I should get one of these tote bags ...

It reads
"Every girl needs her morning coffee before a day of wrecking ships and drowning men."

Neil Gaiman Talks About Writing

 A casual, wandering, interesting interview with Gaiman that touches on his writing methods.

Find it here in a small review of American Gods, number 22 on a list of recommended Fantasy genre novels/

The Non-violent Heroic Confrontation

I came across this in my reading. 

The article considers,
"How does the hero confront violence without becoming violent themself?"
and,
"How intrinsic is violence to the idea of heroism?"

Interesting to me. Maybe a thought-provoker for others who write or review.

What I'm reading ...

 

Some good books I read in the last little while.
I got them as kindle books, borrowed from my library.

Hunter, Elite, Apex (Hunter Novels), Mercedes Lackey

The Mercy Thompson Collection Books 1-5, Patricia Briggs

Blackout, All Clear, To Say Nothing of the Dog (The Oxford books), Connie Willis

Blood Heir (Kate Daniels series), Ilona Andrews

The Will and the Deed, Ellis Peters

The Death of a Cad, M.C. Beaton

Wood Beyond the World, William Morris

The Scargill Cove Case Files: An Arcane Society Story, Jayne Ann Krentz

American Gods, Neil Gaiman

 

And here are a couple few more on the TBR shelf. I'm looking forward to reading or rereading them.

 

Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin

Tales from Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle Series Book 5) Ursula Le Guin

Skinwalker (Jane Yellowrock), Faith Hunter

Year One (Chronicles of The One), Nora Roberts

Jack of Shadows, Robert Zelazny

Coraline, Neil Gaiman 

Grimspace (Sirantha Jax), Ann Aguirre

The Setting as Story

I’ve been thinking about “The Setting as Protagonist.” That is, when setting acts in the story. When it has its own narrative.

Fr'instance, consider All Clear by Connie Willis. This is a Time Travel SF that moves from a small town in the English countryside in WWII, to the evacuation at Dunkirk, to Bletchly Park, to the coastal defenses, to London during the Blitz. Time travelling protagonists see the era's awfulness and bravery through modern eyes.

Willis' use of London-as-a-character is clearest about midway through the book in scenes of the air attack on St. Paul’s Cathedral.

How does she do this? Well ... Lots of prior description of St. Paul's physicality. Vignettes of members of the Fire Guard. She purpose-builds two Cockney moppets for use in the Blitz subplot. The protagonist argues that destruction of the cathedral would be a final blow for British morale.

So. Not just extended metaphor. Setting can be a symbolic equivalence. Can clarify and add an emotional gloss. I find myself rooting for St Paul's as if it were an old friend.

 cf Tolkien's the "Cleansing of the Shire." Burnett’s Secret Garden. 

Turf of a Viking Burial Mound

 

I've been reading up on Vikings. Nothing deep or scholarly on my part, just random bits about the social order of Vikings.
(n.b. This quoted passage is an example of why academic journals need editors.)

 

"Interestingly, the grass that was used to cover the mound was tested by Bersu and was found to have come from the dead individual’s farmstead, which consisted of about 500m2 of grass for the  purpose of covering the mound.

...  archaeologists found near the top, a layer of cremated animal bones that have been identified as cattle, horse, sheep and dog remains. Within the same layer the remains of a younger female, between twenty and thirty years old, was also found. 

... claims that there was a lack of regard for the burial that the woman received (no coffin and lack of items accompanying the body), testifies to her being a slave." 

The poor woman seems to have been killed by a sword chop through the head. Tough being a slave on the Isle of Man in the Viking Era, apparently.  

None of that comes as a great surprise.
 

Now I sit here wondering whether the grass on the mound was picked up and carried some distance to cover the grave or if the farmstead was just the nearest place to roll up some first-rate sod.

Men's things and Women's Things in the Medieval World

While this below is probably most interesting to those exploring the Medieval world, I think it has larger interest.

This is how these folks saw the world. This is the men's sphere and the woman's sphere.
Notice how the 16th Century woman got to keep the "books that women tend to read".

 

We still have this today. Imagine the moveable goods of your own household taken out into the yard and neatly sorted as to what belongs to who.

(Yes. I know this "whom" of which you speak, but I do not choose to acknowledge him.)

 

 Anyhow, from

From Brill & The Hague Academy of International Law

 

According to Magdeburg Law (Magdeburgisches Weichbild), a deceased husband’s wife was to pass on to his male descendants his sword, his best saddled horse and best armour, as well as his pulvinar bellicale “military bed,” which included a bed, two pillows, two sheets, a tablecloth, two bowls and a towel. The hereditary property of a wife that was to be received by her daughter, and otherwise by her closest female relative, was much more extensive. Although in Łaski’s Statutes these were defined as being only her sheep, dishes and the food in her home, in the judgments of Magdeburg Law, translated into Polish in 1501, these were described with much more precision as: the woman’s silver and gold jewellery, cups, chalices, spoons, cupboards (in Latin armarium), wash-basins, cushions, sheets, pillows, tapestries, carpets for covering benches (In Latin bancalis) and beds and hanging on walls, tablecloths, towels, quilts, clothing, headscarves, chests, candlesticks, yarn, beer brewing kettles and books ‘that women tend to read,’ as well as a pot for melting wax, a mirror, scissors and other items commonly used by women. In 1567, Bartłomiej Groicki, a notary at the High Court of Magdeburg Law in Krakow, described the Weichbild as follows:

These things belong to the woman’s movables [gerada] according to Magdeburg Law: all the woman’s clothing, gowns and cloth cut for the clothing the woman typically wears and has power over; all gold and silver that is woven for the woman’s clothing; all rings, buttons and pins, buckled belts, silk cloth, bracelets and necklaces, bed coverings, sheets, bath towels, curtains, lace curtains, beds, head-rests, pillows, table-cloths, bowls, brewery vessels to be leased, a wash-boiler, crates with lids, linen, washed and raw wool; books that women usually read; geese, ducks, sheep that are herded out to pasture.

                                Jakub Wysmułek
                                History of Wills, Testators and Their Families in Late Medieval Krakow

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.