Category Archives: LJ

dude_the is here for our traditional Superbowl Sunday festivities. Yay! His plane was delayed due to weather, so he got in quite late, which might explain the slightly punch drunk conversation had during the car ride from the MARTA station. Banter revolving around the state of the world resulted in him suggesting that an “automatic sporker” was needed, which then led to discussion of the feasibility of a “nuclear spork” (spork of mass destruction?). I was, and remain, inordinately amused. Spork the world! Mwa ha ha haaa!

   

Writing Stuff
I got my first hate (e)mail today. Well, actually, that’s way too harsh. It’s really not hate mail–unless hate mail’s a lot more civilized and courteous than I’ve been led to believe. There was no name calling or swearing. I think it’s more accurate to call it “grumble mail” or perhaps “somewhat-aggravated mail.”

I’ve got strong views on a number of controversial issues, and my beliefs tend to make an appearance in the fiction I write–theme and content-wise. So the part of my brain that braces for unpleasantness while the rest of me goes bopping about, oblivious and optimistic, has been busily stacking sandbags, collecting canned goods, and making sure there are extra batteries for the flashlights. It’s been preparing my psyche for this moment, with fortifications started as soon as I began having some success publishing-wise, accelerated into frenzied duck-and-cover mode once my more thoughtful work started seeing print.

Suffice it to say I’m not staggered, speechless, or spooked.

However, I am perplexed. Not because I received correspondence from a dissatisfied reader (can’t please everyone, and it was only a matter of time before someone felt compelled to type up an email letting me know how much they didn’t like something I wrote), but because it had never occurred to me that this particular story would be the one to elicit reader ire. It wasn’t the one with the drug use, or the sympathy-for-the-devil-with-undertones-of-free-love tale, or even the treatise on the existence of God (as put forth by a penguin balloon animal). And it wasn’t any of my fiction that touches upon squeamish issues like incest, the morality of vengeance, euthanasia, homelessness, rape, religion, and children’s rights. It wasn’t even any of the erotic horror tales I’ve penned that contain some extremely squicky naughty bits. The story that abraded someone enough to voice their displeasure? My tongue-in-cheek macabre humor fluff piece. I got my first grumble mail from Escape Pod‘s podcast of “My Friend is a Lesbian Zombie,” a story utterly lacking anything that even remotely resembles a theme

Huh.

My anti-fan–I’ll call her “C”–took issue with what she considered my negative portrayal of lesbians.

For the record, it was not my intention to offend or otherwise nettle, provoke, or aggrieve any lesbians, or cast any negative aspersions whatsoever on non-straight sexual orientations and relationships. My sincere apologies to anyone who found “My Friend is a Lesbian Zombie” anti-gay.

But, okay, here’s the thing. C was piqued because the zombie lesbian in question slept with a man at some point in my tale, and that my narrator still refers to her as a “lesbian” and not “bi.” Granted, I’ve never quite got the hang of labels; they typically leave me blinking in the dust. But according to both the Human Sexuality class I took in college (admittedly ages and ages ago) as well as my own first-hand, interpersonal experiences, a large percentage of straight folks experiment with same-sex relationships (especially in college, for e.g.) and yet still consider themselves “straight” and not “bi.” Likewise, there’s a number of gay folks who experiment with different-sex relationships and who still consider themselves “gay” and not “bi.” So labelwise, I don’t get why a lesbian having an affair with a guy is cause for dissidence. My take on the matter is that you love who you love, whatever their physiological composition is, and screw the labels.

Not to mention “My Friend is a Bi-Sexual Zombie” doesn’t have the zing that “My Friend is a Lesbian Zombie” does.

C also thought my portrayal of lesbians in general was negative–the main one in question being a zombie and therefore having many disagreeable traits that are part and parcel of walking deadhood, but also her romantic interest who is a goth-type with necrophile tendencies. Yet, I thought my characterization of the lesbian characters was leaps and bounds more positive than that of the straight characters–one of whom is a psychotic serial killer and the other is a shallow, borderline neurotic with profoundly skewed priorities, overly preoccupied with the state of her worldly possessions.

Regardless, I wasn’t trying to make a statement; my goal was to write a funny story. I’m there at the front of the “humor is hard to write” line, waving my “I wish I could write funny” placard, so I’ll just nod and acknowledge that I missed C’s funny bone, alas.

Hey, does that mean I’m controversial now? Another milestone, woohoo!

Except the part of me prepping for psychological/emotional cataclysm and disaster is scratching her head, inventorying the pile of unused sandbags and putting away all the cans of vegetarian baked beans, with a bemused and somewhat put out air. I think I’m going to need to placate her by watching CNN for an hour or so . . . or subject myself to a re-run or analysis/commentary of George W’s State of the Nation speech. That should mollify her.

Shameless plug:
My signing with Aberrant Dreams is tomorrow. Details:
Date: Saturday, February 4th, 2006
Time: 4:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Place: Oxford Comics & Games 2855 Piedmont Rd NE; Atlanta, GA 30305-2767; (404) 233-8682

Swing by, say “hi,” I’ll sign anything. Or come and protest my portrayal of lesbian zombies.

Received:
– 92-day FYI from OSC’s Intergalactic Medicine Show: “apologies for the long delay . . . your story did make it through the first cut, and will now be passed on to Mr. Card to read and make a final decision.” Another month, or two . . . or more to engage in nail-biting before the final verdict.
– 15-day “this is a form rejection” from Son and Foe. Is it me, or have rejection notes gotten kind of weird recently? This one actually says: “As you may have noticed, this is a form rejection.” *blink* Okaaay.

New Words: 700 on the Japanese Demon Hunter story.

4,642 / 6,000 (77.4%)

Club 100 For Writers
      4

500/day
      3

Herein my Sundance experience:

We left Atlanta on a warm January day; as I recall, it was somewhere in the 50s-60s. Hopped a plane to Denver, had a 4 hour layover (ugh) and then boarded another plane to Salt Lake City. Brrr. There was much napping and reading on the outbound journey. By the end of the layover, I’d finished the only reading material I’d brought with me, and was already kicking myself for not bringing another book as I’d contemplated during the packing phase. Hindsight blows goat chunks.

The temperature when we arrived in Salt Lake City was somewhere in the mid-30s. Something of a shock to my Southern-softened sensibilities. But hey, I was raised to be hardy Midwestern stock, right? *snort* We hopped a shuttle bus to Park City after some confusion (fosteronfilm had neither written down the name or number of the company we’d reserved tickets on and there are something like half a dozen shuttle services between Salt Lake and Park City).

We ran into Ian, one of our condo-mates and a film EFX guy I’d met at Dragon*Con, as we waited for the shuttle and got to know him better on the hour-long ride. The mountains were beautiful, their snowy peaks looking like big piles of sugar from a distance and turning jagged and rocky up close. Our condoplex was set at the base of a range of mountains and we had a lovely view as we shuttled to and from the festival venues. The full compliment of condo denizens: Devi and Agustin, director/writer and producer (they made “Teenage Bikini Vampire” and “Confederate Zombie Massacre”); Eric, technical and EFX guru (he always carries a projector, screen, and various electronic toys around with him wherever he goes), and his wife, Jodi (trailing spouse like me); and of course, the previously mentioned Ian, and fosteronfilm and me. Also popping in for a few days were Lenora from L.A. (actress, model, producer, and staff writer for Frontiers magazine) who knows absolutely everyone, Mark from the U.K. (editor of Naked magazine), and Michael-who-was-only-there-for-a-couple-days.

Park City transportation is A-1. Sundance sets up free shuttle buses for the duration of the festival that come every 10-15 minutes or so, and take people to all the myriad venues as well as stopping at the major condo locales–including right in front of our complex. The town itself is charming and picturesque. The roads are narrow, reminding me of the ones in London, and Main street is chock full of little shops (including several ice cream parlors which made me go “huh”) selling artsy nick knacks, boutique clothing, food, and a variety of “downtown”-esque consumables. The city goes to great lengths to be delightful. The houses are painted bright colors–yellows and blues and reds–with decorative trim. I saw a vivid purple dumpster, one of those industrial construction ones, with Robert Redford’s head plastered on it. A purple garbage receptacle is a great idea. It looks festive rather than grungy. There were a lot of gingerbread awnings and elegant little sculptures and ornamental bird houses. Makes me want to paint the staid pillars in front of our house a bright turquoise instead of the white they are now. Maybe we will. That would undoubtedly give our Nazi Homeowners Association an aneurysm–which makes it worth it right there. I saw several fur shops which depressed me, but also several anti-fur protesters, which helped.

The Sundance crowd is a diverse and eclectic mix; countless accents, languages, and fashions were to be experienced in the space of a few blocks every day. And, of course, I saw a pair of obligatory Mormons in their missionary suit-tie ensembles. Didn’t see any celebrities, though, alas.

It snowed almost every day we were there, which I was not at all happy about . . . until Saturday afternoon. The temperature had warmed slightly, and Matthew and I were walking to a shuttle stop. Big, fluffy white flakes floated out of the sky to speckle our hats, coats, and eyelashes, and they created a muffling softness over everything. One flew into my mouth, melting on my tongue, and in the face of such exquisite beauty, my normal “I hate snow!” sentiments whisked away, lost in white flurries. It takes a lot, but every now and again, I will grudgingly admit that sometimes snow can be nice. We passed a young male in a train of people of assorted ages–a couple families on vacation maybe?–who was carting around a snowball bigger than my head. I do wonder what his intentions with that ginormous snowball were, but I’ll never know.

Our condoplex was located across the street from a large grocery store and we stocked up on foodstuffs. Our condo sported a fully stocked kitchen with all major appliances: microwave, refrigerator, oven, and dishwasher, as well as pots, pans, bake-ware, glasses, plates, utensils, and minor electronic devices like a mixer, popcorn popper, blender, and electric can opener. Agustin is an amazing chef. He made omelets or scrambled eggs for breakfast every morning, and his spaghetti sauce was incredible. I offered up homemade chocolate chip cookies as my culinary contribution. The condo also had a gas fireplace that I turned on at every opportunity. It’s so decadent having a fire you can switch on. The place also had a complete entertainment system–DVD player, 5-point surround sound, TV, and CD player. The sleeping arrangements were almost-but-not-quite cramped–two bedrooms, one dayroom, a fold-out sleeper couch, and a dining room that got converted into another bedroom. It would have been perfect if they’d also had WiFi.

There were fewer guerrilla film festivals this year. Word was that Sundance was doing its best to crack down on those. I didn’t see the roving film festival-in-a-truck that Matthew experienced last year. Actually, there were only three that I saw: Sundance (duh), Slamdance, and Tromadance–not counting our own party/film festival: Condodance. There was also a split in venues with many screenings in Salt Lake City. But without complimentary shuttle service between Park City and Salt Lake, I don’t know how many people attended the Salt Lake ones. We certainly didn’t.

Total films viewed: I lost count, but I’d estimate between 30 and 40, the majority being shorts.

The best was Forgiving the Franklins, the Sundance feature I mentioned before. I also liked Puccini for Beginners, another Sundance feature which was billed as a lesbian screwball comedy, but was really simply a lesbian romantic comedy. Sweet but fluffy, with some nice writing. Matthew saw a couple films without me: Moonshine, a vampire flick, and The Descent, a spelunking horror-thriller. They screened during the midnight showings. From the sounds of it, I didn’t miss anything. He also collected quite a few DVDs from various filmmakers who he went up to talk to if he liked their work.

After the films screened, if the film makers were there, they always had a Q&A where the director talked briefly about their inspiration/experience/etc. and the audience had a chance to ask questions. That tended to break things up more often than I liked during the short film blocks, unfortunately. I found it interesting to see how varied the filmmakers were in charisma, personality, and social savvy. Some were vibrant and effusive, full of enthusiasm about their creations, while others were obviously unused to public speaking and didn’t seem to know what to say or where to look. One filmmaker, the writer/director of “40 Dollars,” a day-in-the-life of a drug addict short screened at Tromadance, mumbled and looked at her feet, obviously desperate to escape the spotlight, as the moderator kept throwing more questions at her. From her laconic comments, it was pretty obvious the desperate and despairing story was taken from firsthand experience.

There was an obvious flavor to each of the festivals. Sundance is puffed up by its own pretension, something which is especially apparent in its shorts selection–but there’s a high production value to everything they show. It also tends to favor slice-of-life dramas that may or may not have any sort of narrative structure. Slamdance tries to be edgy and actively spurns a classic narrative, e.g. storytelling structure, which frankly, I don’t like. I want a story, dammit. Esoteric imagery and unusual camera angles are all good and well, but if there isn’t a story, by the end all I’m left with is “so what?” And Tromadance is much more into the traditional narrative format, but their selection committee obviously suffers from multiple personality disorder–some of their offerings are quite good, while others are just . . . not.

Total parties attended: Three.
1. The Film Association party on Wednesday. Eric’s a mover and shaker in those circles and invited us along. Pros: the open bar and the networking. Cons: the loud music that made it impossible to talk to anyone. What is it about people who think that it’s a good thing to crank up the sound system at a party? No one was dancing, and everyone was there to schmooze, network, and socialize. Loud was bad. But the drinks were free. And fosteronfilm was able to hook up with a withoutabox.com contact.
2. Condodance on Thursday, hosted by us condo folks. Did I mention that Eric carries a projector and screen everywhere he goes? Last year, they had an impromptu film festival and dubbed it Condodance, offering free spaghetti and good movies, and through word of mouth, gobs of people wandered in just off the street to partake of the fun. So this year they made up cards to publicize it and made it a tradition. Much fun, but also the time when I realized that the higher altitude–something I’d been joking with fosteronfilm about on the plane–did in fact have a real effect. Even on 20mg of Adderall, a paltry amount of alcohol (even for me) totally laid me out. I stumbled upstairs to our room at around 11:30, unable to keep my eyes open, although other folks stayed up late into the night screening movies and talking film. Matthew hooked up with many film folks and pimped the Dragon*Con Film Festival.
3. Tromadance on Saturday. Another loud party at the Tromadance site–Rum Bunnies bar. The music was too loud, the drinks were expensive, and there wasn’t much in the way of networking to be had. We didn’t stay long.

Then there was the impromptu dance party Devi, in a fit of tipsy ebullience, started at our condo before Tromadance’s party. It was much better. I met Devi at Dragon*Con last year, and she’s absolutely lovely, full of bubbly energy and laughter. She teaches at Notre Dame and writes, edits and directs indie movies. She introduced me to a game called “Exquisite Corpse” where a group of people (here fosteronfilm, me, her, and Agustin) write a story together. Each person takes a turn and folds down what they’ve written just showing the last four or so words before handing it off to the next person. The end results were surprisingly good. She promised to transcribe and post them online. I shall link to our collaboration when she does. Devi also writes short fiction but doesn’t know what to do with it next, publication-wise. And as a corollary, I’ve become intrigued by the notion of turning some of my short stories into screenplays and seeing if I can’t get something done with them. But, of course, I don’t know where to start on the marketing equation. Serendipity. So Devi and I are going to swap our industry expertise and connections and see if we can’t get each other pointed at the right people.

I had much fun, even got words out on a new story, met some great people, and saw some excellent movies. Rah.

Now I’m ear-tip deep playing catch-up.

   

Writing Stuff
Doing the ad hoc research on the Japanese Demon Hunter story that I wasn’t able to in Utah. How did people get anything done without the Internet? Oh, yeah, they lived in libraries . . . which is what I used to do, come to think of it.

Club 100 For Writers
      2

I feel like I’m an online commando, dashing into an Internet cafe and updating LJ at Sundance.

fosteronfilm is watching the short blocks (a series of short films, not stumpy rectangles) at Troma Dance, and I’m pretty shorted out (both in the “zzt” and “seen-too-many-shorts-gurgle” way). Also, possibly hung over. But only slightly.

It’s the altitude. Yeah.

So far, the shining glory of the convention has been Forgiving the Franklins. Because of the controversial nature of the film, not to mention all the nudity, it’ll probably never get distribution, but this movie is absolutely brilliant–brilliant and inspiring and spiritual, and as anyone who even vaguely knows me should realize by now, I don’t use the s-word lightly. If there’s a snowball’s chance anywhere anyhow that y’all can get to see this, go!

fosteronfilm is going to try to snag a copy of it to bring to Dragon*Con’s Film Festival, but that’s still way up in the air.

Writing Stuff:

The Aberrant Dreams webcomic artist has struck again in a Slip of the Pen from the 25th: “Let Those Creative Juices Flow.” Hee! They said I was “hot.” They also made me go “ewww.”

Trade-offs.

Safe in Utah. Free WiFi across the street at the Starbucks. Cold and snowy, but good company and (I hope) good movies. Sundance, charge! Already, the muse stirs. Whee!

Watched Aeon Flux last night, courtesy Netflix, the MTV series, not the Charlize Theron movie. I haven’t seen the movie yet, being more than a little dubious about it.

I remember seeing the shorts on MTV’s Liquid TV, and then some of the series episodes, and wondering whether they would make more sense if I saw all of them in order. The answer to that is “no.” Viewing them in proper sequence, first to last, does not in any way make them an iota more coherent.

However, I really like them, despite or perhaps because of the extreme weirdness. Although “weird” doesn’t do justice to the profoundly freaky-bizarre experience that is Aeon Flux–beautiful and strangely disjointed, with ultra-bizarre technology and unnaturally graceful characters a la anime, but without the usual anime trappings.

I’m still ruminating on the episodes, replaying some of the (disturbing) imagery in my mind, and luxuriating/speculating on the subtext and dialogue. Lines like: “I’m not in the habit of arguing about the color of red herrings!”; “We won. We must have been right”; “Learn from your mistakes, so that one day you can repeat them precisely”; and “That which does not kill us, makes us stranger” left me glassy-eyed and awed.

Although I do wonder what it says about my sensibilities on romance that I find Aeon Flux’s and Trevor Goodchild’s love/hate, quasi-BDSM, obsessive-dysfunctional, manipulative-merciful-murderous relationship incredibly sexy. Eh, then again, I already knew I was a bit twisted.

“You’re hurting my hand! …Normally, I like that. But this time I can’t reciprocate your feelings.”

   

Writing Stuff
Got a note from Chris McKitterick inviting me to participate in the nomination process of the 2005 Sturgeon Awards. I’m honored and flattered, but now I have to scrunch my brain up and somehow come up with a Top 5 list from all the amazing short SF that was published last year.

Also got an email from Jason Rennie of The Sci Phi Show, letting me know that he’s going to use the Escape Pod podcast of “The Life and Times of Penguin” in a forthcoming episode. The focus topic will be an examination of “The Problem of Evil,” which I am absolutely tickled by. I hope Voltaire would have been proud of, or at least amused by, my homage to Candide.