Kate Heartfield

Cool! Feel free to flip him my email if I can be of help connecting him to resources or answering "did yours also do this" questions. There's a Nerdy Gurdy Facebook group that has been a big help

I am sure it'll take me some practice to get even halfway competent, but a meeting can be arranged!

A keybox for a hurdy gurdy. Basically wooden pegs that will change the pitch of two of the four strings.

A nearly complete hurdy gurdy, a boxy pear shaped wooden instrument.

My hurdy gurdy project is nearly done. This weekend I'll put the wheel in, which might require a little light chiselling ("trueing") to make sure it's perfectly round. Then I'll wax the whole thing and then: the strings. (And the dog, a little piece that buzzes when you crank with force.)

This is extremely likely. Next time I have a beer before doing revisions.

There's actually kind of an existential question about the self in it, or maybe it's just been a very long week, but I do think a lot about impermanence as it relates to creation. The Kate that wrote the first draft is not me, and yet, thinks (almost) the same as this moment's me.

The sibling of this effect is when you're doing revisions and think of a kickass sentence to insert, and as you're chortling at your cleverness, you scroll down three paragraphs to see that your first draft self already wrote the same sentence word for word.

Always kind of creepy/cool when you're doing revisions and come across a sentence that not only do you have no memory of writing, but that you can't imagine coming out of your brain, somehow. (It absolutely did come out of my own brain, for the record, but just goes to show, it's weird up there!)

"What are the experiences of people of color in the publishing industry?"

arleysorg.com/by-the-numbe...

'A NEGRO WAY OF SAYING' (Published 1985)

"Hurston's mythic realism, lush and dense with a lyrical black idiom, was regarded as counterrevolutionary by the proponents of social realism"
www.nytimes.com/1985/04/21/b...

Thank you for raising the topic! It's clearly sparking thoughts for me. There's a quote by Henry Louis Gates about Zora Neale Hurston I've used in journalism classes about how transparent/lush prose was coded by the Hemingway generation left/right: 1/2

No, for whatever reason it hasn't had that effect on me. I figure different readers will feel comfortable trying different books and ultimately what they will all encounter on the pages will be me just trying my best. I don't make a distinction when writing, I just think about what the story needs.

Yeah, it's really interesting (a) the assumption all prose in IP will be transparent because that must be what the masses like (b) the sneering at that as "bad". And then on the other hand we get the identification of "purple" prose as elite, being overwrought, pretentious, etc.

Yep, more than once someone's asked me that flat out about my Assassin's Creed books, always people who don't actually *read* AC books (mine or anyone's) but assume that we're slumming for the masses for money, that franchise novels are "bad" (=pulpy?) but pay well. (Neither assumption is true, ha)

This is also interesting to me as someone who occasionally writes IP, because I've been asked more than once whether the editors "made me write bad prose" (not by people who had read the IP I wrote, they were just assuming that there's no skill or elegance in writing a voice that fits the project.)

Definitely! Sorry, it wasn't my intention to suggest veneration, just that I was thinking of examples of sliding between modes and his body of work came to mind. I think you're right that writers may get pigeonholed into being stylists or not which is not that useful.

Someone who I think is really good at this flexibility is Vajra Chandrasekera, who can shift so easily between styles within the same story or book.

Yes I definitely think so. I don't care whether something reads like a Heartfield story and I bounce around a lot. I figure it'll probably read like a Heartfield story whether I mean to or not, but to me I choose what works for the story and then try to do that, which is fun because it's challenging

Same same

Still thinking about Richard II today because as it happens I'm using it to help figure out a thing in my WIP. I love the way "landlord of England" is a cutting insult here (an interesting view into early modern concepts of the state!) And "live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!" is a mood.

Mercutio NetGalley helps publishers and authors promote digital review copies to book advocates and industry professionals. Publishers make digital review copies and audiobooks available for the NetGalley comm...

Periodic reminder that my next novel, Mercutio, is available to request on Netgalley UK now, for those of you who are reviewers, bloggers, podcasters etc. An imagining of one possible origin for Shakespeare's Mercutio, set in the 13th century. And thanks for taking a look.

A life in pictures: Remembering Bruno Schlumberger Bruno Schlumberger's six National Newspaper Awards were the most any Canadian photographer received.

A lovely obit of Bruno Schlumberger, a photographer so many of us had the pleasure of working with as reporters. Thanks, Bruce Deachman. @ottawacitizen.com #ottnews ottawacitizen.com/news/local-n...

Same! I suppose it's a little odd that it resonates more for me in middle age, given that Richard himself only makes it to 33, but I feel as if it's been there this whole time waiting for me to be ready for it.

Ahh this is so cool! I love the peacock feathers!

Ooh yes definitely! It feels like we're only seeing the curtain pulled back a bit.

There's a dark places tax when you're writing in a tradition. Take a penny leave a penny.

I think any good retelling wanders into those dark places, but should also show us glimpses of other, new dark places beyond them too.

A lot of those glimpses (in that play and others) are vestiges from the older stories Shakespeare was drawing on, or even vestiges of other versions of his own work, but whether deliberate or not, they add a sense of human landscape and R&J in particular has always made me daydream new stories.

One of the things I like about R&J is one of the reasons I felt drawn to write a R&J novel: the glimpses of other stories in it. Like Capulet's lost children. Or "Mercutio and his brother Valentine." Or Benvolio: why does he have a troubled mind? How did he curb the hot temper Mercutio says he has?

Yes, really good points. We don't need to be praised! Just let us know what you want from us.

Probably unsurprisingly, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are the two I know most by heart, and that I've returned to many times over my life.
In recent years, though, Richard II is the one that fascinates me most.