Here’s Donna in Fraser’s Hill.
And the “what is a fantasy trilogy” discussion continues on the blog below for Saturday 7th. There’s another interesting discussion on originality in sff, over on Russell Kirkpatrick’s blog.
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There is such an interesting discussion going on in the comments section of the post below, I won’t post anything today except these photos of Donna’s visit to West Malaysia.
All taken in Malacca…those shiny statues in the street were decorations to the front of the trishaw! Yep, we became decadent Westerner tourists for a day…
I have been having an interesting email discussion with a Sydney specialist bookseller about the expectations readers have when they pick up a trilogy – in other words, what they expect a trilogy to have extra, over and above a stand-alone novel.
Now obviously it will have better world building, because there is simply more words to do it in.
But what else do you expect to be different?
A trilogy has more room for an author to shift focus between characters, to have more characters, more complexity of plot.
Are you disappointed (or delighted) by a trilogy that …
Shifts focus?
Has huge complexity in, say, the politics?
Concentrates on more depth in fewer characters? Prefers to expand into more characters? Kills off too many of the characters – after all there are lots more!? (A complaint I have heard about G.R.R. Martin’s present epic.)
What makes you stop reading a trilogy (i.e. fail to buy the second or third book)?
What do you expect of the story arc in a trilogy? e.g. do you prefer a story that follows one or two characters from childhood through to hero/ine status? Or are you happy if it deals with a shorter time frame? What about one that switches from one generation to the next?
Do you prefer trilogies to series? How would you define the difference?
And for those who have done tons of reading: What’s the best trilogy you’ve ever read?
If you have any opinions on any of the above, I’d love to hear them!
There was an interesting article in this morning’s “New Straits Times” newspaper, p16, written by a lady called Zainah Anwar, who is, I believe, one of a group of local women called the Sisters in Islam. They attempt – sometimes in the face of considerable nastiness – to bring some sense and compassion and equality to the way Islamic women are treated here, while still conforming to Islamic precepts. And I bless their grit and determination.
They have much to do. She describes how, while attending the compulsary pre-marital course for all Muslim couples about to marry, the male teacher told her group that one of the characteristics of a good husband is a man who does not listen to his wife, while at another such course, the male participants were told how they could easily circumvent the local law that severely restricts taking a second wife, by crossing into Thailand and marrying there.
And in another class, a female religious teacher carefully explains to men just how they may beat their wives in the Islamic way: with a knotted towel all over the body but not on the face. And, oh, not on the stomach if she is pregnant. Apparently, according to that teacher, beating a pregnant woman is just fine as long as you do it correctly. Well, thank you very much, ustazah, for that.
I try to be upbeat. Even in the face of the news that some official religious teachers freely prescribe absolute tyranny within marriage, and the physical abuse of women – including pregnant ones – by their husbands, and multiple marriage as long as you don’t do it here, we have to remember that the newspaper above is one of the primary English language newspapers, and they feel free to print an article which is highly critical of the present situation. While that can still happen, there is hope for the Islamic women in this country.
What century was this again?
I just spend the day at a meeting on the new project I will be working on over the next nine months.
We started at 9 a.m. and stopped at 5 p.m.
I spent well over an hour getting there and over an hour and half getting back.
And sitting in the car on the way back, surrounded by stationary vehicles emitting fumes, under a sky thick with the haze from forest burning in Malaysia and Indonesia, I remembered just what is good about being a writer: you don’t have to go to work.
All you have to do is get up.
Well, Donna has gone back to Canberra.
In the short time she has been here, I have introduced her to, in no particular order:
Leeches
Glenda’s Malaysian driving skills (- or is it lack of them?)
Fireflies on a river in the middle of the night
The joys of shopping in KL (and yes, she came close to rivaling Jenny Fallon’s shopping skills in KL)
Birdwatching
Glenda’s liking for Bombay Sapphire except when it is accidently mixed with soda
The Malaysian squat
Malaysian Indian food
Malaysian Chinese food
Malaysian Malay food
Malaysian food
Malaysian mangoes
Neighbours washing the dishes outside your window at 4 a.m. during Ramadan
Being blasted out of bed by recitations from Mosque loudspeakers at 5 a.m., just after you went back to sleep after the dish washing
Trishaw rides
Tropical rainforest
Sweating in the tropics
Did I mention Malaysian culinary expertise?
And, oh yes, wild mushroom soup, Malaysian style.
Life, I have decided, really doesn’t make sense.
And it’s really better not to ask questions, expecting an answer.
For example, I remember asking for an aerogramme at the post office near the station in Venice. ‘Sorry,’ says the man behind the counter. ‘Not sell aerogramme Fridays.’
Now I could have asked him why not, but what possible answer could there be to make sense of a statement like that? Let it remain an intriguing mystery to haunt me for the rest of my life.
Um, well, maybe there are times when it might be better to ask.
After all, I really should have asked what that sign meant on the ricefields that day. It was just that it seemed so idiotic. We often went birdwatching there, roving up and down the bunds in a car, setting up telescopes and observing such gems as Imperial Eagles or a couple of Paintedsnipe, or two thousand egrets following a tractor.
But that day the access road bore a sign that read: Please vacate the area by 2 p.m. No reason was given. We promptly forgot all about the sign and drove on. In retrospect, we really ought to have asked someone why it was necessary to leave by two…
Come 2 p.m. we were still in there. And then this plane came over … and we found ourselves being crop dusted. I’ve never driven so fast in all my life – down a gravel bund just as wide as my car, hotly pursued by a Cessna spewing insecticide or herbicide or something equally toxic. I swear, I burned rubber off the tires and hit eighty kph in three seconds flat, with my telescope still tucked under my arm and winding up the windows at the same time. Bet the fiendish pilot was laughing his head off.
However, I refuse to ask why on earth Mr Bush thinks the Iraq war is not making Americans less secure. I know there is no answer he could give that would make sense to me, or to anyone else who doesn’t live in a glass bubble fantasy. It just has to remain one of life’s little mysteries.
When we were on “Survivor Island” a couple of weeks back, one of our party had a problem ordering a gin and tonic. There was a bar – widely advertised in the hotel brochure – but alas, it didn’t didn’t live up to expectations… for a start, although they had several different types of gin, there was no tonic. The final insult was when the person concerned ordered a vodka and orange, he got just that. A shot of vodka in a glass, and an orange. Uncut, unpeeled, unsqueezed.
Last night, I sympathised.
Friend Donna is visiting from downunder which has been great. We talk nonstop, and tell lots of “do-you-remember stories” from Conflux and Worldcon and the Orkneys. Yesterday, I dragged her around Kuala Lumpur on foot – but that’s another story. And then last night we had an incident with a bowl of mushroom soup. It went like this.
Waitress hands us menus, and hovers while we make choices. We order some garlic bread and the drinks; waitress continues to hover, so we turn out attention to the main dishes.
Me: Those little red things beside some of the items are chillies to tell you that dish is hot.
Waitresses: Spicy.
Donna: Oh, I see.
Waitress (to Donna): So you are having the mushroom soup?
Donna (who hasn’t mentioned soup of any kind): I’ll have the pan-fried dory.
Waitress: So you aren’t having the mushroom soup?
Donna: No, I’ll have the fish.
Waitress: Mushroom soup and fish…
Donna: Just the fish.
Waitress (disappointed): No mushroom soup?
Me: The wild mushroom soup here is actually very good. I’ve had it before.
Waitress (to Donna, hopefully): So you will have the mushroom soup?
Donna (desperate now): No, no soup.
Me to waitress: Never mind, I’ll have the mushroom soup, and a mixed salad.
Waitress: Two mushroom soups?
Donna (totally puzzled): No. ONE mushroom soup.
Me: One soup and a salad. And the soup had better be good!
Waitress gives me look of non-comprehension and disappears with our orders.
A little while later waiter appears with garlic bread and drinks.
A remarkably short time later, Donna gets her fish. I tell her to start, as there is no sign of my soup.
Donna finishes her fish. We evidently have to take it in turns to eat.
My salad arrives, but no soup.
I shrug and have my salad. We talk and talk, and finally I realise I have finished my salad, and the soup still hasn’t put in an appearance. I mention this to a passing waiter. He seems bemused and speaks to waitress. She comes over, and says to Donna, ‘Oh, you want mushroom soup, too?’
By this time, Donna is convinced there is a conspiracy to poison her with the wild mushroom soup, and I’m convinced there is a conspiracy to keep me from having it.
‘No! No,’ she cries, ‘No mushroom soup!’
At that point I gave up and cancelled the order. ‘No mushoom soup,’ I agree.
Waiters disappear and we start laughing so hard we can hardly talk.
After some coffee, we go to the counter to pay the bill. And there, on the list of items, is one mushroom soup. Donna says, ‘We didn’t get the mushroom soup.’
‘Yes, cancelled,’ says the cashier happily.
‘No,’ says Donna torn between tearing her hair out and disintegrating into a fit of giggles, ‘It’s on the bill…’
And finally, finally, we manage to lay the mushroom soup to rest.
By this time we needed a vodka and orange.
Memories: Worldcon Glasgow 2005 – when Donna and I last met just over a year ago.
(Trudi Canavan, self, Donna)
If you didn’t know it before, you know now : Newsweek has different lead/cover stories for each region.
CNN also has different news coverage for each region. And I’ve sampled CNN all over the world. Which country has the worst most insular news? You guessed it. USA.
Thanks to this site for pointing this out, and to Making Light for the link.
And read my next post which should explain why I am posting this.
No, I don’t mean prophet in the Biblical/Quranic sense, I mean in the “telling the future” sense.
I knew they were not going to find any WMD in Iraq. (Of course, I might have had a head start there. My husband used to work for IAEA, and we knew all the experts. And we happened to believe them too. )
I knew – the moment I saw the US army ignoring the looters at the beginning of the occupation – that we were in for one helluva mess.
I knew there would be massive civil disturbance in Iraq in the years after the invasion. That’s what happens when you get rid of a military dictator who has been keeping diverse groups from strangling one another. (Yugoslavia anyone?)
I knew the coalition troops would find it hard to leave with dignity and without leaving a mess behind. (Vietnam anyone?)
I knew that the invasion/occupation would result in increased terrorists and terrorism, not less. (Geez, did they have no idea of how extremists think and how they manipulate the frustrations of the young or poor or ignorant or religiously naive? Where have our Western pro-US leaders been living for the past 20 years or so???)
I thought all these things were so self-evident, that it seemed both extraordinary and scary to me that other people – like the Bush administration and my own dear PM in Oz, and that strange Mr Blair over in UK – couldn’t see it too.
What makes me so perspicacious and them so downright DUMB?
Is it because I have lived for long periods of time in other cultures besides my own (3 to date – European, Asian and African, including 2 Islamic ones)?
Is it because I have mixed with international communities over such a long period, counting my friends from places as diverse as the USA, Tunisia, Yugoslavia – and yes, Iraq and Iran?
Is it because I am more intelligent that the President of the USA? (Don’t answer that.)
Is it because I have travelled widely? ( – and not cooped up in a tourist bus, either.)
Is it because I speak several languages?
Is it because I read widely?
Is it because I listen to people who know things instead of dismissing them because they don’t have the same opinion as me?
I am truly puzzled because things which seem so self-evident to me are seen so differently by others, and I don’t really think I am particularly brilliant.
Sometimes (mostly?) I wish I were wrong.
Oh, yes, there are some things I didn’t predict.
I never dreamed that the USA would endorse kidnapping.
I never dreamed that the USA would think torture is ok.
I never dreamed that the USA would think torture is a reliable source of information.
I never dreamed that the USA would endorse imprisonment without trial and access to the law.
I never dreamed that the people of the USA would tolerate any of the above done in their name.
America, we used to look up to you as the champion of human rights; with an imperfect record, perhaps, but still a country to be proud of because you always strove to be better. I never dreamed there would come a time when I am proud to say, so heartfeltly, that I am not American.
Hmm, so maybe I am a lousy prophet after all.