chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2023-05-26 07:00 am

my The Expanse rewatch

Hi! A couple of you mentioned there's a comm watching/rewatching The Expanse right now? Could anyone direct me there?

Don't know if I'll be able to keep up, but I'm just finishing rewatching season 1. My plan is to rewatch s. 1-3, and then continue with 4-6, which I never caught up with when it jumped to Prime.

Wow, there is a lot I just didn't remember. Also this is SUCH A GOOD SHOW and really needs to be watched carefully. Like if I find myself getting distracted, I will turn it off mid-episode to pick up later or the next day when I can focus better.

AND IT IS SUCH A GOOD SHOW! Really some of the best science fiction out there. I have not read the books and looking at my terrifyingly large TBR piles, I'm not sure when I could even get to them, but the world building, the future plausibility (keeping in mind I am currently on 1.10) is so good, and I love that we're just dropped in and have to figure a lot of it out for ourselves.

Also, Avaserala is such a fashion icon.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2022-10-31 08:43 am

(no subject)

If we're connected on other social media, you will know that I was admitted to the emergency room on Friday for emergency oral surgery -- a dental infection which blew up and for which antibiotics were ineffective.
They operated on Saturday. Since no scheduled surgeries take place on weekends, it's a great time to be on a surgical aftercare ward -- very quiet. I landed a single room -- no window, which normally I'm almost phobic about, but in this case helped me to sleep so, so very much. Marty came by on Sunday with a change of book and my laptop, as I needed to contact my students on Canvas to let them know classes are cancelled for a few days and online for the rest of the week.

I should be going home mid-day today. One side of my face looks normal, the other half looks kind of Winston Churchill-ish, although already a bit less so than yesterday. Just hope I'm able to travel to Crime Bake two weekends from now -- it's meant to be my first mystery conference and I'm also meant to be up to charming agents and editors. Hopefully if I'm not up to it, they'll let me roll things over 'til next year.

Anyhow.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2022-05-30 09:54 am

. . . so that's settled

I tested negative this morning. Since I was following the CDC's guidelines, and it was 10 days since symptoms, I did go on a masked errand yesterday which involved walking crosstown, and while I'm clearly going to have to build back up my strength, it went well.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2022-01-05 04:56 am

2021 Meme

Via Scribblemoose:

1. What did you do in 2021 that you’d never done before?

Watched a group of right-wing extremists invade the Capitol.

Physical therapy.

And on a positive side, won a writing scholarship for my mystery fiction.

Read more... )
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-12-09 01:23 pm

(no subject)

I've been sitting on this for a few weeks, until the announcement was official.

I'm one of the Leon B. Burstein/MWA-NY Scholarship in Mystery Writing winners for this year!

It's funding for a conference, basically, but they had the announcement at their Revels holiday party last night. I won based on an excerpt from my WIP, which makes me feel hopeful and encouraged that this thing will find a home once I'm finally done with it.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-10-22 02:57 pm

(no subject)

I saw the orthopedist today and the news was good . . .

it's not the bones, it's not arthritis, it's patellofemoral syndrome and it's treatable entirely by PT.

I'll even get to wear real shoes again at some point.

Apparently walking doesn't exercise your quads, and mine are atrophied to an extent. I feel like my legs are strong, but it turns out, not in this regard.

So I had PT booked for next Tuesday morning anyway, and I now have a much more thorough prescription.

And eventually I'll be back to normal. I just can't neglect my quads anymore.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-09-09 06:58 am

seriously, intellectual property theft is theft

Reposted from my FB:

I'm struggling here. Some very sweet, very young students said something yesterday that really got under my skin. So I'm venting here because they are definitely good kids and I don't want to take it out on them. But.

They don't want to buy the textbook for the First Year Writing class. I get it -- textbooks have become absolutely predatory in their pricing, and even though ours is the most affordable, they see it as another drop in the overflowing bucket. But as we discussed it, I mentioned that a student in my literature class was asking whether the novels would be available as PDFs.

My students didn't seen anything wrong with that. They got that I would not want to scan a 500 page book, but not that it was theft of someone's intellectual property. That writing is someone's livelihood and that books don't just magically jump from our fingers. That it hardly seems an imposition to ask students to buy a handful of paperbacks that are available for under $20 apiece and in ebook form for even less than that.

My students are going to become engineers and computer professionals and doctors. They would not expect people to take their work for free. Why do they see the written word so differently?
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-09-02 07:48 am

Day 2 and already morning classes are cancelled

. . . because of flooding issues with the remnants of Hurricane Ida. While I normally like to work in my office all day on teaching days (Newark's a bit of hike, and my office is really nice, and once the Center is up and running -- which it isn't yet--I like to be there), I'd already decided to go in just shortly before teaching.

Because our oldest cat, Scorpius (Scorpy for short), who is 18, suddenly went into some kind of spasms last night. He was sleeping in between us and M woke me up calling Scorpy's name and he just was acting really strangely for maybe two minutes, maybe a bit longer? He got out of bed and wandered into the living room and sat under a chair he likes to sit under, so I followed him out and petted him and soon he was back to normal, but of course I never got back to sleep, and that was 1 am. So a fun day today, clearly.

Class isn't until 2:30, so I've already been working on class and admin stuff at home, and I'll head in around noonish. 1pm classes are the first ones to run. And Scorpy is curled up in his favorite cardboard box just as normal.

Yesterday was nice, though -- I saw a number of colleague friends and the class that met yesterday seemed really good -- quite a few of them actually volunteered in discussion even on the first day, and it's a smaller group (16, as opposed to today's FYW class, which is 21).

Funny thing: I was wearing a vintage-inspired midi dress, navy blue with white polka dots and flutter sleeves. One of my students was also wearing a midi-dress in navy blue with white polka dots and flutter sleeves. Considering a) our student body is about 70% male and b) the women tend to wear jeans and athleisure anyway, it's unusual enough when a student turns up in a dress at all. But one so close to my own? I hope she wasn't embarrassed -- I thought it was rather charming. But that's M-W class; maybe I'll try to remember to wear this dress on Ts or Ths just in case she was.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-08-02 07:08 am

writing frustration and the corset myth

Aaargh.

Since my first novel was a Western historical romance, I joined various Facebook groups to promote it.

I JUST read a post where EVERY SINGLE RESPONDENT except me and one other buys the corset myth -- that they fainted, that they removed ribs, that they were all short of breath and in pain all the time. The other woman posted a link to a Bernadette Banner video, but she and I were swimming against a tide of "I heard, I read." (And yes, I can think of much more serious issues where the same is true, but I'm fortunate to mostly travel in circles where science is respected, for example, so I don't run into it.)

And some of these people WRITE historicals. No wonder there are so many books with wildly inaccurate depictions in them.

Meanwhile, I'm realizing just how much research there's left for me to do, even with a PhD in the period I'm writing in! But at least if it's the first of a series, all that research will pay off more than once.

I'd hoped to be querying by spring. I've realized that's not going to happen -- maybe fall 2022 will be enough time, to write the book I WANT to write. I suspect I could dash it off and find a small house that'd take it, but I wouldn't be happy with it. (Not dissing small houses!)
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-21 07:45 am

Me on Instagram Live!

So real names and all: my friend/fellow writing group member Finola Austin has been doing an Instagram live festival to promote the paperback release of her novel Bronte's Mistress. (Which is fabulous and you should definitely read it.) She's been having half-hour dialogues with lots of other historical fiction writers, many of them FAR BETTER KNOWN than me! You can find out more on her Insta.

But anyway, here it is, with both my pseud, Cate Simon, and my Real Name. If you'd like to know more about me and my writing, here I am.


Finola and Friends, featuring Cate Simon
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-16 01:33 pm

(no subject)

Is anyone watching the current season of The Handmaid's Tale? Does anyone want to talk about what the hell just happened?

Cut for spoilers.

No, really.

You don't want to see this, unless.

OK.

Read more... )
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-15 07:51 am

(no subject)

Day 14: What fandom broke your heart?

Sleepy Hollow. A lot of this was the showrunners' fault -- the way they brought in fantastic people and then got rid of them (John Cho, Orlando Jones) and the way they treated Nicole Beharrie. The incredibly inconsistent way they wrote Katrina. The way the whole thing was basically one season of brilliance and then the remainder of a series of missed opportunities (which I stuck with far longer than I should have done).

I thought Ichabod and Abbie should end up together, but also that Ichabod and Katrina needed to be worked through first, because there was still real love there. And there were so many ways they could have done that well, but they found the worst possible way to do it horribly badly. And then when Katrina was gone there was still no Ichabod/Abbie. So that's on the showrunners. But people, especially on Tumblr, started namecalling, and I went from "wow, finally after a long hiatus, a show I want to fic!" to "putting this down and backing away slowly."
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-13 11:02 am

(no subject)

Skipping Days 9, 10 & 12.

Day 11: What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?

I fall in love with a story or a world, for the most part, and when it's not capturing my imagination anymore, I start to drift. The thing that pushes me away is if the fandom is all about a particular pairing, and that's all anyone's interested in. If only part of the thing is of interest to me, that's not enough to draw me in. I like talking to people who have different favorite characters, different OTPs in the same fandom.

Day 13: Squicks - What are some things that squick you in fandom - not necessarily "icky", though it can be. From anything involving blood, to bad grammar.

As long as people are doing what makes them happy, that's cool. I just won't read it if it's not for me. I have to admit I don't "get" certain things, like mpreg or A/B/O, but if others are having fun with it, good for them.

HOWEVER, there are certain fanon conventions which drive me absolutely spare in a particular fandom, but which wouldn't make sense to anyone here. Oh, and too many cutesy stories about main characters when they were children. Once in awhile, sure, but please keep it to a minimum. "But that's not a squick?" you're saying. Fair enough.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-10 08:43 pm

June fandom meme

Day 7: What's the longest time you've been in a fandom. Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

That would be Alias Smith and Jones. I didn't watch it when it first aired, when I was 9 or 10. I discovered it via a friend and fannish VHS tape samizdat, in the mid-90s. My friend and I had great fun putting together a humorous guide to the series on the still-young Internet, and I wrote what turned out to be reams of fanfic. My last stories came out in 2001. Then in 2017, I found an old zine, realized the stories had held up really well, and decided to revise them and post them to AO3. I made friends with people who'd discovered the stories (via an old-school single fandom web archive) between the time I'd walked away and the time I started reposting, and that meant so much. In addition to re-editing the old stories, I started writing new ones. While it's slowed down -- I'm more focused on my non-fanfic fiction writing -- it's still ongoing. In fact a picture a friend posted ended up sparking a 500 word ficlet this morning.


Day 8: Crack!fic - We all know it. What's your opinion of it, and if you want, show us an example.

I like funny stories, but they should have some connection to what's important about the original.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-08 01:27 pm

(no subject)

Day 5: Compare and/or contrast your very first fandom obsession and your very latest fandom obsession.

When you're my age, that's easy. In high school my friends and I were in love with Star Wars -- by which I mean *cough* the movie now known as A New Hope. (The Empire Strikes Back came out when we'd already graduated, yikes! Special effects used to take a lot longer in the 70s-80s.) We used to buy 'zines at cons, and try to get different ones so we could trade them around. And we got a lot of our information from Starlog magazine, because no Internet.

I'm not sure what my latest fandom obsession is. I wrote four stories for The Alienist since The Angel of Darkness aired last summer, but a lot of that was out of unhappiness with where they left things. I think I've worked through my issues, and I'm not obsessing anymore. Lucifer is the show that's making me happiest, but I'm not ficcing for it; I read some stories last spring/summer, but haven't even done that lately.

In general: I'm more likely to engage with things that are historical, or somehow our world but not. I'm less likely to go for space opera or epic fantasy (I was also Tolkien-obsessed in high school. By the books. We had the Rankin-Bass and Bakshi animations, but I was not impressed by either.)

Day 6: What's a fandom that you wish had a bigger following?

Anything that I'm in, because maybe someday I'll actually get kudos in three digits. ;-) My highest ever is 82. I know I'm a good writer, but I don't ever seem to write megafandoms or megapairings.

But seriously, I would love there to be a lot more fic around a Canadian feminist Western series that only got one season, Strange Empire. I think there was one story in Yuletide this year? I know three of us offered and requested it. They do some intriguing things in the first season, but they also dropped a serious last minute cliffhanger, and then there wasn't another season, and I want there to be all sorts of epic fic working out what happens next. But the one time I attempted a story myself, it just . . . eluded me.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-08 05:29 am

We Are Lady Parts!

So I downloaded the Peacock app to watch Girls5Ever, which was charming and fun and exactly what I expected.

And discovered something much, much better: We Are Lady Parts, a six-part Britcom about a British Muslim female punk band.

So, so good. Go and watch. Especially if you're one of the many who was galvanized by the Linda Lindas' recent viral video of "Racist Sexist Boy". These characters are in their 20s and their lives are way more complicated, but the music resonates with that.

But be aware, only the first episode is free. You have to subscribe to see the rest. :-(
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-04 01:19 pm

More June Fandom Questions

Day 3: What's a favorite, or at least memorable fandom meeting/interaction that you've had?

I've been fortunate enough to meet some great friends through fandom, whether I eventually met them in real life, or whether they've remained online friends.

Three years ago, I met up with some friends who flew over from the UK to visit the hometown and grave of an actor from Alias Smith & Jones, near Rochester, NY. Two of them had been fans of my fic for years before we met online, and we still have a regular chat on Messenger, talking mostly about our real lives now. The others were their friends. It sounds morbid, but it was really sweet. Since my parents (Dad was still alive then) live not very far away, I visited my family first and then met up with them. When we went to visit the grave, just by chance we met the late actor's (long late -- he died in the early 70s and was quite young) sister, her husband/partner, and a cousin. They were so delighted that my friends cared enough to come all the way from England and Wales, enough so that the sister left a lovely note and this year the cousin reposted a picture of us she'd taken that day to FB, with a message that the sister sent her love.

I also, at my first and so far only NY Comic Con, the autumn before the pandemic hit, decided to wait online to get Christopher Eccleston's autograph for M. Eccleston hadn't been on the con circuit at all and this was, I think, his first one. He'd recently come out about his struggles with mental illness, and I thanked him for his openness and told him that the signature was for my partner, who is bipolar and we had just the loveliest chat. He has such lovely blue eyes. I will also never spend that much on an autograph ever again, and wow, he charged waaaaaay less than the Marvel stars who were there. But I'm glad I did it.

Day 4: What are the origins of your penname/username?

I lived in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan for 22 years, during the heyday of LiveJournal and etc. The tribute to Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls was very much intended. Also, M and I spent our wedding night at the Chelsea Hotel, since we had visitors from England for the wedding and never actually went on a honeymoon.
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-06-03 07:05 am

June

I am so bad at tagging on this system, but this is the June fandom meme, created by squidgiepdx and seen by me via muccamuck and nyctanthes.

As with all of these things, I will possibly drift off midway through . . .


Day 1: What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?

What I'm most enthusiastic about watching is not necessarily what I'm talking about or ficcing. I watched Lucifer all the way through. Twice. Read some fic, was not inspired to write a word.

Actually posted four The Alienist fics and only one Alias Smith and Jones one -- although there is a second which I wrote for the advent calendar that I just haven't coded and put on AO3 yet.

Wrote an m/m fic for Yuletide, which is totally not my wheelhouse. (Like I've written one previous m/m for a 'zine and I was embarrassed enough by its badness that it's the only zine story from that fandom I haven't reposted to AO3.) Not the pairing of my heart, but a pairing I could absolutely see.

Realized that I would probably not participate in any more exchanges, because ficcing for me needs to be returning to the well for inspiration, not an obligation. An obligation that I kept setting aside my WIP novel to work on instead, and that is NOT a good thing.


Day 2: You've got your OTP, you have to throw a third into the mix (from the same fandom), creating an OT3. Who is the OTP, and in your opinion, why would they make a perfect third for them? Bonus question: What about adding a third to your OTP from a different fandom? Who and why?

So in the past 365 days, I wrote four fics for The Alienist:
two Sara/John -- the 'ship the show itself played up, and then broke my heart with
one John/Laszlo -- popular m/m pairing
one Laszlo/Mary -- this involved resurrecting a character who was murdered in the first season, but I did it with a sort of fairytale feeling and the commenters at least seem to think it worked.

I did think of taking the John/Laszlo and adding Sara in a sequel, to OT3 them. It is a popular trio in the fandom and it could work with the way I've set story #1 up. I just haven't had sufficient oomph to do it.
And when I think about writing historical fiction involving people who solve crimes in late 19th century NY, I think "maybe I'll just work on my WIP instead?"


Read more... )
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-04-30 08:27 am

So *that* was not clever

My laptop is very mobile. Not only does it travel with me, whether to work or on trips, but I use it all over the apartment, in the bedroom (desk or bed), livingroom (couch), and dining alcove (table). Only last Saturday I managed to drop it, and while I'm due for a new one in the fall (thank you, university!), one of the hinges broke and the trackpad went wonky.

I dropped it off on Monday, thinking maybe they could tighten a screw or something, but they pointed out there was an area that was exposed at the crack and maybe it could be repaired or maybe I'd get a replacement. I was next on campus on Thursday (we're still semi-remote, so I've been going in twice a week for my "converged" class and to work in the office, which is large and nice and right now very quiet). I stopped by the desk where I'd dropped it off and the student working there was like "well, they haven't gotten back to me and . . ."

So I had a heavy old loaner in my office, and was using M's at home. FWIW, M's mum bought us a desktop when we were first married -- within a few months it was clear that sharing a computer was a bad idea, and I went back to using my laptop. So yeah. Feeling very unsettled not having a computer of my own to set up all my stuff on.

Thank goodness, I saw that B's light was on in his office as I left the building. B made a few phone calls and in about an hour or so, P was at my office with a new Lenovo. He said it could be loaner and I could trade it in when I'm supposed to exchange in the fall, or I could just keep it. By the time I get everything set up, I suspect I'm going to just keep it. Also, they're unsure Lenovos or Dells and I rather undignifiedly said "not Dell!!" because I had one good Dell in the early 90s and then they started overproducing and I had very bad experiences with Dells consistently (my own, using my mom's, ones at offices I worked at).

So now I'm moving things over from my external hard drive and trying to recall correct passwords for all the sites I visit on a regular basis. And wondering if I am just a dinosaur when P asked why I didn't save everything to Google Drive? I said it was because I don't like Googledocs and prefer to use Word and be able to work offline, but he said I didn't need to use Googledocs and now I am thinking that I really should look into this.

And ironically? I picked out M's new computer last fall, and got a different Lenovo model from the one I had. Which is now the model I have, too, so . . . twinsies?
chelseagirl: Alice -- Tenniel (Default)
2021-04-06 08:36 am

Yet More Book Meme

. . . because I have stacks of work to do, which I will get to shortly, but I'm procrastinating.

I will enjoy being back in the office four days a week next fall, for certain. Where work is work, and life is life. Hoping for it; apparently I like boundaries. I had a taking-a-walk plan with a faculty friend who had to back out (she ended up teaching from home for good reasons), but another, who I haven't seen in person for 13 months, came to campus to get her computer reimaged. (She had a health reason to be online-only, whereas I did not have an exemption and have been going in part of the time.) So that was nice. And we ran into another lecturer and the woman who runs the University Club where, in normal times, we'd have lunch. And I ate a falafel from a place where we used to sometimes get falafel, though we took it to campus to eat outside because pandemic.

Anyway, book meme:

4. A book with a worldbuilding detail that has stuck with you

I love China Mieville's Bas-Lag books, and the thing that stays with me always is the image of the Perdido Street Station in the eponymous first book. It's massive, it has rails reaching out to the city in all directions, it's decaying yet lively, it's panoptical above all.


5. A book where you loved the premise but the execution left you cold

Death on Telegraph Hill by Shirley Tallman. This was the fifth and last in a mystery series about a woman lawyer in San Francisco in the 1880s. OK, so obviously fantastic idea, and someone beat me to it, and good for her, and there's room for both of us. I enjoyed the first four books in the series. But you do not put Oscar Wilde in a book and just have everybody talk about how tedious and pretentious he is. This is Oscar Effing Wilde. And then he shows up again later, and everyone still doesn't like him, and just thinks he's a bore.

Not like Oscar Wilde?

I mean, yes, he was pretentious. But never tedious. He was Oscar. He was fabulous.


6. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work

Hmmm. Does anyone really want to take a guided tour through Hell, and all that torture? And lots of it is just the author getting back at his contemporaries and we only know who they are because footnotes. But Dante's Inferno is mindblowing and there is a reason it's still being read centuries later.