Robin McKinley's Blog, page 143
January 22, 2011
Making a Wedding Cake (cont.)- Guest Blog by B-Twin
Last year my sister asked me to make her wedding cake – and I started a small series of blog entries for Robin. I sort of fell off the wagon about getting this entry done because I had the bright idea I should make more flowers to make up for the decided lack of pictures. That was the theory.
Given that my sister's first wedding anniversary is fast looming on the horizon I thought I had better just run with what I have. I hope you will still gain some insight into decorating a cake. :)
To refresh your memories:
Part 2: Decorations
Cake decorating is usually a series of little tasks that need wait time between them. This is especially true when making flowers and leaves from sugar paste. The creation of the decorations took days, mostly as a couple of hours here and there. As a result I forgot to take photos!
You may recall that my sister had asked for jasmine on the cake. And I, fool, said yes. I've never made jasmine from sugar paste and the jasmine flowering on our verandah had just finished blooming. Ooops. As a result, I admit, there are some inaccuracies in my depiction!
For moulding flowers most decorators here (Australia) use a special flower or modelling paste version of sugar paste. There are many recipes for different circumstances, such as ones that can handle humidity or ones that can be rolled very thin for fine work.
As a general rule flower paste dries rather quickly, especially if it has been rolled very thin. This can be good if you want a shape to set in a hurry, it can be not so good if you are slow and fumble fingered. Nothing like a good incentive to find the right paste for you and the work you are doing!
There is a huge variety of leaf and petal cutters out there. It really is amazing. For jasmine, however, I decided that all I needed was a simple star-like cutter that is usually used for making the calyx on flowers such as roses.
Each bloom was "wired" so that it could be assembled later into a spray. This is done as soon as the flower is shaped. They can then be left to dry, upright, until the colouring phase.
Making the leaves was a trifle tricky because I didn't have a cutter that was the exact shape of the real leaves. In the end I used a different cutter and slightly modified each one as I went. A wire was stuck into a small amount of pre-coloured paste and then I rolled out the paste on either side of the wire. Then I used the cutter to make the shape and tidied up with my fingers.
After the leaves were all made they were dipped in liquid colour to give more depth to their colour.
Leaves ready for dipping in liquid colour
Once leaves had been dipped and the flowers dusted with 'petal dust' the aim was to try and put them together in realistic combinations (I try to!).
Here is one of the sets of jasmine ready to be put into a final arrangement:
Jasmine spray
(Rose leaves also on the rack.)
I'm not sure if I had mentioned previously that my sister had wanted a Moongate on her cake? The groom thought they looked like a Stargate and so approved whole-heartedly! LOL The Moongate was made out of the same sugarpaste that covers the cake. I had coloured it first and then dusted it. It didn't turn out quite the colour I had wanted but by then it was too late to attempt another (it took several days to dry).
Final placing of all the flowers, leaves and assorted decorations can take hours. Especially when it is the night before the wedding and you are tired and keep having interruptions…and there is the detail of how difficult hard little sugar flowers on wires are to sit properly.
However, I was able to finish around midnight and then in the morning took these photos before it was delivered to the reception centre.
Wedding Cake!
"Moongate" and jasmine
Except for the flower wires and the ribbon that is all icing/sugar paste. The bride got her moongate. And there was a wee baby in one of the roses sitting on the second tier.
—————
But wait! There's more! :)
Part 3: The Recipe
This is the base recipe I tend to use. It's very flexible. I have successfully swapped the flour for Spelt, dried cherries instead of glace ones (that really altered the flavour as they are very rich) and have used Lactose-free milk on occasion. I actually don't use the pre-mix dried fruit that is available here and so every cake is slightly different depending on what people want – more cherries, less cherries etc. You can easily double or triple the mixture if needed (double would be used for a 12" tin).
RICH FRUIT CAKE
This is the amount you would use for a 20cm/8" cake tin.
Ingredients:
2 lb Mixed dried fruit (sultanas, raisins, currants, glace cherries & citrus peel) – which is bought here in Australia pre-mixed.
2 tablespoons Sherry or Brandy
2 cups Dark Brown Sugar
½ tsp Nutmeg
½ tsp Ginger
½ tsp Cinnamon
½ tsp Bi-carb Soda
½ tsp Salt
½ tsp Vanilla Essence (I use Extract though)
½ tsp Lemon Essence
½ lb Unsalted butter
½ cup Milk
3 Eggs
3 cups Plain Flour (All-purpose)
Method:
Combine fruit, sherry and sugar in a bowl, Mix well then stand for 2 hours (but overnight is better). Add soda, spices and mix well.
Melt butter in a saucepan with milk, add to fruit mixture. Make sure the milk-butter mix has cooled down a bit before adding the beaten eggs, lemon and vanilla essences and sifted flour.
Bake in a slow oven for about 3-3 ½ hrs.
Tips for making a rich fruit cake:
Protect the edges of the cake from cooking too quickly by lining the tin with several layers of brown paper, or wrap newspaper or layered aluminium foil around the outside of the tin.
Be prepared to cover the top of the cake with foil in the last hour or so of cooking.
As soon as the cake is out of the oven then I always leave it in the tin and wrap the whole lot in a large towel. Remove from the tin after 24 hrs. You want the cake to cool slowly.
Like all things – PRACTISE. Slightly undercooked cake is still yummy. Just reheat and add ice-cream! Overcooked cake can be made into trifle etc.
Slow cooking is always better.
Any unused mix can be frozen and used later (mine doesn't last that long… it's yummy!)
Cooked cake will keep for months if wrapped securely and stored in a cool, dark place. It can also be frozen – just remember to pack it carefully and thaw it out in the fridge.
Rich Fruit Cake
January 21, 2011
More adventures
It's already way past frelling midnight and I still have a blog post to write. Fiona was here today and we've been having adventures. Two entirely separate electrifying and sensational adventures that have nothing to do with each other!
(a) We went to a Richard Thompson concert*
(b) I have gone over to the Dark Side.**
Fiona has been a crucial assistant (not to say abettor) to both these life-bending enterprises.*** Toward (a), she has developed the really nasty habit of sending me little emails about concerts I might be interested in.† And she's hot off the mark too—we had front row seats again.
This proved to be a mixed blessing. We panted in about five minutes late††, and thirty seconds before the show started, and were confronted by stacks of amps on either end of the stage and a redoubt of more across the front. I have got to start remembering to bring earplugs. I stopped going to rock concerts about a quarter-century ago and haven't yet reinstated my default habits. You think oh, folk, oh, all right, folk rock, but you should be thinking electric frelling folk rock and Richard Thompson has never been the kindly, gentle end anyway. I do not know from guitars, so any better-educated person out there, please don't yell at me, I did Google it†††, but the object Thompson was playing tonight was the classic Stratocaster type, which says 'Jimi Hendrix', 'Eric Clapton' and 'Stevie Rae Vaughan' to me. It also says LOUD. But Thompson is a known and venerated Guitar God and I think guitar gods are required to be LOUD.
And it was loud. There were five blokes up there‡ and they were all banging away like anything. Mostly they were merely plugged in to enough hardware to raise the roof, but there was also The Biggest Saxophone You Ever Saw that made a noise like Ray Bradbury's fog horn‡‡ The drums were amazing. The bassist had at least twelve fingers. The violinist was adorable. And the saxophonist played about forty-seven other instruments too. It was fabulous. It was all fabulous.‡‡‡ You really do have to go hear live music occasionally—I don't care how magnificent the album is, and yes, I did rush out during the break and buy the new album§ they'd played about three-quarters of in the first half—live is different.§§ Sensurround and HD-3D R2-D2 e=mc2 are all very well, but live is different.
And if I don't go to bed soon I will not be alive. Oh, you want to know about (b)? Gee . . . I guess it'll have to wait. . . .
* * *
* And we didn't get lost. I think this may be a first. SatNav or no SatNav. It did lose the plot a little on the way home and ordered us to return to New Arcadia via Alabama. Hey! I said. That's a dumb way to go!^ We'll go my way! It went on making snarky remarks however till Fiona turned it off.
^ And we'd forgotten our water wings
** No, no! This is a whole new dark side!
*** We also got most of the PEGASUSes and assorteds posted.^ At least I think we did. I am not having one of my scintillating-with-intelligence days and I only know about the errors that we caught. I am expecting the 'many thanks for the signed book. However I had asked it to be signed to my pet giraffe, Hester, and you didn't actually write JANE EYRE although it's a rather nice edition except for the corner that it looks like a hellhound puppy chewed off'^^ emails to start soon.
^ It amuses me a lot that the PRC winners are not only from three different countries but three different continents.
^^ Darkness has no idea how Near He Came to Death.
† I can't remember if I blogged about the tragedy of missing Maddy Prior—she of Steeleye Span fame—and her Carnival Band, a few days before Christmas, when the weather gods closed Hampshire. AAAAAAUGH. Heartbreak and calamity. Fiona, who is a reasonably intrepid driver under most conditions, was convinced to stay home without my having to resort to threats of violence. Although she did climb on a train to London next day and saw them at the South Bank. Buying me a copy of the CD for Christmas is no frelling comfort.
†† We were late because we were pursuing (b). Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.
††† Note that I do know there are more search engines out there than Google. But I'm always writing these blog posts in a hurry at the last minute, when I'm already three-quarters asleep and chiefly longing to get in a hot bath and read.
‡ Most of the time. For at least one song there was a small, discreet, black-garbed gremlin hitherto seen only briefly carrying one or another of the fabulous array of instruments to one or another member of the band, himself playing what I think was a guitar. The real problem with the dranglefabbing amps wasn't the noise but that they blocked my view. What's the point of the front row if you can't SEE?
‡‡ One of his best. I think. http://members.fortunecity.com/ymir1/beastfro9.html Now tell me how to find out if it's okay that it's hung on the web for free.
‡‡‡ It was all fabulous except for one crushing, diabolical playlist omission. They didn't play 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.^ Which is a motorcycle. And one of my favourite songs ever.^^ I almost had
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome,
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
for my tag line, or what you call it, the little blast of text at the bottom of your forum reply box. And then I found out that an Ariel is a car. I don't care how fast it is or what a miracle of engineering it is, it's ugly. I'd rather have my angels on Vincents.^^^ Thompson has also written a really good song about a car: http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=199 Which sort of thing is pretty much why I'm a huge fan. How many people can write a brilliant song about a car?^^^^ Or drop not just a motorcycle but a specific motorcycle into a love song? He also does the modern with the edgy trad folk stuff like nobody else.
But Fiona got her Wall of Death. And I didn't get my Vincent. Waaaah.
^ http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=580
^^Right up there with Che Faro Senza Eurydice and Una Voce Poco Fa
^^^ Although I was seriously hot for Nortons in my youth.
^^^^ That it's an MG doesn't hurt, although GTs—hardtops—are an error. The true MG is a roadster.
§ Dream Attic http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/aug/26/richard-thompson-dream-attic-review
And here's a concert review: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/richard-thompson-royal-festival-hall-london-2190275.html
§§ Live is sitting for almost three hours with your fingers in your ears. Sigh. The unexpected bennies of bell-ringing: shoulders that will let you spend three hours with your fingers stuck in your ears. Or maybe it's the hellhound wrangling. Whatever. I don't expect performers to see what they're looking at—when I'm giving a live performance, and I only do words, I try not to register what's happening in the front row—and in this case I hope he didn't engage with where his eyes were aiming. But Thompson glared right at me for a good ten seconds at one point, and us front row was relentlessly well-lit. No, no, I wanted to be in the front row! I just forgot my earplugs!
January 20, 2011
The three-four to bob major
I rang the 3-4 to bob major! YESSSSSSSSSSS. It was not, I admit, a thing of absolute beauty and grace, and we broke down more than once and had to start over . . . but we did it. And we did it more than once! So it's real. So I can say . . . I almost ring 3-4 to bob major on handbells. Sometimes I ring the 3-4 to bob major. I can probably ring the bob major 3-4 if everyone else is in the right place.*
I was sure, when I started letting people in tonight,** that it was all going to go Terribly Wrong. I haven't had nearly enough time*** to practise the last couple of days, and Tuesday night was not encouraging. And Colin, who is usually on the 3-4, did not immediately take to the trebles†, which meant that the treble itself was not always flawlessly in the right place.††
But we did it! We did it! I did it! Long live Pooka! This is really all about my iPhone!†††
We had an unusually long and chatty tea break however because my brains were melting.‡ And somehow the conversation turned to cats. One of Niall's few shortcomings is that he is Not An Animal Person, but both Colin and Fernanda are card-carrying‡‡ cat people.‡‡‡ And so, for anyone else whose education has been sadly lacking, here is what I think is the original video of the gremlin who did terrible things to the homeowner's water bill . . . . http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sugexp=evnsp&xhr=t&q=cat+flushing+toilet&cp=8&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=0&aqi=&aql=t&oq=cat+flush&pbx=1&fp=975ed894378411e6
* * *
* This is one of my rants. My two pet peeves: really good ringers who can't be bothered putting in time teaching beginners. And so-frelling-called advanced ringers who are only as good as the ringers around them can frelling carry them. This is a lot of where my small but fervent obsession about becoming both kinds of ringer, tower and hand, solid enough for other people to bounce off of, arises from. I'd rather be good at Grandsire doubles than carried through Bristol Royal.^ In the first place I remember—painfully—the MONTHS Niall and Esme put into teaching me bob minor on handbells—I was sure I'd never crack it—I'm not at all sure why the frell I stuck with it, I was so clearly hopeless—probably chiefly because the other two just assumed that I was keeping on. At the end of every meeting we got out our diaries and made a date for our next. I Was Helpless in Their Toils. And toil it certainly was. Gah. But . . . I've told you this before . . . you remember this kind of thing. You remember how much work it is. It makes you rather frantically (a) willing to put up with grinding it into someone else and (b) anxious to give some of it back. I like being the wheel horse.^^
^ Like I could even be carried through Bristol Royal. This would be like someone who can just about get the saddle on the right way around going for a gallop round in the Grand National.
^^ GAAAAH. I was trying to find a link for wheel horse. And they're all about tractors. I even dared Google's 'advanced search' and forbade pages containing 'tractors' . . . AND NOTHING CHANGED. THEY WERE STILL ALL ABOUT TRACTORS. There's one feeble little dictionary definition, about a person who's a hard worker. Feh. Research on the net is unbelievably hit or miss. This is why we have LIBRARIES.+
Long before the internet, and long before tractors, the wheel horse or horses were the ones harnessed to the thing to be pulled—the carriage or the plough or whatever. The rest of the team were harnessed, serially, to the wheel horses. A good wheel horse was essential. You could get away with a little nonsense from the rest of the team. But what you do went or fell over, depending on your wheel horse. A good wheel horse is the ultimate in steady, patient grind. A good wheel horse is gold.
+ I don't know if anyone outside the UK is aware that the old rope ends and washing machine lint we presently call a government are trying to close nearly 400 libraries in this ex-great country? Dear gods. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/13/library-campaigners-demand-public-inquiry-closures
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12232756
As far as I'm concerned, libraries are a basic necessity. Food, shelter, clothing and libraries. So much for Ugly Nick Frelling Clegg, so-called leader of the so-called Lib Dems. That the Tories are humourless ratbags with computer chips, and balance sheets weighted for management, where most people have hearts, is no surprise.
I'm not political. I'm just enraged.
** No, no! Go away! I'm not here! Barking? What barking? I don't hear any barking. . . . [Darkness! Sssssh! Chaos! Stop leaping over the gate! There's no one there! I mean, we're not here!]
*** Time? TIME???
† Although bless his bifurcated little ringer's brain, he'll give anything a good shot
†† Okay, here's the bit that only crazies who find other people's obsessions interesting will want to read. The thing about the treble in most basic methods is that when it leads—when it's the first in your row of, in this case, eight, bells, all going bing—is when things happen. You can just trundle on doing what you're doing—and what you're doing can vary extremely depending on what pair you're on^—until the treble leads. Which is your cue to Do Something Else. A lot of us need that cue. So if the treble isn't in the right place. . . .
^ Which is why handbells are so appalling. In the tower, all the 'inside' bells do the same thing. They just start at different places in the pattern. In handbells, since you're ringing two bells, the shape of what your two bells is doing is different from any other pair—because each of your two bells is starting at a different place in the pattern. You get that, right?
‡ And, when I can't sleep, I put my hand out and fumble around on the shelf next to my bed^, pick up Pooka and ring some handbells. I am a sick, sick, sick puppy.
^ Which is mostly full of books. Now including a few on digital photography. Ahem.
‡‡ Geeky obsessive bit, Part Two. The actual pattern that the trebles ring—which is to say the treble and the two, and the two is an inside bell (see above)—is nasty. It's every bit as nasty as either of the middle pairs^. But you have a unique, crucial advantage if you're ringing the treble: that you have that crucial cue of the treble leading in your own hand. It's not one more thing you have to keep track of, which it is for the other bells. It's one more thing too frelling many, I can tell you, from the 3-4.
Ringing a new pair is always a trifle challenging. But ringing your first inside pair to a major method . . . total brain melt. Total.
^ The 3-4 or the 5-6. I don't yet know if the tenors—which means the 7-8 for major, and the 5-6 for minor, which has only one inside pair—are always a bit easier. The tenors for the plain bob methods are easier, which is all I know about. So far. Niall is already muttering about Kent and Cambridge. Sob.
‡‡ 'I am the slave of [cat's name here]. Please be nice to me. [Cat] would miss me if I didn't come home with tuna.'
‡‡‡ katinseattle wrote:
Quote: When the groups shifted I said 'I can't move. There's a cat in my lap.'
Quote: . . . not a cat person.
**falls down laughing**
Ha, ha, very funny, ha ha. I'm not a cat person. But I am an instant and total sucker for anything warm, furry and friendly—as previously demonstrated. I fought frantically against the hellkitten, didn't I? I didn't keep asking when Phineas was going away again? I didn't take any photos of kitten antics? Noooooooooo. I've lived with and been friends with cats, and if the ME were the really vicious kind that precluded hurtling, I'd probably have cats rather than dogs. But . . . all things being equal, I'd rather have something that didn't walk on my kitchen counters.
I'm also a sucker for beauty. And the Orientals tend to be eye candy, like most sighthounds. Well, to my eye.
Diane in MN wrote:
Quote: Aaron wrote: 'I have heard two explanations for this. [The way many domestic animals pursue the human that expresses no interest in them.] The first is that animals mark their territory and a person who is already marked by another animal is less attractive than a person who, being standoffish, has avoided being so marked. The second is that animals find many of the human "approach" mannerisms threatening and therefore prefer people that are not trying to approach them. I am moderately allergic to cats and I certainly have encountered my share of inexplicably affectionate cats but I don't know that I find either explanation convincing.'
I don't find them convincing, either. All the dogs I know are very enthusiastic about investigating someone whose clothes etc. smell like dogs–or any other interesting critter, for that matter. And confident and socialized dogs, in my experience, don't feel threatened by the usual human attempts to engage their interest. These explanations sound like they come from from a behaviorist's lab notes, not from someone that's lived with animals. I think dogs do it because they like to tease, they like to play games, and they like to win: they can do all three by annoying and getting a reaction from someone that doesn't want them around. I haven't lived with kitties for decades so will not speculate about their motives, although I suspect that a cat-centered worldview has something to do with it.
I want to add a word for simple outgoingness—which Chaos in particular has in bucketloads—and curiosity. Chaos certainly likes playing games, but he's also just friendly. Oooh! Person! Pet me! I'm probably a bit simple-minded myself^ but I don't see Chaos' initial overtures as being anything but overtures. Later on he'll get around to games and hierarchies and what he can get away with, but that first impulse is just, ooooh! New thing! STIMULUS!
And curiosity. Hey, half the human stories out there are based on everyone else instantly being intensely curious about the stand-offish one. If it's a romance, everyone else instantly has the hots for the stand-offish one. For a well-socialised domestic animal who of course has every right to believe it's the centre of the universe, why wouldn't it be curious about some mere human who isn't falling into line?
And yes, I've had Narknon and Fourpaws flourished at me before as demonstrations that I know one end of a cat from the other. Sure. As I say, I've lived with them. Fourpaws was based on a specific cat belonging to a friend. I like warm furry things. I'm still a dog person. But I wouldn't throw a cat out of bed on a cold night.
^ I have the notoriously training-resistant sighthounds, don't I?
January 19, 2011
Another one for your booklist
I was stuck into this book before I knew what had happened to me. BLOOD MAGIC, by Tessa Gratton. You pick it up and say hmm, looks interesting, I like that title, that's some creepy, striking cover—and for me anyway, because I've been through it from the other side, there's always a little extra breath-holding for a first novel, is this person going to bring it off? Am I going to be looking for her next book, and the one after that? Am I going to need a new dedicated shelf?—now you turn the first few pages. There's a quote from Richard Selzer, MORTAL LESSONS: 'Thus is the fruit of the earth taken, its flesh torn. Thus is it given over to standing, toward rot. It is the principle of corruption, the death of what is, the birth of what is to be. You are wine.' I love 'You are wine'. But maybe Gratton just knows how to choose a good quote.
Turn the page. Chapter One is one line: 'I am Josephine Darly, and I intend to live forever.'
Chapter Two: 'It is impossible to know who you really are until you spend time alone in a cemetery.
'The headstone was cold against my back. . . . Dusk washed the cemetery of shadows, lending it a quality of between-ness, neither day nor night, but a gray, teary moment. I sat with my legs crossed and the book in my lap. Beneath me, scraggly grass hid my parents' graves. . . . The mahogany leather cover was soft and scuffed from years of use . . . Notes on Transformation and Transcendence. . . . The book had arrived in the mail this afternoon, wrapped in brown paper with no return address. DRUSILLA KENNICOT was written in plain block letters, like a summoning. . . . It smelled like blood. . . . I closed my eyes and saw a splash of blood streaked across bookshelves.
'When I opened my eyes again, I was still alone in the cemetery. . . .'
The book, mysteriously old and old-fashioned, was written by Silla's father, and has been sent to her by someone who describes himself as her father's friend, but Silla has never heard of him. But what he has written to his friend's daughter is crazy: 'He was a gloriously talented magician and healer.' Silla thinks: 'why would [the friend] suggest such incredible, ridiculous things . . . he'd only been a high school Latin teacher.' But she also recognises her dad's handwriting: ' . . . every page contained lines and lines of perfect writing and meticulous diagrams sprawling like spiderwebs. . . . Dad had made tiny notes at the edges of the pages, written descriptive paragraphs in Latin, and made lists of ingredients.
'Salt dominated the lists, and recognizable items like ginger, wax, fingernails, mirrors. . . . But there were words I didn't know. . . .
'And blood. Every list included a drop of blood.
'They were magic spells. . . .
'There had to be a spell I could try. . . .'
I don't have to tell you that there is, right?
'I pushed the knife against my skin. . . . My whole body shivered. I was about to find out if magic was real. . . . Quickly I let one, two, three drops of blood fall and splatter. . . . They gathered in the center . . . in a small pool. I leaned over, staring at the blood as if it could stare right back. I thought of Dad, of how much I missed him. I needed this to be real. . . .'
BLOOD MAGIC is told from three different perspectives: Silla and Nicholas now, and Josephine in the past. Josephine also discovered she can do blood magic: 'It is like nothing I can say. No words Capture what it feels like when my dark blood smears against a red ribbon, or leaks into the lines of a rune carved into wood. The Thrill of the Blood as the magic burned through me, the way it tickles and teases when I am doing other things, begging me to slice my skin open and let it out!' But Silla is a young woman of the present day, a junior in high school, and an orphan, after her father shot her mother and then himself—as everyone, including Silla's brother Reese, believes, except Silla herself—three months ago as the book opens. Silla found the bodies—and cut her long hair afterward, because she couldn't bear the memory of the ends of her hair soaked in her parents' blood. She may believe that she is doing magic, when she cuts herself with a knife; the school counsellor sees the scabs and scars and is afraid that she's self-harming.
Nicholas has just moved in next door. He's from Chicago, and wishes he was still there, and not in the back of beyond in some hick farming village in Missouri. His grandfather died and left him the property, and Nicholas' father—and loathed stepmother—have decided to move the family there. Nick has just stomped out of the house, having lost an argument with his stepmother, and wandered off in the dark of the forest, when he finds the cemetery—and the girl. The girl cutting herself with a knife. 'There was no effing way I'd seen that. It wasn't possible. Not here. Not again.' Nick has a few secrets of his own: his mother, his certified-crazy mother, who grew up here, was also into blood. . . .
Tessa Gratton is the third of the Merry Sisters of Fate: http://community.livejournal.com/merry_fates/profile They post short (eerie, sinister) fiction and hold on-line discussion groups: 'Welcome to Merry Fates. But be careful, we run with scissors.' The other two sisters are Maggie Stiefvater, whose LAMENT and WOLVES OF MERCY FALLS series(es) are multi-gazillion NYTimes bestsellers, and Brenna Yovanoff, whose first novel, THE REPLACEMENT, made an enormous splash last year. These are very hard acts to follow, and if I were Tessa I'd probably be hiding in a closet and eating lots and lots of chocolate and making small whimpering noises. But I loved BLOOD MAGIC; it's absorbing, it's well-written—it's full of little throw-away lines like 'His lashes curled like birthday ribbons'—it has a climax of blood and fire that scared me silly. It's totally up to the standard set by Yovanoff and Stiefvater. Also, you know how I'm always objecting to this or that fashionable literary gimmick? I don't like alternate POVs. They piss me off. They're cheating. Yeah, well, blah: They work a treat here. Rather than making me feel the author just doesn't want to make the effort to get one viewpoint right, I felt I was getting a whole extra layer of the complexity that is life which is what the best stories give you. The swapping between Nicholas and Silla works especially well at the end when they may have just won out—may—but: "'We can do it. We have to." It was almost over.' The page following is just these terse little bursts from each of them: Nicholas: 'The only thing that kept me going was Silla's hand in mine. . . .' Silla: 'Every step meant being closer to destroying the thing that had killed my mother, my father . . .' Nicholas: 'The forest screamed as it burned. . . .' Silla: 'A cluster of crows fell from the sky, trailing flames. . . .' Nicholas: 'We fell to our knees when we returned to the beginning. As I painted the rune onto a tree, Silla dug at the earth . . . "Be bound! . . . Be forever bound!" . . . heat exploded. . . . Silla and I were knocked backward. . . .'
And don't let me forget to tell you that there's really good kissing too. Soppy moony dragged-out eye-fluttering trash kissing is one of those things that makes me throw books across the room. This is good kissing. And when Silla and Nick argue, it's like two real people arguing, not like two characters in a novel where the plot needs a boot forward.
Okay, do you have to read this book? Yes? The bad news is the freller doesn't come out till April. They sent me the ARC over a month ago and I did ask why so soon, but the response is that they're building buzz. Whatever. Zzzzzzz. But mark it on your calendars. BLOOD MAGIC. April 2011.
January 18, 2011
Cat
There was a cat.* A small, sleek, slinky, dark brown Burmese with enormous eyes. It—she—was sitting on the (padded) fender** when we came in. Well 'sitting'. Sitting is not really the word. What we want is the verb form of 'they worshipped me in ancient Egypt, you know'.
You may or may not remember that we were ringing handbells at Fernanda's tonight.*** I'm being ganged up on; all my regular handbellers ring oftener than I do—as Niall likes to point out, trying, without a great deal of success, not to laugh fiendishly—not just Colin and Niall and Fernanda, but pretty much every handbeller I know, aside from the ones who do it only because you're holding a gun to their heads.† I've been hearing about these Tuesday evenings for years now, and my standard excuse that I haven't got time to commute loses force when Fernanda is hosting it, since she lives about twelve minutes away.
And . . . she has a cat. Niall and I were the first to arrive, and the cat Viewed us, as cats will, and appeared to find us less than entirely satisfactory, but you could see her telling herself that she had been well-bred, and that a well-bred cat does not stoop. She may stalk, however, and this one stalked. Out of the room. Then Colin turned up, and we began to assail bob major††. A fifth person arrived, but we were busy with poor bob††† and it wasn't till we crashed and burned that we noticed that the fifth person had gone all quiet, because he had a cat on his chest. Colin, who is seriously a cat person, showed signs of being diverted from the sacred art of handbell ringing, and Fernanda said quellingly that Neith or Isis or Nephthys or whatever her name is wouldn't stick around long because, fascinating as potential worshippers are, she didn't like the noise the bells made. And she did indeed disappear again shortly after this.
I had had another crummy night last night, when I couldn't get to sleep and then I woke up way too early and lay there having the horrors‡ . . . till I sat up, feeling my pupils spinning like Catherine wheels, turned the light and Pooka on, and started ringing the frelling 3-4 to frelling bob major again. How do I get myself into these things. I was driven to it, like a cow backing away from a cow prod, but I did agree to learn an inside pair to bob major. I had had a sudden traumatic thought last night when Niall, on our way home from tower ringing at South Desuetude,‡‡ said, I'm sure you'll be fine on the 3-4‡‡‡ and you're solid on the trebles. —Er. I am? So I suspiciously had a refresher go on the trebles on Pooka, and—yup. I still can't ring 3-4 reliably, but trying to learn it has entirely unseated my marginal stability on the trebles. Aaaaaugh. So today has perhaps been less about PEG II than about bob major.§
And then there were six of us tonight, which meant we split up nicely into two groups of three—which meant minor. I can ring bob minor.
Colin and Fernanda and I were one group, and we were perhaps none of us having one of our most brilliant evenings—furthermore I was on the frelling inside pair, which is enough to cause brain lesions in the susceptible—when there was unexpectedly a small lithe dark brown shadow gliding around the edges of the room. She approached our little group of chairs—the three of us all valiantly ignoring her—took aim and—I suddenly had a cat in my lap. I'm still ringing. Colin is starting to lose it and Fernanda is saying, never mind the cat! Keep ringing! Nephthys stared up at me for a few seconds—I am now ringing with my hands better than lap-width apart, and up around my ears so I don't, you know, distress her or anything—tested my lap with her front paws—sat—lay down—I'm still ringing—stood up—lay down again. Settled. Fernanda and I were coping—girls multitask you know—but Colin lost it. He had to stop to laugh, and we fired out. Feh.
Nephthys was there for the rest of the evening.§§ When the groups shifted I said 'I can't move. There's a cat in my lap.' So the groups shifted around me. During tea break when the five of us not dealing with kettles and cups rang plain hunt royal I was on the 9-10 which are big frelling wrist-breaker bells and I was ringing them at shoulder level so I wouldn't disturb the cat.
I finally had to put her down when Niall and I left. The ancient Egyptians had a point. I'm sure she's responsible for the fact that there were six of us tonight. Which means I have two more days to get both the 3-4 thumped into my granite brain and the trebles reinstated. There will be four of us on Thursday, so—major.
The hellhounds found my lap very interesting when I got home.
* * *
* I know, I know, not a cat person. Tell me about it. The kitten monster next door at the cottage has become a vast, fluffy-tailed orange tom, but Phineas has been staying home in a weirdly persistent way, so I haven't contributed to the ex-kitten's attainment of vastness in a long time.
** I want to call something you can sit on a settle—fenders are just railings—but settles are big bench things with backs, and this is just a little low cushioned kneeler that runs the width of the hearth. We had two at the old house, in front of the two big fireplaces in the two sitting rooms. But they're nice for sitting on and contemplating life, the universe, and the soggy smoking tangle of hacked-off branches you haven't given up on making burn yet. That's one of the great things about a wood stove: once it's going it'll burn anything. Of course if you're burning a lot of anything you need to have the chimney cleaned about every six hours, which slightly defeats the purpose of cheap(er) heating. But a nice padded thing, whatever you call it, beats crouching on the floor, whether your fire is behaving or not.
*** I suppose I may conceivably not have told you. I do try to remember that not everyone is fascinated by method bell ringing and—although this is nearly inconceivable to me—some people have positively an aversion to bells^, especially handbells.^^
^ Probably no one who has survived reading this blog for more than two days however
^^ Fancy schmancy tower bell ringers have been known to be rude about handbells. But I know the truth. They are merely trying to disguise their impotence and inadequacy. Handbells is an extreme sport. Hang gliding? Piffle. Rock climbing? Pshaw. Free diving? + Child's play. Plummeting over the edge of a very tall waterfall in your kayak?++ . . . okay, wait, that's not sport, that's just nuts.
Handbells is the true summit, the peak achievement of the human yearning to go too far. I bet that kayak guy wouldn't get through a plain course of bob minor.
+ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU_IF20t2R8 Thank you, ajlr
++ http://www.dump.com/2010/11/30/highest-waterfall-in-a-kayak-189-ft-video/
† Tediously gifted handbell ringers are rarer than tediously gifted tower ringers but they do exist. The thing that makes us sad blistered grinds want to throw ourselves into shark-infested waters^ is that just because they can doesn't mean they want to, but really good handbell ringers are so vanishingly present in the population that you are tempted to promise almost anything to get them to agree to ring. Read GOODNIGHT MOON one million times a month to your three-year-old? Sure, I can do that. Make one million brownies for your favourite charity's bake sale next month? Sure, I can do that. Dedicate your next book to . . .
No. There are limits.
^ Or offer to play 'wolf pack' with a group of sociopathic six-year-old girls http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/01/wolves.html
Thank you, Jodi
†† Yes, I mean assail. Mug, accost, belabour, whack that sucker.
††† Ow! Ow! No, no, please, I'll read GOODNIGHT MOON to the three-year-old!
‡ What is about waking-too-early, not-quite-asleep semi-dreams? It's very much like 'you're not going to get up on your own? Okay, I'll make you'. This kind of thing makes me feel that I have been taken over by hostile aliens.
‡‡ Where the ropes were so damp and stiff I swear if you—ahem—wrung them you'd get a puddle of water on the floor. So not only are they incredibly awkward and unpleasant to pull, they chafe. Colin shouted for Cambridge and said to me, are you ready for a touch yet? —Are you kidding? I said. I can barely make it through a plain course on a good night.
And then three of the other ringers went wrong.
‡‡‡ This is the sort of thing Niall says. I have never decided if it's meant to be comforting, or is just expressing his inner demon.
§ Maybe I should try kayaking. The waterfalls around here are all pretty small.
§ She is tiny. If it weren't for how warm she is you'd barely know you had anything in your lap. Her little paws are about the size of the tips of my index fingers. People keep telling me that Burmese aren't small, but every one I've ever known has been itty-bitty and radiant with charisma.
January 17, 2011
And E Moon said . . .
More about the writer's view.*
Reviews…I have spent 20+ years not growing the thick skin it's said you must grow.
Well that's at least two of us then. I gave up: I'm not going to grow the thick skin, so I concentrate on the evasive manoeuvres. These writers who compulsively read their amazon and Goodreads reviews are another species.
I don't read them, or hardly ever. Editor sent me one last week which she said was "mostly favorable" but which to me was one slice after another. (The favorable bits go right past me; the negative bits, however small, are shrapnel in the heart.)
Yep. Me too. Ms Fancies Her Keen Critical Faculties in THE ONLY BOOK REVIEW THAT COUNTS said that the relationship between Sylvi and Ebon was touching and poignant? She did? All I remember is that she said that Fthoom was boring, the pegasi implausible, and there should be an elephant stampede to add interest.
You need to train your editor better. Mine, poor woman, checks with Merrilee even if a review has three stars and the only adjectives are 'brilliant', 'amazing' and 'irresistible'.
I am very much the same way about the story [as I've been describing it]…it exists already and I'm just writing it. Sometimes it hides under the couch, or wants to play silly games with me, but if I can hold the focus (in spite of everything else going on and my own undisciplined mind) it's there, as it is, and no amount of "Why don't you just…?" or "Shouldn't you do this other…?" or "Change this!" works. That's their story, not my story…the story that came to me and tickled the inside of my head, and then poked me in the ribs and finally grabbed something painful and twisted and said "Write me. Write me NOW."
Yes. We could compare scars some day. Here's the one where Gulp whapped me up longside the head. Here's the one where the pre-faenorn Master of Willowlands tapped me on the shoulder. Here's the one where one of the Beasts held me over a bottomless ravine by one ankle. Here's the one where Woodwold's floor jumped under my feet, knocked me down, and rained plaster on me.
God knows I would like to be a better writer.
Yes, but you have to want to be better. Wildly. Yearningly. You have to want to be a better writer like you have to write, I think. If you lose the hopeless despair I think you also lose your edge.
More like A in handling this, more like B in handling that, and OMG how does C do that thing C does, that rips my heart out even on a fifth reading?
Yes. And you think, it's just words. How do they do it with just words? Words are the most powerful things on the planet . . . except when they're coming to mortar dust and broken eggshells in your hands.
I read better writers than I am, I read them silently and aloud, hoping the magic will rub off, but my stories are stuck with me, the imperfect.
Which is the little light in the hopeless despair. The story came to you.
Like the kid in the corner of the studio with Michelangelo, struggling to outline just one acanthus leaf on a scrap of stone, and watching with wondering eyes the David emerge from marble…
Frivolous note from an evil cow: I don't like Michelangelo's David. You can add it to my list of sins. Which just got one shorter, since JS Bach has moved to my 'angels' list. I nonetheless take your point.
I will never be there…but at least I'm trying to serve my story, as it came to me and wanted to be told.
Yes. The thing to hang onto at 3 or 7 o'clock in the morning, with your hands full of dust and grit, or even 3 in the afternoon or 7 in the evening. The story came to you.
Which sounds all gooey
I dunno about gooey. Pretentious, maybe. But big scary important true things have a nasty habit of sounding pretentious. We also both write genre stories, which as we all know are entirely enshrouded in cooties, like a kind of armour, so we're being doubly pretentious having pretentions at all. But I've long been a believer in the spectacular power of good trash.** So here's to us. And pffft to the snobs. In fact, pfffft.
or something but it's how it seems…the stories wait for me, a row of them, ever more shadowy and vague the longer it will be before I get to them, but they exist on their own…alone until I can write them and let them find their readers.
Yup. You got it. For me too. Although I could wish the queue was a little more orderly, and things didn't keep jumping out of it, rushing up to me, whispering in my ear, and then running away again giggling madly. And playing leapfrog*** with their neighbours.
* * *
* Remember that I write these entries after I've pretty much tapped myself out on the articulate sentence front and have tapped myself out on the possibility of coherent thought for the rest of the day. But at least one thing I should have made clear last night: I do understand about wanting to wait till a concluding book is out before you read the first one or ones—I don't mean what I would call a proper series like (say) Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone or Jim Butcher's Dresden Files—but the ones like LOTR or, pardon me, PEGASUS, which are all the same story whacked up in pieces. I haven't got a problem with the decision to wait.^ I've been known to wait myself.^^ What I'm objecting to is people who seem to think either the waiting or the publishing in separate volumes is legitimate grounds for complaint to the author.
I think it's another form of Othering. Of which there are multitudes. I suppose it all still comes back to the tribe thing: we're hardwired to believe in us and them, to believe our tribe is significantly different from your tribe—and we're probably far superior and therefore have the right to tell you what to do. I think evolution could get a move on this one soon. It's not doing us any good, now that sabertoothed-tigers in the neighbourhood are not a big issue.
And then there's atavistic Othering. I had an email from a pregnant friend yesterday who is beginning to show, and is suffering a kind of boggled astonishment that is familiar to me as a recipient of reader responses. How can someone possibly think it's okay to pat the pregnant belly of a stranger? she says. —Probably because the hippocampus still auto-fires at the sight of someone contributing to perpetuation of the species. But how can someone think it's okay to rush up to a total stranger, give them a passionate hug and tell them that you are twin souls? I don't think we can blame the hippocampus for that one.
And speaking of twins, my friend added: And how can someone possibly think it's nice/friendly/acceptable/polite to say, are you expecting TWINS? You're HUGE. I've NEVER SEEN anyone so HUGE. —Yes. It's somewhat similar to the people who write me to say, why is SUNSHINE the only audiobook I can find? I don't like that one. Or, why don't you write another Damar novel? None of your other books are nearly as good. Or When is PEG II coming out?
::Headdesk::
^ So long as I can go on buying chicken for hellhounds. Which is a practical rather than a philosophical dilemma.
** I also had a long Twitter conversation with Richard Kadrey after I posted about SANDMAN SLIM, and he's another one who believes in the power of trash. We're out there and we're dangerous.
^^ I was just discussing THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO with a friend. I think the second one was out before it really registered on my radar—I am not a dystopia person, so as soon as the d-word gets used I tend to be out of there—as something I probably do want to read.+ But then I started hearing about the major-eeep endings of both the first two and I thought, hmm, I can wait.++ The thing is that there are always lots of good books out there. You don't have to read a cliffhanger if you don't want to.
+ Yes. HUNGER GAMES is in the pile.
++ The third one is now out. And they're all in the pile.
*** Leap gecko. Leap pegasus. Leap dragon. Leap . . . not unicorn.
January 16, 2011
We took the Christmas tree down today.
Hey, what do you mean? It's only the middle of January!* This is good!
I had promised Peter I'd get the freller down today—once I pull all the ornaments off** he takes the tree to pieces and folds it up in its box.*** It was a good day to do it too because I got no sleep last night, for some reason. Lay there and had horrible semi-waking dreams where I'm fairly sure I'm dreaming but the aftertaste is still gruesome. So I thought this would also be a good day to steal—I mean appropriate—hijack—um—highlight somebody else's words.
This in response to HERO and PEGASUS a few days ago, and specifically my closing remark: Ah well. I'm hoping that after PEG II I can settle down and be a nice author again for a while.
Alannaeowyn wrote:
A nice author? Isn't ALBION next in line? I find it unlikely that you'll be able to avoid more horror, then.
ALBION is next in line, so far as I know at present†, and both the evil vampire queen and what I know about the climax†† are fairly dreadful, yes. But it's only one book. I am seriously not doing another cliffhanger. I don't care about my readers! I hate the trailing around being miserable! You only have to read about it!
And, you know . . .I'm not having nearly as much trouble with the cliffhanger ending as I expected, because nobody is hanging off a cliff. Nobody's in a coma*, nobody's tied to a chair being threatened by a creep with a syringe (or a giant spider) . . . or trapped in a car headed for a cliff, or–yes–standing in front of a huge, unquestionably evil dragon. Yes, it's a cliffhanger, yes, we're all worried about what happens next, but–it could have been so much worse. Everyone seems to me entirely capable of dealing with the problems besetting them. It's when they're helpless that I'll worry.
Well, yes. This is more or less my feeling. Which is a lot of why I've been rather—ahem—startled by the amount of you are a horrible person and I hate you that PEGASUS has aroused. Seriously? A little unendiness in a novel you have found involving††† and you're having a nervous breakdown? Have you thought about getting professional help? I have mixed feelings about the frequently equally forceful declaration that PEGASUS should say somewhere that it's unfinished—that PEG II is coming. I think my publisher and I are going to yield on this one, and some reprint or other will have a reference to PEG II at the back. But . . . no, I don't think I owe my readers this. I'm not sure how I would have felt about it pre-internet and pre-every-author-her-web-site-not-to-mention-her-blog. What writers owe readers is the frelling gods-blasted best we can do, and I'm not sure the contract extends any farther. Yes, if we want to earn a living, we need to remember that we need a happy, book-buying audience. But . . . the internet is out there, and you don't have to be a regular blog reader hearing me yelp about PEG II to spend two seconds clicking on the opening page of either my blog or my web site where it says, vibrantly and repeatedly, 'PEG II COMING IN 2012'. If this makes you suspicious, it's not at all difficult to find out that PEGASUS ends on a cliffhanger; or if you bought the book straight off the bookstore shelf and have just turned the last page. . . you can find out in those same two seconds‡ that yes, there is a PEG II. I'm not very impressed by the people who rush to beat me up because they can't do a little research.‡‡ The information being easily available shifts some responsibility to people to look for it. No, I've never written a cliffhanger before. I didn't want to write one this time, it's what happened.
*Like Ryuuji in Tokyo Crazy Paradise…..I'm so glad I wasn't reading that a chapter a month. Or reading Lord of the Rings as each book came out–horrible thought.
Uh-huh. Remember that I did. And all I knew when I got to the end of THE TWO TOWERS was that there was a third book.
Speaking of shaping influences. I then grew up to be an evil cow.
* * *
* I got a funny HA HA HA VERY FUNNY HA HA email from a friend today in response to mine that I had two goals for Sunday, one of which was getting the tree down. She replied with a great show of headmistressy shock, You haven't got your tree down yet!! No. I haven't^. Nor have I made marmalade, got all the backlist moved into Third House's attic, learnt Una Voce Poco Fa for my interview with my new voice teacher^^, destroyed the Tea Party by my incisive logic and inexorable charisma, or taught hellhounds not to chase cats.
^ HADN'T
^^ Although I have been working on The Miller of Dee, just for laughs. Since I have the G, I might as well use it. Well, I don't know if Beethoven wrote it that way, but that's the way my book of Folk Songs Arranged By Famous Composers has it. And then it makes Che Faro's mere F look safe and easy.
** This year I had a fit of cleverness and tied all the boxes up with green garden string^ so next December I don't pick up the pile, am promptly hit in the face by six exploding rubber bands, and the contents of all the boxes fall at my feet with a sound resembling the noise of Wolfgang hitting a gate^^—the intimate, chamber ensemble version, as opposed to the full orchestral thunder.
^ I had to ask to borrow Peter's since all of this is happening at the mews. He doesn't have Twine in a Tin, which is what I mostly use, he has the old-fashioned hank, that looks like a skein+ of yarn, and you have to pull one end. Gently. Peter gave it to me, handed me the critical end, and said anxiously, Please don't get . . . mad at it.
Snrrrfle. Rggmph. SNORK. No, it's okay, I've been practicing with Pooka and Ruby's earphone wires. ARRRRRRGH. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to ask the collective intelligence of the blog, do any of you have any experience of single earphones? I don't dare not have one ear available for hellhounds and approaching potential hellhound nemesis, and listening on only one channel is . . . interesting not in a good way. There are single earphone thingies out there, but I don't know anything about any of them and none of them seem to be sold by anyone I know either.
+ If I mean skein, she says, nervously, aware that she is surrounded by knitters.
^^ I tweeted about this earlier. Forcefully. Got back from hellhound hurtle to notice that the plastic cover of the parking light on the brand new wing on Wolfgang was hanging off. Snapped it back into place—it's that kind of a cheezy thing—and drove away . . . and half a mile later there was an ominous, parts-falling-off-your-car noise . . . and yeah. It had fallen out. I picked it up before anybody ran over it—this was happening on a hairpin zigzag in Ditherington, and it did cross my mind that I would be very annoyed if I died rescuing a £4.99 piece of moulded plastic—and I will take it back to the body shop tomorrow morning. I want all my £4.99 bits of plastic to remain in their scheduled apertures at least until the guarantee runs out. The sledgehammer, Silly Putty and cheap VW knockoff cost in the high three figures, thank you very much.
*** I hadn't meant to get controversial over the whole Christmas tree thing. I don't like killing trees, but I eat vegetables (I eat lots of vegetables) so it's not like this is a big philosophical issue with me. I will reiterate, however, that my own impression of the farmed real/resource gobbling fake tree debate is that I don't believe there is a clear answer. So we can all feel superior.
† Although I am wondering if I could maybe rip off NOT THE WICKED STEPFATHER STORY or TAM LIN^ before I start it, both of which are supposed to be short. Cough cough cough cough cough etc.
^ Or both. What the hell.
†† Although I've been seriously wrong before. I've just been talking about how wrong I was about HERO.
††† Thank you!
‡ Okay, maybe a minute or two, if you have to turn your computer on. If you have an iPhone and decent wifi it'll be about fifteen seconds.
‡‡ Nor am I very sympathetic to the people woe-is-me-ing about how desperately they want to read PEGASUS but they can't face a cliffhanger ending. Fish or cut bait, guys. PEGASUS is out there, and it ends on a cliffhanger. Choose. If it were me, if the author was—say—Diana Wynne Jones or Peter Dickinson, I'd read it anyway, and if it killed me, it killed me, meh. Although this kind of decision is complicated in my case because I tend to be one book behind with favourite authors so I haven't read everything yet. I've done a lot of rereading, slapping my hands away from The One I Haven't Read Yet. But I'd still have the cliffhanger problem because I still wouldn't be allowed to read the next book till the one after that was published.
There are always creative ways to torture yourself.
January 15, 2011
PRC prizewinners – Black Bear
First, a little perspective…
There were 33 Pegasus Release Events worldwide in November and December, in 6 countries, and 18 different US states, with a reported 375 attendees. Give yourselves a round of applause, everyone, because that's pretty dang fantastic. This completely blew me away. If you haven't already, please go check out all our photos on Photobucket–and we had an eleventh-hour report/photos from Knoxville, Tennessee last weekend!
While we'd originally planned to give away just 2 books, Robin felt that with over 300 people in the drawing, she wanted to put in a few more prizes. So she is giving away SIX signed books, plus THREE signed posters featuring the gorgeous cover art. Robin was also anxious to make sure that while some students from participating schools were unable to put their names in the drawing due to privacy reasons, that we still make them eligible to win something. I solved this by putting blank draws into the mix, marked "Student, such-and-such High School."
So without further ado, it is my very great pleasure to announce the winners of the Pegasus Release Celebrations drawings!
SIGNED BOOK WINNERS
CORRIE W., of Anchorage, Alaska
DEB B., a teacher in Kaiserslautern, Germany
LEON A., of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
XANTHE M., of Whitmore Lake, Michigan
ESTHER Y., of Urbana, Illinois
And a student in Milton, Wisconsin, via school librarian Heidi Z.
SIGNED POSTER WINNERS
SUZANNE A., of Indianapolis, Indiana
SAMANTHA M., of Kansas City, Missouri
DAWN H., of Santa Cruz, California
Congratulations to all our winners!! I will be contacting all of you directly regarding your shipping addresses and whether you would like your prize personalized by Robin. *Please Respond Promptly!* This is going to be a big post office run for Fiona, and Robin would like to get everything shipped all at once to make it easier. *
Thanks so much to everyone who participated in these events! This completely exceeded my expectations, and I'm so glad everyone had a good time with it. Whenever we find out about UK publication dates, there will be (I hope) more opportunities for fun and games. And perhaps we'll continue this streak with Pegasus II in a year and a half…. :)**
* * *
* Easier is a euphemism. HINT: Fiona comes THIS FRIDAY, the 21st. Do or die, guys, which is to say if you miss this Friday, it'll probably be another month before your book/poster goes out.
** AAAAAUGH
January 14, 2011
Bach
I am so buzzed.* Oisin's been playing Johann Sebastian Bach. I probably told you a while ago that Oisin had bought a Virtual Pipe Organ from Hauptwerk**—you remember that Oisin, my piano teacher,*** loves the organ first?—and then spent a long time checking out, buying, swapping, arguing with the providers of, hooking up, rehooking, rejigging, rehanging, reconfiguring, rewiring, and shouting at the necessary pieces of kit to make the thing work. Piano teachers and church organists generally speaking are not rolling in cash, so the result is that his studio now looks like a steampunk set for Phantom of the Opera.† He's usually playing the beast when I turn up on Friday afternoons. In the short winter daylight, with the rest of his studio murky in the twilight, the spot for him to read the music by is making pythons and giant spiders out of the loops and gyres of cable—and Oisin himself has a strong face, so the stark lighting is turning him into Saruman.†† I'm walking down the little hill toward the studio end of his house with the earth under my feet going brrrrrrrrooooom, ††† and I have been known to have a brief, faint-hearted moment when I think about having something to do right now on the far side of town. Preferably in a strong overhead light.
I do not yield to these spasms of cowardice. Not only will there be music, there will be tea.
The thing about your virtual organ is that it can be many organs, and probably is. I think Oisin's came with three already loaded. There are also lots of sample packages or what-you-call-'em out there, where you can try some of the other organ software, although it usually has the failure-to-buy-averting trick of the sound dropping out every few minutes which, just by the way, is infuriating, but I see their point. One or two Friday afternoons Oisin has had a stack of samples that he's worked his way through with lavish commentary from the peanut gallery. It's astonishing the variety of organ sound—of course a lot of your experience of an organ is of the building it's in—usually a church—which is more than just the experience of your ears, plus that the architecture has an enormous contribution to what you hear. You also don't usually hear six organs in an hour and a half so their individuality isn't so obvious.‡
Oisin had a new one today—the full programme, not a sample. I've forgotten where the real one is, except that it's in Germany, or exactly how old it is, although it's the 1730s, which means it was around when J S Bach was around, and while there's no documentation that he played it, still, he could have—but perhaps more to the point, this is the sort of organ he was writing for.
It was fabulous, listening to Oisin play Bach on this 1730's German organ. Fabulous. One might almost say a Religious Experience.
I've always been a bit resistant to Bach. Very nice and all, and I do somewhat get it that he was this amazing innovator blah blah blah. But, you know, I'm resistant to Shakespeare: I am an evil cow. That's just the way it is. I like Bach better after five years of Friday afternoons with Oisin‡‡, but he still wasn't on my top ten composer list or anything. That was yesterday. He is today. Blither blither blither erk. There was a coming-home quality about today: a good deal of what Oisin played was the really famous stuff that even the Bach-resistant like me are familiar with, but as if hearing it right for the first time, because played on the instrument it was meant to played on. One of the astonishing things about this particular organ is how well balanced the three keyboards are‡‡‡: the pedalboard thunders away like the Ents on their way to Isengard but never overwhelms the manuals, which are each as sharp-cut clear as Orthanc in snow. And the way the three musical lines all work both separately and together, each being itself at the same time as creating one or seventeen or an infinity of things out of the resonances that clever Mr Bach has laid down—I'm going to say something about Lothlorien or Rivendell here, I just know I am, and then I'll never forgive myself.
If I'm reverting unilaterally to LOTR I'm in a dangerously transcendent state. I'd better eat more chocolate. But . . .
Wow.
* * *
* No, not by the frelling tower meeting. The frelling tower meeting was a success as measured by the fact that it only took forty-five minutes. But we've got various issues, chief among them that our precious and beloved bells need some serious repair and maintenance work, and we're going to have to do some fund-raising. I don't want to think about this tonight. I want to go on thinking about Bach.
*** And new voice teacher enabler
† His pedalboard is to die for. You want it in your sitting room as sculpture. But he's still using a pair of tatty old plastic manuals (keyboards) which he happened to have about the place^ before he bought his organ. He keeps muttering about how he should upgrade. True. But I, being a hellgoddess, and committed to leading men to doom and destruction, keep trying to convince him he should buy the keyboards by the maker of his pedalboard, and he keeps cringing and whining about not being able to afford it. What are you, a man or a karaoke singer at the Troll and Nightingale?^^ But it's been a few months since he's bought a new piece of the three-dimensional gear or had printouts of keyboard ads lying around or said anything to me about it so I'm hoping he's nerving himself to buy the good manuals.
^ I've also told you, although you're forgiven for forgetting+, that he has an entire little recording studio in his attic. You can't stand up in his attic, but the recording stuff is tucked in very neatly, like nests of owls.
+ I am in a very bad place for ever getting snarky about anyone forgetting anything.~
~ Except Peter my birthday. I am wearing the earrings he gave me for Christmas—the earrings he commissioned at my request—for the second time today and he hasn't noticed either time. And remember that gorgeous black cardigan with the embroidered roses I got for my birthday? I haven't worn it partly in fear of the likelihood of my instantly overturning a large bottle of salad dressing on myself, but also partly because it's been SO UNGLEBLARGING COLD, and it's only cotton. I finally wore it for the first time on Tuesday, for my adventure with trains and little blue sewing machines with wheels. I don't have to tell you he didn't notice when I turned up at the mews for dinner, do I? Okay, it was just because he was so glad to see me, right?
And at least he gives me the presents. He has the really important part down.
^^ One night recently while Wolfgang was still in the body shop and hellhounds and I were walking home there was the most awful racket—not from the Troll, which is locally notorious for its live cough cough music, but from the Six-Legged Pony.+ Karaoke night, I said to myself, and looked in the window as we went by. No. Wrong. You mean he was getting paid for that noise? I hadn't realised I had a future as a bar singer. This changes everything.
+ You are of course assuming that I am taking the usual liberties with its alias. Well, I am, but a six-legged pony is what is on its sign. Not one of the greater examples of the pub-sign-painter's art.
†† No not Christopher Frelling Lee. Saruman.
††† It's the Uruk-hai! Run for your lives!
‡ And sad but true, some organs have been better served than others by their virtual programme builders.
‡‡ With a little help from our frelling blondviolinist and her bleating about solo violin sonatas and partitas. I'm sure it's really her fault that I had a Road-to-Damascus^ conversion driving home—oh, a year or so ago now I think? I told you this at the time, didn't I? This solo violin thing came on the radio and it so blew me away I had to pull over to the side of the road so I could listen to it properly. I don't even remember which one it was: just that it was Bach, and solo violin. Music of the spheres. Golly. Never been much of a strings person either. Well, five years ago—before Oisin—I had very little use for the organ, great bullying thing, except I was aware it could be thrilling live. But, eh. So you see there is always hope even for evil cows.
^ Speaking of religious experiences
‡‡‡ With all due plaudits and huzzahs to the sample recorders and programmers.
January 13, 2011
A Quiet Day of Coming to Pieces in Various Directions
The morning did not get off to a happy, articulate start when the phone went off like the end of the world at eight thirty. I'd had about four hours' sleep at that point.* My other credit card—the one that hasn't just been replaced after someone in Tokyo put their gambling debts on it—was ringing up in an automated sweat to tell me that there was fraudulent activity. In this case, no, there wasn't. Yesterday I had been trying to order some of those remaindered copies of the hardbacks of CHALICE and DRAGONHAVEN from Putnams and Putnams was telling me my card wouldn't go through. But of course I never buy books. I'm not at all surprised that Wondercard's automated doohickey was flagging this as suspicious behaviour. My other card accepted the charge meekly—the same card that had accepted those gambling debts in Tokyo before scratching its head and saying 'hmmm'. There's a moral here somewhere.
It was another hard evening at the handbell rockface. I was made to Feel Bad for not putting in an appearance on Tuesday at Niall's when they had Need of me. Well, yes, but the fulfilment of that particular need would have manifested as my being given an evil ratbag pair of inside bells and reading the lines off a piece of paper so I could stay stolidly right for the other, erratic people who . . . ring like me. Sigh. My great handbell gift: being able to ring while reading the lines. I've told you this before—never occurred to me this would count as a talent, but I'm pretty much the only handbell ringer I know who can do it. Or anyway the fancy people who probably can don't have to because they already know the method, whatever it is, any method, all methods, they know them. Sigh. We haven't got the necessary inertial mass, as Niall calls it, of really good ringers around here.** But ringing off a piece of paper is boring. You don't learn anything—or I don't—I'm just an eye-hand conduit. Learning some frelling line is SLOW. It has to pass soberly through your brain between your eyes and your fingers. Your synapses have to have time to fire individually.*** Over and over and over and . . .
All of this goes to explain why I seem to have agreed to come along next Tuesday to ring handbells at Fernanda's house in Mauncester. Although when Fernanda said, but ten o'clock is absolutely the latest. . . .
WHAT? I said. Ringing practise—whatever kind of ringing practise—ends at nine. Unless it starts early in which case it ends earlier. Two hours. Max. And that's handbells, with a tea break. Tower bells is an hour and a half.†
Oh yes, said Fernanda. We were just leaving at eleven when Penelope came home††. I don't think she was glad to see us.
At ELEVEN? No, I don't suppose she was glad to see you. I was going to hitch a ride with Niall next Tuesday, but maybe I'll take my own car.††† Meanwhile I am now motivated to try and get that plain course on the 3-4 to bob major nailed by next Tuesday‡ . I about managed a touch of bob minor on the 3-4 tonight with just the three of us, but it is as I feared: when I've got myself used to counting to eight for major, I start falling over the edge of those little short six-bell lines in minor. Whooop. My handbell talent, you know, isn't really about handbells: it's about reading.
I wonder what kind of tea and biscuits Fernanda serves. This is important.‡‡
* * *
* I know, I know. But I was reading something thrilling.
** Or rather, the ones we do have are only interested in ringing extra-fancy peals with others of their ilk. Grrrrr. You've heard me on this subject before too: if you're good, damn it, put in some hours teaching beginners. How do you think people learn to ring? The Bell Fairy? I've now rung enough quarters in hand that I occasionally hear from Niall that the big kids are expecting me to ring a full peal with them some day. No. For a variety of reasons. One of them is because I think they're spoilt brats.
*** Especially when you only have three, and they're also busy keeping your heart beating and digesting your lunch etc.
† Except tomorrow night. Tomorrow night is the annual tower meeting. Aaaaugh. The annual tower meeting is bad enough just because it is—agendas! Minutes! Nominating! Seconding! Finding yourself made Deputy Ringing Master over your own dead body! —Which last makes it that much more Not On to have a pressing alternate engagement on annual tower meeting night. I'm an officer. Ugh. This is being put critically to the test tomorrow however after Niall asked me tonight if I'd looked at the agenda. Are you kidding? I said. Living through it is going to be bad enough. Fine, he said, but you should know that one of the items is 'Deputy Ringing Master's Report'.
WHAT?
Okay, do I get to say that I hate it when the Ringing Master goes on holiday?
†† She's teaching adult-ed classes. It's not like she'd been out carousing with her friends.
††† The red and shiny Wolfgang! Yaaaay! I did change the hellhound bedding although I fear the smell of wet dog may have become systemic. And we got out of town for our hurtle today. I could see hellhounds growing taller as they pranced along the first hedgerow and the thought-balloons over their heads were reading 'well finally'.^ We had to turn back early when we ran amok of another dranglefabbing shoot stretched, with fine disregard for public safety, across the footpath. But it is one of the working principles of my life that you don't argue with people with guns. Especially not people with guns with loose Labradors more or less at heel, who are getting bored with the comparative lack of dead birds to retrieve, and may be looking for other amusements. A testy owner waving a gun around because his [sic] dog is not obeying is on my bottom ten list of least favourite things.
But we came back along a little back road where there were a couple of blokes building a brick-and-flint wall. Brick-and-flint is Hampshire to me, despite the fact that none of our current three houses nor the old house were made of it; and I do have a very fine old brick-and-flint wall around the cottage garden. I also have a fantasy of a brick-and-flint wall along the footpath edge of Third House's garden. I'm afraid it's in the same category of fantasy as the conservatory off Third House's sitting room is but . . . I took the wall-building blokes' card. I will probably even ring them up. Not because I think I can afford a wall. But because the fellow I spoke to has whippets. Maybe he could bring them along when he comes to give me an estimate. . . .
^ Also, 'rabbits? Any rabbits?'
‡ Ouch. I think that synapse is already in use.
‡‡ An additional reason we don't want Penelope pissed off is that she bakes. We get Penelope's cakes when we ring at Niall's. And speaking of pissed-off spouses . . . I'm ringing three nights a week now. I sneak in the handbells on Thursdays because we meet early, and I sometimes manage to get back to the mews for supper only moderately late. I may start having Rebellious Spouse if I'm ringing four nights a week. Not to mention Rebellious Novel in Progress. Rebellious hellhounds, not so much. They have fairly emphatic little ways of getting what they want. The baying and the climbing into my lap (simultaneously) are fairly irresistible.
Robin McKinley's Blog
- Robin McKinley's profile
- 7220 followers
