The ongoing saga of David D. Levine's writing and other adventures.
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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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6/30/05: Allen keys, the History Mouse, and Year's Best Fantasy
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]
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