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Shop at Holly Lisle’s Site
This fascinating article turns up a disturbing part of history.
The Dawn of Civilization: Writing, Urban Life, and Warfare
An extraordinary ancient Syrian settlement shines a light on one of the most important moments in human history.
by Andrew Lawler
Discover Magazine
From the December 2009 issue
published online February 3, 2010http://discovermagazine.com/2009/dec/03-dawn-of-civilization-writing-urban-life-warfare
Joan Oates’s sharp blue eyes spotted something that was not right. Standing on the windy summit of a vast, human-made mound in northeastern Syria, the wiry 81- year-old archaeologist noticed an ugly scar that had been left by a backhoe on one of the smaller mounds ringing the ancient city of Nagar, where she has excavated for a quarter century. Oates had just arrived to begin her latest season at the site, and this blemish on her cherished landscape annoyed her. Two young men on her team volunteered to investigate the damage. They returned, shaken. Jumping into the trench, one of them had come face-to-face with a skull. “Everywhere we looked, there were human bones,” one recalls. “There were an enormous number of dead people.”
More than 100, it turned out, and their remains had rested there undisturbed for nearly six millennia. What Oates’s team found that hot autumn day in 2006 were the remnants of a ferocious battle or a brutal mass murder on a scale unprecedented for such an early date. And the inadvertent discovery lay within sight of what is currently our best and oldest evidence of early urban life. Digging just a few hundred yards away on the main
mound of what today is called Tell Brak, the archaeologists recently uncovered large buildings and extensive workshops from the same period-around 3800 B.C.-as well as imported material and fancy tableware.
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Kelly Harmon has a novella available: Blood Soup is up at the Eternal Press website.
Summary
A tale of murder, betrayal and comeuppance.
King Theodicar of Borgund needed an heir. When his wife, Queen Piacenza, became
pregnant, he’d hoped for a boy. His wife, along with her nurse, Salvagia, had
other plans. With each cast of the runes, Salvagia’s trusted divination tools
yielded the same message: “A girl child must rule or the kingdom will fall to
ruin.” As such, the women were convinced that the child would be a girl.
When the queen finally gives birth, the nurse and the king are equally
surprised. The king is faced with a terrible choice, and his decision will
determine the fate of his kingdom. Will he choose wisely, or will he doom
Borgund to ruin?
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Holly Lisle has announced the winners of the “How to Revise Your Novel” contest, along with plans for a new contest.
THE WILDCARD WINNER (for 3 videos):
Congratulations, Emily! (mlekc85)
THE SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS:
Scholarship #5 goes to…
Disaster #5: Vicky and Mike Attempt To Save The World
By Kittiewan
Scholarship #4 goes to…
The Flight of the Naysayer
By Cerulean Son
Scholarship #3 goes to…
NaNovelist Woes
By Laura Rainbow Dragon
Scholarship #2 goes to…
Detective Disaster
By pqr780
And Scholarship #1 and the GRAND PRIZE go to…
By TheFantastic FA
THE NEW SCHOLARSHIP CONTEST
Holly Lisle will soon have a new Create-a-Video contest for the “How to Think Sideways” novel writing course. Watch for rules and details to appear.
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David C. Kopaska-Merkel has a new piece of flash fiction up. ”The Cabbage Patch God” is the first in a series about gods, humans, and others.
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BronzeWord promotes books by Latino or Latina authors. The site is a treasure trove of resources that span virtual book tours, video trailers, audio interviews, news, and more.
The virtual book tours are particularly clever. Host blogs feature the author in various ways so a tour crossing through multiple blogs could have one with an interview, another with an article, then a review of the book, and so forth. Each blog is scheduled for a different day in the tour, and the author is available that day to make comments on that blog and interact with the readers. Sometimes they do contests and give away a book.
In a world where Latino culture often gets buried, this site is a great resource for authors to promote their books and for readers to find new titles. I took a Chicana literature class in college for women’s studies credit, and I’ve also studied some (Mexican) Spanish. It makes me happy to see folks promoting this branch of literature and culture. ¡Viva la diversidad!
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Here for your delectation is this week’s excerpt, an excursion into dark literature…
314 Crescent Manor by M. Jones
Where the rent is cheap and your neighbours are dead to the world. Read the rest of this entry »
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Previously I posted a link to Macmillan’s position on ebook pricing and marketing. Now I’ve tracked down something similar from Amazon.com so that folks can see both sides of the issue.
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Walking to Mercury
A story of introspection should begin at a point within, and a story of people should begin with personal interaction; so this one does. The viewpoint character, Maya Greenwood, is a writer and the opening scene comes from her book From the Mountain. A young woman touches divinity directly, yet fears the burden that vision brings her. Likewise Maya finds herself struggling to follow her own vision up a rough and rugged track. A man once part of Maya’s past reappears in her present, and she must work through all the old issues. Her mother’s death leaves her shaken, so she packs up the old woman’s ashes and travels to Nepal in search of a suitable resting place for them. Through it all Maya strives to rediscover herself and her source of strength and inspiration.
Reading this book is like digging through a trunk in someone else’s attic. Starhawk brings us the story through a combination of plain narrative, letters, journal entries, and other tidbits strung together in approximate order. This provides a broader perspective than Maya’s alone, and I found the differences in style quite striking. The author certainly knows how to capture each character’s unique perspective and personal voice. It can produce some confusion too, but you can follow it if you read carefully, as you would listen to someone’s life story.
Walking to Mercury reads more like real life than fiction, which has both positive and negative effects. It is eminently believable and packed with gritty little details. It is also rather sordid in places. People make mistakes — small ones, large ones, stupid ones. Sometimes they manage to forgive each other and move on. Some of the plot twists actually managed to surprise me (not an easy task) and offer thoughtful options rather than the obvious, without quite breaking the contract with the reader. The worst problem stems directly from one of the greatest challenges in fiction, namely how to keep a story from wandering lost when the main character does just that. Between the piecemeal presentation and Maya’s chaotic if sometimes obsessive rambling, the story meanders quite a bit before reaching its conclusion.
From a Pagan perspective, it contains more hints and glimpses than heavy impact. While the main character experiences several powerful encounters with the divine, these stand out as little islands in a sea of insecurity. The author’s knowledge and beliefs provide a firm background so that the spiritual aspects make sense, and I thoroughly enjoyed the original portrayal of the Goddess in Her three phases, given here as the Seer, the Singer, and the Reaper. Yet I found somewhat less “going on” here than I expected. On my scale it falls in that broad borderland between “Pagan Fiction” and “Pagan Literature” because it touches on Maya’s relationship to both the spiritual realms and the modern “mainstream” society.
Not light reading by any stretch, Walking to Mercury does offer a contemplative look at middle-age shifts and surmounting the challenges of daily life. The Pagan themes are subtle but present, and you can have fun hunting for all of them. Give yourself time to savor this one slowly. It deserves your attention. Fans of Starhawk’s nonfiction will recognize many familiar elements, especially from Dreaming the Dark : Magic, Sex, and Politics
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You may be interested to know that Macmillan and Amazon.com have parted company, at least for now, over disagreements about the marketing and pricing of ebooks. Here is a post from Macmillan describing their position. I’ll keep an eye out for one from Amazon.
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Sandra Kasturi provided a link to this blurb about Chizine Publications. They publish speculative fiction of the literary and creepy sort.
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This is a weekly opportunity to talk about books, music, and other things you enjoy.
- What are some of your favorite books?
- What are you currently reading?
- What kind of music do you like?
- What are you listening to now?
- What else is on your mind?
I’m currently listening to Second Chants
I’m currently reading Divine Misdemeanors: A Novel (Meredith Gentry, Book 
I’m currently rereading Swallowing Darkness
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Here is an opportunity for a volunteer position as assistant editor of a speculative fiction magazine. This is worth a look if you wish to gain editorial experience.
From Claire Massey, editor of New Fairy Tales
New Fairy Tales is seeking an assistant editor.
You can live anywhere in the world as long as you have a reliable internet connection. You must be passionate about fairy tales and related fiction.
Duties will primarily involve reading submissions and discussing them with the editor although there may be opportunities to do some marketing work too. Time-wise it shouldn’t take up more than a couple of hours a week, with perhaps a little more time required close to submission deadlines.
Unfortunately we can’t pay – the magazine run on a voluntary basis and tries to raise money for charity – but you will gain valuable experience working on a growing online magazine.
Please send an email to Claire at editor@newfairytales.co.uk detailing a little bit about yourself, your creative experience, and what you love to read.
Deadline: 15th February 2010
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This was Tuesday’s post, delayed. The iBlog staff is working on the problem.
The nomination period for the Ursa Major Awards is now open, and runs through Feb. 28. These awards recognize excellent anthropomorphic material across a variety of categories.
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This week’s featured cyberfunded creativity is a piece of urban fantasy. You never know what could be around the next street corner …
Addergoole by Lyn Thorne-Alder
Addergoole is a contemporary fantasy story with erotic and dark-fantasy elements, a modern-day fairy tale of sorts, without the soft-glow filters to soften the harsh edges, without the safety of ”happily ever after” or even the security of knowing that the Prince on his white horse is the good guy. Read the rest of this entry »
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The nomination period for the Ursa Major Awards is now open, and runs through Feb. 28. These awards recognize excellent anthropomorphic material across a variety of categories.
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The First Immortal
The science of cryonics is relatively new, full of doubt and promise. This book explores not only the core of the science but its many ramifications, and as such comprises one of the best pieces of science fiction I’ve ever read. Reading it is like taking a trip through the future history of the universe next door. I love it because I believe in infinite possibilities, and that’s really what this book is all about — tearing down all the old boundaries that limit human potential.
What makes it work is the way Halperin filters all that through the perceptions of several very remarkable characters. Fortunately, most of them are related, and the author thoughtfully supplies a guide to “The Benjamin Smith Family Tree” in the front of the book. At center stage, Ben wends his way through historical events that shape the whole world and personal events that shape the lives of himself and his family. His experiences inspire him to invest in cryonic suspension for himself and his loved ones, and it pays off — nanotechnology allows them all to be revived in the future. Yet that future is in peril from the very ease of existence, and it falls to the ones who remember hardship to save humanity from its own indulgence…
This isn’t quite the world I’d want to want live in, a similar complaint to one I levied against Halperin’s first book, The Truth Machine
The First Immortal is a must-read for anyone interested in cryonics or immortality. It holds broad appeal for fans of science fiction in general. Most highly recommended.
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This was Sunday’s post that jammed for some reason.
Adrienne J. Odasso shares this news about a new market:
Although this isn’t a genre journal as such, I should begin by pointing out that the very aims of the project have pretty much guaranteed that the poetry and fiction (my own included) set to appear alongside the essays inDark Mountain Journal: Issue 1 are essentially speculative in nature. The Dark Mountain Project seeks to create a narrative for the potentially wild, uncertain future that we face – and takes joy in the prospect, rather
than anxiety or fear. What to do:1) Check out the DMP’s main website. (Pay special attention to the Manifesto; it’s worth reading!)
2) If you decide you’d like to help with fundraising for printing costs on the first issue (we need about $7,000 – and yes, that’s a somewhat daunting sum, but we’re already approaching about 2/3 of the way there), go here to donate. The minimum amount, $10,
will secure you 50% off a copy of the journal when it goes to print, and the next level up, $25, secures you a copy. The perks get significantly better as you climb the donation-amount ladder.
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Marge Simon shared this news regarding Star*Line:
Just to let y’all know we’re full and closed for July/Aug 2010 and Sept/Oct 2010.
Bob Frazier gives the call for the December issue in the January/Feb NL which will be mailed shortly.
I’ll be reading for Jan/Feb through May/June 2011 in July.
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This is a weekly opportunity to talk about books, music, and other things you enjoy.
- What are some of your favorite books?
- What are you currently reading?
- What kind of music do you like?
- What are you listening to now?
- What else is on your mind?
I’m currently listening to Road to Santiago
I’m currently reading Divine Misdemeanors: A Novel (Meredith Gentry, Book
I’m currently rereading Sword of Ice: And Other Tales of Valdemar (Daw Book Collectors)
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Deborah Kolodji shares this news regarding the Haiku Society of America.
It’s not spec poetry, but I thought you might be interested in how the Haiku Society of America conducts national quarterly meetings. During the weekend, the officers will have a private business meeting of the executive committee, which satisfies the meeting requirement for their non-profit status.
In February, my local haiku group is hosting the meeting here in Pasadena, California. The last time the HSA had a meeting in Southern California was in the mid-to-late 1990’s. The other quarterly meetings for 2010 will be in Seattle (June), Mineral Point, WI (Sept), and Boston. Read the rest of this entry »
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