Trip Report #4: Foreign Language as Gaming Code

I know a little bit of Spanish.  I won’t even go so far as to say I speak it a little bit.  I stumble through it.  I get better at it when I’ve had a couple of drinks.  Speaking Spanish in Barcelona is complicated by the fact that there’s a second official language, Catalan, which looks to be sort of a bastard stepchild of Spanish and French — no surprise there, being so close to the border of France and all.  Many place names, signs, etc. are in Catalan.

When you know a tiny bit of a language and are trying to use it, it’s like a gaming code.  You say the words, and you hope it gets you the result you want.  But eventually, and usually rather quickly, things go off the rails.  You have actually fooled the people you’re talking to into thinking you understand the language as well as you speak it.  And, well, you don’t.  They reply with speed and confidence, and you stare at them thinking, Holy crap, what have I done?  Can I hit reset?

But then there are the times when it works.  On this trip, I was in charge of the Spanish; my friends were in charge of French.  So, we were on a Metro platform in Barcelona, and someone there called out to my friend, in Spanish.  My friend just stared — he had no idea what she said, and tried to speak French at her, because that’s what he does.  I tapped his shoulder and told him, “Say Gracias.  She said she likes your T-shirt.”

Now, what’s really funny is “Me gusta su camiseta” is something you learn in the second month of high school Spanish.  It’s basic, elementary, beginner Spanish.  But you know what?  Second-month high school Spanish is really useful!  It gets used!  People actually say those things!  And I got it!  For that moment anyway, I wasn’t just speaking Spanish code phrases, I was understanding it.  That felt pretty darned good.

Trip Report #3: Ghosts in Carcassonne

Sometimes you can feel the history of the place. That’s one of the great joys of traveling, especially to an inveterate storyteller and history buff like myself.  When you walk into a place like York Minster or Notre Dame and you can actually smell centuries’ worth of incense burned into the stone.  When you see a ruined castle, with a fireplace hanging in midair, and underneath it the holes for where the beams that held up the floor used to be.  When you walk on Omaha Beach in Normandy, and look across it from one of the German gun embankments still in place there.  When you’re standing in the middle of a ball court in a Mayan ruin complex in Belize and can almost hear the crowd.  Yeah.  That’s why I travel.

We arrived at Le Cite, the old fortress of Carcassonne, pretty much after everything had closed, but we were able to grab crepes for dinner and had a walk around.  The space between the inner and outer walls is open and lit after dark, and that’s where we went.

At one point, where the space turned wide and flat, and I stopped and announced that I wanted to ride a horse here.  Just a nice, easy canter around the walls.  I could hear the hoofbeats of horses all around that space, echoing, and I imagined them and their armored riders loping by.

The next day, at the museum and reading up on the fortress, I learned that that space had in fact been used for mounted exercises and tournaments.  Of course.  So, I didn’t see ghosts, per se.  But it sure felt like it for a moment.

things to share

Hey, look what I got in the mail!

It’s a box of Kittys!  I think this is the earliest before the actual publication date that I’ve ever gotten my author copies.  I’m very curious now when they’re going to start showing up in stores.  All the books have appeared a week or so before the actual on sale date.  (January 4 in this case.)  But this one’s obviously shipping already.  In time for the holidays!

Today, I have a guest blog post at Magical Musings.  The topic is near and dear to my heart:  setting goals.

Also in my inbox (it’s been a very, very busy week for mail, both e and snail):

Kinda cool, yes?  This one will be out in July 2o10.  It’s the Cormac story I’ve been talking about.  And it just hit me, the horrible thing he does.  I mean, he doesn’t have a choice, he has to.  But he…well…I mean…  I’ll just let you read it.

Trip Report #2: The Camargue

This is me riding a Camargue pony.

I fell in love with horses when I was about 8, after reading Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.  I went on to read all the Black Stallion books, including the really strange ones (like the one with the aliens, and the post-apocalyptic one) and everything by Marguerite Henry.  Christmas shopping for me became easy:  anything with horses.  I ended up with quite a few horse books and a lot of Breyer models (which I still have, though packed in a box).

A big part of a lot of non-fiction horse books is describing lots of the different breeds, and every one of the books I had talked about the Camargue ponies.  This is a very ancient breed of horse, and some of them still live wild in this marshy region in the south of France, the giant estuary where the Rhone River lets out into the Mediterranean.  Much of the area is designated as a regional nature preserve, one of the largest in Europe.  The domestic ponies are part of a distinctive “cowboy” culture that still exists here. (Ranchers in the region raise bulls for bullfighting.)  And they’re used to shuttle tourists around.

Mostly because of me, and because I’ve been curious about Camargue ponies almost as long as I’ve loved horses, we took a detour into the Camargue and went riding.

Like many ancient regional breeds (I’m thinking the Icelandic ponies and Scottish highland ponies, for example), Camargue ponies are hairy, stocky, tough, good-natured dudes.  They schlepped through thick black mud without a problem, and my guy had one of the nicest, peppiest walking gaits I’ve ever ridden.  (It may be because he was the alpha of this particular pecking order and had to be in front the whole time.  Whenever I go to tourist riding places like this, they always ask if you have any experience, and they always figure out that I have experience, and they always give me the ornery alpha horse.  They know experienced riders aren’t likely to freak out if the ornery alpha does something particularly ornery.  Once I figured out that Ton knew what he was doing, I just let him go and we got along great.)

This area is not what comes to mind when most people think Europe:  wide, flat, wet.  Primal, even.  Swarming with mosquitoes and birds — wild flamingos everywhere.  They chortle and gurgle constantly.  Wild flamingos in Europe — who knew?

I’d like to spend more time here, go hiking and do some bird watching as well as do more riding (we only had a couple of hours to spend on our action-packed itinerary).  But for now, that’s another check mark on the life list.

Trip Report #1: Time Traveling

We started in Barcelona, where we saw flamenco the first night and Depeche Mode the second night.  Then we caught a train to Carcassonne, spent two nights in Le Cite, the old fortified part of the town.  Then we took off through Provence in a rented car, staying in Arles and Nice, and day-tripping to Avignon (with stops at Pont du Gard and Nimes) and Monaco.  Quite the whirlwind trip.  It’s my first time in Europe since 2002, and my first time in France since 1994, and then I was mostly in Paris and Normandy, so this was a good trip to take.

Any trip to Europe feels like time travel, because the history — sometimes 3,000 years or more of it if you stumble upon the right sites — is all butted up against each other.  Part of the 4th century Roman baths in Arles make up the wall of the 16th century house next door.  It’s a little disconcerting.  So, here’s the trip, time traveling via architecture.  (I picked these three photos to post on Facebook, as representative of the trip, and realized that they were also representative of a big chunk of European history.)

The Roman empire had a very big footprint in Provence.  In fact, when I was going through the guidebook I put sticky flags on every town with a prominent Roman ruin, knowing that one of my traveling companions, who has a degree in Classics, would want to see them.  But there were too many to see without spending weeks in the region, so we had to pick and choose.  The south of France became Rome’s retirement community in some ways, which explains why there are so many arenas and theaters — keep ‘em entertained, and they won’t come back to Rome and cause trouble, right?

This is the 1st century arena at Nimes, which I didn’t tour like I did the one at Arles, but I really like this picture because of the bullfighter statue.  The cool thing?  Both arenas are still in use.  There are steel bleachers set up on top of the stone seats, but still.  You can go and see bullfights — unlike in Spain, the bulls aren’t killed.  So not only is this 2,000 year old edifice still standing, it’s still being used for its original purpose of spectacle.  (Those of you reading this in Europe, don’t laugh at me.  I have a typical American’s astonishment at anything over hundred years old still standing much less still in use.  Just let me gawk.)

Carcassonne’s walled city is one of the most famous set of medieval buildings in the world.  Because it looks so darned medieval, see?  Thick walls, a wide moat (waterless), a castle, narrow twisty streets of the surrounding town…  There’s been a fortress on the site since Roman times, but the really famous bit dates from the middle ages and the Albigensian Crusade, in the early 13th century, when the Pope and French king mounted a war against a bunch of heretics holed up in the southwest corner of France.

Something we learned this trip:  the same guy, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, was responsible for a lot of restoration and reconstruction of France’s medieval monuments in the 19th century.  He worked on Carcassonne, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and the Palace of the Popes in Avignon which we saw later in the trip, as well as a dozen other locations.  We had to wonder:  how much of our aesthetic idea of medieval France is actually a product of this one guy’s work?  Quite a lot of it, it turns out.  It’s a little disappointing.  Once again, it’s clear that much of the popular idea of the Middle Ages was actually created in the 19th century, rather than being true to the reality of the time.

And now we come to the modern era, and La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Gaudi’s cathedral that’s been under construction for over a hundred years.  This astonished me the same way Stonehenge astonished me.  I’d seen pictures, I’d read about it, I thought I knew all about it.  I was going to see it because you can’t go to Barcelona and not see it.  But I wasn’t prepared to be blown away by it.  It’s indescribable.

It’s beautiful, it’s strange.  It’s got sculptures and colors, words worked into the design, fruits on spires, towers and widgets.  There’s an angel playing bassoon above one of the doors.  It’s a wonder, a celebration.  It’s everything a cathedral ought to be, but through a 20th century interpretation with all the weirdness and coolness that entails.  And then you go to the top of Montjuic, the big hill across town (where this photo was taken from), and you realize that La Sagrada Familia is huge, this gigantic thing set down in the middle of the city.  Just wow.

best cover art nomination

So, you can hate urban fantasy cover art, you can love it, you can analyze the hell out of it, but what it ultimately comes down to — you can’t change it, so you might as well celebrate it.  That’s what the folks at the All Things Urban Fantasy site are doing, with their First Annual Urban Fantasy Cover Art Awards.  And what do you know, Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand is nominated in the category of “Best Female with Animal.”  (Although I think my favorite category is “Best Floating Head Cover.”)  Congrats to artist Craig White.

The best part is, y’all can vote and win prizes.  Woot!  Go forth and exercise your democratic right.

Also, a couple of weeks ago I posted part of the first chapter for Kitty’s House of Horrors on Genreality.  It’s the same excerpt that’s in the back of Raises Hell, I believe.  I could post the whole thing, but the chapter ends on a cliffhanger that will have you cursing my name.  Trust me.

Ninja Assassin: The Short Review

This was good kooky fun, like those old “all ninja” issues of G.I. Joe.  Except with more blood.  Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots more blood.

(Also, the title isn’t actually redundant, as I had originally assumed.  It isn’t “assassin who is a ninja,” but “assassin of ninjas,” which makes a lot more sense.  As “making sense” with these things go.)

precious package

I got something precious in the mail today:  the last issue of Talebones.  I’m tearing up writing that.  I teared up when I opened the package, too — the cover has the names of all the magazine’s contributors over its 39 issue run.  **sob!**  My first published SF story appeared in Talebones #17, exactly 10 years ago.  Editor Patrick Swenson published 8 of my stories in all.  The eighth appears in this final issue, which is an honor, but it also makes me sad.

So, if you so choose, go to the website and order the magazine.  My story is “The Book of Daniel.”  If that sounds familiar, it’s because this is the story that Kitty and Ahmed are talking about in Kitty Goes to Washington.

The Road

I decided this was more of a psychological allegory for grief and despair rather than an actual realistic post-apocalyptic movie pretty early on.  When the characters stuck around to see how horrifying the cannibals really were — that is, to show the audience how horrifying they were — rather than fleeing like smart survivalists for the third time maybe did it for me.  (It’s tough seeing movies like this with a bunch of gamers.)  Other than head-scratching details like that, the movie is artistically intriguing.  Nary a drop of color in the whole thing, the ominous creaking and groaning of a dying world constantly in the background, and so on.  My favorite moments were when the man and boy actually encounter other people they can talk to, and the halting conversations that take place when there’s no longer a civilization.  I think ultimately, though, it tried way too hard in its relentlessness.  (A big question in the movie seems to be, How long do you keep struggling before you finally just off yourself?)  I kept thinking, not only do I get this, I’ve seen it before.

I saw this mainly as an academic exercise because I’m so very fond of post-apocalyptic movies as a genre.  This one seemed so strange, a throwback to the absolute apex of post-apocalyptic movies (and especially the post-apocalyptic road trip movie, my favorite incarnation of the genre):  the early 1980’s, which gave us Mad Max and The Day After.  This even seemed especially 1980’s in its flavor — I don’t know of anything except nuclear holocaust that could destroy a landscape as utterly as this one had been destroyed.  Cormac McCarthy’s novel only came out a few years ago.  Is this a throwback?  A last gasp of now-middle aged subconscious fears?

The genre isn’t new by any stretch — we’ve had post-apocalyptic movies since at least 1936, with Things to Come, based on the H.G. Wells novel. (Which gets bonus points for positing World War II as the civilization-destroying war, when it was only a brushfire on the horizon at that point.)  I’m afraid The Road suffers a bit from the same problem a lot of literary works that use science fiction tropes have:  treating as new and shocking things that someone steeped in the genre (like me) find far too familiar.  I’m supposed to be shocked, and I’m not.  I kept thinking about the scene in a British post-apocalyptic movie I saw as a kid that I’ve never been able to track down, where the main characters dig into a rotten dog carcass lying the street because there’s nothing else to eat (This movie ends with a woman drawing back in horror from the mutated, stillborn baby she’s just given birth to.  I’ll never forget that scene.).  I confess I haven’t read the book The Road yet, but I can’t imagine it holding a candle to A Canticle for Leibowitz.

a few items

Awe, no one commented on my Depeche Mode photo!  Granted, WP screwed up the posting and maybe no one saw it…  But on to news!

Applications are now being accepted for Taos Toolbox, a graduate-level writing workshop where I’ll be a guest lecturer.

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, of the awesome giveaways, is giving away a set of new Wild Cards books — Inside Straight and Busted Flush — including stories by me.  This is because Suicide Kings, the third volume, will be out in a couple of weeks!

And…it’s snowing!  More snow!  So glad I don’t have to go anywhere…