AlmaNews

The folks who did my latest review...

Sat, 17 May 2008 19:08:44 GMT

...also did a fantastic interview with me, which is now up for your perusal. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this one. Go have a look.

Book trailers quandary

Fri, 16 May 2008 19:54:52 GMT

The long and the short of it - all the cool kids are doing it. (Or having it done for them. I don't know. Ye gods, it isn't cheap.)

So - what do you think, folks?

View Poll: Book trailers

I have to start thinking about the logistics of this, if the feeling is positive towards having one. Do any of y'all know someone who is in the business of producing these whom you can recommend...?

Honey, where did you park the spacecraft?

Fri, 16 May 2008 18:38:42 GMT

See if YOU can find it...

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080514/full/news.2008.821.html

Happy impending book day, Kelly McCullough!

Thu, 15 May 2008 22:39:30 GMT

Kelly McCullough, a fellow SFNovelist, had the first novel in the WebMage series, WebMage, released by Ace in 2006 to considerable critical praise. A second, Cybermancy, followed in 2007. His newest release, CodeSpell, will be out May 27th 2008. And a fourth book, MythOS, is slated for late May '09. His short fiction has appeared in numerous venues including Weird Tales, Writers of the Future, and Tales of the Unanticipated. His illustrated collection, The Chronicles of the Wandering Star, is part of a National Science Foundation-funded middle school science curriculum, Interactions in Physical Science.

For more information and samples of some his short stories you can check out his website: http://www.kellymccullough.com/. Kelly blogs regularly on writing topics at http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/ along with several other members of his writing group including well known authors Eleanor Arnason, Tate Hallaway/Lyda Moorhouse, and Naomi Kritzer. He also occasionally posts at http://sfnovelists.com/ – usually on the 9th of any given month.

Here's what he had to say on the subject of the new book:

1) Why this book? What made you want to write this story?

That's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. This is the third book of a series and certainly part of my motivation for writing it is that this is a fun world to play in and I like these characters enough to want to spend more time with them. Part of it is that I had what I thought was a fast fun plot that continued the story in a way that would be entertaining to write and to read. But probably the most important part of the equation for this book is that actions have consequences. The things that Ravirn did in books one and two have ongoing repercussions and I wanted to see how they played out and how Ravirn would have to grow to respond to them.

2) Which authors inspire you? Has that changed over time?

Different writers teach me different things at different times. Zelazney and Tim Powers are probably at the top of the list of writers who've affected my work most visibly, though Powers is less present in the WebMage stuff than he is in some of my other, darker work. Norton and McCaffrey and Tolkien are in my bones. Martha Wells is wonderful and so are Robin McKinley and Lois McMaster Bujold.

3) Why genre? Is there something special about science fiction or fantasy that draws you to write in the field?

I was pretty much raised to be a fantasy and science fiction writer, though that certainly wasn't the intent of the process. I'm a third generation fan of the genre and some of my earliest memories are of having the Lord of the Rings, Asimov's Foundation trilogy, and A Midsummer Night's Dream read to me. I learned very early to love story and genre and once I found out that I could maybe make a living by telling the sorts of stories that were told to me I was pretty much lost.

4) What do you find most interesting about Ravirn? Why write about this protagonist?

What I love about Ravirn is his combination of idealism and cynicism. He expects the worst of a situation but won't let that stop him from working toward a solution, even when he knows the attempt is probably doomed. That and his sense of humor. I come from a family where humor, particularly black humor and sarcasm, are fundamental coping mechanisms. Sometimes life hands you a situation where you have to laugh or cry, and given any choice in the matter I'll always pick laughter. It may not solve the problem, but it sure lightens the load.

5) You're a writer. What else are you? What are your interests? Hobbies?

Husband and cat-wrangler are probably at the top of the list for other self-identifiers. My wife and I are coming up on twenty fantastic years together and over that time two cats became three cats, became four cats, became five. I love to read and play video-games. I've got a Gaiman, a Pierce and a Blaylock on the active books pile and I just finished playing Portal and Drake's Fortune. I also like hiking and biking, and since it's spring, I'm at the front end of the annual garden madness.

6) Did you have to do any special research for this book? What did you need to know in order to write it that you didn't know before? Do you have some special preparation you do for your writing?

I didn't have to do a lot of new research for this book. After finishing two novels set in the Greek gods plus computers reality of the WebMage I have a pretty good grounding in this world, and I really only needed to touch up my memory of a couple of the myths involved in this specific story. On a more general note, I read non-fiction voraciously. I just finished a great book on plants in traditional Hawaiian culture as part of a Hawaiian history and mythology kick. I read several science and technology magazines on an ongoing basis and I'm looking around for some good references on the Canadian Maritime provinces in general and on Halifax in particular.

7) I see a lot of computer and programming stuff in the WebMage series. Is that something that really interests you? Or is it more driven by the needs of the story?

Mostly it's the needs of the story. I love my laptop and the web and I tend to be a technology early adopter if I can afford it, but I'm not really much for programming or hacking. While I have been immersed in computer culture from a very early age since my mother became a bug-checker when I was about ten and has been working as an analyst and programmer ever since and because I've got a lot of close friends in IT, it's not something I'm much involved in outside of writing the books.

8) Ravirn displays a lot of physicality, constantly getting himself into life-threatening situations and back out of them in ways that involve all sorts of death defying action. I'm guessing that's not something you the writer have an enormous amount of experience with. How do you make that convincing? Do Ravirn's solutions reflect the sort of things you might do in a similar situation?

I'm much more of a thinker than Ravirn, especially as I've gotten older, but I've got to admit to a certain amount of speaking from experience when I have him do something big and physical and stupid like climbing a building and then jumping off. It's not the sort of thing I'd do now, but when I was in my late teens and early twenties I was something of an adrenaline junkie. I was into martial arts and mountain climbing and all sorts of things that are moderately safe when done responsibly and less so when done the way I did some of them. From fifteen to twenty-two I averaged two trips to the emergency room a year, and as I've gotten older that's led to things like a couple of knee surgeries and other corrective measures.

9) What are you writing now?

A couple of things. I just sent off book proposals for a fifth WebMage and for two books that I would like to write as a successor series to the WebMage/Ravirn books. I've also got a YA I want to work on–the second in a series that my agent is shopping around now–because I'm in love with the story and the world. That's the main front burner stuff. But I've got five complete novels and nine proposals out with various editors and any of those could get moved up the list if they sell. I'm pretty busy at the moment, and I love it that way. There's really nothing I'd rather be doing with my life than what I'm doing right now.

10) How did you become a writer? Is this what you saw yourself growing up to be? Or did it take you be surprise?

Short answer: I quit theater. Longer version. I set out at the age of eleven to be an actor and was well on my way when I met the woman I would eventually marry. At that point, I realized how incompatible theater was with having a long term relationship and I went looking for something else to do. On something very like a whim I wrote my first novel and fell head over heals in love with writing. Now I can't imagine myself doing anything else.

11) Do you have a writing routine? Talk process for a moment, how do the words get on the page?

I write between two and eight hours a day five days a week. On a typical day I get up around eight in the morning, stagger downstairs and collect a unit of caffeine–could be soda, could be tea, it doesn't really matter since it's a delivery system. Then I hop on the treadmill and websurf and read email and the like for an hour or so. At that point I'm mostly awake and I do things like respond to the email or other writing and life maintenance tasks. That can take anything between twenty minutes and two hours. Then I write. Less than a thousand words is a bad day. More than two thousand is a good one. Oh, and, I use a laptop so that I can work where the whim takes me.

12) Office? Closet? Corner of the living room? Do you have a set place to write? A favorite? How does the environment you write in affect your production? Your process?

In summer I write in a second floor screen porch. It has a gorgeous view over the park that abuts our backyard, and that sort of near outdoor setting is my preferred setting for writing–I'm hoping to have a more permanent solar built to replace the porch soon. Until then, my winter office is our upstairs sitting room which gets southern light and is a pretty comfortable substitute for my screen porch.

13) Is there anything you especially like to work on in a book? Anything you hate?

I love world-building and plot-twisting. Figuring out how a system of magic might work and then figuring out ways to game that system fascinates me. And yes, I was a rules lawyer back in my role-playing days, why do you ask? Likewise building a plot and then coming up with ways to add twists or bits of misdirection is a joy for me. I don't really have any hates. There are things that I used to find more difficult, character chief among them, but I'm getting a steadily better handle on the whole process and I just love writing. I even love rewriting, both the sentence level stuff and the bigger more complex story edits.

14) This isn't your first book; tell us a little bit about what else is out there.

Well, primarily it's the WebMage stuff. WebMage, Cybermancy, and now CodeSpell with MythOS finished and forthcoming and a proposal in for SpellCrash after that. On the novels front, as I mentioned above, I've got five more books and nine proposals out, so that could change at any moment. I've also had a number of short stories published, including an illustrated collection as part of a big middle school physical science curriculum that's been adopted by several states. But that doesn't make an enormous amount of sense outside the classroom setting it was written for.

15) Do you see fiction as having a purpose? Generally? How about your own work?

Transcendence. I think that human beings need story. We need myths and legends and tales that lift us out of ourselves and that fiction supplies that need. That's another reason I do most of my work in fantasy-if I'm going to be a mythmaker for a living I might as well write the truly mythic.

Sales info:

Amazon:
CodeSpell: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0441016030/kellymccullou-20/ref=nosim
Cybermancy: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0441015387/kellymccullou-20/ref=nosim
WebMage: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0441014259/kellymccullou-20/ref=nosim

Barnes & Noble:
CodeSpell: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=0441016030
Cybermancy: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=0441015387
WebMage http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=0441014259

Dreamhaven (signed copies): http://dreamhavenbooks.com/mccullough.php
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"if you go down to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise..."

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:21:31 GMT

Well, at least into your playground, anyway.

I couldn't, um, bear not to share this...

'Nother nice review

Tue, 13 May 2008 19:38:32 GMT

Of BOTH the Worldweavers books. Which is interesting seeing as it gives a SERIES perspective as opposed to just a response to individual volumes.

Some nice quote-bites:

About "Gift of the Unmage"
The mythology is rich, the characterization full, the coming-of-age portrayed realistically and patiently, the tension while personal is compelling, the dialogue smoothly handled, and the physical detail sharp and vivid.

About "Spellspam"
Thea’s character remains fully formed and we continue to see her mature at a realistic pace, complete with self-doubt, mistakes, backsliding, regrets, etc.

...a richness, depth, and true emotional impact that close the book out strongly.

...a strong likable central character, an original and intriguing mix of magic and technology, and a richly veined core of mythos.

You can read the whole thing here.

Happy Mother's Day...

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:05:13 GMT

... to all the mothers I know. There's more of you than you think. Here's why

I got this catalogue in the mail yesterday.

Sun, 11 May 2008 20:41:21 GMT

I don't know WHY I got it, because I am neither an avid gardener who has a footprint somewhere and a reputation of demanding odd gardening solutions, nor an owner of exotic menageries which require equally exotic, um, menus - but the catalogue was vastly entertaining anyway. I just have to share some of the items on offer with you.

First, the "I can haz magic garden" department:

* LIVE LADYBUGS! shipped in the adult stage, with each adult guaranteed to consume about 5000 aphids. You get about 4500 ladybugs per shipment, for a small garden, and up to 70 000 of hte critters for one acre (and extra ladybugs are shipped with each order to account for mortality). And then it gets really interesting, apparently - from the catalogue copy: "WIthin 8 to 10 days of release each female ladybug lays 10 - 50 eggs daily on the underside of leaves. The larvae emerge in 2-5 days... and eat up to 60 aphids per day. After 21 days they pupate and the adults emerge in 2-5 days, completing the cycle. ...If not released immediately, you may store ladybugs for 1 - 3 weeks at 35-45 F."

It does not say how many of the original 4500 - 70 000 ladybugs you receive are female, but let's say half of them are, just for calculation purposes. So you now release between 2250 and 35 000 lady ladybugs into your garden. The catalogue does not say what their lifespan is, but they each lay 10 - 50 eggs DAILY within a week of release. Let's work with 10 000 ladybugs laying like crazy, giving 25 eggs each. That's 25 000 eggs a DAY. These eggs hatch and then pupate and then emerge as egg-laying adults within the space of about a month (and presumably while the first batch of 25000 eggs are marinading, the original adults are laying more...

I am running out of fingers but HOW MANY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF LADYBUGS AM I GOING TO HAVE AT THE END OF THIS?...

(And.... waitaminit...I am supposed to be able to store LIVE INSECTS in my FRIDGE for a bit if I'm not quite ready to release them...?)

*PRAYING MANTIDS shipped in egg cases each of which will produce about 200 baby mantids. You're supposed to distribute these cases over your yard (not on the ground, because the ants get 'em) and wait for the voracious little bugs to come out and start munching. They can also be hatched inside a paper bag kept in a warm place, apparently, but you have to be careful with this scenario - from the catalogue copy: "After they hatch [in the paper bag] they need to be released before they eat each other!!" (Yes, THEY have two exclamation points)

If you have fruit trees, you can pick the

*APPLE MAGGOT LURE, which you hang on an APPLE MAGGOT TRAP to catch up to 20 times the maggots you catch with the sphere alone (I am thinking ahead to the point where these traps are, er, full of their intended prey and kind of writhing on the tree...)

For general gardening, you can purchase a 10-pound bag of BAT GUANO for about forty bucks and change, and if that seems a bit pricey as an on-going investment, earlier on in the catalogue there's the option of buying an ATTIC CEDAR BAT HOUSE for sixty-odd dollars, and attract your own producers of bat guano (and having had bats at one of my houses in Africa, I can tell you, bats sure do produce guano. In QUANTITY.) The cute little "bat guest house" comes with "...instructions, bat information, and a little bat guano to get started." And for the really enthusiastic, there is FOSSILIZED BAT GUANO (do fossilised bats still produce guano...?) which you can only get in a single quantity, 2100 pounds, for $1280.

Well, if we're done with the garden, let's move on to the pet store department. Aside from the not unexpected crop of flea collars and shampoos (although the "ALOE HERB OIL SHAMPOO FOR DARK COATS", a "natural dark coat color enhancer" (brunette dogs, rejoice) did catch my eye), it would seem that my life has been rendered rather less interesting by my never owning creatures more exotic than cats or dogs. There's a section of the catalogue entitled "Delectables", for birds and reptiles and such. Let me share a few:

*WIGGLERS-TINY WIGGLERS (LIVE) AND WIGGLER TEMPURA (DRIED) - "dried wigglers resemble dried coconuts and are a nourishng crunchy snack for your pets". Live wrigglers are "Ready to eat upon arrival. To delay pupation, rinse the larvae with lukewarm water and strain with a fine sieve. When refrigerated, larvae will remain viable for up to two weeks. When ready to use, warm Wigglers to room temperature and place in a feeding receptacle that is at least one inch deep". (WHy am I suddenly channeling Klingons...?)

* COCOON CAPERS LIVE AND DRIED - "fly pupae that you may receive freeze-dried or live".

*TINY WASP SURPRISE - LIVE (I"m particularly fond of this one...) - "shipped as parasitized fly pupae and contained in a paper bag. The wasps emerge upon arrival or shortly thereafter". (Bright inssects. They somehow know when they have "arrived"...)

*FLY DELIGHT - "100% natural house flies raised under optimal conditions". The mind, it boggles at the thought of what the "optimal conditions" might be and what happens if these things get loose.

*COMBO CUISINE - DRIED - special blend of all the dried fly stages - larve, pupae and adults - uh - I am so glad the specify the "dried" and even then I kind of have this morbid fascination at the thought of all these generations tossed into the freeze dryer all together.... it's kind of cataclysmic, if you think about the whole thing from the poor fly's POV. These big galumphing bipedal monsters, first they raise us under optimal conditions and then they msss-murder us all...

*CRUNCHY DRIED CRICKETS - and I'm suddenly back in Monty Python land with an outraged voice calling out "LARK'S vomit?!?" in the background (afficionados will recall that another chocolate delicacy was "crunchy frog"...)

Look I'm sure some of you out there HAVE critters that eat these things, and you probably think this is all old hat. But with me it was alternately laughing out loud (at the NAMES of these things!) or going "Ewwww!" when I realised what was in them. Feeding some critter Fly Delight would probably make me lose MY lunch...

Oh, and finally, in the book section, with a gold sticker annoncing "A perfect gift!" we have a book called... "Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation" - according to the blurb, "A hilarious view into the private lives of bugs. You will learn about necrophilia, virgin births, eating your mate's head, male pregnancy and more!!" (yes, they do like their multiple exclamation pooints...) And here's more: "In an advice column format (the bugs write in) "Dr Tatiana" delivers tongue-in-cheek advice that educates while it makes you laugh out loud."

I may have to get this one.

.. so much for light blogging.

Fri, 09 May 2008 20:38:16 GMT

Only days after I announce it, I post three (counting this) posts in a day.

Still - wrote 3000+ words yesterday, another 800 or so today - I'm plugging along at a good pace here.

Consider this my taking a break.

"Someone's read it already" take 2 -

Fri, 09 May 2008 20:23:51 GMT

Stephanie from Someone's read it already has finished book 2 of Worldweavers - you may recall she reviewed book 1 back in late April. And I get ANOTHER lovely review from her! I'm particularly fond of this quote:

I’ve always loved the speculative fiction idea of creating a world with something strange about it (such as magically inert computers) and finding out what happens when this core belief of the society goes funny somehow. It’s always interesting to see how a society reacts when it is turned upon its ear, and Thea and her society have firmly been turned upon their ears. In addition, Ms. Alexander has set up a great overarching plot about creation and creativity and dreams, and I much await the third volume in order to see how that will be resolved.

She gives me 4.5 out of 5 stars for this one!

Read the rest of the review here.

Head down and hip deep into the next chapter...

Fri, 09 May 2008 18:56:05 GMT

...but just so as to keep this place interesting, here's something to think about.

rdeck just forwarded me an interview from "Shelf Awareness" with an author called Tom Rob Smith. In case he is someone whose name you are not familiar with, here's his bio as it appears in the interview:

Tom Rob Smith was born in 1979 to a Swedish mother and an English father and
studied English Literature at Cambridge. He worked on Cambodia's
first-ever soap opera and wrote screenplays until he started work on
the novel Child 44, just published by Grand Central. Film rights have
been bought by Ridley Scott, and Richard Price will adapt the novel.

Amongst other things, he was asked what book he might want to read again for the first time.

His reply:

I know exactly what you mean by this question. You come to the end of
the book and you feel kind of sad, like you're saying goodbye to a
friend and you can't recapture that friendship by re-reading the
book, because that's almost like looking through a photo album rather
than re-living the experience.

Oh, I so know what he means.

There are books I would love to read again for the first time without knowing the things about them that I know now and did not know when I first touched them. I can never read the Narnia books again with the same kind of innocence with which I read them when I was a child and I did not know who C S Lewis was, what he believed, and what the subtext for those books (intended or not) is or was. I can never read again for the first time the book that I remember crying over when I first read it - in translation - and understood the power that words would always have over me ("My son, my son" by Howard Spring, for those who want to know).

So, over to you folks. What's the book that you carry on your heart?

From the last post...

Wed, 07 May 2008 04:55:50 GMT

...it's time to wrestle the current recalcitrant chapter into submission...

And DONE. And it's a GOOD chapter.

It isn't at all the chapter that I began with, to the extent that perhaps five paragraphs of that original chapter survive in this one, and even they are much changed and reshaped in order to fit into a new place. But nonetheless, the chapter is in the bag.

[dusting off hands]

Tomorrow, onward.

"The physical act of writing"

Sun, 04 May 2008 17:55:50 GMT

Jeff VanderMeer declares war on Internet and other distractions while he concentrates on finishing the next novel. My personal favourite quote is this:

I [also] quite frankly just love the physical act of writing. Focusing all of my attention on one thing and getting lost in it, frustrated with it, elated with it, arguing with it, hating it, loving it, seeing the true shape of it – that’s bliss.

Word.

And I think I shall go and do likewise. I have Wiscon in just over three weeks, but then I have the summer which is relatively free of other commitments - and I would like to have this new novel at least first-draft-shaped by Fall.

Blogging shall be relatively light; I shall keep up with the standing other-blog commitments (SFNovelists on the 5th of every month and StorytellersUnplugged on the 30th of every month) so you can keep up with musings and thoughts and whatyoucallit on those sites - but I'll be on LJ kind of occasionally, just checking in every so often. It might be worth noting, just in passing, that I've just passed the third anniversary of this journal - that's a commitment all by itself, I won't be going AWAY, just... taking a little leave of absence, as it were.

Because I love the physical act of writing, too. And it's time to wrestle the current recalcitrant chapter into submission and get on with it.

See y'all later.

Anomalies in the navigational magnaspanner!

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:58:09 GMT

Oh, dear Lord. I'm still giggling.

A "Treknobabble" site which will give any Trek fan silly fits. Go, look, laugh.

On Magic

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:32:54 GMT

I just read a comprehensive essay on the subject, which is well worth reading - go here to do likewise - and although I don't agree with EVERYTHING this guy says he makes some wonderful points, and he is also well-read enough to quote from quite a number of other people with names that are quite luminous in the genre who had things to say on the same subject. I'm not going to do that - the quotage, I mean - but the piece did stir up the subject in my own mind and I'm going to throw out a few ideas here.

Fantasy is a lens which sharpens and clarifies the sliver of reality viewed through it, or at least that's what the very best fantasy is. Magic is one of the tools used to accomplish this, and it's a powerful one. I'll even go so far to say that it's a threatening one, because there is, and always has been, that propensity to react against something that affects you deeply.

Sufficiently advanced magic takes on a reality all of its own and begins to be something believed in on its own terms, with something approaching religious faith. This is possibly the reason why the more fundamental Christian ilk feels so violently threatened by such things as the magic in Harry Potter, because they confuse a powerful system of magic being used to shape a fictional story and certain aspects of the reality in which it is based with a potential rival to their own creed and dogma and set of beliefs and a false dichotomy of "people who like and believe THIS cannot possibly believe OUR ~~magic~~ faith and so they must be like be our enemies". And enemies are there to be attacked. And thus magic gets a reputation because it's batting against an already established system which is entrenched, and very much opposed to the things that the new fantasy might be bringing in with it.

superversive writes from the POV of a Catholic baseline – and that may be the reason why I instantly put the thing into a Christian frame in that paragraph above. But I am going to take this one step further, and perhaps into contentious territory. If any sufficiently advanced technology, as the quote goes, is indistinguishable from magic then it is also possible that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a religion.

If anything that is beyond our comprehension or ability to explain away by empirical means may be tagged with the word “magic”, then the Christian mythos starts to drip with the thing – what are miracles if not magic? Changing water into wine? Walking on water? Resurrection, for that matter…? But over the course of two thousand years the magic has hardened into a cracked outer shell of dogma. It is no longer the original magic but the recasting of that magic into something useful and controllable by a series of human interpreters who sought to use the instances of true magic into something that supported their own thesis, or theory, or grip on power.

I believe there is real magic in belief. I truly believe that sometimes wishing for something hard enough actually does make it come true because the sheer power of the act of visualisation often means that you are, however unwittingly, also working in real-terms for the manifestation of that thing in your life. I remember reading Richar Bach’s “Illusions: the adventures of a reluctant Messiah” (I couldn’t remember the exact title so I just looked it up and this jumped out at me from one of the book’s Amazon reviews: “I'm a Christian, but believe that when you move beyond a literal interpretation of Christ's words and see the symbolic message in them, it's not too different from what's in this book. But that's a big leap for most Christians and this book will probably make their blood boil).” – this encapsulates precisely the conundrum I was talking about up there in the third paragraph…) Specifically, I am thinking about the blue feather incident, where the reluctant Messiah of the title instructs our POV character, his equally reluctant disciple, on the principles of visualisation. Visualise something, the Messiah says, and it will manifest in your life. All right, says the disiple, a blue feather. The Messiah raises an eyebrow but goes, okay, blue feather. CONCENTRATE on it.

Next thing, they’re passing a dairy delivery truck and our disciple’s eyes go wide. Hey, LOOK, he says, and sure enough, on the side of the truck it says BLUE FEATHER DAIRIES.

This is where it gets interesting.

The disciple says that he expected a “real” blue feather. Yes, says the Messiah, but how did you visualise this when you invited it into your life? Were you holding it in your hand or was it just, like, floating disembodied in space?… Floating, the disciple admits. Well, the Messiah explains, that accounts for it. You didn’t personalise the magic and all you did was manifest a generic iteration of the item that you were seeking, not the thing itself in your possession.

Oooooh. It’s MAGIC. It’s real magic because this is delievered utterly matter-of-factly, as though it were common knowledge, as though anybody could do it.

But this is where the organised and dogmatic faith departs from the pure unfettered faith of a child not yet trained to obey all the “rules”. The original miracles are crusted over by the barnacles of creed, words that are repeated verbatim every Sunday to the point of becoming invisible, and completely detached from the things that they may actually mean. True, there are occasional intra-dogmatic kerfuffles within denominations who argue until they foam at the mouth whether “Body of Christ” and “Blood of Christ” are representations of the things they puport to be or whether they MAGICALLY (and I use the word advisedly) transform into the actual real thing when the priest intones the words above the plate and the chalice. Magic is rich and powerful stuff. Powerful enough to make the faithful, who would otherwise recoil at the idea of eating human flesh or drinking human blood, accept even the most potent of the interpretations of those words when they are uttered by a consecrated being over a consecrated thing and freely partake of it despite the implications and moral and ethical contradictions inherent in what they believe they are consuming.

True magic lies in weaving together something that is impossible with something that is yearning for the impossible in such a way that the impossible thing becomes not just possible but inevitable.

This is what writers do every day.

What is it that makes magic come alive for the reader? Is it that the writer must believe in it first, and to what degree should that belief be taken – philosophical, empirical, dogmatic? What is it about magic that pulls in the human mind? What are the riptides and the undertows of that wine-dark sea in which we all like to occasionally drown?

What makes magic… for YOU?…

Friend and Colleague Tate Hallaway has a new book out...

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:31:45 GMT

Tate Hallaway is the best selling alias of the award-winning science fiction author Lyda Morehouse. Lyda wrote a four book trilogy about angels, computers and the end of the world all of which are currently out of print, though she still writes and publishes science fiction/fantasy/horror short stories. Tate’s books are all in print with more in the Garnet Lacey series in the works. You can find both Lyda and Tate all blogging all over the internet including places like LiveJournal, Blogspot, MySpace, Facebook, and even YouTube. “They” live in Saint Paul, Minnesota with five cats, a five year old son, and many, many fresh water fish.

Tate Hallaway's new book is "Romancing the Dead" (cover pic and links at the bottom of page!)

Blurb:
It’s been one heck of a week for Garnet Lacey. The Vatican witch hunters finally think she’s dead, the FBI has closed their file on her, she’s co-founding a new coven—and the gorgeous vampire she loves has just asked her to marry him. How lucky can one girl get?

Then, her fiancé goes missing and Garnet’s worried sick. Has he been kidnapped? Or could he have run off with that blonde from the coven? Now Garnet will have to seek the help of her future stepson—the same brat who turned her over to the witch hunters for a brand-new Jaguar. But there’s more bad news: the Goddess Lilith, who camps out in her body, has been making embarrassing appearances. And on top of that, some killer’s on her tail...

And here's what Tate/Lyda has to say on the new book:

What was your inspiration for writing ROMANCING THE DEAD?

ROMANCING THE DEAD is the third book in my paranormal chick-lit Garnet Lacey series. People often ask me how I, as a writer, stay inspired when writing about the same characters. I think I could get pretty bored if I didn’t allow my characters not only to be human (and thus full of flaws), but also to change and grow.

A lot of the romance I read when I first started reading romances were “first blush,” as in the main point of the story was the excitement of meeting someone new. At the end of these novels, things faded very quickly into the nebulous (and unrealistic) happily, ever after. One of the things I’m trying to do in the Garnet Lacey series is promote the romance that can be found in a long-term relationship. I mean, Garnet is in love with a vampire, for goodness sake. You don’t get more “ever after” than that. I, myself, have been together with my partner for more than twenty years, and I don’t think those kinds of relationships get a lot of glory in romance novels, you know?

Plus, in every novel I like to take on one of the tropes in urban fantasy and do my own thing with it. In this book, I have Garnet meet someone who may or may not be a werewolf.

Who are your favorite authors and books now and when you were growing up?

Currently my favorite authors are writing graphic novels. I’m in to Brian Michael Bendis’ NEW AVENGERS. I just finished reading NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI in preparation of the up-coming Secret Invasion. I’m also a huge fan of Ed Brubaker’s CAPTAIN AMERICA, particularly his WINTER SOLDIER stuff. Comic books haven’t been this fresh for me since I first picked up Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s FANTASTIC FOUR when I was a kid.

For more traditional fare, my favorites are Rachel Caine, who writes the Weather Warden series, and Kristin Katheryn Rusch who writes the Disappeared series, which is a kind of futuristic a police procedural set on Mars. When I was growing up my favorite authors were Katherine Kurtz and Anne McCaffrey.

What is it about fantasy/science fiction that attracts you?

The explosions.

Seriously, I was talking to a friend about this at a bar the other night, and I confessed that one of my favorite things about writing paranormal romances/urban fantasy is that you get to have all the relationship/girly stuff married to the high-octane adventure/boy stuff. That’s pretty near perfect for me.

Why did you decide to make Garnet a Witch?

Because I am.

And it can be very difficult to find realistic portrayals of Wiccan religion in novels. One of the things that drives me crazy in movies and TV shows like “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” is when a complete novice reads a spell they find in a dusty book and they conjure a demon without breaking a sweat.

Of course, because the Garnet Lacey series is fantasy, I take liberties, too. Real-life witchcraft can be pretty dull. The scope of Garnet’s power is a lot stronger than anything I’ve experienced in real life, but I try to show ritual as part of her daily practice as well. In other words, she doesn’t just cast spells, but she also prays to a Goddess and observes the cycle of the seasons, like the real witches I know.

What (besides writing) do you do for fun?

I’m an aquarist. I have four fresh water fish tanks in my house and have had over the course of a year: powder blue dwarf gourami, neon tetra, bettas (a spawning pair), a white cloud minnow, yellow tuxedo guppies, and several goldfish (comet and shubunkin). I’m so into it I read fish magazines and occasionally write long, boring blogs about my fish triumphs and woes on my livejournal: [http://lyda222.livejournal.com]. My betta Johnny/Giant-Girl is even a YouTube star: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9Gg0mfEfTw.

What sort of research did you do to write this book?

Well, because I’d decided to play around with the urban fantasy trope of werewolves and the story takes place in Madison, Wisconsin, I did a little research and discovered that Wisconsin has its own werewolf myth: “the Beast of Bray Road.” There’s a book about it by LInda S. Godfrey called BEAST OF BRAY ROAD: TAILING WISCONSIN'S WEREWOLF.

Garnet loves astrology. Is that your favorite thing too?

One of them. Just like Garnet I’m an amateur astrologer. Yeah, we’re talking about predictions and horoscopes and stuff. No, I don’t think the stars rule my destiny, but, yeah, I think it’s all a very fascinating and entertaining way to look at life and relationships.

I love astronomy, too. My friend Rachel takes me and my four-year old out star-gazing on clear nights. The science fiction fan in me loves seeing the rings of Saturn and such.

What are you writing now?

There’s more Garnet Lacey in the works. I’m currently putting the wraps on book four, DEAD IF I DO, which I like to describe as “The Wedding Planner” meets “Night of the Living Dead.”

Did you always want to write? Or did you stumble into it? How did you get where you are now?

It took boredom to turn me into a writer.

True, I was an English major in college, but other than dabbling a little in fanfic as a teen I didn’t really do a lot of creative writing. After college, I had a series of dead-end secretarial jobs and really didn’t require a whole lot of my brain power. One of these jobs didn’t even come with a computer, but when I incessantly bugged my boss for work she taught me the art of the slack. She said, “Sometimes it’s important to LOOK busy.” So, I started typing letters home to friends. The letters turned into little silly stories, limericks, and finally, the beginning of my first novel, Sidhe Promised, which has never been sold.

Someone either a friend or my partner talked me into taking a science fiction writing class at the Loft http://www.loft.org I had an awesome teacher who taught us the art of critique and encouraged us to form writers’ critique groups outside of class. The one I formed from that class with my friend and fellow writer H. Courrage LeBlanc, Wyrdsmiths is still going strong today, nearly twelve years later. If you want to check out the "life" of a writers' group, we have a blog: http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com

Eventually, through a friend of a friend I got my second novel, Archangel Protocol, under the nose of an agent. The rest, as they say, is history.

What does a typical writing day look like for you? How long do you write, that sort of thing?

Well, I’m in crunch time now, so I write close to four hours a night, from about 8:00 pm to midnight. Normally, however, I tend to clock closer to only a couple of hours, if that. I have a full-time job as a mom, so my writing time doesn’t start until everyone is fed and tucked in their beds. When not writing under a deadline, I also take weekends off.

Hm, which may explain why I'm in crunch time now, eh?

Where do you write??

Wherever my laptop is. I tend to write propped up in bed or on the couch in the TV room.

What is easiest/hardest for you as a writer?

I’ve always found dialogue the easiest to write. That’s probably because it’s the part I practice the most. Not only do I love to talk, but also when I’m falling asleep at night it’s the fictional conversations that I play with in my head.

As for hard, that would be plot. If I had my druthers, no one would do anything. They’d all sit around in a coffee shop and argue.

This isn't your first book; tell us a little bit about what else is out there?

Though all of them are meant to stand more-or-less on their own, there are two previous Garnet Lacey books: TALL, DARK & DEAD and DEAD SEXY. Both follow the exploits of Garnet Lacey, a Witch who accidentally drew in the dark and murderous Goddess Lilith to protect her coven from attack by Vatican witch hunters. When the stories start, she’s on the run and trying desperately to give up witchcraft, which Lilith (and, consequentially, she) crave like a drug. Tall, dark and dead Sebastian Von Traum comes into the bookstore the Garnet manages and, as they say, hilarity ensues.
And explosions… or at least zombies.

There’s an excerpt of the first chapters of all three books available on my website http://www.tatehallaway.com.

Other useful stuff:
Picture of cover (it's HUGE,

Amazon.com links to Tate's books:
Romancing the Dead: http://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Dead-Garnet-Lacey-Book/dp/0425221334/
Dead Sexy (Garnet Lacey #2): http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Sexy-Garnet-Lacey-Book/dp/0425215083/
Tall, Dark & Dead (Garnet Lacey #1): http://www.amazon.com/Tall-Dark-Dead-Garnet-Lacey/dp/0425209725/

Places to find Tate on the Web:
Website: http://www.tatehallaway.com
Blog: http://tatehallaway.blogspot.com
Wyrdsmiths group blog: http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com
Fangs, Fur & Fey (group blog for paranormal romance writers): http://community.livejournal.com/fangs_fur_fey/
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/tatehallaway

OOOoooo, pretty!

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:02:07 GMT

There was a contest for SF future-architecture here. Ooooo, pretty. Go look.

I'm a Mock Printz-ess...

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:14:58 GMT

For those who know YA, one of the big awards in the kidlitosphere is the the Michael L. Printz Award, given to "...a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature."

Well, what people may NOT know (I certainly didn't) is that the the Bergen County Cooperative Library System, consisting of 74 public libraries in New Jersey's Bergen, Essex, Hudson, and Passaic Counties, are running something called the Mock Printz Awards.

And I only just found out that I GOT a nomination

Here's what librarian Susan Rappaport of the Rutherford Public Library had to say about the book:

Mock Printz: Spellspam by Alma Alexander

This fantasy is excellent and my very favorite so far this year... The world is well-thought out, the premise of using the computer as a venue for an alternate world is cleverly pursued and the characters are interestingly developed since Gift of the Underworld, the first book in the Worldweavers series. This second book stands beautifully on its own. Alma Alexander creates a world where spellspam is a play on the word "spell". Some malicious person is sending magic or "spells" through e-mail. Once again Thea, an underestimated seventh child of two seven children displays remarkably original talents as she puzzles out the solutions for her changing world. Dare I say it but this book does remind me of Harry Potter. Thea attends a school for kids who have no magic talents, and with her four other friends, she confronts the mysterious and sometimes playful problems. Because the magic is changing, the adults do not have the answers here. Unlike Harry Potter, it is not so strictly black and white. Thea feels compassion for the villain who turns out to be a literal lost soul. This is a highly imaginative story and I really loved it. Read it and see what you think. Thumbs up and three cheers for Alma Alexander!

THANK you, Ms Rappaport!

And the winner is...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:13:22 GMT

So, here is Himself on the three finalists.

"St Burl. Now, I like that, I really do, don't get me wrong. For a long time that was the front runner, make no mistake about there. But I got to thinking. There's this THING about saints, see - to qualify to be one you either have to be poisonously good (well, that shouldn't be a PROBLEM, really, seeing as I'm surveying my world from this little spot in The Writer Woman's office, just how much in the way of shenanigans am I really going to be able to get into... although don't ANSWER that, nobody quite knows what my capabilities are, quite, yet, anyway, and I might well be found stalking the bucks outside if I felt like it...) or else, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a martyr. That has even less appeal. The stakes are kind of high, because - well - I WOULD (or should that be "wood") be the stake if any burning at the stake were to be contemplated. So I cooled on the idea. And just "Burl" - eh, no. Not quite there. So, regretfully, decline.

Farnabal. I like that, too. It's exotic and exciting and noble and kind of gives me images of riding on elephants and all. But, see, I am not in any way noblesse or oblige. I'm what you might call a working class chap of a gnome. I need a name that is simple, direct, and doesn't give me delusions of grandeur or those who address me the wrong idea. So, regretfully, decline.

Which leaves number three.

I will add my name to the signed book which The Writer Woman has offered as the prize. Would you kindly let her have a mailing address, she can be contacted at anghara at vaxer dot net, and the book will be on its way to you shortly after this information is received.

Yours sincerely,

Spine."

So - he has apoken. Many thanks to all of you who played.

One Star Reviews

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:57:42 GMT

John Scalzi and others have done this in the last couple of days - the challenge is, take your one-star Amazons and toss them out there for public purview.

I've only ever had four one-star reviews, but

For "The Secrets of Jin Shei", Amazon.com

1.0 out of 5 stars Awful, just awful, September 3, 2007

Trite, corny, unbelievable characters and storylines. Yuck. This terrible book was recomended to me in a bookstore as I was purchasing historical fiction. The "alternate China" is just a ruse to hide poor scholarship and writing. Truly the worst book I've read in the last couple of years.

(unh... quite possibly understandable if she was looking for HISTORICAL China. But ye gods and little fishes, I have spent SO much time and energy telling people that it is not...)

1.0 out of 5 stars Jumping the Shark, August 17, 2005

This book never finds its plot, and like a sitcom passed its prime, jumps the shark repeatedly in an effort to distract the reader from this potboiler drivel and at the same inject forward motion into the book. This might be one of the worst books I have ever read. Which is really too bad, because the premise- women with their own language and bond- is very promising.

(so, I had a "worst book I've ever read" from each coast. At least I am egalitarian in my badness, as it were.)

(and just for the record... the lowest star rating for this book at Amazon UK is four stars. Go figure.)

Moving right along, concerning "The Hidden Queen"/"Changer of Days":

1.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't finish it., January 12, 2006

This review is from: The Hidden Queen (Mass Market Paperback)
Oh my word. I have only ever not been able to finish a book twice in my life -- and this was number 2. The first few chapters were ok, but when things really started cooking plot-wise, the writing style became, well, high-schoolish. I wanted to like it, so I plowed ahead. But, half-way through it, I gave up.

The writing style is amateurish, and clunky. Characters act in a melodramatically, with no realism. There are patches of good writing, but these patches are quickly followed by a clunker or two.

I would hope that the sequel to this book improved, but since I can't finish the first, I won't be trying the second.

(..."WITH NO REALISM"...? This is a self-avowed high epic fantasy...eh... never mind, then.)

1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing, August 13, 2006

This review is from: The Hidden Queen (Mass Market Paperback)
After reading the blurb and seeing this called and intelligent and sensitive book, I was really looking forward to reading it. I liked the plot and the setting, but the execution was simply horrible. Point of view shifts happened from paragraph to paragraph. The main character was lifeless and dull. There were long passages detailing emotions (sensitive?) but then the plot would be summed up in two or three sentences. It was telling instead of showing at its worst.

(...eh.)

I got a 3-star review for Worldweavers 1, but that was from an 11-year-old (who STILL managed to find something to like, though). But anyway, there's my one-star career, for what it's worth.

I am told that if you don't have any negative reviews then not enough people are reading your book. The thing is, *you've already done your job* by causing a reaction in the reader. GOod or bad, you've done it. It's the "meh" reviews that are REALLY awful; the ones with real passion speak to the fact that something in the book, whether they wanted it to or not, reached out and spoke to them. Which part of them it spoke to is something that is utterly beyond the writer's control - our job is just to do the speaking. Someone out there is listening.

And just because this REALLY doesn't happen every day...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:28:24 GMT

If you look at Spellspam on Amazon.com, at least right THIS INSTANT AS I POST THIS, you will see this:

Popular in these categories: (What's this?)
#1 in Books > Children's Books > Computers > Fiction
#45 in Books > Children's Books > Educational > Explore the World > Fiction > United States
#74 in Books > Computers & Internet > Software > E-mail

Okay some of those categories are boggle-worthy (I mean...Books > Computers & Internet > Software > E-mail? Really? Do they know this is fiction...?) and I have no real idea what, if anything, any of these numbers mean. But I am really tickled that I can now say that my book - for however brief a moment in time - was a #1 on Amazon [grin]

A nice review and a jumping of point for discussion...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:07:34 GMT

I just got a very nice review posted out there in the blogosphere. Stephanie from "Someone's read it already" has given me four out of five stars - ant it's a terrific review.

The star that got taken off? Well, here's what she says in the review:

The writing style on the book was perhaps the only part I did not find excellent. Alexander has quite a turn for poetic language, but sometimes her paragraph-long sentences did not quite match the intended audience for the book. These sentences are not in the dialogue, which was fine; they were in the narration. Again, individual parts of these sentences were lovely, and they were all grammatically correct, but the length was sometimes oppressive. I can’t imagine that fourteen-year-olds would find these more appealing than I do. For example:

Grimoires were temperamental books, sometimes with a life of their own, unpredictable and often dangerous; they were usually kept well apart from the main part of any library, but even so accidents happened every so often and the consequences could be dire.

Again, the story was lovely, and a nice introduction to Thea’s world. I’m very interested to read the next book in the trilogy (which I have on a shelf, quite nearby), and I’m sure I won’t be able to wait for book 3. This book comes recommended to readers who like interesting settings and vibrant characters, but who wouldn’t mind waiting a few months for book 3, and for whom short, choppy sentences aren’t a necessity.

To which my response is, well, yes, but it isn't a bug, it's a *feature*.

Perhaps I am underestimating my readership, at that. Perhaps there are folks out there for whom short and choppy sentences ARE a necessity. But that's just the thing - I've never been able to write them. Short choppy sentences exercise no fascination for me - I get no charge from creating them and therefore I cannot see any reader getting a charge out of reading them, and if I TRIED to write like that I would come off sounding like the very worst of what I've always tried to avoid both reading and writing - someone who is *writing down to her readership*.

When my first ever solo effort got published, a slim little volume of three Oscar Wilde-like fairy tales called "The Dolphin's Daughter and other stories" (you could try AmazonUK, or occasionally you get lucky at Amazon US, but at any rate you can see the cover art if you scroll down to the bottom of this page) what they did was put together these three stories that I had written *for an adult readership*, written in as lush and complex and uncompromising a manner as I knew how, and they had put them together in this little book which was aimed at a 15-year-old demographic. When the proofs of that book came to me to check, I remember holding them out to my father in a hand that literally shook, and saying "You look, I daren't, they must have eviscerated the language." Because I figured they had to have done, in order to make it palatable to a young readership.

You know what? They hadn't. Those proofs remain one of the most lightly edited sets of proofs I've ever seen. Longman trusted the audience; that the trust wasn't entirely misplaced is that - although it currently seems to be on the outs with both Amazons - the book, published in 1995, STILL brings me a trickle of royalties every so often. Still being read. No, it wasn't Potterological, it didn't sell ten million copies, but it sold a respectable number of copies for a thin little book that was never published commercially but only under the auspices of a strictly defined reading project by an educational publisher.

So I throw it out to you. What do you think? Should children's books in general, YA books in particular, be written in short choppy sentences - or is it all right to be lush and complex? sartorias, cynleitichsmith, tltrent... others who are involved with/write/write ABOUT/review YA... what do you think about this issue? How important is language? Should we be making readers stretch beyond what they thought might be the limits of their linguistic capabilities, or should we be writing to the LOWEST common denominator and using language that will make a work of fiction accessible to the less well linguistically endowed? Is it the level of language used or the themes within a story that differentiate a children's book from a YA book?

I was very aware of my audience, of the changed demographic at which the Worldweavers books were aimed, when I wrote these books. And yet... I was writing them for the reader who was once myself, a reader who always wanted more, bigger, brighter, wider, mroe complex, more dramatic. In my own family I was always treated as though I had a mind of my own, and the rule was that if I picked up a book that was in my house and I could understand it and it interested me there were no borders or bans enforced on what my reading material "should" have been. In point of fact I pretty much skipped the whole YA demographic altoghether - which isn't REALLY unexpected, seeing as how recent a marketing bracket that particular genre actually is - and I simply read what were considered to be adult books by the time I was in my early teens. The classics - Austen, Bronte, Stendhal, Hugo - as well as the more "modern" oeuvre which encompassed several Nobel prize winners (Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ivo Andric, Pearl Buck, Sigrid Undsett, John Galsworthy). I thought lush and complex was the way language was SUPPOSED to be.

So. Am I - are writers like me - asking too much of our young readership...? Or can we be said to be nursing these fragile hopes that some day those readers... will grow up as blindly, powerlessly, hopelessly tenderly in love with the lushness of language and word, and believe in it with the same kind of deep and all-encompassing faith...?

Cats, competitions, and other stuff

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:47:50 GMT

So, today was the Annual Vet Visit.

I must be getting better at this or my cats are kind of dozy - because I got them both into a small room together with a carrier, we had an incident of Cat A (the doofus) who jumped in quite willingly after a handful of treats escaping niftily just before I could corner Cat B - but Cat B is the craftier critter anyway and once SHE was in the bag, as it were, I could collar Cat A with more treats ("ooooooh! Treats!") and stuff him in upside down and get the zip closed. The whole thing took rather less than three minutes in total.

We got to the vet really early. Like, REALLY early. And those cats just sat there and made owl faces through the mesh of the carrier with those big green eyes - and once we transferred to an examination room showed little inclination to evacuate the carrier. My little boy in particular hates vets - he just... goes away. The body is there, the mind is elsewhere entirely, and you can pick him up and pose him and poke him and do whatever you want with him and he's just going to hang there like a boneless bag of fur. Honestly, he scares me sometimes. It's like he's already made a pact with the leaving of this life and is quite at peace with the idea.

Either way, they got their claws clipped, they got their shots, they got their teeth and ears and eyes and heartbeats examined, they got a clean bill of health, and we were outta there. We got home about ten minutes after they were supposed to have been in with the vet in the first place, so we came out ahead.

And as a retro-bribe I gave them a can of wet food which they polished off pretty smartly, and now they're sleeping off the experience in comfortable and familiar surroundings. And I don't have to think about this again until next April. God, what a month, Cats and taxes.

On to more interesting things.

Himself on the wall, the Bookgnome, has considered the candidates for his Worldname ("*WILBUR*?", he sniffed in disdain over one of them... sorry guinwhyte...) and he is currently down to dithering between three - Spine, St Burl, and Farnabal. I shall continue with the consultations and I will announce the winner by Friday. In the meantime, can the three gentle readers who suggested those names tell me if you've actually seen/picked up/read the first Worldweavers book? (Because you'd get much more out of "Spellspam" if you have...)

I shall be back with a decision shortly. Thank you everyone who contributed.

Competition: Name The Bookgnome

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:17:37 GMT

On my recent trip to New England, the entity in the photograph made himself known to me and insisted I take him home to be my Bookgnome - I mean, this is a story teller, just look at that "I know something you don't!" face - and I was given little choice in the matter...

(Click on picture for a larger view)

(You may notice he is a little, um, spiky, and fragile with it, and I only had hand luggage which was already packed tight, and there was no room for him in any manner which would not presuppose major injury - so he made his way here c/o the USPS, in a cardboard box while swaddled in bubblewrap. He has finally got over the idignity of it all and deigned to communicate again...)

Here's the thing. He has, he informs me, a Secret Name That Must Not Be Spoken and which only he himself knows. He and I have agreed on a Name of Addressing By Means Of Which COmmunication Shall Be Established, just so that I don't have to call him "hey you" and heap further indignities upon his person - but this is the name that stays between him and me, and is a sort of password between us.

What he now needs is a Name By Which The Public At Large May Know Him By, and I am throwing that open for your consideration.

There's a prize. There's a copy of "Spellspam" in it for anyone who comes up with a name that His Nibs (no, that's not the secret-handshake name by which I know him, that's a placeholder for the name YOU guys pick for him) gives his final seal of approval to.

Have at it. Comments are now open. You've got a week to put in your two cents, as it were.

"I had a farm in Africa..."

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:36:05 GMT

So, TiVo taped a classic weepie for us - "Out of Africa". Just finished watching it - and wept, again. The acacia trees against sunsets that only happen in these skies, the sweeping vistas of hundreds of gazelles or thousands of flamingoes taking off from Nauru, or the a single stately elephant or pair of lions.

I wish I didn't get the feeling of watching history, something long gone, something that only still exists in memory and dream.

I was ten when I first set foot in the Dark Continent, ten years old, a child whose mind and spirit were wide open, and that place left a stamp on both of them. I know that there is also filth and death and disease and corruption and bitter poverty and tribal rivalries and constant suspicion and aggression and greed and arrogance and edge-of-catastrophe. All that, yes. But beyond that, there's the memory of vastness and ancientness and beauty that stabs at the heart with something that is almost exquisite pain. There is the smell of the frangipani trees in the twilight, and the sound of cicadas in the heat of the day when the air shimmers with the noise and the heat-mirages and the shadows themselves are hot and sultry and the sun has weight and sits coiled on the shoulders like a living thing. There is the purple of the jacarandas and the scarlet of the flame trees and the bougainvillea, and the golden waves of the savannah grasses, and the rough gray of ancient tree bark, and the red earth of Africa. There is the endless sky with its jewel-coloured sunsets. There's the danger of snake, or crocodile, or mosquitoes that carry diseases which leave you shaking and sweating in the night. There are the bright beautiful stars in the night, closer and sharper than anywhere else on earth. There are the bright vivid smiles that break in chilren's faces; There is an innocence there, as well as an ancientness that is almost beyond understanding. There is the fear and the glory and the beauty and the dream of it all.

And I was very young when it was all handed to me to absorb. And I may have missed some here and there. But what I got, I still carry, and there are times during movies like "Out of Africa" that I sob helplessly when I watch it all unfold before me and the memories all start stirring.

A long time ago I wrote an essay about leaving "shadow selves" behind in places where I've been. I know there is one always back on the shores of the Danube, my beloved river, watching over the town where I was born. And I know there is one - or perhaps more than one - roaming the hills and plains of Africa, walking with the elephants at sunset, drifting through the red hills of Swaziland or sitting on the edge of Table Mountain at night kicking my heels against the side of the cliff and watching the lights of Cape Town twinkle a long way below. Shadows that carry the heat and the light and the memory of Africa within them.

Shadows that make me weep when I remember the places which they guard.