Friday, February 29, 2008
Usually my look at weird stuff has a sad edge to it. This one just cheered me up no end, even though the milk really does get more reviews - mostly good ones too - than any book of mine ever will!!
My confidence in the human race is restored.
There really are folk out there just as warped as me...
And I love them all.
Do go and check out the reviews at Amazon.com for a gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Just in case you wanted to know what sea cucumbers look like - live ones. (They were lifted out of the water briefly for the photo shoot).
And these things are delicacies?? They look like over-sized well-fed leeches...
About 15 cm (6"), but they can stretch themselves into a slim 30 cm too.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Why? Because I have no feeling in part of my hand and 2 fingers. It has been like that for months, but I have had a hard time convincing doctors to take this seriously.
I have a feeling that time is now over.
The torture* revealed "near absence of left ulnar sensory action potentials" - which translated means (I think) pretty much what I have been saying for months. I can't feel a damn thing in 2 fingers. Now I have to go for MRI to find out why I have "ulnar nerve palsy". Good news is there's nothing wrong with my motor strength. I just drop things cos I can't feel them - and forget about typing with my little finger...
*Ok, so it was pretty mild, if kinda creepy.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
This is for budding writers:
I have just updated the list of writing tip posts. You can always find the link on the sidebar. I was 18 months behind...sigh.
Photos: Ok what's going on here, on a street in Kudat, Northern Sabah? Answers tomorrow.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Or being blasted via a loud speaker at any time of day or night.
Or when I realise I haven't seen a stunning dawn or sunset in weeks...
or walked a deserted beach.
Banggi Island, Sabah.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
With writers, we have the authors of "literary" works (whatever that may mean) at the top and romance and fantasy somewhere down at the bottom. Some science fiction writers class their works waaaay above that of fantasy. There is one very famous sci fi writer who at cons - when told by an author that they write fantasy - is wont to say "What a waste".
Now it seems that the diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is stepping on a few toes by insulting a young NZ singer who dares to a) be popular and b) use a mike. She describes Hayley Westenra - who sings light classics and sometimes her own songs - as 'a fake who will not last', who is 'not in my world and never will be.'
'I've had a 40-year career,' she said, 'but these people, two or three years and they're gone.'I find it astonishing how patronising and petty some people at the top can be, in blatant contrast to how helpful and kind others are. Fortunately - the sci fi writer above being an exception - I seem to encounter more of the latter.
Friday, February 22, 2008
I remember going off to Morocco with my husband - he was on duty travel - in 1988. For 8 or 9 days. The girls were just turned 13, and the older 16, four months short of 17. Yep, left them alone for 9 days.
We were living in Vienna (the one in Austria, that is.) The kids were at school, so could not come with us. We lived in a row of adjoining houses and the German/Finnish couple next door promised to keep a eye on things - but they weren't actively involved in their care. For heaven's sake, the girls could look after themselves. My husband's secretary kept in touch with them as well.
And you know what? I wasn't particularly worried about them and I don't think we did anything particularly terrible.
My own mother at age 11, back in 1914, was cooking for the family, caring for a chronically sick mother, looking after her two sisters aged 10 and 4, and schooling as well.
Here's what I wrote to her after we got back to Vienna: "Home again and all well that I can see. N managed to remove the skin from her upper lip and chin in a fall which does nothing for her looks, and they dropped a knife onto the element of the dishwasher where the handle melted, but no other disasters..."
Of course, Vienna was a safe city. People didn't walk around taking pot-shots at school kids, and crime where we lived was rare. In our six years there I don't remember that we were robbed once. (Wish I could say the same about Malaysia today.) Drugs were rare in the school environment. And there were so many friends - both theirs and ours - that the kids could turn to in a fix. In addition, European children tend to be an independent lot, used to fending for themselves and even travelling to other countries on their own.
Elder daughter and her girlfriend once went by train for a weekend to Venice. I think they were 16. They found their own accommodation and meals, and fended off amorous Italians all by themselves. That's Europeans for you.
When the older daughter was off at Oxford, we left the younger one at home again, when we went to Albania for five or six days. She was 15.
I rang her from one of the two public telephones in the capital city of Tirana, just to check how she was. The year was I think 1990. And you had to use a real live telephonist in the hotel to connect you before you could speak...
Anyway, no sooner was daughter on the phone, and before I could get a word out, than she was desperately asking after OUR safety. Were we all right? There was a revolution in Tirana!
I said, 'Huh? You sure you've got the right place?' We hadn't had any access to the news, although the Albanians did seem upset. Italy had just been defeated in the semi-finals of the World Cup Soccer, after all...
To which she replied with a scathing: 'Muuu-uuum!' You know the tone.
'Oh,' I said, the penny dropping, 'So that's what all those people we saw climbing over the embassy walls was about!" And that was why the Government Minister we'd had dinner with the night before had a decidedly harrassed look, especially when he was buttonholed by a Western reporter in the hotel lobby.
We were in the middle of a revolution and hadn't even known it.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Once I lived in Kingsford, Sydney, for 6 months. The Opera House had it's grand opening that year. My elder daughter was two and a half. She had a grand passion for walking on walls. Every time we went anywhere at all, she had to walk the walls...it made going to the shops a very slow business.
Now she has a son, and guess what...
Beach pix taken at Santa Monica.
And that's them skyping Nana in Malaysia...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
He got 15 rejections before his first book, "A Time to Kill," was published.
He made $9 million last year.
He says: "I'm not sure where that line goes between literature and popular fiction.(...)I can assure you I don't take myself serious enough to think I'm writing literary fiction and stuff that's going to be remembered in 50 years. I'm not going to be here in 50 years; I don't care if I'm remembered or not. It's pure entertainment."
And I like this point:
"When I start getting good reviews, I worry about sales (...) It's a better day if I don't read any reviews. It's the only form of entertainment where you're reviewed by other writers. You don't see rock stars reviewing each other's albums, and you don't see directors reviewing each other's movies."What do you think - ought we ban fellow writers from doing reviews? Hmmm.....
Monday, February 18, 2008
Back in 1964 while all this was still going on -- that is, forcibly taking children away from their indigenous parents and communities, literally dragging them out of their mother's arms in some cases, simply on the racist basis of them having some white blood, then carting them off to mission schools where the level of care and education was patchy and their religious denomination was decided by chance -- back then, I was in university taking a course in elementary anthropology. The course included a unit on the culture of the indigenous peoples of Australia. It was all pretty basic.
I knew children were being taken, even then, to mission schools for education. In my humungous naivety, I assumed their parents had consented and that the children returned home for holidays. I assumed they could write letters to their families. I assumed that this was the best way for them to get an education and therefore to have a choice in their future lives. What did I know - I assumed all this, because the people who surrounded me in my youth were reasonable rational and kind and would never have treated me in any other way.
It never occurred to me that not only was permission not granted, but that these children were quite literally being stolen, and that the paper trail was obscured by name changes or obliterated, or perhaps never existed in the first place, so that when children and parents tried to find one another as adults, it was never easy and sometimes impossible.
To this day I wonder about those professors and tutors I had at university - they must have known. They did field research, after all. Why did they not tell us just how iniquitous the system was?
When I found out, I was outraged, but by then I was already living in Malaysia. And that was when I started to wonder what I could do to say sorry. Not much, really. When the previous Australian government refused to say sorry, I was furious.
And of that outrage, of that fury, one of the elements in Heart of the Mirage was born - and I wrote a fantasy novel about a woman stolen from her people and raised to despise her own culture.
The acknowledgments in the book say, in part:
Many years ago, when my own children were very young, I heard for the first time two stories, from opposite sides of the globe. One told the tragedy of (...) how several generations of children were forcibly taken from their loving, caring families to be raised by strangers. They were told to forget who they had been and where they had come from, to forget their language, their culture and their people; indeed to denigrate their very origins.
Ligea’s story is my way of saying sorry to all those mothers and their children; my way of paying homage to (...) the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Australia. As a mother, I have wept for you.After the book was published, the best fanmail I have ever had came from a Koori woman living in Western Australia, to say thank you. I cried then too.
There is so little one can do to repair the past.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
The trouble is that once accused, there was no way out.
Produce a witness to say that the witch was somewhere else at the time of the supposed crime, then the witness was obviously bewitched.
If it is proven she led an evil life, then obviously she is a witch. If she proves she led a blameless life, well, we all know witches are good at dissembling.
If she resists confession under torture, well what did you expect, she's a witch. If she admits it, well, that proves she's a witch.
If she seems scared, well, her conscience accuses her.
If she is brave, well, that's typical of a witch.
And so on.
Once accused, there was never a way out. To find a witch innocent would have called into question every other case. Take a single year, 1598, in a single German town (Wurtzburg) - there were 28 public burnings of witches, each with some 4 to 6 victims.*
The last execution for witchcraft in England was in 1684, when a woman and her nine-year-old daughter were hanged. Their crime? Raising a rain storm by taking their stockings off.
Of course, we have left all this behind now. No state in 2007 would be so stupid or cruel or weird. No religious leaders or major religion or government would recommend or support such horrors, or display the kind of misogynous and weirdo-erotic elements as were found in the sexually repressed, male-dominated society of the 16th of 17th century Europe and America.
This from the BBC news.
"Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.
In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.
The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.
Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.
Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened."
Friday, February 15, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
This morning husband and I tried to leave for our walk along the river - only to find the keys would no longer open the padlock.
One hour later, with the aid of wonderful neighbours from every side, and the loan of hacksaw and muscles, we were finally released, too late for the walk.
Tried to pick up my air ticket to Australia. Couldn't find parking. Gave up. When I came home from a bookgroup meeting (Animal's People was up for discussion), there was no power. Which is no joke in the tropics. It finally came on, and immediately set off the burglar alarm. Great.
Then tonight the power went off again...
And I discovered the disadvantage of broadband (external modem won't work without power) and a free standing monitor (won't work either). Sigh.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The other day I had to tell my 2 sisters-in-law, both over 50, that the little creature so common in all Malaysian gardens and kampungs is not a squirrel but a tree-shrew. It's not even a rodent, as squirrels are. It's active throughout the day and will even enter your house if it's quiet enough. And yet they could not distinguish it from a squirrel - didn't even know there was such a distinct creature.
Don't believe me about how clueless most Malaysians are? Look here (in Malay) for the Kosmo news page, from which I pinched the pix. Kosmo, and at least one of the daily English language newspapers, has not a clue what animal they are talking about. They speak of a Spotted Leopard cub.
And yet this is the most common of all our wild cats. It is Leopard Cat - not a Spotted Leopard (or Black Panther which is the morph of the Leopard most commonly found here in Malaysia). And it is an adult, not a cub.
That's right. These folk - who are informing the public, mind you - reckon this is a baby of the rare leopard which grows to a length of over 2 metres (7 feet) if you count the tail, and is usually black here in Malaysia. When actually it is a fully grown leopard cat, relatively common, which is a only bit bigger than a domestic puss.
In all my years in Malaysia, I have seen one leopard (see here for the encounter and a pix), and countless Leopard Cats. Go out into an oil palm estate that borders a bit of forest at night with a spot light and you practically trip over the things.
I give up.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
That's for Song of the Shiver Barrens which is Book 3 in The Mirage Makers trilogy. Book 1, Heart of the Mirage, was also a finalist, but in 2006.
That's the sublime part.
And then there's the ridiculous.
This from today's paper:
The religious police in Saudi Arabia have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shops to remove any items coloured scarlet...
So giving your wife or your husband a red rose is a vice in some parts of the world it seems. Shades of the Scarlet Letter.
This has got to be in the running for my top award of the year for "How to Make Your Religion Look Stupid."
Monday, February 11, 2008
In 1804 there were 1 billion people on earth.
There are now 6.65 billion.
And I have nothing whatever to say about the photo below, taken by my husband in L.A.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
There's been a few posts on the subject just lately: Justine Larbalestier and John Scalzi (read the comments section) and Meg Rosoff.
The consensus seems to be that "if I don't like it, I won't blurb it." I must admit, though, I have read quite a few books that have loads of praise on the cover but have left me thinking, "Did these guys ever read this??"
Getting my booked "blurbed" by an author never crossed my mind when I started out. I have still never asked someone to do one for me. I never will.
So, how did some of my books get to have another author's comment on it?
Havenstar English cover: None. But it did have a 10/10 rating from Starburst magazine mentioned.
Havenstar German cover: None. It has a quote from Publisher's Weekly about being in the upper league of fantasy
The Aware Australian cover: "Witty, gritty and enthralling" comment from Trudi Canavan. This one has a story behind it. Voyager sent a pre-publication print to a Melbourne sff specialist bookseller. He didn't have time to read it, so passed it to Trudi, author of The Black Magician Trilogy. She loved it and wrote a magical blurb, bless her. At this stage, I had not met her.
Other Isles of Glory covers - even American ones - have repeated this or give quotes gleaned from one of more Australian reviews. Happily, I have been reviewed fairly well in Oz so there was plenty to choose from...
Heart of the Mirage Australian cover: Quotes Trudi on The Isles of Glory trilogy "Hard to put down. It'll keep you up late and make you stay home all day"
Heart of the Mirage UK cover: Quotes Kate Elliot saying : "Exciting, robust adventure. Glenda Larke is a fabulous writer." Another story here. I read some nice things Kate had to say about my previous books on the blog Deep Genre, which just blew me away - because I admire her writing so much. We have the same editor at Orbit UK, and he read what she had to say and asked if she would mind writing the blurb for the new book.
The Shadow of Tyr UK cover: Quotes Karen Miller saying, "Glenda Larke is magical. If you don't read her, you're missing out a treat". (Karen is much more famous than me, so I feel she lost out when I was asked for a blurb for her first book in the UK.)
Song of the Shiver Barrens UK cover: Karen Miller's quote on the front, and Kate Elliott's on the back.
As you can see, I have benefited from some really splendid writers being kind enough to write a blurb - and each of them was asked by the editor, not me. Similarly I wrote a blurb for Karen Miller when an editor asked me. And yes, it was honest. I had already read the book in the Australian edition and was delighted to be asked.
So my question now is this: do you readers take any notice of famous writers writing nice things for a book cover?
[Russian covers? Absolutely no idea what any of them says...]
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Because I want to ask you something.
If you were walking through a large space in a public building - like the departure hall of an airport or the ticket hall of a railway station - and all of a sudden you noticed that there were tens and tens of people frozen in place around you... ordinary folk who were doing ordinary things but are now suddenly looking through you blankly. And not moving.
That man there, about to take his next step, that one over there, doing up his shoelaces, that girl eating an icecream with it now dripping all over her fingers, that guy frozen as he bends to pick up some sheets of paper he dropped, that group of people looking at a map...all not moving. Several hundred people, in fact, not moving. They aren't laughing. They are just...fixed. For minute after minute.
If you were there and saw all that happen in front of you, what would you think?
Aliens have come from Alpha Centauri and stolen their souls away?
They are aliens, and have suddenly all succumbed to earth's toxins?
They are aliens and have been recalled home, so they just shucked off their borrowed bodies?
They are all good Christians/Muslims/Whatever, and God has whisked their spirits up to heaven as a mark of His favour, leaving their bodies behind ?
They have all somehow breathed in a poison - released by wicked terrorists - which has stopped their ability to move or speak?
They are an acting class sent out by the teacher to see how good they can be before an audience?
They are just a group of people having fun just for the heck of it?
Bet you'd come up with something along the lines of one of the last two explanations.
Now, if something odd happens to you - e.g. you are about to ring your dad - first time in two weeks - you reach out to pick up the phone when it rings. Lo and behold it's your dad.
You immediately think:
Wow, I'm psychic
Wow, he's psychic
Wow, we have a psychic connection
Aliens are at work
God's ways are mysterious to behold...
Not to be wondered at, seeing as I haven't rung him in two weeks...
So tell me, why do so many people NOT go for the logical non-magical answer with things like the phone call, when that was the kind of answer they looked for in the first scenario? (Which I deduced from listening to the sound track of the video, and from the fact that none of the normal, non-frozen people were running screaming from Grand Central Station or even punching in 911 numbers on their mobiles...)
Thursday, February 07, 2008
And it truly is amazing how many times two different readers can read exactly the same thing and see two different things. And how humbling it is when you are the writer and you discover what you thought was crystal clear was not clear at all...
One of my characters is a woman who cares for her husband but doesn't want to show it, for reasons I won't go into here. There's a short scene where he is about to go off to rescue someone, a woman, and she is a bit bad-tempered. I was trying to point out to the reader that she is sick with worry for him as he is going into danger, but doesn't want him to know it. The beta reader thought I was trying to say she was jealous. Which never occurred to me.
And that's just one example. Back to the drawing board...
And have you all seen that wonderful video about the frozen folk of Grand Central Station? If not, do look. It is marvellous.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
The eggs are collected - mostly to keep them safe from the huge monitor lizards, and the young released at night when they hatch. Human interference is not a problem here, due to the military presence on the island.
This particular turtle laid under some bushes, well up the beach. You can see her shifting sand with her flippers. She must have been more than a metre in length.
Note how deep she laid the eggs, being collected here by the wildlife officer. His right arm is buried up to the shoulder as he extracts them. The eggs are soft-shelled but tough and therefore not easily broken...
And here's a tongue-in-cheek etymological lesson for Americans: turtles have flippers and spent most of their life in water. The other guys - the ones with legs and feet and claws are called tortoises, and live mostly on land...
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
There was a whole list of "Dont's" obviously aimed at young adults, scribbled in red print on a black background. Probably locally manufactured.
It started off pretty much as one would expect:
Sunday, February 03, 2008
I took me a while to establish that I had indeed bought the keyboard in the USA and brought it back here (my fault for the delay, not theirs), but once that was done, they were amazing in their response. I now have a brand new keyboard that works beautifully, and the swelling and pain in my wrists has vastly improved. Microsoft staff were helpful, followed up everything, and the result was excellent, the matter solved quickly.
So, credit when credit is due - thanks Microsoft.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
I haven't spoken French since 1994, which is when we left Tunisia, so my French is a bit shaky. But I think they said that this trilogy has identified me as a rising star of the Antipodes. Wow.
I have a strange reaction to the translation of Blaze Halfbreed, though. Somehow Braise Sangmêlé sounds - to my English-attuned but vaguely-French-conversant ears-- like a rare steak. You know, braised mixed blood.
Présentation de l'éditeur
Braise Sangmêlé s'était juré de ne jamais remettre les pieds à la Pointe-de-Gorth, repaire de tout ce que les îles Glorieuses comptent de désespérés, de trafiquants, d'escrocs et de criminels sans foi ni loi prêts à tuer père et mère pour quelques setus ou une choppe de bineille. Mais les Vigiles, qui règnent en maîtres sur l'archipel, ne l'entendent pas de cette oreille. Braise est la seule à pouvoir mener à bien une mission délicate pour leur compte : ramener le plus discrètement possible la castenelle de Cirkase en fuite. Et on ne lui demande pas son avis. Mais à peine débarquée, braise se rend compte que quelque chose ne tourne pas rond : son enquête se heurte au mutisme des matelots et une odeur inquiétante de magie carmine semble s'attacher au moindre de ses pas. Car en plus d'être une combattante hors pair, armée d'une épée aux proportions exceptionnelles, Braise Sangmêlé possède le don de Clairvoyance qui lui permet de sentir la magie à l'œuvre. Quoique pratique, ce talent fait d'elle une cible de choix pour les sorciers de tout poil qui n'apprécient guère qu'on se mêlent de leurs projets de domination du monde. Bref, Braise s'est encore mise dans de sales draps.
Biographie de l'auteur
GLENDA LARKE. Elle est née au pays des kangourous mais vit en Malaisie. Bien plus ambitieuse qu'elle n'y paraît de prime abord, la trilogie des îles Glorieuses l'a consacrée comme une des étoiles montantes de la fantasy des antipodes.