And today I shall share some of the pictures of some of the animals I saw! You recall how I mentioned that I’m not actually a good photographer in passing? Most of my pictures failed or are just unshareable.
Photo Post: I went to a zoo! (part 2)


And today I shall share some of the pictures of some of the animals I saw! You recall how I mentioned that I’m not actually a good photographer in passing? Most of my pictures failed or are just unshareable.
This is part one of a picture post set. Yes, I sometimes do them! In this case, I went on a trip to Antwerp. (And, I’m sorry, but I will never be able to say ‘Antwerp’ without thinking of this.) This will be rambly and probably overly excited. (Sorry. I’m afraid I’m not good at formal-and-professional while going SQUEE. Yet. I may learn!)
I have musings on translations. Sort of. A lot of my musings are things I don’t feel comfortable sharing yet because I don’t know how other parties involved would feel (and whether it would scupper their chances in ongoing book deal negotiations).
So I have thoughts and musings on translations and their effects on a text, especially in light of the recent debate on diversity in SFF. And I have neither the words nor the comfort level to share them at present.
Instead, I thought I’d throw it out as a question. What are your experiences with translations in regard to their treatment of the setting? I’m not really talking the kind of translation that turns Tolkien’s Shire into Auenland or Gouw, but the kind that would take Harry Potter and rewrite it to put it firmly and canonically within, say, France and still market it as the exact same tale.
Yes, there are translations that actually do that. I’ve no idea how common or widespread it is, though. Hence my musing. Because I’m sure there’s a very interesting essay for someone in that about the topic and what it means for the discussion on diversity in fiction in general.
Please do also feel free to pelt me with links discussing the issue. I really don’t have the spoons to keep up with the discussion, so I don’t know if anyone’s brought it up and I missed it. Sadness.
Coming in late 2013 is my debut short story collection Feather by Feather and other stories. Below the cut you’ll find a monochrome version of the cover, along with a sampler of the stories available in the collection.
Some days I want to say something about anxiety and me. And I can’t do it.
August was a weird month. Let me go and prove it to you!
I Want to Read:
– Madam Fate by Marcia Douglas
– Namma by Kate Karko
– The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker
– Beyond Binary edited by Brit Mandelo
I Want to Write:
10000 words of fiction
I also had a private goal where I was going to read Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled, which I already read. I wound up abandoning The Anvil of the World, though, so it evens out? I read all the things this month and then added a couple more to the list! WHOOT! And writing, oh writing. My handy dandy spreadsheet tells me that I wrote a good 34,457 words this past month! GO ME! Onwards and upwards! I’m on schedule for finishing The Passage of Pearl before my tentatively picked deadline, but… September is…
Well, let’s just say that this September sees me with very little chance to sit down and relax as much as I need to. Not that it’d help much. I’ve been trying to relax all summer and it doesn’t seem to have helped, but we’ll just trudge along and do our best. September will be The Month Of The Chunkster and it’s when the dayjob (and life) picks up again, so we’ll see how I do with time management.
I Want to Read:
– River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay
– Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
– The King’s Peace by Jo Walton
I Want to Write:
10000 words of fiction
Again, we’ll just see how it goes. I suspect I’ll struggle to pick up River of Stars because it’s the last new-to-me read by Guy Gavriel Kay and every fibre of my being is screaming “Noooooooooooooooooo” at the prospect of having no new books waiting for me to pick up when I finish it. I shall be sad. But! It is a chunkster and I would like to be out of paper chunksters before the end of the year. I my reading tends to speed up during the final months and if I have no more chunksters I may actually get my entire shortlist read this year. :O EXCITING! I am SO CLOSE. (Really, I have 13 books left. I can read 13 books in four months, surely. Especially when they’re relatively short…)
But we’ll see how it goes because September is going to be filled with scads and scads of busy-ness and Social Commitments. I have scaled down my word count accordingly. Most of the work will go into polishing the collection and getting the final short story for it written up and polished too. And then I shall be free not to think about covers and distribution and stuff for a while as I work on making a writing order and sort-of sticking to it (oh and getting my life sorted; that needs doing to).
And so August has come to an end. Below the cut all the things I read/played this past month that wasn’t online fiction! Of which I read tons to try and catch up only to fall behind again. >> You’ll get a proper goals post later as I am tired and still need to write it up. This just required checking it over to make sure I didn’t forget anything. Yay being organised enough to add it all!