Relying on hand-me-downs for the last nine months has insulated me from the apparent fact that shopping for children's clothing is like reliving my childhood gender trauma one inch at a time. Last night I found myself muttering "I'd be gender appropriate if the boys didn't hog all the cool stuff!"* a lot...

*Like frogs and spaceships and sports and cars and monsters and pirates and dinosaurs! Giraffes, however, are apparently gender-neutral this season.

The reporter showed up. He's probably about 30 but looked 12, tall skinny, blond. Polite and professional. He'd done some homework and has read moderately in SF&F. We talked. He asked good (but standard) questions.

We agreed that since Willamette Writers sent him to me and WW is a regional organization and they are giving me that life time achievement award next month that he should try to submit the story to more than just the local once a week Sandy Post. We'll see.

Just got rid of him when zeborahloray and clan showed up. We had a nice visit. Her eldest put the new 1 gig ram chip in my laptop. Not a big difference but moderate improvement in loading and booting speed. Worked wonders with Firefox and the system doesn't freeze if I let it go to sleep naturally rather than putting it in stand by mode.

And I got 562 words of a new short story for a secret anthology done. Heavy on the set up, but this is stuff I need to know.

A good day all in all.

Now I can work on Thistle. I really want to write Thistle's story.

At this rate it's going to take me weeks to dispense all the links I've got stored up, but at least this is getting me back in the habit of posting regularly, which I like to do.  So!  Today I cannot shake this song from my head:


(As it happens, this video is all I've ever seen of the second LotR movie, since I made a solemn vow to myself back in 2001 to hold off on watching it until 2010, at which point I could reassess and decide whether the vow should be renewed.  It occurred to me today that the terms of my arrangement are nearly up!  Hmm.  Meanwhile, a few seconds of Legolas on repeat is perfectly sufficient.)

Did I beat Dianne to the posting this morning? I think I did!

We're in final edits on the next Pandora Project story, which is so exciting. This one features some new characters (giving Sender and Elios a break for a little while) and a lighter tone. You'll have a chance to get out into deep space, meet Pandora, learn more about the cultures that make up the Auriga's population, and make some new friends. We're very fond of all the characters in the next story, including the anti-social and irascible engineer responsible for Sender's and Macy's Harpies. I'm a sucker for a soft-centered grump.

Your stories of your worst summer ever make me long for the climate-controlled future! Would you miss the extremes of summer and winter, rain and drought if you moved out to a carefully engineered colony in space? Are we going to take our weather with us? I often think that if we could manage to do so, we'd definitely keep sunshowers and rainbows.

Thank you for all the suggestions and advice you've posted for me; I appreciate your help very much.

I have to start by telling you, right up front, that neither George nor I is willing to tackle setting up a compost pile or a worm bin. We understand why that would be a good thing to do, we understand that it doesn't have to involve a lot of work, and we admire people who do it, but we're just not up for it. We have tried it several times over the years and have been sorry every time, no doubt because we've always done it badly. It's like dusting; it turns into something we both try to avoid dealing with; it turns into something we fight over -- about who did and who didn't take care of it, and why, and how inexcusable that is of the person alleged to have shirked the essential tasks.

And then I have to tell you that neither one of us is willing to take on keeping even one chicken. Keeping a chicken means building a structure to shelter that chicken and putting up a fence to keep that chicken home, and making sure that chicken's water doesn't freeze in the wintertime, and more. Our little dog is all the livestock we're willing to look after.

[Elders, right? They ask for your advice and then they don't take it. I know.]

The books on cooking for one/cooking for two/cooking for students don't speak to our needs. It's not that George can't figure out how to shrink recipes so we don't end up with too much. The problem is that he always looks at the amount of food he's getting ready to cook and thinks, "That can't possibly be enough!" and then he throws in just a little more of this and just a little more of that. Intellectually, he knows about quantities; emotionally, it doesn't look right to him, and he keeps fooling with it until it does look right. Ideally, he would always make just enough for us to have two dinners from whatever-it-is; instead, it ends up being three dinners. Every single time. George would agree with you that this isn't rational, and then he would tell you that by damn if he's going to do the cooking he's going to do it his way, and that at 74 he's entitled to do it his way. And I wouldn't be willing to argue with him about that.

Now we have at last come to the end of the contrary part of this post and have arrived at the courteous part. All your advice about making more efficient use of our freezer ... that has been truly helpful. So many good ideas; so many excellent tips; thank you. I'm going to read all of that again, and make notes, and see what parts we can put into practice.

In case you guys missed the last post (made late last night), there's a new, longer video of me and my six fellow authors getting up to some shenannigans at the last signing over at YouTube! Go check it out for a laugh. And leave a comment!

And now, the review (copied from GoodReads):

I just finished this book last night and after reading the entire series I'm wondering why it took me so long to pick up these books and try them. I know I saw them on the shelf numerous times and almost bought them. But now that I've read them, I'm kicking myself. I should have started reading David B. Coe earlier. But at least he's got a bunch of books out now, so I have something to read next (rather than waiting impatiently for the next book to come out). *grin*

This is a good series and the third volume definitely wraps everything up in a nice way. We get to see where everyone we like ends up, and the resolution to the overall arc is satisfying. I had a few minor quibbles with the third book and the series as a whole overall, but none of those quibbles kept me from enjoying the books in any way.

For Eagle-Sage, it took a good half of the book before the real plot got moving. The first half was set-up, but I couldn't help thinking that it could have been shortened or gone faster. (I didn't spend much time trying to figure out how though.) At the end, I wasn't satisfied with how the Keepers were integrated into the final resolution. I thought they'd play a much more important role somehow, and since one of the themes of the book is that everyone needed to work together to defeat the enemy, their involvement ended up being too minimal, especially with how that ended for them.

For the series overall, my main complaint is that the familiars--the hawks and owls and eagles--were mainly just used as props. I kept wanting to see more interaction between the mages and their familiars. I wanted the familiars to come across as characters in their own right, and I wanted to see a deeper, more emotional relationship between them and thie chosen human counterparts.

But again, there is anough good stuff going on overall, especially in the writing department as well as the unique ideas of the world and how it works, that those quibbles did NOT keep me from enjoying the books. They are solid fantasies that I'd recommend to everyone. As I said, I'll definitely be reading more David B. Coe in the future.

*************


Amazon.com Widgets

Making Light has a discussion of how some U.S. conservative commentators who happen to be Catholic are going batshit crazy over the Pope's new encyclical.

I find this hilarious, because these are the same folks who are quick to criticize ANY Catholic who dares to express concern about the Church's position on abortion or ordination of women or the role of gays and lesbians. "The Pope is infallible, the Pope defines doctrine for the Church, if you don't like it, go be a Protestant." But let the Pope say something in support of the right of workers to organize, or articulate concerns about unbridled capitalism, and it's OMG, the Pope got it wrong, he's mistaken, he's throwing a bone to the left-wing of the Church.

Oh, please.

I'm not Catholic, don't have a dog in this fight, but I have always had respect for the Church's consistent stand for life - I haven't read the new encyclical, but it sounds like it's right in line with that stand, recognizing that life doesn't end at birth, and that inherent human dignity applies to born people just as much as the unborn.

What have you been reading recently in the science fiction field? Anything that has really impressed you?

Although my HD version was still outstanding by 11pm, baron_elric and I decided to watch ep 4 of Children of Earth, after having watched all three of the previous episodes last night (yes, I hoarded them up and watch them all at once -- got a problem with that? shut it!).

( And now we go to a cut ... )

Just going through now and putting in italics (underscores, anyway) where they were stripped out by the ruthlessness of clearing out my screwed up formatting.

I need to remember that MSWord gets DARN PERSNICKETY on me when I write longer than about sixty thousand words, and even more persnicketty when switching a document back and forth betwixt Open Office. Maybe copy-paste is my friend, and also stars or some crap like that which can be search-replaced at the end, not that I ever remember how wild cards work without going to look it up on-line.

I can't possibly finish my underscoring search tonight. Eyes, crossing.

G'night.

It took them until 1 am or so to clear up that accident. Unfortunately, we had an unhappy side effect at our end. Randy was hurrying to get to the fire station, but when he went up on the balls of his feet to run, he ripped loose the bottom of his calf muscle on his right leg with what he described as a loud snap. He could barely hobble home and was in a lot of pain. We elevated his leg and packed ice on it, but it's a pretty bad tear. He worked from home today to keep off the leg. The doctor can't do anything about it because as bad as it is, it doesn't call for surgery. It will take a loooong time to heal, followed by careful physical therapy.

Robert McCammon will be coming to ConFusion 2010 as Subterranean Press's sponsored guest.

http://www.robertmccammon.com/

ConFusion's website

http://stilyagi.org/index.php/confusion

Robert McCammon will be coming to ConFusion 2010 as Subterranean Press's sponsored guest.

http://www.robertmccammon.com/


ConFusion's website

http://stilyagi.org/index.php/confusion

From yesterday's news: Summer camp kids get expelled from a private club their camp paid for membership in because club members and owners concerned minority kids will "change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club."

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

The next day the club told the camp director that the camp's membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.

"I said, 'The parents don't want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,'" camp director Aetha Wright said.

Go to the article and watch the video linked to on the left. Those kids are so articulate, and so bewildered at the same time, by comments made by club members.

Then consider watching this video here:



Happily another place stepped up and offered the campers a place to swim. The club is now claiming the reason was really that the pool couldn't accommodate so many children in addition to the private members. That's obviously not the whole story, and in any case that doesn't take away the experience of these kids hearing racist comments and being told they had to leave.

Here. Have a game in which you need to poke a woman in the forehead as many times as you can in a minute. Complications include rising platforms, power-ups, and random masks.

The internet remains full of weirdness.

Aha! The conquest continues with a new--and longer!--video! This is the seven authors of doom . . . oh wait, that should be SEVEN AUTHORS OF DOOM!!!! . . . having fun at the signing last June. Really, getting us together is a disaster in the making. But one that you'll enjoy while you die.

Check it out here!

I'm quite quite late with the Advance Uncorrected Proof (hereafter known as AUP) of Traitors' Gate contest due to moving house and having visitors at the same time. My apologies. Basically, everything online or that was not moving and visitors (or paddling) was derailed for several weeks.

So.

This contest was exceptionally difficult as I loved ALL the entries and found them very very interesting, heartfelt, and illuminating in the sense that it was fascinating to me to see what appealed to different people about different characters.

With the trenchant aid of two of my spawn, I settled on four finalists:

Yileen L
Carol B
Josh S
Christopher Z

The third spawn drew lots from a cup, and the winner is: Christopher Z.

I will try to send out thank you notes to all who participated before the next set of visitors arrives next week. I really appreciated those of you who wrote in; as a writer, I can often wonder what effect my narratives have on readers, and so through your answers I got a glimpse. But because I appreciated every entry so much, I found it agonizing to have to choose between them, honestly. It was like someone asking which one is my favorite child! (well, not quite, but I'm exaggerating for effect)

As an aside, I was alerted that two copies of the AUP of Traitors' Gate are up on eBay. Now, the AUP specifically is not for resale (or any sale). It's a publicity tool. I don't know if my publisher will request the AUPs get taken down, but what burns me in the case of Advance Proofs is that I requested more AUPs but the publisher had already run out. So I could have used those for more contests, or in the case of ties (see above), or for actual reviewers, etc, while meanwhile some schmoe is trying to make a profit over something they got for free and doubtless was not interested in. Feh.

Tomorrow, Dianne and I will be back. It's a lovely, cool summer where we are, though the young people are complaining vigorously about the lack of heat. I have to disagree with them. I like it boring.

What was your WORST summer day? I can't decide between the multi-day power outage in the heat of summer or maybe it was the heatwave the week before we had the AC installed when I was sitting in a baby pool full of ice water in the living room. ...so many choices. Maybe the campout when I got sick from so many mosquito bites... we stopped counting at 20 on each arm and leg. What about you?