Audio Editing: Pro work for Arvan Eleron

 The former podcast editor for Arvan Eleron has moved on to other, full-time work. I've taken that over, turning video episodes of Arvan Eleron's Twitch RPGs into podcasts, after having been responsible for making shownotes and timestamps from his videos for quite a while. Editing audio episodes for pay is new, although I've had a fair amount of experience editing audio for Skiffy and Fanty, Stargate SG-Fun and the Supergirl Supercast. My first podcast for Arvan, Shire Adventures - Episode 28, went live on his website on Monday, April 22, and I'll be putting those episodes out weekly from now on. Eventually, certainly by the end of Shire Adventures if not before, I'll start turning his Eberron campaign into podcasts.

Review: Death in the Spires, by KJ Charles

I've loved KJ Charles since I stumbled across her historical fiction a few years ago, starting with Band Sinister, a sort of frothy gender-flipped combination of Georgette Heyer's Venetia and Sylvester, progressing to the wonderful caper/crime/romance Any Old Diamonds, reveling in the supernatural adventure/romances of This Spectred Isle and the Magpie Lord trilogy, and various other fun romps that combine crime/suspense/adventure and romance. Charles' latest book, Death in the Spires (being released April 11), is not a romantic romp like many of her others, but it is a gripping, immersive, deeply engaging and well told mystery.

It opens in 1905 with clerk Jeremy Kite being shown an anonymous letter that his employer had received, accusing him of killing Toby Feynsham. Yet again he has lost a job due to a scandalous unsolved mystery from 10 years ago, when he was one of "The Seven Wonders," a close circle of shining students at Oxford. After Toby, the leader of the group, had been found murdered, Jeremy had been unable to concentrate on exams and dropped out into obscurity. Now, he reaches out to the others to find out if they've been plagued with similar accusations, and finally decides to find out who ruined his life by killing Toby.    

I've read plenty of books set at Oxford (the Spires of the title) between the World Wars. This is a bit earlier than that, but the only major change I saw was that in 1895, women weren't yet awarded degrees, although they were allowed to study there. So there only a couple of women were members the charmed circle. One of the students was Black. Jeremy himself was lame in one leg and a scholarship student from a poor background to boot (and secretly homosexual). Toby, however, had drawn all these apparent misfits into his circle, and for a while they brought out the best in each other.

A decade after Toby's death, some of the others are doing just fine, at least on the surface, but others have fallen nearly as far as Jeremy. However, they have mostly moved on and want him to drop the matter. Despite warnings, pressure, and eventual attacks, Jeremy perseveres in his investigation, traveling across the country to question his former friends and others who might know anything, and returning to Oxford to dig for clues in the past. Secrets are revealed, old wounds are revived, and old relationships are renewed, for good or ill.

Death in the Spires was a compelling page-turner; I raced through it in one night. The protagonist is highly sympathetic and relatable, and the other characters in the group are sharply drawn. The writing is evocative, and the revelations throughout the book and at the end were surprises but felt natural after all. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in historical mysteries, especially anglophiles.

Content warnings: Death, violence of various forms, a few short sex scenes, and negatively portrayed sexual and racial discrimination and ableism.

Comps: Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

Disclaimers: I received a free eARC of this book via NetGalley.

Review: Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery

I ran across Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery, story by Mat Johnson, art by Warren Pleece, and letters by Clem Robins, in the graphic novels section of my local library. It's fiction, but it's based on the true story of Walter White, the former head of the NAACP, who was, as Johnson puts it, "an African-American even paler than I was." White went undercover passing as a white man in the Deep South in the early 1900s to investigate lynchings, which was, of course, incredibly dangerous.

Incognegro's protagonist is Zane Pinchback, who works for the New Holland Herald of New York, reporting undercover on lynchings in the 1930s. Having narrowly survived his last assignment, he wants to switch to local Harlem coverage, but his editor pulls him back one more time by telling Pinchback that his brother back in Mississippi has been charged with murdering a white woman, his partner in distilling illegal moonshine; meanwhile, a sheriff's deputy has gone missing. Zane will save his brother Alonzo if he can, and cover the expected lynching if he can't. 

This effort becomes more complicated when his best friend turns up on the train. Carl wants to tag along and learn how to become an incognito black reporter himself, but he's overestimated his acting ability, and gets into his own trouble. Also, it turns out that missing deputy was keeping a major secret, too, which plays a major part in how things turn out.

I admire the characterization and plotting here; Johnson tells a great story, interspersed with ironic humor that highlights the horrors of dehumanization. He's aided in this by Pleece's striking black-and-white artwork; its bold expressiveness really brings people, including their conversations, arguments and actions, to life. Additionally, the juxtaposition of cheerful camaraderie in some of the crowd scenes with the crime that they're there to perpetrate is quite chilling.

The version of Incognegro that the library had was a 10th anniversary edition, published in 2018. An afterword by Johnson written for this edition says that when he first wrote it, he thought of it as a story of America's past -- not that racism was gone, but that its organized, overt expression had largely been defeated. But now, "the racial dynamic of the early 20th century seems to be, in some ways, repeating itself. ... Sadly, the era of racial terrorism covered in Incognegro is suddenly relevant again." 

I couldn't agree more. I'm from the South myself, and the facts that acted as a springboard for Incognegro weren't any surprise to me; however, seeing how they played out here in fiction acts as a visceral reminder of how normal and accepted vicious racism has been in this country's past, and if we don't work hard to stop its current recurrence and spread, may become so again in the not too distant future.

Content warnings: Lynchings and other violent deaths, drawings of dead bodies, casual and vicious racism, racist language.

Disclaimers: None

A Vanilla Villain's Variant Villanelle

 “After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.”

– Dave McCarty’s much-repeated statement on the 2023 Hugo Awards.

 

 

A Vanilla Villain's Variant Villanelle

It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools;
If you knew all the facts, you’d condone our behavior.
I grok Chinese fans, and was their White Savior.
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

We guarded our fellows by serving as footstools!
The Committee’s allowed to use our discretion,
so we bowed to preempt any Chinese repression.
It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools.

To dodge any offense, we looked hard for cesspools.
So what, if we glitched on some searchable facts?
Our Ineligible rulings were protective acts;
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

I knew we’d be hearing some protesting mewls,
so I massaged data while dragging things out,
and blamed lots of factors for the info-drought.
It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools.

Those who’ve assailed us are ignorant fools;
My Facebook inquirers, I rightly rejected,
except for Neil Gaiman; the ONLY affected.
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

So sorry I / we had to bury some jewels.
I’d have liked to give Weimer some facetime to vent,
But I’d have said that we ruled just the way that we meant.
It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools.
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

 

(I thought the repetitive nature of a villanelle was a perfect match for McCarty's self-referential defensive statements. Yes, I know a true villanelle should have been five tercets followed by a quadrain, not five quadrains followed by a quintain. But I needed a bit more space, and I am proud of some of these rhymes.)

 

UPDATE same day: Edited to fix McCarty's name.

Audio/Video/Gaming Roundup, 2024

Scroll down this post for the latest updates. For roundups of my 2023 activities in podcasting, gaming, videos, etc., please see here and here. Activities from before then are listed further back in my blog.

AUDIO: The SFFaudio Podcast #767 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany, published Jan. 1, 2024. I discussed the novel with Scott Danielson and host Jesse Willis. I really enjoyed this old-fashioned fairy tale set in Spain. The audiobook is 7 hours, 40 minutes, and our discussion follows, bringing the podcast up to a total of 9:37:39. I haven't had a chance to review our discussion yet, but I certainly enjoyed exchanging thoughts about the book.
https://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-767-audiobook-readalong-the-charwomans-shadow-by-lord-dunsany/

UPDATE 2/7/24:

GAMING: On Wednesday, Jan. 17, I played a Call of Cthulhu one-shot on the Shadows of Nox Discord channel (video and audio). I thought it was being taped, but it hasn't been released as of 2/7/24.
On Saturday, Jan. 20, I played another session of the Stargate RPG, with Andrew Pontious as the DM. As always, I had a lot of fun. It was private, as usual, so it wasn't recorded. I STILL NEED TO EDIT OUR FIRST SESSION, THOUGH.
UPCOMING: I have a private Star Trek Adventures game set for Sat., Feb. 10, and another Stargate game set for Sat., Feb. 17.

CONVENTIONS: I went to Capricon in Chicago Feb. 1-4 and came back Feb. 5. I played my first game of Traveller with the Fan GOH, Victor Raymond, and attended a lot of panels. Very pleasant!

UPDATE 2/9/24:

VIDEO/AUDIO: I was on The Skiffy and Fanty Show's Looking Back, Looking Forward discussion last Friday, where Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer, Brandon O'Brien, Daniel Haeusser and I discussed Books, Media and Other things that we'd enjoyed in 2023 and that we are anticipating in 2024. Currently the VOD is on twitch.tv/alphabetstreams (Shaun Duke's Channel), but eventually this will be edited into a podcast.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2058256572
(Update: This was posted on the Skiffy and Fanty podcast feed on Feb. 17 at
https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/759lookingbackmovingforward/
as a and YouTube video on Feb. 18 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibtWceJvwq8 .)

UPDATE 2/25/24:

GAMING: I played three role-playing games in February: Star Trek Adventures on Sat., Feb. 10, Stargate (by Wyvern) on Sat., Feb. 17, and Cthulhu Invictus on Sat., Feb. 24. All three were over Discord speech/video, and Stargate and CI also used Roll20. Both Paul Weimer and Andrew Pontious are very good gamemasters who do a lot of preparation but roll with it when players strike off in unexpected directions. Zoekitten (who offered the CI one-shot via The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord) is also fun to play under; she used the scenario Akhenaten Unveiled, where we were servants of the old gods taking action against the heretic monotheistic pharaoh.

I'll be playing several more private games during A Weekend with Good Friends, a free online gaming convention organized by The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord channel, this weekend. I'll be playing a science fiction game in the Bulldogs system, a villagers vs. monsters (or aliens) game in the Mutant Crawl Classics system, and a Nahuatl (Aztecs) vs. conquistadors game (we're the doomed Nahuatl) in the Unknown Armies system. And who knows, I may also end up in a pickup game or two!

VIDEO/AUDIO:

Paul Weimer used to do a regular column for Skiffy and Fanty, called "Mining the Genre Asteroid", back before the blog went on hiatus. Now it's been reborn as a discussion and podcast, intended for every month or two. It's being first broadcast live on Shaun Duke's Twitch stream, then converted into podcasts and YouTube videos. 

The first "Mining the Genre Asteroid" revival episode, on Feb. 16, had Paul, Shaun and me discussing The Demon Breed (1968) by James H. Schmitz, which featured a female scientist using her planet's ecological expertise to fight alien invaders. Rarely for the time, especially for male writers, Schmitz often wrote using tough, competent female protagonists, usually without even a male love interest. We had a good time talking about this one! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2064916424
The podcast https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/760demonbreed/
and YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvOZQJugbZ4
were both released on Feb. 22.

AUDIO: I'm in The SFFaudio Podcast #774 – READALONG: Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein, released Feb. 17, with host Jesse, and Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Jonathan Weichsel. The discussion is almost 3 hours long, and does not include the audiobook. I definitely recommend skipping the audiobook, unless you're a serious genre historian, because there are a lot of vile ideas in this post-apocalyptic exploration. Maybe read Steven Barnes' Lion's Blood instead, if you want to read about an America where Blacks rule over whites (because the Plague killed off 90% of Europe in the Middle Ages). But you may still be interested in our discussion, because we had a LOT to say about this book.
https://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-774-readalong-farnhams-freehold-by-robert-a-heinlein/

UPDATE 3/5/24: 

GAMING: I was offered a slot in a Moonlight on Roseville Beach game on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord's A Weekend with Good Friends free online role-playing games convention, on Thursday, Feb. 29, but I had to back out with an hour's notice because one of my freelance science editing projects ran long. However, someone else snapped up the slot within 5 minutes of its availability being posted, so I didn't feel too bad. I've played this game before, and it's fun with a willing crew, and easy to pick up.

As the convention continued, I played 3 RPGs on Saturday, March 2, and every one of them had a no-show. Now, THAT is rude! But, whatever the GMs may have had to do on their ends to adjust threats/balances, things appeared to go smoothly from the players' viewpoints, and we had fun anyway.  I won't put other players' names here, in case they expected privacy (games were not permitted to be recorded or streamed).

Slot 9, 10-2 Saturday, March 2: Diverted Through a Nebula, for Bulldogs (FATE system), run by River, with three other players and me (and a no-show). It was a science fiction game, where we were exploring a derelict sending out a distress signal, but it wasn't abandoned after all. I hadn't played Fate before, but I had watched and listened to several Fate-based Actual Plays, and the GM was pretty good at talking us through our options. I played a medic ejected from a military service for triaging people and saving supplies TOO efficiently, and losing too many patients. My goal was to find something worth writing a paper about so someone would buy my contract back into civilization from the fringes. I enjoyed my RP, and so did the GM (who found something nice to say about everyone). Good game!

Slot 10, 3-7 Saturday: Temple of the Sk'wik for Mutant Crawl Classics, run by Blythy, with two other players and me (and a no-show). It started out with me, playing a sentient plant, with a human and a rat-mutant with a gun, all defending our village from gun-wielding wormy invaders, but took several unexpected technological turns. Not much RP, but a ton of fun action!

Slot 11, 7:30-11:39 Saturday: A Bed of Roses for Unknown Armies, run by mellonbread, with two other players and me (and a no-show). This was set during the fall of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), and we were struggling against the conquistadors. Again, I hadn't played Unknown Armies, or watched/seen it, but our GM talked us through it, and I had a fantastic time once I got the hang of it. I was extremely satisfied with my glorious Flowery Death that saved my son to fight another day! The GM has a wonderful write-up of the one-shot here:
https://bellenmred.blogspot.com/2024/03/unknown-armies-bed-of-roses-playtest-two.html

UPDATE 3/22/24:
GAMING: I played another really fun game of Star Trek Adventures on March 9. What had been planned as mainly a medical research/rescue mission turned out to have a lot of political angles, at least in the mind of my acting captain. We found a cure for the plague, but then various territorial/warlord wars heated up on that planet, and now numerous people are asking our ship for asylum.

On March 16, I played "Trailer Park Shark Attack" on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord. It was a lot of silly fun.  I forget the system, but it was pretty simple to pick up. The venue was Owlbear Rodeo, which only requires the GM to have an account. 

VIDEO/AUDIO:
On Friday, March 1, I streamed on Shaun Duke's alphabetstreams Twitch stream with him and Paul Weimer, discussing Science Fiction Empires. That discussion was released as a podcast on March 10 (https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/762sfempires/)and on YouTube on March 11 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZqbxVymZQ).

AUDIO:
I was on The SFFaudio Podcast #778 – READALONG: Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr., with host Jesse and Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel, released March 18. It's a grim but extremely well written novella from 1976, about a group of astronauts who return to Earth and find out that all the men there had been wiped out by plague long ago. Our discussion was very lively. 

UPDATE 3/30/24
GAMING/VIDEO/AUDIO: On March 26, I played "Cats of Catthulhu II: The Wraith of Chan" on Shaun Duke's Twitch stream (https://www.twitch.tv/alphabetstreams). Cats of Catthulhu is a very light-hearted, light-on-rules role-playing game, unaffiliated with Call of Cthulhu or any other cosmic horror game as far as I know. But there IS weird/eldritch horror, as seen, reacted to, and affected by cats. Part I of this game was played privately on Discord a few months ago. In Part II, my character, the adorable Abyssinian Tora-Chan, had, unknown to themself, acquired an evil twin named Tora-Khan. Congrats to Paul for successfully Catherding us to a conclusion in less than 2.5 hours!
Currently, the game is on Twitch, but I'm hoping that it will eventually be posted to Shaun's YouTube channel.
In case it doesn't, I made some clips:
https://clips.twitch.tv/FaintVastBillTBCheesePull-oDWdWd1xJD5fLw9U (Tora-Khan-I-Do-The-Eating)
https://clips.twitch.tv/UnsightlyToughOysterWoofer-LsK_ZsjAdUigb2-C (CalamityButtonsAndMoonChildArgue)
https://clips.twitch.tv/FurryCrypticWombatVoteNay-8DWJ5AmRm0Lx85nn (WeShouldTakeTheVesselWithUs)
https://clips.twitch.tv/SuccessfulArtisticPeanutNerfRedBlaster-g34GPEXDoa4kuYeV (Tora-ChanVsMoonChild)
https://clips.twitch.tv/HelplessGoodAnteaterTwitchRaid-WWEulJMClIKHogE-  (MoonChildEatstheSacredBean)
https://clips.twitch.tv/TardyDependableMeerkatFrankerZ-Q_QtSaP85fHdSWix (DrownTheBookAndPissOnTheGrave)

VIDEO/AUDIO:
On March 29, I was on the Skiffy and Fanty Show's Torture Cinema episode discussing Meteor (1979), starring Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau, and a bunch of other people. It was honestly better than anyone expected, although the pacing was bad. Shaun Duke hosted the discussion on his alphabetstreams Twitch channel, and it should eventually be added on YouTube and as a podcast.
Meanwhile, here's a clip that ConfigurationQueen made of Shaun and me singing the "Meteor" theme that CQ wrote during the show: https://www.twitch.tv/alphabetstreams/clip/FlaccidSmokyMuleOptimizePrime-FU4vOZYW1o9uD7l1?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time
Unfortunately, our singing was out of sync due to the lag, but you'll get the idea.
(UPDATE 4/15/24: Here's the podcast: https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/766meteor/
and here's the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siz-ZLLVZfs )

AUDIO: I was on the Hugos There podcast released on March 27 that was a tribute episode to Vernor Vinge, who died March 20. Seth Heasley hosted, as always, and the other guests were Rich Horton, Olav Rokne, and Russ Newcomer. https://hugospodcast.com/podcast/vernor-vinge-tribute-episode/

On March 29, Andrew Pontious, David Schaub and I released an episode of Stargate SG-Fun that we had recorded in 2021 and finally got around to editing. This one, "Horse and Serpent Guards," was a deep dive into two episodes from Season 2, "1969" and "Out of Mind." Also, David attached pictures of Vancouver, where the show was filmed, from "1969" and the real 2021.
https://sgfun.space/horse-and-serpent-guards/ 

GAMING: I played a prompts-based science fiction game on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server on March 30. It was a playtest for Foretold: From Earth, which should be available on itch.io next month. It doesn't use dice or character sheets; it's more like a one-shot that is a Session Zero where each player reacts to a prompt drawn randomly from a list (that's the only mechanic), and then everyone else yes-ands their ideas, expanding from what they've said to extend the worldbuilding. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but it needs to be played with a group of thoughtful, creative people, or it could end in stagnation or quarreling.

UPDATE 4/23/24:
GAMING: I played Call of Cthulhu: Poetry Night, a one-shot RPG, on Thursday, April 18, on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord. I played an arts-focused Twitch streamer who had permission for the first time to stream a poetry night from the Lakeside Coffee House, a tavern in Colorado. Unfortunately, someone chose to recite something from a forbidden tome. Most of the four characters made it back, only to find the world had changed. Lots of fun role-playing here. The keeper was Joseph.

I also played the Stargate RPG on Saturday, April 20. Andrew Pontious had set up a really fun two-part "season finale" for our team of five players, following the premise that each session of play represented a TV episode. As usual, this was over Discord with audio and video. Everyone got something to do that pulled on our strengths -- for instance, my Aturen character Jileria pulled apart Dr. Anderson's glasses to turn them into lockpicks so we could escape from a Goa'uld holding platform, but that's OK because Dr. A is a secret Tok'ra who doesn't really need glasses and just wears them for show.

AUDIO: About six months ago, I participated in The SFFaudio Podcast #783 – READALONG: Ill Met In Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber with host Jesse Willis and guests Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, and Jonathan Weichsel. It's an extremely well-crafted urban fantasy novella from 1970. However, some aspects of the characters and plot annoyed me, so soon after that, I reread S.M. Stirling & Shirley Meier’s novel, Saber & Shadow (1992). I compared and contrasted the two works for Skiffy and Fanty in "BOOK REVIEWS: ILL MET AND WELL MET" on Oct. 30, 2023. Now, on April 22, the podcast has finally been released. I haven't had a chance to re-listen to the discussion yet, so I can't guarantee that it won't have any annoying or stupid parts itself, but I do remember enjoying the discussion.

Tomorrow, May 24, I've signed up to play "CoC Pulp Cthulhu: Waiting for the Hurricane" on TGFoJE Discord, set in Key West in 1935. Looking forward to it!