Sillybean

Vicky Bliss PSA

Laughter of Dead Kings, the new Vicky Bliss mystery, is out this week.

Back to work. Frantically busy. First week of school. GAH.

Trip photos

... uploading now.

Oops, time for vacation

Our vacation has snuck up on me. Sarah and I are driving to Houston tomorrow night and flying to Boston on Saturday, meeting up with the boys there. They’ll be in training all next week, so we’ll be on our own during the day. We have food and touristy recommendations, but if you know where the good bookstores are, please let us know!

The new novel is up to 16K already but likely to hold there for a while, since I rarely get any writing done while traveling.

I should probably think about packing now.

Where did the summer go?

the greying of SF: not a myth

Over in a nice discussion of the generation gap in SF on Tor.com, a commenter crunches numbers on the ages of Hugo winners and comes up with a pretty clear trend. Really fascinating, assuming you care about this sort of thing in the first place.

ETA: A handy graph, all color-coded and shit, via Tobias Buckell. Check out that eggplant-shaded sliver.

ETA2: Original thread now contains Nebula numbers too.

Olympic stuff

How much do I love Shawn Johnson for using the August Rush soundtrack (“August’s Rhapsody”) for her floor exercise music? Lots and lots and lots.

And then they had to spend ten minutes on Bush. Who can’t even pronounce the names of the world leaders he’s been talking to, much less “Ossetia.” Melanie Rawn fans could give him a clue. Bah.

Crack for English majors, Elizabethan edition: Ink and Steel

I am madly in love with a book (other than the one I’m writing): Elizabeth Bear’s Ink and Steel. It’s actually the first half of what was once one long book; here’s the other half. I’m doling it out to myself in very small portions, lest I get drunk on Elizabethan dialogue and lit geek jokes.

The conceit is that Christopher Marlowe (Kit Marley) is a member of the Prometheus Club, a clandestine organization that uses magic to support Elizabeth’s reign. (In a nutshell.) Kit’s job was, unsurprisingly, to write plays, and his death leaves a gaping hole in the roster. From the prologue:

Oxford cleared his throat and his memories. “But with Marley, we lose the Lord Admiral’s men, leaving us without a company—”

“There is my company,” Burbage put in, but Oxford’s voice rose over the player’s effortlessly.

“—and without a playmaker under whose name to perform our works. Never mind Kit’s ear for a verse.”

Walsingham extended a long, knotty hand, bony wrist protruding from dusty velvet, skin translucent as silk over gnarled blue veins. “Oxford—”

But Oxford shook his head. “I have not Kit’s grasp on an audience, Sir Francis.”

Hundson’s hands lay flat on the scarred tabletop. He closed his eyes. “It risks Elizabeth.”

Walsingham’s chin jerked sharply. “We’ll find another way.”

He stared down at his hands until his attention was drawn outward again when Burbage coughed.

“What is it, then?”

Burbage drew himself up. “I know a man.”

This cracks me up every time I read it. You know whose door Burbage is about to darken. It’s also funny as hell if you follow the arguments over who wrote Shakespeare’s plays — and the original title of the unified book was, after all, The Stratford Man. (Or, as the author likes to call it, Will & Kit’s Bogus Journey.)

Because things are not over for poor Kit. Left for dead by traitors within the Prometheans, he’s been drawn into the realm of Faerie and is now bound to the Mebd.

“In faith, Rosemary,” he said, so he would not hiss in pain. “I hope I’m not dead. I thought death was meant to be an end to worldly cares, and here I find rather less release than might be hoped from a knife in the eye. Tell me then, be I dead, or in Cheapside?”

“Neither dead nor in Cheapside, sir knight,” an amused voice answered. “And you’ll find the legend of your wit precedes you. Drink, if you’ll risk it.” The cool fingers touched his lips, and water dripped into his mouth. Water? No, some tisane, sweet with honey and tart with lemons. Rosehips and catmint. “Better?”

“No knight,” he answered. “But a playmaker. Yes, better by far than the taste of my oversleeping. Was I fevered?” He put a hand up to cover hers, but his trembled and hers was strong.

“Bards are honored as much as knights here,” she answered. “And you’re a Queen’s Man, which makes you more a servant of the crown than many entitled to a Sir. You are lucky to be alive.”

That did open his eyes—his eye, as the right one seemed swollen shut. He remembered a knife in the hand of his master’s man— Poultice or no, he sat, pulling the wet cloth aside. His ring was missing, the gold and iron ring Edward had given him. “Where did you hear such deviltry, woman?”

She was tall. Hair black and coarse as wire, gray at the temples, strong and fine of feature with an aristocratic nose. If she’d not had her hair twisted into a simple straight braid and been dressed in gray-green linsey-woolsey, he might have said she was like enough his Queen to be Elizabeth’s own cousin.

“From Gloriana,” she replied, straightening her spine like a Queen herself. “And before you ask why you live, Kit Marley, Queen’s Man—call it a favor from one Queen to another.”

If you want more, the first three chapters acts are posted on Bear’s site. (Scroll down a bit.) It’s part of the larger Promethean Age series, but so far, it appears that you don’t have to have read Blood and Iron or Whiskey and Water, the two previously published books, to get into Ink and Steel — which is, after all, set four hundred years earlier. Knowing what happens in the other two will give you a sense of impending doom about the proceedings, is all.

And I do highly recommend reading more. If you can get to the part where Will snarks to Kit (back in London, on loan from the Mebd) that Hero and Leander is an ode to Leander’s arse and not fall hard for this book, you’re made of sterner stuff than I am.

Now comes the fun part, because I know you’re all intrigued and stuff, and you’re thinking, “Hey, I should get me one of those.” But you’ll have to click those Amazon links above or get thee to a Borders, because Barnes & Noble fubared their database and didn’t order any copies of either book. SRSLY. They can order them for you if you ask for them by ISBN, but not by title or author. Even though both books are right there on their website and everything.

In case you do need to use B&N, here you go:

Ink and Steel: 0451462092

Hell and Earth: 0451462181

Idiots. These are SUCH good books. They deserve a wide readership.

Can’t sleep, book will eat me

I have given up any pretense that I’m just jotting down enough notes to remember the new book when I’m ready to come back to it and will soon return to revising the old one. This book is a freight train running at full speed, and it will flatten me if I do not keep up. People in Novel in 90 saw me completely lose my shit at 3 a.m., when the rush of scenes had driven me out of bed for the third time.

I’m accustomed to having to coax every word out from its hiding place. Usually, the Novel in 90 goal of 750 words a day is a slight stretch. This week, I’ve hit 1200/day without pausing to think up the next scene. I wrote something like 3500 words yesterday, and could have kept going had I not needed to catch a few hours’ sleep so I could come to work today.

It’s the first book in a projected series, so I have a few scenes sketched in for the later volumes. Last night it seemed that the entire series was right there on the tip of my brain, ready to unfold before me if I could just keep up. We’ll see if that sensation returns… right now I’m too exhausted to think.

This is both euphoric and deeply unsettling.

Revisons, part eleventy-three

I am so very tired of this book, and so very excited about that other one I am not supposed to be writing.

The new first chapter is coming together in my head, though.

Breaking Dawn thoughts

A) That was sooooo not the book I wanted. Ugh. And blech. I want that four and a half hours of my life back.

B) I need brain bleach now.

C) These recaps are fucking hysterical.

Saturday

My husband, who does not read for fun, snatched The Watchmen from me when it arrived in the mail today and has been ensconced on the couch with it for the last two and a half hours. Guess I’ll be reading that when he gets done….

My goal for this weekend is to revise the first chapter of the-manuscript-inaccurately-known-as-Sparky. However, I had a stinking brilliant idea for a mystery series earlier this week, and now I seem to be in sticky time, totally without meaning to be. With the sexy new idea whispering in my ear, the prospect of working on the old manuscript is about as attractive as that of licking toilet scum. I’ve just located some missing notes, though, so I’m off to try again.

Also, let me pause here to say: shit. I’ve studied SF plots and fantasy plots and romance plots, but not mystery plots. Send help?

Paco y Juan

When Michael and Shenan are cooking, fixing a computer, or tiling a bathroom, they become Paco and Juan. As of this week, their adventures will be chronicled at the new Paco y Juan website. As you can see, the monkey has found a new home, and Shenan Juan has a snazzy soap dish business card holder for his office. I’m Serafina over there. If Sarah has named her alter ego, I’ve already forgotten.

They have some lovely green aprons for grilling. We’re thinking of getting that chili graphic screen printed on them.

They’re planning to post some of their recipes and computer tips. I’m sure other potentially amusing things will end up over there, in time.

Revisions, part bleh

As usual, the characters are great, but I have failed to bring the conflict. They’re having a cocktail party in my head, looking at me over the rims of their glasses like, “What? We’re not supposed to like each other?”

Annoying, they are.

Contemplating the monkey

I can’t stop thinking about the process that led to a ceramic monkey trash can arriving on the shelves at Target. I mean, let’s take another look at this thing:

Someone designed that. (“What is missing from my monkey trash can? YES. A banana. That’s it. My work here is done.”) And furthermore, someone else approved the design (“Why yes, this is good, there are Americans who will pay money for this.”) and sent it off to a manufacturing division somewhere. And someone in the manufacturing division said, “Plastics will not do justice to this objet d’art. We need to CLASS THIS BITCH UP. Boys, fire up the kiln.”

And you know what? They were all right. There were at least two Americans who were willing to pay money for this, once it went on the clearance rack. And I have the everlasting joy, the deep-seated satisfaction, of knowing that I married one of them. And that? Is priceless.

ETA: Michael informs me that it’s made of plastic after all — which, I’m sorry, demotes the thing to mere kitsch — and that it’s part of a truly horrifying collection.

Learning, and practicing, and confidence

So, Bear’s new column is up at Subterranean. It’s about learning, and learning how to learn. This made me stop and think:

But there’s a corollary. If all you ever attempt is things you can’t do, the result is discouragement. And also, coming back to things you can do, going over them again and again–like playing scales–builds technique and confidence, and helps to internalize them, make them automatic and effortless… so you have more brain power left over for the new, hard thing you are trying to accomplish.

Seriously. I wish that someone, anyone, had put it like that at any point during school or any of the various kinds of lessons I tried and eventually gave up.

A lot of my failures have to do with my own impatience with myself. I try to dash to the next step without having really mastered the previous one, because — the end! It’s there, I can see it, and I want to be there!

... yeah. Gotta remember to slow down sometimes.

New WordPress plugin: Post and Page Excerpt Widgets

Post and Page Excerpt Widgets let you display excerpts from posts or pages in the sidebar. For some reason, page excerpts were taken out of WordPress somewhere along the way, so the widget requires the Page Excerpt plugin to handle those. If The Excerpt Reloaded is installed, the widget will use that function; otherwise it’ll do a normal excerpt.

Unlike any other widget I’ve seen, this one allows you to link the widget title. These widgets do support the usual WP ‘more’ links, but in some situations it makes more sense to link the heading than to append a link. Here, you can do either, neither, or both.

This plugin grew out of some of the custom work I did for Justine’s site. We both wanted the sidebar to contain more information than just links in some cases — upcoming events, for example — but there was no good way to do that without a lot of custom code. Then I found Milan Petrovic’s Multi Instance Widget demo and realized that I could merge my work with his and come up with something that would be useful beyond this project.