August 31 - On This Day!

 Every now and then, I post about events and birthdays on a date, and try to include, if possible, writers and books. There aren’t too many that fit that on this date, but I’ve chosen some of interest, for your enjoyment. I hope you like them!  

Things That Happened on August 31

1422 - Henry V, that English warrior king, dies of dysentery, leaving his baby son to succeed him. He became Henry VI, but inherited some craziness through his mother, Catherine of France, and she, in her turn, married Owen Tudor, and we all know what happened as a result. Still, Shakespeare got some inspiration from it! I’m still catching up with his history plays via The Hollow Crown. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (Henry VI, Part 2) 

HENRY V. Public domain

1897 - Thomas Edison patents the world’s first film projector, the Kinetoscope. Think of all the creativity that has been possible due to this invention! 

Public domain

And a hundred years later, on this day, Princess Diana, her boyfriend  Dodi Fayed and their driver, Henri Paul, all died in a car crash in Paris. Who can remember where they were when they heard? I do! I was at home, vacuuming. 

2006 - the famous Edvard Munch painting, The Scream, stolen August 24 in 2006, was recovered by Norwegian police. Thank goodness for that! 

Some Birthdays On This Day

12 CE, that dreadful, murdering Roman Emperor Caligula. The role was played by John Hurt in I, Claudius, and wasn’t he evil! 

1741, Jean-Paul-Egide Martini, a French composer who did music for Marie Antoinette and Napoleon! Best known for Plaisir D’Amour, that break-up song. 

1834, Amilcare Ponchielli. Composer. You will certainly know him for one tune, Dance Of The Hours. 

1894, Albert Facey, an Australian man who wrote his memoir, A Fortunate Life, which became a huge bestseller, a TV mini series and a play. The book was a delight and showed that an ordinary person had something to say that other people would want to hear. Among other things, he fought in the Great War, and received a pair of socks knitted by a young woman he would later meet and marry. If you ever get a chance to read the book, do so! 

I’m going to sneak in one more, born on August 30, as I didn’t post about her yesterday. In 1797, on this day, was born Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, known as the mother of science fiction. Her mother was the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. We all know the story about the house party attended by two poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, and two unknowns, our heroine Mary and a doctor, John Polidori, and the challenge they took, to write a “ghost story”. Ironically, it was the two newbies who created classics while the professional poets didn’t. Polidori wrote The Vampyre, which wasn’t the first vampire novel, but did create the first sexy vampire, Lord Ruthven. You can get both of these books on Project Gutenberg.

Feast day/holiday

August 31 is the feast day of Joseph of Arimathea, who is connected with the Holy Grail, and was supposed to have come to England, where he planted his staff, which blossomed.

He is the patron saint of undertakers and funeral directors, I’m guessing because he was the one who organised the burial of Jesus. 

Tomorrow is the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere, where I live. I will be playing the first movement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, to celebrate. 

Have a great season, whether it’s spring or autumn! 

Just Finished Reading… Scandal In Babylon by Barbara Hambly. Edinburgh, Severn House, 2021

 I have been reading Barbara Hambly’s books for many years, starting with a gorgeous fantasy novel, Dragonsbane. Next I read the Darwath trilogy, which had such a nice twist at the end, then the wonderful portal fantasy series, the Windrose Chronicles, which she is still writing in the form of self published novellas, novelettes and short stories. Her wizard hero, Antryg Windrose, is basically the Doctor, something she cheerfully admits - the Tom Baker Doctor, if you can imagine him wearing cheap jewellery instead of a scarf, and settling down with his computer specialist Companion after the Council of Timelords nearly succeeds in killing him.

But she has done a lot more than fantasy, including horror fiction and historical crime fiction. The James Asher vampire series is still going. 

My favourite of her historical crime fiction so far are the Benjamin January novels, set in New Orleans in the 1839s/40s, seen from the viewpoint of a free African American surgeon and musician who solves crime. These novels have never gone downhill after 18 novels and several short stories. 

So, I know she can write whodunnits set in earlier eras. I snatched this one off Apple Books as soon as I learned it was out. Historical murder mystery? By Barbara Hambly? Yes, please! 

And yes, it was good fun. It was set in Hollywood in 1924, seen from the viewpoint of Emma Blackstone, a scholarly British woman, widowed when her American husband was killed in the Great War and brought to the US by his glamorous sister Kitty, a silent movie star. There, she works as a scenarist for the movie her sister- in-law is acting in, balances her cheque books, pays the bills and looks after Kitty’s three adorable Pekinese dogs.

Sound familiar? If it does, you have probably read this author’s novel Bride Of  The Rat God, which has pretty much the same characters with different names, except the dogs, which have the same names, quite deliberately. The main difference is that there aren’t any fantasy elements in this one. It is a straight whodunnit, in which Kitty’s unpleasant ex-husband is murdered in her dressing-room while waiting to have a Word with her, possibly involving blackmail. And guess who is the obvious suspect? 

 It seems this will be the first in a series called Silver Screen Historical Mysteries. I have no idea whether the next novel will feature the same characters, but I will be reading.  

Unfortunately, Bride Of The Rat God, a delightful novel, seems to be out of print, though it’s still available in audiobook. There is a sequel, short story “Castle of Horror”, which is available in ebook, one of the self published stories the author has been posting online. But you don’t need to have read Bride Of The Rat God to enjoy this new novel. There is the same flavour of fun and colourful cinema history, with a different focus. 

Very much recommended and available in ebook or print, in all the usual places. 

Of Fan Fiction And Villains

Many years ago I had a friend who was into fictional bad guys. She was writing fan fiction with heroes such as Darth Vader and Dracula. She lost interest in Star Wars when she found out that Vader was Luke’s father - no doubt because this put him on a possible redemption arc(it did). But her fanfic Vader was not horrible. The Sith were a people rather than a part of the Dark side of the Force(in all fairness that hadn’t been established yet) and his armour was a cultural thing, not something keeping him alive. He became a matriarchal Queen’s lover, only possible because he could get out of his armour.

Dracula, who couldn’t really get a redemptive arc, nevertheless wasn’t too horrible and got a job as a crewman on the Enterprise. He didn’t murder anyone, which might have caused him problems, just took a sip of blood now and then from female crew, who didn’t know he was a vampire and thought he was just cuddling them. Better still, he got to sleep and work at the same time as everyone else because he was in space. 

You might have noticed that her villains were not really villains any more by the time she finished with them? Nevertheless, her fan fiction was great fun. I still have those fanzines on my shelves and wouldn’t part with them.

I have lost track of this friend, who doesn’t even appear in a Google search any more, but I can’t help suspecting she would not be too keen on the fact that these days everyone seems to be into baddies. It’s more fun when you get to be a fan of Darth Vader while everyone else is into Luke, right? 

Another friend was writing fan fiction about Space Commander Travis, the villain of Blake’s 7, who had done some dreadful things, but was, all the same, a tragic figure.

The thing is, there are baddies and baddies. Travis is all very well as he was, despite all, respected and cared for by his men, even in canon. But I can’t imagine anyone writing fanfic from the viewpoint of Sauron, can you? That would take some doing! And Sauron was, once, more than a red eye in the sky…. 

His predecessor, Morgoth, was not a team player from the start, let’s face it. He was singing his own tune while the rest of the Valar were doing a celestial chorus. (See the opening of The Silmarillion). I suppose this is easier to argue about. “He is an individual! He is different from all those Valar sheep!” But I suspect no one has written any Morgoth fan fiction either. He is just too prone to being disgusting and living in horrible places.

I’d just like to slip in here that I can’t understand why Dark Lords live in such dreadful places. Why would you bother gaining power if you have to live in Mordor?  In fact, British SF writer Peter Hamilton wrote a children’s novel in which the Dark Lord’s brother gets fed up with it all and leaves the dark land to live in a posh London flat, where the children find him watching football on a big screen TV. 

Villains now have a tragic back story or at least have a possibility of redemption. Even the Marvel villain Thanos thinks he is the good guy(and in the animated series What If…? he is a good guy, a likeable member of the reformed Ravagers crew, who still thinks the genocide thing is a good idea, but has been talked out of doing it)

I suppose the question is, can you see it from their viewpoint? In one of my published short stories, “Five Ways To Start A War”(in the anthology Light Touchpaper, Stand Clear, published by Peggy Bright Books)* part of the story is seen from the viewpoint of Eris, the Greek goddess of mischief, sister of the war god Ares. Eris is the only god not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis(as in the Greek myth) - with good reason, as she starts trouble wherever she goes. She argues that it’s her job to cause trouble. So, she causes trouble anyway, with that golden apple marked “For the most beautiful” which more or less causes the Trojan War. I like to think that, in this story at least, there can be a little bit of sympathy for her. After all, Athena and Hera don’t have to do what they do when Aphrodite wins the apple - and Hera, especially, makes sure the war happens even when Helen refuses to run off with Paris. All Eris does is show she knows the personalities of the three goddesses and use that.

Well, that’s my story, anyway. But I don’t think anyone would write Eris fan fiction, not even me! 

In Star Trek fandom, the Klingons were favourites and got their fanfic, even when they were supposed to be the baddies, well before we got to meet Worf and realise they were just people, good and bad. I treasure a badge I bought years ago, at a convention, which read “Kill A Klingon For Christ”, which I wore to annoy my friends who were so terribly serious about it all. (Good grief, I just Googled that in case there was a photo, and found a web site “Klingons for Jesus”! Talk about serious!)

So why do people write villain fan fiction at all? 

I suspect it’s female fans who just want to hug (male) villains with tragic pasts and help them be better, and if they suffer, great! It always has been. Hurt/comfort fiction has been a thing ever since I can remember, and I have been reading fan fiction since the 1970s, and wrote it for a long time(never hurt/comfort, which made me cringe). Hurt/comfort is where two characters are put into a horrible situation and one of them looks after the other, who is suffering from bad wounds from which he - usually a he - may or may not recover. I’ve heard one writer at the Melbourne Writers Festival talk about her hurt/comfort fantasy novel, so it’s not only fan fiction. 

I have recently visited fanfiction.net out of curiosity and found 161 stories based on the Loki series, only a couple of months since its release, and guess what? At least half,  judging by the blurbs, were hurt/comfort, the rest were romances. 

Bless the fans! 

*If you are interested in this anthology the web site is selling the print edition discounted as a lockdown special.  http://peggybrightbooks.com/new/ or you can buy it in Kindle. https://www.amazon.com.au/Light-Touch-Paper-Stand-Clear-ebook/dp/B00AQBE036

Just Finished Reading… From Krakow To Krypton: Jews And Comic Books by Arie Kaplan.Jewish Publication Society, 2008

 

This book is the main reason I’m into Marvel these days, trying to catch up with the films since it’s a bit late to catch up with the comic books it mentions. As a child, about the only comics I got to read were DC’s Superman - with a friend, because my mother wouldn’t let me read comics at home.

I had to order it on line from overseas, but don’t regret the effort. It’s a detailed history of US comics and the role Jewish artists and writers played in it. I did know about some Jewish comic book creators - for example, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the two Jewish boys who created Superman, and Rene Goscinny, the French writer of the Asterix comics. 

What I didn’t know was that American Jewish artists pretty much founded the US comics industry, when antisemitism prevented them getting jobs in commercial art. Oh, there were comic books around, but they were mostly compilations of newspaper comic strips, nothing newly published and certainly not new characters and stories. 

The story starts early in the 20th century and goes right through to the present day, including Neil Gaiman and Sandman(okay, he is British, not American, but he is Jewish). 

The Jewish illustrators and writers often changed their names. You probably know about Stan Lee(changed from Lieber), but there were quite a few others, such as Jack Kirby(changed from Kurtzberg). I’ll leave you here with the Wikipedia entry for those characters created by Kirby, with others such as Stan Lee and Joe Simon(another Jew, born as Hymie Simon). 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Characters_created_by_Jack_Kirby

If you are a comics fan or watch the movies,you will recognise quite a few of the character names. 

Did you know the satirical Mad Magazine was created by Jewish cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman? I didn’t till I read this book. 

It’s pretty thorough, including underground comic books, and graphic novels such as the classic Maus - which was once on the Year 12 curriculum at my school, by the way.  

It also discusses Marvel and DC characters whom the authors considered Jewish, though they only occasionally had a story where the character said they were. 

The most obvious one is Magneto(X Men) who was a Jewish character, no question about it, but there are others who are mentioned in the book, which also includes snippets of the comics. 

The book is colourful and entertaining, full of fascinating information I really didn’t know before. 

Well worth ordering! It’s easier to buy in ebook than print at the moment, both on Kindle and Apple Books, but there are some print copies available from Book Depository. 

There are other books on this subject, and I have a few I’m still reading, so I will get back to you with more reviews when I finish them. 

So, what do you think, readers? Any comic book fans out there? 

Alan Baxter - A Guest Post!

 Today’s guest post is by award-winning Aussie horror writer Alan Baxter. Alan is one of a lot of Australian spec fic authors who  find their inspiration in our sunburnt country and don’t need to set their stories in the US or Europe. 

Anyway, I’ll let Alan tell you all about it himself - welcome to The Great Raven, Alan! Take it away! 

Isn’t There Enough Weirdness?

Okay, let’s get this out of the way immediately. The title of this piece is clickbait and the answer is obviously no. There can never be enough weirdness. And frankly, in this current world, more weirdness can only be a good thing.

But I get questions like this a lot. Along with “Why do you write such horrible stuff?” which I’ve answered elsewhere. (And for the record, it’s not horrible – it’s honest.) But the weird? Ah, now that’s something different. I’ve always been absolutely fascinated with just how weird and bizarre real life can be. The number of times I’ve seen a news item or an article and said, “If I wrote that into a story, every editor in the land would tell me it’s too on the nose and I’d have to change it.” I think it was Neil Gaiman who said (and I paraphrase), “The trouble with fiction as opposed to real life is that people want their fiction to make sense.” But make it weird and you have a lot of leeway.

Weird in this sense harks back to the kind of strange fantasy of H P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard, and even before. It’s that sense of non-human, of irrational, of cosmic bigger-than-us human insignificance. There’s a lot of horror that deals with stuff built from an Abrahamic mould. And other cultures draw on their own religious myths. There’s also old folk-horror and nature-horror, which are some of the earliest myths in most cultures. These bleed into each other and have enormous scope, and people still write wonderful stories using those themes to this day. I do as well sometimes. But there’s something less restrained in the horror that assumes all of that has limitations, and looks beyond it.

Every brand of horror and fantasy has its place and they’re all fabulous. But I’ve been drifting further away over recent years and looking to horrors beyond our mortal and even galactic boundaries. We are but dust in the greater cosmos, and isn’t that the greatest horror of all?

But that in itself is a horror story told and finished. We are nothing and everything is pointless. It’s far too nihilistic, and on a human level, despite our insignificance in the greater universe, we are far from insignificant to each other. We are as important to each other as it’s possible to be. Kindness is the greatest human attribute, in my opinion. We need to look after ourselves and each other and the world around us. It’s the confluence of those two things that makes cosmic horror and the weird so appealing to me.

In the face absolute nihilism, some people will prey on others with no guilt. Other people, the vast majority thankfully, will try to look out for each other. I explore those themes a lot in my stories. Recently I wanted to create a place I could return to again and again that would give me somewhere to play. A place so soaked in cosmic indifference, yet so intensely personal, that all kinds of weirdness could play out. So I created the isolated Australian harbour town of Gulpepper, called by locals The Gulp, as it has a habit of swallowing people. When reviewers for the first volume of Tales From The Gulp said things like “Baxter has found his Castle Rock”, I was happy. Because that’s what this is supposed to be for me. This region, with The Gulp nestled away in the bush by the ocean, and the towns of Monkton and Enden about half an hour’s drive away north and south, is a wonderful sandbox for me to make castles and knock them down. It’s somewhere for me to explore the Weird on a deeply human level, with people just like you and me. Well, some of them are really quite different, but most are just like you and me.

The first volume of Tales From The Gulp is out and I’m working on the second set of stories. I’ve also recently finished the first draft of a novel set nearby. There is so much scope to the weird. There’s never enough. I hope you’ll come along with me for the ride.

Thanks, Alan, for sharing your thoughts on weird fiction, and your new book!

If you want to buy it either in ebook or print, it’s readily available on Amazon. I have just downloaded my own copy from Apple Books, and am looking forward to reading it! 

Here is a link to the Gulp page on Alan’s website.

 https://www.alanbaxteronline.com/my-books/the-gulp/

Just Finished Reading..Beowulf, Translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

 

I first read this poem when I was studying English at university. The one I read was a Penguin prose translation. It was old even then. I also have a copy of Tolkien’s translation. 

Beowulf was written in Old English,  some time in the eighth century.  Old English is like German - I did a semester of it, and my knowledge of Yiddish helped! 

This latest translation, published recently, is in verse. It has been the subject of a lot of enthusiastic discussion on line, for its modern language, so I bought it earlier this year, but hadn’t got around to finishing it when it appeared on this year’s Hugo Award shortlist. I decided I’d better finish reading it, for that reason. 

I have now read it and have to say I’m impressed. 

You may know the story. King Hrothgar builds a mead hall for himself and his warriors. Night after night they party until a creature called Grendel comes calling from the fens where he lives, and helps himself to Hrothgar’s men, including a dear friend of the king’s. 

A party of Geatish warriors, led by the hero, Beowulf, arrives to help. That night, Beowulf stays awake and fights the invader, ripping off his arm and sending him running, dying, back to his home in the fens. 

Grendel has a mother, just as scary as her son, even more so. She comes to avenge her son and Beowulf chases her back to her underwater hall where she too dies at his hands. 

But there is a second part to the story. Years later, when Beowulf is old and a king himself, a dragon comes ravaging the land after a cup is stolen from its hoard. Beowulf fights it, knowing that he can’t win, even if he kills it. 

He is right. 

The poem has a famous beginning, “Hwaet! We Gardena in geardagum…” Well, after that you need an Old English keyboard. But that first word has been the subject of much discussion over the years, usually translated as “Listen!” Tolkien translated it as “Lo!” 

However it is translated, Hwaet! definitely sounds intended to shut up party goers in a noisy hall. 

Maria Headley begins with “Bro!” a word she uses quite often in the rest of the text, but it absolutely works as a beginning. 

She uses many contemporary words, quite deliberately, including  a cheeky line including “piles of preciouses”. 

All the same, the verse is alliterative like the original. Despite the modern words, I felt as if I was reading the real thing; it can be read aloud to a noisy room full of warriors. 

The translator admires Grendel’s mother, a warrior woman rather than just a monstrous creature like her son, and it shows. Headley didn’t just translate the poem, she made it a work of art in its own right, so I understand why it is up for an award for writing. 

If you haven’t read this version, I do recommend it. It’s easily available in ebook if you want to buy and download it right away - or get your library to buy a copy. I bought mine in Apple Books, but you can get a print copy in all the usual places.

Just Finished Reading… The Gospel Of Loki and The Testament Of Loki by Joanne Harris

 I was looking on Apple Books for Honeycomb, the latest book by Joanne Harris, best known as the author of that gentle novel Chocolat, when I discovered she has also written some quirky fantasy novels in a series called Runes. The premise is that, after  Ragnarok, among other things, the runes that were so important for magic, or glam as it’s called in this series, are scattered through the alternative Worlds. Some of the Norse gods managed to survive it and escape from their prisons in the Netherworld, although there are problems for them. Children in one world are born with rune marks. 

After establishing that Honeycomb was too big a download for now, I couldn’t resist reading the two prequels to the main series, The Gospel of Loki and The Testament Of Loki, both about the Norse myths as seen from the viewpoint of our favourite trickster god. 

Or, rather, not really a god, as such. This Loki is originally a fire demon, coming from Chaos into a world based on Order. He is brought by Odin(known as the General or the Old Man), who needs his particular skills, and puts a rune on to Loki’s arm, so he can’t return to Chaos without its ruler, Surt, knowing where he has been and punishing him horribly. 

He enjoys all the pleasures of his new home, though he never does get his own hall, just a small back room in Asgard, but no matter how many times he saves the day through his intelligence and quick wits, he is never considered “one of us”. 

Eventually there is a “last straw” moment, when he realises finally that he will never be accepted, that even the one he believed would protect him has betrayed him, and decides to get his revenge.

Really, you can see why he has done all those dreadful things, including the killing of Baldur. 

 If you like Crowley from Good Omens, you should like this version of Loki.

In the sequel, Loki, who has been chained up in the Netherworld next to his son, the Midgard Serpent, works out how to escape, with the giant snake’s help, and finds himself popping out of a computer game into the body of Jumps, a teenage girl in our world. 

Jumps is not impressed to find herself sharing a mind and body with a Norse god, although she might not have minded so much if it was Thor. (She has been watching too many movies).

However, she hasn’t much choice and Loki really can’t leave just yet. He is unbodied, for one thing. And some scary things will happen if he and his host don’t stop them. 

There is an actual character arc in this book. Although Loki does understandably want to save his own skin, once he has one, he finds himself, much to his horror, “corrupted” with caring for his host. Jumps has some big problems in her life. She is bullied. She has an eating disorder. She has been terrified at coming out as gay.

Loki, while in her body, does what he can to fix these issues. How embarrassing! But he does it all in a trickster way, so not sentimentally.

And they have an adventure saving the world(or Worlds) from some of Loki’s old antagonists…

I read these two novels in about three days and am looking forward to reading the main sequence of this series, after the sequel to Chocolat. I got them in Apple Books, though you should be able to find them in print or Kindle.

 

Norse Myths And Marvel

 I've been re-reading Neil Gaiman's delightfully chatty book Norse Mythology on a whim. I'd forgotten how good it is. It's interesting to read in his introduction that we don't have many Norse myths left. Most of them disappeared with the arrival of Christianity. We have the names of many gods, but not their stories. This is very sad, and I have the sinking feeling. I know all the available ones. There are far more Greek myths, but even those have many missing plays, since the fire at the Great Library of Alexandria. 

About all I can do now, for the Norse myths, is plunge myself into the Eddas instead of the modern re-tellings. 

Norse Goddess Idun, artist James Doyle Penrose

Meanwhile, there are the definitely not mythical Norse gods of the Marvel universe. I missed those comics as a child, because my mother thought comics were unworthy reading and wouldn't let me have any. I did get to read the Superman comics, as a friend of mine had those and we read them together. Amazing what I learned from them, by the way. A Superboy comic referred to the Herodotus “Egyptian Cinderella” story(young Clark Kent cheats on his history exam by time traveling…). Another told me the real full name of Nero. 

But I missed most of them. And I'm just catching up with the Marvel films, which assume you are a fan of the comics. You can enjoy them without having read the originals, but they do make references to things that happened in the comics, or characters who appeared there. 

Still, I've been watching, bingeing on the Marvel movies and recently watched the six part TV series Loki . 

As someone who has read the myths, I'm intrigued at the comics versions of the characters. Mythical Odin is rather scary, the god of the gallows, who rides an eight legged horse, Sleipnir, whose eight legs suggest the legs of four people carrying a bier. There were human sacrifices made to him, by hanging. Not a nice god.

Mr Wednesday in Gaiman's American Gods is not nice either. He manipulates everyone, including the hero, Shadow Moon, whose loyalty he definitely doesn't deserve. But he is pretty similar to his mythological original.

Marvel Universe Odin is dignified and wise; the worst you could say of him, really, is that he is guilty of bad parenting. There are no slain warriors feasting in his hall as Asgard has ordinary citizens as well as gods. They do have Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge, and the god Heimdall does keep a watch over it. 

Mythological Thor is kind, but not too bright, and drives around in a cart pulled by goats which he can slaughter for dinner every night, then restore next day. I assume that the rumble of the wheels sounds like thunder.

If something goes wrong, he either decides it's the fault of trickster god Loki, or he asks Loki for help. Actually, he is usually right when he figures it's Loki's fault. 

You do have to wonder how Thor sleeps so soundly when his wife Sif's hair is plucked out during the night, leaving her bald(you have to wonder, even more, how she sleeps through it!). That time it is Loki, who just thought it was funny. But Thor also sleeps through having his hammer, Mjolnir, stolen by a giant(this despite those high walls and Heimdall) and asks Loki for help, which he gives. That is the hilarious story of Thor's “wedding” where the thunder god disguises himself as the beautiful goddess Freya to get back his hammer, and lets Loki do all the talking while he consumes all the food at the wedding feast.

Marvel Thor is a lot smarter than his Norse original, and loves his trickster foster brother no matter what dreadful things he does. He does get to do some humorous scenes, but he is not dumb.

And then there is Loki, the trickster. He is not one of the Aesir, but a giant. He's the father, by a giantess, of three scary children, Hel the goddess of the underworld, the Fenris Wolf which will one day play a part in Ragnarok, and the Midgard Serpent, which coils around the world and is nearly caught by Thor when he goes fishing one day. He is the mother(yes, mother!) of Odin's horse Sleipnir    , due to one of his tricks that got the gods a huge protective wall.   He also has two normal sons by his wife, Sigyn. 

The other gods don't seem to like him much, but he fixes things for them, as much as he causes trouble, because he is the brains of the family. Unfortunately for him, he goes one step too far by playing one prank too many, causing the death of Baldur, a son of Frigg and Odin, and ends up in a sort of Prometheus snake situation, with dripping venom instead of that eagle. His loyal wife stays with him to keep the venom off his face. Nice to know someone loves him.

The Marvel Loki is recognisable but different. You can certainly him imagine doing some of his original's pranks, and there is a reference to Sif's hair(“I thought it was funny!” he protests), but not the same person. This Loki is a frost giant adopted by Odin and Frigga as a baby, but they don't tell him till he is well into adulthood. He starts off as a villain who has a big narcissism problem and wants to rule the world, then moves to anti hero and finally hero, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. 

But even as villain, he still has the same cheeky trickster charm as his original, which has gained him a lot of fans. Wherever he arrives, he introduces himself: “I am Loki, the bad guy.” 

And the last few weeks I have followed the streaming series Loki, in which we see things from his viewpoint, he finally makes a friend who believes he can improve instead of just being the character that allows the heroes to be their best, and has an impressive character arc that makes viewers cheer for him and weep when he hurts. Oh, and he falls in love, but she is another version of himself from a different timeline… talk about narcissism! She is, however, a badly hurt woman who has spent most of her life, from childhood, on the run from an organization that wants to kill her.

It was very well written. One of the script writers was on Twitter, explaining the thinking behind what the team wrote. Unfortunately   there were some entitled fans who need to get a life abusing him for the ending. I've been in SF fandom long enough to know that people like this are always around. 

There is a solution to not liking what you get, and it isn't being abusive to the authors. Fan fiction makes you feel much better and you can share it with others who think the same way. Goodness knows, there are plenty of fan fiction sites. 

It's wonderful to see what storytelling can emerge from mythology.

A Brief Info Post - Moving On From Feedburner

 Just a brief information post, for my followers. As you know, if you have a Blogger blog, Google is switching off Feedburner, which I didn’t even know I was using. When I went to the Feedburner site, I discovered that I have far more followers than appear here; most are following by email. 

Anyway, I had no idea how to fix it. The instructions from Google were unhelpful. 

When I got an email from follow.it offering to help set up an account with them to keep my list going, I was suspicious, but then saw a site I subscribe to, the Archaeology Network, was now using it without problem. I checked it out and found I already had an account. Not sure how, I must have registered when someone else’s site I wanted to follow had it. But it did simplify things, so I did the fiddly stuff with the nice lady from follow.it, and when you get my emails for new posts the emails will have that on them. It’s free, though has a premium version I don’t need. What the heck, why not? 

And now I know I have over 1300 followers! Yay! See you next post. 

Angela Armstrong: A Guest Post!

 

Today’s guest post is by Kiwi author Angela Armstrong, who has a new book coming out soon, but who has had to write it under very difficult conditions! I’ll let her tell you herself ,  but I really must take off my hat to someone who didn’t let the pandemic or lack of a proper home deter her from getting the book done. Take it away, Angela! 

In a world like ours, Mystics once ruled the night. Well, so long as they were men.

On Ash’s day of naming, she chose the Mystic path nonetheless. The same illusions that garner gasps of awe from the lamp-lit crowds earn her scorn from the basilica.

There is only one way forward: a perilous quest -- earn the Queen’s Seal, a badge of honour, and immunity.

She’ll simply have to avoid being hanged, burned or drowned first.

Our family began house-sitting as a way to explore New Zealand and different versions of “living a beautiful life.”  Home-schooling and writing, as lifestyle choices, offered us the flexibility, and my kids’ love for animals is never satiated, so we got hooked, hard.  We’d bottle-feed lambs for a week near paradisiacal sounds or walk dogs on picturesque beaches, and enjoy beautiful lodging in return, and then we’d go home to Dunedin.

As time went on, we saw longer house-sit opportunities advertised, and an idea began to take root.  When a year-long house-sit in Northland came up, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “This is it.  It’s time to leave.”  We consulted the kids, and they agreed.  Our family geared up for our next grand adventure – starting over in the winterless North after decades in the deep South. First: to be chosen for The Big Sit.

I flew up first to be interviewed by the house-owners, who had a selection of eager candidates to consider.  I flew back to deliver the news they’d picked us – we could spend a year living rent-free looking for where we wanted to buy our next home, and I could really write this book I’d started! 

That’s how we ended up selling all of our furniture and stacking our material world into a shipping container and saying goodbye to a city we loved.

While the house-owners prepared for their motorcycle trip through Russia, I lamented sliding my beloved manuscript of The Unflinching Ash to the backburner with the promise: I’ll be back.  To sour the pot, the editor I’d been working with from a major publishing house was made redundant in a restructure, and I wasn’t sure if the agent I’d secured since was a great match.  But I’d figure all that out after we were settled in the year-long sit.  I’d work on the book in earnest once I had routines on my side.  Once all the moving was over, I’d secure its publication.  Once everything was some semblance of normal.  (Foreshadowing is impossible these days, isn’t it? Because we all know where this is going).

We began our meandering road trip North, our possessions unloaded and waiting in the garage of our home-to-be.  

But we never moved into that house, because New Zealand locked down, and the exiting home-owners bound for Russia with it.  We found ourselves at the opposite end of the country without a house and without an immediate plan.  Since that fateful day when all was upturned, we’ve moved from temporary accommodation to house-sit, to house-sit, to house-sit.  Then we managed to buy a section, only to see a skills- and supply-shortage lead to our Plan B (Build a Modest Home Earlier Than Planned) sputter and stall. We haven’t even broken ground.  We’re still house-surfing.  The potential for panic like Poppy Nwosu described in her excellent guest post – has been real.

A month or so into riding out this spontaneous contingency wave, I realised The Unflinching Ash was still a draft, still on the backburner, and my agent wasn’t going to the Bologna Book Fair for the first time in decades.  As another guest-poster put it so well, things in publishing were looking grim.

It hit me that I couldn’t wait for the perfect conditions to reclaim writing, and that no one was going to slide this pot back onto the heat but me. That meant I had to make writing work while we were homeless – or gypsies, if you want to go gently with the connotations.  

So I woke early, and I wrote.  I dictated scenes while I did other people’s chores in other people’s homes.  The story I’d sketched in Dunedin was slowly filled in, in other people’s living rooms and in other people’s offices.  I typed at improvised standing desks in an array of kitchens, in libraries all across Northland, in loggias and hallways. I’m typing this guest post now from someone else’s house.  I don’t have a home, let alone an office.  I have surroundings and schedules that constantly change.  But nothing is guaranteed right now, is it? So I’m not waiting. 

Often when people ask, “Do you know where you’ll be next month?”  I answer, “Nope,” or “For some of it.”  But what I can say is: Wherever it is, I’ll be writing.  

The Unflinching Ash (the book I finished as a nomad) is available for pre-order now.  

Multiple formats release 12 July.  

Paperbacks will land on Book Depository and in bookstores soon after.