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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12/31/07: David's Index for 2007

Novel words written: 79,453
Short fiction words written: 5,121
Notes, outline, and synopsis words written: 3,074
Blog words written: 27,076
Total words written: 114,724

New stories written: 1
Existing stories revised: 2

Short fiction submissions sent: 27
Responses received: 31
Rejections: 27
Acceptances: 2 (1 pro, 1 semi-pro)
Other sales: 4 (1 reprint, 2 translations, 1 unpublished story as part of collection)
Awaiting response: 5

Short stories published: 10 (2 pro, 1 semi-pro, 1 reprint, 5 translations, 1 audio)

Novel submissions: 5
Rejections: 4
Acceptances: 0
Awaiting response: 1

Collection submissions: 1
Rejections: 0
Acceptances: 1

Award nominations: 0

Happy New Year!

Posted 12/31/2007 19:44 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 84072 | Since last entry: 2685

Neither of us has relatives nearby, and as Kate's brother is in retail, her brother-in-law provides customer support for something that doesn't stop even during holidays, and her mother's a deacon, there would be no point in trying to visit them at Christmas. We'll be gathering the clan in late January, as usual. So for now, we have nothing to do but hang out with our friends. I think we have some kind of party or dinner every single day this week and next.

Today we got up around 8:30 and made banana-buttermilk pancakes before opening our presents to each other. I got Kate an iPod-dock-radio (I found one with knobs rather than tiny little buttons), the new Linda Thompson CD, and a promise to clear off the mantelpiece and the floor on my side of the bed by January 15. She got me the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD, a big bag of popcorn, and a decorative glass dragonfly.

In some ways Christmas is no different than any other day, now that I'm not working. But it was very quiet when we went for a walk in the neighborhood, and everywhere we saw empty parking lots and darkened shops that are otherwise always bustling. And then... snow! A light dusting, just enough to stick, and the air just cold enough to justify earmuffs. Just enough to make the day special, not enough to be a hassle. Perfect.

We spent the rest of the morning cleaning and cooking for Boxing Day, when we're having a couple friends over. In the afternoon and evening, our traditional movie-and-squid with our friend Michael. This year's movie was Enchanted, which was even better than I'd expected, followed by, as always, the best pepper-salted squid on the planet. After dinner, another thousand words on the novel.

I like my life.

Here's hoping your day was as fine.

Posted 12/25/2007 22:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 81387 | Since last entry: 1849

If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would get done. Stayed up until 2am to get chapter 11 finished, and sent it off for critique this morning. I've been so productive lately that I was sure I would get this chapter done early, and start in on the next right away, but this one turned out about one and a half times as long as most of the other chapters. Lots of stuff is happening now. I am a cruel god to my characters.

Also yesterday, being the Solstice, there was festivating to be done. Started off the day at the gym, then drove out to Beaverton to have lunch with the guys I used to work with. It was so comfortable and familiar that, when we got back to the office, I was just about to sit down and get back to whatever I had been working on before lunch when I realized I didn't work there any more. In the afternoon, we found a tree, hauled it home, and put it up. I wanted to put up outdoor lights as well, since it wasn't raining, but at that point I needed to fall over, so I did.

A simple dinner, then a holiday party dance with the "C-Dogs" Challenge square dancers (hosted and called by M, who is doing much much better though he still can't work or drive). Challenge dancing is really more like walking to music, but I still managed to do something to my left calf (which has been giving me minor problems for months, on and off) on the last tip. Ow.

Posted 12/22/2007 11:32 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 79538 | Since last entry: 1215

Day go voom. But I know exactly what I was doing every hour.

We started off by packing up all our Christmas presents that need to be shipped, then got them to the UPS store first thing. From there Kate went off to take our friend M to a dentist appointment.

Next I called an accountant and talked with him for an hour -- my current tax guy is not going to be doing individual accounts much longer and I need a new one, someone who understands both investments and writing. This guy sounds like he'll fill the bill nicely. Next I wrapped up Kate's presents. All present-related tasks are now done (well, I still have one thing to do for Kate, but that won't take long). Then the electrician arrived, right on schedule, to fix a dead light fixture in the kitchen and install an electrical outlet on the front of the house for outdoor Christmas lights. I ate lunch while he was doing that.

Shortly after the electrician left, I discovered that the dead light fixture, which we had both seen come back to life as soon as he wiggled it and had both agreed was just a loose wire, was dead again. Wiggling the wire did not help. However, because I'd seen him disassemble it I now could attempt a diagnosis that I'd been unable to do before. I hauled out my old voltmeter and determined that power was making it as far as the fixture (beyond where we thought the loose wire had been), and because all three (low-wattage halogen) bulbs were out it was probably a bad transformer.

Took the fixture down and drove to A-Boy for a new one. They didn't have that brand, but suggested a couple places that might. Used my fancy-pants phone in the parking lot to call around, and found one place that had exactly one in stock. Asked them to hold it for me. Drove across town, bought the fixture, came home, installed it. One of the (expensive low-wattage halogen) bulbs was broken when I took it out of the box, but I just swapped it out for one of the ones from the old dead fixture. Success! Proper illumination for that corner of the kitchen for the first time in months.

Fixed dinner (broccoli and tofu in spicy peanut sauce, a household favorite). Sat down to write. 1200 words later, watched half of the pilot of ER (a recent DVD acquisition) with Kate. Blogged. Bed. Tomorrow is another day.

Posted 12/20/2007 23:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 78323 | Since last entry: 1810

Being retired means that I can get kind of disconnected from the calendar. We often don't know what day of the week it is, and (you may find this hard to believe) we actually haven't really felt the pressure of Christmas approaching. Some years it's kind of snuck up on us, but this year it really pounced. As of this morning I had purchased exactly three presents, and we have no tree nor lights.

The good news is, I'm retired. So we drove downtown and did our shopping, and now I'm done with that. The crowds weren't too bad, even this close to Christmas, given that we were shopping on a weekday. We will wrap the presents tonight, and they'll go in the mail tomorrow. Also tomorrow, the electrician is coming to install an electrical outlet on the front of the house, so we can put up lights (as we haven't been able to do since we replaced our porch light with a compact fluorescent fixture that doesn't support those screw-in plug adapter thingies we used to use). We'll get a tree soon.

Meanwhile, I've had a number of interesting writing and other workshop opportunities appear for next year. They're all cool, but even for me there's only so much time and money, so I'm going to have to make some hard choices. One unpleasant surprise: the workshop I want to take this novel to has a deadline at the beginning of March, not April as I'd thought. So I have to double my productivity if I'm going to get the damn thing done in time. A thousand words a day should do it.

So I wrote a thousand words today. It's getting easier now that the plot is really starting to accelerate, but we'll see how long I can keep this up.

Posted 12/19/2007 21:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 76513 | Since last entry: 2587

The other day Kate said that she was really feeling oppressed by clutter, so I've been watching out for places to do something about that. I got all the dishes done this weekend, yesterday we sorted out a box of posters, and today we completed a major swath of decluttering that began when Kate got a new stereo for her car.

Now that Kate's car is CD-based rather than cassette-based, you see, there was no real reason to keep most of our stash of music cassettes. The only ones to stay were those that will never exist on CD (like the recording of my college synthesizer class final project) and/or have sentimental value (like the copy of Billy Joel's Storm Front we bought while driving across France, with its 50F price sticker). Of the rest, about 1/4 are commercial cassettes (they go to Goodwill), 3/4 are cassette copies of music we own on CD (those will just have to be recycled, probably through GreenDisk), and about a dozen are filk (those will be donated to some fan fund).

After taking down the cassette racks, we now had several empty shelves, which I thought might be just about large enough to hold the CDs that have been piled up all over the house because there was no room to shelve them. I hauled out the power drill and made new holes in order to mount the extra shelf which we'd bought years ago for just such an emergency. We then sorted out the CDs onto the now-CD-sized shelves, and lo and behold they all fit with about 6" to spare.

The final step will be a Goodwill run to dispose of the commercial cassettes and the old, ugly cassette storage boxes. We also have some nicer cassette storage boxes (4 silver wire mesh units, kind of like this but with 4 cassette-size drawers each) which Kate thinks would be a shame to take to Goodwill, as it's so hard to find decent cassette storage these days. If anyone in Portland has cassettes (or anything!) that need storage and would like these, just leave a comment in Kate's blog (there should be an entry for this very shortly, I can hear her tapping away in the next room).

Much else has been happening round here, including a delightful cheese party chez Jay Lake. I've been plugging away at the novel, making good but not spectacular progress; the good news is that the plot has really begun to pick up steam, and the climax is now visible somewhere down the track. Exciting though this is, I will need to make space for a short story project very soon.

Posted 12/17/2007 17:16 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 73926 | Since last entry: 618

I really feel like I wasted a lot of today. I spent the entire morning creating a planning calendar for our 2008 travel, which took entirely too long because Excel 2004 on the Mac doesn't seem to be able to align text properly and has two different ideas about what a cell's background pattern should look like, depending on whether or not the cell also has a colored background. I finally switched the file over to the trial edition of Numbers (haven't yet decided whether to pony up the $80 for iWork), which handled the text spacing much better but has issues of its own with patterns and colors. This is, of course, far more work than the problem really deserves.

Then I went to lunch with some local writers. Unfortunately, due to an unfortunate excess of health-related problems in the area only two other people showed up. Nice to see them, anyway.

In the afternoon, I worked on synchronizing my email address books (Palm, Gmail, and Mac), which turned out to be a painfully manual process. Got halfway through before my brain rebelled.

Fixed hash for dinner, using potatoes from the farm and some lovely leftover pork loin, then watched an episode of Torchwood before finally setting down to write. And, as you see, got 600 words, which is respectable, but I really need to be doing more like 1000 words a day to finish two chapters (instead of my usual one) for the next crit group meeting. I need to do that at least twice between now and April to make my deadline.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another day. (Bites radish.)

Posted 12/12/2007 22:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 73308 | Since last entry: 1304

A productive evening's writing at the coffee shop. It was only me and Jay Lake tonight, and Jay left a while ago, but I kept slowly plugging away. The plot is being fractious and not helping me to guide it to the right place, but I think some kind of confrontation is brewing even if it wasn't the one I had in mind. Also, Jay gave me some great writing-business tips. In exchange, I gave him my opinion (for whatever that's worth) on a novella of his which I think could be great if he just let it go in the direction it wants to go instead of the direction he wants it to go. But it's his novella and I wish him all the best with it.

Kate and I have been enjoying the latest season of Amazing Race and we keep thinking about what it would be like to compete for real (as opposed to the pretend version we had in Thailand). I think we could be good at it -- it is what we do for fun, after all -- except for the physical demands of some of the Detours and Roadblocks, and the whole going-without-food-and-sleep thing. I know that there are a couple of tour packages offering a semi-equivalent experience for money (a trip around the world with some competitive and adventure aspects, though without either the million-dollar prize or the possibility of elimination). I've also considered asking our friends to put together an itinerary for us (places to go and certain things to do or see) which we would then unseal bit by bit as we traveled. Could be kind of expensive, though, since we'd have to buy all the tickets on a last-minute basis. Kate's also considered adding an element of unpredictability to our travels by going to the first postcard rack we see in a new location, giving it a spin, and traveling to whatever is shown on a randomly-selected postcard.

I'm just putting together a calendar of all the SF and square-dancing events we want to attend next year. There's two or three events every month -- we're plainly not going to be able to do all of them, and if we add any non-convention-related international travel (we're thinking Venice/Vienna, and/or maybe Kate's delayed trip to Guadalajara) or just-visiting-friends domestic travel (Bay Area, New York, and Vancouver are among the candidates) we're going to have to forego even more. The paradox of choice is that too much choice makes one unhappy. But it's still good to have the options.

Posted 12/11/2007 22:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 72004 | Since last entry: 300

Back to work on the novel again. I must increase my pace if I'm going to have this thing finished and edited in time for a workshop in April that I want to take it to.

Meanwhile, a summary of my fiction publications for 2007.

• "Tale of the Golden Eagle," translated into Czech in the Czech edition of Fantasy & Science Fiction (February 2007).
• "Tk'Tk'Tk," translated into Italian in Robot (Spring 2007).
• "Tk'Tk'Tk," translated into Finnish in Portii Science Fiction (March 2007).
• "Titanium Mike Saves the Day," in Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 2007).
• "Babel Probe," in Darker Matter (issue #1)
• "Tk'Tk'Tk," translated into Hebrew in Bli-Panika.
• "Titanium Mike Saves the Day," translated into Hebrew in The Tenth Dimension.
• "I Hold My Father's Paws," reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection.
• "I Hold My Father's Paws," podcast in Beam Me Up.
• "Moonlight on the Carpet," in Aeon (#12).

Although that's a very satisfying list of publications (and I'm really jazzed about the Year's Best, which has gotten the story taught in at least two college-level science fiction classes), I note that it includes only three new stories. As far as short fiction goes, I'm reaping the rewards of spending most of the last couple of years working on as-yet-unsold novels. Once this novel is done I swear I'm going to do nothing but short stories for at least six months. (And no more damn novellas!)

Posted 12/09/2007 09:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 71704 | Since last entry: 0

Latkes for dinner tonight. Yum. Haven't lit a single Hanukkah candle yet this year, though. And once we are done with dinner we'll be off to see the Christmas Ships. I am a bad Jew.

Although the word-count-o-meter above shows zero, that only represents work on the novel. I've actually been working quite hard this week, finishing up edits on an invited short story. I got good crits on it, which helped me identify an entire character and scene that could be cut (the fact that the character appeared in only one scene should have pointed out to me how little he was doing for the story) to get the story from 6300 words down to the required 5000.

Unfortunately, after making that change and a few others, the story felt... meh. Workmanlike. It had plot and characters and all that, but it didn't grab me. I had it all printed out and ready to go in the mail, but I just couldn't. So today I gave it one last editing pass, just for me. Because the market is a humorous anthology, I went through and added a few funny lines here and there, and amped up the ridiculousness of a few situations. It's better. Probably good enough to get published, in an invite anthology (I hope!) but I don't feel great about it. I put it in the mail anyway.

But then, who am I to judge my own stuff? The ones I really love are the ones that never sell. And at some point I think all my stuff is crap. But going through the manuscripts trying to pick stories for the collection, I found that I really liked them.

Also today, received an 11-month rejection from F&SF on that damn novella. I emailed it to another market but it was immediately turned back as being too long. The only other major market that would take a novella is closed until March (at least). I've sent a query to a UK publisher that sometimes does novellas as chapbooks, but if those two don't pan out I think it may be the end of the line for this one, for a while at least. Mama, don't let your stories grow up to be novellas.

Posted 12/07/2007 18:41 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 71704 | Since last entry: 5586

Well. It's been three weeks since I've had a proper blog entry. Sorry about that.

It's been a busy few weeks. As an example of those Telling Details they're always telling us to put in, either "Pack" or "Unpack" has been on my to-do list nearly continuously during this time. Which means that I've either been just about to travel somewhere, just back from somewhere, or too busy (or lazy) to unpack the bag that's sitting in the middle of the living room.

I participated in a multi-author SF/Fantasy event at Powell's in Beaverton. It was apparently a success. I had a large pile of the current Year's Best Science Fiction and a very small pile of every other anthology this store had in stock with one of my stories. I managed to sell one or two YBSFs and all but one of the other anthologies. Also spent the evening hanging out with the other writers and playing with the pencils on the bench there, so it was a win all around.

I was a very busy boy at Orycon, between panels and workshops and dinners with friends. At the writers' workshop, the other pro and I found ourselves with a bit of time to discuss the manuscripts before the workshoppers arrived. One of the stories had a blind protagonist, and both of us thought that she was shown doing things that no blind person would actually be able to do and found her generally unconvincing. And then the workshopper came in and sat down, with the seeing eye dog she sat down... the moral of the story is that there's a difference between factually correct and believable.

I was on a lot of panels, which occupied most of the convention, but I didn't mind because they were all very good panels and I feel I owe my hometown convention a lot. I had about a dozen people for my reading, and I was told several times that I moderate well. I also spent most of Friday evening at the RadCon party (on the bed), because I will be Short Story Guest of Honor at RadCon in February, about which I am right chuffed. Orycon got a very nice article in the Oregonian, in which I had the honor of being mentioned in the same paragraph as Ursula K. Le Guin and Kate Wilhelm.

The best thing that happened at the con was learning that I have sold a collection of 15 of my previously-published short stories to Wheatland Press. A pre-publication edition should be available at RadCon, with the real edition available at WisCon. A whole book all to myself! I am most pleased. We are in discussions about title, cover, and introduction and I hope to have very exciting news on all these fronts shortly.

Right after the con we discussed The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett at our neighborhood book group. This first Discworld book is rather disjointed and episodic, and the characters are largely cruel and unsympathetic -- it doesn't reflect the later magnificence of Pratchett. But all of the seeds of what Discwould would eventually become are here, from Unseen University and the Librarian to Death and, of course, The Luggage. An interesting historical note.

We played host to our friend Lise from New York for several days after the con, then drove up to Vancouver BC for the annual Thanksgiving square dance. On the way we stopped in Seattle, at the home of Kate's sister Sue, where we had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat and didn't get up until the next morning when we all had to drive to Canada.

We managed to get past an accident at Mount Vernon that blocked all lanes of I-5 (yay Google Maps!), but then at the border we waited for two hours in a crowd of Canadians coming back from the day-after-Thanksgiving sales, flexing their Strong Canadian Dollars and kicking sand in the faces of ninety-eight-cent weaklings. All in all it took nearly an entire day to drive the 120 miles from Seattle to Vancouver, but the fly-in was tons of fun. As usual, we enjoyed the hospitality of Will Martin, the calling of Anne Uebelacker and Grant Ito, and another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat.

After returning from Thanksgiving I focused my attention on my writing, shamefully neglected during the previous two weeks. I managed to pound out over 2500 words yesterday, by dint of working diligently (though not continuously) from 10am to 1am, and finished chapter 10 of my second novel in time for today's critique group meeting. 2500 words in one day might be a record for me. I don't understand how some people are capable of 5,000-word or even 12,000-word days. Part of this is almost certainly because I edit as I go and my first drafts are in publishable shape (in terms of words, sentences, and general coherency, anyway... the story always benefits substantially from critique, and often changes dramatically before it is ready for submission). I sometimes wish I had a different process, but this seems to be the way I work.

In other writing news, Issue 12 of the e-zine Aeon Speculative Fiction, containing my rather short story "Moonlight on the Carpet" and over a hundred pages of other fine stories, is now available for purchase in Microsoft Reader (.LIT) format. Other formats will be available soon. And I received the contracts for another sale to Aeon, novelette "The True Story of Merganther's Run," along with the pleasant surprise that Aeon has doubled its pay rate from 3 to 6 cents per word. That story is tentatively scheduled for Aeon 15 (August 2008).

During this time we also spent a lot of time and emotional energy on our friend M, who had to go into the hospital with (still undiagnosed at this writing) serious problems with vision, balance, and cognition. Special thanks to Robin Catesby for taking care of M's dog for most of two weeks. He is supposed to return home on Sunday, which will be a big improvement even though we all know this story is far from over.

And that was November.

Posted 12/01/2007 23:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 66118 | Since last entry: 445

Back on the novel chain gang, with 445 words on chapter 10. It's not exactly NaNoWriMo speed, but it's not too shabby. I'll have to keep up this pace or more on my writing days to make my next (self-imposed) deadline, given the fact that OryCon and Thanksgiving both fall between now and then.

The short story ended up at 6300 words, which means I wrote 2500 words on Friday, which is huge for me. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Unfortunately, this market has a hard limit of 5000 words and I did not have time for an editing pass before sending the story to critique. It will probably be easier to edit it down after it's been critiqued (and has lain fallow for three weeks) anyway. I think there's a certain amount of repetition, duplication, redundancy, and redundancy that can be trimmed, but it might take a bit more than that to get it down to 5000 words. Whatever. I've done this before and I know I can do it again.

Spent much of this weekend at Wordstock, Portland's annual "festival of the book." Attended many readings, some by people you might have heard of, such as Patrick McManus (Never Sniff a Gift Fish) and Peter Sagal (public radio's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me). All the readings I went to were entertaining, especially the one by Ann Marie Fleming (The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam). Between readings, browsed the booths from local presses (and some not so local), writers' organizations, and bookstores. This year's Wordstock, the third, didn't seem as well organized and didn't have as many big names as previous years, but it wound up being more fun than I'd thought it would be.

I love this town.

Posted 11/11/2007 23:14 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65673 | Since last entry: 0

No novel work this week, but I've been powering away at a new short story -- 3800 words so far, limit is 5000, first draft will probably come in about 6500. I really want to get this one done by Saturday; it'll be a near thing.

The cold I had last week is still hanging on a bit, no doubt because I took such good care of myself at World Fantasy (cough). Kate's also draggy, coughy, and phlegmy. Between the two I have not exactly been leaping out of bed in the morning, sometimes schlumpfing about in my bathrobe until as late as noon. I don't want this to become a regular thing.

A few missed notes from World Fantasy: thanks to Dierdre S. Moen for consultation on this story, wowzers to Deanna Hoak for showing up in a phenomenal dress that showed off all her chakras, and nods to new pal Todd Lockwood. I met Todd at O'Hare on the way to the con, where we comisserated on the almost complete absence of publicly-accessible power outlets. Then we kept passing each other in the hall at the con, giving each other the same "I know that guy, but where from?" look but never really intersecting. And then we wound up on the same flight back to O'Hare on Monday, where we had a very nice chat in the departure lounge. Turns out he's next year's WFC artist guest of honor! Small world.

We've seen Blade Runner: The Final Cut and a play called The Underpants in the last couple of days. You wouldn't think that Blade Runner really needed yet another cut, and yet this one is just marvelous. The changes are numerous but subtle, including replacing the obvious stunt double with Joanna Cassidy's actual face and fixing the mouth movements in the scene where Decker assaults the Egyptian so they match the dialog. It all adds up to an improvement you can feel, but not actually see. This 25-year-old SF movie holds up astonishingly well. The Underpants, written by Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin) based on a German play from 1911, wasn't nearly as memorable. Despite some fine performances, the whole thing was weighed down by over-broad comedy and a lack of surprises.

Remember that community college class that was studying "I Hold My Father's Paws"? I can't link to the class discussion, because it's password-protected, but the instructor's lecture on "Paws" and "The Best Christmas Ever" by James Patrick Kelly is publicly available in text and audio format. I'm just flabberghasted. I didn't put any of that stuff in on purpose, but all of those cultural and historical references are entirely valid and I can believe that I had many or all of them in mind at a subconscious level. It's great to get such a thoughtful outside perspective on my own writing process.

One last reminder: I will be participating in a "Local/NW Sci-Fi Authorfest" with 13 other authors at Powell's Cedar Hills next Wednesday, November 14, at 7pm. Hope to see some of you there!

Posted 11/09/2007 10:31 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65673 | Since last entry: 0

Despite the time change and the fact that I had set my alarm clock but failed to turn the alarm on, got to the con just in time to rendezvous with Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and, um, two others for breakfast as planned. Marvelous conversation over a couple of Swedish oatmeal pancakes with real maple syrup.

Got back to the con around 10:30 and kicked around, mostly in the dealers' room, talking with various folks (including Sharyn November, Laura Anne Gilman, and Gordon van Gelder) until the banquet at 1pm. I wound up at a table with K. Tempest Bradford, Steve Nagy, Jim Minz, and World Fantasy Award judges Jeremy Lassen, Gavin Grant, and Carsten Polzin. We discussed the judging process, and many other things, over a nice salmon dinner. Master of Ceremonies Guy Gavriel Kay led off with a heartfelt memorial to Robert Jordan, then lightened things up with a long fairy tale in which the names and/or titles all of the nominees were embedded as puns and the big bad Gary K. Wolfe had a speaking part. The awards ceremony itself was straightforward and ended exactly on time; results are posted elsewhere.

Hung around the lobby for a few hours, chatting with the departing multitude, until Mark Rich (a writer and toy enthusiast from Wisconsin whom I knew slightly from previous cons) invited me to dinner along with his partner Margaret Borchart, Locus photographer Beth Gwinn, and Locus webmaster Mark Kelly. We went across the street to a delightful little Italian restaurant crammed with WFC people, where my "personal" pizza proved to be big enough for tomorrow's breakfast as well (Italian Cheese Toast, a guilty pleasure).

Very quiet back at the con, as the few remaining people filtered back from dinner. I wound up having a long chat with Ellen Klages in which she cheered me up, as she often does, by reminding me how many wonderful things I have in my life even though I don't have a published novel. "Best outcome," she said, meaning (I think) that if you don't fix your intention on a specific wished-for outcome and remain open to possibilities, the universe will bring you the best outcome (not necessarily what you thought you wanted).

Just then a crowd of Tor people, including Teresa Neilsen Hayden whom I had not even known was at the con, returned from dinner and headed into the bar. I finished up my talk with Ellen and followed them in... and I realized I really needed to go back to my room, pack, and fall over. So I said my goodbyes and left while some dogs yet barked.

Long day tomorrow. It'll be good to be home.

Posted 11/04/2007 21:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65673 | Since last entry: 0

After last night's hilarity, didn't manage to get up and dressed until lunchtime. Rather than breakfasting alone as I have been doing, I decided to go to the convention and maybe find someone to lunch with (but I'm not dumb -- I set a firm deadline of 1pm or I would eat alone rather than getting stupider and stupider). It was pretty cold this morning so I decided to take my car rather than make the 10-15 minute walk to the convention center.

At the con I didn't see anyone I knew until I ran into Jay Lake by the Night Shade table in the dealers' room. He and I and his Adrian wound up at an extremely plain-spoken diner, where despite the place's complete lack of character we heard words like "counterfactual" drifting across the divider from the diners on the other side. It was Gordon van Gelder and Jacob Weisman. Walking back from lunch, we ran into many other people from the convention including Esther Friesner.

Got back to the con and hung my coat in the coat room. Because I had been walking to the con every day so far, I wrote DON'T FORGET YOUR CAR on a business card and stuck it in my hatband. (It worked.)

By this time it was just at the end of the Shimmer reading, but I headed up to that room anyway in hopes of spotting Mary Robinette Kowal. I did spot her, but only just, as the Shimmer crew were just clearing away in favor of the Inferno anthology reading, edited and introduced by Ellen Kushner. Elizabeth Bear was among those reading so I hung around for that. And she was also reading in the following hour, with the Waste Lands anthology edited and introduced by John Joseph Adams. Lots of good stories in those two anthologies.

I'd been planning to go to Ellen Klages's reading at 4pm, but by then I was pretty much reading-ed out so I headed for a panel. But on the way there I was dragooned by Diana Sherman to go into the dealers' room and look at shinies. This reminded me that I already had a Laurie Edison earring, which I'd forgotten I had with me, so I put it on. While waiting for Diana to decide whether or not to buy a necklace I struck up a conversation with her friend David J. Williams, who had managed to avoid being lynched by the Clarion West class of 2006 despite the fact that he sold three novels to Bantam in the first week of the workshop (the first one comes out in May). Nice guy!

After the orgy of jewelry-buying concluded (well, okay, maybe just a tryst), Diana, David, and I set off in search of dinner. But on the way out of the hotel we encountered J.J. Adams, Jennifer Jackson, and others on their way to the Orbit party at a nearby pub. It turned out to be an invite-only party, but we were allowed in anyway. Loud loud loud, but free drinks, snacks, and books, so we hung out until they started clearing people out for the dinner crowd. We wound up adding two other people (um, wow,it was only a couple hours ago but the names have already fled) for dinner at some nearby Indian place. Turns out all five of us were Clarion grads, ranging from 1988 to 2006.

Back to the con. I meant to go up to the Tor party but my throat rebelled at the thought of coping with the noise. I'm also having more problems than usual hearing in those crowds -- maybe my ears are stuffed. Anyway, I spent the rest of the evening hanging out on the ground level of the hotel, drifting from the green room where I chatted with Davey Snyder and others, to the lobby where I hung out with Pat Rothfuss and new friend Tiffany Trent and saw Tina Connolly for the first time this con, to the bar (and the emergency overflow bar that the hotel cleverly set up nearby) where I was offered single malt by Laura Anne Gilman, which I accepted, and a seat by Ellen Klages, which I declined. Long con, tired now.

Got back to my room and changed the clocks, after which I could say I left the con before midnight. (But then I blew it by staying up to write this.)

Posted 11/04/2007 20:53 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65673 | Since last entry: 0

Up at the crack of noon, just in time for a crepe place called Ravenous to open for lunch. Had a lovely ratatouille crepe. I decided last week that I was going to try to eat properly even on the road. Doing pretty well with it so far.

Saratoga Springs is doing one of those charity events where they give large animal sculptures (cows, pigs, etc.) to artists, who paint and decorate them and then let them stand around town for a while before auctioning them off. In Saratoga's case the animals are horses. I hadn't quite realized as I was planning this trip that this Saratoga is the same Saratoga of racetrack fame. Every time I see one of those horses I get the song snippet "...and we get off at Saratoga, for the fourteenth time!" going through my head. I mentioned this to Gardner Dozois and of course this resulted in a quick impromptu chorus of same. Other people have given me nothing but blank looks. Some People are clearly lacking in cultural literacy.

Made it to the con after lunch to run into Diana Sherman, just on her way out (we've had beastly meal timing, but hope to manage dinner tonight), Ellen Klages, mostly undamaged from yesterday's fall to the marble floor, and Lisa Freitag who was chuffed that many of her photos from Japan were in the November Locus, including one of Kate and I at the Kamakura Big Buddha. While I was talking with Lisa and Alice Bentley, Ellen Klages came up and dragged me off to Margo Lanagan's reading. She read a short horror story about Wee Willie Winkie, which was awesome although I kept thinking of Bullwinkle.

After Margo's reading I caught the second half of a panel on the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, including Betty Ballantine and Tom Doherty. Alas, by the time I arrived it had devolved into a rant on the sad state of book distribution today. Next I went to a panel about book covers... which devolved into a rant on the sad state of book distribution today. But the next panel in the same room was a talk and presentation by the French artist Jean Giraud (Moebius), which was delightful. Although I winced with pain as his wife tried to use PowerPoint to present his slides, moving the various Microsoft pallettes and sub-windows around on the screen in Edit mode to try to show off the art instead of just clicking "Slide Show". I was tempted to run down to the front of the room and click on it for her, but I restrained myself. Maybe I shouldn't have.

I cruised the art show for a while, then attended an entertaining reading by Scott Lynch, after which I tried to go to Jay Lake's impromptu cheese party. But apparently I missed a memo and went to one of the places it was going to be instead of the place it actually was. Had some nice conversations in the hall outside the dealers' room anyway, then went off for an early dinner with Davey Snyder and other East Coasters at the hotel's fancy restaurant. Very fine company, very fine service, very fine food, possibly not worth quite what they charged for it.

Next came the big autograph session, 1400 people in a large ballroom with linoleum floors and hard walls. Jeez, it was noisy in there. I think that's where I lost the first third of my voice. I was offered a table tent but declined, figuring that no one was likely to ask for my autograph (it would be different if I had a book with my name on the cover) and I'd see more people by wandering around rather than sitting in one place. I got a bit melancholy seeing all of my friends with published novels. Perhaps I will sell one some day. Must write more.

The autographs were supposed to run from 8pm to 11pm, but Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Elise the lioness, and I, along with several unindicted co-conspirators, ran off to Bear's room for BPAL sniffing and traumatic readings of the sex scenes from a bad Scottish time-travel romance, all fueled by generous quantities of Chartreuse (dangerous stuff... 55% alcohol, most of the rest sugar). Every anachronism was greeted with a chorus of "...in sixteenth-century Scotland?! DRINK!" I demonstrated that, yes, some men do have "silky chest hair," and many were the LOLcat references and snorts of derision that came from the shrubbery. I left another third of my voice around there somewhere, we made Sarah fall off the bed, and I think we might have broken Elise. And yet the New York Times Best-Selling Author probably made more from that one book than all of us put togithir.

Try that with a sporran full of coffee beans.

Nearly noon. Time for breakfast.

Posted 11/03/2007 08:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65673 | Since last entry: 0

Amazingly smooth travel. On both legs of my flight the plane was half full, took off right on time, and landed early! Picked up my rental car (PT Cruiser) in Albany and had no difficulty finding my hotel in Saratoga Springs. The hotel looked to be miles from the convention on the map, but it's actually only 10-15 minutes' walk.

Saratoga Springs reminds me of Ashland, especially in that it has a very high quotient of good restaurants and fine shops for its population. Had breakfast at Beverly's and dinner at Hattie's (the latter with Peggy Rae Sapienza and a bunch of her DC peeps) on the recommendation of tripadvisor.com, both were wonderful. The fried chicken at Hattie's is particularly recommended.

The convention started at 3pm today but when I showed up right after breakfast (at, um, 11am) there were already plenty of people hanging out, including Ken Scholes, Sarah Monette, and of course the ubiquitious Jay Lake. Later I ran into Elizabeth Bear and WotF compadres Jae Brim and Patrick Rothfuss. Dozens of others too, whose LJ handles are too large for this margin to accomodate. I also met Ellen Klages, who immediately jumped in my arms and sent both of us crashing to the hard slick marble floor. Ow. Haven't seen her since.

My reading this afternoon ("Charlie the Purple Giraffe") went very well; about a dozen people showed up even though a lot of my friends were all off at dinner with their agents or editors. Apart from that I have seen neither programming nor parties, instead spending my time in the bar and lobby area. Perhaps I will so something else tomorrow, perhaps not. I seem to have an amazing ability to find the one spot at the convention where all my friends will pass, and not budging from that spot for literally hours at a time.

During dinner I got a call from Kate, who has had to cancel her trip to Guadalajara due to illness (hers). Crap. Drop by her LJ and bring her some chicken soup.

Jay and I decided to turn in early, realizing that we're both tired (and my voice is threatening to leave me for someone who won't abuse it so) and there is an entire normal convention (Friday-Sunday) yet to come. But when I got back to my room I had to check in with the class. (Oh wait, it appears that I have not mentioned that this week two online community college classes are studying my story "I Hold My Father's Paws", and I've been invited to participate in the class discussion. This is even cooler than I had thought it would be.) And then there was LJ to read and... look! It's 1am!

Night night.

Posted 11/01/2007 22:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65673 | Since last entry: 1317

I cannot believe how fast the last couple of weeks have gone.

Let's see... we went to Ashland for the Shakespeare festival, where we stayed for a couple of days with square dance friends Mark and Tim in their lovely new house just blocks from the center of town. We saw As You Like It, a terrific production set in the Depression and using 1930s pop songs; On the Razzle by Tom Stoppard, a delightful farce full of rapid-fire wordplay; and Distracted, an intriguingly metafictional play about a mother coping with a son who may or may not have ADD. We also spent a little time with square dance friends Paul and Danny, who were in Ashland in their RV and intersected with us only because a car accident made them stay longer than planned. Many fine meals were eaten.

Right after we got back from that was Kate's 25th college reunion, at Lewis & Clark College here in Portland. I was surprised how dated everything looked in the old college yearbook photos. It wasn't so much the clothes -- a sweater's a sweater, jeans are still jeans -- as the hair, the glasses (big as Jeep windshields!), and the typography and layout of the yearbook itself. My own 25th is next year, in St. Louis right before Wiscon. We could easily combine the two (we did so five years ago) but I haven't decided if I want to.

At the reunion we also attended a couple of lectures by LC faculty, one on spiders and what can be learned about genetic diversity by studying their venom, and the other on geckos and how they stick to walls. Both were fun but the gecko one was particularly fascinating. When the research started, they thought geckos used some kind of adhesive. Turns out gecko feet are covered with microscopic hairs (setae), each of which ends in a nanoscale spatula. But it took the researchers months to figure out how to make an individual seta stick to an object. The little spatulas stick to surfaces by van der Waals force; they only stick when dragged slightly across the surface, then release when pulled up at a certain angle. The whole gecko is evolved to move in exactly the right way to use these forces to run up walls at high speed. The researcher pointed out, apropos of the previous lecture, that he hates spiders and likes to point out that "my research subject eats your research subject for lunch."

Last weekend we bopped up to Seattle for their third annual Halloween square dance (it will return to Portland next year), ably called by new co-callers Anne Uebelacker and Scott Zinser. Had a good time, lightly marred by a minor cold which is still hanging on. I also managed to lose one of my favorite hats at the dance, but it was found and I hope that we will be reunited at the Thanksgiving square dance in Vancouver BC. We hung out for one extra night to see Into the Woods, a local production every bit as good as the best Broadway touring shows I've seen, presented in the amazing Oriental magnificence of the 5th Avenue Theatre. If you're in Seattle and you haven't seen this theatre, you really should.

We've been taking advantage of our time off to get together with friends. I count seven shared meals in the last two weeks, including dinner with writers Amy Thomson and Edd Vick Friday, dinner with visiting writer Matthew S. Rotundo yesterday, and an impromptu breakfast today with fans Ulrika and Hal O'Brien. That's not counting the meals with Mark, Tim, Paul, and Danny in Ashland or going out for pho with Katy King during the lunch break at the square dance in Seattle.

What with all the travel and eating out, my fitness goals are in the toilet. I haven't been to the gym more than a couple of times in the last few weeks (one of them with my new trainer, who proceeded to kill me (I got better)). I haven't even weighed myself in a week. I think I'm scared to.

Writing? Yes, some. Finished up chapter 9 (just barely in time for crit group) and edited a story in response to a rewrite request from Aeon. Amazingly, the rewritten story was immediately accepted. This story has had a very interesting journey, which I think deserves a whole 'nother post. Next up is a fantasy short story for an anthology, for which I have been doing some research and cogitation, but really needs more focused attention.

So we just got back from Seattle yesterday. I'm mostly recovered from my cold, but my voice is fragile and I am somewhat short on spoons. Tomorrow I fly to New York for World Fantasy Con. So much for October. Voom!

Posted 10/30/2007 15:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 64356 | Since last entry: 280

Everyone I talked to about being retired said that they couldn't imagine how they managed to get everything done and still work a full-time job. It's true. You'd think that with 40 extra hours in a week I could relax. But no -- I'm not even keeping up with my email.

You know how, going into the weekend, you think you'll be able to get a lot done on your day off? And yet somehow the tasks expand to fill the time available, and you find yourself at the end of the weekend with only three of the twenty things on your to-do list crossed off (plus eight more things done which hadn't been on the list in the first place)? Every day so far has been like that. Like the day I bought the iMac... it took basically the whole day, because I had to go to two different Apple Stores (one of them twice) before I found the computer and printer I wanted in stock. And getting the thing set up and all the files and applications switched over has taken a lot of time, though not nearly as much as I'd feared.

It's easy to forget what day of the week it is. Every day feels like Saturday. But every day feels like Sunday too, because yesterday felt like a Saturday. There's a bit of that Sunday afternoon angst, that uncomfortable can't-possibly-get-everything-done and yet at the same time what-am-I-doing-with-my-life vibe.

Mind you, I have been able to take the time to do some things I would not otherwise have done. In the last couple of weeks we've attended four plays, three movies, and a reading by Charlie Stross. (Weekday theatre matinees are... different. The house is half full and they're all female and over 60. Where are the retired men? Are they all dead, or do they just not like the theatre?) We finally got caught up on the TV shows we taped while we were in Japan. I've been doing the dishes and the laundry the way I always meant to. When Kate's folks came for a visit, I was able to hang around with them instead of running off to the day job.

I've been writing every day, but not much... 100-300 words most days. I need to do a little more than that if I'm going to make my next crit group deadline. It's hard, because I'm still trying to take this novel over the hump in the middle -- the main plot driver for the second half of the book is just peeping its nose over the horizon now. It should start building momentum again in the next chapter or two, I hope.

I fear that I am transitioning from a successful short story writer to an unsuccessful novelist. Novel #1 has so far failed to find a publisher, and because I've been focusing on novel #2 I have, ironically enough, sold fewer short stories in the year since winning the Hugo than any year since I started selling at all. Also, next year's Writers' Weekend, at which I was to be a featured speaker, has been cancelled.

However, there is some good news on the writing front. "Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely" (Realms of Fantasy, June 2004) has been picked up for The Mammoth Book Of Extreme Fantasy, edited by Mike Ashley. And I will be joining such luminaries as Mary Rosenblum, Irene Radford, Jay Lake, and Ken Scholes at Powell's Cedar Hills for a multi-local-SF-author event on November 14. Watch this space for more details.

Tomorrow we're heading to Ashland, where we'll be visiting square dance friends Mark and Tim and seeing three more plays. We get back just in time for Kate's 25th college reunion weekend. The days really are just packed.

Posted 10/15/2007 00:19 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 64076 | Since last entry: 2925

Two weeks gone by already? Wow. Plenty of stuff happening.

One big thing done in that time: I replaced the PC with a new top-of-the-line 24" iMac. Screen: big, shiny, very crisp. Speakers: better than anything else in the house. Also took the opportunity to clear off the old desk and cubby. We found some very amusing old stuff dating back to before there was a web.

Before and after photos of the cleanup:

Before

After

Posted 10/13/2007 13:29 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 61151 | Since last entry: 450

Retirement, day 1. Collect the whole set.

Kate took off this morning to take a friend to the doctor; I went to the gym, then walked down to Stumptown and bought some coffee beans then traded them to a funny little man for a magic cow. In the afternoon I sorted a pile of papers that I'd shoved in a box before a party a few weeks ago. Fortunately there were no overdue bills or other nasty surprises, and most of them could simply be thrown away. Two or three more such boxes to go.

Then we fixed dinner for friend Brenda Cooper, visiting from Seattle, after which we worked on a jigsaw puzzle Kate brought back from Japan. It was wicked hard, with a thousand tiny tiny pieces, most of them pretty much the same color. Right around the time Brenda left, Kate's parents showed up for more jigsaw puzzle and conversation (mostly about Japan). They were supposed to have visited this weekend, but life intervened and delayed their trip by three days.

Tomorrow morning we'll have breakfast with Kate's parents. It must be Sunday, right? Feels like Sunday...

You may note that I have renamed this blog. I was going to call it "A Month of Saturdays" but I think "The Days Are Just Packed" seems more descriptive. And besides, it's a Calvin and Hobbes quote.

Posted 10/02/2007 23:52 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 60701 | Since last entry: 720 | Days until retirement: 0

The guys at work retired my keyboard.

They cut off the cord and epoxied it to a plaque with my name on a brass plate at the top. I signed it. It will hang in a place of honor in the Design Studio conference room.

I am truly touched.

I also got a going-away lunch on Friday and a get-together at the Hall Street Grill today after work. People were sincerely sorry to see me go. I didn't get emotional (well, I got a little misty as I was going off to work for the last time this morning). I realized today that I never got a going-away lunch from Intel, or from any of the last several jobs at Intel (most of which stopped when the division was shut down, so any going-away was a group activity). I feel good about the work that I did at McAfee; I'm sorry to go, but there's now a whole department to do what I used to have to do myself, so I'm not leaving them completely in the lurch.

Tomorrow... a new start!

Posted 10/01/2007 20:46 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59981 | Since last entry: 277 | Days until retirement: 4

Yesterday was my last 8am meeting, and probably my last time going to the gym near work. Today might have been the last time I'll have to make my lunch in the morning. Going-away lunch with my department tomorrow. Monday's my actual last day.

This is a strange transitional time. Almost everything I need to do is done. I still have meetings to attend and some housekeeping chores, but I'm not really responsible for anything any more. I'm not quite done here, and not quite started there.

I have so much on my to-do list for when I'm done here it isn't funny. Writing, of course, of which I have hardly done any in the last 8 weeks. I don't entertain any fantasies about eight-hour writing days and octupling my former productivity -- I've heard enough from other writers who have gone full-time that life expands to fill much of the time that the day job used to, and I don't even intend to try to write full-time. But I do hope to improve my productivity somewhat, maybe even enough to do some short stories as well as finishing my second novel by early next year. I also have a lot of major non-writing projects in mind, like upgrading our six-year-old computer and twelve-year-old entertainment center. And we'll be traveling a lot: Ashland, Seattle, and Saratoga (NY) in October alone. And Kate wants to re-do the bathroom.

::rubs hands:: This is going to be fun.

Posted 09/27/2007 23:00 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59704 | Since last entry: 110 | Days until retirement: 13

First day back at work. Most of the gang was off at some kind of training class so I spent the day catching up with email. Many people said, as I'd expected, "hey, aren't you retired?" My boss is still trying to convince me to stay on just a little longer. I remind myself of all the times in my working life I've poured my heart into a project only to have it canceled. Shoe's on the other foot now...

After dinner, I went to the coffee shop for Tuesday night writing group. I spent much of the time there re-reading the synopsis and last chapter in hopes of being able to pick up where I'd left off. I didn't find the existing material terribly convincing, but I did manage to write a hundred new words (I promised myself at least a hundred new words) before acknowleding I couldn't keep my eyes open. At this rate I'm highly unlikely to finish a chapter before the next crit group meeting. So it goes.

This is the first fiction writing I've done in almost two months. This book may have a visible seam in the middle, like the Washington Monument.

Nine working days to go.

Posted 09/18/2007 21:55 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Ah, home. The blessedly familiar...

While we were gone our neighbors began repainting their house. It's now half yellow, half green with white spots.

When I turned on the dining room light, one of the bulbs immediately died and gave out a wisp of gray smoke(!). When I went to replace it, the glass envelope of the bulb came off in my hand, leaving the exposed filament behind. The envelope was filled with smoke, which sloshed gently, like a liquid.

Our neighborhood grocery store has been entirely rearranged. We never did find the cereal.

Glad we were only gone for three weeks! :-)

Posted 09/16/2007 21:03 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

The business-class lounge at Narita airport has free wi-fi. Also free booze, beer, and snacks. A girl could get used to this.

It's been a trip. We came for the strangeness, and got it in spades. I'm tired of strange now, and ready to come home. We have been able to communicate pretty well with people here, between our limited Japanese and their limited English. But it's terribly frustrating to be unable to read. I'm also looking forward to Portland's more reasonable humidity.

Last night there was a religious festival in the neighborhood of our hotel. All over the neighborhood, groups of people dressed in identical yukata gathered together to carry their local shrine (a decorated box about 3' cube) around on their shoulders, bobbing and chanting and stopping at each local business. Trick or treating? Wassailing? Not sure, but there was one guy in each group going into each business they stopped at with a shopping bag and coming out before they left, and that shopping bag was definitely getting fuller. We saw three such groups without hardly trying, and we're told the big night is tonight. Unfortunately, tonight we will be on our way to Seattle. (Whatever "tonight" means in a day which is, I think, 40 hours long... we leave Tokyo at 5pm and arrive in Seattle at 9:30am the same day.)

In the last three weeks we've hardly eaten the same kind of food twice. I think it was two weeks before we repeated anything other than train-station bento, which is consistently a good quick lunch. I didn't have katsu-don (breaded pork cutlet and egg over rice) until yesterday. Barbecued eel. Tempura. Oyakodomburi. Things on sticks. Sushi-go-round (a tiny cheap place, not the greatest sushi ever but pretty darn good). It's all been wonderful.

Spent most of yesterday at the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which covers the entire history of Tokyo from its establishment as capitol by Tokygawa (before that it was just just a reedy swamp... hmm, just like Washington DC). Very well-done museum, notable for 25' square miniatures equipped with binoculars so you can see the details. Every turn provided new and fascinating stuff I hadn't realized I would be interested in, like the history of Tokyo's coinage (Tokyo was on the gold standard, while Kyoto was on the silver standard, which did interesting things to the economy).

Boarding soon. Back later today...

Posted 09/16/2007 00:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

We've been to DisneySea! (And the reason for the rather awkward name is that it's the opposite of DisneyLAND. Surprised it took us until today to figure that one out.) This deserves a much bigger post than I have energy for at the moment -- been up since 6am, just got back a half-hour ago at 10pm, on the move the whole time -- but I do want to note a few differences from Disney in California:

1. Everything at Tokyo Disney is in Japanese (except for the signage and some recorded announcements, which are bilingual). This shouldn't have been a surprise but I kept getting tripped up by it, especially in familiar surroundings such as the "New York" and "Cape Cod" sections of the park. All non-recorded announcements and most non-safety-related announcements, including the soundtracks of all rides, are in Japanese only (though one stage show had hand-held subtitle devices available in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean). Cast members have about as much English as the average Japanese person, which is to say that some have none, many have some, and some have a lot. On the other hand, my little head exploded when the Japanese cast member at the Indiana Jones ride waved us aboard with a cheery "Adios, Amigos!"

2. Themed fire extinguisher cubbies in every ride and area.

3. I was wondering what they would do with Rod Serling at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Answer: no Rod Serling at all. The DisneySea Tower of Terror has a completely different backstory.

4. They have squashed-penny machines, but no pennies. They use copper blanks the same size as a US penny, right there in the machine. It's not as much fun to just stick in a 100 yen coin and get the squashed penny out. Squashed pennies should cost 26 cents (or 101 cents, or whatever the price is these days).

5. The 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth rides are unique and very cool. The Aquatopia ride is also unique but just plain strange.

6. The railway between "America" and "Tomorrow" is a tiny little two-car trolley that squeals and rumbles like a full-sized Chicago El. Not quite sure how they managed that.

7. They have a full-sized ocean liner, which contains two very good restaurants and a deck you can promenade on. I wonder how many people they lose every year trying to lean out over the prow (with a real sixty-foot drop to real water and nothing preventing you from doing so) and shout "Top of the world!" in Japanese.

8. Flavored popcorn. We spotted strawberry, cappuccino, chocolate, and black pepper.

9. Daikon and jellyfish salad. We didn't order that.

10. Potato and burdock danish. We didn't order that either.

Posted 09/13/2007 07:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Took the shinkansen (bullet train - basically a long, very-low-flying airplane with wheels) from Takayama to Tokyo today. Spent much of the trip studying kanji, and determined that shinkansen means "new trunk line," nothing to do with bullets at all. Didn't figure out the kanji for "passenger car," though, which was more important because it would have helped us ask which car of the train we were supposed to be in.

Arrived in the Tokyo neighborhood of Shibuya, found our hotel, checked in, found dinner. Shibuya is exactly the 2019 Los Angeles of Blade Runner, complete with light drizzle. All it needed was umbrellas with neon shafts to complete the picture. Imagine taking about four blocks of downtown Portland, clearing away all the buildings, and dropping them down at random on the surrounding blocks. Pave the area where they used to be, then cover every vertical surface with neon and video screens (each with its own blaring J-Pop soundtrack). Now take the entire population of Portland and dump them all in those same blocks. Have about half of them stand at the edge of the paved area, and every five minutes have them all scramble to a randomly-selected point on the opposite side of it. That's Shibuya.

(By the way, does anyone know why the Shibuya branch of Mandarake might be closed at 6pm on a Tuesday night?)

Having obtained dinner (tuna sushimi to die for, plus two salt-grilled things-with-eyes in garlic and olive oil, yum) we returned to our hotel to do laundry and plan the next day. Tokyo is overwhelming, but we have made a decision. Because Shibuya is not stimulating enough for jaded travelers like us, tomorrow it's... Ginza!

Posted 09/11/2007 07:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

If you want to know more about this trip, check out Kate's blog.

Since last I posted we've visited the small castle town of Matsumoto, spent a night at a high-end onsen (hot spring resort), and landed in Takayama.

In Matsumoto we toured the castle, where I asked the English-speaking guide what tatami mats are made of. She looked it up in her handheld electronic dictionary and it said "iguanadon." In her defense, she was working in the dark without glasses and might have typo'd the Japanese, but then again this is the home of Godzilla. I bought a little cell-phone dangle of Godzilla attacking the castle at the castle gift shop. Also in Matsumoto we ate oden (miscellaneous boiled things) at a tiny bar presided over by two ladies I nicknamed Flo and Dot. The food was nothing special but we had great conversation, despite the formidable language barrier. I am so glad we studied Japanese. The next day we ran into friends Dave Howell and Eric just as we were checking out. They were staying in the same ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel) and visited the castle at the same time, but we managed to miss them until the last day.

The onsen was a phenomenal experience, featuring world-class service, relaxing hot baths, and an amazing dinner. Fifteen tiny courses, all different and all delicious. My favorite course was the "mini-steaki's" of famed Hida beef (they take their cows seriously here); the weirdest one was a beautiful bouquet in which the largest flowers were actually two whole fish, skewered and grilled and intended to be eaten right off the stick. Fish on the cob. Breakfast the next morning was not so overwhelmingly wonderful but was pretty overwhelming in its own way. Probably the strangest breakfast I have ever eaten. The best part was another local specialty, miso paste grilled on a leaf on a tabletop brazier, kind of like hot sesame peanut butter. Trust me, it was delish. But then, I have been eating things with eyes and loving them.

Takayama reminds me of Lincoln City, touristy but not overwhelmingly so. Unlike Lincoln City, people come here for the history -- there are picturesque 100- and 200-year old streets all over the place. It's also a bit like New Orleans in that there's a huge parade every year and much of the town is focused on it year-round. Like Mardi Gras, it's nominally a religious event; there are gigantic floats with competing neighborhood krewes; and you can't get a hotel room during festival week (October, with a smaller one in April) for love nor money. But with all those tourists the restaurant scene here is great. We had Hida beef tonight, cook-it-yourself on a tabletop grill, expensive but worth it.

We're staying at the Rickshaw Inn, lots of foreigners here but the room is traditional-style and one of the nicest we've had (well, not as nice as the onsen but the price is about 1/4 as much). We're enjoying Takayama enough that we decided to stay here two more nights, skipping our planned stop in Kanazawa, and head straight to Tokyo from here. This change in plans is going to greatly reduce our stress levels. The takkyubin (delivery service) system that whisks your heavy bags from each hotel to the next, which is working great for us so far, takes a day, so it doesn't work well if you're only spending two nights in each place; this change helps that too.

We're having a lot of fun. I'm even getting used to the Shoe Thing.

Posted 09/08/2007 04:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Suppose you are an American tourist in Tokyo and you want to visit a museum on the other side of town. Here's how to do it. Keep in mind that at all times there will be Japanese people bustling purposefully in every direction around you.

1. Find your destination on the large system map posted above the ticket machines. This may be harder than it seems because in some stations all the station names are shown in kanji. In this case you will have to coordinate the wall map with your map in English.
2. The map tells you what the fare is to get there from here. Buy a ticket for that amount from the ticket machine. Ticket machines come in two flavors: video (usually with an English option) and button-based. The button-type machines will not do anything until you put some money in. As you insert coins (or bills, they take up to a $100) more and more buttons light up. It's pretty opaque until you've seen it in action, but once you understand how it works it's not bad. Alternatively, just buy the cheapest ticket and then use the "tell me how much more to pay" machine at your destination, but that's for wimps.
3. Use the map to determine which line or lines you need to take to get there. Carefully note any transfer points. Note that the ticket you just purchased is not going to tell you anything more than how much you paid and which end to stick into the turnstile. The good news here is that the colors of the various lines are consistent on all the maps and signage. The bad news is that because there are so many lines, from several diferent companies, the colors can be on the obscure side ("Did we want the brick line, or the rust?").
4. Pass through the turnstile and proceed to the platform for your line by following signs on the walls and/or electronic reader boards. Note that local and express trains for the same line may be on different platforms.
5. Determine which track of the two on that platform goes the appropriate direction, by consulting wall signs on the platform or before it (varies by station). In many stations there is a large sign saying "this is station X, the next station in each direction is Y (this way) and Z (that way)." In other stations you have to find a route map posted on a pillar, and coordinate that with the real world.
6. Determine which train you want on that track. There may be express and local versions and/or different branches of the same train, and even entirely different trains, sharing the same platform; you want one that actually goes to your destination. Use the timetable, route diagram, and/or overhead electronic signs at or before the platform. There's not a lot of consistency in how this information is presented.
7. Determine which car you want. Depending on the train, there may be reserved-seat-only cars, plushy "green" cars, and spots on the platform corresponding to no car at all. Sophisticated riders will select a car that winds up near the correct stairway at the destination. Stand in one of the marked lanes for the selected car. The train will stop right there.
8. Board the train when it arrives, exactly on time. Exiting passengers have priority; passengers waiting to board wait to the side. Don't dawdle, there's another train coming in three minutes.
9. On the train, use in-car electronic signs (often in kanji, kana, and romaji), route diagrams, announcements in Japanese and sometimes English, platform signs at the stations you pass, and/or the map clutched in your sweaty paw to track your progress. Alternatively, work Japanese picture puzzles and leave that part to your paranoid husband -- after all, you know exactly what time the train will arrive at its destination.
10. Leave the train when it arrives at your destination. Again, don't dawdle.
11. Repeat steps 4-10 for each transfer.
12. Find the station exit nearest your destination. Most stations have several exits and they may be blocks apart. Some stations are effectively huge multi-level shopping malls. There may be a map to help you figure out how to get out. Good luck.
13. Repeat steps 1-12 for your return trip.

Jeez, no wonder we're exhausted.

Posted 09/03/2007 16:15 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

...in the middle of the Worldcon. The convention is small but definitely a Worldcon, with a much higher than usual proportion of non-US fans even if you ignore the Japanese. I've appeared on two program items so far, both of which went very well despite the fact that I was the only panelist who showed up for the second one (we dragooned Jordin Kare from the audience, and Esther Friesner did eventually appear, an hour late due to no fault of her own). I also had a kaffeeklatch, for which no one signed up, but I had a nice time talking with Donya White who had been assigned as timekeeper for the panel. Also attended several good program items, including Bob Eggleton rhapsodizing about Godzilla and a talk by George Takei.

We have continued to do well with the food: we've eaten very good udon, okonomiyaki, tonkatsu, etc. and the worst culinary disaster was a slight kerfuffle over paying for some bento. Every time I think we've eaten every major Japanese cuisine we come across another one I'd forgotten. Plus killer gelato. Went to Chinatown for lunch and got very confused about what country we're in (the Brazilian-style charrascuria, with the usual artistically-crafted plastic food displayed out front, was the last brain-exploding detail).

The Japanese language study we did before the con is paying off handsomely. The thing I'm most glad about (after basics like "I'll have one of those," "where is the bathroom," and "please forgive me, I am a stupid foreigner") is being able to read the written language (hiragana and katakana). Even the limited ability I have to painstakingly sound out words letter by letter is better than not being able to read signs at all, and makes possible such things as getting on the right train and choosing the strawberry-filled over the squid-eyeball-filled pastry.

Just came back to our room from the usual round of bid parties. As usual they were hot and crowded, but at this con they are slightly unusual in that they are held in rooms with tatami floors, which require taking your shoes off.

Posted 08/31/2007 07:53 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59594 | Since last entry: 0 | Days until retirement: 36

Sitting at the airport waiting for our flight to Seattle and thence Japan. Don't know when I'll be back online again.

Yesterday vanished in a blur of packing, except that we joined Sarah Prince (in town for a wedding) at the Portland Adult Soapbox Derby. This annual event, featuring bizarre handcrafted gravity-powered vehicles, takes place just a few blocks from our house and we've never gone. Thanks Sarah for providing the impetus!

And now... here we go!

Posted 08/26/2007 09:46 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59594 | Since last entry: 14 | Days until retirement: 38

Today was my last day of work until mid-September. We leave for Japan in two days. I have to pack. I have spent much of this evening packing my computer -- making sure I have all the files I'll need to survive on the road for three weeks with little or no Internet access.

The worst part is going to be living without the phone, or the "magic rock" as Kate has been calling it. I've gotten so used to having email, LiveJournal, and most especially Google Maps available at all times that it's going to be rather like losing a hand. Especially in Japan, where being lost is the national sport. We'll survive.

Ganbatte!

Posted 08/24/2007 22:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59580 | Since last entry: 0 | Days until retirement: 40

There are times when you have to steal time from work because of urgent personal business. There are times when you have to work late, stealing time from personal business, for work. And there are times like the one I've been in for, fundamentally, most of this year, when work and personal life are both desperate to steal time from each other. So you balance them, and steal time from something else. Like sleep.

We've been to Austin and Phoenix in the last two weeks (highlight of the A&C weekend for me was a long, energetic Challenge tip with Saundra Bryant calling to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" -- now that's dancing!) , and we leave for Japan on Sunday. I have a gi-normous list of things I really want to get done before we leave. I'm plugging away at it bit by bit. Tonight: hepatitis booster shot, and new pants. The thrills just keep comin'.

At work, my main project is winding up (we'll have a Release Candidate this week, if all goes well) and I'm supposed to be 100% on another project, although the main project isn't quite dead yet and there are two or three other projects that would sure like to have an hour or two a day. I'm managing all these things reasonably well -- not everything is going to get done, but the most important things will.

And then there are the other things. Like, I haven't been to the gym in the last month except when I had an appointment with my trainer (who, by the way, is quitting at almost exactly the same time as I retire, so I don't have to worry about her -- I'll get a new trainer at the gym closer to home). Like, I haven't written a word of fiction in a month (though we did do Bento, which is back from the printer and will be mailed after we return from Japan). Like sleep, and groceries, and doing the dishes. All of those I promise I will get back to after Japan. And/or after I retire. Which is two weeks after we return from Japan.

You know how, when you have a new baby or a new relationship, life is full of firsts? First steps, first words, first kiss, first movie together? When someone dies or a relationship ends, there are lasts -- last walk in the park together, last kiss, last movie together -- but those are usually only visible in retrospect. In this case I am leaving work on a known date in the future and I can see the lasts as they go by. Some of them are sweet, like "last time I'll have to leave a convention on Sunday afternoon to get back to work on Monday" and "last 8am meeting". Some are more bittersweet.

Today I had a meeting where it was very clear to everyone, especially me, just how much I understand about this product, why it is the way it is, and where it can plausibly go from here, and how all of that is in my head and can't easily be beamed to someone else. Also today I sent out a mass email to the whole building announcing my retirement. I left as quickly as I could after sending it so I wouldn't have to talk to anyone. Why is this so hard?

Posted 08/22/2007 22:23 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59580 | Since last entry: 264 | Days until retirement: 47

Back from Armadillocon. A good time, spent hanging out mostly with West Coast and East Coast friends rather than Texans. Had breakfast with Jay Lake, who later showed us the Freshman Moon and skunked me in pool; had lunch, ice cream, and yarn shopping with Madeline Robins; had a fine dinner with Sharyn November and Ellen Klages in a restaurant with a view of the bats, if they had ever appeared. We also had good BBQ at the airport both coming and going. At the convention itself I spent most of my time hanging out in the convivial space between function rooms, chatting with whoever came by (which included Laura Anne Gilman and Patty Wells WINOLJ). Hanging out with Ellen Klages was a special treat. Who else could cause three people to burst into song: "There is nothing like my brain / Nothing in the world / There is nothing you can name / That is anything like my brain..."

Last Japanese class tonight, and the final program schedule for the Worldcon has been posted (I see they gave me a kaffeeklatsch). I so do not feel suffificently prepared for this trip. I'm sure we'll be fine.

Saw Endeavour and the ISS tonight, a bright racing star visible for just a couple of minutes from our back yard. Very cool. Kate said "it moves so deliberately!"

Posted 08/15/2007 23:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59316 | Since last entry: 0 | Days until retirement: 53

No work on the novel in the last week or so, but I have written 9755 words for the next issue of Bento, which will go to press right after we get back from Armadillocon, for which we leave bright and early tomorrow morning. As one of our VP's memorably said in a teleconference this morning, "I've been getting single-digit hours of sleep for the last week." (Well, we knew what he meant. I think.)

This Bento is very heavy on the kind of extended metaphor, or fictionalized essay, that seems to be the hallmark of my fanwriting. In this case we have "our trip to Thailand as Amazing Race" and "David's retirement as a fall into an alternate universe, harking back to another essay from five years ago with David's job as a space war." Writing this kind of stuff is a lot of fun, and such a break from novel-writing. It's short; it's based on my own life, so I don't have to think too hard; it's not tied in with the rest of a 100,000 word story with all the continuity and plot threads to worry about; it's not original worldbuilding, so I can relax on that; and it's supposed to be funny. I can see why some people write slash, or fanfic. In this case I suppose it's fanfic of my own life.

I announced my retirement to my group this week. They were very supportive, and happy for me. However, although I meant to send out an email announcement to the rest of the company that day, I decided to hold off for a bit because right after that meeting the architect of the product announced that he is leaving for another company (his last day is Friday). This is a pretty serious blow to the project and I thought that announcing my own impending departure would be bad for morale. (They'll be okay without me, really they will.)

The other big news is that I got my iBook upgraded to a new hard disk twice the size. No more having to close down apps because the virtual memory swap file is filling up the remaining hard disk space! No more wondering if this CD I'm ripping, or photo I'm pulling off the camera, will be the last! As long as it was in the shop I also had them replace the keyboard, which only had about half its letters still visible. Unfortunately, it took three days to get a new keyboard from Apple. Good thing Kate and I were working on Bento together, on the big computer, during that time.

See some of you in Austin. Play nice, the rest of you.

Posted 08/09/2007 22:37 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59316 | Since last entry: 5213 | Days until retirement: 63

I haven't posted much about the writing lately because it's been difficult and slow. It took me what seems like forever to finish the latest chapter, which I did only by virtue of staying up too late on the last day, writing over 2000 words in an evening, and emailed out to the crit group at 2:00 (when the meeting started at 2:00, 15 minutes' drive away). I don't want to cut it that close again.

The book has been difficult and fractious because I am passing over what I think of as the "knee" of the novel. This is the point where the initial plot -- the thing that drove the characters into the book -- has essentially played itself out, and the "real" plot -- the thing that I hope the readers will take away as "what the book was about" -- is just getting started. This has turned out to mean a series of 2-4 chapters during which the plot slows down for a major turn, and I've been trying to let the characters use the time to do some reflection, introspection, and other character-building stuff. I'm not sure how well it's working. I suspect that in revision I will have to do the thing I think of as taking a rolling pin to the book, to mash the various disparate bits down and smush them around more evenly.

My crit group is generally enthusiastic about the way things are going. They made some useful suggestions, such as: although Keelie really ought to be 14 years old, readers and editors will be more likely to accept her and the things she does if she's 16, and that it might not be believable that Rachel is the sole medical officer for a space ship with a crew of 60 when she's not a fully-qualified doctor. Both of these, and several other such problems noted, are actually very easily soluble. It's not like the way it was with novel #1, where everyone hated Jason no matter what I did with him.

The new barbecue has been working out great. In the last 3 days we've had fresh-caught salmon (with a great spice rub from Alton Jones) with grilled fresh-picked corn on the cob; flank steak marinated in coffee and peppercorns with grill-roasted potatoes; and fresh garlic sausage with more corn on the cob. It's a hit.

Posted 07/30/2007 23:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 54103 | Since last entry: 1682 | Days until retirement: 72

A big package arrived today: my anniversary present for five years at my employer. I had selected from the catalog of watches, clocks, and jewelry... a Weber grill. Cool! I am Guy, hear me grunt.

Naturally my plans to buckle down and spend the day writing went right out the window. I spent the afternoon assembling the thing, finding propane (in the peculiar tank size it requires), and buying a stand, barbecue tools, and other necessities. I read the dire warnings of explosions and devastation, then fired the thing up. As it happens, we had already planned burgers and cole slaw for this evening's repast. It was fabulous. And when the yellowjackets came round, we took advantage of the fact that we were grownups and eating in our own backyard and just went inside. Take that, yellowjackets.

Also today: some Japanese study, a fun lecture on Portland's neighborhood movie houses, and a viewing of the new Harry Potter film (better than I'd expected) in one of them. And I did get a few hundred words written. I am amazed to see that somehow I have accumulated over 2000 words in the current chapter, and I might conceivably finish it before next week's crit group meeting. Will wonders never cease.

More writing tomorrow. I swear.

Posted 07/21/2007 23:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 52421 | Since last entry: 1738 | Days until retirement: 83

I finished up chapter 7 and sent it to critique, got my critique on chapter 6 (they still seem to be quite thoroughly engaged, though Rachel still needs more backstory), and completed the re-outlining. At one point half the living room floor was half-covered with little bits of paper. I should have taken a photo. The new outline has 16 chapters, down from 18, and the second half is much, much denser than before although I dropped a lot of incidents. One of the big changes is that I excised a whole try-fail cycle that was just repeating what had already happened to fill in space.

Another big change is that I took a key role in the climax away from a minor character and gave it to a major character instead, going "well duh, of course they'd be the one to do that, it's just what the whole frickin' book has been leading up to." Amazing that it took me so long to realize that. It does mean that two characters who were in different places before are now in the same place at the climax and have to be separated immediately thereafter for the anticlimax to work properly. I think there will be enough chaos that this shouldn't be difficult. I'm also wondering whether that minor character, who died in the previous outline, should now be allowed to live as a sort of consolation prize for losing the big scene. Either way, the new ending is ever so much more satisfying than the old one -- I hadn't thought a happy ending was even possible, but physics properly applied can cover a multitude of sins.

I have been getting way too little sleep lately. I should be asleep right now, in fact, as I have an 8am meeting tomorrow. But before I pack it in, I should mention that The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois (who is, I'm told, recovering nicely from a quintuple bypass), has its official release today and has already been reviewed at sfrevu.com. I haven't seen a copy yet. This anthology is my first Dozois Year's Best appearance, with "I Hold My Father's Paws". Coincidentally, that same story was just this weekend podcast at Beam Me Up from WRFR radio in Rockland, Maine. The reading, by Ron Huber, begins about halfway into the show. Hope you like it!

And so to bed.

Posted 07/10/2007 23:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50683 | Since last entry: 376 | Days until retirement: 88

I've been pondering and noodling away on the new outline for the second half of the book for the past couple of days. (Interestingly, Jo Walton and Charlie Stross seem to be in the exact same situation.)

It seems that I work by driving toward and building connections between key scenes, using the next upcoming juicy scene as bait to drag myself forward. I'm slightly stalled because I've run out of juicy bits to tempt myself with. So I wrote down a whole bunch of potential juicy scenes for the second half. Some of them are from the original outline, some are brand new. There are 32 of them, which is too much stuff for one half-novel even if many weren't mutually exclusive, so some will be discarded and/or combined with others. I printed them out and cut the printouts up so I have 32 little rectangles of paper, with the intention of shuffling them about until they seem vaguely plot-like and then dividing them into chapters and viewpoints. This is an exercise recommended by Tim Powers and others, which I haven't done since my original outline for novel #1 (the one with the insanely complex braided timeline, for which the outline eventually became a color-coded spreadsheet).

In the process of preparing the 32 little rectangles I discarded the original ending (it always was a bit of a downer) and replaced it with a new one suggested by something Leah Cutter said. It's uniquely science-fictional, makes good use of a key element of the setting, and resolves a key ethical dilemma all in one tidy package. Now all I need is to find the way there. (I always know the ending of a story... generally it's the second thing I know, after the setting or situation. Sometimes the end changes as I move toward it, but I always have an ending that I'm heading for.)

This evening I realized that I have to get this chapter done by Saturday, and lots of other things too (including the season premiere of Dr Who on the Sci-Fi channel). I also realized that even if I don't know exactly what's coming next I have a fair idea of the rest of this chapter, so I started drafting again. It's going to be a stretch to get it done. I'll finish re-outlining after that.

PSA: If you are one of the eight people who was watching Drive when Fox unceremoniously canned it after four episodes, you might want to know that the remaining two episodes will be aired on Friday July 13 (not July 4, as originally announced).

Posted 07/05/2007 22:30 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50307 | Since last entry: 152 | Days until retirement: 91

Had a great time at the Writer's Weekend conference, despite the fact that I didn't know anyone there except Louise Marley. But I was on a couple of very nice panels with her and with Cherie Priest and met a bunch of keen new folks, including a bunch of cool kids from Bellingham. Conference organizer Karen Junker said she heard very good things about me (including from literary agent Nephele Tempest, whom I don't even know!) and has already invited me back for next year.

The conference was held at the lovely Roosevelt Hotel, just blocks from Pike Place Market and other downtown Seattle wonderfulnesses. We were only slightly affected by the president of Korea's presence at the hotel next door, although motorcades halted vehicular traffic near the hotel on a couple of occasions. We also shared the hotel with delegates to the BMM conference. I have been unable to determine, either by asking around or by reading the conference's web page, what BMM stands for, but I gather it's a conference for US residents who hail from a certain Indian state.

I must admit that it was very strange for me to be playing the role of Big Name Pro (though many of the other BNPs at the conference were substantially younger than I), but I do think I was able to provide some useful advice in my presentations and hallway conversations. This seems to have been my weekend for telling people to get off their duffs and submit something already. I hope that they will follow through. (Yes, I'm looking at you. Do it now.)

Before the conference we attended the weekly Clarion West party at the lovely new home of Kelly Eskridge and Nicola Griffith, where we schmoozed with many a Seattle fan and pro and met at least half of the 2007 class. I won't attempt to list them except for Leah Cutter, who gave me some very good ideas about my novel. And then tonight we started Japanese class (only 8 weeks until we leave for Yokohama, aiee!).

All this means little writing in the last few days. So it goes. I did write every day in June, although most of what I wrote at the conference was outline and notes rather than actual novel. I realize now that what has happened is that I've now written all the scenes I have been holding in my head since the beginning and I need to pause and rethink what comes next. I have a general idea of where I'm going but I need to get more concrete about it.

Posted 07/02/2007 22:46 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50155 | Since last entry: 10592 | Days until retirement: 95

In my last writing post I declared a new resolve to write every day. I have done so every day since, 300-500 words most days. Yay me. However, this has taken time away from blogging. A good tradeoff, in my opinion, but I'm kind of sorry I didn't get to write in detail about some of the things that happened this month.

I've made very good progress on the novel, but I just hit a point where I realize the outline is too thin to sustain forward progress. I may have to pause and re-outline very soon. Alternatively, I could glom the next three chapters into one and move quickly to the next exciting bit. I'm no longer worried about the novel being too short.

It's been a very busy month at work. We hit the UI Freeze milestone and I fixed (or otherwise dealt with) 241 bugs and other issues. However, just because UI Freeze has come and gone doesn't mean I can't fix any more problems. I just have to be more subtle about it. For example, I can no longer add any new words or phrases to the UI (they've all been sent off to be translated into 14 languages), but if need a new phrase and I can find a similar phrase that already exists I might be able to use it in a new location (if the translation will work in both places in all languages). Still, this milestone means that my level of effort on this project is going to be scaling back. Lots of other projects await.

I've told key people at work that my unofficial official retirement date is October 1. There are quite a few details to work out before then, health care being a biggie. I have not told my co-workers yet (well, unless they're reading this blog).

I've been a real social moth (that's like a social butterfly but it batters itself against lightbulbs and other shiny things). Just briefly, the last 3 weeks included: Brandi Carlile concert, reading by the Yarn Harlot, housewarming for a writer new to town, major cross-site work meeting and dinner, viewing of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (I didn't know it was a comedy), dinner with square dance friends, failed attempt to have brunch with other square dance friends, Gay Pride parade and festival, dinner with another square dance friend, benefit showing of Serenity, haircut, open house for the new Grand Central Bakery, JayCon, midnight singalong showing of the Buffy musical episode, dim sum with yet another pair of square dance friends, party at the home of some lesbian librarian friends, book group (Portable Childhoods), delightful house concert with one of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, and a live taping of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Every one of those deserves at least a paragraph, if not its own entry. They won't get it.

Tomorrow in the afternoon at work we have the celebration of our recent Beta 1 release, which I will duck out from early to head up to Seattle for a Clarion party followed by the Writer's Weekend conference, at which I am a Guest Speaker. See some of you there!

Posted 06/28/2007 23:42 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 39563 | Since last entry: 891

Kate is in Spokane again this week. Her father had a new plastic lining installed in his abdominal aorta today, and when last we spoke he had come through the surgery okay but they hadn't yet seen him. He's expected to come home Thursday, and Kate should be back Friday, subject to the usual uncertainties. I miss her.

Two people who know a little something about having new linings installed are friends Jerry and Suzle, from Seattle, who called up on the spur of the moment on Saturday (Kate was still here then) to say that they were in town and would we like to have dinner? We were just about to boil some potatoes for salmon hash, but I want to live in the kind of world where friends can just pop in on each other on short notice, so we turned off the stove and had a nice Middle Eastern dinner at Karam downtown. Too bad we didn't remember that it was the night of the Starlight Parade. But we did find parking eventually. And we had the salmon hash the next day, and it was delish.

I was a bad bad writer in May. I wrote on only five days in the whole month. I also traveled to Palm Springs, New York, and Denver, but still. So I have made a new resolution: to write every single day in June, at least a hundred words a day (though I'm going to have to average over 200 words a day for the next 10 days to finish this chapter in time for the next crit group meeting). So far, so good. I'm also going to try to go to the gym three times a week, but frankly that's more negotiable.

I received my author copy of Israeli magazine The Tenth Dimension, with the Hebrew translation of "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" and five cool illustrations. Looks like they got five different artists to illustrate Mike in each of the five scenes of the story -- each the same pose, but they're all different, and charmingly childlike. Very apropos.

On the downside, my first novel has now been rejected by every one of the big New York publishers that might reasonably be expected to want it. It is now in submission to one of the smaller genre presses. I do hope it finds a home soon. I'm also jealous of people who are at Rio Hondo or Blue Heaven this week and next.

Oh well. I try to distract myself by writing on the new novel. A snippet:

As near as Keelie could tell, Rachel herself spoke only one language. This baffled her. Everyone spoke at least Argot, and probably one or two other trade languages, in addition to their own language or languages.

But Rachel depended on the machine, and kept holding it in front of Keelie's face, its surface blinking with sixtyfours of different kinds of marks. Keelie knew what writing was, but it was opaque to her -- teaching a slave to read was a whipping offense.

She swore in frustration.

And the machine spoke...

Posted 06/05/2007 22:33 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 38672 | Since last entry: 35

Just back from the IAGSDC convention in Denver. Flight was delayed so I arrived home about 1am today. Guh?

Kate had to leave the convention early to be with her father, who went to the hospital (and then got transferred to another hospital in Spokane) with an aortic aneurism. He spent 5 days in the cardiac ward and then was sent home because they had to order a part. No, really. Kate should be home tomorrow, probably will go back again for the surgery some time next week.

I had a great time at the convention itself. Good dancing, good food, good friends. Denver seems a very nice city, quite similar to Portland in some ways, and the convention location on the 16th Street pedestrian mall was excellent. Had a phenomenal dinner at Tamayo, and went back for lunch the next day. Honky Tonk Queen contest was surprisingly entertaining; 3 of the 4 contestants displayed actual talent! Fun Badge Tour had us dancing on the field at Broncos Stadium (professionally-maintained real-grass football field is a very nice dance surface!) and at the fabulous Red Rocks Auditorium. It was much more fun than I'd expected, knowing nothing about Denver.

After the FBT I went to the famed Casa Bonita with some square dance friends. At first I thought it was cheap and tacky, but after I came to accept it on its own terms I was charmed. Despite its gaudy extravagance it has a certain naive humility. It's hard to describe, but it's kind of like a cross between Pirates of the Caribbean (the ride) and Chuck E. Cheese, except with live entertainment. I mean, cliff divers! And a haunted cavern! What's not to like?

Posted 05/29/2007 22:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 38637 | Since last entry: 719

I'm pleased to announce that I sold story "Moonlight on the Carpet" to Aeon Speculative Fiction. This story was written at the Two Beers And A Story Challenge at the Worldcon in Boston.

I've been writing about as often as I've been blogging, alas. I did write 500 words at the coffee shop last night, but they don't quite fit where they are and I'm going to h