"Osteomancer's Son" resold

Contract pending, it appears that Rich Horton has selected "The Osteomancer's Son" for inclusion in the next volume of Fantasy: Best of the Year (Prime Books). Which pleases me ginormously and enormically, because I was hoping that story would get some more play. Yay!

Danger brewing

Longtime readers of my journals may recall my nearly fatal experiment in beer brewing, as depicted and described in this entry and its comments.

I'd been intending for a while now to give it another try, but hadn't got around to it. But a confluence of factors -- reading Beer in America, the Early Years -- 1587-1840, and it being October, with its cool, dark evenings, and me having some Mr. Beer Vienna Lager mix (described on the can as a traditional Oktoberfest beer) -- I decided that tonight was the night. I dug out my Mr. Beer brewing kit (sort of a paint-by-numbers approach to beer making), and I currently have a keg of delicious-looking, foamy wort fermenting, and in two weeks I'll know if I have a batch of beer or a 8.5 quart ticking bomb.

Stay tuned. And just to be safe, take cover.

More thoughts currently brewing, but I'll save those for another time, or perhaps will just keep them to myself, as is sometimes the wisest course.

_________

Favorite trivia bits from Beer in America:

1. The saying "mind your p's and q's" comes from a directive tavern keepers would give to the help, to keep track of the customers' tabs and mind their pints and quarts.

2. A cure for lunacy required one to "work (stir) herbs into clear ale, say 7 masses over the worts, add garlic and holy water, then have the patient suffering from lunacy drink it out of a church bell."

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.

Strange Horizons fund drive

Strange Horizons is my favorite science fiction and fantasy magazine. They're funded by reader donations, a model that's been working for them since 2000. They've published some of my favorite stories of the past few years, and I think they offer something substantially different from the other fine magazines out there. From a writer's perspective, I've found them among the most professional of professionals to work with.

They're currently running their fall fund drive, so if you've enjoyed stuff at Strange Horizons in the past, now would be a perfect time to kick in a few bucks and help keep the goodness going. Or, if you've never checked SH out, now would be a great time to do so. Also, if you donate, you're eligible for prizes -- chapbooks and signed ARCS and all sorts of cool stuff.

Do consider.

Six-word stories

WIRED magazine commissioned a bunch of writers to write six-word stories, and just because they didn't commission me doesn't mean I can't play. So, here're a couple I came up with. I found the exercise harder than it looks, but just as much fun. I may keep adding to these, because neither one is really a story. If you want to play along, feel free to add them here in comments (or over on my LiveJournal mirror). Or, if you post some on your own journal, let me know so I can link to 'em.


Time folded inside wallet. Still broke.

Cadaver on table. Bad table dance.

------
UPDATE:

Two by Kirsten

More in comments at my LiveJournal.

And some more by freudinshade.

Typically good and funny participation by Jon Hansen.

And still more from Jenn Reese.

Also a bunch at James Nicoll's LJ. [thanks, to tacithydra for the tip!]

Spamxt

To the person who anonymously texted me a birthday greeting yesterday, thank you. That was very kind and thoughtful of you. It was also a bit early -- by three months and a day -- but that's neither here nor there.

I think if I were going to text spam to someone, I might, instead of wishing them a happy birthday, say "Congratulations!" or "Can we talk?" or "I'm coming over in five minutes." Because those are the kinds of messages I might mistake for something actually directed at me, personally. Those, I might actually be prompted to respond to. Whereas my birthday? I actually know when my birthday is. So, it doesn't take me that long, when someone wishes me a happy birthday, to realize that it's not actually my birthday.

I guess I don't understand the mind of a spammer.

But anway ... Thanks!

Bullets

It is such a lovely morning. A perfect day for walking and musing with a Moleskine in hand. And later, a beer and a sandwich out on some nice patio. Sunny smiles for everyone. Followed up by more musing and walking.

Instead, I have to go teach my recalcitrant students, one of whom recently asked why we have to bother writing sentences and paragraphs, since all useful information these days comes in bullet points. I told him bullet points are what brought down the Space Shuttle Columbia, but I don't think I reached him.

Infestation

There's been a creep infestation at the coffee joint this morning. I didn't witness the precipitating incident, but Clinton, the mild-mannered manager, had to threaten a guy with having the cops called on him if he harassed the female customers again. Clinton's about half this guy's size, but he got right in his face. The creep made conciliatory noises and gestures, and after loitering for a few minutes, he left.

And then came back in. And started chatting up another customer. And then started rubbing her shoulder. Clinton tore into him again, and again the guy left.

And then came back in. He looked around and then left, I assume because there were no more female customers in line.

I don't know if Clinton actually went ahead and called the cops. If he did, they haven't shown yet.

I hate to see this kind of thing under any circumstance. But especially here, because the coffee joint is like my second home. I have to go teach class soon, but I really don't feel good about leaving. Grrrr.

iTunes wax

I've been building a playlist for my Norse novel. Little if any of it is likely to suggest Norse mythology to anyone else, but it's stuff that puts me in a Norsey mood, stuff that serves as one character's or another's theme song, and stuff I won't mind having in heavy rotation for a long time. I figure it'll change over the course of production, so I thought I'd post it in its current state so that, in future days, I'll be able to trace its evolution.

Suggestions always welcome.

This, I freely admit, is perilously close to cat waxing.

1. Stuck in a Moment - U2
2. Walk On - U2
3. Fell on Black Days - Soundgarden
4. Carve Away the Stone - Rush
5. Totem - Rush
6. Scartissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers
7. Strange Currencies - REM
8. Low Light - Pearl Jam
9. In Hiding - Pearl Jam
10. Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Nirvana
11. I've Been Everywhere - Johnny Cash
12. Take Me to the Pilot - Elton John

Sunday breakfast links

I'm having a cozy, relaxing Sunday morning at home with coffee in my monster mug, a sausage, egg and cheese croissant, and the morning interthing-clicky-papers. I do sometimes miss flipping through the LA Times Sunday edition, with Calvin and Hobbes, and the book section helping to grow me up literate, Jonathan Gold (one of the best LA writers since Raymond Chandler, even though he lives in New York now) and his musings on obscure lunch counters on Pico Boulevard, and Robert Hilburn's generally idiotic concert and record reviews ... but the interthing-clickies make sharing much easier.

Some items:

Good grammar saves lives!!

Some short chains of amino acids have been found to kill antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Gregory Stephanopoulos at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues reasoned that if the amino acid sequences of these peptides were treated as a language with grammatical rules, the rules could be used to create new peptides with similar properties.

Itty-bitty (albeit extinct) water buffalo!

The extinct creatures were similar to a modern species of small water buffalo that lives on the nearby Philippines island of Mindoro. That animal—the middle outline in the drawing—reaches about 3 feet (0.9 meter) tall. It is related to the Asian water buffalo—the topmost outline—an even larger modern species that stands about 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall and can weigh up to a ton.

You've probably heard of Pat Tillman, the NFL player who left football to join the Army after September 11 and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. He served with his younger brother Kevin, who has remained silently out of the media until now:

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Dismiss that, Mr. Bush. Condescend to that. I know you will, but when you do, I hope your supporters feel queasy.

Kevin Tillman's whole piece is worth reading.

And, finally, so as not to end this entry with tooth-enamel-splintering rage, the best wildlife photos of 2006.

Would this be an anti-idea?

I don't think I'll be using this version of Hermod in the Norse book:

Hee hee hee

When I'm lucky enough to write a good line or devise a fun and apt simile or come up with a really neat idea, it makes me giggle with delight.

A couple of days ago I came up with a really neat idea for the Norse novel, and I'm still giggling.

Hee hee hee!

Fat lip, small items, live long and I break your nose

I've learned a defense in case you're making the Live Long & Prosper hand sign and someone grabs your fingers. I don't know how often this happens, but apparently often enough that the Shaolin devised a defense against it. I think it's further proof that Vulcans visited China in ancient days and founded the art. So much as been lost.

Gave myself a fat lip yesterday, courtesy nunchuk technique #6, but the swelling's gone down.

There's an interview with friend/writer/editor, Tim Pratt, which I mention largely because he gives a nice shoutout to me and my chapbook. But that's only a small part of the interview. The rest of it is plenty interesting.

Finished my class prep for tomorrow, and possibly for Wednesday as well, depending on how well the students work. It takes them longer to do stuff when they're working well and putting in effort. When they're not, it creates more work for me, cuz I can't stand the feeling of them staring at me, all bored, because they blasted through the writing exercise I gave them in fifteen minutes. I know I should just let them stew and grade them harshly, but it goes against my sunny nature.

So, a while ago I talked about a few guys in my martial arts class whose attitudes put me off. One of them was in class yesterday, and I decided to try something. Instead of aloofness and avoidance, I decided to try befriending him. I asked him before class if he woulnd't mind reviewing some of my older material with me, and then he asked me if I wouldn't mind going over a new form with him, and by the end of class we were both happy and friendly little shaolin wannabe's. I'm going to try the same thing with two other guys I've got issues with. I like to get along with folks, and I'm glad I put forth just a little extra effort to make it happen. Not getting along is just illogical.

Camels the size of freakin' elephants!!!!!

This shit brings out the 8 year old in me.

The bones of a huge extinct camel have been discovered in Syria, a joint Swiss-Syrian team announced last week.

The previously unknown species lived about a hundred thousand years ago and was "as big as a giraffe or an elephant," the archaeologists say.

Based on comparisons between the ancient remains and modern-day counterparts, researchers estimate that the animal stood 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall, making it almost twice the size of living camels.

The scientists also found humanoid bones at the desert site near Tadmur (Palmyra) and stone tools with the camel's remains (Palmyra photo).

The finds suggest that the massive dromedary—or single-humped camel—was hunted by prehistoric people, the researchers add.

Read the whole damn thing!

Itty bitty victories

This is one of those entries in which I attempt to connect something learned in martial arts to life in general. For the most part, kung fu is much simpler than life in general. But anyway ...

We do this form at my school that translates into English as "Short Stick of the Northern Beggar," which I have been translating as "What the Hell Am I Supposed to Be Doing With This Stick?"

I've been trying to learn it for over a month, but it's just been a jumbled, patternless set of moves in my head, an impossible-to-memorize bunch of random poking and swinging and whapping gestures. There's been nothing deliberate in my execution of the form. At best, there have been some accidental resemblences to the way the form is supposed to go.

But last night it finally clicked (due in no small part to the good instruction I got), and I was able to see the pattern, enough so that I could even write most of the form down from memory after class.

Not that I know the form. Not that I'm even sure all the moves I wrote down are correct. But discernable learning took place, whereas before all I had in regard to the form was discernable frustration.

I treasure those small moments of learning. I recently learned that my composition classes go much better when I just give my students a writing assignment and then discuss and analyze what they wrote at the end of class. I was making myself crazy trying to build hour-long lectures and hunting down good reading assignments. Now my class prep tends to take much less time, and I think the students are getting more out of the class sessions. I'm certainly happy about those things, but I'm also quite pleased to have learned something about myself as a teacher, amateur though I remain.

Things I learn that apply to life in general are perhaps the most rewarding, because they not only improve my life, but also those of the people around me. How long has it taken me to realize that action is so often preferable to inaction? That risking pissing someone off by doing something is so often better than pissing them off by failure to do something (as long as the thing you're doing is a decent thing to do, of course). How long did it take me to learn that I bite my tongue far too often? Why should it take decades to learn that simple thing? But I've learned. Or at least, I'm learning.

Writing is a little different, of course, because every time I sit down to do it, it feels pretty much like I've never written a story before in my life. But realizing that was a pretty valuable lesson, too.

Just a bit of reflection and rambling on a Wednesday morning. Gotta go print out stuff for today's classes. Do carry on, and have a good day.

Lessons from Pulitzer winners and cookies

Caught an early matinee showing of Jet Li's Fearless, and though it was kinda cheesy, and Jet Li's acting kinda hammy (unlike his restrained performance in Hero, or his poignant performance in Unleashed), I did enjoy it for the great sets and costumes and the kick-ass martial arts action. He claims this is his last martial arts epic, and I truly hope that's not so. Maybe he can't keep up with the acrobatic stuff for much longer (he's 43 now), but I'd love to see the grace and poise of an ageing martial artist in big, sweeping epics with cool costumes and great sets.

The movie left me with a craving for Chinese food (much as Bladerunner always makes me run out for Japanese), and we ended up at a pretty good Chinese restaurant for dinner. My cookie yielded the following fortune: "You have had a good start. Work harder."

That's a very direct and absolutely spot-on fortune.

After dinner, went to hear Michael Chabon read at the beautiful old Orpheum Theatre in downtown Phoenix. He focused his selections around the theme of beginnings -- beginnings as in one's personal origins, and beginnings as in beginning a story. So, he read from a piece that he'd written in response to an assignment from the Washington Post, to write about summer in Maryland. And instead of just reading the piece he turned in, he also shared two of his lengthy false starts, stories that failed to keep his interest, that never ignited, that stalled, that died. In other words, he shared his failures, and I really appreciated that. The story that he did finish (which incorporated some cannibalized bits from one of the previous efforts) was quite good, but it was also a failure in a sense, because he'd misunderstood the WaPo assignment and had written fiction when they had wanted memoir. He didn't mention the title of the story, and he didn't mention finding a home for it, but in any case, it served as a wonderful illustration of how Chabon develops his stories, his relationship to self-criticism, and how he handles the task of taking memories, experiences, and people from his life and, in his words, betraying them to craft fiction.

I love good writer talk from good writers.

Respite

Man, yesterday was just what I needed. I relaxed. I hung out at the coffee joint and listened to old Elton John. I watched rain plink against my car. I napped. I ate pizza and drank beer. I had a pumpkin spice latte out of my new funny mug. I sent whiny email to writing friends and got good advice. I made progress toward sorting some shit out. Good day.

This morning I'm waiting to see what, if anything, I'll have to do for the contract job. In the mean time, I've been wrestling with a revision of a flash piece. It's a mash-up of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Green Lantern. My grasp may have exceeded my reach on this, but what the hell.

Mug with a mug

It's raining, with gentle thunder. I can see my car outside my window, getting clean.

I've done a bit of loafing today and a bit of writing. Lisa bought me lunch. Since I'm typing a journal entry, this counts as loafing. But afterwards, the writing, fer sure.

This is my new mug. I like it.

Unexpected consequence

So, the meeting in San Bernadino I mentioned in a friends-locked LiveJournal entry turned out to be a good thing for the folks I'm working for, and through a complicated chain of events too tedious and convoluted to relate, I have ended up with the day off today!

Oh, I could ... should ... do all the grading and class prep I didn't do on Tuesday because of the meeting. But not gonna! Gonna loaf and write instead. Loaf and write! Loaf and write! Woo!

Sunday with Jeff Beck

After spending most of Sunday grading papers, I punched out at 4:00 and hied over to Four Peaks to meet Ken and Zilla for beer and grub, and then we headed out to see Jeff Beck in concert.

Jeff Beck was one of the first live acts I ever saw, way back when with my older brother Mike and my friend Todd, when Beck was touring with Stevie Ray Vaughan. A spectacular show, that was.

They say rock is a young man's game, but they is on crack. You want the surgeon who's performed five spectacular operations, or the one who's done the procedure 50,000 times and hasn't yet lost a rib-spreader inside a patient? Jeff Beck has been a dazzling guitarist for at least 40 years, and his skill and sense of taste have just gotten increasingly sublime. He opened with "Bolero" and closed with "Over the Rainbow," and in between he made his guitar growl and sing and shimmer without affectation, pretense, or posing. He remains one of the greatest players on Earth, and last night he was effortlessly superb.

His singer, Beth Hart, was also impressive. She'd come out for a song or two, powerfully belt out some blues, and then retire backstage for another several songs. Kind of like an NBA player who's good for 20 points off the bench.

Also very good to hang out with the boys. Zilla saw that my back was bothering me still after a couple of pints and prescribed red wine. I'm appointing him my new physician.