juliet

Here is a list of the recs I picked up from various panels I attended at Worldcon. (These are likely not complete, but they’re the ones that I wrote down.)

In Defense of the Unlikeable Heroine:

We Who Are About To – Joanna Russ

Non-Binary Representation In Fiction:

Transcendent: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction – ed K M Szpara (anthology)
The Black Tides of Heaven / The Red Threads of Fortune – JY Yang (forthcoming in Sept)
Provenance – Ann Leckie (forthcoming, but read some on her website)
Jacob’s Ladder – Elizabeth Bear
River of Teeth – Sarah Gailey
Pantomime – Laura Lam
Killing Gravity – Corey J White
Interactive fiction Craft phone games (Choice of Deathless/City’s Thirst) – Max Gladstone (you can play an nb character)
“Masculinity is an Anxiety Disorder” (essay) – David J Schwartz
Rose Lemberg
Foz Meadows
A Merc Rustad

Beyond the Dystopia

(This one should be complete as I moderated the panel and made a point of writing them down to tweet afterwards.)

Two Faces of Tomorrow – James P Hogan
Culture series – Iain M Banks
Dragonlance
Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders – Ada Palmer
The Postman – David Brin
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed And Common Orbit – Becky Chambers
Hospital Station – James White
Malhutan Chronicles – Tom D Wright (panelist)
Orbital Cloud – Taiyo Fuji (panelist)
The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison

Older Women in Genre Fiction:

All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye – Christopher Brookmyre
Blood Songs series – Anthony Ryan
Remnant Population – Elizabeth Moon
Barbara Hambly

Also, Catherine Lundoff keeps a bibliography of books with older women protagonists.

Colonialism and the Space Opera:

Praxis – John Williams

Moving Beyond Orientalism in SFF:

Black Wolves – Kate Elliot
Vixen and The Waves – Hoa Pham
Isabelle Yap
Ken Liu
Stephanie Lai
Zen Cho

(Plus one from Nine Worlds in which the MC has Borderline Personality Disorder: Borderline – Mishell Baker)

Current minor aggravation: Hugos nominees who have provided their story/novel/whatever in PDF format only and with a watermark across each sodding page. This makes it very difficult to read. And suggests a level of mistrust that is annoying. If people really want to rip a book then they can and will; Hugos voters are surely unlikely to be a major factor in this? (And in general AIUI all the evidence is that you're better off just putting stuff out there without DRM and other similar frustrations.)

I am also a bit narked at the ones who provided an excerpt rather than the whole thing, but perhaps that is unreasonable of me. It does make it much harder to judge against a book where I've been able to read the whole thing, and simply on that basis I'm going to vote them further down the list. Which is, I imagine, not what they wanted.

Having said that, the one case of this on the Novels list was The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin, and off the back of the first ten pages I wouldn't have read the rest anyway. She's a good writer & all that but way over my "unpleasant things happening" threshold.

Two years ago we relaid the patio (to make it Better[0]), and put a pergola in, and I planted two grape vines, one at each end[1]. The aim being that over time, they would grow up and over the pergola, and provide shade in the summer when it's needed, and die back in the winter to let more light through. And (obviously) provide tasty grapes.

This year the first patch of shade has been produced! Currently it covers only about one person's worth of sitting, but this is clearly Proof Of Concept, and the vines just need to keep growing. The vine on that side (west) is also covered in bunches of proto-grapes, so as long as I net it in time (last year I didn't, and the birds got the single bunch of grapes, grumble), later in the summer we should have lots of lovely grapes. Annoyingly the other vine is doing much less well, but I will give it another couple of years before I consider uprooting it and trying a different variety.

The raspberries have finally hit their stride, too, so we are already in "just keep eating raspberries" season.

Signed, A Very Satisfied Gardener

[0] Very successfully!
[1] The east one might have been planted the year before. I definitely planted one in 2013 which died, and I can't now remember if I replanted in 2014, or waited til 2015.

Mirrored from Juliet Kemp.

Slightly belatedly — I had a splendid time at Eastercon. I was on four panels (Emotional Storytelling Through Music; Mystery, Fantasy, and Romance; Writing With Disability, Writing About Disability; and In Search of Optimistic SF). My co-panellists were all great, and all four panels seemed to go well as far as I could tell. I was pretty entirely wiped out by the end of the last one on Sunday evening though.

I also went to lots of other panels; spent all my spare cash on books in the Dealers Room[0]; hung out talking to splendid people (old and new) in the bar and the fan lounge; and drank rather too much caffeine.

I especially enjoyed the Women In Star Wars panel, the BSFA Hamilton lecture (with impromptu singalong), the Vorkosigan Law talk (especially the bit where they acted out the scene in which Ivan and Tej attempt to divorce 🙂 ), and the Populism in SF panel on Monday morning that wound up happening in the bar due to Technical Errors[1]. I had vague thoughts of putting some of my notes from them here but on re-reading them, I think turning them into anything comprehensible to anyone else is beyond me.

Looking forward even more to Worldcon in August now (and indeed to next year’s Eastercon, for which I am already signed up).

[0] I’ve been talking about Kindles lately and I do love my Kindle, but I want to support the small press folks and book dealers at the con too; buying directly from the author as in a couple of cases is awesome as well.
[1] Risk of being on fire due to mains cable problem. Being on fire generally considered unwise.

Mirrored from Juliet Kemp.

Eastercon was fabulous, and I may yet do a writeup post, but for now, I have many recs to extract from my scribbled notes. (NB I have not yet read any of these; things I had already read I didn’t generally write down.)

LGBT to QUILTBAG panel:

“Not Your Sidekick” — C. B. Lee

“A Rational Arrangement” — L. Rowyn

“Hunger Makes the Wolf” — Alex Wells (cyberpunk)

The Raven Cycle — Maggie Stiefvater (YA, queer relationships)

“The House of Shattered Wings” — Aliette de Bodard

General recs: Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com, Lethe Press

Women of Star Wars panel:

“The Things I Would Tell You” — Muslim women anthology

Hamilton lecture:

Ham4Ham with The Ladies (1/3/2016) on YouTube (this is awesome!)

If/Then — bisexual musical

In Da Homey — 1903 musical

Romance, Mystery, and Fantasy panel

(plus some recs from the bar afterwards. Some of these are non-SFF romance.)

Obsidian and Blood series — think this may have meant “Ivory and Bone” and “Obsidian and Stars” — Julie Eshbough

“Daughter of Smoke and Bone” — Laini Taylor

“Behind Her Eyes” — Sarah Pinborough

“Hold Me” — Courtney Milan

"Hold" -- Rachel Davidson Lee

Cosy witch mysteries!

Heather Rose Jones (published by Bella Books)

“Don’t Feed The Trolls” — Erica Kudisch

“Rollergirl” — Vanessa North

“The Art Of Three” — Racheline Maltese & Erin McRae

“Storm Season” — Pene Henson

“The Ultra-Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves The World” — A. C. Wise

“Hurricane Heels” — Isabel Yap

Neville/Hermione/Luna fic generally (must check AO3 tag 🙂 )

Fandom and Theatre panel

Team Starkid — on YouTube

Smash — TV show about backstage

Slings and Arrows — TV show about actors

Misc other recs

“At The End Of The Day” — Claire North

“The End of Days” — Jenny Erpenbeck

“Cities in Flight” — James Blish

“Meg and Linus” — Hanna Nowinski

“Every Heart A Doorway” — Seanan McGuire

So, uh, that should keep me going.

Like quite a few other people, I am treating LJ's new user agreement as a reason to stop crossposting on Dreamwidth. (If you're reading this on LJ, I am

juliet on DW.)

I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to delete my old content or not; they have backups, I assume, after all. I probably won't delete the account altogether.

This winter I conducted an Experiment on my feet, specifically: how long into the winter and in what conditions can I (comfortably; this wasn't intended as an experiment in foot-related suffering) continue to wear sandals?

Now it's spring again (at least here: there are daffodils in full bloom and I was cycling in a T-shirt again yesterday) I can probably declare the experiment finished and draw appropriate conclusions. Which are:

Anything above 10^oC and sandals are perfectly comfortable.

Anything below about 2-3^oC mark is definitely too cold, even if dry. This only happened on a very small number of days this year, though it was an unusually mild winter.

3-10^oC depends largely on how wet it is; if it's wet underfoot or actively raining then it's likely to be chilly, although at the top end of that range might be OK anyway, depending on what sort of mood I'm in and how long I'm likely to be out.

There is a difference between 'walking the dog' (or other walking-around-outside activity), 'going somewhere indoors by public transport', and 'standing around in a playground'. If I'm mostly going to be on a bus/tube and then indoors, sandals are fine even getting down towards the zero mark. If I'm standing around in a playground (especially if wet), boots might be wiser even if it's closer to 10. Walking the dog I'm only out for 30 minutes at a time anyway so even if it's chilly I'll probably cope. (When it's freezing that's still long enough to be properly uncomfortable, though.)

If cycling rather than walking then your feet don't move enough to keep warm; toe-coverings required. But in fact I've been wearing bike sandals all year round for about 8 years now and just wear waterproof socks with them. This is obviously a fashion disaster but if I'm going somewhere where I can't just take my shoes off on arrival (which in general I prefer if at all possible[0]) I carry proper shoes with me.

Fewer people than I would have expected appeared to either notice or comment on my footwear choices, even in the middle of December.

So it has been very informative!

There was a purpose to this beyond scientific experiment; my knees are happier when I wear sandals than when I wear boots, so the less time I spend wearing boots the better. I am pleased to discover just how feasible it is to minimise boot-weeks.

[0] I just don't much like shoes! The RFH don't mind you wandering around without shoes on. I got told off in the British Museum once, also on a train when walking between carriages.

Mirrored from Juliet Kemp.

Tales of the Civil War, another City of the Saved anthology, is available to buy now and shipping in physical form now-or-very-shortly! It’s edited by Philip Purser-Hallard and contains stories by Kara Dennison, Kelly Hale, Louise Dennis, Helen Angove, Selina Lock, and me.

Book cover, text "The City of the Saved", "Tales of the Civil War", "Edited by Philip Purser-Hallard". Behind the text a comic-style drawing of various people supporting/grabbing/fighting over a flag. — Cover art by Blair Bidmead

For a taster, try Kara Dennison reading part of her story, ‘The Tale of Sir Hedwyn’.

My copy hasn’t come through yet but I am greatly looking forward to everyone’s stories.

1. How do you like your coffee?
Black (due partly to influence of partners -- Pete in particular is heavily down on adulterating coffee -- and partly to the fact that soya milk doesn't generally work well in coffee). But I drink it at all only very rarely.

2. How do you like your tea?
Just normal tea (theft) with soya milk, and occasionally a smidge of honey.

3. What's your favourite late night beverage?
Water. Can't drink tea after about 7pm or coffee after about 3pm if I want to be able to sleep at bedtime. I like hot chocolate in theory but not that often in practice (and it's a faff to make properly, with a saucepan of milk, and less tasty made with water).

4. If you could only drink one thing for the next week, what would it be?
Water-with-a-splash-of-apple-juice. I would be sad to miss out on a week's worth of tea though.

5. If you were on vacation, what would be the first thing you'd drink to celebrate?
I would probably open a bottle of wine that evening, but often going on holiday happens in the morning when it seems a bit early to be drinking booze.

I've been thinking about air pollution a lot lately. Tower Bridge is shut for Not Falling Down Works, and the resultant tailbacks across South London seem to be making the air significantly worse than usual. Anecdotally, as I walk down to the Jamaica Road*, the air starts tasting weird and my throat starts feeling weird.** The onset of this (I've lived in this area nearly 15 years and I don't usually have problems) precisely matched up to when the bridge shut. It would be hard to argue that there's not going to be more pollution: same number of journeys, give or take, all taking longer so generating more airborne crap. Other S Londoners of my acquaintance have noticed the same; an asthmatic friend is particularly struggling.

But are there figures? Not really: annoyingly, there's no roadside monitoring station anywhere near here, although in 2015 most of the nearby stations to me exceeded the Air Quality Strategy objectives, and it's looking the same already for 2016 even before Exciting Tailback Autumn really got going. This street-by-street map looks more useful but is a "now-cast" only (right now, at nearly 7pm on a Saturday, which shouldn't be super busy, it's at the high end of 'low' on Jamaica Rd; the notes state that 'low' levels of pollution may in fact be higher than is good for your health). I will come back to it on Monday morning. Without a very close monitoring station I do wonder how accurate this is, but looking at the nearish ones would still be informative.

Hopefully this particular batch of badness will improve in December when the bridge reopens. But London's air quality is pretty horrible at the best of times. Checking my postcode on the 'annual levels of exposure' map (data from 2013) they give rates for four pollutants:

NO2: my house high end of 'passes' range (37 microgrammes/m³); Jamaica Road well into 'fails' (~67 mcg/m³).

Ozone: my house 40 mcg/m³; Jamaica Road a bit lower as apparently ozone reacts with other pollutants so is lower close to busy roads.

PM10: my house passes at 25 mcg/m³; Jamaica Road not quite up to the 'fails' range at 31 mcg/m³.

PM2.5: my house passes at 15 mcg/m³; Jamaica Road higher but also passes at 19 mcg/m³.

This does not fill me with confidence for my respiratory health (and all the other consequences of breathing in lots of pollution).

Short of moving***, I'm now wondering if there's much I can do about this on my own behalf. (I have already commented on the current London Clean Air study, and have contributed to various similar campaigns over the years to try to fix the actual problem.) Some years ago I tried a facemask for cycling but as the Guardian discovered more recently, these are basically very uncomfortable. It's also worth knowing that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the pollution risks. So whilst a mask might make the air less icky to breathe, it makes walking or cycling around the place more unpleasant in other ways.

In terms of long-term health consequences, the main suggestion from the London Air people is "avoid busy roads" as levels drop rapidly away from them (as seen with my house vs the Jamaica Rd). That's mostly doable. There's some evidence that consuming more antioxidants (e.g. lots of vitamin C) can help protect against the long-term health consequences; I've also seen "more omega-3 fatty acids" suggested (flax oil, hemp oil****). Won't actually stop me coughing, but as "more vitamin C, more omega-3" is a pretty risk-free dietary change, probably worth doing.

The best solution though is probably for Sadiq Khan to get on with making the air actually less vile. I believe the current plan has various aims for 2020. Here's hoping.

* One of the major east-west arteries south of the river; in particular it leads to the Rotherhithe Tunnel, which is dealing with a lot of the redirected Tower Bridge traffic. Three minutes walk from my house.
** I'm also getting headaches again and sleeping badly but these might be related to one another and not to the unpleasant air.
*** Though basically to get all that much better than here I would have to move right out of London, not just a bit further out.
**** Or fish oil for non-vegans.

Mirrored from Juliet Kemp.

Note: these are not books that I am recommending personally, because I haven’t read any of them yet. They are instead books that other people at the con talked about sufficiently enthusiastically that I now want to read them. Some of them are on my (now much larger) to-read pile, either in dead tree form or electronically; some aren’t yet.

First up: two people I know had book launch parties at the con! David L. Clements released his collection of short stories, ‘Disturbed Universes’ (from NewCon Press); and Siobhan McVeigh has a story in the collection ‘Existence is Elsewhere’ from Elsewhen Press (scroll right down for buying options). I heard various of the authors reading extracts from their stories in this book at the launch and they all sounded great.

The rest of my recs are from the Feminist Fantasy panel:

Jo Walton ‘Lifelode’ (annoyingly, it seems to be out of print, and expensive second-hand)
The Chinese myth series Dream of Red Mansions
Elizabeth Gouge (note that not all of her books are fantasy)
Octavia Butler ‘The Wild Sea’
Someone mentioned the Green Knowe series of children’s books, which are sort-of historical fantasy. I read them as a child (a long time ago now) but am now minded to have a look for them the next time I’m in the library and see how they’ve held up.
Tanith Lee
Lois McMaster Bujold ‘Paladin of Souls’ — I have read this one and it is GREAT. Very strongly recommended.
Kate Elliott — both fiction and non-fiction. (Just looked at her post about her own books/series and am now wondering how I missed all of this for this long. Looks great!)
Mary Stewart — Merlin trilogy
Andre Norton ‘Year of the Unicorn’. (I should probably have read this already…) (but I haven’t, so.)

To enlarge your (my) reading list further, E. G. Cosh (who was on a panel with me and is v cool) has a recs post too.

Mirrored from Twisting Vines.

I have a story in the current issue of Luna Station Quarterly! You can read online for free, or buy an issue in e- or paper form, and there’s lots of great stuff there.

(Direct link to my story.)

Mirrored from Twisting Vines.

Look what arrived in the post for me!

Stories by some splendid writers including me:

I haven’t read it yet as it only arrived yesterday, but am greatly looking forward to it. Some of the titles look especially interesting, but I may have to start with Helen Angove’s story.

(Buy it here from the publishers, Obverse Books, in paperback or ebook form.)

( Read more... )

Mirrored from Twisting Vines.

I’ve finished my Permaculture Diploma (all the designs and so on are up here)! I’ll be doing my final presentation at the London Permaculture Festival this Sunday, from 11:30-1:30. There are three of us doing a bunch of mini-talks and chatting to people about urban permaculture and the diploma, so it’s not just 2 straight hours of being talked at.

Come along if you’re free; there’s loads of stuff going on at the festival as a whole, and if you’re at all interested in permaculture it’s well worth going.

Mirrored from Twisting Vines.

Now available for pre-order from Obverse Books: The Perennial Miss Wildthyme, featuring Iris Wildthyme, and a story from me. It’ll be out this autumn, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to reading the rest of the stories.

The cover, by Paul Hanley

(Should you feel unable to wait for your Iris fix, Iris Wildthyme of Mars, in which I also have a story, is available right now.)

We still do not have permission for our solar panels, although we have an official form planning letter which mostly doesn't apply to us. On Thursday it will have been 3 weeks and thus I can chase the planning officer to find out what the problem is with issuing a certificate stating that our lawful development is, in fact, lawful development. (Gah.) On the upside, Patio Dude has just sent an email saying he'll be round next week (which I sincerely hope means a week tomorrow and not tomorrow, for which I would not be prepared) to take up old patio and install new patio, new fence, and new pergola. In some glorious future year the pergola will, I hope, support GRAPES. (The grape vine already exists, but is quite small.)

Leon is now teaching himself to count in other languages (French, Russian, and Mandarin, so far). The internet has a lot to answer for. He is also keen on rainbows (from a colour perspective, rather than as a meteorological phenomenon), and the bin lorry. ("Taking the things to the recycling, to make them into new things!") In a slightly scary step we have taken away the stereo-pen (ie the baby pen that corralled stereo instead of child) without any incident resulting. I believe we are beginning to enter the "why" phase...

I have been GETTING RID OF THINGS in a middling dramatic fashion, and feeling very good for it. My room looks -- not empty, but the stuff that is there looks uncluttered. And I have now kept my desk actually clear for about 3 weeks now which is an all-time record.

And I have not one but two short story deadlines upcoming, which on the one hand is a good state to be in, and on the other hand, deadlines, writing, editing, etc. Yesterday I read through one of them and thought that it was pretty much OK which always makes me nervously wonder what I've missed or if I have lost my critical edge. (Did I ever have a critical edge? who knows.)

Now to finish sewing rainbow patchwork for Leon's upcoming birthday.

Mirrored from Twisting Vines.

I am pretty pleased with this.

Before (June 2011, a month before we moved in):

Eight months later (late Feb 2012, the week before I had Leon!):

One year on (July 2012):

Nearly three years on (May 2014):

Not bad going, really. More photos in the Flickr album.

(Currently it looks quite wintery but I might add a photo in a bit anyway.)

Mirrored from Twisting Vines.

Look what came through the letterbox yesterday!

A brand new Faction Paradox collection, featuring a story by me, among eight others. I haven’t yet read the others, as it only arrived yesterday, but I am greatly looking forward to them; especially the frame story by Kate Orman.

Available now from Obverse Books (hardback) or on Kindle.

Further to my previous posts musing on getting stuff done and the perils of the ticky-box approach, I have realised another interesting thing, which is that I can find researching and (in particular) Planning a Thing more satisfying than the actual Doing of the Thing.

The thing with planning is that you can research and consider and analyse and generally collate lots of information into a cohesive whole, and then make a considered decision based on appropriate factors. All of which is (I find) quite satisfying. And after that you can work out what needs to happen when[0], and whether you need to acquire anything, and generally, once again, consider and analyse and collate things into a Plan. A Plan is a beautiful thing.

But then comes the actual Doing, which involves hard work (physical or mental) and finding that you forgot to allow for this, that, or the next thing; and often the Doing does not entirely match up with the Planning in outcome either[1]. (Though sometimes it does, and sometimes it is better.)

And yet, Planning without any actual Doing is (probably) (right?) eventually going to be unsatisfying.

I could use getting better at Doing.

In other news, we are (hopefully) going to get solar panels! (They should be Permitted Development but due to the specifics of our covenant we have to get permission and it is proving a little more intricate than I expected. Which, really, I should have expected.) Planning the solar panels was fun, and also takes me one step closer to finishing my Permaculture Diploma which I am now aiming to finish by July. There is, inevitably, Another Plan.

[0] If you are very lucky, there may be a Gantt Chart.

[1] I often find it difficult to start writing something, for example, because in my head it exists in a whole and, it seems, perfect form, which is necessarily going to suffer when turned into cold hard words on paper. I am trying to get better at this. Also that is the point of editing, but it is still sometimes sorrow-making to read back something I've just written and realise just how clunky it is.

Profile

juliet

My Website

December 2024

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Recent Entries

Worldcon Recs

Minor peeve

Sitting under my own vine

Eastercon highlights

Eastercon 2017 recs

Ditching LJ

Cold feet

Tales of the Civil War — out now

Tea/coffee meme

Air pollution

Mancunicon 2016 — book recs

New story — Luna Station Quarterly

Furthest Tales of the City

Dear Yuletide Author

Permaculture Diploma presentation

The Perennial Miss Wildthyme

Rainbows and emptiness

Back garden photos

Liberating Earth

The joys of planning

Profile

December 2024

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

Expand Cut Tags