Marie Brennan's Blog, page 173
February 5, 2014
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes / For to save her shoes from gravel
“Mad Maudlin” is live on Tor.com! And the artwork for it is as beautiful as it was the first time I saw it. 
You know what else is live? This audio excerpt from The Tropic of Serpents. There is also a sweepstakes, if you want to win a copy of the book.
Also live: a Con or Bust auction with a pair of ARCs up for grabs. It’s your chance to get signed copies of both A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents, while benefiting a good cause!
Not live yet: the Kirkus review. I think that goes up tomorrow.
Live and ongoing: Letters from Lady Trent. Write! Receive! Don’t make me walk aaaaaaaaall the way to the post office for nothing! (It’s a whole ten minutes away. I could die of exhaustion, y’all. But finding letters gives me the strength to soldier on.)
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A Year in Pictures – Statue Silhouette
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Notre Dame is packed to the gills with various monuments and such in its side chapels. I particularly liked this one, silhouetted against the stained glass behind.
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February 4, 2014
Countdown to Dragons
It’s four weeks and counting until the street date for The Tropic of Serpents. The talk is starting . . . .
1) Excerpt from the book on Tor.com
2) Liz Bourke’s review on Tor.com (which I believe wins the prize for being first out of the gate)
3) Publishers Weekly liked it
4) So did Kirkus, but I don’t think that one will go live for a few days. (Holy crap, that’s three books in a row of mine that they’ve liked. I think it may be a miracle.)
5) Brief interview with the UK site Female First, on A Natural History of Dragons
6) I’ve sent pronunciations to the narrator for the audiobook of TToS. I’m delighted to say that Kate Reading is continuing with the series, and this one will be out a lot closer to the print date than the last one was.
7) Speaking of the UK, it occurs to me that ANHoD will be out there very soon! I actually don’t know the precise street date, but I think it’s in the next two weeks. (Again, #2 should follow in quicker succession, I think.)
I think that’s all for now. But as we get closer to the street date, things will be picking up rather rapidly, I imagine!
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A Year in Pictures – Kerala Canoe
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The “backwaters” of Kerala are a region of canals, where locals get around by canoe. My husband and I went down there to spend a day and a night on one of the houseboats that ply the area, and it was one of the most beautifully relaxing experiences I’ve had in years.
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February 3, 2014
Letters from Lady Trent
It’s now February, so you know what that means: it’s time to send letters!
As I mentioned before, you can get a letter from Lady Trent, written with an actual dip pen and my best effort at good cursive handwriting, sealed with wax, and sent directly to your mailbox. Here are the necessary steps:
1) Write a letter! You may choose to write to Isabella in her youth (when she’s running around studying dragons) or in her old age (when she’s writing the memoirs). If it isn’t clear which version of her you are writing to, I’ll respond as the memoir-writing version. You may adopt a persona within her world if you wish, but it isn’t required. Just don’t ask her about me; she has no idea who I am. 
2) Put it in the mail! Letters should be sent to:
Marie Brennan
P.O. Box 991
San Mateo, CA 94403
Remember to address the outside envelope to me, not Isabella. (And if you’re writing from outside the U.S. you’ll need to add the country to the address, of course.)
3) Profit! Which is to say, receive a letter in reply.
You have from now until the end of February to send your letter; I’ll reply as quickly as I can. Depending on how much mail I receive and where you live, it may take a while — it is snail-mail, after all. I look forward to hearing from you!
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A Year in Pictures – Parthenon Horsehead
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This is one of the Parthenon sculptural fragments in the British Museum, along with the famous friezes. When part of an entire horse, I imagine it was impressive; on its own, it’s a little freaky. (And calls to mind a certain scene from The Godfather.)
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January 31, 2014
A Year in Pictures – Moon over the Louvre
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The day we went to the Louvre, we decided to get dinner in the vicinity and come back after dark to see if we could get any cool night-time shots.
We came back and found the full moon rising over the Louvre. So, um, yes.
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January 30, 2014
Jay Lake and a chance to fund SCIENCE!!!
As a goodly percentage of you probably know, author Jay Lake has cancer. He's had cancer for years now, going through round after round of chemo and surgery in an attempt to halt it; they've managed to slow it, but he's pretty close to terminal decline at this point.
However.
Read this post. It's about Jay participating in a cutting-edge NIH trial that holds great promise for improving our methods of cancer treatment in the future. It will likely extend his own life at least a bit; it will certainly extend a great many other people's lives, and possibly even save some of them, as doctors put together superior tools for the task.
As Jay points out, the reason they're able to take such a good shot at it with him is because of a fundraiser his friends ran before, which pulled together enough money for Whole Genome Sequencing. That data means the doctors in this trial are incredibly well-armed. But the mass of data also means it will take longer to sort through, which means Jay will be in Maryland longer than expected. Since Maryland is not where he lives, this is expensive.
There's another fundraiser. It has already met its goal, but the goal was to cover the length of time Jay expected to be in Maryland. Which means it is no longer enough. There will be some stretch goals added soon, but you don't need to know what those will be to donate, do you? You already know the ultimate cause is a good one. You aren't funding the NIH, but you are funding Jay's ability to participate in the trial, which will help both him and them. So if you can spare anything, please head on over and do so.
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A Year in Pictures – Sunlight Through Bamboo
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Bamboo forests are also awesome.
That is all.
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