…to the reader-hivemind: if I call a soldier a “knight”, does this mean that he *has* to have a horse or be mounted on one?
The equivalent French and Spanish words are “chevalier” and “caballero”, which are formed from the root of “cheval” and “caballo” respectively, suggesting that possession of a horse is imperative. “Knight”, insofar as I can see, doesn’t have that connotation, but maybe it’s irreversibly acquired it by now?

Currently watching Angel (in Spanish, in an effort to keep my vocab up to date. So far, I’ve learnt lots of moderately useful words such as “stake”, “coffin”, “demon”, but you never know, I might need them somehow). I like the show, but the mythology is sometimes… particular. As in, you don’t want to dig in too deeply, because things might crack.

For instance, crucifixes and holy water are clearly harmful to vampires, whether they’re ensouled or not. But, conversely, it doesn’t seem to be a problem for Angel to stroll into a church, which is a. consecrated ground, b. the house of God (ie, the origin of the powers invested in crucifixes in the first place), and c. in a deliberate crucifix layout, like most traditional churches (the nave and the transept forming a rather characteristic shape…).

Interesting…

Mostly on non-writerly things, alas–including tables, mass booklets and tracking down of those last few guests who hadn’t yet answered us. Deluge continues. Hoping to have a quieter weekend with Juliette Wade, who is visiting Paris, and with my grandmother.

Books read: The Golden Key by Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson and Kate Elliott, which was awesome. A trans-generational tale of a Renaissance world where spells can be set in paintings, and where paintings are used to document everything from treaties to victories. An over-ambitious painter, Sario, discovers forbidden magic and sets about to remake the world, with disastrous results. Reminded me of all the stuff I loved in art history; I also loved the focus on women and how the kind of power they wielded evolved with time, as the world moved towards a more equal system.
Currently reading Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy, which is mindless fun, but pretty well done.

And in other news…

Almost done with the tables–now for the actual table plan… I think we’ve sorted out most of the printing problems, even though we still have to drop the booklet at the printer’s.

Actual writing: er… Does research count? Preparing a story to complete the “Shipbirth/Shipmaker” set of stories, still not sure where it’s going other than the fact that it involves transport ships.

Reading: opened a random book taken from the library (Tess Geritsen’s The Apprentice), which had a serial killer raping and kidnapping women. Suppressed an urge to hurl it at the wall, and closed it. I really need to find a decent thriller that doesn’t have a serial killer torturing women in it, before my faith in the crime genre falters altogether…

And your Vietnamese word of the day is mặt trời: “the sun” (lit. “the face of the sky”). Meanwhile, I’ll go back to practising my tones. Still can’t get the level tone right (you’d think it would be the simplest one, but it seems I can’t maintain my voice level at all).

As part of her ongoing series of short writer/editor interviews (which have included fellow AR author Kaaron Warren), the lovely Angela Slatter asked me five questions. Find out what my favourite literary character is, and whether I prefer donuts or danishes here.

Calling on the combined wisdom of readers of this blog…

Would anyone happen to know good recipes which involve tortilla flour? (not tortillas, obviously :-p. We don’t own a tortilla press, and it’s a bit too much of a hassle without one).

Thanks in advance!

H and I are preparing the signs for the tables at the wedding reception. Just so you see the context: there are 24-25 tables, and every one of them has a name so people can find it. All the tables have related names, what is called the “theme” of the wedding (for instance: species of goldfish, islands, famous doctors[1]). Every table has a 4-page leaflet on it for orientation purposes. The first page bears the name of the table with about two paragraphs of explanations (example: if all the tables are named after famous doctors, every table has two paragraphs of doctor biography), and the inside has the menu (which comes in three flavours: French, English and French children’s menu).

Me: “So we’re agreed on this, I’m sending the layout to the parents so they can comment on it.”
H: “Yup, looks good to me with this colour choice.”
Me: “And then I’m stopping until we have the green light from them. I still have to write 23 bits of text for every table, and if we change the layout I’d have to go over all 24 documents and change the layout for every single freaking one of them. *pause* It’s kind of a shame you can’t apply a global layout across documents.”
H: “I bet you could use a Python script to generate an RTF file according to your specifications.”
Me: “I don’t speak Python. Maybe VBA? *pause* Hang on, theoretically, all we’d have to is look in the master document, find the anchors where the bits of text are, and then do a standard substitution from the command line, using sed or something like this…”
H: “…”
Me: “You’re right. Let’s not go there.”

So I’m reading this book (the title of which shall be omitted, because I don’t think I want to remember it for even that long). It’s about a small town targeted by (yet another) serial killer who preys on young girls and has digusting sexual fantasies. It’s got the arrogant rich bastard, the arrogant rich bastard’s son who is also an arrogant bastard, the haunted police investigator whose wife cheated on him, the heroine whom everyone pines for and who is kind and comforting and great with kids but generally completely helpless. And in the end, the serial killer turns out to be the sweet mentally challenged kid, who kidnaps the heroine and tortures her.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with all the %%% clichés here? (and seriously, the guy with the mental troubles is a serial killer? Way to go to ease the mistrust and prejudice towards people who didn’t have much of a choice in what life dealt them)

Also, seriously, what’s with the serial killers in US novels? I’m getting tired of sexual fantasies and extreme violence towards women. Perhaps some people enjoy reading about that. I certainly don’t.

Because I’ve noticed I’ve become really, really badly distracted…
I might be a tad slower and/or forgetful in posting/answering email/the like. If you don’t hear from me and you were expecting something, it’s because RL (aka the wedding) has struck. My mind’s a bit like a colander at the moment, so don’t hesitate to remind me…