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The table of contents has been released for Mad Norwegian's upcoming Doctor Who essay collection, Companion Piece: Women Celebrate the Humans, Aliens and Tin Dogs of Doctor Who! The book includes essays by Seanan McGuire, Amal El-Mohtar, Mary Robinette Kowal, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and many others. It includes my essay "'I Can Do Your Part If You Can Do Mine': Romana II as the Girl Doctor." I'm looking forward to reading the whole collection!


Companion Piece Table of Contents

• The Impossible Girls by Deborah Stanish
• That Nitro-9 You’re Not Carrying: Violence and the Companion by Seanan McGuire
• Scheherazade and Galahad in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks by Mags L. Halliday
• Steven Taylor, Space Adventurer! by L.M. Myles
• Scintillating, Fascinating, Irritating by Liz Barr
• I Don’t Want Her to Go by Amy Gaertner
• “What a Splendid-Looking Roman You Make!": The Male Companions, from Ian to Rory by Emma Nichols
• A Different Way of Living by Julia duMais
• We, Robots by Erika Ensign
• The Damned Don’t Cry by Sarah Groenewegen
• Stories and Fairytales: Feminism, Agency and Narrative Control with the Pond Family Women by Karen K. Burrows
• The Shakespeare Race Code by Amanda-Rae Prescott
• “I Can Do Your Part If You Can Do Mine”: Romana II as the Girl Doctor by Gwynne Garfinkle
• Mouth on Legs by Tehani Wessely
• From “There’s Nothing Only About Being a Girl” to “The Most Important Woman in the Whole of Creation”: Feminism and the Female Companions by Linnea Dodson
• Where in Eternity... is Josephine Grant Jones? by Joan Frances Turner
• Forever Playing Second Fiddle: How Sarah Jane and the Rest of Us are being Sold Short by Nina Allan
• The Barbara Strain by Lynne M. Thomas
• The Curious Case of Miss Victoria Waterfield by Jennifer Adams Kelley
• “Where Do I Fit In?”: The Tale of Perpugilliam Brown by Stephanie Lai
• My Doctor: Harry Sullivan by Sarah McDermott
• Donna: Noble by Name and Noble by Nature by Karen Miller
• Rewriting History with Sticky Notes: Narrative, Agency and Bernice Summerfield by Emma Ward
• Scientists, Not Office Boys: Zoe and Liz, Science-Heroes by Anna Livingston
• The Uses of Turlough by Anne Goldsmith
• Amy‘s Choice: Doctor Who Companions and the Nightmare of Domesticity by Una McCormack
• The Ones He Leaves Behind by Foz Meadows
• Science Princess FTW by Mary Robinette Kowal
• Origin Story by Aneira Vaughn
• What Has Romana Ever Done For Us? by Phoebe Taylor
• The Heroine of Her Own Story by Britany Harrison and Liz Barr
• Sara Kingdom Dies at the End by Tansy Rayner Roberts
• A Question of Emphasis: The Doctor as Companion by Amal El-Mohtar

It is Henna Day, on a pleasantly warm day in L.A. (following a spate of hot weather). I think I'm having my usual post-WisCon slump, and massive allergies aren't helping.

I never did properly write up Wiscon, but it was so great to spend time with nwhepcat, oracne, skogkatt, cafenowhere and many others. The Open Secrets group reading (Lisa Bradley, Amal El-Mohtar, Gwynne Garfinkle, Nancy Hightower, Kathrin Köhler, Shira Lipkin, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Elizabeth R. McClellan, Julia Rios, S. Brackett Robertson, Sofia Samatar) was one of the best poetry readings of any kind I've ever participated in. And there was the amazing panel discussion on speculative poetry featuring tithenai, shadesong and Sofia Samatar, and the also amazing panel on the new Queers Dig Time Lords book of essays, and papersky reading from her two upcoming novels, and far too much more for me to reconstruct at this point...

I've been tackling my pre-Wiscon to-do list. I'll have to get up at Stupid O'Clock on Thursday morning--it's almost not worth going to bed Wednesday night. Today I went to my mom's and we celebrated her birthday a bit early (since on the actual day I'll be packing for Wiscon) with pizza and a pear tart.

***

Re: last night's Doctor Who: ( spoiler )

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I saw a couple of movies on TCM this weekend--one a somewhat silly but fun one from 1944 (Passport to Destiny) in which Elsa Lanchester decides to go to Germany to kill Hitler. Luckily for her, everyone in Germany speaks fluent English. Even the signs on the doors are in English!

The other film was something of a revelation: Autumn Leaves (1956). The capsule description said something about Joan Crawford marrying a psychopath (Cliff Robertson), and I figured I knew what I'd be getting...sort of a '50s version of one of those Lifetime movies, in which a charming cad woos Joan, then turns into Bluebeard or some such. That's what I kept expecting as I watched charming young Burt (Robertson) pursue cautious, older typist Millie (Crawford). After the wedding, when the ex-wife Burt never mentioned and the father he said was dead show up, I was sure I knew exactly where this was heading--and then the movie flipped the script. By the time Burt spectacularly cracks up, it's pretty clear why he's so broken, and no matter how terrifying he gets, he's no villain. The film's portrayal of mental illness is dated, but Robertson's performance is so nuanced, it transcends those limitations. If I'd known, I would've DVR'd the thing...I ended up buying the DVD the next day. (The film's on YouTube too.)

***

I finally finished (re)reading Scott Miller's Music: What Happened?. I was in no hurry to finish. For a taste of the book, here's Scott reading from it about William Shatner (!) and Ken Stringfellow, followed by his rendition of Stringfellow's gorgeous "Death of a City" (which has been earworming me for days).

I am hennaing my hair on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, while SOAPnet re-airs last weekend's weekend-eating fifty-hour General Hospital marathon. We're supposed to have OMG Strong Winds in Los Angeles starting tonight. I hope the power stays on.

I've been loving all the GH 50th anniversary celebrations (Frisco singing "All I Need" at the Nurses' Ball on Friday's show!). Also, I loved last week's Doctor Who...this week's, not so much.

New Mad Men tonight!

I took a couple of vacation days (today and tomorrow) to celebrate my birthday. (Oh, the joy of not having to drive across town!) Today I went to Skylight Books, where I bought Kate Zambreno's O Fallen Angel. Then I went to Cafe Tropical and picked up a Cuban sandwich, guava & cream cheese pastry and cafe con leche for dinner.

Tomorrow night I'll be having birthday dinner with friends, then birthday lunch with my mom on Sunday.

***

What did you just finish reading?
Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who (edited by L.M. Myles and Deborah Stanish). This made me want to immediately park in front of the TV and watch/rewatch hours upon hours of classic Who (especially the Third Doctor, for some reason).

What are you reading now?
Still reading American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath. This has lots of good material from letters (unpublished Plath letters and letters to Plath from friends). It's been a long time since I've read the earlier Plath biographies, but there's a fair bit of info new to me.

I've just started Seanan McGuire's Midnight Blue-Light Special.

What do you expect to read next?
Probably a General Hospital tie-in novel, Love in Maine by Connie Falconeri, which, according to Romantic Times, is actually quite good. (On GH, teenaged Molly wrote the book, then publishing magnate Kate Howard's alternate personality [!] Connie Falconeri stole it, added sex and got it published.) I suspect that when I read it, I'll keep remembering Molly's outraged editorializing at the book party: "Dear god, was that all one sentence?...'Grip on her hip?' It's like a nursery rhyme for perverts!"

The BBC has confirmed that Elisabeth Sladen has passed away.

My reaction when I saw the news on Twitter was, No, it can't be THAT Liz Sladen! Such awful news. Rest in peace, Sarah Jane.

Today is Henna Day, and the cold henna on my head is helping to alleviate a headache.

Yesterday I went to the Gallifrey One convention near the airport. It was great to see scarlettgirl, lordshiva, spikewriter, and taraljc (though alas I never ran into calapine!). Highlights of the day included the Whedonistas! book launch panel (featuring Jane Espenson, Scarlettgirl and Lordshiva; the book also includes essays by herself_nyc, seanan_mcguire, and many others) and an interview with Peter Davison and Janet Fielding, during which the two basically snarked amiably at each other for an hour (ljs, you would've loved it!). Unfortunately it started raining biblically during my drive home--it was fairly hair-raising.

After I rinse out my hair, there will be noveling, reading, a trip to Trader Joe's, and season one The Good Wife DVD viewing...

Yay, Doctor Who The Creature from the Pit is gonna come out on DVD!!!

Meanwhile, LJ is not sending me comment notifications. ::shakes LJ::

So Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred are gonna be at the Gallifrey con near LAX in February! I went to the con in 2006 but not this year, but I'm thinking I should attend this one. Anyone from my FL planning on going?

( today's Ryan's Hope )

( yesterday's GH )

Old Soap PSA: They're getting ready to rerun the first vampire arc (highly derivative of both Buffy and Dark Shadows) of Port Charles on Soapnet (4:00-5:00 a.m. Mon-Fri). The show would really run its vampire stories into the ground, but the first arc was pretty good, notably because of Ion Overman playing the formerly nice Nurse Gabriella who turns overnight into a scorching hot, red-lipsticked siren in thrall to the vampire!

Meanwhile, due to the newly fantastic writing on the show, I've been forced to add One Life To Live to my daily viewing schedule. I figure I should enjoy it while I can, because if the scab writers come in, who knows what will happen to this currently marvelous show...