Seek Giacometti’s “The Palace at 4 a.m.” Go back two hours. See towers and curtain walls of matchsticks, marble, marbles, light, cloud at stasis. Walk in. The beggar queen is dreaming on her throne of words…You have arrived at the web home of Marly Youmans, maker of novels, poetry collections, and stories, as well as the occasional fantasy for younger readers.
I like this little article including new research into the making of medieval manuscripts. Here's a clip:
The contents of a scriptorium’s cabinet have something of the ‘eye of bat, toe of frog’ about them. The parchment pages are goatskin, sheepskin, calfskin, split and pared down to tissue thinness, or they are ‘uterine vellum’ — the skin of aborted calves. Cuttlefish bones scraped the parchment smooth. Quills were cut from goose, swan or crow feathers. Hair from squirrels’ tails made the finest brushes. Gold leaf could be polished to brilliance with a ‘dog’s tooth’ — a shard of agate.
And another taste of the past:
The Roman taxonomer Pliny, a collector of both natural histories and far-fetched fables, writes of a red pigment called ‘dragon’s blood’ derived from the mingled bloods of a battling dragon and elephant. While most pigments could be had from the town apothecary, a scribe wanting to get his hands on dragon’s blood would have to wait for a defeated dragon to be crushed beneath a wounded elephant. Spoilsport art historians have since identified ‘dragon’s blood’ as the sap of the East Asian rattan palm tree.
Read the rest! You'll find illuminated books to be even stranger and more beautiful than before.
to writer and anthologist Lynne Jamneck, who says, "Eight stories from Dreams From the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror received honorable mentions by Ellen Datlow for "The Best Horror of the Year 8."
August first so soon! It's time to begin a novel, time to read four books by writers I have not read before and get the reviews in by month's end, time to figure out what to do with some poetry manuscripts . . . time to hunker down and improve the time.
I have found the lost microphone and fooled around with recording a snip from Glimmerglass. I may do more. Unless the general populace detests my audio self.
Like many people, I dislike recordings of my voice. My father once tried to record me reading Alice in Wonderland when we lived in Louisiana (Wonderland), and I was so self-conscious that I think I lost my mind in a sort of 5-year-old way.
Next time I am going to record in my closet, which is all buffery-buttery-soft and should make for better sound. And thank you to Paul for the gift of the microphone, which I will try not to misplace again. Both books and microphones wander, it seems.
