Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Who fans who are interested in the Target novelisations might like to note that there is an excellent 20-minute documentary about Malcolm Hulke and his role in starting off the range, plus a look at each of his contributions to it, on the new DVD set of The War Games - if, that is, you need another reason to go and get it.

This makes it two such documentaries in a matter of weeks, since Mark Gatiss's documentary on the range as a whole, On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box, was broadcast on 23 June. (And if you missed it then and haven't managed to get hold of it since, let me know and I will see what can be worked out.)

see more Lolcats and funny pictures


--go back to bed.

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I like wool, alpaca, mohair, cashmere, silk.
Acrylics, cotton and weird novelty fibers and I don't get along.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
I have a huge plastic drawer that everything has been tossed into. I could wish for the organization brownies to come and straighten things out for me, but the cats keep brownies away.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced? I'm self tought and have been knitting for well over 20 years. I'm somewhere between intermediate and advanced.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
No, I don't. Sorry.

5. What's your favorite scent? vanilla, lemon.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy? Is it sugar? Is it chocolate? Then I'll eat it!
I adore good chocolate.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin? I spinn sporadically. I sew, I make wire wrapped jewelry, I cross stitch, I weave, and I scrapbook.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)I can play mp3's, and my musical taste is eclectically odd. Anything from They might be Giants, Big Country, Peter Gabriel to Brubeck, Acapella and show tunes can be found in my cd collection.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand? bright jewel tones, blues, purples. Rich deep colors and corals. I'm not fond of yellows, orange and lime green.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets? Married to my wonderful sweetie, 1 darling 3 year old daughter and three cats.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos? yes to all. Don't have a poncho though - not since the 70's - my mom made me an irish knit one out of blue/green varigated yarn

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit? afghans, hats, scarves and sweaters.

13. What are you knitting right now? toddler sweater, hubby sweater and too many ufo's to count!

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts? - yes, thank you!

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic? Circular bamboos, Brittany wood straights are my favorites.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift? Yes to both. Though my winder is getting rickety.

17. How old is your oldest UFO? - Um, Do I really have to answer this? Over 15 years old.

18. What is your favorite holiday? What winter holiday do you observe? Christmas and Channukah both are celebrated in our house. My favorite holiday is Channukah and Christmas because that's when I get to spoil family and friends with gifts.

19. Is there anything that you collect? I hate too much stuff. yarn, fabric, sewing machines.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have? I'm not subscribed to anything. Some of the new indie dyed stuff looks great.

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn? not sure, I'm in a knitting rut atm.

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements? I wish I could knit Socks. I try and then I get frustrated and I don't finish the socks. Maybe it's the 4 dpns falling out and hitting the floor, or the too loose cast on at the top I just can't knit them. *sigh* My feet are 8 and 3/4 inches long and 3 inches wide.

23. When is your birthday? April 25th

24. Are you on Ravelry? If so, what's your ID? yes, Aviatrix18

I thought I was a music fan (of certain types and genres), but I never heard this before. Holy cow, love! (Thanks to "sardine" at Eschaton for cluing me in.)

There's a Saturday and Sunday of Readercon yet to report on, but it ain't gonna happen tonight. I was on the run from 8:30 a.m. through 11:30 p.m., taking the stage to pontificate, watching others do the same, breaking bread, hanging with friends by the pool, partying, hiking through a deserted parking lot, closing down the bar, and more. I'd love to tell you about it all, but unlike yesterday's tongue-in-cheek apology, tonight's apology is a real one. Right now, I have nothing more to give.

So here's one photograph to stand in for the joy of the past 48 hours of Readercon. Until I recover, it will have to do.

The following photo was taken at a dinner thrown by the committee, a meal which included those who worked so hard over the years, plus the former Guests of Honor who still remained, as well as some of the loyalists.

John Clute, Michael Bishop, Barry Malzberg, Eric Van and Bob Colby are standing, while I'm on my knees along with Paul Di Filippo. You can find the 79 photos I've added to flickr so far here.




See how happy we are? Why, that Barry Malzberg fellow is almost smiling!

Thanks to everyone who attended FiestaCon last weekend. I'm still working on final numbers, but based on the hotel bill and pending reimbursements for out of pocket expenses it looks like we may have made a small profit. It will take about a month to get all of the reimbursements taken care of. Preliminary numbers suggest 800 total members, 650 warm bodies. Now that I've had about a week to catch up on mundane things I hope to determine better numbers soon.

Feedback would be appreciated. Please use info@fiestacon.org and we'll share it with Pasadena next year (Westercon 63 aka Confirmation).

<== Mike ==>

Word count: 11182 | Since last entry: 1253

Spent the weekend in Seattle, visiting with scarlettina. We had several very nice meals with her, including her birthday brunch with jackwilliambell, varina8, and others. We had tons of fun playing with Sophie the new kitten and Spanky the not-so-new cat -- it was like LoLCats Live! 24/7 and my jeans are covered with little kitten-claw snags -- and although my allergies did act up it was never a serious problem. We attended the Clarion West party in honor of matociquala at marykaykare's; always nice to see Bear, however briefly, as well as many Seattleite friends (both old and new, permanent and temporary). We went to a steampunk swap meet where I scored a fabulous floor-length leather coat and we ran into alicebentley, philfoglio, kajafoglio, jerrykaufman, and Suzle WINOLJ, followed by a fine lunch with the latter two. We had a nice walk around Fremont and visited Cleopenguin in her new home. And we bopped down to Kent for an excellent Chinese dinner and a game of Apples to Apples with akirlu and libertango.

But the main event of the weekend, and dominant emotional note, was markbourne's heart valve replacement. The plan was to hang out with e_bourne at the hospital on Friday and then attend the Clarion West party after Mark came out of the operating room.

It didn't work out like that.

The operation went smoothly until they went to take Mark off the heart-lung machine and close him up, at which point his heart did not start up as it should have. Since then Mark's situation has been a continuous medical crisis and a hell of waiting for those who love him. The details can be found in e_bourne and scarlettina's LJs, but at last report his chest had still not been closed (they don't want to do that until they are 100% sure everything is working properly in there) and he's still in critical condition. The good news is that he's been unconscious this whole time and when he wakes up he won't remember any of this.

The model I've been using is that one's social support system resembles the roots of a tree, with the weight traveling down the trunk and being spread out to successively smaller and more distant roots, putting less and less weight on each smaller root until it eventually vanishes into the ground. The weight of this crisis falls on Elizabeth, of course, and I think Janna's in second position (she and Mark are Evil Twins and share a birthday, which happened to be the day of the surgery); I viewed my role as supporting them (especially Janna) with my physical presence, stupid attempts at levity and light conversation, and occasional errands. It didn't feel like much but I hope it helped. I then turned around and depended on Kate and our Seattle friends, and so on. I thought I was handling it well until I showed up at the Clarion West party and EBear commented that I looked wrecked.

Anyway. Home now. Managed to write at least 500 words every day, if by "at least 500" you mean "well, anything more than 250 as long as it's a good-faith effort". Haven't yet written today but there's still an hour or two before bedtime; I expect to complete a first draft this week with a week to cut it back to 10,000 words before the next critique group deadline. All in all things are going well.

I'm still worried sick about Mark, of course, but I know that he's in good health, is in one of the best cardiac units anywhere, and has the best circle of friends one could hope for.

The askverse has been throwing a fake wake for Ianto that is truly astounding.

Last I checked, it was up to over 1600 comments. (Which is where the party is, folks -- it's like reading crack. You. Want. To. Go. There.)

The breakfast table was all midwesterners again: Missouri and Wisconsin, today. They were predicting rain in the middle of the day, so I opted for a shortish hike close to town, up the Illinois Creek trails to the Blue River path. It was about a three-hour round trip up to a little lake and back, with several detours to loop onto interesting side paths. This trail was over the top of a low mountain, instead of up the side of a tall one, so the sun came straight down through the trees; the forest floor was full of columbines and wild rose and lily-of-the-valley, and the middle of the trail passed down through an open, boggy glen full of buttercups. Really lovely.

And then I spent the afternoon writing, first on the patio of the Starbucks watching the storm move in, and then inside it watching the rain fall. Very good writing day; I did three thousand words of angst in one sitting and only stopped because I was hungry.

That was my first mistake. I've been really startlingly hungry the whole time I've been here-- I'm not normally a breakfast eater at all, and yet I have been demolishing a plate of bacon-intensive breakfast every morning, and still being hungry for lunch. I've been trying to eat lighter lunches and dinners than I ordinarily would when those were my only two meals-- allowing of course for all the extra activity-- and I've been managing, mostly-- I'm not getting hungry between (broadly defined) mealtimes, but I have been getting to each meal just a little hungrier than I was for the previous one.

So by suppertime tonight, I was starving. So I decided to reward myself for my three thousand words with the $25 three-course prix fixe dinner at the pretentious-but-quite-well-reviewed restaurant around the corner from the B&B.

And it was an excellent dinner. I had the white cheddar asparagus soup, and a lamb shank-- more on that later-- and a very good chocolate mousse with fresh berries; also a quite nice malbec to go with. The soup and dessert were everything they should be, and the lamb-- oh, the lamb! Braised to fork-tender in white wine with tomatoes and mirepoix and saffron and, if I'm not mistaken, meyer lemon, and served with the mirepoix-- a new batch, just poached to tenderness in the braising liquid-- strewn over a bed of spinach, and the braising liquid poured over the whole thing, and accompanied by this goat cheese risotto that set it off amazingly. It was to die for.

Which I kind of felt like doing an hour later, when it turned out that there are, in fact, two things I physically cannot do at this altitude: run up a full flight of stairs, and digest rich food in quantity.

But, up until the acute gastric distress portion of the evening, it was really a good day.

And tomorrow is my last day; I get back on the airport shuttle Tuesday morning.

Aside from 'eat lighter food,' how should I spend it? I'm on enough of a roll with the fic that I'm tempted to just hole up in a scenic spot and spend the whole day writing.

This entry was originally posted at http://ellen-fremedon.dreamwidth.org/687742.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

New Shadow Unit content tonight!

Or was Agatha Christie fascinated by the idea of orphans, adoption and identity issues related to orphans and adoption?

Oh, for Frak Sake
I didn't wish grbggrl  a happy birthday - I am, officially, an idiot! Will belated wishes do, my dear? Here's hoping you had a marvelous weekend, that you have a fantastic time at the con, and that the coming year simply rocks.

  Just got back from Readercon in Burlington Mass. a little while ago.  I'm beat.  There's quite a bit to report on tomorrow, but wanted to get this news posted tonight.  The Shadow Year has won The Shirley Jackson Award.  I'm thrilled to have won as I have great respect for Jackson's fiction and the fiction of my fellow nominees in the category. 

Novel: The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow)

Novella: Disquiet by Julia Leigh (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton)

Novelette: "Pride and Prometheus" by John Kessel (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)

Short Story: "The Pile" by Michael Bishop (Subterranean Online, Winter 2008)

Collection: The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa (Picador)

Anthology: The New Uncanny, edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page (Comma Press)

The awards were presented on Sunday, July 12th, at the Readercon Conference on Imaginative Literature in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Back from Readercon. Tired. Sniffling, which is allergies and/or a con crud cold. As usual, falling into the post-con "it's over? already?" blues...and looking forward to Worldcon.

Overall: This was another good Readercon.

Positives: I made it to several very good panels (which I have notes on and will put some reports together for). I got to see lots of great people I don't see often enough (and meet some new ones). I finally managed to get to the Korean BBQ place after years of not quite making it. (Mmmm, bulgogi.)

Negatives: There were too many people I didn't see: not everyone I would have liked to see made it to the con, and I didn't get enough time with several of the folks who did make it. The hotel Internet was $13/day and really bad; I heard enough complaints that I didn't even bother trying. I just used my cellphone data plan instead, and even shared it out over Wi-Fi for a few folks so they could get to sites that weren't working through the hotel wireless: you know, the really obscure and useless ones like Gmail. I was spoiled by the free and functional wireless at Fourth Street and Penguicon; if this had been either free or functional, I think a lot of people would have been at least marginally satisfied with it.

I'm really wary about the announced "no GoH, single track" plan for next year. It worked for Fourth Street, but that was between 1/3 and 1/4 the size of Readercon and probably would have been a problem had it been much larger. For the first time in a while I didn't pre-register for next year at the con, because I'm wondering if I'll want to go. Watching train wrecks isn't nearly as much fun when you're on the train.

I'm really glad I decided to (a) stay at the hotel again and (b) arrive Thursday. There was enough con on Thursday night and Friday morning to justify the extra day (to the detriment of folks who couldn't get there until after work Friday, unfortunately). I don't see going to a single programming track as likely to improve that issue either.

satisfying order
Originally uploaded by netmouse.

Even though I was running pretty late on dinner tonight and am exhausted from 3 hours of fun outdoor bellydancing in downtown yellow springs last night and 2 hours of biking this morning (plus some moving around of furniture after that), I got working on organizing my tools, and that was so much fun I got this far before stopping to eat.

Because I'm like that.

Just got the pegboard up today. We bought it a month or two ago.

I guess I'm like that, too. *sigh*

Does anyone know where to find demographics (ethnicities) on the United States military, additionally broken down by service if possible? Joe and I have beaten our heads against both Google and the U.S. Department of Defense website and come up with nothing.

Joe: "We spent like ten minutes looking."
Me: "That's 'beaten our heads' in internet time."

I brought my laptop with me. With the new battery. New battery appears to refuse to recharge, despite all the tricks and jiggering I can come up with on the fly. Therefore, laptop (upon which I had hoped to get some work done)is sitting there doing nothing useful. As I'm still proofreading, this isn't a huge problem. The writing I'm getting done (1-2000 words a day) I'm doing longhand in my journaling notebook. But I was really hoping to do some data entry/writing on the trip home.

If I ever get to go home, that is. The date for the return-to-camp bus has still not been set (initially they said "probably Wednesday." Now it's "either Thursday or Saturday." That's a big either if you have, say, a return ticket to San Francisco for Thursday at 2pm...). And while I revel in being in the Land of My Birth, the fact that Avocado doesn't have her cell phone here (and is understandably a little anxious about being out of radio-contact, even as she pines to explore and be all teenage and autonomous) rather constricts my movements.

I know. Such First World problems, and will I please shut up?

Today we got to Barnes and Noble (more books for A), Forever 21 (dress for camp dances, unaccountably not thought of when she left for camp) and Target before we came home to hide in the A/C and eat leftover Chinese. Tomorrow the girl has a movie date; I try to get hold of the pediatrician for a possible appointment; we maybe find out whether I have to arrange for a change of flight and somewhere else to stay (as the long-suffering owner of this apartment is coming in on Friday and would very much like to have his home back!).

It's a rich, full life. Again.

A good con, when all was said and done, despite some rockiness at the beginning. (My big worry -- that the hotel was going to charge me per connected computer for wireless access, rather than a simple flat-fee per day -- turned out to be baseless.) A good and well-attended reading; good panels; a steady trickle of people for the signing, including one person with a 2004 reprint (with new cover art) of the 1990 middle-grades project for which we're never going to see a penny of the royalties owed to us†; a good Viable Paradise brunch (thanks in large part to the resourceful and redoubtable skyfyre); and a nice kaffeeklatsch to end it all.

Saw a number of the usual suspects, including aviatrix18, beth_bernobich, ellen_kushner, jenwrites, kate_nepveu, merlinpole, prusik, stealthmuffin, theodosia, and undoubtedly others whom I am missing because I failed to connect face with pixels. Also saw the Elder Daughter and her spouse with their new offspring, said offspring being amazingly alert and adorable for a three-week-old. As always, if I missed you completely, it's not because I was trying to ignore anyone but rather because I suck at crowds and faces.

Made the trip home in good time, despite stopping between Boston and Manchester for Himself and Twin A to render emergency medical assistance to a motorcyclist who had wiped out in dramatic fashion only moments before we arrived on-scene -- the motorcycle was, quite literally, still a flaming wreck in the breakdown lane. The motorcyclist, fortunately, had been wearing his helmet and his leathers, so he could have ended up in a lot worse shape than he did (as it was, he had a bloody nose and pain in his wrists and forearms, which ultimately earned him a trip in the ambulance.) The other folks on scene before the local ambulance squad arrived were an off-duty paramedic (whom Himself in fact knew), and an army guy still in his cammy fatigues, who happened to have a couple of fire extinguishers in his vehicle and so was able to put out the flaming bike. We supplied the highway flares.

Now I am back home, and tired, and Himself is up at the ambulance trailer on duty for the night (and there have already been two calls.)

And it is raining again.

†Long story. Short version: the usual contract between a book packager and an author says that the packager -- who is the entity actually contracting with the publisher -- is responsible for receiving any money owed from the publisher and passing along the writer's share. When the packager goes out of business without warning and subsequently vanishes, the publisher's response is not, in some cases, to say, "Oh, dear, we will have to pass along the writer's share of the royalties directly," but rather "Oh, my. The packager is no longer there to receive their share of the money from us; we'll just have to keep all of it instead."†† Not that we're bitter or anything.

††All writers have horror stories. This is one of ours.