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Even in a little thing

10th October, 2008. 11:30 am. Back in the Middle Ages - yay!!

I'm getting ready for much teaching over the next two months. Most of my Canberra courses are up and running, but I haven't heard back about the Sydney one yet. There is space in all of them, if you were thinking of doing one or another and hadn't quite yet made up your mind.

ANU by night
The single evening course at the ANU this semester is Heroes, Magic and Myth in the Middle Ages and we're going to have a rattling good time. Lots of stories as well as lots of understanding of how things fitted together (why did I want to write 'fat together' as the past tense?).
This is heartland stuff for me and I get a big kick from teaching it. We'll look at everything from epic heroes to the start of the witchcraft trials. I may teach Inquisition method or I may not, depending on the students. I'll almost certainly spend a moment on Alexander's stay at the city of the Amazons and spend significantly longer with all my favourite epic heroes (especially Guiborc, who was a stroppy female epic heroine). Plus there will be Arthur.


NSW Writers' Centre - one weekend only
For Sydneysiders, I have a similar course starting tomorrow week, but targetted directly at writers. It's The Medieval Imagination and you'd better book quickly if you want it to go ahead.

This is easily the most loved (by students) of all the courses I teach writers. Every time I teach it I get complaints that it's not long enough. You can find booking details here. I start with world view and build up to stories and where they come from and how they are used. There's lots of space for asking "If I want such and such in my novel..." Though most of my answers will focus on magic and hero-tales and legend, I will have the Beast with me should you have passing queries about daily life or inheritance.

If you want specific workshops about other Medieval topics, then still come and in your evaluation say "Can we have a workshop on such-and-such next year." (It's a matter of actively demonstrating current and future demand, purely and simply - if the NSW Writers' Centre doesn't know about the demand, they won't run the course.)

ACT Writers' Centre
I'm teaching a couple of things at Gorman House this semester

The first is for late primary/early high school students. Adults keep asking me if they can pretend to be just a little younger so they can take part. The dates have changed from the ones originally advertised and it now starts 25 October. It goes for 6 weeks, with a break on 8 November. It's the perfect family outing, because Gorman House markets run those days, so the rest of the family can stock up on market goodness while my students and I have fun indoors.

Each week has its own topic. They are:
1. Create a medieval town;
2. How to make your magic work;
3. Making sure your hero gets fed (food design and land design and markets);
4. This goes with that (arms and armour and fortifications and siege warfare– making sure your fighting works);
5. What your peasants know (and when they can leave the farm to fight dragons);
6. Travelling (from basic equipment to money to roadside cooking).

For adult writers (and younger ones) there is a specific workshop on writing magic. This is quite different in focus to the ANU eveing course and only lasts one day (26 October). If you have projects in mind we'll work with them, but we'll also look at the difference between theories of Medieval magic and what one needs in a book or story to make that book or story work.

And, of course, in November, there's my not-suitable-for-children course on Love and Sex in the Middle Ages. I may mention elephants. It's a short-short course - a mere Sunday afternoon's worth. It's going to be a great deal of fun. You may never, ever look at the Middle Ages the same way again. You may never, ever write love scenes the same way again. Especially not on Wednesdays.

Details of the ACT Writers Centre courses are here.

And that's it, except for my Wednesday sessions: you need a referral for those (email me if you want more info).

Read 2 Notes -Make Notes

9th October, 2008. 7:07 pm.

Yom Kippur is over, thank goodness. I still have my fine fever but the inflammation is the least it's been in 2 months, also thank goodness. Conflux made it worse, but sleeping almost all the time since then has really got it under control. Life and skin are both mysteries.

My main concern of the evening is who the mysterious person was who tried to ring me a little while ago. I couldn't answer the phone because it wasn't yet dusk and I am desperately curious. Please ring back, whoever you are!! (the dusk thing only applies one day of the year, just in case anyone was wondering what weird regulations govern my daily life)

Unless anything else intervenes, my evening will be unevenly distributed between Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and my own writing. Yes, I finally am well enough to write. You would not *believe* how relieved I am at this. I've already decided my fairy needs a mid-life crisis in celebration. (Why does that last sentence read oddly?)

I broke my fast with aloo parathas, in case anyone is curious. An easy and mindless foodstuff for those living alone. If I had stayed in Melbourne I would have broken it with family, but I returned for Conflux and that's the price. Aloo parathas is not a big price. I wouldn't mind that missing phonecall being from someone who rings back very soon, demanding my presence, I admit. It feels strange to be alone tonight. This is why DVDs were invented and why good friends lend me DVDs. In five minutes I shall not be alone. I shall be in an entirely cheerful universe. Did I say 'entirely cheerful' and mean to describe BSG? Should I be really scared about the fiction I produce tonight?

Read 2 Notes -Make Notes

8th October, 2008. 12:52 pm.

And now for a brief moment of seriousness.

I'd like to apologise for anything I have done this last year to hurt any of you, whether it was intentional or unintentional, with word, look or any other means. I don't think I've tried to hurt anyone, but that doesn't mean I didn't and tonight is Yom Kippur and it's almost past time for me to apologise.

May anyone Jewish reading this be well over the Fast and be inscribed in all the right places and have a wonderful year.

Read 13 Notes -Make Notes

8th October, 2008. 12:45 pm.

A silly post before the serious one. I want to send a letter of greeting to Lego. I hadn't realised that they were here from an alternate universe until [info]a_d_medievalist alerted me to this. Anyone from that universe needs a special welcome into ours, I think.

Read 1 Note -Make Notes

7th October, 2008. 8:08 pm.

So much stuff to remember and so little space in my brain. Karen Herkes was such a wonderful chair that I'm on the committee next year. I swore I wouldn't, but I am. I keep telling people that the banquet will be Sixties and Conspiracy theories and will comprise a three course buffet of everything in aspic. In the reality, I'll be putting several options to the committee and aspic may or may not be one of them. I accept bribes but do not respond to blackmail: anyone who blackmails me gets fed lettuce in aspic whatever the theme ends up being.

Anyhow, to content. I need a content-full post so that I can finish with Conflux and move on to Medieval Sex and other teaching delights (today I learned that more people are interested in Medieval Magic than Medieval Sex - in Canberra, at least).

I didn't get to many panels I was not on and I didn't make any launches at all. I had a fairly busy time of my own program and basically waved at piles of books in passing.

The first panel I made was "Making a living as a writer, but not necessarily a novelist" (which I was on) and we talked about a fairly wide range of income options, from technical writing, to working in media, to teaching, to freelance writing, to comics, to pro-blogging. The main audience interest was in the film industry, so Mark Shireffs had to answer more questions than I did (mwa ha ha): I got most of the blogging questions at the blogging workshop and Karen Simpson-Nikakis handled at lot of the teaching questions. In other words, I was bog lazy, which is my favourite thing to be.

Nyssa and I shared a pizza at the bar for lunch (Nyssa owes me many drinks, since I've decided I charge extortionate interest on drinks - I was too good throughout Conflux, basically, and now evil Gillian has emerged).

After lunch I went to the alternate history panel, about which I have blogged and about which you have heard. I'm pretty sure the panellists haven't yet realised I liveblogged them. If I die tomorrow, all my leftover sweets and chocolate go to Cat Sparks and my skulls get divided between my publishers. Also, if I die tomorrow, my ghost shall haunt the speakers on the alternate history panel because one of them is likely to have been the death-bringer. Anyone who writes a really good alliterative death rhyme for me, lauding my achievements, gets my Medieval book collection and the first person who can demonstrate they've actually read all my fiction gets my entire (and enviable) fiction collection. If I don't die tomorrow, then I get to keep it all, including the skull that's attached to my head.

I missed so many good things at Conflux because of conflict. The thing I most wanted to go to (of the many things I most wanted to go to) was Mark's Jasper Morello film. If anyone has a copy, I promise to give you exciting things in return for borrowing it. Maybe some of the grains of paradise that we scientifically tested on the food and worldbuilding panel? Or alcoholic medlars? Or other exciting things from that panel (I have lots, and made people try them, too. Oddly, not a single Conflux report so far has mentioned the panel - maybe I killed all those people off?).

After that was the mass book signing and auction. I was too tired to bid for things, but I did sign stuff. Oddly, of all those copies of my book that has been sold only one appeared for signing. Also, of all the copies of the overview of Australian Speculative Fiction that had been given to Confluxers in their con bags, only 2 appeared for signing. Mass signings are mysterious in their mechanisms. Anyhow, I had enough people ask for signatures so I felt respectable and then I spent the rest of the time in chat or vile gossip (depending on who I was talking to).

The auction (the bits I got - I left when Dr Who stuff came out because I so love it and I so have no money) was hilarious. Danny Oz could sell an elephant his own trunk and make the elephant laugh in the doing.

I changed for the banquet then was on banquet duty for the rest of the night. I got to enjoy the banquet (which I did, muchly) but I also was there for questions and problems and making sure everyone knew the drinks arrangements. It made me realise how awesome Karen is, because she was on this kind of background duty all the time. No-one blinked an eye about me turning from guest to committee, just as no-one had puzzled over my presence at the reggo desk on Friday or my presence at the CSFG desk when Scott needed a bit of a breather. My mind games were a complete failure this convention. I need to retrain.

Sunday morning I caught up with a bunch of things and missed all the panels. No heckling the evil overlord panel, alas, though one of my Evil Henchpeople from last year was there in my stead. When I ask her how it went she nods sweetly and smiles even more sweetly. I suspect my Evil Overlordship status will soon be threatened.

After my morning of doing miscellaneous things I was on another panel. This was, for me, the best panel of the convention. We didn't have a big audience because it was opposite the launch of Margo Lanagan's book (Peter Strong, the bookseller, was ecstatic - "We sold everything" he said for the remainder of the convention. "We sold out."). We had 4 different minority groups and an anthropologically-trained chair talking about some of the less-discussed aspects of cultural appropriation. We talked about respect and consequences and self-definitions.

I had a one hour break then and spent it getting ready for 3 hours in a row of doing things, so I missed some awesome stuff and you'll have to rely on other reports for it.

My 3 pm slot was my guest speech. If you missed it, all I can do is laugh, because it was full of all the things I promised. I won't tell you that Bruce Gillespie wants to print it, though, because that will mean you feel good about not being there, and you shouldn't. Everyone there got a truly awful Star Trek joke, plus the news about Life through Cellophane ahead of anyone else. Apparently I was so emotional I trembled, but that may just have been overexhaustion. I definitely teared-up.

There was apparently a brilliant panel at 4 pm (and I was cursing missing it) on Accessing the dreaming (white Australians and indigenous mythology). Yaritji told me about it afterwards and I cursed even more. They were talking about the difference between wider copyright law (where the story isn't copyright, only the telling) and indigenous (where stories may be owned). I so need to learn more about this. Pity Yaritji had to go home - I could have chained her until she told me all she knew (which is a lot - she might not be comfortable after the first few hours - maybe that's why she left so quietly?).

At 5 pm I waltzed into what I thought was a shared world panel that had me on but turned out to be a panel on critical writing. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to have 4 hours of 5 in front of audiences in one afternoon? Ian Nicols kindly dealt with my loss of brain (or was that 'dealt kindly' - anyway, he kept things afloat until my brain returned from its wanderings, and I owe him). Donna was oddly absent, I now realise (my one panel with her, and she wasn't there!). Jenny Blackford and Bruce Gillespie are wonderful, BTW. Very good to be on a panel with. Very easy to bounce off and get riffs of conversation going. It was - in short - a good panel.

After that I spent some time with Purplezoners (dinner!) and then we looked up the Speakeasy but our feet were restless and we all went in different directions. My feet led my towards Baron Munchausen. I kept on getting foodstuff to build stories on, so my stories were very ordinary householding ones. That's the bad news. The good news is that my European geography is better than certain other peoples' (who shall remain nameless because they are taller than me) and I managed to pronounce 'automaton' correctly despite how very tired I was. Chris, I've never played the game before, but if you run it again I want in! (Everyone else should want in too, Chris Barnes makes it very, very funny - just don't ask him about rafts made of chickens).

Monday. Last day. Yesterday. I should be wearing mourning today because all that wonder and good friends is gone, part of my past.

On Monday everyone who missed the cream pie incident told me how sorry they were to miss it. I told them I wasn't sorry they missed it, I hope, but I really can't remember. By yesterday I was beyond tired.

I was very fortunate, though, because Felicity Pulman turned up to give a workshop. She's a good friend and a fine writer and we spent Jannatime. I can't wait to find out what happens to Janna in the next book and whenever she has a question for me, I know she is a step closer to a draft and I am a step closer to reading it. Mostly we talked generally yesterday, but next week I'm hoping for lots of questions. I love giving historical advice, being a teacherly sort of soul.

I forgot. I made one more panel. The one I confused the day before: the shared world one. I was a bit of a fish out of water, because the others are serious parts of major universes. We heard stories of making the train set of Superman and writing a Star Wars novel. All I have is New Ceres. I did a lot of listening and felt rather small, to be honest. I talked when I could and Karen Miller was excellent at finding ways of keeping me in the dialogue, but she and Lewis Morley and Marilyn Pride had the most to say, and with very good reason.

After that I got to be a participant again at the excellent grant writing workshop.

And after that it was 4 pm and it was all over. All except the closing ceremony. The closing ceremony was incredibly funny. I was so tired I couldn't stand up, so it's just as well I didn't have to line up with the rest of the committee. If anyone had insisted on it, someone would have had to carry me and prop me up. Liz Argall and Richard Harland are super-wonderful MCs, even when wearing wings and tiara (Richard) or looking and sounding like someone out of Anne Bishop (Liz).

The bar finally emptied about 11 pm, and Conflux was over.

PS for Confluxers (as Richard Harland said "Who're you going to call: Confluxers!") who wondered why I was very comfortable temperate while you were freezing in the airconditioning, it appears I still have that fine fever. This is a practical demonstration of the power of adrenaline and chocolate - I must have been operating on them the whole time!! To those friends who made me eat even though I wasn't hungry, many thanks. Before any of you can tell me to go see the doctor, I've already checked to see when he's available.

PPS Don't put milk in St John's Wort tea. It is really not a wise thing to do.

Read 26 Notes -Make Notes

7th October, 2008. 5:56 pm.

I meant to post yesterday, honest. I also meant to post one more time the day before. Truly. What happened was being a tad unwell got a bit worse and I couldn't do blogging and having a fabulous time: I made entirely the right decision in sacrificing blogging.

This means you get a longish post now and it will still be only highlights. If you want more depth, please ask Sherwood if her hat worked. If her hat worked, she will know all sorts of curious stories. If her hat didn't work, she knows cons and can make something up and then we will have to try to recall if it happened when we were all trying those cocktails or whether it's fiction. For the record, never take a Sherwood Smith book as relaxing reading for a convention. You will read the whole thing in one gulp and wonder where the sleep went.

Now, where did I leave off? I haven't given you key personal moments yet, have I? My key personal moments were:

1) When the CSFG table organiser came to me very early in Conflux saying "Your books are sold out - we need more." The 'more' was gone within the hour.

2) The Continuum room party. This may possibly be because my medlar liqueur was much appreciated there. It might make an appearance at Continuum.

3) The banquet (of course). Especially the table (whose residents shall remain nameless) that mistook the palate cleanser for the final dessert and had to reconfigure their brains for a cheese platter and two desserts.

4) Being designated an honorary child.

5) Being shot by a plastic dalek (life size) that had taken one of my fellow-children a half-day to blow up. Another fellow-child balanced a 3 foot tall (4 foot tall - you know, I never measured) on her head. I wished I had my camera.

6) Being given a second-hand Edmonds Cookbook (previously a matter of great yearning by me - now a matter of contentment) and a white chocolate sheep by a New Zealand friend. I don't know if it's PC to celebrate a white chocolate sheep given by a New Zealander.

7) Successfully disbursing 5 kg of chocolate and lollipops and toffee. What really funny is that it was Cat who cuased the sugar high among the child-contingent this convention.

8) Discovering that the committee and my various testers make better mixed drinks that the hotel (they did the food brilliantly, but crushing a mint leaf proved a challenge for the bar staff).

9) Finding out who read the graffitti on the winning towel from the towel competition: it said "The Master was here."

10) Making it to the Dead Dog party. I talked more and more and got more and more abstruse, but I got there. For the record, if you want light and gentle conversation from me, you want me awake and alert. If you want me to sound abstruse then 3/4 asleep is perfect.

More about panels and things in another post. I need a something-break. I need lots of something-breaks today. Conflux was warm and friendly and funny, but I'm very very tired.

Make Notes

6th October, 2008. 11:40 am.

Sorry about not blogging yesterday. I had too much fun and not enough time. I'll try to do a bit of a catch-up post later. Until then I'll leave you with my yesterday's announcement. Life through Cellophane, by me, will be published by Eneit Press next year. No dead morris dancers, but one very interesting mirror.

Read 15 Notes -Make Notes

5th October, 2008. 1:01 am.

The police (who looked suspiciously like a con guest, a con treasurer and the spouse of a con MC) raided our banquet. Jack Dann was arrested for illegal possession of liquor, but I wasn't. He said it was because I wasn't drinking. I pointed out that it was because I had the good sense to drink cocktails and pretend they were fruit juice whereas he was drinking wine.

Other than this small contretemps (Jack managed to get out of his pickle very quickly) the banquet was indeed splendid. The chef at The Marque did us proud. We're all fat and contented. I'm fat, contented and ten years old, because the Conflux child contingent has officially proclaimed me an honorary child. As long as no one tries to enforce a child's bedtime on me, I'm very happy with this and very honoured by it.

I've started blogging about the banquet preparation and recipes at my food history blog. The ice cream was as mouth-wateringly wonderful as I remembered from the tests and now I have lots of people to back up my opinion. So much was so very good, in fact. People kept coming up to me and saying how very good the chef was, how very good the menu was, how very full they were. I can relax. Actually I relaxed from the moment the canapes were served. Yummy, yummy canapes. The black olive one and the cheese one were particularly yummy and the quantities were generous. The chef is every bit as good as those early meetings promised.

Dinner finished just in time for a round of room parties and I went to the Continuum one. Their theme next year is Galaxies by Gaslight. I need to scrutinise my calendar closely and I so need to get there.

Me wanting to go to Continuum has nothing to do with the Continuum mob (especially Rachel) liking my medlar liqueur. Perish the thought.

On a related alcohol note, what I was drinking while they were liqueur tasting was Chris Barnes' Krupnik. For those who haven't been following the saga, for about three years he has been generously giving friends drinks at various conventions and for three years it has never been when I was there. I was beginning to think he was avoiding me. If he was, then tonight he didn't flee fast enough. As a result, I'm very mellow and happy with the world. Chris's taste in drinks is an important source of happiness at Aussie con room parties, I have decided.

Earlier in the day was the food panel. It's a strange beastie. Wherever it is on the program, it starts with maybe 4 audience members (Peter Strong, the chair, offered to swap seats with the audience at one point, so that they could have the table). Every year people peek their heads in the door and the audience grows and grows until it is respectable.

We had fun. Much learned discourse and much sampling of foods. I brought in Altoids and various herbs and spices (including grains of paradise -every convention I play the same practical joke and every convention I find men who fall for it) and yes, I was evil Gillian. I was almost-nice about Richard I for a moment, and I almost-regret it.

I did some duty on the CSFG table, too. Not a big amount, but almost enough to assuage my guilt about not being able to do guest stuff, plus Conflux committee stuff, plus deal with the health. The health is holding up, albeit a little precariously. If I'm careful, I'll be fine. Tomorrow I have a late start and a bedtime of before midnight, since it will be very busy. I don't know when I'll have time to blog, but give my posts are erratic and strange, this may not be a bad thing.

Read 11 Notes -Make Notes

4th October, 2008. 2:17 pm.

This is extreme live blogging. I'm sitting in a panel on alternate history. Jack Dann is currently talking about alternate history as a thought experiment. He suggests that alternate history is looking at the past to see new ways of looking at it. His James Dean book used the culture of America in the fifties to extrapolate. He did a big panic about reader acceptance of an actor standing for Governor of Clifornia. Then Schwartzenegger did his thing and Jack heaved a giant sigh of relief.

Lewis Morley is interested in alternate history through films. He's talking about the other 20th century as envisaged in the film Brazil and how the Brazil universe worked visually.

Dave Luckett pointed out the 1066 truism, that history is what you think you can remember. He talks about the telling detail used in a novel that turned out to be false, but that worked as a touchstone for readers to bring a novel to life.

He says that to see things in depth you need binocular vision ie more views give you more ifnormation. This is the virtue of alternate history.

Richard Harland was the last panellist to be introduced. Alternate history hinges with our world. How different it is to our work depends on how far away to point of divergence is from our world. Jack's Memory Cathedral has a near POD and RIcahrd's new novel has a further one (nad can get away with juggernauts and things). Napoleon builds a tunnel, invades England and life becomes really interesting after that - but Richard's book is 100 years on. The closer you are to the POD, the deeper knowledge of history you need..

Dave points out that readers don't need to have the POD explained up front

Now they're getting into philosophy of history: how the mechanics of change might work. And they're listing novels and Jak has been scolded for thinking all the nooks are brilliant. "Then start mentioning bad books," he suggests. Pavane, Guns of the South, Joan Aiken's England: these are some of the books mentioned.

Now I'm going to leave you in limbo and just enjoy the second half of the panel. This s because I'm on a panel straight after this (on developing food systems) and I need a break. I'm just going to enjoy the rest! .

Read 10 Notes -Make Notes

3rd October, 2008. 11:44 pm.

I received a very funny look on the way up to my room to change, earlier tonight. I asked Stuart Herring (giver of funny look) if people were going to look at me like that for the whole of the convention. "Yep," he said cheerfully. I rather suspect I need to see some photos, very quickly. I rather suspect that I looked maybe a little undignified with cream all over my face.

I blame the Great Debate. I especially blame the third speaker for the negative. "Props," her opposition kept saying. "She's using props. It's cheating." The props were a pie pan and a can of cream. She used them to prove that we live in the real world and not in a dream. Specifically, she walked into the audience and demonstrated reality using my face. Poor Tim was sitting behind me and got stray splashes, but I got so much on me that my glasses were entirely covered and my clothing liberally bespattered. .

The remaining cream in can is to be auctioned off to charity tomorrow.

The opening ceremony came before my discovery that cream makes a very good moisturiser. It was a wonderful event. The Wiradjuri Echos - a local dance group - gave us a cleansing dance and then a set of other dance (including one in honour of the upcoming Grand Final - which is not the same game at all as last week's Grand Final. The rest was very funny - and I wish I had taken my usual notes, but this convention notes may be difficult and so I am forced to rely on my wayward memory. My wayward memory right now wants to remember what sleep feels like. I hope other people blog this evening's events, because they were just great.

Read 14 Notes -Make Notes

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