In the home stretch in Noraville lately — I’m determined to finish Book 2 before Christmas. That’s looking pretty likely at this point given that I’m at 88,000 words thus far, and have been averaging 2K words per day. But all work and no play makes Nora a dull girl, so here’s some of what else I’ve been doing in my spare time:
-Advance warning for anyone reading who doesn’t already know: I’m very liberal, politically speaking. But it isn’t solely due to ideology that I find the shoe incident and this followup hysterically funny. I do plan to send my funkiest, oldest pair of shoes, by the way. (Gacked from Making Light.)
-In light of my earlier post about the need for diversity in fantasy, I’ve been incensed to hear that one of the most intriguing and original children’s fantasies I’ve ever seen — Avatar: The Last Airbender — has been whitewashed in its film version. Great shades of Earthsea! There seem to be a few fan efforts organizing to fight this, and the best-organized of them is Aang Ain’t White. I’m not sure about this effort; I think an organized and public boycott would be more effective. But I’m glad to see that the fans aren’t taking this lying down, so I’m supporting them.
-I’m reading Alaya Dawn Johnson’s “Shard of Glass” for Podcastle! I’ve never done any sort of voice acting before, so this is both intimidating and a lot of fun. Had to learn to silence my inner Virgo, though, because I kept erasing and restarting the takes, hoping to get them perfect, which meant I made very little progress at first. Must remember — that’s what editing is for.
-Because most of my friends and family live far from New York, much of my holiday shopping has been done online. I prefer online shopping anyway to the horrors of Black Friday — no hassle, no crowds, and someone else does the wrapping and shipping for you. I always tend to like sending region-specific gifts to people who aren’t from that area. When I lived in New Orleans, my favorite gifts to give were Loretta’s Pralines and Gambino’s exquisite Doberge Cakes, both of which are to die for. In Boston, it was Legal Seafood’s lobsters — surprisingly affordable, if your loved ones don’t mind receiving a live animal on their doorstep, and boiling it for dinner. So since I moved to New York last year, I’ve been looking for something quintessentially New York to send. And what’s more New York than cheesecake? Unfortunately I hate cheesecake myself — but I have it on good authority from cheesecake lovers that Junior’s Cheesecake is pretty darn good. I’d dearly love to send a Cake Man cake too, since I have tried those and determined them to be, ahem, the shiznit. But since the Cake Man’s cakes are all handmade, they don’t do mail order. Alas. Anyway, bringing a NY cheesecake with me next week when I go up to Canada to visit one of my BFFs for the hols. (Beware New Yorkers bearing gifts! They’re sure to be fattening.)
-And last but not least, the deal I mentioned a couple of posts ago is done; German rights to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and its sequels have sold to publisher Blanvalet, a subsidiary of Random House/Bertelsmann. This calls for beer and bratwurst! Except I don’t like beer. Hmm, maybe I’d like a German one, if I tried it. (Any recs, beer connoisseurs?)
Back to work!
So, what’s fattening, the gifts or the New Yorkers? =P (woo hoo hoo, ambiguous grammar!)
I have some apple pilsener at home as well as some wheat beer, but they’re both really summery beers and not suitable for bratwurst. Otherwise you’re stuck drinking Chat-en-Oeuf. Which is really good. But not beer.
(my legit recommendation is to go for a dark stout, like Guinness, which doesn’t taste like horse pee, and which goes REALLY well with salty wurst)