Jane Lindskold's Blog, page 26

Motion and Visual Poetry

Vibrant!

Last week, we got a peek at Tom Kidd’s cover art for House of Rough Diamonds.

It features Grunwold (stag), Vereez (fox), and Xerak (lion) with Heru the xuxu flying high guard, and the ship Slicewind soaring overhead.

I always enjoy seeing how an artist will interpret my work, even if it doesn’t match my own vision.  One thing a lot of authors miss is that a cover is not an illustration, it’s a tool.

Let me quote Tom Kidd’s eloquent discussion of the topic:

“I liken book covers to poetry because of their limitations (flat rectangles of colors and type) and the importance of them to communicate. They should capture the feel of the story even though stationary/stagnant images that suggest movement, emotion, and story, something to make a person wonder about the book. Covers aren’t typically scenes from the book but a scene that could happen that says something true about the characters, location, or the action. Sometimes I’m left with something that was never described but had to have happened.”  (FB message, 2-19-23)

When I saw the covers for Library of the Sapphire Wind and Aurora Borealis Bridge, well before I’d ever been in communication with Tom Kidd, this was precisely how I felt.  The art differed in detail, but the spirit of swashbuckling adventure was absolutely right.  And his choices of detail were delightful.  One of my favorites was Peg fighting using her knitting needles.  She never does that, but she absolutely would should the situation arise.

This latest cover is a perfect example of the cover that “could happen that says something true about the characters, location, or the action.”  You can see the trust between the characters, get a feel for how they approach problems.  (Vereez is definitely the most impulsive of the trio.)  I like how Xerak’s mane is groomed, and he would definitely love those arm bracers. 

I also love how Tom Kidd uses fabric to create a sense of motion.  All three of his covers for me feel like scenes in motion I could walk right into.  Given the choice of dully static or vibrant, both Vereez and I absolutely forgive him for putting her in a dress, which would not be her choice of combat attire. 

As we get closer to the release date, I’ll talk more about what House of Rough Diamonds is about, but for now I want to give people a little more time to read the first couple of books, so there won’t be any spoilers!

Racing About

Roary Rests After Racing

This week has been full of racing about as Jim has his two week plus rechecks.  All the medical people seem delighted by how nicely his surgical incision is healing, but it’s really too early to do much with the mobility of the replaced shoulder.  It is great that he can use the hand, though!

For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.  The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.  And it’s also a great place to tell me what you’re reading. 

Completed:

Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Audiobook.  Enter Miles who talks his way out of just about everything and has yet to learn about consequences.  Well, he’s only seventeen…

In Progress:

The Collected Enchantments by Theodora Goss.  ARC.  A friend recently recommended Goss’s short fiction, especially her fairytale retellings, so I felt very lucky to score this ARC.  I’m nearly done, and have very much enjoyed.

The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Audiobook.  Set four years after Warrior’s Apprentice.  Miles is out of the academy, but no better at subordination than when he went in.

Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon).  The third of her books about the surviving paladins of the mysteriously deceased Saint of Steel. 

Also:

The latest Archeology magazine.  Finished off the AARP mag as well.

Ramifications

Greetings, Dandy Silverstone!

They’ve probably changed the rules by now, but way back in the dark ages (mid-1980s) when I started playing AD&D, a human fighter, beginning level, was (according to some table I no longer have access to) assumed to be something like sixteen to eighteen years old.  A half-elf with the same basic abilities was assumed to be quite a bit older, like in their eighties.

This niggled at me until one day the solution came to me: It simply takes elves a long time to learn anything.  They aren’t stupid. (After all, elves are known to be brilliant.)  However, maybe as a result of their very long lives, they have no incentive to learn anything, so they don’t bother.

From this, I came up with one of the most restful characters I’ve ever played: Kymbree Silverstone.  The surname was taken from a then popular alternative to Teflon coating, and Teflon, as you may recall, was famous for being a surface that everything slid off of.

Kymbree was unable to worry.  She lived in the moment.  She sang a lot, and usually remembered to swing her sword when something came after her.  That particular game was a short one, but I still remember Kymbree fondly, both for herself, and because of how she was the solution to a problem of ramifications.

Ramifications are something that, as a writer of SF/F, I think about a lot.  Every story starts as a blank slate, but once you have an element, you’re stuck with all that goes with it.  Kymbree’s shiny steel sword implies that someone, somewhere, is making steel.  Steel takes iron (so someone is mining, or maybe there are meteor tracking groups).   Making steel takes heat, so someone is polluting the air by burning wood or coal or whatever.  (Or maybe they have really big magnifying glasses and focus the sun’s heat.)

Forging the sword means that somewhere there are stinky forges, burly people wielding big hammers.  (Or maybe they’re made by earth elementals who have no sense of smell and smooth out the steel by touch.)

But whatever the answer, you’ve created not just a sword, but all that goes into making a sword.

Or maybe swords drop out of the sky…  But who is dropping them?  Where did they come from?

Ramifications.  They’re part of the writing game, especially the SF/F writing game.  At least they are for me.

FF: Enchantments

Persephone Relaxes

I’ve been pretty tired lately, but stories are the enchantment that recharges my soul.

For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.  The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.  And it’s also a great place to tell me what you’re reading. 

Completed:

Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher.  Book two of the Saint of Steel.  Good re-read for a stressful time.

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Audiobook.  Darker than Shards of Honor, as a tale of political strife should be.

Epitaph in Rust by Timothy Powers.  Very early Powers.  “Timothy” on the jacket, rather than the “Tim” of his later works.  In a future LA, androids police an unsettled city and a young monk finds more than he ever dreamed.  Warning: Very high body count in this one.

In Progress:

Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Audiobook.  Enter Miles who talks his way out of just about everything and has yet to learn about consequences.  Well, he’s only seventeen…

The Collected Enchantments by Theodora Goss.  ARC.  A friend recently recommended Goss’s short fiction, especially her fairytale retellings, so I felt very lucky to score this ARC.

Also:

Newly arrived, my university’s (Fordham, in case you wondered) alumni magazine.

Frazzled!

Frazzled Sparrow

A week and a day ago, Jim had complete shoulder replacement surgery.  The procedure went well, and he has started PT.

That said, we’re both rather frazzled.  Jim underestimated how much having only partial use of his left arm would mean in terms of limiting what he can do.  This means an inclination to over-do on his part, which I appreciate until he tuckers out and gets grumpy.

Me…  Well, taking over most of his jobs, including running errands, has cut into my ability to separate from reality and write.  I am managing, but it’s harder to get into the zone.

However, weirdly the thing that is disrupting me the most is our current sleeping arrangements.  The number of pillows needed to give Jim appropriate support feel like a wall between us.  I have a whole new appreciation how the custom of “bundling” as a courtship procedure really did provide a sense of separation.

But we’re managing.

What’s amazing is how quickly the cats figured out that Jim’s left arm and shoulder are off-limits.  Persephone in particular likes to sit on Jim’s chest.  After being told to not touch the shoulder, she still sits on him, but she carefully avoids kneading the tender area.

Oh, and if anyone thinks cats are committed to order, they’re nothing to guinea pigs.  Our guinea pigs have two domiciles: smaller for night, larger for day.  In order to accustom them to both of us handling them, I move Dandy in the morning, Coco in the evening.  Jim does the reverse.

Well, obviously, right now Jim can’t safely move either one.  Coco in particular made a tremendous fuss to inform me that YOU HAVE IT ALL WRONG!!!  It took a week before she’d settle for sulking rather than kicking and running in circles.

So, a frazzled household, but coping, and grateful that frazzled is all we are…

FF: Get Going

Roary Wonders What’s For Dinner

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.  Me?  I tend to read, and with Jim’s surgery this week, I have done a fair amount.

For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.  The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.  And it’s also a great place to tell me what you’re reading. 

Completed:

Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Audiobook.  From reading the Miles books, I know much of the “what happened,” but I’m finding the details of the “how” more than enough to keep me interested.

Dinner at Deviant’s Palace by Tim Powers.  Before he became renowned as the master of “secret history” tales, Tim Powers wrote this strange take on post-apolcalyptic LA.  I haven’t read it for years, but I’ve been sucked right in.

Veni Vino Vegas: I Went, I Got Drunk, I Got Married by A_N_D from Archive of Our Own.  Clever Good Omens Romance/FanFic.

In Progress:

Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher.  Book two of the Saint of Steel.  Good re-read for a stressful time.

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Audiobook.  Darker than Shards of Honor, as it should be.

Also:

Reading the most recent Vogue.  Amid the fluff and stuff, a very interesting article about foods grown/created from algae, some of which are apparently already in stores.  Interesting.

Life and Writing

Mei-Ling Contemplates

Above, a sneak peak at the mass market paperback of Library of the Sapphire Wind with it’s elder sibling, the trade paperback edition.  Oh…  And a very smug Mei-Ling.

As for why I’m thinking about the life and writing balance…

Earlier this week, my husband, Jim, had a total shoulder replacement.  This is his third joint replacement.  He had one knee done in 2018, the other in 2020, and now this…  Archeology, especially for those who get out there and dig, as well as write papers, is really not kind to the body.

When Jim had his first knee replacement, I lost about two months writing time, not only because he needed help, but because I had to take over all the chores and errands that he usually does—which are quite a lot. And, well, I did tend to hover anxiously…  I’ll admit it!

When he had his second knee replacement, I didn’t lose as much time for a variety of reasons.  We had the routine down, so we’d been more efficient in our pre-planning.  The pandemic shutdown meant that we’d already pared down our errands and outings.  However, having Jim laid up still ate both my time and my emotional energy, even though I wasn’t hovering quite as much.

This third joint replacement has already impacted on my time, since I’ve been going along to pre-op visits, so both of us know what is expected.  Jim and I have spent a lot of time working out logistics for how he will sleep, and whether we can manage both of us in the same bed with him supported by lots of pillows, and stuff like that.

So, how do I think this most recent surgery will impact my writing?

Well, in anticipation of disruption, I’ve already immersed myself in my current writing project: SK5, aka the yet-untitled fifth book in the Star Kingdom series I’m writing with David Weber.  From past experience, I know that I find it easier to continue a project than to get started on one. 

We’ve also been doing a lot of cooking in advance, so meals will be easier to do.  Yes, Jim does some of the cooking.  He also makes almost all our salads, and we’re still figuring out if he can do that with one arm in a sling.

We’d washed a lot of laundry, and made sure all the routine chores are taken care of, so there wouldn’t be a backlog.  Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that there will be a lot less time for me to write.

But I’m okay with that.  As I noted, Jim and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary last week, and part of the deal is that whole “sickness and health” thing.   We’ve had at least two friends lose their much-loved spouses in the last couple of years, and another have a narrow miss.  How can I not be glad to interrupt my writing because Jim’s here to fuss over?

Therefore, I’m off to go see what he might need, then to write!

FF: What Happened Or Why?

Persephone the Friend-Shaped

A couple of the books I’ve read recently have held few surprises for me by way of major details, but while for one this made the plot a bit flat, for the other it didn’t matter.  This has had me musing as to why the difference, and I’m not really sure.  Any thoughts?

For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.  The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.  And it’s also a great place to tell me what you’re reading. 

Completed:

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss.  Audiobook.  A book oddly lacking in suspense because the characters keep breaking the fourth wall, so weak on plot, although strong on characterization.  Setting is pulp Victorian, with some logical incongruities.

From Sawdust to Stardust: the Biography of DeForest Kelly, Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy by Terry Lee Rioux.  I’d call this one bittersweet.

Excess by H.P. Holo and Jacob Holo.  Monster Punk Horizon Three.  A very short novel (about twenty percent of my e-book was extra material) with lots of action, hyped-up descriptions, and some very personable characters.  For a book about hunting monsters, it’s very friend-shaped.

In Progress:

Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold.  Audiobook.  From reading the Miles books, I know much of the “what happened,” but I’m finding the details of the “how” more than enough to keep me interested.

Dinner at Deviant’s Palace by Tim Powers.  Before he became renowned as the master of “secret history” tales, Tim Powers wrote this strange take on post-apolcalyptic LA.  I haven’t read it for years, but I’ve been sucked right in.

Also:

Finished the latest Smithsonian and a copy of the Berkshire magazine I got as a freebee.  The latter is like reading life in an alternate world in some ways.

Twenty-Six!

Roary Guards the Years

Today is Jim and my twenty-sixth wedding anniversary.  Not too bad for what was for both of us a later-in-life marriage.

Depending on the weather, we’ll either go wander around the zoo, or go out somewhere indoors and look at things.  Jim has a very associational memory, and the best way to get him telling stories is go somewhere and see what we can see, then discover what it brings up out of the depths.

And we’ll probably eat out.  Japanese, I think.  A few years ago, Jim asked a friend who’d lived in Japan where we could go to get authentic, rather than Americanized, Japanese food here in Albuquerque.  Turns out there are a couple of good places, and so a repeat performance seems in order.

Just the other day, someone asked how Jim and I met.  The answer is simultaneously very simple, and somewhat complicated.

We met through the shared hobby of role-playing games.  That’s the simple.

The complex is as follows…  When I moved to New Mexico to live with Roger Zelazny, I told Roger that the one thing I really missed from my old life was gaming.  He said, “George has a group.  I’ll ask him if he knows if anyone is looking for players.”  And that’s how we came to join the group that Jim played with.  (Which, in case you wonder, is also the group that spawned Wild Cards.)

After Roger died, the members of that group were amazingly supportive, up to and including helping me move from Santa Fe to Albuquerque.  In the course of that move, the door of the cabinet in which I kept the TV swung wild and got broken.  Jim felt bad about that, because he’d failed to stop the accident in time, and offered to come over to fix it.

He did, and I offered to make him dinner as a thank you.  When Jim left, I realized that his was the first visit since Roger’s death where I didn’t suddenly get overwhelmed.  We almost more drifted into dating than making a deliberate choice.  I’ll admit, as much as I liked Jim, I had a lot of healing to do, so it was good that he had a field project that took him out of town most of the week.

But one thing was certain, he remained, and remains, the only person who has become part of my privacy.  I’m glad, and I am incredibly grateful as well.

FF: Come By It Honestly

Persephone Dreams Hexapuma Dreams

This week I finished reading the mass market proofs of A New Clan (written by me in collaboration with David Weber). The mass market edition will be out in May, right alongside my solo Aurora Borealis Bridge, also in mass market.

My reward for a job well done?  I’ve pulled in the manga of Saiyuki Reload, the Burial Arc from out outdoor library, because I want to compare and contrast who the story was handled in the print (manga) form, in comparison to the anime, which I just watched.  Apparently, I come by my English Professor tendencies naturally, since I’m doing this for fun.

For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.  The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.  And it’s also a great place to tell me what you’re reading. 

Completed:

A New Clan by Jane Lindskold and David Weber.  Page proofs for mass market edition. This book was released in June 2022, and is currently available in hard cover, e-book, and audiobook formats

In Progress:

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss.  Audiobook.  A book oddly lacking in suspense because the characters keep breaking the fourth wall, so weak on plot, but strong on characterization. 

From Sawdust to Stardust: the Biography of DeForest Kelly, Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy by Terry Lee Rioux.  I’ve hit the post-Star Trek years.  Interesting.

Also:

Reading the latest Smithsonian.  Almost done.  Some excellent, well-balanced articles in this one.