Marie Brennan's Blog, page 241
December 31, 2010
a meme to end the year on
I'm not feeling as nostalgic and backward-looking as usual this New Year's -- not sure why. Anyway, as posts to end the year go, I could do worse than to mimic this meme from
![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380442897i/1319734.gif)
matociquala
, commemorating the passing of the woman believed to have been the model for Rosie the Riveter.
I wore my dojo t-shirt for the shot; it seemed fitting. (No bandanna, though.)
May we all be mighty and do new things in the coming year.
matociquala
, commemorating the passing of the woman believed to have been the model for Rosie the Riveter.I wore my dojo t-shirt for the shot; it seemed fitting. (No bandanna, though.)
May we all be mighty and do new things in the coming year.
December 30, 2010
new audio
In contrast to the happy stories I posted before, here's something dark and grim for the end of the year: Flash on the Borderlands V, a collection of three flash pieces over at Pseudopod, one of which is my fairy-tale retelling "The Snow-White Heart." Note that is Pseudopod and not Podcastle; this is the horror sibling of the EA podcast family, and as I have not yet listened to the whole file, I can't tell you what lurks in the other two stories. (Mine starts with cannibalism and goes downhill from there.) Listen at your own risk.
December 28, 2010
the internets love me
Now that the AO3 is no longer weeping for mercy, I feel safe in pointing you all at What I Got For Yuletide.
A few days before Christmas, I noticed I had two gifts listed on my profile. My assigned writer had turned in their piece, and some total stranger had decided to write me a little something extra. Not until Christmas, though, did I discover what they were. Remember that crazy crossover idea, the The Nightmare Before Christmas/Hogfather mashup I really wanted but had no guarantee I would get?
Dear Readers, I didn't just get one story of that sort; I got two.
My assigned writer produced "'Twas the Night," in which an unexpected midair collision between two sleighs leaves Discworld's Death and Halloweentown's Jack Skellington debating the nature of reality while Sally and Susan Sto Helit team up to fix the problem. A bit less than six thousand words of awesomeness, featuring guest appearances by characters from both stories, including (eeeeee!) the Death of Rats.
Then! Somebody else browsed the list of prompts, saw what I had requested, and wrote me "The Ill-Advised Skeletal Exchange Program," wherein Death and Jack Skellington are pen-pals and arrange a temporary swap. Sally is Helpful, and Susan is Not Amused, and the Death of Rats shows up again, because he's just too awesome to leave out.
Folklorist Brain is entirely fascinated to see the differences and similarities that result when two writers produce their own takes on the same prompt. Yuletide Brain is bouncingly happy to have gotten an extra gift. Anybody who's interested is welcome, nay, encouraged to share in the bounty; go read the stories, and if you get a 502 error just try again later, when the archive has once again staggered to its feet.
(I can't tell you yet what I wrote for Yuletide; that has to wait until after New Year's, when the authors are revealed. Until then, I'm having to sit on my hands not to respond to the comments I've received so far. If anybody wants to play the "guess what I wrote?" game, though, your clues are that I wrote four pieces, one over 4K, two in the 1-2K range, and one less than 1K for Yuletide Madness; none are for novels, and no two are in the same fandom or media type. Also, no RPF: the modern stuff squicks me and the historical stuff was too much like work. Given that there were over three thousand stories produced for Yuletide 2010, though, and I have no pre-existing track record of fanfic for you to base your guesses on, I don't expect anybody to spot my work. If you do, I'll find some prize to give you.)
A few days before Christmas, I noticed I had two gifts listed on my profile. My assigned writer had turned in their piece, and some total stranger had decided to write me a little something extra. Not until Christmas, though, did I discover what they were. Remember that crazy crossover idea, the The Nightmare Before Christmas/Hogfather mashup I really wanted but had no guarantee I would get?
Dear Readers, I didn't just get one story of that sort; I got two.
My assigned writer produced "'Twas the Night," in which an unexpected midair collision between two sleighs leaves Discworld's Death and Halloweentown's Jack Skellington debating the nature of reality while Sally and Susan Sto Helit team up to fix the problem. A bit less than six thousand words of awesomeness, featuring guest appearances by characters from both stories, including (eeeeee!) the Death of Rats.
Then! Somebody else browsed the list of prompts, saw what I had requested, and wrote me "The Ill-Advised Skeletal Exchange Program," wherein Death and Jack Skellington are pen-pals and arrange a temporary swap. Sally is Helpful, and Susan is Not Amused, and the Death of Rats shows up again, because he's just too awesome to leave out.
Folklorist Brain is entirely fascinated to see the differences and similarities that result when two writers produce their own takes on the same prompt. Yuletide Brain is bouncingly happy to have gotten an extra gift. Anybody who's interested is welcome, nay, encouraged to share in the bounty; go read the stories, and if you get a 502 error just try again later, when the archive has once again staggered to its feet.
(I can't tell you yet what I wrote for Yuletide; that has to wait until after New Year's, when the authors are revealed. Until then, I'm having to sit on my hands not to respond to the comments I've received so far. If anybody wants to play the "guess what I wrote?" game, though, your clues are that I wrote four pieces, one over 4K, two in the 1-2K range, and one less than 1K for Yuletide Madness; none are for novels, and no two are in the same fandom or media type. Also, no RPF: the modern stuff squicks me and the historical stuff was too much like work. Given that there were over three thousand stories produced for Yuletide 2010, though, and I have no pre-existing track record of fanfic for you to base your guesses on, I don't expect anybody to spot my work. If you do, I'll find some prize to give you.)
December 23, 2010
a holiday treat for you
Looking for something to read while you hang out with or avoid family? Author Stephanie Burgis has put together a project called December Lights, with various authors providing free reprints of short stories. And not your gloom-and-doom short stories, either, with grim amoral heroes and inexorable zombie apocalypses, but little bits of light for this season of darkness*.
My contribution to the project is "Lost Soul," one of my Nine Lands stories. The full list is here, and there's more to come before the month is out. Enjoy!
*Unless you're in the southern hemisphere. But you guys could still use more light, right?
My contribution to the project is "Lost Soul," one of my Nine Lands stories. The full list is here, and there's more to come before the month is out. Enjoy!
*Unless you're in the southern hemisphere. But you guys could still use more light, right?
December 19, 2010
in-flight wireless, facilitating Yuletide silliness
So I discovered I have longer to write "Coyotaje" than I thought, which means I was able to let myself stop pushing on a stone that really doesn't want to roll yet. Still need to get the thing written soon, but as long as that one wasn't moving forward, I let myself write a silly little treat for Yuletide, above and beyond the story I was assigned. The recipient is somebody I don't know in the slightest -- which pleases me, because there's something delightful about total strangers writing stuff for each other. Friends writing stories as gifts is also nice, but when it's a stranger, it's all about shared love for the source. Somebody else going, "omg, you've seen/read/heard that, too? Isn't it fabulous?"
After the brain-drain that was With Fate Conspire, this is, indeed, what I needed. Stories as play, without having to put on my professional hat. December is a good time of year for recharging, and I can feel myself getting excited about other things now. We'll see how much I can get done before the calendar ticks over.
Right now, though, I'm on a plane, which was okay for polishing that Yuletide story, but not terribly good for drafting something new. Plus, I'm very sleepy, and can't let myself nap. Time to find someway to keep myself awake.
After the brain-drain that was With Fate Conspire, this is, indeed, what I needed. Stories as play, without having to put on my professional hat. December is a good time of year for recharging, and I can feel myself getting excited about other things now. We'll see how much I can get done before the calendar ticks over.
Right now, though, I'm on a plane, which was okay for polishing that Yuletide story, but not terribly good for drafting something new. Plus, I'm very sleepy, and can't let myself nap. Time to find someway to keep myself awake.
December 18, 2010
an unexpected victory
After all the doomful predictions of how it would die in the Senate, it appears that the repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays has passed.
Dear Congress: thank you for my early Christmas present. It's about bloody time.
Dear Congress: thank you for my early Christmas present. It's about bloody time.
December 16, 2010
just in time
I almost didn't get this month's installment written in time -- only finished it a few hours before the thing went live -- but my posting streak at SF Novelists is unbroken. That's right, folks, it's the sixteenth of the month, and that means I'm blogging over there, this time on the topic of responses, reviews, criticism, and critique. Comment over there, no account needed, but if you're a first-time commenter I'll have to fish your reply out of the moderation queue before it will be visible.
an odd metric
I don't particularly have issues with my weight. (I couldn't even tell you what it is, with a margin of error smaller than five pounds; we don't own a scale.) But I will admit that I have some issues with my composition, by which I mean the lean-to-squish ratio of me is skewed more toward the latter than I would like, and sometimes that also means issues with my shape.
Last night, however, I got vivid proof that my general shape has not changed all that much in the last fifteen years or so. Going through the costume closet, in a (not entirely successful) attempt to cull its contents a bit, I dug out and tried on all the old dance costumes I've been holding on to.
And they all fit.
They didn't necessarily look good on me -- some of them I don't think ever looked good, on anybody -- but I got them on, and without putting the spandex to much of a test. And these are things I wore when I was fifteen and dancing eight hours a week. To which I say: dude. I would not have predicted that.
Mind you, this put a crimp in my plan to chuck out lots of costumes that don't fit me anymore, because they do fit. I've chucked the truly ugly ones instead, the things that only look vaguely right when put in motion, on a stage, a healthy distance from the audience, but that's only half or so of the total. (I should get rid of more, especially now that I'm not involved in a Changeling game where random dance costumes come in handy for playing a swan maiden or water elemental or whatever -- but I can't bring myself to do it. I might need them someday.) But it was an encouraging experience, and only firmed my resolve -- pardon the pun -- to do more things to increase the lean percentage of me. Today I rode my bike for the first time since my ankle surgery in the spring, and in the future intend to run as many of my errands as I can that way, weather permitting. My glutes may hate me for it today, but they'll thank me eventually.
Last night, however, I got vivid proof that my general shape has not changed all that much in the last fifteen years or so. Going through the costume closet, in a (not entirely successful) attempt to cull its contents a bit, I dug out and tried on all the old dance costumes I've been holding on to.
And they all fit.
They didn't necessarily look good on me -- some of them I don't think ever looked good, on anybody -- but I got them on, and without putting the spandex to much of a test. And these are things I wore when I was fifteen and dancing eight hours a week. To which I say: dude. I would not have predicted that.
Mind you, this put a crimp in my plan to chuck out lots of costumes that don't fit me anymore, because they do fit. I've chucked the truly ugly ones instead, the things that only look vaguely right when put in motion, on a stage, a healthy distance from the audience, but that's only half or so of the total. (I should get rid of more, especially now that I'm not involved in a Changeling game where random dance costumes come in handy for playing a swan maiden or water elemental or whatever -- but I can't bring myself to do it. I might need them someday.) But it was an encouraging experience, and only firmed my resolve -- pardon the pun -- to do more things to increase the lean percentage of me. Today I rode my bike for the first time since my ankle surgery in the spring, and in the future intend to run as many of my errands as I can that way, weather permitting. My glutes may hate me for it today, but they'll thank me eventually.
December 12, 2010
aaaaand . . . . GO!
Got my Yuletide story uploaded. Now I have three days in which to try and finish a story for (hopefully) paying purposes. I would have done these things in the opposite order, but the pro piece didn't actually cohere in my head until tonight; in fact, I was on the verge of giving up and not submitting anything after all.
Working title, "Coyotaje."
Go.
Working title, "Coyotaje."
Go.
December 10, 2010
Ten days ahead of deadline, too.
Woot. That's a draft of my Yuletide story, in less than four thousand words. Time to sleep now; in the morning, I can decide if it works.
