C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 84

Spokane has the Worldcon in 2015

The Worldcon has voted.

We’re it.

It’s going to be interesting.

We are served by Amtrack, Greyhound, Southwest, Delta, and Alaska Air.

We sit astride I-90, and the most convenient route up from the south if you’re east of the Rockies is I-25 to I-90, or I-35 [there IS a continuance up to I-80, though it may not be official federal highway: it LOOKS like official federal highway, through northern Kansas. Or any route that originates near Chicago and picks up I-90. If you’re coming up from west of Arizona, you’ve got the choice of the fairly untrafficked route through Nevada (Winnemucca) to the highway that comes up on the east side of Oregon, up to Kennewick WA and up to Spokane via Ritzville—or going I-5, which is heavier traffic, up through Portland. In Portland you have a 3-way choice: going the scenic drive up the Columbia gorge, which will also get you to Kennewick, with a stop at scenic Multnomah Falls; or going on the White’s Pass route, which will take you through the Cascades (once you leave civilization you see a lot of pine forest and mountains, and it is beautiful, but the only frequent rest stops are the Park Service camp sites, which have latrines; you can also stay on I-5 and pick up I-90 near downtown Seattle, which will take you on the other side of those mountains, and bring you through Snowqualmie Pass. If you’re lucky it WILL be raining and misty, which makes those mountains real camera-friendly. It looks like areas of New Zealand. You then go through a lot of flat farmland before you begin to climb again, and that brings you to Spokane.

OMG, Batchelders.

Now and again—you run across a family in genealogy that just boggles the mind. A Reverend Stephen Bachiler, a minister from England, was involved in at least one bollixed-up attempt to migrate to the colonies, (colonists went, he, the organizer, didn’t) and he kept marrying and begetting as wives would die…probably in childbirth, though there’s enough contagion floating about to also account for it. He finally got to the colonies, with Bachilers begotten before the voyage, got a new Colonial wife, begat some more Bachilers, most of whom couldn’t spell and called themselves Batchelders, and finally, widowed yet again, and in his dotage, he married a sweet young thing who didn’t mind his property but who had a thing for the guy next door. Now—at this point it gets foggy, but in spite of the fact the adultery was in flagrante delicto, so to speak, not hard to prove, the Colonial court required the reverend to go on living with the sweet young thing, whom now he did not trust with the silver, until they could meander their way around to a divorce, perhaps next session. So the reverend decided he’d had it, and took ship BACK to England, usually a 4-6 month venture fraught with such lovely things as typhoid in the water casks, etc, but he lived to get there, and finally died.

Other Bachilers, however, had also emigrated to the Colonies, some who spelled it Bachelor, Bachelder, and Batchelder, and there was a thing going in the Colonies, that, though they were in church for hours on end, more than once a week, and had all these things they didn’t do—apparently sex must’ve been on their minds 24/7, because every danged one of them reproduced until the wife died and then they got another and another, and begot more Batchelders until finally the husband dropped over of a heart attack while plowing, or got shot in the endless skirmishes with Native Americans, who hadn’t been consulted about these people claiming Massachusetts. The wife would then find herself another husband and carry on having kids (usually with a Dodge, a Davis, a Maxfield or Kimball) until she finally wore out.

Well, the Bachilers and Batchelders founded Hampton, Massachusetts, and were prominent in Salem, but they also went elsewhere, and begat and begat, each generation having about 12 kids each one of whom grew up to marry successively and have 12 kids. I have downloaded 150 pages of Bachilers/Batchelders just in Hampton and surrounds.

My direct maternal line goes through a Farrell in Ohio who married a Maxfield (a tale similar to the Bachilers) in a first cousin marriage, so she was Mrs. Maria K. Maxfield Maxfield; and worse—her husband was James Bachelor [Batchelder] Maxfield, to whom she was related, also being, we think, a Batchelder.

Well, thought I, the Batchelders are well documented. This should be easy.

Heaven help me, every other one of the Batchelders is named John or Josiah or Mary, those who aren’t are named Hannah and things like ‘Increase’ and Hepzibah and their dates are all squishy. People doing the trees have made so many mistakes of identification that everything has to be questioned.

This is the hobby I do for relaxation from plotting, —eh?

From Tommie: Was Jules Verne the first SF writer?

Some list Homer. And to a certain extent that’s so: he wrote voyages to the unknown worlds and to hell and back. And some list the Egyptian Sinbad, Sinhue, who did likewise: in the days before space travel, there were ‘exploration’ stories. But to really get the earliest, I think you’d have to go to Gilgamesh, who journeys to the Scorpion Guards at the limit of the world, and who pursues immortality, has it within his hands, and loses it while he sleeps, as a snake devours the plant that would confer it. All these are imaginative fiction which we might equate with space travel: the protagonists explore off the map places and encounter strange beings and forces.

The Roman writer Lucian (b. 125) envisioned a voyage to the Moon.

According to one researcher, you can probably put Marco Polo (b. 1254) on the pile: she did a thorough search of indexed Chinese records of the time and turns up no such visitor…and the Chinese were obsessive indexers. [Possibly he got TO the Silk Road and simply chronicled travelers' tales.]

In the mid-1600′s Cyrano de Bergerac (b 1619) had a voyage to the Moon powered by fireworks.

But Jules Verne (b. 1828) was much more the first sf writer: a) he confronted a modern era’s skepticism and worry about machines by romanticizing the Machine b) he, more than de Bergerac, tried to envision how such machines would work. c) he integrated his machines into a ‘changed world,’ ie, showed what effect such things might have and d) he was pretty much an optimist about the effect of science, in terms of people not only coping but creating. In 20000 Leagues, eg, Nemo might have been a disillusioned, bitter nutjob, but he was also creating a sort of utopia for his crew and seeking in the ocean a protected zone without the problems of the world as he saw them.

Following him was HG Wells—and to an extent Conan Doyle and H Rider Haggard, who both wrote ‘Lost World’ stories. You could begin, in their era, to add others, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, born in 1875, and dying in 1950.

[Book sale] We have started the dreaded cleanup…

of the (dracula music here) basement.

We have boxes. Boxes of books. We have shelves of books. We are going to have to unload some books that are our books [we own them and have had them for years] but are not OUR books, if you get what I mean. This is the spillage of the kind of library a writer collects over 30 years. And we have a plan. We are going to sell the books, many of which are older, mixed hardbounds, paperbound sf and other stuff, in groups. By author. Or by type. We will declare a price for the group, and make a package that will ship efficiently (should you wonder what logic governs selection) in an if it fits it ships USPO box. These boxes are small enough we can carry them.

We also have numbers of foreign language copies of my books—Japanese, Polish, Spanish, you name it. Want to brush up on your foreign language by reading a book you know? These would be just the ticket.

There will also be bizarre eclec-ticity of our old research books. If you want us to sign somebody else’s book just as a curiosity — cool. WE’ll do that. All the books will be cheap-ish, except for a few real treasures. We don’t really care if it’s a collector’s item—just we need the shelf space!

We’ll be putting it up on Closed Circle for convenience, because that has a payment option. We’ll put a little item in the Closed Circle page that describes what’s the content of a particular box up for sale, but please don’t ask us to mix and match. A box will be a box will be a box.

Moving past the outline…

Or at least the tight outline. You’ll see the word count bounce around as I replace ‘outline’ with finished text.

You’ll note I’m down another pound: this one has been a battle. But we’re there. Lower weight than any time since the 1980′s. And halfway to the goal.

We’ve been good. We’ve been at this since March. It didn’t come on easily, so it’s not going to go off easily. We started off with the Atkins frozen meals, and have graduated to actual cooking, within limits.

What we’re doing: since March, we’ve limited carb intake to 20 carbs a day, and those carbs from green vegetables. We’ve coupled this with doctor visits and careful attention (usually) to vitamins and minerals that might be shorted by cutting out almost all starches, which is the big difference. As long as our protein level is high, and our starch level is low, and carbs are around 20, we don’t have hunger-attacks. Seems to be a trigger mechanism in, perhaps, blood sugar. Whatever it is, we don’t often feel hungry and we’re able to avoid snacking.

We’d be ahead of the game now if we hadn’t started off allowing nuts as a snack. That’s not a good thing, and they have carbs. We cut that out. We did get the Soda Stream machine, so we can have soda whenever we like…and Soda Stream uses Splenda, which is allowable for Atkins: it doesn’t have a blood-sugar rebound, for those that can tolerate it. I don’t get along with their lime flavor in anything: it gives me an upset stomach. But then most artificial flavors don’t work for me: many taste ‘off’. The one delight is their diet root beer, which helps me cut off cravings if they start. Jane likes it too, and she doesn’t like modern root beer. (This is much more like the old-fashioned stuff.)

What we’re doing now. We found some little diet cakes from Dixie Diner, mixes that produce a piece of cake that’s under 4 carbs for a tasty ‘sometime’ treat. Again—not to get carried away with. But when we MUST have a sweet. These are iced with Splenda-sugared cream cheese with vanilla, and refrigerated after baking. One 8″ pan produces 9 little cakes. Occasionally we have dry Champagne, when we need a break. Otherwise no alcohol.

Breakfast: 3 Jimmy Dean sausage links and a scrambled egg. Each. No carbs.

Lunch: an Akins frozen dinner (4-5 carbs) or an Atkins diet bar (4 carbs) [Peanut and chocolate.]

Dinner: 1 piece breaded white fish, with tartar sauce made of dill and mayo and lime juice, 1/2 packet steamed broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, green beans, etc. about 18 carbs.

or: half a cup of chicken pieces (grilled) with cheese and jalapenos, and veggies; about 12 carbs

or: a no-bun bacon cheeseburger with veggies, 12 carbs. [The carbs are all from the veggies.]

Dessert, occasional, a snack cake, 4 carbs.

On this, we’ve been losing a pound a week or a pound over 2 weeks, gradually inching down. It’s not grand cuisine, but we’re healthy, even healthier—climbing stairs has become, for me, an of course, not an oh-my-God; and I’m comfy in my skinny jeans, at a 14.

I think we can sort of keep this up indefinitely. We’re headed for party-season, in which Jane and I both have birthdays…and then Thanksgiving…and then Christmas…and then New Years. The fact we can have Champagne without diet disaster is good. These little cakes help. But we may venture as far as a cheese cake, or if we’re really bad, a cream pie.

Tell you one thing—cheat on this diet—and you will feel it. You go out and eat something laden with sugar and starch—and within thirty minutes your body is saying to you, oh, no, that was not such a good idea. Oh, dear. Oh, my, I’m not feeling so good. You feel like you did when you ate the whole box of your mother’s Valentine chocolates. And that restrains you from doing it again soon.

I think the best course for birthdays is going to be a nice peppercorn steak, a small baked potato and salad, and a cheesecake dessert, or only a part of a helping.

RIP Neil Armstrong…on this date, 2012.

Brave, resourceful man…82 years on this planet, a few hours on another one—that’s a heckuva biography in itself.

Thunderstorms…

Rare as hen’s teeth up here. Last night we had one.

Usually rain sifts down as anything from fine drops to fine mist that sifts down over three days. If we do get lightning, it’s usually ‘dry’ lightning, and virga, which is rain that evaporates before it hits the ground…that kind of lightning starts fires in the woodlands.

The sort with lightning and a downpour surprised us. They’ve been saying rain for days, and it would cloud up, spit three drops and quit, or cloud up, rain at night, and we’d never see it, except for wet patio chairs.

This time we were sitting in the living room talking to Lynn on the phone and — cowabunga, that was lightning! Jane of course got up and threw the curtains wide.

But it was soon over. This morning the skies are china blue and clear.

When we go south to visit, we always love driving through thunderstorms, and—like the kids from space—will run to the windows to watch.

The pond is staying clear…and the writing…

…is advancing into the sketchy, magic-happens-here part of the outline.

I outline only in broadest terms, mostly to get the pacing down and to get an idea of the slice of time…

This doesn’t always work: sometimes an incident turns up that skews your timeline.

The worst thing a writer can do for himself is to follow the outline when the people in the story are saying “but…” and trying to do something else.

But outlines are necessary, I think: when I was a novice writer I wandered through the terrain and then threw out fifty page chunks as irrelevant until I pared the stack of pages down to a novel. Now I have a sort of a plan and a destination, but I always stay alert to other possibilities along the way.

The problem is conventions and, well, life.

Go to a convention, spend the weekend with people asking you about the book you did two years ago, or twenty, and you have to reconstruct that logic flow to answer; or you’re on a panel talking about concepts that belong to a book twenty years back. Or you party a bit, and drop a few stitches there. You get back home, travel-lagged, or just tired; and you sit down Monday or Tuesday morning trying to gather up the thirty or forty threads you were managing. But you only have half a dozen people you’re managing. Thirty or forty? Oh, yes…because every person has several irons in the fire, every person has a history and connections that can be in play, and you have to respect those, because if you don’t watch it, a missed thread can hand you an anomaly, and an anomaly can need to be handled, and handling it to explain how this happened (rather than ripping out 20 pages) can add 20 pages…

These things frequently happen post-convention, post trip, post-life-event, like, oh, having to paint the garage or replace the furnace…

The beat do go on. But that outline will help finding those threads a lot easier. So that’s mostly what the outline is, less WHAT happens as what HAS to happen, logistically, for things to get done, and what plot threads everybody is carrying, and why they have to be on-scene or off- and whose plans are apt to get overturned if X happens, and whether or not they get the clues and where…

Oh, a novel outline is SO not quite the orderly A. B. C. that Ms. Smith taught in 8th grade English.

If you have not caught Lynn’s adventures with the alligator…

Her blog has pix.

:Head/wall: The pond…

…is clear.

It wasn’t yesterday. It was green murk.

Today, though I did absolutely NOTHING…

It’s clear. You can see the rocks on the bottom.

It’s my theory that the bursting of the sand filter gasket that dumped sand and dust into the pond, turning it milky for days…has finally done what sand does when you dump it into bioactive water, and gathered a shell of bacteria about each dust particle. There is, indeed, a fine dusting of sand all over the bottom.

The not-too-cheap actual filter I ordered is still on its way.

It will undoubtedly be useful.

But now the water is so clear our fish look suspended in glass.

Go figure.