Marie Brennan's Blog, page 250

I hope five things really do make a post

I hope that one of these days I will regenerate enough brain to post about a bunch of things piling up in my head: Ada Lovelace, Babbage's childhood attempt to summon the devil, the manga I've been reading lately, etc. But that day is not today -- not if I want to also get my writing done at a reasonable hour -- so let's just get on to the reminders and such.

First, something unrelated to A Star Shall Fall: if you missed it over the holiday weekend, I'm the most recent guest on Jim Hines' ...

most quotable line from tonight's dinner

"Socrates was kind of the original sockpuppet." -- kniedzw , in discussing Plato

I love my husband. :-)

a blast from (my own) past

Recently Jim Hines has been doing a "First Book Friday" series on his blog, inviting authors to tell the story of how they sold their first novel. This week, I'm up to bat, talking about how Doppelganger (later known as Warrior got sold to Warner Aspect, almost six years ago.

how obscure can I get . . .

. . . before the Elljays cannot answer a question for me?

I need help from somebody who has on hand a translation of the Black Book of Carmarthen that is NOT Skene's. (Because apparently that one is very inaccurate?) There's a specific poem I need, not too long, and it would be dandy if I could get it sooner than my next trip to Stanford's library. Comment here, and I'll drop you a message via e-mail with the name of the poem I'm after.

the reposting thing

I'm a little baffled by the appeal of crossposting one's LJ comments to Twitter or Facebook, but anyway, it's definitely a bad idea that you can do that with comments on somebody else's LOCKED post (complete with links back to that post). So if you want to disable that for your own journal, it's easy to fix in the LJ settings, and there's also a poll going that apparently has gotten the attention of at least one of the LJ Powers That Be.

Sing it wth me! Second verse!

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me . . . .

Yep, that's right: the release date for my fifth book and the anniversary of my birth ended up back-to-back this year.

I'm going to steal a page from (I think) Cat Valente, and sink not into the WOE IS ME I'M THIRTY MY LIFE IS OOOOOOOOOVER idiocy modern pop culture insists is the proper response, but rather say, woot! I've reached level 30! In other words, treat this as a thing to be celebrated. I have increased in experience; I have more sk...

celebrating in style

What did I do to celebrate Book Day?

I wrote 2,312 words of a scene I've been looking forward to since <checks e-mail records> June 25th.

See, Dead Rick? I promised it would end eventually. And now you get to RIP PEOPLE'S THROATS OUT.

Don't say I never gave you anything nice.

Crack Addicts (not so) Anonymous

Over on Dreamwidth, Toft has posted about discovering the crack that is Mercedes Lackey (specifically, Valdemar).

It's prompted an outpouring of squealing fangirl love in the comments -- I suspect it's mostly fangirls, though there may be the occasional fanboy in there -- with frequent deployment of CAPITAL LETTERS to properly channel the commenters' sentiments. I'm in there with them; I, too, was once a twelve-year-old girl, and Lackey's books once occupied a beloved position on my bookshelf...

Tube Map of Science

Okay, this is just about the perfect thing for me to come across on the launch day for A Star Shall Fall.

Courtesy of Jay Lake, it's a history of science rendered in the form of a map like the London Underground: the colored lines represent different branches of science, scientists are stops along the lines, certain scientists are "transfer points" between multiple fields, there's even zones to divide the history by century. It's a wonderfully creative way to represent the idea; heck, now I w...

Sing it with me!

Happy Bookday to me, Happy Bookday to me . . . .

Actually, Happy Bookday to all of you, if the release of A Star Shall Fall was something you were looking forward to. As of today, it ought to be on the shelves of discerning bookstores everywhere (in the U.S. and Canada, anyway).

Now seems a dandy time to link once more to my essay on the merits of buying a book from a bookstore, rather than from an online seller. If you have a choice of which way to go, choose the physical store; it will help...