Comments | robinmckinley: Gingerbread etc

robinmckinley

Gingerbread etc

Dec 29, 2007 01:17

I have Peter’s head cold. I feel like boiled death: grey and mushy. Unnnnngh. I’ve known for about twenty four hours that it was coming but I was managing to ignore it, through a powerful combination of self-delusion and headmistressyness (‘McKinley! Pull yourself together and do something!’*). This afternoon it knocked me down and sat on my chest ( Read more... )

baking, sick

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pameladean December 29 2007, 02:07:00 UTC

Some things calm down after menopause. Sometimes. I'm actually getting my brain back. Also, hot flashes actually diminish. I didn't believe this, in fact. I figured I was just stuck. But they do. Or they can. It's better to have the brain back, though. That part was no fun. You sound like you have more of yours than I had of mine, but it may not feel that way.

P.

robinmckinley December 29 2007, 11:06:05 UTC

I'm actually getting my brain back.

************* YOU ARE???!???!?!!?!!!!! OH GODS, THAT'S THE BEST NEWS I'VE HAD . . . well, since all this started, anyway. I'm finding it fairly nightmarish. *****Golly**** I hope this is going to be the case for me too. And listen, one of the reasons something like the blog works for me is because when I space out it *doesn't necessarily show*. When you're hanging on a bell rope . . . it shows. When you're having a conversation . . . it shows. I've never been much of a Public Appearances author, but I will say here that one of the reasons I don't *mind* having hellhounds keeping me at home is because *I don't trust my brain any more.* I made it through Wiscon a few years ago, but that's before the spaced-out moments were this bad.

I don't have savage hot flashes per se--I get sort of general hormonal rages, when everything swells up and hurts. The hot flashes aren't themselves nearly as gruesome as the bloating and aching.

blackbear88 December 29 2007, 16:01:38 UTC

For what it's worth, I thought you "made it through" that Wiscon very well--it was one of my favorite Wiscons. Your GOH speech was highly entertaining. :)

My mother spent the better part of her menopausal years crying; nearly every dinner ended in tears for a while there. I have hormonal issues as it is, and I can't even imagine how fun this is going to be when it happens to me... I may have to up my flood insurance.

robinmckinley December 29 2007, 18:36:06 UTC

It may not take you that way; maybe you'll be LUCKY like me and turn into Rabid Bitch on Wheels . . . with lashings of bloat and throb. And I mean 'lashings'. Arrrgh. Who INVENTED this system?!? Women's female bits are the strongest argument I know for a MALE god.

robinmckinley December 29 2007, 18:37:50 UTC

For what it's worth, I thought you "made it through" that Wiscon very well--it was one of my favorite Wiscons. Your GOH speech was highly entertaining. :)

*********** Seriously slow on the uptake here. Did I meet you? Although even if I did I probably won't remember. Sigh. This is also why I don't tour/go to cons: the whole thing becomes one long adrenaline blur. I'm well aware that I'm actually missing out on FUN, it's just the emphasis is on the 'missing'.

blackbear88 December 29 2007, 21:30:23 UTC

:) I guess that depends on how you define "meet." I did stand in a bit of a line to have you sign a book--which is something I almost never do, and I was peevish because I hadn't thought to bring my much-loved and falling-apart copy of Outlaws of Sherwood to the con for this purpose. But I went and picked up Sunshine as a stand-in, so all went well. At any rate, I can't think of any reason why you should remember me, as I didn't trip over your table or spill anything on you. But I do remember I had serious pen envy, you had a lovely fountain pen!

the whole thing becomes one long adrenaline blur.I'd imagine so! When I worked in the game industry, the big game cons were just like that for me--I had to be constantly "on" when I was working and when I finally got a chance to catch my breath my impulse was to go curl in a ball rather than go out and enjoy the rest of the con. At the end of 4 days I could barely remember my name, much less anyone else's. I'd figure Wiscon and its brethren would be like the fantasy author's version ( ... )

robinmckinley December 30 2007, 00:38:38 UTC

Ah, that would have been my black and white one, yes? Yes, it IS good. :)

When I worked in the game industry, the big game cons were just like that for me--I had to be constantly "on" when I was working and when I finally got a chance to catch my breath my impulse was to go curl in a ball rather than go out and enjoy the rest of the con. At the end of 4 days I could barely remember my name, much less anyone else's.

************ YES. EXACTLY. THANK YOU. Most people look at me as if I have eight legs and a bad attitude when I try to explain why I don't go to cons.

blackbear88 December 30 2007, 05:48:37 UTC

Ah, that would have been my black and white one, yes? Yes, it IS good. :)

I didn't recall the color--I do remember that it looked good and heavy, and had a nice nib. I recently celebrated the first 6 months at my current job by buying myself a really gorgeous Waterford, with a sort of patterned metallic copper color on the barrel. I even went a little wild and bought dark brown ink for it instead of black, and every time I pick it up to write it makes me happy.

Most people look at me as if I have eight legs and a bad attitude when I try to explain why I don't go to cons.

This is because most of them have never worked at a con. And it IS work, and in your case it doesn't stop when the dealer room closes. The company I worked for had a modest fan base, and people would occasionally stop me in the hall when they saw my badge and say "Hey, love your products!" or complain about our release schedule. But for an author with a large fan base, I'd imagine that any time spent out of your hotel room is fair game time for folks to say "I ( ... )

robinmckinley December 30 2007, 18:50:48 UTC

I didn't recall the color--I do remember that it looked good and heavy, and had a nice nib ( ... )

blackbear88 December 31 2007, 01:21:43 UTC

I actually t hink I do remember an exchange with someone who commented on my pen and mentioned her old OUTLAWS at home--and I would have said that I'm always **delighted** to sign falling-apart copies of my books. I remember the ROOM we were in. I don't remember a THING about YOU. (*&^%!!!LOL! Seriously? I'm impressed you recall the conversation at all, you must have talked to hundreds of people that day. As for not remembering anything else about me--I'm fairly innnocuous-looking so that's not at all surprising. I've got straight, slightly shaggy brown hair, green eyes, poor posture, and a rather deep voice. So you can fill in the blanks with that ( ... )

robinmckinley January 1 2008, 01:43:09 UTC

Museum exhibit developer, at the moment. :) No worries, that was quite a few threads back and a serious dog-illness ago ( ... )

blackbear88 January 1 2008, 16:51:43 UTC

You get to sit around all day and play with Leggo and then they PAY you. :)

Yes, grand, isn't it? :)

I'd been talked into Wiscon partly on the grounds that the people are more civilised than some and that was in fact my experience.

Oh good! Yes, in some ways Wiscon is very civilized. But I would describe it as one of the more intense cons I've been to (since I'm throwing the word intense around a lot here.) Sometimes people get very worked up in the panels, and if there's not a good moderator in charge then it spirals wildly. But I really enjoy it, I've been 10 of the last 12 years; and I'm glad you did come, that was one of the motivations for me to go back after skipping 2. :)

You do all kinds of things you hate doing because the story makes you. Well, so I figured--which is why I wouldn't come up to you at a con and complain about the dogs. Unless I'd felt you were being gratuitious ("Hm, reaching a dramatic climax, I'd better kill off a few people for effect." I know there are authors who do this...) But if I ( ... )

robinmckinley January 2 2008, 01:12:47 UTC

I think we may differ. I hated killing off Tuck's dogs, but it had to be done, because that what happens in the story. The moment you're untrue to the story, it dies. I personally feel that the reader has a similar responsibility. If the story is true, you accept it--or get out. Getting out is always an option.

I agree with you about gratuitous however, which as far as I'm concerned is only a different form of being untrue to the story. I'm also a wimp. There are all kinds of books I won't read . . . but that's not going to tempt me to shout j'accuse! at their authors. That's about me, not the story. I would probably have the same reaction to the Morrow book (I like him too but I haven't read that one) but I don't guarantee that I'd think Morrow had gone off the rails. I might just think it's a story I don't want to read because I'm going to hate the main character.

blackbear88 January 2 2008, 02:08:09 UTC

Getting out is always an option.Yes, exactly! I feel that as a reader, if the story IS a good one--a true one--then what happens is happening because it has to happen, and if I need to stop reading it for my own personal sanity, that's me. Not the writer, not the story, but me. Of course the dogs had to die at that point in the story, and I wouldn't want it elsewise no matter how much I cried at the time. That's what Kleenex are for ( ... )

robinmckinley January 2 2008, 17:42:16 UTC

(I actually think a bit less of myself, frankly, for being so jittery about these things ( ... )

blackbear88 January 2 2008, 18:33:45 UTC

Sometimes I think my decision not to read further is valid. Sometimes I think I'm just being a wussy.

Indeed! Though I usually just assume wussiness. Just last week I was reading something I've looked forward to for a long time (Will Eisner's "Contract With God" graphic novel, generally acclaimed as one of the most groundbreaking books in the comic field.) It's a series of 4 stories, and though the first couple were intense and moving I was fine with it. Then I got to one that just completely unhinged me, and I had to put the book down and go curl up with the cats for a while... And even as I was snivelling I was thinking, you DORK, it's just a comic book.

It has to be in there *for* that. MOrrow is not a sloppy or sensationalist writer. (Or his sensationalism is to a point, like, well, like Pullman's is.)Yeah, I would call Towing Jehovah sensational, but to a very specific end. :) I think the point in this book was to give us a general distaste for the main character's family (as I recall, torturing toads is part of the ( ... )

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