A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Bad Heir Day: A Comedy of High Class and Dire Straits by Wendy Holden. Sourcebooks Landmark; Reprint edition (September 1, 2010); ISBN: 978-1402240614; 352 Pages. Price: List $14.99 (Amazon: $10.79 / Kindle: $9.99).

Anna Farrier’s life is going nowhere when Bad Heir Day begins. She’s living with Sebastian “Seb” Lavenham, an upper-class playboy with commitment problems. After attending a wedding of one of Seb’s school friends at Dampie Castle on the Island of Skul, Anna begins to take a hard look at her current situation and reluctantly admits it’s going beyond depressing. She hasn’t written anything in a long time and in reality she’s nothing but Seb’s live-in maid with benefits. She’s ready for a change.

Luckily, at the wedding, while Seb was making out with all his old girlfriends, she met Geri, a woman with a plan for her life, who was full of helpful hints on how to get Anna’s life on track, beginning with becoming an author’s assistant. Anna puts up an ad and gets a call from Cassandra Knight who just lost her au pair – again – and needs a replacement but the service won’t send anyone else out to care for her hellion of a son, Zachary. Anna accepts the position thinking it’s to help with research and writing and ends up being an extremely low-paid babysitter and household help.

It turns out the waiter she met at the wedding actually owns the castle and he’s in desperate need of a wife. By the time he shows up in London, Anna’s experience as Cassandra’s pseudo-slave, Zach’s victim, and Jett’s (Cassandra’s husband) potential conquest has not helped her self-esteem or her writing. She’s ready for a change.

Bad Heir Day is a lot of fun even while being totally predictable. However, I read this almost immediately after reading Farm Fatale and found the underlying structure to be quite similar. I think if I’d had more time between the two books, the plot structure wouldn’t have been as noticeable. Even so there were some great one liners and lots of eye-rolling moments as the story unfolded. The characters are more archetypes than fully developed but in the context of the odd-ball romantic comedy story, it really doesn’t matter.

Bad Heir Day is pure entertainment with a mild message of “don’t ruin your life trying to be someone you’re not”. Just grab a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, put up your feet, and enjoy watching someone else’s life going off the rails and somehow finding a perfect mate in spite of the chaos their life has become.

I noticed that today would have been Julia Child’s birthday. I remember seeing her on TV when her cooking show was new and I was young. I remember her voice and the fact that she made it look like no matter what happened, or what went wrong, it was okay, because who’d know what went on in your kitchen if the guests were all in the living room. I have to wonder what she’d think of the popularity of open floor plans where your guests gather around the kitchen island and watch you get dinner ready. Somehow I doubt that it would bother her.

Last week we finally watched Julie & Julia based on the book by Julie Powell. Powell wrote a blog where she cooked her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, in a period of 365 day making 524 recipes. You can still read the blog online — the Julie / Julia Project. The last post is about when Julie heard that Julia Child died. (Amazon has the book available in paperback with a look inside so you can get a taste of the writing.)

Julia Child was an amazing woman. She did so much at a time when women were so circumscribed in what they should or shouldn’t do with their lives. If you haven’t seen the movie here’s the trailer — maybe you’ll decided it’s a must see too.

I thought the movie was informative and affirming. I like cooking and I’m no great chef — I’m more a plain home cooking type with once in a great while a foray into making something fancy. I admire Julie Powell for working her way through all those recipes — that’s a lot of work, especially when holding down a full-time job. Seems there are lots of daring women in the world we just need to keep our eyes and ears open.

One Fine Cowboy by Joanne Kennedy
Sourcebooks Casablanca, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3670-9, pages 416
(List: $6.99 / Amazon: $6.99 / Kindle: $4.79).

Charlie Banks is a graduate student in psychology who is looking to do research on non-verbal communication, especially between species.  Her advisor has sent her to a clinic at Latigo Ranch with Nate Shawcross who is a horse whisperer.   It seemed like a great idea to Charlie except that the ranch is out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, with no sizable town, let alone a city, for miles in any direction, and she’s a city girl through and through.   Of course her car breaks down just short of the ranch. Luckily, a cowboy stops by to offer assistance.

Nate Shawcross, her cowboy rescuer and the owner of Latigo Ranch, doesn’t know a thing about the clinic, or the people who signed up.  Seems his girlfriend wrote the brochures, sent then out, collected the deposits, and then wiped out his bank accounts, took the deposits, and left for Denver.  Charlie, of course, is attracted to Nate in spite of herself, and steps in to help him out.   Luckily the other three guests are understanding and more interested in learning to work with the horses than in having a fancy dude ranch experience.

Being a novel,   the readers, know that that’s not the end of Nate’s problems or Charlie’s or the last we’ll see or hear of Nate’s ex-girlfriend, Sandy.  In fact, as a romance this story is predictable; however, that doesn’t take away from the fact that the story is absorbing.  Kennedy manages to stay to the usual tropes of romance writing but give as an intriguing story of people and relationships on many levels.

“No one is an island” said John Donne, and that is still true today and in this story.  Each character acts upon the others and together that forms a community that supports and helps them to cope with their problems and issues rather than retreating into isolation.  Charlie being a graduate student in psychology is not simply a device to get the character out to a ranch in Wyoming, but a choice that allows the author to explore relationships a bit deeper within the story.  It also brings up the question of what is the best use of a person’s talents.  Aren’t the people who work quietly in the background making contributions to society as much, or even more than those on the public stage?  (Discuss among yourselves after you finish the book or bring your thoughts here and share.)

Whether you’re looking for a typical romance or a story that has people dealing with real problems then give Joanne Kennedy’s One Fine Cowboy a try.

Finally, a weekend day with no appointments or meetings scheduled. Managed to do the shopping for food and mail out books and made it to the bank before checks were too old to cash. Didn’t get to recycling though so guess that has to collect until next week — we don’t have a trash pick up where we live and we pay a private company to pick up the trash. Then since we recycle, we have to take all the recyclables to the center ourselves. Question why does doing the right thing always mean more work?

Heard a noise on the porch a while ago and Paul went to check it out because last night two raccoons were out there eating the cats food.  Tonight, we thought they were back but it was a feral cat who dropped by for a late snack with our Emnot.  However, Emnot decided to hide behind the blueberry bushes we have on the deck until it finished eating.  The feral just moved away to the edge of the car port and sat to wait.  Paul put some food out downstairs — maybe the feral will come back.  We could always use another good mouser/moler out here in the woods.  Since Emnot came to live with us the side yard is much less spongy to walk on with a less holes than it did have.

Actually got some vegetables this year.  Then garden is winding down and I’m going to miss the fresh tomatoes.  The thing is there are blossoms on the tomato plants and the green pepper plants but the night are dropping down to the 60’s and 50’s at night now.  Though today was in the high 70’s.  You can almost taste fall in the air.  Bought a small orangey-red mum to brighten up the living room.

Got to finish up some reviews for here.  Hope to post a review of One Fine Cowboy (Joanne Kennedy) and Bad Heir Day (Wendy Holden) this coming week so watch for that.

Dropped some bookmarks for Capclave at the Border’s in Bowie and Waldorf.  Hoping it spreads the word our our local science fiction convention in Rockville, Maryland in October.  The Guests of Honor are Connie Willis, Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer.  I’m this year’s chair of the convention — luckily, I have a great committee but as the date gets closer I get more anxious that everything turn out well for the participants and attendees.

Have you ever been to a science fiction convention?

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester. Published by Sourcebooks. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4136-9, 387 pages including index. Trade Paperback. $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19; Kindle: $9.68)

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester is just what the title implies, it’s a book about the Regency World that made up the background for Heyer’s Regency books. It helps to explain to today’s readers the nitty gritty details of what it was like to live in that time, in that society, and explains a lot of the customs, rules, and etiquette of that period. Now I know that makes it sounds like it would be incredibly dull and boring but, in fact, Kloester’s book is extremely readable. I started with the intent to read it front to back and before I was in more than 30 pages, I found myself reading a bit that made me think of a question, so I checked the table of contents and index and thereafter I skipped and dipped into the book at will, checking on those things that had niggled at the back of my brain when reading one book or another.

I wanted to read this book because I read a fair number of books that take place during the Regency Period. I will admit that I don’t read a lot of Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels. So, while the book is filled with examples from Heyer’s writings, I wasn’t familiar with the works cited; however, that’s not a problem because Kloester gives enough background that if you’ve read in the period you’ll get pick up what’s being explained from the books you have read.

Georgette Heyer’s Regency World is well organized so that the reader can go to a specific section to find an answer to questions about what the society was like and how it worked. Chapters are titled: Up and Down the Social Ladder; At Home in Town and Country; A Man’s World; The Gentle Sex; On the Town; The Pleasure Haunts of London; The Fashionable Resorts; Getting About; What to Wear; Shopping; Eat, Drink and Be Merry; The Sporting Life; Business and the Military; and Who’s Who in the Regency. Each chapter in the table of contents is listed with a subset of what’s included in that chapter, for example; the chapter on Getting About includes: All Kinds of Carriages; On Drivers and Driving; Public Transport; On the Road; Long-Distance Travel; and Turnpikes, Toll-gates and Tickets. Each individual chapter starts with an overview of what will be covered in that chapter. I was surprised to learn that long distance travel was considered anything further away than 10 miles. That’s rather difficult to wrap your mind around when most of us travel further than that one-way to work now-a-days.

There are also black and white illustrations throughout the book. I found the pictures of the various types of carriages, the cut-a-way view of a London townhouse, types of dress, and a circulating library, among others to be worth more than words while changing the mind pictures I’d built up while reading. There are also several appendices: A Glossary of Cant and Common Regency Phrases; Newspapers and Magazines; Books in Heyer; Timeline; Reading about the Regency and Where Next?; and Georgette Heyer’s Regency Novels.

For readers of books set in the Regency period, Georgette Heyer’s Regency World is an outstanding resource for understanding the world and society those characters lived in. For those who read books that take place in historical settings, the world has changed. Many of the social conventions that ruled the lives of the people living in Regency England no longer apply. Even during that period people who were born into the lower social classes found it difficult to deal with the myriad levels of behavior that those in the upper class were breed and trained to exhibit in their behavior. Many of the books set in that period mention the misunderstandings and missteps that characters took when moving into a higher social circle than that which they grew up in.

If you enjoy the Regency period, and want to have a better understanding of what society was like, this is probably the best, most accessible and readable book you’ll find on the subject. Even though I haven’t yet read Heyer’s Regency novels (I now have several on my to be read pile), I found Georgette Heyer’s Regency World a wonderful guide to the ins and outs of this social, cultural, historical time period of so many of the books that I read as a Jane Austen fan.

I’d like to hear other readers’ impressions of this work. Have you read it? Do you plan to?

As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I’m the chairperson of Capclave 2010. Capclave is the Washington Science Fiction Association’s annual convention, held this year in Rockville, Maryland. Our guests of honor this year are Connie Willis, Ann VanderMeer, and Jeff VanderMeer. There will also be many other guests — writers, editors, publishers, and of course fans of speculative fiction in all its various designations.

One of the things that we’re very proud of this year is the number and quality of the workshops we’ll be offering to participants. If you are registered to attend Capclave, there is no extra charge for being in a workshop, but space is limited and some have requirements (homework that’s due at the time of the workshop or before you arrive in the case of the VanderMeer workshop).

If you are already a member of Capclave and wish to sign up for one or more of these workshops, send email to workshops at capclave dot org (you know how to parse that email address I’m sure). If you haven’t signed up for the convention yet, check out the website and sign up then send your email asking listing the workshop you wish to be in.

Here’s the full list of workshops:

Workshops at Capclave:
Capclave 2010 is pleased to once again host a number of interesting workshops. Space is still available. If you are interested, send an e-mail to our workshop coordinator.

Online Content Workshop
Putting your comics, music, video, and fiction online is easy. Making it pay is harder, but it can be done. Join webcomic creator and comedy musician Rob Balder as he talks about making a living with the free content model. Get practical advice (feel free to bring a laptop/tablet and samples of your stuff) and work out a specific strategy for growing and monetizing an audience around your work. Two hour workshop.

Plotting Workshop
What makes a story a story? How do you construct a viable plot from a bare (naked) idea? We’ll start at the beginning, and by the end, you should have everything you need to know to plot your story. Allen Wold will lead this 2 hour session.

Reviewer’s workshop
A good reviewer does more then read free books and say “I like that”. Peter Heck, a regular reviewer for Asimov’s Science Fiction will demonstrate the hallmarks of a good review and how to create one. Bring a at least 10 copies of a review you’ve written and are proud of.

Wordsmith’s Workshop
Danny Birt will guide you through looking at writing from the perspective of the single word, and then work up from there, making sure that every word counts. This 1.5 hour workshop is good for beginners to professionals and is limited to 16 participants.

Writer’s Workshop
Allen Wold will lead a panel of authors in a hands on workshop. Learn many skills as you work on a short story. Session will be for 2 hours on Sat. and for those interested, a 1 hour follow-up on Sunday. Number of Participants is limited to 12.

Writer’s Workshop
Jeff and Ann VanderMeer will critique short stories of 12 participants. Each participant must write and submit a story of no more than 7500 words at least 2 months before Capclave (by August 22nd) to the workshop email address (workshops at capclave dot org). The story will be shared with the VanderMeers and the other participants. This will be a 2 hour workshop.

Hope your as excited about these opportunities to learn as we are to be able to offer them to our convention attendees.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2010 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (published in 2009)

“each thing i show you is a piece of my death” by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, published in Clockwork Phoenix 2, edited by Mike Allen, Norilana Books (July 2009).

“Images of Anna” by Nancy Kress, published in Fantasy Magazine, edited by Cat Rambo (September 2009).

“James and the Dark Grimoire” by Kevin Lauderdale, published in Cthulhu Unbound, edited by Thomas Brannan and John Sunseri, Permuted Press, (March 2009).

“Race to the Moon” by Kyell Gold, published in New Fables, Summer 2009,  edited by Tim Susman, Sofawolf Press  (July 2009).

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster, published in Interzone (January 2009) / Apex Magazine (August  2009), edited by Andy Cox (Interzone) / Catherynne M. Valente (Apex).

“Siren Beat” by Tansy Rayner Roberts, published in Twelfth Planet, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (October 2009).

“The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #27, 10/08/2009, edited Scott H. Andrews.

“The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram” by Jeff Soesbe, published in DayBreak Magazine, edited by Jetse de Vries (October 2009).

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2009). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 22-24th in Rockville, Maryland.

Conquering Mr. Darcy by Abigail Reynolds, Sourcebooks Casablanca, August 2010, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3730-0, 416 pages, Mass Market Paperback. [Note: Previously published as Impulse & Initiative: What if Mr. Darcy had set out to win Elizabeth’s heart? (Pride & Prejudice Variation)]

To Conquer Mr. Darcy, by Abigail Reynolds, is truly a “What If” novel. The critical question is what if Mr. Darcy didn’t give up on Elizabeth after his first disastrous proposal and Elizabeth’s unequivocal refusal? What if instead of meeting her again purely by chance at Pemberley, he returned with Bingley to Netherfield and made a concerted effort to win Elizabeth’s love and respect.

The book begins with Colonel Fitzwilliam stopping at Darcy’s townhouse in London. Georgiana has been worried about Darcy. Ever since the visit to Rosings, Darcy has spent his time alone, in the dark, drinking himself into a stupor and refusing to see anyone. This is totally out of character for him to be so depressed but he stubbornly resists all efforts to find out what is bothering him. Fitzwilliam luckily is a soldier and he barrels in where Georgiana and Bingley fear to tread and drags the story out of him. His advice is to go after Elizabeth if she means that much to him and win her.  For to do otherwise is evidence that he really doesn’t care. Darcy is angry but he pulls himself together and sets out determined to win Elizabeth.

At this point, we’ve diverged from the original story of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and Reynolds has to weave her story between the incidents of the original story with a few changes. Darcy supports Bingley in his desire to marry Jane Bennet. Thus Darcy is with Bingley when he visits Jane and can pursue Elizabeth’s good opinion.

You can imagine that things are awkward at first as she’s refused his offer of marriage and while his explanation of his dealings with Mr. Wickham have somewhat changed her opinion of him, she doesn’t care to be more than acquaintances. Darcy on the other hand, really makes an effort to be civil and courteous to Elizabeth’s family members. He makes sure that he meets Elizabeth when she goes for walks and rambles and essentially treats her as you would a wild animal — kindly, slowly taming her — getting her used to the idea of him being around.

Reynolds uses much of the original dialogue and manages to incorporate Elizabeth’s trip with the Gardiners and Lydia’s pseudo-elopement with Wickham. Of course, the changing relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy, changes the way these events play out.

And for purists, I have to mention that his book is a romance — there’s several very steamy scenes along with some that are more conventional for the time period such as holding hands, kisses. But, the real non-cannon event is Elizabeth and Darcy having sex prior to their marriage. Reynolds builds up to this slowly over the books so that when it occurs it seems a logical extension of their relationship within context of this book. By the way, this doesn’t give anything away as it’s on the blurb on the back of the book and in the Amazon description. So, purists are warned.

In summation, I felt that it was a well done. Reynolds took her “what ifs” and wove them into the plot points of the original books so seamlessly that you might have to refer back to the original to scope out the magnitude and number of changes those what ifs cause. At heart To Conquer Mr. Darcy is a romance — now it’s just a bit more racy romance than we’re used to between these two well-loved characters.

[Note: Edited 10 Aug 2010 to change book title to match the actual published title as it change since I read the review copy.]