Vicissitude and Season

1) One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that, although I in fact have been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack a fair amount, I spent the late winter being more drawn to another Alexander, von Humboldt. I read The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf, which is both a biography of Humboldt and a review of his huge scientific and cultural influence. (Actually, I listened to most of it, because it was out at the library and we had an Audible credit - not my favorite choice for this book, since I so often wanted to flip pages back and check on things. Read about the last fifth when the library hold came in. Will probably acquire it in paperback later.) Humboldt was an enormous figure in the 19th and long after his death into the early 20th century - internationally famous, hundreds of things named after him - and has practically vanished from our literacy now, mostly because he was a science generalist promoting broad-based theories, and the scientists of today are all specialists who seldom venture out of their chosen fields, whereas the general public shies away from both science and history, but also because at the time of WWI a lot of German historical figures got erased from American and English curriculums (and street and building names).

I had heard of Humboldt, because I read a fair amount of history of botany and he turns up there, and also because he figures peripherally in the Aubrey/Maturin books, but I had no idea of his importance in formulating some of the concepts that spurred theories of natural selection, evolution, climate change, etc., not to mention a lot of Romantic literature. He had a fascinating life and was a compelling person - so, book recommended! And I don't know if Humboldt would make a good musical, but should you want to write RPF about him, apparently he wouldn't have minded being slashed. (In case that makes you more inclined to read the book. I don't think it should.)

2) Have been spending too much time re-watching West Wing episodes, probably just as an antidote to Scandal (not to mention Real Life OMG), but I could use the excuse that I suddenly realized it's 2176 in the book I'm writing and there needs to be a presidential campaign. (Rose is at the end of her second term, so it's open.)

My, I have not updated here in a long while.

I think it's just been one of those periods where I'm not feeling particularly fannish, at least not about what everyone else is crying up as new and exciting (for example, I have not yet listened to the "Hamilton" soundtrack, and yes, I know. And I will. I suspect perhaps I'm holding back because a) I'm worried I might possibly not like it and then would feel an incurable fuddy-duddy, b) I am a little bit hmph-y just because of this sudden rash of accompanying enthusiasm for a period of history that I have been saying "hey. Hey, look" about for a good while now, impressive in a slightly boring eighteenth-century way, y'know, and no one listens. Though Alexander Hamilton is not my field of expertise by any means. Anyway, I digress). I've also been sick on and off, and a touch depressed here and there, though nothing to worry about. But yeah - not been on Tumblr in ages, and my Facebook use has gone up, and until yesterday my biggest recent media enthusiasm was "The Great British Baking Show," and while that was great fun it was not traditional narrative.

However, I did get inspired enough by my latest Netflix binge to come on here and recommend it (if a touch hedged with reservations) - if you're looking for something engrossingly narrative, you can do worse than "River." It is yet another British police procedural, and yet. It's both original and extremely trope-full, if not derivative exactly. At any rate, it does remind me of lots of other things - most strongly of "Luther," "Hannibal," "Scott and Bailey," "Broadchurch," and any number of other intense detective dramas, and also of Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge books. DI John River is played - very well - by Stellan Skarsgard, as yet another troubled (if not downright insane) but gifted investigator; it also stars Nicola Walker (last seen by me in "Scott and Bailey," as a (at least superficially) rather different character), here spookily charming and subtly developed (and I won't ruin the Big Reveal in the opening scene by saying more, because it is spot-on terrific). And it contains the Pragmatic/Human-Relief Ethnic Sidekick, the Tough But Fragile Female DCI, the Resentful Big Boss, the Gentle Romance-Teasing Psychologist, and the Irish Crime Family. But it's also got great acting and fascinating manifestations of dead people only River can see, and some interesting psychology, and a diverse cast (with some good thoughts about immigrants and loneliness), and it kept me enthralled. And I dare you to watch it without getting That Song stuck in your head. Six hour-long episodes - not too big a commitment!

Aside from that:

- Got through Thanksgiving (cooked for seven, came down with a cold afterwards).
- Did not embark on a Vorkosigan read-through, though I did reread Brothers in Arms to remind myself of what plot is.
- Have read much in a miscellaneous fashion since, but didn't keep track. Currently on Louise Penny's latest (which is, as always, sublime, even if I don't quite believe in someone building an enormous Armageddon device in the woods outside the village of Three Pines). Before I made it to the library I was pulling Nevil Shutes off the shelf, to modest enjoyment and the excuse that they are something Charles would like and I should be getting into his head. ETA: Also reread The Once and Future King and The Mists of Avalon back to back, I have no idea why, but it was a fascinating experience.
- Have caught up with "Doctor Who" and am generally liking the season except when I think they're being completely nuts, which is par for the course really. "Heaven Sent" was brilliant in the way that says "hey, look, we're being brilliant," but I do appreciate watching Peter Capaldi go for it. I want to say something about fabric stiffness after water immersion, but am unable to do so without proper spoiler cuts, which I'm too lazy to create.
- Have done much furniture rearrangement and sorting of Stuff. Not nearly finished.
- Oh, we also have been watching "The Knick," which I describe as "House"-in-1900 - gifted but troubled and drug-addicted Dr. Thackery is, however, balanced by other more interesting characters, and if the plot arcs are a trifle obvious and the blood a bit excessive, it made frosting and pastry layers even more refreshing by comparison. But I think overall I prefer detective tropes to doctor tropes.
- No writing progress; editing on NTF complete (I think) and I am taking a break before the publishing slog commences.

I'll pop in with more updates as I think of them.

So it was Three Weeks of Cellulitis, in the end, but I'm better now. Hurray for finding the right antibiotic! My primary care doctor was making noises about MRSA, but I just don't see how I have any of the risk factors, so I'm going with "nobody ever cultured it, so we will never know."

I also did get through (as of yesterday) all of the Amelia Peabody books, some of which I actually hadn't read before. I think perhaps I gave up initially somewhere around He Shall Thunder in the Sky and the emotional storm leading up to it, and didn't in fact get back to the series even though I thought I had. Glad to have come back and finished. Say what you will about Elizabeth Peters (and I could say a little about the editing in some of the later books) but she really knew how to write, and how to laugh at the right parts of what she was writing and take the right parts seriously, and I will always love her for that.

Also, it occurred to me partway through that this series is kind of the major key version of the Vorkosigan books, at least in the sense of a central family who pulls in many and varied characters to become part of their circle, viewed over a generation of time. Clearly this is something I like. And, because I enjoy exploring the intersection of writing and reading, I will admit to noticing how the Charles/Beatrice/Wilfrid triangle has similarities to Emerson/Amelia/Sethos, though at least I went a different direction with the unexpected familial relationships.

Aside from that my life is mostly tomatoes and Swiss chard at the moment.

Quick TV catch-up:

Sleepy Hollow: Almost like Katrina after last night's episode. Almost. Also, nice to see Frank again? I hope?

Castle: Back to form and they managed to find a new twist to keep things running a little longer. (Based on last week; haven't seen this week's yet.)

The Good Wife: And the Chicago canyons echo again with the refrain, "Kalinda, what the hell, no!" Also, I love episodes that require "we didn't know this would be in the news" disclaimers.

Elementary: Introducing new main characters and giving them storylines of their own is a good thing, people; season developing nicely. (I should probably note here that Ophelia Lovibond was yet another in the category of "where, oh where, have I seen that actor before? *checks imdb* Of course: 'Lewis'.")

Agent Carter: Watched the first two episodes of this; will probably keep watching. My main reaction is: it's just so satisfying. In somewhat the same way as Miss Fisher except with much more anger and fork-in-artery grit.

Person of Interest: On hold again until February, dammit. (Not that I begrudge the State of the Union, but otherwise grrr.) Good essay here: Why Person of Interest Needs to Continue Being the Gutsiest Show on Television. It's hard to remember sometimes that reactions are different outside fandom, but I'm not surprised that some viewers want it to go back to being the cosy procedural it never was. And probably hate Root/Shaw.

Couple of reading notes: Aside from finishing A People's History of the American Revolution, it's been mainly comfort reading. Among other things, I reread Lois Bujold's The Spirit Ring, which is an early stand-alone historical fantasy novel that I must have read originally after plunging through the Vorkosigan books. In that context it was a bit disappointing, but it's really very good on its own merits: the world-building is solid, the writing sings in places, and the characters are appealing. Seen retrospectively, it strikes some interesting notes with regard to the Chalion series, too.

Earlier in the month, to remove the taste of a dreadful Agatha Christie conspiracy thriller dealing with the misuse of an international youth movement, I reread some John Verney - anyone else here familiar with the Callendar series? ismo is the relevant one here, but the series starts with Friday's Tunnel - very fun 1960s British teenage adventures, which for some reason our local library possessed when I was a kid, and I later managed to procure copies for my kids (out of print alas and tend to be expensive). All of them use female POV, girls with real personalities and varied interests and a tendency to be irritable, and I'm glad to find I still love them (the books and the protagonists, especially February). If I ever do participate in Yuletide, I'll be sure to propose this series - there has to be someone out there who's read it.

1) Watched the "White Collar" finale last night! I enjoyed it and thought it was close to the best ending possible. ( spoilers )

2) I've been watching "Luther" in down time (there were some headaches last week) and like it a lot at least through the beginning of the second season where I am now, although there's a sort of pile-on mentality with regard to tragedy and conflict that gets exhausting. So much happens to DCI Luther in the course of a few episodes that you don't wonder he keeps throwing things, though that doesn't make him less of a jerk (toward the maintenance staff if no one else) or paradoxically less lovable. The hero with anger management issues is a bit of a cliche by now, but Idris Elba pulls it off beautifully, and all the supporting cast is great too. I particularly enjoy Saskia Reeves, and Indira Varma (who ( spoiler ), and of course Paul McGann. I think the show does men better than women, though, including the creepy second lead (who is a spoiler unto herself), though perhaps not if you view her as a sort of metaphor for guilt or a twisted guardian angel.

3) And I did read Code Name Verity and predictably loved it. What is this "young adult" business though, OMG. No, I suppose I would have loved it as a teenager too, but it would have haunted my dreams; I'm used enough to unreliable narrators and tragic twists to be immune to that now, but the power's still there. It was odd reading it after seeing so many spoiler cuts regarding it - ( and now I give you one of my own; take it seriously )

1) Post up on visiting places you write about (the why and the maybe why not) at the author blog. With reference to Venice, because.

(Incidentally, I am gathering that as with Twitter, so with Wordpress there is a method whereby bloggers like, follow, and/or post empty comments with the intent of getting you to follow them back; see comment about my interesting post on travel writing which is not what I wrote about but is what the commenter does. Sorry, I have you all sussed out now and I'm not going there. So to speak.)

2) Things I need to do in the next few days: upload teaser chapters for Time Goes By; decide on a not-stupid About the Author blurb for that book, and also whether I should have a dedication; start formatting the print version; do a temporary price cut for TFT and TAF ebooks (month of November, buy 'em now); send out email announcements as well as posting on the blog; get ready to agonize over cover design. Plus other things in other spheres of my life.

ETA: Also have to come up with a blurb for TGB a little more extensive than the placeholder ("Adventures extending over five centuries, three separate continents, and one world-convulsing war"). OMG how.

3) Am attempting to catch up on TV missed while away. Caught up on Person of Interest, which continues to be fantastic this season (all of you who gave up last season, you should come back!); on Castle, which is still entertaining if stretching it a bit with the amnesia plot oh please; on Sleepy Hollow, which is just absurd but completely lovable and doing interesting things with interpersonal relationships; on Doctor Who, which… I just don't know, really. Others to follow.

4) I read, over the course of the trip, several books but two in particular that I'd really like to review together if that were possible anywhere, just because they resonated as if unrelated objects struck and vibrating in close harmony. One is Jo Walton's My Real Children, which I loved as a transformation of the mundane extraordinariness of life into the fantastical (old woman with dementia in nursing home reflects on two entirely separate lives she remembers having lived in two versions of the 20th and early 21st centuries (neither of them ours)), and the other is a memoir by my second cousin Ann Hedreen about her life and that of her mother who died in her 70s of early-onset Alzheimer's, called Her Beautiful Brain. The resonance is close in the description of confusion and forgetting and disintegration, the life choices faced by women, the poignancy of loss and ordinary living, the portrait of a period of time; the format is different, of course, but I think Walton's book has a lot of elements of memoir (there's a lot more of "and then this thing happened, and then the other thing" than I thought I could put up with in what has to be categorized as speculative fiction) and it certainly reads as a real person's story, or stories. (But it's a different sort of person who chooses to write about their own life rather than those of invented characters. I didn't know Ann very well before reading her book; now I almost feel I know her too well. Memoir is not a choice I'd make for myself, even if my life was interesting enough to merit one.) Also, I had no idea before I started Walton's book that it had so much to do with Italy, so that was fun.

1. Just finished a post called "Writing the Future" over on the author blog. I think I could have polished it up with more examples and the like, but I was getting that OMG-long feeling (along with the OMG-going-away-tomorrow one, see below). This will be followed eventually by the others I mention therein, the one on historical fiction, and the one on race. Eventually.

2. We are going to Cape May tomorrow for a few days, a typical vacation for us, meaning the sort you decide on and plan a week in advance. Then I am going on a road trip in the middle of September, me by myself, looping down to Charlottesville VA first for the Monticello Harvest Festival, and then proceeding northwards as far as Maine, taking in on the way some theatre and lots of gardens and a couple of historical markers (the John Andre-Benedict Arnold ones), and hopefully some undisturbed writing time. And picking up a bunch of nostalgically important books, the ostensible purpose of it all. I am foolishly more excited about this than about the October trip to Italy and possibly Croatia, visiting P. on his fall break (which, though we have more time to plan, still falls under the typical-for-us category. We were going to go in December, but this makes more sense in the end. Better weather, too).

In any case, it's a lot of being away from home. And a lot of logistics.

3. Should probably pop to the library so I have something to read at the beach. I was going to save Hild, but I finished it over the weekend. Loved it, and hope to articulate why at some point (when I catch up on Goodreads, if that ever happens).

4. This post about white privilege worked for me as an analogy, not perfect in some directions but extendable in others, and thoughtful, which is the most important thing.

5. Fingers still numb. Should call PT.

6. Many tomatoes! Speaking of which, lunch now...

I had a horrible bout of insomnia last night, and after tossing and turning for a long while ended up rereading The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope, which is the kind of long-familiar book I turn to in that sort of situation, until 3 a.m. (and then getting up at 6:30). I'd been thinking about TSR recently, since I'm revisiting the Benedict Arnold-John Andre tale as part of researching Book Five, and TSR is set in the same time and place and mentions both of them - anyway, it has to end up on any list of "books that have influenced me," because I'm sure it fueled much of my early interest in the Revolutionary War period (that I'm now following up on) and also provides some rummaging material for my box of character traits. I had a huge crush on Peaceable Sherwood as a teenager, though it's telling that his attributes (especially the "leaning on things and making dry remarks" sort) show up in Richard Halsey more than any of my other characters. But the whole crew of them are tremendous fun, and I think the research is pretty good, though I haven't checked its accuracy. And it has that nice balance of romance/historical fiction where things actually happen, if all fairly simplistic (but it's a young adult novel written in the 1950s, so what do you expect).

I do hope I can sleep tonight. Right now I am pretty much at the "words what are they I cannot word" stage, so I don't think much else is getting done today, but I have done my lead-gardener-thing and also voted, so can probably crash for a bit (in the "rewatching Sleepy Hollow" sense, speaking of less credible but equally fun Revolutionary War-related entertainment). I expect a person more awake than I am currently could manage a TSR/SH crossover. Among the many other things that person could accomplish.

ETA: Speaking of young adult novels, this, LOL.

Time and Fevers is now available for purchase in ebook and print versions! Details are at my website (which really needs a redesign, but who has time). Here's the blurb:

Olivia Lake’s search for her missing husband continues, as she and time-jumping partner George Merrill venture into the world of tulip traders, spice merchants and theatre lovers in 17th-century Amsterdam. Meanwhile, new players on the time travel stage make surprise entrances, and the employees of Constantine and Associates face the dangers posed by mysterious conspirators, unanticipated market forces, and their own hearts.

This would be the time to talk up the series, people. :)

Waiting to see if the attempt to link my blog to Tumblr is working any better than the currently-claimed links to Facebook and Twitter - they did work, for a while, and now I have to manually repost everything. I have other strategies in reserve, but still hoping maybe Wordpress will fix itself?

In other news, I'm rereading Christopher Fowler's The Water Room with crossover possibilities in mind - the Rivers of London connection is so obvious it hurts. Need to look at my Trope Bingo card again...

Oh god exhausted, but such is the nature of first demo garden workday of the season. I will sort of get used to it again. (And, by the way, we had another inch of immediately-melting snow on Sunday. Today feels like spring, though.)

Since this has been such a gardening-intensive couple of weeks (I have a talk on edible landscaping to give tomorrow evening, and then I can not exactly relax, but space out the duties a bit more) I've been holding back on stuff like creating the cover for Time and Fevers, and instead have been doing an editing pass through Time Goes By, probably way too early except for one factor discussed under the cut, and mostly just because I want to and it has to be done sometime and it's happy-making. ( long discussion of song lyrics and copyright issues )

I'm through The Ringed Castle in the Lymond reread, and trying to decide how to write a review that focuses on romance without making it seem like I am shallow enough to read the books only for those aspects (which would be an exercise in frustration, really). But I appreciate deeply how it's handled, as a minor development that's tremendously central, I guess, and it fits nicely into my observations (which should have been more formal) of POV use. (Which is the only relevance of the subject line, sorry; but I can hear Francis humming "oh no, not now" at the end of the Revels scene, I really can. Except that it would be under copyright.) Anyway, perhaps I'll just wait till I'm through the last book.

Oh, crap; I guess it's frozen pizza for dinner.