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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. 🙂
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. 🙂
Here’s the schedule, as it stands right now:
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” is live on Tor.com! And the artwork for it is as beautiful as it was the first time I saw it. 🙂
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.)
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Notre Dame is packed to the gills with various monuments and such in its side chapels. I particularly liked this one, silhouetted against the stained glass behind.
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!
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The “backwaters” of Kerala are a region of canals, where locals get around by canoe. My husband and I went down there to spend a day and a night on one of the houseboats that ply the area, and it was one of the most beautifully relaxing experiences I’ve had in years.
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 she’s running around studying dragons) or in her old age (when she’s writing the memoirs). If it isn’t clear which version of her you are writing to, I’ll respond as the memoir-writing version. You may adopt a persona within her world if you wish, but it isn’t required. Just don’t ask her about me; she has no idea who I am. 😛
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. 🙂 I look forward to hearing from you!
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This is one of the Parthenon sculptural fragments in the British Museum, along with the famous friezes. When part of an entire horse, I imagine it was impressive; on its own, it’s a little freaky. (And calls to mind a certain scene from The Godfather.)
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The day we went to the Louvre, we decided to get dinner in the vicinity and come back after dark to see if we could get any cool night-time shots.
We came back and found the full moon rising over the Louvre. So, um, yes.
As a goodly percentage of you probably know, author Jay Lake has cancer. He’s had cancer for years now, going through round after round of chemo and surgery in an attempt to halt it; they’ve managed to slow it, but he’s pretty close to terminal decline at this point.
However.
Read this post. It’s about Jay participating in a cutting-edge NIH trial that holds great promise for improving our methods of cancer treatment in the future. It will likely extend his own life at least a bit; it will certainly extend a great many other people’s lives, and possibly even save some of them, as doctors put together superior tools for the task.
As Jay points out, the reason they’re able to take such a good shot at it with him is because of a fundraiser his friends ran before, which pulled together enough money for Whole Genome Sequencing. That data means the doctors in this trial are incredibly well-armed. But the mass of data also means it will take longer to sort through, which means Jay will be in Maryland longer than expected. Since Maryland is not where he lives, this is expensive.
There’s another fundraiser. It has already met its goal, but the goal was to cover the length of time Jay expected to be in Maryland. Which means it is no longer enough. There will be some stretch goals added soon, but you don’t need to know what those will be to donate, do you? You already know the ultimate cause is a good one. You aren’t funding the NIH, but you are funding Jay’s ability to participate in the trial, which will help both him and them. So if you can spare anything, please head on over and do so.
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Bamboo forests are also awesome.
That is all.
As I said in the comments on Jim’s LJ, it took me a while to read the post, not because it’s long (though it is) but because my AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH meter kept maxing out and I would have to go away and breathe for a while before I could read any more.
I just . . . ye gods and little fishies. If you’re trying to respond to a piece on gender, and right up front you tell everybody that you’re assuming the person you’re responding to is a man and you can’t be bothered to check and see whether you’re right — even though the bio is right there at the bottom of the page, waiting to answer your question — then that’s pretty much a red flag of “Nobody should bother to listen to me on this topic.”
Because you just reinforced MacFarlane’s point. Yes, sure, she’s talking about the default of non-binary gender — but sweet baby Jesus, if we can’t even get past the default of male gender, then the problem you’re trying to dismiss is even bigger than she’s saying. Correia makes it clear, over and over again, that he is uninterested in putting anything other than the straight white male default into his stories unless there’s a “reason” for it. And apparently, “people like that exist and would like to read stories in which they exist” is not a reason. Their identities have to be plot-relevant, yo, or it’s back to the straight white men (because that isn’t a political act at all, natch). Doing anything else will make science fiction BORING and then people will STOP READING IT and that’s why the genre is DYING. Because the way to make it thrive is to cater to the comfort zone of straight white male gun-loving conservatives: only non-binary people want to read about non-binary people, and presumably only black people want to read about black people, etc, so let’s stick with what’s safe, shall we?
I mean, sure, there’s money to be had in catering to that demographic. Correia is probably not wrong that he makes more money from his writing than MacFarlane does (though I don’t agree with the follow-on implication that this makes him right and him her wrong). But the notion that the future of the genre depends on not rocking the boat? That including the full range of human diversity is automatically a MESSAGE — but restricting that diversity is neutral and value-free?
Bull. Shit.
Take care in reading the comments on Hines’ site. He says they’ve been “civil,” but there are a lot of Correia’s fanboys in there, waving the flag of their ignorance on matters of sex and gender and so forth, and straying very close to the border of getting banned.
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One advantage of it being rainy the day I first went to the San Francisco Tea Garden was, there was hardly anyone there. Normally this bridge is crawling with people, because the sides of it are like a ladder (therefore entertaining) and it’s a good place to have your picture taken. But in the rain, it becomes more serene.
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The entire exterior of Halebidu is covered in carving and sculpture, some of it in better condition than others. Another visitor had placed this flower where the statue’s head ought to be, which made for a rather striking image.
As some of you may recall, for the past two years I’ve participated in Mary Robinett Kowal’s Month of Letters project. But since I’m terrible at writing letters just because (I know, I know; the whole point of the project is to get better at that), I followed her lead in another respect and invited you to send mail to my characters instead.
I’m doing it again this year, of course — and not just because it’s the only thing keeping my ability to write in cursive alive. You are all invited to send mail to Isabella during the month of February, and I will write back in character, using an actual dip pen and sealing the letter with actual wax. Just follow these steps:
1) Write a letter! You may choose to write to Isabella in her youth (when she’s running around studying dragons) or in her old age (when she’s writing the memoirs). If it isn’t clear which version of her you are writing to, I’ll respond as the memoir-writing version. You may adopt a persona within her world if you wish, but it isn’t required. Just don’t ask her about me; she has no idea who I am. 😛
2) Put it in the mail! Like, the actual physical mail, not some electronic device. Letters should be sent to:
Marie Brennan
P.O. Box 991
San Mateo, CA 94403
It is very important that you address the letter to me, not Isabella. The post office wouldn’t let me put her name on the box unless I brought in two forms of photo identification for her. Which, um. Yeah.
3) Profit! Which is to say, receive a letter in reply.
She will be available for correspondence during February, so you have a few days to plan what you want to say. I may even smuggle hints about upcoming books into her replies — you never know . . . .
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Along the Thames Embankment, at the base of the obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle, there are two sphinxes. I was pleased by the juxtaposition between the old and the new here, with the London Eye in the background. (This photo was taken during my research trip for With Fate Conspire.)
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Redwood forests? Are awesome.
That is all.
And that’s a draft.
‘Twas @AdrianTurtle on Twitter, with Puff the Magic Dragon.
(That sounds like a solution from Clue.)
Thank you to all who responded! It was nifty, seeing the spread of answers.
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My parents should have their fortieth wedding anniversary more often. 🙂
In January 2012, to celebrate my parents’ anniversary, my father flew my entire family out to Hawai’i for a long vacation. So while much of the U.S. was mired in snow, and even California was chilly and damp, this garden was just outside my hotel door. I couldn’t really complain . . . .
