Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 82

Last HILD reading in Seattle: Third Place, Ravenna, Wednesday 19th, 7 pm

Tomorrow is my very last Hild reading in Seattle. By last I mean last. The next set of readings will be for Hild II. So if you want to hear Hild-as-three-year-old and Hild-as-butcherbird, or perhaps Hild-discovers-sex, or even—depending on a variety of factors—the very beginning of Hild II, come to Third Place Books in the cosy Ravenna neighbourhood. Wednesday, at 7 pm. Sip a beer (they have a truly fab eatery with beer and wine) and listen and chat. Especially chat: the Q and A if often my favourite part of the evening. I love to talk about my book!

If you can't make it, you can still get a book signed and personalised. Both paperback and hardback make beautiful gifts. The lovely people at Third Place will ship. Hild, as I've said before, is a luscious object. (See that close-up of the thick gold debossed title...) But if you want the book personalised, you have to get your orders in before Wednesday evening. After that it'll have to be just a signature; I'm guessing I'll be signing a bunch o' stock.

I'm guessing you don't need to see more pix of the hardcover (unless it's with cute cats reading) but if you want to peer more closely at the paperback take a look here.

So: Wednesday 19th November, 7 pm, Ravenna location of Third Place Books. Join us!

Today is Hild's 1400th anniversary

Today is Hild’s 1400th birthday. That is, Hild, who became St Hilda of Whitby, was born 1400 years ago, and November 17th is her feast day, so today seems like a good day for it. Happy Birthday Hild!
How do you say, fourteen hundreth in Latin? Well, settle back for a discussion.
My first stab at it was quattourdecenennial. But this is word Hild would have found odd. She would have been able to figure it out, but it's a made-up word, English based on Latin—there's no evidence for anything like it in actual Latin anywhere. Also, Latin counting would have used one thousand four hundred rather than fourteen hundred. The words we use for such things today, e.g. bicentennial, are formed from analogy to millenial, which is a late-Latin formation on the model of the Classical Latin words biennium and triennium. But according to Annie, a young Latinist I consulted (over beer in a pub), these mean a period lasting x years, and there's no Classical evidence for them having adjectival forms meaning on the second/third anniversary. Apparently, they're in a numerical class of their own. Annie suspects they might be based on the numeral adverbs, rather than the ordinal numbers—the bi- prefix is probably from bis, which means twice rather than two—and the closest you could get to 1400th on this model would be quaterdecienscentennial in English, quaterdecienscentennialis in Latin. 
At this point, the beer ran out. Well, okay, the pub still had beer but our capacity for it —at least as it relates to making sense of Latin—most definitely came to an end. So after a few days to recover, we switched the conversation to email. Which means that (much to my relief!) I can now quote directly:

If you instead take the late-Latin (in use c. 1250 CE in Britain) millenium or the English word centennial as the model, then quattourdecimcentennial(is) is probably more correct, using the cardinal number fourteen.You could even make an argument for quaternidenicentennial(is), using the distributive. All of these should make a certain amount of sense to an English speaker familiar with Latin.

If you want something that a native speaker (or scholar of the language) might more readily write, millensimus quadringentensimus is probably close. Livy has mille et quadringentis for the cardinal 1400 (Ad Urbe Condita 26.50), and I'd assume mille(n)simus (et) quadringente(n)simus to be the ordinal equivalent (those 'n's are dropped pretty regularly, and the 'et' is entirely optional.) It would decline as a regular first/second declension adjective on the model of bonus, -a, -um; so 1400th year (nominative) would be millenimus quadringentesimus annus. It's a little trickier if you want to refer to a specific event which has recurred once every year for 1400 years, but you'd probably want to use anniversarius (yearly) in some form: eg, millesima quadringentesima anniversaria lupercalia, the 1400th annual Lupercalia. I really don't know enough about ecclesiastical Latin to say whether there were other conventions for writing numerals by the 7th century, but this would at least make sense when read. You are certainly correct that (written) Latin in Ireland was almost dialectally different—Hisperic Latin is a very strange creature, and I know nothing about that, either, except that the Altus Prosator is often given as the prime example.

And if you want to go deeper than that, feel free to consult Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar. Many thanks to Annie (go back to school!).
For now, I declare that this is her fourteen hundredth anniversary: millesima quadringentesima anniversaria. Happy Birthday Hild! I shall raise a glass to you tonight.
Now I just have to figure out Happy Birthday in Old English. Ēadiġ ġebyrddæġ…? 

ETA: Today is also the day the Church of England voted for women bishops. I'm just trying to imagine what difference this might have made to Hild...

Planes, trains, and automobiles

Kelley and I got in late last night—given jet-lag, it was about midnight when we walked in the door, 2 am when we got to bed.

It was a fab trip. I talked myself not-quite-hoarse. (It takes a lot to make me hoarse...) To old friends and those who are now new friends. To lots of people we'd only talked through through the photons and electrons of the übernet. Family (in Washington DC, all too briefly, alas). To booksellers and readers, editors and publishers—even a couple of cats.

Here are a few random statistics of our paperback tour (so far):
5 airports1 hospital ER6 hotel roomscountless cabsuntold elevatorsa billion beers (and a not-inconsiderable quantity of wine, a handful of cocktails, plus some Armagnac)1 night of live musica score of truly memorable conversations5 bookshops13 bars2 cats7 gifts (3 ARCs, 2 t-shirts, 1 nifty water bottle, 1 whistling rock)a river of photos (I didn't take any; I'll try to round up others' for your delectation and delight)2 videos (not posted yet)4 bestseller lists (more on that anon)100s of books signed—maybe even a thousand6 gorgeous autumn sunshine days2 eh-it's-November days3 days of cracking cold1 airplane de-icing1 broken-on-the-jetway tow-bar1 very long perhaps-we'll-have-to-deplane wait on the snowy runway5 miraculously intact, checked luggage, on-time-to-right-destination deliveries5 we-took-apart-your-luggage-and-fucked-with-your-careful-packing TSA inspections1 lost iPad charger (not TSA's fault)untold kindness of strangers2 or 3 dozen receipts to be sortedIn other words: hellacious busy but absolutely worth it. Two things I'll expand on now: the ER and the bestseller lists.

The ER was in Washington, DC. It was my left eye. Since my surgery, I've had a couple of spectacular-but-not-dangerous subconjunctival haemorrhages. They look awful, but they don't really bother me (except the shock on others' faces). They don't affect my vision, they clear up fast, I don't worry about them. But on the plane from Atlanta to DC something began to happen. Long story short, it turns out to have been an atypical (sigh; atypical is typical for me) vitreous separation. Apparently these things usually happen slowly over a period of two weeks (which is what happened with my right eye a couple of years ago); this one happened whap-whap-whap all at once and (given recent surgery and the haemorrhages and the fact that it happened at 44,000 feet) freaked me the fuck out. But everyone at George Washington Hospital was fabulous. Yes, we were there four hours, but they called in a consultant ophthalmologist from home, and he gave me the most thorough eye exam I've ever had, and said he couldn't see anything wrong with my retina but that I should come back to see the retinal specialist the next day to be sure.

As the next day was a busy one (I ended up spending 13 hours with a drink in my hand—when I wasn't holding a pen to sign things), I declined. But next week I'll go in to see my own eye doctor and get a definitive opinion. Meanwhile, I think the GWH interlude was probably the best ER experience of my life: astonishing kindness and efficiency. And I've been in a lot of ERs...

The bestseller lists are exciting. Hild is on three regional independent bookstore lists: Pacific Northwest, Northern California, and Southern California. And it's number 21 and "on the rise" on the national indie list. So keep your fingers crossed. I can imagine few better end-of-year presents than being able to add National Bestseller to the cover of the next printing of my book. Of course, the book needing a reprint so soon would be pretty fine, too. So remember: gorgeous-looking immersive paperbacks bought from your local independent make perfect holiday gifts. And you can get a signed copy from any place I've been recently; they'll ship.

There's more tour stuff to come, of course, but all regional: right here in Seattle (Third Place, Ravenna, Wednesday 19th, 7 pm—they have a great restaurant; definitely worth a trip), Wenatchee and Leavenworth and Port Townsend. Meanwhile, it's lovely to be back!

Tonight: Left Bank Books, St Louis, 7 pm

I've been to St Louis many times. I'm particularly fond of Left Bank Books where my friend Mark Tiedemann (author, most recently, of the fabulous Gravity Box and Other Space Stories) works.

Tonight I'll be reading from and talking about Hild. Mark has promised there will be libations, so come and listen, and say hello!

Friday 14 November
St Louis, MO
Left Bank Books
7:00 - 8:00 pm
FREE - and there will be libations...

The ending of HILD

From: Christine

I was at your reading for Hild at the Elliott Bay Bookstore on Friday evening*. I did not have a book for you to sign, but did tell you that I had spent 3 weeks in Yorkshire this past summer. I spent time in Leeds, and visited the site of Kirkstall Abbey twice while in Leeds. I stayed with friends in Horsforth. After Leeds, the trip took me to the Dales, and the Moors, including a stay at the Youth Hostel at Whitby Abbey. I had the occasion to hike in the Dales, Moors, and on the Cleveland Trail along the Coast. While visiting the Whitby Abbey, I became very interested in learning about the early church that had been at the site, prior to the Abbey being built.

When I stumbled upon a review of Hild in the Real Change, I knew that I had to read it.
At any rate, after the reading I told you that I had almost finished reading the book and you asked me to let you know how I liked the ending. I found it fascinating. I read it over at least three times, and went back to the beginning and re-read that twice as well.

Needless to say, I will be waiting for the next book.

I am jealous of your trip! Last time we were in the UK (last month) I didn't have time to do anything but readings and talks and things at various bookshops and universities and libraries. But I longed to roam Hadrian's Wall and get up to Whitby, spend the time of time in the north of her world that we did a year or two ago at places like Caer Loid (Kirkstall) and Aberford (which is, er, Aberford). There are photos of those places here on the blog somewhere but I'm writing this on the road and not my desk and searching a tiny screen is not the easiest thing in the world...

The ending of Hild tends to take people by surprise, but I also tried to make it feel inevitable. As I worked I held an image in my head of finishing the edges on a piece of weaving: folding back the threads, tucking them in, making sure there are no rough edges. And creating a kind of symmetry I find pleasing. I'm glad you did, too.
___
* Halloween

Branding for writers

A while ago I was thinking about "branding" as it is applied to (and by) novelists, and wondering why I have such mixed feelings on the subject. Sometimes I think the very notion pernicious; other times, frankly, I love it. I wrote an essay to figure it out—or to begin to. It went up yesterday on The Weeklings. Here's a taste:

WALLY OLINS, BRANDING guru, died in April. According to an Economist review of his posthumous Brand New: The Shape of Brands to Come (Thames and Hudson, 2014), branding is “about knowing who you are…and showing it.”

It sounds simple but for a novelist it is not.

Writing is both a verb and a noun, a process and a product. The job of a writer is staged: creating then selling, that is, art then commerce. Stepping from one mode to the other involves a profound rearrangement, a state change, as I found out on US publication of my most recent novel, Hild.

To learn to create the kind of novel I aim for, to conjure another time and place with the authority to immerse a reader—to run my software on the readers’ hardware—took years of two different and contradictory practices: disciplined focus on craft, and a kind of unmoored wandering to find my voice.

You can find the rest here. I'd love to know what you think.

Tonight: Porter Square Books, Boston, 7 pm

Tonight I'm at Porter Square Books in Boston. It's a new place to me, but I already know lots of people who've said they're going to be there. It will be a blast! Come and join us!

Monday 10 NovemberBoston, MA
Porter Square Books
7:00 - 8:00 pm
FREE

Tonight: Washington DC, Kramerbooks, 7 pm

Tonight we're finishing our fabulous time in DC with a reading at Kramerbooks and Afterwords Café. I've never done a reading in DC before, so I hope some of you show up and say hello. I know some of K's family will be there, and there's a bar, so it will be a bit of a party...

Sunday 9 November
Washington, DC
Kramer Books & Afterwords Cafe
7:00 - 8:00 pm
FREE - Also, it has a bar...

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them

From Morgan:

In the first few chapters of Hild , there is a line that goes something like “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.”. I’m curious, was that a deliberate Margaret Atwood reference, or just something that has been true throughout all history?

It's on p. 16. Hild is repeating something her mother told her.

Margaret Atwood said something very close to that on the radio in the early 80s. At the time I was teaching women's self defence and volunteering at Lesbian Line, a phone helpline. Many of women I knew worked with Rape Crisis. I'd heard variants on the theme—that women's and mens fears were quite different—from women for years. Atwood crystallized it, though.

This is from Wikiquote:

And from Margaret Joe, a member of the Yukon Legislative Assembly,
a brief quote by Margaret Atwood.
“’Why do men feel threatened by women?’ I asked a male friend of mine.
“’They are afraid women will laugh at them’, he said, ‘undercut their world view.’
“Then I asked some women students, ‘Why do women feel threatened by men?’ ”’They are afraid of being killed,’ they said."
Hansard transcript from the 2nd session of the 27th Legislature (December 5, 1990).

The exact quote, "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them," is a later refinement, I think. I don't know whose, exactly. Perhaps the wisdom of the crowd.

Today: World Fantasy Convention

I'm doing a few things today and tonight at WFC. The first public event is a panel at 3 pm on historical influences in fantasy. Then the mass autographing at 9 pm. Then we'll be in the bar from about 10:30 on.

Come and say hello!

Thurs 6 - Sat 8 November
Arlington, VA
World Fantasy Convention
I have one panel on Friday, 3 pm, but you'll see me around
REGISTRATION REQUIRED