books. So today, I thought I'd just let you know some of the things on my reader. My top reads? The ones in the folder marked "5 stars": Presented without comment (I've rambled about them before) DYING BITES by DD Barant THE CLOUD ROADS by Martha Wells RIPTIDE by Michael Prescott WANNA GET LUCKY? by Deborah Coonts THE CROWN JEWELS by Walter Jon Williams THE GRAND SOPHY by Georgette Heyer The book I just finished reading on the kindle? KAT, INCORRIGIBLE by Stephanie Burgis (Micro-review upcoming) The samples waiting for me to try? Bad Things by Michael Marshall Vegas Bites by Seressia Glass, and others Desdaemona by Chaz Brenchley ProtoZoa by Lois McMaster Bujold Scrap Metal by Harper Fox The books I'm... in the middle of. (The major flaw of the e-reader. Too easy to forget which file you're reading!) Water to Burn - Katherine Kerr May Bird and the Ever After - Jodi Lynn Anderson Once a Princess: Sasharia - Sherwood Smith Dead on the Delta - Stacey Jay Ten Ruby Trick - Julia Knight The books I downloaded but haven't touched yet... Nope, too depressing! It's bad enough I have a physical TBR pile that takes up multiple shelves. I have an electronic TBR pile that takes up multiple pages. Sigh. I blame sampling. I LOVE sampling. So very much. | | Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 | | 10:27 pm |
D is for Dean but not for dignity.
See, told you we'd get to cats sooner rather than later. :) Dean is one of two cats that I adopted two (?) summers ago. He's a big, slobby, affectionate cat with no sense of personal dignity. He also LOVES to help me write. Every morning, I wander upstairs to the study and he races me there. I set out my papers, my drinks, my pens, and he... shoves them all aside and goes to sleep, which sounds pretty peaceful. Except, he's an active sleeper. ( Pics! )I shove him aside, and he oozes back, and I pick him up (with some difficulty; he is a LARGE cat) and remove him and he's back before I know it. I've learned my best bet is just to ignore him until he's deeply asleep, then tickle his feet until he kicks and slides himself right off the desk. Then, he stalks off, offended at my furniture and I can get to work. Why do I put up with it? He purrs in his sleep. |
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