Yay, LJ is back!!!! Good to be in business again.

I’m in Brittany at my parents, enjoying a break before packing up for San Francisco and Worldcon (and dealing with the renovation works and the move, sigh). They did install Internet, but I’m going to try very hard not to use it–so, to all intents and purposes, this is a blackout

In other, writerly news, you can pre-order the French version of Harbinger of the Storm on amazon, under the title Le Cinquième Soleil. It’s interesting to see the titles: book 1 was “Of Obsidian and Blood”, book 2 is “The Fifth Sun”. Quite a change from the English versions–which, to be fair, are completely untranslatable (you can translate them, they just make sucky French titles).

And the Joanna Russ fairy said, “If you think that family and love and grief are not inherently important topics, you might as well put some zombies in your Pride and Prejudice and be done with it.”

Yes, yes, and yes.

(from owlectomy, via starlady38)

I don’t post about this much on the blog–but I just emptied my office space over at work, after 4 1/2 years of working with the same company. I’m only leaving tomorrow, but it already feels singularly empty…

Amusing fact of the day: you wouldn’t believe how many mugs and tea-boxes I managed to accumulate on my desk.

Amusing fact of the day #2: my office plant (aka Nyarlathotep, in the grand tradition of naming plants after Lovecraft creatures) is so big it was taking the entire car, and whenever I braked it would poke me in the shoulder. I think it was feeling lonely…

Got a nice going-away party; was given a nice Lancel women’s purse, and a set of Japanese cutting knives, which is going to be a nice change from our old low-end supermarket knife (the H was already eyeing them speculatively. I’m preparing bandages…).

Writing-wise: zero, as I spent the entire day moving boxes from the car to the office space, and back to the car–and then between the flat and the car…

For part 2 of their feature on Harbinger of the Storm, the tireless Brad Beaulieu and Greg Wilson interview me. Go check it out here (and check out the other episodes while you’re at it!)

Aka the recipe I made when I found myself with an extra can of pineapple and some leftover chocolate. You would think that the pineapple would not go well with the chocolate–but it does, trust me. It’s actually a very yummy combination, the pineapple bringing the moisture and sugar that the chocolate lacks.

 

There you go–enjoy!

ETA: adjusted quantities following further experimentation

The awesome Sirens this fall and make a joint presentation on “Magical and Monstrous Female Beings in South Asian Myth and Folklore” (which sounds like a really interesting subject to discuss, and one that I bet hasn’t been covered to death at cons). If you feel like hiring her or donating money, go here.

-Bandits, ’cause it was fun and I could always use a rewatch
-Ladyhawke: it looks kind of cheesy, but I’ll admit I can’t resist Rutger Hauer as the good guy (for a change)

Also added to my wishlist: The Scent of Green Papaya, and possibly the Vertical Ray of the Sun. Yup, want to try out some Vietnamese movies. But first, I have a pile of stuff to watch…

What I tried out this weekend (we went to the countryside with friends and had a go at pretty much anything that sounded fun):
-archery: far, far easier when the bowstring’s tension isn’t cramped up to max, and my hand is shaking with the mere act of holding it steady. Also, I apparently have beginner’s luck, because I can shoot in the centre of the target by accident.
-bowling: still have a very peculiar notion of what constitutes a straight line. It seems I can send the ball spinning very fast, or I can send it spinning very straight, but not both. Interesting, if not necessarily helpful to make quills fall…
-paintball: my natural position as a paintball gunner is entrenched within our camp, drenching anyone who gets too close in a hail of bullets (aka, “last resort obstacle”). And, er, faces and legs make nice targets (people have to peek out to shoot sometimes, but they rarely have the decency to show their whole torsoes).
-cooking: yum yum. We took turns doing the cooking, and we ate some super food (piperade, pasta saltimbocca , pierrade sausages and skewers (hmm, pretty much untranslatable. Pierrade is a hot stone on which the cooking is done), and schnitzels (you have not lived until you see a cook soften up the meat for the schnitzels by beating them up with a frying pan. In the absence of mallets…).

All in all, it was great. Now feeling refreshed and ready to attack the last week of work, before starting the packing and the moving (and a side touch of the holidaying).

OK, it’s late, and I have a backlog of other stuff, but…

You should really go read Kari Sperring’s post on history and why it matters to people.

Here’s my point. History is not a theme park. It’s not a story, either. It’s people’s real lives. If you’re going to write about it, about any part of it, you need to do your homework properly, you need to be respectful, because — as Ms Willis did with me — otherwise, you’re going to find someone’s sore place, someone’s vulnerability, someone’s sacred or difficult or secret thing, and you’re going to do damage. Other countries aren’t theme parks, either, nor museums, nor big bags of useful resources. They’re homes to millions, they’re people’s lives, too.

And while I’m talking about this, let’s have a look at another phrase I’m seeing a lot lately, ‘Eurocentric fantasy’. This, as far as I can tell, means fantasies set in backgrounds drawn from a sort of default idea of mediaeval Europe (usually Western Europe at that). I understand what people mean by this, and what they are thinking about. The thing is, as a European myself, these fantasies don’t feel ‘Eurocentric’ to me. They don’t feel like Europe at all, they feel like a mix of 50s Hollywood historicals and Las Vegas, they are theme park fantasies — right up there with that ‘England’ where everyone is either Hugh Grant or a Cockney, and we have names like Rupert and Gwendolen

(comments disabled because the discussion should really be happening over there, but yes. Yes. Yes)

OK, so apparently, this is how you can tell that Torchwood has become a joint US-UK production:

While the previous jackets of Torchwood featured the entire team in varied/neutral postures (the boxset of seasons 1-
3, the DVD of Children of Earth), or even a stylised abstract (the boxsets of season 1 & season 2), this one has everyone carrying guns (and a mean-looking guy in a suit who could advertise for Hollywood FBI). And, as a bonus, Eve Myler in a highly sexualised aggressive posture (the two guns pointed downwards, the leather jacket, the tight-fitting pants. She could be any number of pseudo bad-ass heroines).

*bangs head against wall*

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[1] Not that I particularly liked Torchwood, but I just happened on this while browsing Amazon.
ETA: mind you, the US jacket for Children of Earth isn’t half-bad in the bad-ass babe department, either…