A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Marsha Altman continues the story of The Darcys and the Bingleys in Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape, bringing us to 1812. This is book three of the series following The Darcys and the Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers. While the lives of the major characters have continued since Pride and Prejudice, Altman has remained true to the character of each person and yet allowed them to grow and change, not to mention beginning a new generation of Darcys and Bingleys.

The book opens as the entire clan gathers at Netherfield, which Mr. Bennet has had to rent, for Kitty’s wedding. It’s an occasion that allows the reader to catch up on the growth that has taken place and refresh their memories of the previous books. It also sets up the relationships between the characters and their families, so what happens later in the story fits into these new and expanding friendships and family connections.

Once past the confused chaos and joy of the wedding, we’re hit with incident after incident with little quiet time to relax until the end of the book. That’s not to say the book is episodic or has gaps that make the story jerky — it’s just much more of an action adventure thriller than the sedately paced story most readers would expect from a Pride and Prejudice follow on. In fact, I don’t think any of Altman’s books are quite what you’d expect, but they are nevertheless some of the best follow on stories to Pride and Prejudice that I’ve read to date. Each volume is filled with humor, quirky happenings, incidents that will have you laughing right out loud, as well as scenes that will catch at your heart and put a tear in your eye.

You probably wonder why I’m not getting to what the book is about, well, it’s a book that brings a lot of characters together in way that you would not expect, doing things you probably would never have thought possible. Lady Catherine de Bourgh finally invites the Darcys to Rosings and of course she has ulterior motives that in themselves bring on some especially trying and unexpected consequences. Dr. Maddox’s brother Brian has invited him to visit with him and his wife in Transylvania. It’s a strange letter and Dr. Maddox feels he must not just respond but take the journey to find out for himself what is going on. Darcy has lost contact with his brother, Gregoire. The war is heating up in Europe and many of the monasteries are being disbanded. Concerned that traveling alone could be dangerous, Darcy and Dr. Maddox decide to travel together. When their wives receive notes that make them suspect that something is going on, Elizabeth and Caroline put aside their differences and set out on a mission to discover what has happened to their husbands.   Bingley and Jane, of course, need to stay behind and watch over all the children, related businesses and establishments. I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine who had the worse part of this adventure.

There are plenty of incidents that occur in England and in Europe and Altman manages to keep us informed on what is happening to each of these various groups: Darcy and Maddox; Elizabeth and Caroline; Gregoire; the Bingleys, and the Fitzwilliams. Just as in life, it’s complicated, but once you begin you just can’t put the book down. I ended up reading it through four times preparing for this review because if I opened it to look up something, I ended up rereading it. In fact, I’m about one third of the way through again.

So don’t waste any time, Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape should be available from Amazon and from wherever you usually buy your books. But don’t start reading until Friday night because you’ll want to finish it in one go and start over again to savor the humor, the adventure, and the pleasure of spending time with the Darcys and the Bingleys.

NOTE: Tomorrow’s post will be an interview with Marsha Altman about Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape and other books planned for the series. Please check back for the interview and to enter a contest to win a set of all three of the books that have been published in this series so far.

A friend pointed me to this YouTube Video about the sameness of urban fantasy book covers and the poses of the female protagonists. Go ahead take a look.

The problem is that often, if not nearly always, authors have no control over their book covers. That’s why a red-headed heroine might be on the cover as a blonde or brunette. Mythical creatures that never show up in the book might be featured prominently on the cover.

It’s not the artist’s fault either as some discussion with cover artists have informed me, it’s seldom within their deadlines that they are actually given a copy of the book to read before they begin the project. Often an artist gets an overview of those items that should be on the cover to make it stand out on the shelves.

The problem is that when a great urban fantasy comes along and sells well, the marketing types forget that people are buying a book with a compelling story and figure if that type of cover sells, then our cover with the same elements should sell our book. Many times the writing and author combine to sell the book, reinforcing the move toward a “look” for the newly emerging sub-genre.

I remember years ago when Fabio was on practically every cover of a romance novel in the bookstore. Some friends and I were in a bookstore, came around a corner and faced a wall of outward facing romance covers. We began to look at them. We figured there were probably about 10 poses which included: girl clutched to man’s leg, girl clutched to man’s back/side/chest, girl draped over man’s arm and so on. The only difference in these poses were the costumes that indicated the period of the romance.

This video certainly makes it seem that things haven’t really changed. That as hard as publishers/artists/authors/art directors try to be different, with the lead times they have for publications, there are bound to be a whole lot of covers that look like fraternal clones.

The Washington Science Fiction Association [http://www.wsfa.org] has created of a literary award to honor the work done by small presses in promoting and preserving science fiction. The WSFA Small Press Award will be given yearly for original short fiction works (17,500 words or fewer) of imaginative literature (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction or like literature) published by a small press.

For the purposes of the award, a small press is defined as a hard copy print or web publication house releasing from 3 to 25 titles per year. Eligible periodicals are those with a paid circulation of fewer than 10,000 in the year that the story is published. Periodicals must have an must pay authors in cash as opposed to non-monetary items. Any story published in a periodical owned by a major publishing house or media producer is not eligible for this award. For complete rules check the website.

For this our 4th Annual WSFA Award, eligible works are those published for the first time in English in 2009. To help us identify worthy pieces, we are asking for small press publishers and authors to nominate stories. (The story does not have to be published by you, although we generally expect you to nominate works from your publications.) You may nominate up to three (3) stories as a publisher, one (1) story as an author.

FOR THIS YEAR THE DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS IS April 1st.

Nominated stories _must_ be submitted in electronic form, in any of the common formats (e.g. doc, rtf, pdf). Judging will be blind, that is the name of the author and publisher will be stripped from the story. Therefore, we ask that you either send the story in a format that allows us to edit the file to remove the author’s name, or strip the name yourself but be sure to include the name of the author in the accompanying email message.  Nominations should be sent to admin at wsfasmallpress dot org. The accompanying email should indicate the name of the person or entity that holds the copyright to the story and permission from that person or entity to circulate the story within WSFA for the purposes of judging. We also need to know the publication information (Publication name, issue date) The story WILL NOT be circulated beyond WSFA members and will be housed on a secure, password-protected website.

The award will be presented at the annual WSFA convention, Capclave, held each year in October in the Washington, DC, area. The award winner and the publisher will be notified prior to the convention.

Additional information about the award can be found at the website.

We woke up to a thin blanket of snow covering everything.  Yesterday the ground was bare of snow — today a couple of inches so far.  It’s also cold.  Bone chilling cold.  I’ve stayed in all day.  But one thing snow means is that all the little birds in the area flock to your deck to peck at the window to let us know it’s time to fill the feeder.  I didn’t know birds were so clever.

Yesterday we had an incident with the kerosene heater.  It smoked.  Turned out you need to occasionally jiggle it to make the chimney seat right.  Who knew?  We’d had the same model for years and never jiggled it.  We’d used this heater for the last three months and never jiggled it until yesterday.  When it smoked I turned the heat back and it stopped and thought that was it.  Then I checked on it a few minutes later and it was smoking a bit.  I shut it off.  Then I spent the rest of the day rewashing the clothes that were in the basket waiting to go upstairs as they were covered with soot.  And washing off just about every surface in the living room where the heater is.  When Hyperion got home and got down to check it out (I’ve got arthritis in my knees so I don’t get down that low unless I absolutely positively have to), he found that it had a label with tiny print that said to open the tiny door and jiggle the thingy if it smoked.  He did and its been working since.

Today we cleaned the living room floor and most of the flat surfaces.  I’ve still got to wash windows, walls, floor, and dust all the books and things throughout the upstairs and the level with the heater.  This is due to the fact that we occasionally touch things and find our fingers sooty.  Less this evening than this morning since we’ve been picking at this problem all day.

I really don’t need these types of crises at the end of the month since we’re working on getting the zines up and live on February 1st.  So, far I’m semi-keeping up.   All I’ve got left to do right now is finish and polish my own reviews and do my editorial overviews of the issues. I can see the home stretch just down that long, long, tunnel — the one with the light at the end.  At least I think it’s a light, but it could be a train.  Is that a whistle I hear?…

The good news of today is that my first package for the Rockin’ Sock Club came from Blue Moon Fibers.  I’d looked at the blog and on the Ravelry forum and so many people were reporting that they’d received their yarn and patterns.  But, when I picked up the mail — nothing, nada, zip, zero — no fibery goodness at all.

Today, it was delivered.  So, it’s sitting out so I can admire the yarn.  It comes with two patterns and I’m going to dither for a while on which one to make because they’re both so wonderful looking.  Hyperion says that if necessary we can buy a second skein so I can make them both — Isn’t he the best?  Yeah, of course he is.

Anyway, now I have something to look forward to putting on the needles.  Each year I’ve read about the Rockin’ Sock Club and wanted to join but just didn’t seem to get my act together enough to make the sign-up period willing to spend the money.  Yeah, the world’s going to crap in the economy/financial area but the past year has been very stressful for me with my health and there’s some very inescapable commitments coming up that are inherently stress squared.  So, after talking with Hyperion and going over the budget we decided that I could join this year. [Hyperion here:  There’s money and then there’s life, and I know which is more important.  Gayle really loves knitting and fiber.  So if the Rockin’ Sock Club can bring her some much needed joy, I say it’s worth it at twice the price … or an extra skein of yarn so she can make the second pattern.]

Knitting after all, as every knitter knows, is way cheaper than paying a psychologist by the hour to listen to a litany of stressors that can’t be fixed and can’t be changed because they’re a part of your life that is going to be there until…well, forever.  It’s nice that some people can change their lives, but when a good part of the stress is pain because you have a body that doesn’t function like it should — well, knitting is a way of keeping yourself centered so you can just keep on keeping on.

Once club members are allowed to post photos of their socks publicly, I’ll be sure to post the one I chose to do so you can be as excited as I am about it.  Meanwhile, I’ll touch the fiber and dream of really nice socks until finish this month’s commitments and can cast on.

It’s still cold.  It’s still snowy out there.  But I’m smiling.

I don’t get to knit much except during those times when there’s not much else to do that requires my hands — so I knit when the PC locks up (which lately is a lot and knitting keeps me from trying to get it to work by pressing keys, thus making it worse) or when watching TV or DVDs, when we have company and just sitting and talking.  But somehow, to my surprise I managed to finish a few things that have been hanging around.  You know how it is — a bedroom project, a living room project, an office project, and one that fits in the purse for travel.

First, I finally finished these socks made with Red Heart’s Heart & Sole with Aloe yarn. As usual with self-stripping yarn they’re fraternal socks. The colors aren’t quite right but they’re a beautiful orange, burnt red, purple, brown, yellowish that reminds me of desert sunsets. They’re just my basic sock pattern only with a broken rib pattern on the leg section. Only since I really don’t like doing purl, the purl band only shows on the inside and the outside has some interesting bumps and texture that I really liked.

Next, I blogged about knitting the Baby Fan Mitts of a Paton’s Silk Bamboo yarn in a previous post. The pattern is a free Ravelry download designed by Morgan Wolf that you can find here. The pattern is very clear and the mitts are beautiful and dressy without being too fussy.

I had plenty of the yarn left over so I decided to make a matching cowl to go with the mitts. I used a pattern from one of Barbara Walkers’ books and started knitting. It took a few tries to get what I wanted but here it is drying. (Don’t let the color fool you — this is the same yarn as the Baby Fan Mitts and in the same color — for some reason I just couldn’t get the same color in the pictures. Actual color is a very pretty blue-teal — closer to the mitts photo than the cowl one.

I think it came out pretty good and I’m pleased with it. I’ll try to get a picture with me wearing it at some point. I’ve been thinking of writing the pattern up and posting it but don’t know if there would be much interest. Would there? Should I?

But because now I didn’t have anything but sweaters on the needles, I needed to start another pair of socks. These are a beautiful green/gold/red/yellowy tweed using Paton’s Kroy Socks yarn.

I haven’t yet decided what to do with them. So, I’m making a plain foot and will do something with the leg portion when I get there. I’m debating making these as a Christmas gift for someone so I’ll have to see how the foot looks before deciding how to do the leg. Right now I’m thinking a plain 2×2 knit purl ribbing or some other simple ribbing pattern.

I’m rather pleased with myself at doing so much over the past two months. But then the fibro has been pretty bad and knitting is something I can do even if I can’t really think straight as long as it’s just plain knit and socks are mostly that. Luckily when you’ve been knitting for years even using double pointed needles to do socks is second nature.

I signed up for the Rockin’ Sock Club by Blue Moon Fibers this year. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I finally managed to hit the enrollment period with the money to do it (just got paid for a freelance gig). I’m really looking forward to getting the first shipment of yarn and patterns. If I can keep up with the socks from the club I should manage to keep my feet warm next winter and hopefully a couple of the pattern will make great gifts for those who keep asking me for socks for those family members who keep hinting for socks.

Saturday was the worst flare up of Fibromyalgia pain I’ve had in over a year. After I woke myself up whimpering, the day seems to slide down a very steep hill.

At first it was my lower back and I took aspirin. Several hours later I’d upgraded to a big pain killer — no difference in pain level. I’m talking 8 to 9 on the 1-10 pain scale. A second big pain pill and a muscle relaxer and I managed to get it down to about a 5. Other than infrequent weeping from the pain — I thought I handled it pretty well.

I didn’t snap at anyone. I didn’t go and sit in the dark closet and hope the world would go away. I even managed to talk to company as if my brain actually functioned. Of course since the company was a friend who was well aware of my Fibro short-coming, I was given a bit of leeway when my attention span seemed a bit shorter than a 2-year-old after four bowls of sugar-laden cereal in a room full of shiny things.

Today, I’m happy to say, I’m back to my usual 3 and finding myself unusually grateful for it. I hope that I don’t have another flare up of this magnitude ever. Yet, I know that I probably will and there’s very little I can do to prepare or avoid it. Thinking over the past several weeks, I can’t see anything that I’ve done that would have triggered it. I’ve been very careful to avoid strenuous activities except in very small doses and with proper warm ups — that includes carrying wash up and down stairs, housework, washing floors, changing beds, cooking, etc.. I keep things to short 15-30 minute intervals with a rest period in between where I relax and rest (read, knit, work on the computer…).

I survived a very bad Saturday that stretched into a bad night. Today, Sunday, the world looks a lot better to me. Maybe I appreciate it more in contrast because today is grey and gloomy but none the less, today was and is a beautiful day.

If Fibro has taught me anything it’s that no matter how bad it gets, if you just hold on long enough, you’ll come out on the other side. You won’t be cured. You won’t be pain free. But, you’ll be alive and the world will look a lot brighter because it won’t be as bad it was. I now have a new benchmark for “bad” and I don’t think I’ll forget about it any time soon. So, every day that’s better than Saturday will be a good day.

This is going to be something of a unfocused political rant. Just decided to get some things out there for people (mainly me) to think about:

• What makes Congress think that delaying the coverage of pre-existing conditions for 4 years and requiring people who can’t afford insurance to buy it or be punished with fines is a good idea? Here’s the scenario — I’ve got medical problems but no insurance and I have to pay out of pocket for everything. Now the government forces me to spend my money to pay for medical insurance, thus using up what little money I had to cover office visits and RXs and the insurance doesn’t pay for anything because all the medical problems are pre-existing. Wow, that’s really helpful because what money I did have is now gone. The insurance won’t cover the medical problems and now I have no money to pay out of pocket. Thank you Congress?
• Do the members of the Supreme Court know that they are there to defend and support the Constitution? Have they even read it? Do they know the term “precedent”? Because they just threw out years of precedence and will now allow big business to pour money into Congressional campaign coffers — and some how that supposed to help the “little guys” support their candidate? In what universe does that happen? In this one, big business gives big money and expects big favors or you don’t get money the next time you run for office.
• Avatar is a movie. People smoke now knowing that it’s bad for them. They’ll probably smoke in the future too (have you seen those non-cigarette cigarettes — yuck). The Nav’i live in harmony with their planet and that’s not a bad thing — we should be as concerned for Earth. Oh, and the complaint that corporations would never use force on the native population to better their bottom line. Well, guess some people haven’t been paying attention to what goes on now-a-days in our “real” world.
• Why don’t the Democrats stand up and tell the Republican’s to stuff their lies and innuendos? For years, the Democrats have been allowing the Republicans to define them. There is NOTHING wrong with being Liberal — in fact, if you look up the definition of a Liberal it is something that we should all strive for.
  

  favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
  favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.
  of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
  free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant: a liberal attitude toward foreigners.

  Grow a spine would you. You wonder why you’re losing the people because you haven’t the fortitude to stand up for your own beliefs. Democrats have been kowtowing to the Republicans and afraid to set the record straight — as loudly, as repetitively, and as firmly as the Republican spread their own wacky version of the truth. It’s hard to have people know what’s going on when only the other side is doing the talking — telling the same untruths over and over and over.

• Is the attention span of the average American really that short? Don’t they remember that what the Republicans say about being all for keeping government out of the lives of the people really means do exactly what we say and everything will be fine. It hasn’t been in the past and I doubt very much it will be in the future?
• I find it difficult to believe that the people who lost their own Congressional bank because they didn’t remember to keep their own finances balanced are the same people who are in charge of the country’s finances. I’m surprised with the rules they’ve been making that the banking crisis isn’t worse than it was. I still don’t see any understanding that loosening the rules on banks was not a good thing and that the laws that were in place to protect us from this type of crisis should be re instituted.

While I’m ranting. I want my country back. I want the America I grew up in. The one were people had individual freedoms and protections guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The one where people were not disappeared off the streets and thrown into prison and tortured for unspecified crimes without trial or due process. I read the paper now and remember back during the cold war when Americans were so proud of their freedoms — now we live in a country very similar to the old Soviet Union — where people have to show papers (coming with the “Real ID Act” ), where people disappeared just as we’re now doing to anyone who is even hinted at being a terrorist. In the America I grew up in people would be horrified to find out that our government was torturing people. (Make no mistake. Calling it enhanced interrogation is just a way to weasel out of calling it what it is — torture.

I want my country back. I want to be proud of being an American again but all I see is Congress slowly bit by bit turning this country into a police state where everyone is afraid all the time.

There, that’s out of my system for a while. Maybe I should just give up reading the news — it’s so depressing to see what’s happened to our values and belief in fair play.

Today my laptop decided to take the day off.  I didn’t know that’s what it had in mind.  I was working along thinking I’d do a few more things and then take a short break and up pops a low battery warning.  Now, I’ve got the ‘ol laptop plugged into the UPS which is plugged into the house circuit so no worries.  I keep on working.

I enter a stack of books into the database and between books this low battery warning keeps popping up.  So, I stop and check all the connections and everything is plugged in solid.  Sometimes you see my feet and those dangling cords sort of have their own battle.  But all is as it should be.  Keep on working.

Up pops a notice that the laptop is going into some sort of mode to help me conserve power.  What the?  I check the cords again.  Everything is fine.  This time I’m on my hands and knees under the desk checking the entire length of each cord — from laptop to the power brick and the  brick to the UPS.  Yup all the cords in and plugged in solid not wobbly.  I even checked to make sure the UPS was plugged in but knew it was because the printer and the lamp was working fine.

Okay, weird but not critical but I’m thinking I’ll start a backup just in case.  Close all the programs and start the backup.  Grab a book to read while it’s running and I get a Skype just as I get a message from the laptop telling me it’s shutting down soon.  Send word I’m going to be offline and hit send.  Black screen and a beep.

Try to turn it back on.  Dead. Nothing.  Nada. Okay.  What’s there to do but make tea and grab a book and pretend it’s my break.  I tried several times throughout the day to push the power button hoping it would some up.  Nothing.  Finally, Hyperion gets home from work and I tell him about the problem and ask if we should buy a new brick — last time this happened it was a bad power brick.  He says maybe I missed something and he follows the cords all fine and dandy and then pulls out the cords to pull them out in the light to see that they look fine and not broken or scuffed, plugs them back in and powers up.

Everything is fine.  My laptop sits here with this smug look of satisfaction.  I think it just wanted a day off.  I don’t know why it couldn’t just send me a memo requesting the day off.  I think it might be developing sentience and if not that it’s at least developing an attitude.