Hitting oneself with adapted farm implements

When I quit my 9-5 Day Job and took on a three-class teaching load and the contract job, I figured I'd be busy, sure, but I also thought my time would be flexible enough that I could dedicate maybe half a day per week to writing, plus random road trips during which I would see strangely beautiful or amusing places and drive great distances and think deep thoughts.

So far, not so much with the flexibility and the road trips.

Last night I dreamed of a road trip, though. I was in Monterey, which was not really Monterey but rather a dream version of Monterey, characterized by viscous sapphire waves and a really lovely little library, in which I was spending most of my road trip. My road trip was in a library.

I am determined to take one day off per week, and today was it. I'm having a hard time relaxing. I've got a brown belt pre-test Tuesday (in anticipation of a brown belt test in November, and, boy, is that ridiculously too soon in every way something can be too soon, but I must defer to my school's judgment on such matters) and I can't remember nunchaku technique #10, which consists of hitting oneself in ten places (yes, in this technique you hit yourself rather than your opponent, who presumably is rendered inert and vulnerable in wonderment at the spectacle of you hitting yourself) and I can't remember which ten places and in which order. I used to be much better at writing stuff down, but I've let myself get lazy, and now I'm paying the piper. Fucking piper. I should just hit him with my chuks.

Oh, also, I threw my back out. Exacerbated an old injury. About nine years ago, I was lifting a huge computer monitor for a pregnant co-worker and started losing my grip. I could have just let the monitor crash to the floor, but instead I wrestled it down and badly strained some back muscles. I was much younger then, and even stupider. And the injury acts up every now and again, and hopefully it will leave the stage in time for the pre-test.

I think I've already figured out what to do with my students this week, which will hopefully save me classroom prep time. I need to save all the time I can, because I lose my usual prep day (Tuesday) on account of I have to fly out to San Bernadino and back for a one-hour meeting.

Insane, just a little bit.

My new osteomancer story is going exactly the way the first one did, in which I spent a few thousand words getting my hero to the Big Action and then had to pause and wonder what the Big Action Was and What It Meant In Terms of Theme and Character.

In the last osteomancy story my hero Fought the Evil Wizard of Los Angeles, whereas in this one he's about to have a Confrontation With a Shadow Man Made of Magic Tar in a Parking Lot.

If I get desperate I guess I can just throw in a gratuitous nunchaku battle.

I think I may have had slightly too much caffeine.

Bad influence

Via Jay Lake, via Richard Parks (or is it the other way around), I learn that "Anywhere There's a Game" (my b-ball story) is being assigned (along with stories by Mr. Parks and Devon Monk) for a creative writing course at Kincaid Upper School in Houston.

Hopefully it's not being used as an example of what not to do. But even if it is, I still think it's quite neat-o to have my stuff used in classroom curriculum, cuz, you know, the young minds and the warping thereof.

Why I like working from home

Steak and eggs for lunch.

Not that bad.

I get knocked down

Uuuuuuuuhrrrrr.

I'm tired.

But I had a fun afternoon! It was a sweeping class. No, not housework, you smartenheimer. Sweeping, as in sweeping a person's legs out from under them. Mostly, I just fell down a bunch and inhaled histimines, as we were doing this outside in a park. But I also learned (or was at least exposed to) cool techniques, such as spinning back sweeps and iron brooms and arms scissors and flying scissors kicks. But mostly, yeah, a whole bunch of falling down.

The falling down is pretty easy, but the getting back up again gets exhausting after a while.

***

And now I rest. And maybe watch some Lost. And maybe a trip to the coffee joint. And begin reading a friend's novel. It's got Kung Fu innit!

Odd ducks and investing in loss

The temperatures are approaching nice in these parts. The days are still warm, but the mornings and evenings are not at all bad, and this morning my walk to the coffee joint was absolutely pleasant.

There's an interesting woman at the next table, wizened, somewhere between middle and old age. She's reading the newspaper, not drinking anything, and has a large, overstuffed suitcase beside her. Today she's dressed in a rather elegant, long, royal blue velour dress. The last time I saw her here, it was a totally groovy striped mini-dress with calf-high gogo boots.

An odd duck, but she exhibits only a few alarming behaviors.

***

We've got some new white belts at the kung fu school, a trio of guys that have all trained in muay thai. I've sparred one of them and spoken with another, and I don't think they understand how we spar at our school. They want to win, and it's not supposed to be about winning.

At my kempo school, it was about winning. There, we did tournament-style points sparring. Two points for a kick, one point for a hit, first person to five points wins. At the kung fu school, sparring is not competition. It's practice. It's learning. Instead of scoring points, we spar to practice the application of techniques. If you try a technique ten times, twenty times, thirty times, and your partner blocks your attack and gets in a counterstrike every time, it's okay. Losing is fine. We invest in loss. It's how we learn and advance. It's hell on the ego, but many people invest too much in ego. I certainly do. (I think there's much wisdom in this approach, this idea of investing in loss, and I've been trying to generalize these lessons to the rest of my life recently. But I guess pursuing a career as a writer requires similar investment, which is one I've been willing to make for years and years.)

So, when one of these muay thai guys was bragging to me about his sparring conquests, I had to walk away. It's not my place to correct his attitude, but I hope he gets it, and soon.

***

But, oh! We've got a four-hour sparring class Saturday in the park! I'm gonna be so beat, and so beaten up. But I can't wait!

***

Shaolingrrl has a much more cogent entry about martial arts and writing that I commend to your attention.

***

Okay, when I wasn't looking, the lady at the next table changed her outfit. Long-sleeved blue shirt, black skirt, black socks and shoes. I hope she changed in the restroom.

Opportunity to give a little

The sister and family of my friend and sometime collaborator, Ol' Mike Jasper, have lost their house, most of their possessions, and their dog in a house fire. If you care to donate to help buy some basic necessities for them, Mike's put up a PayPal link here. Any little bit helps.

Chivalry

My 101 students impressed me with their analysis of "The Pedestrian" on Monday, and today they'll be reading and analyzing Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry". Which will take us to the end of our Writing About Literature unit, alas. I could happily stand there and lead them in discussion about cool stories all day, but I suppose I should give them opportunities to practice traditional persuasive writing and argumentation and all that English compy stuff that's annoyingly written into the course competencies.

No way I can justify bringing fiction into my 102 class. That one's all about the persuasion and the argumentation and the research and all that MLA citation blah. Valuable to the students, not as much fun for me.

Their education should be about meeee!

Clever

Despite the fact that I'm teaching college composition courses, I figured out a way to justify teaching Ray Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" today. I think this makes me a very clever teacher. Not necessarily a good teacher, but perhaps a fiendishly clever one.

Querying composition teachers

One of the two classes I'm teaching is an introduction to writing the research paper. I've found that guiding the class through analyzing model essays is far more effective than me clicking through PowerPoints and lecturing. The problem is, I have very quickly run out of model essays. Do any of you college composition or high school English teachers have links to good sources for model essays?

Right now, specifically, we're covering argumentative essays, but I could use any good example essays (I'm also teaching a more general intro composition course).

My thanks.

By Ymir's eyelashes

Emailed off two agent queries this morning (thanks to Ol' Mike Jasper for the tip!), and will be sending out a query and first 50 by snail later today. Which feels really incredibly good and productive, because that YA novel's just been loafing on my hard drive, not doing anything to advance my career. Get out there, ya lazy bum! Ya gonna spend your whole life watching cartoons and playing Pong?

And I've been thinking Norse stuff. Last night I listened to a BBC radio program in which British academics discussed Norse gods, and from the 45 minutes I gleaned the detail that the wall surrounding Asgard is made from primordial giant Ymir's eyelashes. Somehow I'd missed that in my readings of the Eddas. I think it's neat. Have also had one or two other thoughts about the book. Which is good, of course, but in general, it's not ideas that I necessarily fall short of. It's plot, which is different than ideas, and something that comes much less naturally to me. Learning is hard. But I have faith in my ability to learn. I emailed a subset of my writer friends about my difficulties with the novel, mostly a crisis of spirit and confidence, and they responded with a broad variety of solutions and suggestions -- just as I knew and hoped they would. Mostly what they gave me was faith, and I owe everyone of them a beer, at least. And I ain't talkin' no Gherkinbrau, either.

Alright. I gotta bunch of Flash pieces to develop or storyboard for others to develop. It's for the contract project I'm doing with a group from Cal State San Bernadino, for an online course teaching critical thinking skills. I should get me some of those skills sometime. I bet they're real handy.

Head of Air Force declares war on American people

The Secretary of the Air Force wants to test military weapons on American citizens. He refers to crowd-control situations. I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret crowd-control situations as organized dissent.

Back in the old days, when people used to wear onions on their belts and nickels had bees on them, public officials used to at least try to conceal their contempt for the American people. Five bees for a quarter, please.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

Delude

It's possible I'm deluding myself, but I actually think I'm really ready for my classes today. I've only got one handout to photocopy so I don't have to head in an hour early, I've got enough material and planned activities to carry over into Wednesday if necessary, and I even got some fiction writing done this morning.

Enh, I'm probably deluding myself.

Thanks

I remember the shock, fear, and anger I felt five years ago today. (Most of the fear wasn't about more attacks, but for what we would do in response. And, look, here we are).

But I also remember the almost desperate gratitude and love I was feeling for the people in my life. My friends, my colleagues, my communities, my family. Fundamentally, I pretty much feel the same way today. So, to the people in my life, those who know me best, those I've never actually met, those who keep me on my feet, those who keep me on my toes, those who laugh at my jokes and give me things to laugh about or things to think about, friends or just intersections on a Venn diagram ... thank you.

Slightly steadier

At Barnes and Noble, I spotted some copies of Year's Best Fantasy 6 (this is the one edited by Hartwell and Cramer), which includes in its table of contents "Single White Farmhouse" by Heather Shaw and "Robots and Falling Hearts" by Tim Pratt and yours truly. I look forward to getting my contributor's copy and dipping into the other stories.

It was a busy weekend -- grading a teetering stack of papers and assignments, prepping for my classes tomorrow -- but the stack no longer teeters, and the prep is done. There was even some time for leisure reading, a nice brunch at Four Peaks, and I even got some writing done. Hell, I even sent off a submission!

Still insanely busy, but not currently insane.

Motor sport

And now I am at an Ontario Airport bar that is charmingly done up in early NASCAR, drinking a much overpriced Sam Adams, and bobbing in waves of nostalgia as the Channel 7 Eyewitness News blares on the TV. The suspiciously named Dallas Rains apparently still performs the weather report. As I recall, he named his son Austin. Personally, I miss Channel 7's weatherman from very long ago, Dr. George Fishbeck. He wore a bow tie. He was born a 70-year-old.

My brain is all wadded up from two days of work stuff, not much gas left in the thank, but I'm typing here and there on fiction, and it feels very nice.

It's a short flight, so I could probably have another beer and not worry about having to climb over my seatmates to get to the tail-section lavatory.

Greg in chains

I'm here on work-related stuff in San Bernadino, California, somewhere between a trivial and non-trivial distance from Westside Los Angeles, where much of my life remains centered. Had I known that the work-related stuff would end at a reasonable hour, I might have made dinner plans with people upon whom some of my life remains centered, but I did not do that, and as a result, I find myself free of obligations in the cultural wasteland that is San Bernadino. I had dinner at the last seat at the bar of a B.J.'s Brewhouse, drinking drinkable corporate beer, and now I find myself at a Starbucks where, shock of shocks, none of my favorite barristas happen to be working.

I had many choices for dinner. Claim Jumper. Black Angus. Olive Garden. All the chains where I never dine. Where they really give you more food than you really want.

It's okay. I've got a pumpkin spice steamer. And I'll just write. Life still feels a bit crazy, but I'm writing. I feel more like Greg when I'm writing. Being Greg really isn't such a bad thing to be, but feel free to remain you instead of Greg if you want. I get it. I understand.

Please don't tell my parents I was in LA (kinda, not really, but kinda) and didn't come see them. My friends will understand, but my parents? Please?

"Osteomancer's Son" review and more of the crazy

Pretty nice review of "Osteomancer's Son" over at BestSF.net. It's really too short to excerpt, so I guess I'll just link to it. Nice things are also said of Paul Melko's "The Walls of the Universe" and Bill Shunn's "Inclination", not a surprise in either case.

***

Flying out way early tomorrow for two days of business-related travel. My life is just packed with motion and excitement. But this is my last trip for a couple of months, and that's a good thing. It seems I've been in Go mode ever since the incident with the paramedics, that coinciding with starting the teaching gig, and I am so looking foward to catching my breath. I will admit to some fatigue. I would like to put my feet up and sit a spell. I might even get me an ottoman.

San Francisco

Perhaps you have heard that summers in Arizona are quite hot. Totally true! So, Lisa and I decided to do the sensible thing and head for the cooler climes of San Francisco for the weekend.

We arrived Friday evening and immediately ran into some San Francisco character in the form of our cab driver, who may well have taken home a silver medal in fencing for the Soviet Union in the 1964 Summer Olympics, but Wikipedia doesn't bear him out.

After checking into our hotel in Union Square, we found dinner at Belden Alley, a restaurant-filled seam between buildings full of light and clinking plates and glorious, glorious food. We settled on tapas at B44, a Catalan place that served us amazing shrimp and sausage and oxtail, and daaaaaaamn. It was good.



Saturday was a day of walking. And walking. And walking. We hoofed it from Union Square to the Ferry Building and breakfasted on pastries and fruit samples from the farmer's market, then continued on to Fisherman's Wharf, from there to the Marina district, then through Pacific Heights, through Chinatown, and back to Union Square. About twelve miles, total. Worked up a good appetite, and I started to get ideas for a sequel to "The Osteomancer's Son". At the end of that story, I had my hero running for Northern California, and San Francisco began to seem like the obvious setting for the sequel.

Dinner was at Colibri, a Mexican place across the street from our hotel. Fresh guacamole and tortillas and more tapas: seared halibut, carnitas, and papas al gratin. Munch.

Sunday was a day of socializing. First, Lori Ann White was kind enough to drive over from Mountain View to meet us for breakfast, and we had a nice, long, leisurely time with her, talking about martial arts, writing, science, the infamous Grope and resulting fallout, and various other things. I barely saw Lori at World Con, so I was especially happy to get to see her just a week later.

After bidding her adieu, we took BART out to Tim and Heather's place. And guess what? More deliciousness! Hanging out in the backyard, we dined on grilled buffalo and chicken with jalapeno salsa and wasabi-glazed wild salmon and sausage and potato salad and beer and White Russians and grilled bananas ... I nearly burst with satisfaction. In between eating, there was also fun conversation, of course, and we were also joined by Heather's sister and nephew, who told us a really interesting version of Jack and the Beanstalk, parts of which had me reaching for a pen and notebook. He also gave us a martial arts demonstration that would have been devastating to my face were he older than not-quite four.

As the evening cooled, we headed upstairs where I got my ass kicked first at Soul Calibur, and then at Halo, because it turns out my strategy of running into walls and falling off ledges was somewhat less than effective. Fared somewhat better at the Book Lover's edition of Trivial Pursuit. Sadly, the clock kept ticking toward late o' clock, and with reluctance, we took our leave and BART-ed back to San Francisco with a trainload of subdued, pot-infused Tool fans.

I miss Tim and Heather lots for most of the year, and I'm really, really happy we got to spend so much time with them. They're among my all-time faves.

Monday, after lunch at a French bistro (croque madame is my new Best Sandwich Ever), there was more walking. We strolled through Chinatown over to City Lights (one of the few truly historically significant bookstores around), through Northbeach, up to Coit Tower (which made me think of Heather's Single White Farmhouse), over to Grace Cathedral, and back to Union Square. Another good walking loop, and by the end of it I'd pretty much plotted my entire new osteomancy story.

Walking has always been a useful writing tool for me. Scenery and blood circulation and the friction of shoe tread on pavement often work in my favor, and I haven't been doing enough of that lately.

Smooth BART ride to SFO, flight back to Phoenix, checked up on frothing internet lunacy, and here we are today ... FRANTICALLY BEHIND ON MY WORK!!!

But it was a great weekend. Completely worth being frantically behind on my work.

Chapbook review

Back from San Francisco, and I'll post about the trip soon, but right now I just wanted to put up a link to a review of my chapbook by Kathy Sedia. She says some very nice things, including this:

The most striking thing about these stories is their energy, the crackling and fizzing of words, and the way they combine an almost old-fashioned sensawunda with a very literary narrative.

That's very nice, isn't it?

Done and done, maybe

And now I am done with the Day Job. This was a short stint, just December to August, but I'd worked with many of the same people in a different configuration previously for four years, and I plan to continue to see at least some of them for the occasional beer/wings butchery.

Today, I head out for some recreational travel, back on Monday, teach class on Wednesday, leaving town to start the new contract gig on Thursday ...

Oy.

***

SFWA is not the SFF.net SFWA lounge.

SFWA is not the SFF.net SFWA lounge.

SFWA is a group that includes many volunteers who quietly toil away at thankless tasks to keep the engines running. SFWA is many good things.

SFWA is not the SFF.net SFWA lounge.

I'm repeating this a lot as I contemplate renewing my membership.