Archive for July, 2010
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Painful but Necessary
There comes a time when one must admit that one does not need to own every book in the whole world. When the books are shoved sideways on top of paperbacks that are already two rows deep, well, it is time for some serious soul searching. And a thinning of the library.
First to go are the books where somehow I have an ARC, a hardback and then a paperback. Hardback stays, the other two can fly. Then there are the books I bought, tried to read and could not finish. Sorry, guys, you did not make the cut. Then the books I’ve read but cannot imagine ever wanting to read again. Time to let you fly off and find a more appreciative home.
As I am doing this, I am fighting guilt. “I paid money for this book. I should read it.” or “This book got great reviews. Everyone talks about it to this day. I should make myself read it.” Then I open the book, start in on the first paragraph, and within a page or two, I suddenly realize that, “No, my first impression was correct. This book is not talking to me.”
Old textbooks? How did these get saved all these years? Spanish workbooks, health textbooks, basic geometry. Off they go. Then I start encountering the ‘required reading’ books. How many copies of Three Theban Plays does any home library need? How many paperback copies of MacBeth, highlighted and Post-it-Noted to within an inch of its binding? Poor things, off you go to find a home with some high school student. I nearly saved the copy of The Great Gatsby just for the seven sentence outline that one of my offspring wrote in the front. Hm. They did not appear to enjoy this story much!
There are other kinds of chance encounters on the book shelves. Books I don’t recall buying, but suddenly find intriguing. And other books, books I can’t imagine that I ever paid money for that go into the toss box without another thought. Let them go off to the library used book shelf and with their sale bring some badly needed money into the library.
A shameful secret? There are three books in the box that I actually read and enjoyed. And then real life encounters with the authors cooled my appreciation for their work. Very petty, I know. But if there are three books that I am parting with on those terms, there are several dozen books I am keeping, in spite of feeling luke warm or even negative about the creators. There is some sort of a moral there, that if you write a good enough book, I’ll keep liking your story even if you personally make a horrifying impression on me!
This is also an opportunity to reorder my library. To put all the Scarborough in one place, to get all the deLint together, to find all the various volumes of Joe Lansdale and gather them into one glittering hoard of gems. Time to clear some space to put the Evanovich in numerical order.
My daughter wandered through as I was sorting the Lansdale. “Hey, that’s my copy!”
I take insufferable joy in opening it and pointing out that it’s signed to ME! Ha-ha!
I do not point out to her that the one that is three volumes over is signed to her!!! Later. She will look for it and find it. But for now, I will hoard it for her.
So, despite the fact that I will part with four cardboard boxes of books today, at the end of the day I will actually feel richer for rediscovered treasures, for moments spent dusting off old friends and for those lost moments when I actually dared to open an old favorite and once more fall into the depths of a story.
Oh, my books. Somehow, I don’t think seeing a file title on a hand-held screen could ever be quite the same as sorting through my own library.
Robin
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My Recent Reads
Let’s start with Blue Eyed Devils by Robert Parker. This is the most recent and alas, last installment that we will get about Everett Hitch and his partner Virgil Cole. It has been a long time since I have so enjoyed a Western novel, and I am sure I will re-read the books and more than once. Parker was best known for detective stories that featured Spenser. His death is still recent and I am still mourning that there are now definitely a finite number of Robert Parker books for me to find and devour. The Virgil and Everett story is one that I highly recommend; start with Appaloosa.
I am midway through Hard Eight, by Janet Evanovich. This is the eighth installment in the Stephanie Plum books, and I am still enjoying her New Jersey bounty hunter! These books not only make me laugh out loud, they are my best resource for calming those middle of the night anxiety attacks that occasionally plague me. Give up trying to sleep, turn on the light, pick up the book and leave my own reality for a time. I am very much enjoying this series and recommend them.
My first forays into reading SF came as a result of my mom bringing home digest sized magazines from the second hand store. I think it was probably her first experience, too, but it quickly led us both into a paperback habit that neither of us ever shook. In the final years of her life, we shared all sorts of SF and fantasy, from Cook’s Black Company books to Gaiman and Pratchett’s Good Omens. Half my pleasure in discovering a new author or great book was looking forward to passing it on to my Mom. It’s something I still miss.
But the SF magazine habit is still with me, expanded now to include the fantasy that often graces those pages. My enduring favorites, through several editorships, are The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. They come, and I read. I’ve always felt that shorter works are some of our brightest gems in SF and fantasy in that everything excess is sheared away and what is left is pure story telling. The magazines are also where I have first experienced writers who went on to become favorites with me for their novels. It’s a great way to sample writers. And I’ve always enjoyed the magazines as my companions when waiting at the doctor’s office or during soccer practice. Sometimes I just want a whole story that I can read in less than an hour.
From the May/June edition of Fantasy and SF, I’ll call your attention to “Seven Sins for Seven Dwarves” by Hilary Goldstein and “The Gypsy’s Boy” by Lokiko Hall. And “Forever” by Rachel Pollack. And in Asimov’s, September 2010 (yes, the editors have developed time travel to whisk us to stories for months that haven’t happened yet!), I very much enjoyed “For Want Of A Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal.
Does that mean I didn’t enjoy the other stories? No, only that those are the ones I devoured most recently. If your fantasy and SF reading has been limited to full length books, then perhaps you don’t know what you’ve been missing. Poe may have invented the American short story, but these magazines are certainly letting it evolve in a time when short fiction has disappeared from so many other magazines.
Happy Reading.
Robin
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Work In Progress Another Rain Wilds Book
I’ve posted about this before, but I keep receiving queries, so I’ll mention it again.
I am currently at work on another Rain Wilds book. It does not yet have a title. It does pick up the tale of the Tarman Expedition, but also touches on some events in Cassarick and Bingtown.
And that is as much as I’m saying about it right now!
Robin
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The Day’s Work
It was a lovely summer day.
And I knew that I had to stay inside for the morning, and finally pay all the bills, including this quarter’s Business and Operating tax, and do a tidy on the office. I always grumble to myself about having to pay B&O tax. In Washington state, artists and writers are taxed just as if they are small businesses. So, I pay a tax on my income to the city and to the state every quarter. It strikes me as unfair as my business does not incur any extra costs for the city; I don’t require extra police patrols, I don’t generate extra waste water, etc. Basically, I am taxed for having a computer in my office and writing on it. Grumble, grumble.
Next order of business was mailing things. One very nice item was that I was sending back a signed set of contracts for Romanian rights to Farseer.
Then, back to the house, where I successfully ignored the little drifts of dog hair in the corner of the livingroom. I vacuumed just yesterday, not just the hosue but the dog himself. Pip has always enjoyed being vacuumed, and I had vaguely hoped that the shed hair might go straight from the dog to the vacuum bag, but evidently he had more to share. Later, I will get that.
Then I made my first batch of jam for the year. The cool wet start to summer has meant that my strawberries did not do well. Enough lingered on the plants that our recent bout of sunshine and warmth ripened them up to sweetness. So I was able to do one batch of strawberry jam. Tomorrow, I will do raspberry.
Next task was to run through the .pdf file of “Blue Boots”. That is my story for the anthology SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH, edited by George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois. This is an anthology from fantasy and romance authors, due to be released in November of this year. (Gives you an idea of how far ahead we have to work on these things!) As I often do with stories I have finished, I began reading it with rather a jaded eye, wondering if I’d done my task as a story teller. But, at just the right moment and completely unexpected, I got a shiver up my back! Like most writers, I do write for myself first. So, at this point, all I can do is hope that you share my sensibilities and that Blue Boots will work for you as well.
Now the day is winding down and I still have to do some pages on my major project. I’ve passed page 200 on the manuscript for the new book. My goal is to pass 300 pages before the end of the month. I desperately want to turn this book in well ahead of time, and actually have a relaxed holiday season with my family, with no deadline keeping me at the keyboard while everyone else is eating holiday cookies!
So, I may miss the sunshine today. And the drifts of dog hair in the livingroom corners may get a bit deeper.
But that is this writer’s day.
Robin
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Played Like a Fish
There’s a Cats Laughing song called “Signal to Noise.” I think Emma Bull wrote the lyrics; anyone who knows for sure is free to confirm or correct me. But there are times that those lyrics bounce right back into my head. Here’s the first verse:
Drinking coffee, have to stay awake and think of you
Aching awfully, knowing my perceptions aren’t true
If you were what I’ve made you, not as your acts betrayed you
How could I keep away?
But things still lead me on, a word and then it’s gone
What lives here and what’s stray?
Tell me please, what’s signal and what’s noise?And that is exactly where my head is tonight. Yet again, I’ve discovered that someone is not who I thought they were, and it wasn’t in the pleasant sense of, “You mean you really are Superman?” It was more like, “You really don’t have any respect for me, do you?” It’s the realization that I made up a persona and hung that persona like clothes over a skeleton of reality. I really liked person I made up. But that person doesn’t really exist.
So. Sad and feeling rather stupid. Suckered again. Oh, dear. Not a major relationship in my life, so there is that to be grateful for. Still, it’s a disappointment.
I tend to take people at face value. I believe what they tell me about themselves. After that, it can take months or even years before it dawns on me that things just aren’t adding up. None of this makes sense . . . oh. Unless you were not being truthful about statements A, B, and D. Then it does work.
So, while this is not a life changing event for me, it is one that makes me once more evaluate my ability to judge character. And to downgrade it even more than I had before.
Am I going to change? Become more cynical? Dissect people? Be wary on first meetings and cautious about who I befriend or let into my home?
Nope. I intend to go on believing the best of people until they prove I’m wrong. I’ve found it’s a lot less work. And I don’t enjoy being cynical or suspicious. I don’t like me when I’m that person. I’d rather be too gullible a thousand times than cynical and hard when it wasn’t called for.
I don’t even get confrontational when I find out I’ve been played. I simply tend to withdraw. I re-sketch the person in my mind, getting much closer to reality and then I reorder the relationship. I don’t think I’ve ever really tossed anyone out of my life; instead, I tend to reset the orbit to a more appropriate level, and carry on as before. There is almost always something to like about any person; might as well hang on to the good stuff and let the rest slide away.
And there is, as they lyrics suggest, an element of personal responsibility in these things. Often I am the one who has slipped the person into the mold and then assumed it fit. Only to discover later that it did not.
“If you were as I made you, not as your acts betrayed you . . .”
Maybe that’s why I enjoy character creation so much. Writing friends who I know from the heart out, people who are indeed exactly as I made them up . . .
Robin
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Howling at the Moon
Almost everyone can read almost anything you write on the Internet. Even if you make your social networking site blog private or ‘friends locked’ or whatever. Even if you choose another name for yourself, one that you think will never be connected to you as a flesh-and-blood human. There are ways around all those picket fences, and most of them are not nearly as complicated as the social networking sites would have you believe. The vaunted anonymity of the Internet does not exist.
And if you are reading this, I’m sure you are saying, “Well, of course, I knew that. Everyone knows that!”
And we do. On some level. But why, then, do almost all of us write such appalling things? Even knowing that almost anyone can read them, even knowing that what you write will probably exist in perpetuity, for as long as there are pixels? Why do we write such cruel and destructive things?
We all get angry. Or sad. Or even clinically depressed, some of us. Or paranoid to where we think even our most loving friends are out to get us. I know we all feel such things. I just wonder how they manage to break out into pixels?
Some of it is understandable. Angsty teen blogging, the sort of stuff that used to be confined to spiral notebooks, seems to be a hazard that afflicts many today. Comments about teachers, siblings, parents, ex-boyfriends, the slut-ho who stole that ex-boyfriend all get out there onto millions of screens, with apparently no though that six years from now, you might want to work alongside that slut-ho, or you might be putting a job application in to the company run by slut-ho’s mother.
But teenagers, well. As I said, I think I understand that sort of rash behavior for the under 15 crowd.
Too often the rash words are thrown out by people who are substantially older and one would hope, a bit wiser. I surf into them and freeze in shock and awe at the sight of someone shooting themselves in the foot with words. Words about your husband. Or your teenage daughter. Obscenities about your employer or co-worker. Words that surely you would not say aloud on a streetcorner or in the noise of the company cafeteria. Yet there you are, belching them out where they can be read, not only today, but ten years from now. Or, who knows, perhaps one hundred years from now.
It reminds me of the abusive parents that one overhears in the supermarket or laundromat. The ones that call their children ’stupid’ or ‘you little bitch/bastard’. Do they really think that their kids are not already people, people who will remember that not just next year, but for the next sixty or seventy years? Do you really want that to be the rock you give your kid to carry around for the rest of his/her life?
Your blog is the same. The thing you say about your disrespectful, irresponsible (and absolutely normal) teenager is going to get back to him/her. It’s going to stick and fester, long after today’s little quarrel is over and forgotten. Long after the dirty laundry left on the floor has become tattered threads, the words you typed will linger.
It’s true about people you don’t know well, also. Comments you make on the school principal, or the owner of the hair salon where you get your locks styled, or Bill Gates or Stephanie Meyer or Lady Gaga linger and some, at least, do get back to their targets.
There are times to criticize public officials. Times to stay clearly that you think your congressman is not keeping his promises, or that a basketball player or movie star is a poor role model. There are times when it is not just your right, but your duty to speak out plainly.
Yet it would be so wonderful if we could also recall that there is a time and place for ‘If you can’t say something nice, say nothing.’
Robin
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Pulling weeds
Well, summer threatens to descend on me here!
I am a 70 degrees Fahrenheit person. That’s a wonderful type of day for me. I don’t really mind 60 or 50 or colder. I can always put on a sweater. But today the weather man says we are going to 80. And 90 tomorrow! This after days of clouds and cool rain. Suddenly, summer is here.
I think I will welcome it a little bit. My strawberries were not so good this year; big from the rain but not very sweet. It’s too late for most of the strawberries to enjoy the heat, but I still have lots of raspberries, so maybe some of them will ripen with some sweetness. And maybe the heat will help me fight the mildew and fungusI’ve been seeing on some of my trees.
I went out early in the day to get some weeding done before the day warms up too much. And as I was crawling along in the gutter with my trowel and weed basket, I realized that I have several kinds of neighbors.
Some just call a greeting as they stroll by. Sometimes they have dogs on leashes or are ‘power walking’. Too busy to stop and talk; just a ‘good morning!’ from them.
Then there are people who pause and chat for a bit. They might eat a strawberry or two, or ask for some of the poppy seeds from my big poppies when the seed heads dry out.
But the best are neighbors like Judy and Danielle. They pause. They start to talk. And soon they are down on hands and knees beside me, helping pull weeds as we chat. There is something so companionable about shared work, even a simple task like weeding. And some people simply cannot watch anyone do work without joining in. Those two neighbors are like that. And in return, if I see Judy out weeding, I wander across and pull a few weeds with her while we catch up on the neighborhood news. And when I see deer in Danielle’s garden, pruning plants she doesn’t really want pruned, I quickly text her about them.
Danielle teaches botany, and always has more starts than she needs. So this year’s Early Girl tomato plants are courtesy of her. And I’m going to hit her up for some Begonia starts, too. She said she had lots of them.
And those poppies that everyone admires and asks for the seed pods? The seeds for those came from Danielle’s grandmother’s garden, about13 years ago, not long after I had moved in here.
Gardens may not make a neighborhood, but they can certainly stitch one together.
Robin
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And there’s gonna be fireworks . . .
I love fireworks. The pretty kind that make colors in the night sky.
But once, I loved blowing things up. It was all about the explosion. Sad but true.
My first memories of fireworks are from when I was very small. In the back yard of our home in Terra Linda, California. 531 Wisteria Way, for the curious. We set off fireworks for the 4th of July right there in the back yard. My dad held the Roman Candles in his hand and swooshed them through the air to fling the flaming balls even higher into the sky. We had sparklers we could use to draw on the night air. And ‘worms’ or ’snakes’, little black pellets that emiited a lot of smoke when lit and long charcoaly snakes of ash! Smoke bombs! Fountains and rockets. Fire plus gunpowder equalled magic. I loved the smell of Fourth of July.
Next memory. Menlo Park. California. My cousins place. My cousins were substantially wealthier than we were, with a very large home, an orchard, and an immense ‘yard’ near their pool compound. When we went there for the fourth, there were fireworks in their back yard with all our extended family gathered for the occasion. However, we were not the ones lighting the fuses. Hired pyrotecnic experts did that. So, although these fireworks were more spectacular to watch, I very much missed the ‘hands on’ aspect of blowing things up. I remember I asked my mother if it meant that we could have ‘real’ fireworks when we went home afterwards. She had to tell me, No. Not that year.
But life always brings more opportunities.
We moved to Alaska. We bought some property there. Some trees had to come down. Chainsaw or axe work to take down the tops. But then, the stumps and roots had to come up. And that was when I discovered dynamite! I watched my Dad work his magic, using his pocket knife to cut through the fat red waxy sticks. Doesn’t take much. A quarter stick will blast a stump, with a little shiny blasting cap pushed in. Later, my dad mixed up his own explosive from fertilizer. It was not as predictable, and one of our efforts had dirt raining down on the tin roof of our log house. Very satisfying.
And in Alaska, we could buy fireworks every fourth of July from the local fireworks stands and set them off in our back yard. My brothers and I saved all our pocket money for weeks for those days in late June and early July. We bought from the Lambert boys’ stand. Their wares were definitely not ’safe and sane’. Rockets and fountains, yes, but also cherry bombs and m-80’s. Strings of Black Cats and Ladyfingers. We put them under tin cans, heaped dirt and rocks on top, lit the fuse and ran! Ka-BOOM! Dirt flying, rocks falling. Very satisfying. 20 Ball Roman Candles. We bought them in July, and set some off for the Fourth, but saved a lot for the deep black nights of Alaskan winter when they showed so well against the sky.
Ah, but the best was yet to come.
I lived in Fairbanks, very close to several military bases. There was a tremendous amount of military surplus stuff around. Parkas, army canvas mukluks, ammunition boxes that were great for storing all sorts of stuff, and the ubiquitous C-rations. C-rations were the forerunners of MRE’s or meals ready to eat, I suppose. Lots of people bought them to use on hunting trips. So, one day, while way back in the woods, I came across a couple of cardboard boxes and I thought at first I had stumbled on a cache of C-rations. But they were just dumped there, the boxes shoved under some bushes beside a rabbit trail. It was very peculiar, and when I opened the boxes . . . WOW. There was one cardboard box that held six or eight smaller cardboard boxes. Each was FULL of m-80’s. But they didn’t look like 4th of July M-80’s. These were just cardboard colored, not red or blue at all. Hundreds of M-80’s!
And the next cardboard box was even better! Packed into individual compartments were some things that looked like cardboard tubes, sealed at the ends, with a thing you could pull.
Practice hand grenades. No shrapnel, just explosive as all get out!
(From the vantage of time, I suspect that they had been stolen from the military base. And then, for some reason, dumped in the woods.)
I took my treasure home.
My parents let me keep them.
Yes. I know.
But this was a different time and a different place. And I DID share them with my brothers. Actually, we hoarded them like misers,and carefully rationed ourselves. We learned that you could bend down a young tree, fix a practice handgrenade into the top branches, and then let go of the tree as the pin was pulled, launching the grenade high into the air for the explosion.
We did get in trouble once. We strung a trip wire attached to a grenade, at a very good distance, across the path that my sister Mary had to take on her way to hang out the laundry. She snagged her foot on it, it went off, the wet laundry went in the dirt and she was outraged with us.
Okay. Let’s not do THAT again. Having an angry big sister in pursuit of us was not fun.
Tossing lit M-80’s into the metal culverts under the gravel road . . . now that was great fun. Lots of echo. Or toss them into the river! Wow. Build a little hill of sand and rocks, put plastic army men on top, light the fuse, run and then whirl to look back. Kaboom!
But no wonderful thing lasts forever. Even though we rationed ourselves, eventually, after a couple of years, we had used them all. All done. The hoard was gone. Never again. And somehow, I had become a teenager, and blowing things up was not as exciting as it had once been.
Many Fourth of July’s have come and gone since then. We’ve had backyard fireworks some years, and on others, taken out Charmante and sat on her deck out on the Sound watching the city displays.
I’m a grown up now. Rational. Sane. Cautious, even. I would never hold an M-80 in my hand while my brother lit it for me to throw. I would never tie a practice hand grenade to a trip wire across a path. I look back now at the things I did in my reckless youth and I am shocked that I paid so little in consequence. Badly stinging fingers from Black Cats that went off sooner than expected. And there was the time I deafened myself for a day or two. I had observed how sometimes a firecracker would fizzle and sizzle instead of exploding. So I thought that if you lit a pile of loose gunpowder from inside salvaged ‘duds’, it would fizzle and sizzle a lot.
No. My little pile of fine gray powder exploded. And it stung my face and arm with the sand blasted off the concrete block I had dumped my gunpowder on and my ears rang for two days.
But you know, that was about the worst of it. My brother got worse the day he tried to get an outdoor fire going using gasoline. Billy scorched his eyebrows off.
But we all survived, with all our fingers and toes and our vision and hearing intact. Dumb luck, I suppose. Or perhaps it was due to all our experimentation.
I am very tame now. I live very safely. I haven’t even bought any fireworks this year, not even the ‘legal’ pipsqueak ones. I may go down to the public display and watch the beautiful pyrotechnics high in the air. Very pretty, but they aren’t real fireworks to me unless mine is the hand holding the punk. More likely I’ll stay home and make sure my dogs are in the basement.
I won’t complain about the kids setting off little firecrackers in the intersection. Or pop bottle rockets shrieking through the night sky to end in a shamefully small ‘pop’. Even as much as I despise Whistling Petes that do nothing but make an awful whistle, I won’t call the cops. Yes, they are dangerous. Kids will get fingers burned and some will get hurt. Some fireworks may start fires this year, despite all the rain we’ve had.
But I was once the kid with the scraggly braids and the jeans with the knees torn out, running with a lit punk and then whirling around to watch my explosion go off. It was a time of straight gravel roads cut through forest and houses spaced many acres apart. A time of endless summer days, of midnight sun nights. Unsupervised kids with fireworks and unleashed dogs and not a car seat belt or bike helmet in sight.
A gloriously dangerous and perhaps stupid time in my life. Nothing I would advocate for my grandkids or for anyone else’s grandkids.
But I wouldn’t trade those dumb and dangerous days for a pile of gold.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
Robin Hobb
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Birds
We have quite a population of them in my yard, thanks to Fred. He has a little sparrow house on virtually every post of the privacy fence. All of them are occupied, and today I saw little head with wide open mouths sticking out of the doors as parents frantically tried to fill all those beaks.
I also have a crow’s nest in my big evergreen. The location is quite obvious, due to the splotches on the sidewalk below. Yesterday evening, a youngster got out of the next and was hopping about on the branches. His parents were absolutely frantic. My grandchildren and I were outside watching the little bird, and the two adults were going through all sorts of antics to try to distract us from him. They were also very unhappy when my cat came out into the yard to see what the fuss was about.
I enjoy the crows a great deal. I know they are scavengers and carrion eaters, and not exactly what people usually invite to their feeders. But these crows are also accomplished mimics and I’ve enjoyed them a good deal. They can do a ratchet turning absolutely perfectly. It makes me think Fred is out working in the garage. They have evidently also been listening to someone practice on a stringed instrument. It sounded as if someone was tuning something up in the tree yesterday. Their mimicry is not perfect, but it may be a banjo.
They’ve learned that I will feed them if they make a fuss. So, if the dogs are ’selfish’ and eat all their kibble, the crows come and sit on the fence right outside my kitchen table window. I’ll be trying to read the morning paper, and they will wait until I glance out, and then open their wings and squawk about how they are poor starving birds until I give them a torn piece of bread. I know that if I don’t, they will spend the morning dive-bombing my regular bird feeder to set it rocking enough to spill seed on the ground.
This is the first year they’ve had a nest in my tree. I am wondering if they will keep it for next year, and if their hatchlings will build nests in the tree as well.
Robin
Upcoming Appearances
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