AlmaNews

Time for Simon's Cat...

2013-05-02T23:38:54Z

So, this photo show. You can't make it? Let me bring it to you....

2013-04-27T23:47:20Z

Every one of my photos in the show that I'm currently part of has a story. And PEOPLE ARE STOPPING TO READ THOSE TALES as they pause by the photos. This is wonderful to see.

Back at the Artist Reception, last Sunday, a computer savvy visitor friend basically said, "Have you thought about putting these images and their stories into aa booklet or an ebook? I can help!"

So, with that help, I can now announce that the Books Are Here.

They are available, currently, in PDF and EPUB formats (but I will probably be adding Kindle versions soon...) - so here are your current options.

As the button below will tell you if you toggle the fold-down menu, you can do one of three things.

You can order the physical, printed copy of the book which I can print off here, perhaps even sign if you want it thus, and then mail to you through the good graces of the post office. You get a printed, colour booklet to hold in your own two hands and flip through in real-time at your leisure. All the photos and the stories are included.

You can order, for a slightly cheaper price, the thing as a PDF file which I can email to you, and you can do your own printing at home if you so desire - or you can view the PDF file on a display device of your choice.

Or you can order, for a slightly HIGHER price, a copy of the PDF file (for possible printing and physical viewing) and a copy as an ebook (currently, as I said, EPUB, but working on more...) to be viewed on, perhaps, your iPad or similar device.

(Also, BTW, if you get the book and fall in love with a particular photo, they're all available for purchase as prints - email me for details...)

Here's the Buy Button with those options:

And now, just to give you a hint of what's inside and to

“Almost perfect”
“But there is a bug.”
“And so…?”
“It isn’t perfect. It isn’t flawless. There is this thing, right there, and it mars it…”
“It mars it? In what way does it harm true beauty?”
“Look. There is a bug.”
“Very small. Tiny. Almost invisible.”
“But it’s there. And I can’t see past it.”
“And if it wasn’t there?”
“Then the flower would be perfect.”
“And what would you measure that perfection against…?”
“Perfect just is – you don’t have to compare…”
“But without that tiny, tiny flaw – what would you find to focus your gaze on? And how would you know that what you saw was truly without flaw, like you can see that this flower is, behind the bug? Look, and learn well. A tiny flaw sometimes only serves to make the unbearably perfect something that it is possible for us to actually see.”

“The heart of the flower”
Most of the rest, standing around her, were still tight and half-furled, the waxy petals folded protectively around one another, demure, coy, Victorian ladies making sure their gowns did not reveal too much ankle, gloved and buttoned so that barely any skin showed to tempt a stray eye.
One or two were teetering on the verge, almost fallen women but not quite there yet, clinging to gentility, still keeping the shape although it was loose and blowsy, a woman lounging back in a half-made bed with laces untied so that someone stepping softly into the room could see the soft rise and fall of the curve of her breast.
And then there was one. HER. The one with the petals who had fallen open, whose secret heart was exposed, out there for all to see, naked and vulnerable.
And you looked upon her, and felt pity, and sorrow, and pride. Because there are times that you were that flower. And you hoped people would be kind.

“The memory of windmills”
“Do you see it?”
It was hard to miss, really, the windmill resting picturesquely in the midst of the tulip fields, but it was clear that the old man who had whispered those words was seeing something that wasn’t quite the same thing that I was looking at.
“Yes,” I said carefully. And waited.
He heard my silence and turned his face to mine – and his expression was strange, a smile barely tugging up the corners of his mouth but his eyes filled with tears.
“You are young,” he said, reaching out to pat my hand with his own gnarled and twisted fingers. “You will understand. The day will come, for you too, when you remember who you used to be. Who we all were, when our passions were storms and the windmill wings whirled and whirled in the bright air. Look now, and feel now, and store it all up, and some day you too will remember.”
“Remember what?” I asked, mystified.
The smile broadened, and one of those tears broke free from his eye and ran down the wrinkled leathery skin of his cheek.
“Remember,” he said, “when the day has long settled into night that once you, too, were Don Quixote.”

“The world below”
“Oh look,” one of them said, “look. Is it us?”
And every flower bent its lovely head, and there in the puddle at their foot, there they all were, nodding back, cool bright beauty gazing straight back at them, straight out of the brown muddy water.
“They are more beautiful than us,” said some, and hid their faces in shame, and did not look again.
“They are the same as us!” some said, and did not know what to do, and whether to accept their mirror image as their equal and their friend and their brother or to close up their petals and pretend that they had never seen anything at all.
“They are more glorious than us! More perfect! Better! They are gods!” some cried out, and yearned towards that other, and drowned in the mud.
And in the World Below, the reflections looked up and said nothing at all one way or the other…

Come look at this wonderful world of ours with me, through a lens on my camera, through the words that the pictures inspired. Come walk through the flowers with me.

Spam idiots strike again

2013-04-27T22:47:20Z

Really, you want to sit some of these people down and EXPLAIN things.

This rocked up in the old inbox just now:

Hi,
I will like to discuss a very important crude oil project with you. I
wrote to know if this is your valid email.Please, email me for details on: [redacted]

What, if I don't get this email I should let him know? No, this is not my correct email address but somehow I got your mail anyway to tell you this? And you want to discuss "an important project" with me but you don't even address me by name?

Dude.

OK so we haven't done a meme for a long time...

2013-04-24T00:42:48Z

...and here comes this thing which reminds me of my mis-spent youth, and my role-playing days. So I went and did their test. And the answers are, um, VERY unsurprising...

I Am A: Lawful Good Elf Wizard (7th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-9

Dexterity-11

Constitution-12

Intelligence-18

Wisdom-14

Charisma-11

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

...but you KNEW that, didn't you? You KNEW I was an Elf...? [grin]

My photo exhibition show is NOW OPEN!

2013-04-13T22:59:41Z

This is what you will find at the Bellewood Acres Facebook page:

Artists Reception on Sunday 21st April, 3 - 5 PM - cider and refreshments will be served. If you're around, come spend a Sunday afternoon with me looking at pretty pictures and getting the stories that go with them!

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeeah. THIS.

2013-04-13T00:48:48Z

(if you're not into driving disco beat, watch it with the sound turned down. But watch it anyway. Just do.)

Dumb and dumber...?

2013-04-13T00:26:12Z

Back over at my my website blog this doozy came along to be moderated in the comment queue (and I have changed nary a word in it):

Select comment * online marketing*
affordablesearchengineoptimizationx.com/

Submitted on 2013/04/12 at 12:51 pm

Would you be capable of guide us in your internet marketer or dude that
takes care of your blog, I would like to determine it would be easy to
certainly be a guests poster.

Well... first of all, any guest on my blog needs one basic qualification: a basic knowledge of English grammar. This say I, the blog owner; and so does "the dude" who takes care of the whole thing, who is my husband, and who is very amused at being "the dude". And second of all, guests on my blog tend to be known to me, and usually invited to participate.Not to say that I haven't acceded to requests to guest before, but as I said, those came from people I know, whose writing and whose motives I know, and yes, who can string together an English sentence without coming up with the sort of monstrosity that turned up in the comments.

On second thought, maybe I ought to play along. Ask this "dude" to submit something and it if is sufficiently funny I could post it as an example on how not to... but no. I'm not quite THAT mean.

Still. Thought you'd enjoy. Clueless spammers are clueless, as always.

So, then - tomorrow I am going to a hanging....

2013-04-12T02:21:46Z

...of things onto walls, that is.

Ladies and gentlemen, I go tomorrow to a place called Bellewood Acres, where there is a small gallery, in which yours truly is going to be a part of a photographic exhibition from this Saturday all the way until May 30. For any of you within driving distance, if you want want to drop in, please come! There will be an Artists Reception on April 21, from 3 - 5 PM, and I would lvoe love love it if people came by to take a look and say hi.

Being a writer, I am doing this highly visual thing with one difference. EVERY PICTURE HAS A STORY. There's a "story snippet" that goes with every image in the show, and I spent the past three days writing them, and I swear I was channeling Oscar Wilde all the way. They came out pretty well, the tiny little story gems that are being offered up together with the images in the exhibition. Some of them turned out poignant. Some of them have the air of dark fairy tales. Some of them are even funny. I'm feeling rather pleased with that effort.

But the important part of this is, I'm going in tomorrow to hang pictures. THIS should be fun; I'm thinking of charging admission, just for those who want to watch me blunder and bluster and possibly come out with cartoon-fingers full of bandages tied into white ribbons. I've some 20 photos to hang, adn some of them are "double hangers", with two hooks on either side of the frame, which means I have to keep the freaking things STRAIGHT, and, well, this should be great fun...

Anyway. If you're local and you want to point and laugh and take pictures during the set-up (and maybe make coffee runs for me down to the counter in the main cafe area... [grin]) you might swing by and wave and tell me LiveJournal or Facebook sent you, or something. Or just make a plan to come by - not necessarily tomorrow, but over the next few weeks - and take a look. And maybe stock up on a Christmas present or two for someone who might appreciate a fine photograph and a story to go with it.

I'll see you, as it were, at the pictures...

New Simon's Cat!

2013-04-08T00:22:11Z

Well, new to me, anyway... Enjoy!

Weighing in on the latest Publishing Situation...

2013-04-05T22:32:38Z

By now anyone in the game would have heard about Night Shade and the cavalry riding to its rescue, Sky Horse/Start Publishing. Authors have commented on the proposed new contracts that would go into effect under the new broom, and the responses have ranged from lukewarm to outright outrage. And now there's this, an interview with the heads of the rescue party publisher, elucidating a few things.

A couple of things that caught my eye (with my comments IN CAPS):

"We're the good guys," insists Jarred Weisfeld with Start Publishing. "We're the ones who are coming in and trying to save something."
Weisfeld and Lyons see themselves as rescuing a sinking ship, and they're not thrilled about being painted as the bad guys on the internet because they want to offer what they see as realistic terms to Night Shade's authors.

Night Shade proved that "there was no way to run a book publishing company in that field, with those kinds of royalties, and make a profit," adds Lyons. So he tried to come up with a realistic royalty rate, "where I felt pretty confident that we could make a small profit." And that meant shaving those 22 to 25 percent losses that Night Shade was making out of the author's share -- because other costs in publishing are fixed, like printing and binding.

THERE ARE ALWAYS "FIXED COSTS" LIKE PRINTING AND BINDING. BUT I SAID IT BEFORE AND I AM SAYING IT AGAIN HERE NOW. *WITHOUT THE AUTHORS THERE WOULD **BE** NO "FIXED COSTS" LIKE "PRINTING AND BINDING". SO THE CHEAPEST WAY OUT OF THE FIXED COSTS OF PRINTING AND BINDING WOULD BE TO GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS THAT REQUIRES THEM. WHY WHY WHY *WHY* IS THE ONLY "NEGOTIABLE" ASPECT IN THE PUBLISHING BUSINESS THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT THE *AUTHOR* GETS? wHY ISN'T THE AUTHOR A "FIXED COST"? WHY IS THE THING ON WHICH ALL OF THE REST OF IT RESTS CONSIDERED TO BE A NEGOTIABLE THING, WHY SHOULD THE AUTHORS BE EXPECTED TO TAKE THE CUT EVERY TIME? PROFIT ISN'T A FIXED COST OF DOING BUSINESS, AND IF YOU FRIGGING MAKE A LITTLE BIT LESS PROFIT WHILE PAYING YOUR CONTENT PROVIDERS WHAT THEY ARE WORTH, SHOULDN'T THAT BE A COST OF DOING BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE? NOBODY SIGNED ON TO PROMISE YOU OODLES OF MOOLAH. BUT WITHOUT A BOOK NONE OF THE REST OF IT IS RELEVANT AT ALL. SO WHY DOESN'T THE AUTHOR GET AT LEAST 40% OF THE PRICE (AS THE CREATOR OF THE PRODUCT!!!) AND THE REST OF THE "FIXED COSTS" GET TAKEN OUT OF THE 60% THAT REMAINS? I REALISE PEOPLE LIKE BOOKSELLERS NEED TO PAY RENT - BUT SO DO THE AUTHORS. REALLY. HONESTLY. WE DO. WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE WRITER WHO HAS TO BE THE "SACRIFICE" PART IN THE "SHARED SACRIFICE" EQUATION?

Meanwhile, Start will be handling the ebook side of things, and Weisfeld says that the deal only makes sense if they drop the ebook royalty, from between 30 and 50 percent to 25 percent. That original, higher royalty rate is just another sign that "bad decisions were being made by editors and business people," says Weisfeld, adding: "We're not bad guys, we're here to turn a profit and at the same time keep our end of the deal and make sure all our authors get paid." This is definitely better for authors than if Night Shade enters bankruptcy, he adds.

AGAIN. MAKES SENSE FOR WHOM? FOR THE PROFIT MARGINS OF EVERYONE BUT THE WRITERS? MAY I REITERATE. THE AUTHOR WROTE THE BOOK. WITHOUT THAT BOOK NONE OF THE REST OF IT MATTERS AT ALL. THERE WOULDN'T *BE* ANY ROYALTIES. PAY THE AUTHOR *FIRST*, AND THEN DEAL WITH THE COSTS INVOLVED IN PRODUCING THEIR WORK. THIS IS PARTICULARLY TRUE WHEN IT COMES TO EBOOKS WHERE THERE *ARE* NO "FIXED" COSTS LIKE PRINTING AND BINDING. THERE IS A ONE-TIME COST OF PRODUCING AN ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE WORK, YES, WHICH A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL CAN DO QUICKLY AND CLEANLY AND IT ONLY NEEDS TO BE DONE ONCE FOR A GIVEN BOOK WHICH CAN THEN BE ELECTRONICALLY (AND COSTLESSLY) DUPLICATED WHERE AND HOW IT TURNS OUT TO BE NECESSARY. THE ONLY OTHER OUTLAY IS PRODUCING A DECENT COVER (AND, WELL, OF COURSE THE AMAZON CUT...) BUT THE POINT IS IF YOU'RE KVETCHING ABOUT THE COSTS OF PRINTING AND BINDING AND THAT'S WHY THE OTHER ROYALTIES OF 10% WERE TOO HIGH FOR YOU TO SUSTAIN, WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE HERE? REALLY, WHAT IS IT? WHY IS A 40% *MINIMUM* ROYALTY ON AN EBOOK UNSUSTAINABLE? bECAUSE THE AUTHOR GETS WHAT IS ACTUALLY A FAIR SHARE OF THE PROFITS...?

Lyons says that the bloggers and other people who have been weighing in on the deal, and posting on the Skyhorse Facebook page, seem to believe that "everybody ought to get the most that anybody's getting."

AND OFF WE GO INTO THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM, FOLKS.

THE STARS GET THE MILLIONS. THE REST OF YOU, THE LINE FOR THE SLAG HEAP STARTS OVER THERE.

And then there's the "Term of coypright" clause that it's in the new contracts that the Night Shade authors are now expected to knuckle under and sign - the very same clause that drew the fire of organizations like SFWA when it turned up in the new contracts from a Random House imprint recently. WHy oh why would anyone sign away their rights for "term of copyright" - for the duration of their LIVES?! Who thought that this is a good idea? Well, it might be, for the publishers. Authors, not so much.

And then there's the clause which gives the new owners the right to dispose of some of the acquired properties to third parties at their discretion, without the author's further approval or consent. So you could end up being published by who knows who, and you have absolutely no say in the matter at all.

I don't have a book with Night Shade, I don't have a horse in this race. But I have friends who do.

And there is a lot of unhappiness.

A couple of things that caught my eye today -

2013-04-01T18:28:00Z

HBO isn't worried about Game of Thrones piracy - “I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” Michael Lombardo, HBO programming president, said. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.” Ain't it nice when you're SO BIG that you don't care if a couple of (maybe hundred thousand) people don't actually pay for your product (well, in their case... and I quote... "According to one estimate, Thrones‘ second season finale was illegally downloaded 4.3 million times worldwide last year." the mind, it kinda boggles.). For most of the rest of us down here on Planet Earth, it kinda matters, ratio wise, whether or not we actually get paid for our work. I mean, yeah, sure, it's a compliment... but me going to my power company or the cable company (hey, don't judge, that's my INTERNET...) and complimenting their product isn't going to get me free electricity or free WiFi and if I try to steal those by hacking the wires and I get nabbed at it I get jumped on, hard. It's nice that HBO can be so cavalier about the piracy of their show. WHEN THEY"VE ALREADY EARNED THEIR MILLIONS. Gah.

NASA video to be shown before "Star Trek: Into Darkness" - this one is equal parts squee and appalled sadness. Squee, because NASA - and SCIENCE FICTION - and they are COMING TOGETHER - and OMG for any fan of the great Out There this is something that makes the heart race. Reality is - or may be - approaching those flights of the imagination which have always filed me with joy and awe, and it's enough to make me dance. But the other - read the small print - after a *successful Indiegogo campaign* - NASA is getting CROWDFUNDED? *REALLY*? We can spend bloody gajillions on a semi-functional war plane that is simply and solely a killing machine... but reaching out to the stars gets CROWDFUNDED? By pennies thrown at it by the public? The priorities here are so screwed up that I could weep and gnash my teeth and tear my hair out. The idea that our road to the stars is being paved by... well, probably by people like me, with more enthusiasm than wherewithal... we should have had that moonbase by now. If the funding had been channelled to where it should have been channelled, human curiosity and exploration and moving us forward, the BEST of us, rather than on figuring out how better to kill one another.

And the dance goes on.

2013-03-26T23:47:13Z

You may have already heard all about it from other sources - the giants are fighting in the playground again, and everyone else is scrambling to get out of the way and hoping they don't get trampled in the process. You can learn more abou it from various blog posts by other authors, affected by the whole kerfuffle - Stephanie Burgess has wept over it, Di Francis has links, Laura Anne Gilman has a summary and comments, and there are more out there, and there will be even more - but let me put it it in a nutshell for you, in a grand old saying which has never seemed more apropos than when applied to the publishing world: "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" (apologies about the required accents, Francophones, don't know how to do them in LJ...)

Or, in plain English, the more things change the more they stay the same.

The basic bedrock on which the publishing industry rests - what is it, do you think? The publishers? The booksellers?...

No. THE WRITERS.

Without the writers, there are no stories. WIthout the stories, there is no raw material. Nothing left to publish. Nothing to see here, folks, just sit back and watch the tumbleweeds. But the people whose jobs involve getting those stories to those who wish to enjoy them are quite simply taking an unholy advantage in the fact that they think there will always be more patsies... er, new writers... waiting in the wings to take over if anyone they already have in hand falls by the wayside, so it's perfectly fine when those people DO fall, usually through no fault fo their own but through a lack of support in terms of marketing and publicity (mention publicity to any mid-lister, and be prepared for the howls that follow...) and distribution.

Yes, it is true that there are other writers always waiting. But people, people, people, WRITERS ARE NOT FUNGIBLE. We are not widgets. If you don't get story-widget produced by writer A that is NOT directly solvable by simply slotting in story-widget by writer B - even if they tell the exact self-same story they will inevitably tell in in different wise and make it their own story - and if you WANT writer A you will never be satisfied by writer B's take on it. Period. And yet, you cannot go buy writer A's books and support writer A's career... if you cannot find their books. And out of sight of out of mind, who goes to a bookstore to ASK FOR A SPECIFIC BOOK IF IT ISN"T THERE, very few people will go hunting for a specific story or a specific author if they have to ask for it and then wait for it, and browsing is increasingly limited to bestsellers - which then remain bestsellers because they are the only thing available and therefore the only thing that sells and tehrefore their sales numbers grow exponentially while that OTHER book - maybe just as good, maybe better, but not by a name you recognise on sight - vanishes like the Boojum Snark. Because nobody knew about it. Nobody bought it. Nobody looked for it because they didn't know it was there to be looked for. And if it's a second or third book in a series and it vanishes from the radar, just how well do you think the previous books in that series are going to do, and how long they are going to last?...

Look, I know we can't all be bestsellers. I understand that completely. I just don't think that the industry which is supposed to be taking care of this business knows that. Because they seem to be stuck in a world where there is a single switch - EITHER you are an instant bestseller OR you're out, over there on the slag heap please, now, and would the next person who MIGHT be the next big thing step right up to the guillotine, please?

It's been said before, but it's worth repeating. In this current day, in the current climate, a writer sells books if that writer's readers talk about those books. If there is no talk, the writer dies, the stories die, no matter how hale and hearty the publishing INDUSTRY is the unique components on which it is built are fragile and can vanish without trace. Very easily. Very fast. I've known perfectly wonderful writers whose contracts have been cancelled practically on signing because the previous book didn't sell up to expectations (no matter what the circumstances were - like, for instance, the inevitable drop in sales via B&N because they are simply not ordering the relevant books and therefore will not be selling same because THEY WON'T HAVE STOCK - go read Stephanie Burgress's blog again, and weep.)

Readers, I am talking to you. If the writers are the bedrock of this industry, only you can provide the necessary support for them - they cannot rely on the industry whose only motive, these days, seems to be squabbling about how much money THEY can make off of the books that they handle. Readers, I am talking to you.

IF YOU LIKE IT, SHOUT ABOUT IT. Talk about it. Love a book? Buy a copy for a friend who may not have read it. Or get the friend to buy it for themselves. Play games - get a friend to promise to buy a copy and to get another friend to buy a copy and THAT friend gets to get a friend to buy a copy, and... things snowball from there. But it starts with a single person, a single voice, a single reader who loved a story. IF YOU LIKE IT, SHOUT ABOUT IT. Have you posted a review of your favourite book by your favourite author? (somewhere - anywhere - Goodreads, Amazon, Facebook, your blog, SOMEWHERE, just DO IT...) How many of your friends know about a particular author because of you? How many have become fellow fans, because of you? How many of their friends?

START AN AVALANCHE. Start one now. Tell people about the fact that the last book in a trilogy has been dynamited by a publishing industry squabble, and then go out and find Stephanie's books. Go out and find a few of mine. Go pick your own favourite and spread the word. Just spread the word. Talk about us all behind our backs. The writers of this world will be grateful for it.

If you are a reader who loves a partciular writer's work, in this day and age more than ever it is up to you to make sure that writer gets to keep writing. Go tell it on the mountain.

New Triads is out!

2013-03-21T19:34:18Z

Triads #7, "A Sense of Love", is finally available! It contains the story which won the BBC short story competition a handful of years ago, a story which garnered me one of the greatest writing compliments I ever got, and a brand new never before seen tale - would be great if it got some love (and maybe a review or two...?)

And now for something different...

2013-03-21T04:14:30Z

For those of you who might be interested in this sort of thing - and fro something QUITE different from me - I have a poem in this collection. A sonnet. Those of you who know me well enough to know whence my love of sonnets comes... well let me just say that sonnets, as a poetic form, are always a loving tribute to my grandfather, the one who woke the love of language in me with his own poetry. So - if you'd like to read something DIFFERENT from me - here you are.

Enjoy.

Once upon an encyclopedia #4: Volume IV: Excom to Hermosil

2013-03-15T15:28:07Z

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition (1979)

Volume IV: Excom to Hermosil

This volume’s theme seems to be magic, mystery, and the exotic… so let’s see where it takes us…

1. Fairy:

The article defines a fairy as a “supernatural being who could become invisible, change shape or size, skilled in magic and able to bewitch human beings – described in 1691 by a Scotsman named Robert Kirk as “of a middle nature betwixt Angel and Man.”

They are “longer lived than men”, apparently – although tales that I have read seem to have a fairly loose definition about time when it comes to the fae so I am not certain how this is being measured. Are their ‘years’ truly the same as ours? Do they even HAVE a concept of years? How on earth do you figure out how old a fairy actually is? But they are, apparently, mortal in the end, it seems because (being, by a certain definition, “soulless”) they are said to be “extinguished at death.” Which presupposes that they do die. Causes of fairy death have been left mysterious.

Once the fairy folk were feared as dangerous and powerful, so much so that naming them could bring disaster upon your head – so they were seldom named directly, referred to instead as ‘the gentle people’ or ‘the good neighbors’ when you had to talk about them at all. To name them was to invoke them, and then you were theirs. They might do anything – you couldn’t know, and you couldn’t defend against it – they might take a fancy to you and take you home to visit and you might return mad, or centuries later to find all you have loved dead or changed. There are LOTS of stories about that (try Tam Lin, or some of the Irish tales…) And then there is the whole idea of changelings – taking a human baby and substituting it for fairy children. This was serious bad mojo. You didn’t tick off a fairy, because you could be called to account, and the price could be a lot higher than you were ever willing to pay.

There were many kinds of fairy. Some were actually pretty nice, on the whole, and minded their own business most of the time – they were agriculturalists, cattle keepers, weavers, woodworkers -- they worked at stuff just like us humans did with the added dimension of a dose of fairy magic loaded in there. Others, like brownies, reputedly attached themselves to human beings or households as helpers, under certain rules. Fairies, despite having their own ways and means and being attached to their rules and kind of ornery if you broke them, seemed, on the whole, to be pretty decent hardworking folk when attention was being paid to the nitty-gritty of their working lives. There were, of course, the free spirits – the nature fairies who haunted woods moorlands and rivers – trolls, dryads, and water spirits – and those didn’t seem to be so attached to a good day’s work if they could obtain the same gain by trickery and deception or intimidation. But hey. That wasn’t much different from us humankind.

They began by looking rather like us (except perhaps more eerily beautiful) – human sized or larger, a serious, often dangerous, and frequently sinister kind of being. But then something happened… and it was “Honey, I shrunk the fairies.” All of a sudden you got the pretty pretty flitty diaphanously bewinged Thumbelina-sized flower fairies with which children’s stories were illustrated – tiny, and shrunken, and rendered harmless. The difference between, the Cobweb and Peaseblossom of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Tolkien’s Elves.

Honestly? The pretty fairies at the bottom of the garden have never held much of an appeal for me. If I wanted something translucent and flying and sparkly, I’ll have a dragonfly on a summer afternoon, thank you very much. If I ever were to actually meet one of the Fair Folk, I would prefer it to be the older and the more dangerous – the more REAL – kind, despite the perils which they bring with them. I would go West with Tolkien’s Elves any day. I don’t think I would happily spend my days skipping around the heads of dandelions in the meadow at the end of the lane. The pretty-pretty fairies have no PURPOSE, other than being a pretty illustration, really. And purposeless things have never been attractive to me. Give me a Fae who knows what they are, where they came from, what they want and where they are going – and this is a creature I would happily share a world with. And yes, there is no light without shadow. I know that these are dangerous. And I revel in that.

2. Fiordland :

A region and a national park (the nation’s largest) in southwest New Zealand, stretching from Milford Sound to Preservation Inlet. It was so named after coastal inlets or fjords excavated by glaciers and flooded by the sea to a distance of 10-20 miles inland, the only true fjords outside of Norway (the world’s geography is truly strange. Remember where Norway is with respect to New Zealand. How did the fjords know where to go?) The fjord inlets are characterized by steep rock walls which plunge vertically below the waterline to reach great depths – to the point that cruise ships, actual full-size ocean-going cruise ships (think about the water depth required to support the magnitude of those ships’ keels), have been known to come right into a fjord inlet and can come within a stone’s throw of the shore.

On the nearby highlands, densely forested by temperate rainforest and ferns which grow lush and thick in a climate which has some of the highest annual rainfall figures on record, the glaciers which are responsible for the fjords also carved out large inland valleys – which eventually became dammed by moraines and formed lakes. The best known of those are Te Anau, Poteriteri, and Manapouri. This last has a claim to fame which is actually extraordinary. The lake is MUCH HIGHER than sea-level, which creates a drop between the lake level and ocean level… and they used this to build a huge power station which takes advantage of this natural gravity-assisted drop to produce electricity. The power station is ENTIRELY UNDERGROUND, you can visit it, and the throb of the powerful turbines within the caverns that house them is not so much heard as experienced as a hum that pervades the rocks around you and sets your teeth vibrating in sympathetic rhythm. A New Zealand friend and I once co-wrote an entire fantasy novel centered on the Manapouri Dam – a novel that involved selkies, and taniwha (Maori spirits), and fallen angels, oh my. Some day I should dig that out and revisit it. The story wasn’t half bad, actually. Maybe we could do something with it. (You game, mmy_me? Or are you willing to cede your share of the thing to me (full credit given as co-world-creator!) and I can see if something can be done with this…?)

3. Flying Dutchman:

The ghostly ship of popular legend, believed to haunt the waters around the Cape of Good Hope and appearing as a sign of imminent disaster. There are many variations of the story which produced this particular spectral vessel, but in the most common version of the legend a Captain Vanderdecken gambles the eternal salvation of his soul on a rash pledge to round the Cape during a storm. He fails of course and the Devil is a bad entity to wager with – he ALWAYS takes his winnings – and so the poor sod is condemned to round the Cape forever and ever and ever in those howling winds that always blow there.

I visited the Cape a number of times, and I can vouch for the winds – but I have never seen the ship, alas. More’s the pity. It might have been AWESOME to have observed that plunging, pitching, bucking ship under full old-fashioned sail crossing the line where two of the world’s great oceans meet.

4. Grail, Holy:

Best known, I suppose, as the famous quest object in Arthurian legends – where the term was used to denote a wide-mouthed or shallow cup used by Christ at the Last Supper and used afterwards by Joseph of Arimathea (who WAS this dude, anyway? I don’t think I’ve EVER heard of him outside the Arthur story…) to collect the blood of Christ at His crucifixion. The quest was achievable… by the Right and Just Knight, by virtue of his, well, virtue. But the identity of that knight changed, as the focus of the retellings of the Arthurian mythos changed.

In the beginning, the Grail Knight was Sir Perceval, whose outstanding qualification for the job was his innocence. In Chretien de Troyes’s seminal account, boy-knight Perceval leaves home in order to pursue being knighted at Arthur’s court (um, I’m not QUITE sure as to why, given the idea of knighting that later developed in chivalric lore – just why was Perceval so goshdurned entitled to a knighthood here, anyway?) After this is accomplished, anyway, he goes off a-wandering, and at some point in his peregrinations he comes across a lame fisherman who instructs him to go to nearby Castle Carbonek for lodging. Perceval obligingly follows directions, and in the castle he discovers the man who is supposed to be his host lying wounded upon a couch – and then, just, you know, BECAUSE – he witnesses a strange procession which appears to be remarkable only in the fact that it is seemingly so unremarkable to the wounded guy on the couch . First, a squire carrying a lance dripping blood; then a couple of other young men carrying ten-branched candlesticks (not sure if there is a significance to this – why ten?); then a damsel carrying a great cup that gives off a great light. This happens several times during the course of the evening he spends at the place – but our hero Perceval, having been raised with the stricture that asking too many questions is impolite, does not remark upon these strange goings on at all and asks not a single question about this occurrence.

In the morning, Perceval finds the castle deserted (and it is also sometimes described as “in ruins”, too) around him, and is informed that his host had been the Fisher King, wounded by having a lance thrust through both thighs, who would have been healed had Percival actually asked about the procession. Not quite sure how asking the question then translates into action, but apparently Perceval then sets off on a fruitless quest for the grail – and then Chretien De Troyes goes off at a tangent, describing Sir Gawain’s parallel quest for the bleeding lance… although just how HE got into this particular story at this point and how he knew about the lance and what HE hopes to accomplish is… well. Onwards.

But the story was never finished – we never find out if Gawain got the lance, or Perceval returned (with or without the cup) to ask the proper questions.

Later versions of the legend produced a new hero, the pure knight Sir Galahad (son of Lancelot and Elaine of Astolat) and the quest for the grail became something wholly (holy?) pious, a search for mystical union with god – knights such as Gawain, who did not seek the help of divine grace in the quest, failed utterly; Lancelot, because of the stigma of his adulterous love for Guinevere, could only glimpse the grail in a dream; Perceval (remember him?) returns as a more worthy candidate but only gets as far as receiving a higher class of revelation (innocence alone is now longer enough, apparently…) – but Galahad was able to look directly into the grail and was granted a vision of divine mysteries which cannot and may not be described by human tongue. In the last branch of the Vulgate cycle, the final disasters were linked by the withdrawal of the grail, symbol of god’s grace, never to be seen or achieved again.

Of course, in later incarnations, the Grail became Mary Magdalene and the whole story was thrust into bestsellerdom by the likes of Dan Brown. Oh, how far we have come from Perceval who was too polite to ask the right questions. In those early versions the mere whiff of, you know, sex, and the Grail was just gone (not for you, you bad boy, you dallied with GIRLS…) but it then transformed INTO a girl, and is achieved not by abstaining from carnal knowledge of woman but indeed by indulging in it to the point of producing progeny…

There are volumes to be written on this one alone. The grail – vision, prophetic revelation, real cup with magic powers, real cup which was just a cup and no more, or body of the Magdalen? Pick your version. Have fun. I don’t think there is a right answer.

5. Gypsy:

“Gypsy” is a generic term for a nomadic people without true nationality, found on every continent on Earth but mostly in Europe, traditionally travelling by horse-drawn or motorized caravan. In Europe they go by many names - to the French they are “Bohemians”, to the Spanish “Flemish” or Gitanos (or Egyptians),to the Swedes, Tatars. To the Germans, who have never minced words about things, they are simply “heathens.” Which, in a sense that rigidly applies to what you might construct as a German definition of the pure apostolic faith, they were.
But they are fascinating heathens.

Their history and spoken language (Romany) can in fact be traced back to India, where they probably originated. They got around right from their early beginnings, and by 1000 AD they were In Persia – and then, after that, they split into two branches, one going south and west through Egypt and North Africa and the other taking the northern route into Europe and reaching northwestern Europe by 15th/16th century. They refer to themselves as Rom – meaning Man – and to everyone else as “gadje” which boils down to “Barbarians”, (well, if you call them heathens they’re entitled to name-call back, don’tcha know).

It is part of the mystique of these people that they are so absolutely free-spirited. No single authority has ever been accepted over all gypsies – international congresses have been held, and even “kings” crowned, but these tended to be concentrated in specific groupings or Tribes and have never been widely respected or recognized in the community as a whole. Several different and geographically delineated Tribes are in fact known to exist, but they are not strictly defining as a social descriptor. At the local level of social organization, Gypsies are known to be organized into bands of anything from ten to a few hundred households under the leadership of a chieftain or “voivode” elected for life from amongst the outstanding families. He acts as treasurer for the band, determines methods and routes of migration, and is the group’s spokesman to the local municipal authorities where necessary. He governs, loosely speaking, through a circle of elders – which includes a mysterious entity known as the “phuri dai”, a senior woman in the band.

Strongest amongst the gypsy institutions of social control is the Romany “kris”, the body of customary law and values of justice as well as the ritual and formation of the tribunal of the band. Basic to the Gypsy code are concepts of fidelity, cohesiveness, and reciprocity within the recognized political unit.

Oh, the stories that lie glittering amongst these customs, these mysterious words and concepts, this secret world which the “gadje” may have the barest skeleton of facts about but which must be so much deeper when one is embedded deep into the heart of it all…

Their looks and lifestyle have long made them convenient scapegoats and pariahs for all kinds of social ills, often used as an excuse for outright official and legal persecution. A tragedy lost in the greater numbers of the Jewish Holocaust, almost half a million of them were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. They were resolutely non-agrarian – even semi-settled Gypsies never became peasants, however long they were settled on any land. They were always artisans or craftsmen. Their occupations tended to be part-time, sporadic, or seasonal (in line with their preferred nomadic existence) or else at circuses or travelling fairs.

Being social pariahs anyway, they were also known to indulge in occupations which the local settled populations disdained – undertakers in Romania, hangmen in Bulgaria, and such. Gypsy men often exercised their talents as smiths, musicians and horse dealers, and they were a presence in the village streets back in the land where I was born, crying out their specialties, back in the day when things were FIXED AND REUSED rather than thrown away as soon as they became damaged. The men wandered the dusty streets hollering about fixing broken umbrellas, or patching holed cooking pots (as I understand it, with solder, which probably wasn’t all that healthy, but those were the days when such things didn’t loom quite so huge – a patched pot was one that could have a new lease on life and everything else is secondary.

The women tended to more exotic stuff – fortune tellers, entertainers, dancers, always portrayed as ravishingly beautiful and passionate when young, all curly black hair and long bare brown legs flashing from underneath bright skirts around bonfires and nimbly seducing lavish tips as they danced to the wild violins played by their menfolk. But that was the Gypsy of the song and the story, the beautiful Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the vivid life force of it all. In the real world, they were often outright beggars. In my own early childhood, I remember women dressed in rags sitting on street corners, with filthy urchin toddlers crouching barefoot and wide-eyed beside them, and the eager, earnest, hungry expressions on the narrow brown faces underneath colorful headscarves. In line with the scapegoat reputations of the Gypsies as villains, children who behaved badly were sometimes told that if they didn’t mend their ways the Gypsies would take them away – and they were sufficiently different, sufficiently alien, sufficiently not-one-of-us, that the mere threat of that, of the possibility of leaving one’s warm bed and the comfortable settled existence which one so took for granted, was enough to quell the young into at least a semblance of decorum.

They have a long history, and a bitter past, and probably a hard-scrabble present and a future that doesn’t always promise a lot. But the very fact that they clung to what they were, that they preserved an identity and a way of life and then made themselves into a living legend in a world where legends are hard to make bloom… that’s something. The legend of the colorful caravans pulled by great placid horses with unkempt manes and huge Shire-horse feet is probably long vanished in the Europe of today -- there is no room for this any more in the kind of world that we have made. Although the legend itself may be long vanished into the mists of history – still – it doesn’t take much for it to rise resurgent. If you, like me, come from somewhere in Old Europe, all that is necessary to conjure up the Gypsy spirit is the faintest distant sound of a melody, plaintive lament or wild dance, coaxed from the strings of a Gypsy violin…

anghara @ 2013-03-06T16:49:00

2013-03-07T00:49:59Z

New review of Dark Faith Invocations - and it says:

"Stories that touched me deeply, perhaps due to their inclusion of an important parent-child bond were Night Train by Alma Alexander, The Sandfather by Richard Wright, Starter Kit by R.J. Sullivan, The Divinity Boutique by Brian J. Hatcher, and Little Lies, Dear Leader by Kyle S. Johnson. I loved the fragility of Alexander’s story, the way that faith in oneself is so important and how much that can be bolstered by becoming a parent. It helps you plumb new depths of strength, because there is now this new life depending on you. A little person that believes you can do anything and it’s incumbent on you to keep that faith unbroken for as long as you can. I love how in this story that faith is reflected by the lost souls on the train and that the protagonist’s unborn child is that which saves her dying lost personal god."

ALWAYS great to be one of the name-checked stories in an anthology...

Guest blog: Marie Brennan on "Natural History of Dragons"

2013-03-05T22:18:06Z

My friend Marie Brennan has left behind the Faerie courts and has gone off in a new but (being who she is) a wholly fascinating direction. Her new novel is "A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent". I just finished reading the book, and I liked it immensely - this is an author who has a clear and present understanding of the importance of Voice, and is immaculately in control of the Voice necessary to tell a story.

She's joining us here today for a guest blog on a topic that illuminates some of the choices behind the Voice she has assumed as the storyteller of this tale - and of course, being Marie Brennan, even the background to her background is beautifully presented and painstakingly researched.

Here's what she has to say:

_____________________________________________________

Sometimes when you put something into a story, you wonder how many people, if any, are going to notice it.

Which is why I’ve been delighted by every reader who comments on religion in A Natural History of Dragons. You see, when I first began playing around with the idea, I wrote in a passing reference to “Frostnight” -- a placeholder name for a Christmas analogue. After all, my setting is based on nineteenth-century Europe, so it was the natural thing to do.

But when I came back to the project several years later, I found myself looking at that word and frowning. There’s a Middle Eastern analogue in the setting, too, so I’d been pondering what sort of religious history the region should have, and then out of nowhere I asked myself: why make the dominant “European” religion pseudo-Christianity? Why not pseudo-Judaism instead?

The anthropologist in me immediately started raising a cautionary hand. Cultural elements aren’t modular; you can’t just plug them in wherever you like without affecting other things. Then again, it isn’t like I was trying to plug in Hinduism or Shinto; Christianity and Judaism have much more in common with one another. The bigger issue, I realized, was that I didn’t really have a model for Judaism in the role I envisioned. The rabbinic form of the religion was not, until the modern establishment of Israel, a dominant and state-backed faith; it’s deeply shaped by the Jewish diaspora and the persecution that brought. There was a state version of the religion, but that was localized and ended two thousand years ago, with the destruction of the Second Temple. It never covered an entire continent, nor did it deal with the social and technological changes of the intervening history.

Thinking about those two forms called up echoes of the Protestant/Catholic divide in my mind. What if I incorporated both versions of Judaism into my setting? One would be Temple-based, a centralized faith taking its lead from a high priest back in the original homeland. The other would be modeled on rabbinic Judaism, with many teachers and sects in different places. Fantasy tends to have only One True Version of any given religion, so I really liked the idea of mixing things up a bit. I consulted a friend who studies Judaism and worked out the “evolution” of both forms, adapting them to the context of my world, and went back to work on the story, which had suddenly come to life in new ways.

You’ll never see the word “Judaism” in the novel, of course, nor any other widely recognizable terminology associated with it (e.g. “rabbi”). Since what’s in my story is based on Judaism, rather than being the religion itself, I decided to take the same approach to my word choice. There are magisters instead of rabbis, assembly-houses instead of synagogues, the Feast of the Reception rather than Shavuot. But readers familiar with the subject will notice that “synagogue” comes from the Greek word for “assembly,” and Shavuot commemorates the day God gave the Torah to the people of Israel: I’m still talking about the same things, just in a slightly altered guise. There are other details along the way, drawn from both forms of Judaism, sometimes tweaked to a bit of an angle, which make it clear what I’m talking about, even if it never gets a familiar name.

And some readers, at least, are noticing. I knew it would fly under the radar of many people; if you’re not personally conversant with Judaism, it can be easy to overlook the hints. (Many of them are things I wouldn’t have noticed, before I began researching this for the book.) But I’ve seen reviews and gotten e-mails that
mention this thread, and every one of them makes me happy.

THE BOOK

Recommended.

ANNOYED

2013-03-04T01:23:45Z

Any of you guys on LJ finding words in people's posts randomly underlined - which used to mean that there was a link underneath it leading to an article or anyway to someplace else which had been rendered as a Live Link so as not to break up the flow of the entry, but now, if your mouse happens to hover on it, it turns out it's a goddamned AD? I have a paid account, thank you so VERY VERY Much indeed, and one of the reasons for that is that I don't have to muck about with ads. This... is sneaky, and insidious, and I am SO not happy. Really.

And who owns "history"?

2013-03-02T20:18:04Z

OOOooo, nice one.

Great questions. Things to think about. Having commited "faux"history (i.e. had the temerity to use history in fiction) myself, a lot of this is relevant directly - and so is this quote:

"No one owns history, no one owns the truth.

Even though people would like to. As any dictator will tell you, whoever owns the past controls the present. It’s why fundamentalists want to seal it off.

Do you have to be a Muslim to write about Muslims? Do you have to come from the seventh century to write about it?

No, you just have to do your research. Sherry Jones clearly has. While some have said the novel is too contrived, others say she relied too heavily on historic Islamic sources. Too much license, not enough; sigh. As an historical novelist, you really can’t please all the people all the time."

So much that we think we "know" comes from ingesting things other people are ever so firmly convinced of - whether or not they are right. And I don't see a way around that - we cant ALL be, or learn from, absolutely PRIMARY sources and every source in between us and that primary is a lens that focuses through a prism of its own prejudices, errors, and wishful thinking, not to go out on a limb and say sometimes outright and deliberate lies that will advance a cause or raise a flag over a barricade. You have to figure out whom to trust, and how much to trust them. This is not always easy. It is sometimes not even possible.

I think that in a lot of ways it is FICTION that is a way out of this trap - because you can tell a story about the story you want to tell, and you aren't presenting it as absolute unvarnished truth - and it gives you a glimmer of opportunity to be freer with presenting what you see as your "facts" because nobody is being asked to read your novel as absolute history and accept it verbatim as a the full and complete gospel truth.

What do you think? Feel free to discuss.

The cute. It BURNS...

2013-02-28T23:52:52Z

What's in a name, and all that.

2013-02-28T23:37:27Z

A couple of years ago I was browsing in a magnificent second-hand bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin (which has since apparently vanished because further attempts to locate it in subsequent visits to the city have failed miserably) I happened to turn around and come face to face with a glass-fronted book display cabinet with a selection of the (presumably) older/more valuable/more fragile books in stock.

I could barely believe it when I saw THIS staring back at me:

So I asked to see it, and they handed it to me for a closer look. It turned out to be an illustrated (!) manual for exercises which were suitable for girls, written by one A. Alexander, billed as "Director of the Liverpool Gymnasium, late Professor of Gymnastics at Dublin University, Gold Medalist, &c" (PROFESSOR of GYMNASTICS? THere was an entire department dedicated to gymnastics at Dublin University? GOld Medalist IN WHAT? Oh my, the slew of mysteries!) and published in 1887.

And when I say Illustrated...

I mean, I had to have it, no? This other A. Alexander, writing fantasy novels in the 21st century... I just had to have it, this odd little handbook for bloomered little girls doing their "healthful" exercises.

It lives in my bookshelf, a treasured addition.

Oh, I don't know. I just thought y'all might like to see it..

So, then, a trip down memory lane, a little bit...

2013-02-26T22:33:57Z

I tripped over a few things concerning one of my older books, "Secrets of Jin Shei".

The first was this delightful review, in lively Portuguese, from a Brazillian reader:

(I know it's Brazil and not actual Portugal because the original Portuguese editions had different covers on them, and the book she is holding up has the cover that was originally on the British edition and which ended up being used in Brazil...)

I understand maybe one word in ten (and even then it tends to be the occasional "jin shei" she throws in there....) but the sheer flow of enthusiasm gives me joy. And when I tossed it out for the collective wisdom of the Internet to see if anyone spoke Portuguese well enough to give me the gist of what she is saying, a firend of a friend came up with this:

"The girl talks about the book. Gives a description of what the story is about. She liked it a lot. She loved the dynamics of the relationships between the women, the drama of women and their lives. The reviewer loves novels regarding strong women. She loves the history that was incorporated in the book and the lives that these women have. Anyone who loves a book regarding strong women will love this book. She found it very refreshing and was able to get lost in the book. She highly recommends this book.
Now I want to read this book. lol"

Good enough. That makes me happy.

I also didn't quite realise that people continued posting their reviews to Goodreads long after the original publication date of the novel.

Aside from the readers who obstinately did not read the Author's Note or, apparently, pay attention to the names within this story closely enough to realise that this was NOT a novel of strictly historical China (otherwise I would have called it China, not Syai!) - and who, thusly, berated the author and took the book to task for having "silly magical stuff" in it (despite it being presented BY THE AUTHOR as a historical fantasy from the outset...) - there were some surprisingly heartwarming bits in there. Witness this one, from just over a year ago:

Tonya
Feb 17, 2012
Tonya rated it 4 of 5 stars

It was the recommendation on the front that intrigued me when i
purchased this book. "This evocative novel is sure to be popular with
fans of Amy Tan, Gail Tsukiyama, and eve Marion Zimmer Bradley." I
bought it because I was very skeptical that writer could be herald as
a combination of these three authors. I stand corrected.

A book filled with love, tragedy, suspense, and a little magic; I
devoured every page. As I read I was reminded of all the jin-she I
have in my life. All women from different backgrounds that fate moved
our paths to cross and we soon walked them together.

Very well written and spellbinding mastery of imagery that I have not
seen in written word in quite some time, this book is one I most
highly recommend. Gave four stars because I would have liked more at
the end. And I do hope there is a sequel out there somewhere, if not
already written, but being written. These women left a legacy filled
with unanswered questions that, as the reader, you either want to see
the continuation. Or maybe we are to imagine them ourselves.

Or this one, of similar vintage, although my copy-and-paste didn't seem to capture the actual date for reproduction here:

E_bookpushers rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: historical, own-it

Alexander has a way of ripping my heart out with her writing. I can't
read her often because I get so invested in her characters and they
experience such hardship. Unlike a romance that I know will have a HEA
these characters usually don't have a HEA. Some of them live, some of
them die and they are all permanently changed from their experiences.
The chain that brought this entire book together was that of a
friendship/sisterhood so unbreakable that it changed history in more
ways then one for the characters. The thought of such a bond and how
it is innocent at first but then could become heavy and painful as
people change from what they could have become to what they became.

I want to go back and read the first duology I read by her and then
dive into her world weavers series but I need some recovery
time.

I am so absolutely delighted that this story is still out there, still being read, still being loved. Delighted, and amazed, and yes, grateful. And if you have an opinion on it which you haven't shared, please, please, please do - there are lots of places - Goodreads, Librarything, Amazon, my website, my blog, my Facebook fan page (which is here, for those who haven't found and/or "liked" it yet. This author is always more than happy to hear from you.

Trick or Treat! (or, baby deer don't know when it isn't Halloween...)

2013-02-23T23:22:59Z

So, this morning. Leaving the house for a breakfast out and some errands. I open the front door and turn back momentarily - and my husband says, "Don't let the deer in."

Don't let the deer in...?

I turn back around, and there they are, two young deer, not quite fawns (they've lost their spots) but certianly not full-grown, just standing there, maybe two steps away from me, looking at me expectantly - with a requisite degree of wariness but no fear and no skittishness and no obvious intent to run.

"Get one of the older apples," rdeck says, and I race into the house, quarter an apple which we have owned for some time and which was beginning to wrinkle a little, and race back out with the quarters. I toss them at the deer. The babies step forward, delicately, and start hoovering them up.

"There's that last little bit of the bread," rdeck says, after all the apples are gone and the deerlets are still standing there expectantly.

So I race back in (by this stage my cat is up in arms - INDIGNANT MEOW - why is everyone outside oohing and aaahing and I am IN HERE, AIN'T I, AND WHAT KIND OF FURRIN CUTENESS ARE YOU PLAYING WITH OUT THERE?!?") and grab the heel of sourdough bread that's lying there and chop it up into bitesized pieces (deer have VERY small mouths, we have found) and head back out there again.

They hoover it all up. One of them took a piece of food *from a human hand*. It was pretty amazing stuff.

Made my day, I tell you. It MADE MY DAY. I am still smiling.

Fan Art!

2013-02-22T22:53:52Z

I recently came across some fan art for "Secrets of Jin Shei, at Deviant Art, by an artist who goes by the name of sivvus (site here

Here's one of the paintings:

Gorgeous. And so I dropped the artist an email to say thank you. And got the further gift of being told that she was amazed and delighted to have heard from ME, and how much she loved that book.

It isn't every day that you handed both a compliment and a gift like that. Please do go swing by her site and take a look at some of her other stuff - she has some artwork for sale, too! - but in the meantime, feast your eyes on the image she did for my beloved characters.

My thanks. My grateful thanks. I will always be astonished and delighted to have readers respond to the children of my heart in this wise.

Something nice.

2013-02-22T22:42:35Z

Reader review of "Midnight at Spanish Gardens", here.

Any review that ends with a sentence which implies that the reviewer is now inclined to go and look for other books by the writer of the book being reviewed is a gift. Many thanks!