lisatuttle

Kate and Leopold

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:29:12 GMT

I finally watched "Kate and Leopold", having resisted for years because despite having a weakness for time slip romances, and a fondness for Hugh Jackman, I always thought it would probably irritate me. Which it did, in many ways, although I set my annoyance meter low enough that I could enjoy it for the piece of undemanding (if somewhat suspect) fluff it is.

The worst bit? When Leopold shows up J.J. (Jay like Gatsby?) as a poseur by revealing he knows all about "La Boheme" and J.J. is faking. At this point, Kate should have stared at him and said, "I thought you said you were from 1876? So how come you're such an authority on an opera that wasn'r written until twenty years later?" (And then I guess, he reveals that in his copious spare time, in the hours left over between learning how to use the toaster,telephone and other modern devices, he watched it on DVD and memorized the songs.) But nooooo -- she swallows it, and why not; this is meant to be another part of his old-fashioned, cultured education, as the audience is presumed to be as clueless as Kate. It's The Past! When people talked all formal and women wore long dresses and there was all this cultural stuff going on in the background. Yet it could have been ANY opera -- Leo has to come from 1876 so the movie can start with the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. (I'm assuming that at least really was the correct date.)

And it's so unnecessary! ANY opera, or piece of music, or play could have been used to make the same thudding point.

That bit of stupid muddling with history really irritated me, yet I wasn't bothered by the pretense that this fictitious Duke of Albany had invented (or would invent) the elevator, and then name his elevator company after his butler, Otis. But, then, THAT was funny. A butler named Otis! Yeah, right.

Reading and researching

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:41:22 GMT

I've been doing research on the internet all afternoon and am now feeling faintly sickish. Why is reading on-screen so different from reading books? Or is it just the way I have to keep wading through stuff searching for one little nugget -- whether it is something listed in a university's special collection, or an item in a newspaper from 1890.

And I will have many many books to read this coming year, having agreed to be a judge for the Shirley Jackson Award. Here's a link to the press release, if you're interested: http://shirleyjacksonawards.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-advisors-jurors-added-for-shirley.html

Would I ever have believed, back in my teens when I was constantly searching for more stuff to read (and occasionally even running out of books I wanted to read) that there would come a time when I would actually OWN more books than I could manage to read in ten years? Not that I am tired of reading, mind you. Just feeling a little overwhelmed. Especially as so much of it looks so GOOD.

The rain is lashing down outside and the wind is howling, so taking a break to take the dog for a walk isn't on. Guess it'll have to be a housework break instead...

mea culpa

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:52:42 GMT

I'm a bad bad person who never posts, yet people still, inexplicably, want to be my friends and read what I don't write!

Must do better.

In the meantime, I may as well admit that I've joined Facebook, where I use a more recent photo. If any of you would like to "friend" me there, please do.

Reading lists

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:43:40 GMT

Looking through an old notebook, I found a list of the books I read in July 1979. I confess, I don't remember much -- in some cases anything -- about most of them. Here it is:

So Much Blood by Simon Brett
Raw Silk by Janet Burroway
Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris
Love Kills by Dan Greenburg
There's Trouble Brewing by Nicholas Blake
The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
Our Lady of Pain by John Blackburn
I, James McNeill Whistler by Lawrence Williams
The Key to Midnight by Leigh Nichols
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
Strange Eons by Robert Bloch
The Fly on the Wall by Tony Hillerman
The City Lover by Andrea Newman
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
The White Album by Joan Didion
Wayland's Keep by Angela Bull
Life in the English Country House by Mark Girouard
Alexandra by Valerie Martin

I still keep reading lists; for comparison, here's my list for July 2009:

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock (re-read)
A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists by Rachel Cohen
Nowhere-Land by A.W. Hill
An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (re-read)

One obvious difference is that, 30 years on, I don't get through so many books in a month. In the summer of 1979, I'd just quit my job, and maybe I hadn't quite figured out how I needed to make better use of my time as a full-time writer...or maybe I read faster in those days. I undoubtedly devoted more hours to reading. There was no internet back then, and as I only had a small, black and white TV set in an un-airconditioned living room, I rarely watched it that summer, preferring to lie in the air-conditioned bedroom with a book, or beneath a shady tree on the lake shore.

Her Voice

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:38:45 GMT

"Her voice was like old red velvet; it had extraordinary depth. On the telephone it could be mistaken for a man's voice."

"that throaty, deepish, wholly attractive voice"

"light, musical, with a throaty note, it was one of her great charms."

"her unusually pleasing voice"

"low-pitched but electrifying"

"She was like somebody belonging to another world and I was entranced by her... She had a lovely musical voice, but even this did not alter the effect of not quite belonging to the world."

Do you know who is being described, above?

If you want a clue, I'll list the people who said the above about their friend -- scroll down; (if you don't want a clue, look away now)

In order: Nigel Nicholson, Rose Macaulay, Rosamund Lehmann, Angus Davidson, Francis Partridge, Alix Strachey.

Got it?

Marilyn French

Sat, 09 May 2009 11:52:21 GMT

Listening to Radio Four this morning Iearned for the first time that Marilyn French had died. (A few days ago, aged 79) The Today Programme had invited Sarah Dunant and Christina Odone to discuss the significance of French's most famous book, The Women's Room. I was slightly apprehensive, expecting a typical & pointless argument about feminism between two women with differing politics, but was very pleasantly surprised by how sane and affirmative the comments were ... at one point the presenter (John Humphries? I can't remember) sort-of-jokingly complained that he wasn't getting a word in edgewise...and then swiftly tried to turn that into a compliment -- how rare and pleasant it was, etc. The two women burst into laughter, and then very politely and attentively paused [astonishing how visual radio can seem sometimes!] for him to say something. He stumbled his way towards a question.

Of course, both his guests have loads of experience as speakers and presenters on radio themselves. But listening to them was heartening -- too often these discussions are nothing more than an excuse for a sort of faux-debate, neither side really listening to each other as they trot out their lines and try to talk over each other and have to be stopped by the host so the other one gets equal time. And that laughter... the laughter of women together.... it lifted my heart and stirred an old memory but I couldn't put my finger on it... Finally I had to dig out one of my External Memory Repositories (aka a book I wrote many years ago called Encyclopedia of Feminism) and eventually -- even though there's not an entry on Laughter (which I now think there should be) -- I found it --

A Question of Silence was a film made by Maureen Gorris (Netherlands) in 1981, and ends in a scene in court, with laughter spreading and swelling through all the women present. A wonderful scene, exhilaratingly subversive as I remember.

As for The Women's Room (getting back to Marilyn French), I recall that when I read it, probably not too long after it came out in 1977, I was disappointed. It struck me as out-dated, a blast from the past, and of little relevance to me, personally. Well, I was young -- Marilyn French was old enough to be my mother -- and what she wrote about seemed very remote, it just didn't chime in with my own experiences of life or relationships. Also, it was quite a depressing book. So, I had a very narrow view, and the fact that it became such a big best-seller surprised me -- obviously, it affected many women much more deeply. I know that in Britain the book was published with the shout-line "This Book Will Change Your Life!" And a recent survey of women readers confirmed that many of them felt that it truly had.

sewing machines

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:35:22 GMT

I sure am sorry now that I gave away my old Singer sewing machine (untouched in nearly 20 years). See "Sewing machine hoax hits S. Arabia.": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7999168.stm

First time I'd heard of this!

Books, Wonderful Books

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:02:21 GMT

It's kind of insane, I know, to make a purchase like this at a time when I am trying to clear more books OUT of my house, but I have just bought THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES (edited with notes by Leslie S. Klinger) -- all three huge volumes.

But - oh! -- they are SO wonderful! Pictures, notes, and of course, the stories and novels themselves. And of course -- since I already had the complete works in paperback -- it is mainly all the notes I wanted it for. Original illustrations, old photographs, etc. are very nice, too, but it's the notes about what one scholar (or enthusiast) or other has puzzled out regarding Holmes' private life based on hints and suggestions in "the canon" that I think I love the most. Was he gay? Was he married? Formerly married? Was he a woman? Was Mycroft actually in league with criminals? Hours of endless fun! Such intense scrutiny devoted to a fictional character makes me think -- can Holmes truly be called fictional? He seems more real than many people who actually lived.

Books I Need to Finish

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:36:56 GMT

Besides the one I'm currently writing, that is. (Don't go there!)

I was just looking at the stack of books on the bedside table & realized I have probably too many on the go at the same time. All non-fiction -- I don't often put down one novel to start reading another (that is, intending to get back to the first) except on an assignment. But non-fiction is different. I am currently reading:

THE LOST (A Search for Six of Six Million) by Daniel Mendelsohn
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Jonathan Black
A CHANCE MEETING (Intertwined Lives of American writers and artists) by Rachel Cohen
ABOUT WRITING (7 Essays, 4 Letters & 5 Interviews) by Samuel R. Delany

I thought I would put down the Delany after a couple of essays and get back to finishing THE LOST (which I need to take back to the library) but it turned out to be exactly what I was most needing to read right now, and I haven't. It is FULL of good stuff and insights about literature and writing and reading. The only thing it lacks is an index -- I neglected to make notes of a couple of things, at least one of which I wanted to quote here, and it's going to take me awhile to find them again. I think I've been spoiled by computer-searches -- books require me to use my failing memory more.

What a good & thoughtful book. Definitely one for every serious writer's collection; published by Wesleyan University Press in 2005.

All the news that fits

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:10:15 GMT

Just got a flyer through the door advertising the opening of a new hair and beauty salon in the village. Always nice to hear about a new business in these troubled economic times, and I'm guessing that one of the young ladies running it (they only give their first names) is the same person who did a very good job of cutting my hair a few months ago, just after she qualified as a hairdresser.

Then I scanned down the list of "Available Treatments" -- hair colouring, styling and cutting isn't even mentioned, I supppose all those things can be taken for granted -- and noticed along with the !!!!SUNBED!!! (exclaimation marks theirs) they'll be offering aromatherapy, massage, light therapy, colourpuncture [huh??], Past Life Regression --

Oh, hang on. I'm not really sure I want to go to a beauty salon that offers such things. I can just imagine lying there on the sunbed, only to discover I'm suddenly on the sands of ancient Egypt, about to get a whipping if I don't get back to work on building that pyramid...or worse!

And I wonder what sort of therapy "colourpuncture" might be. Like acupuncture, only instead of using needles (such a turn-off) maybe beams of coloured light...??

Clarke Award

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:53:37 GMT

The short-list for the Arthur C. Clarke Award is still a few weeks away from being decided, but -- for the first time ever, I think -- a list of all the books the judges have had in to read and consider (46) has been made public, here: http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/2009-arthur-c-clarke-award-submissions/

Thus allowing plenty of time for anyone interested to try to out-guess them.

Feeling that I'd at least SEEN (even if not actually read) every single SF novel published in Britain in 2008, I was surprised to find there were still a few on that list I didn't know. But not many. Another caveat: I've only read one (or two -- depends on your definition, I guess) of the "mainstream" titles.

But I won't let that stop me. Here's my idea of what the short-list should look like:

OMEGA by Christopher Evans
THE NIGHT SESSIONS by Ken MacLeod
THE QUIET WAR by Paul McAuley
HOUSE OF SUNS by Alistair Reynolds
ANATHEM by Neal Stephenson
... and since I think it's usually a list of six, that leaves a space for either a book I haven't read, or another one that I wouldn't at all object to seeing there, e.g.:
MATTER by Iain M. Banks or WINTERSTRIKE by Liz Williams or SATURN'S CHILDREN by Charles Stross or even HALTING STATE by Charles Stross (again! what it must be, to be so prolific that your novels can be in competition with themselves)

I hadn't even heard of THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO by Patrick Ness before but what a great title! Looking it up, it sounds terrific, definitely one I have to read, and also like it could be strong enough to overcome my dislike of putting YA titles in competition against novels written for grown-ups. (I love a lot of children's books, but it just doesn't seem right or fair to me to cross categories that way. Yet there will always be the occasional exception, a book that transcends boundaries, and these days I think some books that really were originally intended for adults -- and would certainly never have been published as such twenty years ago -- get published as YA for marketing reasons.) I also haven't read KETHANI by Eric Brown, but intend to do so very soon, maybe even before the real short-list is announced.

In the news

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:39:00 GMT

I heard the news today, oh boy!

Sir Terry Pratchett!

How great is that?

I don't think the announcement of any other knighthood ever made me smile so much as this news did today.

Still on the subject of knighthoods, titles, and listening to the news, what is the deal with "Sir Alan" (or Allen, I haven't seen it written ) the billionaire con-man from Texas -- I didn't think that a) Brits were supposed to give away such-like honours to non-Brits or that b) proud American citizens were allowed to accept them if they did! Something wrong here, surely.

Something silly

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:32:56 GMT

Big news around here -- what counts as big news in the quiet rural area where I live -- for the past few years has been an impending introduction of beavers to the area. So I knew what the headline referred to when I bought the local paper, but it made me laugh, and although it is early in the year to tag anything as "silliest headline of the year," this one will likely get my vote:

Beavers bask in financial glory

While most people are feeling the pinch of the credit crunch, four furry families are basking in financial glory this week.

_____________________

But did they include a picture of these lucky beavers rolling around in piles of cash? Or heading off to the high street to single-handedly (paw-edly?) rescue Ravvi or Adams' or Whittards or M&S from the financial melt-down? No! And why not? Because they couldn't. Nobody's giving the beavers cash...and anyway, it's only £40,000 pounds, over two years, split between four families -- I don't know how big beaver families are, but if the People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) offered my family £5,000 to help us settle into a new country, while we'd certainly be grateful for the money, I don't think it could fairly be called "financial glory" -- especially as we'd be expected to build our own home, and anyway there's not a lot of places that accept cash in Knapdale, or anything to buy, or even shops...

Typical journalistic misrepresentation!

I found one of the headlines on an inside page nearly as ridiculous:

Festive Road Checks

Except I know that for a certain type of journalist, the word "festive" pops out like an involuntary spasm when they have to write about anything that happens in the month of December, and doesn't mean the traffic police were wearing Santa suits or investigating that the roads were in a sufficiently jolly mood or correctly decorated with tinsel and lights....

You'd never guess I used to work on a newspaper, would you?

That photo

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:53:10 GMT

I should perhaps explain my current userpic, especially as it is hard to make out. (Well of course -- I took the picture; what do you expect?)

It's my International Horror Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in Horror & Dark Fantasy for Mid Length Fiction: Lisa Tuttle "Closet Dreams" Postscripts #10 Presented October 31, 2008.

It arrived in the mail shortly before Christmas, and now lives on the windowsill with my BSFA Award from 1989. At least this one won't get filled up with foreign coins and old marbles. (Where do they come from?)

More books

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:40:10 GMT

The Magic: The Story of a Film by Christopher Priest (GrimGrin Studio)

The subtitle is somewhat misleading, as is the claim on the back jacket that the book is "a unique insight into the way a major film is developed from a novel."

Unique, yes, as this is Chris's personal take on the film The Prestige, based on his novel of the same title. However, as he admits, he had absolutely no contact with the film-makers, no influence on the script or how the film was made, and his only information about what was going on while it was being made, as he describes quite frankly, came from the same sources available to any other member of the public curious about what Christopher Nolan's new film was going to be -- that is, he surfed the internet, read people's blogs, logged onto discussion boards, and generally attempted to sift fact from fantasy. After the film was released he watched it more than once and, quite naturally, because he is intelligent and perceptive and has a long-standing interest in movie-making, he had some interesting and even insightful things to say about it. But "uniquely insightful" only in the sense that every critically intelligent response is unique to the person who makes it.  I was most impressed by his close reading of the complexities of the opening sequence, which was almost enough to make me re-think my own reaction to the film (lukewarm), which does seem to be made in a way that rewards multiple viewings. Chris also makes some very good points about the difference between a story about a mystery, and a story that relies on keeping something secret.

And yet, at the end, I felt his cogent criticisms were at risk of being dragged down or buried inside an over-long, rambling narrative that would have been better reshaped as a shorter, sharper essay. I was left feeling dissatisfied and a bit puzzled, wondering what the point of it was. I suppose the point is simply that he had things he wanted to write, all connected in some way with his book or Christopher Nolan's film (and although the film could not exist without the book, it is not simply a dramatized version of the novel -- it's a different thing), and so he wrote it, and published it himself. (price £16.99, 143pp. indexed.)

Ersatz Wines is another book Chris has published under his own imprint, but this one I think will be of interest to a wider audience. It's a collection of his earliest short stories, most of them never before published (yes, that's right, these are stories he was unable to sell when he wrote them back in the early-to-mid-1960s)  -- a dodgy proposition rescued by the context in which they are set: an autobiographical introduction about his beginnings as a writer and notes on what he was trying to do in each story and why it failed.

I think that most writers are interested to learn from the attempts of others; every writer's story is different, and yet there are similarities in most experiences. And even bad stories have much to teach us. This is a very different take on the writer's memoir, and I found it fascinating.   I'm just sorry the notes weren't just a little longer and more detailed. (price £16.99, 166pp.)

So many books

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:15:52 GMT

So many books, so little time!

I've been thinking about some of the books that I wasn't able to review, for a variety of reasons, this year, and it seems ungracious not to acknowledge at least a few of those I was sent for review and did actually read, so I thought I'd offer a few mini-reviews here.

CAGE OF NIGHT by Ed Gorman (PS Publishing)   Small presses do often have the edge when it comes to producing really attractive volumes, like this one. As soon as I saw it I wanted to read it. I found the cover art spooky and appealing; it's slightly different on front and back, an the difference creates an expectation about sinister events involving a mysterious woman and a strange clearing in a wood. Also, although I'd heard the name Ed Gorman mentioned with respect many times in the field of horror, somehow I had never read any of his novels. This one was written in the 1990s but I don't think (judging by the copyright, anyway) that it was previously published, and I got the impression from the introduction that it may have been because it fell between genres: is it horror or is it crime/suspense? Well, I like books that can't be easily categorized, so I was all prepared to like this one, and I felt let-down by it...yet liked it enough that I found myself trying to figure out my decidedly luke-warm response.

It's written in the first person, in prose that's taut and stripped down yet also rather musical. There are brief interludes in the form of taped case-notes, interviews and news commentary and this works to build up suspense and also to raise the possibility that the narrator is not the good guy we want to think he is...someone, after all, is about to be executed, but this nasty murderer is not named. I found this particular suspense-narrative-convention contrived and rather irritating, but the bigger problem may have more to do with packaging and not the novel itself.

In his introduction, Stephen Gallagher begins by describing the type of writing he has always loved: "spare, intelligent commercial fiction."  Yes, I enjoy that, too, and that's what this book is, and if it was a paperback, running to under 200 pages, and I'd ppicked it up to read on the train, I probably would have felt more satisfied by it. (Even though I didn't have to pay for the book!) Somehow, the hardcover and the beautiful presentation suggests this is something more than a quick, slick thriller...and it ain't. It is what it is, but it does not rise above or stretch the boundaries of commercial genre fiction...

As for which genre, I think it falls into the currently growing genre that marries horror with crime, and is usually marketed to crime readers.

Now I have to run some errands; I'll do some more reviews before the year ends, though.

Best of My Year

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:27:54 GMT

I was thinking about posting a list of the best books I read this year (regardless of when published) when I was asked to do that very thing for Aqueduct Press's website So, anyone interested may read it here: http://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/

Mystery Mice

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:26:45 GMT

We have had mice before, I confess. But never any quite like this.

The house next-door is empty most of the year (owners live in the city) and there's wild empty land all around, and most winters we do have the occasional visitation. Daisy, our lovely Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is the most gentle of creatures, but she does enjoy a good mouse-hunt, and while her response if she catches up to a cat or a chicken she's been chasing is to stand back and wait hopefully to see if they want to keep playing, and back off if they don't, when she catches a mouse she kills it, with astonishing swift efficiency. No blood, even. In fact, the first time we saw her do it, the pounce and withdrawal were so swift, we speculated that the mouse had simply died of a heart attack. But presumably she snaps the neck. And once it's dead, she loses interest.

But Daisy is an old lady now -- stone deaf, a trifle arthritic, eyesight not what it was, and with a heart murmur that makes us fear the excitement could kill her. She always lets us know when a mouse has been in the kitchen, but it has been a couple of years since she's managed to catch one.

Or so we presume... But there was a dead mouse in the living room a few mornings ago. In the past, when we've put poison down in the attic, the mice have died up there; they've never made it all the way downstairs. Usually, too, when they've eaten the poison there's some green around their mouths...not this time. So, just possibly, Daisy-- who was already up and waiting by the back door to go out when I got up -- had killed again.

We can't put poison out downstairs because of Daisy. Instead, I put down a couple of non-killing traps -- I've had good luck with these in the past, but nothing this time.

The first tray of poison - the one that got covered over with bits of cardboard and paper and tinsel, and even one of Barbie's old hairbands-- is now empty. No corpses found yet. (But there must be one or two mouldering away, somewhere.) The second tray remains untouched in any way. Colin put a third tray in the cupboard under the stairs (from whence we presume all that scuttling and rustling has been coming from as they shoot down from the attic aiming for the kitchen by some route we can't fathom) but this one has also remained untouched, although they WERE there, evidenced by the usual rodent calling-cards sprinkled around it...I could just imagine them circling it warily, going up close, then pulling back warily: "No! Elmo get back, don't touch it, it's nasty! Let's go check out the dog-dish in the kitchen!"

We didn't hear any noises last night, but it's too soon to assume they've gone.

smart mice

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:26:43 GMT

So, anyway, after the mouse jamboree or stampede of the night before last, Colin put down a little tray of poison bait in the attic. (I hate it, but I also hate discovering books and clothes nibbled to bits.) This morning, when we checked, no corpses in view, but a piece of cardboard had been put on top of the tray, which was also decorated with a bit of old Christmas tinsel, scraps of blue twine, and a tag from Hotter Shoes.

It was really, really weird.

I'm guessing...nest-building? Or an attempt to hide this tasty-looking stash for some later time? Whatever, it was certainly some kind of purposeful activity, and now I feel just awful, because how do I know, maybe they wear clothes and hold meetings, and sing, and use tools....and what if Stuart Little is living in our attic?

WHAT KIND OF MONSTERS ARE WE??

(Colin does not share my attack of sentiment.)

Writing and not writing

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:50:21 GMT

This novel...ooooh, this novel is giving me grief.

Second draft -- even my kind of second draft -- really should be more fun than this. But I've made so many changes already that by this point most of what remains of the first draft is practically useless to me. Basically, I'm back to writing a first draft again. And now that the ending is beginning to come into sight (like an ice-berg glimpsed from the deck of you-know-what) I've started to realize, not that it's wrong, but that I can't possibly stop there; it's not a proper ending to this book; I have to go on to show, or at least suggest, what it will mean for the lives of the main characters...and so, the actual ending, recedes further into the distance, and the mist... (Although at least, maybe, when I get there, it won't be an ice-berg but a new-found-land.)

Not a good night last night -- awakened by the sound of scrabbling and nibbling, crunching and scuttling and slithering. "Where is it?" whispered Colin. Under the floor? In the walls? In the room with us? Sounded like all those things. Probably just a field mouse (or two) in the cupboard under the stairs, eating my old Yoga mat and the tennis rackets (at least I took the wrapping paper out already) but, my dears, at 2:24 a.m. let me tell you it was like being trapped in a story by Mr. E. A. Poe.

And the winner is...

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:51:11 GMT

Wahey!

Apparently my story "Closet Dreams" has won the International Horror Guild Award for "Mid-length Fiction" this year...which is the last year these awards will be given...oh, please tell me I didn't kill it!

Seriously, I'm delighted. (And I only say "apparently" -- did I manage to spell it right? -- because I've picked up this news from other blogs rather than from some official, never mind angelic, annunciation.) t have no idea what the award looks like, or how the ceremony in Calgary went, or if Farah Mendelsohn picked it up for me or what she said in the event... I did make her my annointed one ... er, actually, it was a lot more casual than that. About a month ago, in a London restaurant, much wine having been consumed (at least by me), Farah having said she was going to WFC, I asked her if she would be so kind as to accept on my behalf if the story did win, and she said she'd be honoured, and ... now I'm thinking, gosh, that was awfully casual; I should have sent her an e-mail with a couple of lines thanking the judges or whatever ... only I didn't think I'd win.

Local Ghostliness

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:21:12 GMT

Happy Halloween!

It seems I haven't posted in three weeks. Three weeks! Where does the time go? And just as I find when I don't answer emails, the more time goes by, the harder it is to know how to begin, or what to say.

But since it is Halloween, I thought I'd jump in with a tale of local spookiness. Not a ghost story as such, just one of my favorite local legends. There's a spot about six miles along the (narrow, winding, single-track) road from our house where supposedly a long time ago there was a battle, now recalled only by place names. One is Slochd na Chapuill ("the Hollow of the Mare") and the other is Clac na h'Imuilte ("the Hollow of the Struggle") No, I don't know why the two different spellings for what is presumably the same word, but Gaelic seems to work like that. The story is that one clan attempted to pull the Cailleach (a witch or "old woman whose real name must never be mentioned") from her horse while the other clan attempted to allow her to keep her seat -- which I have to say sounds more like a ritual than a battle. Overlooking both these sites is a hill known as the Seat of the Cailleach, and all have a good view across the water to the Paps of Jura.

All very witchy and female power and pagan and White Goddess-y, and in the mood of "Hollow"-e'en, I feel.

Have a good one, all who read this!

New Story

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:48:05 GMT

So, I've written a new story! And it's SF -- first time I've written one of those for a few years.

It's called "Ragged Claws" (after the line in one of my favorite poems of all time) and it will be appearing in a special "taster" edition of PostScripts that will be mailed out to all BSFA members at some point; probably within the year.

I finished the final polish on Sunday afternoon, sent it off, and got an acceptance a few hours later. (Ah, the wonders of our digital age.) Peter Crowther thought it was "delightfully downbeat."

As for the kitchen disaster -- obviously, problems with floor, wall and heating will all have to be dealt with in the near future, but for now, I've put a rug over the burned bit (It looks amazingly nice, as if intentional decor rather than emergency cover-up) and the weather has suddenly warmed up. And the electrician (who is also a member of the local volunteer fire department) opined that we were perhaps 10 minutes away from a house-fire, so I do think we were lucky, after all.

Domestic Disorders

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:55:18 GMT

Woke up Saturday morning, went out to the kitchen and found it filling with stinky smoke, the storage heater lying on the floor, gradually burning through the laminate...help!!

Of course, the heater was not only extremely hot but incredibly heavy (filled with those hot bricks); even with oven gloves and the aid of the shovel Colin and I could not manage to lift it. Brief detour to get dressed, then we managed to lever it up using the shovel and a garden fork, and inserted wet, moss-covered bricks from outside beneath it to prevent fire breaking out; then called for help from a neighbour. He and his strong young son managed to up-end it.

Colin has been saying we were incredibly lucky -- the house didn't burn down, and the floor is still solidly THERE even where the top layer burned away -- and I guess that is the way to look at it, but I can't help thinking that we'd have been much luckier if, when I awoke briefly in the middle of the night thinking, What was that? Did I hear something? I'd gotten up and gone to see instead of going back to sleep... or if the dog (deaf, poor darling) had barked to alert us when it happened...and I'd been able to turn off the electricity before the heater built up enough heat to be dangerous.

So we'll have to get a new floor and a new heater... why do these things always happen when we can least afford them? Was annoyed but somehow not terribly surprised to learn that the damage is not covered by our contents insurance, even though it is supposed to include accidental damage, because anything wall-mounted is considered "fixtures and fittings" rather than "contents" , and a laminate floor is likewise, although if it had been carpeting, it would have been covered. Insurance companies and their quaint little ways, ya gotta love 'em.

The smell still lingers on. I put the little oil burner & essential oils (that I was more or less pressured into buying a few months ago -- now I'm glad) to good use; there went the last of the tea-lights. More room spray!

Of course, yesterday was also the one day in many, many weeks that we actually had guests coming for dinner, which added a certain je ne sais quois to the customary kitchen-cleaning routines. But company for dinner and several bottles of wine did lift our mood.

Book Meme

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:56:24 GMT

Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

We had a good class-meeting, and rejoiced together.

From: This Green & Pleasant Land: Chronicles of Cavan Township

(Never did one of those meme things before, but couldn't resist this. This was the nearest book to my RIGHT hand. The nearest to my LEFT hand was one of my own:

daughter. "Don't fuss."