Interview with Ben A. Barres

On science and gender. An addition to this article.

In Which the Protagonist Tries Very Hard Not to Hate Her Book

Finishing up the edits to the POV chapters for one of my main characters in tDW, Auryn. His chapters and Roh's chapters are the last in need of major overhauling (as usual). This is good because it means Lilihin, Zezili, and Anavha are done, and I refuse to touch them again until somebody tells me to rewrite them.

That's how I'm getting through this, by telling myself I'm in the final stretch. Just these two sections of edits, input the edits, print the fucker, and send it back out into the world.

I can't tell you how pleased I'll be to get this thing out of my hands again. It'll make concentrating on all my other projects a lot easier.

In the meantime, I'm reminded of why these two particular characters' chapters are such a bitch to write.

Well, *yea*

You Are A Pirate!


What Type Of Swashbuckler Are You?
brought to you by Maddog Varuka & Dawg Brown

(thanks, Jenn!)

The Crappy Part About Having Type 1 Diabetes

... is that 90% of diabetics are Type 2, which means 90% of the drugs are tailored to Type 2s, people who still have functionaing pancreases. So you get all excited reading about the benefits of new drugs and then realize that they aren't made for you.

Money & Power

Interesting article about the power dynamics in a small coastal village in South Korea where the women make the bulk of a family's wealth by diving for shellfish.

Like their sisters throughout coastal areas in East Asia, the sea women here spend their days diving into the sea with no breathing devices, simply holding their breath for minutes as they comb the sea bottom for shellfish.

Women, whose bodies are thought more able to spend long hours in the cold water, experts in the subject say, have had a monopoly on this business, so that the sea women have long enjoyed an uncommonly powerful position in otherwise male-dominated societies.

It reminds me a bit of the diving culture in Egalia's Daughters, and is a good example of how you can alter the language of how you speak about a skill and emphasize that one sex is innately "better" at that skill than another. You don't realize how tied you are to the language of biologically determined skill sets until you see someone else flipping it on its head.

The really interesting part here is that women, because they make the majority of the money, have traditionally held more power over what's done with that money. Which is a good testament to why women can't really acheive total equality until we receive equal pay for equal work. As more and more men are getting jobs in tourism, the power dynamics in the village are changing. Now that men are making money, they're getting a voice at home.

My favorite quote from the whole article? This one, hands down:

“Even though he was a man, he was more like a woman,” she said. “He was so nice and tender. He was very feminine. I couldn’t tell the difference whether he was male or female. So I never begrudged having to feed him.”

I'm so cribbing that line in my next book... heh heh

Motrin is My Friend

But hey, if that's the only consequence to having an IUD anymore, I'll take it. Why doesn't everyone have one of these?

Oh, yea, cause the first three months fucking sucked.

Also, I've discovered why so many of my characters in my last two books get their fingers chopped off. I just chopped my finger again with our new kitchen knife. Jenn has this set of ultra sharp knives, and I was constantly bleeding all over everything. Then they lost thier sharpness, so me, being the brilliant person I am, bought a new one.

Chopping up salad greens was never so exciting. Though typing is now a little painful.

Damn.