the · beautiful · and · the · mad

My gardening book recommended making a citrus spray with orange peel, so I did. I've been squirting the plans for three days now and I don't see any aphid death. However I am loosing some plant leaves (due to aphids I think).

Any advice? I have pets and people with allergies in the house, so eco-friendly advice is preferred.

TIA!

I did come up with two names yesterday, the name of the narrator (yes, it's another first-person narrative)— India Phelps —and the name of her lover— Eva Canning. I lifted Eva from "Werewolf Smile," from Sirenia Digest #45, though this Eva will be a very different Eva from that Eva. It's not much, but it's a start.

I am thinking that today I'll be going to a library to continue my notes and the working out of this puzzle, in hopes that by tomorrow I'll be ready to write the proposal/synopsis thing, however provisional it might be. And I still have a short story to write for Bill Schafer at subpress this month, and two pieces to write for Sirenia Digest #48. That means I have, at best, twenty days remaining to get all this work done, having lost most of those first ten days of November.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thanks.

I forgot to mention that Spooky and I read and adored David Petersen's Mouseguard Fall 1152, and are now looking forward to Winter 1152.

However, last night we watched the series premiere of the V remake (it really is a remake, and not a "reboot"), thanks to Hulu, and I was not so impressed. Thing is, I was never much of a fan of the original series, and I saw very little last night that improved upon it. Sure, Morena Baccarin does a superb job, and is extremely easy on the eyes. But that's about all the first episode had going for it. Partly, it's that this new V is weighed down by the blandness that usually infects network television. Interchangeable, forgettable characters reciting forgettable, interchangeable dialogue. I'll watch again next week, but I'm no longer optimistic.

And now I need to get dressed and slip out into the chilly grey day.

Current Location:	Al-Qahira Vallis
Current Mood:	anxious
Current Music:	Arcade Fire, "Wake Up"

Today, I go back to work, and I do so in earnest. I feel as though most of October and all of November (thus far) have been allowed to lay fallow. Sure, I tried to write "Romeo and Juliet Go to Mars," and I did write "The Dissevered Heart" for Sirenia Digest #47 and last week I tried to get started on "The Wolves, the Witch, and the Weald" for Sirenia Digest #48. I managed to write the flap copy for The Ammonite Violin & Others, and give more interviews, and there were various other bits and pieces of work that did not get ignored or set aside. But, still, mostly, health issues and depression and various sorts of uninvited chaos conspired to encourage me to slack off and allow so much needed time to slip away.

Today, I intend to hammer out a proposal for Blood Oranges (working title), which I will have to my agent before the end of the week.

Saturday was mostly spent on housecleaning, as sovay and readingthedark were expected in the evening. I'd asked them both to come down from Massachusetts to help me talk through some of the barriers between Me and the Next New Novel. Saturday night was long, and filled with good and useful conversation. The novel, and many things pertaining to the novel (and no shortage of things not pertaining to the novel). First and foremost was the problem of evil, and how it relates to the book I'm about to try to write. Spooky and Geoffrey went out and got pizza from Fellini's on Wickenden Street. I'd thought we'd actually talk about plot, but I find it too absurd, discussing "plot points" as if they are something that should be worked out beforehand. This is, by the way, the first time I have ever asked friends to step in and help me get over a story hurdle, and it speaks to my current desperation. But it was a smart move. The talk went on until almost dawn. Geoffrey left about five a.m. (CST) for the drive back to Framingham (though I'd offered to let him crash on the sofa). Sonya spent the night, and took the train back to Boston yesterday afternoon.

I think it was the most socializing that's taken place in this House since we moved in. I ought to have taken photographs.

If you have not already, please do have a look at the current eBay auctions. I have a medical thingy coming up at the end of the week that I fear is going to seriously dent our finances, and every little bit helps. Frankly, as everyone crows about how publishing is being forced "to reinvent itself," I think I'm ready to return to true and genuine patronage. Find myself a patron or ten willing to pay me to keep this up, this writing, or to shower upon me offerings of land and property (a modest house of my own would be fine and dandy). As long as we're talking revolution, I may as well dream.

By the way, I have learned (rather belatedly) that the German-translation of Low Red Moon will be out December 1st. Out in Germany, I assume. Unfortunately, it has been renamed Kreatur. What? Is it not possible to translate the phrase "low red moon" into German? I admit, I've only gotten as for as "red moon"— rendering it as roter Monde —but I do not speak German. Anyway, I thought someone might be interested.

Okay. Work.

Current Location:	Hyperboreus (Lacus)
Current Mood:	motivated
Current Music:	Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet, "Dear Sweet Filthy World"

houseboatonstyx

"If we're looking for sounds that would be PERCEIVED as something other than vowels or consonsonants or something along that continuum -- that's an issue about the perceivers, isn't it? If they've been trained that to be meaningful, a sound must be classified as v, c, or in between -- then won't anything that might be meaningful be stuck into one of those categories, whether it physiologically fits the physiological definition or not?"

Yes. Terran linguists listening to the speech of native speakers of an ET language are going to expect to hear vowels and consonants because that's what they've been trained to hear, and are going to sort the sounds they hear into those two categories for that reason. Only after the U.S. Corps of Linguists (USCOL) had accumulated a large database of ET sound-based languages that included vowels, consonants, and "something else" would it be possible to train them to identify and analyze that "something else." And my conviction is that that would take a very long time to happen.

And here's the next paragraph of the comment:

"Are we looking for sounds from the vocal tract that would be so different physiologically/phonetically that they COULD NOT be fitted into those v-c categories, even by a sort of legal fiction? But would somehow be clearly meaningful so that they COULD NOT simply be disregarded or somehow marginalized?"

Yes again. My Brethandi ETs -- because their anatomy is very different from the anatomy of the Terran cattle they so closely resemble to the casual eye -- are able to speak in a fashion comparable to Terran speech, although they of course have distinctive accents. [I knew that. So I did a cognitive SHAZAM-leap and took it for granted that you would know it too. Sheesh.] And my question was serious. Supposing one or more of the Brethandi languages was composed of three meaningful classes of sounds -- vowels, consonants, and something else -- then what, I wanted to know, could that something else possibly be?

One possibility turned up in a comment from kelsied:
"Consonants, vowels, and rests. As in music. The rhythmic and intentional interruption of consonants and vowels to modify their meaning."

That option -- musical rests -- is the one I used in my USCOL story "Honor Is Golden," published in Analog. [Not online anywhere, so far as I know.] It worked, to my satisfaction and my editor's, although I got slammed for it in a review. My linguists weren't able to isolate the rest-phonemes or work with them, but they were able to establish communication. Which was their primary goal.

I hope this clarifies things just a tad. If it doesn't, let me know and I'll try again.

Those of you who've complained that I didn't define my terms -- neither "vowel" nor "consonant" -- are absolutely right, and I apologize. For me, vowels are speech sounds that are produced without any obstruction of the flow of air through the vocal tract; consonants are speech sounds for which that flow of air is obstructed in some fashion. That of course means that the vowel/consonant distinction has to be a continuum, not an either/or binary split. As pgdudda has pointed out, the English liquids [L and R] and the English glides [Y and W and H] are neither strictly vowels nor strictly consonants; they fall in between the two, somewhere on the continuum.

My opinion -- and it's only that, an opinion, since I've never encountered an ET language -- is that all of the varieties of noises proposed in your comments would be perceived by Terrans, and by Terran linguists, as falling somewhere on the vowel/consonant continuum; that is, as either vowel-like or consonant-like. I don't believe they would perceive the noises as a separate, third class of meaningful speech sounds.

I could be wrong about this. For sure.

I'm new to this forum and to the business side of publishing a book. I've recently finished a novel and want to start submitting it in January. In my writing research I've read that it is best when trying to publish a book to have a second one waiting on the chance that the agent or publisher request more of your work. The downside, by one article, was that you lose the chance to make a contact with the agent and publisher by not having the second book ready to be shown, and may not get the contract because of this. I've already started a new novel before I read about this and am now wondering if it might be best to wait to start the submitting the first novel until the second novel was finished.

Can anyone help me with this?

My question was narrow and specific:
Suppose the ET language we're dealing with has three classes of meaningful sounds: vowels; consonants; and something else. What could the something else be?

Comments proposing that the something else could be colors, or smells, or the position of the speaker's face/ears/tail/fur -- something other than a class of meaningful sounds -- are answering a different question. It's an interesting question, and I thank you for the comments, but it's not the question that I asked.

Down the Rabbit Hole, Alice

Title: Resources for Writiers
Summary: A listing of my favorite software and books directed towards writers on the internet; click and see what you might find!

Down the Rabbit Hole, Alice

What is the common touch that it is supposed to be so goddamned desirable? The common touch is usually an inept, stupid, clumsy, unintelligent touch. It is only the uncommon touch that amounts to a damn. (John Steinbeck, 1949)

Current Location:	let's just say Mars and be done with it
Current Mood:	tired
Current Music:	Spooky typing

I am going to make more time and effort to come here. It just makes me too happy not to. I love coming alone and will always treasure the memory of that first independent trip, but having Chris here with me is the best thing of all. I'm too tired and happy to go into specifics. Just walking around, hanging out together, seeing a couple of friends, eating lots of wonderful food (I've developed a taste for waffles on this trip - not American-style hot waffles with syrup but the crunchier Dutch ones you can eat hot or at room temperature, and that come coated in every permutation of chocolate, strawberry, cherry, vanilla, caramel, and nut topping you can imagine) and smoking vast tonnages of across-the-universe-quality weed, hash, and kif. I mean, the stuff that was considered strong nine years ago is on the mild end of the menu now, and the current state-of-the-breeding-art strains are just insanely strong. Too strong, many people claim; it renders them unconscious. Chris has gone semiconscious a couple of times, but in general he has held up admirably. Me, I just suck it up and love it. There is no pain here to speak of. Maybe eventually I'd get used to the massive concentrated doses of THC and the pain would return, but for the past four days it has been only a distant memory. If anyone ever tells you medical marijuana doesn't work, send them here and I will laugh in their face. (And just that should be enough to get them high.)

I was going to post pictures on Flickr, but the iPhone app is way too slow. For now, there are some on Twitter that you needn't be a member to see; just go to twitter.com and search for docbrite or @docbrite.

Tomorrow: Museumnacht!

There's nothing to report, so far as yesterday is concerned. We're on the sixth day of the month already, and I've been unable to get the proposal for the Next New Novel written or even make a good beginning on a piece for Sirenia Digest #48. I'm losing time (again) that I cannot (again) afford to lose.

All of yesterday, I sat here with a perfectly good short story title, and stared at the screen, and stared, and wrote nothing of consequence.

I've been writing long enough to know that there is no single problem I can blame for my current difficulties. But, honestly, I think that a great deal of it is fallout from the release of The Red Tree, its failure to sell better than the novels that came before, and the sense of futility that follows. Whatever the next novel becomes, it will be my eighth (I'm not counting the ghostwritten novel, or the Beowulf novelization, or The Dry Salvages). How do I bring myself to do this again, knowing, as I do, that the book will almost certainly be received with the same general indifference that my previous novels have encountered?

Yes, I know there have been scattered dribs and drabs of recognition. I see that, and I appreciate that. But I also can't shake the feeling that it's far too little, come far too late.

I think I'm not up to trying to explain myself, or defending my right to feel this futility, and I probably should not even have begun writing this journal entry.

Spooky has started a new round of eBay auctions. We've mostly covered the cost of this year's taxes, but now I've got medical bills to contend with. So, please, have a look. Thanks.

Current Location:	Pityusa Rupes
Current Mood:	incoherent
Current Music:	P.J. Harvey, "Liverpool Tide"

One possibility is to take up each of your comments, one at a time, and respond in detail. That means finding a way to explain a great deal of basic information about phonetics and phonology, without resorting to LinguistSpeak, and without creating additional confusions that would tie us up in knots for weeks, maybe months, while I tried to straighten them out. This would take a very long time.

Another possibility is for me to sort the comments into classes of some kind and deal with them in batches, with all the same caveats attached.

Another possibility is to notice that you seem to have had a good time proposing answers to my question, to thank you for all your excellent comments, and then to just butt out and mind my own business.

Do you [youall] have a preference?

CHAPTER ONE

It's not fair.

That was the thought that consumed her, never mind how aware she was that it was childish and whiny. And unjustified. What had happened to her was what would have happened to any USCOL candidate who had failed her final exams. Still, it had all her attention. And there were other, even less seemly, thoughts tangled in with it...

"But I worked so hard."
"But I never missed even one class."
"But it was easier for the rest of my class because they came out of better linguistics programs than I did. [And whose fault was that?]."

Briar knew what drivel all of those thought-tangles were. She had failed three of her finals, that was the simple truth, and the penalty she'd been assigned for that -- a monograph describing and discussing the Brethandi languages -- was horrendously difficult, that was the simple truth as well. But she wasn't stupid; she was prepared to admit that it was in fact entirely fair and that she was a lucky woman. They could have just kicked her out of the program -- that was in fact what she had taken it for granted that they would do, when they told her about the failed exams -- instead of offering her the chance to redeem herself by writing the penalty monograph.

They were going to send her to Gaudalle, the Brethandi planet -- in spite of the fact that she hadn't yet qualified for USCOL -- to do the necessary fieldwork with the four languages: Thandi; Aubre; Lenadess; Nangdi. And it wasn't going to be easy. The Brethandi weren't humanoid; except that their legs ended in feet, not hooves, they looked exactly like Terran cattle. Briar hadn't yet taken any courses in nonhumanoid languages. The Brethandi did speak and write Panglish, saints be praised, because they understood that there was no way to function in this galaxy without being literate in Panglish, but they bitterly resented that necessity, as they bitterly resented the fact that although Earth had no empire it remained the dominant planet. No Brethandi willingly used Panglish. Briar's Brethandi consultants were going to be unanimously sullen, they were going to work with her only grudgingly.

Briar understood very well the politics behind what was happening. The point was not only that she should fail -- and fail spectacularly -- but that she should be an example to the worlds. The message to other potential U.S. Corps of Linguists candidates would be loud and clear: "This is what can happen to you if you're not the ideal candidate. If you, like Briar, don't come from a 'heritage' family, where your parents were part of USCOL, and their parents were linguists, so that from birth you ate and breathed linguistics. If you, like Briar, didn't get your prerequisite Ph.D. in linguistics at one of the top half dozen universities USCOL favors. Be warned. You could end up like Briar Jamison -- an interplanetary laughingstock."

What you need to identify a language as extraterrestrial is some feature never before observed in any Terran language. For example, suppose you encounter a language that has three basic classes of meaningful sounds: vowels, consonants -- and something else. The question then is: What could that "something else" be?

It couldn't be tone, by the way, or aspiration. Tone is just a way to modify vowels; aspiration is just a way to modify consonants. You'd still have only two classes of meaningful sounds.