Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 55

Time of Daughters, Book 1

Sherwood Smith has new novel out, Time of Daughters, in two books. Both are available now from Book View Cafe (ebook only) and Amazon (ebook, paperback, or hardback). I've just finished the first book and found it thoroughly engrossing, a real treat. People who enjoyed the Inda series may especially enjoy this duology, which takes place 100 years later, but I honestly think people who like a dynastically focused story with lots of slow-burn intrigue and character development will love this...

how I clicked 'yes' for a tutor and ended up meeting a poet

I've been using Duolingo to learn/practice Spanish for more than three years now, and Portuguese for about a year, and while it's got its flaws, I basically enjoy and appreciate it a lot, so I decided to get a paid membership to help support its mission. Doing so got me some ancillary benefits that for the most part I was uninterested in, but one thing that came over the dash was an offer of a Duolingo tutor. "Would you like a tutor?" the app innocently asked. I pressed yes, thinking I'd get...

breadrocks

"Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?" (Matthew 7:9)

.... I think you might be forgiven for giving your kid a stone if you came across these loaf-like specimens. I altered the color (crudely; I blame my tech like the TOOL I AM like the tool it is?) so they approached bread color--but it's more the shape, the texture...









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The Boy on the Roof--live for free reading/listening

I said I'd mention when "The Boy on the Roof" was available for free reading at Fireside Fiction, and it's up now, along with *amazing* narration by CSE Cooney. She got everything about the mood just right; she really brings the story alive.

The Boy on the Roof



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walking the rails

Walking the rails is better when the weather isn't quite so bitingly cold, but it's always good. It's a way through the landscape that you don't usually see.

The rails were shining blue from the blue sky overhead:



I saw...

Hot Chocolate Run 2019

Last year I fundraised here for the Hot Chocolate Run, which raises money for Safe Passage, an organization that helps people recover/escape from domestic violence. This year, I wasn't going to fundraise; I don't know why not really--just a kind of psychic tiredness, maybe.

But I remembered stories that two women in my classes told me about what they had suffered at the hands of their boyfriends/husbands. ( TW abuse )

White Kitten

For wakanomori 's third-year Japanese class, he's having students read something from a different decade each week, starting with the present and working back over the course of the semester until 1900. A couple of weeks ago, they read a portion of a children's story from 1942, 白い子猫 (White Kitten), written and illustrated by Nakajima Kikuo.

In the story, the next-door neighbors have moved away, leaving behind two white cats, whom protagonist Ichiro and his little sister Hanako adopt. There are ups and dow...

Beautiful wise one

A puddle of gold beneath a golden tree: it's gingko, the ancient of ancients, gingko, who watched indulgently as the dinosaurs rose and fell; gingko, who, a mere kilometer's distance from ground zero in Hiroshima, survived and flourished when all else died. That's how you survive for 270 million years.

Gingko, at some point along in your evolutionary journey, you chose to turn to brilliant gold before shedding your leaves in the cold. You were the first of all the deciduous trees to do so (.....

flu immunizations

Look at this; two entries in one day--what is this, 2008? But it's because I had two very disparate thoughts that didn't sit nicely in the same post, so here you go.

When I did a unit on vaccines with my students, almost all of them were pro-vaccine ... with the exception of the flu vaccine. Many more people were on the fence about that or were actively opposed to it. The flu vaccine has the problem of being a best guess as opposed to a sure thing in terms of how relevant and effec...

Is it a Chekov's gun or just a wall ornament?

I was recently thinking about when a detail is a Chekov's gun and when it's just, y'know, part of scene setting or world building. I was thinking this because my mind was pinging on things that I was sure were being placed in the story to be picked up later (the story was Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, and the details in question *were* picked up again, but not in the way I expected), and yet not all details are there to be used later. To take an example that pops into my head, in Ann Leckie's Imper...