Yet Another Message from the Goddess

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This was not deliberate on the creator's part. The page was smudged by the kind of accident common to all manner of printing. But I thought it profound.

So I pasted it into the Image Book and explained what was going on below it.

Then I thought, "Why be explicit?" So I scribbled over the explanation and drew an arrow to it with the explication everything explained.

So very very much of my fiction is about the silence of God.


Above: For those who came in late, as a way of drawing attention to my newly-published novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, I'm serializing the Image Book I put together as a way of helping me to visualize Faerie and its inhabitants. There are a week and a half more images yet to come.

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Greer Gilman's Little Kingdom

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How did I spend your weekend? Funny you should ask. I was at a science fiction convention (oh, all right, it was Readercon), where I did a small amount of stagehand work in support of the first public reading of Greer Gilman's new one-act play Little Kingdom.

The reading was not part of the convention, which has such demands on its program time that it could only afford to offer Greer a half-hour. Alas, for a play 33 minutes long this was far from enough. So the participants invented a sort of Readercon Fringe by putting it on anyway, on the Terrace, as an independent production.

Greer Gilman played the part of Ben Jonson, "playwright, pundit, malcontent," while Marianne Porter was Ethel Smyth, "composer, suffragist, Sapphist."  The play records their first meeting on the Moon, the immediate dislike they take to one another, and how they come to terms with their fate and with each other.

It really was tremendously entertaining. Greer and Marianne played their parts with verve and brio, and everybody had a tremendous time. The audience, myself definitely included, loved it.

I also got to hang out with interesting people, meet old friends and new, buy books, learn much information of use and interest, and involve myself in yet more projects. Details as various matters become public.

And in the Image Book . . .

This is a great one . . . a picture of the Dowager herself.It brings out, I think, some of her glamour (in the novel, she is described thus: She was regally tall and imperially slim. She was also old, there was no denying that, but her face in age had taken on the mystique of a civilization lost in time and known only by rumor) and her darkness, but also the pain that made her into such a terrible individual. So I'm happy with it.


Above: For those who came in late, as a way of drawing attention to my newly-published novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, I'm serializing the Image Book I put together as a way of helping me to visualize Faerie and its inhabitants. There are less than a dozen more images yet to come.

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Caitlin Escapes (Monday's Blogpost)

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A big reminder here: I'll be at Charm City in Baltimore Wednesday evening at 7 p.m.

I'm not making many public appearances to support The Iron Dragon's Mother, so if you want an autograph, this is your best chance.

Also, it's going to be lots of fun. So why not?


And I apologize . . .

As always, I was on the road yesterday. I should have gotten this up sometime yesterday, but when I got home but I was kind of washed out by then.

Mea culpa, though far from maxima. It's just a blog, after all.


And from the Image Book . . . 

Cat Escapes. This is kind of a cheat because I'd already written that scene when I pasted in his book. But I couldn't resist.

Again, this is not what Caitlin of House Sans Merci literally looks like. But it's definitely how she feels at the time.



Above: For those who came in late, as a way of drawing attention to my newly-published novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, I'm serializing the Image Book I put together as a way of helping me to visualize Faerie and its inhabitants. There are only eleven more images yet to come.

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Spite Goddess

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This could well have been a pic of one of Caitlin's fellow dragon pilots. Rather, she became a Spite Goddess.

I think this deity plays a larger role in our world than is commonly acknowledged.

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Ben and Ethel on the Moon

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I'm at Readercon, relentlessly promoting my brilliant New fantasy nove!, THE IRON DRAGON'S MOTHER, and hobbling with various literary types. Alas, I cannot share any photos with you. My electronic devices won't cooperate. They never do.

It's not that I'm a Luddite. It's the MACHINES that are the Luddites. They refuse to work with me. They fear that if they do, I'll take over.

And I would, if I could. But they won't let me. Sure I can't.

Well played, machines.


And the highlight . . .

Undenably, the best event of the con has been not an official one but a Fringe performance. This was the first public reading ever of Greer Gilman's one act play Small Kingdom. Greer herself played Ben Jonson, "playwight, pedant, malcontent," and Marianne Porter was Ethel Smyth, " composer, suffragist, Sapphist. "

It was, in my unbiased opinion brilliant. Also loads of fun.

More, I hope, Tuesday, when I get back home, where my machines are more trusting.

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Lazy Friday Morning

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I think that this is the second half of the story begun yesterday but the resolution is too small to read and I'm in Quincy, Massachusetts, for a convention, so I can refer to the Image Book.

Well, as Dick Cheney once wisely observed, you go to the Internet with the pix you've got.

And given that a major theme of the trilogy. Is the Silence of God...


And on a related note . . .

I'm in Quincy, Massachusetts,  for a convention. I won't say which, because I'm not officially here yet.

The big surprise reveal tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it's a lazy Friday morning, I'm reading Lisa Goldstein's Ivory Apples, and I have nothing to do before I introduce Greer Gilman's Small Kingdom at five.

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A Holy Story, The Best I Know

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Have you ever wondered what my handwriting looks like? I didn't think so. Now, however, you know.

Even I have trouble reading it.

The doodle is of a trickster and, for some reason, I wrote the beginning of what I characterize at the bottom as ...a holy story. The best I know.

Here's how the story begins: And then the years blur into one another. I remember staying up all night, afire with inspiration, one Friday, typing, typing, typing, & when I finally ran out of inspiration realizing first that it was Saturday morning, next that I wanted to fall into bed and sleep for eighteen hours, and finally that I had no clean clothes [indecipherable]. So I could either sleep and,  awakening on Sunday, put on my sweated clothes and take my stuff to the laundromat

I have no idea what that story was doing in this particular notebook or why I cut it off midway through. I won't go into detail here because I've narrated it elsewhere. But what happened was that on my way to the laundromat I ran into a young woman I knew who was sitting with her visiting father upon her stoop, both of them eating ice cream cones. I said hello, apologized for my unshaven and disheveled appearance, and explained why I looked (and smelled) so bad. Then I went on to the laundromat, cleaned my clothes, went home, and crashed.

I made an impression, though. The young lady's father went home and told her mother about this remarkable young man he'd met, leaving an indelible impression that never quite went away.

And the young lady? Reader, I married her.


Above: For those who came in late, as a way of drawing attention to my newly-published novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, I'm serializing the Image Book I put together as a way of helping me to visualize Faerie and its inhabitants. This is the 93rd of 108 images.

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