Etched with Soma's Pen

Sale to Realms of Fantasy, and two contracts just received!

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:49:30 GMT

I've been sitting on this news for a bit now -- but I see that it's out!

Sultana Lena's Gift has been accepted for publication by Realms of Fantasy*, making it Doug's first slush survivor to be bought by the new RoF :)

Sultana Lena's Gift features some of the same characters as my story in Shimmer's Clockwork Jungle issue, The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar. It's set a little earlier, and based on an actual historical incident (except that the historical incident had a sad lack of solar-powered mechanical soldiers).

I am, of course, thrilled :)

And I just got both the RoF contract and my Strange Horizons contract for Charms, which is a truly lovely way to procrastinate on the diss. YAY!

ETA: Wow, thank you all so much! It's a lovely feeling to wander off into dissertation land and come back to so many kind thoughts. *feels warm fuzzies and shares them round*

* This does not mean RoF is open for subs -- they're not.
For context about where things are at -- I submitted this story in September, and it was on Shawna's desk when the magazine went down. While (as I understand it) Doug is totally done with the pre-closing slush backlog, Shawna's not; there are still later slush survivors on her desk.

People saying smart things.

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:29:44 GMT

I am still getting over the Brainfuzz of Doom, and it'll be a while before I approach smart again -- but you make up for it, people on the internets :)

In the comments to ellen_kushner 's timely sputtering about FAIL on urban fantasy in a Salon article, tithenai says: Also ... In what way is "urban fantasy" bounded by "the contemporary world"? Last I checked the world was not exclusively urban. I wouldn't call Peter Beagle's Tamsin urban fantasy, nor Terri Windling's The Wood Wife. Surely "urban fantasy" should mean not only fantasy in an urban setting, but fantasy that explicitly engages with that setting in a way that informs the story?

Also, her icon hits my academic geekery in the bestest way possible.

On writers and jealousy, which I am so very lucky to have mostly escaped so far, raecarson says: Unless you start actively looking for other reasons why someone is agented/published besides the smug, masturbatory “she got lucky” or “he eschewed artistic integrity in favor of commercial success” or “she has connections,” then guess what? You’ll never get better. You’re so invested in creating a reality in which you are a suffering, misunderstood genius that you will never face the truth and find success for yourself.

It's the flip side of the "OMG anyone I like reading is perfect and if you don't like them you're just jealous" coin; both are ways of avoiding the sort of critical thinking that actually helps us improve. And given that I'm especially prone to defensiveness when attacked by The Brainfuzz, it's a timely reminder :)

On objecting to the "unnatural", redbird says: Referring to things as "natural" says more about the speaker than about the things. Hemlock, strychnine, and arsenic are as natural as fresh fruit and solar energy.
redbird also has great thoughts about thinking about RaceFail, which I cannot possibly summarize and don't wanna quote out of context.

All these posts and comment threads are, I think, really good and useful thinkyjuice.

Addendum to the last post

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:08:52 GMT

Here are things so far that are worth mention but don't fit on my list :)

Featuring but not mainly about POC:
Francesca Lia Block, Weetzie Bat books
Michael de Larrabeiti, The Borrible trilogy
Tamora Pierce, The Circle of Magic quartet/The Circle Opens quartet/The Will of the Empress

Daja's Book and in the first quartet and Cold Fire in the second are about the black girl in particular
ETA: AndBriar's Book and Street Magic are about the kid I hadn't realized was multiracial.

Sherwood Smith's Wren books (there are subtle clues that Wren's biracial but it's not clear enough for the other list IMO)

Graphic novels:
Runaways

Not fantastical, but by POC about POC and awesome:
Sherman Alexie, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House, The Game of Silence
Naomi Hirahara, 1001 Cranes
RK Narayan, Swami and Friends

Some helpful blogs suggested to me, with suggester's comments (I haven't followed 'em yet):

American Indians in Children's Literature: She deals with NA children's books and discusses racist elements.
Young Adult Science Fiction: A great site for YA SF.
Stuff as dreams are made on: A really, really, really good site. Chris Howard is a prolific reviewer of all kinds of books, mostly spec-fic. And he does a lot of kid books, some POC.
TheHappyNappyBookseller: It's mostly kids and YA lit by/about POC, some other books too.

YA Fantasy book lists for characters of color

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:40:34 GMT

ETA: This list is still in progress but I absolutely need to get a dissertation chapter to my committee before updating.

I have been making 'em. Because a) I love YA, so I need these, b) The Carl Brandon Society has several wonderful lists but not a specific YA one yet, so this fills a gap (and is mostly made up of suggestions from the CBS listserv, as well as suggestions and resources from sdn .) and c) I'm co-modding a YA fantasy roundtable at MythCon and realized my knowledge of the sort of YA about POC is shameful. This is the first step towards fixing that.

It's doubtless woefully incomplete, but it's a work in progress.
And I haven't read nearly everything here, so please tell me what doesn't fit, or if I have anyone in the wrong category; I've done the best internetsearching I can, but I'm basically going off suggestions.
And I haven't liked everything I've read (a couple books have problem-notes). But it's a start!

ETA: There's so much stuff here that's worth noting even if it doesn't fit on these lists that I've started an addendum here.

YA fantasy novels by POC about POC that are more or less the same sort of POC they are
...AFAICT

Octavia Butler
~~Fledgling~~ (consensus: not YA)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The Conch Bearer
Louise Erdrich
The Birchbark House
The Game of Silence
Not fantasy, oops.
Eugie Foster
Halp, does Eugie Foster write novels? I'm finding lots of YA and kids' short fiction...
Jewelle Gomez
The Gilda Stories: a novel (vote: is it YA? Cause I don't know!)
Hiromo Goto
Half World (illustrated by Jillian Tamaki)
The Water of Possibility
Virginia Hamilton
The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl
Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed
Walter Mosley
47
Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
Pemba's Song
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (now Nnedi Okorafor)
Zahrah the windseeker
The Shadow Speaker
Long Juju Man (younger kids' book).
Helen Oyeyemi
The Icarus Girl
Cindy Pon
Silver Phoenix
Salman Rushdie
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Cynthia Leitich Smith
Tantalize
Eternal
Note: ~~Unlike her books for younger readers, these don't seem to feature POC or Native traditions or mythology~~. Apparently Eternal's heroine is Chinese-American. Anyone know if Tantalize belongs on this list?
Drew Hayden Taylor
The Night Wanderer

YA graphic novels by POC that are more or less the same sort of POC they are
...AFAICT, again.

Marguerite Aboutet & Clement Oubrerie
Aya
Note: I have no idea if this is fantasy or not. I need to get it.
Los Bros Hernandez (Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez)
Love and Rockets
Marjane Satrapi
Persepolis (1&2)
Note: not fantasy. But I'm keeping it in here anyway.
Shaun Tan
The Arrival
Gene Yang
American Born Chinese

YA Fantasy novels by 'non-POC' that are about POC of a different sort from them
...AFAICT, again
And I put "non-POC" in quotes 'cause I've yet to meet a colorless person.

Alma Alexander
Jin Shei trilogy
Lloyd Alexander
The Iron Ring (1997)
Note: Much as I love Lloyd Alexander, I find this one problematic: exoticizing, projecting values
MT Anderson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party
Susan Cooper
The Greey Boy
Diane Duane
So you want to be a wizard
Deep Wizardry
High Wizardry
A Wizard Abroad (Problematic. Seriously cliched American's take on Ireland, iirc).
Note: There are more books in this series.
Nancy Farmer
The ear, the eye and the arm
A girl named disaster
House of the Scorpion
Alison Goodman
The Two Pearls of Wisdom
(Published as Dragoneye Reborn (US) and Rise of the Dragoneye (UK))
Lian Hearn
Across the Nightingale Floor
Grass For His Pillow
The Harsh Cry of the Heron
Diana Wynne Jones
Castle in the Air
Justine Larbalestier
Magic or Madness
Ursule Le Guin
- The Earthsea sequence:
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
Tehanu
The Other Wind
- Annals of the Western Shore:
Gifts
Voices
Powers
China Mieville
Un Lun Dun
Andre Norton
Lavender-green Magic
Tamora Pierce
Trickster's Choice
Trickster's Queen
Note: This duology is perhaps problematic. Approaches the "white kid comes in to solve the dark peoples' problems" trope. IMO subverts rather than hits this, or perhaps sort of does both (though the books are still really about the white kid) but YMMV.
Terry Pratchett
Nation
Sherwood Smith
A Posse of Princesses
Suzanne Fisher Staples
Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind
Shiva's Fire
Note: Problematic. Girls with oddly westernized values have to deal with their Misogynistic Cultures. Even where I agree with the author, it still reads as cultural imperialism.
Susan Vaught
Stormwitch
Carole Wilkinson
The Dragon Keeper

Thoughts? Additions? Fixes? Cookies?

Galleys!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:14:06 GMT

I'm currently reading over the galleys for Pishaach. Excitement!

It looks like part of a book. With the fonts and, and... yes, yes, I know it is part of a book, but this is still strange and new and wonderful.

Of course, the excitement and delight are tinged with writerly neurosis. As follows:

1) I'm finding absolutely nothing wrong with this copy, and while I know that just means it's a lovely clean galley (set of galleys? I don't even know the syntax of galleys, I'm so new to them), I still wish I had found a missing period or something. Because that would mean I wasn't missing errors.

Well... actually, no it wouldn't, but it would comfort my neuroses. Because of course if I can't find anything wrong I must be missing something!

ETA: Found a couple of typos! I feel much better now.

2) I keep wanting to fiddle with my phrasing, because a) I wrote this story in late '06 and edited it in late '07, and have grown as a writer since, and b) nothing drives me quite as crazy as the notion that I cannot change it any more. Especially given the amazing and somewhat daunting company I'll be in in this anthology.

eep!
But mostly --

A question about comics

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:43:25 GMT

So, I wasn't going to do this. I was going to keep my fiction-life and my academic-life separate. Oh well, that lasted well into my... first diss chapter.

Heh.

Here's the thing -- I could use opinions, especially from people who read various types of comics. Is it common to draw main characters somewhat more schematically and less realistically, with simpler lines, than secondary characters? I think very few comics do it quite to the extent of the delightful Shi Long Pang, or the differently delightful Bone, but I have this intuition that I've seen it a fair amount. Even though I'm not currently finding many examples. ETA: scriitor points out that I missed Tintin. Not sure how I did that, except maybe that I mistakenly remembered everyone being as roundheaded as him.
So, thoughts?

And apropos of not much else (except the fact that I've been rereading it for examples), I'd like to point people at Dicebox. The art starts good and gets wonderful, the characters are complex and interesting, and it's SF that gets both that sense of awe-inspiring scope and that sense of worlds being lived in, where stuff breaks down, where there are inequities people get mad about and there's dirty work to be done. And enough Neat Stuff that for all its problems, this is a future I'd like to live in (and maybe could exist in; there are plenty of people of various ethnicities in these worlds).

Mythcon

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:14:55 GMT

Goodness, Mythcon is like 2 weeks from now.
It's the first con this year my lungs may actually let me make it to. Hopefully! I'm supposed to be co-moderating the YA fantasy roundtable, which is I think on Sat. morning, but should check.

Anyone I'm not expecting to see planning to be there?
I'm currently expecting to see sartorias , elsmi , kirizal , voidmonster , and whswhs .
And of course buddhistmippo.

Am I missing anyone? Am I going to be happily surprised by anyone?

Different brains

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:05:52 GMT

Well, it's June... *waves*
Been sick all month, and just getting better enough to work on the dissertation again.

But I've been noticing a pattern again and wonder if other people have it too -- namely that I seem to have four different brains.

ETA: Just in case this is unclear, I'm not going for any sort of cogent analysis, just babbling about how it feels. What's actually going on is doubtless a lot more complex than I could possibly access consciously, and not nearly so structured, but I really do seem to function in entirely differnt modes.

1) The editor/academic brain.
These two seem to be one and the same, because I have been entirely unable to edit the two story drafts I have languishing while I'm working on the dissertation. Even though I'm not editing the diss, I'm writing the first draft. This brain is that -- ability to think precisely, rather than go with what feels right just now, and think about how the words will affect the reader while I write.

The editor/academic brain dies at the first sign of fuzziness. If I'm not breathing pretty well, it's just gone. This is probably why I spent four years making no diss progress.

2) The prose-writer brain
This one can handle a little bit of fuzz. I don't have to be thinking incisively to imagine a narrative and immerse myself in a character's point of view, and I seem to plot by imagining. But once I'm immersed in a narrative it's pretty unpleasant to pull out of it and think about the dissertation.

3) The poetry-writer brain
This one seems to thrive on brainfuzz. Lines of poetry come into my head when I'm trying to fall asleep or not wanting to wake up, or when I'm far too out of it even to read. That's when I get free-associative, I guess, and the things that have been bothering me that I've been ignoring bubble up. Though they also turn up when I'm in the shower -- perhaps it's just that the poetry requires not being distracted by a zillion different thoughts?

Of course editing the poetry or the prose require editor brain, which has been completely taken up with discussing iconicity and metaphor in Comics as compared to language. So I'm feeling pretty unproductive as a writer just now. But when I get back to the novel, my main MC gets to threaten my female MC with a crosssbow, so that will be fun :)

4) The artist brain
This one comes on without warning -- words stop making sense and all I want to do is draw, or carve candles, or make something. And it's also all I'm good for for a while. It's a little disorienting, the extent to which I stop being a language-centered person, but I'm pretty confident at this point that the words will come back.

Anyone else have something like this, or am I just overthinking this?

Found a time machine, and... when am I?

Sat, 23 May 2009 03:36:10 GMT

Er, I mean... hi?

I've been off in tendonitis/family crisis/ear infection land. All of which is... well, getting better, I think. And hope.

However, I've also been making dissertation progress, which is a Precious And Important Thing. That's basically been taking all my wrists can handle, so I haven't been hopping on lj (though I bet I'm missing awesome bittercon conversations).

I figure I'll be back in June, maybe? But I miss my lj friends, so wanted to pop on to say a brief hi and, y'know, mention that I'm Not Dead Yet.

And I got a wonderful call-out from Beth Wodzinski of Shimmer, so I also wanted to squee a bit :)

Happy Lutin's Birthday!

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:06:11 GMT

...Er, and Beltane.

Specially for lutin, here is a sonnet + a bit of head-explodiness for cognitive linguists. Because it's a copy of a sonnet I wrote, but it is not the sonnet I wrote. This confuses matters enough that I wasn't going to share it -- but given that this seems to glance off fictive interaction stuff, in that the space the written words (the form) are taken to be in determines the nature of the (semantic) beast, it seemed appropriate for the lutin-elf.

If I write a sonnet in the sand,
unedited, just scribbled part by part,
created by the rhythm of my hand,
then shall we wonder if it may be art?
What gives it sense to justify the form
When every line is written for the rhyme?
Will meaning come emergent when the storm
described this way is but the storm of time?
And if true art lives on, then this is not
If art is great -- again, my words are small
A work of moments etched upon a spot
that, in some hours, will not be here at all.

Like mortals, then, my mortal work abides
for moments, to be lost beneath the tides.

---

Also, I seem to have seen the sun up. Hi, Sun. Very seasonal of you.
Good night.

I am become spam, destroyer of worlds

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:07:32 GMT

From The Grin Without A Cat:

But what made this doubly-interesting was when-- on a whim-- I googled the first line of the first story and what came out was Eugene Fisher's Husbandry in Strange Horizons. The others were Nira and I by Shweta Narayan, The Spider in You by Sean E. Markey, and Turning the Apples by Tina Connolly. A-ha! The plot thickens!

The web administrator of Strange Horizons-- after I notified them-- had it right: that's embarrassing, finding your work now part of a spreading spam-mail worldwide. But I figured, it's a shame the spammers didn't include the writers' names: that's one hell of an advertising trick for the writers, don't you think?

I'm in good company, anyway... O.o

Happy International pixel-stained technopeasant wretch day!

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:10:15 GMT

...And happy birthday naomikritzer :)

I am still encountering WristFail, and also KeyboardFail; fixing the lattter ought to help the former, and a new keyboard is in the mail.
Till then. I'll just share my bit of technopeasantry.

He says

His eyes follow curling trails of incense
and red silk creases
over my breast
You're what a gently nurtured wife should be
he says

I shred spiced peacock wing
a morsel a time into
his mouth.
Not like those other girls
he says from my lap
Messing around with that flute player.
He feels me tense.
I know, he says
It disgusts.

He's exotic, of course.
Skin dark as twilight
sandalwood scent

(rich yellow draped silk
eyes gleaming mischief)

And that music.
And you girls like the exotic.
You don't understand
Don't know right
he says. That's why you need husbands.

I smile down at him.
Pomegranate seeds follow peacock wing
One at a time between his lips
red as virgin blood.
Until he sleeps, finally
Sated.
I wrap him in red silk

gather peacock feathers
pick the brightest shivering blue
shred its ragged barbs
slice the shaft
strip it down
for a crown of gold on black hair

(over dark skin draped with sandalwood silk)

And that music.

And I wait in silence for my flute player
my Shyaam
Who carried a mountain
danced on a serpent
and does not say
I am gently nurtured
And do not understand.

re: recent fail

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:39:08 GMT

I'd really like AmazonWTF to be a glitch and not bigotry, as I don't want to have to stop using 'em altogether.

And, Two Men For Marriage looks like political speech of the best sort.

I'd say more but WristFail makes this much hard enough *sigh*

April 10th was

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 06:20:19 GMT

John M. Ford's birthday.
And unlike many people on my f-list, I didn't know him. So this is in remembrance of... I don't know. What I knew, who I didn't know.

Happy birthday, Dr. Mike, and thank you. I blame you for the sonnets. This one isn't done, but I'm out of time for now.

I was the kind to pen my stories in --
stay small and risk no (glorious) mistake
He taught me that it matters what we make;
a fine-honed tale lives underneath the skin

Examples pull me harder than advice;
his army-dragons, crashing into war
upset my balance, rattled wide the door
that trapped the bits of me too big for 'nice'.

He helped me stumble out from where I hid
(would he have granted such a major debt?)
And dammit, he was right about regret --
he never knew he taught me what he did

In death, he taught me never just to say,
"I'm tired; I'll meet him on a better day."

Note: Still no wrists. This is my typing quota for the nonce. Going over quota, the 9th was the nephew's 1st birthday. He's walking! Oh the cute.

Very quick heads-up

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:31:15 GMT

I have left a lot of convrstions dngling, sorry. Major bad tendontis flare. Hd to stop typing within 5 mins ch tim I've tried in the last 24 hours. Time for a break.

What that last post was about...

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:09:59 GMT

So yes, technically gray is the American spelling and grey is the British spelling and I have always thought there was no other difference between 'em, and I always use "grey" because it's one of the UK spellings I haven't lost.

There's a line in Kelly Link's The Specialist's Hat that goes:

Mr. Coeslak can tell the twins apart, even if their father can't; Claire's eyes are grey, like a cat's fur, he says, but Samantha's are gray, like the ocean when it has been raining.

And my reaction when I read it was "...Whatever." Honestly I thought it was a bit lit-wanky, though iirc, L'engle's similar line made me laugh. But then, I had a lot of fun reading L'engle, and did not enjoy The Specialist's Hat (probably cause I dislike being creeped out enough that it is Just Not My Thing).

So yesterday on Absolute Write, James MacDonald made a similar distinction, which made me both grin and remember Kelly's line. Which, this time round,made me grin too. Partly because they made the same distinction (gray is darker/colder) and partly because if they'd done it the other way, it'd have seemed viscerally wrong to me. (To me, ABC are gray, DEF are grey, E's the worst category member. But I'd call them grey, light cool grey, (dark) cool grey, light warm grey, warm grey, light grey. Right now A looks a bit warm and F a bit cool, but I think that's just in contrast to what they're next to.)

So I asked some folks on chat and they all (three) had the opposite intuition from me (and from Jim and Kelly), and justified it with the exact same arguments I'd have used, only flipped around. So I got curious :)

Why do so many of us have strong intuitions on this matter, even though the words are pronounced identically and strongly associated with different speech communities? If we mostly had my intuition, it might be a secondary sound symbolism effect (a is generally a lower vowel than e, so it might be associated with dark/cold colors) -- but no. We split, if not evenly, then (I think from a brief look) at least evenly enough to defy a simple explanation. Especially since a high proportion of people do have an intuition.

Obviously this is a terrible excuse for a study, methodologically, but I shall likely compile the data in the next day or two and see if any pattern emerges. So far I don't see one beyond what intrigued me in the first place, but I'm still intrigued, and do now see why Kelly's line works :)

Follow-up questions should obviously include "Which spelling is standard where you live/where you grew up" and "Did this question bring to mind a story where that distinction is made (and did that pattern with your intuition)"

~~Could I bother people to put spoilery responses behind a cut too? If responses can do that...~~
Silly Shweta, they can't. Er. So! people shouldn't answer that after reading comments here either :)

Important question.

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:32:04 GMT

ETA: Better question, thanks to early comments:

Grey or Gray?

(ETA again: I'd also love to know if you had a definite opinion on the matter before I asked.)

Original question:
~~Which is darker, gray or grey?~~

In the name of the Rev. Martin Luther King...

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:17:27 GMT

Sing.

I love you.

Yes, you :)
And check out deepad's wonderful wonderful poem here.

I draw sort of slowly...

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:33:23 GMT

And here's an example of why.

It's part of the picture I'm drawing to accompany scriitor's Clockwork Jungle story (which is an excellent fun story, which I specifically asked to illustrate and should've finished by now)

The part, specifically, is like the top inch or so. Of the background, which shall be faded out in the final version.

But it's fun!

*facepalm*

Note for artists: perspective is deliberately a bit wonky. There's a reason for it.

My work is being translated!

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:32:24 GMT

GÜD Magazine has posted about several exciting new innovations coming up in issue 4,including a translation of my story, Daya and Dharma. There's a sample paragraph at that link.

I'm so thrilled! The translation has a lyrical beauty that I never thought to see. Do go check it out and -- since I'm sure you'll agree with me -- support GÜD's willingness to experiment!

Can we say, Earthsea TV series all over again?

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:05:41 GMT

hanks to sartorias for the heads-up --

So probably almost everyone knows this before me, but if anyone still doesn't, the Emmy-winning animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender came up during the RaceFail debates as an example of an actual multicultural world with multicultural cast. There's a movie being made.

How bad is the casting? Well! Visuals here.

Summary:

The aang_aint_white community is a hub, apparently and has suggestions for what one can do. As well as that amazing photo essay.

In other news (but not really, since this sort of shit is exactly why PoC need to be more visible in literature & entertainment in general) my candle auctions for con_or_bust end in ~~2 hours~~ 26 hours (got the date wrong!). Gears is at $27, and Literature Dragon is only at $22. Plenty of other auctions are ending within the next day. Do go peek!

What pixies do to painters

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:50:50 GMT

This is elisem's fault.
And the piece isn't even finished, apparently (though it looks finished to me)! Oh well :)

What pixies do to painters?
Well, it's worse than you'd surmise --
first we switch around the labels
on your precious, store-bought dyes

So your Coeruleum Blue turns into
powdered scale of snake,
and we substitute some fairy dust
for dull old Madder Lake.

We might joggle your poor elbow
when you want a simple line,
so your steady, careful fence comes out
as straight as tangled twine

Or we may bespell your brushes
so they spiral, swoop, and slink
and you wonder in the morning
what was in your evening drink.

And we shift the world around you,
little changes, seldom cruel;
but the rock you thought to paint
could be a marbled agate jewel

So we turn your earnest labor
to a weird, unsettled art --
'cause...

What pixies do to critics?
that's the really funny part.

Candle nudge

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:51:37 GMT

My two candle auctions at con_or_bust are ending in a couple days, and each has only one bid.

You want pretty candles, don't you? *smileblink*

Five cool things and a silly one make a post full! of exclamation marks

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:43:26 GMT

1) Shimmer issue 10 is out! And available as both an awsome print book and a free download! It contains my story, One for Sorrow. Here's what I can currently say about the issue: final proofreading took me a long time, though I only changed one comma -- 'cause I couldn't stop reading the other stories.

So this is so very shiny.

ETA: The issue also has a long interview with Cory Doctorow, which makes it even more apropos that it's available for free!

2) I just did final proofreads of Daya and Dharma, which will be in GUD Issue four. And! grayrose76 has a wonderful poem in Issue 4, and kaolinfire put up a teaser of Issue 4's art that is to drool over -- and if you look up at the top you'll see a sheep by Ursula Vernon. While this is only one of many things I love in the teaser, I have to jump up and down about it because I am a total Ursula fangirl and OMG I'm going to be table of contents buddies with her!

I think I'm forgetting some of the awesome around GUD Issue 4, because there is just so much of it.

3) Speaking of of Ursula Vernon, her comic, Digger, which claims to be made out of pixels but in fact is made out of pure awesome, is now available for free in its entirety! First page is here. You will see why I like it a whole lot right from page 1, but page 5 is where you'll start to see why I adore it.

I have a lot of beloved webcomics, but Digger is one of my Top Five, along with
- Girl Genius, in which "Sparks flying" would mean... something quite different. Possibly related to the falling machine.
- Gunnerkrigg Court, which gets Coyote right. (And where my icon comes from, so you know it's adorable).
- Skin Horse (admittedly, this should really read "whatever is cooking in Shaennon Garrity's insane and delightful mind just now", but the current answer is Skin Horse)
- xkcd, which is, well, um... it's xkcd.

4) I signed and mailed (well, okay, elsmi mailed) my contract for Wiscon Chronicles vol 3 to L. Timmel Duchamp yesterday. I wrote a response to her GoH speech at last year's Wiscon -- a speech that blew my mind open and rearranged it and made so many things make sense -- and I'm so very glad I got to think and talk about why it meant so much to me. And! My responses go with shvetufae's and grayrose76's! So very many thanks to badgerbag for making this (or at least my little part of it, I am clueless about the rest) happen.

5) I now have:
- Zahrah the Windseeker
- Lifelode
- My very first copy of Star*Line (which contains a poem by grayrose76!), since I finally got my act together and joined SFPA :)
- Two wonderful manuscripts which I'm not sure I get to be specific about, though both make me go squeee!
- and a brain that is very nearly back to being able to comprehend long-form narrative I'm not writing.

6) And the silly one -- I got asked where I get my ideas today. Hee! Trying not to sputter made me feel like a real writer.

In case you, like me, have been living under a rock (short story rec)

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:04:22 GMT

I just read Pahwakhe by Gord Sellar (eclexys), and wow. Must have missed it when I was sick from Jan-May last year, and lost track of reading. Anyway! I want to call it beautiful, wondrous, magical -- but adjectives don't do it justice. I willnote how rare it is for me to find an unsympathetic narrator compelling, but this one is so oblivious to his own selfishness (and the author so clearly isn't!) that I follow him with appalled fascination:

The chiefs of the other villages came to my longhouse one by one, bearing gifts for her hand. They wanted me to marry her to one of their sons. But I kept her for myself. You know how a father enjoys his girls when they bring him food, and talk to him, and listen to him tell the old stories.

And! The specific Other in this story gives me extra-special delight -- that of seeing someone do beautifully what one has sort of been playing with oneself. So I am totally loving this story and looking forward to chasing down more of Gord's work.

And -- many thanks to oldcharliebrown, who pointed it out (because Gord is nominated for this year's Campbell Award!) and thus gave me much joy.