Celebrating Endicott

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Those clever ladies at the Endicott Studio have created a new blog (to go with the fabulous one they already have) featuring pictures of some artists and writers involved with the studio at its inception and now. This is part of their continuing celebration of 20 years of wonderful work.

Looking at those photos just makes me happy. So many strong, brave, amazing people. I feel incredibly lucky to know — or at least have a passing acquaintance — with many of them, and even luckier to have more than a passing acquaintance with most of their bodies of work.

Here’s to 20 more years.

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Tuesday Hangovers

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Monday Hangovers

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Oh, Goodie

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I have a list, of which I’m only going to share the first five, because the other things on it keep changing — also, alas, there’s a pretty good chance those are the only five I’ll get to.

Anyway, the way my particular low residency program works is on a schedule of six month semesters, with five packets. After you turn in packet five, you have however long you have until the 10-day residency that kicks off the next semester, and your next packet goes in to your new advisor at some point after that. One of the things that goes into my monthly packet is an annotated bibliography — a paragraph or so — on all the books I’ve read. (You can see more or less what I’ve annotated by looking in the column to the immediate right in Reading List 2007.) I’ll have a little over a month until the residency after I turn in, so I have a list of books for adults (a silly designation, I know) that I’ve been holding back on reading because they won’t count for the annotated bibliography and I can’t get essays out of them. (If a book like this has a young protagonist or cross-over appeal, then I can count it and have — I was able to justify going ahead and reading Stacey Richter’s fabbie new collection, Twin Study, in this manner.)

So, these are the five books for adults I plan to read during that little break:

And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes from a Writer’s Early Life by Nicola Griffith
Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
Spaceman Blues: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery
Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe (LBC pick)
Triangle by Katherine Weber (LBC pick)

My reason for posting is that Ysabeau just read and posted about Liz Hand’s book and Matt just read and posted about Slattery’s and both were very, very happy. I’m now filled with the best kind of reading anticipation.

For the record: I’m actually extremely happy with all the reading I’ve done this semester and amn’t complaining a bit. YA is where it’s at and I have an Extremely Long List of books I can’t wait to read for younger readers (or, at least, published for younger readers), but still, a girl likes free reign from time to time. That said, I can’t remember a half-year when my reading has made me more thoughtful or brought me greater pleasure.

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The Basic 8

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The wonderful Susan at Chicken Spaghetti tagged me for the 8 things meme. Sayeth the rules:

For this meme, each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. Working a window shade or blinds — of any kind except the Roman variety — is like doing extreme physics for me. Christopher swears this is easy to do and most people learn to deal with them as children. I’m very skeptical.

2. I floss every day. And I don’t really understand you non-daily flossers.

3. I grew up in a county with only one stoplight, fifteen minutes away from my house.

4. I read the complete works of William Shakespeare between the ages of 11 and 13.

5. In high school, I wrote a lot of poetry about George Bush, Sr. If you’d like, I might be persuaded to humiliate my younger selfpost one.

6. So many of these are about my youth because we are at my parents’ house right now, in Bond, Ky.

7.  I often pretend to be a spy. Sometimes I wonder if now I really am one.

8. Nine times out of ten, I know whether I’m going to like a book by the end of the first paragraph. And why.

I would tag, but I am too the lazy to go posting in comments. Also, I can’t remember who has already done this one and who hasn’t, so if you haven’t done it yet and want to then go forth and listicate.

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Saturday Hangovers

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I have all these posts fluttering around to write once packet the final (of this semester) is over, which is a week from today. Assuming all goes according to plan. This means, though, that since I’ve spent the last couple of weeks revising, I have to bust it and do 1500 words a day or so of new material for the next six days. (Yes, I have enough to turn in already, but I’d really rather turn in 50 new messy messy pages of stuff he hasn’t seen, so I get direction on where to go with them, than stuff that is now where it needs to be due to revision and just get the nod on it — it really is strange to do a draft this way, but working so far, so…) I also appear to have a bit of Scratchy Throat & Tiny Men Inside Temples Crud that no doubt came courtesy of Wiscon, but I’m pretending I don’t, other than sleeping in until nearly 11 today and still being in my pajamas.  Christopher leaves for Syc Hill this time next week, so he’s under the deadline gun too. This will be a fun week, no?

I am getting together an ordering page for Say… what’s the combination? that contributors can link to — and contributor and subscriber copies and such will be en route soon, but it may take a week or so longer than it should. Yes, we know we suck at this admin stuff, which is why the next issue is Say… is that the end?, ahem.

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Friday Hangovers

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Thursday Hangovers

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Wiscon post, the Last

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I must say that the weekend was so lovely it killed any lingering sadness over missing BEA; also, I’d be dead if I had to tromp around the floor of the Javits Center, so there. (I will not, however, refuse kind mailings of free books from those of you on the ground — especially YA stuff. Hint. Hint.) Too lazy to provide links, but y’all know where to find most of these folks anyway, I suspect.

1. I only made it to a few programming items and barely visited the party floor this year — which meant I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with a bunch of you (I’m looking at you Barzak and Alan and Kristin and Steph and Patrick and Lawrence and Ysabeau, and, well, LOTS more of you — but at least some of you I should get more time with later on). It was ever thus and ever will be. On the other hand, I managed chats with Jenn Reese and Sarah Prineas as opposed to just passing you in elevators, and had much more satisfying chunks of time with Karen Meisner and Susan Groppi and Terri Windling and Midori Snyder. I also feel like I met slightly more new people this time, so that’s always good (hi Kameron and Chris). For whatever reason, I ended up hiding out in rooms a lot (could it be because Wiscon is so big now and I get cranky in crowds? not sure), but that meant decent quantities of quality time with Karen Fowler and Kelly Link and Ted Chiang, among others, so yay. And we had a lovely dinner with Meghan McCarron and the amazing Liz Gorinsky, which was, well, lovely and fun. Holly Black spent her usual most of the weekend convalescing in her room with a cold, but emerged to hang out Sunday night and Monday for hours at a stretch. There may be a few more names that slip into the rest of this, but I’m really unable to do the whole Name Everyone Thing, because there are too too many fine people I adore seeing at Wiscon now. This is a good thing, if somewhat overwhelming.

2. Oh, the happiness of finally convincing the Melissas to come to Wiscon and having it turn out well! I love it when we’re right and it results in the joy of others.

3. Thanks to everyone who came to our reading. I was, of course, way out of my league with Christopher and Richard and new friend Chris Nakashima-Brown (he of the controversial quip).

4. Apparently the penguins in Antarctica lay on the ice with their tongues hanging out because it’s so warm now. Also, I hear Molly Gloss’s new book is fabulous.

5. Panels attended, three. One on feminism in YA, where smart people said smart things. Mely’s write-up tells you all you need to know. I also went to the judging the Tiptree panel, where I mostly tried to suck Midori’s wisdom in through osmosis — they read 100 books last year; eep. The third was the one I was on, about trends and YA. Someone asked that we post the list of books we recommended at the end (I should mention we also talked about middle grade and even some about picture books, so broad net), so here are the ones I mentioned: Cecil’s books but especially Beige, MT Anderson’s books but especially Octavian Nothing, Holly’s books but especially Valiant and Ironside, Ysabeau’s Flora Segunda (which had to be the most recommended book of the weekend), Elizabeth Knox’s Dreamhunter duet (also recommended by Kelly in the feminism panel), Laura Amy Schlitz’s A Drowned Maiden’s Hair, China’s Un Lun Dun, and Margaret Mahy (aka my new obsession). I think that was pretty much it. Sarah Prineas had a lengthy list that was wonderful and if she posts it, I’ll link it, along with Patrick Samphire’s ditto.

6. Readings attended, three-ish. I ducked in for the very end of Kat, Sarah and Jenn’s reading, only catching the final reader (whose name escapes me) — this is what happens when you don’t check your watch on the way to lunch. We also saw Meghan, Alice Kim, Rick Bowes and Barzak’s reading, which was fab, and Alan, Kristin, Lena, Dave and Haddayr’s, which was ditto fab. I missed a bunch of other readings I wanted to attend, including one with Holly and Ysabeau and Ellen Kushner and Greg Frost (much gnashing of teeth), but I sent Christopher with the video camera and he got snippets that may appear here later on in June as part of the Blog Blast Tour.

7. Madison is wonderful. Resolve to get out of hotel more next year.

8. I bet you didn’t know that Ted Chiang is constantly fighting to keep more towns from being named after fictional characters. It’s true.

9. Maureen McHugh is the best. And she has a total yoga glow.

10. I managed yoga only one morning and no real cardio. Someday, I really will figure out how to move at conventions. I have a feeling then I wouldn’t get half so exhausted and overstimulated all at once.

11. I actually did some revision though, so I’m cutting the slack on the work-out stuff. But my last packet of semester one is due at the end of next week and that means I should go do more. Like now. See you next year!

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