barbara_hambly

barbara_hambly @ 2008-05-15T08:50:00

2008-05-15T16:14:45Z

My apologies for not keeping up with everyone's posts - way too much going on around here. The end of the semester is coming up, I am still entangled in The Re-Write From Hell, and I got an unexpected request for two historical-mystery outlines for a book I'd hoped to turn into a series, but which had lain fallow for years. (Not Benjamin, but another). (I'm sorry - I generally don't like to give specifics about projects until they're contracted, and - at least in the case of the Project Which Should Not Be Mentioned - if there's a pseudonym involved, I've been asked not to talk about it right now). In any case, in addition to some very complicated re-structuring of the Civil War story, I'm now having to quickly outline - in a completely other place and time - who gets killed, why somebody would kill that particular person, how they did it, and why my intellectual young heroine would care enough to put herself into danger figuring it out? (Not to mention re-acquainting myself with the lovely Gabrielle and her surly and silent bodyguard after a gap of several years...)

And, I've acquired an ingrown toenail which will require soaking in epsom salts, which will in turn require going to the drug-store and buying epsom salts... one damn thing after another. I've switched over to drinking barley-tea, as it has no caffeine: a giant pain in the shorts to make, but a comforting and pleasant drink.

The weather at least has been gorgeous, and hot: beautiful evening last night up at the college, when I just wanted to sit outside in that warm night air, but instead had to go indoors and explain about Popes Behaving Badly during the Rensaissance.

I think The Beautiful Jasmine listens for the sound of my keyboard; the minute I begin typing, she comes in and hops up in my lap. She's the perfect writer's cat - never steps on the keyboard, never fusses, dozes right off. Poor Little Nemo would really like to be a writer's cat but has never figured out about the keyboard business, and always ends up being put outside the study and the door closed.

barbara_hambly @ 2008-05-11T18:41:00

2008-05-12T01:43:41Z

Update on Ro_Anshi, for those who are on her flist also. I talked to her this afternoon (Sunday) after her angiogram. She said they found NO blockage, and everything looks fine; she should be home tonight, and back to work soon. Though I must admit, she sounded pretty out of it when we spoke, and no wonder!

I am much relieved.

Bulletin from a Friend

2008-05-10T18:28:32Z

Quick bulletin, for all those who are friends of Ro_Anshi and may have gotten her post that she's in the hospital having a cardiac "procedure." I've just spoken to her; she's having her procedure tomorrow - essentially, to check out what the 1) mild-to-moderate chest pain and 2) "anomalous" EKG readings actually add up to. This is a poster situation for, "If you get these symptoms, go get them checked immediately," which she did.

She sounds fine, although a) bored out of her skull and b) ready to kill for a Diet Coke. (I've been in her situation and the minute they see "cardiac" on your chart, that means you're in for three days of eating library paste). She spoke admiringly of Dr. McHunky in the ER who admitted her, so her spirits are good. She gets to ride in an ambulance to a bigger and better-equipped hospital this afternoon.

Everyone think good thoughts for her. If you haven't met her in person, she's one of the best.

Tale of Two Cities

2008-05-06T17:58:32Z

Just read - and watched - Tale, as part of my brushing-up on what people would have been reading during the Civil War. Sure is lucky for our side that Sidney Carton had the same size feet as Charles Darnay.

As a student of the French Revolution I spent most of the book going, "Hunh???" until I read that Dickens got the idea for it in 1857, during the Indian Mutiny -- at which point I realized the book is a whole lot more about the Indian Mutiny than it is about the actual Real-Life French Revolution. Then it made a lot more sense.

And the movie of course was just - er - Selznickian.

A couple of people have mentioned that they've looked up "Fortress of Solitude" on-line and been directed to a store in New Jersey - is there anyone who doesn't know that the Fortress of Solitude, at least in the 1960s, was Superman's ultra-secret hideout at the North Pole?

Medieval Football

2008-05-01T16:32:15Z

This was a University sport. At medieval universities like Oxford, Paris, Bologna, and Salerno, students hung out with - and ate with - other guys from their own countries: Brits with Brits, Germans with Germans, etc. Football games were either between one nationality and another, or between the students as a team and the young non-students of the town (usually trade apprentices)(who hated the students - obviously, the students had more money and more leisure, thus got all the girls). Teams were as many guys as you could round up. You'd put a ball in the middle of the street, and each team would try to move the ball past the other team and down to that end of town: over roofs, through yards, down alleys, etc. It was like Steroid Rugby with no fence around the field and no rules. There were occasional fatalities. Streets were unpaved and there were roving herds of pigs in most cities, so I imagine it gave new meaning to the phrase, "fighting dirty." Since the only police in any town was the volunteer Night Watch, sometimes games were accompanied by looting of shops in the confusion. University authorities didn't approve, but if you've got a bunch of 18-year-olds who have to listen to lectures in Latin all day, they've got to do something.

Other University sports were drinking and sex.

And yes, King John managed to lose the Royal Treasury in actual quicksand. He was crossing the estuary of a tidal river while the tide was out - this was before Kings had a permanent headquarters in London, so they took their treasury with them when they traveled. This custom was discontinued shortly after this (not that it mattered a lot, then).

Exchequer Rolls establish that John paid a special servant to draw and heat water for a bath for him, every six weeks whether he needed it or not.

Writering and Teachering

2008-05-01T15:32:20Z

One of the problems about being a full-time writer and having a blog is that my life, as a writer, is so dull. "Sat in front of computer for 6 hours. Sat in front of TV for 90 minutes. Went to bed." Thrill-a-minute City!

I SO much look forward to sat-in-front-of-computer day today.

A local paper in Riverside - where I went to school and took karate and started my writing career - is running a little interview with me; they got the photographer from a sister-paper to meet me on campus yesterday afternoon and take a picture for the article. It was a cloudy-bright day of mild temperature and diffuse light; the college campus has a desert-plant botanical garden, which makes a nice setting. I'm hoping I can work out a deal with the photographer to use the shots (if they're good) as book-jacket photos. Most decent-and-recent shots of me include party-hair and dermal illustration; it would be good to have one where I look halfway respectable.

Then I went on to explain the origins of capitalism and the Summa Theologica to my incomprehending class, lightened up with a discussion of Medieval Football (which students thought should be re-instituted) and what a lousy king King John was. (The man lost the entire Royal Treasury in quicksand and took a bath every six weeks. No wonder they made him sign the Magna Carta.)

barbara_hambly @ 2008-04-25T18:50:00

2008-04-26T02:13:02Z

Feeling much better. The infection which had me spending several evenings last week soaking my nose in hot salt water has cleared up; my editor gave the go-ahead that yes, this is the way she wants Homeland re-written; the weather has been lovely. My favorite blood-red roses are blooming. I was able to spend the day in absolute solitude, with the promise of a quiet weekend ahead.

I may take the day off work (for once) and spend tomorrow sewing and cleaning up the study, a frightful task. It's far too easy to settle down to play with PhotoShop... and have the whole day disappear, the adult equivalent of losing oneself in one's colorbook and crayons. Probably because Homeland is so much about the relationship between fiction and emotional survival, I've been reading a great deal of Dickens lately, an author I've never sufficiently appreciated: having just polished off three of his novels in a row (plus Sketches) I suspect I'm in for a backlash. (I remember going through about five Raymond Chandlers -- halfway through the fifth I threw the book against the wall and said, "For God's sake, get some therapy!")

Gefilte fish

2008-04-20T15:12:29Z

So, just where did the Children of Israel get their gefilte fish while wandering around the Sinai Penninsula for forty years?

A lovely Passover dinner, although because of my cold I just sat quietly down at the end of the very long table, eating my bitter herbs and patting the dog. Much silliniess and laughter, and the usual ritual singing of old Broadway show-tunes (Mel's rendition of Appalachian Spring was a high point). And of course, wall-to-wall dessert (presumably symbolic of the land of milk and honey?). It was agreed after rabbinical discussion that potatoes are included in Passover dinner (although the only way the Children of Israel could have gotten them was if God had rained them down along with the manna) because they neither chew the cud nor have cloven hooves. I'm glad that point was clarified for me: it has often caused sleepless nights.

Interesting to be in a roomfull of people that familiar with the Bible.

Yet another URI...

2008-04-19T18:28:32Z

I must say, after getting six and seven colds per year for the past eighteen years, I'm getting very tired of this.

As if in compensation, this is the week all the roses came into Spring Flush: beautiful. There's an arbor in my back yard and the blood-crimson climbers are out, and if the morning happens to be warm, the smell is enchanting. (I haven't lost my sense of smell; it just feels like my sinuses and bronchial passageways have been rinsed out with lye).

Cold or no cold, I will get to Passover Dinner tonight at a friend's. Though not Jewish, I've attended Passover regularly for over twenty years: it's good to have friends. I think the first or second Passover dinner I ever went to was given by a man I was seriously involved with, and included his parents, neither of whom would have approved of their First Born Son dating a shiksa, had they known he was doing so. ("We're just good friends..."). It was... odd. Those I now attend (at which my fellow guests are probably 75% Gentile) are much more laid-back. Pass the Maneschewiz.

The host household includes Levi The Too-Much-Coffee-Dog, a dobie-airedale mix whom my friends adopted after someone threw him out of a pickup in Griffith Park. When my friend's adopted (sort-of) brother was in beautician school, he'd practice on Levi: sometimes dyed his mustache blue (of course, Terry would dye his own mustache blue as well), sometimes gave him pink hair-extensions... it was all fine with Levi. He's been taught not to go after the hors d'oevres on the low tables, which is great. I anticipate a pleasant evening.

barbara_hambly @ 2008-04-14T18:49:00

2008-04-15T02:15:35Z

Just a check-in, though I'm tired and more tapped-out than usual. My family and I spent a lovely day yesterday at the Getty Villa in Malibu (probably the only truly cool-and-pleasant place in the LA area yesterday); the place itself as beautiful as the stuff inside it. It's astonishing, the sheer quantities of trivial facts about Greek and Roman history and mythology I can spout upon a moment's notice. I always could, and teaching Western Civ has made me infinitely worse.

Still frustratingly entangled in the Re-Write From Hell, so it's difficult to talk about anything: restless, sleep, bad dreams. Certainly the reason I haven't been on LJ since I got back from New Orleans. My neice came down to visit the night before, and we watched Enchanted: I realize the "Cute Little Animals Clean Up The House" song is supposed to be clever, but if I had a child who was at all phobic about some of the vermin (and I use the term advisedly) in that number, I'd hesitate to take them to see that film. There are shots in that sequence that are truly the stuff of nightmares.

Or maybe most kids aren't as twitchy as I was (and am).

In between sending in bits of "Is this what you had in mind?" to my editor (and having her be out of the office for a week or ten days) I am hacking at first draft of a historical mystery (the pseudonymous one I've been asked not to talk about). This is always slow and frustrating going: stopping every paragraph or so to look up how old Character A was in a flashback, and what would a horse cost in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the mid-eighteenth century? (The closest I could get to a specific was that George Washington turned in an expense-account item to Congress asking to be reimbursed for six grand and change, for the purchase of five horses and a carriage, to go to the front in, which even at this distance seems to be pretty nervy). (George, famously, refused payment for his services as Commander in Chief - something he could afford to do, having married the richest widow in Virginia - and said, "I'll only take expense reimbursement." Meaning, all the other Continnental generals got paid in wildly inflated Continnental paper money, while George got paid back after Congress had gotten its financial act together and money was worth something again.) (I suppose, in a way, he was betting on the success of the Revolution, since if the Brits had won, he a) wouldn't have got paid anything and b) would have been hanged, drawn, and quartered - always supposing he and Martha didn't high-tail it to Mexico or France.)

Adopted town

2008-04-01T20:36:50Z

Well, I made it home safe from New Orleans, though I'm very, very tired (to the extent of having completely forgotten about a committment I had for tonight). I had lunch with my friend, who took me on a driving tour of the Ninth Ward: I suspect I was too numbed with stress from other sources to do more than mentally log what I saw. Green grass. Long weeds. In some places a flight of concrete steps, or one leaf of a wrought-iron yard-gate. Foundations knocked crooked. In other places, trailers next to houses that are being repaired: through the house doors you can see the incomprehensible ruin that a flood leaves. My friend told me during the first clean-up, mostly what was found were zillions of those little 45-rpm "singles" (as the pre-CD, pre-iPod generation called vinyl one-song storage devices), and aluminum Mardi Gras dubloons. (Vinyl and aluminum are light, and would sink and settle last as the water went down). The treasured collections of everybody's parents and grandparents.

Victoria and I walked around the Quarter (since I had panels to be on at the Festival, I was fairly limited in my time); outside Brennan's there was a phenomenal band setting up on the street (complete with a small piano on a hand-truck). Go onto YouTube and look for the clips of the G-String Quartet: klezmer-flavored, gypsy-flavored music, beautifully done; people sat on the curb, and on the concrete steps of the Department of Justice (or whatever that building is across from Brennan's). A trio of tribal dancers happened along in the middle of the performance and danced; there was a small amount of general dancing in the street as well. (My quads hurt for the rest of the night). Every now and then you'd have to get out of the way of a car.

This was down on Royal Street. A block up, on Bourbon, it was the end of Spring Break and hot and cold running drunks. The hotel we were at was half a block from Bourbon, and you could hear the ruckus most of the night, though never enough to keep me awake. The weather was that strange, warm, blowy storm-feeling weather you get most of the year in New Orleans, with clouds thick in the mornings, rain to one degree or another sometimes in the afternoon. We sat on the steps by the River and watched the boats go by, or had wonderful dinners in small courtyards whose walls go up like the sides of a well. The Tennessee Williams Festival itself was fun, with some of the panels held in the old Orleans Ballroom where the Quadroon Balls used to be held before the Civil War - went in with a friend who can sense psychic energy through her hands: an interesting experience. ("Oh, yeah, this place is occupied...")

But mostly what I am is tired.

When I come out my front door...

2008-03-27T17:16:57Z

...what I don't want to see is four news helicopters hanging in the air. This is particularly unnerving as I live close to one of the largest metropolitan airports in the country (handy when there's a power-failure, of course, since I think I'm on the same power-grid and the lights come back on really fast). In this case it wasn't a terrorist attack, but a horrendous - though accidental - explosion at a building on the main drag leading to the airport (one killed, several injured). Choppers were up all afternoon - well into rush hour - so I can only imagine what the traffic tie-up was. Made me glad I was only outside to walk the dog.

But, it didn't help with an already-awful case of Travel Anxiety. I leave for New Orleans at, God help me, quarter to six in the morning, which means getting up at two for a three-fifteen shuttle. (I pick up my traveling companion at the train station at eight tonight). Travel Anxiety keeps me from even thinking about the trip until the day before, so today is all about packing, and prepping the house for my parents, who will be house-and-pet-sitting, bless them. (I think my Dad particularly likes keeping an eye on the Big Screen TV to make really sure nobody steals it...) Once I'm in the shuttle to the airport I calm down, but it's preceeded by many nights of bizarre dreams, and days of fretting.

The Tennessee Williams Festival is the big literary deal in New Orleans, and I look forward to re-connecting with a number of other writers that I knew there, plus lunch with one good friend I made in the city, a woman who, oddly enough, I went to High School with -- though we didn't know each other in the mid-sixties when both of us were actually in Montclair High. We only stumbled onto that fact in the course of a conversation. (She was a senior when I was a freshman). She now runs one of the loveliest bed'n'breakfasts in New Orleans (so if you're going to New Orleans, check out The Chimes - marvelous hospitality, wonderful breakfasts, a butterfly garden, and they welcome pets). (Look 'em up online: they've got a website).

I'll write a trip report when I get back.

Further meditations...

2008-03-23T02:30:49Z

...upon those six guys with vacuum-cleaner hoses on their foreheads trying to take over the universe.

"Oh, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention...
...pardon, gentles
The flat unraised spirit that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object; can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France?....
Oh, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work...
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hooves i' the receiving earth;
For tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings...."

Or Zygons, as the case may be. Although mind you, I do appreciate the computer technology of the current DW series. But, as far too many TV shows and movies attest, all the CGI in the world can't ignite the heart where there isn't good acting and good writing. (Can you spell, 'Jar-Jar Binks'?)

(Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), on the other hand, was a great fan of CGI, or would have been had it existed in the sixteenth century: "...comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke: and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it [the stage] for a cave. While in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers: and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?")

And, there's nothing like the opening credits of the new series seen on a very large flat-screen TV at close range with a home theater and sub-woofer. Sends my cat bolting out of the room in terror every time.

Mental editing and the joys of the imagination

2008-03-22T02:19:22Z

Ah, the joys of old Dr. Who episodes: RADA and RSC refugees making their rent in rubber monster-suits. Impeccable elocution and zippers up the back. It's one thing to display cosmic horror in front of a green-screen where there's eventually going to be a CGI Araknoid coming at you; but to convincingly show terror when confronted with what's obviously a guy rolling around in a spray-painted parachute? Now, that's acting! (And, that's the farthest thing I can get from the Civil War. Comfort-food for the brain.)

Recovering from Wednesday night class, complicated by a cold, and the to-and-fro of putting together a Family Easter Lunch; all I've really wanted to do for two days is sleep. Instead I've been ironing pink tablecloths and tracking down tiny little Easter-baskets for table-favors. We do what we have to do.

Migraine.alt

2008-03-13T19:31:24Z

I would like to express my appreciation to whoever it was, back in 1951, who got the Migraine Fairy drunk and in a good mood when she came to my christening, so that instead of the regular, agonizing migraines that most people get, once or twice a month I get treated to the compact, 40-minute, pain-free light-shows which my doctor calls "ocular migraines." (I got the real kind as a teen-ager, although I didn't know that's what they were. I just knew that when things started appearing and disappearing, and fire started falling through the air, I was going to get a Really Awful headache very soon).

Every now and then, I get an "alternate presentation" of the usual marching-lines-of-fire hallucination. The first couple of times this scared the hell out of me, but the other night I was just curious: Wow, that's interesting. Hmm, never seen THAT color before. Why is that opaque cloud perfectly square? I clocked it at slightly under an hour, long for an "alternate." Didn't even get the very slight headache that sometimes comes in its wake.

Stress? Allergy? Ageing? Supernatural entities trying to get in touch with me? Who knows?

Sleep does wonders

2008-03-11T16:19:43Z

...although I'll probably be flat on my back again within a few hours. Bed rest is pretty much the only thing I can do for these recurring viruses I get.

But, a lovely morning, new leaves on the birch tree, Jasmine cozying up to me at dawn to remind me lovingly that her dish is empty (or almost empty, or may be empty soon). Taking the dog out early in the morning is always a blessing, to see the new day. Because of daylight savings, this was just a few minutes before actual sunrise, and there was a single dove sitting on the telephone wire, warming himself in the first pink flush of daylight, cooing. (Goodness knows where the crows were. In a bar, I suppose).

Fretting, waiting for the go-ahead from my editor on the next phase of the re-write, although I do have an Alternate Project Which I Have Been Asked Not To Talk About.

Hanging in

2008-03-11T01:04:40Z

Yet another Upper Respiratory Inflammation, o joy.

Correcting exams all afternoon (unable to work for several reasons, one of which See URI above); amazing range of Students Who Get It and Students Who Don't. Realize that the expedition to New Orleans for the Tennessee Williams Festival is in less than three weeks... which means, almost certainly, flying with URI, above. (Thank God for pressure-equalizing earplugs!) (A cold will generally run me 10 weeks). I know I should go fluff up my lecture notes on Two Guys Named J.C. (Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ) but I just can't face explaining Middle Eastern religio-politics in the First Century BC/AD at the moment. Can I just go take a nap?

Not keeping up

2008-03-07T03:14:08Z

For the time being, I'm going to have to de-friend a number of people on the list - I'm simply getting behind in posts. There is absolutely nothing personal in this. I just need to clear the list a little. And, since I don't put blocks or filters into smaller and smaller lists, pretty much everything I post is public to everyone. (I see that "New in your Inbox - 426 new messages!" and know that on a good night, i read maybe 80. It makes me feel like a complete failure.)

I'm a bit overwhelmed right now; my editor asked me to re-write about 150 pages for the second time (plus the other 200 or so that I didn't even get to the first re-write on), and everything seems impossible. And it's been one of those days of trying to buy a new microwave and a new suitcase, and visiting two big-box warehouse-like stores with long lines, awful parking, and giant mobs of people... and having streets blocked off between here and there. The usual. (Driving home last night, both freeways that route from one side of The Hill to the other - and there are no other routes - had wrecks on them, at 10:45 at night) Since I started teaching, it's as if I use up all my People Points on Wednesday nights. The little blue gauge down at the lower left-hand corner of the screen is on empty. I need a Potion of Restore Proximity.

I did administer my first test of the semester, and am as usual wondering, "What part of Tell me Who or What this was, Where it lived or took place, When it took place, and Why It's Important - repeated on at least three distinct occasions - did you not hear? Did you miss the place where it's Written on top of the Exam Paper?" It's disturbingly clear that a lot of these people have no idea how to read for content... if they're even attempting to read at all. (I will not even go into the issues of spelling and grammar).

Back to work.

Writ upon water...

2008-02-29T03:15:11Z

When the Cable Guy brought a new, digital box this morning (three times the size of the analog box, and complete with a small and bewildered cockroach which crawled out for lagniappe), he expressed surprise that I do not get any cable channels: just the local broadcast stations. I said, I watch TV so seldom that it wasn't worth the $45/month for 150 channels which is the least you can get. What TV I watch, is either movies or old shows bought in boxed sets. We enthused a little over what he considered "old" shows, and he mentioned he enjoyed Get Smart. I countered with saying, I was waiting for The Man From UNCLE to become available on Netflix (it's only available now through Time-Warner, I gather)...

And this fellow had never heard of The Man From UNCLE. (Yes, this fellow was young enough to be my son, but still...) The original Spy Show? The show of which Get Smart was a parody? I blush to say I can still rattle off that UNCLE (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) was a secret law-enforcement agency headquartered in New York and entered through the changing-booth of Del Floria's tailor-shop and pants-pressing establishment... What's wrong with these people? Does no one recall its zillion imitators in the mid-sixties? (Secret Life of Henry Pfyfe, anyone?) (Which I never watched, either... there was a reason I gave up TV).

Misty-cool evening after a gorgeous day. Salt-fog coming in off the ocean, slowly enveloping the sky during my walk. The smell of the sea. Crows.

Still fighting the Civil War.

Is there anyone who DOESN'T have an Oscar comment?

2008-02-25T05:11:10Z

You can always tell when an actress really and truly doesn't think she's going to win: she isn't dressed for that stage. Tilda Swinton reminded me of Brenda Bethlin (?) who took it for My Left Foot: the outfit of someone who dressed her best (not a stylist's best) for the evening, happy to be nominated and obviously comfortable with the expectation that someone else is going to win.

Watching the Oscars always leaves me with a headache, and the sensation that my brain has been turned to chewing-gum by four hours in front of the Idiot Box. More TV (which is what I use to wind down at the end of the day) is out of the question, yet, it's too early really to go to bed. (Reading usually wakes me up, not puts me down).

Good work today.

No hiking today

2008-02-24T17:00:21Z

I was supposed to go hiking this morning; not going to happen.

Cold, wet, and gray - raining all night. Woke up under a pile of cats. Love that soft beauty when I take the dog out early, there's no sound but the crows.

The re-write of Homeland is all-consuming and exhausting, the different structure suggested by my editor pushing me into areas of my own heart and life that I find disturbing and dark. It's hard to write and emotionally very exhausting, and I'm doing nothing else these days: sleeping, writing, and class-prep and teaching work. People ask me, "How's your writing going?" and I want to say, "Can we talk about something else?" But since that opens the conversational meme of, "Gosh, you sound troubled about it, can you give me a full explanation and re-hash of all the things about the publishing industry that really bother you?" though I do appreciate the concern, I generally just say, "Fine. How's your life going?"

That's why I love days like this one, with large blocks of time to work in. Maybe I'll cut out a shirt during the technical awards and speeches portion of Oscar-night tonight.

Aloha Oy!

2008-02-17T17:17:27Z

Well, the Tiki-Lounge Party was a resounding success. The big cardboard tiki-heads looked astonishingly eerie by torchlight in the windy darkness, my friend Hazel's sweetie Mark smoked a salmon and enough ribs to feed the crew of the Bounty, there were Chinese appetizers, grass skirts, a chocolate cake shaped like a hula-dancer, and Chinese lanterns; a purple volcano spouting dry ice in the livid mango punch-bowl (I did find the coconut-shell goblets for punch cups); 60s "exotica" music on the stereo (!), and everyone but me sipping Blue Hawaiians (rum, coconut cream, and blue curacao, I think) with umbrellas in them. Oh, and cats playing with the decorations. A most splendid time was had by all.

As always, the best thing about the party was the conversation and the friendship. Several of us have been friends for over forty years. Despite the aforesaid Blue Hawaiians, we're not a heavy-drinking crowd, so nobody was visibly hammered (though one of the discussions concerned memorable hangovers in the '60s and '70s). (My, we were stupid when we were young...) None of those wussie men wore a coconut bra, though the always-impeccable Ryan descended so far as to wear a Hawaiian print tie with his flawlessly-coordinated suit.

The cats woke me this morning, concerned lest I oversleep and worried that it might slip my mind that their dish was empty (or was almost empty, or might be empty soon...)

All Work and Very Little Play

2008-02-16T03:35:03Z

A sweet and much-needed walk at sunset; the air so soft I felt like I could take off and fly.

Rewriting Homeland involves intense re-structuring, telling the same story a different way. Lots of little bits of paper about who found out which piece of information when; part of the background is simply the length of time communications took during the Civil War, particularly if there was no mail delivery between people in the Union and people in the Confederate states, and the letters had to be smuggled. It's headache-producing, and tiring, and there are days when I feel very imprisoned.

Fortunately, I'm going to a party tomorrow night: my friends like to do themed parties, and this one is going to be Tiki-Lounge. I got to spend a couple of hours Wednesday (before teaching my class) making big cardboard tiki-heads to be mounted on trees and tomato-trellises. My friend's cats assisted, including one who had to be locked up after the fourth or fifth time she dived at the box-knife as I was carving cardboard. Another friend has cruised the Internet and come up with six CDs worth of "exotica" music. Tomorrow I get to toss the house, looking for the damn coconut goblets that I bought for my own luau many years ago and put away in a Safe Place. A nice break from the Civil War. (I did find all the dishes shaped like banana-leaves, though). With any luck, it will be warm enough tomorrow evening to get away with wearing Hawaiian shirts (albeit over longjohns). Several of the guys, I understand, have promised to wear cocoanut bras.

History and historical fiction

2008-02-12T21:00:35Z

Yay! I have received yet another in my slim collection of Most Massively Useful Research Books in the Entire World - books that tell you what day-to-day things actually cost in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. How much would you pay for rent if you lived in a garret in London in 1812? How did that compare to Paris? What would bread and beer cost you for dinner? What would you make per month? How much would your funeral cost your family after you'd shot yourself in despair? (And how much would doing so set you back for the gunpowder?)
I heard about John Burnett's The History of the Cost of Living and knew I had to have it. Abebooks.com is a wonderful thing. It arrived today, and just a quick glance through convinces me it will be worth the cost.
If I'm writing a historical whodunnit, this kind of information isn't just necessary to my story, it is my story. It is my detective's observation of Things That Don't Add Up: Yes, the body of the woman we found was clothed in the dress of a servant, but her hands bore no evidence of hard work, and her petticoats and underwear were made out of Italian silk that costs 7 shillings a yard... It's the specificity that rings true, when Sherlock Holmes is making an observation, or Lord Peter Wimsey.
Books that tell me this:
Paul Jordan's The Birth of the Modern
How They Did Things in the 1870s
Oliver Bernier's Pleasure and Priviledge
I love this kind of thing!
Another difference between writing biographies and writing biography-based fiction: you have to know what year minor characters were born, even, in some cases, what month (if they're babies in whatever scene you're writing - are they babies in arms, or toddling around the kitchen in danger of falling into the fire?) In an academic biography you can say, "Mary Todd Lincoln was one of fourteen children..." and let it go at that, but if you're writing a novel, we have to know how old each of those people is when Mary's having a hissy-fit over the breakfast-table. (I look on the LDS website, FamilySearch.org. That usually works).

Alas, that's as close to doing my Actual Work today as I'm going to get. It's Tuesday, which means I need to spend the day fluffing up my lecture-notes for tomorrow night (The Agrarian Revolution, Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt. Lots of slides from The Ten Commandments, but who's ever made a movie about ancient Babylon, except D.W. Griffith?)
And, I had to take Rocket to the vet, for what turned out (it looks like at the moment) to be some kitty stomach-flu virus. Rocket was not pleased about this.
And now Jasmine has figured out how amusing it is to pull the book-marks out of my copy of Guide to Civil War Nashville.

Yay!

2008-02-08T03:14:07Z

Fate is kind. The problem wasn't the heater, but the thermostat. I couldn't get the kind with a timer, but I got the kind that works and that's all that's important.