Nicola Griffith's Blog

Autumn With Cats and Flowers

This is Charlie playing leopard-draped-on-a-tree-branch and enjoying end-of-summer sun here in Broadview. He’s giving me a baleful look for two reasons. One, he doesn’t entirely trust the unseasonal sunshine; he’s knows autumn is stealing through the trees towards us. And, two, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to be photographed until his fur is back to to its full magnificence but, eh, he’s not longer Carolus.Imp but a mere Baron of Beasts, so I risked his displeasure.

Two closeups illustrate just how well his scars are healing now. This is his right side, where he had two lesser wounds: one so shallow it’s already vanished, the other small enough to just require a bit of a shave and a good clean but no stitching. As you can see, it’s almost perfectly healed.

Of course it was the left that was the problem. The vet had to shave his foreleg to get the IV in and though the fur is just beginning to come back in, the gap makes him look as though he’s wearing a little blond mitten on his paw. (But, oh, if you want to see *baleful*, call him Sweet Kitten Mitten…) You can’t really see it from this angle, but if you go back to that first photo and click through to embiggen you can see the scar is doing really well. That central quadrant messiness is just bits of old skin that aren’t quite ready to come off yet, but now even the superficial opening in that section is closing. In a few weeks no one would ever know anyone of this happened.

George meanwhile, has been enjoying the last days of sun here in Seattle though the other evening he deigned to make a brief appearance and consented to a single photo—after all, as a Gentleman Spy and International Cat of Mystery, it simply doesn’t do to permit one’s likeness to be bruited about the internet for the consumption of hoi polloi—not to mention the nefarious purposes of the other side’s Bad Actors. He and his neighbourhood asset, the Tabby Pimpernel, take seriously their mission to keep the cul de sac free of infiltrators.

As you can see, he is as debonair as ever—note the handsome though tastefully understated duelling scar.

The summer, though, is coming to an end. This was the sun earlier this week on the drive home—there’s something about those colours that can be nothing but that rich, mellow moment where the world hangs between harvest-is-in and winter-must-be-readied-for…

And here it is, right over our house.

Earlier that same day, this was the state of the flowers on the back deck:

Some things are still blooming—but fewer, and the colours are a little less vibrant. The hummingbirds and bees, though, are still very much enjoying the different salvia—and of course the four-footed members of our household are enjoying planning their demise. (It won’t happen—we try to make sure that things grow in such a way that predatory leaps are difficult. But it’s endlessly entertaining for all.)

And so, as autumn beings, that’s the state of play here in the Griffith-Eskridge household. I have plenty of other news to share in the coming days, but for now, carpe the sweet richness of the harvest and the last lingering of light and warmth as the world turns…

Demoted

Charlie’s stitches are out, his imperial purple retired, and he’s now reduced from Carolus Imperator to his more usual titles, Charlie Bean, the Bean of Beans and Baron of Beasts.

Having said all that, he has three shaved patches, one quite large, and here in Seattle the weather recently gave us a taste of autumn, wet and cold, so for a while he looked less lordly than like a bedraggled and mange-riddled alley cat. His fur will grow back—and at least his skin is very dark, so the shaved patches don’t stand out too starkly (unlike the last time George got hurt).

As you can see, the main scar is pretty big, but much of its length is already almost perfectly healed—just that middle quadrant that’s less than pretty.

The first day freed from his suit he limped a bit, but that’s a thing of the past—cats are such creatures of the Now—and he’s back to his sentry duties.

Having said that, he’s not above looking pitifully at his bigger brother every now and again until George takes over for a while and Charlie can retire for a quick snooze behind the big jasmine pot.

Sadly, one of his duties that he has not felt able to relinquish is Warmer of the Wheelchair. Here he is on Saturday—before the rain started (and back in the same position yesterday, the day after the rain stopped)—vigilantly ensuring I must stay on the deck in the sunshine to read rather than doing some work.

So, basically, everything’s back to normal except the fur. And time will take care of that.

Carolus Imp.

Wearing the purple

So, despite Charlie’s nifty surgical suitical—in fetching purple tie-dye—he’s still managed to get rid of a stitch or two. So today back to the vet he went to see if we could get the rest out. The answer? Nope. Nopey old nope. He’s healing well, but the last stitches can’t come out for another 2-6 (!) days.

HE. IS. NOT. HAPPY.

There again, as we’ve told him (and it does seem to soothe his pride), he looks great in purple, very imperious—very imperial. In Late Antique/Sub-Roman/Early Medieval Britain, Emperor Charlie might translate to Carolus Imperator—or, as they would stamp it on a coin or cut it in stone for his Triumphal Arch, CAROLUS.IMP.

Omnes Carolum imperatorem salvete!

Surviving Isn’t Enough

Over on Autostraddle me, Tess Sharpe and Katrina Carrasco got together to talk about queering genres, queering worlds, queering time and space and minds—whether in crime fiction, SFF, contemporary or historical fiction. We all agree: surviving isn’t enough. Queer characters, just like queer folk in the real world, deserve joy. We deserve to thrive, to be the Big Damn Heroes.

We had fun. I hope you do, too, that you enjoy “this very queer conversation between three brilliant minds!”

Charlie’s Sad Çaturday

The Situation

This was Charlie at the weekend, sleeping blissfully among the flowers. (And, y’know, stealing my wheelchair, but that’s just SOP for him these days. Stealing my tee-shirt too, was new, but eh, he knows red attracts humming birds so he really likes red.)

Flower Power

Then on Monday, just before midday, he came blamming in through the at door in a way that suggested some dire situation, and I found him lying on the floor, panting.

This is unusual for two reasons. Charlie never lies on the hardwood floor—George does, sometimes, but Charlie? Never!—and if you can see a cat panting, you know something is very wrong. (Dogs pant all the time; cats not so much.)

And in fact it was clear something was. He just looked terrible, and when he stood up, he limped. Please bear in mind that cats are great at masking; they will never show weakness unless they’re badly hurt (sometimes not even then). I cancelled my physical therapy appointment and set about figuring out the problem.

Eventually we discovered—well, Kelley did; I couldn’t really get to him properly—that he had two puncture wounds, one behind each shoulder. Cat immune systems are weird: their puncture wounds almost always abscess. That plus the degree to which he was truly freaked out added up to one thing: a visit to kitty ER.

The wound on his right shoulder was superficial; a quick clean, some antibiotics, and it was fine. The left not so much. Whatever had bitten him or driven its talons into him from above/behind had gone so deep it had driven fur way down into the muscle and made a hell of a mess. They put in an IV and put him out and went to work.

We finally got him home about 11 pm—doped on methadone and antibiotics, a shaved left leg (for the IVs), and an enormous sutured wound on his left shoulder, with a drain stitched in. And wearing the dreaded cone of shame.

There’s no cat on earth who likes wearing a cone—it interferes with their vision and, far worse, their whiskers. Charlie was supposed to stay still and not jump or run for a day or two, but when you add methadone to cone-confusion, well, things don’t go well.

At some point he got himself stuck under the bed, half-strangled. So we got him a doughnut to wear instead, or a ‘Zen-collar’. This is basically a tiny inflatable swimming ring that velcros round the neck—it doesn’t interfere with the whiskers but prevents the cleaning/attacking of the wound. But it turns out Charlie figured out how to get that off in jiffy, and before we had time to blink had the drain partially pulled out. On went the cone again while we made an emergency phone-around-the city-for-a-solution…which turned out to be something called a surgical suit.

We got two, slightly different sizes. Both intended for dogs. Both pull-on full-body stretch fabric. He didn’t need the full body (they’re designed for abdominal wounds—such as the stapling after being spayed) so we cut them both down to long tee-shirt size.

He was not a fan of the first:

Been Down So Very Damn Long…

I think it was a bit small. But it did the job—kept his teeth away from that drain.

However, the nature of drains is to, well, drain. So we had to change the suit on a regular basis and clean around the drain, etc. We swapped to a different suit, called a Suitical. It was a bit looser but he was becoming progressively more unhappy.

Suiticals suck

It’s hard watching a small beast look at you as though he’s been betrayed. And when he’s too dopey (now on buprenorphine) and queasy (amoxicillin) to even be cross.

So it was perversely delightful when he started to get really irritated.

Rage, rage against the moms

The delight became less delightful when he started to just go bonkers, really trying to go after that drain under the suit. We assumed it was just itching as things healed—and the wound looked good when we changed the suit—but then his behaviour got weird. We stopped the buprenorphine. It got really weird. We weren’t sure if it was itching, pain from infection, or the suit rubbing on the wound or what…

After going back and forth yesterday we decided we needed to get him looked at by the vet. And by back and forth I mean it: yesterday was our wedding anniversary; we were supposed to go out for a lovely dinner. But we both understood we’d just fret the whole time about the damn cat, so we agreed: cancel the dinner, take Charlie back to kitty ER.

And to be clear, often in these posts when I say ‘we’ I really mean Kelley: MS renders it difficult for me to do a lot of practical things. So Kelley took him to the ER and I opened a beer and watched a film I’d seen so many times before it didn’t matter that I couldn’t concentrate on it. (Happy Anniversary to us, sigh.)

At the vet, it turned out Charlie was healing so well we could get the drain out a couple of days early. Yay! So now we could switch to a less restrictive suit—all it had to do was stop him getting his teeth to the sutures.

And this is what we found:

Purple Haze

We thought perhaps a flower-power style hippy tie-dyed suitical might improve his mood. But, eh, well, not so much:

Mood Indigo

Things, of course, continue to improve—at least from our perspective. He still doesn’t like it, but this time it’s looser, this time we don’t have to keep changing it—because the wound is sealed and not leaking—so this time he’s just going to have to lump it for a few days. He is, of course, pissed off:

Good Kitty Gone Bad

The wound on his right shoulder is already basically gone. The bald patch on his shaved shin—which makes him looks a bit like a poodle (sssshh, don’t tell him)—will of course grow back. And as I say , the major wound is well on the way to healing.

The sutures are supposed to stay in for another week. My guess? It won’t have to be that long. But of course we’ll check as often as the (by now truly cross) wounded warrior will let us, and as soon as they start to get that loose look, well, we’ll either take him back to the vet for removal or do it ourselves. (We’ve done that before.)

So What Happened?

So what happened? We don’t know. It’s puzzling. He has two matching wounds on either shoulder—far too wide apart to be another cat. Plus I didn’t hear cat-fight sounds—and we always hear the cat fights. Besides, in my experience cat bites are almost always near the face or chest—the front of the cat—or on the legs. So if not a cat, then what? If it had happened at night my guess would have been he nearly got taken by a barred owl. Could an owl have done this? Oh, yes. Charlie weighs just under 10 pounds; a neighbour’s dog—a sheltie (and shelties can weigh up to 20 lbs)—got snatched right in front of her a few years ago. Fortunately the dog fell out of its clutches as it shifted grip—but it had horrible wounds and had to go the vet. So maybe it was an owl but I’ve never seen a barred owl hunt in full daylight before. There again, it’s been a bountiful summer, so perhaps the owls had two broods this year and many fledgelings to feed and that forced a change in usual patterns.

It could have been a raccoon, I suppose, but the placement of the wounds doesn’t seem quite right, and—again—full daylight. Raccoons tend to be crepuscular hunters, when they do hunt. But they generally prefer easier prey than a muscly, fit and fighty cat.

Coyotes of course hunt all the time—but a) we usually hear them, and b) if a coyote had got its jaws on Charlie, he would not have lived to tell the tale. Plus we didn’t hear any dogs barking—and dogs have a tendency to lose their shit when raccoons or coyotes are around.

Over on Patreon (where I posted this first—paying customers get news 24 hrs early) several patrons have mooted the possibility of an eagle. Yes, it’s possible—bald eagles and osprey do live around here and they do operate in daylight—but I don’t think it’s likely. Those two eagles don’t like to hunt under the trees—and it’s nothing but trees around here. Some hawks, however, do hunt in the woods. There again, it would have to be a pretty big hawk to make an attempt on an experienced and fast 10 lb cat. If anyone knows what kind of hawks live around here (near Carkeek Park), I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In the end, then, it’s a mystery. I’m just glad he’ll be fine—we’re all no worse for wear other than a couple of thousand dollars of vet bills and a couple of weeks of being terrorised by a seriously pissed off kitty who does not understand why he has to wear hippy drag and very definitely doesn’t know why we’re being so mean and discriminatory and letting his brother out but not him…

Addendum

Do not suggest we keep our cats indoors. In terms of human-made dangers, this is one of the safest places in the world for a small predator: a cul-de-sac in an already quiet neighbourhood that dead-ends in a ravine that runs down to a park that is on Puget Sound. Yes, there are natural dangers—but our cats are creatures of nature, born to live outside. They are happier and essentially healthier being able to come and go during the day (we try keep them in at night) as they please. We’re not going to change that, and it just irritates me when people get sanctimonious about it. This is your only warning.

Another Screwfly Solution, and other snippets

It’s been a while since I did a snippets post. So for this sunny August Monday here in Seattle, some fun facts.

Flying flesh-eating maggots

First, for those who are familiar with the work of Alice Sheldon (aka James tiptree, Jr, aka Raccoona Sheldon), specifically “The Screwfly Solution,” I woke to a little frisson, a shiver down the spine at the news that the New World Screwfly is advancing rapidly towards the US. (Okay, it’s not exactly new news, but I’m just catching up.) Think flying, flesh-eating maggots, except of course it’s the flies that fly, and the maggots that scarf down the flesh, and you get the general idea. They can infect people—and the resulting wounds can be life-threatening, requiring surgery—though that’s rare. Best not to let it happen. The real worry is that, if these nasties reach the herds of Texas and California, the price of beef and diary products will sky-rocket. The USDA’s latest figures suggest the economic losses in Texas alone would be over $1.8 bn ($1,828,293,838 to be precise).

How do we know? Because it’s happened before. Officially eradicated in the 60s, but with occasional outbreaks, such as one in 1976. How did the USDA beat it then? Well, you could go read the USDA’s latest plan, or you could scare the spit out of yourself on several different levels by reading Sheldon’s story. You’re welcome.

Basic graphic lifted from California Dept. Food and Agriculture fact sheet; annotations mineOur squirrel-like ancestors of the frozen north

What is actually much more interesting, and certainly more pleasant to contemplate over lunch, is the recent suggestion that primates—y’know, the order we belong to—didn’t evolve in a warm climate like Africa but in a much harsher environment, one with temperature swings of nearly 40 degrees Celsius (over 70 degrees Fahrenheit), such as North America.

Here’s the abstract from the original paper:

One of the most influential hypotheses about primate evolution postulates that their origin, radiation, and major dispersals were associated with exceptionally warm conditions in tropical forests at northern latitudes (henceforth the warm tropical forest hypothesis). However, this notion has proven difficult to test given the overall uncertainty about both geographic locations and paleoclimates of ancestral species. By the resolution of both challenges, we reveal that early primates dispersed and radiated in higher latitudes, through diverse climates, including cold, arid, and temperate conditions. Contrary to expectations of the warm tropical forest hypothesis, warmer global temperatures had no effect on dispersal distances or the speciation rate. Rather, the amount of change in local temperature and precipitation substantially predicted geographic and species diversity. Our results suggest that nontropical, changeable environments exerted strong selective pressures on primates with higher dispersal ability – promoting the primate radiation and their subsequent colonization of tropical climates millions of years after their origin.

J. Avaria-Llautureo, T.A. Püschel, A. Meade, J. Baker, S.L. Nicholson, & C. Venditti, The radiation and geographic expansion of primates through diverse climates, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (32) e2423833122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2423833122 (2025).

But if, like me, you prefer your Monday afternoon reading to be a bit more digestible, there’s a better-than-average write-up on Earth.com. Basically, fossil evidence and statistical models using the Köppen-Geiger climate system that sorts environments by average heat and rain, point to a “70% chance that the first crown primates lived in what is now North America, with 30% pointing to Western Europe – territories then sitting near 45° N before plate motion.” So there you have it: we come from little squirrel-sized beasties roaming the northern forests 66 million years ago. At least they wouldn’t have had to worry about screwflies because unlike our tough little ancestors, they couldn’t have survived that climate.

Brid flu and Covid

I don’t really have anything new to say—things are just trundling along as they usually do.

Bird flu is both everywhere and in decline. There are several reasons, most prominently that it’s summer: flu doesn’t do well in summer, and migratory birds are not currently migrating. There’s also the fact that there’s not a lot of testing going on. But don’t be fooled—no news is not good news; it’s still out there, still circulating in the wild. It’s very possible it will come surging back at some point with a roar and a bag of dangerous reassortants, and if it does it could be fast, but right now, nothing to worry about. As always, though, keep an eye on your cats, don’t let them kill and/or eat birds, and never feed them unpasteurised raw food of any kind, especially dairy.

Covid-19 continues to evolve. We’re in the middle of the expected summer wave—with those most affected being the old, those with co-morbidities, and the under-4s. If you aren’t already, please start masking in crowded places, and very definitely when travelling, whether on municipal mass transit or planes. Rules for vaccination are changing all the time—but do remember, even if official recommendations imply you can’t get vaccinated if you’re under 65 without a comorbidity, doctors are often will to prescribe shots off-label. Just ask your healthcare provider. I had a Moderna booster shot before the Nebulas, and assuming I can find a Novavax shot in autumn I’ll get the next in November. (Novavax for two reasons: fewer side-effects for those who are sensitive to such things, and longer-lasting immunity.) There’s more and more data on Long Covid, and every single new study while adding to our understanding of its aetiology also confirms what we all know if we’re willing to admit it to ourselves: Long Covid is devastating; it lasts a very long time, often forever; and the odds of developing it increase with every infection. Wear that mask.

Worldcon Report

This will be a very short report because we had to leave the con early because Kelley was unwell. (Not Covid or flu or other respiratory stuff, so no worries for anyone who spent time in close proximity with either/both of us.)

We registered on Wednesday, and I went straight into my first event, a table talk. (Thanks to Heather, Melody, David, Al, and Ralph for the interesting conversation!) Then we went to the bar with a couple of friends for a couple of hours.

Then we went home, because I had medical appointments the next day.

We came back on Thursday afternoon, checked into the hotel, and made our way to the convention centre for my autographing session (I was thrilled by the number of Slow Rivers I signed—probably the most in one day since the book first came out, lovely!) then we went to the bar again for a couple of hours, with some different friends.

Then I did my worldbuilding panel, which was delightfully well-attended. Then back to the hotel. Then cocktails and dinner with a friend. Then the bar again…for a long time. Many conversations. Many, many drinks. Much pleasure. An all around great time. But no sleep until 2 am—and we had to be up early the next day for yet another medical appointment.

Sadly, Kelley was feeling unwell. We were both exhausted before the convention began and though, as usual, all the wonderful conversation were rejuvenating, when you add all the to-and-fro of appointments, the lack of sleep (on top of several days in a row of little sleep), the cumulative stress we’ve been under for a while and, well, we hit the wall. So without even getting a cup of tea, never mind breakfast, we just packed, drove straight to the hospital (where Kelley slept for an hour in the back of the parked van while I went in and got all the fucking tests), then drove home. Kelley went straight to bed and I sat with the cats and started emailing apologies to people for the parties, the events, the interview, and the meetings I was about to miss. Sigh.

I truly am sorry we had to miss all those. These kinds of conventions are a great opportunity to see people I haven’t seen for years, who’ve travelled from other states, countries, and continents, or who perhaps I’ve only spoken with before via email or social media, or in Zoom meetings.

But even as I type this, I can still feel the vast fatigue like a subterranean lake moving dark and deep beneath the surface and I know we did exactly the right thing. There will be other cons, other parties. I’m just glad we got to be there for a while.

It’s not you, it’s me

To all those friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, readers, and random strangers who have sent me email, postal mail, texted, left voicemail, responded to blog posts, or on social media, and been roundly ignored: sorry.

Please don’t take it personally. Please don’t read anything into it. It’s not about you. I am deleting most communications unread or unheard—sometimes even, in the increasingly rare instances where I have begun a conversation, in the middle of same. I’m doing this to survive. I have no bandwidth. This one time, it’s not you, it’s me1.

Why? Well, that’s a fat, intertwined braid of several stories at once, some of which I’ve dealt with and am trying to recover from, or at least adjust to, some of which have moved into a new phase, and some of which are currently so overwhelming I don’t want to give them any more space by talking about them. So for now I won’t. I’m not deliberately trying to be mysterious; I wouldn’t even have brought it up if I wasn’t about to attend Worldcon.

Starting tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be out and about at Seattle Convention Center and at the main hub hotel, the Sheraton Grand. (My schedule of events are here.) If you see me and want to chat, but think, Oh, I emailed her and she ignored me, she probably doesn’t like me or want to talk to me: Not true! For one, I probably don’t even know that you wrote to/called/messaged me, never mind what about. And two, the point of conventions to me is hanging out with people: the odds are very good that I would actually love to talk to you and/or set up time to chat later.

I’ve been doing what I’m doing in order to keep my head above water. There’s a lot still ongoing (during the convention I’ll have to disappear here and there for a few hours to attend to various non-con things; some planned, some probably not, sigh). But while I’m there I’m hoping to actually be there. So please do say hello. If I have hurt your feelings because I appear to have ghosted you, please give me some grace. My silence really—truly—is not personal.

And if we don’t see each other, well, have a great convention!

Before this—and most likely long after all this is in the rearview mirror—nine times out of ten if I ignore you it’s because I want to. ︎

Worldcon, 13 – 16 August, Seattle

Next week there are lots of things happening downtown at the Seattle Convention Centre, August 13 – 17, when Seattle hosts the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention, that is, Worldcon. Guests of Honour include Martha Wells (author), Donato Giancola (artist), and Bridget Landry (scientist). To attend, paid registration is required.

I’ll be doing a handful of things.

Wednesday, 13 August, 2025 — in-personEvent: Table Talk. Room 430. 4:30 pm – 5:30 pmDescription: Come chat with me in a small, casual group. Chat about what? Well that’s the thing—anything you like. The conversation is determined by the group. So if you want to talk about books—mine or other people’s, already published or still to come, great! If you’d rather ask who I think should star in a screen adaptation of a certain books, or want to know about Charlie and George’s latest adventures, or want info on the Early Medieval or some basic self-defence tips, also great! You get to decide.Notes: You need to be registered for the convention and I believe you also need to sign up in advance because there are only 6 slots. See ‘small’ and ‘casual’ above.Thursday, 14 August, 2025 — in-personEvent: Autographing. Garden Lounge (3F). 3:00pm – 4:00 pm.Description: Me and a dozen or so other writers (Robert Silverberg, Seanan McGuire, Mur Lafferty, Curtis Chen, Terry Brooks, more) will autograph things that you bring.Details: I can’t speak for the other writers but I’m very happy to sign novels, stories, magazines, anthologies, etc.—old and new—for readers, collectors, and resellers. I’ll personalise for readers and very selectively for collectors, but not for resellers. I’m happy to chat, too, assuming it’s not hectic. (Frankly I don’t expect my line to be hectic.) All I ask is that if there is a queue, and you have an entire box of stuff for me to sign, you let let those with fewer things go first.Thursday, 14 August, 2025 — in-person and virtualEvent: Panel. “Worldbuilding Through Geography and Environments”. Room 433-434. 6:00pm – 7:00pm.Description: Me, Martha Wells, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Morgan Smathers (m). “Geographic determinism provides a powerful element for worldbuilding, informing the audience of the wide-ranging world beyond. Join our authors as they explore the fundamentals qualities and techniques that secure this soundly for the audience.”Details: I imagine I’ll get to talk about my favourite bits of writing: how my characters move through their environment, how that environment changes and is changed by them, and how I persuade the reader to believe me. It’ll be a great discussion!

I’ll also of course be found attending a few things like the Tor party on Friday, and hanging out in the bar at the convention hub hotel, the Sheraton Grand.

Help finding someone to type a short manuscript written in cursive

My stepfather-in-law, Art Woodbury, has written a short but excellent how-to book on jazz improvisation.1 The problem? It’s written in pencil. In shaky cursive. With many alterations, erasures, and insertions. Plus a mix of photocopied and hand-drawn musical notations. Some pages are easy to read, others, well, not so much.

Here are a few sample photos to give you an idea:

It occurred to me that perhaps those who work in archival curation might know some people who—for a reasonable fee—might be willing to turn these handwritten pages into editable, digital text. It’s hard to estimate the length but I’d be surprised if it were over 20,000 words, and I’d guess closer to 12,000.

This is the work of Art’s heart—and mind, and expertise—and he would dearly like to see it published. Time is not on his side (he’s 95). So if anyone has any ideas about where to look so we can get this initial part of the process rolling I’d be most grateful.

Here’s the thing, it’s not just that I would like to please my stepfather-in-law but I genuinely believe this handbook would be a useful manual. So, again, I’d really be grateful for any suggestions anyone has. Please leave a comment below or reach out via the contact form.

And thank you!

He knows whereof he speaks—he’s toured with the Harry James Band; done a lot of studio session work (he’s a saxophonist); taught musical practise, and theory, and improv at various universities. He was the first person, I think, to use the Stanford mainframe to compose—one of the first people to work on artificial intelligence there. He edited the first incarnation of Source magazine. He even played with Blue Cheer once at the Fillmore. ︎