the other half of Swan Tower

Oh, hell. It just occured to me that maybe this is what I should use as my icon for teaching my fairy-tale class next fall.

That doesn’t bode so well for my students. <g>

Anyway, I mustered enough energy to do some updates on the Bryn Neuenschwander half of Swan Tower, which have been sorely overdue for a long time. There’s nothing dramatic, but I finally got my C.V. posted in legible form and put a tiny bit more content into the areas about my research. The next big project for over there is a doozy: I want to gather up sources I’ve found useful on RPGs or fairy tales and make an online annotated bibliography. God only knows when that will happen, but I would like to do it someday. In the meantime, these minor updates will have to do.

And with that, I am done with my website for today.

oof.

A large amount of tinkering later, I think I have finally achieved something I’ve been aiming at for a while. You see, I didn’t just switch to a paid account so I could have more icons (though I admit that was icing on the decision); I did it so I could embed the journal on my website. Thanks to the inestimable sapphohestia, this is done. You can now read this journal at its LJ address, or at Swan Tower. I believe everything is working now, with a couple other minor fixes made to the site at the same time.

There’s other stuff I want to do over there, but I think I need a break from webpage coding.

However, I’ll try one more shiny new thing before I quit: a poll! It’s my first ever. The question at hand, dear readers, is what I should do about my default icon. At present, it is Michael Whelan’s Summer Queen, that woman in the gorgeous mask you can see on this post. This has been my default since I first got on LJ, in large part because at the time the default for my meaner half, kurayami_hime, is Whelan’s Snow Queen. But I am contemplating — though not decided on — a change. The options for switching are as follows:

My swan icon — the major selling point for this one is the whole Swan Tower/New Swan thing, it being a reasonably appropriate representation of me. Currently I don’t have a particular use for this one.

My Neuschwanstein icon — Schloss Neuschwanstein literally translates to “New Swan Stone Castle,” and I have a childhood love for the place (though I’ve never been). Currently this is my icon for the rare post about domestic events involving our domicile, Castle N.

My writing icon — the only real selling point for this one is that I use it all the bloody time, since more of my posts are about writing than any other topic. Otherwise, it has nothing to recommend it in particular.

Some Swan Tower icon created for me by tooth_and_claw — I’ve been toying with the idea of getting her to design a logo for the website as a whole, which would then be an appropriate default for my journal.

It’s your turn to vote!

WARNING: construction ahead

I’m going to be messing around with LJ settings for a while this afternoon, so if anything starts going wonky over here, don’t mind me, I’m just screwing everything up. (Hopefully not permanently.)

today’s random question

Imagine there is a novel set in Elizabethan England. What famous figures would you expect and/or want to see show up in it?

Aside from Elizabeth herself, I can think of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Francis Drake, Doctor John Dee, and John Stow.

Who else?

Oy.

Well, I made it through about three weeks of working out before doing something overly enthusiastic. That has to count for something, right?

In case you were wondering, interval training (alternating between sprinting and walking) may be great for fat loss, but it also kicks your ass six ways from Sunday. And should you decide to give it a shot, I recommend starting out with, oh, twenty minutes of it. Not half an hour.

If you need me, I’ll be on the floor, moaning and feeling sorry for myself.

In which the Swan admits she has no upper body strength

See that icon? Yeah, I’m nowhere near that.

These numbers will be a little embarrassing, but I want to record for posterity what I’m lifting here at the start of my exercise regimen, on the principle that I can then feel proud when I look back and see how far I’ve come. (In theory.) So here is what I’m doing for strength training right now.

  • Bench press: 2 x 12-15, 12 lbs. (It was disappointing to discover that the bar alone on the normal bench is heavier than I feel capable of. Not sure how much that thing weighs. Fortuantely, they have these nice, padded weight bars in a variety of numbers. I’ll start with those and work my way up.)
  • Shoulder press: 2 x 15, 12 lbs. (See above about the weight bar. I quite like those things.)
  • Row: 2 x 15, 5 lbs. (Nothing like a single-digit number to make you feel pathetically weak, but since I do the exercises in this order, by the time I get this far, those muscles are already tired.)
  • Lat pulldown: 2 x 15, 30 lbs. (A higher weight, at last! And I’m going to add to this one the next time I do it; it isn’t tiring me much at all, at the current weight.)
  • Back hyperextensions: 2 x 12, no weight. (Today’s addition to the regimen. I really need to strengthen my lower back more.)
  • Crunches: 2 x 15. (God, I hate crunches.)

So there you have it. I’m not doing lower-body stuff as yet; leg muscle has never been a problem for me, and my cardio work alone will give me some of that. I think I may add “pullups” on the lat machine, though, as a step toward doing proper pullups, since those always look cool.

I don’t have any particular goals regarding what I want these numbers to be in six months; I don’t have enough experience with weights to know what’s reasonable to aim for. But I’ll be keeping an eye on the stats, and reporting back in when I feel like I’ve made progress.

two stories

Glorifying Terrorism, the anthology of political SF/F assembled in protest of a dumb British law, is officially out and about in the world as of today. It’s already netted a mention on Boing Boing, which constitutes some pretty awesome publicity. You can order it from the webpage above, though I’ll admit it’s on the expensive side if you’re an American like me (which would be most of the readers of this journal, I imagine). But my story “Execution Morning” is in it, and you want to read that, right?

It remains to be seen whether any of the UK authors involved in the anthology end up being prosecuted for it. They could be, in theory; that’s the point of the antho.

In much less politically provocative news, “A Thousand Souls” is live at Aberrant Dreams. You can read that one for free.

Man, this selling and publishing of stories is an addictive thing, ne? It’s only been a few days since my last sale, and already I’m jonesing for another. ^_^

feeling accomplished

Spent the weekend up in Indy. Four stores and obscene quantities of silk, satin, taffeta, tulle, crystal, and lace later, ladies and gentlemen, I think I’ve found my wedding dress.

If I weren’t so proud of myself for having put together this icon, I might be tempted to use the detail photo my mother took of the embroidery as my wedding icon.

We’ve also scoped out hotels to put the guests up in, looked askance at the horrible selection of bridesmaids’ dresses, and started thinking about florists. We are, it seems, in business.

Sword & Sorceress 22

Sword & Sorceress returns!

I’m sure others of you remember this anthology series. I won’t go so far as to say it had a huge effect on me, but it certainly had one; among other things, I was vexed when I saw teenagers getting published in it, thereby highlighting my failure to become a Child Prodigy. (Alas, I didn’t write any non-crappy short stories until I was twenty.) Anyway, it’s good to see that it’s back.

But what to send, what to send? (The reading period doesn’t open until March, but I’m looking ahead.) “Stories should be of the type generally referred to as ‘sword and sorcery’ and must have a strong female protagonist whom the reader will care about.” Clear enough, but where do I go with that?

Well, for starters, it turns out I’ve got a dearth of female protagonists on hand at the moment. Of the fifteen stories I’ve got in circulation, four and a half meet that criterion. (The half is “Driftwood,” which splits pretty equally between two characters, the other of which is male.) So the initial list is:

  • “The City’s Bones”
  • “The Drowning Ships”
  • “La Molejera”
  • “A Mask of Flesh”

TCB is urban fantasy, therefore probably out. La M is one of my strongest candidates for the label “interstitial,” which puts it pretty far away from sword & sorcery. That leaves me with TDS, which is not one of my stronger stories, and AMoF, which might count as having “explicit sex,” depending on how explicit they mean.

Which leaves me with stories not yet in circulation. (I’m very glad, now, for that recent short story census.) “Sciatha Reborn” isn’t ready to see the light of day, though I could try to get it there. “On the Feast of the Firewife” isn’t s&s enough. “The Last Wendy” isn’t what they’re after. “Kingspeaker” could go, but it isn’t my best bet. The faerie trouble story, even if I knew what to do with it, also probably fails the s&s test. I could try to go with “Once a Goddess,” if I can figure it out . . . or with the one story I forgot to include in that list, “The Waking of Angantyr.”

Which is based on an Old Norse poem and has a strong female protagonist dragging up the ghost of her father and brothers so she can get revenge for their murders.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner — if I can get the story working, which it isn’t at present. akashiver gave me some good advice on it, but I foolishly didn’t make use of that advice while it was still fresh in my mind, so I’m not sure where I stand. But I’ll give it a shot, I think.

What about you all? Anybody else thinking of submitting?

rambling thoughts on colonialism and feminism

I didn’t freeze, and we appear to have a functioning furnace again, though it’s striving mightily to drag this old heap up from its freezing temperatures to something livable while it’s barely above zero outside. Learned many interesting lessons about survival in the cold without central heating, and also used up a lot of my candles and lamp oil.

But that’s neither here nor there. I want to ramble on about parallels and differences between two different projects of mine. One, Sunlight and Storm, is a fantasy western that was the fourth novel I wrote, back when I was in college. Its first draft sucked rancid goat cheese; its second draft is better, but I still want to rewrite it substantially before it ever goes public, and that will probably not be any time soon. The other is a series I’m contemplating for the future, which would essentially be about scientific expeditions going to study dragons. They share the common characteristics of being in settings that look a lot like our nineteenth century, and they both have female main characters, hence the desire to ramble on about colonialism and feminism.

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Ladies and gentlemen of the internets,

I am writing you this missive from the kitchen of my residence. It is a southward-facing room, and the doors to the rest of the house are shut. The oven is turned on, and twenty-four candles burn on my counters. Thanks to these measures, I am tolerably warm; though my toes are a bit cold, I am not wearing gloves, and the blanket I had wrapped around me is currently on the floor. I am, however, still wearing thick socks and slippers, sweatpants, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt, and my nice warm bathrobe.

From this fortress I shall await the arrival of the man who is to fix our furnace.

If you do not hear from me again, please retrieve my frozen body from this kitchen and give it proper burial.

short story census

I have made a good start on “Kingspeaker,” which is the story I hope to finish this month. (For those unaware, the goal is to write a minimum of one short story a month. It’s an eminently reasonable goal; let’s see if that helps me meet it. My short story output has been crap of late.) The beginning is going well. Unfortunately, soon I will run out of beginning, whcih means I need to figure out how to put into the story that thing that needs to go into the story.

The goal is also to get one new short story sent out every month. Since I have a small backlog of things I’ve been meaning to revise for a while (in some cases, for years), this means the newly-written stories will have time to get beautified before they go out in public. All in all, it sounds like a good system. Hopefully it will work.

First lines of the stories that need revision:

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Definitions of fantasy I don’t like, #1

I’ve been noodling for a while now with the idea of writing a series of small essays for my website about various genre definitions and how I feel about them — their pros, their cons, their applications, etc. Since Rob Sawyer has started a minor internet dust-up with some recent comments of his on the subject, I thought this seemed a good time to address one of them.

We’ll start with this statement:

Fantasy and SF, on the other hand, are diametrically opposed: one is reasoned, careful extrapolation of things that really could happen; the other, by definition, deals with things that never could happen.

Delany has done a finer-grained version of this in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, which I’ll quote at length because I think any attempt at summary would end up being nearly as long:

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addendum to the fitness post

I begin to suspect that my standards for judging my fitness are slightly askew when I think, “I’ll know my glutes are in good shape when I can do a grand rond de jambe en dedans and not throw my hip out when I go from derrière to à la seconde.”

Not that I did that over Christmas or anything.

(I blame my mother taking me to her adult ballet class. They don’t require you to be at those standards, but the problem is, my muscle memory doesn’t remember how to do anything except at certain standards . . . which I no longer have the muscles for.)

I need to figure out fitness benchmarks that don’t come from ballet.

iconage with an excuse

The boy and I joined a gym recently, which means that for the first time in my life, I’m trying to exercise just for the purpose of exercising. That is, I’m not taking dance classes to prepare for a recital, or doing summer swim team with organized meets; I’m just going to the gym and doing stuff to be in better shape. This is a new experience for me.

Because I’m still having fun with all my glorious new icon space, I have an exercise icon; I figure Demi Moore doing a one-armed pushup in G.I. Jane is a good inspiration/motivator/what-have-you, because man, she was hard in that movie. (Edited to add: Also, a pic of Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby just seemed a little too ominous for my taste.)

This also seems a good chance to pimp something I encountered a while ago (I think from gollumgollum, though I’m not sure): Stumptuous.com. It’s written primarily as a weightlifting site for women, but honestly, half or more of its information is good for men, women, small children, and other humanoid creatures; things like the lowdown on sets, reps, tempo, periodization, nutrition, cardio, and the like are useful for everybody. If you’re a woman, though, you may particularly appreciate the advice that has specifically to do with female body structure and the difficulties that may arise from working out during your period. (I’d say go look at the pictures for inspiration, but the link to the photos seems to be broken.)

I’ve started out with just some very very basic cardio, keeping it easy because right now I think my biggest challenge is simply getting myself into the habit of going to the gym. Time enough to push myself into harder workouts when I’m used to working out in the first place, right? But I’m looking into picking up a bit of weightlifting (hence browsing Stumptuous) because, frankly, I want to look utterly smashing in my wedding dress, and most of them seem to be strapless. ^_^ Plus, y’know, upper body muscle doesn’t suck to have. I’m also stretching again; I love doing it, but apparently need a reason to do it (like an evening of dancing, or a workout I just finished). I’ve often tried stretching for its own sake, and can never make a habit of it. It’s also the one area of my workout that I have experience and familiarity with, where I can not only understand what I’m doing but choose reasonable goals for my progress. Step one: get my front splits back, reliably. (I’m close, but only get them after I’m warm.) Step two: get my side splits to not suck. Step three: get my side splits to the wall/walkover point. (Is there any purpose in pushing myself that far? No, because I’m not a ballet dancer anymore. But dammit, I want my 180 back. Or at least the 178 or so I used to have.)

I’d be interested in hearing advice from the peanut gallery, since I’m so very new to this whole “gym” thing.

a day of random research

Today has featured two e-mails to random strangers about research questions (for writing, not academic purposes). Climatology and contact information for a Spanish musician — we’ll see if either turns up results.

(Yes, I’m still trying with “Hijo de la luna.” A very helpful person pointed me at the Spanish poem that inspired Cano’s song, but having translated it, turns out it doesn’t contain the elements I’m basing my story on. I did, however, come up with a purportedly official website for Mecano that had some actual contact information [unlike Cano’s own site], so I’m making another attempt to find the man and ask him if I can story-ize his song. The site is even in English! Though I said in my e-mail that I can correspond in Spanish if necessary. As tough as that might be for me, I kind of want to, partly to continue validating my supposed proficiency in the language, and partly to not be a Stupid Monolingual American.)

(Okay, that parenthetical digression ended up longer than the supposed body of the post. Oh well.)

post of random linkage

Memento players in particular might be entertained by news of the International Alchemy Conference, billed as “the largest gathering of alchemists in 500 years.” Order of Purification, anybody? Let me know if they have a giant argument that results in one half going one way and the other half going another; it means we’ll have the Philosopher’s Stone in approximately 650 years.

(Either that, or Nicholas is calling them all together to let them know they can stop trying.)

(And hey look, it gave me an excuse to use my Memento icon!)

In totally non-Memento non-alchemy news, pandas! Click for cuteness. And be sure to scroll down for the rest of the pictures.