Carbon Paper

 It occurs to me that some folks have never seen carbon paper in action. 

The first couple minutes of this program show somebody using it.
So I share.

My first book was typed on a manual typewriter like this, an Underwood, and I used carbon paper.

 

Ingredients of Character

I was thinking the other day about how we create characters, since I'm trying to do some of that.  

What are the ingredients we knead and stir and bake into characters? How do these people end up knocking around inside our brains, anyway? Where do they come from?

Some of the sparks that grew into Marguerite in Forbidden Rose were real spies.

Consider Marie-Madeleine Bridou. (She ended up Marguerite in the book instead of Madeleine as a nod to The Scarlet Pimpernel. Jo waves. Hello, Scarlet Pimpernel.)

Read about Bridou here, here, and here.

She chose the code name Hedgehog because, as one of her colleagues put it, “it’s a tough little animal that even a lion would hesitate to bite.”

 

You will be pleased to know Bridou worked for a publishing company.  Heroic people, those who work in publishing.

Celebrating Language Change

I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm a language fuddyduddy, clinging to past-pull-date English. Language is a living thing. I don't expect it to freeze solid in 1969*.

Language chases after change in the real world. Names are born for the new stuff: wiki, tweet, google, go cup, podcast, bitcoin, DNA, penicillin, page view, Peace Rose, moonwalk, on brand, quark. 

Bright, shiny new things, these words.

Words let us look at familiar things in new ways:

right-size,  single-use, metrosexual, non-binary, slipstream,  catfishing, mansplaining, fail as a suffix (skateboard fail,) salty, to "ghost" on somebody, Black Lives Matter, geek, I can't even, slut-shaming, binge watch, photobomb, throw shade, because reasons, because awesome, nerd, gender fluid, double down, rewilding, first world problem, singular they . . .  

 

We play with language.

I adore that**.

*1969 is the first use of "pull date" according to Webster's

 

 ** Careless errors of grammar, OTOH are not useful nor clever nor beautiful.

And, in truth, there are days I stomp grumpily along the transitional boundary where the newfangled grammars ooze into general acceptance, me sneering and fluffing out my feathers.

(The proper use of lie and lay, for instance. Gone. Hrumph.)

So maybe I am a fuddyduddy.

Interesting punctuation

Came across this in Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs, in the heroine's viewpoint. A private detective is guarding a  client. He says on the phone:

"I'm kinda hoping her soon-to-be-ex shows up," he said softly; I thought so she wouldn't hear him.

Semicolons always seem a bit academic and formal to me. Most times when I see one in popular fiction I feel it could be advantageously replaced by two sentences.
Fr'instance:

"I'm kinda hoping her soon-to-be-ex shows up." He said it softly, probably so this client wouldn't hear him.

But .  .  . though my editorial alternative might be slightly clearer,  Briggs' choice — or her editor's choice . . . this 'feels' like an editorial correction — is maybe the better writing. It uses POV so neatly.

Cursing in ASL

For those of you who want to be obscene but not heard.
Or let your time travelling characters curse effectively while moving silently in a dangerous place.
Or exchange rude comments at a Regency ball.

How To Curse in ASL.

Words are cool.

Perfect words

Sometimes in the midst of a beautifully written story ⁠— in this case Coraline by Neil Gaiman — you find a little vibrating diamond of a sentence.

"Terribly slowly, stiffly, heavily, a hinged square of the floor lifted: it was a trapdoor."

. . . which is a Japanese meal of a sentence, perfect in its simplicity. A square of sunlight on the walls of a museum. One wild strawberry growing in the tangle beside the path.

Violence: Deep Country Version

 So. Here's what we get up to in this neck of the woods. Happened a few weeks ago.

"Investigators from the Sheriff’s Office processed the victim’s vehicle and located evidence related to this incident. Investigators were able to identify the suspect and obtained several charges.

Wyant, a 31-year-old white male from Buena Vista, Virginia, was wanted for attempted malicious wounding, abduction, use of a firearm in commission of a felony, shooting from a vehicle and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon."

 As you can see, authorities threw the book at him.

I bet you didn't know that shooting from a vehicle is a separate charge all on its lonesome.

Random Comments on the Day

photocredit: veronika_andrews

 8-10-21
 
 More and more hummingbirds are coming to sip my sugar water. More and more butterflies nestle in my butterfly bush.

 Listening to some mellow jazz .

 This time next week, I'll be in New York City.

 Life is good.

Rurouni Kenshin

Netflix is showing two Rurouni Kenshin flicks. The first, Ruroumi Kenshin: The Beginning, gives us interesting plotting, subtle acting, complex reveals, unexpected assumptions.

Always nice to see a new cultural take on familiar material. Lovely photography. Fairy tale level of realism. Glacially slow in places. Full of folks getting killed.

Glad I saw this.

https://www.netflix.com/watch/81313229

Copperheads

Rives Park -- local here -- has a nest of copperheads. Some poor dog got bit and they're worried whether he'll make it or not.

Animal Control collected 3 baby copperheads, (Doesn't that sound endearing? Little baby copperheads.) but warned that there may be others. Animal Control is not for sissies.

Anyway,  I won't be walking Mandy there for the nonce.

Back in Saudi Arabia,
(relatively few  countries are named after people. America, Bolivia, Columbia, Monrovia, but not, y'know, Chad,)
we had a viper under one of the bushes in the housing next door. Very poisonous. It was the compound with all the kids, of course. One of the dogs spotted it and did the hysterical barking thing so nobody got bit.
Though, for all I know it was a peaceful committed pacifist snake minding its own business.

The gardeners had to go kill it, that being in the job description. Being a gardener in West Africa is one of those jobs with a lot of side benefits.

I'll be cowriting with friends in a bit so I will warn the one who lives next to Rives Park to be cautious.

Movies: The Irregulars and Gunpowder Milkshake

Both these movies have multi-racial casts and pass the Bechdel test.
For me, that's icing on the cake rather than a requirement.
But — iced cake.

 

I've been looking at Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, and Paranormal books for a while now. Lately I've expanded to movies and TV series.
Endless delights delivered to my computer screen.
We live with such splendid technology.

First, consider the tongue-in-cheek, cynical, and bloody romp that is The Irregulars.

It's "a British mystery adventure crime drama television series" created by Tom Bidwell for Netflix."*

Some paths in the Magical Wood  are well trampled. Beer bottles and McDonald wrappers litter the roadside.
I'll admit to being jaded about powerful lost heirs, schools for angsty teenage wizards**,  colorful squaddies on the battlefield of clashing magical empires, and other staples of the genre.

One could make the case that The Irregulars is wuxia
which is trope and utterly predictable,
but it's a story I like.
Finding such a story with good tropework is sweet. 

Irregulars is a nugget of gold in the spoils pile of the Sherlock fictive universe.

Gunpowder Milkshake also pleased me.
This one glows with subtle, intelligent acting from everybody on the set.

Now, there are long sequences of car chases and kung fu fighting and extras dying bloodily ***.
Presumably the intended audience likes car chases, martial arts, and gore.
Me, I fast forward through that stuff and it does not interfere with my enjoyment of the movie.****
Ain't technology grand?

A study of Jackie Chan's corpus of work might have kept the frenetic action scenes from being so boring.
I dunnoh.
Maybe it would have subverted the spirit of the story . . .
I have no wisdom in critiquing movies and my taste is not especially commercial.

Final thoughts on Milkshake is that it worked for me and I recommend it.  

 

*  I pulled the description from the wiki so it must be true.

** I wasn't much interested in teenagers even when I was one.

*** Some of the violence is disturbing. Most of it is like those old Westerns where cowboys have 37 bullets in their handguns and spin and fall dramatically when hit,

**** Some Romance readers flip past pages of the explicit and go on with the story. It's a skill.

 

Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, and Paranormals: A List

These books are full of good storytelling, fine characterization, lyrical language, and intelligent world building.
Eminently readable.

Some are legit free online.
Most all are in the online section of major libraries.
Many are relatively cheap to buy.
 

Buying books supports authors.
So does checking them out of your library.

 

Ben Aaronovitch. Midnight Riot, Rivers of London.

Douglas Adams. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Hitchhikers Guide series.

Ilona Andrews.  Magic Bites. Kate Daniels series. 

Peter S. Beagle. The Folk of the Air.

Patricia Briggs. Moon Called. Mercy Thompson series.

Lois McMaster Bujold. The Curse of Chalion. World of Five Gods series. 

Emma Bull. War for the Oaks.

Jim Butcher. Storm Front. The Dresden Files. 

Gail Carriger. Soulless. Parasol Protectorate series.

Susan Cooper. The Dark is Rising. Dark is Rising Series.
MG/YA

David Eddings. Pawn of Prophesy. The Belgariad.

Jasper Fforde. The Eyre Affair. Thursday Next series.

Jeaniene Frost. Halfway to the Grave. Night Huntress series.

Neil Gaiman. Good Omens.

Lev Grossman. The Magicians.  Magicians trilogy.

Charlaine Harris. Midnight Crossroad. Midnight Texas.
This Charlaine Harris is not to be confused with the most excellent C. S. Harris who writes Sebastian St Cyr books.  

Robin Hobb. Assassin's Apprentice. Farseer trilogy.

N. K. Jemisin.  The Killing Moon. Dreamblood series.

Diana Wynne Jones. Deep Secret.  

Mercedes Lackey. Burning Water. Diana Tregarde Investigations series.
Also Born to Run. Serrated Edge series.

Ursula Le Guin. A Wizard of Earthsea. Earthsea series.
MG/YA/Adult.

Fritz Leiber. Our Lady of Darkness.
He's better known for his short stories. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Madeleine L'Engle. A Wrinkle in Time. Wrinkle in Time Series.
MG/YA/Adult

C. S. Lewis. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Narnia series.
MG/YA/Adult.

R. A. MacAvoy. Tea with the Black Dragon. Black Dragon series.

Anne McCaffrey. Dragonflight. Dragonriders of Pern series.

Seanan McGuire. Rosemary and Rue. October Daye series.

Robin McKinley. Sunshine. 

Barbara Michaels. Ammie, Come Home.
She's also Elizabeth Peters.

Naomi Novik. His Majesty's Dragon. Temeraire series.  

Terry Pratchett. The Color of Magic.

Phillip Pullman. The Golden Compass. His Dark Materials series.

Spider Robinson. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. Callahan's Place series.

Patrick Rothfuss. The Name of the Wind. Kingkiller chronicles.  

Brandon Sanderson. Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. Evil Librarian series.
MG/ YA

Lisa Shearin. The Grendel Affair. SPI files.

Mary Stewart. The Crystal Cave. Arthurian saga.

J.R.R. Tolkien. The Fellowship of the Ring. Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Carrie Vaughn. Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Norville series.

Manly Wade Wellman. John the Balladeer. Silver John books.

Connie Willis. To Say Nothing of the Dog. Oxford Time Travel series.

Roger Zelazny. This Immortal.

Library Book Titles That Stick to Your Kindle

Here’s how to get rid of those old library book titles that ghost in your Mac computer’s Kindle list.

 

1) Caveats.

Are you willing to empty your computer's Trash can? If not, you can't get rid of your ghosts in this way.

This is a Mac computer fix. I don't know if it works on other Kindle devices. 

If you have .pdf files, personal documents, or books from non-Amazon sources stored in your computer's Kindle, you should copy them elsewhere. They may die a horrible death if you do not.

In this fix you will lose the date of acquisition of your Kindle books in your Kindle. Accurate date of acquisition will remain at Amazon but your Kindle acquisition date will revert to the date of the fix.

2) At the end of Step 8 the list of books in your Amazon Content & Devices library will match the library in your Kindle. Your currently borrowed library books will be in both places. The dozens or hundreds of borrowed-and-returned ghost library books will appear in neither place.

3) Directions:

At Amazon go Content & Devices / Library.

You can take screen shots of the Amazon book list as a backup in case anything goes wrong.

4) In your computer,  go to the Kindle app program.
(In my machine that's Finder/Go/Applications/Kindle app.)
Uninstall Kindle by moving it to Trash.

Now go to the Trash icon and empty Trash. I had to do this twice before it took.

5) At Amazon, go to Content & Devices / Devices. Deregister your Kindle App for Mac.
If you have other Mac devices you do not need to deregister them.

Now  re-register your Kindle App for Mac.

6) On Amazon search for and buy Kindle for Mac.
It’s a freebie.
Download it to your computer and install it. 

7) On your computer the Kindle library should show as empty. 

8) Back at Amazon, go to the Content & Devices library. Send everything into your new Kindle. This may take a while. There will be no ghosts.

Lovely cursing

 

Sometimes there's lovely cursing:

“Who the fuck are they?” I asked. 

“That’s the gentry and their servants,” said blond Bev. “All the liars, hypocrites, exploiters, dog-bastards, wankers, janissaries, Monday men, cat-ranchers and people who fly-tip in protected waterways.”

Ben Aaronovitch,  Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London)

That's how it's done

Another Contemporary Fantasy

I recently reread Peter S. Beagle's The Folk of the Air,  contemporary fantasy, one of my favorite books. It's also set in Berkeley, (always a plus.) This Beagle, sadly, is not available in kindle, which is enough to make one doubt the inherent benevolence of the universe. 

Quote: "He did recall being instantly certain that he had just met either an old friend or a very patient, important enemy."

Lovely. lyrical, unforgettable prose.

Adding Backstory

Since I took time off from all extraneous pursuits a month or so ago I've not only been getting my head together, I've found time to do some of that reading.
(That's part of getting my head back together.)
It's been TBR-bookshelf time.
A self-indulgent immersion in story.

I'm looking at how to fold in complicated backstory in First Person.  Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London,  Jim Butcher's Storm Front, and Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue  

Backstory be like (1) lay out the backstory on the bones of the plot, (2) take your time. 

I'm mentally highlighting my way through the books in three or four different colors and see how they're woven together.

Interesting that the three authors who immediately come to mind for introduction of backstory are all writing First Person.

Do we introduce backstory and infodumps more easily in First Person?
More to think about.

Adventuring In My Own Way

I have a little machine called a Eufy that glides around my floors and picks up dog hair and cat hair from underneath the chairs and the bed. It's like a roomba but cheaper. *
I am a creature of the cheaper alternative, always.

The cat and dog eye the Eufy with grave suspicion but it does not terrify them which is a good way to live one's life.

Today my little machine friend managed to pull out one of the wires essential for the operation of my internet.
The possibilities being manifold it was not immediately obvious which of many potential problems was now mine.
Even after I decided there must be a physical lacunae in the system ., . well, I have lots of cords running around behind the desk.

By dint of** some dusty scrambling about and muttering I finally managed to lay my hand on the cord that had been pulled from its proper mooring. ***
Yeah me.

While I was on my hands and knees doing this I noticed a UBS port on the side of the offboard hard drive I recently added to my collection of mysterious black box sitting about.
It appeared to connect the external hard drive to what may be the router.
I didn't even know I could connect the backup to the router though I had rather wanted to.

So now I have wireless access to my Time Machine.
I am doing backups automatically.
Even though I am not adventuring with the Doctor
my life is bright and shiny and I feel very clever.

I have signed up for pottery wheel access. It starts tomorrow. I will now be both artistic and clever.

 

 

 

 * Here's a video of a cat on a roomba. It is not my cat. My cat is smarter than that.

** The dint in "by dint of," you will be pleased to know, is from Old English dynt "blow dealt in fighting" (especially by a sword), from Proto-Germanic duntiz (related to Old Norse dyntr blow, kick.)
This dint is probably not directly from the co-existing dialected dint of C15 that comes to us from PIE "dent" meaning tooth but doubtless they lived on the same street.

"By dint of" as a phrase for "by force of, by means of," is early C14 so it is a fine, strong, ancient little set of words.

*** This picture is a slight exaggeration of the number of cords I have around my desk.
But not by much.

The Music Playing

Listening to Clifford Brown in this collection  because it is so mellow.

I put this in the background of re-reading. Aaronovitch's Moon Over Soho. 
Aaronovitch is so good with deep POV. He uses sophisticated elements to build it -- language, special knowledge,  scene reaction, philosophy. Just splendid stuff.

As to the music:

Trumpet – Clifford Brown
Bass – George Morrow
Drums – Max Roach
Piano – Richie Powell
Tenor Saxophone – Harold Land 

Delilah
Parisian Thoroughfare
Blues Walk
Daahoud 
Joy Spring
Jordu  

Brown only lived to be 25

Computer Stuff

An exciting weekend in which I set up my external hard drive.

On a Mac this means buying a black plastic box the size of a good novel, fiddling through my barely finite collection of twiddly wires, and then blindly following the directions of Some Guy on the Internet.

The problem with getting advice from YouTube videos is that they're all for systems five or seven years old. Every two minutes the nice geek with the oddly untrained voice tells you to, for instance, "Click on Options" and you discover there is no Options key because they threw that out in the 2015 OS.

Once again, the world betrays you.

You prove inadequate to a task that is completed handily by 16-year-olds.
(Don't ask me about my cell phone.)

You lose.

So you go to Google to figure out where Mac has hidden the action you wish to undertake. And you

have to decide whether you want your GUID (whatever that is) to be a table or a map.

Half an hour later you close your eyes and pick at random
because the hell with it anyway.

This is like ordering in an Azerbaijani taverna far, far off the beaten path where nobody speaks any language with which you have a nodding acquaintance,
except less prone to moments of delightful surprise.

Or like when your car has an extra bobble on the PRSNL to put the stick in and you have no idea what it does but the car seems to run okay either way so you ignore it.

I now have an operating back up and a Time Machine
or I don't
and I am back to limping along with my severely crippled version of Word except for (probably) backup.

This is not exactly adulting, but I muddle along.

Exponential

I came across, "He’d lost an exponential amount of blood," in a book recently.

The weakening of the word "exponential" from meaning
"a number that gets multiplied by itself"
to just meaning "a big hulking, scary number"
is very sad.

We take these delicate, specific, useful adjectives and empty them by the slop-bucketful till they're just one more of the thousand bland, lank, meaningless synonyms for common concepts.
Our word shelves become full of Twinkies and Wonderbread.

Thank god for slang, that's what I say.