PUGGY'S HILL

I am back at the Undisclosed Location (housesitting for friends in Western Mass.) where I so happily wrote large chunks of The Privilege of the Sword. I am blissfully happy - and doing as little Social Networking (or even email) as possible, while I work on New Novel. I am a Creature of Extremes.

However, I need your help:

A teenage girl in my Riverside city. She is very tall, thin, and has reddish hair. Spending her "sub-Deb[utante]" year with the other noble girls, learning to be a young lady. They give her an unflattering nickname (eta) mostly referring to her height - (though, as you know, mean girls will seize on anything to augment that). I can only think of "Beanpole" - do you have anything better, either from personal experience or a cleverer mind? (I know that Delia, who was the tallest girl in her class, was called "String" - but that was partly from her name, Cordelia = Cordie = String. My girl's name is Jessica.)

ETA: Also, taunts for tall people (like the one Kat Langrish added in Comments: "How's the weather up there?")

Thanks!

And if you were so taunted, I hope you've lived to laugh in all their faces!

 Yes, this week my FaceBook Page is all about Fencing!  Especially Women's Fencing!

Why?

Because Audible.com has thrown up an ad there for the new The Privilege of the Sword (TPOTS) audiobook, and I want to see it!

It is one of those things that pops up in response to your interests - and my liaison there (She Who is Known as Neil's Representative on Earth) rather cleverly thought that while the Olympics were on, we could bag a lot of eyeballs from Women's Fencing Enthusiasts, and bring them over to Riverside.  But in order to see the ad pop up myself, I must mention mittens fencing. And so must all my friends!!!  In comments on my page, I guess - and maybe even, as one person suggested, on their own?  ("Try getting your friends to mention women's fencing as well.. that sometimes helps direct the ads.") 

We are having a lot of fun in the Comments.  And I am learning all sorts of things about people's pasts with swords - Who knew Jane Yolen was a fencer in college? that Tiffany Trent does Chinese straightsword? that Lucy Sussex's student is "writing a book on a C17th French woman fencer and opera singer. Also burnt down a nunnery."  ?

Come join us - it's a great lark!  (FYI:  I am happy to accept pretty much anyone as a FB friend. Feel free to drop me a message letting me know who you are - but it's not a requirement anymore.)

In other news: I have a new computer.  And I fell down a manhole in Lowell.  But I am, as you can see, all right.*  


*I will write it up later today, as it's not the sort of thing that happens often - and, yes, I was thinking as I sat nursing my pride and my wounds, "I can use this!"  So don't want to forget.  A brief spasm of concern for the fact that latest research shows if you've experienced a traumatic incident you're supposed to think of fluffy puppies & like that, rather than to dwell on it . . . But so far my dreams have been benign and my bruises are healing, so I think that's all right.  One of the nice things about having a short attention span.

'Tis the Season for all the 2011 Award Nominations - and we* are just thrilled to find ourselves up for these, for our revival of the classic Bordertown series - for a new audience.  If you could possibly spare a few moments, your vote could count a lot:

• Teenreads.com, in association with the Children’s Book Council (CBC) and Every Child a Reader (ECAR) has announced their 2012 Teen Choice Book of the Year Nominees – and we’re nominated! Voting closes on February 15. The 5 titles that receive the most votes will serve as finalists for the CBC’s 2012 Teen Choice Book of the Year. So please head over here and vote your faves - we hope Welcome to Bordertown will be one of them!

• Welcome to Bordertown made the Locus Online Recommended Reading List under Best Anthology!  Which should be enough for anyone - but it also puts us on the docket for the Locus Awards Ballot.  You don't need to be a Locus subscriber to vote: 
http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2012/PollAndSurvey.html

The fine thing about all this is that the ballots are broad - you have a chance to see and vote for lots of other nominees in many other categories (coughcough like Delia Sherman's The Freedom Maze in Locus' Best Young Adult Books)  - and to get recommendations for fabulous stuff you may even not have read!

*That would be my co-editor, Holly Black ( blackholly ), B'town series creator (and my co-author on the title story) Terri Windling, and the whole collection of Authors for Welcome to Bordertown!  Plus our husbands, wives, and dogs. And cats. The cats are thrilled, too; they're just better at hiding it.

. . . . And NOT in a GOOD way.

Have returned home from Cleveland to my laptop, to find that on my laptop I am having sudden ghastly trouble with Apple 3.6 Mail: it seems to have updated itself somehow without warning, and now refuses to *send* anything.  As in, the "Send" glyph is dark, and unresponsive, and even the pulldown menu MESSAGE>SEND is greyed out.  I'm receiving just fine.  

I've also got the mail working fine on my iPhone & iPad - I think it did some kind of stealth upgrade when I started with the new iPad last week, since that's when it started making dear little whooshing noises when it sent mail.  But I was having no trouble with it then.  I turned it off Friday, and turned it on this afternoon, and the Mail told me there were exciting new things I could do. (I can now think of a few exciting new things I can think of for it to do . . . but never mind.)

I have OSX 10.5.8.

I am not clever at any of this, so unless you know a quick & obvious fix, please don't leave elaborate suggestions here which I won't understand.  Instead, please Comment here with a time that I can IM or phone you. Thank you.

BONUS POINTS:  So I added some new Apps to the iPad (under my brother Philip's tutelage), and they are all trying automatically to load themselves onto my iPhone without even being asked.  I bet there's a button I can push for that (to make it not happen, I mean).  Isn't there?

Assured one of my anxious Hollins students that there are web pages that briefly & clearly tell historical/fantasy writers how long it takes to get places on horseback or by carriage (and how it all works).

Am I right?

We're in Post Production right now with gifted, hardworking producer/director Sue Zizza, who is merrily editing the trax we recorded in November with our all-star cast,  including:

Art by Ilene Winn-Lederer (also illustrator for for my children's book, The Golden Dreydl, a super-nice person and incredibly versatile, talented artist!).  This art will also be the CD cover for a 2-CD set that we're producing, consisting of the entire 59-minute audio drama, plus 11 new tracks of music from the show!  We'll let you know when it's available.  Meanwhile:

"Can I hear The Witches of Lublin on my beloved local public radio station this April?"

I hear you cry.

The answer is:

Maybe.

First, your local station needs to know that the show exists, and that their listeners want to hear it on their air.  So here's what you must do*:

• Go to this handy listing of NPR stations
• Type in your Zip Code
• Click through ("more info") to your local station's homepage
• Find "Contact Us" there, and
• send a note along these lines:

( *Sample Letter to Stations* )

It really will make a difference - so on behalf of our talented team of musicians, actors, writers & producers, I thank you in advance.  This is about the time stations are nailing down April programming, so it's just the right time for you to step in and help make it possible for everyone in your community to get to enjoy The Witches of Lublin.  There's lots more info on our website, including full cast bios, plot synopsis, music sample, and more to come!


* Obviously, if you already  know how to contact your station, you can jump this bit about how to find yours!

I've just hit SEND - heaven help us!

* * *

Dear Welfords,

I hope this is the strangest request you ever receive from a guest - but not the most inconvenient!

I'm the friend of Elizabeth-Jane Baldry's, with whom we were visiting in Devon when she declared that we'd be fools not to stay at Gwydir Castle while we were ambling about in Wales this week. My partner, Delia Sherman, and I are both writers, and as she is doing a story set in a haunted manor house (involving Sherlock Holmes and some automatons for a "steam-punk" anthology), we figured it was fate, and are delighted to be staying with you tomorrow night.

To my dismay, I've just gotten page proofs from my editor for a story, and he wants a very quick turnaround. (Editor is in Australia, publisher's in San Francisco - and I am currently on a Welsh sheep farm!)

It's a complex piece, and I'd much prefer to be able to go over it in printed-out hard copy. I attach a PDF of the entire work, since that's what he sent, but not that my story is ONLY pages 279 - 290 of the ms. If there were any way for you to print out just those 12 pages for me to go over when we reach the castle, I'd be terrifically grateful. As Judy's also an author, I'm hoping this will all make sense to her.

That said, I know it's a madly busy weekend for you there. If you can't manage, I'll understand completely. I'll still be able to see the text on my laptop screen here, so I'm sure it will be fine. Apologies in advance for being such a bother!

Many thanks,
Ellen

Bet you never thought you'd hear that, did you?

But the Interstitial Arts Foundation is trying to diagnose a problem we're having with donations on Click & Pledge. As you probably know, we're running a big "Crowdfund" drive to fund our next anthology, Interfictions 2. A fabulous person in Australia has been unable to make her donation online at C&P, and we think it might be the slowness of her connection: "the hang comes at the point where credit card data would be processed through a high-bit security filter."

Our trouble-shooter suggests we attempt to replicate the experiment, and asks: Do we know of anyone else with a reeeeaaallly sllllooooww connection who would try a small donation as a backup test?

While I hate to wish a bad connection on anyone, in this case I'm hoping one of you might fit the bill & be willing to give it a whirl. CLICK HERE TO HELP SPONSOR INTERFICTIONS2

And this is clearly a good time to remind you that donors of $375 or more sent by June 30 will have their names printed on the Sponsors page of the actual book! (After that, we'll try, but depends on the printer's schedule.) REally, though, any donation, large or small, is tremendously important to us. A few tax-deductible $$ thrown our way goes a long way to support interstitial fiction!

(Yes, we have access to PayPal, but for reasons I try not to understand, we prefer not to use it.)

Some things you just can't believe.

Like the big set of (12?) cheapie French drinking glasses I bought myself at a box store when I moved to Boston for I'm sure less than $25 - now the factory's gone out of biz (after, what, 100 years?) and they've become Collectable! Just when Delia was pointing out that we've broken nearly all the 12-oz glasses over the years..... Amusing details on all this here and here and these folks point out that "the original Picardie glass pattern favored by European bistros was one of our best selling glassware patterns until Bormioli retired it and replaced it with Picardie Bar." Argh! It Will Not Do.

I have found a new set of 6 on eBay for a ridiculous sum, and am about to punch in my PayPal - but right now, must run out to Vital to see a friend's show. Meanwhile, this ray of hope: According to one chat room about 6 months ago, Duralex Picardie glasses are still "at many Cost Plus World Market stores --- but you'll have to go to your local store and check. While there is a picture of them... on their Website, they aren't available on line. However, for the time being they are in stock in the stores at a reasonable price"
I know Saturday is a big shopping day. IF you have a World Market store near you and IF you're heading out there.... Well... We have plenty of the small ones; what I need is the tall ones that holds 12 oz. They are approximately 4. 3/4 inches in height and 3. 1/2 inches in diameter at the drinking rim. ADDED: Oh, boy! They're there, all right: the mighty just_ann_now found me a bunch by her in Virginia. I forgot to explain that NYC has no Cost Plus World Market stores. I'm shameless, but not evil. Anyway, I now officially love her forever. You all should go and see if they have them by you - they're great!

From one site: "According to Wikipedia (French) the word Duralex comes from the Latin maxim dura lex sed lex (The Law is hard but it is The Law)."

Ain't it the truth.

I've been invited to donate something to a romance & thriller author Brenda Novak's 5th Online Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research (I like her already: it's always disgruntling to be told an auction is to benefit a disease).

I don't see any reason not to. My question for you is: What shall I offer? A signed book or two is easy. But which one? Thomas the Rhymer won some kind of romance award, I think - as did TPOTS, come to that. But mailing things is such a nuisance. (No, really. I'm awful about mailing.) It would be so much easier simply to airily offer to auction off the chance to have lunch with me here in NYC. So easy: all I have to do is show up, and someone else picks up the bill. But would anyone bid? Would such an offer appear arrogant? or New York Centric? (and would I really rather sit through lunch with a random total stranger than go to the post office...?)

I guess my other question for you is: has anyone else donated something to this auction? or bid in the past?