About To Leave Shetland

Since this isn't exactly a family blog, I'll not offer a complete treatment of the holiday. It included hill and cliff walks, fishing trips, contentious games of Loups-Garou, a fashion photo shoot (more on that later), tons of eating and drinking, lots of chat, a trip to Hermaness, the northern most point of the British Isles, lots of family time... Great stuff.

Here are a few images, mostly nicked from my brother in law's family blog:





I also did a little business - an interview with Radio Shetland and a reading at the Lerwick library!

A Little Bit Of Traveling

So I drove the family two hours to Boston. Parked. Boarded a plane. Flew overnight six hours to Ireland. Changed planes. Flew on a paper airplane to Scotland. Got picked up by my brother in law, Sorley, who drove us three hours north to Aberdeen. Boarded a ferry. Sailed overnight for Shetland. Woke up in the morning, disembarked, drove winding roads out to my father in law's cottage in Bousta.

Ah... we're here!

Gudrun has photos up at her blog, The Shetland Trader. It's going to a good three weeks...

Things To See In Shetland

Remember I mentioned a trip to Scotland? I'm a couple days away from departure. Looking forward to spending quality time with my wife's family, and with lots of Gudrun's knitwear design cadre, who happen to be in country at the same time. (She'll be doing the photography for her upcoming booklet while we're in Shetland.)

Yes, Shetland. That's where we'll be spending most of our time. The island famous for...

and...
and...

and awesome coastlines, like this...

Oh, and also, apparently, for being welcoming to American Authors, as is evidenced in this announcement in The Shetland Times!

Dale of Walls

Had a great walk on the eve of the New Year. Here's me walking with Maya and Sage.
Loving the time here in Shetland...

Christmas...

...was rather wonderful here in Sandness.

The kids were bubbling with excitement. The adults were all on good terms. (An important component to any holiday, yes?)

We began the morning with champagne and strawberries, Nat King Cole and marmite & melted cheese on toast.

The presents were thoughtful and often handmade. Santa delivered small treasures. We took the standard Christmas walk along a rugged coastline.

The food was lovely but not a display of belly swelling excess. The drink was varied and plentiful. We enjoyed a new episode of Wallace & Gromit, and just missed a special episode of Dr. Who (the only bummer moment of the day).

And the evening concluded with a rousing episode of "The Shetland Dance Off", a competition of interpretive dance featuring a selection of eclectic tunes. Maya and Sage were the primary competitors, each with several guises with decidely different personalities. We had a panel of celebrity judges, featuring members of the Irish clergy alongside Scottish former stars, etc. The show was hosted by D-Squared, a silver-tongued and easily impressed veteran of such competitions. And yes, the entire things was captured on video!

And, no, not a chance I'll be posting that here!

I do hope the day (or the Holiday Season in general) has/is going well for you also.

21 Seals

I wish that I'd taken the camera with me. I actually walked out of the cottage with it, Maya and Sage just behind me, to take a walk and snap some pics. We only got as far as the shed, though, before ducking in for cover from the falling rain. From inside the shed I snapped this photo of my son, Sage...

But then I left the camera in the shed so we could complete our daily expedition into the wilds of Shetland. (It's a nice camera, and it was pelting down.) Five minutes later, we approached the beach of the little inlet not far from the house. There were tons of seals lounging about the stony beach. As we walked down to say hi, they all belly rolled into the water and then promptly turned around and hung about twenty yards off shore, watching us.

That's when I wished I had the camera. There was something both really cool and kinda unsettling about being watched by a bunch of submerged mammals. I counted 21 heads, all staring right at us. Cool. Your average sight in Shetland, though. It would be much harder to fine 21 people within a five minute walk from the cottage...

Next time I'll keep the camera tucked under my rain jacket.

Reunited!

I'm happy to finally be able to say that I am safely in Shetland, reunited with my family after three months! Here's a quick pic of me and wife...

Yes, it is incredibly windy, with dramatic, ever-changing skies, and it's just as treeless as I remember. And the sheep haven't gotten any smarter. No worries, though. The cottage is cozy, filled with family, with both a peat and a coal stove, with broadband and tons of books and art and music, and even with a hi-tec projector and screen for watching films (Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E first up).

We're off to do some shopping just now in Lerwick, hoping that the ferry made it in this morning. The seas were quite rough last night, and if the boat doesn't make it across it means no fresh food! Ah, island life...

I'm Almost Here...

December Light

Here's my Shetland pic for the day, stolen from my wife's blog. Can you tell I'm thinking about my coming trip a bit?

And the Father-In-Law Responds!

Okay, folks, for all of you that helped suggest sci/fi and fantasy titles for my father-in-law (and those that may have watched with passing interest) here's the verdict. Yes, I just heard back from Laughton, and figured I might as well share his response, especially as this has been a collaborative effort. Here's what he wrote...

I clearly did not know what I was asking of you! I'm overwhelmed, by the time and thoughtfulness that you and all your correspondents have put into this and... by my ignorance of modern fantasy and sc-fi. You know I read a lot but this is literally (in both senses) another world.

I am pleased to say that I have read one of the suggestions... Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, probably in the early 70s. When I discovered the joys of the A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy for the children I went on to read everything of hers that I could get. Lately, her writing took on the later style and topics of Doris Lessing's 'fantasy' (although the latter has moved on/back again) and she no longer appeals to me.

My choices from your list may well then be a little conservative (I am getting old). The last thing I want is to settle down (perhaps that's stretching it a bit) on the long flights and restless airport lounges and find that the thick book with the crisp pages is not to my taste!

Robert Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land is appealing, probably for nostalgic reasons... I read masses of sci-fi in the late 50s, 60s and 70s. Less of Heinlen than I thought when I look at the shelves; they seem to contain more John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury, Azimov, Arthur C Clarke, Frank Herbert etc (just name-dropping). I wonder how many of your correspondents have read A Voyage to Arcturus by the Scottish writer David Lindsay (who died fairly young)? So, Heinlen would be stepping back rather than forward...

I have my eye on a couple of recommendations, partly based (I was going to say 'mostly' but that might worry you) on your comments; I have a great respect for you judgement!

But the others...

A Game of Thrones by R R Martin sounds like a big boy's read. I think I will have to graduate to that. Maybe when I get home in January, when the nights are still long and dark and it's blowing a gale out there, I will take the plunge. No, not maybe, let's not be too tentative and timid here... I will go for this in the new year.

Richard Morgan's Thirteen/Black Man... hhmmm. The 'over-sexed' comment puts me off. Not that I would under-rate sex, but in one's late 60s I'm looking for subtlety.

Dan Simmons' Ilium? I guess I will just leave this for the reasons you know. Like I know the story of Franklin so well... incidentally, it was an Orkney man, John Rae, who first brought the news of the horror of the fate of Franklin's men, and one of his few companions was a Shetland man. Lady Franklin also makes a brief appearance in a book of mine. I felt the 'actual' story was scary enough.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson, The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolf and Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, I will keep on my list for later.

I suspect I will be raising a few hackles with my very short and dismissive comments, but what do we all do when faced with so many choices?

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. With a title like that, it sounds quite intriguing. Plus your 'bloody good read' comment. I am tempted here. Likewise, I am tempted by your comments on Dreaming Void by Peter F Hamilton. These I might try later along with, or before, RR Martin. So, they are sort of third/fourth choices.

I am going to take two then. Did you intentionally/unintentionally put them in order of your own preferences? (No you didn't did you! You put them in alphabetical order so as to appear completely unbiased...)

However, I am going to take your first two. Second choice is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Not because he is British writer but because it sounds frighteningly contemporary. Tell me if my hunch is way wrong.

The one that I instantly went for, though I am not sure why, is Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. On second thoughts, perhaps because I see that the author is a black woman whom I would hope might bring some fresh perspectives. Or am I the marketing man's dream who simply picks the first shiny one on offer? Like the previous book, there is a contemporary feel to it which attracts me... and... you liked it.

So thanks to you all and forgive me for my many presumptions... I'll let you know!

Thanks, David,

Laughton

And just so you know who has been talking, here's a photo of the man himself (along with his youngest daughter - and my wife).

Okay. Works for me. Butler and Gaiman. They both rock. I do hope you'll have both of them with you, Laughton, just in case either doesn't do it for you.

Octavia Butler is... well, she's the first sci/fi writer to get a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, isn't she? (Jonathan Lethem scooped one more recently. As far as I could tell, he bought really suave new glasses with the cash.) I know pretentious literary prizes aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I wouldn't say no to $500,000 "Out of the Blue", with no strings attached, just for being... geniusy. And, yes, in many ways Ms. Butler's racial identity informs her writing. She would've been brilliant anyway, but she has a wide, empathetic perspective that I'm quite sure was influenced by the particular details of the skin she lived her life in.

And, yes, Gaiman does strike me as "frighteningly contemporary", at least in reference to American Gods. Neither author is one that I assume everyone will like, but both have a measure of brilliance that I'd encourage anyone to at least try. Notes on two other titles... I finished The Dreaming Void recently. Liked it very much, although as I rounded the last hundred pages or so I got to suspecting there wasn't going to be much in the way of resolution at the end. I wasn't wrong. Mr. Hamilton wraps things up like a professional, but this is clearly just the beginning of this particular story. And Perdido Street Station got another celebrity shout out recently - John Scalzi spoke of it as one of his favorite books on several occasions at LosCon. As we all know, Mr. Scalzi is a very smart guy.

Okay, I think that brings the "Help Me Pick a Book For My Father-in-Law" segment of this blog to a close. Thanks for playing. In closing... I'm curious. Anyone read A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay?

A Shetland Moment

I'll say a word or two about LosCon soon, but I just got home and noticed a recent post on my wife's blog. Just some pictures of Shetland, really, but I find them quite stunning. I'll be over there soon myself.

Beautiful. Kinda heartbreaking to have not been part of it for the last couple of months. How weird.

The Father-in-Law List

Okay, here it is, the list of recommended sci-fi/fantasy books I've been trying to prepare for my father-in-law. I appreciate all the responses to my earlier query on this, and it has effected what I finally came up with. Honestly, one of the ways it effected it is that instead of recommending ONE book I realized I'd need to give him a shortlist and leave it up to him. So that's what I'm presenting here.

As I say, I did appreciate all the suggestions. The things I ended up recommending have at least little bit to do with the particular person my father-in-law is. (All good. All good.) Also, though, I was inclined to recommend titles that had a feel of tenure to them - either because they or the authors had been around for awhile. So don't think I've ignored or dissed the Abercrombie, Abraham, Lynch, Rothfuss, Ruckley contingent. I think those guys are awesome. I'm also glad to say I know most of them, and it does feel very good to be writing fantasy in amongst such promising emerging stars.

Okay, enough of that. Here are the books I think my father-in-law should consider. Are you paying attention, Laughton? Take a look at...

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower. Loved this one. My first Butler book. Might be a little worrying to a man whose daughter lives in far away Central California, but I swear I'll take the kids and run before it gets this bad. Promise.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods. Neil made me feel all funny inside when I met him. Tongue-tied and silly. What can I say, though? He rocks the black leather jacket, and this book is... well, it's sort of like "A Great American Urban/Contemporary Fantasy", if such a category existed, and if it I didn't matter that a Brit wrote it.

Peter F Hamilton, Dreaming Void. I'm actually in the middle of this right now. It's the first Hamilton I've read, so some folks may have other faves of his instead. I'm just really enjoying the smart writing, the multiple plot lines and the amazing diversity of his far future. This is a novel of both high-technology and subsistence-based worlds, all woven into the same epic tale. Kinda like an exploded version of the mix we have going on earth.

Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land. Classic sci-fi, yeah? I could see Laughton liking this one. I do think it shows some... uh... well, dating in terms of gender roles, etc. I had a mini-argument with Pat Rothfuss on this issue. (I won, by the way, though Pat may not know that.) Still, quite a book.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness. I'm sure he's read LeGuin before, but maybe not this one. I think she's absolutely great. Wrote her a gushing note awhile back, actually. Didn't hear back, but that doesn't change my affection for her work.

George RR Martin, Game of Thrones. This one means inviting him into a big, unfinished, gigantic work. I have to mention it, though. I think Martin is tops in epic fantasy. (We're on a first name basis, you know? Hehe...)

China Mieville, Perdido Street Station. China. Okay. Confession. I haven't actually read him. I mean to, and I will, and I can't help but want to recommend him cause this book sounds so bloody good.

Richard Morgan, Thirteen/Black Man. Technically, Richard and I are exactly the same age. (Hence my assumption that I can call him by his first name - as with China above.) Still, he's cranked out some lean, mean books. This one isn't so lean, really, but I thought it was terribly smart. As I mentioned when I praised it before, it is a bit over-sexed. Err... But we're all grown-ups here, right?

Dan Simmons, Ilium . So, as I mentioned before, The Terror didn't go over that well with the prospective reader in question here. But Simmons got so much love from folks he seemed a reasonable one to include for a second try.

Neal Stephenson, Anathem (or The Diamond Age.) I haven't read Anathem yet, but I've loved several other Stephenson novels. I'm looking forward to this new one, and folks seem to think it's worth it.

Gene Wolfe, The Book Of The New Sun: Volume 1: Shadow and Claw. I saw Wolfe pick up a World Fantasy Award a couple years back in Saratoga Springs. Not for this book, but it was still well-deserved. Wonderful writer.

Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light. And this is another star figure of sci-fi history that I haven't read. I guess I recommend it because Zelazny is on my too-read list also, and I've heard so many good things about him that he seems like a safe beat.

Okay. That's what I came up with this time. I think there's some good reading here...

I Need Suggestions...

A little help here, please. Yesterday my father in law asked me for a recommendation of a good sci-fi or fantasy book. He's heading to New Zealand for Christmas (to enjoy the summering sun with his other daughter's family) and he fancies reading a big book, something to get lost in. No, I can't recommend anything of mine, cause he's read all of them. (I'd like to think, actually, that Acacia sort of planted the seed for this query.)

Some context first. My father is Scottish, a Shetlander who lives in that lovely wee cottage I've posted photos of so often. This one...

Yes, it's bloody isolated, but it's isolated in a good way. Inside, it's filled with books and art and letters and photos from his far-flung family. He reads really widely, and is looking for something to rival Dune... See my dilemma? How do you rival Dune? I can't point him toward an OK book. It can't be light on substance. It's got to be a gem.

The weird thing is that as enthusiastic a proponent of the genre(s) as I am, I'm having a hard time settling on a book. I keep thinking of ones I love, but then there's always something that makes me think twice about it. Hence, this call for suggestions.

So, on my shortlist so far are...

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

A Game of Thrones, by GRRM

The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson

Is it one of these I should go with, or something else I'm not thinking of right now?...

Halloween

I'm post dating this. Just got back online and saw this photo of my kids heading out to their Halloween celebration. Geez. They look awesome. Sorry to have missed this one. Christmas. Christmas...

My witch daughter and Viking son...

Where The Family Has Been Recently...

So, you know my family is in a land far far away. No, not that place. They've been in Shetland, staying with my father in law. Recently, though, they took a trip back to the mainland, where they were awed by things like trees. Gudrun took a few snaps, as she quite likes to do. I thought I'd offer a few for your visual stimulation.

This is near Dunkeld and Birnam, in Perthshire...
These are just some leaves...
And a tree... (The girl isn't mine, but she's a lovely family friend.)Flowers...
This is is the River Tay as it approaches Dunkeld. We used to live in Dunkeld, and I wrote quite a bit of Pride of Carthage while strolling along this river...
The kids out with a cousin for a walk in Aberdeenshire....
And then! Then they returned to Shetland. Just in time, too, for the seas soon churned up a gale...

In case you're wondering. Yes, I'm still working on the book. It's getting juicy. (In a "Man, readers are gonna hate you, Mr. Cliffhanger" type of way.) I'm fatigued, but I'm also nearly at the point where I type in "The Hell With It..."

Wait, no, that's not it. I meant where I type "The End". It's coming soon. Less than 24 hours away... Actually, I've got more like 12 hours left...

Another Day in Shetland

Are you kidding me?
That's my father in law's cottage again. My wife assures me that all I have to do is come on over. Our money problems are solved! The pot of gold, apparently, is right in the cottage, just next to the peat-stove, beside the wee table and the waiting dram of Lagavulin...

Think I should believe her?