Mythusmage's Friends

8:42AM - Casket of Souls Book Signing!

I'll be signing books at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego on June 3 at 2 pm. See link for details:

http://www.mystgalaxy.com/event/lynn-flewelling-signs-sd-060312

Hope to see you there!

2:50PM

I managed to get home fairly early from work, yesterday, and while my beloved was out milking, I watched/listened to some of the lectures I'd downloaded from iTunes. I also multi-tasked, in that I was doing laundry at the same time. The first lecture was about Diocletian and other Roman emperors of the time, the second was some of the foundation information that the lecturer thought was the basic reason that English has become a significant world language. Thirdly, I tried to listen to a lecture on Hannibal from Stanford University, but I found it to be poor in comparison to the others. I mean, the professor opens up bragging that he was expecting to be called upon to work on a movie on the subject; how is that relevant to teaching the material? So I dumped that one after about an hour's investment (two hour lecture...).

Once she was back, and we'd had dinner, I put on the final Netflix disc of Game of Thrones season one. I have to confirm that I put season two on the list...this was very good.

No spoilers. That to folks out there who are discussing season two as the shows turn up on HBO, since we don't and won't get the premium channels.

7:43AM - The 2012 Campbell Awards.

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is currently open for voting! This award uses the same nomination and voting mechanism as the Hugos, even though the Campbell Award is not a Hugo, and will be presented this year in Chicago, during the Hugo Awards Ceremony. Having been on the Campbell ballot in 2010, I can testify that it is a huge, huge honor to be nominated, and that it gets your name in front of a lot of eyes that might not otherwise have heard of you.

(I can also testify that winning is amazeballs best thing oh my sweet Great Pumpkin corn maze paradise wonderful. But that's probably true of winning most awards that you really, really want.)

If you are currently a member, either Attending or Supporting, of Chicon 7, you are eligible to vote for the Campbell Award, along with the Hugo Awards. If you're not a member, either Attending or Supporting, you can view the membership rates by clicking right here. A Supporting Membership comes with voting rights and the complete Hugo packet, and is only $50.

Because writers who are eligible for the Campbell are, by their very nature, relatively new writers, it's possible that you don't know anything about this year's candidates. Jim Hines has sensibly decided to help you with this little problem, and has conducted interviews with all five of this year's nominees. Go, read, and be enlightened!

We have a truly awesome class of Campbell nominees this year; any one of them is worthy of the tiara. Because remember, the Campbell is the only major genre award that comes with a tiara.

In closing, I present the comic strip I drew to commemorate my own eligibility:



TESTIFY!

2:42PM

Happy birthday, doafy!

9:54AM - New Book Discussion!

I've just posted the book discussion for Michelle Sagara's new book Silence, the first book in The Queen of the Dead series, over at the DAW Books blog (dawbooks). Anyone here read it yet? It certainly looks significantly different from Michelle's other books. If you haven't heard of it, swing on by and check it out!

9:51AM - Book Discussion: "Silence" by Michelle Sagara

We're now ready to start discussing the May releases from DAW and the first up is the hardcover release of Michelle Sagara's Silence, the first book in The Queen of the Dead series. I haven't gotten to this one yet, but what about you guys? It's certainly looks significantly different from Michelle's other books.

Cover Copy: Ever since her boyfriend Nathan had died in a tragic accident, Emma had been coming to the graveyard at night. During the day she went through the motions at her prep school, in class, with her friends, but that's all it was. For Emma, life had stopped with Nathan's death. But tonight was different. Tonight Emma and her dog were not alone in the cemetery. There were two others there--Eric, who had just started at her school, and an ancient woman who looked as though she were made of rags. And when they saw Emma there, the old woman reached out to her with a grip as chilling as death. . . .

Emma was not quite like other teenagers. It was true that other girls had experienced grief. Other girls had also lost their fathers or had their boyfriends die in a senseless accident. But though she hadn't known it till that night in the graveyard, unlike those other girls, she could see, touch, and speak with the dead. In fact, Emma could draw upon the essence of the dead to work magic. That was what Necromancers did. But Emma had no desire to be a Necromancer. She just wanted to help the ghosts who walked the streets of Toronto, unable to escape from the land of the living. And that was just as well, because had she chosen the path of the Necromancer, Eric would have had to kill her.

Instead, Eric and his fellow Necromancer hunter Chase found themselves violating every rule they were sworn to follow, becoming part of Emma's group, helping her to stand against those who preyed upon the dead. But whether Emma and her friends could survive such a battle was anyone's guess. And whether Emma could learn to use the magic of the dead against her enemies without herself falling victim to the lure of such power remained to be seen. Eric seemed to think she could, and her living friends would never abandon her. But only time would tell what Emma's true destiny was. . . .

6:36AM - Flash of History - Europe

kith_koby sent me this link. As you're watching, see the effect of personal history on the map, and other elements. At least I found it mesmerizing.

7:38AM - Links Roundup for 16 May 2012

Here's a roundup of stories about the importance of fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• Singer Alexandra Burke wrote about the importance of her fans, saying she can "fully appreciate the extent that 'fandom' as some people like to call it has really taken over. I am superclose to my fans (probably too close for it to be healthy lol) but I feel like they are this extended family of mine and they do so much for me, and there's no better form of honesty than if these guys don't like something/don't like some of my music - they won't dress it up in cotton wool - they will just tell you damn straight!" What's more, "[t]he last few years I think for me have certainly changed my perception on this whole 'movement', and no doubt that of label's and management who now have whole teams dedicated to ensuring that the fanbase is looked after."
  


• Dr. Who fans, on the other hand, got a whole book written on their importance. SFX reviewed The Official Doctor Who Fan Club: Volume One and concluded that "[e]ven readers born many years after 1971 will probably experience a stab of nostalgia. You are transported back to more innocent times: before forum flame wars; before fandom had been commodified. This was a time when you could write to the Doctor and know there was a decent chance of getting a letter back; a time when Who fans had to make their own entertainment (one of Keith’s innovations was a 'lending library' of hand-made, one-off novellas of old stories, available to borrow one at a time). You may find yourself wondering if we weren’t better off back then."
  


• If the discussion at Den of Geek is any indication, the above book will likely sell well. Contemplating what fandom did for Dr. Who, they note that "the market is completely different these days. Before the show came back, Doctor Who merchandise was a relatively small but lucrative area, mainly based round adult collectors. Now it's a huge and broad market, with magazines and toys selling large numbers in supermarkets to kids." They then attempt to quantify Who fandom, speculating "When you consider that Doctor Who Magazine's 2011 circulation was 30,682 these figures are impressive, but for further context we must ask: how many hard-core Doctor Who fans are there?...If you combine the highest figure from fan-sites' Twitter followers or forum members the total is roughly 145,700. This figure does show is that, even adjusting upwards (say, doubling the figure to accommodate variables), the kind of fan who is debating how much of Destiny of the Daleks was written by Terry Nation or Douglas Adams has gone from being the near-totality of fandom to being a minority (the average UK viewing figure for the 2011 series was 7.75 million)."
  


• Certainly the U.S.'s SyFy network has realized the importance of fannish content to its bottom line. Their recent upfront presentation included various shows targeted at fans. Aside from creating two different shows aimed at collectors, there is a new project on cosplayers, Divas of Dress Up, and the "Untitled Mark Burnett Project...where fans of science fiction/fantasy books and movies compete to create the most flavorful and inspired dishes from the foods featured in the imaginary worlds that they love."
  

If you are part of Dr. Who fandom or want to share your fandom recipes, why not write about it on Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW blog. Find related news by viewing our tag cloud.

9:34PM - Guest Post: LOOKING FOR THE WOMEN (IN ANCIENT ROME)

Recently there’s been a great deal of discussion on the topic of whether women did actually exist in “historical times,” by which I mean to say that all too often “common knowledge” of what women’s roles were in historical periods is a mythology. If writers and readers base their expectations of women in fantasy fiction on these erroneous stereotypes, then not only is our literature and our reading the poorer for it but it is also getting it wrong.

Today I offer a guest post by Australian writer Tansy Rayner Roberts on this very (and very important) subject.

 

 

Looking for the Women (in Ancient Rome)

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

 

I was inspired to write this after Kate’s post about looking for women in historically-based fantasy worlds.

It’s long frustrated me that a great deal of fantasy fiction in the long tradition of the genre underestimates women.  In particular, I am tired of worlds which are supposedly ‘based on medieval history’ and yet seem to be under the impression that women in the Middle Ages only turned up when a hero needed someone to marry, or to pour him a drink.

And I’m especially, especially tired of any attempts to interrogate the gender politics in fantasy fiction being shut down with the argument: it’s based on real history, so the sexism is AUTHENTIC.

I’m not going to lie to you.  Every historical period has been unkind to women, up to and including our own.  But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t complex and interesting possibilities available to women of all eras, in between stirring the turnip soup and being oppressed.

My favourite fantasy fiction is fed by history, by the nitty gritty details of things that really happened, people who had real lives, tossed around with magic because that automatically makes things more fun.

I wanted to bring my knowledge of Ancient Rome to what Kate has already talked about, largely because I think we can all take a rest from pure Anglo medieval-inspired fantasy for a decade or two, but also because Rome is what I know best.

Ancient Rome is packed with the types of historical issues we see people running up against when trying to write non-sexist stories set in mostly-sexist societies.  In Rome, there was a very clear division between the public and private spheres.  Sadly almost every historical document that survived to document their society was kept because it related to the ‘obviously important’ public sphere in which men were dominant.  Most of the sources we have about private life are conveyed in the words of men, such as the Letters of the Younger Pliny.

But while women had no technical power in that public sphere (which mostly consisted of military issues, senatorial politics and toga parties) they had immense power behind the scenes.  They had their own religious rituals which were considered just as important to the well being of the state as the public, mostly-male rites.  For a long time, scholars assumed women’s religion was less important because they weren’t allowed to make blood sacrifice, and it’s only recently that scholars have gone, um, maybe we only assumed blood sacrifice was more important than, say, baking the sacrificial cakes, because the men were in charge of it?  Oops.

Women of all social levels ran businesses, owned property and slaves, and moved freely around their local city or, if they preferred, the Empire itself.  Even aristocratic women could do those things, though they were more likely to have male relatives who wanted to control them.  The older a woman got, the greater her status.  Divorce was easy to achieve (as long as you weren’t too emotionally attached to your children, one hell of a loophole) but there was special social status granted to a univira, the rare woman who had only had one husband in her lifetime.

We know that Augustus, the first emperor, brought in legislation to try to control women, a little under two thousand years ago, and that tells us a lot about how unruly they had become!  In particular, he brought in a law to force women of the upper classes to remarry within two years of being widowed (and one year of divorce).  This was somewhat devastating, as divorcing your husband or becoming a widow had previously been the best way for  a woman to achieve independence.

Still, we have some great examples of interesting women in Roman history, who had rich and fulfilling and complex lives, despite the patriarchal society in which they lived.  Such as:

THE VIRAGO
The word ‘virago’ was supposedly coined by Octavian (later the emperor Augustus) to insult his rival Marc Antony’s wife Fulvia.  It means ‘women who acts like a man’ and referred to the fact that Fulvia joined her husband on military expeditions.  She wasn’t actually wielding a sword or wearing armour (not that I’d put it past her, she was a feisty lady), but it was apparently unusual for a woman to prefer to rough it in a tent with her husband rather than stay home in comfort with her children.

Having said that, we know of several other women who did the same thing, including Agrippina Major (the granddaughter of Augustus) who raised her children in military camps so they could be near her their father (and so they would all be far from the dangerous politics of the capital).  Later, the Empress Faustina Minor discovered that following her husband to war allowed historians to trash talk her reputation (though the accusations that she had affairs with gladiators had little to do with her own reputation and everything to do with how much the Romans hated her son, the Emperor Commodus).

THE VIRGINS
While having a husband was the key to many social successes and honours in Ancient Rome, it was not always compulsory.  The Vestal Virgins were the among the highest status women in the city.  While there were some scary stories circulating about what would happen to a Vestal if she broke the chastity rule (buried alive for a start) they were nevertheless trusted to regulate that chastity themselves.  They were not shut away or guarded by eunuchs as some 1960’s movies might have you believe!

In fact they moved through the city in freedom and comfort, attended dinner parties, performed rituals, and took part in several business-related duties including the receiving, archiving and dispensing of the city’s legal wills and other documents.  They often had political influence, and had the same status in a law court as a man – which is to say their word had greater legal weight than any other woman of the time.
After thirty years of service (they sign up as children) each Vestal would be released with a generous dowry, and could either live independently or choose to marry.

THE MISTRESS
One of my favourite historical characters (only partly because of the marvellous historical novel written about her, The Course of Honour by Lindsey Davis) is Caenis, the mistress to the Emperor Vespasian (he who built the Colosseum).  Caenis’ story is fascinating because it goes against everything we think we know about Roman society and their class system, and what women were allowed to do.

Caenis began as an imperial slave, serving Antonia (niece of the Emperor Augustus, mother of the Emperor Tiberius) as a personal secretary.  She appears to have had an eidetic memory, and served her mistress dutifully through a time of great political scandal.  When she was freed, she took the name ‘Antonia’ as was tradition.

But while freedwomen could run businesses and own property, one thing not allowed to Antonia Caenis was to marry above her station.  Her love affair with the ageing general Vespasian thus was unlikely to be officially sanctioned by the state, but the class divide broadened when he became the surprise Emperor of a new dynasty.  Luckily he already had two adult sons.  He and Caenis lived happily together in the imperial quarters, she providing him with great advice and wisdom, until her death.

Even in a world where the rules of marriage and social status were quite complex and technically restrictive, love and smarts could beat them all into the ground!
There are so many other specific women I could have talked about – the further they got from the city of Rome itself, and the lawmakers who thought it was okay to dictate what women should do, the more likely they were to take all kinds of freedoms for themselves that the law didn’t actually allow for.  Take mixed bathing – the public baths were supposed to have separate areas for men and women, but half the time they all jumped in together, with all the social ramifications that might imply, regardless of whether or not the current Emperor though it was a good idea.  In smaller towns we even have women running local councils, or breaking with all manner of traditions expected of ‘good’ Roman matrons.

Then there’s the time that the Emperor Augustus gave a lecture about what men should demand of their wives, with all the senators laughing up their sleeves because they all knew that the women of his family had other opinions on the matter.

If we learn nothing else from Roman history, it is that there have always been strong-willed women who get their own way, no matter what the law or the ideals of the society say about it.  Personality can rule over technicalities, and even a sexist society can produce some amazing, capable women, those who work with the system as well as those who work against it.

Too often, female characters only get celebrated in fantasy fiction if they are behaving like men, or taking on traditional male attributes – the kickass lady in armour, the sorceress who can zap you if you say the wrong thing, and so on.  But while I’m all for putting women in (sensible) armour and throwing them out on the battlefield, I also would like to see greater use of other female roles in fantasy – of women’s brains, in particular.  The further back you go in history, the smarter women had to be in order to exhibit and use the power they had.  So let’s see more of THAT in fantasy.

If a story starts with a maiden, let’s not assume that she has to get locked in a tower.  There are alternatives…

 

 

This post was written by Tansy Rayner Roberts for her Flappers with Swords Blog Tour.

Tansy’s award-winning Creature Court trilogy: Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts, featuring flappers with swords, shape changers, half-naked men and bloodthirsty court politics, have been released worldwide on the Kindle, and should be available soon across other e-book platforms.  If you prefer your books solid and papery, they can also be found in all good Australian and New Zealand bookshops.

You can also check out Tansy’s work through the Hugo-nominated crunchy feminist science fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia, Tansy’s short story collection Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press).  You can find her on the internet at her blog, or on Twitter as @tansyrr.

Mirrored from I Make Up Worlds.

9:01PM - Art Marathon Tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning, when I get home from my meeting, we’ll be launching our fundraiser for my friend’s service dog, with 24 hours of drawing brought to you live, presumably by large amounts of caffeine and crunchy vegetables. See you then!

 

Originally published at The Story Dragon. You can comment here or there.

8:11PM - Weary and Heavy

Some days are harder than others.  Sometimes we feel older than our years.  At some point the routine weighs more heavily, the responsibilities seem more onerous.  Bad news arrives from a distance of both years and space, little moments that remind us of our own mortality catch us off our guard, the slog of the day-to-day seems unrelenting.

I am weary tonight, and my heart is heavy.  I could write more, but really that's what it comes down to.  And tonight of all nights, I feel that my time would be better spent playing my guitar, seeing to my girls, sitting with my wife.

If you love someone, tonight would be a good night to tell him or her so, be it with words, or with a kiss, or with the simple act of taking a moment to sit and say or do nothing at all.

10:00AM - In this post, I swear a lot for no apparent reason

I’m sitting here on a Sunday trying to remember what I was going to blog about. There was plan a while back – perhaps even a written one – but I’m afflicted with a curse that causes me to forget anything remotely plan-like the moment I sit down at a keyboard. Fortunately, I have a back-up plan: 4 Random Things where I place Fuckin’ in the centre of the entry title.

1. DENNIS FUCKIN’ LEHANE

One of my favourite book stores is Brisbane’s Pulp Fiction, a speciality-store focused exclusively on Fantasy, SF, and Mystery/Crime fiction. When I first started patronising the store I stuck to the fantasy/SF side of things, revelling in the ability to pick up fiction from small presses and mid-list authors I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to track down. All that changed about…jeez, I don’t know, but a while back…and these days I tend to pick up a few things from the crime side of things. I’m a fan of the hardboiled mystery, after all, and I’m developing a growing affection of the cosy murder mystery, and there a depths of awesome in those genres I’m still to find.

But last week I picked up a copy of Denis Lehane’s A Drink Before the War and…well, holy shit, I kinda dig this book. There are certain writers who have the ability to engender trust in a reader, simply be deploying an opening paragraph that makes you think, well, yeah, this writer gets it, and Lehane is one of those. There’s a control there, an ability to deploy language in a certain way, that I knew from the opening paragraph how much I’d enjoy what follows (and, lo, I enjoyed what followed exactly as much as I expected).

I went back on Friday and picked up the second book featuring the same characters. I inhaled the damn thing in one manic night of reading, staying up until the wee hours when I should have been getting some sleep prior to going to the dayjob.

2. LL FUCKIN’ HANNET

It’s always nice when friends who do good work are recognised for, well, being fuckin’ aces at the things that they do well. Case in point: this year’s Aurealis Awards were given out over the weekend and while I’d offer congratulations to all the winners, I was really happy to hear that the immensely talented LL Hannett had walked away with the gong for both Best Collection (for Bluegrass Symphony) and co-winner of Best Horror Story (for The Short Go: a Future in Eight Seconds).

Congratulations, also, to Thoraiya Dyer for picking up the Best Fantasy Story nod for Fruit of the Pipal Tree (yes, she totally deserves her own entry as Thoraiya fuckin’ Dyer, but I’m not yet sure we know each other well enough for such familiarity not to be seen as offensive).

3. RED FUCKIN’ DAWN

Last night’s Trashy Tuesday Movie. Watchable, enjoyable, and utterly terrible. #Wolverines

Next week I’m watching Doom. Actually, next week I’m watching the *extended directors cut* of Doom. Because someone, somewhere, though it was a film that needed to be longer and my flatmate is the kind of person who pays money for such things.

I’m already afraid.

4. AMANDA FUCKIN’ PALMER

‘Cause, really, if you’re going to make a list of people and things with the word fuckin’ inserted in the middle of their names, it’s a fairly natural fuckin’ progression.

Also because I wrote a post for QWC’s blog about her recent kickstarter, John Scalzi’s commentary on it, and what that means for writers. I wouldn’t ordinarily bounce people from this blog to that one, but one of the curses of working on three different blogs every week is that occasionally there’s a conversation on one that you really wish could involve readers from another. Also, the QWC blog is shiny and new, so I figure it can’t hurt to send anyone interested in that direction.

5. AND ONE FINAL NOTE, WITHOUT SWEARING, REGARDING CONTINUUM

If there’s anyone whose heading along to the Continuum Nat-Con in June that may be interested in half a hotel room, drop me a line. It turns out the room that I’ve got has two queen beds, and many of the usual suspects I’d split a room with either aren’t coming along or already live in Melbourne. I’m not opposed to having the room to myself and all, but if the opportunity is there to split costs…

Originally published at PeterMBall.com. Please leave any comments there.

4:07PM - Ahhhhhhhhh!

3:41PM - Today's Best Typo

“It’s stacked with mountain trout, my lord. Good fishing in that pond, and a tasty catch, if you care for fish."

Stacks of trout. Yum!

I'm also using the word "muscular" a lot lately. Where's that Thesaurus?

2:38PM - Tick tick tick

Thirteen days.

2:07PM - Sherlock: Scandal in Belgravia, uncut version

OK, yes, I am obsessed. Watched the uncut version over lunch.

( Spoilers )

3:05PM - mad men + thrones = shakespeare?

12:01PM - Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville Second viewing

I downloaded the uncut version from iTunes (bless 'em!) and watched it again. The combination of the extra five minutes business, lowered expectations, and knowing what was going on to catch the little details made it much more enjoyable.

( Spoilers Ahead )

11:38AM - Current projects, May 2012.

And now, the May 2012 current projects post, which makes me a little sad, because I made the April post from Cat's place in Maine, and I am not in Maine now. Oh, well. This is the post in which I tell you what I'm working on, and you finally understand why I don't have time for tea. To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Blackout, Ashes of Honor). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

Not everything on this list has been sold. I will not discuss the sale status of anything which has not been publicly announced. Please don't ask.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out! )

2:07PM - Hmm…maybe…

Eternally curious Rachel Griffin lives in the World of the Wise, hidden from the eyes of mundane modern earth. Arriving at Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts—a school for magic located in New York’s Hudson Highlands—she discovers a more secret world, the motives of which she had reason to distrust. Instead, Rachel puts her faith in those others fear: dark elves, demons, and junior Supervillains. The friendships she forges will save her world. Or, if she missteps, destroy it.

Originally posted to Welcome to Arhyalon. (link)