cathshaffer

Here’s one of my pet peeves. This survey was linked from BoingBoing with the explanation that cilantro-haters have a genetic mutation that causes them to perceive the taste differently. The linked article claims, without a reference, that there is a study in identical twins showing that cilantro-hate is genetic. But the study being reported proved no such thing. It only showed that preference for or against cilantro varied by culture, which is no surprise as cilantro is an herb that has been used heavily in some cultural cuisines and not in others.

The study authors called cilantro “the most polarizing” food. I disagree that it’s polarizing. Actually, I think online cilantro-haters are a bunch of whiny assholes. Lots of people have foods they hate, and they can and do hate them passionately. Some people can’t bear the taste of onion. Some people hate the flavor of all vegetables. Some people hate coffee. Etc. Etc.

People who hate cilantro, however, are the only group that seems to think it is somehow special.

Now, it is remotely possible that there’s some chemical in cilantro that can be perceived by some people and not others, but I doubt it’s the case. People who hate cilantro say it tastes like soap or dirt, and I agree. Cilantro does taste like soap – enchantingly delicious soap. There’s is also an earthy, “dirty” taste to it. I like that, as well.

Nothing in the strength of people’s dislike for cilantro, or in the nature of their descriptions, suggests this is any different from not liking onions or garlic or coffee. Different strokes for different folks.

When we are babies, we come programmed for one basic taste: mother’s milk. As our parents introduce new foods to us, we mostly don’t like them at first. Check out a baby trying a new food for the first time. It invariably comes right back out with a highly amusing “ick” face. (Yes, I know that some babies like trying new foods.) Over time, as we’re exposed to foods again and again, the taste is gradually less off-putting until our brains finally figure out it is food and has nutrition in it. Then it crosses over from being something yucky to something delicious.

A lot of people don’t understand the process of developing a taste for a new food, and think if they hate it the first time they try it, they will always hate it. It’s just not true. This is why it’s best not to push vegetables onto little kids. It truly will make them gag and throw up if they go from zero to broccoli in one meal. But if they see it, see their parents eating it, and try it a time or two or fifteen, their brain will eventually stop objecting to the flavor.

I think most of this cilantro hate is just unfamiliarity. I can’t comment on the twin study, but I will note that separating identical twins in adoption went out of style in the 1950′s, so it’s unlikely that the twins in the study grew up in different homes, unless they are about 70. Twins probably tend to share preferences about cilantro, because, duh, same house same family.

None of this is to say that cilantro-haters, or haters of any other particular food, need to get over it. Far from it. We all have a right to our preferences. I don’t like capers! I never understood why those icky little sour things so frequently show up to spoil a perfectly nice sauce or whatever.

I just think people need to get over thinking they’re special if they don’t like cilantro. In fact, since cilantro comes from cuisines of Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, and is gaining popularity rapidly in the U.S., the exceedingly vocal resistance to it strikes me as a little bit racist.

Originally published at So Shiny. You can comment here or there.

davidlevine

This will be a brief post because the wifi keeps going up and down (annoyingly, when it's down there's still signal but no data, so our phones insist on trying to use it instead of the 3G).

Out of yogurt at the apartment, we set out in search of breakfast. But though this is a pretty good neighborhood for restaurants, it's more of a bar-and-club sort of a place than a breakfast place, and most of those we found were just bars that had baked goods and coffee in the morning. We settled for a croissant and coffee, but I think the lack of a proper breakfast put me out of sorts for the rest of the day.

Today is our last day in Europe, at least for this trip. We spent the day preparing for the trip home, mostly, sorting through papers and packing and going to Kaufhaus Galerie to buy another bag (yes, we did buy a lot of souvenirs). Kate also browsed in bookstores and bought a scarf and a few other things. I wrote and mailed a few last postcards, but mostly just lazed around the apartment in a traveled-too-much stupor.

Had currywurst (Curry 61 at Alexanderplatz was better) and doner kebab for first and second lunch. FYI, "kebab" means meat grilled over or near flame, "shish" means skewer, and "doner" means rotating, so when we Americans call skewers "kabobs" we've got it all wrong.

Today is our 21st wedding anniversary. I got Kate a tin of mints with a VW Beetle and the words "Er lauft und lauft und lauft..." (referencing an old VW ad we'd seen at the Glass Factory, it means "it runs and runs and runs...") and a kid's book about a sheep, both of which I'd spotted in one of the shops in the Hackesche Hofe. She got me a bar of chocolate with walnuts and marzipan.

We had an early dinner at a Japanese noodle place nearby, called Makoto. The Japanese staff speaking a mix of German and Japanese made my head 'splode and Japanese phrases lying dormant in my head since 2007 come spilling out. "Eigo-de daijobu desu ka?" I said, and "toide-wa doku desu ka?" I had a Ramune, the lemon drink with the glass marble closure. Our ramen soup was really exceptionally good, and I don't think I'm just saying that because this is the first time I've had Japanese food in a month. After that we wandered through the neighborhood for a bit. I could come back to Venice, Vienna, or Prague but I think I've "done" Berlin. It's got a lot of keen stuff, but it's just very hard to navigate and there's a certain negative vibe -- might be leftover Nazi and Communist engrams or something.

Cab tomorrow at 4:30 AM for a long, long travel day. And then home!

shadowhelm

• Thu, 12:19: My tweets http://t.co/YRERqtVb
• Fri, 01:55: The Sky Warrior Books Daily is out! http://t.co/nhAHx9w6 ▸ Top stories today via @lachesispub @bookwormnews @eileen_shepherd @chickensoncam

jamietr

Just a reminder to any science fiction and fantasy fans in the metro-DC area that there will be a mass booksigning at the Hyatt in Crystal City today at 5:30pm. Among those signing books:

• Adam-Troy Castro
• Myke Cole
• Gardner Dozois
• Scott Edelman
• Nancy Fulda
• Joe Haldeman
• James Patrick Kelly
• John Kessel
• Alethea Kontis
• Mary Robinette Kowal
• Jack McDevitt
• James Morrow
• Geoff Ryman
• John Scalzi
• Stanley Schmidt
• Lawrence Schoen
• Bud Sparhawk
• Rachel Swirsky
• Connie Willis

and many, many others. The signing is free and open to the public, and books will be available for purchase during the signing. So if you are in the area and are a fan of SF/F, this is a great opportunity to meet up with some of your favorite writers.

tobiasbuckell

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/_K3HNBpVjGA/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/?p=7000

I keep mentioning that I came to realize while I wrote my latest book, Arctic Rising, that the US Military was one of the largest investors in green technology. Why? They anticipate that having more control over your own ability to *move* gives you an upper hand in war. By helping green tech along to the point where it can become cheaper (and in some cases it already is in certain military applications) they’ve been the leading edge (let us not forget the military’s role in giving us the internet via DARPA).

However, even the military has now fallen into the middle of the culture wars, as conservatives ban it from using/helping develop alternative fuels:

On Monday, the U.S. Navy will officially announce the ships for its demonstration of the “Great Green Fleet” — an entire aircraft carrier strike group powered by biofuels and other eco-friendly energy sources. If a powerful congressional panel has its way, it could be the last time the Navy ever uses biofuels to run its ships and jets.

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying an alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel.”

Imagine that phrase wrapped around any other technology:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced weaponry that costs more than “traditional weaponry.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced armor that costs more than “traditional armor.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced fighter planes that cost more than “traditional planes.”

It’s a fairly stunning move.

Mabus and his allies countered that the Republicans were taking an overly-simplistic view of things. Of course relatively small batches of a new fuel are going to be expensive — just like the original, 5GB iPod cost $400 and held fewer songs than today’s $129 model, which holds 8 GB. That’s the nature of research and development. With development time and big enough purchases, the costs of biofuels will come down, they argued; already, the price has dropped in half since 2009.

“It’s a false choice to say that we should concentrate on more ships versus a different kind of fuel. If we don’t get a different kind of fuel, if we don’t have a secure domestic supply of energy at an affordable price… the ships and the planes may not be able to be used because we can’t get the fuel,” Mabus told the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Power in March.

What’s more, Mabus added, there’s a value in a more stable, domestic supply of fuel; every time the price of oil goes up by a dollar per barrel, it costs the Navy $31 million. “We simply buy too much fossil fuels from places that are either actually or potentially volatile, from places that may or may not have our best interests at heart,” he said. “We would never let these places build our ships, our aircraft, our ground vehicles, but we do give them a say on whether those ships steam, aircraft fly, or ground vehicles operate because we buy so much energy from them.”

A fairly stunning step backwards, as the US military was one of the few places really helping the US keep up on the advances needed in alternative fuels.

genreville

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=1916

lwe

• Thu, 12:37: Got three pages of The Sorcerer's Widow written last night. Better than nothing.
• Fri, 01:24: Got interviewed tonight. In theory, it'll eventually wind up on the SFWA podcast page and on WBAI in New York.

scalzifeed

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/18/mass-author-signing-including-me-at-hyatt-regency-crystal-city-530-to-730-today/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18618

If you’re in the DC area today, and you love science fiction and fantasy, you have a fantastic opportunity: Dozens of science fiction and fantasy authors are signing their works today at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, from 5:30 to 7:30, in the hotel’s Independence Center. Writers signing books include this year’s newly-minted Grandmaster Connie Willis, Joe Haldeman, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jo Walton, Myke Cole, James Patrick Kelly, Rachel Swirsky, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Jack McDevitt, Diana Peterfreund, Geneveive Valentine, and many others, including yours truly. Need books? We’re selling them here. You have no reason not to come. At all!

See you there.

scalzifeed

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/18/the-big-idea-michelle-sagara/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18615

This Big Idea post made me tear up a little. It’s partly because I’m a parent. But it’s mostly because of how Michelle Sagara explains how the understanding and kindness of the very young informed her new book Silence.

MICHELLE SAGARA:

This book is about its dedication:

This is for the girls:

Callie
Katie
Caroline
Molly
Alexandra
Rada

With thanks, with gratitude, although admittedly they might not understand why.

I am, as I often do, getting ahead of myself.

When I set out to write my first YA novel, I wrote it on spec. This came about because my Luna editor asked if I happened to have a finished YA novel just lying around (this is almost an exact quote). As I had two books due that calendar year, I emphatically did not have any finished novels, mostly finished novels, or even partially finished novels on my figurative desk.

But I had an idea for one that I’d been mulling over for some time. It was even a contemporary, which meant I had some hope of writing a novel that was short (for me). I’ve always been drawn to stories about grief, loss, and the ways in which people deal with both. I wanted to write a ghost story, from the point of view of a young woman who had just lost the first love of her life.

So I sat down to write Silence. I had some idea of who the protagonist was, but I often discover nuances of character while writing. The prologue and the first chapter were exactly what I envisioned. The second chapter started in the same smooth vein.

And then chapter two took an abrupt detour, veering in a direction that I hadn’t planned. I wrote:

At 8:10, at precisely 8:10, the doorbell rang.

“That’ll be Michael,” her mother said.

You could set clocks by Michael. In the Hall household, they did; if Michael rang the doorbell and the clock didn’t say 8:10, someone changed it quickly, and only partly because Michael always looked at clocks, and began his quiet fidget if they didn’t show the time he expected them to show.

Books have tone. They have voice. And I realized, as I paused at the end of that last paragraph, that I was about to veer wildly off-tone if I continued; that my careful, little paranormal would have an entirely different feel.

But I also suddenly understood where this new book was going. I understood, at that moment, who Emma was, and what had kept her moving during the almost crippling months of grief.

I knew that if I wrote this unexpected book, I was no longer writing a book that would be guaranteed to speak to the market – if any book can be said to do that with certainty – but I wanted to write this book. Because I could see the dedication, from that point on.

Let me explain why. I’ve had some experience with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) as a parent. I’ve experienced the difficulties school can cause – even an incredibly supportive school, which we were lucky to have. I witnessed firsthand my oldest son’s inability to parse social cues, and to miss simple things like people saying “hi!” with enthusiasm – an enthusiasm that waned when he all but ignored them. He didn’t hear; they didn’t know he couldn’t.

We are terrified, as parents, for our children; we are terrified that they won’t fit in, they won’t find friends, they’ll be made fun of, they’ll be isolated. Because my oldest son was diagnosed ASD (Aspergers at the time) I was prepared for this, but not less terrified, and it broke my heart to know that my son was terribly lonely when I could see the children in his class trying very hard to make connections with him. If I was present, I could point them out – but I wasn’t going to be present for most of his school day.

He struggled through two years of kindergarten with some limited success, and then came the full day of grade one. And in grade one, he met the girls. Yes, those girls – the ones to whom the book is dedicated. The teacher treated my son as if his behaviour was normal for my son, and at six, children’s ideas of normative behaviour are very flexible. The girls took their cues from his teacher that year, and perhaps with a different teacher they would have picked up different cues. I don’t know.

What I do know is this: My son hated the noise of the stairwell and his class was on the third floor, so he was required to use the stairs. He almost always entered dead last, when the stairwell would be mostly empty. On this day, (half-way through the year) he was trudging up the stairs, and the stair monitor, a woman of middling years, shouted at him.

He failed to hear her, so she marched up the stairs and shouted in his ear. And he still failed to hear her; he pretty much tuned out all the noise until he left the stairwell. I started to approach the stair monitor to tell her as much, and stopped as a young girl with platinum blond hair caught her by the elbow.

“He can’t hear you, you know,” she told the woman. “He’s daydreaming. He always daydreams when he walks up the stairs.”

She was six years old. She was six years old and entirely fearless when it came to correcting a much older and much larger authority figure. And she had done so without prompting from anyone. My son, of course, didn’t even notice. But I did.

She was part of a group of friends, and they kept an eye out for my son. They also came to his birthday parties from grade one through grade six, although by that time three of them were no longer in the same school.

When my son was in grade three, we took karate together. Karate made us late, and one night there was a school open house, so we went directly from the dojo, in our gis, to the school. We entered his classroom and found two girls there, and my son approached one of them – in his karate outfit – and started to talk.

The other girl said, with a sneer, “As if we care about your stupid karate.” This is the type of reaction I feared, as a parent, especially given that ASD children can go on for an hour about any topic that engages their interest.

But the first girl turned to her friend and said, “Well, I do care.” And proceeded to talk with my son about his karate progress. She was, of course, one of the six.

Did they spend their whole days doing nothing but babysitting my son? No, of course not. They spent most of their time socializing with each other. But they continued to keep an eye out in all the little ways that made my son’s life easier. I’m not even certain, these many years later, that they would remember the incidents that I remember so clearly and so gratefully.

Michael appeared at Emma’s door at exactly 8:10 in the morning.

And I thought: Why not these girls? Books are written about shy outsiders or social outcasts all the time; books are written about mean girls just as frequently, and often books are a combination of these two extremes. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But why not these girls? Girls who were best friends and who supported each other (often by phone even in the early years) and who, while having lives entirely of their own also had the compassion to keep an eye on an awkward ASD child? It’s a paranormal, it’s contemporary, but why can’t the story be about girls like these?

Silence is that book.

—-

Silence: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt (pdf link). Visit the author’s blog. Follow her on Twitter.

scalzifeed

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/18/because-it-is-about-to-be-forwarded-to-me-a-million-times/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18613

Yes, I’ve seen this. And while my own position isn’t as extreme, I certainly sympathize.

From xkcd, of course.

For those who need it or haven’t seen it, my own position on Klout.

vylar_kaftan

Originally published at Vylar Kaftan. You can comment here or there.

Hey folks! If you’re reading this, I could use a hand. I need to know something for a story.

If you read the following lyrics, which ones do you immediately know the tune for, without thinking about it?

1) I went to California with a washpan on my knee…
2) Yippie-ki-yi yippie-yippie yay, yippie yay!
3) Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?

Let me know which ones in comments. It’s okay if you know them all, or none of them. I need to know how recognizable these lyrics are. Thanks!

cathshaffer

I grew up before the internet. I know, it existed. But it wasn’t a reality for me or most other people. We also had no cell phones, which resulted in a pretty much perpetual farce of missed connections and misunderstandings that we mostly don’t worry about anymore. It was a different time.

One thing we used to do a lot of, back in the 80′s, was writing in regular paper journals. Not blogs. Just paper. Private, handwritten journals are great for all of the things that blogs are not great at. You can write about your actual problems, you can keep your to-do lists, you can dabble in poetry, you can doodle. There are many things worth writing about that could not and should not be shared on the internet. I also find that writing by hand feels like a different activity, and activates a different part of my writing brain.

Lately, I’ve been keeping two journals. In one, at the end of the day, I write down what I’ve done. I started doing this because I was having a lot of days that seemed to get sucked into a vortex, and I would wonder where the time went and feel bad that I had not gotten more done. So now, when I get things done, I celebrate by noting it in my journal. If I cleaned the bathroom, I take credit for it. If I scoop the litterboxes, score! It just makes me feel better. I also try to note something about the day, particularly positive things. It’s just nice. I also write down all of those really cool story ideas that come to me when Writer Brain gets stuck on the novel and doesn’t want to do it anymore. Putting them some place I can find them again is a good compromise with the Writer Brain. I don’t journal in it every single day. I seem to go in spates.

My other journal is a moleskine where I keep writing related notes and doodles. Since reading Steal Like an Artist, I’ve been stealing a little something every day. Every day has something I can save and use later. One day, I wrote out the lyrics to a pop song. Another day, I copied out a descriptive scene from a book I was reading that worked well for me, and wrote some notes on why I liked it. Yet another day, I took plot notes from a book I was reading that I thought I could adapt for a different project, later. I expect I will also find opportunities to steal from life. People-watching at a cafe could give me some good character sketches (particularly in Ann Arbor!). I sometimes overhear conversations that are funny or suprising. Memories, too, can be “stolen” for use in stories. In short, there’s really no excuse not to engage in some kind of creative larceny each and every day in order to build up a dragon’s hoard of material for possible later use.

At the top of each page, I write in large capital letters what it is I’m stealing. DESCRIPTION. CHARACTER. FIGHT SCENE. And so forth. That will help me find my stolen treasure later when I might need it. Obviously, I don’t intend to copy the stolen property directly. But it’s very helpful to have something similar to look at when you’re writing a challenging bit of story. If I can flip through my notebook and review a couple of fight scenes, I can use them to decide how to block out my own fight scene, and remember what works for me and what doesn’t.

I think a lot of writers do this consciously or unconsciously with their memory. My memory doesn’t work that way. I’ve never known if it’s a bug or a feature, but when I read a book or watch a movie, the details go away as soon as it’s over. Very often, upon rewatch, I can’t remember how the story ends. On the one hand, it lets me enjoy my favorites over and over again. On the other hand, I am at a handicap compared to other writers who have easily memorized the stories, scenes, and much of the dialogue from their favorite stuff, and when they write a fight scene, they can easily call up examples. I can’t do it. Instead, most of what I write is reinventing the wheel. No wonder I’m so slow.

This notebook feels like something I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I only wish I’d thought of it sooner.

Considering the fact that I ALSO blog, AND keep a record of all of my food and exercise in my cell phone, my life is extremely well documented. Future Historians, you’re welcome!

Originally published at So Shiny. You can comment here or there.

jongibbs

Here’s my selection of interesting (and sometimes amusing) posts about writing from the last week:

Description:It's more than a visual (Kathryn Craft)

What the heck are queries good for, anyway? (Juliette Wade)

Shutting Down, In a Good Way (Cassie Alexander)

The “Brutal” 2000-Word Day (Kristine Kathryn Rusch)

Editing Clauses in Publishing Contracts (Victoria Strauss)

Expressing Thought-Reactions in Fiction (Jodie Renner)

Virtual Safeguards (Lynn Viehl)

7 Bad Habits of Successful Authors (Rachelle Gardner)

Revise/Resubmit Requests (Jane Lebak)

The Esspresso Book Machine [Not a blog post, but an interesting glimpse of the future]
by way of Bart Palamaro

Amazon's knock-off problem (Stephen Gandel)
by way of Gary Frank 

If you have a particular favorite among these, please let the author know (and me too, if you have time).  Also, if you've a link to a great post that isn't here, feel free to share.

If you found these useful, you may also like my personal selection of the most interesting blog posts from 2011, and last week’s list.

stephanieburgis

...I just planned to do it all: work the day job during the day, write my fiction at lunchtime, and write my PhD thesis at night. I could finish the thesis within a year, and have that PhD diploma to make me officially a success. Easy-peasy!

Well. Guess how long that plan worked out?

I think it was on the second night of my new schedule that I started crying helplessly when I sat down at my computer, completely overwhelmed. That was when I realized that I’d made a fatal error...

jamietr

A short, but very fun evening tonight at the Nebula Weekend 2012. I took the afternoon off work, got myself cleaned up and then headed over to the Nebula Awards hotel, the Hyatt in Crystal City, a short walk from my office, which was particularly convenient. I found my way down to registration and immediately ran into Alethea Kontis and Nancy Fulda,  talking with Lawrence Schoen and Tom Doyle. We chatted for a few minutes and while we chatted, Joe and Gay Haldeman walked up to say hello to the group. I immediately stood and offered my seat to Gay but they were moving on and she insisted I sit backdown. Despite my best efforts, I am still a big fanboy at heart.

Registration opened and I got to chat with the volunteers at the registration desk, including Bill Lawhorn and Steven Silver. Steven kindly pointed out that I’d forgotten to order Kelly’s meal for the banquet, but equally kindly corrected my oversight.

I chatted for a while with Nancy Fulda, who had huffed her way over to the event from Germany. We then found a quiet spot in the bar so that I could interview her for SF Signal. I was a little nervous because I haven’t done too many interviews and because this was the first one I was recording (using the voice recorder on my iPhone), but it all worked out well. Nancy answered my halting questions like a pro and I’m not just saying that–you’ll get to see for yourself when the interview is posted.

Later, I found my way up to the hospitality suite on the 18th floor, and was amused to discover I could see my office building from there. “Which one is it?” someone asked.

( Read the rest of this entry » )Comments: (Add a comment)

mizkit

One of my favorite authors, Ann (AC) Crispin, has announced she’s been fighting cancer. The chemo appears to be working, which is fantastic, but the chemo has been going on for months already and is expected to continue through the summer. This means her Starbridge book sales are basically her only income this year.

I’ve mentioned STARBRIDGE before on this blog. I vividly remember reading the first book, mostly because I’d seen it several times in the bookstore and never bought it, because I didn’t like the cover very much (it was a Boris Vallejo, so it’s probably some kind of sin for me to say I didn’t like it, but meh, never really got behind the Vallejo work). Anyway, but Dad checked it out from the library for me and since I now *had* it, of course I read it.

And I loved it. I adored it. It’s about a young woman who is part of humanity’s first contact with new alien species, and who eventually helps to establish the Starbridge Academy, where young people of all species can go to school and learn to work together and be ambassadors to new cultures and worlds. For a 15 year old SF/F reader it was complete wish fulfillment stuff. I *loved* it. Love love love love loved it.

I don’t remember if other books were out by then or if they came out and I snatched them up with gleeful abandon every time they did, but she wrote more and more books in the series, all with collaborators. I liked them all. I loved some of them, loved them as much as the original StarBridge novel: most particularly SILENT DANCES and SILENT SONGS, with Kathleen O’Malley. The SILENT Starbridge books are about a deaf Native American girl whose ambassadorship is to a world where the natives are avians, and honestly, those two books are on my Desert Island list.

I already had great plans to be a writer by that age, of course, and I sent Ann a letter asking for advice. She wrote back a 4 page yellow pad letter with red pen and big fat loopy handwriting, full of stories and enthusiasm and advice and encouragement. I’ve still got it somewhere, but even if I didn’t I would never, ever forget that she took the time to do that for a teenage kid. Fifteen or seventeen years or so later I had URBAN SHAMAN published, and although I knew there was no chance at all she would remember having written to me way back when, I sent her a copy, and a letter explaining how she’d been so kind and generous to me so many years earlier, and thanking her for it all.

The incredibly bizarre and wonderful thing is that we’ve been in communication on and off ever since. Last year, when she announced that the Starbridge books were going to be e-released, I warned her that if they did well enough I was going to pitch a Starbridge idea to her myself, which prospect she met with enthusiasm (she also mentioned there was a third SILENT book planned, and wisted a moment over some of the unexplored potential of the Starbridge universe, so I don’t think she was *just* being polite :)).

So on a completely selfish note, of course, I’d like the books to do well enough to justify getting to write one with her someday, but on a much more important note, Ann is a terrific woman, a wonderful writer, and this is basically the best possible time for you to buy the books. The first 5 have been released and Ann is working on the last two between her chemo and PT and everything, so…yeah.

*goes to buy some books*

(x-posted from the essential kit)