Ask Nicola

Crucial vote tomorrow

2012-01-31T11:55:00.000-08:00

Last night, the Washington state House Judiciary Committee passed by a vote of 7-6 the bill to extend the freedom to marry to same-sex couples. Tomorrow, the state Senate will vote. There's a very good chance it will pass.

If it does pass, Gov Chris Gregoire will sign it. Washington will be the seventh state (plus Washington, D.C.) where people who love each other can get married. We won't have to settle for marridge.

But the margin of votes is narrow. If you live in Washington, please call your state Senator and urge her or him to vote Yes. If you don't live here but have friends and/or relatives here, phone them and urge them to call their Senator. (Find yours here.)

And hopefully I'll have good news to report tomorrow. Start dialing.

Game of Thrones Season Two trailer

2012-01-29T21:00:00.000-08:00

Clearly the producers have taken on board the popularity of Peter Dinklage and his character, Tyrion. Also, the palette looks much darker. I hope there ~~are some jokes and some pretties~~ is much great acting and stern drama.

Available for rent: the Acropolis

2012-01-29T07:58:00.000-08:00

Parthenon (Cornell)

Parthenon (Brooklyn Museum)

These two photos were taken a long time ago. But this is how the Acropolis looked when I walked there, when I sat on one of those bits of marble and smoked a cigarette looking out over Athens. Of course, when I was there, it was less clean: can tabs, cigarette butts, food wrappers... And perhaps it was slightly more ruinous. But it was magnificent. Even in the haze of morning-after-my-first-sex-with-a-woman it made an impression:

Greece was the first foreign country I visited. It marked many firsts. Kissing a girl. Knocking a man down (I was smoking outside a disco, sitting on a wall, he came outside and sat next to me; he wore a white silk catsuit, professed to love the music of "pin floynd", and insisted that because he was joining the army tomorrow we had to kiss; I pushed him backwards off the wall). Smoking inside an historical monument (the Parthenon, and yes, it was amazing to sit on a broken column and look out over the city with my girl by my side and a fat bumble bee buzzing by my foot). From And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner notes to a writer's early life

Since then, the Greeks have partially restored the place. And now they want a return on their investment:

In a move bound to leave many Greeks and scholars aghast, Greece's culture ministry said Tuesday it will open up some of the debt-stricken country's most-cherished archaeological sites to advertising firms and other ventures.

The ministry says the move is a common-sense way of helping "facilitate" access to the country's ancient Greek ruins, and money generated would fund the upkeep and monitoring of sites. The first site to be opened would be the Acropolis.
Archaeologists, however, have for decades slammed such an initiative as sacrilege. [Read the rest here.]

If they're broke, they're broke, but it would be a pity to see the old place riddled with rubbish again. I remember it fondly.

MS on Dr Kiki's Science Hour

2012-01-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

The huge news that MS is a metabolic disorder and not an autoimmune disease hit the web afresh this week.

On Thursday, Angelique Corthals, the author of "Multiple Sclerosis is Not a Disease of the Immune System," was on Dr Kiki's Science Hour, a marvellous weekly one-whole-hour video interview about a single chewy science topic:

I'll be watching more of this show.

And then yesterday io9.com ran an article, "Have we been looking at Multiple Sclerosis all wrong?"

The MS ship turns slowly. But it is turning.

Galactic Suburbia Award

2012-01-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up to a lovely surprise: I've been awarded the first Galactic Suburbia Award for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction. This is in recognition of Taking the Russ Pledge and related posts.

The award was announced in the podcast. I haven't listened to it yet (I'm still sipping my first cup of tea of the day, and blinking). But here's the basic info:

The Galactic Suburbia Award
for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction in 2011

Honours List

Carrie Goldman and her daughter Katie, for sharing their story about how Katie was bullied at school for liking Star Wars, and opening up a massive worldwide conversation about gender binaries and gender-related bullying among very young children
Cheryl Morgan for Female Invisibility Bingo, associated blogging and podcasting, and basically fighting the good fight
Helen Merrick, for the Feminism article on the SF Encyclopedia (a rewrite)
Jim C Hines for “Jane C Hines” and associated blogging, raising awareness of feminist issues in the SF/Fantasy publishing field.
Julia Rios, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond for episode 11 of the Outer Alliance podcast (The Writer and the Critic special episode)
L. Timmel Duchamp - for continuing to raise issues of importance on the Ambling Down the Aqueduct blog and various Aqueduct Press projects
Michelle Lee for the blog post “A 7-year-old girl responds to DC Comics’ sexed-up reboot of Starfire”

Winner

Nicola Griffith - for the Russ Pledge, and associated blogging

This is a great list of names doing great work to keep the issues of equality front and centre in the ongoing conversation. I am honoured (and delighted) to be part of it and think perhaps we should find a way to share custody of the prize: a Deepings Doll, a hand-painted figurine of a suffragette with a Galactic Suburbia placard.

The fabulous women who run Galactic Suburbia, Alisa, Alex, and Tansy, are asking for ideas about the Galactic Suburbia Honours list for 2012. Send deserving names to galacticsuburbia@gmail.com or tweet @galacticsuburbs. Personally, I think they deserve an award, too.

Resilience

2012-01-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

A student of mine, Eric Nguyen, has edited a marvellous book, Resilience:

To be queer and young is to be STRONG. To be queer and young is to be RESILIENT. Collected in this anthology are over 20 inspiring stories, poems, essays, and other writings made for you - our queer youth. Started in 2010 in a time of crisis for the queer community, these are the works of artists who wanted to show the world the power of words. While eclectic in style and form, what unites these works is a message of hope: it doesn't just get better, you grow stronger and wiser. Money from the sale of this book will be used to help fund The Make It Safe Project, which aims to bring LGBT-related books into schools and homeless shelters and into the hands of LGBT kids. More information on Resilience, visit the Better Books Project.

This is an anthology of stories, poems, essays, etc for LGBT teens. Money from it will be donated to the Make It Safe Project, which helps brings LGBT books to schools and shelters. I haven't read it, but I know it will be good: there are pieces in the book by two other students of mine, Liz Green and Jarrett Neal, and poems and essays by several other Fellows I had the good fortune to meet in Los Angeles when I taught at the Emerging LGBT Voices writing retreat in 2010.

This is an important project. I urge you to go take a look at the sample, then go buy a copy. You'll not only be getting yourself a very cool book, you'll be helping young LGBT kids who have nowhere else to turn.

Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards

2012-01-25T06:05:00.000-08:00

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards are awarded annually for works of speculative fiction translated into English from other languages. There are two awards: one for long form (over 40,000 words) and one...well, I expect you can work that out.

They are a fabulous idea--encouraging availability of world sf--and they need your help. They are currently running an auction fundraiser, with many great prizes. Some examples:

A signed US hardback edition of Embassytown from China Miéville
A signed manuscript of Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow’s forthcoming YA novel
A signed copy of the South African edition of Moxyland, with soundtrack by African Dope on CD, from Lauren Beukes
A signed copy of the Pyr edition of The Restoration Game from Ken MacLeod
A signed copy of Range of Ghosts, the new novel from Elizabeth Bear

Kelley is giving a signed copy of the Small Beer edition of Solitaire, the one with the fab new cover:

I'm offering a signed first edition of Ammonite, never even opened. (If you'd prefer it utterly uncracked, I won't sign it.) There have been several editions and printings of this book:

The one I'm offering is the orange paperback on the left with the jellybean spaceship. It's the very first printing of the very first edition of my very first novel. I don't know how many there are left in the world but I only have two on my shelf.

Please go make some mad bids on some good stuff and help a great cause. (Don't forget it's tax-deductible--and your employer may match the money you donate.)

All is well with the world

2012-01-24T07:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was an astonishingly sunny day here in Seattle. I was serenaded by a fat bird at breakfast:

And in the afternoon, Chow Ciao--whose real name, it turns out, is Eros (yep, she's a boy), and is now being time-shared by two sets of doting neighbours, though of course we still offer treats every now and again (today it was chicken)--snored on the fence outside my office:

All is well with the world. Except, perhaps, for the bird...

Washington marridge about to become marriage?

2012-01-23T09:01:00.000-08:00

About an hour from now, the Washington State legislature will open hearings on two identical same-sex marriage bills, HB 2516 and SB 6239, in the House and Senate in Olympia:

Senate: 10 a.m. in the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Tribal Relations and Elections, Senate hearing room 2, J.A. Cherberg Building. A series of prearranged three-person panels, both pro and con, will speak, then the committee chairman will pick people at random who signed up to speak. The hearing will last for about two hours.

House: 1:30 p.m. in the House Committee on Judiciary, hearing room A, John L. O'Brien Building. Five bills are on the agenda, and gay marriage is the last one. It's expected to be heard around 2:30 p.m.; testimony will go for an hour.

The hearings are expected to be crowded. So unless you're already in line, I suggest watching them at home. Both will be aired live on TVW.

I believe that both bills will come to a vote as early as the beginning of February. There are enough votes in the House and it's possible that one or two uncommitted Senators may tip the balance in favour in the Senate. Then Washington would be the seventh state in the US to allow same-sex marriage.

The momentum is definitely there. Recently 50 major-city mayors called for marriage equality. And here's Governor Christine Gregoire on the matter:

For more, read these great articles (roughly in chronological order) in the The Advocate, the Huffington Post, and Seattle Times.

I have a lot to say on this issue. Most obviously that it's time and past time for politicians to stop splitting hairs and do what's simple and right: I want marriage, not just marridge. Separate but equal is not equal. The rest I'll save that for another post. Meanwhile, go read the articles.

ETA: The bill now has the votes in the Senate. Looks as though it will come to a vote next month. I'll post updates.

Libraries rock

2012-01-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

Fans of Green County Public Library (Ohio) made this supercut of scenes from TV and film about libraries. Libraries rock. If you get impatient, fast forward to 1:18 to see what I'm talking about. But try not to be impatient; you will be rewarded.

Via LLF

It Was the Snow

2012-01-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

A picture of our street taken ~~Friday~~ Thursday afternoon by our favourite photographer, Jennifer Durham (who took these snapshots with her phone), looking down the hill to our house (which is mostly hidden by the hedge). Just for grins, here's the main drag by the supermarket, and the nearby golf course:

Last night it started to rain. I'm guessing by tomorrow, all the snow will be gone. Then I'll rediscover my sanity and we'll get back to blogging about all things writerly. And queer. And scientifical. And foodish.

-----

Don't understand the title? You need to read some Pat Cadigan, specifically "It Was the Heat."

I'm a woman writer: I am unspeakably privileged

2012-01-20T06:39:00.000-08:00

If you believe Teddy Wayne, I am, as a writer, unspeakably privileged: I'm a woman.

In "The Agony of the Male Novelist," (sadly, I'm not kidding) he says:

For the majority of male literary authors — excluding the upper echelon of Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, Don DeLillo and their ilk, plus a few younger writers like Chad Harbach who have scored much-ballyhooed advances — it’s actually harder than it is for women to carve out a financially stable writing career.

His argument (I use the word loosely) is so logically pitiful that I thought he might be attempting some kind of wit. I certainly don't want to waste my time reiterating it here. You're all familiar with it's essence: But teh menz hav it reeely reeely hard!

However, one snippet of his whine pleases me:

The archetypal book-club novel is written by a woman, its characters are female-centric, and it contains a love story, sensitive coming-of-age tale, or mother-daughter narrative, perhaps set against a historical backdrop.

If you replace or with and, and throw in some sex, swords, and scheming, that's a pretty good description of Hild. So, hey, now I know what to do with my snow day: come up with a list of earnest questions for the book club. Chortle.

How to take down a mammoth

2012-01-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

Still snowing. Huge icicle hanging outside our kitchen could probably take down a mammoth. There's an ice storm warning in effect for most of the rest of the day. As KOMO-4 say cheerily on their blog, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

As a result of the ice storm, Governor Christine Gregoire has declared a state of emergency for Washington (though this is, apparently, party to make life easier for dairy farmers).

Me? Sick of the weather. Hoping for lashing of warm rain tomorrow to wash it all away. Right now I'd be happy to take on that mammoth. Believe it or not, I'm tired of reading...

Marooned

2012-01-19T10:17:00.000-08:00

It started snowing in earnest first thing Tuesday morning:

It stopped yesterday, but everything stayed frozen. Today it's a little warmer, but it's snowing again:

Today I'd planned on a massage, but no one is getting in or out of this cul-de-sac unless it warms up and the snow turns to rain.

But being marooned isn't unbearable. Yet. I've watched an episode of Justified, two each of Entourage and Antiques Roadshow, one each of Castle and Downton Abbey, and every extra, teaser, snippet and trailer I can find for the upcoming Season Two of Game of Thrones. Favourites of the televisuals? Justified and Downton Abbey.

I've caught up on the Economist (two whole issues--sadly with less interesting science/technology and books/arts section than usual) and a few blogs. I've read Stella Duffy's Theodora (I can't make up my mind whether it needs a sequel), and just begun Bernard Cornwell's latest, Death of Kings, which promises to be up to his usual satisfying and happily violent standard.

I've also eaten double my bodyweight in meals and snacks. For example, breakfast this morning was an omelette/egg torta: eggs and leftover roasted vegetables from last night: cauliflower, brussel spouts, onion, smidgeon of carrot. It makes a surprisingly robust flan-like thing that's wholly good for a person. Exceedingly tasty, very filling. (Yesterday's breakfast was good in a different way: big chunk of cod and a sadly-slanted 'half' a grapefruit--colourful but lopsided.) My latest mania, snack-wise, is very fresh macadamia nuts lightly roasted. I swear they taste just like shortbread biscuits. Splendid little things.

You'd think this weather would be perfect to settle down and get some work done. It's not working out that way. I keep finding myself staring out of the window, longing to get out. My restlessness is rising like a tide.

How I look now

2012-01-18T08:37:00.000-08:00

photo by Riva Lehrer, January 2012

This photo is by the artist Riva Lehrer. It's low-res and not well-lit because it's just one in a series of a hundred snapshots she took ten days ago to help conceptualise a piece she's working on. But a) it's been a while since I posted a photo, and b) I find I like not being able to see all those dints and wrinkles that have accumulated in the course of a rough-and-tumble (uh-huh) writer's life.

The finished picture will be clear and sharp, though, a representation of, well, me--but not the me you're likely to find in a photo. An artist's portrait is a rich and complicated thing. I feel very lucky to be involved in this. I'm looking forward to seeing what Riva sees, in my face, in my presence, in my work. I'm hoping I'll learn something. Plus, y'know, look splendid.

ETA: In going through the photos I came across this one that I like, too; it's less pose-y:

I need amusement!

2012-01-17T10:25:00.000-08:00

Snow is coming down. It will come down all day. Tomorrow there will be a lot more. I won't be able to leave the house between now and Thursday at the earliest (probably Friday). So I need amusement.

Tell me what books, TV, and film I should check out. It must be available on cable or via Amazon or Netlix. I can't watch Apple or Hulu stuff on my big-screen set up, and I hate watching on my desktop monitor. I don't have an iPad and the phone is too small.

For an idea of things I like see the, ah, List of Things I Like. (Must get around to turning that into a proper blog post one of these days.

Last night I watched Contagion: recommended by many people. But, damn, Soderbergh doesn't know the meaning of the word 'emotion'. Like Ocean's Eleven or even Sex, Lies and Videotape, it was a cool, keep-the-viewer-at-arms'-length piece of work. Not my cup of tea. At all.

I love escapism. Filmwise, the latest reboot of Star Trek is practically perfect. Galaxy Quest and Die Hard rock the Thunderdome. TV-wise, my favourites are things like Merlin, Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Trueblood, Buffy, Highlander, Firefly, etc. I loved the first season of Deadwood, but then it lost itself in its own mannerisms. I thought the first season of The Sopranos was a blast, but then it dissolved into nothingness. I thought Lost sucked after about four eps. Stuff like Breaking Bad is too grim. I just don't care about ordinary life, don't give a damn for realism.

In terms of novels (I'm not interested in non-fiction right now), I like well-written story. I don't much care for delicate examinations of the meaning of life. I don't object to it--I just don't want it to be the point. Angst, in fiction as in real life, pisses me off. I find it self-indulgent.

So: help! Save me from madness and eating the neighbours!

Snow day

2012-01-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

Today is a snow day. I'll be watching this and thinking about Hild:

I'm grateful for modern conveniences: light, heat, the ability to cook nourishing food without having to have hole in the wall or ceiling. The twenty-first century is our friend. And, yep, I promise that next time I'll remember to turn my phone sideways before I shoot the video...

Some blog stats

2012-01-15T11:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I gave you a peek behind the curtain. So here are some relatively arbitrary statistics about this month's traffic:

In the last thirty days 23,096 people have passed through here. This is a significant increase (a little over 50%) over the monthly average.
27% of you are Mac users. Another 7% of you visited via your mobile device.
Unsurpringly, the top two countries are the US and the UK, followed by Canada, Germany, France, Australia, Netherlands...and then things get uncertain because at this point Google Analytics starts to disagree with the built in Blogger stats, so it could be Russia, Belgium, and India (Blogger), or Belgium, Serbia, and New Zealand (GA).
The French read the most pages per visit.
Chrome has now outpaced Safari as your browser of choice--though both still lag behind Firefox (number 1) and (oh dear god, people, please stop using it) Internet Explorer (number 2).
New visitors this month outpaced old by a wider margin than usual: 63.58% to 36.42%. (Long term, those numbers are much more evenly matched: 53.46% to 46.54%.)

Most of this can be explained by my posts on the new framework for understanding MS as a metabolic disorder. I don't normally give much space to MS on this blog (it takes up enough room in my life without it invading this space, too), but this was a special case. It triggered a fresh influx of readers, particularly from Europe. Some are sticking around, but most are going away when they discover I tend to talk more about writing than health.

So, there you go. At some point I'll ask you questions about what you like best/least about this blog, but not today. Today I go look at the pitiful excuse for snow the sky is attempting to drop on us and contemplate the next phase of Hild

Boundless blue beauty

2012-01-14T06:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a photo taken earlier this week--Wednesday afternoon--looking out over Puget Sound. The long low bit is Bainbridge Island. Behind it, the Olympics.

As you can see, it was a beautiful day, an absolute gift. Cold, though. So, while the sun was bright and I was feeling pleased with the world for a variety of reasons, I didn't hang about.

Forecast this weekend: snow (we are in a convergence zone). Ah, but I had this. For a few hours, I saw bright, bright blue.

Freedom from money worries leads to great writing

2012-01-13T06:41:00.000-08:00

I've always believed that writers do their best work when they are unhooked from the financial hamster wheel. Finally, I've found someone else who believes the same thing. Sort of. Below is a cartoon illustration of Dan Pink's thesis, explicated in Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, that it isn't money that motivates brain work, it's autonomy, mastery, and purpose:

The trick, though, is to be making enough money that the cognitive worker--the writer, say--doesn't have to think about it, doesn't have to connect the specific work to paying the rent or buying new glasses.

I haven't read Drive, and I'm guessing after watching this ten-minute animation that I don't need to, but the notion makes a lot of sense to me. It makes me wonder what brilliant art we might have if there were more grants for creators, and more generous patrons.

Some writers, for example Tolkien, use the security of an academic job to free their writing. But teaching is a real job; it took him twelve years to write The Lord of the Rings. To me it's significant that the work only really took off when he was writing not for his publisher but for his son. I can only imagine how much more quickly all this would have come together if he'd had a five-year MacArthur Fellowship and complete freedom.

I'd love to be free, just for a little while, from thinking about money. So if you are or happen to know a tech multi-millionaire, my email address is in the sidebar...

Arthur, Hild, and the challenge of the historical novel sequence

2012-01-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday I started rereading Gillian Bradshaw's Arthurian trilogy. I've always loved Hawk of May. And I like Kingdom of Summer well enough. But I rarely continue to In Winter's Shadow.

As I read and mentally ranged ahead to the next book I realised that this--preferring the first book in the sequence--is a pattern with me and the Matter of Britain (or at least the Arthurian cycle). I love T.H. White's Once and Future King, yet I can't remember the last time I managed to read past The Sword in the Stone. Then there's Mary Stewart. I've lost count of the number of times I've immersed myself in The Crystal Cave, but I've read the next two books, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment, less often, and the fourth, The Wicked Day, hardly at all.

Perhaps it's the nature of trilogies: very often the first book is the best, it's the one the author pours their heart into. Perhaps it's the nature of this story cycle: Arthur begins as a shining youth, matures into a betrayed man, and ends as a king crushed by his inevitable doom. And perhaps it's the nature of those times, or our understanding and portrayal of same: so gendered I can hardly bear it, in which men kill each other, and women stay at home plotting, fretting, pining--then die in childbirth.

I suspect it's a combination. The Arthur story cycle inevitably begins with the story of boys (whether Arthur and Kay, Arthur and Merlin, or Arthur and Gawaine/Gwalchmai; girls don't enter into it. It's a tale of honour, glory, civilisation holding the line against lapping barbarianism, and swords, ponies, and brave banners. Wonderful outwardly-directed adventure with very little angst. But boys grow up, they notice girls, and suddenly we're in the heads of these bright, beautiful, brave young women who are hopelessly bound, bent, and belittled by the constraints of their gender. There's a lot of angst. Much less simple hack-the-heads-off-the-bad-guys and Might=Right=Light.

These are all things I had to bear in mind while writing Hild. I was determined not to fall into the gendered angst trap; my aim with this book is immersion, not claustrophobia. But when I began, I began to worry. In the early seventh century, women (by one estimate) spent 65% of their time on textiles: growing, harvesting, processing, weaving, sewing (and so on) flax and wool (and hemp and, sometimes, nettles). This is not the stuff of riveting twenty-first century fiction. Also, they really did die young, in their twenties generally (pregnancy is very, very hard on malnourished bodies). The easy way out is to do what most genre writers do: and sidestep the issue by giving their protagonists unrealistic/ahistorical traits and habits: they use the sword; they have sex without fear of pregnancy; they are perfectly healthy; their mate understands their need for independence. These writers use history as window dressing.

That isn't my path. I want readers--including experts in the field--to read Hild, nod, and think, "Yes, that's how it was." So my challenge was to bring the seventh century alive without suffocating the reader in the harsher aspects of reality: pain, disease, discomfort, fear, uncertainty, work, early death having babies. And to find a way to make it work while still colouring inside historical lines.

I found a way. I used a combination of narrative technique, Hild's extraordinary mind and body, and her peculiar and particular situation. I admit I did cheat in one respect: Hild's health is almost superhuman. (This can be sort of explained by the fact that she's astonishingly privileged: she gets all the food and comforts she needs. Besides, I thought I was allowed one free pass. And writing about illness is so tedious.)

But that was only for book one--traditionally the easy one in the sequence. I'm currently outlining book two and am going to have to pull some rabbits out of hats. How I love the smell of challenge in the morning!

While I'm doing this, you could go amuse yourselves with reading some of these books:

Gillian Bradshaw's Arthur books are historical fantasy with supernatural elements:
Hawk of May (1980)
Kingdom of Summer (1981)
In Winter's Shadow (1982)

Mary Stewart's are much less fantastical, but Merlin has the gift of the Sight:
The Crystal Cave (1970)
The Hollow Hills (1973)
The Last Enchantment (1979)
The Wicked Day (1983)

T.H. White's books are ahistorical, wickedly pointed, but not particularly fantastic:
The Sword in the Stone (1938)
The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939, originally titled The Witch in the Wood)
The Ill-Made Knight (1940)
The Candle in the Wind (1958)

Food glorious food

2012-01-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

This is the kind of thing I'm eating for dinner on my new food regimen*: steak (grass-fed, and cooked on a Foreman grill), roasted beet, carrots, cauliflower, onion (just tiny bit) and brussel sprouts, and mushrooms (sauteed in olive oil). Book (old but ordinary-sized mass market paperback) for scale. Aperitif was a couple of little bottles of Perrier sipped by the fire with Kelley. Starter was a big gulp of flaxseed oil. Dessert was a pile of blueberries and raspberries, with green tea (decaf). Delicious.

I have no idea how many bazillion calories it amounts to. But I ate every scrap (and a bit of Kelley's). The sad part? I'll be hungry again in two hours. No alcohol and no grains will do that to a person.

Breakfast and lunch is a tad more austere (protein only for breakfast--fish or eggs; protein and non-carbolicious veg for lunch). But at night--well, evening (no food after 8:00 pm)--I pig out. Strictly speaking I shouldn't have had beets and carrots, but they were leftovers from yesterday. I couldn't let them go to waste.

* I really will blog about this regimen coherently. Too much going on right now to organise the information properly.

Reading distinguishes us from other animals

2012-01-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

At the end of December the Guardian ran a story about reading and empathy:

Psychologists from Washington University used brain scans to see what happens inside our heads when we read stories. They found that "readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative". The brain weaves these situations together with experiences from its own life to create a new mental synthesis. Reading a book leaves us with new neural pathways.

The discovery that our brains are physically changed by the experience of reading is something many of us will understand instinctively, as we think back to the way an extraordinary book had a transformative effect on the way we viewed the world. This transformation only takes place when we lose ourselves in a book, abandoning the emotional and mental chatter of the real world. That's why studies have found this kind of deep reading makes us more empathetic, or as Nicholas Carr puts it in his essay, The Dreams of Readers, "more alert to the inner lives of others".

This is significant because recent scientific research has also found a dramatic fall in empathy among teenagers in advanced western cultures.

I've talked about this in often in my essays, particularly in "As We Mean to Go On," which I wrote with Kelley, about how it was books that us together:

Books--the ones Kelley and I had read, the ones we wanted to write--drew us to the place where we would meet, and made it possible for us to understand each other when we got there. We were born only nine days apart, but also eight thousand miles, on different continents and to different cultures. Our meeting and life together should have been one long cultural car crash, but though there are times when our common language puzzles us extremely, books have formed for us a parallel universe, a world where we learnt the same things at the same time from the same characters, though sometimes with distinctly different flavours.

I've also written about reading: how it saves us, how it makes us, fortifies us, helps us find each other. This is from "Doing It For Pleasure":

Yet when I read, part of my pleasure is the knowledge that others have read the same words and been amused, educated, delighted, vindicated or connected, and I feel part of something bigger and richer and intensely exciting. When I put the book down, I go in search of a friend to talk to about the ideas or characters or places I've discovered. All my friends are readers. I wouldn't have it any other way; readers are, in my opinion, better people for having spent much of their lives being amused, educated, delighted, vindicated and connected.

Reading is the gateway to so many things that helps makes it possible for seven billion people to live together on one planet. Literature is the great extra-somatic keeper of our knowledge of what it is to be human. Reading elevates us. We read to be our best selves.

No available brain

2012-01-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy day. All bandwidth taken. I forgot to blog. Ooops. Oh, well. As someone not a million miles from here likes to say, Western civilization will no doubt survive...

Watch art being born

2012-01-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

Just what we all need for a relaxed Sunday: soothing video of Donato Giancola, a popular f/sf artist, creating an oil painting (or, eh, probably acrylic...). The music is neither here nor there, and the painting itself, of Joan of Arc, is rather standard, but the process is fascinating. I particularly enjoyed watching her eyes take on colour and life. I love to watch other artists at work. And, hey, it's only four minutes: worth a look.

Some sun to go with that

2012-01-07T11:08:00.001-08:00

I'm enjoying the conversation about Tolkien and literature we started yesterday. Here's a bit of sunshine to go with that: early morning from my office window earlier this week. An unexpectedly bright, fresh day in what is traditionally a gloomy month.

Tolkien's storytelling not up to snuff?

2012-01-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

I amused myself yesterday by briefly getting apoplectic over a Guardian article: Tolkien was dismissed by the 1961 Nobel prize jury as a second-rate storyteller:

The prose of Tolkien – who was nominated by his friend and fellow fantasy author CS Lewis – "has not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality", wrote jury member Anders Österling. Frost, on the other hand, was dismissed because of his "advanced age" – he was 86 at the time – with the jury deciding the American poet's years were "a fundamental obstacle, which the committee regretfully found it necessary to state". Forster was also ruled out for his age – a consideration that no longer bothers the jury, which awarded the prize to the 87-year-old Doris Lessing in 2007 – with Österling calling the author "a shadow of his former self, with long lost spiritual health".

Durrell, meanwhile, "gives a dubious aftertaste … because of [his] monomaniacal preoccupation with erotic complications", while Italian novelist Alberto Moravia "suffers from … a general monotony".

Greene, who never won the Nobel, was 1961's runner-up, with Danish writer Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, coming in third.

It seems to me that the Nobel Committee confused 'prose' and 'storytelling'. Both, of course, are vital in a great novel. My favourites--for example, Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin sequence--combine sharp but generous prose with particular characters, vivid setting and riveting plot. It's that combination that creates the story. And the very best stories have a clear, tight, and inevitable arc.

The Lord of the Rings is one of the best novels I know. It's not perfect. I admit that in the first hundred pages or so the prose wobbles--and occasionally lurches--here and there, enough to make the blue pencil in my head twitch and to make me turn away to allow a decent pause for the prose to collect itself. But it improves, and later passages can be very fine. And, oh dear me, yes, he could have lost quite a few chunks of song. And, no, he doesn't do women fully--he doesn't do them horribly, he just doesn't do them enough--but all writers have their weak spots. His storytelling, however, is without peer. Tolkien's arcs--for Frodo, and Sam, and Aragorn--are graceful and strong, elegant as Chinese cabinetry: pared down to the essential, perfectly balanced. The result is a story so compelling that, at age eleven, I read the entire book in one two-day marathon. And I've read it roughly every fifteen months since. I know I'm not the only one.

The Nobel Prizes are awarded for "achievement." I wonder how the Nobel Committee defines that.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in literature fifty years ago was Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andrić. I have no doubt that he can write, but I had never heard of him. I wonder how writers he has influenced? I wonder, How many people are reading and rereading him today?

Christopher Logue, poet

2012-01-05T03:39:00.000-08:00

I read All Day Permanent Red when it first came out in 2003 (or perhaps it was when it first came out in this country the year after). It's brilliant poetry. Here's what I said about it then:

[Logue]'s an English poet and occasional screenwriter who has reimagined the first battles of Homer's Iliad. His technique is often quite cinematic, with jump cuts and scene notes, and he renames characters from the epic without batting an eye. His imagery is a mix of historically accurate and wildly anachronistic (arrows carve tunnels through people's necks the width of a lipstick, a footsoldier's shield sprouts arrows as thick as the microphones at a politician's podium) but I felt the dust gritting under my palms and the blood in my mouth. The whole is as startling as a flick in the eye. Astonishing.

Logue died last month but I found myself thinking about him and his work again today as I pondered the next Hild novel--which might start with a big battle.

After lunch, restless, I was idly leafing through the magazines I didn't get around to reading over the holidays and came across the Economist's obituary of Logue. I don't know who the writer is, but I've read their work before: it's consistently fine. And this one is fantastic. You should read it. And if between us we can't persuade you to go read War Music or All Day Permanent Red then your notion of poetry is not mine.

If you've never read it, do so. I promise you'll be shocked awake. The world is worth being awake for.

GAFA fight!

2012-01-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA) between them pretty much rule consumer tech world. (You can find a good analysis of the GAFA ecosystem--in audio--at the Economist's Babbage blog.) They began in different niches. Increasingly, though, they're thieving from each other's patch. (Google is doing books--half-heartedly. It's doing social media--unexcitingly. It's doing mobile--but without profit in the form of the free, open-source Android. Facebook is muscling in on advertising revenue. Apple... Eh, but you've all read all the news.)

Amazon changed the game, moved it up a gear, by bursting into the mobile hardware/portal scene with their inexpensive Kindle Fire tablet. And now, according to reports like this one from GalleyCat, Apple is rumoured to be planning a move onto Amazon's publishing turf with an announcement of an epublishing platform.

I'm guessing this is just the beginning of fun-filled invasion games. If I had to bet a sandwich, it would be that, next up, Facebook will do something interesting with content publishing. If I were them, I'd buy Goodreads, put out a cheap tablet, and build my own self-publishing set-up for both books and music. A poke in the eye for both As in the GAFA and another step towards reducing Google's relevance except as the provider of an open-source mobile platform.

So that's my (only partly joking) prediction for 2012. What's yours?

MS new hits the Washington Post

2012-01-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

News of Dr Angelique Corthals' exciting paper on MS yesterday hit the Washington Post. I'm delighted.

This is how the NMSS responded:

Dr. Corthals’s paper adds to ongoing discussion about what causes MS, but since it is a review of published research, rather than results from original studies, the report carefully notes the need for more research.

The National MS Society welcomes the ideas of thoughtful people who want to end MS, and fully agrees that we need to pursue all promising leads to do so.

While I understand the NMSS's cautious response I'm looking forward to them taking the time to analyse Angelique's work and really get to grips with it.

ETA: For those who want a copy of the paper, drop a comment with your email address and I'll send it to you.

One-day writing workshop in Seattle

2012-01-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

Clarion West is the world pinnacle of f/sf workshoppery. Every year, emerging writers from all over (Africa, Japan, the UK, US, Australia...) undergo a competetive selection process to be one of the eighteen chosen for a six-week immersive experience taught by the best writers in the business. (This year? Hiromi Goto, George R.R. Martin, Chuck Palahniuk, Mary Rosenblum, Kelly Link & Gavin Grant, Connie Willis.)

It's a life-changing experience. It's six weeks of nothing-but-writing, nothing-but-learning. It costs $3,600.

Have you ever wondered what it's like?

Well, the fabulous people who run that workshop have started a series of taster classes: one-off, one-day workshops right here in Seattle. They're a kind of literary salon, with a leader. They last six hours. They cost $125. They're for all writers, not just f/sf. And they're first-come, first-served. This is your chance to take a Clarion West for a test drive.

Each one-day workshop has a laser-sharp focus. Each is taught by writers with years of experience and multiple books under their belt.

Here's the line-up for the first quarter of this year:

★ Avoiding Rejection
Louise Marley
Sunday, January 15, 2012
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Agents often only read the first ten pages of a novel before deciding if they want you as a client. Slush readers for magazines decide within a few paragraphs whether your short story is right for them. We'll practice techniques to make your manuscript grab the attention of an agent or editor from the first paragraph on.

★ Bringing the World to Life (Without Killing the Story)
Richard Paul Russo
Sunday, February 5, 2012
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

How do you provide enough information about the physical, social, political, and other aspects of the story’s environment to fully engage your readers without distracting from or slowing down the story? Accomplishing this is one of a writer’s biggest challenges. Through discussion and written exercises, we’ll explore different approaches to scene-setting and description that bring the world of the story richly to life without losing the readers’ interest or engagement.

★ Creating Your Urban Fantasy World
Kat Richardson
Sunday, March 4, 2012
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

This special-focus workshop will help you learn how to choose, establish, and write a setting (real, alternate, historical, or allegorical) appropriate for Urban Fantasy. You'll learn how to block out and write action that utilizes whatever magic, occult, or paranormal system you're establishing, and how to develop and write characters for Urban Fantasy by integrating their power(s) and skills--or lack of them--with their setting and interactions.

If you want to get into Louise Marley's workshop, you have exactly one week to get your application in (apply here by January 8). Louise is a great teacher, and whether you write litfic, urban fantasy, or gritty Napoleonic war fiction, it all begins with the first page. Start your engines...

And now we move on

2012-01-01T11:02:00.000-08:00

This is how we began our celebration last night.

Every New Year's Eve since we've met, we've opened a bottle of Champagne (rarely just one) and talked about the year that's past. We wander all over the map: what we learnt, how we feel about that, what it means. They we start eating, and we talk about the year that's to come: our hopes, our dreams, our plans. As we talk, we gradually reach firm goals and hard targets. We talk the night away.

Last night I enjoyed my Champagne with particular intensity. It's the last alcohol for me for at least six weeks; I'm taking my lipid cycle in hand. (I'll talk about the diet, exercise, and so on in more detail another time.) I imagine that to begin with I'll get thin and a bit peevish. But then I'll become stronger, faster, better than before...

2012 is going to be a magnificent year. Stay tuned.

Destroy MS with spectacular violence!

2011-12-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

For those who don't like reading serious science stuff, today I'm offering a fun and violent solution to the problem of multiple sclerosis. My favourite options:

1. Carpet-bomb it:

2. Drop a helicopter on it:

3. Chew it up with a twister:

4. Turn up the music and call in a missile strike:

On Sunday I'll return with a post about something sensible, like writing. Until then: Happy New Year! Go blow shit up!

Never piss off a writer

2011-12-30T09:37:00.001-08:00

As a novelist I'm fond of reminding people: Never piss off a writer. A writer can immortalise an enemy by killingly them gruesomely, lingeringly, before millions of readers. (It's very satisfying.)

I am currently dissatisfied with the Quarterly Review of Biology. There's a paper in their latest issue that should be freely accessible but costs $14. However, it's difficult to write the death of a scholarly journal into a novel about the seventh century (my current work-in-progress). So I've had to resort to spectacular movie violence instead.

So, for all the millions of people with MS who want to read this paper and can't get to it, I made this for you. Turn it up loud:

MS is a metabolic disorder: the paper is finally out!

2011-12-28T18:21:00.000-08:00

Dr Angelique Corthals' brilliant new understanding of MS, "Multiple Sclerosis is Not a Disease of the Immune System" is finally out! Full citation:

Angelique P. Corthals
The Quarterly Review of Biology
Vol. 86, No. 4 (December 2011), pp. 287-321
(article consists of 35 pages)

Right now, it looks as though free web access is restricted to those with JSTOR accounts. I'm a little taken aback by that (it was my understanding that it would be free for all). Hopefully, this is just a(nother) glitch. If you can't afford $14, I can send you the paper by email, and then you can send it on to others. For now, direct your healthcare professional to the link above; they'll no doubt have free access.

Meanwhile, my précis of the paper, and explanation of why this is not just another bit of hype, but a truly ground-breaking new paradigm, is here. And here's the abstract:

Multiple sclerosis is a complex neurodegenerative disease, thought to arise through autoimmunity against antigens of the central nervous system. The autoimmunity hypothesis fails to explain why genetic and environmental risk factors linked to the disease in one population tend to be unimportant in other populations. Despite great advances in documenting the cell and molecular mechanisms underlying MS pathophysiology, the autoimmunity framework has also been unable to develop a comprehensive explanation of the etiology of the disease. I propose a new framework for understanding MS as a dysfunction of the metabolism of lipids. Specifically, the homeostasis of lipid metabolism collapses during acute-phase inflammatory response triggered by a pathogen, trauma, or stress, starting a feedback loop of increased oxidative stress, inflammatory response, and proliferation of cytoxic foam cells that cross the blood brain barrier and both catabolize myelin and prevent remyelination. Understanding MS as a chronic metabolic disorder illuminates four aspects of disease onset and progression: 1) its pathophysiology; 2) genetic susceptibility; 3) environmental and pathogen triggers; and 4) the skewed sex ratio of patients. It also suggests new avenues for treatment.

Please spread the news as widely as you can. The sooner people are banging on the doors of the medical establishment, the sooner MS will be eradicated.

This is a tremendous way to prepare for the New Year. I, for one, will be folding the insights of this paper into my goals and resolutions for 2012.

ETA: As Heather points out in the comments, many library systems have JSTOR access. So try your friendly local library.

Cars crash from the sky

2011-12-28T15:30:00.000-08:00

A funny thing happened on the way to lunch at Julia's today...

That Wallingford intersection will never be the same.

I'm now hoping the app maker will come up with some even better options. Top of my list: volcano eruption, tank attack, charging rhino. Also some Treacly Nice options would be cool, e.g. kittens tumbling from a box in the ceiling, unicorns and rainbows, an instant coating of sparkly frosting...

I blew up our Christmas tree

2011-12-28T10:32:00.000-08:00

Making the Christmas tree is fun. Dismantling it such a hassle. So this year I blew it up instead:

FX from the free app, Action Movie, via GalleyCat.

Jaw-dropping news: Nixon was gay

2011-12-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

From the Daily Mail:

He carpet-bombed Cambodia, spewed out anti-Semitic slurs and crude misogynistic jokes in the White House and smeared his political opponents with ruthless 'dirty tricks' campaigns.

And, of course, he lied to his country about his involvement in the Watergate scandal and went down in history as America's shiftiest, darkest President.

Given everything that Richard Nixon has been accused of, it's difficult to believe there could be any more skeletons left in his cupboard. But it seems there are.

[...]

A new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington reporter who covered the Nixon years, suggests the 37th U.S. President [...] may have been gay himself. If true, it would provide a fascinating insight into the motivation and behaviour of a notoriously secretive politician. (via @TheAdvocateMag)

Apparently the book, Nixon's Darkest Secrets, details Nixon's affair with a Florida 'non-member Mafia‑affiliate' called Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo. They held hands under the table. Rebozo had complete doesn't-even-have-to-give-his-name-to-the-Secret-Service access to Nixon in the White House--where he had his own bedroom. He chose Nixon's clothes. They held hands under the table. It's... Well, just... Whoa!

Part of me doesn't believe this: it's just a damn good way to sell a book. But part of me thinks this explains a very great deal. Go read the article. Even if they didn't actually have sex, the other revelations are just jaw-dropping.

What Hild saw

2011-12-27T05:15:00.000-08:00

photo: BBC (couldn't find a credit for the photographer)

This photo was taken late last week in West Yorkshire--which in Hild's day (early seventh century), was the kingdom of Elmet (see nifty map). I'm trying to imagine Hild sitting outside on a bright twelve-days-of-Yule morning and watching those glide over the horizon. What would she have made of them? To me it looks like meringues carved by a god. (Big meringues, carved by a major god: those are wind turbines: easily over 100' tall.) But in Hild's time and place there was no meringue because there was no sugar.

So...carved driftwood? Whipped cream from a celestial cow? (I've no idea if the Anglo-Saxons whipped cream--it seems unlikely but, hey, so do those clouds.)

Technically speaking these are lenticular clouds:

Where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the downwind side. If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops to the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds.

There aren't any mountains in Elmet/Leeds, though, so this is a rare sight. In Hild's day, a gift from the gods. I like to think she would have been pleased with the present.

To boldly glow...

2011-12-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

Peoria, IL via GeekTyrant.com

If we did lights, this is what I'd put on top of our house. And it would flash and make that awesome go-to-warp wooshing sound whenever I turned them off.

Have a wonderful holiday, surrounded by comfort and love. I'm signing off for a day or two. I'll be back next week.

Which MS organisation most deserves a donation?

2011-12-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

A couple of readers have asked my opinion regarding the best place to give money. Specifically, money to help encourage research and treatment options regarding Dr Angelique Corthals' exciting new understanding of multiple sclerosis (that it's a metabolic disorder akin to atherosclerosis).

I'm stumped. I used to be on the board of the Multiple Sclerosis Association (MSA) of King county. I didn't care for their approach--people with MS were to be helped but not consulted--but couldn't change their course. After a year or so of trying I resigned. Not long afterwards they were absorbed into the Great Northwest chapter of the NMSS.

I have absolutely nothing against the NMSS, I believe they do a great deal of good. But I'm wondering if there's a more nimble organisation, one willing and able to use a nice donation to help push further investigation into Dr. Corthals' insight into the etiology of the disease.

I'd love to hear your opinion on that. Information by the 28th Dec would be most helpful--so that kind donors can make their gift in time to take a deduction against their 2011 taxes. If you have thoughts to share, I'd eager to hear them.

Meanwhile, I wish you a warm and welcoming holiday with those you love.

A question and answers about diet, MS, and Terry Wahls MD

2011-12-23T12:20:00.001-08:00

From: Diana Mackin

What do you think of Terry Wahls, MD?

I asked Angelique to answer this. She said, "QED. When you understand MS (and treat MS) in the context of a metabolic dysfunction, the results may be more obvious than with current immune system-based treatments (though it may depend on the stage/severity/type etc. of your MS)."

My answer is: when I was first diagnosed with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) in the UK in 1989, I took complete control of my diet. I cut out all processed foods. I took a specially designed combination of vitamins and minerals. I was already essentially vegetarian. I added fish and liver to my regimen.

I went from being unable to walk more than fifty yards without resting to running again. From horrible numbness and tingling to an apparently complete remission of symptoms. I also lost so much weight that people worried. (I found it hard to maintain weight without lots of starch.)

Then I came to this country, and stress and different diet and--frankly--complacency gradually sent me back to the numbness/fatigue place. Then came the limping. Then came full MS.

In 1997, I took three months and devoted it to zero alcohol, zero processed food, zero red meat. (Zero chocolate, sigh. Zero bread, sniff.) And became well enough to begin to study aikido.

Complacency struck again. Followed inevitably by loss of function. And MS. I gave up aikido. I graduated to a cane.

Rinse. Repeat.

I found it impossible to maintain a strict regimen with nothing to go on, no support or evidence but gut instinct. The medical profession wanted was to get me on immunomodulatory and -suppressive therapy and nagged me endlessly. Every now and again I'd try it--with disastrous results. I refused finally half a dozen years ago. I've continued to lose function, and now walk (I use the term loosely) with elbow crutches.

But now I have evidence. Now I have a cohesive framework. Now I'm beginning to form an idea of what lab results to measure. In the New Year I'll embark on a new regimen. It's daunting but exciting.

----

The QRB paper is still not live (no one knows why). But I do have a copy. If you want to see it, let me know and I'll email it to you. Also, Angelique is travelling and so won't have much time for responses for a while. Just FYI.

A terrible and beautiful vision

2011-12-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

For all the support and signal boosting of the last two days: thank you. Thousands of people have now read my précis of the paper, by Dr. Angelique Corthals, that will be published tomorrow in the Quarterly Review of Biology.* That paper is a brilliant synthesis of what is known to be known about multiple sclerosis (MS). It takes the research we're all familiar with, the research that's been reviewed and replicated, that the medical establishment understands and is comfortable with, and fits in into a new pattern: MS is caused by faulty lipid metabolism.

This is a profound insight: MS is a metabolic disorder, not an autoimmune disease. It will change the way researchers approach the disease. It will change how doctors treat the disease. It will change the way people with MS live our lives. It will, one day--just possibly--lead to the eradication of MS.

As Angelique says, "When lipid metabolism fails in the arteries, you get atherosclerosis. When it happens in the central nervous system, you get MS." Think about that. Think about the fact that atherosclerosis is preventable and, sometimes, reversible. Now, so is MS.

It's difficult to explain what this means to someone with MS. I've spent nearly twenty years knowing that immunosuppression and -modulation didn't help my MS and never would but without the expertise to articulate exactly how and why. When I first read Angelique's rough draft earlier this year, it shook me to the core. I had a vision of ten years from now: a world without any new cases of MS.

It was a terrible and beautiful vision. Beautiful, because I'm so very glad for all those people for whom MS won't be a life squeezer, a life crusher, a life burden. Terrible, because at this stage I don't yet know how much better I can help myself become.**

Last night was the winter solstice. I thought, Tonight is the longest night, and tomorrow we turn towards the light. And that's how it feels.

Perhaps after the holidays I'll write about how I'm going to approach this new beginning. But for now, I want to thank you all again. Tomorrow there will be thousands of downloads of that paper. In the New Year, tens of thousands of people with MS all over the world will march into their doctor's offices and say, "Read this. Now, how are we going to take charge of this thing?" And it's all because you helped get the word out. So for those who have blogged, emailed, Facebooked, Google+'d, and Tweeted: thank you. Keep doing it. You are changing millions of lives.

* I'll link to the paper as soon as it goes live. It will be free to all. It's a very technical paper, but if the précis isn't enough to hold you until tomorrow morning, drop a comment or email me with your address and I'll email you a copy.
** By making changes to diet, supplementation, and exercise. I also don't know how fast research will move on variations on statins, fibrates and other extant drugs.

Huge news: multiple sclerosis is a metabolic disorder

2011-12-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

***The paper is now published. Read it here.***

In the latest issue of the Quarterly Review of Biology (Vol 86 Number 4, December 2011), in a paper titled "Multiple Sclerosis is Not a Disease of the Immune System," Dr Angelique Corthals argues that multiple sclerosis (MS) isn't a disease of the immune system: it is caused by faulty lipid metabolism.

The very basic précis of the paper: looking at MS as a metabolic disorder helps to explains many puzzling aspects of the disease. MS cases are on the rise as a direct consequence of a high-sugar, high-animal-fat diet. MS is similar in many ways to atherosclerosis.

This is huge. It is not an incremental improvement of what's known about MS, it's a paradigm shift. It will change the way MS is understood, researched, and treated.

Full disclosure: Angelique is a good friend of mine. I've seen every draft of this paper. It is not original research. It's an overview of what is known to be known. It takes what has been researched, reviewed and replicated and reassembles it into something utterly new: a jigsaw puzzle in which, for the first time, all the pieces fit. There are no pieces left out, none hammered in with brute force. It's brilliant. It's elegant, clean, and makes complete and utter sense.

At some point soon I'll write about how this makes me feel. But today I want to give you the gist of the paper without editorialising. (All mistakes are mine; nifty illustration and direct quotes are from Angelique.)

WHAT THE PAPER SAYS

The medical profession has believed for a long time that MS is a disease in which the body’s own immune defenses attack nerve tissue in the central nervous system. [For an overview of changing medical wisdom, see The Incredible Journey, courtesy Rocky Mountain MS Center.] The disease's main characteristic is inflammation, then scarring, of tissue called myelin which insulates the brain and spinal cord. Over time this scarring can lead to profound neuron damage.

Researchers have thought that the fault lies with a runaway immune system, but no one's been been able to explain what triggers the onset of the disease. They've linked genes, diet, pathogens, and vitamin D deficiency to MS, but evidence for these risk factors is oddly inconsistent and often contradictory. This frustrates researchers in their search for effective treatment.

"Each time a genetic risk factor shows a significant increase in MS in one population, it's been found to be unimportant in another. Pathogens like Epstein-Barr virus have been implicated, but that doesn’t explain why genetically similar populations with similar pathogen loads have drastically different rates of disease. The search for MS triggers in the context of autoimmunity simply hasn’t led to any unifying conclusions about the etiology of the disease."

Understanding MS as metabolic in origin rather than autoimmune begins to bring the disease and its causes into focus. "The new approach explains both the recent rise in incidence and all pathological, genetic, and environmental aspects of the disease."

In other words, this new understanding of MS will finally make it possible to find effective treatment--including preventative treatment.

THE LIPID HYPOTHESIS

The etiology of MS (click to enlarge)

Corthals believes that the primary cause of MS can be traced to transcription factors in cell nuclei that control the uptake, breakdown, and release of lipids (fats and similar compounds) throughout the body. When the lipid-metabolizing function of these receptors, known as peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs), is disrupted, it can cause the accumulation of toxic lipids known as oxidized LDL, which form plaques on the affected tissues. The accumulation of plaque triggers an immune reaction, in part also regulated by the PPARs. With a failed inflammation control and the accumulation of oxLDL, the immune response runs amok and the toxic plaques leads to scarring of the tissue. The mechanism is essentially the same as atherosclerosis, in which PPARs' failure in heart cells leads to inflammation and an immune response in coronary arteries. "When lipid metabolism fails in the arteries, you get atherosclerosis. When it happens in the central nervous system, you get MS."

There are several risk factors for reduced PPAR function, including:

a diet high in saturated fats and carbohydrates
genetic predisposition
environmental factors (such as poor exposure to sunlight or sources of vitamin D)

If the PPARs and the disruption of lipid homeostasis are the culprit in MS, it would explain why statin drugs, which are used to treat high cholesterol, have shown promise as an MS treatment. It would also explain why cases of the disease have been on the rise in recent decades. "In general people are increasing their intake of sugars and animal fats, which often leads to high LDL cholesterol. So we would expect to see higher rates of disease related to lipid metabolism—like heart disease and, in this case, MS."

It also sheds light on the vitamin D link. Vitamin D helps to lower LDL cholesterol, so it makes sense that vitamin D deficiency increases the likelihood of the disease—especially in the context of a high-fat/high-carbohydrates diet.

The lipid hypothesis also explains the inconsistent evidence for MS triggers. In many cases, Corthals says, having just one of the risk factors for reduced PPAR function isn’t enough to trigger a collapse of lipid metabolism. But more than one risk factor could cause problems. For example, a genetically weakened PPAR system on its own might not cause disease, but combining that with a poor diet can. Under these conditions, the body is "primed" for the onset of the disease, which is then triggered either by a pathogen (it can be any) or trauma, or even stress.

Finally, the lipid hypothesis also explains why MS is more prevalent in women.

"Men and women metabolize fats differently. In men, PPAR problems are more likely to occur in vascular tissue, which is why atherosclerosis is more prevalent in men. But because of the way women metabolize fat differently in relation to their reproductive role, their lipid metabolism is more likely to affect the production of myelin and the central nervous system, leading to the neurological equivalent of atherosclerosis. MS is more prevalent in women, just as atherosclerosis is more prevalent in men--but this framework excludes neither sex from developing the other disease."

Much more research is necessary to fully understand the role of PPARs in MS, but Corthals hopes that this new understanding of the disease could eventually lead to new treatments and prevention measures:

"This new framework makes a cure for MS closer than ever."

And that, dear reader, is the magic word: cure. For the first time, ever, I think there might one day be one. Even better, we might be able to prevent MS.

If you have questions--and I'm sure many of you do--please drop a comment here. Angelique has promised to answer as many as she can. I will, too. But please note: neither of us will give specific medical direction or advice. For one thing, I'm seriously not qualified. For another, there is no substitute for talking in person to your healthcare professional. I'm happy to share my opinion--I'm opinionated; it's my blog--but do not construe this as medical advice. Angelique will discuss her understanding of MS in general, particularly as it relates to this new paradigm. But she will not tell you what you should do. There will be no exceptions.

ETA: QRB is not yet live (sigh), so I've reverted the link to the forthcoming page. I'll update when this changes.

ETA2: This an emotional topic. I will be moderating comments here carefully. Please remember that neither Angelique nor I am making money from this. This blog post is a service. Don't even think of getting impolite or I'll delete your comment. Let's all play nicely.

ETA3: QRB informs us there's been a delay and the paper will go live on Friday. But I have a copy of the final document, the PDF that will be downloadable free in a couple of days. It's 25 pages of double-columned, densely argued fabulousness, with 9 pages of double-columned bibliography. It is solid. For those who know their PPARs from their peroxisomes and can't wait until Friday, email me.

A meta note

2011-12-20T06:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about the big news about multiple sclerosis coming tomorrow from the Quarterly Review of Biology. I explained why it is such big news. And, trust me, it's the biggest news I've ever encountered about MS.

Tomorrow I'll post the precis of the paper ("Multiple sclerosis is not a disease of the immune system," by Dr. Angelique Corthals). I promise you won't need a graduate degree in biology to understand it. I'll even include a nifty diagramme. And hopefully a link to the free, downloadable article itself. (Assuming it's live. Right now it's just forthcoming.)

Today is just a signal-boost day. Think of it as the middle section of a school essay--you know the structure: say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you said. Except, hmmn, I suppose today is just the comma between saying what I'm going to say (which was yesterday) and saying what I am saying (which is tomorrow). Confused yet? Yeah, me too...

Come back tomorrow. All will be clear.

Coming soon: important news about MS

2011-12-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

QRB's Forthcoming page (click to enlarge)

On Wednesday, December 21st, the Quarterly Review of Biology will publish "Multiple Sclerosis Is Not a Disease of the Immune System," by Dr. Angelique Corthals. It presents a revolutionary new framework for understanding the disease: MS is not an autoimmune disease, rather, it is caused by faulty lipid metabolism.

MS has been regarded as an autoimmune disease for decades. Billions of dollars have been spent on research depending on that premise. As a result, current treatments for MS are not particularly effective.

This paper explains why and, more importantly, offers a way forward.

I've been paying attention to research in the field since I was diagnosed with MS in 1993. I have a good understanding of the issues and a solid grasp of the scientific lexicon. Full disclosure: Dr. Corthals is a very good friend of mine and I've read every draft of this paper. I am fully convinced that her framework explains the contradictions that have puzzled researchers over the years, and answers their most frustrating questions*:

Why does vitamin D play such an important role?
How does diet affect the disease?
Why do some studies suggest Epstein Barr (and other pathogens) trigger MS but other studies contradict this notion?
How important is genetics in the development of MS?
Can stress and physical trauma trigger the disease?
Why are women more prone to MS than men?
Why do drugs like statins sometimes seem to help MS?

This paper takes all the research of the last decade and fits it into a new pattern: a radical new understanding of MS.

However, it's an extremely technical paper, and long (70 pages--though 20 of them are the bibliography). So on Wednesday, when the article goes live**, I'll post a précis here that I hope will help readers grasp the essentials. (For those who know their PPARs from their peroxisomes, I recommend downloading the original.)

Angelique has given me permission to start discussing the paper before publication because it will have a powerful impact on people with MS and those who love us.

It takes a lot to move the needle of orthodoxy. Think of the MS ecosphere--people with MS, their loved ones, their doctors, their insurers, the pharmaceutical companies--as an ocean-going liner. It needs time to make a course correction. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll get the ship moving in the right direction and the sooner the right treatment will reach those who need it.

The odds are very good that you know someone with MS: there are more than 1.4 million of us (some estimates are much higher). For them--for us--I'd like you to help spread the word. If you know any media professionals (online, in print, on the airwaves), please point them to this post or the forthcoming Quarterly Review of Biology. Talk to your doctor. Talk to bloggers. Talk on Twitter. Just talk. Help move the needle. Think of it as a holiday gift to people with MS.

I'll be talking about this more fully on Wednesday.*** Angelique has also offered to answer questions then--or now, if you have them. Just drop a comment or send me email (see sidebar).

This paper doesn't offer a miracle cure. It doesn't offer an instant treatment. But it does point the way. Please help by pointing people you know to me or to Angelique (her contact info is on her website--the first address is best).

Thank you.

* All opinions in this blog post--and all the mistakes--are mine.

** The paper will be available to all as a free download.

*** The announced publication date of QRB is 12/21/11. If that doesn't happen--and delays do occur--I'll post the précis anyway. This is too important to wait.

Tree, with hangover

2011-12-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

No, the tree doesn't have a hangover, the photographer does. Having said that, the tree was utterly dry this morning--it had sucked down all its water (replenished before bed) overnight. So perhaps it was also feeling a wee bit dehydrated. Eh, it's what the holidays are for.

Now I'm going to go eat a lot of bad food and watch some cheesy TV. Okay, I admit, not cheesy: I happen to be very fond of Highland: The Series. I even got this t-shirt to enhance my viewing pleasure:

Facebook Timeline

2011-12-17T10:42:00.001-08:00

Facebook is bringing Timeline online next week. I decided to get ahead of the curve and do mine now. I haven't spent much time on it. But I imagine I could: curating, fussing, sharpening, adding. I can see how for many people this could be a very useful feature, a way to bring together their online lives in one place.

But I prefer using tools over which I have long-term control. (This blog. My website.) I would hate to spend a hundred hours fixing everything in this walled garden, getting it just right, and for the FB powers-that-be to decide, Eh, bored now, and put in place yet another design. My work would be wasted.

But I spent an hour yesterday fiddling. Go take a look. Go look at your own Timeline. (GalleyCat has some basic How-To tips.) Make sure to pay attention to the privacy issues like downloadable email addresses and so forth. And don't waste too much time...

QR codes made of chocolate

2011-12-16T08:53:00.000-08:00

This is a genius idea: QR codes made of chocolate. No, I'm not joking. Chocolate is serious business. From Chocolate Graphics:

Looking for a great new way to promote your company and products? QR codes allow anyone with a smartphone and a QR code reader app to scan the QR code and access websites, videos, coupons and more!

... Chocolate Graphics chocolate QR codes are not only delightfully delicious but are also a great talking point and marketing tool. Each chocolate features an embossed chocolate QR code design using a process far more advanced than simply printing on the chocolate.

Chocolate Graphics uses a unique patent protected process to create a finished product that is 100% chocolate (no inks or icing are used) and this unique feature results in a superior product.

Imagine being able to hand out a chocolate that will take readers immediately to a free first chapter, or an audio sample, or your book trailer (though I admit I'm one of those people who think book trailers suck; they are not worth the money), which they will then settle down to read/listen to/watch while eating chocolate. That, dear reader, is a triumph of associational good will for the book in question. The happy muncher will be hitting the Buy button before they know what they're doing.

I've written before about how and why to use QR codes (here and here). But I never dreamt up chocolate. It's pricey, but I'm thinking some of this might be in my future (and therefore possibly yours). Immersive reads like Hild pretty much demand chocolate.

Go slay a dragon

2011-12-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

Slay a dragon, fight off sharks, put out fires--all at drawastickman. It's enormous fun. You can share your pictures afterwards. Or not.

All you have to do is draw a stick figure, then watch your little person caper about and get into all sorts of scrapes. The software will occasionally prompt you to help your hero out with another wee drawing--but there's no artistry required. A toddler could do this. Er, a toddler could probably do a better job.

Have fun.

Reader comment, and how to contact me

2011-12-14T06:25:00.000-08:00

From: G

I’ve been reading your blog for a while, and your latest post (on seeing a video of yourself in your twenties) prompted me to stop lurking. It reminded me of a story by Ali Smith, called "Writ," and I wondered if you’d read it? (It’s available in a collection called The First Person and Other Stories.) A woman is visited by her 14 year old self, and the story describes how terrible and wonderful that possibility is. I’d quote, but as usual, Smith’s work is so bloody brilliant that I’d just end up typing out the whole story…

A friend gave me a couple of your books in the summer, and since then I’ve read all the novels, and as many of the short stories that I’ve been able to track down. I loved sci fi when I was little, getting everything by John Wyndham out of the library, graduating to the likes of Asimov et al (I love his story "The Bicentennial Man," and think of it whenever I read something by you about Descartes and dualism) but I only relatively recently discovered women like Octavia Butler, so was delighted to discover another contemporary female author. I would have loved more Ammonite, but have accepted that’s not going to happen! However, I am more hopeful that Aud will one day return (I now take corners wide, and on a recent visit to Oslo, my daughter went to the sculpture park purely because I'd mentioned it to her in passing having read about it in your novel).

‘Historical’ fiction isn’t really my bag, but I think I’m going to have to make Hild the exception to my rule, as I love how you write nature into all your other novels, and I guess there’s a lot of scope for wild (in all senses of the word) writing in Hild.

I also enjoy your blog posts and essays on writing; I’ve your manifesto printed up on my study wall. The ethos of that reminded me of Kakfka, when he talks about books being “ice axes” to break the frozen sea inside of us.

Well, this was really all just a long winded way of saying thank you for your books, and for taking the time to write your blog, because it makes me think.

Sorry, last thing: I heart your occasional photos of Seattle, because I have an old school friend who lives in Enumclaw, Washington State, and your pics help make me feel closer to her.

G, your email arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Normally I'd just write back privately but Kontactr, the form I've been using, screwed up not only the formatting but your address: I have no other way to talk to you but here, in public. As I wasn't sure whether you'd be okay with this, I redacted your full name.

First of all, thank you. Thank you for forcing me to pull my finger out, get rid of Kontactr, and fling a bit of javascript around my asknicola email address so I can post it without fear of evil spambots. (See sidebar. To talk to me about business, go through my agent: Stephanie Cabot at the Gernert Company.) And thanks, too, for prompting me to finally get around to giving my writing manifesto (previously part of You've been warned) it's own post and, therefore, URL. Now cunningly titled Manifesto.

Now, on to your email.

I have three collections of Ali Smith's stories: Free Love and Other Stories (1995), Other Stories and Other Stories (1999), and The Whole Story and Other Stories (2003). I think she's a truly original writer. Her work astonishes me. But I haven't read "Writ." I imagine the story is brilliant and terrifying. I'll be adding Free Love and Other Stories to my collection soon. How exciting! So thanks for that, too.

As for Hild, oh yes, the book is stuffed to the gills (to the mane, to the beak, to the fang; to the bough, to the beach, to the horizon) with nature. Hild is in nature all the time. Flora and fauna fascinate her: for its own sake and for the purposes of prediction (weather, war, wyrd). I believe you'll like it. Think of it as a hybrid of Aud and Ammonite.

And here's a photo for you: my back deck and the ravine, taken from the shelter of my kitchen (it was cold!) yesterday morning.

But if you want to see some gorgeous pix of Washington, follow Jennifer Durham's blog, Light Coming Back. She's a professional in love with nature and she lives right here.

Manifesto

2011-12-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

When I write, dear reader, I don't want to build a careful tale for you to discuss with a smile in a sunny place, I want to own you. I don't want to be The New TV Series, I want to be pornography: to thrill you so hard you're ashamed but can't help yourself crawling back for more.

I want to write a whole novel that invades you. I want to control what you think and feel, to put you right there, right then, killing and being killed, fucking and being fucked, cooking and starving, drinking and thinking, barely surviving and absolutely thriving. I want to give you a life you've never had, change the one you live.

How? I will take control of your mirror neurons. I will give you tastes and textures, torments and terrain you might never find in your real life. I will take you, sweep you off your feet, own you. For a while. For a while when you're lost in my book you will be somewhere else, somewhen else, someone else.

I control the horizontal, I control the vertical. Sit back, relax, enjoy. When you're done, take a breath, smoke a cigarette, figure out who you are now, and come back for more.

Publishers: pay writers more, it's good for you

2011-12-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

Mike Shatzkin has written another thought-provoking post about the publishing industry. (If the business interests you, subscribe to his feed; his perspective is expert and insightful.) This time his basic thesis is not only perspicacious, it absolutely delights me. He makes a good case that it's in the best interests of agency publishers (most of the publishers you've heard of) to pay their authors a higher ebook royalty.

For the ins and outs of it, you'll have to read Shatzkin's post; publishing accounting practises are arcane. But here's one of the more simple points he makes: writers don't pay much attention to the fiddly bits, the unspoken cost of the publisher's job: marketing, publicity, design, editing, etc. Apparently what we notice are the contractually agreed numbers: advances and royalties. So if Amazon comes along and offers the author an ebook royalty of 35% of the gross, and an agency publisher offers 25% of the net, well, us simple souls won't bother factoring in such airy-fairy fiddle-faddle as market penetration, we'll think, Hang on, Amazon will pay us twice as much. And we'll jump ship.

Publishers need to hold their noses and take the leap to higher royalty rates. Yes, it'll trigger all kinds of clauses regarding industry standard rates; yes, then they'll have to pay out more even on backlist titles. But the alternative is a) paying out more to retailers instead (go read the post) and b) losing the providers they absolutely can't do without: writers with proven readership.

Do I want to get paid more? Oh, yes. Do I think Shatzkin is right? Absolutely. Will it happen? No doubt; it's just a question of how fast. But how many great writers will get scooped up by Amazon before that happens?

Big Six, over to you.

Stannis is coming...

2011-12-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

This trailer for Season Two of Game of Thrones isn't nearly as shivery-good as the first one for Season One. "The cold winds are rising," is sorta pitiful next to the blunt "Winter is coming." (The blue pencil in my editor-brain twitches. They could at least have said, "The north wind is rising.") So I hope there'll be another one soon.

Will I be watching anyway? Oh hell yes.

Anniversary

2011-12-11T06:41:00.000-08:00

Today is the 22nd anniversary of the day I moved to the US permanently to live with Kelley. I intend to spend the day lazing about and beaming, and the evening celebrating in suitably splendid style. I won't be around much. I imagine you'll survive somehow.

Ominous to glittering to eerie glow

2011-12-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

Here's how yesterday morning began: dull, grey, and ominous, with a carpet of frost--thick as cat fur--on every surface:

And here's how it was less than an hour later, bright and spangled with sun:

And--though sadly I don't have a photo--last night was cold and clear with a huge LED-bright full moon. And a scarf of fog lying twisted around the neck of the Olympics and draped across the Sound, which glowed like the breath of some spirit stealing into our world.

I love Seattle.

29 years ago today: me on video

2011-12-09T03:01:00.000-08:00

Dead Kennedys, The Damned, The Undertones, Cocteau Twins, Killing Joke, Stiff Little Fingers, and my band, Janes Plane. What do we all have in common? We played at the Ace, Brixton, in 1982. (So did, uh, Kajagoogoo, but we don't admit to that. Though in my defence of coolness I will point out that this was before their pop hit, "Too Shy.")

To be precise, twenty-nine years ago today I sang in front of a sell-out crowd and four TV cameras. I had a blast. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll was not a metaphor.

If you've read my memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, you'll have heard some of the Janes Plane songs. You can read an exerpt about the band's formation, and how singing brought me to writing, here. Or, ah fuck it, just listen to "Bare Hands":

It was recorded in August 1982, when the band was still together--and when the following video (for a UK TV show called Whatever You Want) was recorded.

I've been sitting on this video for a long, long time. It makes my toes curl. (Do you have any idea how hard it is to edit video when you can't actually look at it??) I was 21, trying to hard to look laid back and world-weary, but so stressed out about that kitten. (And with a wicked hash hangover--the night before was the first time I'd smoked Nepalese Temple Ball. I smoked a lot.) Note that my nose looks different: it was a couple of years before I got it broken in a fight.

While I'm throwing caution to the wind, here's video of part of that Ace gig, filmed December 9, 1982. We were woefully under-rehearsed (we'd split up not long after that August interview, and reformed for this one gig) and this was the song we'd played least. (You won't find this one on the CD in the memoir. It was the last song we wrote.) Also, Jane's guitar was horribly out-of-tune. It was always out of tune; even pooling our resources, we couldn't afford to replace the machine heads.

We were incredibly poor. That white shirt I was wearing cost 20p in a jumble sale and I cut the collar off with a knife (ditto that shirt in the other video). The waistcoat was knitted for me by a lover's mum. The pink trousers were hand-me-downs that I wore all the time. I was reminded just the other day that on the day of the gig I didn't have tube fare to get there and had to borrow it. But, hey, we got paid in cash--union rates--right after the show. That night we partied. The only snag is, I don't remember a thing about it :) Eh, I was 22; I thought I ruled the world. I remember that young person fondly.

Enjoy.

Catherine Hall wins Green Carnation Prize

2011-12-08T14:42:00.000-08:00

The winner of the Green Carnation 2011 is The Proof of Love by Catherine Hall. I've enjoyed watching the process--and the longlist and shortlist are good places to find gifts for your quiltbag lit loving friends.

Full press release below:

Catherine Hall has won the 2011 Green Carnation Prize with her second novel, The Proof of Love. Set during the long hot summer of 1976, it is a deeply evocative and moving tale of a young Cambridge mathematician who arrives in a remote village in the Lake District and takes on a job as a farm labourer. Just as he is slowly winning the trust of the suspicious local community, tragedy strikes.
Chair of the judges Simon Savidge said “I am thrilled, along with all the other judges, that Catherine Hall has won this year's Green Carnation prize with her extraordinary second novel The Proof of Love. This is one of those rare novels in which you get so lost you forget that it is fiction. The characters walk off the page and you can feel the atmosphere simmering and brooding in every sentence. It's a book that quietly takes you by the hand, leading you gently into a false sense of security before gripping you and it doesn’t let go until the very last moment. It is the sort of novel that storytelling and reading are all about, wonderfully written and a book you want to pass on and recommend to everyone you know.”
Winner Catherine Hall said “I’m utterly delighted to have won the Green Carnation Prize – a completely unexpected pleasure, especially given the calibre of the other writers on the shortlist. It’s a great way of raising the profile of LGBT writing, which I think can only be a good thing.”
About The Prize
The Green Carnation Prize got off to a great start in 2010 as an award that celebrated the best fiction and memoirs by gay men. It provoked debate, produced an intriguing shortlist and chose a worthy winner in Christopher Fowler's Paperboy.
In 2011 the prize came back even bigger and better. As Britain's most prestigious literary prize for modern gay writing, it opened its doors to all LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) writers. It aims to engage the wider LGBT community, as well as all readers outside of it, in its search for great modern writing.
Details of the winning author and novel:
CATHERINE HALL was born in the Lake District in 1973 and brought up in an extended family on a remote hill farm. After reading English at Cambridge University she moved to London in 1995, working in documentary film production and then for an international peacebuilding organisation before becoming a freelance writer and editor for human rights and development charities. Her first novel was Days of Grace (Portobello, 2008)
THE PROOF OF LOVE: During the long, hot summer of 1976, a young Cambridge mathematician arrives in a remote village in the Lake District and takes on a job as a farm labourer. Painfully awkward and shy, Spencer Little is viewed with suspicion by the community and his only real friendship is with scruffy, clever ten-year-old Alice. When he saves Alice from a mountain fire, he begins at last to feel accepted, but as he is drawn deeper into the lives of others, he also becomes aware of their secrets - and of the difficulty in keeping his own. As the heatwave intensifies and a web of complicity tightens around him, Spencer realises that he will be forced to choose: between passion and logic, between loyalty and truth...”
The six shortlisted books for the Green Carnation Prize 2011 were:
The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge – Patricia Duncker (Bloomsbury)
The Proof of Love – Catherine Hall (Portobello)
Red Dust Road – Jackie Kay (Picador)
Rembrance of Things I Forgot – Bob Smith (Terrace Books)
Ever Fallen in Love – Zoe Strachan (Sandstone Press)
The Empty Family – Colm Toibin (Penguin Books)
The judges for the 2011 prize were:
Nick Campbell, blogger and book addict
Stella Duffy, author, broadcaster and director
Paul Magrs, author
Michelle Pauli, deputy editor of guardian.co.uk/books
Simon Savidge (Chair of Judges), blogger, journalist, podcast presenter and literary salon host

Book spaces

2011-12-08T10:01:00.000-08:00

About a thousand people read yesterday's post about showrooming: turning book shops into book spaces funded through the marketing budgets of various organisations (publishers, big independent writers, giant online retailers).

I'm not the only one thinking along these lines. Yesterday, over at Publishing Perspectives, Jo Henry, the MD of Book Marketing Limited, ventured the opinion that Amazon may end up buying Waterstones, a UK book chain, "so that it would have its own showroom on the high street."

And today in Publishers Weekly, Roxanne Coady, of RJJulia Booksellers, Madison, CT, has a modest proposal for independents to charge Amazon for showrooming.

Finally, a smart friend of mine points out that the book space I imagined yesterday already exists: it's the New York Public Library. So my additional suggestion is for publishers and giant online retailers* (Amazon, B&N, Apple, and Google) to fund libraries directly.

Just a thought.

* Giant Online Retailers: GOR.

Bookselling: We are showroom dummies

2011-12-07T08:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, AllThingsD discussed Amazon's latest move:

Amazon is offering consumers up to $5 off on purchases if they compare prices using the online giant’s mobile phone application in a store.

The promotion goes live Saturday and will serve as a way for Amazon to increase usage of its bar-code-scanning application, while also collecting intelligence on prices in the stores.

They refrained from characterising this any more than ~~breaking customers to the saddle~~ accustoming customers to using price comparison software--combined with a nifty information-gathering-on-their-competitors'-pricing exercise. But many book-centric blogs exploded in outrage.

I don't think outrage will serve.

A couple of days ago, the New York Times Media Decoder blog introduced me to the term 'showrooming':

Bookstore owners everywhere have a lurking suspicion: that the customers who type into their smartphones while browsing in the store, and then leave, are planning to buy the books online later — probably at a steep discount from the bookstores’ archrival, Amazon.com.

Now a survey has confirmed that the practice, known among booksellers as showrooming, is not a figment of their imaginations.

I read on, nodding. The survey found that 24% of those who bought books online in the last month had seen the book in a store first, and 39% of people who bought from Amazon said they'd looked at the book in a bookshop before buying it from Amazon. In other words, Amazon has been doing this for a really long time, as we all know; they've just added some extra incentive for the customer and, as I say, are accustoming more customers to the practice.

Peter Hildick-Smith, the president of the Codex Group, said publishers and bookstore owners should be worried about the practice, especially considering the rapidly increasing number of e-readers in circulation.

It's at this point that I stopped nodding. I started to shake my head. No. The time for worry about this behaviour has passed. It's time for bookstores to acknowledge this pattern and start using it.

Readers are customers. We shop as it suits us. No one--publishers, wholesalers, retailers, commentators--can wish that away, no matter how vehemently. It's time to look at the situation from another perspective. Right now book shops have what Amazon (and publishers) need: the showroom. The showroom is the bookseller's advantage.

In any business, the way to make a living is to leverage one's advantage. Book shops need to start thinking of themselves less as points of sale than as showrooms.

I've talked about this before:

Customers of all kinds live in an information and experience-rich world. Booksellers and publishers should be figuring out how to enhance a reader's shopping experience, creating a relationship with them...

What I'd take from the description of these readers and shoppers is that the urge to shop in person, even among those who read on Kindle, is something online retailers don't yet quite have a handle on. It's a magnificent opportunity. Why don't independents install WiFi and partner with publishers so that readers with Kindles can download DRM-free books in .prc format from them? Why don't publishers club together to build experience kiosks in public spaces where people can fondle the merchandise, get ideas for books, then download them? Why not hire booksellers to talk up their product to these shoppers? Why doesn't Amazon sponsor book parties to tempt non-Kindle users into giving it a go? Why don't writers band together and hire customer reps to staff kiosks in bars or cafes selling their books (digitally or paper) at the best price?

I don't understand why, in the season of pop-up retailing, some writers' coop hasn't tried this. Seriously: why haven't we tried this?

If you walk into the average Barnes & Noble, there are 15,000 books in your immediate sightline. If you log onto Amazon, you see a maximum of 33 covers per screen*. It's no contest in terms of discoverability. Why aren't booksellers using this? Why isn't some small luscious book shop with high foot traffic but low sales and collapsing bottom line partnering experimentally with a group of publishers for sponsorship, and hiring extra staff to wait on customers and really sell books? I want book shops to survive. I want to know that in ten years there will still be spaces that display books for readers; there will still be spaces where, as a writer, I can meet those readers; where, as a reader I can get personal recommendations.

We need book spaces.

But let me be blunt: I'm not convinced these book spaces will be book shops. They'll be book displays. Book showrooms. Former booksellers will be professional, publisher-agnostic book marketers paid fees directly by publishers, and, yes, giant online retailers. Functionally, it makes no difference to most readers whether the owner of that bricks and mortar book space earns money directly from the sale, on the premises, of particular books, or whether they are paid fees by publishers and giant online retailers to display their wares. Functionally, would it be so bad to be paid directly by those wanting to market their wares rather than by individual buyers? Functionally, I as a writer only care that the venue exists, that the publishers exist so that writers are published and paid, and that readers can discover new books.

The world has changed. It's not going back to the way it was. Every corner of the publishing ecosystem has to accept this reality. Look at Hollywood. Film studios spend over $100m to market a big movie. Studios understand that viewers must discover the film before they can see/pay for it. Similarly, publishers should start understanding that books now need real marketing. Putting boots on the ground in showrooms is one way to begin.

Imagine a book space where a customer is greeted at the door by a book professional with twenty years experience and asked: What are you looking for? Where they're ushered to their own private ~~changing room~~ reading nook and brought a variety of ~~clothes~~ books to ~~try on~~ look at. Where they are engaged in aspirational conversation: That ~~dress~~ book will make you look/feel so attractive. Everybody's reading that book this month. Where other book buyers will nod and say: I read that one last week, it rocked my world.

We have showrooms. It's time to start using them the way readers/customers have already shown us they want us to. Otherwise we're all dummies.

* Via Paid Content

Magic Flight's Launch Box

2011-12-05T14:41:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a blog post for Friday about what I was up to twenty-nine years ago (it's an anniversary--but more on that on Friday).

Meanwhile, I've encountered a nifty bit of kit that, twenty-nine years ago, I would most definitely have wanted to own. I present to you, from Magic Flight, the incredible Launch Box:

It comes in this tin Rubik's-Cube-For-Stoners über box:

Everything slots neatly together, including rechargeable AA batteries and their case, and there are heartfelt sayings, carved on the Launch Box and painted on the tin. These sayings are, I imagine, just gnomic enough to be either deeply mysterious or highly risible, depending on your usual response to herbal alteration.

The method is ingenious: you grind your, ah, material to a fine consistency (pestle and mortar = perfect), open the box, drop the material in the centre trench, press the battery to the contact for 3-5 seconds, which heats an element sufficiently to vaporises the aromatics in the material, then you draw. No flame. No smoke. No noise. Barely any smell (except the herb itself, of course). Given the practise I'd had with smoking 29 years ago, I bet you any money I could have extracted every whiff of vapour from the draw.

So now I'm thinking 'Magic Flight' might mean something like, 'Wow, you could use it on a plane.' (I'm thinking this as a novelist, you understand, not an advocate. I'm sure Federal Aviation rules forbid it. They forbid electronic cigarettes, after all.)

Mainly I'm fascinated by the sheer ingenuity of people. I would have coveted this gear three decades ago. I loved finding new way to smoke hash (which I gave up when I was 24, just to be crystal clear): joints, of course (I made the best in town), on a pin under glass, through a carrot (and then you eat the carrot), via a supercharged fire-extinguisher (just once--dangerous, but fun), and, my favourite, hot knives. I loved hash on hot knives. But this cool gadget would have gone to the top of my wishlist.

And, ah, look, Amazon's Universal Wishlist will accept that item. Pretty wild. The world really has changed since I was doing this stuff.

Now I'll get back to mumbling, tugging on my floppy cardigan, and ordering those kids off my lawn...

Sharing breakfast

2011-12-05T10:29:00.001-08:00

A squirrel and I munched companionably at breakfast this morning--right next to each other, though separated by glass. It looks as though Tufty was enjoying a chunk of half-frozen apple from the wild orchard just north of here. Me? Smoked salmon on toast and green tea.

A day off

2011-12-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

It's a sunny day here in Seattle. I'm taking the day off. Why don't you, too?

Russ, etc

2011-12-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

I've had an interesting couple of days. Bumpy, in some respects. (Waiting--and everyone I know seems to be waiting for some important news right now--is not my forte.) But then two things happened that felt like a ray of sunshine slicing through the murk.

First, we planted some Siberian iris that came, in direct descent, from Joanna Russ. And then, literally two hours later, this gift arrived from New York:

The box was full of caviar.

So I've been pigging out on luxury items, and dreaming of a summer bright with the kind of irises Joanna might have gazed upon while writing her classics. Which of course she had no idea would be classics while she was writing them. Or maybe she did. Which--frankly--makes me feel even more pleased with the world: we all do what we must do, and the world grants its grace and favour or, shrug, it doesn't. Nothing much you can do to influence public opinion except do what you do, and do it well.

So I'm in a phelgmatic mood. And heading towards cheerfulness. Happy Saturday.

Words to use carefully, a PSA

2011-12-02T06:04:00.000-08:00

Bitch. Cripple. Dyke.*

Only some people can get away with using these words--and only sometimes, and in certain circumstances.

The rules are simple:

If you've had such a word hurled at you as a term of abuse, you may then reclaim the word and use it as a self-identifier, or--among other self-indentifiers--as a term of admiration.

Any other circumstances, any, make your use of the term an insult and a fighting word.

Clear? Good.

* There are, of course, many similar words that insult whole classes of people. But in troll country it's not a good idea to speak on behalf of a group to which one doesn't belong. You know the words I mean. Out in the real world, when you hear (or see) someone use one, call the user on it. You'll be making the world a better place.

John Carter of Mars trailer

2011-12-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

It's looks... Hmmn. Well, it doesn't look deep. But there are swords, and heroism, and epic music. (Which sounds like a weird choral/orchestral version of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".)

Will it be good? No idea. But it's John Carter. Of Mars! How can I not give it a go? Besides, it'll be interesting to see Taylor Kitsch in something that's not Friday Night Lights. (I'm so used to seeing him with a football helmet dangling from his hand that I kept mis-seeing his weapons in this trailer.)

And, hey, all you producers out there, I think it's time for a remake of Tarzan. Seriously. I can't get enough of that stuff.

Lambda Literary Award nomination deadline

2011-12-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

The deadline to nominate a book for the Lambda Literary Award is today. But Richard Labonte, administrator of the award, has these reassuring words:

Nominations close officially on Dec. 1, but as always there's some leeway for publishers and authors who leave things to the last minute...we've all been there. In the next week, I'll be contacting publishers about a number of books reviewed in past months by the engaged and engaging critics of the Lambda Literary Review, but not yet submitted for consideration by more than 90 judges - but if publishers and publicists (and authors) want to avoid a nudging email, they can access the online submission form here and guidelines about what kind of book can be nominated, and what category is most suitable, here.

Readers are always hungry for good books. But we can't read what we don't know about. So don't hang about. Nominate something!

Acquisitions list

2011-11-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

This 15-inch high chunk of elephant just sold for $8,547,979. It's 750 years old, give or take. I wish I had a better picture. But for something so old and fragile, it seems to be in great shape. You can read a bit (not a lot) more here.

It's nice enough, I suppose, but it doesn't really speak to me. What do are the Lewis Chessmen:

Andrew Dunn, creative commons

There 78 of them, mostly carved from walrus ivory some of whale teeth. They're even older than the Virgin: twelfth century, some think. Probably made in Trondheim. But no one's certain. No one's certain, either, about where exactly they were found, or when. They were retrieved (apparently "under mysterious circumstances") from Lewis in or before the nineteenth century.

One of my favourites is the Beserker:

Rob Roy, creative commons licence

Substitute the shield for my First Generation Kindle and that could have been me the other day.

Against the day I make (or steal, or win, or am given--I'm not picky) a billion dollars, this is going on my acquisition list. What's on yours?

Figuring it out

2011-11-29T06:16:00.000-08:00

Continuing yesterday's saga* about turning the manuscript of my latest novel into an ereader-ready file for advance readers...

I was having a hard time figuring out how to make the glossary--a tabular list--appear on my Kindle 1 the way it's supposed to, that is, as a two-column list rather than a pool of word vomit.

I tried everything I could think of. It didn't work.

Then a very kind soul and expert ebook maker**, Catherine M. Wilson, offered to take over for me. I accepted gratefully. And, you know what? It turns out that the glossary thing isn't just me: it's the Kindle. Apparently no one can make this kind of table look good on a First Generation machine. So, hey, I'm not an idiot. (At least not about this. Though I still don't read the instructions...) Here's how it looks now on a Kindle 3:

So now it's done. I have a luscious looking draft of Hild in EPUB, MOBI, and HTML. I am good to go. Which means that now you can stop feeling harassed by my updates and/or stop feeling sorry for me and/or Kelley (depending on your point of view and temperament).

Except, ha!, I've just discovered PressBook in beta, and also signed up for the Vook book-making platform as soon as it goes live. I'm guessing you haven't heard the last of this...

* I forgot to mention that the illustration I used for the temporary cover is a watercolour of Bamburgh Castle by Norman MacKillop who, a few years ago, graciously gave me permission to use the painting in exchange for a donation to his favourite charity. Here's what it looks like in colour:

I love this painting.

** I've also had much input, handy tips, and offers of help from Vonda M. McIntyre, Shana Cohen, and @TinaHolmboe. The world is full of kind and generous people. Thank you, all.

How to turn your Word document into a Kindle-ready file

2011-11-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

My current project is Hild, a massive novel set in the seventh century. For the convenience of advance readers (editors, agent, publicists and so on), I want to turn the manuscript into a nifty ereader-ready file, complete with embedded map, glossary, and genealogy, which I can email to readers for sideloading to their device of choice via USB.

A plain word file is easy. Last year I found a a quick way to turn a Word doc into very sturdy .azw format. (This is Amazon's proprietary format. I use a Kindle, so the first part of this post is all about that; don't worry, I'll get to the other stuff later.) It's not elegant but it works.

Here's how I do it. First of all, because I began my keyboarding life long ago on a typewriter, and sometimes old habits die hard, I do a global search-and-replace to substitute one space for two between sentences. Then I make sure that the paragraphing is right--no line breaks between paragraphs, no extra spacing that might lead to such, etc. Then--and this is important for the quick-and-dirty-zero-coding method--I change my tab indent from .5 to .1. Then I save the Word file (.docx) as a web page (.htm).

I email the .htm file to my Kindle address and Amazon kindly flings it through the ether to land on my Kindle home page. I open it.

Here's how it looks:

Not fancy but eminently readable.

To make an .azw file that I can email as an attachment to others so they can sideload it to their own Kindles, I email the .htm file to my Free Kindle address, and Amazon kindly emails me the .azw file, which I can then forward.

So far, so simple. And very, very fast. (Really. The whole thing takes less than ten minutes.)

The difficulty comes when I try to embed graphics (map, genealogy, nifty end-of-section symbol: ✥) and tables (glossary). It should be simple: embed the pictures in the Word doc, save that as a web page, upload the whole thing. But it isn't. What I get where the big graphics should be (e.g. the map) is picture of a camera and an exclamation point. (The little graphics, i.e. symbol, are just a question mark in a box.) As the Kindle is delicate (and, y'know, mine), I don't throw it at the wall. (Yep, I exaggerated the other day. It's what writers do.)

So then I thought: Okay, you bastard, I'll just upload the graphics as separate files and send a zipped file for readers to upload to their Kindles. Ha, eat that you awkward git! I tried uploading the graphics on their own. I tried it several different ways, using different formats (I won't bore you with the details) and eventually got so cross I was driven to do what I should have done to start with: I read the instructions. (Kelley always laughs at me for not reading instructions. I know I should I just...don't. Call it a moral failing and move on-- Why, yes, that is Kelley in the background chortling mercilessly.)

So, if I'm reading the instructions correctly--which I often don't, which is why I never read the fucking things in the first place--my fastidious First Generation Kindle (yep, it really is that old) not only finds PDFs unclean (which I knew) but also won't touch .gif or .jpg or .png or .bmp or any other picture formats on the planet.

So then I tried all the same methods but this time to Kelley's Kindle, which is a third generation device. Failure.

So then I turned to Calibre. (Calibre is a free and open-source e-book library management system. As part of that management, it converts documents into and between a variety of formats, including EPUB, used by lots of ereaders such as Sony, Kobo, iBooks, and MOBI, which Amazon easily turns into its .azw format.)

Calibre won't import and convert Word documents, so I turned Hild into an RTF file (complete with graphics, tables, etc.) and tried, twice, to import/convert that. For reasons unknown it wouldn't work. Calibre suggested I try converting the document to a webpage first. So I did that. I imported. Converted to MOBI. Added metadata, commentary, a cover. Uploaded to my Amazon account. And, woo-hoo! It worked. At least for the cover and genealogy:

If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you'll see that as well as actually displaying the cover (nope, this is not the final cover; I just made that on Photoshop while waiting for one of my endless trials/conversions/uploads) it now also shows the title and author in the right place.

The genealogy can be zoomed on the Kindle, at which point it flips on its side:

However, the glossary, in tabular form, came out looking as though someone had eaten a dictionary and thrown up on my Kindle. Huh.

The saga will continue tomorrow...

Happy overindulgence

2011-11-27T11:23:00.000-08:00

Last night was one of overindulgence. This one photo encapsulates it: Champagne (Thierry Triolet), Armagnac (Larresingle X.O.), port (Sandeman's, 40 yrs. old), and two delicious red wines (just visible in the background: a haughty old Rioja and, well, ah, I forget what the other one was). It was a celebration dinner for an old friend.

Life is good. But today I'm moving slowly...

Currently having fun with...

2011-11-26T11:40:00.000-08:00

I am currently having fun trying to turn my Hild ms. into something pretty which early readers can read on their Kindle. By 'fun' I mean 'not fun'. By 'pretty' I mean a sturdy and readable .azw document without ugly gaps, spaces, and format errors, and with the embedded loveliness of my map, family tree, and glossary. By 'early readers' I mean experts in their field: historians, publicists, editors, agents and so on. (So, no, sorry, much as I love every single one of you--and I do--you can't have one.)

Some parts of it are working, some are not. I'll tell you all about it on Monday. When I've recovered my temper, Kelley has stopping laughing, and I've retrieved the pieces of my Kindle from the floor...

The cat who gave thanks

2011-11-25T09:36:00.000-08:00

The nieghbourhood cat, whom we call Chow Ciao, but whose new owners have named something like Kira, has been visiting every morning. This was early Thanksgiving morning. Being a cat, she isn't particularly thankful for any of the treats she's had in the last week: bacon, salmon skin, lamb fat, pork leftovers, and chicken. Hey, that's how it is. She is Cat. She deserves treats from all her minions. Plus, it was cold.

This morning dawned even colder--but, miraculously for this time of year in Seattle, dry and bright. Here's a picture of the sun-threaded ravine. The torture tree is finally beginning to lose its leaves. When they're gone, it's officially Winter.

Thank you

2011-11-24T01:48:00.000-08:00

Without readers, my novels wouldn't exist. Oh, there would be words on a page, but they wouldn't live in hearts and minds--which, for me, is the point. In that sense, Dear Reader, you make my life possible. You fill it with excitement and joy. Thank you for reading. Thank you for dreaming. Thank you for the conversation, the encouragement and, yes, the love.

Thank you.

Some novels I got all the way through this month

2011-11-23T03:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I listed books I've tried in the last three or four weeks. I'm going to talk briefly about the novels I managed to read all the way through:

Reamde, Neal Stephenson
11/11/63, Stephen King
Santa Olivia, Jacqueline Carey
The Long Tomorrow, Leigh Brackett
The Affair, Lee Child
Island, Thomas Perry
The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan
Haweswater, Sarah Hall

Key word: brief. Which means my remarks may seem to be brusque or careless. After Hild I'm finding it difficult to write at length. My comments will feel more like elevator conversation than the long, rambling beery interludes you're used to here. It might seem as though I'm damning with faint praise; that's not my intent. I'm talking about these books because I think they might be worth your time.

The Stephenson (Reamde) was kind of cool--a geek thriller set in various parts of the world (including the online world) full of fascinating detail about how aspects of MMPORGs (and money, and China, and terrorism, and drug smuggling, etc.) work. Also offering insight (I suspect) into how some corporate sultans of tech think. Very long, though. And the last 20% or so felt a little out of control. Actually, it felt a bit like Return of the King, the movie: too many endings. But the women aren't objects, they're very much subjects (mostly--still lots of tie-them-up-and-threaten-them-sexually scenes, sigh). If you want to spend a week in another world, read this.

The King (11/22/63) was a return to his old style, lacking that particular bitterness which feels like carelessness I've come to associate with his recent work. A few pages in it was clear to me that this was an idea he'd had near the beginning of his career. The afterword confirmed it. Also confirmed in the afterword: the ending is not entirely his. It's a nice ending, but it doesn't sit entirely comfortably. But, damn, I was relieved. Given his recent callousness to his characters, I thought the ending might be horrible. I read on faith. I was well rewarded. I might talk about this one some more another time, when a Certain Someone Who Bakes has finished it and won't be grumpy about spoilers.

The Carey (Santa Olivia) was a blast. Lesbian boxing mutants, woo hoo! It was also peculiarly one-dimensional in places. But, oh, what assured narrative; so lovely to be in competent hands. I knew nothing of this book before I started it and haven't read anything about it since. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that this, like the King, had its genesis at the dawn of the author's career. It has that fresh-new-writer-in-the-world feel to it. Also like the King, I was initially worried about the story trajectory. But, again, it ended well. Perhaps a little too well. It's obvious Carey is writing a sequel, and I feel about that the same way I felt about the Phèdre books: Kushiel's Dart was wonderful, the sequels unnecessary and a dilution of the original premise. But that's just the kind of reader/writer I am. If you can tell the story with one definite spear thrust, then you don't need endless dancing and jabbing. Mileage varies. (I know lots of readers would love to have a sequel to Ammonite...)

The Brackett (The Long Tomorrow) was a reread. A Ruined Earth story, in some ways the American mirror image of Wyndham's The Chrysalids. I'm writing a short essay on this one, so I'll stop there for now.

I think Lee Child's The Affair was the first book I read after finishing Hild. It's pretty much what I expect from a Reacher Novel, with the added bonus of being Reacher's origin story. Reacher never changes. In other words, the perfect book to read when you don't want anything surprising, e.g. while flying.

Island, by Thomas Perry, was a bravura performance, and a delight. Not deep, but a fascinating premise--create land, turn it into a nation state--backed to the hilt by a thoroughly committed author. Good stuff.

Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf was great: chewy, unexpected, sharply written and exactly what the title promises. Sort of. Let me put it this way: a smart protagonist, lots of sex and food and blood, a hint of queerness, some name-brand Scotch, good clothes and a nifty ending. No doubt this one, too, will have a sequel. I might read it.

Hall's Haweswater is a fine novel, a paean to early twentieth-century Cumbria. Hall understands bodies, human and animal, and she understands landscape. Her notions of story and point of view aren't like mine--her perspective shifts about two-thirds of the way through, which I found disorientating--but I can recommend this one if you like the moors of Hardy and Emily Brontë. Given the other works of hers that I've read (The Carhullan Army and one short story) I'm beginning to suspect she has a problem with endings. But she's definitely worth reading.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US--so discussion of the list of books that didn't work for me will have to wait a few days.

Recently read

2011-11-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

I've just finished writing a massive, technically difficult novel and ground my brain into dust trying to make it feel, to the reader, luxuriously, joyously clean and simple. I believe it's a writer's job to be a good host: to welcome the reader, make even the most difficult subject matter and obtuse characters easy to enter.

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be a priority for other writers. Or perhaps they're just not able.

In the last three or four weeks I've downloaded dozens of sample chapters only to become irritated and impatient. In this regard, the Kindle is very frustrating: I can't throw it at the wall. I have to put it down carefully, then throw something else at the wall. Tuh.

I've read one paper book all the way through, my ancient 1961 paperback of Alistair MacLean's Fear is the Key. The object itself is in dreadful shape:

If you look carefully, you'll see the bookworm holes in the cover. Here's how it appears from the inside:

Don't worry. Those worms are long dead. And, just in case, we keep it in a plastic bag. This has the added benefit of keeping the book together. Alas, we've already lost about thirty pages over the years. Not so bad when you consider the thing is nearly as old as I am. But it doesn't matter; I know the story; I've read it often enough.

But it's sad when one is reduced to reading a broken, vermin-riddled, mouldy, fifty year-old paperback.

Of the newer books I've attempted, some are not acceptable because the writing is pitiful. Sometimes the digital design and/or conversion is appalling. Sometimes the premise, story or characters are tedious and/or unbelievable. Sometimes the style is stiff and unconvincing. Sometimes--no, often--they suffer (I suffer) from a combination of the above.

I admit I'm currently a difficult customer, but here's the thing: I don't need a book to be perfect. I do need it to do something interesting and/or do most things competently. Finding books that pass even that low bar hasn't been easy.

Here are some of the books I've actually finished in the last three weeks, all sufficiently engaging to get me through to the end:

Reamde, Neal Stephenson
11/11/63, Stephen King
Santa Olivia, Jacqueline Carey
The Long Tomorrow, Leigh Brackett
The Affair, Lee Child
Island, Thomas Perry
The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan
Haweswater, Sarah Hall

These are books I've read a bit of and might very well read more:

Floating Worlds, Cecelia Holland
Beyond Black, Hilary Mantel
Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan
The Stranger's Child, Alan Hollinghurst
The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje

These books failed me:

State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
The Dovekeepers, Alice Hoffman
The Element of Fire, Martha Wells
Sister Mischief, Laura Goode
How Fiction Works, James Wood
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

Tomorrow I'll talk about why.

Unexpectedly lost

2011-11-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

Today I got unexpectedly lost in a project and forgot about the books blog post I promised you. Oops. Tomorrow is another day.

Sneak Peek at Game of Thrones Season 2

2011-11-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

Via Deadline Hollywood

The problem with good TV: it takes way too long!

Five movies: not bad, weird, and appalling

2011-11-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

Since I've finally sent Hild on her merry way, I've been consuming entertainment: mostly books and films. And, wow, there's a lot of rubbish out there.

Today I do film. Tomorrow books. I'll start with pretty good, move on to a couple that are head-scratchingly weird, and end with comedy that made me lose all hope for women in this culture.

So. Hanna was enormous fun. Great soundtrack. Great display of female ruthlessness. Wonderful unexpected interlude with the English family and a splendid take on sudden friendship--and possibly more--between two very different girls. With lots of chase scenes, some nifty snow, and bloodiness thrown in. The whole film was surreal, in a good way, though the story arc wobbled alarmingly here and there. Definitely worth seeing. Turn the sound up and the high-pucker-factor left brain off.

Attack the Block was great. The first few minutes were difficult: they didn't pull any punches showing how a young woman is threatened, mugged, and knocked down by a bunch of semi-feral kids. (Youths as my parents might say.) But then we watch the redemption of the redeemable, the come-uppance of the irredeemable, and an uplifting ending that isn't unbelievably happy and tied in a bow. The music is good. And the depiction of class. It's been prettied up a little for the commercial palate of course, but that palate is a European one, not American, so while it pulls a few punches it at least lives in the same neighbourhood as realism. Much of the humour is generated not despite the class consciousness but because of it. I liked this film. It's much more representative of England than all that boring interwar costume drama public television likes so much. Go watch it.

The first half of Limitless was a fairly standard riff on the Flowers for Algernon notion of a drug that makes the user smarter. The protagonist of this one, though, wasn't dim and earnest and likeable, he was a morose, self-absorbed wannabee novelist with no work ethic (no ethics, as far as I could tell) and low self-esteem. Oh, yep, a really lovely personality--but played by Bradley Cooper, so probably meant to be attractive. I'll spare you details of the plot (I use the term loosely) but the second half of the film fails. The story points and pivots are spectacularly stupid: he's meant to be world-challengingly smart and he forgets to pay the mobster back his money? He didn't think to stash emergency supplies of his drug in several places when any meth head, crack addict, alcoholic and stoner would know better? He does the most interesting, paradigm-shaking stuff, i.e. learns to stay smart while weaning himself from the dangerous drug, offstage?? This one's worth watching for about the first third, because the director does a couple of nifty blended multiples-of-the-protagonist shots, and someone (DP, SFX?) does a great job lighting Cooper's eyes when he glows with smarts. But throw the rest away. Life's too short. They missed some wonderful opportunities with this one, storywise and actorwise (they hardly used Abbie Cornish). I would love to rewrite it.

The Advocate is a very odd duck indeed. A 1993 indie production starring Colin Firth, Ian Holm, and Donald Pleasence, it's original title was The Hour of the Pig. And I can believe that. It begins with a donkey being threatened, in all seriousness, with a judicial hanging, and delves deeper into weirdness as it proceeds. It's confusing on more than one level--for example, it calls the fifteenth century the Dark Ages--and strangely lit, but it's oddly endearing. My viewing was interrupted about a third of the way in, but I might pick this one up again. Lots of casual nudity of real-looking bodies (non-plucked and primped and smoothed) is a plus.

And then we come to Bridesmaids. The most important thing I have to say about this one is: it's not funny. It is pathetic, in all senses of the world. I felt pity for main character, pity for all the women, whose notion of a good time, of humour, of relationship is feeling bad about themselves and lying. I managed twenty minutes, without cracking one single smile, never mind laughing out loud, and simply couldn't bear watching another second. These women are sad sacks with low self-esteem and zero self-assertion. They all hate themselves. They hate and fear men. I know I'm not exactly the target audience for this film but watching even the bit I did made me long to wash this culture off and leave. This is a terrible film. It appalled me that women find this kind of thing amusing. I literally don't understand it. And I'm glad.

Tomorrow I'll talk about some books I've read (mostly worth reading). Meanwhile, please recommend a comedy in which the protagonist doesn't hate her or himself. I need a palate cleanser, stat!

Historical fiction and science fiction

2011-11-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, one's historical and one's fantasy but, eh, close enough for Saturday

Annalee Newnitz has an article on io9.com about the "ten major themes and ideas shared by HF and SF." Go take a look.

All then, I think, would fit comfortably under an uber-theme--a fascination with systems, both human and cultural. That is, how things work, and how they play out. Fiction is the great play-test of our imagination: we ask What If...? and let the experiment run. Both HF and SF run the experiment rigorously (the sub-genres not always; their concerns are different). The longer the fiction, the more numerous the parameters.

But, oh, for writers and readers of a certain bent, it's enormous fun. I think that when those of you who have read Ammonite or Slow River read Hild, you'll see that in many ways the concerns of Hild are those of my science fiction novels: how things work, and how my character/s influence the world, or at least their part of it.

Oh, I am so eager to share this book with you! I've no idea how I'll keep my mouth and blog strings shut. Just have to drink more wine and distract myself with luscious women who bake...

Hild and Cromwell

2011-11-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

I've said before how Hild was originally intended to be a single novel. In the writing, that all changed. Yesterday I saw this article in the Guardian about Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall. I'm guessing she knows what I'm talking about:

"Initially I had set out to tell the story of Cromwell's career between Thomas More's death in the summer of 1535 and his own death five years later," Mantel said, speaking to the Guardian about why her view of the structure of the story changed. "I didn't see the project as a trilogy because I thought the difficulties of carrying the backstory into a third novel would be too great. But all my thinking changed in the last month; it shows how hard it is to make predictions about how a novel will evolve.

I certainly know what she means. When I got halfway through Hild, I saw that Hild's life falls naturally into three parts, each with a quite different arc, length, and tone. So I cut the story short (if you can call 200,000 words short), and plan to pick it up in Book Two. This book, tentative title Menewood (though that's bound to change) will be short and brutal, the pivot around which all else turns.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I read this paragraph from the same Guardian article:

"When I came to write about the destruction of Anne Boleyn (a destruction which took place, essentially, over a period of three weeks) the process of writing and the writing itself took on an alarming intensity, and by the time Anne was dead I felt I had passed through a moral ordeal. I can only guess that the effect on the reader will be the same; the events are so brutal that you don't want to take a breath and turn the page, you want to close the book.

I don't know Mantel. But one day I'd like to sit down with her and have a drink. "Oh, and wasn't that realization a bastard? Didn't you just want to kill someone?" "Ha!" she'll say. "But then of course we did. Several someones. Horribly."

It's that willingness to enter the world of your own fiction, with all its surprises and horrors and joys, and to then recreate it for your readers, that makes great novels so vivid. It's the author's willingness to really go there, and to open the door for others, that makes story, place, and people so believable. That believability is what makes other creative artists think, Oh, I want to play there with those people! In other words, it's what TV producers are looking for.

Hilary Mantel just agreed to let HBO turn her novels about Cromwell into a series. I'm excited. And, y'know, thinking about Hild and TV. She, too, was a powerful advisor to kings. She, too, got mixed up in religious change. She, too, had a glittering, matchless mind...

Big as a battering ram

2011-11-17T07:48:00.000-08:00

Until a month ago, I had no idea that Brussels sprouts grew on stalks. I'd only ever seen them loose, or pre-packaged: tiny little cabbages in string bags. Then we had dinner at a friend's house and I spotted this gigantic Jack-and-the-Beanstalk looking thing in her kitchen. What the fuck is that? I said. Brussels sprouts, she said.

It's a bit of a shock to find myself so divorced from the roots (pun unavoidable, unless I think hard, and, y'know, as much as I love and admire every single one of you, a post about Brussels sprouts just isn't worth it) of a vegetable I eat often.

So just in case any of you are labouring under a similar burden of ignorance, here you go:

Yes, it really is three feet long. And heavy. You could use it as a battering ram. Or plant it in a pot, stick a star on top, and put presents under it at Yule. You can thank me when you get over the nightmares.

Novels: the expression of the human condition

2011-11-16T06:04:00.000-08:00

Campbell's Soup I (1968), low-res snapshot so it can (hopefully) be considered Fair Use, via Wikipedia

A couple of weeks ago I read the cover article of the Nov/Dec issue of Intelligent Life, "A One-Man Market," by Bryan Appleyard. (It was excerpted in the Economist.) It's about Andy Warhol and the market for his art.

Warhol is now the god of contemporary art… In 2010 his work sold for $313m and accounted for 17% of all contemporary auction sales.

That shocked me. Seventeen percent of all contemporary auction sales. For one man who made it very clear that he regarded art as a commodity.

But that's just a by-the-bye. What really struck me was part of the last paragraph:

... Prompted by Warhol, conceptualism--art driven by ideas rather than sensuous and emotional engagement--has ruled for more than 20 years. It is a machine aesthetic, a desire to make art that is beyond human, and Andy always wanted to be a machine. But, though all art is in constant, self-questioning flux, one thing never changes--the longing to define, synthesise and express the human condition. In the absence of religion, it is art's job to do this...

Read the last two sentences again. This is one of the bases of my philosophy. Art--more particularly, literature--exists not only to entertain* or to soothe**, but to help us understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it.

Literature is what distinguishes us from every species that has gone before. It's what makes it possible for seven billion of us to breathe the same air. Literature is the great sum and sea of human experience, out there heaving serenely in the moonlight, ready for individuals, when it's their time, to paddle out on their voyage of discovery. Sometimes a whole boatload goes at once (a class, a book club). Sometimes the lone traveller comes back and tells her family and friends tall tales (the child retailing horror stories around the campfire). Sometimes he simply hugs the knowledge to himself (the gay teen exploring forbidden territory). But every voyager returns with added experience, a new perspective, a different lens through which to examine the world.

Literature is what keeps us learning about violence without having to kill, about hunger without having to starve, about fear without having to be hunted. Through books we learn strategies for situations we haven't yet encountered. We try on lives we may never get the opportunity to live. We can learn to walk in another's shoes without depriving him of them.

Literature isn't risk-free because books change us. But it can save us from physical harm in the quest for experience. It can save us time. Books provide valuable rehearsal so that when the big moments and grave decisions come we don't screw up as badly as we might otherwise. And we come back from our voyage, we recognise fellow travellers. I've talked about that in this essay I wrote with Kelley: without books, I'm not sure we would be together. I've talked about it in my paean to reading, "Doing it for Pleasure." And I've talked about it in my promise to run my software on your hardware.

I talk about it all the time. Because I believe it. I believe writers are the shamans who map unknown territory so that you don't have to. I believe writers help create the world, not just report it. I don't always do it well, but I'm getting better. And, oh, there are so very many journeys ahead.

* I'm with Pauline Kael on this. "If art isn't entertainment then what is it? Punishment?"

** A familiar novel can be very soothing. For more on this see "Doing it for Pleasure," linked above.

Good author readings

2011-11-15T07:21:00.000-08:00

From: Sheila

Just want to say thank you for your piece on author readings. I have done many over the past eight years, but always wonder if I am "doing it right". So with one scheduled for tomorrow and another in two weeks, I went in search of someone else's perspective and found your article. [Author Readings: a guide] Thanks for that.

What I am struggling with is how to connect the audience with the piece I am about to read. My books are collections of short personal essays with the humorous ones getting the best reaction when I read. In the past I sort of said hello and started right into reading. But I am feeling that I need to ease them in with a bit of talk about the subject of the essay I am about to read.

Do you have any tips to offer?

Yes. Ease them in. Say hello, tell them how happy (or not) you are to be there. And why. Tell them what you're going to read. Tell them how long you'll read, and what happens after that. Audiences don't like to be surprised. Give them context: don't be afraid to tell them the mood of what they're about to hear: funny or sad, joyful or grim, frightening or sexy. Audiences love knowing what to expect. (Go read up on the science and marketing of movie trailers: the more you tell and audience about the film, the more likely they are to want to go see it, and--when they are watching it--to enjoy it.) Tell them what to expect. Then give them what you promised.

Here are two examples of my reading--from the same book (And Now We Are Going to Have a Party, my memoir), and on the same evening (a reading at Hugo House). ANWAGTHAP is a book with a serious arc but light moments.

There's a lot of stuff missing, and the poor sound quality makes me sound as though I have a lisp (I really don't), but you can see how I set the context for the first reading: that it's meant to be short and light.

For the second, I signal that although it, too, will be amusing in places, it is more complicated, emotionally: some light bits but serious at its core.

I like to give my audience a notion of the emotional flavour of what I'm about to read. But I work hard to never, ever insist on it. If I read something I think is sexy and people laugh, then it's not the audience that's at fault, but me: the writing, or the delivery, or the context-setting. Blaming the audience is counter-productive.

One of the first readings I went to, long ago, was a standing-room-only performance by Alice Walker. She talked for a while. We laughed. Then she read a poem. At the first line, we (mostly women; lots of people of colour, lots of white people) laughed. She flew into a rage: It was not funny! She lambasted us for at least two minutes.

The thing is, it was funny. She might not have meant it to be funny, but it was, because that's what we were primed for. So we laughed. And then we felt stupid. And racist. And guilty. We (I, certainly) felt resentful.

Here's a tip: you never, ever want to make your buying public feel stupid, resentful, or guilty.

If Walker had simply said, This next poem is about horror and racism, we would have listened differently. We would have been primed.

So set the context, especially the emotional context. Then have fun. (Or feel righteous rage. Or wildly hot. Or a sensawunda.) Just let the audience know what to expect.

I hope that helps.

Blazing happiness

2011-11-14T10:34:00.000-08:00

I have been having a truly marvellous few days. Hild is now safely in the hands of editors on either side of the Atlantic (and there's a lovely discussion going on about some secondary characters over on Gemæcca, my research blog). I've had a wonderful response to Hild from one historian who said, among many other heart-warming things, "It's a fantastic story. Your writing style is utterly brilliant. The historical setting is so carefully crafted that I felt like an archaeologist sifting through seventh-century artifacts at the excavation of a Deiran homestead... I think I'm supposed to be looking out for anachronisms and such. Not much chance of that. The world you've created for Hild works perfectly well without my meddling." Ha! This is pretty much a dream come true. One of the (many) things I want from Hild is for experts in early seventh-century Britain to nod and think, Yes, this is how it was. So I'm utterly delighted.

And throughout all this blazing happiness, Seattle blazed with sunshine. I took the picture above on Thursday morning immediately after a very pleasant phone conversation. The sun has gone now, for a little while, and the leaves are turning from gilded bronze to sherbert.

But who needs sunshine when Kelley has baked another luscious carrot-walnut cake?

Life is good. That's all.

Snow White with a sword

2011-11-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Interesting. The ~~Blob~~ mirror talks. Snow White is silent. ~~Thor~~ The huntsman sounds Scottish. And the Wicked Queen has an odd and rather wobbly English accent. The soldiers seem to be made of shatter-prone black glass. The birds are pretty. And the swords. And it's all brightly coloured. Also, the music doesn't suck. But I'd really like to know how they're going to handle Snow White. Armour and a sword is all well and good, but how confident is she? I hope she doesn't do the patented Kristen Stewart sulk. But, eh, so far I'm thinking: yep, I'll go see this. You?

Cultural images of women: blame the Romans

2011-11-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

The Romans. Those bastards. It's all their fault:

Research coordinated by Carlos III University in Madrid (UC3M) analyzes the images of women in Roman mosaics and their impact on the collective consciousness of feminine stereotypes. In many cases, the research concludes, the images pointed to the female as the cause of wars and other evils.

Read more at History of the Ancient World.

I'm guessing they didn't have this kind of thing in mind:

Wikimedia Commons

It's from the Villa Romana del Casale, early 4th century. You should go look at the other photos.

Starship Sofa 3

2011-11-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

Some of you may remember that Starship Sofa did an audio podcast of my Hugo and Locus Award-nominated novelette, "It Takes Two." They didn't and don't charge listeners. (Listen to it here. It starts at 14:48.) They can do that because every year they solicit donations to keep them going. This year, in service of that goal, they're selling a selection of nifty anthologies. Actually, it's just one anthology, but it comes in a variety of formats.

The anthology's only flaw: I'm not on the cover

The story of mine that included in this collection of fabulousness isn't "It Takes Two," it's "Songs of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese." Here's the full list of contents for the plain text digital edition:

Fiction

“Electric Ladyland” by Matthew Sanborn Smith (Illustrated by Daniel Tozer)
“That Blissful Height” by Gregory Frost (Illustrated by Simon Watkins)
“Feedback” by Joe Haldeman (Illustrated by Jack Calverley)
“In The Harsh Glow of Its Incandescent Beauty” by Mercurio D. Rivera (Illustrated by Timothy Booth)
“Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese” by Nicola Griffith (Illustrated by Jerel Dye)
“Nimbus” by Peter Watts (Illustrated by Evan Forsch)
“Luck” by James Patrick Kelly (Illustrated by Patrick McEvoy)
“Where Virtue Lives” by Saladin Ahmed (Illustrated by Ben Greene)
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time” by Catherynne M. Valente (Illustrated by Mike Dubisch)
“The Occurrence at Slocombe Priory” by Paul Cornell (Illustrated by Thomas Crielly)
“Sunsets and Hamburgers by Gareth L. Powell (Illustrated by Bradley W. Schenck)
“Martyrs of The Upshot Knothole” by James Morrow (Illustrated by Brian Thomas Woods)
“Newts” by Kevin J. Anderson (Illustrated by Richard Case)
“Cold Reading” by Michael Swanwick (Illustrated by Peter Snejbjerg)
“Drink For The Thirst To Come” by Lawrence Santoro (Illustrated by Daniele Serra)
“In Pacmandu” by Lavie Tidhar (Illustrated by Graeme Neil Reid)
“Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders” by Aliette de Bodard (Illustrated by Mark Zug)
“World Without End, Amen” by Allen Steele (Illustrated by Brent Holmes)
“The Happiest Dead Boy In The World” by Tad Williams (Illustrated by Ben Wootten)
“Nothing Ever Happens In Rock City” by Jack McDevitt (Illustrated by Dave Krummenacher)
“Halfway People” by Karen Joy Fowler (Illustrated by Patrick McEvoy)
“Friction” by Will McIntosh (Illustrated by Jouni Koponen)
“Just A Couple of Subversive Alien Warmongers Floating All Alone in the Night” by Adam Troy Castro (Illustrated by Doug Holverson)
“News From 2025″ by David Brin (Illustrated by Bradley W. Schench)

Fact

Joy of The Flicks by Dennis M. Lane
Top Ten “Must Read” Time Travel Works by Amy H. Sturgis
Comics: what have they done for Us lately? by Frederic Himebaugh
Science Fiction Through The Looking Glass: the Ape, the Alien and the Android by Morgan Saletta (Illustrated by Timothy Booth)

This enormously fabulous collection costs only £2.99 for the plain, unvarnished text, available in ePub, Kindle, PDF and so on.

But wait, there's more! So much more: varied paper editions, softcover and hardback, with and without extras. There's the edition with illustrations, that one with author photos (no, not of our sad faces--of our work space), the one with the extra special extras (I include a song--yes, me singing, about being very, very stoned in Amsterdam...), the one that has extras and is signed. And more. Prices range from £2.99 all the way up to the unique (yes, just one), first-off-the-press, with-everything, signed-by-everyone volume for £150.

So click the wee book below. Go buy something.

Buy this book!

Very nifty book cover

2011-11-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

Oooh, this is nifty! Drag your mouse over it:

via Galleycat

Sadly, it's Flash, so it won't play on many mobile systems. Sorry. It seems a pity that someone would go to so much trouble to make something on Flash, which has been slowly fading into the west ever since the iPhone launched, and is now Officially Dead.

How easy is it to do something like that in HTML5? That's a real question. I've no idea how this stuff works. But I think it would be cool to have a cover for Hild where the grass ripples, the trees shiver, and the water laps...

Green Carnation Prize Shortlist 2011

2011-11-10T06:55:00.000-08:00

The judges have announced the Green Carnation Prize Shortlist 2011:

The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge – Patricia Duncker (Bloomsbury)
The Proof of Love – Catherine Hall (Portobello)
Red Dust Road – Jackie Kay (Picador)
Remembrance of Things I Forgot – Bob Smith (Terrace Books)
Ever Fallen in Love – Zoe Strachan (Sandstone Press)
The Empty Family – Colm Toibin (Penguin Books)

Half a dozen books, a good mix of novel, short story, and memoir. Four written by women, two by men. But all but one--as far as I can tell--primarily about men (despite the jacket art). The exception is Jackie Kay's Red Dust Road.

When the longlist was announced I downloaded sample chapters from several of them and skimmed, but I haven't read any of the short listed books all the way through. Which is why I'm not absolutely certain of my about-men/about-women ratio. But I've talked often enough about literary prizes and girl cooties. I would love to be horribly wrong about this, especially for an LGBT prize.

ETA: One of the judges this year, Stella Duffy, corrects me in the comments below. Do go read her remarks.

Cryptomnesia

2011-11-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I heard the news about a novel being pulled by its publisher for plagiarism. This morning, I read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg's article in the Wall Street Journal about the novel in question, a spy novel by Q.R. Markham (a pseudonym of poet Quentin Rowan):

The book is a thriller about an elite CIA agent chasing a shadowy international group of assassins. But Tuesday, publisher Little, Brown & Co. recalled all 6,500 copies of the novel on the grounds that passages were "lifted" from other books. One sharp-eyed observer says he had identified at least 13 novels with similar material.
[...]
On the first page of chapter one of "Assassin" is this paragraph: "The boxy, sprawling Munitions Building which sat near the Washington Monument and quietly served as I-Division's base of operations was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular work space."

In the book "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" by James Bamford is this: "In June 1930, the boxy, sprawling Munitions Building, near the Washington Monument, was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular workspace."

Thirteen passages (at least) of that kind of straight theft is most definitely plagiarism.* I don't see how it could possibly happen unconsciously. There again, until last year, I didn't believe any plagiarism could happen unconsciously. But then I realised I'd done it. This kind of utterly unconscious borrowing is apparently known as cryptomnesia. (Thanks to @BuffySquirrel for the word.)

My borrowing was tiny in comparison--a matter of two images from the same poem--and I caught it long before publication. But it scared me rigid: I imagined just this kind of public crucifixion. I fretted for quite a while.

I relaxed gradually, and thought I'd put the matter to rest. But this case has put me on alert again. I don't much fancy the notion of obsessively plugging successive 10,000 word chunks of Hild into a Google search box, just so I can relax. Does anyone know a more efficient way to check a manuscript?

ETA: I checked out iThenticate, the version of Turnitin for individual authors. It costs $50 per submission. A submission is 25k words. That would end up costing me around $400 for Hild, which I think is ridiculous. I'll keep looking. Sigh.

* It turns out to be way, way more than that. Over at Reluctant Habits, Edward Champion turns up literally dozens of serious steals by Markham/Rowan in the first 35 pages of the book. It's truly mind-boggling.

Apartheid and economics and language

2011-11-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

I think I'm getting hopelessly addicted to Time Off. This morning I spent a happy hour reading a wonderful article, 'Apartheid and Economics in Anglo-Saxon England', by Alex Woolf (The Britons in Anglo-Saxon England; N. J. Higham (ed); Boydell & Brewer 2007; 115-129).

It proposes an intriguing solution to the arguments over how/why the English language isn't more 'Celtic'.

I was struck, though, by how closely one passage (about periphrastic phrasing) parallels a passage from my introduction to And Now We Are Going to Have a Party. I've haven't read this article--it was published the same year as ANWAGTHAP (2007): the year after I actually wrote my memoir--but, wow, it's eerie. It also, I admit, makes me feel very, very clever.

Eeriness (and smug chortling) aside, this is a great article. I'll be thinking about it more, and probably talking about it. If you want to be ready for that discussion--if this kind of thing interests you at all--go read the article. It's a free PDF. (Thank you to Dr Woolf for being generous enough to put it up for non-academic-library-enabled readers.)

A strict regimen of rubbish

2011-11-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

I've been taking a couple of days off. I've discovered that doing nothing is a skill I'll have to relearn. I'm finding it difficult to read more than a page or two at a time of anything not non-fictional and related to Hild. The closest I've managed to get is WSJ articles, the Economist, and Archaeology.

This is very sad.

So yesterday I took myself in hand and prescribed a strict regimen of rubbish: chocolate, ham sandwiches, beer, and TV. No erring to the serious, no dipping into the worthy.

I watched an episode of Dexter, followed by Patriot Games and futzed about with Photoshop. And for today I've downloaded Attack the Block. If it were playing around here, I go buy half a ton of popcorn and a pound of Skittles, and park myself in front of Your Highness:

Recycling in Seattle (not what you think)

2011-11-06T10:37:00.001-08:00

I woke up this morning to brilliant sunshine and the smell of brine and fallen apples deliquescing into the frost-crisp grass.

No, the photo is not an apple tree. It's the tree directly outside my office window, taken first thing this morning. It's a neighbour to the north who has an untended apple orchard. The squirrels love it. The raccoons love the squirrels. The coyotes love the raccoons. I love the life and death drama (and the wonderful smell). Ah, recycling in Seattle...

I love SF Gateway

2011-11-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

I've been busy the last little while, but today the sun is shining and it might be time to go play. So I set aside various projects and before I closed the Intarweb for the day I fossicked about a bit.

One of the sites I checked was SF Gateway, and got a warm fuzzy feeling when I found that I now have two novels on the Top 10 of the Week:

Part of the warm fuzzy wasn't just my books, but seeing Keith Roberts' novel on there, too. I don't think many people in the US know his work, which is a shame. Pavane is an amazing alternate history novel. That and Kiteworld are my favourites by him.

The top ten of the month made me positively nostalgic:

These are all fabulous books. Wow. Now if there were only a few more women on both lists my warmthiness would overflow.

Married in London

2011-11-04T11:40:00.001-07:00

No, not me--at least not yet--but a song from the always-fab Janis Ian.

I've said it before, ad tedium ad nauseum, that full federal marriage equality is coming, and federal marridge very soon. Perhaps I'll talk more about that, again, next week. (Or you could bribe me not to...)

Meanwhile, enjoy Janis. (Thanks, Georgi.)

Maps!

2011-11-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

For purposes of consolidation, I've decided to put my Hild maps up at Gemæcca, my research blog. I am very pleased with the final iteration--for now. For publication, of course, and the website, I'll get much more splendid: bigger, better, more. Think colour, and idiosyncratic pictures. Maybe little scenes from the book drawn in Anglo-Saxon carving style. (I'll have to get much better at Photoshop.)

Anyway, go take a look. Let me know what you think, what additions you'd like to see in the final version/s. Because, hey, if you don't ask, you might not get.

Leave comments either at Gemæcca or here. I don't mind. Enjoy.

Tech gremlins

2011-11-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

On Monday tech gremlins started chewing on random things in our house.

First up: voicemail. The gremlin ate our message and started answering our phone in its weird machine voice. Easy enough to fix.

Yesterday, the gremlin ate TiVo: just munched its way through all our settings and saved video. Fortunately, we're all backed up in the cloud, so we got it all back. But for ten minutes it was heart-stoppingly horrible.

Then this morning, it somehow got into Photoshop. It took me a while to notice. When I was trying to change my Twitter icon (which I've been fooling about with on and off ever since the Anglo-Saxon episode). Twitter kept rejecting my photo, saying I hadn't chosen a file. I had chosen a fucking file. Over and over. Twitter ignored me. I went off to make a cup of tea (better than counting to ten) and realized, Huh, it's a file size issue. And, sure enough, it turns out the gremlin had got into Photoshop, too, and resized an ordinary snapshot to 120 MB.

The photos the gremlin futzed with are these, taken last year:

So, tech gremlin, be advised: I am armed. Don't fuck with me anymore. But if you're just attention-seeking because you're lonely, fear not: I'll introduce you to Clementine.

LLF: New website and new challenge for you

2011-11-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Lambda Literary Foundation has a new website design and a new challenge.

LLF is the biggest and best queer lit organisation in the world. It runs the Lambda Literary Awards, and the Emerging Voices writers retreat/workshop (which I taught last year), it champions queer literature in many forms. We need those queer voices because books save lives, and queer books save queer lives.

If ever you've been inclined to donate money to LLF, now's the time:

We have incredible news! Three Bay Area donors have offered the opportunity to match the $25,000 they are extending as a challenge grant to the Lambda Literary Foundation for LLF’s fall fundraiser and membership drive. Through the month of November 2011, Jan Zivic (pledging $10,000), Chuck Forester (pledging $10,000) and Al Baum (pledging $5,000) are challenging you to match their offer. New memberships at the $25 level or higher, as well as any additional donations by current LLF members, will be matched dollar-for-dollar to help raise an unprecedented $50,000 for LLF!

[...]

Give during LLF’s $25,000 challenge grant and membership drive and your dollars will go twice as far to champion lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans literature.
Please give generously. Whether you can afford $25, $100 or $1000, you will see your contribution doubled during the challenge grant! Help us to continue our highly respected programs, expand our capacity to serve the entire LGBT literary community, and increase the visibility of our books and writers.
We are deeply grateful to Jan Zivic, Chuck Forester and Al Baum for their generosity. Help us meet their $25,000 challenge by making a donation today.
We sincerely thank you for your support!

Tony Valenzuela
Executive Director

If you give money now, it will be doubled. Please donate--by PayPay, by credit card, by cheque. It's all good.

Conversations with the restless dead

2011-10-31T15:00:00.000-07:00

"Ravens and jays heard calling after the owl was abroad: in conversation with the restless dead..."

That's the kind of thing Hild, the main character of the novel I've just finished, tells those she wants to frighten into listening to her advice. It works, mostly. Given her situation--young woman in a dangerous age--she finds it expedient to play the role of seer and prophet. She isn't--there are no fantastic elements in Hild, no magic but that of the natural world--but she becomes an observer of people and nature. She learns to predict behaviour--of people and systems (the weather, for example). She builds herself a reputation. (No, not like Miss Marple. Unless it's the alternate universe in which MM kills people, has wild sex, and plots more intricately than bishops and kings. That would make a cool TV series...)

Birds are a favourite indicator. One of my favourite research texts was a PDF a kind reader sent me a couple of years ago of a century-old book The Birds of Yorkshire: A historical account of the avifauna of the county, by T.H. Nelson. It's a wonderful book, full of just the kind of nifty oddities (albino magpies, nest-sharing doves and starlings, oddly-coloured eggs) a seer might need.

It's been interesting writing about a world utterly ignorant of science. (A useful book was Elves in Anglo-Saxon England, by Alaric Hall. I discussed the text and the thoughts it triggered--about elves and gender and fantasy--at length here.)

Hild is a naturally suspicious child, not inclined towards belief of any sort. But she does occasionally make up reasonable-sounding stories that fit the facts as she knows them: Swallows hibernate in a vast underground cavern all winter and emerge only when it's warm. Rainwater is some god's tears. The north wind comes from the great black cave of Arawn. (She lives in a world of Germanic and Celtic and, later, Christian belief.) And of course she can't know anything about death.

Hild's contemporaries find Hild uncanny--she's unnaturally tall, unnaturally clever--and suspect her of being, variously, part hægtes (witch) or part etin (giant), and occasionally possessed by an ælf (wicked and terrible, nothing like the diminished creatures of Santa's workshop) or wight (ghost). She is not above using these rumours to her advantage, although this choice comes back to haunt her. It's a dangerous thing to be other in a marginal culture.

But that's a whole other blog post. Happy Halloween.