In Which Our Heroine Says Slightly More

21 March 2003

I'm doing better today. I don't feel quite so physically cruddy. Mentally/emotionally better too: we still have some good options for the future, and I did a bunch of Dwarf's Blood Mead edits. Less than 50 pages yet to go. Don't know how long that'll take proportionally, because there are some fairly large scenes that need to be written in. More and more of the butterfly effect. But I'm enjoying the edits, and I'm enjoying the book. I'm glad I wrote it. It's nifty. And I'm glad to be editing it.

Yesterday I finished Servants of the Map, which was interesting to me. It made me want to read Barrett's other novels, too, because the characters crossed over with this and The Voyage of the Narwhal and Ship Fever. Makes me wonder if she just has one history. I also read Diana Wynne Jones' Archer's Goon, which was all right, I guess, but the twist ending did not surprise me at all after one key piece of information was revealed in the middle. I liked it well enough, but it started a bit slowly for me, and I thought it was going somewhere else entirely. And I think I would have liked that other location a bit more.

I started reading Anne Perry's The Face of a Stranger, because Lin swears that Tathea was not representative of Perry's work. I'll agree so far: I believe I'll be able to finish The Face of a Stranger (a Victorian mystery novel), whereas Tathea was unbearable to me after less than 50 pages. (Tathea, which was free at World Fantasy Con in someone's bag, was an attempt at a fantasy novel. Shudder. It was hideous.) The Face of a Stranger would have to improve significantly for me to seek out the rest of the series, but at least now I don't have to use "writes like Anne Perry" as a really bad insult.

I would like to know of more mystery writers who write to my taste. I love Kate Wilhelm, for example, and about half of Lawrence Block, and Joseph Kanon. And Sayers, Sayers, Sayers. Agatha Christie leaves me cold, and I can't say I was thrilled with the Kris Nelscott novel I read, even though I like Kristine Kathryn Rusch well enough. I think the thing is that I like speculative fiction as a genre, even though I don't like some of the specific examples of it. The same is not true for mysteries. So I'm less willing to just grab a random book off the shelf in the mystery section, because I don't like mysteries, I like that mystery, and that one, and that one. So...anybody? I've got a few more mystery writers on my library list to try, but I'd like to hear who you like and why.

I wish I was at ICFA this weekend. Not just because it's not here, either. Sigh.

You know what I like? Time-stamped blogs from the eastern part of this continent. Also, e-mails from same. It looks like time travel to me. "At noon, Karina thinks this! But it isn't noon yet! It's only 9:00! Look into the fuuuuuture!" Actually, I'm childish enough to get the same effect from people whose computers are just set ahead.

I haven't turned the war on yet. Maybe once I've showered and worked a bit. As I said, I'm doing better today all around. I just want to keep that for awhile.

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