Here's where I'll be Sunday...

10:00 a.m. Great First Lines
12:00 p.m. Business Side Of Writing (Contracts, Taxes, Agents, And More)

This afternoon I'll be on two panels:

1:00 p.m. Physics of Fantasy
4:00 p.m. Blogs and the Media

See you there, maybe!

Courtesy of Faith...



If you missed me and you're of an SF-nal bent, all is not lost--I'll be at VCON this weekend.

Last week a new acquaintance, after knowing me for a couple hours, said: "You don't strike me as a girly girl."

What interested me about this was that at the time I was totally wearing woman drag. Pink leather coat, red t-shirt, a skirt that looks like an Easter basket, pretty shoes (provided by Ana), hose, lipstick. My hair was all down and wavy. In any case, the comment both surprised and pleased me.

The above costume is almost certainly what I'll wear Sunday to WOTS, by the way, for those who want to weigh in on my apparent femininity or lack thereof.

Kelly and I got to tour the UBC Farm on the weekend, and it was so incredibly cool. Students have got over forty research projects going there, in a number of disciplines; they're raising chickens, keeping bees--without feeding them sugar!--and growing fruits and veggies. They have a kid's garden, where retired farmers and master gardeners mentor children in how to grow stuff. They raise and sell organic food while trying to figure out the most planet, plant, animal and human-friendly ways to do it.

Meanwhile UBC Campus and Community Planning would really really like to plow the farm under and make a few kazillion bucks by putting yet more condominiums on the site.

There will be public meetings and web forums where Lower Mainlanders can protest, and I'll post info as it comes up. Full-Bodied is tracking the story too. And if you couldn't care less about the farm, consider writing them a nag note for my sake, because come spring I'm keen to attend their beekeeping workshops, if and when they don't get the chop.

From this year's BEST OF VANCOUVER issue of THE GEORGIA STRAIT...



You can read Full-Bodied here or friend the syndicated feed.

I am pleased to announce that I will be appearing at the Word on The Street festival on September 28th at Vancouver Public Library. I'm appearing on behalf of On Spec Magazine, who kindly bought my story "The Children of Port Allain" some years ago--at 2:30 p.m., I'll read from that story on Mini-Stage 1, and at 3:00 p.m. I'll read a passage from their upcoming Youth Issue.

I'll be giving away a free subscription and some copies of ON SPEC, and I hope some of you will join me to celebrate this terrific literary arts festival as well as an awesome Canadian SF magazine.

The hair had already been styled-ish, when I decided to do this...

Take a picture of yourself right now.
don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
post that picture with NO editing.
post these instructions with your picture.

But here are some flying horses, from the local racetrack...



Last week would've been a good one for me to have started The Eowyn Challenge, which is a self-paced walking challenge whereby people, usually female, try to cover the miles walked by the various Lord of the Rings characters. I hiked around Trout Lake a bit, and around my neighborhood generally, and to Hastings Park a couple of times. On this occasion, I'd gone in the early morning specifically to catch the horses at their morning workout.

I love walking and taking pictures, as you've all probably noticed, and the weather in Vancouver has been so glorious that I've been indulging myself, eschewing other forms of exercise in favor of hiking five, seven, even ten kilometers a day. I figure that once it starts pouring I'll be less inclined, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Has anyone seen anything brilliant, preferably on the web, about the differences between text and subtext and techniques for writing scenes with interesting, juicy subtext? I plan to go surfing for this myself, of course, and I'll post any neat links I find. In the meantime if you have a favorite article on this topic I'd love to hear about it.

We opted for a quiet day of dawn-to-dusk loafing today--reading, video gameage, and there will no doubt be some TV in our future. Just for fun, I'm also not walking kajillions of kilometers today. I finished Terry Jones and Alan Ereira's BARBARIANS and decided I was enjoying the collapse of the Roman Empire enough to jump into JUSTINIAN'S FLEA: PLAGUE, EMPIRE AND THE BIRTH OF EUROPE, by William Rosen. From which, this particularly well-turned paragraph:

The coincidence of timing does not, of course, prove that the pandemic caused Rome to fall, or Europe to be born; as above, the uncertainties of the three thousand body-problem makes such a claim fundamentally uncertain. However, the Plague of Justinian, to give both pandemic and emperor their names, killed at least twenty-five million people; depopulated entire cities; and depressed birth rates for generations precisely at the time that Justinian's armies had returned the entire western Mediterranean to imperial control and only decades before Muhammad's followers emerged out of Arabia to conquer Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Persia, Mesopotamia and Spain. It is therefore as difficult to plot a course to modern Europe without acknowledging the presence of Justinian and the plague as it would be to send a satellite to the moons of Saturn without accounting for the gravitational impact (the technical word is perturbation) of the planet Jupiter.

I did make a quick run out to the usual places: Fratelli's, the cave of cheese, and the produce store. And now I'm simmering a chicken stew, which would usually include apricots, but I couldn't find any--not at Triple-A, not at Norman's, not at Santa Barbara--so I bought prune-plums instead, because they are currently in season, smooth and perfect, tart and sweet at once. The stew has fennel and carrots and is seasoned with cumin and coriander, and I added a splash of red wine. For sides we'll have two salads: new potatoes with capers, seasoned in blackberry vinegar and olive oil and beetroots in balsamico.

Speaking of TV, we watched the Fringe pilot last night, and liked it enough to give it a few weeks, at least. TV deities, please take note: as usual, we'd like the Vancouver-born boy-hero's stubble shaved as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

With all that's happened lately, Kelly and I have decided that going to Calgary for the World Fantasy Convention isn't in the cards. I therefore have an attending membership for the World Fantasy Convention for $125 U.S., if anyone is interested.

ETA: It's sold! Thank you, anyone who did in fact pass the word!

She's there, I'm here, and blogging will continue here and in Facebook, as usual.

Berries in the sun...


Ironically, that hot and relentless sun is gone now, at least for awhile. It started cooling off slightly on Sunday and now it's cold, rainy and very wet indeed. You'd never know that only days ago we were living under the electric fans and gasping for breath. After getting soaked on the way home from Tropic Thunder yesterday evening, I hauled out my very old favorite raincoat from the early Nineties to deal with future deluges. (Hello, my purple coat. It's lovely to wear you again. Kelly has suggested we get you some shiny new buttons to update your look--what do you think?)

Tropic Thunder was... okay, I laughed. I laughed really incredibly heart-attackingly hard in a few places. Some of the performances were great, it moved, I loved that they were mocking the Vietnam War movies I've seen so many of, and I had a great time seeing it. But I'm not sure it would work twice. Many of the gags were based on a combination of humor and that peculiar, Sarah Silverman-esque type of "I can't believe they did that, OMG!" shock value. I don't know if they'd stand up on a second viewing, when I knew what was coming, and when the comparative lack of a real narrative would, inevitably, be more apparent.

The David C. Lam Asian Garden at the UBC Botanical Garden has a shiny new feature--I'd call it a canopy walk, but it isn't quite high enough. In two seconds of browsing their site I can't see any info on it, and it looked as though one wasn't allowed on it without a tour guide. Which wouldn't have stopped me, but a tour had just started, and they'd have heard and seen me if I'd tried to go roaming the catwalks on my own.

I must learn more! I will learn more, though perhaps not today.

If by some chance you haven't already noticed, Kelly and Dolly have been covering Vinocamp all day, in great detail, at Full-Bodied. There were truffles and tastings and an opulent lunch, and so much information about wine! All the geekly attendees were encouraged to write about the event as it was happening and Kelly gave a fantastic closing address about wine blogging, bringing the day to a really satisfying close.

Vinocamp was held at the UBC Botanical Gardens--site of our legal wedding--and today is the fifth anniversary of the ceremony itself, so I couldn't resist the urge to steal away once or twice to roll in the memories and take a few pictures. Here's one from the herb garden that I'm extremely pleased with.

I've decided I particularly like this sunset shot...

When we were in Onoway last week, Joan gave me this sketch. It was done by her stepmother, my great-grandmother Phil, and on the back it says:

Drawing by Florence L. Brown 1933 after the painting of "Lady Georgiana Fayne" by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Original painting in the National Gallery, London, England. Florence Letitia Booker.

It's in pretty delicate shape, so I'll have to get it mounted and framed at some point in the near.

Working my way backwards photographically through the past week in Alberta, I spent some time taking portraits and closeups of my brother and sister-in-law's horses.

What you want with me, you Great Ape? You not even know my name!


( And five more... )

We spent most of today in the car, heading west, heading home, but as we went through Jasper National Park we were determined to stop for wildlife and beauty wherever we saw it... and we did. And so, there will be pictures. We saw bighorn sheep, and I spotted a bear. One of the places we stopped was the same little streambed where we took pictures two years ago, when Jerry died. It's a lovely spot, and there's always something interesting--and usually small--to see. Today it was bird tracks in the streambed.



We've been home for just over an hour, and it is extremely good to be here. The week was extremely full and very emotional, and I don't think either of us has processed even a tenth of it yet.

Kelly and I were headed back to Sandra's from Sherelyn and Dave's, and I said, "I think tomorrow I'd like to have a few more wildlife sightings. The elk was cool, but that's about all we've seen."

Not thirty seconds later we were turning from the Entrance Road onto the Highway and we saw a huge cougar trotting in the same direction, springing over the highway guardrails like they were nothing, and vanishing into the bush.

Cougar!!! Rare gorgeous kitty sighting! Wow.

Connect with Writers, Courses, and Inspiration for Free at the Writers Faire on Sunday, September 7

( All the info )

I took some pics of another family gathering yesterday, but I think they are all on K's camera. The original files for these are huge, but when I get the laptop up and running there will be more, and smaller shots.

( Alberta Visit Day Two )