Mortality, intimations of; also, defiance in the teeth of

Ah. First gin of the day.

I neeeed it, 'k? It has just been borne in upon me that I am (probably) doomed to die on an American road. Because

(a) I am an inveterate jaywalker, and you can't shed fifty years of habit all in a rush;

(b) I cannot read American traffic (it's not like Europe, where they also drive on the wrong side of the road but I understand them none the less; there must be some fundamental difference in rules or manners here, because I misread every junction); and

(c) Californian drivers don't bother to indicate, except when they're bullying their way across lanes of traffic in defiance of common sense, common courtesy and very probably the laws of the land.

So, yup. Gin.

But tho' I die, I shall die with lovely things inside me. Right now, I have about two hours before klwilliams comes home from work and calendula_witch arrives for a few days' stay; and I am filling in this time by making a lamb tagine with figs and apricots, and chicken in orange sauce. For which I have just picked nine oranges, sun-warm from the tree. It's, um. Not like life in Newcastle.

We can haz fuds!

An extraordinarily generous care package just arrived:



How cool is this? Home-made fig jam, and Curious Things In Jars. About which I am now curious. (There is some debate in the house, as to the proper pronunciation of okra. I say that I am English, and therefore everything I pronounce is inveterately proper. QED.)

FogCon schedule

Everyone is posting their FogCon schedules; it's practically a meme.

Me, I am giving a reading at 3pm on Friday: certainly something from Hidden Cities - which will be available! in the dealers' room! for the first time ever! - and maybe a short-short story on the side.

Then on Saturday, at 9am (!):

A Sense of Displacement

Write Where You Know: If you’ve never been to Mars, how can you write about it? How does where you’ve been affect your work? Do you have to travel in order to write about far-flung actual places, even if you then transmute them into fantasy?
M: Emily Jiang, Chaz Brenchley, Cassie Alexander, Lynn Alden Kendall


and on Saturday at 8pm (!!):

Why London? Nod Nolyhw?

What is it about England’s capital that inspires so many stories positing the existence of a second, evil twin city? Maybe it’s that there’s enough history there for two separate cities. Or that there’s enough ghosts that a second, spectral city is the only answer to affordable housing. Whatever the reason, London keeps authors coming back to build: above, below, instead and sometimes in ways we really don’t have prepositions for. But why?
M: Amy Sundberg, Alan Beatts, Chaz Brenchley, Valerie Estelle Frankel


Otherwise, and far more properly, I shall be in the bar. Hope to see you there...