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Lynda Williams Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing Sumptuosity The Alien Next Door
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Monday, March 28, 2005
Mother Amazed: My daughter Jennifer recorded Courtesan Prince for me, using my original manuscript, and gave me the tapes for my birthday (Feb 17) in a painted box with captions for the author and the best-ever narrator! [More Pictures] Happy to step aside in favor of letting the students at Kelly Road take over and read from my work, when I visited in March 2005. Much fun was had. They were good! And most brave. I gave away copies of the books and drafts to the people who volunteered to read from them. KP's buttons were also popular. Thursday, March 24, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Oh, the motivation
Quote from a discussion with Karl, publisher of Neo-Opsis, on writers' anxiety and publishing: "I just remind myself that the worst thing that can happen is the publisher will get all mad & drive over & beat me up & tell all the other publishers never to publish anything I write." Puts it all in perspective, now don't it? :) Virginia Saturday, March 19, 2005
Nesak Domestic Ritual
That third section is about Kene's visit to Fountain Court, and includes a bit where one of Beryl Nesak's retainers helps out by waiting on table. Rinsing a cereal bowl, I imagined a gesture periodically performed by Nesak men, in which they ritually remind themselves that woman's work is of equal value, and the women voluntarily perform it to leave them free to do the work they prefer. In the ritual they will acknowledge that it is not demeaning to do domestic chores, demonstrate their willingness by washing one dish or sweeping one floor, and thank their wife, mother or sister before handing over the broom or the tea towel. The reality of Nesak life is unequal with regard to gender roles and, ultimately, power, but I am discovering in Beryl that Nesak women have enough spunk to catch them out in hypocrisy if they get too superior and effectively say, "Fine then, you do the dishes and I'll fight the Vrellish for you". PS in justice to loved ones, I will add that Jennifer has just come upstairs and spontaneously offered to do all the dishes she can get done before we go out to meet Sarah at Books & Co at 10 am. (She's been taping the first book of Animorphs.) David is working today at the Playhouse. Dishes in the sink, however, are still dishes in the sink and there are always better things to do, for everyone. Grr, grump, and ringing of hands. Thursday, March 17, 2005
Lynda, this one's for you: since I know you like to make buttons. Granted, they are minimalist buttons, requiring great economy of phrasing, but nevertheless ... the link is to a script that makes buttons in the style that is becoming ubiquitous amongst blogs, the 15x80 rectangles that say 'RSS' 'XML' 'MovableType' etc. I have just made an ORU button: . And another: Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Our experience with wikispam notwithstanding (when the beginning pages of an ORU novel were repeatedly replaced by crud), I still like the wiki format, because it offers the opportunity to grow notes and reference material freeform, without having to decide upon its structure in advance. I have an installation of UseModWiki on my G4, which I use to slap down various bits and pieces, but a key feature was lacking: the ability to export files in any format. If I'm going to build anything coherent, I'd like the ability to load it onto my PDA, not to mention possibly loading it onto a website. So I went looking for an easy-to-use wiki that would export HTML at least. I came across Dokuwiki - designed for small companies to write documentation with - which uses PHP and stores the information in readable flatfiles. I rather like the idea of flatfiles, too, having now twice manually rebuilt a MovableType blog because the database became inaccessible. Dokuwiki took me all of 5 minutes to do a default installation, and the default installation is simple and elegant (it's the one that the site itself displays). Wednesday, March 09, 2005
If I follow Erasmus' dictum of books before food, I'm going to get hungry in May. Here's the to-buy list:
Unfortunately, my birthday is in September. I will simply have to get my income tax done early - assuming they're going to give me anything back. Consider it motivation to do a chore I usually put off until the week before. Sunday, March 06, 2005
Amanda with Lynda On the Job
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