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OutlantaCon and “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” on Best of Escape Pod Top Ten List

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Weekend was chok-full. fosteronfilm is working as a census taker—band-aid on our hemorrhaging finances and all—and he is neck-high in door-to-door interviews, so wasn’t able to accompany me for most of OutlantaCon. Fooie. But the folks at OutlantaCon took fabulous care of me; Edward deGruy, the Director of Guest Relations, is an absolute sweetheart and filled my ear with the most outrageous ego-booya throughout the weekend.

Panels were a mixed bag. I felt totally intimidated at my “Social Activism” panel. On top of being on the panel with Jessica Bair (co-chair of the Los Angeles Steering Community for the Human Rights Campaign) and Lee Martindale (amazing writer and editor and a leader in the Size Rights Movement), I ended up sitting next to Dr. Darieck Scott, who is not only a brilliant, celebrated author and literary professor at Berkeley, but is gorgeous to boot. I was treading water like a duck on speed to keep from going all “tee-hee-hee *blush* you’re cute tee-hee” whenever I was within ten feet of him.

And while I enjoyed my “Getting the Word OUT” panel, as it gave me a chance to get to know and catch up with my fellow panelists, Greg Herren, Edward deGruy, and ceciliatan, respectively, I shall best appreciate it for its cosmic irony, as we panelists outnumbered our audience.

But I did enjoy my “Beware of Homophobes, Homophobes Beware” panel. Thought it produced some interesting discussion and addressed subject matter I haven’t encountered at a panel before. Snaps go to neo_prodigy for his thoughtful questions and to Joseph McDermott for giving us a launch point with his opening question.

   


Writing Stuff

Was thrilled to see that David Steffen included “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” on his “Best of Escape Pod” top-ten list over at Diabolical Plots—at the #1 spot no less!

The Day After, Conventions, and Linguistic Subconscious

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The morning after Day 40, and the atmosphere in my office is totally transformed. So peaceful, so quiet, so serene. ‘Course there’s hardly anyone here, but even so, it’s like a benevolent wind came and whisked away all the tension and anxiety and stress, leaving everyone blinking and grinning.

Although I am a little scared to open up my to-do list or bring up all the emails I’ve flagged as “needs response.”

In other news, I got my official guest approval letter from Dragon*Con the other day. I’ll again be wearing multiple hats at D*C this year. And OutlantaCon begins today. I’ll be at the opening ceremonies tonight. Hope to see folks there!

   


Writing Stuff

Haven’t had much time for writing these last couple days—a situation which is greatly alleviated now—so only managed something like 300 new words on “Rampion.” Did have an amusing instance of subconscious serendipity though.

I like for the names I give my characters to be somehow meaningful to their nature or their role in the story. I often spend far too long researching etymologies and the meaning of names to find just the right one, although I also sometimes just use whatever strikes my fancy at the time.

In my current WiP, I have a character who is obsessive, driven to assuage an unappeasable intellectual hunger, and I came to the point of “he needs a name now” while in the middle of some good writing flow. So I didn’t want to pause to do my usual name deliberation. Often in circumstances like that, I just stick in “XXXX” and go back later and do a Find–>Replace on the appropriate holder text. But this time, the name “Esur” popped into my head, and it felt right. So Esur he became.

This morning, while I was groping for a synonym for “hungry,” thesaurus.com offered me “esurient.”

“Wha—?” sez I.

My vocabulary is fairly respectable, at least so sayeth all the standardized tests I’ve taken in my life, but this was a new word for me. Hopped out to etymonline.com and discovered that it’s from the Latin esurientem, the present participle of esurire, “to be hungry.”

Huh.

My Latin is nonexistent (to my enduring regret, I listened to my mother and took Russian in high school instead of Latin). So was this a cosmic coincidence or some odd linguistic quirk of my subconscious? I’m going with quirk. It’s cooler.

Day 40: Sine Die, Callooh! Callay!

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It’s Day 40, the last day of the 2010 Georgia legislative session. O frabjous day! There were vast swaths of this year where I wasn’t sure it was ever going to come, that we were trapped in some malevolent, infinitely recursive loop of never-ending, perpetual session.

There’s still today to get through, of course, and it promises to be a looong day laden with uck. But that’s okay; I brought my bunny slippers. Tomorrow it will be over, and next week I go back to a 4-day workweek.

Happy sine die.

Story Progress and Brooding Over Word Counts and Story Lengths

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1.7K words on “Rampion.” Matthew had to all but drag me away from my laptop last night to go to bed.

Waist deep in the final scene, although there’s a chunk in the middle that still needs fleshing out. I’ve got a placeholder jammed in there which essentially reads: “Bad things happen here. Insert.”

This story is well over halfway done but not quite in the homestretch, and it’s just shy of 10K words. Doubt it’ll overflow from novelette into novella length—especially considering there’s vast swaths of utterly raw, unedited prose which are undoubtedly overwrought, overdone, and will need to be ruthlessly slashed, not to mention all the trimming I’ll surely want to do to streamline the pacing and plot. Even so, it’s still pinging my “Eeep! Too long, too long! Unmarketable!” alarm.

I know in my head that a story should be exactly as long as it needs to be, marketing constraints be damned. But it is an indisputable reality of short fiction that longer is harder to sell. There are fewer markets which accept stories greater than 5K words, and there’s a sense of a longer work having to be better than its shorter counterparts in order to earn its space.

It’s both frustrating and a shame. I’ve been finding myself enjoying novelette- and novella-length short fiction more these days, and I appear to be gravitating to writing them too. ‘Course, I’m still stymied by that hop from short form to novel, but I’ll get there eventually…probably.

Day 39 of Session 2010, Writing Progress, OutlantaCon update

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It’s Day 39, the penultimate day of the 2010 Georgia Legislative Session. Thank Jeebus it’s finally here.

This session has been light on the midnight oil and slammed-unto-death days, but it’s been the longest session evah, time-wise. I’d rather have more oily-slammed days and have session end in March than this extended twitch-when-will-it-be-over-twitch stress which permeates the office. Gah.

Clawing my way to the end of this week with broken and jagged fingernails, woo.


Writing Stuff

  • Got an update on my panel schedule from the OutlantaCon folks. I’ve also been slated to be on “Beware of Homophobes, Homophobes Beware” Sat. at 6PM: Would you boycott purchasing an anthology that had writers you like in it, just because one story was by a known, vehement homophobe? Would you refuse to submit to a publication that included homophobic writers?
  • And I’ve been invited to be a guest at Sci Fi Summer Con in June.

New Words:

  • 3K words on “Rampion” and it’s officially a novelette. Hmph. How did that happen?

Dragons: And the Stars Anthology and How to Train

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Thanks for all the anniversary congrats! fosteronfilm and I saw How to Train Your Dragon, which I giggled and squeed at and generally greatly enjoyed, and tried out a new (for us) Thai restaurant, Rama 5, which has a very nice red curry. I also tried, again, to teach Matthew how to use chopsticks, but I think we may be filing that endeavor into the same oubliette of fail as “teaching Matthew how to drive a stick shift.”

Also received my contrib. copy of The Dragon and the Stars, due out next week (May 4). It is “the first anthology of science fiction and fantasy written by ethnic Chinese living outside of China who make their homes in places as varied as Canada, the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines. 18 original stories meld the rich cultural heritage of China with the new traditions of the authors’ homes.” Shiny goodness. For more information, check out the anthology’s Facebook page.

Uppy-Downy-and-Generally-Slammed: State of the Eugie

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It’s been so uppy-downy-and-generally-slammed this last while that it feels like I haven’t had the time or energy for more than tweet-sized posts. Finally managed to clear some stuff off my plate (although my @#^!& plate still way overfloweth), so herein a catch-up of recent good, bad, and meh:

The good:
• Had an appointment with my brand new rheumatologist yesterday. I remain royally displeased with the State of Georgia for forcing me to switch health care providers, as my previous rheumatologist was the best doctor I have ever had. But so far, I have no complaints about the new one, who is someone the previous one recommended when I told him I was having to change insurers. She seems both nice and competent, which is a remarkably difficult combination to come upon in doctors for some reason.

However, I’d been stable for so long under my previous rheumatologist’s care that, as he put it, I’d “graduated” with him to only needing annual follow-ups. But this new one, because I’m a new patient with a slew of ailments, wants a follow-up in a month and then bimonthly visits after that. Sigh.

Also, since I haven’t had any lab work done in four months (before I was having labs done bimonthly to ensure that the drug I’m taking to keep my immune system from rising up and declaring war upon the rest of my human suit isn’t destroying my kidneys) and because I’m a new patient, she ordered a slew of bloodwork. TEN vials worth. Glad her phlebotomist was skilled, quick, and gentle, but still…owitch.

The bad:
• My car’s check engine light came on last Friday. It was overdue for various tune-ups and maintenance thingums, so this was the final indicator of “can’t put it off any longer.” New spark plugs, new timing belts, a new motor mount clip, a fuel induction thingy, and we’re down $1.5K. Because, of course, we weren’t hurting enough financially this year. Ouch. A lot.

The meh:
• The Atlanta Film Festival provided fosteronfilm with an all-access pass this year, great for not only seeing the films but also powwowing with the filmmakers—film festival networking and all. But, of course, I can’t go with him, not having either an all-access pass or the time to do so (see below re: late running legislative session), with the result that I haven’t and won’t be seeing very much of him this week. Came home for the first time in eight years to an utterly empty house yesterday. Far too quiet and utterly depressing.

   


Writing Stuff

• Finished my narration of “Honored Guest” by Ellen Kushner for PodCastle. Because the legislative session has run so late, my to-do list is scary-big, I’m behind on everything, and it was a last minute scramble to get this done in time. I would have liked to have done another editing pass on it, as I think my inflection and dynamic range in a few places could’ve used some fixing up, but I was already bumping up against the deadline.

It’s a lovely story. I hope I did it justice.

• Resumed work on the short story “Rampion” that I began in February. Obviously wasn’t able to finish it then. Added about 2K words, and it’s looking suspiciously like it may turn into a novelette.