Rixosous

Lonestarcon (worldcon) Schedule

After working like a mad thing running the Hugo Ceremony at last year's worldcon, this year at Lonestarcon I wanted a very easy, relaxed schedule that would allow me time to enjoy being back in Texas (one of my home states) for the first time in sixteen years and remind me that worldcons are supposed to be fun experiences.  So I have a very sensible three program items and no other scheduled work.  I did dutifully volunteer for a few things, but none of them worked out, which does not really bother me.  I expect I'll do some low-level volunteerage here and there, nothing too stressful.

In addition to the below items, I expect to attend the Friday and Saturday business meetings (and Sunday, if business spills over).  That will be right up there with having my toenails pulled off as far as fun goes, but there are issues up for discussion regarding which I have some decided opinions.  I'll also presumably be happily in the audience at the masquerade, Hugos, and opening ceremonies (assuming they are revealing the Hugo trophy there).  I will be helping out the Helsinki in 2015 worldcon bid in some as-yet-undetermined fashion. 

Otherwise, I am trying to be aggressively unscheduled this worldcon.  I realize that doesn't really square with the previous paragraph, but truly, for me, this is a relaxed schedule!

Thursday, 6:00-6:50 PM in 006A (Convention Center)
Organizing Your Costuming
Paige E. Ewing, Susan de Guardiola, David Weingart

From small spaces to the large studio, how do you organize your costume storage and workspace for maximum effectiveness?  (Anyone who's seen my sewing room can just stop laughing right now, okay?)

Thursday, 8:00-8:50 PM in 007B (Convention Center)
Dressing like Darcy
Joy Bragg-Staudt, Susan de Guardiola

Regency/Georgette Heyer menswear.  (Nothing like a detailed panel description, eh?  I will talk about all the pieces of clothing that make up a men's outfit and some patterns and sources for making or assembling your own outfit.)

Sunday, 2:00-2:50 PM in 101A (Convention Center)

Almost Nominated

Vincent Doherty, Susan de Guardiola, Nancy Hightower

We all know who made the Hugo Nominee list this year. But what about the those who were just a few points shy of the list?  (I assume they aren't going to give us a advance peek at the long nominee list for THIS year, so presumably we will talk about previous years.)

Promise of Blood

I was lured into reading Brian McClellan's impressive debut novel, Promise of Blood (Orbit, 2013, no editor listed), by McClellan's "Big Idea" post on John Scalzi's blog, Whatever.  Napoleonic technology and an alternate-French Revolution setting with magic works for me.  It turned out to be a bit more alternate than I was expecting, but I liked it quite a bit.  A book trailer video is available on McClellan's website.

Below: no spoilers past the first eighty pages or so of the five hundred and forty-five McClellan gifts us with.

Crystal Rain

I didn't only buy Tobias S. Buckell's debut novel, Crystal Rain (2006) at Balticon because it had a gorgeous finned airship on the cover, but I admit, Todd Lockwood's art was part of the attraction.  The book mostly lived up to it.

Is there such a genre as Caribbean-inflected Steampunk?  If so, this book would be representative of it.  We're in a low-tech human colony on an alien planet, Nanagada, in an area settled primarily by groups from the Caribbean, which gives us interesting dialect and lead characters (and villains) of color.  The villains are bloodthirsty Aztec-ish warriors intent on conquering the peaceful inhabitants and using them as either slaves or blood sacrifices.  Or both, sequentially.  Our hero is one John deBrun, who suffers from amnesia and does not seem to age, but has settled down and built a new life for himself with a wife and preteen son.  When the Azteca invade, the family is scattered and deBrun finds himself (via airship and railroad) in the Capitol City, where he is tempted/coerced into setting out on a mission to recover the mysterious Ma Wi Jung, a legendary weapon which may help turn the tide of the war.

Balticon 2013 Ramblings

Balticon 2013, featuring REST AND RELAXATION, which I desperately needed after five days on the road in three different states with a dance gig and toddlers galore.

Okay, I did a few things.  But not many.  I arrived Friday afternoon in plenty of time to check into my room and put my chainmail into the art show and still have free time before the Steampunk Ball.  I wandered through the Victorian gambling games session, where I failed to get into a game of whist, and the con suite, where SFWA was sponsoring a band.  I am not actually fond of bands in con suites; it negatively affects conversation.

Note to SFWA: when you state that "Esteemed past and present members include Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Ray Bradbury, and Andre Norton", the first thought that comes to mind is that ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE DEAD.  So which are the present members?

Balticon 2013 Schedule

Here's my nice, easy schedule for this year's Balticon.  Saturday is delightfully empty, and I am happily not overscheduled on the other days either.  I'll have lots of time to enjoy the convention and see friends and take a nice swim!  Other than my scheduled items, I have no special plans other than attending the masquerade.  I'll also have chainmail in the art show again, since that seems to be working nicely for me.  Find me if you want to hang out!

Friday, 10:00 PM - midnight in the Valley Ballroom
Dancing in the Gears! -- Steam Punk Ball
Susan de Guardiola (M)
Attention all aeronauts, aethernauts, lady and gentleman adventurers, mad scientists, inventors, and other Steampunks and neo-Victorians! Join us at 10 pm Friday night at for a time-traveling formal evening at the Steampunk Ball! Become part of the living clockwork of Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas. No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance mistress Susan de Guardiola. Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century. Steampunk, neo-Victorian, or Victorian costume encouraged and admired but not required. Airships and time machines should be parked outside the ballroom. No sabers, ray guns, or clanks permitted on the dance floor.

Sunday, 12:00-12:50 PM in Salon D
Making Sense of Patterns & Sewing References
Karen Schnaubelt (M), Susan de Guardiola, Jeanette Holloman, Marianne Pease, Kate Szkotnicki
Many folks these days are never actually taught to read and use a traditional pattern or to understand various sewing and construction terms.  Here's how to make sense of it all and understand the steps.

Sunday, 3:00-3:50 PM in the Derby Room
Music Editing for Dummies
Susan de Guardiola (M)
Do you want to get the music for your costume presentation just right? Want to put together
music for a photo display at a reunion? Attend this class in editing sound clips (for masquerade or otherwise) for people who are not techies, audio engineers, programmers, or any other sort of expert.
 

The Kingmaker's Daughter

Much as I love Shakespeare's Richard III, I also love to see Richard portrayed more positively.  Philippa Gregory's latest in her "Cousin's War" series, The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012), takes up the end of the Wars of the Roses from the point of view of Anne Neville, the woman who is "in this humor wooed/in this humor won" in the Shakespeare's notorious seduction scene.

I think this is the first of Gregory's works that I've read, and I was quite favorably impressed.  I am not a particular scholar of the era, but I know the basics, and her research seems sound to me.  She includes a five-page bibliography of resources in case anyone feels like checking her work.  Everything I casually checked was accurate or accepted as possible.

Anne's story, unfortunately, is a fairly depressing one: married at fourteen to the ill-fated Prince Edward, son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou; widowed at fifteen; imprisoned; married to Richard; one surviving child; two years as queen to the embattled Richard, during which reign their son dies; then dying herself at twenty-eight only a few months before Richard is killed by the future Henry VII.  All this I knew before.  But Gregory manages to bring alive not only Anne herself but the members of her family whose history I'd never thought much about: Richard Neville, a.k.a. the Kingmaker, 16th Earl of Warwick, whose machinations and shifting loyalties drove much of the latter part of the Wars of the Roses; Anne Beauchamp, her mother, a great heiress in her own right; and her older sister Isabel, married to Richard's older brother George, Duke of Clarence, famously said to have been drowned in a butt of malmsey.

Blind Descent

I've been reading about extreme mountaineering since the late 1990s.  With James M. Tabor's Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth (2010), I go to the opposite extreme: extreme caving.  As adventure-exploration goes, it is actually quite similar to extreme mountaineering: weeks spent isolated in cold, wet environments with complicated technical equipment and a dozen obvious ways to die.  Even the most minor of injuries can trap a caver; rescue is near-impossible at the depths to which these "supercave" explorers routinely descend.  There are plenty of high cliffs, even in the greatest depths, so the climbing equipment and danger of falling are quite similar.  Cavers, like climbers, establish a series of camps with supplies as they move deeper into the cave.  Even the term "Sherpa" has been adopted for the lower-ranking cavers who spend all their time ferrying supplies for the more experienced explorers.  The personalities can be equally extreme.  And, as in mountaineering, getting to the destination is only half the battle.  Getting back is even worse.

Easter Mysteries (Theatre at St. Clements, March 2013)

I'm getting a bit of religious whiplash this week.  Tuesday evening I attended the last part of a Passover seder notable for its cheerful feel and silly moments ("let me go kasher the scimitar!"), and for the rest of the week I am house manager for Easter Mysteries, billed as "a contemporary oratorio about death and resurrection" being presented by St. Clement's, New York's famous theatre-church, as a benefit for its food pantry.  "Contemporary oratorio" means that this is a semi-staged musical passion play accompanied by piano and cello.  I don't have a lot of experience with passion plays (other than Sarah Ruehl's take on the subject) and am not emotionally involved in it on a religious basis, but this is quite a good little production of a very powerful story.

The composer/librettist/lyricist is John O'Boyle, whose contemporary take on the story of Jesus's last days in Jerusalem, death, and resurrection is sung and acted by an accomplished twenty-two-member ensemble (led by Kyle Scatliffe (Jesus), Elizabeth DeRosa (Mary Magdalene), and Danny Rothman (Peter).  Scatliffe is a gentle, otherworldly presence as Jesus, and DeRosa and Rothman ably portray the conflict between Jesus' male and female followers, Mary's combined faith and frustration, and Peter's self-doubt and insecurity.

The production begins with a triumphant sung entrance into Jerusalem and a seder (the Last Supper), where the disciples are wonderfully humanized as uncertain young activists.  It proceeds quickly through the familiar tale of Judas' betrayal at Gethsemane, Peter's denials, Jesus' trial, and the crucifixion.  Notable character turns include Paul Louis Lessard's slyly swishy, scene-stealing Herod in the wonderful trio "Wash My Hands" and Jason Veasy as a dignified Roman Centurion, who quietly but powerfully delivers a hideously detailed description of death by crucifixion.

After intermission, as the disciples begin to fall apart, Mary and her companions Joanna and Miriam (Trista Dollison and Mary Jo Mecca) come into their own as the first to visit Jesus' tomb and report the news of the resurrection in two more notable trios, "Nearly Day" and the marvelous "Voices".  Michael Deleget (Cleopas) and Hansel Tan (Simon) also get a spectacular duet as they describe their meeting with the risen Jesus in "On the Road to Emmaus", and the entire ensemble powers the joyous "Good News". 

Costuming is minimal (concert black), the bare-bones staging consists of two risers, and the oratorio is performed with binders of music and scripts in hand, but the cast succeeds in delivering quite a bit of nuance.  DeRosa's Mary is particularly poignant as she is repeatedly  dismissed by Peter, whose own imperfection and how it fuels his resentment and jealousy of Mary and her relationship with Jesus are beautifully conveyed by Rothman.

The production is directed by Dan Wackerman with musical direction by Milton Granger and is being presented for only three performances this week (Wednesday being past, that leaves this evening's performance and tomorrow's matinee).  I would recommend it to anyone interested in a contemporary take on the Easter story.

Tickets are available through St. Clement's; use discount code EM20 for a special rate.

I hope this becomes an annual tradition at St. Clement's.

Lunacon 2013 Ramblings

I'm definitely getting better at this "just say no" method of avoiding overcommitting myself at conventions.  I've now achieved a pleasant balance of work and play twice in a row.  Let's see if I can keep it up.

The worst problems for me at Lunacon this year were the personal annoyances I was dragging along: a lingering bronchial cough, being tired and headachey and medicated because of it, a strained ankle that left me limping painfully around, and the money-is-tight necessity of commuting back and forth from home, adding ninety minutes of driving to my days.  My con was also curtailed early by my having a gig up here on Sunday afternoon, making going back to the con on Sunday morning impossible.

Despite all this, I had a good time.

Lunacon 2013 Schedule

After last year's perfectly insane schedule, this year I have much more manageable plans for Lunacon, with a sensible three items, and no late nights since I am commuting from home this year.  My official schedule:

So You Want to Make a Historical Outfit
Friday, 8:00-9:00pm, Maple
Lisa Ashton (moderator), Byron Connell, Susan de Guardiola, Diane Kovalcin

Where to start, places to find good documentation, pitfalls, problems, and solutions.

Regency Ball
Saturday, 1:00-3:00pm, Grand Ballroom North
Susan de Guardiola

Dress up in the elegant attire of the Austen era, or any other ballroom wear that suits your style, and dance the day away to the historically inspired choreographies of Susan de Guardiola.

Make & Take: Thread Buttons 18th Century Style
Saturday, 4:00-5:00pm, Halstead
Susan de Guardiola

How to make your own soft, washable buttons out of nothing but thread, in the style used for 18th and early 19th century style shirts before the age of mass-produced buttons.

I will once more have a few chainmail pieces in the art show, that having been surprisingly successful at Arisia.  Other than that, I plan to attend the masquerade, relax with friends, and hopefully spend some time in the hot tub.  I will not be around on Sunday, since I have a gig in Connecticut that afternoon.

Best times to catch me will be Friday evening and Saturday after five.

Eiger Dreams

I've been a lover of extreme climbing stories ever since reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, which covered the disastrous loss of life on Mount Everest during the 1996 climbing season.  Since then I've read a few similar books (though none quite as exciting) and hiked to the summit of the extinct volcano Rangitoto, which, at only 259 meters above sea level (compared to Everest's 8848) is pleasantly warm in late summer and accessible in around two hours with nothing more than good walking shoes and a willingness to scramble a bit.  Since I don't like cold weather or heights and strongly prefer the normal proportion of oxygen in my air, I don't ever expect to ever climb anything much more ambitious than that.  But I still like reading about highly-skilled people doing highly-dangerous climbs out of sheer because-it's-there ambition.  And I particularly like this kind of book when I'm finding life personally stressful; there's nothing like reading about other people's misery to put things in perspective.  So I was pleased while scanning the library bookshelves for something else entirely to come across Krakauer's first book, a collection of his magazine articles entitled Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains (1990).

Weirdly Hairless Acrobats Entertain Pope, Nuns

Someone explain this video to me. Seriously. Because my thoughts on four tanned and sexy acrobats making a human tower for a religious audience including the soon-to-be-ex-Pope Benedict are, briefly:

1. Those four men have NO BODY HAIR. Like Ken dolls.
2. Slow, coordinated half-striptease. The Pope is riveted.
3. What is Emma Peel doing acting as wardrobe assistant for this act?
4. Tight white pants and video closeups nicely display acrobats' assets. Pope still riveted. Cameraman seems to have a similar problem.
5. Straps holding pants perfectly in place while upside down.
6. But still no hair!  Plastic people, very disturbing.
7. Pope: thousand-yard stare while he thinks of holy things, or just trying to keep his tongue in his mouth?
8. Most people are staying seated and applauding politely, but a gang of nuns are on their feet waving handkerchiefs. Do they like this as much as the Pope?
9. WHERE IS THEIR BODY HAIR?

I mean, I recognize the talent and strength on display here, but somehow they are not the first thing one notices.

Arisia 2013 Schedule

After two years of completely insane schedules at Arisia, plus similar at Lunacon and a worldcon that got completely wiped out by running the Hugo Ceremony, this year I am working aggressively on maintaining "just say no" and "do not over-volunteer" policies.  I have succeeded in giving myself a pleasant, sane schedule for Arisia that should allow me to actually enjoy seeing my friends and attending panels and program items (like the Emerald Rose concerts!) that I am not actually on.  I look forward to this new, relaxed way of attending Arisia!

Thirteen

Kelley Armstrong's thirteenth and more-or-less final book in the Otherworld (formerly Women of the Otherworld) series is named, with admirable simplicity, Thirteen.  It completes the sub-trilogy begun in Waking the Witch and Spellbound, with the main narrator again being the young witch/sorcerer/demon hybrid Savannah Levine.  As before, I refuse to even attempt to summarize Savannah's backstory.  Read the novels.

I have to give Armstrong some serious props for actually ending her series before it jumps the shark and for doing it with a pretty creditable bang.  I won't say that every previous character shows up at some point, but she tags all the major ones at least briefly, with many of them narrating a chapter or two, and in general she ties up all the loose ends and everyone lives more-or-less happily ever after or dies very messily, as the case may be.

The Stratford Adventure of Adrian & Tiddlywinks

I'm not much of a judge of where the dividing line is between children's books and YA books, but I'm pretty sure that The Stratford Adventure of Adrian and Tiddlywinks (2012) falls on the children's side of it.  Being a sucker for theatre-related fantasy novels, especially those set at the Stratford (Ont.) Shakespeare Festival, I bought it anyway.

Being a kiddie tale, it wasn't quite as an attractive to an adult reader like me as the creepy Come Like Shadows (also set in Stratford), the similar King of Shadows, or the lovely Eyes Like Stars.  The plot is fairly thin: a boy moves from England to Stratford, Ontario, in the 1960s, early in the Festival's existence, in the wake of his actor father's taking a role there.  He is accompanied, unwittingly, by a mouse who enjoys declaiming Shakespere in his model theatre and decides to stow away with the cargo.  Boy and mouse both want to be actors.  Adrian's father is against it, feeling he does not have the personality for an acting career.  The other mice just find Tiddlywinks eccentric. 

Once they get to Stratford, Adrian befriends a girl who is one of the Festival apprentices, and with her support, becomes an apprentice actor himself, playing one of the princes in Richard III.  Tiddlywinks befriends a mouse named Hotspur and is introduced to an all-mouse drama group that lives in the Festival Theatre and performs their own versions of Shakespeare plays.  Adrian's father still resists.  The drama-club mice are not 100% accepting of the English Tiddlywinks.  But I'd classify the obstacles to mutual theatrical success as token, and soon there are happy endings all around.

There are no deep messages in the tale, and things are resolved far too easily for there to be any real suspense.  What fascinated me about it was that the author, John Sullivan Hayes, was one of the original company actors in the first season of the Festival (1953) and participated in it in various ways until his death in 1993.  (The book is a posthumous publication.)  So there are some interesting tidbits about life backstage and the training of the apprentices in the Festival's early years as well as a tour through the Festival Theatre's "underworld" that made me wonder if it's still possible to take it.  And a few of the characters have names that any Stratford aficionado will recognize: the cameo appearance by bearded designer Desmond made me grin, as did having a mouse costume designer named Tanya.

The interior illustrations are unfinished sketches by Hayes himself, and a letter from him to his daughter at the end of the book gives amusing background on his efforts to draw anthropomorphic mice:

As for drawing mice from the front... this is much harder, as this bespectacled fellow illustrates.  I have put a bottle of scotch because he looks so alcoholic.

That refers to an illustration on page 23, where Tiddlywinks is eating a piece of cheese and there is indeed an unidentified bottle next to him.

I don't really recommend this book for adults unless they are really passionate about the Stratford Festival, but I'm sure it would be great for children of some age or other.  Chapter book, 132 pages, about 275 words per page, prose straightforward to the point of being a little simplistic, and minimal emotional depth.  Maybe one of my parenting friends can advise me on the right age group?

Read for yourself:

Redshirts

John Scalzi is one of those writers who just seems to be having way too much fun.  After last year's lovely "reboot" of H. Beam Piper's classic Little Fuzzy (in Fuzzy Nation), he's now taken on classic Star Trek, with a delightfully crazy twist.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas (Tor Books, 2012. Editor: Patrick Nielsen Hayden) explores in a loving, fannish way the crappy worldbuilding, bad plotting, and ludicrous science of a lousy science ficton television show...but from the point of view of some of the characters, who gradually come to realize that quite a few things about their entire world are seriously wrong: impossible physics, knowledge suddenly appearing in their heads, ridiculous coincidences, officers who are injured every episode and make miraculous recoveries, normal people suddenly changing speech patterns, crazy tasks always successfully accomplished at the most dramatic possible moment, and a major problem with low-level crew members dying at a horrendous rate on away missions.  Since the protagonist, Dahl, is a low-level crew member himself, that last particularly captures the attention of him and his friends.

The parallels with classic Trek will be hilariously obvious to anyone who watched the original series, and the title, obviously, is a hat-tip to that show's disposable extras in their red uniform shirts.  This is sort of a literary version of Galaxy Quest, turned inside out and twisted a few times, and it's every bit as funny, particularly with the characters channeling Scalzi's trademark wit and deadpan humor.  No one is ever at a loss for a good line.

And then it gets, to quote the characters, "recursive and meta".  Because sometimes bad science and bad plotting have their uses, and people can adjust to living in a poorly constructed world and learn not only to predict how the Narrative will go, but how to manipulate it in their favor.  And off we go on a recursive and meta adventure that makes perfect sense within a completely nonsensical premise -- in other words, with precisely the suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy a bad science fiction television show.

To say any more would be completely unfair, but I just have to make one little comment that will go completely over the head of anyone who hasn't been reading fan fiction forever.  It's rot-13'd because for anyone who has, it's a major spoiler: Fpnymv bjrf Wrna Ybeenu naq Jvyyneq Uhag zbarl.

I laughed a lot reading Redshirts.  Having been a fan of classic Trek helps, but I think anyone who's seen any bad science fiction TV show or movie will catch the jokes.  But it's more than a parody or comedic exercise.  A few times, especially in the codas, I cried.

You simply must read this one for yourself:

The Naked Olympics

My bedtime reading while at Mainewoods Dance Camp last week was an interesting little book by Tony Perrottet called The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games (Random House, 2004). 

Perrottet's very interesting field of study is ancient tourism, which was a more popular pastime than I had ever realized.  He starts with some general history of the Olympics, packed full of historical details.  I didn't know before that the ancient games were held regularly for nearly twelve centuries and were so famous that the Greeks counted time relative to Olympiads and their winners.  Hearing to what degree athletics and what I can only call sports fandom dominated Greek society and created popular celebrities was fascinating.

No Hugo Posts

Normally around this time of year I'm making an effort to read as many of the Hugo nominees as I can and posting my thoughts and votes in various categories.  I'm still doing the reading this year and have had about the usual proportion of enjoyment to what-the-heck-is-this-doing-on-the-shortlist? dismay, but I've deliberately avoided posting any thoughts on the nominees and will not be posting my votes this year. The reason for this is simple: I'm organizing the Hugo Ceremony.  And while that doesn't stop me from reading and voting, I think I'd find it mildly awkward to deal with nervous nominees if I've been making public statements about which of them I favor or trashing their efforts online for all the world to see.  I don't imagine too many of them read Rixo, especially in its current state of torpor, but it's not impossible.

Voting for the Hugo Awards closes tomorrow, Tuesday, July 31, 2012, at 11:59 p.m. PDT (Wednesday, August 1, 2012, at 2:59 a.m. EDT).  Anyone who is a member of this year's World Science Fiction Convention, Chicon 7, can vote here.  If you're not a member, you can still join the convention, and if you get the membership processed fast enough, will still be able to vote.  I would not put that off until the last minute if you intend to vote, since I don't know how quickly they deal with incoming memberships.

A Play of Piety

A Play of Piety (2010) is the sixth book in the Joliffe series of fifteenth-century murder mysteries by Margaret Frazer, fitting in between A Play of Treachery (#5) and A Play of Heresy (#7), which I read back in May without realizing that I'd inadvertently skipped a book.

Rachel Rising, Volume 1: The Shadow of Death

"Obviously, I'm not dead, Jet.  Look at me."

"You look dead!"

"I'm having a rough night, okay?"

Talented comic writer-artist Terry Moore, who has previously taken on friendship (and then some) in Strangers in Paradise and science fiction in Echo, is moving along to the horror genre with his new book, Rachel Rising.  Issue-by-issue comic collecting makes me crazy nowadays, so I was happy that the first six-issue collection, Rachel Rising Volume 1: The Shadow of Death, was already out by the time my friend Serge tipped me off about the comic.  That isn't too say that waiting for the next collection won't be torture!

In a way, Moore is jumping on the zombie bandwagon, but being Moore, he doesn't do it like anyone else.  Rachel Rising centers around the town of Manson, which is just as creepy as its name and was the site of a mass execution of witches centuries ago.  The entire town is, in effect, an ancient graveyard.  You just know that isn't going to work out well.

In Desperation

Moving along in series order at last, the third of Rick Mofina's Jack Gannon series, In Desperation (2011), delivers all the expected crime fiction thrills and more than the usual amount of not-quite-far-enough-offstage gore.

While Mofina's standard formula is in good working order, this time he raises the stakes for intrepid crime reporter Jack Gannon (I feel like that last phrase should be capitalized and intoned, and perhaps include "Stately Wayne Manor" somewhere) by having the kidnapping victim be the daughter of Jack's long-lost sister Cora, whose boyfriend has secretly gotten in over his head with a group of Mexican drug smugglers and then inconveniently disappeared.  It's all very topical, straight from the headlines, etc.  A little girl in danger is even more of a guaranteed button-pusher than a single mother (though he tags that part of the formula too, with Cora), and Tilly Martin is a spunky eleven-year-old whose personality Mofina fills out enough that she is more than a plot device and notably less generic than his usual victim-in-waiting.  Gannon also has a conflict of interest, since his official assignment is reporting on drug-related murders on the Mexican side of the border, and in trying to help his sister he crosses the line from journalist to participant in a breaking story.  This gives him an interesting ethical juggling act to perform for much of the book.

Viewpoint characters include not only Gannon but Cora, Tilly, Cora's boyfriend, and the youthful assassin that the Mexican gang sends to execute Tilly.  The assassin's desire to end his career and his relationship with the priest to whom he confesses are an interesting subplot.

While Jack has gone on about Cora repeatedly in both the previous books, all the necessary background is provided here, and the book easily stands alone.

About that gore: Mofina doesn't generally put much of the blood and guts on the page, and thankfully he does not do so here.  But there is a chainsaw.  It gets used.  There is an aftermath scene.   And severed heads.  Plural.  My imagination was stimulated unpleasantly by all this, which is a tribute to Mofina's skill as a writer.  Those hypersensitive to the idea of very messy violence should be prepared.

All in all, it's a brisk read with effective tension and an ending that avoids the easy out; perfect summer reading for crime fiction fans.

Rick Mofina's website is here.  The previous Jack Gannon books were discussed here and here.  Read this one for yourself here:

Balticon 2012 Schedule

My schedule for this weekend's Balticon.  This is vastly less crazy as the schedules I had at Arisia and Lunacon, so I will have time to just enjoy the convention! 

I will have a large chunk of free time on Saturday afternoon/evening, during which my only specific plan is to watch the Masquerade, so that'll be the best time to catch me for conversation.  Sunday afternoon I plan to be at the Chromatics and S.J. Tucker concerts (1pm and 3:30pm, respectively).

Friday, 10:00 pm - midnight (or later) in Valley Ballroom
Dancing in the Gears! -- Steam Punk Ball
Susan de Guardiola (M)
Attention all aeronauts, aethernauts, lady and gentleman adventurers, mad scientists, inventors, and other Steampunks and neo-Victorians! Join us at 10 pm Friday night at for a time-traveling formal evening at the Steampunk Ball! Become part of the living clockwork of Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas. No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance mistress Susan de Guardiola. Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century. Steampunk, neo-Victorian, or Victorian costume encouraged and admired but not required. Airships and time machines should be parked outside the ballroom. No sabers, ray guns, or clanks permitted on the dance floor.

Saturday, 12:00 noon - 3:00 pm in Frankie & Vinnie's (con suite)
Regency Tea and Games
Susan de Guardiola, Irene Urban
Come join us for afternoon High Tea and Regency era games.


Sunday, 12 noon - 1:00 pm in Garden Room
Liars Panel
Mark L. Van Name (moderator), Susan de Guardiola, Jennie Faries
Each panelist, including the moderator, answers all the questions. All answers must be the truth--except three. No one other than the answering panelist knows if the answers are true or lies. After each one, anyone in the audience can challenge the answering panelist. Multiple people can challenge; the more, the better. After there are no more challengers, the panelist tells whether the answer was truth or a lie. If it was true, every challenger puts a dollar in a bucket that runners pass. If it was a lie, the panelist puts $10 in the bucket. All proceeds go to support the literacy program, BSFS Books for Kids.

Sunday, dinnertime, offsite
Susan's Birthday Dinner Party!
All my friends are invited.  If you're a friend, email me for details.  :)

Sunday, 10:30 pm - 11:30 pm in Garden Room
Martian Parlor Croquet -- A Steampunk Diversion
Susan de Guardiola
Victorian explorers, adventurers, chrononauts, and aethernauts! Join us in the fine sands of the remote Martian Canal Estates, where the well-dressed 19th-century tourist and all civilized alien entities may indulge in the genteel yet cutthroat Martian pastime of parlor croquet. Portable gravity generators encouraged to prevent loss of croquet balls into the aether. Tentacular assistance prohibited.


Sunday/Monday, Midnight - 1:00 am in Salon A
Eye of Argon - the Play
Walter Hunt (M), Susan de Guardiola, Grig Larson, Hildy Silverman, Michael Ventrella
"One of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose" presented in all its theatrical glory.  (Note: It's not a "play" exactly -- some of us pantomime the story as we read.)

Vengeance Road

I'm reading Rick Mofina's Jack Gannon series out of order, having accidentally started with The Panic Zone, the second in line.  I've finally gotten around to reading the first one, Vengeance Road (2009), and while Mofina's plots definitely have a very set pattern, they still deliver all the suspense and thrills I need in light reading.

The pattern: a heroic reporter who has something to prove struggles against his own superiors and/or the corrupt police in order to pursue the case of a serial killer and save the young woman, usually a single mother, whom he has in captivity and is going to kill any moment now.

It will perhaps be no surprise to learn that Mofina had a long career as a journalist.  I'm guessing he's got a relative who was a single mother, too.

Vengeance Road follows the pattern with all Mofina's usual skill.  Jack Gannon, who had one Pulitzer-nominated story a while back but is now suffering under a "what have you done for me lately?" mentality at his newly business-oriented Buffalo newspaper, is drawn into reporting on the discover of a mutilated body in a wooded area and the disappearance of the victim's friend, single mother Jolene Peller, recently off the streets and ready to start a new life in Florida with her young son Cody.  With the likely suspect a well-connected local cop, Gannon's superiors and local law enforcement pressure him to back off, but, Gannon being Gannon, he's too stubborn to do so, and pursues the case to the end.  Mofina alternates lovingly detailing the nitty-gritty work of reporting with effective emotional button-pushing in depicting Jolene's misery and increasing danger.

While the heroic-reporter/single-mother-in-jeopardy pattern is likely to get tired with overuse, Mofina is good enough to make it easy to forget that one pretty much knows how things are going to come out.  That's exactly what one wants in a crime thriller.  I recommend Vengeance Road for anyone who likes this genre of light reading.

Check out Rick Mofina's website, and read for yourself:

A Play of Heresy

I was thinking it had been quite a while since the last Joliffe book from Margaret Frazer and thus was happy to receive the most recent one as a Christmas present last year.  That I'm only just now getting around to reading it tells you what my spring has been like.  That I completely failed to notice the publication of a sixth book and thus skipped straight to the seventh and latest, A Play of Heresy (2011), tells you what my life has been like.  So much for reading in series order.

Crucible of Gold

Crucible of Gold (Ballantine, 2012; editor: Betsy Mitchell) is the seventh in Naomi Novik's consistently high-quality Temeraire series, following 2010's Tongues of Serpents, and delivers yet another intriguing alternate-history-with-dragons tale that kept me up half the night reading.

At this point Novik seems to have a three-pronged agenda: moving the Napoleonic Wars slowly forward, exploring different cultures with various dragon-human relationship models, and engaging with the growing anti-slavery movement.  Crucible of Gold hits all the bases by taking the Celestial dragon Temeraire and his companion Laurence to South America, where Napoleon has stirred up trouble by mobilizing a transatlantic fleet of dragon transports to help the African dragons and humans of the Tswana culture (introduced in the fourth novel, Empire of Ivory) recover their kinfolk who were taken as slaves.  This conveniently threatens the Portuguese colonists in Brazil as France occupies the Iberian Peninsula.

Lunacon 2012 Schedule

My insane schedule for Lunacon this weekend is below.  It includes a nice mix of dance, costume, literary, and miscellaneous fun items, but how did I end up with about fifteen hours of program again?!?  (Masquerade rehearsal, not publicly scheduled, is 4pm-8pm Saturday.)

In between all this, I will somehow be collecting books for the Science Fiction Outreach Project.  Find me if you have books to donate!  The best time to catch me with books or just to say hi is, as always, right after an item but not when there's another one coming right up.

Regency Ball, Fri 21:00 - Fri 23:00, Westchester Ballroom B
Susan de Guardiola (M) 
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that dancing like Jane Austen is the way to spend Friday evening! No experience or partner necessary; all dances taught. Elegant costume (Regency or other) encouraged but not required.

What Are the Hugo Awards and Why You Should Care, Sat 10:00 - Sat 11:00, Westchester Ballroom A3
Neil Clarke, Susan de Guardiola, Arthur Hlavaty, Andrew Porter (M), Sharon Sbarsky 
How the Hugo awards work, why you should nominate, all those other categories and what they mean, what’s good and eligible this year?

Making a Rope Corset, Sat 12:00 - Sat 13:00, Port Chester
Susan de Guardiola (M) 
Part costuming, part performance art, part kinky fun, a rope corset must be remade each time it is worn, but the materials are cheap and they look impressive!

Waltz for Dummies, Sat 14:00 - Sat 15:00, Westchester Ballroom B
Susan de Guardiola (M) 
Easy cross-step waltz moves for people who think they can't dance!

Masquerade, Sat 20:00 - Sat 22:00, Grand Ballroom North
Susan de Guardiola (MC), Bob Greenberger (Halftime), Sandy Swank (Director)
Costumers transform themselves into a dizzying array of science fiction and fantasy recreations and original concepts. Claim your seat early to see the opening act, Tribe Hamsa, and make sure you stay for Trailer Park, the halftime show!

Eye of Argon Reading, Sun 10:00 - Sun 11:00, Westchester Ballroom B
Susan de Guardiola, Genevieve Iseult Eldredge, Hildy Silverman, Michael Ventrella 
Start your final day of Lunacon off right (wrong?) with the worst science fiction story ever written...now with extra drama! Compete in reading this hilarious masterpiece of bad writing with a straight face! Vote our readers off the island and make them act out the story! 

The Alternate Regency, Sun 11:00 - Sun 12:00, Birch
Byron Connell (M), Susan de Guardiola, Karin Rita Gastreich, Meredith Schwartz
From Sorcery and Cecilia to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to Temeraire to The Magicians and Mrs. Quint to Shades of Milk and Honey, the English Regency has had many notable fantasy novels set in it recently. What do they have in common; how do they differ (from each other and from alternate histories set in other eras) and why are so many of them focused on magic?

Ballroom Croquet, Sun 13:00 - Sun 14:00, Westchester Ballroom B
Susan de Guardiola (M) 
What it says on the tin. Come play croquet in the ballroom. Adorable miniature sets provided. Flamingo optional.

Hoop Dance Jam, Sun 14:00 - Sun 15:00, Westchester Ballroom B
Susan de Guardiola (M) 
Hula hooping, modern style, to music with a good hooping beat! Some hoops provided, but bring your own as well!

 

Hugo Nomination Suggestions?

What I have so far for nominations for the Hugo Awards for this year (for F&SF/related work produced in 2011):

Deathless, by Catherynne Valente (Best Novel)

Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art, by Karen Haber (Best Related Work) 
Jar Jar Binks Must Die, by Dan Kimmel (Best Related Work)

Niall Harrison, Editor, Strange Horizons, (Best Editor, Short Form)

Daniel Dos Santos (Best Professional Artist)
Bob Eggleton (Best Professional Artist)
John Picacio (Best Professional Artist)

Jim C. Hines (Best Fan Writer) (also, see here)
Cheryl Morgan (Best Fan Writer)

I don't feel particularly bad about not nominating very much, since I don't even pretend to keep up with the field in any comprehensive way, but is there anything/anyone else who really ought to be on my ballot?  I'm sure I'm overlooking things I've already read.  I'll wait until right before the deadline (Sunday night) to put my list in, but get any suggestions to me quickly, please!  

Note that I don't nominate in Best Editor, Long Form, because I think the category is a travesty, and that I almost certainly haven't seen any Dramatic Presentation (long or short), so there's not much point in suggesting those unless you can meet the rather high threshold of convincing me it's so unbelievably good that I should nominate it just on your say-so.  It is exceedingly unlikely that I will watch any video longer than five minutes, and I'm not going to read anything new that's longer than a short story.

Boskone 2012 Schedule

Yes, I'm actually going to Boskone for the first time in many years.  I wasn't hired for the Dance Flurry this year, alas, so I had a free weekend, and Boskone decided they'd like to have some indoor croquet, so...

Oddly enough, Boskone is held in the same hotel at Arisia, so it's going to be kind of weird, like a continuation the same con, but with three quarters of the population and programming gone.  Happily, though, I'm not going to be overworked, since I'm only doing the croquet.  My schedule:

Martian Croquet: A Steampunk Diversion
Saturday, 5:30pm-7pm, Galleria-Demo
Susan de Guardiola
Victorian explorers, adventurers, chrononauts, and aethernauts! Join us in the fine sands of the remote Martian Canal Estates, where the well-dressed 19th-century tourist and all civilized alien entities may indulge in the genteel yet cut-throat Martian pastime of parlor croquet. Portable gravity generators encouraged to prevent loss of croquet balls into the aether. Steampunk, historical, or science fictional costume encouraged for all species. Tentacular assistance prohibited.

The observant will recognize this item from previous Arisia and Balticon schedules.  Teeny-tiny croquet on tabletops.

I plan to hear Scalzi speak and as many of Tricky Pixie and S.J. Tucker's concerts as I can squeeze in, and other than that, just relax and hang out, see the art show, maybe help with the Chicon table or something.  So for once, this is a GOOD con to find me to chat!

A Train in Winter

I can't really classify this as pleasure reading, but Caroline Moorehead's A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France (HarperCollins, 2011) certainly lives up to its subtitle. 

Ever since I was a child, I've periodically gone through phases where I read a lot about World War II and the Holocaust.  Mostly that's centered around the Jewish experience (though I'm not Jewish) and the American/British side of things, though I did give myself a political-military introduction with William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich way-back-when.  But I can't say I knew much about either the experiences of the French during the Occupation or the experience of non-Jews in concentration camps.  Moorehead's book remedies this, in spades.

The first half of the book gives an overview of life in Occupied France and something of life under the Vichy regime, with a special focus on the growing Resistance and the women who became involved in it.  This is fascinating stuff in its own right, but the real highlight, so to speak, is the second half of the book, in which 230 women -- members of the Resistance and others caught up in the Nazi net -- are shipped from France to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Only forty-nine would survive the resulting ordeal.

For the horrific details of how deadly a concentration camp could be even towards political prisoners who were not being deliberately exterminated, read the book.  It's educational, and adds to my sick incomprehension of how any group of human beings could do such things to any other.  But what I took away from it was not just the brutality of the experience, how hard it was to survive, or the degree toward which banding together in a group could raise the odds of survival, though all of these were grippng reading, but the extent to which chance played a role, and how much any individual's survival depended upon luck as well as effort and how helpless even this tight-knit, organized, and relatively privileged group of prisoners could be in the face of camp conditions (including lack of clothing, icy temperatures, poor food, and disease) that slaughtered inmates by the thousands.

There's nothing fun about this book, and I was in tears more than once, but it's valuable, valuable reading.  I can't recommend it enough.

Read for youself:

 

Arisia 2012 Ramblings

My hectic work schedule didn't leave me much time for anything else.  Short version:

What I did not do at Arisia:

See the art show
Visit the dealer's room
Go to any program item I wasn't on
Talk to most of my friends there
Take any pictures
Get enough sleep

What I did do:

Eye of Argon reading
One costume panel
Masquerade with lengthy rehearsal
Four dance workshops
Martian croquet
Attend a few parties

Longer version:

Arisia 2012 Schedule

My crazy schedule this weekend for Arisia is below.  This is after I received my original schedule and sent an incredulous email to program, events, and the con chair pointing out that I was scheduled for over twenty-five hours of work (masquerade eats noon-midnight Saturday with rehearsal and stuff), including a couple of times when I was scheduled for two places at once, and got them to eliminate another half-dozen items.  I'm not sure what part of "no more than six items" was unclear; it seems like it should be an easy check within their program software to compare total number scheduled to the number one enters for "maximum total items" and flag someone if the former is greater than the latter.  Likewise the "two places at the same time" problem.

Here's the list:

Hidden

I sometimes feel like I need an entirely separate category just for Kelley Armstrong novels.

Hidden (Subterranean Press, 2011) is a standalone novella in a lovely hardcover edition; Armstrong seems to be making these a winter tradition.  I order these months in advance and it's always a pleasant surprise when they suddenly turn up in the mail.

Without going back to trace the backstory through the previous dozen or so Otherworld novels, the background for Hidden is primarily the Bitten/Stolen/Broken/Frostbitten/Men of the Otherworld/"Becoming"/"Beginnings" sub-sequence within the larger series that focuses on the werewolves, and particularly on Elena Michaels and her often-rocky relationship with werewolf Pack enforcer Clayton Danvers.  I like how Armstrongs transcends the romance formula to go on with extensive storytelling after the happily-ever-after, which for this couple happened in the very first book of the series.

And ah, the dilemmas of the modern female werewolf!

At this point Clay and Elena have more-or-less settled down, with four-year old twins to care for and Elena moving slowly into the role of Alpha of the werewolf Pack.  Hidden focuses on Elena's two dilemmas: whether (considering their age) and what to tell the children about their werewolf heritage, given that as the children of two bitten werewolves rather than genetically-inherited ones, no one knows whether they are likely to grow up to be werewolves themselves.  Child-rearing manuals do not really cover this sort of thing.

Secondary to this is Elena's maturation into the role of Alpha, for which she has to balance the traditional Alpha's authority over her husband with her desire for equal partnership and the Alpha's traditional role behind the lines with not, as the only known female werewolf, looking dangerously weak.  Feminism doesn't quite cover these problems either.

Nor does it cover the challenges of finding private time for a still-amorous couple when one's precocious twin pre-werewolf children are perfectly capable of picking locks and walking right in.  I think a supernatural marriage & family guide would be a hilarious addition to this series, if Armstrong wanted to take up comedy.

Wrapped neatly around all these family worries is a nice little Christmas story about a potential man-eating werewolf in the small town where the werewolf family is attempting to take a quiet family vacation, and whole thing is illustrated by Armstrong's online artist Xavière Daumerie/Angilram.  The man-eater plot is a only a short story's worth, but Armstrong integrates it nicely into the family story and ties the whole thing into Elena's own backstory as well.  Beta werewolf and eternal punching-bag Nick Sorrentino and two characters from Frostbitten make appearances as well, wrapping up some minor loose ends. 

Overall, it's good, and I liked it better than the last two novellas, but not overwhelming.  I'd call it a very solid addition to the series and a nice treat for fans of the werewolf clan in particular.  I'm really quite curious to know how the twins turn out, but I respect Armstrong's determination to age them in real-time and maintain the suspense for her fans.

The book itself (mine is the "deluxe hardcover edition") is very nice, with wraparound cover art and interior illustrations on glossy paper.  I generally like how Angilram draws Elena and the various wolves, and the kids are adorable if disconcertingly big-eyed, but I find her drawings of male characters a little too feminine-looking for me.

Shop for yourself:

Conspiracies (Shadow Grail #2)

Hypothesis
Take Mercedes Lackey out of her Valdemar rut and she can actually tell a good story.

Experiment
Check out the non-Valdemar Lackey book next to Changes on the library shelf and see if it’s any good.

Changes

Spoilers ahead.  Read on anyway.

Darkovercon 2011 Schedule

I'm heading out soon (traveling the day before Thanksgiving: very bad!) to Maryland for what will eventually include my annual trip to Darkovercon (formally known as Darkover Grand Council Meeting XXXIV) this Friday-Sunday.  I'm doing the traditional Regency Ball and my usual charity fundraising work.  Very easy schedule:

Saturday, 5:00-7:00 PM - Regency Ball

Regency dancing.  Live music.  The usual sort of thing.

Saturday, 9:00-11:30ish PM - Clam Chowder Concert

I am obviously not a member of the band, but I organize a fundraiser for Children's Hospital as part of the event every year, in which we raise money under the guise of bribing the band to sing the bawdy song known fondly as B.O.G.S.  After more than a decade the fact that this is pure theater is well-known, but we nonetheless manage to squeeze thousands of dollars out of only a few hundred very well-primed fans.

Prior to the con I'm looking forward to hanging out with my friends Jeff & Sandy and their daughter Megan and a Thanksgiving feast at Noel-Marie's with many fannish friends.

Philcon 2011 Schedule

I never actually received a schedule from Philcon, but this information turned up on the website today:

The "Eye Of Argon" Reading
Friday 11:59 PM
Crystal Ballroom Three
Oz Fontecchio (mod), Marvin Kaye, Joan Slonczewski, Gregory Frost, Susan de Guardiola, Phil Kahn
Panelists and the audience compete in dramatic readings of the reputedly WORST genre story ever written. A Philcon classic!

I'm not clear on whether this will be the standard model (we just read until we crack up) or Mike & Hildy & I's new-and-improved version with the voting off the island and the acting out.  I suspect the former but will push for the latter.  It won't be the same without Mike and Hildy, though!  But ooh, I'm on a panel with Marvin Kaye, co-author of my favorite unfinished trilogy ever...

Basic Costume Shapes & What You Can Do With Them
Saturday 1:00 PM
Plaza V (Five)
Lisa Ashton (mod), Vicki Warren, Susan de Guardiola, Patricia Wake, Carol Salemi
(i.e. T-tunic, circle skirt, cloaks, etc.) Many wonderful costumes start with a basic garment shape, that can then be transformed. If you are new to sewing itself, these shapes offer the benefit of an easy shape, no pattern, and very few seams, as well potential for embellishment, What are the basics and how do you go about using them?

Since I need to leave the con around 1:00 to get to my gig in Gettysburg, I'm not sure I'm actually going to be at this panel.  The others should do a great job without me if that's how it works out.

Other than these panels, I expect to be at the S.J. Tucker concert at 9pm Friday and otherwise spend most of Friday afternoon/evening and Saturday morning working in program operations, which will be by far the best place to find me, though not necessarily the best place to have a chat.  When I return to the con on Sunday I'll be floating around being semi-social with whoever's left and hopefully taking in at least one Cory Doctorow panel.

Three happy things

Three happy things from this weekend's Harvest Ball, run by the gender-role-free contra dance gang up in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.  Two funny, one serious.

Funny suggestion over dinner:

In a discussion that was shifting between the different varieties of 5/4 dance in various historical eras and the need for me to make demo DVDs and the fact that if I did I would use a female partner and call them "Two Girls Dance", the following helpful suggestion:

"Bill them as HOT 5/4 GIRL-GIRL ACTION!!"

That does sound a lot more exciting than "How to dance the Five-Step", doesn't it?  Hmm.

Funny exchange:

Me: Are you my sassy gay friend, then?
Him: I could be!
Me: No, wait, I already have a sassy gay friend.
Him: I could be your sassy gay Jewish friend.
Me: I already have one of those, too...maybe you could be my best-dressed sassy gay Jewish friend?

After that, we had a waltz.

And one serious bit:

It's odd to have a time-travel moment at an event with such a modern atmosphere in general.  Not in costume, not dancing Regency style...actually, I was dancing the leader's role with a guy in the follower's role, while wearing a vaguely Goth minidress and skirt and stripey black and white knee socks.  Can't get much less historical!  And yet...when we danced the most modern version of "Money Musk" (thirty-two bars of dance squeezed asymmetrically into a twenty-four bar version of the tune) I was so pleased to be able to fall into a triple minor progression (normal for me, unlike pretty much the entire rest of the dance world) and enjoy the feel of working my way slowly up the set, and then that moment with my partner when we were ready to start dancing down and we went into that right hand swing, active couple all the way down to the bottom of the set...it was glorious.  Part of it was the tune, which is one of my favorites and very compelling to dance to, but part of it was the extra elasticity of the modern contra styling and the tightened timing overlaying the old-fashioned figures with their notable difference in activity between active couples and the others.  I'm not expressing it very well, but I just really like that contrast and hurtling down the set with the extra dramatic zing of being in the position for a few seconds per repetition of performer to audience, active to receptive, with the different type of figures that permits, rather than the consistent equality of role of most modern contra choreography, which I often find rather dull.

I think this attachment to contrast occurs in other areas of my life as well.  Food for thought.

Renovation Schedule (worldcon, not house!)

My house needs renovation, too, but this is actually my program schedule for this year's worldcon, Renovation, running Wednesday-Sunday, August 17-21, 2011, in Reno, Nevada.  I've been completely stereotyped as a costumer this time, despite requests to put me on non-costume program as well.  So it goes.  Three panels (one of which seems wildly overpopulated at seven panelists!) plus sharing the calling of Friday afternoon's Regency tea dance with my friend Alan.  Best time to catch me at-con is at the end of one of these.

Wednesday 16:00 - 17:00, How to Watch a Masquerade
A11 (RSCC)
Byron P. Connell (M), Susan de Guardiola, John O'Halloran, John F. Hertz
Panel for everyone - things to look for, etiquette, why it seems to take a long time for the judges to make their decisions, etc.

Thursday 13:00 - 14:00, What to Expect as a Contestant in Your First Masquerade
A10 (RSCC)
Kevin Roche (M), Byron P. Connell, Susan de Guardiola, Christina O'Halloran
Will you be appearing in the Renovation Masquerade?  Here's an insiders' panel on what to expect and what to do; also what NOT to do.

Friday 12:00 - 14:00, Regency Workshop and Tea Dance
C3 (RSCC)
Susan de Guardiola (M), Alan Prince Winston (M)
Learn and practice Regency country dances, cotillions, and waltzes in a gentle, gracious atmosphere. All dances will be called or taught. Neither dance experience nor partners are required.

Sunday 11:00 - 12:00, History of Masquerades and Con Costuming
A11 (RSCC)
Pierre E. Pettinger Jr.(M), Byron P. Connell, Toni Lay, Sandra G. Pettinger, Susan de Guardiola, Karen Anderson, Yvonne Penney
Costumes have come a long way since Forrest J Ackerman and Myrtle R. Jones wore futuristic silver suits to the first Worldcon.  Stop by to hear some stories about costuming and masquerades, and find out how you can help preserve today's costumes for the future.

I also expect to be at a few other dances for at least a bit of time, some of the Business Meetings, any concerts with S.J. Tucker, and of course the Hugos and Masquerade.

Fuzzy Nation

I've liked pretty much everything I've read of John Scalzi's, so I was fairly certain I was safe in picking Fuzzy Nation (Tor, 2011; editor: Patrick Nielsen Hayden) for my last vacation book.  My only mild worry was that I had read and enjoyed H. Beam Piper's classic Little Fuzzy many, many years ago, and a series "reboot", even with the blessing of Piper's estate and the talent of someone like Scalzi, makes me a little nervous.  I deliberately did not reread the Piper novel, and my memories of it are sufficiently, er, fuzzy, that I was able to come to Fuzzy Nation without specific plot details intruding.

And I'm delighted to say that it's wonderful.  I laughed, I cried, I loved it with a great happy skiffy love.  It's not a work of deep literature, but it's fabulous escapist fun, and how much SF outside the specifically humor-oriented stuff can you truly say that about nowadays?  Scalzi joyfully captures the spirit of old-fashioned science fiction, complete with present-day problems which one would really hope would be resolved by the far future: pitch-perfect little jabs at the patriarchal assumptions inherent in assigning human gender to small fuzzy aliens.  And he even keeps the science non-laughable.

The story: on the faraway planet Zara XXIII, disbarred lawyer Jack Holloway and his dog Carl are contractors searching for valuable minerals, particularly the rare and thus fashionable "sunstones".  Jack's brash manner and habit of training Carl to set off explosives haven't made him a lot of friends at ZaraCorp.  He's still trying to smooth things out with his former girlfriend Isabel, the company biologist, who's moved on to dating a ZaraCorp lawyer, Mark Sullivan, when he makes a double discovery: an enormous sunstone strike, enough to make him wealthy for life, and the aforementioned small fuzzy aliens, who seem to be a lot more intelligent than one would expect from something that looks like a bipedal cat.  Developing the sunstone strike would trash the habitat of the fuzzy clan, and ZaraCorp's entire tenancy of the planet would be challenged if it proved to be inhabited by an intelligent species.  This little problem, of course, does not further endear Holloway to the corporate honchos on site, nor does Isabel's advocacy for the species.  Will Jack get rich?  Save the fuzzys or betray them?  Get Isabel back?  Turn out to be a good guy after all, or just as much of an asshole as he appears?  Trust me, you want to find out.

Read for yourself:

The Panic Zone

Although most of my reading falls in the fantasy & science fiction category, I love a good thriller, and Rick Mofina writes very effective ones.  I'm coming in to the middle of his Jack Gannon series with the second book, The Panic Zone (MIRA, 2010), which I picked up at my favorite used bookstore in Stratford.  I'll definitely be picking up the first and third.  In the meantime, let me recommend the second as a great combination of classic mass-murder-plot thriller and scary disease story -- Black Sunday meets The Hot Zone. 

Buffalo journalist Jack Gannon, newly employed by the World Press Alliance (an Associated Press-style news wire service), is sent to Brazil to see what he can find out about a bombing that killed two WPA journalists.  A woman is thrown clear of a Wyoming car crash that kills her husband and her child -- or did the latter survive?  These events are not unrelated, though it takes lots of pages and patient unraveling of a deliciously complicated international plot involving a renegade CIA scientist and secret research on weaponizing hemmorhagic fevers like Ebola, which really doesn't need any help to be terrifying, to find this out.  It's a fun, suspense-filled ride with plenty of cheap emotional hits involving bereaved parents, a few gory deaths, and some rather science fictional nanotech.  Perfect vacation reading, in other words.  Mofina doesn't write deep, but he does write lovely plot tangles, and builds suspense so well that he makes you forget for the duration that you know it's going to all be solved in the nick of time.

Recommended for anyone who likes a good, light thriller.  Read for yourself:

Spell Bound

(This post contains spoilers for the previous Otherworld book, Waking the Witch, and reveals that this book doesn't really finish its story.)

Kelley Armstrong has a new book, and thus I have new blog post.  Spell Bound is the second in the trilogy that began with last year's Waking the Witch and is miniseries within her overall Otherworld series.  And that's becoming a problem.  Spell Bound is a fine enough read as paranormal/urban fantasy goes, and it's going to please series fans like me simply by advancing the story a bit and providing little updates on all our favorite characters.  But it suffers badly from middle-book and weighty-series-backstory syndromes.

Independence Year

Right now a great deal of what is happening politically in our country makes me feel sick and sad.  I don't want to write about our still-worthy ideals when we're so spectacularly failing to operate our actual political system, despite some notable bits of social progress this year.

On a personal level, though, the last ten months of my life, since quitting my day job and deciding to commit full-time to my dance research and teaching, have been some of the best of my life. 

Independence suits me.

That is all.

Balticon 2011 Schedule

My exciting schedule of events for Balticon this weekend, with official descriptions and my comments:

Friday 10:00pm-midnight, Valley (Ball) Room
Dancing in the Gears Steam Punk Ball
Susan de Guardiola with Irene Urban and Jeff Poretsky (floor managers)
Attention all aeronauts, aethernauts, lady and gentleman adventurers, mad scientists, inventors, and other Steampunks and neo-Victorians! Join us at 10 pm  Friday night at for a time-traveling formal evening at the Steampunk Ball!  Become part of the living clockwork of Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas. No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance mistress Susan de Guardiola. Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century. Steampunk, neo-Victorian, or Victorian costume encouraged and admired but not required. Airships and time machines should be parked outside the ballroom. No sabers, ray guns, or clanks permitted on the dance floor.

(I wrote this description, so it's accurate!)

Saturday night/Sunday morning midnight-1:30am, Salon A
Eye of Argon - the Play
Susan de Guardiola, Daniel Kimmel, Marty Gear, Walter H. Hunt, Hildy Silverman, Michael A. Ventrella
"One of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose" presented in all its theatrical glory." 

(Actually, we've sort of combined reading the play with a Survivor-style voting-off-the-island system that leaves the rejected readers acting out the story as we keep reading.  Calling this a play is kind of a stretch.  This is the third time out for Hildy, Michael, and I's roving Argon road show.  Maybe we'll read the second half of the story this time!)

Sunday, 11:00am-12:00noon, Valley (Ball) Room     
Martian Parlor Croquet: A Steampunk Diversion
Susan de Guardiola, Jeff Poretsky, Irene Urban
Victorian explorers, adventurers, chrononauts, and aethernauts! Join us in the fine sands of the remote Martian Canal Estates, where the well-dressed 19th-century tourist and all civilized alien entities may indulge in the genteel yet cutthroat Martian pastime of parlor croquet. Portable gravity generators encouraged to prevent loss of croquet balls into the aether.  Tentacular assistance prohibited.

(I wrote this description too.  We have tiny croquet mallets and we are not afraid to use them!)

Sunday, 3:00pm-4:50pm, Parlor 1041
Regency Tea and Games
Susan de Guardiola, Irene Urban, Jeff Poretsky
Come join us for afternoon High Tea and Regency era games.

(That's not what I sent them!  Here's the longer version:  Take a trip back in time to the society of early 19th century England and the games played during the era of Jane Austen, "Master and Commander", and the Napoleonic Wars!  Enjoy the pleasures of whist, the intricacy of picquet, or a cutthroat session of spillikins.  Games will be taught.  Regency costume encouraged (but not required).  Tea and light nibbles will be served!)

Steampunk World's Fair 2011 Schedule

This weekend, May 20-22, I will be appearing at the Steampunk World's Fair in Somerset, New Jersey and doing a whole list of exciting events -- a ball, dance workshops, lectures, and parlor croquet!  Details:

Friday, May 20th, 4pm-5pm
Victorian Ballroom Etiquette Talk
Victorian ballroom etiquette for beginners.  Proper bows and courtesies, how to perform introductions (and what you can do when youhave one) and the secret strategies of the dance card!

Friday, May 20th, 8pm-11pm
Formal Dance: The Big Brass Ball Part 1
Join us for a time-traveling formal evening at the Big Brass Ball!  Enjoy Victorian and Victorian-inspired set dances and spin madly with your partner to romantic waltzes and lively polkas.  No previous experience is needed; all dances will be taught by dance historian
Susan de Guardiola.  Music will be an eclectic mix of modern and nineteenth century.  Formal costume encouraged!

Saturday, May 21st, 2pm-3pm 
Germans: Silly Victorian Dance Games
What those wacky Victorians got up to in the ballroom after a few drinks too many!  Blindfolds, musical chairs, fan-slapping and more.  Freud would love it!

Saturday, May 21st, 4pm-5pm 
Victorian Dance Workshop I: Polkamania!
In-depth lesson on two popular Victorian ballroom dances, polka and
schottische and dancing to historical and modern music!  No experience
needed!

Sunday 10am-11am         
Martian Croquet
Explorers, adventurers, chrononauts, and aethernauts!  Join us in the
fine sands of the remote Martian Canal Estates, where the well-dressed
19th-century tourist and all civilized alien entities may indulge in
the genteel yet cutthroat Martian pastime of parlor croquet.

Sunday, May 22nd, 3pm-4pm
Victorian Dance workshop II: Whirl of Waltz
The secrets of how to spin madly around the dance floor in Victorian-style waltzing to a wild mix of historical and modern music!  No experience needed!

I'd be happy to meet up with any remaining Rixo readers -- find me there!

The Valcourt Heiress

It's hard to think what word to apply to Catherine Coulter's The Valcourt Heiress (Putnam, 2010).  "Shallow" is about the closest that comes to mind, or possibly "superficial".

On Yellow Ribbons

Everyone my age and up remembers yellow ribbons.  We learned the song "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree" back in the early 1970s and we lived through the first big adoption of them as a symbol during the Iranian hostage crisis from 1979-1981, when we saw actual ribbons tied on trees everywhere while we were counting the days and weeks and months of the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran and watching it play out as a political issue in the Carter-Reagan presidential race in 1980 (an issue that is much on the minds of people with long memories right now in light of last week's helicopter raid into hostile territory that succeeded where Carter's famously failed...) 

There was also a 1971 article in the New York Post by Pete Hamill telling the returning-convict story, which the Post has kindly republished here.  I never knew about that article before today, but the song was one of my childhood favorites even before the hostage crisis.   I love songs that tell a story, and this one is so simple yet so moving that it still makes me tear up.

Nowadays, the yellow ribbons have been reduced to those little magnetic stick-on things attached to cars, lost among a rainbow of other symbolic ribbons and now associated with supporting military men and women deployed overseas.  It had never before occurred to me to wonder about the yellow ribbon's history; I just assumed it started with the song.  That turns out to be wrong.  Very wrong.  And now I can document just how wrong it is. 

But before I get to my own little contribution to the historiography of the yellow ribbon, some background: 

The Terrifying Toes of John the Baptist

I took a meander through some of the collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a friend recently after seeing the amazing Alexander McQueen exhibit and somehow found myself in the gallery of Spanish art from 1500-1700.  There I came across a pair of rather peculiar feet attached to a relief of John the Baptist (left; click to enlarge).  While I'm all in favor of prehensile toes -- during my misspent youth, I taught myself to solve a "Rubik's Pyramid" with mine -- these toes seemed somewhat overlong and a little bit disturbing.  Especially the second toe on the left foot.  I spent some time studying my own toes, and they are not overly-long or uncanny-looking at all.  Am I just imagining that there is something a little off about these feet?  Is this something common in men's feet?  Did the artist copy his own toes?  Do saints have mutant feet?

Three Good Things

As you all know, last summer I quit my day job to try to make a go of doing dance, writing, and random freelance jobs full-time.  It's not quite a living yet, though I'm getting closer, but not having a day job and the resulting restrictions on time off means that I'm free to take exciting gigs as they come along.  "Exciting" can actually get really exciting.  I thought after my big New Zealand/Australia celebration-of-freedom trip last summer that I would be out of luck on interesting travel due to extreme poverty.  But that doesn't seem to be quite the case.

Here are the three most exciting gigs I have coming up this year, one of which has been announced for months and two of which I've been keeping quiet until the details were confirmed:

Blood On My Name

Well, here's a creepy little music video/short film.  "Blood On My Name" is a ten-minute short from Whitestone Motion Pictures that wraps a teeny bit of plot and worldbuilding around a fairly decent song.  Major credits include Brandon McCormick as writer/director and Nicholas Kirk as writer/composer and performer (with Billy Wilkerson) of the title song.  Sean Bridgers and Justin Welborn play the two leads.

I've never heard of Whitestone before, but they seem to have a whole collection of films as well as lots of downloadable soundtrack music.  I'll be watching more of them in the future.

Spoilers behind the cut, so go watch it before reading on.

The Night Children

One of my two Lunacon purchases was The Night Children (Starscape, 2008; no editor listed), by Kit Reed, apparently an author of note that I'd somehow never heard of.  It's both a Y.A. story and a fairly harsh bit of social commentary about our consumerist society.

The setting is the Castertown MegaMall, clearly a fictional take on the Mall of the Americas and, like its real-life model, a tourist destination in its own right featuring not merely stores but a miniature amusement park inside it.  Castertown was dying after all its manufacturing industries collapsed -- does this sound familiar? -- and was essentially bought by the megacorporation Zozzco, run by the reclusive Amos Zozz (who has more than a little in common with "Oz the Great and Powerful" -- a nonmagical wizard behind the curtain) and his daughter Isabella, who quieted any protests by essentially hiring the entire town.