Jane Lindskold's Blog, page 87

FF: Preconceptions

I think I’m finally “all better.”  Well, except for autumn allergies, and those are simply to be taken in stride.

[image error]

Kel Loves to Model

For those of you just discovering this feature, 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.

Recently Completed:

Clouds of Witnesses by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Audiobook.  Re-read.  A book about how preconceptions are, perhaps, the greatest cloud of all.

Jingo by Terry Pratchett.  Now that I think about it, another book about preconceptions.

Wolf’s Rain, volume 2, by BONES, Keiko Nobumoto.  Art by Toshitsugu Iida.  Manga.  Completes the tale.  I’ve heard the anime also has a less than full ending, but I’ll admit disappointment that the manga (which came later) didn’t fill it in more.  However, some of the best manga wolves I’ve seen.

Fairytale, volumes 6 and 7, by Hiro Mashima.  Manga.

In Progress:

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett.  Read this soon after it came out in 2001, and maybe once since.  Time (heh-heh) for another read.

Before Midnight by Rex Stout.  Audiobook.  A Nero Wolfe tale.  Oddly enough, time is a major element in this tale.  Synchronicity?

Also:

Finished my review of Through Wolf’s Eyes and will be padding along.

TT: Scratch, Scratch

ALAN: Now Jane, you were going to tell me about the course of injections (or “shots” as you called them) that you were offered to combat your allergies.

JANE: Don’t Brits use the term “shots”?  Interesting…  But too much of a tangent.  I’ll stick to the point.  Get it?  Point???

[image error]

Prompt and Response

ALAN: Ouch! Nice bit of blunt speaking there…

JANE: Very punny…  Right!  Now to the topic.

After the test I mentioned last week, the doctor suggested I try shots.  Since I was hoping to avoid taking daily medication and I’m not at all worried about shots, I agreed.

I went in for my first shot the day before leaving for World Fantasy Con.  I mention this because this was late October, considered an “off” season for allergies.  I was astonished how little material was in the syringe, and therefore dismissed the fact that I felt a little “off” as trip-related stress.

When we came back, I went in for my second shot.  That evening, my arm started itching, deep down, almost as if under the skin.  I ran my fingers over the surface and felt a bump forming.  I was breaking out in hives.

ALAN: Oh, that sounds ominous. Were the hives particularly bad?

JANE: Oh, they were very bad.  I ended up with hives everywhere on the exterior of my body except for the insides of my mouth, my eyes, and my privates.  They lasted for five and a half months, during which time I also ran a constant low-grade fever.  Except when going out – which I did as infrequently as possible – I wore loose baggy clothing.

Probably the only good thing to come out of this was that I learned which allergy drugs worked best for me, because I could count how many new hives formed if I changed to a less effective drug.

ALAN: That sounds like a very severe reaction, though I do know from personal experience that very small amounts of allergens can cause reactions out of all proportion to their size, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.

JANE: No one knows for sure why I reacted so intensely.  The best conclusion I was offered is that, unlike most people, I basically don’t have an “off season,” so the level of allergens in my system is always high, and the shots – minute as they were – were enough to kick my system over into a severe reaction.

ALAN: Since I get allergy attacks all year round, I suspect I don’t have an “off-season” either.

JANE: Needless to say, this reaction meant no more shots for Jane.  I manage my allergies with a careful routine of pills, drops, and inhaler.  (I have allergy-related asthma.)  Most of the time I’m fine, and very, very grateful to live in the twenty-first century.

ALAN: I do pretty much the same. When I get the first symptoms of an allergy attack, I take anti-histamine pills and use a nasal spray. They don’t have much effect on the first day, which is often quite severe. But eventually the drugs kick in and the second day is generally quite mild by comparison and by the third day I’m usually back to normal. But that first day is always a killer. I quickly get dehydrated because I never stop blowing my nose (you wouldn’t believe how much tea I drink) and I stagger through my day like a zombie.

JANE: Your dog, Jake, has allergies, doesn’t he?  How is his treatment going?  He gets shots, right?

ALAN: That’s right. I noticed that he was getting lots of rashes on his tummy and between his toes and, of course, he was constantly licking them (because they itched) which just made things worse. Generally the rashes ended up infected and he had to have antibiotics for the infection and steroid tablets for the rash. Very unpleasant for both of us.

Eventually, at a cost of nearly $500, I got him allergy tested. It’s a similar procedure to what you and I went through except that it involves taking a blood sample which is then screened against a range of allergens. Apparently it’s quite a complex procedure. There aren’t any places in New Zealand that can do it – his blood sample had to be shipped to a lab in America, one of the very few in the world that actually offers the service.

Just like you and me, Jake turned out to be very allergic to pollen, mainly from grasses and daisies and also something called Mugwort, whatever that might be.

JANE: Mugwort?  Aren’t those people who can’t use magic?  No, sorry.  That’s “muggles.”  How are you treating Jake’s allergies?

ALAN: For an extra $300 the lab formulated a vaccine specifically tailored to his allergens and he is currently in the middle of a course of injections which will go on for another four months or so. There is no guarantee that this will work – the success rate is only about 65%. But since the alternative is a lifetime of antibiotics and steroids, we decided the risk was worth taking.

JANE: I think you made a well-reasoned choice.   I hope Jake is in the group for whom the shots – I mean, “injections” – work.

I’ve only had one pet with allergies, my very first cat, Gwydion.  I acquired him as an amiable nine-month or so old stray cat.  After I got him to my apartment, I realized why he didn’t have a home.  Anything he ate came out liquid, including what should be solid.  At that point, my former roommate, Kathy, was working for a kind vet, who sent a device to take a stool sample.

Never having had a cat before, I had no idea how solid a cat’s stool should be, and tried to take a sample of the stinky, liquid goo.  Eventually, we got enough for a test which confirmed no worms or other parasites.  After other tests, the conclusion was food allergies.  Eventually, we found that Gwydion could eat only two foods without bad reactions.  And so that’s what he ate until his death at nineteen.

Have you had any experience with food allergies?  Human or otherwise?

ALAN: Yes – I am strongly allergic to a common food group and highly intolerant of a very common staple food item. I’ll tell you about them next time, unless an allergy attack gets in the way.

WW: The Short of It

Back in January, as I celebrated the seventh anniversary of the Wednesday Wanderings, I mentioned that with my transforming schedule, there might be times when my Wednesday Wandering post would be less ambitious.

[image error]

Happy Hollyhock

Guess what?  This week is one of those times.

Probably as a result of being sick for close on two weeks, I’ve fallen behind on a bunch of routine jobs.  The one thing that I haven’t let slide is my writing.  However, even that has taken up a greater percentage of my reduced pool of energy, and I’m not writing as much.  It’s frustrating, but when the writing goes well the high is well worth the effort.

As I begin to feel better, I’m adding back into my life many neglected tasks, none of which make for fascinating Wanderings, unless you want to discuss whether or not you balance your checkbooks.

The long and short of it is, I’m very busy but rather boring right now.

In fact, I’d welcome any questions that I might use as seeds for future Wanderings, because I envision this happening again as a few self-imposed deadlines take up more of my creativity.

On other fronts, despite almost no rain, the garden is doing well.  The wildlife is okay, although the toads are less visible now that they need to dig in to stay damp.

On that note, have a hollyhock and envision me busily typing away!

Catch you next week…

FF: Healing Words

As I slowly get over the con crud from hell, ’ve been doing a lot of reading in folklore and mythology.  Short articles are a good fit with a foggy brain.

[image error]

Kel Says “Cat Reign!”

For those of you just discovering this feature, 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.

Recently Completed:

Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon.  Middle-grade,  lightly humorous ,fantasy.  I very much enjoyed.  I’ll be reading more of this author’s work.

Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie.  Audiobook.  One of her best non-Poroit, non-Marple tales.

Fairytale, volume 4, by Hiro Mashima.  Manga

Wolf’s Rain, volume 1, by BONES, Keiko Nobumoto; art by Toshisugu Tida.  Manga.  In an twist on the usual story development, this is adapted from an anime, and the artist and writer are not the same person.

In Progress:

Clouds of Witnesses by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Audiobook.

Also:

Have returned to my re-read of Through Wolf’s Eyes.  It’s been so long, I can almost read it as a stranger might.

TT: Ah-Choo!

JANE: So, Alan. We’ve been very literary of late. What high-brow topic shall we discuss next?

[image error]

A Little Hoarse

ALAN: I have no idea. I’m currently having a massive sneezing fit from an allergy attack and my brain has turned to tomato soup

JANE:  Wow, to tomato soup?  That’s amazing.  I have allergies, too, but I’ve missed the bonus tomato soup element.

It just occurred to me that I’m dealing with autumn allergies, and you’re dealing with spring allergies.  Mine include tumbleweed, amaranth, and the omnipresent juniper.  What’s getting you?

ALAN: I don’t really know. My doctor calls it Non-Specific Rhinitis, which means that I sneeze a lot, nobody knows why, and every so often I turn into a rhinoceros. Now that he has given it a name, he feels that his job is done.

You seem to know exactly what causes your allergies to flare up. How did you find out?

JANE: I had a test – or perhaps what should be termed several tests, since what they did was draw a grid on my back and then poke me with tiny bits of various allergens to see where I reacted.  I still remember the nurse coming in, examining my back, and saying “Well, your pets are safe.  No reaction to any animal allergens.”

I was actually a little angry, since merely being allergic would not be reason for me to get rid of my animals – not if I could find a way (short of death) to manage the allergies, at least.

I’m also very attached to where I live.  Much of what I’m allergic to is common west of the Mississippi, uncommon “back East,” so I suppose I could try moving.  However, I really love living in New Mexico.  So, as long as I can manage my allergies, I’ll stay in the land of tumbleweed, amaranth, and much, much juniper.

Have you ever been tested for your allergies?

ALAN: Yes, I have. The test was similar to yours but on my arm rather than on my back. The nurse was very nervous. I was her first ever allergy test patient and she was worried in case she made a mistake. She carefully painted my arm with various common allergens and then scratched each stripe with a needle. After about five minutes, various of the scratches came up in itchy red lumps. The nurse was ecstatic. “I’m doing it right!” she yelled, her face wreathed in smiles. I was very pleased for her, but much less pleased to have an itchy right arm. The nurse measured the size of my lumps, smothered me with soothing cream, and wrote a report for my doctor.

JANE: That sounds as if you should have received definite results.  Why was the diagnosis “Non-Specific”?

ALAN: The tests were actually a little inconclusive because the allergens were spread across such a broad spectrum that it was hard to be precise about exactly what was affecting me. The pollen stripe, for example, was a mixture of common pollens, so goodness knows exactly what it was that I was reacting to. The only positive thing that came out of it was that I definitely wasn’t allergic to the cats.

Springtime pollen is the worst culprit, as you might expect, but I get attacks all year round, so obviously there is something else going on though nobody is quite sure what.

When I get a bad reaction, Robin is always very sympathetic, but she herself does not suffer from allergies at all, so while she realises that an attack is very debilitating, she doesn’t really understand just how it feels.

What about Jim? Does he have allergies?

JANE: Yes, he does, both plant and animal.  When we started dating, several of our mutual friends informed me that Jim was allergic to cats.  At that point, I had six cats.  I decided that, no matter how appealing I found Jim, I wasn’t going to give up my cats – and he’d better know that.  So, one day when he was visiting, we had the following exchange:

Jane: “I’ve heard from several people that you’re allergic to cats.  I feel it’s only fair to make clear that my cats are a non-negotiable element.”

Jim: “I was allergic but, maybe because so many of my friends have cats, I seem to have gotten better over the years.  Still, if I start having problems, well – I hate needles, but I’d get shots.”

ALAN: I’d certainly do the same as Jim. Fortunately I’ve never had to. Whatever it is that sets me off, it isn’t connected with the balls of fur that I wait on hand and foot.

JANE: I will admit, that exchange was when I started thinking Jim might be more than another pretty face.  And Bast, Goddess of Cats, was kind to him.  In the twenty-some years we’ve been together, he’s never had a bad reaction (even though a couple of our cats have decided that they must sleep on his pillow) and so he’s been able to avoid shots.

ALAN: It has been suggested to me that I might save myself a lot of misery by embarking on a course of injections to de-sensitise me to whatever it is that sets me off, but I’ve never bothered. My allergy attacks aren’t very frequent – perhaps once every month or so if I’m going through a bad period. So even though they do tend to knock me out and dehydrate me (I once used up six boxes of tissues in a single day; at least I think I did. My tomato soup brain was losing the ability to count…), I’ve never taken the suggestion any further.

Have you ever considered a course of de-sensitising injections?

JANE: Oh, that’s a complicated answer.  Can I save the response for next time?

ALAN: That’s probably a good idea – I’ve just come to the end of a box of tissues, and I need a cup of tea…

Enough Time

I caught something vicious and determined at Bubonicon, and have been in the world of sore throat, headache, wobbly, sniffly, exhausted, definitely-not-the-best for over a week.

[image error]

Enough Time

As I struggled to drag myself through my obligations, the one thing I wanted to do more than anything else was write.  If I could slip into that other place for a while I would feel – if not precisely “better” – not so bad.

On Tuesday, as I downed hot drink after hot drink (fresh limeade was best), I found myself thinking, “But I don’t think I’ll have the energy to sit at the computer for very long.  I guess this is going to be a wasted day for writing.”

Then I found myself thinking about the SnackWrites panel I’d been on at Bubonicon and, how much I was able to write in just five minutes.

(You can find two of the exercises we did here.)

I realized that having a prompt had helped, so I designed a prompt for myself by re-reading what I’d done the day before, then turning the material over and over in my cloudy brain until I knew where I needed to start.

This worked surprisingly well.  I didn’t write a lot on Tuesday, but I did write.  I tried the same tactic on Wednesday, then on Thursday, and each day I managed to write a little.

The most memorable day was Friday.   After struggling and struggling to write, I stretched out on the sofa and thought myself through all of that day’s false starts.  I nearly drifted off to sleep a couple of times, but eventually I realized my “prompt” was wrong.  After about a half hour, I hauled myself upright, turned on the computer, and wrote a thousand words in about a half hour.

So, why not just take “sick leave”?  After all, I don’t have a deadline for this piece.

Well, as I mentioned above, writing was a great way to escape feeling horrible.  Another advantage was that I never “lost touch” with my piece.  I’ve talked to many writers about how, when you’re away from a project more than a couple of days, it often takes as many days to get back into the mindset in which you’d been writing.

I’m accustomed to taking weekends “off,” so two days wouldn’t have mattered much, but if I’d taken a week, it’s likely I would have needed another week to get back into the flow.  Since even as I write this, I’m still battling the bug, I’d be feeling pretty discouraged.  Instead, I’m already designing today’s prompt, part of which is going to involve some research reading.

“Not enough time” is one of the most common excuses I hear for people never starting a beloved project – whether writing or drawing or singing or whatever.  I’m learning that five minutes can be enough, and that that thirty can be a good day’s work.

Now…  Off to down another mug of hot limeade and then to write!

FF: Reading as Medicine

I caught some sort of con-crud this past weekend at Bubonicon (sore throat, fever, aches, congestion) and have turned to stories as part of my treatment.

[image error]

Ogapoge Wonders He Could Be a Minion

For those of you just discovering this feature, 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.

Recently Completed:

A Dangerous Place by Jaqueline Winspear.  Audiobook.  Masie Dobbs and the Spanish Civil War.

Fairytale by Hiro Mashima.  Manga.  Volumes 1-3.  So far this is good enough I’ll try more, but it may not hold me.

They Came to Bagdad by Agatha Christie.  Audiobook.  Spy thriller with an ironical awareness of some of the conventions of the genre.

In Progress:

 Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon.  Middle-grade,  lightly humorous fantasy.  So far, I’m enjoying.

Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie.  Audiobook.  One of her best non-Poroit, non-Marple tales.  Built around Christie’s thesis that catching criminals is not about punishing the wicked, but rather about protecting the innocent.

Also:

Beginning of the month has brought in some new magazines.

TT: The Thin Line Between Fact and Fiction

JANE: All right, Alan.  Last time you tantalized me with the promise of creative non-fiction that works – and when it crosses the line into pure fiction.  Even better, you promised that your examples would come from the works of the same writer.

[image error]

Fact or Fiction?

Go for it!

ALAN: Here I go…

I think Hunter S. Thompson was particularly good at creative non-fiction. Hells Angels is a brilliant piece of non-fiction about the eponymous gangs, and I am also rather fond of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 which is a superb analysis of the political environment in America during the 1972 Presidential campaign. Both books contain elements that might be regarded as fictional by a purist, but they are never intrusive and Thompson never loses sight of what he is trying to achieve.

JANE: Could you give me an example?

ALAN: Some of the dialogue in the Hells Angels book flows so smoothly and illustrates the points that Thompson wants to make so well that I can’t help thinking that he’s made it up (at least a little bit). But I may be doing him a disservice here – the whole thing may well be accurate reportage; it’s very hard to tell. Certainly it reads well, it presents itself as journalism, and it tells you everything that you need to know (and probably a bit more than you wanted to know) about the Angels.

JANE: Okay…  I can see why you’d consider this a good use of creative non-fiction techniques.  What about the other one?

ALAN: The campaign book is a bit easier to analyse. Thompson’s style had relaxed a lot by then. “When a man gives up drugs he wants big fires in his life—all night long, every night…”

At one point, worried about the possibility of being mugged, Thompson notes that “I immediately called Colorado and had another Doberman shipped in”. This I seriously doubt. How many spare Dobermans does a man keep on the off chance that he might need to ship one across country at a moment’s notice and at vast expense? Nevertheless it’s a very effective image that perfectly conveys the paranoia of the time and place.

JANE: But he’s not putting words or thoughts in anyone else’s mind, so I don’t think he’s straying beyond the borders of non-fiction.  In fact, I’d guess he probably meant this as a metaphor.

ALAN: It’s definitely not a metaphor – earlier in the book he has a section about his Dobermans. They are very real and fully equipped with teeth.

JANE: I cheerfully surrender to your superior knowledge!

ALAN: On the other hand, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is almost pure fiction masquerading as fact and should be taken with the last pinch of salt that you didn’t put in your stew for fear of spoiling it…

JANE: Ah! I wonder how many people knew to draw the line or if, because they were conditioned by the previous books, they took Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as factual as well.

ALAN: Anyone who believes that a man can ingest that quantity of drugs without killing himself probably isn’t living in the real world anyway. The book does contain real people and real incidents, but they are buried so deeply in the tissue of lies that he surrounds them with that they may as well not be there at all – for example, Hunter’s Samoan attorney, though not mentioned by name in the book, was actually the Spanish-American lawyer Oscar Zacosta and Hunter’s characterisation of him was not quite as exaggerated as you might at first suppose… If you are curious, you can look him up on Wikipedia.

But really it’s best to just relax and read the book as a novel – it’s certainly one of the funniest stories I’ve ever read.

JANE: It’s interesting that your examples are from what, at the time they were written, would be considered contemporary material.  By the purest coincidence, there is an article in the Summer 2017 Author’s Guild Bulletin titled “What Every Writer Needs to Know About Defamation.”  In this, two lawyers and author Susan Cheever (who has made her mark writing biographies and memoirs, as well as novels) talked about what can happen when you put words in other people’s mouths.

It’s a long article, full of legal detail, so I won’t attempt to summarize it.  What I will say is that, if I were tempted to write creative non-fiction, especially about people who are still alive or still have immediate family alive, I would be extremely cautious about putting words in their mouths or thoughts in their heads.

ALAN: Probably that’s good advice – though America is notoriously litigious. In the UK (and here in New Zealand as well), you can get away with a lot of things that might cause problems in the US.

JANE: Actually…  but no.  I won’t go into it.  That would involve too much summarizing of the article.  Let’s just say, you’d be surprised at the stringency of the legal code outside of the U.S.  Many European nations protect the rights of the dead as well as of the living.

That’s why I’d be careful about putting words into the mouth of someone – even if that person is no longer alive and therefore could be thought to be beyond defamation of character.

ALAN: The British author Michael Dobbs has written a trilogy of novels about Winston Churchill set just before, and during, WWII. I recommend them highly. They don’t always paint a flattering portrait of Churchill, and they are stuffed full of imaginary dialogue between real people. Clearly the books don’t step over the line into defamation (the novels are well thought of, and there has never been even a whisper of legal proceedings) but nevertheless, in light of what you say, I imagine that they must sail very close to it. So clearly there is a lot of leeway to play with…

JANE: Churchill didn’t always paint a flattering picture of Churchill – and I’m sure his family was aware of this, and knew what might come up if a lawsuit for defamation was raised.

As I said, I’d be careful.  I didn’t say no one should ever try it!

ALAN: I wonder if any of the comments will take the form of an imaginary dialogue between you and me?

JANE: That would be amusing!

Running the Rat Race

As I mentioned last week, this past weekend was Bubonicon.  I’m happy to report that it was an intense weekend, but a very good one.

[image error]

My First Panel of Bubonicon

For those of you who don’t know Bubonicon, I should mention that the mascots are Perry and Terry Rodent, so the reference to rats in the title of this piece is not in any way derogatory to the convention – far from it!

I had two panels on Friday.  This may not sound like much until you fill in that the first one was at 5:00 pm (Is the Stand-Alone Novel Dead?). This was followed by the Opening Ceremonies, which are a major event at Bubonicon, and not to be missed if at all possible.  I then had a dinner meeting before racing off to my second panel (Facts Behind the Fantasy: Research Impact) at 7:30 pm.

The panels were fun, and the meeting productive.  I have now met Linda Caldwell, who did the cover design for the new e-books of Smoke and Mirrors and When the Gods Are Silent.  Along with Emily Mah Tippetts, who is my e-pub guru, we discussed a host of future projects, both reprints and original fiction.

Then we went home to discover the pump on our little pond had stopped working…  But it was too late and too dark to fix it, so we admired the toads who were enjoying the still water and went to bed.

Saturday I was on the first panel of the day (Felines and Feline Aliens in SF/F).  This was very exciting for me, because I had my fan moment being on a panel with C.J. Cherryh, whose innovative aliens and alien civilizations are a seminal influence on the field.  I also had the chance to be on a panel with Ursula Vernon, who was back at Bubonicon, this time as Toastmaster.  And I meowed my introduction, which probably showed that I was already punchy!

Then Jim and I had lunch with writers (and dear friends) Steve (S.M. Stirling) and Janet Stirling.  Steve is amusing that early in the day (11:00 a.m. is early for Steve and thanks to an alarm clock error he’d been awakened at 10:00.)  After Steve toddled sleepily off to do his noon reading, Jim and I had a chance to tour the Art Show and a bit of the Dealer’s Room before my reading at 1:15.

This was very well attended.  Thanks to all of you who stayed to shiver in that very cold room!  I read my yet-unpublished short story “Can’t Live,” and took a few questions.  At that time, I revealed for the first time that forthcoming projects will include a new, self-published, Firekeeper novel…

(Did you read far enough to learn that?)

First, however, will come Asphodel, probably early in 2018, featuring cover art by Rowan Derrick, who also did the cover for my short story collection, Curiosities.  More on forthcoming projects in future Wanderings!

Fairly soon after my reading, Jim took off to buy a new impeller for our pump.  He was reassured that, given the number of plants thriving in the pond, the fish should be okay.

He returned in time to go with me to my next panel, SnackWrites: Writing Exercises. Moderated by Josh Gentry, host of the SnackReads site, this panel provided me, Robert (Bob) Vardeman, and M.T. (Matt) Reiten the challenge of having five minutes to show what we could write in response to a set prompt that we had not seen in advance.  The audience was encouraged to participate, and many did.  We had lots of fun and proved that five minutes is enough to get some decent writing done.

Whew!

We chatted with a few people after, then raced off to catch the second part of Artist Guest of Honor Elizabeth Leggett’s excellent presentation.  I always learn something about the creative process when I go to these – far more, honestly, than I do from most writer’s panels, given that I’ve been writing professionally now for some twenty-five years.  In her panel, Elizabeth offered a bonus lesson on perseverance as she showed just how many revisions she did on just one piece.

After that, it was time for the Mass Signing, followed by dinner with our much-missed friends, Mike and Yvonne (who moved to Virginia several years ago).  We added Ursula Vernon and her husband, Kevin Sonney, at the last minute.  However, as I had hoped, the group chemistry was great and I think a good time was had by all.  I certainly had a blast.

Sunday morning, Jim fixed the pond pump.  The fish were grateful.  I picked a lot of string beans and eggplant…  Garden do not understand that you’re at a convention.  They keep growing.

Sunday, once again, I was on the first panel of the day (Pros Who Game: Gamemastering &Writing).  Then we went to the excellent interview of the two guests of honor (Sherwood Smith and C.J. Cherryh) by Ursula Vernon.  We had to leave a little before the end to get upstairs to help set up and run the Afternoon Tea.

The Tea was, as always, delightful.  This was my first attempt at judging the “hats and gloves” – a sort of friendly “hall costume” show, for which we give prizes donated by the Tea Team.  Betsy James was a good coach, and I think I’d enjoy doing it again.

After Tea clean-up, we stayed for closing ceremonies, and then stayed to chat for about 45 minutes with Mike and Yvonne.  Thus endth Bubonicon for another year…

On Monday, we discovered that Ursula and Kevin couldn’t get home because their flight is through Houston, so we picked them up at noon and went out to show them something of Albuquerque.  We hit the Rattlesnake Museum, then several shops in Old Town.  After that, we went by the zoo, where the much-desired the wombats and Tasmanian devils cooperated by being out and active.

Now it’s back to the “normal” week of writing.  On Friday, I left my characters about to discover some rather world-changing information.  Time to find out what they think of it.

Joy!

FF: Pugs, Princesses, and War

Bubonicon starts this weekend, so on top of everything else, I’m preparing for my panels.

[image error]

Battlecat Meets Battlepug

For those of you just discovering this feature, 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.

Recently Completed:

How Much For Just the Planet? by John M. Ford.  A completely insane Star Trek novel about a planet that doesn’t want to join either the Federation or the Klingon Empire.  I’ve laughed out loud so many times that Jim has put dibs on this for when I’m done.

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale.  Audiobook.  Pretty good, but really didn’t hold up without the illustrations.

Battlepug, volume 1-5, by Mike Norton, Allen Passalaqua, and Chris Crank.  Graphic novel.  I came for the quirky concept of a classic Conanesque hero riding a giant pug and stayed for the story.  Really liked!

In Progress:

A Dangerous Place by Jaqueline Winspear.  Audiobook.  Masie Dobbs and the Spanish Civil War.

Fairytale by Hiro Mashima.  Manga.  Volumes 1-2.  During a recent visit to Texas, my nephews mentioned this.  As it’s the only one of the “big four” (as they called them) that I hadn’t read at least some, I decided to give it a shot.

Also:

I’m writing every spare moment I can find, which isn’t giving much time for “also”!