(no subject)

I had to reschedule my eye appointment. I'm very good at making my body do things when it's tired and hurting, but this morning I realised that I needed to go back to bed. My deadlines will waver a bit this week, too. But I shall teach tonight and go to the library today and the dentist tomorrow. I possibly shou8ld have known that something was up when I fell asleep in the middle of taking medication last night...

Two years ago I couldn't even have gone to Sydney, one year ago I could have done the coastal trip but not taught on both sides of it and certainly not come home last night and done a few hours of urgent work.

My underlying health must be improving, for I managed last week's classes and deadlines, three days of travel and then three more days of travel. After going back to bed for a few hours, I'm not chipper but I am able to do basics. This is big. It means that I'm catching up to normal work levels. If I continue to take care, then I'll be just fine.

In fact, the last few months I've been doing more than normal, between the livelihood and the medical and the chasing insurance matters (which reminds me, more of that to do today) and the full-time study. Sean Williams is also earning on top of the fulltime study and we were chatting about it (briefly) on Saturday and he, too, finds it hard work. So maybe my body is closer to fully capable than I've been assuming! That would be nice.

What's nice now is that I actually have the energy to make me some coffee. If the milk's still OK I'll have two cups, I think. I can't buy replacement milk until tomorrow (it was going to happen on the way back from hospital). Small complications - but nothing dramatic. Yay for returning health!

Laura and her Dancing Mice - guest post from Laura Goodin

Several years ago, Gillian helped me whip into shape something I had written as a charming, whimsical tale (with, admittedly, a bit of shadow to it, but on the whole it lacked a certain...depth and resonance). With her sharp eye for both story and resonance, she was able to give me the feedback to make it what we both felt was something special and exciting. It now had not just wistfulness, but intense desire, grief, and exultation. Not just quaint characters, but figures of genuine power. Not just a vague theme, but a ringing significance that could captivate and inspire a reader. (Gillian is some kind of editor, let me tell you.)

That story, "The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders", led off the wonderful lineup in the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild's anthology Masques. I got a lot of enthusiastic feedback about it, much of it along the lines of "This needs to be illustrated!" and "This would make a great animation!"

But when my husband, composer Houston Dunleavy, said, "This would make a great opera," lightbulbs went off. I adapted the story into a libretto, and Houston wrote some absolutely thrilling music for it. We secured the support of an international gang of top-tier professionals, including singers, a director, and an animator, to start work. We're now in rehearsals for the first stage of workshopping: a concert performance (that is, with all the music, but without the costumes, props, or staging), to hear how the music sounds in real life, in front of a real audience.

We're reaching out to people who care about art, stories, opera, new music, multimedia to help us fund this stage of the development. We've got a funding page up at http://dancingmice.pozible.com; you can go there to find out more about the project. If it's something you want to support, we'd love you to pledge what you can, and/or to share the link with as many people as you can.

I'm very excited about crowdfunding. At its heart, it takes art out of the hands of the gatekeepers (governments, moneyed elites) and puts it in the hands of individuals who can choose for themselves what art they want to make happen. Needless to say, I'm also excited about the project itself: to see a story that I love become real in time and space, a vehicle for bringing so many amazing artists together, and something exciting and beautiful for the people who will come to see it. I hope you can be part of it as well.

(no subject)

I have a couple more guest posts to arrive in my inbox - I'll gift you with them when they arrive. It wasn't intentional that two appear almost at once, and after a few days when I couldn't post at all (due to walking ocean shores and getting sand between my toes) but I'm not complaining (well, I am, but not about guest psots).

My class tonight was very patient with me. Despite the extra time asleep, I was still so tired that I forgot basic things, like the abbreviation for a denarius and lists of kings. I remembered the big patterns and was able to send people to good sources for all the stuff they wanted more reading on, and the time passed so quickly that it was 8 pm before any of us realised. We talked about paperclips and rubbish disposal and about building a society where the cultural approach to technology fits the actual technology in the story. We also talked about hot water systems in the Middle Ages. And pipes. And rummaging through the garbage of dead people.

I have no more teaching until Tuesday. Since I've taught somewhere between 40 and 50 hours this week (possibly more than that - but I ventured there earlier and decided I would not even think it as a possibility), I rather suspect this isn't a bad thing. My students at the coast pointed out that even when I made my felt scarf, I was teaching them how to use the experience in their writing. I said that I was sure I had five minutes when I wasn't teaching and was still working on the scarf. "Possibly five minutes," my students replied. They plan to do lots of craftwork and incorporate the sensual aspects of it into their writing.

Did I forget to say that I made a felt scarf? A very nice one, too. I was going to give it to my mother, but I fear I may need it more than her. Canberra is building up to the coldest winter on record, and it's only autumn. The only way it can't be one of the coldest is if winter is warmer than autumn. And on that deeply considered opinion (which has not been researched or even thought about - I was cold today!) I shall take myself to sleep.