1. Delightful news: the first Mythic Delirium anthology is out in the wild. I have a poem in this one, alongside such amazing people as Amal El-Mohtar, Marie Brennan, Sonya Taaffe, Georgiana Bruce, Jane Yolen, Ken Liu, C.S.E. Cooney, and many, many others.

2. Once Upon a Time is even more snarkable than I could have dreamed in my wildest hopes. Good thing, too, since I will be recapping each episode for Tor.com this season. You can catch the initial posts here, here and here.

I've also been chatting about Paddington Bear, because, Paddington.

3. I finally got to the new Harry Potter section at Universal, and I have to say - I like it a lot more than the first section. Fake London, complete with the little teddy bears that I was chasing all over London (at, I must say, a higher price, which - Universal, if you are more expensive than anything in London, you really need to reconsider your pricing stategy), a dragon that blasts fire every few minutes which is undoubtedly going to be very unpleasant in the summer (you can definitely feel the heat), ice cream, evil wands - yay. Did I mention the dragon? Yay! If you can splurge for the dual tickets for both parks, I recommend it - that lets you take the little train over to Hogwarts, which was fun. (I kinda would have liked at least one view from the train to the rest of the park/Orlando area, but I can see how that would have spoiled the Harry Potter effect.

The one negative note: if you do use a large mobility scooter, the restaurant at the new section may be difficult to navigate - to the point where the greeters at the entrance will suggest leaving the scooter at the entrance and walking in. (I know, because they asked me to do just that - and I was in a smaller scooter.) I would recommend NOT leaving the scooter outside - it's a longer line/distance than it appears.

Tidbits

Mar. 27th, 2014 09:41 pm
Various tidbits that we will pretend make a post!

1. I spent most of last week and weekend at ICFA, the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, which for many people is an academic conference offering important insights about fantasy and the arts (literature, film, television, apparently tarot cards) and for me is a time to have a nice drink by the pool. Various personal issues and getting extremely sick prevented me from enjoying this conference as much as I would have liked, but I did have a chance to do a reading with Eugene Fischer and Dennis Danvers By a complete coincidence, we had all managed to choose stories on a similar theme: horror stories about the process of creating story. And by horror, the excerpt from Eugene's novella strongly suggested that we are all going to die, Dennis' story chatted about a puppy strangler – and by this, I mean, someone who strangles puppies, and my story had a house built from the teeth of small children. All very cheerful for a Saturday morning, though the puppy strangler story had us all collapsing with laughter. I think you have to read it to understand.

Special thanks to Julia Rios and Keffy Kehrli for helping me out during the conference.

2. Alas, attending ICFA meant I missed going to Megacon – and seeing many of you – but it looks like next year the events are on separate weekends. I'll keep my fingers crossed that golf is on a separate week.

3. While I was at ICFA I did get various tidbits of good news, including:

The release of Mythic Delirium 0.4, April-June 2014, available from Weightless Books here, which contains my poem, "The Silver Comb." (If you check, you will also see that it lists my name right under Jane Yolen, which is pretty awesomely cool.)

The news that Upper Rubber Boot Books will be reprinting my short story, "Twittering the Stars," as part of their new upcoming SOLES series.

I'm particularly delighted by this second bit since prior to this, although "Twittering the Stars" was hands down my most widely and best reviewed story (well over 40 positive reviews the last time I checked) it was also only available in an anthology that briefly popped up in bookstores and then mostly vanished, although the ebook is still available, which in turn meant that it was also one of my least read stories. I've been hoping for a chance to have it released into the wild again, so this is pretty awesome.

I'll also just note that Upper Rubber Boot Books offers a lovely selection of poetry books.

4. And while I was at ICFA and recovering from ICFA, Tor.com blogging continued! Two more posts on Mary Poppins, here and here, and also a second post chatting about Once Upon a Time and Oz here where I am VERY DISTURBED about the biological implications.

The Once Upon a Time Oz posts are not going to be a weekly event, primarily because so many parts of the show leave me wanting to throw things at the television or slam my head against something, and this sort of emotional reaction is a) not appreciated by the cats, who, as they have noted, do not deserve to have their hard-earned cat naps disturbed by this sort of thing and b) not really helped by friendly contact from the ABC publicity department (though I appreciate the effort.)

5. But regarding the upcoming Game of Thrones season four: yes, I do plan to snark individual episodes here, but I may be a bit delayed depending upon when exactly the new computer arrives.
ABC's Once Upon a Time finally went to Oz this last Sunday. I had FEELINGS, which Tor.com was gracious enough to post.

Speaking of Tor.com, the Lloyd Alexander reread finally came to a conclusion with The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio.

I'm finding, by the way, that going through this many books by a single author at once is getting slightly mind numbing - not to mention that I think it's making me less appreciative of these authors. So I may be altering my approach a bit - starting with choosing a less prolific author to reread this week. Keep an eye out for magical nannies.

(The Disney focus of this week was entirely unintentional, I promise.)
Everyone else is doing a year end television summary, so why not me? Couple of caveats, though: this is heavily weighted to recent fall shows because, well, they are recent, two, I've undoubtedly left stuff out, especially pre-September stuff, and three, this list does not include anything from Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, or Reign are not on this list because I haven't seen any of them yet. I plan eventually to catch up on the first three. Reign SCARES ME. So don't ask. I've also left Orphan Black off the list since I've only seen the pilot and I'm not sure when I'll be able to watch the rest.

Anyway, the summary, behind a cut because it got incredibly long: 2013 Television shows. Not particularly spoilery except where I go off on a rant about Once Upon a Time. )
A couple more Tor.com posts, including The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha by Lloyd Alexander and Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer.

And yes, I realize that yet again my blogging here seems to be reduced to "hey, the latest Tor.com posts" posts. I just have not felt the blogging bug; I have a few things to say about television, like, Go Team Oliver and Felicity Go! and wow, Scandal may be the only show about government to now go several episodes into its third season without having any character decide that, you know, governing might be an awesome idea (even House of Cards, which is primarily about power plays and scandals, at least had two subplots about actual government work), and I feel that Scandal is trying to say something here about our current thoughts on government, and hey, Once Upon a Time writers, sure, kudos on sorta bouncing back from a really awful second season to an at least watchable third season, but if you want to match your main heroine up with the supposed first love of her life, you might not want to give her a sexy, sexy pirate as an alternative love interest, just saying, and seriously, Ichabod over on Sleepy Hollow, you have the nerve to criticize anyone else for their interpretations of U.S. History after a couple of your statements, or that wow, just as you think that show can't possibly get more ridiculous people start leaving 300 year old secret messages on teeth (YES THAT WAS TOTALLY IN THE SHOW) but I got nothing except Go Team Oliver and Felicity, Go!

I don't think this can be totally blamed on the semideath of Livejournal, either. It's just that the blogging bug appears to have gone into hibernation. We'll see if more profound thoughts poke it to come out, or if I just tell myself to go ahead and write more stuff. After November sweeps. Or if Sleepy Hollow gets a tad bit less ridiculous, although I suppose that would ruin the point.
Of all the things I could be blogging about, this is hands down the least important, but it's bugging me and I need to get to sleep, so...

Major spoiler for the most recent episode of Once Upon a Time, the Pinocchio episode. )
1. Happy Pi Day! I myself plan to celebrate by having a homemade beef and bacon pie, followed by considerably less homemade cherry pie. This, of course, requires that I purchase bacon. Oh, the pain. It's a good sort of holiday to celebrate.

2. Over at Tor.com, the Georgette Heyer reread continues with Penhallow. Wow. I remembered this book as deeply, deeply unpleasant, but I hadn't remembered just how unpleasant or how many times characters threw things at each other or tossed people down the stairs. The comments recommend reading Cold Comfort Farm as an antidote. I agree.

3. My mother wants you to watch this. (In French, but you don't need to speak French to follow it.)

3. So I finally got around to catching up with Once Upon A Time, and Some brief spoilery comments. )

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