From sapphohestia: The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers.
I’m not entirely sure what this is, but it looks like a web-based superhero/kung fu adventure series, except with dance.
In other words, AWESOMENESS INCARNATE.
I cannot wait to see more.
“A woman’s place is not in the refrigerator.”
Comment over there.
If you are a language geek . . . .
What I really want is, as the poster suggests, an online version integrated with the OED proper. The 4000-page doorstop sounds less user-friendly. But OMG do I want access to this book (and oh god, the things I could have done with it for Midnight, Ashes, and Star . . .).
Back from India. I definitely need to post pictures and thoughts eventually, but I’m not sure when I’m going to do it, because of the rest of this post . . . .
World Fantasy is this weekend. If you’re going to be there, you can find me at the big autograph session, or at the “Bad Food, Bad Clothes, and Bad Breath” panel on Sunday at 11 (the topic being the grittier and less-pleasant side of premodern life).
I will also be at the second group signing at Borderlands Books on Monday night. Assuming, of course, that I don’t end up eaten alive by my Very First Jury Duty that day.
Aaaaaaalmost done with book revisions. I pretty much finished before I left for India, so I could let the book sit and then tweak anything else needing tweaking. Well, kittens, it’s time for some tweaking. But that needs to get done before World Fantasy, so I can send the book off to my editor.
And then there are some projects I intend to dive into as soon as that’s done with. More on those later.
In other news, a new interview with me has gone live at I Am Write, where (among other things) I talk about how the Onyx Court books were almost an all-folklore extravaganza instead of focusing on faeries.
Now I need to convince myself not to crawl back into bed (curse you, jet lag!), but rather to knock some of these things off my to-do list. I haven’t been reading LJ at all in my absence, so if you or anyone else posted anything I should see, let me know . . . .
It turns out today is the first anniversary of Beneath Ceaseless Skies — which I discovered when I, proud of the fact that I’d almost caught up with back issues, clicked onto their site and found not two but FOUR new stories awaiting me. Yes, folks, it’s a double issue, in celebration of their anniversary, and I’m busy enough between now and when I leave for India that I’m going to come back to find myself almost as far behind as I was before. Oh woe!
Also, it seems they’ve added e-book formats to the usual web publication and audio podcasting. So if you have an e-reader, you can download their content as a PDF or Mobipocket PRC file. Which is nice and convenient.
Anyway, congrats to editor Scott Andrews on making it through a full year, with great fiction every two weeks like clockwork. That’s a hell of an achievement, in the world of web magazines.
The Mermaid’s Madness is out! This is the sequel to The Stepsister Scheme, which was a fun, Charlie’s Angels-ish take on the world of fairy tales, with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White teaming up to save the kingdom. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the story go on, since I’m a big sucker for that kind of thing. But I’m not allowed to buy the book until I finish my own revisions (which I hope to do before I leave for India next week), so you all should go buy it now to make up for my own delay.
***
I posted a while back about Save the Dragons, a crowdfunded novel whose proceeds are going toward paying the quarantine costs for the author’s pets, a group of rescue cats and dogs he does not want to abandon when his family emigrates to Australia. That’s made good progress so far, but he needs to pull together the remaining money by Christmas, so if you can spare him a few bucks, please do.
***
Looks like the Dell Award has a spiffy new webpage! This was the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing back when I won it; the name has changed, but the mission has not. If you’re an undergraduate, or a recent graduate (i.e. you left college last spring), you’re eligible to submit short stories. If you’re neither of these, but you know some college-age SF/F short story writers, pass the word along. It’s a great award, and I would recommend it even if I hadn’t won.
***
A review of the second issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. In discussing “The Waking of Angantyr,” the reviewer says “A piece of heroic fantasy starring a woman is a nice surprise.” Even after twenty-some-odd Sword and Sorceress anthologies, heroines are still enough of a rarity in that subgenre that they’re worthy of comment. I bring this up because it would warm the cockles of my heart to see HFQ get a slew of good stories with female protagonists, so that we can take another little step towards a world where characters like Hervor aren’t unexpected.
It turns out October 1st was Support Our Zines Day. So it’s appropriate, I guess, that (all unknowing) I posted about “The Waking of Angantyr” going live at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and also about the return of the website for Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
In fact, it’s worth pointing out that I noticed the absence and return of the BCS site because I’d fallen behind on their stories. When I found myself with a little bit of spare time to read something, BCS was where I decided to spend that time. Unfortunately, the site was down, so I kept checking back until it returned. (And making sad faces in the meantime.)
Which made me realize that BCS is, hands down, my favorite magazine these days. Slipstreamy interstitial what-have-you is all well and good, but I loves me some secondary world fantasy, especially if it features a diversity of settings. I haven’t liked everything they’ve published, but they’re squarely in the mioddle of What I Want. So consider celebrating Support Our Zines Day a day late, and donating to BCS.
Nothing of mine in it at the moment (I need to get some damn stories revised and out the door before that will be a possibility), but if you tried to visit Beneath Ceaseless Skies recently and found the website down, it’s back up again. With a new issue, too, and new audio on the podcast feed.
If you’re nauseated by all the signatories to the “oh noes, don’t punish Roman Polanski!” petition, here’s an alternative one to sign. I quite like the terms of this one, and have signed it myself.
Those of you who follow my Onyx Court posts know how much I glory in finding random bits of weird history I can work into my tale.
In case you were wondering, it is possible for something to be too weird for me to include.
My recent SF Novelists posts, and a related series of posts by Kate Elliott and Ken Scholes over on Babel Clash, have turned up several male writers saying they’re nervous about writing female characters because they’re worried they’ll get it wrong. And I point at the second my posts I just linked as proof that I don’t think it’s so hard — but I’ve realized that’s a bit disingenuous. There are ways writers (male and female alike) screw it up. They just aren’t the ones people seem to be worrying about when they say “but I don’t know how to write women!”
So I’d like some help gathering fodder for more posts on the topic, this time looking at the common pitfalls. (And how to avoid them, but really, 90% of that is noticing the pit before you fall into it.) I’m thinking of things like Women in Refrigerators and the Madonna-Whore complex. What other things can you add to the list?
My SF Novelists post for this months is the result of picking up yet another epic fantasy in which female characters are all but nonexistent. Ever heard of the Bechdel Test?
Comment over there, usual drill.
I have to boggle alongside kniedzw (who found this thread) that he found it on Fark, of all places. I haven’t tried to watch the video that originally started the thread — it may be gone by now — but that’s okay; the real point is the posts by user COMALite J.
Some of you may recall me posting about the Vocal Majority last Christmas. As I said then, I mostly just like their holiday music; their standard work, which is more straight-up barbershop, isn’t as much to my taste. You can’t deny, though, that they are very very good at it — as outlined in COMALite J’s first epic comment, which goes into the scoring and history of the Barbershop Harmony Society’s competitions.
(Side note: dammit! Looks like the Ambassadors of Harmony, who have been on a different gear of the three-year cycle, got beaten by the Westminster Chorus in ’07. Which meant the AoH were able to return for the competition this year — you can’t come back for two years after winning — which meant they faced off against the Vocal Majority for the first time, and the VM took silver for the first time in thirty years. Mope. I wanted them to win. Though at least it was the most epic battle for gold the BHS has ever seen.)
Anyway. If you want to know who to listen to in the field of barbershop quartets and choruses, that’s the comment to check out. If, on the other hand, you’re a music geek on a more technical level, he also posted about the harmonics of barbershop, talking about how Pythagoras led Western music down a path that missed all kinds of other harmonic opportunities, with an added bonus explanation of why proper barbershop has to be performed a capella.
And then, if your interest is more historical, he comes back for a third round, this time about the history of barbershop as a musical form, and how it got co-opted by whites in the thirties, very much to the exclusion of the black performers who started it.
But stop there. Those are pretty much the only comments of any substance whatsoever, and most of the remaining thread is your usual fark-fest of “omg that’s so gay.” What this was doing on Fark in the first place, I don’t know, but it makes for very interesting reading.
But before I get to the disagreeing: I’ve been so brain-deep in finishing A Star Shall Fall, I overlooked the fact that Podcastle’s audio of “A Heretic by Degrees” has gone live. So go, listen, enjoy.
***
Right, so, the disagreeing.
I find it interesting that Dean Wesley Smith begins this post with the assertion that “No writer is the same” — and then proceeds to make his point (on the topic of rewriting) with such vehemence and absolutism that it could easily be mistaken for divine, universal law. Which is a pity, because I think he has a good point to make; but the force behind it drives the point way deeper than I think it deserves to go, and as a result, people who find themselves disagreeing with the full version may miss the value of the reduced version.
I think he’s right that rewriting can hurt a story. It can polish the fire out, like focus-testing a product until it’s bland pablum that doesn’t offend anybody, but doesn’t interest them, either. Sometimes you get it right the first time.
But. He seems to be arguing (with the force of an evangelical preacher) that your critical brain will never be useful to you as a writer. This works because a particular rhetorical trick:
Adorable beyond words. Especially the second picture down. (Though the adorability is undercut by the fact that she’s the only female manager in the company.)
In Which Genreville’s Writers are Twelve Years Old. Turning your beloved genre into a series of “your mom” jokes since 2009! (And some “your dad” jokes, too.) The comments get even better.
20 Neil Gaiman Facts. In which Jim Hines wins the Internet. (Again. How does he manage it?)
I’ve been keeping an interested eye on various crowdfunded projects, because it’s a neat (and sometimes successful) approach to publishing on the internet.
Well, this one’s a little different: Save the Dragons is not just a serialized comic fantasy novel, but fundraising for the author, who is moving from South Africa to Australia. Specifically, it’s fundraising to help him pay the quarantine costs for his family’s pets, so they won’t have to be left behind. That’s right: when you donate, you’re helping save KITTY-CATS AND DOGGIES.
I can vouch for Dave Freer, the author, being above-board. This cause is what he claims. His family is taking a gamble that they can improve their lives in Australia, and they don’t believe in abandoning the four-footed members, even if bringing them adds to the hardship. So it’s a good cause, alongside an entertaining novel. Look at my icon: Puss in Boots wants you to donate. ^_^ Check out the site, see what you think, kick a bit of help his way if you can.
