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lj_maintenance.
We've added some fantastic new vgifts to help you spread holiday cheer. We also hope you'll honor AIDS Awareness Month by purchasing virtual red ribbons. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine.
In honor of all the brilliant writers on LiveJournal, we've created a brand new community: ljlimericks! Each week, we'll enter a handful of limericks into a poll (which we'll tuck snugly under an LJ-Cut). The winning poem will be published in the following newsletter. In addition, the author will receive a virtual blue ribbon! If you have the time, come drop us a rhyme. Please keep the "Nantucket" stuff on the downlow, since this is a youth-friendly community. Our first prompt is: Insomnia in winter.
We're back with more incredible images from our global photography community. Congratulations to sempre_marseeya, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our second lj_photophile poll.
Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay warm and safe out there!
The desert is beautiful. Looking out the window at all this snow, I miss it. Although right now, this desert is probably covered in snow too.
Originally published at JeremiahTolbert.com. You can comment here or there.
Originally published at Vylar Kaftan. You can comment here or there.
My dad used to read to me almost every night. We worked our way through lots of classics, including the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Winnie-the-Pooh, Little Women, Lord of the Rings, and Treasure Island.
I was a high energy kid, and sometimes I couldn’t sit still for the reading, so I jumped around the room and bounced on the bed. Dad would ask if I was listening, and I said yes (it was true), and he’d go on. Sometimes I’d curl up next to him and read the page myself as he read aloud. Somehow I couldn’t listen unless I was also doing something else, a trait which continues today. But I was definitely listening, and have fond memories of these books (except Treasure Island, which bored me).
Dad liked to do voices, and he read with great enthusiasm. But it was because he had a listener. When he retired, he tried recording books for the blind, and he said it just wasn’t the same.
1) Did your parents read to you when you were a kid? What did they read?
2) If you’re a parent today, do you read to your kids? What do you read?
Stuff I’ve enjoyed recently: Apex has an awesomely creepy story by fellow VDer Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, “59 Beads”:
Air limousines floated by like ghosts in a night filled with a jangle of sounds. A mad juxtaposition of chords, wailing voices and crooned-out tunes mangled by the sound of honking horns, curses and the cries of the desperate filled the dark streets. Cordoba’s End, home to migrants and refugees.
After their parents succumbed to the rot, Pyn and Sienna wandered the streets of Cordoba. Together, they trekked the back side of the posh quarter. Ecstasy street, Ilona’s Oord, Sonatina’s Point, the words tasted as exotic and beautiful as the places themselves.
“You think we’ll ever be rich enough to live on High End?” Sienna asked.
“I don’t know,” Pyn said.
Rochita is also blogging over at Jeff Vandermeer’s blog on Writing from the Context of my Culture.
I’ve also been reading the anthology Federations by John Joseph Adams, which, while it contains many good stories, isn’t really my cup of tea–there are far too many stories focusing on the military or pseudo-military of the Federations to appeal to me. But I’ve found two gems so far, Yoon Ha Lee “Swanwatch”, about a poet exiled to a space station overlooking a black hole where people commit suicide, and tasked with turning their deaths into art. Very intriguing concept, and a sparse execution that works up to a punchy ending. In a, er, much different vein, “The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousness” by James Alan Gardner, is what would happen if Intergalactic civilisations developped a consciousness, and started looking for their soulmates using 21st-century dating techniques. Hilarious. Still have the Cat Valente story to read, which I’m looking forward to.
In the latest issue of Interzone, I enjoyed Colin Harvey’s “The Killing Streets”, which showcases his ability to depict believable scarce-resource futures with flawed yet sympathetic characters. Mordantly dark, well worth a look (and it almost made me miss my station, which is a sign of how engrossed I was). I also loved Lavie Tidhar’s “Funny Pages”, easily the best story in the issue, a fast and wry tale of Israeli super-heroes and super-villains (bonus points for relooking a particularly famous superhero as the Sabra–I didn’t catch the reference until fairly late in the story, but it was pretty funny when it came up).
Cross-posted from Aliette de Bodard
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The January and February 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy both turned up nearly simultaneously in my mailbox. The reason for the delay, insofar as I can ascertain, is that the January issue had been mauled in transit, resulting in a missing lower-right-hand corner that looked like it had been nibbled by rats (I’m pretty sure that’s not the explanation, but it did look very much like it). On the plus side, the February issue arrived in a neat USPS protected envelope, contained a folded check (which I almost lost when opening the issue, as I’m still not used to checks being folded half-inside the magazines), and, of course, my story “Melanie”, complete with illustration by Frank Wu.
w00t.
Here’s the obligatory teaser:
March in Paris: the trees in the school’s courtyard have bloomed in the mild weather, tumbles of white and pink flowers hanging just out of reach.
The boarders sit in small clutches under the arcades of building B, their notebooks open on their knees–making their last, frantic revisions before the competitive exams.
“Three weeks left,” Richard says, tapping his pen against a mathematical formula.
“Yeah,” Erwan says. He’s staring at the other students–all shining, all gorged with light: the light of numbers and curves, the endless dance of the formulas that rule the world. And, as it always does, his gaze fastens on Mélanie.
Meanwhile, I’ll be off to write some more Harbinger (regained the 2500 words I’d cut, plus some, bringing me to almost 46k. Also, the character with the longest-ever name has walked on-stage, and looks to be taking over the scene if not the plot).
Cross-posted from Aliette de Bodard
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Originally published at Vylar Kaftan. You can comment here or there.
I went into my Messages to manage things. I unchecked “tell me about virtual gifts” and a few other things. Somehow, I no longer am getting messages when people leave comments on my posts–but that option is still checked, and always has been. I unchecked/rechecked just in case, and no luck.
Anyone know how to fix this?
This is the bit where I’d go for a liedown were it not early morning here…
I’ve sold “The Jaguar House, in Shadow” to Asimov’s. It’s a novelette set in the Xuya universe (where China discovered America before Colombus, the same as “The Lost Xuyan Bride”, “Butterfly Falling at Dawn” and “Fleeing Tezcatlipoca”, not to mention novel Foreign Ghosts, currently with my agent). It focuses on the Aztecs in Greater Mexica, and the Jaguar Knights, elite spies and manipulators caught in the bloody aftermath of the civil war. Complete with blood sacrifices, crazy priests and hallucinogenic drugs.
The mind wanders, when one takes teonanácatl.
If she allowed herself to think, she’d smell bleach, mingling with the faint, rank smell of blood; she’d see the grooves of the cell, smeared with what might be blood or faeces.
She’d remember–the pain insinuating itself into the marrow of her bones, until it, too, becomes a dull thing, a matter of habit–she’d remember dragging herself upwards when dawn filters through the slit-windows: too tired and wan to offer her blood to Tonatiuh the sun, whispering a prayer that ends up sounding more and more like an apology.
Wrote the first draft of this in Brittany last summer (somewhat amusingly, the previous sale I made to Asimov’s, “The Wind-Blown Man”, was also written in Brittany, so there’s clearly something in the air here). I workshopped this on OWW, where it got very helpful crits from Christine Lucas (silverwerecat), Rachel Gold and Swapna Kishore.
If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the flat, jumping up and down and making incoherent noises.
Cross-posted from Aliette de Bodard
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curiousOriginally published at Vylar Kaftan. You can comment here or there.
In Ohio this year, an autistic young man killed his mother in a fit of rage.
The article is sad but fascinating and quite detailed. It covers a lot of things, from autism and its less-discussed dangers to the difficulties in finding placement for a child whose parent cannot handle him.
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