We were planning on having some friends over for dinner so I pulled on the long underwear because it was cold outside and headed out to New Seasons. It’s about 2 and half miles away which is far enough to get cold but not so far that I warm up from the activity.  This was my first really big shopping trip on the bike. I took my two saddle bags and a third bag dubbed, “The bag of last resort” with a cargo net.  I was really hoping the other two bags would do it, but as you see they did not. Still I felt very pleased that I was able to do this without needing to get out the zip car.

One the way home the extra weight was definitely noticeable on the very slight rise between the store and home.  More noticeable was the wind which was pushing me as though it wanted me to not go home.

I walked into the apartment, set the bags down and looked out the window. There were small white flakes floating past the window. Hm… what’s that?

Snow? That wasn’t in the forecast.

I checked the weather and was reassured that it was supposed to melt off. Except, it was sticking.  And coming down very fast.  I checked gain when the yard looked like this: Continue reading Snow? I wasn’t expecting that.

Because Rob was out of town until Monday and I’ve been working a lot, we hadn’t had a chance to get a tree until yesterday. You know… Christmas Eve. We walked to the tree lot that’s two blocks from our apartment but they were gone.

That was okay, because there was another one at the foot of the hill, so we walked down to 42nd where that tree lot was also gone. It turns out that all the tree lots wrap things up so by four o’clock there’s no where to buy a tree.

We figured that Fred Meyer would be open and have leftover trees so we walked down to 30th and on the way passed a tree lot. With Trees! But it was locked and the attendants had gone home.  Although we joked about hopping the fence, I suggested taking the somewhat more legitimate route and going into Freddie’s to actually purchase a tree.

They had five.

Five dry, needle-dropping trees that were free, probably because they were fire hazards.

So we walked back to the abandoned tree lot and Rob hopped the fence. We took a tree and left a note and $20.  Actually, poaching a Christmas tree has a long tradition in my family.  For decades my [unnamed relative] has poached a cedar from [redacted] on the grounds that it is growing in a place where it has to be removed anyway.  It’s nice to have these family traditions.

Merry Christmas! One of the things I love most about this time of year is that its the one time of the year when fantasy and the real world intersect.  I mean, in households all around the world, people are participating in the world’s largest fairy tale as they open presents under the tree to see what Santa brought them. (St. Nick is, after all, described as a “right jolly old elf.”) Granted Santa is unique in the world of elfdom, but it’s possible that any number of his kin could rise to the occasion. So let’s take a look at some fantasy elves who could carry the mantle, should the big guy ever decide to take a year off.

Check out my complete list at of Six Fantastic Candidates for the Next Santa Claus.

Normally, we go to Chattanooga to spend Christmas with my family.  At this very moment, they are sitting down for a dinner with 32 people, all of whom I’m related to. It’s great fun and I am very sad to miss it.

Fortunately, Santa, being a wise man, knows how to cheer me up and sent me an entire box of Scenting the Dark! In hardcover! Yay!

I hope you are having a Merry Christmas, too.

Rob and I have returned from seeing Avatar.  His verdict? It’s just bad.  Mine?  It’s very silly, with horrifically bad science and yet, if you are a visually based person, it is worth seeing on the big screen in 3-D.

If you are a logic based person, then skip this film.

Question: If every life form on the planet has nostrils in their necks and six limbs, why do the Na’vi have noses like we do and only four limbs?

Question: Where do the feathers on the bow and arrows come from since we never see a feather creature, ever.

Question: Kiss? What is this thing you call kiss, James Cameron? I mean really, there are HUMAN cultures that don’t have kissing.

I could go on. That said, it’s some damn impressive CGI.

I am feeling unspeakably old. No, no, it’s not because of the elf costume that I’m wearing at work these days, though it is work related.

One of the men working in operations came up to me at work last night and said, “Does the phrase, ‘It happened in Narnia,’ mean anything to you?”

I hedged my bets and said, “It might…” because all I could think of was that someone had told him about the white spandex suit I used to have to wear in a production of the show.

The he said, “Do you remember little K— P—?”

My jaw dropped. Really. That’s not a metaphor. When I had last seen him, he had been twelve or thirteen years old playing Edmund. Now, I know that people age and realistically, I recognize that it has been 13 years or so since we worked together, but– but… he was twelve and now he’s an adult peer.

Man, people are weird. I spent today in the bear suit handing out cookies at the Saturday market. It’s actually a lot of fun because the kids totally love having a giant teddy bear give them cookies. What’s weird is that the adults just love the bear also, want hugs and will happily take a cookie.

Now. If I were dressed in normal clothes, even with a Christmas flavor, and tried to give a total stranger or a small child a cookie can you imagine the reaction? Dubious distrust. How about hugs? Sure, there would be some takers in both cases, but on the whole it would be seen as completely weird and a little sketchy.

But put me in a bear suit, so that you can’t identify me even by gender, and suddenly everything is fine. Weird.

My column this week looks at the films of Roald Dahl.

There are few authors who have had as profound an influence on the fantasy movie genre as Roald Dahl. It's not just that so many of his stories have been adapted for the screen, but also that he was himself a fantasy screenwriter. You might think you know a Roald Dahl movie when you see one, but I'm willing to bet that a couple of his masterpieces will surprise you.

via AMC – Blogs – SciFi Scanner – Mary Robinette Kowal – The Many Fantastic Flicks of Mr. Roald Dahl.

I’m at about the 23 second mark.

I knew I’d be accompanying the bear, but I didn’t know that tv was on the agenda when I left the house this morning.

Rob and I don’t own a car so my bike is my primary way to commute. This month I’ve been riding nine miles pretty much every day and lately I’ve been having some trouble with my shifters. On Tuesday, the gears locked as I was coming up a hill — not fun — so I took it in to have it looked at.

There was nothing obviously wrong. So the awesome mechanic at Bike Gallery lubed it, tightened a couple of things and didn’t charge me, since he “didn’t really do anything.” It’s riding like a dream now, so I disagree.

While it was there, and in the stand, I noticed that my saddle was crooked. At first I thought it had just spun on the mount, but no. No, the rails were actually bent and probably had been since we moved back from NYC. I know the bike fell at least twice while it was in the back of the moving truck. So, I invested in a new saddle.

Today, my toes went numb during the last ten minutes of the ride both to and from work.

So, back to the shop today and I have a new, different saddle. Another awesome mechanic took the time to check the fit to make certain that there wasn’t anything else going on.

Let’s hope the new saddle does the trick. It’s funny though, how when you change one thing a cascade of little changes begins.

Rich Horton has just given my short story collection a really lovely and lengthy review. Here’s a teaser.

Scenting the Dark and Other Stories is notable, compared to other first books I’ve seen, for its brevity — only 8 short stories, some 80 pages. I rather think this is a wise choice — start with something of a taster, a sample. It’s not that she has used up all the good stuff either — for instance, neither of the stories I've reprinted is included here. The book does represent her style and concerns very well. It’s also representative temporally — a couple of her earliest stories are included, and a couple from 2009, including one new to this book. On the evidence of this book (and, I will add, her other work that I’ve seen) Kowal is a writer interested to a great extent in the characters behind her stories.

You can read the rest at The SF Site Featured Review: Scenting the Dark and Other Stories.  Needless to say, I am very, very pleased.

Once upon a time, someone starting a new publishing house would either have a personal fortune or would seek large private investors. Crowdsourced fundraising allows the masses to chip in for projects they believe in.

Tu Publishing is one that I’m excited about. Tu Publishing is a small, independent multicultural SFF press for children and YA and they are raising money for startup costs right now. I’ve had the opportunity to correspond with Stacy Whitman in my role as SFWA secretary and she’s sharp, knows the industry and is passionate about YA and SF.

The catch is that the fundraiser only has four more days to go and they only have 40% of their total.

Fantasy and science fiction, mystery and historical fiction–these genres draw in readers like no other. Yet it is in these genres that readers of color might feel most like an outsider, given that such a large percentage features white characters (when they feature human characters). It is the goal of Tu Publishing to publish genre books for children and young adults that fill this gap in the market–and more importantly, this gap in serving our readers. By focusing on multicultural settings and characters in fantastic stories, we also open up worlds to all readers.

Now, given my history with fundraisers, I want to let you know that Kickstarter rocks. It’s a very solid platform. I’ve talked to the developers and experimented with donations on the site. It’s beautifully done.

Please consider donating to get Tu Publishing off the ground.

We put these up on a private page for Jay Lake as a get well present, but he’s asked me to share the readings.

What readings, you ask? Why full-cast recordings of two of Jay Lake’s Nebula eligible stories, read by Jeff Soesbe, M. K. Hobbson, Dave Goldman, David D. Levine, Camille Alexa, and me in front of a live audience at Orycon..

So please, give a listen to “Golden Pepper” and “The Future by Degrees” plus audio that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the entire audience is wearing Hawaiian shirts in his honor.

Willis Couvelier just dropped me a note and asked, “Is there a difference in a “southern” style of writing SF/F?”

His question was prompted by John Scalzi’s introduction to Scenting the Dark, where he says, “Mary Robinette Kowal is from the U.S. south, specifically from the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. This means two things. First, she has truly impeccable social manners and a personal style that will relax you and put you at ease. Second, and as a consequence of the first, she is astoundingly sharp at observing humans up close and personal without them knowing she is observing them. This second datum is a key to her writing.”

So is there a southern style?

I suspect there is.  There’s a difference in the way southerners speak that goes beyond the accent into sentence structure and word choice. But this is true of any region, really. The tricky thing is since it all looks normal to me, it’s hard to define from the inside.

Since he prompted the question, I asked Scalzi what he thinks. “Yes. It’s a more observant, more intimate style, as rooted in Flannery O’Connor as Isaac Asimov.”

Thinking about the authors that I know who hail from the south like Alethea Kontis and Cherie Priest, that certainly seems true of their writing.

All of this makes me curious of course but it’s hard to step outside the culture that I was brought up in to see what is region specific.  So what do you think?  Is  there a definable southern style to science fiction and fantasy?