Sarah Monette's Blog, page 30

Yay?

I have a complete revised draft of The Goblin Emperor . . . 20,000 words over budget.

This is what one might call a mixed blessing.

Con Or Bust auction

con_or_bust is starting to post items for auction! (The auction itself will start February 11 and run through February 25.)
Among these items (which are widely varied, check 'em out), you may find:
a signed (and personalized if desired) copy of The Bone Key (2nd edition, with gorgeous new cover & an introduction by Lynne Thomas)
a signed (and personalized if desired) copy of Somewhere Beneath Those Waves

UBC: Hitler's Empire

Mazower, Mark. Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. 2008. New York: Penguin Books, 2009.
Short version: Nazis. Most incompetent Evil Overlords in the history of ever.

Exactly as the subtitle says, this book is about how the Nazis ran occupied Europe: how they dealt with the fact of administering an empire which, as Mazower shows, they spared no thought for even when they were in the middle of planning to invade Poland. Mazower is a functionalist rather than an intentionalist when it comes to the Holocaust, and that position arises naturally from the demonstration, in conquered country after conquered country, that the Nazis could not plan their way out of a paper bag.

Millions of people--Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Romanians ... Millions upon millions of people died because the Nazis didn't know what else to do with them and didn't, to be vulgar, give a fuck. They were determined to get rid of the Jews (and I've explained elsewhere my sense of how that determination evolved over the course of the Third Reich's inglorious career) and they were determined that Germany and the German Volk would expand and prosper and not suffer a moment's deprivation, and those two ends justified any means that happened to come along.

Mazower is occasionally a little cavalier--in particular, he throws around the word "psycopath" as if it excuses him from having to explain war atrocities and the Einsatzgruppen and the institutionalized brutality of the concentration camps--but aside from that quibble, this is a very good book, very thorough, very thoguhtful, and very useful particularly in its discussion of how the various conquered countries reacted to their new overlords and the different shades of "collaboration"--and genocide--that emerged.

Also useful and illuminating was the discussion of the aftermath of the Nazis' accidental empire and the choices the Allies made about returning to--and enforcing violently when necessary--the pre-war status quo. Once again, the more I learn about Winston Churchill, the more compromised my admiration of him becomes. This book takes apart a lot of the myths about World War II and about the "good guys"--while providing more evidence than ever that the "bad guys" really were just that. Bad. Evil, crazy, incompetent--and there's your hat trick.

2 better things

I'm not going to make it to five, but have a couple things that are better than my virus:

1. Lightspeed Magazine's free ebook sampler includes my story "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek."

2. The Taronga Zoo, which continues to have the world's most awesome animated logo, has a video of their three Sumatran tiger cubs (plus mom) which put some color back in my world.

not actually a fun way to celebrate the new year

My body, as I have noticed before, thinks it has a sense of humor. Sunday, I write that one of my goals for 2012 is to be healthy. Monday, I come down with the stomach flu.

Ha bloody ha.

The violently disgusting part of the program was mercifully brief, but apparently stomach flu acts as an amplifer for RLS. Monday afternoon I ended up going to Urgent Care, not for the flu, but for the involuntary twitching and spasms I was having in both legs. If RLS is like having little dragons chasing each other up and down my legs, this was big dragons. On STEROIDS. We weren't to too serious for numbers , but we definitely reached my pain is not fucking around. (The doctor said that gastrointestinal upset can have neurological effects, which was a new one on me. Of course, usually those effects are weakness in the legs, not uncontrollable twitching. Because I just have to be a special snowflake.) They ended up giving me an extra dose of my usual RLS medication--which, hey, three cheers for Lyrica, because it worked.

Since then, I've been virusish: weak and washed out and although I'm not nauseated any longer, food is deeply unappealing. And there's the twitching. The horrible relentless twitching. The sleep clnic doctors have okayed my taking an extra Lyrica during the day and assured me Tuesday that things would die down in "a couple days."

The degree to which I want them to be right cannot be expressed in words.

::twitch::

taking stock

As the new year begins, my story "Blue Lace Agate" is live at Lightspeed . (Author interview here.) "Blue Lace Agate" is chronologically the first story about Mick and Jamie, the protagonists of "A Night in Electric Squidland" and "Impostors" (in Somewhere Beneath Those Waves), and I'm delighted that it has finally found a home.

ETA: Also, Mateusz Skutnik has a charming little New Year's game which I commend to your attention.

Although I don't usually write year-in-review posts, after the year I've just had, I really do feel the need to sit down and take stock (4,691 irradiated haggis, check).

So.

had three books published:
The Tempering of Men [with matociquala ]
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves
The Bone Key 2nd ed.(Also, holy shit, one of my books has a second edition. OMG ELEVENTY-ONE.)had two short stories and an essay published:
"The Devil in Gaylord's Creek" (Fantasy Magazine 50)
"Why Do You Linger?" (Subterranean Magazine 8)
"The Kindness of Monsters" ( Whedonistas )
sold some reprints:
"The Yellow Dressing Gown" ( Apex Magazine 31)
"Bringing Helena Back" ( New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird )
"Mongoose" [with matociquala ] (also New Cthulhu )
"Boojum" [again with matociquala ] ( Drabblecast 202-203)
self-published a chapbook, Unnatural Creatures, as a fundraiser and raised $3200 for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital's Companion Animal Fund
did some erratic blogging for tor.com

Also in 2011 I:
had two cats die, which was horrible
suffered both a Baker's cyst and a Morton's neuroma in my right lower appendage--said right lower appendage also continued to be stiff and painful (ranging from subliminal ow all the way up to ow!) and generally a freaking nuisance
was Guest of Honor at Odyssey Con and LepreCon, both of which were very cool
began to have some success in managing my RLS, although it seems to take both drugs and acupuncture to keep the little dragons quiet (see above re: right lower appendage, cross-ref.: freaking nuisance)
became gainfully employed outside academia for the first time since the summer of 1991
survived the Great Sleep Deficit of 2011, which--much like the Great Ankle Debacle of 2010--we have vowed never to repeat
got to do a whirlwind trip to Boston, which was awesome
went to my first dressage schooling show and did okay
continued to have chronic non-ulcerous dyspepsia and added in some irritable bowel just for fun
slowly, slowly began to get my brain back

Also, I read a bunch of books:
Ayçoberry, Pierre. The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933-1945. Transl. Janet Lloyd. New York: The New Press, 1999. (05/17)
Baatz, Simon. For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. (12/12)
Begg, Paul. Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History. (05/04)
Begg, Paul. Jack the Ripper: The Facts. (05/04)
Brown, Arnold R. Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991. (04/21)
Brustein, William. The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925-1933. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. (03/09)
Burrough, Bryan. Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. (06/10)
Cohen, Patricia Cline. The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. (01/18)
Deakin, F. W. The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism. 1962. London: Phoenix Press, 2000. (03/09)
Douglas, John, and Mark Olshaker. The Cases That Haunt Us. New York: Lisa Drew-Scribner, 2000. (05/12)
Duggan, Lisa. Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. (04/22)
Evans, Richard J. Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. Basic Books-Perseus Books Group, 2001. (11/06)
Evans, Stewart P., and Keith Skinner. Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell. Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001. (05/18)
Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 2008. (05/17)
Glass, James M. "Life Unworthy of Life": Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler's Germany. N.p.: New Republic-Basic Books, 1997. (03/15)
Godbeer, Richard. The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.(01/29)
Kater, Michael H. Hitler Youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. (01/09)
Koch, H. W. Hitler Youth: The Duped Generation. Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. (03/09)
Lambert, Angela. The Lost Life of Eva Braun. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. (05/01)
Lincoln, Victoria. A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967. (05/23)
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. Lost Prince: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. New York: The Free Press-Simon & Schuster, 1996. (06/06)
Overy, Richard. Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945. New York: Viking-Penguin Books, 2001. (03/09)
Read, Anthony. The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004. (03/15)
Roseman, Mark. The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. London: Penguin Books, 2003. (03/09)
Rosenthal, Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge University Press, 1993. (04/05)
Rumbelow, Donald. Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook. (05/04)
Schneider, Paul. Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend. New York: John MacRae-Henry Holt and Co., 2009. (06/04)
Segrè, Claudio G. Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. (09/12)
Sereny, Gitta. Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell. 1998. New York: Owl Books-Henry Holt & Co., 2000. (12/12)
Starr, Douglas. The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science. New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 2010. (12/12)
Sugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994. (05/19)
Stannard, David E. The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. (02/12)
Trow, M. J. The Many Faces of Jack the Ripper. (05/04)
Wallis, Michael. Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. (07/10)
Zierold, Norman. Little Charley Ross: The Shocking Story of America's First Kidnapping for Ransom. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967. (06/06)

As 2012 begins, I'm going to full-time as a database thrall, and we'll see what effect that has on my health and my writing.

Goals for 2012 (note to self: do not mistype as "gaols," please) include:
finish The Goblin Emperor
write An Apprentice to Elves [with matociquala ]
finish Thirdhop Scarp and write this backlog of Booth stories
write a bunch of other short stories
maybe start on this novel that is twining seductively around my ankles
blog more
BE HEALTHY

Happy New Year! May 2012 be a better year for all of us than 2011!

BULLETIN FROM THE FRONT

ALL NEW SCENES ARE WRITTEN. SOME OLD SCENES STILL TO BE EXCISED/REWRITTEN, AND GREAT WODGES OF CONTINUITY TO BE IRONED OUT. BUT ALL THE BITS THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN ARE ACTUALLY THERE. OH MY GOD I MAY WIN THIS WAR YET.

season's greetings

Whatever you may celebrate at this time of year, I hope it's a very happy one.

5 things

1. I'm seeing a sleep therapist now, because I would like to get off the potentially addictive hypnotic that is currently holding my insomnia down. She told me what I really already knew, that I need to get on a fixed schedule of going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning. Which means getting up at 6:30 on weekends. I HATE THIS. I have always been a night owl, and mornings are my favorite time to sleep. But I am determined to give this fixed schedule a fair shot, so here I am, awake and fed and medicated and dressed at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. (Nobody says I have to move fast on weekends, just that I have to get up.)

The fixed schedule idea also means that I have to go to bed--as in, in bed, lights out, eyes shut, at 10:15. And ideally I need to try to decrease my computer usage in the late evenings, because of light issues (photosensitivity plus glow of monitor equals confused circadian rhythms). Which means I have even less time to get computer things done, and I am still trying to finish this goddamn book. Ergo, as little as I have been an online presence in recent months, I'm going to be even less of one, at least for a while. Which is Teh Suck, but I have to find a way to keep the insomnia chained in the basement, and long-term drug usage is just not the way I want to go.

2. So, when I was making my whirlwind trip to Boston, I discovered that O'Hare has a Field Museum store. This is a brilliantly terrible idea on the Field Museum's part, but it did mean I could take matociquala meerkat socks as a hostess gift (because seriously--meerkat socks). And I bought for myself a pair of tiny Sue earrings. They have become my favorite earrings--for the one set of holes I don't just leave rings in all the time--for days I don't have to dress like an adult.

3. Two really nice capsule reviews of The Bone Key: (1) and (2). And Somewhere Beneath Those Waves got a starred review from Library Journal (here if you're interested) and a very kind mention from Lesley Hall over at Aqueduct Press's blog.

4. These fossa pups, Ingrid, Heidi, and Gretchen, show that Madagascar really knows how to work the charismatic predator* angle.

5. Have a picture of Milo and me:

(Stepping Stones Studio 2011)
---
* ursulav came up with that useful designation.

UBC: three books about murderers

Starr, Douglas. The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science. New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 2010.
Baatz, Simon. For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.
Sereny, Gitta. Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell. 1998. New York: Owl Books-Henry Holt & Co., 2000.

(1.) Joseph Vacher, the subject of The Killer of Little Shepherds, was a contemporary of Jack the Ripper. He killed, raped, and mutilated (in some order) twice as many people as the Ripper, most of them teenagers, both male and female. You've never heard of him because he was caught, tried, convicted, and executed; there's no mystery to build a myth around.

The Killer of Little Shepherds is probably the best of these three books. It's well written, thoughtful, and persistent; it recognizes that its subject raises very difficult questions about mental illness and legal responsibility and evil, and it talks about those questions both as the authorities of the day understood them and as we understand them now. And it distinguishes clearly between the two.

Also, reading about late nineteenth century scientific in-fighting is always fun.

(2.) (Most over-used words in the genre of true crime: "shocked" and "shocking.")

For the Thrill of It is, conversely, the most disappointing of the three books. It suffers from a number of problems, the first and probably worst of which is that Leopold and Loeb just aren't that interesting. Or, perhaps, the ways in which they are interesting are things that this book failed to illuminate.

Baatz is an academic historian deliberately trying to write a "popular" book, which is not an auspicious combination. He says in his author's note that he wanted to write about the competing scientific paradigms/understandings of mental illness and crime duking it out in the Leopold and Loeb trial (i.e., in a nutshell, free will vs. determinism), but it's not clear from the actual text of the actual book that this was his goal. In fact, what the book is most signally lacking is a thesis of any kind. He's not making an argument about anything, just collecting and sorting the mountain of primary source material. (Apparently, there are great wodges of transcript which have been neither stolen nor written about already; see above re: L&L not being interesting.) And he's not even particuarly good at organizing--he never seems to be sure where he thinks the story starts.

And there are two problems with source material. The first is that, while Baatz clearly dislikes Nathan Leopold and distrusts his autobiography as a source (for neither of which, let me be clear, I blame him), he (a.) uses Leopold's autobiography as a source anyway and (b.) never offers explicit evidence that Leopold is lying. The second is that, although he's careful to assure readers that all dialogue is taken from transcripts, he has an awful, awful habit of describing the thoughts and feelings of murder victims--for which he can have no reliable source.

I got the feeling, as I read, that Baatz wasn't very interested in L&L either. He doesn't follow up even very obvious contradictions, e.g. the contradiction between Loeb not being interested in sex (as he himself said in interviews with psychiatrists) and the claims that he extorted sex out of other inmates at Stateville. (I'm not saying that Baatz should have an answer, because there may not be one; I just want him to point out the problem.) And there are plenty of others. Baatz doesn't provide any kind of analysis, even of the psychological/psychiatric questions he says he's interested in, and he makes no effort even to articulate the paramaters of the question that underlies the whole trial (and what continuing interest in the case there is): Why did they do it? Or, the other way around, why did they fail not to do it?

(3.) Unheard Cries is the most problematic of the three, in some ways more frustrating and in some ways less frustrating than For the Thrill of It. Its subject is Mary Bell, who murdered two little boys in 1968, when she was eleven, and who subsequently got dragged through the British justice system in ways that Sereny is quite right to want to protest. My problems with the book are not with that part, or with Sereny's general point that child criminals are very badly served by adult legal systems. My problems are with her discussion of Mary Bell's crimes and what caused them.

Sereny displays a dreadful historical naivete: "The uncertainties of our moral and--yes--spiritual values have caused a fracture in the bulwark of security with which earlier generations protected children from growing up prematurely" (370), which I think contributes to her failure to interroagate the question of classism in Mary Bell's biography as rigorously as she needed to. There are a number of other questions that she doesn't pursue as far as she should (and she irritates me by hinting at things), but the real flaw in the book is the other little girl.

Norma Bell (no relation) was Mary's best friend. She seems to have had nothing to do with the first murder, but everything to do with the second, and I really wanted Sereny to talk about that shift in a meaningful way--even just to talk about the transition for Mary from her first murder (which she committed alone and for which, you could make a pretty good case, she did not have a clear understanding that death was irrevocable) to her second (which she committed with Norma either as a participant or an audience, and which she did know was murder and permanent).

Sereny wants to generalize from Mary Bell to all children who kill (as her nested subtitles suggest), and while I think that's reasonable when talking about their treatment by the justice system (as in, one may safely generalize from Mary Bell's specific case to say that better protocols need to be in place), I'm not convinced that all children come to murder by Mary Bell's path. And I'm not sure that the commonality Sereny wants to argue for (that children who kill are all victims of prolonged and serious abuse) is actually as useful as the obverse difference: why do all child abuse victims not become child murderers? The question may sound glib, but I'm perfectly serious. The question of what enables some people to resist doing evil, while others cannot or do not, is one that morality, philosophy, and psychiatry, put together, still can't answer. And it's a question that the cases of Vacher, Leopold & Loeb, and Bell--in different ways--all shed illuminating darkness on.