HB MES and Publications

Back from a fantastic trip to P-Con. With luck I can get a con report up soon, but I have to give a talk to the digital humanities doctoral students at the Moore Institute tomorrow, so I better get that completed first. Many thanks to Pádraig, Catie, Deirdre and all the organisers as well as to Maura for taking me under her wing, the lovely Sarah for all the laughs, Suzanne and Juliet for great craic, the Talbots for my signed copy of Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, John Connolly for buying us all dinner, the tango dancers for giving us a cause -- oh, and so much more. Anon.

My publication: I have a piece "Before the Watchmen Palaver" in the latest issue of Drink Tank (309). The editors have turned the entire issue over to discussion of the proposed Watchmen prequels. There's a wonderful and terribly unsettling cover, too. Read the full issue in PDF form here: it includes Pádraig and Laura Sneddon, too. Thanks, James, for asking me to contribute. UPDATE: I don't think I remembered to post yet that the collection that includes my essay on reading Lost Girls as post-Sadeian text is also out:



Last but very much not least, fifty-five years ago in a dark corner of Manchester, the lighting flashed, the skies opened up and Mark E. Smith was born. All right, I'm only guessing about the lightning and rain, but it's bound to be likely. My muse, my role model (LOL) -- well, he has inspired me in several stories of late and what better example of sticking to your guns and succeeding on your own terms do you need? So while I might post perennial favourites like "Bill is Dead" or "Touch Sensitive" or "Tempo House" I'll share this instead for those not yet up to speed on The Fall or if you'd prefer a story, snuggle in for storytime with MES and Lovecraft.

P-Con Bound

Heading back to Dublin today for P-Con; looking forward to seeing friends and meeting new folks. Mary and Bryan Talbot will be signing Dotter of her Father's Eyes at Forbidden Planet and I believe Pádraig said there'd be drinks after. Looking forward to more plotting with Maura and I'm on some panels that ought to be interesting.

The schedule here; my bits include:

SAT

12.00 -12.50: Myth and Folklore in a Modern World
KA Laity, Ruth F Long, Peadar Ó Guilín, Brian J Showers

17.00 -17.50: Who Really Needs an Editor? Quality Control in an Internet Age
KA Laity, Ian McDonald, and Peadar Ó Guilín ponder on what an editor brings to a book, and how to find something good to read in a jungle of misspellings and bad punctuation. 

SUN

11.00 – 11.50: Crowdsourcing and Other Alternative Funding Models
If you want to make money out of your writing, what other alternatives are open to you besides getting a publisher to take your book? With KA Laity, CE Murphy, and Brian J Showers.

16.00 - 16.50: Managing Social Media: Pros & Pitfalls
KA Laity, Alan Nolan, Sarah Pinborough, Brian J Showers

Hope it will go well. Doubtless I will write it up. In the meantime, here's some photos from last weekend's trip to Dublin with Robert.

Dublin & Miss Wendy

I tried to post from the phone and kept getting errors. I am getting the photos up online so you can see the fun we had :-)

Boxing Day v St Stephen's Day

I'm packed and ready for the next journey -- meeting Miss Wendy in Dublin which ought to be a lot of fun, but makes it no less difficult to leave Dundee. A bus to Edinburgh Airport then a flight to Dublin and one more bus into the city centre. Hopefully Miss Wendy is having a chance to sleep off her jet lag as she should be there already. I leave the UK where it's Boxing Day and arrive in Ireland where it's St Stephen's Day. Will I feel the difference?

I'm over at the New England Horror Writers blog today with a little information on Dundee's Howff: drop by and enjoy!

A Writer Discovers the Famous Dundee Cemetery

by Kate Laity

The Dundee Dragon (picture by Kate Laity)

I have a lot of New England friends who enjoy exploring the graveyards of the northeast and probing the histories behind them, so it’s a treat to be able to visit an even older cemetery here in Dundee where I am spending Christmas. Of course the big holiday in Scotland is Hogmanay, but I have to be back in Ireland this year, so I’m going to miss it. Dundee also has a famous dragon as well, though it’s best known for the three Js: jute, jam and journalism. The jute mills once employed much of the population, until jute production was outsourced to India in the 1920s. Orange marmalade continues to be a staple of British tables. And Dundee remains the home of DC Thomson, creator of The Beano, The Dandy and The Sunday Post... [read the rest]

Did you get a Kindle or some other reading device for your holidays? Need something to read on it? I have some suggestions :-)

Talk About the Weather

Everywhere I've lived people have always said, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute." Even in Houston, which flabbergasted me because nine or ten months of the year it is relentlessly hot and humid with only the regular 3pm brief thunderstorm to break the hellfire monotony. It was slightly more true in Michigan, but you could generally get a picture of how the weather would go in the morning and plan accordingly with reasonable accuracy (contingent on your knowledge of the seasons, I should add).

In Galway, however, it is literally true. I do consult the weather oracles (i.e. I check my phone) and look out the window, but I know that what I see outside may instantly change. I have walked out into rain and arrived at my  destination in sunshine. I have generally given up on carrying an umbrella, as the bins on most days look like this one. The gales of Galway are legendary. I risked an umbrella today because there seemed to be no wind and it was that kind of pervasive misty rain that quickly soaks everything. But by the time I was crossing the Corrib on my way to campus, the wind had begun to gust again.My umbrella made it here, but I suspect that it may be a challenge on the next leg of my perambulations.

In Galway it's important to wield your brolly like a rapier, twirling it to brace against the shifting winds, dodging other umbrellas on the narrow pavement -- so far it seems to be a very gendered norm, with men raising their umbrellas and women lowering theirs, but we shall see if that has just been coincidence so far. But most of the time I either just get wet or wear a hat (shock, I know). I was walking along the Claddagh the other day, enjoying the dramatic skies (thanks for the touch up on the photo, Ayub!) and watching a jackdaw eat mussels by flying up a few feet and dropping them on the rocks. There were a few rainy clouds out to sea, but while brisk, it was quite pleasant.

And then it started to hail! The wind blew so hard that it was difficult to walk as I hightailed it back toward the centre. Yet by the time I got up to the street again, the sun was out. Sure, it was still raining. But the sun was out. It's crazy, but it always gives people something to talk about, eh?

This weekend there's the Fiction Slam on Friday and then Octocon on Saturday, so I'll be heading up to Dublin to finally meet Pádraig Ó Méalóid face to face after all these years. Next week I'm off to London for some fun including not one but TWO Alan Moore events and some idling in East London with the mad Mr Murphy. Next it will be off to Scotland, but more about that anon. For the present, let's talk about the weather...

Dublin, Newgrange and Maynooth

I had a busy weekend thanks to the Fulbright folks. Our orientation in Dublin proved to be a lively affair that kept us on the run. Thanks to Colleen, Sonya and Pippa for a great experience. Thursday started out a wee bit early, with a dawn train from Galway to Dublin. Good thing I live across the square from the train station!

I haven't been in Dublin in thirty years. A lot has changed. While we started out at Trinity, there was no time to catch the Book of Kells exhibit, so I'll be back (anyway I didn't get a chance to meet up with Pádraig either, so I'll be back soon).

We met the other Fulbright folks, including Michael, Leslie and Gurram who are all in Galway and we had a chance to chat and talk about our projects as we got to know each other. We had a lively welcome and a fun history tour of Dublin with our energetic guide Tommy. That evening we had a dinner theatre show -- a sort of Riverdance light >_< The musicians and dancers were mostly good, but it was a bit cheesey and touristy. But the audience seemed largely pleased (apart from Dominique who's doing a masters in traditional Irish music at Limerick; poor gal, she found it a bit trying).

In the morning we were off to Newgrange, an incredible megalithic site, older than Stonehenge. I wasn't sure I would actually go inside. The passage into the temple is quite narrow and there are all those tons of stones overhead. The light at the winter solstice hits the interior through a special channel designed for that purpose, so they knew when the sun would return once again. Quite a sight, which they recreate with a 40 watt bulb ;-)

So yes, I did it. I hung back at the very end of our group and was rather nervous, especially when they turned out the lights. Okay, panicky might be a better word, but I tried to relax (ha!) and while I may have run out pretty quickly at the end (oh yeah), I can say I did it and it was quite an amazing experience. You can throw your hat into the ring to be one of the lucky few who actually get to see the dawn rise there at midwinter; there's a lottery to choose.

After that we went to the lovely campus at NUI Maynooth, where we had lectures on Irish history and language, a tour of the campus and a tantalisingly brief visit to the Russel Library and all its many treasures. We had a lovely dinner with the new President and lots of the other faculty that spawned a lot of conversations and connections. The second day we got our introduction to speaking Irish and in the afternoon Irish dancing. Hee, a bunch of academics! We did a lot better with the language than the dancing (well, most of us -- Dominique and Amelia did just fine, and we were getting better by the end). Dinner that night was under the full moon that rose over Trim Castle, the twelfth century Norman fortification (take that, Strongbow!). It was an absolutely gorgeous night.

Sunday we headed back to Dublin for the Ambassador's Remembrance and Peace event. The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, spoke eloquently and there was beautiful music, including a new piece in honour of the day that featured the Irish Orchestra and Uillean pipes that had a soaring beauty, both melancholy and by the end, full of hope. It was that kind of event: NYFD and NYPD first responders were honoured -- some dual citizens, some the children of immigrants. It was a very moving event.

Afterward we all headed back to our separate locations, promising to keep in touch and to practice our dancing ;-) I'm still without internet at home (finally have it on campus, hurrah!) so I may not be online as much as usual. Hopefully it will all be sorted soon (or I may just go crazy).