Kestrell

Does this webpage really contain a picture of me with Chip Delany at Readercon a few years ago?

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 16:55:22 GMT

I remember when someone took a picture of us with our heads bent together, each describing our love of the city of New Orleans, but I don't, myself, have a copy of that picture.
https://www.sallywienergrotta.com/category/appearances/?page_number_0=11&page_number_1=2
Added later: Please read in the comments for a picture description provided by teenybuffalo, and I also encourage everyone to read this brilliant interview with Chip, in which Chip describes growing up with undiagnosed dyslexia

Samuel R. Delany Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 210
Interviewed by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6088/the-art-of-fiction-no-210-samuel-r-delany

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The Readercon program is posted + panels I am on

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 13:55:03 GMT

Readercon 31
https://www.readercon.org/
will be taking place August 13-15, and will be virtual.
The guests of honor are Ursula Vernon and Jeffrey Ford, with the Memorial Guest of Honor Vonda N. McIntyre.
YouTube will be used to view panels, talks, readings, performances, and events, via links shared in our members-only Discord server
Discord will be used to participate in Q&As, visit virtual fan tables, attend launch parties, chat in kaffeeklatsches, and otherwise interact with program participants and other attendees during and between sessions.

The program can be downloaded in several formats, including an accessible plain text file,
here
https://www.readercon.org/program

I'm on two panels:

Saturday - 2:00 PM
Main Track 1 - I'm In: Infiltration Techniques for Writers - Toni "Leigh Perry" Kelner, Catherynne M. Valente, Kestrell Verlager, Elizabeth Wein, Fran Wilde (mod)
How can characters get into spaces they aren't supposed to be, whether physical or virtual? What makes these scenes feel plausible? Panelists will analyze the literary possibilities in various infiltration techniques--including those that rely on technical skills (such as lockpicking or hacking) and those that rely on social engineering--and suggest useful reference works and successful fictional depictions.

Sunday - 10:00 AM
Main Track 1 - L'Ã‰tat, C'est Quoi? Social Organization in SF/F - Terri Bruce, Ian R. Macleod, Kathryn Morrow, Malka Older (mod), Kestrell Verlager
Let's talk about modes of social organization in science fiction and fantasy: nations, kingdoms, empires, anarcho-syndicalist communes, hives, necromantic capitalism, and more. How do shifts in real-world politics change how we read speculative fiction's use of both real and imagined forms of government? Why is it so hard to make up truly novel social systems, and what does that tell us about how we perceive human (and inhuman) nature?

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The original goth rock band

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 17:08:29 GMT

Alexx: I read some more of the David Jay biography.
Kestrell: Remind me who David Jay is.
A: He was in Bauhaus, the original goth rock band.
K (scoffs(: That wasn't the original goth rock band.
A: What was the original goth rock band?
K: You know, that one with Byron and Mary Shelley.
A: That wasn't a rock band.
K: Many hardcore goths would back me up on this. Liz Hand would back me up on this.
A: I'm not going to win this one, am I?

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Virtual Readercon 31 to be held July 9-11, 2021

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:25 GMT

Our guests of honor are Ursula Vernon and Jeffrey Ford, and our memorial guest of honor is Vonda N. McIntyre. We’ll also celebrate the careers of Carol Emshwiller and Rick Raphael, winners of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award for 2019 and 2020 respectively.
Read the announcement and further details on the website:
http://www.readercon.org/RC31virtual.htm

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We may have missed Readercon, but we can still babble about books

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 19:56:35 GMT

So we missed Readercon this year
I organized a virtual Readercon with some friends so we could discuss what books we had been reading lately. Here's the list, with some additional comments by me. Note: ssorry I only began mentioning Bookshare/NLS availability starting around halfway through the list.

A Song for a New Day by Pinsker, Sarah
Available on Bookshare.org, and on NLS as an audiobook

Fritz Lieber "Coming Attraction", Our Lady of Darkness
Story about a man who gets caught up with occultists in San Francisco? and has a scene which explains why we no longer sleep with piles of books in our beds.
Available on Bookshare.org (Kes recommends geting the ebook which also includes "conjure Wife"), also available on NLS as an audiobook

Podcast "Our Opinions are Correct"

Audiobook Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Audiobook

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
"dashing geneticist vampire" [it says so on the book jacket]
Enthusiastically panned by Kestrell, who had to review it when it first came out

The Magnus Archives
Enthusiastically recommended by three of us. The narrator has a *great* voice. This is like the old-school M. R. James/Algernon Blackwood kind of horror, with no violence toward women and only a few passing references to sex. Kes loves the evil books.
All sorts of ways to listen, including asking Alexa to play it for you, or listen to it online at
http://rustyquill.com/the-magnus-archives/

Does the dog die.com
doesthedogdie.com
Because we all hate stories where the dog dies.

Darcie Little Badger
Along with Rebecca Roanhorse, Little Badger writes great speculative fiction that integrates Native American myth and culture. Highly recommended by Kes.
You can read both of the following short stories on Darcy Little Badger's short fiction page at
http://darcielittlebadger.com/published-fiction/

"Skinwalker, Fast Talker" Coyote story in _No Shit, There I Was_ (available on Bookshare.org)
"Owl versus the Neighborhood Watch"
The latter short story is also available in _Mythic Journeys_ edited by Paula Guran (available on Bookshare.org and NLS as an audiobook)
_Mythic Journeys: Retold Myths and Legends_ anthology, ed. Paula Guran (available on NLS)
Recommended by Kes, who also mentioned the following stories:

"How to Survive an Epic Journey" - the tale of the Argonauts told by Atalanta, by Tansy Rayner Roberts
and
"A Wolf in Iceland is the Child of a Lie" - a woman meets one of Loki's children, by Sonya Taaffe
You can read this story online at
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/a-wolf-in-iceland-is-the-child-of-a-lie/

Rebecca Roanhorse
This is Kes's favorite new (to her) author: she recommends a duology:
_Trail of Lightning_ and _Storm of Locusts_, and the commercial audiobook versions are wonderful (available on NLS, and ebook versions are on Bookshare.org)
Check out her GoodReads page
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15862877.Rebecca_Roanhorse
for a list of her books, including her upcoming _Black Sun_, and a link to Levar Burton reading one of her stories.
( many, many more books mentioned below the cut )

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My notes for the Readercon trickster panel

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 17:44:23 GMT

Kes: I had made up more notes of material than I actually said during the panel, so some of this will be new.

Recommended book: _Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art_ by Lewis Hyde
Recommended story: Buffalo Girls Won't You Come Out Tonight by Ursula Le Guin - A must-read featuring a female coyote

My top 3 tricksters in speculative fiction:
1. Miles Vorkosigan in the series by Lois McMaster-Bujold, especially as Miles is disabled, but unstoppable: Miles was a real inspiration for me, be afraid, be very afraid.

2. "Repent Harlequin, Said the Tick-Tock Man" by Harlan Ellison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpzRHX78TqE f

_Rainbowz End_ by Vernor Vinge - has a hacker character whose avatar is a white rabbit, rabbits also being a traditional trickster in the southwest and Louisiana Cajun culture

Gillian Daniels, the moderator, asked panelists to name their favorite trickster, but I never met a trickster I didn't like, so I really can't just name one, so
Hermes, because he is the god of language and technology, and because he travels between
Coyote, because he can get out of or into anything, plus, as a person with prosthetic eyes, coyote and his detachable body parts has to be in my personal pantheon, especially in the story "Coyote Juggles His Eyes" (lots of versions in text and video form all over the Web)
and Loki, because he is such an instigator, full of scathing language, a shapeshifter, and possesses definitely qualifies as queer

My other favorite tricksters:
Hermes' kids and grankids: Pan, Autolykus, Odysseus, and Iambe (see below)
Puck
pooka, puca - an Irish shapeshifter often appearing as a black horse (_Tamsin_ by Peter Beagle) or a black dog (_War for the Oaks_ by Emma Bull). "Harvey" (1950), Harvey is a six foot tall invisible rabbit that accompanies Jimmy Stewart's character around.
tanuki - Japanese racoon dog, a trickster and prankster associated with kitsune, shows up in manga, often shown as a fat jolly old man with ridiculously large testicles, statues of which are set outside Japanese sake bars
Tanuki at TV Tropes
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tanuki
Tom Robbins wrote a novel, _Villa Incognito_, featuring Tanuki as its protagonist.

The Green Knight in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (proposes a "game" at Christmas, a traditional time for jokes and games, and can walk about with his head underneath his arm--again with the detachable body parts)

( Read more... )

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Re: Researching the Other notes

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 16:23:47 GMT

Not really notes from the panel but my writings on blind characters, science fiction, and the technology of prosthetic eyes.

What Good Writers Still Get Wrong About Blind People, Part 1
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/593188.html#/593188.html

Part 2
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/593549.html#/593549.html

Part 3
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/593697.html#/593697.html

A great post on writing about blind characters from the writer's perspective
Why is Oree Shoth blind?
by M. K. Jemisin
http://nkjemisin.com/2011/01/why-is-oree-shoth-blind/

My thesis: Decloaking Disability: Images of Disability and Technology in Science Fiction Media
https://cmsw.mit.edu/alicia-kestrell-verlager-images-of-disability-and-technology-in-science-fiction-media/

How Kestrell's prosthetic eyes were made, or, Kestrell and Alexx Go to the Ocularist
Part 1
https://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/287659.html

Part 2
https://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/289581.html

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Readercon notes on accessible ebooks

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 16:11:52 GMT

I'm going to write an extended post on this subject in the near future, but for now:
Check out your public library's online ebook and audiobook offerings: many of these can be easily accessed online and read with your browser.
WeightlessBooks.com
offers many ebooks by Readercon authors, in addition to magazines.

My number one recommendation for people with vision or other disabilities which interfere with reading print books is
Bookshare.org

which is a subscription ($50/year +registration fee Website for people with disabilities. It has contracts with the government and publishers, including Small Beer Press so it has everything from bestsellers to textbooks. Authors and publishers can contact them to arrange to have their books made available.
Bookshare.org also serves as an information warehouse, as it explains almost everything you want to know about accessible ebooks, such as what formats, apps, and hardware devices are available. This site is partially supported by grants from the U.S. Dept of Education, and it is the major resource used by universities and institutions, including the U.S. government, for making ebooks available. This means, if you work for a government office or you are a student or faculty of a university, they may already have an institutional membership which will cover you.

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Alexx and I will be attending the Saturday of Readercon

Tue, 30 May 2017 15:40:54 GMT

For the first time in years I feel as if I have the spoons for a day at Readercon, so Alexx and I will be there on the Satyrday of that weekend. However, since I have really missed the people as much as the panels, I'll be hanging out in the lobby, aside from a prowl through the bookroom.

See you all there!

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Weightless Books now offers Aqueduct Press ebooks

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:17:39 GMT

Weightless Books, which offers a wide variety of SFF, slipstream, spec fic, insert your favorite name for it here, just added a bunch of
Aqueduct Press titles

http://weightlessbooks.com/category/publisher/aqueduct-press/
including
Distances
by Vandana Singh
http://weightlessbooks.com/genre/fiction/distances/
of which I bought a paper copy months ago, but it was subsequently swallowed up by the Closet of Mysteries, which I expect any day to spit out something quite startling, such as a very bad-tempered Fenris (because just imagine a very large dog going eons without walkies), but just stop and mull that one over for a minute: Fenris as my guide dog!!!

And speaking of wild beasties, I also had to buy a copy of
Bewere the Night
http://weightlessbooks.com/genre/fiction/bewere-the-night/
which is an anthology of shapeshifter stories, although I bought it solely on the fact that it contains a Richard Bowes story and an Elizabeth Hand story, which is good, because they are two of my favorite authors and it's been way too long since they hadnew books out, although it seems 2012 will do something about that, but frankly, sometimes I feel as grouchy as a Fenris who has gone eons without walkies.

And I never did mention the Twilight Zone moment I had at Readercon when I tried to go to a Small Beer Press reading of Mexican fantasy writers and instead seemed to have ended up at a reading which no one else remembers and which didn't show up on the program, but involved he Elder Gods returning to Earth, except they seemed to be large sharklike beings, so it was kind of like Cthulhu meets Jaws.

Did anyone else experience the parallel universe Readercon?

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An online review of Readercon

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:13:18 GMT

http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=13893
which makes me feel like doing it all again.

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Readercon report: ebooks panel +ebooksin the Book Room!

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:51:24 GMT

Panel: Book Design and Typography in the Digital Era.
Panelists:
Neil Clarke, editor of Clarkesworld Magazine http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/
and author of the highly informative essay, "This is My Life on Ebooks" http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/clarke_07_11/
Erin Kissane http://incisive.nu/about/
author of _Elements of Content Strategy_, available in both paper and ebook formats http://www.abookapart.com/products/the-elements-of-content-strategy
David G. Shaw, Alicia "Kestrell" Verlager
Edited later: Apologies for getting a panelist name wrong, the panelist was actually Ken Liu
http://kenliu.name/
who read from an article he wrote about the transition from codex to scroll
and the blog David recommended for more on ebooks and accessible Web design was Joe Clark's blog http://www.facebook.com/l/qAQD1rd19/blog.fawny.org/."

This panel is mostly a blur in my memory, although I remember David and others recommending a number of useful resources, such as A List Apart, and the book which Erin just published. David pointed out Cory Doctorow's collaborative publishing effort in his latest collection, with footnotes mentioning the names of readers who pointed out typos and other errata. We also encouraged the audience to be active consumers and producers by making complaints to publishers when the formats they need aren't available and, on the part of writers and editors trying to be part of the decisionmaking process as to in which formats the ebook versions of their books are being issued. This isn't always easy, as often authors and editors aren't kept in the loop of these decisions. An example of this surfaced when I mentioned to Ellen Datlow that I can find ebook versions of some of her anthologies at Baen Books, and she wasn't aware that the anthologies were available through that site.
Baen Books Webscriptions-New Arrivals page (includes link to Best Horror of the Year 3)
http://www.webscription.net/c-66-new-arrivals.aspx
Ellen Datlow page
http://www.webscription.net/s-196-ellen-datlow.aspx

Also, after the panel Alexx and I went to the book room and I sought out the table for the university press which published the newest edition of Samuel R. Delany's nonfiction essay collection, _The Jewel-Hinged Jaw_, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney, and the rep was glad to find out that the publisher could donate the electronic files for books to Bookshare.org, which works with many publishers to make books, including textbooks and literary criticism, accessible to visually impaired students and readers. Small Beer Press and ChiZine Press were there selling both paper books and ebooks, as they have done for a number of years now, and there was also a magazine called Crossed Genres which offered an ebook bundle for $20, which included two novels, two anthologies, and a year's subscription to Crossed Genres http://crossedgenres.com
. The works come in a variety of DRM-free formats, and the co-publishers who were there said I could contact hem if none of those formats turned out to be accessible, and they would send HTML files.

It was a pretty awesome experience to know that I would have ebooks waiting for me whenever I wanted to read them, as opposed to having a pile of books which I would have to scan by hand (not that I didn't indulge in some paper books also, mostly because Alexx found me a book about books).

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The Shirley Jackson Awards + I get to show Neil Gaiman my Delirium eyes

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:24:08 GMT

This was the first time I was able to attend the Shirley Jackson Awards, although I've followed them closely since their inception four years ago.

2010 Shirley Jackson Awards
http://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/sja_2010_winners.php
The opening speech was given by Victor Lavalle, author of _Big Machine_, last year's SJA for best novel [available to visually impaired readers at Bookshare.org]. Lavalle (who also possesses a wonderful voice) gave an absolutely lovely speech about the development of an artist's mastery and style by telling about Victor Van Gogh's development as an artist, pointing out that an artist becomes a master when his or her voice and style are as fine as her or his technical skills, and then he read a couple of pages from Shirley Jackson's _Life Amongst the Savages_ (not sure I got the title precisely correct) in which she describes a house as if it has an emotional and psychological life of its own.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Joyce Carol Oates [lots of her books are available to visually impaired readers at Bookshare.org]

Novel: Mr. Shivers, Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit) [available to visually impaired readers on Bookshare.org)

Novella: “Mysterium Tremendum”, Laird Barron (Occultation, Night Shade) [available in DRM-free ebook formats from Baen Books http://www.webscription.net/s-173-laird-barron.aspx
which also provides free memberships to visually impaired individuals and veterans with disabilities)

“Novelette: Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains,” Neil Gaiman (Stories: All New Tales, William Morrow) [available from Bookshare.org]

Short Story: “The Things,” Peter Watts (Clarkesworld, Issue 40) [available online from Clarke's World Magazine as eithre text http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
or as an audio podcast http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio_01_10/ ]

Single Author Collection: Occultation, Laird Barron (Night Shade)

Edited Anthology: Stories: All New Tales, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (William Morrow)

I was very glad to see Laird Barron win some awards as I believe he is one of the best horror writers currently writing psychological horror, and I had an additional thrill by having the chance to show Neil Gaiman (who showed up rather unexpectedly) my prosthetic eyes based on the eyes of his Sandman character, Delirium. I asked Neil for a one-word quote to describe them, and he said, "Perfect." (Alexx and I were also amused that Neil kept referring to them as his eyes.)

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The ebook panel at Readercon

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 22:00:40 GMT

went, I think, extremely well, as all the panelists were extremely knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. I'll probably write a bit more about this panel at some later point when I have more info at hand, as opposed to being kind of burned out and waiting for Chinese food to arrive, but after the panel I went to the Book Shop, where a number of publishers were advertising that they sold ebooks, also (go Crossed Genres! go ChiZine!), and I managed to provide a university press with the info that Bookshare.org is the perfect way for university presses to distribute their books to students with disabilities.
Alexx mentioned after we had left the panel that it looked as if some people might have wanted to ask me questions: if you are someone who wanted to ask a question or know osmeone who wanted to ask a question, feel free to post here or e-mail me privately through LJ.

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My Readercon schedule

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:38:36 GMT

Here is my Readercon schedule--note that Readercon uses my mundane name. Also, there is a HTML version of the Readercon program at
http://readercon.org/docs/RC22schedule.htm

1. Saturday July 16
11:00 AM F Book Design and Typography in the Digital Era. Neil Clarke, Erin Kissane, Eric Schaller, David G. Shaw (leader), Alicia Verlager.
Design and typography can heighten the experience of reading a written work; in the case of poetry, typesetting can be crucial to comprehension and interpretation. E-readers can change font sizes with the press of a button, making books far more accessible to people who have visual limitations or just their own ideas about how a book should look. What happens when these worthy goals are at odds? Will the future bring us more flexible book design, much as website design with CSS has become more flexible as browser customization becomes more common? Or will we see the book equivalent of Flash websites where the designer's vision is strictly enforced?

2. Sunday July 17
12:00 PM F A Fate Worse than Death: Narrative Treatment of Permanent Physical Harm.
John Crowley, Glenn Grant, Mary Robinette Kowal, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Alicia Verlager (leader). Cinderella's sisters cut off parts of their feet. Rapunzel's prince loses his eyes to a thorn bush. But in present-day fantasy, it seems less shocking to kill a character than to significantly and permanently damage their physical form; witness the thousands of deaths in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series that don't get nearly as much airtime as one character losing a hand. What changed--for storytellers, and for audiences? How does this fit in with our culture's mainstream acceptance of violence alongside an obsession with youth and physical perfection? As medical advances help people survive and thrive after drastic injuries, will there be more stories that explore these topics?

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Can anyone put me in contact with the author N. K. Jemisin?

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:45:07 GMT

Dear fandom,

I've been trying to find a way to contact the author N. K. Jemisin but the Word Press interface keeps giving me error messages when I try to post to her blog. Best way to contact me is through my livejournal account kestrell at livejournal dot com. Thank you fandom.

Edited mere moments later: Mission accomplished--thank you to the incredibly efficient avatar of fandom, you know who you are.

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Readercon report

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:01:45 GMT

Before I say anything else I have to mention: Trader Joe's dark chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds.
( continued below cut )

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What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People, Part 3

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:31:23 GMT

Some forms of fiction seem particularly prone to inscribing meaning upon the physical body;
( continued below cut )

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What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People, Part 2

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:25:11 GMT

As in the case of the myth of the blind storyteller, many of the blind characters I will be discussing explore the connection between blindness and knowledge, so the question of how the cognitive processes of blind people differs from that of people with normal vision seems like a good place to begin the discussion of specific works in speculative fiction.

In "None So Blind" by Joe Haldman, which won the Locus and Hugo awards for best short story in 1995, the narrator begins with the question, why aren't there more blind geniuses? The story proposes that, as blind people do not use their visual cortex, their brains have untapped resources which could be used for more intellectual processes. This idea is ascribed to the protagonist, a socially-awkward geek who falls in love with a blind woman. After he becomes a brain surgeon, and without informing her of the true purpose of the surgery, the geek uses his blind girlfriend as a test subject in order to partition off the visual cortex from the rest of the brain so that the visual corrtex can then be used to increase the blind person's intelligence. When the surgery is successful, the protagonist fulfills his original purpose of having this surgery performed upon himself so that he can increase his own intelligence. The story ends with one of the blind woman's former teachers bemoaning the fact that this surgery has become the norm, and that people are now divided into two groups, the rich and powerful blind class and the poor but sighted unmodded folks.

While some of us might indeed welcome a future in which clueless sighted people are compelled to serve their more intelligent blind overlords, the sad truth is, the human brain does not work this way.
( continued below cut )

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What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People, Part 1 of 3

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:21:51 GMT

by Kestrell Alicia Verlager
Talk/discussion delivered at Readercon on July 09, 2010

To begin with, I wanted to mention how I came to propose this discussion. I graduated from MIT's Comparative Media Studies master's program a number of years ago, and my thesis was _Decloaking Disability: Images of Disability and Technology in Science Fiction Media.
http://www.blindbookworm.org/decloakingdisabilitycomplete.rtf .

One of the reasons I love speculative fiction in general and science fiction specifically is it's many characters with non-normative bodies and modes of perception. However, when it comes to fictional blind characters, I often find myself shaking my head and wishing I could talk to writers about what they have gotten wrong in regard to the experience of being a real blind person. So, when I received an invitation to submit ideas for Readercon programming, I thought, Here is the perfect audience! And the Readercon programming committee was kind enough to encourage me.

Because my goal is to discuss specific representations of blindness and blind people, I am going to use concrete examples from specific works. I don't wish for this to be interpreted as personal attacks upon the writers who wrote these works; I specifically mention in the title of this talk that these are all goodwriters, really, the best writers. The problem, I believe, is that there is so much mythologizing and misinformation about blindness and blind people that it is difficult for even the best authors to always distinguish fact from fiction, reality from stereotype.

My hope in presenting this talk is to supply some ideas and questions which people can employ in order to be more critical as writers, readers, and reviewers, for--I'm going to use a quote here from Samuel Delany's introduction to _Uranian Worlds_:--
"If we want to change the way we read, we have to change the way we write."

In considering representations of blind people in narrative, one becomes aware of how deeply woven together story and blindness are as represented by the mythic figure of the blind storyteller. Borges, Carolan, Milton, Homer--their blindness seems not merely a matter of biographical detail but something of more significance. My use of the word "significance" is intentional, for I wil repeatedly be returning to the question of what blindness signifies or means within the context of the stories I will be discussing.
( continued below cut )

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Off to Readercon +free ebook of The Painted Darkness

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:44:52 GMT

I'll be leaving for Readercon this afternoon, and for once I am very much looking forward to the enthusiastic air conditioning of the Burlington Marriot. I'll probably be offline until Sunday, as I can rarely manage to configure my laptop to make use of the free Wi-Fi in hotels and I'm too cheap to pay for it.

For horror fans, Cemetery Dance is offering a free ebook of Brian James Freeman's _The Painted Darkness_, which CD will be publishing in hardcover in the autumn. The ebook also includes a bunch of extras, and there is also the option to listen to the book in streaming audio. Check it out at
http://www.downloadthedarkness.com/

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My Readercon schedule

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:07:51 GMT

Kes: For those who don't know my mundane name, I'm listed as A. Verlager.
Friday

3:00 PM
Rhode Island
What Good Writers Get Wrong about Blind People
Verlager

5:00 PM
Maine/Connecticut
Axes of Identity in Speculative Fiction
Hairston, Janssen, Jemisin, Singh, Verlager

Saturday

1:00 PM
Salon F
The Meat & the Motion: The Body & Physicality in Spec Fic
Andreadis, Bear (L), Charlton, Menon, Verlager

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Excitement

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:30:55 GMT

I just learned that my proposal for a Readercon presentation titled "Ask a Blind Person: What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People" was approved, hurray! This is the part where I start begging my friends and vague acquaintances to show up for my presentation so I won't be talking to an empty room, and yes, I would too notice!

Also, it is beginning to seem like I may actually really be getting a new right eyeball--I go to my ocularist on Monday, and I have already told LJ user alexx_kay that he is to take pictures of everything, including my ocularist's head exploding when I explain that I haven't changed my mind about wanting the mismatched Delirium eyes.

And I'm also looking forward to Monday because my sweetie will be back after five days at GDC. Of course, it will be a rainy Monday, and Alexx has never been very good at rainy Mondays--he has a rainy Monday face which is very close to his curmudgeon face, but a little lower on the adorable expressions spectrum. Oh well, a sleep-depped zombie sweetie is better than an on-the-other-side-of-the-country sweetie and I'll still be the only one with the detachable body parts.

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10 reasons Why I think Walter de la Mare would make a great ReaderCon Memorial GOH

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:04:09 GMT

Note that this petition is posted to DreamWidth and cross-posted to LiveJournal.

This was my favorite ReaderCon ever, as you cam read more about in my ReaderCon report
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/517755.html .
One of the highlights was finding a stack of out-of-print Walter de la Mare story collections at the table of Bill Keaveny, proprietor of VanishingBooks.com. He and I had so much fun talking about why we were de la Mare fans that I found myself asking, "Hey, wouldn't it be great to have Walter de la Mare as a ReaderCon Memorial GOH?" to which Bill (and later Liz Hand) agreed.

So this is my official petition to propose Walter de la Mare as a Memorial GOH for a future ReaderCon.

Walter de la Mare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_de_la_Mare
[Kes: I note that the Wikipedia bibliography of DLM's works is incomplete, refer to the external links I include at the end of this list for more complete bibliographies and databases.]
( quotes from writers and critics, links to stories, more below cut )

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