Greer Gilman's Blog, page 21

O what is rounder than a ring?

rushthatspeaks  asks five questions:

1. Listened to any good music lately?

O my heavens, that last evening at Pinewoods, looking out at moonrise on the water.  It was just past full, a deep apricot, a little squashed, and writing stories on the lake in swift sure brushwork.  We were singing in the dark.  Snatches of ballads, that kindled and caught, that cast long wakes on the darkness.  There were great great voices on that porch, and small quavery ones, all singing as one.  What mattered was harmony.

2. If someone gave you the opportunity to direct one of Shakespeare's plays, which one would you want to direct?

My inner Quince is pleading for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  This time, we rude mechanicals will be perfect, I swear.  Our audience will be wheeled away, weeping uncontrollably.  The fairies will be feral and transcendent; the Athenians, bewildered and bothered and bewitched.  The verse will be spoken as a native tongue. 
 
And I will do it when the Fox is exactly the right age to be enchanted.

Next!

3. Unicorns or mermaids?

Dryads.

4. Did you consider staying in the U.K. after finishing school there?

No, sadly, I was called back.  I hadn’t yet realized that my life was my own.  I wouldn’t for the longest time.

5. Did you always have your color scheme, or did it become apparent over time, or start at any particular point?

Strangely, I wasn’t always bluegreen.  I always did like jewel tones.  In high school, I had a white-splashed amethyst mini dress with balloon sleeves bigger than the skirt; in college, a crimson tunic worn over an outrageous fuchsia plaid maxi-skirt.  At Cambridge, I did a lot of slatey blues and soft earth browns.  I found a dress there—long outgrown, alas—made from antique paisley shawls, all rust reds and and slate blues, like hidden rivulets in bracken.  And then the waters rose and drowned the earth.  Now that I think of it, the metamorphosis began when I started writing fantasy.  I found that the colors I chose were always bluegreens:  my own band of the spectrum, running from teal and peacock into true blues, edging into blueviolet.

Last Boskone, I got a hall costume ribbon for Most Nine-ish Nine.

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Gormenghastly

Endless ceremonials...

Link courtesy of Catherine Rockwood.

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True Queen

"I was crawling along the bottom of the lake on my arms and knees, looking for stones to skim, when my hand and knee felt something long and hard buried in the clay and sand. I pulled it out and saw that it was different from the sticks or rocks I usually find. One end had a point, and the other had a handle, so I pointed it up to the sky, put my other hand on my hip and called out, 'Daddy, I’ve found a sword!'

"I felt like a warrior, but Daddy said I looked like Pippi Longstocking."


The sword is 1,500 years old.

Nine

"...as ruthlessly exquisite as a silver frost."

My copy of the Handheld Press Kingdoms of Elfin has just arrived, wrapped in tough brown paper.




It comes out on Hallowe'en.

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Mistress Masham's revenge

Now this looks delicious, for those of us who like a dish of syllabub a-tingle with scorpions, and take our crumpets with wasp honey.  Such actresses!  Such wicked repartee!  Such clothes!  Not opening until November, though—it should enliven Thanksgiving.

Nine

P.S.  "Just like buses, it feels like we’ve waited an age for a decent female anti-hero to turn up and now three come along at once: Each of them is tragic, and each of them is ridiculous. Each has her own fatal flaw, and in no case is it a man. Let me just write that again because it was borderline orgasmic the first time: in no case is it a man."

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The Hunt (Diana and Her Nymphs)

I so wish I could sit at a broad oak table in a manor house, looking out through mullioned windows at a Tudor garden in the rain, and doing jigsaw puzzles. Especially ones like this.





The image comes from an art nouveau mural (1926), painted for an Edinburgh tea shop by Robert Burns (not the one who hunted nymphs, but another who painted them hunting).




Liberty Puzzles cuts brilliant whimsies.




And when you've done the puzzle, you can do it all over again as a stag's head.




As a child, I never understood why the second Mrs. Charles Foster Kane was so miserable over her fabulous jigsaw puzzles...




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The water chooses whom to drown

Last night was the launch party, down at Lovecraft Arts & Sciences in Providence, for sovay 's brilliant new collection of stories, Forget the Sleepless Shores. Here's what I wrote for the cover:

"Conscience stalks Oppenheimer as a golem of nuclear glass; passion is laid bare beneath a peat bog; fall and fire claim their own. A girl is moth-light to a throng of ghosts. The sea calls, endlessly imperative. The water chooses whom to drown. In Sonya Taaffe’s vivid cinema of metamorphoses, the elements themselves have eyes. Watch now and wonder."

sovay gave a fabulous reading, and (after an intermission for drinks) an electrifying interview, speaking of classical antiquity, sea-roads, the geometric shapes of music and of language, film noir, Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale, the non-linearity of narrative, hope and fear in politics, and time. I don't know what they put into that tot of Corryvreckan, besides a fellside of peat on fire and a whirlpool, but she was inspired. There was a storm of applause.

For me, there was excellent conversation there and back again with teenybuffalo and Gillian Daniels; there was book shopping in the sort of places that we used to have in Harvard Square in its glory days. I snatched up Cabinets of Curiosities on sight. And I got to hang out with cool people like rushthatspeaks and M. J. Cunniff.

Wonderful, wonderful evening.

Nine

sniffle sniffle snuffle

More about a most excellent Readercon when I've stopped falling over, but for now: Hedgehog!





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Whizz!

Happy Fourth! Hopes for a new birth of freedom.

Do not, I pray you, melt.

Myself, I did the red-white-and-blue thing with some very nice bluefish paté, and strawberries with vanilla ice cream. Also shell peas.

Will rooftop for the fireworks, and hope that Boston hasn't shifted them behind a building.

Nine

Presenting Moonshine

A brief but elegant Readercon schedule, my 28th.

Living in Material Worlds, Part 2: What Do Clothes Convey?
Friday 10:00 AM
J.R. Dawson, Samuel R. Delany, Greer Gilman, Elaine Isaak, Victoria Janssen, Emily Lavin Leverett

Having examined where clothing comes from and what it says about a culture, this panel will move on to discussing what an individual character’s clothing conveys about gender, class, wealth, affiliation, ability, access to materials and craftsmanship, and much more.

The Works of E. Nesbit
Friday 7:00 PM
Greer Gilman, Barbara Krasnoff, John Langan, Henry Wessells, The joey Zone

E. Nesbit (1858–1924) was a giant of children’s literature. She was the first modern writer of literature for children, writing or collaborating on over 60 books, and was the most influential author on the genre in the 20th century. The Story of the Treasure Seekers, Five Children and It, The Enchanted Castle, The House of Arden, and her many other fantastical works for children are still read and loved today. Nesbit also wrote romance novels, a fantasy (Dormant), and an underrated and overlooked set of horror stories. She was a writer of great range and inventiveness, and a witty and intelligent stylist. Please join us in celebrating her life and work.

The Glamour of Grammar
Sunday 10:00 AM
Greer Gilman, Jack Haringa, Emily Lavin Leverett, John O’Neil, Tamara Vardomskaya

Grammar has strict rules that don’t always make sense. It can change the meaning of a word, it’s different in different places, and some people seem to be naturally better at understanding it. In other words, it’s a lot like magic. This panel of grammar fiends will discuss the storytelling
possibilities of real and fanciful grammar, odd corners of the grammarian’s world, clever uses of grammar in speculative fiction, grammar as magic, and the grammarian as hero.

Reading: Greer Gilman
Sunday 12:30 PM

I hope to see many of you there!

Nine