It’s been crazy…but we’re making progress. We’ve done a couple of podcasts for Defiance, and you can catch at least one now, maybe the other one a little later, on YouTube. Just google cj cherryh and/or jane fancher and you’ll see things turn up.
Re the yellow plane, well, you know…
The book is dedicated to Chip Fancher, Jane’s brother, who was our technical advisor on the plane, and who left us unexpectedly this August, of age and ailments, so he never got the surprise we hoped to give. Chip was quite an amazing guy: cerebral palsy, which got worse as he got older, and finally may have contributed…etc. It never stopped him. His dad owned a flight school and Chip both ferried planes and gave instruction—his reach might falter in the motion, but his hand never did; and he was an excellent pilot. We’d sit in his living room and he and Jane would reminisce about flights past; and old times; and planes…
One of my favorites was the Stearman, which the plane on the cover is….because we could. You’ll come to know it. Quite a remarkable plane. There are YouTube videos of flying and landing it…which has some unusual elements.
Chip knew planes up one side and down another. Jane herself can fly—never got her license, but as she says, she thinks she could get your average small plane up into the air and back on the runway in one piece. We studied navigation, communication, we went to an airshow and got up close and personal…we so wanted to present the book to Chip, but that wasn’t to be…when we penned the dedication, we knew that.
It’s been a while, now. All fond memories. A real great guy, who never let nature’s rough deal slow him down.
When it came to the cover, of course it’s the same artist…and we got the cover sketch and saw—a beautifully designed alien version of a red plane.
No, no, no, we cried, ensemble. And contacted the artist and said—nope, Todd, it’s YELLOW. Has to be yellow. Has to be a Stearman 75. Every detail on it is a Stearman 75.
Artists generally hate yellow. It’s a difficult color to work into a painting—for balance of intensity transparency, tone, etc…
Yellow, he said.
Yellow, we said.
So, well, the whole color palette and balance had to rebalance. He really worked on that.
And did a beautiful job. Love that cover. For a lot of reasons.
Anyway, the book is out, and I’m working on another. So is Jane. Another Foreigner book, another Alliance book. She’s working on Alliance, I’m starting Foreigner 23; and at a certain point we’ll switch files and go ahead…the way we work together has evolved into that sort of together-function. She has a real clear focus on the situation we set up at the end of Alliance Unbound (soon to come); and I know how I left Bren…
So on we go.
Life stays interesting—a little looking forward to winter to kill off some garden weeds, so we get a fresh start in the spring. In the meanwhile we’ll snug down and get some concentrated writing done while TRYING to get the house back in order after the remodel…which actually ended several years ago; but the passing of Jane’s sister and the acquisition of Tanner; the loss of our carpenter (who moved out of state); then Covid, cancer (mine), gall bladder (Jane’s, (chemo (mine,) and 4 hip replacements (ours,) rather well kept us off balance. Now we’re sighting on an open horizon and recovery and getting back into harness, so to speak—books to write, worlds to create, things to do, and cats to teach—we’re going to try that ‘button’ thing.
As a teenager, I learned to fly a sailplane. (Glider.) One of those confidence-building teenage things. It’s very different from common planes. Very quiet for one. Another is, you don’t have any kind of engine, so there’s no such thing as TOGA, Take Off / Go Around. Fun, but once college started, no time for it.
CJ, I have never had danios, and I’d mistaken them for a much larger fish. And you have tetras: I had those and loved them because they always school, even if you only have a few. I had cardinal tetras (IIRC) which are like neon tetras, except the red/green iridescence runs nose to tail; a school of them put on quite a show.
Now that I imagine the tank is established and generating algae, may I suggest some Chinese algae eaters? They’re sleek with quite a shark-like collection of fins, but instead of teeth, they have a sucker, vaguely like a remora I suppose, and they’ll scrub the glass and anything else of algae. They occasionally try to attach to a slow moving fish, but I never noticed a fish hurt by one. They can get big, but they never did in my tank.
You can also supplement your fish’s diet by putting a pan of water outside long enough for mosquitos to start to spawn. You can just net out the little wigglers, and the fish love them. I had a Japanese weather fish, and that was the only thing that would get him off the bottom of the tank. Of course, don’t let the mosquitos actually spawn.
Plants often come with snails, and you can squish them on the sides of the tank, and let the fish nibble on them. Otherwise, the snails can get too big and numerous.
You probably know all this, but maybe someone will find this useful.
Button thing? I missed something…
There are recordable buttons on a card that will ‘talk’ when pressed, paw-sized. And cats can learn to press buttons for what they want to say or ask for. There’s one on YouTube with over fifty words—and can put them together into complex (2-word) statements.
Very cool. Remember Alex the Parrot?
Walt, training cats to speak with buttons is an expanding fascination on the webz. It started with dogs. Look up “Hunger For Words” in Facebook to see training from the canine perspective. There will probably be links for feline training. It’s amazing, but I think not for every dog or cat, especially the senior citizens. I started trying to train my then 11-yo dog with not much success. He has me too well trained and I was able to read his body language without the assistance of buttons. I don’t think he thinks “deep doggy thoughts” where advanced button training might make a difference. He’s very zen and lives in the moment.
Well, as we all know dogs and cats are NOTHING alike. But several studies have shown that dogs often do have some ability to grasp meaning in at least a few human words. And the word “spectrum” (as to some of us 😉 applies to dog intelligence.
Maybe I shoulda typed ; – ) ?
We will see how this goes. Finity is very young and our best bet. 😉
Dogs and cats are nothing alike in terms of personality, but since they successfully compete against each other, it’s reasonable, I think, that they have similar intelligence.
Alex was an African Grey parrot, who not only used human words, but at least once made up a logical word understood immediately by his human. Corvids (crows) make and use tools; some guy on YouTube creates squirrel puzzles; dogs and cats just use humans to solve problems. 😉
One dog had something like 200 objects memorized by name. You could wave something at him, say “This is a gizmo,” toss it on the toy pile, and he could then fetch the gizmo, and no other toy, on command.
Happy birthday to Jane!!!!
She says Thank you!
So what’s the tail number for Dur :D?
I think it’s got to be a felicitous symbol and 01 in Ragi. 😉
When Michael examined the cover he declared “It’s a Stearman.” He wasn’t certain of the model but he knew it was a Stearman. He too learned to fly in a glider. He gave up dreams of being a pilot when the Air Force said his eyesight was not good enough to qualify for flight school. We would never have met if he had become a “Zoomie.”
Love it, Michael! I think it’s one of the neatest planes ever! 😉
Michael and I are grandparents as of 11:57 pm last night. Welcome to Wren who will be raised to love scifi as much as we do.
Welcome, little bird let, to this world… and many, many more of the imagination!
Congratulations and welcome to the little one!
Welcome, little one!
Congrats to you and michael!
I positively gulped the new one down! Love the little yellow plane . . . You’ve got a lot of “balls” in the air plot wise. I’ll be interested to see how you juggle them. Let us hear from you more often. Will be eagerly awaiting the next instalment of anything. Happy Birthday, Jane, and what a great tribute to a brother.
Supposed to get down to 27F/2.7 C tonight here in the flatlands. Lap robe weather for sure.
I’ve had to switch to green pets (arrowhead plant, Christmas cactus, Antherium)
People keep giving my mom “grocery store orchids” (Phalaenopsis) and when they get done blooming, I end up with them. I’m up to four now, two of which need repotting. One appears to be putting out a bloom spike. So I have a window full of little green friends now.
I need to get to our local Sci-Fi/Gaming bookstore and buy the book!
Powell’s, here in Portland will ship it to you.
Indeed, but I prefer to support local and give the business to Pandemonium (also, I enjoy going in to browse and say hi to staff). Powell’s, being independent, is much preferable to Amazon, however!
I fully understand. One can tell a lot about a person with one innocent question: If you’re walking on a street downtown, what kind of store can you not pass up; you will go inside even if just to have a look around? Bookstore is one of mine, and hardware.
But, of course, that’s assuming one could be walking down that street.
Merry Christmas , CJ. I just read ‘Defiance’, my Christmas present to me!
What a story, what a plane, what a crazy alliance and what a wonderful way to deal with the Shadow Guild, aka the bad guys!
All that breathtaking action, fascinating atevi history and the continued entertainment with Cajieri was even more than I hoped for, given the health challenges you have had during the last 3 years, and it is very much appreciated. Once again, you have set up a cracking cliffhanger.
Thank you very much.
I hope very much that your health and Jane’s continues to improve in 2024.