Blood calls to blood as the hours draw down

[sovay]

Readercon! My schedule is unchanged except that "Absent Friends" has been moved to Sunday morning. This had better be a con I get some sleep at.

Otto von Habsburg has also died. I said to schreibergasse, "I think the twentieth century is officially over now."

Yesterday we grilled all the things and ate most of them; there was also hand-cranked strawberry ice cream, my family's tradition. What is faintly amazing is that there's still some in the freezer, although in rapidly diminishing quantities.

I just remembered I was supposed to translate five poems by Verlaine.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

He was a pretty handsome fellow in his youth, too.

[sovay]

He was a pretty handsome fellow in his youth, too.

. . . Otto von Habsburg or Verlaine?

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

"Absent Friends" has been moved to Sunday morning.

Thanks heavens, not against one of mine. I want to hear you and rushthatspeaks on DWJ. I shall bring handkerchiefs.

Hand-cranked strawberry ice cream and Verlaine sound equally delicious.

Nine

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Verlaine, or his compatriot Rambo?

*runs away*

[sovay]

Verlaine, or his compatriot Rambo?

"Arthur Rimbaud, 1854 to 1891. French Symbolist poet. Not the tortured veteran played by . . . the actor whose name escapes me."

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

"Come come, sir. Let us not be defeated. Let seize the day, and take it roughly from behind. As the Colonel used to say, in his unfortunate manner.”

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Verlaine, or his compatriot Rambo?

Nice.

I've got a partially written alternate history novel set in a partially Francophone US, whose the French-language film industry has produced, amongst other things, a series of action movies about Jean-Sylvestre Rimbaud, a shell-shocked veteran turned heroic mercenary. (Would giving the character a trademark of ad-libbing clever little verses as he fights be excessive? Probably, even if it wouldn't be referential in their world.)

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

...LJ just saw fit to email me this comment. May I say, that novel sounds excellently entertaining. :)

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

May I say, that novel sounds excellently entertaining. :)

Thank you very much!

I've got rough-draftish bits* of it on my LJ, unlocked, because I did it for a Young Adult Vampire Novel Challenge a few years back. I need to try and get back to it.

A lot of the bits about the Francophone part of the country are things I know, but haven't had cause to mention in the story--there's a city called Thiers (or by the name of some other French iron-working centre) in l'État de Mobile, approximately where Birmingham, Alabama is in our world, the current governor of Lousianne is Joseph-Marie Patel, the lycée-educated son of Indian immigrants who in public always speaks in a rural working-class register of French, that sort of thing. The main characters live in Shawnee State, which is sort-of-Ohio, except most of the old earthworks are intact because the first settlers knew better than to mess with places where the Gentry, trolls, etc. would be living.

I'm trying very hard to resist calling the centre of the French-language film industry Bois de Houx, because that would be too silly.

*Please pardon the shameless self-promotion

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Ehehehehe.

Oh, I'm going to be all about the shameless self promotion in re my Lesbian Regency Novel, so no worries. Ain't nobody else going to promote us!

I will have to go over to your Elljay when I get home tonight. :)

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Oh, I'm going to be all about the shameless self promotion in re my Lesbian Regency Novel

I'd be very curious to read in that, so shameless self promotion on your part would be appreciated.

I will have to go over to your Elljay when I get home tonight. :)

I hope it's not too terrible. ;)

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Dad told me a story he swears is true: Von Hapsburg was talking to a friend who expressed an interest in the results of the Austria-Hungary football match.
The great man answered 'Who were Austria-Hungary playing'?