I've been asked to be a guest blogger on the Penguin Books site. I just submitted an entry, about 800 words, discussing the roles women play in the Deverry books. I also of course took a swipe at the Celtic Golden Age myth of female equality.

When it's posted tomorrow, I'll post the URL here.

If you are squeamish about blood and guts, this is the time to wander away and read someone else's LJ for the day.  Though this is only the preliminary discussion (the real deal will come after Friday's and Saturday's adventures)  some of you might be upset anyway.  So...(waving hands in a shooing motion) go.  Go.  ( Unpleasant realities follow... )

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Last week we sang a mostly-Purcell Evensong at St. David's.  Tonight we sang the same music (well, most of it) at Good Shepherd.   I had a difficult drive in (fog and rain) to a place I didn't know, and whose signage, for visiting choristers, is nil.  It was raining when I got there (and I got wet, since I couldn't get Richard's umbrella to open, and had to wrap my rain jacket around my choir robes to keep them dry instead of me) and walked halfway around a building to find the door.   Not everyone showed up, but we filled the available choir seats and did a pretty good job.  The acoustics are very different and I had trouble both hearing what our section was doing, and hearing the other sections for balance.  

The drive home was a monster too, with drizzle, rain up to hard rain, and fog.   Was very glad to get home.  It's gorgeous music but I'd rather sing it in a place where I've rehearsed more than a half hour before. 

I must praise our bass Julius, though.   The usual bass soloist suddenly had to work (don't know what his other job is) and couldn't be there.  Julius is a HS senior with a busy schedule and a gorgeous bass voice.  David tells all of us to pay attention to other parts any time we're not singing, so Julius had been listening to the bass soloist in rehearsal.  So when David called him last night and asked if he could take over--he said yes.   And boy did he pull off the solos today...which are not simple, since it's Purcell.  (For those who know Purcell, the big one was "The Bell Anthem" or "Rejoice in the Lord Always.")

http://madrobins.livejournal.com/374884.html

London in 1927. In colour. If you haven't seen this in Mad's topic, do take a look!

I had a good signing yesterday. Not a lot of people were there, but a lot of readers had ordered books for me to sign and the shop to ship to them, so it was successful all round. I read for about 20 minutes, I guess, from a section set in the Dawntime.

Afterwards H. and I went out to dinner with my agents at a nice Indian restaurant just up the street from the bookshop.

I'm a little wheezy today but not too bad.

I'm off to watch some more football!

ETA: grumble snarl growl wretched Alex Smith is just not real bright, let's face it, grumble snarl growl

We're having a long run of cool, but sunny days. Pleasant, if a bit monotonous.

I spend most of the days networking, researching job possibilities, dealing with email, and yes, I will confess to playing more WoW than before. {g} My little tabby girl, Zoe, has been a total lap fungus. She's the only one happy about this turn of events.

For several weeks, we've had a mother squirrel (obviously nursing) show up in the back yard, grab a couple of peanuts and apparently vanish into the rosemary bushes right outside the kitchen door. That made no sense because there's nowhere for her to go. We finally figured it out. One day after she'd grabbed her peanuts, I went to the front window and sure enough, there she was. She scoots along the side of the house, across our front yard and runs across the street to the house opposite us. We worry about her running back and forth across that street because people drive like such lunatics and she has a tendency to stop about three times while making the crossing. I expect her babies to show up in the yard any day now.

Or maybe they have. We've seen quite a few very young squirrels lately. One had the most gorgeous tail. It was lined in exceptionally long white and black hairs. There's one little squirrel that has some kind of neurological problem. He falls to the right when he tries to sit up and has trouble keeping his balance. He also has some kind of deformity on one front paw. But he comes by regularly to scoff up large amounts of seed.

I saw another black squirrel while taking a walk yesterday. It was about a mile from here, at the edge of park. Beautifully coal-black. We haven't seen the one that would come to our back yard for months now.

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And here's today's bread--same basic brown bread recipe, but I did a few things slightly differently, and then instead of dividing it into thirds and baking it in bread pans, I divided it in half and baked it on one of my new spiffy baking sheets (larger than cookie sheets.)   They're not quite round--about 9.5 inches the short way and 10-10/5 the long way.

It's no secret that I'm not thrilled with any of the local Congresscritters, both mine and those who used to be mine and got redistricted away.   Nor either Texas U.S. Senator, for that matter.   Silvermane and Blondie are neither one of them a credit to the Senate and Blondie's indecent determination to wrap herself in military might she never earned...well.   I am sick of pictures of Blondie posing with military people trying to look both glamorous and tough.   I'm sorry, darlin', the whole cheerleader thing has gotten older than you are.

It's not just the matter of health care reform, though my latest desire to whap the two nearest Congressmen upside the head with a clue-bat is related to that.   My very own braindead incompetent, John Carter, keeps sending out these dishonest, nonfactual bits of neocon publicity, and then has an automatic calling thing call our number with a recorded voice telling me to stay on the line for an important message--and then a recording of *him*, the blustering loudmouth himself, spewing a load of untruth about health care and wanting me to stay on the line for a "town meeting" phone call.   At which I can ask questions.  Yeah...like "Why are you scaremongering and lying, you scumsucker?"    Inevitably it's at a time when I need to leave for something else (most recently, to pick Michael up from work)  and I'm well aware that interrupting the Great One and telling him what an idiot I think he is would do no good.   I've communicated my opinions in writing already. 

The other one, who used to be my Congresscritter before redistricting, has become more neocon than he used to be (to stay elected in that district, I'm sure) and he's now turned on the healthcare proposal.  Both of them yammer about fiscal responsibility...and the national debt.    If they really were for fiscal responsibility would they have bent over and said yes, sir, thank you, sir every time Bush asked for more money for the war?  No.   Would they have voted to bail out the big banks and investment houses?  No.   Would they have voted for changes in the bankruptcy laws that made it harder for individuals, but easier for corporations, to file for bankruptcy?  No.  They don't give a flip about fiscal responsibility, really.  It's just buzzwords for the constituency.

What really burns me about this is that they email and call and write, but you can't hit "return" and answer their emails because that's a fake return address.   You can't pick up the phone and call and get them (unless, I suppose, you're a huge supporter)--you get their paid-for-by-taxpayers staffers.   They wrap themselves in layer after layer of well-paid sycophancy, isolating themselves from anyone who doesn't agree with them,  and hand out pronouncements to the rest of us. 

Well, that's one of the things that really burns me.  Another is the fact that these guys think it's fine for taxpayers to pay for their health care--the best system around, it's generally acknowledged.  That's not fiscally irresponsible.  But tax money spent on taxpayers' health care....ooooooh, eeeevilll.  

Carter was also on the "if you give people more weeks of unemployment they'll just hold out for better jobs" side of things, which is ridiculous when there are no better jobs.  There are no JOBS for most of the people who are looking, and have been looking.  What does he not get about that simple reality???  

Some of these guys are younger than I am, so I can't count on outliving them.

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Almost by accident I have stumbled across a grand scheme to revive Proto-Indo-European, a.k.a. PIE, as a common language for the European Union.

http://dnghu.org and then http://indo-european.eu are two good starting point websites.

No, I'm not making this up.

Nor am I seriously advocating this revival. I am merely fascinated by the Don Quixote flavor to the attempt. Indo-Europea linguistics are a hobby of mine, as regular readers of this space know, but it had never crossed my mind that it might have practical applications. In fact, I was just remarking to la_marquise_de at WFC that I love PIE studies because they are so meaningless. Well, meaningless no more! This is definitely several steps up from those groups that speak Quenya or Klingon in rigor though probably much less fun.

The advocates point out that back in the 1800s no one would have believed that Hebrew could be revived as the speech of a living nation, but with Israel we're talking about a much smaller, highly motivated, and reasonably uniform population compared to the vast and heavily populated reaches of Europe, including Western, Middle, and Slavic-speaking nations, all the way from Ireland to Siberia, really.

And of course, PIE is a reconstructed language. It's likely that scholars have gotten it mostly right, but there are no guarantees that any given word or bit of grammar ever existed. What's more, it's extremely complicated, with more cases, voices, tenses, and inflections than Greek, Sanskrit, or Latin. (Which some here are probably thinking were bad enough.)

Its advocates know this, but they certainly have a point when they say that the EU needs a common language. There are a lot of people, particularly students with the time to worry about such issues, who resent the fact that the common language that's emerging by default is English with strong overtones of American English at that. Still, I'd say that the parallel campaign to just go back to idiomatic Latin has more chance to succeed -- and alas, it doesn't have much.

This morning I had a delightful time being interviewed by Nanette Savard, voice actor and director for GraphicAudio,  who produced the audiobooks of the Serrano-Suiza books and are now working on the Vatta's War books.

Nanette was great fun to talk with--we turned out to have many interests in common, including singing, so there's going to have to be vast cuts in our chat for the podcast, I'm sure.  We were supposed to talk mostly about those two groups of books, but wandered into various corners of science,  cultural stuff,  etc, etc.   I don't know when it will go up, but I'm looking forward to it.   When I know I'll post it, of course.

Although I've become used to doing telephone interviews, and don't intend any disrespect of any of the interviewers (all have been good) I think this was the most fun so far.   Sometimes you just hit it off with a new person--and that was the feeling.  

OK...if this is not you, don't get your knickers in a knot.  Nobody's pointing at you innocents.

If it is you, get your knickers out of the knot they're already in, and realize that you don't own the world and nobody owes you a damn thing.   Yes, Auntie E- is pointing directly at you.  

There's a perception (which, from some emails and other messages, I suspect is more accurate than not) that a lot of people are convinced they have a right to be fed whatever information they want whenever they want by their favorite device.   They don't want to have to do anything themselves...they want it to flow to them automatically.  (Ads feed this belief, of course...saw one last night on TV showing how all these streams of information would pour into someone's cellphone and produce the perfect girlfriend...yes, that's what it looked like...)

But--these people don't want any duplication.   They'll complain like a kicked anthill if they find that someone has posted the same thing on different venues (because some people on each venue refuse to use any of the others, this is necessary if you want to be sure all your "friends" or "followers" or "fans" or whatever you want to call them get the info they claim to want, but can't be bothered to come to your own site to find.)   

If someone posts only on sites that allow longer communications, they'll complain that a) it's not on Twitter and b) it's not frequent enough.    If someone posts on Twitter and has it fed to another site, they'll complain that it's just a re-feed of the same old Twitter they already saw and it's not as interesting as longer posts.   At one point, LJ was considered the hot! new! best thing EVAR!! and then the focus shifted to MySpace and FaceBook and Twitter, and the same enthusiasts for A ran off to B, and then to C and D.  Ghu knows what's next (which of the other social networking tools will suddenly become the hot! new! best thing EVAR! that if you aren't on, you're just so, so out of it.   It's like junior high cliques.) 

Let's be clear:   There is no way for the person posting information to win.  Specifically, and bringing it into the personal, there's no way for me, a full-time novelist, to write separate (different enough for some people) posts on every possible social networking venue every day covering the same basic information at exactly the length each person reading it wants, whatever length that is.    A well-written blog post takes time, and a badly-written one reflects badly on me as a professional writer.   I need to put 2000-3000 words down on the book every day.  Another 500-1500 words online is about the limit before the arthritis kicks in.   And, for the sake of personal health, I've been advised to do other things that take up a couple of hours a day, plus the usual work--laundry, cooking, even minimal housework.  

No, I don't post at LJ every day.    I have three other online venues where I do post almost every day...and where some of the people reading and enjoying those don't want to bother with LJ.    Can't do four a day every day.  Cannot.  Nobody who's making a living at something other than blogging online can spend hours a day blogging online.   Yes, there's the need to develop a "platform" as it's now called, but

So:  if you're feeling annoyed with me about what I do and don't post, how often I do and don't post, where I do and don't post, and on what schedule...tough.   If you're interested in me, then pick one or two of the places where I hang out online (all easily found from my website) that are most of interest to you, know that the data I think important for everyone will be there, and you may have a taste of something not served in the other dining room, and be happy.   Or, get mad and storm away. 

The basics:   For those who are interested in biology, nature stuff, wildlife management, prairie restoration, etc., the best place to hang out with me is the 80 Acres blog.   I usually post there several times a week, often with photos of our land project, most recently a photo of a new fly for our species list (cute: white spots, gold wings.)  You can also find my images on BugGuide.net (including lots from before I had the 80 acres blog.)

For those who are interested in the current book project or the Paksenarrion books, including some writing about writing and the process of constructing such books, the best place to hang out is the Paksworld blog.   I usually post there several times a week (currently aiming for 5x week) and the most recent posts discuss the use of whiny characters and details of the revision process.

Posts in both these are noted here, in LJ, usually with a little description, as above.  This LiveJournal is getting fewer posts since the above two blogs got busier (if I spend time and wordage on answering comments there, I don't have it to spend here) but I still post here at least every 3-4 days.   As I've peeled off the major special-interest/project posts to other sites, LJ posts will be "general interest" topics for the most part and will only very rarely contain images.  (It's a lot easier to upload images at my own blogs.)

Then there's my sff.net newsgroup.   Can be read by guests via WebNews  or with a newsreader such as Thunderbird; my newsgroup is under People and then Elizabeth Moon  in the news hierarchy of topics.   This is the virtual "fishing cabin on a Hill Country river."   Wandering topics, friendly bunch of familiar faces.  Zero tolerance for some kinds of disturbances.   Some people hate newsgroups.  Your loss.

If your primary interest is autism, there's the Speed of Dark blog.   I post there less often than I'd like to, thanks to a) writing books, b) LifeStuff, c) keeping up blogs for current projects, d) more LifeStuff.  

Then there's Twitter.   Twitter posts will appear here once daily.   If you feel you need up-to-the-instant access to my Twitter posts, then look for emoontx.   If the daily Twitter-post digest annoys you...skip it.   It was created in response to a request from one of you...go be annoyed at him/her.   I'm doing my best to cover all the bases I've been told to cover. 

Now for the irritated persons (I'm sure there are some) with their knickers still in a knot who want to scold me for wasting time writing this when I could have been satisfying their every want...Go do something interesting and your knickers will un-knot themselves.  I suggest beginning a serious study of  beetles.   Studying beetles will fill up hours in anyone's life that might otherwise be used to heckle me.   Someday you'll have your revenge on me when you're the only person in the world who can ID the beetle image I send in to BugGuide and you sneeringly inform me it's named for you (because you found it) or for me (because it's butt-ugly and you wanted to insult me.)   You can be thinking which of those would give you the most satisfaction. 

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The empire strikes back

RSS feeds again

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icanhaschzbrgr

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

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Enveloped in postcards

Photos of the week

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I find Facebook totally non-intuitive and a PITA to use. I've set up a "fan" page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christy-Marx-Clubhouse/200249107558?v=info, but {sob, choke}, I have zero fans. I'm pathetic. Nobody loves me. Okay, the page is only an hour old, but we writers are so insecure.

I have dipped a toe into the Twitterverse, but don't know how to get it to work with my other online stuff.  

Ideally, I would not have to post the same thing multiple times in multiple venues read by different people, right?   But I haven't figured out how that works (been nose down in the book for months and months and months...) 

So if anyone can give a plain, simple set of directions for getting tweets to appear here, or things here to appear (in truncated form, I realize) in Twitter, that would be a great help.

My Twitter username is emoontx, for those interested.   So far I've made only one entry, more to test my ability than anything else.

I got my author's copies of THE SILVER MAGE today. In person it's a very handsome book, unlike the horrible little picture on amazon.com. The cover copy is also good, unlike the horrible little description on amazon.com. I am trying not to worry about the poor presentation on a.c, because I doubt -- and hope -- that anyone who hasn't read the other books will be looking at that anyway. Those who have will ignore the bad advert. Er, I hope.

In other news, there isn't much. :-) I'm still wheezing. Once asthma really gets going, it's hard to bring back under control. I have been following my "action plan" and taking double the usual meds, which has left me jittery. Oh well. Better the jitters than oxygen deprivation.

There will be a new story up on bookviewcafe.com tomorrow, a long short story or short novelette, depending on your point of view, that is the one piece of fiction I wrote specifically for a gaming world, "Tunnels and Trolls" in this case. However, I changed most of the names to non-proprietory ones for this posting.

There is, as always, a -lot- of really good fiction, short and long, up at Bookview, by other authors as well. http://bookviewcafe.com should take you there if you'd like a look.