It’s not.

I explained that the area affected by Eyjafjallajökul is very small and that Europe is getting most of the ash plume. He looked doubtful. When I got home, I had this video sitting in my inbox from a friend in Iceland. It’s part of the Inspired by Iceland campaign to spread the word about how fantastic Iceland is.

Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.

If you’ve read any of my fiction you know how much living in Iceland for a year and a half inspired me. Here are some of the stories that I took out of Iceland.

• Ring Road — Dark Faith Anthology (January 2010)
• At the Edge of Dying — Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness
• Prayer at Dark River — Innsmouth Free Press
• Scenting the Dark — Apex Online (August 24, 2008)
• Horizontal Rain — Apex Online
• Bound Man — Twenty Epics (May, 2006)

If you are looking for vacation plans and a lot of sunshine, hit Iceland this summer for 20 hours per day.  The landscape changes constantly so one day it is like vacationing in Middle Earth and the next the Moon.

The Moon, with air and hot springs, that is.

So here you go, puppetry flashback.

—
April 26, 2006

I did loads of stuff with one of the puppets on a highwire. We had one shot that was really fun to do because it was hard. The puppet had to hold on to one of those bars that tightrope walkers use to balance. I have no idea what they are really called, but we called it the stripey pole. So, normally, you’d tape the rod to his hands and either have someone outside the frame holding the end of it, or you’d put a rod on it. In this case, an actor needed to take it from the puppet in the shot. Which we would normally do with live hands, but the way it had to be framed, there was no way to do either of these and make it look good.

So, I put on a greenscreen top, and used the wrist-entry left arm. (Maybe I should stop and explain that with live hands I have a choice of entering the arm at the elbow or the wrist.) I pulled the green shirt sleeve over the entry sleeve and they keyed my arm out. This mean that everything in green was invisible on camera–it’s very cool. So, it just looked like the puppet was holding the stripey pole and then we could pass it to the actor.

Maybe you have to be a puppeteer to know that this was nifty.

After that, it was more stripey pole action, but I just held the end of the stripey pole out of frame.

We finished the day with a trashcan shot. I know. I thought I was finished with trash too, but no. I was the periscope which had too peek up from inside a trashcan. They painted the fiberglass trash can today and it was still degassing. Mmm…let’s sit inside the container of toxic fumes.

I don’t think so. I requested and given a respirator. Because there wasn’t room in there for me, the periscope and a monitor, I also had to use the VR goggles, all of which were oh-so-attractive. The shot itself was fairly simple. I had to make the periscope peek out of the trashcan, look around, and then an actor had to jump on me. Great fun.

—

And just so you can see what a trippy, trippy episode that was to work on. Here’s the music video and the closing number.

I also miss the lack of bullshit with Icelanders. With an American you so often have to do a social dance to make plans. You know the one.

Host: “I could make muffins or we could go out to a diner for breakfast.”

Guest: “Whichever is easiest.”

Host: “They’re both easy. Which would you like?”

Guest: “Oh, I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

etc, etc, etc… until it’s time for lunch and the whole thing starts again.

With an Icelander.

Host: “I could make muffins or we could go out to a diner for breakfast.”

Guest: “A diner sounds good.”

So, with that in mind, here’s the Daily Show and their documentary on the effort to get Iceland’s troops back in Iraq.

Our friend, Daddi, said that he was at the studio packing up for an expo here and that he and Hannis felt it, saw the lights shaking and headed outside. The quake lasted long enough that they got all the way outside before the tremors stopped. He also said that the weather is perfect today, so that most people are just pitching tents outside and planning on camping while things get sorted out.

If you click through you can watch footage of the quake from different parts of the country, including parliament. Does business stop? No. I love the Icelandic spirit.

And I’m so grateful that everyone is okay.

This is one that comes up a lot and, strangely, I don’t think I’ve posted on it, so I’ll give the long answer.

I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything. My parents indulged me and so I took violin, art, theater classes, writing workshops and then, in high school, discovered puppetry. A friend of mine went to a church that had a puppet ministry program, which was the coolest thing ever. I started going to the church so I could be involved — maybe not the best reason to join a church. Anyway, I got very lucky because the leaders of the puppetry program worked very hard on teaching us good skills. A lot of puppet ministry programs have truly dreadful puppetry. I loved the puppetry. When our high school did Little Shop of Horrors, I was the plant.

Anyway, I did puppetry until I went to college. I majored in art education with a minor in theater, which was the closest I could come to combining everything that I loved to do. My sophomore year, the college did Little Shop and I was the plant again.

Then a professional puppeteer came to see the show. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that someone would actually get paid to do puppetry. I mean, sure, I’d seen Sesame Street, but that was on PBS and everyone knew that PBS was run by volunteers, right? Yeah… But this puppeteer, Dee Braxton, owned a house, only worked a couple of days a week and most importantly, was willing to train me. By the end of the first summer, she was handing me the gigs she couldn’t take. People were giving me money. To do puppets. I was making more money doing that than my part-time job.

Later, I realized that we lived in an area of the country with a very low cost of living and that we were the only puppeteers in a three county radius. It helps.

From there I went to the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, GA for an internship. This shaped me as a puppeteer more than anything else. George Latshaw (like unto a god, in puppetry) was directing, and the cast was a dream team of puppeteers, Jon Ludwig, Jane Catherine Shaw, Bobby Box, and Peter Hart. Pete was in charge of the internship program and my mentor. If I tried to say enough good things about that program, I would bore you, so suffice to say that I can trace everything back to there.

After the internship, I just kept working. I’ve been at it for nineteen years now and, with the exception of a two-year break due to a wrist injury, have made my living as a puppeteer.

Until I came to NYC.

Now the irony here is that, before Iceland, I’d had several years where I worked three to five months out of the year here, as a puppeteer. I always felt as if I would work constantly if I lived here. And behold, that’s true. The odd thing is that almost all the work has been in the props department.

That’s something I stumbled into and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I enjoy it and it’s honest work. On the other hand, it’s not why we came to NYC and is taking up so much time that I haven’t had a chance to really pursue puppetry and it’s cutting into my writing time.

Rob and I are talking about how to balance that, going forward. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

AND a friend from Iceland was in town on business. A mutual friend told her about the party and brought her along to surprise me. Such happiness!

Mom and Dad called today too. Dad sounds like he’s in good spirits. On the other hand, I could clearly hear that they made the right choice to stay in Tennessee.

I also got a package from Mom and Pop K in the mail which contained, among other goodies, some of her world-famous cookies. Mmm… I’m not sharing those. Which reminds me that I have to hide them from Rob.

And I also got a Konjoined Kitty, lovingly created by Michael Schupbach. This is very cool, not only because it is adorable, but because I got to see him work through the process of developing the idea, creating it and now he’s marketing them. And I have one of my very own. Soft, cute and disturbing. What more could you ask for in a pillow/toy?

The urge to watch this kind of film doesn’t come up that often so I don’t keep up with the good action films out there. I’m looking for suggestions for the next time I need an exploding film nights.

To start you off, here are movies that fit the bill:
Almost anything by Jackie Chan
The Blues Brothers
Spiderman
Indiana Jones
The Bourne Identity
Some Bond, such as Goldfinger
Serenity
Robocop

There’s a tendency for comic book escapism here, you might note. It’s not that they need to be light-hearted it’s just that I don’t handle monsters well.

So… got any suggestions for me?

On the whole, I think the layout worked well for the dining portion, but the mingling portion beforehand still has some kinks to be worked out. We had the cats locked up in the bedroom, but next time, I think we’ll have to have that room open just for more milling about space.

I really, really love throwing dinner parties. Especially this one because it’s my formal dress party. I’ve got a bit of a thing for evening dress and I throw this party as “black tie optional.” Now, technically, that means that it’s a white tie party and the gentlemen can dress down to black tie, but in this day and age, it just means you can dress up if you feel like it. And everyone looked stunning, I must say.

Sorry. Like an idiot, I forgot to take pictures with the tables set. You’ll have to trust me that there was much china and crystal, with placecards and party favors.

Ah me… I need to throw more parties.

I took the subway home, where my fabulous husband had dinner waiting. I spent some time getting work done that’s been pending at home and rediscovered the surface of my desk. It is brown and wood. Who knew?

Saturday, well, suffice to say that Saturday was lovely and is private. It has been a good six years.

Then today we rode the motorcycle up to D– and J–’s home from their son’s second birthday party. It was good seeing them both. I hadn’t seen D– since the show we’d worked on in Iceland. My heavens. Their son was still in-arms last time I saw him and he’s a tyke now. Plus! They had a puppet show there, which was performed by our mutual friend Steve Widerman, of The Puppet Company. Great seeing him.

We headed from there to Katonah to visit the L– family. They let us store Rob’s motorcycle in their garage and, as a bonus, we get to spend time visiting. Tonight I introduced them to hot toddies and may have made converts.

If you don’t know, a hot toddy is the best cold weather beverage ever invented. Unless you don’t drink, in which case I’ll argue for hot apple cider.

We just returned from those outings. Heavens. I feel like a real human being.

Edited to add, per request:

There are many variations and I make no claims that this one is The Genuine hot toddy, but it’s the one I like. Tweak to your hearts content; I like mine on the tart side, so I tend to keep the lemon juice ration high.

Other stories do in fact meet many of the criteria listed in my opening paragraph. Mary Robinette Kowal’s ‘Bound Man’ – one of the longer pieces in the anthology – goes for an epic scale in both space and time, having her warrior heroine Li Reiko summoned across the ages, by means of a magical Sword, to aid a beleaguered village community in a harsh northern land. Both Li Reiko’s sophisticated Japan-esque homeland and the Viking-era Iceland analogue to which she travels are nicely evoked – and the heightened, the-fate-of-all-depends-on-this register of epic is captured well:

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Susan Marie Groppi spoke with Mary Robinette Kowal. Mary is a puppeteer and writer, and she is also the art director of Shimmer magazine.

Edited to add: I was just listening to this to make sure I didn’t sound like an idiot. Which I mostly don’t, until I try to speak a little Icelandic. In fact, I talk about Iceland a bit and figured I would throw some visual aids up here. If you’ve listened to the podcast and want to know what the Land of a Thousand Throw Pillows looks like, it looks like this.

See! I wasn’t exaggerating my description, was I.

Susan was a really gracious host to the podcast. The only thing she seems to have cut was my closing remark, which was something along the lines of “Strange Horizons is one of the best things going for short fiction.”

Here’s a snippet.

Horizontal Rain is a reasonably short short-story, fewer than 2700 words, but Mary Robinette Kowal packs a good deal of story into those 2700 words. Confusion, fear, fairy tales, trolls, death, driving, construction, meetings, phone calls, and a general sense of unease as the harsh Icelandic wind blows the rain sideways.

If you’d like to read the story, it’s at Apex Online.

Mr. Sherry also posted his dream list of authors to invite for an anthology. Lord help me, I have no idea what sorting criteria could possibly have put me on the list at number two. Still, I like his day dream.

It’s an interesting mental game, isn’t it. Who would you invite to your dream anthology?

We are sad that it couldn’t work out, but living in NYC is not a bad consolation prize.

I was going to do a post about how we’re settling into the rhythms of living in NYC but that was before we got the call from Iceland. At the moment, all I feel is a sense of waiting again and that the uncertainty has returned.

So, since my father asked for it, here is a poll about what will happen next.

• Ungi maðurinn þekkir reglurnar, en gamli maðurinn þekkir undantekningarnar.
  “The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”
• Nú duga engin vettlingatök.
  “No more mitten-takes.” — used for: Do it right this time.
• Ég kem alveg af fjöllum.
  “I come completely from mountains” — used for: I have no idea what is going on
• Ég mun finna þig í fjöru
  “I will find you on a beach” — used for: Don’t make me hurt you. Sort of.
• Að koma einhverjum fyrir kattarnef
  “To put someone before a cats nose.” — used for: Putting someone in the spotlight, but slightly more dangerous.
• Ég borga bara með reiðufé
  “I only pay with an angry sheep” — used for: Okay, but I don’t have to like it.

Edited to add: I put in rough ideas of how one would use these phrases

Rob has been offered a full-time position. We are discussing it. I promise that I will let you know when there is more to tell.

Robert A. Kowal is a New York University graduate holding a B.F.A. degree in Film & Television with two decades experience in both creative and technical roles. His production credits include director, producer, writer, story editor, and production coordinator.

Robert spent 2006 in Iceland working on the children’s television series LazyTown.

He currently resides in New York City.

Hire him. He’s good.

Now if I can just convince them to carry the pear flavor.

It was gray and overcast and cool…that’s just like Iceland and Portland, so that’s what normal is, right?

At one point today, Rob said, “You look very nice.” I must have looked confused–I was wearing ratty work clothes–because he leaned back to look at me with more care. “I guess it’s because you aren’t sweating and your hair isn’t matted down.”

Nice. That’s what nice means. Not sweaty. No mats.

Why can’t the weather be like this all the time, so I can look nice?

Princess Bride? Goya in Bordeaux? But since then… I can’t remember one.

I don’t want to gush too much, because part of the joy of the film is the discovery. The actors are all strong, particularly Charlie Cox as Tristan. Male ingénues are so hard to play and he is spot on perfect. Normally I link to trailers and what not, but don’t–try not to see a trailer before you go in to watch the film. And do go, tomorrow. Don’t wait. It’s not that there are enormous spoilers, but there are surprises and moments of wonderful ah-ha! waiting for you at every turn in Stardust, and yet it all makes sense and is inevitable. Oh, it’s just wonderful. Go.

I’ll see you there. Partly because I want to see it again and sink back into the world, and partly because I want this film to have a really strong opening weekend so that there will be more.

There’s a funny sort of symmetry for me about seeing this film while I’m making the Coraline puppet. The first time I performed in NYC, was with our production of Old Man Who Made Trees Blossom at Here Theater. The puppets are made out of paper–it’s a different technique than the one I’m using now, but still, it’s the first time I used washi paper on a puppet. One of the other performers loaned me a copy of the ARC (advanced review copy) of Stardust–and behold, here I was tonight at an advanced screening. Funny how things work out.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that large parts of the movie were filmed in Iceland. If you want to understand, really, why I want to move back…

I can’t understand what the clerks are saying to me.

I find myself responding by rote, based on what part of the transaction we are at. It is astonishing. Some of this comes from people who are speaking English as a second language. I don’t begrudge them the incomprehensibility of their speech. I’ve been there myself and understand. But the majority of them are native speakers who mumble. Would it really kill them to open their mouth when speaking? I know they can speak loudly; I’ve heard them on their cellphones. I just want to be able to understand what they are saying when I check out.

Well, actually there is, because I got some news about three different exciting projects none of which I can tell you about. Gah! So, for the moment, you’ll just have to watch the paint dry.

La la la.

Oh, and no, the news is not about selling a novel–I’ve had two different people guess that, so I figure I can save you that much. Nor is it about going back to Iceland.

Here is the wall of the dining room that is finished. We finally pulled Rob’s Magnapan speakers out of their boxes. In Portland, we didn’t have anywhere we could put them that was cat safe. I mean really, to a cat, those are not high end speakers, but the perfect scratching surface.

The table is not in view now, because it’s to the left of the photo under a sheet. I’m still painting. The color requires three coats each of which have to dry for a couple of hours before I do the next. I have one coat left on the wall I’m working on, and then there’s one more left to do.

Isn’t drying paint fascinating?

Look! A new lighting fixture. That’s much shinier than anything else that I could possibly be talking about now. It glows!

We started by having brunch with fab girl, her friend Leslie, Jodi and Jed at Cafe Deville. It’s a nice big open space with good food, but the service was questionable. We kept having to send water glasses away because they had floaters in them. Ugh.

After that, Rob and I spent a couple of hours tromping around to various paper and art supply stores looking for the paperwood I want for my laptop’s space bar. No luck. I finally picked up a piece of thin birch ply for model airplanes. I’ve found paperwood online, but there keep being minimum orders and, you know, I want to test it first. It’s very frustrating. If you know a store that carries it, do let me know.

Giving up on that, we headed to Home Depot to pick up paint for the living room and dining room. While I’m all for shopping locally, I just can’t plunk down $45 on a gallon of paint. Can’t. And that’s what the paint costs in my neighborhood.

In between painting, I wrestled with a couple of different computer programs trying to crank out an ad for Shimmer, because my software is still in the boxes coming from Iceland. All the trial versions of other software have expired, leaving me with nothing very useful. Again. Frustrating. So I went back and forth between that and the walls, which are also frustrating because they are just a wee bit uneven. It’s impossible to get a clean edge, even with tape, at any point. I do it better freehanding, really.

I’m heading off to shower and bed now. I’ve got a job interview for a temp position as a receptionist tomorrow. While I’m here to do puppetry, it usually takes a year or two to establish oneself in a new community. Gotta keep food on the table and paint on the walls while that’s happening, eh?

Much to our surprise, Stefan was in town from LA for the night. We had no idea he was coming. I guess he got in around 7:00 pm, has a gig today, and is flying back home tonight. Crazy life of actors. It was so good to see him. We trotted out the Icelandic for about three sentences and then spent the rest of the evening in English. Which is good because I have so not been practicing.

But I think we all really enjoyed reminiscing about Iceland itself and didn’t talk about the show at all. Certainly, Stefan had wonderful, wonderful stories to tell about growing up as the son of a whaler. Fascinating stuff. I miss being there.

The meal itself was good, but not exceptional. Solid, well-conceived food. sigh… I sound like such a food snob. It was a lovely evening. Hopefully the first of many.

(By the way, for those newcomers to my site, I worked on this show, but try to avoid using the name to make it harder for fans to search for it. The producers of the show let me blog while I was working there with the understanding that I would keep my posts generic and specific to the work that I was doing. There’s also the fact that one of my co-workers, the youngest daughter referred to earlier, is a minor and some of her fans can be a little creepy.)

Rest assured, that I did find affordable paint, although still more than I’ve paid before. Sigh. BUT the room is painted, mopped and we began moving things into it. The painting of it was pretty funny. All of my work clothes are in the boxes we shipped back from Iceland. After considering several options, I finally decided to paint the room in my work jacket and a t-shirt. Rob says that I looked like a pin-up girl, since I was sans trousers.

I’ll post photos once it’s a little more put together.

Edited to add: Of the office–I’ll post photos of the office once it’s a little more put together. Geez… you people. One little slip of an imprecise pronoun and your minds go straight to the gutter.

The reading was surprisingly well attended. I didn’t think there would be anyone here so early in the con, but I had maybe ten people in the room. I read “Rampion” from Prime Codex. I had an hour off and did a workshop on reading aloud, which again, had a larger attendance than I expected. The last one I did had eight people, this one had around thirty or forty.

Hm… I’m really exhausted. I think I’m going to go collapse before finishing my report. My brain is toast. Suffice to say that it is fun and that I’m enjoying seeing everyone. I realized that last Readercon I’d flown in from Iceland and this time we’d driven cross-country with the move, so I’m sort of feeling like travel exhaustion must be part of the experience for me.

Speaking of strange and corncobs, we discovered today that Marlowe likes corncobs–not corn, mind you, but corncobs. When I’d finished my lunch, I held the corncob out to Marlowe. He’s often strange and has a tendency to like vegetables. He spent the next, oh, fifteen minutes licking the corncob. It was cute and a little disturbing.

Anyway, we were on the road by six o’clock and made reasonably good time. I must say, West Virginia’s interstate was the smoothest we’ve been on; it’s too bad that we were only in the state for twenty-five miles. When we hit Pennsylvania, traffic stopped. We’re on the turnpike now, but I’m unclear on what the toll fees are being spent on.

We passed a number of towns or landmarks with names that just wouldn’t fly in a book. Paxtonia? Linglestown? Mad River? Triadelphia? Boro of Alpha? Please… Oh, and two Bethlehems. What’s up with that?

I spent quite a while on the phone today, changing our arrival plans around. Instead of going into Katonah tonight, we went to Brooklyn to drop Jodi’s stuff off. We arrived around 8:30. My brother, Steve, just arrived after the ball game he attended. Indian food is on the way. Whew.

Tomorrow is load-in day. Wish us luck.

That would be fine, except that the program that I use to layout Shimmer is in one of the boxes coming from Iceland to NYC. You know, the ones we left behind because we thought we were going back? So, if I do a system restore, I can’t reload that program. Oh, I could download a trial version, but it’s only good for fifteen days. I could switch programs, but that means rebuilding all my templates. The timing on this is, shall we say, crappy.

He’s begun covertly shopping for one here too, because of course, the urge is not out of his system. I mean, how could it be, since he’s never touched the one that he owns. It’s as if it doesn’t really exist.

After looking around, he found a place that rents them here in Portland. We’ve been invited down to the beach with some friends for the weekend, so it seemed like a perfect time to try it out.

I have never been on a motorcycle. The thought has terrified me, while I’ve been encouraging him to pursue the thing. So, when he brought the rental bike home today, I put on my leather jacket and my boots, pulled the helmet on and got on the motorcycle behind him.

You know what? It wasn’t so bad. Dare I say, it was actually sort of fun? I think I’ve spent enough time on bicycles, so I understand what the balance of two-wheeled vehicles is like. I had been expecting to freak out when we had to lean into a turn. Nope. I’m also crediting riding horses in Iceland with helping me get past the fear of being on large moving things over which I have little control.

We’re going back out and heading for Sauvie’s Island now. I gotta say, there are worse ways to spend a sunny day than sitting on a motorcycle, hugging one’s husband.

But besides that bit of oddness, it turns out the rules have changed since I last looked. It is now four weeks of isolation, instead of six, and they have a facility in Reykjavik. When we looked into it before, the only facility was on an island in a fjörd in northern Iceland. This seems doable.

I’m sure you are wondering if this means we are moving to Iceland instead of NYC. Nothing has changed, we’re just looking at all our options.

In fact, based on my sense of wonder in Chattanooga, I also am starting to wonder how long it has been since I have seen spring anywhere. The curious thing about traveling a lot is that it is quite possible to miss something as ephemeral as spring. For instance, flowers bloom earlier in Portland than New York. So if one leaves Portland for a gig in NYC before things start blooming in Portland and returns home before things start blooming in NYC then it’s easy to miss most of the blooming. I see parts of it, to be sure. I remember the azaleas starting to come in there. And I remember the daffodils blooming here, but not the lilacs. I keep looking at the one in the front yard every day, waiting for the moment when it is in bloom, not just hinting at color.

The other thing that tips me off that it’s been a while since I’ve seen a spring is the onset of my allergies, which I had sort of forgotten about. Funny, there aren’t so many allergens in Iceland. Actually, Iceland does get an amazing spring, it’s just when most of the rest of the northern hemisphere is experiencing summer. The hillsides turn purple and golden with bloom and tulips last for months.

All of which is to say that though I thought I had remembered that the camellia in the backyard of our house got heavy with pink blossoms in the summer, and that I thought I remembered that it dropped a lot of them on the ground, I had completely forgotten the sheer volume of blossoms. I mean, seriously, look at all of them. And that’s just from the past couple of days. It does this every week. For weeks. I filled two recycling bins with blossoms. Sure, they look pretty now, but they quickly turn to brown slime. One year, I piled them all under the tree, which looked gorgeous, but there’s this little disease called blossom rot which camellias get if their blossoms sit under the tree. What kind of crazy design flaw is that? Which wild animal, exactly, is supposed to cart these away, because I’d like to have one in my backyard in the spring.

Or not. It’s also possible that we won’t go to Iceland at all.

Or that he’ll go and I will stay in NYC the whole time.

Or that we’ll both go on the May 1 and someone else will move us into the apartment.

Then there’s the question of where to put our cats if Iceland happens.

The short form of this is that although I’ve got plenty of material to write about, it almost all makes me feel stressed and reminds me that I should be packing instead of writing about packing. Sigh.

I did have a lovely, lovely time at Norwescon. I loved hanging out with Stephen Segal, Lisa Mantchev, Cat Rambo, Jennifer, Gordon Gross, Spencer and Chrissy Ellsworth, Patrick Swenson, Cherie Priest, M.K. Hobson, John Pitts, Ken and Jen Scholes (though not enough), Jay Lake…. the list goes on and on. I’d link to you all, but I should be packing.

Highlights of the convention: the Sesame Street monsters, meeting Kathy Watts, the Liars’ Panel, breakfast with Cherie Priest, Talebones Live, seeing the Earthling mockup, everyday at the Ellsworths’ and Easter dinner at the Pitts’ residence.

In this issue, we place the spotlight on Mary Robinette Kowal with an interview and her story “Horizontal Rain.” Apex Publications executive editor Jason B. Sizemore steps up to provide relaunch content with his pagan-based dark fantasy piece “Blue Lights.”

I’m delighted to be featured and especially to have “Horizontal Rain” up there. It’s one of the two stories that I took out of Iceland with me on my first trip. It’s also my only story where the title came first. A couple of the folks at the company I was working for started a band and had a contest for the band name. I suggested Horizontal Rain, because that’s what the weather was doing outside. We get Horizontal Snow too. Sadly they went with another name, which was so lame I can’t remember it. I loved the word combination and kept thinking that I should write a story to go with it.

The nice thing about Iceland is that really, that title could apply to any story there. The wind is so strong it can push you down. I remember a day when I turned so the wind was at my back. The coat I was wearing had a hood that funneled the air around my head, creating a perfect vortex of stillness in front of my face. I had trouble breathing, as it ripped all the air away from me. This is Iceland. This is where my story is set.

Here’s a teaser of “Horizontal Rain.”

Maxwell Sanders pressed the phone closer to his ear as if that would somehow bring comprehension. “Did you say trolls?”

“Yes, Max.” With her words, he could picture Amalia’s rigid posture.

He ran a hand over his scalp. “I can’t redo the aluminum plant blueprints because your foreman believes in fairytales.”

In the silence, static hissed faintly on the line, reminding him that she was in Iceland. “I know what it sounds like, but eighty percent of the population here believes in fairies, elves, and trolls. So when the foreman tells me they won’t continue construction of the plant because we’re intruding into troll territory I can’t just ignore him.”

“So negotiate.”

She was silent long enough that Max thought he had lost the connection, then her voice crept across the ocean to his office in New York. “I think we’re beyond that.”

Read the rest of the story.

Ah. Life’s uncertainties. So much fun.

Now I’ve got an urge to write a short story entirely on the typewriter. One on each, in fact. Plus we have three others that aren’t here. We just dropped off a Woodstock to be repaired, our Groma Kolibra is still in a box coming from Iceland, and then we’ve got a Corona in Chattanooga. Pretty, pretty things.

*Ace Typewriter – 7433 N. Lombard, Portland, OR 97203. (503)286-2521. “This father-and-son operated shop specializes in manual typewriters, has a number of beautiful classic machines for sale, and would love to have your business. Definitely worth the short drive to St. Johns.”

-e- called and invited us down for porch food, though by the time we got down to her house the sun had set and the night had drifted toward cool. We elected to eat inside.

After dinner, we watched the 1935 Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Max Reinhardt, which serves as a backdrop for the audio book I’m working on now. Astonishingly, Puck is played by a 12 year old Mickey Rooney, who does an amazing job. I mean really. This is one of the best Pucks I’ve seen. I’m not going to try to match the truly freaky laugh he does, but you’ll have to trust me that this is a Puck that you would not want to meet in the woods at night.

My brother would be so happy; when we were growing up he was always saying, “It’s all Mary’s fault,” and this time he’s right. Thank heavens he doesn’t read my blog.

Besides that I ran the audio I recorded last night past the author and the publisher and they both like it, so I’ll go back into the studio tomorrow to record some more.

Nearly all the hot water in Iceland is geothermal and comes right up out of the ground. For this reason, there are several outdoor swimming pools open year round. I made it a priority to visit one very soon. I had swimming lessons at the YMCA in kindergarten, but the only technique I learned to prevent drowning was grabbing onto my cousin’s frilly swim suit. Despite having taught myself how to swim later in college, I found I had a lot more to learn from these Icelandic pools.

Except for the muscles rippling under his form-fitting dress shirt, Magnus Scheving at first glance bears little resemblance to Sportacus, the hyperactive, health-promoting hero he plays in the international hit children’s television program “LazyTown.”

Unlike Sportacus, Mr. Scheving does not have a thin black mustache that juts out as if he had recently been electrocuted. He does not reside in a dirigible in the sky. He does not have a ski hat-cum-nightcap permanently affixed to his head.

But both he and his alter ego are devoted to a single, impassioned cause: getting couch potato-prone children to exercise, eat good food and generally lead healthier lives. And somehow Mr. Scheving, the creator and chief executive of the vast entertainment and licensing company known as LazyTown Entertainment, has become one of Iceland’s best-known figures and biggest exports, a sui generis hybrid of Jack LaLanne and Richard Branson.

This is who I worked for in Iceland. You can read the rest of the article about Magnus at the NY Times website.

I went to four different fabric stores to pick up silk for the monkeys’ skin. Most of my time seemed to involve heading in the wrong direction and back-tracking. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of navigating, because I’ve done it here before, but it always seems to take awhile for me to remember the uptown/downtown orientation.

After that it was off to look for yak fur, for their hair. I had no success. Ironically, the closest I came was a really gorgeous pelt, which turned out to be Icelandic sheep. Go figure. $250 for something that I can buy in Ikea in Iceland for $25.

Next up. Balls for the monkeys. I’m trying to find rattan, wicker or grapevine balls that are 2″ in diameter. So far, I found some really gorgeous ones in Tibet, but the shipping is killer. I’m now trying to track down a store with parrot toys, because evidentially parrots like to play with 2″ wicker balls. I don’t understand, but I won’t complain if I can find them.

Tomorrow, I’ll be picking up airplane cable, wooden balls and dowels.

Today, Rob bought a new camera–well, a different camera from Craig’s list. It works with both computers. Hurrah.

By coincidence. I also got my hair cut today. Pretty, huh? We’ll see how it does when I have to do it on my own tomorrow.

I also got new glasses about a month ago and completely forgot to mention them. I tend to wear contacts most of the time, and usually just wear the glasses to and from bed but I’ll also sometimes go a week without putting contacts in. It sort of depends on what I’m doing. I don’t like performing or biking with glasses, because I want that extra peripheral vision. Thanks to the magic of the new digital camera you can see the new glasses.

I just laughed. I mean, that’s as fine description of my last year as you can get in music.

It turns out that the piece is called Okon Fuoko. I’m going to have to track down a copy and listen to it with intent, because the plot does look like something which might be adapted to puppet stage. It’s like Petruchka in Japan.

So, Monday I went to my snow-delayed dental appointment. I mentioned to the hygenist that a tooth on the front right of my mouth was giving me some discomfort as I bit down, but I wasn’t sure which one it was. When she took the x-rays and photos it was so obvious that even I could see it. I had a cracked filling. Oh! Of course that’s why it was owie. Thank heavens, I thought, that I came in so soon after it started giving me trouble. She then complimented me on how well I’d been keeping my teeth clean during the time I’d been away. I was feeling pretty good about my oral hygene.

Until the dentist came in. She took one look at the x-ray and said, “You’re a sneeze away from needing a root canal. We need to get you in to have that repaired ASAP.” She went on to explain that the dark shadow above the filling was decay. The size of the decay meant that the filling had probably cracked shortly after I arrived in Iceland–a year ago. Yeah. Further, the decay was so close to the root, that it was questionable if she would be able to fill it without hitting the pulp. You know, the place where the nerve is.

Joy.

So, I’m preparing myself to come in later that week, when she announces that she can see me that day. In fact, only half an hour after my current appointment ends. She seriously meant ASAP.

The procedure was everything one loves about going to the dentist. The rubber bite block, the green rubber dam stretched across my mouth. The drill.

So they get me all settled in, numbed and with the instructions to raise my left hand if I need them to stop for any reason. My dentist is very good and knows that I’m curious about things, so she stopped periodically to let me have a look with the mirror. I got to see the inside of my tooth as she paused in drilling. This is where we are sad that they couldn’t export the dental photos from their proprietary software. She kept saying, “I think we’re going to get away with this. I think you’re about to be lucky and we’ll save this tooth.”

Then she hit the pulp.

It’s the only time I’ve ever raised my left hand at the dentist. Even numbed, the sensation was so sharp, so direct-to-the-brain vivid that it’s hard to even describe as pain. It was simply something that had to stop.

They got the bleeding to stop–didn’t show me that part, which I’m fine with–and put the new composite filling in. My dentist said that the composite bonds better with the enamel and she’s hoping that if she can get an airtight seal that everything will hold. We’re hoping that I won’t need a root canal.

On the other hand, that could be because I had a dentist appointment and had to cancel it. I love snow.