I'm enjoying my first few weeks in Florida very much.  First, nice to live in the same house as my husband again, in a comfortable place with a pool.  I always thought a pool would be too much hassle, but so far we love it and try to swim every day.  I enjoy the weather, because even when it rains the sun always has the last word.  But one thing I hadn't anticipated about Florida, especially here in Weston on the eastern edge of the Everglades, is creepy crawlies. 

There's bugs and varmints, and then there's South Florida bugs and varmints - really in a league of their own as far as creepiness goes. Every time we open the door it seems there is some creature desperate to get into the house with us, such as this little guy who we finally captured in a french fry box.

 
Over the weekend the cat chased a small frog inside that we still haven't located.  At night I can hear a faint cheeping from hubby's closet...

My co-workers warned me about the local toads on my first day. 

http://floridagardener.com/critters/BufoMarinus.htm

Apparently, if your dog or cat bites one of these things it can die from the poison.  First aid includes washing pooch's mouth out with soap and the garden hose and then giving mass quantities of milk to drink.  I have spotted one of these things out on the patio, but it is so huge and ugly I can't imagine one of our pets being stupid enough to bite it.

And despite our love of the pool and the fact that it is enclosed in screens, we always inspect it carefully now before jumping in, ever since we discovered the drowned corpse of what we tentatively identified from Google as a redbellied snake, although our specimen had an orange belly:  http://www.uga.edu/srelherp/snakes/stoocc.htm

It doesn't help that I found the snake in the pool a few days after reading about the uncontrolled Burmese python epidemic here in South Florida:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520131750.htm

So Florida is nice, but no going barefoot.


 

Just two books this month, because of my move from Nashville to Florida.  I'll blog more about that later, still getting my swamp legs here in the Sunshine state.

Book: The 10% Solution by Ken Rand
Month Read: June
Notes: Bought at Wiscon on the advice of my workshop teacher, this is a succinct and useful guide for editing.  Very pragmatic, it has a cheat sheet of troublesome words or phrases to search for in your word processor.
Recommended? Yes

Book: The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt
Month Read: June
Notes: Steampunk worldbuilding is brilliant, and the characters are engaging, especially the secondary cast.  But overall the book is a little too long for me.  At the end I just felt like I was watching plot points grind along rather than being in the story.
Recommended? Overall yes, just clear your calendar for a couple of weeks

I've just been reading chapter one of Catherynne Valente's excellent online novel Fairyland.  It's a lovely start to the story, but I was delayed a bit in finishing the chapter because I missed that day at school where they taught us about Widdershins (when was that lesson, second grade or third?).  I believe the redneck equivalent is "ass backwards."

In case you are also unclear, here's the wikipedia.

 

Jim Van Pelt just sold me on buying Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, which I am embarrassed to say I have not read yet.  Van Pelt makes it sound like a must-read for any aspiring spec-fic novelist.

I'm in the process of moving my household from Nashville, Tennessee to South Florida this month.  We've lived here for eleven years, raised our kids in the 'burbs just outside Nashville, and we have some good memories.  But politically and culturally, Tennessee can be tediously conservative.

I'm accustomed to voting Democratic and never having a prayer of seeing my candidate win, but stories like this one underscore the real problem in Tennessee:  www.wsmv.com/politics/19761259/detail.html 

It's chock full of backwards racist hicks. 

Some people from outside the state might read the story of the legislative aide to a Republican Tennessee State Senator sending out a racist email ridiculing the President of the United States and think that this is just one extremist nut-bag, but they would be wrong.  This sort of attitude is pervasive.  This is Sarah Palin/Rush Limbaugh country and I am so looking forward to a change of scenery, now more than ever.

My story "Shiloh Orchids" was just published today over at The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature:

http://www.deadmule.com/fiction/

Hubby and I dropped in at Bonnaroo for a couple of days this weekend.  The contact high from low-lying clouds of pot smoke is only just wearing off.

Here are some pix from my phone:

This was a great African band, Amoudou and Mirian. 

Book: The Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean
Month Read: May
Notes: This is the most beautifully written boring book I have ever read.

Book: The Postman by David Brin
Month Read: May
Notes: A great novel from 1985, I feel silly for not having read it sooner. The first chapter is everything a first chapter should be and one that I will try to emulate, and there is an important epistolary dated May 2009 in the novel, which is an interesting coincidence.   I've previously read a couple of books in S.M. Stirling's "Dies The Fire" series, which was published at least ten years after "The Postman".  Plot and setting similarities in Stirling's books to this fine novel are striking and it's hard to see how they could be accidental. 
Recommended? Yes

Book: Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson
Month Read: May
Notes: Great conclusion to the trilogy, smart in a way that stimulates your imagination.  And many thanks to KSR for such an indulgent climax - I think he set out to reward his loyal audience with the ending.
Recommended? Yes

Book: The Lost Fleet: Relentless by Jack Campbell
Month Read: May
Notes: Nifty space naval battles, as always for this series, but the forbidden relationship stuff is getting irksome.  Next book better see some epic space-ship sex for the hero and his love, that's all I have to say about that.
Recommended? Yes

Book: The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finlay
Month Read: May
Notes: Sandra McDonald recommended this book on her blog and so I decided it would be my reward for finishing a particularly gnarly work project.  I love the way Finlay writes scenes, very cinematic and calculated to give his characters the juiciest possible situations to play around in.  The magic in the book was cool and surprisingly scary, too. 
Recommended? Yes

Book: Bad To The Bone by Jeri Smith-Ready
Month Read: May
Notes: A fun comfort book, the sequel to Wicked Game (vampires and rock and roll).  Jeri Smith-Ready's writing is notably witty, with clever zingers throughout the book.
Recommended? Yes

Book: Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout
Month Read: May
Notes: Really enjoyable, it got me through the airplane ride to and from Wiscon this year.  For the writerly, check out the POV of the ravens, very effective.  Also, Hermod is one of the best god characters I've read in a while.
Recommended? Yes

I survived the flu, thanks all for the good wishes.

Even though I am an educated person and I know about flu viruses and all that, there was a low point when I felt so horrible that I seriously wondered if God was punishing me for something.

Then I thought, this must be what it would feel like to be cursed or hexed. Naturally, being feverish and having not much else to think about, I started imagining what the flu must have been like back in the middle ages. 

It is such an angry virus. Just like a well-crafted hex, the flu just hits you all at once and you are down, in bed, abjectly miserable - and that's in 2009.   I'm sure in 1409 the flu must have been truly excruciating.  No Tylenol, no Mucinex, no blessed Chloraseptic spray for the demon sore throat.  Chloraseptic is good stuff, I hope everyone out there has some in the medicine cabinet.

And when the flu is finally vanquished, it's just over.  Saturday I was in bed and helpless, Sunday afternoon I was hustling through the airport to fly home to Nashville.  It's just as if the right magic charm or well-phrased prayer finally dispelled the curse.

After my week with influenza I can see how a flu outbreak back in the olden days could inspire some burgermeister or parish priest to start calling out witches and trying to get to the bottom of who is casting these dangerous curses and spells around, infecting innocents and inflicting misery.  I'll bet the royal physicians would have been the first to point fingers.

I've had the flu since Wednesday.  Flu is very bad and I urge everyone to avoid it. 

I really enjoy JA Konrath's blog.  Periodically he lays down a healthy dose of reality for writers, as he does in this post:

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/05/advice-for-professional-writers.html

http://wiscon.piglet.org/schedule

We strode into the Tennessee Renaissance Festival today just as the heavens opened up.  The renn fair players were still game, as you can see here (medicinal rum may play a role in such resilient good cheer):



We did see some sad wet fairies, but they cheered up when we promised to leave extra milk and bread on the back steps for them:


And this is me and my merry band after we found out about the renn fair's "No Rain Checks" policy:

I awoke from a lovely Sunday nap to find that my boys had bought me flowers!  This is especially touching since their Dad is travelling and not here to strong-arm them into celebrating Mother's Day.

Best. Movie. Ever. 

That is all.

It's prom night here and my boy is looking good:

My micro-flash story, The Day the Castle Burned Down,  is the May 1st story on Flashshot.

Book: The Electric Michaelangelo by Sarah Hall
Month Read: April
Notes: This is a beautifully written lit fiction novel about an English tattoo artist who lives at Coney Island for a while, set in the 1940s.  I think if I saw one of the characters from the novel walking down the street I would recognize him or her immediately.  Just a haunting story, I'm still carrying it around in my head.  I'm pretty sure I need to read everything Sarah Hall ever wrote now.
Recommended? Yes

Book: The Hidden City by Michelle West
Month Read: April
Notes: This is a BIG book.  This is my first experience with a Michelle West fantasy, very involving and immersive, lovely use of language, and the author pulls off deep emotional content without sounding overwrought.  But I have to say, about 150 pages too long for me, at least (sorry Grant!).
Recommended? Yes, but clear your calendar for a couple of weeks!

Book: Afraid by Jack Kilborn
Month Read: April
Notes: This book knows exactly what it is, adventure horror run full-out amok (with a dancing monkey, no less) !  I read it on an airplane, great fun.  The pacing reminds me of one of those episodes of the TV series "24" where Jack Bauer runs around Los Angeles kicking the living shit out of terrorists.
Recommended? Yes

Last week my husband, also known as "he who shall be has been well rewarded", got us tickets for Iron Maiden.  It was so awesome.

There are a lot of reasons to love Iron Maiden: four screaming guitars and a BIG drum set, plus their over-the-top lead singer. They were coming off a world tour so their sound was perfect and the show went without a hitch.  They blew up some nice pyro and there was a floating giant mummy, as well as a 20 foot tall demon with a ray gun.

The best part for me, though: they performed my favorite metal song ever, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  Yes, it's that Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  The band originally recorded the poem on their Powerslave album.  There is a long spooky interlude in the middle that sounds like you've plunged into the underworld. On stage they did the whole piece, like 20 minutes long, and during the underworld ballad the stage was only illuminated by purple lights and a massive fog bank appeared.  Coincidentally, this is when many audience members started lighting pot pipes and doobies.  It was wild to hear 14,000 metalheads reciting the lyrics to Coleridge at the top of their lungs.

The crowd was almost as entertaining as the band - it looked like an Aryan Nation Youth convention.  Midway through the concert the more enthusiastic drinkers in the crowd started passing out and a well-practiced security detail would come out and whisk them away.  We had tickets in a private box and late in the concert a stoned guy came in and rooted around in our snack tray.  After some pointed encouragement from the guys in our group, he grabbed a brownie and stumbled out.

Greg Van Eekhout's first novel is available on Amazon for pre-order.  He's a VP grad and the book looks really interesting, Norse Code, an urban fantasy rooted in Viking myth.  There are Valkyries, even, so that's cool - I decided to pre-order a copy.

So there I am on Amazon and the ad pops up for the Amazon credit card.  You get a $30 free book credit.  I signed up for the Amazon credit card, people.  Hopefully, I will be able to control myself. This is like a crack credit card for a junkie, though, so we'll see what happens.

Anyway, the good that came out of this, I get Norse Code by Eekhout as soon as it comes out, yay!