Robin McKinley's Blog, page 158

Zero

 

I feel like death and taxes.*  No, worse than that.**  Er . . . I can't think of anything worse than that.  Except how I feel, of course.  This is way old and boring, and I don't think it has much, if anything, to do with the lingering aftershocks of dental anaesthesia.  I think it's just Evil Stomach Spirits in joyous partnership with my abiding evil spirit, the ME.  Ah, the ME headache, there's nothing like it.  Fortunately there's nothing like it.  My jaw, where the dentist was plying...

Major bleeaurgh

 

I am suffering post-dental-anaesthesia brain failure*, compounded with No Sleep to Speak of generalised constitutional dysfunction plus malevolinternetitis in one of its infinite (and infinitely malevolent) manifestations, so if I suddenly stop making any kind of fringrabbleponk zurlich arumblux naffare sense, that'll probably be dinzle dwab duggee dorg why.  Also it's raining.  Hard.**   And my jaw hurts.  And Finale, software music programme from Abaddon, isn't working.  I think, in this c...

A medium-slow Sunday

 

I rang a touch of Stedman doubles at service ring this morning*, I've got another page or two of PEG II sucked out of the void and more or less safely into this world, and Chaos is crapping solid.**  And I need a night off.  I've already wasted most of it reading plant catalogues.***

            So† I'm going to leave you with a couple of photos of a fabulous object I found parked in front of Ditherington's infant school a few weeks back, for the little darlings to lay in their supply of...

All Bells All the Time

 

I didn't oversleep this morning.  Whereupon Fate said, whooooa!  Can't have that!  —So the first thing that happened is that the t-shirt (because it's still hot at noon) and little sweatery cover-up (because it will be cold by tea-time, and probably in various towers) I laid out last night will not do together in daylight.*  Feh.  Blundering noises, accompanied by helpful hellhounds. 

            And then when we finally got out there, I having decided that we still had time to get in...

Grandsire Triples

 

So, do you want the good news or the bad news?    The good news is that Chaos is better.  The bad news is that he's still streaming, just not as violently.*   The good news is that I rang two touches of Grandsire Triples at practise tonight.  The bad news is that I'm spending pretty much all day in one or another bell tower tomorrow.

            My mild martyrdom on the subject of bells and Saturday began some weeks ago.  You've got it that we have more bells and bell towers in this area...

My Life and Hard Times

 

I overslept again.  Sigh.  The ME is not behaving itself lately plus I have not one, not two but three mss/ARCs to read—that I want to read, I mean.  I am not on top lists of potential blurbers first because I am only a medium-sized deal myself, not a big one, and second because my evil-cowishness is pretty well established.  If you keep turning things down (I'm also a slow reader, so unless I'm just weeping with longing to read something I am totally capable of refusing the opportunity to, ...

Revenge of the Kangaroo Rat, guest blog by Chris Laning

 

As I've mentioned in previous guest columns, as a college student I volunteered as part of the staff of the campus museum. The professor who ran it was a zoologist, and anyone who volunteered there picked up a fair amount of knowledge about small furry animals just by hanging around. We also had the opportunity to go along on collecting trips, and there was often one scheduled for the week of spring vacation.

One year a couple of dozen of us piled into the college vans and took off for a...

  

 

Our Internet World

 

I'VE JUST LOST AN HOUR CRUISING ON AMAZON.   Radio Three ran a talking-heads programme tonight about . . . well, this is it:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jhny7   I immediately pricked my ears* at the description of Sturt's book The Wheelwright's Shop;  one of my favourite things is ye olde tymie life as described by them wot were there.**   And the problem with amazon, as I assume all of you know, is that their little robot gizmos glom onto what not merely you've ordered, since in...

Asking Robin more about the writing process

 

I shouldn't be this tired.  I feel like I must have just reinvented the wheel or something.*   And I'm supposed to write a blog entry?**

            However I did have an important bit of story delivery today.  You can fake around the holes to some extent and for a while, especially if you can feel the main story dragging you on*** but eventually you do need to know certain things.  In this case I have a war to direct.†  And the particular consignment that arrived today had some fairly...