It’s an Exerpt!
Oh, this is awesome! It’s an exerpt of the audiobook for THE OTHER SISTER!
Archive for Uncategorized
If you’re interested in digging into the background of “An Exchange of Two Flowers,” there’s an excellent new book out. Stephen R. Platt’s “Imperial Twilight,” presents the facts and the harsh difficulties of the world in which Charles Elliott and High Commissioner Lin had to make their way. You can check out the New York Times review here.
How Did it Start?
Nothing in this world happens in a vaccum. Everything is related, especially when it comes to the desire for resources, and the desire to explore. The events in “An Exchange of Two Flowers,” are actually tied up in the need, and the desire for three plant-based resources. In the novella, I’m focused on two men — Lin Zexu, and Charles Elliot and two plants – tea and opium. But there was a third plant tied into the story. Cotton.
The British had planned to be able to pay for the tea they wanted from China with a trade in cotton, which they’d get from what was becoming their colony of India. But the Americans, with clipper ships and, yes, slave labor, could get American grown cotton to the English mills cheaper, and faster than the British could get it home from India. So, there was not enough profit to buy the tea in the quantities that the English public demanded.
This left the English in a quandry. And they were determined to solve it.
Enter the opium poppy…and so our story begins…
MORE RESOURCES:
Here’s an excellent overview of the history of what the English called “the China Trade” from MIT.
Privacy Policy
As many of you know, new privacy rules have gone into place across the EU. These cover data collection and transparancy for all kinds of websites, including this one. I/We are working on crafting new policy to comply with the new rules, and it will be posted shortly.
Out of the Omnibus
So, I found this book in the second hand store.
Fifty cents, I kid you not. The intro by the splendid Ms. Sayers alone is worth the price of admission.
I love reading old books. A deep dive into the strange and the obscure is my favorite catnip. Also, as an untrained urbanite, it’s the only kind of archeology I get to do. And as I’m writing madly on my next mysteries and thrillers, I figured getting some deep background on the genre would be useful. But let’s face it, mostly, I just have an impolite passion for old, weird books.
FIRST UP: THE CORSICAN SISTERS by Violet Hunt
Sarah Zettel Talks Female Protagonists in SF!
Sarah Zettel takes to YouTube to talk about the ups and downs of the SF heroine (with and without the ray gun).
Speaking of SF Heroines:
It’s Book Day!
Happy Book Day to all who celebrate! In honor of the release of DANGEROUS DECEPTIONS, not to mention the paperback of PALACE OF SPIES, I thought I’d post the lovely trailer the folks at HMH created to help introduce the world to Peggy Fitzroy, spy, card sharp, housebreaker, impersonator of persons of quality and maid of honor to Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales…
Yet More from the Yellow Brick Road
So, there I was sitting in the theater waiting for Frozen to start (loved it, BTW), and what do I see? Disney’s doing an Oz sequel. Based, of course, on the world of the movie, not the books.
I can tell you this right now, it’s not going to work. It never works. Occasionally, you get an alternate take on Oz that runs away with it (like Wicked) or that is kind of interesting from a genre stand point (A Barnstormer in Oz), but the sequels never hold up. In all the years “they” have been trying to do sequels to the movie, not one of them has ever even come close to success. They all flop and the box office or in the ratings.
I even know why.
To talk about it, I’m going to have to do something difficult for me and set aside the books. A vanishingly small number of people have read any of the books, even Wonderful Wizard, never mind any of the sequels. This is not me judging, it just is. For most people Oz is the movie musical with Judy Garland and friends. And that is the primary reason none of the sequels work.
Because of all the remarkable specticles Hollywood, even The Mighty Mouse can produce, they cannot reproduce the look and feel of that movie. Even if they could, it would probably not update well. That movie was very much a thing of its time, from the songs to the sets.
And then there’s the ending. It was a dream. We all know it was a dream. The scene where Dorothy wakes up again is one of the most famous in the movie. It’s been parodied a thousand times. This is not, BTW, how it ends in the book. In the book, Oz is real and Dorothy was gone for months, much to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry’s distress. When she goes back, it’s via different routes and for different reasons, but she can go back because it was always a real place.
But in the movie, for reasons I’ve never heard explained, it was turned into a dream. This pissed me off as a fantasy-loving kid, and pissed me off later as a feminist for a whole different set of reasons. But it’s also made making a sequel really, really difficult, because any sequel’s got to explain that famous, emotionally effective scene away, which is a tough start. Then it’s got to recreate the same level of emotional connection as people have with the original, without any of the working material that made the original great — the performances, the songs, the totally unexamined and wonderful weirdness of those Munchkins.
An alternate take or alternate world sideways telling of Oz doesn’t have these hurdles. They can just tap into the wonder, or the weirdness (and Oz, as I have mentioned elsewhere is PLENTY weird) and run with it, they don’t have to recreate it, or better it.
Oz is our national fairy tale. I’ve never been sure how it got to be that way, but it is. I’m fascinated by the rewriting and the different ways the pattern has been woven into other stories, but sequels…not so much.
Good luck folks, and good-night from the Yellow Brick Road.
My Snowpocalypse
A confession. I like winter.
I like bare tree branches, stark, dark and complex against the grey, or with the silver light from moon and street light shining through them. I like the angled, tangled complexity of their reach and strength that gets hidden by summer’s gaudier dress.
I 
I like how snow picks out the details, showing the normal to be entirely new.
I like the sound of sparrows, hidden in an evergreen shrub, shouting to each other “Stay in! Stay close! Something’s coming! It’s here! It’s here!”
These are things absent from summer. I like winter.
Happy New Year!
Here’s wishing you luck, health, good books, good shows, and many good reasons to celebrate!
