Marie Brennan's Blog, page 179

things I have been enjoying since I got back

1) Not wearing the jacket I've been wearing every day for nearly a month.

2) Not wearing the shoes I've been wearing every day for nearly a month.

3) Not wearing shoes at all for much of the day, if I do not choose to.

4) Sleeping in my own bed.

5) Sleeeeeeeeeeeeping.

6) Going to the dojo and the gym. (There's some discomfort associated with this one, because I basically didn't stretch for a month and also walking = full exercise, but it's still good.)

7) Seeing Thor: The Dark World, to which I said "Needz moar Loki." My husband claims they actually filmed extra Loki scenes after the fact.

8) Seeing how my pictures from the trip turned out. (There are still too many of them.)

9) Working on the third Memoir. I sorted out some fun plot points on the trip, so now I get to make them happen.

10) Seriously, though. NO. SHOES.

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last of the photos

The last seven of these are new.

No photos from Brighton, alas. Partly because I was busy at the con, but more because it rained a fair bit while I was there, and when it wasn't raining, the wind was trying to fling me into traffic. No, really: at one point a guy waiting at the intersection with me was leaning back into the wind at about a fifteen-degree angle, just letting it hold him up. It was kind of ridiculous. Since the weather also meant my glasses were constantly being coated in a thin layer of salt and grit, I decided not to expose my camera to such trials.

It might also have something to do with me being all OMG NO MORE PHOTOS, though. During this trip, I took nearly 3500 shots in total. A first pass of culling has dragged that number down to about 2400, which (by comparison) looks much more reasonable, but -- jeebus. If we exclude the major outliers, i.e. the days where I took less than forty pictures, I averaged almost 230 per day. When we went to Highgate Cemetery, I took 350 in two and a half hours.

Which is by way of saying that, while I'll definitely post more pictures later, it's going to take a while for me to go through them all and do the necessary editing, labeling, etc. Don't look for that to happen any time soon, I'm afraid. I had been all proud of myself and the work I'd done on my pre-existing catalogue of photos. All I had left to go through were my honeymoon and Poland, and I was thinking I could see the light at the end of the tunnel . . . but it turns out to have been the oncoming train of this trip. :-P

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five more photos

Added an additional five shots to the photoset so far. Still one per day, but not caught up to the present yet; I've fallen behind in dealing with my photos (surprise!), so there are three days I haven't even gone through yet in search of good shots.

These are, for the record, totally unedited. I've tried to pick ones that look good already, but just think how much better they'll look once they've gone through Lightroom!

In other news, I have discovered how many days is too many to be continually on my feet sightseeing. If I ever plan a trip this long again, I need to build in more downtime -- or rather, find some way to silence the little voice that insists I should be out seeing stuff, being as how I went to all the effort of getting here.

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(one picture per day)

My vacation so far.

Yeah. It's going pretty well. ^_^

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Yuletide signups are open!

One last post before I leave on my trip. (Okay, that might be a lie. I have no idea if something else will prod me into posting in the next twenty hours or so. But this is the last one I intend to make.)

Yuletide signups are open. If you already know and love Yuletide, go forth and have fun!

If you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about, keep reading.

Yuletide is a fanfiction gift exchange for "rare fandoms" -- meaning not your Harry Potters and so on, but things that don't normally get a lot of fannish activity. This means stories for obscure '80s movies, book series you loved when you were nine (whenever that was for you), indie comics, songs, paintings, historical personages, bizarre TV commercials, Appalachian murder ballads, London museums, and Plato's Dialogues, along with many, many other things.

Participating means that you sign up with requests and offers: things you would like somebody else to write for you, and things you'd be willing to write for somebody else. Offers get matched to requests, everybody gets an assignment, and you go off to write a complete story of at least one thousand words, featuring the characters your recipient asked for. Come Christmas morning (ish, depending on your time zone), you get to read the story your assigned writer wrote for you. And much fun is had.

I wasn't making up that list, either: this is the list of fandoms and characters nominated for Yuletide this year. You can find all the things I described in there somewhere. If there are things on the list that make you go "squee!" or "oh god I would love a story about X," consider signing up. This post tells you how, plus there's a FAQ here, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Or, if the idea sort of appeals but you don't know what you would ask for/you'd prefer not to have the pressure of a deadline, you can participate unofficially, either by writing "treats" (extra stories for the heck of it), or by pinch-hitting -- stepping in when a participant has to default on their assignment. If you're interested in either of those, let me know, and I'll give you the rundown on how it works.

It really is a lot of fun. Yuletide is full of people going "oh my god, I'm not the only person who loves this!" (In fact, that's kind of the point.) This is my fourth year participating, and it's become sort of my annual treat to myself, writing some stuff just because it's entertaining to do so, not because it's my job. Plus it's a lot more communal and social than writing generally is. If that sounds like your cup of tea, give it a shot!
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a dragon of your very own

You know how I got the World's Best Cover Art (tm) for A Natural History of Dragons?

Well, I just noticed that you can buy prints of it from the artist, Todd Lockwood. I have one of the limited edition giclees, myself -- or rather, I have #1 of them. :-) It's lovely. So if you want one of your own, they're available!

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ARCs are here!

Look what showed up on my doorstep today!




As you can see, this ARC is decidedly more ARC-y looking, which is to say, more like a promotional thing than a copy of the book that just happens to be more cheaply printed. That wall o' text on the cover is pull-quotes from a bunch of reviews for the first book, with the actual cover art squeezed into the corner there. But the text is the real deal (minus a few tweaks made during page proofs), and the interior art is in place, though the maps aren't. So: on its way to being a Real Book!

I realized, dreadfully late, that I never did announce the results from the icon contest I did ages ago. obaona , as you may have seen from the icon on this post: you're the winner! You can have a signed copy of either A Natural History of Dragons, or one of these pretty, pretty ARCs. Just e-mail me (marie {dot} brennan {at} gmail {dot} com) and let me know where to send it.

I will, of course, be looking for excuses to send more of these things to good homes. That will have to wait until after my trip, though. In the meanwhile, you'll have to content yourself with the picture. ^_^

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encapsulating the shutdown

I have no words around the rage this induces in me:

“We’re not going to be disrespected,” conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., [told the Washington Examiner]. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

ACA and the government shutdown

There's not a lot I can say here. I've been ignoring political news for a while because I can't bring myself to deal with it; most of what's pissing me off is beyond my ability to affect in a meaningful way, so all reading about it does is raise my blood pressure. (Which sometimes could use it. But I don't think that's a medically recommended method of fixing the problem.)

Other people, however, have said very intelligent things.

First and foremost, Tobias Buckell, on EMTALA and how we got to this point. It says something about political coverage in the news that I? Had not actually heard of EMTALA before this. I had heard about it, sure. I knew that emergency rooms had to treat anybody who came in, and worry about payment later. I knew some (not all) of the problems that had produced. But I didn't know what caused it. I didn't know this was a law from Reagan's presidency, and that legislators at the time had kicked down the road the question of how anybody was going to pay for it.

And you know, if I had the power to change one thing about our dysfunctional political system, that might be it: the overwhelming tendency to kick the payment can down the road. Defer spending on infrastructure and other vital things, until it collapses out from under you. I heard somebody say once that this is a fundamental weakness of democracy, and I believe it. When you need to worry about re-election, you go for the quick and easy points, not the things that need to be done but nobody will thank you for them.

Scalzi, as usual, has things to say, but for me his best line is in the comments. Someone there -- clearly thinking he was scoring points by accusing Scalzi of bad rhetoric -- said "In other words, the explanation for the behavior of your political opponents that seems most likely to you is that they are evil. This seems uncharitable and unimaginative." To which Scalzi responded:

You know what, Leonard? Shutting down the whole of the government of the United States in order to force a change (or indeed repeal) in a law offers access to medical insurance to millions that don’t already have it or can’t afford it, because you otherwise don’t have the legislative majority to make changes, thereby putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and costing the nation millions of dollars each day? That’s not a bad definition of banal evil.

Now I hear rumblings that these same folks will try to leverage the debt limit in order to get their way on the ACA. If that’s correct, a willingness to destroy the US’ global financial standing, and disrupting the entire planetary economy, would take the action out of “banal” to actual flat out evil.

To which I have to say, yeah. This shutdown is financially and economically destructive, and it amounts to the Republicans throwing a temper tantrum about a law they failed to prevent, because they would prefer we go back to the good ol' days when millions of people went without medical care or died because they weren't rich enough to be healthy.

Two words: Fuck. That.

ACA is not perfect. But this? Doesn't help anybody.

And then I'll just point you at Fred Clark of Slacktivist, who has said many good and important things: "The 'debt limit' Kobayashi Maru," "What the shutdown means: Unnecessary pain," "The longer the shutdown goes, the more it costs us all," and a more general look at "Another proof of bad faith: The inconsistency of blacktracking." (I prefer the term he quotes later, "pulling a one-hatey," because that one's applicable to circumstances other than those involving Obama. But both terms have a certain rhetorical charm.)

***

My entire life as an eligible voter, I have wished that I could respect the Republican Party. I would probably vote Democratic anyway, but I wish I could look at their behavior and say, "I understand where you're coming from and I respect that, even if I disagree with you." But I can't. I just can't. I look at them and see a pack of dishonest, amoral idealogues who cater to the basest impulses in our political discourse. We need a new Republican Party, stat. One that's actually conservative, rather than reactionary. But I don't think we're going to get it any time soon.

Books read, September 2013

I did a terrible job of keeping records for September; I know there are things I forgot to put on this list. But all the ones I'm thinking of are the books I started and haven't quite finished. (Rather a lot of those. But not because they're bad; just because I'm not done with them yet. So that's good, I guess.)

Demon Drums, Carol Severance. Recommended by maladaptive . First in a trilogy, and I picked them up because they're quasi-Polynesian fantasy. The writing is a little bit rough, and I'm not sure the magic system operates on any underlying principle other than "the characters can do what the author needs them to, when she needs it," but there's still a lot in here to like. Semi-retired warrior woman protagonist who's bonded with a kind of nasty shark god, young woman with more magical power than she really knows how to handle, shapechanging pretty boy from the sea, death as a metaphysically dangerous event, drums made from tattooed human skin. (Okay, those last aren't something you like, per se, since they're what the bad guys are using. But the idea is nifty.) These are available as ebooks, if that sounds interesting to you.

Storm Caller, Carol Severance. Second in the trilogy. Does some very good (and distubing) stuff with family conflict, as Iuti Mano's brothers and mother take, shall we say, serious issue with something she did in the previous book. My main gripe here was that I expected the book to deliver some kind of answer as to what was up with Tarawe's power -- in fact, I had a pet theory that I totally thought was going to prove true -- but as it turns out, nope, no answer at all, whether mine or another. Possibly I'll get it in the third book, which I'm in the middle of reading, but I kind of suspect I won't. Still, good conflicts, volcanic goddess, island of crazy bird people, if that sounds like your cup of tea then check this out.

The Tropic of Serpents, Marie Brennan. This was a month of a lot of proofreading, as I also went through most (but not all) of The Book of Water for L5R. But anyway, read through this one with a fine-toothed comb, and now it's one step closer to being a Real Book. (In fact, ARCs are supposed to show up here any day now.)

Traveling for most of this month, which means I should probably stock up on ebooks. I'm thinking Rivers of London will be at the top of the list, since I heard part of it at Milk and Cookies, and -- as many people had told me I would -- kind of fell in love with the London geekery on the spot. (Trufact: when the protagonist mentioned the plaque on the side of St. Paul's Covent Garden about how the first plague victim from 1665 was buried in their churchyard, I thought, "huh, I didn't know that. But it makes sense; weren't the early deaths concentrated around Long Acre?" Then I mentally facepalmed and agreed that, yes, I was the right kind of nerd for that book.)