Over in the Asimov's forums, a poster asked "What are your priorities when you write a short story? What's your mission?"

The amazing and fantastic James Patrick Kelly gave an answer that I'm about to tape to the wall over my computer. I don't think he'd mind my sharing.


1. Try not to repeat myself. (I've been around for awhile.)

2. Get something into the story that I've never seen before. (I've been around for awhile.)

3. Make readers want to turn the page.

4. Say something bigger than the plot.

5. Write at least one character who doesn't know she's a character.

6. Stick the ending.

7. Get published.

8. Get discussed.

re No. 5:
Well, it has something to do with the way a character will do something that surprises me or show a side of herself that I hadn't seen when I imagined her. For example, I thought John Dark in "Surprise Party" was only coming to Mercedes 's party so he could sleep with her. I didn't know he was going to do what he did until I typed it. Or take Rain from "The Edge of Nowhere." What she does after Will leaves came out of nowhere.

This "independence" happens because I usually try not to think too much about a character's backstory until I need it. I will write what they do before I know exactly who they are.

Courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger: Communist Cat

After several days of blazing sunshine, we woke to rain this morning. This is possibly because we went to Wells yesterday and bought new swimming costumes (holiday is advancing), and I suspect the weather gods thought we were getting above ourselves. However, we are officially smug, as a result of having done an extensive amount of gardening last night, and the greenhouse is now full, apart from some space left for melons. Now, on with legal Stuff and the final pages of the copy edit.

Sorry this week's entries have been so boring but as someone once said to me: boring is good. However, exciting news coming soon!

Two months ago, garunya blogged about this map of the planned Intercontinental Subway System. (Well, we can dream.) I've kept the window open to that page in one of my browsers for two months, intending to post about it here, but never finding the right moment. What do you know -- the right moment finally came.

About a month ago, elisem asked people to post about Fourth Street Fantasy Convention. Elise wrote: "Although it's been a little quiet on the publicity end, this revival of the legendary Minneapolis-based fantasy convention of decades back is cheerfully open to everybody who wants to get a membership, and I hope lots of people do, because I'm throwing this big party on Friday night, and [Elizabeth] Bear and Sarah [Monette] and some other folks are going to read necklace challenge stories and other Artists' Challenge works, and the more people who are there, the better it'll be." So please, consider yourself invited. The convention folks have even extended the registration deadline to May 31st.

(Person on my friends list most likely to cave to the last-minute pressure and go to the con: Evan, because he misses talking physics with Marissa. Okay, so it's not likely to happen, but it's more likely than anyone else.)

In about a month, it will actually be time for Fourth Street. A vacation would be nice right about then. Or now -- I'm not picky.

In about two months, it will be time for Readercon... and an art exhibition that rbfineart has been counting down to for months. The same weekend. Oy. What to do?

OK, I've done some unusual necklaces, but this is the first one I've ever done that wanted three clasps.

I think it's called "Bordertown Runway Queen," and it's growing out of that IAF discussion I linked to a post or so back.

And also there's a long linked necklace in progress. No, longer than that. Might not turn out to be as long as "Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home," which belongs to truepenny (because it would not be denied) and which is twenty-three feet and ten inches long, but then again, it might. Haven't done one like this for a while, and it's kinda nice to get back to it. It's all twilight colors and magic spooky blues and purples and gray and lavender....

...with this past week's episode of Bones.
( Has anyone ever heard of a major cavil? )

Over at woadwarrior and jeanineers for the evening. They watch American Idol, but I love them anyway. Currently we are waiting for pizzas to be delivered.

red-orange radar
images swirl on tv
tornado warning

It's called LJ Images and it's a feed that shows the last 50 pictures posted on LJ, some of them quite non-work safe (so wait until you're home to take a looksy). I will say that folks seem to be rather celebrity obsessed.

Macguffin Wednesdays:

A book is found in an old bookstore, and it’s encrypted in a sophisticated cypher that has three different messages, depending on which key you use. Three organizations in the city have the three different keys. They’re very different organizations, (say, the Masons, the Nurse’s Union, and the Boy Scouts) groups that never found reason to fight before, but now they all want this book. But they don’t realize (at first) that they others want it for entirely different reasons.

---

The News From Poughkeepsie is a daily blog post featuring an idea for you to take and do with what you will. Read more about it here. This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. You can take this idea, change it, make something new, and even make money off of it. All I ask is if you create something - anything! - that this post inspired you to make, please link back here.</p>

Originally published at The Murverse. You can comment here or there.

I have the new Half Man Half Biscuit album, CSI: Ambleside. Hurray. Also, the shops hardly stock any CDs now, it's all DVDs and games.

Rangers seem to have lost the UEFA cup final, but people are letting off fireworks round here anyway, presumably on the grounds that well, they've bought them, and it's a long time till Bonfire Night.

(Ha, I forgot to turn off shuffle on WMP, and Half Man Half Biscuit suddenly changed into David Tennant chattering at me. I was very confused.)

I want this t-shirt:



(That's Zoe, folks, not Wash. And there are some other good SF/ political t-shirts there too.)

And I want this chest of drawers:



Fractals. WIN.

Also, best rap about tea, ever.

I just emailed a proposal for two books to my agent. I'm hoping she thinks it's absolutely perfect as-is and that I'm shopping for my private yacht by the end of the week.

Today's office was the Ocean Beach Pier Cafe, which is that little white speck at the end of the pier.



I was able to pick up bunches of wireless signals, even a couple from Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, miles and miles away. I wonder if all that open water with no buildings in the way makes the signals bounce or something. Anyway, I couldn't actually sign onto any of those networks, not even the one for the cafe, but it was just as well, because it meant I spent less time websurfing and more time watching the surf.

They weren't really set up as a coffee joint. More as a quaint and salty breakfast/lunch joint. The waitress wasn't quite sure what to do with me in the nearly empty room. She even offered me a refill of coffee, which is so unlike a coffee joint that I'm afraid I stared at her for a while in utter confusion. Ultimately she brought me some water, and I think that satisfied her.



And apropos of nothing, man, I wish I lived on this street in Dana Point:

The chore du jour was paying bills -- medical, electric, and telephone/broadband. The first two were no more annoying than such things usually are; the third involved dealing with a computerized customer support system that was simultaneously clunky and complex (and that never did offer a "talk to a live human being" option.) All I wanted to do was to find out the total amount on this month's bill, because I couldn't find the paper copy -- either they're changing the mailing schedule and it hasn't been sent out yet, or I accidentally tossed it as junk mail because it no longer comes in the familiar red-bordered Verizon envelope -- and at the moment there isn't a way to view the current bill on line as has been my habit in the past. I finally got the info I needed, but the process of getting it felt like wrestling with a greased anaconda.

mrissa posts the flyer with the data, but what I really want you do to is read Pamela Dean's description. One track panels? So much discussion that moderators have to limit to questions? Non-fantasy readers who come away with recommended books . . . that hook them? It is painful to miss Mythcon and Wiscon, and very painful to miss Worldcon and Readercon, but of all of them, I think it's worst to have to miss this one.

So here's my selfish request: if you have the money and the ability to travel, please attend, and write a con report! Reading con reports is a lightning bug to the lightning of solid days of reading and book talk, but con reports engender discussion, which makes being stuck at home a lot easier.

I'm on # 32 my 34 lecture series and what do I learn? The word 'hello' was not in use until the mid to late 1800's; and came about only because of the telephone. 


A couple of interesting tidbits: Alexander Graham Bell wanted to use the word, 'ahoy,'  and operators were first called 'hello girls.'

So. The next con for which I have a membership is Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, which is about ten minutes from our house and will be full of awesome. June 20-22. You should definitely come if you possibly can. Lots of people have said this elsewhere, and they were right; listen to them. The registration deadline is not until May 31; if you don't pre-register, you can still come, but registrations are more expensive at the door. Go! Register! Frolic! Rejoice!

However. Several people have said to me, "I can't make it this year. Maybe next year." And oh my dears, conventions are not like violets. They do not spring up of their own accord in green and shady places. You cannot be sure that they will be there the next year, and the next, and the next. For why? Because conventions are work. And while we already know it will be awesome, if it is too small and awesome, the people who are doing the work might not be able to do it next year, or might not be able to find other people to do it next year.

And what can you, as a person who is unable to come this year, do about this problem? Why, I am so glad you asked, amiable reader! You can print this flier here, and you can take it to your local SF bookstore, or your local SF club meeting, or wherever else you think it might be of interest -- colleges sometimes have bulletin boards with announcements about conferences, and I don't see why eager college fabulists oughtn't to know about this, if you know some. And so on. I don't say you should post it at your local grocery store, but if you can think of interesting people who might not know about this event and might want to know, that would be exceptionally handy, and they and we would all thank you for it. And then the odds that there would be a next year's Fourth Street would increase by a non-zero amount, so you'd have another chance at it! See how this makes everybody happy? Mostly me?

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010232.html

Quoth Xopher, when willed to speak where what is willed may or may not be:

108 is the sacred number of Hinduism. A Hindu mala is a string of 108 beads (usually with a flag bead, not used in counting) for counting recitations of a mantra; Hindu deities have 108 names; the dance of Shiva Nataraja contains 108 poses. The number is also significant in Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, and Shinto.

Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth for 1 hour, 48 minutes: that's 108 minutes to you and me. I doubt he was doing Japa though, because that would mean each name was a whole minute long! Besides, he was busy.

108 is two squared times three cubed. 108° is the interior measurement of the angles in a regular pentagon. The only regular convex polyhedron with pentagonal faces is the dodecahedron, which has twelve of them. Twelve is also a factor of 108, and a significant number in its own right; twelve Olympian gods, twelve Apostles, twelve hours on an analog clock. 108 hours is about 4.5 days.

Here's Shakespeare's Sonnet 108:

What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
Finding the first conceit of love there bred
Where time and outward form would show it dead.

Thank you, Xopher.

hello! due to financial bad timing i wasnt able to secure a room on my own. i am hoping to attend Balticon this next coming weekend and i am seeking people needing an extra roomie to split room costs!

i can roll with a party bunch or a non-party bunch, i will have my own money and i am in good standing with at least the phillygeek ML contingent of local fandom. i don't smoke but i do snore..might as well put that out there.

i will be arriving in MD on friday night and staying throughout the whole con until Monday's closing!

i've also offered services as a volunteer but as of right now, have not heard an official OK on that yet...any other people going down as volunteers who need extra roomies are a plus!

if you can help, contact me in comments or through email - raequel [at] tmail [dot] com (that's my mobile and usually the fastest way to get to me)

i wont put my phone number up, but i can be reached through AIM - zaftzine or YIM - ladytris.

thanks in advance! Hope to see yall soon :)!

As far as fiction goes, I am, as of fourteen seconds ago, buying for 2009.

However, if you're looking for a quick payday, you'd be smart to send me a query for a feature article. I hardly get any, and those I do get are grotesquely inappropriate. While a dime a word is definitely on the low end of the non-fiction payscale, it is not as though Clarkesworld's non-fiction features involve a lot of shoeleather journalism. As it stands, I actually have to go out and solicit articles like some kind of schmuck, and sometimes people even tell me ridiculous things like, "I'm not good at non-fiction." A bizarre response to "How about some free money?" I say.

I'm happy to take science articles such as the one we ran on supersperm and genetic competition between parents and offspring, personal essays such as Rick Bowes piece on experiencing the World Fantasy Convention as a sober person or Tim Pratt's on being a deadline novelist and a new father, narrative interviews (NOT Q/As, those are not my department) with either an interesting individual or group on some specific topic, or some pop culture stuff such as our article on pro wrestling.

What I DON'T want is this: your term paper. Feature articles are those non-hard news/non-scholarly articles published in magazines such as Atlantic Monthly or even your local community weekly newspaper. The one about the guy with the shoelace collection, or the story about the house that burnt down in 1858. That sort of thing. Literary criticism also counts, but I am not running either book reviews or scholarly papers. Look at the New Yorker's literary journalism or even something like Bugfuck! by Rick Cusick (albeit at 1/12th the length).

Too many of the queries I get are for Q/As (see above) or for what was pretty obviously a school assignment that just happened to be about monster movies or Barry Malzberg short stories from forty years ago. Term papers are essentially designed to have an audience of one, and that person gets paid to read them. That's a word to the wise WRT why I don't want them in my magazine.

Also, when you send a query, this is what you do:

First graf: THE HOOK OF THE STORY. Note that the hook of the story is NOT the first paragraph of a term paper, ending with a thesis statement. It is a one or two-sentence description of the "nut" of the story. Something like, "Everyone loves free. Today, bestselling SF authors like foo and bar are putting their books online, for free, and even letting fans play around in their fictional universes. It's called 'Creative Commons', and it may just change the way geeks read." Stories should be focused. There is no such thing a story about "fantasy is better than science fiction", as that story has no focus.

Second graf: WHY YOU SHOULD BE THE ONE TO WRITE ABOUT THE IDEA.

Third graf: Specifics — WHO will you be talking to, WHAT books/movies/whatever will you be looking at.

Fourth graf: Proposed word count, prior pubs, clips if possible.


That's it. It's really very simple.


I have an article in the works for 6/1, but after that I am totally free. This is probably the easiest way in the field to make $250 by the Fourth of July. Note that queries are by definition non-exclusive, which is why they don't get rejected. The assumption is that a query is being shown to any number of venues. Just send something in and if you don't hear after a few days, understand that we don't want that story idea. Feel free to query again right after that with a different concept.

Either there's a major sporting event on, which means everyone is in the pubs (or Manchester), or else the aliens quietly took away 85% of the population and BBC News is ignoring it because it didn't happen in the Home Counties hasn't noticed yet.

Today is a great day. I think I have mentioned that my mom is battling her sixth episode of breast cancer. This time it metastasized into her back bone and has gone down into her hip, which is the reason it spontaneously fractured a few weeks ago. The doctor made it clear that what we're dealing with is a matter of time rather than finding a way to beat this thing.

After fracturing her hip, she had to go through a round of radiation, which she just finished. The nurse called her today. The doctors are amazed! The nurse was excited! My mom's cancer markers went down from the 3000s to 81, and there is hope of her cancer going into remission. Although there is no guarantee, this is very good news.

Yeah, mom! Happy Mother's Day!!

Last week, the school officials evacuated my kid's middle school, because a threatening message was written on a bathroom wall. They caught the kid and had him arrested. It seemed a bit drastic to me, but as a parent I guessed it was better to opt for safe than sorry. Anyway, you'd think that would be the end of this kind of prank. Not so. Today, I found this note in my email:

"Just a short while ago, the school received a report that a threat was written on the restroom wall. To ensure student safety, the building was evacuated and students were taken outside. The police were immediately called and are conducting a systematic search of the building to ensure it is safe. The students will be dismissed at the regularly scheduled time. No other buildings in the school district were affected but the district chose to communicate with all parents to ensure that an accurate message was delivered."

Not only was the school evacuated, but all after school activities were cancelled, including a band concert. This really upsets me. Do they need to pull the alarm every time some smart-ass writes something on a wall? And what are we teaching our kids? The school claims they're teaching zero tolerance and accountability, but I think they're teaching the kids how to get out of class. I think they're teaching the kids that the world is a scary place and even your classmates can't be trusted. And I don't agree. These are six through eighth grades. These kids don't need to be treated like small personality bombs waiting to go off. I refuse to become one of those people who jumps at shadows, who sees the worst possibility even in the local middle school. I really believe this school needs a new policy or a shot of common sense.

My chores done for the day, walked the dog, ready for thunderstorm. Drinking a nice cup of coffee laced with copious amounts of half-and-half and Splenda. Will get more later.

I wrote about 1.5 this morning on DitD.

I rarely write in the morning, because my brain is usually mushy then. Today I felt moved to do so.

The fusing worked! The dichroic did that gorgeous crinkle thing, too, which emphasized the blue, so they are much more blue than they were. I hope people are cool with that.

And there's a rousing discussion of art/craft/literature/found objects/interstitiality/beads/design/impossible runway fashion/writing and a lot of other stuff going on, which you are strongly encouraged to join.

And now I am going back up to the workbench, and also I need to make an emergency silver order. How can I have gone through 18 ounces of 20 gauge half-hard in, what, four weeks?

signed,
apparently a very worky beast indeed

I was at the lake this afternoon reading and writing, and inevitably had to go use the bathroom. So I was gonna grab my cell phone and keys and all that, but there weren't that many people at the beach, so I decided fuck it, let's put a little trust in humanity. I mean, most people have their own cell phones now, it's not like this is 1986 and it's a hot tech item. They can steal my keys, but good luck finding which car they match, or even which key is relevant, because I've got the Schneider from One Day at a Time set and I don't even know what half of them are for. Cooler? It's a cheapie, not that there's a market for designer coolers, at least not that I know of, and anyway who would steal a cooler?

I come back from the bathroom, and all is in tact, except the flap of my cooler is open and my OATMEAL FUCKING COOKIES are gone from the cooler! I had two specially wrapped in a sandwich bag, delicious chewy fat free oatmeal cookies that I was really looking forward to. GONE. Not the cell phone, the cookies.

I think it was the chick that asked me earlier if I had a lighter. Actually is was like "Hey, you got like, a lighter, man?" I think she was stoned, you could have blinded her with dental floss her eyes were so squinty. Skunky skank ate my cookies. I hope she gets diarrhea.

Dark Water Blues


1660+ words. Not a bad little run. Now to get some housework and job hunting done, assuming the cat ever gets off of my lap.

Some mash-ups are just plain funny.  Found this one with Darth Vader on the Boing Boing site.  And yes, I was laughing.

So this year, as so often in May, you get to pay your taxes. I'm not yet listed on any registers, so I have to go get a form from a Tax Center. Those tend to have...rather special opening hours (they open late and close very early, and they're clogged with people at this time of the year, obviousy).
But the French civil service thought about people who don't want to walk to a Tax Center: you can order an online form from their website.
That would be cool... if only the "name" field of their order form wasn't so ridiculously short. My full surname (which is long, but not horrendously so), barely fits into it--and leaves no space whatsoever for me to enter my first name. That means that if you have a compound first or last name, or anything out of the ordinary, you're screwed.

Gotta love this.

Mahabharata update: finished book 1, which leaves me with the sinking feeling that books 4 through 12 are going to be all battle-scenes...
Favourite moment: the hero Arjuna falls in love with his friend Krishna's sister. He asks Krishna what he should do. Krishna's answer: "well, she's going to have a bridegroom-choosing ceremony. I could introduce you, but you know women can be so unreliable when it comes to choosing things. I think you'd better abduct her".
Which he does.
And which she likes.
*headdesk*