Author Archives: Autumn

Forty-Four Months Old!

Our house is all Star Wars, all the time. The boy is alternately Artoo, the Millennium Falcon, and either the Imperial Star Destroyer or the Rebel Blockade Runner. Lego is now material for creating X-wings and TIE fighters and Star Destroyers. I found an R2-D2 figure the other day (Clone Wars figures, who knew?) and bought it for him. He’s still thanking me. He drew about nine pictures of Star Wars characters and ships last week, which I should find and put up on the fridge.

I love that someone can mention something about the moon, and I can say, “That’s no moon, that’s a space station,” and without missing a beat my son will reply, “It’s too big to be a space station. Maybe you should turn the ship around. Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right.” While he plays with Lego spaceships in his room I can hear him recite passages of dialogue accurately, complete with inflection and accent.

In the book area we’re revisiting picture books as we search for a new series of early chapter books to read aloud. A Bear Called Paddington didn’t work; neither did The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The ratio of illustrations to text needs to be higher.

January was music month at preschool, and as part of the unit he made a guitar out of an empty Kleenex box and the long roll from gift wrap at school, complete with rubber bands stretched across the box opening. The picture says it all.

The biggest thing this past month is his sudden fascination with babies and how they grow. After seeing a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy (as in, one could see and/or feel the baby moving) he asked where babies came from. Rather than get into super-specific technical explanations we told him that there’s a little bit of each of the mother and father that is grown inside the mother’s tummy over a long, long time. He then (incorrectly but understandably) inferred that the food one eats is what grows the baby. No no, we explained, the baby actually grows underneath the tummy, not in the stomach where the food goes to be digested, although indirectly yes, the food one eats is what helps the baby grow. And then he decided that he had a baby in his tummy and could feel it moving. So we had to disappoint him by saying that alas, only mothers could do this particular trick, although if he wanted to find a way for fathers to do it too when he grew up then more power to him. He then decided that there was a baby growing in my tummy, specifically a baby sister. And he cheerfully started telling people this. Which made things slightly awkward at times, until he decided we needed a new Maggie-cat, and included the information that there was a baby Maggie and a baby sister growing in my tummy. (Just to be absolutely clear: No, on both the kitten and the baby.)

We’ve begun talking about where we will eventually move to next, although it’s certainly not any time soon. He was quite upset by this for a bit, saying that he didn’t want to move to the new house, that he wanted to stay here, that this house was fine. I asked him where this hypothetical little sister would sleep. “In my bunk bed, with me!” he said. “She’d be too little,” I pointed out, “she’d need a crib.” “We could move my easel and put the crib at the end of my bed,” he said, which was very generous of him. While they were out on a walk or a shopping trip he and HRH saw a puppy, and talk turned to owning a dog someday. When they came home Liam burst into the house and said, “Mama, we have to get a new house and then we can have a dog!” So suddenly the new house isn’t such a bad thing. He’s decided that the bathtub will be bigger, the kitchen will be bigger, the living room will be bigger ( “And we will bring our new TV!”), and he will have an office of his own, like Mama and Dada do, with his own computer. To which I said hey, sure, because HRH has already let the IT guys at work now that the next time the eMacs get replaced he has dibs on a couple, one earmarked for the boy himself.

I mentioned that there was a level-up somewhere around Christmas. Well, there’s been another in the past two weeks. The reasoning and language and behaviour and associated stuff has refined yet again. It’s great. On the other hand, he’s hiding his reading skills from us and still trying to convince us that he can’t dress himself or draw. He pretends all over the place and tells exciting stories, and is getting better at lying down in his room and playing with trains or cars for a good half hour or so, constructing elaborate conversations between them and narrating the action.

He has recently gone crazy for raw snow peas. He’s been horse-like in his appetite lately in general (as in eating horse-sized servings, not preferring grass and oats) but particularly so for raw peas and carrots, bananas, blackberries, cantaloupe, and corn. The nap habit is kind of iffy; at school we’re lucky if he naps for half an hour, because there’s so much going on to distract him, and the older kids don’t nap any more. And as he hangs around with them, well, he sees it as perfectly reasonable that he doesn’t need to nap either. Which is, alas, untrue, because if the nap is missed he’s a whiny cranky horror by six o’clock. He naps around an hour and a half with his caregiver and Grandma, and about two hours at home, though, so heh, the nap is not a thing of the past yet, my son.

Something that amuses us is a sudden aggressive politeness. When you tell him to do something and he angrily says, “No, thanks!“, it’s really hard to hide the smile. He has also recently taken to moaning, “Oh, I never get to do [thing you won’t let me do]!” when we tell him no, and we’re very hard put to not laugh out loud at the dramatic hyperbole. Especially when it involves playing with cars, Lego, trains, colouring, watching a movie, or eating crackers. Because you know in our house those fun things Just Aren’t Done. Ever.

Other Liam posts this past month:

~ Liam is introduced to Star Wars

That Kind Of Day

Lunch: Two servings of bacon, and leftover whipped potatoes fried in the second round of bacon fat.

It was hard not to lick the plate. It was only a saucer, but still.

In other news, Gretchen Yanover’s Bow and Cello is absolutely exquisite. Lovely atmospheric, relaxing, meditative-y kind of stuff. She’s a brilliant musician who uses looping technology to enrich and deepen her already sensual music. Beautiful.

Also, hello annual February thaw. I have the heat turned off and windows cracked open to air out the winter-dead rooms.

In Which She Reflects On Her Reading Tastes

I just filled in my Locus ballot for the published material of 2008, and I have realised something.

I don’t read many best-of or notable books any more in this genre. In fact, I don’t read many of them at all. (‘Them’ meaning in the genre, not notable books.)

Now granted, I no longer work exclusively in the realm of speculative fiction, and as a result yes, I do tend to miss some of the sleeper hits or books of note released from smaller publishers. But even when I did work in the speculative fiction market, I’d look at the Hugo or Nebula nominations and think, Wow, I’m lucky if I’ve read one title in each category. I was very excited one year when I’d read three books in the Best Fantasy Novel list. I do still have speculative fiction authors I read religiously. Most of the authors I follow online via blog or journal are spec-fic writers, now that I think about it, and they’re in the same category of must-buy-upon-release-date.

I’m not sure what this says about me. It may indicate that my tastes don’t run to what people consider Good Books, although personally I’d laugh at that assumption. I’ve never been a big reader of hard SF, which tends to considered Serious and therefore often perceived as more worthy of a nomination. I’m not a big SF reader in general any more, nor could I really classify myself as one even in my heyday. (That said, I actually read Anathem this year and could vote for something on the SF list with a clear conscience.) But I’ve cut down my fantasy reading too, mainly because epic fantasy takes too much work and how many times can I reread the basic tropes and plots? (I did write in nominations for Elizabeth Bear’s Stratford Man duology, though, because they were among the best books I read last year of any category.) I’m a year or so behind on books, too, which doesn’t help, because I’ve read some great stuff this past year that would have been on the 2006 or 2007 lists.

When I got to the Best YA Novel category, though, it clicked for me. Oh, I thought. This is where all my reading material has gone. Which makes sense, really, because it’s what I’m interested in writing, too.

My non-fiction reading has evolved as well. Whereas I used to devour books about spirituality, now I’m finding it hard to enjoy them the way I used to before I started, well, writing them myself. A colleague gave me an advance reading copy of Voices of the Earth: The Path of Green Spirituality by Clea Danaan, and I had to force myself to start reading it. It’s not bad, has the potential to be really interesting, but I’m just not drawn to that kind of book any more.

Which begs the question: What am I interested in, then?

I have to look back over my reading log to answer that, because I can’t off the top of my head. This horrifies me to some degree. Why can’t I describe what I want to be reading?

My reading log suggests that I’ve been reading mysteries, specifically historical ones; narrative non-fiction; YA fiction, especially paranormal or fantasy; the occasional biography; historical fiction; mainstream literary fiction, and now and again some more popular mainstream fiction. That’s not in any particular order, either.

It’s like I haven’t found my reading niche again. Not that eclecticism is bad; on the contrary. It’s just that I used to be able to pinpoint my taste in books, and I’m not quite sure what they are any more other than a general YA sort of trend. And I don’t know why this disturbs me, other than theorizing that I’ve lost some sort of stability in some ineffable way, or some sort of defining fact or structure to my life.

Weekend Roundup

Yes, hello, Monday, nice sunny Monday. How are you?

Saturday morning I had a cello lesson, which went well. The newly adjusted-and-rented 7/8 performed very nicely. My teacher feels the C string could be even better, but it’s not crucial at the moment. It feels good to be working on nuances in pieces instead of struggling with technical stuff. Except for that one shift in that one piece, which I know I can do but never happens in a lesson. My teacher made a good point: We both know I can play it, so why am I stressing in a lesson? If I played it perfectly every time we wouldn’t be working on it, would we? It’s hard to focus on the things you’re doing right when you do things wrong. I need to work on recognising the successes more than the okay-so-that-bit-wasn’t-perfect-this-time parts. And she also gave me this pearl of wisdom: The next note you’re about to play is always be the most important one. That means not dwelling on the one you just played and criticising yourself because it wasn’t as good as you wanted it to be, because it takes away for the energy you should be directing toward that next note. Food for thought. (I swear, I would be so lost in this new way of discussing music if I hadn’t done years of energy work and meditation in a spiritual context.)

Saturday afternoon HRH went out to pick up my cousin downtown, who had a weekend layover in Montreal. For dinner I tried to slow-roast two rolled rib roasts from the farmer, but it didn’t exactly succeed (see, I am not saying it failed!) for a couple of reasons. One, I doubted the slow-roast instructions and decided to roast it for two hours at 250 degrees instead of one hour at 200 then turning the oven off entirely. Two, the second roast was inedible due to the amount of gristle and sinew marbled through it. Which is a risk one runs when buying directly from a farmer who butchers his own stuff, I suppose, because it’s not regulated the same way supermarkets and pro butchers are. Anyway, the first roast was all right, just half of it was overdone to my taste. The kick-ass gravy I made made up for some of it, though, as did the nice creamy mashed potatoes and carrots half-steamed then sauteed in butter. And there was pecan pie for dessert, except the shell cracked and the filling seeped through to glue the crust to the glass pie pan, thereby ensuring that every single piece had to be pried out in several bits. It tasted good, though, and the home-made pastry was quite acceptable: very crisp and light. And we really, really enjoyed my cousin’s visit. The boy dragooned him into playing with trains and Lego and all sorts of things.

Sunday morning we met the Preston-LeBlancs for lunch at the hot dog and French fry restaurant we love for its artery-clogging deliciousness. I had an ensemble lesson later that afternoon, which was also a lot of fun because we were reviewing the early Suzuki pieces we’re playing at the Sun Youth fundraiser next Sunday.

Than last night we had the second session of the new steampunkian horror game Tal began in January, and I got another two inches of my lap blanket done (I suspect I will need an even longer circular needle to work the size I’m aiming for comfortably). I also started a knitted lightsaber yesterday during the boy’s nap. And I found the missing bamboo circular needle! It was at the very bottom of one of my works-in-progress bags under some books.

So overall a very enjoyable weekend. And I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning and ready to edit at least four more stories today, as well as read a first draft for a new contributor. Correspondence and news have all been handled, so away I go.

Astonishing

So I took the 7/8 in to the luthier last night (and was twenty minutes late, thank you every single red light on de la Verendrye) and talked about the kind of sound I was looking for. I played it for him and he agreed that the C string was a little mou (which would translate to ‘soft’ or ‘mooshy’ [not ‘mushy,’ totally different!] or some such thing, but in English those infer touch rather than quality of sound). He put the cello across his lap and WHACKED THE BRIDGE a few times.

Yeah. But he’s a professional, so he can get away with it. Also, he was probably using some Jedi Luthier Techniques or something, which means there was More Going On than just whacking it.

And he gave it back to me, and my gods, it was like a different cello.

Then he said, “Hmm, the A is a little timide.” And he asked what that would be in English and I said the direct translation was ‘timid,’ but again, it didn’t convey the quality he was looking for. I would have said ‘reserved.’ So he put the cello across his lap again and inserted the fancy swirly crowbar that is the soundpost-adjuster, adjusted the soundpost, and gave it back to me to play. And my gods, it was yet again a different cello. The lower strings are more focused, everything is more balanced, and yes, the projection has improved overall as well. (Not a lot of the latter, but hey, it’s a student cello.)

I am very pleased.

I signed a two-month contract for rental, paid the fees, and walked out with it. Now it becomes my primary cello so as to really work it and see if the size difference actually does make a positive impact on my technique.

I realised this morning that I haven’t even looked at my lesson material over the past insane work-week, which is moderately problematic because (a) I have cello lesson in an hour, and (b) there was an entirely new piece that I haven’t even played through yet, but I suspect my teacher will be understanding because I worked my orchestra stuff instead. (Good grief — the Hebrides overture, the Arlesienne treble clef celli solo in the ‘Carillon,’ and the Rimsky-Korsakov [heh, mistyped ‘Risky’]; they will kill me.)

Interview Outtakes

The second half of the interview with Neil Gaiman has been posted at fps!

Here are the promised outtakes.

First, a single line because it made me laugh. The context: The assistant had given me the two minute warning, which meant about seventeen minutes had gone by.

    NG: You haven’t even asked any questions, I’ve just monologued at you!

And here’s the post-interview stuff.

    A: I have tons more questions that I wish I had asked —

    NG: I’m sorry!

    A: But obviously we are out of time. So what I will ask you to do is —

    NG: Do you need me to scribble on anything for you?

    A: I would very much like you to. It took me – I’m not kidding – since I was given this assignment it took me five days to figure out what I would ask you to sign, and finally I said, Well, since the interview’s for Coraline, I shall ask you to sign that.

    NG: Spell your name.

    A: A – r – i – n.

    [NG shakes his fountain pen]

    NG: I, of course, was an idiot, and left this uncapped.

    A: Do you need another? [because OF COURSE I have brought a fountain pen to a Neil Gaiman interview] Oh, you’ve got a back up. Okay. [ballpoint, alas]

    NG: How is this, it should work – A-r-i-n? [writes]

    A: Yes, that’s correct!

    NG: Where’s it from?

    A: My parents made it up.

    NG: Ah! [draws]

    A: Well, obviously it’s all over the place now, but thirty-eight years ago they made it up. My mother is Scottish, from Kirkcaldy, and wanted to call me Aran, for the Isle of Aran.

    NG: Right.

    A: My dad’s Irish, and wanted to call me Erin. So, they compromised. They went halves.

    NG: [laughs] So you have an Aran meets Erin. Which leaves you somewhere around the Isle of Mann in terms of geographics.

    A: [Laughs.]

    [NG continues to draw]

    A: I’m trying to get my son to agree to let me read him The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish.

    NG: How old is he?

    A: He’s going to be four in a few months. And he won’t – ‘No Mama, I don’t want to read it, I just want to look at the pictures.’ And he’ll look at the pictures and say, ‘Why is he holding a gorilla mask?’ And I say, ‘Well, we’ll have to read the book and find out.’ ‘No, I don’t want to do that yet.’

    NG: That’s so cool. The point I knew that The Wolves in the Walls worked as a book was when my friend Gary Wolfe called me from Chicago to tell me his grandchildren had been over, and the 3 yr old had made him read them The Wolves in the Walls and he did. And then the light was going, and she asked if he would read it again. And he couldn’t really see the text properly so he began, ‘Lucy was wandering around the place.’

    A: Telling the pictures.

    NG: And she said, “Granpa. It’s ‘Lucy walked around the place.’” And she, on one listen, had it cold.

    A: That’s great. I love hearing my son start to do that. ‘Here Mum, I’ll read this book to you,’ and you know, he’s pretty darn close, and you realize that reading really is an awful lot of memorization.

    NG: Yeah. It’s – there’s so much of words that is memory, remembering the shapes, the word shapes. We don’t actually read it; we only think we read it.

    [NG shows A the drawing he’s done in the book.]

    A: [laughs] I love it. Thank you, so very, very much.

    NG: You are so very welcome. Thank you for coming.

    A: I’m looking forward to you coming back in August.

    NG: I will be here!

This is the last post on the topic, I promise. But you must understand, it’s been eating my life since Tuesday of last week. In a good way, but still. Now it’s all out of my system.

Here is something totally unconnected: I have an appointment with the luthier tonight to adjust the 7/8 cello, and get the rental thing started. I hope I can stay awake that long, and be focused enough during the appointment to test and evaluate the adjustments.

In Which She Talks About The Interview With Neil Gaiman

First: Part One of the Interview With Neil Gaiman is live at the fps web site! Yesterday was all transcribing and editing and formatting stuff. Later today I shall post an outtake, I think.

What was the human experience behind the published interview? Read on!

To begin with, I got to the interview site half an hour early. The STM directions were off by half an hour (in my favour, but still). I killed twenty minutes by wandering around old Montreal (hurrah for a warmish day) then showed up at the interview site ten minutes before my slot was scheduled to start. I had no idea who to talk to to check in, but a very nice lady at the concierge’s desk pointed me to a man in a blue sweater who had met someone famous-ish when he’d arrived. Accordingly I went over and waited patiently for him to finish his conversation with someone, then introduced myself and hurrah, it was my contact. Who proceeded to tell me they were running forty-five minutes late, and Neil was nowhere in sight. (Later I learned that his flight was very late, and there was a press conference to get through before the private interviews could begin.) So I said I’d come back for four-thirty and went to have a nice hot cup of tea in a nearby Van Houtte cafe that was warm and upscale and relatively empty but for a handful of people reading, like me. I had my copy of Smoke and Mirrors with me, because I’d figured if things were a bit late I could read a short story or two. Well, I read half of it, then tidied up and went back to the hotel.

Where I learned that there would be yet another forty-five minute delay. (This would be the traffic jam of waiting interviews to be conducted before mine.)

Well, at least I could see Neil this time; he was posing in a lovely overstuffed cognac leather armchair in front of some very luxurious wood panelling while a photographer snapped a cascade of digital photos. Rather than leave again I settled into a chair in the lobby and took out Smoke and Mirrors once more. (Ended up finishing it, too.) He sat down for the next interview and had a cup of tea during it, then did the interview before mine, and then the assistants put a little sample platter of food in front of him and looked at me apologetically. Good grief, the man was exhausted, and I’d been going to suggest that he eat at some point myself; I wasn’t going to make a fuss! He polished that off quite quickly (it smelled truly lovely, and reminded me that I’d eaten quite some time ago and had no idea what supper was going to be) and they brought me over to be introduced.

Looking back on it, I think what I was going for was a very human interview, rather than a right-down-to-business you’re-here-to-answer-questions kind of interview. Which wasn’t necessarily good for my end product, but seemed to succeed in making him relatively comfortable. I could not, absolutely could not, ignore the fact that he was exhausted and trying to keep up with everything, or treat him like a means to an end. He’s a person, first and foremost. And my approach did mean I lost a few minutes of topical stuff, but I’d like to think it made him a bit more relaxed and felt like someone wasn’t expecting him to perform so much as share a conversation about cool stuff. (If we’d had time I would have asked him one of Ceri’s questions: “What have you been waiting to talk about the whole tour, but no one’s asked yet?” That was a derivative of her first suggestion: “Okay Neil, you’ve been on tour for ages, and the Newbery before that. What do *you* want to talk about?”)

He didn’t look as tired as he’d looked in some of the photos I’d seen from earlier in the tour, and I was glad for his sake. The Montreal stop was so brief in his whirlwind press junket, and to be late out of Toronto and having to end up compressing all the appearances and interviews must have been beyond crushing. The grace under cumulative pressure that he demonstrated was really inspiring. My mother would say that he was a true gentleman, and she’d be absolutely right.

Our settling-in and level-checking conversations consisted of talking about his schedule, how long before he could see his daughter Maddy (one day) and before he could go home (three), talking about how he was trying to keep up with all the Newbery coverage (and was losing ground), and talking about Emru. Then we got into the interview proper, which went pretty much as the published interview reads until the assistant gave me a two-minute warning. (That happened between part one of the published interview, and what will be part two.)

At the end he asked if I’d brought something I wanted him to scribble in, and I pulled my copy of Coraline out. I’d agonised for days over this: what, out of my extensive Oeuvre of Neil Gaiman collection, was I going to bring for him to sign? My first issue of Stardust? Preludes and Nocturnes, as I first encountered his writing in the very first issues of Sandman as it was released? The original copy of The Books of Magic vol. 3, which is also signed by Charles Vess? (That got nixed because when I checked it was inscribed to Johane, who gave me her set when she moved.) The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, for Liam? (Who has been resistant to the suggestion of reading it, although he goes through all the pictures and asks what’s happening; my standard answer is, “Well, we’d have to read the book to find out.”) Good Omens? I might have brought American Gods, but t! has it out on loan. Fragile Things, although I love it, was, well, too new. The Graveyard Book? I adored it, but I didn’t want him to think I’d brought it just because it won the Newbery. Just before I left I settled on my copy of Coraline, because it was the reason I’d been given the interview, after all. He drew a lovely big picture of a ghostly rat saying “Boo” in it for me.

I wanted to talk to him about so much. I’m reading Susannah Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu, for example, and I know he was instrumental in getting that titular first short story published, so I wanted to ask him about that. I wanted to ask him about his creative process and how or if it differed when writing for different media. I wanted to talk about the Newbery, although we did touch on it in the pre-interview bit, because for one of my favourite authors to win one of my favourite awards makes me want to ask all sorts of questions. I wanted to thank him for introducing me to Thea Gilmore and Tori Amos. I wanted to tell him that I played the cello, for some reason. And I wanted to thank him for those very many hours of joy he’d given me as an author, and how much inspiration as a writer.

And I wanted to say, “Once upon a time Ceri handed you a blank postcard at a signing and said, ‘I have a friend who is collecting story prompts and I’m surprising her with postcards from the authors at this con. Would you write a line or a thought on this to mail to her as a story assignment?’ And I got the green-ink fountain-penned postcard from you in the mail and used it as a talisman for years until I finally wrote the story in February of 2006.”

And above all, I wanted to say, “You are such an incredibly generous man, sharing what you do with the world. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

He is such a wonderful man. I love him. I loved him as a writer before; as of the interview, I totally love the man himself as well. The world needs more men like Neil Gaiman in it.