Kee-ouch!

Finishing up Day Job stuff before heading out of town for the long weekend (Vancouver!), so to my fellow Americans, please don't burn the whole country to a crisp with your sparklers and Piccolo Petes.

***

Started using nunchuks in class last night. I am so going to knock my own teeth out.

One of the black belts showed me a manuever in which you hop about awkwardly and hold your toe as though it were injured, and then unleash the deadly fury on your unsuspecting opponent. I need to learn that one. I think I'd have much opportunity to use it.

***

Friday's doodle started out as an eye and ended up as a fish. I must follow the inexorable exhortations of my soul.

Cool shot

From yesterday's Mentos/Diet Coke experiment, just because I think it's pretty:


(photo credit: William Atwood)

Sausage toe

Well, last night in Kung Fu I did in another toe. Big toe, right foot this time, during warm-up kicks when I did an outside-smash kick and smashed my toe right into the wall.

It's not my fault! The school is small! My legs are long!

It felt okay enough for me to finish out the class, but experience tells me that it's possible to get along on a broken toe for awhile before it swells up and stiffens and gets sore, which is how it feels today.

I'm sure it's not broken this time, though. And to make absolutely sure it's not broken, I will not be going to the doctor and getting an x-ray. Because if nobody tells me it's broken, it's not broken.

I'm giving my toe 22 hours to feel better, because that's how long I've got till my next class.

You hear that toe? Don't piss me off!

I will never again doubt the internet

A 2-liter of Diet Coke and a roll of Mentos. I only managed to drop in three of the Mentos before I ran out of time.






(Photo credit: William Atwood)

There's aspartame in my hair.

Reading, good

At Blue Heaven, I told Sarah Prineas that I'd never read any of the Miles Vorkosigan books (actually, had never read any Lois McMaster Bujold), and Sarah looked at me as though I'd just sprouted a second head, and it was wearing a dorky hat. But she kindly sent me Young Miles, an omnibus containing two Vorkosigan novels and a novella, and I just finished the first of the novels, Warrior's Apprentice. And Sarah was right -- Miles is a fantastic character. Physically stunted, smart, and hyperactive, he's an enormously fun and engaging protagonist who protags his ass off through this book. Absolutely perfect summer reading.

I also recently read Jenn Reese's chapbook from Tropism Press, Tales of the Chinese Zodiac. I was a fan of these stories when they appeared in Strange Horizons, and the new framing material and two new tales are very nice additions.

And also from Tropism Press, I've been going through the fiction in the latest issue of the fine zine Flytrap. I was particularly fond of Barth Anderson's and Meghan McCarron's stories, but every piece in this issue features a strong, unique voice. These are stories that could only be written in the way they're written by the writers who wrote them.

And finally, Tim and Heather, the keepers of Tropism, continue to send me a few flash pieces per day as we work on our short-short collab, which is turning my email in-box into my favorite fiction venue of the moment.

Reading. Good.

And here's a bird I doodled:

Death by jacket

I seem to be capable of only small yet satisfying creative endeavors this week. I've written three flash pieces over the course of the last three days, which ain't much, but dang it all, it's fun. We're still not sure exactly what we're going to do with them once they're all done, but with some creativity, it is possible to find good homes for flash, either by linking them up and selling them as a single piece, or finding cool markets like Escape Pod that take flash-length stuff. And even if some of them never get sold, they're still ridiculously fun to write, and ridiculous fun is what it's all about.

***

I am in wardrobe denial. I am dressed today as though it were October, in one of my favorite long-sleeved tees with a t-shirt underneath. This happens to me every summer, but usually not until August or September. It probably has something to do with the grey, monsoony skies. Come mid-July and I'm probably going to be wearing a jacket. I am going to die because I couldn't not wear a jacket. That's pretty stupid. Arizona summers are pretty stupid.

***

Tuesday's doodle looks pretty wired:

Seven, Shelter, Meta

Tagged for a meme by Randy: Seven songs you're currently enjoying.

As is my usual memey practice, I participate while tagging not just the number indicated by the tagger, but rather by tagging everyone who might like to be tagged, all at once.

1. "Express Yourself" by Charles Wright - Funky-ass bass riff that can't be beat. It'll put a groove in your duodenum.

2. "Express Yourself" by N.W.A. - Much the same, only with Dr. Dre. "Cuz some don't agree with how I do this/I get straight, meditate like a Buddhist."

3. "Bus to Beelzebub" by Soul Coughing - Kirsten gave me this in a Soul Coughing compilation, and I found it at work on some guy's network-shared iTunes playlist. I love network-shared iTunes playlists. Ultimately, I think most buses take us to Beelzebub.

4. "Spoon" by Dave Matthews, Live at the 10 Spot - One guy, one acoustic guitar, one weird song.

5. "In Hiding" by Pearl Jam - Just one of those songs that makes me nod my head rhythmically in rock and roll fashion.

6. "One Vision" by Queen - Big arena cheese. Love it.

7. "Soul Kitchen" by X - I was never part of the 80's L.A. punk scene, but this song makes me feel as though I were.

***

I've developed feelings for First Person Shooter, the creepy guy who's always at the coffee joint, wearing camouflage and playing shoot 'em up games on his laptop. I think he actually might live in his pick-up, and he's been using the coffee joint to escape from life in a hot metal box baking in a parking lot. Doesn't matter if I'm here in the morning, at closing, weekday or weekend, he's always there, same corner table, looking like he hasn't moved in weeks. At least he used to be.

The other night a customer walks up to him and says, "You're always here. You never go home."

Shooter laughs nervously and says, "No, not really."

"Yeah," intrusive customer insists. "You're here all the time. You live here."

Shooter laughs, painfully, reiterates that he does actually leave, doesn't really spend all that much time here. But the instrusive customer won't leave him alone, just keeps drilling him, despite Shooter's squirming.

And I haven't seen Shooter since. Whatever his circumstances, instrusive customer made them more uncomfortable, I think.

I hope Shooter's found another coffee joint where give him water and let him sit at the same table for sixteen hours, nursing a decaf.

***

You can skip the following if you're not interested in meta blog thinking.

With the last couple of entries, I've been mirroring Writing and Snacks at my LiveJournal to save LJ users the trouble of clicking over. But, man, I really don't like LiveJournal all that much, despite cool features like friends lists and all that. Over at writingandsnacks.com, I've got all the links to my Flickr stuff and my bibliography and online stories and interviews and stuff, and it's prettier there, I think. But more and more, it seems a bit futile to try to control how and where readers make contact with your content. RSS means that people will read your content in the manner of their choosing, not yours, and fighting against that may be like trying to hold back the ocean with a spork.

So, for now, I'll be posting full entries at both places. But for the record, writingandsnacks seems like home to me, and the LJ is ... something other.

Make way for dinosaur overlords

We saw "An Inconvenient Truth" yesterday, because sometimes, as a member of the choir, it's nice to be preached to. Does Al Gore make a convincing argument that our greenhouse gas emissions are heating Earth faster than a Swanson's salsbury steak dinner? You bet. Just peel back foil over tater tots. The most striking statistic he cites is that, out of a random sample of over 900 peer-reviewed science journals, the number that express doubt that human activity is contributing to global warming is ... zero. And the number of articles in the popular press that express doubt about human activity contributing to global warming? 52%.

While I appreciate media's obligation to present multiple sides of the issues covered, there seems to be a basic truth that's getting lost in their approach to their coverage of global warming. And that truth is, we're readying this planet not for future human habitation, but for the rise of neotriceratops. Raaarrrrr!!!!

***

Been a pleasant weekend so far. Bought new cargo pants. I think cargo pants make me as happy as orange shirts. I've futzed with bags and pouches of various kinds, but cargo pants are the most convenient way I've found to carry insulin-loaded syringes. They're the most commando one can feel while still wearing underwear.

***

I've been reading all sorts of great stuff lately -- probably fodder for a future entry -- but what's particularly delightful is the stuff coming in email these past couple days. I'm working on a fun little short-short collaboration with a couple of friends (don't mean to be coy, but I haven't asked if they want to talk about it publicly yet, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind, but since I don't know for sure, coyness), and one of them has emailed three of them so far, and they're neat and fun and it's just a really neat thing to get little stories from favorite writers in my in-box.

So, today, I have to write at least one short-short, and since I really enjoy short-shorts, I'm looking forward to sitting down with a big-ass mug of coffee and doing some work.

Hope yuzall's weekends are going nicely.

Belted blue

Well, I had a few more bumbles than I'd have liked, but I managed to bounce back and recover and get through my test.

Tests at my new Kung Fu school aren't as big a deal as they were at my old kenpo school, where there were written invitations and everyone tested at the same time and there was more ceremony and it was more like a rite of passage. At the new school, until you get into the upper brown belt and black belt ranks, you just test after class whenever the instructor figures you're ready. Last night I was the only one testing, and I found it a bit nerve-wracking to be out on the floor by myself with stealy Shaolin black belt eyes upon me, not to mention a clipboard. Each testing style has its benefits and attractions, and I haven't decided which I prefer, so I guess I'm just fortunate that I've been able to experience both. In any event, this test, like the others I've gone through, was inspiring and humbling.

Thanks, ya'll, for the encouragement in comments and email. Last night was just a small milestone on a long road, but such things are great opportunities to reflect on how far I've come and how far I've got to go.

Plus, now I get to learn nunchuks! Woo!

Hallmark has got to have a card for this

So, I'm dropping a couple of books in the library book-return bin, and this dude walks by, turns his head over his shoulder, and calls me a fag.

I felt bad, because I guess I forgot it was Give Random Offense Day, and I didn't get him a card. Sorry, random homophobe.

The episode made me kinda nostalgiac for junior high. Go, Culver!

***

Last night in my dreams I was attacked by a giant carp in the garden of a Japanese restaurant. It had shot out of its pond like a torpedo, come up on land, and crawled on its belly toward me. "Pick it up by its arms and throw it back in," a busboy kept screaming at me. It had a human face, too, and not a pretty one. Looked a bit likeEdward C. Robinson.

***

When you finally get to this big scene you've been bulding to for more than 200 pages, and the character stands up in dramatic fashion to say the big thing that will make the reader go "oooooh" and "aaaaaah" and possibly "yeeeeeeee," and instead she just stands there with her mouth shut like a head in the deerlights, do you

A. Stop writing until you come up with the perfect bit of "yeeeee" dialog.
B. Rip apart everything you've written so far and restructure it such that you never have to come up with the perfect bit of "yeeeee" dialog.
C. Make the character say something, anything, even if it's just a recitation of a lentil soup recipe.

I think I know the right answer for this one.

She rose to her feet, her cloak billowing like a column of smoke, and in a voice as cold as the Arctic wind said, "In a large casserole dish, saute ingredients until onions are transparent."

***

Testing for blue belt tonight. I am so going to muff my flying tiger form. They keep telling us how important it is to embody the spirit of a tiger when doing the form. But my ideal of a tiger is Tigger, and my tail just isn't that bouncy.

Someone else's broken robot

Today's broken robot isn't really broken, but it was designed to appear broken, and it's really creepy. And also, no doubt, a brilliant feat of engineering.



Video: Japanese Crawling Robot

Elements of success

Let's say that success as a writer requires some combination of the following three elements, in no particular order:

1. Talent
2. Work ethic
3. Luck

Which of these elements do you wish you had more of?

Some whining, pardon

Quite a few of the people who happen upon this blog do so by searching on "gag reflex." And a significant percentage reach me by searching on "migraine." Now, I'm going to try to pull in the highly coveted demographic comprised of people seeking information about "puking."

Yesterday morning's migraine really sucked, four hours of feeling like I'd taken an unfortunate drive past a grassy knoll, punctuated by bouts of, yes, puking, followed by another four hours of feeling like my head was being held together with little more than peeling scotch tape. Fortunately, there were plenty of interesting shows up at the higher end of the dial about such things as earthquake-resistant bridges and volcanoes going kablooey and Little Foot, the bipedal cryptid of Sumatra, so I could just lie on the couch and let knowledge gently wash over me. I was glad I'd worked on the novel Saturday, because despite dragging myself and laptop to the coffee joint, it just wasn't happening yesterday.

Speaking of whining, I'm thinking of mirroring these entries on my LiveJournal, where I currently just post links to my entries here. I know a lot of people like the social networking features of LJ, and I'm not unwilling to pander to them. The only reasons I can think not to do it is because it creates a a minute or two of extra work for me every time I post an entry, and also, should a conversation break out in comments, it would be split over two locations. I guess I could get a paid LJ membership and host it on writingandsnacks.com, but that's starting to sound suspciously like work. So, I dunno, just stuff I'm considering.

I was going to try to doodle a visual representation of a migraine, but just thinking about it made my stomach get all swimmy, so instead, a random mammal:

Broken robots and other things

Helix is a new webzine started by a group of science fiction/fantasy writers that includes William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans. It's invite-only, closed to submissions, which I guess bothers some people, but though it reduces my interest in Helix, I'm not particularly bothered by it. What I do find off-putting is the content of William Sanders's editorial:

This magazine had its origins in a discussion among some of us disgruntled bastards concerning the present rather discouraging state of speculative fiction; and in particular the timidity and conservatism that seemed to be taking hold in the editorial offices of the SF magazines. Several of us had recently had the experience of having perfectly valid stories bounce merely because they were too "dark", too unconventional — or, most disturbingly of all, too likely to offend somebody.

It's that word "merely." You hear this complaint from disgruntled, unpublished writers a lot. You hear this complaint from writers who once published in the pro sf markets with regularity and now find it harder to place their work than they did five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years go. But never, not once, have I read a story described as too dark, too unconventional, or too offensive for "timid" editors to get past their "timid" corporate publishing masters and found the story anything more than ... enh. Okay. Not bad, maybe. Kinda dark, maybe? Kinda, maybe, offensive? I've always found these stories, at best, rather average. Icky, sometimes, but not terribly gripping or interesting. Which makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe, they were rejected by bigger markets for reasons other than "merely" being too dark or unconventional.

Are really good stories ever rejected for those reasons. Probably. But when I have opportunity to read stories reportedly rejected for those reasons, I'm seldom impressed.

I'm interested in reading great fiction. A magazine that publishes great stories aligned with my somewhat catholic tastes is likely to get my attention. A magazine that promises to rail against the overly cautious market? Not so much.

Nevertheless, it's good to have new fiction venues, and I wish the people behind Helix well.

***

I'm working on another story that prominently features a broken robot. Broken robots seem to call to me. I'm hesitant to examine the attraction too closely, because I think I write better when I'm not being too self-conscious. Besides, what metaphor is good at is expressing an idea that is less interesting when explained in declarative sentences. But there it is, in 12-pt. Courier New, another broken robot. I tend to feel for these poor things more than I do the human characters in the stories the robots inhabit. It's hard to be a broken robot. Humans don't quite understand them or their problems. They want to function normally, but they've got dented parts and foul lines of code, and it makes them screw-ups.

I never end these stories with the robots fixed. Poor robots.

***

Oh, you know Jon Hansen, right? Fine writer, good guy, creator of Tales of Plush Cthulu? Well, if you haven't already done so, go look at what Jon and his lovely wife Lisa made.

***

Friday's doodle. They could well be broken robots.

August 18 will be fun

Women are underrepresented in the tables of contents of the big pro science fiction magazines. This is simple fact. Charlie Finlay has put out the call for a deluge of story submissions on August 18 by women to Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I like it. It's proactive, it's a fascinating experiment, and hopefully we'll get to read some awesome new stories in F&SF. If that happens, everybody wins. On August 18, I'll wish I were a woman, kinda.

Tuesday doodle

I've felt the way this guy looks.

Holy chicken bones!

And another sale, "Ghost Market", to an as yet unnamed urban fantasy anthology.

It's been a dry several months, so I cluck with glee and relief.

Monday doodle

I don't know what these guys are.

Rock sale

I feel as though I've been rewarded for writerly virtue this weekend. After angsting over whether I should be working on my novel or working on short stories, I worked on both. And I also mailed off a short story submission. And then I got word this morning that the estimable Jay Lake and I have sold our story collaboration, "C-Rock City" to the anthology Solaris Book of New Science Fiction from Games Workshop. You see? The sale would have never happened if I hadn't engaged in writerly diligence this weekend. Because the universe works that way, like chicken-bone magic.

Of course, Jay almost always engages in writerly diligence, but recognizing that complicates my argument, so I blithely dispense with it.

I also did non-writerly things. We ate at Four Peaks (favorite pub) and Oregeno's (favorite pizza joint) and other non-favorite-but-still-nice places. And I bought cargo pants with big pockets in which to stash ill-gotten gains and supplies. I don't yet know how the magic universe will respond to these activities, but I hope it will be some kind of positive.

Mild Friday angst

It seems I've decided to upgrade from my weekly migraine to biweekly migraines. Because more is better, no matter what it is, right?

***

God, I wanna be writing short stories.

***

God, I need to finish my novel.

***

God, the zombie scene in my novel is really stupid.

***

(Confession: I started a short story yesterday.)

***

God, I hate feeling guilty for starting a short story.

***

And now, a picture of an angsty tree:

Haboob

... also known as a dust storm. This is the one that rolled into town yesterday evening.


(photo credit: Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic)

They're actually pretty cool to witness, though not much fun to drive through. If you're caught out on the road, you're supposed to pull as far off as you can. Keep your lights off and your foot off the brake, or else cars behind you might mistake you for the road and plough into you.

Fortunately, last night's haboob happened when I was at home between work and class, and since the storms move quickly (20 - 30 mph is typical), they don't take long to pass.

I still remember the first one I went through. We were waiting at a bus bench and thought it was just the grittiest fog ever. But, no, it was the sentient desert trying to reclaim land.

Shunn fun

One of the pleasures of Blue Heaven was meeting William Shunn, a fine science fiction writer, a quietly hilarious gentleman, and a great guy to sit around and drink a beer or four with.

One evening, Bill treated us to an entertaining hour in which he told us how he went from Mormon missionary in Alberta to an incarcerated terrorist. No shit, he really did, and the long version of the epic tale is in memoir, The Accidental Terrorist. Bill's been reading from the book on his podcast. I started listening at Chapter Six, and though I plan to go back and catch the rest of them, the story works well even if you come into it in the middle.

It's fascinating stuff, a peek into another world (if you're not Mormon), and it's also quite funny. Give it a listen.

The Accidental Terrorist, chapter 7 by William Shunn

Sealed

It is officially hot, with the National Weather Service issuing Excessive Heat warnings and advisories. The Maricopa Country electorate has again voted against the sales tax hike that would fund the construction of a transparent, weather-controlled dome over the entire county, citing among their reasons the nasty shit Brainiac did to the domed Kryptonian city of Kandor.

Short-sighted, you ask me, because there is a way to defeat Brainiac, and I know we would find it. Instead, we sweat.

(Update: I know you're used to seeing Kandor referred to as the bottled city of Kandor, but it was in a dome before it was ever in a bottle. Zor-El [Supergirl's dad and Jor-El's younger brother] was an atmospheric scientist, and for research purposes, he had Kandor enclosed in a dome. When Krypton blew up, Kandor was ejected, intact, into space, protected by the ... wait a minute. I'm way off. That's wasn't Kandor at all. Kandor was stolen and shrunken by Brainiac before Krypton exploded. Oh, jeez, I totally don't know what I'm talking about. Crap.)

***

Yesterday on the Day Job I got some effusive appreciation and praise from a colleague. I don't actually need effusive appreciation and praise to do my job, as I've developed into a pretty self-motivated employee, but, boy, sometimes it's nice when someone shows that they really appreciate your efforts, that they really think you did a good job, that they really think you're good at something. So, now, instead of doing this particular task because I was assigned to it, I'll do it because I genuinely want to help out and do a good job.

Funny, that.

***

Progress on the novel has been a bit slow lately, no 30 and 50-page weekends in quite a while, and I really do feel the need to pick up the pace while I'm still feeling the buzz from Blue Heaven. Short stories tend to work for me when I'm writing carefully, paying a lot of attention to the individual sentences and nuances, digging the story out with fine instruments. With this novel, in contrast, I was happiest when I was working quickly and digging with a big shovel. The first 200 pages have big piles of mess in them, but it works better than I thought it did, and I wrote those first 200 faster than I've ever written 200 pages of anything.

So much of writing isn't figuring out how to write, but figuring out how you write. I found a way to write efficiently in January and February. I hope that method works as well in June and July.

In other writing-related shtuff, I got two rejections this week -- an agent rejection on my YA novel, and a story rejection from Flytrap. Time to hit those market listings again.

***

Starting to watch the first season of Lost. Guess now I see what all the fuss is about.

***

Going through photos, feeding my Flickr account. Think I'll post a few of them here this week, maybe.

Let's eat!

Notions and nattering

Today, as my Day Job, I would like to be standing before a tower of Marshalls, a low-strung Fender strat on my thigh, my flowing locks blown back by the appreciative roar of 20,000 Gregheads.

Only my locks don't flow.

Also, me and spandex? Bad idea.

***

I overheard First Person Shooter at my coffee joint saying that he played bass in an 80's hair band.

I haven't felt comfortable probing him for details.

***

I think my favorite character in my current novel is turning out to be an Alaskan malamute. I feel I truly understand his motivations.

***

Via the most wise Charles Coleman Finlay, some words of wisdom from Kelly Link. Her main argument, if I'm understanding her correctly, is for writers to have the courage to write the stories that only they can write, and write them in the way that only they can write them, and to aim for something higher, or at least different, than the competence = publishable mindset. I've never felt competent enough to imitate the stories I used to read in Asimov's and F&SF and such. So, honestly, the idea of trying to be conventional, trying to sand off your own weird edges, trying to hit all the bullet points of some imaginary PowerPoint slide entitled Features of Publishable Short Fiction, is all very strange to me. And, simply, where's the fun in that? Where's the joy? Where's the passion?

Incidentally, I did try to imitate Kelly once, and I was quite pleased with the resulting failure. But, of course, judged as an effort to model my story after one of Kelly's, it really was a failure.

***

And look at the clock. Time to go to the Day Job. I bet there won't be a single Greghead in the joint.

Continuing the habit

Today, fish.