Aidan Moher at Dribble of Ink has a very nice review of Shades of Milk and Honey.  One thing that pleases me is that he points out that this is not a typical fantasy novel.  I think some people have been surprised by the structure of it, since it does hew more closely to Jane Austen than to a classic quest structure.

In the end, it’s the story of a girl navigating her way through a stuffy society and a love triangle formed by three very different bachelors. Will it appeal to all Fantasy readers? Unlikely. Will it appeal to most Fantasy readers? Also no. Will it appeal to those looking for something unusual in the genre, those looking for an easy, charming read amongst the sea of fireballs, gritty warfare and morally grey characters flooding the genre? Absolutely. Kowal is best known for her short fiction, but Shades of Milk and Honey shows that she has what it takes to produce beautiful fiction no matter the length. It’s the perfect rainy-day novel and, though Jane’s story has been told, I cannot wait to see what else Kowal has up her sleeve.

Read the full review of SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY at A Dribble of Ink.

You might recall that I made a passing reference to being ill last week and that Rob was also ill.  Yesterday, we both went to the doctor. The good news is that it isn’t pneumonia.

Rob had been at work with two people that had pneumonia for a couple of days the week before this hit so it was in the range of possibile illnesses. The bad news is that I was contagious for the past week and saw a lot of people. Hence this post of warning.  Doom!

Did you see me last week and get sick a couple of days later?  Don’t worry, it’s just a respiratory infection but a fairly unpleasant one.  The doctor thinks it is not the flu.  Here are my symptoms.

• Starts with a head cold
• Adds a fever and a sore throat
• Nasty cough
• Green phlegm
• Some nasal congestion, but mostly chest
• Aches
• Rob got shaking chills and night sweats
• We’ve both been sick for over a week.  Rob for ten days, me for eight.

They’ve got us both on antibiotics to which it is already responding.  The point is, if you saw me and you got sick about two or three days after, don’t mess around. Go to the doctor.

And I’m sorry about that. Until the fever hit, I thought the cough was from all the travel.

The cab picked me up this morning with no problems. I hopped in and the driver said, “Are you paying with cash?

I said, “No… I asked on the phone and she said I could use a credit card.”

“Well you can, but not for trips under $20.”  He looked aggrieved. “Sorry. The dispatcher should have told you. We’ve had problems with her.”

“Then we’ll have to find an ATM because I have $1.”

He clearly felt bad and offered to make an exception, but at this point, I just wanted it to be over and took the path of least resistance.  We stopped at an ATM — he turned off the meter while I got cash — and continued to the train station.

I walked up to the front door and there were people standing outside. Smokers, I thought.  Only none of them were smoking. They were standing outside because the station wasn’t open yet.   I only had to wait a few minutes but my brain did go, “Really? Hasn’t there been enough at this point?”

While I was in the station, a young man approached me and asked if he could plug his mp3 player into my computer to charge it.  Sure! I’ve been without a charger before and it’s a pain. We struck up a conversation and agreed to sit together on the way back to Portland.  He asked what I did. I explained the whole writing thing.

I asked what he did.

“I’m disabled.”  He showed me his hand. “I was stabbed and my hand is partially paralyzed.  I used to be a carpenter.”

That. Is. Horrifying.  All of my travel stuff? Sort of puts it into perspective.

Anyway, we had a nice chat on the way down.  Once I got on the train, I had no more problems. I got on the bus in Portland and arrived home safely.  Rob and the cats are happy to see me.

In other news, I have decided that I am my own Infinite Improbability Drive.

I’ve called a cab which is picking me up at 7am to take me to Amtrak for the 8:13 train.  The other trains were sold out until the last one at 7:00pm.   I am getting to the station absurdly early, but at this point feel that I should build in crazy amounts of extra time for things to go wrong.  In theory. I will get to Portland around 11:00 and take the bus home.

I heard from Irene and Edwin, who made it home safely.  Apparently it was an annoying trip because the car alarm kept going off, despite being disabled.

Naturally, I will keep you posted on how the rest of the day goes.

In our last episode, Mary was reunited with a high school friend who offered her a ride back home. Shortly after joining forces with Irene and Edwin, our intrepid heroine was in the back of a comfortable auto heading to Portland.  As they motored along, traffic slowed because of an accident to the side of the road.

A warning buzzer went off on the dashboard, cutting through their conversation. The left front tire was flat.  Edwin pulled safely off the interstate and into the parking lot of a gas station. There, our travelers learned that not it was not merely the left front tire, but both left tires had fallen victim to debris from the accident.

At this point, via Twitter, Rose Fox noted that Mary seemed to have accidentally cast in an adventure film or buddy picture.  The buddy picture seemed more likely because Irene and Mary have known each other since seventh grade.  However, the picture came with an amusing twist.   Mary and Irene wearing both in trousers, while Irene’s husband sported a utilikilt and long hair.

Putting in a call to AAA, the threesome passed their time in a local bar awaiting a tow truck. This allowed them to do the requisite bonding over drinks.  A musical montage ensued.

The tow truck arrived in record time. Sadly, it could only accommodate two passengers so the company parted ways.  Mary chose to stay in a nearby hotel and take the train back in the morning while Irene and her romantic lead returned to Portland.

Unbeknowst to them until after they departed Mary’s company, the car’s odometer read 6660.  Further complicating matters, Amtrak’s booking system was down for maintenance because, as a friend noted,  it makes sense to take your website offline during a major holiday weekend.

Will Mary get home?  Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!

(I completely wish I were joking about any of this. But it is pretty darn amusing at this point.)

The video was created by David Kazzie.

(Hat tip to Michael Chan for pointing it out)

So I’ve gotten to explore a lot of Seattle with Cherie today. We went to lunch at Bad Albert’s and afterwards stopped at Fremont Coffee to get some writing done.  While there I called the mechanic to see how things were going. He cheerfully said that they had gotten the car to start and that they should be calling me shortly once they were sure it was okay and roadworthy.

An hour later, I called back to see how things were going.

They couldn’t get it to start again.  He thought there was air in the line and they were trying to figure out how it got in there. Later he called to say that it turned out that it had bad O-rings and that was the problem.  An additional problem was that it was now after 5pm and all the parts stores were closed.

So, they’ll pick up new O-rings on Monday and hopefully the car will be ready to go.  I opened up the Amtrak site to book tickets home and they were sold out for today.  So I called Rob to let him know that I’d be home tomorrow and updated Twitter.

Cherie and I headed to Barnes and Noble to sign stock. On the way there, I got a call from my friend I– from high school, who lives in Portland now.  She said, “Are you still stuck in Seattle?”

“Yeah. It’s getting comic.”

“Well, we’re in Renton having dinner with friends and are heading home tonight. Do you want a ride?”

“Heck, yes!”

So! Twitter and Facebook to the rescue; I am going home tonight.

I am currently on Cherie Priest‘s couch.  My car is at a garage.  Eric O. drove me down the hill from Leslie’s and we tried jumpstarting the car, though I was fairly sure that it wasn’t a battery issue, just to make sure we’d tried everything.

It wasn’t the battery.

After we returned to Leslie’s I began trying to find a shop that was a) open and b) would work on a Mercedes this old.  I had the car towed to a shop and the Leslie dropped me off at Cherie’s to hang out.  The plan was that if the car is ready this evening, I’d ask Cherie to drop me off at the garage. If they couldn’t get to it until Monday, I’d ask her to drop me at the train station at 5pm. If it would be ready tomorrow, I’d ask if I could stay over.

I’m staying over.

The verdict with the car is that the diesel gelled during the snowpocalypse and that water got into the tank and things froze. Tomorrow they’ll make it drivable, largely by heating the thing up.

While I miss Rob, there are many worse ways to await car repairs than spending the day hanging out with Cherie.

I have arrived safely in Seattle after a stress free trip back. I’d been upgraded to first class so had a surprisingly tasty meal on board the plane. More importantly, there was an electrical outlet at my seat so I could work for the whole trip.

But why, you might wonder, am I in Seattle when I live in Portland.

Well… it’s like this.  Since I was in Seattle to teach at the Hugo House on Sunday, we’d decided that I would fly straight to NYC to make that part of the trip a little easier. So I was going to fly back and drive home tonight. But…

On Monday at 4:30am, when I got ready to go to the airport I discovered the beginning of Seattle’s snowpocalypse.  I was really not expecting snow when I went out.  It was starting to stick, but the road still looked fine.  I brushed off the car, hopped in and tried to start the car.

No dice. I was on an incline and the car kept rolling back before I could get it started, so I finally just let it roll back across the street so that I was on level ground.  Again, I tried to start it without success.  Remembering that my folks often had trouble starting their diesel in the cold, I called Dad to ask him for advice.

I tried putting the glowplug through several cycles to get it nice and warm before starting.  No.

So, I pushed the car around until I got it pointed downhill — Mercedes from 1984 are very heavy — then tried a rolling start. Without success.  Since Leslie lives at the top of the hill I tried several rolling starts and just could not get the engine to turn over.  At the bottom of the hill, I prevailed upon a nice jogger and a motorist to help me push the car out of the way.

Leslie, who deserves a medal, came to get me and drove me out to the airport. I arrived about half an hour before my flight was scheduled to depart and breezed through security without problems and boarded my flight to NYC.

Tonight, Leslie picked me up and we again tried to get the car to start, figuring that it was warmer this time. Sadly, the car still won’t turn over. It sounds like it wants to but just won’t quite catch. Tomorrow we will try again.

So today, I am thankful that I have a friend who was willing to rescue me at god-awful early in the morning. And who also added an extra place at her dinner table for me tonight.

New York has been a great deal of fun this trip. Monday and Tuesday were packed so full that I basically collapsed in bed each night (in the lovely guest room provided by Felix and Sarah Gilman) without summoning the brain power to write up my adventures. Today, I sounded dreadful and my throat felt funny. It became clear that I had contracted some illness so I cancelled my plans and took the rest of the day easy.

We ordered Chinese food! I miss being able to have Chinese food delivered.

I’m flying home tomorrow and really have to schedule longer in the city next time I’m here. Three days is simply not long enough to see everyone and to do everything that I would like.

And now! I’m off to NYC for the SFWA reception. Having spent seven hours teaching today in Seattle, I’m catching a flight tomorrow at 6:30 am.  Forgive this entry for being so brief.

I’ll be in NYC through Thanksgiving day.

I’m heading back down to Portland to perform in a Puppet Slam with Jodi Eichelberger. This is the first chance to see Jodi and me perform together in Portland in almost a decade.  He and I have been trying to sort out when our last show was here and aren’t entirely sure.

For those of you who mostly know me as a writer, Jodi is my creative partner with Other Hand Productions. Since he moved to NYC to be in Avenue Q and then to Iceland for Lazytown, we don’t get to perform together very often.  This should be fun.

We’ll be performing “Dinner Conversations” which is a very short piece as part of the Puppet Slam at the Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Avenue. ($8 at the door).

I’ll be in Seattle tonight to read from Shades of Milk and Honey at UW bookstore (4326 University Way N.E., Seattle, WA, 98105) at 7pm.  As a bonus, I’ll also perform  The Broken Bridge, which is the shadow puppet play from Chapter 10 of the novel. It’s a shadow play from 1874.

And I’ll be in costume, so those of you at Steamcon can pretend it’s all part of the same thing.

Hope to see you there.

Thank you all for the lovely wishes. Rob and I had a delightful two days at the coast. The place we picked out was beachfront with a sauna and a giant soaking tub that looked out on the ocean. A storm was rolling in for much of yesterday and it was deeply satisfying to lounge and watch the waves crash on the shore.

Now I just have a bajillion emails to catch up on.

Rob and I are off at the beach today for our 9th anniversary.  Actually, we left yesterday and won’t be back until tomorrow, but I cleverly sent this message into the future so that it would be waiting for you.

See you on Friday.