This is for anyone who has ever doubted that there is magic in the world…
Amazing.
Posted in Likes | Tagged awesome, Canada, Cape Breton, inspiration, lighthouses, Motivation, Nova Scotia, smile!, space, Thoughts, yay | Leave a Comment »
Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, dies aged 66
The Guardian reports that Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series and many other books, has died at home “with his cat sleeping on his bed” and surrounded by family. His intellect, creative abilities and incisive sense of humor will be sorely missed.
I think I’ll read Good Omens next, to remind myself of Pratchett’s genius, the power of writing (and humor in the face of the apocalypse), and the pearls we can leave behind if we’re willing to keep pushing ahead.
Addendum: A lot of nice tributes are going up online but I thought I’d direct you to one in particular, Jo Walton’s “Reminiscence” at the Tor.com blog. She says it well: “The writing will live on. Death sucks.”
Posted in Writing | Tagged artists, arts, creativity, death, Discworld, Fiction, genre fiction, inspiration, neil gaiman, persistence, RIP, speculative fiction, Terry Pratchett, Writers, writing | Leave a Comment »
Back in the fall, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy interviewed Patrick Rothfuss about his new book, The Slow Regard of Silent Things. In it, he touches on the details of his writing process, the likelihood that he revises “more than anyone else in the genre,” why his prose sounds like “dark chocolate,” role-playing games and many other topics.
… because we have the ability to have fantastic plots and armies clashing and magic and dragons, it’s easy to leave out other things and one of the hardest ones to do is language.
If you’re interested in the process of fiction, in Pat’s writing, or in why he thinks you might not want to buy his new book, check out the full transcript now posted by the good folks over at Lightspeed.
* As an added bonus, the interviewer describes fantasy and science fiction as “the imagination Olympics.” So true!
Posted in Writing | Tagged artists, books, creativity, dark chocolate, Fiction, finishing, gaming, genre fiction, Imagination Olympics, interviews, Lightspeed, Patrick Rothfuss, podcast, sff, speculative fiction, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Writers, writing, writing process | 1 Comment »
Gerardus Mercator was born today in 1512. Yes, that Mercator, as in maps, as in one of cartographic history’s groundbreaking creations, the Mercator Atlas. The Mercator projection* displayed latitude and longitude as a grid, which (while causing all sorts of difficulties with pole-proximate object scales that persist to this day**) allowed sailors to plot their courses in straight lines. Sounds like a simple thing? Try calculating where you are, and where you need to go, while tossing up and down on the deck of a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, using hand-held scientific instruments and a flattened, rum-stained ellipse with sea monsters at the edges, then see how you feel;)
In honor of Mercator’s 503rd birthday, I want to point my fellow writers to an article on the right ways (and wrong ways) to build a cartographic history for your fantasy land:
10 Rules For Making Better Fantasy Maps
I particularly like suggestion #3 for urban fantasists; when it comes to understanding city form, it’s hard to go wrong with Kevin Lynch at your side.
Map: a useful distortion of reality.
* For more on Mercator’s process and the social context in which he produced his maps, see this excerpt from Mark Monmonier’s Rhumb Lines and Map Wars, via the University of Chicago Press.
** Check out this interactive puzzle map for a fun demonstration of size distortions.
Posted in Science!, Writing | Tagged cartographic history, cartography, creativity, fantasy, Fiction, genre fiction, Gerardus Mercator, latitude and longitude, maps, Mark Monmonier, Mercator projection, science, sff, speculative fiction, urban fantasy, Writers, yo ho ho | Leave a Comment »
Ursula Le Guin has an interesting piece up at the Book View Cafe blog about Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel The Buried Giant. She has issues with specific elements of the book but the part that caught my attention was the reason she felt compelled to write the piece in the first place.
In an interview, Mr. Ishiguro wondered whether his readers would label the book as fantasy. And, as Ms Le Guin says, “It appears that the author takes the word for an insult.” Regardless of Ishiguro’s intentions, this provides Le Guin with a jumping off point for discussion. Her defense of fantasy is concise and compelling.
Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.
As she lays out the case for fantasy as more than “childish whims,” I am again reminded that the value of imagination lies not in its escape from reality, but in its distillation of significant questions of life and death, purpose and perils, loss and joy. In short, the human experience writ across the universe.
That’s big. I’d better get back to work.
Posted in Writing | Tagged Book View Cafe, books, creativity, fantasy, Fiction, genre fiction, Kazuo Ishiguro, sff, speculative fiction, Thoughts, Ursula Le Guin, Writers, writing | Leave a Comment »
‘Star Trek’ Star Leonard Nimoy Dies
So sad. His artistic vision, creativity and (of course) Spock, will be missed.
* Edited to add a link to his obituary, detailing more on the extensive range of Nimoy’s experiences and abilities, in The New York Times.
** Here’s another nice piece by Emily Asher-Perrin on the Tor.com blog: Goodbye, Mr. Nimoy — What Spock Meant to One Geeky 12-Year-Old Girl.
*** Here’s a great piece from NPR recalling Leonard Nimoy’s Advice To A Biracial Girl In 1968. As a biracial geek girl I wish I’d seen this advice growing up.
**** Also, from Astronaut Terry Virts, currently on the International Space Station…
http://t.co/ErjTLgCIrL—
Terry W. Virts (@AstroTerry) February 28, 2015
Posted in Entertainment | Tagged artists, death, Leonard Nimoy, science fiction, star trek | 2 Comments »
I was pleased to see Mary Robinette Kowal’s recent recipe for dairy-free faux parmesan and thought I’d chime in. As a recently-discovered lactose intolerant, I’ve spent more time than I’d like looking for lactose-free recipes. Sure, you can take pills but isn’t it nicer not to? Instead of timing your medication precisely and watching the clock to make sure you haven’t over-eaten your lactase welcome, or realizing too late that you’ve forgotten your pills, avoid the problem in the first place.
Lactose-free options also make life easier for hosts. I still wince at a dinner party we gave in my pre-intolerance days, where a guest who accepted the invitation with a breezy “Oh, no, I can eat anything,” looked at her cream soup and asked if I had anything without lactose. Whoops.
This modified version of Mark Bittman’s Mexican chocolate pudding recipe is rich and creamy, flour-less and lactose free. This isn’t one of those good in an “I-have-to-eat-this-way” recipes, it’s just good.
If you’re avoiding soy this isn’t the dessert for you, but otherwise I recommend it without reservation. It is fast, easy and delicious.
* * *
Tofu Chocolate Pudding
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 pound silken tofu*
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted**
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1. Heat sugar with 3/4 cup water over medium heat. Cook until sugar is dissolved, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool slightly while the chocolate melts.
2. Put all ingredients in a blender and purée until smooth. You may need to stop and scrape down the sides to combine everything completely. Chill for at least 30 minutes, although longer gives a denser final pudding.
Garnish with raspberries and fresh mint or eat directly from the container with a spoon, your choice. Serves 4 to 6. Or one very hungry writer.
* * *
Recipe notes:
* My grocery stores carry tofu in Tetra Pak boxes or water packed, but the important point is to find the silken variety. If you can only find 12oz boxes, I recommend getting two and increasing the recipe 1.5 times.
** Double boil if you like but I have good luck melting chocolate in my microwave at 20-30% power. I do this much chocolate ~three minutes at a time, stirring in between zaps. The chocolate taste is dominant so better is… better. While Valrhona is sure to be delicious I’ve had very good luck with a short ingredient list generic chocolate from my local grocery, so don’t feel constrained by the tyranny of premium labels. Look for one without added milk ingredients and off you go.
* * *
A final comment on lactose: I was surprised to find that a lot of the foods I thought were off-limits actually contain very little lactose. Imagine my joy to find that brie and many other aged or fermented cheeses are essentially lactose free, not to mention butter and long-fermented yogurt. Find your own comfort level, of course, but that was a game changer for me. A quick crib for cheese is to check the nutritional information chart on the label. Grocery chain Wegman’s put out a post on this, and also lists other cheeses with low lactose levels:
An easy way to check for lactose in cheese is to look at the Nutrition Facts under “Sugar” Since the sugar in cheese is lactose, you can easily see how much lactose the cheese contains. If the sugar is listed as zero, then the cheese contains no more than half a gram of lactose per ounce. Compare to 12 grams of lactose in an 8 ounce glass of milk.
Enjoy!
Posted in Food and..., Likes | Tagged #fuelforwriters, #srslygood, chocolate, chocolate pudding recipe, dairy free, dessert, food, lactose free, lactose intolerant, Mary Robinette Kowal, recipes | 3 Comments »
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