After several days of "radio silence" due to lousy internet @ Readercon's Marriott, I have much to tell, and hope I can get even a little of it down. I'll begin with the big news: Yesterday morning (Finnish time) at Finncon, the Helsinki Science Fiction Society announced:

The Tähtifantasia award for best translated fantasy in 2008 was given to Ellen Kushner for her novel Thomas Riiminiekka (Thomas the Rhymer), published in Finnish by Vaskikirjat. The novel talks about the power of words and speech. The jury commends Kushner’s characters as exceptionally well-rounded, feeling persons. The story uses point-of-view technics to bring multiple voices into a discussion about songs, stories, love and how language brings meaning to life.

Warmest congratulations to my Finnish publisher, Vaskikirjat, and particularly to my translator, the magnificent Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo, who asked me a lot of really interesting questions while she was working on the book, clearly to good purpose. (And thanks to Finnish blogger Tero Ykspetaja for writing the post I quoted from . . . and to my dad for tracking down all the links about it & pointing them out!

I am truly scunnered & honored - especially when I see who else was nominated! Indeed, I blush - and can only think that it is Johanna's brilliant translation that brought me in first in a field that included translations of Patricia McKillip, Robert Silverberg, Nobel Laureate José Saramago, and Gregory Maguire's Wicked!

[The teenage girl whose bed I'm sleeping in here in Maine (while she bunks with her brother & the dog, bless her!) asks - in her wonderful deadpan way, "So do you get anything for this? (beat) What's in it for you? . . . Any Finnish Delicacies? . . . Maybe you should get a crate of pickled herring or something. Ask them about it!" It never occurred to me. I do love herring. But a plaque or some chocolate would be nice, too.]

1. The first thing I did when I got home was make a pot of coffee and drink the whole thing. (I was seriously undercaffeinated all weekend, which, if you spoke with me whatsoever, I might have noticed.)


2. The second thing I did was watch Stephen King's Desperation on SyFy, and laugh hysterically. And I am the world's biggest weenie about anything vaguely resembling horror, so it takes a lot to show me hundreds of dead bodies and manage to NOT creep me out, but after the fifteenth tarantula-riddled corpse, I was cracking up. Did they build the town on a huge mating nest? Also, young woman stock character, is it necessary to scream every time you see one? It's like your thirtieth corpse. Eventually it has to be old hat, right?

Steven Weber has the magical ability to look totally embarrassed in whatever he's in, as if he's sending a manful hostage note right through the camera to the audience. Best scene: while touring a Small Town Abandoned Place, he fondles a Foreign Artifact (hey-o!) and he and the young woman stock character have to pant at one another for two minutes, because you know how finding random artifacts on an office desk makes you frisky.

In true TV-movie fashion, not only does this encounter not affect the plot, it doesn't even come up (HEY-O!) again in character beats. It's just how Steven Weber rolls.

The best part of the entire thing is Ron Perlman, who knows when the time has come to chew scenery. Check out that pretty face. Third from the bottom is the best one. Jazz hands!


3. I'm still wasted-tired. The con reminded me of the "Gotta Dance" number in Singing in the Rain when Gene Kelly and company are on a pair of moving walkways, dancing manically and zooming back and forth and just missing one another.

I’ve had a Monday. It has been a Monday wherein many things got done, none of them writing. I spent the morning on day-job work (as per usual), then went to Petco for fish supplies, went to (stores redacted) to do some birthday shopping for a couple of relatives, hit up Trader Joe’s for some desperately needed groceries, went to the postal store and bought shipping materials, packed up and shipped off a couple of birthday packages, took out a couple loads of trash, changed the fish tank while doing 2 loads of laundry, then folded/sorted/put away the laundry*.

I’m tired. I don’t want to stand up anymore.
But I still need to clean the litterbox.
*sigh*
I’m thinking maybe that one’ll wait ’till tomorrow.

However, I do want to point you at something new and groovy: The first chapter of Boneshaker, live for your reading pleasure.

In my oh-so-copious downtime today [:: eye roll ::] I spent some time fleshing out Clockwork Century — cleaning up my own grammar, adding a graphic or two, and plumping up the “Stories” and “World” sections with more in-depth info on those two topics, respectively.

As I said, I’ll be tweaking, adding, futzing, and poking at the site for some time yet. I might even put up another chapter or two, one of these days. You never know. It’s like the wild wild west. Anything could happen.

---

* As a point of fact, it’s worth noting that the laundry room is in the basement of our building, which means four flights of stairs up and down in a joint with 11 foot ceilings. It’s more than housework; it’s manual labor.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

Brought to me by Google alert and other nefarious sources:

What’s this about a second series?  why do they do that? I HATE that.  I NEED more Kate and Curran now. (cut short for some unflatering speculation regarding motives of money-hungry writers with two series’ in general and Gordon and I in particular – Ilona)

Dear upset reader person:

Our advance for Magic Strikes was $10,000.  We kind of like eating.

Toodles.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there.

The thing is, I'm allergic to controversy, especially internet controversy. I don't like fighting over things. Especially con-things.

So, due to probably-foreseeable anger with my idea from the Readercon folks, we'll likely try to find another weekend for IslandCon.

I still don't think I'll be attending Readercon. I still think it's the wrong direction for the con and an alarming canary in the mine for fandom. It saddens me, and I hope they come back in 2011, because while this may be my father's Readercon, it's not mine.

But I don't want to go down fighting and never be welcome there again. That may well already be the case. I should probably have known better. So I'll have my barbecue some other time. Weekend nominations are open as of now.

One of the constant pillars of my field has been kicked out. No wonder I feel a bit wobbly.

I just read shweta_narayan's March story at Strange Horizons, "Nira and I."

It's very, very evocative, and it makes me think about the importance of bearing witness, and the recent and ongoing struggles in Iran.

Charles Brown, the editor and co-founder of Locus.

http://www.locusmag.com/

died yesterday. He was a friend of mine and the world is less without him.

Wow.

The publishing world has just lost another great -- Charlie N. Brown, the publisher of Locus.

This is truly shocking and sad, the end of an era.

I'll be in San Francisco next week for some more medical appointments in connection with my cancer. Since I'm finding it logistically impossible to schedule time with people, I thought I'd throw one of my group dinners.

On Monday 7/20 at 6pm, calendula_witch and I will be at Kezar Bar & Grill, at the corner of Cole and Carl in Cole Valley. Exact address:

900 Cole St
San Francisco, CA 94117-4316
(415) 681-7678

This is just off the N-Judah street car line, among other things.

This is an open dinner. That means if you're reading this, you're welcome to come, whether we're old friends, nodding acquaintances or total strangers. If you think you'll be there, please let us know. That way we can warn the restaurant.

Originally published at jlake.com.

Your Monday moment of zen.



Old truck, photographed by me in Mendocino County, CA.

Originally published at jlake.com.

1,500 words on the plane. Closing in on the ending. Definitely running short, but as calendula_witch says, I have left out some key descriptive passages etc. Fred's been running ahead of chemo to get the plot and story bones sorted out, I think.

( And a bit of the old WIP... )

Originally published at jlake.com.

When I was a kid, I remember reading in The Weekly Reader or some other free periodical handed out to schools of the horrors of the Soviet Union. In one story that listed many terrible absurdities, I read that a person with mild retardation was sent to prison for spilling ink on a newspaper that had featured a photo of Stalin. (This wasn't a story contemporary to the 1970s or early 1980s, when I read it.)

Meanwhile, here in 2009 in the US:

On Oct. 15, 2004, Mary Elizabeth Schipke entered the Oracle post office to buy a 47-cent stamped envelope. When she got frustrated with the clerk behind the counter, she told her: "God, I pray a bomb falls on your stupid, fucking head."

Almost a year later, Schipke was convicted of threatening a federal facility with weapons of mass destruction. Schipke describes what she told the clerk that day as an "imprecatory prayer"—basically, a simple curse—but that defense didn't keep her from serving a four-year prison sentence, with the last two years at Carswell, a women's federal medical prison outside of Fort Worth, Texas, that has been the subject of allegations about the questionable care of prisoners with physical and psychiatric conditions.


One of the things I noted immediately: "WMD" has been dialed down to apparently mean any bomb at all. That'll be handy for the next round of preemptive invasions, eh?

A couple of other interesting things. Schipke is kook in her own right (see November 7, 1998). Also, she looks forward to the day when the Chinese military frees their children from George Washington since the American people are utterly brainwashed by their masters. She certainly seems to count as mentally unbalanced, perhaps in a way not so dissimilar to our poor Soviet ink-spiller.

But real threats with WMDs? Nah.

Having Charlie Brown suddenly not there is like losing one of the landmarks that lets you know you’re home.

One of my favourite Charles memories: fossicking in that library of his while he told me secrets about Gene Wolfe and Carter Brown.

God damn.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

A Field Guide to Surreal Botany is now available in another brick-and-mortar bookshop: Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge, MA. Pandemonium has been servicing the science fiction, fantasy, and gaming needs of the Cambridge community for the past twenty years, and it's just the type of specialty bookshop that I know I'd be spending way too much time and money in were it nearby. It's also nice to see a bookstore that specializes in science fiction staying afloat right now, and they deserve the support. Here are the deets:

Pandemonium Books & Games
4 Pleasant Street
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
617-547-3721
orders@pandemoniumbooks.com

If you happen to live near this fine bookshop, please consider paying them a visit and picking up a copy of Surreal Botany whilst you're there. Supplies are small right now, just a handful of copies, but there's a good chance that they'll reorder if the existing stock gets snapped up.

As always, you're welcome to order the book from our ordering page, but please also patronize independent bookstores such as Pandemonium. They're the lifeblood of the bookselling industry, and are the ones willing to take a chance on indie titles like our own. It's hard enough for independent bookstores to keep their doors open in these tough economic times, but the shops that specialize in just one genre have an even tougher time of it. Please show them some love.

Many thanks to Surreal Botany contributor Cassandra Phillips-Sears for persuading Pandemonium to carry copies of the book.

I didn't know Charles Brown personally. But the man founded a magazine and then kept it running for forty years, inspiring readers all along the way, and I do have an idea of just what a herculean task that was. Well done, sir. Rest in peace.

I can haz a shiny advance quote for On the Edge.

This calls for a snippet.

“Mémère?”

Éléonore glanced at Georgie’s face. She never could get him to explain how he knew to call her that. She had never spoken a word of French to either of them. But Georgie started saying it when he was two, with a light Provençal overlay. She had a feeling he didn’t know himself why he did it, but every time he said the word, it brought her back to dry, warm hills, where she sat in the sunshine next to her own grandmère, nibbling on fougasse that left a faint orange taste on her tongue and watching the men down in the village play la longue with the grace of ballet dancers.

She smiled at him. “What is it?”

“Can we go outside?”

 

( Read more... )

 

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there.

Things are slowly gathering momentum here. Almost enough academic papers are promised, or on the way, or actually submitted  Lots of other interesting  things beginning to appear, eg. we hope one Guest of Honour speech already, courtesy of the publisher, plus 2 pieces from Nisi Shawl, the  Tiptree prize winner, 2 poems on panels from Anne Sheldon, who is a truly excellent poet, and a My WisCon in verse in process from Robin Small-McCarthy, attending her first WisCon. A piece on language at Cons and elsewhere from MJ Hardman is on the way, and I'm hoping for an ethnography of WisCon from a writer and archaeologist with a similar interest in Peru, Meg Turville-Heitz. Nancy Jane Moore is doing a response to one of the academic papers, and a report with Diane Silver on a panel about a Writers' Community, and other panel reports are also coming in. There's also some fiction and poetry from people who read at the Con.
I'd really like at this stage, some more overall views or My WisCons, and more panel reports. The ones I'm getting are excellent, so more please. More!

Where I spent aaalll my used books credit…  on manga for the kids.  :headslap:

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there.