Bluejo's Journal

4:47pm: OMG, it's full of tea.
So, I think I'm awake enough to post about a funny thing that happened on the way home. I'm not very awake, mind you, but anyway.

Bristol airport have unilaterally decreed that nobody is leaving there with more than one piece of hand luggage. We all had one piece of hand luggage plus a laptop each. The others managed to repack so that their laptops were in their hand luggage, but I couldn't. Caliban is a fairly hefty laptop as laptops go, and anyway, my hand luggage was smaller and already full of fragiles. Now Caliban is a hefty laptop and his carrying case is very sturdy -- it was the original case with the original Caliban, which was one of the first 386 laptops in Europe in the early nineties. The padding is very good. It survived the journey absolutely fine, ("Arthur bruised his upper arm...") though I did hate the thought of checking him and I did worry all the way that someone would steal him or he would get damaged.

Zorinth's checked bag was a very heavy backpack, with straps. Because of that, and because I'd made a bit of a fuss about being forced to check Caliban, they asked us to take these two bags down to the x-ray machine for special x-rays and gentle treatment as odd-shaped pieces of luggage unsuitable for conveyer belts. Because the pack was Zorinth's and I was juggling three people's passports and boarding cards, he was holding the papers for both bags when we got there. They went through the machine, and then they called him forward to Caliban's case. The rest of us waited a little way away and watched what happened.

The baggage guy, a huge fellow, pointed at Caliban and asked Z to open the case. Z sensibly opened the central compartment where the actual laptop was, not the sides, which are special bits for the wires. It was evident in every motion of Z's body that he was horrified to have the baggage guy believe that this antique laptop had anything to do with him. "It's my crazy mother's," he was probably saying. "It runs DOS. I have a much better laptop than this!"

The baggage guy nodded and asked him to open the side compartments of Caliban's case. Z did, clearly expecting only the wires and powerbox and USB A-drive. But I had -- well, it seemed like a good idea at the time -- stuffed the sides with Somerfield red berry tea bags. They're foil wrapped, and there wasn't any need to take the boxes because they were going into a tin when they got here. I'd bought ridiculous amounts of them because Somerfield have been bought by the Co-Op and I'm worried that they'll stop making their terrific own brand tisanes. (This always happens to me. I'm in a permanent state of having plenty of teas to drink, but several instances in the apartment of the last teabag in the world of some particular tea.) So anyway, I'd opened the packets and stuffed a lot of them into my pack, and when I'd run out of room there I'd had the brilliant idea of stuffing them around the wires in Caliban's case.

The baggage guy laughed and said something. Z looked mortified. He zipped the case up again and the baggage guy gently put it with some other bags. Z came back to where I was chortling. "Did he say Oh My God It's Full Of Tea?" I asked. "No," Z said. "He just said: well why not."

Indeed.

12:50am: Going Home Again
I'm leaving Wales and will be (planes willing) home in Montreal tonight. Normal communications will be restored as soon as possible, both here and over at the new exciting Tor blog where I'm going to be posting regularly about what I'm re-reading.

12:44am: Prometheus Award, Yay!
I'm delighted, amused and honoured to announce that Ha'Penny has won the Prometheus Award -- actually, it's better than that, because it's co-won with Harry Turtledove's The Gladiator and you can't imagine how lovely it is to co-win something with a splendid book by an author you've loved for years.

I'm amused because of all my online arguments with Libertarians. I am so not a Libertarian. Ask zsero. But I am anti-authoritarian and I suppose I have written a book about the moral corruption of an authoritarian society, and if they think that's good enough to give me an ounce of gold (an ounce of gold, how cool is that?) then good for them. As they've given it to Ken MacLeod and Charlie Stross before, they're obviously looking at the book, not the author. Oh, and another cool thing -- this is the first time the actual award has been won by a woman. The Hall of Fame award has been given to Le Guin and Ayn Rand, but the annual award has been won by a man since 1981.

I'll be at the award ceremony, which I believe is Wednesday afternoon at Denvention.

(zorinth is torn between the idea of me keeping the ounce of gold to be a coin on my eventual dead eye in my eventual archaeologically interesting tomb, or melting it down to buy him a new laptop.)

( complete Prometheus award press release )

2:57am: Bits and Pieces
I've been dashing about hither and yon, and will continue to do so for the next little while.

Ha'Penny is available in paperback, it's been spotted in the wild in Montreal by rysmiel so it's probably all over the US. If you were waiting for it, you need wait no longer.

My story Tradition had an honourable mention in the Dozois Year's Best, (thanks, ericmarin!) which is pretty amazing, especially as this was a "you saw it here first" story.

Marcus Rowland (ffutures) has finished the RPG of Tooth and Claw and it'll be out as soon as I finish reading through it and send him the minor corrections. (I'd have finished it by now except that I forget to take it on the train up to Lancaster.) And here is a review of Tooth and Claw.

And a couple of positive Farthing reviews, the nauseating brilliance of it is the familiarity and I almost literally couldn't put this down and a comparison between it and Buchanan's latest offering.

1:47am: "Oh," grumped Jo, grumpily.
There's going to be an exciting new trade paperback edition of Farthing, and I'm going to correct all the mistakes.

(Of course I'm not going to correct the robin/wren thing. That's not a mistake, that's alternate history. Alternate numismatics...)

I know about Venus, and I know about the insufficiently copyedited Earl/Duke thing. There are also a couple of other things I'm going to clarify up where I am actually right but there's a Tiffany problem.

If anyone has noticed any other mistakes, or any typos, in Farthing, please post them here with page numbers so they can be fixed, by me, with good cheer and a smiling heart.

(Actually, once I start reading it I'll probably enjoy it. Or so I keep telling myself as I procrastinate. And it's great that they're doing a new edition. Really it is, because it's earned out now. I just have to slog through it. Upwards and onwards!)

2:34am: Lifelode -- Questions?
I have to write an essay about Lifelode to go in the book.

I've written one sentence("Lifelode is unquestionably the most difficult book I've ever written") and since then I've been staring blankly. I thought it might be useful and stimulating if you were to ask me some questions about it that I could answer -- not here, but in the essay. So, whether you've read it or not, got any questions about it?

Also, I've lost my list of beta readers on my original Caliban's hard drive. If you read it, please remind me, so I can thank you!

In other news, we've been to a megalithic tomb, a reconstructed Celtic hillfort, and a Roman town since I last posted, all within an easy day's drive of Cardiff.

4:19am: Safely here, and a plan
We are safely in Cardiff. I have asthma. This isn't unexpected, I am allergic to this whole country, and I know that, it happens every year. All the same, it's tiring and annoying. We're going to go down to the sea today, the lonely sea and the sky -- no, that's not what I meant to say, the lovely sea air full of sleep and quiet breathing, that's it.

The other cool thing we're doing is that we're going to show Z's girlfriend British history in order -- starting with standing stones, and making our way forward through the Celts and the Romans before getting to medieval castles. This is a plan.

11:07am: The beauty of airports
I'm exhausted and soaked in sweat from... zipping my bag up.

It's kind of humid today.

Fortunately for my dislike of this weather, we're flying to Britain this evening, where it will (I hope) be chilly. I'll be there for the next three weeks, mostly in Cardiff with a brief excursion to London and a brief excursion to Lancaster. If you want to see me and we don't have plans, email.

zorinth is of course coming with me, and his girlfriend is coming with him. It'll be her first time going, well, anywhere really, and we hope to show her some interesting places.

I'll have email, but I won't be online very much. You probably won't notice much difference, as I notice I hardly posted last week, a busy fun week in which I went to Kingston, saw Leonard Cohen in concert, and melted in the heat. You'll notice "fixing the end of the novel" is not in that list, but it's on the to-do list, and every day I was actively not doing it. I am taking Caliban II to Britain, and may fix it there. I may even do a research trip to the location where it happens... gosh, that'll be a fun European location for Z's girlfriend's first trip.

So, we're packed, we're ready, we're leaving this afternoon.

2:22pm: Leonard Cohen live last night: link is to a coherent review
And from that tiny shape in grey,
so small, so old, so far away,
that voice, that sound, that music.

9:52am: Interview with me about science in SF.

3:40pm: New edition of Tooth and Claw
There's a new Orb edition of Tooth and Claw coming out in January, and This is the proposed cover.

It's going to say "Winner of the World Fantasy Award" instead of what it does say, but otherwise that's it.

What do you think?

5:32am: Prom Pics
For those of you who want to see them, here are zorinth and his girlfriend all dressed up and ready for the Prom.

Pictures by rysmiel, taken on our back balcony. You can just see some of my flowers grown from seed and one day to have flowers and be blue, in the background of one of them.

6:36pm: Mary Renault spoiler thread
Hey pameladean and the_red_shoes, why don't we talk about The Mask of Apollo over here where we won't be treading on mrissa's toes when she hasn't read it yet?

If only I'd known when I was fifteen what I know today -- which is that if you read a book over and over, you will eventually memorise it, and then you can't read it any more.

Comments are going to have spoilers.

2:38pm: Melting and tetchy, have some links.
Totally bizarre a review of Lone Star Stories 27, including a detailed review of my Sibyl poem. Never argue with reviews.

Positive review of Farthing.

Fairly dull interview at SciFi Wire.

ETA Libertarian review of Ha'Penny.

And I don't know, but I must have totally messed up yesterday's post, because so many people saying "but you don't have to do that" when my whole point was that I want to do that and can't, can't all be idiots. I'll try to rephrase it sometime when it's cooler and I have more brain.

12:02pm: Why I can't write science fiction. Grump.
I can't write science fiction because I know both too much and not enough science.

I know too much to spout total crap and not care, and I don't know enough to inherently get it right. So I can write it and be sort of right and I need to get it checked.

Getting it checked slows me down, because it's everything. And sometimes slowing me down in itself slows me down to the point of losing momentum and not being able to write it. Other times getting it checked means I can't write the paragraph I want to write that was doing set up and incluing and making the whole thing work. The way I write, I inclue as I go along and plot develops as I go along and background develops out of that, and my understanding of the world develops (even if lots of it doesn't end up on the page) and if half of what I think turns out to be wrong then it just gets to the point where it isn't worth doing in the first place. The people who know science suggest alternatives that totally screw up what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it, and I lose all confidence in it and decide I should stick to stuff I understand.

So I have this thing about aliens with four genders. It takes place in the universe where the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that FTL drives make your star explode after 20 uses. So these aliens are stuck in their solar system (with a couple of other aliens who showed up and can't go home) and they know about other aliens. (Earth may or may not exist in this universe. It doesn't matter. This is a story about some aliens.) My aliens have a mother planet and a terraformed marslike, and a moon where they live in domes. My character comes from the terraformed planet. He's leaving a spaceship on the mother planet, he smells the mother planet air, and he thinks "Ah, the sweet smell of /INSERT ATMOSPHERE COMPONENT GAS HERE/, which we don't have in the air of my terraformed home, which smells so atavistically good because this is where my ancestors evolved, but which nevertheless reminds me of the three years I spent here in the prison camp." And I stop, and I trot off to ask what atmospheric component gas it could be (and already you notice I have stopped writing and started checking, and also, note how much I had to explain to get to this point, which in the actual story would all not be explained) and after a long discussion I find out that there's nothing, unless I totally change everything I want, or give them noses that can smell argon or something (which is an unnecessary complication when they already have turtle shells and four eyes and the interesting thing is the four genders) and I have to scrap that sentence which was doing set up and incluing and background and was about to set up the next sentence about how he met his best friend in the prison camp and was going to lead on into some actual story.

If I didn't know any science at all, I'd just merrily put traces of chlorine in an oxygen atmosphere and it would all be as dumb as heck but at least it would actually get written and the characters would get out of my head and get to have their adventure.

And this is just one line, and it's all like that.

So anyway, that's why I don't write SF, even though it's what I like to read.

3:47pm: Trains. I've always liked trains.
I am going to Denver on the train.

I was dithering about this, but I discovered, poking around on Amtrak's website (now that I have a computer competent to load Amtrak's website) that both Denver and Montreal are in the East part of Amtrak's remit, and that a peak time 15 day pass on the East part is only $369. This is a lot less than flying. Granted it takes a lot more time, but I have a lot more time than I do money. Also, flying isn't very fast -- yes, it's a four hour flight, but the "cheap" flight I was looking at takes more than nine hours and has two changes. I'd rather spend two and a half days on trains and in stations than nine hours on planes and in airports. Also, I still have a US visa from the time we whizzed down to Vermont so we could officially Land in Canada, so that makes things easier.

So, I will have a 15 day ticket on which I can go anywhere in the East region. (You can see a really good map of it if you go to the link I embedded earlier, click on "buy a pass" and then on the map. I can't link directly to the good map.)

I want to arrive in Denver on the 5th and leave on the 11th.

First thought -- is anyone else planning on going on the train and would like to meet up, maybe in Chicago?

Second thought -- on the way home, if I go directly I have the old "23 hours in Schenectady" problem. (This is because Amtrak, while totally rocking in many ways -- cheap, with lovely trains with edible food, free cold water and huge comfortable seats such as are undreamed of in Europe -- runs trains and not a railway system. I have ranted about this before.) Anyway, there are other things I could do if I have a pass. I could go somewhere else between Denver and New York -- pretty much anywhere. I'd have six days to do a two and a half days journey in. Even so, it wouldn't be possible to go everywhere and see everybody I'd like to -- but I might be able to go to some places and see some people. Or I could just ride trains in a great big loop on my own and see zillions of places, from the train. There are sensible options and silly options. (And the more I look at that train map, the more I think of the really, really silly options.) But I thought I might as well ask, who's between those two points, might like to see me, and has a railway station and a spare bed?

9:21am: Denvention
So, who's going to Denver?

Anybody want to share a hotel room? I've been poking about looking for cheap places to stay nearby but I can't find any.

1:26pm: Lone Star Stories
My poem "Sibyl" (you saw it here first!) can be found in this month's Lone Star Stories, along with poems by sovay and seajules and some stories as well.

8:55am: Title Thought
How about:

Industrial Landscape, with Fairies?

( though definitely not )

8:41am: Thud: ILE
Words: 884 (Well, more than that, but I was working in the "all" file and I cut a lot as well as writing a lot)
Total words: 99924
Files: 3
Tea: Jasmine
Music: NMPA
RSI: Going to rest hands now.
Reason for stopping: this is the new fixed end.

Just fixing the end.

Every day this last little while I've been fixing the day before's first thing in the morning. This was a little more than that, but I am now much happier with the flow of end.

I'm now going to do all the things I've been leaving until after the book is finished.

Happy birthday nancylebov!

4:17pm: Thud: ILE, Finished at last!
Words: 2107
Total words: 99080
Files: 4
Tea: still Emperor's Choice
Music: still Bach's orchestral suites 1 & 2
RSI: still awful
Reason for stopping: finished!

I need to read through the whole thing and do a smoothing pass, and I probably did rush that last bit, but anyway, a through draft!

Will take volunteer beta readers, but it'll be at least tomorrow and probably a few days before it's ready to send.

2:51pm: Thud: ILE
Words: 1339
Total words: 96970
Files: 4
Tea: Emperor's Choice Writing Tea, as foolishly discontinued by Celestial Seasonings, who don't understand that we're all emperors now.
Music: Bach's Orchestral Suites 1 & 2
RSI: getting into the "can't feel it" range, so let's not think about it.
Reason for stopping: need to check sunset times.

Anybody have sunset times for Cardiff for February 1980? I'll take moonphases too if you have them, but it's sunset times I need right now.

1:13pm: Thud: ILE
Words: 1368
Total words: 95599
Files: 4
Tea: Spring tea, not much of it left either.
Music: Bach's Orchestral Suites 1 & 2
RSI: lousy
Reason for stopping: that's a bit.

The end continues to recede before me. I must not rush. This was a good bit. It needed to be there. Festina lente. Maybe not until tomorrow. That would be OK. Next week would even be OK.

Incidentally, I wanted to look up who said the British class system was "branded on the tongue". Google informs me it was Wyndham Lewis, John Wyndham, George Orwell and/or George Bernard Shaw.

7:34am: Thud: ILE
Words: 1018
Total words: 94257
Files: 3
Tea: Jasmine
Music: NMPA
RSI: Actually hurting and stiff
Reason for stopping: the end keeps receding, and I don't want to rush it in a stupid way that'll need fixing, which is harder than getting it right in the first place.

I keep underestimating the number of things that have to happen. I hate it when that happens. This is a longer story than normal, and not in chapters.

Query: when was the episode of Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy in which Zaphod Beeblebrox says "Anything for a weird life" broadcast?

7:04pm: Thud: ILE
Words: 1785
Total words: 93299 (What's this, 93,000 and not finished? Dear me.)
Tea: Heath and Heather Mandarin and Ginseng, of which I am now down to four bags, it's a good thing I'm going to Britain in July.
Music: Bach's Orchestral Suites 1 & 2, especially 2.
RSI: Look, if I wasn't coddling the RSI it would be no kidding finished by now.
Reason for stopping: You say you want a resolution, well, you know we all want to save the world.

There's about another day's worth of writing to go, which will be tomorrow.