Happy Year-End!

Oof. Half a bottle of wine, a glass of cider, and a slice of rum-soaked Christmas pudding with rum butter, and I am not firmly anchored to the turning world, I must say.
So I will post some pics, which will not risk spelling or syntactical errors.

 An artistic shot of one of our saffron-producing croci, beside the front gate in November, taken by Mark.

 Me icing my birthday cake, with the icing left over from doing Christmas cookies. Also taken by Mark. He took about a dozen, but I kept moving at the crucial moment and coming out blurred.
The overall icing is butterscotch, melted butter, cream and brown sugar. The coloured icing is basic butter icing. The red behaved much better then than it had for adding holly berries and suchlike to the cookies, but I don't know why.

Baking tally, hmmm...
Two batches of cake gingerbread
1 batch of gingerbread men
4 pans of 'petticoat tail' shortbread
1 batch of rolled shortbread
2 pans of oatmeal shortbread
2 pans of chocolate shortbread
1 pan of domino cookies (choc shortbread with white choc chips)
1 batch of cardomon sugar cookies
1 batch of honey cookies
2 batches of rolled & cut Christmas cookies, iced
1 batch of caramel sandwich cookies
2 batches of cheese shortbread (1 spicy, 1 plain)
2 batches of butter pecan shortbread
3 pounds of sugared walnuts
3 pounds of candied grapefruit peel

Tomorrow I may do butter tarts.

For Christmas dinner I made a spinach and feta pie for the boy, who has gone vegetarian, the pastry done with a veg shortening called Fluffo (which makes me laugh). Mark very very kindly dealt with the stalks and washing and stir-frying of the spinach, to spare me from the cooking side of things. I get somewhat nervous when I have to jigger a recipe the first time  I use it, so his prodding was more than a little helpful. 

The duck was dinner for the carnivores. Mmm. And made into curry, it fed another ten diners (two to four at a time).
I got to try out my Christmas present of an ergonomic potato masher, and very effective it was too.
Other cool presents - a long-handled pruning hook, with saw, so that I can Deal With that tree that's overshadowing the roses in the front.
And a Kobo e-reader. Which I am still learning my way around, after helpful lessons and work-arounds from Chris.

 A definitive sign of Christmas being over, I reckon. A flat Santa. (photo by Mark)
By the way, while I understand several of the Christmas totems (nutcracker soldier, reindeer, Santa in a prop airplane), I am stumped by the cartoon owl with Santa hat. Is it from some animated Christmas special I've missed? From the back it looks like a monstrous baked potato with a Santa hat, which is less Christmassy than one might think.
I prefer plywood to inflatables, but that's probably just my failure to move with the times.

A cute cat picture to see you to year's end. At present, Priss is squished between my breastbone and the back of the Capisco chair, relaxed and purring. Here she is at the kitchen table, preventing me from doing anything useful.
Though in cat terms I'm probably doing the most useful thing of all, providing aid and comfort to the cat. 



all photos by Mark, it seems!

Merry Christmas!

And other winter festivals as appropriate to your particular circumstances. Also my birthday. Yay!
The beating of Cost of Silver into another shape has been set aside for a while in favour of Christmassy things like writing and mailing cards, visiting friends, wrapping presents, decorating, and baking cookies (in a leisurely way, since I only just finished icing the rolled cookies).

 A little early this year (that is, before Christmas Eve) we brought in the greenery.
The tree was decorated with the assistance of Tess and Rowan, so there's rather more ornaments on the lower 2/3ds than on the top, and some of them are a bit crowded.
It still looks good with the lights on - and none of them blinking, after Tess's careful examination of every bulb to make sure.
If you're wondering, yes, we are standing on the big table, which Mark's mother used to polish by walking a floor polisher up and down it.

(The box of stuff in the front is my collection of antiquities, waiting on the new position of the display case, which is waiting on us figuring out where it will go.)

And here's my cubicle at work, where Christmas gets serious. It takes a couple of days to get everything out and on the shelves, once I've cleared off the books and orders that usually occupy that space.

Each year the Times-Colonist paper (yes, Victoria's newspaper really is called the Colonist) prints a map with routes to see the best light displays, and I always resolve to go and see them, but there isn't always time.
This year Mark got me out of the house, abandoning baking and wrapping for an evening, so here are some pics to share the Christmas wattage.

Here is but one small corner of the house that really goes all out. You need to get out and walk around the yard for the full experience.
I managed to enjoy it in an entirely non-ironic fashion, and without wondering about their electric bill until later.

 I admit it, this pic is for the sake of the madly excited pine tree in the front.
Whe I was a young child, our family would drive into Vancouver for Christmas shopping, and to visit my godmother. Near her house was a family who each year put up plywood figures of a snowman family. This was a high point of Christmas shopping, to drive by the snowman family.

On the other hand, the big department stores, like Hudson's Bay and Eatons, would fill their display windows not with fashion mannequins and goods for sale, but with Christmas scenes of trains, skating rinks, Dickens-era carollers, inhabited by animatronic children and elves. I don't know if anyone still does that, devote retail display space to a non-retail purpose. Perhaps no one can afford to anymore. So it's fallen to individuals to make up the balance of animatronic skating rinks?

I have to mash potatoes in a minute, so I'll leave you with the more spiritual side of Christmas, as expressed (like the snowman family) in plywood.
Merry Christmas!

metaphorical cat

Here, the cat takes on the role of symbolising Christmas tasks such as addressing and mailing cards, wrapping presents, and decorating the house, as she rises over my head.

Picture taken with Mark's IPad.

long tail?

Two weeks knee-deep in the 1600s, and last week hip-deep in other people's books.

I was helping with the United Way booksale at the university Student Union Building, and a right object lesson in humility for fiction writers it was.
See, it turns out that the hardest category to sell, even for $2 a pop is ...

Hardcover fiction.

Doesn't matter which genre. We had stacks of mysteries, thrillers, romance, Canlit, bildungsroman, small-town angst, wry slackers, picaresque, in shiny clean dustjackets and shabby library brodarts, sitting there yearningly like unattractive Babylonian women in that Herodotus story.
In the meantime, nonfiction, maps, and mass-market paperbacks were trundling steadily out the door.
Sarah the amazing co-op student and I made up gift baskets of thrillers, mysteries and romances with props like martini glasses, teacups, teabags and candles, in hopes of moving a few more, but even this did little to thin the ranks.

I took pity and took a few home at sale's end. For Christmas presents, of course.
Really. I'm not adding more books to my library when I should be weeding. Of course I'm not.

ergonomic cat

As you may recall, my 'writing room' has a HAG Capisco chair, which is super-ergonomic and ... has no provision for a lap.  Especially if I'm sitting in it backwards, which I do a lot.
Since the cat loves my writing sessions because I remain sitting for a couple of hours at a time, furnishing her with a lap, I wondered how she would cope.
She found a way.

 

In other non-writing news, I have successfully made apple peeling jelly, from this recipe here! I reduced the sugar and added a grated quince (from my brother's trees) for more pectin, and some ginger slices, not being a cinnamon fan.  

I don't know that I'll do this a lot, but I feel fairly virtuous about it, despite the extra electricity use.  And I can still compost the peels & cores afterwards.

You may have noticed, faithful reader(s), that I haven't said much about nature's goddamn bounty this fall. This is because something like 80% of the Spartan and Golden Delicious apples have Gone Away to be made into cider. So you may hear some groaning when bottling time arrives. 

In actual writing news, I have received 6 pages of editorial comments on the Dread Synopsis, which will require substantial revision (naturally). It seems I went too far on the expansion of historical scope / events / characters. Plus need to clarify motivations, provide closure to plot threads, etc. My agent includes this observation, which I found very interesting, so I share it with you:

As I read over this synopsis and thought about what kind of book succeeds I realized that what editors really want is a novel that feels like it has scope, but which isn't actually too complicated in plot because too much complexity undercuts the suspense and pacing.

There you are, actual writing advice. Now I need to take it into the revision.

WFC 2011 panels

 While I'm stuck in the kitchen waiting for the apple peeling jelly to cook down to jelly consistency, why don't I give you a few pictures from the sf-con side of WFC?
This is the last panel I attended, and a good one, too. Time Goggles: Modern perspectives and period literature. Emma Bull moderated, with panelists Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Bradford Lyau, and Marie Brennan.
Some very good discussion of how to honestly portray period attitudes without losing reader sympathy--and that tightrope between giving a character modern-day sensibilities and appearing to condone repellent practices like slavery.

 Another good one - The Not-So-Fair Folk, a discussion of the bad fae, fairies as fearsome rather than charming or benign.
Delia Sherman has something to say about this, as Mercedes Yardley listens.

Woo! Thanks to Mercedes linking it, I discover that there's a podcast of this panel on the Filipino Bibliophile.

 Jenny Blackford and Patrick Rothfuss were the other panelists. I realise that now I'll have to find my copy of Dreaming Again and re-read Jenny's story.

(Excuse me here, as the jelly seems to have reached the required temperature. Back soon.)

 With Holly Black as moderator. She had some great facial expressions as she guided the discussion or prodded the panelists, and I wish I'd caught one of the sly ones, but this will have to do as a hint.

 I might have skipped I Believe That Children Are the Future, because I've been to a few panels on juvenile and YA fantasy recently, but I couldn't resist the lineup. In any case, the discussion veered rapidly to trends in YA fantasy, particularly paranormal romance and The Book That Must Not Be Named.

Here, Tamora Pierce speculates on the mechanics of sex with the undead/dead.

 And here, Cindy Pon and Karen Healey react to those speculations.

It was a pretty amusing panel, and Tamora Pierce was gracious enough to stop in the hallway and sign books (she hadn't been at the Friday night autograph session).

Because I am, apparently, not at all on the ball, I took no photos at The Coral Sword: material culture of undersea civilizations, with panelist Sharon Mock (fellow VPer), or at But Can You Take Him Home to Mother: paranormal romance, with panelist Sandra Wickham (fellow SF-Canada).
But! Here is a pic of From Elfland to Poughkeepsie: should fantasy sound like fantasy? with Terri-Lynne Defino, Susan Forest, Ellen Klages, Shawna McCarthy and Ellen Kushner as moderator. How's that for star power?

Obviously, only to be outdone by Neil Gaiman, taking the podium during Opening Ceremonies. 
This is as close as I got to the Neil. The lineup for signings for him was immensely long, and so was the second signing added to make up for those who missed out the first time. The man must have signing muscles of iron by now.

This last pic here is why I missed about half the panels I'd put arrows next to--all the hanging out with VPers & associates.
I've forgotten the name of this restaurant, which I guess is a chain in the States? Any road, it's the chain where you can have Asian-fusion food next to the butt-end of a giant concrete horse. I hope sincerely that's an identifying feature.

I got back to the site in time to catch part of Out From Under the Bed: Monster as Protagonist, and managed to stay awake for How to Survive the Coming Zombie War (conclusion: I am pathetically unprepared and am doomed).

Panels I missed because of hanging out with people and eating food or scheduling difficulties (ie need for sleep):
The Role of Class in Fantasy and Horror
The Successful Misfit as a Theme in Fantasy
Founders of Steampunk
William Hope Hodgson's Nautical Horrors
Who Wants to Live Forever? Immortals
Don't Open That Door! The role of stupidity in genre fiction

On the whole, I think this was the best lineup of panels of the World Fantasy Conventions I've attended. Plus, that really annoying moderator whose name I've forgotten wasn't there.

because it is Nanowrimo

An excerpt from Maenads at Band Camp, which, if I finish it and have the nerve to attempt the YA Paranormal market, will probably go out with one of those portentous one-word titles instead. I'm favouring Muse.

This is about midway, from the pov of the Sensible Girl, Cassia:

I slid down the grassy overhang, and landed with a sandy thump on the narrow beach. Good thing they'd picked the sand beach, instead of the pebbled boat lauch. And there they were, all seven of the Parthenoi, some standing with arms crossed, some cross-legged or kneeling on the sand. I couldn't tell which was which in the moonlight, with all their hair turned black and silver.
"Okay," I said. "I came. And I didn't tell anyone I was coming. But I'm telling you now, I'm going to use my own judgement about what I tell Kay. I'm not keeping secrets from her."
"That is well." Oleia's voice. "She may believe what she hears from you."
"You're going to tell me something that's hard to believe, right?" I wasn't too sure what was still hard to believe, if the last few days were believable. They happened, I told myself. That means you believe them. Otherwise you can't trust anything.
"Hard for some. Your friend will not wish to believe."
I'd read about 'her heart sank'. Now I knew what it felt like. More in my stomach than heart, but I guess that doesn't sound as dramatic. "This is about Adrian."
"What have you guessed?"
"Uh-uh." I shook my head. "No. I know how a cold reading works. You have to tell me what's going on, you don't get to let me fill it in while you pretend you knew all along. That's what con artists and fake mediums do, and I'm not going to fall for it."
A sigh rippled across them, starting with Oleia and ending with the two who were kneeling.
Oleia seemed to hesitate, which was not what I was used to from her. "You have seen what happens when we sing. When Adrian plays."
"No kidding. And I've seen that Dubois and Sawchuk don't see what happens. Cute trick."
"Do you know what Parthenoi means?"
Jazz had told me, after he'd googled it in town. "Virgins. So?"
"It is a name of--courtesy for the dancers of Dionysus. The Maenads."
I bit my tongue and managed not to say 'the what?' Maenads was the spelling my brain came up with after a second. The first thing I remembered was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with Bacchus and the wild girls making vines spring up in freed Narnia. But C. S. Lewis hadn't written the real maenads and bacchanalia, not in a kid's book, not by a long way. Hadn't Lucy said she'd have been afraid of them if Aslan hadn't been there? What about the real (mythical) maenads? Come on, brain, you read a book of Greek myths when you were thirteen...
Dionysus, the god of wine and madness. The bacchanalia, a mad dance and orgy, which sounded like fun (a ceilidh?) until you read about mad women chasing animals and tearing them apart with their bare hands. Mad women who demanded that Orpheus play his lyre for them. But Orpheus was mourning for what's-her-name and refused. So the Maenads tore him apart, and his head floated down the river, singing...
I shivered, and it wasn't just the cold wind off the water. "The Maenads who murdered Orpheus."
One of the sitting girls spoke. "Not murdered. The son of a god is not so easily dealt with."
There were seven of them, and one of me. I knew the ground better, and my night sight was pretty good, but--better to stand and face them. "You got me to break bounds so you could test my trivia knowledge of Myths and Legends of the Ancient World?"
"Not ancient," said Oreia, without a smile or sneer. "Now. We are the Maenads, we pursue Orpheus down the millennia, but the story is not as you have learnt it."
I crossed my arms, partly for warmth and partly to look bigger and more businesslike. "No kidding. What's your version?"
The sitting girl spoke again. "She is not ready to hear. Let us go." They swivelled their heads all together as if they had practiced for hours, and the seated ones flowed smoothly to standing, so they were all poised to leap up the bank and run into the night.
"Wait," I said. "Is this about Kayley? Is she in some kind of danger?"
They turned their faces toward me, all together, and the moon lit their eyes to white. "She s always in danger. In every life."
"Wait, every life? You mean, reincarnation?" I tried to remember. Did the ancient Greeks even believe in reincarnation? Didn't all their dead end up as ghosts in Hades, the most boring afterlife ever? "No, forget that. Is Kayley in danger now? Here and now, at Forbidden Lake, this summer? No double-talk, just tell me yes or no."
The moonlight cut Oleia's face into cold stone, a statue that didn't understand pity or fear. "Yes. She is in danger."
That book of myths had taught me one thing:  gods and other immortals were double-talking, double-dealing bastards, worse than lawyers about hidden clauses, fine print, and reading between the lines. "Be specific."
"If she continues on her present path, she will be dead before the week is out."