Monthly Archives:

August 2011

Television

Big Finish just levelled up in AWESOME

So I’ve been following my Doctor Who Podcast boys for a while, and one of the awesome things they did a while back was to interview Scarf Doctor himself, Mr. Tom Baker. In that interview one of the questions raised was whether Baker would consider joining the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctors in recording audio adventures with Big Finish. At the time Baker made ambivalent yet interested noises, and userinfosolarbird and I both were all OOH OOH YES PLEASE DO THIS.

People, it looks like Big Finish have indeed scored Tom Baker. There are going to be new Fourth Doctor adventures as of next year! With Leela as the Companion in the first set of them, and Romana I coming in for the second set!

I told Dara this last night, and watched her eyes get huge and her face light up. She then informed me that we need ALL OF THESE–given that Leela is her favorite Classic Who Companion and all! That set is due out in January 2012, so WOO! Yule present, baby!

So for those of you who like Scarf Doctor, GO TO. Hell, you should check out Big Finish if you haven’t already, because they do excellent work with the other Doctor adventures they offer as well–full cast plays with excellent sound effects and music. They have several productions in particular of stories that had been scripted for the TV show but never got produced, and so they call those “Lost Stories”. Great fun!

August 17, 2011 by
Quebecois Music

Fangirling, French Canadian style!

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, can ever dislodge my beloved B’ys from the top of my music list–but I gotta say, Le Vent du Nord and La Volee d’Castors are duking it out HARD for the esteemed position of My Second Favorite Band. Especially after I went and found some videos of Le Vent du Nord this afternoon, and realized WHOA HEY WAIT A MINUTE, their guitarist/bouzouki player is really rather cute. Thus continuing my grand tradition of being partial to cute dark-haired bouzouki players!

Here, have some Le Vent du Nord goodness, them doing “Cre Mardi”, one of my favorite songs of theirs. The dude in the front, nearest to the person who took the vid, is the aforementioned cute guitarist/bouzouki player. When he moves out of the way towards the latter half of the song, you can see more of the awesome podorythmie action from his bandmate behind him! WHILE THE GUY IS PLAYING THE FIDDLE. I mean damn.

I grabbed a couple more of theirs for my YouTube favorites list as well, like this one, which is a full ten minutes of a capella excellence (all four guys in the band take turns singing lead, and I got a giggle out of this one featuring a tune La Volee d’Castors covered, “Les Coucous”), and this one, which is also long but is a nice segue from an instrumental into vocals. Mad props to YouTube user bordurat, too, who took all three of these vids and who is clearly an LVN fan.

For comparison, I also give you La Volee d’Castors here and here. I like these guys just about as much as Le Vent du Nord–their harmonies aren’t as smooth and polished in these vids (although NOTE: they’re really a lot more polished on their latest album, Le retour), but they have GBS-like levels of vigor on their awesome live album Y a Du Monde À’ Messe! and I TOTALLY want to see them in concert. And check THEIR foot-rhythm guy, who totally meets and matches LVN’s–LVC’s guy makes with the footstompy + accordion!

I highly recommend both of these groups for any GBS fan who either speaks French or digs the sound of it sung!

August 15, 2011 by
About Me, Valor of the Healer, Writing

I have a cunning plan

Which is to say, I’m going to take the entire week of Labor Day off since I have the vacation time to spare, and work on finishing my edits. To further this goal, I will be also dropping off the net for the duration of that week. I’ll still be answering email, but I won’t be monitoring Twitter, Facebook, or Google+, and for the most part I’ll only be answering email sent directly to me (as opposed to any of the mailing lists I’m on, or comments on any of my posts).

Noting this now by way of general accountability. I may post status updates during that week–again, for purposes of accountability–but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer any comments on them.

We’ll see how much I can get done before then; any little bit I can get done before does after all further the goal. And anything I can write above and beyond finishing the edits on Lament will be bonus. Christopher and Kendis are looking VERY expectant in the back of my brain, you know.

So there you have it. If you think you might want to get a hold of me during that week for whatever reason, email, text, or phone will be best! If you think you should have those means of contacting me and you don’t, let me know.

August 12, 2011 by
Music, Nethack

If Irish musicians played Nethack

It has amused me for a while now that in the vast repertoire of tunes available to Irish musicians, several of them have vaguely SF/F-nal names, like “King of the Fairies”, “Queen of the Fairies”, and “The Elven Cloak”.

That last one in particular, though, got me thinking of Nethack thanks to my propensity for playing Elf characters. Which, of course, led me to wonder about other hypothetical Nethack-themed Irish tune names! Such as:

  • The Surly Shopkeeper
  • Farewell to My Pet Cat
  • Gold in the Bag of Holding
  • The Cursed Loadstone Lament
  • The Polymorph Trap Jig (this one would definitely change keys AND time signatures between the A part, the B part, and the C part)
  • Yet Another Stupid Death Reel
  • The Elven Boots
  • The Infravision Jig
  • Izchak’s Magic Lamp (That I Stole in Minetown)
  • The Vibrating Square
  • The Lich That Cursed My Broadsword
  • Road to Gehennom
  • Drowsy Maggie Needs Sleep Resistance
  • A Luckstone to Banish Misfortune
  • The Succubus Washerwoman

Anybody got any others?

August 10, 2011 by
Books

And, yet a few more books

Picked up electronically:

  • Sasha: A Trial of Blood and Steel, by Joel Shepherd. Fantasy, one of Pyr’s line. Currently available for free on the Kindle store, so I snagged it for reading on either the phone or the iPad when I’m in the mood. Pyr unfortunately doesn’t hand nearly as much electronic love to the Nook store; the title’s available for sale there, but free beats nearly ten bucks, so.
  • Countdown: A Newsflesh Novella, by Mira Grant. For reasons which should be ENTIRELY OBVIOUS, given my love of Feed and Deadline. Those of you who follow userinfoseanan_mcguire know she was posting snippets of this leading up to the release of Deadline, but this is the polished up, edited version. Those of you who are e-inclined, grab this–it’ll help convince her publisher to let her do another one leading up to the release of Blackout.
  • The Door into Sunset, The Door into Fire, and The Door into Shadow, all by userinfodduane. Ebook editions of the “Door Into” books by Diane Duane, currently available for sale directly from the author over on her site. Those of you who are longtime fans of hers and in particular of this series may wish to check her post about the STARLIGHTGUILT discount currently active, and why she hasn’t finished this series in the last thirty years.
  • Prince Ivan, Firebird, and The Golden Horde, all by Peter Morwood, also available for direct sale on Diane Duane’s ebook site. These are re-releases of the Tales of Old Russia, and y’all should check Ms. Diane’s LJ post about that, including an OLDRUSSIA coupon code. Act fast, I don’t know how long this discount will be active!
  • Footsteps in the Dark, by Georgette Heyer. Old-school romantic/paranormal suspense, this week’s freebie from B&N.

163!

August 6, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Gosh, that horse I have to get back on is awfully tall

My writing morale, for various reasons I won’t get into in a public post, has been pretty low for a while–another round of that self-defeating, self-perpetuating cycle that I daresay any writer who’s been at it for more than five minutes knows all too well. The only real cure for it is to just do the damn writing, and the simple fact that I’ve had an R&R to finish for a while has been enough to keep the morale from vanishing entirely.

So I dragged another 250 words out of my head tonight for Chapter 18 of Lament of the Dove. Even this tiny number of words has felt like an effort, but I don’t want to think of it like that; I’d rather think of it as a victory, tiny though it may be. And I’m going to write tomorrow, dammit, come hell or high water, gods willing and the creek don’t rise, etc. I can commit to writing tomorrow. Even if it’s twenty words. I will write tomorrow.

But now I have to go to bed.

August 5, 2011 by
Books

And now, a great big ol’ pile of books

Here’s what I spent my tasty store credit at Third Place on:

  • Downpour, by userinfokatatomic. Book 6 of her Greywalker series. I’m working on reading book 4 right now and hope to be caught up on this series soon! (Also, the observant reader will note that I already bought the ebook before; this is the hardback. Because I did indeed buy this book twice! I do that for fellow authors who love Twice Upon a Time, you know.)
  • Working Stiff, by userinforachelcaine. First book of her new series.
  • Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris. Steampunk/paranormal investigation type novel, set in Victorian England. Sounded like fun, so I snagged it.

Meanwhile, this is how I spent my money from the sale of my original nook:

  • Hounded, by Kevin Hearne. Book 1 of the Iron Druid Chronicles. Urban fantasy, starring a protagonist who’s an ancient druid trying to keep a low profile in the modern world. I expect his attempts to pull this off will go very badly, or otherwise we wouldn’t have a series, now would we?
  • Crossed, by J.F. Lewis. Book 3 of his Void City series. Urban fantasy, starring a vampire protagonist, and y’all may remember I quite liked the first two of these.
  • The Hob’s Bargain, by Patricia Briggs. Fantasy, re-buy of a book previously owned in print.
  • Steal the Dragon, by Patricia Briggs. Another re-buy of a previously owned fantasy, one which I quite liked, I note–but Briggs has so many books now that it’ll be easier for me to track her electronically. But I liked this one in particular
  • Out of the Deep I Cry, by Julia Spencer-Fleming. Book 3 of her Clare Fergusson mystery series, starring a young woman who’s an Episcopalian priest and the town sherriff with whom she’s developing a relationship with–even though both are fighting against it, because he’s married.
  • Death Most Definite, by Trent Jamieson. Book 1 of his Steven de Selby series, picked up in no small part because userinfoseanan_mcguire spoke highly of it. Hero’s working for the Grim Reaper.
  • Masques, by Patricia Briggs. Fantasy, another re-buy of a book I’d previously bought in print, but in this case I hadn’t actually read it yet. This is a re-issue of her very first novel, set in the same universe as Steal the Dragon and When Demons Walk and Wolfsbane.
  • Wolfsbane, by Patricia Briggs. Fantasy, yet another re-buy, one which I hadn’t read yet in print. Most recent of her Sianim universe fantasy novels.
  • When Demons Walk, by Patricia Briggs. The last of my Sianim universe fantasy novel re-buys, and I very much liked this one, as the heroine must pose as the mistress of a crippled nobleman to discover who’s been killing others of noble blood–and who caused the accident that crippled him. This was great fun and I look forward to re-reading it.
  • Follow My Lead, by Kate Noble. Romance. Bought due to really liking all her previous novels I’ve read, thanks to the fine ladies at the Smart Bitches site! Third of her Blue Raven series.
  • The Young Widow, by Cassandra Chan. Mystery, the first of her Bethancourt-Gibbons series, which I’ve already read and highly enjoyed. Buying this now because it finally hit ebook and I hadn’t been able to find a print copy; my prior read of it was from the library.

That’ll bring me up to 154 for the year and this should sustain me nicely until the releases I’m eying for September. userinfomizkit, userinfocmpriest, and Mr. Richard Castle!

August 2, 2011 by