oracne

Romance Scholars on women and body image, in romance novels and otherwise.

To a Very Wise Man

I

Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown.
Your soul is full of cities with dead names,
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone
Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords
Watch the procession of their thundering hosts,
Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords
And wizardry of ghosts.

II

In a strange house I woke; heard overhead
Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream...
(Is death like that?) ... I quaked uncomforted,
Striving to frame to-morrow in a dream
Of woods and sliding pools and cloudless day.
(You know how bees come into a twilight room
From dazzling afternoon, then sail away
Out of the curtained gloom.)

III

You understand my thoughts; though, when you think,
You're out beyond the boundaries of my brain.
I'm but a bird at dawn that cries 'chink, chink'—
A garden-bird that warbles in the rain.
And you're the flying-man, the speck that steers
A careful course far down the verge of day,
Half-way across the world. Above the years
You soar ... Is death so bad? ... I wish you'd say.

--Siegfried Sassoon

So Fey new edition from Prime Books now available at Amazon.com for pre-order. Release date ETA: February 2009.

Shades of Grey
Fri 7pm Montrose
Peter Heck [moderator], Mindy Klasky, Victoria Janssen, Ted White, Catherine Asaro
Anti-heroes and morally ambigious chracters (such as Elric or Snape). How do writers
portray a character not firmly good nor evil. Why would a writer want to create such a
character? What is the advantage of making an ambigious character the hero? The
antangonist?

Girl Meets Monster - Gets Boyfiend: Paranormal Romances
Sat 1pm Montrose
Victoria Janssen [moderator], Maria V. Snyder, Mindy Klasky, Jeri Smith-Ready, Traci Castleberry
What is paranormal romance? Is it absorbing urban fantasy or is it a completely separate
genre? Why is it so popular? Why now? Should they be filed under romance or fantasy?

E.T. Phone Earth: First Contact and Alien Communication
Sat 2pm Montrose
Lawrence M. Schoen [moderator], Judith Moffett, Victoria Janssen, Charles Gannon
What happens when humans meet aliens? How might we communicate with them?
What barriers stand in the way? How have different SF stories, TV, and movies
addressed this situation?

Reading
Sat 9pm Twinbrook
Victoria Janssen

Home from Gaylaxicon, off to Capclave on Friday. Found Philcon and Arisia invitations in my emailbox this morning.

Tired, so, a numbered list.

1. Gaylaxicon is small and relaxing.

2. The Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial are amazingly beautiful (and uncrowded) between 11 pm and 1 am. Thanks, feklar, for kidnapping me!

3. The Iwo Jima memorial is amazing from every angle. Contrapposto! Also, there were new battles engraved on the base since the last time I saw it. *sad*

4. I got to see annesible for the first time in a while, which was lovely. I also met Ginn Hale, C.S. Friedman, and tcastleb for the first time.

5. Got to talk Dr. Who with mroctober. We agree that Jo Grant was in love with Three.

Deanna Raybourn, Silent in the Grave: a mystery set in Victorian London. It's first person, from the pov of a woman (Julia Grey) whose husband dies at the beginning, and later she suspects it's murder. She learns how to be a detective as she goes, with the help of investigator Nicholas Brisbane. Brisbane's many talents and Interesting Secrets are revealed as the book progresses, and there is a nifty subplot involving a bird whom I suspect will feature in future books

Brisbane becomes more and more Swoonily Interesting as the book goes on, and I am hoping he does not become So Interesting that the narrator is excluded. Her naievety might have been exacerbated in this book by her inexperience as a detective, so might improve.

All in all, this had much more of a romance feel to it than the C.S. Harris Regency mysteries.

( Spoiler that gives away solution to mystery. )

Other than that, I liked the book. I got the second one, just to see.

The damned mucous alien is still bugging me, particularly at night. It better clear up soon, or I'm calling in Torchwood. Rehearsal was Not Much Fun, when every time I took a deep breath, I didn't know if it would propel a coughing fit. Very annoying. It finally started to clear up, but not until the last half hour. Amazing how such a tiny thing can drive me crazy.

Here's my schedule for this weekend at Gaylaxicon:

"The YA (Young Adult) Boom"
Saturday, 2:00 PM
Maybe it was Harry Potter, or maybe it was Buffy, but there's been a growing market boom in speculative YA works recently. These new YA works are complex, morally ambiguous, often feature young adults defying parents, and even include GLBT characters. These works are not just for young adults anymore. Who are some of the creators to read/watch for in this area?
Victoria Janssen, Steve Berman, RR Angell

"Is Sex A Viable Plot?"
Saturday, 10:00 PM
There's nothing wrong with sex, but can sex alone carry a story? What about erotica….does it need a plot too? Or porn? Is plot the difference between them?
Victoria Janssen, Cecilia Tan, Nathan James, Catherine Lundoff

"How To Break In"
Sunday, 10:00 AM
So you want to be a writer/creator? How do you break into the publishing world or the media production world? Beyond just having a great story to tell, what more do you need to do? Agents, contacts, editors……oh my!
Victoria Janssen, Joshua Bilmes, Lee Martindale

"Erotica In The Genre"
Sunday, 11:00 AM
It's time for works with erotic content to come into the light of day. Works like "Lust" by our Author Guest of Honor Geoff Ryman are incorporating significant sexual content in works intended for a non-erotica audience. Is the genre ready for this? Are there editorial or market concerns with including so much sexual content in a genre work? Will the inclusion of GLBT erotic content be considered part of the stereotype of the "hypersexxed" gay?
Victoria Janssen, Geoff Ryman, Rebecca Ore

"Romancing the Genre"
Sunday, 3:00 PM
Take a look at the bookshelves in the genre section these days and you'll clearly see a wealth of genre-romance crossovers. It's even had an impact on media works - with romantic relationships playing a major role in works like Torchwood and Battlestar Galactica and even Doctor Who. Why have we seen so much romance entering the genre? Has it been a good thing for the genre?
Joshua Bilmes, Victoria Janssen, Therese Szymanski, Anne Harris

Reading: Cecilia Tan, Victoria Janssen
Saturday, 3:00 PM

I have promo!

Scroll down on this page to see a blurb on the Duchess novel.

This one is a mixture of uplifting and uplifting but goofy songs to which you just have to give up. I'm still not entirely satisfied with it, but after a while you just have to stop futzing with it.

Uplift Mix, 87,748 KB. Available for seven days. Please comment if you download. ETA: Track 5 is now fixed, link updated.

Uplift

1. "Rise Up," Yves Larock
2. "Closer," Melissa Ferrick
3. "In the Night," Basia Bulat
4. "Oh No," Gogol Bordello
5. "Karma Chameleon," The Beat Farmers
6. "Ton Plait Favori," Malajube
7. "Another Train," Pete Morton
8. "You're Still Standing There," Steve Earle
9. "Las Batallas," Café Tacuba
10. "Mr. Blue Sky," Electric Light Orchestra
11. "Patio dos Amores," Dulce Pontes
12. "Rain," Priscilla Ahn
13. "Sur ma Tombe," Soldat Louis
14. "Don't Stop," Fleetwood Mac
15. "Kalise," El Guincho
16. "We Shall Not Be Moved," Dan Zanes
17. "It Don't Mean a Thing," Club des Belugas
18. "Kaimono Boogie," Kanjani 8
19. "Apres Ski Remix," Polkaholik Atomik Harmonik
20. "After Party," Ozomatli
21. "How Can I Keep From Singing," Eva Cassidy

Ravel - "Valses nobles et sentimentales"
Prokofiev - "Piano Concerto No. 1"
Shostakovich - "Piano Concerto No. 1"
Musorgsky - "Pictures at an Exhibition"
Martha Argerich, piano; David Bilger, trumpet
Charles Dutoit, conductor
The Philadelphia Orchestra

The Ravel made me feel like I was watching a movie with lots of women strolling along the Seine or whatever, wearing bustles and carrying those foofy ruffled parasols. The last movement got slightly more crunchy, but I still didn't love it.

The Prokofiev was awesome, as was Martha Argerich, who got a rather lengthy ovation. Fun with intervals and pounding on the piano to show it really is percussion!

The Shostakovich was nice; I wanted more trumpet solo. He got to spend a lot of time just standing there, and playing tiny little sections here and there, until the bravura bit at the end.

"Pictures at an Exhibition" was great fun to listen to; I love and am familiar with the piece, and was happy to hear it live. I didn't like the saxophone solo much; the sound was too airy, the solo not sexy enough, possibly because throughout Dutoit took it at a brisk pace. Sometimes I liked the brisk pace, sometimes I wanted a little more lingering and scraping on the crunchy bits. A couple of times, the strings felt too smooth and polished for my taste, but that's getting really nitpicky. Tuba solo hurray! I finally got to clearly hear the new(ish) principal tubist, Carol Jantsch, as other than part of the low brass. (I say principal, even though there's only one, because it is so cool.)

Lastly, Oh Charles Dutoit, please stop doing that with your hair. Pleasepleaseplease. Please sir please. You are a nice man and don't deserve to have your hair look like that.

If you've read any good mysteries lately, particularly historical mysteries, please tell me about them!

I'm currently reading C. S. Harris (Regency England) and Deanna Raybourn (Victorian England). I've already come to love Lindsey Davis (Flavian Rome).

EDITED TO ADD: My older posts on mysteries, at least the ones I had the foresight to tag.

This is the "flower" duet from Lakmé by Léo Delibes.

And this is the much darker song by David Usher that samples it.

Interesting, huh?

What did I do yesterday?

A load of laundry.

Tonight, though, I get to go to the Orchestra for free. Thank you, Tom!

Poll #1270462 Angsty YA
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I like angsty Young Adult books.

In an angsty alternate-world YA fantasy, I'd like these things:

My favorite you-only-hurt-the-ones-you-love torture is:

Rehearsals continue apace for the Eric Whitacre concert. I discovered that my residual brusing and sore muscles from Sunday, when I pitched onto some concrete steps, actually affected my posture; I had a hard time sitting up and breathing deeply unless I thought about it. Am much less stiff today, thank goodness.

My favorite of the pieces to sing remains "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine," because it requires turning on a dime every few pages; I also adore the way Whitacre integrated Renaissance styles in one section, then uses the choir for onomatopoeia, or whatever it's called when voices imitate sounds when they're not using actual words to do it. Hey, there're performances of it on YouTube and imeem! Some of them quite messy in places, though, and of course the sound's a bit tinny.

My other favorite is "Five Hebrew Love Songs," which is just gorgeous. And for me, "When David Heard" is the biggest technical challenge, as we have long, long phrases of repeated triplets in wide intervals at various volumes that are quite tiring, especially when it's loud, loud, anguished at the end.

I have the feeling I'm going to be falling over at the end of these performances, but it's worth it for such exciting music. Because of our hookup with the Bach Festival, and a gig with the Chamber Orchestra, the rest of the year is all Bach, and Brahms' Requiem in February. It will make me very, very happy to sing those things, especially my very first time singing Bach's B Minor Mass this spring.

Eric Whitacre on MySpace has an nicely uncluttered site and several lovely choral pieces to which one can listen. None of the pieces my choir is doing is up--these are newer, and some of them are experimental operatic pieces.

Slumber-Song

Sleep; and my song shall build about your bed
A paradise of dimness. You shall feel
The folding of tired wings; and peace will dwell
Throned in your silence: and one hour shall hold
Summer, and midnight, and immensity
Lulled to forgetfulness. For, where you dream,
The stately gloom of foliage shall embower
Your slumbering thought with tapestries of blue.
And there shall be no memory of the sky,
Nor sunlight with its cruelty of swords.
But, to your soul that sinks from deep to deep
Through drowned and glimmering colour, Time shall be
Only slow rhythmic swaying; and your breath;
And roses in the darkness; and my love.

--Siegfried Sassoon

Finished my proposal for The Duke and the Pirate Queen! I'm sending it off today.

1. Worked on the short story instead of the outline this weekend, maybe 1000 words, but I figured out what the story's about.

2. Tripped on concrete stairs and now have some interesting bruising in straight lines.

3. Bought new ironing board cover at Sears after turning up my nose at less excellent ones at other places.

4. Mucous alien still draining. Communicating via Nyquil at night.

5. Friend from Buffalo is visiting this weekend, yay! Will have to juggle with pimping of Sarah Connor Chronicles.