What's New?

Forward to July 2000...

6-21-00

NEWSFLASH!

Ok, since I am now your Official Market Resource (TM), here is a correction to the Black Gate situation, due to possible name trademark infringement confusion. This is the new official Black Gate Magazine newsgroup, and here is Dave Truesdale's newsgroup, for more info.

Oh yeah -- I did get a prompt two-day bounce on my sub there. So I promptly sent him another one. :-)

Incidentally my Submito-Rejectometer thingie up on the top is a bit out of whack -- as in, I lost proper count of my subs this year, and need to redo some numbers. So for now, pay little attention to it, since it is blatantly lying. *grin* Like, as if you were even paying any attention to it before, right? ;-)

6-15-00

NEWSFLASH!

Folks, we have new NAWticisms! :-)

And the submission counter goes up a notch, as I have just sent in my first submission to the brand new pro market, the fantasy magazine Black Gate, edited by Dave Truesdale. Best of luck to it, for we are in dire need of fresh strong professional outlets for fantasy fiction -- especially the high fantasy, sword and sorcery, or heroic kind.

It's exactly the kind of stuff that I write.... :-)

6-14-00

NEWSFLASH!

See, see, I toldja! The NAW is alive with the sound of music! (*groan*)

Now it's our Ron suddenly playing his newly re-strung guitar after all these years, and building up callouses on his fingers, and then John Savage so eloquently discussing the MP3 music and publishing industry in one fell swoop -- music really seems to be the cosmic force all around us lately! :-)

Talking about callouses, I've been building up my own recently, and the funny thing is, it takes me only 2 days of playing guitar to get them. Day one is easy -- I am soft but eager. Day two is agony. Day three -- tada! I've got callouses! :-)

Chiara e-mailed me to say how funny it is that we both can't play wind instruments, and maybe we blow funny or something. I agree. :-) And then, Chiara said, "Too bad we all don't live near each other; we could start a NAW band! Too bad we don't have eight arms each."

Well, Chiara, I agree. We SHOULD have a NAW band. And an additional arm or two.

What do y'all think? ;-)

6-10-00

NEWSFLASH!

I dunno what it is, but I have been in a music mood recently.

I notice, a lot of NAW folks have been too -- Chiara Shah has been playing her piano, Neile Graham had "the music in me" in her latest journal entry, etc.

Maybe this is a music cosmic moment for the whole world...

Because, despite the fact that I have like a gazillion other things I should be doing now -- like finishing cleaning the house, writing 5 more stories for my collection, painting the cover art, etc, I have gone to my MP3 website, and went nuts.

First, I recorded the song for Marion Zimmer Bradley, in a spontaneous fit. Then I revamped the MP3 site for Normal Conquest and uploaded that song and another (the fragment).

And then, I finally found out HOW to get rid of that horrible sound distortion which my recordings have had up to this point.

Giles, a friend of mine who is a musician, and a MIDI expert, told me to set the microphone input line to very low volume, and then after I recorded the track at low barely audible volume, to simply hit "normalize," which will allow me to proportionately return the sound to the correct level without ever hitting the boundaries of distortion.

WOOOHOOO!!!!

He also said something else about it, something about setting another function preliminary to beginning recording, but I forget what it is now, since the first suggestion took care of the problem!

Anyway, I have been working on recording a brand new song which I wrote last night, a Celtic piece with voice, harmony, guitar, and tambourine.

I recorded the master vocal track using the n-Track Studio software, and there was no sound distortion whatsoever! Finally! It sounds great, if I may say so myself! :-)

The song is called "A Bonnie Witch Named Gwen" and I kinda made it up completely, tune and lyrics.... But is sounds pretty authentic "generic" Celtic, and when it's all done and recorded and uploaded, I will let you guys know!

Which brings me to another point. Chiara had mentioned in her journal entry how she was completely self-taught on the piano. The interesting thing is, so am I. I have a weird ability to just pick up an instrument, and then, after a half hour of fiddling with it, to play actual music. The keyboards, the guitar, the harmonica, the tambourine, and even a bit of accordion, are all instruments I just learned to play on my own. However, this funky ability does not extend to flute-type instruments as much. For some reason I just do not have a very good knack of flute-recorder-piccolo, etc. I wonder why?

I am also highly frustrated by the fact that I am NOT a better musician on these instruments. I am an excellent, pro-level singer (done opera, etc) and I wish I could "accompany myself" well enough. If only I could play a fraction of how well I can sing!

6-8-00

NEWSFLASH!

Welcome back to Caroline Austin Hazen's NAW journal! :-)

Earlier today...

I finally did something that had been on my mind ever since Marion Zimmer Bradley's death. I had a song in my mind... all these months. A song of mourning and loss and emptiness, in memory of Marion.

Last night, I recorded the song and uploaded it to my MP3 music site, Normal Conquest, where you can listen to it. The song is appropriately titled "Marion," and is an acapella and tambourine Celtic piece.

You may've noticed that I changed my MP3 website a bit, improved the look, added some graphics and a guestbook. Let me know what you think...

Oh, and I also have another new song there, "Morn6," basically a little fragment of an acapella fantasy piece -- a little like Anonymous 4 in sound, and a little bit like the Celtic/folk singer Connie Dover.

6-4-00

NEWSFLASH!

Happy belated birthday to Jim Bailey! Muahahaha! I am still older than you by 8 days, weenie-boy! *grin*

A month-belated welcome to new fellow Webrat Harold Chester! Welcome to the happy cheeseland, Good Sir Harold! And a belated happy birthday! *grin*

In the house news, I now have no more asbestos-lined ducts in the attic, but instead a lovely functional central Air Conditioning and Heating system, and about $5K of extra debt on my pocketbook. Oh well, we will be cool and poor in my house. ;-) And this is very important, folks, in order to survive a summer in the San Fernando Valley.

There have been several fascinating topics floating around the NAW lately, especially Ron's brilliant essay on the idea of "can there be art without communication?" and then Toby (6-1-00) and Myke (6-2-00) and Diana's Mensa musings and commentary.

To addess Ron's argument that Art is both communication and therapy -- I would like to agree, with all my heart and reason. I really don't have much to add to what he says, except that in both cases, Art is self-therapy as much as it is therapy for others, and the resolution of one's inner psychological issues is the only real reason any one of us writes intense genius-level unique material that transcends the ordinary (as opposed to simply writing material that is erudite and marketable and maybe even clever, but does not blow your mind away).

As far as Mensa -- it's funny, but I have always been a Mensa idiot. I am no good at math, and my mind glazes over into village idiot mode at the sight of numerical expressions. I cannot do simple arithmetic. I cannot even understand most of math concepts. And no amount of training can help me in this case, because I discovered a weird thing -- my memory simply cannot retain these concepts and layer them appropriately for my cognitive engine to solve word problems, or understand formulas. In this respect, I am simply dumb. :-)

Maybe that's why I am a little bit put off by people who are really high-cognitive Mensa material in the sense of easily passing all the Mensa tests, engaging in "Mensa-bashing." I think I understand their motives in this -- they probably don't like the idea of exclusiveness and hi-brow mentality. But to me, Mensa is admirable! I am sorry, but I wish I were Mensa material! I wish I could be smart in that sense. And you know what? There really should be a Mensa to counterset the sports jock-hero admiration norm so prevalent in our society. To me, Mensa is a lofty goal to aspire to, but never attain.

As a person who is about 300 lbs fat -- and physically inert, much less inactive -- and who lives wholely in the mind and in my dreams, whose sports ability is nil, and whose ability to even exist in this material world is very flimsy, the idea of Mensa-level intellectuality is true hero-worship.

On the other hand, I also understand the perfect ideal of the Rennaissance man or woman, fully able to balance mind and body. But somehow the body part for me is so very secondary, as is health. And that Rennaissance mind-body ideal is so very remote. Instead, I can see myself as one of those cliche SF disembodied "brain minds" encased in a complex machine, living in a Matrix-type dream world, ruled by Mensa-type geniuses.

Now that's real power.

*grin*

You do realize that a lot of the above is stated tongue-in-cheek.

But you may not realize how much... or how little. :-)

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