Hey, people who know more about music theory than I do:
How does one go about shifting a piece of music from a minor key to a major one? (Assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that I’m just looking to transpose a simple melodic line. No chords or anything to worry about.)
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1) Not wearing the jacket I’ve been wearing every day for nearly a month.
2) Not wearing the shoes I’ve been wearing every day for nearly a month.
3) Not wearing shoes at all for much of the day, if I do not choose to.
4) Sleeping in my own bed.
5) Sleeeeeeeeeeeeping.
6) Going to the dojo and the gym. (There’s some discomfort associated with this one, because I basically didn’t stretch for a month and also walking = full exercise, but it’s still good.)
7) Seeing Thor: The Dark World, to which I said “Needz moar Loki.” My husband claims they actually filmed extra Loki scenes after the fact.
8) Seeing how my pictures from the trip turned out. (There are still too many of them.)
9) Working on the third Memoir. I sorted out some fun plot points on the trip, so now I get to make them happen.
10) Seriously, though. NO. SHOES.
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The last seven of these are new.
No photos from Brighton, alas. Partly because I was busy at the con, but more because it rained a fair bit while I was there, and when it wasn’t raining, the wind was trying to fling me into traffic. No, really: at one point a guy waiting at the intersection with me was leaning back into the wind at about a fifteen-degree angle, just letting it hold him up. It was kind of ridiculous. Since the weather also meant my glasses were constantly being coated in a thin layer of salt and grit, I decided not to expose my camera to such trials.
It might also have something to do with me being all OMG NO MORE PHOTOS, though. During this trip, I took nearly 3500 shots in total. A first pass of culling has dragged that number down to about 2400, which (by comparison) looks much more reasonable, but — jeebus. If we exclude the major outliers, i.e. the days where I took less than forty pictures, I averaged almost 230 per day. When we went to Highgate Cemetery, I took 350 in two and a half hours.
Which is by way of saying that, while I’ll definitely post more pictures later, it’s going to take a while for me to go through them all and do the necessary editing, labeling, etc. Don’t look for that to happen any time soon, I’m afraid. I had been all proud of myself and the work I’d done on my pre-existing catalogue of photos. All I had left to go through were my honeymoon and Poland, and I was thinking I could see the light at the end of the tunnel . . . but it turns out to have been the oncoming train of this trip. 😛
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Added an additional five shots to the photoset so far. Still one per day, but not caught up to the present yet; I’ve fallen behind in dealing with my photos (surprise!), so there are three days I haven’t even gone through yet in search of good shots.
These are, for the record, totally unedited. I’ve tried to pick ones that look good already, but just think how much better they’ll look once they’ve gone through Lightroom!
In other news, I have discovered how many days is too many to be continually on my feet sightseeing. If I ever plan a trip this long again, I need to build in more downtime — or rather, find some way to silence the little voice that insists I should be out seeing stuff, being as how I went to all the effort of getting here.
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Yeah. It’s going pretty well. ^_^
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One last post before I leave on my trip. (Okay, that might be a lie. I have no idea if something else will prod me into posting in the next twenty hours or so. But this is the last one I intend to make.)
Yuletide signups are open. If you already know and love Yuletide, go forth and have fun!
If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, keep reading.
You know how I got the World’s Best Cover Art ™ for A Natural History of Dragons?
Well, I just noticed that you can buy prints of it from the artist, Todd Lockwood. I have one of the limited edition giclees, myself — or rather, I have #1 of them. 🙂 It’s lovely. So if you want one of your own, they’re available!
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Look what showed up on my doorstep today!
As you can see, this ARC is decidedly more ARC-y looking, which is to say, more like a promotional thing than a copy of the book that just happens to be more cheaply printed. That wall o’ text on the cover is pull-quotes from a bunch of reviews for the first book, with the actual cover art squeezed into the corner there. But the text is the real deal (minus a few tweaks made during page proofs), and the interior art is in place, though the maps aren’t. So: on its way to being a Real Book!
I realized, dreadfully late, that I never did announce the results from the icon contest I did ages ago. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
obaona, as you may have seen from the icon on this post: you’re the winner! You can have a signed copy of either A Natural History of Dragons, or one of these pretty, pretty ARCs. Just e-mail me (marie {dot} brennan {at} gmail {dot} com) and let me know where to send it.
I will, of course, be looking for excuses to send more of these things to good homes. That will have to wait until after my trip, though. In the meanwhile, you’ll have to content yourself with the picture. ^_^
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I have no words around the rage this induces in me:
There’s not a lot I can say here. I’ve been ignoring political news for a while because I can’t bring myself to deal with it; most of what’s pissing me off is beyond my ability to affect in a meaningful way, so all reading about it does is raise my blood pressure. (Which sometimes could use it. But I don’t think that’s a medically recommended method of fixing the problem.)
Other people, however, have said very intelligent things.
First and foremost, Tobias Buckell, on EMTALA and how we got to this point. It says something about political coverage in the news that I? Had not actually heard of EMTALA before this. I had heard about it, sure. I knew that emergency rooms had to treat anybody who came in, and worry about payment later. I knew some (not all) of the problems that had produced. But I didn’t know what caused it. I didn’t know this was a law from Reagan’s presidency, and that legislators at the time had kicked down the road the question of how anybody was going to pay for it.
And you know, if I had the power to change one thing about our dysfunctional political system, that might be it: the overwhelming tendency to kick the payment can down the road. Defer spending on infrastructure and other vital things, until it collapses out from under you. I heard somebody say once that this is a fundamental weakness of democracy, and I believe it. When you need to worry about re-election, you go for the quick and easy points, not the things that need to be done but nobody will thank you for them.
Scalzi, as usual, has things to say, but for me his best line is in the comments. Someone there — clearly thinking he was scoring points by accusing Scalzi of bad rhetoric — said “In other words, the explanation for the behavior of your political opponents that seems most likely to you is that they are evil. This seems uncharitable and unimaginative.” To which Scalzi responded:
You know what, Leonard? Shutting down the whole of the government of the United States in order to force a change (or indeed repeal) in a law offers access to medical insurance to millions that don’t already have it or can’t afford it, because you otherwise don’t have the legislative majority to make changes, thereby putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and costing the nation millions of dollars each day? That’s not a bad definition of banal evil.
Now I hear rumblings that these same folks will try to leverage the debt limit in order to get their way on the ACA. If that’s correct, a willingness to destroy the US’ global financial standing, and disrupting the entire planetary economy, would take the action out of “banal” to actual flat out evil.
To which I have to say, yeah. This shutdown is financially and economically destructive, and it amounts to the Republicans throwing a temper tantrum about a law they failed to prevent, because they would prefer we go back to the good ol’ days when millions of people went without medical care or died because they weren’t rich enough to be healthy.
Two words: Fuck. That.
ACA is not perfect. But this? Doesn’t help anybody.
And then I’ll just point you at Fred Clark of Slacktivist, who has said many good and important things: “The ‘debt limit’ Kobayashi Maru,” “What the shutdown means: Unnecessary pain,” “The longer the shutdown goes, the more it costs us all,” and a more general look at “Another proof of bad faith: The inconsistency of blacktracking.” (I prefer the term he quotes later, “pulling a one-hatey,” because that one’s applicable to circumstances other than those involving Obama. But both terms have a certain rhetorical charm.)
***
My entire life as an eligible voter, I have wished that I could respect the Republican Party. I would probably vote Democratic anyway, but I wish I could look at their behavior and say, “I understand where you’re coming from and I respect that, even if I disagree with you.” But I can’t. I just can’t. I look at them and see a pack of dishonest, amoral idealogues who cater to the basest impulses in our political discourse. We need a new Republican Party, stat. One that’s actually conservative, rather than reactionary. But I don’t think we’re going to get it any time soon.
I did a terrible job of keeping records for September; I know there are things I forgot to put on this list. But all the ones I’m thinking of are the books I started and haven’t quite finished. (Rather a lot of those. But not because they’re bad; just because I’m not done with them yet. So that’s good, I guess.)
Because late on a Friday is the best time to put out pieces of major news. 🙂
Many of you know that my intent has always been for the Memoirs of Lady Trent to be a five-book series, of which Tor had already purchased the first three. Well, as of today I am allowed to tell you that now we’re set for all five: they have offered a contract for the remaining two, ensuring that the entirety of Lady Trent’s story will be told.
And! Bonus!
They have also made an offer for a third, unrelated book. That won’t be coming out until after this series is done, so it’s years off yet; don’t look for me to be talking about it all that much here. (Especially since it’s entirely possible that three or four years from now, we’ll decide that it ought to be something else than what we’re planning on right now.) But if you want a teaser, well, let’s just say it might be inspired by this song and involve a few weeks of research here. ^_^
So yeah, I’m bouncing over here. How about you?
. . . so let me get this straight. The Kurgan is hanging out in Sleepy Hollow, where the Four Horsemen are terrorizing people and chopping off heads?
Nah, that doesn’t bring anything to mind.
Remember how I was writing all those posts on how to write fight scenes? Well, it occurred to me that it might be nice to have them collated in a much easier-to-read format. And, y’know, to revise and expand them while I was at it.
Ladies, gentlemen, and swordspeople of all types, I give you Writing Fight Scenes: The Ebook Version. Complete with all the posts from the blog series (now in improved order, with additional thoughts), plus a few illustrative examples. It is, of course, on sale at Book View Cafe, along with Kobo, Barnes and Noble (Nook), and Amazon (Kindle).
(This, by the way, is why I chose to put Lies and Prophecy on special at BVC this month. Not just to celebrate my birthday, but also because I knew I had this coming out, too. It’ll stay a dollar off until the end of the month.)
If you know of people for whom this might be of interest, please do point them at it! Nonfiction is sort of a new thing for me, so signal-boosting would be much appreciated.
I know, I know — that’s a very motley assortment of things to stick in one post. But I’m going out of town tomorrow, and the rest of today is liable to be very busy, so I’d rather combine them than let one fall through the cracks.
The serious and important one first: I have signed on to this statement in support of trans-inclusive feminism. Because I know several people for whom this is not a matter of theory or debate, but their daily lives, and anything I can do to make that easier for them is absolutely worth doing.
Signing a statement is a minor thing, but I hope that mentioning it here is a larger one. And yes, I am thinking about ways to reflect this in my writing.
On a lighter note, my post at SF Novelists this month is “Lingua universalis fantasiae”, on the tendency of fantasy worlds to default to a “Common Tongue.” Comments on that post should go over there on SF Novelists, por favor.
Finally, and most frivolously, Yuletide nominations are open. Yes, I know it’s only September; we’re on a leisurely schedule this year, rather than cramming everything into November. The Yuletide member community is here as usual, if you are looking for more info and discussion.
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My father got moderately serious about photography some years ago, buying gear and software and taking lessons and so on. I, being less serious about photography, would occasionally ping him for tips, but resisted his suggestion that I invest in a program called Lightroom, because I wasn’t interested in doing all of that post-processing on photos.
Last fall, I made a mistake: I brought a couple of my Poland photos over on a thumb drive and asked my father to show me what Lightroom could do.
I could try to describe to you all the speed with which I fell. I could recount how I told my father on the spot that the only thing I wanted for Christmas was that program. I could rave at the magic even a simple click on “Auto-Tone” can work (on those occasions when Lightroom has good ideas — sometimes I have no idea what crack its algorithms are smoking). But pictures, words, conversion ratio thereof, ne? So here’s a shot I snapped at the Asian Art Museum today. Took this with my phone’s camera, through glass, so not what you would call ideal photography conditions in the first place.
Not only is it not a great photo, it isn’t even a great representation of what my eye saw, standing there. Apart from being fuzzy, it’s too yellow, and you can barely make out the designs on the body of the pot.
So when I got home, I popped my camera pics into Lightroom and commenced mucking about. Here is the result:
I was offline for a bit (sort of) because my laptop had to go in for repair, leaving me mostly functioning off a tablet for the duration of its absence. Not conducive to blogging, nor to anything much resembling productivity. 😛
But! There are interesting things afoot, and I would like help from you all, dear readers, in prepping for them.
To whit, the kniedzw and I are going to England. (Mostly to London, though we’ll be attending a friend’s wedding in Oxfordshire, and I’ll be winding up in Brighton at the end for World Fantasy. Also, we’re probably going to pop over to Paris for a bit to see his old roommate.) We’ll be there from October 11th through the end of the month . . .
. . . and I have no idea where we should stay.
“But swan_tower,” you say, “haven’t you stayed in London, like, a bazillion times?” Why yes, yes I have — for values of “a bazillion” that equal half a dozen or so, that is. But the first of those, I stayed with a friend’s sister, and the last four, I stayed in the cheapest hostel possible, neither of which are really what we’re looking for in this case. (The remaining time — or possibly two — I have no memory at all of where I stayed.) I honestly don’t even know what neighborhood we should aim for. We’re there for sightseeing, not research, so I don’t need to be smack dab in the middle of the City. In fact, I’d prefer not to be, since you can’t get food there after 6 p.m. 😛
Where should we look at? Our price range is flexible; we’re not looking for luxury, but we want better than a backpacker hostel. Convenience to a Tube station is key, though probably not hard to get. Moderately central location preferable, i.e. maybe we could save a bundle by staying somewhere out in Richmond but it isn’t worth trekking back and forth.
Recommendations? And feel free to propose nifty things to see in London that I haven’t already done.
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I meant to include this with my birthday post, since I have a long-standing tradition that I’m allowed to be unreservedly egotistical on my birthday. 🙂 The day before, Annalee Newitz posted this faboo review of A Natural History of Dragons on io9 — which, given the magnitude of that site’s readership, is quite a shiny thing to receive.
It will motivate me to crawl through the salt mines of page-proofing The Tropic of Serpents. 🙂
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Lost quite a bit of this month to travel and being ill. Feh to the latter. (I did, however, get massive amounts of photo-editing done. This is not reading, but it is satisfying.)
Sorcery and Cecelia, Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Re-read, because I felt like it. Still an enjoyable little romantic alt-Regency fantasy romp.
Child of a Hidden Sea, Alyx Dellamonica. Not yet published; read for blurbing purposes. I’m still trying to put my thoughts into words, but it’s a nifty adult portal fantasy about Stormwrack, a world made up of hundreds of islands, with dozens of different cultures among them. The ways in which the Fleet maintains peace in Stormwrack are interesting.
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton. Had started this ages ago, then got interrupted. This is about as different of a book as one can get from A Natural History of Dragons while still having both books be describable with the words “Victorian” and “dragons.” If you’re the sort of person who would be entertained by seeing nineteenth-century literary tropes recast with a lot more teeth and claws and fire-breathing, this book is for you. I was entertained.
The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com. Didn’t actually read all of this, but given its RIDICULOUS SIZE, I feel quite comfortable with deeming it an entire book’s worth of reading regardless. Tor.com released a free ebook containing the first five years of fiction published on their site. As you might expect from anything that large (with that many editors choosing what to buy), the quality is highly variable — hence me skipping stories. Some just weren’t my cup of tea, but some were actively bad, and not every author has a good handle on how to write a tie-in story to promote their novel. (Some of them, however, have a very good handle on it. So it isn’t like you should just skip all the tie-ins.)
Brief aside for a rant: my GOD is this ebook badly formatted. The text itself is generally fine, but the table of contents?
It’s all like that. Separate ToC entries for every element in the book, many of them with useless names, like those five lines of gibberish. And for at least three-quarters of the story, the ToC entry for the actual text is “Begin Reading,” which means that the running footer doesn’t actually tell you which story you’re reading. I hope that if Tor.com does this again, they take a moment to clean up the text, because the formatting here looks really unprofessional.
The Spice Islands Voyage, Tim Severin. I’ve been reading this in bits and pieces for, ye gods, I don’t know how long. It’s written by a guy who sailed around Indonesia in a locally-built prahu to recreate the voyage Alfred Wallace was on when he figured out evolution. (There’s an aside about how we don’t know, but have reason to strongly suspect, that Wallace’s letter to Darwin did not in fact arrive right after the latter figured out evolution for himself, but right before, and played a large role in Darwin’s work.) The text goes back and forth between telling the story of Wallace’s voyage, and recounting how the modern crew are checking up on the state of the environment and wildlife in the places he went. In many cases, the latter is kind of depressing — but not always. I sort of wish the book had been more firmly one of those things, rather than being both, but it was still a useful read.
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