The Days Are Just Packed     
The ongoing saga of David D. Levine's writing and other adventures.

I'm a geek, fan, and writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. For more information about me, please see my web page. If you have questions, comments, or just want to chat, you can send me e-mail. Or you can post a comment on my LiveJournal.

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12/29/05: David's Index for 2005

Novel words written: 6,004
Short story words written: 10,992
Notes, outline, and synopsis words written: 8,794
Blog words written: 33,428
Total words written: 59,218

New stories written: 2
Existing stories revised: 2

Short story submissions sent: 23
Responses received: 22
Acceptances: 4 (1 pro, 1 semi-pro, 2 reprints)
Rejections: 12
Other responses: 6 (4 rewrite requests, 2 markets closed)
Awaiting response: 4

Short stories published: 9 (6 new, 3 reprints)

Major award nominations: 0
Minor award nominations: 1
Awards won: 0

Novel editing hours: 69.5
Novels submitted: 1
Novels awaiting response: 1

Happy New Year!

Posted 12/29/2005 22:31 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Somewhere in my webbish peregrinations the other day I came across an appreciation of John Kessel's "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence". The appreciation includes this statement:

"A casual reader might have read this story: Two trashy people ride in a strange subway to an even stranger terminal where they are given tons of cash. That casual reader would, in my opinion, really miss out on some great layers of this deceptively simple story."

Well, that's how I read it. Although this story has been highly praised, and was in at least one Year's Best volume, I thought it was rather lame. The main character takes harly any independent action -- he is literally led by the hand through much of the story -- but he is sent on an amazing journey and in the end he is, as it says above, given tons of cash. Which he accepts. The end. Whoopee.

I guess I'm shallow.

It may be that, as the appreciation says, there's more to the story. But most of the Oz references went over my head, since I've never read that series. And the socio-economic allegories some other readers have found weren't apparent or didn't work for me. If there really was a lesson to be learned about the Haves gaining their wealth from the sweat of the brows of the Have-Nots, why did the main character simply acquiesce to the system? What some see as his "moment of epiphany" at the end of the story fails for me because he does not take any action as a result of his epiphany, nor is there any implication that he will do so in the future -- which means that I don't even consider it an epiphany.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... well, I'm a simple guy, and I like my stories simple. It's not that I'm incapable of appreciating a finely turned description or a reference to an older story; some of my favorite stories (and some -- or even most -- of my stories) are riffs on older stories by obscure authors. But for me, if a story doesn't work at the first, most basic level, I'm not going to stick around to see if it has hidden depths.

I didn't like "What I Didn't See" either. But that's a rant for another day.

Posted 12/28/2005 22:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Today's mail brought a nice holiday card from Dell Magazines (I guess I am a member of their "stable" now, neigh whinny) and a 281-day bounce from Realms of Fantasy (281 days for a couple of sentences scribbled on my cover letter, grr). That story's off to Fantasy.

Also today I found a nice mention of my Tales of the Unanticipated story "A Book is a Journey" in Richard Horton's sff.net newsgroup. It's only a partial sentence, but a nice mention is much better than what I've been getting lately and it's extremely welcome.

I spent the first part of this week at a managers' offsite in Hood River, helping to present a workshop on Agile Programming Techniques. It wasn't terribly difficult or stressful, but I find that I am... intellectually exhausted, I guess you would say. I haven't been able to accomplish much of anything today, either at work or at home. I did manage to unpack my bag, at least, which I don't always do right away after returning from a trip.

There's been a bit of a re-org at work, and effective Monday I am no longer assigned full-time to the project that has been eating so much of my life lately (I got home at 8pm last Wednesday, 10pm Friday). Mind you, there are still quite a number of design decisions to be made and meetings to attend, but now someone else is the dedicated lead on that project and will be doing all of the heavy lifting while I'm supposed to be concentrating on another project. The new project is a return to something I've spent a lot of time on in the past and I enjoy working with those people. It is still going to be a lot of work, but the deadline is much farther away and I hope it won't be quite so intense.

Posted 12/15/2005 23:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

A Taste of Clarion West

The Potlatch 15 science fiction convention, which will be held February 24-26, 2006 in Seattle, Washington, will be holding a short story workshop. Workshops are a great way to get feedback on a story. Perhaps more important, they are a great way to learn about what makes stories succeed and fail in general, through the process of critiquing others' work and comparing your critiques with others'. They're a great way to meet other writers, and work with a couple of professionals in the field. Finally, if you're considering applying for Clarion West (http://clarionwest.org/website/) they should give you a small inkling of what the Clarion West workshop process is like.

Journeyman Writers' Workshop

This year for the first time we are experimenting with a Journeyman workshop. We envision it as a tool for recharging and refocusing more advanced writers. Perhaps you have a sale or two but feel as if you've lost steam; maybe you're a Clarion West graduate who's looking to get back to writing after years on other projects, or are just looking to add new tools to your kit. This is the workshop for you, with like-level participants. Since this an experiment we don't know what demand is like. Please let us know as early as possible if you want to participate; this workshop will only be held if there's enough interest.

Please check the Potlatch 15 website (http://www.potlatch-sf.org/writersworkshop.html) for more information, including updates on workshop instructors, and workshop availability status. If you have any questions, email me at dlevine@spiritone.com.

-- David Levine, Workshop Coordinator

How To Submit:

1. Complete an SF, Fantasy, or Horror short story (maximum 7500 words). No fragments; no novel chapters; no poetry. One submission per person.

2. Proofread it carefully. Make sure it represents the best you can do.

3. Print it out in standard manuscript format (see http://www.sfwa.org/writing/vonda/vonda.htm for more information). Fasten the manuscript with a paper clip.

4. Write a cover letter with a short (1-2 pages) writer's bio. Have you published before? Have you been to other writer's workshops? Are you part of a writer's group? Are you new to writing? What are your hopes and expectations for writing in the future? Be sure to include your mailing address, and your email address if you have one. Please specify which workshop -- Taste of Clarion West or Journeyman Workshop -- you wish to participate in. If you're interested in the Journeyman workshop, please let me know whether you'd like to participate in the Taste of Clarion West workshop if the Journeyman workshop is not held.

5. Send the manuscript and cover letter, along with a check or money order for $10 to cover copying and postage, to:

Potlatch 15 Writers' Workshop
c/o David D. Levine
1905 SE 43rd Ave.
Portland, OR 97215

Make checks payable to David D. Levine.

--> All submissions must be RECEIVED by January 15, 2006. <--

Posted 12/14/2005 19:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

So I was doing a Google search on my own name, as one does, and Google turned up this page on a mysterious site known only by a number.

The page is about "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" and it has two reader comments. One reader gives the story a grade of 5, the other a 4.

I can't even figure out what language the page is in, never mind what it says.

The Xerox language guesser thinks it's Estonian. But there doesn't seem to be any automated Estonian to English translator on the web. I've tried Romanian, Slovenian, and Serbian translators and none of them can extract any meaning from it.

Can anyone reading this tell me what it says?

Posted 12/11/2005 21:02 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

And "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" goes off to Analog. On to the next thing.

Has anyone else noticed that short stories in standard manuscript format weigh just about one ounce per thousand words?

Posted 12/06/2005 22:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Finally got a chance to sit down and finish the edits on the Titanium Mike story, and I got through to the end. It's about 200 words longer than it was, and I'm not 100% convinced I'm done with the edits. I shall sleep on it.

Posted 12/05/2005 23:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Whoa, how did it get to be {Friday, December, Smofcon, Christmas, 2007} so quickly?

Thanksgiving was swell. We stayed in Portland Thursday evening and had a fantastic dinner at the home of our friends Paul and Debbie, then hit the road fairly early on Friday for the Vancouver square dance fly-in. Had a great time enjoying the hospitality of our friends Will and Grant and hanging out with square dance friends from all over, returning to Portland on Monday.

I was supposed to go to Sunnyvale (for some entirely explicable reason I'm always tempted to say "Sunnydale" instead) for business on Tuesday, but when I got home Monday night I had a phone message that the trip was postponed to Thursday. So I went to work as usual on Tuesday to find a sh*t storm of major proportions. My boss had been out of town for two weeks, and apparently several serious problems that had been simmering for some time, and which he might have been able to defuse if he'd been there, burst open on Monday -- people screaming at each other and all kinds of mean nasty ugly stuff. Glad I missed it. But I didn't miss the aftermath, which is still unfolding. None of the serious issues are my fault, but some of the repercussions will affect me. Probably some people will be shifted to different projects.

One of the consequences was that the person who was supposed to go with me to Sunnyvale was diverted to another trip. But then, when he had cancelled his Sunnyvale tickets and was in the process of scheduling the other trip, he was told that the other trip was off. So I had to go to Sunnyvale by myself while the other person just stayed back at the office.

I was really worried about this trip, because the weather forecast called for a major snow storm to hit Portland that day. I packed with the assumption that I might have to stay in the Bay Area for a day or two. But, apart from the fact that I had to get up at 4am to catch my flight, everything went smoothly. My meeting in Sunnyvale was intense and productive and I got home by 8pm.

I had a busy day at work today (Friday) and went from there straight to Smofcon, the convention-runners' convention, which is in Portland this year. Kate and I hung out with SMOF friends, had dinner with Arthur Aldridge, then participated in the traditional Friday night icebreaker. This year's icebreaker was to re-enact the Orycon hotel search (with all the Portland hotels disguised behind names such as Trantor Hilton and Towers and Innsmouth Hotel at the Docks) in fifteen minutes. Amusingly, my team selected the same hotel the actual Orycon did, and for pretty much the same reasons. Martin Easterbrook suggested we write our press release as a pastiche of "The Raven," and we whomped out three verses of pretty good faux Poe (Paux?) in about five minutes. You can see it, along with another poem from one of the other teams, here.

The writing, unfortunately, hasn't been going well. I've been making fitful progress on the rewrite of the Titanium Mike story, but I haven't sold anything since February. Several stories have been published in the last couple months, but there have been few reviews and most of those have been bad (one poster on the Asimov's message board said he wanted to slap me). I'm hoping for some better news in the December Locus. And there's still no word on the novel. The editor said he hoped to look at the rewrite in December, so I'll bug him fairly shortly if I don't hear something soon.

Well. Anyway. More Smofcon this weekend, and that should be fun. And I don't have any more work-related travel until December 12! (Unless I have to go to Sunnyvale again next week, but I think I should be able to avoid that.)

Posted 12/03/2005 00:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Today was interesting.

At work, it was almost like Christmas as the long-awaited Macs arrived. I must confess I was surprised -- I'd been figuring that someone, somewhere in the purchase order approval chain, would say "we make Windows software -- I don't care if they're 'Designers', they can't have Macs!" But, despite my skepticism, there they were: three shiny (very shiny!) new dual-processor Power Mac G5 Towers with half a gig of RAM and 250 gigs of disk each, plus three boxes of assorted software. And so the day was spent in setting up, configuring, installing, and tweaking. (Um, can anyone tell me how to make IntelliJ Idea use Command instead of Control for its keyboard shortcuts?)

Then, at home, I finally got off my duff -- well, no, actually I got on my duff -- and started editing "Titanium Mike." Shortened the first scene by about 200 words (in the first 800) and made the Mike story a bit more outlandish. The edits on the next scene are going to be trickier. But I'm editing again! I hope to have this one in the mail by the end of next week.

Posted 11/22/2005 23:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

In the last week, I've mostly divided my time between work and being sick.

The project at work, time- and energy-consuming though it is, is coming together nicely and I'm pleased with my part in it. At this point my greatest fear is that our fine design might prove to be too much to implement. I wish we were in the same city as the implementers.

And then I come home at 7pm or so, read or watch TV a bit, and fall into bed. I just don't have enough energy or brainpower for anything more. I'm so glad I've got Kate to take care of me when I get like this.

In the last couple of days I've been much less sick. I'm still blowing my nose a lot, but the sore throat, aches, and fever are mostly gone. So I have had enough energy to put a bunch more music into my iPod (including several discs of Broadway show tunes -- still not convinced they will work well in rotation, but it's worth a try), see the new Harry Potter movie (I have some problems with the plot, but I applaud the filmmakers' decision to exclude those beastly Dursleys from the film), and read the new Iain Banks novel, The Algebraist, which I picked up at the Worldcon. I had heard some disappointment at this one, but for myself I found it a cracking good read with inspiring scope and complexity.

I don't get nearly as much time as I would like for reading these days, so I should feel glad that I managed to read a whole novel that wasn't required for anything. But I still feel like a total slug. Perhaps I shall accomplish something useful later this week. But for now... going to bed early has a lot of appeal.

Posted 11/20/2005 21:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Wow, it has been a while since I've posted. Well, I've been very busy with real life... barely time to read email, and definitely not enough time to read my friends' online journals, never mind writing in my own. Here's a brief, brief update.

• I finished the revisions on my novel before World Fantasy Con, though I had to stay up until 3am to do it. I haven't heard anything from the editor yet except an acknowledgement of receipt. If it doesn't sell after all this I will be Annoyed.

• Lise Eisenberg from New York was our houseguest for several days before OryCon. Great conversation, good eats, but in trying to open my wireless network to let her in I managed to bring the whole thing down -- it took me until 2am to get it working again.

• I had to get up at 4am for my flight to WFC. On Saturday morning of the con I was able to announce in the dealers' room, in all sincerity, that I was tireder than the whole rest of the convention... put togithir!
• I must have had a good time at WFC, because I didn't go to any programming at all (except for the one panel I was on and my reading, both of which had quite respectable audiences -- oh, wait, I did also attend the Monette/Bear/Lake readings Sunday morning). Basically I spent the whole con schmoozing in the halls, the parties, and the bar. Now, when I say "schmoozing," I really mean "hanging out with writer friends" more than "sucking up to editors," but there was also a certain amount of the latter. And I really wish there was something I could wear that would look as sexy on me as Elizabeth Bear's corset did on her.

• Came home to find that Kate, Lise, and Dave Howell had had a good time without me at OryCon, ending with an amazing series of mishaps that I will let one of them relate. Sounds like their convention was a lot more... eventful than mine. Both Lise and Dave stayed at our house for a day or two after the convention. Wonderful to see them both, to be sure, but it was nice to get the house back.

• All through this time I've been working 9-10 hour days at the day job. We've made some difficult decisions about which projects to defer, but we still have tight deadlines on the one major project that remains on our plate, and when that is done we will be behind the 8-ball on the other projects we've deferred. Work will probably remain quite heavy well into next year.

• What with all the strange people I've hugged and the massive sleep deficit I've rung up in the last couple of weeks, it's not too surprising that I've come down with a cold. Nothing serious, but it does slow me down a bit.

So that's what's up with me. If I owe you an email or a phone call... please be patient, I'm treading water as fast as I can.

Posted 11/13/2005 20:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

44% done with this editing pass. Hardly any changes tonight, but every word has to be examined because I'm taking away the sounds the aliens make, and it's real easy to read over a line like "she trilled in pleasure" and not notice that it's a sound if you're not paying close attention. Search and replace won't do it; I used too many different sound words.

Removing the sounds isn't the only change I'm making in this pass, but it's the most pervasive. The other changes -- like making Jason more head-over-heels in love with Clarity -- are localized (in this case, to the comparatively rare flashback scenes with the two of them together). I'm not sure how much I can change on that without adding additional scenes, which I don't want to do for a variety of reasons.

Today at work we had the celebration for the release of a major product. We all went off to a very nice brewpub/cinema, a former Masonic lodge, where we were treated to beer and wine, barbecue, and a showing of Office Space. Not the movie I would have chosen for a morale booster... it was a little too close to reality sometimes.

Also today... you remember I mentioned that work ate my life for a couple of weeks there? The VP responsible just gave each person on my team an iPod nano as a thank-you for that work. So there is some justice in the world. I gave the new nano to Kate, but I have to get a USB 2.0 port for the PC before she can put any of her music on it.

Posted 10/26/2005 23:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Sorry about that. The day job rose up and swallowed my life. You know that scene in Broadcast News where Holly Hunter the producer is leaning over Bobby the technician, who is editing the tape for tonight's broadcast, and saying "C'mon Bobby-bobby-bobby-bobby..." because it has to be finished by, like, five seconds from now? That was my life for the last couple of weeks. I was Bobby.

I finally heard some more from the editor on my novel. He's still excited about it, but the publisher is less so, and the editor would like me to make some changes to make it more acceptable to the publisher. I consulted with my agent about it, and he says that if I think the novel would be improved by the suggested changes I should go ahead and do them. Which, since some of the problems the editor has identified are also problems I've been fighting the whole way through, I'm going ahead and doing. So I spent the whole weekend revising, making the aliens more alien and increasing the friction between the aliens and the humans. Thanks to Mary, Sara, Nalo, Jim, and Denny for brainstorming assistance.

I've rewritten the first 50 pages so far, including fairly significant changes in Clarity's introduction and the funeral scene. Mostly what I've been doing is adding exposition -- a sentence here, a paragraph there -- and rewriting a few scenes to make them more dramatic and conflict-y. The total word count change so far is only about 600 additional words.

In other writing news, the January 2006 issue of Asimov's, including my story "The Last McDougal's," has been reviewed at Tangent Online. "Levine paints the future with a clever brush.... His down-to-earth and realistic portrayal of family and the dynamic between two distant generations is refreshing and timely." Watch for the issue on newsstands or in your mailbox soon.

Posted 10/23/2005 22:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I haven't seen a copy yet, but I just learned that Greenberg anthology All Hell Breaking Loose, including my story "The Curse of Beazoel," is now available at Powell's and other fine booksellers (it got five stars from Harriet Klausner). Also, issue #26 of Tales of the Unanticipated, including my story "A Book is a Journey," will arrive fresh from the printer on or about November 4. If you order now, your copy will be in the mail before it cools off.

Posted 10/10/2005 20:30 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

"Titanium Mike Saves the Day" is now complete at just under 5000 words, and off to my critique group. It'll be critted next Saturday and I hope to get it in the mail to Analog shortly thereafter. My first new story since March, and my first new solo story since... crikey, last September. Really need to get on the ball.

Speaking of which... in response to the recent meme that's been going around, here are the opening paragraphs of the just-completed "Titanium Mike" and a few other stories in progress ("in progress," in this case, means that they were completed a year ago or more but are now high on the list to be revised next).

Titanium Mike Saves the Day (Hard SF)

"Gramma, I'm scared."

The poor girl wasn't just scared, she was terrified -- tense and shivering and speaking in a breathy whisper her helmet mike could barely pick up. Behind a faceplate fogged with rapid breaths, her skin was pale and clammy and her sapphire-blue eyes twitched like small frightened animals.

Helen wasn't exactly calm herself. "Don't fret, Sophie," she told the child, but her own voice trembled. She muted her mike and took a deep breath to settle herself, the sound echoing loud in her helmet until she felt under control. "We'll be safe here." For a while, anyway, she added silently. The shelter's single dim light was already beginning to fade.

Moonlight on the Carpet (Horror)

"Vrrm, vrrm," said Liam as he ran the little wooden car across the Persian carpet. It was summer, a hot humid Midwest summer, and there was nothing else to do.

Daddy and Mommy were away again. The blue and gold pattern, a thing the shape of the big black card at the top of the poker deck, could be Laclede Island where they went every month at this time. Liam ran his car along the causeway -- a long curve of blue and red and black, and through the stripe of bright white moonlight that crossed it. The little golden hairs on the back of his hand glinted in the light.

Across the causeway and along the bay, the little car sped. Liam imagined himself in the back, leaning his chin on the back of the seat, peering out at the streetlights that flicked past one after the other. But above them all would loom the moon, the full moon, outshining them all. Mommy and Daddy never took him out to the island when the moon was full.

Interview with the Photographer (Hard SF)

We called ourselves the Trillion even then, though in those days it was a proud and overweening boast, not the vast understatement it is today. Those were heady days, early days, days of energy and promise when anything could, and did, happen on a daily basis. In those days a person could say something like "I think we ought to take Jupiter apart and build something useful out if it" and be greeted with cheers.

How young we were!

Let me tell you a thing to impress upon you how different those times were from these: I was given five names when I was born. It was a formality even then, of course; the UniTag was already two hundred years old, but my parents still held to the old ways and tried their best to give their child a unique spoken name. They were old-fashioned with my genome, too, which definitely explains my stodgily symmetrical appearance and probably explains why I have been too stubborn to change it. But I'm slave enough to fashion to go by just Jonquil now.

Night Mail (Fantasy)

Nate Richmond loved estate sales. The mundane thrill of searching for bargains, with the slight ironic tang of a second-hand encounter with death, had always been exactly what he needed to distract himself from his cares. Besides, they were cheap entertainment. So on a crisp sunny Friday afternoon in May, when Nate's cares were particularly big and his wallet equally empty, he strolled down 43rd from his apartment on Belmont to see what he might find.

Nate was a thin young man of 23, with white, white skin and black, black hair. His chunky shoes and his pants and his denim jacket were also black, as was his T-shirt, which bore the name and logo of the industrial band Bauhaus. The only article of clothing that wasn't black was his socks, red cotton decorated with white skulls. Around his neck he wore a small silver ankh.

The decedent at this particular estate sale had been a woman with size 8 feet and extremely practical taste in shoes and clothing. Emerging from her closet, Nate found his way blocked by two large, burly men, the proprietors of the sale, who were disassembling the mahogany sleigh bed that dominated the bedroom. As they levered the box spring out of the bed frame, Nate noticed a rectangle in the thick dust underneath. "What's that?" he said.

The older of the two men bent down and picked it up. "Looks like an old desk set." It was a large flat rectangle of embossed leather with brass hinges and fittings, maybe twenty-four by sixteen inches, wrapped all around with yards of yellowed cellophane tape.

In the Joy Business (Fantasy)

"Joy is the serious business of Heaven." -- C. S. Lewis

Monday. The angel Umiel was trying to finish writing a Customer Research Report when her screen beeped. Again. It was an e-pistle from Ganiel, her supervisor: would she please update her monthly budget figures? Today? By 11:00?

Umiel looked at the clock in the corner of her Illuminated User Interface -- the big hand was on the X and the little hand was on the IV -- and sighed. She considered asking Ganiel if this budget thing were absolutely necessary, but she knew what the answer would be: all priorities are top priorities, it's your job to manage your own time, et cetera, et cetera, et blah blah blah. Ganiel would probably quote at her from The One Second Manager, or whatever management book she was proselytizing today.

She set the report aside and opened the icon for the budget. It took her ten minutes to find her department -- they'd "rationalized" the budget spreadsheet again -- and properly record her paltry expenditures for the month. Then, when she returned to her own report, she discovered she'd lost her train of thought.

The morning was not going well. She decided to take an ambrosia break.

Posted 10/04/2005 22:13 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, on top of the F&SF rejection the other day I got my first review of "The Ecology of Faerie", by Dave Truesdale in Tangent Online, and it could be summed up as "Eh." Usually I can get at least one quotable phrase out of any review, but this one... not so much. Sigh.

But! I did finish the first draft of "Titanium Mike Saves the Day." Okay, I'm not at all sure this one works -- in fact, I'm not certain it's really a story. But it's done, at about 5000 words, and I'll send it to my crit group after a quick editing pass (probably Tuesday, since we have symphony tickets tomorrow). Then on to the next. I really need to build up my inventory, which has fallen to just a few stories.

Writing is hard. But I persist.

Posted 10/02/2005 23:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Gordon Van Gelder didn't buy the rewrite of the Bigfoot story. No "alas" in the rejection, but he also included his assistant editor JJA's comments and they started with "Eh." Which if you ask me is worse than an Alas.

Oh well, it goes off to scifi.com tomorrow.

Posted 09/28/2005 20:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Took the train to work today, saving gas and getting a little time for writing. Added about 300 words to the space opera folk tale story and edited a bunch of the existing words. Also did some critiques.

And as for that reopened bug? Turned out the submitter wanted to talk to me because the problem was really subtle. It's a mental model problem -- the user has a consistent mental model of what the software is doing, but it doesn't match the software's behavior. It would be easy to say that the user is wrong, but others also have the same incorrect mental model, which means that the software isn't doing enough to educate the user about how the system actually works. I need to find a way to gently persuade the user to think about the problem in the right way. Not yet sure how to do this, but I'm accepting the reopened bug as an indication that something needs to be done.

Tomorrow: off to Foolscap!

Posted 09/22/2005 22:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

After a somewhat annoying day at work, when just before leaving I discovered that a UI bug I'd closed as "as designed" had just been reopened without any explanation as to why, I settled down for some writing. 750 new words on the space opera folklore story, and the second of four scenes is done. I don't know if it's really working as a story, but I'm happy with the amount of emotion I'm managing to pack into the plot part of each of those little scenes. I'm really relying the reader's knowledge of one of the Standard SF Universes to build up the situation in each with just a few words -- if they aren't already familiar with Niven and Heinlein I'll probably lose them. Well, I'll just finish the story and let my crit group tell me whether or not it works.

Still no word on the novel. I called my agent and asked him to nudge the editor for me. I fear that no news is bad news, but I strive to be patient and optimistic...

Posted 09/20/2005 23:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

About 675 words tonight on the space opera folklore story. That's most of the first real scene. Terribly old-fashioned, but the interleaved bits of future folklore will give it a postmodern twist. I'm sending it to Analog first, anyway.

I am concerned that the story's going to be too long... around 4000 words at this rate. I'd be happier if it were much shorter. Well, once it's done I can try to cut it.

Posted 09/15/2005 23:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Just a couple of minor bits that I should have posted earlier...

One is that we had a successful yard sale last Saturday. It did start raining at about 11:00, but I had bought some tarps at the last minute and we quickly got everything covered. By 12:00 it became apparent that the rain (never more than a light drizzle, but still more than you'd want on your books) wasn't going to let up, so we moved everything onto the porch. The amazing thing is that we sold enough between 9:00 and 11:00 that we could fit all the rest on the porch! By the time we were done, we'd gotten rid of between 2/3 and 3/4 of the stuff we'd started with (by volume) and taken in about $220 -- a lot better than I'd been anticipating, frankly. It was work, but fun. The best part was seeing people happy to walk away with our unwanted stuff -- a boon to both parties. Now we have about eight boxes of unsold stuff to donate to various charities.

The other is that on Tuesday I was the guest of honor at the SF book group that meets at Powell's in Beaverton. The book under discussion was Hartwell and Cramer's Year's Best Fantasy 5, including my story "Charlie the Purple Giraffe" among other fine stories. We talked about the craft and practice of writing as well as about the book itself, and I got to talk with the SF buyer, who invited me to contact him when and if I have a novel and want to do a signing.

Also, I see that I now have 181 people reading my LiveJournal. Goodness. Hello, people!

Posted 09/14/2005 22:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Sweet Kate made me sit down and write tonight. It's been some months since I did so with any regularity (basically, since I sent off the novel), but I have been picking away at a space opera folklore piece in odd hours here and there. I didn't get a lot of new words down but I think the piece is starting to take concrete shape. It's currently about 1500 words, all in the folklore part and none of the actual plot. The plot should come together around the folklore pretty easily, I think, though. It's going to cover over 100 years, five generations with about ten characters, in under 4000 words... maybe as little as 3000 if I can rein in my tendency to repeat myself.

Posted 09/12/2005 22:35 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction usually sends very terse rejections -- one or two sentences on a half-sheet of paper. But on my last submission I got a two-page letter, identifying the problems he had with the story and saying he would consider it again if I could come up with a way to address them.

I'm honored to receive so much attention. I know that few editors these days have the time and energy to help new writers with their craft the way John W. Campbell did back in the day. However, I know that GVG is trying to provide more feedback in general, so it's probably not just me. But it's still keen that he took the time.

Anyway, I did rewrite the story to address his concerns, and I'll put it in the mail tomorrow. The rewritten story is more aggressive, nastier, and more science-fictional. It's also not quite the story I had in mind when I started (the original major theme has gotten somewhat lost, although the plot, main character, and especially the climax are stronger), so if GVG rejects the rewrite (as he has in the past, alas) I'm not sure which version I'll send to the next market.

Whatever. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. Onward and upward.

Posted 09/01/2005 22:37 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Tuesday morning the convention ended as it had begun, with us running into Paul and Maureen at breakfast. We had a lovely time gossiping about Charlie Stross and others before heading out to obtain train reservations and change our Scottish money for English (nominally it's legal tender but it had been direly hinted that it would be less and less likely to be accepted as you head south). The first bank we tried wouldn't exchange money for non-customers, and recommended the post office. The post office wouldn't do it at all, and recommended a bank -- specifically an English rather than Scottish bank. We found one, but for no visible reason as soon as we got to the front of the queue all transactions suddenly became tremendously involved and we waited, and waited, and waited... meanwhile Kate went to sit down, because she felt a migraine coming on.

Eventually I did get the money exchanged and we went back to the hotel, where Kate lay down for a bit while I checked out. As warned by the convention daily zine, the hotel charged my card in US dollars, at an exchange rate north of $1.80, so I asked them to do it again in pounds. By the time I got back upstairs Kate had thrown up, which usually helps but did tend to slow her down as we lugged all our worldly goods to the station. I was getting pretty worried about making the train, but we did make it in time... and then Kate threw up again, and again a little while later. There was nothing I could do for her (she hates being fussed over when she's sick) so I just sat next to her and tried to read.

Kate slept most of the way through to Chester, by which time she felt somewhat better. We piled our worldly goods on our backs again and headed out toward our B&B, for which we discovered we had an address but not an exact location. The address was #10 Hoole Road, and we found #7, 9, and 11, but across the street was a park. Behind the park maybe? No, that was a different road. I asked at a pub and was told it was just a little way further along, and indeed it was, about two blocks later. Addresses here are just plain meaningless (and often not posted at all, anyway).

Our B&B was a large and tasteful house, painted inside all in bright orange and yellow. Once checked in, we went out and found the nearby shopping street, in search of something for Kate to eat (for she hadn't kept a thing down all day). We found a bakery that still had a few things left and got her a "fudge donut" (no chocolate to it that I could see, the gooey topping was more caramel colored and it wasn't filled) and me a "flake cake" (chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a piece of Cadbury Flake on top), which we devoured while exploring the rest of the street -- including butcher, fruit & veg shop, fishmonger, natural foods emporium, Chinese takeaway, delightful-looking old pub, Internet café, stereo shop, laundromat, and laundry. We considered the latter two options and decided to pay a bit more to have our laundry done for us tomorrow rather than hanging around the laundromat.

From there we headed into town, and by happenstance caught a free bus from the train station to the city walls. The town of Chester is a delightful melange of half-timbered, classical, and modern buildings, some dating back to the 1200's, with an intact city wall completely surrounding the old city center, a canal, and the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre. One of the town's most notable features is the "rows", a second level of sidewalks above the street-level shops, delightfully cool after a hot day dragging luggage hither and yon.

After familiarizing ourselves with the city we set out in search of dinner, but had poor luck finding anything, complicated by the fact that Kate desperately needed a bathroom. And once that was accomplished she determined that she really wasn't hungry -- she needed to lie down, now. Tried calling a cab, but was told it would be 20 or 30 minutes. So I asked around for a cab stand and was directed to the cab company office, where there was a queue waiting outside. Kate sat down in the office and I talked with one of the boiler room phone operators (probably the same one I'd just phoned), who took my name and promised a cab would be along shortly. We waited there for what seemed like not shortly, watching cabs arrive and pick people off the queue, and finally when a cab arrived and there was no one who'd been waiting longer than us I just bundled Kate into it. "If we ever need to call a cab again in this town we'll give your name," I told her, and got her back into the room, where she threw up again. Poor thing! But these migraines usually last only one day.

I pulled the blinds and left Kate to sleep while I slipped out to call Tom Brennan from a nearby pay phone. I left a message with his wife, and when I got back to the B&B and told the girl on duty to expect a call for me she told me she'd just gotten one and thought it was a wrong number. She let me use her phone to return the call, and I got Tom's wife again, who relayed the call to Tom at work, who called me back at the B&B, and this is the lunch date that Jack made.

Kate was still asleep, so I went out and had dinner at a nerarby place that I thought was a coffee house but turned out to be a pleasant very modern pub (well, the sign out front did brag about cappucinos, lattes, and mochas and say nothing about beer). I had a Thai beef salad which turned out to be a very nice grilled steak, sliced and served with a spicy dressing on top of "assorted leaves" (what we'd call "greens") and "sauteed potatoes" (what we'd call "French fries"). Good, though. I also got a bread roll to take home for Kate to gnaw on, which she was glad to have. And we went to sleep early, and that was Tuesday.

Wednesday morning Kate was feeling better. Breakfast at the B&B was a bit more complex than at our hotel in Glasgow, with a huge variety of cereals as well as the full cooked breakfast (this time with baked beans instead of the black pudding). After the first day we got selective and ordered only a subset of the breakfast -- our host seemed a bit taken aback but managed to cope.

After breakfast we lugged a couple of bags of dirty clothes to the laundry and gave them over to be professionally cleaned -- which consisted of them being dumped in a washer before we left the establishment (but we didn't have to hang around and wait). Then we walked down to the train station to catch one of the frequent trains to Liverpool. While waiting for the train we bought some Liverpool maps, an issue of Private Eye, and the Time Out guide to London for future reference.

The train itself was small and cute -- just two cars -- but unlike Portland's light rail it was a real actual train. I begin to see the attraction of trainspotting. With so many different kinds of trains, and so much concrete difference between the various types in terms of comfort, features, and noise, it would be easy to start caring about which type of train you were getting on. Add a dollop of obsessive-compulsion and/or Asperger's and you'd have a classic sad anorak trainspotting git.

On the train, when I finished Private Eye (like The Onion only classier and British) the fellow in the next seat offered me his Sun. The Sun is truly appalling -- like the Weekly World News except that it seems to take itself seriously. It also has a large picture of a topless woman on page 3. It was from the page 3 girl that I learned the space shuttle Discovery had landed safely. Swear to God.

We arrived at the Lime Street station (picked up some more maps) and wandered out into a rather gray day, full of bustle and traffic and modern buildings and the huge St. George's Hall (rather like the Parthenon only not nearly as ruined). We read a few of the tourist information signs, then wandered off in search of something interesting to do in the hour or so before our lunch date with Tom. One area that looked on the map like old and interesting streets turned out to be a place where the old and interesting streets had been torn down for a modern shopping center, but we also found the tourist information office (more maps!) and were interviewed about our experience in Liverpool so far by someone from the local ministry of culture.

From there we headed to the Cavern Quarter, AKA the Let's Cash In On the Beatles Quarter. The original Cavern Club was torn down, but has since been reconstructed brick-by-brick and is now surrounded by various tacky clubs and shops. But there was also some interesting Beatles-related public art, including a bizarre shrine showing the Virgin Mary (?) holding three of the four lads (portrayed as infants) and a life-size bronze of John leaning against a wall. We paused for a scone and something to drink before continuing on to St. John's Garden, in the shadow of St. George's Hall where we'd started. There we met Tom and his wife Sylvia (just as charming and shy as Tom himself -- they were high school sweethearts, aww) and went for lunch at the café in the Conservation Centre, a museum about the art of preservation and care of old and fragile objects.

After lunch Tom walked with us down to the waterfront, where he pointed out the amazing art deco ziggurat that is the offices and air shaft for a tunnel under the Mersey, and the three huge office buildings of the Port of Liverpool, Cunard Lines, and Royal Liver (pronounced with a long i) Insurance. These three beautiful buildings are known as the Three Graces and are significant to Liverpool's maritime heritage. Over nine million people and untold tons of goods passed through this port in its heyday. The Royal Liver building is still the headquarters of Royal Liver Insurance and is topped with two enormous sculptures of the mythical Liver Bird from which the city gets its name (the bird's name, in turn, is related to laver, a kind of seaweed).

We said goodbye to Tom and walked out on the docks. There we toured the portmaster's house, which is currently furnished as it was during WWII, complete with a working victory garden. Liverpool, being one of England's key ports, was bombed nearly as heavily as London. Then we visited the Maritime Museum, where we learned all about the great age of ocean liners, including the mystery of the Lusitania and, of course, the Titanic. One room was filled with artifacts related to these two famous disasters, including a deck chair from the Lusitania and the twenty-foot-long builder's model of the Titanic (later revised into the Britannic and finally the Olympic). Other exhibits included the emigrant experience, the slave trade, and the modern customs and excise service. Despite the museum's best efforts, they couldn't make customs and excise exciting, but the rest of it was fascinating. The exhibits on the slave trade made it plain that these people had cultures of their own -- they weren't just products.

As the museum closed we wandered off, past the memorial to the Titanic, in search of dinner. We wound up at a Portugese restaurant -- one cuisine we don't have at home -- before catching the cute little train back to Chester and our B&B.

Thursday was our day for touristing in Chester itself. We walked down to the train station and caught the free bus again; upon alighting we immediately found several charity shops, where we picked up some cheap CDs. After picking up a walking map at the tourist info office, we wandered upstairs to learn about the Roman amphitheatre across the street. Turns out it was not discovered until the 1920s, and is currently being actively excavated; the archaeologists were working right there in plain sight and we could have asked questions if we'd been of a mind to. The exhibit was fascinating -- a great mix of information about Roman amphitheatres in Britain (the practice of beast fighting as an entertainment was responsible for the near extinction of fierce beasts in Europe; over here, post holes from small booths are accompanied by chicken wing bones and beef ribs, indicating fast-food stands) with honest exposure of the messiness and open questions of real-world archaeology (many stones are missing here, probably taken away for other uses during the middle ages, but this wall was apparently untouched and we don't know why; elsewhere, the amphitheatre is disrupted by a medieval road, which is in turn interrupted by a 20th century garage foundation).

Following the walking map, we proceeded around the amphitheatre itself, down the riverfront, and up some stairs to a marvelous ruined church. I love these ruins, and thanks to Henry VIII England is full of them; I took gobs of pictures. Then we headed up onto the city walls, walking under Chester's famous clock and spending several happy hours in the various book and antique stores which are apparently only reachable from the pedestrian walkway on top of the wall. From the wall we had a nice view of the canal that skirts the city and into people's back gardens. Everything in these old towns is infill -- houses, shops, and services wedged into the spaces between other things, and not a right angle anywhere.

By now we were getting hungry and stupid, and set off in search of Chez Jules, a French restaurant Kate had read about in some guidebook. But, once again, the street numbers were irregularly assigned and rarely displayed, and we were just about to give up when we blundered into the place by chance. I'm really glad we persevered, because the food was delightful. From there we made our way to the local cathedral. I'm always astonished by the enormous churches one can find in small European towns, and I wonder what they were like in their heyday. Today Chester's cathedral offers a digital audio guide to its art (ranging from the 1500s to the 20th century, including some spectacular Victorian mosaics and a tiny "cobweb painting" done on tent caterpillar webbing), tombs (including the alcove behind the organ where at least five organists are memorialized), and the amusingly quirky carved figures in the "quire."

Not too far from the cathedral was the local market, a cavernous building filled with stalls selling fresh vegetables, CDs, clothing, jewelry, and everything in between. Nothing touristy here -- this was where the locals did their shopping. We had an interesting conversation with one of the locals about American turns of phrase -- she had trouble with the expression "to meet with" someone, feeling that the "with" was unnecessary. I thought about it a moment and tried to explain that, in American at least, "to meet" someone is to encounter them for the first time or briefly, while "to meet with" someone is to engage in a more protracted encounter, typically a business meeting. We also sampled, and purchased, some truly spectacular cheeses. Some of the local cheddars explode with flavor.

By then we were flagging a bit again, so we stumbled into Katie's Tea Room for a bit of a sit-down and an afternoon snack: pastries, and tea served in antique silver (which transmits the heat very well -- ouch!). The proprietor looked a lot more like an Ahmed than a Katie, but the tea and crumpets hit the spot and building was quite impressive -- dating back to the 1300s, with some of the original wattle-and-daub construction still visible in spots.

Afternoon tea gave us sufficient energy for a trip to the local Waterstone's, where we picked up many of the books we hadn't managed to find in the convention dealer's room, such as a paperback of The Iron Council by China Miéville (it was only one of this year's Hugo nominees, for pity's sake!). But the energy didn't last very long, so we dragged ourselves back to our room and fell over. Later we roused ourselves sufficiently to put together ham and cheese sandwiches from our market finds for dinner, but otherwise spent the rest of the evening watching local TV (including something that gave every impression of being CSI: Glasgow), listening to newly-acquired CDs, and reading newly-acquired books. Touristing is hard work, and sometimes you need a rest. Especially since the next morning we would be heading for London.

To be continued...

Posted 08/27/2005 23:26 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Kate and I rose bright and early Tuesday morning and met our friends Ariel and Phil, and their kids Jesse and Arthur, at the airport. Through careful planning and the use of about five years' worth of air miles, we'd managed to wangle business class tickets. This meant we got breakfast, (unlike our steerage-class compatriots who got no free food at all -- not even snacks -- nor pillows). Given choice of cheese omelet or corn flakes, I took the corn flakes... which came in a china bowl, with a little bowl of blueberries on the side, plus a banana, choice of juice, and freshly baked biscuits. And plastic cutlery. Five-hour layover in Chicago passed fairly quickly in conversation with various Shattans and reading Curse of Chalion. Once our gate was announced we found a total of about ten fans on the plane, including Aynjel Kaye, who had the seat behind me and promised to kick my seat through the entire flight. Aynjel would have been my Clarion classmate if I'd gone to Clarion instead of Clarion West in 2000. She'd probably be over six feet tall even without the silk top hat.

Our business-class seats for the flight to Glasgow were insanely roomy, not so much side-to-side as lengthwise. It was simply impossible for me to reach the seat pocket ahead while strapped in, and not even Aynjel could kick my seat back. The seats included adjustable leg rests, foot rests, and head rests and reclined almost all the way, as well as having a generous center console with little slide-out drink trays. As we were getting settled in the stewardess brought out individual DVD players, complete with noise-canceling headphones and a selection of disks. All free. Other entertainment options included the usual movie and audio programs, choice of real newspapers and magazines, and the books, computer, and iPod I'd brought with. (12v outlet available at each seat, too, though I hadn't known that and had no 12v adapter.) Not to mention the food service, which was really good, again served on real china with plastic cutlery. Kate: "Bugger Scotland, we're staying right here." But despite all these options, what I really wanted to do was sleep. I got a couple hours here and another hour there, but mostly I just read my book and listened to the iPod.

Arrived in Glasgow bleary but intact. Waltzed through passport control, baggage check, and customs. One by one the fans from this flight and another that arrived at about the same time (including Ellen Klages) gathered in the arrival lounge, all watching each other's bags while changing money, visiting the loo, and trying to figure out how to get to our respective hotels. There were too many of us for one cab and not enough going to the same place anyway. Eventually most of us wound up on the airport bus.

We dragged ourselves several blocks from the bus stop to find our room not ready yet. Leaving our bags with the hotel desk, we rendezvoused with Ellen Klages and Aynjel at the Central Station (using Aynjel herself as the rendezvous point -- "because 'gather around the dwarf' is never a good plan") and wandered off in search of lunch, but it was only 11am and every place was closed until noon (including a seafood place called the Mussel Inn that Kate really wanted to try). Finally wound up at The Auctioneer, which we went to because Ellen thought it actually was an auction house but turned out to be a pub, and open, and with quite good pub grub (lightest, flakiest crust I've ever seen on a steak pie).

After lunch we visited local historic landmark Hutcheson Hall and wandered zombie-like through the picturesque streets until admitting we really needed a nap and returned to our separate hotels. But, alas, our room was still not ready. "It'll be ready in ten minutes," we were told. Fell asleep in lobby while waiting an hour and a half in "just another ten minutes" increments. Finally made it to room -- clean, bright, smallish by American standards but perfectly acceptable, with a really interesting view down the Clyde toward the Armadillo -- and fell over until 5.

Having napped, we headed toward the Scottish Exposition & Convention Center (SECC) to register for the con and find some fans. It took a while to find the appropriate train to get there, the stairs to the "low-level" train being located between tracks 12 and 13 -- in other words, platform 12 1/2 -- but the train itself runs every 15 minutes and takes only about 10. The walk from the SECC station to the SECC itself, though, through the clouded perspex hamster tube, takes another 15 minutes. We met Amy Sisson and several others in the tube.

While walking to registration we met John and Lenore from Hoboken, and decided to go to dinner with them. Then, while registering (no line at all), we met Moshe and Lise, who knew John and Lenore, so we all went to dinner together. After more than the usual amount of kerfuffle about where to go and how to get there (bus? train? cab? walk?) we wound up taking the train to a place called Charcoal which turned out to have really excellent Indian food, great service, and fine conversation all round. After dinner we accompanied Moshe and Lise to Tesco in search of supplies for their party, but we faded out while shopping and decided to pass on the party itself. Asleep by 10, we didn't wake up until 7 the next morning. We later determined it was 33 hours from when we woke up until when we finally went to bed, and I for one didn't get more than a couple hours' nap during that time.

Thursday: At breakfast in our hotel (quite a nice buffet of cold and cooked items) we met Paul and Maureen Kincaid Speller (and it is a measure of how deeply LiveJournal has invaded my head that I said when I saw them "look, it's Peake and Brisingamen."). We ought to make plans to have a meal with each other, we all said... say, how about breakfast tomorrow? Then we headed off in search of the rumored £20 cell phone, but the best I could find is one for £30 (~$60) which was just a bit too much for two weeks. So we abandoned that idea and headed off to the Burrell Collection. Again, it took a bit to figure out which train to take and how to catch it, but we were definitely starting to get the hang of it. The Burrell Collection is smaller than we'd expected but definitely choice, including a wide variety of objects from ancient Egypt, China, and Greece as well as medieval and more recent paintings, sculptures, tapestries, armor, weapons, and embroidery.

We had lunch at the Burrell's café (I passed on the jacket potato with haggis) and took the train back to town, transferring to the train to the SECC. The ticket booth was closed but we were told that we could pay on the train. However, no one ever appeared to take our money. This was the first of several times when we managed to get to the SECC without paying anything. Said hi to Dave Langford, Catherine Crockett, Charlie Allery, and several others on our way to the fan lounge to hang out for a little bit. Then I went off to Ellen Klages' reading. Jay Lake was scheduled to read between me and Ellen, but he wasn't here and no one else had been scheduled in his slot so we split the time between us. I read half of "Nucleon" in that half-slot, followed by the entire prologue and chapter A of Remembrance Day in the full half-hour slot that followed (it was a tight squeeze). There was a pretty good crowd of about a dozen people, some of whom I didn't even know, and they seemed to like it.

After my reading, went down to the Moat House bar for the LiveJournal get-together Jay had planned, but apart from Lynne Ann no one else appeared. We talked with her, and then Doug Faunt, until Davey and Chip arrived. Davey, Chip, Doug, and we decided quite quickly on a Russian place that Kate had heard good things about, and we all piled into a taxi. Service was friendly but slow, food was generally good though I wasn't too impressed with my entrée.

Dinner ended around 9 (still light, though) and once again we went to Tesco, this time for breakfast stuff for Doug. Then we hiked over to the Hilton, which proved to be a long long walk and the hotel almost completely inaccessible by pedestrians. But we did eventually find it, and milled about the various hot and crowded parties for a while until realizing it was time to fall over.

Friday was a very long day. After breakfast we took the train to the SECC and I hung around in the fan room for a while until Moshe showed up. We talked for about 45 minutes about my novel, and Moshe opined that it could be improved by making the aliens more alien. I said I knew this, but had done the best I could, and could use some more concrete advice. He also said that he expected to be able to talk with Tom and get an offer within 10 days after getting home (but we've heard this before) and that the publication date would most likely be in the winter (first) quarter of 2007. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it allows taking 18-24 months to write the second novel but have them come out within a year of each other to build momentum.

I had written up two novel ideas (out of five in my ideas file) as one-paragraph pitches and showed them both to him on paper. He liked the one I call Dark better, which is good because I like it better too. We talked about the main character and the environment and the history of the place -- in some cases I already had answers, in others I made them up on the spot, and in others I had to admit I didn't know. Much research will be required.

Kate showed up at 1:00 but Moshe and I kept talking for another 15-30 minutes, so Kate and I didn't make it through the hamster tube to Argyle Street in search of lunch until nearly 2. Unfortunately, what we found there was mostly skanky pubs, except for one nice-looking coffee shop with sandwiches. But while I, in my hunger-befuddled way, was trying to figure out whether we were supposed to order and then sit or sit and then order, another couple came in and sat down... at the last available table. We were too hungry to wait until another table opened up so we went back to our second choice, an Italian place that proved to be pretty good. It was still rather stressful. Must remember to eat a morning snack.

After lunch Kate went to Jane Yolen's GoH speech and I squeezed into a half-hour talk by Joshua Bilmes on the agent-client relationship (I asked what is usually in the agent-client contract, and he said it was usually the percentage (15% for domestic sales, 20% for foreign) and the terms for starting and stopping the contract, so I think I'm okay with the handshake deal I have with Jack), followed by... um, not sure what, probably miscellaneous chats in the concourse and dealers' room, until my kaffeeklatsch. To my surprise, three people had signed up and four showed up: Cally Perry (who friended me on LiveJournal because of our shared interests), a friend of hers, someone who liked the Eagle story, and someone who'd never heard of me until she came to my reading because the panel next door was full. Also a fifth person who left (very apologetic) after the first five minutes when a slot opened up for George R.R. Martin at the next table. Can't say I blamed him. An hour and a half for my kaffeeklatsch seemed kind of long but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

From there I went straight to my Religion in SF Television panel, which consisted of an atheist, a transsexual pagan, and me. The room was pretty full and the discussion lively and interesting; the pagan and I wanted to talk about Battlestar Galactica but the discussion kept returning to Babylon 5, with occasional jaunts into Buffy and Angel. Interestingly, although Angel has The Powers That Be, there is no significant supernatural force for good in Buffy and in neither case -- nor in most other genre shows -- do the main characters have any religious faith at all. But Babylon 5 is clearly the show that has done the most with religion. After the panel I went for dinner with the pagan and her soon-to-be-husband at the bistro in the convention center, where the food was surprisingly good although they did put ice in the cider (I gather it's a Glasgow thing) and brought me the wrong entrée.

I ran from dinner to the Challenges for New Writers panel, a lively discussion in a large and fairly full hall. It started off with some discussion of how new writers should beware of people who know only a little giving them wrong advice, and I had a sudden attack of wondering whether I might be doing the same. But there were plenty of people there who could have contradicted me if I said anything wrong. Mostly it was about self-publicity, managing blogs and websites, managing your time, and getting feedback... pretty basic stuff. Charlie Allery and Anna Feruglio dal Dan were among those in the audience. After the panel I talked with fellow panelist Jay Caselberg for a while before catching a cab to the Aeon Award ceremony. I was joined in the cab by the next fellow in line, who was also going to the Hilton. He recognized my name badge and asked if I was the author of "Tale of the Golden Eagle," which was great egoboo. We talked for the whole ride about me.

I came into the crowded and very hot Aeon Award room about 8:30, which was supposed to be halfway through the previous presentation on the Albedo One anthology but the presentation actually got going a while after I got there. I sat and talked with Lynne Ann and with Ralan Conley before and after that presentation. Then came the actual Aeon Award presentation. To make a long story short, I didn't win, but everyone involved made a point of telling me afterward just how very close the judging was... which didn't help. Kate was late to the ceremony, which also didn't help. But it didn't hit nearly as hard as losing the Campbell.

After thanking the judges and all, we went off in search of the SFWA suite, because I'd neglected to note in my Palm which suite it was in. After wandering the Hilton for a while we finally found a pro (Gay Haldeman, I think) who told us it was in the Moat House. So we caught a cab there, and joined the Asimov's party in progress. We spent the rest of the evening there and in the fan room, before heading home. But there were no cabs at the hotel front door, and we stood and waited with David Moles, Jed Hartman, John Scalzi and Gordon Van Gelder as well as Lynne Ann and Roelof.

It was a great conversation, but eventually we got tired of waiting and Roelof went in and had the hotel desk call for a cab, which of course made two other cabs instantly appear. But one of them apparently poached the other's fare, which caused the first cab to pull out and prevent the second one from leaving. The two cabbies yelled back and forth for a long while before the passengers changed to the first cab and they both pulled away. Finally the cab we'd called showed up and took Lynne Ann, Roelof, and us back to our hotels.

Saturday I had only one scheduled panel and dedicated most of the day to just attending the convention. We arrived just a bit too late for Jo Walton's reading, so the first thing I went to was a panel on "Complex Families and Queer Neighbors" with Ellen Klages, Geoff Ryman, Andy Trembley, and token straight person Lynn Gold. Jack Cohen was in the audience and put in a few choice bits from his experience counseling infertile couples (he is an embryologist), which includes some same-sex couples. "Some of them like to pet anything that purrs, if you get what I mean." Several comments from both panelists and audience members indicated that people assume that gay marriage is opposed to gay polyamory, which is certainly not the case in my experience.

I talked with Geoff Ryman (one of my Clarion instructors) for a while after the panel, then showed up late for "Hobbits, Orcs, and Homo Floriensis" with Jack Cohen and others (I sat way in the back and couldn't see the panelists), then had lunch in the fan room with Frank Wu. Kate joined us part way through. Then I ran off to "Military Vs. Civil Authority in Battlestar Galactica," where I got to talk about all the Cylon religion stuff I'd wanted to discuss at the religion panel, plus a lot of stuff about who's got what agenda and how much we don't know (it was an hour and a half). Great panel. (Later in the con I talked with a couple from the audience about Galactica and writing and lots of other things. People came up to me all weekend to say they liked some panel or other I'd been on.) We had to promise not to say anything about the first few episodes of Season Two, which haven't aired here yet. Several times I had to clap my hands over my mouth.

I think that after that must have been when I saw the art show. The Jim Burns stuff was keen but otherwise not much really stands out. I probably wandered the dealers' room for a while too. Then I tried to go to a panel about homoeroticism in fantasy, but it was too crowded so I went next door to Brenda Cooper's reading. She was glad to have me... there were only about four people in the audience.

I met Kate, Charlie Allery, and Tom Brennan (a member of my Writers of the Future cohort who lives in Liverpool) in the fan room, and we took a cab to the Mussel Inn for dinner but it was all booked up (many tables empty, but all reserved for 7:00 -- this being 6:15). We walked from there to an Indian restaurant called Bombay Blues, which sounded good in the convention's restaurant guide, but proved to have very strange service. First the waiter insisted we wanted the buffet, but we wanted menus. Then, when Kate ordered an Indian drink off the card in the middle of the table, he told her she didn't want that. Then, after ordering (including naan), we said we wanted rice. "How many?" "Well, how big are they?" "About so." "Two, then." "Oh, you'll want four." "All right, four then." Tom: "I'll have that yellow rice... what's it called?" David: "Pullao." Waiter: "Right, that's two plain rice and one fried." David: "No, three white and one fried." Repeat until thoroughly confused. The food was reasonably good, though. After dinner I wound up sitting with Charlie and Tom in the fan lounge and basically never budged from that spot for the rest of the evening. Charlie Stross sat down next to me a while later, complaining of his rigorous day of signings, readings, interviews, and talks with agents and editors, and I realized how I must sound when talking with writers who haven't sold as much as I have. Charlie and I wound up reminiscing (or was that just bitching) about nasty man pages we'd written. Kate and I wound up splitting a cab back to our hotel with Andy Duncan, whom I did not recognize until he spoke, and his wife.

Sunday we slept in, and by the time we got up the selection at breakfast was very limited. But it was quiet at breakfast, unlike most other mornings when we had to compete with a busload of French or Italian or Spanish tourists all of whom were trying to eat and get to their bus. I realized I'd have to hurry to make my 11:00 panel on Lost so I took off without Kate. I arrived a few minutes early and was surprised to be the only one sitting at the front of the room until somewhat after 11. But then Priscilla Olsen arrived, along with the rest of the panelists, and berated me for not checking in at the green room.

The panel, which included Joe Haldeman on the panel and Greg Bear in the audience, was mostly concerned with speculations about the big secrets of the island and whether the explanation was fantastic or realistic. Joe said that The Numbers (Hurley's lottery-winning numbers, which crop up in several places) made it fantasy rather than SF. Priscilla kept coming up with big theories (e.g. "They all died in the plane crash and everything's taking place in Locke's mind as he dies") which would be so, so disappointing if they turned out to be true. A series this complex deserves a complex explanation (or, better, a number of interlocking explanations). But I said I thought the ending could not fail to disappoint -- look at X-Files and the Riverworld books -- even Babylon 5, which had about as good a conclusion as you could hope for, was somewhat disappointing. Priscilla also kept saying that there were two different monsters, but I don't understand where that came from.

After that panel that I hit the dealer's room, and decided to actually buy something. I picked up GoH Christopher Priest's latest, The Separation, which had been getting a lot of attention at the con (Paul Kincaid did an academic paper on it), and Iain M. Banks's latest, The Algebraist (which, unfortunately, Giulia de Cesare said she couldn't finish). Banks himself was going to be signing in the dealer's room in 15 minutes after I bought it -- his only appearance at the convention -- but the dealer I bought it from said he was not at the con because he was going through a very difficult patch and needed his privacy just now, and besides the book was already signed. So I went all the way to Scotland and didn't see Iain Banks, alas. I also talked with Jo Walton at Elise's table and wound up writing Elise a check in US dollars for cash in pounds, a favor for both of us.

Lunch was a chicken, cheese and pineapple panini which was mostly mayonnaise, alas. Then I decided to invest an hour in watching an episode of the new Dr. Who. The large auditorium was mostly full, and most of them, when asked, raised a hand to indicate they'd seen the episode ("Dalek") before, so I had high hopes. I must confess that when the theme music came on -- I hadn't heard it for ten years or more -- I got a little lump in my throat. But though the episode did have its strong points, including complex characterization for the Dalek (hmm, similar to the revamped Cylons on Galactica) and CGI effects much better than the crap effects of yesteryear (though the biological creature inside the Dalek shell was a rubber monster that would have been right at home in the Tom Baker years), I found aspects of the writing weak. Why, oh why, do the human soldiers continue to pour bullets at the Dalek when it's been plainly demonstrated they have no effect at all, while the Dalek calmly picks them off one by one with its death ray? And how come this Dalek can levitate (neatly puncturing the old "all we have to do is run up a set of stairs" gambit) when this was never the case before? And this Dalek was not a new model -- it fell through time from the climactic battle of the Time War, in which the Time Lords and the Daleks wiped each other out forever (leaving the Doctor and this Dalek as the last of their respective species). The episode was followed by a half-hour Q&A with the writer, and I hung around and talked with him in the hall after that (along with a half-dozen other sad anoraks). Some of the most egregious problems were the result of the producers meddling with the script late in the game, but it was still a bit disappointing all in all.

After that I attended the last half-hour of a panel about script writing, then rendezvoused with Kate, Lynne Ann, and Roelof for an early dinner before the Hugos. Lynne Ann called the Mussel Inn -- amazing to hear her slip into Irish cadences and vocabulary ("brilliant!") while talking with the Scottish proprietor -- and we finally did make it there for a delightful dinner and conversation, including Banoffie Pie. And then the Hugos, with Kim Newman and Paul McAuley MC'ing from an alternate universe in which the award is named after Victor Hugo and the world is dominated by France. The Hugos were largely won by hometown favorites -- including Ansible beating Locus for Best Semiprozine, a first -- and I was generally pleased with the results (yay Battlestar Galactica!) even though I thought Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell would have been better if it had been cut down to about three-quarters of its current length. The Hugos were over amazingly quickly and we adjourned to the fan room, followed by the SFWA suite (which was a bit underpopulated, but we had a nice time talking with party host Jane Jewell).

Monday I hit the ground running and made it to the green room well in advance of my 11:00 "Future of Malware" panel, because I was moderator. The panelists were well chosen -- a tech support author from Sophos, a guy who left a career in IT to go to law school and become an IT lawyer, and a network administrator. Mostly we talked about the present of malware, but there was some discussion of the future.

I met Catherine Crockett for lunch, and we wound up eating sandwiches in her room while watching Colin sort fanzines in the nude (yee ha). Then it was time for the Fan Room Closing Ceremony, part of which consisted of me providing narration while someone called Ang performed her now-traditional (this being the third time she'd done it) recap of the entire convention in interpretive dance. I had no idea going in what I was going to do, but everyone said it went well.

We skipped the convention's official closing ceremonies in favor of taking a train to the Pollok House museum. But the train from Central Station to Pollokshaws West (not to be confused with Pollokshaws East or Pollokshields West) didn't leave for twenty minutes, and then was delayed and finally canceled before leaving the station. There was another train in half an hour, but it had gotten so late we would have had less than half an hour at the museum, so we bagged it and went back to the room for a nap. Then we returned to the Moat House to meet Steve and Giulia and Marci Malinowycz for dinner, as well as Alyson Abramowitz who tagged along. It was a bit of a hassle getting the six of us to the restaurant, since cabs are limited to five, and the service at Fratelli Sarti was incredibly slow, but the food was marvelous. Back to the Moat House for the dead dog party, amazingly crowded and noisy but full of some of our favorite people (including some we hadn't seen all con, such as GoH Christopher Priest and newly-engaged Janice Gelb with her Australian fiancé) making it difficult to tear ourselves away. But tear we did, sharing a cab with Lynne Ann and Roelof, because we had a train to catch in the morning.

To be continued...

Posted 08/23/2005 23:48 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, we're back from the Worldcon and Chester, Liverpool, and London afterwards. Had a great time. Proper trip report is forthcoming. We gave out a new issue of Bento at the con, and it will be in the mail soon to those who weren't there.

I did not win the Aeon Award, though everyone involved made sure to tell me just how close the competition was between my story and the winner. Oh well. At least the story will be published in Albedo One, some time before the end of this year.

Upon my return I found a surprise in my mailbox: author copies of the October 2005 Realms of Fantasy, including my story "The Ecology of Faerie" with an excellent illustration by artist Andrea Wicklund. I hadn't known when this story was going to be published. I also surprised to find, upon reading the printed story, that it actually gave me chills. It was written back in 2002, spent a couple of years at markets with very long response times, and I never got galleys for it, so I hadn't read it in years. I'm very pleased with it.

I also got a couple of rejections, and news that another story had gotten lost in the slush pile and was only now, five months later, being sent to the editor (an editor reknowned for taking a long time to decide). Oh well. One of the rejected stories has already gone back in the mail. The other... it's been to all of the pro markets I can think of that might be appropriate for it, and it's been a near-miss at just about all of them. I feel strongly about this story and want it to succeed. I may take a hard look at the editors' comments, rewrite it (possibly with a different main character), and send it out again to the same markets.

I really should write a new story or two too, and revise some of the ones that have never been submitted.

One other bit of news is that I have decided to attend World Fantasy Con rather than OryCon this year. It was a hard, hard choice (I'm really going to miss a lot of the OryCon people, including Kate) but by then I expect that I will have either a sold novel to publicize or a rejected novel to resubmit, and the people I should talk to in either case will all be there (including my agent).

Oh, and my infected toe cleared up within the first couple of days of the trip. Thanks to all who expressed their concern (and raspberries to those who suggested amputation).

Posted 08/20/2005 16:35 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Two days until we leave for Scotland. I just got word that the Aeon Award ceremony will be in the Dalmore Room of the Hilton Hotel at 9pm on Friday the 5th. Hope to see some of you there. I'm started to get nervous/excited about the award. I believe I have a good shot at it, but there are five other shortlisted stories that are equally worthy.

Another thing that has me nervous, though not at all excited, is that I have an infected toe... again. I've had this problem two or three times before (same toe each time). The cause might be a bacterium or it might be a fungus, but whatever the reason it's red and swollen and itchy and painful and it keeps me from sleeping and walking properly -- not what I want going into either the Worldcon or touristing around the UK. I'm taking prescription drugs for it, but I'm not yet convinced it's getting better.

I'm not going to let this toe stop me from going to the Worldcon, but it's almost certainly going to slow me down. I hope it gets better soon :-(

Posted 07/31/2005 10:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

• Kate and I just sent a new issue of our fanzine Bento off to the printer. We'll have copies at the Worldcon, and mailed copies will be sent out shortly after we return. Promise!

• I just got another rejection on my story "Interview with the Photographer." It's a 6100-word far-future SF tale that involves the construction of a Dyson sphere and the destruction of several planets. It's now bounced from Cosmic Tales from the Far Future, Analog, Interzone , Asimov's, F&SF, F&SF again after a rewrite, SciFi.com, Strange Horizons, Oceans of the Mind, and Aeon, and I'm at a loss where to send it next. I really like this one, it's gotten very encouraging rejections, and think it deserves publication. But where?

• I just sent off another of my irregular "David's Writing News" emails. If you don't get one and would like one (or, for that matter, if you got one and don't want any more), drop me a note.

• I hate my hair. I'm growing out the sides, and they are now long enough to fly out like wings but not yet long enough that I can pull them into the ponytail. This situation is going to get worse for another couple of months before it gets better, I think.

Posted 07/24/2005 17:20 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

The postman just dropped through the door a fat package containing a copy of the July/August 2005 issue of Asimov Ciencia Ficción, containing the Spanish translation of "Tk'Tk'Tk" by one David E. Levine. My first Spanish translation, and my first translation to appear on paper ("Tale of the Golden Eagle" was in an Israeli webzine in Hebrew). It's got a cool illo and my name (almost) on the cover.

Posted 07/23/2005 13:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Okay, here's where I'll be when at the Worldcon. I would really really really appreciate it if you would show up at my reading on Thursday at 5pm. I can promise you a good show.

Thursday 5:00pm - Reading (0.5 hrs)

Friday 3:30pm - Kaffeeklatsch (1.5 hrs)

Friday 5:00pm - A Matter of Faith: How SF Television Treats Religion

The panel discusses how religion and spirituality is treated in science fiction television. Has it evolved since the original Star Trek?

Friday 7:00pm - Challenges For New Writers

Interruptions, interruptions, interruptions -- how can new writers stay focussed? Are websites, blogs, and newsgroups helping or hindering new writers? What about writers workshops? When do you know you're established and no longer new?

Saturday 2:00pm - Military vs. Civil Authority: Do You Trust Adama or Roslyn? (1.5 hrs)

The conflict between military and civilian authority can be seen in the world around us, and sometimes it is portrayed in SF. The panel examines this conflict, a key element in the new Battlestar Galactica.

Sunday 11:00am - Is Lost SF or Paranoid Realism?

(Warning: spoilers) Is Lost speculative or just a paranoid delusion? Is it truth or fantasy? What about Hurley, Locke, Walt and Claire?

Monday 11:00am - The Future of Malware

Viruses continue to proliferate and most email traffic is spam. Where are we going -- and is it anywhere other than down? Are phishing and similar scams mind-hacks?

Monday 2:00pm - Fan Room Closing Ceremony

We summarise the entire convention for you, using the medium of interpretive dance. And we give out the Fan Room awards!

Posted 07/19/2005 22:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Just back from a relaxing writing weekend at the Colonyhouse on the Oregon coast, with Jay Lake, Aurora Lemieux, Ken and Jen Scholes, Brian Wade, Amanda Clark, and my dear Kate. Fine weather and good companionship all weekend.

On Saturday afternoon I awoke from a nap to the roar of the waves and the crackle of the fire -- no, wait, that's the clatter of laptop keys...

This was the first opportunity I have had to spend much time with Ken, and he's a nice guy and a heck of a guitarist. He was working on a story that he originally started for Bones of the World, which coincidentally was where Jay and I both made our first sales back in 2001. But I had Ken beat in the "old story" department, because I was revising a story I originally wrote at Clarion (2000) and never got around to submitting. Finished it, too, and put it in the mail tonight. (It's the Bigfoot story, for those who have read it, and it's off to F&SF.) I also started another story, which is going to be short and funny but structurally complex, with three to five intertwined scenes spread across a century of time.

But it wasn't a very intensive writing weekend. A lot of the time was spent sitting around talking, taking walks on the beach in twos and threes (for some reason there was an enormous number of dead crabs on the beach, with their legs and bodies washed up here and their upper shells washed up over there), and eating way too much. Jay did all the cooking, for which much thanks, and provided us all with about ten billion percent of our recommended daily allowance of lipids. Yum. We tried to get up a game of 1000 Blank White Cards but it didn't come together.

Note to self for next time: remember to pack long-sleeve shirts, pillow, towel, sleeping bag, long cord for iBook power adapter, hat, picnic cooler.

Saturday night Ken brought out his guitar and gave us his interpretations of some favorite songs, a real treat. One of the most... interesting... of these was his impersonation of Queen Elizabeth II and Dylan doing U2. It actually sounded a bit more like Ken Scholes doing ((Julia Child doing the Queen) and (Cartman doing Dylan)) doing U2. Then he started to do "Puff the Magic Dragon," but Jen asked him not to because the ending always makes her cry. She asked him instead to sing "American Pie," and promised not to sing the wrong words. This led to the following exchange:

Ken: A long long time ago...
Jen: ...in a galaxy far away...
Ken: PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON...

Okay, maybe you had to be there, but I about fell off my chair laughing.

And Amanda will never live down the sheath-cleaning jokes.

When I got home from the beach, I learned I can now announce that my story "I Hold My Father's Paws" has been shortlisted for the Aeon Award. The winner of the award receives 1000 Euros, and all six shortlisted stories will appear in the Irish magazine Albedo One. The winner will be announced at the Worldcon in Glasgow. I'll be there!

Posted 07/17/2005 22:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I am now represented by Jack Byrne of the Sternig & Byrne Literary Agency.

Thanks to Jo Walton and Jennifer Jackson for recommending him. (Waves to Sarah Monette.)

Posted 07/11/2005 22:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I'm in Santa Clara for the annual gay square dance convention. On the way here I had to have part of my baggage hand-searched because the X-ray showed... an allen wrench. But when it turned out to be the little key to reset the combination on a combination lock, they let me keep it. "So," says Kate, "it would have been a problem if it were hexagonal, but it's okay because it's round?"

Do you feel safer?

The convention doesn't start until tomorrow, so today we went to the Winchester Mystery House (or, as I always call it, the Winchester History Mouse). I hadn't expected it to be so intimately surrounded by the same boring malls and office parks that make up the rest of Santa Clara (plus the cool triple-dome movie theatre next door). I was also surprised at the mix of completed, under-construction, and fallen down in disrepair... many perfectly complete rooms adjoined hallways with bare lath and no plaster, and vice versa, while one entire group of 30 rooms was boarded up and never repaired after the 1906 earthquake. A natural consequence, I should have realized, of the building's history of continuous renovation. Another surprise was that Sarah Winchester left no journal or other indication of why she built and built as she did, so the well-known statement that it was to appease, or distract, the ghosts of those slain by the Winchester rifle is only a theory. Maybe it was just a hobby (some people build model trains, some tie flies... Sarah Winchester had a lot of money).

In writing news, Year's Best Fantasy #5, edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer and including my story "Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely," is now available at your local independent bookstore, Powell's, amazon.com, and bn.com. Enjoy!

Posted 06/30/2005 22:06 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

It appears that my story "Tk'tk'tk" from the March issue of Asimov's has been translated into Spanish (in issue 19 of Asimov Ciencia Ficcion) and reviewed in Finnish. The best translation I've been able to come up with for the Finnish review is as follows:

Myyntihenkilö is vieraalla planetary shop tietokonejärjestelmää , only kielimuurin for ploy no really affair. And eventually husband waste omaisuuttaan väärinymmärrysten for and starvation began became , until husband eventually discover locally vegetarian restaurant , whereof may edible grub. Glorious good tale kielimuurista kultturien sometimes. Loppuratkaisu oli anew the idealist nössö.

That's definitely my story, and it sounds like they liked it... I think.

I also got two short story rejections on Friday, and finished the proposal for novel #2. I'll be stuffing things in envelopes tomorrow.

Posted 06/25/2005 23:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

As faithful readers will no doubt recall, I picked up an iPod along with my new iBook. Well, it sat in the box for a while, but I got it up and running a couple of weeks ago... a nice UI, to be sure, but really not much different than a portable CD player. But I plugged away, loading up five or six CDs per evening, until I now have about two days of music on there (only about 1/8th of its capacity), and this evening I hooked up the little thingie so it can play through the nearest radio...

...and now I get it. It's Radio My Favorite Songs All The Time, and every day's a no-repeat day with no commercials.

A guy could get used to this.

On the writing front... the synopsis for Gaia's Blood is up to about 3500 words and the plot is actually moving now... maybe too fast. I'll probably have to rejigger it to smoosh the exposition around before I send it anywhere.

Posted 06/20/2005 21:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Spent the evening working on the outline for my second novel, working title Gaia's Blood. 2000 words of outline so far and I'm still in the opening chapters; I need to make things happen faster. Still no definite word from the editor on the first novel, but I've already been rejected by two agents so far. Bleah.

I've been working very hard for the past few days at work, productive and useful stuff but not leaving a lot of energy for anything else. Also, in case I haven't mentioned it, I've moved from my old cube to a new "bullpen" with two other people, both UI designers. I was a little worried about lack of privacy, but the space is large enough that it hasn't been an issue so far, and it's nice to have other people to bounce ideas off of. We've equipped the area with furniture from ScanDesign, lots of design magazines, and fun stuff like a giant inflatable T.Rex.

We also have a lot of windows, which is great but I hope it will not be a problem when it starts to get sunny. Not that we've had any sun lately -- it was cool, gray, and drippy today, as it has been most days for weeks. Some of my East Coast and Midwest friends are complaining about the heat, but at the moment I wouldn't mind seeing some of that. I wore my leather jacket and hat to work again today. In June. Feh.

Posted 06/16/2005 23:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Anthology Gateways, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and including my story "Circle of Compassion," is now available from your local independent bookstore, Powell's, amazon.com, and bn.com. If you want to know more about the story, I've put up a page about it on my web page.

Posted 06/12/2005 09:14 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Last night I saw Howl's Moving Castle. Today I have the song "I Should Be Allowed To Think" by They Might Be Giants going through my head. This tells you something about how my brain works. (Bonus points if you can trace the references.)

I recommend this movie. It was lush, exciting, and emotional, with warm and believable characters and gorgeous, gorgeous animation. I haven't read the source book, but we went with a friend who is a huge Diana Wynne Jones fan, and it sounds like Miyazaki changed it almost completely (for example, the book has none of the movie's steam-powered automobiles or flying machines, and the scarecrow in the movie is friendly and helpful instead of being terrifying as in the book).

But if you like Miyazaki you'll love this movie. It's even more visually sophisticated than Princess Mononoke, but there's much less ooze and violence, and the plot makes more sense. Mind you, the plot is still rather tenuous and indistinct, at times incomprehensible, but that's Miyazaki for you.

I'd like to see it again with subtitles. Most of the voices in this dub are fine (I particularly liked Billy Crystal as the fire demon, others disagreed) but I didn't care for the voice of Howl and I bet the original Japanese voice suited the character-as-drawn better.

Posted 06/11/2005 09:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, we're back home from Wiscon. Ate too much, slept too little, exercised not at all. Had a great time.

For me this Wiscon was not so much a feminist convention as a writers' convention. I spent most of the con hanging out with writers, and the program items I attended were almost all on the business and/or craft of writing, from the writers' workshop bright and early Friday morning to the "writers in mid-career" discussion group at the dead tail end of Monday afternoon.

Some people asked me what I was doing in the workshop, and I replied that I was there for the same reason they were -- to learn. Mostly one learns from the critiquing process (it's easier to spot flaws in one's own work after seeing them in others') but in this case there was a pretty strong consensus that the antagonist's conversion at the climax was insufficiently motivated. Now I have to figure out why he does what he does. Also, no one believed that an impoverished loner living in a shack in the woods could possibly have that many guns. Unfortunately the shack, and the guns, are drawn from life. But just because something is true doesn't make it plausible, so that little darling must die.

The mid-career writers' discussion was even more valuable. Pat Murphy, who convened it, warned me that I might not be quite "mid-career" enough for this (she is considering defining "mid-career" as "has had at least one novel remaindered") but I attended anyway and found it a validation of both my fears and my hopes. It's nice to be able to hang out with other people who know that success can sometimes be as stressful as waiting to succeed.

In between I spent time with many wonderful people, including Elizabeth Bear, Kristine Smith, Leah Cutter, Charlie Allery, Jed Hartman, Maureen McHugh, and many many more. It's a hell of a fine crowd for a convention of less than a thousand people (I keep thinking it's much bigger than that) and every time I turned around there was someone else I wanted to talk to. Exchanged business cards with a couple of agents and an editor, too.

My reading on Friday night went reasonably well -- we had about a half-dozen people and they seemed impressed with the novel's new opening. The other program items I was on also went well. I was concerned that I might not have enough expertise to hold my own on the panel about David Reimers, subject of the book As Nature Made Him, given that two of the other panelists were transgendered and the remaining one was the author of Why Men Hate Sex, but I did find some things to say and several people told me after the panel that what I'd said had been sensitive and well-stated. I guess I know more about the transgender and intersex communities than most people, even at Wiscon. The other two panels, on business in SF and gender modification in SF, turned out to be more about corporations and gender (respectively) in the real world but they were still lively and interesting discussions.

After the first hour or so of the Tiptree auction Kate and I got up to go to the Tor party before it got too crowded. But we'd made two mistakes: 1) sitting in the front row, and 2) being known to the auctioneer. Ellen spotted us walking out and insisted we sit back down. So we borrowed a Michael Swanwick mask from Eileen Gunn and tried to sneak out behind it. That didn't work too well -- Ellen grabbed me and hauled me up on the stage where she could keep an eye on me, and Kate took advantage of the fracas to slip away. I looked so pathetic that they passed the hat to free me, and wound up collecting about $110 (plus another $80 from those who wanted to keep me there). Next year I'll try to be more inconspicuous.

Many fine meals were eaten -- Japanese, French, Indian, Nepali, Himalayan (those might be the same cuisine, but they were two different restaurants) as well as a couple of traditional American meals and fresh baked goods from the farmers' market. Many were among the best meals I've had this year; I've never had a really bad meal in Madison. No cheese curds this time, though, nor the traditional stop at the noodle place.

What else? The crowd on Sunday night was all turned out in film noir finery, with many a trench coat and slinky dress, and someone took a picture of me with the Maltese Falcon. Later that night I wound up in a hallway party with Barth Anderson and some nice people from Pittsburgh and Indiana whom I'd never met before. I missed the Campbell nominees' cream-pie duel but not the aftermath. I discussed Los Alamos with Ellen Klages and got cold feet about that novel idea (she said that if I did less than two years of research I'd be in over my head). After that conversation I was worried that I had no other novel ideas on the back burner, but on Tuesday morning in the shower I had a key insight on another idea -- a short story idea originally, but I found a way to make it novel-sized -- and now I'm really excited about that one. It's a little bit Thomas Covenant, a little bit Connecticut Yankee, and a little bit Narnia, but like Remembrance Day it uses the reader's expectations about this type of story against them. I love playing with the reader's head.

All in all it was a fine, fine convention and I'm really looking forward to next year's, which being the 30th Wiscon promises to be extra-special. But there was a bit of a weather delay in Denver coming home, so we got home late and I'm running on about five hours' sleep. So, to bed.

Posted 05/31/2005 22:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Not much to report, really. I've seen Revenge of the Sith twice -- spectacular special effects, but it lacks heart, and wow can Hayden Christensen not act. Even when he's Darth Vader, and James Earl Jones is providing his voice, his body language is flat.

(Um, I suppose that might be considered a spoiler... in some parallel universe where the end of All The President's Men is also a surprise.)

Anyway, apart from that I have a couple of pieces of good news which I am not yet at liberty to discuss. And I should be packing for Wiscon right now. Speaking of which, my schedule is:

Friday, 10:15-11:30 pm, Conference Room 2: Reading ("Big Jumps and Long Tomorrows")
Sunday, 2:30-3:45 pm, Wisconsin: Insider Futures: Business in Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sunday, 4:00-5:15 pm, 607: The Transformation of Sexuality

Hope to see you there!

Posted 05/24/2005 20:48 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I had a meeting rescheduled today, so I had some time to deal with the sick Mac. First I called Apple, where (after the first call was cut off just as the operator answered, grr) I got a knowledgeable and companiable tech who walked me through all the potential software solutions until she agreed with me that it looked like a hardware problem. So then I used my local Apple store's web page to schedule a slot at the Genius Bar -- which it promptly gave me for ten minutes hence (the store's about half an hour away). Fortunately, by the time I got there my name was just coming to the top of the list. About 15 minutes later I was walking out with a brand new Mac.

All was wonderful when I got it home, until I tried to connect it to my Wi-Fi network, which not only failed but I managed to knock the whole network off the air trying to fix it. I was terribly distracted while we went off to our neighborhood SF book group (this month's book: The Year of Our War, which we all thought was a bit shallow and the main character unsympathetic), but when we got back I used the DSL modem's setup disk to reinstall it from scratch and all is now cool.

Spent the rest of the evening installing Tiger. Now I'm back to where I was Sunday when the DVD drive failed. At the moment the new Mac is downloading software updates, and I'm going to let it have fun by itself, for I must sleep now.

Posted 05/16/2005 23:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

So I went down to the Apple Store today and I dropped a couple thousand bucks on a new iBook and a new iPod and all the associated software and accessories, including AppleCare for both because I know a lot of people who've had problems with their iBooks. Got it home, started it up, installed Tiger (which came in the box, but not preinstalled), got it talking to my Windows Wi-Fi network. Most impressive when it printed a test document. Tried playing a CD and a DVD. Way cool. Stopped, had dinner. Lovely carrot curry.

After dinner, looked for compiler. Ah, it's not installed by default. Inserted the Tiger startup disk, clicked on the "About XTools.pdf". Disk whirred and ground for a few minutes and finally bombed out with error -36. Ejected disk, inspected, reinserted. This time it whirred and ground for a few minutes, then simply ejected the disk. Tried a couple more times and never got it to accept the disk, except for the time it whirred and ground and then decided to keep the disk without it appearing on the desktop -- nor would pressing the eject key convince it to let go. Restarted and held down the trackpad button, which made it spit out the disk, but it still won't mount. Same behavior seen with three different factory-fresh disks -- Tiger, Office, and the diagnostic disk from the AppleCare package.

Naturally, it waited until after 8pm Central time to do this. And I'm not going to be able to take it in for service tomorrow.

Grr.

Posted 05/15/2005 20:57 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Put my novel manuscript in the mail today! Yay! Now I will take at least a week off from writing. After that it's short stories for the rest of the year, though I may also do some research for novel #2, a fantasy set in an alternate WWII.

Also, my short story "At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco's Homebrew Gravitics Club," which originally appeared in the OryCon 25 program book, has been posted at Infinity Plus. You can read it here (for free!): http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/uncleteco.htm

We have started getting a box of organic veggies delivered to our door every week again. Dinner tonight was a pizza with spinach, fresh mozarella, and caramelized onions, made from a recipe that came with the veggies, on pizza dough from Trader Joe's. Simple and very, very good.

Posted 05/09/2005 19:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 69.5 | Since last entry: 6.9 | Percent complete: 100%

Final manuscript word count: 124,247
Final manuscript page count: 584
Synopsis word count: 3460

It took me over an hour to browbeat Microsoft Word into formatting it properly (why, oh why, doesn't find and replace with paragraph styles impose all of the style's font settings?) and over five hours to bash out the synopsis.

On the synopsis, what I intended to do was a light edit on the synopsis I'd written for the Lupton contest last year. What I wound up doing was just sitting down and telling the whole story from the beginning, one paragraph per chapter, trying to get in as much emotion as possible without running too long or losing any important plot points. What this banzai first draft lacks in panache, I hope, it makes up in verve. I'm not as concerned about the synopsis as I would be if I weren't sending out a complete manuscript at this point.

I looked at the manuscript occasionally while writing the synopsis, but mostly I just re-told the story from memory. In some cases I simplified, combined, or omitted incidents to make it smoother; in a few cases I admit that I wrote what I wanted to have happen in a scene instead of what's actually on the page. It's a lot like the synopsis of Les Miserables in the booklet of the CD of the musical of the novel... it bears a resemblance to the original in the same way that a postage stamp bears a resemblance to an enormous painting like "Whistler's Mother" or "Sunday on La Grande Jatte." But, with luck, I've captured the flavor of the original -- the same shampoo in a smaller bottle.

And so Remembrance Day is done... by which I mean I am letting it go, rather than that I feel I'm really finished with it. I would still like to rewrite a couple key scenes near the end, where Jason reveals all to Sienna and, for some inexplicable reason, she doesn't kill him. I would still like to raise Jason's fanatacism in the months leading up to Remembrance Day, to make him kill with his eyes open instead of by accident. Clarity's chapters still need more description. The aliens should still be more alien.

Nonetheless, it goes in the mail tomorrow morning. And I'm not going to touch it again unless I get an editor saying they will buy it if I make certain changes, or it's many years from now and I've decided to revise this old trunked novel based on what I've learned from the many bestsellers since.

And so to bed.

Posted 05/08/2005 22:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 62.6 | Since last entry: 5.0 | Percent complete: 100%

Blew off a square dance to get in three hours of editing tonight, on top of scattered half-hours throughout the week. The total of 5.0 is really just a guess.

I completed my editing pass tonight! And many of my readers will be pleased to note that I put Flea in the penultimate sentence. He just appears -- he doesn't have any lines -- but at least they will know he's alive and free. Damn him for being such an appealing character. I never meant for him to be as important as some people found him. (Though I'm glad they like him.)

Having completed the editing pass, I went through my to-do list checking things off. There's lots of to-do items undone, but they're all either too small to worry about or too big to do anything about. But in the same folder I found a few pages of comments from my first readers that I said I would do something about "later." So I'm going through those now.

I'll finish those up, edit the cover letter, and do a real quick pass on the synopsis this weekend. Should have the package ready to go in the mail Monday.

I am so ready to be done with this novel.

Posted 05/06/2005 22:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 57.6 | Since last entry: 2.5 | Percent complete: 98%

Back from my annual spring trip to Palm Springs. Had a grrreat time; deepened some existing friendships and made a few new ones. Very relaxing too, with weather sunny but not too hot.

Editing time above is an approximation -- the total of half an hour here and half an hour there in various airports and airplanes. Most of my airplane time was spent critiquing, novels for my crit group and short stories for Wiscon (which is only four weeks away, yay!!) I spent a bunch of the editing time going back and re-polishing Jason and Sienna's last scene together, but also amped up the emotion at the first appearance of the Vaccinator and addressed a few nitpicky details (such as, how can Jason sign to Clarity when his arms are being held by the guards?). Left off editing at a key point where the Green Hills soldiers let Jason bring the Infector with him onto Raptor's flagship -- that's implausible. I have a better and more dramatic alternative in mind but I simply ran out of time to write it.

I will almost certainly complete this final editing pass this week. Then I have to revise the cover letter and synopsis -- the cover letter's in good shape, but the synopsis could easily take weeks of work. However, since the first couple of people I'm going to send the novel to have requested the whole manuscript it's not as critical as it might be. I'm just going to power through it and put the package in the mail as soon as I can.

Posted 05/02/2005 22:47 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 55.1 | Since last entry: 0.7 | Percent complete: 92%

After two nights of rich dinners and fine conversations with my friend the Lioness and those who came out of the woodwork to visit her during the Portland stop on her Great North American Railroad Expotition, it's back to the editing. Unfortunately, today was a real pisser at work -- running non-stop from 8am until 6:30pm, with interruptions to the interruptions and a nasty commute home to round it all off -- so I only had a little editing time tonight. Still, I was able to find a proper finish for Sienna's father's watch, which had become a significant symbol of Jason and Sienna's relationship. I had never been happy with the way it just vanished at the end.

The worst part of my work day was that a project I had thought was complete popped up again, like one of those movie villains that would not die. I really, really don't have time for this, especially since if I touch it at all I'm sure it'll turn into a complete tarbaby, so I was really stressed out during the meeting. After the meeting was over I got some "feedback" on my "attitude," but I think I took that remarkably well under the circumstances. With any luck we'll find a way to put this thing back to bed in fairly short order... but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Posted 04/27/2005 22:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 54.4 | Since last entry: 4.6 | Percent complete: 92%

Finished up the last Jason chapter this weekend, focusing on amping up the emotion in Jason and Clarity's meeting (the first time they meet face to face, except in flashback, in the whole book) and when Jason convinces Sienna to hand over Raptor's password. The latter changed from a simple financial transaction to a brutal 500-word scene in which Jason uses his education and imagination to bludgeon Sienna into doing the right thing.

One Clarity chapter to go, and the epilogue. We'll have a house guest this week so I might not get to them before the end of the month. But I'm so close to the end I can taste it.

I see I just passed 50 editing hours, so NaNoEdMo is officially over -- I guess this is March 55th. I think I have about 3-5 hours of editing work left, plus some time to revise the cover letter and synopsis.

Also... this weekend we went to Portland's first annual Wordstock Festival, a free event with readings and workshops and lots of book dealers and publishers. It was a treat, and I hope it was enough of a success that they'll do it again next year.

Posted 04/24/2005 22:20 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 49.8 | Since last entry: 0.9 | Percent complete: 87%

Mostly this evening I just read over chapter 9. I had only two notes for this chapter in my giant list of things-to-do; I decided not to do one of them, and the other (an old note from before the last edit) I decided didn't need any additional work. So I made no substantial changes, just a very few wording tweaks.

I think the chapter before that still needs attention -- more suffering, more danger, more suspicion. But there was nowhere to put it. Everything in the chapter felt finely polished, leaving no cracks or crannies to attach anything new. I considered adding a complete new scene just to show civilization breaking down, but that seemed artificial, and things in these late chapters are moving so fast that I can't justify a whole scene that doesn't advance the plot. Besides, I want to reduce the word count, not add to it.

I'm having a definite, but low-key, crisis of confidence on this thing as I approach the end of the revisions (which I really hope to have done by the end of this month). I find myself thinking a lot about the fact that working hard on a novel doesn't guarantee it will sell. Most first novels don't sell. But I can't bear to think that this thing on which I have spent over two years of my life might never go anywhere but my filing cabinet.

Well. Knowing what I do about the publishing biz, it might take years to reach the point of deciding to trunk the thing. Plenty of time to write more novels, better ones. And this one might sell. Though at the moment I can only see its flaws.

In any case, once I finish this one... it's short stories for at least six months, baby. I want instant gratification!

Posted 04/20/2005 22:15 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 48.9 | Since last entry: 2.5 | Percent complete: 82%

Spent most of the evening reducing a couple of Jason's computer-hacking scenes that some critiquers thought went on too long. It was surprisingly hard to reduce; every bit of information seemed necessary. But I got rid of a sentence here and a paragraph there... and then I realized this wasn't doing enough good, right around the time I noticed that it might be possible to excise an entire bit: a place where Jason connected a Cetan personal ID code to a Cetan email address by way of a document filched from somewhere else. All I had to do was to change the email address to an ID code and I could get rid of the connecting document, the filch, and the decipherment of the filched document. This is much easier in fiction than it is in real code.

I'm not sure how many words I managed to get rid of, but it was probably nearly five hundred. Then I added back a hundred or two, smoothing over the seams where the removed bit had been. It does involve a bit of a coincidence, but the coincidence was there before, it just wasn't as obvious.

A good evening's work. Definitely entering the home stretch here.

By the way... I seem to have created a bit of a kerfuffle with my statement about removing references to food. This isn't the first time I've raised hackles by overstating good advice I've received. Food is good and useful in fiction. It can be used to characterize people, and to give them things to do that display emotion, and even to raise tension. The thing to avoid is the use of food (or anything, really) in a scene where it isn't doing any of those things. It's an easy trap for some writers to fall into. Especially if you write while you're hungry.

And now, prompted by Jay Lake, the Microsoft Word Grammar Checker Follies!

I wrote: The cavernous, bustling space rose five stories high and stretched all the way to the Platform's far exterior wall.

Word suggests: The cavernous, bustling space raised five stories high and stretched all the way to the Platform's far exterior wall.

I wrote: One, two, three wingbeats, and then the flyer was rolling forward, bumping along the road.

Word suggests: One, two, three wingbeats, and then the flyer were rolling forward, bumping along the road.

I wrote: The other doctors are doing their best, but...

Word suggests: The other doctors are doing there best, but...

I wrote: The big triple bed, where Clarity had bounced whenever she could get away with it, had been replaced by an elevated hospital bed, a human thing of steel and plastic covered with harsh white sheets.

Word suggests: An elevated hospital bed, where Clarity had bounced whenever she could get away with it, had replaced the big triple bed, a human thing of steel and plastic covered with harsh white sheets.

And my personal favorite...

I wrote: But that blessed state was soon interrupted by the automated controller at the Moses Lake airport, which transmitted landing instructions to the human-made transceiver fastened like some boxy, awkward fungus to the smooth curves of the instrument panel.

Word suggests: But that the automated controller at the Moses Lake airport, which transmitted, soon interrupted blessed state-landing instructions to the human-made transceiver fastened like some boxy, awkward fungus to the smooth curves of the instrument panel.

Posted 04/19/2005 22:49 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 46.4 | Since last entry: 3.6 | Percent complete: 79%

Continuing to make Jason's life harder, and even harder still, after Remembrance Day. His current situation diverges more and more from his situation in the previous draft, making the work more difficult, but I only have to do this for one more chapter, and then he'll be in a completely different place both literally and figuratively.

I also touched briefly on a Clarity chapter between the two post-Remembrance-Day Jason chapters, but that was pretty easy. I only had to add a couple of sentences to close off a possibility that I knew wasn't open but never actually stated. I also made it clearer that Clarity is taking control of the Corporation -- again, only a few sentences changed. A lot of the changes I'm making are subtle.

One lesson I've learned (I forget from whom, probably Elizabeth Bear) is this: take away all references to food. Food is comfort. Characters who are eating are not serious about whatever problems face them. One lousy frozen burrito can suck 25% of the tension out of a scene.

The parts of the book I'm editing now are in the best shape, because they're more recent, and they benefit from everything I learned in the previous couple of years about how to write a novel. Editing this part is easy because it's fresh in my mind and there isn't that much that needs to be done.

The parts of the book I'm editing now are in the worst shape, because they haven't been edited and re-edited through several previous passes. Editing this part is hard because it's fresh and I don't have enough perspective on it.

Posted 04/17/2005 21:53 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 42.8 | Since last entry: 2.1 | Percent complete: 70%

Spent the evening rewriting the first long scene of chapter H, changing it from "Jason whines about his awful job and commute and reads in the paper about how society is breaking down" to "Jason runs from a riot." Made the job and the commute worse while I was at it.

As I pointed out to Kate, during the day I try to make life easier for my customers. At night I make life harder for my characters. It all evens out.

Next, I'm going to take the scene were Jason loses his job and change that into something really nasty.

Posted 04/14/2005 21:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 40.7 | Since last entry: 5.8 | Percent complete: 68%

Finally back to editing again, though the first couple of hours (Saturday) were mostly spent reading, to put the book back into my head.

Most of today was spent on Clarity, especially chapter 7, amping up the emotion in the early discussion between Clarity and Doctor Patience (formerly Perceptivity) by putting more of the conversation on the page. As long as I was at it I dropped in some more information, because some critiquers didn't understand exactly how the plague spreads. The conversation's a little data-heavy now, but at this point in the book I think that's needed. I also worked to fix the continuity problems mentioned last time, which wasn't all that hard. The revised scene in which Clarity reacts to the news that Jason was responsible for the epixenic works well in its new location.

Next time (whenever that is... soon, I hope) I'll focus on Jason and Sienna, on the run after Remembrance Day. This section needs quite a bit of work -- I have to make their life massively harder.

In non-writing news, we saw a benefit performance of Hell's Angels (1930, directed by Howard Hughes) with local author Mark Bourne and the lovely Elizabeth. They sure don't make 'em like that any more. The pacing was slow, and the acting was sometimes amateurish, but it was still a lot of fun, especially having seen The Aviator. The aerial battles and explosions were phenomenal. Surprises included a couple of scenes in color, and a gripping zeppelin chase. I wish I'd told Jay Lake about it.

And one more thing... my Unitarian Jihad name is Brother Landmine of Compromise.

Posted 04/10/2005 22:23 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 34.9 | Since last entry: 0.0 | Percent complete: 62%

It's been a week since my last post here. I spent the weekend doing many useful things, including clearing three boxes of clothes and shoes out of my closet (part of my new year's resolution) and putting knobs on the china cabinet (something that has needed doing for, oh, twelve years or so). Monday I had a planning meeting all day at work, and Monday evening we had a first meeting for a neighborhood SF reading group (it looks like it's going to fly, and we're reading All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories to start off, with The Year of Our War to follow). Tuesday I went to the CHI 2005 conference, an international conference on Computer-Human Interaction which just happens to be held here in Portland this year, and Tuesday evening there was Japanese class (but it's going to be cancelled after next week unless we can scare up 4 more students). Today, Wednesday, was the second day of the CHI conference.

So why do I feel like I'm not getting anything done?

I really feel awful about the fact I haven't done any editing, have only been to the gym once in the last two weeks, and have been eating badly. I also don't feel I'm making the most productive use of the conference. Somehow no matter what papers I choose to attend I wind up wishing I'd picked something else. I know I'm not being fair to myself, but knowing this doesn't help.

I had three options for tonight: attend the evening conference receptions (with free cocktails from Yahoo and Google), stay home and work on my novel, or go to the gym. What I wound up doing was watching Lost and West Wing with my sweetie while eating macaroni and cheese in front of the TV. Mind you, it was the best damn macaroni and cheese on the planet, hand-made from a recipe in Gourmet magazine with fine imported cheeses and Dijon mustard. But it wasn't exactly healthy.

I think I needed a rest.

Posted 04/06/2005 22:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 34.9 | Since last entry: 2.2 | Percent complete: 62%

I've been sick for the last couple of days. Not too sick to go to work. Not too sick to lightly revise one of my Clarion stories (which has never been submitted, and it's been five years choke gasp ack) and send it to the Wiscon writers' workshop. But too sick to edit my novel.

I'm still sick today (though improving). But Kate said as she went off to the opera tonight that I should try a little editing anyway, so as not to lose momentum completely. If it wasn't working I could stop, but if I got into it...

I got into it.

Spent the evening working on chapter 7, focusing on amping up the emotion. Indeed, as my critiquers pointed out, it is quite flat. To that end I decided to move the scene in which Clarity makes a key realization about Jason toward the end of the chapter, which both puts it in a place that's already more emotional and avoids the question of "why doesn't she do something about it?" for the rest of the chapter. But moving that scene creates some continuity problems about who-knows-what-when that I have not yet completely resolved.

I'll have to tackle the same chapter some more next time. Maybe tomorrow.

So NaNoEdMo ends with less than 50 editing hours. It's still been a good, focused month of editing and a worthwhile exercise. I'm going to keep tracking the hours until I finish, just to have a gauge of progress.

Posted 03/31/2005 23:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 32.7 | Since last entry: 5.0 | Percent complete: 58%

Looks like I'm going to come closer to 50 editing hours this month than I'd thought I would!

Started the day with the annual 43rd Avenue Easter Egg Hunt and Brunch. This was the first time in about four years we were able to attend, because we weren't at Minicon, Norwescon, or Eastercon. The weather was cold and rainy, so instead of setting up card tables on the sidewalk as usual we all crowded into someone's house on the corner. Much discussion of kitchen remodels and the other joys of an eighty-five-year-old house.

I love my neighborhood and my neighbors. The conversations at the party were all about where to find ecologically friendly construction materials, and how great hybrid cars are, and how nice it is to live in a part of the country where people are willing to tax themselves for the sake of the schools. We even met a couple of neighbors we hadn't met before who are science fiction readers, and we might be starting up a neighborhood reading group.

In the afternoon and evening I buckled down to editing, with a new strategy and a new attitude.

The new strategy: I looked through my to-do list for the next few chapters, found items that I thought really needed to be addressed, and looked for places to address them. This was much more productive than going through each chapter in order, trying to keep an eye out for places to trim, places to add emotion, places to add description, and other to-do items all at once (which very easily shifted from "scanning for possible edits" to "reading my own deathless prose").

I made a lot of small changes and trims (though the overall word count is back up over 123,000): setting up things that come later, increasing the amount of emotion on the page, making the protagonists more active and less whiny, folding together sentences that say the same thing in different ways.

The new attitude: the changes I am making now are tweaks. Nothing I am doing now, I think, is going to make the difference for an editor or agent in deciding whether or not to buy/represent this novel. Either it's fundamentally salable for that particular editor/agent (in which case there may be additional edits anyway, sigh) or it is not (in which case no amount of tweaking will make a difference). I do want it to be the best it can be, but really I know that at this point I am simply not going to make any structural changes. So, for example, Jason's going to continue to be an "insular tech-head." That's not the characterization I would have hoped for, but I think that it may be the best I can do with this character, in this novel, at this stage of my career.

I need to keep in mind that I am not going to make every reader fall all over me with praise. Yes, my critters have found problems. That's what critters are for. Yes, it might not sell. That's a hazard of first novels. But I'm going to get the damn thing in the mail, at least. And soon.

More tomorrow.

Posted 03/27/2005 22:52 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 27.7 | Since last entry: 4.6 | Percent complete: 44%

Today's retreat was incomplete; we did some grocery shopping and went to a movie (Robots, it was silly and fun) and cooked some stuff for tomorrow's Easter brunch. The editing felt a bit incomplete, too. I find myself extremely daunted by my large list of things-to-do. As I look at each item and read over the chapter, it becomes easier and easier to say "well, it's not perfect, but it would be too much work to change it."

I did make some changes. One biggie was right at the beginning of the day, when I woke up thinking about the Jason jealousy problem mentioned yesterday. I wound up cutting almost all of that scene, and what was left I turned around so that Flea was jealous of Jason. This solution leaves the tension between them but strengthens Jason as a character, and I'm surprised I didn't think of it before. It also cut about 300 words, which is a good thing.

Most of the rest of the changes I made today were small, sentence and paragraph level, mostly informational rather than emotional. I'm finding it very very hard to make substantial changes.

I think I'm getting ready to let go of this novel. I'm certainly heartily sick of editing. More tomorrow, though.

Posted 03/26/2005 23:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 23.1 | Since last entry: 5.7 | Percent complete: 29%

As mentioned earlier, I'm taking a writing retreat for the three-day weekend. No television, no internet -- everything just the same as I would do if I went to the coast and wrote, but staying home. So, apart from going out to the gym this morning and for pizza tonight, I've been editing all day.

I spent some time following Clarity forward for a few chapters, then backed up and worked on Jason chapters for a while. I turned the telepathic conversation between Honor and Clarity at the first Council meeting around so it was her idea to go along with Raptor's plan to name her as CEO.

I added time cues to the beginning of each chapter I touched to help nail down when they occur (though I might still put the time maps back, since many people found them invaluable). In several cases I cut or moved the anticlimax of the chapter so the chapter ends on an emotional high point.

Some of those anticlimaxes were among my favorite paragraphs -- I think it was because I was trying so hard to keep up the level of excitement despite the fact I'd passed the actual climax. In particular, I lost Jason's reminiscences of the sex scene with Sienna (only two paragraphs, told not shown) in favor of cutting off right when she bites his earlobe, and similarly cut the paragraphs of Jason driving out of Seattle after breaking up with Chris. I tried putting the sex paragraphs elsewhere, but by the time I'd edited them to fit in the new location all the sex was gone and there was nothing left but musings on why Jason couldn't tell Chris about Sienna. That was needed, but it's too bad about the sex stuff. (Oh well, the seduction scene before that is much hotter, shown not told, and that's still there.)

Something else I cut was Jason's jealousy over Flea's relationship with Sienna. Many people objected to this, on the grounds that it's hypocritical given Jason's many relationships with men, women, and aliens, but the first Jason/Flea/Sienna scene is pretty flat without the jealousy. I could cut the scene completely, but I think it contains needed information. I'm going to try to do the "co-sweeties who don't like each other" thing instead of the jealousy. Needs more work, that.

There's a certain amount of worry that I'm making things just different instead of better, or that I'm breaking something that was okay before. I'm trying not to listen to that.

If this were the Colonyhouse I'd probably be talking with other writers until the wee small hours, so I think it's legit to take a break from editing now. More tomorrow.

Posted 03/25/2005 20:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 17.4 | Since last entry: 1.6 | Percent complete: 16%

Bopping around among the first few chapters, touching on both Jason and Clarity, trying to nail down the date at the start of each chapter, increasing emotion, focusing on strengthening Jason's motivations.

I put a paragraph of exposition near the top of the second Jason chapter, explaining how long it had been since he'd stolen the biocomputer, what had happened in the interim, and what he hoped to accomplish that day. It's one of several places I've increased exposition in these early chapters. I know that generally exposition is a bad thing, but I've been trying to "use exposition as ammunition" (Carol Emshwiller) and I'm using it only in those places where I see I haven't put enough information on the table (being too mysterious, or just too wrapped up in my own universe).

I've also given Jason a ring to wear -- his mother's ring, which he found in his parents' safe-deposit box, and which he will look at whenever he questions whether he's doing the right thing. I suspect I'm going to have to find a big payoff for that ring in the last few chapters (along with Sienna's father's watch, which kind of vanishes), but it should be a useful tool... it'll be interesting to see how Jason reacts to the thought of selling it when he and Sienna are on the run and short of cash.

The other big change tonight was realizing that "I don't want to do that, he thought" is a lot weaker than "He didn't want to do that." The former is narrative about the character's thoughts; the latter is the character's thoughts as narrative, and puts the reader more firmly in the character's head. I did a global search for underlines and killed most of them, saving them for emphasis, foreign words, telepathy, and a few places where I want to indicate a character is thinking in words rather than in concepts. In general I see I used these underlines a lot more in the early chapters... I think this means I started realizing and applying this technique subconciously before I really understood it.

I'm not going to make fifty hours of editing this month. So be it. I didn't make 40,000 words during NaNoWriMo, either, and it was still worthwhile.

Posted 03/22/2005 23:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 15.8 | Since last entry: 5.2 | Percent complete: 16%

Spent the entire day editing, while Kate went to Seattle for a square dance. By suppertime I was feeling rather as though I'd wasted the day, having spent much of that time just re-reading my deathless prose and fiddling with words here and there. But after supper I really buckled down. I moved the scene where Clarity sees her father in his sickbed for the first time up to the beginning of the second Clarity chapter, reducing a 500-word scene in which Clarity is hustled out of the auditorium (which I spent a whole evening writing earlier this week, sigh) to a four-paragraph flashback. I think that has ironed out the continuity problem I was so worried about in my last entry.

Also killed a couple of other darlings -- sentences I loved dearly when I first wrote them two years ago, and have survived every other attempt to prune them up to now. Here's one of them, included for posterity:

"Cedar Point had once been nothing but a suburb of Denver, an undistinguished bedroom community like thousands of others across the country. But on October 23, 2050, Cedar Point had changed from a place to a point in time -- a charred hole in history, like Wounded Knee or My Lai or Chernobyl."

Reason for its demise: the new Prologue, which actually shows the Cedar Point disaster. I still like that sentence, dammit, but it had to go.

The press conference scene that used to be the first major scene of the chapter is now in the middle, and I need to think about it a little while longer before I decide whether or not it's needed at all.

I think that's all the major rewriting I need to do, huzzah. I may be able to go faster from now on. To help keep myself focused, I think I may write my editing goals for Jason and Clarity on an index card. My massive To-Do file is just too large to keep track of, and many of the items in it are just not going to happen. Primarily what I'm trying to do for both of them is make them more protagonisty: more active, less reactive; more angry, less whiny; and more emotion via description, less "I'll describe what's happening and the reader will know how the character feels." (Though that's all stuff I thought I was doing before...)

One last thing before I fall over: my forte seems to be the "middle-sized picture," both in writing and in user interfaces. My plots and layouts are conventional, not revolutionary, but I never mess up the continuity and my Apply buttons are always disabled when the inputs aren't correct. In both cases my hope is that a well-executed conventional thing will be accepted better than a half-baked revolutionary thing.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Posted 03/20/2005 22:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 10.6 | Since last entry: 1.8 | Percent complete: 14%

You know that cartoon of the guy driving in the golden spike where the two train tracks meet, but the tracks don't actually meet properly? You know, the southern Westbound track connects with the northern Eastbound track, leaving two tracks unconnected?

Ever see that happen to a novel?

Having written the scene where Clarity sees Vigor collapse at the UN, I felt the energy dissipating as soon as Clarity got bundled up by Security and hustled away (which is what they'd do, despite any protestations of hers to the contrary). So I decided to amp up the emotions of the collapse and then end the chapter right after that. Not a bad finish for the first Clarity chapter.

But the following bit introduced Raptor, plus some other key concepts (which used to be at the end of the Moses Lake scene, but I cut them from there to send Clarity to New York instead), so I moved that bit to the beginning of the following Clarity chapter. Where it collides with the beginning of that chapter, which is currently Clarity arriving in New York from Moses Lake. The first couple of scenes of that chapter are going to have to be substantially rewritten to match the new set-up.

And if Clarity's in New York when Vigor collapses, there's no reason for her to not see him in his sickbed shortly thereafter, which means the following press conference scene needs to be exchanged with the scene where she sees him in bed for the first time, and switching those two around will probably create other continuity problems...

I have this horrible vision of having to completely rewrite the entire book, or at least all the Clarity chapters, to iron out all these wrinkles. (No! There will come a point there the seam can be hidden. Sodesuyo!)

I'm also not completely happy having the second Clarity chapter begin in the same calendar day the first chapter ends. In general, I don't split days across chapter boundaries. Though, come to think of it, that might not be a bad change to make in terms of keeping the reader hooked from chapter to chapter.

Posted 03/18/2005 23:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 8.8 | Since last entry: 1.7 | Percent complete: 8%

Still writing new text: 660 new words, showing Vigor's collapse and its aftermath and introducing Raptor. Total word count now over 123,000 -- too long, too long. Should not be adding words! Should be cutting! But the opening chapters are stronger, I think.

This is not the place to end the chapter, but it's where I'm stopping for tonight.

I briefly considered ending the chapter right at Vigor's collapse, but that seemed too abrupt, and I wanted to fight my tendency to go "naturally the reader will know what to feel here, I don't have to describe it" and really show Clarity's feelings. At the moment she's mostly pissed that nobody's telling her what's going on (she doesn't yet know that they don't know either) -- I need to get more concern and fear in there. Emotion has always been my bugaboo.

One more good night's work on this chapter and I should be done with it, and then things should progress more quickly as I shift into editing and cutting mode. I hope. I really hope.

Posted 03/16/2005 23:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 7.1 | Since last entry: 1.5 | Percent complete: 7%

At the moment I'm generating new text rather than improving or cutting, so progress is slow -- even slower than it was when I was concentrating on generating new text, because everything I'm writing now has to fit into what follows as well as what has preceded it. At one point tonight Kate went for a walk around the block, during which I managed a single sentence. But it is progress. (I'm not quite sure how the "percent complete" score went down from last time. Rounding error?) I just reached the point where Vigor collapses at the UN, so the chapter's nearly over. I'll probably go back and trim a bit before moving forward.

Spent the weekend in Seattle, at a square dance event. Much riotous humor. At one point we were in a Completed Double Pass Thru formation and the caller, Sandie Bryant, told us to do a Checkmate the Column, which naturally resulted in a grand kerfuffle. I asked for some help on the traffic pattern and she said "Do you all know how to do a Track Two?" and of course we did, so she went on to say "Then why can't you do a Checkmate from here?" and we all laughed our heads off. There were two little kids looking in the doorway, and they laughed too, despite the fact that they didn't get the joke any more than you did. (Okay, there are a couple people on my LJ friendslist who would get it.)

As long as we were in Seattle, we visited the Science Fiction Museum. We'd taken a hard-hat tour during the Nebulas, but it's much more impressive with all the exhibits and interactives in place. The spherical display in the first hall and the three-dimensional touch-screens in the spacecraft exhibit were particularly impressive, and I really liked the way they combined books and magazines with the TV and movie props in almost every display case. They also had the humungous X-Prize trophy and several early models of SpaceShipOne on display. It must be nice to be Paul Allen.

We had only an hour and a half, but the museum's actually pretty small so we were able to see everything in that time. That might be a disappointment for the $12 entry fee if you aren't as much of a sci-fi geek as I am. (Harlan Ellison's typewriter, gosh wow!) To me, the conversation between Robby the Robot and the Lost In Space robot was almost worth the price of admission by itself.

We also lucked out on the timing and visited with a goodly portion of Seattle fandom at the Big Time brewpub. Friendly conversation and fanzines were exchanged before we hit the road back home.

One last novel-related bit: I just received an amazing, unexpected, and unprecedented email, about which I unfortunately cannot tell you anything. Let's just say that I am both jazzed and terrified, and also highly motivated to finish the darn thing and get it in the mail pronto. Therefore, I plan to spend Easter weekend on a writing retreat. I'm not going to go anywhere, mind you -- I'm going to unplug the phone and computer and have a writing retreat right in my own house. We'll see how well that works.

Posted 03/15/2005 22:37 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 5.6 | Since last entry: 0 | Percent complete: 8%

I awoke feeling more chipper than yesterday, and my mood rose further when I opened the paper and saw this article about our kitchen remodel! Well, the article's mostly about Kate's blog, but it does have some photos of the kitchen. We're practically famous!

Unfortunately, by the time my work day ended I was feeling pretty pounded down again.

I've been thinking a lot in the last couple of days about how to find my joy. One of the big problems is that everything I would like to do takes time (which is in very short supply right now) or calories or both, so whenever I'm tempted to do something just for me it turns into a stressor because it takes away time from some important thing or is bad for me.

But I really needed a break, so I said "screw it" and walked down to Ben & Jerry's with my sweetie and got a Chocolate Therapy cone (how apropos!). And lo, it was good.

After that I did the taxes (well, filled out the worksheets for the tax guy), which is something that really needed doing, and a few other chores. So no editing tonight, but my load is lightened.

And, really, isn't that the point?

Thanks to everyone who has sent emails and comments of support.

Posted 03/10/2005 23:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 5.6 | Since last entry: 3.2 | Percent complete: 8%

Over an hour of editing tonight, but I'm still frustrated. I got in an hour on the plane to Potlatch, but nothing at the con and only a few minutes on the plane back. Monday was Japanese class, and yesterday I came home from work with a splitting headache and didn't have the energy to do anything productive. Which is not to say I got to sleep at a reasonable hour. Grr.

Potlatch was a pretty good convention -- had many nice conversations and meals with friends new and old -- but I felt rather out of sorts for the whole thing. Maybe it was just lack of sleep, but somehow I just wasn't in the mood to enjoy it completely.

At the moment I am trying to remember what in life gives me joy. (It's not editing, that's for sure.) I'm also wondering if, when I remember that, I will be able to find the time to do it. I'm bogged down with responsibilities and somehow not finding the time to focus on any of them.

This will pass, I think. Sleep would certainly help.

Posted 03/09/2005 22:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 2.4 | Since last entry: 1.4 | Percent complete: 7%

I have picked up two NaNoEdMo buddies, pollyc and deedop. Much appreciated, and there's always room for more.

Packed for Potlatch, SF convention in San Francisco, tonight. Also continued the new scene with Clarity moving toward the UN... about 500 new words. But it's the hours that count this month, not the words.

Clarity must not whine. Must not whine. Must not whine.

And neither will I. I will edit on the plane tomorrow, I will edit on the plane coming back, and I will steal an hour or two for editing each day during the convention as well. This is my NaNoEdMo pledge, and if you are going to be at Potlatch I'd appreciate it if you'd hold me to it.

Posted 03/03/2005 22:53 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 1.0 | Since last entry: 1.0 | Percent complete: 7%

Tonight I printed out the unicorn story and stuck it in an envelope, watched Lost (Hurley rocks!), and updated my website with the excellent Locus review of "Tk'Tk'Tk" -- and still got in an hour of editing. And so NaNoEdMo gets under way!

Most of tonight's work was new text, moving Clarity from the Manhattan Platform toward the UN. To make it more difficult for her I decided to make it rain. Hard. This involved adding rain to the Jason chapter, later in the book, that takes place on the same day. Which made me realize that I have to coordinate the two chapters hour by hour. I wound up writing a detailed timeline of the day, and changing the times of some of Jason's events to make it all work. Fortunately, this is the only day in the whole novel that has to coordinate this tightly.

The "percent complete" figure above represents the fact that I am currently editing page 15 of 221. There's a certain amount of hopping back and forth, but I plan on going through the novel in order and on any given day there's going to be a focus, or locus, of editing, so I hope that tracking the position of this locus through the book will be some kind of indicator of progress. We'll see if this idea actually holds water.

Posted 03/02/2005 23:04 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Editing hours: 0.0 | Since last entry: 0.0

March is National Novel Editing Month (no, really, it's true: see http://www.nanoedmo.org/), and it couldn't come at a better time for me. I really need a kick-start. So I am going to tackle the NaNoEdMo challenge: 50 hours of editing on my novel during the month. With any luck that will be sufficient to complete the darn thing and send it on its way.

Since NaNoEdMo works on hours of editing rather than word count, each participant needs a "buddy" to verify their editing hours. I'm looking for one or more buddies, and offering the same in return. Anyone want someone to help goad them into editing?

Anyway... today being the first day of NaNoEdMo, I kicked it off by... not editing on my novel at all. But I did do editing! I revised the unicorn story (if my edits meet with my co-author's approval I'll get it in the mail tomorrow) and I edited my galley proofs for Greenberg anthology Gateways. (In the whole story there was just one misplaced comma. How did that get in there?) However, I won't count those 3 or 4 editing hours because they were not on my novel. So I go into the month already 1.6 hours behind the desired daily average. Oh well.

In other writing news... since my last journal entry, "The Last McDougal's" sold to Asimov's and reprint "At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco's Homebrew Gravitics Club" (which originally appeared in the OryCon 25 program book) was accepted by the non-paying website Infinity Plus. "The Last McDougal's" is my twentieth sale!

Also, my story "Tk'tk'tk" in the current (March 2005) issue of Asimov's got a good review in the Internet Review of Science Fiction and (I'm told, but haven't seen it yet) another good review in Locus. Asimov's is also offering the first part of the story as a teaser on their website right now.

Yoicks, and away!

Posted 03/01/2005 23:42 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120661 | Since last entry: -256 | This month: 2708

Where did the weekend go? Didn't do anything special, even though it was my birthday today... just the usual weekend round of chores and errands, but three days instead of two. All gone now. Voom.

I spent my writing time this weekend working on the first Clarity chapter. In order to put Vigor's death on stage I first had to remove the frenzied phone call from the end of the scene in the potato field. But once I'd done that, the remainder of the scene didn't have a lot going for it... it had almost no emotional impact, didn't establish Clarity's story problem, and basically existed only for expository purposes. Obviously this scene didn't have much going for it before, but removing the sting from the tail pointed that out clearly. So I thought "can I get rid of this scene completely, and open with Clarity in New York?"

But though that idea had a lot of appeal, the existing scene sets up a lot of stuff that will be needed later: it establishes Garrett, and shows Clarity's love of flight (in a scene that at least one of my first-readers really loved), and shows Clarity interacting with ordinary humans and establishing her sympathy for them. In New York she's completely surrounded by her own people and that would be harder to convey. This scene also introduces a lot of details about the Cetans that would have to be redone in a different way in New York -- basically making this a complete new chapter.

So I rewrote the scene to have a lot more interior dialogue, in which we establish how long it has been since Cedar Point, and how Remembrance Day is a forgiveness holiday for the Cetans, and how much tension there is between Clarity and her father (which will never be resolved, bwah hah hah). To do all this I focused on her shoes.

Yes, her shoes. There was a throwaway line in the very first draft about Clarity wearing Nikes, and I decided to use that as a symbol of all the ways in which she fails to conform to Cetan norms. I think it works.

But. I'm still not convinced it's the best way to introduce Clarity. I may break down and eliminate the entire scene (after spending the whole weekend rewriting it, argh) and create a new scene in New York that carries only the key information from the old scene, with more emotional punch. I know I can do it; I've learned a lot in the nearly two years since I wrote this chapter for the first time. But it'd be a lot of work, so I'm resisting.

I think I can reuse a lot of the existing sentences and paragraphs, but it might be quicker to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Either way I think it's likely to be several days of work.

The one thing I absolutely can't introduce in New York is Garrett. But maybe I should put him on the phone and Clarity's father dying on stage, instead of the other way around.

Must ponder some more. I think I need a day or two to convince myself it's worthwhile.

Posted 02/21/2005 23:03 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120917 | Since last entry: 588 | This month: 2964

Finished up the revisions to the first Jason chapter, in which Jason creeps about to steal the biocomputer. Raised the tension in the creeping-about scene by adding a couple near-misses of being discovered. Also went back and re-edited the scene with Honor and Jason some more. It's amazing how much cascading effect can occur from dropping one sentence -- since Clarity's sept name was revealed for the first time in that sentence, and I couldn't find anyplace else in the chapter to slip that information in naturally, later sentences referring to that name had to be rewritten as well.

It's improving. It's coming along, slowly. I persevere.

Thanks to Kate for going off square-dancing and encouraging me to stay home and write. 588 net words doesn't seem like much but I know the change is significant.

Posted 02/18/2005 23:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120329 | Since last entry: -538 | This month: 2376

I spent much of this evening massaging one little fragment of a scene, in which Jason encounters Clarity's old friend Honesty at the Platform. This is the first appearance of a Cetan (formerly Tauran) on stage and it has to carry a lot of weight. I'm trying to slip in a few sentences of exposition, so the conversation doesn't have to do all the work, but I keep taking expository sentences out and putting them back in because I keep waffling over whether or not the scene is clear enough without them. It doesn't help that I'm trying to establish details that didn't even exist before this revision, so I'm not 100% sure of them myself.

At the last minute I cut an entire small scene (which explains my -500 words for the day) because I determined it was, indeed, no longer necessary. But I'm not quite finished with the scene before the cut yet. Needs more massage.

And, as always, the cat needs vacuuming. First must obtain cat...

Posted 02/16/2005 22:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120867 | Since last entry: 199 | This month: 2914

Spent the evening on revisions, alternating between the novel and the unicorn story while emailing the story back and forth with Sara. Once she approves this final version, it's off to critique.

On the novel, I've nearly reached the end of a scene, and I think I can now cut most of the following scene. Next I'll have to amp up the danger and difficulty of Jason's break-in at the Platform, which may take some doing... I want it to be plausible, and as he's not a professional spy it can't be that hard.

To bed now. I was at work from 7am to 6pm today, with an 8am dentist appointment tomorrow. Bleah. But Kate's breathing machine has arrived, with dramatically effective results. Finally she gets a good night's sleep! The mask is rather isolating -- I don't get to kiss her good-night -- but she's breathing so easily now that it's worth it.

Posted 02/15/2005 22:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120818 | Since last entry: 2715 | This month: 2715

Well, it appears to be about two weeks since I last posted. Sorry. I have been writing, honest (as you can see by the wordcount above), but on those days when I was writing I was too busy to post and on those days when I was not writing I was... er, also too busy to post.

The main thing that has been consuming my energy of late has been the day job, where I still am nearly full-time on each of two projects (a situation unlikely to change any time soon). I have been too brain-dead on most weekday evenings to do much more than watch television, a rare activity for me. Mind you, the new Battlestar Galactica is actually very good. Lost, on the other hand, after a strong start, is beginning to annoy me with its increasingly elaborate tricks to keep the characters from learning anything at all about the mysteries of the island.

The 2700 words above represents about 800 additional words on the novel and 1900 words on the unicorn story -- which is now complete, yay. I need to crit it soon and send my suggested changes to Sara. I feel pretty good about it; it's definitely a story that neither of us could have written by ourselves. I think the main character could be emotionally strengthened, the antagonist made more sympathetic, and more sensory detail added, but one thing's for sure: this is a unicorn story unlike any other unicorn story you have ever read.

The 800 words on the novel represents a complete redraft of the first bit of the first Jason chapter, which used to be the Prologue and is now Chapter A. This draft focuses on Jason's grief and anger over his parents and replaces exposition with emotional description. (One of my themes for this rewrite is: Add Emotion Through Description. I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone, and so far I think it is working.) At this rate it will take me at least several more writing days to complete the new Chapter A, and then I have a heavy new scene to write in Chapter 1 in which Clarity goes to New York and sees with her own eyes when Vigor falls ill. This is the third time I've written the beginning of this novel, but it really is getting better each time. After that will come a thorough revision pass on the whole thing. Probably won't get it in the mail by my birthday as promised, but soon, I tell you, soon.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate revisions?

I got some late comments from a couple of my first-readers, which indicated that they would have been lost without the time map at the top of each chapter. I'm also finding it really hard to nail down the chapters in time with sufficient precision to prevent confusion. Despite Dean's feedback, I might put the time maps back in. I also might compromise and put a single time map at the beginning. I wonder what the procedure is to include a map in the manuscript? Is it a numbered page?

Apart from the novel, this has been a week full of good writing news. I got an email from David Hartwell looking to buy "Charlie the Purple Giraffe" (from the June 2004 Realms of Fantasy) for his Year's Best Fantasy anthology; the same story was also mentioned in the Locus Recommended Reading List and has picked up two Nebula recommendations. And "Tk'Tk'Tk" (from the March 2005 Asimov's) garnered me two fan emails today, plus several very positive comments on the Asimov's message board ("a very memorable story"... "one of the more powerful SF stories in recent memory"... "an intensely visceral read"). Plus Gardner Dozois mentioned me twice in his Year in Review column for Locus. So I am a very happy writing puppy. Apart from the revisions, that is.

Japanese class tomorrow night. 7 AM teleconference with India, followed by offsite customer visit, on Tuesday... bleah. More writing Wednesday, maybe.

Posted 02/13/2005 22:30 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120476 | Since last entry: 1818 | This month: 4044

Nothing on the novel today, but a very productive day on the unicorn story with Sara (with a bonus of a fine dim sum lunch at a new place on Division -- Wong's King, I think it's called, and it's definitely a keeper). This collaboration thing is tons of fun and I think the story is turning out great. It's something that neither of us could possibly have written alone. Two more sessions like that, I think, and it'll be done. I only hope we can get it in below 7500 words -- below 5000 would be better.

One other note: as I was driving home from work the other day the "MAINT REQD" light on the dashboard came on, which the owner's manual claims means the car needs an oil change. But I got the oil changed just over 1000 miles ago, and I happened to notice that the light came on as the odometer passed exactly 5000 miles, which made me suspicious. And indeed, when I took the car to the friendly local neighborhood car mechanic who'd changed the oil, he confirmed my suspicion that the car just needed to be told it had had its oil changed -- but since they don't have the shop manual for the 2005 Corolla yet, they had no idea how to do it. The two of us together managed to find it, buried in the back of the owner's manual: turn off the ignition, then turn it on while holding down the trip-odometer reset button for five seconds. Ah, the joys of car computers. (But wait! There's more! Some luxury cars with Bluetooth cellphone integration may be vulnerable to computer viruses...)

Posted 01/30/2005 22:35 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120476 | Since last entry: 523 | This month: 2226

It took me almost the entire afternoon today to write, rewrite, edit, trim, rearrange, polish, tweak, and finagle what turned out to be only about 500 net new words, but I think the new prologue is done. I think it's good, too -- I got that little twinge at the back of my throat that's close to tears, and that means I hit something that really hurts. I think one reason it took so long is that I had to back up and take a running start at the Cedar Point disaster a couple of times before I could actually write the scene. But once I found the entry point... yow. It just came pouring out.

Basically I just introduced a new character, built her up, and killed her off in a little over a thousand words. But she's not just a throwaway -- she links to Jason and makes him more sympathetic and his motivations clearer. The act of writing this prologue also helps me get a handle on Jason in a way I never quite managed before. So although it took a lot longer to write than 500 words normally would, I think it's worthwhile. Especially because it's the beginning of the novel and it has to hook the reader.

Thanks, Dean!

Posted 01/29/2005 22:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 119953 | Since last entry: 494 | This month: 1703

A really nasty week at work, with two projects still both in crunch mode (one of them having an offsite meeting all day Thursday and Friday). I didn't have the energy to write in the evenings, but I made Kate promise to make me work on my novel tonight. Then I came home and noticed we had a party on the calendar. Kate very generously told me to go and write for an hour while she made soup for dinner. I love my Kate.

I wrote almost 500 words of the new prologue, then we had dinner and attended a fine party at Sam & Shandra's, featuring much fine conversation and a keen variation of the game Bottecelli in which one player thinks of a person (announcing the first letter of thenir name) and the others must stump him with trivia questions -- whose answers begin with that same letter -- to earn the right to ask a yes-or-no question about the person.

More writing tomorrow!!

Posted 01/28/2005 23:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 119459 | Since last entry: 1209 | This month: 1209

Okay, it's been a week since I got back from the coast. What have I done since then? Quite a lot, really.

On Monday I had the day off from work due to Martin Luther King Day (we don't usually get MLK Day off, but with Christmas Day and New Year's Day both falling on weekends this year I think they had some extra holidays just lying around). As it happened, this was the perfect time for the photographer from the local paper to come by and take pictures of our new kitchen. I was so pleased and proud of how the project came out, you see, that I wrote to the Oregonian and suggested that they might want to do a story on it. And they bit! At least enough to send a photographer, we haven't talked to the reporter yet. I think the thing that tipped the project over the edge was Kate's kitchen blog ("Gosh wow," says the Oregonian, "we can be hot and trendy and do a story with this newfangled 'blog' thingie in it!" Welcome to the twentieth century.)

It's a good thing this work week was short, because it's been panic city from one end to the other. I'm still involved in two different projects (neither of which consults with the other before scheduling all-day design meetings), and on Thursday we had a bit of a meltdown on one of them. So I spent most evenings during the week just recovering from work. One bright spot in the week is that the other UI designer got pulled off of one of his two projects so he's now full-time on one of mine -- I can concentrate more on the other.

Hmm, looking at my Palm I see that I didn't just vegetate. We watched the latest episodes of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, attended a live performance of 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.Com, and went to a "Classical Mystery Tour" performance at the Oregon Symphony, featuring the cast of Beatlemania doing excellent Beatles covers with a full symphony orchestra. That was a blast. Also picked up and read about a month and a half's worth of comics from our local comics pusher.

We've started a community college Japanese 101 class, beginning preparation for the Worldcon in 2007. Japanese follows the Law of Conservation of Complexity, which dictates that for every area in a language that's simpler than English, there has to be another that's more complex. For example, Japanese has a straightforward phonetic writing system, but it has two separate alphabets for the same sounds. Its nouns avoid the complexities of grammar and gender, but there are multiple counting systems. And its verbs have only two tenses, but subtle distinctions of formality. Shikata ga nai.

On Saturday, Sara M. and I got together and started work on the unicorn story we outlined back at OryCon. We wrote about 1200 words, and I'm pleased with the results so far. This is a story that neither of us could possibly have written alone, and it's interesting that so far each of us thinks the other is doing most of the work. The writing has been great fun and I'm looking forward to more next week. Saturday evening Kate and I celebrated twenty years together by going out for dinner with some of the people who were there when we met on New Year's Day 1985. (Twenty years?!)

I did make some progress on the novel this weekend. It's plain at this point that I will need to write an entire new (but brief) Prologue and do a substantial rewrite on the first Jason chapter, and I'm considering a complete rewrite of the first Clarity chapter as well. But once I've snagged the reader I think the rest of the novel will work without major surgery.

I had hoped to write at least the new prologue this weekend, but that didn't happen. I did, though, update my To-Do list to incorporate all the new things to do I got from the novel weekend. It's currently eight pages long, with items ranging from "Make Jason more protagonisty" to "Names Wind Racer and Desert Wind are too similar". I don't expect I'll actually check off more than about a quarter of them, but at least I have them all in one place.

One of those to-do items is -- alas! -- to change the name Taurans, because Dean says "Tauran" is too similar to "Terran." And he's right, dammit. Even though, as Kate says, "But... they are Taurans." Well, not any more. Now they are, I think, Cetans. I want to sleep on that before commiting the change.

Oh, one last writing-related news bit. I got my subscriber copy of the March 2005 Asimov's, with my story "Tk'tk'tk." It should be on newsstands soon. My first Asimov's story, yay!

Posted 01/28/2005 23:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Just back from the novel workshop at Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch's house on the Oregon Coast. I haven't posted anything here for the last two weeks because I was exceptionally busy at work (I think I had a total of two working hours last week that weren't consumed by meetings) and I had to critique two full novels and four partials before the workshop. So not only didn't I have any progress to report on my own writing, I didn't have any time to report it. But I'm back now, and things should be a bit less hectic for the near future.

Travel to and from the workshop was interesting, in the Chinese sense. On the way out of Portland on Thursday night, I took a wrong turn and didn't realize my mistake until I'd gone 15 miles in the wrong direction and was thoroughly lost; it took me over two hours to get all the way out of town. Then on Saturday Portland was slammed by an ice storm that made the streets impassible, but I hung out at the workshop house until mid-day Sunday and it had all thawed out by the time I got home. But we had lovely weather at the coast all weekend.

The workshop itself was a lot of fun, with the seven of us and Dean (plus Kris and local writer Steven York in the evenings) talking about writing stuff in the mornings and evenings and between crits. We ate exceptionally good Thai food and far too many M&Ms and potato chips (Karen Abrahamson kept pushing junk food, which proves that Canadians are not nearly as nice as they are made out to be), and got way too little sleep. We walked on the beach and visited the bookstore down the hill and made friends with Galahad the cat. Some of us even got some writing done (I didn't).

I got very useful feedback on my novel. Reactions from the other workshop participants were mixed but Dean and New York editor John Douglas (who sent comments by fax) said that it would most likely sell if I made some changes: add a prologue showing the Cedar Point disaster; increase the emotion and sensory detail throughout, especially in the opening chapter; clear out the table of contents and the time map and date at the top of each chapter, and replace them with solid scene setting to ground the reader in time (if readers get lost between the two timelines, don't try to paper over the problem with graphics and typographical tricks, fix the underlying problem!); watch for places where a chapter ending that's supposed to be a cliffhanger goes past its emotional peak and cut it right at that peak; use more varied paragraphing; replace the detailed outline with a shorter, more focused proposal (in proper manuscript format!). These changes are actually not that large, especially by comparison with the major surgery Dean suggested to some of the other participants. I should be able to get this puppy in the mail in a few weeks.

Dean gave several long talks on the business and craft of writing, some planned and some impromptu and all exceptionally valuable (if sometimes a bit discouraging). I took about 14 pages of notes, which I will attempt to summarize here as a public service. (Disclaimer: What you see here is my summary of Dean's advice and opinions. I don't necessarily agree with all of it; on the other hand, I may have gotten some of it wrong.)

The workshop was largely focused on presentation, because it doesn't matter how good your novel is if you can't present it in a marketable way. We did talk a lot about the novels themselves, especially their structure and double especially their openings (because the first chapter or two determines whether the remaining chapters will be read at all), but the most interesting and useful information in the workshop was about the proposal.

A novel proposal (also called an outline or synopsis -- the words are completely interchangeable) is a sales tool for your novel. I'll repeat that, because Dean did: the proposal is a sales tool. It is used throughout the publishing process to represent your novel, so if it fails to intrigue and excite the reader it almost doesn't matter how good the novel itself is.

Fundamentally, the proposal has to capture the essential elements of the novel in miniature. Dean brought out a bottle of shampoo and a tiny sample-sized bottle of the same shampoo. The big bottle is your novel, the small bottle is your proposal. The shampoo in the small bottle is the same color, smells the same, and tastes the same, and the bottle has approximately the same shape -- but the cap is proportionally bigger because otherwise you couldn't get the shampoo out, and there are fewer words on the label because if you just made the same text smaller you couldn't read it. The purpose of the small bottle is to get you to buy the big bottle, not to be a perfect copy of the big bottle.

Similarly, the proposal has to say what the novel is about, not just recount the plot. It has to capture the novel's emotions, not just list its characters. It should have the same voice, style, and stance as the novel. It can be long or short -- as little as a few pages, or over a hundred pages for a complex best-seller -- but it has to be as exciting and intriguing as the novel itself, if not more so. It is usually written in third person present tense, no matter what person and tense is used for the novel itself, and it must use standard manuscript format (12-point Courier, double spaced, 1" margins, with your name and address on the first page and your name in the header of every subsequent page). Non-standard formats make it harder for the editor to read and give them an excuse to reject the novel -- and they receive so many proposals they are looking for any excuse at all to toss the current one and move on to the next.

It used to be that the science fiction field was based on reputation and personal relationships, and novels were sold over dinner at the Worldcon. That's no longer the case. Computerized sales tracking and corporate attention to the bottom line mean that the only thing that counts today is how you sell, which is determined by quality more than publicity or anything else. One downside of this tracking is that if your sales are disappointing you may not be able to sell your next book at all. The upside is that a new author, or a new name for an existing author, gets a fair shake based solely on the quality of the novel -- as represented by the proposal and sample chapters. It's a great time to break in.

If your sales record is dragging you down, don't hesitate to adopt a new pen name. Even an author who is doing reasonably well can benefit from changing their name -- if you are selling at the $5K advance level and you write a true breakout novel, you can sell it under your own name for $5K (with corresponding publicity), but a really great book from a fresh name with no track record will be judged on its own merits and can sell for $100K (with corresponding publicity).

Here's how the publishing field works today: first off, there is no slush pile any more. Hardly any publishers accept unsolicited manuscripts. Instead, publishers receive query letters. The assistant editor sits at her desk in the hall outside the editor's door and goes through the pile of queries received each day, passing only the most intriguing ones on to the editor. The editor then picks the most interesting queries out of that reduced set and requests a package (sample chapters and proposal) from them. The received packages then receive a further winnowing, with editors or assistant editors reading them and rejecting as many as possible, retaining only those that demand recognition -- for these they request the whole manuscript. If the manuscript bears out the package's promise, the editor presents the proposal to other editors, management, and the sales force. If these people all agree, based on the proposal and the editor's passion for the novel, that this is something that will make money for the publisher, they extend an offer to the author. So your job is to create a query letter and a proposal package that are so compelling that no one anywhere in that process will be able to say no.

This process takes months and months. These days you have to treat novels exactly the same as short stories: write one, submit it, and move on to the next one. If one comes back, resubmit it right away. Don't track rejection times, don't bite your fingernails waiting for a response; you have no idea whether it's taking a long time because it's being seriously considered or because it's sitting at the bottom of a huge pile. Just work on the next novel and make sure it's as good as it can be. If you keep the pipeline full of quality work, eventually one will land in front of the right editor at the right time and will "click." And once you've sold one novel, the game changes and you have an entirely different set of problems (one of the main ones is the temptation to overcommit yourself).

Can an agent get you around this process? No -- not the kind of agent you can get as an unknown. Good agents don't have to take on writers with no sales, there are plenty of writers who have just made their first sale and need an agent. And even with a good agent, the process still takes enormous amounts of time. The main thing an agent can do that you can't do for yourself is to submit to multiple publishers at once.

Do not be discouraged by the length and complexity of the process. The system is more in the writer's control than ever before. If you can write a good query and package you can sell even if you don't have an agent, never go to conventions, and don't know anyone in the business. (You still need an agent to negotiate the contract, though.)

The reader's initial reaction is the most important, because editors and assistant editors don't spend a lot of time deciding if a novel is marketable. The opening has to grab the reader's attention and the remainder of the sample chapters have to hold it. Use pacing, cliffhangers, etc. to pull the reader along. Setting and sensory details are critical; a novel (especially in its early chapters) has to be even thicker and richer in detail than any short story -- after all, in a novel you have much more room for this sort of detail and you should make effective use of that.

The manuscript must be clean and free of "scabs" -- typos, grammatical errors, punctuation problems, etc. -- which can make the editor think that the copy edit might be more trouble than it's worth. It's especially important to kill typos and other glitches in the early pages. Your goal is zero defects.

The title is an important element, because it represents the novel when people are talking about it (within the publisher, and then in the market). If you can't come up with a memorable title that summarizes the book in some way, work with a friend who's good at it. Good novel titles tend to be shorter than good short story titles; most best-sellers have two-word titles.

The secrets of a successful proposal are clarity and focus on character. It must be welcoming to read (standard manuscript format!) and the novel's structure must be clear from the proposal. But it needs to convey what the book is about -- from the character's perspective -- rather than summarizing the plot. It should explain how the book opens, how it ends up, and how the character gets from point A to point Z, but avoid the details. "What the book is about" is bigger than the plot.

The query letter is the postal version of the elevator pitch. It must be brief. Typically it has one paragraph of what the book is about, one paragraph listing your qualifications (previous publishing credits and relevant life experience), one paragraph citing similar successful novels, and one paragraph to ask for the sale (e.g. "The novel is finished and I would be glad to send it to you, thank you for your time"). The query letter should use standard business letter format -- this is a job interview, and you wouldn't show up for a job interview wearing a sweat suit. Don't explicitly state your novel's theme in a query or cover letter; that tends to make it appear preachy.

When you send in your package it should be assembled in this order: 1) cover letter, 2) sample chapters, 3) proposal (labeled as such). Be sure to include your full contact information at the top of each, since the three pieces often are separated from each other during the process. Include exactly the amount of sample material requested by this particular agent or editor. If they ask for 50 pages, give them exactly 50 pages -- cut off in the middle of a word if need be.

For the novel's opening, many successful writers pick one detail of setting or character and focus on it for several pages. The description needs to be thick and rich in sensory detail, and focus on what the detail means to the viewpoint character. What about it catches her attention and why? Similarly, if you have multiple viewpoints they can be made distinct by giving each one a "walking motif." For example, one character could notice smells, while another notices noises, or the temperature. What is each character's reason for being? That should be the most powerful element of the character's first appearance and should color their every perception.

Most wannabe writers stop at about page 100 or 150 (1/3 of the way through the novel), the point at which the excitement of the opening is past and only the long slog of the middle is visible ahead. You must keep going past this point. Resist the urge to go back and revise, or even read, the first part -- you have to trust the process and "eat the elephant one bite at a time." Deadlines are useful to keep you going.

It's important to get feedback on your work, because the writer's job is to create an impression in the reader's mind -- to transfer thoughts and feelings and images from your mind to the reader's. Because you already have these images in your own mind, you cannot judge whether or not your writing is effective. But you should complete the entire novel before sending it for critique. Very few writers can accept critique on individual novel chapters without allowing it to warp the novel into "art by committee."

Science fiction, per se, is a dying genre; even Western outsells it. But there are enormous quantities of science fiction and fantasy being published outside the "science fiction" publishing field -- they are just labeled as romances (romance is 55% of the market, vs. 5% for SF) or mysteries or thrillers or just "fiction." SF writers who have escaped the SF ghetto include Michael Crichton, Dean Koontz, Robin Cook, Neal Stephenson, Jonathan Lethem, Neil Gaiman, and Karen Joy Fowler. Take a look at some recent SF and fantasy best-sellers and see if you see the words "science fiction" or "fantasy" anywhere on them. The science fiction ghetto is superficially welcoming to new talent, but in the long run is harmful to them because it locks them into a tiny market. Don't think of Asimov's as the best possible place to sell your short SF story, take it to the New Yorker or Playboy first.

Part of your job as a professional writer is to stay abreast of the markets, even those you don't plan to write for. If a major romance publisher has a line of supernatural romances, and you have a fantasy book with a strong romantic element, you may be able to sell that same exact book to the romance publisher for a hell of a lot more money than you'd get from a fantasy publisher. You may have to change the query letter and proposal to stress the romantic element.

Publisher's Marketplace (www.publishersmarketplace.com) costs $15 a month and is well worth it. It includes a database of recent deals (editor, agent, type of book, and size of advance) that is invaluable in researching agents and markets, and an email newsletter called Publisher's Lunch that helps you keep abreast of the news in the field. An agent who isn't sending news of their deals to Publisher's Marketplace is missing out on how business is done today.

Most agents you see at the Worldcon these days are not the agent you want. The good ones are too busy to leave New York for more than a day. An exception is agents who have a client up for a Hugo, who may fly in just for the day to hold the client's hand (and help them with deals if they win the Best Novel Hugo). Mainstream writer's conferences such as Surrey are better, but watch out for scammers. An extensive website for an individual agent is a warning sign: good agents don't have the time, or any reason, to maintain one. When you hear an opinion about an agent, consider the source: is this a multi-published author, or a wannabe? A good agent can't save your career, but a bad agent can hurt it.

The agent is your employee and you need to be aware of what they are and aren't doing for you. You also need to keep up with the market so you know what the alternatives are. Your agent could retire or flake out without warning, and you may need to change agents suddenly or if a better alternative emerges. Be willing to fire your agent if they aren't working to your satisfaction, or if you find that you are turning into a type of writer who is no longer well represented by your current agent. You are responsible for your own career. You need an agent you can work with, but the agent you like the best personally might not be the one who'll do the best job.

"Big Books" are an entirely different genre, with their own structure: an incredible setting, vividly realized; everyday characters doing extraordinary things; multiple viewpoints (generally), often two characters with their own problems who collide mid-book to produce an even bigger problem. Most authors should never even attempt a Big Book. The author of a Big Book must have incredible control of the reader's thoughts and feelings. It takes a lot of practice and reading, study of best-sellers, millions of words written. Styles of best-seller change with the decades; read Making the List by Korda for insights. Big Books can fail in big ways if you get the small stuff wrong.

Your hero can get hurt, he can get damaged, he can be in pain, he can be frightened, desperate, frustrated, but he can never whine. He has to keep moving forward even when he can't.

Posted 01/17/2005 23:07 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

My resolution for the new year is simple and far-reaching, and peripherally writing-related. It's based on the idea that any piece of writing can be improved by reducing the wordcount by 5-10%. So I resolve to Edit The House: to go room by room and reduce the amount of stuff by 5-10%. We've already edited the kitchen, as a side effect of the remodel, and I'm particularly looking forward to editing my clothes closet. I'm less enthusiastic about editing the bookshelves upstairs, but something has to go... they're so full there isn't even any more room to cram books in on their sides. There will be a garage sale this summer.

I have another goal for the year (but I'm not going to make it a formal resolution, because I prefer to have just one new year's resolution): to put the novel in the mail by my birthday (February 21). That'll give me five weeks to edit it after the workshop in mid-January.

My resolution for 2004 was to Finish The Novel, which I defined as finishing the first draft, revising it once, preparing the submission package, and submitting it somewhere. I think I can mark that as a near-miss (or even done, if you count sending it to the workshop as "submitting it somewhere").

Not much writing news to report. I've been slogging away on my critiques for the novel workshop. I need to pick up the pace, but I've been partying hard for the last few days (one party Friday night, two today, another tomorrow). And I need to make an addendum to the David's Index post of December 30: one more rejection came in under the wire, a 141-day(!) boingeroo from Gordon Van Gelder rejecting the story he asked for a rewrite on. ("Unfortunately, I haven't been able to pin down what isn't working for me ... I'm just not feeling this one.") Oh well. That one goes to scifi.com next.

Happy Gnu's Ear, everyone!

Posted 01/01/2005 21:02 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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