I need someone to come stare at my phone and check my email every six minutes so that I can have some lunch and relax a little bit. Anybody not have anything important to do right now?
Tag: blogging
#WeekendCoffeeShare: WTFNovember Edition
If we were having coffee, I’d ask you how the election went. Well, actually, I’d just look outside and see if the sky was raining fire, and check to see if I was wearing clothing or sackcloth, and that would answer the question for me. Because apparently when I went to bed last night I slept for seven months. It was gorgeous outside yesterday, or at least it was until the cold front blew through. Now it’s 40 goddamn degrees outside. I bought shorts this week and it’s 40 degrees outside.
Gotta love Indiana.
We– yes, we— have a bridal shower to attend in Illinois tomorrow, so we’re going to be out of touch all day. I may post some fiction; I have a story in mind that I wrote in a single burst a couple of months ago and put aside thinking “try to sell this to someone.” I never did, so I may as well give it to you guys. Hopefully it’s warmer in Illinois; we’ll see.
Let’s see. Anything else? It’s been a pretty quiet week, actually, other than the job interview on Monday. I’d kvetch about that some more but I already did it and I’m leery of jinxing myself at this point. I should know in a few days. We’ll worry about it after that.
Have you seen Captain America: Civil War yet? If not, what the hell are you waiting for? No more coffee for you until you’ve seen that movie. It’s awesome.
Hmm. Yeah. That’s what I’ve got. Let’s listen to Prince again for a while. Let’s Go Crazy has been running through my head for a couple of days; there are worse ways to spend a cold Saturday morning than listening to good music.
#WeekendCoffeeShare: Words on Paper Edition
If we were having coffee, I’d want to talk mostly about what you’ve been reading and watching lately. I went to see Captain America: Civil War yesterday, and while I haven’t had time to review it yet the short version is “best Marvel movie yet,” which may already tell you everything you need to know. I didn’t get to it yesterday because the afternoon turned out busier than I thought, but it’s coming, believe me.
What good books have you read lately? I’ve mentioned this, but not a lot: I’m doing a project with my reading this year where I’m trying to limit my books by white men to 25% of the books I’m reading. This has meant a lot of books by new authors, which means that competition is fierce as hell already for my top 10 list at the end of the year– because it turns out that when you say “I’ve never read anything by that person. What’s their best book?” a lot, you read a hell of a lot of good books. I’ve got some reviews to write there as well, most especially for Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, which is flat-out the best short story collection I’ve ever read. I’m mostly a sci-fi/fantasy person, as I think almost all of you know, but I’ll read literally anything in English that gets a recommendation from people I like regardless of the genre. So what’s good out there?
(I started Claudia Gray’s Bloodline last night. Her Lost Stars ranks among the best Star Wars books I’ve ever read, so I’m super excited to get into this one.)
So, yeah. What’s good out there? I’m still unemployed, so I’ve got nothing but time right now. Gimme some recommendations!
#AtoZChallenge, Day 26: Zaumg
Zaumg started off as a joke on Twitter while I was flailing about trying to come up with a proper title for The Sanctum of the Sphere. I wanted something that sounded like a Star Wars/Indiana Jones/ adventure serial type of subtitle, and specifically was trying to think of something alliterative. When I referenced The Temple of Doom as a template I was working from, some jackass (and I say that with love) suggested The Ziggurat of ZOMG. I rejected it, for obvious reasons.
There is a story in the forthcoming Tales from the Benevolence Archives called The Ziggurat of Zaumg.
It is the Internet’s fault.
My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives. You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.
Previously: “Yank”.
#AtoZChallenge, Day 25: “Yank”
“Yank” is one of the short stories in The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1. And this entry is kind of hard to write, because it’s a short story, right, and so if I tell you much about it I’ll be ruining it, but I still need an entry for Y anyway.
Hm. Yank is the first story with dwarves in it, the first mention of the Malevolence, and also the story about what happens when you think you’re in tunnelspace and then suddenly you’re not. It’s kind of important to Sanctum, come to think of it. Read it! You’ll like it.
My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives. You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.
Previously: Elvish pronouns.
#AtoZChallenge, Day 24: Elvish Pronouns
Because elves typically do not have a gender, elvish pronouns do not match the binary “he/she” construction common to English. Elvish pronouns begin with X, meaning that I am the only participant in the A to Z Challenge who had an easier time finding a word for X than he did for J.
Elvish pronouns are as follows:
He/she: Xe
His/hers: Xir
The genderless “they” and “their” can be used for multiple elves.
My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives. You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.
Previously: Whisper-on-the-Waters.
Here we go here we go here we go
Okay.
I’m going to have a productive day today, people. If it kills me. I have a job interview in half an hour, and once that’s done I have a literal list of projects from which to choose from, and I’m gonna bloody well get to as many of them as I can before I have to go collect the boy from school this afternoon. Today will be productive.
You hear me, world?
Productive.
Getting stuff done.
Yeah.
#AtoZChallenge, Day 23: Whisper-on-the-Waters
Whisper-on-the-Waters is a dwarf and a high-ranking member of the Noble Opposition. She appears in The Sanctum of the Sphere.
Dwarves are an intensely matriarchal culture, and women by law hold all positions of status and power. Female dwarves typically have “story” names (two other dwarves from BA stories are Smashes-the-Stars and Shocks-the-Mountains, for example.) Male dwarves are practically slaves unless they happen to be the children of very highborn dwarven women; most male dwarves have a three-letter name, not always especially pronounceable. Brazel and Grond have been called upon to “liberate” male dwarves from their homes on more than one occasion, as the few allowed access to education often try to escape dwarven society to make their way in freedom somewhere else.
My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives. You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.
Previously: Brian K. Vaughan.
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