Marie Brennan's Blog, page 49

New Worlds: A Trip to the Dentist

I have not been blessed with good teeth in my life, alas. The New Worlds Patreon hopes yours are better, because going to the dentist isn’t fun . . . but it used to be much, much worse. Comment over there!

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Upcoming events of awesomeness!

It has been bonkers around here for the last two months or so, with a nigh-constant stream of interviews and promotional events. That’s slacking off at last, but there are two more coming up that I want to particularly draw attention to . . .

First, this Sunday, February 28th, we’re getting the band back together! Myself, Alyc, my husband, and two friends of ours from my grad school days (Emily Dare and fellow author Michael R. Underwood) are getting together for a Rook and Rose Blades in the Dark tabletop game. We all used to game together back in Bloomington — and in fact, the only reason I use the past tense there is that Mike doesn’t live out in the Bay Area with the rest of us, so he’s not in our current gaming group. But he’s offered to GM a one-shot game this Sunday, from 6 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Pacific until about three hours later, which will be streaming live on Twitch. (My first time doing this kind of thing for an audience, eek!) We’ll be playing members of the Oyster Crackers, an Upper Bank knot of thieves that appear briefly in The Liar’s Knot; I suspect we may run into the Rook. But I have no idea! It’s in Mike’s hands! This feels so weird and so awesome at the same time!

And second, on Wednesday, March 10th, Alyc and I will be doing an event with Tubby & Coo’s, a great independent bookstore in New Orleans. This is set up courtesy of fellow author Bryan Camp, a New Orleans local; we’ll have a reading and a conversation with him. That’s at 6 p.m Central, which is 7 p.m. Eastern and 4 p.m. Pacific.

. . . plus some more interviews, but those are more of a “record it and then it’ll go live later” kind of thing. Oof. Full court press in promoting The Mask of Mirrors has been fun, but it’s also tiring, y’all.

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all the audio that’s fit to hear

I’ve managed to accumulate a small pile of audio news for y’all!

The big one is that at long last, the Onyx Court series is getting an audio treatment, courtesy of Blackstone Audio. Midnight Never Come came out last week; you can pick up that one from Apple or from Audible. The rest of the series will follow in due course!

I’ve also been doing a pile of audio stuff with Serial Box, starting last year. So far they’ve put up ten of my short stories and novelettes: “Daughter of Necessity,” “Coyotaje,” “Love, Cayce,” “Once a Goddess,” “The Genius Prize,” “At the Sign of the Crow and Quill,” “Mad Maudlin,” “A Mask of Flesh,” “What Still Abides,” and “Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood.” But the big news here is that they’re going to do some of my novellas, as well! Deeds of Men was already done as an audiobook some years ago, and I don’t hold the rights for The Eternal Knot, but they’ll be recording audio versions of Dancing the Warrior and the two Varekai novellas, Cold-Forged Flame and Lightning in the Blood. I’ll announce those here once they’re done!

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The . . . Abvent of Scent?

I had this thought that when I was done going through perfume tests, I would offer up my unwanted samples to the general public, free to a good home.

. . . yeah, “done” has proven to be an ever-receding mirage. Not just because friends keep sending me things (thank you, friends!), but because I’ve now started ordering some random samples myself. At present I have enough to keep me busy through mid-March, and since I know of two people planning to mail me more, we’re probably good until some time in April. And by the time I get there, more may have shown up. Rather than waiting until this mythical “end” to the process, I’m just going to post my current list here, and let people start claiming things if they want.

Most of these are little sample vials; some are 5ml bottles. There are too many for me to want to link to their descriptions individually, but if you go to this tag you can search for specific perfumes, or just browse for things that sound good to you and then check back to see if I’m unloading them. (There’s a very small pile of “I love this!” and a much larger pile of “I would like to try this again” that are not up for grabs — not yet, anyway. Once I try that second pile again, I’m sure some of them will go on offer.) People who have sent me samples will get first dibs on anything here.

List behind the cut!

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab:
Prototype ICD 17
Lemon Peel, Marshmallow, Orange Blossom
RPG Series: Gnome
Wolf’s Heart
Mad Hatter
Black Fig, Oak Bark, Brown Sugar
Hollywood Babylon
RPG Series: Good
Vasilissa
Incubus
Phantasm
Bliss
The Arrival at the Sabbath and Homage to the Devil
Zephyr
Y’Ha-Nthlei
Pumpkin Latte
Peach Brandy
Honey Taffy Smut
Hay Moon
Unmasking the Sambaso Dancer
Prototype HR2
Flesh of My Flesh
Fair Maiden Side-Eye
Sanguinem Menstruum
Dirty
Burial (x3)
Fae (x2)
Kabuki

Haus of Gloi:
Satyr
Narcosa
Kumbaya
Flutterby
Pumpkin Peach
Garden of Earthly Delights
Caramel Apple Pops
Apple Milk
Mama’s Porridge

Imaginary Authors
Whispered Myths
A Whiff of Waffle Cone
O, Unknown!
Slow Explosions
Bull’s Blood

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Unfamiliar kinds of physicality

For the last couple of months I’ve been having sessions with a guy who’s sort of part physical trainer of the type you would find at a gym, part physical therapist. My sister’s been working with him for ages; I decided to hop onto the bandwagon because (as some of you know) my ankles have been absolute crap for most of my life, but what I’d seen of how C goes about things made me believe he might be able to do something to improve that.

Which he has in fact done. The process isn’t complete, of course — in some ways it will probably never be complete — but for the first time in years, I’ve started to feel like I can maybe trust my ankles. Getting to that point has involved not the familiar routines I’ve been given by every physical therapist I’ve ever seen, but stuff ranging from getting my arches to move again (which they had more or less stopped doing) to balance exercises aimed at reprogramming the way my eyes and my brain interact.

And also weight training. Which is where things get weird for me.

I’ve done very little of this kind of thing in my life. For a brief time I saw a regular trainer at a gym, and she gave me some upper-body stuff to do, but C’s got me doing deadlifts and bizarre variations on back lunges where I do a one-handed shoulder press with a kettlebell before lunging and then lean over to put the palm of my other hand on the floor and so forth. And what I’ve discovered as I do this is . . . my brain just does not have any baseline for processing what the hell is going on.

Sometimes C will tell me to do something and I am absolute crap at it — until suddenly I’m not. This happened with a small exercise where I was balancing a kettlebell upright in one hand: the first day I tried, I couldn’t keep it in position for even five seconds, and then the next day I was doing fifteen, twenty, twenty-five seconds, no problem. It wasn’t that I’d gotten stronger literally overnight; I think that somewhere between Day One and Day Two, my brain went ohhhh, I see what you’re getting at. But what really gets me is that when I’m doing the strength exercises and my heart rate and breathing go up — y’all, it turns out I have no sense of scale there. Not in the context of that kind of work. Ask me to do karate kata or swim 500 meters and sure, I know how to pace myself. I know how hard I’m working and whether I can maintain that for an extended period of time or not. But put a kettlebell in my hands and suddenly I have no freaking clue whether I need to slow down, whether my heart rate and breathing will continue to spike or whether they’ll stay where they are, how many more reps I’ll be able to do before my muscles give out. I’m probably working slower/easier than I’m actually capable of, because something in my hindbrain is freaking out over these unfamiliar sensations and telling me I need to back off before I ‘splode.

I’ll be interested to see how this changes over time. Presumably, as I get more familiar with the physicality of strength training, I’ll get better at judging where I actually am on the effort scale. I’ll also get stronger — but I think that’s a separate thing. At one point C asked me how hard a particular movement was on a scale of 1 to 10 and I didn’t even know what to tell him. Another time he asked me that question, and I realized that while I didn’t feel like I was exerting myself super hard, I also had this feeling like I was about two reps away from Nope Not Happening Anymore. A weird split between my strength, and the endurance that particular strength had.

It’s a brave new world, yo. One in which I am closer to being able to do a squat than I’ve been in my entire life — so that’s something!

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The Advent of Scent, Week 10

* Yesterday Haze (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “fig, iris, cream, tonka, tree bark, walnut bitters, and orchard dust.” Like a number of their scents, this one hits me as VERY strongly woody — alcoholically so early on, for long enough that I don’t think it’s just the evaporation of the spray; my guess is that’s the “walnut bitters” part. Underwhelming result.

* Moonlight in Chiangmai (Dusita)
Described as “yuzu, jasmine, nutmeg, benzoin, myrrh, patchouli, vetiver, teak.” In the bottle it’s slightly floral, brightened a bit by the yuzu. Wet, it’s kind of green; I think that might be the vetiver? (That’s a note I’m still trying to learn to identify.) As it dries down it gets sort of resinous with a touch of nutmeg and, uh, benzoin is another note I’m still trying to learn to pick out. Interesting enough for me to keep to try again.

* Hollywood Babylon
Described as “glittering Egyptian amber and heliotrope, infused with the sweetness of strawberry and vanilla – dragged into debauch by lusty red musk and a dribble of black cherry.” WOW CHERRY to start, but as it dries . . . I think the only real description I can give this one is “confused.” It’s kind of generically perfume-y with whiffs of fruit.

* Pecan Pie Oud
I couldn’t find a description for this one, but based on my previous experience of oud — by which I presume they mean the perfume component, not the musical instrument, but then again who knows — I was not optimistic. However! It’s got a bit of that cloying note right after I apply it, over a kind of woody/nutty scent, but as it dries it develops more into nutmeg and other spices. At no point did I pick up the sharp, medicinal, chemical note I think was oud in Liquid Gold Is in the Air (which I definitely did not like). I’ll keep this one for now!

* A City on Fire (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “cade oil, spikenard, cardamom, clearwood, dark berries, labdanum, a burnt match.” After applying it I learned that cade is a kind of cypress, which explained why my wrist smelled so much like my hinoki incense. Definitely smoky, too. It mellows as it goes, but this is in the same camp for me as BPAL’s Pomegranate and Date Palms — I think I prefer it as a room scent rather than a bodily one? (Though since IA’s perfume samples are all in spray bottles, I could spritz it around as an air freshener, I suppose.)

* Apple Milk (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “apple pulp, hot milk, and cardamom.” Hits that nasal-passage-coating cloying note in the bottle, which I’m going to guess is from whatever they used to create the “milk” note. On, however, it’s mostly apple, eventually bowing to the cardamom. This kept its apple note much longer than many others I’ve tried, but I prefer BPAL’s Honeyed Apple.

* Slow Explosions (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “saffron, rose absolute, leather, apple, benzoin, cashmeran, and Arpora Night Market.” Like Hollywood Babylon, this one just felt confused to me, never quite cohering into something where I could say, “ah, this is the target we were aiming for.” At first it was sort of leathery with some rose and apple maybe; the sort of green and woody note it took on later might have been the cashmeran; I still don’t really get what I’m sniffing for where benzoin is concerned. Not a winner.

* Bull’s Bloood (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “patchouli, rose, costus root, tobacco, black musk, and bull’s blood.” I don’t know whether it’s the fact that IA samples are spray bottles or something to do with how they formulate their perfumes, but wow are they frequently overpowering on me. This one was mostly overpoweringly tobacco — not necessarily in an outright unpleasant way, but it’s not what I want to smell like.

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New Worlds: Our Crowning Glory

From the skin, the New Worlds Patreon moves on to the hair! All the things we do to keep it clean . . . and all the meaning we assign to it, too. Comment over there!

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The Advent of Scent, Week 9

Belated post this time, though the perfume-testing continues apace.

* Phantasm
Described as “green tea, lemon verbena, jasmine and neroli.” That sounded very promising, and I picked up the lemon verbena in the bottle, the neroli as it started to dry. But like so many perfumes with floral elements, it wound up just being . . . generically floral. Which is not a category I like.

* Pumpkin Latte
Described as “espresso, pumpkin syrup, smoky vanilla bean, milk, raw sugar, and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg.” This is quite nice for what it is; it starts out very strongly coffee, with the smoky vanilla coming out in the wet stages; later on the coffee steps back to allow the cinnamon through quite powerfully. But I’m coming to the conclusion that many of the “foody” scents don’t appeal to me: fruit is okay, but other stuff on the edible side of the perfume spectrum is just not what I want to smell like.

* Midwinter Eve
Described as “the perfume of sugared plums over a breeze of winter flowers.” This is quite nicely balanced! Early on it’s fruity, but a tart fruity rather than sugary-sweet (despite the description); later on the florals of unknown variety show up, but for once they don’t overpower everything else.

* Samhain
Described as “damp woods, fir needle, and black patchouli with the gentlest touches of warm pumpkin, clove, nutmeg, allspice, green cardamom, sweet red apple and mullein.” I have no idea what mullein is supposed to smell like, and searching did not enlighten me. Possibly it’s the sort of “middle” note I picked up here during the drydown (she said, making vague gestures as if “middle” is anything resembling a meaningful description). Like many of BPAL’s apple scents, that part shows up quite well when this is wet; unlike some of them, it sticks around later. As does the woodiness and the spice. I’d call this one “interestingly autumnal,” and I’m keeping it for now in the “try again later” pile.

* Good
Described as “shimmering celestial musk with vanilla, white honey, acacia, and sugar cane.” Blech. Hella floral, which I guess is coming from the acacia; it even strong-arms the musk into submission, when that’s usually the part that sticks around on me after everything else is gone. (God only knows what “celestial musk” is, though. I’ve now seen celestial, white, black, red, pink, amber, peach, Egyptian, Chinese, bear, skin, body, and blood musks mentioned in various perfume descriptions, and I have no idea if those terms mean anything at all.)

* Golden Priapus
Described as “vanilla and amber with juniper, rosewood and white pine.” I may at last be starting to get a handle on what is meant by “amber” in perfumery, as this starts out with a warm scent that isn’t the usual things like sandalwood or musk. The evergreen elements cut that a bit, which I find quite nice.

* Hay Moon
I cannot possibly replicate in text format the tone of voice in which my sister and I keep saying “haaaaaay mooooon!” to each other. Described as “hay absolute, tall grasses, dry honey, mallow, cardamom, amber, oat cakes, and wheat.” Based on comparison to a couple of other perfumes, I think I Do Not Like mallow; something in here and a few other mallow-containing scents starts out hideously cloying and . . . all I can think to do is call it “buttery” or “creamy” even that’s not quite what I mean. Now, in this instance that went away as the perfume dried, leaving behind the amber and the cardamom, followed by the vanilla and the honey. But I can get nice scents in that category without first going through the part that makes me almost sick to my stomach.

* Pomegranates and Date Palm
Described as “pomegranate, dates, and cypress infused with ketoret smoke.” Like some others, this does a swap from bottle to wrist: it starts out tartly fruity, with overtones of woody smoke, then becomes sharpy woody with overtones of fruit. It mellows and balances out as it dries, but my ultimate thought was “I want this as an incense, not as a perfume.”

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New Worlds: Skin Deep

Do you struggle with acne or wrinkles? The New Worlds Patreon is taking a promise at skin care and the promises the manufacturers of various products have made over the millennia . . . and what actually happens when you use some of them. Comment over there!

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my Boskone schedule

I am going to be at Boskone this weekend! Schedule is below; note that because Boskone is on the East Coast, I am giving all times in EST.

Friday, February 12th, 5-6 p.m.: Science in Fantasy (panel with James Patrick Kelly, Adam Stemple, Tamora Pierce, and Andrea Hairston)Friday, February 12th, 6:30-7:30 p.m.: Reading (with Max Gladstone and R.W.W. Greene)Saturday, February 13th, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: From Podcasting to Patreon, How to Make and Market Your Creative Work (panel with Marc Gunn, Neil Clarke, Gene Doucette, and Nicole Givens Kurtz)Sunday, February 14th, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: The Gritty Underbelly of Fantasy (panel with Rebecca Roanhorse, Joe Abercrombie, and Aleron Kong)

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