Playing with custom friends groups

I have finally figured out how to use custom friends groups and have been busy. Now I can set up friends pages just for my friends who are avid writers and readers, just for my friends who are in the Twin Cities, just for my friends who are interested in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings . . . and I can post to just those individual groups, too. I have another larger group for everyone who has ever wandered across my radar screen on LiveJournal, but I've fixed it so that I don't have to view all those people on my LiveJournal friends page at once. I have also taken some people off of my default friends page, but I'm still viewing them every day on a private friends page (usually because of language in their journal entries issues). I have a quick view page for the days I'm in a hurry and just want to read the few people I always want to read every day.

This is cool! So much more flexible.

This morning's discovery

If you happen to be interested in Neil Gaiman's work AND you're a paid user, you can view his on-line journal (with lots of cool stuff about writing) on your friends page by going to the syndication feed at gaimanblog and adding it as a friend.

Or not. Your choice.

Edited to add correction: Free users can add syndication feeds, too, (they just can't add as many as paid users). So, paid or free: go ahead and add. Thanks for the correction, daedala.

At Once Upon a Crime

I went to the charming little mystery bookstore Once Upon A Crime because they were having a mass autographing. I originally didn't read many mysteries, but I am married to a man who loves them, and he introduced me to M.D. Lake (who, alas, has stopped writing) and R.D. Zimmerman, whose latest is getting quite a bit of attention, and Ellen Hart and kijjohnson introduced me to Nancy Atherton and well, one thing led to another. So there are maybe half a dozen series or so that I conscientiously snap up the new books whenever one comes out.

Ellen Hart, alas, did not show at the signing. I gather she had a leg injury that she was nursing. I missed a couple of others who had left before I'd arrived, including Joel Rosenberg. I felt a bit bad for the five or six novelists I saw still sitting there behind the table, stacked high with their books. I didn't have the money to lay out to try a bunch of new authors, and well do I know that awful feeling an author has, sitting behind a table at a signing, when no one is buying the book. Fortunately, the owners Pat and Gary told me that they had been making great sales all afternoon, which diminished my guilt a little. One stack of Larry Millett's books caught my eye. One of the other gentlemen sitting at the table explained that Larry had been there earlier but had left. I had been debating whether or not I should buy his second book Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders. It is set at the 1894 St. Paul Winter Carnival, and Holmes has come to Minnesota and gets wrapped up in, you guessed it, solving murders at the ice palace. This was the first time I had held the book. I stared at it for a long time, debating, and then regretfully put it back on the table. "I don't dare even look at it," I told Pat regretfully. "At least not until mine is written." Larry's friend, still sitting there faithfully at the table, obligingly told me about one of Larry's key research books, a biography of the architect of some of the early St. Paul ice palaces, which includes floor plans. I will have to look it up.

I had a long and enjoyable conversation with Gayle Frazer, who writes the Dame Frevisse mysteries under the pen name of Margaret Frazer. (The books originally came out under a collaboration, between Mary Monical Pulver, and Gayle Frazer, and they called themselves "Margaret Frazer." After collaborating together on six books, Mary eventually went on to write several other series (including the Monica Ferris Crewel World books) and Gayle continued the Dame Frevisse books by herself. We gossiped about whether it was likely Dame Frevisse would ever become prioress, the terrible downfall of Dame (later Prioress) Alys, Joliffe's shady role as a collector of information, whether Thomasine would ever become a dame, and more. She was delighted that I knew the books and could discuss them so knowledgeably. I told her how much I appreciated that Frevisse really did change. She also struggled with depression, in, I thought, a very realistic way. I told her that I liked series in which the central character really grew and deepened from book to book, and we discovered our mutual approval of the fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold when I remarked that Miles Vorkosigan was a good example of doing it right. To my great happiness, she told me that she is writing a spin off series centering on Joliffe, the traveling minstrel/player who has assisted Frevisse with several of her investigations. A very pleasant conversation.

Cheers,
Peg

Would any one . . .

have any ability/interest in designing a business card for me? I've been meaning to get one for awhile and have simply been balked by aesthetic bafflement. Three people at Once Upon a Crime asked me for my card, and I was vexed that I didn't have one to give out. It would be nice to have cards for when I go to Wiscon.

If you think you might be able to help me with this project, drop me a line, letting me know what terms you have in mind. Thanks.

Cheers,
Peg

Some people are getting it right

If you haven't read the post on Patrick Nielsen Hayden's web log about the speech by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins to the troops of the Royal Irish--and comparing and contrasting it with some remarks of George W. Bush, take the time to read it now please. You'll be glad you did. Thanks for the pointer, baldanders, anoisblue, and others.