Category Archives: Photography

Images from my Flickr photostream.

Scattered blogging, with a high chance of gratitude

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A few announcements: First, I have tried to thank each and every person who wrote, commented, or DMed me to say congratulations on the Sunburst Award. If I missed you somehow, sorry, and thank you! Word is continuing to ripple out… I especially liked Megabest characterizing it as a “suburban thriller“. The Quill and Quire chose to note the presence of Robert Charles Wilson, Cory Doctorow and several other ‘name authors’ on the ballot. I get what they mean, but Hey, QQDudes! Not only do I have a name, it’s so long it doesn’t fit in the Revenue Canada computers. (Seriously. The full moniker is Alyxandra Margaret and it’s one character too long for their name fields. I have been filed as Dellamonic for years.)

Speaking of names, I also have been remiss in congratulating the brilliant Hiromi Goto, who got the Sunburst in the Young Adult category for Half World, as well as those other amazing folks on the short list: Cory, Robert, Charles de Lint, and Karl Schroeder, all, curiously enough, for books published by TOR. And, finally, the Sunburst jury itself: thank you, so much!

Moving on, I have one slot left in my next UCLA class, “Creating Universes, Building Worlds,” which focuses on short fiction in any of the fantastic genres. The syllabus is online, and previous students are, as always, welcome to join us again.

Work on The Rain Garden proceeds apace, pace being somewhere between 900-1200 words a day. I write longhand and transcribe as it’s convenient, and it hasn’t been for a couple days; when it is, I’ll catch you up. In the meantime, posting word counts in this fashion keeps me chugging along… so once again, I thank you.

And a warning: I posted a spider shot a couple days ago and there will be more. kelly-yoyoKelly and I have taken up our autumn practice of noting all the orb weaver webs along our morning route–we don’t formally count them all that often, just admire. But we call it the Spidercount, we began really looking this morning, and they are huge, well fed and ambitious. By Halloween the 2010 spidery biomass bids fair to be immense. So, if you are in East Van and can deal with spiders at all, I recommend a stroll down the Central Valley Greenway. They are wonders of nature and the webs are amazing to behold.

But today I give you a pigeon who’s really got somewhere to be:
Seawall

Words and pictures

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I think you all know I live in a beautiful city, but here’s proof in the form of False Creek on a sunny fall afternoon:

Seawall

After a marathon transcribing session, I’ve gone and dug up the 4K words (ish) I’d written on THE RAIN GARDEN before starting the most recent push, and integrated the files. Total verbiage now comes to 29,555. Words for Tuesday, Monday, and Sunday, working backwards: 955, 1082, 1108.

Vancouver’s top Arachnomodel

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I don’t know what it is exactly that makes for a bumper crop of spiders, but this year has been it in Vancouver. We are awash in eight-legs, and they are ambitious. One tried to set a web for Kelly in the living room the other day. We’ve had them in our hair, on our hands, everywhere but… well, if I finish that sentence several of you will spend the next six days cleaning your crannies with wire brushes, am I right?

I’m no keener than anyone else on having a creepy arachnoid beast crawling on me if I don’t know where it is, but when they’re sitting still, or spinning webs, I can appreciate the beauty. I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, though, so avert your eyes if you must.


Spiders

Saturday’s verbiage for THE RAIN GARDEN, meanwhile, is typed and comes to 1,806, for a total of 20,964.

Into the ravine

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Thursday’s word count: 1078. Friday’s: 970. Total now, 19158.

Kelly and I recently learned that there’s a ravine in east Vancouver, not far from the Italian Cultural Center. We went exploring and found ourselves plunging down a steep and slippery trail into a mildly smelly, litter-strewn hole in the earth. There’s a creek down there, and a trail, and about five bazillion spiders. (The spiders are having a good year, and there will be many photos of them quite soon.)

This doesn’t communicate how far down and middle-of-nowhere it felt–even though it’s actually quite small and right in the heart of the city, but we felt very off-road when we got to the bottom.

Renfrew Ravine

I am planning to leave a fictional body down here within the week.

Attempting to be Sue

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One of my sisters is the sort of person who can go to Istanbul, head for the bar where she has arranged to meet some friends, and then get there only to discover they aren’t there because she forgot about the International Date Line (silly International Date Line!) and is 24 hours late. Sure, you’re thinking, anyone could do that! But this sib’s particular enviable superpower is to walk a block, look around the neighborhood, choose another bar, walk in and find the friends happily sitting there. No harm, no foul–in fact, much rejoicing.

I planned to find the Walk for Life through the same kind of jovial reckoning on Sunday. I set out in plenty of time, and was even on the train with a fellow choir buddy. But I had my mind on other things, and I lost sight of her. I ended up on the wrong side of the park, and by the time I got through to Badger to ask for directions and apologize, I was kilometers away. Like almost eight kilometers away, according to the GMaps pedometer.

So… no singing for me. It was a glorious walk. I saw oodles of purple sea stars, and an especially gorgeous heron. (I didn’t have my camera with me, but here’s his stunt-double.)

Stanley Park - Heron

I guess you could say I managed the cheery laissez faire tardiness, but not so much the part where I stumble in, on time, for our next concert a day later. (I also bruised the tops of my toes because I was wearing singing shoes, not walking shoes, and I had doubled up my socks because I was afraid of being cold. How’s that for a neat trick?)