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This stands in one of the museum galleries in Malbork Castle, and is likely a relic from the church, awaiting restoration to its previous spot. The lack of hands, while obviously lamentable from a preservation standpoint, makes it especially striking.
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At night there is a rotating beacon atop the Eiffel Tower. Catching it at the right moment to have it pointing at the riverside wing of the Louvre took several attempts, but you know what they say: patience rewards the obsessive perfectionist. ๐
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Another splendid piece of amber from the museum in Gdaลsk, Poland. I would not mind having this on my shelf at home!
(You have no idea how tempted I was to title this “Ni Presentas . . . Goal!” You have no idea mostly because I’m not sure whether anybody reading this blog even knows why the heck I would be tempted to say that in the first place.)
So, that Kickstarter I’m running? It made goal this morning. I woke up way earlier than I wanted to, because I had to drag myself to the airport for my Wiscon flight, and lo and behold: I found myself funded. In fact, we’re at $2060 right now.
Which is, in a word, refrackulawesome.
And if you’re familiar with Kickstarter, you know what that means: stretch goals! I have 25 days to go before this thing ends, so I might as well see how far we can go. If we hit $2500, I will share with all backers “The Music of Lies and Prophecy” — the track listing for the novel, with links to the songs (where possible) and notes on how and why I chose them. (I would share the soundtrack itself, but, um, copyright violations up the wazoo.) And if we hit $3000, I’ll write a short story in the setting!
If we go beyond that . . . well, you’ll just have to wait and see. ๐
So if those sound tempting, you can mosey on over and back the project yourself. Or if you’ve already done that, spread the word to some friends! The more, the merrier.
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This is from a recent trip to Point Lobos in Monterey, California. I liked the condition of the light just then — the overcast sky threaded with light, and the remaining sun glittering off the water while the trees and rocks stood in silhouette.
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I am stupidly proud of how well this shot came out, given the zoom involved and my lack of tripod; I had to brace against something on the far side of the cathedral to get it steady. This is, of course, one of the rose windows of Notre Dame — the north one, I believe — and yes, it is every bit as stunning as I’d been led to hope.
Fourteen and a half years ago, I completed the first draft of what at the time I thought was a stand-alone novel: Lies and Prophecy.
Within a year or two, though, I started getting Ideas. Fragments of ideas, anyway — bits and pieces about what would happen to Kim and Julian after the end of that novel. They piled up, and fed back into later drafts of Lies and Prophecy, until here we are more than a decade later, and those ideas have formed a can-can line and are performing choreographed routines in my head.
So I’ve decided to Kickstart them into reality.
My aim, if I meet my funding goal, is to draft the sequel of Chains and Memory this summer, while I’m doing the prep work for the fourth Memoir. In pursuit of that, I am offering a variety of book packages, plus other rewards like behind-the-scenes reports, t-shirts, tarot readings, and even the chance to appear as a character in the novel. Head on over to Kickstarter to check out the full list; it will be running for the next four weeks.
You can also help me immensely by spreading the word! Whether it’s on a blog, or Twitter, or Facebook, or messages stuffed into bottles and dropped into the sea, any and all signal-boosting would be absolutely wonderful. I’ll be posting more information here over the next few weeks, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
You have no idea how excited I am about this. ๐
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If memory serves (which it may not), this is an old decoration from the Savoy. It’s definitely something near the end of the Museum of London galleries, when you’re up to the twentieth century, and it’s from some famous landmark like the Savoy; if I have it wrong, please do let me know. Anyway, I loved the effect of the light from above on the raised carvings.
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I took this picture during my recent tour — the one bit of sightseeing I managed the whole trip. This is a flowering tree off the southwest corner of the Salt Lake City Temple, and I don’t know what kind of tree it is; people on Twitter suggested a weeping cherry, but all the photos I could find of such trees showed straight trunks and branches, rather than the taffy-twisted effect this tree had. Any identification would be much appreciated!
I am croggled to discover that Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber is apparently not available as an ebook (not commercially, anyway — my library seems to only have it in electronic format). Furthermore, if I wish to purchase the dead tree edition new, my only option seems to be buying an enormous honkin’ omnibus of all ten main novels.
I would welcome evidence that I am wrong about this, likely on account of searching when it is nearly 3 a.m. here and I need sleep. But if it is indeed as it appears: what the heck? Why has the rights-holder not made the book more widely available? This is not some obscure novel nobody’s ever heard of except academics and three Yuletide fans; it’s a reasonably well-known classic. I want to give the rights-holder money, whoever they are. But they are making it annoying to do so. I don’t want a giant omnibus; I want the instant gratification of an ebook, which I can take with me to Wiscon, and then if I like the first one I’ll probably buy it and the rest in paper. I do not want to carry a brick on the plane.
Grrr. Argh.
My most recent gem of WordPress spam:
Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems
as though you relied on the video to make your point. You obviously know what
youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your site when you could be giving us something informative to read?
Indeed. My problem is that I don’t write enough — I’m just throwing my intelligence away.
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One of the effects from me becoming more interested in photography is, I’ve begun to appreciate details. Point Lobos is a very pretty area in Monterey, and I took many scene-sized pictures there . . . but I also found myself pausing to shoot things like this little line of limpets, clinging to a rock on the shore. A few years ago, I suspect I never would have even noticed them, much less taken this picture.
Possibly the easiest way for me to encapsulate the character I talked about in a previous post is by linking you to this song.
It’s an amazing remix all on its own. I love the way it builds, wave-like: it keeps climbing and then receding, stepping back to a quieter level when you expect it to bust out in full Linkin Park screamo yelling. ๐ But more than that, it fit beautifully with Ree at the pivotal moment of her story, the brink of her metamorphosis from the broken, lost thing she had been for eons back to her original self. “I’ve felt this way before” . . . she’d been shattered, and had tried to piece herself back together — thought she had succeeded — but then during the course of the game she was shattered again, falling back to square one, so far from her goal it was almost impossible for her to believe that she was actually closer to it than ever. “Against my will I stand beside my own reflection” . . . she sold half her soul to someone else, not realizing that was what she was doing, and she had to reclaim it. “Without a sense of confidence, I’m convinced that there’s just too much pressure to take” . . . the problem with her Seelie side was that it had too much confidence, without the fatalism of her Unseelie half to temper it, which is how she got broken again, and then the symbolism of the diamond and pressure over time pretty much guaranteed I had to use this song. This was Ree at her lowest point, one step away from victory, and the tension that builds throughout this evokes those days perfectly in my mind. There’s more to it than one song, but I can point to the song and say, this. This is why I can’t forget her story.
When I make soundtracks for characters, or for games I run, or for novels, many of the songs are filler. They go in because I want the whole story in music, and so I pick the best matches I can; in the really good soundtracks, even the filler is pretty solid. But this? This is why I go to the effort. For the one or two or five songs that are the story, the ones that become so linked with the narrative that they end up feeding back into it, and it can be eight years later and hearing them still brings the story to life in my head. This is Galen walking into the chamber below the Monument. This is Dead Rick getting his memories back. Here’s the entire second half of Doppelganger, according to my half-dozing brain when I was in the middle of writing the book; I can quite literally map segments of the novel to the various stages in the music, because my subconscious had decided this was the outline it was writing to. (Much like what happened here, though that was on a smaller scale.)
It’s no accident that I also love film scores. Pairing music with story — turning music into story — is one of my favorite things. Since I’m not a composer, I have to settle for the mix-tape approach. Sometimes it works out very, very well.
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Indian temples are very frustrating things to photograph, because the decoration on them isn’t done in discrete blocks: it’s an ongoing mass of things, friezes like this one banding the exterior, sculptures rubbing shoulders with elaborately carved columns — basically no square foot left plain. I suspect this frieze depicts military glory, since there appears to be someone crouching beneath the hooves of that horse, but as you can see the top edge has rather been damaged.
Design Your Own Dragon ends tomorrow night! Get your entry in while the getting is good . . . .
Me, I’m home from tour. The fact that I am exceedingly glad to be back has more to do with the wear and tear of shifting from hotel to airport to cab to store than to do with the tour events themselves, which were splendid. Mary Robinette Kowal and I drew some pretty good crowds together, and it turns out we make for compatible traveling companions — which was by no means a guarantee! We’d met a couple of times before, at conventions and such, and of course our books make a good pairing with each other . . . but that didn’t necessarily mean we’d get along on the road. Despite Mary having her own hashtag for travel woes, I quite liked traveling with her. It turns out we see eye-to-eye on a number of fronts, ranging from fiction to how early we should get to the airport, and that’s valuable when you’re spending a week and a half together and suffering the aforementioned wear and tear.
Plus! There were costumes! And dragon bones!
I foolishly did not get anyone to take photos on my own phone, so rather than stealing other people’s pictures, I will link you to them. This report at A Truant Disposition shows the whole thing pretty well, from my dress and Mary’s to our respective song-and-dance bit (a mini puppet show on her part, a mini naturalist lecture on mine). Geeky Library has some more, and I quite like this photo from @ghostwritingcow on Twitter. The “dragon bones” are the thing I alluded to before the tour: Mary suggested I obtain replica dinosaur fossils from Skulls Unlimited, and use them as dragon substitutes. For the curious, the skull and the smaller claw are from a velociraptor, while the tooth is from a T-Rex and the larger claw is from a megaraptor. (The tiny skull, which I don’t think got photographed, is actually supposed to be a “dragon skull;” Mary picked it up at a natural history museum in Utah.)
Touring is a lot more fun in company, I have to say. Not only does it jazz up the event itself, by giving you somebody to riff off of, it does a lot to mitigate the “oh god I’m in another airport” drudgery of the travel itself. So props to Tor for putting us together, and I hope for a chance to do something like this again in the future.
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I don’t actually know the name of this church, which is a pity. It’s somewhere in Zakopane, or at least that general region; we weren’t able to go in, so this photo is taken through a window in the door. The woodworking is absolutely gorgeous, and I love the warmth it creates.
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I rather suspect this relief decoration is new, because it is not nearly weathered enough to have been there for more than maybe a hundred years or so. But I imagine it’s intended to be the type of carving that might have adorned the place in the past; given how much care they’re taking with restoring the building, it may even be a direct reproduction. It was next to the entrance, and I thought it was quite cool; then I walked inside and discovered it was only a tiny, greyscale taste of the glory within. ๐
We’re headed into the final stretch for Design Your Own Dragon, and I just wanted to clarify something one interested party asked about a few days ago:
You do get to keep the rights to your entry.
Which is to say, if I pick your dragon as a winner, I will have the non-exclusive right to use the concept (with modifications, if necessary) in the Memoirs of Lady Trent, in prose and/or visual form — but you retain all other rights. If you want to write own stories or make your own art about your dragon concept, you are entirely free to do so. You are not signing over your idea to me wholesale.
This was a question for at least one interested party, which means it may very well be a question for others as well. So if that was giving you any hesitation in entering, hopefully this clears things up in an acceptable fashion.
You’ve got until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 15th. I’ve got a lot of fun entries already, but there’s always room for more!
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The Victoria and Albert Museum has a splendid collection of Japanese netsuke: little carved figures used to secure boxes or other such things to the obi. I have a number of shots of them, but this one is my favorite, because of the way he towers over the others.
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Apparently you can take the archaeologist out of the field, but you can’t take the field out of the archaeologist. While wandering down to the short of the Thames near Tower Bridge, I discovered several bones amidst the gravel: a vertebra or two, bits of some long bones I couldn’t ID. I have no idea what they were from, though (because I am the sort of person I am) it did cross my mind that they were of vaguely the right size to be human. Anyway, although I rarely “stage” my shots, in this case I piled the bones up in an artistic manner and took this photo. Like you do.
