The SF/F genre has taken a heavy blow today. Just a few scant days after her post to Facebook that she was doing battle with cancer, Ann Crispin, who wrote under the name A.C. Crispin, has passed away. I’m seeing the news going all over Twitter, and Making Light has a post up here.
For me, her impact was heaviest with her amazing Han Solo trilogy in the Star Wars universe: The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, and Rebel Dawn. I adored the HELL out of those novels, and found them critical reference material for when I played Han on Star Wars MUSH. She did such a fabulous job as well utilizing what was established in the previous Han novels by Brian Daley as well.
I even wrote to her about those novels, way back when, and I remember having had a lovely conversation with her by email about them.
Dara has a copy of her excellent Trek novel Yesterday’s Son as well, and while it’s been a while since I’ve read that, I quite respected that book too.
Many, many condolences to her loved ones and fans.
ETA: Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware calls upon Ann’s fans to honor her memory by reading her work, and by continuing to spread the good word to writers about how to watch out for themselves. Strauss says Writer Beware WILL continue operations.
To these I will further add that Dara has commentary here as to what it would actually mean to try to boycott PAX, and here as to what she’d really like to ask people to consider taking as an action in all of this.
And in the interests of clarity and forthrightness, I note that I’ve seen Gabe’s post here and have read what he’s got to say about the matter.
Me, I’ll repeat that to some degree I have no horse in this race because I’ve not been much of a PAX person or a Penny Arcade reader, either. On the other hand, I do have a horse on the very edge of the race because people close to me are PAX people and Penny Arcade readers. And in several cases, they are also survivors of rape. And it bothers the hell out of me, on their behalf, that this kind of shit keeps happening. It encourages the creation of a space that is actively hostile to them. And from a bigger picture perspective, it contributes to the ongoing misogyny of gamer culture. That, yeah, I do have a problem with.
And for me, it’s less a question of any specific bullshit remark the man makes, and more of a question of a repeating pattern of behavior. Gabe’s new post certainly sounds sincere, and if his heart is in the right place, awesome… except his heart being in the right place only means so much when he keeps making remarks like this over and over and over and over and over. He keeps getting called out on them, and keeps not stopping making these remarks. And since he is indeed half of the public face of the giant Godzilla of gamer culture, he is a huge influence on how that culture responds and behaves.
To paraphrase what I said in comments in response to my last post on this: I’ll be happy to stop calling bullshit on his behavior when he stops doing it. I have nothing personal against the man. I don’t hate him. But this ongoing pattern of behavior is bullshit, and if he wants his apologies to be taken seriously, it needs to stop.
We’ll see if it manages to stop this time, before next year’s PAX rolls around. It’ll be a deciding factor in whether I choose to go again, myself.
I hear tell authors need things like official Facebook pages, so I made one, and you can find it right over here.
Those of you who’d like to follow me in an official Facebook capacity and focus on getting data about my writing, that’s your best bet. ‘Cause if you follow my personal account, you’re going to get a LOT more blathering about Quebecois music and Great Big Sea, and y’know, if you like those things, that’s awesome, but I DO tend to blather on. 😉
Probably what I’m going to do with that page is use it as a place to talk about interesting Here Be Magic posts (’cause that’s the Carina author blog I’m on), any general Carina news, and news about my self-pubbed works as well. Writing-specific posts from this blog will get cross-posted there. And I’ll maybe post answers to questions, or maybe tidbits of excerpts of stuff coming, or cover reveals, or y’know, author stuff!
Mostly though it’ll serve as a way for people who don’t know about me already to find me on Facebook.
So yeah. Those of you with Facebook accounts, y’all know what to do! That Like button sure looks shiny, doesn’t it?
I’ve been spending quite a bit of my musical time on tunes from the Quebecois repertoire, but every so often I get to remind myself that actually, y’know? I also play guitar. Especially when I hear a song like the delicious “Au rang d’aimer” by La Bottine Souriante, which I’ve been swooning over for ages. It’s pulled hard into the lead to become the first song from Quebec that I’ve been able to figure out how to play and sing at the same time, properly!
I used the Chord Detector app I’ve got on my iPhone to get an initial idea of the chords. Now, the app ain’t perfect, and I find that when I throw a song at it, it’s usually good for giving me the general ballpark–the right key and several of the right base chords. But then I need to go in and finesse it and figure out things like strum patterns, and where to plug in chords that might be missing.
This song’s delightful to play with, just because it requires a more delicate strum pattern than I’m used to playing. (‘Cause hi, right, I’m the girl used to playing the sorts of chords that are better fitting to boinging around the living room, playing along with the Great Big DVD and belting out “Mari Mac” at the top of your lungs, NOT THAT I DO THAT OR ANYTHING!) Don’t quote me on the key, but I think we’re dealing with D mix here. There’s a lot of F, D, Em, and G, with periodic loverly little bits of Em7 and C. And I THINK there’s an Am that pops in as a transition chord between D and Em on the third line of the verses, but I’m not a hundred percent sure of that.
Note also, if you play with these chords, the first and fifth verses start with D->G->D->G, but the rest of them go F->Em->D->G, as near as I can tell. Because the first and fifth ones are coming after the intro and bridge, and starting them with D instead of F makes the chord flow work better.
(Any French speakers out there who recognize this word, you want to clue me in, I’d be much obliged! I have even taken the drastic step of pinging the excellent gentleman who sings it, Éric Beaudry himself, to see if he can enlighten me. Given that I tried that in French, we’ll see if I managed to do so coherently. I make no guarantees. *^_^*;;)
… in no small part due to how I’m back in edit mode for Vengeance of the Hunter. But from what I’m hearing, first from Dara’s PAX report and then from rumblings around Twitter this morning, apparently Gabe opened his mouth again and highly unfortunate things fell out.
PAX has always been a bit of a problem for me. For one thing, hi, raging introvert girl here. So many people attend that thing that my tolerance for the crowds goes only so far if I’m there too. A couple of hours on the expo floor and eventually I get to a point of wanting to go all Invader Zim and stand up yelling STAND AWAY! YOU SMELL LIKE FEET! Which, y’know, not terribly productive.
There’s also the problem that I’ve never been a console gamer. There’s other types of gaming covered at PAX, sure–Big Fish has had a booth there the last couple of years, so casual games do have a presence. I’m given to understand we were hawking our forthcoming Zombie Zombie Zombie match 3 game, and yeah, I’ll be playing the hell out of that. But mostly, the whole event is filled with stuff I’ve never been particularly interested in. I quite enjoy watching Dara and Paul play various console games, and experiencing their stories vicariously–I really liked the storyline of the BioShock games, enough that I went and grabbed the tie-in novel just so I could read about the founding of Rapture. Portal and Portal II, also great fun to watch, and of course between Paul and Dara we’ve been HOUSE OF SKYRIM for a while now too. Also great fun to watch, if nothing else because Skyrim’s always struck me as a way fancier version of Nethack.
But. Looking from the outside in, and seeing repeated incidents of misogyny and queerphobia in gaming culture, I can’t help but get a big vibe of ‘yeah that? That’s not for me.’
I’ll be going to GeekGirlCon, though. And who knows? Maybe I’ll see something there that’ll change my mind about console gaming, even before Dara and Paul launch their campaign to try to pull me into Elder Scrolls Online next year.
ETA: First of the pertinent commentary links that have come across my radar: From Make Me a Sammich, who has generally Had Enough of This Shit
To Kathryn H., who reshared on Google+ and who dropped a comment on the giveaway post: you get the $25 credit to the book-selling store or site of your choice!
To Cheryl M., also for resharing on Google+: you get the print and ebook copies of Faerie Blood!
To Angela R., for comment and reshare love on Facebook: you get the ebook AND audio copies of Valor of the Healer!
Winners, you may accept your winnings on behalf of yourself or of someone you’d like to give the items to. I will be contacting the winners to make arrangements to hand out the shinies!
Thank you all for playing! And for the record, I am now 26 sales of Faerie Blood away from doing something amusing to my hair. Chances are good I’ll have anime hair by Second Thanksgiving, or maybe Christmas! There WILL still be pictures! Check back here for events as they happen, Internets!
Y’all knew THIS one was coming, right? What with the whole “I haven’t been able to shut up about these guys for the last several months” thing? Because yeah, let’s talk Le Vent du Nord. Hands down, uncontested, kings of my favorite Quebecois bands. The guys who are going head to head with Great Big Sea for Anna’s All-Time Favorite Band EVER. I gushed enthusiastically about them when I first found them. I adored the album Symphonique, and I fangirled Tromper le temps seven ways from Sunday.
So yes, it should surprise absolutely none of you that if you ask me “So Anna, I want to check out Quebec trad music, who should I listen to first?”, my instant answer is going to be “Le Vent du Nord”!
And I could write entire dissertations on the theme of JesusjumpingChrist, Olivier Demers can play him some fiddle. That guy? That guy right there? That’s the guy who’s making my fingers itch to pick up my flutes and try to cram as many Quebec tunes into my brain as possible. The guy who inspired me to transcribe “Manteau d’hiver” just because I love that tune so much I had to figure out how to play it. The guy who, because he is just that awesome, gave me his permission to ask him musical questions. BEST. FIDDLE. PLAYER. EVER.
It should also surprise none of you that my unequivocal recommendation for “which Le Vent du Nord album should you get first?” is Tromper le temps. For the love of all that’s holy, get that album. In no small part because it’s got the aforementioned “Manteau d’hiver” on it, but it’s also got “Le dragon de Chimay”, and I’ve written before about how I’m obliged to love the hell out of that song because it involves a knight being transformed into a dragon. A DRAGON, YOU GUYS. Why yes, I DO love a little bit of fantasy in my trad, thank you. 😀
If you can find it, I also cannot recommend Symphonique passionately enough. It’s the only Le Vent album not available digitally to US customers, though, so if you want it, you’ll have to order it–or maybe show up at a Le Vent du Nord concert and buy it from them directly. (Which you should do. And tell them Anna the Piper sent you!) For one thing, it’s an excellent live album. For another, the juxtaposition of Le Vent and an orchestral backup is lush and gorgeous and it’s got three of the top repeat tracks on my Le Vent du Nord playlist. As a former student of symphonic band and wind ensemble in my school days, I adore the orchestral backup. I adore it like kittens, and have to sternly remind myself that next March, when I get to see Le Vent do a live symphony show, that no it is not socially acceptable to use stealth technology to hide in the flute section so I can make off with the sheet music. (But I digress.)
If you go poking further through Le Vent’s discography, it’s important to note that they did go through two prior membership changes before settling on their current lineup. Here are my notable tracks on the various previous albums!
Their very first album, Maudite moisson !, is worth listening to just because that one features vocals by Bernard Simard, who does have a gorgeous champagne-like tenor voice. And it’s got the original versions of “Vive l’amour” and “Au bord de la fontaine”, which have survived as concert staples for the group.
For live Le Vent you do actually have two options–the aforementioned Symphonique, but also Mesdames et messieurs, which is their live concert from the Memoires et Racines festival in 2008. Kickass version of “Au bord de la fontaine” on there, and there’s guest support from Bernard Simard on “Vive l’amour” as well.
Ultimately, though, I stand by my rec of Tromper le temps for which album you should get first!
