Sumac

So. Hi. Stuff. Um.

As I said before leaving, I wasn't going to Toronto as much as through Toronto; I didn't get to see several of my favorite people in Toronto, and I certainly didn't get to explore the city much at all. The taste I got was good, though, worth a return. One of the small details I enjoyed: the little corner shops, like the depanneurs in Montreal, seem to have good fruit selection/availability. So it was extremely easy to find fruit for yesterday's breakfast and lunch while we were out for Wednesday's dinner.

Also, I like the kind of traveling where the sentence, "I'll take a croissant and some fruit on the train," makes sense. That is my kind of travel. Watching the half-turned sumac out the window while munching a really good pain au chocolat: bliss.

We could see the difference in sumac over the course of the week between our train rides, and also on the trip down from Montreal to Toronto. Fall is further along up near Montreal. Some of the birches have gone golden up there. Further down near Toronto, none of them. I look out the window here and see just the first few birch leaves.

I love fall. I made sure the windows in the library were locked down because it was chilly enough this morning that I'm not going to want them open when I sit in there with the dog to read a bit. I have said before that summer is an aberration in my brain, that outside is supposed to be where we keep the cold. When I went to bring the paper off the front step this morning, it was chilly outside, and I breathed it in: home. And autumn. Yes.

Fishies swimming in the abyss

Also, I seem to have sold a story in my absence! Abyss and Apex wants "Väinämöinen and the Singing Fish." This is -- surprise! -- another Finnish fantasy. I am pleased.

The to-do list is daunting me at the moment. I know looming ominously is a cliché, but sometimes clichés come about for a reason. In this case, that reason is my to-do list.

In other news: water wet. Plus: panel report, such as it is.

(Here's the post-flight vertigo: wheee! What fun.)

Personal revelations that were really, really obvious to everyone else seem to be sort of a standard thing on livejournal. I don't know why I should expect to be exempt.

But really, did you know that I'm a very political novel writer?

Why didn't you tell me?

Did you think that the bit where I got the glowing praise up and down and sideways in my last novel rejection with the only negative bit being that it was "too political" was going to clue me in? Anyway, this was my major bit of self-revelation last weekend: at the "Fantasy of Manners" panel, at the "A Different Magic" panel, at the "Writing for all ages" panel...most of the panels, really. Of course at the "Kings, Seventh Sons, and the lamentable absence of miller's daughters" panel. I ended up thinking, "Um. Sounds like I'm very political. Comparatively speaking."

From the way ksumnersmith laughed at me when I shared this thought with her, I suspect I am the only one to whom it is news.

Still and all: political. Apparently.

At the "Fantasy of Manners" panel, I managed not to leap up and cheer when adrian_turtle said that fantasy of manners was about non-binary distinctions, and I managed again not to leap up and cheer when Debra Doyle said, "Manners are how you manage division of power." But it was a near thing in both cases. People going around being smart about these things; it's very heartening.

I don't know how to do reports on the panels I was on, really. I can come the closest on the Joy of Reading panel, where papersky asked a bunch of us to read from a bunch of things. ( those things, mostly )

But I don't remember what pnh read at all, although I will say, "Of course!" and feel stupid when someone reminds me.

I'm afraid I'm a dreadful failure at reporting on panels. Hmm. I liked "Making Real Things and Making Things Real," because it was full of such fascinating tidbits, like the Quaker handwriting and the false hills of Acre and the Japanese books down the wells. Good panels make me want to go out and do things, or do the things I've been doing better, and these did. So.