2:30 READING!
(AKA “The SUPER LUCKY PRIME TIME Right-After-Delia-Sherman-Reads Slot!)
New short story “Lily-White and the Thief of Lesser Night.”
3 PM
SALON 6 Ladybromances
Cooney, Garfinkle, Goss, Janssen, N. Wolfe
7:30-9:30
SALONS 5-6 A Most Readerconish Miscellany CONCERT!
This year I get to do four of the new BRIMSTONE RHINE songs, accompanied by Carlos Hernandez on ukulele and Faye Ringel on piano!
Oh, and here’s this article I did for BLACK GATE MAGAZINE, where I interviewed the INCREDIBLE ARTIST PETER NEVINS who designed the CD jacket art for Hadestown! (Well, and all the poster art you see for it too–not to mention for the Child Ballads as well!)
And here’s a review of the Hadestown album that Amal El-Mohtar wrote for Black Gate!
And a YOUTUBE VIDEO of “Hadestown” the song!
I guess…I’ve been with this musical since 2011, maybe 2010, and what I NEVER KNEW (though occasionally hoped for/suspected) was HOW MUCH MUSIC WAS MISSING FROM THE CD!
The CD is maybe more like HIGHLIGHTS.
Sure, you can extrapolate the story from the given material, especially if you read Edith Hamilton’s and Bulfinch’s Mythologies OBSESSIVELY as a child (>.>), but there were ALL THE SONGS I’D NEVER HEARD!
Plus the spare, direct, dialogue/poems that SEEM at first glance-off-the-ear to be too simple, almost facile, and then a slant rhyme catches you off guard, snags you, breaks you… And you think, you think, REVELATION, you think WONDER, you think, COLOSSUS!
My series of Tweets from Intermission:
When Hernandez and I emerged from the theatre, we walked arm in arm a while in the sunny breeze–on this, the first truly sultry weekend of late spring.
After a while, I said, “You know…Right before Hermes repeats that line about how we all know how the story ends, but we keep singing it–because it’s the brave thing to do, it’s brave to sing in hopes that THIS time, it will turn out differently… Right before he sang that, I thought, I mean, I KNOW this is going to end the way it does! I even know where on the stage it will happen. I even know HOW it will be lit. But maybe, I don’t know, maybe this time it will surprise me. Maybe they’ll make it out. Even though they warned me they wouldn’t.”
And Hernandez said, “I had the same thought.”
The tears were still drying on both our faces.
What catharsis. What ritual. Old and new at once–AND it had me dancing in my seat.
I told Hernandez, “My friends who edit the mythic poetry magazine GOBLIN FRUIT” –incidentally, after we saw the matinee, they went to see the 8 PM performance– “say that the poems most often submitted are Persephone poems. Well, and Mermaid poems. I mean, I myself wrote an Orpheus & Eurydice/Persephone & Hades musical mess in high school. Here’s a juvenilia line by C. S. E. Cooney: “And down the Lord’s stone face ran tears of rusty iron glistening.”
I looked at him.
“Carlos,” I said, “I’ve been waiting MY WHOLE LIFE to see Hades cry!!!”
He smiled. “You really have, haven’t you?”
And that’s what this musical–this folk opera–did.
It gave me the tears of the Lord of the Dead. And his big baritone bass. And his cynical face.
And it gave me the bright sharp green of Persephone, and the sunlight on her shoulders. And her dancing. HER DANCING!
And it gave me Hermes, who moved as slinky as a mink and as gravely as thunder. With his voice like gravel and the shuffling of a joker deck.
And it gave me the three Fates–who showed their close kinship with the Furies, their howling outrage, their vulturous aspects, their tight harmonies. How I feared and longed for them.
And it gave me fierce Eurydice, strong and bold and mischievous and afraid and hungry and cold.
And it gave me gentle, gentle Orpheus, with his voice that cracked and soared, his voice as pure as a newborn’s, his frailty, his joy.
Truly I can say that my favorite German word (not that I know many) was at play here. Gesamtkunstwerk.
So much masterful art went into the making of this uber-masterwork of art. The costumes, the choreography, the lighting, the bone-pale stage tree–roots reflecting branches–the direction, the musicians–ah, the precision and playfulness of the musicians!
It was lovely. It made me want to work.
The flaws–if they should be considered flaws–are in the gender-locked and old-fashioned nature of the myth itself: What is man, what is woman, how do we perceive each other, how they’re ever in opposition?
Even gender-bending the casting would only go a little way in opening up a wider picture.
But perhaps that is not the job of Hadestown. Perhaps it is the job of someone else, who emerges from their katabasis at the New York Theatre Workshop to a world full of what is possible.
“What story can I tell? What story do we already know that we must hear again–but as we have never heard it before?”
Ah. Good theatre always pisses me off and roils me up and makes me very restless. I am grateful for it. It is the flip side to fertile boredom: fertile outrage. Fertile collaboration. Fertile inspiration.
Watching a colossus (like Anais Mitchell, and the folks at NYTW) at works just makes me want to stand on the shoulders of giantesses.
On ANOTHER NOTE, but apropos:
I got home and found out that filker and “geeky musician” Dr. Mary Crowell is running a KICKSTARTER to fund her new mythic blues/jazz album “Scattering Seeds on the Pomegranate Tour.”
As I’ve been working on this project this week–which is all about, you guessed it, feminism, geekdom, genre, erasure, power, resistance–Rosarium Publishing has been running their Indiegogo Campaign.
I’ve got this odd feeling of unity, because Rosarium is, like, one big act of resistance all by itself. Do you think #WeNeedDiverseBooks? ROSARIUM HAS THEM!
Anyway, I’m a huge fan. I put my money where my mouth is, and now I’m putting my mouth where my money is, I guess!
To that end, I made this wee little VLOG. First thing in the morning. With a hat on.
I know it has been long and long again, faithful backers of Brimstone Rhine!
But I gotcher back! I haven’t forgotten about you!
1. All CDs have been MASTERED and PRESSED and SHIPPED TO ME in a cunning box FULL OF CDs. Yes, CDs!!! THAT YOU HELPED MAKE! Showing here:
I wasn’t sure that, after all that work, they’d actually, you know, WORK! So I tested one. AND GUESS WHAT IT WORKED!!!
MEANWHILE, we’d had our local silkscreening company, the FABULOUS and FABOOSH J Mack Studios in Westerly, make our PRINTS! I picked out a nice thick beautiful paper, and we silkscreened 4 prints per page. Which means…
APPLICATION OF STRAIGHT EDGE AND STRAIGHT RAZOR WHILE LISTENING TO A DOROTHY SAYERS NOVEL ON MY NANO, GA-DOING!
This work will result in a backer, like this backer here, receiving the GOODS, both CD and PRINT, in the mail. SOON!
(Okay, so this backer just happened to be STANDING RIGHT THERE, so I just GAVE him his, all right, but you’ll get YOURS soon enough!)
We are printing out labels on Sunday. I’ll package everything up this week and hope to ship ’em out by Thursday!
YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE!!!
If your ADDRESS HAS CHANGED
since backing the
BRIMSTONE RHINE PROJECT
in February and March of 2015
PLEASE CONTACT ME
with your
UPDATED ADDRESS INFORMATION!!!
In other news, the Dread Templeton, as I think you know, designed the cover for the Backer’s Album, CORBEAU BLANC, CORBEAU NOIR. Showing here:
LIMITED PRINTS will be available for sale sometime soon. I say limited and I mean LIMITED!
And, as all of this is happening, we are slowly but surely working on setting the backers’ songs to ukulele. They were “written” in true Brimstone Rhine style. As in, “scribbled on a notebook with the melody sung into the Voice Recorder app on my phone.” So you can imagine what collaborating with me to find the ACTUAL CHORDS must be like.
This is my first time on the Nebula Nominations ballot. But you know whose first time this ISN’T? My friend, Amal El-Mohtar.
Now, Amal . . .
I have know Amal for nine years now. Nine. That’s an auspicious number, is it not?
She’s one of my oldest friends in-genre, and certainly the first good friend I ever met and made at a con. She’s also one of the most luminous, the most garrulous, the most welcoming, and hard-working, and people fight duels over her, and also she fights her own duels.
This is documented.
What else is documented about Amal El-Mohtar? Oh, you can find much of it here. Formidable woman.
Her story, “Madeleine,” published last year by Lightspeed Magazine, is a Nebula finalist in the short story category. Hernandez and I are trying to make a point of reading them all out loud, before working our way up to longer work. But if we never finish, at least we’ll have started with Amal.
But here is an idea I had this morning while driving to work. You all get it in its drafty-ass form, with a romantic smudgy filter, right from my MacBook’s PHOTOBOOTH.
I’ve been narrating all day in the studio, and that shows–but I won’t apologize for my voice. It’s just a voice. This is just a song. And it’s all meant in love.
“Madeleine”
by C. S. E. Cooney
A tribute to Amal El-Mohtar
Madeleine, where are you going?
Madeleine, where you have you been?
Madeleine, what are you looking for?
Where are you going?
Madeleine, I see you standing there
Is this present or is this past?
Madeleine, what does it matter?
Our love here is meant to last
Touch me, my distant Madeleine
Come, open up your glass
Touch me, is this a memory?
I hear you laughing
Madeleine, I know you’re grieving
Your heart’s so wild and sore
Madeleine, you have a friend in me
I’m your friend forevermore
Madeleine, Madeleine
Hold me
And I’ll find you
I will find you
On the other side of dreaming
The closet of my 34-year-old self is my inner six-year-old’s ideal version of her “dress-up chest.”
Due to a lack of storage space in our apartment, I share my closet with my roommate Jess. This is great, because the number of crinolines and shipwreck skirts and bustled black satin things has increased, like, 300%.
Roommate Jess, AKA “The Goblin Queen,” the only one I know who can combine Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses with corset, antlers, FitBit, and Greek Goddess sea-foam shift, and make it look… cool.
So. To the point of this blog.
Just over a week ago, the SFWA announced the Nebula Award nominations, and my novella “Bone Swans” was among them. It’s not anything I’d looked for; it didn’t occur to me to hope for it–the whole notion is still extraordinary. Anyway.
…Perhaps I shall do a WHOLE SEPARATE POST on that, because WHOA FREE REIN!
(What happened the last few times he told me I could dress him up. Tee hee.)
He’s so adorable.
I can’t stand it.
But I’ll keep him.
Because, suspenders.
As for myself.
Really. I have all these gowns. And sometimes I dress in red-velvet-with-train JUST to go GROCERY SHOPPING. There is a sad LACK of OCCASION to wear pretty things as often as I’d like.
For the Nebula Awards Banquet, I was just going to go through my mighty, magnificent, utterly over-the-top, Looney Tunes-operatic-level-of-thrift-store decadence wardrobe, and choose one of the many things there.
Typical “Go To the Grocery Store Ensemble.” Just kidding; I probably had a reading at the library or something. To which 2.7 people showed up. BUT THEY WERE THE RIGHT PEOPLE!
That’s right. Those are BETSIE WITHEY flowers in my hair!!! You’ll find out about those presently.
But.
My other roommate, the one who is NOT poet/writer/editor/artist/shipwreck skirt-and-black-satin-bustle-mermaid Jessica P. Wick, just happens to be an ARCHITECT OF SILK AND PEARL, a textile artist and expert free-style embroiderer, an Etsy business owner and a general über-wunder-MARVELWOMAN!
Roommates Jess (left), in Shipwreck Corset. Betsie (right), wearing some flowers she made.
Betsie and I went to The Breakers mansion today, in Newport, RI to gawk at the gilded cherubs and the marble everything. Twilight fell on the Cliff Walk as we walked, the Atlantic ever to our left. I wore a Betsie flower on my hat.
Yeah.
Basically, what I realized is…
I live with frikkin Betsie Withey.
She made this:
And this:
And this!
AND THIS!!!
That’s our friend Caitlyn Paxson modeling. She’s a poet, storyteller, novelist, editor, and singer/songwriter! We love her.
I live with Betsie Withey, gosh darn it, and today I FRIKKIN COMMISSIONED HER TO MAKE ME A GOWN!!!
A long time ago, I had this random dreamy idea for something called “The Champagne Gown.”
It was just a vague notion of a glittery pink and gold thing. In my head I wore it barefoot for no reason at all. Just traipsin’, ye ken?
But now I have a reason. And I have a pattern. (Vogue something something, size 18–in case you were wondering.) It looks like this:
That’s the basic pattern anyway.
Today, before we went to visit the Vanderbilts’ “Summer Cottage” in Newport, we went up to Warwick, RI to Jo-Ann Fabrics…
And we picked out the pink and gold materials and embellishment bits for the CHAMPAGNE NEBULA GOWN.
Showing here:
It’s like wearing a certain sort of sky.
I sort of view Betsie’s part in this gown-making adventure as the SARTORIAL EQUIVALENT of living with Tita from Like Water for Chocolate.
Betsie Withey pours herself into her creations. Her attention to detail, her lavish love of textiles, her glowing colors, her fantastically detailed embroidery, the happiness she derives from making other people feel beautiful–oh, she is SPLENDID!
I am so proud and excited to have embarked on this collaboration with her. And by collaboration, I really mean…
She does all the work. I do all the wearing. Ahem.
If your heart’s in the Scottish Highlands, come discuss Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander in this, its 25th year. This series of novels and shorter works features elements of historical fiction, romance, mystery, adventure, and science fiction/fantasy. It has spawned a Starz TV series, a graphic novel, and a 14-part song cycle. If you loved the books, how do you think the series is faring? Maybe your introduction to Outlander was through the TV series. How do these two perspectives differ?
Aesop, Charles Perrault, and the Brothers Grimm have much to answer for. Their fairy tales are integral to the European cultural heritage, and they’ve spawned novels, films, and TV shows in vast numbers. Why are their stories so compelling? Why do we keep going back to these old collections?
More and more often we see elements of new media being incorporated into fiction. Sometimes using new media in fiction is #awesome! and other times it’s just #FAIL. Is new media in fiction just a fad? There’s an art to doing it well. What stories are good examples? When does it go wrong? Where might new media take us in the future of fiction?
Flourish Klink (M), C.S.E. Cooney, Theodora Goss, Carlos Hernandez, Shahid Mahmud
How You Get the Word Out: Starting and Running a Successful Podcast
Saturday 14:00 – 14:50, Harbor III (Westin)
Podcasting gives us an outlet to share our thoughts and ideas with the world, and everyone seems to have something (perhaps a lot) to say. But is podcasting right for everyone? How do you go about “bootstrapping” a podcast? What do you need and what do you need to know? How do you attract and keep an audience? Where do you find a place to host your site? Successful ‘casters pass on their secrets.
Steve Miller (M) Kate Baker, C.S.E. Cooney, Don Pizarro, Brianna Spacekat Wu
Superhero Open Mic
Saturday 21:00 – 22:20, Marina 1 (Westin)
Kapow! Live from Boskone … enjoy the knock-out stylings of our program participants and audience members who share their open mic skills in the first-ever Superhero Open Mic. Each person gives his/her best 5-minute superhero performance – story, poem, song, skit, interpretive dance, or whatever! OPTIONAL: For extra appeal, feel free to come dressed as a superhero!
The Rules: Boskone members are invited to join our participants in the open mic by signing up for one of the eight open slots at the door to the event, which opens for sign-ups at 8:30 pm. Each performer is given a firm 5-minute time limit (max), including set-up time. So a quick transition between acts is key.
Walter H. Hunt (M), Kenneth Schneyer (M), C.S.E. Cooney, Carrie Cuinn, E.C. Myers, Garth Nix, Don Pizarro, Lauren Roy, Mary Ellen Wessels
Notes for Participant(s)
Walter and Ken will open the event by quickly reminding everyone about the rule: 5-minute maximum per person, each performance must include superheroes in some way, a quick transition between performers, and a live demonstration of the “over time” buzzer. They will trade off introducing each performer and will use the person’s real name matched up with a fake bio that they create, example: “Just off her successful tour of the Moons of Deneb IV, where she instigated a minor border war with a single song, please welcome…” There will be a double mic stand – with a lower-down mic to accommodate a guitar or other instrument and an upper mic for vocals. There will also be a buzzer to alter people when they go over…and have to stop. There will be a sign up sheet at the door for members to sign up for the 8 open slots. We will look into decorating the room, if possible. Erin and Brenda will be on hand to make sure things go smoothly.
Poetry Within Fantasy & Science Fiction
Sunday 10:00 – 10:50, Harbor III (Westin)
Fantasy and science fiction literature often samples snatches of song or poetry within its pages. But where does one look for original poetry that’s wholly focused on dragons and aliens, magic and deep space? Which writers are also fine versifiers? What inspires them? How do they decide whether an idea is better delivered in prose or poetry?
Jo Walton (M), C.S.E. Cooney, Mary Crowell, Theodora Goss
So sorry it’s been so long since I posted! Things are IN MOTION!
1. All the songs have been mastered!
2. All the prints have been printed!
3. Tonight and tomorrow, all the files–audio and visual–are being UPLOADED to Discmakers.com!!!
They ship within 10 business days! I, meanwhile, will take a straight razor and a straight edge to the Brimstone Rhine prints (there are four to a page) and do a little every day until they are all done and ready for you!
When the CDs arrive, and the prints are all in their little plastic slips, I shall put them all together in packages and send them off to you! AND THEN, I BELIEVE, WE ARE DONE! About a year from when we started too.
What a journey it’s been. Thank you. More soon!
(P. S. That’s Carlos Hernandez, with one of the BRIMSTONE RHINE PRINTS. Just so you know I’m not a bald-faced LIAR!)
And Hernandez said, “I had the same thought.”
Truly I can say that my favorite German word (not that I know many) was at play here. 
On ANOTHER NOTE, but apropos:
So.
WHY? Because she wanted it PERFECT!
Ahem.
Then she made the main part of the dress.
A GREAT DEAL OF EMBELLISHING!!!
(I know.)
So the flower she made?
