Month: May 2018

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Wednesday Reads/Listens: Catch Up Post

Welcome to Wednesday Reads/Listens!  It’s been a hot moment since I did one of these.   So here you go!

What I’ve Been Reading:

The Only Harmless Great Thing – Brooke Bolander

Everyone read this book. Everyone read this book and then come talk to me about it. Because this is a slim but majestic book that will leave you breathless with the delight of the prose.

The Sumage Solution – by Gail Carriger

Oh this was a delight and I cannot wait for the next one. The worldbuilding is great and the characterization is delightful and I super love the way that she builds her stories

Omega Required – Dessa Lux

The first novel length story from this author and I looove this one. I love her worldbuilding and her shifters and just the amount of sleep I lost over this book cause I couldn’t stop reading it. I really hope there are like 20 sequels to this.

The City Born Great – N.K. Jemisin
A short story but an AMAZING one. Definitely pick this one up. It’s hard to describe, but definitely worth the time.

Emily Wilson’s The Odyssey –

Oh. OH. This translation is everything I wanted and never knew I needed.

A Queen From The North – Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese

This was absolutely delightful – an alternate universe of England where everything is just a little to the left and it’s positively awesome.

The Brightest Fell – Seanan McGuire

It’s okay. I didn’t need my heart. Totally fine.

A whole lot of Ursula K. LeGuin essays and books and stories- but that’s going to have to be a separate post.

And a whole bunch of fanfic and news articles.  Poke me if you want some of those links!

What I’ve Been Listening To (podcasts that make me scream in delight, send shivers down my spine, tickle me because of the sheer meta levels of NERD, and generally give me A Strong Emotion):

Steal The Stars – a wholly interesting audio drama full of twists and turns and some excellent character moments. Protagonist is female and completely kick ass.  This is the inaugural podcast of Tor Labs and it’s weird and quirky and I sort of want to know more and I sort of am happy with where they left it.

Ars Paradoxica – This continues to delight and thrill me and I’m going to be sad when it ends. Featuring an ace female protagonist!!!  Also time travel,  so much weird, small government towns, and a Partridge in a pair tree.

The Bright Sessions – OH this one is so good. SO GOOD and I am sad to see it ending too even if there are more spinoffs planned.  Just SO much emotional connection to these characters and their stories and just OMG.  I remain forever emotionally compromised by this show and I welcome it because it’s brilliant and just so amazing.

Tanis/The Last Movie/The Black Tapes/Rabbits – how much do I love these? Let me count the ways. I love the plotting and the craft and the everything. I love that I am incredibly terrified that one of these days I will actually have to listen to Nic Silver die over the radio because his reporter dumb can’t stop touching the thing. MK is amazing. I have serious qualms about Alex’s ethical boundaries and I super love the messiness of it all.  I feel for Strand.   I adore Carly Parker so hardcore.   I love how they captured the weird spooky feeling you get when you visit some places in the Pacific Northwest.

I’m pretty sure all four are connected and it’s gonna end with them accidentally raising an Elder God ( I could go on, but then we verge into spoiler territory).

Casefile True Crime – this is sincerely the best true crime podcast out there. I love the host, the music, the research they put into everything. It’s amazing.  ESPECIALLY the series about the Night Stalker/East Area Rapist/Golden State Killer.

The FBI Basement – recaps of the X-Files from the beginning with a whole host of hysterical characters. I love the nerdery involved and all the details they mention and just everything.

Why Is This Happening – Chris Hayes’ new podcast and it’s awesome. It’s SO worth it. He covers some amazing topics and it’s great to hear him and the experts he talks to break down the subject matter into easily understandable chunks.

I will stop there for the evening.  But hey, if you’ve read any of these books or listened to any of these podcasts, come chat with me!   I’d love to hear what other people think of any of the above.

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The Royal Wedding

So this weekend, I like many other people watched the latest Royal Wedding. It was glorious. The ceremony was gorgeous, the bride and groom looked like they were truly in love. I still cannot get over how lovely the bride’s mother was. It was pure class all the way through.

It also was astoundingly progressive for the royal family and a good marker of how the British monarchy has changed and evolved.

For those of you who might not be aware of it, the last time a member of the Windsor family fell in love with an American divorcee, it ended up with a constitutional crisis only resolved by an abdication and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it broke the royal family for several generations.

The abdication of Edward for Wallis Simpson was seen by many people as one of the highest forms of betrayal/treason. He passed up on his sworn God-given duty for the love of a woman who at the time was in no way politically or socially suited or suitable to be Queen consort, according to the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions. It also conflicted with Edward’s position as the titular head of the Church of England, which at the time, frowned deeply upon remarrying after divorce if the ex-spouse was still alive. That’ll be important later.

With his abdication, the throne passed to his brother, King George and it made his niece, Elizabeth, the new Heir Presumptive, later Queen.

The effects of the abdication were still felt years later on, as her sister, Princess Margaret wanted to marry Group- Captain Peter Townsend, a divorce, with two sons from the previous marriage. Likewise with her uncle, Parliment did not approve, and Elizabeth as Queen and Head of the Church, could not approve. The romance was eventually fizzled out (with significant help from the government) and both parties married others, however it did open a breach between the sisters.

Still later on, in 1992, her annus horribilis (horrible year), both Princes Andrew and Charles separated from their wives and Princess Anne separated from her husband. All three separations ended in divorce. Out of the three, only two of them ever remarried. The Princess Anne and Prince Charles.

Any controversy over Charles, who would inherit the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England, marrying a divorcee were laid to rest when the Queen, the government, AND the Church of England all gave their consent to the marriage. That was 2005.

Now, in 2018, Prince Harry has been able to marry a gorgeous mixed-race American divorcee in Meghan Markle with the full blessing of his grandmother and the government. So instead of breaking the family further instead it seems like this marriage will heal a lot of the previous damage done. Several commentators remarked on how this wedding moreso than some of the previous royal weddings will be the one to change the world. It has already changed England.

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On The Art of Scheduling…

I was at a convention this past weekend and while that writeup is coming (short version: it was the nerd version of being wrapped up in a soft warm blanket fresh out of the drier), I am actually writing today about something that happened while I was there.   It came up during one of the panels I was on, in response to the question of “why have I not finished this nerd show?”

Short answer:  I was getting around to it, it was on the list, but I wasn’t going to be able to watch it live and I knew that going in.  So I did what I do for several of my shows and I plotted out time for it in a couple of months.    The moment stuck with me though on how true that is.   Or rather specifically about how when you become a professional creative person and you start making appearances at one of these things, you come to the realization very very quickly that scheduling is not only a necessity but also a blessing.

Not just for your actual creative works, but also for the ways in which you creatively recharge. I am a writer and while I deeply love to write and I love the act of writing stories and creating new worlds and cultures…I can’t make that the thing I do for ALL of my spare time not used for sleeping/eating/the day job.

Burnout, my friends, is A Thing that comes for us all. So it is good to take the time for watching movies or shows or reading books. It’s feeding your brain and your imagination while also giving yourself a bit of a break from the heavy lifting of the creative work you’re pursuing. Even though it’s fun and it doesn’t always seem like work, it really is.

However, there’s the flip side where feeding your brain and imagination is all you do and you never really get around to the writing or painting or recording and that’s no good if you’re serious about trying to make this a career.

Balance and scheduling are the keys that have worked for me the best. So I have my day planner and my online calendar for the house and I just start plotting out blocks of time here and there. For example, the last couple of months, the house has been going through the five seasons of Fringe during the weekdays when we’re not feeling like watching the news. We’re almost done with season 5 and after that, we’ll pick up another thing we’ve been meaning to watch and start that.

I’ve got on my list to finish Black Sails seasons 2-4, the first season of Star Trek Discovery, The Clone Wars, and Star Wars Rebels. Westworld Season Two is currently airing and I also have the last season of Orphan Black waiting for me and two seasons of the Librarians. And those are just the shows that I would like to have finished by the time Dragon*Con rolls around.

That is also not counting the movies that are coming out in the next six months or the book releases. My to be read pile is actually taller than me at this point. But since I don’t have a Time Turner or an Amulet or infinite time, I have to schedule things out in such a way to where I’m making progress on the writing front and yet also balancing that with watching and reading here and there.

Some days it works better than other. Sometimes not. That’s life.

So for all of you fellow creatives out there, what do you do? How do you keep the balance between work and recreational stuff?

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Con Appearances!

This was supposed to go up last week, but I was laid low by a stomach bug and my body has reminded me that I am no longer in my twenties and pushing through is not really a reliable thing I can do anymore.

So with that being said, here are the cons that I am confirmed for this season:

Wholanta – Atlanta, May 4-6  Where I will be mostly hanging out on the Otherworlds track or learning at the feet of one of my writing mentors, Lee Martindale.   Her work is here and you should definitely check it out.

Hypericon – Nashville, July 6-8 :  doing panels, having fun, and definitely not spending too much time in the gaming room.   Our Guest of Honor is Sherrilyn Kenyon and you should definitely check us out.

Dragon*Con:  Atlanta, August 30 – Sept 3:  Teaching workshops, doing panels, and hanging out with the other authors by the bar.  Surest way to find me is the Sci-Fi Classics panel room or Hanover A-B.   There are SO many awesome people coming this year- I cannot wait.

Imaginarium: Louisville,  Oct 5-7:  Teaching workshops, doing panels, and hanging out with all the other authors.  Literally if you are a writer who wants to learn and socialize and network, this is the con for you.

Anything else will be added when I learn about it!   But that’s where I will be this convention season.   Please come up and introduce yourself!  I love meeting new people.

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