Mottisfont
Was it last year or the year before I gave you a Mottisfont post? Maybe both. Well, here’s another one. You can kind of figure there’s going to be a Mottisfont post most years: National Collection of Old Roses? Hellgoddess? . . . Any questions? *
Given the lateness of the hour and the fact that WordPress will doolally my text anyway, I’m going to declare the following self-explanatory. If any of them aren’t, post questions to the forum and I’ll answer. ** I do wish to state however that I had no idea that Mottisfont’s new flyer was colour-coded for my new t-shirt. I also wish to draw your attention to my belt buckle and my All Stars. Cathy emailed me photos of All Stars available in my size this year at Jack’s Shoes around the corner from Wiscon–you know, the store I bought nineteen pairs of All Stars in the year I attended Wiscon, that Wiscon also being where I met her blah um I forget number of years ago***; she’s a regular attendee–and I chose these and she nobly brought them over. Pink. Yes. Flowers. Yes.# Oh, and my hat says Swan Bells. Western Australia.##
And I didn’t buy any new rosebushes. No! Not one! We’d had a fast whirl around the sales area and we were actually leaving, me empty-handed and triumphant . . . and was frelling shanghaied by one at the gate. Damn. I should have bought her too. But I didn’t. Damn.
* http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-mottisfont.htm
** Probably. Unless they’re to do with sequels to SUNSHINE.
*** Long before the blog was a twinkle in Merrilee’s eye. Or a flanged mace in her armoured fist.
# It’s going to be really hard to pretend they’re roses however. They have only four petals. But gold glitter makes up for a lot.
## http://www.thebelltower.com.au/
The many uses of technology
So I put one friend on the bus to Heathrow this morning, galloped home, galloped hellhounds, galloped into going-out-to-fancy-restaurant clothes, galloped to Mauncester to catch a train to London . . . first piece of major luck was an actual real-live parking space within galloping distance of the Mauncester train station, which even in a country full of tiny cranky medieval towns that have expanded into large sprawling modern cities with tiny cranky centres, stands out as an unusually appalling outletless maze of death and madness.*
I was meeting Cathy and Merrilee for lunch. Cathy, our own Black Bear, and Merrilee—well, you know Merrilee, literary agent of coruscating splendour. She’s in London for forty eight hours or something, in the dashing way of literary agents of coruscating splendour, and had mentioned offhandly that we could meet for lunch if I could get myself to London. Yes! Yes! And in one of those concatenations of events generally only seen in Diana Wynne Jones novels, Cathy was coming over this week too, and so one of my American mods and my American agent were going to meet me for lunch . . . in London. Excellent.**
Cathy and I got to the restaurant and commenced to wait. Merrilee’s plane was due in at 9:25 this morning, plenty of time to get to her downtown hotel, unload the suitcase and find the restaurant. Except, of course, that the plane arrived at 11. We didn’t know that however. Technology only works if you know . . . how to make it work. I can just about answering a ringing RaspBerry*** but . . . I was in the process of failing to figure out how to ring the hotel when Merrilee appeared at the restaurant door, tooling her suitcase behind her. That’s when we found out her plane had arrived at 11.† Well, I emailed you, she said to me. And I left you voicemail. And I texted†† you. She looked at me sternly.
Er um, I said. Er. I don’t actually know how to do all that stuff on the RaspBerry.
Merrilee, on no sleep, and with 857 meetings that afternoon†††, nearly lost her temper. That’s ridiculous, she said. You must learn to use your phone.
I will, I said feebly. As soon as the new 4 thingy is available, I’m going to buy an iPhone. ‡ And I’ll learn to use it. ‡‡ I promise.
* * *
* All plans for taking the train to London begin with, oh, gods, how many hours do I need to allow for finding a parking space?
** Pity about the food though. Although the tea was, well, excellent. As were the tiny chocolates that came with the bill. I am peculiar enough that I think I may find this an acceptable, even a worthwhile, trade off. It does mean however that I was getting pretty strange on no genuine calories and too much caffeine by the time we got back to New Arcadia this evening and some hellhounds who tried to convince me that they had been left alone all day and that there hadn’t been any dogminder and they were poor sad put-upon lonely forlorn creatures.
*** Although when Cathy rang me on it yesterday to make sure all plans were good, I freaked out and managed to hit the ‘ignore’ button instead of the ‘answer’ button and then had no idea what to do.
† Which meant she had got through Customs at much better than galloping speed. Whirlwind speed. Hellhound after a rabbit speed.
††I don’t care what anyone says. ‘Text’ is not a verb.
††† While Cathy and I were going to go play at the V&A.
^The Victoria and Albert Museum, which is too amazingly wonderful in too many ways and is always in the top running for My Absolute Favourite Museum Anywhere. And maybe I’ll load some photos tomorrow.
‡ Oh gods. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7800676/10-reasons-not-to-buy-Apples-new-iPhone-4G.html
‡‡ Sort of.
The Terror of London, guest post by Black Bear
I’d thought originally that I might write a guest blog about something pleasant, like a trip to a museum or a luncheon out at a fancy place in the Big City. Little did I know, however, that I was bringing a weapon of mass destruction along on the trip… namely, my iPod.
I got an iPod Touch for myself as a holiday present last year, and it’s still new enough to be endlessly fascinating for me. Like everyone who owns one of these jiggers, I have downloaded enough silly time-waster games, both free, and not so free, so as to have hours of entertainment at my fingertips. (Or at least an hour, depending on screen brightness and battery life.) I’m a puzzle person, so I like puzzle-games; I’m particularly fond of Unblock, and Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab, and so on. I’m a bit of a cribbage freak too, the single app I probably use most is my cribbage game. I have also spent an embarrassing number of hours playing Rock Band in recent weeks. But when I handed Robin my iPod so she could play with it on the train, she immediately locked onto a game I had downloaded months ago and then completely forgotten about: Fingerzilla.
Fingerzilla is a pretty simple game concept. When the game begins, you’re presented with a screen showing a bird’s-eye view of a happy little city of office-buildings, cars, cheerful pedestrians on their way to work… and it’s your job to destroy every single one of them and raze the city to the ground. You do this by tapping the screen rapidly with your finger; every area you touch explodes in a fiery blaze and a sound of crashing rubble, a la Godzilla striding purposefully across Tokyo. It’s fairly spectacular. But even more spectacular from my perspective was the zeal with which Robin embraced this game. I’m fairly sure that other folk on the train were nervously edging away from us as Robin ravaged the tiny hamlet of Oakville. “Did you know I can EAT people? tap tap tap crash aiee! Hey, I just smashed a helicopter!!‘ tap tap tap tap* And so on, while I squinched over in my seat giggling wildly.
At the end of the game, you’re given a screen mocked to look like a newspaper, informing you the results of your rampage. “Town of Oakville Sustains Minor Damage!” screamed the banner headline. “ONLY MINOR DAMAGE???” screamed Robin. (Well, not screamed, necessarily. But it was said with emphasis.) “MINOR DAMAGE? I’m playing it again.”
And so it was that the poor town of Oakville was destroyed, not just once, but again and again and again this fateful afternoon. Few Oakvillites survived to tell their grandchildren of that dark day.* But those that did whispered tales of the horror from the skies, the fearsome beast which took purest joy in its wanton devastation…. the scourge known only as
Robinzilla.
* * *
* She left out the ‘munch’. When you eat someone, they scream and you go MUNCH.
* Actually quite a few did survive, because she kept doing “only minor damage.” Being a monster takes practice—Tokyo wasn’t destroyed in a day, after all.
Ringing outing, guest post by southdowner
I just can’t get enough ringing. There. I admitted it. Worst of all I’m not using the “I recognised my addiction so I’m on the first step to curing it” explanation. I recognise my addiction… and I’m FEEDING it. (Such a bad person *g*)
And perhaps you can see why when I show you some pictures of a recent ringing outing.
This is a small Warwickshire village called Polesworth (close to Sheepy Magna which has to be one of my favourite village names), and Polesworth has old buildings scattered liberally amongst the new.
In the heart of it all is an old Abbey which just happens to have 8 bells – and what do we do with bells? Well at Polesworth there is choice :D
Of course there’s always ringing – here is the only stained glass ringer I have found so far
Then there’s the craft option…
And the literary tradition (ringers tend to have a strange sense of humour which is obviously historical ! )
The whole text on the wall says (I’ve kept the spelling as written):-
Who will divirt themselves with Ringing here
Must nicely mind to Ring with hand and ear
And if he gives his Bell an Overthrow
Pay Sixpence a forfeit for doing so
He who in Ringing wears Spurs Gloves or Hat
Pay Sixpence as a forfeit for that
All persons that disturbance here create
Forfeit one Shilling towards the Ringers treat
Those that to our easy laws concent
May Join and Ring with us we are content
Now in love and unity Join a pleasant peal to Ring
Heavens Bless the Church and George
Our gracious King Amen
A gathering of ringers is also great for advertising (had you noticed that black T shirt ?)
And let’s not forget the climbing; there’s nearly ALWAYS climbing :D
Many ringers like taking photos – many of my Facebook friends are ringers and most of them have large albums of ringing photos. Polesworth Abbey offered plenty of scope for photos – historical…
And photos artistic (I’m not intending to imply that my composition is artistic O.O! Rather that there is a joyful abundance of art decorating the church)
And stained glass everywhere – I love sun through stained glass…
And yes, we DID actually do some ringing; I liked the bells which I thought of as “kind” – my mentor who is a long standing perfectionist of a ringer said she thought they were “stately” which I felt summed them up perfectly.
I’d definitely like to visit and ring at Polesworth again. Some towers remain in the memory as more to be avoided!
And did I mention that every outing involves a pub lunch? What hardship!!
The Perfect Reader Letter
Have just had two more ‘so, why are you writing a sequel to PEGASUS when you’ve always said you wouldn’t ever write a sequel?’ emails—two in a day is unkind. Usually they space out a little better than that. Somebody tell me why people translate ‘volume two of the SAME STORY’ into ‘sequel’ so easily* AND why these SAME people believe that I’ve said I’ll never write a sequel? How many times can I say I would LOVE to write a sequel to SUNSHINE, but I can only write what comes? And even when I do get around to Damar again, none of the Four or Five (known) Third Damar novels is a proper sequel—they’re all related, like SWORD and HERO are related, but none of them really follows another one.**
Anyway. I should be hoovering. Or dusting. Or weeding.*** Or something.† I need a night off.†† And yesterday I received the perfect email from a reader. I was so ravished by its sublimity that I wrote to her immediately and asked if I could hang it on my blog. She graciously (if perhaps bemusedly) agreed. So. Spare my blushes and all that, but it’s not only madly, excessively, gratuitously egotistically gratifying but a relief to receive one like this occasionally. †††
Dear Robin–
I finished Sunshine yesterday. It’s one of those books that stick with you past the ending–the ones you can’t quite get over, the ones that prevent you from reading anything else, because nothing really compares. I read your blog post, so I won’t say anything about a sequel, though I think I’d like to know as much as anyone about some of the loose ends. Is Mel a sorcerer? Is the grandmother really dead? (Most of all, though, what kind of were is Ms. B?)
One of the things I loved most about the book, though, is the development of the world. I’m not entirely sure how I can articulate this, but here’s how I think of it: when someone writes a novel about this world–the real world–they show us a tiny slice without telling us everything ever to happen in the history of Earth. We know the rest of that history is there, but it’s not a part of the novel. It’s like a ghost. I had never really gotten this impression from a fantasy novel before. Worlds were too shallow, I suppose, or not exactly realized beyond what happened on the page. It’s not that I missed it, exactly. I didn’t really notice absence of that more out there feeling until I read Sunshine, and felt as though I was looking through a pinhole at another Earth. There seems to be so much more beyond what happens in the novel. It’s not just the history of the Wars, or of the sorcerers and vampires and weres. It’s everything. It’s the dead spots and the politics and the characters and the whole Earth. It all seems to keep on going, even after I’ve closed the book. Does that even make sense?
That was the first thing I loved about the book. The second was Mel. I loved Con. I liked his age and his sensibilities, even his honesty. In some ways, I think he was the one we were supposed to love. I felt–like Rae–a little cheated by the scene in the basement of Con’s house. But. But. Mel is the closest any author has ever gotten to realizing this intangible idea I have of the perfect boy. More than I want a sequel, having finished the book, I want a whole novel devoted to Mel (I realize you don’t do sequels–I figure that means you don’t do prequels either). I hate that I don’t know everything about him, yet his mystery is one of the things I find most attractive. Well, that and his tattoos. They sound so, so beautiful.
Third, I think I love the ending. Of course I’m frustrated, but I like how unexpected it is. In most vampire novels, there are only a few choices: change the human, try to live together, die, or decide it won’t work. Sunshine deftly avoids all of them. It doesn’t feel like the end of a story, or the end of the life, but more like a little piece of it. Like I said, it feels as though the world goes on, extending in front and behind.
In some ways, I’m still in that buzzing space after a novel when you just want to follow that story for the rest of your life. I don’t really want to get over Sunshine, though, becuase Neil Gaiman (my idol) has it right–it is pretty much perfect.
Anyway, I’m sure parts of this are totally incoherent. I believe in writing to authors, though (if you have a good waitress, you tip them, you praise a cook for a good meal. Why should writing be so thankless?). Sunshine is one of those lingering, perfectly-written books, though, that makes you want to share with everyone.
I guess I mean, thank you. For a beautiful novel and a beautiful boy and a few beautiful days when I thought that maybe, maybe, I could just keep reading forever.
If it weren’t for that tedious business of having to earn a living, I could at this point retire happy. It’s not the only Perfect Reader Letter/Email I’ve ever received, but it’ll sure do for making my day, even while I’m winkling the big, mean hoover out from under the bed and trying to remember which bit of the thing goes where and how to turn it on. I may even yatter on a bit about Mel and world-building some other evening, but tonight I am going to try to go to bed early. Just for laughs. Just for a change.
* * *
* Yes, I know, there was an interesting discussion on the forum about this. But it does seem to me that ‘sequel’ has evolved to mean something fairly specific in the genre fiction world, which has to do with series, with one more-or-less-complete-in-itself story following and being followed by the same, but with enough common characters and developing background that you’ll probably want to read them in order. It does NOT mean one long frelling story hacked up into separate books. There’ll be an omnibus PEGASUS at some point down the line of the ENTIRE STORY BETWEEN ONE SET OF COVERS. Or one digital squirt.
** Okay, except KIRITH. Which, if I ever get round to tackling it again^, is two books and might even be three. Ewwwww. But they aren’t really sequels either. They’re one long story, like PEGASUS. Well, the first two are anyway. I freaked out so much at the idea that there might be a third I didn’t hang around long enough to find out much about it. Maybe if I rewrote it it would get shorter?^^
^ You realise that the reason I stopped posting bits of it here is because I found myself rewriting it which means it’s still ‘live’. Although I could give you to the end of the first chapter, which is in the back of my mind that I am going to do. Some day.
By the way, it’s a total ratbag that I can’t post bits of PEG II here the way I posted occasional bits of PEG I, because it’s pretty well impossible to excerpt II without reference to how the first one ends. Teetering on its crumbling cliff.
^^ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. When has anything I have EVER written got shorter?
*** It’s a little late for weeding, even on the longest day of the year. And I think candlelight might lead to error.
† Hellhounds say: or hurtling hellhounds! That was really fun, yesterday! Can we do it again? We’re sure we can see well enough in the twilight of the longest day of the year to disappear! Yes, I reply, I’m sure you can too: No.
††Relatively speaking. I am also in throes of deepest trauma and horror as a result of today’s voice lesson. Here I am being a good student and rescheduling my lesson this week because I have a train to meet during lesson time tomorrow, and what happens? I am punished by being told that I should learn the little Dowland piece as Blondel put it ‘off copy’. Which is a euphemism for memorise. Oh, I don’t mean exactly memorise, said Blondel. Sure you don’t, buddy.
††† I’m not insane! If I were insane, manifestly sane people would not write me graceful letters about my books!^
^ I don’t want to hear about the gaps in my logic.