Supernatural Re-Watch: “In My Time of Dying” and season premieres

I never thought about it until I sat down and rewatched the episode for this project . . . but this is a really weird episode to open your season with.

Think about it. What do you want a season premiere to do? It should be a good entry point for people who are new to the show, since this is pretty much your best chance to pick up fresh viewers. That means it needs to give a good sense of the flavor of the show, while also not relying too heavily on stuff those hypothetical new viewers don’t know.

From that standpoint, this episode fails resoundingly — in fascinating ways.

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A Year in Pictures – Roman Forum

Roman Forum
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You have to understand: I am a dyed-in-the-wool Latin geek. Not the most knowledgeable one, not by a long stretch, but I did NJCL competitions in high school, up to the national level in Certamen. The origins of my Latin geekery lie even further back, courtesy of an Odyssey of the Mind project in fifth grade where the problem we chose was “Pompeii.” So for me, going to Italy was like a pilgrimage, and the Roman Forum was my shrine. To actually walk on the Via Sacra and see the remnants of all those old monuments . . . it was a dream come true.

Books read, June 2014

This was a terrible, terrible month for reading books. I’m in one of those pits where you start reading things and then quit on them, but too many of them are things I get a hundred or two hundred pages into before I decide to stop. Or else I’m reading things I’m not done with yet, like the autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila, which I picked up for research; it’s kind of a slog. (And also a study in religion as Stockholm syndrome. Every time she goes on about how God makes her suffer so that she may better know the depths of His love . . . yeah.)

Plus there were copy-edits. Result: the title of this post only barely deserves the plural.

Skull City, Lucius Shepard. Novella, and technically a re-read, but given that I first read it when I was twelve and remembered nothing beyond the quote we put on our TIP shirt, it might as well have been new to me. ๐Ÿ˜› Re-read this because Shepard passed away recently, and the Locus roundtable discussion made me realize I had encountered his work once upon a time. If this is representative of Shepard’s writing, then he was a deeply weird writer, but also one with some very thoughtful things to say.

Also: I’m tempted to make a project of re-reading all the TIP stories. I still have ’em; it might make for a fun experience, seeing what I make of them now.

Also also: holy mother of god I can’t believe Roger got away with giving this story to twelve-year-olds. Even if I didn’t know what “fellatio” meant back then, there’s plenty more that’s clear enough. O_O

Shadowboxer, Tricia Sullivan. Read for blurbing purposes.

You all know me. You know what genres I like. So when I tell you that I probably would have read and enjoyed this book if it had no fantasy content whatsoever and was just about a teenaged Dominican girl trying to make it in the world of MMA, you should extrapolate accordingly.

Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan. Copy-edits don’t count.

Building a Better World

Some of you may have seen this excellent set of posts on the blog Generation Anthropocene, using details from George R.R. Martin’s novels to try and build a geological history of Westeros and Essos. It’s a fantabulous bit of geekery, marrying serious scientific know-how to one of the big challenges of writing speculative fiction, that task we refer to as “worldbuilding.”

I read those posts, grinned at the geekery — and then paused.

And clicked around a bit.

And sent an email.

A couple of months later, I am the proud owner of a tectonic map of Lady Trent’s world, along with extensive notes on the geology and climate of her planet. Mike Osborne and Miles Traer of Generation Anthropocene were kind enough to read through the first two Memoirs and take my description of the places that show up in #3, then help me work out the underpinnings of that world in greater detail than I had already. I’m pleased to say that my efforts on the climate front pretty much held up to their scrutiny; I don’t have any howling errors there. Figuring out the tectonics, though, gave me information I need for future maps, and provided a number of new considerations I’ll definitely be trying to work into the last two books.

I want to thank these guys publicly, because they have done yeoman work on my behalf. If this kind of nerdiness is your catnip, you should definitely check out the Generation Anthropocene site.

A Year in Pictures – Column Capital

Column Capital
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I shouldn’t actually have this photograph. It’s from one of the museum-y bits at Westminster Abbey, and I didn’t realize until after I’d taken the shot that photography wasn’t permitted in there. I’m glad I have it, though, because the under-lighting on the figures is so wonderfully sinister.

A Year in Pictures – Arms and Armor

Arms and Armor
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My fondness for the implements of war is showing through. ๐Ÿ™‚ These were on display in the Artus Court of Gdaล„sk, and something about the simplicity of it just appealed to me. I think it’s partly that you tend to see this kind of stuff formally laid out in a display case, whereas this looks more casual.

A Year in Pictures – Dishware Dragon

Dishware Dragon
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The Chinese Lantern Festival in Dallas also featured this lovely dragon, which (as you can see) is not made as a lantern, but rather consists of plates, spoons, and other such items wired together. It was a nightmare to photograph, because the head was swinging from side to side, and at low light levels the exposure time was not short. But as the copy-edited manuscript for Voyage of the Basilisk has just gone back to my editor, it seemed an appropriate time to post this image!

A Year in Pictures – Armored Border

Armored Border
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This is one of my favorite detail shots from the “Line of Kings” exhibit in the White Tower. I don’t remember which Henry this armor belonged to; I only know it was a Henry because of the HR decoration on the border. Taking a photo of the whole shebang, full suit of armor atop a similarly armored horse, turned out utterly terrible — too many lights, too much glare from the intervening glass, too many people wandering through — but one of the things photography has taught me is, sometimes it’s the little bits that make the best shots.

the real work begins

The hard part isn’t running a Kickstarter campaign. The hard part is dealing with all the work after your campaign succeeds. ๐Ÿ˜›

Good news is, I’m being organized. I’ve made a spreadsheet for all the backers, noting which items go to whom, so that (hopefully) it will be easy to track what’s been taken care of and what still needs doing. It would be easier if I could take care of everything in one go, but of course that won’t work; a lot of rewards involve Chains and Memory in either print or ebook format, and I can’t send that out until after I, y’know, write the book. (And revise it and copy-edit it and proof it and so on.)

But the ball will get rolling pretty soon. I’m just waiting on a half-dozen remaining surveys, at which point I can start sending out the rewards that are ready to go. After those, I’ll deal with the stuff that involves actual production (t-shirts, miniscript photocopies, etc) and/or coordination with the backers (tarot readings, tuckerizations). And then so on from there. This is going to be an item on my to-do list for a while, I can tell.

Such, my friends, are the laments of success. ๐Ÿ™‚

Supernatural Re-Watch: “Salvation,” “Devil’s Trap,” and dominoes

I got interrupted in my re-watch of Supernatural, and then I was traveling, and then I had that whole Kickstarter thing to run and also the copy-edits showed up for Voyage of the Basilisk, so, yeah. The good news is, this isn’t a blog series I’m attempting to do on any kind of organized schedule, which means if I fall off the wagon for three months, hey. ๐Ÿ™‚

So! “Salvation” and “Devil’s Trap.” Aka the end of season 1, aka not at all what I think they were priming the audience to expect.

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A Year in Pictures – Dramatic Chopin

Dramatic Chopin
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Had I been a little more organized, you would have gotten Dramatic Chopin Is Dramatic on his birthday (which Wikipedia tells me was either February 22nd or March 1st). I didn’t think of that until we were halfway through the year, though, so he’s showing up in June. I just loved the lighting on this one, and the shadow he’s casting on the wall.

A Year in Pictures – Apollo Gallery

Apollo Gallery
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Because it was formerly a royal palace, the Louvre an incredibly splendid building, quite apart from all the artwork displayed in it. This is the ceiling of the “Apollo Gallery,” painted and gilded and carved to within an inch of its life, with representations of the zodiac signs along its edges.

A Year in Pictures – (Fake) Rosetta Stone

(Fake) Rosetta Stone
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One room at the British Museum is still maintained in the museum’s original style. In that room there stands a replica of the Rosetta Stone, this one not behind glass or mobbed by a hundred visitors. Which allowed me to get up close and personal to obtain a much more artistic photo than would ever be possible with the actual stone . . . .

The Final Countdown

Just over an hour to go.

The number currently stands at $4,377*, and given that when I launched this I was moderately terrified I wouldn’t reach the $2000 goal, that’s pretty excellent. ๐Ÿ˜€ It’s been exciting to watch the pace pick up, too: there have been more pledges in the last three or four days than any time since the first couple of days. Which is how these things usually go, so it doesn’t come as a surprise — but knowing it’s pretty common doesn’t make it any less exciting.

Anyway, if you want to get in on Chains and Memory, now’s your last chance! All the rewards are still available (though there are only two Tuckerizations left). You’ve got 66 minutes left, as of me hitting “post” . . . .

*I love it when I have to revise that number while drafting a post. ^_^

A Year in Pictures – Face on a Wall

Face on a Wall
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Ordinarily you should frame a photo like this such that the face is looking toward the center of the image, rather than off to the side. In this case I couldn’t: the sculpture was hanging on a wall in a room I wasn’t allowed to enter, and immediately to the left was a window that would have blown out the light levels and made for a bad composition anyway. So I went with what I could get, which is the face looking out of the frame — and I actually kind of like the unsettling effect it produces.

All Around the Internet

I’ve done a number of interviews and guest posts lately, so here’s a quick link dump:

Five Underused Mythological Creatures at Fantasy Cafe, in which I talk about weird things in bestiaries that show up all too rarely in novels.

Interview at Fantasy’s Ink; they ask me about my favorite characters and what I consider to be the most important element in a book.

Another interview, this one with Mike Underwood, who leverages the fact that we’ve known each other for more than ten years to ask me a lot of fabulous questions about gaming, Driftwood, and what martial arts master I would train with if I could.

“Time, Writing, and Tricks of the Trade”, a guest post at Bookworm Blues where I talk about the challenges of writing a sequel fifteen years after the first book.

“Kick(start)ing Myself into Scrivener”, a post at Book View Cafe on my first-ever attempt to write a novel in a program other than Wordperfect.

And finally, one that isn’t mine, but mentions me and makes for entertaining reading: Science in Fantasy Novels is More Accurate Than in Science Fiction.