Happy Mabon! We welcome autumn in with a revival of the guest blog post. We’re starting off with a wonderful and informative blog from my friend and fellow writer Michelle Belanger. Enjoy the magic of the day and of the words below.
-Laurell
Tag: magic
New Blog – See you at FairieCon East!
So many of you ask me to come visit your part of the world, that I’m going to try and do more conventions and make more appearances. I will be a guest at FairieCon East November 7 – 9, 2014 in Hunt Valley, Maryland. I will be doing at least a signing a day, and panels! They’re opening up the big room for my spotlight panel which is a one on one conversation rather than a straight interview. I’m not exactly sure what that means either, but we’ll find out together.
The more of you that show up for my events at FairieCon East, the more likely I am to do more conventions and events on the east coast. I’m responding to two things; first that FairieCon has been asking me to be a guest for a few years now, and second, that so many east coast fans have consistently requested that I come back to their neck of the woods. So here’s your chance to see me in person, have me sign something for you, and give me more incentives to travel and meet all of you.
New Blog – New York and the Pursuit of Happiness
Where did you spend this 13th anniversary of 9/11? Jonathon and I spent it in New York, the Big Apple, that happening town. We had our fiancé, Genevieve, with us, as well, so the romance was high in between the high powered business meetings. The meetings went very well, not sure how much else I can share, or would be appropriate to share here, so I’ll leave it at that. I’m not trying to tease, just honestly bad at judging such things. But in between those creative and productive meetings, we took time to enjoy the City that Never Sleeps. Considering the great food we got at odd hours, that may even be true. If you like great food, and Italian in particular try Villagio, 40 Central Park south. We ate there twice and everything from wine to desert was fabulous. They also had wonderful staff that made you feel welcome, even when the three of us stayed late and closed the place down the second night. Thanks to all the staff there that helped make our first New York trip as a “couple” even more special. Hopefully next trip we’ll have Genevieve’s husband, Spike, with us and our fourple will be complete.
When we realized we would be in New York on the actual day of 9/11 we tried to think how to commemorate it. Thanks to the wonderful, and Tony award winning, James Monroe Iglehart, who is amazing as the Genie in Aladdin, we decided to see the show. He is beyond brilliant as the Genie, seriously it’s a performance you really owe it to yourself to try and see. The rest of the cast is great, too. The staging was complicated and they made it look effortless. The choreography was fun and innovative, and then there’s the costumes! I have never seen so many quick changes on stage, and all done so fast and smoothly that it took us a few minutes to go, “Hey, that dancer was on just seconds ago in a different costume. How’d they do that?” Thanks to James inviting us back stage, and the charming and talented stage manager, Sarah, we had some of our questions answered. Far from taking away from the magic, knowing the technical details made it all the more amazing. Since I’m claustrophobic there were a few entrances and exits that James and some of the other cast members do that I would have had trouble doing, but they made it all look easy. I haven’t seen the other Tony award winning shows, but if there is better staging, choreography, and costumes on Broadway right now, I’ll have to see it to believe it.
It was all great fun, but we chose to attend Aladdin on 9/11 because that was the only thing that had ever made Broadway go dark. Not two world wars, not the Great Depression, nor all the “wars” since have darkened The Great White Way, until that awful moment YEARS AGO. So, to commemorate that anniversary, and to celebrate that we are all still here, our country still stands, and that Broadway keeps doing one of the things that America excels at, entertaining, we wanted to see a Broadway musical on 9/11/14.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are the three inalienable rights listed in the Untied States Declaration of Independence. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll be happy, just that all people should have a chance to try for happiness, it’s up to the individual to catch it for themselves. Well, Jonathon, Genevieve, and I chased and caught it in New York this week. I hope you and yours were able to catch some happiness, too
New Blog: My Daemons are Crashing
My daemons are crashing, the computer tech said. I thought I’d misheard over the crush of the computer store, but then she repeated it. My smart phone wasn’t working because the computer daemons in it were crashing. Computer daemons are programs that wait in the background until you call them into service, sort of like the original idea of genies, or jinn, that give magical help if you have the power to call and control them. Not too far off from some of the mysterious workings of computers.
Once I was a technophobe, but as I stood there in the computer store waiting for my phone to come back to life, and I felt bereft. I couldn’t call, text, check e-mail, or . . . my hand held office was broken. I have not only embraced technology, but I have drunk deep of the technological Kool-aid. I didn’t realize how deep until the moment I stood in the buzz of the computer store and mourned my non-functioning phone.
I was suddenly a writer that couldn’t write, because I didn’t have a pen, pencil, or piece of paper to my name. I was so distressed that I left my husband to babysit the phone while I ran down to the brick and mortar bookstore to buy a pen and a notebook. I also picked up a new book to read, because I was a writer in a bookstore, come on, I had to buy a book. What book? Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, which I’ve actually never read. I decided recently that I needed to fix that, and there’s no time like the present. It was somehow reassuring to hold a real book that was written long before the thought of computers, back when a writer had to have good penmanship so that his editor could read his manuscript. I admit I’m glad I don’t have to write my novels by hand, in fact, I write almost exclusively on my iPad and iPhone, and main computers now. I even take notes on my phone most of the time instead of sticky notes. I’m writing this on my iPad, while we watch, “Fast & Furious 6” on the big screen LED TV with a Blue Ray DVD. Does anyone remember when if you wanted to watch a movie it had to be on the three, maybe four channels, that you could get on your rabbit-eared TV? The smart phone you’re holding in your hand has more computing power than the computers that sent the Apollo spacecrafts to the moon. How freaking cool is that?
How many of you remember Space Invaders, and how everyone was mesmerized by those little blips on the screen? Now the graphics on the latest games are so amazing they look like mini-movies. Would any of us have guessed how far the computer revolution would come into our homes and change the way we do not only business, but our recreation and play? E-books, electronic books are perilously close to outselling paperback books. Time spent in front of our TV and computer screens take more of our days than being outside in the real world. I know I had no idea when I watched that first rough game move jerkily across the monochrome screen what was coming, and how much of modern life was going to be so closely intertwined with it that one of the things our government fears most is an EMP, electromagnetic pulse bomb that would take out all the pretties that we use everyday.
My daemons are coming when called again, to work their spells. The magic smoke is back in the little box in my hand, and the world is strangely more firm.
New Blog: Sholto
I thought I had posted this earlier today, but apparently not. *laughs* Preparation for tour is beginning to eat the world, but my goal is to be packed and ready to go a few days ahead rather than the last minute rush I usually do. (My final pack for tour is pretty much a *Kermit Flail* of epic proportions, trying to avoid that this time.) So here is Sholto’s blog for, A Shiver of Light. This book is so thickly plotted, and there are so many surprises and reveals, that it’s getting harder and harder to find a page-tease that doesn’t give something major away, but I finally found a Sholto scene that walked that fine line. This blog pairs up with June 8, and the event at Printers Row Literary Festival, Chicago Tribune, Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State Street, Chicago, IL 60605 my event is 2:30-5:00 PM. See you soon!
New Blog: Mistral
Here’s your taste of Mistral from, A Shiver of Light, which hits shelves on June 2, less than a week away! You actually get more than just Mistral in this page-tease, because some magic, not even Rhys, Merry, or Doyle can stop. I’ve been seeing each blog with a different character from the book as corresponding to a different tour date, so this one would match up with Friday, June 6 in Chicago at Barnes & Noble at 55 Old Orchard Center, Skokie, IL 60077 – see you there!
