Tricia Sullivan's Blog, page 8

Midwifery then and now...

I just spotted this piece on midwifery in the 1950s, and it quotes Mary Cronk quite extensively.  Mary is a famous and enormously respected midwife, and in the latter years of her career she focused on helping women in difficult circumstances or with problematic medical presentations, who wanted a home birth.  By pure chance she came out as a backup midwife for the birth of my first child, which started out as a home birth (we ended up with an assisted delivery in hospital).  Mary would have been in her early seventies then, and mobility was difficult for her but she was amazing. She knelt on the bathroom floor beside me as I laboured, spooning honey into my mouth or offering sips of water, and made conversation between contractions.  She even managed to keep Steve calm(ish), which is no mean feat.  When she found out I was a writer she told me she had attended the same school as Iain Banks--that was a surreal moment.  When Andrya, my much-younger main midwife, offered me Rescue Remedy for the shakes, Mary snorted and muttered in my ear that I'd do better with a dram of whisky.

I'm not sure I could watch the program without gales of tears, though. Reading this article and thinking about what Mary's work must have been like in those days reminds me how easy we have it now!  Not that 'easy' is the first word that leaps to mind.  Shudder.

Karen Mahoney

There's a moving guest post by Karen Mahoney here about turning points as a writer.  She has as big a heart as anyone I've ever known, and I'm so grateful to be able to call her my friend.  Reading her post made me a bit weepy.  And it made me want to punch the teacher who laughed. 

I was talking about Kaz yesterday at Picocon, how she dared me to start writing the Thing I'm writing now and even named the main character.  She has a new book out, YA urban fantasy The Wood Queen, which is getting some lovely reviews.  Although I'd normally wave to kaz_mahoney from a post like this, I know she is working so hard on the final book in the series that she may not even be reading this. 

Kaz is one of those people who puts her money where her mouth is and takes the risks.  Big kudos to you, Kaz.

(A bit more about Picocon later when I've got time. It was fab.)

Picocon!

I know I can be ditzy, but I can't believe I've forgotten to announce that I will be at Picocon tomorrow.  The date has crept up on me, like a ninja mold. But in a good way!

Fellow guests are Justina Robson and Adrian Czjazkowski (whom I've never met, so this will be cool), woo-hoo! 

I will be reading from the untitled, uncontracted and otherwise mysterious proto-novel I've been wrestling with since roundabout October, the one inspired by a conversation with kaz_mahoney in which the protagonist is named in accordance with The Kaz's wishes. I will also mutter about random things. There will be a panel, and the blowing-up of Stuff (in the non-Justina-Robson sense, I hope).

In other news, half-term has been particularly disobedient and scruffy. My to-do list has run me to ground and I have the persistent sensation that everything I'm trying to do is falling apart not by increments, but in large squashy irretrievable chunks. I'm shirking various things even by taking the time to string adjectives.  Gah!

PS I was going to disable comments because I probably won't have time to answer them, but then waffled. Still waffling.

Sophia McDougall

Hello, my dears. How many of you knew that Sophia McDougall, author of the Romanitas trilogy, was on LJ? I went to her blog yesterday via a link and it looked so slick I didn't even realise it was an LJ blog...OK, I am a little sleep-deprived, it's true.

Her handle is, unsurprisingly, sophiamcdougall .

I gather she's on twitter also, but I'm not in a twitter-friendly mood today so can't provide that information.

If anyone needs me I'll be fighting with DVD conversions and losing.

a day late & a dollar short

Even by my standards this video must take the prize for most unflattering outfit.  That's how you know it's me and not my body double. Next week I will record something properly martial-arts related instead of conditioning, but I have been working on Tabatas since last week and I think I'm getting better at sustaining my energy. For the record:

there's a hole in my bucket

When I was in my thirties I had three kids relatively close together.  They were all good-sized kids: 8 lbs 10 ounces each for the first two, and nine-and-a-half pounds for the third. That's a lot of baby for a person my size to carry (I'm 5'5" but most of it is leg. I've got a short torso) and I ended up with damage to my abdominal wall in the form of a sizeable diastasis.  It's a separation between the two major muscles of the abdomen, and the only reason it's not a true hernia is because of faschia covering the gap. I put up this picture right before I had surgery for it.

Yick, right?  I couldn't afford a tummy-tuck to repair the muscles, so the NHS put in mesh. This is a patch over the hole.  I have better functioning of my abdominals than before, but there's still a sensation of a missing piece.

It's an odd feeling, because it's right in the center of my body.  The abdominals are essential for coupling forces between the legs and the arms. For most normal activity it's not noticeable, but when I have to make an awkward stretch or reach and I go to use those muscles, I get zero. It's a feeling of reaching into empty space, looking for a step that isn't there. 

Everything I do has to work around the hole.

I'm up in the middle of the night for the second night running, and I'm in that state of not being functional enough to really get anything done but not being able to sleep, either.  And I'm thinking about work.

There are two things going on with me right now.  One, I'm trying to write something that's making me feel like a fool on a daily basis.  Two, I'm studying for the first time in many years. By going back to mathematics I feel like I'm addressing the intellectual hole in the middle of me.  

I have felt for a long time like something is missing, incomplete, in my ablility to perceive.  I've worked around it, just like I work around the abdominal defect--and this requires a certain creativity, I guess. But to address the hole in action on an almost-daily basis involves recognising how little I have in the way of muscle, because when I reach for that mathematical thinking there's practically nothing there.  I'm repeatedly stressing this mental muscle to burnout point, crawling away, and then coming back for more.

I started this course with the OU because I couldn't get a job as an English teacher without British qualifications, and I didn't think I'd find work even if I picked up a PGCE in English.  So I decided to go in for physics 'for the bursary.'  A year into the preliminary coursework I'm realising that I really want this. It's an opportunity for me to fix the damned leaky bucket.

The exertion is waking up the dormant bits.  I'm aware of this inchoate...material that I have floating around in my headspace, waiting to get out.  I think its fundamental basis is probably musical; I don't know how to express it in narrative yet.  I know that when I was working in music, when I was 20, say, there were no issues about 'productivity' or 'goals' or 'professionalism'.  I'd have laughed at that. There was only intrinsic interest, the need to explore for its own sake. I grew like a weed during those times.

This mindset seems to be waking up, growling.  Maybe that's why I can't sleep.

physicists who aren't like Sheldon

I'm reading one of Lisa Randall's books right now.  She is amazing at elucidating really crazy-ass tricky stuff in terms we can all grasp.  Here she is talking about the Large Hadron Collider.

thank you, fingerless gloves

Yesterday's writing was accomplished thanks to Caroline Holley's Hand-knitted Fingerless Gloves. And Steve's hat. Except, Caroline gave me the gloves whereas Steve's hat was actually stolen. Also my £4 pair of knockoff Uggs that are falling apart.  Also tea.

Did I mention it's cold?

Here is the rest of my list of complaints:

1) My traps are actively hurting all the time. It is hard to tune this out. Thank you, Tabata practice.
2) Writing yesterday was two fingers from impossible at all times, and it's not like I didn't try. Wish I knew what to sacrifice to do better today.

On the positive side, I just splashed out on an e-book of Lisa Randall's Warped Passages and it looks very readable. I have a New Scientist subscription but haven't read any books in this field since stumbling through The Elegant Universe in the middle of the night when Tyrone was a baby. Since I am some years away from hoping to grasp the math (if indeed I ever make it to that level), it will be good to catch up on some physics for the layperson.

And speaking of math, I finally solved the last problem on my assignment.  It required a small amount of lateral thinking, not very much really, but enough to reduce me to a jelly.  All my failed attempts have left the kitchen looking like  a ream of paper went through a wind tunnel.  But I got it! Happy dance.

Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear

Since I read an advance copy of Elizabeth Bear's new novel, Range of Ghosts back in December I've been planning to post some personal reactions, but I was waiting to post closer to release.  What I hadn’t appreciated was that Range of Ghosts is coming out now in the US, but apparently not until April in the UK.*  So I'm going to post this now. 

As far as I know, this the first UK edition of a Bear novel despite the author being a very major writer of science fiction and fantasy in the US. I hope UK readers and reviewers will take note of it. Preorder? Keep your eyes out?


From the publisher's description:

Temur, grandson of the Great Khan, is walking away from a battlefield where he was left for dead. All around lie the fallen armies of his cousin and his brother, who made war to rule the Khaganate. Temur is now the legitimate heir by blood to his grandfather’s throne, but he is not the strongest. Going into exile is the only way to survive his ruthless cousin.

Once-Princess Samarkar is climbing the thousand steps of the Citadel of the Wizards of Tsarepheth. She was heir to the Rasan Empire until her father got a son on a new wife. Then she was sent to be the wife of a Prince in Song, but that marriage ended in battle and blood. Now she has renounced her worldly power to seek the magical power of the wizards. These two will come together to stand against the hidden cult that has so carefully brought all the empires of the Celadon Highway to strife and civil war through guile and deceit and sorcerous power.

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I’ve written a review of the novel for Foundation, but here I thought I’d just make a few remarks about the way the book affected me personally, because it’s one of those rare novels that strike a deep chord of familiarity.  And I couldn't put any of this stuff into a review.  It's too childish and subjective. So here you go:

Reading Range of Ghosts was like revisiting some of my favourite childhood places.  Usually when I do this (literally or metaphorically) I'm disappointed not to mention weirded-out.  But in this case, instead of the old playhouse seeming painfully limited in the context of wider experience, in Bear's hands it has modernized very nicely while still retaining its particular corners and treasured smells.

Range of Ghosts is set in a fictionalized Central Asia in a fictionalized past with all kinds of local magics smashing up against one another in interesting ways.  In many ways the novel reads like a reply to Tolkien, and the things Bear has to say to JRR had me nodding and going, ‘Yeah, that’s right. Mmm-hmm.’ 

Of course, the ‘response to Tolkien’ is only one aspect of the book.  There’s a lot going on here, and I take my hat off to Bear for her ability to make a scene or a sentence work on more than one level.  She is a master of sensory detail, and beneath the immersive sensory experience there are larger movements at work.  Range of Ghosts exemplifies the richness that my former editor Caroline Oakley tried to wrest out of me when I was writing fantasy.  ‘It’s got to have tapestry,’ she’d say.  ‘You need to feel that there are layers under layers.’ If she had handed me this book I’d have grasped what she meant in an instant. 

In fact I’d go so far as to say that this book would make a very good instruction manual for writers of epic fantasy, because big fat ‘traditional’ fantasies seem to be springing up all over the place. This one right here shows how it’s done.

I’m sure lots of other readers will be remarking on the sexual politics of this book.  I’ll just say I was pleased in myriad ways.

In Range of Ghosts you get a crime novel’s attention to plot.  You get sweeping mythic resonances.  You get horses—oh, man, do you get horses.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever written on LJ about my horse-mad youth, but I was as much of a horse freak as you are ever going to find.  Nobody could turn a horse into a god like me and my imagination, and I had books and books and books about them.  In college I worked in a thoroughbred breeding stable.  Steve used to be a trainer of reining horses and so I lived with them for some years, took care of them, rode (not very well), learned about natural horsemanship and got the lowdown on the reality of horses, which is a bit different from their somewhat romantic fictional portrayal to say the least.  And Bear’s horses were just brilliant.  Ooh, if I don’t watch myself I’m going to start putting in You Tube clips of cool horses and people who can ride Roman-style and all that. 

So there are a couple of my personal bells rung, right there.  For others on my friends list, know this: it's geeky.  This book will get you right in the D&D. I mean, just when I thought I was getting to grips with the worldbuilding she threw in living boulders! Herded for their excretions! Of gems! 

What.  Is.  Not.  To.  Love.

So, UK readers, looking on Amazon I’m seeing a hardcover only and not until April.  I’m not seeing any signs of an e-book but if I find out about that I’ll keep you posted.  Meanwhile if you are into fantasy I’d say this book is a must-read.  They don’t come along like this every day. 

*Link goes to Amazon.co.uk but for those who are avoiding Amazon here's a Waterstones link

mundee

This post is probably kind of pointless, but I'm
So, I worked like a hellhound all weekend on all the usual weekend stuff: cleaning house, maths, physical training, killing the plants (don't ask--it's depressing) and by Sunday night I was completely fried and went to bed before 9 am. I've started calculus and some of the manipulations are tricky, so I'm back on Khan Academy brushing up on exercises.

I got up at 4 this morning and went over logs and trig until everyone else got up. (I learned all this stuff a year ago, but haven't used it enough to make it stick. I need to do extra work outside the coursework if I'm going to make up for the holes in my maths background.) Took the kids to school, dragged myself into the freezing cold gym and did 3/4 of a Tabata, which is only 6 minutes.  Then came back and worked on math the rest of the morning.  When my eyes started going bloodshot I had a 5 mile run.  Then back, a bit more faffing around on Khan Academy, an hour of writing, and then up to school.

Sean has a friend over for tea so I have to pretend to be at least somewhat normal, but I don't feel like I finished for the day with the writing. I made some notes in the car waiting to collect the kids.  Not enough.

I am in a place with this book where it could literally go anywhere and do anything.  I'm starting to realise I could take on some things that I've never had the nerve to take on before, but which at this point in my life seem like they're calling to me Now or Neverland style. But it's pretty hard to leap out into the unknown and I'm going to have to generate a patch of something solid for myself to stand on while I engage in this very messy process of exploration.  I'm going to have to get on my own case very soon and make something concrete happen, since it's time I stopped believing in the idea that books somehow write themselves.

I mean, they do.  They absolutely do.  But they need a lot of sweat and suffering on the writer's part if they're going to get out of bed. I need to crank up the sweat.

Tomorrow will be mostly spent on the book, I promise.