Synova

I should probably post more and stuff, at least every day. But maybe I'd be better off to try to write fiction every day. I have the first Dresden File book to read... I could be half done with it already if I hadn't sat here on the computer doing nothing.

I got three books signed: _A Shadow in Summer_ by Daniel Abraham. The second book (of a planned four) is out NOW and I want it *badly*. I highly recommend these. Jane Lindskold signed _Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls_ for me although it was signed when I bought it. I wanted to let her know that I particularly enjoyed it. She told me it was a reissue and the first book she'd sold. I had no idea. I also got _A Very Large Array_ signed by the editor, Melinda Snodgrass, which makes me very happy because the book was a gift to me. Happy surprise, Mark Ferrari was there again this year. He's got his first novel out just this week, _The Book of Joby_. In his former life (when my daughter and I both met him) he was artist Guest of Honor and encouraged my daughter very much about her artwork. He was able to see the two drawings she had in the art show this weekend and talk to her about them. She was very excited about that, and so was I (because I'm ...

I already went on about this to my husband at 1 AM last night when I got home from the con so it's partly out of my system. Way back at post number one I explained that I was blogging here under a pseudonym as a way to at least symbolically separate my political ranting from my hopeful professional career writing fiction. My purpose isn't to be deceptive. My purpose isn't to make sure that no one ever finds out that I'm Julie A. Pascal. My purpose is to avoid unnecessarily alienating my potential audience. So. I went to Bubonicon, a science fiction/fantasy convention this weekend. Anyone with two neurons to rub together knows that the political/religious/ideological... scope... of those who love speculative fiction of one sort or another is enormously broad. Anyone, except, it seems Connie Willis or John J. Miller. And maybe they set the tone or something because it seemed that that whole panel seemed determined to speak their minds. Connie began by intro...

I'm headed off to our local science fiction convention tomorrow. I've missed for a couple of years and probably would have this year as well but my daughter begged to go (turns out some new friends of hers will be there) and then decided that she wanted to enter something in the art show after all. It should be interesting. I'll try for some pictures. It's not the most costume oriented con out there but there are usually some storm troopers. The con is more book oriented. Hopefully I'll be able to meet some famous people so I can come back here and drop names. ;-)

Maybe this is silly but I'm just psyched. I learned something new today! I found out what "Macaroni" means in the song Yankee Doodle! A "Macaroni" in the period of king George (of tea taxing fame) was an excessively stylish gentleman. Those who aspired to high fashion (and succeeded) were a Macaroni. I suspect that the point of Yankee Doodle was that he aspired to high fashion... and failed. ;-)

Pakistan has troubles that certainly don't need Obama announcing tough love and invasions over. I don't know what people think, sometimes, about other countries and the people who live in them. This is a video popular in Pakistan. The singers in it are pop stars there and they got together to do this song. (This version has English subtitles.) I've said before, national mythology, or self-identity is probably the most important determining factor there is for what people can do tomorrow. And while I'm linking videos. Here's a very different one from a Marine. Blackfive has the words if you'd like to read them. (Or if the link to You Tube doesn't work.) A call to unity and service.

Ahead of us in the McD's drive through on a rather nice car... Feminists for Life and Equal Rights for Unborn Women Very nice. Comment from my daughter in response to my enthusiasm... "Feminist is another word for Sexist." That girl may be too smart for her own good. ;-)

Airman Christina Valla thinks that no one knows her dark secret yet shortly after enlisting in the military she's pulled into the blackest of black ops. Trained from childhood to keep her demons at bay she resists, but ultimately fails. She is the only one strong enough to defeat the man who has run this black op for a lifetime and to rescue the Special Forces unit he has betrayed even if she loses her soul while doing it. Broken in spirit she learns that it's not the weapon but how it is used that defines good and evil. Christina Valla is a Norse shapshifter-trance walker. A berserker. Unlike the others pulled into the black op she has always known. Unlike the others she has never had an episode. The ability is heritable and her line is not diluted, not in intensity nor in knowledge of her history, of Red Thor who prefers that blood flow and the White Christ who made it stop.

What I liked about this book, other than the heroine who can truly kick butt, is that John Ringo gets Christianity right in a few unusual ways. Barbara understands that she fights her own demons and her faith is how she does that, how she keeps them in check. She believes that she *needs* forgiveness, though she has never in her life done anything anyone else would consider evil or wrong. She knows the blackness in her own heart. And I don't think it's too much of a spoiler for the plot, but what this means is that when the demon gives her visions of truly evil things that are at least slightly based in her own desires, she isn't destroyed by them. The evil inside of us, after all, is what forgiveness is for. Ever since I was a kid I noticed that people seemed to think that it was *easy* not to do that bad things, that it was *easy* to have self-control. That the good kids were good because they didn't have to face what the bad kids had to face. But who ...

This morning I had a dream that I had my own dojo. It was a long narrow unit on the end of a stip mall. The walls were bare cinder block, the floors cement. Chunks of rebar and construction debris made little piles here and there and the florescent lights hung on wires. There were no windows.