The backyard

I haven't posted any pictures of the backyard lately. (Here's a before post for purposes of comparison). The mission was to encourage water to flow away from the house, and we've had a few hard rains with no wet floors downstairs, so I would have to call that mission accomplished. The cosmetic aspects are still very much a work in progress though (I still have no stairs from the back door to the patio, for instance).

Here's a shot of where the Bobcat tracks were last year. Can't even tell now, can you? The dirt pile is left over from the gardens. The plan is to cover it with rock and plant a few herbs to grow between the rock, but that won't be happening until next spring:

This doesn't look like much now that I pulled all the wildflowers out. It doesn't usually look so much like plain dirt, honest! The morning glories made it all the way to the top of the trellis for the first time this year. The Boston ivy has only just started climbing up after our excessively dry summer:

This is where the other half of the old patio covered. The open patch is dirt mixed with concrete, and it's at an angle to carry water away from the house. We had talked about what to cover it with, but when that moss started growing we decided that was cooler than anything we had planned, so we're leaving it (and hopefully it will spread more and thicken; that would be really cool):

This part has had the least work done so far (the rock the patio crew threw down for Bobcat traction is still there). A few plants have been put in, but the plan is for more ferns and shade plants to leave nothing but a little trail:

Last pic is the stump of the crabapple tree. Or it used to be the stump; it's now an enormous fungus. Oliver refuses to go into the backyard because it completely freaks him out. Thankfully the fact that he has a terrific view of it from his bedroom window hasn't been a problem. Or maybe that's what has him up in the middle of the night, nightmares of the fungus crawling in his window...

It's like a roasted bell pepper tart

One of my husband's favorite dishes is roasted bell pepper tart. I like eating it too, but making it is a minor headache. Not roasting the bell peppers or making the pastry; actually baking the tart, which you'd think would be the easy part. It's all gooey egg goodness; but how to tell when it's done? Our cheap oven can't hold a steady temperature even with a baking stone on the bottom rack. The fact that it's still supposed to be a little soupy when it's done because the recipe calls for five post-oven minutes to "set up" is what really messes with me. I have to look at this thing and decide if it will firm up in five sitting minutes or not. I'm not good at those kinds of judgement calls. (The anxiety I have about undercooking food also explains that while I am technically the carnivore of the family, I only eat meat that other people have prepared).

All of which is just to say that I'm calling this novel "done" in the hopes that it's going to set up now, or something. I foresee some rewriting when I hear back from my critique group, but hopefully nothing too extensive. I'm considering it done enough to print the whole thing out for my husband to read, and I promised when I started this thing he'd only have to read it once; that's probably the best indication of my sense of doneness.

So I have one short story to do a little tinkering on, another that is niggling to be written, and then it's on to the next WIP, which I'll lovingly refer to as "Untitled", the YA sci-fi that's been burning in my brain for months now.

I'm still working on stuff...

...so another short post here. I just wanted to share this rather long article over at Making Light about the UFO spotted by Barney and Betty Hill (any documentary you've ever seen about alien abductions starts with the Hills). I found it amusing that no one who's done a story on these two has ever gone up to the road they were on and looked around, not even the fellow who wrote the book (using travel brochures). I do more research than that guy for my fiction (although I haven't been to Greenland. I wish I could go. It's hard to get a sense of what it smells like from photos).

I've never put all of my research books together, but between general Greenland research, books on the Inuit, books on the Troth, books on Chinese magic, and books on Mars it's got to be over 50. Some of those were from the library, though, so I guess I physically can't stack them up now.

I only mention because Marie Brennan photographed the books she used for Midnight Never Come, which I can't wait to read. Plus, she actually went to London. (Have you read Marie Brennan? You really should).

I'm very busy writing stuff...

...but here's a link to keep you busy: the 25 biggest wusses of rock. The fact that I actually rather like 15 of them probably doesn't speak well of me, though. Forget I mentioned it. Click it just to find out which band is "like the Smiths but without all the macho posturing".

Sale #3!

I just sold my short story "Trifle" to Beyond Centauri (although I had actually submitted to Aoife's Kiss, so I got a letter that was both a rejection and an acceptance; a cool first). This was my first short story that came out actually short and not a mininovel, and I wrote it for the very first Backspace contest I ever entered. So I'm fond of it and glad it's found a home. On the other hand, it takes so long for me to find homes for things, everything I've sold so far has been at least two years old. I feel like I should put in my mini-bio "and I write much better now", but then I'd have to add "and in two years you'll find out!".

I still haven't really been sleeping, which makes me mood-swingy (can you tell?). I'm hopeful that after driving in for a meeting tonight I won't have to work again until Saturday (although I fully expect that day to suck, if this past weekend is any indication). I worked way too long yesterday and then stayed up later than I should have watching the last half of Avatar Season 2 now that we have the DVD. "One more episode and I'll go to bed... OK, one more episode and then I'll go to bed..." Which is sad, as I've seen them all before.

I am excited for the live action movies to come out. I mean, I was excited as soon as I heard M. Night Shyamalan was going to direct them, as I've loved everything he's done, even Lady in the Water. But they had a little interview with him as a bonus feature and when the two creators of the TV show asked him why he wanted to make Avatar when all of his previous movies have been his own stories, his answer without hesitation was "the martial arts". Yes!

What's so magical about 4 a.m.?

I don't know, but for some reason I just have to be awake every morning at 4 a.m. and lie there for an hour and a half. The spiders are growing, although I don't really worry until they get the size of cats. But then again, when I was driving to the library the other night I kept seeing the wings and talons of a dragon in my rearview mirror, so perhaps the spiders are no longer my best clue that things have gotten bad.

No, I don't do sleep deprivation well at all. I did take next week off of work to try to get myself straightened out. Sort of. It's terribly inconvenient to people in two countries when I'm not there working, and the best I could do was an agreement that they would put me down as off but if they need me they'll call and I'll get on and work. There's a pretty big downside to being as fast as two normal people; it's impossible to get away guilt-free ever.

I had entertained the notion of getting some writing done if I did manage a work-free night or two, but at this point I'd settle for catching up on sleep. I do have plans for at least one night, though. As Aidan gleefully informed me, Avatar season 3 starts on Tuesday, and now that I won't be working next week I can watch it with them rather than recording the episode and catching up on it later. Wu ha! They just better not call me until 7:30 on Tuesday. Say it with me "I'm sorry; my husband must have been on the other line and didn't click over. I only just got your message." What? I need the break! Plus, it's Avatar season 3.

My August Book Report

So I'll start with the only book I read this month that wasn't written by Robert Heinlein, Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer. It's some indication of how much I was looking forward to reading this that I interrupted my Heinlein marathon the day it came in the mail to read it right away (whereas Spook Country is waiting on the TBR stack until I'm done with the Heinlein, although I've been picking it up and paging through it; my willpower might break on that score too). EGB didn't disappoint. It's a YA vampire tale that manages to pay homage to all the vampire tales that have come before without being derivative itself. No mean feat, that. Vlad may be a vampire, but he's also a thoroughly modern boy and an outsider at his school. It reminded me a bit of Peter Parker in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie; having superpowers isn't much help when you're the weird kid no one wants to talk to, and you're hopelessly crushing on the prettiest girl in school. I only wished it had been longer, but then there's always ninth grade (and tenth, and eleventh, and twelfth, and dare I say college?).

The rest of what I read this month was all Heinlein, as I mentioned. I've read a few of his later novels, but never the YA I've been told again and again I simply must read. Being anal, I always read in chronological order (one of the many handy uses for Wikipedia, it has such nice and complete lists).

The first two I read, Beyond This Horizon and For Us, The Living were both written in the 40s but not published until much later. BTH had some interesting ideas, but it seemed to start out being one story and ending as something else and it didn't really hang together. FUTL is not really a story at all, more a collection of Heinlein's ideas told in an almost Socratic way through dialogue. It sounds dry; I actually found it dead interesting. Everything that is quintessentially Heinlein is touched on in this book; it's amazing that he wrote it before all the others. It's probably not the Heinlein you'd want to start with, but I would recommend it to anyone who's read more than a few of his other novels. I would especially recommend it to writers who write primarily to put forth ideas. It makes an excellent study tool; observe how Heinlein already knew what he wanted to say, but set it aside to master straight-up storytelling first and then started slipping the ideas back in. I'm pretty sure that's why he was a Grandmaster.

The next two I didn't like as well: Rocketship Galileo and Space Cadet. The two shortest of his books, but they took me the longest to get through. After I finished RG I admitted to Quin that the little science lectures sprinkled throughout I mostly skimmed over, but Nazis on the moon were cool. Which was pretty much exactly the opposite of how he feels about that book (and I'm probably lucky he didn't throw something at me for being such a heathen). SC reminded me a lot of Old Man's War. I realize I have that exactly backwards, that Scalzi was modeling after Heinlein, but honestly I liked Scalzi better. (Perhaps because there were also women involved in his military.)

The last two I tackled in August I really liked, or my marathon would have come to a grinding halt (I'm not a masochist, after all; I prefer to read books I like). Red Planet I liked well enough to make a little space in Aidan's history book reading schedule for him to read it next. I may have a difference of opinion with Heinlein on the "we should all be naked" thing, but I'm right there with on the libertarian front, and this is a very libertarian book. Plus I loved Willis, who even though she has laid a nest of eggs still insists that "Willis is a good boy". (Of course the actual women in the novel contribute to the effort by making sandwiches and coffee. A boy becomes a man when he takes up a gun to defend his own, but a girl is a woman when she cooks.)

The last one I finished in August was The Sixth Column, which I also liked. I see little hints of Stranger in a Strange Land in it, with the way he portrays religion. (And here women contribute to the war effort by doing clerical work.) (And if you think I'm harping on the woman thing here, be glad you're not my husband. Actually, most of what he's had to endure has been on behalf of The Puppetmasters, but as I didn't finish that one until September you'll have to wait a month for me to lay into that one).

Didn't get a thing done last week

Not a word written. I'm late posting my August book report as well; perhaps I'll get to that tomorrow. It was a pretty crappy week, but this week should be better, right?

I did finally get to watch the end of Salaam-e-Ishq (I mentioned watching the first half before). It's more of an inspired by Love Actually movie than a remake, which is cool. I've mentioned before how much I love reading the entries in Backspace contests (back in the day, when I had the time; I wish I still did). Seeing how different writers approach the same subject matter is one of my favorite things. There are a few corollaries between the two films but mostly they are very different stories. I mentioned before Salman Khan was in this, and I did enjoy his story line, but it was Govinda who ran away with the movie for me. He plays a taxi driver who speaks very little English who is helping a Canadian woman who speaks very little Hindi find her boyfriend before he gets married to an Indian girl. Now anyone who's read my fiction knows my fascination with how people communicate when they don't share a language, and in fact the Colin Firth story line was my favorite in Love Actually. But while Colin Firth and the Portuguese girl didn't understand each other at all, Govinda and Stephanie speak just enough of each other's language to almost, but not quite, have a conversation. Which for my money is much funnier.

My only gripe with the movie was that Govinda barely dances in it. Watching Govinda dance is like watching Steve Nash play basketball. He makes it look so effortless and fun, he always puts a grin on my face (even in the midst of a crappy, crappy week). He gets a few moments in the title song:

But that's it. Luckily I have a few more Govinda films in my waiting to be watched stack, so I have something to look forward to.

Quin had taken Friday off to give himself a four-day weekend, so we had an extra movie-watching time slot. We filled it with Don: The Chase Begins Again, which is completely Salman-free. It was really cool, sort of a James Bond/Mission Impossible feel to it. I've often said to Quin that watching ShahRukh Khan movies I sense the guy really wants to be making kung fu films, and this is a step in that direction. Although it gets a bit bloody for my taste in a few places, that gets counterbalanced by the singing and dancing, which never comes up in Bond films (plus, good songs). By a weird coincidence, both of these films also starred Priyanka Chopra. She was Salman's love interest in Salaam-e-Ishq and ShahRukh's in Don. Quin, still not a Salman fan, insists she's much better opposite ShahRukh. I liked her in both, but in Salaam-e-Ishq Salman not only sings and dances with her, he turns up on horseback and brings a marching band with him. It's rather hard to top that.