If you tried to visit this site over the weekend and got an “attack site” or “badware” warning from Google or Firefox, my apologies — somebody managed to sneak an iframe into a couple of pages on the site. But now everything is shiny, new, and clean, just in time for Alcestis to launch in paperback on Tuesday (thank goodness, and especially thanks to my heroic and long-suffering tech support). I can’t believe how fast December and January have raced by, and I really can’t believe it’s been a year since the hardback launch.
I’ll be running a giveaway sometime in February, possibly through Goodreads. More on that soon!
The problem with having two computers you use regularly is that you end up with loads of tabs open in one browser, things you mean to post links to — and then you (or at least I) switch to the other computer for a week and forget about them. I have an Ubuntu desktop machine and a Macbook Pro; I do most of my dissertation work on the desktop because the screen is bigger, and most of my fiction writing these days on the Macbook, because I’ve been using Scrivener for Killingly. (I love Scrivener, by the way. I usually write in order, but Killingly is challenging that habit a bit, since I keep realizing I need to go back and add a scene, etc. The corkboard/notecard system is perfect for keeping track of what I’m doing.)
Anyway, there were a few things I’d intended to include in my link roundup post this weekend that were lurking on my laptop. The first is this response by David Simon to criticism from the current Baltimore police commissioner about the effect of The Wire on the city. Makes an interesting comparison with this article about Portugal’s decriminalization of drug possession. (As the person who posted the Portugal link on Twitter said, “Portugal is Hamsterdam.”) I don’t buy the argument that the commissioner is making, either — the notion that a fictionalized portrayal of real problems in a city somehow harms the city more than the actual problems do. Or that fictionalizing real life makes the fictionalized version untrustworthy, as if the only thing art were good for was creating documentation.
And speaking of complicated things, I’ve been meaning to link to this post about ebook piracy, by a writer who grew up in Malaysia and has been living in the UK recently. But I’m glad I hadn’t yet, because Karen Healey, who was involved in the original Twitter discussion (? maybe not quite the right word) about pirating ebooks, has also made a sensible and apologetic post owning up to the fact that she hadn’t really considered the points brought up in Zen’s post, or in colorblue’s post, which focuses on (in colorblue’s words) “the underlying hierarchies & inequalities in the both the current concept of IPR and the ways that it is used and enforced.” Seriously, read all of these. For a number of reasons, including the fact that I taught Lessig’s Free Culture a few years ago, I’m not ever likely to go off on Twitter about how kids on BitTorrent are ruining my career — though it’s entirely possible that that would change if I were trying to make a living solely off my writing, or if I were in striking distance of a bestseller list, which I am totally not. But I can’t say I had considered the points made in these posts as fully as I should have either. The conversation authors often have on the internet about intellectual property rights and piracy is lamentably American-centric, but it doesn’t have to be.
The Blanton Museum Book Club meeting was really lovely — we met in one of the galleries while the museum was open for Third Thursday, next to some very fitting art. It’s been a little while since I’ve talked to a group about Alcestis, and I’ve been thinking so much about Killingly lately that it was fun for me to compare the two projects and consider, as I talked with the group about the book, what I’m doing differently this time.
Have to get back to dissertation revisions now, but here, a whole bushel of links:
- A rejection letter in kind, to Gertrude Stein.
- A border collie that knows more than 1000 names of objects (and is now working on grammar).
- Jubal Early doing his bit for the mode of self-defensive autobiography. (No, not that Jubal Early, the real Jubal Anderson Early [ouch at that web design]. Who is apparently one of Nathan Fillion’s ancestors. What.)
- Via Jessa Crispin, an Edith Wharton short story in which she snarks about book clubs… published, in PDF, by the Library of America. As they introduce it: “During Story of the Week’s first year, we have been gratified to learn (via e-mail messages, blog posts, and phone calls) that an increasing number of readers are using selections for reading groups, the classroom, and library events. And so it is with a bit of trepidation that we offer, in commemoration of Edith Wharton’s birthday on January 24, a story that makes fun of such gatherings by describing one of the more dysfunctional reading discussions in the history of literature.” Heh.
- Maud Newton “on creating the feeling you want the reader to feel“, which opens with the question “Do you think writers have to feel what they want the reader to feel when they’re writing?” What’s interesting here is that this isn’t a “write what you know” question — it’s not about whether or not writers need to feel what their characters feel, but about whether they need to be able to evoke the same state in themselves that they will evoke in their readers. I’m not sure that’s possible, exactly. I think the fact of being the writer of the work always tempers, even if just slightly, the feeling that will be fully accessible to readers — if you’ve done your job right.
A quick reminder that on this Thursday (the 20th), I’ll be leading a discussion of Alcestis at the Blanton Museum Book Club, at 7 pm. The book club will meet in the Susman Gallery on the second floor of the museum. Since it’s Third Thursday, the museum will be open till 9 pm. See the Blanton website for directions and more information on the current exhibitions.
The lovely people at Iambik Audio are producing an audiobook version of Alcestis. Even better: the audiobook will be DRM-free. I’m tremendously excited about this! For now, go take a look at Iambik’s growing (and very impressive) collection of already-available audiobooks.
Just a quick set of links right now, because I am actually, gasp, working on Killingly — and therefore looking at things like this, the most perfect and lovely map of the Massachusetts train system in 1898 that you could imagine, and this account of the architectural changes in Pemberton Square in the late 1880s. And did you know that the Boston Police Department has digitized its annual reports back to 1885? I wonder if they were cooking the numbers even then.
So:
I’m back from a conference and trying to get myself together. This takes more effort than you’d expect, when in the wake of cross-country trips and one of the Worst Migraines of All Time. Ugh. But I’m slowly making progress, and part of that progress involves posting some reminders here about recent and upcoming news.
Thing 1: I will be leading a discussion of Alcestis for the Blanton Museum of Art Book Club in Austin on January 20. (Tiny sidenote: I’m not actually a graduate of the Michener Program, as that link suggests — my creative writing master’s degree is from the UT English department. I am, however, replacing Ted Hughes as the subject of this book club meeting. No, I am not ever going to get tired of mentioning that.) This discussion is linked to the Robert Wilson Alceste print exhibition currently running at the Blanton. I believe we’ll start at 7 pm, but I’ll try to get confirmation of that this week and will update here. If you’re in the Austin area and want to talk about the book, about misbehaving gods, about historical fiction and adaptation — come by and chat!
Thing 2: Many thanks to the fabulous Karen Healey for including Alcestis in her list of favorite books of the year! (Karen’s novel Guardian of the Dead is awaiting me on my Kindle, to be read on my next trip — since I really can’t justify too much pleasure reading when I’m not traveling, this month.)
Thing 3: The delightful Hipster Book Club people asked me to contribute a top 5 list for their end-of-the-year collection. Go to page 2 of that index and you can enjoy my ramblings about my favorite works of the year featuring post-apocalyptic themes. (My original list was chock full of links, but apparently those got lost somewhere along the way. Ah well.)
Thing 4: I feel weird about doing this, but as I’ve seen a number of other writers mention their Hugo/Nebula eligibility lately — Alcestis is eligible for nomination in the fantasy novel category for both the Nebula Awards (for SFWA members) and the Hugos (if you’re a WSFS member). I’m not sure if I’m Campbell-eligible this year, but I’ll let you know when I find out.
And a link to conclude: a short NPR piece on who really wrote the first detective novel. The tone of the piece is a little strange — oddly disparaging about mystery-novel clichés, considering that they weren’t clichés when the first one was written — but the information is interesting.
