Marie Brennan's Blog, page 260

the trials and tribulations of a writer's life

I don't suppose there's anybody out there who's read enough vulgar Victorian writing to tell me what the period equivalent would be for "fuck you"?

I might check the OED historical thesaurus the next time I go to Stanford, but I don't necessarily expect to find an answer there. (The OED itself has "fuck you" starting in 1932, and "go fuck yourself" in 1895 -- but that one's distinctly an American quote.)

"Go to hell" is the obvious choice, but it's one faerie talking to another, so I'd like to...

a question for the color-blind

So Dead Rick, one of the protagonists of this book, is a skriker. That means he's a faerie who can take shape as a black dog. I have a scene in which he's talking to a (faerie) character whose eyes are many shades of green.

And it occurs to me that dogs are red/green colorblind.

Advice on how to describe this from his perspective? My experience with colorblind men is that some shades I call green they will also call green; other shades they will mistake for grey, yellow, or brown. So would ...

thoughts from the Legion of Honor

Went to the Legion of Honor today, to see their Impressionist-era Paris exhibit -- which I frankly didn't care about that much, but I wanted to go Do Stuff with friends, and it's a holiday weekend, and well why not.

For those of you who haven't been there: there are probably prettier museums, and there may be museums with more spectacular settings, but I've never personally visited one that combines those two qualities to greater effect. Not only is it a lovely classical building with columns...

another icon request

Will anybody make me an icon with this quote from Hamlet?

"Cudgel thy brains no more, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating."

Because sometimes, that is the perfect line to describe the state of my brain.

It's that time of book again . . . .

. . . when I cover my living room floor in paper.



That's the entirety of Part One, laid out in itty-bitty type and no margins, so I can stare at it and see the whole shape at once.

It's a bit depressing, seeing it shrunk that small. Though I take some satisfaction in knowing I had to stand on the couch to get a good picture of it all.

I also have index cards. And the beginnings of a soundtrack. I don't outline, but I do sometimes convert the book to spatial or musical representation, the bett...

'nuff said.

io9 on The Last Airbender: "M Night Shamalan Finally Made a Comedy."

The Last Airbender is a lavish parody of big-budget fantasy epics. It's got everything: the personality-free hero, the nonsensical plot twists, the CG clutter, the bland romance, the new-age pablum. No expense is spared — Shyamalan even makes sure to make fun of distractingly shitty 3-D, by featuring it in his movie.

and

Shyamalan's true achievement in this film is that he takes a thrilling cult TV series, Avatar: The Last...

all the comet news you can shake a stick at

It's now sixty days until A Star Shall Fall reaches shelves, so you know what that means: more excerpt! This time we introduce the book's faerie protagonist, Irrith, first seen in Ashes. Or, if you've missed the excerpts so far, you can start at the beginning.

In honor of that -- and of the fact that the Science Fiction Book Club will be printing Star as a featured selection, which is the news that greeted me when I woke up this morning -- and of the fact that I've joined Goodreads -- I'm do...

the Wikipedia Limit

So I'm running this game, and it's set in the 1875 frontier, which is not an area or time period I know very much about.

I have this knee-jerk reflex to research the hell out of it. Gee, I wonder where that came from? I'm having to actively remind myself this is a game, not a novel somebody's paying me for, and so while research is okay, obsessive amounts of it are not. Thus I have instituted the Wikipedia Limit: I am allowed to read as many Wikipedia articles as I like in the course of doi...

two bits of short story news

First, Clockwork Phoenix 3 debuts today. This contains "The Gospel of Nachash," which is my Bible + Sekrit Ingredient story. The whole anthology series has been pretty awesome, full of (as the subtitle has it) "beauty and strangeness;" I highly recommend all three volumes. (And not just 'cause I'm in them.)

Second, there will be audio of "And Blow Them at the Moon," the Onyx Court Gunpowder Plot story. Which hasn't been published yet, but I still wanted to mention the audio version is comi...

for the gamers reading this

If you're a fan of White Wolf's Scion game, I just discovered they've put out a new supplement, covering the Yaztata, the Persian gods. So far it's only a .pdf, though it looks like there are plans to do a print edition early next year.

What interests me about this is that, according to the place where I first saw it mentioned, the supplement is based on fan-created material. Scion's original books covered a wide range of polytheistic religions (Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Norse, Aztec/Mayan, Jap...