Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 13

Thank you all for your kind "welcome back" mess...

Thank you all for your kind "welcome back" messages! I very much appreciate them.

I'm still trying to sort out FB, which seems to have changed its Business Page (without telling any of its customers - or at least without telling ME). I never did like those people, though the Business Page was/is useful.

Things haven't materially changed, by the way - I still teach a 60% class load, and continue to write (even as I type this I should be working on the next Ben January book... but have to spend the morning doing errands as soon as the traffic calms down a little); I'm severely behind schedule due to viral bronchitis (which I picked up when I got to spend 5 1/2 hours in the emergency room at Kaiser one night after tearing a leg-muscle folk-dancing) - plus secondary infections. I'm teaching more "condensed" classes, which are harder and more tiring, but pay better.


Let's see if this picture will appear on my page...

After months and months of overwork and illness - and dea...

After months and months of overwork and illness - and dealing with Facebook issues - I am finally trying to get back to posing here more regularly than I have been. Facebook is (or possibly WAS) good for quick touch-ins; In those brief times when I HAD a few minutes I'd think, "I don't really have time to do an LJ post..." (And then, a few weeks after my most recent FB post I came down very, very sick).

FB has turned weird in a fashion that I do not understand. I will - as I have repeatedly promised in the past - try to check in more frequently here. I'm feeling better now, though grossly behind on my work. It is good to check back in.

Cyber Monday sale

Cyber Monday sale on a whole slew of my titles from Open Road Media:

http://www.openroadmedia.com/cybermonday?tab=scifi-fantasy&utm_campaign=Cyber+Monday+2014&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=cpc

And, even better, (well, better for ME) is that a VERY rough semester is coming to an end!

I need assistance again, if one or some of you would be s...

I need assistance again, if one or some of you would be so kind?

Does anyone out there know about the course and severity of pneumonia, before the advent of penecillin? How long would it take to recuperate? How long would it take for the disease to run its course?

Many thanks for whatever information you can give! (And I will, of course, give credit in the book).

The corrolary to the Family Reunion yesterday afternoon w...

The corrolary to the Family Reunion yesterday afternoon was that I went to the birthday party of a friend last night, after the last of my family had gotten on the road for home... and my friend's biker neighbors are SERIOUS about their fireworks. So, the birthday party in the beautiful, jasmine-scented arbors of my friend's gardens had a distinctly Saigon-in-the-Sixties ambiance, with MASSIVE explosions going on overhead (I think they were using trash-cans as mortars). It was - um - special...

Family Excursion to the LA County Arboretum today.

I love those parties which conclude, like a sit-com, with...

I love those parties which conclude, like a sit-com, with the house being miraculously re-set to what it was before everyone arrived. My wonderful brother, sister, and nieces cleared away the dishes and did them, everyone helped me take down the tent, nephew moved the wooden gate-leg table back to its off-duty position in the living-room, and I don't have to come downstairs tomorrow morning afraid of what I'm going to see.

Lovely weather - mid-80s (one reason we have the 4th-July-Family-Reunion here), sunny, pleasant sitting at a long table in what I think of the outdoor dining-room: a patio half-covered with a trellis, to which I add a put-up shade-tent. A very relaxed atmosphere. Later this evening I'm driving up to a friend's birthday party in the Valley, and tomorrow the family will re-convene for a trip to the LA County Arboretum. For the moment, all is silent, the cats are out of lockdown, the dishes are clean, and I'M DONE WITH MY FIRST DRAFT!!!

Spending an afternoon painting (when I should have been w...

Spending an afternoon painting (when I should have been working... but I DID work part of the day) feels EXACTLY like bingeing on chocolate used to.

For a number of years now I've been involved on-and-o...

For a number of years now I've been involved on-and-off with a project called The Gates of Midnight. Deb Smith and I came up with the basics; Deb has worked on it since then (though I am counted as a "consultant"): urban fantasy, cross-universes, strange creatures coming through the Void to our world... The original plan was for a TV series, though it has now morphed into a graphic novel series from the newly-founded Kymera Press.

Kymera has started a Kickstarter campaign, both for Gates and for the press in general: one of their several goals is to get more women into the comic book field.

In any case, check them out at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/812703115/gates-of-midnight

Kymera Press also has its own FB page: www.facebook.com/KymeraPress

And the results are in!If I teach Western Civ or World Hi...

And the results are in!

If I teach Western Civ or World History, I generally ask on the Final, who were the 5 people who most influenced (either Western or World) civilization between 4 million BC and 1588 AD? (Spanish Armada, which is my cut-off for both classes). This semester it was World History, and the question was given as extra credit, so the voting pool was small.

But, the results are, as usual, interesting.

Alexander the Great won with 9 votes.
He was immediately trailed by Christopher Columbus, with 8.
Next in the tally, Jesus Christ tied with Elizabeth I of England, 4 votes apiece.
Muhammad got 3.
Socrates, Augustus Caesar, Julius Caesar, Buddha, Confucius, Joan of Arc and Martin Luther each got 2.
The one-vote wonders were: Homer, Hammurabi, Cleopatra, Hernan Cortes, Genjhis Khan, Charles Martel, his grandson Charlemagne, Leonardo da Vinci, Hannibal Barca, Henry VIII of all people!, and - I was delighted to see - Shi Huang Ti, the meglomaniac strongman who first united China (and thus may have had more historical influence than anyone except the religious founders)
There were gang-votes for The Greeks, the Persians, and the little australopitheci who first came out of the African forests in 4 million BC and started it all.

Now I get to grade papers for the next week, and do jury duty.

Well, I am almost SPEECHLESS with ecstacy. Turgot's 1...

Well, I am almost SPEECHLESS with ecstacy. Turgot's 1739 Plan of Paris arrived today (the 1965 reprint of the 1900 reprint, and it's a good thing, otherwise I wouldn't have dared lay a finger on it); EVERYTHING I was looking for and more. It's not just a map of Paris (like the 1754 map I've been using so far); it is, essentially, a drawing of the entire city, district by district, house by house. Meaning, I can see not only what the gardens of the wealthy town houses looked like, and which of the city's bridges had houses on them as London Bridge did, but I can see which portions of the banks of the Seine were embanked at that time (I drove myself crazy writing Ran Away, trying to find out if the Seine was embanked in 1827, and ended up writing around that detail), and where open ground at the edges of the built-up areas of town had been graded, or not. This map is jaw-dropping. It came in 20 sections, each section about 18 x 24 inches, all tenderly enclosed in a portfolio. (It took Mr. Turgot five years to put the thing together). AND it was accompanied by a sort of gazeteer listing every street and cul-de-sac in Paris, every parish church (with descriptions of when they were built!), every neighborhood (Paris was organized by neighborhoods before Napoleon split the city up into arrondissements).

As a research tool, this is staggering. Especially used in tandem with the book I have which dissects modern Paris, showing - street-by-street - any architectural treasures, thus permitting me to identify which neighborhoods were favored by the rich.

I have a set of CDs with similarly detailed historical maps of London, but it was only recently that I learned of the existence of Turgot's Plan.

Such are the arcane joys of being a researcher.