Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 7
September 1, 2022
Even Worse Spelling
Aside from that, the history of this world parallels ours. Here is English as we speak it, but not as we write it.
Unsar Fader, hwarh irht in hebune,
hailagodaz biwje thin namo
Thin kuningadom kweme
Thin willjan biwje dan
An erthu alls' hit ist in hebune.
Imagine school children having to learn that a between vowels is pronounced as /v/, and all the fiddly non-pronounced word endings. Then, they'll have to remember that in "hailagodaz," the i, middle a, g, and ending -az are all silent! Why is /art/ spelled with an and a ? You just have to memorize it.
Then of course some good-hearted person will suggest a spelling reform. What if we at least omitted all the silent letters?
U'r Fader, hwa' irht in hebun'
Hail'od' bi' thi' nam'
Thi' ku'ng'dom kwem'
Thi' will' bi' dan
An erth' a's' 'it is' in hebun'
Much better.
August 31, 2022
New Website
Yes, I am going to slowly move to my new website. I plan to keep this old one up until at least February 2023, though, so don’t worry. What do you think of the new place?
August 19, 2022
My Worldcon Schedule
I thought you might want to know I’m going to be “at” the virtual Chicon worldcon in two weeks! If you’re planning to be there too, come find me.
Here’s my schedule:
The Biology of Fantasy Creatures (panel)
Friday September 2nd at 11:30am CDT Airmeet 1
Building a Better Monster (speculative evolution workshop)
Saturday September 3rd at 8:30am CDT Airmeet 1
Reading
Saturday September 3rd at 11am CDT Airmeet Readings
Virtual Table Talk
Sunday September 4th at 11:30 AM CDT Airmeet Table Talks
What Will the Aliens Look Like? (panel)
Monday September 5th at 11:30 am CDT Airmeet 2
August 16, 2022
July newsletter: The Cicada
So, there I was, stalking the East Aegean cicada*.
Its insistent, gearbox cough rose out of the electric pulse of the other insect life on the hillside behind the restaurant in northern Greece.
When the buzzing stopped, I knew I was close, but it still took me another minute of looking before I picked it out against the bark of a sycamore**. The bug’s spotted olive-gray shell matched the tree perfectly, but its symmetry gave it away.
I called over Maggie and her cousin and pointed the cicada out to them. They went off to find a half dozen cast-off molts. I showed them the folded, piercing mouth-parts, telling the girls how the nymphs suck sap from tree roots until they climb out of the ground and molt into adults with wings but no mouths. If that’s a metaphor, I don’t want to use it.
And I don’t have to! Doing research for this newsletter, I found out that at least some adult cicadas do feed.
Anyway, so do I. The reason we were at this restaurant in the first place is because I was able to ask the saleswoman at the Alistrati Cave gift shop for recommendations. No hiding in a corner with my phone. No googling as I reinforced my fear of human interaction by imagining that she’d probably be a jerk anyway. I bought some pomegranate liquor to sweeten the deal, then just asked the woman for lunch recommendations.
“On the back of your ticket there are three restaurants,” she said in English. “I recommend two of them. Do you have children?”
Boy, did I ever. Two daughters, a niece and a nephew. And don’t forget all the adults, who just wanted a moment’s peace.
“Then go to Achilleas. It has a garden with a gate that shuts. The other place is on the road. You have to spend your whole meal worrying that the children will run into traffic.”
Yes, there’s google maps, but google helpfully calls Achilleas “Taverna.” I don’t think we’d have found it without a human’s directions, and we might have been scared off by the lack of air conditioning.
Instead, we had a real experience. The staff (two owners plus one friend) were delighted to see us and my sausage was great. We could indeed take our eyes off the children without worrying. They explored the garden and found a drowned cicada nymph. I had a conversation with the owners in a mixture of English and Bulgarian about how their son used to be a doctor in Plovdiv.
When they asked where I was from, I said, “Bulgaria.” Knock on wood, but I’m getting the hang of this vacation thing.
No, there’s not much news this month. I’m on vacation. I sent Wealthgiver to beta readers (contact me if you want to be included). Then, rather than try to muscle writing time into my family’s enthusiastic beach schedule, I just made sure I ate, drank coffee, and slept sufficiently.
I swam, I sketched, I went along for the ride. While my kids picked up kittens and put them down again, I watched the sunlight fade from the juniper-blanketed hills and listened to the soft, moronic cooing of the collared doves. (Guh!!)
I did read a whole lot, though.
Warrior Mom, by J.J. Virgin – heart but no theory
This is the autobiography of the mother of a critically injured teenage boy. It so happens that the author was a somewhat famous dieting guru before her son’s accident, and she had a lot of the skills and infrastructure in place to give us a detailed look at her experience. Most powerful is the author’s examination of herself, and the changes she needed to make in order to give her son the best chance of recovery. The medical details are anecdotal, though. I think Virgin probably did something right, but I’m skeptical about the fish oil. I would have liked to see her team up with a doctor or hospital administrator to give an analytical balance to the emotional story. The emotional story, though, felt real.
The Green Hills of Africa, by Ernest Hemingway – what I did on my summer vacation
Hemingway starts this book with a foreword telling the reader that this book was an experiment to see if he could write an autobiography as interesting as his fiction. I haven’t actually read anything else by Hemingway yet, but now I plan to.
The Green Hills of Africa is as fun as a lot of novels. We follow Hemingway as he gets frustrated trying to shoot kudus, grumpy about other authors, envious of other hunters, and thoughtful about himself. I wouldn’t want to go on a safari with the man, but I do respect the hell out of him. Writing, he says, puts you somewhere you’ve never been, and nobility is treating someone else as if they are part of your tribe. I’ll remember that.
Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich – cautiously-worded but nonetheless honest
This is a fascinating book about what improvements in DNA sequencing have revealed about the history of our species. Populations today are mixes of ancient populations, which themselves were mixes of even more ancient populations and so on, all the way back to when the earliest humans hybridized with other hominids, not just twice but many times. Inspiring for any writer of speculative fiction 
I also appreciate the finicky job Reich does with his talk about modern human evolution, including IQ. He argues against both racism and censorship, arguing that prejudice is bad, and facts are precious.
Dreadgod by Will Wight – a pleasure as always
What a great summer read! I by the pool while the kids played and let myself get carried away by Lindon’s Big Problems.
Structurally, this book was unbalanced. I would have liked to see more of the main bad guy (a tiger who controls dreams) before his climactic battle. And then, after the battler, there’s still a whole lot of book left to read. The Big Problem, though, is good and chewy. What do you do when the most powerful people in the world are causing the danger from which they protect us?
Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin – lacking depth.
The thesis of this book is that one kind of life-organization strategy does not fit all people. Instead, there are four, defined by how a person relates to internal and external discipline. I appreciate the attempt to get a nuanced view of the lives of different kinds of people, but I’m not convinced that the four tenancies described by the author are the best ways to do so. I would have liked either more empirical evidence or deeper personal stories.
Reality 36 by Guy Haley – a virtual world that I almost cared about
I first found Haley with A Champion of Mars, which I loved. Reality 36 is fun and out there in a similar way, but much more scattered. Like many books about the middle-near future, it tries to show us what the whole world is like, occasionally losing track of characters and plot. Haley does have something interesting to say about different ways of being a legal person (human, AI, brain-scan, and more). I ended up more interested in the back-story of the real-feeling virtual worlds and their embargo than in the main story, itself.
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt – is 10 years old
If one excised all the psychological studies that failed to replicate in the 2010s, how much of The Righteous Mind would be left? Something, I think, but we’d need more.
The author’s central messages are that the conscious mind is a rider on an elephant (the much more powerful forces of moral intuition), and these intuitions come in five “flavors.” It seems like a good model to me.
More unsatisfactorily, Haidt spends a lot of time talking about how people are not moved by evidence and reason, as the reader is supposed to reason based on the evidence he provides. That seems like a problem.
If you’re interested, I recommend the thorough and entertaining review I read on ACX.
The Vindication of Man by John C. Wright
I have to say, I was disappointed in this book, the 5th in the Count to the Eschaton series. That’s because book 4 was very, very good, balancing personal and historical stories and keeping its promises in a way that book 5 did not.
Reading the book, I wondered often at it’s alarming lack of editing. Someone needed to tell the Wright that certain events of series-defining import had to occur on screen. And there were several obvious typos. It’s as if Tor took the rough draft of the manuscript and published it as is.
I think I’ll still read the next book though.
*Cicada mordoganensis. I can’t be certain of this identification, but the song and color seem to match.
**Platanus orientalis, also called a plane tree. In Bulgarian, chinar.
See you next month, everyone.
July 11, 2022
June Newsletter: Zemen Gorge
So there I was, sliding through a series of lush and secret valleys. Pillars of stone passed my train, russet and glowing against steep, green slopes. Under us swung the river Struma, cupped by willows, uncrossed by any human tracks but ours. I didn’t pay much attention to it all because I was having an interesting conversation.
Pavlina’s maternal grandfather comes from a small village near the town of Kyustendil, on the borders of Serbia and North Macedonia. In the summer, It is Expected that we spend our weekends in this village, where the cherries and lizards are plentiful, but there is little internet. And why are you leaving Sofia on Friday evening? Why not Friday morning or Thursday evening? Why do you have to go back to Sofia on Monday?
I teach online classes, is why. I had stuff to do in Sofia. After losing sleep over the question of whether or not Pavlina would want to drive us back, I realized I could just take the train by myself. Liberty! Self-determination! I would spend a week alone in Sofia, cooking with eggplants*.
Man plans, God laughs. My three-legged journey to, from, and to Sofia again included buses, ticks, and a diesel train converted into a low-cost sauna by means of the energy of the sun and screws that locked all the windows closed. But let’s talk about the middle part, from Sofia to Kystendil.
The train was a modern electric, with air-conditioning and an aerodynamic nose. I sat near a father with his son, who played video games and did Yo-Yo tricks for an old, bearded man with a big plastic bottle of chicory stems and some clear fluid. The old man didn’t want to sit down, and had a discussion about liberty and self-determination with the conductor.
She hung around after that, chatting with the bearded man, the dad, and a man with a weed-whacker about the high quality of the train, the beauty of the view, and how nice it was to form human connections with one’s fellow travelers, rather than spend the whole trip staring at a screen.
I smiled at my cell phone. I did want to enjoy the scenery, and I had a general to-do of practicing small talk and connection-making. But there was a very interesting book review on ACX about homelessness in San Francisco.
Yes, I could have done better. At least I didn’t say no when the weed-whacker guy turned around in his seat and asked if I wanted to talk. It’s two and a half weeks later now, when I’m writing this, and he just called me to tell me his name is Ivan.
Ivan told me this rail line was built by the Germans with the intention of linking Sofia to Tirana and by ferry to Italy. The competing interests of large, far-off countries had intervened and now, the line ended in Kyustendil. Another step backward in the march of Balkan unity.
We talked more politics, agreeing about some things, disagreeing about others. I asked Ivan what the old man with the beard was doing with his bottle full of chicory and clear fluid. Ivan told me he didn’t judge.
When we transferred trains, I carried Ivan’s other bag so he could concentrate on his weed-whacker. We sat together.
That was the most beautiful part of the trip. The Zemen Gorge flashed past while Ivan told me how he had climbed those slopes, hunting mushrooms. Those mushrooms in the mountains, they were like steak! A man could live off them for a week. By the way, what’s manatarka in English? Between the two of us and Wikipedia, we found the answer, at least in the US, was “porcini.” Ivan sent a text to his girlfriend in California to tell her how to ask for this mushroom by name.
So now there’s at least three more people in the world who know how to translate manatarka into English. I learned about rail lines, mushrooms, and the cherry-only detox diet Ivan planned to carry out while he was whacking weeds at his own village. It was a good conversation.
We need connections. They don’t have to be deep. Destinies don’t have to be shaken. It’s just nicer to spend a train ride talking to someone rather than reading. It makes you feel like you have a place in the world, that you’re not at the mercy of implacable strangers. You’re a person, surrounded by your fellow people, and far more unites than divides you.
And if the community gets to be too much, you can hop on a train and escape.
In other news, I participated in this year’s Specposium, and gave a 10-minute presentation on Junction and how to set a story in a spec-bio world. You can watch it here.
On my Patreon, I posted the previously-published short story “Film Studies” (part of the Fellow Tetrapod universe), a bit of cursive cuneiform (courtesy of conlanger Yuk-tepat), an alternate-earth rotifer trying to be a fish, and, for patrons, chapter 7 of The World’s Other Side.
And! I finished this draft of Wealthgiver. It’s the fourth or “skin” draft, which means it should have everything it needs to live as a story, but is still a bit embarrassing. To make the manuscript ready for polite company, I need your help! Please tell me if you want to read this story about 19th century Balkan geopolitics and cave-Thracians. Tell me in the comments.
And I read some stuff:
The Five Levels of Attachment by Miguel Ruiz Jr. — a brief but thorough look at one problem people have
The Five Levels of Attachment isn’t as broad as the Four Agreements, but it is deep. It deals with specifically “attachment,” the way people accept a belief, make judgement based upon it, and identify with it. It gave me a good way of thinking about the difference between concern and zealotry, and I appreciated the author’s personal stories. I might have liked more stories from other people, but the book did its job.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik — folkloric history with real history and folklore
I was convinced to read this book by Abby Goldsmith’s review, which reassured me this isn’t another one of those dull fantasies “flavored” with pre-modern Eastern Europe. Spinning Silver takes place (please correct me if I’m wrong) in 13th-century Lithuania, with a new monarchy, Mongols at the doorstep, and everything. I wouldn’t call it alternate history, but Novik took her historical and folkloric source material seriously. These are real people, with real problems, and they really fall in love.
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith — more wholesome candy
McCall Smith now takes up residence in my head in the room next to Wodehouse. I might struggle to remember what happened in which book, but each one is a contented week spent with a dear friend. In this case, I don’t actually remember whether we found out what the guy is doing under Mma Ramotswe’s bed. But I do know she got her van back, and denied her trauma in the best Adlerian way.
Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller — marketing advice appealing to writers
A screen-writer-turned business coach, Miller presents his advice in a language I understand: the hero’s journey. It made sense to me. I can’t say yet if the advice in his book works, but I am taking it seriously enough to try. Expect an update in a few months.
The Humor Code by Peter McGraw and Joel Warner — an interesting premise heavily padded
I’m sure the proposal for this book was attractive: a scientist and a journalist travel the world to test the grand unified theory of humor. It just doesn’t quite work. The theory is interesting: humor is a benign violation. But the travel writing lacks depth and isn’t all that funny. I think it’s because the authors never really test the theory or themselves, or at least they don’t admit to it in the book. I would have liked to see more teeth and vulnerability.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde — the hell of consequence-freedom
A gorgeous, lush book. It embodies, as well as describes decadence. I wish we had seen more of Dorian’s corruption rather than just seeing the first and final steps, but maybe that’s just because I wanted more.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude — not as good as Anna Karenina
Haha! But I did stick with it for four months, all the way to the Second Epilogue, chapter 12. There were moments of genius (Napoleon’s ear-pulling and Platon’s cabbage-maggot come first to mind), but not as many as in Anna Karenina. Between were long, dry stretches of Tolstoy’s opinions about history. I’m glad Tolstoy dug more into characters and their relationships in his later writing.
The Heaven Makers by Frank Herbert — an odd little story that didn’t quite live up to its potential
The set-up is promising: immortal aliens are killed by nothing but boredom. They use Earth to generate interesting stories. They get messily, grotesquely entangled with the humans they’re manipulating. Then the story drops a lot of threads. The aliens are so powerful, it’s very hard for the human characters to have agency, and their victories seem hollow. The psychology is interesting, though.
Have a good July
*Pavlina is allergic to eggplants.
July 1, 2022
Beta-read Wealthgiver?
Wealthgiver is an alternate history romance with Balkan geo-politics and cave-Thracians.The playlist on SpotifyMore on WealthgiverSome of you might have read earlier drafts, but this is the first one that should work as a novel. It has a beginning, middle, and end, a cast of characters with personalities and problems, and no enormous holes in either…probably.It is my hope that you will help me find those holes. Tell me where things are missing, where things are too much, and what to change. When we push against each other, who knows where we’ll end up? So you know what you’re getting into: Wealthgiver is about 90K words long – that’s a normal-sized novel. I’m going to let this draft rest until January 2023, so you have 6 months to read it in. What do you think? Are you up for it? If you want to read Wealthgiver, tell me and I’ll send it to you in the format of your choice. My thanks in advance,Dan
June 29, 2022
The creatures of my alien planet Junction and how to turn...
The creatures of my alien planet Junction and how to turn speculative biology into a story.
Many thanks to Charlotte Bowman, Henry Thomas, and everyone at Specposium
June 17, 2022
May Newsletter: Korban
So there I was, walking home through the park with Maggie, singing.
We sailed away in the roughest of waters.
Row, me bully-boys, row!
But now we return in the most royal quarters.
And row, me bully-boys, row!
“Is that a song from Mossflower?” Maggie* asked. “Because it sounds like something Gonff would sing.”
I was overjoyed. It was a hard week.
(see the newsletter with all the pictures on my Patreon)
I say that I “got sick” six years ago. To be clearer, I got sick over the course of about a year. What happened on June 1st 2016 was that I underwent emergency surgery to remove a tumor from my large intestine.
I remember the way the sun shone as we left the hospital after the first visit. The smell of growing grass when I left the hospital after my first surgery. Then, before the second, telling Pavlina in my most pitiful voice that I wanted to go home. I remember much too well.
Those of you who’ve followed this newsletter for a while know how much I work on myself. This is why.
For the last six years, when the weather turned good, I curled up. At first, it was every sunny day between January and July. Over time, I managed to chip away at the problem, and this year I was free until the last three days of May.
On Monday the 30th, I sat working in my comfortable chair, and a pang of anxiety pierced my stomach. It felt like when you try to cross the street and a car speeds past your the tips of your shoe’s. You’re going to sleep and something crashes over in the kitchen. You’re sneaking a piece of cake and a family member appears. That squeeze. Danger!
In the past, I looked for reasons for the fear. Is there something wrong with my chair? Is this email I’m reading a threat? But after five revolutions around the carousel, I know what’s happening. My calendar has a yearly-recurring event called “Hard Week.”
It wasn’t just anxiety pangs. All the resistance had been cranked up. It seemed impossible to summon up the energy to do anything creative. I wanted nothing more than to curl up and wait for the world to get easier, but I had to go out.
There’s a Bulgarian tradition called korban (compare Arabic qurbān and Hebrew korbán). On the anniversary of something bad happening to you, you slaughter an animal and feed it to guests. I don’t know how to slaughter things, so I generally buy a lot of meat and invite guests over to eat it. This year (before the “hard time” set in) I set myself the challenge of going to a butcher and having a conversation with him about exactly what sort of meat I should use. In order to make sure I’d follow through even in the midst of my anguish, I tied the butcher trip to picking up Maggie from school.
It worked. I tried to sabotage myself, but Maggie needed to get picked up. I got out the door and made it to her and the two of us made it to the butcher’s before closing time.
“Do you want me to explain for you?” Maggie asked. She gets worried because Dad doesn’t speak Bulgarian well.
“No, I want to have a conversation with the butcher. This is how you get better.” I took out my phone. “Now, hold on while I look up the word for ‘recommend.'”
“Predporachvam.”
“Thank you.” We entered the store. “Zdraveite. Imate neshto da predporachate za korban?”
“Predporachvate,” Maggie corrected me.
The two butchers looked at each other. They explained that korban should be lamb or beef, and this shop sold pork. I should go next door.
“Told you so,” said Maggie.
Excellent. A fresh chance to get the conjugation of that verb right.
The butcher next door he told me that “with us” the meat for each korban should be the same as the first. So what had I eaten for my first korban?
I didn’t remember, but I did know that last year I’d had beef. Beef, I told him.
The butcher slid down his counter and indicated a hump of chuck the size of a basketball. How about this?
I needed to feed (4+1+2+2+(2?)=9~11), and I’d practiced the sentence: “Za edinaiset hora.”
“Edinaiset choveka,” corrected Maggie.
The butcher said it was usually about a quarter of a kilogram per person, so… he looked at me expectantly.
Zero point two five times eleven, but would Pavlina’s aunt and uncle even show up? What about her cousin and her husband? Remember that time you had a Fourth of July party and bought way too much ground beef? Danger. Danger.
The butcher was still looking at me.
I guessed a kilogram and a bit. Doing the math now, I see that was about half of what I needed, but the butcher just wrapped up the whole piece of chuck and sold it to me.
What I really wanted was for him to sell me some of that aged stuff he had hanging in the special chilling room, but at this point I was done. The attempt at math had used up the last of my willpower.
But then, leaving the shop, I felt an enormous surge of relief. I’d had a conversation. Success was still possible.
“Let’s get cherries,” I told Maggie. There was a green-grocer on the way to the subway station.
You don’t rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your practice. That’s why I work on myself. When life is light, I exercise. I set challenges. I build up the strength so that I can stay standing when the weight increases.
I could pick up Maggie and buy meat and cherries with her. I could walk to the metro station with her, swinging my bags and singing.
And it’s row, me bully-boys
We’re in a hurry, boys
We’ve got a long way to go.
We’ll sing and we’ll dance and bid farewell to France
And it’s row, me bully-boys, row.
In other news, I started a substack. So far, it’s just a place where I put these newsletters when they go public, but maybe it will be easier for you to read.
I attended my first of the monthly meetings of the Sofia ACX Rationalists. I was impressed by the other attendees, but even more by the fact that they spent half an hour arguing about the economy then voted to read a book about economics recommended by the guy they were arguing with (this one). If you’re interested (and you live in Sofia) why not come to the next meeting?
I got the second generation of conodonts done for my spec-evo art project and I’ve signed up to give a (virtual) presentation at this year’s Specposium. In early July, I’ll be talking about Junction (link), Interchange (link), and how to build a real story around the creatures you made up. You can join the discord and talk to me.
I finally got my “We are the Good” advertisement translated from English to Vessian (the made-up language of Wealthgiver). You can read it here.
I posted my short story Uncle in the Entrance (a sketch of what might grow into an urban fantasy set in Bulgaria) and the next chapter of The World’s Other Side on my Patreon, which you can see for a mere dollar.
And I am very nearly done with the “skin draft” of Wealthgiver. As I write this, I just have the made-up language to add in. I think I’ll be done with that by the end of June. Shall I then send the draft to you? Tell me if you’d like to beta-read Wealthgiver, a book about the difference between love and worship and how to build a nation out of cave-dwelling assassins.
Things I’ve liked this month:
Lost Horizon by James Hilton
A WWI vet, chilled by his experience with death, is kidnapped by a syncretic cult of Himalayan mystics with a human longevity project. Their home: the Pass through the Shang Mountain. Shang Ri La.
In its strange, contemplative way, this book is a lot like Wealthgiver. It’s not at all the sort of thing you’d expect to be popular, but perhaps it gave soldiers some comfort during World War 2.
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life by Jordan B. Peterson
Most self-improvement books I listen to with interest, curiosity, and occasionally frustration. Peterson’s is one of the few I also had fun with. I looked forward to reading it the way I usually look forward to reading novels.
Peterson begins with his harrowing (and, to me, relatable) story of multiple international health crises, giving dark depths to the advice that follows. This advice is on balancing order and chaos in one’s life, illustrated by anecdotes from Peterson’s personal experience and psychology practice. I might have wished for less alchemical symbolism, but I took his points. The fact that Person writes so little about the negative public reaction to his work shows both that he practices what he preaches, and that what he preaches works.
The Metropolitan Man by Alexander Wales
A well-researched and fun meditation on the nature of Superman, as seen through the eyes of his nemesis and his love interest. How does Superman do what he does? What rules govern his powers? How can you bear sharing a planet with him? Superman himself is never the point of view of a scene, which makes less a hero and more a god, a force of nature who weeps. There’s also an interesting illustration of the anguish caused by the combination of consequentialist utilitarianism and the awareness of opportunity cost.
Joy in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse
Jeeves bends the universe around his desire to go fishing. He does go fishing, then cleans up the mess so that all the right people marry each other.
Street of the Five Moons by Elizabeth Peters
I liked this one better than Trojan Gold, perhaps because the focus is tighter. Each scene collapses excitingly into the next, ratcheting up tension, but never becoming tense. There’s an art counterfeiting ring, a very big dog, beautiful people making love to each other (off screen), and mechanical gargoyles. I enjoyed the ride.
The Physicians of Vilnoc by Louis McMaster Bujold
I liked this one more than most of the Penric stories, to the extent that I recommend it if you can find it for free on Audible. There’s an interesting medical mystery and a some noticeable character development. There isn’t much else, but I didn’t feel as let down as in the “Orphans of Raspay.” Maybe Bujold is getting better at not promising more than can be delivered in a novella, or maybe my expectations were more reasonable this time. I still think her earlier work was better.
The Cunning Man by D.J. Butler
A fun and thoughtful dive into 1930s Utah (plus witchcraft). Hiram Woolley is a middle aged, fatherly witch (that is, a “cunning man”), burdened by the need to always do good. He manages, but man oh man. The other characters are all delightfully gray and human in their own moralities (except the demon, who is inhuman and definitely evil). I dug the practical folk magic, too.
Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual by Jocko Willink
This is a book written by a retired navy SEAL with a picture on the front of a scowling male face. I wasn’t at all prepared for the fuzzy underbelly Willink immediately exposed. There’s an anecdote where the author solved his conflict of personality with an arrogant entrepreneur by saying, “you know, I really admire you.” “I admire you too, bro!” I’ll admit a lump came to my throat when they hugged it out. Beyond the warm fuzzies, Willink does an excellent job of specifying techniques to take yourself out of the heat of the moment and do what needs to be done.
Have fun this month. Talk to you later.
*I’ve decided it’s okay for you to know my older daughter’s name.
June 14, 2022
What light what summer light
What light what summer light
That illuminates the leaves
While clouds hump gray
The pigeons clapping in their flight
From under eaves
Before the rain
May 28, 2022
We are the Good
(See things like this a week earlier by become my patron for $1)
This was supposed to be a trial run for Vessian, a fictional language that evolved from ancient Thracian, and a part of my current novel-in-progress Wealthgiver.
I say “supposed to” because I wrote the English version of the follow message almost a year ago. Let’s hope the Vessian parts of my novel will take less time.
~~~
We are the Good.
Ami emi Vessiti.
(WE-nom BE-1st-plur GOOD-nom-plur-def)
You can forget the lies you have heard about us; we are not evil.
Iu ivuss galti ta egmirat dravdzissi tsi tsepis zlivti be nami; me emi zuli.
(YOU-plur-nom BE-2nd-plur-aor CAN-past.part-plur TO FORGET-2nd-plur LIE-plur-acc-def THAT Be-2nd-plur HEAR-past.part-plur FOR WE-dat NOT BE-1st-plur EVIL-masc-plur)
Please, do not call us “Thracians.” This is a Greek word meaning “Trouble-Makers.”
Kiat, made ta na kolat “Traki”. Zete iss gritsisse ssile, ziamania “dregi.”
(PRAY-2nd-plur DO.NOT TO 1st-plur-clitic CALL-2nd-plur-impf THRACIAN-plur. This BE-3rd-pres GREEK-adj-fem WORD-fem-nom, MEAN-active.participle JERK-plur)
Our land of Vassia is ancient and wealthy.
Nuiuda dan an Vessia iss ime tse zelvesside.
(1st-plur-poss-neu-def LAND-neu ON VESSIA-fem BE-3rd-pres ANCIENT-fem AND WEALTHY-fem.)
She welcomes you.
Iate iu deztar.
(3rd-fem 2md-plur RECEIVE-3rd-pres)
She offers beautiful nature, tasty cuisine, skiing, discrete financial services, and the most generous taxation system in Europe.
Preber kalian vusiden, eisazevten tsissinian, sski, zisskriti ssartsidrunuri abasitri tse plissuda bagun sussisseman n Ivratse.
(for-CARRY-3rd-pres BEAUTIFUL-fem-acc NATURE-fem-acc, TASTY-fem-acc CUISINE-fem-acc, SKIING, THROUGH-JUDGE-pres.part-fem.plur MONEY-BENCH-adj-fem.plur SERVANT-abstract-fem.plur AND MOST-neu FAIR-neu WITH-SET.UP-neu TO WIDE-FACE-fem-acc.
In Vessian, we say: “if you bury gold in a triple-pit, the Earth will give it back to you tripled.”
Ne Vississezia glusa beman: “I ne tribadar zelte erie, an trie ze sa anda De.”
(IN GOOD-adj-fem-def-dat TONGUE-fem SAY-1st-plur-pres IF IN THREE-SACRED.PIT-masc GOLD-fem bury-2nd-pres BY THREE FUT 2nd-clitic AGAIN-GIVE-perf-3rd EARTH.GODDESS.
Come! Bury your gold in Vessia!
Ergat! Aperat va zelteden ne Vessia!
(COME-2nd-plur-perf-imp BURY-2nd-plur-perf-imp REFL.CLITIC GOLD-fem-def-acc TO GOOD-abst-fem)
~~~
The next step is recording this as a video for Youtube.
