You have no idea how many things I coveted in that raffle and I couldn’t enter a drawing for a single one of them. It was very hard.

So, imagine please, my surprise and delight on seeing this in my feedreader today.

The Knight Agency Blog: Critique Winner and Thanks!

Thanks to those of you who donated to Team Parallel Heat for the Breast Cancer 3-Day and entered my critique drawing/giveaway.

CONGRATULATIONS
to…..
Mary Robinette Kowal

The drawings are complete and the winners have been notified. For a complete list, visit the website. If you see your name listed, but have not received an email from me, please let me know.

I will be letting the donors know who has claimed their prize tomorrow. (Saturday) Right now, I’m beat and heading for bed.

Thank you all for your help in making this a success. We raised $2779 for Apex Digest!

Another Twenty Epics review, this time at Tangent Online

My favorite story in this collection is “Bound Man” by Mary Robinette Kowal. Ripped from the past while playing with her two children in her courtyard, legendary “warrior-god” Li Reiko finds herself six-thousand years in the future where she has been summoned to slay the Troll King. Halldór the warrior-priest has invoked her presence to save his lord, Duke Lárus, after bandits attack. Halldór agrees to become her bound man if she will save Lárus’s life with her healing power. But once that’s accomplished and she awakens back at their village, she refuses to fulfill her destiny and slay the Troll King. That is, until the trolls attack and take the village women hostage.

There’s a lot more to this fine story than that brief synopsis, but I don’t want to spoil it. Written in lucid prose, this tale has the true feel of an epic. And while it has a most satisfactory conclusion, I felt like I was reading the first chapter of a fast-paced novel getting off to an excellent start. I don’t know if the author has any intention of becoming a novelist, but I have no doubt she could. Kowal is a talent to watch.

In fact, I have already begun plotting a novel set in this world, but it didn’t occur to me until after the story was written.

Take note, for those of you planning to submit to Shimmer’s pirate issue, of what the Slush God says on his blog.

Pirates say “Arrr!”, damn it: no “gh.” “Argh!” is a cry of frustration (it is, also apparently a fungeoid esoteric programming language). I keep seeing this error over and over, and as the editor of a piratical periodical, this bothers me.

I have to say that I love the way “piratical periodical” rolls off the tongue.

I don’t often bring up politics on my blog because I have family members with whom I don’t see eye to eye.

But this is important. Please read, Whatever: On Moral Cowardice which discusses the new detainee trial law.

Everytime I meet someone here in Iceland and have to admit that I’m an American, I feel like I need to follow it up with an apology. I don’t think that any nation is perfect, but I want to live in a society that is moving forwards, not backwards.

For the past week, I’ve had a little bit of a scratchy throat which I ascribed to not drinking enough water. Not because I was coming down with something. Oh no. And the conjestion when I wake up in the morning? I probably got pollen on the pillow and just need to do laundry. It’s not a cold.

And the fever that started during Icelandic class today? Um… I think Icelandic is really hot?

So, I’ve got a mild cold and I’m going to spend today under the covers with Captain Future as he journeys to Danger Planet! That sounds more exciting than it probably should…

I got word this morning that Aoife’s Kiss would like to buy “Chrysalis.” I am very happy that this story has found a home.

Chrysalis : The Husiths undergo Chrysalis to become an adult, but the enzymes involved in the process scramble their memories. As a culture, they are obsessed with documenting their pupaehood, which is when the serious work takes place, before becoming a playful adult. Geroth is determined to put off his Chrysalis so he can finish his mathmatical treatise. He hires a human documentarian to help him retain his memories after Chrysalis. This documentarian struggles with deciding which memories, and thus which version of Geroth’s life she should present.

Here are the first thirteen lines. The rest will be out in the December 2007 issue of Aoife’s Kiss.

Chrysalis
People ask me if I ever get involved with the subjects of my documentaries. I have a difficult time imagining that they would ask my male colleagues the same question, but they seem to expect women to be more emotional. In response, I tend to grit my teeth and answer very patiently with another question. How could I do my job if I were part of the story? Only by maintaining a sacred distance could I have any hope of understanding someone’s life. A documentarian records, but does not participate.
     That mantra was the only thing keeping me from gnawing my arm off with frustration while Geroth and Iliath had their latest spat. Iliath wanted Geroth to undergo Chrysalis. Geroth wanted to stave it off until he finished his mathematical treatise. Geroth and his betrothed brayed their points like sea-lions mating.

Unfortunately, the battery on my camera died so I don’t have very many pictures of this part of the process.

I first removed the lower jaw and then carved out an upper and lower palate for the bear. While I’ll fiberglass all of it, I’ll wind up cutting some away later giving the bear a hard and a soft palate. This will make the performer more comfortable, by allowing more air to flow through and also avoiding hard poky bits of fiberglass. I put the jaw back on for the photo so you can see how our bear will look with his mouth open. Isn’t that a nice smile?

In the profile, you can also see that I’ve removed his nose. I’ll be making the nose out of leather so it’s nicer to touch. I’m also planning on cutting part of the snout off and replacing it with foam, to make the nose friendlier. I’m expecting the bear to do a lot of hugging at the children’s hospital. If the performer misjudges the distance in a hug, which can happen when your nose is suddenly ten centimeters longer than it has been, then the softer nose will cushion any bumps. Besides, kids will like to squeeze it. I don’t know why but they always seem to do that with puppets.

Hey. I wonder what would happen if we put a squeaker in the nose. Hm… I might have to look into that, it could be very cute.

After this, everything gets vaselined and goes under fiberglass.

I don’t understand it. Helicopters? Giant marionettes? How in the name of all that is holy did I miss this?

There are so many pieces of footage for it.

How? How did I miss this?

Edited to add: Ah. I missed it because it didn’t happen. No one in Reykjavik saw it and it’s not in any of the papers. It is likely faked, but still very nicely done.

I have a weakness for napping in the sun.

A couple of years ago, Rob and I discovered the joys of Incubus, starring William Shatner, which is the only feature length film made entirely in Esperanto. The cinematographer was Conrad Hall (American Beauty) so it’s beautifully shot, but still… Esperanto. The point of this is that only phrase I can remember from the film is “reposi en la suno,” which means “to lie in the sun.”

Napping!

Since then, when the sun falls across the bed or the couch, I will sometimes announce that I am going to reposi en la suno.

It’s warm and cozy and, in Iceland, a rare opportunity. And what I’m going to do right now. Mmm…reposi en la suno.

Well. Extremely well. In fact, I think I just impressed my mother who is a fund-raising goddess. I tallied what has come in so far and shared the numbers with Jason. As of this posting, the raffle has made $1828.00. Jason did not get the 200 subscriptions he was looking for, but your raffle ticket purchases made up the difference.

The raffle is scheduled to run through Friday, and I’ll keep it open until then, as promised.

Jason and I have talked about what will happen to any money that comes in from here on. Two things. He’ll be able to raise the writer’s rates. Any remaining funds will provide a safety net for Apex; running a magazine is always a risky business, and Jason has high goals for Apex.

Thanks for making sure the Apex Digest sticks around.

The last two days have been dealing with cases. Nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. So here’s your Icelandic phrase for today.

[audio:mybrainhurts.mp3]
Heilinn minn meiðir.
Translation: My brain hurts.

See. Useful phrases like this aren’t in your standard guide book. My biggest problem was that I had no idea what the English equivalent of the last two cases was. I mean, I’ve tried learning Icelandic before and always got stuck trying to figure out what genitive meant. I think I’ve got it now.

nefnifall (nominative) Are either the subject of a sentence, i.e. the one who does, OR the object of að vera (to be) or að heita (to be named/called). Like, in “that is I,” the I is nominative because nothing is being done to it. Þetta er ég.

þolfall (accusative) Are the direct objects, Like, “the boy eats the fish.” But a word can also be in the accusative case if certain prepositions are in front of it.

þágufall (dative) These are the indirect objects and some prepositions. “Will you give him the book.” “Him” is dative.

eignarfall (genitive) These have to do with posession. “I miss him.” “She guards him” And then, some prepositions. The prepositions, I’ll just have to memorize, but at least the others make sense now.

The reason this is important is that each Icelandic word “bends” depending on the case that it’s in and takes a different ending. Watch:

Masculine ending for words which end in “ur”.

Mascline words can also end in i, ll, nn, and r, each of which bends differently. And then there’s feminine and neuter words.

So now, everyone repeat after me, “Heilinn minn meiðir.”

I was ordering a subscription to the Clarkesworld Magazine chapbooks (which look gorgeous) and the order form asks “Who is your favorite author?” This stopped me dead in my tracks. Favorite. I was just having this conversation with my husband last night about The Sparrow. It is the book that I always recommend when people ask me to recommend a book. But it’s not my favorite book. My favorite book is probably Lavender and Old Lace by Myrtle Reed.

This is favorite defined as “a person or thing regarded with special favor or preference” because it’s certainly not the best book I’ve ever read, but it makes me cry everytime and I love it. She wrote in 1902 and it’s a straight ahead romance, with mild fantasy elements, and yes there is purple prose. But the characters are very real and the descriptions are evocative. I mean look at this line, “The faded green shutters blended harmoniously with the greyish white background, and the piazza, which was evidently an unhappy afterthought of the architect, had two or three new shingles on is roof.”

So, favorite author? Orson Scott Card, Mary Doria Russell, Guy Gavriel Kay, Steven Brust, Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis…? Lordy. I should just put down Myrtle Reed and confuse the living daylights out of them. I regard all of them with special favor.

I think I’ll go with Steven Brust though, because of three things: I won a interpretive reading competition in college with an excerpt from Brokedown Palace; I had my first fan girl squee! over him; I read The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars whenever I’m creatively constipated and that always gets me over it. I have a special regard for him for that.

So who’s your favorite author?

Check out the Strange Horizons Review of Twenty Epics, edited by David Moles and Susan Marie Groppi.

“Most successful is “Bound Man,” Mary Robinette Kowal’s stark re-humanization of the hero archetype. When the soldier-priest Halldór, hard-pressed by foes, chants the spell to summon the legendary warrior Li Reiko, he has no idea that he is in fact bringing her out of the past, separating her from her children and the life she knows and setting in motion the chain of events that leads to the development of his own culture. As she struggles to adapt to her new reality, Reiko’s grief and anger stand in sharp contrast to the usual devil-may-care attitude of mythical heroes.”

–reviewed by Rose Fox, Strange Horizons

Okay, I lied. I closed the donation window, but these two came in right after I went to bed. They are lovely and I covet both of them.

• A six-issue Interzone subscription.
• An illustration by Sandro Castelli for the story of your choice.