Barbara's Blog

  Evidently there's a year-end sale going on at Open Road books. Today, US and Canada, $1.99 apiece, digital: Those Who Hunt the Night, Dog Wizard, Walls of Air, Armies of Daylight - by George Effinger, Fire in the Sun and Exile Kiss. Mind you, none of the many covers that have appeared on Dog Wizard or Armies of Daylight look like what they look like in my head - not that any of that will make a difference, in a digital edition. The one on Exile Kiss is nice - the third book of George's Budayeen trilogy. I've never seen that one before. Happy New Year everyone.

  A very quiet Christmas here, due to a stomach bug (after spending a lovely Christmas Eve with friends) which caused me to cancel Christmas Day family plans. I just couldn't face the drive. So, a day of reading editorial notes on "Death and Hard Cider," Ben January #19 - and when necessary, eating what my husband used to call "non-threatening food." No Christmas candy here. Open Road promo Monday: the whole Darwath Trilogy will be down-priced to $2.99 (digital, US and Canada) - Monday December 27. As with Time of the Dark, though Walls of Air has had a number of very beautiful covers in various editions, I'm still partial to the original Del Rey paperback cover. Although no cover of any book of mine looks the way the scenes look in my head. Now that I've posted grades for the semester, and have 6 weeks of break, maybe I'll be able to get back to painting on Sunday afternoons. I've missed it. Everybody have a lovely and peaceful holiday!

  Open Road - Tuesday, December 21 - Time of the Dark downpriced (digital, US and Canada) to $1.99. (Yes, I know there are more recent covers, but this one has always been my favorite!) In addition, I want to put in a plug for Laura Frankos' Broadway Revival, on Kindle, an entertaining and well researched time-travel tale about (among other things) old Broadway musicals... Class is done for the semester. Can I please get some actual work done now?

A way long time ago, during the British Invasion of the mid-'60s, I had a medium-size crush on a British rock-n-roller named Ian Whitcomb. His big hit was "You Turn Me On" and I remember he was a pretty enthusiastic showman on programs like Shindig and Hullabaloo. But even on his first rock album, he had what was probably an old British music-hall song called "Poor But Honest", and he later had a hit with an old Al Jolson tune, "Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on Saturday Night?" And of course, he went on from there to become a much-respected historian of old British music-hall tunes, with his own radio show: I saw him in concert at the Huntington Library several years ago, gray-haired, slender, and cute as ever. He passed away in April of 2020 - I have heard, from COVID, though on-line it's listed as complications from a stroke suffered 8 years previously. He had an office and did research at the Huntington Library, and this book - After

  Always my favorite. 

  More adventures in research. Harry Turtledove turned me on to this one a couple of years ago - I find it a soothing and informative before-bed read (when I should actually be researching either the Presidential election of 1840 - for Benjamin January - or what the Los Angeles barrios were like in 1924 - for the second Hollywood mystery). American Cornball is an exhaustive compilation taken from old joke-books, old "novelties" catalogs (the precursors to Archie McPhee), old magazine, newspaper, and animated cartoons, of stuff that used to be considered hilarious in American culture and now isn't. From the hate-filled pervasiveness of racist humor to the "hunh?" of humor about women's ankles and people getting their hats knocked off, the guy really did his research, and writes in a pleasant, readable, thoughtful style. Sometimes simply curious, sometimes really unsettling to see some of the things that people at one time thought it was okay to make jokes abo

  I see the website for LosCon 47 - the local Los Angeles science fiction convention - still has me listed as a "confirmed guest." This is no longer accurate. I had planned to attend - I've gone to LosCons since the early 1980s. But a combination of health concerns, holiday family logistics, and simple COVID paranoia caused me to step back from that. The LosCon committee is being scrupulous about masking and vaccine requirements for the convention, but the fact remains that I'm in a couple of Endangered Categories and I'd rather not breathe hotel air just yet if I can help it. My apologies to all. 

  From "Tik-Tok of Oz" by L. Frank Baum: [The Queen of Oogaboo is recruiting men for her army, and enlists her subject Jo Files]            “This Files … had nine book-trees, on which grew a choice selection of story-books. In case you have never seen books growing upon trees, I will explain that those in Jo Files’ orchard were enclosed in broad green husks which, when fully ripe, turned to a deep red color. Then the books were picked and husked and were ready to read. If they were picked too soon, the stories were found to be confused and uninteresting and the spelling bad. However, if allowed to ripen perfectly, the stories were fine reading and the spelling and grammar excellent.            “Files freely gave his books to all who wanted them, but the people of Oogaboo cared little for books and so he had to read most of them himself, before they spoiled. For, as you probably know, as soon as the books were read the words disappeared and the leaves withered and faded – wh

  Back when I lived in Westchester, one of my neighbors grew these in his front yard, and entered them in competitions. Most of them were white, but he had a couple of orange ones. It was like walking past a parking-lot full of Volkswagens. Carve one of THOSE into a Jack 'o' Lantern that looks like it means business! I always did wonder whether they tasted the same. Peoples' hobbies and occupations are wonderful things. Not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine.

  I have a short story - in fact, a re-print, the first short-story I ever wrote - in the anthology "Shapers of Worlds, Vol. II," which will be out Tuesday, Nov. 2. "The Little Tailor and the Elves" appeared originally in Jane Yolen's Xanadu-2 anthology - I think we were asked to do re-takes of fairy-tales. I've done a number of re-takes of fairy-tales - particularly with Sun Wolf and Starhawk Further Adventures - but this one, in modern New York (or at least New York in the early '90s, which was when the story was written), though not a Sun Wolf/Starhawk tale, is one of my favorites. https://www.amazon.com/Shapers-Worlds-II-featured-Worldshapers-ebook/dp/B09FM3M37Y/

  I shamelessly stole this from Just History Posts - a fun site that I visit when I can, though it's been b usy, busy times. A lot of cascading deadlines (including the fantasy I started seven years ago which unexpectedly came to life again) and the whole Holiday cycle thing coming up. Plus teaching. Luckily, the deadlines all come before Finals and Research Paper Time, and the holidays themselves look to be quiet and undemanding (except that I have to start the second Hollywood Murder Mystery on the 23rd of November...) (mostly because the editorial notes for Ben January #19 are due in on the 22nd). I plan to celebrate Halloween as I always do: by turning out the lights in the front of the house and watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show quietly in the back. Don't dream it... be it. In other news, George's cyberpunk masterpiece "When Gravity Fails" will be downpriced, digitally, on-line from Open Road Media on Halloween (Sunday the 31st) - US, UK, Canada, and Aus

  I am up against the wall with deadlines, but I saw this on my other FB page and couldn't not post it: In other news - Open Road is having a huge sale on George's work today, a whole slew of his titles, for anywhere from $.99 to $2.99. AND - my new website is live! barbarahambly.com is FINALLY back into my control. You can now connect with the little manucule hand at the side of the blog that says, "Return to Table of Contents." The new look - designed by my dear friend Eric - is gorgeous, and it includes a small gallery of some of my favorites among my own paintings. (I paint on my day off... of which I haven't had one for several months now). I will cross-post blogs from FB to my blog there, but it will serve as a nice backup if there are further issues with FB. The new site also includes links to all my "Further Adventures" stories, and to all my books.

Happy Birthday, John Lennon (Still miss you).  

  More research in the slave-trade and slavery. An EXCELLENT article by Marley Brown in this month's Archaeology Magazine about the excavations at Christiansborg Castle in Ghana - about what life was like in the sixteenth century, in a slave-trade depot run by European slavers who traded with the local Africans who actually captured and brought in captive fellow-Africans to sell. The evidence of a small but thriving mixed-race community around the castle walls - and the fact that the (Danish, in this case) slavers would often send their mixed-race sons to be educated in Denmark - was absolutely not something I expected to find. And it brought up - as slave-trade research always does for me - the shocking contrast of the "business-as-usual" images of the people involved in the trade who weren't its victims, but its perpetrators. When I read about the accounting procedures on plantations, or the fact that plantation owners could purchase PRE-PRINTED FORMS to catalog sl

  More trolling around the net when I should be working on the notes the editor sent me... First: because I did some Grail research in grad school, I was pretty sure at least one member of Monty Python was a medievalist - and I think the culprit is Terry Jones, who has written an EXCELLENT book on the so-called "barbarian" civilizations, and co-authored another which posits that Geoffrey Chaucer (who drops out of any historical record rather abruptly in 1400) was murdered. I recognized a number of Grail legend tropes in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (like the Castle of Maidens, which one finds in at least a couple of the different versions of the tale). I didn't realize, however, that THIS was a medieval thing, but it shows up in several illuminated manuscripts: So evidently The Boys weren't making it up! And then I found, in a friend's FB, a horrifying modern confirmation of all those snail illuminations I posted a few days ago! (The man in the pict

  The Darwath Trilogy will be downpriced digitally, through Open Road Media, US and Canada, Sunday, October 3, $2.99. But that's not the big issue. Trolling around the Net last night when I should have been making my dinner, I encountered about a dozen images from medieval manuscript illumination that caused me to wonder: Who was putting what into the ale supply of those monasteries? Was this 1950s science-fiction time-slipped back to the 12th century? WTF? The last one - at least from what my gardener friends have said - is at least understandable. But for the rest... Is there something about the Middle Ages that we haven't heard about? (Particularly what appears to be an airborne snail in Picture #2)? (Which could actually be pretty disgusting in combat, when you think about it.) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-were-medieval-knights-always-fighting-snails-1728888/

  Tuesday, Sept. 28, George Effinger's "When Gravity Fails" will be on sale through Open Road Media, $1.99, digital, US and Canada. It's one of his best. He always claimed it was his attempt to channel Raymond Chandler, but in truth, it was his desire to write about the French Quarter as he knew it in the '70s and '80s, but in science fictional guise. In other news, I'm wrapping up Benjamin January #19 - "Death and Hard Cider". I thought about calling it "Tippecanoe and Murder, Too," but suspect that too few people even know about that whole Presidential campaign: the first campaign to use modern hoopla, marketing, and publicity stunts, including the campaign slogan, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!". ("Old Tippecanoe" was the name the Whig party chose for their candidate, William Henry Harrison. John Tyler was his VP). I've spent the past several months shaking my head over the research on the Election of 1840. They

  IT WAS THE DAY BEFORE AUTUMN OFFICIALLY BEGAN AND THEY WERE PUTTING UP CHRISTMAS MERCHANDISE IN LOWE'S! I understand that this is how things are. But, c'mon... it wasn't even Bilbo Baggins's birthday yet!

  More fun with research. In the betting book at Brooks' Club in London, in 1785: "Lord Cholmondeley has given two guineas to Lord Derby, to receive 500 guineas whenever his lordship f***ks a woman in a balloon one thousand yards from the earth." (The original did not use asterisks). Origin of the Mile-High Club? In 1774, Brooks had to outlaw betting on other peoples' premature deaths. From the book, Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know, by Karl Shaw. And I'm only in to Chapter 2. As my friend Laurie says, "You can't make this shit up."

And here we are, at my new blog. The website is yet to come, and for the first couple of weeks I'll be buried in a deadline: Benjamin January # 19, Death and Hard Cider , which takes place against the background of the 1840 Presidential election. I thought about calling it, "Tippecanoe and Murder, Too," but realized that a lot of people won't understand the reference to the campaign of William Henry Harrison. That was the first "modern" style Presidential campaign, with songs, rallies, women's auxiliary organizations (even though women couldn't vote - the guys found them convenient for providing refreshments at the rallies, and Harrison's opponents railed against those hussies for handing out leaflets and reading newspapers and having opinions about the politics of their betters). In a couple of weeks (so my website builder assures me) my new website should (at last!) be up and running, and this blog will be linked to it. I will double-post - tri

 This is an experimental new post, to see if this works. Can I put in a picture? Can I change the font ? We seem to have a small number of available. Can I change this after it's uploaded? Let's see .

Click on your picture. Click on the B logo in the upper left of the screen. The 3 horizontal lines icon is called the hamburger and is the universal symbol for a hidden menu.  Click the hamburger. Select "New Post". Write your entry and Press publish. We can chat about this tomorrow at your leisure <g>. —There is a lot you can do with this blog software. Whatever you may conceive is probably possible. Write and publish is pretty basic. You can have separate pages, membership requirements, groups, links, email posting, moderating...it's all here when you want it. You can also ignore all that stuff.— eb  

     A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. At last a funny-looking old gentleman engaged her, and took her home to his house. When she got there, he told her that he had something to teach her, for that in his house he had his own names for things.      He said to her, "What will you call me?"    " Master or mister, or whatever you please, sir," says she.      He said, "You must call me master of all masters . And what would you call this?" he said pointing to his bed.      "Bed or couch, or whatever you please, sir."     " No, that's my barnacle . And what do you call these?" said he, pointing to his pantaloons.     "Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir."     "You must call them squibs and crackers . And what would you call her?" he said pointing to the cat.     "Cat or kit, or whatever you please, sir."     "You must call her white-faced simminy . "     &quo