just sayin’.
I rarely do short pieces. But in the process of trying to get my head on straight after the Yvgenie edit while traveling, I’ve done a Foreigner short piece, involving Ilisidi, and involving her viewpoint. I haven’t got it up on CC yet, but it will be. It’s technically a novelette, but nobody actually knows what that is, ie, it’s shorter than a novella, longer than a short story…but—the dictionary that *doesn’t* reference the SFWA definition calls it a novella. Whatever it is…it’s coming.
Can’t wait!!!! One of my favorite characters. I want to be like her when/if I grow up.
Now that sounds like a fun piece.
The question is can we handle something from her point of view? Sun Tze comes to mind, along with Machiavelli.
That’s great news. I am watching for Yvgenie and now I have an Ilisidi story to anticipate. Thank you for a bright spot on a day of annoyances.
Reminder to self: drooling in public is embarrassing. So is blatant sycophancy, begging for hints, or other such childish behaviors.
Deep breath… :
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!! 😀
Ilisidi is one of my favorite sci-fi characters ever… and vignette from her POV sounds awesome.
‘Sidi certainly make your point about “strong characters”. I’ve only done Foreigner and Invader, but she’s definitely the strongest character I’ve met, to my way of thinking. Not saying some of the others are milksops, but the Ragi are so reserved! Kinda remine me of me, a touch of Asperger’s. (Yeah, I get the point that Ragi politics is something like a John LeCarre spy novel, e.g. “Tinker, Tailor”. Or the famous image of a graceful swimming swan.)
Back in the day when everyybody was carrying on about the Ring Trilogy, it was suggested I try “The Hobbitt” to see if I’d like it. Didn’t much, because the only character I found was Gollum. ‘Sidi’s a loveable old reprobate. 🙂
I hope the story will be available in print. Don’t do ‘e readers’ (or whatever they are called), and would feel really deprived if I couldn’t get hold of a story from the Atevi universe…
P.S. Would of course be prepared to pay for it. 🙂
Sapphire, you can read it as easily on your pc as you do this message.
Hopefully that would apply to a Mac as well?
Incidentally, have you ever thought of producing a signed limited edition of this novella? I’m thinking of just a simple printed out, A5-sized version, put together like a booklet (perhaps simply sewn through the centre), and with plain, unillustrated, softly coloured covers (not boards).
I’d go for something like that like a shot. 🙂
A printed limited edition could even have the simple plain covers made out of Japanese paper, which can be very fine. Could use the Ragi colours – red and black. (Gold might be a bit difficult?)
I just thought of this because I’ve been looking at a 1920s’ Liberty leaflet I have, which is about jade. It’s printed on some strange parchment-type paper.
With your knowledge about book binding, it wouldn’t be too difficult to produce a booklet that would be very simply made. I would love to own something like this, linked to my favourite SF story by my favourite SF author…
(happy dance)
Looking forward to it very much!
*happy dance*
!!!
I’m seeing a decided trend here….
Happy, happy dance (whoops ouch sorry kittens) — yippee!!
Happy dance…with kittehs and puppeh joining in….chaos ensues! 🙂 😀 😆
Hot ziggity ziggity zee!!!!
Well, it passed Jane. She approved. (We read to each other.) So…soon! I have to a) copyright it, b) get its cover made (not a long process: I’ve already got the image, just need to put letters on it), –and format it—THAT’s a long process, but not as long as for a whole novel, and there’s no table of contents.
Yippee! Hurray! Oh, that is most wonderful and marvelous news! (And Lady Ilisidi is a great character.)
Hah, I have seen so many “definitions” of novella/novelette, and of anything shorter than a short story, that I am just as happy with the word “novella” as “novelette,” or “flash fiction” or “short-short.” Personally, “novella” is the word I heard long before “novelette,” and so the latter sounds odd. By etymology and analogy, “novelette” would fit better, while “novella” seems like a variant on grammatical gender or euphony. (How’s that for being pedantic, wordy, and obscure? Hahahah.)
No matter what we call it, I am very happy to hear about it and will look forward to reading it with gusto. I am sure whatever Lady Ilisidi is up to will be well worth reading.
(And yes, there are plenty of ways to read an ebook document on the Macintosh, Windows, and Linux/Unix, thank heavens. I’ve been very surprised in reading lately, at how much like ordinary web pages, ebooks are underneath the hood. You just need to find a handy app or program. Nothing to be alarmed about, it’s quite nicely ordinary. Though producing an ebook is not so mundane, alas. Certainly, get an app/program and start enjoying ebooks on your computer. Absolutely. It’s as easy as viewing a web page or a word processor file.)
That said, I will always love printed books. But that’s a given for most readers and writers.
BlueCatShip: I’m even a bit vague about what an app actually is. I’m trying circumnavigate around the plethora of gadgets available, i.e. to keep life simple and productive, and avoid using them.
I see sooo many people fidgeting with iPhones and computers when travelling on the train that it really puts me off. I mean, the activity they are engaged in is not productive or useful in any way, e.g. grown men playing games on iPhones for an hour at a time. The whole electronic thing seems to be incredibly addictive (e.g. Facebook), and security seems to be an issue, if not now then in the future.
I love the design of Mac products, and use the computers, but have so far resisted the iPhone, iPad and iPod…
Sshhhhhhhh! The computer industry doesn’t want anybody to think like that. Computers, of the personal sort, have not turned out to be “labor saving devices”. (Only in industrial uses.) On the contrary, their main benefit is to allow people to do some tasks and analyses that would have been unthinkable manually. People have always found ways to fritter away their time unproductively one way or another, but that’s probable more of a personal statement.
Speaking of computer enabled addictions, my sister has become besotted with Ancestry.com. If she’s on the right lines, she’s found 16th Century ancestors near Ramsgate, in Kent, that left a named street–the meaning of which is at least debatable.
Back in the day when “science fiction” meant “magazine science fiction”, the novelette was the common term. It was applied to stories that were long enough to have some complexity but short enough to run several in one issue without crowding out everything but a few short stories. Everything longer than a novelette was either a serial of a complete-in-one-issue, “book length” novel. These novels were usually shorter than what we now think of as book-length but not so short that the reader felt cheated when some of them did later appear in a book of its own.
Sometimes a magazine would publish a “short novel”, but I did not see the term “novella” applied to a science fiction story until Galaxy doubled its page count any halved its publication frequency. It that point, mid-1960s as I recall, it began to offer complete-in-one-issue novellas. They were certainly longer than the usual novelette and (maybe) a little shorter than the “novels” that Startling Stories had offered a decade before.
Many of the early science fiction novels were created by stitching magazine novelettes together. Hawk Carse and the original Foundation Trilogy were created that way.
(An EPUB file is just a container for HTML; so, is that case an ebook is an ‘ordinary’ web page.)
I’m with you, Sapphire, on the phone-gadgets. I don’t see microprint, so even a regular cellphone is a trial involving finding my glasses.
OTOH, if you ever do get a reader, I’d recommend either a Kindle or Nook, if available in your area: they’re dead-easy to use, and you can ADJUST the print upward to actually readable, by means of this little key below the window. I prefer the one that’s got a keyboard under the window, because I use it to annotate a new piece. These devices can link to your computer by a USB cord, and when they are linked, your computer thinks they’re a flash drive (one of those little plug-in key things) and will happily treat it as an extra drive. So you can take an ordinary PDF file and drop it onto the reader. Kindle likes .mobi, .prc or .pdf files; Nook (and most European readers) likes .ePub or .pdf.
The advantage of these things is lightness. You can read LOTR without your hand getting tired, and you can read it in the bath or in bed. The weight is a few ounces, they use no cord except when charging, they can be read out in bright sun, and a page-turn is with a thumb button. They store more books than the average library ever has, and if you don’t get a color one, the power lasts for weeks. [We also found, on our trip, having lost one charger, that the Kindle cord can recharge my cellphone. 😉 ] Anyway, they are good, they’re light, and they’re real great for people who hate microprint, or who have arthritis or impairment in holding or using books; or who just don’t like their library banged up by taking books with them in a briefcase. I resisted them myself, but having used one in travel, I find it quite nice. I’ll love this tech LONG before I like my cellphone.
I will probably get a Kindle eventually because I do see its advantages for travelling, but I won’t get one until I really need it. When I’ve gone away for 2–3 weeks in the past I’ve tended to weigh down my luggage with at least eight books, which is too much. This is when a Kindle might be useful. However, for everyday purposes, I currently have a special small shoulder bag that is exactly the right size to take a paperback of the size of Explorer, plus the other things one needs for the day.
I am quite fussy about which books and authors I want to read – and the ones I do read I want to have as physical books, so a Kindle would not be sufficient for my purposes.
I used to have far more books than I do now, and weeded out the ones I would probably never want to read again. The ones that are left are my SF novels, which I do reread, and also large reference books mainly on archaeology, art history and aspects of cultures that interest me.
As for a mobile phone, mine is eight years old and usually switched off – I pride myself on having resisted the hype surrounding smartphones. 🙂 I would certainly not want to use one for reading a book (which someone I know has done), or for banking and other personal stuff (suspicious about security). When it comes to iPods, I am not enough of a music lover to feel the need to own one.
I’ve resisted the fancy phones (and having vocal problems, I’d never speak on the phone again if I could avoid it), but I finally gave into the allure of the iPod when by sister showed me how easy it was to use. When I realized this teensy thing could hold 100 cds, I was hooked. Being a fan of mobile music (still have my 25-yr-old walkman, for the radio), it was so wonderful to be able to go for a rapid-pace walk without a cd player bouncing around on my hip. I just finished digitizing my 300 cassette tapes in fact, although I had to resort to down-and-dirty to get it done (moving soon, gotta lighten the load), so the songs haven’t been split up yet, but that’s another two boxes I don’t have to bring. And CJ was one of the 3 writers whose books I intended to keep getting in hardcover until I realized I could have them instantly if I went the ebook route, rather than wait 6 days for it to be shipped. And now that I have to ditch books for the move, I’m really wishing I’d made the transition much sooner. With all my remaining books in storage, the ebooks will be the only ones I’ll have easy access to.
I’m in the camp that believes books will still be in use when the word kindle refers to fires again. (Wanna read the Book of Kells? No prob! Can you read my 8″ floppies? Eh? Can you?) One thing no electronic “reader”, going back to the 70’s, has ever given me is “random access”. I like the ability to simply flip back some estimated number of pages and reread something. (More rarely to skip over some passages.) Electronic search is useful for some things, keywords aren’t good enough, but no replacement. IMO.
E-books have resurrrected the old meaning of chapters for exactly that reason, to enable you to hit certain ‘near’ points within the book…to the extent that Jane is even contemplating chapter names. Doing a Table of Contents (TOC) was a technical challenge in a ‘scalable type’ book, where page count varies, but it now exists. Searching uses power: reading doesn’t; so the less page-back or page-forward you have to do, the longer the charge lasts.
E-books have also resurrected the possibility of frontispieces and internal illustrations—have done the one, but not the other. I always loved the color plates in beautifully-figured books in the old Carnegie library.
Paul, I hear you. I like being able to open the book to a remembered page too, as well as mark up the TOC of anthologies, so I can tell which stories were worth rereading, and I was pretty annoyed with Amazon for deciding that I wanted all my stuff on The Cloud when they ditched the Archive function, and I like being able to read and read when the power is out … but I have 1000 books. Crates and boxes and boxes and crates, and bookcases, all of which have to be schlepped up and down the stairs, again, and which are going to be in storage for god knows how long. If I actually had a permanent residence, it’d be one thing…
As a bonus, the iPad doesn’t collect dust bunnies. Or spiders. 🙂
P.S., Sorry, don’t have the capability to read the 8″ floppies, but then again, I transferred all my 3.5″ disks to zips, then to cds. Much like I transferred my vinyl to tape to digital, and my VHS to DVD. Time consuming, yes, and if I had more money I’d have just re-bought everything, but in the absence of money falling from the sky, ya do whatcha gotta do. I imagine in 20 years I’ll be converting everything from digital to holographic crystals or AI biofilms or entangled cosmic particles or something…
I remember seeing some of the 10″ floppies back in the early 1980s, and then there was something called a “Winchester” drive. Certainly nothing like Zephram Cochrane’s “warp drive” (from Star Trek). Eventually, they started using 8″ floppies, and I didn’t see my first 5-1/4″ until we bought our first PC at home. After that, we got a 3-1/2″ drive, and never looked back.
I suppose I’ll never be able to read some of those old disks that I have right now tucked away in my office.
CJ, I have the Sony eReader, this one has wi-fi capability, as well as 2 different SD card slots, to accommodate the larger and the smaller formats. Unfortunately, it’s only black-and-white, doesn’t have a lighted screen, and is probably obsolescent by now.
Reading your posts above reminds me of one other thing I don’t like about electronic gadgets – the need to continually upgrade them (at a fairly hefty cost when you are talking about things like Macs). Then when you upgrade a gadget you find that programs associated with it also need to be upgraded at further cost. Fine for the manufacturer, but not so good for the consumer.
You don’t get that with a physical book…
Oh, don’t assume it’s out of date and won’t work! My husband has had a Sony for years and still reads on it. My Nook is several years old and while they’ve come out with new versions, it still works fine.