Voyage to Connecticut

 I met the fabulous Queen of Everything for breakfast at Cafémantic in Willimantic. Quite lovely -- never had been there before; it was delightful.

 Then we headed over to WECS to heckle Marko throughout the Punk Rock Jukebox -- I mean, to help promote the Salacious Art show that features some of the QoE's fine work (as is that poster). I got to give a shout out to my Mark up in Scotland, but I couldn't quite convince Marko to play all of Extricate (Extra Kate?). Then we headed off to the Willi Pub and had burgers and beer and more giggles.

 Next it was off to Elena's where the puppies were all happy to greet me, especially if I was eating something, eh Shaq?

 We had some wine and watched frighteningly bad films, The Godmonster of Indian Flats and a little bit of Swamp Girl (which had one amazing theme song O_o).

 On Saturday, Rod and Elena took me to Stew Leonard's, which they'd always talked about but I'd never been to. It's like Whole Foods, except it has all these wacky animatronic displays. Quite an experience. Must work it into a story.

Elena and I hashed out some of the next stage of Jane Quiet, our comic, while -- as I noticed much later -- mosquitoes made a meal of my feet. I headed back to Albany in time to run into the fierce rain, which of course let up once I arrived. Had a nice dinner with Debi (congratulations on finishing that first draft of your novel!) and then it was back to facing the huge pile of things that must be done. Sigh.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Between the Angels and the Apes

Not so much "forgotten" as -- what? Aborted? Headed off at the pass? The initial news was wonderful: Alan Moore writing an opera on John Dee with Gorillaz! What's not to love? It sounded like a match made in an alchemical lab somewhere with the potential of turning into gold. There was just one problem: Gorillaz couldn't be bothered to come up with some artwork for Moore's magazine Dodgem Logic despite having the issue held for them several times.

Really? Is it so hard to give a little quid pro quo? Apparently, so that was that.

Well, if you're Alan Moore, you just get on with the billion other projects you have going and publish what you have in Strange Attractor, and if you're Damon Albarn, you make your own opera on Dee anyway.

The lovely thing about Between the Angels and the Apes is how the notes reveal (once again) Moore's structural approach to composition. Consider the opening section of the outline:

If we're to create an approximately ninety-minute piece on the subject of Greatest Dead Englishman John Dee, then a solid and conventional place to start structurally would be a classic three-act construction with sections of a half-hour each. This also seems to fit nicely with the triangular Greek delta symbol (which is how Dee identifies himself in the facsimile notes presented in A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr John Dee and Some Spirits [Meric Casaubon, 1659] and is also the elemental symbol for fire, which is in turn the element that represents the highest spiritual component of the magician or, indeed, the ordinary human being).

Moore further breaks down each section into subsections with flashbacks and the opening and closing scene of the dying Dee in Mortlake with his daughter. It almost seems as if Moore comes up with the idea of breaking the fourth wall as he writes, suggesting that the magician can sense the audience as "spirits of futurity" watching him from the time to come. His take on Queen Elizabeth is that she's a kind of Faerie Queen and he suspects "that Dee's devotion to Elizabeth was at least partly erotically inspired" so imagines her  as more "otherworldly and erotic" than traditionally envisioned. It's a fascinating look at a show that will doubtless never be. Yes, it includes some of the text as well as the notes for the piece, although it remains unfinished.

You can buy this issue of the journal, which also includes Moore Bumper Book of Magic collaborator Steve Moore, no relation, but subject of his performance piece, Unearthing.

Find this week's round up of Forgotten Books over at Sweet Freedom, next week back at Patti's.

Last week's FFB included Todd's write up of our comic Jane Quiet for which he's given me and Elena the best pull quote ever:

Laity might be the literary child of Angela Carter and Peter Cook and Italo Calvino, and Steier the artistic child of Trina Robbins and Gahan Wilson and Jules Feiffer, and not a little dash of Joan Aiken.

Yes, I plan to employ that one.

Connecticut Adventures + Publication

Well, I ran off on Friday early enough to get to the Punk Rock Jukebox and have a good time aggravating Marko during his show, including decorating him and annotating the walls. Mostly I just giggled in the background while he was trying to talk. Then we ran off to the pub to have some lunch and yak. Marko terrified me with an introduction to the amazing phenomenon of the Shake Weight (O_o). Guess it's a good thing I don't watch much TV.

I had a lovely dinner with Sue Crowley and her husband in their home which I managed to find despite the Connecticut habit of not putting street signs at corners. When I first moved to the state it was one of the first things to get used to -- that and getting directions using landmarks that no longer exist: "Turn right where the old Beaumont farm's barn was before it burned down..." Ah, New England. A world unto itself.

Then it was off to Elena's. She and Rod were busy meeting with Desmond Tutu (yes, really!) so I let myself in and greeted the happy puppies. We all went outside and sat on the back porch for a bit until they got home. In the morning I was a visitor at Elena's cartooning class. She does an amazing job with these young kids.

She has an early class with young kids, but I came for the later class (pre-teens) and I told them the story of "Another Metamorphosis," my swipe of Kafka plus dinosaurs and with more than a little silliness. Now I should be clear: I am not a storyteller, I am a storywriter. I was a bit nervous about trying to tell the story, but I interpolated parts and cut others and it seemed to go okay. I figured dinosaurs at least would be appealing to the audience.

It seemed to do the trick; boy, they sure worked hard on the drawings! It was cool to see how much they were captivated by the ideas, although each on different aspects. There were a couple who really wanted to focus on the car accident, others who wanted to show the transformation and others who wanted to draw the theme park. All of the illustrations were wildly different.

Elena scanned in all the pictures and I've added them to the story and uploaded it to Scribd. I love the internet! Idea to execution in no time. I didn't so much love inserting the pictures and captions in Word. Can anyone explain why each caption came up in a different format?! Some had boxes around the words, some didn't -- one even had a partial box. WHY?! I don't know. Very irritating -- and that's exactly the kind of thing that drives me mad. Maybe I should have been a model instead...

I spent the afternoon with the fabulous Queen of Everything plotting and planning, as well as getting a sneak peak at the Jezebel lounge. Then it was back to Elena's for some more relaxing. A great weekend. I miss all my CT friends and all the peculiarities of the Quiet Corner.

Publishing News & Connecticut Bound

Over at Night and Day, The Spectator's Arts blog, I have an introduction to erotic fiction that will give you some  steamy reading for this rainy day. Simon always gives me such interesting assignments; I find it amusing that the newspaper is so conservative and its Arts blog so liberal. Of necessity, this is only a taste of the genre. As I write in the preamble,

A beginner’s guide to erotic fiction cannot help but be incomplete. One cannot do justice to such a broad body of literature, so I have selected a bouquet of offerings that will provide novices with a sampling of the breadth of the field, from which they can explore further...

I've neglected to mention also having a story accepted for publication, "The Wyandotte Haunting" which includes...

ghostly chickens?

Could it be true? Yes, perhaps. That's a couple of Wyandottes in the photo, whom I snapped at the Altamont Fair last year, or was it the year before? There's a little nod to one of my inspirations, Ramsey Campbell. More info as it becomes available: a collection from Pill Hill Press (home of my zombie Western "High Plains Lazarus" too). The essay on Gilliam's Tideland has finally settled into place (ay yi yi, there's a story), but the main thing I'm hastily working on at present is The Triumph of the Carpet Beetle, my non-fiction collection. More as that gets closer to release (soon, soon -- we all know how pleased I am with tedious and painstaking tasks 9_9).

I'm off to Connecticut today, lunch with M. Marko, dinner with Sue Crowley, then evening at Elena's (assuming they get safely home from their travels). In the morning Elena's cartooning class, then a visit with the QoE before returning to Elena's. I wanted to be sure to have a chance to see everyone before I headed off to England. Life is a bit of a whirlwind lately (only lately?!). So little time, so much to do!

Jane Quiet in Egypt

Wow, Elena is really drawing some lovely panels. The digital colors look so vivid and striking! And hey, what do you think all those cats are doing around the temple...? ;-)

See all the new panels in Jane's Egyptian adventure at the webjam.

BitchBuzz: Should Writers Abandon Social Media?

Three guesses what I'm going to say -- what's that? You only need one? Yeah, go on then. Read it anyway:

Should Writers Abandon Social Media?

By K.A. Laity

Is social media getting to be too much to manage?

This week over at Publisher's Weekly, Andrei Codrescu castigates the use of social networking as a complete waste of time. His interactions with his 5,000 "friends" has left him bitterly disappointed, complaining that "the camaraderie utopia of Facebook and every other social network is just pixel puff, literally a u-topos, the nowhere place where data bots work overtime to reduce you to a brainless consumer" and further, it's "nothing but lies and fake grins," so you can't even get good material out of it.

Codrescu declares, "The time has come for writers to become inaccessible again." Not, he says to cultivate a mystique, but because "no real writers ever lay down anything real in public." Anis Shivani's "New Rules for Writers" (which may or may not have been "satire" as belatedly claimed) likewise suggests avoiding publicity and shunning crowds. Writers need to be solitary iconoclasts: not a good match for social media. Most writers, however, are not likely to follow their urging because social media still offers the best way to get the word out in an ever-expanding market. But many do feel a sense of exhaustion from keeping up with everything.

Read the rest: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/should-writers-abandon-social-media.html#ixzz1CuWn5VbU

Codrescu ought to have looked around a little more, because apparently "real writers" do "lay down" something real in public, especially when they think they're talking between friends (h/t Simon Mason) and don't expect their words to be lifted from Facebook and printed by a newspaper. You may know how to use the privacy settings, but does everyone you know know?

And Codrescu? If you can't get good material out of Facebook, you've really got to get more interesting friends. I'm surrounded by passionate, funny, knowledgeable and fascinating folks who inspire me. I love the internets!

--and have you checked out the latest pages of JANE QUIET? Awesome work by Elena! We finally gave the new arc a title, too.

Jane Quiet 2.0

Welcome to the relaunch of Jane Quiet, the continuing adventures of the occult investigator Elena Steier and I created. We're happy to be relaunching the comic after some delays. We have all kinds of exciting things in store for you, beginning with a wild trip to Egypt that will include a certain cat-headed goddess as well as some wild demonic mayhem.

We're starting out with a blast from the past for Jane: one of her friends from grad school in Edinburgh has phoned her up, reminding her of one of their adventures there (see the prologue!) before asking for Jane's help with some strange phenomena that are happening in her hometown. A clash between the past and the present, mysterious murders, and ancient Egyptian gods will all come together in this arc.

We'll be making use of our trip to the John Hay Library and its occult collection in the near future, and we hope to have the adventures up on a comics distribution site soon (details to follow). We hope you're as excited about this as we are -- it's been a lot of fun getting up to speed once more. It certainly looks like webcomics are the way to go, so we hope Jane finds a lot of readers.

If you're on Facebook, be sure to "like" our fan page! We'll be giving away a unique prize there.

I don't know if JQ qualifies as a "Forgotten Book" but if you're looking for other reading suggestions, you'll find the list at Evan Lewis' blog (Patti's off celebrating her anniversary: congratulations!).

BitchBuzz: Technology and Temperance + Jane Quiet

My column today springs from my annoyance with paternalistic colleagues who keep giving people the impression that academics are stuffy know-it-alls who pontificate from their position of privilege. I realise I can also be a bit unreasonable about it: on President's Day a colleague in the midst of his "technology: bad" talk (thank goodness there was also a "technology: good" talk by the fabulous Kim Middleton) made several references to The Matrix which made me want to break something.

The Matrix?! This is your idea of technology: a twelve year old film? Made when almost NONE of the tech things we're talking about existed as more than an idea? Academics who would never have the chutzpah to offer public opinions on other disciplines have no trouble at all pontificating about things in popular culture that they have at most heard of--they've certainly never participated. It irritates me. But enough bile--I have things to do:

Does Tech Actually Distract from Real Life?

By K.A. Laity

We could all use a little time away from technology, right?

Colleagues of mine forwarded a link on Facebook today to a piece by William Major at the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Thoreau's Cellphone Experiment." In it Major tells of offering an extra credit project to his students: giving up their cell phones to him for five whole days, the better to reach a more "real" experience of life, unencumbered by the "distractions" of their palm-sized technology.

Setting aside the privileged and paternalistic tone of the piece for a moment and setting aside the dubiousness of Thoreau's withdrawal to the "wilderness" of Walden Pond (which did not keep him from frequent, almost daily visits to the village of Concord, or from getting female family members to feed him and do his laundry), the whole aim of this article misunderstands the role of technology in our lives...

Read the rest at BBHQ: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/does-social-media-actually-distract-from-real.html#ixzz1Bai2nins

In more pleasant news JANE QUIET! Have you been reading the prologue? Do you like Elena's new style? What amazing color, eh? Tomorrow the big re-launch: Jane Quiet 2.0 -- yes, there will be prizes!

Jane Quiet RETURNS!

Go to our web jam now for the news! Whoo hoo -- I can't tell you how happy this makes me :-)

Happy Yule, Jane Quiet, Elena & Providence

The solstice is upon us and it pays to remember that the longest night also means it's time for the return of the light. Here's my perennial offering on Anglo-Saxon Yule that ended up online without my putting it there. At least they credited me as author.

I've got another piece up at Polite Company Magazine: a humorous account of a medieval saint.

Waking up at Elena's can be an interesting experience. I am glad not to have been in the room with the evil clown lately. Instead I get the knitted giraffe...

And of course, pin-up boy, Gunnar Hansen...

As well as the Spider-man bedding and if lucky, a puppy. Shaq certainly enjoyed the Spider-man comforter (or perhaps just the belly rubs). The three pups are a lot of fun and of course, as Elena always says, "I'm a mom!" so visitors are very well taken care of. It's nice. Thanks so much for all the food and fun!

Yesterday, once we could tear ourselves away from the pups, we headed off to Providence and the John Hay Library. We needed some visual references for Jane Quiet and to fill in some of her back story. I'm excited that Elena is ready to work on it again -- the story we have in mind is a knock-out! Here's Hay himself with a jaunty holiday bow. Seems that students rub him on the nose for good luck on exams, which makes it shiny. There was a terrific exhibit on Hispaniola in the gallery. We chatted with a librarian who was very helpful and gave me the card for the librarian who's the primary curator for the occult and magic collections -- a good resource. We'll be going back soon with specific volumes to look through (maybe that Danse Macabre bound in human skin!) Elena snapped some photos for reference. They had a copy of the Audubon book on display. Huge!

Next to the library is the little memorial for H. P. Lovecraft, a Providence legend and influential horror writer. I always refer to the "Lovecraft effect" in that city, which seems to mean it's impossible not to get lost. We had GPS and we still got lost (turns out there's two different Prospect Streets in Providence).

So we had a great Indian lunch and snooped around the bookstore (though a drama section that has neither Beckett nor Stoppard doesn't speak highly of their selection process). Re-energized by the trip and all the ideas we bounced around on the drive, we decided to work on storyboarding the new adventure we'd plotted out. So here's Elena sketching away while I was writing dialogue. She's a wonder -- I so admire her skill and how she can capture emotions. I'm so excited about this story -- all I can tell you is Egypt...

Home again to a crying cat, good things in the mail and a boatload of email to wade through. So little time, so much to do!

Happy St. Nick's Day

Or did you get the Krampus instead? Well, my lovely Krampus chapbook designed by The joey Zone is out of print, but you can hear me read it as a podcast. I hope to scan it and get an electronic version available soon, but things are just so hectic (when is that not true?).

I had a lovely lovely time in Connecticut with all the crew. It was great fun that didn't last nearly long enough because I had to come home. Thanks so much to the Queen of Everything for being such a fabulous hostess, my birthday twin Marko and everybody who came. Thanks too to Elena for giving me lunch the next day and -- whoohoo -- knocking out an idea for a new Jane Quiet story! Fingers crossed she gets time to start drawing this week: an Egyptian theme -- how's that sound?

I got my author copy of the collection Exposure from Cinnamon Press that has my short story "Rothko Red" in it. Quite a lovely little volume. I also got notice that I have three items in the new issue of Femspec, reviews of King Kong Theory, Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy and Women and the Divine. Yes, it had been so long since they were submitted that I had completely forgotten about them. Guess I better remind myself to add them to the CV. This is why I need minions!

All right: back to grading. The end is near! I should have all my grading done and submitted before my birthday -- whoohoo!

More Jane Quiet!

Drop by the Jane Quiet site to see the new developments -- gotta get back to work on that script! Elena's catching up to me.

New Jane Quiet

Elena's been drawing again!

At Elena's

My company in the bedroom at Elena's this weekend: the orange mannequin and the gorilla in the wheelchair. Never walked into the room once without starting at the mannequin, thinking it was someone sitting at the computer. We had fun last night, drinking Bubbly Bisons (prosecco + Zubrowka) and watching The Women, yakking and yukking. Miss Wendy is moving away to Mississippi and it's the last chance we would all have to share such a night for a while, so it was a bittersweet. But we had some fantastic pizza and lots of fun. Plenty of puppytime, too, with the Steier pack.

Happy Anniversary, Elena and Rod! Good luck apartment hunting next week, Miss Wendy.  Now let's see if that volcano will let me depart Monday (grrrr).

Jane Quiet Returns!

Elena's got a new comic up at our Jane Quiet web jam page. Whoo hoo!

This is the start of the second issue or arc, I suppose we ought to say as it's on-line. Where did this start? I believe it was me combining Elena's love of drawing dancing babes, my fondness for Johnny Vegas, and a peculiar haunting.

And um, a little John Donne -- but you don't need to know that.

Check it out and leave a comment at the site.

Jane Quiet Moves!

Yes, obvious parallels to "Garbo talks!" will strike a handful of film buffs (and likely no one else), but here's the latest Jane Quiet fun stuff, courtesy of Elena's playful skills and her son Doozie's music:



Half snow day today; yeah, that's going to be effective. Surely my afternoon students will come in for the end of The Lion in Winter. Oh, irony of that name, eh?

Jane Quiet at Coilhouse

Drop over to Coilhouse.net to see Elizabeth S.'s write up on Jane Quiet; I love the serendipity of the internet! It's what brought this about. Please, leave a comment to let Elizabeth and Coilhouse know you stopped by; this is how we measure success on the 'net.

Back from my travels: Friday I went down to Connecticut for Miss Wendy's birthday and had fun with the whole gang. How gorgeous that giant wolf moon looked hanging over the harbour! If only it hadn't been subzero temps, we could have enjoyed the veranda of the Alumni House a bit more. Fabulous food and lots of laughs: only Perilous Cheryl could have made a remark like that about the centerpieces ;-) It was a distinct pleasure to blast Lady Gaga at the Coast Guard Academy.

All right, yes -- it's true: I accidentally stuck my fingers in the birthday cake while moving it. I was a spaz all night (yes, to beat you to the punch, why should that night be any different than any other?).

Stayed up late watching bad movies, woke up far too early with a sore throat. Just too cold and dry. After a relaxing start to the day -- leftover cheese and cake! -- I headed out because I had another birthday party last night. Didn't Angela look fabulous with her spanking new haircut? Much merriment and fabulous food -- mmm, BBQ. I was feeling a bit poorly though, so I came home for tea and the last episode of North and South. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the miniseries; you can't go far wrong with Elizabeth Gaskell as your source (though Wives and Daughters remains my fave).

I've got a two volume Faustus book to review, so I better get cracking. I slept until nearly eleven, but I'm still feeling poorly. Sinuses and chest -- no fun. Considering the speed with which this cold has moved, maybe it'll be gone by tomorrow. I can hope.

WLoADed: Elena Steier

Drop on by the Women's League of Ale Drinkers to see our latest featured artist, friend of the blog Elena Steier. My Jane Quiet co-conspirator talks a bit about her influences and working habits. Above see some of the art that she's been experimenting with for the newly re-tooled Jane.

Jane Quiet: 2.0

We have relaunched the story of your favourite occult investigator! Visit the new Jane Quiet site to see what's going on! New art work from Elena! The script from the original comic! And yes, a new story beginning soon!

Moping and Missing Friends

The nor'easter puts the kibosh on plans for the party at Elena's. I was so looking forward to seeing everybody tonight! I am now going to sulk and watch sad movies... once I finish grading. Bleh.