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May 17th, 2012
12:51 pm - 17 Things on May 17
1. Oh, I'm as scattered as Ophelia's floral props in Hamlet.
2. Scattered, is what I'm saying.
3. Sad to hear about the passing of Donna Summer.
4. Youtube doesn't have any immediately cool vids of "Last Dance," my favorite D Summer song, so you'll just have to imagine it here. [[IMAGINARY LINK TO PROPER VIDEO VERSION]]
5. I have been trapped in the same dinner-party scene in my original project for three weeks...
6. Until finally I said to myself, "Perhaps Heroine and Hero will just....GET UP FROM THE TABLE." Whay hey, I've cracked it!
7. Nominations for MacArthur Genius Grant are no doubt pending.
8. According to his Twitter, noted thespian, writer, and Sherlock/Who fandom troll Mark Gatiss has just discovered the "Trololol" song, as seen in this video. (Obligatory Warning: May Cause Cackling or Brain Damage.)
9. I imagine this is a sign of the apocalypse at best. In any event, No Good Can Come of It.
10. Just reread Good Omens, actually, so the video would fit right in with Crowley's plans.
11. Or possibly Aziraphale's.
12. Am now starting noted writer and dandy Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, Or, An Oxford Love Story, wherein the heroine has just learned parlour magic tricks in order to captivate 1911 English society.
13. As one does.
14. Speaking of captivating -- Emma Thompson and her daughter at the Men in Black 3 premiere.
15. Please forgive the link to the Daily Mail.
16. Am off to brave the May heat with the Small Blonde Dog -- who is bored and needs diversion.
17. May you have delightful diversions of your own today, despite tribulations.
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May 16th, 2012
08:37 am - the joy of research
Hullo, people of Wednesday! On Wednesday. Whatever.
After a few months of excruciation, I am almost on the other side of the Slough of Ack. (Did you know 'excruciation' is a proper word, per the Oxford English Dictionary? Now that I do, I shall use it constantly.)
Anyhoo, this near end to my travails means that I can get stuck into writing again -- and thus stuck back into research. Because the hero of my current WIP is a bit of a dandy, I purchased Bernhard Roetzel's Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion in order to glean details for verisimilitude. This not only has caused my Google-ads algorithm to show me amazing things, but also is just fabulous in terms of pretty pictures, not to mention the actual information contained therein.
Here's a sample fact: In 1871 Brown, Davis & Co of Aldermansbury registered the first shirt with buttons all the way down the breast. Till then people just pulled shirts on and off over their heads (50). This has no relevance for my ongoing project, actually, but isn't it cool to know?
What area of human knowledge would you like to explore today, if you had world enough and time?
In concluding news -- the anthology Vampire's Dilemma, in which I have the story "Thin White Duke in Sneakers," is now available on Kindle as well as in trade paperback. Just so you know. :-)
Cheers to all, and may your Wednesday be wonderfully instructive.
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May 3rd, 2012
12:04 pm - story in Vampire's Dilemma: out now!
Friends, internet neighbors, lovely passersby -- an announcement!
Many years ago, a story of mine was accepted for an anthology. The anthology has just been published.
Vampire's Dilemma is a collection of stories about.... well, vampires, as it says on the tin: good vampires, or at least those who struggle against their natures.
My story is "Thin White Duke in Sneakers." For the last four months Linda Ramirez has thought her husband Greg McGarrity, her thin white duke in sneakers, was dead. One night in St Augustine she'll learn that he's not entirely dead -- and armed with magic and love, they'll fight the darkness together.
The first few paragraphs, as a teaser:
( A sudden breeze off Matanzas Bay fluttered the paper of Linda Ramirez's notebook, pages flying so fast that random words from the notes she'd jotted down seemed to escape into the night. )
..........................
I've posted the Amazon link above; you also can order from Wildside Press directly. Right now it's only available in print, and I'll let you know when and if it becomes available as an e-book.
Hope you like it!
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April 26th, 2012
10:22 am - Questions like Stars
At work I am drowning, at home I am exhausted, at all times I'm fussy....
Diversion! Diversion! I am seeking diversion!
So here's a plaintive request for you all -- Ask me a question or give me a topic, and I'll respond. (I do reserve the right to obfuscate, misdirect, or poss. lie if the question hits too close to home. [grin])
What would you like to ask? Or, rather, what would you like me to tell you?
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April 23rd, 2012
06:46 am - It's April 23
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demipuppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrumps, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid
(Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure; and when I have required
Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
--The Tempest, 5.1.34-57.
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April 22nd, 2012
12:23 pm - Earth Day 2012
On this Earth Day, 22 April 2012, I celebrate 22 natural things I love:
1)monkey-face pansies
2)the sweet scent of rain in a dry land
3)old climbing roses, red
4)red Oklahoma dirt after light rain
5)granite boulders piled high and loose
6)the curves of a river cutting its way to the sea
7)incoming tide crashing over rocks, white spray dancing
8)sunlight through leaves
9)prickly-pear in bloom
10)ocotillo in bloom
11)palm fronds fluttering in thunderstorm wind
12)moss on stones
13)tallgrass prairie, wind-blown, under a deep-summer sky
14)the smell of the first cold front in autumn
15)alligator sliding down off a berm into the river [NOTE: as long as I am far, far away]
16)antelope in the West Texas desert
17)orangeflowers
18)the gleam of pebbles under running water
19)thunderheads in the desert
20)coyotes [NOTE: off running, not in my yard]
21)spring sunsets, gold gold gold
22)the Thames
Wishing for natural goodness for you on this Earth Day!
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April 8th, 2012
06:00 pm - Drive-by
Am a bit fragile, febrile, and other words starting with "f" at the moment (all due to the old devil allergies), but I wanted to stop by. Do a drive-by, as it were.
This is prompted in part by this Guardian feature on Palm Springs, California. I'm very much taken with the photo accompanying the story -- the haze-and-dust desert hills in the background, the v. brightly colored retro hotel in the foreground, fuchsia and orange and lavender almost the same blue as the haze. The copy says it's 1950s-inspired, but I'm thinking 60s and an I Spy episode, "Will the Real Good Guys Please Stand up?" or "So Coldly Sweet."
I've never been in Palm Springs proper, although years ago I did the I-10 drive-by probably half a dozen times. What I remember from those trips is the haze-and-dust and desert glare.
I remember, too, knowing during those old drive-bys that William Powell had retired to Palm Springs, musing about his departure from Hollywood into the haze. There's a Youtube real-estate video of his empty house -- "Mediterranean revival," it says, but it looks mid-century modest to me, cool and comfortable. There aren't any PopArt colors, there aren't the chic Modern lines.
Still, now trapped on the other side of the country, I wish I could do one more drive-by -- and maybe this time take an exit, go inside, find the treasures.
Happy start of the new week to you, and may your drive-by take you where you want to go!
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April 1st, 2012
06:44 pm - No, seriously, actually posting
Despite it still being April 1 here, this is not a joke-posting.
(However, now that I think about it, I should definitely invent a cool persona for such posts. If only I were cool....)
Anyway! I've been busy these days, messing around with new projects and doing proper work elsewhere and even having people over for drinks yesterday. (I vaguely envy those soap-opera characters or everyday extroverts or similar, for whom entertaining is No Big Deal, open up the cupboard and fabulous food falls out, whoops look here's a designer frock which will be at once understated and film-star fabulous, wheee! Except usually there's a murder at parties like that. At my drinks-and-nibblies thing, on the other hand, the Blonde Dog fell asleep on a friend's shoes, and no one dressed up, and no one got dead. Which was good.)
I also compiled and burned my first mix-CD in two years, though, which was v. pleasing.
So, since I'm deadly dull, I'll link you to an interview with Marianne Faithfull, who is fascinating.
Also, apparently Julian Clary has written a novel which features Noel Coward, which fact draws me to the novel like a moth to.... well, you know. Anyway, The Observer visits Mr Clary at home, said home a former residence of Noel Coward.
And I shall try to post more, as soon as I have things to say. :-) Cheers to you on this first day of April!
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March 21st, 2012
07:23 pm - A peculiar fact
It is a Peculiar Fact that around the time of the year the subtropics explode with pollen, I become halfway worthless. (Please don't tell me I'm completely worthless, because I'll believe you.)
The general effect is one of listlessness (that's right, I can't even write lists), low-level headache, depression, exhaustion, and over-consumption of caffeine to counteract said exhaustion, which means I lie awake longing for sweet slumber to overtake me. Sweet slumber, however, has taken the last plane out of town, or has bunked down with the Blonde Dog in the next room.
If I check the news at any time during the day... well, let's not even contemplate that horror.
So anyway, that's where I've been -- whingeing and feeling awful. I have been poking at one finished draft, too dull and swollen-eyed to bend my mind to revision, and instead have written a chapter of a new project, la la. Also, I have started switching over my closet from winter to summer. Lastly, I just began reading a new book.
For some time I'd been seeing references to Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, a police procedural with magic, set in my favorite city in the world. Finally I picked it up -- or rather, picked up Midnight Riot, which is the US title of the book(and a crappy title it is, too). Well! Those who know me know that the Thames is my holy river, and Aaronovitch's book, with its dry-and-droll first person narration by DC Peter Grant, its delightful Folly set in Russell Square, and its personification of Mother Thames, is indeed worthy of that river. (At least so far -- I'm halfway through.)
I mean, I'd rather BE in London, but that'll do, pig, that'll do.
May you find ways to celebrate spring (other than sneezing), and may you be reminded of places you love.
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March 12th, 2012
07:26 am - Monday luxuries
It's still dark on this Monday morning, a day after the time-change. I can hear slightly damp birds (after a weekend of rain) trying to wake the sun; the Blonde Dog snores at my feet, waiting for enough light to be walked; I am feeling grey myself.
So instead of dwelling, I offer the thought of Monday luxuries --
*my yellow roses, bought at the grocery store, unfurling in golden richness on the kitchen table. (
*fresh strawberries on my cereal this morning.
*This slideshow of actor Taylor Kitsch in my beloved Marfa, Texas. (I am perhaps more interested in Marfa than Mr Kitsch....)
And finally,
*even if you've already seen this short film of magic and sparkle, worth another look: L'Odyssee de Cartier.
May you find your own luxuries (large or small) on this March Monday.
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