Sarah Monette's Blog, page 76

I posted two weeks ago about Kage Baker's cancer--there's...

I posted two weeks ago about Kage Baker's cancer--there's an update, and the news is not good.

Two links for your Tuesday amusement

From the Department of Cross My Paw With Treats, Kitty is a very BAD mystic (link from cmpriest )--as someone whose cats have been voiced, in domestic conversations over the years, by Marilyn Monroe, James May, and Keanu Reeves, I love the fact that this Siamese is clearly being voiced by Sir Ian McKellen.

From the Department of Show, Don't Tell, John Barrowman explains why high heels are sexy (link from matociquala ).

UBC: Hitler (Bullock)

Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Abridged edition. 1964. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.


This is an excellent biography. Inevitably, the fact that it was written nearly fifty years ago shows--more scholarship has been done and some of Bullock's ancillary facts are wrong (e.g., in 1941, the Russians were not better equipped and better fed than the Germans (Ivan's War); Albert Speer's "economic miracle" was almost entirely the work of the man he replaced (The Wages of Destruction); an...

After the Dragon

My story, "After the Dragon," is live at Fantasy Magazine --and also as a podcast, read by Sarah Tolbert.

The story comes, in part, from elisem 's sculptural necklace, "After the Dragon, She Learned to Love Her Body," and that is, in part, why it is dedicated to her, although there are so many other reasons I can't even list them.

our love is all of god's money

1. Apparently, the soundtrack for the end of this book is Norah Jones' cover of Wilco's "Jesus Etc." (YouTube clip here, for those who are curious.) No, I have no idea why. Of course, I didn't know why Cry Cry Cry's cover of "Cold Missouri Waters" was the soundtrack for the end of Corambis, either, until well after the fact. So maybe this will make sense in six months or so.

2. Cut 2,000 words of wrongness from the draft today. Which hurt, since it puts me back at 95k again, but those words we...

nothing to see here, move along

95,000 words and it's all dénouement from here.

Meanwhile, on the internet, cmpriest talks about what authors do and don't control, and jaylake describes the Larval Stages of the Common American Speculative Fiction Writer. Go read them because I got nothin'.

5 things + 1

1. Happy birthday, pameladean !
2. Congratulations, yuki_onna !
3. It is both sunny and snowing today, which is always just weird.
4. Today's APOD is both gorgeous and amazing, as APODs always are, and a picture of somewhere I've been.
5. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: I wish he were alive for this celebration of his birthday. He would be 81.

Finally, with a big thank you to Dave at Steve's Tattoo, here's what I did with my weekend:




And now, these goblins and I have a book to finish in the next tw...

Post a Story for Haiti: "The Half-Sister"

Crossed Genres is running a fundraiser: Post a Story for Haiti. I am participating here with "The Half-Sister," which is the oldest of my stories that is not currently available either somewhere on the web or in The Bone Key. I would participate by posting something previously unpublished except that I don't have anything. If stories were cans of soup, my cupboard would be bare. So a reprint, especially of something that (a.) celebrates its fifth anniversary of publication this month, (b.) I'...

Life with cats, debate team edition

So I'm trying thecoughlin 's advice for whiny princess feet (thank you, btw!), which means there is a towel draped across my footstool (stubby little legs to go with the whiny princess feet), and, periodically when I feel warm enough to take my slippers and socks off, my bare feet kneading it.

This would be the unparalleled glamor with which the life of a writer is filled.

It took Catzilla a couple days to notice (Catzilla, while nowhere near as dumb as my beloved first cat Richie, is neverthele...

Kage Baker

I was on a panel with Kage Baker at Odyssey Con two years ago; she was wonderful--smart and dryly funny and an overflowing cornucopia of knowledge. I understand her books are the same way (I have not read them due to my ongoing problems reading fiction, and I hate it because I know I'm missing out.) Kage is now fighting metastasized cancer; as her caregiver says, "At this point, it is a race to see what dies faster: Kage or the cancer."

She is too weak for phone calls, but messages and cards w...