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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12/31/06: David's Index for 2006

Short fiction words written: 44,485
Novel words written: 9,205
Notes, outline, and synopsis words written: 9,946
Blog words written: 44,048
Total words written: 107,684

New stories written: 3 (2 short stories, 1 novella)
Existing stories revised: 2

Short fiction submissions sent: 27
Responses received: 21
Rejections: 18
Acceptances: 3 (3 pro, 0 semi-pro)
Other sales: 7 (2 reprints, 4 translations, 1 audio)
Awaiting response: 8

Short stories published: 7 (3 pro, 1 reprint, 2 translations, 1 audio)

Novel submissions: 4
Rejections: 4
Acceptances: 0
Awaiting response: 1

Agent submissions: 3
Rejections: 2
Acceptances: 1

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

Happy New Year!

Posted 12/31/2006 09:34 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 9205 | Since last entry: 1063

We have returned from Kennewick in one piece. Presents were exchanged, dogs and small children were played with, much good food was eaten. The weather was great, clear and cold the whole time, and on the drive back the Columbia River was mirror-smooth, so that the opposite shore appeared to be a floating island. We do live in a very pretty place.

In the last week I've been pretty down on myself for lack of discipline. I've been eating too much, exercising too little, and writing not at all. But, as Kate points out, this is expected -- nay, demanded -- at this time of year. Despite this, I still felt bad about it, and today I did something about it: I went to the gym, and I took advantage of my critique group meeting being canceled to sit down and write. I surprised myself by turning out over a thousand words, in a scene in which my main character is arguing for her life in a situation where she barely speaks the language (actually it's more complicated than that).

My mood was also greatly raised by an envelope that arrived in the last mail delivery of the year: Gardner Dozois is buying my Aeon Award shortlisted story "I Hold My Father's Paws" for his 24th annual Year's Best Science Fiction anthology. This is my first appearance in the Dozois Year's Best antho and I'm right chuffed about it.

Posted 12/30/2006 23:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 8142 | Since last entry: 0

I've been rather down on the writing lately, what with the latest rejection and all. I'm afraid I'm running out of major publishers, but my agent is still enthusiastic about the book and advises me to put my energy into writing the next one. But with all the holiday foofaraw around here, I haven't been finding the time to do that either.

But a bit of good news arrived yesterday, in the form of a registered mail package from Poland containing two copies of the November issue of Nowa Fantastyka. My name was on the cover in big letters, and inside I found my story "Tk'Tk'Tk," translated into Polish, with four great interior illustrations. I don't know if the translation is any good, but the illustrator (whose name I couldn't find) clearly read and understood the story. This is almost better than a good review.

Heading off to Kennewick this morning. May or may not blog in the interval, depending on availability of time and bandwidth.

Posted 12/27/2006 08:42 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 8142 | Since last entry: 465

A very laid-back Christmas Day here. Woke up at a reasonable hour and fixed gingerbread waffles, then went back to bed for another couple hours. We opened one present each -- I got Kate an orange juicer because she always orders fresh-squeezed OJ when we go out for breakfast, and she got me a copy of Lost Girls because I asked for it. Lazed about for much of the day, and watched the DVD of So I Married an Axe Murderer that the guys at work had loaned me so I wouldn't be culturally deprived.

In the evening we had our traditional Christmas Day movie and squid dinner with our friend Michael -- the movie was the new Casino Royale, which has a lot to recommend it (not least the hot new Bond, Daniel Craig) and the squid, unfortunately, was at a random Vietnamese restaurant because Thien Hong, home of the finest pepper-salted squid we've ever eaten, is closed on Mondays. Even if Monday happens to fall on a Christmas Day. Bastards.

Back to work tomorrow, for one day, then I'm taking the rest of the week off. Life is hard.

Posted 12/25/2006 22:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 7677 | Since last entry: 468

...or Christmas Eve, anyway.

We had a party yesterday, an open house where a couple dozen folks showed up to assemble jigsaw puzzles, talk, and eat. I made brownies using the recipe on the back of the Ghirardelli chocolate can, with the addition of some peppermint extract and mint chocolate chips, and OMG were they good.

I'm not quite sure where today went. Went to the gym this morning, cleaned up from the party, went out for lunch, spent too much time online. We're going to a dance performance in a little while, followed by dinner with friends.

Tomorrow we will open some presents, but most of the presenting will be done when we get together with Kate's family in Kennewick later this week. I hadn't planned to take any time off this week, but then we decided to take two days for this trip, and now I'm thinking we'll spend the second night there and come back a day later. I don't think anyone at work will miss me for that extra day.

I bought myself a new phone, a Treo 700p, and I'm liking it a whole lot. Gmail and Google Maps are the killer apps for this platform, for sure. I'm extremely glad I sprang for the unlimited data plan, because if I had all this power at my fingertips and I had to count every kilobyte I'd be going mad right about now.

I've been fighting some WiFi interference issues that make my home digital music system flake out at irregular intervals. I'm pretty sure that it's interference from a non-WiFi device such as a cordless phone or microwave, or possibly a WiFi network that's not broadasting its SSID, because there's no other WiFi network showing up on the same channel but the problem looks just the same as the interference I see when I run the microwave. But neither of my two closest neighbors was home Friday evening and I was definitely seeing the problem then. Might be my back-fence neighbor. I really need some kind of signal strength meter with a directional antenna to figure out where the problem is coming from. But if it turns out to be my neighbor's phone or microwave, what do I do then? I'm considering some kind of signal booster to try to power past the problem, but unfortunately my cheapo wireless router (which I have to use because it is the only one supported by my DSL provider) doesn't even have a detachable antenna so I'm not sure how I'd even connect it.

As for the writing... well, things have not been going too well on that front. I've been writing only a hundred words a day on those days I've been writing at all (missed three days this week). And I got another rejection on the novel, this one from DAW. Plus another short story rejection. Bah, humbug.

Posted 12/24/2006 16:33 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 7209 | Since last entry: 2062

It's been a long time since I've posted. Sorry. I did start this entry yesterday, but then the power to our whole neighborhood was knocked out by the massive wind storm that pummeled the whole Pacific Northwest. (The power came back a few hours later, while we slept, and we had no other damage, unlike Mary Rosenblum, who lost a shed and an apple tree when a huge tree landed on them.)

Tonight I had a phone interview with Jason Rennie, host of The Sci Phi Show (http://thesciphishow.com), a podcast from Australia that looks at questions of science fiction and philosophy. I talked about where my ideas come from, and how I differ from my characters, and my history and ambitions as a writer. I think it went well, and it should be up on the site in January.

I've been writing 100-300 words every day -- haven't missed a day yet this month. It doesn't feel like much progress, but this tortoise-like steady progression is better than longer but intermittent bursts. Or so I tell myself. I'm learning about the world and the characters as I go -- a vaguely-defined group of aliens that my protagonist encounters in chapter 2 of the outline has resolved into a single, elderly cat-like creature named Huss (at least so far). I like him.

I don't feel that this novel has really found its voice yet, and I think my protagonist is far too independent and self-assured for a traumatized 14-year-old. I might decide that it's easier to change my notion of who she's supposed to be to match the way she's turning out, rather than to go back and rewrite her to be more the way I originally conceived of her.

It's also very hard to write any kind of meaningful description when the viewpoint character's whole world is made up. Not only do I have to decide what the alien ship looks like, I have to describe it using referents that the main character (who was raised on a different alien ship) would have, rather than using analogies or metaphors that will be meaningful to the reader. Why did I set myself such a hard task?

Apart from the writing... well, I had a pretty head-exploding day on Tuesday. First, I learned that I have been selected as one of the top 7% of engineering staff in the company. What this means is that, along with about 100 other employees and their spouses, Kate and I will be taking a trip at company expense... to Phuket, Thailand. It will be some time in February and I don't yet know how long we will be gone or any other details. It doesn't seem real yet.

Thailand.

Right after getting that email I headed off to meet with our financial adviser. We'd paid for a detailed analysis of our retirement situation, to answer the question of exactly when we will be able to afford to retire. And the answer came back: we are already making more from our investments than from my day job. And even the most conservative estimates of inflation and return on those investments indicate that they will continue to provide enough for us to live on, in the style to which we've become accustomed, for the forseeable future.

I can retire any time.

Guh.

I enjoy my job (well, most aspects of it, most of the time). I'm good at it and, after all these years, I've finally reached a place that people respect and request my opinions. I feel a certain responsibility to my co-workers, not to mention that I want to see my current project, which I have been working on for between one and four years depending on how you count it, through to shipment some time next year. But the commute -- lord, I'm tired of the commute. And it would be nice to be able to make travel plans without having to eke them out of a limited vacation budget.

So I'm probably going to retire in 2007. Or I might scale back to three or four days a week and keep on for longer than that. I don't know -- I haven't discussed it with my boss yet. I talked with my dad and he suggested that there's considerable value in continuing to work, even when you don't need the money, for the external stimulus. It's certainly true that Scott Adams's work on Dilbert went downhill when he quit the day job.

Retirement is an extremely strange thing to contemplate. I've been going to work every weekday for twenty-three years, or thirty-nine if you count going to school as "work." Although I'm sure I could find plenty to fill the empty days (everyone I know who's retired says they can't imagine how they found the time for the day job with all the other things they have to do) I still have a lot of trouble imagining what life would really be like if every day were Saturday. Yes, even with the writing.

As I was driving to work this morning, Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton came up on the iPod and I found myself crying. And laughing at the same time, because it's a silly little song and a stupid thing to get all weepy about. But there you have it.

And I saw a heron. Any day you see a heron is a good day.

Posted 12/15/2006 23:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 5147 | Since last entry: 1393

I did get back on the horse, the day after my last entry, and I've written at least a few words every day since. It sucks, of course, but I'm learning not to let that bother me. I've done this before and I know it'll get better once I get my feet under me.

I've gotten some interesting writing-related emails in the last couple of weeks. A fellow from Australia wants to interview me for a podcast, and a guy from Milwaukee wants to make one of my stories into a student film. I'm willing to sell him the rights very cheap, for a limited period of time anyway, but I don't want to do it without some kind of contract and I haven't yet found a usable sample contract online. Any suggestions?

I've also been invited -- nay, importuned -- to be a guest at RadCon, so we're going to that.

Not much else to report. Day job. Chores. Square dancing. Went to the Symphony. Didn't go to the gym for almost two weeks, but clambered back on that horse too. You know -- stuff.

Posted 12/04/2006 23:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 3754 | Since last entry: 0

We are lying side-by-side in the grass, the horse and I, staring up at the fleecy clouds scudding by across a luminescent blue sky. Each of us is chewing on a stalk of grass -- me contemplatively, the horse as more of a snack.

"You're going to have to get back on me sooner or later," says the horse.

"Tomorrow," I say. "I've been sick."

"No, really. I mean, you call yourself a writer, and here it is nearly the end of NaNoWriMo and you haven't written a word since you finished Chapter One over two weeks ago. That's pathetic."

I chomp my stalk for a moment before replying. "I finished the outline. 1700 words. Now at least I know where I'm going."

The horse snorts. The sound vibrates through the damp earth between us. "Doesn't count."

I raise myself on one elbow and look the horse in the eye. "Give me a freakin' break. First there was OryCon, and we had Lise in town before and after."

"And she kept up her daily NaNoWriMo word count that whole time..."

"Shut up when I'm talking. I was so heavily programmed I didn't even attend one program item I wasn't on, nor did I see the art show. Good con, though. And then, on the day Lise leaves, I come down with a cold."

"Poor baby."

"No really, I was miserable. Achy, feverish, sneezing... I wasn't good for much more than watching TV and sleeping for almost three days."

"And you went to Thanksgiving dinner with your friends like that."

"I washed my hands a lot." I sigh. "At least I didn't spread it to all the square dancers in Vancouver."

The horse finishes his stalk and begins chewing on another. "Okay, I'll admit it was a bummer that you had to miss the square dance. But look on the bright side -- you got to see the BNL concert instead, and you aren't fighting your way back home from Canada through a snowstorm right now."

"Yeah, thank heaven for small favors."

We look at each other for a while. "You're still going to have to get back on me sooner or later."

"Tomorrow," I say. "Tomorrow."

Posted 11/26/2006 23:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 3754 | Since last entry: 803

No new words on the novel per se in the last three days. I reached the end of chapter 1 (at least, an end) and found that I couldn't get started on chapter 2. So I dropped back and started outlining -- trying to figure out where this thing is really headed. I wrote about 1000 words of outline yesterday -- a brief paragraph each on the first 12 chapters (out of about 20). Today I had dinner with a psychologist neighbor and talked about where my main character's head is at, given her traumatized early life. I'm going to have to scale back the malnutrition (if she wasn't properly nourished as a child she'll have some cognitive problems, and I need her brain in one piece if she's going to be an effective protagonist). Wrote up a couple hundred words of notes on that. None of those words are counted above.

So, though I have been doing novel-related work, I'm about 1200 words behind my pseudo-NaNoWriMo target, and OryCon starts tomorrow so I'm unlikely to catch up. I remind myself that I'm in this (novel writing thing) for the long haul -- NaNoWriMo should be just a goad, not a requirement.

In other news, Analog rejected the novella -- a long, thoughtful rejection hand-typed by Stan Schmidt that 1) points up a plausibility problem my critique group also had problems with, which I tried to address but apparently did not succeed, and 2) shows that Stan believes his readers don't want too much of that pesky angst getting in the way of the rivets. I may try Analog again, if the right story should happen, but at this point I think the only way I'm going to sell there is if I consciously decide to shoot for the Analog market and scale the characterization way back. And I'm not sure I want to do that. I'm going to sit on the novella until I hear back from Asimov's on the story I currently have there, then send it there. I may add a couple-sentence tweak that someone suggested as a way to help address the plausibility problem.

And at my neighborhood Starbucks, Christmas has come down as hard and sudden as a foot of snow overnight. Straight from Halloween to Christmas without even slowing down at Thanksgiving. Bah, humbug. But I don't want to dig in my heels this year, because in previous years I've done that and it's prevented me from enjoying the holiday (and there are enjoyable aspects to it -- I really dig the lights) when its actual time rolled around.

Posted 11/15/2006 23:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 2951 | Since last entry: 829

I keep plugging away. Ten thousand words in a month seems doable for me but I'm giving up an awful lot of sleep to maintain this pace. I wonder how some people can write thousands of words a day, even with a day job. I think that perhaps I am editing too much as I go. On the other hand, this technique seems to work for me.

I talked with my agent today. He's gotten several requests to see the novel so it's going out to two different publishers at once (agents can do this, if they let everyone know it's happening). I hope that this will encourage one or both of the publishers to feel they have to act before the other snaps it up.

I also got a nice email from the slushmaster at Realms of Fantasy saying that he's passing the unicorn story (remember the unicorn story?) up to Shawna. He also said that the days of waiting 6-12 months for a response are long gone. We'll see.

One more tidbit of writing news before I fall over: I talked with Gordon Van Gelder at World Fantasy about when "Titanium Mike" is likely to be published. He'd said a while ago that it might be in the January issue, but then he'd had to retract that, and I asked him what had happened. He explained that my story is 15 pages long, and he'd planned to run it in the January issue, but then he sold one more page of ads, so he ran another story that was 14 pages long instead. (Or perhaps it was the other way around.) It's very informative to see how much influence these random commercial factors have on the makeup of an issue, even when you have a magazine that's owned by its editor, who can theoretically do whatever he wants. So if you're wondering why there were two alien kitten stories in one issue, or why one issue is heavy on the SF and another on the F, the answer might be as simple as that.

Posted 11/10/2006 23:40 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 2122 | Since last entry: 774

The day job's been really intense so far this week. I haven't been to the gym but once in the last week. And, ever since Halloween, traffic has been absolutely abysmal. I've been spending as much as three hours a day driving to and from work. This is getting really tiresome. Can I retire yet?

Also, my novel was rejected by Ace. "I'm sorry to say it's not the kind of science fiction we're doing well with right now." Oh well, at least it was quick, and as rejections go it's very straightforward and professional -- nothing to make me question the book's quality, it was just the wrong novel for this market at this time. We have several good candidates for the next place to submit it; I'll be talking with my agent soon.

But the news on the political front has been refreshing, of course. We spent Election Eve at a Capitol Steps concert, with friends. Interesting that the audience refused to applaud even for a comedian pretending to be Bush. It was great to laugh about politics for a change, and even nicer to read the results after the show. I find I'm even more pleased about seeing the back of Santorum than Rumsfeld.

It's been very hard to make time for writing lately, with all the political news to keep track of, and I've fallen 600 words behind my target for the month so far. I hope to be able to catch up tomorrow. I also hope to write out an outline (one one- or two-sentence bullet point per chapter) when I get a chance; I have a general sense of the book's structure but it feels weird to be writing without a concrete plan.

Posted 11/08/2006 23:37 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 1348 | Since last entry: 1011

Back from World Fantasy Con. I decided early on that I wasn't going to attempt to take notes, so all I can say is that I had a great if rather formless time, and I met many people in person whom I had known only as authors, names in Locus, or LiveJournal users, plus many new and cool people I hadn't known at all.

I kept saying that if I was lucky I would come out of the convention with at least one new person for whom I could remember name, LJ username, and face all at once. I don't think I was that lucky. So I'm not going to attempt to name the many fine people I had meals with or hung out with in the bar, for fear of omitting someone. You know who you are.

We ate (too) much great BBQ, fine Mexican food, and pie. We heard some amazing readings, especially Howard Waldrop in a Jolly Roger mask reading a crossover between Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore, and Peter Pan. I appeared on one panel, about blogging, and quite a few people came up to me afterwards and said they'd liked it. I spent most evenings in the bar as one element of Elizabeth Bear's slut-hat-wearing electron cloud. We saw the Texas State Capitol and a UT tailgate party (hook 'em, Dano Horns) and the original sniper's bell tower from afar, and some other Austin sights (Toy Joy and a little bit of the Story of Texas museum) closer up.

We were delayed coming home by storms in Dallas, but as compensation we saw a spectacular aerial display of lightning as we flew home.

I worked on my novel for three days out of the five. I won't let this lapse stop me from continuing. NaNoWriMo ho!

Posted 11/06/2006 21:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 337 | Since last entry: 337

Well, I have been foolish enough to stay up past midnight doing it, but I have embarked on NaNoWriMo -- well, really a Pseudo-NaNoWriMo, because I have no intention of writing an entire novel, or even a miniature NaNoWriMo "novel" of 50,000 words, in one month. My goal for the month is 10,000 words, which requires an average of 333 words per day. This is going to be hard, what with WFC, OryCon, and Thanksgiving in there, but -- as this entry demonstrates -- I'm crazy/determined enough to do it. Wish me luck.

The first 337 words... well, they suck. But there they are. Gotta start somethere.

Leaving for Austin bright and early tomorrow (um, later today). See some of you there.

Posted 11/02/2006 00:15 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Sorry I haven't posted in a long while. I spent a good chunk of last week at a meeting with customers in Santa Clara. I typed over 18,000 words of notes in two days (I wanted to be sure the customers' input was properly captured) while sitting in a non-adjustable chair at a table that was too high, leaving my wrists resting on the hard edge of my laptop. After the first day I noticed the last two fingers on my left hand getting a bit numb and tingly -- a very bad sign. I moved to a better chair, and when I got home I started taking ibuprofen and gave myself a three-day holiday from typing. I hope that this will be enough to prevent further problems. Carpal tunnel problems scare me more than anything other than AIDS. Just about everything I do -- job, hobbies, volunteering, avocations, keeping in touch with friends -- is keyboard-dependent.

In better news, I sold the story I submitted last week. "Firewall" will appear in Transhuman: On the edge of the Singularity, edited by Toni Weisskopf and Mark Van Name, coming from Baen some time next year.

I also got my OryCon schedule:

• Friday 4pm: The Magical City of Unbelievable
• Friday 9pm: Whose Line Is It, Anyway?
• Saturday 10am: RSS Feeds and the New News
• Saturday 1pm: Turkey Readings
• Saturday 2pm: Writers' Workshop
• Saturday 3:30pm: Reading
• Sunday 12pm: Believable and Lovable Evil
• Sunday 2pm: Are You Really a Writer?
• Sunday 3pm: Remakes, Reimaginings, & Resurgencies

Pretty intense, but I guess that's the price of fame.

I don't yet have my World Fantasy Convention schedule, even though the convention's less than a week away. They still haven't sent me anything, but I see from their web page that I'm on a panel on Friday at 4:30 about "Fantasy, Social Networking, and the Blogosphere" with Elizabeth Bear and others. Cool.

Posted 10/29/2006 21:49 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

This weekend Kate and I went to McMenamin's Grand Lodge, a former Masonic retirement home, now hotel, in Forest Grove. It was far enough out of town to be an out-of-town trip, but close enough that we got the benefits without a lot of pesky travel.

The occasion for the trip was a knitting workshop. In a reversal of our usual pattern, Kate would be hanging out with her knitting friends, knitting and talking about knitting, while I sat in the corner and wrote -- a little one-man writing retreat in the middle of the knitting workshop. I hoped to get a lot of prep work done on the novel.

I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but I did accomplish a lot. I used a technique Chris York had shown me several years ago at an OryCon to sketch out a rough outline of the novel in about two hours. This was mostly an exercise in answering questions (like "what is the character just about to do as the novel opens?" and "how do the character's strengths and weaknesses help and hinder him/her as the story progresses?") in timed bursts of writing -- I chose a 5-minute burst period. I wrote about 3300 words in an intense hour or two. It was mostly a matter of writing out stuff I already knew about the character and the plot, albeit subconsciously, with a few bits of brainstorming. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether I was remembering something I'd worked out previously or making it up. I was typing as fast as I could.

Do I know everything that happens now? No. But I have a better feel for the overall shape of the novel -- beginning, rising action, climax, and resolution. There's a whole lot of middle that I know this exercise isn't much help with -- in the coming week I'll work on fleshing that area out.

My goal for the rest of the month is to learn as much as possible about the characters and plot, with the intention of beginning the first draft on or before November 1. Then I'll celebrate NaNoWriMo by writing every day, shooting for 10,000 words (that would be an average of 333 words per day) to get off to a good start. Wish me luck.

In addition to that, I put the finishing touches on the firewall story and sent it off to the editors of the anthology via email. I hope to hear back in a week or so. And I did some critiques and nonfiction writing that were way overdue.

Also this weekend, we heard some live music, visited the farm where our vegetables come from (it was not too far from Forest Grove, and besides it was Pumpkin Pickup time -- we picked out a nice sincere one), went to the gym, ate some very nice meals (and some mediocre ones), and booked our tickets for Japan. 330 days in advance is when tickets for frequent flyer miles become available, and there were upgrade seats available on our preferred flights. So we're going business class, baby!

So it was a fun and relaxing weekend, and I had a surprisingly good time hanging out with the knitters -- a charming and intelligent bunch, and I'm not just saying that because a couple of them turned out to be SF fans (or had family back home who are) and two of them asked me for my autograph.

Posted 10/22/2006 20:57 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 4447 | Since last entry: 46

Finally heard back from Del Rey, after six months.

The word is no. Bottom line: "the fundamental setup just doesn't hold up in terms of suspense." I don't agree, obviously. But the sting is lessened somewhat by comments like "I'm loath to pass on getting a chance to publish a talented writer like David."

I am not as crushed by this rejection as I was by the Tor one, because I hadn't been led to expect an acceptance and I wasn't as emotionally invested in it. My agent is querying other publishers right now, and I'll be talking with people at World Fantasy Con.

Onward and upward.

Posted 10/18/2006 22:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 7843 | Since last entry: 314

I'm really enjoying these Tuesday night writing get-togethers. Only two other people tonight, and I wound up with Jay Lake's power supply, but I pried open the firewall story and, after a long period with story parts spread out all over the garage floor, got everything crammed back inside and the casing bolted back on before heading home. It wants another read-through and a smoothing pass, and perhaps a bit of a trim, but I've done just about everything I wanted to do with it based on last week's critique. Is it better, or even good? No idea.

Posted 10/17/2006 22:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 4401 | Since last entry: 1459

1500 words of notes on the novel, mostly about the stardrive. This is fun, and of only marginal utility for developing the characters, but it's a great generator of possible plot ideas. I've come up with a novel stardrive (combining aspects of Babylon 5 and The Space Eater) that has plenty of things that could go disasterously wrong, i.e. potential drama. Kate doubts that anyone would actually use something that dangerous, but, hey, an airplane could run out of fuel or hit a mountain or be blown off course, and we take those every day.

Also worked extensively on editing the firewall story -- 360 new words, not counted above, plus many changed words (many of which I did not eventually put back the way they'd been in the first place). I'm not sure it's really getting better, but I am at least trying to address the issues identified by my critique group. There's certainly more angst. I think I need one more scene, in which my main character consults with his boss before throwing the switch, but the biggest issue is that it's not plausible that he'd take the action he does at the climax. Well, maybe he doesn't. (But if he doesn't, he doesn't change.) Need to find a way to plant a seed of his final action earlier in the story, but the action's moving so fast I find it very difficult to cram in even a small character moment. Ponder ponder ponder.

In other news... our VCR died earlier this week, and since it's early in the new TV season and many of the good shows we like haven't been canceled yet, this crisis required immediate attention. So we spent far too much of yesterday looking for a new VCR. Surprise! VCRs are obsolete. Even the largest video equipment store we visited had a total of two VCRs... and one of them turned out to be out of stock. So we bought a DVD/VCR combo -- the only machine we saw anywhere that supported the VCR+ codes that make programming the timer so much easier. (None of them allow you to program channel numbers or times using the numeric pad on the remote, or to seek by time.) This brings the household up to seven DVD players. But the new machine has some very cool features, such as "replay the last ten seconds" and displaying the title of the current program. The astonishing thing is that it can display the program titles from tapes recorded on the previous VCR.

TiVo or something like it is in our future, to be sure, but we didn't want to make that decision right now because it's so tightly coupled to questions of which cable/satellite/etc. system we're going to subscribe to in the long run. I need to do research on that. And we'll need a new TV eventually, too.

Also this weekend: had a very nice dinner at a new Balkan restaurant called Two Brothers (the former cheap Chinese at 39th and Belmont), and met up with recent returnees-to-Portland Robin Catesby and Dave Molner for coffee, which then turned into dinner at Malay Satay Hut.

The coming week will be a busy one.

Posted 10/15/2006 22:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 2942 | Since last entry: 1546

It's been a while since I posted any new word count here. That's because I haven't been writing a lot. My things-to-do list for the weekend was HUGE, which isn't to say I actually crossed off a lot of items. But we did visit old friends Sonia and Devin on their property out by Vernonia. And the dogs and the cats and the llamas and the goats and the emus. Emus. Emus are very, very strange creatures. I've never felt the thud of a bird's feet on the ground before, nor heard a bird breathing. The chick (only about three feet high) pecked endearingly at my trouser buttons. It came back every few minutes and pecked at me again in case I'd changed into something edible while it wasn't looking.

But today was a good writing day. I dropped off the car for an oil change and took the train to work, during which I batted out about 1200 words of notes on the novel. This worldbuilding stuff is easy and cheap -- all I'm doing is writing down random thoughts, and the further thoughts that spring from them. The main benefit is that writing this stuff down frees up brain space that was being used to hold it, and encourages/allows me to follow the idea to the next step. Writing about the aliens is also helping me to get a handle on the main human character.

In the evening I met with some other writers at a coffee shop for what may become a regular Tuesday writing evening. During this time I worked on revisions of the Singularity story, which I got critiqued on Saturday. The critiques found some serious problems -- the ending feels rushed, and the protagonist changes his mind much too hastily at the climax, but the big problem is that my happy ending is read by some as a chilling horror story. It may be that this is okay. I think that in its intended context the ending will be seen as a happy ending, and even if it is not... well, it's valid for the reader to reach their own conclusions.

So far in the revisions I've just nibbled away at the minor problems. I'll start tackling the more serious issues with the climax and character interactions next. One thing I need to keep in mind is this: if the ending seems broken, you probably need to fix the middle. Specifically, I need to plant some doubts in the protagonist's mind earlier so that his change of heart at the climax isn't so much of a surprise.

One other thing and then I'm off to bed: I'm reading Jules Verne's From The Earth to the Moon for our book group. I didn't know it was a comedy. Or possibly an extended infodump with comedic moments. A fun, light read, though.

Posted 10/10/2006 22:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 1396 | Since last entry: 1396

Joined several other writers at a pizza place for convivial-sitting-and-typing-together tonight. I had been kind of worried about what I was going to do, since I just finished up a project and I didn't feel ready to start on my novel. So what I did was just start typing notes. It went really well (1400 words in less than 2 hours), despite the fact that the place was too bright and too loud. If we do this again we'll go someplace else.

So far what I've written is mostly the natural history of the Drur, the main alien species in the novel -- how did they evolve, what is their history, what is their culture. I also wrote one paragraph about the main human character but, apparently, I find it easier to understand aliens than a 14-year-old girl. Because Keelie was raised by an alien of one species while they were both enslaved by aliens of another species, I'm going to have to build both species' cultures from the ground up before I can understand Keelie.

Apropos of which, Karen Berry mentioned that she saw something on the Discovery Channel about children raised by wild dogs. This really happens?! I must investigate, because the enslaving species has a pack culture (though they aren't nearly as warm and fuzzy as a pack of slavering wolves -- they're more like wasps, only more competitive). I also need to call my psychologist neighbor to talk about what a girl with such an f'd-up upbringing might be like -- what will she fear, what "issues" will she have?

It's much easier for me to write this sort of stuff than actual drafting. It doesn't have to do more than one thing, it doesn't have to lead anywhere, it doesn't have to echo the theme or even be particularly well written. I just make stuff up and type it out, which I can do almost as fast as I can type. One interesting aspect of the exercise is that it points out all the stuff I do when I'm writing fiction -- I don't draft as fast as some, but it's really solid for a first draft. These notes... aren't.

As he mentions in his blog, Jay Lake and I talked a bit about his word counts and whether he should post them. I said that, though I do find them a bit intimidating sometimes, if you're capable of producing that quality of work at that speed, why not say so? Some may find it an inspiration. As the joke goes: Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: To show the opossum it could be done!

I figure I'll work on this notes file for a while (days? weeks? months?) before I'm ready to outline. So, for now, word counts above are all notes. I wound up with over 32,000 words of notes on Remembrance Day before I was done.

In other news, the Southeast Examiner story came out, and... well, on the cover it said "Sci-Fi Guy, page 18" and I actually did say most of the things I am quoted as saying. It's not a bad article by any means, but I still find it a bit wince-worthy in spots. I'll probably scan it and put it up on my web page anyway.

Also, I have been invited to be a speaker for A Writer's Weekend, June 30-July 1, 2007 in Seattle. I've never been to one of these before but I'm looking forward to it.

And I talked to my agent today. The first novel's been at the same place for almost six months and it's time for them to fish or cut bait. There may be news, one way or another, later this week.

Posted 10/03/2006 22:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 7149 | Since last entry: 1676

Finished up the first draft in a burst of enthusiasm and sent it immediately to my critique group. Some of the characters and background I made up in the early parts are unused at the climax, which means that they can perhaps be excised, but on the other hand they add richness to the world. Whatever. If it's a problem, my critiquers will tell me.

I got a little weepy when writing the climax, which is always a good sign but doesn't guarantee that others will feel the same way. It's impossible to know whether enough of the things that were going on in my head made it to the page or not.

I do know that the climactic scene itself was not exactly something I'd planned. It was a solution to a problem that had been bugging me yesterday -- the question of "how do you know what you know?" In this case, all of my protagonist's information was coming to him through an unreliable channel, and he's a smart enough guy that he'd realize this -- how does he make any decision when he knows he can't trust his information? So I, or perhaps my subconscious (which Jay Lake calls "Fred") came up with an outside source of confirmation -- an outside source that also answered another problem I had, which is that I felt my setting was being underused, and provided a powerful image of the protagonist's emotional dilemma. It all came together in a single brief scene which is the one that almost made me cry.

I have many short story ideas knocking on the inside of my skull right now, but I think I really ought to work on the novel next. However, I may take a day or two off first -- I've been grinding really hard for the last week and Kate needs some of my attention.

After that, we went downtown to the big public hoo-hah over the new Gerding Theatre, a marvelous refit of the grand old Armory building just one block from Powell's. While waiting for our backstage tour to begin, we wandered over to nearby Chinatown, which was also having a grand civic celebration in honor of the opening of its new street renovations, and had a bite of dim sum for lunch.

In the evening, we met up with square dancing friends Bo and Don for a fabulous dinner of many meats at Brazil Grill (and, by the way, if you haven't read this you must: Argentina on two steaks a day). After which we watched the first episode of Heroes, which shows a lot of promise.

An excellent weekend.

Posted 10/01/2006 23:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 5473 | Since last entry: 2360

800+ words yesterday, 1500+ words today. Of course, I spent all day today on those 1500 words, not like Some People who can whip out 2500 words in an evening after work. But it's still been a good productive day and I hold out some hope I can finish the story tomorrow.

I did find a way to work in the necessary backstory. My protagonist is a real Baen/Analog hero, a hard-nosed practical guy, but he's also emotionally damaged in a way that will pin him to the wall at the climax... which is coming very soon now, I think. The biggest remaining problem is how to set it up in such a way that his choice at the climax makes emotional sense for him. (Some writers would just wind him up and see what choice he makes on his own. My characters aren't that self-actualized, unfortunately; they only do what I tell them to.)

In addition to the writing, today we did grocery shopping, cooked dinner (curried green beans and eggplant, using some pico de gallo we had on hand for some of the tomatoes, garlic, and spices -- it worked pretty well, but we neglected to compensate for the lime juice that was already in the salsa when adding lemon juice and it came out pretty darn tart), and took in a movie (An Inconvenient Truth -- a well-made and rather hopeful documentary, despite its serious topic, but on top of this week's rape of the Constitution I found it a bit of a downer). And now I'm going to bed before midnight, because I'm tired.

Oh, one more thing. I dealt with a storm of over 7000 bounce messages caused by some spammer who used various made-up names at osfci.org as his forged return address -- and that's not counting the unknown number of messages that didn't bounce (probably tens of thousands). It would have been even more except that I got my ISP to turn off the "catchall" email forwarding in the middle of it. This was the second such storm this week, and it was over four times as big as the first one.

This spam storm and its resolution has three possible consequences for you, the reader of this blog: 1) If you ever send mail to some random address at osfci.org or orycon.org (e.g. programming@orycon.org) on the assumption that it will magically reach the appropriate person, you can stop that now. It used to be that I would receive such mail, sigh, and manually forward it to the appropriate person. Now such messages will bounce or vanish silently. 2) If you sent me an e mail today and didn't receive a reply, there's a possibility it got mixed in with the flood of spam and deleted -- please resend. 3) If you are a mail administrator, please don't bother bouncing obvious spam back to the From: address, as it's almost certainly forged, and will do nothing other than annoy some innocent third party.

I hates spammers, I hates them to pieces.

Posted 09/30/2006 23:32 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 3113 | Since last entry: 877

Another post-Hugo rejection in today's mail, this one from F&SF. Alas, he just bought another post-Katrina ghost story. I'd been afraid that might happen.

That made three stories requiring resubmission, so I went ahead and resubmitted them. As it happened, the story that F&SF just bounced went to Asimov's, and the story Asimov's bounced earlier in the week went to F&SF. The Jupiter story, which I'd intended to send to Asimov's as soon as they replied to the previous story, had to be held back again because I wanted to send the post-Katrina story to Asimov's before it gets any staler than it already is. So rather than let it languish any longer, I sent it to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show -- my first submission there. The story is really a better fit for Baen's Universe, but that market's closed until further notice (though I now see that it could reopen as early as October 1... oh well, the story's in the email already).

It took entirely too much time to update my spreadsheet, decide where to send the three stories, and prepare the packages and emails. But I did get some more writing done. The action is cracking along nicely -- in fact, I think it might be moving too fast, because the main character has some backstory that I have to lay in so that the climax will make emotional sense. (I don't have a written outline for this one, but by now I know everything that is going to happen.) Ponder ponder ponder.

Changing topics completely... I'm considering changing my phone -- I want to carry a single device instead of my web-enabled phone, Palm V, and camera. It has to have a QWERTY keyboard, and I would really prefer PalmOS to Windows Mobile, so it comes down to a Treo 650 (Cingular) or Treo 700p (Verizon or Sprint). But it seems that the minimum calling plan I can get that supports this phone's data capabilities costs $60 (Cingular, 450 minutes + 5MB, or Sprint, 450 minutes + unlimited data), or $80 (Cingular or Verizon, 450 minutes + unlimited data) per month. My current plan (Cingular) is $40 for more minutes than I ever use + 1MB (I use maybe 50 minutes a month, but 1MB is a little too small). $240 or $480 more a year seems like a lot to pay for email and web on my phone. Any advice?

Posted 09/28/2006 23:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 2236 | Since last entry: 623

The story's moving along, and the rivets are flying. I may need to engineer a pause soon to work in some critical backstory. ("Engineer." "Work in." "Critical." Yep, it's a Baen story all right, with a protagonist who's an engineer and a soldier.) Also, I'm almost halfway into a 5000-word story and the real problem hasn't even appeared yet. Some of what I have just written may have to be jettisoned. ("Jettisoned." Yep.)

As important as it is to me to finish this by this weekend, I still have some critiques and submissions and stuff to do this week, so I'm setting down the draft right now in favor of some of that. Sleep would also be good -- I have an early meeting tomorrow.

But first, this public service announcement: the deadline for the R. L Fanthorpe Write-Alike Contest is October 10, which is remarkably nigh. The contest is a benefit for the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund and is a chance for all you writers to get some bad writing out of your systems, aid a worthy cause, and maybe even win some cash money. Click the link for details. Enter early and often!

Posted 09/26/2006 21:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 1613 | Since last entry: 119

As you may already know, we lost Mike Ford last night. A fine and wise and quiet man with amazing eyebrows, he wrote extemporaneously on nearly any topic, often in highly structured poetry, and the more you knew the funnier it was. He will be sorely missed.

We spent most of the evening at our neighborhood book group. Unusually, we managed to spend most of the time actually discussing the book, 40,000 in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh. When we got home I read over my work in progress (tentatively titled "Firewall") and realized that it would really be happier in first person. I think I'd been avoiding it largely because my last two stories were in first, but when I went through and changed it, it was like loosening a belt that's too tight. After that I added one paragraph and a few scattered sentences and I'm calling it a night. I'll take the train tomorrow.

Much else ought to be done. I have two stories to put back in the mail, two short stories and two novels to critique, and I still have to unpack from Foolscap, plus the usual groceries, dishes, and other life maintenance. Too bad. Not gonna happen right now.

Posted 09/25/2006 23:20 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 1494 | Since last entry: 268

Foolscap was a small, pleasant convention, and we had a nice time talking with Jay Lake, Dave Howell, Kate's sister Sue, Sue Mohn, Hal and Ulrika O'Brien, Amy Thomson and Edd Vick, and artist/author guest of honor Mark Ferrari. But, as has often been the case, it felt a little underpopulated... just not quite enough people for critical convention mass. Many Seattle fans were missed (although I'm sure they all had good reasons not to be there). Also, the last panel I was on, which concerned "why do so few science fiction characters go to church or have any religion at all?" was fairly stressful both because of its touchy subject matter and because of some argument over what the exact topic of the panel should be, so my convention ended on a slightly sour note. But many people congratulated me on the Hugo win and we had some fine meals.

In addition to the 268 words above on the work in progress, also participated in an exercise where I wrote a 700-word scene based on an artwork. I might finish that up into a whole story, I might not. Not right now, anyway. I have too many excuses not to start on novel #2 already.

Came home to find the first post-Hugo rejection, from Asimov's as it happens. That's okay, now I can send them the Jupiter story.

Posted 09/24/2006 23:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 1226 | Since last entry: 679

Had to choose today between taking the train (writing, no gym) and driving (no writing, possibly gym). After yesterday's nightmare commute, leaving the driving to Tri-Met sounded like a real good idea. I'd hoped to get 1000 words for the day but it was still productive (though a bit heavy on the exposition... which is to be expected for this stage in the story).

I mentioned yesterday how I felt the story expand when I added the internal conflict to my concept of the story. I've been meaning to say something about a concept I think of as a story's "trajectory." The best analogy I can draw is to Evel Knievel's aborted attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon. If you look at films of the event, you can easily see that his "motorcycle" (actually a one-man short-range rocket with decorative wheels) was plainly on a perfect parabola to the other side of the canyon when its parachute accidentally deployed. If it hadn't been for that chute, there's no doubt in my mind he would have made it. In the same way, I can feel this story taking off at a certain angle. That angle tells me that the end is about 7000 words away (plus or minus about 10%) and I can take a thousand words or so to set up the situation. If the story were accelerating faster I'd know I'd have to get to the action right away and defer or cut that exposition.

(Okay, that's not a very good analogy, but it's the one I've got.)

Several people commented on yesterday's entry to the effect that "why change your working style when the old style is demonstrably working extremely well?" A fair question...

1. I don't feel that I must change my style, I just want to try another way. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to write as well, only faster? I'll never know if I can unless I try.
2. I'm working on a project that has a deadline. In order to get it critiqued in time to incorporate critique comments before the deadline, given that the group meets every 3 weeks, it has to be done by either 9/30 or 10/21. Sooner is better than later, and also there's a chance I might be out of town for the second (10/28) meeting, so I'm shooting to be done by 9/30. At my usual working speed this would be a stretch, especially with Foolscap this weekend.
3. Now that I've gotten that external validation, I feel confident enough that I can try messing with the way I work and see whether it helps or hinders.

None of which is to say I'm actually achieving a faster speed. But I'm still trying.

Got interviewed tonight by a reporter from the Southeast Examiner. It was fun -- the reporter's an SF reader and we spent a good part of the time swapping recommendations -- and the piece should appear next week, I think.

Posted 09/21/2006 23:44 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 547 | Since last entry: 547

I have been a slug. A slug most foul and slimy. I haven't been to the gym, and I haven't been writing. Well, I did write over 1500 words of notes on the new story ("Firewall") on Monday and Tuesday, but yesterday I sat and read fanzines during the hour I should have been writing. A slug, I say.

Today didn't start well. I had an 8am meeting followed by an all-day planning session, so I awoke in the dark and didn't expect to get much done all day. But the 8am meeting lasted only half an hour, giving me time to type up some notes from yesterday's UI review. Then the planning session finished unexpectedly quickly, right after lunch, so I got in some actual productivity and even managed to go to the gym for the first time this week (go me!). Homeward-bound traffic was insane, but I took advantage of the situation to make some phone calls. (Usually I would never make a phone call from a moving car, but... well, I wasn't moving.) I set up an appointment to talk with a reporter from my neighborhood paper (the Southeast Examiner) about the Hugo.

Got home and warmed up the ratatouille we'd made yesterday from the magic vegetable basket -- it's always better the next day, so we made it ahead -- and then sat down to write. Again, go me.

I know who the main character is. I know his backstory and his current situation. I have an internal problem for him that parallels his external problem (and when Kate gave me that idea I felt the story expand from 5000 to 7500 words -- weird, never had that happen before). I have a general idea of the shape of the plot, and I know what happens at the climax. I'm not 100% sure how to convey what happens after that point, but I'm pretty sure I know what decision he'll make. I even have some secondary characters. What I don't have is an outline. For me, this is working without a net.

I also am trying to write fast (after much good advice on this from Jay Lake at the Worldcon). So far, it's not working. 500 words in 76 minutes isn't fast -- I keep backing up and tweaking with the current sentence until it's perfect, which is my usual habit. I will try again tomorrow to break that habit.

Oh, almost forgot: I have an entry in the current Brain Parade over at memetherapy.net.

Posted 09/20/2006 22:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I put the fershlugginer novella in the mail to Analog on Monday. Thanks to Elizabeth Bear, who posted a LiveJournal entry that made me realize the time had come to stop tweaking and send it out to seek its fortune.

The "A Hacker, a Machinist, and a Writer Talk About Craftsmanship" panel at the Portland PerlMongers meeting on Wednesday went well. The audience seemed to enjoy it; I know I did. It was like a good convention panel, but without the convention. There's a podcast of the whole thing here: http://pdxpm.podasp.com/archive.html

Fall has arrived. It rained today, for the first time in I forget how long. Also, I had a dentist appointment first thing today and I wound up working late, so I woke up in the dark and got home in the dark. This will become increasingly more frequent in the coming weeks, alas, until it's dark and rainy all day every day. (But it beats shoveling snow, and the summers here are gorgeous.)

I've been catching up on my critiquing, and my reading. Finished 40,000 in Gehenna and Fun Home (the latter is absolutely brilliant) and started in on His Majesty's Dragon.

No writing. This must change soon.

Posted 09/14/2006 22:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Kamila Miller writes:

I'd like to have folks spread the word that OryCon's writer's workshop deadline is coming up fast, and I hope that you can encourage people to submit. Have them contact me, Kami, at kamila@easystreet.com for more info. We're still building the workshop and so right now there is lots of room.

Kami

More information is available at http://www.orycon.org/orycon28/writers_workshop.

Posted 09/10/2006 10:42 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Started off the day with a trip to the Belmont Street Fair and a visit to the old firehouse there, which is now a museum. Great use of firefighting stuff to make up the practicalities of the museum, such as ladders as display elements and fire hoses as railings. This particular firehouse has been in use since fire engines were pulled by horses, and still has the old hayloft and hose tower. I got to slide down (a segment of) the fire pole, and see the mechanism of a fire alarm (a very simple spring-powered clockwork to send out the alarm's location code). And you know those big round things they used to use to catch people jumping out of burning buildings? They stopped using them because, although it might save one person's life, a single use would often destroy the shoulders or backs, and hence careers, of three or four firemen.

Next came a dim sum expedition to Fong Chong, to celebrate the return of Robin Catesby to Portland. Mary Hobson was there, along with numerous other writer-types, and I talked with her about the Damn Novella, which she has read in its current state and assures me it's fine. (Which is not to say it doesn't have any problems; they always have problems even when they're done and published -- see this post by Elizabeth Bear.) I will give it one last quick pass tomorrow and put it in the mail on Monday.

After that, we returned to the Belmont Street Fair and wandered the booths and storefronts, drinking coffee and counting black dogs. I love my town, and my neighborhood. I got to ride on a Segway -- it was strange and freaky, like standing on a wobbly wheeled chair that, for no apparent reason, doesn't tip over and dump you on your butt. Along the way we hit a couple of rummage sales and picked up a bunch of used CD's. Next to us some teenaged or early-twenties kids enthused over CD's from the 1970's. "Dude! It's Boston! If I owned these I'd never sell them!" Oddly disturbing.

Back home for a nap and a quick dinner of peanut butter sandwiches before heading out again for Garrison Keillor at the Symphony. Between Garrison and the opening night of the Time-Based Art Festival (maybe other things too), the whole area was rocking. Though it was hard to find a parking place, I'm glad to live in a town with a vibrant and lively downtown. The performance itself was as entertaining as you'd expect, an interesting integration of Garrison's usual radio show schtick with classical music. I wonder how much of it was improvised.

And so, after an evening snack of corn flakes, to bed.

Posted 09/09/2006 23:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Took the train to work today, determined to push through and finish work on the novella. Wrote a new 670-word scene, second from the end, intended to address a couple of problems with the climax and anticlimax. Not sure whether it works, or whether it's just a huge steaming redundant infodump. And sappy. I'll sleep on it. Maybe I'm done, maybe not. If not, I will be soon.

Also, I've been invited to appear on a panel discussion at the Portland PerlMongers meeting next Wednesday: "A hacker, a machinist, and a writer discuss the question of Craftsmanship." Sounds like the lead-in to a joke; should be fun. Follow the link for more information.

Posted 09/07/2006 22:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

It's been a productive (and expensive!) fannish evening.

Unfortunately, we waited too long on World Fantasy Con; memberships cost us $150 each, and we had to settle for a room in the overflow hotel. It's not like we haven't known since the beginning of the year that we were going to Austin. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I also sent in my program questionnaire; I hope that it's not too late to get on the program.

We didn't (yet) sign up for the WFC banquet. Should we?

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, we also made our hotel reservations for Nippon in 2007. We're in the Pan Pacific, which is slightly cheaper and has larger rooms (40 square meters -- seems HUGE for Japan) than the hotel attached to the convention center. I believe we have paid for the whole stay in advance -- good thing we have savings.

No writing tonight. I have given myself a couple of stars for the last two days for editing on the novella, but they haven't been very productive. I have changes I would like to make, but they're fairly deep and structural and I find it's much easier just to poke at wording here and there (and I have literally done the thing of putting in one word and then coming back half an hour later and taking it out). I'm thinking that I need to either set it aside for a while and work on something else -- and I do have something else I could be working on -- or shove it out of the nest. At the moment the nest thing is looking awfully attractive, but at the same time I've worked so long on this novella that I really, really want it to sell. Ponder, ponder.

Posted 09/06/2006 22:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Tuesday: "The next time they offer us a room near the elevator, remind me to ask which elevator."

My main memory of the trip down was that our early afternoon flight, which gave us a very relaxed half-day off to prepare for the trip, put us into L.A. right at rush hour. So any hopes we had entertained of spending Tuesday night at Disneyland were revealed as fantasy, replaced by fighting through traffic. It didn't help that we gave friends Joyce and David a ride from the airport, and the four of us had sufficient luggage that they had to share the back seat with two large and pointy suitcases. After a quick light dinner of banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) at the famous Lee's Sandwiches, we arrived at the con just after registration closed. We hung around in the reg area and the hotel lobby for a while, and ran into my Writers of the Future classmate Pat Rothfuss, Interzone editor Jetse de Vries, and fanzine editors Dick and Nicki Lynch before falling over around 10pm.

Wednesday: "You're hanging around with him, you obviously don't overwhelm easily."

Got a little bit of writing done in the morning before heading to downtown Orange for an antiquing expedition with Nicki Lynch Downtown Orange has been featured in many films, including playing 1960s Erie, Pennsylvania in That Thing You Do, and we started with breakfast at Watson's Drug Store, which looked as though it hadn't changed in forty years. We spent an entertaining morning browsing the antique stores and had a nice lunch at a Lebanese place called Byblos before returning to the con, already in progress.

I ought to mention here that I thought the convention was remarkably well run. Everything happened pretty much on time; all convention publications, especially the pocket program, were well-laid-out and accurate; and pre-con communications with the program participants were first-rate. My only complaints are that the daily program change sheets were often insane (containing items such as "Joe Schmo Reading: remove panelist Joe Schmo" and "Dogs Vs. Cats: replace moderator Jane Doe with Jane Doe") and that the convention lacked a central gathering place to rendezvous (accidentally or on purpose) with other fans. The Hilton lobby, Hilton bar, convention registration area, several places in Hall A, and the outdoor plaza between the Hilton and the Convention Center were all plausible, but none of them were "the place were everyone passes each other." Because of this lack of a central meeting place, I didn't see a lot of my friends until the last day and I found out later I'd missed some of them completely.

The first two panels I appeared on were "What I Do When I Should Be Writing" and "Mix & Match Writing Challenge." The first was an entertaining romp, with Sarah Monette, Phyllis Eisenstein, Fiona Avery, and me swapping anecdotes and advice; the second was also a crowd-pleaser, where I found myself seated between Peter S. Beagle and John Barnes, both of whom turned out phenomenal stories in very little time based on someone else's character, setting, and plot (Beagle's R. Daneel/Casablanca/Pygmalion mash-up was particularly fine). My own story, featuring Superman in the Springfield of The Simpsons with the plot of Logan's Run, was less successful, and didn't even have an ending.

After that I attended Sarah Monette's reading, then went off to Mamma Cozze's for a fine old-fashioned Italian dinner with Richard Threadgill and his sweetie. We returned to the con in time for the writers' workshop reception, but I didn't know very many people there so we buggered off to the SFWA suite. The rest of the evening was Nomad Fever, never really finding a satisfactory party to settle in at, and I turned in about midnight feeling mildly grumpy.

Thursday: "I would say: stick it to the Mouse and do the geek thing."

I wasn't scheduled to appear on any programming today, so I found myself standing around in the registration area talking with the delightful Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and Jay Lake who borrowed my thumb drive so he could print out a story. From there I decided to indulge my inner media geek, attending talks by Star Trek visual designer Rick Sternbach and actor Marina Sirtis (Counselor Troi). Both talks were entertaining, but I would have enjoyed them more if I'd watched more than two episodes of any Star Trek after season 4 of Next Generation.

I snagged a quick and not-entirely-unsatisfactory lunch in the convention center before my writers' workshop session, where I joined with Jean Lorrah, Darrell Schweitzer, and Lori Ann White to critique the work of three new writers (I said "I dislike the terms 'pro' and 'amateur;' I prefer 'eviscerator' and 'evisceree'"). I was able to encourage the new writers by pointing out that I'd workshopped my story "Tk'Tk'Tk" at a similar workshop at ConJose, and it was now on the Hugo ballot.

After my workshop session I was scheduled to sign autographs for an hour at the Dell Magazines table in the dealers' room. Not too surprisingly, only two or three people wanted my autograph, but I had a nice time talking with Asimov's associate editor Brian Bieniowski and his Analog counterpart, and when I was done there I was interviewed on camera for a Writers of the Future documentary. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering about the dealers' room, art show, and fan room, followed by a wonderful halal Chinese dinner at Mas' with fans Mary Kay Kare and Ulrika O'Brien.

When we got back from dinner I grabbed my laptop and headed to the Hilton bar for the "Two Beers and a Story Challenge" convened by Laura Anne Gilman. But Jay Lakewussed out, and without his participation the event collapsed. Nonetheless, I spent the entire rest of the evening in the bar and had a great time. Got to bed around midnight.

Friday: "It's a tool for removing the valve guide covers from a Model A Ford."

This was a great convention for attracting keen people from outside fandom, such as Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. I attended a fascinating panel about online communities, featuring Craig and Teresa Neilsen Hayden spouting delightful phrases such as "early bloggers like John Locke." At one point it looked as though a fugghead in the audience was going to derail the panel, but I reassured Kate that with Teresa on the podium everything would soon be under control, and indeed it soon was.

Next I appeared on the 'Physics of Superheroes" panel. One realization I had during the panel is that comic book physics (and cartoon physics) is essentially Aristotelian -- things behave as you would intuitively expect them to behave rather than in the messy and peculiar way that actually do. For example, Superman's heat vision was originally an extension of his X-Ray vision: objects were melted by the X-Rays coming from his eyes, just as vision in the Aristotelian system works by sending out rays from the eyes.

After that panel I went to a panel including the editor on whose desk my novel is currently sitting. I had an encouraging chat with him after the panel (he'd read the first 200 pages on the plane, and was reasonably pleased with it although he thought the opening was muddled), which was briefly interrupted by someone who'd sent him a book when he was at another publisher and wondered if he'd be interested in taking another look at it. He said yes, and the writer proceeded to hand him a postcard with "comp covers" for the first five books in the ten-book series (!) and discuss the books' movie, action figure, and TV series potential, which he hoped his new agent would help him realize, unlike the agent he'd just fired. Life as an editor at the Worldcon must be hell.

Casting about for a decent lunch, I wound up jumping over the railing to join my Clarion West classmate Amy Sisson in the Hilton lobby restaurant, along with her astrophysicist husband and one of his NASA colleagues. Amy and I talked writing while her husband and his friend talked NASA politics, but it was a fascinating conversation nonetheless and the food wasn't half bad either.

After lunch I appeared on two panels in a row: "Zen Scavenger Hunt" and "Intermediate Writing." The Scavenger Hunt, in which the panelists brought random objects and the audience told them what they'd been looking for, was mostly a two-way contest between Geri Sullivan (who had brought an amazing assortment of intriguingly fannish objects) and Pat Cadigan (who didn't know she was supposed to bring anything and brazened through with the contents of her purse and a healthy dose of attitude). Pat won on points but it was a delightfully entertaining hour. The Intermediate Writing panel was one of my least favorite hours of the convention, unfortunately, because while Jay Lake and I wanted to talk about the life of a writer who's sold a few short stories (as described in the panel's precis), the other two panelists wanted to turn it into the "Novelists Recovering From Mid-Career Meltdown" panel. One of the two, in particular, had a nasty habit of stating his opinions as Facts, and when he said to me after a difference of opinion -- not once but twice -- "we'll see who's still here in ten years" I had difficulty keeping my replies civil.

Due to a scheduling snafu, we wound up double-booked for dinner, with both Bridget/Simon Bradshaw and Elise Matthesen/Ellen Klages. We finally decided to dine with both pairs, sending Elise and Ellen ahead in a cab since our car could only accommodate four. After many adventures we all met up at Johnny Reb's for Southern-style barbecue, with peanut shells on the floor, and had delightful conversation over sweet tea in Mason jars and fried apple pie the size of your arm for dessert. On the way back we somehow crammed everyone into the car, with four in the back seat and me on Ellen's lap, and it's possible that Ellen has since managed to stand up straight.

Upon our return from dinner we went straight to the Asimov's Dessert Reception in the SFWA Suite. At one point I had to stop and go "whoa" because I suddenly realized that it was only six years ago that I'd been a fresh Clarion grad wishing I could go into the SFWA suite with the cool kids, and now not only was I attending a party in the SFWA suite, but copies of Asimov's with my name on the cover were scattered all over as decorations/party favors. How cool is that?

Then we set off on the Search for the Tor Party, which was a lot more complicated than it had to be because the Hilton's Lanai deck had not only a non-Euclidean floor plan but three Presidential Suites. Eventually we did locate it, and I very quickly wound up in conversation with Keith Watt, an astrophysicist friend of Amy Sisson's husband. We talked about black holes (research for my next novel! really!) for hours -- the convention practically paid for itself right there. Staggered off to bed around 1am.

Saturday: "Getcher ass up here!"

I didn't have anything specific to do until the afternoon, so naturally we were kicked out of our room by the housekeeping staff around 10am. We went to the Galaxy Quest writer's talk, but the writer was ill, so the space was being used for a showing of the film. It tried to suck us in, but we pulled ourselves free and spent the rest of the hour chatting with Lise Eisenberg, Marci Malinowycz, and other random fans in the hall outside. Then we headed off to get a seat at the presentation by the Lost writers, but that too was canceled. Bummer. I went to a different panel, then snagged a pretty good grilled chicken salad at the convention center, which I ate during Ellen Klages's reading ("In the House of the Seven Librarians" from Firebirds Rising, a wonderful story about a little girl raised by feral librarians).

After that I had a half-hour for the Hugo rehearsal, which consisted of a quick walk-through from the audience, up the stairs to the lectern, and then offstage. The stage of the Anaheim Arena was far too familiar to me from my position as Opening Ceremonies co-director at the last L.A.con, but as soon as I got up there I had the same reaction I'd had at the last two Hugo rehearsals I'd attended: I've been pretty good at keeping my hopes in check up until now, but you know... I might just win it. I reswallowed my heart, slapped that hope down as hard as I could, and dashed off to my next panel.

"Is SF Like a Shark?" went reasonably well. In fact, all my panels went well -- in all cases the panel happened on time and in the originally-scheduled room, we panelists were well outnumbered by the audience, and people came up to me afterwards and said they'd enjoyed it. This panel would have been better, though, if the moderator had not insisted on a) asking a series of prepared questions, b) using the microphone (every other panel I was on, even those in larger rooms, did well enough by simply speaking up), and c) passing the mike to the panelists (in the same order each time) so that each of us got exactly one shot at answering each question. This moderation technique prevented the panel from building up any momentum. But I did get to say that I thought SF was less like a shark than an octopus: intelligent, predatory, and communicates by changing color. I also got to meet and thank John-Henri Holmberg, editor of the Swedish magazine Nova Science Fiction, in whose latest issue "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" was just translated.

After that Kate and I had time for a brief nap before changing into our Hugo-night finery. In our fancy duds we attended a very cool panel with three writers from the Whedonverse (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) and then headed off to the pre-Hugo reception. At the reception we noshed, sipped, and mingled with the other nominees, presenters, and guests, served by a bartender named Hugo (I wonder if that was deliberate?). The Hugo base was revealed -- everyone agreed it was one of the most handsome in years -- and group photos were taken of the nominees in each category. I was the only nominee present for Short Story; Mike Resnick was also at the con, but didn't arrive until later. I was certain this was an omen, because when I was up for the Campbell the first time, Wen Spencer had come late to the "Meet the Campbell Nominees" panel and then proceeded to win it.

Patty Wells said that she had burned incense and sacrificed a goat for me. I thanked her for this, but suggested that it might have been more effective to bribe our mutual friend John Lorentz, who had counted the ballots. She replied that John is one of the most incorruptible people she knows, and anyway what could she bribe him with? "A goat dinner," I said.

The time arrived for us to move out into the hall, where we sat with Campbell nominee Sarah Monette and her co-author and Campbell presenter Elizabeth Bear in the center of the second row. I commented to Sarah that when you're really nervous your heart doesn't beat faster, just deeper. She agreed.

The ceremony went on, with the speeches and the Big Heart and the Seiun and the Campbell awards. Sarah cheered mightily for John Scalzi, so clearly she wasn't too badly crushed by her loss. And now that the non-Hugos had been taken care of, the Short Story award must come next.

But no. Next came the artist and the fan and the semi-prozine awards. And then the editor and dramatic presentation and best related book. And I started to realize that Short Story was one of the evening's major awards.

Which was presented by Harlan Ellison. Who, whatever I may think of him personally, is surely a major figure in the field. He gave a long talk about how short stories are the heart of science fiction, and how the Short Story Hugo is really the "big one," and he read the names of the nominees, and he pronounced my name and the title of my story correctly. And he tore open the envelope.

And then he said "I'm not gonna tell you" and started to walk off the stage. But he was dragged back to the mike. And he spoke into that mike and his voice boomed out and he said -- no, not "and the winner is," nor the politically correct "and the Hugo goes to" -- he said "Levine? You here?"

"Yeah?" I managed.

"Getcher ass up here."

I think I said "oh shit oh god oh jesus" or something like that instead of "excuse me" as I rushed past Sarah and Elizabeth and anyone else who had the misfortune to be seated between me and the aisle. I was moving so fast when I hit the stairs that they broke into two sections, the lower section sliding sideways by about six inches. I got up on stage and Harlan was standing there with his arms outstretched and I gave him an enormous hug. In fact, I climbed him like a spider monkey. In the photos you can see that he was holding the Hugo in one hand, and it's just good luck that no one was hurt, because that thing's heavy and very very pointy.

You have to understand that I have been in fandom since I was sixteen years old. Winning a Hugo Award has always been the pinnacle of possible achievements that I could reasonably aspire to. And here I had won it -- I had won a Hugo of my very own. My little story about a guy and some bugs was going to be listed with "Soldier, Ask Not" and "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "Neutron Star" and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones." Written in the Book of Life forever.

I read my prepared speech, including the top line: "2006 Hugo acceptance speech, which will never be used," which got a laugh, and although I was trembling all over I managed to hold it together and not start sobbing until I got off stage, where Janice Gelb held me up and offered me water, which I was silly enough to refuse.

I spent the rest of the evening grinning maniacally and clutching the Hugo to my chest, so much so that my right bicep was sore for the rest of the convention. I just couldn't believe my good fortune. I had totally not expected to win. And, indeed, "Singing My Sister Down" had the most votes in the first round, and my story won only because it received more second- and third-place votes from people whose first and second choices were eliminated in later rounds. This is exactly the effect our preferential voting system is designed to achieve: finding the nominee that is most acceptable to the most voters.

Many wonderful things happened after the ceremony ended. Ellen Klages pointed out that she'd won a Nebula after wearing a chicken suit at the Tiptree auction and I'd won a Hugo after wearing the same suit -- it must be a lucky chicken suit, we should charge authors money to wear it. I was invited to perform the ceremonial breaching of the sake cask at the post-Hugo party (hosted by Nippon in 2007), and I did the best I could, although the little wooden mallet they gave me wasn't up to the job. I ran into Geoff Landis, who tore the Past Hugo Winner ribbon off his name badge and gave it to me. I made a delirious round of parties, surrounded by people who wanted to congratulate me and take my photo and tell me how much they liked my story. And I think they really meant it.

Edward Morris posted on the Asimov's website's message board later: "David Levine was on cloud 9 from outer space the whole night. I have never seen a human being so transported with joy. Good for him."

Just before I drifted off to sleep, about 2am, I realized that the four fiction winners this year were Spin (one of the best SF novels I've read in years), Connie Willis (the Hugo-winningest author of all), Peter S. Beagle (author of the classic The Last Unicorn)... and me. Omigod.

Later, I awoke in the night and made my way in the dark to the desk, to touch the Hugo, to make sure it was still there.

Sunday: "Here, kid. Have a torch."

I woke up the next morning still weepy about the whole experience. The first task of the day was to go to the convention office and pick up the promised box to keep the Hugo safe on its way home. But no one on duty first thing in the morning knew where the boxes were. So I carried the Hugo around for a while, enduring much ribbing (um, partially deserved) about not wanting to put it down, before my reading.

About a half-dozen people came to my reading, only one of whom I knew. I answered questions for a while, then read "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" which will be appearing in F&SF later this year -- I'd picked that story because it's short and upbeat. During the hour Francesca Myman and Ulrika O'Brien showed up, and we chatted together as we left so that I forgot I'd promised to stop by kids' programming and show off the Hugo. Oops.

I returned to the convention office, where I discovered that the boxes provided, while perfectly good for mailing, were huge, so I just wrapped it in bubble-wrap. It was still too big to fit in my carryon bag, though.

I met up with Kate at the Ray Bradbury talk. This was one of the program items I absolutely did not want to miss, because Bradbury doesn't travel and isn't getting any younger. They wheeled him up on the stage, put a mike in his face, and he proceeded to talk rivetingly for an hour about his life, about how he'd sold two novels he didn't even know he'd written, how he'd channeled Herman Melville while writing the screenplay of Moby Dick, and how Robert Heinlein and Leigh Brackett and the other pro writers had been so good to him when he was a teenage kid, and when he was done I looked down at the little Hugo in my lap and I got all weepy again.

After that I said to Kate "Okay, the convention's over now." I bought a canvas bag at Scott and Jane Dennis's souvenir stand that said "Space Cadet Class of 2006" and was just big enough to contain the bubble-wrapped Hugo. Then I joined Kate at the Starbuck's in the Marriott, where she'd already obtained me a panini for lunch. We went back to the room then, but I looked at the Hugo, whose bubbles were already beginning to pop, and decided that it needed more protection. So I went back to the convention office, where I hauled out my long-dormant architecture-student skills and my Swiss Army knife, and I crafted a close-fitting cardboard protector for the Hugo. It fit very tidily into the Space Cadet bag.

At this point there was about an hour before our final dinner rendezvous of the convention, so I went to the bar and hung out with Jay Lake, Diana Sherman, Bridget Coila, and many other writers, several of whom I hadn't seen before at the con. As I talked with Jay I noticed a peculiar thing: while Jay and I were talking, everyone else was keeping mum and just listening. It made me want to try to be especially profound or something.

We had a nice Vietnamese dinner with New York fan Lise Eisenberg; at another table in the same restaurant was a large group including Francesca Myman. The food was really good but they didn't seem to understand the concept of "we're finished now, please bring us the check." Once we finally extracted ourselves we went back to the room and packed up our stuff, getting to sleep around 10pm.

Monday: "I can't take that from you, because it might go boom."

We finished packing and checked out, leaving our bags in the car, then caught a shuttle to Disneyland -- actually Disney's California Adventure, because we'd given it only one day on our previous trip and there were several rides there we really wanted to do again. When we arrived at the park, early enough that we were first in line at the gate, someone wearing mouse ears congratulated me on the Hugo win.

Disney has a very confused notion of what it means to "open." The posted opening time for the park was 10am, but at 9:30 an exceptionally cheery gentleman showed up and led all the people in line in a big count-down for the opening of the park. But though we got our tickets stamped and entered the park, none of the rides were going yet, so all we could do was mob at the rope closing the entrance to the Hollywood district and wait for another half-hour. But we overheard a park employee mention to someone else that Soaring Over California, one of our favorite rides, was already running, so we walked over there, rode that, and came back to the Hollywood entrance just in time for the rope to drop.

In Hollywood we rode the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror -- where I got so wrapped up in the Twilight Zone stuff (they have several original props, or possibly just accurate re-creations, in the pre-ride and post-ride areas) that I actually forgot that the elevator drops, so I got a nice shock out of the ride. Then we rode Monsters Inc., the California Screamin' rollercoaster, and the Mulholland Madness mad-mouse in short order -- thus hitting every one of our "really want to do this" rides by 11am. First thing on a non-holiday Monday the park was practically deserted, and there were no lines to speak of. In some ways this made it less exciting, and exacerbated the California park's excess of white space, but I can't really complain.

Having hit every ride we really wanted to ride, we took half an hour to take the tortilla factory and sourdough bread bakery tours, which were entertaining and provided a nice morning snack for free. Then we rode Screamin' one more time (by this time the line had grown to 20 minutes, but we'd picked up a Fastpass on our first visit so we were able to skip most of it) and left the park.

I've already posted about the catch-22 at the airport security gate. At the airport we ran into Laura Majerus, Amy Thomson, and Edd Vick, Jay Lake, and Mike Moscoe. In fact, Jay and Mike were both on the same plane as us, and Jay had the Campbell regalia in his luggage, so if that plane had gone down the field would have been devastated. But it did not, and we arrived home safe and sound.

After Return: "I'm happy, shaggy, wet, stinky, brave, sloppy, and dark -- I must be a Newfie!"

That was a week ago. I went to work on Tuesday with the Hugo, planning to say "Hey, let me show you this cute little souvenir I picked up at the convention," but the guys in my department had already put up posters all over the office announcing my Hugo win, with pictures from the midamericon.org site. I didn't get a lot of work done the first day back, with people coming by to congratulate me and admire the Hugo.

I haven't gotten any writing done since then (or during the convention, either). Most of my keyboard time in the last week has been taken up with answering email, much of it congratulatory. I hope to get back to the writing today. After much talking with Jay Lake and others about the value of writing fast, once I finish the novella I may try to whomp out one more short story -- in one week, tops -- before diving into novel #2.

On Friday we had a celebratory gathering at the Barley Mill pub. About 30 people attended, and it got kind of crowded -- one person described it as "like a Tor party, but without a balcony to cool off on" -- but everyone seemed to be having a good time. In addition to hanging out with many long-time fan and writer buddies, I made several new friends and got an invitation to a panel discussion at Free Geek about the value of craftsmanship.

This weekend, as Kate has blogged, we hosted Kate's sister Sue and the three nieces, and spent a lot of time on miscellaneous household chores. We've gotten a lot done, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. So it goes.

Chop wood, carry water.

Posted 09/04/2006 11:16 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

As most of those reading this already know, my story "Tk'Tk'Tk" won the Hugo for Best Short Story. I am, in brief, stunned. I really, really didn't expect this. I literally sobbed with joy when I received the award (from Harlan Ellison, no less), I spent most of the next twenty-four hours clutching the Hugo and grinning like a maniac -- I mean, even more than usually -- and I'm still stopping in my tracks and going "wow" at intervals. This is a phenomenal honor and I am just plain overwhelmed.

The complete voting results and details are here. Some photos from the award ceremony can be found here.

I just got back from Los Angeles tonight, after being off-Net for the last week, and I will respond to the many congratulatory emails as soon as I get a chance. One thing that's slowing the process down is that I have to examine all the spams with subject lines like "Congratulations!" and "You won!" to see if any of them are actually from friends of mine.

A proper con report is forthcoming, but I thought I ought to clear up a few things:

1. Humping Harlan's leg. As you probably already know, I am a toon. I can and will do anything as long as it's funny. In particular, I will often put one leg behind the other person when engaged in a big fat hug. This is a joke I've done so often I just about can't stop myself. Under the circumstances it seemed the thing to do. Soon it will be all over the net... but I survived the Chicken Suit Incident, and I'll survive this. Most people seemed pleased by my enthusiasm.
2. Breaching the sake keg. All I can say is that I did the best I could with the inadequate mallet provided, and I sure hope that failure to break the lid on the first blow isn't a bad omen.
3. Does winning the Hugo help your career? So far, signs are positive. I've already received offers for Czech and Italian rights for the winning story, been solicited to contribute to an anthology, and received at least one email with the subject line "No One I've Seen Naked Has Ever Gotten A Hugo Before (I Think)." Well, maybe that last one isn't really a career thing.
4. Getting the Hugo home. There was much discussion and debate at-con about the advisability of attempting to bring a large, heavy, and very pointy rocket-shaped object in carry-on luggage. I thought I was being practical when I decided I'd ask at the security gate if I could carry it on, and if the answer was no I'd put it in my checked luggage. But no, practicality and the TSA have nothing to do with each other. Consider this Catch-22: I couldn't get an opinion from the TSA agent as to whether I could bring a bag on board until it had been X-rayed; I couldn't go through the X-ray line without a boarding pass, nor could I hand my bag to the TSA agent to be X-rayed; and even if I could get a boarding pass without checking my checked bag, it would be rejected when I took it through the security line.

   The best I could hope for was an awkward and peculiar boarding process involving a minimum of two passes through the very slow security line, whether or not the Hugo passed X-ray muster. So to save time I just packed it in the middle of my checked bag. Which arrived on time and in good shape. The trophy's on the Radiola in the dining room right now.

Tired now. More later.

See also Kate's perspective.

Posted 08/28/2006 22:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Up until a few days ago I considered the F&SF Slush Bomb of women writers proposed by Charlie Finlay for 8/18 (see here) to be of only academic interest to me. But late Wednesday I realized that the New Orleans story, which I was planning to revise and submit to F&SF as soon as I was done with the revisions on the novella, had a female co-author. Duh! So I took the train to work on Thursday, laptop in hand, and tackled the revisions during my commute.

I finished the revisions on Thursday night, then we joined my co-author Andrine de la Rocha and her housemates at their home on Friday for a previously-planned get-together. After a truly wonderful dinner, we looked at Andrine's photos from her trip to New Orleans (it was weird to see actual photographs of scenes that until now I'd only visualized from Andrine's diary -- many of which made it into the story), after which I gave a reading of the story. I put it into an envelope that night, though it wasn't picked up by my mail carrier until today.

I don't know if this really counts as part of the Slush Bomb, both because I'm not of the designated gender and because it lacks the 8/18 postmark. But it is done and in the mail.

I feel pretty good about this one. I've never written anything so explicitly based on real people and incidents, and it makes me a little nervous, but since I have everyone's permission I'm sure it's okay.

Today we attended a delightful backyard party where various fans and geeks, many of whom I hadn't seen in years, feasted on fresh roasted corn and burgers. In the evening we watched the intriguing and puzzling film Primer (I enjoyed it, which is not to say I understood it completely) and I added nearly a hundred words to the novella. And now to bed -- tomorrow is my last day before the Worldcon with any free time and I have a lot to get done.

Oh, and Bento is back from the printer and looks fabulous. We'll be handing out copies at the Worldcon, and mailing them shortly thereafter to people who aren't there.

Posted 08/19/2006 23:48 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Spent most of the time since my last post producing another issue of Bento. Yes, each issue of our nearly-Hugo-nominated zine takes about one week to write, edit, lay out, and paste up. It's at the printer now and we should have copies at the Worldcon.

No writing during that time, but I did get back into it after taking the zine to the printer on Monday. I'm grinding slowly through the edits on the novella... slowly because it's hard to make the changes I'm trying to make, and because I don't have a lot of time for it. Some days the word count goes up, some days it goes down, rarely more than 50 words plus or minus. One day I worked for forty-five minutes and achieved a net wordcount change of one word.

I did get a couple small bits of writing egoboo: a college professor asked permission to use my story "The Last McDougals" in a freshman seminar on science fiction (along with a lot of other stories by better-known writers) and someone on LiveJournal whom I don't know recommended two of my stories (available online) as reading for English-as-a-second-language learners. Also, an excerpt from "Primates" has been posted at the Asimov's website.

We leave for Anaheim in six days. I have tons of stuff that needs to be done before then. We're waffling over whether or not to go to Disneyland again. And a voice in my head is trying to tell me that I might win the Hugo after all. I'm trying to slap it down. Not going to win no way nohow. I'd rather get myself in a frame of mind where a loss is expected and a win would be a pleasant surprise, rather than one where a win is expected and a loss would be a disappointment. But I don't think it's working.

My final Worldcon schedule:

• What I Do When I Should be Writing: Wednesday 2:30-4:00pm
• Mix & Match Writing Challenge: Wednesday 4:00-5:30pm
• Writers Workshop (closed session): Thursday 1:00-4:00pm
• Autographs at the Asimov's table in the dealers' room: Thursday 4:00-5:00pm
• Physics of Superheroes: Friday 11:30am-1:00pm
• Zen Scavenger Hunt: Friday 4:00-5:30pm
• Intermediate Writing: Friday 5:30-7:00pm
• Is SF Like a Shark?: Saturday 2:30-4:00pm
• Hugo Ceremony: Saturday 8:00-10:00pm
• Reading: Sunday 11:00am-12:00pm

(Not gonna win. No way nohow. Never gonna happen. Nuh uh.)

Posted 08/16/2006 23:26 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Since my last post the editing has been moving forward slowly. Most days I only add or subtract a few dozen words. I've been waffling over how much planetology is really needed to set up the ending, and trying to find a way to cram in an explanation of some backstory that most of my critiquers didn't pick up on. The problem I have is that, the way I write, by the time a story is ready for critique it's pretty much a hermetic whole. I find that there just isn't any place to put in even a single extra sentence without breaking the rhythm of the scene, and taking information out generally leaves something hanging someplace else. So making even minor changes involves fairly severe restructuring. Which means a lot more thinking than typing, and quite often finds me putting it back the way it was in the first place. I just love my own deathless prose too much.

Also since my last post, I've gotten another rejection (that story, at least, is already back in the mail), and the August Locus, containing reviews of the September Asimov's. Alas, Nick Gevers found my story "unconvincing" and Rich Horton didn't see fit to mention it at all (though he did say he'd been unimpressed with the issue as a whole). Le sigh.

I also got my preliminary Worldcon schedule, and I'm mighty happy with it. I got two readings, and I'm on panels with some very keen people. But I'm going to be a very busy boy:

• Wed 2:30pm: What I Do When I Should Be Writing with Fiona Avery, Phyllis Eisenstein, and Sarah Monette.
• Wed 4:00pm: Mix & Match Writing Challenge with John Barnes, Peter S. Beagle, K. A. Bedford, and Valerie Estelle Frankel. "Authors are presented with a character description for a well-known character, the setting of a (different) famous work, and a brief plot description of still another work. Without knowing their sources, they create and tell a story on the fly." I'm moderator for this one, so I might be handing out the assignments rather than playing.
• Thu 5:30pm: Themed Reading: Weird Sex with Cecilia Tan and Sean Williams. Shall I read the ovipositor sex scene from Remembrance Day or the all-dialogue biotech sex toy implant short-short?
• Fri 4:00pm: Zen Scavenger Hunt with Pat Cadigan, John Pomeranz, Geri Sullivan, and Mary A. Turzillo. "Panelists each bring ten items. Audience members ask for a type of item, a la a standard scavenger hunt. The panelists will then have to show one of the items they've brought and try to convince the audience that their item is the best match for what was requested." Should be fun.
• Fri 5:30pm: Intermediate Writing with Jay Lake, Mike Shepherd Moscoe, and Deborah J Ross.
• Sat 10:00am, Jay Lake Roast with Christopher J. Garcia, Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen, and (duh) Jay Lake. I'm moderator of this one, God help me. If anyone reading this has any Jay Lake anecdotes or wants to participate in the roast, drop me an email.
• Sat 2:30pm, Is SF Like a Shark? with Charles N. Brown, John-Henri Holmberg, Don Sakers, and Vernor Vinge.
• Sun 11:00am, Reading. Please do come. I'm told my readings are quite entertaining.

I will also have an autograph session at the Asimov's table in the dealer's room, not that I expect anyone to want my scrawl; I have a writers' workshop section; and of course I will be at the Hugos. See (many of) you there!

Posted 08/02/2006 23:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Got a lot of chores done. Had a long talk with Sara from my critique group about the novella, which helped me understand that despite the logic and motivation problems, the story's emotional core is in good shape and the problems are surmountable. Worked out a checklist of changes to make and began picking away at the edits. For breakfast this morning: blackberry pancakes. For dinner tonight: Chicken, Charred Tomato, and Broccoli Salad.

Life is good.

Posted 07/30/2006 22:40 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

When I got home from work today, the first step in making dinner was to take out the compost. As I headed out to the compost bin I noticed three spectacular blackberry canes looping over the back fence, like the Martian's fingers in the commercials for the War of the Worlds TV show from a few years back. I wanted to go out and hack at them right then, but Kate restrained me for the sake of getting dinner on the table.

It was a good thing she did. When I got out back, limb-loppers in hand, I found that the three big canes (the largest of which rose about ten feet high and was thicker than my thumb) were only the vanguard of a massive invasion force, thorny and heavy with fruit. I whacked at them for about forty-five minutes, and would probably have been completely overwhelmed except that our neighbors (the best neighbors in the entire universe) came by just then. Pat, who's much taller than I, was just barely able to cut the tallest cane with the loppers at their longest extension, while Michelle and five-year-old Rowan gamely helped denude the invading canes of their evil (and delicious) seed-bearing fruit. While I cut up the canes and gingerly transferred them to the yard debris bin, the neighbors picked about five pints of berries and left one of them for us. I'm more than happy with the deal. They'll be back for more berries in a couple of days.

Writing news: Four of my stories received Honorable Mentions in Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction: "A Book is a Journey," "Circle of Compassion," "The Ecology of Faerie," and "Tk'Tk'Tk." Which is, um, everything I published in 2005 except for "The Curse of Beazoel."

I'm going to go edit the novella some more now. Blackberries and yogurt await for dessert.

Posted 07/26/2006 21:03 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Yesterday was a good writing day. I got my subscription copy of the September 2006 Asimov's, including my story "Primates." My name's on the cover! Also, the issue has already been