Friday Cat Blogging With Bonus Cats

The rare chocolate walrus-seal sunning itself.



Wake me if…actually, no. Just let me sleep.



Ahhhhhhh…



I kill fish with my mind.



Shadowy cat blogger is shadowy.



Where iz mah snaxz?



You do know you can't outstare a cat, right?



Watch this next trick!



Of course I'm not that into you. You don't have food.

Friday Cat Blogging

It's a bag and I'm a cat, duh. Wait, glitter, you say?




If you do not pick me up and snuggle me
RIGHT NOW, I will die of the sads.



I looked out the front window, that's why!



The view out the front window:



You say eyelid stitches. I say BIONIC WHISKERS!



I'm too sexy for my books, too sexy for…



Pour me 'nother nip, barkeep, I'm fine.

Friday Cat Blogging

The committee for feline domination board meeting



THIN cat.



WIDE cat.



There, all snuggly for nap time.



Character is what you are in the dark!



Not a cat, but still devilishly cute.



The OTHER committee for feline domination

Book Club Weirdness

Last night I was invited to take part in the local Gaylaxicon reading series, as they had all read (or at least been assigned to read) Resurrection Code. I will be the first to admit I find these kinds of visits especially... awkward.

I had a great time, don't get me wrong. (There were cookies! Pop! A fellow Hogwarts scarf wearing fan!) But, I mean, in my mind, the point of a book club is so that you can have rousing discussions about all the things you loved and HATED about the book you just read. It's a lot more difficult to really get going --especially about all the flaws -- when the person who wrote it is sitting right there... at least, in Minnesota, it is. I'm usually the first person to admit that there are a lot of things that people might not like about my work, but no one wants to bring that stuff up. Conflict bad! (Not for me, of course. Conflict = interesting).

In the future, I should come more prepared. Have a quiz ready to go. Or, trivia (with prizes!) Or, maybe just a few, pointed, serious questions about some of the meatier issues, like, "How badly did I represent the transgender character? Discuss!"

Thus, the conversation didn't stick on Resurrection Code for very long. We ended up talking about TV shows, sharks, and other people's books. As I said, I had a great time, but I left wondering if, you know, I should have been more willing to talk about my own work. Especially since I resisted reading from it too.

Though, as you know, I am one of the guests of honor at Gaylaxicon this year (along with Wendy Pini... I wonder, should I bring along my fan art? I have a ton of ElfQuest fan art from my youth in the basement.) Anyway, Don K. asked me if I would be willing to write something short for their program book/chapbook. I said yes, of course, and I had been thinking of giving them a re-print of something, but now am thinking I should write something NEW, a short story in the AngeLINK universe. What do y'all think?

I need to come up with a plot, though. A gay plot. The plot must be very gay.

Any suggestions?

Revision Neurosis

On Friday I got my editorial letter from Penguin for Tate's newest novel Precinct 13. Shawn and I were off celebrating "anniversary observed" and so I didn't really see it in my in-box until yesterday. Today is the first day I'm sitting down and really looking at it. First of all, it's seventeen pages long. That's pretty long, though my editor didn't send back an electronically marked-up document, so it's not as line-by-line detailed as some of the others have been (though there is *some* of that.)

My editor is always very reasonable in her expectations, but regardless, I seem need to spend the first day of "revising" actually fuming, and not (re-)writing at all. I get over it. I usually get over it in a matter of hours, and then get down to the work of making changes that she will appreciate and I can live with. More often than not, I come out the other side very grateful for her suggestions.

I suspect that'll happen again... any minute now.

However, at this very second, I just want to whine that "no one understands my GENIUS!!"

It's something I've noticed a lot about my writing process: it's very manic depressive (or maybe just... neurotic). For instance, I just finished a short story that I'm submitting to the second Biblical horror anthology that Dybbuk Press is putting out. I HATED the story at several points during its creation, but, on Friday, when I finished going over my writers' group's comments and revising it, I thought it was the most awesome thing anyone had written eVAR in the history of writing. If/When it gets rejected, I will, at first, decide that the editor was the biggest fool in the universe not to recognize my genius. I will immediately send it off to someone else who might appreciate me more. Then, after it's gone back into the mail, I will suddenly believe that I suck, and that none of my writing has ever been worthy of publication.

Technically, I skipped a step in here, where I will love the story just before I print it out to handout to my writers' group, and then, the moment they have it in their grubby little hands, think of everything that's wrong with it and why they're going to tell me it's dumber than the dumbest thing ever uttered. And, then the subsequent roller coaster of emotions at the writers' group itself where I'm insanely happy that they found things to like, and mortified by the things that need improvement. Weirdly, I don't tend to blame Wyrdsmiths for not recognizing my genius, and I no longer go through a period, not even a millisecond, of thinking, "Wow, they just don't GET me," probably because my brain pre-filters comments as I'm listening to them, ie, "Oh, that was a good catch, I'll write that down," vs. "Well, that wasn't my intention, but so-and-so doesn't like horror, so I'll note that impression but not dwell on it other than to make sure that part is toned down in revision so no other reader goes there."

I think that just shows that there's a lot of trust built up in Wyrdsmiths over time. You'd think I'd have that same trust with my editor, but I see Wyrdsmiths every other week. I talk to my editor usually only when working on a book's revisions with her, once or twice a year. Also, face-to-face is ultimately different than receiving a seventeen page critique (even though my editor is always very good to mention the things she likes as well.)

I guess I just needed to articulate that, because I have no one here at home to complain to besides the cats.

Not that I'm a crazy cat lady.

Spontaneity and Honesty

I have been reading Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones. Goldberg is very much self-identified as a writer. Most of her work has about the process of writing. She is a writer who writes about how to write. She has also published poetry, which I don't find especially interesting, and a novel I didn't like. Her best work is either memoir or how-to writing books or a combination.

She studied Zen with Katagiri Roshi in Minneapolis, and what she describes is very much writing as a Zen practice. In fact, Katagiri told her writing was her practice.

She emphasizes spontaneity and honesty, writing that comes straight from the heart. I enjoy reading her and think about using her writing exercises. But in my own writing I value control and lying. My writing, especially my prose fiction, is not spontaneous; it's worked over, revised and refined. Most of my writing is fiction and untrue. In fact, it is is not even realistic. It is science fiction and fantasy. I keep thinking about the line from Hamlet: "By indirections find directions out." Using fiction, one finds or says the truth.

I draw on my own life, my experiences and feelings, but I don't show them directly. They are hidden in the tale. And my stories wander into unplanned places. In that sense, they are spontaneous. But control is always present. I am not going to become enlightened working this way. But I am reasonably happy with the stories.

Saturday Meteorite Blogging

These colorful images are of thin slices of meteorites viewed through a polarizing microscope. Part of the group classified as HED meteorites for their mineral content (Howardite, Eucrite, Diogenite), they likely fell to Earth from 4 Vesta, the mainbelt asteroid currently being explored by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Why are they thought to be from Vesta? Because the HED meteorites have visible and infrared spectra that match the spectrum of that small world. The hypothesis of their origin on Vesta is also consistent with data from Dawn's ongoing observations. Excavated by impacts, the diogenites shown here would have originated deep within the crust of Vesta. Similar rocks are also found in the lower crust of planet Earth. A sample scale is indicated by the white bars, each 2 millimeters long.

Friday Cat Blogging

Beached! But sun… But beached! But sun…



I can has suuuuun.



Nap attack.



Yes, my precious…

Launch Neurosis

I am now deeply into the "nobody is even going to see that this book exists, and that means no one will buy it phase," of Broken Blade launch neurosis.

My version of launch neurosis is funny, actually, because I'm not generally susceptible to the more common imposter syndrome variation. I don't find myself thinking, "what if if nobody told me the books sucks?" Or, "people who read this are going to hate it." Or, "I'm not a real writer."

That's in part because I don't mind that some of the people who read it won't like it. There are any number of perfectly excellent books that I don't like. And it's in part due to the fact that I am confident that I have written the best book I could. I'm proud of Broken Blade, and I think that it will do well if it finds its market.

But I do find myself absolutely terrified that no one will notice the book and that it will sink without a trace before the people who might have really liked it will find it. It's really all about locus of control. I can, more or less, control how good of a book I write. I can't control how people will react to the book, and I'm okay with that. But I feel that there should be some way to make sure that people know the books exists, and the fact that there's actually very little I can do on that front drives me nuts.

Sunday Star Blogging

For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this has never been seen before. It's true that supernovae and novae expel matter out into space. But while the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen here is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of Monoceros the unicorn. In this Hubble Space Telescope image from February 2004, the light echo is about six light years in diameter.

Friday Cat Blogging

Duuuuude…



Lean down here so I can smack you



Bliiinded by liiiiiight



Crazy eyes? What crazy eyes?



I can kill you with my mind.



Anyone see a bunch of reindeer go by?