More Shakespeare

I recommend you go to the McSweeney's Internet Tendency web site and scroll down to read Hamlet: Facebook News Feed Edition (by Sarah Schmelling). To entice you, a sample:

Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet are now friends.

Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.

Hamlet thinks Ophelia might be happier in a convent.

Ophelia removed "moody princes" from her interests.

Hamlet posted an event: A Play That's Totally Fictional and In No Way About My Family

(I'm assuming this quotation falls under fair use and I'm not violating copyright. If I'm wrong, please, Ms. Schmelling or the folks at McSweeney's, let me know and I will delete this blog post instantly.)

And — many thanks to Cathy for the heads-up!

Another swordfight, yippee!

Okay, if you haven't already, watch the swordfight from The Court Jester that I blogged about the other day.

Now, watch this clip from The Mark of Zorro (the one that came out in 1940). Make sure you watch them in that order. (Note: the good stuff in this one starts at about 0:50, so be patient.)



I so, so love Basil Rathbone. When I grow up, I want to fence as he fences. And I want to have a sword like that. I really do.

The boots are cool, too.

Rockitude

I just want to shout out to all my friends, family members, friends of friends, Net Buddies, and other people in my life who are exhibiting amazing rockitude these days. This includes writer buddies who are getting tons of stuff published to great acclaim, friends whose families are in crisis but are striding through (however painfully), people I care about who are coping with — and even bringing good from — life-threatening and life-changing illnesses (and there are more than a few), friends whose own lives may be in pretty good shape but use that as a base to reach out and help others, friends who completely instinctively share a kind word or a hug and thereby make all the difference, people who are taking risks in careers, education, or relationships — and on and on.

The world is blessedly full of people with true rockitude. I am grateful to, and grateful for, every single one of them.

(Note: I see that Peter M. Ball has posted a similar appreciation on his blog — but you can never have too much gratitude and appreciation in the world, I always say.)

Chris Green's blog is well worth a visit.

My Clarion buddy (and just plain ol' buddy) Chris Green is posting some particularly good stuff on his blog these days. There are some truly excellent writing tips — wisdom from someone who's definitely starting his rise to great heights — as well as some summaries of what he learned from our Clarion tutors. He's here: http://christophergreen.wordpress.com/.

Interestingly, Chris is on a quest to garner a cool hundred rejections this calendar year. Sadly for him, his stories keep getting sold instead of rejected. Bummer, buddy!

Don't you just love this sort of thing?

Here's a link to a rather fun piece called "5 Shakespearean Heroes That Science Fiction Epics Could Learn From," by Charlie Jane Anders. (Thanks to Tansy Rayner Roberts for the link!)

I love how everything is Shakespeare and Shakespeare is everything. I find it hilarious and delightful when people draw these parallels. I'm waiting to see added to the groaning bookshelf of Shakespeariana titles like Macbeth or McDonalds: Shakespeare and the Death of Fine Cuisine or Ophelia's Secrets of Aquatic Gardening, or maybe Falstaff Didn't Die: The Shocking Story of How He Changed His Name and Went On Biggest Loser.


(From http://www.savagechickens.com/; used by permission.)

Buckling swashes

I disclose here a lifelong fascination with fencing (particularly sabre, which I know some consider uncouth — and their point is?). And I particularly love not just sport fencing, but stage combat. A well-choreographed fight is a thing of heart-wrenching beauty (and yes, Peter M. Ball, I truly do understand why you watch professional wrestling). Houston has reminded me of this fabulous scene from The Court Jester. If Basil Rathbone's character reminds you of Count Rugen, I will not find it at all surprising.

Progress on my Gauntlet challenge

So far I've written a flash piece, which does NOT count toward my three-stories-finished criterion but at least keeps the writing mojo flowing, scrawled a few more words on one of the stories that does count, and at least made a bunch of lovely pages in my notebook, each with a heading describing exactly which facet of my YA world will be built thereunder. Most of the pages are still...blank. But it's progress merely to have set up the pages, no? No?

So how do you store turtle power in a battery for use in keeping small boats up in the air?

New flash fiction on my story blog

I have just posted another piece of flash fiction on my story blog, Dry As the Remainder Biscuit. Not my cheeriest opus, but perhaps you will like it.

Download "Panthers Ahead" from the Outlandish Voices podcast page!

Go to the Outlandish Voices podcast page and download "Panthers Ahead," a neat little story by the rapidly emerging (not to mention talented) Jacqui Dent! Go on. You know you want to.

(Illawarra writers, or those who have ever had an Illawarra connection, I...am...waiting! Send me your stories, yeah? The address is outlandishvoices at gmail dot com. RTF format, please.)

Mild alarm

I have fewer than ten active sendouts at the moment. But, to my dismay, I realize I actually don't have many other pieces to send at the moment. The good thing about this is that it indicates that I've had a few sales. The bad thing is that it indicates just how unproductive I've been over the past few months. Not idle — never that. But unproductive. While there is a moral difference between the two, they result in the same thing: Laura languishes in obscurity.

This, then, is my very public pledge: by the end of September, I will COMPLETE at least the first drafts of three stories (emphasis on the COMPLETE), and I will do the world-building I promised myself I would do so that I could continue with the YA novel. I have spoken.

Stone Soup

"Stone Soup" has — even from childhood — been one of my favorite stories. (The version I've linked to is a bit warmer and fuzzier than the somewhat cynical version I remember from my youth, but it's still a fine yarn.) The reason I bring this up is that a friend of mine here in Wollongong runs a periodic coffee house-salon-open mic afternoon she charmingly calls "Stone Soup." Today, Margaret and two of her friends (whose names do not appear here because I haven't cleared it with them yet) performed a little three-minute play I wrote and — in my directorial debut — directed. They did a great job, and if there's a chance to get them to perform it again, I'll see if I can video it and post it. (I may expand it to a 10-minute, which would be long enough to enter into short-play competitions.)

Moreover, I did my very first piece of performance poetry. Oh, I've read poems of my own on occasion, but this was the first one I ever consciously worked up as a performance and learned by heart, reproduceable in essentially the same form for different audiences on different occasions. It was fun. Maybe I'll find a poetry slam in Sydney one of these days and enter. (This poem was only one minute, which may be too short; I'll have to write, work up, and memorize another one, closer to the target time limit of three minutes.)

If you have ever entered a poetry slam, tell me: did you like it? Was it worth the effort for you? Was it fun?

Miscellany

First, Margaret and I went to see Traces the other night, an acrobatics/dance/comedy/poetry physical-theatre event by a (multi-lingual) Canadian mob called "7 Doigts" ("seven fingers"). Go to the link and click on "photos" to the left, and scroll through. The show was fantastic, and while the photos only give a tiny indication, you will see enough awesomeness that I hope you buy tickets and go see them whenever you know they're in your town.

Second, my current New Favorite Blog: The Intern. Her take on writing workshops is perfect. (I only wish she'd gone to a Clarion instead; they're totally, totally unlike. Anything. Unlike anything. Except another Clarion.)

Third, a good friend and I spent yesterday afternoon and early evening eating churros and drinking chilli hot chocolate. I'm told San Churro is aggressively expanding; and, indeed, their contacts page lists dozens of outlets, mainly in Victoria OF COURSE, that's the really civilized state, New South Wales is so prosaic, where's the whimsy in Sydney, but at least they do have San Churro outlets now, so go find one and have their very thick, very aggressive — nay, even pugnacious — chilli hot chocolate. And don't go past the churros. (Squee note: they have recipes on their site, and their mole recipe looks really good and it's even set out to be beautifully sensible to follow.)

Truly, the world is a marvelous place.

Any planet, any species, that can produce something like this has got to be doing something right.





I'm particularly charmed by the guy who plays what is either a bass or a baritone ukulele (I'm not knowledgeable enough to make a judgment call on that one), because he looks like he's having such a blast. You can find out more about these guys on their web site.

Many thanks, as ever, to the remarkable Jason Fischer, who is your tour guide to the Internet's more amazing cul-de-sacs.

A microreview of "The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders"

From Not If You Were the Last Short Story On Earth, a review of my story "The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders":

"The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders," Laura E Goodin, Masques - a lovely lead in to the anthology, a sweet tale of mouse courtiers and artisans that really should be illustrated within an inch of its life.

Any illustrators or animators out there interested in talking about a joint project?

Bobby McFerrin is cool.

Nothing profound. Just a fun little clip about people choosing to trust and enjoy each other, through the medium of the pentatonic scale.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Originally found on boingboing.

Oh oh oh!

Oh oh oh! Linguist, grammarian, and author David Crystal has a blog! Oh oh oh! Go have a read. If you're a word geek, it will make you happy happy happy. If you're not, go see if you'd like to become one. And why wouldn't you?

By the way, if you haven't gone to the Outlandish Voices podcast page and downloaded Cat Sparks's story "A Million Shades of Nightmare," I recommend you do so. Next up (in about two weeks), a charming story by an up-and-coming writer, Jacqui Dent. (So far Outlandish Voices has been short on charming, a lack that we happily remedy with Jacqui's story.)