Bluejo's Journal

And related subjects, my recent Tor.com posts

2009-07-11T15:40:09Z

Sean Stewart's Mockingbird, Geoff Ryman's Air, Dying Inside Robert Silverberg, David Feintuch's Midshipman's Hope, Daniel Abraham's A Shadow in Summer.

Half a Crown nominated for the Sunburst Award!

2009-07-09T19:31:27Z

Full list of nominees here.

It's lovely being nominated for a Canadian award. Despite being in Cardiff right now, I'm feeling as Canadian as possible under the circumstances. Actually, I've been feeling very enthusiastically Canadian all day, as I've battled British dumbed down libraries and the NHS, either of which would be enough to make people emigrate.

Tor.com posts

2009-07-01T00:06:52Z

Sorry, lots of posts and no updates here between being away and everything. I'll try to do better in future.

Nina Kiriki Hoffmann's The Silent Strength of Stones, Cryptonomicon, Babel 17, Iain Banks' The Crow Road, Packing books for a trip, Starman Jones, Scott & Barnett A Point of Hopes, Midnight's Children.

Sonnet (Even Keats made this thought seem a little whiny)

2009-06-30T11:44:00Z

If I should die some night and never see
Dawn's light, my email, and my morning tea,
I face the thought with equanimity,
In fact, it would be worse for you than me.
Not that I want to die and turn to clay.
I'm only half-way through, I want to stay,
I want more years, more books, more chance to say
I love my life, my work, my friends, my day.
But I would know for sure the mystery
Perhaps go on to live again and grow
But even if there's nothing, I would know.
My death I view with calm philosophy
It's other people's death that makes me rage
Weep, grieve, and curse, demand another page.

Trip home from Minneapolis

2009-06-29T19:52:14Z

Herons: 16
Foxes: 1
Hawks: 2
Bitterns: 6
Beavers: 1

And all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well and this blood pressure can just go back to where it's supposed to be any time now.

Trip to Minneapolis

2009-06-19T16:58:13Z

Physical observations (formatted as list)

Great Blue Herons: 5
Foxes: 2
Lakes: 4
Cormorants in tree (perhaps not cormorants?): 6
Deer: 3

Lake Champlain looks just like the Long Lake as drawn by Tolkien. The south part is choked with waterlilies.

Wisconsin!

Philosophical observations (formatted as poetry)

Off, away, between
a blue figure in the corner
of a changing landscape.
Train views are like water,
always the same, changing always
fleeting, glimpsed, gone.
It's easier to say
"the crack in the teacup opens
a lane to the land of the dead"
than
the pattern on the tea-cup opens
delight throughout your head
it doesn't mean the first is truer.
Wisconsin!
Who knew!

Things to remember to put in denim bag in the morning

2009-06-15T17:19:31Z

Lizard.

Janet's Phone.

Eee.

Hairbrush.

Food from fridge.

Waterbottle.

(I think I'm packed, apart from that.)

Recent Tor.com posts

2009-06-11T12:35:06Z

Dunsany's short fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness, Votan and Not For All the Gold in Ireland by John James.

Definitely Fourth Street

2009-06-09T19:47:32Z

OK, I've been medically cleared to go to Minneapolis, so I will be going. But I'd better not get ill when I'm in the US. So, my panels for Fourth Street, which I believe still has a few memberships available if you hurry.

Reasons Things Go Wrong (in the crafting of stories). 7:30pm - 8:30pm Friday. Pamela Dean, Marissa Lingen, Sarah Monette, Catherynne Valente, Jo Walton.

Embracing Exposition. Exposition is your friend. No, really it is. 3:00pm - 4:15pm Saturday. Lois Bujold, Pamela Dean, Sarah Monette, Teresa Nielsen Hayden(M), Jo Walton.

Food Fashion and Fornication: what do these things say about the society in a particular story? 7:30pm - 8:30pm Saturday Karen Anderson, Magenta Griffith, Sarah Monette, Jon Singer, Catherynne Valente, Jo Walton (M)

How to Give and Take Critique 10:00am - 11:00am Sunday from editors, as a beta readers, in writers groups, or from your dog (how to take a critique from your cat would require its own panel, if not its own convention). Marissa Lingen, Beth Meacham (M), Michael Merriam, Jo Walton, Tom Whitmore.

The Stuff of Fantasy The technology of fantasy: what objects say about context, culture, and world. 2:45pm - 4:30pm Sunday Liza Furr, Elise Matthesen, Sarah Monette, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Kathryn Sullivan, Jo Walton (M).

Caffeine

2009-06-08T15:05:47Z

I don't think I drink too much caffeine, and I was astonished to see people suggesting it could be a problem. This is a brief overview of what I already knew, the summary is:

"A 5-oz cup of coffee contains on average 80mg of caffeine (the range is typically 40 to 170 mg depending on the type of brew). Whereas Black tea contains on average 40mg, Oolong tea 30mg, Green tea 20mg, and decaffeinated tea only 2mg of caffeine. Herbal teas usually don't contain any caffeine."

It goes on to explain how you can take 90% of the caffeine out of tea yourself at home by discarding the first brew, which I always do for Pu Er and Oolong, which in any case I drink maybe once a week. So normally, I'm drinking four mugs of green tea over the course of a day, which is the equivalent of 80mg caffeine, or one mug of coffee. If I have a headache or if I'm tired, again maybe once a week, I'll have a mug of Earl Grey, so that would be about 100mg those days.

I switch to tisanes at 15h00 (3pm).

Does this really sound to people like a caffeine problem?

Saturday morning

2009-06-06T16:16:56Z

A couple of posts on Tor.com Faster than Light at any speed, about FTL, and Something old, something new trying to justify reviewing old stuff.

I'm feeling a bit better today, still a little breathless and constricted and exhausted, but no more dizziness thank goodness and I wouldn't define this constriction as actual pain. Also my blood pressure was down to 124/80 when I tested it myself in Pharmaprix. The tests took most of the day yesterday, Z came with me and was very amusing. In the absence of any results yet, I'm tentatively working on a hypothesis that it may be menopause. I like this hypothesis for several reasons, first: no more periods, second: nothing more serious, third: it'll go away. My second favourite suggestion was the idea that my ears are on too tight. Thanks for all the comments, which I really appreciate.

My plants are all growing. The herbs I put in Victoria Day weekend are sufficiently well established that I can use them in food, which is just great. And I have one left of the herb cubes I froze last autumn! I love popping outside to get what I want. I especially love fresh sage, because with everything else the dried or frozen variety is OK, but dried sage might as well be a different plant. This year's seeds are a combination of mixed seeds for hanging baskets (in a window-box on the rail) which are coming up really well, and mixed seeds that butterflies are supposed to like (in another) and some sweet peas in a tub. All these are up and green and growing enthusiastically, though unidentifiable as yet. The ginko tree and the Ontario pine (gift of the Ontario Literary Festival -- did I mention that literary writers get all these cool freebies?) are thriving in their pots. I've put some pansy seeds around the ginko tree, and they seem like the only failures so far, no sign of anything sprouting in there. Oh well.

The restaurant guide for Anticipation is pretty much done. Much of it can be seen on the antici_food community.

Medical

2009-06-05T12:02:52Z

My response to medical things, to things being wrong with me, is to become very calm and detached and analytical, not in the sensible way that causes people to Google the tests being done to them for more information, but in the poetic way where I focus on analysing and remembering the actual specific sensations so I can give them to characters. This is, of course, why I'm writing this. I don't want sympathy -- in fact I hate sympathy, it makes me snarl. Of course, this is one of the areas where rysmiel and I are a bad fit, as rysmiel's reaction to me being ill is to be very sympathetic and terribly fretful. I am often amused, sometimes darkly amused, at whatever I'm feeling, rysmiel tends to be distressed by it.

I thought the room going round was one of those cliches of fiction, like flashing eyes, denoting shorthand. No, turns out that like seeing stars it is a literal thing, and rather disconcerting. When I woke up this morning, I could tell the room was going round even before I opened my eyes. I had all the sensation of being on a merry go round. I opened my eyes, which was much more entertaining. I could make the room rotate around any point. The best rotatary point was the blue spotted stegasaur, the worst was the light fitting. I think I'd have been sick if I'd kept having it go around the light fitting. It still has a slight tendency to do it.

My blood pressure (which has all my life up to the last time I idly checked it in Pharmaprix while Z's A was waiting for a prescription about a month ago, been a steady 120/80) has shot up to ridiculous levels -- 180/90. I feel a strange constriction in my chest, sometimes as pain, more often as pressure. Sitting up is much nicer than lying down. I'm a little short of breath but this definitely isn't asthma, I'm intimately familiar with asthma in all its manifestations, and I tried my inhaler just to make sure.

"Go to the doctor!" those of you who know me are poised to post. "Go to the doctor, because this could be serious!" I've been to the doctor -- I went yesterday. There's a definition they could put with those pain numbers they make you do, "Did you go to the doctor before posting about the symptoms on your LJ?"

Z made me go after I checked the symptoms on the Mayo Clinic web page and couldn't totally rule out a heart attack. He went with me, and was darkly sardonic in the waiting room. ("I hate going to the doctor when I don't feel well." "Yeah, it's the most you can cope with when you're 100%!") I'm not having a heart attack, heart and lungs seem fine to the stethoscope but the doctor was puzzled as to what it actually could be. Today (Canadian free medicine, fast when they think it might need to be) I am having tests, fasting blood tests and various other stuff, some of which might be interesting to experience. Perhaps it is choler, in which case having the blood drawn for the blood tests might make me feel better -- Stephen Maturin would have been sure of it.

I went to Provigo yesterday morning and did all the heavy grocery shopping for the month, sack of potatoes, onions, cans of pepsi, box of beer, iced tea, juice. When I'd put it all on the conveyer belt (for them to deliver) I felt exhausted. I felt as if I needed to sit down for half an hour and have a cup of tea. It wasn't until three hours and several liters of tea later that I felt worried because I didn't feel any less exhausted and I had this breathless constriction.

I still feel that, and I had the room spinning first thing. I was afraid I'd throw up if I sat up suddenly, or even if I moved my head too quickly. I have felt the whole time as if I'll be fine if I rest for half an hour and have a cup of tea. Green tea and Oolong are supposed to be good for blood pressure, so it's a good thing I drink them all the time, because otherwise just think how high it would be.

I'll take possible diagnoses (at any tech level or medical system) sensible suggestions, silly suggestions (please distinguish) useful comparisons, jokes, arguments on socialist medicine (only from zsero) but please no well meant sympathetic wishes.

More of my Tor.com posts

2009-06-03T17:37:15Z

Pohl and Kornbluth'sThe Space Merchants, Daphne Du Maurier's The House on the Strand, Francis Spufford's Backroom Boys. And I just had lovely email from Francis Spufford, thus demonstrating that when you say something about a book on the internet you're better to bet that the author will see it than that they won't.

It's June! (Rabbits!)

2009-06-01T11:09:06Z

The new Lone Star Stories is out with my story "Parable Lost" in it, and a Nina Kiriki Hoffman story, and a terrific poem by sovay as well as other good stuff by other people. Go and enjoy it.

Parable Lost is the one about the jellyfish to go with Tradition (the one about the ham) which was also in Lone Star Stories. And the beach featured in it is Mumbles, near Swansea, which is also the beach featured in my poem Candlemass poem (also in LSS) which seems to be the canonical default beach that comes to mind when I write about a beach.

Recent posts at Tor: Delany's Nova, Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day.

And related subjects...

2009-05-28T12:19:06Z

Is the right thing winning the Hugo a look at 1990. Hyperion. Walter Jon Williams's Dread Empire's Fall books.

Doctrine of Labyrinths on Tor.com

2009-05-25T18:27:31Z

Sarah Monette (truepenny's Melusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, and Corambis.

Do my research for me: Overland bus query

2009-05-24T19:47:54Z

What year is the last year it was possible to take the bus from London to Athens? I took it several times to and fro in the early eighties. When is the latest date it could have run, before the trouble in what-was-then-Yugoslavia stopped it?

Oh yeah, sorry

2009-05-19T15:17:04Z

My recent posts on Tor.com:

Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers, Lisa Goldstein's Tourists, Where do you find out about new books?, Susan Palwick's The Fate of Mice, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, Is alternate history SF, Cherryh's Conspirator.

Nine things about Heraclitus

2009-05-19T12:29:54Z

(For siona, in a dream)

Heraclitus says "You can't step into the same river twice."

You can't step into the same river even once;
rivers are always changing.

All the same, there is a reason we keep calling it the same river.

Live beside the river and learn it in its seasons.
Learn the rocks and the water,
the light and the sky,
the slow undercut of the bank,
the gurgling swirl between the rocks.
When the beer-coloured spate tears down the bridge,
and when you cross dry shod on the big stones,
it is and is not the same river.

Walk the whole length of the river
from the spreading delta to the sulky seep of upland spring.
There is a gorge in the mountains.
a shallow meander where the frogs are singing,
a brown pool where the trout sip flies.
If you watch by the willows you might see a kingfisher dive.
There's a rowan on a shelf above the waterfall,
a power-station by the dam.

This river takes too long to step into.

You doubt the concept of river;
the river has been your constant companion.

You call the river your friend;
the river doesn't know you exist.

"You can't step into the same river twice"
the river isn't the only quantity in that equation.

Now here's my plan...

2009-05-15T13:27:55Z

Fringe

In Montreal, Thursday June 11th -- Monday June 15th

Fourth Street

Tuesday June 16th Leave Montreal Adirondack 09h30
Arrive Schenectady 16h50
(Anyone want to meet up in the station in Schenectady?)
Leave Schenectady Lake Shore Limited 19h31

Wednesday June 17th arrive Chicago 09h45
(Anyone want to meet up in Chicago on a Wednesday morning?)
Leave Chicago 15h15 Empire Builder
Arrive Minneapolis 22h31

Thursday June 18th -- Playreading, Midsummer Night's Dream

Friday June 19th-Sunday June 21st Fourth Street Fantasy Convention

Monday 22nd-Tuesday 23rd, in Minneapolis. (Anyone want to meet up?)

Wednesday 24th June, leave Minneapolis Empire Builder 07h50
Arrive Chicago 15h55
(Anyone want to meet up in Chicago railway station?)
Leave Chicago Lake Shore Limited 21h00
Thursday 25th June Arrive New York 18h35

Friday 26th June In New York. Anyone want to meet up?

Saturday 27th June Leave New York Adirondack 08,20
Arrive Montreal 19h10

Rest.

Britain

Thursday July 2nd 22h05 Leave Montreal on a plane.
Friday July 3rd 09h35 Arrive Heathrow.

I will then be in Cardiff, with a definite trip to Lancaster and a possible trip to London, not yet scheduled -- anyone want to meet up?

Monday July 27th 17h30 Leave Heathrow
Arrive Montreal 19h30

Worldcon, Anticipation, in Montreal
August 6th - 10th

The lessons of fairytales

2009-05-12T21:44:29Z

Fairytales are lies but
Not far down inside
Lurking in the sugar-coating
The truth will bite you.

Be kind to animals, old ladies, psychopomps,
Unshod unlikely unknowables
It will make the world better
Even if they're not disguised.

Beware of greed, of short-term goals,
Never snatch, consider well your choices,
Do not grab for the quick gold,
The lead may hold more promise.

Never slight your inferiors
Don't abuse your stepchildren
Do not steal but consider exchanging
A safe cow for some chance of change.

Boasting will lead to trouble.
You may trick the tricksters.
No more rely on luck
Than spurn it if it strikes you.

And if you should find yourself
In some impossible predicament
Never despair, for hope and fortitude
Are much more likely to be rewarded.

There may be no magical salvation
But equipped with these fairytale principles
You are fitted to quest in the world,
Well deserving of half the kingdom.

My recent posts on Tor.com

2009-05-10T13:57:00Z

John Brunner's The Infinitive of Go, Gillian Bradshaw's The Beacon at Alexandria, M.A. Foster's The Gameplayers of Zan.

Half a Crown Nominated for Sidewise Awards

2009-05-08T11:33:00Z

The Affinity Bridge, George Mann (Snowbooks; Tor '09)
The Dragon's Nine Sons, Chris Roberson (Solaris)
Half a Crown, Jo Walton (Tor)
Nation, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
Swiftly, Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

Full list here.

So, on the one hand, I'm on an awards list with Terry Pratchett! That's really cool!! On the other hand, it does seem to suggest there's not much hope of actually winning. But it's an honour to be nominated, it really is.

Back from Ottawa

2009-05-06T14:07:43Z

I had a great time in Ottawa. Literary Festivals are very very different from conventions, but I had fun anyway. We got there about lunchtime and walked about a bit and went to a bookshop, then walked about a bit more, then had dinner and went to the thing. My panel went quite well. I did have to stand up to read, which I didn't realise in advance, and by the time I did realise would have been very disruptive to change, so I just put up with it. I read the first half of the first chapter of Ha'Penny, cut a little for timing, and it seemed to go over quite well. There's a thing when you're reading aloud and people are being quiet listening and then they suddenly go to a new level of quiet. The questions were intelligent and it all worked much better than I was afraid it would, with me and two urban fantasy writers.

Ursula Le Guin was wonderful. She read a couple of poems and a bit of Lavinia, which everyone kept referring to as if it had just come out. (It's been out a year! I've read it twice already!) She talked about writing and life and when asked where she got her ideas from, she said "My beautiful world." There was an amazing contrast between this tiny fragile person and the powerful strong things she was saying. Z said afterwards that she was a Fourth, which won't make any sense unless you've read Spin, but which struck us as remarkably insightful.

Sunday we hot-tubbed, then after breakfast we went to the art gallery to see the remarkable Inuit piece Ursula Le Guin had mentioned. Then the others went home in Rene's car and I stayed and hung out on my own in the afternoon. The waitress in the cafe where I had a cup of tea recognised me from the night before, which was weird but nifty. I came home first class on the train -- the festival had bought the tickets. First class on Via rail includes a meal, of better than plane food, and free wine and tea. That's the glamorous life of a writer!

The festival also gave me a tree, just a little one, which I have planted in a pot on the balcony. And the seeds I planted optimistically last week have started to come up. They're about a millimetre high, so you can't tell what they are yet, but I love them already.

Unfortunately since coming home I've been flattened with a stomach virus, which isn't Ottawa's fault or the train's, as Z's girlfriend had it on Friday.

Tor posts: Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.