Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 31
January 20, 2012
Laundry. Galleys. Tea.
Laundry. Galleys. Tea.
January 19, 2012
Chilly morning, long day ahead, lotta work. Still plowing...
Chilly morning, long day ahead, lotta work. Still plowing through galleys, but need to do school prep, and am losing large chunks of the weekend for other committments - which means, working into the evenings and little down-time, a situation I always hate.
However, part of that work is that I'm pulling together ideas to do what I hope will be a new fantasy trilogy, something I haven't done in ages. I'm told the fantasy market is reviving a bit, so the time may be good to saddle up that particular horse again. (Although no one is going to buy books from the old serieses, and they'll be continued in Further Adventures... which has turned into both a pleasurable and a profitable - thank God! - outlet for my fantasy jones). We'll see if a new series flies. (They tell me they're looking for "updated" fantasy, whatever that means... presumably wide-screen, lots-of-factions a la GRRM).
One spends an AWFUL lot of time figuring out the right names for people.
However, part of that work is that I'm pulling together ideas to do what I hope will be a new fantasy trilogy, something I haven't done in ages. I'm told the fantasy market is reviving a bit, so the time may be good to saddle up that particular horse again. (Although no one is going to buy books from the old serieses, and they'll be continued in Further Adventures... which has turned into both a pleasurable and a profitable - thank God! - outlet for my fantasy jones). We'll see if a new series flies. (They tell me they're looking for "updated" fantasy, whatever that means... presumably wide-screen, lots-of-factions a la GRRM).
One spends an AWFUL lot of time figuring out the right names for people.
January 18, 2012
Another day of reading galleys and drinking tea!Actually ...
Another day of reading galleys and drinking tea!
Actually got a chance to do a little gaming last night and realize yet again that I simply don't have the time to get good at it. I get slaughtered repeatedly in combat, and then don't get back to it for a week or more - frustrating and keeps me buzzed awake for hours afterwards. I have a whole slew of games that I simply can't get past the first big boss-battle. (I'd like to think it would be different if I were in Middle School and someone was supporting me, but maybe if I had hours and hours a day of practice I'd STILL be this terrible.)
Actually got a chance to do a little gaming last night and realize yet again that I simply don't have the time to get good at it. I get slaughtered repeatedly in combat, and then don't get back to it for a week or more - frustrating and keeps me buzzed awake for hours afterwards. I have a whole slew of games that I simply can't get past the first big boss-battle. (I'd like to think it would be different if I were in Middle School and someone was supporting me, but maybe if I had hours and hours a day of practice I'd STILL be this terrible.)
January 17, 2012
Well, an extremely tiring day at the college - discouragi...
Well, an extremely tiring day at the college - discouraging, too. And a whole day's work yet to do. Fortunatley, I can read galleys, and get them closer to out-of-the-way so I can actually work all day tomorrow on Mr. J Goes To Washington... which was, incidentally, the hub of the slave-traffic in 1838, both legal and illegal.
I am VERY pleased with the final read-through of Magistrates of Hell, which I gather is available for pre-order on Amazon.
I am VERY pleased with the final read-through of Magistrates of Hell, which I gather is available for pre-order on Amazon.
January 16, 2012
A day of work - since tomorrow is going to be a day of sc...
A day of work - since tomorrow is going to be a day of school-training and of pulling together syllabi and lecture schedules for the coming semester, which starts on the 6th.
Got my font-junkie fix and re-installed a whole bunch of Renaissance and 18th-century fonts that went down with the crash - stuff I cannot POSSIBLY use on a regular basis. But they're so pretty...
Anybody got a good recommendation for other good font-sites (good = you've used them and they're safe to download)? Just asking...
Got my font-junkie fix and re-installed a whole bunch of Renaissance and 18th-century fonts that went down with the crash - stuff I cannot POSSIBLY use on a regular basis. But they're so pretty...
Anybody got a good recommendation for other good font-sites (good = you've used them and they're safe to download)? Just asking...
January 14, 2012
Haiku for the night:The full moon;seven story-songs of a ...
Haiku for the night:
The full moon;
seven story-songs of a woman
turning toward the sea.
basho
The full moon;
seven story-songs of a woman
turning toward the sea.
basho
January 13, 2012
Study break
Back in the early 1970s, when I was attending the University of Bordeaux, the American students in Village 4 (our particular dorm complex, stuck out in the middle of the pine-woods near the concrete water-tower) would, every evening when we got bored or exhausted from trying to read textbooks and write papers in a foreign language, would take a "study break"... i.e. go down to the second floor to see what Debbie was doing or up to the 4th floor to see if Christine was as tired and bored as we were, and would retreat to the kitchenette (there was one on every other floor) to make cocoa or tea. So we'd actually spend a good part of every evening wandering around the dorms seeing who else was wandering around the dorms. (The French kids stayed in their rooms and worked like demons... and were lonely. We later found out that many of them envied us our ability to make scratch-friendships with the other Americans on the program whom we'd never met before. French culture, at least at that time, was very insular, and one didn't make friends with those one hadn't known from childhood and whose family didn't know one's own).
In any case, I spent today taking a study break and going hiking with a friend in the hills beyond Chatsworth. The weather here has been brilliant, chilly - windy as the ninth circle of Hell up in Chatsworth - clear as a diamond and dry as a bone; perfect for hiking if you don't mind getting blown off your feet. There's a ruined house we use for a destination: out and back is 2 hours, then we go have lunch (in this instance, to a marvelous Thai place called Jasmine in the Porter Ranch shopping center - EXCELLENT pad thai). The hills are still in their dull-colored dry-season dress. I think the rushing of the wind in the pine-trees near the half-house (as Larry calls the ruin) was what brought back the memories of Bordeaux so clearly. And the ruin itself is wonderful. I would love to have that little stone house as it was, perched all alone in the emptiness of the hills.
I am a great fan of oxygenating one's brain-cells: advice for the day to aspiring writers is, get plenty of exercise. It will only improve your work.
This evening I'll stay home quietly doing what I should have been doing this afternoon, with an ice-pack on my knee which was not as recovered as I thought it was, from my failed little experiment in running. I'm pleased to say the hike went well - the knee is obviously not damaged. Just sore and tired.
In any case, I spent today taking a study break and going hiking with a friend in the hills beyond Chatsworth. The weather here has been brilliant, chilly - windy as the ninth circle of Hell up in Chatsworth - clear as a diamond and dry as a bone; perfect for hiking if you don't mind getting blown off your feet. There's a ruined house we use for a destination: out and back is 2 hours, then we go have lunch (in this instance, to a marvelous Thai place called Jasmine in the Porter Ranch shopping center - EXCELLENT pad thai). The hills are still in their dull-colored dry-season dress. I think the rushing of the wind in the pine-trees near the half-house (as Larry calls the ruin) was what brought back the memories of Bordeaux so clearly. And the ruin itself is wonderful. I would love to have that little stone house as it was, perched all alone in the emptiness of the hills.
I am a great fan of oxygenating one's brain-cells: advice for the day to aspiring writers is, get plenty of exercise. It will only improve your work.
This evening I'll stay home quietly doing what I should have been doing this afternoon, with an ice-pack on my knee which was not as recovered as I thought it was, from my failed little experiment in running. I'm pleased to say the hike went well - the knee is obviously not damaged. Just sore and tired.
January 11, 2012
Dreamed last night about working graveyard shift at Stop ...
Dreamed last night about working graveyard shift at Stop 'n' Go market in Fontana, CA - psychological fallout from anxiety over school budget-cuts? I worked there several months, as I recall; Kaiser steel was still in operation, and guys would come off-shift at 5 a.m. and buy a six-pack for their breakfast. I remember going out to dip the gas-tanks in the small-hours and seeing the wild dog-packs roving on the other side of Sierra Blvd: all housing-tracts, now. Remember, too, getting home at 8 a.m. and going to bed, and waking up in gray twilight not knowing if it was dawn or sunset. A horrible time of my life.
But a time and a place where I certainly met people I would not otherwise have met. Which all goes to show, I suppose, that for a writer, no experience is ever wasted.
But a time and a place where I certainly met people I would not otherwise have met. Which all goes to show, I suppose, that for a writer, no experience is ever wasted.
January 10, 2012
Fonty Instructions Needed
I have a disk full of fancy fonts.
I'd like to install these on my computer.
I know it's simple, but could I get instructions on doing this so I don't mess things up?
WIndows 7.
Many thanks!
I'd like to install these on my computer.
I know it's simple, but could I get instructions on doing this so I don't mess things up?
WIndows 7.
Many thanks!
Nitty-gritty rough-draft work - creating the world in whi...
Nitty-gritty rough-draft work - creating the world in which the story takes place = stopping every two sentences to look something up on Google (when WAS the railroad built from Washington DC to Philadelphia? Did they HAVE a public hospital in Washington and if so, where was it?) (I actually found a picture - yay!)
It's one reason I love to go to the cities I write about, even if the city is no longer even remotely what it was in 1838 or whenever. Only on-site can you purchase - or know the existence of - those little specialized books that contain things like topographical maps and 1842 photographs of buildings that were torn down in 1850.
It's one reason I love to go to the cities I write about, even if the city is no longer even remotely what it was in 1838 or whenever. Only on-site can you purchase - or know the existence of - those little specialized books that contain things like topographical maps and 1842 photographs of buildings that were torn down in 1850.
