Reading

Current Music: Blondshell, "Berlin TV Tower"

I want to show you all the versions of myself

Tonight after my second and last panel of the convention, I was told by one audience member that they would listen to me read the phone book because even under those circumstances they would learn something interesting and Tiny Wittgenstein was definitely confused.

The panels went chaotically well. "Cursed Literature" lived up to its name by losing two panelists before the con even started, but in practice it turned into a freewheeling discussion less of literature in particular than the concepts of hazardous information, the spellmaking of language, and narratives as contagion, which gave me an excuse to boost Emeric Pressburger's The Glass Pearls (1966), An-sky's Jewish Ethnographic Program of 1912–14, and Aramaic incantation bowls plus the inevitable M. R. James. "SFF on Stage" had a supersaturation of panelists mostly from the performing arts and could have gone an extra hour at least as we started with the inherently liminal nature of theater and bounced around through all the ways that the speculative can be invoked on stage through conceits, stagecraft, scoring, nothing but the contract that reality changes because the actor says it does. I went all in on twentieth-century opera and weird technically realist plays and discovered that there has actually not been another production of Jewelle Gomez's Bones & Ash: A Gilda Story since the one I saw with my grandparents in 1996. As always, members of the audience asked such good questions that they should have been on the panels to start.

I have been asked multiple times if I will be around for the last day of Arisia and since I have no further programming the odds are unfortunately good that I will be flat in bed, but at the moment I regret nothing. I saw a

genarti! I saw a

skygiants! I failed to write down the names of a pair of extraordinarily well-dressed attendees who wanted to talk about Jewish folk magic and were thrilled that I recognized their Babylon 5 tie-in novels!

nineweaving and I shared a panel for the first time since virtual 2021! I did not make it back to the dealer's room before it closed and instead sort of keeled over in the disused cosplay repair area with

choco_frosh and presently a friend of his who is unlikely to be on DW, since this time around people were giving me their contact information on Instagram and I felt as though I should have business cards printed on papyrus scraps. I had genuinely not been sure how this experiment in professional interaction would go. It is snowing as busily as a real winter in New England and without begrudging a second of this vanishing season, I am looking forward to Readercon.

Current Mood: relaxed

Entry tags:

The Vacation Begins

And as I hoped, it started with us sleeping in until the cats woke us up at 7am demanding to be fed. That's the one thing I actually wanted to do this week: sleep in take my time deciding what I wanted to do that day (if we didn't already have plans). So far so good!

Today was a somewhat late run to Costco, but we are now well stocked in needed things and we managed to survive the chaos that is the parking lot. The one we go to in Colma is right next door to a Trader Joe's so while A started the shopping, I popped in to TJ's for a few other needed things. The traffic today was weirdly busy so it took us a lot longer to get home, so lunch was late and dinner ended up being crackers and cheese.

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the last three episodes of The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity, an anime on Netflix and a manga I am extremely obsessed with at the moment. On the surface the story does give the sense of "why do these teens have ALL THE FEELS" but let's be honest, we were all like that when we were 15-16. The manga is up to about 170-plus chapters right now, and the new anime series only covered maybe the first forty in this particular 13 episode season. I'm definitely hoping it gets renewed, because it's extremely well done and very faithful to the source material.

And speaking of anime obsession, I hear that Your Name will be playing in Japantown in February and I am extremely tempted to go see it. Another personal favorite that I highly recommend.

SO! Any other plans this week? Aside from more sleeping in, we'll be visiting the in-laws for lunch and maybe heading elsewhere in the North Bay afterwards, going to the Haight tomorrow, and going for lunch and high tea on Thursday (which also happens to be my birthday). Not too much planned, just a vague idea of going outside and enjoying the day. And that's just fine with me.

Hope everyone has a good week!

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Bloomington

I have returned from a weekend of dissipation in Bloomington! We visited FOUR local bookstores, during which book-shopping spree I bought:

Used copies of Gary Paulsen’s The Cookcamp and Ngaio Marsh’s Singing in the Shrouds, both from the public library.

Used DVDs of Chernobyl and the Ruth Wilson Jane Eyre for myself, plus Brideshead Revisited and season 3 of the 1960s Batman for a friend (who will be therefore enabled to return my copy of Brideshead Revisited)

Mary Stolz’s Ready or Not, which has simply gorgeous endpapers (would any of my fellow Stolz fans like a crack at this book after I’m done?)

And Knight Owl and Early Bird, a birthday present for my niece, whose birthday is not until March, but who am I to turn down an opportunity to support the Book Corner? (I’ll probably also buy her a picture book from my beloved Von’s.)

We also hit up Goods for Cooks, which tragically did not have my beloved dark chocolate hobnobs, but I DID buy a sieve and a garden herb themed dishtowel and a bright springy oven mitt. (I liked to have seasonal dish towels, oven mitts, napkins etc; an easy way to decorate for the seasons.) In between the sieve and the potato masher I got for Christmas, I feel rich in kitchen ware.

And we went to my friend Becky’s house to hang out with the dog and three cats and the baby, who gave us the grumpy Churchill face for about half an hour before deciding that we were all right and toddling over to the coffee table (with the help of her baby walker) to pick up one of our shortbread cookies. To eat it? No. Just to hold it. An interesting texture perhaps.

And then Caitlin and I went back to her place and watched a couple Poirots and ate more cookies, and then I went to bed and read The Cookcamp, a short memoir about the time he spent with his grandmother as a small child when she was working at a road-grading camp, companion piece to Alida's Song and The Quilt. Sweet and poignant if you enjoy a childhood memoir.

Then this morning I drove home and began rewatching Chernobyl. (What a good show! Already watched two episodes and only paused with difficulty to make dinner.) A most successful visit.

Entry tags:

Is it drafty in here?

The Long Back Yard

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Was hitting the keyboard by 7 am, taking a break now to take trash out ahead of the Winter Weather Event that's rolling in. I think that most of the accumulation will be on the coast, and so does the tree guy, who thinks he'll be by tomorrow to take down my two dead pines and do some tree work for the next door neighbors.

I have a date downtown with friends tomorrow, and I hope we won't be snowed out.

How's everybody doing this morning?
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Cardinal (male, for those who don't see cardinals in their back yards):

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Added about 1,000 words to the WIP this morning. Breaking for lunch. Still hoping to be able to have a Good Enough Draft by the end of the day. Can't type with my fingers crossed, though.

I am somewhat confused by the weather report. Seems like now we may just get a few flakes, which would be OK by me.

Tali tells me that she Very Much Likes pork and sauerkraut. I take leave to doubt this intelligence.

And so the midday report.
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Upcoming Author Event
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That's it. I'm calling this the Good Enough for Rock 'n Roll Draft. It does not properly end; it stops. This is not particularly unusual in our Good Enough for Rock 'n Roll Drafts, and I might as well stop here.

I wrote just over 3,700 words today, bringing this draft to +/-138,880 words. For comparison, Salvage Right was turned in at 132,000 words.

I will, oh, on Wednesday, put out a call for Beta Readers. If you're thinking you'd like to do this, bear in mind that what you will be reading is a draft -- which not only means that it likely has holes in it, but there are without a doubt misspellings, ugly sentences, disreputable punctuation and a shipload of other errors present.

What I'm saying is that beta reading is not for the faint of heart, the short of patience, or, really, the short of time.

This is not, notice, the Formal Call; that will come on Wednesday, when I will also explain what the nitty-gritty of beta reading means to me.

Rookie has been running up and down the hall like a crazy man for the last hour, looking for Happy Hour. Happily, I have Happy Hour right here in my pocket, and realsoonnow, I'll be serving that up.

The weather beans have abandoned the whole snow idea up here in the center of the state for right now. We may, it says here, get an inch on the overnight. Which is, actually, very good news.

Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe.

I'll check in tomorrow.

RimeGlaze of Celeste

This was a busy day, and one where I had my boots on for almost the whole thing. I started out by shoveling the snow again. There wasn't a lot, just an inch or two. I didn't think I'd be able to do it in time for us to get to church, but my charming next door neighbor child came out and helped me. We met in the middle of the driveway like the transcontinental railroad. So the Sparrowhawk hustled into his clothes, and we went to church. I don't normally show up in my boots and shoveling clothes and drip all over the floor, but what are you gonna do.

We went straight from there to the movie theater, where we picked up a quick sandwich and ate it before the movie (RotK in the extended version) started. Again, it was a totally immersive experience, and I gloried in the landscapes and the horses. Of course, that meant that some of the director's errors and self-indulgences were more glaringly obvious, too, so I had my eyes shut some of the time. TOO MANY ORCS. And some other things, too, but I won't kvetch about them because overall, as I said, it was a magnificent experience. A really big snowstorm is coming, but mercifully, it had not really started by the time we drove home. We're not making any mad dashes for bread, milk, and TP, because we are pretty well supplied. I'm happy to take my boots off and settle down in my hobbit hole again.

[fanart] Catlin(s)

Catlin(s) (from CJ Cherryh's Cyteen)

for

ilyena_sylph

digital fanart: Catlin I & II from CJ Cherryh's Cyteen

Periodic Sunday Book Summaries--Installment One

I’ll start out by saying that I’m not a big fan of any of the books read recording platforms. Setting a number of books to read for the year feels to me like a competitive activity, which…reading has never been that for me. Though I’ve tried. For a couple of years I set reading goals in Goodreads and…ick. I didn’t enjoy the process of needing to chronicle everything I read, especially since I am one of those voracious readers who prefers to curl up with a book rather than watch TV. It's just my thing.

But reading goals, reviewing everything I’ve read, just feels like a chore. That said, by not recording my thoughts about some of my reading, I somewhat miss out on dialogue about what people are reading, the impact of my reading on what I’m thinking, and the like. I end up scratching my head and going “I know I read that book, I know I found it impactful, but I can’t remember why.”

So what the heck. I’ll give talking about what I’m reading a try, but…unlike in past years, I’m not going to capture it all. Nor am I going to tie myself down to a mandatory, you must post about this schedule. That gets back into making posts about what I read into a chore. I’m also limiting these posts to Dreamwidth and Substack, because that’s where most of the dialogue about reading seems to be happening in my circles these days.

With that, here goes, a brief look at what I was reading in mid-January, 2026.

I finished Alix Harrow’s The Everlasting last night. It was one of those books that, once I started reading, I kept on going until I finished it. What also helped was that I started reading fairly early in the evening.

As for the book? What a ride. A mixture of Faerie and time travel, with commentary on power. But there were some interesting twists along the way, including how the two powerful women in the story interact and what their actual relationship is. Add in the male scholar who at first observes but then gets drawn into the story and that throws in some more power dynamics. Ultimately, though, this is a story about how national myths get made and twisted to serve the powerful. It’s well-written, with the voice of fairy tale.

I admire it—and yet. There’s something distancing about the voice. I can’t explain it, but perhaps that’s because it’s about deconstructing a national myth more than it is about the individual characters—at least that’s how it reads to me. I like it, but something about it niggles at me.

The night before, I read Desert Cabal, by Amy Irvine—a meditation on and dialogue with Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. Irvine engages with Abbey’s problematic aspects and the fruit of his popularity—as shown by the hordes descending upon Moab and Arches National Park. Ironically, by writing as he did about the desert, Abbey inadvertently unleashed the very same national park industrial complex he rails against in his work. Irvine illustrates some of these tensions using the method of a very Abbey-esque dialogue.

I came across a recommendation for this work in a Substack post about unrecognized literary outdoorswomen which…echoed a feeling I had fifteen years ago that I was tired of just reading about the guys in the outdoors. The guy interaction with the outdoors. The guy experience. I’ve been seeing more outdoorswomen writing over on Substack and decided it was time to blow the dust off of my own attempts to write about the outdoors. Reading Irvine was just one start, enough that I might write about my own reflections on Abbey.

And, finally, I read Glen Cook’s latest Black Company book, Lies Weeping. I like Cook and I love the Black Company, but damn. Cook has this habit of ending books on cliffhangers and this one is no exception. That plus, along with Croaker, there are references to the origins and history of Lady and Soulcatcher that I know I’ve read before. I went digging through my Black Company books to discover that I’m missing one—and it appears that’s the one which may hold the sequence Cook describes repeatedly that gives us clues as to which Senjak sisters those two are. All the same, I’ll keep on reading each Black Company book as they come out.

I have some other books I’ve been reading slowly. I just finished rereading Anthony Trollope’s An Editor’s Tales and may pair it with Dorothy Parker in reflecting how in spite of computers, social media, and what-have-you, the more that publishing changes, the more it remains the same. I’ve also been wading through the revised and expanded Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien and, well, there’s some interesting stuff in there. No surprises that Tolkien was a rather conservative Catholic and it shows in his correspondence. But the other piece that shows up is the impact of health and the day job on his work. Interestingly, in responding to a request about Gollum, he expounds on inheritance and family dynamics in the Shire with some surprising egalitarian notions about heads of family (for example, the married heads are viewed as equal with equal authority, and if the man passes first, the title does not pass down to the next male heir but is assumed by his wife until her death).

I do have a winter tradition of rereading Discworld until I get sick of it (I like Discworld but can only take so much of it) and Earthsea in the big pretty book. I’ve finished Discworld and will be picking up Earthsea in the coming week. I just need to sort through the pile of to-be-read books so that I have a good place to put it.

Besides Earthsea, there are several other book-related blogs I want to write, and keep putting off because of perceived time constraints. I’m almost finished with a deep dive into the Mitford sisters, inspired by starting a reread of Jo Walton’s Small Changes trilogy because they play a role in those books, under a different name. I’ve read some primary work by Nancy and Jessica, a biography of all six sisters, and have a couple more books to go (all through library loan). And then there’s the book about the blending of French classical dressage with the vaquero tradition.

See why I don’t want to record what I’ve read? It becomes a chore, and these occasional blogs are not meant to be a chore. Rather, they are reflections on what I’ve been reading and thinking about, and might even want to…discuss.

Entry tags:

Fairy Cat, by Hisa Takano

One rainy day Kanade, a high school student, finds a mouse-sized cat in his room. It's a fairy cat or "palm-sized cat!" They are elusive magical creatures which sometimes adopt humans, but mostly behave like ordinary cats. Only extra-tiny!

That's about it for the plot. What this manga is actually about is showing an incredibly adorable tiny cat being an incredibly adorable tiny cat. It's an incredibly adorable manga. Proof:

ShortDays of Celeste

It's been a busy few days. My visit to Madame went all right. I brought her coffee and cake. She tried to get out of her chair at one point, and it was very difficult. I do most of the talking now, because she doesn't remember current events well enough to say anything about them. Sometimes I can get her started on events of the distant past, and then she'll tell me some stories. Wednesday night, the Sparrowhawk was getting ready to go to the gym, but Coach canceled it. The snow didn't seem too bad here, but some of the people come from the lakeshore, and it was pretty slick out there. I stayed up a little bit late on Wednesday making the chicken pot pie filling and rolling out six pie crusts. One of the things that made the filling good was to blend it with cream as well as chicken broth, to make the gravy smooth and tasty. The good thing about doing the pie crusts the night before was that they spent the night on the back porch, where it was freezing, so they were well-chilled when I baked them. I think this makes them more flaky.

Thursday morning, I made four loaves of bread before Dragonfly came over. When we went out for lunch, she needed to pick up a couple of things at the store, so I went with her and got my salad fixings. When I got home, I set to and baked the pies and mixed up the salad. It was romaine and boston lettuce with blueberries, slivers of red pepper, and pomegranate seeds. I wanted some of that crumbled goat cheese, but the store didn't have any, so I got some Wensleydale with blueberries in it and chopped it up in the salad. It was well received, especially with some maple balsamic dressing. We also had a tray of plain crunchy carrots, cucumbers, celery, and peppers in case the kids didn't care for cheese in their salad. One of our friends brought an apple cake from Mary Berry's recipe, and it was delicious. We had a lot of fun at dinner, but didn't make too much progress discussing the Paradiso, because we got off on some other topics, and then the parents had to take their kids home because it was a school night.

I thought I'd get up bright and early and get a lot done on Friday, since at last I had no social events. It was not to be. I didn't sleep well, and when day came, I was bushed and unable to motivate myself. I had to take a nap. We were planning to go see the extended version, 25th anniversary FotR on the big screen at 7, but it snowed more and more, and I groaned at the thought of shoveling the car out again, and the Sparrowhawk was very tired and worried about staying up until 11. We mutually agreed to chicken out. I WANTED to want to go, but I didn't. We watched our DVD of the extended version (because of course we have one, darling) instead. I made the last of the popcorn. An added benefit to being at home is that we were able to take a break to FaceTime Aquinas, wish him a happy third birthday, and sing him Happy Birthday. As we were going to bed just before 11 (another good thing about movies at home is that it only takes five minutes from movie to snuggled up in bed) I looked out the window and saw really huge snowflakes floating down. The all-day snow had been that thin, mean, stinging, wind-driven snow, but it turned into the Silent Night variety. I was still glad not to be driving home in it.

Today I went out in the morning and shoveled everything. It was pretty thick. It seemed like 4-6 inches to me, although the official weather report said not. It was bitter cold, too. We had one pot pie left over. I was going to freeze it, but then I got into a text chat with my sisters, and learned that both the Duchess and Dr. Nurse have bad colds, which they probably caught from Bird Baby via preschool. It occurred to me that Dr. Nurse could probably use some comfort food, so Uncle Sparrowhawk took the pie over to them. He reported that the roads were pretty good, so we drove to the theater at 3-ish to see The Two Towers on the big screen. It was a great experience. The landscapes are so gorgeous when they're full size, and every detail is so involving. The theater was packed full of people, many of them wearing elven cloaks and other garb. It was snowing like mad when we emerged. Not quite as bad as the Redhorn pass over Caradhras, but not very nice either. We were glad to get home. I anticipate more shoveling tomorrow . . . .

A Winter Escape

The weight of the world grew too heavy yesterday. No one cause—between news, the demands of daily life, and, well, winter—even an unseasonable snowless January with plenty of sun strained the nerves. Too much. Too much.

Cabin fever.

Not even the daily pilgrimage to commune with the good Foxtrotter boy was enough to silence the dread in my gut. The field where he lives in winter and where we ride is mud over frozen ground. If I get out there soon enough in the day we might have time for a road excursion before the early sunset thanks to the mountains—it depends. But the only remedy for what I was feeling was getting further out. Away.

Time in the woods.

So we climbed into the truck, visited the good boy horse on the way to other adventures (while entertaining him and the herd by bringing in a kiddie pool that blew into the fence, then was dragged out to be played with by bored horses). The Good Boy was eager to the join the herd investigating the pool as the husband brought it out of the field while I grained and groomed him. But he stood, quietly, when I was done and took him back into the field, waiting with head high until I unhaltered him. Once free, he trotted off a few steps before bursting into a tail-flagging gallop to check out the excitement. Much of an improvement over our first winter together. Two years of consistent handling has paid off.

That settled, we headed out north to the prairie. To the woods. Out to look at mountains. Canyons. Just plain out. A pattern that’s held true for us over the years, whether it was the madcap brief half-year we spent here when we were young, followed by visits to these woods and other places when we could snatch time away from work and other obligations.

Out.

Memories whispered around us as we drove, not talking about anything other than what we saw. Remembering those younger days. Time spent cruising on breaks from work, accompanied by beer when we were younger, now just plain water in our senior years. Recalling political and business discussions conducted with others during those drives, when four of us were skinny enough to fit in a pickup’s bench seat. Days when the world seemed simpler and less filled with shadows. A time before cell phones and computers. Almost a different world.

More than memories, wisps of stories flowed around me. That prairie and the woods and canyons surrounding it have been the inspiration for so many of the places in my stories. A ranch house once busy, now only seasonally occupied, looking out at a bunchgrass meadow? One of the inspirations for the Andrews Ranch in the Netwalk Sequence stories. That first pine grove where the road drops into the other side of that meadow? A setting from the Goddess’s Honor books. Over to the west, another small canyon sparked the creation of the Double R Ranch in the Martiniere Multiverse Family Saga, not far from the spooky village of Wickmasa from Goddess’s Honor.

And more.

The land. The land.

Three young spike bull elk raced across a draw near what used to be the stage stop of Midway to cross the road fifty feet in front of us, behaving more like whitetail deer than reversing direction to run away, like we normally see elk do. Better get it figured out before next hunting season, boys. A couple of coyotes trotted warily away from the truck, cautious, unlike the spike bulls. Then a small, cautious band of mule deer.

The land. The land. Tensions melt away.

Midway itself is but a shadow. Once a small stage stop between the canyons and town, for years its only remnant was an old barn that leaned further and further until a prairie wind took it down one December, a few years after we moved here. Now, what remains is a small shelter over a picnic table. Last spring when we drove by with family, we spotted four four-point mule deer bucks resting in the shelter’s shade, chewing their cud.

No bucks today. Just the spike bulls.

Further on, a male snow bunting flew up from a fencepost, fluttering along in front of the pickup until he reached the edge of his territory and dove off into the dried bunchgrass.

When we finally reached snow, the tracks from other drivers reassured us that the way was still open. We negotiated past trees that had fallen across the road and had just enough cut away to allow a single vehicle through. We pressed on, hoping to get to the old fire lookout over the canyon. Which—doesn’t usually happen in January. When we reached the lookout’s turnoff, we carefully made our way until we encountered a drift deeper than we wanted to tackle. Thirty, even twenty years ago we might have continued, even though it was late afternoon. Not now. We’re old and we’ve had to walk back from unwise decisions too many times to trust our luck.

But we still got canyon views—what we could see of the fog-filled canyons, anyway. Ridgetops barely poke out of the sea of fog, rolling in waves like the ocean suddenly was moved to this inland area.

The land. The land. Soothing. Healing. Itself, uncompromising despite human influence. It’s hard to keep the dread going out here. Maybe that’s why so much of my fantasy writing involves land magic—it’s easy enough to feel that the land is still a living thing out here.

Back again, with fewer critters but now more mountain vistas. The snow bunting picks us up where he left us off, flitting along until we reach the other side of his territory.

Dusk fell as we reached town, and the dread had flown. It will pick up again soon enough, but for a day, at least, the dread weighed less heavy. The thrill of those bull elk crossing in front of us. The Good Boy. The snow bunting. The ghostly waves of fog crashing on the dry inland shores.

The land. The land. Here today and tomorrow. Still itself, now and forever.

The land.

Entry tags:

randomness

Amusing Encounter

So today's adventure was going uptown to meet friends at the Cloisters and see the special exhibit (on sexuality in the Middle Ages) with them. I took the subway up then walked the last bit through the park with snow softly falling. As I'm walking along the path, a couple coming the other way stop to compliment my coat. (This is the long green redingote with the shoulder capes.) I thanked them and told them about how I loved to make historically-inspired clothing and we chatted briefly then went on our way.

So I saw the exhibit and the rest of the museum. Went to an early dinner with my friends. Then caught the subway back toward downtown, but because it's a weekend I had to overshoot my destination and double back from Columbus Circle. So I'm standing on the platform at Columbus and I hear this voice, "I'd recognize that coat anywhere!" It's the same couple (at the opposite end of town). We chatted some more while waiting for our trains and it turns out they both went to Berkeley for college. What a small world.

Current Music: Wolf Alice, "Midnight Song"

If you don't want the death of the party after I'm gone, sing one for me

I may feel like a dishrag, but if so it's a dishrag who had a wonderful time returning to Arisia after six years, even if the ziggurat on the Charles is still a dreadful place to hold a convention. For the Dramatic Readings from the Ig Nobel Prizes, I performed selections from W. C. Meecham and H. G. Smith's "Effects of Jet Aircraft on Mental Hospital Admissions" (British Journal of Audiology, 1977) with what I hope was an appropriately haggard channeling of my sleepless night and Leonie Cornips' "The semiotic repertoire of dairy cows" (Language in Society, 2024) with what I hope was an appropriately technical rendition of cow noises. I heard papers on the proper techniques of nose-blowing, whether snakes dress to the left or the right, the sexual correlations of apples. It feels impossible, but it must have been my first time onstage since onset of pandemic. Readers who overstayed their allotted two minutes were surrounded by a chorus of bananas.

I had forgotten how much socializing my attendance of conventions used to entail. I turned the corner for registration and immediately spotted a

nineweaving, followed in close succession by a

choco_frosh,

a_reasonable_man, and a

sorcyress. I was talking to the latter in the coat check when Gillian Daniels came in and now I have a zine-printed copy of the second edition of her chapbook Eat the Children (2019/2026). I had not lengthy enough catch-up conversations with

awhyzip and

rinue and am now in possession of a signed copy of Nothing in the Basement (2025). I brought water with me and kept forgetting to duck outside to drink it. Dean gave me a ride home afterward and commented on my tired look, which was fair: six, seven years ago I could sprint through programming even after a night of anaphylaxis or a subluxed jaw and these days there's a lot less tolerance in the system. It seemed to be a common refrain. If I have fun and don't take home any viral infections from this weekend, it'll be a win.

Tomorrow, panels.

Entry tags:

The Writing Life

The Long Back Yard:

Saturday. Snowing, but lightly. There may be half-an-inch of new stuff on the ground.

Breakfast was cream cheese on toast with a side of grapes. Breaking now for lunch and to bake pork chops, so I can have something to eat tomorrow (today, I'm having the other half of yesterday's sandwich and a bowl of lemon-orzo soup).

Wrote about 1,200 words this morning. Intend to go back after lunch and write some more.

Did PT Homework Part One, and my duty to the cats. Prepped the pork chops that are now in the oven.

The cats are in Steve's office. Tali's feeling feisty today, she threw Rook off of the top of the cat tree, and then took over his box on the desk. He has retired to Scrabble's Basket, which resides on its own stand in the V made by the sliders.

Speaking of sliders, I need to take measurements so I can order in some up-and-down blinds from Blindster. They promise me no-tools installation, so I'm in.

And? I think that's all I've got. I have not looked at the news today, and that seems to be working well, so I'll be continuing there.

What's happening at your house today?

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Tali's new PR photo:

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Saturday evening. Still snowing. Might be an inch out there by now.

Wrote just about 3,100 words today, bringing the total wordcount to +/-135,155. I may actually finish this draft tomorrow, for values thereof.

All cats have had their front claws clipped. Two out of a possible three cats cursed mightily at this indignity and have sworn to File Complaints. Firefly was Stoic, today.

Speaking of Firefly, her fans may recall that she really doesn't "get" the whole spring thing. Tali is a very enthusiastic player. Rook, who really is Scary Smart will chase the spring, and either bring it back to me so I can throw it again, or will guide me to where it's gone, so I can throw it again.

Firefly -- eh. The spring bounces over her head, she shrugs and walks away. It lands at her feet and the only thing she does is sit there. Unless Tali careens into her, whereupon she'll pound Tali in the head.

So -- no chasing the spring for Firefly.

She will, however, barter them. It goes like this: she does understand that the springs have value, and she will occasionally go find one, and then come to me, making her "I caught one!" sound. Which is my cue to? Get out the Cat Dancer or the blue octopus, so she can play in her preferred manner.

What's also interesting is that the other two recognize that she has purchased this time, and, while they'll watch her play (sometimes, they don't even bother to attend her play session), but they won't intrude on it.

And they say cats are dumb.

So! Time for a glass of wine, I think.

Everybody stay safe; have a good night. I'll check in tomorrow.

Entry tags:

books,
impolitic

scouring, etc

Just finished Lord of the Rings. This may well have been the first time I read the Appendices all the way through (though I did skim the ones on the calendars and the alphabets).

Two takeaways from RotK:

First, the Scouring of the Shire hits different when you're under occupation. It's also perhaps the most fantastical part of the book, since it posits that the citizenry were nearly all ready to rise up and just needed a push, as opposed to a third of them cheering on Otho and Sharkey and a third of them just hunkering down and hoping it would all pass them by.

Second, the meme take on Denethor as 'doomscrolling in the Palantir to Sauron's algorithm' is ... remarkably apt.

Now ebooks for a couple of days, and then once I'm home the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. UT is, as I recall, mostly-complete fragments with some commentary. The twelve-volume History of Middle-Earth reverses the proportions, and is thus less interesting to me. UT also contains a version of the Quest of Erebor ("The Hobbit") as told from Gandalf's perspective, which should be neat.

All quiet on bus stop patrol. Tuesday had a couple of plateless SUVs and a couple of blocks-away whistle choruses; Thursday and yesterday were quiet. It's nice to be out in the snow in my black wool coat and hat, though, and nice to get some smiles from folks driving past.

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placeholder microfiction

I don't like to go so long without posting! Just offline stuff piling on (nothing personally dire, though). The offline stuff is doing a number on my ability to write, but I still manage to squeeze out microfictions, though not quite daily. Here's one from a few days ago:

I dreamed of a pharaoh, awaking after death and arranging to his liking the various precious items buried with him.

"You've got quite an ego," I snapped at him (dream-me is apparently rude to people's faces), "having this massive pyramid built just so people would remember you."

"That's not why I had it built. It's for all the stories that collect around it. Adventures, time travel, curses, beings from the stars--I hear them all, and they entertain me," he replied.

And here's a sweet video my tutor sent me of Martin, a pygmy marmoset monkey, whining at Gordo-the-dog, who's relaxing.

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 333 – Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 19: Age Gap

Posted by Heather Rose Jones

http://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-333-our-ffavorite-tropes-part-19-age-gap

Saturday, January 17, 2026 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 333 - Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 19: Age Gap - transcript

(Originally aired 2026/01/17 - listen here)

I confess this is going to be a bit skimpier than my usual trope episodes. I had planned an entirely different topic for this month’s show, but it’s turning out to be far more involved and elaborate than originally intended. And on top of that I’m about to be traveling for a couple weeks, so I needed something I could put together quickly without a lot of background research.

So today we’re going to talk about age-gap romances. The “Our F/Favorite Tropes” series examines popular historic romance tropes from the point of view of female couples and considering both the similarities and differences from other types of couples. In literature, a trope is a recurring motif that is understood to carry a certain expected structure and meaning. The trope could be a situation, such as forced proximity, or a character type, such as the lovable rogue. It could be a type of relationship, such as a second-chance romance, or even a mini-script, such as a Cinderella story.

I tend to see discussions and tags for age-gap romances mostly in the context of contemporary lesbian romance, and there are solid historic reasons for that—but not because age-gap relationships don’t exist for male-female or male-male couples, but rather that they don’t tend to be viewed as noteworthy in those contexts.

Historically, the combination of patriarchy and the valorizing of female virginity at marriage has meant that male-female marriages default to the man being older than the woman. “Older” doesn’t automatically get classified as an age gap—a number that gets hotly debated and is variable depending on the absolute age of the participants. Patterns in age at marriage could differ considerably across time and geography. Europe tended to fall into two general patterns, the so-called “Mediterranean pattern” where women married relatively young, usually to significantly older husbands, leaving young men often in a lengthy unmarried state waiting to acquire sufficient wealth or social power to be competitive. A number of other economic factors tended to accompany this pattern, but we’ll stick to the age factor for now. The other pattern—the so-called “northern pattern”—involved the man and woman being of roughly similar age (though still the man was typically older), with women marrying later, typically after working outside the home to help accumulate a nest egg to set up the married household. But even in regions where the northern pattern held for middle and working classes, it was often the case that the upper classes married their daughters off younger to significantly older men.

Combined with the tendency of historic romance to concentrate on upper-class characters, this means that—whether it’s a classic by Jane Austen or written by a contemporary author—it’s normal to see a pairing where the woman is just coming out into society in her late teens or early 20s and the man is mature and established and well into his 30s. Austen’s Emma is 20 years old while her eventual groom Knightley is 37 and the near-parental relationship between them is considered unremarkable.

All of this is to say that an age gap in a heterosexual historic romance is not noteworthy enough to be considered a trope…unless it’s the woman who’s older, and then it becomes an entirely different trope, the “cougar” or “older woman.” It’s not the difference in ages that is noteworthy in that context, but the reversal of the expected difference.

I’m far less familiar with the typical patterns in male-male romance novels, whether contemporary or historic, but within history itself, from ancient Athenian pederastic relationships up through the libertinism of the 17th century, the standard expectation was for erotic relationships between men to involve a hierarchical difference, most often based on age, but also including status. The asymmetry aligned with expected sexual roles, with the older, more socially powerful man taking the dominant, masculine-coded role and the younger, lower ranking one taking the “passive,” feminine-coded role. This made for a dynamic and shifting framework in which younger partners “aged out” of their former role and were expected to take up the dominant role with a new, younger partner. In individual instances this alignment might not hold, or one might find a stable age-matched pairing, but such arrangements were a “marked state”—the non-default—and it was egalitarian relationships that were considered transgressive. Of course, this pattern is also driven by patriarchal dynamics, where only the dominant partner is considered truly masculine. Around the 18th century there also developed, in parallel, a culture of male-male eroticism that focused more on mutual desire and something resembling the idea of sexual orientation. In this context, age and status dynamics became less of a defining feature, though the hierarchical pattern still held in many contexts.

When we come to consider female couples in history, we have neither the socio-economic politics of patriarchal marriage dynamics, nor the tradition of aged-based hierarchy for male partners. Bernadette Brooten (in Love Between Women) takes the analysis farther than the evidence can likely support in concluding that female homoeroticism in the classical and early Christian world was rooted in non-hierarchical, egalitarian relationships. (In contradiction, there is that one, tantalizing reference to Spartan women engaging in something equivalent to male pederasty.) But throughout European history the two primary patterns for relationships between women are not based on age difference, but either on similarity—of age, status, background—or on the reflection of a male-female relationship with one partner performing masculinity to some degree, but where age is not a component of determining who takes that role.

When there is a significant age difference within a specific couple, it may affect the types of models they use to enact and understand their relationship. In a different trope episode I discussed how some couples—particularly in the 19th century—adopted maternal symbolism in the context of age difference. In literary examples from at least the 16th century onward, age differences often appear in the context of mentorship, where an experienced older woman initiates a younger one into sexuality. Of course, these examples aren’t necessarily intended in a positive light! But it’s one context in which an age gap is made meaningful in the establishment and maintenance of a female couple. (It’s also a context that can be turned on its head to interesting effect, if a more experienced younger woman finds herself mentoring a “late bloomer” who is otherwise more established in life.)

As I’ve discussed in various other trope episodes, various scenarios carry with them the default expectation of maturity: the widow, the established businesswoman, the wealthy spinster taking on a companion. While these roles don’t require that a potential partner be significantly younger, including an age gap in the set-up changes the basic dynamics in systematic ways.

In each of these cases, the inclusion of an age gap is a choice, rather than a default expectation, which is what makes this element a trope rather than a part of the literary wallpaper.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

The historic and social context of age-differentiated pairings of various genders
Why the “age gap” trope tends to be restricted to f/f romance
Historic contexts for age-gap relationships

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
Twitter: @LesbianMotif
Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

Website: http://alpennia.com
Email: Heather Rose Jones
Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

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http://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-333-our-ffavorite-tropes-part-19-age-gap

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History points out again and again

The Long Back Yard

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Friday. Cloudy. Breezy. Cold.

The weather beans tell me that it's not going to snow today, but I'm watching flakes kind of just lazily drifting out of the sky so that's interesting.

I slept solid and never woke up until 7:30. The exciting end of book writing schedule is just exhausting. All together now: Writing is hard.

I'm sitting in the comfy chair overlooking the long backyard with the happy light on. Eventually I'll get up and get some breakfast and do my duty to the cats and wander off down coast for a bit.

I hope everybody has a good day.

Dictated to my phone.

Pine Point

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Well. It was a nice day for a drive. Too cold to walk on the beach, though I saw some brave souls out there.

The spine doctor says keep doing what I'm doing. I have a referral to an osteo in Augusta, for manipulation, and also an extension on my PT ticket, since next time is the last time. I at least want that on file in case I need to go back, sorta like running a credit balance on your credit card.

Since it was all nice and sunny and all, and because I haven't practiced with my navigator for a while, I drove home up Route 9, and let the navigator take me through Portland.
Got home to find, despite the instructions being in my FedEx file AND the garage door being open so it would be easy to just sit the box inside, the deliveryperson had opted to throw the 50-lb box against the front door. That's right, so it didn't open.

I struggled, and got the door open, whereupon the latch on the screen door flew free and splotted on the driveway.

Went inside, took care of business, came back to go through the door and get my Stuff out of the car and! That's right! The door doesn't open.

I get out my phone to call my neighbor, only -- I can't make a call. I can, however, text, and she's home and she promises to come right over and let me out, just as soon as she gathers her tools, in case it was an easy fix.

While I'm waiting for her, I look out needlenose pliers, which don't work, and only then realize I can reach through the window and open the latch from the outside, which I do.

Neighbor arrives. We get the latch back on, precariously. We come to the mutual conclusion that the set screw has come loose. We collaborate on a temp fix. Neighbor goes home, comes back with husband who has arrived home in the meanwhile. He sets the screw, diagnosis a worn-out spring, and performs a more stable temporary fix. My mission next week (after I finish this. damned. book) will be to go to the hardware store and see if they can sell me another latching mechanism.

In the meanwhile, I tried to call my cell from my landline and learned that my number is not in service.

So! I guess I should go see what the Verizon page has to say to me about that.

And how was your Friday?
#
Verizon will call me back when it's my turn -- at 3:30 pm tomorrow.

So, that's fun. I hope nobody snabbles up my phone number in the meantime.

I bought a sandwich at the Saco Hannaford, but with one thing and something else, I never got around to eating it, so I'm thinking, I'll search up Coon Cat Happy Hour, pour a glass of wine and open my sandwich.
#
Late updatery: I rebooted my phone and it is now Fully Operational.

I have canceled my litter order from Petco, so I never have to deal with FedEx again. It cost me a little bit of a pang, because it was one of the systems Steve had put into place, but he never meant it to get this stoopid.

I will be writing tomorrow, Saturday, and the next day, Sunday. With only a little bit of luck, I'll finish this damned draft.

Today's blog post brought to you by Blue Oyster Cult, "Godzilla"

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Museum Visit

Back in September, on my podcast, I aired an interview with Karli Wurzelnbacher who had curated a museum exhibition on sculptor Emma Stebbins at the Heckscher Museum on Long Island. So one of the conjunction of excuses to make this trip out to the East Coast was a chance to actually see the exhibit. Yesterday I took one of those typically complex assortments of transit peculiar to NYC to get there and had a wonderful time viewing everything.

The Heckscher is quite a small space--just five rooms and all of them in use for the show. In addition to quite an assortment of Stebbins' sculpture, there were displays of her drawings, biographical information, and a large number of photographs of works that are no longer extant (or no longer locatable), especially those documented in a scrapbook that her sister had compiled for her.

There was also a good amount of space devoted to her partnership with actress Charlotte Cushman (the exhibit used the word "wife" to my delight), as well as the rest of the expatriate artist community in Rome that they were part of. There were sculptor's tools on display and a video showing the process of mocking up a clay model, creating a cast, then using that to transfer the shape to marble.

In addition to enjoying the show, I was able to meet Karli face-to-face (although I didn't think to get a selfie with her). All in all, a lovely little adventure.

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The Huntress, by Kate Quinn

In this engrossing historical novel, three storylines converge on a single target, a female Nazi nicknamed the Huntress. During the war, we follow Nina, one of the Soviet women who flew bomber runs and were known as the Night Witches. After the war, we follow Ian, a British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter, who has teamed up with Nina to hunt down the Huntress as Nina is one of the very few people who saw her face and survived. At the same time, in Boston, we follow Jordan, a young woman who wants to be a photographer and is suspicious of the beautiful German immigrant her father wants to marry...

In The Huntress, we often know what has happened or surely must happen, but not why or how; we know Nina somehow ended up facing off with the Huntress, but not how she got there or how she escaped; we know who Jordan's stepmom-to-be is and that she'll surely be unmasked eventually, but not how or when that'll happen or how the confrontation will go down. There's a lot of suspense but none of it depends on shocking twists, though there are some unexpected turns.

Nina and Jordan are very likable and compelling, especially Nina who is kind of a force of nature. It took me a while to warm up to Ian, but I did about halfway through. Nina's story is fascinating and I could have read a whole novel just about her and her all-female regiment, but I never minded switching back to Jordan as while her life is more ordinary, it's got this tense undercurrent of creeping horror as she and everyone around her are being gaslit and manipulated by a Nazi.

This is the kind of satisfying, engrossing historical novel that I think used to be more common, though this one probably has a lot more queerness than it would have had if it had been written in the 80s - a woman/woman relationship is central to the story, and there are multiple other queer characters. It has some nice funny moments and dialogue to leaven a generally serious story (Nina in particular can be hilarious), and there's some excellent set piece action scenes. If my description sounds good to you, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

Quinn has written multiple historical novels, mostly set during or around WW2. This is the first I've read but it made me want to read more of hers.

Content notes: Wartime-typical violence, gaslighting, a child in danger. The Huntress murdered six children, but this scene does not appear on-page. There is no sexual assault and no scenes in concentration camps.

Current Music: Wolf Alice, "Don't Delete the Kisses"

That gossip's eye will look too soon

Alexander Knox was born on this date a hundred and nineteen years ago and without him I might never have discovered that the fan magazines of classical Hollywood could get as specifically thirsty as the modern internet.

Come to that, you would have been pretty tasty in the pulpit, too, Alex. You look, except for that glint in your eyes and that dimple in your cheek, like a minister's son. You look serious, even studious. You dress quietly, in grays and blacks and browns. Your interests are in bookish things. You live in a furnished apartment on the Strip in Hollywood, and have few possessions. You like to "travel light," you said so. You like to move about a lot, always have and always will. You've lived in a trunk for so many years you are, you explained, used to it. Of course, you've been married twice, which rather confuses the issue. But perhaps two can travel as lightly as one, if they put their minds to it. But you do have books. You have libraries in three places. At home, in Canada. At the farm in Connecticut, of which you are part owner, and in the apartment where you and your bride Doris Nolan still live. You write, which would come in handy with sermons. You're dreamy when you play the piano. For the most part it isn't, let's face it, church music you play. But you could convert.

—Gladys Hall, "Memo to Alex Knox" (Screenland, August 1945)