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| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 | |
robin_mckinley
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12:23a |
Mondays are extreme enough, hot is too much
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/Y0WLSFMxomo/ http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=9597
Mondays are always long and this one has been longer than most and I have Weetabix Brain.* In the first place it is too hot. Peter, who feels the heat worse than he used to, was saying that he wasn’t getting out enough; that watering the wilting garden in the late afternoon, when the blaze is beginning to dim, was about as much as he could deal with. I said, it’s really nice at dawn. It does cool off some overnight** so when the sun is first coming up in the morning, and before it starts beating us up again, the world is pretty and cool(ish) and quiet and empty.*** You should try going out then. (Peter is an early riser.) I’ve taken hellhounds out for a quick sprint the last two dawns. I hope you go to bed again after, said Peter. Hrrmph, I said. I don’t go to bed again. I go to bed.†
Monday is also the day I have the dogminder to provide their afternoon hurtle, chiefly to keep me on her active customers list so I can use her for stuff like the Met Live Saturdays—but it is pleasant not to have to race out with hellhounds the minute I get home from my voice lesson, and to have time for a sit-down and a cup of tea before I go off again to ring bells at Colin’s tower. Today I gave hellhounds extra morning time, told Mavis to make it a half-length amble this febrile afternoon, and took them out once more, although I would not call it racing, when I got home after Nadia. Niall wasn’t going tonight†† so if I went ringing I had to drive myself, and the ME and I did have a little conversation about this but rather mysteriously the heat doesn’t seem to aggravate it the way it aggravates the rest of me. And Wolfgang knows the way to all three of Colin’s towers. So we went.†††
My voice lesson wasn’t nearly as terrible as it should have been. Singing in the heat is strange. Some of it is just the singing version of ‘what do you mean work’ but some of it is unique to the physiology of throats and small vibrating pieces of flesh. I crack more in the heat and Nadia said severely, that’s dehydration. I said, it is? This sensitive-flower thing would be easier to take seriously if I had a voice worth cosseting, but I guess it’s like buying the best shoes for running even if you’re never going to be better than 1,000,000,000th in the London/New York marathon, it’s still your body. So I guess I’m going to have to start doing that My Life, My Water Bottle that the upmarket spa people have turned into a fashion statement. Sigh. I don’t like water.‡ Also, I have Post Menopausal Woman Bladder.‡‡ The loo at Nadia’s is immediately outside the music room door, but this isn’t going to help me with the Muddles’ loo-free rehearsal church.
Nadia always asks how it’s going with Oisin—and while I’ve told her that I’ve engaged the stubbornness element and am therefore now singing on Fridays pretty regularly, she’s kind enough not to assume. Today we were discussing how I was going to keep myself amused while she’s on maternity leave‡‡‡ and I was explaining that while even a dork-level singer ought to be able to cope with some poor patient pianist supporting them on their effortful way, what interested me was the music-with aspect, the fact that someone else was performing music with you, and that therefore my favourite songs tended to be the ones when the ‘accompanist’ is doing something else entirely—when I can sing them, that is. Nadia said immediately, oh, you should sing Peter Warlock. The words were already out of her mouth. Then she looked a little anxious and said that most of his songs were technically fairly demanding. But it’s too late. I’d love to sing some Warlock. So she’s going to have a look at her [complete song collection] of Warlock at home and see if anything strikes her as possible. And not too gruesome for the responsible voice teacher.
So maybe there’s an explanation in there somewhere why the ringing tonight was . . . ahem . . . less than consummate generally. Maybe it was just the shock of Glaciation being t shirt temperature even for me.
* * *
* From Wiki on Weetabix: ‘Dry Weetabix is so absorbent that it is extremely difficult to eat without liquid. Fund-raisers such as the Boy Scouts hold events based on this, such as returning double the entry fee for those who can eat two dry Weetabix.’ Thoughts produced from a Weetabix brain tend to be dry, hard and crumbly also.
** Which I realise puts us way ahead of you sufferers in places like the Midwest and Texas.
*** I love empty. My favourite parts of a lot of post-apocalypse and dystopian novels, especially because I’m not a big post-apocalypse and dystopian novel person, are the beginnings, when our hero or heroine or small beleaguered band of survivors are wandering through huge deserted cityscapes. Before the zombies or the mutant bug things or whatever start eating them.
† Dawn does come very early this time of year. Very.
†† Or rather he was going elsewhere. He is increasingly sucked up into handbell peal ringing. Feh.
††† And failed to run over the duck roosting in the middle of the road. Who objected to being moved on. :_)#{*%$£”!!!!!
‡ Except in tea.
‡‡ Before that I had Menopausal Woman Bladder and before that I had Peri Menopausal Woman Bladder. Before that I could drink ten giant mugfuls of tea a day without considering the consequences. But it’s not all bad. I do seriously like not blowing up like a water balloon every month and killing people because I can’t help myself. If I’m going to kill someone, I want to do it deliberately.
‡‡‡ I am, of course, convinced that by the end of the first Nadialess fortnight I’ll have lost my top end and be squeaking like a rusty wheel. I can test this hypothesis the next fortnight since she is not teaching during the four-day Jubilee riot next week. I plan to stay indoors as much as possible and to allow no red, white or blue in my vicinity. I will put decals on [red] Wolfgang, and Darkness and Chaos will have to wear leather for a few days while their bunting-coloured harnesses are disallowed. So not a monarchist.
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| Monday, May 28th, 2012 | |
alisonscottblog
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11:54p |
Summer's just around the corner
http://www.kittywompus.com/macadamia/2012/05/summers_just_around_the_corner_1.html Actually, it's Right Here, Right Now; for anyone not in the UK, or in the future, it's fantastically hot and sunny this week. This is because the bank holiday and half term have been moved to next week. When it will rain. Oh yes.
Anyway, it's about to be festival season! Chippenham Folk Festival will be the first of the year for us, so we need to air our camping gear and pack up our instruments.
The festival I'm looking most forward to this year is the reimagined Big Session, now on a greenfield site in Derbyshire and being run by Mrs Casey (who also do Towersey). I don't *think* it will be as big or as crowded as Towersey! It would be hard if it is, because it's still in school term and it's not close. But the lineup is looking really good and it's always been a very lovely, chilled festival, with a great family area, excellent beer, and a lovely crowd. It also remains good value for a festival, though is not as cheap as it used to be (is anything?)
I've pulled together a massive Spotify playlist of bands playing at the Big Session, mostly so that I can listen to it on 'shuffle' to keep an eye out for the people I don't know.
Rest of the summer plans (still not quite firm): the English Country Music Weekend, Cropredy, Castellans Folksommer, Broadstairs, Tegeingl, Towersey. Ish.
And because I don't believe that free mp3s are *quite* obsolete yet, you can get the full version of one of Jonathan's favourite pieces of music in the whole world completely free from last.fm at the moment:
Kandakoran by Elephant Talk
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klwilliams
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8:31p |
We haz grill
Chaz and our neighbor Jerry put together our new grill this afternoon. For dinner, we had: Grilled hamburgers on home-made sesame seed buns Grill sausages Grill portabello mushrooms Grilled bananas with sugared strawberries Cabernet Mmmm....Everything was superb, which should not be surprising. |
stillsostrange
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10:23p |
Obligatory post is obligatory
All right, I give. I thought of a clever story reason to give that character another name. Which in no way mitigates the awkwardness of the first couple chapters, where everyone will be calling him by the old one. But hey, it's something. This ends my obligatory daily post. Maybe tomorrow I'll find some substance. Current Mood:  recumbent |
| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 |
gillpolack
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12:51p |
Time and space in all kinds of writing: a rant
My beef-of-the-second is writers who feel they have conquered time. Writers who take a bit of this and a bit of that are capable of annoying me, for some of them completely fail to understand why there's no underlying unity to the this and the that they have welded together in their work. They can't see a difference between nineteenth century England and twenty-first century America, or between Mainz in the eleventh century and in the sixteenth. A lot of history of Jews is written with this approach. Jews are universal, after all*, and so are not culturally confined by time and space in the normal way. My favourite history books (focussing on any subject) have an acute awareness of the long patterns of time and the short patterns and how geography and status and gender help configure time in a culture and how different people experience all this as themselves, not as projections of theory. My favourite recent book on this is by Elisheva Carlebach (Palaces of Time). It's a masterly study of the kind of things I think writers and historians need to understand. Right now, I'm reading a study that does the opposite. It contains such good ideas, but the author doesn't have much of an insight into how the cultural contexts of the works she examines actually operate. This means that the text is muddled and the conclusions are muddied and the whole work rests on insecure foundations. What I think I'm finally realising is that time and space in cultures operate the same way the palette does in painting. They need to be understood at a fairly deep level. They don't always need to be expressed. They help inform a writer's decisions. Quite often a work itself progresses with hardly a mention of them, but the solid understanding is working hard in the background, assisting the story or the argument. Moving to fiction for a moment - it's not a question of whether a society has clocks or if people travel a lot. It's a question of how time is measured and how time is perceived (both - not either/or) and how space is visualised and used. There are so many different ways a society can operate and still have most of its members limited to a 30 mile radius in their lifetime, for instance. It might be the difference between a housewife in 19th century outback Australia (on a Steele Rudd type property - since these things count) and a cockney woman in 19th century London: the two woman might be born in the same year and travel the same total distance in their lives and still have hugely different spatial awareness. And their lives! So vastly, vastly different. I suspect that one reason some books are more easily accessible to a wider range of readers is because those books have this awareness informing them. The writers either understand space and time and build their world to manifest that clearly (taking this and that, but taking this and that with scrupulous care), or they select very narrow boundaries and stick so closely to those boundaries that the palette is consistent**. Some readers (of fiction, of general non-fiction, of academic studies) also lack that time/space cultural understanding. They couldn't care less if the palette jars sensibilities. Some of us care very deeply and things jar easily. Most readers are somewhere in between and a modicum of care and a bit of a reach to develop a palette will make most readers much happier. And that's an end of my rant. it's a pity, because it only has two footnotes. *So a popular assumption says, anyhow - I don't feel particularly universal. **For some books, of course inconsistency is way important. The Adventures of Alianore Audley, for instance (which is where this rant came from - the contrast between Wainwright and the other authors I'm looking at today). It's done intentionally and for comic effect, however - the writer still has a deep understanding of the place and time. It's one of those instances where someone who knows something very well can mock it very effectively. |
| Monday, May 28th, 2012 |
ericmarin
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9:43p |
Idling
IdlingWaiting at the Ford dealership to finalize a car purchase, twenty conversations, a few negotiations, a baseball playoff, sales calls on the PA, vie for my tired attention, but I focus on this poem, my bartering done for the day, looking forward to the drive home in my new-car-scented sedan to show my wife and my daughter what will now take us from Point A to Point B for the next few years-- engine-idling time in verse. ---- |
fidelioscabinet
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9:11p |
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msagara
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10:08p |
Grade Two, and finally, the end to bullying
When I first started posting about my ASD child, it was indirectly in response to discussions on the internet about bullying in its many forms. I had intended to speak about how one Principal at our school had landed firmly in its midst to put a stop to bullying and its culture. Of course, in order to do that, I had to talk about the school, and I wrote about my son because in some ways, he would have been an ideal victim. He wasn’t. He wasn’t in part because of the teachers and their certain faith in a Principal who backed them up. I’ve spoken about my son’s grade two educational aide. What I haven’t mentioned in any detail is that my son was not the only child with whom Mr. Virk worked. The other boy was not ASD. He was in no conceivable way -- except for age and gender -- like my son. If my son did not pick up social cues, and, until the middle of the year, had not developed the theory of mind that neurotypical children develop by age three, he was nonetheless a reasonable child if you understand his particular quirks. ( The other child who also shared Mr. Virk’s time was not. ) |
alfreda89
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9:03p |
Word Count on WIP
Well, the meters are not cooperating for me. So -- current Allie 3 count, 87,359 words as counted by WORD. I think this book will be 120,000 words. Just a guess. I think I know where I'm going! Current Mood:  tired |
malkingrey
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9:59p |
So It's a Day.
On the minus side: I felt achy and dragged-out most of the day. I don't know if it was because of the weather (they've been promising us a thunderstorm since yesterday, and not delivering) or the pollen (Oak, Birch, and Grass, according to the weather page), or the cold that Twin A had last week. On the plus side: Caramelizing onions in the crock pot works great -- just throw in a stick of butter, a teaspoon or so of salt, and about 4 pounds of sliced onions, set it on Low, and leave it alone for about 12 hours. In the morning, you'll have about 2 cups of Essence of Onions. Also on the plus side: Caramelized onions make a great pizza topping. I did one white pizza, because Twin A doesn't care for tomato-sauce-based things, and one red pizza, and the onions worked just fine on both. The red version with caramelized onions and lots of cheese was amazingly rich and good -- almost meaty, in fact. I think I liked it even better than the white pizza. I'm still waiting on the thunderstorm, though. Current Mood:  full |
cranky_editors
[ thatwordgrrl ]
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6:31p |
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| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 |
gillpolack
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11:27a |
I'm making sense of things today. Finishing some stuff, sorting some stuff, and, of course, teaching Latin. I've realised I can't do all my messages this week and do all the work I must do and get to all the medical/dental appointments. I will do the one non-postponable message tomorrow and as many as I can on Friday after the dentist and the rest can wait. I want the insurance stuff finished, but there is a limit to the number of hours in a day. In better news, I finally have my own copy of Brian Wainwright's The Adentures of Alianore Audley and of the last two books of Felicity Pulman's Janna series. Flick sent me hers, for which I'm very grateful. Her next book's about Norfolk island, and I'm kinda hoping it's a bit like Ghost Boy. Brian's next book will be another straight historical, but it's a way off yet. (I don't know why I didn't own my own copy of Alianore - these things are a mystery). I also found a copy of Jennifer Fallon's new book in Target when I was doing some insurance shopping and somehow it snuck into my shopping basket. I've also received a bunch of review books this week. The sword and sorcery one appeals particularly, but one that calls itself "Tribal Science" is going to be interesting reading. I won't get to these new books until after Continuum, I suspect, but I have a good chance of finishing all the older ones before then. And of finishing my various deadlines. This latter is because I have someone to drop dire hints - it makes a *big* difference to my willingness to work when things get tough, having someone who also has deadlines and who is willing to work alongside. One day, maybe, I'll be through this curious stage of my life and my blog will be all kinds of interesting again. I don't get lunch until I finish filling the holes in the review essay. I'm afraid I left gaps for examples when I was too pressed for time. When they're filled in I can do a final revision and lo, one deadline will be done. |
| Monday, May 28th, 2012 |
melissa_writing
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8:08p |
Deconstructing book cover & pondering misleading clues
I spend a lot of time thinking about book covers. I blame a slim part of that on being an author, but the rest of it is the result of being a reader and being a person who is fascinated by non-verbal stories. When I was in my late teens, I entered therapy (a much healthier choice than the other "coping mechanisms" I had adopted in those years). The problem with therapy--IMHO--was that it involved talking about feeeeelings. I wasn't very keen on that. If I was angry, I walked away or played music loudly until I was calm. If I was sad, I exercised or cranked the stereo again. So my therapist suggested taking pictures and journaling. I still do both, & I still find them very satisfying--both as a coping with moods & (now) for fun. My interesting in photos & music led to an interest in all of the ways we "speak" without words. Book covers are very much a case of the visual media speaking, telling us what we need to lure us in (so too album covers* back in the Ancient Years when I bought vinyl & then CDs). One of my favourite assignments as a university teacher was to have my freshman "read" advertisements. Where is the eye pulled? What do those colours convey? Are there models? If so, what do their postures, eyes, expressions, attire (etc) tell us? What is the tone? How does the font fit into the overall message? What about cover copy? We "read" all of that from both our personal perspective/experience and from our current historical & cultural contexts. We do all of that very quickly. So while we shouldn't judge a book's MERIT based on the cover, we are--because we are trained to do so--judging a lot of other things. The final decision/judgment is whether we will open the cover* to proceed to judge the contents. I am thinking about covers extra because my new book just had a cover reveal in USA Today. (Go here to see it.) We went through well over 2 dozen covers to reach that one. It was a verrrrry long stressful process that involved me wringing my hands and (I suspect) my editor and agent pondering ways to get working voodoo dolls. On the heels of that, I recently tried to get my kids to read two books I very much enjoyed of late-- Altered by Jennifer Rush and Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry** I had to all but FORCE by daughter to try them, and both were books I could NOT get my son to read. (NOTE: My kids are big readers. They both go through a couple hundred books a year. No, not exaggerating. They both read early, & they both read at a very rapid rate.) I can't go too much into the Carnival of Souls cover. I will say that the masks are a very important plot point (esp the white mask), and that the burning of the mask is significant. What I can do is take a look at the covers of the two books I read & recommended. First I want to look at the cover for Pushing the Limits. The primary message this cover conveys is romance. The couple is leaning against school lockers. Her hand isn't holding him, but dangling over his shoulder. Her other hand is on her hip. She is very assured in her posture. His hands are on her, and he leans into her. The font is a strong, bold blocky font. It has a scratchy texture, & the "the" is vertical instead of horizontal. It's a strong font with texture. I think the font fits. The overall image is heavy on shadows. That could be secrecy (which fits) or hiding (still fits). On the bottom, there is a quote from Simon Elkeles calling the book "riveting and emotional." That quote was what gave me pause. I know Simone's books (& her), so I flipped it over to read the back. The cover copy made the book sound more serious than the image conveys. Since I like both romance & serious, I started reading. As it turns out, I think Simone was a perfect choice as a read-alike for this. However, the cover image says things about the protagonist (confidant in her sexuality & in herself) that aren't accurate. It, likewise, in the cover image & cover copy lets me know that the boy is a "bad boy." Nope. He's a good guy in a bad situation--there is a difference. I loved the book, and---more importantly--my daughter did too, but the cover image of the protagonists gave her pause. The book has a romance, so the cover isn't wrong. Unfortunately, I think it makes the book look less serious than it is. My daughter wouldn't have read it if not for my "ignore the cover; just read a chapter & decide" approach. Then, I added a "had a bit of Sara Zarr feel to it" (Zarr being like magic/guaranteed good reading for both of us). Is the cover simply trying to appeal more to the romance readers? Or is it a result of the design teams' primary genre (this is a Harlequin Teen book) or is this a case of romance being more commercial than the serious? This is what Daughter & I discuss (often on our evening walks). What would we change? The posture of the couple (make her projected persona match the protag), amp up the seriousness of the cover copy, & adjust the font size of the author's name (bigger) as well as the cover quote from Simone. Add an attribution of what books Simone wrote as that is useful. Keep the awesome title font; keep the use of shadow. So Goodreads doesn't have the cover for the book I just read this weekend--Altered by Jennifer Rush. It's on the author's blog though. Go here. The unusual placement of the title stands out, but the bright green and mostly naked guy don't tell me much. This is a VERY action-y book. Think a little bit of Dollhouse (the TV program), a little bit action movie. Yes, there is romance (which I think we are to read from the very fit topless young man), and there is a "modified to be fit/better/etc" (still matching the guy on the cover). This is a book with dynamic action. I'd watch it on the screen. Escapes, car theft, guns, hand-to-hand . . . It's very solid in the pace department. Yeah, there's romance too (and gods know, I am a diehard romance readers!), but much like Pushing the Limits it's so much MORE than romance. Where Pushing the Limits was a book with complicated family dramas and serious issues, Altered was a book that was filled with intrigue & secrecy. It's also a book that could have a boy-reader appeal. I offered it to my son--who likes actiony books--and he rewarded me with a look that was followed by, "Are you serious?!" If I had a vote, I'd revise this cover to be more dynamic. This is an action-filled book. The cover art should have more movement. The increasing presence of action-filled, thriller-esque, "light SF" books is exciting. For Altered, I'd try to convey that this fits into that trend. I know that boys aren't the primary demographic of either book, but I also think that there are reasons these COULD appeal to boy readers 1) the strong protagonist in Pushing the Limits (Noah) who is dealing with loss and grief and trying to be a man for his younger siblings and 2) guys who were altered to fight, car chases, fights, & shady stuff. One area where both book covers really succeeded was the importance of being readable in a digital shopping arena. Press both "control" and the minus sign on your keyboard and shrink a cover graphic to e-shopping size. With the death of Borders & far too many indies over the past few years, swaths of the country lack bookstores. Add the ereader boom to that, and we have readers buying more of their books (print & e) via online vendors. The covers of a few years ago were dressed up with effects (gloss, emboss, foil, etc). They still are, but now, a cover has to be equally (more?) able to jump off the virtual shelf--oh & do it while being postage-stamp-sized. Strong title fonts, shorter titles, and iconic images become important with those parameters. Both are books I recommend without reservation. In both cases, I think the covers had strengths, but didn't convey some of the aspects of the stories that I think are strengths. Since I just got my German cover for Graveminder, I'll look at it too. Graveminder has had five covers. (You can see the 2 US ones, & the two UK ones on Goodreads here. You can see the German one here.) In the US, the first cover was a sepia tinted barn with a red moon. The font is in script. It has a quote from Charlaine Harris, and a tagline "Sleep well & stay where I put you." I love the cover. I selected the photo AND font, & I agreed with the quote. There were a few cover concepts before this--one had a scarf fluttering in a field. The tone it conveyed was "very feminine"; the hardcover image, otoh, said "creepy." The book was picked up by horror readers, won the Best Horror of the year on Goodreads, but a lot of readers were turned off. They said "too creepy" (no, really, they said that--I saw the blogs, the emails, & heard it in person). The paperback cover is the antithesis of the hardcover. A young woman (early 20s at the oldest, but really looks pretty teen) is holding a lantern. Poppies fall around her. I love it too. The UK (& German) covers all use a combination of a design around the title, swirls/vines/possibly ironwork. They all have a blue-ish tone (like many of my Wicked Lovely books), and they are all rather Gothic in tone. Unfortunately, they all also break the title into two words (which makes me crazy in a way I can't explain). No one of the five covers is wrong Like with the two books above, the covers here are conveying messages that are all--in part--accurate. The book is a Gothic (in the traditional sense of that word), creepy, & with romance. Finding a cover that conveys the WHOLE of a story is a hugely impossible job. Instead, art departments are left choosing elements of the story, a market demand, a trend, or even a vendor request. Right now, covers matter a lot, and I'm not sure we'll reach the place where albums seem to have because one buys whole books not only chapter 14 or 32 or etc. I have very few answers, but I do enjoy pondering :) So my final thoughts-- Add these two to your TBR list, and let me know if you agree with me on the covers. Tell me if there are covers that YOU think are a great match for a book OR books you've read that you loved but wanted to tweak the covers so more people pick them up. Pondering is more fun with others . . . --- *'I'm not sure the album cover is quite as important in the era of Pandora/Last.fm/etc and an era when buying single songs is more typical than the whole album, but my jury is still out on this. (NOTE: Yeah, I know I tagged the same footnote for two spots.) ** I don't know either author. |
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icanhaschzbrgr
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4:00p |
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icanhaschzbrgr
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2:00p |
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icanhaschzbrgr
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12:00p |
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icanhaschzbrgr
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10:00a |
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docbrite
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6:47p |
Have You Had THE SURGERY Yet???
This video has been cheering me up at difficult moments. I linked to it in comments the other day, but want to embed it for interested parties who didn't see it there. Just listed several new eBay auctions: the chapbooks Would You?, Used Stories, Stay Awake, Crown of Thorns, and The Feast of St. Rosalie (a hardcover); also a hardcover copy of Antediluvian Tales. My blank journals and other handmade objects are also still available until Wednesday evening. Also, Grey has listed a one-of-a-kind photograph for sale, and a very beautiful one, too. Angel that he is, he has earmarked his profit from the sale of this piece as my testosterone fund. Current Mood:  hot |
| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 |
charlesatan
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7:22a |
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| Monday, May 28th, 2012 |
alfreda89
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6:15p |
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douglascohen
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6:57p |
Game of Thrones: Season Two: Episode Nine (Spoilers for Books & Show)
Wow. It's not the most eloquent way to start this blog post, but it's certainly the most accurate. I think most people will agree with me when I say that this was the best episode of season two so far and by far. From everything I've read, I believed that HBO would do its best to get the Battle of Blackwater right, but that big question loomed: how much of it could they really cram in on a non-movie budget? The answer is a lot, and I never got the feeling they were skimping on the special effects (and because they're on a non-movie budget there was never any danger of them relying too heavily on special effects). George R. R. Martin--who handled the script for this episode--and the director, Neil Marshal, should both be commended. When the episode was over--and I say this with all due respect to the other writers who have done some really good work this season--I found myself thinking that it's a damn shame that GRRM can't write every episode. Of course, I quickly reminded myself that the man needs to work on The Winds of Winter; with the HBO series in full swing and the kid actors growing up, he needs to churn this one out faster than he did the last one. If George writes all ten scripts, as awesome as they would be, it would take much too long for the next novel to come out. But let's get into the episode itself. As always, beware of spoilers for the books and the series. Be up to date before reading any further. Thou hast been warned. ( Read more... ) |
al_zorra
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6:45p |
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loupnoir
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3:17p |
Hey, cold! You've been here for over a week. Changing from a head cold to a chest cold doesn't turn you into something new, so you can hang out longer. Go away! I need to be healthy now. No love in the very least, me Ah, the return of an old tradition: the little head cold that hangs out and turns into a nasty chest cold. How fun, hacking up one's lungs. As little fun as this is for me, I feel worse for poor ![[profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) albionwood who has to listen to all the hacking and wheezing and nose-blowing and general grunts and moans of malaise. The wind slowed down to merely annoying yesterday, and since I was feeling better, I was stupid and went out and did some work. Three tanks of gas later, I put the weed eater away and felt great, for about half an hour when the coughing restarted and would not stop. Thank science for really good night time medication. Since yard work is not a good idea, maybe I'll finish cutting out a pattern. Surely, the stupid cold will put up with that. Cross-posted from dreamwidth.org Current Mood:  sick |
stillnotbored
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5:00p |
Contest time! (bet you thought I forgot)
Nope, I never forget. Life is, shall we say, full to bursting right now. And what better day to post a contest than my first paid holiday in five years? Let me explain what's going on. Or I could sum up: Once a month I will post an orphaned first line here on LJ. All my LJ posts are mirrored on Goodreads, so you can find the line there as well. In comments--either here or on Goodreads--write the first paragraph of a story or the first stanza of a poem using that line. Easy peasy. Anyone can enter. Anyone at all, friend, foe or interested stranger, newbie or professional. You have one (1) week to come up with your entry. I will announce the winner and repost his or her winning entry. There is more at stake here than covering yourself in glory on my blog. Oh yes, there is an actual prize involved. The winner each month will receive one of the portable fantasy map pendants I make. Kinda like this one. Not this exact one, but you get the idea. I'll surprise you.  And the first line for this month is: At midnight on her ninth birthday, Alison Marie was crowned Queen of the Nightlands.Now go forth and write. I'm always delighted to see what people come up with. Detailed rules behind the cut for those who missed them. ( Read more... )Have fun! |
klwilliams
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2:51p |
BayCon 2012
I've been to most of the BayCons in the last 22 years, but have not had a great time the last few times I went. We almost went somewhere else this year, but decided to try BayCon again. I'm so glad we did. The panels were interesting, the con itself run very smoothly, and the guests were a lot of fun. I'd never heard of Brandon Sanderson before, and he turned out to be quite sharp and interesting. I wish I'd been able to go to his interview. The Kollin brothers were...well, the Kollin brothers, which means fun and over the top. Chaz and I were on panels, plus I had my first reading. (I read way too quickly, without any dramatic pauses, even though I knew better. I was worried about running out of time, even though I knew I would run out of time. Still, no one walked out. I wonder how much my mother had to pay them?) There were quite a few panels across from ours that I wish we could have gone to as well. The BarCon part was also much better this year, since we stayed down in the quiet end near the sushi bar. Lots of friends were there whom I hadn't had a chance to hang out with in a while, plus new friends we got to meet. I'm really looking forward to next year (Lois McMaster Bujold will be GoH). My one complaint is with the hotel/convention center. I brought my cane, which I hardly ever need, but the extremely long hallways with no place to sit along the way made me very happy I had my cane to lean on. There were lots of other people with mobility issues, too, who probably also wished the hotel layout was a little bit more helpful. The BayCon staff was great, though. |
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