Archive for June, 2008
Codex Writers Workshop
Posted by Michael Livingston in Fiction on June 30th, 2008
I’ve spent the last few days just outside of Chattanooga, attending the first annual Codex Writers Workshop. Wonderful. I met a number of terrific writers, one award-winning editor, and a couple of extraordinarily kind folks in Mr. and Mrs. Harrison (parents of the unequaled Mary Robinette Kowal), at whose home we stayed.
I also received much encouragement about the progress of Four Shards of Heaven, whose completion is one of my main tasks for the summer.
I’m now in Checotah, Oklahoma for the evening, at a cheap-as-dirt-and-about-as-clean motel off the interstate. Sherry came with hobbit and pup to Chattanooga on my last night there, and then we all left this morning to begin our Western Trek. This is night one. Next stop: Albuquerque.
Going Greyhound
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on June 26th, 2008
I survived an overnight Greyhound route, complete with an early morning stopover in the Atlanta bus station.
I wouldn’t think this impressive, myself, but folks sure seemed concerned for my well being in the weeks before this trip. “You’re taking … the bus?” was a common response. Yeah, I am. It cost $40 to get me from Charleston, SC to Chattanooga, TN. And all I had to put up with was:
A near-knifefight in Columbia.
Four drunks in Atlanta.
Smokers at every turn.
And a LOT of really strange people.
But I made it. In Chattanooga now, at the Codex Writers Workshop.
Dear Captain Livingston
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on June 25th, 2008
I received a bit of academic mail yesterday that began thus. I stared at it for a good ten seconds before I realized it really was for me. You’d think I’d be used to this military rank business after two years, but you’d be wrong. It’s just really strange to me still.
After I realized it was me, I had a minute or two of soul-searching as I tried to figure out if I just didn’t like being called Captain Livingston and, if so, what I’d prefer to be called. Doctor Livingston? Professor Livingston?
The only conclusion I could come to in the end was that none of ‘em sound like me.
Captain Doctor Professor Livingston, though … that’s got a nice ring to it, eh?
Now to Begin Vacation
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Fiction, Homelife on June 22nd, 2008
I finished my most pressing academic projects. My fourth academic article in as many weeks hit the post office Friday. Plus, I finished the edits on my edition of The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament (this meant writing a number of notes on the poet’s fascinating version of Job, in particular). So I’m done for a short bit while I await all the parts to the Battle of Brunanburh volume I’m editing.
Just in time, too: I leave Wednesday night for Chatty-town, TN, to attend the First Annual Codex Writers Workshop. Should be fabulous. From there I’m headed west for the Rockies: family, friends, and fun are much needed.
This also means that I’ll be back to working on Four Shards, which has been much neglected the past month and a half. I’d still like to get that novel completed by August so I can begin sniffing ’round for an agent to represent my work.
Hobbit Birthday
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on June 17th, 2008
I still can’t quite believe it, but the Hobbit turned two today. He celebrated with a trip to “Gymboree,” a brief nap, a grilled cheese at Chili’s, and a viewing of Cars. This weekend he gets a more formal party, which will no doubt be long-expected once arrived.
Closer to Completion
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on June 14th, 2008
I’ve remained quite busy of late, but I can at least say that I’m accomplishing something. Over the past two weeks I have brought three articles to the completion and submission stage:
1. Aphra Behn’s “The Disappointment” as Ring Composition. (Submitted to Notes and Queries.)
2. The Tripods of Vulcan and Mars: Homer, Darwin, and the Fighting Machines of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. (Submitted to The Journal of Popular Culture.)
3. “A Far Green Country”: Tolkien, Paradise, and the End of All Things in Medieval Literature. (Co-authored with A. Keith Kelly of Kutztown University and submitted to Tolkien Studies.)
I’m also about ready to submit my article proposing that the Anasazi petroglyph I found recently is an example of “Medieval American Cartography.”
So that’ll bring me up to four articles in a rather short span, which ain’t bad. Plus, I’m very close to completing the edits on my massive edition of The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament.
On the down side, I’ve hardly written a word of fiction for about a month, and I’ve long since stopped sending out short fiction. So nothing is remotely forthcoming on that front. Alas.
Dragon Haiku
Posted by Michael Livingston in Fiction on June 11th, 2008
James Maxey, a talented young writer, is asking for dragon poetry on his website, in honor of the forthcoming release of his book Dragonforge (which is sure to be good). Aside from the potential glories of having their wordsmithing exposed on his website, those who submit are entered into a drawing to receive copies of Maxey’s fine work.
I hastily scribed a bit of draconic haiku for him myself and — behold! — mine is the first in the post: see it here. Crossing my fingers on that drawing now…
Wells and Huxley
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on June 8th, 2008
I’ve spent much of the evening trying to finish up my brief essay on the tripods in H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (I locked my keys in my office yesterday, so I couldn’t work on Paraphrase), and it’s actually been rather educational.
Did you know that an eighteen-year-old Wells took a lecture course from Darwin’s “bulldog,” the brilliant biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (himself grandfather to Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World)? I sure didn’t. The experience, by Wells’ own account, changed his life. You can see the influence of Darwinism across just about everything he wrote. In his “experimental” autobiography Wells is positively effusive in his praise of Huxley, Darwin, and the intellectual revolution that they achieved:
Darwin and Huxley, in their place and measure, belong to the same aristocracy as Plato and Aristotle and Galileo, and they will ultimately dominate the priestly and orthodox mind as surely, because there is a response, however reluctant, masked and stifled, in every human soul to rightness and a firmly stated truth.
That’s good stuff right there.
