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January 22, 2014
Doctrine of Labyrinths: Chinese editions
My intrepid translator,
214314
, sent me pictures today of the Chinese editions of the Doctrine of Labyrinths.
MERE CAPSLOCK CANNOT CONVEY THE DEPTH AND BREADTH OF MY EXCITEMENT.
214314
, sent me pictures today of the Chinese editions of the Doctrine of Labyrinths.MERE CAPSLOCK CANNOT CONVEY THE DEPTH AND BREADTH OF MY EXCITEMENT.
January 21, 2014
5 things for fimbulwinter
1. This guy's art is AMAZING.
2. The thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that I now have a little weather prediction center in my right ankle that FAITHFULLY lets me know when the weather is changing. You know, just like characters in books always do. I must tell you, however, that it is not actually as much fun as you might think.
3. I love this proof that cats have always been cats.
4. I have rubbed a raw spot inside my nose with my sleep apnea tentacles. DON'T ASK ME HOW I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
5. If you are in need of laughter today, this site made me laugh so hard I nearly ended up on the floor.
2. The thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that I now have a little weather prediction center in my right ankle that FAITHFULLY lets me know when the weather is changing. You know, just like characters in books always do. I must tell you, however, that it is not actually as much fun as you might think.
3. I love this proof that cats have always been cats.
4. I have rubbed a raw spot inside my nose with my sleep apnea tentacles. DON'T ASK ME HOW I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
5. If you are in need of laughter today, this site made me laugh so hard I nearly ended up on the floor.
January 19, 2014
Three years, five months, and nineteen days out . . . but who's counting?
This is most likely the last post I will make specifically about my ankle, unless something changes dramatically for better or worse, although I'll probably still bitch about it from time to time.
I'm making this post for closure on the series of posts I made about breaking my ankle and recovering therefrom, and because everything is a learning experience and everything is potentially story material, so that anyone thinking about breaking a character's ankle will have some idea of (at least some of) the possible repercussions and outcomes.
My ankle is basically as healed as it's going to get. I have full range of motion, and 99 days out of 100 I don't limp. I still have nine titanium screws and a titanium plate in there because the surgery to take them out seems like a much worse problem than the occasional discomfort they cause me. The worst of the discomfort is that cold weather causes inflamation around the plate, and I've discovered this year that wearing a cut-up old sock under my regular sock, and wearing that cut-up old sock to bed, reduces that problem almost to zero. It also keeps the joint warmer and therefore more flexible. It's still uncomfortable to lie on my right side for too long (although the socklet helps with that, too), because while my ankle will flex to the inside, it doesn't like to hold the position. And it still hurts like mad howling fury if I bang either condyle on, say, the leg of my office chair. There's an adhesion on the outer condyle, but that doesn't actually bother me aside from the fact that it's weird to touch.
I have a Morton's neuroma, most likely caused by the stresses of walking with a recalcitrant Achilles tendon, and I was working on a stress fracture in my second metatarsal (I forget the word for the problem, but it's the grade below "stress fracture," i.e., the place where a stress fracture is going to happen if nobody intervenes), but those problems have pretty much been solved by PT (for the neuroma) and a custom orthotic. I only very rarely catch the neuroma wrong, and almost always while I'm wandering around barefoot as I prefer to do, and I haven't (knock on wood) had any trouble with the metatarsal in more than a year. The PT & the orthotic & the occasional shooting pain seemed like a better answer to the neuroma than the surgery that would (a) leave me with some part of my foot insensate and (b) possibly not solve the problem. Plus (c) being more surgery, which has become something I am extremely keen to avoid.
The worst problem I have, and the one least amenable to any kind of solution, is that one of the interior ligaments has calcified. This throws off the very delicate geometry of the ankle joint, so that my talus no longer fits quite correctly in the socket created by the tibia and fibula. This makes the joint stiff and awkward (and I can make it pop on command, which is NOT comforting), and unfortunately, there's nothing to be done about it. The orthotic takes care of the chain reaction where the problem in the ankle causes problems in the foot, but the podiatrist I talked to said that even if I could find a surgeon willing to go inside the joint and scrape off the calcification, it was overwhelmingly likely that it would just come back. And she didn't think I'd find a surgeon willing to do it anyway. (She was also phenomenally impressed with the screws--"Come here!" she said to a colleague. "You have to see this! It's the size of a pencil!"). The calcification isn't the result of anything anybody did wrong; it's just one of those things that the body can do when it's trying to heal.
So the joint is stiff and painful, especially first thing in the morning, and I still occasionally have the tendons seize up, and that's the forecast for the foreseeable future. It's a good thing, I think, that my passion has turned out to be dressage rather than rock climbing, because I don't think I can manage the combination of force and flexibility that rock climbing requires, but dressage doesn't bother my ankle at all (except that some days I can't flex it far enough to get my foot in the stirrup without some help).
I have also become excruciatingly paranoid about untrustworthy footing.
Overall--and I want to be clear about this--I am extremely lucky. I do have full range of motion, and the lingering problems don't prevent me from doing any of the things I love. The RLS is far, far worse, both in terms of day to day nuisance value and because it makes travel so very, very unpleasant. But my ankle is never going to be as good as it was before I broke it, and while I'm at peace with that (unlike with the sleep apnea, which still makes me want to punch things), it is a fact that requires some workarounds and hacks in order to be manageable. (Really, the cut-up old socks are damn near miraculous.)
And that's the new status quo.
I'm making this post for closure on the series of posts I made about breaking my ankle and recovering therefrom, and because everything is a learning experience and everything is potentially story material, so that anyone thinking about breaking a character's ankle will have some idea of (at least some of) the possible repercussions and outcomes.
My ankle is basically as healed as it's going to get. I have full range of motion, and 99 days out of 100 I don't limp. I still have nine titanium screws and a titanium plate in there because the surgery to take them out seems like a much worse problem than the occasional discomfort they cause me. The worst of the discomfort is that cold weather causes inflamation around the plate, and I've discovered this year that wearing a cut-up old sock under my regular sock, and wearing that cut-up old sock to bed, reduces that problem almost to zero. It also keeps the joint warmer and therefore more flexible. It's still uncomfortable to lie on my right side for too long (although the socklet helps with that, too), because while my ankle will flex to the inside, it doesn't like to hold the position. And it still hurts like mad howling fury if I bang either condyle on, say, the leg of my office chair. There's an adhesion on the outer condyle, but that doesn't actually bother me aside from the fact that it's weird to touch.
I have a Morton's neuroma, most likely caused by the stresses of walking with a recalcitrant Achilles tendon, and I was working on a stress fracture in my second metatarsal (I forget the word for the problem, but it's the grade below "stress fracture," i.e., the place where a stress fracture is going to happen if nobody intervenes), but those problems have pretty much been solved by PT (for the neuroma) and a custom orthotic. I only very rarely catch the neuroma wrong, and almost always while I'm wandering around barefoot as I prefer to do, and I haven't (knock on wood) had any trouble with the metatarsal in more than a year. The PT & the orthotic & the occasional shooting pain seemed like a better answer to the neuroma than the surgery that would (a) leave me with some part of my foot insensate and (b) possibly not solve the problem. Plus (c) being more surgery, which has become something I am extremely keen to avoid.
The worst problem I have, and the one least amenable to any kind of solution, is that one of the interior ligaments has calcified. This throws off the very delicate geometry of the ankle joint, so that my talus no longer fits quite correctly in the socket created by the tibia and fibula. This makes the joint stiff and awkward (and I can make it pop on command, which is NOT comforting), and unfortunately, there's nothing to be done about it. The orthotic takes care of the chain reaction where the problem in the ankle causes problems in the foot, but the podiatrist I talked to said that even if I could find a surgeon willing to go inside the joint and scrape off the calcification, it was overwhelmingly likely that it would just come back. And she didn't think I'd find a surgeon willing to do it anyway. (She was also phenomenally impressed with the screws--"Come here!" she said to a colleague. "You have to see this! It's the size of a pencil!"). The calcification isn't the result of anything anybody did wrong; it's just one of those things that the body can do when it's trying to heal.
So the joint is stiff and painful, especially first thing in the morning, and I still occasionally have the tendons seize up, and that's the forecast for the foreseeable future. It's a good thing, I think, that my passion has turned out to be dressage rather than rock climbing, because I don't think I can manage the combination of force and flexibility that rock climbing requires, but dressage doesn't bother my ankle at all (except that some days I can't flex it far enough to get my foot in the stirrup without some help).
I have also become excruciatingly paranoid about untrustworthy footing.
Overall--and I want to be clear about this--I am extremely lucky. I do have full range of motion, and the lingering problems don't prevent me from doing any of the things I love. The RLS is far, far worse, both in terms of day to day nuisance value and because it makes travel so very, very unpleasant. But my ankle is never going to be as good as it was before I broke it, and while I'm at peace with that (unlike with the sleep apnea, which still makes me want to punch things), it is a fact that requires some workarounds and hacks in order to be manageable. (Really, the cut-up old socks are damn near miraculous.)
And that's the new status quo.
January 15, 2014
2 reminders
Reminder the first: You can still help me NAME MY SOCK ELEPHANT. I have had many fabulous suggestions, and I would love to get many more!
Reminder the second: The only thing I published in 2013 is "To Die for Moonlight."
It has become weirdly traditional for writers to post their lists of Things Eligible for Awards in January, and I was debating with myself how I felt about that this year when a couple people on Twitter remarked that the January lists were how they found stories they'd missed the previous year. And regardless of how I'm feeling about self-promotion and awards on any given day, pointing people towards stories they might want to read is a good reason to make the post. So. "To Die for Moonlight." Kyle Murchison Booth, "The Fall of the House of Usher," and werewolves.
Reminder the second: The only thing I published in 2013 is "To Die for Moonlight."
It has become weirdly traditional for writers to post their lists of Things Eligible for Awards in January, and I was debating with myself how I felt about that this year when a couple people on Twitter remarked that the January lists were how they found stories they'd missed the previous year. And regardless of how I'm feeling about self-promotion and awards on any given day, pointing people towards stories they might want to read is a good reason to make the post. So. "To Die for Moonlight." Kyle Murchison Booth, "The Fall of the House of Usher," and werewolves.
January 13, 2014
UBC: Briggs
Briggs, Robin. Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchhunts. New York: Viking-Penguin Books, 1996.
For most of this book, I was planning to blog about it and say basically, "This is a pretty good book." And then I hit the last chapter and the evolutionary psychology and no. He lost all the good will he'd built up and I started yelling.
LEAVING THAT ASIDE, this is a pretty good book. It is interesting and helpful because it is a comparison of witchhunts in various countries, and since I don't know very much about European witchhunts except what "everybody knows," I found the material fascinating. And he pointed out something about why Salem is so weird that I knew, but hadn't ever really noticed, which is that only in the Salem witch trials would confessing save your life. In Salem, if you confessed to being a witch, your life would be spared. Those who were hanged were uniformly those who refused to confess. But in other places and times, unless you got incredibly unlucky, if you could withstand a round or two of torture and still profess your innocence, you were likely to be released. Those who confessed were burned . It's an incredibly important point--and like I said, it's something I knew--and one thing Briggs does very well is foregrounding the backwardness of the Salem trials.
But Briggs is a sloppy writer; in particular (and crucially for discussions of witchcraft accusations), he is sloppy about pronouns and antecedents, so that it becomes very difficult to tell what is the accused's testimony (i.e., what they actually said) and what is the accuser's testimony about what the accused said. This is very problematic.
He also falls into a logical fallacy--and it's all over the evolutionary psychology conclusion--which goes something like this:
1. There were people genuinely practicing witchcraft, that is, cursing their neighbors in the belief that they had the power to make that curse work.
2. There were people accused of witchcraft.
ERGO, the people accused of witchcraft were practicing witchcraft, and were therefore actually a threat to their accusers.
He's very insistent about citing the studies about present day cultures in which witchcraft is still a powerful belief, the studies we've all heard about where it's shown that if a witch curses someone who believes in the witch's power, the victim will, in fact, die. (He ignores some pretty crucial differences between those cultures and the culture he's studying.) And there's a lot of handwavy elision around the evidence that some accused witches did utter curses and threats against the people who would go on to accuse them, and things get all turned around until the people making accusations of witchcraft are actually right to do so. (This is largely where the evolutionary psychology comes in.)
And that is so completely wrong that it makes me yell at the book. There are so many victims of the witchhunts that, yes, the laws of probability say that some of them did practice maleficium and did believe that they were witches. But it is abundantly evident, over and over again, that the vast majority of people accused of being witches were no such thing. They were generally misfits, not outsiders so much as people who just didn't quite fit with their neighbors, who were quarrelsome or pushy or just inconvenient. They did not deserve what happened to them, and I'm actually kind of furious at Briggs for twisting things around to suggest that they did.
For most of this book, I was planning to blog about it and say basically, "This is a pretty good book." And then I hit the last chapter and the evolutionary psychology and no. He lost all the good will he'd built up and I started yelling.
LEAVING THAT ASIDE, this is a pretty good book. It is interesting and helpful because it is a comparison of witchhunts in various countries, and since I don't know very much about European witchhunts except what "everybody knows," I found the material fascinating. And he pointed out something about why Salem is so weird that I knew, but hadn't ever really noticed, which is that only in the Salem witch trials would confessing save your life. In Salem, if you confessed to being a witch, your life would be spared. Those who were hanged were uniformly those who refused to confess. But in other places and times, unless you got incredibly unlucky, if you could withstand a round or two of torture and still profess your innocence, you were likely to be released. Those who confessed were burned . It's an incredibly important point--and like I said, it's something I knew--and one thing Briggs does very well is foregrounding the backwardness of the Salem trials.
But Briggs is a sloppy writer; in particular (and crucially for discussions of witchcraft accusations), he is sloppy about pronouns and antecedents, so that it becomes very difficult to tell what is the accused's testimony (i.e., what they actually said) and what is the accuser's testimony about what the accused said. This is very problematic.
He also falls into a logical fallacy--and it's all over the evolutionary psychology conclusion--which goes something like this:
1. There were people genuinely practicing witchcraft, that is, cursing their neighbors in the belief that they had the power to make that curse work.
2. There were people accused of witchcraft.
ERGO, the people accused of witchcraft were practicing witchcraft, and were therefore actually a threat to their accusers.
He's very insistent about citing the studies about present day cultures in which witchcraft is still a powerful belief, the studies we've all heard about where it's shown that if a witch curses someone who believes in the witch's power, the victim will, in fact, die. (He ignores some pretty crucial differences between those cultures and the culture he's studying.) And there's a lot of handwavy elision around the evidence that some accused witches did utter curses and threats against the people who would go on to accuse them, and things get all turned around until the people making accusations of witchcraft are actually right to do so. (This is largely where the evolutionary psychology comes in.)
And that is so completely wrong that it makes me yell at the book. There are so many victims of the witchhunts that, yes, the laws of probability say that some of them did practice maleficium and did believe that they were witches. But it is abundantly evident, over and over again, that the vast majority of people accused of being witches were no such thing. They were generally misfits, not outsiders so much as people who just didn't quite fit with their neighbors, who were quarrelsome or pushy or just inconvenient. They did not deserve what happened to them, and I'm actually kind of furious at Briggs for twisting things around to suggest that they did.
January 10, 2014
MASTER LIST OF NAMES
I am delighted! So many people have made suggestions that I need a list! And if you want to consult the list before you make your suggestion, you may feel free =to do so.
(Please note, this is NOT where to make suggestions, which would be why I have disabled comments. To suggest a name for my sock elephant, or if you're wondering what the exact hell is going on here, this post is what you want.)
Abigail
Ada Lavanda
Adelaide
Adolpha
Aethelflaed
Aimee
Alice
Amelia
Anette
Annabel Lee
Annabelle Anne
Antonia
Aparajita
Arabella
Araminta
Aroha
Artemisia
Aurelia
Awkward Ada
Babar
Baboon Butt
Beatrice
Berenice
Beryl Byblos Biblioteca
Bethamine
Blueberry
Bronwyn
Brownie
Brunhilda
Brunhoff
Butterfly
Butterfly Petunia
Butterwortia
Calliope
Celeste (2)
Chandra
Charis
Charlene
Claude (short for Claudine)
Cleo
Cordelia
Corinna
Darcy or Darcie
Dorothy
Duchess
The Duchess of Socks
Edith
Eeyore (2)
Eglantine
Eleanor
Eleanor the Elephant
Ellisock
Elly Phant
Elphaba
Elphabeth
Elsa Lancaster
Elsinore
Encephalupagus
Enid
Ermengarde
Esmerelda
Ethel
Fanta
Faustina
Festive
Flavia
Flora
Florence
Galahadral
George
Gertrude
Gladys
Glinda
Gollum
Gwen
Hanna
Hattie
Heffalump
Henrietta
Hepzibah (2)
Hester
Hettie
Hildegarde
Hippolyte
Hirault's Pride
Hiro
Hironama
Honoria
Hortense
Innogen
Ippolita
Isabella
Isabelle
Ivoire
Jonquill
Josephine
Katerina
Lady Edith
Lettice
Lilac (Mizzz Lilac Deveraux)
Louise
Luckery Bay
Lucy
Luna
Luo
Mabel
MacMartina
Madame Socky-Trunk
Majmun
Mamie
Marian
Max (Maxine?) von Pettinkofer
Maxine
Mehitabel
Melinda
Melopony
Meredith
Mimosa
Minerva (nickname Kate)
Miss Ethel Oldsoul
Miss Fanny Faye
Miss Sockiness
Mombatur
Moomatrix
Morrillia
Mugwump
Myrtle
Neela
Nikolina Rimsky-Korsakov
Norma Jean
Nova
Olly
Ophelia
Oriana
Our Lady of Lovingness
Ozymandia
Paco
Pasiphae
Peaches
Peduladerma
Penelope
Pennywise
Peppermint
Petunia
Pickles
Philomena
Polly
Pom
Pompadour
Prudence
Red Maxi
Richeldis
Rosalie
Rosalind
Rosaline
Rosie
Rowena
RUFUS
Rufus Higgenbotham
Seranna
Siddhi
Socktacula
Sofonisba
Sophie
Squishyboo
Sybil
Sylvia
Tama (short for Tamanoir)
Tamar
Tanaquil
Tantorina
Tartuffe
Teresa
Theocrita
Theodosia
Threads (In Weaving Threads Of Sorrow We May Find Comfort)
Trumpetina
Ursula
Viola
Wazi
Wendalina
Winifred
Winnie
Xanthippe
Yun-yun
Zenobia
Zerilda
Zipporah
Zippy
(Please note, this is NOT where to make suggestions, which would be why I have disabled comments. To suggest a name for my sock elephant, or if you're wondering what the exact hell is going on here, this post is what you want.)
Abigail
Ada Lavanda
Adelaide
Adolpha
Aethelflaed
Aimee
Alice
Amelia
Anette
Annabel Lee
Annabelle Anne
Antonia
Aparajita
Arabella
Araminta
Aroha
Artemisia
Aurelia
Awkward Ada
Babar
Baboon Butt
Beatrice
Berenice
Beryl Byblos Biblioteca
Bethamine
Blueberry
Bronwyn
Brownie
Brunhilda
Brunhoff
Butterfly
Butterfly Petunia
Butterwortia
Calliope
Celeste (2)
Chandra
Charis
Charlene
Claude (short for Claudine)
Cleo
Cordelia
Corinna
Darcy or Darcie
Dorothy
Duchess
The Duchess of Socks
Edith
Eeyore (2)
Eglantine
Eleanor
Eleanor the Elephant
Ellisock
Elly Phant
Elphaba
Elphabeth
Elsa Lancaster
Elsinore
Encephalupagus
Enid
Ermengarde
Esmerelda
Ethel
Fanta
Faustina
Festive
Flavia
Flora
Florence
Galahadral
George
Gertrude
Gladys
Glinda
Gollum
Gwen
Hanna
Hattie
Heffalump
Henrietta
Hepzibah (2)
Hester
Hettie
Hildegarde
Hippolyte
Hirault's Pride
Hiro
Hironama
Honoria
Hortense
Innogen
Ippolita
Isabella
Isabelle
Ivoire
Jonquill
Josephine
Katerina
Lady Edith
Lettice
Lilac (Mizzz Lilac Deveraux)
Louise
Luckery Bay
Lucy
Luna
Luo
Mabel
MacMartina
Madame Socky-Trunk
Majmun
Mamie
Marian
Max (Maxine?) von Pettinkofer
Maxine
Mehitabel
Melinda
Melopony
Meredith
Mimosa
Minerva (nickname Kate)
Miss Ethel Oldsoul
Miss Fanny Faye
Miss Sockiness
Mombatur
Moomatrix
Morrillia
Mugwump
Myrtle
Neela
Nikolina Rimsky-Korsakov
Norma Jean
Nova
Olly
Ophelia
Oriana
Our Lady of Lovingness
Ozymandia
Paco
Pasiphae
Peaches
Peduladerma
Penelope
Pennywise
Peppermint
Petunia
Pickles
Philomena
Polly
Pom
Pompadour
Prudence
Red Maxi
Richeldis
Rosalie
Rosalind
Rosaline
Rosie
Rowena
RUFUS
Rufus Higgenbotham
Seranna
Siddhi
Socktacula
Sofonisba
Sophie
Squishyboo
Sybil
Sylvia
Tama (short for Tamanoir)
Tamar
Tanaquil
Tantorina
Tartuffe
Teresa
Theocrita
Theodosia
Threads (In Weaving Threads Of Sorrow We May Find Comfort)
Trumpetina
Ursula
Viola
Wazi
Wendalina
Winifred
Winnie
Xanthippe
Yun-yun
Zenobia
Zerilda
Zipporah
Zippy
January 8, 2014
NAME THE SOCK ELEPHANT
I have a sock elephant in need of a name.
Our tiny, struggling, local co-op periodically has silent auctions of stuff that it looks like someone went out and found at garage sales. Much as I want to support our tiny, struggling, local co-op, my house already looks like a garage sale exploded in it. And mostly, the stuff in these auctions is not stuff I actually want.
But the last time around, one of the auction items was a sock elephant.
No, really. An elephant. Made of socks.
I cannot even explain to you how or why I fell in love with the sock elephant. But I did. Hard.
Problem was, I noticed the sock elephant on December 24, and the auction closed on December 23. With a bid down for the sock elephant. I felt weirdly bereft, but there was nothing to be done about it. Somebody else had won the sock elephant.
But come Boxing Day, the sock elephant was still sitting on the auction table, looking just a little bit forlorn. I'm in our tiny, struggling, local co-op fairly often, because it's where I buy milk and fruit, and I kept coming in and the sock elephant kept being there, looking a little more forlorn each time. Finally, last week, I caved and asked the cashier what was up. Had somebody WON A SOCK ELEPHANT and NOT CLAIMED IT?
Unimaginable as I found this possibility, it was true. The person who won the sock elephant had not claimed it. We're going to give them another week, the cashier said and looked at me hopefully. Yes, I said with that simultaneously sinking and exhilarating feeling you get when you out yourself as a complete freak. If the sock elephant needs a home, I'm interested.
I kept coming in, and the sock elephant kept being there. Forlornly.
Today, as I was standing in front of the produce section, contemplating the Fair Trade blueberries from Patagonia, the cashier said, Hey, are you still interested in the sock elephant? (I should add, this was not the same cashier. Clearly, word had gotten around.)
I donated $10 to our tiny, struggling, local co-op and came home with milk, blueberries, and a sock elephant.
When I was struggling miserably to finish Corambis, one of
heresluck
's friends gave me Earl the Writing Frog, a little homemade beanbag frog to keep me company and to remind me to keep writing. And Earl did his job. He's still on my desk, along with the rest of the garage sale explosion. And I have decided that the sock elephant is something I am giving myself to remind me that no matter how ugly you are, somebody will love you. Baboon butt and all.
I need that reminder right now, because everything I write is getting blocked by the little inner voice that says, That's stupid. Nobody wants to read that. I know it's not true, but I am really struggling to get past it. And struggling. And struggling. And did I mention the struggling? My hope is that the sock elephant will give me a boost over the wall.
I have a novel coming out in April, my first new novel in five years. I am proposing a contest to name the sock elephant, winners to receive signed copies of The Goblin Emperor as soon as I get my author's copies.
GUIDELINES
1. The sock elephant is female. She has a ribbon around her neck and everything! Unisex names are also acceptable, and you know, if you tell me her name is Henry and it turns out I agree with you, you can win that way, too.
2. All decisions are mine: entirely subjective, finicky, irrational, and not up for discussion.
3. All entries are to be made in comments to this post. I am enabling anonymous comments.
4. You may suggest as many names as you like, in as many different comments as you like.
5. There will be two winners, one for the name I choose and one for the name I like the best. (For example, if you suggest Bombalurina, I think it is a fabulous name, but it is not my sock elephant's name. Ditto Tinuviel.)
6. The contest will close the day I receive my author's copies. I wish I could tell you exactly when that will be, but I can't. I will then make a post announcing the winners (tagged "sock elephant" as this one is) and telling them how to contact me with their addresses so I can send them their books.
7. Please spread the word widely. My sock elephant needs a name!
Our tiny, struggling, local co-op periodically has silent auctions of stuff that it looks like someone went out and found at garage sales. Much as I want to support our tiny, struggling, local co-op, my house already looks like a garage sale exploded in it. And mostly, the stuff in these auctions is not stuff I actually want.
But the last time around, one of the auction items was a sock elephant.
No, really. An elephant. Made of socks.
I cannot even explain to you how or why I fell in love with the sock elephant. But I did. Hard.
Problem was, I noticed the sock elephant on December 24, and the auction closed on December 23. With a bid down for the sock elephant. I felt weirdly bereft, but there was nothing to be done about it. Somebody else had won the sock elephant.
But come Boxing Day, the sock elephant was still sitting on the auction table, looking just a little bit forlorn. I'm in our tiny, struggling, local co-op fairly often, because it's where I buy milk and fruit, and I kept coming in and the sock elephant kept being there, looking a little more forlorn each time. Finally, last week, I caved and asked the cashier what was up. Had somebody WON A SOCK ELEPHANT and NOT CLAIMED IT?
Unimaginable as I found this possibility, it was true. The person who won the sock elephant had not claimed it. We're going to give them another week, the cashier said and looked at me hopefully. Yes, I said with that simultaneously sinking and exhilarating feeling you get when you out yourself as a complete freak. If the sock elephant needs a home, I'm interested.
I kept coming in, and the sock elephant kept being there. Forlornly.
Today, as I was standing in front of the produce section, contemplating the Fair Trade blueberries from Patagonia, the cashier said, Hey, are you still interested in the sock elephant? (I should add, this was not the same cashier. Clearly, word had gotten around.)
I donated $10 to our tiny, struggling, local co-op and came home with milk, blueberries, and a sock elephant.
When I was struggling miserably to finish Corambis, one of
heresluck
's friends gave me Earl the Writing Frog, a little homemade beanbag frog to keep me company and to remind me to keep writing. And Earl did his job. He's still on my desk, along with the rest of the garage sale explosion. And I have decided that the sock elephant is something I am giving myself to remind me that no matter how ugly you are, somebody will love you. Baboon butt and all.I need that reminder right now, because everything I write is getting blocked by the little inner voice that says, That's stupid. Nobody wants to read that. I know it's not true, but I am really struggling to get past it. And struggling. And struggling. And did I mention the struggling? My hope is that the sock elephant will give me a boost over the wall.
I have a novel coming out in April, my first new novel in five years. I am proposing a contest to name the sock elephant, winners to receive signed copies of The Goblin Emperor as soon as I get my author's copies.
GUIDELINES
1. The sock elephant is female. She has a ribbon around her neck and everything! Unisex names are also acceptable, and you know, if you tell me her name is Henry and it turns out I agree with you, you can win that way, too.
2. All decisions are mine: entirely subjective, finicky, irrational, and not up for discussion.
3. All entries are to be made in comments to this post. I am enabling anonymous comments.
4. You may suggest as many names as you like, in as many different comments as you like.
5. There will be two winners, one for the name I choose and one for the name I like the best. (For example, if you suggest Bombalurina, I think it is a fabulous name, but it is not my sock elephant's name. Ditto Tinuviel.)
6. The contest will close the day I receive my author's copies. I wish I could tell you exactly when that will be, but I can't. I will then make a post announcing the winners (tagged "sock elephant" as this one is) and telling them how to contact me with their addresses so I can send them their books.
7. Please spread the word widely. My sock elephant needs a name!
January 7, 2014
5 things of which a post are made
1. For anyone looking for verisimilitude, below about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit is too cold to ride. (Below zero is too cold for ANYTHING.)
2. Our Formerly Feral Ninja was well taught by her Feralista Mama. On Saturday I found her with a dead mouse (!) in our bedroom (ZOMG!!!11!1!). She hadn't eaten it yet, thank goodness (because the only thing worse than a dead mouse is a dead regurgitated mouse, don't ask me how I know), but she was definitely giving me the fix my toy, biped look. I did not oblige her.
3. My dear friend and frequent enabler,
heresluck
, gave
mirrorthaw
and me Season One of
Elementary
this holiday season. It took us a little more than a week to watch the whole thing, plus the special features (this is why it's a good thing I don't like many TV shows, because I am the opposite of will-power). I liked it a bunch. I liked the games it was playing with the source material; I adored Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and Aidan Quinn (and Jon Michael Hall also!, although his character is not in the slightest canonical). In some ways I liked it more than Sherlock, in some less. I may make a longer post about it at some point, but the thing I actually wanted to note here is not directly related to the show; it's something I noticed in the special features, something I knew but that it's good to be reminded of. It is very difficult to give an interesting answer to a general question. The actors and writers were getting thrown these slow underhand lobs over and over (you could tell by the answers they were giving), and it just didn't give them anything interesting to say (especially because they had to avoid spoilers). There was nothing they could hit out of the park. The set designer and the prop guy and the editor and the composer, on the other hand, who could talk about very specific details, were awesome. The composer actually demonstrated the way he puts music to a scene, which was very cool, but the best bit for me was the prop guy, who said, "Every prop has a ghost." By which he meant that, once you've established a prop, an object with which an actor interacts, it's a visual cue that tells its own part of the story without anything needing to be said. It was a tiny interview, but it was brilliant.
But nobody asked Jonny Lee Miller, in these tiny special feature interviews, specific questions about the choices he was making as an actor. Nobody asked the writers to talk specifically about how they wrote a particular episode, or how they decided what they were going to do with the bits of canon they chose to interpolate. (And there are some very interesting and specific questions that could be asked.) And so they couldn't reall get beyond platitudes, like the platitudes Crash makes Nuke rehearse in Bull Durham . And it's worth remembering as a rule of thumb: to get interesting answers, you have to ask specific questions.
4. Things are better with my little Cthulhu machine. We tied the tentacles to the headboard with twine, and I can now roll over without encoiling myself. I still hate the fucker, but that's a different problem.
5. The present given me by 2013, like a cold dead squirrel on my pillow, is migraines! I now get migraines as part of my PMS package. Did you know, there is nothing cool about migraines at all? Nothing works on them except specific drugs, and those specific drugs can cause heart attacks and strokes by the inherent nature of what they are. (The first one I tried also made me so light-headed and woozy that I was no better off than I'd been with the migraine and its wicked little nail gun.) And mine last for days.
They aren't bad migraines. Even without the drugs, I'm not incapacitated. I'm not nauseated. The pain is, comparatively, not as bad as my menstrual cramps even now (and not even in the same league as the menstrual cramps I had in college, which routinely hit too serious for numbers).
But dear freaking Jesus is it annoying.
2. Our Formerly Feral Ninja was well taught by her Feralista Mama. On Saturday I found her with a dead mouse (!) in our bedroom (ZOMG!!!11!1!). She hadn't eaten it yet, thank goodness (because the only thing worse than a dead mouse is a dead regurgitated mouse, don't ask me how I know), but she was definitely giving me the fix my toy, biped look. I did not oblige her.
3. My dear friend and frequent enabler,
heresluck
, gave
mirrorthaw
and me Season One of
Elementary
this holiday season. It took us a little more than a week to watch the whole thing, plus the special features (this is why it's a good thing I don't like many TV shows, because I am the opposite of will-power). I liked it a bunch. I liked the games it was playing with the source material; I adored Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and Aidan Quinn (and Jon Michael Hall also!, although his character is not in the slightest canonical). In some ways I liked it more than Sherlock, in some less. I may make a longer post about it at some point, but the thing I actually wanted to note here is not directly related to the show; it's something I noticed in the special features, something I knew but that it's good to be reminded of. It is very difficult to give an interesting answer to a general question. The actors and writers were getting thrown these slow underhand lobs over and over (you could tell by the answers they were giving), and it just didn't give them anything interesting to say (especially because they had to avoid spoilers). There was nothing they could hit out of the park. The set designer and the prop guy and the editor and the composer, on the other hand, who could talk about very specific details, were awesome. The composer actually demonstrated the way he puts music to a scene, which was very cool, but the best bit for me was the prop guy, who said, "Every prop has a ghost." By which he meant that, once you've established a prop, an object with which an actor interacts, it's a visual cue that tells its own part of the story without anything needing to be said. It was a tiny interview, but it was brilliant.But nobody asked Jonny Lee Miller, in these tiny special feature interviews, specific questions about the choices he was making as an actor. Nobody asked the writers to talk specifically about how they wrote a particular episode, or how they decided what they were going to do with the bits of canon they chose to interpolate. (And there are some very interesting and specific questions that could be asked.) And so they couldn't reall get beyond platitudes, like the platitudes Crash makes Nuke rehearse in Bull Durham . And it's worth remembering as a rule of thumb: to get interesting answers, you have to ask specific questions.
4. Things are better with my little Cthulhu machine. We tied the tentacles to the headboard with twine, and I can now roll over without encoiling myself. I still hate the fucker, but that's a different problem.
5. The present given me by 2013, like a cold dead squirrel on my pillow, is migraines! I now get migraines as part of my PMS package. Did you know, there is nothing cool about migraines at all? Nothing works on them except specific drugs, and those specific drugs can cause heart attacks and strokes by the inherent nature of what they are. (The first one I tried also made me so light-headed and woozy that I was no better off than I'd been with the migraine and its wicked little nail gun.) And mine last for days.
They aren't bad migraines. Even without the drugs, I'm not incapacitated. I'm not nauseated. The pain is, comparatively, not as bad as my menstrual cramps even now (and not even in the same league as the menstrual cramps I had in college, which routinely hit too serious for numbers).
But dear freaking Jesus is it annoying.
January 1, 2014
Buy, Read, Talk: How to Help a Writer's Career
Back in 2009, when my career as a novelist went into a nosedive, somebody asked me what my readers could do to help. I apologize wholeheartedly to that person, for I no longer remember who they are. At the time, I didn't have a good answer, both because I really didn't know and because there was, at that point, nothing readers could do.
But now, five years later, when The Goblin Emperor is finally coming out, I do have an answer, and I'm offering it up--not merely on my own behalf, but so that you all, as readers, know how to help the career of any writer whose work you like. And, as it turns out, the answer is simple. There are three major things any reader can do to support a writer:
1. BUY THE BOOK
I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. Buying the book is absolutely the best thing you can do to help a writer. And that means buying the book when it comes out.
That's easy for my book in this particular instance: it's a standalone. But I know there are a lot of people--and I'm one of them--who much prefer to wait to buy the books of a series until the series is complete. The problem is that the message that strategy sends to publishers isn't, "I'm waiting to buy this book until I can buy all the books." The message it sends is, "I'm not going to buy the book." And you end up with a situation like I was in in 2009: by the time the fourth book came out, the second book was out of print (so that readers who were waiting for the series to be complete were now unable to buy all the books), and Ace had already decided not to offer me a new contract. By the time the series was complete, in other words, my publishing career with that publisher was already over; people buying the fourth book (and Corambis, like The Mirador, is still in print) had no effect on my career at all. It was too late.
Another grim--and frequently realized--possibility is that later books of a series never come out at all. Publishers don't necessarily buy all the books in a series when they buy Book One. (Again, to use me as an example, Ace bought Mélusine and The Virtu together, but they didn't buy The Mirador and Corambis until two years later when they'd had a chance to see the sales figures on Mélusine, which is the only one of the four that earned out its advance.) If they don't like the sales figures on Book One, they may choose not to buy the later books at all. Again, the people who were waiting to buy the series never register as potential sale; they register as No Sale.
So if you're one of those people who prefers to wait (and I promise you, I understand and I sympathize), buy the book anyway. Again, this isn't just about my career, because it isn't just in my case that publishing works this way. Any author you like, if they start a series, buy the books as they come out. Nobody will make you read them until the series is complete, and buying the books as they appear is the only direct way you can tell the publisher you want the series to continue.
2. READ THE BOOK
(I know this is self-evident, but it just felt weird leaving it out.)
3. TELL THE WORLD
There is an indirect way you can tell the publisher you want the series to continue, or the author to be offered another contract, and that is to tell everyone you know that you like the book.
Seriously.
Nobody actually understands why readers choose to buy the books they do. Nobody understands why J. K. Rowling took the world by storm and Diana Wynne Jones never did. Nobody understands why The Name of the Rose was a best-seller. Or Fifty Shades of Gray. Or A Game of Thrones. Publishers are trying their damnedest to find the books that will replicate this phenomenon, but they do it by guess and gamble, and when they succeed, they don't know why, either. Nobody knows why people buy books.
The thing we do know is that word-of-mouth is the best and most persuasive way for a potential reader to find out about a book.
So if you like the book, tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your co-workers. Tell anyone you know who you think might like it. Blog about it. Write an Amazon review of it. Ask your library to buy it. (And if you can't afford to buy the book yourself, getting the library to buy it and checking the book out is an excellent alternative.) Get your book club to read it. Spread the word.
Now, none of this is obligatory. I'm not issuing commands here. I'm saying that, if there is a writer whose books you like, these are the best things you can do to help their career continue. And it holds true for self-published authors, as well. The mechanics are different, but those fundamental needs are the same. Authors need readers first and foremost to read their books, because without that, none of this even matters. But to make their careers flourish, authors need readers to buy their books and to talk about them.
Buy, Read, Talk. (Like Eat, Pray, Love, only for books.) That's my answer. That's how readers can help the career of an author whose works they enjoy.
And my first resolution for 2014 was to make this post.
But now, five years later, when The Goblin Emperor is finally coming out, I do have an answer, and I'm offering it up--not merely on my own behalf, but so that you all, as readers, know how to help the career of any writer whose work you like. And, as it turns out, the answer is simple. There are three major things any reader can do to support a writer:
1. BUY THE BOOK
I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. Buying the book is absolutely the best thing you can do to help a writer. And that means buying the book when it comes out.
That's easy for my book in this particular instance: it's a standalone. But I know there are a lot of people--and I'm one of them--who much prefer to wait to buy the books of a series until the series is complete. The problem is that the message that strategy sends to publishers isn't, "I'm waiting to buy this book until I can buy all the books." The message it sends is, "I'm not going to buy the book." And you end up with a situation like I was in in 2009: by the time the fourth book came out, the second book was out of print (so that readers who were waiting for the series to be complete were now unable to buy all the books), and Ace had already decided not to offer me a new contract. By the time the series was complete, in other words, my publishing career with that publisher was already over; people buying the fourth book (and Corambis, like The Mirador, is still in print) had no effect on my career at all. It was too late.
Another grim--and frequently realized--possibility is that later books of a series never come out at all. Publishers don't necessarily buy all the books in a series when they buy Book One. (Again, to use me as an example, Ace bought Mélusine and The Virtu together, but they didn't buy The Mirador and Corambis until two years later when they'd had a chance to see the sales figures on Mélusine, which is the only one of the four that earned out its advance.) If they don't like the sales figures on Book One, they may choose not to buy the later books at all. Again, the people who were waiting to buy the series never register as potential sale; they register as No Sale.
So if you're one of those people who prefers to wait (and I promise you, I understand and I sympathize), buy the book anyway. Again, this isn't just about my career, because it isn't just in my case that publishing works this way. Any author you like, if they start a series, buy the books as they come out. Nobody will make you read them until the series is complete, and buying the books as they appear is the only direct way you can tell the publisher you want the series to continue.
2. READ THE BOOK
(I know this is self-evident, but it just felt weird leaving it out.)
3. TELL THE WORLD
There is an indirect way you can tell the publisher you want the series to continue, or the author to be offered another contract, and that is to tell everyone you know that you like the book.
Seriously.
Nobody actually understands why readers choose to buy the books they do. Nobody understands why J. K. Rowling took the world by storm and Diana Wynne Jones never did. Nobody understands why The Name of the Rose was a best-seller. Or Fifty Shades of Gray. Or A Game of Thrones. Publishers are trying their damnedest to find the books that will replicate this phenomenon, but they do it by guess and gamble, and when they succeed, they don't know why, either. Nobody knows why people buy books.
The thing we do know is that word-of-mouth is the best and most persuasive way for a potential reader to find out about a book.
So if you like the book, tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your co-workers. Tell anyone you know who you think might like it. Blog about it. Write an Amazon review of it. Ask your library to buy it. (And if you can't afford to buy the book yourself, getting the library to buy it and checking the book out is an excellent alternative.) Get your book club to read it. Spread the word.
Now, none of this is obligatory. I'm not issuing commands here. I'm saying that, if there is a writer whose books you like, these are the best things you can do to help their career continue. And it holds true for self-published authors, as well. The mechanics are different, but those fundamental needs are the same. Authors need readers first and foremost to read their books, because without that, none of this even matters. But to make their careers flourish, authors need readers to buy their books and to talk about them.
Buy, Read, Talk. (Like Eat, Pray, Love, only for books.) That's my answer. That's how readers can help the career of an author whose works they enjoy.
And my first resolution for 2014 was to make this post.
December 25, 2013
Season's Greetings!
Whatever you celebrate this time of year, I hope it is a very happy one!
