The Days Are Just Packed     
The ongoing saga of David D. Levine's writing and other adventures.

I'm a geek, fan, and writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. For more information about me, please see my web page. If you have questions, comments, or just want to chat, you can send me e-mail. Or you can post a comment on my LiveJournal.

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12/29/05: David's Index for 2005

Novel words written: 6,004
Short story words written: 10,992
Notes, outline, and synopsis words written: 8,794
Blog words written: 33,428
Total words written: 59,218

New stories written: 2
Existing stories revised: 2

Short story submissions sent: 23
Responses received: 22
Acceptances: 4 (1 pro, 1 semi-pro, 2 reprints)
Rejections: 12
Other responses: 6 (4 rewrite requests, 2 markets closed)
Awaiting response: 4

Short stories published: 9 (6 new, 3 reprints)

Major award nominations: 0
Minor award nominations: 1
Awards won: 0

Novel editing hours: 69.5
Novels submitted: 1
Novels awaiting response: 1

Happy New Year!

Posted 12/29/2005 22:31 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Somewhere in my webbish peregrinations the other day I came across an appreciation of John Kessel's "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence". The appreciation includes this statement:

"A casual reader might have read this story: Two trashy people ride in a strange subway to an even stranger terminal where they are given tons of cash. That casual reader would, in my opinion, really miss out on some great layers of this deceptively simple story."

Well, that's how I read it. Although this story has been highly praised, and was in at least one Year's Best volume, I thought it was rather lame. The main character takes harly any independent action -- he is literally led by the hand through much of the story -- but he is sent on an amazing journey and in the end he is, as it says above, given tons of cash. Which he accepts. The end. Whoopee.

I guess I'm shallow.

It may be that, as the appreciation says, there's more to the story. But most of the Oz references went over my head, since I've never read that series. And the socio-economic allegories some other readers have found weren't apparent or didn't work for me. If there really was a lesson to be learned about the Haves gaining their wealth from the sweat of the brows of the Have-Nots, why did the main character simply acquiesce to the system? What some see as his "moment of epiphany" at the end of the story fails for me because he does not take any action as a result of his epiphany, nor is there any implication that he will do so in the future -- which means that I don't even consider it an epiphany.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... well, I'm a simple guy, and I like my stories simple. It's not that I'm incapable of appreciating a finely turned description or a reference to an older story; some of my favorite stories (and some -- or even most -- of my stories) are riffs on older stories by obscure authors. But for me, if a story doesn't work at the first, most basic level, I'm not going to stick around to see if it has hidden depths.

I didn't like "What I Didn't See" either. But that's a rant for another day.

Posted 12/28/2005 22:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Today's mail brought a nice holiday card from Dell Magazines (I guess I am a member of their "stable" now, neigh whinny) and a 281-day bounce from Realms of Fantasy (281 days for a couple of sentences scribbled on my cover letter, grr). That story's off to Fantasy.

Also today I found a nice mention of my Tales of the Unanticipated story "A Book is a Journey" in Richard Horton's sff.net newsgroup. It's only a partial sentence, but a nice mention is much better than what I've been getting lately and it's extremely welcome.

I spent the first part of this week at a managers' offsite in Hood River, helping to present a workshop on Agile Programming Techniques. It wasn't terribly difficult or stressful, but I find that I am... intellectually exhausted, I guess you would say. I haven't been able to accomplish much of anything today, either at work or at home. I did manage to unpack my bag, at least, which I don't always do right away after returning from a trip.

There's been a bit of a re-org at work, and effective Monday I am no longer assigned full-time to the project that has been eating so much of my life lately (I got home at 8pm last Wednesday, 10pm Friday). Mind you, there are still quite a number of design decisions to be made and meetings to attend, but now someone else is the dedicated lead on that project and will be doing all of the heavy lifting while I'm supposed to be concentrating on another project. The new project is a return to something I've spent a lot of time on in the past and I enjoy working with those people. It is still going to be a lot of work, but the deadline is much farther away and I hope it won't be quite so intense.

Posted 12/15/2005 23:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

A Taste of Clarion West

The Potlatch 15 science fiction convention, which will be held February 24-26, 2006 in Seattle, Washington, will be holding a short story workshop. Workshops are a great way to get feedback on a story. Perhaps more important, they are a great way to learn about what makes stories succeed and fail in general, through the process of critiquing others' work and comparing your critiques with others'. They're a great way to meet other writers, and work with a couple of professionals in the field. Finally, if you're considering applying for Clarion West (http://clarionwest.org/website/) they should give you a small inkling of what the Clarion West workshop process is like.

Journeyman Writers' Workshop

This year for the first time we are experimenting with a Journeyman workshop. We envision it as a tool for recharging and refocusing more advanced writers. Perhaps you have a sale or two but feel as if you've lost steam; maybe you're a Clarion West graduate who's looking to get back to writing after years on other projects, or are just looking to add new tools to your kit. This is the workshop for you, with like-level participants. Since this an experiment we don't know what demand is like. Please let us know as early as possible if you want to participate; this workshop will only be held if there's enough interest.

Please check the Potlatch 15 website (http://www.potlatch-sf.org/writersworkshop.html) for more information, including updates on workshop instructors, and workshop availability status. If you have any questions, email me at dlevine@spiritone.com.

-- David Levine, Workshop Coordinator

How To Submit:

1. Complete an SF, Fantasy, or Horror short story (maximum 7500 words). No fragments; no novel chapters; no poetry. One submission per person.

2. Proofread it carefully. Make sure it represents the best you can do.

3. Print it out in standard manuscript format (see http://www.sfwa.org/writing/vonda/vonda.htm for more information). Fasten the manuscript with a paper clip.

4. Write a cover letter with a short (1-2 pages) writer's bio. Have you published before? Have you been to other writer's workshops? Are you part of a writer's group? Are you new to writing? What are your hopes and expectations for writing in the future? Be sure to include your mailing address, and your email address if you have one. Please specify which workshop -- Taste of Clarion West or Journeyman Workshop -- you wish to participate in. If you're interested in the Journeyman workshop, please let me know whether you'd like to participate in the Taste of Clarion West workshop if the Journeyman workshop is not held.

5. Send the manuscript and cover letter, along with a check or money order for $10 to cover copying and postage, to:

Potlatch 15 Writers' Workshop
c/o David D. Levine
1905 SE 43rd Ave.
Portland, OR 97215

Make checks payable to David D. Levine.

--> All submissions must be RECEIVED by January 15, 2006. <--

Posted 12/14/2005 19:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

So I was doing a Google search on my own name, as one does, and Google turned up this page on a mysterious site known only by a number.

The page is about "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" and it has two reader comments. One reader gives the story a grade of 5, the other a 4.

I can't even figure out what language the page is in, never mind what it says.

The Xerox language guesser thinks it's Estonian. But there doesn't seem to be any automated Estonian to English translator on the web. I've tried Romanian, Slovenian, and Serbian translators and none of them can extract any meaning from it.

Can anyone reading this tell me what it says?

Posted 12/11/2005 21:02 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

And "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" goes off to Analog. On to the next thing.

Has anyone else noticed that short stories in standard manuscript format weigh just about one ounce per thousand words?

Posted 12/06/2005 22:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Finally got a chance to sit down and finish the edits on the Titanium Mike story, and I got through to the end. It's about 200 words longer than it was, and I'm not 100% convinced I'm done with the edits. I shall sleep on it.

Posted 12/05/2005 23:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Whoa, how did it get to be {Friday, December, Smofcon, Christmas, 2007} so quickly?

Thanksgiving was swell. We stayed in Portland Thursday evening and had a fantastic dinner at the home of our friends Paul and Debbie, then hit the road fairly early on Friday for the Vancouver square dance fly-in. Had a great time enjoying the hospitality of our friends Will and Grant and hanging out with square dance friends from all over, returning to Portland on Monday.

I was supposed to go to Sunnyvale (for some entirely explicable reason I'm always tempted to say "Sunnydale" instead) for business on Tuesday, but when I got home Monday night I had a phone message that the trip was postponed to Thursday. So I went to work as usual on Tuesday to find a sh*t storm of major proportions. My boss had been out of town for two weeks, and apparently several serious problems that had been simmering for some time, and which he might have been able to defuse if he'd been there, burst open on Monday -- people screaming at each other and all kinds of mean nasty ugly stuff. Glad I missed it. But I didn't miss the aftermath, which is still unfolding. None of the serious issues are my fault, but some of the repercussions will affect me. Probably some people will be shifted to different projects.

One of the consequences was that the person who was supposed to go with me to Sunnyvale was diverted to another trip. But then, when he had cancelled his Sunnyvale tickets and was in the process of scheduling the other trip, he was told that the other trip was off. So I had to go to Sunnyvale by myself while the other person just stayed back at the office.

I was really worried about this trip, because the weather forecast called for a major snow storm to hit Portland that day. I packed with the assumption that I might have to stay in the Bay Area for a day or two. But, apart from the fact that I had to get up at 4am to catch my flight, everything went smoothly. My meeting in Sunnyvale was intense and productive and I got home by 8pm.

I had a busy day at work today (Friday) and went from there straight to Smofcon, the convention-runners' convention, which is in Portland this year. Kate and I hung out with SMOF friends, had dinner with Arthur Aldridge, then participated in the traditional Friday night icebreaker. This year's icebreaker was to re-enact the Orycon hotel search (with all the Portland hotels disguised behind names such as Trantor Hilton and Towers and Innsmouth Hotel at the Docks) in fifteen minutes. Amusingly, my team selected the same hotel the actual Orycon did, and for pretty much the same reasons. Martin Easterbrook suggested we write our press release as a pastiche of "The Raven," and we whomped out three verses of pretty good faux Poe (Paux?) in about five minutes. You can see it, along with another poem from one of the other teams, here.

The writing, unfortunately, hasn't been going well. I've been making fitful progress on the rewrite of the Titanium Mike story, but I haven't sold anything since February. Several stories have been published in the last couple months, but there have been few reviews and most of those have been bad (one poster on the Asimov's message board said he wanted to slap me). I'm hoping for some better news in the December Locus. And there's still no word on the novel. The editor said he hoped to look at the rewrite in December, so I'll bug him fairly shortly if I don't hear something soon.

Well. Anyway. More Smofcon this weekend, and that should be fun. And I don't have any more work-related travel until December 12! (Unless I have to go to Sunnyvale again next week, but I think I should be able to avoid that.)

Posted 12/03/2005 00:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Today was interesting.

At work, it was almost like Christmas as the long-awaited Macs arrived. I must confess I was surprised -- I'd been figuring that someone, somewhere in the purchase order approval chain, would say "we make Windows software -- I don't care if they're 'Designers', they can't have Macs!" But, despite my skepticism, there they were: three shiny (very shiny!) new dual-processor Power Mac G5 Towers with half a gig of RAM and 250 gigs of disk each, plus three boxes of assorted software. And so the day was spent in setting up, configuring, installing, and tweaking. (Um, can anyone tell me how to make IntelliJ Idea use Command instead of Control for its keyboard shortcuts?)

Then, at home, I finally got off my duff -- well, no, actually I got on my duff -- and started editing "Titanium Mike." Shortened the first scene by about 200 words (in the first 800) and made the Mike story a bit more outlandish. The edits on the next scene are going to be trickier. But I'm editing again! I hope to have this one in the mail by the end of next week.

Posted 11/22/2005 23:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

In the last week, I've mostly divided my time between work and being sick.

The project at work, time- and energy-consuming though it is, is coming together nicely and I'm pleased with my part in it. At this point my greatest fear is that our fine design might prove to be too much to implement. I wish we were in the same city as the implementers.

And then I come home at 7pm or so, read or watch TV a bit, and fall into bed. I just don't have enough energy or brainpower for anything more. I'm so glad I've got Kate to take care of me when I get like this.

In the last couple of days I've been much less sick. I'm still blowing my nose a lot, but the sore throat, aches, and fever are mostly gone. So I have had enough energy to put a bunch more music into my iPod (including several discs of Broadway show tunes -- still not convinced they will work well in rotation, but it's worth a try), see the new Harry Potter movie (I have some problems with the plot, but I applaud the filmmakers' decision to exclude those beastly Dursleys from the film), and read the new Iain Banks novel, The Algebraist, which I picked up at the Worldcon. I had heard some disappointment at this one, but for myself I found it a cracking good read with inspiring scope and complexity.

I don't get nearly as much time as I would like for reading these days, so I should feel glad that I managed to read a whole novel that wasn't required for anything. But I still feel like a total slug. Perhaps I shall accomplish something useful later this week. But for now... going to bed early has a lot of appeal.

Posted 11/20/2005 21:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Wow, it has been a while since I've posted. Well, I've been very busy with real life... barely time to read email, and definitely not enough time to read my friends' online journals, never mind writing in my own. Here's a brief, brief update.

• I finished the revisions on my novel before World Fantasy Con, though I had to stay up until 3am to do it. I haven't heard anything from the editor yet except an acknowledgement of receipt. If it doesn't sell after all this I will be Annoyed.

• Lise Eisenberg from New York was our houseguest for several days before OryCon. Great conversation, good eats, but in trying to open my wireless network to let her in I managed to bring the whole thing down -- it took me until 2am to get it working again.

• I had to get up at 4am for my flight to WFC. On Saturday morning of the con I was able to announce in the dealers' room, in all sincerity, that I was tireder than the whole rest of the convention... put togithir!
• I must have had a good time at WFC, because I didn't go to any programming at all (except for the one panel I was on and my reading, both of which had quite respectable audiences -- oh, wait, I did also attend the Monette/Bear/Lake readings Sunday morning). Basically I spent the whole con schmoozing in the halls, the parties, and the bar. Now, when I say "schmoozing," I really mean "hanging out with writer friends" more than "sucking up to editors," but there was also a certain amount of the latter. And I really wish there was something I could wear that would look as sexy on me as Elizabeth Bear's corset did on her.

• Came home to find that Kate, Lise, and Dave Howell had had a good time without me at OryCon, ending with an amazing series of mishaps that I will let one of them relate. Sounds like their convention was a lot more... eventful than mine. Both Lise and Dave stayed at our house for a day or two after the convention. Wonderful to see them both, to be sure, but it was nice to get the house back.

• All through this time I've been working 9-10 hour days at the day job. We've made some difficult decisions about which projects to defer, but we still have tight deadlines on the one major project that remains on our plate, and when that is done we will be behind the 8-ball on the other projects we've deferred. Work will probably remain quite heavy well into next year.

• What with all the strange people I've hugged and the massive sleep deficit I've rung up in the last couple of weeks, it's not too surprising that I've come down with a cold. Nothing serious, but it does slow me down a bit.

So that's what's up with me. If I owe you an email or a phone call... please be patient, I'm treading water as fast as I can.

Posted 11/13/2005 20:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

44% done with this editing pass. Hardly any changes tonight, but every word has to be examined because I'm taking away the sounds the aliens make, and it's real easy to read over a line like "she trilled in pleasure" and not notice that it's a sound if you're not paying close attention. Search and replace won't do it; I used too many different sound words.

Removing the sounds isn't the only change I'm making in this pass, but it's the most pervasive. The other changes -- like making Jason more head-over-heels in love with Clarity -- are localized (in this case, to the comparatively rare flashback scenes with the two of them together). I'm not sure how much I can change on that without adding additional scenes, which I don't want to do for a variety of reasons.

Today at work we had the celebration for the release of a major product. We all went off to a very nice brewpub/cinema, a former Masonic lodge, where we were treated to beer and wine, barbecue, and a showing of Office Space. Not the movie I would have chosen for a morale booster... it was a little too close to reality sometimes.

Also today... you remember I mentioned that work ate my life for a couple of weeks there? The VP responsible just gave each person on my team an iPod nano as a thank-you for that work. So there is some justice in the world. I gave the new nano to Kate, but I have to get a USB 2.0 port for the PC before she can put any of her music on it.

Posted 10/26/2005 23:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Sorry about that. The day job rose up and swallowed my life. You know that scene in Broadcast News where Holly Hunter the producer is leaning over Bobby the technician, who is editing the tape for tonight's broadcast, and saying "C'mon Bobby-bobby-bobby-bobby..." because it has to be finished by, like, five seconds from now? That was my life for the last couple of weeks. I was Bobby.

I finally heard some more from the editor on my novel. He's still excited about it, but the publisher is less so, and the editor would like me to make some changes to make it more acceptable to the publisher. I consulted with my agent about it, and he says that if I think the novel would be improved by the suggested changes I should go ahead and do them. Which, since some of the problems the editor has identified are also problems I've been fighting the whole way through, I'm going ahead and doing. So I spent the whole weekend revising, making the aliens more alien and increasing the friction between the aliens and the humans. Thanks to Mary, Sara, Nalo, Jim, and Denny for brainstorming assistance.

I've rewritten the first 50 pages so far, including fairly significant changes in Clarity's introduction and the funeral scene. Mostly what I've been doing is adding exposition -- a sentence here, a paragraph there -- and rewriting a few scenes to make them more dramatic and conflict-y. The total word count change so far is only about 600 additional words.

In other writing news, the January 2006 issue of Asimov's, including my story "The Last McDougal's," has been reviewed at Tangent Online. "Levine paints the future with a clever brush.... His down-to-earth and realistic portrayal of family and the dynamic between two distant generations is refreshing and timely." Watch for the issue on newsstands or in your mailbox soon.

Posted 10/23/2005 22:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I haven't seen a copy yet, but I just learned that Greenberg anthology All Hell Breaking Loose, including my story "The Curse of Beazoel," is now available at Powell's and other fine booksellers (it got five stars from Harriet Klausner). Also, issue #26 of Tales of the Unanticipated, including my story "A Book is a Journey," will arrive fresh from the printer on or about November 4. If you order now, your copy will be in the mail before it cools off.

Posted 10/10/2005 20:30 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

"Titanium Mike Saves the Day" is now complete at just under 5000 words, and off to my critique group. It'll be critted next Saturday and I hope to get it in the mail to Analog shortly thereafter. My first new story since March, and my first new solo story since... crikey, last September. Really need to get on the ball.

Speaking of which... in response to the recent meme that's been going around, here are the opening paragraphs of the just-completed "Titanium Mike" and a few other stories in progress ("in progress," in this case, means that they were completed a year ago or more but are now high on the list to be revised next).

Titanium Mike Saves the Day (Hard SF)

"Gramma, I'm scared."

The poor girl wasn't just scared, she was terrified -- tense and shivering and speaking in a breathy whisper her helmet mike could barely pick up. Behind a faceplate fogged with rapid breaths, her skin was pale and clammy and her sapphire-blue eyes twitched like small frightened animals.

Helen wasn't exactly calm herself. "Don't fret, Sophie," she told the child, but her own voice trembled. She muted her mike and took a deep breath to settle herself, the sound echoing loud in her helmet until she felt under control. "We'll be safe here." For a while, anyway, she added silently. The shelter's single dim light was already beginning to fade.

Moonlight on the Carpet (Horror)

"Vrrm, vrrm," said Liam as he ran the little wooden car across the Persian carpet. It was summer, a hot humid Midwest summer, and there was nothing else to do.

Daddy and Mommy were away again. The blue and gold pattern, a thing the shape of the big black card at the top of the poker deck, could be Laclede Island where they went every month at this time. Liam ran his car along the causeway -- a long curve of blue and red and black, and through the stripe of bright white moonlight that crossed it. The little golden hairs on the back of his hand glinted in the light.

Across the causeway and along the bay, the little car sped. Liam imagined himself in the back, leaning his chin on the back of the seat, peering out at the streetlights that flicked past one after the other. But above them all would loom the moon, the full moon, outshining them all. Mommy and Daddy never took him out to the island when the moon was full.

Interview with the Photographer (Hard SF)

We called ourselves the Trillion even then, though in those days it was a proud and overweening boast, not the vast understatement it is today. Those were heady days, early days, days of energy and promise when anything could, and did, happen on a daily basis. In those days a person could say something like "I think we ought to take Jupiter apart and build something useful out if it" and be greeted with cheers.

How young we were!

Let me tell you a thing to impress upon you how different those times were from these: I was given five names when I was born. It was a formality even then, of course; the UniTag was already two hundred years old, but my parents still held to the old ways and tried their best to give their child a unique spoken name. They were old-fashioned with my genome, too, which definitely explains my stodgily symmetrical appearance and probably explains why I have been too stubborn to change it. But I'm slave enough to fashion to go by just Jonquil now.

Night Mail (Fantasy)

Nate Richmond loved estate sales. The mundane thrill of searching for bargains, with the slight ironic tang of a second-hand encounter with death, had always been exactly what he needed to distract himself from his cares. Besides, they were cheap entertainment. So on a crisp sunny Friday afternoon in May, when Nate's cares were particularly big and his wallet equally empty, he strolled down 43rd from his apartment on Belmont to see what he might find.

Nate was a thin young man of 23, with white, white skin and black, black hair. His chunky shoes and his pants and his denim jacket were also black, as was his T-shirt, which bore the name and logo of the industrial band Bauhaus. The only article of clothing that wasn't black was his socks, red cotton decorated with white skulls. Around his neck he wore a small silver ankh.

The decedent at this particular estate sale had been a woman with size 8 feet and extremely practical taste in shoes and clothing. Emerging from her closet, Nate found his way blocked by two large, burly men, the proprietors of the sale, who were disassembling the mahogany sleigh bed that dominated the bedroom. As they levered the box spring out of the bed frame, Nate noticed a rectangle in the thick dust underneath. "What's that?" he said.

The older of the two men bent down and picked it up. "Looks like an old desk set." It was a large flat rectangle of embossed leather with brass hinges and fittings, maybe twenty-four by sixteen inches, wrapped all around with yards of yellowed cellophane tape.

In the Joy Business (Fantasy)

"Joy is the serious business of Heaven." -- C. S. Lewis

Monday. The angel Umiel was trying to finish writing a Customer Research Report when her screen beeped. Again. It was an e-pistle from Ganiel, her supervisor: would she please update her monthly budget figures? Today? By 11:00?

Umiel looked at the clock in the corner of her Illuminated User Interface -- the big hand was on the X and the little hand was on the IV -- and sighed. She considered asking Ganiel if this budget thing were absolutely necessary, but she knew what the answer would be: all priorities are top priorities, it's your job to manage your own time, et cetera, et cetera, et blah blah blah. Ganiel would probably quote at her from The One Second Manager, or whatever management book she was proselytizing today.

She set the report aside and opened the icon for the budget. It took her ten minutes to find her department -- they'd "rationalized" the budget spreadsheet again -- and properly record her paltry expenditures for the month. Then, when she returned to her own report, she discovered she'd lost her train of thought.

The morning was not going well. She decided to take an ambrosia break.

Posted 10/04/2005 22:13 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, on top of the F&SF rejection the other day I got my first review of "The Ecology of Faerie", by Dave Truesdale in Tangent Online, and it could be summed up as "Eh." Usually I can get at least one quotable phrase out of any review, but this one... not so much. Sigh.

But! I did finish the first draft of "Titanium Mike Saves the Day." Okay, I'm not at all sure this one works -- in fact, I'm not certain it's really a story. But it's done, at about 5000 words, and I'll send it to my crit group after a quick editing pass (probably Tuesday, since we have symphony tickets tomorrow). Then on to the next. I really need to build up my inventory, which has fallen to just a few stories.

Writing is hard. But I persist.

Posted 10/02/2005 23:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Gordon Van Gelder didn't buy the rewrite of the Bigfoot story. No "alas" in the rejection, but he also included his assistant editor JJA's comments and they started with "Eh." Which if you ask me is worse than an Alas.

Oh well, it goes off to scifi.com tomorrow.

Posted 09/28/2005 20:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Took the train to work today, saving gas and getting a little time for writing. Added about 300 words to the space opera folk tale story and edited a bunch of the existing words. Also did some critiques.

And as for that reopened bug? Turned out the submitter wanted to talk to me because the problem was really subtle. It's a mental model problem -- the user has a consistent mental model of what the software is doing, but it doesn't match the software's behavior. It would be easy to say that the user is wrong, but others also have the same incorrect mental model, which means that the software isn't doing enough to educate the user about how the system actually works. I need to find a way to gently persuade the user to think about the problem in the right way. Not yet sure how to do this, but I'm accepting the reopened bug as an indication that something needs to be done.

Tomorrow: off to Foolscap!

Posted 09/22/2005 22:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

After a somewhat annoying day at work, when just before leaving I discovered that a UI bug I'd closed as "as designed" had just been reopened without any explanation as to why, I settled down for some writing. 750 new words on the space opera folklore story, and the second of four scenes is done. I don't know if it's really working as a story, but I'm happy with the amount of emotion I'm managing to pack into the plot part of each of those little scenes. I'm really relying the reader's knowledge of one of the Standard SF Universes to build up the situation in each with just a few words -- if they aren't already familiar with Niven and Heinlein I'll probably lose them. Well, I'll just finish the story and let my crit group tell me whether or not it works.

Still no word on the novel. I called my agent and asked him to nudge the editor for me. I fear that no news is bad news, but I strive to be patient and optimistic...

Posted 09/20/2005 23:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

About 675 words tonight on the space opera folklore story. That's most of the first real scene. Terribly old-fashioned, but the interleaved bits of future folklore will give it a postmodern twist. I'm sending it to Analog first, anyway.

I am concerned that the story's going to be too long... around 4000 words at this rate. I'd be happier if it were much shorter. Well, once it's done I can try to cut it.

Posted 09/15/2005 23:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Just a couple of minor bits that I should have posted earlier...

One is that we had a successful yard sale last Saturday. It did start raining at about 11:00, but I had bought some tarps at the last minute and we quickly got everything covered. By 12:00 it became apparent that the rain (never more than a light drizzle, but still more than you'd want on your books) wasn't going to let up, so we moved everything onto the porch. The amazing thing is that we sold enough between 9:00 and 11:00 that we could fit all the rest on the porch! By the time we were done, we'd gotten rid of between 2/3 and 3/4 of the stuff we'd started with (by volume) and taken in about $220 -- a lot better than I'd been anticipating, frankly. It was work, but fun. The best part was seeing people happy to walk away with our unwanted stuff -- a boon to both parties. Now we have about eight boxes of unsold stuff to donate to various charities.

The other is that on Tuesday I was the guest of honor at the SF book group that meets at Powell's in Beaverton. The book under discussion was Hartwell and Cramer's Year's Best Fantasy 5, including my story "Charlie the Purple Giraffe" among other fine stories. We talked about the craft and practice of writing as well as about the book itself, and I got to talk with the SF buyer, who invited me to contact him when and if I have a novel and want to do a signing.

Also, I see that I now have 181 people reading my LiveJournal. Goodness. Hello, people!

Posted 09/14/2005 22:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Sweet Kate made me sit down and write tonight. It's been some months since I did so with any regularity (basically, since I sent off the novel), but I have been picking away at a space opera folklore piece in odd hours here and there. I didn't get a lot of new words down but I think the piece is starting to take concrete shape. It's currently about 1500 words, all in the folklore part and none of the actual plot. The plot should come together around the folklore pretty easily, I think, though. It's going to cover over 100 years, five generations with about ten characters, in under 4000 words... maybe as little as 3000 if I can rein in my tendency to repeat myself.

Posted 09/12/2005 22:35 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction usually sends very terse rejections -- one or two sentences on a half-sheet of paper. But on my last submission I got a two-page letter, identifying the problems he had with the story and saying he would consider it again if I could come up with a way to address them.

I'm honored to receive so much attention. I know that few editors these days have the time and energy to help new writers with their craft the way John W. Campbell did back in the day. However, I know that GVG is trying to provide more feedback in general, so it's probably not just me. But it's still keen that he took the time.

Anyway, I did rewrite the story to address his concerns, and I'll put it in the mail tomorrow. The rewritten story is more aggressive, nastier, and more science-fictional. It's also not quite the story I had in mind when I started (the original major theme has gotten somewhat lost, although the plot, main character, and especially the climax are stronger), so if GVG rejects the rewrite (as he has in the past, alas) I'm not sure which version I'll send to the next market.

Whatever. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. Onward and upward.

Posted 09/01/2005 22:37 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Tuesday morning the convention ended as it had begun, with us running into Paul and Maureen at breakfast. We had a lovely time gossiping about Charlie Stross and others before heading out to obtain train reservations and change our Scottish money for English (nominally it's legal tender but it had been direly hinted that it would be less and less likely to be accepted as you head south). The first bank we tried wouldn't exchange money for non-customers, and recommended the post office. The post office wouldn't do it at all, and recommended a bank -- specifically an English rather than Scottish bank. We found one, but for no visible reason as soon as we got to the front of the queue all transactions suddenly became tremendously involved and we waited, and waited, and waited... meanwhile Kate went to sit down, because she felt a migraine coming on.

Eventually I did get the money exchanged and we went back to the hotel, where Kate lay down for a bit while I checked out. As warned by the convention daily zine, the hotel charged my card in US dollars, at an exchange rate north of $1.80, so I asked them to do it again in pounds. By the time I got back upstairs Kate had thrown up, which usually helps but did tend to slow her down as we lugged all our worldly goods to the station. I was getting pretty worried about making the train, but we did make it in time... and then Kate threw up again, and again a little while later. There was nothing I could do for her (she hates being fussed over when she's sick) so I just sat next to her and tried to read.

Kate slept most of the way through to Chester, by which time she felt somewhat better. We piled our worldly goods on our backs again and headed out toward our B&B, for which we discovered we had an address but not an exact location. The address was #10 Hoole Road, and we found #7, 9, and 11, but across the street was a park. Behind the park maybe? No, that was a different road. I asked at a pub and was told it was just a little way further along, and indeed it was, about two blocks later. Addresses here are just plain meaningless (and often not posted at all, anyway).

Our B&B was a large and tasteful house, painted inside all in bright orange and yellow. Once checked in, we went out and found the nearby shopping street, in search of something for Kate to eat (for she hadn't kept a thing down all day). We found a bakery that still had a few things left and got her a "fudge donut" (no chocolate to it that I could see, the gooey topping was more caramel colored and it wasn't filled) and me a "flake cake" (chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a piece of Cadbury Flake on top), which we devoured while exploring the rest of the street -- including butcher, fruit & veg shop, fishmonger, natural foods emporium, Chinese takeaway, delightful-looking old pub, Internet café, stereo shop, laundromat, and laundry. We considered the latter two options and decided to pay a bit more to have our laundry done for us tomorrow rather than hanging around the laundromat.

From there we headed into town, and by happenstance caught a free bus from the train station to the city walls. The town of Chester is a delightful melange of half-timbered, classical, and modern buildings, some dating back to the 1200's, with an intact city wall completely surrounding the old city center, a canal, and the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre. One of the town's most notable features is the "rows", a second level of sidewalks above the street-level shops, delightfully cool after a hot day dragging luggage hither and yon.

After familiarizing ourselves with the city we set out in search of dinner, but had poor luck finding anything, complicated by the fact that Kate desperately needed a bathroom. And once that was accomplished she determined that she really wasn't hungry -- she needed to lie down, now. Tried calling a cab, but was told it would be 20 or 30 minutes. So I asked around for a cab stand and was directed to the cab company office, where there was a queue waiting outside. Kate sat down in the office and I talked with one of the boiler room phone operators (probably the same one I'd just phoned), who took my name and promised a cab would be along shortly. We waited there for what seemed like not shortly, watching cabs arrive and pick people off the queue, and finally when a cab arrived and there was no one who'd been waiting longer than us I just bundled Kate into it. "If we ever need to call a cab again in this town we'll give your name," I told her, and got her back into the room, where she threw up again. Poor thing! But these migraines usually last only one day.

I pulled the blinds and left Kate to sleep while I slipped out to call Tom Brennan from a nearby pay phone. I left a message with his wife, and when I got back to the B&B and told the girl on duty to expect a call for me she told me she'd just gotten one and thought it was a wrong number. She let me use her phone to return the call, and I got Tom's wife again, who relayed the call to Tom at work, who called me back at the B&B, and this is the lunch date that Jack made.

Kate was still asleep, so I went out and had dinner at a nerarby place that I thought was a coffee house but turned out to be a pleasant very modern pub (well, the sign out front did brag about cappucinos, lattes, and mochas and say nothing about beer). I had a Thai beef salad which turned out to be a very nice grilled steak, sliced and served with a spicy dressing on top of "assorted leaves" (what we'd call "greens") and "sauteed potatoes" (what we'd call "French fries"). Good, though. I also got a bread roll to take home for Kate to gnaw on, which she was glad to have. And we went to sleep early, and that was Tuesday.

Wednesday morning Kate was feeling better. Breakfast at the B&B was a bit more complex than at our hotel in Glasgow, with a huge variety of cereals as well as the full cooked breakfast (this time with baked beans instead of the black pudding). After the first day we got selective and ordered only a subset of the breakfast -- our host seemed a bit taken aback but managed to cope.

After breakfast we lugged a couple of bags of dirty clothes to the laundry and gave them over to be professionally cleaned -- which consisted of them being dumped in a washer before we left the establishment (but we didn't have to hang around and wait). Then we walked down to the train station to catch one of the frequent trains to Liverpool. While waiting for the train we bought some Liverpool maps, an issue of Private Eye, and the Time Out guide to London for future reference.

The train itself was small and cute -- just two cars -- but unlike Portland's light rail it was a real actual train. I begin to see the attraction of trainspotting. With so many different kinds of trains, and so much concrete difference between the various types in terms of comfort, features, and noise, it would be easy to start caring about which type of train you were getting on. Add a dollop of obsessive-compulsion and/or Asperger's and you'd have a classic sad anorak trainspotting git.

On the train, when I finished Private Eye (like The Onion only classier and British) the fellow in the next seat offered me his Sun. The Sun is truly appalling -- like the Weekly World News except that it seems to take itself seriously. It also has a large picture of a topless woman on page 3. It was from the page 3 girl that I learned the space shuttle Discovery had landed safely. Swear to God.

We arrived at the Lime Street station (picked up some more maps) and wandered out into a rather gray day, full of bustle and traffic and modern buildings and the huge St. George's Hall (rather like the Parthenon only not nearly as ruined). We read a few of the tourist information signs, then wandered off in search of something interesting to do in the hour or so before our lunch date with Tom. One area that looked on the map like old and interesting streets turned out to be a place where the old and interesting streets had been torn down for a modern shopping center, but we also found the tourist information office (more maps!) and were interviewed about our experience in Liverpool so far by someone from the local ministry of culture.

From there we headed to the Cavern Quarter, AKA the Let's Cash In On the Beatles Quarter. The original Cavern Club was torn down, but has since been reconstructed brick-by-brick and is now surrounded by various tacky clubs and shops. But there was also some interesting Beatles-related public art, including a bizarre shrine showing the Virgin Mary (?) holding three of the four lads (portrayed as infants) and a life-size bronze of John leaning against a wall. We paused for a scone and something to drink before continuing on to St. John's Garden, in the shadow of St. George's Hall where we'd started. There we met Tom and his wife Sylvia (just as charming and shy as Tom himself -- they were high school sweethearts, aww) and went for lunch at the café in the Conservation Centre, a museum about the art of preservation and care of old and fragile objects.

After lunch Tom walked with us down to the waterfront, where he pointed out the amazing art deco ziggurat that is the offices and air shaft for a tunnel under the Mersey, and the three huge office buildings of the Port of Liverpool, Cunard Lines, and Royal Liver (pronounced with a long i) Insurance. These three beautiful buildings are known as the Three Graces and are significant to Liverpool's maritime heritage. Over nine million people and untold tons of goods passed through this port in its heyday. The Royal Liver building is still the headquarters of Royal Liver Insurance and is topped with two enormous sculptures of the mythical Liver Bird from which the city gets its name (the bird's name, in turn, is related to laver, a kind of seaweed).

We said goodbye to Tom and walked out on the docks. There we toured the portmaster's house, which is currently furnished as it was during WWII, complete with a working victory garden. Liverpool, being one of England's key ports, was bombed nearly as heavily as London. Then we visited the Maritime Museum, where we learned all about the great age of ocean liners, including the mystery of the Lusitania and, of course, the Titanic. One room was filled with artifacts related to these two famous disasters, including a deck chair from the Lusitania and the twenty-foot-long builder's model of the Titanic (later revised into the Britannic and finally the Olympic). Other exhibits included the emigrant experience, the slave trade, and the modern customs and excise service. Despite the museum's best efforts, they couldn't make customs and excise exciting, but the rest of it was fascinating. The exhibits on the slave trade made it plain that these people had cultures of their own -- they weren't just products.

As the museum closed we wandered off, past the memorial to the Titanic, in search of dinner. We wound up at a Portugese restaurant -- one cuisine we don't have at home -- before catching the cute little train back to Chester and our B&B.

Thursday was our day for touristing in Chester itself. We walked down to the train station and caught the free bus again; upon alighting we immediately found several charity shops, where we picked up some cheap CDs. After picking up a walking map at the tourist info office, we wandered upstairs to learn about the Roman amphitheatre across the street. Turns out it was not discovered until the 1920s, and is currently being actively excavated; the archaeologists were working right there in plain sight and we could have asked questions if we'd been of a mind to. The exhibit was fascinating -- a great mix of information about Roman amphitheatres in Britain (the practice of beast fighting as an entertainment was responsible for the near extinction of fierce beasts in Europe; over here, post holes from small booths are accompanied by chicken wing bones and beef ribs, indicating fast-food stands) with honest exposure of the messiness and open questions of real-world archaeology (many stones are missing here, probably taken away for other uses during the middle ages, but this wall was apparently untouched and we don't know why; elsewhere, the amphitheatre is disrupted by a medieval road, which is in turn interrupted by a 20th century garage foundation).

Following the walking map, we proceeded around the amphitheatre itself, down the riverfront, and up some stairs to a marvelous ruined church. I love these ruins, and thanks to Henry VIII England is full of them; I took gobs of pictures. Then we headed up onto the city walls, walking under Chester's famous clock and spending several happy hours in the various book and antique stores which are apparently only reachable from the pedestrian walkway on top of the wall. From the wall we had a nice view of the canal that skirts the city and into people's back gardens. Everything in these old towns is infill -- houses, shops, and services wedged into the spaces between other things, and not a right angle anywhere.

By now we were getting hungry and stupid, and set off in search of Chez Jules, a French restaurant Kate had read about in some guidebook. But, once again, the street numbers were irregularly assigned and rarely displayed, and we were just about to give up when we blundered into the place by chance. I'm really glad we persevered, because the food was delightful. From there we made our way to the local cathedral. I'm always astonished by the enormous churches one can find in small European towns, and I wonder what they were like in their heyday. Today Chester's cathedral offers a digital audio guide to its art (ranging from the 1500s to the 20th century, including some spectacular Victorian mosaics and a tiny "cobweb painting" done on tent caterpillar webbing), tombs (including the alcove behind the organ where at least five organists are memorialized), and the amusingly quirky carved figures in the "quire."

Not too far from the cathedral was the local market, a cavernous building filled with stalls selling fresh vegetables, CDs, clothing, jewelry, and everything in between. Nothing touristy here -- this was where the locals did their shopping. We had an interesting conversation with one of the locals about American turns of phrase -- she had trouble with the expression "to meet with" someone, feeling that the "with" was unnecessary. I thought about it a moment and tried to explain that, in American at least, "to meet" someone is to encounter them for the first time or briefly, while "to meet with" someone is to engage in a more protracted encounter, typically a business meeting. We also sampled, and purchased, some truly spectacular cheeses. Some of the local cheddars explode with flavor.

By then we were flagging a bit again, so we stumbled into Katie's Tea Room for a bit of a sit-down and an afternoon snack: pastries, and tea served in antique silver (which transmits the heat very well -- ouch!). The proprietor looked a lot more like an Ahmed than a Katie, but the tea and crumpets hit the spot and building was quite impressive -- dating back to the 1300s, with some of the original wattle-and-daub construction still visible in spots.

Afternoon tea gave us sufficient energy for a trip to the local Waterstone's, where we picked up many of the books we hadn't managed to find in the convention dealer's room, such as a paperback of The Iron Council by China Miéville (it was only one of this year's Hugo nominees, for pity's sake!). But the energy didn't last very long, so we dragged ourselves back to our room and fell over. Later we roused ourselves sufficiently to put together ham and cheese sandwiches from our market finds for dinner, but otherwise spent the rest of the evening watching local TV (including something that gave every impression of being CSI: Glasgow), listening to newly-acquired CDs, and reading newly-acquired books. Touristing is hard work, and sometimes you need a rest. Especially since the next morning we would be heading for London.

To be continued...

Posted 08/27/2005 23:26 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Kate and I rose bright and early Tuesday morning and met our friends Ariel and Phil, and their kids Jesse and Arthur, at the airport. Through careful planning and the use of about five years' worth of air miles, we'd managed to wangle business class tickets. This meant we got breakfast, (unlike our steerage-class compatriots who got no free food at all -- not even snacks -- nor pillows). Given choice of cheese omelet or corn flakes, I took the corn flakes... which came in a china bowl, with a little bowl of blueberries on the side, plus a banana, choice of juice, and freshly baked biscuits. And plastic cutlery. Five-hour layover in Chicago passed fairly quickly in conversation with various Shattans and reading Curse of Chalion. Once our gate was announced we found a total of about ten fans on the plane, including Aynjel Kaye, who had the seat behind me and promised to kick my seat through the entire flight. Aynjel would have been my Clarion classmate if I'd gone to Clarion instead of Clarion West in 2000. She'd probably be over six feet tall even without the silk top hat.

Our business-class seats for the flight to Glasgow were insanely roomy, not so much side-to-side as lengthwise. It was simply impossible for me to reach the seat pocket ahead while strapped in, and not even Aynjel could kick my seat back. The seats included adjustable leg rests, foot rests, and head rests and reclined almost all the way, as well as having a generous center console with little slide-out drink trays. As we were getting settled in the stewardess brought out individual DVD players, complete with noise-canceling headphones and a selection of disks. All free. Other entertainment options included the usual movie and audio programs, choice of real newspapers and magazines, and the books, computer, and iPod I'd brought with. (12v outlet available at each seat, too, though I hadn't known that and had no 12v adapter.) Not to mention the food service, which was really good, again served on real china with plastic cutlery. Kate: "Bugger Scotland, we're staying right here." But despite all these options, what I really wanted to do was sleep. I got a couple hours here and another hour there, but mostly I just read my book and listened to the iPod.

Arrived in Glasgow bleary but intact. Waltzed through passport control, baggage check, and customs. One by one the fans from this flight and another that arrived at about the same time (including Ellen Klages) gathered in the arrival lounge, all watching each other's bags while changing money, visiting the loo, and trying to figure out how to get to our respective hotels. There were too many of us for one cab and not enough going to the same place anyway. Eventually most of us wound up on the airport bus.

We dragged ourselves several blocks from the bus stop to find our room not ready yet. Leaving our bags with the hotel desk, we rendezvoused with Ellen Klages and Aynjel at the Central Station (using Aynjel herself as the rendezvous point -- "because 'gather around the dwarf' is never a good plan") and wandered off in search of lunch, but it was only 11am and every place was closed until noon (including a seafood place called the Mussel Inn that Kate really wanted to try). Finally wound up at The Auctioneer, which we went to because Ellen thought it actually was an auction house but turned out to be a pub, and open, and with quite good pub grub (lightest, flakiest crust I've ever seen on a steak pie).

After lunch we visited local historic landmark Hutcheson Hall and wandered zombie-like through the picturesque streets until admitting we really needed a nap and returned to our separate hotels. But, alas, our room was still not ready. "It'll be ready in ten minutes," we were told. Fell asleep in lobby while waiting an hour and a half in "just another ten minutes" increments. Finally made it to room -- clean, bright, smallish by American standards but perfectly acceptable, with a really interesting view down the Clyde toward the Armadillo -- and fell over until 5.

Having napped, we headed toward the Scottish Exposition & Convention Center (SECC) to register for the con and find some fans. It took a while to find the appropriate train to get there, the stairs to the "low-level" train being located between tracks 12 and 13 -- in other words, platform 12 1/2 -- but the train itself runs every 15 minutes and takes only about 10. The walk from the SECC station to the SECC itself, though, through the clouded perspex hamster tube, takes another 15 minutes. We met Amy Sisson and several others in the tube.

While walking to registration we met John and Lenore from Hoboken, and decided to go to dinner with them. Then, while registering (no line at all), we met Moshe and Lise, who knew John and Lenore, so we all went to dinner together. After more than the usual amount of kerfuffle about where to go and how to get there (bus? train? cab? walk?) we wound up taking the train to a place called Charcoal which turned out to have really excellent Indian food, great service, and fine conversation all round. After dinner we accompanied Moshe and Lise to Tesco in search of supplies for their party, but we faded out while shopping and decided to pass on the party itself. Asleep by 10, we didn't wake up until 7 the next morning. We later determined it was 33 hours from when we woke up until when we finally went to bed, and I for one didn't get more than a couple hours' nap during that time.

Thursday: At breakfast in our hotel (quite a nice buffet of cold and cooked items) we met Paul and Maureen Kincaid Speller (and it is a measure of how deeply LiveJournal has invaded my head that I said when I saw them "look, it's Peake and Brisingamen."). We ought to make plans to have a meal with each other, we all said... say, how about breakfast tomorrow? Then we headed off in search of the rumored £20 cell phone, but the best I could find is one for £30 (~$60) which was just a bit too much for two weeks. So we abandoned that idea and headed off to the Burrell Collection. Again, it took a bit to figure out which train to take and how to catch it, but we were definitely starting to get the hang of it. The Burrell Collection is smaller than we'd expected but definitely choice, including a wide variety of objects from ancient Egypt, China, and Greece as well as medieval and more recent paintings, sculptures, tapestries, armor, weapons, and embroidery.

We had lunch at the Burrell's café (I passed on the jacket potato with haggis) and took the train back to town, transferring to the train to the SECC. The ticket booth was closed but we were told that we could pay on the train. However, no one ever appeared to take our money. This was the first of several times when we managed to get to the SECC without paying anything. Said hi to Dave Langford, Catherine Crockett, Charlie Allery, and several others on our way to the fan lounge to hang out for a little bit. Then I went off to Ellen Klages' reading. Jay Lake was scheduled to read between me and Ellen, but he wasn't here and no one else had been scheduled in his slot so we split the time between us. I read half of "Nucleon" in that half-slot, followed by the entire prologue and chapter A of Remembrance Day in the full half-hour slot that followed (it was a tight squeeze). There was a pretty good crowd of about a dozen people, some of whom I didn't even know, and they seemed to like it.

After my reading, went down to the Moat House bar for the LiveJournal get-together Jay had planned, but apart from Lynne Ann no one else appeared. We talked with her, and then Doug Faunt, until Davey and Chip arrived. Davey, Chip, Doug, and we decided quite quickly on a Russian place that Kate had heard good things about, and we all piled into a taxi. Service was friendly but slow, food was generally good though I wasn't too impressed with my entrée.

Dinner ended around 9 (still light, though) and once again we went to Tesco, this time for breakfast stuff for Doug. Then we hiked over to the Hilton, which proved to be a long long walk and the hotel almost completely inaccessible by pedestrians. But we did eventually find it, and milled about the various hot and crowded parties for a while until realizing it was time to fall over.

Friday was a very long day. After breakfast we took the train to the SECC and I hung around in the fan room for a while until Moshe showed up. We talked for about 45 minutes about my novel, and Moshe opined that it could be improved by making the aliens more alien. I said I knew this, but had done the best I could, and could use some more concrete advice. He also said that he expected to be able to talk with Tom and get an offer within 10 days after getting home (but we've heard this before) and that the publication date would most likely be in the winter (first) quarter of 2007. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it allows taking 18-24 months to write the second novel but have them come out within a year of each other to build momentum.

I had written up two novel ideas (out of five in my ideas file) as one-paragraph pitches and showed them both to him on paper. He liked the one I call Dark better, which is good because I like it better too. We talked about the main character and the environment and the history of the place -- in some cases I already had answers, in others I made them up on the spot, and in others I had to admit I didn't know. Much research will be required.

Kate showed up at 1:00 but Moshe and I kept talking for another 15-30 minutes, so Kate and I didn't make it through the hamster tube to Argyle Street in search of lunch until nearly 2. Unfortunately, what we found there was mostly skanky pubs, except for one nice-looking coffee shop with sandwiches. But while I, in my hunger-befuddled way, was trying to figure out whether we were supposed to order and then sit or sit and then order, another couple came in and sat down... at the last available table. We were too hungry to wait until another table opened up so we went back to our second choice, an Italian place that proved to be pretty good. It was still rather stressful. Must remember to eat a morning snack.

After lunch Kate went to Jane Yolen's GoH speech and I squeezed into a half-hour talk by Joshua Bilmes on the agent-client relationship (I asked what is usually in the agent-client contract, and he said it was usually the percentage (15% for domestic sales, 20% for foreign) and the terms for starting and stopping the contract, so I think I'm okay with the handshake deal I have with Jack), followed by... um, not sure what, probably miscellaneous chats in the concourse and dealers' room, until my kaffeeklatsch. To my surprise, three people had signed up and four showed up: Cally Perry (who friended me on LiveJournal because of our shared interests), a friend of hers, someone who liked the Eagle story, and someone who'd never heard of me until she came to my reading because the panel next door was full. Also a fifth person who left (very apologetic) after the first five minutes when a slot opened up for George R.R. Martin at the next table. Can't say I blamed him. An hour and a half for my kaffeeklatsch seemed kind of long but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

From there I went straight to my Religion in SF Television panel, which consisted of an atheist, a transsexual pagan, and me. The room was pretty full and the discussion lively and interesting; the pagan and I wanted to talk about Battlestar Galactica but the discussion kept returning to Babylon 5, with occasional jaunts into Buffy and Angel. Interestingly, although Angel has The Powers That Be, there is no significant supernatural force for good in Buffy and in neither case -- nor in most other genre shows -- do the main characters have any religious faith at all. But Babylon 5 is clearly the show that has done the most with religion. After the panel I went for dinner with the pagan and her soon-to-be-husband at the bistro in the convention center, where the food was surprisingly good although they did put ice in the cider (I gather it's a Glasgow thing) and brought me the wrong entrée.

I ran from dinner to the Challenges for New Writers panel, a lively discussion in a large and fairly full hall. It started off with some discussion of how new writers should beware of people who know only a little giving them wrong advice, and I had a sudden attack of wondering whether I might be doing the same. But there were plenty of people there who could have contradicted me if I said anything wrong. Mostly it was about self-publicity, managing blogs and websites, managing your time, and getting feedback... pretty basic stuff. Charlie Allery and Anna Feruglio dal Dan were among those in the audience. After the panel I talked with fellow panelist Jay Caselberg for a while before catching a cab to the Aeon Award ceremony. I was joined in the cab by the next fellow in line, who was also going to the Hilton. He recognized my name badge and asked if I was the author of "Tale of the Golden Eagle," which was great egoboo. We talked for the whole ride about me.

I came into the crowded and very hot Aeon Award room about 8:30, which was supposed to be halfway through the previous presentation on the Albedo One anthology but the presentation actually got going a while after I got there. I sat and talked with Lynne Ann and with Ralan Conley before and after that presentation. Then came the actual Aeon Award presentation. To make a long story short, I didn't win, but everyone involved made a point of telling me afterward just how very close the judging was... which didn't help. Kate was late to the ceremony, which also didn't help. But it didn't hit nearly as hard as losing the Campbell.

After thanking the judges and all, we went off in search of the SFWA suite, because I'd neglected to note in my Palm which suite it was in. After wandering the Hilton for a while we finally found a pro (Gay Haldeman, I think) who told us it was in the Moat House. So we caught a cab there, and joined the Asimov's party in progress. We spent the rest of the evening there and in the fan room, before heading home. But there were no cabs at the hotel front door, and we stood and waited with David Moles, Jed Hartman, John Scalzi and Gordon Van Gelder as well as Lynne Ann and Roelof.

It was a great conversation, but eventually we got tired of waiting and Roelof went in and had the hotel desk call for a cab, which of course made two other cabs instantly appear. But one of them apparently poached the other's fare, which caused the first cab to pull out and prevent the second one from leaving. The two cabbies yelled back and forth for a long while before the passengers changed to the first cab and they both pulled away. Finally the cab we'd called showed up and took Lynne Ann, Roelof, and us back to our hotels.

Saturday I had only one scheduled panel and dedicated most of the day to just attending the convention. We arrived just a bit too late for Jo Walton's reading, so the first thing I went to was a panel on "Complex Families and Queer Neighbors" with Ellen Klages, Geoff Ryman, Andy Trembley, and token straight person Lynn Gold. Jack Cohen was in the audience and put in a few choice bits from his experience counseling infertile couples (he is an embryologist), which includes some same-sex couples. "Some of them like to pet anything that purrs, if you get what I mean." Several comments from both panelists and audience members indicated that people assume that gay marriage is opposed to gay polyamory, which is certainly not the case in my experience.

I talked with Geoff Ryman (one of my Clarion instructors) for a while after the panel, then showed up late for "Hobbits, Orcs, and Homo Floriensis" with Jack Cohen and others (I sat way in the back and couldn't see the panelists), then had lunch in the fan room with Frank Wu. Kate joined us part way through. Then I ran off to "Military Vs. Civil Authority in Battlestar Galactica," where I got to talk about all the Cylon religion stuff I'd wanted to discuss at the religion panel, plus a lot of stuff about who's got what agenda and how much we don't know (it was an hour and a half). Great panel. (Later in the con I talked with a couple from the audience about Galactica and writing and lots of other things. People came up to me all weekend to say they liked some panel or other I'd been on.) We had to promise not to say anything about the first few episodes of Season Two, which haven't aired here yet. Several times I had to clap my hands over my mouth.

I think that after that must have been when I saw the art show. The Jim Burns stuff was keen but otherwise not much really stands out. I probably wandered the dealers' room for a while too. Then I tried to go to a panel about homoeroticism in fantasy, but it was too crowded so I went next door to Brenda Cooper's reading. She was glad to have me... there were only about four people in the audience.

I met Kate, Charlie Allery, and Tom Brennan (a member of my Writers of the Future cohort who lives in Liverpool) in the fan room, and we took a cab to the Mussel Inn for dinner but it was all booked up (many tables empty, but all reserved for 7:00 -- this being 6:15). We walked from there to an Indian restaurant called Bombay Blues, which sounded good in the convention's restaurant guide, but proved to have very strange service. First the waiter insisted we wanted the buffet, but we wanted menus. Then, when Kate ordered an Indian drink off the card in the middle of the table, he told her she didn't want that. Then, after ordering (including naan), we said we wanted rice. "How many?" "Well, how big are they?" "About so." "Two, then." "Oh, you'll want four." "All right, four then." Tom: "I'll have that yellow rice... what's it called?" David: "Pullao." Waiter: "Right, that's two plain rice and one fried." David: "No, three white and one fried." Repeat until thoroughly confused. The food was reasonably good, though. After dinner I wound up sitting with Charlie and Tom in the fan lounge and basically never budged from that spot for the rest of the evening. Charlie Stross sat down next to me a while later, complaining of his rigorous day of signings, readings, interviews, and talks with agents and editors, and I realized how I must sound when talking with writers who haven't sold as much as I have. Charlie and I wound up reminiscing (or was that just bitching) about nasty man pages we'd written. Kate and I wound up splitting a cab back to our hotel with Andy Duncan, whom I did not recognize until he spoke, and his wife.

Sunday we slept in, and by the time we got up the selection at breakfast was very limited. But it was quiet at breakfast, unlike most other mornings when we had to compete with a busload of French or Italian or Spanish tourists all of whom were trying to eat and get to their bus. I realized I'd have to hurry to make my 11:00 panel on Lost so I took off without Kate. I arrived a few minutes early and was surprised to be the only one sitting at the front of the room until somewhat after 11. But then Priscilla Olsen arrived, along with the rest of the panelists, and berated me for not checking in at the green room.

The panel, which included Joe Haldeman on the panel and Greg Bear in the audience, was mostly concerned with speculations about the big secrets of the island and whether the explanation was fantastic or realistic. Joe said that The Numbers (Hurley's lottery-winning numbers, which crop up in several places) made it fantasy rather than SF. Priscilla kept coming up with big theories (e.g. "They all died in the plane crash and everything's taking place in Locke's mind as he dies") which would be so, so disappointing if they turned out to be true. A series this complex deserves a complex explanation (or, better, a number of interlocking explanations). But I said I thought the ending could not fail to disappoint -- look at X-Files and the Riverworld books -- even Babylon 5, which had about as good a conclusion as you could hope for, was somewhat disappointing. Priscilla also kept saying that there were two different monsters, but I don't understand where that came from.

After that panel that I hit the dealer's room, and decided to actually buy something. I picked up GoH Christopher Priest's latest, The Separation, which had been getting a lot of attention at the con (Paul Kincaid did an academic paper on it), and Iain M. Banks's latest, The Algebraist (which, unfortunately, Giulia de Cesare said she couldn't finish). Banks himself was going to be signing in the dealer's room in 15 minutes after I bought it -- his only appearance at the convention -- but the dealer I bought it from said he was not at the con because he was going through a very difficult patch and needed his privacy just now, and besides the book was already signed. So I went all the way to Scotland and didn't see Iain Banks, alas. I also talked with Jo Walton at Elise's table and wound up writing Elise a check in US dollars for cash in pounds, a favor for both of us.

Lunch was a chicken, cheese and pineapple panini which was mostly mayonnaise, alas. Then I decided to invest an hour in watching an episode of the new Dr. Who. The large auditorium was mostly full, and most of them, when asked, raised a hand to indicate they'd seen the episode ("Dalek") before, so I had high hopes. I must confess that when the theme music came on -- I hadn't heard it for ten years or more -- I got a little lump in my throat. But though the episode did have its strong points, including complex characterization for the Dalek (hmm, similar to the revamped Cylons on Galactica) and CGI effects much better than the crap effects of yesteryear (though the biological creature inside the Dalek shell was a rubber monster that would have been right at home in the Tom Baker years), I found aspects of the writing weak. Why, oh why, do the human soldiers continue to pour bullets at the Dalek when it's been plainly demonstrated they have no effect at all, while the Dalek calmly picks them off one by one with its death ray? And how come this Dalek can levitate (neatly puncturing the old "all we have to do is run up a set of stairs" gambit) when this was never the case before? And this Dalek was not a new model -- it fell through time from the climactic battle of the Time War, in which the Time Lords and the Daleks wiped each other out forever (leaving the Doctor and this Dalek as the last of their respective species). The episode was followed by a half-hour Q&A with the writer, and I hung around and talked with him in the hall after that (along with a half-dozen other sad anoraks). Some of the most egregious problems were the result of the producers meddling with the script late in the game, but it was still a bit disappointing all in all.

After that I attended the last half-hour of a panel about script writing, then rendezvoused with Kate, Lynne Ann, and Roelof for an early dinner before the Hugos. Lynne Ann called the Mussel Inn -- amazing to hear her slip into Irish cadences and vocabulary ("brilliant!") while talking with the Scottish proprietor -- and we finally did make it there for a delightful dinner and conversation, including Banoffie Pie. And then the Hugos, with Kim Newman and Paul McAuley MC'ing from an alternate universe in which the award is named after Victor Hugo and the world is dominated by France. The Hugos were largely won by hometown favorites -- including Ansible beating Locus for Best Semiprozine, a first -- and I was generally pleased with the results (yay Battlestar Galactica!) even though I thought Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell would have been better if it had been cut down to about three-quarters of its current length. The Hugos were over amazingly quickly and we adjourned to the fan room, followed by the SFWA suite (which was a bit underpopulated, but we had a nice time talking with party host Jane Jewell).

Monday I hit the ground running and made it to the green room well in advance of my 11:00 "Future of Malware" panel, because I was moderator. The panelists were well chosen -- a tech support author from Sophos, a guy who left a career in IT to go to law school and become an IT lawyer, and a network administrator. Mostly we talked about the present of malware, but there was some discussion of the future.

I met Catherine Crockett for lunch, and we wound up eating sandwiches in her room while watching Colin sort fanzines in the nude (yee ha). Then it was time for the Fan Room Closing Ceremony, part of which consisted of me providing narration while someone called Ang performed her now-traditional (this being the third time she'd done it) recap of the entire convention in interpretive dance. I had no idea going in what I was going to do, but everyone said it went well.

We skipped the convention's official closing ceremonies in favor of taking a train to the Pollok House museum. But the train from Central Station to Pollokshaws West (not to be confused with Pollokshaws East or Pollokshields West) didn't leave for twenty minutes, and then was delayed and finally canceled before leaving the station. There was another train in half an hour, but it had gotten so late we would have had less than half an hour at the museum, so we bagged it and went back to the room for a nap. Then we returned to the Moat House to meet Steve and Giulia and Marci Malinowycz for dinner, as well as Alyson Abramowitz who tagged along. It was a bit of a hassle getting the six of us to the restaurant, since cabs are limited to five, and the service at Fratelli Sarti was incredibly slow, but the food was marvelous. Back to the Moat House for the dead dog party, amazingly crowded and noisy but full of some of our favorite people (including some we hadn't seen all con, such as GoH Christopher Priest and newly-engaged Janice Gelb with her Australian fiancé) making it difficult to tear ourselves away. But tear we did, sharing a cab with Lynne Ann and Roelof, because we had a train to catch in the morning.

To be continued...

Posted 08/23/2005 23:48 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, we're back from the Worldcon and Chester, Liverpool, and London afterwards. Had a great time. Proper trip report is forthcoming. We gave out a new issue of Bento at the con, and it will be in the mail soon to those who weren't there.

I did not win the Aeon Award, though everyone involved made sure to tell me just how close the competition was between my story and the winner. Oh well. At least the story will be published in Albedo One, some time before the end of this year.

Upon my return I found a surprise in my mailbox: author copies of the October 2005 Realms of Fantasy, including my story "The Ecology of Faerie" with an excellent illustration by artist Andrea Wicklund. I hadn't known when this story was going to be published. I also surprised to find, upon reading the printed story, that it actually gave me chills. It was written back in 2002, spent a couple of years at markets with very long response times, and I never got galleys for it, so I hadn't read it in years. I'm very pleased with it.

I also got a couple of rejections, and news that another story had gotten lost in the slush pile and was only now, five months later, being sent to the editor (an editor reknowned for taking a long time to decide). Oh well. One of the rejected stories has already gone back in the mail. The other... it's been to all of the pro markets I can think of that might be appropriate for it, and it's been a near-miss at just about all of them. I feel strongly about this story and want it to succeed. I may take a hard look at the editors' comments, rewrite it (possibly with a different main character), and send it out again to the same markets.

I really should write a new story or two too, and revise some of the ones that have never been submitted.

One other bit of news is that I have decided to attend World Fantasy Con rather than OryCon this year. It was a hard, hard choice (I'm really going to miss a lot of the OryCon people, including Kate) but by then I expect that I will have either a sold novel to publicize or a rejected novel to resubmit, and the people I should talk to in either case will all be there (including my agent).

Oh, and my infected toe cleared up within the first couple of days of the trip. Thanks to all who expressed their concern (and raspberries to those who suggested amputation).

Posted 08/20/2005 16:35 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Two days until we leave for Scotland. I just got word that the Aeon Award ceremony will be in the Dalmore Room of the Hilton Hotel at 9pm on Friday the 5th. Hope to see some of you there. I'm started to get nervous/excited about the award. I believe I have a good shot at it, but there are five other shortlisted stories that are equally worthy.

Another thing that has me nervous, though not at all excited, is that I have an infected toe... again. I've had this problem two or three times before (same toe each time). The cause might be a bacterium or it might be a fungus, but whatever the reason it's red and swollen and itchy and painful and it keeps me from sleeping and walking properly -- not what I want going into either the Worldcon or touristing around the UK. I'm taking prescription drugs for it, but I'm not yet convinced it's getting better.

I'm not going to let this toe stop me from going to the Worldcon, but it's almost certainly going to slow me down. I hope it gets better soon :-(

Posted 07/31/2005 10:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

• Kate and I just sent a new issue of our fanzine Bento off to the printer. We'll have copies at the Worldcon, and mailed copies will be sent out shortly after we return. Promise!

• I just got another rejection on my story "Interview with the Photographer." It's a 6100-word far-future SF tale that involves the construction of a Dyson sphere and the destruction of several planets. It's now bounced from Cosmic Tales from the Far Future, Analog, Interzone , Asimov's, F&SF, F&SF again after a rewrite, SciFi.com, Strange Horizons, Oceans of the Mind, and Aeon, and I'm at a loss where to send it next. I really like this one, it's gotten very encouraging rejections, and think it deserves publication. But where?

• I just sent off another of my irregular "David's Writing News" emails. If you don't get one and would like one (or, for that matter, if you got one and don't want any more), drop me a note.

• I hate my hair. I'm growing out the sides, and they are now long enough to fly out like wings but not yet long enough that I can pull them into the ponytail. This situation is going to get worse for another couple of months before it gets better, I think.

Posted 07/24/2005 17:20 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

The postman just dropped through the door a fat package containing a copy of the July/August 2005 issue of Asimov Ciencia Ficción, containing the Spanish translation of "Tk'Tk'Tk" by one David E. Levine. My first Spanish translation, and my first translation to appear on paper ("Tale of the Golden Eagle" was in an Israeli webzine in Hebrew). It's got a cool illo and my name (almost) on the cover.

Posted 07/23/2005 13:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Okay, here's where I'll be when at the Worldcon. I would really really really appreciate it if you would show up at my reading on Thursday at 5pm. I can promise you a good show.

Thursday 5:00pm - Reading (0.5 hrs)

Friday 3:30pm - Kaffeeklatsch (1.5 hrs)

Friday 5:00pm - A Matter of Faith: How SF Television Treats Religion

The panel discusses how religion and spirituality is treated in science fiction television. Has it evolved since the original Star Trek?

Friday 7:00pm - Challenges For New Writers

Interruptions, interruptions, interruptions -- how can new writers stay focussed? Are websites, blogs, and newsgroups helping or hindering new writers? What about writers workshops? When do you know you're established and no longer new?

Saturday 2:00pm - Military vs. Civil Authority: Do You Trust Adama or Roslyn? (1.5 hrs)

The conflict between military and civilian authority can be seen in the world around us, and sometimes it is portrayed in SF. The panel examines this conflict, a key element in the new Battlestar Galactica.

Sunday 11:00am - Is Lost SF or Paranoid Realism?

(Warning: spoilers) Is Lost speculative or just a paranoid delusion? Is it truth or fantasy? What about Hurley, Locke, Walt and Claire?

Monday 11:00am - The Future of Malware

Viruses continue to proliferate and most email traffic is spam. Where are we going -- and is it anywhere other than down? Are phishing and similar scams mind-hacks?

Monday 2:00pm - Fan Room Closing Ceremony

We summarise the entire convention for you, using the medium of interpretive dance. And we give out the Fan Room awards!

Posted 07/19/2005 22:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Just back from a relaxing writing weekend at the Colonyhouse on the Oregon coast, with Jay Lake, Aurora Lemieux, Ken and Jen Scholes, Brian Wade, Amanda Clark, and my dear Kate. Fine weather and good companionship all weekend.

On Saturday afternoon I awoke from a nap to the roar of the waves and the crackle of the fire -- no, wait, that's the clatter of laptop keys...

This was the first opportunity I have had to spend much time with Ken, and he's a nice guy and a heck of a guitarist. He was working on a story that he originally started for Bones of the World, which coincidentally was where Jay and I both made our first sales back in 2001. But I had Ken beat in the "old story" department, because I was revising a story I originally wrote at Clarion (2000) and never got around to submitting. Finished it, too, and put it in the mail tonight. (It's the Bigfoot story, for those who have read it, and it's off to F&SF.) I also started another story, which is going to be short and funny but structurally complex, with three to five intertwined scenes spread across a century of time.

But it wasn't a very intensive writing weekend. A lot of the time was spent sitting around talking, taking walks on the beach in twos and threes (for some reason there was an enormous number of dead crabs on the beach, with their legs and bodies washed up here and their upper shells washed up over there), and eating way too much. Jay did all the cooking, for which much thanks, and provided us all with about ten billion percent of our recommended daily allowance of lipids. Yum. We tried to get up a game of 1000 Blank White Cards but it didn't come together.

Note to self for next time: remember to pack long-sleeve shirts, pillow, towel, sleeping bag, long cord for iBook power adapter, hat, picnic cooler.

Saturday night Ken brought out his guitar and gave us his interpretations of some favorite songs, a real treat. One of the most... interesting... of these was his impersonation of Queen Elizabeth II and Dylan doing U2. It actually sounded a bit more like Ken Scholes doing ((Julia Child doing the Queen) and (Cartman doing Dylan)) doing U2. Then he started to do "Puff the Magic Dragon," but Jen asked him not to because the ending always makes her cry. She asked him instead to sing "American Pie," and promised not to sing the wrong words. This led to the following exchange:

Ken: A long long time ago...
Jen: ...in a galaxy far away...
Ken: PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON...

Okay, maybe you had to be there, but I about fell off my chair laughing.

And Amanda will never live down the sheath-cleaning jokes.

When I got home from the beach, I learned I can now announce that my story "I Hold My Father's Paws" has been shortlisted for the Aeon Award. The winner of the award receives 1000 Euros, and all six shortlisted stories will appear in the Irish magazine Albedo One. The winner will be announced at the Worldcon in Glasgow. I'll be there!

Posted 07/17/2005 22:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I am now represented by Jack Byrne of the Sternig & Byrne Literary Agency.

Thanks to Jo Walton and Jennifer Jackson for recommending him. (Waves to Sarah Monette.)

Posted 07/11/2005 22:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I'm in Santa Clara for the annual gay square dance convention. On the way here I had to have part of my baggage hand-searched because the X-ray showed... an allen wrench. But when it turned out to be the little key to reset the combination on a combination lock, they let me keep it. "So," says Kate, "it would have been a problem if it were hexagonal, but it's okay because it's round?"

Do you feel safer?

The convention doesn't start until tomorrow, so today we went to the Winchester Mystery House (or, as I always call it, the Winchester History Mouse). I hadn't expected it to be so intimately surrounded by the same boring malls and office parks that make up the rest of Santa Clara (plus the cool triple-dome movie theatre next door). I was also surprised at the mix of completed, under-construction, and fallen down in disrepair... many perfectly complete rooms adjoined hallways with bare lath and no plaster, and vice versa, while one entire group of 30 rooms was boarded up and never repaired after the 1906 earthquake. A natural consequence, I should have realized, of the building's history of continuous renovation. Another surprise was that Sarah Winchester left no journal or other indication of why she built and built as she did, so the well-known statement that it was to appease, or distract, the ghosts of those slain by the Winchester rifle is only a theory. Maybe it was just a hobby (some people build model trains, some tie flies... Sarah Winchester had a lot of money).

In writing news, Year's Best Fantasy #5, edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer and including my story "Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely," is now available at your local independent bookstore, Powell's, amazon.com, and bn.com. Enjoy!

Posted 06/30/2005 22:06 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

It appears that my story "Tk'tk'tk" from the March issue of Asimov's has been translated into Spanish (in issue 19 of Asimov Ciencia Ficcion) and reviewed in Finnish. The best translation I've been able to come up with for the Finnish review is as follows:

Myyntihenkilö is vieraalla planetary shop tietokonejärjestelmää , only kielimuurin for ploy no really affair. And eventually husband waste omaisuuttaan väärinymmärrysten for and starvation began became , until husband eventually discover locally vegetarian restaurant , whereof may edible grub. Glorious good tale kielimuurista kultturien sometimes. Loppuratkaisu oli anew the idealist nössö.

That's definitely my story, and it sounds like they liked it... I think.

I also got two short story rejections on Friday, and finished the proposal for novel #2. I'll be stuffing things in envelopes tomorrow.

Posted 06/25/2005 23:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

As faithful readers will no doubt recall, I picked up an iPod along with my new iBook. Well, it sat in the box for a while, but I got it up and running a couple of weeks ago... a nice UI, to be sure, but really not much different than a portable CD player. But I plugged away, loading up five or six CDs per evening, until I now have about two days of music on there (only about 1/8th of its capacity), and this evening I hooked up the little thingie so it can play through the nearest radio...

...and now I get it. It's Radio My Favorite Songs All The Time, and every day's a no-repeat day with no commercials.

A guy could get used to this.

On the writing front... the synopsis for Gaia's Blood is up to about 3500 words and the plot is actually moving now... maybe too fast. I'll probably have to rejigger it to smoosh the exposition around before I send it anywhere.

Posted 06/20/2005 21:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Spent the evening working on the outline for my second novel, working title Gaia's Blood. 2000 words of outline so far and I'm still in the opening chapters; I need to make things happen faster. Still no definite word from the editor on the first novel, but I've already been rejected by two agents so far. Bleah.

I've been working very hard for the past few days at work, productive and useful stuff but not leaving a lot of energy for anything else. Also, in case I haven't mentioned it, I've moved from my old cube to a new "bullpen" with two other people, both UI designers. I was a little worried about lack of privacy, but the space is large enough that it hasn't been an issue so far, and it's nice to have other people to bounce ideas off of. We've equipped the area with furniture from ScanDesign, lots of design magazines, and fun stuff like a giant inflatable T.Rex.

We also have a lot of windows, which is great but I hope it will not be a problem when it starts to get sunny. Not that we've had any sun lately -- it was cool, gray, and drippy today, as it has been most days for weeks. Some of my East Coast and Midwest friends are complaining about the heat, but at the moment I wouldn't mind seeing some of that. I wore my leather jacket and hat to work again today. In June. Feh.

Posted 06/16/2005 23:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Anthology Gateways, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and including my story "Circle of Compassion," is now available from your local independent bookstore, Powell's, amazon.com, and bn.com. If you want to know more about the story, I've put up a page about it on my web page.

Posted 06/12/2005 09:14 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Last night I saw Howl's Moving Castle. Today I have the song "I Should Be Allowed To Think" by They Might Be Giants going through my head. This tells you something about how my brain works. (Bonus points if you can trace the references.)

I recommend this movie. It was lush, exciting, and emotional, with warm and believable characters and gorgeous, gorgeous animation. I haven't read the source book, but we went with a friend who is a huge Diana Wynne Jones fan, and it sounds like Miyazaki changed it almost completely (for example, the book has none of the movie's steam-powered automobiles or flying machines, and the scarecrow in the movie is friendly and helpful instead of being terrifying as in the book).

But if you like Miyazaki you'll love this movie. It's even more visually sophisticated than Princess Mononoke, but there's much less ooze and violence, and the plot makes more sense. Mind you, the plot is still rather tenuous and indistinct, at times incomprehensible, but that's Miyazaki for you.

I'd like to see it again with subtitles. Most of the voices in this dub are fine (I particularly liked Billy Crystal as the fire demon, others disagreed) but I didn't care for the voice of Howl and I bet the original Japanese voice suited the character-as-drawn better.

Posted 06/11/2005 09:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, we're back home from Wiscon. Ate too much, slept too little, exercised not at all. Had a great time.

For me this Wiscon was not so much a feminist convention as a writers' convention. I spent most of the con hanging out with writers, and the program items I attended were almost all on the business and/or craft of writing, from the writers' workshop bright and early Friday morning to the "writers in mid-career" discussion group at the dead tail end of Monday afternoon.

Some people asked me what I was doing in the workshop, and I replied that I was there for the same reason they were -- to learn. Mostly one learns from the critiquing process (it's easier to spot flaws in one's own work after seeing them in others') but in this case there was a pretty strong consensus that the antagonist's conversion at the climax was insufficiently motivated. Now I have to figure out why he does what he does. Also, no one believed that an impoverished loner living in a shack in the woods could possibly have that many guns. Unfortunately the shack, and the guns, are drawn from life. But just because something is true doesn't make it plausible, so that little darling must die.

The mid-career writers' discussion was even more valuable. Pat Murphy, who convened it, warned me that I might not be quite "mid-career" enough for this (she is considering defining "mid-career" as "has had at least one novel remaindered") but I attended anyway and found it a validation of both my fears and my hopes. It's nice to be able to hang out with other people who know that success can sometimes be as stressful as waiting to succeed.

In between I spent time with many wonderful people, including Elizabeth Bear, Kristine Smith, Leah Cutter, Charlie Allery, Jed Hartman, Maureen McHugh, and many many more. It's a hell of a fine crowd for a convention of less than a thousand people (I keep thinking it's much bigger than that) and every time I turned around there was someone else I wanted to talk to. Exchanged business cards with a couple of agents and an editor, too.

My reading on Friday night went reasonably well -- we had about a half-dozen people and they seemed impressed with the novel's new opening. The other program items I was on also went well. I was concerned that I might not have enough expertise to hold my own on the panel about David Reimers, subject of the book As Nature Made Him, given that two of the other panelists were transgendered and the remaining one was the author of Why Men Hate Sex, but I did find some things to say and several people told me after the panel that what I'd said had been sensitive and well-stated. I guess I know more about the transgender and intersex communities than most people, even at Wiscon. The other two panels, on business in SF and gender modification in SF, turned out to be more about corporations and gender (respectively) in the real world but they were still lively and interesting discussions.

After the first hour or so of the Tiptree auction Kate and I got up to go to the Tor party before it got too crowded. But we'd made two mistakes: 1) sitting in the front row, and 2) being known to the auctioneer. Ellen spotted us walking out and insisted we sit back down. So we borrowed a Michael Swanwick mask from Eileen Gunn and tried to sneak out behind it. That didn't work too well -- Ellen grabbed me and hauled me up on the stage where she could keep an eye on me, and Kate took advantage of the fracas to slip away. I looked so pathetic that they passed the hat to free me, and wound up collecting about $110 (plus another $80 from those who wanted to keep me there). Next year I'll try to be more inconspicuous.

Many fine meals were eaten -- Japanese, French, Indian, Nepali, Himalayan (those might be the same cuisine, but they were two different restaurants) as well as a couple of traditional American meals and fresh baked goods from the farmers' market. Many were among the best meals I've had this year; I've never had a really bad meal in Madison. No cheese curds this time, though, nor the traditional stop at the noodle place.

What else? The crowd on Sunday night was all turned out in film noir finery, with many a trench coat and slinky dress, and someone took a picture of me with the Maltese Falcon. Later that night I wound up in a hallway party with Barth Anderson and some nice people from Pittsburgh and Indiana whom I'd never met before. I missed the Campbell nominees' cream-pie duel but not the aftermath. I discussed Los Alamos with Ellen Klages and got cold feet about that novel idea (she said that if I did less than two years of research I'd be in over my head). After that conversation I was worried that I had no other novel ideas on the back burner, but on Tuesday morning in the shower I had a key insight on another idea -- a short story idea originally, but I found a way to make it novel-sized -- and now I'm really excited about that one. It's a little bit Thomas Covenant, a little bit Connecticut Yankee, and a little bit Narnia, but like Remembrance Day it uses the reader's expectations about this type of story against them. I love playing with the reader's head.

All in all it was a fine, fine convention and I'm really looking forward to next year's, which being the 30th Wiscon promises to be extra-special. But there was a bit of a weather delay in Denver coming home, so we got home late and I'm running on about five hours' sleep. So, to bed.

Posted 05/31/2005 22:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Not much to report, really. I've seen Revenge of the Sith twice -- spectacular special effects, but it lacks heart, and wow can Hayden Christensen not act. Even when he's Darth Vader, and James Earl Jones is providing his voice, his body language is flat.

(Um, I suppose that might be considered a spoiler... in some parallel universe where the end of All The President's Men is also a surprise.)

Anyway, apart from that I have a couple of pieces of good news which I am not yet at liberty to discuss. And I should be packing for Wiscon right now. Speaking of which, my schedule is:

Friday, 10:15-11:30 pm, Conference Room 2: Reading ("Big Jumps and Long Tomorrows")
Sunday, 2:30-3:45 pm, Wisconsin: Insider Futures: Business in Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sunday, 4:00-5:15 pm, 607: The Transformation of Sexuality

Hope to see you there!

Posted 05/24/2005 20:48 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I had a meeting rescheduled today, so I had some time to deal with the sick Mac. First I called Apple, where (after the first call was cut off just as the operator answered, grr) I got a knowledgeable and companiable tech who walked me through all the potential software solutions until she agreed with me that it looked like a hardware problem. So then I used my local Apple store's web page to schedule a slot at the Genius Bar -- which it promptly gave me for ten minutes hence (the store's about half an hour away). Fortunately, by the time I got there my name was just coming to the top of the list. About 15 minutes later I was walking out with a brand new Mac.

All was wonderful when I got it home, until I tried to connect it to my Wi-Fi network, which not only failed but I managed to knock the whole network off the air trying to fix it. I was terribly distracted while we went off to our neighborhood SF book group (this month's book: The Year of Our War, which we all thought was a bit shallow and the main character unsympathetic), but when we got back I used the DSL modem's setup disk to reinstall it from scratch and all is now cool.

Spent the rest of the evening installing Tiger. Now I'm back to where I was Sunday when the DVD drive failed. At the moment the new Mac is downloading software updates, and I'm going to let it have fun by itself, for I must sleep now.

Posted 05/16/2005 23:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

So I went down to the Apple Store today and I dropped a couple thousand bucks on a new iBook and a new iPod and all the associated software and accessories, including AppleCare for both because I know a lot of people who've had problems with their iBooks. Got it home, started it up, installed Tiger (which came in the box, but not preinstalled), got it talking to my Windows Wi-Fi network. Most impressive when it printed a test document. Tried playing a CD and a DVD. Way cool. Stopped, had dinner. Lovely carrot curry.

After dinner, looked for compiler. Ah, it's not installed by default. Inserted the Tiger startup disk, clicked on the "About XTools.pdf". Disk whirred and ground for a few minutes and finally bombed out with error -36. Ejected disk, inspected, reinserted. This time it whirred and ground for a few minutes, then simply ejected the disk. Tried a couple more times