Sarah Monette's Blog, page 65

project list/first-line meme

Bear did the first-line thing, and I've been meaning to do it for a while, so here you go.

COMMITMENTS
1. A Reckoning of Men (with matociquala )
Vethulf and Skjaldwulf did not get along.

2. An Apprentice to Elves (with matociquala )
Tin laced her fingers together across her gravid belly and frowned along her nose at the feeble human child.

3. Shadow Unit: "Hope Is Stronger Than Love"
Everyone had had to bring a brown-bag lunch.

(4. The Goblin Emperor [waiting for the edit letter:]
Maia woke to the grip o...

Reminder

The debsliverlovers auctions end tomorrow (May 23rd) at noon EDT. I've donated a signed paperback set of the Doctrine of Labyrinths, and there are many other fabulous items as well. I'm drooling over the Thomas Canty art, myself.

worldbuilding with 10 gnomes

I've expressed my admiration for the Polish artist, architect, graphic novelist, and game designer Mateusz Skutnik1 before, in connection with his Submachine games. I'm pointing you to Mr. Skutnik again because I've been whiling away the hours of insomnia this week playing his 10 gnomes games. [ETA: as kate_nepveu points out, if you are prone to motion sickness, these games may not be your friend. otoh, 10 gnomes in bologna has a redesigned interface which may be less problematic.]

10 gnomes

adjusting self-perception in 3 . . . 2 . . .

So I was looking for information on ocular albinism last night because I was trying to think of ways to condense the explanation (I find it more than a little tedious, and am always worried that the person I'm explaining to is also finding it tedious), and I discovered something.

I don't have ocular albinism.

Your actual ocular albinism is an X-linked condition, which means only men have it. Women can be carriers, and [corrected per marsdejahthoris 's comment] which means very very few women eve...

psa re: bread pans, plus some good old fashioned skiffy sensawunda from the real world

If you are thinking about the Chantal bread pans, as I know some of you are, I can report that they do make very nice bread, but it is essential to the success of the enterprise that you use a non-stick cooking spray (e.g., PAM). Just FYI.

And if you couldn't care less about bread pans, have this COMPLETELY AWESOME PHOTOGRAPH of the ISS and Atlantis transiting the Sun. (Yes, our Sun.) And, as Phil Plait says, the big version is so totally worth the click.

another thought on writer's block

Another thing that doesn't work with writer's block? Punishing yourself.

This one is tricky, because there are times when what looks like writer's block is really a screaming howling toddler temper tantrum case of the Don't Wannas. In that instance, the right thing to do is to sit yourself down in front of the manuscript and be firm about the fact that you have to work on it. Even if you'd rather poke pencils in your eyes or tow the African Queen through a leech-infested swamp.

But it's easy--a...

5 things, many though not all of them horse-related

1. (via @bethmeacham over on Twitter) Another candidate for a very special hell is whoever stole a six-year-old's horse.

2. Congratulations to this year's Nebula winners, and also to the new SFWA officers!

3. Judith Tarr on 10 Ways To Prove You Didn't Do Your Horse Homework and Things Horse People Take For Granted.

4. This is a Trakehner stallion named Rubinesque *Pb*. I don't know who his rider is, or who the photographer is, but this is seriously one of the best portrait photos I think I've ev...

Alaya Johnson, Moonshine

Alaya Johnson's novel Moonshine is out this week. I was asked for a blurb and thus read Moonshine in ms last year, but I wrote up my impressions and saved them so that I could post them at a moment when people who read the review could actually then go buy the book.

If you're interested in Johnson's take on what she's wrought, she's featured on John Scalzi's Big Idea today (which also, happily, reminded me to make this post). And there's an excerpt of Moonshine up here.


The premise of this nove...

when you talk to me in circles take your foot out of your mouth

Thank you to everyone who has commented on my last couple posts about being stuck with sympathy and support. I appreciate it very very much, and it does help--if not exactly with the problem at hand, then definitely with my attitude toward it.

A couple people have suggested externalizing the voices (which, I should add in case you are becoming concerned about my sanity, are not literal voices; they're sock puppets for the dialogues I have with myself, which is a pretty much constant feature of...

the current manifestation of writer's block

One of the most useful things I learned from Victoria Nelson's excellent book, On Writer's Block, is that you can't let writer's block present itself to you as a reified monolith. Which is to say, without the fancy words, writer's block is not an ineffable thing imposed on you from the outside. (Well, okay, with different fancy words.) It is not the monolith from 2001. It's a problem, or a set of problems, you are having with the interface between your creativity and what I call the front off...