Musapaloosa

Delia & I are off to the wilds of Maine tomorrow, to a magical house over the water lent us by her oldest friend, for a lengthy and much-needed writing retreat: she to finish her revisions on The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (sequel to Changeling) and I to try to finish a couple stories and start a script for a kids' play - oh, and finish that comic script! By July 15 we must make our way toOdyssey to teach, and from there proceed at a stately pace to Readercon. So don't look to hear from us for awhile: in Maine we will have access only to dial-up connection, mostly - and a good thing, too, or I would be spending every available minute for the next few weeks just playing with Wordle, a cool new toy that matociquala found for us:



This is of the opening and closing paragraphs of The Privilege of the Sword. Enchantment, thy name is Wordle.

Clowns will haunt me.

>Just wow. No wonder my childhood was so strange.

Check out Colleen Doran's post about her "Riverside" auction piece! What a nice person she is.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

See the rest here, chez tetrabinary, who has reclaimed his old account and lj name.

...a change-of-scene makes! This morning Patrick and I drove together into downtown Leeds for the first time in months. (The curse of the suburbs - it's just so much easier to drive 5 minutes to the suburban Borders/shopping center, with its free parking, or to drive 10 minutes to the mall - again, free parking - than to drive 15 minutes into the city center and pay for a parking space...) Instead of sitting at home for our writing session, we did our writing in a downtown café looking out onto the busy main street. And it was amazing - I scribbled pages and pages of notes on KbS, and had the easiest, most purely fun writing session that I've had a long time. It felt great.

Once we'd finished, we wandered two blocks over to the huge Waterstones bookshop, which I absolutely love - but which I almost never go to (see: free parking at Borders!). For the first time, I was able to see in person several of the books I'd read about online, and better yet - they were doing a 3-for-2 sale! I ended up with four (!) new American YA novels that all look like so much fun: Robin Benway's Audrey, Wait! (which feels kind of like a teenage girl version of High Fidelity - excellent), Cassandra Clare's City of Ashes, Kelley Armstrong's The Summoning (first in her new YA trilogy), and Jo Graham's Black Ships, which I've been looking forward to for a LONG time. Just to make it all even better, I got mega-points on my Waterstones card for them, too, including 5 "eco-points" for not asking for a plastic bag - woot! I was practically bouncing as we left - it felt like Christmas. And as we walked through the busy downtown streets, surrounded by unfamiliar people and shops and scenes, I felt my mind opening wide open.

It is much too easy to fall into a rut with day-to-day routines. But it feels so nice to break it, even if it's only with something as mild as a drive into town.

This afternoon was Maya-time, with a trip out to the park. We'd started to worry that she wasn't getting enough dog socialization - she'd started acting nervous around other dogs when she met them, mostly because she didn't meet other dogs nearly often enough - so we've started taking her to the local park much more regularly. It's always full of border collies racing across the field after balls, Scottie dogs and labradors congregating in big wagging, sniffing groups, families playing games on the grass, and little kids climbing around the playground equipment. It's one of the most relaxing places I know, and I love it - especially on days like today, when Maya races around both of us with her tail high and wagging like a flag, brown eyes bright, pink tongue hanging out of her mouth, daring us to catch her, and then flying after her squeaky stuffed monkey with total dedication.

It's been a really good day.

Kat by Starlight

59,796 / 70,000 (85.4%)

Help us, Cory Doctorow Kenobi! You and the EFF are our only hope!


(Great. Now everyone's going to know how many times I watched that video of Celine Dion and Anastacia duetting on AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long.")

I don't usually leap into the fray when memes spread across LJ, but this one intrigued me:

Rules:
* Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done.
* If anybody responds with "I've done that," add another thing.

So here's my attempt to come up with three things I've done which I doubt any of you could have possibly done:

1) Jumped out of a plane—while wearing a parachute, of course—with an Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics.

2) Looked into the eyes of Ted Kennedy as we stood alone in the rotunda of the Supreme Court at opposite ends of the coffin of a Chief Justice.

3) Received the very first badge the very first day of the very first Star Trek convention.

Any challengers?

I've been wondering for a long time whether I could write a comics script. All the cool kids are doing it. But can I?

livelongnmarry's auction has given me the strength to find out. It's for charity, after all, isn't it? And a charity my wife and I support wholeheartedly. (We were legally married in Massachusetts - in our backyard - before we moved to NYC. Your heart would break to hear our plaintive cries of "Now we're living in sin!" every time we cross the border, and our shouts of joy every time we re-enter that Blessed State. Wouldn't it be nice if California led the way in being another safe haven for our union - and a locale for many others'?)

Tongue only somewhat in cheek, I've been scribbling a shortish script* about the young Theron Campion's pre-Fall of the Kings enthusiasm to right an ancient wrong (that predictably enough involves a gorgeous young Riversider no better than he should be), plus his father, the Mad Duke** . . . It's called "A Riverside Marriage" and what I'm auctioning is your chance to illustrate the entire comic (Fan Use Rights only), and post the creative collaboration on my website.***

The amazing Colleen Doran would have liked to outbid you, but she's on deadline, so instead she's offering a single original illustration at the auction. (Thank you, Colleen, for supporting the cause!)

So if you can't draw, pay Colleen to do it for you! If you can, but you're short of the ready, put together a consortium of artist pals to share the drawing duty - and the glory (and expense)! Minimum bid is $75, but please get into a bloody bidding war with dollars and body parts flying everywhere. It's for charity, after all.

livelongnmarry's auction runs only through July 15th. And a good thing, too. The suspense would kill me.

*And may I say how much I love writing comics script? All I have to write is the dialogue!! Someone else does the description!!! Why didn't I think of this yeeeears ago?

**It's also got the Duchess Katherine, head in hand, going: "Oh, Theron..." a lot. blackholly said I should put that in, and who can deny her?

***I will also answer any questions you have while drawing it.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

The good folks at SF Signal have done one of those Mind Meld things on the question of gender imbalance in SF. I was asked to contribute to this, but I turned them down: not because I have anything against SF Signal - the Mind Meld thing is very popular and works quite well, so I was honored to be asked - but because I think that the whole debate has got very narrow and very silly. I may try to write something more general and (hopefully) more useful sometime soon.

Meanwhile David Moles has entered the affray, including the following:

I’d love to edit a fiction magazine that was run like a proper academic journal, by which I mean one based on anonymous independent peer review by experts in the field, which is in this case to say by published authors with expertise in the genre or subgenre of the story under submission.

I’m sure this would be totally dysfunctional, but it would be totally dysfunctional in a different way than our current totally dysfunctional short fiction publishing system.

And that is so true. If there is anything that a career in regulatory economics teaches you it is that no matter how many whiz ways people come up with to “fix” things that are “wrong”, the primary effect of all this huffing and puffing it to create something that is totally dysfunctional in a different way.

( The unfinished novel meme... with bonus list of books that may never get written at all, and two bonus novellas )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Glenda Larke may have found one, in Como. And what is so good about it? The building in which it is located has been around since the 6th Century. That’s the sort of building that ought to be selling books.

via stillsostrange

A list of potential/unfinished novels.

Mal Se -- sf novel, set on alien world with Russian colonists and alien wolf packs, started in 1998; earliest beginnings were attempted in 1979-1981
Wave -- disaster thriller about a tsunami, set in Hawaii, started in January 2000
Red Shale -- medieval fantasy, 2004
Doe/Romeo Unbound/Bathtub Clone -- enslaved clone searches for the meaning to life in a future Chicago, with criminals and decadence and societal unrest, started in 2001
The Sun Also Sets -- sequel to Only The Dead, secret history vampire novel with Ernest Hemingway and Irene Joliot-Curie, started in 2008
Shift -- multiverse invasion thriller, started in 2008
City of Fire -- current work in progress, uses thematic elements from Mal Se and Doe and some set pieces from Red Shale, started in 2008

I set TSAS aside because it seemed silly to write a sequel to an unpublished novel. OTD is good, everyone says so, it's just a mater of finding an agent and then finding the right publisher. I may find myself in the envious position to write fantasy and horror, and work with two different publishers. As I've grown and worked on my craft, I've felt I'm probably most akin to Dan Simmons in focus. Oh, and Charlie Finlay, who can switch genres with ease as well as Simmons. Perhaps even better than Simmons. If you want to emulate anyone's career, you couldn't go wrong trying to match Charlie. Dedication is his real middle name.

And I don't mind if he reads this and feels embarrassed (and he probably would feel that way, he's so modest); I met him back in 2000, and seeing how hard he works keeps my own nose to the grindstone. Because while the above list seems pretty long, I'm finally gaining some steam. It certainly helps to write things the "right" way rather than stumbling along, making several false steps. I'm shooting to finish City of Fire before the end of October, which is 121 days from today. Then I'm heading back to Shift, which falls somewhere between sf and horror and mainstream thriller. TSAS is something for another day. I'll probably run more of Only The Dead past the writing group, attempting to get it perfect, before I tackle the sequel again.

I will be working down in Christchurch next week Tuesday and Wednesday.

It looks like there may be games at goldboy's house and Tuesday night, so I will be going there sometime in the evening. 

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

If it's not too hard for you to get to Burlington, Mass. (about 30 minutes from Boston), July 17-20, come to Readercon! It's right up there with Wiscon in my try-never-to-miss list. Who can resist a program with titles like Snape, Gollum, and Other Moral Linchpins, or What Has It Got in Its Apocalypses?, or The Aesthetics of Online Magazines . . . not to mention, ahem, a solo talk by yrs trly: Return to Riverside? And guests like Geoff Ryman, Suzy McKee Charnas, Andy Duncan, Louise Marley, Farah Mendlesohn, Barry N. Malzberg, Kelly Link, Paul Park, Michaela Roessner, John Kessel, Michael Swanwick, Theodora Goss, John Clute, Nancy Werlin, and, well, us?*

There will also be an Interstitial Arts Town Meeting, open to all.

Hope to see you there! Honest. Please feel free to use this post's Comments to troll for rides and roommates.

*A plethora of my favorite LJ authors will also be there, like Elizabeth Bear & friends - but I figure if you're a fan of theirs you already read all about it from them....

The restlessness has hit, though alas the brain has obviously not fully regenerated yet. Which is to say, I really would like to be working--I'm fretful and bored and want to be creating things--but right now I have a first draft of "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood" and a second draft of Seven for a Secret and I have two-thirds of the first draft of Chill written, and they should really all be being worked on... but the inside of my skull is itching in that way that tells me that I need to let them sit and grow a little bit longer, until they present me with the answers to the dilemmas I've built into them.

This is the left-brain/right brain portion of the process.

Right now, what I'm doing ("I" in this case means that portion of my brain, the tippy top of the left neocortex, which thinks of itself as I and uses language and manipulates linear deductive logic) is waiting while all the other bits of my brain--which are also I, but do not think of themselves that way, and do not communicate in the kind of symbols that the portion of me that calls itself I finds congenial and easy to comprehend--sort out how the tricky bit of the story--the part that is currently represented by "And then a miracle occurs"--goes. When they've done that, they'll communicate the answer to me, and I'll sit down and write the last few bits of prose and be amazed at how simple that was, once I thought of it.

Hopefully maybe something back there is working on Chill, too, because I'd like it in the last part of the book grew soon, as I have to (you see) write it. And stuff. Right now, it's really waiting for it to ripen, so I can write something I can be proud of instead of barely-competent hackwork. 

You know, it's true. You can't wait for inspiration to strike. You have to be able to get down there in the trenches and slog through the words even when it's not flying along, because that's part of what being a professional means. But you also need to know when to give yourself a little time and room, to let things cook. Because it's possible to outrun your creativity, and at that point, you just have to wait until the fruit is ripe before you can eat it and not get sick. Sometimes this means setting limits on what the industry will demand from you. And sometimes it means setting limits on what you yourself will demand from you.

And the funny thing is, sometimes one fruit will ripen before another, even though both seem to be getting the same amount of sun. You can never really tell. It's just poking them until they smell right.

In the meantime, though, maybe what I need is a nap. Or a map. Or both.

( Books read so far, 2008 )

---

Walked 4.5 miles this morning, so I am 90.5 miles from Lothlorien.

Regarding the first-draft-just-completed novel, it doesn't have a title yet. I usually don't have too much trouble with titles--not that I don't change them (for a long time Spells for Clear Vision was Airs and Graces).

This is part of a loosely connected series of novels based on ballad and myth. Gypsy Davey, the first one, is based on the ballad of that name (also called "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy", "The Gypsy Rover" and other variations) + the Donkeyskin fairytale.

This second one is based on "The Demon Lover" ballad + the Persephone myth.

The problem is that "The Demon Lover" has a far too paranormal romance connotation for this particular novel, though a relationship is central to the story and it is a fantasy novel. I'm bummed that "The Demon Lover" won't work as it would be great to consistently name the novels after the ballad titles, but so it does. I would choose a ballad that doesn't seem to have a variety of titles to choose from. At least, I don't think so. There aren't any pomegranates and I don't think there is an image that is central enough to the story to work as a title. My working file folder is called "Kate" after the main character, which is pretty useless.

The only thing I can think of so far is Alakshihir, the (made-up place) setting for the greater part of the novel.

What do you think of that as a title?

Any other title suggestions conjured by the very little I've said about the novel?

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I quote from Nature:

The Spanish parliament’s environment committee last week approved resolutions for chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans to gain some statutory rights currently applicable only to humans. It is thought to be the first time a national legislature has taken such action.

More here.