Rob and I have a tradition of making sushi New Year’s Eve and staying in. Tonight, on my way home, our neighbor was standing in the lobby and ready to hop on the elevator. I rode up with him, chatting about New Year’s plans and, quite spontaneously, I invited him and his wife to join us for sushi.

I’m so glad I did. We just had a great conversation ranging across theater, philosophy and cinema. They’re coming over tomorrow for the traditional New Year’s Day meal. We’ve got a small group coming for black-eye peas, collards and cornbread. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, you must have those New Year’s Day to ensure health and prosperity.

It’s a fine way to send the old year out and bring the New Year in.

My niece gave me a cold for Christmas, so we’re going to take advantage of it to show some tricks for dealing with throat ailments. For kicks, I recorded the whole post this time. You can listen to it here OR you can read and just listen to the example clips.

[audio:readingaloudsick.mp3]

You’ve probably noticed that when you are sick your voice tends to get lower, right? Basically, what’s going on is this: the pitch of your voice depends on the length and thickness of your vocal cords (folds really, but that’s a tangent) Men have big thick manly vocal cords, while ladies and kids have thinner more delicate ones. When you’re sick, your throat gets inflamed, which thickens your vocal cords. They vibrate more slowly and voila, lower voice.

Let’s pause for a moment to listen to some audio, shall we? I’ll let you hear a recording of me reading Rampion with my normal voice, and then switch to one with my voice the way it sounds right now.

This is the full text of Rampion, but only listen to the first 30 seconds or so of it.
[audio:rampion.mp3]

Now, this is me, today, sick. I’m trying to deliver the same read, but I’m not making corrections for the effects of illness.
[audio:sickrampion.mp3]

Sounds like a different person, eh?

Since the cold is lowering my voice, I can raise my pitch and try to compensate somewhat. For me, it feels like I’m speaking incredibly high, but to someone who doesn’t know me, this will do a lot to bring my voice into the range of normal. I wouldn’t want to do this for long, but it’s gotten me through many performances.

So, same text but with me trying to correct.
[audio:sickrampioncorrecting.mp3]

It’s passable, but there’s a danger here. I have a smaller vocal range when sick already, and by moving my voice up in pitch, I cut off the bottom end of my range. When ill, I mostly have bottom end and then nothing until the very top end. Your mileage may vary, but try humming through your vocal range next time you are sick.

And if you are feeling frisky, take advantage of that suddenly deep voice. Everything can sound sexy with your new range. For example:
[audio:strunkelements.mp3]

Mostly though, the answer to being sick is to rest your voice and to drink plenty of fluids. Stay away from the citrus, dairy and caffeine. But if you have to use your voice, at least you’ll know why it’s misbehaving.

(This was from before Christmas)

No photos today, sorry.

Emily came back from China and we dived into work. Good heavens, it is so much easier to figure things out when the designer is right there to answer questions.

First thing on the list were the tentacles. We decided that if we shortened them a little and tightened the coil that it would work under the skirt. I spent the morning doing that and behold! they fit. A large sigh of relief.

All the good SFWA boys and girls seem to have dutifully posted about the pending close of the Nebula preliminary ballot on December 31. On the off-chance that you are a SFWA active member and haven’t recommended any fiction yet, I would like to recommend a simple strategy.

My opinion on the Nebulas is that one of the primary benefits comes from the ballot itself. Simply put, any story that makes it on the ballot will automatically get a much wider readership as people review stories for voting. So, when I’m recommending stories, I’m choosing stories that I think people ought to read, whether or not I think the story is ultimately likely to win the award.

Getting on the ballot is a boost to writer because it does raise their profile, and thus, people are more likely to notice their other work later. It might not be a conscious thing, but you see someone on the Nebula ballot and next time, by golly, you’ll see their name and think, “I’ve heard of her.”

So here are writers who I want to support and think that you should read their stories.

Novelettes
Andrea Kail: The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom (Writers of the Future Volume 23) This is a brilliantly done epistolary tale told in a series of letters from Tutankahmen to Abraham Lincoln. Trust me, it makes perfect, chilling sense when you read it. Beautifully and heart-breakingly done.
It also has eight recommendations and its eligibility ends in March. Go! Recommend it! Do you really want to see it not make the ballot because you didn’t take the twenty minutes it will take to read this gorgeous story? I didn’t think so.

Ted Kosmatka: The Prophet of Flores (Asimov’s, Sep07) Holy cow! This is a freaky blend of SF and alternate history. The deep-story to this one? Intelligent design is real. The earth is only 5800 years old and carbon-dating proves it. And then someone finds a fossil that turns everything upside down. Seven recommendations thus far, but this one has eligibility until September, so I’m not quite as frantic about it making the ballot. But, you’ll be missing out if you don’t read it.

Livia Llewellyn: The Four Hundred Thousand I don’t know how to describe this one without giving away the creepy turns this chilling SF story takes. To grossly over-simplify it, this is about the right to choose. But, look, there’s a link so you can go read it. And do.

Jennifer Pelland: Mercytanks The person who pointed this one out to me said that it was the first time they’d really seen far-future done well. And how.

Short Stories:
Richard Bowes has two I liked: A Tale for the Short Days (Coyote Road, Trickster Tale) and King of the Big Night Hours(Subterranean, Sep07). The thing that he does, particularly with the King of the Big Night Hours, is tell a story that seems so absolutely, totally grounded in reality that it makes you wonder why you haven’t noticed any magic happening in your life. I mean, these seem like they are things that actually happened.

Vylar Kaftan: Kill Me Extremely evocative SF. The story is deceptively simple. A professional masochist has a device which records her thoughts so that she can be killed and brought back. But there’s a price; there’s always a price.

Andrea Kail: Soft Like a Rabbit I read this the first time as I was typesetting Fantasy. It stopped me cold. I forgot what I was supposed to be doing and just read the story. When I finished I couldn’t understand why I’d never read anything of Andrea Kail’s before. She’s a power-house and tells economical and wrenching stories. Have tissues standing by when you read this.

Nancy Kress: End Game I listened to this one at Escape Pod. Again, SF. Have you ever wished you could just concentrate on one thing at a time? Listen to this and rethink your wish.

David D. Levine: Titanium Mike Saves the Day This is probably the first light-hearted one I’ve mentioned. People always need tall tales; why should outerspace be any different? A fine example of yarn-spinning.

Lisa Mantchev: Six Scents Six tales in one. I could sum this up as tales of famous fictional women and their favorite perfumes, but really, it would not do justice to the brutally clever writing here. For example: “Men find it hard to fall in love with a dead girl. They tell her it’s a turn-off that they take her hand at the movies and a finger lands in the popcorn.”

Joy Marchard: Pallas at Noon lives in the uncanny place between things that could actually happen and the magic that lies just on the other side of that. I don’t even know how to describe this story, but definitely find a copy of Interfictions and read this. It will make you weep and feel hope and despair all at the same time.

Holly Phillips: The Oracle Spoke is quite possibly my favorite story this year. It’s the one that I desperately wish I had written. Please read it.

Cat Rambo: Foam on the Water You think Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid has a chilling ending? Ha! He could have taken lessons from Cat Rambo’s story.

I’m not doing mini-reviews of the novels, because I know you won’t have time to read any between now and then. But here are some that I think you should read after the first of the year.

Chris Barzak, One for Sorrow; Tobias Buckell, Ragamuffin; Jay Lake, Mainspring; Ekaterina Sedia, The Secret History of Moscow.

And finally, I will finish with a totally shameless self-pimp.

Look! For Solo Cello, op. 12 has six whole Nebula recommendations. This is makes me squee with girlish pleasure.

All right folks, there’s still reading to do. Go forth recommend stories! (And I hereby open this up for shameless promotion. Got a story you want read? Link away!)

Irene Gallo had this bit of loveliness on her blog, The Art Department.

And with a belated gift from my little niece! Yes, the delightful germ-monger has presented Rob and myself with colds. His struck yesterday and mine began kicking in this morning. We’re fortifying ourselves with Chinese food and heading for bed early.

We are all packed and will be on the way in about half an hour. I’ll drop you a line when we get back to the apartment.

While I’m in transit, why don’t you tell me what your top three favorite gifts were this year.

I’ll start:

1. Soup spoons in our silver pattern
2. A Ryobi cordless trim saw
3. Victorian pantaloons

I hope your Christmas was as merry as ours.

Click through, and if you don’t just faint from sheer longing to be in one of these libraries then you clearly aren’t a reader. Or you are already in one and jealous-making.

Yesterday we went over to Grandma’s as the rest of the extended family descended on her house. It was good to catch up with my many cousins to find out just a little about what was going on in their lives. There’s never enough time, of course, especially as the family keeps growing. I met, let’s see…my new first cousin twice-removed. That wouldn’t be as impressive if she weren’t my grandmother’s great-great grandchild. Can you even imagine having great-great-grandchildren? Grandma’s 102 and still going strong.

On my dad’s side the extended family is broader, with third and fourth cousins abounding. I like having family and coming home to see them.

At the moment, I’m sitting in front of the fireplace with my dad. Normally, I say that I write daily so my folks don’t think I’m dead and this post started as an easy way to leave a toy for my dad to play with when we leave tomorrow (The Music Text Composition Generator ( A free online music utility)) but I gotta tell you, sitting here all I can think about is how glad I am to be home and how much I’ll miss everyone when I go back to New York.

Meanwhile, before I get to maudlin, really do go play with the Music Text Composition Generator. Try composing something that is interesting to read which doesn’t sound awful when you listen to the midi file it creates. This post? Ouch.

Swing by Shimmer and enjoy the .pdf of our 2007 Holiday Bonus Story, “What Child is This I Asked the Midnight Clear” by Ken Scholes.

Just in case you needed to know where Santa was, NORAD tracks Santa and gives up to date reports on his location. You can also tie in Google Earth for real time tracking.

Emily just spoke to the very nice people at NORAD who told her that Santa is on his way but in Africa right now.

I spent the day hanging out with my nieces and nephew. Most of the time involved playing in Emily’s “house” in the magnolia tree out front. There was a weird discomfort for me about that. See, though I acknowledge that it is a superior space for a pretend house, as a child I never, ever played in that tree.

Not after the incident with the turtle.

I’m not sure how old I was, but probably between five and eight simply because I was doing what Emily was doing today. I was “exploring” or playing house. This magnolia tree is great for that because it’s actually a single large tree surrounded by a crowd of magnolia saplings. They grow so slowly that it doesn’t look much different from when I was little.

I remember pushing through the tightly bunched trunks and the waxy feel of the leaves. The slender branches feel like cinnamon sticks. It is dark and quiet in the center of the grove, even at noon. I step over a branch and my bare foot comes down on a dead turtle.

This is my first scream of abject terror.

The turtle’s shell had collapsed so that the inside is visible. I remember trying to run out of the grove, but the branches were so tight that I couldn’t push through. Robby, my grandmother, came running out of the house and made everything safe somehow. Later she said that she’d known that I was really frightened and not just pretending to be upset because of the way I’d screamed.

This is a very sharp memory for me and this is the place that my niece wanted to play with me today. I’m a good thirty years older than I was, but I had so much dread going in there today, even though I know, I know that the turtle skeleton is long gone. I kept trying to find reasons for the Scientist Fairy and I to go play someplace else, but after the expeditions to discover dinosaurs and to throw parties, we kept coming “home” to that blasted magnolia grove.

She’s got no idea how much affection I was demonstrating by playing with her there .And you know, it probably wouldn’t have been as weird and uncomfortable if I weren’t trying to remember what it was like to be her age so that I could play with her.

Such a Halloween story, eh? It was like a nightmare before Christmas in real life. Other than that, today was lovely. We baked and did other Christmas prep. Rob has made eggnog.

Modern Mechanix posted this old ad for Corona typewriters. We have a slightly later model and I have to say that their claim that it’s the “finest, the fastest, the smoothest and easiest-running” is pretty darn true.

It’s the machine that we are most likely to pull out when we need to type something because its action is so nice. So, if you are looking for a typewriter for someone, and can find a Corona from the thirties, I highly recommend it.

Today was largely relaxing, except for our outing to buy Christmas presents. We borrowed Dad’s car and drove to the mall to pick up some things. Now, you have to bear in mind that this is really the first time either of us has driven since moving to NYC six months ago. We’re really used to being pedestrians at this point in our life, so rather than driving from the strip mall to the main mall across the street, we decided to walk. Traffic was icky and it was less than three blocks away.

Except that Chattanooga apparently has a thing against sidewalks. There were none.

Strangely, one of the lights had a pedestrian crossing button, to get the traffic light to change color, but no crosswalk, no crossing signal, no sidewalk on either side. Just who were they expecting to hit the button? Drivers just didn’t know what to do with us. I felt far less safe walking than I did driving. I’d forgotten just how intense the car culture is after living in NYC and Portland.

Meanwhile, I’m probably not going to be online much the next couple of days, so may I offer you some old-time Christmas Radio. This includes such gems as the original cast recording of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Still looking for that perfect Christmas gift? Look no further!

Subscribe to Shimmer by January 10, and you’ll get 4 issues of terrific new speculative fiction and art for only $17.00 (plus postage). We’re going to raise our rates then, so this is your last chance to subscribe at this price.

Bonus: We asked Shimmer favorite Ken Scholes to write a special holiday story for us - and he came through with “What Child Is This I Ask the Midnight Clear,” a post-apocalyptic Christmas tale. We’ll be posting the story on our site soon; but as a special thank-you, anyone who subscribes (or renews!) by January 10 will get a lovely signed chapbook of the story.