Howard Andrew Jones

• Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster! ...okay, that wasn't a thought exactly. But still cool.



• I am having anxiety issues about upcoming life shifts. I should probably break down and go back to counseling, but that takes both money and time that I'd rather not spend.



• Regarding my recent LotRO binge and its related posts: one reason I've picked LotRO back up again was to get myself back into the mindset to continue my "Iz Srs Bznss" Fortress of Tears game, since hantamouse mentioned it in particular as one he'd like to see more of, and sirfox also seemed very into his character for it. That campaign is explicitly an attempt to be Tolkienish, and as such I figure LotRO is a good place to help get me into the right frame of mind. (LotRO is not a perfect adaptation of Tolkien by any stretch, but there are spots in which it is very, very good.)



• Tyson's Corner is a terrible, horrible, no-good place to be an introvert.



• When I was 10 or so, and Devo was the new hotness, there was a parody song on the air called "Wimp It." I remember chunks of it ("When a creature comes along/lookin' wimpy/lookin' funny and dressed wrong/really wimpy/you know there's something wrong/'cause he's so wimpy..."), but I have never been able to find who wrote/recorded it, nor indeed any record of its existence. It's not Weird Al, I know that much, but beyond that I've got nothing. Anyone out there besides me remember this song? I expect it must have at least played on Dr. Demento once or twice...

...that's all for the moment.

Pope Francis made news again recently when he said that even atheists can obtain salvation. The critical thing, according to the pope, is, "doing good."

I imagine everybody reading this is saying, "Well, duh!" right about now, but I suspect a historically important point is being missed. What I see Pope Francis doing here is taking a head-on stance against Martin Luther's doctrine of Sola Fide, or Salvation by Faith Alone. It's been a point of major contention between protestant and catholic interpretations of Christianity for centuries, and Pope Francis is coming down firmly on the side of the traditionally Catholic position. However, he's going to a place where his namesake, St. Francis, went but few others have since. The pope is saying that not only is salvation by faith alone a bogus argument, but that faith doesn't even matter. Atheists who do good will obtain the Great Reward, while those who proclaim belief in Christ but do not do good will not have salvation.

Personally, I think Pope Francis is right about this. It's the way we live our lives that counts. But he's not making any effort to bridge an old difference with the protestant denominations by taking this position. On the other hand, I don't think any mainline protestant leader is going to make a big thing of it.

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It's time to do some thinking about Rufaniel's long-term plans. What do I -want- from this character?

With Maedhroc, for a long time I was something of a completionist-- do ALL the instances! Get ALL the mounts! etc. With Rufaniel, I'm sorta "been there, done that" about a lot of things. Not that she would refuse to go back to whoop Thaurlach or Thorog... again... but she's not going to seek out those particular adventures. She (and I) are looking to see new things! Or at least, things that are new to me. Which at this stage includes:

• Isengard! I have never done an Isengard instance. What the heck is in there?


• Finishing off some of those Mirkwood instances. I've never past the front door of the Warg Pens, for instance. These are old news for some players, I know, but I'd still like to actually see them.


• Dragioch! This raid had just showed up right about the time I wandered off from the game and had large broken bits last I heard. Assuming those have been fixed, I'd like to see it.

On the other hand, I don't particularly care about, say, the "In Their Absence..." stuff, which never really gripped me from a story/lore-monkey standpoint. Mounted combat seemed like fun, what little of it I did, so Rufaniel will probably try to get into that a bit, too.

In the more immediate future, she has to finish off Aughaire to grab those last bits of Armor of Fem. When that's done, she'll probably be right around 45, so I have to decide... go back to the Misty Mountains and finish off Book 1 Chapter 5... or rush ahead to Eregion? (Answer, I'll probably finish the book quest, that's just my nature. But Eregion is tempting.)

-The Gneech

When I spoke about Historical Research at the DFW Writer's Conference earlier this month, one of the things I mentioned was using Wikipedia.

Now I always suggest taking any Wiki with a grain of salt. As a user, you don't know who's posting the info there. But I wanted to mention one way in which Wiki became invaluable to me in researching 1902 Portugal.

I used it extensively as a portal to Portuguese Wikipedia.

Let me give you an example:
Here's the English Wiki Page for Matosinhos, a town where part of The Golden City is set.



As you can see, there's hardly anything there. Apparently English speakers don't care much about this town.

But if you look down the left sidebar, you can see several other languages available.

When I click on Portuguese, I get this version of the page:



You can see that there's a LOT more information on this version of the page. There are also dozens of links on the Portuguese version that I can follow, both of other pages in Portuguese Wikipedia, and to external sites. Each of those might have links to dozens of other sites...and on it goes.

So I've used Wiki this way to help me slip into Portuguese research. If I tried to do research via a search engine in Portuguese, I would be overwhelmed. I wouldn't know where to start or which sites had any validity. With Wiki's help, though, I have a starting place.

But I don't speak Portuguese!, you complain.

I speak very little, and that I had to learn for writing these books, but there are always machine translators out there that can give you a leg up. I mostly use the Bing Tranlsator, but Google has one as well. (Keep in mind that these are machine translations, and are only 'better than nothing'.) Between my poor Portuguese and the machine, I do a decent job.

In addition, if you hop to another Wiki page, you can double check to see whether there's an English version. That page may have similar information.

To research for Book 3, The Shores of Spain, I'm now having to hop over to Spanish Wiki a lot. Since my Spanish is better than my Portugese, this is easier for me.

It's still proving a very useful research trick.

 This last week it was the Mother of Slavery.

 

The last two days were transitional, the change of state:

From the world of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who had moral qualms about slavery (TJ found that living from selling slaves and slave labor trumped morality every time, while Washington, at least, freed his slaves in his will) to the world of no moral qualms at all in South Carolina -- no siree bhob! slavery is a positive GOOD FOR THE SLAVES!;

 

Change of water into land, land into water;

 

The Norfolk-Portsmouth-New Port News-Hampton Roads region -- from which tens of thousands of people of color changed their state of mere enslavement for life to that of the dark regions of early death's no return further south and west. This, along with Richmond and Charleston and other Atlantic ports, mirror on this side of the Atlantic the slave entrepots and out ports on the African Atlantic coast; 

 

North Carolina's Albemarle County -- which was thefted from Virginia and given to Carolina, mostly in order that Carolina in that day might have one county that had white population;

 

The Great Dismal Swamp, location of so much of Virginia's William Byrd's -- he of Westover -- dreams and fantasies;

 

And Albemarle Sound. 

 

 

 

Down to the vital port of the CSA, Wilmington, North Carolina.

 

Today we enter the Heart of Darkness.  We go to Beaufort, South Carolina.  Old John C. will be spinning in his crypt, perhaps.

 

Geography is the second pillar of history (the first, of course, chronology).  There is the reason the Father of History, Herodotus, traveled the lands and the peoples who lived in them. The historian must know the typography, the distance, the climate and what exists therein.  How vast, how very vast, the Chesapeake regions, how varied.  We have traveled the entire length, from Maryland down to Albemarle now.

 

We had lunch-breakfast yesterday in a nice little place in Windsor.

 

It's hot.

Actually... George Carlin really did say that.

-The Gneech, healing and caring, feeling and sharing

Okay, so a story.

Say there's a guy at your work, and you barely know him to say hello to, but you have a fellow feeling for him.

It's like, when you do happen to say hello, the hello becomes a kind of joke, and his eyes know the punchline, and he's looking to you to deliver it, and you're both about to crack up, just because of the word hello? That kind of guy.

Anyway, it's not your work. It's my work.

It's a rare writer can sustain a second person narrative, and I'm not she.

So I asked this guy his name a while ago, because I like to know the names of people who seem to recognize me without ever having met me before. Not like a, "You're famous!" recognition, but more like, "If only we had two weeks on a desert island, and enough food and booze and sunblock, we'd be GREAT FRIENDS IN NO TIME, but life doesn't work like that, but good morning anyway."

I greeted him by name when I got into work early.

"And how are you this morning?"

"I'm beautiful!" he said. Then added, "Well... At least, I feel like I'm beautiful."

I about near melted all over the place, and said, perhaps a little fervently, "You ARE beautiful!" and then said, "You know, I think everyone's just a little more beautiful in May?"

He thought about it, started smiling even more smilingly, then said, "You know, I think you're right?"

"Because," I told him, clapping my hands together, "it's French-Kiss Weather!"

"It's French-Kiss Weather," he repeated, laughing.

Then he went back to reading Vonnegut. And I went back to memorizing lines.

***

So, in my opinion, this term "French-Kiss Weather" should not be wasted on a chance encounter, no matter how delicious. In fact the chance encounter shouldn't be wasted as a mere chance encounter, hence this blog.

But wait. It gets better.

***

There I am, in a certain position at work that has a lot of downtime in between a lot of RUSH AROUND AND TRY TO MAKE EVERYTHING WORK AT THE SAME TIME kind of time. And in my downtime, I write this little poem called "French-Kiss Weather."

And all the while I'm thinking, "Do I give this to him? I mean, is there a non-creepy, non-stalkerish way to give this to him, that will indicate it's just a gift of May, that it means nothing except that he was there for when I thought of it, and anyway, the worst that can happen is a sexual harassment suit, but the second worse that can happen is that we'd lose this unspoken joke between us, which would be a real shame, but the third worse that can happen is not giving it and thinking myself a coward, when I'm not really, and haven't been since I was 23 and decided that the only thing to do with poems I write about people is to, you know, give them to them, because it's only FAIR."

And I came to the conclusion (it was more of a hope, really) that there was that in his eyes which would not freak out too badly.

I think it's called a sense of humor.

I trust people with a sense of humor. They allow for astonishment, but take it in stride.

I still had to think of a way to give it to him.

I couldn't just bring it to his workplace. There were too many of his co-workers there. Ew. NOT MY DEPARTMENT.

Okay, so I took my afternoon break in the staff lounge, checked my email, and LO! In he walks. Right into the staff lounge. Alone.

(Because the gods have a sense of humor too.)

And I called him over and brought my left hand up to shield my face from the rest of the room in case there were spies and lip-readers among those gathered at the far end (and also, because I saw one of my supervisors approaching in periphery), and I leaned in and whispered, "Would you be weirded out or offended if I wrote you a poem?"

And he said, "No! I love poetry!"

And I said, "EXCELLENT!" and dug in my back pocket and handed his to him.

And he said, "RIGHTEOUS!" and went on his way. (People who use the word "righteous" unselfconsciously but also deliberately are A-Okay with me. It's totally boss.)

I take a moment to exhale. I'm a little over-warm, right? WOULDN'T YOU BE?

Because, you know, sometimes it's just a little harder to breathe.

Even when you've done these things before.

***

BUT THEN!

***

My supervisor, who'd been headed in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION, turns around and comes back to me.

"Claire, are you that red because you've been outside all day?"

And poor sweet soul, he's REALLY concerned, I can tell. And it's SO RIDICULOUS that I almost laugh, but I don't because I don't want to get hysterical, so I just tell him, very seriously:

"Nah, boss. I made sure to wear sunblock today, knowing I was going to be working outside."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure. I'm red because I'm blushing. It will fade in a few minutes."

"Oh," he said, looking confused. "Yeah, it's already fading."

And that was that.

***

Life is so interesting.

Men are interesting. And there are more of them ABOUT than usual in my life, which is a pleasant change. I'm a little bit in love with all the world in May. I'm trying to enjoy myself, to control myself, and to not (split infinitive split further) control myself too much. Keep the avenues open, because the avenues are so beautiful right now, full of blossoms and bees.

And it's French-Kiss Weather.

And Stephen Sondheim DID say that a girl has to celebrate what passes by.

***

http://www.lauraannegilman.net/tricks-of-the-trade-ebook-now-available-in-the-uk/

After a delay that was making me twitch (and no, I don't know why there was a delay), TRICKS OF THE TRADE (Paranormal Scene Investigations #3) is available digitally in the UK!

Book 4, DRAGON JUSTICE, will be available 1 June.

*throws confetti*

(and while you're there, check out the short fiction of DON'T READ THIS BOOK and DRAGON VIRUS!)

Thanks to  reader Catherine Sharp for the news!

Been blogging!
http://www.mharoldpage.com/?p=60

http://www.scotthandrews.com/wordpress/?p=689

I will be at Balticon, the annual Baltimore F/SF con, this Sunday for the day, including on several panels about editing and podcasting:

From Slush to Sale (Sun, 1:00 PM)

This panel will be a reprise of the ‘From Slush to Sale’ roundtable that I was on in February hosted by the Baltimore SF Society. Other editors on this panel include Hildy Silverman, editor of Space & Time, who has bought several of my stories.

We’ll be discussing various aspects of the submission, acceptance, and editing process, including the ever-popular ‘what do editors want’ and its converse, ‘what do editors see all to often’. :)

Jake Bible We Hardly Knew Ye: The Current State of Podcast Fiction (Sun, 2:00 PM)

This panel features a number of prominent podcasters, such as Mur Lafferty. I will be representing the trends in ‘hybrid’ online magazines–those, like BCS, that publish short fiction in text / ebooks and in audio podcasts.

Editors’ Q&A Session (Sun, 4:00 PM)

This panel includes several editors of theme anthologies and will answer audience questions about submissions, acceptances, and the publishing process, for anthologies and magazines. I’m moderating, and I’ve got a stack of my own questions to ask, including some that I bet you’ve never heard before. :)

I will also have the requisite stack of shiny BCS flyers and postcards. If you see me in the halls, feel free to say hello!