Paper Fruit

It’s that time again! Time for VeganMoFo: the Vegan Month of Food. (Yes, it’s a shout-out to NaNoWriMo).

I did VeganMoFo a few years back, but I’ve been recently inspired to participate again. So, for the month of October, I’ll be regularly blogging about veganism!

Since this year I’ve taken the time to incorporate a lot of positive, health-conscious changes into my life, my theme will be (unsurprisingly, perhaps) “Health & Happiness.” Twice a week I’ll be posting about positive, health-centered eating, and then once a week I’m going to post pictures of Cheat Sunday. (Cheat Sunday is a new tradition in my family where for dinner/desert on Sundays, we don’t worry too much about calories, fat, you know, all that sort of thing.)

That said, I’m amenable to blogging about just about anything veganism-related, so if by some strange chance anyone out there has any requests, let me know in the comments, on twitter or facebook, or via email at emollytanzer@gmail.com.

The RSS for the whole project is here, and the master site for the whole project is now just veganmofo.com. Last year I think over 800 bloggers participated, so this is huge and awesome and I’m superhappy to be involved again. Woo!

I have to blog (read here: brag) on this fine sunny Monday, because I just saw this review of “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” (my novelette which is extremely available for purchase in both Historical Lovecraft and the brand-spankin-new The Book of Cthulhu) by none other than the magnificent and mighty Caitlín R. Kiernan:

“Last night. . . I read another story from The Book of Cthulhu, Molly’s Tanzer’s “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins.” And wow, this one’s a keeper. I’d never encountered this author before, but … imagine H. P. Lovecraft refracted through the lenses of Lemony Snicket, Edward Gorey, and any number of Victorian authors, and you get this wonderful and delightfully perverse short story. Brava, Ms. Tanzer … “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” is very, very good, and I’ll be keeping my eye open for additional work by that author.”

Holy shit? Holy shit! I loved Lemony Snicket’s series, read the whole thing from A Bad Beginning to The End, and, well, it’s not for a want of affection for Mr. Gorey’s work that I have a tattoo on my wrist of Beelphazoar from The Disrespectful Summons. It’s hard for me to imagine more lovely comparisons.

Many, many thanks, Caitlín! And thanks again to Ross Lockhart for reprinting “Infernal History” in The Book of Cthulhu, and to Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles for allowing my story to make Historical Lovecraft an infinitely less classy project. The Twins remain my favorite creations to date, and seeing they’re giving pleasure to others is a wonderful feeling.

Over at Strange Horizons, I reviewed Sensation, Nick Mamatas’s latest novel. I liked it a lot! I tried to keep the spoilers to a minimum, so, you know. Go check it out! And they have a new comment system, apparently, so you can leave your own stories of the time parasitic wasps poisoned your brain and you started thinking you liked natto and got really into macrame and murdering industrialists.

1. I went camping last week. We hiked a little bit, and I read, ate snacks, sunbathed on rocks. The first night I cooked some stew over a campfire in my dutch oven, the second night we toasted tofu pups. I saw what I think was a long-tailed weasel (that’s not my photo, but I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of creature I saw), a mouse (who was trying to creep on our snacks), a bunny, and a bunch of birds. It was pretty awesome, except lots of the free campsites around Nederland have been trashed by careless assholes who leave toilet paper and broken glass everywhere. Pack it in, pack it out, folks!

2. The Book of Cthulhu is shipping! I received my contributor copies and it’s really beautiful, heavy, and filled with so much excellent Lovecraftian fiction! And my story.

3. I finally read Ender’s Game and came away with mixed feelings. I really liked the ending, which I should have predicted but didn’t, but getting to that ending wasn’t all I’d hoped. After reading a bunch of Card’s short stories I had high hopes for my first novel-length trip with him, but it just wasn’t my thing. Also some of the discussion of Jewry, which I think was also maybe supposed to be a comment on affirmative action, made me deeply uncomfortable. In terms of “awful stuff done to children” and “military SF” books I was more into Shade’s Children and Starship Troopers, but I have to give credit where credit is due. The ending of Ender’s Game got to me big time. Even if the pacing, the plotting, and all the female characters (all meaning, um, two) left me a bit cold.

3. I watched Drive Angry and The Expendables. I enjoyed Drive Angry, even though I thought it could have been a better film with just a few mild tweaks; The Expendables was a big pile of turds that disappointed me in every way. I just don’t know what to make of action movies these days. ::shakes cane:: Seriously, though, if your lady characters make me long for the liberated, progressive days of, say, The Running Man, you’re doing it wrong. The Expendables, as was pointed out to me, was less a movie and more “a patent attempt to capture the audience of middle aged men who wanted to reprise the films of their youth,” and “meant to be set on the mental mantlepiece and admired by those who are prone to gulled by it.” Fair enough, maybe, but I dunno. I’ve seen a lot of those aforementioned films, and many of them had scripts where the lady characters had better roles than that of “holy saint who drives a pickup truck” or “cheating slut.” On a different note, I’ve heard a lot of shitty action movie dialogue but never anything as bad as “I’ll have to have you over for dinner sometime … IN ABOUT A THOUSAND YEARS” or whatever it is that Arnold says to the bizarrely swollen-faced and blush-enhanced Stallone. Ugh.

4. I’m finishing up a short story and within sight of the finish line with my novel.

5. To console myself over being unable to attend WFC this year, I’m making an epic Halloween costume. So epic I already started on it so it will be done in time.

6. I will be attending MileHiCon, with more details to come as I receive them. Not sure if I’ll be involved with programming or not yet, but hopefully I will!

7. I’ve switched up my exercise routine lately, and now have started working on endurance, body strength, and addressing a few long-term issues with my body, such as my weak spine/lower back. The new routine includes a lot of different kinds of pull ups, push ups, squats, lunges, core work, and cardio. I’ve also started running a mile a few times a week, for the first time in my life. Running is still not my favorite, and I’m not sure if I’m actually getting better at it, but whatever! Maybe I am getting better, since today I ran a mile in 12 minutes 13 seconds, which isn’t the worst. Still. Ugh.

That’s … about it.