pameladean

I've donated one first-edition hardcover copy of each of The Dubious Hills and Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary to the Con or Bust auction. Bidding opens on May 25th. Even if you don't need a copy of either book, there is the usual amazing variety of other things to bid on -- dozens of books, of course, some signed, some not yet released by publishers; and everything else from custom-made chocolates and lovely jewellery, to novel and short-story critiques by people who know what they're doing

Here are the links to my books:

http://con-or-bust.org/2016/05/pamela-deans-the-dubious-hills-signed-hardcover/

http://con-or-bust.org/2016/05/pamela-deans-juniper-gentian-and-rosemary-signed-hardcover/


Pamela

So I'm going over the scanned text of The Dubious Hills to catch errors and to confirm its correspondence with the originally published version. Early on, something reminds Arry of "one of Beldi's paintings." I had forgotten that Beldi ever painted anything, and was considering this in the light of the short stories (all striving to be novels, but I am pretending that that isn't happening until it's the right time to give up) that I'm writing about Arry's family after the end of the book, when I hit a remark in a later chapter. Arry, Con, and Beldi are figuring out what kind of coming-of-age present to give to a friend, and they decide to pass on some old paintbrushes of their mother's, because "None of the three of them painted." Ooops.

I see three choices.

1. Leave it alone. The book has been out for literally decades. People are used to it. This kind of error is perhaps like the one in Dorothy L. Sayers's Strong Poison, in which a note from Harriet Vane to Philip Boyes is introduced into evidence, and the judge remarks, "It is signed simply, M." This used to drive me wild. Of course, on the first reading of a mystery novel anything might be important, but since the judge ought to have remarked on it, it was probably just a typo. It's in the facsimile hardcover we have and in all paperback editions I've seen. Eventually, I had to just get over it. But I must admit that it still makes me twitch when I get to that part of the book.

2. Change the earlier reference so that Arry is reminded of someone else's paintings; there are at least three possibilities that I can think of offhand that aren't inconsistent with other assertions in the book.

3. Leave in the reference to Beldi's paintings and add a line or so to the scene where they choose to give away the brushes, about how he doesn't paint any more. This is, honestly, probably what I had in mind and lost track of in the lengthy process of writing and rewriting the book. But a larger change isn't necessarily the right thing at this juncture.

I think any of these choices is valid; it depends on the author and the book. But I'd be very much interested in any opinions or similar experiences anyone has or has had.

Pamela

Hi, you guys. I'm sorry that I haven't posted in so long. There's no particular excuse other than general harriedness.

The weather has been of the sort that makes mowing the lawn difficult to schedule. It will rain a lot and be very hot and sticky; then there will be a nice day when the grass gradually dries out, but then either it will rain again, or there will be another nice day and Raphael and I will go hiking; and then it will rain some more. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that I don't really want to mow the lawn at all. It's not that the task is so very onerous in itself, but I find lawns boring and am much more interested in seeing what comes up and blooms if I leave them alone. Sadly, the city of Minneapolis, while willing to permit prairie meadows, is not on board with simply neglecting one's lawn, however experimental the spirit in which it is done. And it's true that one would need to scythe down or burn volunteer trees, and that it is useful to be able to make one's way from the house to the garage with trash or recycling, and even to sit in the yard to watch for bats or chimney swifts or swallowtail butterflies.

Today is not great for dragonflies because it's too cloudy, so we did not go hiking; and I decided I'd actually mow the front lawn. I had taken the lawn mower around from the back and was eying the fallen branch of the neighbors' pea-bush hedge with disfavor when I noticed a bright eye in the grass. A little stripey bird stared at me, bits of gray fluff protruding from its stripes and vibrating with its breathing. It did not gape for food or make any sound at all, and no parent bird clicked or chirped or shrieked at me. I got the pruning shears and did some haphazard reduction of the volunteer trees in the side gardens and the back yard. When I was tired of that, I went back around. The bird was still there. I came into the house and grumpily told Raphael, who suggested looking up what one was recommended to do. I was pretty sure we both knew, but I looked it up. Sure enough, fledglings of most species spend two to five days on the ground being taught important life experiences by their parents. One is strongly advised by the Audubon Society and other similar organizations to leave the babies alone and let them get on with life.

It's very sad, but I cannot mow the front lawn. Raphael said that the city (which, in addition to its lack of enthusiasm for unplanned spontaneous meadows, also dislikes grass and weeds higher than eight inches in one's yard -- there is simply no pleasing some people) would surely understand this situation. I said I looked forward to explaining it to them.

Both appearance and statistics suggest that the baby bird is a house sparrow, but I am not going to mess with it even so. It can't help being part of an imported rapacious species, any more than I can.

In other news, David and I are working on re-issuing my 1998 novel Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary as an ebook and a POD. I'm about three-quarters of the way through reading the OCR and checking it against the previously published version. I remember writing it well enough, but it's been long enough that I keep reacting to it as if someone else had written it. This means that sometimes I enjoy it so much that I stay up late to keep reading, and other times I address the author in exasperated terms.

It is an odd sideways book in some ways. I still feel that my actual point was overstated and obvious, but this has not been the experience of most readers. I don't plan to rewrite anything, though. The people who love the book do love it a lot, and I have plenty of new stuff to write. But JG&R probably didn't even reach all of the small audience it should have, because it was published right around the time that the mass-market distribution system broke down, so that it had no mass-market paperback edition and people were not yet resigned to trade paperbacks. So I hope to at least remedy that.

We hope to reissue "Owlswater" and The Dubious Hills as well.

Pamela

P.S. Parental chipping and high fledgling eeeeeings are now coming from the front yard. I'm glad someone is on the job.

ETA: I saw the parent. It might be a chipping sparrow, or maybe an American tree sparrow, only I didn't see a chest spot. I didn't want to stare too long, since the bird was busy and not best pleased with my arrival.

It's a hardcover first edition of The Dubious Hills. Here's the link:

http://con-or-bust.livejournal.com/119195.html

This is the copy that I reread and referred to while writing Going North, the joint sequel to Hills and The Whim of the Dragon. It's in good shape, but not pristine. I had thought this was pretty much my last copy, but when I unearthed a few more in the process of massive cleaning, I decided that since this one had a little added interest, I'd put it into the auction.

Pamela