I wrote 3700 words yesterday...

...and looking them over this morning they mostly don't suck, so that's good. I celebrated with lots of dancing. Since it's been so unremittently hot I've given up treading the mill for the last few weeks, but what with all the dancing I've actually dropped a few more pounds (well, that and the lack of appetite I always get when it's just too hot). Oliver likes to dance with me, but Aidan finds it distracts him from reading the subtitles. He's trying to work out which Hindi words mean what in English. I guess he must be my kid after all.

You know, George Lucas has talked about watching Akira Kurosawa films before making Star Wars, and how he loved all the little rituals and things that a Japanese viewer wouldn't need explained, but as an American you don't know what it means but it surely means something. He was going for that effect in his first three films, that sense that this or that gesture meant something specific but didn't feel like he needed to explain it all. (Two problems with the second trilogy: he lost the sense of fun and he started explaining stuff instead of going for that sense of it all being foreign and cool. Mitichlorians, anyone?).

I only mention this because Salman Khan is in a Hollywood movie about Bollywood movies coming out next Friday called Marigold, and while I'll surely go see it, it looks from the preview that they missed that crucial fun element. It looks like it's going to be all explainy about what makes Bollywood great instead of just being a great Bollywood movie. (Like Moulin Rouge, which was essentially an English language Bollywood movie, and tons of fun. Baz Luhrman, where did you go?) Plus the MC seems like she really belongs in the movie Braatz. Personally, I'd rather see the new one he's doing with Govinda called Partner that just came out in India, but it'll probably be a year before it makes it to DVD here. Sigh. At least there's always You Tube.

Brief Notes

So this week is our homeschool vacation week, the only time I get these days to write. I'm not making any goals to finish anything, though. I'm standing on shifting sands employment-wise, which is making me panicky. Quin's career is taking off now, but it's not the meteoric rise we'd need to get by on one income, and it would be hard for me to find another work-from-home nights and weekends thing which is necessary for the homeschooling, especially as Quin sometimes has to go out of town overnight with almost no notice. I couldn't really do the overnight shift at the Red Cross again unless I was constantly calling in sick or something. I might have to work my way through less and less savory transcription employment (working for services, ugh, and just until they outsource out of country or replace humans with computers). I hope to milk out another six years. Ten would be nice. I could always go back to being a lab tech, although at this point it would be a huge drop in pay. I've gotten spoiled on this pay for productivity thing; it's easy to forget that most jobs you can't get more cash just by working harder and faster.

It's hard not to have the "what if I did this for a living?" fantasy about the writing, but I don't really find that to be a healthy influence; in fact the quality of the work suffers when I'm in any way thinking of who would ever want to buy it when I'm done. It's just not good for the writing to be looking at the WIP like it's a potential Powerball ticket where I can skew the odds if I just write really, really well. Because nothing can ever be brilliant enough for that, and it's leaving me quite dejected. So I've had to get my head straight and just focus on the craft again and not worry about whether or not it will sell. I haven't written any actual words for it in over a month, but I've come up with back stories on secondary characters I need to add to the second half, and also a sense of some other things which are missing. I'm focused to work now, but I'm not quite as joyful as I usually am when I write. Maybe I'll find the joy when I get in the zone.

On a totally unrelated note, Quin's company picnic is this Wednesday, and he's very excited for me to go. I don't go to any of my work's functions; since I work from home the only people I actually know are the other transcriptionists, with whom I have almost nothing in common, so there's very little point (plus, I just hate parties). Since Quin works for an engineering firm, his coworkers are all just like the guys I hung out with in high school, so that's cool for me (it's still a party, but a tolerable party). Quin is particularly anxious for me to go this time since he can dump me with his Indian coworker who has been lending me all of her Bollywood movies (almost all of which I went on to buy my own copies; those movies have an insanely high rewatch factor. I've had Hum Aapke Hain Koun on in the background while I've been working or doing whatever. I've only had it for two weeks but I've played it about 20 times. It's my favorite). Quin's not only been carrying these movies back and forth, but I have him ask her questions about what this or that means, or what other movies with the same actors are good. Then this became "Ask her which one she likes better, Aamir Khan or Salman Khan?" She says Aamir Khan, because Salman Khan has pictures taken with his shirt off and that's just so inappropriate in India. "Well, inappropriate photos aside, I like him in the movies. He's got this dorky-funny thing going on. He reminds me of a Hayao Miyizaki character, that big-hearted, opposite-of-cool vibe is just so... cool." Well, she says you may like Salman Khan now, but that's just because you've never seen Shah Ruh Khan. She doesn't have any of his, but here's a list of titles (none of which are here yet, so I still haven't seen Shah Ruh Khan). I don't know why he wants to get out of the middle of this fascinating conversation. I can't imagine a bunch of engineers giving him crap for discussing which actor is the cutest in this or that musical. Oh, wait...

Squirrels

They're so cute when they're helping themselves to your stale pita bread...



But then they do this to your (admittedly cheap) patio furniture...

I think there's a man-eating squirrel lurking just out of sight in my backyard.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the movie)

So I saw this last night (and just managed to squeak in reading the book for the third time before I went). I suppose I was bound to be disappointed; it is far and away my fave of the series (I'll let you know on Saturday night whether that is still true). This is the first installment by a director whose work I've not seen previously. He had an amazing visual sense; the Ministery of Magic looked fantastic, Harry's dreams/visions and the dementors were genuinely creepy, and the wizard fight at the end was phenomenonly good. In some ways the movie actually tops the book (what the director did at the end is so much cooler than statues coming to life to shield Harry, and having the Room of Requirement provide the mistletoe just when it was required was a stroke of genius). The screenwriter deserves some praise for masterfully condensing the longest book into what I'm pretty sure is the shortest movie.

Alas, in the end it didn't quite do it for me. The scenes without visual effects just really fell flat. They were staged funny, the actors didn't seem to know where to stand or which way to look (particularly Emma Watson, who never seemed to know what to do with her arms). It all felt so wooden; none of the emotional resonance carried over. None of the anger was angry enough. Harry should've been much more sarcasic in Umbridge's class, and the scene when Trelawney is fired really needed more, and should've been on the stairs. I have to blame the director here because I know these actors can act. Somewhere out there I imagine they're moaning "that's the take he kept? That one?" My favorite scene from the book didn't make it into the movie (when Neville's mother gives him the gum wrapper), but it's just as well. A bad rendition would have completely ruined it for me.

My boys didn't see it. From what I heard I thought it might be a bit much, and as they hadn't seen the Transformers yet they went to that one without me. They enjoyed it very much. Quin says that Oliver was on the edge of his seat, grinning, practically vibrating with excitement. I'll have to catch that one on DVD (probably about a million times...)

This and that

Mostly links here.

First off, check out the latest issue of Fusion Fragment, which features a certain "My Bonny" by a certain J.F. Peterson, a fine tale from one of my favorite writers. This story came from the same Backspace contest as my own "Tale of a Fox". It's always cool how the same set of parameters can lead to such varied works.

This is why Ursula K. LeGuin rocks. The whole review Ruth Franklin did of Chabon's book is full of chuckletastic quotes like the one that set LeGuin off. Frankly I stopped being bothered by this "genre is crap" rhetoric some time ago. I just like to point it out and mock it.

And posts like this are why I love John Scalzi. (Someone in his comments linked to this Gandhi quote, and on days like today I can totally agree with him. But then I would, because apparently I am Gandhi).

(You can see the incident Scalzi is referencing on YouTube here. I find it just sad and upsetting. Actually I find most of CSPAN sad and upsetting, except their coverage of British parliament, which is fun and engaging, although the fact that none of what they're saying is going to directly affect me could be a contributing factor there).

Here's something more on the fun side: a clip from Boondocks. I'm anxiously awaiting season 2 on this show; it's funny but unlike most of Adult Swim it's gorgeously animated. The reflections on the hospital floor, the detail on every person in a crowd scene, Huey's anime daydreams; it's all good. And I love these two characters, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Charlie Murphy:

Who reads this blog?

It's been a while since I checked in with my StatCounter (and I totally promise I am going to get some writing done today!). Myspace I like for having the little counter box right there in the corner, very convenient for obsessives. However, it doesn't tell you who stopped by or what they were looking for. I have StatCounter on my blogspot blog, so I do get that information. However, it's not particularly enlightening, is it?



All spanking, all the time. With just a hint of basketball (and the basketball searches are usually from Germany or Sweden. Actually, so is a lot of the spanking). (Hey, dude from Germany, if you find that Marko Jaric wallpaper, send me the link!)

I'm fairly certain the "Kate's blog" searches are looking for Kate Moss...

I've only just started getting stats on my website from Google Webmaster, and while it's not gotten very many hits, at least the hits in question have been for "Kate MacLeod", "Seagull and Raven", and "Fantastical Visions V". Those are probably relevant (although I hate the website in question. Now that I have the laptop paid for I'm going to start hoarding cash to pay someone to make my website look all spiffy. Me alone with Website Tonight just doesn't cut it).

My June Book Report

Many, many things slid to the wayside last week during my failed attempt to finish the WIP. For instance, Aidan was delighted to find that his assignment sheet for school this week was completely empty. That means he doesn't have to do anything! (Uh, no. It means mom flaked and didn't do her prep work last week for this three week school period. It was a long morning).

So today is all about getting non-WIP things done so I can plunge back into it tomorrow with a clear conscience. Ergo, this book report which is now 9 days overdue.

First off: the book I didn't finish. The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Now I remember why I stopped reading Gibson (although I never stopped buying him; the books just kept stacking up waiting for me to finish this). It's official: I give up. I want to like it; it has a lot of cool ideas in it. I think what it needs from me is a quiet afternoon with me, this book, and maybe a cat or two. When my youngest goes to college and I have quiet afternoons like that again, I'll take it back down. In the meantime, I'm moving on to books more amenable to my 10 minutes at a time reading style.

Namely, the sequels to Mona Lisa Overdrive: Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties. These I liked immensely. Gibson writes teenage girls who have no close friends very well (and I should know), and I particularly like the character of Rydell, who carries over from MLO. At the end of May, my favorite Gibson novel was MLO, but that changed to Idoru, and then to ATP, and in the end wound up being Pattern Recognition. PR doesn't tie in to any of his previous efforts. It is, however, dead brilliant. If you're cynical at all about the forces behind marketing, you'll want to check this one out. It also touches on 09/11, something I've been avoiding in fiction be it books or TV or movies. I know it's been nearly six years now, but I'm still not in a place where fiction about 09/11 doesn't really upset me. Gibson only touches on it, he doesn't try to explain it, there's no "this is what it's all about" moment. From a writing stand point, I think he handled it very well. It did, however, bring my nightmares back for a brief encore.

(And for those who make fun of me for shedding tears for characters who die in Harry Potter; yes, it is much worse when it happens to real people. This is why I don't watch the news).

I'm officially out of Gibson until next month, but I have Spook Country on preorder.

At that point I decided to take a break from sci-fi and read the latest Johanna Lindsey. Feel free to mock. It's like potato chips; I know it's not real food but I can't help myself. Plus, it only takes a day to read one of these. It's sort of the anti-Difference Engine.

Then I read The Ice Dragon by George R. R. Martin. Technically a children's book; it's very, very short. I liked the story, being a sucker for all things ice and snow related. No replacement for the long-awaited Dance with Dragons, though, and it sounds like that one is still more than a year off.
I read a bit of nonfiction this month, Parenting Beyond Belief, a collection of essays on raising children in nonreligious households. More of a "you're not alone" than a how-to, but being a secular homeschooler, I can never hear "you're not alone" enough, frankly. The homeschooling community is a lonely place for an evolutionist to be, I can tell you that. It has essays from Penn Jillette, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, and Julia Sweeney. (Actually, that's kind of a litmus test for whether you'll like the book. Have no idea who Dawkins or Shermer is? Not for you).

I finished off the month with two new releases. The first was Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell. I quite enjoyed Crystal Rain, and this is a sort of sequel (although it introduces all new characters and only picks up the old ones when the story is well underway, a structure I quite liked). Ragamuffin is even better than Crystal Rain. There are lots of cool ideas in it, the story is fast-paced, and the character of Nashara is very well done, especially when you find out who she is. As you can tell from the cover, she kicks ass, but she goes deeper than that too. You know, I've often been bugged by the scene in the movie The Matrix when Neo and Trinity blow away all the security guards in the lobby before going up to save Morpheus. These are security guards, not agents, so they're human beings who are stuck in the Matrix and have no idea of what's really going on. Do Neo and Trinity have to kill them to get to Morpheus in time? Almost certainly yes. But does it really have to be such a rah-rah moment? Or am I the only one thinking, you know those are really innocent victims if you think about it. No one is offering them the pills. Which is all to say a similar situation faces Nashara at one point, and she sees it like it I would. She does what she has to, but there is no rah-rah about it. Of course that moment is sort of a footnote to a scene that just happened to stand out in my mind. The whole book is both cool and fun (you know, there's just not enough fun around these days. The fun quotient is really what divides the two Stars Wars trilogies in my mind. I like to go to dark places as much as the next person, but having fun has real value too), and I would recommend this book just for the names the ragamuffins give their ships. And like with Crystal Rain, Buckell put the first third of the novel up on his website so you can read it for free.

The last thing I read in June was the little number I mentioned buying because I loved the cover: Mainspring by Jay Lake. Another fast, fun, cool read. (You know, I think I needed these two books to come back from the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which was marvelously well done, and I adore Guillermo Del Toro, but that movie left me seriously bummed out for days) Lake takes the idea of a clockwork universe with God as the ultimate clockmaker and really runs with it. If we're all very, very good, maybe Hayao Miyazaki will make a movie of it.

(You know, I'm tempted to call both of these last two perfect beach reads, but "beach read" calls to mind books with pictures of some woman's feet on the cover. Have you walked down the book aisle in Target lately? They carry nothing but books with close-ups of women's feet, bare or in flip-flops. What could these books possibly be about? I couldn't tell you, the feet are such a turn-off I don't pick them up to read the back copy. But books with airships and gigantic gears or burly women in free fall with big-ass machine guns? That's what I want to read at the beach!)

Nope, didn't do it

Didn't finish the novel. Got real close, though. I added in the subplot elements, revised the two chapters, and wrote one and a half chapters. I only have a chapter and a half left to go to reach THE END. I'm really hoping I get to it by next Friday. The mood swings are killing me: I either think I've created something really, really cool, the book I've always wanted to read but could never find because no one was writing it, or I absolutely hate it and wonder why exactly I've given 18 months of my life to something no one besides me is ever going to want to read. (You can probably pick which one I'm feeling right now, can't you?).

Well, time to set it aside for the weekend and get cracking on the job that pays.

Sprinting to the finish line

...which I'm still hoping will be this Friday. It's a vacation week from homeschool, and we have no plans for the 4th (quite intentional, I assure you). Still, lots left to do. Three chapters to write, two chapters to majorly revise, and a certain subplot thread that needs to get woven in all over the place to tie it all together.

Man, I'm tired now! I blame the cat who mastered opening the screen door; I've only half-slept while listening for him to come back a couple of nights this week, and he seemed to prefer 4 a.m. for that. There's a bolt on the screen door now (and boy is he pissed!) but I haven't made up that sleep yet. Not to mention like a dope I volunteered to work extra to cover other people's time off, again, which is going to cut into my writing time.

On a completely unrelated note, this blog is rated:

With only one use of the word "crappy". I was hoping for a nice respectable PG-13. I should unleash my inner Tarantino and write something like this.

Maybe next week. Well, wish me luck!

(PS - I have my June book report half finished, but you probably won't see it until the WIP is done and put away.)

Things that bring me up when I'm down

1. Shiny new laptops. Or shiny refurbished laptops. Whatever. I should have caved a long time ago. Not only is this going to help the writing, now I won't have to print chapters posted on my critique group, read them and mark them up promptly, then have to wait days to find enough computer time to type up the notes and line edits. I can do it all on the laptop in the kitchen, while I'm waiting for this or that boy to finish his math. Sweet! Also, paper-free.
2. Only having three chapters left to go to finish the WIP, and these are the three chapters I know exactly what to say since they've been in my head since the beginning. My only fear: there is a big emotional moment coming up, and I have a tendency to go all Marti Noxon on the emotional moments. I'll probably just let it all go full drama mode (frankly, it's fun to write, all over the top, you know?) and then dial it back in on the second pass.
3. My husband saying that when I reach THE END the whole family should go out and celebrate, because it's a big milestone. I've heard so many horror stories lately of writers with spouses who don't support the time-suck which is writing (or the time-suck which is homeschooling), that he would just volunteer this is frankly very, very cool.
4. Andaz Apna Apna, a Bollywood movie I've watched about a hundred times now. It's hard not to feel uplifted, what with all the singing and dancing and bizarre comedy bits. (Nothing on YouTube except a few of the comedy scenes, which won't make sense as they don't have subtitles, so you'll have to take my word on this).
5. A certain 6-year-old who filled my office window with flowers from the clover in our yard, poking the little stems through the screen (he seems to have gotten a disproportionate amount of Irish blood in him; he loves his ma).

On an unrelated note, I just bought a book based solely on the cover. Well, I read the description and I've read enough of Jay Lake's short fic to know I like his style, but to be frankly honest, I knew I'd be buying this as soon as I saw the cover:

A sort of survivors guilt, I suppose...

As a solution to various problems you may encounter upon the way, let me suggest this: Make Good Art. It's very simple. But it seems to work.
Life fallen apart? Make good art. True love ran off with the milkman? Make good art. Bank foreclosing? Make good art. - Neil Gaiman

To which I'll add: "A third of your department laid off with no warning because the Filipinos are cheaper? Make good art."

*Sigh.* Rough night. Well, at least it wasn't me making anyone cry at the department meeting this time. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to finish the novel, listen to some Nick Drake, and have some wine. Maybe not in that order.

In Which I Cave In

I hate making major purchases. Hate it. I cried the day we bought our Subaru, and the negotiations for buying that TV were extensive (spread out over several months, but in the end I got built-in bookshelves in trade. Plus it helps that Quin's bonus check was enough to cover the TV he wanted and the new fridge that I was pushing for. Our electric bill has taken a noticeable drop since we got the new fridge, confirming my suspicion that the other one only looked like it was shut most of the time).

Not that I'm particularly frugal; my book spending borders on the out of control. But that's just ten or twenty dollars at a time. Spending hundreds of dollars all at once... I guess I'm always paranoid that some major disaster will befall us and I'll desperately wish I'd held onto that money. Or something. This isn't rational, I know.

All of this is just to say that I made another big purchase today, and the very worst kind, the kind that is something just for me and not the family. I bought myself a laptop. It's a refurbished Dell with no bells or whistles of any kind, as cheap as I could go and still get tech support (which is why I didn't pick anything up on eBay, although I could've gone cheaper there). I haven't actually gotten it yet; perhaps when it's here I'll be all excited and not low-level nauseous that I just dropped a load of cash all at once. I've been debating buying one for more than a year now. The last week's worth of writing time spent copy-typing from notebooks kind of clinched it for me. I think it would behoove me to find a more efficient way of doing this. Now I'm very fond of writing longhand, I'm not sure if I can be creative the same way with a keyboard (and that worry is fueling the nausea, I'm sure), but now that the homeschooling is taking more time than before, my writing time is feeling the pinch. So I pooled my quarterly bonus and some of my overtime money and took the plunge.

*sigh*

At any rate, I have four chapters left to go on the WIP plus some things I need to go back and add in earlier chapters. I've had this problem with integrating the two parts of the story, and there needs to be more conflict and foreshadowing earlier on. After much stewing I think I know what I need to do now. I'm on track for my July 6 deadline, then I'll let this whole thing sit for Harry Potter Month before giving it one last hard edit and then it's off on the query-go-round.

I've never submitted to agents before. I think that nausea just slid up a notch...

It probably doesn't mean anything...

But The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which usually only takes ten days to get a rejection back from, held onto "Blood and Ink" for more than a month. And the rejection is from Mr. Gordon Van Gelder, not the Slush God.

Yes, it probably means nothing. Still, I like that feeling like maybe, just maybe, I got a little closer. And now I have a story free for this quarter's Writers of the Future (I was beginning to think I'd have to give it a miss; I don't feel short story brilliance in me at the moment, plus the deadline falls before my self-imposed novel deadline).

My foreign language addiction

So I've mentioned before that I have this little addiction to learning new foreign languages. Now there's a limit to how far one can go with no one else to talk to in that language, so I usually pick up a sense of the mechanics and a feel for the pronunciation and then move on to the next one. I have at one point or another studied Spanish, German, Latin, Japanese, French, Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic. I'm not remotely fluent in anything (one could make a pretty convincing argument against my fluency in English on same days), and my phobia against talking to anyone I don't already know pretty much limits my chances of ever practicing any of this in conversation. But I do like to read things in foreign languages, and the internet is great for finding stuff not in English. (I've read novels in Spanish and in German, although it's been so long since I've used my German I don't think I could do it now).

Mostly I do this because I find language tapes more diverting than TV shows when I'm treading the mill (a necessary but tedious 30 minutes I try to get in every day). The Pimsleur series in particular is excellent; it's all oral so you don't need to be holding a phrase book at the same time or anything, and rather than being a listen and repeat the phrase type thing, you have to come up with responses on your own to questions in the language you're learning. It really taxes the memory; a challenging kind of fun. The problem for me was that they only go up to 10 lessons in most languages (hence my mere smattering of Swedish and Norwegian). About a month ago when I was choosing which language to do next, I decided I wanted to really delve into one of the languages Pimsleur had more than 10 lessons in, and I wanted it to be something really challenging.

It came down to a coin toss between Japanese and Mandarin Chinese (I have tons of movies in these two languages, and it would be fun to understand them without the subtitles. Sadly, Cantonese is one of the languages Pimsleur only does 10 lessons in. I have more Catonese than Mandarin movies). Well, Mandarin won. This certainly has served its purpose as far as treading the mill goes; I've quit finding excuses not to do it because I look forward to the Chinese lessons. But the problem was as I've mentioned above, I largely use my foreign language skills to read, and this is strictly an oral program. Plus, Chinese? Well, I don't need to tell you their writing system is a bit of an intellectual Mount Everest. Luckily, it's my kind of rock climbing. I went out and got myself a book on Chinese writing and a monster stack of index cards.

And actually this plays into my whole being an example to my sons thing. Seeing mom learn something which is quite challenging for her by drilling flash cards is a much better motivator than just promising it really helps to learn that way. Aidan is learning Latin with flash cards pretty much on his own. I only go over them with him once when he gets his new words to make sure he's pronouncing it all correctly and then he drills them on his own while I drill mine.

I only recognize about 100 words so far (pretty good for a month's effort, though). It's enough so I can page through some of my books that have Chinese in them and pick out characters here and there I know. Then I found the coolest thing on YouTube: Wilber Pan karoake. (Wilber Pan is another one of those acts I saw on IMF, fell in love, and then had to buy his stuff from some guy in Hong Kong on eBay because it's not available here. Honestly, IMF is evil). Not only does this video have the written Chinese to match what he's singing (in Mandarin, not Cantonese, since he's from Taiwan) (actually he's from West Virginia, but that's not important now), they light up as he sings them. It's like the world's coolest teaching tool.

But my favorite video of his doesn't have the karoake feature. Which is a shame. But it does have subtitles, and it does feature Wilber Pan in a sort of kung fu epic pastiche. Cool.

My May book report

OK, my house is back in order (I would post pics, but to be honest it doesn't look any different. When the shelves are finished and the doors are on, I'll post a pic), I'm all caught up on critiquing I've been dreadfully negligent with (sort of, there's that stack of short stories for the Backspace contest I haven't even started on yet), and I only worked 19 hours this weekend instead of 21 or 22, so I'm feeling pretty good! I finished up working early enough on Sunday to take the boys to see Pirates of the Caribbean. I liked the second one better than the first; I now like the third better than the second. There's no way to craft an ending that will satisfy everyone, of course, but I have to say this ending satisfied me very, very much. I particularly appreciate the care they took to give every character a nice ending, whether it be Admiral Norrington or the characters I refer to as the Pirate Rosencratz and Guildenstern and the British Navy Rosencratz and Guildenstern (if they have actual names, I don't know them, but I bet you know who I mean).

My only complaint: I could have had a little more Chow-Yun Fat. On the upside, I got a new toy yesterday which should meet all my Chow-Yun Fat needs:

(There was also a specific image in that movie that is nearly exactly something that happens in my novel. Gave me quite a chill. I could probably describe mine better. Well, that's always true. Still, very cool movie.)

At any rate, I have this monthly book wrap-up to write, then that stack of short stories to read, then it's back to the novel. It's been tough finding time to write these last three weeks; homeschooling a fourth grader and a first grader is a lot more work than homeschooling a third grader and a kindergartner was. We're working together as a family to find a way of doing things that still gives me time to write, because apparently I get a bit shrewish when I'm not writing. (I wonder, if I say "shrew" is that going to up my "Kiss me Kate spanking scene" hits? Probably not as much as putting "Kiss me Kate spanking scene" in here. Well, lately my biggest source of activity has been the "Which Avatar character are you?" quiz and not spanking. But I digress).

May was a banner month for reading with 13 books. Sadly, many of these were either new buys or from the library, so it didn't really take that To Be Read number down much. Actually, since I put everything on Library Thing and labeled my TBR stack, that number went up (apparently I'd missed some things on my first tally). It now stands at 273.

Now the largest reason the homeschooling is more work these days is that first grade is a big change from kindergarten. The other big change is that Aidan moved from grammar stage to logic stage in the trivium (which is how we homeschool, classical style refers to the trivium. For the wildly curious, here's an essay on what that means from the woman who wrote the book which I've been using rather loosely as a guide). Part of that is that he's added logic into his course load (he loves it, but if you know Aidan that's not in the least surprising). Another part of that is he is learning to work more independently. I now give him a list of assignments on Monday that he has to have finished by Friday and he decides when he does what. Which has led to some very long Fridays, but it's an important skill to learn. The other big change is that his literature-based history program now has him reading chapter books and short novels rather than picture books.

Which of course means I have to read those books as well. As a student I had an uncanny ability to pretend to have read a book I hadn't (I got an A on my Robinson Crusoe test and paper in college without ever getting past page 30, and that was sans Cliff Notes or ever seeing the movie version. It pays to stay awake in class). I don't think I can fake it as well as a teacher. Plus, there's the whole setting a good example thing.

So three of the books I read were for history: The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli (dull, dull, dull! Strangely enough, Aidan liked this one better than I did), The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly (I quite liked this one. Bonus points for trusting us on "Philosopher's Stone". Am I the only one who resents that American Harry Potter is "Sorcerer's Stone", as if Americans cringe at the word philospher?), and Beowulf: A New Telling by Robert Nye, which I also quite liked (not as well as the Seamus Heaney, but that one would be a bit much for a 9-year-old. He'll be reading it in high school for sure).

Four of the books I read were from the library. Two were Robert Zubrin books I read for Mars research for the novel: Entering Space and First Landing (technically a novel, but in actuality the more helpful of the two for my purposes). I also have been toying with the idea of writing a YA novel next (keyword: toying). To that end, I've been combing YA book lists and putting stacks of them on hold at the library. Most I only really skim through. I'm trying to get a general sense of content, length, and that. They are overwhelming fantasy; what I'm toying with would be straight-up sci-fi. I haven't had much luck finding current sci-fi YA. I did find YA steampunk which I liked enough to read all the way through: Airborn and Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel (the one is the sequel to the other). If you like airships and ornithopters and steam power, I highly recommend them. As with all YA, it's not just for kids.

The last Hellblazer finally turned up from my Christmas batch: Reasons to be Cheerful. Perhaps it was just reading it on its own after reading all the others back to back, but it felt very disjointed. It didn't really have a beginning, and it definitely didn't have an ending.

I got books for Mothers Day as well: Hellboy: Wake the Devil (Hellboy is one of my favorite comic book movies; the source material is of course quite good as well), and John Scalzi's trilogy Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. A very satisfying read. He gets compared to Heinlein a lot; I think he's better than Heinlein. Scalzi's women actually act like real women, just for starters. (This is a long-running argument in my house, Heinlein's women. I do give him points for trying, but I don't really like his women characters).

That just leaves the book I read first in May: Virtual Light by William Gibson. That was the third time I've read it. It's my favorite Gibson novel so far. I have a few I've not read yet, and those I'm tackling next.

You know, after I finish the novel. I'm knocking that deadline back a week. I expect to be finished by July 6. This will give me one more homeschool vacation week to get things done but will still have me done before all the Harry Potter things start coming out (there was a trailer before Pirates that had more scenes than the one I'd already seen. I'm beginning to suspect that my favorite Harry Potter book is about to become my favorite Harry Potter movie).

At the expense of seeming like I spend too much time on You Tube...

Look, I was a die-hard MTV fan back in my teen years. You know, back when they used to play music videos. These days, I'm just grateful that my favorite band has so many Brazilian fans who post crappy copies of their videos on You Tube or I'd never see any of it. (Music videos are basically advertising for records, yes? So why don't more bands put them up on their websites? You know, like OK GO does.)

Now, it would not be the weirdest thing I've ever seen on You Tube to see 20-year-old concert footage of my favorite band cut to a John Lennon song (at the very least, it loses out to the scenes from The Matrix cut to "Lifelines". Most a-ha songs don't really mesh with The Matrix; that one really doesn't). Imagine my surprise, that's not John Lennon singing! How is it possible that an a-ha cover of a John Lennon song exists, and I don't have it?

Just one way: it's part of an Amnesty International compiliation which won't be out until June 25 (which just happens to be someone's birthday; however, I don't think this is on his wish list).




(Look, my house is still in disarray as that quick finishing of the bookcases that was supposed to be done in one day still isn't finished. My computer is all-but-inaccessible. Perhaps next week I can write a blog that takes more than five minutes. Like my May book report, for instance. Soon. Soon.)

Well that's interesting

I didn't think anyone saw what I saw in a Keanu Reeves performance. Apparently someone else does, and it's Joss Whedon. Go figure.

Library Thing

I've spent most of this week moving books around. Quin is going to spend the long weekend sanding and finishing the built-in bookshelves. (I'll be spending this weekend working. All three days. Don't even get me started on that one. The really sad thing is I volunteered for it...)

The project still won't be done. The shelves need to be sanded and finished separately and have the front strips added to them, and the bottom cabinets will still need doors, but this is the last time I'm going to be moving all my books around. And I did pretty much move everything to make room for the living room books. I don't like stacking them on the floor in my office since it's a basement with a tendancy for wetness (although all of that drainage work Quin did last summer seems to have done the trick, so that's good news).

As long as I was touching every book, I decided to go ahead and tackle that cataloging project I've been meaning to get around to. Those of you reading this at Blogspot will notice a new sidebar feature, three random books from my library. I probably shouldn't admit to how much time I've spent refreshing the page just to see what combos come up. So now if you go to my Library Thing page you can see all 1906 books I own (no making fun of my extensive Johanna Lindsey collection, or my role playing games, thank you very much). I went through and added a few tags as well. I've cordoned off the books which really belong to my boys and books which are sheet music and not actually book books (actually, I'm not sure why I did that. I'm thinking with sand here these days). I also tagged the books I use for homeschooling (it's possible to do this homeschooling thing with fewer books, of course, but those massive encyclopedias are just so cool).

Most significantly, I tagged the books on my To Be Read list. All 277 of them (yep, that number just keeps creeping up). For those of you so inclined, now you can see what I'm neglecting and chew me out for not getting to the Niven or the Zimmer Bradley or the Dickens.

I showed this Library Thing page to Quin, the author cloud and author gallery are particular favorites of mine, and statistics are always cool. Not only did he not particularly share my geeked state, he noted that this probably meant I haven't written anything this week. Which is pretty much true (I eeked out about 500 words over five days).

I have nothing much to say...

...working hard on that thing I'm working on. I did want to post this video I saw, possibly the funnest music video I've seen in a great long while (it's not in English, so you'll never see it on MTV). These kids must go to hip-hop dancing cram school; they've got the moves. I saw this with the family on IMF the other night. During the middle bit, Quin remarked he didn't think they had any open fields in Japan. I said I think there must be just the one; I would swear that's the same field the Prince of Space lands on in that classic movie.

My youngest is now six!

And he came home from the barber's with a faux-hawk:

It's a bit short for a faux-hawk, but he's enormously proud of it.

I installed the DVD drive in the PC yesterday, but the software that came with it does absolutely nothing unless you buy the $60 upgrade. I mean it, nothing! It won't even play the disc. So it will be just a bit longer before I can post clips here (I'm exploring options that don't involve giving money to companies that enjoy raping their consumers. What, me pissed?)

I have been doing the two-man kung fu forms with Quin again, watching them on the video to fill in the gaps in our collective memories. I remembered more than I thought I had. You can totally tell I'm starting from a non-kung fu state, though; my arms and shins are covered in little green bruises. Once I get used to blocking punches and kicks again I'll toughen up and that won't happen. It does remind me of the last time I started out, and one of my classmates at lab tech school was convinced I was being abused but couldn't think of a way to broach the subject with someone she'd just met.

Right, well, back at it. For some reason when I'm writing I keep hearing Michael Biehn's voice in my head: "Ease up! You're just grinding metal!" I'm sure it doesn't mean anything...