As you might be able to tell from my stories, I love to cook. Cooking is responsible for many of the relationships I have had throughout my life (guys, take the hint: being a good cook will get you laid), and is the basis for many long-running friendships. Since everybody eats, it’s a more stable basis for friendship than silly things like politics, religion, family ties, or mutual devotion to Star Trek (though don’t underestimate Star Trek’s ability to cement a friendship between strangers. That’s a topic for another time).

This recipe is the first I’ve ever posted, and as with many other things in life the blame belongs entirely with Gail Carriger, with whom I regularly compare cuisines and who asked me for the recipes contained herein.

These Gyros differ from the stuff you get in the restaurants in a few important respects:
1) It uses sliced meat instead of shaved sausage
2) It’s kinder on your breath, as it has fewer raw onions
3) It has other veggies besides just the onions and tomatoes
4) You can make everything (including the bread and yogurt sauce) from scratch in about half an hour.

Gyros from Scratch

The Meat
First, get a fertile ewe…well, maybe not that much from scratch.

So, let’s assume the lamb or sheep or goat has been butchered and you have a nice healthy hank of the leg (lamb and mutton work best. Beef tends to be too bland, and goat tends to be too chewy and tastes too much like the way a locker room smells when you spice it this way). So stick with animals that you can make a decent sweater out of, and have somebody–a neighborhood butcher, a factory in New Zealand, or your buddy the hunter–turn it into a roast.

Take about a pound of it and slice it up thin, as if you were slicing beef for fajitas, or even thinner than that. You want a big pile of little ribbons of meat. Trim off all the excess fat, keep that for making soap later (or, if you’re not into making soap, use it as part of a gore bag in that independent slasher movie you’re working on).

While you’re playing with deadly weapons, go ahead and use that knife to demolish a clove or two of garlic and either 2 shallots or half a white onion, and stick those on the meat pile. To top it off, chop a hank of fresh mint to a fine powder (enough to make a third of a cup should do the trick).

Now that you’ve done all that slicing and dicing, put everything into a large bowl and drizzle it thoroughly with balsamic vinegar and olive oil at a ratio of about 1:3, then squeeze a half lemon in, then liberally sprinkle black pepper and salt. Now, hand-mix the whole gloopy mess and let it sit at room temperature to marinate while you prep everything else. The longer you marinate, the more tender and tasty meat at the other end. I find that an hour is about ideal, but half an hour is still pretty good good.

Now, while the beast is marinating, it’s time to move on to the salsa.

Salsa
Using a clean knife and cutting board, dice 3 Roma tomatoes (or the equivalent volume of heirloom/beefsteak tomatoes), one hank of mint (roughly the same size as the amount you used for the meat), the other half of the onion or a couple more shallots, a clove of garlic, and a med. sized cucumber. Combine in a bowl, and add salt, pepper, the other half of the lemon, and a teeny bit of vinegar. Let it sit and sweat down while you make the bread.

Bread
This is my all-purpose flat bread recipe. Like everything else here, it’s a cook’s recipe rather than a baker’s recipe, so you’ll have to practice it to get it right, but it is heavenly.

The secret to an excellent pan-fried flatbread is the texture. You want something light, but with plenty of structural integrity. To this end, I use two kinds of flour: Masa flour and Bread flour, though you can get away with using all-purpose if you’re willing to accept more breakage in your bread.

Take a big mixing bowl, put about two cups of hot water in it (I say “about” because I always just eyeball it).

Add to the water:
1 shake of baking powder (equivalent to about 2tsp, I think)
1 drizzle of olive oil (maybe a tbsp)
1 small pat of butter (important for getting the texture right, otherwise I’d just use olive oil)
A few shakes of salt
a few shakes of pepper

Now, start adding in the masa flour, stirring as you do. Once you’ve built it up about to the consistency of a thin batter, retire the masa and start with the bread flour. Continue mixing flour in until you achieve a texture somewhat drier than cookie dough but slightly wetter than pizza dough.

The Sauce
For the cream sauce that is popular on all things Greek-ish, stir a half cup of plain yogurt together with a tablespoon of minced mint leaves, add a dash of lemon juice, one or two shakes of salt, and four shakes of pepper.

Cooking
Warm two pans (I prefer cast iron, cause they’re glorious for really hot cooking).

When the pans are hot, throw the meat in one of them and stir it occasionally–you want to sear it but not burn it. Once it’s seared, turn the heat down and let it simmer in its own juices, which will sweat off as it cooks. Take it off the heat when the juice reaches the consistency of a glaze.

While that’s cooking, assuming your pans are properly seasoned and/or you have nonstick (if you don’t, you’ll need a teeny bit of oil), take a hunk of your bread dough a little larger than a donut hole, then, working it in your hands (you’ll want to dip your hands in flour first), roll it and pat it out until it’s about the size of the bottom of a tea cup. Now, throw it in the pan and continue patting it out with your fingertips until it’s about as big as a taco-sized tortilla. When it’s about half cooked, flip it over. When it’s fully cooked, take it off the heat and repeat the process with the next hunk of dough.

Note: The pan is HOT, so don’t burn your fingertips. The bread will insulate you as long as you don’t stay in contact for too long in any one location.

Serving
When all is said and cooked, set up an assembly line: flatbread at one end, then meat, then salsa, then a bowl of crumbled feta cheese, then your yogurt sauce. Assemble as you would a taco.

A tip: The salsa is REALLY good, and tends to be popular. If you’re serving more than two people, consider doubling or tripling the recipe. People tend to load up on it.

—
The above recipe feeds 4 very comfortably. Goes well with cider, iced tea, beer (I’m told), and red wine. The Hungarian wine Bull’s Blood is my favorite accompaniment, as it’s bright and lively and an excellent compliment to the minty Greekness of the lamb.

— — —
And there you have it–an excellent spring or summer dinner, right in the dead of winter. Enjoy!

Vanity
For your starter today, I’ve recently finished Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape. We recently had a three episode set discussing the premise and arguments Harris addresses in the book. I’ve also posted a review at Goodreads. It’s an interesting and provocative book–if you have an interest in ethical philosophy, I highly recommend it.

Whimsy
This is an oldie, but goodie, video of a squid filming its own escape from a skin-diver.

Civil Liberties
Are you offended and frightened by the recent shooting? Wish you could silence people who are talking about “targeting” and “taking down” the opposition? Think that such speech is the moral equivalent of a terrorist threat? I humbly suggest that you might want to rethink your position in light of this excellent piece from Slate.

In a similar vein, the attempt to silence political speech on the Internet has been whole-heartedly embraced by the Obama administration. EFF brief here.

Politics
In the “I reserve skepticism but it’s starting to look like I was wrong” department, there’s encouraging news about the early effects of the new health care bill.

Business and Writing
In the “cool research for Steampunkers” department, the Guardian talks about the FEMALE criminal underworld in Victorian London.

Ever wondered what the real scoop is on the most important part of you’re book’s marketing (i.e. the cover)? Turns out that Laura Resnick did a very extensive series of articles a few years back that goes in depth on how the whole business of covers works. Well worth the read.

The charming Kate Elliot posts a great article at SFWA offering advice to teen writers from someone who’s been there. If you’re a teen writer, check it out.

Bob Mayer expresses admirably why I’ve not yet done a book trailer, and why it would take a special project for me even to consider it. A quick read, worth the click.

For your treadmill-listening pleasure, Gail Carriger gives a delightful and characteristically witty interview with SF Signal, discussing the impact of social media on the book industry and the author’s business model.

Nathan Lowell’s publisher Robin Sullivan does a guest blog for J.A. Konrath in which she busts some myths about indie publishing and talks about the sales growth curve of her authors. Interesting, useful stuff.

If you thought 2010 was tumultuous for the publishing industry, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Borders is in the process of a crash-and-burn, and depending on how it goes down, it could do anything from expanding the print-book market to seriously shrinking it over the near-to-medium term (though I doubt it will actually sink any of the publishing houses along the way, it may mean a lot less cash going around to buy new titles). If you have print books on the market or on the way to market, it behooves you to read Joshua Blimes’s excellent and thorough Borders post-mortem report.

Science and Technology
As an enthusiastic tender of a bacteria culture (lacto bascillus San Francisco), this kind of stuff fascinates me. An in-depth article, with sub-links, on the unique ecosystems that exist within cheeses.

Perhaps I’m showing my age–and I can’t believe I just said that–but I’m still blown away by the return of lay people to the sciences. Last week, a ten-year-old girl discovered a brand-new supernova, and setting a world-record in the process.

The Singularity (in the loose sense) continues apace with the development of contact lenses that display information directly in the field of vision. This is the very epitome of “augmented reality” technology. Wonder how long it’ll be until we can buy them at Walgreens.

Another nifty extra-solar planet discovery–this one very like Mercury.

It’s early days yet, but there’s more rumblings from legitimate autism research that might just have nailed down one of the reasons for increasing incidence and prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in the last couple decades. Encouraging news, as this one is completely preventable. Also weird as hell, which tickles my interest-o-meter.

In archeology news, physicists seem to have cracked the secret of the Mayan ability to make dyes that last forever.

At the end of December, the BBC did a wonderful 1-hour documentary on the most world-shaking scientific and technological advantages which, thanks to the marvels of YouTube, you can now see for yourself.

Along similar lines, here’s an article on 8 Science Fiction gadgets and plot devices that became a reality in 2010.

Laser weapons deployed for use on the high-seas! That’s right, non-lethal stun lasers are now being tested for use against pirates. No joke!

And, for the sake of great science-fictiony fun, here’s a great essay by Ronald Bailey speculating on the GOOD things that the lack of ET signals could portend.

Orwell
In other news, moral crusaders continue to Bowdlerize and lie about history “for the sake of the children.” If I can point to the single most harmful strand of human nature, aside perhaps from the propensity to commit genocide, this is the one I’d pick.

On the other hand, there are people of genuine moral fiber still circulating in the world. If you want something that will make you cry or stand up and cheer, check out this statement by the father of one the 9-year-old girl slain in the assassination attempt this week. Someone who takes his responsibility as a member of the body politic seriously enough that he’s unwilling to call for the curtailment of the civil liberties of others as salve for his grief? Uncommon! And displays most excellent character.

Weird Apps
Digital Life has info on an app for all you iPhone folks that will tell you when you can leave the theater to hit the bathroom without missing any plot points in currently-released movies. Behold, RunPee!

And that’s it for this time. Catch you around next time the world gets weird!

On the other hand, there is Powell’s. And The Montage. And the other things about Portland that keep me coming back for a visit every now and then even though the weather is appalling and the streets are paved with potholes and designed according to arcane 1950s theories of traffic control that bear as much resemblance to the patterns of human travel as does spontaneous human combustion to real-world thermodynamics.

These are the kind of thoughts you have after a ten hour drive up from San Francisco with the always entertainingly snarky Gail Carriger in search of a novel con-going experience.

It was novel–or, at least, a chapter and a half of a novel plus a short story. I write a lot at cons during the downtime, and OryCon had some very comfortable seats in the bar (and in the panel rooms) that were well-tailored to the task of keeping my ass affixed to them. As cons go, it was uneventful — low key, some interesting bits of programming, lots of wifi, but in general it had that Portlandy vibe, with which I have an infamous love/hate relationship.

After all, I did live here for a couple years, and in that time I grew to love the landscape, made some very good friends, and had a marvelous time, discovered some wonderful restaurants, venues, and cultural hotspots, all while growing to hate the weather, the politics, and the general dreary-perpetual-fight-against-depression-and-oppression feel of the place. I’m a spoiled Bay Area native–you can tell, can’t you?

So, I’m forced to admit that, by the end of the con, I was exhausted. It’s hard to be simultaneously having a good time and irritated to death, but Portlandiness does that to me, and in the midst of admittedly good and productive times, it wore me down.

Powell’s, which is possibly the greatest book store chain on earth, is a Portland-area legend, and for good reason. Walking into one has for me the same pornographic appeal that walking into a teddy-bear outlet has for a Plushie. I had to resist, very diligently, the urge to pluck the uncorrected galleys of Glory Road off the shelf and take it home with me. Last night, they had an uber-signing: 31 (or so) science fiction authors packed the Beaverton branch for an hour-and-a-half marathon session. (I wasn’t signing, I was off to the side writing another chapter).

I’ve always thought the best part of cons are the unexpected meetings, and this one was no different. In this case, just after the signing, I walked into a bar with Gail Carriger, M.K. Hobson, and a handful of other young-and-hungry Steampunk authors and their entourages, only to see before me a table peopled with authors who I recognized, all of whom were a generation older.

My policy when engaging in shop talk: go for the experience. I introduced myself, they remembered me from my occasional blog comments and invited me to join them for dinner. I spent the next three hours talking shop with Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, and Adrian Phoenix, along with con-organizers John Lorentz and Ruth Sachter. This alone was easily worth the time the trip took–when people who have been in an industry long enough to know its rhythms (and who are very deliberately feeling out the tech and legal trends that acre currently wreaking creative destruction) are willing to discuss their thoughts, entertain debate, and gab about aspects of your business that are difficult to research, you make time in your evening for it.

It was also fabulously entertaining–a whole table full of folks whose sense of humor is more twisted than mine. Not often I run into that, but boy is it fun when I do!

So, recommendations for OryCon:
Their panels on violence are world class, no kidding. They are a must-attend for any fiction writer (though if you have a weak stomach, you might need to look away from the slide show screen from time to time). The people who run it (and evidently it’s a yearly fixture) are some of the acknowledged world experts on the physiology and psychology, and other panelists are trained killers. I went for research concerning the upcoming book on firearms, and left with a reading list for prep work for book 2 in the firearms series.

Likewise, the panels on costuming and particularly on bodypainting are very well-run. I get the sense that this is a core competency of the Portland fan community, and if your interests run in these directions, you’d be well served to attend.

Also, if you value your palate, As con food goes, the food at OryCon is passable, but not great, while the prices are too high for what they’re selling compared to even the Bay Area cons (which, being in the Bay Area, have far more business being pricey, yet are mysteriously more reasonable on the food). The con hotel sits in the midst of a number of excellent restaraunts–a short walk will be rewarded with gustatory satisfaction without undue pain on the wallet.

Now, back to writing. Maybe I can knock out most of the rest of a novel before SteamCon…?

But I can’t put it of any longer—needs must, and I have to move on from Balticon to the next grand adventure, so I endeavor to finish this story.

Saturday began with an argument. The clock wanted to convince me that it was almost time for my first panel. I told it that it was full of shit and really needed to get a life. It countered by telling me I now had one minute less than I used to, so I’d better get my ass moving.

By moving, I mean that I needed to get showered and then contrive some way to dry off in the 80% humidity, then get into my semi-fancy duds (I actually tried to get into my fancy duds, but three seconds after I got into that monkey suit I found myself developing a seriously advanced case of heat exhaustion, so I immediately stripped and re-evaluated my options, settling on the disreputable getup I appeared in, with minor variations, all weekend, on the grounds that it was the only set of clothes I brought that was anywhere near livable in that god-awful swamp heat that east-coasters think of as “nice weather.”)

I actually managed to make it downstairs in time to grab something resembling breakfast (by which I mean a glass of iced tea and a handful of strawberries), before stumbling blindly into the Audio Masters Workshop scheduled for the purgatorially early hour of 9:00AM (which, for those of you keeping score at home, is 6:00 AM by my body clock, a time when I’m more normally deciding it might be a good time to wrap up my writing for the night and get some shut-eye before my regular noontime mixing appointment).

Nonetheless, under the guiding hand of Chooch Schubert and alongside the erudite John Taylor Williams, and the slightly insane but always entertaining Arioch Morningstar, we engaged in a mighty staggering jaunt through the world of audio tech and technique, much to the bafflement and occasional entertainment of the packed audience, many of whom seemed just as flummoxed by the earliness of the hour, low blood sugar, and the shocking lack of iced tea as I was (or perhaps I’m projecting).

Fortunately, I escaped with my skin—even took a chance to plug Brass Farthing, the fabulous mostly a-capella group headed by George Chlentzos, who plays Doug Reeves in The Antithesis Progression novels. I slipped away to the bar, where I acquired something approximating food (good food, if typically overpriced) and bumped into P.C. Haring, who was most kind in showing me around the hotel where I hadn’t quite got my bearings yet.

First stop: the Dragon Moon table to sign a few copies of The Podthology and harass Tee Morris, Pip Ballantine, P.G. Holyfield, Chris Lester, P.C. Haring, Michael Spence…actually, come to think of it, a good sized chunk of the universe started congregating there shortly before I arrived. There were the obligatory hat photos, book signings, and body part signings…ah memories…but I digress.

Enough of the universe was there, in fact (and, thanks to Senor Ubernemesis, stealing my hat), that I nearly ran late for my next panel, the one I’d been dreading. Ever since I’d seen it on the program, I was sure that I was walking into an ambush. Why would I think that? Well, the panel was called Is There Room In The Fridge, Hon?, and I was the only male on the panel.

Yeah. Kim the Comic Book Goddess, who put the panel together, obviously had it in for me. Revenge for the cliffhanger end of Predestination, no doubt. What else was I to do? I pulled my brim low over my eyes and girded up my silk brocade vest, put my cell phone on vibrate, and marched in there expecting the worst.

And it turned out to be a hell of a panel. Not revenge for Predestination, but quite the opposite—there were a lot of kind words for my particular efforts to subvert the Women In Refrigerators trope, and the conversation turned into a delightful talk about the different ways authors use characters as naked plot devices, and how sexuality plays into character development even in g-rated stories. When the audio comes up on the Balticon Podcast, I recommend it.

The remainder of my afternoon consisted mainly of sitting in the bar and having long involved debates over skepticism, economics, and the proper place of Tribbles in a kinky geek life—that last one got kinda messy. Don’t ask. Suffice it to say that I nearly missed the next panel, Chris Lester’s Metamor City Live show, during which I played Artax, sans accent.

In my defense, I actually did practice the accent on the plane between G-Rated Fight Club showings, but the moment I walked into the ninety-degree-plus media room all ability to do an accent left me. Did I mention that I have an uncomfortable relationship with heat?

The rest of the evening—and weekend, for that matter—is a hell of a blur. P.G. Holyfield, Nathan Lowell, and Patrick McLean’s hysterical launch party. A delightfully disreputable incident involving Mur Lafferty, Paulo Bagipliuci, Gail Carriger, a number of martinis, and passers by giving us dirty looks. I also engaged in a couple impromptu Leonard Cohen concerts—first in a round robin group setting with Kim Fortuner on piano, and then later on in a trio with Phil Rossi and Starla Huchton. In both cases, loads of fun, both for the singing itself and for the shocked looks on people’s faces who didn’t expext that a gruff looking hobbit could actually sing (they obviously haven’t seen the Rankin Bass production of The Hobbit).

Saturday and Sunday night, both nights, I snuck up on the sun from behind (and, really, if you *have* to interact directly with a gigantic fusion bomb, the best way is to sneak up on it from behind). Saturday, it was in the courtyard with a crowd of folks I’d barely met before, excepting Starla and Chooch. I don’t remember a lot of it, to be honest—jetlag has interesting effects on the brain, but there were a lot of wonderful songs, including a quite striking original composition by Starla.

Sunday, Chooch and Viv hosted a party in their room (and on their lawn, much to the chagrin of the neighbors). Like in Hotel California, some drank to remember and some drank to forget, but I smoked an excellent Rocky Patel with Sheila Dee while talking photography with Michelle Beckmeyer (who also stole my hat). I also discovered that I need to take out a restraining order against my evil laugh, which has developed a reputation of its own and became the subject of an interesting wager over the course of the party, somewhere between the cigars and the point just before dawn where I was talking about Stephen King with Paul Elard Cooley.

Also somewhere in the dark, there was a protracted debate involving Gail Carriger, Peter V. Brett, Kim Fortuner, and Paul Elard Cooley on the merits of historical fantasy and vintage Science Fiction with respect to feminism, but it was so rapid fire that I regret to report that it’s mostly a blur, and the witty ripostes must remain unrepeated and unattributed to protect the dignity of the participants (myself not least among them).

Monday’s harsh light found me stumbling my marginally-coherent way back to bed. The rest of Monday, well, that’s next week’s story.

Next time: The Voyage Home

At this point in the narrative, I’m forced to chose between one of two roads. I could go along the chronology, skipping the boring and blackmail-worthy parts along the way, or I could chose a theme and tell its story…or I could jump back and forth between each as my fancy strikes me.

Guess which one I’ve picked?

It wasn’t until my appearance on Litopia last December that I began to realize the Power of the Hat ™. First, there was the encounter I recounted last time with Kim the Comic Book Goddess (who insists she’d have recognized me without the hat, but I have my doubts). Then there was the fact that Scott Roche and Sidfawu accosted me based solely upon the Power of the Hat, and we wound up sitting in the bar for several hours on Friday night talking Down From Ten, writing, and what passes for politics in my demented corner of the universe.

But before all that boring stuff, you’ll want to hear The Good Parts.

Much to my surprise, I arrived in time for my appearance as a guest troublemaker…um…panelist on The Good Parts, during which time we talked with great seriousness and deliberation about the influence of Catholicism on Erotica, Erotica markets, why Erotica writers are more conservative than mainstream fiction writers, and why J. Daniel Sawyer can’t resist telling a bad Vatican joke whenever he gets the chance (ok, we didn’t talk about that, but I’m sure that’s what you’ll be wondering after you listen to the ‘cast). The terrifyingly intelligent Kathryn Lively of Logical Lust/Mundania Press joined me as a guest and mutual foil to Nobilis and Cynical Woman’s normal crosstalk. It was a lively session indeed (pun intended), but I did manage to escape with my politically-incorrect (from any point of view) skin intact to take refuge once again in the bar, where I was accosted by the aforementioned shady characters. Gail found me there, drowning my sorrows in iced tea and talking epistemology, and while she and I sat talking Mur Lafferty wandered by.

The host of I Should Be Writing and editor of Escape Pod — drawn by the power of the hat (okay, the fact that I had her favorite ever show guest on my arm probably didn’t hurt, but it’s my hat and I can fetishize it if I want). After a delightful introduction, Gail and Mur flitted off with the New Yorkers to talk shop, while Nathan Lowell and Scott Roche introduced me around.

And this, dear reader, is where the Hat shows its true power. I was shaking hands with…Mae Breakall, I think? I can’t remember who, honestly, because I heard behind me “Oh my god it’s Dan Sawyer!” I turned around just in time to catch a short grey-shirted bundle of energy running up to hug me to death. Once I was satisfied that death was not in the cards, I collected enough of my wits to introduce myself to, it turns out, Heather Welliver, whose voice (I’m proud to admit) stole my heart in the intro to Pieces, and who graciously appeared in Predestination as Shayna Takahashi, and who is every bit as fabulous in person as she is on pod.

My welcome the rest of the con was similarly warm (thankfully, not in the thermal sense – the air conditioner was a life saver) and shocking, but none of it was matched by the dirty, foul, evil prank played upon me by podfather Tee Morris, he of the shameless self-promotion. Tee, in what I can only assume was an attempt to keep me on my toes, put out a twitter bounty on my hat. Over the course of the con, a number of people hunted me down specifically to STEAL my hat.

Let me say that again.

THEY STOLE MY HAT.

And then forced me, when I had a camera handy, to take their picture while wearing it. Theft and extortion, all in one package. And I have only one thing to say about this:

Your ass is mine next Balticon, Ubernemesis!!!

And yes, I’ll be posting more pictures from the Great Hat Heist in coming blog post.

Believe it or not — this only covers up through Friday night. Saturday was a whole other adventures.

Next time: Ponfication, Panels, and Parties

I normally travel with carry-on baggage only, but it’s not because by the end of a plane ride there’s nothing that gives me greater relief from coach seat-cramp syndrome and DVT than sitting down in another small seat in a moving vehicle. Nor is it that the prospect of walking around an unfamiliar building filled with carousels from deSade’s worst dreams fills me with nauseating dread.

The reason is that if I’m traveling by air, I’m interested in getting where I’m going. Car trips are for taking in the scenery – plane trips are for getting somewhere as fast as possible. Airports, with a few exceptions, are incredibly dull places. Let me put it this way: When was the last time you fond a jacuzzi full of literary intelligentsia well-plied with alcohol in an airport? If you’re anything like me, it’s been a while, and when I’m traveling from home to a convention (two locations highly likely to involve the aforementioned flavor of decadence), there’s precious little an airport can offer that I find the slightest bit interesting (aside from, you know, the plane).

This time, however, I was going to a my first general interest science fiction con entirely as a pro (rather than as a part-time fan), so I thought it important to dress up. I brought a nice sport coat, a pullover or two, some mandarin-collar semi-formals, and threw a mess of more knock-around clothes in for good measure. This put me well over my bag limit, so I had to concede to the eventuality of baggage claim.

I should have brought scuba gear instead.

You see, the eastern seaboard of the U.S. is one long swamp stretching from southern New Jersey right down to the tip of Florida, and swamps are peculiar places. Where most land environments have an atmosphere of air with a little bit of water dissolved in it, the atmosphere in a swamps is basically an above-ground lake with a higher-than-average dissolved oxygen content. The reason H.P. Lovecraft set his stories on the East Coast is because it’s the only place in the U.S. outside of Bayou country where Cthulu could breathe above the ocean surface.

As such, the humidity content on Friday afternoon was such that I could have done far better with gills than I did with lungs, and walking out of the sliding doors at Dulles into the afternoon heat I felt rather like a cheerio left in the bowl overnight on the counter top as the milk curdled around me.

Fortunately, I had swimming alongside me the equally bedraggled Gail Carriger (whose book we found in the Dulles bookshop as well – no wonder she hit the bestseller list!). Despite Gail’s public reputation as a genteel woman of breeding, she gives me a run for my money in the obscenity department when dealing with suspiciously titled “customer service” reps at rental car agencies. At such times she is a veritable font of snark, which more than made up for the sanitized films on the flight. Between that and the silly sing-alongs on the Beltway, one couldn’t ask for a better traveling companion.

An hour and a bit later we rolled happily into the hotel parking lot, both changed clothes in situ in the cab of the teeny rental car, and strolled triumphantly through the gathering dusk to register as both hotel guests and program participants, meeting Kim The Comic Book Goddess on the way in. This was the first of many instances that night where I was identified primarily by my hat — bur more on that later.

Next Time: The Saga Of The Hat

[In honor of her new book Soulless, which impressed me with its groundedness in the Victorian world, I asked author Gail Carriger to blog about the art of finding good research sources for Steampunk writing. This is her contribution - thank you very much, Ms. Carriger! -JDS]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: nothing beats primary sources. I hate to be a traitor to the Author Guild’s justifiable objection to the Google Book settlement, but Google books does already have a number of good primary sources from the 1800s available.

* One of my personal favorites, with recipes and other interesting tidbits about domestic management in 1876, is Things a Lady Would Like to Know

* Floote’s Medical Common Sense is another wonderful resource for a historical perspective on the Victorian attitude towards medical science, not to mention a window into scientific, social, and psychological theory. This is an American classic (if non-fiction can be called such).

There are other useful primary sources as well, that you might be able to order through Amazon or a rare books dealer. My two favorites are:

* Baedeker, Karl. 1896. Baedeker’s's London and its Environs. (or any Baedeker’s dated to the Victorian era) for maps, railroad time tables, popular museums and visitors areas, not to mention names of shops, clubs, restaurants, news papers and more.

* Edwards, Amelia B. 1877. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile. For language and the Victorian adventurer abroad feel.

As for secondary sources, what you need may depend upon what you’re writing. I write comedy of manners, so my needs reflect this more pedestrian interest level, someone with a more military bent probably has a different list. Never the less, I find myself constantly reaching for the following:

* Pool, Daniel. 1993. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. For the basics.

* Cunnington, C. Willett. 1990. English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. For anything to do with women’s clothing

* Flanders, Judith. 2003. The Victorian House. For domestic life questions. The information is not well structured, but it is there.

* Farwell, Byron. 1972 Queen Victoria’s Little Wars. For the quickest insight into the Empire Building mentality and military history of the age.

Aside from Wikipeda, which can be an okay place to start, there are some good, if not particularly well organized, research tools dedicated to the Victorians online as well.

* By far the biggest and the best is the Victorian Web which is a great spiderweb of all sorts of useful information

* The Victorian Dictionary offers up primary newspaper articles on different topics

And here are a few interesting individual offerings online.

* Victorian Slag Dictionary

* Victorian Etiquette

* The Illustrated London News (starting in 1842)

* Victorian servants

* The Ladies Journal

* Godey’s Lady’s Book

* Naval Ships of Victorian times

* Nick Names of Cavalry regiments

* Some ways to tie a cravat

* La Mode Illustree LiveJournal group

Other tips:

* If you have a DVR or Tivo trigger in keywords pertaining to your topic of interest. You never know what the history channel might be dealing with next. It will at least give you a jumping off point.

* Watch BBC costume dramas, and or, rent the DVD and check out the extras, they often have interviews with historical experts.

* Having a really hard time answering a research question? Cold call a local university history department. Experts love to talk about their expertise, perhaps there is someone in the history department you can ask. They may at least give you a book or article to read.

Lastly, of course you can keep an eye on my website, I often put up bits and bobs I’ve discovered around the net.

To backtrack, I just finished reading Gail Carriger’s debut novel Soulless, now available for preorder from Amazon and scheduled for release this October. An unusual genre mash-up that the author aptly describes as “Urbane Fantasy,” it combines fantasy, paranormal, romance, horror, mystery, steampunk, and Victorian comedy of manners in the same way one might expect of a veteran chef blending Chinese, Italian, and California flavor palates for a lark at a summer barbecue that is to say, the result is unexpected, surprising, delightful, and brings one up a bit short. Or, it would, if it weren’t for one of the best opening paragraphs I’ve read in a long time. The first chapter flies by fast enough that it’s not until the narrator pauses for breath in chapter two that the reader is left to puzzle over the curiosities of, say, a perfectly ordinary-seeming spinster with a weighted brass parasol encountering an unexpected vampire while having tea at a soirée. The fact that she easily dispatches said vampire, which lisps terribly and can’t seem to keep his fangs up when he touches her, resulting in a scene that positively screams “Buffy, you’re a poseur.” Alexia Tarabotti isn’t a vampire hunter or an angsty teenage girl, and her story is a cut or five above Whedonesque kitschy cuteness.

To backtrack further, Soulless follows the adventures of one Alexia Tarabotti, an independently minded Victorian spinster in her own special kind of hell. That variety of hell is, aptly enough, called “home,” where she lives with her two much younger, much less Italian sisters and a mother that can’t seem to utter three words without being dreadfully boorish or uselessly boring. To compensate for her unfortunate circumstances, Alexia enjoys hobnobbing with flamboyant vampires, needling the local werewolves, resenting her friend Ivy’s taste in hats, and reading until her socks turn blue.

Ms. Carriger makes a great use of romance formula – taking the basic template and subverting it well enough that, even when you know what *must* be coming, it’s often a genuine surprise when it arrives. She also presents the reader with the Victorian world as seen by the social-climbing London middle class. Normally, I find this angle on the Victorian world both suffocating and tiresome, but in this case it works to great effect. As this class historically subsisted on a worldview that was, in large part, fantasy, this turns out to be an apt basis for a novel in which Werewolves are responsible for the British Regimental structure and the Queen has a Shadow Cabinet made up of supernatural advisors.

Which leads me to my favorite thing about the book: it takes itself seriously. I mean this in the sense that there is a flawless internal integrity to the world, the characters, their attitudes, and the action. Far too often with period fantasy or romance (or drama, for that matter), the author delivers cosplay instead of integrity – that is to say, the characters act like contemporary people affecting period manners and forms, but without a genuine period-restricted worldview. As a history nut, this is a make-or-break issue for me – I’m hypercritical about it and will sooner put down a book with poor historical integrity than waste the precious moments of my life reading something by a careless author who can’t be bothered to get it right in the milieu they’ve chosen. Ms. Carriger’s world passes this test with flying colors, even as she works in dozens of sly nods to Austin, Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, and all manner of geeky trivia.

Alas, nothing is perfect, and the one thing about Soulless that kept me frustrated was the world building. This alternate London is a marvelous place, filled up to the corners with an intriguing social structure – and we get only the barest taste of it. It’s quite obvious that Ms. Carriger has done her homework and likely has a voluminous stack of notebooks on the minutiae of her world on a shelf next to her notorious hat collection (which I trust is far more tasteful than a certain hat collection on display in the book), and yet she shows us little enough that I found myself irritated that the book had the temerity to end after a mere 350 pages. Then again, perhaps this is what sequels are for, and the sequel is due out in March.

In sum, Soulless is an unusually strong showing for a first novel, for a comedy of manners, and indeed for a paranormal romance. In blending these with its other genres it manages to achieve what very few novels in any tradition do: it creates a strong enough sense of itself to stand out from the background noise in its genre. This book is something special, a paean to and gentle satire of the Victorian delight with frivolity, witty to the end. The closing author’s note in my ARC mentions the influence of Wodehouse and Austin on the style of Soulless, and while both have noticeable echoes in the author’s voice, I don’t think either does it justice. As good as Wodehouse is, and as iconic as Austin has become, Soulless is not properly a successor to either. It is something better. It is instead, if you will forgive the phrase, a very Wilde excursion.

On this second half of episode seven of Dealing In, Gail Carriger sings the DOOM! song, the quartet gets musically adventurous, Chris Lester gets so tipsy he can’t follow the jokes, and we handle all your voicemail. If you thought the first half was zany — you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!

Topics Mentioned
Espionage, Classified information, and its effect on families
Lois McMaster Bujold
Dolphinsex.com
Cocaine
Space Sickness
Space Toilets
NSA Surveilance
Death By Man Love
Erotica A La Carte
Buried Alive in The Blues
Criminal assault charges

On this episode of Dealing In, Gail Carriger brings a touch of prurient Victorian wit to the proceedings, while Chris Lester gets re-acquainted with scotch and Kitty Nic’Iaian reminds us all why she’s around: To keep the rest of us in line!

Topics Mentioned
Prophets of Panimendorah
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
Metamor City
Gail Carriger’s Soulless
Down From Ten
Transhumanism
Winnipeg
The Red Panda
Furries
Body Modification
God’s Army: A Dark Day in Paradise
CERN
The Large Hadron Collider
Has the LHC destroyed the world yet?

Larry Bushey, Host of the Going Linux Podcast, brings us the Story So Far.

Cast this week (in order of appearance):
Robin Hathaway as Marian Shelley
Tee Morris as Brandon
Kimi Alexander as Ashan
Amy Gahran as Ined
Stephanie Sawyer as Cassy Orinthal
Philippa Ballantine as Brittany Hydra
Steven H. Wilson as Percy Scott
Chris Lester as Greg Singh
Shannon Holden as Ophelia
Michael Lemonjello as Xylar

Marian Shelley emerges from her convalesence to discover whether or not she can actually face the world after what she’s lived through. On Luna, Brittany runs into an unusual character, while on Nineveh Joss gets a not-quite-unexpected visitor.

Larry Bushey, Host of the Going Linux Podcast, brings us the Story So Far.

Cast this week (in order of appearance):
Robin Hathaway as Marian Shelley
Tee Morris as Brandon
Kimi Alexander as Ashan
Amy Gahran as Ined
Stephanie Sawyer as Cassy Orinthal
Philippa Ballantine as Brittany Hydra
Steven H. Wilson as Percy Scott
Chris Lester as Greg Singh
Shannon Holden as Ophelia
Michael Lemonjello as Xylar

Heya Everyone, episode six of dealing in is here. Due to my long absence a LOT of feedback had piled up. This one’s an hour long, and it’s part one of two or three. My cohorts and I deal with an epic email from a former drunk emailer, now sober, we talk Marxist social theory, and we take on some very probing listener questions and some of the most creative death threats yet. Enjoy!

Topics Mentioned:
Trucker Rich
Cybrosis
Into The Blender podcast
The Polyschizmatic Reprobates Hour
The Metamor City Podcast
J. Michael Straczynski
Digital Magic by Philippa Ballantine
09.09.09
Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
Gail Carriger’s new novel Soulless
Death By Cliché by Bob Defendi