Kingfisher

I told you all, didn’t I, that I spotted a Kingfisher in False Creek this November? I’m hoping it’s the first of many, and that subsequent sightings will allow less blurry documentation:

Kingfisher

And since it’s good to be hopeful as the calendar ticks over, I share him with you, along with all my wishes for a great 2011.

Books read in 2010

Here is is, the big annual list… enjoy!


2010 Books Read List

1. UNDERTOW, by Elizabeth Bear
2. THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert and Tim Folger
3. THE CHAMELEON’S SHADOW, by Minette Walters
4. NEKROPOLIS, by Maureen McHugh
5. REMNANT POPULATION by Elizabeth Moon
6. GUNPOWDER: ALCHEMY, BOMBARDS AND PYROTECHNICS: THE HISTORY OF THE EXPLOSIVE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, by Jack Kelly
7. GALLOWS THIEF, by Bernard Cornwell
8. CORDELIA’S HONOR, by Lois McMaster Bujold
9. THE GHOST MAP–THE STORY OF LONDON’S MOST TERRIFYING EPIDEMIC AND HOW IT CHANGED SCIENCE, CITIES, AND THE MODERN WORLD by Steven Johnson
10. TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU, by Lauren Kelly
11. THE WARRIOR’S APPRENTICE, Lois McMaster Bujold
12. WE TWO: VICTORIA AND ALBERT: RULERS, PARTNERS, RIVALS by Gillian Gill
13. NIGHTINGALES: THE EXTRAORDINARY UPBRINGING AND CURIOUS LIFE OF MISS FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, by Gillian Gill.
14. THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE, by Rennie Airth
15. RIVER OF DARKNESS, by Rennie Airth
16. CEMETERY LAKE, by Paul Cleave
17. SEIZE THE FIRE: Heroism, Duty and Nelson’s Battle of Trafalgar, by Adam Nicolson
18. THE BRIDGE: A JOURNEY BETWEEN ORIENT AND OCCIDENT, by Geert Mak
19. MOZART’S BLOOD, by Louise Marley
20. FAITHFUL PLACE, by Tana French
21. MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH, by Ariana Franklin
22. Quarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War, by Adam Nicholson
23. In Triumph’s Wake: Royal Mothers, Tragic Daughters, and the Price They Paid for Glory, by Julie P. Gelardi
24. A Star Shall Fall by Marie Brennan
25. The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett (Kelly read me this on the evening of October 15th.)
26. The Best American Crime Reporting 2010, edited by Stephen J. Dubler, Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook
27. All Clear, by Connie Willis
28. Bloody Crimes, by James L. Swanson
29. Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne, with original color illustrations by E.H. Shepard
30. Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes
31. The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum
32. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
33. So Cold the River, by Michael Koryta
34. Grandville, by Bryan Talbot
35. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larssen
36. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession (Vintage), by David Grann
37. The Serpent’s Tale, by Ariana Franklin
38. The Troublemakers, by Gilbert Hernandez
39. Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth, by James M. Tabor
40. Death Blows: The Bloodhound Files, by D D Barant

Rereads:
In the Woods, by Tana French

The Shape of Snakes, by Minette Walters

Check-In – 2010 Fiction Plan

Last year, at about this time, I set out the following 2010 goals:

1. Draft a novel.
2. Finish a novel.
3. Draft a story.
4. Finish a story.
5. Sell a story.

(This is just the fiction portion of a larger business plan. Non-fiction, promotional work, and other targets are separate.)

Draft and finish were separate items specifically because I’m working on multiple projects: drafting one book didn’t necessarily mean finishing that same book.

As plans go, this one looks rather fuzzy. The reason specific projects weren’t named (Finish this book, draft that story) in the above list reflects the fact that I spent a fair amount of 2010 waiting for other parties to get back to me on things. The timing on when I received edits for my next novel, for example, was entirely up to my editor’s schedule, and out of my hands.

So I kept it modest, and a little vague. And, of course, a nice thing about modest goals is that it’s often possible to overachieve. So here’s what I accomplished, working from the above plan:

1. Drafted two novels.
2. Finished one novel.
3. Wrote a series proposal and two sample chapters, polished it all, and sent it off.
4. Wrote a grant proposal and thirty sample pages, polished that, and sent it off.
5. Drafted, finished, sold and celebrated publication of a novelette, “The Cage.”
6. Drafted three short stories and embarked on a fourth that proved to be a false start.
7. Finished two 2009 stories, which are now off at market.
8. Sent a novel to market.
9. Sent out material relating to a potential short story collection, after I won the Sunburst.

Need A Good Stiff Bonk?

The push to get a few more books read before January is an odd sort of end-year resolution, and it prompts me to wonder if any of you has a similar deadline looming December 31st… something that isn’t work related, so much. Most of us decide to embark upon Personal Improvement during the holidays, and have forgotten all about it by April, am I right? Anyway, this is my quest. And I’ve failed, so far, to plump up my numbers by striking gold in the graphic novel dept: I did like Grandville, but I didn’t love it, and have set aside a bunch of the other prospects after 2-3 pages.

Before I read So Cold the River, I read Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Roach is a rockin’ fusion of science journalist and comedian, as evidenced by the following Very Not Safe for Work TED Talk on orgasms:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers covers bases I expected–cadaver research in a variety of contexts. It examined the ethics surrounding how donated bodies are used, stuff about Body Worlds, and lots of material on forensics, including the examination of decomposition by leaving corpses lying around outside. (You may have encountered this in procedural novels like The Body Farm). It also had plenty of things I’d never thought of: using corpses to make crash-test dummies, the cannibalistic use of bodies in medicine, for example, and a discussion of how much mercury is released into the atmosphere during your average cremation.

Intriguing, frequently guffaw-worthy and occasionally gross beyond words, Stiff
is a great read. I am planning to absorb Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex in the near future.

Early morning sightings

I saw a skunk on Wednesday on my way to the cafe. It was six in the morning, raining hard and very dark–so, no chance of a photo. That, combined with the fact that it was a skunk, meant I didn’t even try to give chase. I was nevertheless delighted to see him waddling down Woodland in high gear, wavering between the west side of the street–and the fenced-in safety of a Terasen work site that is popular with a lot of the urban wildlife–and the garbage dumps of Greyhound Cate’s alley on the east. I don’t see skunks that often, and it has been at least a year. I took it for a good sign.

Yes, out and about at six. My timetable has shifted slightly, and now every day starts with an early fiction-writing session at the cafe. It used to start at half-past eight on Monday to Friday, and then early on Saturday-Sunday. Now it’s all crack of dawn, all the time. As an Xtreme Morning Person, this suits me… but every change has effects, and some have been hard to quantify.

Still, there’s been some “Mmm, must eat this meal at this point in the day now,” and a bit of “Gotta figure out when I’m getting to the pet store,” and “Hey, the frozen food run is sooo much more convenient!” I didn’t count on having to slot in a replacement for the semi-conscious woolgathering I used to do at five in the morning, five days a week. ( I’m not waking up any earlier, in general; I’ve just shifted around the daily must-do list in a way that’s been mostly pleasing.)

A thousand tiny consequences, some to be sorted; some, savored. The weekends are glorious, because K and I are on exactly the same clock, and we’ve already spent a couple long, delicious days together, reading and hanging out. Saturday when we went to the opera, we had a leisurely two hour window to get there… for ten! There was also a fit of self-indulgence wherein we destroyed the living room’s fitness for visitors by arranging the couch and our armchairs back-to-back, to maximize TV viewing comfort on the former and fireside-reading in the latter.

We are still muddling through the process of figuring out when and how to hang out with people when one runs out of brain at seven and goes to bed at nine.

Early bedtime has also proved to be the final nail for choir rehearsals. After the January 22 concert, I am planning to become a non-singing volunteer: meaning I’ll finish out my term on the Board and continue to run the website, but for the first time since 2003 I won’t be rehearsing or performing.