Category Archives: Blog

Weekend not so productive

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Slept pretty crappy last night. Don’t think I would’ve gotten to sleep at all, except fosteronfilm saw I was having a bad night and came over to cuddle me and rub my back. I lubs my hubby. Of course, then I had disturbing dreams (that I can’t remember now–which is probably just as well), and I’ve got a sinus headache. Blah. Not a good start to the week.

But, so this post isn’t just me whining, here’s a picture of Hobkin, who does not suffer from insomnia:

   


Writing Stuff

This weekend wasn’t as productive, writing-wise, as I thought it was going to be. fosteronfilm was planning on attending a director’s workshop, and I figured I’d spend the time he was gone writing. But his workshop was canceled at the last minute, and I spent my time catching up on Tangent and other outstanding writing-related tasks . . . but not actually writing. Sigh.

On an up note, my home office isn’t a safety hazard anymore, just an obstacle course. But at least all the books, magazines, and loose paper are now in tidy stacks rather than strewn in a perilous mess on the floor.

I need to get back on the words-on-the-page horse, or err, hamster.

Published:
– “Beauty’s Folly” in issue #5 of OSC’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. I’m sharing a ToC with Peter S. Beagle!
– “The Center of the Universe” in issue #5 of Helix
– “The Life and Times of Penguin” (reprint) in Part III, the Summer 2007 issue of Farrago’s Wainscot.

Received:
– Note from Aberrant Dreams that “Living with a Shoulder Monster” will be published in July. Yay!
– Email from mroctober with the preliminary cover art for the Magic in the Mirrorstone anthology. It’s puuuurty:

Jeff VanderMeer’s website, Paul Jessup’s online novel, and seeking a Korean translation

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First off, a couple shout outs:
– Jeff VanderMeer has recently overhauled his website and blog: Ecstatic Days. It’s the place to go for folks interested in Jeff’s work.
– Paul Jessup is working on an online serial novel, Dust, with daily updates at his website. Dust is a “surrealistic, dark fantasy, about a girl searching for freedom in a graveyard town built on the ruins of war.” He’s also penning a writing journal about it. So for readers interested in the novel-writing process, it promises to be interesting.

Next, anyone reading this know Korean? Specifically written Korean?

In a nutshell, I need “Please do not remove any mugs, cups, or glasses from this desk” translated into Korean.

Outside a nutshell: Minor, ongoing saga at work. Continue reading →

Single Malt Who and fresh veggies

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The stars finally aligned and fosteronfilm and I were able to make it to another of sfeley‘s Single Malt Who shindigs last night. We had dinner at Pizza Café and then hung out at/with the Eleys (sfeley and ) and a bunch of other cool folks. Watched a Doctor Who episode and gabbed. And there was some scotch drinking (although not by me). Much fun and excellent company.

And britzkrieg very kindly dropped off some fresh veggies from her garden: peppers and cherry tomatoes and a zucchini! I lubs fresh vegetables. They always taste so much better than the stuff at the grocery store.

   


Writing Stuff

I got a note from Ellen Datlow letting contributors know that she and Terri Windling have bought a lot of long (10Kish-word) stories for their anthology and to please keep future submissions short.

Urk. “Fire Rabbit” clocks in at 9.3K works.

So, after much agonizing, I emailed her asking whether the length essentially knocked me out of a chance for an anthology slot, and, as I feared, the answer was “yes.” But she was kind enough to look at it anyway before confirming that it was indeed a no go. However, she very graciously said I could take another shot at it, which I am (ye verily) gladdened about.

So another write-a-thon is imminent. Except, currently, I’ve got little time to write during the day. The page proofs of the updated O.C.G.A. from the 2007 session came in, and until we finish editing all 45 volumes/supplements, there’s much less downtime at work.

My hamsters keep breeding, the lil buggers.

Published/Received:
– Contrib. copies of the newly published reprint of “The Wizard of Eternal Watch” in Best New Romantic Fantasy 2. Hurray! It’s a gorgeous book, although I was a little chagrined to see that the title was listed as “Wizard of the Eternal Watch” in the ToC. Fortunately, it’s correct for the story itself.

Elder God minions and Permanent Account

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So this morning I was awakened before my alarm by what sounded like minions of the Elder Gods in our backyard announcing the imminent destruction of the universe.

As it turns out, it was only a couple of cats–a yellow striped kitty who I’ve never seen before and a spotted tawny and cream plumpy who is a regular visitor–either mating or fighting. I’m not sure which activity I’d feel better about, actually. If mating, then they’re ferals making more ferals and increasing the homeless feline population. Whereas fighting cats often inflict grievous wounds upon each other, and I don’t want either of the Elder God minions/kitties to be hurt.

Zounds, but they were loud.

But, in a wondrous turnaround of my morning, since I was awake, I booted my laptop. Figured I would check my email since I wasn’t getting back to sleep. And I discovered that teflaime, in what can only be described as a munificent and bountiful act, has gifted me with a Permanent LiveJournal account! *Squee!*

I knew that the LJ folks were having another Permanent Account sale, and I’d pressed my nose wistfully against the window of the “buy” page, but didn’t dream I’d get one. Huge *smooches* to teflaime!

I foresee that this weekend will herald much new icon making . . .

   


Writing Stuff

This week, I had three “author’s notes” pieces to write:
– “Beauty’s Folly” in the forthcoming issue of OSC’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. The editor, Edmund Schubert, does an ongoing series of author essays on his blog. This, incidentally, is the only one I managed to finish.
– “Li T’ien and the Dragon Nian” for the forthcoming Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology.
– “Honor is a Game Mortals Play” in Heroes In Training for a promo that jimhines is doing.

While I enjoy writing these sorts of mini-essays and think they’re great publicity, I also never know what to say. I get the same deer-in-headlights feel when folks ask me “where do you get your inspiration?” at conventions. I keep thinking I ought to having something erudite and/or droll to say, and instead, I feel like what I come up with is along the lines of, “well, I was staring at the blank screen of my computer, and it occurred to me that I should write something . . . ”

On a tangential segue, once, Ann Crispin suggested to me (after I hemmed and stuttered out a dull and rambling summary of the novel I was working on at the time) that I come up with an “elevator pitch” for major projects. Sort of a one or two sentence synopsis that I could blurt out in a seemingly off-the-cuff manner should I get the unforeseen opportunity to pitch a project in person to a publisher/editor. That led me to speculate whether I ought to come up with a series of quippy sound byte answers to the most common writerly questions I get like the aforementioned “inspiration, where?” one. ‘Course, the problem there is that my mind fuzzes out when I’m in a spotlight speaking situation. I’d undoubtedly never remember them.

Yup. When it comes to speaking, I verily suck. Wish I could carry around one of those portable scrolling marquees with the multiple programmable phrases. I could just flash my pre-composed witty repartee in blinking red lights.

Published:
– “The Tanuki-Kettle” in the July issue of Cricket. I just love what the Cricket folks do with my stories. The illustrations are by Taeeun Yoo, and I squeed out loud when I saw how she’d imagined the tanuki-kettle:

New Words:
– 700 on my Writing for Young Readers column. Hoping to double-check my references and have that formatted and to ye olde editor this weekend.

The Fiction Machine: The Workshop and the hacks

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One of my writers group peeps forwarded a link to this article: “The Fiction Machine: The Workshop and the hacks.” In it, Sam Sacks purports that writing workshops and creative writing programs, due to fundamental flaws in how they’re structured and effected, are cranking out formulaic and lackluster writers:

“Large, impersonal, ever-shuffling workshops are led by writers of, on average, mediocre ability who throw only part of their energy into helping their students. The result of all this is as predictable as it was inevitable: Writing is taught by rote. Limited in time and care and needing to satisfy at once a wide range of very different would-be writers, professors must rely on the crutches of formula.”

Sacks is particularly dismissive of the Best New American Voices 2006 anthology as illustrative of this phenomenon, which I haven’t read. So I can’t comment as to whether I agree with his taste in short fiction or his evaluation of what constitutes literary merit. But he does make a compelling argument that a proliferation of these writing programs is, in effect, perpetuating a recipe for formulaic writing as well as a proclivity for formulaic and conservative perceptions on what constitutes “good” writing.

Obviously, when talking about any group of things, there’s generalization happening; it’s incontrovertible that some writing programs are better than others. And I’m inclined to believe that the basic craft of writing is something that can be taught and learned. But when the fundamental mechanics–grammar, punctuation, spelling–are disparaged as suitable subject matter and aren’t included in the curriculum, I kinda have to raise an eyebrow.

As a caveat, I haven’t attended a creative writing program or workshop so have no firsthand experience with them. And also, this article seems primarily focused on non-genre writing and doesn’t seem to take into account such workshops as Clarion and Odyssey, which are taught by luminaries in the field.

But I’ve often lamented that I never had more formal training in creative writing, wondering if perhaps the experience might have sparked something deeper, finer, or more insightful in my writing. Or even if it might have gotten me past some of the early foibles and flaws in my writing faster and with greater ease than my own blundering trial-and-error. I’ve even speculated in the past about going back and getting an MFA. But maybe it’s just as well. I also didn’t have to overcome academic indoctrination against risk taking and experimentation.

Photo shoot and setting down some hamsters

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The Volunteer Vixens photo shoot on Saturday went well. The swimsuit/bikini shot was done at a private residence. Our wonderful hostesses had a backyard pool/spa/waterfall–a gorgeous, decadently lush setting. Absolutely perfect. I did, however, get nailed by a couple bitey bugs within minutes of stepping outside and experienced a mild allergic reaction to an abrasion on my leg from the sand or rocks around the spa. Typical. The outdoors hates me. But, I am assured that the red welts can be PhotoShopped out.

After we broke for lunch, we met up for the cover shot, which was at the MMI warehouse. The theme, to match the charity, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation, was pink and black. Now pink is not a color found in my wardrobe, and I was at something of a loss–not wanting to buy a pink dress or somesuch that I’d never wear again. Thanks to my fellow Volunteer Vixen, Ariel, I had a fallback–a pink off-the-shoulder top, but I didn’t know what to wear with it. So on Friday, I went tearing around the house, trying to put together an outfit.

And, serendipity. I found a unitard I’d forgotten about–part of a costume for a modern dance show lo these many years ago when I was still in shape–shoved away in a drawer. The original costume was a white unitard dyed for the performances in streaks of (supposedly) purple and red, but the dye ended up mostly . . . pink. It’d also had dark, wing-like streamers of cloth sewed to shoulders, leg, and side which had been summarily removed at some point before I stored it away. But yes, there it was: a pink unitard.

La! So for the cover shot, I wore this:

   


Writing Stuff

I’ve come to the realization that I’m still juggling too many hamsters. The lil squeakers are beginning to get nippy when I drop ’em, and I feeling more and more guilty when I can’t keep them all in the air. Therefore, sadly and with reluctance, I’ve resigned from my position as The Town Drunk‘s assistant managing editor. I enjoyed seeing that side of the publishing biz and sampling its wares (slush diving!), but there are only a finite number of hours in my week, and all my hamsters are eating into my writing time.

I’m very grateful to britzkrieg for the opportunity and experience.

I’ve also gone on hiatus at Critters. I haven’t done a crit. there in ages, and I feel too guilty to post my stuff without giving back in return. Plus, I’ve been wanting to focus more on my DC2K and Critter Litter writers group.

Received:
– Contract from Tekno Books for the electronic rights for six more stories: “The Tiger Fortune Princess,” “The Storyteller’s Wife,” “Returning My Sister’s Face,” “The Bunny of Vengeance and the Bear of Death,” “The Wizard of Eternal Watch,” and “All in My Mind.” This is for the for the project they’re doing with Sony to put together an electronic short fiction website to promote Sony’s new e-reader device. Hurray.
– Email from editor Jetse de Vries letting me know that my last submission to Interzone made the first cut and he’s holding it for a second read. Crossing my fingers.
– Payment for “Body and Soul Art” from the ASIM Best of Horror anthology.
– Payment for “The Wizard of Eternal Watch” from the Best New Romantic Fantasy 2 anthology.

Published:
– “Body and Soul Art” in the Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine Best of Horror.

Photo shoot and Launch Pad squeeage

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Got a photo shoot this Saturday for the Dragon*Con breast cancer research charity calendar. We’ll be doing the group bikini/swimsuit shot and the cover shot. Have to admit to being rather anxious about the bikini one. Under most circumstances, I’m pretty comfy in front of a camera, but I’ve gained a few pounds (and a few years) since the last time I’ve shown quite so much skin on film, and I have to admit being somewhat insecure about it.

Yes, I’m vain. Glargh.

Okay, moving right along. Our marvelous photographer, Dean Ansley, has been scouting for locations for my August, “Pulp SF Space Girl,” shoot. Think we might be able to use the Fernbank Science Center/Planetarium. I hope so. From the sample shots he showed me, it looks like it’ll be perfect. So I got out my space girl costume last night and tried it on. I’m thinking I’d like to put a few stitches here and there to make the lay of it smoother in a couple places. And I wish I had silver go-go boots now; I think they’d look better than black ones. But then, when would I ever wear silver boots again?

And finally, the calendar now has a website, although there’s nothing on it currently except for a flash slide show of some of the promo shots:

   


Writing Stuff

The organizers of the Launch Pad workshop put together an email list so all the attendees can communicate and introduce each other beforehand. I was delighted to learn that Josepha Sherman, who I’ve met and been on panels with at Dragon*Con, will be one of my workshop-mates. I lubs Josepha and am looking forward to getting to hang with her in Wyoming. And I had a major fangirl moment when I discovered that Vonda N. McIntyre will also be a fellow Launchpadee. I’m debating whether I should bring my copy of Dreamsnake to Wyoming and ask her to sign it, or if that would just be too squeeing fangirl. Hee!

Received:
– 126-day SALE of “The Music Company” to Hub. I subbed the story to them when they were still a print ‘zine and still paying £25/1K words. With the greatly decreased pay, I waffled a bit before giving them the go ahead. But, I figure they did right by me with “Wanting to Want” in issue #1, not to mention it feels unnatural to turn down a sale.
– 3-day reprint SALE of my article, “When the Guidelines Say ‘7-12′”, to Absolute Write. I think it’ll be in their June 20 issue.
– Contract for “Li T’ien and the Dragon Nian” for the Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology. And a sneak peek of the cover art. It’s puuurty:

Published:
– My Absolute Write interview is now up.

New Words:
– 1400 on my July Writing for Young Readers column. Still working on the title, but it’s about writing humor, with highlights from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.


Club 100 for Writers: 19

Drained, strung out, and euphoric

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When a person’s passionate about what they do, it can make for some pretty obsessive behavior:
– My eating’s been on the scant side this last week. At my day job, I’ve been skipping lunch, opting instead to munch a handful of crackers out of the cache of edibles I keep in my desk so I won’t have to stop writing. And at home, I’ve been bolting my meals so I can get back to work.
– My sleep’s been patchy, and I haven’t particularly felt tired–although, admittedly, Adderall’s a great short-term sleep replacement. I went to bed well past midnight last night and woke before my alarm, eager to read fosteronfilm‘s feedback on my story and start on the first draft pass.
– I’ve been irritated with the driving portion of my commute, even though the roadways have been relatively uncongested (for Atlanta), because all I’ve wanted to do is get on the train as fast as I can so I could open up my laptop and get writing again. And I’ve generally been short-tempered and cranky at anything and everything that’s gotten in the way of me writing.

But finally, the story’s at first draft. I’m drained, strung out, and euphoric. But I think it might be decent . . . I hope. Next up, sending it out for critique.

   


Writing Stuff

Published:
– The Pseudopod podcast of “Wanting to Want” is up. Actually, it went up last week, and I didn’t realize until yesterday, when I got a note from the reader, Tabitha Smith, saying she liked the story. Still haven’t listened to it (see above re: obsessive writing), but I’m looking forward to doing so. Although I glanced at the comments and they’ve been less than glowing so far.

New Words/Editing:
– 900 words, a title change, a rewrite/editing pass, and “Fire Rabbit of the Clan of Bótù” is at first draft. I’d like to cut it down, since it’s at 9400 words, but at this point, I’m not sure what to cull. Hoping something bubbles up in critique.

Caught a rather embarrassing blunder that I’m glad I detected before anyone else did, and certainly before I submitted it. There are not two weeks between a first quarter moon and a full moon, only one–at least on this planet. Whoops. But, all fixed now.

And I’m waffling on which romanization style to use with regard to my characters’ names. I’m using the Hanyu Pinyin transliteration system, which is the standard of Mainland China, but it doesn’t normally use hyphens, instead stringing syllables together to make a single “word” and/or separating them with a space. However, I’m wondering if hyphenating would make it clearer that my characters’ names are chunks to be spoken as a unit, rather than a Western-style first and last name. However, hyphens are typically only used in Taiwanese names, which are romanized with Wade-Giles, not Pinyin. I’d like to make the hyphenating consistent with the romanization style, but Wade-Giles just bites.

Meh. I’m undoubtedly overthinking this. In my experience, native Chinese speakers don’t particularly care how their language is mangled into English. Hell, my mother spells my stepdad’s given name as a single word, and he spells it as two–which drives me nuts when I’m emailing them, as I don’t want to, y’know, commit the faux pas of spelling my stepdad’s name wrong. But if they think how his name is transliterated to English is too trifling a matter to come to a consensus on between them, it’s probably not something I need to wring my brain over for my story. As fosteronfilm pointed out when I tried to explain to him my dilemma, it’s not like anyone would notice (or care) either way.

Zokutou word meter
9,413 / 9,000
(104.6%)

Club 100 for Writers: 16

Writing writing writing.

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Added items to my “things to do” list on the train, and then I got frightened and closed the file. Yep, I’m totally doing a “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Guess that’s what I get for living in Atlanta; Scarlett O’Hara’s abysmal work ethic is rubbing off on me.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– Note from the editor of IGMS letting me know that the next issue with “Beauty’s Folly” will go up at the end of June. Also that, alas, while initially they were going to use my story as the cover one, in the interim, they got a story from Peter S. Beagle, and hence I have been bumped. I sort of guessed that when I saw they’d lined up a work by him for the next issue. While a bummer, frankly, I’m just thrilled to be sharing a ToC with the man.
– Galley proofs for “The Life and Times of Penguin” from Farrago’s Wainscot and invite to submit to their next issue.

New Words/Editing:
– 445 words on “Daughter of Fire in the Clan of Bó-tù” and an editing pass. The more I look at it, the more dubious I am about the title. Thinkthinkthink.

Got stymied on a research point so went to my Chinese subject matter experts, my mom and stepdad. And they were able to answer what an hour of Googling could not. Of course.

Estimating I’m 98% to zero draft now, and it’s looking pretty good on the word count front. I axed a superfluous character in the editing pass and I don’t think I’m in any danger of going over 9K. Might even be able to cull it down to under novelette length in the rewrite, since I’m pretty ruthless about making editing cuts.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
8,486 / 9,000
(94.3%)

Club 100 for Writers: 14

Pain and Productivity: A Writer’s Life

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Spend the weekend writing. Wrote for nine and eleven hours straight on Saturday and Sunday, respectively. By the time I shut my laptop yesterday, my arms were throbbing lengths of agony with half-numb typing stubs on the end. But I didn’t feel a thing until I stopped.

I can certainly feel them this morning. Ouch owie ow. Can’t take anything to dull the pain, of course. Anything over the counter won’t work, and in fact will likely make them worse, and I don’t have any tramadol with me. ‘Sides, if I took a tramadol, it would take all my willpower not to become a drooling zombie at my desk. Certainly couldn’t write.

   


Writing Stuff

I’ve shoved everything aside to work on the story (tentatively titled “Daughter of Fire in the Clan of Bó-tù”–which I think might be overlong) for the Datlow/Windling anthology, including all the outstanding Tangent and The Town Drunk items. My things-to-do list is beginning to look like it’s acquired sentience and has launched a campaign for world domination. And I’ve even stopped adding things to it that need to go on ’cause I haven’t wanted to interrupt the writing.

This could get scary. Um, I’ll think about that tomorrow . . .

New Words:
– 8041 on “Daughter of Fire in the Clan of Bó-tù” with almost 4K of those just from yesterday.

Mostly at zero draft. Maybe call it 96% to zero draft. ‘Course, I haven’t looked at huge chunks of the words I put down yesterday, yet. I suspect vasty huge gobs of them are crap and will need to be cleaned up. But by and large, the story’s on the page. Some of the dialogue is just sketched in, and a couple places I shoved in a “and this happens here” synopsis when the ideas and story were coming out faster than I could compose readable prose. And there are a couple big question mark placeholders when I had ad hoc research items I needed to look up but didn’t want to stop to do.

Again, I wonder if I’m simply better suited to be a short story writer. I hit flow. Boy, did I. How I conceptualize stories just seems better suited for shorter lengths.

Then again, this is another case of word count creep, turning out longer than I expected (and I still gotta flesh out the “and this happens here” patches–I’m a wee bit concerned that I might end up pushing the 10K max.), which suggests that maybe I might be working my way up to novel-length. ‘Course getting there via word count creep is going to get somewhat grisly once I hit the “novella” stage.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
8,041 / 9,000
(89.3%)

– 200 on the Fox Princess novel.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
15,333 / 40,000
(38.3%)

Club 100 for Writers: 13