A Year in Pictures – Halebidu Central Hall

Halebidu Central Hall
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This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Like most of the temples we visited, Halebidu had multiple structures on its ground. This is the interior of the main one. Off to the right about halfway down is a small chamber with the actual shrine in it, but the whole place is (of course) intricately carved. (The ceilings are even more amazing; I’ll be posting a picture from those eventually.)

Month of Letters; Con or Bust

Just a reminder that the Month of Letters is ongoing. If you want to get a letter from Lady Trent, now’s your chance!

Also, my Con or Bust auction is now live. On offer: a signed pair of ARCs for A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents. Bidding currently stands at $45. Remember that this is a charity effort organized under the auspices of the Carl Brandon Society, “a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose mission is to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction.” Con or Bust helps fans of color attend cons they might not otherwise be able to afford.

If you need me for anything, I’ll be buried under this rock, revising the next book. šŸ˜›

Tonight’s weightlifting revelation

Increasing the weight is more difficult for the exercises you’re doing at low weights than at high.

Not just because you’re weaker in those regards and less accustomed to pushing for something harder — though that may be true — but because even a small increment is a much bigger deal. If I’m doing 25 lbs. on something and go up to 27.5, eh, okay, that’s a 10% increase. If I’m doing 5 lbs.* and go up to 7.5? That’s a 50% increase. I would probably not go from 50 lbs. to 75 on a given exercise, or 100 to 150, but at low levels, I don’t have much choice. I’ve already done the part where I add reps and sets; eventually I just have to suck it up, add the weight, and mush on.

“Mush” is more or less what certain upper body muscles feel like right now. šŸ˜› But hey: the next time I add weight on those exercises, it will only be a 33% increase. Which is going to feel like a cakewalk, after this round.

*Why yes, I am utterly lacking** in tricep strength; thanks for asking.

**But I’m getting better!

What “photo processing” means

In the comments to my last post, Mindstalk asked:

So what does editing consist of? Are you doing major adjustments to each picture, or eyeballing each one for need for any editing, or doing batch edits?

The answer is long enough that I figured it deserved a post of its own.

First of all: no batch editing, in the sense of selecting ten or a hundred pictures and saying “Lightroom, do the following to all of them.” It wouldn’t work: what each picture needs is individual, so I’d just end up changing whatever I had done. Instead, my workflow goes roughly like this.

(more…)

Climbing Mount Lightroom

I should mention that one of the reasons I’m doing the Year in Pictures project is to blackmail myself into finishing the task of processing all of my photos. After all, if I don’t get through Poland/last month’s Monterey trip/my eight million cemetery pictures from London, you all will never get to see the best of them! And that would be a tragedy.

So how many photos do I have, anyway?

Well. For various reasons, I have photos in my Lightroom catalogue that I didn’t take, which therefore will not be making it into the Year in Pictures set. (Though I’m having to edit some of those, too. And someday, when I’m done with my own stuff, my husband is probably going to make sad eyes at me to edit his pictures, and there are . . . quite a lot of those, let’s say. Some of which are in here already, some of which aren’t.) Stuff in Lightroom That Isn’t Mine = 2132 pictures.

Stuff in Lightroom That Is Mine = 7794 pictures.

Which is a fair-sized stack.

But! I have been working assiduously to get through these! I am pleased to say that after a recent push (in which I finished off my honeymoon, our visit to the Queen Mary down in L.A., and another day of Poland), I have reduced the number which still need editing to the low, low sum of 1361.

. . . this is about the point at which I say “oh god, I’m doomed.”

I’m making progress, really I am. In fact, I’ve done more than the 6433 photos it looks like, because part of the process involves deleting pictures that aren’t that good or duplicate other photos of better quality. I don’t know exactly how many I started with, but I’ve probably deleted two thousand, maybe even more. Certainly more, if I count my first-pass cull of the England/France trip last fall, since that whacked a good thousand out of the total on the spot. So while the current numbers say I’m about 83% done, I’m actually doing much better than that. Still and all: I have a long way to go before I’ll have finished climbing Mt. Lightroom. (And it doesn’t help that I keep taking more. bloody. photos.)

The news, it comes fast and thick

The Kirkus review is online now. I expect some portion of this is going to end up on a book cover eventually:

This, the second of Isabellaā€™s retrospective memoirs, is as uncompromisingly honest and forthright as the first, narrated in Brennanā€™s usual crisp, vivid style, with a heroine at once admirable, formidable and captivating. Reader, lose no time in making Isabellaā€™s acquaintance.

(Though my actual favorite part of it is the bit where they say “And during her adventures in the Green Hellā€”the bookā€™s finest sectionā€”Isabella will find sociology as important as natural history…” Because yes: the anthropological side of things is indeed just as important as the biological side. Dragons cannot be separated from the way human beings view and interact with them.)

Two shiny bits of news regarding A Natural History of Dragons, to go along with the run-up to Serpents: it’s made both Booklist‘s Notable Books Reading List, and the American Library Association’s 2014 Reading List (via their Reference and User Services Association arm). I’m in company with V.E. Schwab’s Vicious in both those places, which makes me think I really ought to check that one out.

Also, this slipped out during the holiday season, and I only just noticed it now: the audiobook of Deeds of Men is on sale. (I’ve gone from no audiobooks to three of ’em in the space of a few months. Heh.)

I think that’s it for now . . . .

A Year in Pictures – Stone Lantern

Stone Lantern
Creative Commons License
This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Being in Kyoto in August meant sweating to death in the heat — but it also meant that several temples had night openings, lighting up their structures and gardens. The effect was absolutely beautiful. This particular stone lantern was at Kiyomizudera, which I hope to see in daylight someday. šŸ™‚

In which the memoirist’s amanuensis goes everywhere (with bonus Mary Robinette Kowal)

Ladies and gentlebeings, I will be doing a reprise of last year’s promotional book tour. Like all sequels, this one is Bigger! Better! with More Explosions Costumes!

I will be touring in company with the inestimable Mary Robinette Kowal, to support the release of The Tropic of Serpents (on my part) and Valour and Vanity (on her part). There will be readings and Q&As. There will be period-appropriate clothing. There may be a dragon puppet. There will certainly be me desperately wishing I was as good of a performer as Mary is. šŸ™‚

Here’s the schedule, as it stands right now:

  • May 1, Thursday, Chicago, IL, DePaul University
  • May 2, Friday, Seattle, WA, University Book Store
  • May 3, Saturday, 2pm, Portland, OR, Powellā€™s
  • May 4, Sunday, 3pm, Salem, OR, Book Bin
  • May 6, Tuesday, 6:30 pm, Houston, TX, Murder by the Book
  • May 8, Thursday, 6pm, Salt Lake City, UT, Weller Book Works
  • May 10, Saturday, San Diego, CA, Mysterious Galaxy
  • May 11, Sunday, 3pm, San Francisco, CA, Borderlands

I’m told that the San Diego event will be part of a larger birthday celebration for Mysterious Galaxy, where we’ll be joined by other authors. Other than that, I don’t know anything more than what you’ve got right there, but I’ll definitely keep you all posted as details firm up.

Bay Area locals take note: I will also be doing a separate event at Borderlands on March 8th, to mark the release of The Tropic of Serpents earlier that week. Again, more details as I have them.

Now if you’ll pardon me, I need to go arrange for a suitable costume . . . .

Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes / For to save her shoes from gravel

“Mad Maudlin” is live on Tor.com! And the artwork for it is as beautiful as it was the first time I saw it. šŸ™‚

You know what else is live? This audio excerpt from The Tropic of Serpents. There is also a sweepstakes, if you want to win a copy of the book.

Also live: a Con or Bust auction with a pair of ARCs up for grabs. It’s your chance to get signed copies of both A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents, while benefiting a good cause!

Not live yet: the Kirkus review. I think that goes up tomorrow.

Live and ongoing: Letters from Lady Trent. Write! Receive! Don’t make me walk aaaaaaaaall the way to the post office for nothing! (It’s a whole ten minutes away. I could die of exhaustion, y’all. But finding letters gives me the strength to soldier on.)

Countdown to Dragons

It’s four weeks and counting until the street date for The Tropic of Serpents. The talk is starting . . . .

1) Excerpt from the book on Tor.com

2) Liz Bourke’s review on Tor.com (which I believe wins the prize for being first out of the gate)

3) Publishers Weekly liked it

4) So did Kirkus, but I don’t think that one will go live for a few days. (Holy crap, that’s three books in a row of mine that they’ve liked. I think it may be a miracle.)

5) Brief interview with the UK site Female First, on A Natural History of Dragons

6) I’ve sent pronunciations to the narrator for the audiobook of TToS. I’m delighted to say that Kate Reading is continuing with the series, and this one will be out a lot closer to the print date than the last one was.

7) Speaking of the UK, it occurs to me that ANHoD will be out there very soon! I actually don’t know the precise street date, but I think it’s in the next two weeks. (Again, #2 should follow in quicker succession, I think.)

I think that’s all for now. But as we get closer to the street date, things will be picking up rather rapidly, I imagine!

Letters from Lady Trent

It’s now February, so you know what that means: it’s time to send letters!

As I mentioned before, you can get a letter from Lady Trent, written with an actual dip pen and my best effort at good cursive handwriting, sealed with wax, and sent directly to your mailbox. Here are the necessary steps:

1) Write a letter! You may choose to write to Isabella in her youth (when sheā€™s running around studying dragons) or in her old age (when sheā€™s writing the memoirs). If it isnā€™t clear which version of her you are writing to, Iā€™ll respond as the memoir-writing version. You may adopt a persona within her world if you wish, but it isnā€™t required. Just donā€™t ask her about me; she has no idea who I am. šŸ˜›

2) Put it in the mail! Letters should be sent to:

Marie Brennan
P.O. Box 991
San Mateo, CA 94403

Remember to address the outside envelope to me, not Isabella. (And if you’re writing from outside the U.S. you’ll need to add the country to the address, of course.)

3) Profit! Which is to say, receive a letter in reply.

You have from now until the end of February to send your letter; I’ll reply as quickly as I can. Depending on how much mail I receive and where you live, it may take a while — it is snail-mail, after all. šŸ™‚ I look forward to hearing from you!