Well, that was quick. Then again, WiFi SciFi is a very small convention, so doing multiple iterations is easy. Event 2 is due up this coming weekend. Hopefully I will see some of you there. Click here for instructions on how to reserve a place.
Fair warning: it is my birthday. I may have decided to dress up.
Today being supposedly a major national holiday, I have tried to take things easy. I have finished editing next week’s radio show, and done some housework. Other than that, mainly reading and TV.
My Twitter feed is full of speculation that Bozo’s stint in hospital was a publicity stunt. Just how ill he actually was will probably never be known, but it is pretty obvious that the state propaganda people have over-played their hand. Portraying him as a Conan-esque hero who has taken on the virus, mano-a-mano, and triumphed was laughable enough, but to have him released from hospital on Easter Sunday and go into the whole “he is risen” shtick was clearly ridiculous.
Ah well, I guess we can look forward to the Victory Parade in which Bozo takes the salute of the Armed Forces and is presented with a Victoria Cross by the Queen for his heroism. It might be worth all of the nonsense if only because it will wind up Donny Little Hands something rotten.
Today has been a long day of recording and editing interviews. I am now mostly done with next week’s radio show. I just have to choose the music and link everything together.
Out in the wider world I understand that Krakatoa has erupted. However, I gather that it does this quite often. That’s a good thing for volcanoes. It stops them building up a head of pressure that will lead to a Very Big Bang. So Krakatoa having a bit of a moment does not mean another worldwide dust cloud. It means that having one in the near future, at least from that volcano, is now less likely.
Besides, if Gaia was really out to get us, She would have let lose with the Yellowstone supervolcano.
Here in the UK people have been wondering why the Home Secretary has been conspicuously absent from press briefings over the past few weeks. Today she was allowed to do the daily virus briefing. Now everone knows why she had been kept away from the public before. Bozo’s problem is that he knows he’s not actually very competent, so he surrounded himself with Cabinet ministers who are even less competent than his is. Now he’s in hospital and we are seeing just how bad his team is.
The one thing that you should never do with this virus is tell people that you are feeling better. It knows. This morning I woke up around 7:00am, listened to podcasts for a while until the loaf of bread I had in the bread machine was ready, and ate breakfast. By the end of that I was really tired and went back to bed. I woke up three hours later.
The rest of the day has been pretty much of a write-off. I did manage to record one interview for next week’s radio show, and cook some haggis & tatties. Other than that I have read, and attended an online party in Finland. I haven’t had the energy for anything much else.
And still I am doing much better than many people I know.
Here’s hoping that tomorrow is better.
Today marked a major health milestone in that it was the first morning in 27 days that I have woken up normally without having been woken in the middle of the night with a coughing fit. Slowly but surely my respiratory system is getting back to normal. I don’t feel 100% yet, but I’m getting there.
Of course I also feel quite guilty about having such mild symptoms. I have friends online who are having things much worse. This really is a nasty bug, folks. Try to avoid getting it if you can.
As you’ll see from other posts, I have had another busy day. With any luck things will calm down a bit over the long weekend.
Talking of which, Easter normally has awful weather in the UK. This year it is beautiful. I have been able to switch the central heating off. I suspect that this isn’t doing the country’s self-isolation policy any good. I’m happily staying inside, because the pollen count will be through the roof out there and that’s the last thing my sinuses need.
I did my thing with Dav Vo earlier today. It was a lot of fun. Indeed I was enjoying it so much that I went a little bit over my alloted 15 minutes.
The star of my talk is the goddess Cybele who rides around in a chariot drawn by lions. It so happens that at this time of year the Romans would have been celebrating the Megalesian Games in her honour. There would have been theatre, chariot racing, and of course much feasting. Cybele’s main temple in Rome was on the Palatine Hill next to the Imperial Palace, and directly overlooked the Circus Maximus.
I illustrated my talk with pictures from museums around the world. Hopefully it looked OK on screen, but if not you can download the slide pack here. In the Notes section of each slide I have put a link to a web page about the object. Sadly Italian museums don’t have much in the way of online catalogues (that I can find in English, they may have them in Italian but Google isn’t finding them) so I have had to resort to Wikipedia.
Dan will be putting all of the talks on YouTube eventually, but for now you can watch via the link below. I note that I was helped by my leonine friend, Augustus, who is alright for a lion, despite being a fan of Imperialism, Patriarchy and English rugby. I see that we’ve had 777 views already. I hope I wasn’t too embarrasing.
#MuseumFromHome with @CherylMorgan https://t.co/YovK7mnXcC
— Dan Vo (@DanNouveau) April 9, 2020
I released another free short story in the Wizard’s Tower Lockdown Reading series today. This one is by me.
Yes, yes, I know. But I wanted to encourage people to buy the book it comes from. The Hotwells Horror is an anthology put together by a group of Bristol-area writers to honour the memory of David J Rodger. All of the proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated to Mind. That’s a charity that will be very busy right now. There are better stories than mine in the book, promise.
On the other hand, mine has tentacles. Well, not exactly, but it does have a few familiar faces from the Cthulhu Mythos. The story also features a young widow from New York called Sonia Greene. She has a passion for weird fiction, and a need for a husband. If you have a bad feeling about this, you are probably right.
You can get the story, for free, here.
Today has been Publication Day for Unjust Cause, which means that you can now buy the ebook from our store. Our authors make more money if you buy direct. Also we give you both the ePub and Mobi, DRM free. Please buy from us rather than that big river place if you can.
There is going to be a new free short story going up tomorrow. This one is by me. I don’t normally push my own fiction, but I have good reason this time. All will be explained tomorrow.
Because I was busy I missed the Hugo Finalists announcement last night. I gather from Twitter that most people are very pleased, which is a relief. Personally I’m pleased to note that there are at least 6 trans people on the ballot. I’m also really pleased to see that all of the nominees for Fan Writer are first-timers. That shows that the field is really healthy.
Of course the big question will be whether a man manages to win a fiction award this year. It won’t happen in Novel because all six finalists are women. Ted Chiang, of course, has an excellent chance of winning. I will laugh myself silly if the only man who wins is Yoon Ha Lee.
Aside from pushing the new book, and the radio show, today has been more day job. I have no idea what is happening in the outside world, but I’m assuming that if the PM had died I would have heard about it.
Given the extraordinary circumstances through which we are living, I decided to devote the first half of today’s radio show to talking to some experts about mental health. First up was Subitha from CASS Bristol who are your one-stop shop for mental health support if you live in the Bristol area. She’s followed by Dr. Dominique Thompson who is a former GP and has written a number of books on mental health, specifically for students.
In the second half of the show I was delighted to welcome back Tamsin from the Popelei Theatre Company. She and her colleagues have launched a Women in Lockdown project, calling for 4-minute monologues featuring women who, for various reasons, are restricted in their movements.
I only had three interviews this week. I was keeping the fourth slot free for some boat-dwelling pals who were being treated very shabbily by Bristol Harbour. Thankfully we made enough noise on social media for them to get picked up by the BBC so they didn’t need me. I got to play some fun music instead.
You can listen to the show via this link.
The playlist for today’s show was:
Today has been mainly day job. Tomorrow probably will be as well, though I will be on the radio as well thanks to the magic of pre-records.
It is also Hugo Day. The announcement of the finalists is due to start in under an hour. I won’t be able to watch as I have work to do.
The outside world continues to be grim, and social media has descended into poltical point-scoring so I’m mostly avoiding it.
My good friend Dan Vo has been entertaining people during Lockdown by hosting a daily Twitter video called Museum From Home. Each day he has a different guest to talk about something museum-related, and probably queer. Today he put out this tweet.
Ahoy hoy! Ready for today’s #MuseumFromHome Live guest @MxSeanC at 12:30pm presenting ‘Through the Queer Hole!†ðŸ‘
Tomorrow @LFCrossley âš½ï¸
Thu @CherylMorgan ðŸ¹
Fri @KS_Ant ðŸ³
Sat @ArranJRees 😱
Here’s @SushmaJansari calling @MuseumDetox a big hug! 🤗https://t.co/YkHDTIrTiM— Dan Vo (@DanNouveau) April 7, 2020
So that’s the cat out of the bag, so to speak. On Thursday I will be Dan’s guest. Despite the emoji he used for me, I will not be talking about Amazons (though I might another day if he’ll have me back). I will be talking about trans Romans. I should note that the show will come with a whole host of content warnings because the Romans were horrible, horrible people by our standards. But if you managed to sit through I, Clavdivs then you should be OK on Thursday as well.
Slowly but surely I am running out of urgent things to do. I might actually be able to enjoy some of that free time at home that everyone else is talking about soon. Of course there are plenty of non-urgent things, or at least slightly less-urgent things, to be doing. I’m not expecting to be bored any time soon.
Today marked the last of my near-future convention cancellations. Finncon 2020 is no more. However, the Finns have taken the decision to roll everything forward to next year. The 2020 convention has become the 2021 convention with the same location, guests and so on. There’s talk of some virtual events this summer, but I don’t suppose it would be very easy to have a virtual sauna.
This does mean that I won’t be visiting Finland at all this year, unless I make a special trip once the panic is all over. Maybe I should go in the winter. There are, after all, things to do.
The next physical trip that I have planned is to an academic convention in Germany in September. I’m keeping my paws crossed for that one.
I made a pot of chili in the slow cooker today. That will keep me fed for several days.
Unjust Cause, the latest new book from Wizard’s Tower will be available to buy on Wednesday. In the meantime you can pre-order copies from the major ebook stores.
Tate/Lyda and I will be doing more PR over the coming days. It’s a NEW BOOK, people!
By the way, I have been asked whether it is necessary to have read Precinct 13 before you read this book. My own experience, having read Precinct 13 years ago and therefore having forgotten most of it, is that you’ll be fine. Obviously it helps to know some of the characters, but mostly you will pick it up as you go along.
The video of the second panel from Saturday is now available on YouTube if you missed the convention. This one is very good, despite Tade’s internet issues.
I see from Twitter that discussions are aleady underway about holding a second event.
Today was a little bit of Wizard’s Tower work then finishing off the editing for my next radio show. This one will have a big feature on taking care of your mental health during lockdown, plus my fabulous Venezuelan friend, Tamsin Clarke. Regular followers will be pleased to hear that, despite doing an interview over Zoom, Tamsin and I kept our clothes on for the whole thing.
Social media in the UK today has been mainly about the government’s threat to ban outdoor exercise if people don’t stop flocking to parks. Reaction seemed to be split between those people stressed out by having to stay indoors, and those stressed out by fear of catching the virus. Me, I’m happy to stay at home as much as possible. I note that Pilates was developed as a means of keeping fit while a prisoner of war. Most people should be able to do some exercise. As far as I’m concerned the big issue is not space, but shortness of breath.
I’ve just seen a report that Boris Johnson has been admitted to hospital for tests. There’s no means of knowing how serious this is.
Elsewhere there are reports that the US Federal Government has seized a shipment of vital medical supplies bound for Barbados. There have been earlier reports that Trump has also intercepted shipments paid for by individual state governments within the USA. The word for this is piracy. Meanwhile the British newspapers are apparently demanding that we sue the Chinese for reparations over the virus. I’m assuming that they will agree provided that they can sue us over the opium wars. Goodness only knows where it is going to end.
Today was all about Zoom again. I now have three interviews in the can for next week’s radio show, and there was the convention that I have just posted about.
The convention featured some breakout rooms in which we attendees got to chat. It was interesting to hear from people around the world who are being affected by the pandemic in different ways. The two most extreme experieneces were both from the USA. One person had been in strict quarantine for 30 days, the other said hardly anyone locally was taking self-isolation seriously.
Several people bemoaned the lack of physical contact with others, which I am not finding a problem but I totally understand. Some were happy being able to spend more time with their families, but one person reported folks on a parent chat group who just can’t cope with having the kids at home all the time.
Most people seemed to think that communities were coming together during the crisis, which is great to hear. Of course it also bepeaks a certain amount of privilege in that they must be comfortable being part of their local community. People from minority groups are often scared of their neighbours.
We spent quite a lot of time talking about the sort of fiction that might come out of this shared global experience. That too will be very varied, I suspect. Some people will find benefit in writing through the trauma. Some won’t be able to talk about it for a long time. And some will use the techniques of speculative fiction to talk about it obliquely.
Finally one piece of good news that I have noticed thanks to having it pointed out by my Finnish friend, Otto. Telephone spam has pretty much dried up. It used to be that when I worked from home I could expect 2 or 3 spam calls every day. I can’t rememeber when I last had one.
Oh, and I was sent a cake in the post. You know who you are. That was very kind of you. Thanks!
Today I participated in my first online science fiction convention. It was a small thing, just two panels and a quiz, but you have to start somewhere. It went very well, all things considered. Of course not everything went according to plan, but the attendees weren’t expecting perfection because we all knew it was an experiment. One of the purposes of the experiment was to find out what worked and what didn’t, so that next time can be better.
Part of the success was definitely down to a great list of panelists that included Mike Carey, Dave Hutchinson, Aliette de Bodard, Gareth Powell and Tade Thompson. Part of it was also due to Anne Corlett and her team who, I understand, have been working hard in the past few days getting to grips with the Zoom software and discovering all of the advertised features that don’t actually work as advertised.
Another great part of the event was the international nature. We had people from the USA (including one Californian who was up at 7:00am), from Canada, from Finland and Croatia, apparently someone from India though I don’t know who that was, and one very keen Australian for whom the con was in the middle of the night. This gives me a lot of hope for Worldcon becoming truly international.
I will be catching up with Anne and her team over the next few days and talking through some of the issues that came up. There are certainly some things that can be improved with minor tweaks to the way things are run, and others that would be better if the software wasn’t so buggy. If anyone who attended it has feedback they want to pass on, do get in touch. The objective is to do a more in-depth review for the next Salon Futura.
The first panel was also streamed live on YouTube. You can watch it below.
I’m not sure what happened to panel 2, but I’m sad if it is not available as it was great (apart from Tade’s internet woes).
Wow, three weeks, doesn’t time fly?
I have been much more quiet on social media today as the insanity of yesterday has gone away. Juliet seems to have sold a good number of books, which is very welcome.
Instead today I have been doing interviews for next week’s radio show. The main focus of the show will be on mental health as I think we are all struggling a bit these days.
I also got the opportunity to watch some of HistFest: Lockdown, the online history festival that replaced the big event due to take place in London this weekend. My good friend Dan Vo was one of the presenters, and there were several other talks I found very interesting. The whole thing can be found online here.
By the way, if all goes according to plan then Dan and I will have some exciting news for you next week.
Tomorrow I get to attend my first ever virtual science fiction convention.
And finally, for those of you who have access to the BBC, this Mark Gatiss documentary about the great Aubrey Beardsley is well worth a watch.
The infection and death rates in the UK continue to accelerate. There were just short of 700 deaths reported today. For comparison, it appears that the number of people who die of the flu in the UK in an average winter is around 17,000. We only have 3,605 COVID-19 deaths in the UK at the moment, but the vast majority of those have occured in the last two weeks and things are getting worse.
Today has been a bit crazy. Not quite as crazy as the first time The Green Man’s Heir got to be a daily deal on Amazon. You can’t really expect the same results the second time around. Not when over 10,000 of you lovely people already own the book. But very pleasing all the same. That will mean a nice chunk of cash for Juliet.
And frankly I have been so busy that I haven’t worried much about the virus today. I gather that the infection and death rates are still increasing, and that the government is making more worthless promisies to do things that we all know it has no intention of doing. Quite why Bozo wants to go down in history as the man who killed thousands of his own people is a mystery to me, but I guess someone must be paying him well.
Anyway, I cooked today. Actual spag bol. Well, technically linguine bol, but we can’t be fussy these days. It was good, even though I forgot to put any chili in.
Tomorrow I start doing interviews for next week’s radio show.
If you want to secure a copy of the new Tate Hallaway book, Unjust Cause, you can now pre-order it from the usual suspects:
The book is due for release on April 8th.