Rosemary Kirstein

I hope your Thanksgiving holiday was lovely. Mine was — my sister and I celebrated it early, heading up to hang with our pals in New Hampshire. Everyone was fully vaccinated (and some even boosted); it was just such a relief to not have to worry about proximity and masking. Good food, great company and conversation — and bonus fuzzy kitty.

And when it was all over, my sister hit the road. Yes! The condo was sold, three days after going on the market. No more: painting, cleaning, trips to the dump, trips to Goodwill, spackling, sanding, hauling, tossing, organizing, reorganizing, floor-scrubbing, repainting, polishing, putting in storage, angst, exhaustion, etc. She’s in Florida now, resting from her (OUR) labors and regrouping. Shortly, her search for the perfect camper-top to put on her Silverado will commence.

As for me, I’ve been gearing up to do a deep dive into writing — and having no one around for the holidays is pretty attractive right now! Historically I lock myself away for the Thanksgiving holiday week; this year it’ll be most of December. Clearing the decks, trying to get as many chores done ahead of time as possible. Limit my social media, ignore non-urgent emails. We’ll see how it works out.

In other news: Over on Goodreads, the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club did a group read of The Steerswoman, and asked if I would do a Q&A.   And I did!  It was fun.

Books recently read:

Well, there’s Susanna Clarke’s Piranisi which I utterly loved.  If you haven’t read it yet, avoid any reviews that describe the events even slightly!  One of the beautiful things about the book is the grace with which Clarke controls the reader’s slow accumulation of understanding.  It is slipped to you piece-by-piece through the eyes and voice of the protagonist.   Mystery and discovery.  So wonderful.

And in my never-ending quest to catch up on the good books of the past that I have missed:

Nancy Springer’s Larque on the Wing — what an odd, sweet, sweet, joyful little gender-bender of a book!  It made me very happy.

And bless Open Road Media for bringing out-of -print books back on the market.   Not everyone is game for the self-pub route.   Open Road does good.

Jo Walton’s kickstarter to get audio version of her novel Lifelode has reached its goal, so yes, there will be an audiobook.   I think it’s still possible to contribute, and for the $15 level you an ebook version, and the audiobook when it’s done.  Worth doing.

Also  my Kindle reader just presented me with my pre-ordered copy of the final volume of James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series, Leviathan Falls. Frankly, I’m afraid to start reading it, because I’m likely to drop everything else and use my time reading instead of writing!  But  I do love that series so much.

But I’m a fast reader… and you know — a little inspiration?  Might not hurt; could help.

Last bit of news:  it snowed.  A little bit.  A few flakes.  But there it was.

Look closely, now….

Picture One:

Picture 1

And Picture Two:

Picture 2

Picture One is the little footbridge just outside my office, crossing over a branch of the Quinnipiac River.

Picture Two is the exact same footbridge,  improved by the presence of the other two members of the Fabulous Genrettes: Laurie J. Marks and Delia Sherman!

Yes, the Genrettes have met again, and for the first time it’s in my town. In, in fact, my actual office.

This made possible by the state of Connecticut finally realizing that if they want people to use public transportation more, there has to be more public transportation.  In the form of, say, trains.

We always had some trains coming by, and my town always had a train station; but the trains were few and inconveniently timed.  Now, we have much nicer train station, and more trains.  Enabling people from, say, New York City, and who don’t like to drive, to come to my town!  And go back on the same day.

It’s still a long ride, but Delia is a veteran train-traveler.   She used the time to good effect.  Working on her novel.

It was lovely to be able to host the Genrettes right in my own special creative space.  And coincidentally, I had just rearranged and reorganized it, to make it especially roomy and and comfortable.

Laurie J Marks, just hangin’ out.

Laurie has been here before, as she lives closer than Delia does.  And does not have to negotiate New York City traffic to get here.

But I hadn’t seen Delia since before the pandemic set in.   We are all completely vaccinated, so no masks, no distancing… Just three chums, catching up, eating sandwiches, drinking tea and coffee.  Talking books, and plots and ideas, and life in general.

I have to say, it was such a relief.  And a great lift to one’s spirits.

Delia also had the opportunity to admire Laurie’s artistic projects.

One big notebook, one smaller….Both full of wonderfulness.

Laurie’s been working hard on her nature drawing, and some of her pictures are just stunning.  They really strike me as the sort of drawings that a Steerswoman might do in the field, recording her observations and discoveries.  That sort of style and clarity.

You may click to embiggen. In fact, I urge you to do so.

It reminds me of the work of Hannah Hinchman, and her book, A Trail Through Leaves, which I have mentioned before…

This is a book I love a lot.  Hinchman also has this Steerswomanly way of observing the natural world.

And in other news, Jo Walton has set up a Kickstarter to make an audiobook of her novel Lifelode.  The Kickstarter met its goal; I checked the page and it looked like they’d closed it to new contributions.  But it means that the audiobook is in the works, and that’s a good thing!

And by the way, the ebook version is currently priced at less than a cup of coffee.  I don’t know how long that will last…

I really enjoyed the book when I first read it years ago; in fact, its time for a re-read.

And in other other news: some chores and obligations that I had have now been completed, and my time is my own again!  Whew.

Yep; here it is: from Volume 6, The City in the Crags, Chapter One

Why from Volume 6 instead of Volume 5, you ask?

Because my Decameron contribution needed to be something never previously published — and that also applies to excerpts posted on blogs.  And while there are bits from Volume 5 that make good excerpts, and are reasonably comprehensible without the full story, and do not contain too many spoilers — well, I’ve posted most of ’em here. It’s my habit, when I do a live reading, to later share what I’ve read with people who were not able to attend the reading; and I do that by putting it here.

But although I have read the opening of The City in the Crags live before, I somehow never posted it.  Therefore: technically unpublished.

So, there it is, for your self-isolation diversion.

Oh, and don’t forget that Jo Walton has created lead-ins for each of the Decameron tales; and that the lead-in  is located at the end of the previous tale. So, you should read Leah Bobet’s story to hear the lead-in to mine; and read Jo Walton’s piece of Or As You Will to hear how she moves into Leah’s story, as well as the opening of the whole frame-story. And a the end of my bit today, you’ll find a lead-in for tomorrow’s tale: Max Gladstone’s “Stop Motion”…

Oh, just read ’em all.  You know you want to.

The Decameron Project.

Summer and Autumn have been unusually busy for me — a lot more chunks of travel than I generally do in so short a time.  I seem to be having a lot of trouble getting my feet back under me…

I’m one of those introverts who can happily operate as an extrovert — for a limited period of time.   But after a certain point, I need to go off, be alone, and sort reassemble my personality.  But by stacking up my social interactions this closely, it looks like the down-times between events just aren’t enough.  I’ve basically overloaded my central processor and am operating at a decidedly sub-0ptimal clock speed.

But everything I was doing was so very interesting!  Couldn’t miss out on any of it, right?

Well.  One more spate of socializing, and I’ll basically hunker down for the rest of November.

November is National Novel Writing Month (AKA NaNoWriMo), and no, I’m not planning to sign up for that.   But what I will do is take the month of November off from working on Book 5 (and/or Book 6, and/or the linked &YA novel), and work on a completely unrelated short-ish story.  Because I need to think about something else for a while!   Something with a definite endpoint.  I’ve been banging my head against the issues in Books 5 and 6, I seem to be going in circles.  Clearly, I need to step away for a bit.  November sounds good for that.  Plus: hey, short story!  Well, short-ish.

I generally forego big Thanksgiving holiday trips and extended visits, so November is my traditional time to shut out the world and let it eat turkey without me.  Although, I will show up for leftovers.  If it doesn’t involve an overnight.

Some of what’s been keeping me busy:

This was my second year attending Scintillation in Montreal–  actually, it was only the second year of Scintillation’s existence.

This is a lovely small convention, with an excellent  collection of  guests.  The hotel is a Holiday Inn right at the edge of Montreal’s Chinatown, with fascinating walking areas, and great food and sights. Although, this time I didn’t do as much walking around town as last year.   I do think I want to make sure that I don’t skip that next year.

Hotel lobby with convenient restaurant and koi pond. Plus: labyrinthine paths over the water.

Friendly fishies.

Some standout moments:

I attended a reading by A.E. Prevost, who is also one of the proprietors of Argo Bookshop. I had never read anything by Prevost, and came to their reading completely cold, and was absolutely delighted.  I do wish I could recall the name of the story, however; it’s a work in progress, and I do not want to miss it when it’s published.

I was on a panel about designing aliens, with Alison Sinclair, Diane Kelly, Jim Cambias and Ferret Steinmetz, which was a lot of fun — and later had an especially interesting conversation with Diane, who is a biologist at UMass Amherst, and Jim, who it turns out is her husband.  (I nabbed one of Jim’s books, but I’m so incredibly behind in my reading!  So I cannot speak knowledgeably about A Darkling Sea yet, but I do possess a copy!)

Jo Walton‘s reading was especially wonderful.  She read from the start of Or What You Will, a book certain to break the heart (in a good way) of any writer who reads it.   The excerpt certainly did that for me.  And she also read some of her best poems, so… I was blown away on two entirely separate fronts.

Ruthanna Emrys had a reading as well, from an upcoming work (whose title escapes me, darn it!).  It’s the second time I heard her read from this book, and I keep liking it better and better.  You know, it just makes sense: when you’re meeting the aliens, if your baby’s diaper happens to need changing, you just stop and change the damn diaper.  That’s life.

Su J. Sokol read from the sequel to Cycling to Asylum.   The section she read was compelling enough that I instantly bought the Kindle version of  Cycling to Asylum so I could get up to speed!

Su and I were also on a program item together, which was, um, an interview of me.

This is the third time in my life that I’ve been in the spotlight in some way, and it felt a bit unlikely, a bit unreal… until it actually started.  Su and I just basically had a conversation; she made the whole process quite simple and enjoyable.  And the audience was full of wonderful people, and I was amazed, and touched by their attention and appreciation.   I want to say more about this, but — later.  I need to mull this over a bit.

For my own reading, I read from the beginning of Book 5 — and then did a change-up and also read from the beginning of Book 6.   Alas, I had forgotten that when reading the start of Book 6, it’s a good idea to practice it out loud first; there’s a specific rhythm to the way people in The Crags speak, and when I don’t prepare, my delivery can falter.  Which it did.  But it was still fun

I’m going to have to pause here, since (as usual; will I never learn?) I’ve left blogging to the end of the day and the end of the day has come and gone, and the beginning of the day already looming.  Must sleep, and then prep to leave again, and then leave, and then come back.

So, more later.  (Unless that short story is going really well, in which case I will be busy!)

View from the footbridge just outside my office building.

Oh, look.  I wrote a poem:

JO WALTON WRITES SONNETS

She tells me that it’s more or less a knack,
The pattern’s that familiar, and the pace.
She knows the beats, and how the rhymes will stack,
With every iamb solidly in place.

With that, she simply lives her life, with all
Its thoughts and feelings, plans and acts. Her days
Are given to her work — but should she call,
The words slip nimbly into their arrays.

But there’s a thing she doesn’t say. Perhaps
Forgotten, being learned so long ago
That years and dreams and decades that elapse
Have moved it from Surprise to Simply So.

It’s this: Delights, when loved and fully known
Will choose to serve — and name you as their own.

(You can subscribe to Jo Walton’s poetry Patreon right here.)

There were two other panels that I participated in, both well worth the time.

One was on Writing a Series, with Ruthanna Emrys, Sherwood Smith, Debra Doyle (with her oft-times collaborator Jim MacDonald commenting from the audience), and Fran Wilde.  Many issues were covered, including: planned series vs. accidental series ;   secondary characters who end up getting their own story;  famous series and what makes them good, bad or indifferent;  series where the milieu is the integrating element, with multiple simultaneous series weaving in and out.

In that last category, the prime example is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.  There are so many threads going on in that world: the witches; the wizards of Unseen University; Sam Vimes and the Night Watch; Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men; Moist von Lipvig, the reformed con artist who keeps getting dumped into important bureaucratic positions –  what am I leaving out? Because there’s more.  We took a little time reminding ourselves about how wonderful those books are.  They aren’t just charming and humorous; they include some true and deep observations about the human condition, and it’s so clear how much Pratchett just loved his characters.  And he didn’t just love them himself; he had a level of skill that allowed him to bring us right into the story, and love them too.  He was so wonderful. I’ll miss him forever.

Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan  series was held up as a good example of a series that follows one character across his or her life, and the panelists and audience had much to say about how they loved that series…  But alas, inexplicably, it has just never managed to grab me. I can’t explain it.  There seems to be nothing wrong at all with the books.  I simply fail to engage fully.  I’ve tried lots of times!  I suppose I ought to try each and every book, just to be sure.  Maybe there’s an entry point that will open it all up for me.  Because once I’m in, there will be a lot more available!  And I do feel a bit left out… Fortunately, Bujold does not need me.  She has plenty of people who love what she does, and more power to her, I say.

As for the authors in the panels:  Fran Wilde spoke of always having a plan, but also always going off-plan.  She needs the plan to exist, but never sticks to it.  Ruthanna spoke of having a place she wants the story to go, but not always knowing how she’s going to get there (I believe it was her who said that… I might be misremembering).  I told of how I always know where I want the story to end up, and really do like to have a planned structure to the story, which lets me tell tales that are integrated and interlocking; but the moment- to-moment writing happens at the keyboard, and I’m open to surprises, too.

The third Panel was “Where are the Books Like Pandemic?” with Alison Sinclair, Eugene Fischer and Ruthanna Emrys.   Pandemic is a board game, one that is unusual in that the players are not set against each other.  Instead, everyone cooperates toward a common goal — preventing the pandemic of the title.  I haven’t played it myself (yet; Sabine bought it), but I’m looking forward to it.  And the topic of the panel was:  What are the books that work that way?  Books that have no villain, that don’t pit person against person, but involve people working together for a solution to a problem?

Jo was supposed to be the moderator, but was called away for a family emergency.  Her role was ably covered by Emmet O’Brien, who did a bang-up job and introduced us to the idea (he was quoting someone, but I missed who it was — was it Jo’s son Sasha?) that the three types of plot can be expressed as “Man vs. Man, Man vs. Plan, and Man vs. Canal,”

And as we talked the issue through, it did become clear that most non-adversarial novels tended to fall under “Man vs. Canal.” There was a thing, a physical thing that had to be done, and we got together and did it, hurrah!  Blow up the asteroid, explore the alien world, make that starship.  I brought up Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky as in that category.  Let’s Terraform Ganymede!  But then we had to take time out to collectively grind our teeth at 1950’s Heinlein’s attitude towards women, and his assumption that a Real Man knows how to do All the Things,

I made sure to bring up what I consider a prime example of a cooperative novel that is not  in the (Hu)man vs. physical thing category:

Geary Gravel’s novel has no villain, and no big physical survival challenge for the characters to solve.  Instead, it’s a group of people gathered together to address an idea, an assumption held by a civilization.  It almost functions, in some ways, as the intellectual equivalent of a classic heist movie: individuals are selected according to the particular skill they each posses, and the organizer has to convince them to undertake this great cooperative task.

And… I’ve stayed up way too late again.  But that does cover the official parts of my visit to Montreal.

Next up: The unofficial parts.

Way back on Monday of last week, I got back from Scintillation, the brand-new small convention in Montreal that Jo Walton started up via Kickstarter.

For years Jo had been throwing a  big yearly event called the Farthing party (after one of her novels), and this year she wanted to convert it into a more formal convention.  Using Kickstarter to fund it, she managed to get enough interest to keep it going for the next couple of years.

So: success!

The event itself was delightful.  After going to so many humongous conventions across the years, it was nice to attend one that wasn’t overwhelming, but was still interesting at every turn.  It was a great bunch of guests (not least of whom was the amazing Jo herself), plenty of opportunity to both hold forth on a panel and chat informally, a pleasant hotel, and a brand-new city to visit.

I  did not catch any of Ada Palmer’s panels, but I did get to hear her and her Sassafras companions perform on Saturday night.  They did some Renaissance tunes and selections from Ada’s Norse mythology song cycle, “Sundown”.   Jo added to the entertainment by reading a selection of her poems.  The woman seems to just generate sonnets spontaneously — I don’t know how she does it.  Makes me a bit jealous, actually.

I had some lovely conversations with friends old and new, like Ruthanna Emrys and her wife Sarah. I caught Ruthanna’s reading, where she read first from  Winter Tide, Book 1 of the Innsmouth Legacy; and then a bit from her upcoming novel, The Fifth Power (link has slight spoilers!), which was really quite a treat.  I’ve already fallen in love with the characters — protagonist and spouse had to pause to change the baby’s diapers while investigating an alien fortress.  My kinda people.

Jo read from an upcoming work, as well, one scheduled for release next year:

Without giving too much away, it’s about Savanarola, who was apparently not the S.O.B. you thought he was.  The part Jo read made me smile, and at a couple of points laugh out loud.   Really looking forward to this one.

Sabine and I also had a nice dinner and conversation with Alison Sinclair, who I met a couple of years ago at and before Worldcon in Kansas City.

You really should check out Alison’s Darkborn Trilogy; she’s used such an interesting setup for her world and society.   I’ve only read the first one, and really enjoyed it — but Sabine’s read them all and can’t say enough good things about them!

Another discovery of Sabine’s:

I bumped into David at the giveaway table — literally, as I physically bumped into him, and also knocked all his books off the table as I was setting up mine, causing him to view me askance as I dithered through an apology.  But Sabine glommed onto his first book, and fell in love instantly.   She got all the sequels, and is now full of enthusiasm about how delightful they are.  High adventure!  Plucky heroine!  You  should take her advice and check them out. I plan on doing exactly that myself.

As for me: I had three panels and a reading.   I read the bits that I previously read at Readercon, so if you went to that, you didn’t miss anything new…

But the panels were an interesting selection –  and I’ll say more about them tomorrow (running out of time today)…  Let’s just say that the words “chuffed” and “gobsmacked” both apply.

Chuffed.

Apparently Amazon did not recognize that the new paperback version of The Lost Steersman is a new paperback version of the previously-existing Kindle version, and I had to go tell them!  If you’ve been looking for it, you might not have found it merely by asking Amazon to show you all the books by Rosemary Kirstein.   The fix should take in a day or so, but in the meatime, here’s a handy link!

Also, searching for “The Lost Steersman” will get you there.  Apparently this linking process is less automatic than I had assumed.   I do believe I had to do that for The Outskirter’s Secret as well.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the physical proof copy of The Language of Power.  It should be here on Wednesday, and I’m almost certain that there will be no issues, and I’ll be able to approve it to go live that day!  The assistance of my voluteers has made working on that book far less angst-ridden than on the previous.  Many errors that would have slipped by my bleary eyes were spotted by the volunteers.

Yikes, I’m beat.  That’s way too much time spent publishing and not enough time spent writing!  But it’s done.

In celebration I’m heading to Boskone tomorrow — not as a participant but as a mere attendant, where I shall delight in hearing fascinating panels, and engaging in conversations with intelligent people.  I’ve been sort of locked in a box lately, and I must get out into the world!

I did get out last weekend for a day, when Sabine and I, with our pals Rob and Jan Walker, participated in an escape room adventure at Mystified in Mystic, CT.  It was great fun!  This particular outfit has a real steam-punk mentality that we appreciated.

Also: in between iterations of corrections and cover-creation, I’ve diverted and amused myself with Jo Walton’s latest book, a collection of her short works.

I have written exactly two short stories, but have ambitions to write more of them.  I find Jo’s collection to be a particularly nice set of examples of the different forms that short works can take.  There are linked vingnettes, structured stories, short-shorts, fictional musings, fictional correspondences, and my personal favorite, “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction,” (read it for free on Tor.com) which I have no idea what to call, but which is deeply clever and well-executed.

In the introduction, she does some explaining about what she believes does and does not contsitute an actual story, and when an idea is best for a story rather than an novel — but I’m going to have to have some deep discussions with her when I see her next, because I don’t quite agree, I think…  I love her idea of “mode”, but the “weight” of the ending… ?  Hm.  She might be using “weight” not to mean importance, but something else…

Must go now or I’ll be up too late to get out early to hit the road!

Still on the home version of a writing retreat. Sort of like house arrest, but with writing.  Plus, at my office instead of at home.

Planning board. Post-it notes in waiting. Bonus writing advice. (Click to embiggen.)

No blogging, I am hard at work! But as consolation, here are Some Things possibly of interest:

1. Cool video! You should go full-screen.

2. Articles by Jo Walton on Tor.com about her Thessaly Series.

The Baroque Inspiration

The Platonic Inspiration

The Original Inspiration

3. Couldn’t make it to WorldCon?  You can watch the entire Hugo Awards Ceremony on UStream.
Live Streaming Api (The Campbell award, with first bonus astronaut, is at 34:00.  Best Dramatic Presentation, long form, with second bonus astronaut, is at about 1:08.  Hey, I like astronauts. Fiction awards start at about 1:24.)

That’s it for now.  Must put post-its on whiteboard, draw connecting lines, and muse further.

I keep waiting until the end of my day to write a blog post…

La-di-da, I say to myself, about time to go home, oh, I think I’ll just knock off a quick blog post...

Hours later:

Well, hours later it’s hours later.

Because there I am, tweaking the pics, checking on the links I’m using, looking up cool things, researching that last snappy bit of wisdom, to make sure I don’t make a total idiot of myself as I impart it. (You cannot make a paper airplane hover between two fans.  Can Not.)

Let’s see if I can do this in under an hour, shall we?

General news: I got my preliminary schedule for the panels at MidAmeriCon, this year’s Worldcon:

Writing Major Minor Characters

Do you ever read a book and come across a character that is so wonderful you want to know everything about them, yet you know you never will because they aren’t the main character? Such characters add immeasurably to our reading experience and yet they are very hard to write. This session discusses how to do just that.

Time - Wednesday 16.00

Hard Fantasy – Does it Exist?

“I’m going to write about what Tove Jansson called “the lonely and the rum,” the unschoolable and ungroupable, those strange and shaggy literary creatures that have no ilk or kin and that mathematically can be contained in no set smaller than the set of all sets contained in no other sets’.  (Micheal Swanwick).  Does Hard Fantasy have a place in fantasy literature, and how should we approach it?

Friday, 19.00. 2206

“Transcending” the Genre

Critics still use the term “transcending the genre,” but what does that really mean? And what does that mean for fandom – have we gone mainstream? Or are we experiencing snobbish reactions rooted in fannish history? What happens to the discourse when Zadie Smith talks about reading Octavia Butler, or Marlon James says his next novel will be “an African Game of Thrones”? At the end of the day, do we really want all the genre walls to disappear? Do we want to completely transcend genre?

Time - Sunday 13.00

Of the above, I think I’ll have the most to say about the Major Minor characters.  It’s something I love doing.

In addition to those, I’ll also be on an panel about living with cancer (if you’re just joining us, I spent 2014 and most of 2015 being treated for breast cancer, with great success).   I don’t know yet what time that will take place.

I think I also requested a Kaffeeklatsch, but I can’t recall if I requested a reading!  Ack!  It would be good to know, as I have to decide what to read!

Although Worldcon itself is over two weeks away, I’ll be traveling or otherwise occupied for much of the run-up to it, so I’m already having little stress-fits about the prep.  Well.  All will work out, in the end, I’m sure.

Last weekend I spent some time visiting pal and fellow Genrette Laurie J. Marks and her wife Deb Mensinger, in their vintage bungalow, which they are in the process of lovingly restoring to its early-20th-century glory.  Deb knows what she’s about, being a professionally trained preservation carpenter.

Ravens figure largely in Laurie’s Elemental Logic series.

Laurie also knows what she’s about, as couple of hours of conversation about our respective current projects resulted in me helping her solve one of her plot problems, and her helping to solve the basic major problem I was wrestling with in Book 5 -  so that now I am currently mostly wrapped up in solidifying that central fix, and setting the book onto the path of righteousness, AMEN.    After which will merely remain the writing of it.   Which sounds like the hard part, but trust me, it’s not.

Other news:

Hey, look, Ada Palmer was interviewed by Scientific Amercian about her novel, Too Like the Lightning.  Holy smokes.

Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of reading Jo Walton’s, Necessity, which takes some unexpected and rather fun turns.   But I do occasionally want to kick certain gods in their butts.  Not namin’ any names, here.

Oh, look, I found some orange roses.

See that guitar?  Been practicing.