A Book of Rogues and Imposters

I do love these books. :)

Okay, context, because I'm nice like that. Way back in the days of yore, I got my hands on a book by Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald, called The Stars Asunder. In the introduction of that book, they talked about how they'd been stuck out in the back of beyond for a while, and started writing bits of a space opera story at one another because they couldn't really source anything. Each chapter ended on a cliffhanger--whoever hadn't written it would often exclaim "ARGH!" before they went to continue the story--and they kept it up a while. Some years later, they ran across the chapters in their stacks on the desk, looked at one another, then started getting out the bleach for the original version's self-described purple prose.

Stars Asunder was the fifth in the series that followed the first one, and I found it far harder to get into. But I tracked down the original one in a used bookstore, and read.

The first half or so still shows the marks of having been a serial, but the second half? ^,..,^ I am absurdly fond of the story being told, and the people inhabiting the universe.

And will shortly be diving happily into book 2 of the original series, having finished the first, The Price of the Stars a little less than ten minutes ago.

I'm very nearly willing to bet money no-one I know has read these. And that if you do, and you follow the Witches' Horses stories, that you can't spot the person who wandered over. :D

Which is to say that Great Big Sea's ZooTunes concert last night was a marvelous amount of fun, filled with Nova Scotian Rock Gods and one of the very few accordian Rock Stars (appropriately enough wearing rock star sunglasses for the very prosaic purpose of Not Being Blind, Thank You). I actually clapped hard enough to bust a blood vessel in one of my fingers, which is bruising up quite interestingly.

A vast improvement, on the whole, over yesterday just-before-lunchtime. We'd gone out to a quite decent breakfast, and on the way home, a minivan decided she was turning left-goddammit . . in a gap that didn't actually exist.

Her insurance company has accepted full liability, and Tic-Tac was today declared totalled. Sixteen months since we got Tic-Tac, after having been rear-ended on an offramp in February of '06. I could do without this becoming a cycle, really. =P

Still househunting, of course (14 houses so far this year, and the best of the lot was #3, the one we lost ten days ago due to runaway cellular growth*). We're seeing #15 tomorrow lunchtime, and a potential replacement car tomorrow evening.

It's fortunate I have a mutual fund stash, but ye gods I'm going to owe taxes come April.


In other news, a very sweet young thing met a classy older english gentleman and together they produced a positively glorious port-y raspberry wine. If you ask me nicely, I might even tell you what farmer's market I bought it from. :)



*: owner decided not to move to Berkeley due to a diagnosis of severe-enough breast cancer she went in for surgery a month after being diagnosed and six days after making the decision re: moving and informing her would-have-been-renters).

Played on horseback.

several links here

Just in case any of you needed inspiration. :D

It's not real--it's fairy tale, all the colours are too bright and the caricatures are there instead of the proper people behind them--but oh, the SHINY.

See Nanny McPhee, if you can.

This is a man with too much time on his hands.

( he built a harpsichord. )

Meg Davis is this amazingly clear voiced folk singer, who used to write her music using coloured pencils--grass green was middle C, with shading up to red being higher, and shading down to purple being lower--because she never learned to read music. She learned her breathing techniques from old records of opera singers, and played a twelve-stringed guitar to her own songs. Sadly, she has "a few ailments that have kept me from writing and performing music since 1994. Multiple Sclerosis causes the most trouble followed by Fibromyalgia, arthritis of the spine and several discs in my back that keep pressing on nerves until I feel like an Arctic Lemming ready to hurl myself headlong off a glacier."

She also has surprisingly shiny taste in teas.

Her website is here: http://megdavis.tripod.com/