Vicissitude and Season

Things I have been up to:

1) Still working on various powerpoints. Two delivered last week, including the root vegetables one on Saturday where I passed around a couple dozen different produce items acquired at just two local supermarkets (things like lotus root and galangal alongside the relatively more prosaic carrots and turnips). Which means that I now have to cook them; it's going to be a week of, I'm sorry, getting back to our roots.

2) Thursday evening we drove into DC (unfortunately at the same time the Dalai Lama was there; it would have been a good day to take the Metro) to see one of the National Theatre broadcasts of Donmar Warehouse's "Coriolanus" with Tom Hiddleston, Mark Gatiss, and a bunch of other great people. It was at the Shakespeare Theatre (the newer location), so a bit weird to sit in a theatre watching a video of another very different theatre, with filmic closeups. But thoroughly enjoyable. Also listened to last fall's Nerdist interview with Hiddles on Saturday's drive, so I am kind of vibrating still. In a totally non-cradle-snatchy way, of course. *hummmmmm*

3) This goes nicely with my slow reread of the Lymond Chronicles, because oh yes, please do make the mini-series before he's too old. yunitsa will write the script.

4) Went nearly straight from the root vegetables thing (well, the whole five-hour event) to Allentown so we could watch the kid in a movement ensemble performance and the kid's delightful girlfriend in an all-female version of "The Learned Ladies," and then drive home again the next evening. Weekend, what weekend.

5) I've also had some migraine-induced downtime, which I've mostly spent watching more "Angel." Well into season 3 now, filling one of those long-needed viewing gaps (after, you know, betaing penwiper26's fic that uses the source material. I'm spoiled for it, but that's not the same as knowing the canon).

Need to sort some seeds now.

I was just announcing happily to everyone that the book is now in print at Amazon (cheaper than at CreateSpace, who knew?) when I realized it's also available both in print and as an ebook at Barnes and Noble. It's also at Kobo, if anyone shops there. Doesn't seem to be at iTunes yet, and I am too exhausted to check anywhere else (but if you see it, let me know).

Now I just have to get people to actually buy the thing. I had an interesting discussion with penwiper26 the other day about book prices, starting with a quote from John Dunning about a book costing about the same as a good restaurant meal (or 3-4 Starbucks drinks, or a couple of fancy cocktails). But often there's a reluctance to purchase - not just my book, but any book that's not by an author you've sampled before, that's an unpredictable experience. And I do this too, hemming and hawing and saying wow, I'm just not sure. Whereas I've had bad or so-so meals before, even in restaurants that got good reviews, and it hasn't stopped me from eating out. You'd think people would be more willing to spring for a book, because it's a possession one doesn't digest and lose through excretion, and okay, I know some people never reread books, but the paper ones you can pass on (or even sell, possibly). And ebooks are pretty cheap: more like a Starbucks drink and a bagel, or less. Of course some people just simply don't have the money at all, but I'm talking about people who do.

So the reluctance to jump right in and buy what sounds like a good book I tend to attribute to one of several conscious or unconscious motives. One, books are time-consuming, so people wait till they're sure they'll have the hours available. Two, for paper copies there's the space issue; this is currently stopping me from buying anything but ebooks for the most part, and even though ebooks take up no space, I suppose if you already have a large catalog of them it feels like things are getting crowded on your reading device. Three, even though buying and reading a book is not exactly the equivalent to putting a political sign in your front yard or friending someone in public on Facebook, it does feel a bit like… taking something on. Adjusting the color shades of your soul a bit. Books are insidious, and they do things to you. You are what you eat, but even more you are what you read, and I have hesitated sometimes to be the person who reads that book, even if it's not the reason I have in the front of my mind for not pressing the Buy Now button. It's this weirdly profound act that's a lot less simple than saying "the spinach enchiladas, please."

But not that hard, okay? *g*

… for Person of Interest to commence operations, and by operations I mean open-heart surgery that takes three weeks to complete. (Or more, in my case. I'm hoping to get to watch the third part sooner than five days after it airs, but no guarantees.)

a) I take back what I said about Sleepy Hollow. Well, no, I don't, but all is forgiven for the delightful sequence in which Ichabod decides to leave Abbie a voice mail and, because he has barely managed to grasp that his words can be recorded and listened to, and has not yet proceeded to phone etiquette, basically writes a letter out loud, beginning Dear Miss Mills and ending Your Faithful Servant (or something similar; I can't remember). I can be very picky about more aspects of this show than the aforementioned historical inaccuracies, including the ways in which Ichabod adjusts and does not to the 21st century (I have written several novel-chapters in which an 18th-century man adjusts to the 20th century, and I had to think about it constantly to get it right, and he didn't run into any black female police lieutenants), but bits like the above make it all worthwhile. And I think I see where they were heading with the Sally Hemings conversation, even if the circumstances made a full and frank discussion rather impractical. So, all in all, I'm going to keep on watching.

Also, Orlando Jones.

b) Currently reading (after having finished Broken Homes thanks to pendrecarc, bless you and I will mail it back soon, and oh Lesley what are you doing?): Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series, though all in the wrong order because of library availability. So far have read #s 7, 9, 6, 1, and 3, the last two bought over the weekend at Houston's Murder by the Book (my son literally lives around the corner from this delightful place, where Julia Spencer-Fleming was reading and signing her new book today, a day after I left alas. I declined to buy the hardcover. Maybe the Kindle edition). Anyway, I really like Penny's writing: interesting descriptions, gentle sense of humor, intriguing characters, long development arc which I am getting all chopped up and mixed, but whatever. The setting is mostly divided between Montreal and a fictional Quebec village, which reminds me rather of Martha Grimes's Inspector Jury books, but these have a deeper sense of place, less repetitive characterization, and more grit. (The comparison seems to have occurred to the Murder by the Book staff too, since they have Penny shelved under "British," meaning, I gathered when I mildly complained, "cosy." Which I wouldn't say she is at all (nor by any means could one define all British mystery novels that way). But they don't have a Canadian section, just British, American, and Foreign. The placement just strikes me as really weird considering how fundamental the francophone-anglophone conflict is to the plots.) There is a lot about art and a lot about bone-aching resentment, and they should be very sad and aren't, and I am enjoying them greatly.

c) Oh shit it's cold. I am not ready for Suddenly Twenty-Three Degrees Fahrenheit. At least it didn't snow today.

Damn, still not ten o'clock.

I have "Walk Through the Fire" (yes, from Buffy) stuck in my head. Dammit.

Definitely not doing the Ten in Ten challenge (I like my inner editor, thank you, and also what I need right now is more like Organize Ten Things A Day) but it is fun to have all the new fics popping up, especially pendrecarc finally running with the Punxsutawney plot bunny, or I should say groundhog, that I played with ages ago.

I'm fiddling with the Henry Gale fic, though it's also hitting the "what is this for?" button and when I have time I'll have to take it for a walk and figure that out. One thing I do appreciate about writing it is how thinking through Ben's motivations brings into sharp relief Lost's deliciously convoluted plotting and presentation: this is set during season two and I'm pulling stuff from two or three seasons later to explain it. But so far it's totally interior monologue (which my brain doesn't want to assign to past or present tense, grr) and I think it would be better with snippets of dialogue. So we'll see.

Yesterday I was a bit under the weather (so to speak: it's hot again, although not unbearably so, but I think this was ragweed-related edge-of-migraine) and decided to splurge on Kindle books: not just Whispers Under Ground (having finished Moon Over Soho, which I liked even better than the first one) but also Naomi Novik's Blood of Tyrants (which I'm about two-thirds through and enjoying muchly), Laurie R. King's The Bones of Paris, and M.M. Justus (mmegaera)'s Finding Home. It is a good time to read the hell out of things before all the TV shows start up again.

I still have to make lists. I need to put "make lists" on my list.

Whoa, it's September; how did that happen.

We're getting a late (probably not last) gasp of actual summer, and I came home from yesterday's putting-in-the-fall-garden session soaked through and filthy, but all I need to do today is stop by and water if it doesn't look like rain. Probably will be driving over to some obscure corner of VA to have lunch - third time eating out this week, but it is the week that contains both my birthday and our anniversary, so. Had anniversary dinner (26th, if you're wondering; it impressed the waitress) at a place that specializes in cocktails, so had a thing with bourbon and peach and hot peppers called a Back Porch, and then a Ginger Rogers, which I think is going to be my "cocktail I can make without looking at the recipe" after a few more tries. I made ginger simple syrup the day after, and produced a version of the drink, though we had no ginger ale so I made it with ginger beer, and yum. I think this is a sufficiently different recipe that I can name it, therefore: Backwards and In Heels.

I have practically a mint lawn on one side of the house now, so can make All the Mint Drinks Ever.

Working away at the really-now-final edit of Time for Tea, taking out unnecessary words, and happily falling in love with my characters all over again. Need to make a list for the next steps. Under the cut, a bit from chapter 12 I've always been fond of (slight spoilers and relative incomprehensibility; the "bastard son of a sacked stable boy" does have a reference point).

( minuet )

Tumblr is still fun, but I have decided the rule is: the more clever I think a photoset is, the less likely anyone is to reblog it. (If you want to know: this and this.) Or maybe it's just: nothing gets reblogged unless it's tagged "Michael Emerson." Whatever. I am happy to post All the Ben Linus Ever, With Side of Harold Finch, but there are going to be bits of paper and parallelism and obscure quotes floating around too.

I'm just surprised I'm actually doing anything there. It's like the good old days when I ferreted out all the animal imagery in the Vorkosigan novels. Obsessive latching-on-to-specifics fandom, enabled by the ease of posting visuals.

Up through episode 10 of "Orange is the New Black" and still enjoying it. The plot arcs are somewhat predictable and yet compelling (or maybe it's "predictable and compelling" - being able to guess what's going to happen when it's a thing that appeals to storytelling sense is good, yes?) and I'm fond of a number of characters. Red and Crazy-Eyes are my favorites.

Reading (finally) Rivers of London, or Midnight Riot as it's called in the US for some unknown reason. Will report later.

And that is enough for now!

A few months back isis did a post about her negative reaction to present tense fiction, in which she discusses how despite being supposed by many to be more "immediate," to her present tense is distancing. It's a good post *pause for you to read it* and I understand what she's getting at even though I don't "bounce off" present tense in the same way. I do often feel there's an excess of This Is The Now in fanfic, but as long as something's well written I don't care much what tense it's in, and there are lots of things that will throw me out of a story faster than verbs with s on the end.

However, I'm as prone to navel-gazing as the next writer (you all have figured this out by now) so I do think about tense along with all the other elements of a story (also, being a writer of time travel books gets you noticing it even if you're committed to using standard past tense narrative). Until last year, I wrote almost exclusively in past tense, and when I moved into using present I thought of it as an effect of suddenly writing a lot of visual media fic - that "immediacy" thing. (A lot of other things changed this past year, of course; one could make all kinds of false assumptions about, say, menopause or hyperthryroidism or empty nest syndrome causing present tense to break out. I don't think we need to go there.) Certainly when I'm writing, to choose a totally random example ha, Vorkosigan fic, I'm going to write in past tense, because my style is not wildly different from Lois Bujold's, and to some extent I'm modeling on the books. I can think of a few examples of Vorkosigan things I might choose present tense for - it would be interesting to write Memory fic from Simon's POV that way - but in general I don't consider anything but past tense.

(I'm not sure "consider" is the right word, actually. But more on that later.)

Some published fiction is written in present tense, of course; most of what got me thinking about this last week was finally getting around to reading Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, which by the way is just as wonderful as Wolf Hall, and let me tell you, reading about Thomas Cromwell and writing about Ben Linus (even a Ben Linus on the way to reformation, if I may confusingly use that word) is an interesting and strikingly appropriate combination. Oh my. No, I do not want to read the crossover, though I would like to watch the chess game, or listen to the trash talk. Anyway. WH and BUTB are in present tense, which I remember clearly not noticing until well into WH, which tells you how well it works. And I suppose if I were to write Mantel fanfic (there is a vanishingly small chance of this) it would have to be in present, or it wouldn't sound right. The opposite (writing present-tense fic based on something in past tense) is somewhat more likely (for me, I mean; other people do it all the time).

( you are reading more )

*The Past, the Present, and the Future, not the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Thanks again, Ebenezer.

First, FYI those who I've been reading on both DW and LJ, I will probably be reading you on DW and may defriend on LJ (or just take you off my reading list).

Second, obsessive but unfortunately dim DW icon and epic fic in progress aside, this is mostly a non-Lewis post! Well, partly, anyway.

Since I am spending my free time otherwise (ahemrewatchinglewisepisodes) I haven't been reading as much, but one book I did get to in the last month was Stephen King's The Dark Half. I had never read a Stephen King novel, so thought I should remedy that. It's a horror story about a writer whose pseudonym comes to life and kills people horribly, and the writer is horrified and it's all very horrid. It was enjoyable reading. There's lot of nice stuff about who we are when we write, which I always find fascinating because I don't know. I mean, there are character voices, and I've long accepted the illogic that being in total control of the writing process and letting the characters take over can happen simultaneously, and that they are completely real and merely a part of my imagination at the same time. (I'm talking about original characters mainly, as characters in fanfic are part of someone else's imagination too - but then of course I hope that my characters will be part of other people's imaginations as well, so perhaps it's all the same in the end.)

That's different, though, from the writer's voice and how it is and is not me. I suppose I can say that when I write things I would never feel or think or do, that it's the characters making me do it, but if I've made up the characters, then...? It's actually kind of fun to think about, but I can see how it could drive someone crazy. Not that that's what the Stephen King book is about, exactly; it might have been more interesting in the end if it had been.

Another writing topic I've been considering, this one fanfic-related, is: what does it do to our writing brains when we make up stuff about characters from TV/movies as opposed to from books? I was mostly a book-fic writer until I launched into "Lewis," and it really does feel like a different process. I'm good at dialogue (she said modestly; I keep getting comments to that effect, though) but it's so different writing dialogue in, say, Vorkosigan fic, when I've never actually heard the characters say anything and have to make up their voices in my head, somehow synthesizing the canon dialogue (which, not irrelevantly, was written by an American about people with European-like voices) into something not too different but in my own voice, than it is writing dialogue between characters I've heard talking. And seen, too, though that in my brain seems yet a different process and oddly similar no matter what media I'm working with. I'm not intensely visual, though I try to make an effort. I describe people's facial expressions far too much, of course.

I don't actually think one fic-type is easier than the other; in the visual-media fic, of course, you have to satisfy your audience with a more precise echo of the original, but it's not like book-fic audiences can't be picky as well. But I find that writing dialogue for "Lewis" I can hear Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox saying it in my head, and can usually tell if it doesn't sound like something they'd say. When I write dialogue for Miles Vorkosigan or Gregor Vorbarra, they often end up sounding like me if I'm not careful.

And this is again all different from the process in original fiction, where the characters are one's own and therefore merely need to be internally consistent (and not remind people of characters they've seen elsewhere). Which isn't always easy either.

Thoughts?

I've been falling behind on documenting books read, but I did want to note that I cruised through Naomi Novik's latest, Crucible of Gold, last night, and really liked it. The last one, Tongues of Serpents, read like a transitional chapter in the series-as-novel, an exercise in getting from here to there; it's not like nothing happened in it, but it felt like a set-up for the next thing. Which in some ways it was, though in retrospect it was more a way to give Laurence a job to do while he was out of the service because they can't let him back in right away. Of course I can't help comparing it to The Letter of Marque which is the anomaly in the Aubrey/Maturin series, the one where Jack is out of the Navy, and Jack is up and down the Med and sailing to Sweden and cutting out ships and getting shot and avoiding being kicked by horses, an unreasonable number, for a naval engagement, and then there is the absolutely lovely ending with Stephen and Diana and the tower and the balloon dreams and singing Mozart. It is perhaps my favorite novel in the series, and the first one I read; those things are not unrelated, of course, but I love the way it fits into the series as a whole despite being an odd bit out. I don't think if I'd read Tongues of Serpents first in the Temeraire series I'd have gone back to read the rest.

But, on to the new book, which works much better in the Novik method of sending our heroes to a new place and making them cope. I really liked the idea of the Incas having forced out the Spanish with the help of their dragons - one can't help wondering how they would have gone on without that conquest, and here it is, although naturally the dragons change everything. And I liked seeing Hammond again, and oh dear poor Granby. So, I will read the next one (though perhaps not buy it) and look forward to seeing them back in England. For a while.

I need to catch up with documenting my life in all the various places I do it, but I seem to be alternatively busy and migrainey, and doing silly things like going all the way over to Derwood just to plant onions, which did actually need planting, but perhaps it was an excuse to drive through the cherry-blossomed streets while playing Mozart's Requiem really loud. (It is not good car music because parts of it are very soft, and my car makes noises. But I needed it.)

The calendar gets checked pretty often these days, as it's hard to believe it's still March; all sorts of stuff is blooming and leafing out that has never done that before this early. What will come of this, I cannot say, but it is hard to harrumph ominously while the weather is so gorgeous. And I ordered a thousand thousand slimy things red wiggler worms yesterday, which is very exciting, at least to me.

We have made a sudden plan to go to South Carolina for spring break, although I can't go for all of it, so I will fly down several days after J. and P. have driven there. Beach house! Charleston! Yay.

Book catch-up: am reading a mystery series by Frank Tallis set in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna, with a police inspector and a psychologist who are friends and play music together and solve crimes and eat lots of pastry. Good sense of place and attitudes/preoccupations/obsessions; I think one should occasionally get annoyed with characters whose worldview is different from one's own, and I do (especially with regard to Clara. Liebermann: My, she has unexplored depths after all! Me: Well, duh. Why are you marrying her again?) but basically they are both sympathetic dudes who hold my attention and make me want to keep reading. Part of it is context, of course, like the bit in the current book where the killer has painted an oddly-shaped cross in blood on the wall, and you read the description and think and then say "oh shit, it's a swastika." In 1902. And Liebermann (the doctor) is Jewish, and rather Panglossian with it (listen to your dad, Max; he knows what's coming).

More reading before bed. Yes.

And in non-reading news, managed to see "Hugo" (on small screen) and "The Artist" (on large) on sequential evenings this weekend, which might be too much silent film homage at once, but they were both quite good.

Reading: as mentioned before, John Lawton's A Lily of the Field and Philip Kerr's Field Gray, both of which bring up another phenomenon of series fiction, the looping back and filling in effect that happens when a series starts out covering a wide period of time and then the author wants to keep writing and so dips back in and elaborates on parts of the protagonist's life that were ignored or merely summarized before. It tends to lead to odd structures: the Lawton book spends the first half with newly introduced characters and then turns into yet another Troy of Scotland Yard Solves a Case, war period and post-war respectively; the Kerr starts out in 1954 and has flashback sequences in 1931 through 1946 (IIRC). They work because the grip on the central character is so good, at least for the author and the faithful reader, but would be odd for a first-time reader.

Also, two nonfiction books: Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff, which tells the story of a plane crash on a recreational flight over the territory of an isolated New Guinea society during WWII; and Measure of the Earth by Larrie Ferreiro, the tale of a French-Spanish expedition to "Peru" (currently Ecuador) in the 1730s to make measurements that would determine the shape of the planet. Both of them deal to some extent with the attitudes of whites toward colonial or otherwise-dominated lands, but (aside from the sheer adventure, which is related pretty well in both cases) I would read the first as an example of what happens when military people get bored and need another outlet besides actually fighting (and this applies to the native New Guineans as well - no noble savages these), as well as a case study of sensational journalism (not Zuckoff's, I mean, but that of the contemporary journalists), and the second as a carefully-researched report of stunningly bad personnel and mission management. The most interesting part of Measure is actually the description of how they all got home again - or not, in some cases. It's also fun to have read enough in this period to appreciate stuff like one of the Spanish soldiers going home on a ship that stops to pick up the survivors of Anson's Wager. And Voltaire pokes his nose in a lot.

Then I zoomed through Laura Lippman's novella The Girl in the Green Raincoat, which is "Rear Window" with preeclampsia, and I'm well-started on the newest Charles Todd. I should be reading Gaia's Garden, too. I have been PowerPointing my head off in preparation for Saturday's class.

In other news, I am now the mother of two adults, as Patrick turns 18 today. OMG.