The Sweet Sentimental Music of Eireann

h/t Nancy Kress

The Shipwrecks of Time

The damage of the loss is less than feared.  About 7 kilowords have walked with Jesus, and some of that required a bit of noodling to pin down dates and things.  The noodles will need re-researching, a bothersome necessity when setting a story in the past.  Wonderfully, there is a site where I can find temperatures for Milwaukee for any of the years involved, release dates of movies, dates when certain songs were popular, and so on.  The years 1965-67 were pivot years.  Freeways were not everywhere; channels still signed off late at night.  Camp was camp.  Meatless Fridays went away, and altars were reversed.  Cities burned in the summers, and the US sent combat troops to stiffen the ARVN.  The Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother took their vows on the Feast of St. Clare in the same month that the new passenger railroad station opened.  The Milwaukee Youth Council began picketing the Eagles Club and the next year led marches across the bridge in support of open housing.  The Klan set off two bombs and the following summer, in 1967, Milwaukee exploded. 

It makes for a perfect cover.

In the Lion's Mouth

A review in the San Diego Union-Tribune, second item:

#8220;"In the Lion’s Mouth”
Michael Flynn
Tor; 304 pages, $25.99

Michael Flynn continues his space opera series around the adventures of Donovan buigh — no typo; these characters often speak Gaelactic — and his former employers, the Confederation of Central Worlds. His daughter, the master harper Mearana, had hoped to reconcile him with her mother, a Hound of the League, one Bridget ban, but Donovan’s gone missing … kidnapped by Ravn Olafdsdottr, who shows up at Clanthompson Hall to tell the story of her interactions with Donovan.

Continuing the rich, cheery, grim density of the two previous novels in the series, “The January Dancer” and “Up Jim River,” Flynn shuttles us from Bridget ban’s estate to the ship where Donovan, in all his many personae, is captive, to conferences between operatives of the Confederation and the United League of the Periphery, to odd planets where some differences are … worked out. In engagingly violent ways. Flynn plays joyfully with more than one language, but even in straight English: “One no more despises an enemy than the knife despises the whetstone.” (I found that net searches for some of the Gaelic terms helped me appreciate more of the humor here and in the first two books).

There’s spying and thieving and politicking, both clean and not-so, and rifts in the bureaucracies that think they run this part of the Spiral Arm … and, as we are reminded often enough, it’s a big Spiral Arm. Certainly big enough for this lovely series, and, by the way, the ending does seem to leave room for a sequel, now that Donovan has more or less reintegrated all the characters who live in his head.

Jim Hopper, of Normal Heights, sometimes has trouble
enough with the single character in his head.

"Rich, cheery, grim density."   "Engagingly violent."  Interesting comments.  Not many books display cheering grimness or engaging violence.  And he hasn't laid eyes on ON THE RAZOR'S EDGE yet. 

Elmira, 1895

In modest recompense for losing a month's work, I have learned that my short story, "Elmira 1895," has been accepted by ANALOG.

   He came with the night mail on the West Shore Line at just that moment when the world teetered between one day and the next.  Midnight is a magic time, the single instant when there is no present; only a receding past and an unrealized future.  He stood alone on the platform with his greatcoat and valise and watched the red lanterns of the caboose vanish into the night. 

Mega-bummer.

Having discovered two copies of the novel-in-progress resident on the Machine, I deleted one and emptied the trash.  It turned out I misread the date, and I now have a copy of the file as of Jan 10; nearly a month's work down the memory hole.  There's supposed to be a resident back up somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.  That will teach me to do such things at 11PM

The hard back-up from the auxiliary drive is the aforesaid Jan 10 copy; so it could have been worse: 4000 words instead of 48,000.  It's supposed to back up automatically, but sometimes I forget to unlock the drive.  Okay, a lot of time I forget to unlock the drive. 

Perhaps rewriting from scratch will work out for the best; but I hate the idea of replicating all the en passant research on 1960s Milwaukee.  I had renamed a character, and altered the chapter structure, brought the narrative up through Feb 1967.  Read through on-line copies of the Milwaukee Journal to get the skinny on various background events.  Found specifics on the various chansons de geste, including document numbers and repostitories.  Ach, du lieber Zeit! 

Yes, I know.  I should have been more Christ-like.  Jesus saves. 

Now This is Funny

h/t Jerry Pournelle

Interview with a Flynn

Michael Ventrella has posted an interview with yr. obt. svt.

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Today I am pleased to be interviewing Hugo-nominated author Michael Flynn. Mike and I met at the Greater Lehigh Valley Writer’s Group and have run across each other at Philcon and other conventions before, but we’ve never really had a conversation together, so this should resolve that.

Mike, what was your first big break into the business?

MICHAEL FLYNN: I entered a contest by Charlie Ryan, who was editor at the old Galileo magazine. It was for never-before published writers. So I wrote a story “Slan Libh,” about a fellow who has invented a time machine and decides to use it to feed his ancestors during the Irish Potato Famine.  continued here