JanerBlog

Guess What I Have

Seriously, the whole package is so gorgeous, from the hand-stamped wax-sealed stacks pass to the bookplates to the Spinoza patch to the adorable Luther sketch (Dylan, how is your hand still capable of gripping a pen so soon after your release party?!) to the gorgeous original watercolor of Ariana which is so getting framed and going up on my studio wall next to the last page of Speed's Finder:Talisman. I am thrilled. Best hundred bucks I've spent in a long time.

Congratulations, Dylan, for giving flight to your fancy, and in such stellar style. May there be many more.

OMG YAY

Nickelodeon announces a new ANIMATED Last Airbender series!

ETA: More info in this interview!

**KERMIT ARMS**

Trip Report Day 2: Forts Worden and Flagler

On the second day of our trip we got up early, had a nice breakfast with Dave and Brenda, and then drove and ferried our way out to Port Townsend for an Orca Tour. Alas, there was a gale warning, and so the tour didn't go -- so we decided to hike out to nearby Fort Worden, which has been turned into a nature preserve, and also has a really super Marine Science Center, which I wholeheartedly recommend to any fellow visitors who are big nature nerds like me.

Our next stop was nearby Fort Flagler, on Marrowstone Island, a short and beautiful drive away.

Trip Report Day 1: Seattle and Lady Washington

It's going to be too hard to write a complete trip report -- we just saw too much amazing stuff. I kept a diary during the trip, but even copying parts out here would take hours. So rather than spend more time annotating my vacation than I actually spent on the vacation, I'm going to post some thumbnails from each day, with commentary. Enjoy!

Oh, and one more thing worth mentioning: The week after we visited, the crew of the Lady Washington helped make a young pirate captain's wish come true. How awesome is that?

SCHAAAAAAAAAAAADENFREUDE

Rotten Tomatoes on the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie. Paul would like to point out that Marmaduke is currently scored twice as high, at a still-abysmal 10% fresh.

Also, These other articles are worth reading.

NERD NERD NERD NERD

So Thomas Dolby has a recording studio. In a lifeboat. Powered by... wait for it ... wind power. And best of all? It's named after one of the ships in the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series. If this studio were any nerdier, it'd probably implode under its own critical nerd mass.

And I'm saying that with the deepest fellow nerd-respect. Because if I had a bojillion dollars, I'd do the exact same thing.

Together We

So I tried to watch the new BBC Robin Hood on Netflix, emphasis on the "tried". I'd heard it was worth watching -- and it really rubbed me wrong in every way possible. It wasn't campy enough to be on par with Sam Raimi's series, it wasn't serious enough to be a decent retelling, and oh dear God the dialogue. If I want sad, dated nods to sad, dated pop culture in a fantasy setting, I'll watch Shrek.

I actually hauled out the VHS tapes of my old Michael Praed Robin of Sherwood -- still my touchstone TV version of the myth -- to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's campy and corny and the effects and editing are downright abysmal, but there's just something about the actors, and the raw way the footage was shot -- you really believed that you were looking at 13th century England, with all the mud and blood and dirt and shit that came with it. I'll always have a soft spot for it because Clannad did all the incidental music, and tracking them down to get the soundtrack was partially responsible for getting me hooked on Irish music in the first place. And having Herne involved in the plot line was pretty rad, I won't lie.

And we just won't talk about Jason Connery. In the same way that we don't talk about some of his Dad's movies.

Still haven't seen the new Russell Crowe movie, either. Meh.

A midsummer night's moon

Last night, Paul and I took our kayaks out to Sugarloaf lake to watch the sunset and moonrise. It had been a gorgeous day, the edge was finally coming off the heat and humidity, and we both needed a break after a long, hectic and sometimes frustrating week. What a break it was.

We launched the boats just as the sun was disappearing behind the trees -- did some exploring in the gloaming, poking around in reedbeds on water so still and quiet that it seemed a shame to dip your paddle in in and break the mirror-smooth surface. There was no wind at all, and I could turn around and see my wake's turbulence crisscrossing Paul's in perfect symmetry. The lake was as warm as bathwater, and as the air temperature dipped, a soft white mist began to creep over the edges, giving the night an even more beautiful feel.

We were impatient for the moon to rise, and while we sat in our kayaks listening to the powerboaters motor home and slapping mosquitoes, our buddy R came zooming across the length of the lake toward us, a little green lightstick strapped to her bow. Kayak rave!

No sooner did R arrive than we all turned around and saw the enormous, pumpkin-orange moon rising through the trees. It's a stunning, breathtaking thing to be out on perfectly still water, without a breath of wind, and watch a giant full moon break the horizon, reflected perfectly in the water. It's like going to a kayak-in movie.

Once the moon was up, we had more light to see by, and so we slowly took the passage between the two lakes, taking our time and watching the show. There was a father swan in front of us, who kept making this very Angry Swan Noise at us. We tried to give it a berth, tacking away from him, but he kept running along the surface in parallel with us, honking and making that bizarre little frustrated chirp. Finally, through the dark, we noticed his mate and their cygnets trying to make a getaway in the exact same direction we were going. So we turned around and the swans left us alone. Good thing, too -- those things can put up one heck of a fight.

On our way back, we frustrated the beavers, instead. There were at least two of them out, and again, though we kept trying to cut around them, we were treated to a few angry tail-slaps.

We took our time getting back once we were out of the passage, and put the boats on the car at about 11pm, under the moon gone all butter-yellow. It may have just been a paddle on an ordinary lake we've visited several times before, but it was an incredibly beautiful experience, and exactly what I needed this week.

Now it can be told

So I've been sitting on some really amazing Sizer Design news for a while, and now I can finally share it with you! Hooray!

From Paul's Blog:

It's here! Thomas Dolby's first new studio music in [nearly] 20 years, the "Amerikana" EP is released today, and I can finally divulge the news that I will be working with Thomas Dolby on ALL of the design work leading up to and including his new album, "A Map Of The Floating City" later this year. It's a dream come true for a huge Dolby geek/fan, but I've had a great time collaborating with Thomas so far, and there's some really cool stuff coming up in the near future!

Huge congratulations on this beautiful design, baby. You done good, and now the whole world can finally know how good you done.

One more thing I love about Wiscon

Is The Gathering. It's this big, well, gathering of all the attendees as the con is starting. There are all sorts of little stations where you can do neat activities and meet and interact with new people without a lot of pressure. It's a little different every year, and this time around there were all sorts of girly activities like a fiber arts circle for knitting, sewing, spinning and the like; a clothing exchange; a table for making neat little craft pins; volunteers who would braid your hair in interesting shapes; a table for selling and trading 'zines, betting on a who-would-win-if-they-fought throwdown of fictitious characters, and a class on how to pick locks. All this and cookies, too.

Skypephone review

Short: Nice toy, no substitute for a real phone.

Long: Could place calls and receive messages, but an inconsistent wifi signal meant that I was never able to receive calls as they came in. When I had Skype running and the phone on standby, any change in signal meant that skype had to log back in -- and it wouldn't do so automatically. Bummer.

Still, nice to have free long-distance calling from inside my studio, and an ipod with a functional battery again.

On Wiscon Sin

So Wiscon was amazing. Met up with all sorts of nice folks, old friends and new, went to wonderful panels, ate way too much food, including on Sunday when I became a hobbit and literally had ten meals: First breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, lunch, teatime, second teatime, dinner, desserts, and partying. Partying counts twice because there was beer. I also finally made Tempest a new version of her long-awaited Sparklepony drawing. And somewhere in there was a farmer's market in front of the capitol building where i got handed a loaf of cheese bread as big as my head hot out of the oven with (I am not kidding) a half pound of crusty brown Wisconsin cheese oozing out of it. Sumana and I destroyed it in about fifteen minutes.

And now I will fall over dead with the tired. But first, have some pictures.

Holy Balls Am I Sick of Computers Right Now

Worked late all three nights this week.

Also:
Sunday: Family Tech Support.
Monday and Tuesday: Setting up new iPhone, transferring music and contacts, installing apps.
Wednesday: Hard Drive Brain Transplant for a friend failed due to lack of specific hardware adapter bits, then my backup drive decided to have a meltdown when I put it back in its enclosure. Spent four hours and used three computers to get it running. Note to self: Jump straight to the Disk Utility off the Boot Disk next time. It always works, stupid.

I just wanted to make comics this week, I swear. If anything, all this frigging fussing with gadgetry has made me resentful of its encroachment on my free time. I might just bury the iphone in the back yard for a while.

Nerdy saving grace: My backup drive, which uses OSX's Time Machine, is named McFly -- and it did finally regained consciousness. And no, it wasn't wearing purple Calvin Klein underwear.

Kayak Petting Zoo

Lee's had a huge boat demo today, and Paul went shopping for a kayak. We test drove all sorts of models, from plastic canoes to little twirly creek boats to 18' fiberglass touring boats that'll set you back four grand (and that's before you get to the kevlar option). After trying many many boats, Paul finally settled on a Pungo 140, with an additional bow bulkhead that Lee's will install. And hey James! You and Paul can be boat buddies now.

Even after padding in all sorts of spendy fancy boats, it turns out that I'm really happy with my Tsunami. It's a good little boat, with excellent stability (it *is* kind of a pain in the ass to edge it, but I'll take that in favor of having a solid seat in the water -- for now anyway), it's roomy enough for my backside, and it's a joy to paddle. I had some real fun in it on Thursday night, threading it through a couple of tight strainers, and getting a feel for what the boat could really do. Of all the boats I test-drove, I really enjoyed the P&H Cetus the most -- but between its cost and the extra fussing I'd have to give a 'glass boat, I strongly doubt I'll be trading in my big red plastic tank anytime soon.

I also looked in the mirror today and discovered that my wobbly bingo wings were gone, in favor of nice tight muscle. Nothing sculpted or defined -- my arms are still big and roundish -- but they're on their way. And that's a darn good feeling.

Yay!

Finished a neat little thing I can tell you about soon. Feels good to have finished something, however small.

You know how I can't shut up about how awesome our Farmer's Market is?

Well, it's for good reason. The People's Food Co-op really deserves a massive shout-out for all their hard work on this issue, especially Chris Dilley and Elizabeth Forest. Unlike most other crunchy-granola organizations, they're not about the food suppliments and high-end specialty items that only the well-to-do can purchase regularly -- they're about bringing healthy, affordable, local food to the community -- and in Kalamazoo, making that food available with WIC/EBT/Bridge programs is essential. When the Coop had their first big outlay of seedlings this spring, I was delighted to see signs up next to them saying you could buy them with your Bridge card -- so if you wanted to start a little window-box of lettuces and have fresh, cheap salad all summer long, you could lay out the $3 and be all set. How awesome is that? If you local folks have neighbors who might not know about this, spread the word, so that everybody can take advantage of this great resource

Rock on, Food Coop, and Farmer's Market. You make this city such a good place to live.

Pam commands, so mote it be.

Pam Noles commands that you listen to this BBC Radio play about The Fisk Jubilee Singers, which means you should, because Pam is awesome.

The first time she ever pointed me at this story, the first thing I could think of was what a great comic it'd make. Now, whoooo do we know who already has an encyclopedic knowledge of the story, a mighty love for comics, and is known to be a good (and published!) writer in her own right? *whistles innocently, stares pointedly in the direction of LA*

Swell!

The Swell Season kicked off their US tour in Kalamazoo last night (I know, right?) and it was one of the absolute best shows I've ever seen -- I was moved to tears more than once, and the audience was so responsive that we were all swept away together. There were some really wonderful moments, including a beautiful looped fiddle solo from Colm Mac Con Iomaire, a really nice opening set from Glen's old guitar buddy Mark Dignam, an absolutely inspired cover of Into the Mystic, this hilarious moment where Glen unintentionally prefaced the song "Back Broke" with a reference to Christian country singer Ray Boltz's coming out, a guest musician from the audience, and loads of lovely singing from the audience, complete with hair-raising harmony (Seriously, it's hard enough to get an audience to keep time, let alone sing in bazillion-part harmony). Glen also tried a really gutsy move, playing Say it to me now with absolutely no accompaniment or amplification. It was a really incredible moment until -- well, just watch the video. Oh who am I kidding, that just made it an even more incredible moment.

Some nice local moments, too: Marketa came into my friend S's salon to have her makeup done before the show and was super nice to everyone, and Glen was in Water Street having coffee exactly when I had considered stopping by for more caffeine, but then thought I should be all responsible and save money and stuff, and so I kept driving instead (insert cursewords here). Though I really have no idea what the heck I'd do if I met him -- probably turn into goo and tell him how I've had a crush on him since I was in eleventh grade when he was still Outspan Fookin' Foster. Which would endear me to him immediately, I'm sure.

There's a ton of grainy iphone video up on Youtube right now, so if you're curious, go have a look.

Orchid Lane!

The last few times I went to Orchid Lane, my favorite hippy-dippy fair-trade clothing store -- which I have been going to since it first opened twenty years ago -- they had almost nothing that looked good on my big ole body. This was really depressing, because they used to have all sorts of stuff that did well by me. I was expecting more of the same this time around, and really only intended to swing by for old times' sake before heading to Value Village, but I hit the Skirt Motherlode. You can't find any more skirts there because I BOUGHT THEM ALL. Seriously, I got about five of those gorgeous silk recycled-sari patchwork wrap-skirts that look AWESOME on me, for $15 each. I am made really happy by this, because I'd had a heck of a time locating good looking sarongs for this summer, and this completely makes up for the absence of nice batik.

(This doesn't quite make up for the puking [see below], but is darn close.)

Like

Jane Irwin just deleted all of her Facebook Wall Posts.

Seriously, the privacy thing was just getting to me. I should never have allowed myself to become so dependent on it in the first place: It's a time-sink, it's yet another false substitute for actual contact with friends, and it's taken me away from supporting this blog.

I'm still keeping the account for several reasons: it does give people a chance to get a hold of me that mightn't otherwise; both sides of my family use it heavily for communication and pictures; I need it for work development; and if I ever do make another comics series, I'll need it for promotional purposes. The reality is that Facebook keeps a copy of every keystroke, every photo or link you post, even a trail of every page you visit. That info is theirs whether you delete your account entirely or not, so from now on I'll just be using it as another broadcast point for stuff I write here.

So hey, if you've noticed that I deleted some stuff you posted to my wall, never fear. I still love you in real life -- I just don't love Facebook.

I like this Alot

Why hasn't anyone told me about Hyperbole and a Half before? I like it, Alot. h/t to Pam Noles.

Deadliest Catch, explained

A few weeks ago, I was hanging out with my family, and because the new baby required us to stay put most of the time, we wound up watching a lot of cable TV. We don't have cable at our house, so I took this as the perfect opportunity to subject my family to a rerun of Deadliest Catch, which they'd never seen.

As the captains bemoaned their dead loss and the deck bosses hollered obscenities at the greenhorns, my mom asked why I liked the show so much. I replied that they looked and acted and sounded like people I'd grown up around: Hard working, prank-pulling, self-made men. Then the light went on.

"They're 'Ocean Farmers'," she said.

Yeah.

Another entry in the My Husband is the Awesomest series:

Hey, remember me saying a while back that Paul had a bunch of stuff in the pipe that was awesome, but I couldn't talk about it yet?

Well, here's just one of them: Armchair Revolutionary. More here and here and here.

Congrats, Paul. You're the awesomest.

Why I won't be watching either Avatar movie

There are currently two movies with the word "Avatar" in the title: The first just won three Oscars and ranks as the highest grossing film of all time, and the second is on the way. The current blockbuster can best be summed up as "Dances with Smurfs," and I don't really have much more to say about it because I haven't seen it and probably never will, but the upcoming movie strikes very close to my heart.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is the single best animated series I've ever seen. It was created for kids aged 6-11, but it reduced both Paul and I to tears on multiple occasions, and we watched several discs straight through, nonstop, because we were utterly captivated by the story. The writing is that good. The characters are that good. The setting is that good.

And the setting is what makes the series so truly unique. It's set in a mythical land, but not the usual Celtoid McEurope we're used to seeing in thousands of other fantasies. The land, its peoples, and its history are all based on different Asian countries, along with Greenland Inuit culture. It's a rare and beautiful demonstration of "appropriate cultural appropriation" -- where two white guys created an outstanding work of storytelling art that's set entirely in non-European cultures, and told it with research, empathy, and effort.

So. You'd think I'd be thrilled about the movie, right? Wrong.

The movie producers have gone out of their way to strip out the definitively Asian influences, starting with the cast. In a stunning display of modern yellowface, the movie team cast white kids as the three heroes, and Dev Patel, the former star of Slumdog Millionaire as Prince Zuko, who serves as the villain for the first two-thirds of the series. They also stripped out the authentic Chinese script that serves as the written language for all four nations, replacing it instead with fake mystical writing. The costumes, the backgrounds, the nations' very identities, all the details that make the series a tribute to Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Tibetan and Inuit cultures are gone in favor of hollow, generic Hollywood artifice.

The movie action figures -- which are, of course, white to reflect the new cast -- only compound the problem. Sure, I can finally get a Katara now, but she looks absolutely nothing whatsoever like the strong, annoying, motherly, fierce, Inuit character I fell so much in love with. (This is actually the one place where the original Nickelodeon series really falls down hard: you can buy a zillion Aang action figures, a whole bunch of Zukos, a good-sized handful of Sokkas, and even get multiple figures of minor characters like King Bumi, Admiral Zhao, and even that loser Jet. But how about the girls? You know, fifty percent of the original team? Nothing. Zero. Oh wait, I take that back. Since I started writing this post, you can now get a plush Katara dollie. 'Cause girls love dollies, right? Seriously, I would kill for a Toph action figure for my cube, to put next to Nausicaa and Steelheart and Gran'ma Ben in my Hall of Kickass Cartoon Women.)

It's a huge betrayal, and A:TLA fans haven't been taking it lying down. Ever since the first casting call went out, sites like Racebending.com and Aang Ain't White have been leading the protests. Even Roger Ebert weighed in against the casting choice.

Unfortunately, however, Hollywood isn't taking the protests lying down, either. First, movie producers ignored and returned over 200 protest letters, then Viacom censored Racebending.com's t-shirts on Zazzle, and the latest insult comes from Facebook, who shut down the Racebending group. I guess they must feel threatened by a bunch of fans peacefully, civilly and articulately protesting an unfair casting choice, as opposed to all the other questionable groups they permit. (ETA: The group's been restored [amidst further protest, of course]).

All this is just another example of the danger of a single story, and if you only click on one link in this post, make it this one. What a sad big-screen debut for such a wonderful series. No matter how awesome the special effects are (and I don't doubt they will be amazing), no amount of fancy CG can make up for the lousy changes the movie producers made to the original, and the spectacle just simply isn't worth the betrayal.

New Pinup!

Over the last couple of months, I've been doing some pinups for folks. I don't want to share them all quite yet because I want the giftees to have the right of first post. Ironically, the last one gifted is the first one to make it out on the intertubes, so I finally get to post it!

Guy Davis is hard at work on the third graphic novel of his creator-owned series The Marquis, so I made him a pinup to celebrate.

(click to embiggen)

I can hardly wait to see what fresh new horrors crawl out of his wonderfully twisted brain. If you're not familiar with Guy's personal work, you may know him from his long run on Mike Mignola's BPRD from Dark Horse. A whole bunch of other folks are doing really gorgeous Marquis pinups, and Guy's collecting them on a special blog. Go have a look!

My Husband is the Awesomest

So Paul is a darn good designer, and recently, he's had a couple of really major coups. Some of them are still in the pipe, but here are a couple I can tell you about.

First, a while back, Thomas Dolby had an open contest on his blog to design the tee-shirt logo for a one-shot concert he was giving in London. Paul won, and you can see the logo being used in the concert here and here and here.

And secondly, Paul's a regular visitor to Warren Ellis' Whitechapel Message Board, where each week, Warren posts a new "Remake/Remodel" challenge, where artists and designers take a crack at re-imagining old, forgotten (and usually public-domain) characters. Paul usually does at least one design a week if not more, and his submissions are usually really well received. Fast forward to this week, when Warren gave the following challenge:

You are an artist/designer. You have to put together the cover for a comic called SUPERMAN. It is issue 1 of this book.

You have been told that Superman is a man who dresses predominantly in a shade of blue, and wears a red S symbol. You know nothing else about the character.

The cover must include a logo and the text THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE DARING EXPLOITS OF THE ONE AND ONLY SUPERMAN.

And that's it.

It's up to you what kind of company you're at. What kind of comics you make. How you translate that description of Superman. What era you're in. Who you are, even. Go nuts with it.

You have one week. Go.

The story's received quite a bit of press in the last couple of days, and guess whose image is getting shown far and wide?

Yup. He is my husband. He is full of awesome.

Watching the Olympics, part 2

Me: Yay women's speed skating!
Announcers: Oh noes! The ice machines are broken! The speed skating track is ruined! Delays! Spare machines brought in from Calgary!
Paul: This is Canada. They had to go all the way from Vancouver to Calgary to find a zamboni?
Me: They should've started with the neighbors' garage.
Paul: Or Home Depot. Cryin' out loud.

ETA: Actually, the better punchline would've suggested Canadian Tire. Our USA is showing.

Beyond Victoriana

Man, I am so behind on my blogging; the more posts I write tonight, the more posts I remember I've intended to write for a long time. This one is probably the most overdue: The Beyond Victoriana Project.

This series is so incredibly amazing and I am so, so happy that Ay-Leen is writing and sponsoring them. It's a fantastic resource, and shows the vast, beautiful, fantastic possibilities that the steampunk genre can encompass -- but only if we stretch the fandom to allow room for more than just the basic Brit-centric faux-Victoriana, and be welcoming while we do it.

Here's an index. Go read! It'll crack your imagination wide open.

Skiing with Dan

Dan: Okay, here's a map. We're here. We can take this trail or that one. That one's prettier, but it's going to be harder; you may have to take off your skis for part of it.

Me: That's okay. The scenery's more important than my dignity.

Dan: In fact, I think I can see on this map where you left your dignity. Back there at the bottom of the hill.

Me: I usually don't fall unless I intend to. It was either that or run into those saplings.

Dan: Yeah. You made the right call, provided you don't mind the bruises.

Me: I don't mind them much, but sometimes they freak Paul out.

Dan: Just tell him to use them as a Rorshach test.

Me: Yeah, but then he'll want to make drawings out of them. When Paul's drawing on my ass with a Sharpie marker, I'll know who to blame. "Hey look, this one's an alien!"

Dan: An alien that gets more jaundiced as the days go by.

Me: ... from the flu we gave him when he tried to invade.

Dan: ...

Me: I am so blogging this when I get home.

The iPad Meh.

First thoughts on the iPad? Meh.

It's basically just a supersized iPod Touch No OS, so it can't run programs, which pretty much kills any desire I have to own one -- I was hoping for a pressure-sensitive machine that could run Photoshop and Manga Studio. It'll be a great media-player, and very likely a Kindle-killer. A lot of other people will like it very much. Me, personally, I don't like having a lot of separate gadgets. I like having one gadget that does everything. And right now, for me, that gadget is my Fujitsu convertible tablet laptop. I love the damn thing so much it's a little ridiculous. There are things I'd change about it, like giving it more RAM, a bigger hard-drive, and making it about three pounds lighter. All these are minor quibbles, and it has an awful lot going for it, starting with the hot-swappable hardware bay: it holds a cd-player, a spare battery -- this is the option I use most often; with both batteries fully charged, I get close to 5 hours of drawing time -- or an empty spacer if I want to shave off a pound or so. If I want to get all crazy-nostalgic, it even came with a 3.5" drive.

It does everything. I did all the touchups for Clockwork Game on it, and I'm learning how to draw on it from scratch -- it even takes SD cards, so working from photo reference is a snap. I do all of my writing on it. I programmed my website on it. I read books on it, so having a separate machine specifically for ebooks is redundant. I watch movies on it, and use it in my office as a spare TV, by streaming Hulu and Netflix. Best of all, it's downright *cuddly*, and I really enjoy working with it. Again, my only complaint is that it's a little chunky -- but so am I, so there you go.

I never thought a piece of hardware would turn me away from my long love affair with Apple products, but Fujitsu makes a damn fine tablet -- and Apple's gonna have to turn out a much more universal product than the iPad to make me give it up. I still have (and love) my iMac, but the iPad leaves a lot to be desired.

Creation

EEEEEEEEEEE PAUL BETTANY AS CHARLES DARWIN BE STILL MY SQUEEING HEART

ConFusion

I went to ConFusion yesterday, just the one day. the highlight of the afternoon was getting the chance to speak with Peter S. Beagle for a short time while he was autographing. He had a chair set next to him, and each autograph-seeker would sit down, drinking in his soft storyteller's voice, best appreciated side-by-side rather than across a huckster's table.

He spoke touchingly of his heroes, some of whom I'd heard of (Harriet Tubman, King Christian X of Denmark and Eleanor Roosevelt), and some I hadn't (Hugh Thompson, Jr. [Beagle wrote Thompson a letter, and when an editor wanted to include it in a book about Thompson, Beagle had the opportunity to speak to Thompson on the phone]). I'd just purchased his first book, and while I was waiting in line, I'd read the first chapter, which began with a raven fetching a ring of baloney for a man named Mr. Rebeck. Seeing both together on the same page, I couldn't resist asking if Mr. Rebeck was named after the man with the sausage-machine, and Mr. Beagle said the version he'd learned was about Mr. Dunderbeck, but that he'd heard it sung both ways. He sang a verse for good measure, then told me about his dear aunt who'd taught him the song, how much he loved her as a boy, and how well and beautifully she lived her life.

I ceded the chair to another friend who had a writing question for Mr. Beagle, but I left feeling that despite its brevity, I'd had a very intimate and deep conversation with an artist with a deeply kind and loving soul -- and also that everyone else who sat in that chair would say the same thing. When I related the story to John Scalzi later that evening, he said, "Ah yes. And that's the magic of Peter Beagle."

And so it was.

On a vaguely similar note, Virus sent me this lovely story about a man searching for Kurt Vonnegut.

New look, new url

A few years ago, a domain name speculator bought the FieryStudios.com sitename and -- if I recall correctly -- tried to get me to buy it from them for an inflated price. I waited them out, and a couple weeks back it became available again, so I snapped it up for the next ten years. Take that, jerks.

To celebrate, I finally took some time to spruce up the old thing, and good heavens, what an embarrassment. Tables, bad code, quirks-mode-inducing DTD declarations, and some code snippets that I swear go back as far as 1998. Yes, I've had a website for going on twelve years. You kids get off of my lawn.

Anyway, it's up now, and should be reasonably bug-free. Shout if you see anything wonky.

Skiing the Nature Center

Spent a lovely afternoon skiing today. Went to the Kalamazoo Nature Center with my buddy Dan, and got in at least two hours' worth, maybe a bit more. The sun was shining, the snow was just perfect, and we arrived back at the car just as the last pink light was fading from a mackerel sky. Saw lots of birds, starting with a big blue heron hunkered down by an open stream. We flushed an enormous hen-turkey -- probably a good twelve pounder -- and marveled at the heavy thump of her wings as she got off the ground. A large flock of Canada geese went past, low and loud enough that we could hear the whistling of their feathers. Best of all, I saw my very first Pileated woodpecker. I've been wanting to see one since I first read a story about them in Ranger Rick magazine when I was about seven, but have never been lucky enough until today. They're enormous, just a bit smaller than their more famous (and likely extinct) cousin the Ivory-billed woodpecker, and really impressive to see in flight. They have a lovely laughing call that we heard several times as we skied through the woods.

The mice were busy on the prairie preserve, and there were plenty of footprints with little tails dragging behind, moving between switchgrass and wild rye to harvest seeds. The deer were out -- we didn't see any, but did see plenty of fresh tracks, and the turkeys had been following the freshly-broken trail left by the snowshoers and skiiers (They're no dummies, Dan remarked). As we left, we passed three young guys in Carhartts, armed with snow shovels and sleds heading out to get in some crazy night sledding, which reminded me of all the crazy night sledding we used to do in Ypsi: sled shrapnel and stolen Taco Bell trays and Russ up to his shins in the Huron chasing after his saucer sled and Eric getting three seconds of hangtime before coming down right on his coccyx.

Good times.

And then I came home and made three kinds of cookie dough, for the big annual bakefest tomorrow. More on that, later.

Help Pam Noles support the Interstitial Arts Foundation

Work's been kicking my butt lately, so I'm a day or two late on posting this, but this needs to get signal boosted:

Pam Noles (who is Black, Geek, and Fine With That), has quilted the most amazing wrap skirt and is donating it to an auction for the Interstitial Arts Foundation:

In addition to being gorgeous and twirly and a genuine hand-sewn work of art, it's also inspired by a short story, "Berry Moon," by Camilla Bruce. Those of you who know me well know how much I dearly love cross-pollination like this. Songs written for poems written for artwork based on photographs. Fabric Arts made for short stories. Dancing about architecture. You know the stuff: It's wonderful, and inspiring, and it makes the world a much better place.

As if all that weren't enough, Pam will custom-size the wrap-skirt's buttonhole for you.

So what're you waiting for? Go forth and Bid! It's for a good cause!

Why I love steampunk

So I like steampunk. But I'm not Steampunk, in the same way that I own cats and a dog, but I am neither a Cat Person nor a Dog Person. Similarly, I admire a lot of the hippie/crunchy/locavore aesthetics, but I don't really fit into any of those subcultures, either.

But I do have a deep and abiding love for steampunkery, though far more for its punk aspects than its fascination with Victoriana. The DIY aspects. The idea that with a pile of scrap metal, rudimentary tools and elbow grease, you can make something that'll power your house.

See, I grew up with folks who didn't just believe in that ethic, they put it into practice. And I finally uploaded some photographic evidence. This is one of my grandfather's steam engines. Notice I said one.

Here's Grampa posing in his driveway, circa 1979. The barn in the background was moved there overland to replace the one that burned to the ground. The toolshed, which you can see in the upper left of the picture, was built with the 18" support beams left over after the previous high school's gymnasium was torn down; there was a family joke that you could drive a tank on top of the toolshed roof and not fall in.

That CASE eagle logo was a familiar sight in my childhood. When I was in grade school, Grampa and dad got their hands on the boiler (the big cylinder part, and the large vertical part into which you throw coal) of another Case and built an outbuilding around it in the backyard, with the logo visible through the front window. They dug a trench between the outbuilding and our house, ran hot water pipes between, then outfitted the house with finned-tube baseboard heating. Every autumn after that, us kids spent a couple of weeks with my dad out in the woods, cutting cordwood to heat the house. I was the only kid I knew who came home from school and started a fire so she could take a bath that night.

Grampa again, this time in front of his wood shop. Behind him, you can see the top of the Giant Stride, a diabolically fun piece of playground equipment he built for us grandkids. It was basically a big flagpole set into cement, with a four-armed spindle on the top. From each arm hung a rope with a little three-rung ladder on it, just big enough for a kid to sit in. We'd get that thing going fast enough that there was usually an even-money chance somebody'd clip their ankles on the windmill. Good times.

So that's a tiny fraction of my steampunk lineage. No wonder I grew up to be a do-it-yourselfer -- self-publishing's a walk in the park by comparison.

My mother, the computer nerd

Last night, I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with my mom, helping her get rid of a particularly nasty bit of malware. There was swearing, dropped phones, and a lot of frustration on both ends, but after battling through several rounds of obnoxious pop-ups (Her: "Augh! PrOn everywhere!" Me: "Just close the windows, unless it's good prOn. In that case, save it to your desktop.") mom finally got some antivirus freeware installed, and nuked her very first virus all by herself.

I haven't been this proud of her since she first called to tell me she'd used Snopes to shut down an argument at work. Personally, I think she deserves a Nerd Merit Badge. I know I'm getting this one for myself.

Signal Boost: Project POORCRAFT

Hey, everybody: my buddy C. Spike Trotman is starting up a brand-new project and needs your help! It's called Project: POORCRAFT and it's going to be a guide to living frugally in urban and suburban areas, told in comics format. But don't take my word for it; head on over to Kickstarter and hear Spike tell you about it herself.

Tell it, Joey

Joey Manley, ladies and gentlemen.

I don't even consider myself a webcomicker. I'm a graphic novelist who publishes her betaware on the web.

Or used to. And hopes to do so again soon.

That perfect blend of creepy and awesome

How to make a mummified Fairy

Well, here's a first.

Yes, you read that right. Heinrich Uhrmacher, a fictitious watchmaker who fictitiously died in 1685, just got un-fictitious junk mail from Google. Google's never written me before. Should I be jealous?

SPX 09 Con Report

Home from SPX and soooo tired... but if I don't do the con report tonight, I'll never get to it, so here goes:

Had an absolutely fantastic time, as always. SPX has always been my hands-down favorite show, and this year was no exception. I got the chance to hang out with old friends and new, sell a metric butt-ton of steampunk jewelry (and even a few books, too!) and talk shop with a bunch of creators. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't vote in this year's Ignatz awards because I hadn't read enough of the participants (bad artist!), so I'm hoping to do better next year. This was also one of the best shows I can remember for sheer quality of available books -- I was blown away by the offerings, of both traditionally-published graphic novels and gorgeous, innovative, risk-taking minicomics, and I bought more stuff this year than I can ever remember buying before.

There was one other fun thing that happened -- Paul and I marked our 5th anniversary on Saturday. What better way to celebrate than by selling comics and surrounding ourselves with fans and friends alike? Thanks to everyone who stopped by to wish us well.

I didn't take a lot of photos, but here're a baker's dozen to look through. The captions will have to suffice for the remainder of my con report, as I am mighty tired.

Steampunk Jewelry

Here's the steampunk jewelry I'll be bringing to SPX this coming Saturday. I don't have any new books to sell, so I need to have a little something extra on the table.

I've run out of matching gears, matching dials, and pretty much everything else good-looking, so this is probably the very last batch of this type of jewelry I'm going to make for a long time to come. Each piece is unique, and is pretty much impossible to re-create. They also tend to sell out really fast at shows, so if you're thinking of buying one, I encourage you to stop by the table early in the show.

Geneology

I found this little bit of trivia last night while doing more research. If this is the right record -- which it sure looks like it is -- it makes the story even sadder than it was. It means that Schlumberger lost two sisters and a brother after he left for America -- and probably never even knew they died. He and Maelzel were moving around so much it was probably impossible to get mail.

Cures scurvy, the common cold, and lazy shoggoths

So I finally figured out what was wrong with my sourdough starter, also known as Olmer the Shoggoth. For the last year, it's been turning out these sad, flat loaves. They taste just fine, but they're really uninspired, with a dense, clammy crumb. Lately I've been forced to spike the dough with a pinch of storebought yeast to achieve the leavening I wanted -- which ticks me off, because frankly, that's cheating and defeats the whole purpose of having a sourdough starter.

After a bit of googling, I discovered that starter bacteria require a pretty acidic enavironment to grow and multiply properly. Our water is very, very hard -- to the point where I have to actually scrape off calcium deposits from the sinks and fixtures. Turns out that I'd been slowly alkalizing my bacteria! One website suggested that I crush up a Vitamin C tablet and add that to the starter at feeding time. I was skeptical, but I tried it anyway. Three days later when I opened the jar to check on it, Olmer was happy and bubbling and percolating again, so I immediately split him in half and started baking.

Here's the results:

Pretty, huh? All I use is flour, water, salt and shoggoth.

Screw it, I'm writing fiction.

After wibbling and wibbling over an upcoming scene, and talking to both Jim and Pam about it, I've decided to proceed with a scene I've written, as-is. It involves using Goethe as a sounding-board for Kempelen. We know for a fact that Goethe did see Kempelen's machine (he wrote Charles-Auguste about it) but I have the scene taking place at Kempelen's house -- and it's far more likely that Goethe was only one of the countless thousands who strolled past the machine when it was displayed in Frankfurt and Leipzig during its 1783-85 tour. It's highly unlikely that Goethe was anywhere near Vienna at the time, and Kempelen was old enough that he wasn't really traveling anymore. Still, there's not a historical figure (or character so far in the story) who is better suited for the conversation, and what the scene needs to accomplish: a discussion of the unification of art and science.

So? Screw it. I'm throwing the facts under the bus on this one and going for what the story needs. The audience needs to see the speaking machine demonstrated, the story needs a parry-riposte on art versus science, and von Kempelen needs to get off the self-pity pot. I'm writing historical fiction, so there.

And to soothe my conscience, I've updated the parameters of the About the Story page:

Clockwork Game is a mostly-true story, a dramatization of actual historical events, retold with as little conjecture as possible. I have, however, taken what I consider small liberties to make the story flow more smoothly. I have condensed certain events, and occasionally places, into representative moments that capture the spirit of the story more than the true letter of its history. Some characters, whose names and histories were lost to the predations of time, had to be created almost entirely from whole cloth. Strong--but not ironclad--proof exists for the actions depicted in certain scenes. And, of course, dialogue and personalities had to be invented, based on whatever writings were available.

All this being said, I am doing my best to remain faithful to the facts and personalities of the individuals, and will note any purposeful deviations, and my reason for doing so.

Man, I take this shit way too seriously.

Edited to add: Know what the dumbest thing is? Another week after I wrote this, I deleted Goethe from the story entirely. He's gone. And know what? The story's much, much better for it.

Ohwha Tanerd Iyam

For Christmas, I bought myself a few indulgences -- a couple picture books that are historical trivia/glossaries/companion pieces to the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin books, a couple more reference books about The Turk, and this, which I found on eBay. I'm going to find a wee tiny frame for it. Does anyone else want some pretty, cancelled stamps from Slovakia? I'm not a collector myself, but if you are, speak up and I'll send them out.

(Slovakia also struck a coin with Kempelen's face on them, and Hungary did one with the Turk on it, and I'm chasing both on eBay right now. What a colossal nerd I am.)