Mâvarin and Other Inspirations

Austin Zombies Were Just the Beginning

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:49:13 GMT

From a Phoenix tv station tonight, this breaking news about the zombie threat:

Apparently those naughty zombies are in Phoenix as well as Austin. And so I've gotta ask: are the zombies just targeting Republicans, or is Tucson at risk as well?

Silly Chase Scene Video

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:34:25 GMT

Emininemmy Hill

Via thecalituckyohioan

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Season Four and More - My Doctor Who Quiz

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:05:40 GMT

I wrote this today. In fact, it's pretty much all I've accomplished today, if you can call it an accomplishment. I hope someone likes it.

Karen

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Quiz redone Tuesday due to one answer that got messed up somehow. Sorry about that!

See also:

The Moment Has Been Prepared For.

The Next Doctor - Preliminary review

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 03:44:30 GMT

Adapted from my entry in the DWF rate thread.

Well, I debated between a 4 and a 5 (out of 5) rating for this, and ultimately went with a four. Much of it was excellent, but a few aspects of it could have been better. I must say, though, the more I watch it and mull it over, the more the perceived flaws start to fade.

I find it interesting, and a bit frustrating, that some fans fail to pay attention to the details of an episode, and then complain that something doesn't make sense. For example:

What was the point of children working? Revenge. It was not necessarily the most efficient way to complete the work, but it suited Hartigan's purpose of getting back at London's children for her years of cleaning up after them. Before the kids were brought in, the Cybermen had to set up the treadmills and so on, and Miss Hartigan had to lead the men of charity into a trap and then get them to collect the children. The men of charity - who ignored and possibly abused Hartigan - and the children were then slated to die, completing her revenge. The Cyberleader correctly saw that passion and revenge were her motivations, and that she was screwed up emotionally.

It's also worth noting that lower class children in that era really were put to work under fairly brutal conditions.

How did the Cybermen know about...? The Doctor said that the information on the infostamps was probably stolen from the Daleks. They really do know an awful lot about the Doctor! (I'm not sure how they managed to photograph the Doctor in some of the incidents featured on the infostamp, however, including the incident with the Racnoss and the seconds following the death of Astrid P. and Max C..)

What about that dimension thingy the Doctor used at the end? Wasn't that awfully convenient / DEM? How do you think the Cybermen got to London to begin with?

Wasn't there supposed to be a huge twist at the end? What happened to that? I believe that was the revelation and rescue of Jackson's son.

Weren't the Cybermen a little pointless this time out? No. Aside from being the catalyst to the Jackson Lake and Miss Hartigan storylines, they were a contrast to the emotionalism of each, and commenters on Hartigan in particular, and menaced London far beyond what Hartigan could do on her own. And Hartigan, in turn, managed to avoid losing her emotions despite Cyberizing, and take control of the Cybermen in a way that has never been done before.

Overall...

I personally loved the whole Jackson Lake storyline. It was very touching, well written and well acted. I particularly liked the Doctor's explanation to Jackson (and how great that it was an ordinary fob watch but STILL meant something!) and the scene at the end. The first time through I was a little disappointed it was resolved so quickly, but really it lasted through half the story, with a final additional resolution at the end. And I agree with RTD that artificiality preserving a mystery or other conflict by not letting characters communicate what they know does more harm than good.

Rosita was good, as far as she went, but in the end we don't know what much about her, which is a bit of a loss. I would also have liked to know most about the sources of Miss Hartigan's major malfunction, and how she got from downtrodden washerwoman and possible harlot to poised, well-dressed Lady in Red.

I have no major problem with the Cyberking / giant robot thing, except that the Doctor identifies the latter as "dreadnought class." Huh? Where did that come from? The Cybershades were interesting looking if you looked closely, not masks on gorilla suits as some people have said, but almost like crepe paper, which is at least original. I liked the leaping and speed of them. Do we really need to know exactly what they are and how they were made? Probably not.

Good enough, RTD. For me at least, there was easily enough great stuff here to more than make up for my quibbles. I'd rank this one well above "Voyage of the Damned," and probably slightly above "The Runaway Bride." "The Christmas Invasion" is one of my favorite stories, and for me still ranks as the best of the Christmas eps, by far.

Karen

The Doctor's Stroll to Nowhere

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:14:35 GMT

I made this on the BBC Doctor Who site's Comic Maker, based on a dream I had this morning. I made no claim about its artistic value, but I kind of like it. The images are copyright BBC. The words are mine. I recommend pausing the slide show on some of the more text-heavy slides.

The Plot Thickens: Radio Times Quote

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 06:41:03 GMT

From the Radio Times:

At the time of giving the Christmas special its title, The Next Doctor, Davies knew the news of Tennant’s departure would have become public [Tennant announced in October that he’s leaving after filming four more specials next year]. “Hopefully, that creates a bit more intrigue,” says Davies, “and hints at interesting developments in the show’s future. Let’s just say that regeneration is a complicated process, and never as simple as it seems.”

That would certainly seem to imply that the Next Doctor has some tricky connection to the Doctor that will carry over beyond Christmas and possibly even affect the Moffat era. I've no idea how RTD is working it, though. The fob watch is probably involved somewhere, but beyond that I'm having a failure of imagination. Which is probably a good thing. If a Russell T Davies script were completely predictable, Doctor Who would not be the success that it is.

My Next Doctor Theory, For What It's Worth

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:01:47 GMT

I don't want to subject my non-Who-watching Outpost Mâvarin readers to my most seriously fannish writings about my favorite tv series, so let's get my LJ going again. I'm paying for it, after all.

A somewhat darker version of the image above is making the rounds, ostensibly as a publicity still for the Christmas 2008 Doctor Who special, "The Next Doctor." The image is certainly from that production, but I have my doubts that it's a BBC-issued photo. When I lightened it up, the quality of it turned out to be rather poor, with speckles and scratches. I'm not sure that matters, however. Regardless of the provenance, it is clear that there is a scene in the special in which the Ten Doctor discusses a fob watch with the "Next Doctor." Why does he do this? If it is an ordinary fob watch, an object that would be exceedingly common in the 1851 England setting of the story, there is no reason for the scene to take place. If instead it is the Gallifreyan device that fits into a chameleon arch to change a Time Lord's biology, then the scene makes considerably more sense. After all, the Doctor needs to know how this happened:

For this stranger in 1851 to claim to be the Doctor, complete with TARDIS, sonic screwdriver, and Time Lord identity, there are basically three possibilities:

He has learned about the Doctor and is impersonating him.
He is somehow suffering from a delusion that he is the Doctor.
He actually is the Doctor.

Possibility #1 does not fully explain the "Next Doctor"'s behavior. (I'll call him the ND hereafter to save typing.) In the clip, he doesn't recognize the Tenth Doctor, which he should do if he is specifically emulating him. Yet his words and actions are very much linked to the Tenth Doctor, not just the Doctor in general. He even says exactly the same things, not just catch phrases ("Allons-y!") but off the cuff remarks about not worrying and "What have we got here, then?" Any one of the three things he says as he arrives on the scene could be considered a coincidence, an understandable response to the situation. Three sentences in a row, word for word, are unlikely at best, and not something he could come up with merely by playing a role. These lines are, within the context of the story, unscripted.

Possibility #2 is far more congruent with what we see in the preview clip, and this is where the fob watch comes in. If he believes himself to be the Doctor but is not, how would that come about? How would he be able to mimic the real Doctor's vocal patterns and actions without knowing he is doing it? The obvious answer is a telepathic link of some sort, overwhelming the ND's own personality with the subconscious transmission of the Tenth Doctor's persona. What have we seen that can do that? The Doctor himself might be able to do such a thing directly with a laying on of hands, but it's not something we've seen him do as such, and it would be hard to devise a reason he would choose to do such a thing. A second possibility is a biological metacrisis like the one that turned Donna into the Doctor Donna, but a) the unique circumstances of what happened to Donna are no longer present - no handy spare hand, for one thing - and b) given what he had to do to save Donna, he would hardly be inclined to endanger someone else in this fashion. That leaves us with the third and best explanation: the influence of a Gallifreyan fob watch, specifically one that has had significant contact with the Tenth Doctor himself. We have seen that Tim received messages and images from the Doctor's watch while the Doctor's consciousness resided therein. What if someone else who was susceptible to suggestion held the emptied watch for months or years instead of a single day? Might it not have a major influence on that person? Indeed, Paul Cornell's novel Human Nature shows the original version of Tim becoming more and more Doctorish over time. A fourth explanation, of course, is "something we've never seen before."

Because of the shot of the Doctor with a fob watch, I'm inclined to go with that as a cause of the ND's condition. But there's a small problem: the fob watch that stored the Tenth Doctor's consciousness was last seen in the hands of the aged Tim Latimer, at least 120 years after the DM's time. Some wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey thing has to happen to get Tim's watch back to 1851. Or, it could simply be a second watch the Doctor had lying around. It could even be the Master's fob watch, retrieved after the events of Last of the Time Lords, but one would expect the long-term vessel of the Master's consciousness to have a more baleful influence. The same problem arises if we assume the fob watch belonged (or still belongs) to another Time Lord. If the ND is carrying a watch that belonged to the Rani, Romana, Runcible or some other Gallifreyan not called the Doctor, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for him to develop a Doctor persona instead of the one associated with the watch, whether the ND was originally human or Time Lord himself.

Possibility #3, that he actually is the Doctor, also pretty much requires a fob watch, as this guy does not seem to be an actual Time Lord at present. He doesn't have a real sonic screwdriver, and he doesn't recognize his previous self, which he ought to do if he's the Eleventh Doctor or later, and the Tenth Doctor does not recognize him as a young First Doctor or any other present or previous incarnation. Given the Fifth Doctor's failure to immediately identify the Tenth in "Time Crash" (well, he was distracted and busy!), one can allow for a temporary lapse in a Time Lord's ability to recognize other versions of himself or other Time Lords, but simple memory pretty much requires that a genuine, un-tampered-with Doctor would recognize his earlier physical appearance. But if he has been made human and his memories have been altered, the amount of his own history bleeding through might not extend to what he used to look like. He could thus be a future Doctor, fob-watched as a human. I have two objections to this scenario, however. For one thing, it feels too much like a rerun of previous stories to make the cut as a Russell T Davies-scripted special. For another, it creates a problem for Steven Moffat, setting up a future Doctor and and specific actor to play him, a decision that should be (and probably is) left to the Moff rather than RTD.

My money, in case you haven't guessed, is on Possibility #2, with a Doctor-associated fob watch (or possibly some previously unseen mechanism) as the cause.

There is one more alternative to consider. Maybe the Doctor asks to see the ND's watch, and flips it over to see that it is not in fact a Gallifreyan one. Having eliminated that possibility, he then searches for another answer to the question of who the ND is and why he claims to be the Doctor. "Mr Dark" has blown up the photo, and no Gallifreyan squiggles are revealed. However, the image quality is far too poor to show the script clearly, and one side of the watches we've seen have no script. The watch in the Doctor hand could still be a Gallifreyan device - or not. But if it isn't, the "May I see your watch?" gambit is the only scenario that makes sense for the pictured situation.

Karen (Karen of Mavarin on the DWF)

Yes, I Should Vote. and I will!

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:48:10 GMT

You Should Be Allowed to Vote

You got 14/15 questions correct.

Generally speaking, you're very well informed.

If you vote this election, you'll know exactly who (and what) you'll be voting for.

You're likely to have strong opinions, and you have the facts to back them up.

Should You Be Allowed to Vote?

Now I'm wondering which question I got wrong....

Just Because

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:40:50 GMT

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Cleric (6th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-10

Dexterity-9

Constitution-10

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-13

Charisma-13

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

The election obsession has derailed my writing for now, but I promise I'll get back to it soon.

K.

Continuous Effort, Day 4.

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:50:04 GMT

Never mind that I didn't mention this on Day One, Two, or Three. I only decided to do this on Day Three, having accidentally started on it two days before. From now until circumstances prevent it, I intend to spend at least an hour a night working on one or more of the Mâvarin books. The last two nights it's been an hour and a half; I didn't think to time myself on nights one and two.

The bulk of Mages of Mâvarin - a thousand pages, give or take a few - and some of Heirs as well, come from a period of about two and a half years circa 1999-2002. I was writing or editing every single night during that era, and hanging out on the old AOL fantasy & sf writers' board with Patricia C. Wrede and a passel of fellow unknowns. I only missed two days in all that time: the day I got my gall bladder out, and the night I was on suicide watch after my friend's husband ditched her. Most days I was handwriting scenes at lunchtime, and typing or revising at night.

Then in late 2002 I went back to school, and had a ton of homework to do, including a paper a week. Suddenly I had to channel all that time and effort and discipline to GEN 300 and the courses that followed. I didn't have time to put into the novels while doing all that, and in any case I was kind of stuck on the handful of scenes still needed for Mages. So I mostly stopped working on it. It's been three and a half years since I graduated from UoP, but since then I've spent my evenings blogging and doing other online stuff. Although I've worked on the books intermittently, and submitted Heirs to two publishers, I've never gotten back into the routine of writing and editing fiction on a nightly basis.

So here's the deal. I know from bitter experience that I'm not terribly good at carrying out my big plans and grand promises after I announce them. So I'm not promising that this will last. But right now I'm unemployed, and I'm getting adequate sleep; I'm interested, and I have the time. There is no reason I can't get some editing in on a daily basis, at least until I get another job. After that, we'll see.

Maybe this is the start of another long, productive streak of continuous effort.

Karen

Final Word Count

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:25:44 GMT

Ch	Title	Words	Pages	From	To
1	The Tengrem	10,547	33	1	33
2	The Truth	14,584	46	34	79
3	Appearances	15,256	50	80	129
4	Prophecies and Revelations	12,481	43	130	172
5	Mages and Messages	13,011	44	173	216
6	Two Princesses	11,468	39	217	255
7	The Road and the City	10,800	37	256	292
8	Transformations	10,376	35	293	327
9	Family	10,147	34	328	361
10	Magic	8,907	30	362	391
11	Mind and Matter	12,526	42	392	433
12	Rescuers	13,543	46	434	479
13	War and Peace	12,959	45	480	524
	totals	156,605	524
	averages	12,046.5	40.31

Now to sell the dang thing!

Once a year, whether I need it or not

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:47:04 GMT

This LJ has been lying fallow for many months. I don't care all that much, but I think it's time to revive it. I suspect there's a compartment of my brain with which to connect it.

Earlier today I doubled back and edited the last few pages of Heirs again, having gone through those same pages in a rush the night before while tired. It was worth it. Paragraphs were reworked; sentences were cut; words were changed; and the last page of the chapter no longer was. When I opened ch13, the last chapter of the book, I got to renumber the first page back 13 pages from the last time I updated its numbering. That's pretty good - although I suspect not all the word and page count numbers were from the edit immediately prior to this one.

Chapter 13 ho!

Meanwhile...nah, I'll save that for the main blog.

Karen

Status Report

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:19:55 GMT

Where I am in all the writing-related stuff I should be working on:

Heirs of Mâvarin - have not heard back from Tor; it's been 14 months now. According to what I've been reading, I should count that as a rejection and query widely. Haven't done that yet.

Mages of Mâvarin (trilogy) - I'm on chapter two in my edit, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Just last night I did a light edit on Chapter 33. This time I'll be putting chapters in a file as I finish, so that I don't keep starting over with Chapter One.

The Mâvarin Revolutions - still on Chapter One, but it's growing. It's up to 14 pages now, probably a third of that typed in the past week or so. This morning I planned the next bit in the "A Fire in Mâvarin" sequence as I walked to One Stop Automotive.

To Rule Mâvarin (alternate title Prince of Mâvarin (prequel) - stalled out for now.

I haven't been posting much on LJ recently, but I hope to start using it for benchmarking my progress. This is #1 in the series.

The Fast Path and the Slow Path

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:27:52 GMT

I expect I'll write about this on both blogs tonight. I was going to try not to be too repetitious, but on second thought I think I'll just crosspost, mostly.

There is a Doctor Who episode, "The Girl in the Fireplace," in which the Doctor visits Madame de Pompadour at key moments throughout her short life. For him it all happens in less than a day, but, as she remarks, she experiences the relationship from the perspective of "the slow path." My contrasting experiences with my last two submissions of Heirs of Mâvarin has me thinking about the fast path and the slow path, and which one is better in this particular context.

A timeline of the slow path:

February 20, 2006: mailed cover letter, three chapters and synopsis of Heirs of Mâvarin to Tor Books in NYC.
February 23, 2006: the submission package arrived at Tor, according to the USPS, and was presumably consigned to the slush pile.
February 28, 2006: eight days have passed, and the book hasn't been rejected yet, this time around. The last time I mailed it out (an earlier draft back in the late 1990s), it was back in my mailbox exactly one week later.
June 23, 2006: the four month anniversary of the slush pile arrival marks the first date I can reasonably think that I might hear back on the submission, based on the "at least four to six months" mentioned in the Tor FAQ. Nothing happens.
August 23, 2006: six months out, the "at least" part of that phrase kicks in. Hey, it doesn't say "at most." I consider whether it's time to query about the status of the submission, but decide to hold off.
January 1, 2007: someone I admire but have never met offers to ask PNH of Tor about my submission. I say yes, and thank him in advance.
January 4, 2007: I follow up by snail mail, politely asking the status of my submission.
January 7, 2007 (date approximate): someone I admire but have never met actually does ask PNH about my submission.
January 9, 2007: my contact reports back that PNH "did recall" the submission.
February 23, 2007: I celebrate the one-year anniversary of the submission's arrival on the slush pile by designing a humorous anniversary card. I decide that the longer I wait, the more likely it is that it will not be rejected out of hand. It occurs to me that I once sold a logic problem to Dell over two years after submitting it.
March 20, 2007: I celebrate the 13-month anniversary of the package's initial mailing by emailing a query to an agent who prefers to operate by email.

A timeline of the fast path:

March 13, 2007: I read an article from Writer's Digest Online about agents seeking new clients. I save the info to a file, narrowed down to the three that match my needs (i.e., they handle Fantasy, SF and YA)
March 17, 2007: after working on it in my head for a few days, I write Version 1 of the query, and send to a few friends for feedback.
March 20, 2007, 8:54 PM: After good advice from my friends, careful study of the agent's guidelines and multiple revisions, I email the query. I spend the rest of the evening updating my mavarin.com entry page and my online bio, in case the agent peeks at either.
March 21, 2007, 7:39 PM: I get an emailed "standard rejection letter," identical to the one the agent posted on her blog sometime in the past week. It's a nicely worded, encouraging letter, but it's still a form rejection, the same one I would have received had I sent a 20-page, misspelled horror of a query promoting a gerbil cookbook, a foundation document for a new religion, and fifty other unlikely projects.

So which is better, the fast path or the slow path? It's kind of hard to be sure, because I'm still on the slow path. If it ends the same way as the fast path, with a form rejection and no feedback, then it will be a far greater disappointment than the one received in less than a day. But like that logic problem, my slush pile submission may be making its glacial way toward a good result. Let's hope so, anyway.

As for the quick path, I'm thinking, as it begins to rain here, that it is possible to find at the end of it, not a pot of gold or even a rainbow, but a pewter lining in place of a silver one. At least I didn't have much time to get my hopes up. At least I've now worked out a pretty good query to send out, even though it didn't do the job this time. At least I have a few more places to try, and no more need to wait for this one to respond before trying the next.

And maybe it doesn't matter what I think, either of the fast path or the slow one. It's not as if I get to choose which one to travel on. Some publishers and agents tend to respond quickly, others slowly. Some individual examples may be highly variable in this respect, depending on the submission and the circumstances. Even if it is possible to find out which publishers and agents respond more quickly or more slowly than others, the info shouldn't be a deciding factor as one prepares to address the envelope or the email. I will gladly wait two years for a "yes" answer from a good agent or a mass market publisher, if that's what it takes. If it's a no, then sooner is better, but it's not something to aim for. Better to get on with editing Mages and writing Revolutions, and try not to obsess about timelines. The reply will get here when it gets here.

Dang, I'm depressed.

My Tor Submission, One Year On

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:59:44 GMT

Today was the one year anniversary of my three chapters, synopsis and cover letter for Heirs of Mâvarin arriving on the slush pile at Tor Books in New York. I was reminded of this fact in a dream this morning, in which Patrick Nielsen Hayden got annoyed with me for temporarily storing ham and cheese in a Tor mailbox, and announced he would have nothing more to do with me. I don't have the nerve to do it, but for months I've been fantasizing that I could mark this occasion with an anniversary card, something like this:

The reason I wouldn't send it is not that I think Patrick and Teresa wouldn't enjoy the joke. They might indeed find it funny, which is why I have no fear about posting it where they may possibly find out about it and take a peek. But actually sending such a thing, as a physical card or in an email, strikes me as the kind of unprofessional attention-grabbing stunts that Carol Pinchefsky writes about in her posting "It Came from the Slush Pile." Unfavorable attention on me instead of favorable attention toward the three chapters and synopsis is the last thing I want right now. Yes, I do wish PNH would decide, and soon, to ask for the rest of the manuscript. But if a little nudge from John Scalzi and a polite follow-up letter from me haven't hurried things along, a joke card certainly won't do so, except possibly to encourage the issuance of a rejection letter.

In a way it's fitting that I be made to wait for this all-important reply. There's a reason why the Beatles' lyric, "It took me years to write, will you take a look?" resonates so strongly for me. Heirs of Mâvarin did take me years to write. Too many years, really, but that's what happens when a book slowly teaches you how to write it over the course of a few decades. Unless the bottom suddenly falls out of the fantasy fiction market, I don't really mind waiting a few more years for a publisher to buy, print and distribute my beloved first novel. Heck, it gives me more time to work on the sequels!

On the other hand, if this long wait for a response ends in a printed form rejection, I fully expect to cry for a week before sending it out again.

Karen

Distracted Again - But Progress Has Been Made

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 11:03:00 GMT

Well, this book, The Mâvarin Revolutions, is officially underway. The first scene I wrote months ago. The second one I started in my notebook several weeks back over a plateful of "yummy yummy chicken," and finished this afternoon in my fiction blog. The third scene started to come into my head a day or two ago. and began the transition to paper and pixels late this afternoon. I've even had some ideas for the book's main plotlines, which frankly doesn't happen for me very often. Usually these things only emerge from the fog when I get there.

Then tonight I got distracted for an entire evening by this long thread on Making Light. Dang. The gist of it: some woman promoted herself as an Editor on the Inside, whereas her only credits are in non-paying literary fiction circles. TNH called her on it and she got nasty, and then some proxy or sock puppet got even nastier - but meantime the not-really-an-insider's "Pitch Bitch" blog was taken down. My old thorn Mrk popped up to pitch some pseudonymous bile, which was deleted by the time I got there. Just as well. At least he hasn't taken his attack dog routine back to Wikipedia this time, for which I'm grateful. Then the conversation, as it so often does, turned to Inigo and Westley's sword techniques, Roman horsemanship and the question of whether calling something "vanilla" is an insult to the subject or an unfair denigration of the flavoring extract. Fun stuff!

Still, it's late again, and I must sleep. All I want to say here is this: the fiction is flowing again. And that is officially a Good Thing.

Karen

Words, Words, Words

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:47:38 GMT

Your Linguistic Profile:

45% General American English

35% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Yes, okay. That makes sense, I suppose. I am from New York State, after all.

Karen

Meme and the Plan and Unexpected Good News

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 01:42:16 GMT

What Fantasy Archetype Are you?
The Mentor You are the prestigous Mentor! You're akin to Gandalf (Lord of The Rings), Merlin (ARthurian Legend), Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars), Aslan (Narnia), Door (Neverwhere), Dumbledore (Harry Potter) and Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander (Wizard's First Rule). You are wise and knowing, and know that there is not much time left for the Unlikely Hero to defeat The Totally Wicked Villain. Only you know the true motives and past of The Villain, so it's up to you to teach the Unlikely Hero all he has to know. Be careful as you'll invariably regret not telling The Unlikely Hero things sooner rather than later. You like teaching and often care very much for others.
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

***

A few days ago at the Outpost I blogged the New Year's Resolution stuff, and it was mostly about writing. I had some good news on this front today - not the big news, but, well, read the comments to that entry and see what I mean. I'm going to follow through myself, too, though, and write the snail mail letter in a moment. Between a live-and-in-person reminder and my letter, maybe I'll finally hear from Tor soon. My biggest fear it that it was rejected months and months ago but the response was lost in the mail. My biggest hope is that it's either just waiting its turn in a long queue, and will now get special attention, and they'll like it, and I'll finally be on my way. There's no reason that can't be true, based on what little I know of the situtation. I hope I hope I hope!

The other thing I'm going to do here is simplify things a bit. Rather than feel guilty about all the blogs and journals I don't read, I'm going to unfriend and unsubscribe a few. That doesn't mean they're not interesting or well written by good people I like. It's a question of time. Right now I'm reading some of my very favorite blogs once a week or once every two weeks, or, you know, never. I may do better if the list is shorter. Here on LJ, there's someone on my Friends list who writes long posts more than once a day, and my less frequently-posting friends get pushed off the page before I get there. So the prolific, angry young nephew of my long-dead boyfriend leaves the Friends page today. Sorry, Mike. I wish you well, and all success with your writing and your class work and your love life.

(Ten minutes later: Mike is back on the friends list already, for several reasons. The main one is that I can now filter the Friends page to view different groups of people. So Mike gets his own group, the group blogs get another, and so on. So the rare flower journal entries will now be findable, I don't have to dump anything, and everybody wins. Yay!)

Karen

Silly title

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 06:18:45 GMT

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Baroness Karen the Abstemious of Similar Ealand
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Abstemious. Interesting. If you're talking about drinking and certain other things. it fits. But in the bigger picture, temperance and moderation in all things, so not.

Via Aurora Walking Vacation.

And to those who wonder: not a peep from Tor. Ten months now.

Happy New Year! The Baroness and I promise to do better in 2007.

Karen

P.S. Great gag from an episode of Top Cat (we finally have Boomerang): one of T.C.'s gang is reading a book with a plot that wanders all over the place. Let's see iif I can remember the title correctly: Under A Bridge with Dick and Harry. I would amend it to Under a Bridge: Dick 'n' Harry. What was T.C.'s friend really reading? Hint: it begins with an aardvark.

Let the Counting Commence!

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:06:43 GMT

I don't know what I'm more excited about - the prospect of the Democrats taking the House, or the fact that I won't have to clear any truncated robocalls off voicemail after today. The only caller I enjoyed hearing from was Bill Clinton - and even he was less interesting by the third message.

Now, if the Democrats do well and the xenophobic propositions do badly, I'll be entirely happy.

Karen

Yet Another Book Meme

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 02:32:08 GMT

Oh, my. I really have been neglecting LJ dreadfully. Good thing I have a meme to put in here, from Aurora Walking Vacation:

1. Grab the nearest book. If you are currently reading something, that'll be fine too.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog along with these instructions.

5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet. I know that is what you were thinking!

6. Tag 5 people.

1. I've been doing a little L'Engle research for Wikipedia, so I have a number of books piled on my desk right now. The one on top is

L'Engle, Madeleine. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, ISBN 0-86547-487-7.

2. On page 123, L'Engle is writing about a book from her mother's childhood "about an appallingly pious little girl" (pg. 122).

3. "Elsie refused."

4.

So she sat at the piano bench, martyrlike, refusing to soil her hands with secular music, until she fainted and hit her head. Then she had brain fever and nearly died,and Papa was converted.

It is possible that in its day and age that book might have qualified as a Christian children's book. Much of it was familiar to my mother.

5. I swear it was on top of the pile. I was citing it for stuff that had nothing to do with pious little girls.

6. No. But you can do it if you want!

By the way, no, I haven't heard from Tor. Tomorrow it will have been eight months, so I'll finish that follow-up letter and send it out next week.

Karen

Three Stories About Mistakes in Time

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 06:41:50 GMT

Sarah (applebonkers) posted an entry last week about a muy stressful incident in which a guy with a watch told her it was over an hour later than she thought it was, and she consequently believed (more or less) that she was terribly, disastrously, irredeemably late for curtain in the play she was in. It turned out the Guy With A Watch was wrong by an hour, so Sarah was only slightly, no-big-deal late after all. But meanwhile it had been an awful five minutes.

This reminded me of several little incidents in my own past, and since I hardly ever post on LJ these days, I may as well share them here. I start by quoting my comment to Sarah:

One has to wonder...
...whether the guy was putting you on or misreading his watch. I remember meeting an actor friend in Burbank for an interview years ago, and he gave someone else the time and was wrong by an hour. I've always wondered whether he misread his watch or kept it on standard time or...just doesn't know what time it is outside his head.

Back in third or fourth grade, I woke up one morning and the alarm hadn't gone off. I got dressed and rushed to the bus stop, which that year was around the corner and down the street. There was nobody there. Convinced I'd missed the bus, I wasn't sure what to do. Somehow I ended up at the house of a childless couple near the bus stop, who liked me and other kids visiting them and their Weimeraner, Sonnyboy. Mr. Carlton explained to me about Daylight Savings Time, and showed me that it was an hour earlier than I thought it was. So yes, I made the bus after all.

***

Third anecdote, which I held back from the comment:

Now, what was it...?

Ah, yes. When I was in high school, I tried out for Area All State choir and made it once, and All County Choir and made it I think twice. The Area All State was the memorable one, because of the trauma of getting home afterward, but I've already told that story. But the second time in All County was memorable, too, and not in a good way.

I think somehow I had double-scheduled myself that Saturday. In one part of my brain, I was going to some neighboring municipality for the mandatory All-County rehearsal, without which one isn't allowed to be in the concert itself a week or two later. In another part of my brain, I think I was supposed to babysit the kids next door. I think it was early that afternoon before I suddenly realized this was the day of the rehearsal. I felt awful. I called. It was too late to go. No All County for me that year. It wasn't just the disappointment of not getting to be in the concert. It was the fact that I'd messed up, badly.

But I did something similar a year or so later (she said, introducing the fourth anecdote). Gene Roddenberry was coming to Syracuse, and he was going to hold a press conference in which he was going to talk about a new Star Trek series. (This was about 1975. The new series with the old cast didn't happen. The movies happened instead, a few years later.) My mom made arrangements with someone at Syracuse University (where the speaking engagement was to be that night) to get me into the press conference. I got out of school to do it, taped it and I think asked two questions.

Problem was, I had a job at Friendly Ice Cream in Fayetteville, and I'd forgotten to ask for the Thursday night off when Roddenberry would be speaking. I checked the schedule, and sure enough, I was supposed to work that night. Or so I thought. When I showed up for work on Thursday at 6 PM (or 5 PM, whenever it was), I was fired - for failing to show up for work on Wednesday night! Id been so hung up worrying about missing Roddenberry that I'd misread the schedule! So: happy ending. I got to see Roddenberry's appearance that night after all. And I got rid of a job I was really starting to dislike anyway.

There are circumstances in which it's not so bad to be out of sync with time.

Karen

Too Long? Too Funny? Too Pushy? Too Boring?

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 07:13:19 GMT

Subject: Happy Half Anniversary to my Slush Pile Submission

Dear Patrick et al.:

Greetings from Tucson, where the monsoon is still, um, monsooning. According to the postal service, Tor received my cover letter, three chapters and synopsis six months ago this week. I'm far from panicked about this, but it's time for a follow-up inquiry.

The book's title is Heirs of Mâvarin. The manuscript was in a large Priority Mail envelope, sent February 21, 2006. An equally large SASE was enclosed.

I have a longish list of theories about why I haven't heard back yet, but it's less entertaining and informed than the equivalent list in "Slushkiller," so we'll skip it. I'm hoping that the slush pile is simply more backed up than usual - or, better yet, that my submission has been opened, perused and reported on favorably, and now awaits an editor's attention.

When you get a moment, will you please check on the status of my manuscript and let me know where we are in the process? Thanks!

Karen Funk Blocher
(contact info)

or...

Subject: Follow-up on February submission

Dear Patrick et al.:

According to the postal service, Tor received my cover letter, three chapters and synopsis six months ago this week. I'm far from panicked about this, but it's time for a follow-up inquiry.

The book's title is Heirs of Mâvarin. The manuscript was in a large Priority Mail envelope, sent February 21, 2006. An equally large SASE was enclosed. When you get a moment, will you please check on the status of my manuscript and let me know where we are in the process? Thanks!

Karen Funk Blocher

Second one, huh? Thought so. Darn it.

Karen

A Meme, and a Method for Managing Mages of Mâvarin

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:29:18 GMT

First, let me get this meme code pasted in:

Greed:	Very Low
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Very Low

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Gee, gluttony and sloth. That was predictable. Enough said.

I am writing again, which is to say that I'm getting some new edits in on Mages from Mâvarin. I'm on Chapter Three now. That's not at all impressive when you consider there are 35 chapters in all, but it's a start. It's also occurred to me this past week that despite my relative inactivity on the book(s), the overall manuscript has changed quite a bit in the two years since I sent printouts and CDs to beta readers. It will change more as I go on. The trade-off is that the fiction blog is languishing. I need to get Jace and Sandy moving again, but somehow the evenings go by without my gtiving either of them a visit.

As far as the book editing goes, I've made one change in my working methods. For the past four years or so, I've been printing out chapters, reading and hand-editing them, and, in theory, entering some version of those edits into the Word files - later. The problem was, I constantly lost track of where I was in the process, not to mention all those messy loose printouts. There's no good place to put them by my computer, so entering the edits was where I had the bottleneck. I ended up starting over, lots of times, until I was sick to death of the first five pages of Chapter One. It is better, though.

So that didn't work, and I'm trying something else. Except when I come to a scene that only exists in handwritten form (I think I still have a few of these), I'm editing directly in Word now. Sure, it means I'm stuck at my computer, but I'm there all night anyway. Making the changes in one pass instead of two might mean that the manuscript will be one draft less polished, but it doesn't seem to be working out that way so far. I can change the same passage five times in five minutes it necessary, and never run out of white space on the page. If Sara or Sarah is online, I can even run each version of the paragraph by a faithful beta reader for advice. Yeah, this is working better.

Well, except for the part where I'm sidetracked by Wikipedia.

Karen

Counting up and counting down

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:56:52 GMT

On Saturday, Tor will have had my three-chapters-and-synopsis for 5 months. I choose to call that good news. It means one of eight things:

1. It's still sitting unopened in the slush pile.
2. It's made it past minimal scrutiny (it's typed and has a SASE, etc.) and awaits further examination.
3. A first reader looked at the first page or so and didn't hate it, and will look at it in more detail later.
4. A first reader actually liked it, but hasn't written a report on the submission yet.
5. A first reader has written it up and passed it on to Patrick (or possibly Teresa, or someone else), who will look at it eventually.
6. Patrick has glanced at it, but hasn't decided yet whether to ask for the rest of the book.
7. A rejection is on its way.
8. A request for the rest of the book is on its way.

Only one of these options would actually be bad news.

Karen