silvrethorn's Journal
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
silvrethorn's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | | 9:07 pm |
Interesting advice from my writers' group
R., the leader of my local writers' group, came up with the advice that a new writer's breakthrough novel--the first manuscript a writer offers out to publishers--should be reasonably short, in the 300-page range. The reason is simply that a longer manuscript costs more to print (more words equals more ink and more paper for the pages, which runs up the cost), and publishers are more willing to take a risk on a manuscript that requires less investment up front and will recoup the printing costs more quickly (or put less of a dent in the publisher's finances if it tanks). This is a facet of marketing that I hadn't thought of before, but given today's cost-conscious publishers, it makes sense. And if you want to see this concept in action, just line up the Harry Potter books from first to last. Philosopher's Stone is about one-fifth the size of Deathly Hallows. Current Mood:  thoughtful | | Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | | 2:20 am |
Well, that was interesting
One of the major characters in my NaNo novel switched genders. Luckily, I hadn't introduced him/her/it yet, so I don't have to undo anything, but still... Gender switch or no, at least I won't need to change the way I portray this character. Kel may be female if you look down her pants, but she still presents as an androgyne, and a masculine androgyne at that. This novel is getting seriously weird. Current Mood:  confused | | Friday, November 13th, 2009 | | 10:06 pm |
Bummer birthday
Nov. 12th was my dad's birthday. His older brother called that morning to wish him joy, and informed him that, oh by the way, Older Brother, who's nearly 80, had had a bad fall back in May (!) and spent 18 days in the hospital (!!), then a month in rehab because his kneecap had to be put back together with screws. Disturbing news, especially since Uncle Fester didn't bother to tell us any of this while it was going on, and now there's some question of whether Uncle Fester can come to Thanksgiving dinner. But there was an even worse surprise awaiting us when we got back from Dad's birthday dinner at Outback. We got a call informing us that Aunt Gaga, who's been in a nursing home for many years, was seriously ill with pneumonia and possible lung cancer, and if we wanted to see her again we'd better hurry. This morning, the day after Dad's birthday, he got the news that his sister had died. Gee. Happy birthday, Dad. Current Mood:  depressed | | Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | | 5:16 pm |
Signs and wonders
So, on Nov. 2nd, the second day of NaNo when I've written around 5,000 words and am already a little burned out, I go for a short walk around the neighborhood. There on the ground right in front of me, I find an ibis feather. Not the plain, white little body feathers they mostly shed, the kind that might have come from a chicken or duck, but a beautiful white flight feather with a black tip. What makes this odd is, the Egyptian god of scribes and writers, Thoth, is always depicted as having the head of an ibis. Coincidence? I think not. Yes, this story seriously intends to get written. I've never gotten anywhere near as many "signs and wonders" with other stories as I have with this one. It's beginning to creep me out. Current Mood:  nervous | | Monday, October 5th, 2009 | | 1:28 pm |
An unwelcome friend
Some Russian person pushing a get-rich-quick scheme has randomly friended my LJ journal. I reported this to LJ, but I can't seem to remove this interloper from my friends list. Does anybody know how to get unwanted lurkers off the list? Is there even a way to do this? Current Mood:  annoyed | | Sunday, October 4th, 2009 | | 12:48 pm |
Book review: Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott
In the interest of fairness, any review of this first novel needs to start off with the disclaimer that the author’s previous books have been biographies, not works of fiction. It is understandable, then, that this novel is at least as much of a biography of Isaac Newton as it is a mystery story. In fact, by the end, the whole thing comes off as something of a vehicle for the author to advance a sinister theory about Isaac Newton’s rise in the academic world of the 1660’s--a speculative proposal that would not be acceptable in the form of a “straight” biography, but can be safely fielded embedded in a work of fiction. Biographical leanings aside, this is very much a mystery story. Or is it a ghost story? It begins with one Cameron Brown, a neuroscientist at Cambridge, arriving for a visit to his biographer-mother’s house only to find her corpse floating in the lake behind her house. As a final tribute to her, Cameron talks his writer friend and ex-lover Lydia Brooke into finishing the almost-completed manuscript about the alchemical connections of Isaac Newton that Elizabeth Vogelsang left behind. It is while trying to fill the mysterious gaps and holes that riddle those final chapters that Lydia discovers a link between a series of seven deaths in 1660’s Cambridge and a mysteriously similar spate of deaths happening around Lydia’s modern-day Cambridge, of which Elizabeth’s drowning death is one. Her quest for answers leads her to a psychic, a violent animal-rights group, a centuries-dead murderer, and back into the arms of her lover. The reviews on the back jacket of Ghostwalk almost unanimously called it an “intelligent mystery.” “Cerebral” would have been nearer the mark. The pace is slow, and slowed even further by the curiously passionless love affair between the narrator, Lydia, and the married, philandering Cameron. The narrator also, often and disconcertingly, breaks from the first-person to address Cameron directly; it’s a jarring device, and I found myself asking “ ‘You,’ who?” most of the times I encountered it. The pace of this book is very British, which is to say leisurely, and throwing in whole chapters of the fictional biography Elizabeth had written does nothing to enliven the pace. The breadcrumbs of mystery, however, are cleverly enough distributed to keep you reading, and the overlapping of the 17th century and the 21st is an interesting device. If you’re feeling patient and intellectual, this is an excellent read. Current Mood: thoughtful | | Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | | 9:40 pm |
Oh pleasepleaseplease!
One of our city councilmen is making noises about having citywide WiFi service introduced for the use of the police and fire-rescue people, and also for us city residents. I can live with packing up the laptop and trekking down to the library several times a week to use their WiFi (when it's working), but having city-wide service would be ever so much better. I'm crossing all cross-able body parts hoping this suggestion comes to fruition. Current Mood:  hopeful | | Sunday, September 27th, 2009 | | 12:02 pm |
Coincidence, or just weirdness?
Once upon a time, back when I first conceived the idea for my fantasy novel Ever Summer, which involves alchemy among other magical-type things, a friend who had no clue what I was working on gave me a whacking big book on alchemy completely out of the blue. When I contemplated working on Ever Summer as my NaNo project last year, a book called Hedge Witch (another type of character in the proposed novel) came out, plus for no particular reason my mother started reading a book that had to do with, you guessed it, alchemy. Now, having decided to absolutely do Ever Summer for NaNo this year, the first Random Mystery of the Week I selected from the shelves, with no idea of its content, involves...drumroll...alchemy. Apparently, mystical forces are aligning to get this novel written, which is fine and good, but they really, really need to give me some kind of plot if they expect me to write this thing. Current Mood:  weird | | Friday, September 25th, 2009 | | 8:19 pm |
The Random Mystery Novel of the Week project
In response to the suspicion that I'm out of touch with the current mystery market, I'm trying something new and possibly stupid. Basically, every Friday as I'm leaving the library, I'm going to the mystery section, picking a random book off the shelf, reading it over the weekend and posting a critique here at LJ when I'm finished. My only criterion in picking my random books is that they must be reasonably new (post-2000), because re-reading Agatha Christie really isn't going to help me decipher what today's publishers want. I might also go a little out of my way in seeking out period mysteries, since that's the market I'm aiming for, but beyond that I'm just curious to see a cross-section of what gets published. I can't say I'm off to a very good start, though. The book I got today, Ghostwalk, is British, and the British have a much higher tolerance for tedious, descriptive set-ups than American readers (and, by extension, publishers) do. I like the premise, though, and I have hopes that once the plot gets rolling the pace will pick up. I've seen that pattern a lot in British writing, and unfortunately absorbed it into my own writing style over the years, which is why I should not be reading fiction from across the pond right now. Current Mood: hopeful | | Monday, September 21st, 2009 | | 1:19 pm |
Shimo, two years later
Today is the official second anniversary of the day I brought Shimo the betta fish home from Petsmart. Two years is a good, long time for a betta to last--most of mine faded after one year, and none of Shimo's predecessors lived as long, especially not in such good health as Shimo enjoys. To celebrate, here are two pictures of the "birthday boy," one taken the day I got him and one taken yesterday. Besides developing a slight hump in his spine that keeps him from spreading his tail properly, he hasn't really changed much.  This is Shimo then, taken in natural light.  And this is Shimo yesterday, taken indoors with a flash. He hasn't gotten darker, it's just the lighting. And yes, the camera lens aggravates him (it looks like an eye). Most betta fish his age don't bother to make threat displays anymore, so he's pretty spry for an old guy, eh? Current Mood: pleased | | Saturday, September 19th, 2009 | | 5:06 pm |
A fun writing exercise
Fun because it doesn't require any actual work on our parts, but is an excuse to take a fun field trip. The exercise is: Go to the fiction section of your favorite library or book store. Pull books off the shelves completely at random and read the opening sentence (or paragraph if it's short). Coming up with a snappy opener is always a challenge. Looking at how a random selection of published authors did it is enlightening, inspiring, amusing and sometimes cringe-worthy, depending on the genre and the writer's skill level. Plus you can crib the openers you particularly liked for your own use, but I didn't really say that. Current Mood: mischievous | | Sunday, September 13th, 2009 | | 10:00 pm |
The Samurai on the Chartreuse Pony
Yeah, that samurai book I back-doored from the library was worth it, if only for this quote about samurai horses: "Other proud owners dyed their mounts in hues of crimson, purple, chartreuse and sky blue, or added stripes, so as to highlight their steeds' magnificence." I did not know this, but it definitely qualifies as a Fun Fact (and one I can't possibly use in a story because nobody would believe it). I'm assuming, of course, that the horses that were dyed chartreuse or sky blue were white to begin with. I can't see colors that pale "taking" on a bay or chestnut, never mind a black. Current Mood: surprised | | 12:15 pm |
Why do I have these creatures?
The "Delete" key on my laptop keyboard suddenly stopped deleting, for reasons unknown. After struggling with it for a little bit, I turned the computer on its end and looked under the malfunctioning key. A few seconds later, with the help of a pair of needle-nose tweezers, I removed a chunk of bird kibble from under the Delete button. I'm used to digging kibble shrapnel out of the soles of my feet and plucking parakeet down off the computer screen, but how the heck did kibble manage to end up in my keyboard? Psyche and Spirit are turning into regular little sharp-shooters if they can send their food winging that far afield and lodge it in the innards of a closed laptop. Current Mood: aggravated | | Thursday, September 10th, 2009 | | 3:24 pm |
I love working at the library
When our local Barnes & Noble bookstore moved to its new location back in March, they donated boxes and boxes of books to the library. I helped unpack and sort those boxes, and saw a lovely, shiny, great big book on samurai fighting techniques that I couldn't wait to hit the shelves so I could check it out. Unfortunately, the donated books aren't priority, so they've been sitting on a book cart in a corner since April, still waiting to be processed. However, when I finally lost patience and asked when I would ever be able to take that samurai book home, my boss express-processed it just for me and reserved it in my name, so I got to bring it home with me Tuesday. Now that's a perk I can live with. Current Mood: happy | | Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 | | 3:37 pm |
Because the Internet sucks as a research tool
I just bought a new book. It's A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Japan and Northeast Asia. Why pay $30 for a book when I could look up all those Japanese birds on the World Wide Web? Well, because typing in the names of Japanese birds takes me to sites with no pictures, no range maps, and/or no helpful information about said birds. Unless, that is, I was dying to know all there is to know about the etymology of their Latin names. And unless you count the blurry photo of a tiny gray warbler perched on the tip of a branch, apparently shot through a telescope at several miles' distance, as a useful picture. I did find a few links to recordings of their songs, but for some reason my computer can't find the applications it needs to play those files, and Media Player was no help. Actually, come to think of it, getting any information at all about Japanese flora and fauna has been like pulling teeth. The only English-language guide to Japanese wildflowers is out of print, and consequently costs $100 and up any time it appears for sale, which isn't often. Apparently nobody goes to Japan to look at nature, so there is zero demand for nature guides. And come to think of it, I should have stocked up on British nature guides when I went there years ago, because you can't get those very easily in this country, either (swats self on head). Current Mood: annoyed | | Thursday, August 13th, 2009 | | 8:56 pm |
Stick a fork in those vampires...
They're done. Since I started doing processing at the library, I swear practically every young adult book I've handled is a vampire story. Thank you, Twilight, for over-exposing the genre all over again (and thank you Ms. Rice for ruining it the first time around, plus poisoning New Orleans forever as a setting). Current Mood: pissed off | | Friday, August 7th, 2009 | | 8:48 pm |
Secret agent man?
Some time back, I traveled behind a car with this actual, standard-issue, non-vanity license tag: 007 FBI. My all-time favorite tag is still the vanity tag on the hearse that read XPIRED, but this one was pretty cool, too (the more so for being accidental). On a related note, just the other day I pulled up behind a pickup truck at a light that had the the vanity tag NYUK. My Three Stooges fan proceeded to live up to his vanity plate when we started moving again and he immediately tried to change lanes on top of the car beside him. Guess that makes him a nyuklehead, eh? Current Mood: amused | | Friday, July 24th, 2009 | | 9:29 pm |
Never underestimate the power of a woman with a socket wrench
In the space of a single morning, I did this to my dad's now-empty eyesore of a car shed:  Yeah, he's pissed. But he won't be falling down anymore while trying to drag junk under there. Or parking any more junk vehicles. I'm so mean. Current Mood: jubilant | | Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 | | 2:09 pm |
Tea! And toads!
Those two subjects really go together well, don't they? Mom's 70th birthday is a few days away, so she took Tuesday off and we and Miss Friend (code name for Mom's best friend) went to the charming little tourist town of Mount Dora about 50 miles south of my hometown. I had phoned ahead and reserved a full, multi-course afternoon tea at The Garden Gate Tearoom, so we shopped a little, then trooped into the tearoom for tea. Oh, my. First came a lovely little salad with a salmon puff (warm from the oven) and the most delicious citrus house dressing. That was followed by a palate cleanser--a tart little dab of lime sorbet. This is especially delicious if you stick the spearmint leaf that came with it into your mouth and chew it a little as you eat the sorbet, but I got carried away and swallowed the leaf by accident halfway through the course. Then came the finger sandwiches on a three-tiered serving dish. Just so you know, honey butter tastes really good on an egg salad sandwich. Why? I have no idea, but it really works. Then, when we had cleared the sandwich plates, the pastries appeared--cream puffs with home-made cream, little lemon tartlets topped with fresh berries, enormous chocolate-dipped strawberries (out of season for Florida and kind of bland, unfortunately), and still-warm scones with jam and clotted cream. The cost? $18 per person, but it was so worth it. And now, the toads part. We have toads! They're all over the yard, so they obviously hatched from somewhere nearby. It's been years and years since we had toads in the yard, so I'm very happy to see them. They're all looking fat, too, so I'm hoping they'll thrive and maybe lay eggs in one of my ponds. Current Mood: happy | | Friday, July 17th, 2009 | | 8:47 pm |
Totally hopeless
I finally signed up for Netflix the other day. I now have hundreds of thousands of movies at my beck and call, but I haven't put a single one in my queue because I can't remember the titles of the ones I wanted to watch. I guess I'll have to go to Blockbuster down the street and look at the titles on their shelves, but shopping for Netflix orders at the store it's rapidly putting out of business just seems so...wrong, somehow. Ah, modern life. Current Mood: guilty |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
silvrethorn's journal