PUGGY'S HILL

Early this morning, copperwise posted the unhappy news that our beloved writer, Kage Baker, is going. Here it is; it also appeared in Green Man Review. I want to thank Kage's sister, Kathleen Bartholomew, for taking the time to write such a beautiful letter to us all. In the midst of comforting her sister on her final journey, she comforts us as well. It is an extraordinary gift.

(in addition to his being one of the great writers of our time, that is) Because he is wise, and erudite, and sometimes extremely silly. I enjoyed the chance to talk some - never enough - to Gene Wolfe & his wife Rosemary at Readercon. They drove there from Chicago in the company of young writer C.S.E. Cooney, who, at the con, made sure Rosemary wheelchair got where it needed to go. csecooney's description of their trip, in her July 7-12, 2009 LJ posts, is a joy to read - a running record of what they talked about in the car, and, well, cute things longtime couples say to each other.

I have known the Wolfes since I was a pup: I think I met them first when I was working for David Hartwell and we published The Shadow of the Torturer. I would hang around Gene at conventions, and talk to him about my aspirations as a writer. He gave me excellent advice. I remember one time telling him about trying to create Riverside, and he pointed out that seedy gamblers & their ilk always wore bits & bobs of misplaced finery (I'm not doing him justice, here). I hadn't thought of that. I put that in.

I met up with csecooney and the other Goblin Fruit lasses at their launch party. sevenravens brought her harp, and I was smitten. We sang. The next night, we sang some more. I blasted out a capella ballads, and taught them "Grey Funnel Line" - it was wonderful hearing the harmonies come in strong & true by the 4th verse. I'm afraid I had a little too much of movingfinger's single malt (which, for me, is not that much), and insisted on printing out the lyrics to "A Weekend in the Country" from A Little Night Music and making poor, gifted Miss Cooney do all the parts with me. (O, when did I lose the ability to hear every tune and harmony in my head, and render them perfectly each time? Like Gene & Rosemary, I may well say, "Thank god for the support of the young!")

P.S. And my two Readercon panels really were cracktastic. My favorite takeaway - from a panel I moderated, on readers confusing authors with their characters, featuring the combined brainpower of Peter Straub, Suzy McKee Charnas, Shariann Lewitt & Kit Reed, was the latter's summation:
"I am all my characters. But none of them are me."

Art is central to all our lives, not just the better-off and educated. . . I know that from my own story, and from the evidence of every child ever born — they all want to hear and to tell stories, to sing, to make music, to act out little dramas, to paint pictures, to make sculptures.

This is born in and we breed it out.

And then, when we have bred it out, we say that art is elitist, and at the same time we either fetishize art — the high prices, the jargon, the inaccessibility — or we ignore it.

The truth is, artist or not, we are all born on the creative continuum, and that is a heritage and a birthright of all of our lives.

-- Jeanette Winterson (author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit), from an essay quoted in NYTimes Sunday Book Review, 12/19/08 (line spacing mine)

So glad everyone's enjoying the Bob Morris piece on gay marriage! burgundy sent a link to a really great piece by Sarah Sarasohn of Berkeley, CA (and NPR - gosh, I always thought it was spelt "Saracen"!) from the Washington Post: "A Marriage Form will just be Icing on our Cake." While it also gives you the warm cuddlies, it is longer and more profound than Morris's piece. (It also echoes Delia's & my situation in some entertaining ways that I'll write about later, as I'm on deadline....) I particularly like her analysis:

( quoted here: )

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Meanwhile, deliasherman's trying to create a new website, and finding it a challenge to organize & taxonomize, as she has careers (and publications) in middle-grade/YA and adult fiction. I refer you to her post on the subject. My question: What other authors can you think of with the same issue? How did they deal with it on their sites?

And speaking of YA, I just finished A Drowned Maiden's Hair: A Melodrama (ah! that telltale moment of authorial anxiety - like when I insisted on subtitling Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners and Thomas the Rhymer: A Romance) by Laura Amy Schlitz. Fantastic book. Read, read, read if you like well-rendered period setting with complex characters . . . its other virtues are for you to discover.

• The elegant and affordable paperback edition of Delia Sherman's Changeling will be released on July 17th!

• We've sold Finnish rights to Thomas the Rhymer (to Vaskikirjat). I'm so happy. The translator, Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo, I met at the Dutch Worldcon shortly after the book came out, and she says she's been dreaming of translating it ever since - we've already had some great discussions about the (non-)intersection of British & Finnish mythic material . . . and she's a friend of author Johanna Sinisalo, whose wonderful Troll won the Tiptree. Is there a trip to Finland in our future? One can only dream. . . .

• A friend of a friend sent word of her new book, Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion (Beacon Press, August); author & rabbi Danya Ruttenberg wrote me: It's part-memoir, part cultural criticism, about the personal and political implications of taking on a religious discipline. It's the story of my own post-dotcom, punk rock Third Wave move from atheism into traditional (feminist) Judaism... ( Read more... )

Just found out our pal, author Louise Marley ,is on LJ as lmarley! For people looking for discussions of fiction & how to write it: she's got a lot of good stuff to say, here.

Holy cow! I just found Laurie J. Marks' new(ish - looks like it was put up right before Water Logic came out last year, and I missed it somehow) website. It is just delicious - kind of like being inside the nicest bits of my friend & beloved colleague Laurie's head. We met at, I think it was some WFC too many years ago to count. After she moved to Boston, we took long walks & talked a lot about Life and Writing. I miss her, so it's nice to be able to visit her brain online! I think my favorite bits are The University of Laurie (everything from the "Finish that Novel" fight song to insights from teaching Freshman Comp at UMass), and the online quiz for "Your Elemental Profile," which shows you your mix of elemental magics in her world of Shaftal. Laurie was GoH at Wiscon last year. If you don't know her work, you should.