potpourri

[ewein2412]

1) Gramma

I didn't post about Gramma's progress for a while she wasn't making any and it was very discouraging. After what seemed like a phenomenal recovery, 6 weeks after her injury and with her pelvis mostly healed, she suddenly found herself stricken with debilitating and inexplicable pain on the other side of her body. We thought it might be sciatica. After an MRI scan, turns out she actually had two other breaks that the initial x-rays hadn't picked up, one in her hip and one in her tailbone (?) or thereabouts--so they confined her to the walker/zimmer frame and wheelchair for another 6 weeks. She improved very rapidly (again) after that, and 3 weeks later was back to saying, "I'm fine, but they're still making me use this stupid walker." (Apparently, at her last check-up with her GP, she asked permission to start driving again, and the GP accused her of coercion--that's the specialist's department!)

As far as I know she spent last weekend in Richmond with my aunt (her youngest daughter, Kate) and Kate's daughters. Her first big trip since her accident, and it is a big trip, a 5 hour drive. I will have to have a long transatlantic gossip with her soon.

2) Moonwalk Reminder

Me and my team the "Fair City Fillies" are supposed to be in training for the Moonwalk, a sponsored walk to raise money to support breast cancer projects within Scotland. The freaks that I hang out with consider that appropriate "training" for a 13 mile power walk is to go on a 14 mile hillwalk over rough terrain AT THE SAME PACE as the power walk; i.e., if you don't pass out or end up in the hospital with tendonitis you'll be fine for the half-marathon, which will be considerably less difficult than your training. So anyway, I have been training. I will just about recover in time to do the actual half-marathon; donations always gratefully appreciated here , and many thanks to those of you who have made donations in the past. I will keep you posted when the big day arrives!

Everyone's feet hurt last week. Tim has a mysterious infection in his right foot which was so swollen I finally managed to make him go to the doctor, and antibiotics seem to be improving it. Unbelievably, the day before he went, the CAT turned up limping pathetically on 3 legs with a big fat swollen paw, and SHE had to go get antibiotics as well (or whatever it is they give cats). Tim took her; apparently he asked the vet if he could get a shot in his foot, too.

Tim's ridiculous attempt to explain the strange foot maladies going around:

"Your feet are the bellwether of your soul."

3) Perth, the cultural haven at the end of the motorway system

We went to see the Waterboys at the Perth Concert Hall last night. They were fantastic--I didn't actually expect to enjoy the concert as much as I did. I am not real familiar with their recent stuff and had never heard the "Peace of Iona" song or their marvellous setting of Yeats's "The Stolen Child" (painfully topical, too). And--

ONE MAN STAR WARS TRILOGY IS COMING TO EDINBURGH!!!! WE HAVE TICKETS!!!

I love Scotland.

4) Navel Gazing

As far as I am aware The Lion Hunter is on schedule for its 14 June 2007 debut. I know that there are at least two people on my friendslist who claim to be more excited about this book than about HP7 (marguerlucy said I could quote her on that, so I am). Your reward is…

Somewhere, someone in the dim and distant Internet past (and they probably don't even read this blog) expressed a whimsical desire for a Medraut/Turunesh fanfic. I don't know if it counts as fanfic if the author of the fandom writes it herself, but I have produced a drabble. A DRABBLE! Moi! I wrote it a while ago and was too embarrassed to post it. But what the heck. It is here and here at rarelitslash. madwoman.

Comments

[ewein2412]

I dumped him when I met his son. I have got to see Telemakos to adulthood before I can consider going back and tackling a post-adolescent Medraut. Surely YOU, you of ALL people, appreciate the allure of the next generation!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I do, of course; isn't it funny? It can be hard on the readers, for whom the books & characters exist in time very differently from us. I'm agonizing a bit right now, because the next book looks like it's going to be another Theron one - he'll figure strongly in it, but the main character is the girl he marries, actually. And I know that this will not appeal as much as the Mad Duke (though I have already scribbled the scene in which he makes a tragicomic spectral appearance) - but it's what interests me at the moment. It is good to have someone else who does understand this rather peculiar situation.

And that said - I realized recently that, while readers speculate madly, I am the only one who can Fill in the Blanks for alll the bits in this saga that I skipped; I was afraid I was writing myself into a corner, but really, a writer has a responsibility to tell tales, doesn't she?

[ewein2412]

while readers speculate madly, I am the only one who can Fill in the Blanks for alll the bits in this saga that I skipped

yes, the ultimate Authority. Why does it work that way, I wonder? tim and I were just talking about this--how for a while people were speculating that electronic communication was going to change the way narrative worked--that stories would no longer be linear, but you could choose different plotlines and structures--not just stories, but the way people could collect information, too. And it turns out it doesn't work that way at all, that people *want* their stories to be linear--not only that, but if there's an alternative ending, for example, they want to know which ending is definitive. Curiously, I speculate just as madly as my readers re. what could/might happen, and there are all kinds of weird alternative plotlines in my head (you don't want to KNOW what happens to Lleu in the version where he DOES get delivered to Morgause at the end of The Winter Prince), but despite this I know clearly which is the "real" plotline; what Actually Happens.

The book I am working on at the moment has forced me to slightly compromise the historic integrity of my own invented world. It requires that I expand rather fantastically on a short story I wrote about 15 years ago--it wouldn't matter except that the story was published. Someone out there will read both, eventually, and be disturbed by the non-alignment of certain events. In my own defense, well, you could say the short story had to be written the way it is to maintain its own internal integrity. It's like an oikotype of a folktale, a local version that doesn't turn up anywhere else and doesn't travel. And anyway, the book will be much better than the short story, so a little obscure and minor inconsistency won't kill me.

But because the story was *published*, I think, it took much more mental agony to push myself in the right direction for the book and say: Suppose it happened THIS way? MAKE it happen this way.

(Of course, the other thing I have to say in my own defense is: WHO'S QUEEN?)

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The promise of tragicomic spectral appearance by Alex gives me palpitations!

[ewein2412]

I meant Alec, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

Are you going back to "Fire"? (I might wind up all disappointed if it's not.) Star Trek fans deal with glaring discontinuities all the time; my roommate gets really obssessive and crazy about explaining things like the change in Klingon make-up between the first and later series. I'm just saying. People who get upset about stuff like that need to calm down.

I'm looking forward to the Harry Potter event as much if not more than I am looking forward to reading the book. The June 14th release date of The Sunbird has me dancing with glee. If I order it at Barnes and Noble for pick-up, will that make them more likely to get it in as a regular order?

--Tori (I don't have livejournal)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

(a) I forgive you!

(b) I am much more excited about The Lion Hunter, which I have just read, than I am about HP7, which I am not planning to read. I may have to buy another copy of The Sunbird to reread since my current one is in storage.

[ewein2412]

thank you, thank you!