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Todays crop o’ unsolicited solicitations for colleges for ye older critter arrived in the mail.

I was sitting here, minding my own business — well my characters’ business, like a voyaristic old woman perched atop the chair peering down at people who actually have a life — and I heard the boy mutter “Alternately, I could give its bottle and take it walkies.”

Looking up, I said “WHAT?”

He wordlessly handed me an envelope from Clark University. On the right side, some bright bulb imprinted “Challenge convention; change our world.”

Was there ever a time where this sort of disjointed halmark sentiment appealed to anyone? Did it ever appeal to college-bound people? If it does I’m scared, really.

Let’s take the thing at face value, okay? Come on, indulge me.

When I was growing up — no, wait — when I became conscious that I was growing up in the early seventies, this sentence was everywhere “You’re going to change the world”; “We’re changing the world”;”Changing the world a person at a time.”

To a certain extent this could then be uttered without irony. To a certain extent. Remember, these were the days when our own state department thought the command economy of the old USSR was viable. So, it was all a matter of a bright lad in the department for changing the world hitting on the right idea and saying “Here, here is where the change starts. We’ll have our five year plan for world changing widgets.”

And yet, even then, the young Sarah — a little girl who used to sit in a corner, sullenly glaring at the adults who said this sort of thing — used to wonder “okay. Change the world into WHAT? why doesn’t anyone say THAT? Why is changing the world a value? There are lots of worse ways it could be. Imagine no atmosphere…”

But now, in the early twenty first, when we know a little more about chaotic systems and that whatever else the world is, it is that, why are they printing this slogan on college envelopes. “Change our world” — okay, but how? Into what? And what does it mean?

Now granted they have found the magical “change your world for the better” wand. WHAT the heck does this have to do with “Challenge convention”? What convention? Scientific? Mathematical?

No, of course, what they mean by “convention” is that we should challenge social norms.

Now, bear in mind this is on a college letterhead. Doubtless the bright bulb who came up with this felt very brazen and very with it, and altogether po-mo in identifying their college with challenging social norms, but I ask you… when you want to challenge convention, where do you look? Do you look to a socially stratified institution, rigidly held together by shared opinions and beliefs? If you want to come up with the sort of (Do they still call it “out of the box”) unconventional thinking that would change any significant aspect of “the world” for better or for worse, would you go to college to learn to do it? Or do you go to college so you have proper papers certifying your world-changing abilities?

Gah. The more I think about it the more confused I get. It’s like all those teenagers dressing and behaving in an unconventional manner, just like every other unconventional teenager!

Perhaps I’m just too old. But at any rate, I’m gratified by the boy’s cynical offer to change the world, give it a bottle and take it walkies.

As for me, I’d like to teach the world to burp, in perfect harmony.

Okay, so what strange things do YOU read? When the stress is high and you just want to scream, what books do you reach for? When you need comfort reads, what do you gloam onto? And what strange things did you come across in your printed journey that enthralled you, even though it shouldn’t have?

Most of my strange tastes come from when I was very young. You see, in that galaxy far far away where I grew up, somewhere between Elizabethan England and Victorian England, but speaking Portuguese, books weren’t published in as massive numbers as here. There was one science fiction imprint. One. Good old Argonauta. And back list was an unheard of word. You got it when it came out or you were out of luck.

And then the seventies came (Aaaaack and run in dread, as the rest of you know who had the misfortune of coming of age in the time of bell bottoms and men whom surgery rendered incapable of singing anything but disco.) In that etrange little pays q’etait le mien (with apologies to the divinity of French spelling) this meant really high book prices. Well, mostly really high inflation for anything legal. But books also got interesting taxes if I remember, because, eh… culture. Who needs that?

So… as I hit nine or ten, a book needed to be frightfully, scarily bad for me not to read it more than six times. I mean, this was BC — before children — when I read up to six books a day. HAD to read six books a day. Totally addicted.

I burned through all of my poor brother’s sf/f. Bribed male friends out of their boy-club adventures. Read all of my cousin Natalia’s “blue collection” romances. Read the accumulated family library, including most of Shakespeare, Austen and Dumas (including the really bad Dumas, yes.) In despair, I even bribed friends to get their father’s old SF collections — how I came by City and They Walked Like Men. Of course, my dad’s mystery collection was completely fair game, as was anything else that came under the devouring reading apetite, including but not limited to “literature” “encyclopedias” and want adds.

As you can imagine, a childhood like that scars you deeply and irretrievably. One of the (sniffle) horrible scars I bear is the ability to enjoy less than divine prose. Heck, to enjoy the living daylights out of formulaic stuff that is nonetheless entertaining.

Some of the stuff aged badly, at least for me. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of Thomas Mann in either German, Portuguese or English. And WHAT was with Thus Spake Zarathrusta? Don Quixote, too, I’d agree with Borges, was the most unnecessary of all books ever written.

But other stuff… Ah, other stuff I return to in time of distress, like a child seeking his mother’s embrace after hurting himself.

One of these is Leslie Charteris’ Saint books. If you’ve only watched the movie, find these books and read them. MUCH better than the — largely insufferable — movie. Poorly edited and, more importantly, often bizarrely copyeditted, they nonetheless have fast paced stories and suddenly delightful turns of phrase. I would love to see a take on this updated and done in space opera. Heck, I might even do it, someday.

Another one is Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo stories. Yes, I know they’re dated, branded really, by their post WWII cold war world. And yet… And yet, I would bet you — bet you real money — that if you go into them with a seeing eye, you will find some of the best crafted short stories this side of heaven. JUST perfect little gems. The ones with Don Camillo are good enough, but then there are the ones set in that universe that are just perfect ghost stories or supernatural gems.

If you venture into that realm, I recommend Shotgun Wedding; Bianco; Blue Sunday (a story that for obvious reasons has been haunting my thoughts,) The excommunicated Madonna.

Where else do stories end so bitterly sweetly as in The Little World. Take the end of The Man Without A Head “Anyhow, the headless man acquired a head. Was it rightly his or not? The main thing is that it pacified him and he no longer inflamed the popular imagination. And the great rolling river quietly carried one more story, like a dead leaf, down to the sea.”

And where else can a story of political strife end this way (Peppone is the communist mayor and Don Camillo’s natural enemy.) “At this point Smilzo rode up like a deomon on his motorcycle, having been worried over his chief’s delay. When he saw the little procession, he turned around and rode ahead of it, in order to clear the way. When they were within two miles of their destination he responded to a nod from Peppone by stepping on the gas and leaving the others behind him.

So it was that at the entrance to the village Don Camillo found the local band ready to greet him. And the Crucified Christ came home to the strains of the “International.”
“Under the rope and to victory!” rejoiced Peppone bringing the jeep to an abrupt stop in front of the church door.”

When the world is too scary outside, I pull Guareschi over me like a blanket and pray that it might always be so in the real world — horrible tension, but real humans underneath, and redemption not far behind.

I’ve come to conclusion kid will probably be better off homeschooled, so I’m feeling better.

And I’ve decided to do a totally gratuitous snippet of Heart Of Light, the novel JUST delivered to Bantam a couple of weeks ago.

Right now I’m revising proposals for Baen AND working on the next one of this series, Soul of Fire.

Without further ado, the opening of Heart Of Light:

The twenty Eighth of August Eighteen-Eighty-Nine. The countryside outside Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Midnight.

The town was closed for the night, and the shops selling the famous pork pies and Stilton cheese were firmly shut and dark, as were the homes of the good burghers. All the estates on the outskirts were quiet and dark.
Here and there, only, the occasional candle shone or mage lantern flared in an otherwise silent night, heralding a sick room being checked, or a nurse looking in on a child, or perhaps a reveler returning late from some private party and tracing his way back to his room.
These lights appeared like trailing comets in the greater darkness and vanished, leaving only stillness behind and the great silent, sleeping night.
No light shone at the foursquare, many-chimney crowned home of Lord Widefield, friend of the Queen and – it was rumored – the head of her magical secret service. The house stood dark and closed against the pernicious night air, respectable and silent from the servant quarters to the upper stories. There, startlingly, one window was flung open to the night, the white curtains fluttering in the warm nocturnal breeze like a flag of surrender.
But for Lord Widefield, plucked from his bed in the middle of the night, grasped by a many-teethed mouth and flown to a nearby field, it was too late for surrender.
He lay in a meadow, not far from his house, a meadow across which he’d walked just that morning. It seemed so far away – that man who could stride across the meadow, that man in control of his own destiny, that man who had for fifty years stood astride the politics of magic in Great Britain.
Right then, Lord Widefield, in a pool of his own blood, on the soft grass, could only think of breathing, and breathing again and desperately holding onto the life that was ebbing away from him. He could only feel his heart beat, rasp one more breath in, one more out, and try – try – not to scream out the pain that wracked his shattered, torn body.
Through a haze of sweat and blood, he saw the dragon’s snout hovering, bloodied, over him. Those teeth, those claws, had taken his pride and his self-sufficiency and his life. Bite by bite and tear by tear.
Till nothing remained.
Now the reptilian mouth opened, showing the sharp teeth, and the forked tongue flickered at the blood-spattered muzzle.
“Have you told me all?” it asked, its voice more hiss than speech.
Desperately, fearing only an increase to the pain, all thought of honor and integrity forgotten with the dreams of power and empire, Lord Widefield nodded.
“Good,” the dragon said.
As the bright flashing teeth descended for the coup de gras, Lord Widefield spared a last thought for Nigel Oldhall. And hoped against hope the young man wouldn’t suffer too much.

So, this morning we woke up with the need to take some homework to my kid’s teacher because she said it was fine on monday — i e after quarter closes — but this is same wonderful woman who has — cheerfully — misentered or forgot to enter 4 out of six assignments of his this quarter. Until we get on her. So I trust her about as much as I trust … well… no, wait, I trust politicians more.

While kid — who has day off from school — was getting dressed I said “I’ll start laundry.” Trotted downstairs, to fine 1/2 inch of water in the laundry-choked basement. Cheerful. Call to to rotto rooter (It’s a cyclical thing, but it’s early this year.) Dash madly to the school to deliver homework. Come home to rotto rooter man.

Call from my agent’s office. The novel I just mailed her is missing pages 58 through 173. Okay.

Go off to buy cleaners.

Come home, have cheerful — oh, trust me — email from OTHER teacher informing us Eric is getting a D in his class (this is because of a speciously graded project AND a test Eric didn’t understand was one, however the point is:) THE QUARTER HAS ENDED. TODAY. THERE’s NOTHING WE CAN DO. So this bright bulb is informing us of the D why? BECAUSE IT’S HIS VICTORY DANCE, THAT’S WHY.

So, what do I intend to do? I don’t know. WHere does it become parent-harrassment disguised as concern?

And we are definitely edging towards he’s out of there. The only question is how fast.

Anyway — I am all in curiosity of what else the day will drop on me. Maybe I should go to bed now?

Sarah

For those who are wondering about my sudden absence from posting — or the sudden scarcity of postings, at least… no. It’s not all work.

I won’t go into details, mostly because I’m not absolutely sure all this won’t end up in the courts yet — or at least in a really funny roman a clef — but this year my younger son’s school has been trouble of one kind or another.

Oh, don’t misunderstand me — a part of this is the kid himself. The older one mostly takes after his father in public demeanor and behavior, which means by twelve he gave a convincing immitation of a human being. The younger one is mine, mine, all mine, from the top of his little horns to the bottom of his little hooves. Eventually — hopefully — he’ll control himself and limit actions resulting from his skewed view of the world and resulting sense of humor to the occasional joke — that will sail well above his teachers’ heads — or the — more lucrative — short story.

For now, though, he is twelve. Just on the edge of adolescence. Pudgy. Unwashed. Callow. He forgets his homework. Brushes his teeth only sporadically. His idea of a suave expression made me hide his school picture because it looks exactly like he was struck by sudden intestinal trouble. His attempts at intervening in table time conversation cause all of us to stop dead and say in three voices, in unisson “Shut up, Eric.” (It’s not so much they’re not on topic. It’s like they came from another dimmension.) His not inconsiderable brain power is right now devoted to one setting only “Open mouth. Insert foot.”

So, you’re saying “He’s twelve.” Yes, indeed. Even Robert who, as I said, was pretty human by that age decided to announce to his social studies teacher, at that age “I only come here so mom can get work done. It’s not like I’m learning anything.” The fact that it was true — for a child who taught himself to read from Caesar’s biography at four, middle school social sciences were really beside the point — was no excuse for saying it. And the crud I had to deal with afterwards…

So I imagine what the younger son says and does. Part of this is my own memory of being that age. Half understood politics and religion had the force of dogma. I not only didn’t understand other people, the world was divided into “the stupid and the non-stupid” and the non stupid were vanishingly few. The stupid, otoh, were vast and deserved to be annoyed at every possible moment and in every possible way.

Again — he’s twelve. Adollescence isn’t kind on anyone, and it is part of the function of growing up at that time to get your rough edges knocked off by your peers. Right?

Well. Wrong. At least as far as this middle school is concerned. As far as they’re concerned, the rough edges of adollescence are to be knocked off by the boot of authority. They are to be treated as something between thought crimes and sins. You are to be shriven and jackbooted until you shut up and think only in the CORRECT way.

A friend’s daughter in 8th grade now did an analysis in which she proved middle school was a totalitarian regime. At the time I thought “ah ah. cute.” Now I’m not so sure.

I am perfectly willing to concede that there must be limits in the interaction between sexes in middle school. Of course, by my lights my limits would be that boys and girls would get shut in separate barrels — but that’s just me. I got felt up and cornered in middle school enough to say any physical touching is not acceptable. There are verbal things that should be forbidden as well and at least flag the child for counseling — I’m thinking death threats; spewing obscenity… that level.

But though Eric has gotten at least one death threat in choir — which was ignored with “you must have misunderstood him — the thought crimes we’re punishing are much stranger. Bizarre even.

I had early warning of this when I was told the oldest was harrassing girls in kindergarten by reciting poetry at them. To wit, he told a girl her eyes shone like diamonds. This made her feel “uncomfortable” and was therefore, obviously, sexual harrassment.

This year… well… take boy who expresses himself oddly to begin with. Add girls who have been trained to think anything at all that a boy says to them is harrassment. Voila. A recipe for driving a parent nuts. For better finetuning of the loony-bin creating machine, make sure at least one of the teachers seems to never have been around teen boys — and sends your son to the office for not answering in his “real voice.” Welcome to my h*ll.

The shennenigans this year are too numerous to mention much less describe. In some of them the boy had a reasonable amount of — at least — escalating guilt. In at least one he was the victim of concerted bullying by a group of girls, which extended to his homework and tests disappearing before reaching the teacher — but we only found out about it because a girl finally crossed the line and accused him of bullying THEM. Lone boy. Twenty girls. What can I say? My boys are overachievers.

And then there was yesterday. Yesterday was just BIZARRE. It convinced me of my friend’s daughter’s point. Middle school is a totalitarian regime. Like all totalitarian regimes it extends its reach at first for a purpose and then mindlessly, till it’s punishing bizarre things and till everyone is guilty at all times.

I was going to call it neo-stalinist, only, you know, it would be an insult to Stalin. Weird as that might sound. At least, whatever he might have said, he wasn’t under the impression he was doing anyone a favor. I remember reading somewhere in Heinlein — and I don’t remember the exact quote — that the tyrants to be wary of are those who do things for their victims’ “own good.”

So — yesterday — Eric tells me he was sent to the office for an hour. Why? Oh, they wanted him to apologize for something a girl said he’d said to her. A girl.Said.He’d.Said.To.Her. No witnesses, no corroboration. You’re accused, therefore you must be guilty. The principal and the vice principal spent an hour with him demanding he confess. AN HOUR.

Okay — at this point I’m thinking… death threat. It has to be something very serious for them to take time out of their busy day to devote it to this. Right? Particularly when you add in that he’s denying saying anything and that the charmer who made the accusation was in the first group of girls who severely bullyed him — in fact, was one of the principals in that group.

So, what terrible words did my twelve year old utter — SUPPOSING he’d uttered them, which, frankly… Well… the sentence is almost incoherent enough to be his, but it makes more sense as something that was misunderstood (Particularly since it was supposedly said on a volleyball court, mid game.) — oh, brace yourselves, this one is good. What he SUPPOSEDLY said was “Let’s go down get some alcohol and do something.”

This warrants an HOUR of demands to apologize because it made the girl feel “strange.” (I don’t know about you, but if she’s strange enough to demand protection and apology from THAT she’s going to have an interesting time in real life.)

There is no indication at all that this was a sexual suggestion — if anything was said, it was between plays in the volleyball court. There is NO suggestion of threat in the words. It is — if it was said (and I’d put my hands in the fire it wasn’t, simply because the boy-monkey withstood an hour of yelling at while refusing to apologize because “it’s plain dumb to say you’re sorry when you didn’t do it.”) — no more than what a twelve year old might say trying to sound grown up.

Look, in my time, it wouldn’t even warrant a glare at the boy, much less decking him (which I reserved for crimes of touching.) In my day, that kind of stupid sentence warranted pretending you didn’t hear it. I still use this arcane skill at cons. Serves me well.

BUT — at a guess because the word alcohol was supposedly used — this warranted taking the kid out of class — without corroborative testimony — and having him interrogated and told he MUST apologize.

My mind is bending trying to figure out how the words even would be offensive, much less what he would be apologizing for, even had he said it.

It’s not neo-stalinist. It’s 1984 run by the mad hatter. Confess. Repent. Words mean exactly what we say they do, unless they don’t.

You know, it’s not just that they’re interfering with my ability to think — and write. It’s not just that they’re making my son miserable. Being miserable is a condition of early adolescence. He’ll live. And so will I, except maybe with a few more white hairs. Worst case scenario I bring him home to homeschool — with him kicking and screaming all the way that he “wont’ give them the satisfaction” — and cut out the stress producers.

No — what upsets me here is that all of a sudden making someone feel uncomfortable is a crime: whether or not you had any reason to think in advance that anyone could be made uncomfortable by your words or gestures. What upsets me is that they’re teaching half our population — by and large the female half — to run to authority for protection at the slightest provocation, instead of getting THEIR edges knocked off by contact with the opposite sex.

What truly upsets me is that our childrens’ souls are being nibbled to death by ducks.

Since my husband has made fun of my younger son’s attempts at literary creativity, I’ve decided to pile on, lest the child reach 30 without massive psychiatrist bills.

Among the joys of these last couple of weeks has been Eric’s South American project.  While I was madly pressing forward on a late project, Eric was exploring South America vicariously, only somewhat hampered by the fact that his mind causes him to do very strange things — like decide that ALL countries in South America speak Spanish and then making up stories to explain why  Surinamese name things in Dutch.  (You don’t want to know.  REALLY you don’t want to know.)

Now the great South American project has come due.  The kids have to write a travel log in some format.  Eric did it in the form of letters of a forlorn traveller trying to catch his luggage which always gets misdirected just ahead of him, and finally gets sent to Europe.

It’s very funny — as are his excuses to go visit landmarks and study history while pursuing the luggage.

But… but… but…

My son suffers from a terrible disease known as Sudden Capitalization Syndrome.  This Terrible affliction Causes him to suddenly, inexplicably and for no Reason that anyone could possibly image capitalize letters in the middle of a sentence.  It makes for interesting proof reading as well as a certain amount of contagion.

After reading More than Twelve pages written in this somewhat eCcentric style, I find myself not only Writing this way, but Thinking this way all of a sudden with certain words carrying Undue emphasis in my mental voice.

I wonder if I  can Convince my publisher would consider this a Plausible future Lingo?

Sarah

I’ve received my cover for The Musketeer’s Seamstress.  It’s VERY lovely.

Even better is the text in the back,   which reads as follows:

All for one – in love and death…
Captivated by Aramis’s passionate renderings of the lives of the saints, a Spanish noblewoman — and childhood friend of the Queen — found more than spiritual solace in his arms.  To protect her reputation, Aramis said she was his seamstress.  But now her soul rests with God, taken from her while she was in a locked room with the dashing Musketeer.

Having unwisely fled the scene of the crime with the murder weapon and without his uniform, Aramis now must go into hiding and trust his compatriots to find the real killer before the Cardina’s men find him.  For Queen Anne is bent on seeing swift justice for her dead friend — and the missing Musketeer is the only suspect.

:)

This serves as my — finds soapbox and climbs on it — diatribe against upitty machines.

I’ve always instinctively disliked talking machines. There is something sneaky about a mechanism that presumes to lecture me. First they talk, next thing you know they’re taking over your job (Hey, I read With Folded Hands [Jack Williamson?] And there was that story about the machine that wrote novels. Anyone know what it is? Published in the late seventies, IIRC) or, Heaven Forbid, ruling you (vid. The god machine, Martin Caidin.)

Yes, I DO understand that machines aren’t really intelligent. Why would that prevent their taking over? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Carolingian dynasty. All royal houses. Oh, yeah, and modern day politicians.

In practical terms, what this means is that I scream at my car a lot. There’s me, behind the wheel, maneuvering around the schools to drop off the kids, avoiding collisions with progestorone-addled, coffee-deprived mini-van drivers, while staring intently at my dashboard and screaming, “No, you idiot, my door is not ajar. It is, in point of fact, a door. As you’d know if you were not a stupid machine.” It involves my yelling at the bread machine when it tells me the bread is “cooling off, do not open” and then of course, opening it and burning myself on the steam.

So, all this apropos what? Well, my new microwave flashes a line of text whenever it’s done its thing. The line of text is most singularly inappropriate. It says “Enjoy your meal.” Okay, there are times I’m reheating food. Much more often I’m melting a smidgen of butter for baking. Or perhaps defrosting a roast for cooking or warming the cup of coffee that got cold while I was ranting on LJ.

And besides, really, honestly, if I DON’T want to enjoy my meal, why is this machine trying to force me to? Surely it doesn’t even know what meals are?

It’s a strategy, you see? A slippery slope. First they get us to accept their nonsensical commands. We won’t even notice when they take over the world.

Well, you won’t notice. I will. I will be the one screaming “I will not be terminated. And I am NOT a jar. And I’ll burn my fingers if I wish to. And I WILL NOT enjoy my meal.”

Sarah

Okay, could whoever put a curse on our appliances remove it?

In the last year we’ve replaced everything except the microwave. So, two days ago I turned the microwave on. It turned itself off and gave off thise burning electrical smell.

What does this mean? It means we went shopping for microwaves. How come most places no longer carry anything larger than what’s suitable for heating a frozen entree? What is wrong with people? It’s like my kitchen being done in parquet, which is splintering, because I cook and I clean it. Scrub the floor, you know?

DON’T people cook anymore? What’s wrong with them?

Or am I the holdover of a different world, insisting on messing around with raw stuff till I create something edible?

So, last night, I slept horribly. Today I spent most of the day trying not to sleep, while attempting to write. And then I went microwave shopping.

In totto? Twenty pages written in the opening to musketeers, which means this outline can go on tomorrow. And then I can finish the Singularity story. And then I need to do the other two proposals. And then I need to finish Heart Of Light.

And then it will be Christmas.

Sarah