for those of you who do not share my bizarre obsession with events economical, I thought I’d bring this to your attention:

And you might also notice that as a function of time, we’re actually doing worse than they were on day 300 of the great D.

May you live in interesting times, eh?

Anyone who has heard me wax eloquent about politics (and not run away at the first opportunity) knows I’m hardly a huge fan of the democrats, and this especially includes Barack Obama. I’ve listened to and read his actual policies and he strikes me as a center-right politician of above average oratorical skills. I don’t agree with him on much. I obviously think he is vastly preferable to George Bush, but I wish that I didn’t have to compare my political candidates to murderous tyrants who should be impeached.

Last night I forgot about all of that. I tried really really hard to be the grinch that stole christmas. I did. I tried to remember Obama’s stance on Iran, and his weird middle line on gay marriage and the hundred other issues that I care about. But it didn’t matter. I got on the phone with my sister and I cried. My father was born in 1942. He participated in sit-ins in rural, segregated Virginia. He was the defendant in the seminal civil rights case, Johnson vs. Virginia, which went to the supreme court and desegregated the court systems a few years after Brown vs. Board of Education. He told me stories, growing up, of how he had to sit in the balcony of his town’s theater, because the gallery was reserved for whites. He didn’t mind, because the balcony had the better seats anyway. My dad saw a black man get elected president yesterday. My mom walked home from school during the DC riots after MLK was assassinated. She saw a black man get elected president yesterday.

I’ve had none of those experiences, but I saw Jesse Jackson in the audience during Obama’s speech and I thought: my god, none of us really thought this would happen. None of us. So, I’m happy. Inasmuch as Obama represents a moment utterly beyond himself, beyond his actual positions on actual issues, beyond any sort of mundane partisan victory: I’m proud that America managed to get here.

So, in the spirit of “if I have this problem, other people must also,” I write here a complaint and a proposal.

I really like the idea of Open Office and free, open source software. In general, I think it’s a great product. However, I still use my old version of Microsoft Word to write in. Why? Because Open Office doesn’t have the single most important feature I need as a writer: draft, or “normal” view (that’s the way you can view documents in Word that strips out all the margins and headers and shows a dotted line for page breaks). The only options in OO Writer are page layout view and this truly wonky web view. Both of which are entirely useless for composing long documents without unnecessary headaches. I’ve looked this up, and people have been complaining to them about this since 2002. The developers keep making vague noises that they might do something about it and then put it off into some indefinite “later” version of Open Office. It ain’t in version 3.0 either. It seems a little insane to me that the by far most sophisticated free word processor out there can’t get it together enough to implement a page view mode that’s been available since the early 90s in every other software package. And it’s stopping me from using it. I bought an ASUS so I could have something small bring to coffee shops and write, but unfortunately it’s linux-based and so I’m stuck with OO Writer. The more I use it. the more frustrated I get with the stupid layout view. Augh!

So…anyone else feel like this? Am I alone? Would you too use Open Office Writer if it could get itself together and give us a decent page view? Because if you take a few minutes and sign up on the open office wiki, you can then vote for the issue and write a comment. Maybe if enough writers do this, they’ll start to look at it seriously.

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4914

It’s issue # 4914. If you’re with me, go forth and agitate!

On the other hand, I’ve complained about this to a few of my friends and they seem to have no problems at all adjusting to the page layout view. Different strokes, I guess.

I have discovered that the Speculative Literature Foundation has taken leave of their senses and decided to give me $800 to travel around Mexico. Needless to say, I’m ecstatic.

The press release is here. I’m going there to research a novel I’ve been planning and researching for at least four years. The working title is Revolution and Desire in the Mushroom Kingdom (I know, I’ll have to change it). Once I finish the second book of my trilogy, I think I’m going to work on this until something comes up. Like, the fifty other novels/short stories/work for hire projects I seem to have taken on.

Headlines from the New York Times Index, October 1929
(A Whimsical Selection)*

C A Dice predicts high level will be constant for several yrs, O 13 II, 7:2

C E Mitchell says he sees no signs of predicted slump, O 16, 41:4

Cleveland Trust Co bulletin repts 14% decline from 1st of Sept through 1st wk in Oct; says a few high stocks have concealed bear market, O 16, 47:1

Fisher predicts rise will be permanent; says realized and prospective earnings justify current heights; disagrees with R W Babson’s prediction of 50-60% point drop, O 1, 8:4

Powerful bear pool reptd operating in Wall St, O 19, 32:2

Fall 2 to 10 points for active stocks and as much as 145 for inactive stocks; 2-day drop attributed to readjustment of prices to level more commensurate with earnings, unanswered margin calls, foreign liquidation, hammering by bears and terror among shareholders, O 22, 1:5

I T Fisher says even at current high levels stocks are not up to true value; dismisses decline as "shaking out lunatic fringe that attempts to speculate on margin," O 22, 24:1

C E Mitchell says decline has carried several below real value, O 23, 16:1

I T Fisher says fears that they will go to 1923 level are not justified by present economic conditions, O 24, 2:1

Decline continues through most disastrous day in Wall St’s history; 4-14 point rally at close of trading, O 30, 1:8

Mayor Walker urges moving picture exhibitors not to show gloomy pictures of break, O 30, 3:2 [Jimmy Walker is a character in my novel, so this was particularly funny]

M W Harrison predicts recovery and says business justifies increasing values; H G Aron calls crash unnecessary, O 30, 4:2

Sen Tydings says Repubs must take blame for crash, O 30, 4:2

Stocks lrs sent out by brokers to clients indicate bottom level of liquidation is reached, in their opinion, O 30, 4:4

D Rockefeller says current business status does not warrant severe declines; says he and son are buying heavily, O 31, 1:6

Irving Fisher really stuck his foot in his mouth didn’t he? I’m not even quoting half of his bottom calls. Note to self: regard famous economists who say calming things about the economy during unprecedented financial turmoil with healthy skepticism.

Even more fun to be had in November:

Soviet writers use crash to point moral that capitalism is hollow and fictitious; attribute crash to over-production, N 10, III, 6:1

J L Livermore says leading stocks are selling too low, N 13, 2:2

Decline continues; Stock Exch calls for lists of stocks borrowed and lent and for whom in effort to discourage bear selling; 21 issues closed day with gains, N 14: 1:5

We of this modern age recently banned short-sales, too (the ban expired a few days ago).

La plus ca change.

* This exercise in possibly unfounded historical analogy brought to you by the letter P (for procrastination), and the Columbia University Library, where I happened to sit before the so tantalizing New York Times indexes.

It’s official: I have become addicted to HBO’s True Blood. I was doing that full body roll-around-on-the-couch thing today while watching the fifth episode, and I remember from Veronica Mars what that means…

This is a bit strange since I seem to be entirely alone among everyone of my acquaintance in my enjoyment of this show. They all seem to hate it. Maybe I just have bad taste? Or maybe after I drank the bright red kool-aid big time and wrote and sold a vampire novel of my own I’ve become more forgiving of the genre? I don’t know, but I really do enjoy this trashy, back-door thoughtful show. I can’t wait till next Sunday.

And can I just say that I really love the way they’ve made Bill Compton so weird and awkward looking? Every once in a while there’s a certain angle and you think: oh wow, he really is handsome, but a lot of the time he looks…inhuman. Undead. Like you would imagine an animated civil war corpse should look. This being opposed to David Boreanaz.

p.p.s. also, the most awesome opening credit sequence ever. It is better than the show. Which still means the show is good.

I was listening to my ipod today, while deep in the throes of completing my 2k on The Dread Novel, and came across this song (My Sister by Tindersticks):

The video is a little odd (I think it’s just some fan interpretation), but dig the lyrics:

I especially love the way the music becomes almost jaunty while he says: "He hit her over the back of the head with his bullworker." This song is an almost wrist-slash worthy example of a thing I love in more milder versions in a lot of songs (and books, for that matter). It’s this incredibly taut juxtaposition of happy/sad warring within the same song. So you have these insanely depressing lyrics of a woman’s life which was just one tragedy after another layered over this moody instrumental, with hints of something really not right beneath it (saxophones wandering off into dissonant jazz scales), but this swinging sixties beat. Other songs that are less intense that feel like this to me? Brandy by Looking Glass. Chain Gang by the Pretenders. The happy/sad thing is what made Buffy great.

Anyway. Weird thoughts at the end of the day. I went to Hungary earlier this month, and there’s nothing cooler than realizing that dancing is the language that crosses all borders. You would not believe how much I danced. My knees can’t either.

A short story of mine (hard SF, would you believe?) that I had thought would be going up in September, is actually up this week at Strange Horizons. Read it! If any of you met me at readercon, I used an excerpt from this story for my “meet the prose” quote. The thing about Dante’s first ring and demons who have hox genes. My friend Kris really loves the part about the lip-creature. Now you have to be curious, right?

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20080804/well-f.shtml

In other news, RWA was a very interesting and different experience from the average SF con. I really enjoyed it– especially the fancy dresses and free books. I went to the St. Martin’s Press party and it was swanky! Also, RWA is so much better organized and more useful than SFWA it’s sort of sad and pathetic. I think I’m going to join this week.

Want to point out the upcoming KGB Fantastic Fiction Raffle, in case any of you haven’t heard of it. There are some really awesome prizes up there: you can win a story critique from Nancy Kress, Rick Bowes, Gardner Dozois, Shawna McCarthy and a few others. You can get Jeffrey Ford or Lucius Shepard to “Tuckerize” your name in a short story (this means they’ll name a character after you). Tom Canty has donated an original drawing (eek!). AND there’s lots of reading material, including subscriptions to some awesome magazines like Paradox and Sybil’s Garage. The raffle tickets are only $1 each, though obviously buying more will improve your chances.

Best of all, you get to support the ongoing KGB Fantastic Fiction reading, which happens the third Wednesday of every month. I’m going to be reading there in December, so of course this is a very worthy cause!

EDIT: Starts on July 14th, but you can browse the items before then.

Reviews! I don’t think I can call them weekly anymore, huh? But I’ve finished a lot of books of late, so here you go. Tomes brimming with romantic girl-cooties (sorry, fellas). Two of them made me cry! In this edition:

The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne
Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase
Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner
Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon

The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne

This was shockingly good. I say shockingly just because though I attempt romance novels with semi-regularity, I rarely find them a satisfying reading experience (even on their own terms). Usually there’s far too little genuine tension between the romantic leads, and some sort of tossed-on external plot with a Snidely Whiplash villain and a generally unsatisfactory resolution. But I got lucky this time. For one, the writing is several notches above the average historical romance novelist’s. There are moments of banter, especially between Adrian and, well, anyone else, that feel within kissing distance of Austen. Her approach to sex scenes was occasionally refreshingly cerebral (I mean, they talked). My real quibble is that the resident love interest– the titular spymaster, Robert Grey– is far too Stock Romance Hero, and rather out of place given the excellent characterization of Annique and his fellow spies. He has many what I’ve decided to call “God’s Blood” moments. This goes something like:

“God’s blood, but her saucy beauty was enough to make the saintliest man’s thoughts turn carnal, and Sir Randy was far from a saint…”

If you ever read a historical romance, go ahead and count how many of these you find from the hero’s perspective. It makes a fun drinking game.

But really, it is a romance novel, and it does a great job of elevating the genre to a level it ought to achieve more often. Annique’s blindness is particularly well-handled. Even better, the spy plot holds its own interest! I can’t wait for the next few books in her spymaster world…especially if she writes one for Adrian.

Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase

This is the second novel I’ve read by Loretta Chase. I can’t remember the title of the first, but it was a more strict Georgette Heyer regency, with very arch banter and distant (to omniscient) third person. This is more in the voice of a modern historical romance, though it’s still in the regency period, and the two main characters’ dispute is, I think, far too vulgarly about politics for Georgette Heyer to have ever touched. Which of course makes it interesting, and Loretta Chase is clearly one of the solid standouts of the genre. Still, it never quite thrilled me the way a good Georgette Heyer does, and it didn’t go far enough into its politics to achieve something notably different. Also, she used one of those regency tropes I’ve come to despise, whereupon you learn at the very end that the blissful couple’s romance was in fact Engineered By A Lady of Quality (possibly in collusion of her husband). This lady of quality is generally a meddling aunt of greater pedigree than the hero/heroine. It makes me want to shoot her.

(Incidentally, my hatred of this trope is what makes Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy so wonderful).

Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner

Wending my way from novels explicitly indebted to Georgette Heyer to one more obliquely influenced. Privilege of the Sword is a novel of manners set in a time that one might reasonably interpret as the Georgian or Regency period (though in a fantasy world), and it’s pretty hard to write something like that without a nod in Heyer and Austen’s direction. But Kushner has taken it far, far beyond these sources.

Let me say first that I adored this book, it’s possibly the best thing I’ve read all year, and that after finishing it at Wiscon I had to force myself to stop crying so I could go to dinner. It affected me profoundly. On some level, it does things without any apparent effort that I’ve always striven for in my own fiction. Among other debts I’m sure I can’t guess, it clearly has been strongly influenced by Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. So, it’s nominally a coming of age story about a young girl forced by her mad uncle, the Duke, to dress as a boy and train with the sword in exchange for him saving her destitute family from ruin. Dialogue where everyone talks rings around each other, saying one thing and meaning something entirely different; exquisite descriptions of clothing and mannerisms splashed starkly against moments of extreme cruelty and violence; bi, hetero, homo and pan sexual encounters; gay prostitution as a pastime (lovingly indulged by the prostitute’s female girlfriend); a panoply of recreational drugs, and, of course, music. In particular, there is an interlude in the middle of the novel, where she is training deep in the country with a master swordsman, that was filled with such quiet, taut beauty I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

I can’t really say more without spoilers, so essentially: if you haven’t read this, get thee to a bookstore.

Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner

While in Madison, I purchased every other Ellen Kushner book available in the bookstore. Having recovered sufficiently from Privilege of the Sword, I started on this. I can’t quite tell if this is supposed to be a retelling of Tam Lin or not, but it clearly echoes and references the tale. I loved this, too. It was an especially marvelous touch to use the perspective of the old farming couple who mentor young Thomas and observe the progress of his strange courtship with Elspeth. I love the idea of telling the tale of a famous harper who has traveled to Faerie without once showing him in the courts and being glamorous and beautiful in front of the king and queen. No, instead we see Thomas plucking sheep from the muck and making hilarious mis-steps as he falls in love with Elspeth. The descriptions of Faerie are not terribly surprising for someone who’s read a lot of this type of story, but very deft and beautiful. I especially loved the nuances in Thomas’s relationship with the Fairy Queen. She had enchanted him, and yet she hadn’t. He loved her, but he loved Elspeth too.

And, once again, the end made me bawl like a baby. At least it wasn’t quite as abject as Privilege of the Sword. I swear, I caught tears leaking out of my eyes the day after.

(Yes, if you haven’t gathered by now, it doesn’t take much provocation to make me cry.)

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Hooked from the first line and then just along for the ride. Not like anyone needs me to tell them to read this, but I LOVED it. My favorite of his books so far. Any book that spends so many pages talking about toxoplasma, mind-control wasps and other parasitic lovelies has my devotion (what’s hilarious is that I’d heard of at least half the critters he mentions already because my sister has an obsession with parasites that rivals his main character’s). Not sure that I buy the reveal/True Purpose at the end (nuclear bombs, anyone?) but, whatever, it’s a quibble.

Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon

Tried and failed to finish more than a hundred pages. Why, again, would anyone like this? Done, and done better, by Tamora Pierce.