Mother Amazed: My daughter Jennifer recorded Courtesan Prince for me, using my original manuscript, and gave me the tapes for my birthday (Feb 17) in a painted box with captions for the author and the best-ever narrator! [More Pictures]

posted by Lynda at 13:58   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 

Happy to step aside in favor of letting the students at Kelly Road take over and read from my work, when I visited in March 2005. Much fun was had. They were good! And most brave. I gave away copies of the books and drafts to the people who volunteered to read from them. KP's buttons were also popular.

posted by Lynda at 13:41   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
I have a blog that I use for mindless brain chatter. Thought I would share it.
Sumptuosity

Virginia
posted by Virginia at 09:10   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Quote from a discussion with Karl, publisher of Neo-Opsis, on writers' anxiety and publishing:

"I just remind myself that the worst thing that can happen is the publisher will get all mad & drive over & beat me up & tell all the other publishers never to publish anything I write."

Puts it all in perspective, now don't it? :)

Virginia
posted by Virginia at 18:46   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 

Had an inspiration this morning while doing the dishes, with the usual grumpy resentment about there always being dishes to do in order to clear the deck in the kitchen, although I'm not the one who generates them, and thinking about the third chunk of Righteous Anger I had just submitted to the NorSpec workshop last night, major typos and wrong-words, warts and all.

That third section is about Kene's visit to Fountain Court, and includes a bit where one of Beryl Nesak's retainers helps out by waiting on table.

Rinsing a cereal bowl, I imagined a gesture periodically performed by Nesak men, in which they ritually remind themselves that woman's work is of equal value, and the women voluntarily perform it to leave them free to do the work they prefer. In the ritual they will acknowledge that it is not demeaning to do domestic chores, demonstrate their willingness by washing one dish or sweeping one floor, and thank their wife, mother or sister before handing over the broom or the tea towel.

The reality of Nesak life is unequal with regard to gender roles and, ultimately, power, but I am discovering in Beryl that Nesak women have enough spunk to catch them out in hypocrisy if they get too superior and effectively say, "Fine then, you do the dishes and I'll fight the Vrellish for you".

PS in justice to loved ones, I will add that Jennifer has just come upstairs and spontaneously offered to do all the dishes she can get done before we go out to meet Sarah at Books & Co at 10 am. (She's been taping the first book of Animorphs.) David is working today at the Playhouse. Dishes in the sink, however, are still dishes in the sink and there are always better things to do, for everyone. Grr, grump, and ringing of hands.

posted by Lynda at 09:01   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 
Lynda, this one's for you: since I know you like to make buttons. Granted, they are minimalist buttons, requiring great economy of phrasing, but nevertheless ... the link is to a script that makes buttons in the style that is becoming ubiquitous amongst blogs, the 15x80 rectangles that say 'RSS' 'XML' 'MovableType' etc. I have just made an ORU button: .

And another:
posted by Anonymous at 17:48   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 
Our experience with wikispam notwithstanding (when the beginning pages of an ORU novel were repeatedly replaced by crud), I still like the wiki format, because it offers the opportunity to grow notes and reference material freeform, without having to decide upon its structure in advance. I have an installation of UseModWiki on my G4, which I use to slap down various bits and pieces, but a key feature was lacking: the ability to export files in any format. If I'm going to build anything coherent, I'd like the ability to load it onto my PDA, not to mention possibly loading it onto a website. So I went looking for an easy-to-use wiki that would export HTML at least. I came across Dokuwiki - designed for small companies to write documentation with - which uses PHP and stores the information in readable flatfiles. I rather like the idea of flatfiles, too, having now twice manually rebuilt a MovableType blog because the database became inaccessible. Dokuwiki took me all of 5 minutes to do a default installation, and the default installation is simple and elegant (it's the one that the site itself displays).
posted by Anonymous at 18:47   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 
If I follow Erasmus' dictum of books before food, I'm going to get hungry in May. Here's the to-buy list:

1. Second volume of Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative series. If you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say, a character like Mac is not going to leave a promise to a friend unkept!
   
2. Final volume of Coleen Doran's A Distant Soil. I've been waiting for this one for a LOONNNG time, considering that Lynda got me hooked way back during the writing of my thesis. That was what got me through, that, ElfQuest, and the X-Men.
   
3. May or June is the next Lois McMaster Bujold novel. I think it's also a Chalion one, and it's called The Hallowed Hunt. Which means it could be following Ista on her demon-hunt. Or it could go off with another character - which I think more likely. Whereever she's going, I'm going with her, because if I had to pick a writer who is consistently excellent, she's top of the list.
   
4. May is also when Revenge of the Sith comes out. I will go along to feast my eyes, because Lucas has a sumptuous visual imagination, and with the kind of computer graphics tools now available (which he did a lot to develop), it will be the kind of film to see three times just to look in all the corners. Unfortunately, I fear he doesn't have the dramatic oomph to pull off the story he's trying to tell. I would very much like to be disproved.
   
5. And I know there's one more I can't think of right now.
   

Unfortunately, my birthday is in September. I will simply have to get my income tax done early - assuming they're going to give me anything back. Consider it motivation to do a chore I usually put off until the week before.
posted by Anonymous at 23:26   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments

 

Amanda and I at the start of a presentation at UNBC, sporting ORU buttons.
posted by Lynda at 22:24   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
More on the discovery of little people in Flores and their surprisingly developed brains.

Virginia
posted by Virginia at 10:14   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 1 comments