I figured a good way to start the year is by nerding out all over the place, so this week I have a guest post up at the blog of astronomy-camp alum and Affair-to-Remember-lover Marjorie Liu!

Since I know she understands deep and abiding love for fictional people, I took the opportunity to list ten movie relationships that should have happened, for values of “list” that really mean “talk about how you banged their invisible dolls together with more determination than you addressed many real-life things like calculus.” (In fact, cutting down the list was so hard that technically I squeezed in eleven, because it’s really difficult to watch Wings of the Dove and NOT think a frank conversation could have set up the best triad in a hundred-mile radius.)

The list includes some couples that would have gotten together except they died (Alice and Uncas!), couples that would have gotten together except Austen couldn’t bring herself to pull a switcheroo at the two-thirds mark (Elinor and Brandon!), couples that would have gotten together if Picard had ever, ever learned how to talk to a woman for like two damn seconds of his life (PICARD, GET IT TOGETHER), and couples that were clearly together and just never got the screentime they should have, like these two:

(The couple that trades unauthorized ammo together stays together!)

For those who enjoy some free books alongside their couples not quite getting together and/or pop culture, I’m also giving away copies of Mechanique and Geek Wisdom. So if you’re so inclined, head on over and check it out!

A little while ago, I got a very kind email from a book club in CA who had read Mechanique and enjoyed it, which is just the sort of flattery an author likes to hear. However, one reader had been inspired enough by the book to actually sculpt Alec, the Winged Man(!!), and that is too damn cool not to share.

(The group in question, posted with kind permission! I smiled a lot when I opened this picture, I can’t even pretend otherwise.)

The artist, Talitha Sherman, writes, “They are made, as is only right, entirely from things I had laying around,” which I could not love more. (I also really dig the very early-Gothic icon-y Alec against the sweep and movement of the wings – just awesome!)

Thanks to Talitha, Shannon, and the whole book club for pretty much making my week!

I don’t tend to do big year-in-review posts, but this year I wanted to take a second.

Behind the scenes, there were ups and downs (family, day job, work-life balance, and the like), but I came out the other side of 2011 all right. I even managed to get out of the house enough to attend some lovely cons where I hung out with some lovely people, and there were no champagne fights or anything!

Writing-wise: I published my first novel, Mechanique! It is a great feeling to hold a novel you wrote in your hands, as it turns out! I had some positive reviews which pleased me greatly (positive reviews tend to do that), and have really enjoyed hearing from people (strangers!) with whom the book resonated. But really, most aspects of it were rewarding in some way, right down to the book launch party, for which some friends (and a family member I tricked!) worked their asses off for nothing more than free snacks.

I also got a nonfiction book under my belt this year! Geek Wisdom, in which my co-authors, Stephen Segal, and I gathered geeky quotes and set out to talk about how being a nerd was like a philosophy course, only with more dice and movies and computers and stuff, was a blast.

Short-fiction-wise, I had a dozen stories come out this year (of which I am perhaps particularly fond of “Demons, Your Body, and You,” “Semiramis,” “The Nearest Thing,” and “Study, for Solo Piano”), and some reprints, of which I am particularly glad for “And in Their Glad Rags” in Happily Ever After, and “Keep Calm and Carillon” in Creatures.

Movie-wise, I saw some really great movies this year and some extremely questionable ones. Drive and Shame might be two of my favorite movies that came out this year; the bad ones seem too numerous to mention and often too painful to recall. I must say that, especially in light of some of the completely shit movies I saw this year, Red Riding Hood seems to be on a lot of people’s Worst Movie Ever Made lists, which I find a little suspicious. Don’t get me wrong, it is definitely a bad movie. However, its biggest crime to many people seems to be that it’s directed by a woman who found commercial success with a blockbuster teen-girl movie that also had a love triangle, and is now condemned to be accused of repeating herself forever for things like having helicopter shots of landscape in two movies in a row, which, seriously. Without defending a movie that is for sure not a good movie, the vitriol and content of the criticism is still a bit eyebrow-raising, I think. (I mean, I saw Beastly this year. BEASTLY.)

Tonight ends a year that was often fun, sometimes tough, often interesting, and awash in coffee. I’m at home for the duration, and have spent the morning cleaning up so that I can spend the evening writing, and start the year as I mean to go on. (I’ll also be honoring my family’s oldest and most hilarious tradition, banging a pan on your doorstep at midnight to keep the devil out. Since I live in an apartment and am not a total jerk, I will be tapping a wooden spoon against a pan for about five seconds and hoping the devil is a pearl-clutching sort and that does the trick.)

Wishing you and yours a happy start to the New Year!

So, here’s the deal: Part of me always wanted to save the best Cookson for last. However, the moment comes in your life when you realize you are just never going to make it through A Dinner of Herbs, and if I waited for that to happen before I did The Moth, this entry would be dated sometime in 2017. So, let’s just end 2011 on a high note, with the very best Cookson of them all: The Moth!

The Moth is actually where all this rigmarole got started in the first place: my friend Eileen, who knows from period pieces, brought The Moth over on a visit on a lark, thinking we’d watch it a little and then hang out and actually do something in New York. That was foolish, obviously, because as soon as we finished that one I was looking for the next one. Also, it turns out we accidentally started with the best one, which made the rest of the Catherine Cookson Experience sort of a slide downhill? Not that I hold that against Eileen at all; I think the only way to handle Cookson is to start with a nice one, because if you open with The Tide of Life the entire thing sort of becomes a non-starter.

However, that does nothing to diminish the fun of this puppy, where things are good and/or good to make fun of, which is the ideal combination for a great time in a Cookson, I feel.

Vital Stats:

Era: 1913.
Heroine: Robert Bradley and Sarah Thorman, who deserve equal billing here, I think. He’s a ship-builder who loves to read and feels social injustice keenly! She’s a lady of the manor with budding feminist feelings! Together, they fight crime.
Siblings that require looking-after: Millie, Sarah’s younger sister, who has Peculiar Yet Winsome on speed dial.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Somebody sure is!
Asshole Father?: This thing is an Asshole Father-Off, and competition is fieeerce.
Romantic interest(s): Each other! Marvelously. In a way that makes you want to bang their dolls together almost as much as they do.
Bairnsketballs: Check.
Fistfights: Oh gosh. Definitely a few fights, including one instance of someone getting attacked by a carpentry implement to the face.
Assaults: None! It’s a Christmas miracle!

Under this cut, endless glee. Also, endless pictures, sorry.
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Firstly, I hope everyone had or is having a happy nondenominational winter section of time full of some kind of delicious baked goods! (I tend to the Amateur Astronomer Nighttime Appreciation Celebration with iced sugar cookies, myself.)

Secondly, something extremely fun happened!

Recently, Esther at Fantasy Magazine asked if I wanted to write about dragons.

DID I EVER.

“Three Dragons” is the result of some serious nerding out and a refusal to cull quotes (they’re all awesome, I put them all in there, I regret nothing). The research was fun, and kind of dangerous, since now I have a whole separate research folder for a project that may or may not include “The Imprint of Her Foot Serpentous” in the title, because as soon as I saw that phrase I figured I either had to write something for it or start a band, and I’m all out of band.

Please also note that in the middle of an article that pretends to know what it’s talking about I still managed to fangirl Smrgol, because that dragon deserves it.

P.S. A close runner-up for the photo was this dude, who looks completely flummoxed by the stupid human who shoved itself into his mouth and insists on being eaten.