Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 50

Happy Halloween from 1914

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"The Return," John Freeman

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The Return

I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke,

The unintelligible shock of hosts that still,

Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again;

And Beauty flying naked down the hill

From morn to eve: and the stern night cried Peace!

And shut the strife in darkness: all was still,

Then slowly crept a triumph on the dark—

And I heard Beauty singing up the hill.

–John Freeman

The Circle of (Convention) Life

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This post first appeared at the Novelists, Inc. blog.

On October 14th, I was on a train from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. so I could attend CapClave, sponsored by the Washington Science Fiction Association.

It's a fairly small conference if you're used to behemoths like Dragon Con. CapClave usually features two tracks of panels and one of readings, as well as some special events and of course a dealers' room. You might well ask me why I might want to attend, as a professional; what b...

Kindle Lending

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I have successfully lent a Kindle book!



A friend of mine in Minneapolis recently purchased a used Kindle. We share many tastes in romance and speculative fiction, so we decided to give the lending function a try. We went through our respective lists of e-books and compared what we had. It was a little amusing to see that we had several of the same books already.

The major flaw of Kindles, as most people know, is that they use a proprietary format for e-books, and only allow sharing...

Myers-Briggs Characterization

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If you missed it on Friday, at The Criminal Element I chatted about Maria Duenas' novel The Time in Between.

And now, fun with personality tests!



If you're ever feeling at a loss about a character – either one you've already created, or one you need to create – an excellent way to jumpstart your thought process is to look at the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. MBTI basics.

Various tests to determine your character's Type can be found on the internet, for example here and here.

You can...

"The Island of Skyros," John Masefield

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The Island of Skyros

Here, where we stood together, we three men,
Before the war had swept us to the East
Three thousand miles away, I stand again
And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast.
We trod the same path, to the selfsame place,
Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves,
Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase,
And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves.
So, since we communed here, our bones have been
Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be,
Earth and the...

Hotels & Motels – Hotbeds of Naughtiness

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Recent DNF Crankiness

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As usual, I'm going to avoid mentioning details that might make it easy to identify these books!



1. A steampunky steampunk. Yes, definitely steampunk. In case you missed it.

This book which I didn't finish had perfectly fine prose. It had decent worldbuilding, as in, it had Steampunky Things that were presented gradually as part of the action. It had good characterization. Alas, it had All The Steampunky Things That Are Steampunk. As in, if you were reading this and playing...

Magnum, P.I. post

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I had a new post up at The Criminal Element over the weekend: A Remembrance of Magnums Past.

WWI-era Mysteries?

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I'm attempting to compile a list of mystery series that are set during World War One or shortly afterwards (say, through the 1920s) that refer back to the war or the resulting social changes. I am looking for suggestions! Doesn't matter if you liked the series or not.



Here's what I have so far:

–Anne Perry's WWI series
[tried, didn't get into]
–Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series
[read first one, got depressed, didn't read any more]
–Catriona McPherson's Dandy Gilver series
[read a...