Now This is Cool

Suzette Haden Elgin has a LiveJournal. Lots of really interesting linguistics discussion, and marvelous sf poetry (that has the not-so-nice side effect of making me want to never, ever attempt poetry again). Yay! Which reminds me, I never did manage to acquire copies of those Elgin books Rowena leant to me ages and ages ago (was that junior high?).

Good Day

1884 words of Kentaurs today. It seems to be remaining fairly easy to get the words out, compared to the first day or two at least. This is good. It's no fun when it's a struggle.

I learned something interesting about Octavian (aka Tavie) today. And I wrote a rather gruesome dream sequence. Poor Ixion. I feel mean for putting him through it. Then again, he's the one had the dream; I just wrote it down. (Is it any wonder Freud thought writers were seriously disturbed, when we talk about our invented characters as if they were real people?)

Which InuYasha [fill-in-the-blank] Are You?

theOtaku.com: What Inuyasha Hero Are You?

"Reclusive and often grumpy." Yup, that's me. Hee hee. I get to be InuYasha!

theOtaku.com: What Inuyasha Villain Are You?

[In case you can't see the pictures, which sometimes vanish, I'm evil, evil, evil Naraku.]

theOtaku.com: Who Is Your Inuyasha Mystery Date?

[If you can't see this pic, either, my mystery date is Kouga the wolf demon.]

A Pink Horse Named Centurion

Er, yes, there is a horse named Centurion in A Madness of Kentaurs. Bit he's not really pink. Deianira calls him pink, but he's actually a strawberry roan. (Who knew there was so much to know about horse colouration?)

Anyway, I hit 9090 words toady, which didn't get me much over my daily goal, but I'm getting sleepy, and I haven't started inking the page of Fey I was meant to finish today. I guess I'll be finishing it tomorrow. Plus, there is tv to watch. Must have my weekly fix of InuYasha and Witch Hunter Robin.

Girl Genius

Very cool t-shirt. Except I think I like this one even better.

This Week's Fey Online

Yup, more satyr mayhem in ancient Greece. Here: page 3. Now back to drawing madly.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Or something. Neil Gaiman's comments made me laugh:

As a boy I wasn't sure whether we were meant to be celebrating Guy Fawkes as someone who tried to change the system by doing something about it, or whether it was just that the English love a good loser. When I grew up I realised that it was a thanksgiving for the fact that the Parliament had not been exploded. Still, Guy Fawkes has a day named after him, which is more than King James had (although James got a bible dedicated to him, of course).

Hee hee. Go have a bonfire and use up any fireworks left over from Hallowe'en.

Done for Today

There. The main characters have met, and I have met today's word quota (only 40 words over, but still). I'm now 689 words ahead of schedule, which isn't much, really. Not so bad considering how hard it's been to get into this book, though. It think it may be going better now.

Wow

I just wrote a scene in A Madness of Kentaurs that I think I actually like. I haven't read back over it, but it all just kind of came out in that marvelous trance that so seldom seems to happen. 'Course, I could read it later and discover it's all crap, but *finally* something of this book came easily. The bit just before did not. I had the drag it out by the hair, and might as well have been yanking my own hair. Ouch! Er, anyway. I'm at 6775 words, with almost 600 left to write in the next hour. Today's goal is 7317. Oh yeah, and that chapter ended and my main characters did not meet. But they're really close together now, and shall probably meet in the first scene of chapter three. Really.

Tavy / Tavie

So, I'm at 5650 words and still trying to get my two main characters to meet. And I've changed the spelling of one character's name from "Tavy" to "Tavie." It's short for "Octavian." Ixion is still Ixion. They will meet by the end of the current chapter (which is chapter 2). I wonder if I can find those numerology things I did for Maddy last year. That was silly but fun--psychic predictions for fictional characters. Of course, for some of them, I'd have to come up with birth dates, and I'm not sure the human characters use the same calendar we do. They seem to have March and April in roughly the same places we do, but I think they probably use a pre-Julian Roman calendar. Something to research. I know the kentaurs don't use our calendar.

Er. Right in the middle of today's bunch of words I had to run for the Greek mythology book. Turns out I had remembered the Ixion story correctly, but I needed to make sure. Which isn't to say I'm rewriting Greek mythology, cuz I'm not. It's much stranger. I think. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing. (And that's enough italics for one post.)

This novel is coming out much more reluctantly than last year's. It's partly, I think, because I don't really know where it's going or what it wants to be yet. I know, more or less, the end, but not much of anything in between. I don't even know why the kentaurs are heading for the River Acheron (in Greek myth, it's one of the rivers of the Underworld, the river of woe). I guess I'll find out when they get there.

So, now to go add my NaNoBlog to the sidebar.

It Goes

2011 words today. I'm at 3890 words, and somewhere inside chapter two.

A Madness

It has begun. I'm at 1879 words, which is a pretty good start. I decided to join in NaNoBlogMo and blog my novel as I write it. You can read the whole thing as I go along, in Niko's NaNoBlog. There will be typos, inconsistencies and characters whose names change spelling randomly. Plus, I seem to be really wordy with this one. A little purple even. You have been warned.

Eek!

I just realized that NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. I mean, I hadn't forgotten, it just didn't sink in until this very moment. Starting tomorrow, I need to write 1667 words a day for 20 days to reach 50,000 by the end of the month (actually, it's 1666.6 repeating, but if I write 1667 each day, I'll soon be very, very slightly ahead). Also, I think The Madness of Kentaurs is now called A Madness of Kentaurs, with "madness" being the word for a group of kentaurs/centaurs--like "a murder of crows," "a parliament of owls," "an unkindness of ravens" (my favourite). Hmm. All the ones I know off hand are birds. Anyway. There's still madness involved, of course, but now it's a pun, too. Or something.

Also, I have green hair now. Well, not all of it, just a streak at the front. "Spring green," which is actually more like "really bright, obnoxious green." I like it.

In Lieu of Flowers

Rowena's dad's wake was today, and I didn't make it down to Victoria. I've been trying to come up with a few words for days and days and am forced to conclude once again that there are no words. Or not the right ones. But I will try anyway.

When I was a teenager and young adult, most of my friend's parents didn't like me. One girl's dad said I was "spooky" because I hardly talked. I was debilitatingly shy (I grew out of it, mostly). Rowena's parents, on the other hand, always made me feel welcome, fed me delicious food, and never made me feel like I was required to say anything. Which is maybe why I need to find these words now.

I didn't really know Rowena's dad very well (which may be why I always seem to refer to him as "Rowena's dad" instead of "Mr Hart"), but I remember him as a man who told the coolest stories. Stories about eating ants in the jungle, about finding a shoe--complete with foot--while dredging a river, about poaching pheasants at night with a flashlight and a loop of copper wire. Most of the stories were told at the dinner table, and I thought it was cool that at Rowena's house dinnertime conversation covered topics most people wouldn't touch on while eating. I think, I hope, that Rowena's dad thought better of me because I wasn't bothered by curry with morbid stories.

It's a cliché, maudlin even, to say that the best a person can do with their life is to leave the world a better place than when they entered it, but I do think it's true. And Rowena's dad did leave the world a better place--for me, at least. I don't tend to believe in an afterlife, but if there is one, I'm sure Mr Hart is keeping all the other dead people amused with his stories. And if you happen to encounter a bit of pheasant poaching or a shoe with a dead foot inside in one of my stories, don't blame me.

"Fleeing Arcadia" page 2

Yes, it's that time of the week again--time for a new page of Fey: Fleeing Arcadia, page 2. Incidentally, regular readers (or not) may want to refer back to page 2 of "Drawing Borders" (i.e. the regular series) before reading "Fleeing Arcadia." (Yes, I should have mentioned this last week.) It's not at all necessary, just fun for those who like connections.

Fey: "Fleeing Arcadia"

As I mentioned last week, I'm taking a bit of time to get ahead on the main Fey storyline, "Drawing Borders," so in the meantime I'm running a short (graphic) story. Only one person voted on whether to run a Sorcha-meets-Megan story or an ancient-Greece-with-satyrs story, so Sue gets her way, and satyrs it is. Here: Fey: "Fleeing Arcadia," page 1. (Hand-lettered, no less!) (You can probably see why I decided to PhotoShop-letter "Drawing Borders.")

I Submit an Update

Right, so I blogged a while back about the various things I'd submitted various places. Here's what's come back so far:

• SciFiction sent back a rejection for "King of Kings, Master of Camels," with the lower limit of 2,000 words on the guidelines circled. Note to self: follow your own advice and do not merely read the guidelines, but follow them. I'll probably send it off to F&SF next. Mostly because I like the title.
  
• F&SF sent back a rejection for "Caught on Thorns," handsigned by Assistant Editor John Joseph Adams (aka The Slush God). This is a big step up from a photocopied generic rejection, but still a rejection. (A somewhat better sign is that I haven't had a non-hand-signed rejection from F&SF since the first few stories I sent them way back when.)
  
• Strange Horizons emailed a rejection for my poem "Steampunk Undersea." I really like this poem, for some reason (mostly I love my poetry dearly when I first write it, and then soon realize what awful drivel it is). The Science Fiction Poetry Association has a links page that lists plenty more markets for SF poetry, so I'll send it out a few more times, at least. Maybe to Asimov's once they're done rejecting "Hollow Bones."

So now I've got to get those pieces on their way out somewhere else, and get editing the other stuff I've written, and get it out, and so on.

Edit: Just sent "Steampunk" in as an e-sub to Sidereality.

NaNoNews

It finally occurred to me what I should tackle during this year's NaNoWriMo: The Madness of Kentaurs. It's a YA novel I started working on ages ago, but abandoned because I got too bogged down in taking notes and figuring things out, and lost track of the characters. I only ever wrote the first couple of chapters (and they were short). Madness is an alternate-world fantasy that has some resemblance to the Classical world. The centaurs are sort of cognate to the ancient Greeks (hence the spelling "kentaurs"), and the humans are sort of like the Romans. But not really. I think I got too caught up in the correspondences last time. I won't have time to do that in November. I may blog the novel at Blogger's NaNoBlogMo, but I haven't decided yet. I'm not sure I want anyone staring at my naked prose.

Niko's Toy Clothes

eBay item 5927894422: hakama and gi 12" action figures martial arts 1/6 scale

Latest Reading, Little and Much

Just occurred to me as I wrote that title, that both Little and Much are characters in the Robin Hood legends--Little John and Much the miller's son. Weird. Anyway, it's been a while since I last blathered on about what I've been reading, so here's the latest.

Fiction:

39. Five Weeks in A Balloon by Jules Verne. More in my League of Extraordinary Books reading. The more I read Jules Verne, the more I like. Five Weeks started out mostly description and travelogue, with little action, but there was actually quite a bit of action by the end. I think the real attraction of Verne's books is not so much the story (there isn't much tesion or conflict, and really only a basic plot). It's not even the characters, really, though their relationships are interesting--especially the extent of the loyalty between friends. You don't see that kind of selflessness much in more recent fiction. What really seems to catch me, anyway, are the fascinating speculations. Some science ficiton has been criticized for putting ideas before people, but Verne's are so fascinating that it hardly matters, especially considering a lot of the things he wrote about weren't invented at the time he wrote them, but do exist now. He's one of the few SF writers who can really be said to have predicted the future (or some of it), rather than just speculated on what it might be like. He'd probably say that that was because he very
    carefully worked out the science. Anyway, it also helps that the writing itself (or maybe the translation) is smooth and very readable.
    
40. The Widow of Jerusalem by Alan Gordon. I'm still really enamoured with the idea of a secret society of fools and troubadors, working towards peace in the medieval world. Jesters as secret agents. Very cool. This volume fills in some of the backstory of the main character. I don't know how accurate the depiction of the Holy Land during the Crusades is, but nothing has jumped out as being wrong. It seems to me that the story is based on solid research, which is just the kind of historical tale I like. Fabrication is all very fine, but somehow a good story is that much better when you know (or are confident enough in the author to suppose) that the details are accurate. Erm, anyway, it's a good book. A rousing yarn. Intrigue and juggling, tumbling of various kinds, a little bit of theivery. Assasins, kings, queens . . .
    
41. The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem. I thought it might be a good thing to add some contemporary steampunk to my League of Extraordinary Books reading. After all, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is contemporary steampunk (among other things, I suppose). I'd read William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine some time ago, and loved it. So I dug out a list of steampunk I'd made ages ago, from a website I couldn't find again, and I signed out everything the library had. Which wasn't much, but it was a short list. And I began to read with The Cyberiad. I don't really know that I'd have classified this collection of stories about two robotic "constructors," Trurl and Klapaucius, as steampunk. Then again, I don't really know what else it could be classified as, and classification really doesn't matter in the end. The stories are odd, fable-like, science fantasy tales about improbable machines and strange kingdoms in the far reaches of space. The real fun of the stories is the author's love of language--especially scientific and mathematical language--which comes through even in translation (from Polish). It was a bit of a slow read due to the complexity of the language (though not as slow or as dense as something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for example), but a lot of fun. I can see why many people see Lem's work as classic, and Lem as one of the few "literary" sf writers.
    

Non-Fiction:

49. Shinto: The Kami Way by Sokyo Ono. This is one of those "been meaning to read for ages" books. I finally got it from the library when I got those samurai-related books I blogged about last time. While it didn't have as much detail as I'd have liked--I wanted more on the mythology and ritual--this was a good basic overview of Japan's indigenous religion. I did get very irritated by the frequent mentions of Shinto as a "racial religion," but it was written during the fifties (I think), when even scholars still got race and culture mixed up, or thought race and culture were somehow inextricable, or thought race was a valid scientific concept at all.
    
50. The Jules Verne Companion edited by Peter Haining. More League of Extraordinary Books reading. This book has all kinds of strange and interesting stuff in it, from a Jules Verne story, to appreciations of Verne by various contemporaries (like H.G. Wells), to a "phone call to the dead" between Verne's alleged spirit and Erich Von Daniken. Also, it has lots of covers and other illustrations from various editions of Verne's works, and a bibliography.
    
51. The Book of Kimono by Norio Yamanaka. I got this one to help me work out some of the details in my 1/6 scale samurai outfits for action figures. Not only was it helpful for that, but it turned out to be a fascinating book on its own. Lots of interesting history, and other stuff.
    

Sequential Art:

77. The Great Walls of Samaris by Schuiten and Peeters. A rather slender book, but in the large format that seems to be preferred by European graphic novel publishers. This is a beautiful, beautiful book, a story about a strange city and a man who goes there to find its secret. There isn't a lot I can say without spoiling the story, but if this is typical of French comics work, I'm going to have to find some more French comics. It appears to be volume 2 of a series of fantastic stories. I'll have to see if I can find out more.
    
78. Scary Godmother: The Mystery Date (volume 2, I think) by Jill Thompson. This is a very, very fun book. It's kind of part picture book, part graphic novel, gorgeously illustrated, with great characters. The main character is a little girl who can get into another world via her bedroom closet (with a little help from the monster under the bed). Over there, she has a Scary Godmother, a boy vampire best friend, and adventures with monsters. It's aimed at kids, I think, but it's one of those books adults will get a lot out of, too.
    
79. Parasyte volume 8 by Hitosi Iwaaki.
    
80. Eerie Queerie! volume 1 by Shun Shiozu. Kind of an unfortunate title, though it is the sort of pun manga often has in its Japanese titles. The original title translates as Ghost!, I think. Anyway, it's about a boy who can see ghosts, and who keeps getting possessed by ghosts wanting to settle their affaris in the world so they can pass on. Except he always seems to be possessed by female ghosts who want to work things out with men. Leading to various embarrassing situations for the poor schoolboy protagonist. It might have been another of those silly sit-com comics, except the main character discovers he might actually have real feelings for one of the boys he meets while possessed by an amourous female ghost. Er. I haven't really described it very well. I picked it up out of idle curiosity, having heard fairly favourable things, and ended up quite engrossed. I'll be looking out for more volumes.
    
81. Love Fights volume 1 by Andi Watson. I read Watson's Skeleton Key ages ago, but haven't read anything of his since. I don't know why, as I quite liked Skeleton Key (even though I seem to have traded in my copy of the graphic novel, for what reason I know not). Love Fights is about ordinary people in a city full of superheroes. Also it's about creating comics (in this book, all the comics are licensed propaganda machines for the various superheroes, which must be not unlike working for one of the Big Publishers). And it's a love story. The art is sketchy and rendered in flat blacks and greys, mostly, which suits the mood of the story. Of course, this volume ends after a falling out between the two main characters, so I'm going to have to look for volume 2.
    
82. Fushigi Yugi volume 1 by Yu Watase. This book falls in the "girl falls into alternate historical/mythic world" genre, but the interesting characters, beautiful art, and fascinating detail keep it from being . . . er, generic. I think this is considered one of the classics, though I haven't looked at the publication date to see when it first came out (and I'm too lazy to go look now). Anyway, it's yet another series I'll be continuing to read.
    
83. Maison Ikkoku: Good Housekeeping (volume 4) by Rumiko Takahashi.
    
84. Parasyte volume 9 by Hitosi Iwaaki.
    
85. Chrono Crusade volume 1 by Daisuke Moriyama. I'd read a bit of Chrono
    Crusade in Newtype USA (a massive 200-page monthly anime news magazine that is partly responsible for my lack of non-comics reading lately). It was fun, so I thought I'd see how I liked a bigger chunk of the story. Not only was it just as fun, I was a little surprised (why, I don't know, really) to find quite a lot of depth to the characters and story. I'll have to keep reading to find out what happens to these people (the demon Chrono, in particular). I'll probably have a look at the anime, too.
    
86. Parasyte volume 10 by Hitosi Iwaaki.
    
87. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume 2 by Alan Moore. Yay! More League. This time Moore works in The War of the Worlds and some of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars stuff (on my list of things to read), and some members of the League die or quit along the way, which makes me wonder what can possibly happen in volume 3. While I devoured the comics part of the book, the big text section--a travel guide to the weird world--took me a long time (partly because I kept forgetting where I'd set down the book). The text section manages to work in just about every book of the fantastic up to the late (?) Victorian period (when League is set). It's very cool, but adds a whole lot more stuff to my League of Extraordinary Books reading. Not that I mind.
    
88. The Complete Geisha by Andi Watson. More Andi Watson! This one's about an android raised as human and her attempt to make it as an artist, despite anti-android
    prejudice. She ends up working as a bodyguard for her dad's company, adding some ass-kicking to the story. Interestingly, though the science-fiction elements were necessary for the protagonist to have to fight discrimination, it was so far in the background the story could almost have happened without it. In other words, if you've avoided reading it because it's science fiction (which is a dumb, but not uncommon, reason for not reading things), then read it anyway. The sf is hardly there.
    
89. Cowboy Bebop volume 1 by Yutake Nanten. I've been meaning to write a post about novels/movies/novelizations and manga/anime/manga-izations, partly based on my thoughts about this book. So maybe I won't commment on Cowboy Bebop, except to say that it was fun, but not very satisfying, and I think I'd probably like the anime better.
    
90. Lenore: Wedgies (volume 2, I think) by Roman Dirge. This was a cheap-on-eBay find. Nice art and fun stories, but probably not something I'll spend a lot of money on. Maybe if I'd read right from the beginning I'd have found more depth, but as it is, I didn't see much substance here. I'm keeping the book, though, and will reserve judgement. I might very well be hooked by this series once I've read more.
    
91. Maison Ikkoku: Bedside Manners (volume 6) by Rumiko Takahashi. Argh. The library doesn't have volume 5, so I had to skip from 4 straight to 6. I probably didn't miss a whole lot, but still . . .
    
92. Parasyte volume 11 by Hitosi Iwaaki.
    
93. Inu-Yasha volume 6 by Rumiko Takahashi. I got a lot of Inu-Yasha cheap on eBay, so there are a few volumes on the list this time.
    
94. Inu-Yasha volume 7 by Rumiko Takahashi.
    
95. Inu-Yasha volume 8 by Rumiko Takahashi.
    
96. Inu-Yasha volume 9 by Rumiko Takahashi.
    
97. Inu-Yasha volume 10 by Rumiko Takahashi.
    
98. The Heart of the Beast by Dean Motter, Judith Dupré, and Sean Phillips. This was another booked I picked up on a whim, and I'm really glad I did. The art is gorgeous watercolours, which mostly works--the inclusion of photographic elements sometimes looks cool, and sometimes just looks out of place. The story is sort of a continuation of Frakenstein, but it's so well plotted that you (or I, anyway) only realize this gradually, which adds a tremendous amount to the impact of the story. I sort of wanted a longer lead-up to the characters falling in love, as it seemed to happen a little too quickly, but I also realize that that might have thrown off the timing otherwise.
    
99. Parasyte volume 12 by Hitosi Iwaaki. This is the final volume (for once, the library actually had the whole series). I'm thinking I might have to buy this series. I'm not really a big horror fan, but I'll happily stick with a creepy story that has good characterization. I was pleased to find that Parasyte continued to focus on the main character(s). Even when there was a lot of action and gore, it was about the characters coping with and/or responding to the action and gore, and never about the action and gore for action and gore's sake (can I fit "action and gore" into that sentence one more time?). Anyway, it's a good story that I'll read again if I can find it cheap (getting it from the library again might be too much effort--all that requesting and waiting and discovering that volume 10 was mis-catalogued as volume 8).
    
100. Bone: The Great Cow Race (volume 2) by Jeff Smith. Although I really do like Bone, I'm not really sure why so many people rave about it. It's good, yes. I'd recommend it, yes. But I don't think it's one of the best comics ever. But anyway, this volume was much fun, with more hints of dark things to come. Epic fantasy in comics form and all. I must remember to request the next volume from the library.
     
101. Inu-Yasha volume 11 by Rumiko Takahashi.
     
102. Inu-Yasha volume 12 by Rumiko Takahashi.
     
103. The Five-Star Stories volume 1 by Mamoru Nagano. The gorgeous covers of this series have fascinated me for a long time. That and the fact that no one seems to carry it. I finally found it at Planet Anime, and they were having a graphic novel sale, so I picked up the first two volumes. The art is very nice. The backstory is very, very complex. I'm not sure yet if that's a good thing, a deepens the story as you figure it out thing, or if it's just a too confusing to deal with thing. I think it will be good. I have one more volume to read, after which I'll have to decide if I want to continue with it.
     
104. CLAMP School Detectives volume 1 by CLAMP. Finally, some CLAMP. It was inevitable, in a list this long, that there'd be CLAMP. I think this is my least favourite of everything I've read of CLAMP's. It's a cute detective series, where the detectives are three elementary students at a super-elite school. I enjoyed it, but for some reason it just isn't as engaging as their other stuff. It might be partly because of the young age of the protagonists (though that wasn't a problem in Cardcaptor Sakura). I do have a bit of trouble believing a ten-year-old is a chick magnet. Or it might be that none of the mysteries really seem to matter. Everthing and everyone is just so nice. Oh well, it's only a three-volume series, and I already have volume 2.
     
105. One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry. I found this on the shelf at the front of the library where they put new and popular books. Barry took the idea of painting 100 demons that she found in a book about Zen art, and combined it with autobiography to produce a book of engaging stories (there aren't 100 demons in it; I assume this is volume one, with more to come). The art is cartoony (the stories first appeared as comic strips at Salon.com), but suits the story perfectly. It makes me want to start drawing 100 demons of my own (which might make a good way to start out Into the Woods, though probably without the autobiography).
     
106. Maison Ikkoku: Intensive Care (volume 7) by Rumiko Takahashi.
     
107. Whoa Nellie! by Jaime Hernandez. I got a couple of these comics when they first came out (sort of a later spin-off of Love and Rockets), but there was one that I could never find, so I was happy to pick this book up on eBay. Women's wrestling and friendship, plus Jaime Hernandez's gorgeous black and white art. Very cool. I sat down and read it as soon as I got it out of the envelope.
     
108. CLAMP School Detectives volume 2 by CLAMP.
     

Well, if my other reading has slowed down (partly due to magazines), my comics reading has obviously kept on zooming along. Lots of manga still, but some other great stuff, too.