A goddess in the making, or a demon reborn...?

In the remote mountain village where she was born, Mariarta dil Alicg lives the untroubled life of a peasant girl...until, soon after a mysterious stranger's arrival, she starts to hear voices in the wind.

The voices whisper strange secrets in Mariarta's ears -- promising her the power to command the stormwind, hinting at an unknown, magical heritage, and prophesying a fate marvelous past all Mariarta's imaginings.

Then a curse falls on Mariarta's village, shattering the lives of her family and friends. Mariarta must set out across the mountain realm of Raetia in search of a way to break the curse -- while also hunting for the truth about the beautiful and terrible being who is trying to possess her soul.

Mariarta's search will lead her into hidden domains of sorcery both dreadful and wondrous, and will finally embroil the young woman in the growing rebellion against her land's cruel Austriac oppressors. But not before Mariarta comes face to face at last with the immortal Lady of the Storms, and challenges her to one final battle for control of her life, her soul, and her destiny...

...Some of you may know that the first of the "Raetian Tales" books is now available in paperback. (It's been doing okay, by the way.)

With this in mind, I'm now turning the e-versions of the book loose on the Net for free download. Anyone who's interested in reading the whole thing can grab a copy from the storage at Box.net.

The book comes in three versions. There's an Adobe .pdf version, a Microsoft Reader .LIT version, and a Palm-friendly .PDB version: use those links to download them, or the Box flash-widget down at the bottom of this post. (And if anyone who downloads one of these files wants to port the book over to some other reader format or whatever, please feel free. I'd ask, though, that you send me a copy so I can store it here too.)

If, after you've read the book, you liked it and feel like you want to encourage the writer to do the second one in the series (it's outlined), there's a button in the left-hand column at the Raetian Tales website/blog where you can stuff something in the tip jar if you feel so inclined. And if you wanted to buy a paperback edition of the book, well, Heaven forbid I should talk you out of the idea. Here's a link.

Additional resources: for those of you who're Google Earth users, we have a basic placemarks file available where you can view the major (and minor) locations in the book. You can download that file here.

Jeez, that film got dreadfully spanked in the reviews.

This is something of an issue for me, as one fantasy film's bad fortune affects all other potential fantasy pitches far more than the previous few films' good fortune will; and in a household where pitching fantasy film is something that's more likely to happen pretty soon than not, we both keep an eye on such things.

I get a sense that something's gone wrong in the process between the book and the screenplay. (I haven't read the book, and so can't judge the problem from that side.) I will say this, though: I read the original Eragon screenplay a couple/few weeks ago, and got very concerned. For one thing, the spacing on the screenplay had been badly "cheated" (meaning each page had many more lines on it than it should have). This may not sound like much, but in an industry where the timing of a movie can be definitively judged by the (correct) spacing and pagination of a script, that's a problem... and possibly indicative of more trouble to come.

And I may have been right about that concern, since it now turns out that there are three additional writers' names on the movie. This suggests that the producers felt there was either structural trouble, or dialogue trouble, or both, after the first draft. Some of the reviews would seem to come down on the "dialogue trouble" side, though. (I'm not going to link to them individually: reading them gives me the ouchies as it is, however deserved they may be. Hit that link above and you'll see a lot of reviews using truly scalding language [and terrible puns] to slag the film off.)

...So now -- around here, anyway -- we'll be rooting for the next fantasy film out of the chute to do better, and change the mood.

A note in passing: another of the screenplays that came through here in that last batch was by the wonderful Tom Stoppard. And I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that his script was the only one in the batch that did not cheat on the spacing. My feeling after reading it was that, if there are not too many changes between his draft and the shooting script, The Golden Compass is going to work quite well. (Again, I haven't read the book: so I'm coming to the subject as someone who knows nothing in particular about that universe, and therefore comes to the property as most of the film's viewers will.)

(sigh) Back to work...

For those of you who're interested, Chapter Five of The Big Meow, the last volume in the Feline Wizardry trilogy, is now available online for non-subscribers.

Chapter Six will be going online for subscribers around the 17th of December: check the front page of the Big Meow website, or the project weblog at felinewizards3.blogspot.com. (Just a note: we're going to be redesigning the main website, and the weblog is going to be incorporated into it, so the blog will be changing its address in coming weeks.) By the way, if you're a subscriber and you didn't receive a notification that Chapter 5 was ready, please either leave a comment on this posting or email me (assuming you haven't done so already).

Also, if you already have a subscription, you can upgrade to a hardcover version of the book, with or without dustcover, here. If you're not a subscriber, but you'd like to be -- or maybe want to give a subscription as a gift -- you can click here to buy a sub that will include a paperback version of the book when it's completed, edited and published early in 2007. Prefer a hardcover? Click here for a subscription that comes with a dustjacketed version, or here for the just-plain-old-hardcover.

 If this is the first you've heard about this project, check the sidebar menu at the Big Meow website for all the info. Also, if you'd like to sign up to be informed when new chapters are ready, scroll down in the text box on the front page of the site and you'll see a link where you can do that.

Thanks, all!

I'm about to coin a word.

I don't know if the thing I'm going to coin about is happening in the US right now (or elsewhere), but it sure happens a lot on this side of the water, and it is driving me nuts.

It happens in commercials on both radio and TV. They'll show you, or tell you about, some consumer item. Let's say it's a sofa.* And (on TV) they'll show you the price. (Let's say it's $499.) And then they'll say it out loud. They'll say:  "Now -- only four nine nine!"

Not "four hundred ninety-nine".  These commercials seem to be utterly terrified of saying the word "hundred" out loud.

So there's the word I'm coining. Ekatonosmilophobia. The irrational fear of saying the word "hundred".

Why won't they just say it?!  Do people at all the ad agencies responsible for those commercials really think that if you want that sofa, the pronunciation of the word "hundred" is genuinely going to stop you from buying it? Or do they think we're so stupid that we can't read the numbers and see that there are at least three of them, and know perfectly well that this means the word "hundred" is going to be lurking in there someplace? Because the people in the store sure aren't going to be afraid to say that word at the cash register, and charge an amount containing the H word  to our credit / debit cards or take the h**dred Euro/pound bills/notes out of our hot little hands.

(It just happened again, in a Dell computers commercial. "Five seven nine."  Oh, come ON, Dell!! Aaaaaargh!)

Seriously! JUST SAY HUNDRED, commercial people! (And don't even get me started on the four-digit numbers.)

(sigh) Okay, that's my rant for this year. Back to work.

*And another thing. What is it with the approximately eight million sofa ads on TV the day after Christmas? Do people really trash that many sofas over the holidays?

I came across this comment about me a little bit ago, and it started me thinking:

Next you'll be telling me she's not really a libertarian.

This made me go look up "libertarian", as I wasn't sure that the world presently meant by the term what I think I mean by it. (For me, the word instantly brought up an image of Thomas Jefferson, along with accompanying images of Monticello, and of the vegetables and various European soft fruits that TJ imported to the US for his garden to experiment with and get commerce started in them.)

The Wikipedia entry has all kinds of too-damn-fascinating crossreferences hooked into it...including a link to the page on paleolibertarianism, which I had never heard of before and which immediately conjured up images of some kind of Free the Dinosaurs movement.  (I'm sorry, but these weird sideways associational flashes happen to me constantly, all day, every day. In the psychiatric community they would often be categorized as either "looseness of association" or "flight of ideas", depending on how fast they happened and how logical the connection of the secondary material to the primary material that seemed to be associated with it. But for this writer, at least, they're an invaluable tool of the trade.)

Anyway, I read through the article, thought a bit, and found that the following phrases pretty much described my attitude toward what seem to be the primary issues in question:

(1) I prefer just enough government to protect me from having other political entities fall on my neighborhood with fire and sword. 

(2) I prefer a government that does not behave in such a way as to cause other political entities to want to fall on my neighborhood with fire and sword.

(3) I prefer a government that does not fall on other political entities with fire and sword unless they (a) are falling on mine with fire and sword or (b) can clearly be shown to be in the process of doing so.

(4) Anybody falls on my neighborhood with fire and sword, they're going to find that they've got my sword to deal with. (And a lot of Peter's.) And I know exactly where to insert that sword to best advantage. (This being one of the things that having been a nurse is good for.)

(5) (That's enough formulating for one day. Ed.)

Do those make me a libertarian? Then guilty as charged, I guess. But there were a lot of things on the shopping list of necessary opinions and traits that I wouldn't necessarily hold with.  (From the Wikipedia entry, and this essay, the term "minarchist" would seem to be a closer match to what goes on inside my head.  And even in the description of that term, there would be things I'd have to argue with, or would reject.)

So probably the simplest way to find out whether I'm a libertarian or not would be to name me Queen of the World, and see what I did. If I really am a libertarian, I'll abdicate, right? Q.E.D.

Then again, I might just keep the title for a few years to see how it worked out. And as regarded everything else in the definition, like any other good psychiatric nurse or responsible sf/fantasy writer, I would have to handle each issue that came up on a case-by-case basis. This being the case, when I am Queen of the World, I foresee a lot of long days spent in the adjudicating chair, sorting out all the messy details like free trade (suddenly I hear Jed Bartlett's voice saying, "Unless a war breaks out, I'll be spending the rest of my day talking about bananas...") and the minimum wage (needs raising just about everywhere, if you ask me. And if you made me Queen of the World, then you did).

But generally, I would suggest that you really don't want to see me being Queen of the World, as even my considerable patience does have limits, and when events take me past those, my management style will most closely approach that of Mrs. Oscar Gordon ("This problem will clear up if you take that man -- you, what's your name? with the goatee? -- take him out and shoot him. Do it now."), though without either (a) the accumulated wisdom of the Egg of the Phoenix or (b) the PMS.  ...I do, however, promise in advance to boost funding to every sensible space program, as it strikes me as a good way to give the fire-and-sword types something to occupy their time. And of course I get to decide what's "sensible." What good would being the Queen of the World be otherwise?...

...But no...I'm sure the world will work better if I stay right where I am and continue to exercise benevolent tyranny over the houseplants and the cats. And attempt to exercise it over the computers. (Hah.) And vote.

(...Though the thought of running for the European Parliament [obviously, as an independent] has occasionally crossed my mind. Wow, just think, the opportunity to eat out in Brussels every night...

Naaaaaaaahhh.  I need to lose ten pounds, and with Le Cirio just around the corner and Den Dijver just down the road, it'd never happen.

(snort) Back to work. I've got worlds where I'm queen already, and they're calling.

You may have seen the cool posting in BoingBoing some weeks ago about the hummingbird hawkmoth. If you did, this short MySpace video from our garden might amuse you. (If the MySpace version looks jerky to you, try running this version at Photobucket: I think the transfer went a little better.) Before we went away to CopperCon, Peter caught a few seconds of one of the local hawkmoths "tanking up" while the white buddleia bush in the front rockery was in bloom.

The species is Macroglossum stellatarum. Apparently (according to the Reader's Digest Field Guide to the Butterflies and Other Insects of Britain) hawkmoths of this species migrate to the UK and Ireland from France each year. (Some may also overwinter in the southern counties of each island). They were fairly rare in the UK when the book was written in 1984 -- it states that normally about fifty per year would be spotted: though there were very occasional years (as in 1947) when thousands might be seen.

When Peter took this video in our garden, there were easily ten of them hanging around and working the buddleia -- which is a favorite with all the butterflies because it's so fragrant and produces so much nectar in the long flower-spikes. I find myself wondering whether the lengthening of our local summers over the last couple of decades -- and their earlier onset -- is making it easier for increased numbers of the hawkmoths to get here from France: or whether maybe we now have a breeding population of our own in Ireland....

(Amusing sidelight: note the tiny spark of "blue-eye" that the flash from Peter's camera inflicted on the moth.)