Monthly Archives: April 2018

My book just received a wonderful review

Okay, normally boasting about a positive review is not good form, right? And this person is someone I know, so you could argue she’s biased. But…. she’s also a well-known, professional reviewer in the SF/F community and she wouldn’t risk her rep by saying she liked something if she didn’t.

Brief quote:

“All in all I thought this was a delightful read and I think kids of both sexes between eleven and fourteen would be immersed in it.”

Read more on her blog, which happens to be a great place to learn about books, stories, tv shows, and more importantly, the place to read her stories. That’s how I first met her — at a writing conference where I got to read a story she wrote that blew me away. She’s indefatigable.

My essay is up at “My Favorite Bit”

Mary Robinette Kowal is very kindly hosting my essay about my favorite bit in The Third Kind of Magic on her website. The essay is about how certain essays in Le Guin’s Cheek by Jowl helped me understand what I was trying to do, enabling me to finish it.

The only time I had a conversation with Ms. Le Guin, at a book signing, we coincidentally talked about dragons. It was after a panel at a Book Expo in SF and for reasons I can’t precisely remember, the audience was not best pleased by what she had said about dragons in other books. (I suspect she was implying Smaug had barely scratched the surface of what dragons could be, which would hardly be controversial nowadays, so it was probably just the idea of criticizing the Master…)

The full essay is here.

Let me know what you think.

Happy Birthday, Maya Angelou

It would be hard to top the tribute of the Google doodle today, the many voices reading her poem, “Still I Rise.”

But for me, Maya Angelou will always be first and foremost a prose writer, the author of the most amazing series of autobiographies I’ve ever read. If you’re unfamiliar with them, let me assure you you’re missing something: they are immensely entertaining, fast-paced, and she seemed to be involved in many of the momentous political and social changes the last fifty years. She was a dancer, a singer, and an activist, a poet and a writer, a voice for women, black women, African-Americans, for all of us, really. I will continue to reread her amazing autobiography every couple of years, for the pithy writing, for the adventures. They’re like reading Captain Blood or Scaramouche, only written by a woman, and all true.

First female cable-car operator in San Francisco. Part of the traveling company of Porgy and Bess touring the USSR. Dancer and singer during the Calypso craze (which I actually remember because we had all Harry Belafonte’s records — “That’s right! The woman is — smarter!”) Friends with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and James Baldwin (who encouraged her to write). Lived in Ghana during the time when former colonies were gaining their independence, one after another. Commissioned to deliver the poem at the Presidential inauguration. Incredibly damaging and yet rich childhood. The documentary Bill Moyers made about her visit to Stamps, Arkansas to revisit the scenes of her childhood, affects me every time I see it.

If you’ve never read these marvelous books, start with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. You’re in for a treat.

Something to cheer us all up

Last week was really, really hard. I am not even sure why, except for a horrible confluence of problems with getting my taxes done (other people) and work (other people) and suddenly the phone ringing off the hook with people wanting stuff (other people)! There may be a pattern here.

I still feel a bit peaky this week and need cheering up. Here’s a link to a lovely essay by Ms. Ursula K. LeGuin, one of my favorite writers, wherein she explains why she is a man. This is something all of us of a certain age understand.

So when I was born, there actually were only men. People were men. They all had one pronoun, his pronoun; so that’s who I am. I am him, as in “If anybody needs to throw up he will have to do it in his hat,” or “A writer knows which side his bread is buttered on.” That’s me, the writer, him. I am a man.

Introducing Myself (pdf) by U.K. Le Guin.

Available in The Wave in the Mind, Shambhala, 2004.

Please breathe deeply and enjoy.

(Photo Dan Tuffs/Getty)

Crow Lore # 3

Spring has sprung, and around here, the crows are busy gathering materials for their nests. It’s fun to watch them maneuver on the ground and in the air with their mouths stuffed full of grass or twigs or whatever else looks useful to them. They have that,’don’t bother me, I’m busy’ air about them, and don’t fly away so quickly when approached by clumsier, land-bound bipeds.

Like many social animals, crow offspring stay with their parents for a few years and help raise their younger siblings. Even when they move on and are no longer living with them, they will come back for visits and help out with finding food and predator defense.

Crow parents mate for life, and their families stick together too, especially during the breeding season and summer months. In the winter, large groups of crows forage for food and roost together at night. Seems like the best of both worlds: having a community to help with food finding and defense in the winter when times are harder, and then breaking up into families to provide more devoted attention to offspring when food is easier and the weather’s not so great a threat.

Kevin McGowan studies crows in the Ithaca area around Cornell in upstate New York (where the winters are brutal) and despite years of observation and banding, he’s still not certain how far crow offspring travel away to create new territories for themselves. It’s hard to study animals that can fly when you can’t.

Go outside and look around. If you pay attention, I bet you’ll find crows and other birds busy getting ready for their new families.