Closed for Repairs

As is obvious, the blog is on hiatus again while life events are on-going and I make revamping plans. Have wonderful year-end celebrations, whatever they are, and good luck to us all in the New Year!

Some Years Go Squiggley

 

You never know what’s going to happen in a year.

For a variety of personal reasons, I had to put the blog in hibernation. I did pop about on the Web here and there and at SFFWorld, but the blog had to lay sleeping, like Princess Aurora. No prince needed for revival, however, just a new year, new goals, same as the rest of the world on this warming ball of ours. But it is something of a new chapter for me in life stuff, so I’ll have to see what I do with it.

One of those things on this blog will be the Women in Action feature — a look at how women actors fared in the big action movies and blockbusters as power players in the past year and what looks to be happening for them in this year ahead. I’ve been doing them annually since 2012, and I always find it an interesting picture of the business, so that will be out this month.

Other than that, you never know what I will do. The suspense is ever present. So check in now and then after I clean up the confetti around here. And have a very good sun journey in 2019.

 

 

We Made It to 2018!

Hello Interwebs! Welcome new Open Window Followers! I applaud your optimism, given that it has been some time since I posted anything in my blog. A lot happened this fall, in the world and for me personally. Including my house springing four different mysterious leaks and entering renovation chaos, followed by family travel and family medical emergencies. So while I managed to natter a few times on other people’s blogs and at SFFWorld.com, I was pretty much MIA by the end part of the year.

I do have plans for this year and for the blog, (don’t I always.) There will be a “Woman in Film” feature shortly, though I’m giving it a new name that may or may not discourage the particular kinds of spam I’ve been getting lately for those posts. 🙂 There will be book info. There will be a links retrospective, because I did collect links on things and articles of interest to me throughout the season regarding publishing and whatnot. There will probably be…cross-referencing. It’s a big, wide open year.

Like most Americans, 2017 became kind of a bizarre year for me, a mix of good and bad, unexpected luck, troublesome misfortune and wild roving anxiety. If you told me in 2016 that I’d have to worry about a nuclear war with little prison camp North Korea, I’d have thought you were way off-base, but here we are. Not everybody made it to 2018, sadly. Those of us who did are surrounded by looting pirates who own multiple yachts. The planet is freezing one slice in the Northeast while the rest of it faces record high temperatures and natural disasters as the wild swings of climate change progress and the Southern Hemisphere goes through a sizzling summer. But it’s still here, people are still moving, stories are still being told, more of them then perhaps ever before.

So we’ll see if we can make it to 2019. Thanks for stopping by sometimes. It keeps me from ranting on street corners. And Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The New Year Lurks

So it’s that time again when we have artificially put a pin in time and mutually agreed that it is the start of the Earth’s cycle around the sun and a new year, while still gasping from the last days of the old one. Storms are on the horizon, but we’re not entirely sure what they are going to bring. You never know what comes through the window. We all make ourselves new itineraries, promise to clean out the cobwebbed closets and hope. We set up new starting posts and imaginary finish lines. And then we change them. Human beings love markers. And even more we love to change them.

So new year markers are coming up — a run down of some of the novels I’ve read this year, I’m sure there will be plenty of publishing issues coming up and yes, I’m going to be doing the 2016 recap of Women in Film, to be followed by a look at that subject for up-coming films of 2017. But I’m trying not to do too much of a plan right now, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life about plans — they always get diverted. But I do like having this space, so let’s see what I do with it.

 

 

 

 

I Got Quoted in Academia This Year

Back in 2013, I did a blog post about women SFF authors, “Reality and the Welcome Sign — Gender and SFFH,” in reference to Tor UK’s editorial director Julie Crisp’s blog post at the time about how Tor welcomed women authors but they weren’t showing up in submissions, or at least not for things like hard SF. I felt that Crisp was offering a nice welcome message but missing the plot of what women authors actually faced in the field regarding discrimination and marketing obstacles to their success from the industry. Essentially, Crisp was using the “it’s women’s fault that we’re ignoring them” defense, a very popular idea, and the stats that she compiled on Tor UK’s submissions have often been cited by those who want to claim women SFF authors face no discrimination in the market at all. Unfortunately, the stats Crisp offered show the exact opposite.

I was contacted about whether a quote from that blog post could be used in an up-coming non-fiction work on the SF field and I said sure. That book, an academic reference work on early women SFF writers, came out this year from Wesleyan University Press. It’s called Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B. Sharp. It offers sample works of prominent women writing SF in the early twentieth century, along with lots of commentary and historical context of the field in its early golden age and the women’s role within it. My quote is in the concluding essay written by author Kathleen Ann Goonan, which looks at the women in SF and the science community and the contemporary SF field in contrast.

Being an academic work meant for universities, it’s a bit on the pricey side though chock full of good stuff. If you are looking for a good specialized reference book or teaching writing fiction or SFF fiction, it might be helpful. Anyway, I wish it well and not just because I got a shout out in it. As author Joanna Russ explained so clearly in her non-fiction book, How To Suppress Women’s Writing, if we don’t talk about women writers, society will pretend they aren’t there. Especially these days.

It’s Alive!

Viago from What We Do in the Shadows

And with an incredibly slow start, my blog begins 2016. No, I haven’t forgotten about Women in Film — that’s coming up. And there’s stuff on publishing, books, etc. Thanks patient followers and new followers who are very optimistic!

(By the way, What We Do in the Shadows, a totally awesome — as long as spurting fluids and mild gore do not wig you out — mockumentary about vampires in New Zealand, is well worth your time. It’s the Real World meets Friends meets Nosferatu.)

 

Re-Animation

No, I did not bury the blog in a sand-pit so that insects could pick clean its bones. I just had a bit of a summer, is all. To fit the mood, here is a terrific new song by young Canadian Alessia Cara, called “Here”:

 

Little Note/Up-Date On the Women in Film

So it’s been a bit hectic. The Hugo Awards drama I’ve commented some on at Whatever and SFFWorld, and then had to re-think some of it as weirder and weirder information keeps coming into it. So I’ll probably post some links to articles about it in the Social Equality section by others, but otherwise, I’m moving on. When things get more equal in society, there will be this sort of blow-up reaction from some.

As expected, I did miss at least one woman fronted action film for 2015 — Survivor, starring Milla Jovovich, so we do get some of her despite the next Resident Evil film’s schedule delay. It’s a spy thriller where Milla is a Foreign Service Officer in London who has to go on the run and deal with Pierce Brosnan’s baddie. It’ll be hitting movie theaters in the beginning of June. Angela Bassett is in it too. Looks like a lot of action:

Also missed, a prestigious bio pic, Suffragette, about the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S., and a thriller based on the novel by Laura Lippman called Every Secret Thing, starring Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks and Dakota Fanning.

The first, sleepier part of 2015 had a hit with spunky version Cinderella (not unexpected,) with $494+ million box office so far, the animated Home with $326+ million, and Insurgent, #2 in the Divergent franchise, taking in over $272 million. Not a bad start, and women have been helping the more ensemble giant action pictures too, such as Furious 7 and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Did I see any of those? Only Age of Ultron so far. I’ll probably see most of the others later. I’ll give an Avengers #2 review in a bit.

Also, books! What? Stop laughing. Really, I’m going to talk about some books this week, I swear.

Moving Things Around

In a very short bit of time, my blog, The Open Window, will be having a five year anniversary. This blog was an experiment for me, a lab in which I could try things out and figure out how I wanted to do certain things, in which I got to say some things I wanted to say, and bring attention to some books and artists I liked. There were periods of time that it was neglected, because life got in the way, mostly in a good way. I got a little better at using the formatting devices of Word Press. There were various decorating changes over the years. Now that I’ve entered a new phase of my life, I’m not entirely sure what this blog is going to turn into, but I am going to keep going with it and see.

As I was looking through the stuff I had backlogged from last year, one thing that was clear was that 2014 was a very busy year for issues of diversity, civil rights and social equality, in SFF and book publishing and in many areas outside of those things. And that stuff is important to me, to my family, I’m going to write about it, link to articles I find interesting. But, it’s not primarily what I want this particular blog to be focused on. And so I’m expanding the blog a little, in part to make things easier to find as I did with the Books to Read page. I’ve added a separate page called Social Equality.

I’m still going to do pieces on those subjects on the main page, like the Women in Film review, which will be coming shortly, but those pieces will also be copied on the Social Equality page. Other entries and collections of links to others’ writing on diversity and civil rights issues may be only on the Social Equality page, however, with a link to them on the main page. If you are following me mainly for my talking about those issues or to learn about interesting articles and stories on those issues, you’ll be able to just go to the Social Equality page if you want. (Older pieces on those subjects are available in the blog archives.) So it’s kind of three little blogs together, and I’ll see how that works for me. I may end up changing it; hey, I may get a website at some point. I really don’t know what’s going to happen this year. But we are well into our shiny new century millennium, and while the electricity is still on, we might as well keep talking.

Alrighty Then

Many things happen in life and at times in your life, you feed one part of that life and not others. And so I have starved my blog. 🙂

But I have not stopped thinking about it and what this space means to me, about what I want to do with my drop of water in an endless sea. And so if any of my friends drift past here, they will note that the blog has a bit of a new look — one that many blogs on WordPress share, but still, new for me. And it will evolve further over time. Right now, I like the blue. For a little bit, I will be dealing with a backlog of things that I wanted to put up, and then after that, sporadically, there are some things I want to specifically do. All wonderfully vague, but since this is my drop of water, that’s okay. The spammers will still manage to find me in the sea and assure me that I am the best blogger in the universe while trying to sell me Viagra, Canon Ink Printers, and Louis Vitton handbags, not necessarily in that order.

And speaking of spam and the poetry that sometimes arises from them, here is my absolute favorite piece of spam text I’ve been sent.  It is, from what one might determine, probably for porn or sex toys or possibly mail order brides, and it is weird word salad, and yet within it is lyrical wisdom.  So enjoy, you drifters and spammers and fellow drops of water. More cohesive things later to come.

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