Wyrdsmiths

Friday Cat Blogging

2012-01-27T12:05:00.002-06:00

Shocked, I tell you shocked!

Don't you wish you were this cute?

Sleeping cat rampant, sable on a field taupe.

Is it secret? Is it safe?

U like mah boatz? I sailing on the carpet sea.

What are you looking at? Cats love water.
Everyone knows that.

Cat descending a staircase…very slowly.

Smart Things

2012-01-22T15:06:00.004-06:00

I thought it was way past time to get back to my smart things write ups.

Via Theodora Goss, Jeff Vandermeer saying smart things about how to live as a writer.

"They" It can be singular gender neutral and perfectly correct, the historical and grammatical case. Gabe Doyle (graduate student and doctoral candidate in Linguistics) saying smart things about language.

Tobias Buckell saying smart things about self publishing and attitude. As someone who is strongly considering shifting some of my publishing to an indy model, I quite agree with this.

Thor

2012-01-20T11:05:00.002-06:00

I saw the movie Thor again and did a couple of posts -- one long -- about it on my blog. I know what this about. You fall in love with a movie for silly, personal reasons and then do a complex analysis, demonstrating that it is worth falling in love with. Anyway, if you are interested, my blog is listed off to the right.

Friday Shameless Self-Promotion Cat

2012-01-20T09:53:00.000-06:00

Wha...?? How did SHE sneak in here!!!????

Friday Cat Blogging

2012-01-20T09:00:00.006-06:00

I haz a thought, but it's very hard to hang onto.

Duuude!

Ima be a dragon when I grow up, call me Toothless!

Scratch harder, you missed a spot.

Call me Coconut, King of the Jungle!

Come over here so I can smite you.

We think that you should stay. No, you don't get a vote.

Fame, At Last?

2012-01-19T12:26:00.003-06:00

I found out from a friend that my pseudonym was mentioned in io9 today: "The Weirdest Creatures Vampires Have Gone To War With."

On a side note, I remember when the X-Men were attacked by Dracula/vampires, actually. It was particularly memorable to me because it blew one of my preconceived notions about vampires. There's a scene where Kitty Pride's Star of David burns Dracula, and it's explained that in the Marvelverse, it isn't the cross that hurts vampires, but belief of any kind.

Starting off the New Year with a Bang

2012-01-18T13:58:00.000-06:00

I was updating my static web site and it occurred to me that I should probably let folks over here know what I'm up to.

A lot of people have asked me if any of the AngeLINK books will ever be available in electronic format. The answer is yes. I am working on reformatting a very messy electronic file for Archangel Protocol that I had to steal (from myself) off Torrent. The other books, I have in e-files that are still in usable form. So, I suspect once I get through that, the others will quickly follow. I am hiring someone to do a nice job of them. They should be available in all e-reader formats. Hopefully, that will happen this year.

I had some short story sales that I haven't mentioned.

Tim Leider has accepted "God Box," a science fictional retelling of the golden hemorrhoid story from Samuel 1, for KING DAVID AND THE SPIDERS OF MARS. KING DAVID... is the second Biblical horror anthology to come out from Dybbuk Press, and is a follow-up to the wildly popular SHE NAILED A STAKE THROUGH HIS HEAD (in which my story "Jawbone of an Ass" appears.)

Earlier, I sold a reprint of "Tutivillius" to Michael Mirriam for his second Northern Lights Anthology. For those few who came to the Diversicon reading of this story, it's the one about a female demon who has been charged with collecting words mangeled during the performance of Mass. It's my most Catholic story (there's even a discussion about transubstantiation in it,) but it's also very sweet. I'm pleased it's found a bigger home. It's only previous publication was in a Wyrdsmiths' chapbook.

Speaking of chapbooks, I'm currenly working on an AngeLINK short story that will appear in the Galyaxicon 2012 program book/chapbook. Apparently, Wendy Pini will also be producing some original art for the chapbook, so this is certainly something y'all will want to get your hands on if at all possible. Be sure to check out http://www.gaylaxicon2012.org/ for information!

Friday Cat Blogging

2012-01-13T09:00:00.007-06:00

There's nothing better than radiators!

Watch this front flip!

Best foot forward, always.

Charging lazer eyez is easier with radiant heat!

I'm too sexy for my cat tree!

I haz a cat growing out of my head again, don't I?

The souls of the innocent are always so delicious!

Xmas lazers energized.

So, do you come here often?

MFAs

2012-01-07T09:43:00.005-06:00

This is something I posted on facebook.

I've wondered about creative writing degrees for a long time. What is their purpose, except to train creative writing teachers? I mean, you get a degree in dental hygiene, and you can get a job. It used to be that a degree in journalism could help you get a job, and for all I know college training in business and technical writing are still useful. But creative writing?

I am prejudiced in this area. I have taken some classes in writing poetry, which were fine, though I'm not sure I learned much. (The best one was in Iceland, with awesome birdwatching.) Otherwise, I learned writing from reading a lot and studying English Lit. in college and being in writers' workshops, the kind that writers form to critique each other's work, not the for-pay kind with a teacher. One thing I have never learned is how to teach writing. When I've tried it, I'm not good. You might learn how to teach writing through a creative writing program, and that would be useful, if you wanted to teach creative writing.

The thing that strikes me outrageous is people are coming out of MFA programs with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. A lawyer or doctor has a good chance of paying off this kind of debt, but a creative writer? A poet? Or someone writing literary fiction, whatever that might be? -- I don't get the impression that most MFA programs are teaching people how to write romances and techno-thrillers. In any case, no matter what you write, most people in the field scrape by and a few people do well. The odds are never good.

This does not mean you give up. It means you think long and hard about starting a writing career with a lot of debt.

If your goal is to write, and you have no other career plans, a BA in something is a good idea, since a college degree is useful in getting a job, and you will need to pay the rent while building a writing career. These days you are going to pile up debt getting that. Piling up even more debt seems really unwise.

Friday Cat Blogging

2012-01-06T09:00:00.009-06:00

Do you have foodz?

Ima take a lil nap, 'kay?

Stitches cat can haz napz too?

Speaking of napz…

Napz or snackz? Tough call…

I want snackz!

Zzzzzzzzz…

The Pignetti/Cochran Guest Cats

You're not my real people, I hate you!

What Dexter said, hating you!

Not my real people, I may have to burn you with lazerz!

Don't know who you are, but I love you anyway.

Weirdness... Sells?

2012-01-03T09:12:00.003-06:00

One of the things I did over the holiday was read the page proofs for the mass-market paperback edition for Tall Dark & Dead (my first Garnet Lacey book). My editor sent it as a .pdf, and so I mailed it to my partner's fancy new Kindle Fire, and spent a day reading my book on the Kindle. I found several typos, much to my surprise. The good news is that they'll be corrected in the paperback version. The other thing that was kind of awesome about that is that I discovered that one of my best selling books is also one of my quirkiest.

I don't know if you noticed, but Garnet is kind of a slut. There is a LOT of sex in that book, and sexiness. Sebastian is also surprisingly dark, and Parrish is... a total hustler, like literally, in that book. It's kind of amazing... and Garnet's friends are odd, a lot like my real friends, and the interactions in that books are very *me*.

Thus, one of the things that re-reading that book has done for me is made me a bit more confident about my quirkiness as a writer. You see, in most cases, I had no idea if my personal brand of weirdness was a plus or a minus to sales. The AngeLINK books, which are very *me*, are all out of print.

This "failure" has caused me to believe that maybe I had no idea how to write to a popular market. But, TD&D is going to mass-market. It's the only book I've ever had that's changing format like that. As a trade-size book, it's well into its sixth or seventh printing. I've easily made as much money in royalties from that book as they paid me in an advance, probably twice as much... if not more.

My point is, I can now say, with confidence, that my quirkiness is _not_ a detriment to sales. IN FACT, a person could make a pretty strong case that... maybe, just MAYBE I know what I'm doing.

Well, we probably shouldn't go THAT far. But, at least, it seems to be true that a book that has a lot of my extra special weirdness smeared all over it isn't automatically headed for the remainder pile.

This was kind of an epiphany... during the Epiphany and everything.

Cat Vest: The Video

2012-01-01T10:15:00.000-06:00

A small bit of fuzzy cuteness is my Hogmanay present to the world, Cat Vests: The Video:

Where is the Future We Were Promised?

2012-01-01T09:10:00.003-06:00

At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space. McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk" during Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984. The MMU works by shooting jets of nitrogen and has since been used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.

You can see bits of future in Singapore and Shanghai, at CERN, maybe in Tokyo. But I grew up in the Midwest on the edge of the future, and while I am still in the Midwest, the future has receeded. We are told we can't afford it.

Friday Cat Blogging With Bonus Cats

2011-12-30T15:17:00.003-06:00

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

2011-12-23T12:05:00.003-06:00

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

2011-12-15T20:58:00.004-06:00

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

2011-12-15T10:48:00.000-06:00

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

2011-12-12T11:20:00.002-06:00

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

2011-12-10T11:58:00.004-06:00

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

2011-12-10T09:28:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-09T18:08:00.001-06:00

Beached! But sun… But beached! But sun…

I can has suuuuun.

Nap attack.

Yes, my precious…

Launch Neurosis

2011-12-05T13:03:00.002-06:00

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

2011-12-04T07:56:00.001-06:00

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

2011-12-02T17:47:00.004-06:00

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?

Broken Blade Launch Day!

2011-11-29T10:21:00.003-06:00

I wrote a new book. Okay, I wrote it a year ago, and I've written two more since, but today is the day it gets shoved out of the nest and has to fly on its own. It's called Broken Blade, and its got assassins and sorcerers and swordfights and something very like zombies and all manner of cool stuff. It's also got two sequels already written. One, Bared Blade, is available for preorder at this very moment, and the other, Crossed Blades, goes off to my editor sometime in the next 72 hours. Look at the cover, isn't it shiny?

I really don't have a lot more to say about the book at this point in time. Once it's printed and bound and all of those things, a book more or less has to speak for itself and I'm going to let it, though you can hear me talking about a variety of things with Anton Strout at his latest Once and Future podcast, recorded on Sunday.

The commercial stuff: You can order Broken Blade directly from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Indiebound (various independents) should you be so inclined, and preordering Bared Blade at places like Barnes and Noble or Amazon is as easy as clicking.

If you're viewing this on November 29th, and you happen to be in the Minneapolis/St Paul area, I'll be reading bits of the book at the Har Mar Barnes and Noble tonight at 7:00, as well as making a few other appearances later in the week.

Broken Blade, meet world. World, meet book.

Catch of the Day

2011-11-27T15:10:00.002-06:00

"I began writing in order to arrive into the company of those whose company meant more to me than any other: the world of the books I’d found on shelves and begun to assemble on my own, and the people who’d written them, and the readers who cared as much as I did, if those existed."
—Jonathan Lethem

Friday Cat Blogging (the usual suspects)

2011-11-25T08:41:00.005-06:00

If you turn the heat down, I will cut you.

The yellow face, it burns us!

Warm, yet still retaining an air of mystery. I win.

Could you baste the other side, I'm about to turn over.

RIP Anne McCaffery

2011-11-22T20:17:00.002-06:00

I just read that Anne McCaffery has died.

I never met her, not really. I did get my Pern books autographed when she last came to Uncle Hugo's, but we probably only exchanged the usual, "How do you spell that?"

But the book I presented her to sign was dog eared, worn almost to tatters with rereading and so deeply, deeply loved.

Pern was my first fandom, before that word was really in usage, and certainly before I knew what it meant. I read the Dragonrider books over and over to the point that I had passages memorized. I wrote fan fic, drew fan art, and spent a large portion of my waking hours imagining myself as F'lar or F'nor or Robinton, the Harpermaster of Pern. I talked friends into reading the books so I could talk to them about it. One of my best friends even bought me a wine glass with a blue stem, because it was just like Robinton's. I used to put cinnamon in my coffee so I could pretend it was klah. I never did, but I desperately wanted to join those cool people in the weyr BBSs.

Anne McCaffery's world captured me in a way no others had before, and few would afterwards.

Broken Blade Book Launch Events

2011-11-21T08:45:00.002-06:00

So, I have a new book coming out a week from Tuesday, Broken Blade. The first chapter can be found here.

It can be bought at all the usual places, of course, but if you want to get a signed copy, you might want to come to one of the events I'll be having in November and December.

1st up: Launch day reading and signing at the Barnes and Noble in Har Mar Mall in Roseville (St Paul) MN. 7:00 pm, Tuesday November 29th.

2nd: I'll be signing and chatting with whoever shows up at Uncle Hugo's science fiction book store in Minneapolis, MN. 1:00 pm Saturday December 3rd.

3rd: I'll be signing, maybe reading, and chatting with whoever shows up at Bookends on Main in Menomonie, WI. 5:00 pm Thursday December 8th.

4th: I'll be signing and chatting with whoever shows up at Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, MN. 2:00 pm Saturday December 10th. This will be one of the last events at the book store before they become primarily on online book seller.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-11-18T09:57:00.003-06:00

Move me and die hairless ape!

If you loved me, you'd pick me up and put me in your lap.

Kiss me, you fool.

Nose and toes, nose and toes.

Methinks I saw a treat come this way.

Hellooo, Beautiful.

I like you, you may refer to me as your majesty.

Writing is Hard, Barbie

2011-11-17T13:49:00.002-06:00

Probably most of you don't remember that stink several years ago now over some talking Barbie doll that said, "Math is hard!" But, it is to that which the subject header makes a reference.

I don't always think writing is hard, but I sure did yesterday. I'm doing something lately that I don't attempt very often. I'm writing a short story.

Worse, yesterday, I met some writer friends per usual at our traditional coffee shop and, by chance, the owner had scheduled an author event. A gentleman read from his memoirs, and... well... I'm not fan of memoirs, frankly, but it was also really difficult to write my own words while desperately trying to tune out another's. Also, I'm at that point in the short story (about half way or 2/3rds way through) where I think it completely sucks.

But, today I will try again.

Because that's what it's all about. (Well, that and the hokey-pokey, of course.)

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-11-11T17:35:00.003-06:00

I ignore you from between your knees.

From hell's heart I…Okay, from between your knees I…

I catched the sun in my paws. Now what?

I know why the whales beach themselves.
It's because they feel like I feel now.

I defy you to put clever words in this mouth.

You fill tub with treats now, yes?

Just heating the water with mah laser eyes before drinking.

Speaking of the Stars

2011-11-11T09:01:00.001-06:00

Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. This cosmic close-up, a mosaic based on data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, traces dark dust and young, blue star clusters along prominent spiral arms that lend M83 its nickname, The Southern Pinwheel. Typically found near the edges of the thick dust lanes, a wealth of reddish star forming regions also suggest another popular moniker for M83, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. Dominated by light from older stars, the bright yellowish core of M83 lies at the upper right. The core is also bright at x-ray energies that reveal a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. In fact, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. The close-up field of view spans over 25,000 light-years at the estimated distance of M83

Writing Group

2011-11-11T08:55:00.002-06:00

A very nice meeting of the Wyrdsmiths last night. There were only four of us. Doug was writing against a Monday deadline. Kelly was madly revising. Adam was in Las Vegas. Bill was in the east.

I was in a miserable mood, because my partner Patrick has just lost his part-time job, which was all the money he had coming in. And the day was gray and bleak.

But the other three -- Naomi, Sean and Lyda -- liked my story. That, plus simply chatting with them, moved my mood into happiness.

Sartre said hell is other people. I would say happiness is other people -- and nature -- and the stars.

Character on Board!

2011-11-09T08:59:00.003-06:00

SF Signals had another Mind Meld question that they posed (and kindly asked if I would answer) "What are the advantages of character driven science fiction stories over stories that emphasize technology and sense of wonder? Can you provide some examples of stories that deliver both in a satisfying way?"

To which I (and many others) responded....

DONE!

2011-11-05T18:32:00.002-05:00

What are the two best words in the writerly vocabulary? THE END

Woohoo! Done!

Done! Done! Done!

3 novels, 300,000 words of fiction, in a bit under 18 months.

Still done!

All three will have gone in under deadline.

Did I mention still done?

Smart Things

2011-11-04T12:15:00.000-05:00

Jay Lake saying smart thing about not following every bit of writing advice you get, a sentiment I firmly agree with. It's too easy to lose your own writing process in the sea of advice that may or may not suit you. Then, to balance himself out, he goes on to be smart about the idea that some advice you should follow.

Dean Wesley Smith saying smart things about the inherent conflict of interest in agent as e-publisher. I know this is a touchy subject for many, but I think that Dean is right here that no matter how good your relationship is with your agent this is very shaky ground. I also suspect that sometime real soon here agents as publishers is going to result in ugly lawsuits for some.

Richard Parks saying smart things about getting hung up on language to the detriment of story, or as he puts it, "analyzing the leaves and missing the forest."

For Halloween, agent Kristin Nelson says smart things about scary bad contract clauses that every author and agent should be on lookout for.

Finally, via our mutual editor the marvelous Anne Sowards, Jim Butcher saying smart things about what it takes to make it as an author.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-11-04T08:58:00.002-05:00

Care to dance?

Halp, mah bed isn't big enough and I falled out!

Pardon me do you have any gray…ah, I just can't do it.

Wise cat loves the sun.

Well, I never!

I did, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Wish I could unsee that!

Gratuitous extra Meglet pic because she's having surgery today and I'm worried about her.

Dead Again

2011-11-03T09:05:00.003-05:00

Probably most of you have already heard this, but for those who haven't: Realms of Fantasy is dead (again.)

Vampire Wars

2011-11-02T09:31:00.001-05:00

Apparently Anne Rice's vampires feel sorry for the sparkly ones. And, frankly, who wouldn't?

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T13:22:00.002-05:00

This from EvilMadScientist.com, maybe too old school BSG for some of you, but I thought it was AWESOME.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-10-28T21:38:00.002-05:00

Sunny happy kitties…

Oh yeah!

If I weren't so comfy I'd kill something.

See, speak, and say no evil.

Evil, overflowing its basket.

Dignity and grace in all things.

What Coconut said, but with added evil.

Totally Old-School

2011-10-27T11:54:00.002-05:00

I just did something that I'm not entirely convinced other writers do on a regular basis. I just updated my static web site.

I know, weird, right?

Now, I'm going to be REALLY weird and update my psuedonym's page!!

Looking for Solutions, a Future

2011-10-26T09:15:00.003-05:00

Unlike Eleanor, I'm not in the least bit concerned that I have no interest in mainstream novels. For me, it's a matter of taste. I like carrots. I don't like tomatoes. Science fiction excites me; mainstream, not so much.

However, her thoughtful post made we consider WHY I like science fiction so much better. The conclusion I've come to is that science fiction (in general) tends to focus on solving a problem. (Unlike mainstream novels, which seem, IMHO, to wallow in them.) Even dystopian focused science fiction novels or movements, like cyberpunk, more often than not end with corrupt governments exposed, defeated, etc. The hero, like Case, might still be living in a back alley, but he will have used his powers for good... or made a valiant try.

This is why I consider THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy to be mainstream, not science fiction. The ending is bleak and the character's lives simply go from terrible to awful.

That's not science fiction to me. Science fiction is ultimately hopeful.

Of course, not all science fiction novels are deep and meaningful. Because modern science fiction came out of the pulp tradition, sometimes it's just plain fun. I can read books like THE PLUTONIUM BLONDE (John Zakour and Lawrence Ganum) and just enjoy it for what it is: a ripping good yarn.

I don't usually find the same entertainment value in reading about someone's family dysfunction.

Science Fiction

2011-10-25T12:41:00.004-05:00

This is long, but I had to get it out of my system. I have been posting about literary fiction over on my blog and ended by writing this.

I talk mostly about science fiction, but most of it also applies to fantasy.

*

Literary fiction clearly bugs me. Most likely because science fiction and fantasy still don't get the respect they deserve from most of the literary community. But I don't know enough about contemporary literary fiction to criticize it.

So I will talk about what I like about SF & F.

What people think is important. But I am more interested in how people act and how societies change. Technology is important, science is important, because both change our lives and how we think. NASA's Astronomy Photo of Day opens our minds, and lets us see the extraordinary beauty of the universe. It can move us -- mentally -- hundreds of thousands of lightyears. The Internet enables us to hold conversations that go around the planet. For the first time, we can find out what's happening at the level of individual experience everywhere. The New York Times ignored Occupy Wall Street at first, and has not covered it well since it began paying attention. But we have the videos of cops pepper spraying and beating demonstrators, which were taken by cell phones and put on line. We've seen what the demonstrators look like, heard what they have to say. Their signs and stories are all over the Internet.

When I was a kid in the truly strange 1950s, science fiction was the only fiction that explained the world I lived in, which might at any moment be destroyed by nuclear war. Most adults pretended the problem did not exist. Nuclear war was no worse than any other kind of war. All you needed was a fallout shelter in the back yard or a school desk to hid under. But I remember waking up terrified when a siren went off in the night. Science fiction was real. MAD magazine was real. Comic books were real. Because all knew reality was strange and scary and uncertain.

I subscribe to New Scientist and Technology Review. Science and technology are moving too fast for me to keep up; and it isn't one kind of science or technology that is moving fast. They are all going like gang busters. I figure SF is the best way to describe this astoundingly fluid world, changing from moment to moment in a hundred plus ways.

Did you know that slime molds can run mazes? And they could be used in city planning, though no one is doing this yet? They will find the most efficient way to go from A to B; you could use them to lay out a highway system. How do I know this? Some guy ran slime molds over a map of Tokyo. They laid out a highway system as well as city planners.

What do you do with a piece of information like that? I imagine using slime molds to plan cities. Someone is likely to do it. I also think of an organism that is usually single celled, but can become multicelled -- two different kinds of multicelled, if I'm remembering correctly, one a network and one a kind of hierarchy. The guys on top of the hierarchy get to reproduce. I am trying to imagine an alien society which is usually an anarchy, but can form two kinds of social organizations when needed. In a sense, Occupy Wall Street is like this: separate individuals coming together to form a network with distributed power.

I guess I will give one more example or pair of examples: Margaret Atwood's famous novel The Handmaiden's Tale and Suzette Hayden Elgin's far less well known science fiction novel Native Tongue.

I started The Handmaid's Tale, but gave up on it. Atwood established her idea: the US has turned into a religious patriarchy that enslaves women. But as far as I got into the novel, there were no more ideas, and I couldn't see why I should read a depressing book that was going to go on and on, with nothing new happening. (Many SF fans loved Atwood's book, by the way.) Elgin began with the same idea, then added her ideas about language, which are respected among linguists. (She was a linguist, teaching at the university level.) And she added aliens. I finished Native Tongue and read the sequel.

One idea is not enough in this world, where change comes from every direction, unless you are writing a short story.

Blogging and Facebooking

2011-10-22T23:25:00.012-05:00

I read the Jim Hines conversation about doing stuff on the Internet. I blog and am on facebook. I have mixed opinions re blogging. I have a blog so people can find me via Google. The blog has an email address attached so people are able to write me. Sometimes this is useful. Not everyone has a copy of the SFWA Directory. I keep the blog up, because it tells anyone looking for me that I'm still alive and still able to write.

But I am not a natural blogger. I find it hard to do, and it takes a lot of time. I think the effort I put in is obvious. My style is not fluid, chatty and fun. It's like chainsaw sculpture. Okay, this guy cut a bear out of a tree trunk. Well, it's not much of a bear. Looking at it, all you see is that it was hard to do.

But the blog gives me a place to put my poetry, and it gives me a place to think out loud, and people can find me. So it's worth it. I think.

I love facebook. Unlike the blog, where I mostly speak to silence, I get immediate feedback. The length constraints -- 420 characters -- mean I am forced to write short notes, mostly about the weather and what I had for breakfast and whatever I've done lately that was fun. I love how trivial all this is.

And I post links to articles and images I like, rather than writing about them. Here, this is the NASA photo of the day. Here, this is an article in The Guardian about Occupy Everywhere.

It can eat time, but I don't feel the effort I feel when I blog.

I don't think any of this is especially useful to my writing career. Yes, it has helped John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow, but they are exceptional. I figure, do what you want, so long as you still have time to do your real writing. It makes you more visible on the Internet, and a little visibility is not going to hurt.

I feel I've written or said this before. Well, I mull a lot, and come back to the same topics. Sometimes the mulling proves useful and sometimes not.

Soft Kitty

2011-10-22T11:04:00.002-05:00

Soft Kitty

Warm Kitty

Little Ball of Fur

Happy Kitty

Sleepy Kitty

Purr

Purr

Purr

OMG The Twitter!

2011-10-21T09:58:00.001-05:00

Jim Hines talks smart about blogging and other such on-line promotions on his LJ.

Buried What Now?

2011-10-19T09:09:00.000-05:00

Sometimes my subconscious digs up buried treasure and hands it over. Sometimes what it digs up just needs to have the dirt kicked back over it.

Sunday it produced 80 percent of a 1st draft at a poem that I'm fairly happy with. The words just spilled out of my brain and straight onto the paper. Treasure!

Today it gave me "Amaranth Bloodhagen First Lordmaster of Ghu." Excuse me? Amaranth Bloodhagen? That's not a name, it's an ice cream flavor for vampires. Which is doubly silly since everyone knows vampires are lactose intolerant.

*pauses, blinks*

You know, maybe my inner humorist could do something with that. The ballad of Amaranth Bloodhagen, perhaps? But, later, when the current book is done.

Whoo-Hooo!

2011-10-18T09:25:00.002-05:00

I finished my WiP last night!! Now it's off to beta readers, and then I'll put on a final polish (and, if you listen to Wyrdsmiths, entirely re-write the book in a day and a half) and then... it will be turned in! Yay! Super-yay!

It's funny, but even after all the books I've written and turned in, I follow the advice I gave myself at the beginning: celebrate every step. Thus, after typing "THE END," my partner and I opened a bottle of champagne (yes, we always keep some around,) and toasted another book written.

Cool Blogs

2011-10-16T09:49:00.002-05:00

We need more links to cool blogs discussing writing. I say this because I have trouble finding cool blogs that discuss writing. Help would be appreciated. Laura Anne Gilman is doing a series of posts on being a writer at the Book View Cafe Blog, but that's about all I know about right now.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-10-14T20:38:00.004-05:00

Turn the damn heat on, Monkey!

Evil IS my day job.

Om nom nom?

Shoot me now.

Noble Coconut is noble.

It's good to be the king.

I keel you with my mind.
Or, you could bring me another treat.

The Fictional 1%

2011-10-14T10:46:00.004-05:00

Because so many superheroes actually exist in Marvel's version of New York, this was bound to happen: "Super-Rich Superheroes Respond to #OccupyWallStreet: We are the Fictional 1%."

As a long time Marvel fan, I have to say they NAILED Iron Man (please notice that he wrote over "buy Scotch and lingerie models" with "Fight Communists") and Dr. Doom. However, notably missing is Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Fantastic Four) and Warren Worthington III/Angel (X-Men).

Meanwhile, very likely WITH the 99% would be Spider-Man, who I believe HAS had to deal with Aunt May's home foreclosure/not making rent in canon.

Flyer for St. Paul Art Crawl This Weekend

2011-10-07T18:20:00.011-05:00

I couldn't get the flyer text to load here, but it goes as follows:

THE WYRDSMITHS WRITING GROUP

Eleanor Arnason
Bill Henry
Douglas Hulick
Naomi Kritzer
Kelly McCullough
Lyda Morehouse (Tate Hallaway)
Sean Murphy
Adam Stemple

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Whatever Else We Feel Like

http://wyrdsmiths.com/

http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/

***

Patrick found a web site that lists book signings by the Wyrdsmiths all Saturday and Sunday. I didn't tell the Art Crawl to promise that. People who want signatures will have to make do with mine; or -- if asked -- I will sign for other Wyrdsmiths.

And the lovely image is by Bill Henry for our group's new cool website.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-10-07T11:20:00.002-05:00

Noble Meglet is very noble!

When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you.

Duuuuude!

Mine! Mine! The blankie is all Mine!

Every side is MY good side.

Utterly delicious. I concur.
More please.

Ave, Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T09:46:00.003-05:00

I wrote my first book on a used Apple Macintosh that my friend Ted Davis gave me. Yes, a Macintosh with no modifiers, the very first of the line. I used MacWrite (II, I think). I never sold that book, but I fell in love with writing while I was doing it. I also fell in love with the Mac. It was so much simpler to use than any other computer I'd tried working on. It didn't get in my way I was able to just write and not worry about the machine I was working on.

I think I was in the middle of my second book when I upgraded to a slightly newer used Mac, this one with a hard drive. That lasted me through my third book and the beginning of my short story phase. That gave way to my first Mac laptop, a little Powerbook 140 that I bought new. Then a 145b where I wrote the short version of WebMage, my first story to sell.

I wrote WebMage the novel on my next Mac, a clamshell iBook slate. The form factor helped inspire the version of Melchior's laptop that most of my readers are familiar with. Two white iBooks followed, carrying me through the first couple of WebMage books as well as three novels that are still looking for homes.

I'm writing this on the successor to those machines, an aluminum MacBook, a tough beautiful machine that has lasted longer than any of its predecessors. It's seen me through the end of MythOS, SpellCrash, Broken Blade, Bared Blade, half of Crossed Blades, and The Eye of Horus. I also own an iPad that I use to take notes at Wyrdsmiths meetings and to read ebooks including eARCs.

My history with the Mac is my history of writing. I won't say that I wouldn't be a writer without Steve Jobs and Apple, but it would have been a lot harder and a lot less fun.

Steve Jobs, you made my life better, and you helped me bring my art into the world. Thank you!

On the Write Agenda and Writer Beware

2011-10-05T11:19:00.003-05:00

Lyda's post below reminded me that I wanted to put in my two cents on this. Basically, I'm with Writer Beware, Scalzi, Hines, and the rest of the professional writing community on this one. The Write Agenda is so wrong in so many ways it's hard to catalog them all, though Writer Beware is doing an excellent job in that direction. The core issue of course is that Writer Beware does outstanding work at preventing the literary predators from making money off of gullible new writers, and this makes the literary predators unhappy, which is good.

Keeping Up on the Kerfluffles

2011-10-05T09:32:00.003-05:00

The latest writing realated "mess": The Write Agenda vs. Writers Beware (Jim C. Hines take) and (from John Scalzi) "Writer Beward and the "The Write Agenda."

Girl Geniuses!

2011-10-05T09:27:00.002-05:00

How Stuff Works blog has an interesting article about the Top Ten Things Women Invented.

Number 1 (and possibly a surprise to some): KEVLAR.

The least surprising? Tied, IMHO, with the chocolate chip cookies and the dishwasher.

Broken Blade preview

2011-10-04T10:05:00.001-05:00

Heyo folks.

If you're interested in what I've been doing since SpellCrash, toddle on over to me website and read the preview chapter from the first book in my new series, Broken Blade.

Triskaidekaphobia

2011-10-03T13:57:00.001-05:00

I'm officially overdue on my WiP (Precinct 13, see amazing cover art below.)

And, I'm beginning to wonder at my wisdom of naming it with such an inauspicious number in the title. After all, there have been a series of unfortunate events that have lead to to this book being late. My father has been ill on and off, quite seriously, which would be trauma enough... BUT, I also had a computer crash (literally, as I dropped the computer on its hard drive) which resulted in a complete loss of everything I'd written on the book to-date.

Coincidence?

:-)

Me, Blogging Elsewhere

2011-10-02T11:14:00.003-05:00

I commit guest bloggery over at The Night Bazaar today. The topic? "Duos & Ensembles"

I like to think I took it in a direction less expected. Check it out!

Friday Cat Blogging Flat Cats in the Sun

2011-09-30T15:02:00.004-05:00

Three flat cats in the sun.

One in a ball.

One in a sprawl.

And one melted all down the wall.

.
.
.

Speaking of ball shaped cats…

Bonus Princess in the sun.

OMG! OMG! Sooooo Awesome!

2011-09-30T09:30:00.001-05:00

Here's the cover art for PRECINCT 13, my WiP. It's actually a bit overdue at the publisher, but I'm frantically writing and should have done soon. Because, DUDE, I so want to write a book as AWESOME as this cover!!!

What do you think?

MMP for TDD

2011-09-29T11:08:00.000-05:00

Use your decoder rings for the subject line! It means that there will be a mass-market paperback edition of Tall, Dark & Dead coming to a store near you in April of 2012 (or via Amazon.com pre-order today!)

If you're still scratching your head and asking, "Grandma, what's a mass-market paperback?" Well, honey, back in the late Jurassic, when your nana was young, MMPs were pocket-sized books you used to see on newstands. Most of nana's favorite books were mass-market paperbacks. In fact, nana is *so* old, we used to just call them "paperbacks," because there really weren't a heck of a lot of trade paperbacks to confuse them with.

Well, guess what? They still make 'em, and I'm super-psyched to be getting one!! And I hope they sell like HOTCAKES... no, child, I have no idea what a hotcake is or why they sell so well...

Writing A Series Description

2011-09-28T08:40:00.006-05:00

So, one of the things that they don't tell you about in author school is that you are very likely to be spending good bits of your life writing things that look nothing like fiction. Bios, synopses, blurbs for other people's books, book and series descriptions for cover or marketing or bookstores, opinion pieces, essays on various writing and marketing topics, introductions, and on and on and on.

Today, a bookseller asked me where she might find a good series description for Fallen Blade. Unfortunately, I couldn't point her to one because, to the best of my knowledge no one has yet written one beyond the basic pitch-style one sentence version I've been using while answering fan mail and the like.

That goes a little like this: Fallen Blade is a high fantasy/detective noir hybrid. Which is true enough, but hardly adequate. Especially since I've now written a couple of the books and things change as you write.

So here's my attempt, let me know what you think…

Fallen Blade:

The Fallen Blade series is fantasy-noir set in a world that never was.

Fallen Blade follows the adventures of Aral Kingslayer and his living shadow familiar, Triss. Aral Kingslayer was a sorcerer and assassin once upon a time, perhaps the best in the world, one of the fabled Blades of Namara, Goddess of Justice. With Triss at his side, he killed the kings and generals that the law couldn't touch.

That was before. Before they murdered his goddess and burned her temple to the ground. Before they outlawed his kind. Before the wanted posters and the death sentence and the whiskey bottle. Now, Aral's living on the edge of disaster in the city of Tien, a jack of the shadow trades, working in the darkness while he tries to find his way back to the light. The series begins with Broken Blade, in 2011 with Bared Blade and Crossed Blades following in 2012.

Alternatively:

The Fallen Blade series is a noir-inflected traditional fantasy set in a darkened world of the mythical past.

What do you do when your goddess is murdered? If you're a former temple assassin with a huge price on your head, like Aral Kingslayer, you go into the shadow jack business, solving problems and doing odd jobs on the fringes of the underworld in the ancient city of Tien. It's a long step down from killing kings for the Goddess of Justice, but at least it provides Aral and Triss, the living shadow who is his secret partner and familiar, with a reason to keep going.

The Fallen Blade books follow Aral's adventures as he and Triss try to find a new cause. The series begins with Broken Blade, in 2011 with Bared Blade and Crossed Blades following in 2012.

And Breaking News

2011-09-27T17:20:00.003-05:00

As @neilhimself tweeted, a University of Wisconsin-Stout theatre professor has gotten in trouble for having Firefly and Anti-Fascism posters on his wall.

I would have directed you to the link Neil offered, but he seems to have broken the Internet again.

Because I Know You Count On Me...

2011-09-27T17:04:00.003-05:00

Because I know you count on me to keep you up-to-date on all the Internet explosions, I give you The DC Reboot: The Big Sexy Problem.

I found out about this from an incredibly thoughtful response on Ms. Snarky's Awesometastic Comic's Blog (via Michael Mirrim on FB).

Women have always struggled particularly in comic fandom. I agree that it seems silly/offensive to imagine that by driving them away, DC can sell more titles.

Lookie, Lookie!

2011-09-27T14:01:00.004-05:00

Look what I just found available for pre-order on Amazon! Why it's my February release and final book in the vampire princess of St. Paul series, ALMOST EVERYTHING. If you TRULY love me, you will order early and often!

2011-09-26T12:41:00.002-05:00

As a particularly noisy fan-grrl about Star Wars, I find this post on SF Signals from A. Lee Martinez about "Why You Should Stop Telling Fans to 'Get Over It'" lovely, just lovely.

I am going to try to commit this line to memory, actually: "We tell stories, create art, etc. because we want to have something to care about. It's the whole point."

Yeah. EXACTLY.

I wouldn't scream if I didn't CARE. And, I can only hope that out there, somewhere, there's a fan screaming about my universe.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-09-23T19:37:00.004-05:00

Mighty hunter stalks the veldt, or the video game…
whatever.

Nose down is sexy! Zzzzzzz

Hiding, duh!

Otter cat needs a really wide slide.

Cat light, cat dark.

Leaping and pouncing mostly, why do you ask?

Worship me, and I won't have to kill you.

Frying Pans and Dead Stars

2011-09-22T09:43:00.001-05:00

From New Scientist, I give you frying pans and dead stars.

Mostly because I just wanted to say that.

Friday Cat Blogging on Monday…Oops

2011-09-19T10:52:00.003-05:00

Whazzatzzzzzzzzzzzzz?

Noble is my middle name

Sunlight and sleepy cat

I'd go to the sun, but then I'd have to move

That's where the treat is supposed to be. Get on it.

Clever, that's me.

Evil cat can kill with yoga

Play List of the Damned

2011-09-19T09:58:00.001-05:00

I think blog interviewers can smell fear or dorkiness or something, because, inevitably, they ask me this question: Do you have a play list for each of your novels? If not, can you think of a few relevant songs?

I always FAIL play list.

I haz no play list. In fact, I write all my novels to silence, or at least what passes for silence in a mostly empty house with a few cats, gerbils, and some fish. Sometimes I bust out and write in a place as noisy as a coffee shop, but I almost never consciously listen to whatever is playing on the overhead speakers because my brain wants to either listen to the story of the song, or sing along.

I will, occasionally, plug in my .mp3 play and hit random, but the songs that come up are so incredibly dorky that if I admitted to owning them legions of fans would desert me for the mere fact that I really kind of still dig Mike and the Mechanics.... (What? "Silent Running" is a great song! It's science fiction!)

sigh.

NASA APOD - Sunspot

2011-09-18T11:16:00.004-05:00

Here is one of the sharper views of the Sun ever taken. This stunning image shows remarkable details of a dark sunspot across the image bottom and numerous boiling granules which appear like kernels of corn across the top. Taken in 2002, the picture was made using the Swedish Solar Telescope operating on the Canary Island of La Palma. The high resolution image was achieved using sophisticated adaptive optics, digital image stacking, and other processing techniques to counter the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere. Currently a sunspot group is crossing the Sun that is so large it can be easily seen by the cautious observer even without magnification.

Do not look directly at the sun, even if you have been told there are lovely, large sunspots crossing it. Everyone knows this, right?

In Case You Missed It...

2011-09-16T09:23:00.003-05:00

It's kind of the talk of the town: Authors Say Agent Tried to Straighten Gay Characters in YA.

With some interesting follow up on Sherwood Smith's LJ.

Also, some interesting numbers about GLBT YAs in general.

The Last of Everything, As it Were

2011-09-14T09:34:00.001-05:00

I got some bad news from my agent yesterday afternoon. It seems that Peguin is _not_ interested in more stories about Ana Parker, alas. So, ALMOST EVERYTHING will be the final installment.

Luckily, I've been down this road before with the Garnet Lacey series, and I actually wrote ALMOST EVERYTHING as a possible ender for the series. I had HOPED to write another set of books in which Ana is the Queen of the Vampires, and then another triology where she's the Empress, etc., etc. all the way up to Goddess, perhaps!

But, as it turns out, she'll always just be a princess. :-)

The silver lining is that I'm still hard at work on PRECINCT 13, so you can look for more things by me in the near future. I'm planning to propose a sequel to PRECINCT 13, as well as something, as the Monty Python folks would say, completely different.

So... fingers crossed.

New Nearby Planets

2011-09-12T13:04:00.002-05:00

... like 50 of 'em, and a bunch are even Earth-like.

Me thinks we may have neighbors. Perhaps they fly saucers... ;-)

Lunch Date with Adam!

2011-09-11T14:09:00.001-05:00

MinnSpec Meetup will be hosting a lunch with the newest Wyrdsmith, Adam Stemple, at the Lund's in Uptown next Sunday, September 18 at noon. Adam Stemple, author of Singer of Souls, Stewart of Song, and other pieces, will speak with the group. Bring your writing related questions for a relaxed Q&A session over lunch. The Meetup page can be found here.

Adam Stemple's website: http://www.adamstemple.com/.

Lund's "Uptown" can be found at 1450 West lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-09-09T16:57:00.004-05:00

I am art cat, ooh and ahh for me.

I'm arty caty too, and thoughty to boot!

That's no moon it's a cat station!

Nope nothing to see here, move along.

Of course, I'm comfortable, don't I look comfortable?

I was told this was the place where the snacks happen…

Peek-a-boo!

I haz a flavor and it is pure elegance!

How scary is it?

2011-09-09T10:12:00.000-05:00

Quote from last night's Wyrdsmiths' meeting:

"It's scary; but not, you know, RUTGER HAUER scary!"

Take that in whatever context you wish. :)

Oops, He Did It Again

2011-09-08T10:57:00.003-05:00

Because everyone's talking about it, you should read this review of Orson Scott Card's newest book HAMLET'S FATHER at Rain Taxi.

Contemplate the FAIL.

NASA APOD

2011-09-04T09:28:00.001-05:00

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-09-02T18:48:00.002-05:00

Do these stripes make me look fat?

I was gonna tag you it, but I decided to nap instead.

I'm sorry, is my eeeeevil showing again?

Dude, this is the best…have you ever really looked at your paw?

Holy shit, is that a camera?

No, these aren't my crazy eyes, why do you ask?

And then, I LOLed, like this!

Covers!

2011-09-01T13:39:00.001-05:00

Here are the covers for the second book in the Tales of the Kin cycle, Sworn in Steel:
(click on either one to enlarge)

U.S.

U.K.

Current release date is slated for early April, 2012.

Also, in related news, Among Thieves and Sworn in Steel have both sold in Poland and Russia, while rights to Among Thieves recently sold to Bulgaria. My characters are now much better traveled than I am, but I'm not complaining. :)

ETA: And yes, the extra rapier across Drothe's back on the U.S. cover is there for a reason.... ;)

Happy Birthday to the King of Comics

2011-08-29T11:42:00.008-05:00

After a slight rain delay on account of Irene, my brother's and my third annual Jack Kirby tribute, with contributions by Stan Lee, Howard Chaykin, Tim Sale, Matt Fraction, Dan DiDio, and many more, is up and running at kraalo.com this morning.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-08-26T12:39:00.005-05:00

You are getting very sleepy…
When you wake you will bring me nip!

Mousie is mah friend.

Dude! This is the best nip evah!

I swear if you don't stop taking pictures when I'm bathing, I'm a smack you one!

Polish Edition!

2011-08-26T08:10:00.002-05:00

My editor sent me a couple of copies of ALMOST TO DIE FOR's Polish edition. Probably the coolest part of foregin language versions is seeing the acknowledgement page translated, because everyone's names stand out. Normally, they don't get translated or changed at all, but in Polish Shawn became "Shawnowi."

Cool.

Wyrdsmiths.com

2011-08-23T18:57:00.005-05:00

Hey, everybody! We have a website!

Market News

2011-08-23T12:59:00.002-05:00

Weird Tales sold. Ann VanderMeer no longer to edit! Read all about it here.

Say Cheese, Dark Energy!

2011-08-23T08:50:00.003-05:00

Space is big. I mean REALLY big. But this camera intends to take a picture of stuff so far away, it's actually back in time (almost back to the big bang.)

Storytelling =/= teaching

2011-08-22T08:58:00.000-05:00

You can teach while telling stories, but storytelling isn't teaching. Generally if you have to stop telling the story to educate the reader you've already lost the battle. I am periodically reminded of this at Wyrdsmiths meetings when I put something in a story that goes against the common understanding of how something works.

Sometimes, when I do this, I'm simply wrong. Usually even, and that's actually easier because I can just nod and fix it. Occasionally however, I'm right. For example I have more than once used a word in a traditional fantasy piece that everyone associates with a very modern usage, but which comes originally from the context in which I've chosen to use it in the story.

At that point I have a number of choices. I can ignore the critique, knowing that it will bounce many people out of the story since it doesn't matter that the word is five hundred years old and that it means exactly what I've said it does if my readers don't know that. I can simply rephrase something to avoid the unfortunate word, which makes my inner pedant very cranky. Or, I can try to find some way to explain the etymology of the word that makes since within the context of the story.

It is at precisely these times that it is important to remind myself that storytelling =/= teaching, kick my inner pedant in the noogies and move on.

NASA APOD

2011-08-21T09:17:00.001-05:00

The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released in 2005 as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Friday Cat Blogging

2011-08-19T06:14:00.002-05:00

You bastards are going on vacation without me, aren't you!

You bastards are going on vacation without me, aren't you!

You bastards are going on vacation without me, aren't you!

You basta—
Have you seen my tail? Wait what was I saying?
Oh, right, I am Meglet, queen of the Jungle!

Quick hit

2011-08-17T08:24:00.001-05:00

This what it's like to be a writer post made me chortle. Some of the comments are pretty good too.

Green Zombies

2011-08-16T14:34:00.001-05:00

Several months ago as I was returning home from picking up our CSA box, I noticed a curious sign that seemed to proclaim that section of LaFond Avenue in St. Paul a "post-apocalyptic green zone." So, Mason and I decided to go back an pose. Of course, were this a real emergency, no zombies would be allowed inside the zombie apocalypse green zone...

Of course, there was some discussion about the meaning of this sign on Facebook. Could it be that the green part of the apocalypse is that zombies and their rotting parts are bio-degradable and therefor "green," or has this neighborhood been given the designation of "green" to go ahead and defend against such an apocalpyse? I like to think that this is a safe-zone, a zombie-free "green" zone because of its relative nearness to my house. That way my family and I can make our way there quickly during the up-coming zombie apocalypse.

What If?

2011-08-16T09:49:00.001-05:00

There's been discussion on the Book View Cafe Blog: what if you had an adequate income from a patron, so money was not a consideration. What would you write? Would you write at all?

One of the comments, which I really liked, came from Nancy Jane Moore. She said she'd love to have the time to write -- and do all the things that nourish writing. Reading, thinking, spending time with music and art.

I wrote:

I like Nancy Jane Moore’s comment. It reminds me of all the things I need to do besides write: concerts, museums, walks, reading, thinking. Something else to structure into my life, now that I have time.

I spent most of my working life working part time or saving money and quitting to write full time, then getting another job when the money ran out. I knew I wanted to write, and I knew writing was financially risky. It seemed smarter to have a day job and write what I wanted, when I wanted. It meant that I never had enough writing time, but it enabled me to walk away from contracts I didn’t like and to take all the time necessary to do a good job.

It’s unsettling to know I may never have another day job. But I am writing more, and I think that’s my priority right now.

Why to I write? Because I always have, since childhood; and I like the attention; and I think making art is an important job, worth doing; and because it helps me deal with a difficult world.

Writing News from the Wrong End of the Rainbow

2011-08-15T11:14:00.003-05:00

I got an email last night, one I'd been wouldn't arrive--though I'd suspected it would, eventually. The one short story I've had accepted for publication, "Gaydar," has been released back to me, and once again I get to go back to being straight-up unpublished.

That sounds worse than it is. First, a bit of staging: in late 2006, a call for short stories was put out for a queer superhero anthology entitled Superqueeroes. Lyda mentioned the call for subs to me, and it sounded like a good writing challenge, so I wrote "Gaydar" for the project. I passed it through Wyrdsmiths for critique, revised it, and submitted it at the end of January 2007. The editor accepted it a few months later. I was thrilled--my first print publication! Not much money, but I wasn't worried about that; I was published. I signed the contract and sent it back in. I even bought coffee at our next Wyrdsmiths meeting. I remember it cost more than I was getting from the sale.

Then the complications started. In September 2007, the publisher who had signed the project was sold, and the new house dissolved the line that had accepted the anthology project, leaving the editor with an orphaned project. I went back to being an unpublished author.

The editor went to work shopping the project to other publishing houses, but there weren't a lot of takers--some houses were interested, but their print schedules for the next year or two were already full. A few of the stories got pulled by their respective authors, and the editor reworked the manuscript a couple times and resubmitted it again. Eventually, in October of 2009, a new house expressed interest in accepting the project. In October 2010, new contracts were written up and sent out, and I signed and returned mine. Published again.

I emailed the editor in March 2011 to find out about the status of the project, which was originally set to come out this year, and she said she was waiting for the last two contracts to be returned. Last night's email was the next communication about the anthology, letting us know that the project has been cancelled. Unpublished.

Considering how long it has taken to push this project forward, I'm not at all surprised, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. Considering the rocky path the anthology went though, not to mention the complications the editor has experienced and continues to face in her personal life, I'm not at all surprised that the project has been dropped. It's been a hard four years for her, and I wish her and her family well.

I'm not sure there's a lesson in this, except for one that I already knew: there's no way I should still be going back to "unpublished" four and a half years after my first short story was accepted. There has been plenty of time to find other projects, to write more stories and send them in to the wonderful magazines and anthologies that are currently active. That failure is on me.

Time to fix that.

NASA APOD

2011-08-15T09:54:00.000-05:00

What can the present-day terrain in and around large Endeavour crater tell us about ancient Mars? Starting three years ago, NASA sent a coffee-table sized robot named Opportunity on a mission rolling across the red planet's Meridiani Planum to find out. Last week, it finally arrived. Expansive Endeavour crater stretches 22 kilometers from rim to rim, making it the largest crater ever visited by a Mars Exploration Rover (MER). It is hypothesized that the impact that created the crater exposed ancient rock that possibly formed under wet conditions, and if so, this rock may yield unique clues to the watery past of Mars. Pictured above, the west rim of Endeavour looms just ahead of the Opportunity rover. Opportunity may well spend the rest of its operational life exploring Endeavour, taking pictures, spinning its wheels, and boring into intriguing rocks.

Two bits of writing news

2011-08-13T23:02:00.001-05:00

1. My short story "What Happened at Blessing Creek" is in this month's issue of InterGalactic Medicine Show. You may need a subscription to get in and read it. I also wrote a "story behind the story" essay for the IGMS blog, which is not yet up. I'll mention it again when it goes live (or maybe I won't, and eventually Lyda will mention it for me...)

"Blessing Creek" is the story I wrote in response to the discussions surrounding mammothfail. It came out of me pondering what an honest story about the frontier from the white perspective might look like. The blog post talks about this in a lot more detail.

2. My short story "Isabella's Garden" is in this month's issue of Realms of Fantasy and I got my copies today. I really love the illustration they gave me. Isabella is based on my older daughter Molly at age two, but the mother is not at all based on me.