Audiobook Narrator Stalking Euan Morton on Free Library Apps

I'm kind of narrator stalking Euan Morton right now.  I first heard him in Jim Butcher's swashbuckling sci-fi The Aeronaut's Windlass, and he was fantastic.  He has this swoon-worthy baritone hero voice he uses for Benedict . . .  Then I found out he'd narrated a couple of Guy Gavriel Kay's historic fantasy books, one of which involved Troubadours (Song for Arbonne), and by I was hopelessly voice crushing.  He seems to have a tremendous amount of fun and talent, and his voices are generally distinct enough to recognize clearly. 

More recent listens were completely different.  They were comedies by Christopher Moore, and they were incredibly bawdy and full of inappropriate (and sometimes hilarious) humor. The first (Fool) was like an offstage comedy version of King Lear.  Moore made it work, really.  It's fascinating to see how he can twist things that didn't happen onstage until he has an extremely R-rated version that is not a tragedy (for the Fool, anyway) and ends up matching exactly.  I might actually finally read King Lear now that I will have this story happening in the background . . .   

For Moore next trick, he crashes the Fool character into The Serpent of Venice, a mashup of The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and a somewhat random short story that must have involved a sea serpent who (in this version) eats a number of the characters in the two Shakespeare plays that really should have been eaten in the originals but were not.  As that last sentence indicates, he did NOT adhere to the actual play this time.  Morton's best voices in this one (aside from the Fool) are the villainous Iago and the heroic but dumb Othello. The afterward about how Moore crammed it all together was fun, too.  And I apologize to the older lady at the physical therapy pool while I was listening to this one.  I suspect you think I am insane.  I hope you noticed the earpiece and didn't just think I was barking with random laughter.  A lot.  I think my favorite part was when Morton was playing Portia (a rich young lady) pretending to be an adolescent boy genius lawyer.  The Quality of Mercy speech is a totally different experience when the actor's voice keeps cracking HORRIBLY at the most serious parts.

After that, I decided to give a listen to Carry On, a YA novel by Rainbow Rowell.  It is, lets be honest, a Harry Potter x Draco Malfoy fanfiction, but do NOT let its derivative nature make you think it's not worth your time.  The final product is a completely different world and characters distinct enough to work for your Harry and Draco needs (if you had them) while still being their own strong characters.  The things this book says about loneliness, self-loathing, and feeling monstrous when we are teenagers/young adults are important and well done.  Harry Simon is a totally believable dork.  The mage is charismatic through voice alone.   Also, Draco Baz has this amazing baritone voice that goes from sneering to vulnerable with complete believability.  You want to give him a hug and hit Harry Simon on the head with a rolled up newspaper when he's an insensitive clod, even as you agonize about how sort-of evil he is (just not in the ways he hates himself for being evil).

Basically, if I ever write a book, and someone wants to make it an audiobook, I will want Euan Morton to read it.

Cleaning with Murderbot (kids, definitely try this at home, but only when the kids aren't home or if you're using an earpiece, so they can't hear it)

Do you know what makes cleaning more fun bearable: Cleaning with Murderbot!  The audiobooks of Martha Wells' splendid series of Murderbot novellas are fantastic.  Kevin R. Free is crabby, frustrated, annoyed, irritated, and obsessed in such a way that I almost can't imagine how reading the text myself could possibly be as much fun as listening to him as he brings this character and its world to life.

When I realized that part 3 had come out, I was excited.  And then I saw that part 4 was the "conclusion" and had also come out. ALL OF THEM WERE AVAILABLE THROUGH MY LIBRARY SYSTEMS.  I may have listened to them all.  Twice.  In a row.  Oh, Murderbot, ART, Miki, and assorted annoying humans, it was wonderful to listen to you while I cleaned and did laundry and dishes and came up with as many excuses as I could find to keep listening (and laughing and wincing and wanting to give Murderbot a hug, even though that would totally freak it out).

Murderbot is a construct, a SecUnit (security unit) created of organic, cloned human parts (including a face) and inorganic computer/mechanical parts (most of its brain, I think).  Most areas of the inhabited universe consider them robot tools; they are not considered sentient beings capable of self-determination, and they are strictly controlled by corporations that own and deploy them to places where human security would cost more and be less effective.  They get nearly destroyed a lot.  It hurts, even when you can control your pain receptors to some extent.  These units all have a failsafe installed to prevent them from running amok and destroying everything around them. The failsafe monitors all their actions and can override their self-control.

Murderbot does not have a functioning failsafe; it hacked its Governor Module after something went wrong and Murderbot killed a bunch of people.  (It wasn't held responsible for its actions, of course, because it is considered a tool.)  That is also when it started to refer to itself as Murderbot.  Now that it has its freedom of conscience, control of its actions, and a lot of experience and scary strength it could wreak an awful lot of havoc.  What it actually does is hide from (and complain about) its annoying human clients as much as possible, try to fill in the gaps in its patheticly inadequate, corporate security module education, and binge-watch TV/media every spare second.  And give some powerful (and frequently hilariously aggravated) commentary on what it means to be human and / or a person.  And sometimes accidentally-kind-of-on-purpose go on murderous rampages to save dumb people. 

Murderbot is not interested in becoming a human (humans are pretty dumb, for the most part) or even more human (its revulsion when a helpful AI offers to give it functioning sexual organs is thought-provoking on a number of levels and also pretty stinkin' funny).  But all the humans seem to assume that's what everything wants.  Pretending to be human and fitting in better with humans gives it more freedom, though (and about 800x the stress and aggravation), so it goes back and forth a lot on the topic.

I LOVE ME SOME MURDERBOT. 

Best of all?  There's a novel coming out next year.  I hope they get Kevin R. Free to narrate it.  Except then I will have to go on a 16-hour cleaning binge, and I think that would be a terrible idea.  Maybe if it comes out in the spring . . .

Plans

I had a plan for today.  I was going to go to the annual festival.  The weather is supposed to be pretty much perfect, and I’ve been very good about resting lately.  But I also had plans for yesterday, and those plans did not include a bad allergic reaction to the cat.  

It wasn’t the worst reaction I’ve ever had; I wasn’t doing the, “Am I going to have to go to the hospital this time?” choice.  It was just bad. There was sneezing, coughing, wheezing, congestion, sinus pain, a fever, exhaustion, and no sleep. My lungs are still iffy. The forest fire smoke is supposed to have cleared away by now, but I am still allergic to most of the outdoors, and to put myself in them for hours while suffering a significant allergy hangover seems really unwise.  

If I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow, I would seriously consider doing it anyway.  I haven’t been up to the festival in a couple of years. I was going to go in time to actually see all the things I’ve always wanted to see instead of being restricted by other people’s timetables and interests.  It was going to be glorious. I had it all planned.

Maybe next year.

Too much fantasy in my Fantasy makes me fractious

I was reading this fantasy book series recommended by lots of people on Amazon.  It was billed as a Romance, which I normally don’t read, but it was also billed as an Epic Political Fantasy a la Game of Thrones.  (It totally, totally wasn’t anything even vaguely like GoT, and I say that as an observation, not a judgment.) It was actually an impossible women’s empowerment fantasy romance, and I think maybe I am too cranky right now to enjoy this kind of book.

It’s not that I despise a good Romance, either.  I recently read some fantastic ones by Georgette Heyer that were delightful and witty and left me feeling buoyant and giddy, and I can point you to some fine Fantasy/Romances, so it’s not Romance, per se, that makes me crotchety.

Exploring my testiness about the Romance/Fantasy I just read, first of all, there was a lot of “Gratuitous Plot Advancement” that set a completely unrealistic bar for sexual relationships.  I mean, frankly, if people read these and set their expectations according to them, there is NO WAY they could ever have a relationship in reality live up to this standard. Ridiculous, ludicrous, and eye-rollingly impossible outside of a fantasy world, the frequency, consistency, and physical improbability of their sex life is at best silly and at worst harmful for people who compare their real-world relationships to these fantasy ones.  

On an emotional level, the relationship seems like the sort of thing that comes from a textbook about how healthy, perfect relationships should go.  About how to have total equality in the relationship (as a woman, it definitely helps to have supernatural, god-gifted powers that allow for this), about how consent should look like (pretty sure no one is that perfect, also god-gifted dude), about as far from how things work in reality as possible.  Even the oh-so-scripted, perfectly verbalized/realized lessons they learn from their mistakes seem taken out of a cringe-y relationship advice book about how people should deal with past imperfections and poor decisions.

Maybe it’s that this book series makes it seem like relationships only work if you have main characters (especially females) gifted with god-like strength, magical abilities, power, and wisdom far beyond their years.  It’s not like female empowerment can’t be done well in fantasy; I’ve enjoyed examples (Scott Lynch) of fantasy worlds where the male:female power balance is a little more equitable than it ever has been in the real history of mankind.  The Fantasy worlds that I like better are the ones that have a bit more reality in them: real stakes, people who do wrong thing (a lot), consequences, people who won’t do the right thing, sometimes not even knowing what the right thing to do is, doing the right thing and still not getting the result you hoped for because: people.  

Maybe all that reality is incompatible with the basic premise of a Romance (as we currently define the term) being the meeting and falling in lust/love resulting in a happy ending and hinting at a happily ever after.

Maybe it’s also the length.  If you have a trilogy and everything is neatly tied up in the end and everyone lives more or less happily ever after, I get crabby.  (Maybe I’m just crabby if they have sex in the first book and then a lot after that, in minute and, frankly, repetitive detail, wasting my time while not actually doing anything to really advance the plot or the relationship.)  I’ve read without surliness some longer fantasy series that are pretty far over on the romance continuum, and lots of people are really miserable for significant amounts of time and some don’t get a happy ending (romantic or otherwise) and there’s a decent amount of real conflict and the kind of slow, staggering growth that feels genuine and possible.  I know some people don’t like slow-moving stuff in their Fantasy books, but I certainly feel I have more direct experience with messiness and time healing wounds and changing us.

I think maybe my ultimate problem with these books is that I like Fantasy that asks questions better than I like Fantasy that gives answers.  One of the things that I find compelling about Fantasy is that it can ask sideways questions that are relevant to me here and now while being set in a world that is not the one I live in.  I can think about issues in a Fantasy context that help me get to the heart of what I really think about my real world. I bristle at teachy, preachy heavy-handed moral lessons wrapped up neatly and tied with a bow maybe because I don’t work that way and neither does the world I live in.

I don’t think I have a problem with flat-out escapist Fantasy, either.  I guess maybe I figure if your Fantasy is going to have relationships, I’d rather see something that resembles a real relationship.  I’m not usually enjoying reading Fantasy for the kind of detached-from-reality Romantic fantasy present in this trilogy. I’d rather read something more complicated that gives me hope that change in my world full of real people is possible.

Then again, maybe it’s good for there to be Fantasy stories out there that don’t have questionable consent, rape, and sexual power (im)balances that (negatively) resemble real life.  Maybe it’s worth missing out on some of the other stuff that makes Fantasy enjoyable to me for the sake of having ideal examples and positive representation out there for people to imagine and immerse themselves in.  It’s fine for there to be stories out there that don’t resonate with me; maybe they bring hope to other people in a way that the darker, grittier stuff doesn’t.

To everyone their own.  Enjoy what you enjoy. Just don’t compare something that isn’t at all like Game of Thrones to GoT just to market your book.  It makes some of us pretty darn peevish. But thanks for giving my eyeballs a workout from all that rolling and my abs a workout from the laughing.  Take joy where you find it; there’s nothing wrong with that. : )

To Go or Not to Go

Dear friends, I have the opportunity to go on a 12-day choir tour to Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic this January.  I was initially really excited; then reality set in.  If you have a little time to read through my thought process and then get back to me to let me know whether you think I should go (+) or not go (-), I'd appreciate the input!

+ Holy cow!  Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic!  Castles, monasteries, cathedrals, singing beautiful music with a lovely, young choir!  Wow!  The last time I went was almost 10 years ago!

1. - And it was almost a total disaster.  I was at the lowest point in my health since my senior year of high school.  I was in constant pain, my asthma and allergies were rowdy, I wasn't getting more than a couple hours of sleep a night, and my immune system was a mess.  I was cold all the time, too exhausted to go exploring, and didn't really have anyone in the group that I was very close to.  It was miserable.  I ended up getting so sick I missed a performance and was too sick to even care.

2. + My health is much improved since then!  I don't get 6 sinus infections a year that last for a month!  My allergies and asthma don't lay me flat all the time!  I have meds to make sure I get at least 4 hours of sleep a night at least a couple times a week!  My pain is much more controlled, my thyroid is functioning again, and I am generally not nearly as miserable due to undiagnosed health problems!

3. - My health is improved because now that I have diagnoses and have gotten treatment, I have ways to deal with symptoms.  Most of these ways involve controlling things.  Controlling environmental allergies by staying indoors in filtered environments, controlling humidity, controlling what I sleep on, controlling my schedule to make sure there's enough time for rest and that I'm moving when I need to move, controlling my temperature, what and when I eat, how and where I exercise, what and when I drink, when I go to bed and wake up, and making good choices to not spike my progress.  I will have none of that control on this trip.  There is really no option to rest when I need to or control my schedule.  I will not be able to withdraw to get my parasympathetic nervous system working.  I could undo all the progress I've made in the past few years.  I could end up in pain all the time for months as a result.  I REALLY DON'T WANT (the very realistic) FEAR OF PAIN TO BE THE DECISION MAKER.  I also don't want some weird mid-life crisis "Pain won't control me" rebellion crap to be the decision maker either. 

4. + I would get to make beautiful music in beautiful places!

5. - Unless I got totally sick again!  How frustrating would that be!  To have the opportunity and not be able to enjoy it because of being sick.

6. + Seriously what are the chances I will ever even have this opportunity to make this kind of music in these kinds of places  ever again?!  I'm not getting younger, and there is no guarantee I won't be less able to go in the future.  Seize the day!

7. - I whacked my knee on a chair a few years ago and have had limited mobility ever since.  There are consequences for walking too much, not walking enough, walking for too long, using stairs, standing too long, sitting too long, walking on uneven ground, walking on slick or icy or frozen ground, losing my balance, slipping.  These things are all going to be required, and then I'll have to stand to sing concert-length performances.  (This has been a huge struggle, and it was only last year that I was able to actually do it.  I had to rest for months afterward to get my pain back under control, and the concert was somewhat torturous in terms of pain.)  Will I be miserable going to these beautiful places and not being able to explore them?  I'm a climb-all-the-staircases-in-the-castle and look-around-everywhere kind of person.  I can't do that anymore.  Will it feel frustrating and awful to only be able to look at the beauty I can't explore anymore?  If I have to sit on the sidelines in cafes on flat ground just looking at things I can't explore from a distance, will that by incredibly frustrating and leave me feeling lonely.  And what if some person feels like they need to keep me company and misses out (and annoys me while trying to pityingly keep me company when I just want to be alone with my misery)?

8. + I have the vacation time I would need for the first time ever.  And it's cheaper than going alone.  (I would spend this much money on the airfare and hotel alone.)

9. - I would likely still be going alone because I would have no close friends on the trip and would likely have to expend lots of my limited energy interacting politely with strangers waaay younger than me on the tour bus for long periods of time.  Or adults much wealthier than me with which I might have nothing more than a love of amateur music in common with.

10. + I can afford it.  Barely.  This is the first time in my adult life that I can say that.  Coincidence?

11. - I have the money.  But I also have appliances that are going to break and need replacing soon.  There are also lots of other things I could use the money on.

• more savings in case of medical or other emergencies
• contributions to my friends who are going to be medical missionaries in Africa
• larger gifts to charities doing great work to help the homeless, free slaves, support families of martyrs
• replace increasingly aggressive, leprous bathroom floor and get a soaker tub to continue to reduce my pain levels
• purchase a piece of beautiful art by Yudong Shen (https://www.facebook.com/MeiLinArtStudio), so I could add to the beauty in my home that I can enjoy every day (this thought makes me as delirious with joy as the thought of getting to sing in cathedrals and old churches)
• pay down student loan debt
• pay down car debt after I was rear-ended and had my car totaled earlier this year
• save up for Yellowstone trip with friends from college next summer (I'll have to pay for lodgings for myself that have AC/environmental filtering controls, so it'll be expensive)
• save up to take my sister to Japan to climb Mt. Fuji some day

and so much more!  There are always a number of choices about how to use money.  Huzzah.

So, those are some of my thoughts, and I have to make a decision soon.  If you have thoughts or advice or opinions about whether I should go or not go, please feel free to comment below or email/message me.  Thanks for your time and assistance and wisdom.  : D

Love,
TMIA

I am bad at being in the middle

The car was finally warm

I can see the warm building.

Between the two is frigid air and

icy, snowy, treacherous parking lot.

I know I need to be slow,

deliberately placing each booted foot

so as not to slip and wrench

the balance or fall and break it.

I know this in my bones and sinews.

I find myself walking faster anyway,

step wrong, feel pain of body

flying askew, slow down for a time,

but unconsciously always speed up

unless I think with every step, and that

may be impossible.  It’s dangerous here.

Picking Your Fantasy Poison

This is real now, folks.  I have a choice to make, and it's not an easy one.  I'm writing a story set in something that vaguely resembles European medieval times (albeit in a fantasy world), and I have to decide: do I try to make it more authentic to the actual European Middle Ages or do I totally create my own world? 

If I create my own world, it has to be from the ground up.  Everything about the religion of this empire?  All mine to have to explain.  Everything about the politics and history of it and the neighboring countries?  From the aether through my brain to the page or not at all.  Trying to find and balance all of that with the modern mindsets and worldviews of my characters?  ALL ON ME.  Even if I wanted or could afford research assistance, I couldn't USE it.  But I wouldn't HAVE to research in the first place.  I would just have to create things to fill the gaps out of nothing!  And if people hated it, it would feel like they personally hated my soul, which is uncomfortable.

Trying to make it more like the real Middle Ages certainly removes some imaginary burdens.  I can try to apply the more collectivist religious and social aspects of the time and place (after doing a lot of research).  Then I will still tick off the historians, and the new fantasists will hate  it unequivocally because it would have to try to depict things our culture does not endorse, and they see that as a cop out, not a skill.  Many of them believe that there is no value in a story that does not rewrite the past to make it more to our liking.  It IS fantasy after all.  But I have read some absolutely fantastic historical based stuff (Guy Gavriel Kay, Lois McMaster Bujold's 5 gods series, Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, etc.), and the things you can get done with it are fantastic! 

It's not as if I get out of work either way.  I just shift some responsibility, and I’m not sure one way is easier than another.  Or less fraught.  It's just something I'm thinking about because I was writing this poem about weird things I had used to mark my place in my Bible at some time or another, and there was this shiny notebook with some bits of a good story I liked and have contributed tantalizing pieces to over the years since I first dreamed it one day in college . . .

Anyway, I will not be distracted (again) by shiny things.  What was I going to say next?  Rats. Can't remember.  Anyway, advise wisely, friends.  Because if you advise certain options, you will likely be pestered with questions and plotline possibilities and the history and social customs of different countries in imaginary worlds until you're sick of it. 

No, seriously, what else was I going to say?  It was important, drat it all!  If you remember, let me know.