A friend brought this over tonight. It describes both our lives …
A new faculty member faces his demons
Keyboard Kitty by Marie-Lynn Hammond
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on Keyboard Kitty by Marie-Lynn Hammond
Smashword Update
For anyone who missed my previous announcement, Kindling is available on Smashwords for $0.99. I’m still waiting for them to resolve their issues with Amazon, but if nothing happens in the next week I’ll look into publishing it there as well.
Meantime, here’s the cover for Beginner’s Luck, the next story I’ll be putting up on Smashwords. I’m trying to do them in seasonal order, and much of this story’s action takes place in February. This one will have internal illustrations by Georgie Schnobrich!
Special challenge for my Milwaukee readers — where did I find these trees?
Posted in art, publication, real life, writing
Comments Off on Smashword Update
Dougie MacLean
28 years ago, when I lived in Edmonton, Dougie MacLean was a pretty regular visitor to small clubs in the city. I never missed a performance. Not only was the music grand, but he would always teach us the choruses as if Scots-accented English were a foreign language.
” ‘Oh, are ye sleepin’, lassie,’ — that means ‘oh, are you sleeping, lassie?’ — now try that out once. Oh, that’s verra nice. That means ‘very nice’.”
So encouraged, I learned the secret of the North American-Scots accent, which is; that we are sae frugal we willna move oor lips. Just try it. Ye’ll see it works verra weel.
Here’s one of my favorites, I am Ready for the Storm.
Posted in dougie maclean, music, scots wha hae
Comments Off on Dougie MacLean
In Which I Rant About Unspecified Witches
If there’s a fantasy trope I absolutely despise, it’s the Persecuted Witch.
You know her. She lives her life in fear of being identified as the witch she is and burned, stoned, tortured, whatever, by benighted neighbors. Yet she uses magic (or what looks enough like magic to make those neighbors suspicious) to help the same benighted murderers. And when a wielder of magic arises to take revenge upon the killers of witches, whose side will she be on? You got it. Continue reading
Posted in antifeminist, characters, feminist, oh so cliched, ranting, reading, writing
Comments Off on In Which I Rant About Unspecified Witches
Twelfth Night
Like George Washington, my social circle holds its real seasonal celebrations on twelfth night. Of course, without the twelve days of misrule preceding it, or the troops of mummers, we are a little limited. Still, tonight we will have flaming wassail and go out on the back porch to call summer in again on various instruments. I spent an hour looking for my cow’s horn and loon call, when they were exactly where they belonged all the while.
I will have to miss tomorrow’s fun at church, with the king cake and performances by the people who got the coin, ring, and crown out of it last year.
Here’s the Newfoundland “Mummers Song” – a low-key song, but I like the video. Couldn’t you welcome an irruption like this into your kitchen?
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on Twelfth Night
Poetry Friday
A fragment from a brand-new poem by Theodora Goss. Click here to read the rest on her blog.
What would you think
if I told you that I was magical?
That I had russet hair down to the backs of my knees
and the birds stole it for their nests
because it was stronger than horsehair and softer than down.
That when the storm winds roiled,
I could still them with a word.That when I called, the gray geese would call back
come with us, sister, and I considered rising
on my own wings and following them south.
But if not me, who would make the winter come?
Who would breathe on the windows, creating landscapes of frost,
and hang icicles from the gutters?
I love the way this poem uses the power of classic fairytale images, without trying to subvert or twist them. It’s so easy these days to think that classic images are played out, and that the savvy modern author has to look at them with a jaundiced, or at least a self-referential, eye. But if I’m honest about it, I have to admit that my liking for most twisted, ‘adult’ fairy tales is mostly borrowed from my memories of the originals they are pastiching. I don’t usually want to read new takes on fairy tales: I want to read actual new fairy tales.
Theodora Goss’s poetry scratches that itch, pulling together just the things I’ve been longing for and treating them with the respect magic deserves and requires.
New Year’s W00t
Geranium Cat put me on her must-have list!
Daruma Doll from Blogadilla
The nice thing about having a mini-career is that everything’s new and exciting. I’m still at the stage where every passing mention means a lot to me, and I think I’ve met every single one of my fans, either by email or in person. Of course, I *hope* there are hundreds out there whom I will meet in the New Year.
Last year I had mini-versions of the standard writer’s experiences, to wit:
- Someone I met in another context turned out to be a fan
- I had lunch with fans at a convention and discussed the books
- I received a piece of fan art
- I got several good reviews and a few bad ones
- I self-published for the first time, with Smashwords
- And the usual submissions, rejections, and places-that-make-you-wait-YEARS-for-any-response.
For the new year, I hope to add more of the same; I’ll finish revisions of the third Osyth novel, work on the fourth, and I have a non-Osyth novel awaiting my agent’s attention. I also want to get back to writing the short pieces, hopefully mastering the craft of writing real short stories instead of novellas.
If I were going to fill in a Daruma doll this year, my goal would be to write and submit at least four real short stories. For most professional writers that would be a laughably small goal. But I have a mini-career, in the interstices of my day job, so I will be modest.
Posted in real life, Uncategorized, writing
Comments Off on New Year’s W00t
RIP Coolpix
Well, it’s gone. The camera that went to Ireland, the Galapagos, and Africa with me has perished… here’s the last picture from it. All you creative types can figure out the rest of the story for yourselves.
RIP coolpix
Posted in it's wet down here, real life
Comments Off on RIP Coolpix
A New Year’s Procession
Here’s the Procession of the Sardar, by Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov. My father had a 45 rpm record with this on one side and Valse Triste on the other. I listened to it endlessly, especially in those cold after-christmas months when the view outside my window was a field of snow and bare trees, and I wanted something redolent of old movies and exotic places. On long winter afternoons I would snuggle under my most colorful afghan, read Jack Vance novels, and listen to Anita’s Dance, Mussorgsky, and the Procession of the Sardar.
And what, you ask, is a Sardar anyway? Wikipedia tells me it was a title of honor applied to commanders like this gentleman, a past Prime Minister of Iran. A procession of the like must have been truly impressive!
Posted in From the museum, music
Comments Off on A New Year’s Procession
Poetry Friday
Cockscomb image from http://plantfinder.sunset.com/sunset/plant-details.jsp?id=636
This poem makes me think of a fairy tale. But it doesn’t read as if Dame Edith saw Jane as a possible heroine; in fact, this is more like what the wicked mistress would say to her hapless servant. Complete with the can’t-help-herself repeated references to the flower that will prove key to Jane’s secret identity and lead her to the adventures she was born for…
Aubade
by Dame Edith Sitwell
JANE, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;
Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.
Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,
Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.
But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,
Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain.
The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,
Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers that ‘gin to cluck.
In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,
As carrots or as turnips shining
Where the cold dawn light lies whining.
Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp, turns the milk’s weak mind . . .
Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again!
Posted in Uncategorized
Comments Off on Poetry Friday
