Kickin'
It's October, which means in the stores the mechanical lawn Santas are glaring impatiently at the Halloween decorations, waiting for them to clear the hell out so that we can all commence making with the hardcore Yule. It also means year-end fiction reviews are starting to come in. Rich Horton picks "The Osteomancer's Son" as one of his favorite short stories published by Asimov's in 2006. And in his rundown of favorite 2005 stories, Science Fiction Book Club senior editor Andrew Wheeler makes nice mention of "Gillian Underground", from Polyphony 5, the collaboration I did with Ol' Mike Jasper and Tim Pratt. I do like getting some love, and I ain't much shy about it.
***
I played hooky yesterday in the sense that I didn't work on real-work work. No chipping away at the tottering stack of grading, no contract work (which is a bit sucky, because I would have worked on it had they given me any). Instead, I gave myself two trips to the coffee joint and wrote. I don't think I wrote anything very good, and I didn't tote up my word count, and I don't think it's a significant number, but it's more than I've written in a long time. It felt very, very good. I can't ignore my grading today, and I'm still hoping to get some stuff for the contract job (because if they don't start coming through with stuff, I'll feel obligated to, like, look for a different paying gig, on account of me liking the feeling of having money to put in accounts), and I need to at least walk through my Kung Fu forms and techniques (I'm a walking disaster with nunchuks still) ... but days like yesterday are so good for the craftman's soul. I'm lucky to get those.
***
While reading about new phorusrhacid fossil finds (the phorusrhacid being a 10-foot-tall scary motherfucking terror bird that could possibly run up to 60 miles per hour, had a head the size of a horse's, and could swallow medium-sized dogs), I came across this older article suggesting they used Kung Fu kicks to shatter their prey's bones and get at the marrow.
I'm doing a pre-test for brown belt tomorrow (the actual test is in November), and I'll be thinking about phorusrahacid when I do my bird form, believe you me.
***
I played hooky yesterday in the sense that I didn't work on real-work work. No chipping away at the tottering stack of grading, no contract work (which is a bit sucky, because I would have worked on it had they given me any). Instead, I gave myself two trips to the coffee joint and wrote. I don't think I wrote anything very good, and I didn't tote up my word count, and I don't think it's a significant number, but it's more than I've written in a long time. It felt very, very good. I can't ignore my grading today, and I'm still hoping to get some stuff for the contract job (because if they don't start coming through with stuff, I'll feel obligated to, like, look for a different paying gig, on account of me liking the feeling of having money to put in accounts), and I need to at least walk through my Kung Fu forms and techniques (I'm a walking disaster with nunchuks still) ... but days like yesterday are so good for the craftman's soul. I'm lucky to get those.
***
While reading about new phorusrhacid fossil finds (the phorusrhacid being a 10-foot-tall scary motherfucking terror bird that could possibly run up to 60 miles per hour, had a head the size of a horse's, and could swallow medium-sized dogs), I came across this older article suggesting they used Kung Fu kicks to shatter their prey's bones and get at the marrow.
I'm doing a pre-test for brown belt tomorrow (the actual test is in November), and I'll be thinking about phorusrahacid when I do my bird form, believe you me.
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