Ellen Kushner's Blog

This morning's haze of slightly carboned toast & melty cheese (well you can't get the cheese properly brown without risking the edges of the bread) enlivened by Delia's dramatic reading of A.O.Scott's NYTimes review of the new Holmes movie. Honest - I thought she was improvising when she said: "It seems that an evil aristocrat, executed for a series of murders, returns from the dead to mobilize an ancient secret society that he may have time-traveled into a Dan Brown novel to learn about. D...

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Hilariously weird new KlezNut review up on Show Business Weekly: the reviewer & the entire audience clearly loved the show, but she lambastes it (right at the top, too, so we know she was not seduced by the dancing & the story, no, not she!) for being too "over-thought in a very public-radio way."

Actual content is a crime in children's theatre - who knew? Maybe she just needed a nap.

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"In the losing battle that the plot fights with the characters, it often takes a cowardly revenge. Nearly all novels are feeble at the end. This is because the plot requires to be wound up."
-- E. M. Forster

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I keep forgetting to tell you that I have a new story published, in Jonathan Strahan's magnificent Eclipse Three (Night Shade Books, 10/09). (I'd posted just a little on its progress here.) It's called "Dulce Domum," from the chapter in The Wind in the Willows, bits of which are also woven into my text -- that's the chapter where Mole & Rat find Mole's old home in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve:

Home! The call was clear, the summons was plain.

"Ratty!" Mole called, "hold on! It's my...

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Tickled pink to be included in Paul Cornell's The 12 Blogs of Christmas (#6: "So What Are You Doing This Christmas?") -
my answer squeezed in between Lois Bujold's & Charles Stross' (dear autopope), a nice place to be!

What we will actually be doing on Dec. 24th is unpacking bags from our current trip: We're on Sanibel Island with my family, unwinding & communing & enjoying the fact that it is not icy and blustery (though I do miss the way the City shuts down under severe weather, and everyt...

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As we continue trying to get rid of Stuff we don't have room for in our apartment, Ellen experiences anguish over the fate of a very battered comforter (which once had matching curtains made of sheets, sewn by her late grandmother, sniff!):

- I know; but it's my last link with the past....

- Honey, you still have many links with the past.

(Would that be the overflowing endless boxes of papers & books & T-shirts & ....?)

Not having a basement or an attic truly sucks.

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Small Beer Press (Gavin Grant & Kelly Link) is holding a crazy once-in-a-lifetime sale on all its books, in support of Franciscan Children's Hospital in Boston, where their baby - virtual goddaughter to dozens of their loving friends - Ursula Annabelle Link Grant - has been residing for some months.

I'll let them tell you the whole story here.

The sale is here. $1 off their already crazylow prices on orders through Dec. 31, 2009 goes straight to Franciscan Children's. (And if you choose to or...

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No, really, I insist. If you're near NYC, see Liz Duffy Adams' play "Or," if you possibly can. It's about a woman who wants to be a famous writer, and theatre people, and kings with deliciously long hair, and language and gender. See?

Tix are $20 if you turn up 1 hr before the show (and there are still seats.) The NYTimes loved it, and was not wrong to mention Stoppard in the review, I think. If you can't go - or you need encouraging - Ms. Adams has kindly given me permission to print h...

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Welcome to my Breakfast Table, where I am sitting and reading you amusing bits from past NYTimes Arts Sections, as I go through and throw out old papers in preparation for incoming:

BANDLEADER PETER DUCHIN: His Music Still Makes Society Whirl

Mr. Duchin's father, Eddy Duchin, was also a bandleader and was famous for a string of Top 10 records in the 1930s. His mother, Marjorie Oelrichs Duchin, was described by newspapers at the time of her marriage as a "New York and Newport socialite,"...

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I am a huge Rinde Eckert fan - to me, his work practically defines "interstitial," and his performance is always electrifying. We went tonight w/Chiara to see his "Orpheus X" at TFNA, where it's playing through Dec. 20th. I don't think Chiara moved a muscle for the entire 90 minutes. The moment Rinde appeared, opened his mouth & let out that voice (and that passion), I practically started crying from pure joy. deliasherman will probably write it all up with all her erudite observations fr...

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