ladyboy lizards

Young male lizards in South Africa imitate females to fool aggressive older males into leaving them alone, in an example of transvestism in the natural world, researchers have found.

The lizards not only avoid fights but gain access to females under the nose of their more macho rivals, the South African and Australian researchers discovered.

At least according to this article on Yahoo. You should go read the whole thing. It's interesting--less for the information that boys who look like girls get more sex (duh) but for the homophobic flavour of the piece: eew, boys might kiss. Also, transvestites are cross dressers and I'm not seeing any clothes on these reptiles.

When did journalism get so very sloppy?

However, I will ignore the writer's incompetence and the editors' carelessness and imagine, instead, a bunch o' boy lizards painted to the nines and sashaying up to a startled lesbian lizard :)

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blessings rain upon our heads

This week has been a series of gifts. I got a wholly unexpected royalty cheque. We got some good news on another matter, and heard a friend's great news, and the sun shone. Also readers and friends have been showering us with delicious edibles.

For example, last night we made a meal of perfect tidbits: caviar (sustainably farmed sturgeon) with vodka so cold it was gelid, duck pâté and a lovely rose champagne, hummus and beer--provided in large part by fine people who like our books. (Seriously, stuff arrives at the door with ribbons and bows around it. It's awesome.) And then this afternoon I read a Buffy comic (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 #6: No Future For You Part One)* recommended by someone here a few weeks ago, followed by the first chapter of a book (The Wild Places, by Robert Macfarlane)**, similarly recommended here--and read on a Kindle partly paid for by Amazon.com gift certificates bought by readers for my birthday last year.

Then as I read the last paragraph of the free Kindle chapter and swallowed the last mouthful of a particularly fine cup of tea I thought, Huh, I haven't had any chocolate today, at which point the UPS truck appeared with a bang and a flash and a box of Godiva truffles. I am not kidding. It was like magic. (I even thought, Okay, I want to win the lottery, and waited, listening--for the phone, or the crack of lightning, or something--but nothing happened.)

So here I am grinning like a fool, stuffed with tasties and feeling...graced.

Anyway, the sheer delight of these gifts, and everyone's good news, and the cheque, and the Macfarlane, shook loose four pages of Hild notes to work on tomorrow--which I'll do after I have a massage from a therapist found for me two years ago by a Grateful Reader.

I am not making this up. Patronage of the arts is not dead. Thank you, all. Thank you very much.

* I really enjoyed the comic but it was like getting just one truffle--gone before I could really register it. So, tell me O Comix Readers, at some point will I be able to buy a whole set bound together in one book?

** I'm going to buy the whole thing, but probably on paper. It's cheaper, for one thing. For another, it's the kind of thing I'll want to flip back and forth in, dwell upon, linger over. I can tell it's going to be a fabulous book. It's already triggered massive Hild thoughts.

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les libraires dangereux

There's a fab review of Kelley's Dangerous Space up at The Word Hoarder. Go read it, bask in the reflected glory of the Most Gorgeous Eskridge. Once you've recovered your senses, read it again, see what you notice about gender.

The reviewer, Rich Rennicks, works as a bookseller at Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, North Carolina. I've never actually been there--never actually visited Asheville, even though half of Stay is set just outside the town. But Kelley and I wouldn't survive without the enthusiasm of booksellers. We owe our living to them. So if there's a cosy independent near you, pop in, buy a book (buy a new book) or a card or a cup of coffee or some stationery or whatever else they sell and stop and chat with one of the booksellers. Tell them what you do and don't like to read. I bet you a beer that s/he will be able to recommend something you'd never thought of, a book that will take you on a strange and possibly dangerous journey.

Oh, and before you gallop off to obey, take a look at the photo on the Word Hoarder blog and see how many of those books you recognise--and how many you've read. I've read at least four (if I could read the spines more clearly, it would probably be more). Let's just say I think Rich has excellent taste :)

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Orion guards our house

Last night we drove thirty miles north to take dinner to a friend who has just had the most technologically amazing surgery. (It went well, but he'll be in a neck brace for months.) We had a nice evening, looking at gorgeous things (he makes astonishing jewellery with amethyst, pearl, gold, agate and other pebble-sized semi-preciousness--more on this another time) eating good home-cooked food and drinking Rioja (moderately, because of the drive). A plain but lovely evening between old friends.

On the way back the night was black and sharp, the stars brilliant, with a quarter moon lying on its back and huge Douglas firs looming on each side of the road. There wasn't much wind but the night tasted wild. As we got nearer the Sound, and our house, the trees got bigger, the roads narrower, and the sky smaller. And then I saw Orion--more clearly than I have for years--and he bestrode our house, the star at the tip of his sword looking as though it was about to go down our chimney. And I felt oddly comforted: we have a star warrior guarding our lives; we have the room and time to laugh and drink and love a little before armouring up for the fray in the morning.

We got out of the car, and the night was silent apart from the groan and whisper of trees and some night bird lecturing a vole about something. The air smelt of good dirt and breathing trees. The moon had mellowed; a bank of inky cloud came floating across the water like a pillow.

I slept well. I hope you did, too.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Virgil and BSG

A Guardian blog comparing the Aeneid and Battlestar Galactica:

Before I embark on this blog, can I point out that I am a box-set person, not a Sky person, so I am at only the halfway point of the final series of Battlestar Galactica – and really don't want to know what happens next?

Right, that's done.

Now, am I the only person who regards the sweep of the story of the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica as a kind of re-reading of Virgil's Aeneid? I am talking, of course, of the great Roman epic poem that recounts the flight of Aeneas and his followers from their conquered city of Troy to Italy, where, it is prophesied, their descendants will found Rome.

For a moment, let's forget about the Cylons (although whenever I see one on the screen, I am reminded that the original, real-life Cylon was a wannabe tyrant of Athens, a failed coup leader in 632 BC, but surely that really is a coincidence. If you don't know the series, these are the enigmatic attackers of the humans' home planets, a race of cybernetic workers turned aggressive).

Let's think about the humans for a moment. A leader leaves the destroyed wreck of his former civilisation (Troy/Caprica), which has been blasted into smithereens by an invading force (Greeks/Cylons). You might even see Gaius Baltar as a sort of Trojan horse. That leader is accompanied by his son: it's Adama as Aeneas, and Apollo as Ascanius, if you follow me.

On they forge, guided by prophecies that the leader is initially unwilling to accept, towards their fated new home (Adama, like Aeneas in Aeneid book two, needs some persuasion that the various portents pointing the way are of any value.)

Need I remind you that we're constantly getting heavy hints as to the classical origins of our story via the theology of the humans of Battlestar Galactica, who worship the Olympian pantheon of Zeus, Hera et al?

Tentatively, I'd suggest Starbuck's return to Caprica to collect the arrow of Apollo as akin to the visit to the Underworld in Aeneid book six. The arrow of Apollo as the golden bough?

The unsuccessful stay in New Caprica, of course, recalls the settlement the wandering Trojans found on Crete in book three, in the mistaken assumption that this is the fated new land. (And it is also reminiscent of the section in book five where the comrades build a settlement on Sicily for those who are weary of the journey).

One might argue that Helena Cain is a kind of reversed Dido (Aeneid book four); the eventually destroyed Pegasus might be seen as her funeral pyre.

I could go on. I have my own ideas about how the second part of the final series is going to pan out (please don't ruin it for me). As long as our friends remember "parcere subiectis et debellare superbos".

(Via Per Omnia Saecula.)

I don't know how many eps there are to go (three?) but I really, really hope they pull it out of the bag. I always get tense towards the end of a series that started so well, had a dip, then, for a while, improves. (Though, ugh, the episode before last made me want to put my fist through the writers' collective face. What a load of cobblers.)

Any bets on the Starbuck thing? Or what happens to Hera (and what the point of all that is)? Anyone have any guesses?

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Ammonite's sweet sixteen

Ammonite was published in the US in February 1993 and in the UK a month later. So today is (more or less) Ammonite's birthday. It's sweet sixteen.

To celebrate, a Friend of AN has offered to buy three brand new copies of the trade paperback (cover, above), the one with the map and glossary etc. She have amazon.com send a copy to the first three people who ask for one in these comments. (We'll do private email/address exchange later, off the blog.) You can ask for yourself or for a friend. We just want to send Ammonite out into the world to make new friends.

This was my first novel. It means a lot to me. If anyone is so inclined I'd like to hear what it means to you. Or what music you think goes well with it. Or what food. Or what other books (or parks, or holidays, or wine, or parties) remind you of Ammonite, or complement it in some way.

For those who haven't read it, you can take a look at the beginning for free here on ShortCovers, or here on my website. Or you can listen to a couple of readings.

The first one is about eleven and a half minutes in which Marghe learns the true history of the original inhabitants of Jeep, the goth.


(direct link)

This one is nearly seven minutes of the scene where Marghe is in Ollfoss striking the gong, trying to make some decisions. If you haven't read the book, it will make no sense at all (she said, heartlessly).


(direct link)

Enjoy.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

oldest words in English identified

The BBC tells us that the oldest words in English have been identified. (Via Heroic Age.) I feel as though I should show a series of mugshots of scowling words with bad hair and greasy skin...

Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years.

Their computer model analyses the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share a common heritage.

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct - citing "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable first casualties.

Which words do you think deserve to last forever? Which would you expunge tomorrow if you could? Today I'm enjoying 'unctuous' (sadly more Latin than English).

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Nebulous

Woo hoo! Kelley's novella, Dangerous Space, is a finalist for this year's Nebula Award. You can read it free here.

And, y'know, you really should go read it. Here are some things people have said about the novella and the collection of the same name:

"It takes a special talent to write about emotions this raw without embarrassing yourself. In Dangerous Space, the very talented Kelley Eskridge offers tales of the human heart that are searing, moving, and true."
Matt Ruff, author of Bad Monkeys

"Richly imagined, moving, and very sexy, these stories about music, art, sex, and identity will make you rethink all the categories you thought you knew."
Julie Phillips, author of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon

"...a well written and intriguing collection from a truly fearless author."
bookslut

"...sometimes a writer just sweeps me off my feet and I forget what I was supposed to be doing. Such is the case with the title story from Kelley Eskridge's collection Dangerous Space. While the year is less than half over, this has garnered my vote as one of the best stories of the year."
ideomancer

"...this collection from wonderfully primed-for-action Aqueduct Press shoots onto the must-have list for this year -- and probably onto a few award ballots as well... Eskridge is one of those writers who, in a better world, would not even be thought of science or speculative fiction. She'd just be called: good writing."
The Agony Column

"This is the best collection of stories I've read in forever. Cutting edge in every sense, Eskridge mines the raw edges of emotion -- love, lust and fear -- and places her characters in settings just a bit different to our own -- the near future, the recent past, or the slightly fantastic. If you like Kelly Link, Nicola Griffith or Neil Gaiman, you'll love Kelley Eskridge."
Malaprop's

"Eskridge does a wonderful job describing the ache of love (the beautiful desperation of human relationships!), and she tests the limits of our vicarious, readerly hearts..."
The Seattle Times

"...compelling and imaginative stories peopled with characters that may live in worlds which are purely fictional but who struggle with everything that it means to be human."
The Short Review

"This story ["Dangerous Space"] had me completely in, as they say, the palm of its hand, putty-like. Highly, highly recommended, just like the entirety of the collection."
Shaken & Stirred

"As short story collections go, this is one of the best of the year, with incisive, often subtle character studies combined with down-to-earth contemporary fantasy elements...The great writing here is at the service of fascinating people and unusual situations."
amazon.com

"Kelley Eskridge can sound like Samuel Delany, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, or Joanna Russ, while still maintaining her own unique throaty, modulated voice."
Asimov's SF

"This is the kind of art that the word "queer" fits perfectly. The stories aren't specifically lesbian, and they're not specifically gay, but they render any sexual preference wondrously possible. The biological gender of Mars, protagonist of three of the collection's seven stories -- including the hypnotic novella-length title tale -- is never specified: some will read her as a woman, and her passion for the mesmerizing male lead singer of an indie rock band as straight; some will read him as a man, and the same passion as gay. Eskridge juggles the ambiguity with surefooted physical, emotional, and sexual intensity."
Q Syndicate

"Eskridge proffers a tantalizing taste of just how good and savory futuristic fiction can be."
The Baltimore Sun

"The innovative talents of an emerging Seattle science-fiction writer, with her raw yet heartfelt perspective, are showcased in a fine new collection of short fiction, including an indie music novella that provides the book's title."
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"With its kaleidoscopic variety of settings and prose styles, this short story collection by Kelley Eskridge is comprised of many spaces rather than just one... Eskridge is skilled at creating atmosphere and physical detail, and uses her skill to present thought-provoking stories, ideas that linger in the mind's eye."
Strange Horizons

"Kelley Eskridge doesn't tell you everything. She leaves space in her stories for readers to work things out for themselves. But here's the rub: She sets things up so that readers will not always be completely sure what they've found. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that they may not be completely comfortable with what they find. As the title implies, these spaces are dangerous."
SF Revu

So you see--you have to go download that .pdf right now. Go on.

With any luck at all, we'll be in Los Angeles in April to cheer every single finalist in every single category. This year, pleasingly, we know almost everyone. Here are they are:

Novels:
"Little Brother" - Doctorow, Cory (Tor, Apr08)
"Powers" - Le Guin, Ursula K. (Harcourt, Sep07)
"Cauldron" - McDevitt, Jack (Ace,Nov07)
"Brasyl" - McDonald, Ian (Pyr, May07)
"Making Money" - Pratchett, Terry (Harper, Sep07)
"Superpowers" - Schwartz, David J. (Three Rivers Press, Jun08)

Novellas:
"The Spacetime Pool" - Asaro, Catherine (Analog, Mar08)
"Dark Heaven"-Benford, Gregory (Alien Crimes, Resnick, Mike, Ed., SFBC, Jan07)
"Dangerous Space"-Eskridge, Kelley (Dangerous Space, Aqueduct Press, Jun07)
"The Political Prisoner" - Finlay, Charles Coleman (F&SF, Aug08)
"The Duke in His Castle" - Nazarian, Vera (Norilana Books, Jun08)

Novelettes:
"If Angels Fight" - Bowes, Richard (F&SF, Feb08)
"Dark Rooms" - Goldstein, Lisa (Asimov's, Oct/Nov 07)
"Pride and Prometheus" - Kessel, John (F&SF, Jan08)
"Night Wind"-Rosenblum, Mary (Lace and Blade, ed. Deborah J. Ross, Norilana Books,Feb08)
"Baby Doll" - Sinisalo, Johanna (The SFWA European Hall of Fame, James Morrow & Kathryn Morrow, Ed., Tor, Jun07 (trans. from the Finnish by David Hackston)
"Kaleidoscope" - Wentworth, K.D. (F&SF, May07)

Short Stories:
"The Button Bin"-Allen, Mike (Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly,
"The Dreaming Wind" - Ford, Jeffrey (The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Ed., Viking, Jul07)
"Trophy Wives" - Hoffman, Nina Kiriki (Fellowship Fantastic, ed. Greenberg and Hughes, DAW Jan08)
"26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" - Johnson, Kij (Asimov's, Jul08)
"The Tomb Wife" - Jones, Gwyneth (F&SF, Aug07)
"Don't Stop" - Kelly, James Patrick (Asimov's, Jun07)

Scripts
The Dark Knight - Nolan, Jonathan; Nolan, Christopher, Goyer, David S. (Warner Bros., Jul08)
"WALL-E” Screenplay - Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter (Walt Disney June 2008)
The Shrine - Wright, Brad (Stargate Atlantis, Aug08)

Norton:
"Graceling" - Cashore, Kristin (Harcourt, Oct08)
"Lamplighter" - Cornish, D.M. (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 2, Putnam Juvenile, May08))
"Savvy" - Law, Ingrid (Dial, May08)
"The Adoration of Jenna Fox"-Pearson, Mary E. (Henry Holt & Company, Apr08)
"Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her
Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) -Wilce, Ysabeau S. (Harcourt, Sep08)

I haven't read many of them this year--Kelley's novella, of course, Graceling and Little Brother. I'd like to read the Richard Bowes novelette (he's always good) and Gwyneth Jones's story (she's one of the sharpest writers out there). I've also heard amazing things about Brasyl. (Why the fuck isn't it available on Kindle?)

Kelley and I were just talking about this time thirteen years ago when we found out we'd both been nominated for Nebulas--K for "Alien Jane" and me for "Yaguara". (Different categories, thank god.) It was the first time for both of us. We were thrilled--crazy mad happy. We were painting our new house when the news came. We threw the paintbrushes on the floor and went straight out for champagne and a fabulous dinner. We got treated very strangely at the fancy restaurant--it turns out we had paint in our hair. We didn't care. It was a wonderful evening. My congratulations to everyone who's nominated. I hope you party as hard as we did that night (and might tonight...)

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

shortcovers: brilliance, beauty, risk

I just posted my 2001 Liverpool* Guest of Honour speech,"Brilliance, Beauty, Risk" on Shortcovers. Shortcovers is a website of stuff--fiction and not--to download onto your mobile device. Bored on the bus? Go get a story or an essay or an Op-Ed. A lot of it is free. Some of it isn't. They also make it easy to recommend stuff to others. Go find something fab and tell your friends about it.

Shortcovers is kind of cool, and very easy to use. I think I might post a few more things there. (In fact, while I was thinking about it I put up my Dozen Daily Delights. So easy.) They'll take anything under 5,000 words--so I could do essays, rants, interviews, anything. (Not much short fiction, sadly, as most of my stuff exceeds the word limit. And not book chapters, because the publishers have those rights.)

Any requests?

[* A Celebration of British SF was organised by Liverpool University and the Science Fiction Foundation. It was exceedingly cool. ]

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duck on fire

Kelley did a guest post yesterday over at Learning Voyager. It's all about how fear kills focus and yet, paradoxically, how focus reduces fear. I have some minor quibbles with the semantics--I don't think it's pure fear so much as anxiety that kills focus--but the general sentiment is spot on.

I've talked before about the Armenian proverb that goes something like: get the load off your mind and onto your shoulders. In others words, don't fret, do. Some people interpret that as do do do, running to keep your balance, doing without cease so you don't have to think. Or, as we say in our house, paddling madly like a duck on fire.

Kelley doesn't say this--it's more than my life's worth to put words in her mouth--but the way I see all this is: to survive, you have to face what you fear. Kelley is talking specifically about business, but I think it applies to most things. The most important attribute in hard times is bravery.

So be brave. Stop running from the bogie monster, turn around and look it in the eye. Acknowledge the worst case scenario. Then figure out how likely that worst case is. Probable? Or just plain ridiculous, a fear image based on childhood traumas? Take a breath. Think. Build a mental model and then play with it. What If your fears. If you play in earnest, you'll find your fears are smaller than you think, smaller than you. You can win. If you think you can win, you can cope. Once you're coping you can identify a solution. Once you've identified a solution you can draw up a plan. Then you go out and make it happen.

But none of that is possible if you're running, if you're paddling madly like a duck on fire.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

Notes from Walnut Tree Farm

A year or two ago I came across this review in Publishers Weekly of a book by Roger Deakin, Wildwood:

In this last book before his death in 2006, Deakin (Waterlog) delights with his curiosity and affection for rambling forests in Europe and Australia. The book is as much about the woodland animals and humans engaged with forest life as it is about the trees, the rooks flinging themselves into a strong wind and somersaulting wildly upward, then diving straight down again into the woods like bungee jumpers; the Essex Moth Group clustering around a mercury lamp to view moths with poetic names like the willow beauty, the dingy footman, the clouded silver; and artists engaging with nature, like John Wolseley, inspired by the fire-struck Australian Whipstick Forest to create works expressing all the urgency and energy of the racing bushfire itself. Deakin's lyrical, sometimes anthropomorphic portraits of trees and wood are saturated with his scientific knowledge and passion: a hazel branch, more of a magician's staff than a walking stick... naturally fluted and spiraled by the strangling effect of the honeysuckle stem that still encircled it like an asp... was a masterpiece of nature, the voluptuous embrace of the honeysuckle exciting the hazel into a frenzy of cell division.

I bought it immediately, for an ungodly sum, from England. I fell in love with it. Although it's a little treacly in places, it is essentially the poetry of trees, full of that wild magic that breathes from an English wood.

I'm writing a novel, about a woman called Hild, steeped in my love of the landscape of my home country. Trees and meadow, hill and dale, coastline and fen are what I grew up with, what is ingrained in me at the cellular level. Yet I've lived in the US, among conifers and eagles, raccoons and coyotes, for nearly twenty years. The English landscape is no longer second nature to me. It's wrapped in a curiously scent-free memory cistern.

So here I am writing about young Hild who, as Anglo-Saxons did, lived absolutely in tune with the outdoors in order to survive and I find myself groping for memories that are sealed away. I realise I no longer know what the River Derwent looks, feels, smells, sounds like in April. I can no longer picture Sancton in June. What birds are singing? Are the hedgehogs asleep or awake? When do the trees blossom and come into leaf? When are tadpoles wriggling like plump commas in the pond?

I went to Wikipedia, I scoured the personal blogs of nature lovers who live in England. And still my deep, physical knowledge of the English countryside stayed behind a sheet of glass--inaccessible to all senses but sight. I began to wonder if I could do this.

And then I heard that Roger Deakin's literary executor had put together one last book based on Deakin's notes and diaries. I bought it immediately. It's Notes from Walnut Tree Farm.

I'm only halfway through it and already I feel refreshed. Hild is walking through a beech spinney in April and I've only to flip to page 69, to 'April', to find this paragraph:

Strong, cold, north wind blowing. I go up the side of the field, uphill, and cross over a young wheat field to the wood. It has a wood bank and a deep ditch, and as soon as I enter the wood I am struck by the enormous carpet of lily-of-the-valley leaves, and wood anemone in flower, studded with the deep blue of violets.

And I'm there. I remember the cold loamy smell, the first brave bumblebees, the scudding cloud, the way new leaves shiver and hiss. It fills me with joy and a sudden certainty that I'm writing the right book.

I wish Deakin was alive. I would like to take him out for dinner, drink some good Spanish wine and talk about the birds and the bees and the cathedrals of trees...

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

migration, climate change, war

A bunch of climate change negotiator bigwigs got stranded together overnight in Cape Town on their way to Antarctica. They chatted about climate change and, by the sound of it, freaked each other out. The conclusion they came to over coffee and wine: if their governments don't deal with climate change decisively, "what we're talking about...is extended world war."

[I]t was Stern, former chief World Bank economist, who on Saturday laid out a case to his stranded companions in sobering PowerPoint detail.

If the world's nations act responsibly, Stern said, they will achieve "zero-carbon" electricity production and zero-carbon road transport by 2050 — by replacing coal power plants with wind, solar or other energy sources that emit no carbon dioxide, and fossil fuel-burning vehicles with cars running on electric or other "clean" energy.

Then warming could be contained to a 2-degree-Celsius (3.4-degree-Fahrenheit) rise this century, he said.

But if negotiators falter, if emissions reductions are not made soon and deep, the severe climate shifts and sea-level rises projected by scientists would be "disastrous."

It would "transform where people can live," Stern said. "People would move on a massive scale. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would have to move if you talk about 4-, 5-, 6-degree increases" — 7 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. And that would mean extended global conflict, "because there's no way the world can handle that kind of population move in the time period in which it would take place."

The thing is, this has all happened before. It was called the Migration period:

This was what destroyed/changed/forced into retreat the western Roman Empire. It's what led to the invasion and settlement of Britain by Angles, Saxons and Jutes (and the subsequent fleeing of Britain by the British to Brittany). Basically, it was the precondition that led to Hild.

Yes, I'm being simplistic. People can argue til the cows come home about politics and war, famine and plague, volcanos and earthquakes, cause and effect, but I see it all as water circling the same plug hole: climate.

Climate--whether influenced by all that Roman metal processing and forest clearing, or part of a natural cycle, or catastrophically altered by volcanic eruption--will work upon sea levels, temperatures, breeding and mutation rates of disease, animal migration, crop production, which will in turn lead to starvation and disease, and mass migration. Migration leads to conflict--to war, small scale or large.

The fifth and sixth centuries in Britain used to be called the Dark Ages for a reason. (We don't call them that now, because we have learnt to interpret evidence, historiographical and archaeological and linguistic, well enough to shed some light on the era. Now we call it Late Antiquity, or Sub-Roman, or Early Medieval, or the Heroic Age.) For a good chunk of the population, these were grim and uncertain times. Britain lost literacy, central heating, medical care, road maintenance, currency, centralised manufacturing. (It gained other things, such as sophisticated weaving skills, fantastic metalwork, expertise in wood working, new farming methods, and more.) But the change was profound. Frankly I worry about history repeating itself.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

I like to headbutt windows

On her blog this morning Kelley played with the current Facebook meme 'likes to'. I gave it a go. All I can say is, the Nicolas of the world are obviously less wholesome than the Kelleys. Here are the first ten results for my "Nicola likes to" Google search.

Nicola likes to--

--party
--shop on Bond Street
--clean
--do 'family things'
--act as if her nighttime ordeals never happened
--cook
--have baths in the dark surrounded by candles
--accompany you to dinner parties and restaurants
--have sexual intercourse with strangers
--stress the positive reward side of the equation

Nicolas are clearly hedonistic party girls with a domestic streak. Who knew?

In the next page of search I also, apparently, like to shoot, use smaller baits, keep my curly hair tamed, have all the control and attention, think I'm good fun and very energetic, and (my favourite) headbutt windows.

How about you?

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

jaguar!

Wow, there are wild jaguars in this country. This from Live Science:

The Arizona Game and Fish Department caught and collared a wild jaguar in Arizona for the first time, officials said Thursday. While a handful of the big cats have been photographed by automatic cameras in recent years, the satellite tracking collar will now help biologists learn more about this animal's range.

Meanwhile, a jaguar was spotted in central Mexico for the first time in a century...

I had no idea. These cats (and leopards) have always amazed me. I read up on jaguars fifteen years ago to write "Yaguara." But I never knew they were in North America. I think of them as jungle cats. The notion of a yaguar in dusty old Arizona is just, well, I keep seeing images of cowboys being pulled off their horses by a fucking jaguar and it's wrong. But it's also terribly cool. I'm feeling very pleased. The world is full of wonders.

Here's an excerpt from "Yaguara."

---

The rainy season was not far off. The days were hotter, more humid, and Jane worked harder than before, because when she was busy she did not have to deal with Cleis, did not have to look at her, think about how her skin might feel, and her hair. She did not have to worry about getting Cleis to a hospital.

The nights were different.

They would sit outside under the silky violet sky, sipping rum, talking about the jungle.

"The jungle is a siren," Cleis said. "It sings to me." Sweat trickled down the underside of her arm. Jane could smell the rich, complex woman smells. "Especially at night. I've started to wonder how it would be during the rains. To pad through the undergrowth and nose at dripping fronds, to smell the muddy fur of a paca running for home and know its little heart is beat beat beating, to almost hear the trees pushing their roots further into the rich mud. And above, the monkey troops will swing from branch to branch, and maybe the fingers of a youngster, not strong enough or quick enough, will slip, and it'll come crashing down, snapping twigs, clutching at leaves, landing on outflung roots, breaking its back. And it'll be frightened. It'll lie there eyes round, nose wet, fur spattered with dirt and moss, maybe bleeding a little, knowing a killer is coming through the forest." Cleis's nostrils flared.

Jane sipped her rum. She could imagine the jaguar snuffing at the night air, great golden eyes half closed, panting slightly; could taste the thin scent molecules of blood and fear spreading over her own tongue, the anticipation of the crunch of bone and the sucking of sweet flesh. She shivered and sipped more rum, always more rum. When the sun was up and she looked at the world through a viewfinder she did not need the numbing no-think of rum, but when there was just her and Cleis and the forest's night breath, there was nowhere to hide.

And so every night she staggered inside and fell across her bed in a daze; she tried not to smell the salty sunshiny musk of Cleis's skin, the sharp scents of unwashed hair, tried not to lean towards the soft suck and sigh of rum fumes across the room. Tried, oh tried so hard, to fall asleep, to hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing.

But there would be nights when she heard Cleis sit up, when she could almost feel the weight of Cleis's gaze heavy on the sheet Jane kept carefully pulled up to her chin, no matter how hot she was. On those nights she kept her eyes shut and her mind closed, and if she woke in the middle of the night and felt the lack of heat, the missing cellular hum of another human being, she did not look at Cleis's bed, in case it was empty.

---

It's one of my stories (actually it's a novella) that's not available for free on my website; I just haven't got around to it. If you want to read the rest you'll find it in With Her Body, along with a couple of other things.

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/

weather blank

The weather is changing here in Seattle. The air is perfectly still; the birds are quiet. When the barometer plummets my mind goes blank, smooth as a pebble. Today is no exception. I'm sure at some point I'll wake up--probably just in time to kill my brain by watching the Oscars.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd throw things open to you today: how's your weekend been? Will you be watching the Oscars (or the L Word)? Who do you want to win? (Do you wish they'd just kill Jenny already?)

My guilty Oscar pleasure is looking at the clothes...

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pronouns and reader engagement

A report in Science Daily about pronouns in fiction and how readers imagine character:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2009) — While reading a novel, as the author describes the main character washing dishes or cooking dinner, we will often create a mental image of someone in the kitchen performing these tasks. Sometimes we may even imagine ourselves as the dishwasher or top chef in these scenarios. Why do we imagine these scenes differently - when do we view the action from an outsider's perspective and when do we place ourselves in the main character's shoes?

[...]

The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicate that we use different perspectives, depending on which pronouns are used. When the volunteers read statements that began, "You are..." they pictured the scene through their own eyes. However, when they read statements explicitly describing someone else (for example, sentences that began, "He is...") then they tended to view the scene from an outsider's perspective. Even more interesting was what the results revealed about first-person statements (sentences that began, "I am..."). The perspective used while imagining these actions depended on the amount of information provided - the volunteers who read only one first-person sentence viewed the scene from their point of view while the volunteers who read three first-person sentences saw the scene from an outsider's perspective.

(thanks, Cindy)

While it might appear to negate the whole notion of mirror neurons in reading, it really doesn't. Mirror neurons, after all, are activated when we watch *others* do things, and then we recreate the experience inside ourselves.

When you read "You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head"* you know you're not there; you're actually on the bus or in the bath or sitting under a tree. You know it's a lie. You distrust the narrative. I think that's partly the point in many second person narratives: the author wants you to know right away that you are dealing with an unreliable narrator. With the Aud books I chose first person because I wanted readers to get her perspective--and to not understand for quite a while that she isn't wholly reliable. (No one is, really, but, hey, that's a discussion for another time.)

It's not only point of view and pronoun that influence our engagement. Tense makes a big difference. Many of my students come to a class believing that present tense is more immediate, more real, more involving for the reader. It can take a while to convince them that present tense is actively disorienting in written stories. It's the language of dream and hallucination. It's a distancing mechanism. I used it for Lore's childhood in Slow River.

For Hild I'm back to my very first stamping ground (see Ammonite) of third person past tense. The irony is, the book begins with Hild at the age of three, when all children live in the now dreamtime. It's also set in an almost mythical past--fourteen hundred years ago, in a time and place from which we have no reliable written records. (Not just 'not many', not just 'a few', but none. Oh, nearly a hundred years later we have Bede, and we have a few Celtic language poems that may or may not be contemporary, but nothing from the hand of an Angle living in the north of Britain. Not a thing.) Also, I've decided upon an untethered third person--omnicience without the Voice of God the Narrator--which makes the whole thing feel...slippery. I honestly don't know what readers will make of it, but my sincered hope is that it feels natural, that it snares you, bewitches you, enthralls you, that--to go back to the mirror neurons thing--I get to run my software on your hardware.

* Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay Mcinerney.

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drop and give me 20

Exercise kills cravings. Another duh:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2009) — Research from the University of Exeter reveals for the first time, that changes in brain activity, triggered by physical exercise, may help reduce cigarette cravings. Published in the journal Psychopharmacology, the study shows how exercise changes the way the brain processes information among smokers, thereby reducing their cravings for nicotine. For the first time, researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to investigate how the brain processes images of cigarettes after exercise.

The study adds weight to a growing body of evidence that exercise can help manage addiction to nicotine and other substances. It backs up previous studies, which have shown that just one short burst of moderate exercise can significantly reduce smokers' nicotine cravings.

(Thanks, Cindy)

I have direct experience of this. I've written about it in my memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party. Here's an excerpt from that (in the form of two diary entries and comments):

9th July 1984

[...] I'm so bloody hot and sticky, I wish this weather would break. Karate tomorrow will be unbearable if it's not any cooler by then [...]

Oh--I've had more accidents--both legs temporarily out of action--which might explain some of my irritability at the moment. At karate I tore my calf-muscle--agony--& the next morning I hobbled into my room to get some clean underwear, didn't realise that some prick had shot the window through (not really the sort of thing you look for first thing in the morning!) and trod on a pile of glass. Right leg & left leg out of action. Shit. Oh well, the cut foot's better now, even if the muscle isn't.

Karate, in the Springbank Community Centre with its concrete floor; no heat in winter, no air conditioning in summer. No shower, no changing room. All men--until I and four friends show up. It was a hard school. No compromises. This is where I learnt the value of conscious will, learnt that I could run five miles, then do a hundred and sixty pushups, then sit in zazen on the concrete floor with a pole on my arms for forty minutes. If you set your will, you can do anything.

But karate was simply the conscious understanding of will. I'd been setting my will against the world and its homophobia for years. Carol and I had been harassed continually by the police; someone once pushed burning rags through the door trying to set the house on fire; a group of men tried to break down the front door, yelling about how they'd rape us, show us what we were missing. And on and on. For reasons I can't fathom, I never really took it that seriously. This diary entry is pretty typical of my attitude, which is, Shit happens, let's have a drink! Not that much different, really, from the attitude of that four year-old who made all those crayon pictures.

20th August 1984

Wrote a fable last week--I like it, but it seems very heavy-handed & clumsy. Still, makes a change from epics!

It was, truly, an awful fable. I might still have it in a box in storage somewhere. Be glad (be very glad) that I couldn't find it to reproduce here.

And it was on August the 24th that I smoked my last cigarette. Every time the craving got bad--and, oh, it got bad; I'd been smoking for fifteen years; and Carol didn't give up, or any of my friends--I dropped and gave myself twenty pushups.

Just a month or so later I smoked my last hash and snorted my last amphetamines. The combination of finally using both body and mind as hard as I could was enough. That is, I'd found two new addictions--writing and martial arts--to take the place of drugs.

Writing is addictive. It's a rush--at least the first draft is. Rewriting can be less heady.

And that's the trick: replace one joy circuit with another. I loved exercise (I still do, but my options are much more limited), I loved writing (still do, and my options are much wider, yay!) Every now and again I dream of some drug or other (smoking, mostly) and wake up with a vague longing. But that longing is a habit. I shrug, shake off the dream, and go about my life. Because I have a life. That's the difference between harmful, arrested-development addiction and joy. Addiction is all about warping the life in order to score the drug, and taking the drug is often about blotting out life; it's about narrowing one's experience, deliberately not learning and growing.

Writing is different. Yes, it's a rush. Sometimes it gets out of hand; I work too long for too many days in a row, and it interferes with Normal Life (y'know, friends, family, health). But mostly it's a valuable (indispensible) part of my life. It's my job, my joy, my primary tool for exploring the world--for deliberately seeking that change and growth that many drug addictions obviate.

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure. Just thinking aloud.

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a big duh: naked objectification

From the Guardian, a report of a study on photos that objectify women.

Men are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday.

Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated.

Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other peoples' emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures.

Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, said the changes in brain activity suggest sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon.

(Thanks, Cindy.)

This is a big duh. Women have been saying this for ages. At least now there's some data to back up our practical knowledge. Just as there is now data (it cost $5 million to assemble, if I recall correctly) proving that toast always falls on the floor butter-side down.

Tell me you didn't think I was going to use a picture of a scantily-clad model for this post...

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most wanted painting (and not)

A follow up on the world's worst song post. The same people, Komar & Melamid, put together the most and least wanted paintings for a variety of nations. All based on polls. (The one above is what the US loves. Urk.) Almost all nations liked water/mountain/people from the old days/a four-footed edible scenes (the similarity is remarkable). See, for example, this ideal Portuguese painting:


And this Kenyan pic:


And now look at the Dutch:


Those wacky Dutch. This is really fascinating stuff.

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worst song in the world, scientifically speaking

The crack team of Dave Soldier and Komar & Melamid have scientifically created the world's worst song:

It clocks in at over 20 minutes. The trio has a Web site where they asked visitors to list their most hated sounds, be they operatic hip-hop with cowboy lyrics, swelling harps or marching-band music from hell. They claim that "fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population will enjoy this," but released it anyhow.

I listened to it. (Okay, I listened to ten minutes. I dare you to go longer.) It's not the skin-twitching irritation I thought it would be, but it is very strange, tin-eared elevator music--the kind of thing you would not want to listen to after leaving a party chemically altered. Who knows where you'd end up...

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://nicolagriffith.com/blog/