Musings and Meanderings

I know it can be hard to find reviewers for self-published books. 

Here is a list I've compiled on my website of Blogs that review Spec Fic self-published books specifically.

Hope it helps all you wonderful indie writers.

My poem "Spirit Photography" has been accepted by Through the Gate. The magazine is a new market; the poem is the direct result of one of those dreams that hybridize figures from waking life with history and random brainstem spatters, in this case a theater tour of Faerie and the never-recovered camera carried up Everest by George Mallory in 1924. There is an entire genre of dreams I can never figure out what to do with, so I'm glad this one turned into something.

(I feel as if I am developing a subgenre of ghost poems: Lucan, Christopher Morcom/Alan Turing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Andrews, George Mallory; the eponym of "Ovid's Two Nightmares" is not a ghost in the poem, but he certainly isn't alive now. It must have started in 2003 when I wrote about Young Vilna for strange_selkie, but it seems to be accelerating in recent months. There are ways in which I suppose it's not all that different from writing about myths and gods. It feels like something else: it requires more research, but it also requires more responsibility. Everybody and their cousin has a Persephone poem and I accept that not all of them are going to fall within my ideas of reasonable interpretation. Stories throw out variants like many-worlds quantum mechanics: it's what they do. A god has a different face for everyone from the moment it's described. There are parameters on lives, on history. I don't want to get them wrong. The dead have enough troubles; they don't need me misrepresenting them. What I should really pay attention to is: why these ghosts. There are others I would have expected. Maybe they'll come along.)

I don't think there's been anything particularly memorial about it, but it's been a good weekend so far. Friday was marked by a visit to the home of two of derspatchel's friends: it is a former boarding house once occupied by the composer of "Jingle Bells" and deserves its name, being full of odd little corners of rooms and roof-slants and second kitchens where you don't expect them. We were taught the correct way to do vodka shots. (It turns out to involve black bread, pickled olives, and smoked whitefish. You don't get a hangover and you're all set for visiting a deli for the next few days.) We did not play, but were duly impressed by the antique board game—discovered in the barn—where the various trading countries are things like "Servia" and "Sarawak" and on the other side a race between electric and gas-powered cars includes penalty squares like "Shot by Man You Ran Over, -10 Points." There were hours of conversation. I have a new translation of The Master and Margarita to look for. Saturday, I crashed early in the evening: listened to an episode of The Mask of Inanna, watched some YouTube fragments of a BBC Play of the Week, read a book of poems by Medbh McGuckian, and managed to stay asleep for nearly ten hours. Today, Rob and I tried Café Algiers (where I'd had mint iced chocolate with Dean on Friday) for dinner and were rewarded by really good hummus, falafel and merguez respectively, and tamarind soda where you pour the seltzer into the syrup yourself; we saw A Day at the Races (1937) at the Brattle Theatre and I have no plans for tomorrow.

The Economist gave its obituary to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Urgh, insomnia...

My story "Smoke & Mirrors," originally published in Strange Horizons in 2006, will be reprinted in Ekaterina Sedia's anthology Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top. Since it was previously reprinted in Best New Romantic Fantasy 2, this means I finally have a most reprinted story. Woo!

"Smoke & Mirrors" is the child of my very first artist's challenge necklace from elisem, two different dreams, and the song "Hoist That Rag" played on repeat.

Also, that isn't Loki. And it makes me sad that I've ever had to say that.

The same circus in S&M also appears in "Catch." I hope to eventually get another couple of stories out of it. If I ever get more stories out of anything.

Since we've been given permission to shout it from the rooftops, I'm so stoked to tell you that my story "Vanishing Act" will be part of Ekaterina Sedia's CIRCUS anthology. This story means a lot to me and I'm so glad it will finally be in print (it appeared on SciFiction before, so no trees were killed). So Very Excited, guys. This calls for the cake icon.

Just a few more days until the voting for the Gemmell Morningstar Awards closes and my friend and high fantasy writer Helen Lowe's "The Heir of Night" is in the final round of voting for the category Best Fantasy Newcomer.

Please make your vote before May 31st.

All you have to do to vote now is click Here

Then click again in the circle immediately above "The Heir of Night -- Helen Lowe"

By way of added incentive, no book by a woman has yet won in either the Legend or Morningstar categories. Your support could well make that a thing of the past.

Aha! 

I tried to solve this last night as a mental exercise, but what I really needed was more time to experiment with code. I had gotten close, but I now have an algorithm that solves the problem.

# Start with the definitions
# level, points, name
lpns = (
    (1,0,"One"),
    (4,0,"Four"),
    (6,0,"Six"),
    (8,0,"Eight"),
    (10,0,"Ten")
    )



# get cumulative scores
last_level = 0
cumulative_score = 0
last_points = 1
res = []
for l,p,n in lpns:
    p = p if p else last_points
    if cumulative_score == 0:
        cumulative_score = 1
        last_points = p
        last_level = l
    else:
        cumulative_score += (l-last_level)*last_points
        last_points = p if p else last_points
        last_level = l
    res.append((cumulative_score, last_level, last_points, n))


# res now has the cumulative score, appropriate level, and name in tuples

from itertools import takewhile
from operator import le


# test the process over several point values
for point in range(1,30):
    D = takewhile(lambda x: le(x[0],point), res)
    i_sol = list(D).pop()
    _c, _l, _p, _n = i_sol
    _p = _p if _p else 1
    _level = _l + (point-_c)/_p
    print point, _level, _n

My previous attempts managed to calculate the proper level number, but not the name of the level. When I gave my old attempt the input of 4, it determined the level was 4, but gave the name of the old level definition.

Okay, I feel better. I solved a problem today.

Things continue to come together over here. Yesterday we finished the last of our Major Stuff Shopping, and when the last thing gets delivered on Thursday, we'll officially have the place fleshed out - at least from a furnishing standpoint.

Not that we'll be "done" in any real sense. My dad says that when it comes to home ownership, you're only ever done for now. He's right, I'm sure. There are already a dozen little projects I'd love to fiddle with, not least of all the garden - which is, at present, a rectangular patch of backyard harboring dandelions, semi-wild onions, clover, and the tail-less cat.

The tail-less cat (henceforth TLC, as her name eludes me) showed up in our back yard shortly after we arrived, and at first, I thought she was a pregnant stray. A pretty little black-and-white longhair, TLC was too skittish to touch, and her pendulous tummy swayed as she waddled frantically away.

Poor kitty, I thought. I will feed her and lure her close, and maybe she'll have the kittens nearby - so I can catch them and vet them and home them and oh yes, I was making plans.

After a few days, she'd figured out I was a food-dispensing monkey - and I'd find her sitting outside the roses, waiting for me to open the curtains every morning. Just to make sure I would see her, and know that there was a hungry, pitiful, single-mother-to-be hoping for breakfast.

And then I met the neighbors, who had a good laugh about it.

Formerly a feral stray, TLC was taken in and spayed by these same neighbors - who have never successfully gotten her to stay indoors or wear a collar. She is, however, spoiled silly, routinely vetted, and amply fed.

On the one hand, I'm relieved. I'm always sad to see homeless animals, and it's just as well I don't have to find homes for half a dozen kittens. On the other hand, I could do without the turd presents the fat little scammer leaves outside our back door every day, now that I've stopped accommodating her.*

I'm told that she's an excellent mouser who has never successfully caught a bird to anyone's knowledge, and both of these points please me. We're right at the foot of a mountain, backing up to thick woods which are no doubt teeming with mice ... and we have a shit-ton of birds hanging around, not least of all because I feed them.**

Speaking of birds, though - we may have a couple of new under-the-porch-eaves residents: two of the cutest wee tiny purple-headed finches you ever did see. At first they considered the hanging planters, but after I knocked down an unrelated, long-abandoned nest from a corner, they seem to feel that prime real estate has unexpectedly opened up and the time to buy is NOW NOW NOW.

(Aside I: Obviously I would not have taken down the old nest if it had not very, very clearly been out-of-use for ages.)

(Aside II: Maybe it was haunted, and that's why nobody else took over the lease in all this time. Some kind of bird-atrocity was committed there, and word's gotten around. Maybe other birds called the nest, "The old McFeatherstone place" and teenage birds dared one another to go sit there by themselves ... and when the moon is full, they say that the ghost of Widow McFeatherstone hangs from the petunia planter while moaning, "I KNOW WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE WHEN DOVES CRY" and never mind now this just getting silly.)

Anyway, now they're checking out that freshly vacated corner, and I really do hope they move in.

Hm. Let's see, what else?

Well, today we went to the Chattanooga Market, which frankly blew our minds. The weekly (seasonal) market had just started up around the time we moved away, but it was pretty damn pitiful. Now it's a total circus - well stocked, with a lot of great local crafters, farmers, and other assorted people-with-stuff-to-sell. Well done, Chattanooga. Well done.

I spent a few bucks, brought home a few things, and plan to return, but here's hoping that next week it's not quite so damn hot. And you know it was damn hot if I'm complaining about it, because I'm the sort who keeps the AC set around 80 degrees if I'm left to my own devices, and if it's cooler than that indoors, I'm likely to jaunt around in a bathrobe. You can take the girl out of Florida, etc. etc. etc.

But damn. A few thousand people were crowded into a big old pavilion, and it was 95 degrees.

This having been said, the heat prompted me to sample the wares of a really great two-person soda company offering some seriously fantastic custom syrups. I had a "honey lime" beverage, and would cheerfully go buy another - or try out some of the other flavors. Now I just wish I could remember the company's name. I'll keep an eye out for them next time.

[Edit: It was these guys. Pure Sodaworks. Two thumbs up.]

Not a lot of news to report in home repair and improvement news. This is partly because we're coming up close to Done For Now - and now we're figuring out bills and services, and whatnot. The Perplexing Back Room is now a guest room, but it's big enough that yes, we use it as a game room too. We threw our old TV back there, hooked up the game system, and now we're just waiting for the seating to arrive. (On Thursday, see above.)

It actually looks pretty nice, despite the carpet. I took a picture or two for Twitter, but we've rearranged everything since I did so. The whole thing is still a work in progress.

The library/study has come along nicely, too. The husband's bookcases arrived, and are assembled, and are now holding up books - so yes, we are Officially Unpacked. [:: throws confetti ::] He still has some art to hang, but the place looks great.

If this meager tally sounds like a pitiful excuse for how little I've updated as of late, I would add another excuse to the pile: the copyedits for The Inexplicables landed a few days ago, and I've been eyeballs deep therein. I'm still not done, but I'm about 2/3 of the way through. I was going cross-eyed, so I thought I'd take a break and come over here to ramble.

Mission accomplished, I'd say.

Right. Well. Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone. Go hug a veteran. I have to wait to hug my two nearest and dearest veterans, as my dad and stepmom won't be here to visit for another few weeks - but I will surely make up for it then.

---

* In all fairness, she quit doing this after a week. And now she'll let me pet her sometimes, which is great. She's really a beautiful, sweet little cat. Just ... hilariously fat.
** "Feeding" is one of the many services I am likely to provide for random critters.

Laurel Nakadate's second film, The Wolf Knife, is the examination of two teenage girls and their sexuality, caught between that of an adult, and that of a child.

A video artist and photographer, Nakadate's The Wolf Knife is a film that falls under mumblecore. Shot cheaply on video camera, and featuring to unknown actresses, it has that cheap, DIY ethic that a lot of mumblecore does, and it is both the success and failure of the film. Success because the two actresses, Chrissy (Christina Kolozsvary) and June (Julie Potratz) embody the awakening and confused sexuality that is the centre of the film, and failure because the editing, camera work, and just general style of the film leave a lot to be desired. To be honest, the kindest thing that you could say about it was that it was amateuristic. It's a shame, especially when given that a look around Nakadate's work outside film are interesting and often quite beautiful, in a dirty, voyeuristic fashion.



As a film, however, it's simply too long, going at least twenty minutes longer than it needs. I do understand why it was done, to provide a sense of closure to Chrissy and June's relationship, but it wasn't necessary in my mind--the film worked on its naturalism, and to provide such a sense of closure, of tying up loose ends, went against the piece to me. The acting, outside the two young girls, is uniformly awful, and the dialogue was just as bad. Silence, such an important thing in the film, was even moreso because it allowed you to escape the weakness of the script, or the improvisation--but unfortunately, for the most part, the silence of the film did not convey much.

I was, at the end of the film, a bit give and take about it. The sexuality of the girls was excellent, but it didn't make a film, and in the end, I had to fall on the side that the film itself wasn't very good. The truth is, it's just poorly made, for all the DIY, cheap auteurism. My opinion of that, after flipping around on Nakadate's site, was reinforced, given how much I liked of the still images she had, and the sexuality that she explored there. It was just a real shame that her skills in film--skills relating to craft--were still in development.

Interviews and Profiles

• The Bulletin interviews Hiromi Goto.
• John Scalzi's The Big Idea: Catherine Lundoff.
• io9 on Movie Science That Fails (video).
• Locus interviews Nick Mamatas.
• Anthology Builder interviews Alethea Kontis.
• Decompose interviews Nancy Fulda.

Advice/Articles

• Book View Cafe (Sherwood Smith) on The Time Machine question.
• Book Life Now (Matt Forbeck) on 12 for ’12: Writing a Dozen Books a Year.
• Book Life Now (John Klima) on Debunking the Myth of a Strong Opening.
• Inkpunks (Sandra Wickham) on High Fiber Serials.
• Matt Forbeck on Why Do Ebooks Sometimes Cost More?
• BBC Future on ‘Barcode everyone at birth’.

News

• Launch Pad Attendees 2012.
• Editor GoH at World Horror Con 2013: John Joseph Adams.

Bread and Circuses by Felicity Dowker