Lois McMaster Bujold's Blog, page 11
September 27, 2022
WikiTree Challenge results now up on YouTube
So...
Earlier this year I was invited to be a guest on a WikiTree Challenge Week, explained here:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
They've just posted the very nice results report they did with me at the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scs5r...
Their stimulus inspired me to pull out and put together my short ebook of family history:
https://www.amazon.com/Gerould-Family...
This was compiled from the typescript I was waving around at the end of the interview, laboriously transcribed about 50 years ago from the original pocket diaries from 1864 that my mother had been entrusted with. I do not know at what point and from what original Samuel L. Gerould's memoir was transcribed, though the e-file I obtained was made from a typescript of it by my brother Jim in the early 2000s.
(Showing yet again, things lead to things. Which has been one of my mantras from very early in my writing career.)
Ta, L.
Earlier this year I was invited to be a guest on a WikiTree Challenge Week, explained here:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
They've just posted the very nice results report they did with me at the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scs5r...
Their stimulus inspired me to pull out and put together my short ebook of family history:
https://www.amazon.com/Gerould-Family...
This was compiled from the typescript I was waving around at the end of the interview, laboriously transcribed about 50 years ago from the original pocket diaries from 1864 that my mother had been entrusted with. I do not know at what point and from what original Samuel L. Gerould's memoir was transcribed, though the e-file I obtained was made from a typescript of it by my brother Jim in the early 2000s.
(Showing yet again, things lead to things. Which has been one of my mantras from very early in my writing career.)
Ta, L.
September 13, 2022
Wondrium
Wondrium.com is the rebranded The Great Courses ™ streaming website, with added content. For those of you tired of dumbed-down or of shallow coverage, or who have exhausted PBS.org, here’s one solution.
I used to say popular science books were out of date if they were 10 years old, 5 years for biology. I later thought I’d change that for 5 years for most sciences, 2 years for biology/evolution, but I suspect the line for Bio now is closer to 2 months, and the other maybe 2 years. Even history, which one would think would hold still, is not immune to rapid change. Anyway.
Wondrium recs, recent or classic:
Synthetic Biology Just dropped this month. Brain-bending. My predictions in biology, genetics, and medicine in my science fiction from the 80s and 90s were WAY too conservative (although, in my defense, I did have to make then-current audiences swallow them.) Printing genes, not in the future, but right now. Chloroplasts using quantum effects, really? DNA computing. And on and on.
And if you need the basics of quantum, a course of great clarity is Understanding the Quantum World. Changed the way I look at chemistry, among other things.
Understanding Greek and Roman Technology All the courses by this presenter, Stephen Ressler, are great value. I have in general found that sorting through for “other courses by” to be very useful for finding good stuff.
Board Games of the Ancient World Recent and just plain fun, as it should be.
Fall and Rise of China was very well-presented, superior lecture style, but stops at 2009. Also harrowing, as it mostly covers the 20th Century.
Other especially good presenters on the history side are Kenneth Harl, Mark J. Ravina (excellent on Japan), and Steven L. Tuck.
Wondrium warehouses a range of courses going back decades. The viewer can track the evolution from the sets, from early courses that had a lecturer stuck behind a podium to geek out, old square-screen format, still trying to be to college intro courses and mostly aimed at audio presentations, through increasing sophistication and better use of visuals, to more recent use of illuminating animations.
But really, just go to the website and click on “Browse”.
Commenters, what are your faves and why? (From other nonfiction television/streaming sites, too – I’ve been pretty buried by this one, but I’m dimly aware there are others.)
Ta, L.
Later: another recent rec, tho' not a recent course, for my fellow word fans out there: The Secret Life of Words: English Words and Their Origins
I used to say popular science books were out of date if they were 10 years old, 5 years for biology. I later thought I’d change that for 5 years for most sciences, 2 years for biology/evolution, but I suspect the line for Bio now is closer to 2 months, and the other maybe 2 years. Even history, which one would think would hold still, is not immune to rapid change. Anyway.
Wondrium recs, recent or classic:
Synthetic Biology Just dropped this month. Brain-bending. My predictions in biology, genetics, and medicine in my science fiction from the 80s and 90s were WAY too conservative (although, in my defense, I did have to make then-current audiences swallow them.) Printing genes, not in the future, but right now. Chloroplasts using quantum effects, really? DNA computing. And on and on.
And if you need the basics of quantum, a course of great clarity is Understanding the Quantum World. Changed the way I look at chemistry, among other things.
Understanding Greek and Roman Technology All the courses by this presenter, Stephen Ressler, are great value. I have in general found that sorting through for “other courses by” to be very useful for finding good stuff.
Board Games of the Ancient World Recent and just plain fun, as it should be.
Fall and Rise of China was very well-presented, superior lecture style, but stops at 2009. Also harrowing, as it mostly covers the 20th Century.
Other especially good presenters on the history side are Kenneth Harl, Mark J. Ravina (excellent on Japan), and Steven L. Tuck.
Wondrium warehouses a range of courses going back decades. The viewer can track the evolution from the sets, from early courses that had a lecturer stuck behind a podium to geek out, old square-screen format, still trying to be to college intro courses and mostly aimed at audio presentations, through increasing sophistication and better use of visuals, to more recent use of illuminating animations.
But really, just go to the website and click on “Browse”.
Commenters, what are your faves and why? (From other nonfiction television/streaming sites, too – I’ve been pretty buried by this one, but I’m dimly aware there are others.)
Ta, L.
Later: another recent rec, tho' not a recent course, for my fellow word fans out there: The Secret Life of Words: English Words and Their Origins
September 6, 2022
SubPress Knife Children cover in full
My old post linking to the image on artist Ryan Pancoast's website went dead, but the artist kindly lent me one to display on my blog. Very painterly! as they say in the trade.
More of Pancoast's art may be seen at
https://www.ryanpancoast.com/
(The hardcover of the novella is long sold out at Subterraean Press, but the e-edition with Ron Miller's cover of course remains widely available on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, and Kobo.)
Ta, L.
More of Pancoast's art may be seen at
https://www.ryanpancoast.com/
(The hardcover of the novella is long sold out at Subterraean Press, but the e-edition with Ron Miller's cover of course remains widely available on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, and Kobo.)
Ta, L.
September 4, 2022
Uncle Hugo's now open at new location
As seen here:
http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/index.s...
Because of the way the streets are cut up it will be a challenge to get to, first time -- Google maps is your friend.
In his newsletter owner Don Blyly writes:
"We’ve been open to the public since August 14 at 2716 E. 31st St., but at reduced hours, and we have been accepting donations of books but have not been buying used books. ... We will be closed on Labor Day. The day after Labor Day we will go to our regular hours of 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Saturday, noon to 5 pm Sundays. We will also start buying used books, but with certain exceptions. ...
Some people have complained that they couldn’t find us, often calling from their car which was in front of the store. [Snip long tale about delays in getting signage.] I hope that sometime in September the new Uncles sign will be on the west wall and sometime in October the new awnings will be installed. Until then, look for the Glass Endeavors signage to find the Uncles."
Ta, L.
http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/index.s...
Because of the way the streets are cut up it will be a challenge to get to, first time -- Google maps is your friend.
In his newsletter owner Don Blyly writes:
"We’ve been open to the public since August 14 at 2716 E. 31st St., but at reduced hours, and we have been accepting donations of books but have not been buying used books. ... We will be closed on Labor Day. The day after Labor Day we will go to our regular hours of 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Saturday, noon to 5 pm Sundays. We will also start buying used books, but with certain exceptions. ...
Some people have complained that they couldn’t find us, often calling from their car which was in front of the store. [Snip long tale about delays in getting signage.] I hope that sometime in September the new Uncles sign will be on the west wall and sometime in October the new awnings will be installed. Until then, look for the Glass Endeavors signage to find the Uncles."
Ta, L.
August 30, 2022
Knot of Shadows now on pre-order at SubPress
The signed limited hardbound of "Knot of Shadows", the 11th Penric & Desdemona story (e-published last fall) is now up for pre-orders at Subterranean Press. Publication scheduled for Jan. 31, 2023.
https://subterraneanpress.com/slider-...
Cover art again by the excellent Laurent Saint-Onge:
(At 30k words, it's something of a slim vol. SubPress used to have a two-tier pricing system, with a less expensive trade (regular) hardback volume, and a more expensive signed leatherbound, but Covid in 2020 and onward knocked out their library sales in trade, and they retrenched to signed-limited only with somewhat larger runs.)
Ta, L.
https://subterraneanpress.com/slider-...
Cover art again by the excellent Laurent Saint-Onge:
(At 30k words, it's something of a slim vol. SubPress used to have a two-tier pricing system, with a less expensive trade (regular) hardback volume, and a more expensive signed leatherbound, but Covid in 2020 and onward knocked out their library sales in trade, and they retrenched to signed-limited only with somewhat larger runs.)
Ta, L.
August 22, 2022
Sharing Knife e-covers full scan: Legacy
Legacy turned out to be the cover that occasioned the most back-and-forthing between myself and cover artist Ron Miller. Here’s the final result in full resolution:
My original idea for this cover was that it should follow up from the sort of standing-figures-reaching silhouette meet-cute I’d envisioned for Beguilement, with Dag and Fawn riding double on a horse. I liked Ron’s final meeting-picture with them both mounted – a lot more interesting – but I was very startled by this first offering for Legacy:
Well composed and subtly colored, in line with the set, but way too mid-century horror-movie poster for my tastes. Cowering females being menaced by monsters are out of tune with the present zeitgeist, I feel – monster menace may still be OK, but cowering is right out, besides being out-of-character for Fawn. Ron had said he was very artistically interested in tackling a malice, which I was rather um about since SK malices are so protean in form. But I bounced hard off this version.
As an aside at this point, I should explain my “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” metaphor with respect to unsatisfactory art. Not wanting to make more wasted work for the artist (I have possibly misguided housewifely instincts about that) my first impulse is to try to save the situation with what seem to me to be the smallest changes I can come up with, fiddling to frustration for all, when what actually needs to be done is to sink the blasted boat and start over. I put Ron through this back when we were working on the cover for “The Physicians of Vilnoc”, when the first idea, which he’d put a lot of work on, could not be saved, and we needed to try something else altogether.
I had meanwhile gone back and looked at that attractive cover of For the Wolf from my 72-covers link, and at some point mentioned that it might be interesting to have the knife/knives as tree roots or some such connection.
Apropos this, Ron had shown me a first-draft idea for Horizon:
which seemed to me might recycle well for the punted Legacy cover. At some point I also suggested it might tie the image together better to have the tree roots winding around the knife hilt. I was also concerned with the figures’ apparent heights, as it should be clear that Dag was taller. Fawn needed to be visibly shorter, but not so short as to suggest a child.
Next draft was this:
Generally good, but Ron had flipped the cloud-sky colors from white on blue, against which the white title had shown up just fine, to blue-on-white. Black tree branches against a white sky would not work as backing for either black or white typeface (he tried both), so Ron tried this green.
To my eye, it also had a camouflage problem – the eye expects to see green leaves in a tree; it did not have equal “pop” with the other titles on the plain backgrounds. I tossed out some ideas for other colors taken from the characters’ clothes, since we didn’t want to be multiplying colors, but Ron instead came back with giving more of a white halo around the letters, and then added actual green leaves, which finally worked to make the title not recede, though it made the tree less stylized.
Meanwhile Ron had changed Dag’s buckskins from brown to an orange I did not care for, and repositioned the depth of the figures I think to try to deal with the height issue. Once I started really looking at the clothing colors, I wanted to see some more choices. (I had optimistically assumed swapping out solid colors on the figures was like swapping out colors on typefaces, known to be a trivial test. My apologies to Ron if I was wrong about that.) I am not mad keen on yellow, either. I kept asking for a muted red on Fawn’s dress (burgundy, maroon), which proved to be a vocabulary problem as it kept getting pinker. I thought pink was problematic as it would signal “girl” not “adult woman”.
After several tries, I finally got a burgundy, and not-orange buckskins, and thought I’d better stop. The end result was more American Primitive and less WPA-poster/Arthur Rackham than the others in the set, more busy and realistic, a mismatch that still bothers me a little. Later, out on a walk, I wondered if we’d actually needed to sink a boat and try the image without the difficult figures and those extra colors at all, maybe with a little blood dripping from the tree roots onto the white knife, but I suspected it would leave the middle of the composition too empty unless the tree trunk were shortened or something. And the other three covers all have human figures, so.
Whoever said, “Art is never finished, merely abandoned,” had the right of it.
***
Ron has a continuation/guest post about our process in the first comment; scroll down! The two links GR wouldn't let him put in are:
https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/ for an overview
and the one on silhouettes specifically, linked in the earlier post in this series,
https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/po...
Ta, L.
My original idea for this cover was that it should follow up from the sort of standing-figures-reaching silhouette meet-cute I’d envisioned for Beguilement, with Dag and Fawn riding double on a horse. I liked Ron’s final meeting-picture with them both mounted – a lot more interesting – but I was very startled by this first offering for Legacy:
Well composed and subtly colored, in line with the set, but way too mid-century horror-movie poster for my tastes. Cowering females being menaced by monsters are out of tune with the present zeitgeist, I feel – monster menace may still be OK, but cowering is right out, besides being out-of-character for Fawn. Ron had said he was very artistically interested in tackling a malice, which I was rather um about since SK malices are so protean in form. But I bounced hard off this version.
As an aside at this point, I should explain my “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” metaphor with respect to unsatisfactory art. Not wanting to make more wasted work for the artist (I have possibly misguided housewifely instincts about that) my first impulse is to try to save the situation with what seem to me to be the smallest changes I can come up with, fiddling to frustration for all, when what actually needs to be done is to sink the blasted boat and start over. I put Ron through this back when we were working on the cover for “The Physicians of Vilnoc”, when the first idea, which he’d put a lot of work on, could not be saved, and we needed to try something else altogether.
I had meanwhile gone back and looked at that attractive cover of For the Wolf from my 72-covers link, and at some point mentioned that it might be interesting to have the knife/knives as tree roots or some such connection.
Apropos this, Ron had shown me a first-draft idea for Horizon:
which seemed to me might recycle well for the punted Legacy cover. At some point I also suggested it might tie the image together better to have the tree roots winding around the knife hilt. I was also concerned with the figures’ apparent heights, as it should be clear that Dag was taller. Fawn needed to be visibly shorter, but not so short as to suggest a child.
Next draft was this:
Generally good, but Ron had flipped the cloud-sky colors from white on blue, against which the white title had shown up just fine, to blue-on-white. Black tree branches against a white sky would not work as backing for either black or white typeface (he tried both), so Ron tried this green.
To my eye, it also had a camouflage problem – the eye expects to see green leaves in a tree; it did not have equal “pop” with the other titles on the plain backgrounds. I tossed out some ideas for other colors taken from the characters’ clothes, since we didn’t want to be multiplying colors, but Ron instead came back with giving more of a white halo around the letters, and then added actual green leaves, which finally worked to make the title not recede, though it made the tree less stylized.
Meanwhile Ron had changed Dag’s buckskins from brown to an orange I did not care for, and repositioned the depth of the figures I think to try to deal with the height issue. Once I started really looking at the clothing colors, I wanted to see some more choices. (I had optimistically assumed swapping out solid colors on the figures was like swapping out colors on typefaces, known to be a trivial test. My apologies to Ron if I was wrong about that.) I am not mad keen on yellow, either. I kept asking for a muted red on Fawn’s dress (burgundy, maroon), which proved to be a vocabulary problem as it kept getting pinker. I thought pink was problematic as it would signal “girl” not “adult woman”.
After several tries, I finally got a burgundy, and not-orange buckskins, and thought I’d better stop. The end result was more American Primitive and less WPA-poster/Arthur Rackham than the others in the set, more busy and realistic, a mismatch that still bothers me a little. Later, out on a walk, I wondered if we’d actually needed to sink a boat and try the image without the difficult figures and those extra colors at all, maybe with a little blood dripping from the tree roots onto the white knife, but I suspected it would leave the middle of the composition too empty unless the tree trunk were shortened or something. And the other three covers all have human figures, so.
Whoever said, “Art is never finished, merely abandoned,” had the right of it.
***
Ron has a continuation/guest post about our process in the first comment; scroll down! The two links GR wouldn't let him put in are:
https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/ for an overview
and the one on silhouettes specifically, linked in the earlier post in this series,
https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/po...
Ta, L.
August 18, 2022
Sharing Knife e-covers full scan: Horizon
Horizon was another that worked for me at first sight, although there was some email discussion beforehand with Ron. I'd suggested something with a wagon on a mountain road (Appalachian-style mountains, not Alps.) Ron really wanted to work in a menacing malice somewhere on the covers, and we'd discussed that possibility, but it was tricky; no two malices are the same. (Rather like Five Gods demons, they are what they eat.) I'd bounced hard off the rendition of a malice he'd offered in the first draft of the cover for Legacy, and fitting a bat-malice into his composition in progress was evidently proving a puzzle. He went instead with fireflies, which we'd also discussed in other contexts. (I thought the ones on the sample silhouette cover for Spellhorn in his linked post on same worked well.)
Once again, with a shift in perspective he managed to make something that I'd envisioned as a rather too horizontal subject fit well in a more vertical book frame.
Ta, L.
Once again, with a shift in perspective he managed to make something that I'd envisioned as a rather too horizontal subject fit well in a more vertical book frame.
Ta, L.
August 17, 2022
Sharing Knife e-covers full scans: Passage
From my point of view, this one was the easiest: I asked for a scene with a flatboat on a river, I got a scene with a flatboat on a river. Boom, done. How it was from Ron's point of view I don't know, but there surely must have been some thought put into how to arrange a basically horizontal image into a mostly vertical book-cover rectangle.
I'm presenting these a little out of order, saving what had proved the most difficult, Legacy, for last.
Ta, L.
(Ron also has a recent post on the new Vorkosigan novella e-covers he did this spring: https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/po... )
I'm presenting these a little out of order, saving what had proved the most difficult, Legacy, for last.
Ta, L.
(Ron also has a recent post on the new Vorkosigan novella e-covers he did this spring: https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/po... )
August 16, 2022
Sharing Knife e-covers full scans: Beguilement
So, I promised a better look at the UK-World e-covers for US viewers. Shall start at the beginning...
In my initial exchanges with artist Ron Miller about "what do we put on this book", once we'd set stylized-with-silhouettes (see Ron's link in the prior post about using silhouettes on book covers), same typeface as "Knife Children" and the verbiage, my first idea for the cover image for Beguilement was standing Dag & Fawn figures reaching out for each other, with Legacy to follow up with the pair riding double on one horse. Ron combined the two ideas and came up with this instead:
Note also the limited and subdued color palette, which adds to the air of classy restraint.
Silhouette portraits were a Thing in early 19. C. America (and elsewhere), thus in-period and congruent to my inspirations for this fantasy world. The colors remind me of classic early 20th C. illustrations with restricted colors due to technical printing issues.
Ta, L.
In my initial exchanges with artist Ron Miller about "what do we put on this book", once we'd set stylized-with-silhouettes (see Ron's link in the prior post about using silhouettes on book covers), same typeface as "Knife Children" and the verbiage, my first idea for the cover image for Beguilement was standing Dag & Fawn figures reaching out for each other, with Legacy to follow up with the pair riding double on one horse. Ron combined the two ideas and came up with this instead:
Note also the limited and subdued color palette, which adds to the air of classy restraint.
Silhouette portraits were a Thing in early 19. C. America (and elsewhere), thus in-period and congruent to my inspirations for this fantasy world. The colors remind me of classic early 20th C. illustrations with restricted colors due to technical printing issues.
Ta, L.
August 15, 2022
new e-covers for UK-World Sharing Knife
So...
It was time to refresh the UK-World e-covers for the Sharing Knife tetralogy, which were among the first indie works we'd put up back around 2010. I began by taking a look at what was new and hot in fantasy covers by perusing a handy Goodreads link,
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2372
Lots of classy recent samples on a page, very useful. Some staring, and I noticed, when I wasn't being distracted by pretty colors, I trended toward the "silhouette" covers -- For the Wolf being the best example. On to artist Ron Miller, who came back with this useful link on the subject:
https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/po...
Primed with that, there followed much back-and-forthing by email, one false start, much fiddling -- some of the images were good to go on the first try, others fought us to the end. Final result:
Note that the US ebooks for this series are still under the imprint of HarperCollins -- these will only show up elsewhere in the world, when my ebooks wrangler gets time to update everything.
(These sample jpegs are a little fuzzy at high magnification -- the real covers will have sharper resolution.)
Ta, L.
It was time to refresh the UK-World e-covers for the Sharing Knife tetralogy, which were among the first indie works we'd put up back around 2010. I began by taking a look at what was new and hot in fantasy covers by perusing a handy Goodreads link,
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2372
Lots of classy recent samples on a page, very useful. Some staring, and I noticed, when I wasn't being distracted by pretty colors, I trended toward the "silhouette" covers -- For the Wolf being the best example. On to artist Ron Miller, who came back with this useful link on the subject:
https://bookcoverbasics.tumblr.com/po...
Primed with that, there followed much back-and-forthing by email, one false start, much fiddling -- some of the images were good to go on the first try, others fought us to the end. Final result:
Note that the US ebooks for this series are still under the imprint of HarperCollins -- these will only show up elsewhere in the world, when my ebooks wrangler gets time to update everything.
(These sample jpegs are a little fuzzy at high magnification -- the real covers will have sharper resolution.)
Ta, L.
