It's November 5th. Happy Guy Fawkes Day!
I'm slightly English and an Anglophile. Can a person be both? Anyway the English are quite morbid, but because this falls on my birthday, I like to celebrate. More reason to make merry. I even hosted a Guy Fawkes Party one year, complete with a Guy (Guy Fawkes effigy), fireworks and bonfire. And, of course, roasted bangers and spuds. And someone even knew the words to the old rhyme.
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I can think of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
For those able to attend, here's my Orycon schedule:
Saturday 10AM Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading
Saturday 11AM Portraying workplaces in SF/F
Saturday 6PM Writing Workshop
Sunday 10AM Women Role models in SF
Sunday 11AM Who is Mary Sue and why does everyone hate her?
Sunday 1PM Selling your integrity to pay the bills: Are you really selling your soul as well?
Sunday 2PM Will blogs replace the conventional media?
And I'll be interviewing Irene Radford for Broad Universe. :)
And hanging out at the Open Read and Critique Saturday night.
Every Day Fiction has hoisted my story "The Heist", which they published in June, to their year's best anthology. The letters haven't gone out yet but the authors were listed on the forum and picked up by some who blogged the Table of Contents. This is where my Google alert of "Ann Wilkes" came in handy. Anyway, woo hoo!
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
The Un-Post Post
This is the 'why I'm not posting today' post. You see, I've become a Grandmother this week. My daughter had her first baby early Tuesday morning and I was with her in the hospital. I got home at 4AM Tuesday morning. Thursday I went down again after work. I have been a zombie this week. I've also not managed to write today. Today is also not today anymore.
I tried to take a nap after work but the marching band at the football game down the road kept me awake. Then I vegged when I should have been writing or editing. Then I edited the manuscript I've been contracted to edit by Sunday. The same one handed to me while my daughter was in labor, mind. Now it's tomorrow...
>sigh<
Must go to bed. I have to go grab some 0-3 onesies for Trey before I meet my friend for breakfast. All his clothes are too big or not warm enough. I'm going back to see the him tomorrow. They're an hour away.
So, I'm not really blogging today. You just thought I was. But here, how about a picture of the cutest baby in the world?
I tried to take a nap after work but the marching band at the football game down the road kept me awake. Then I vegged when I should have been writing or editing. Then I edited the manuscript I've been contracted to edit by Sunday. The same one handed to me while my daughter was in labor, mind. Now it's tomorrow...
>sigh<
Must go to bed. I have to go grab some 0-3 onesies for Trey before I meet my friend for breakfast. All his clothes are too big or not warm enough. I'm going back to see the him tomorrow. They're an hour away.
So, I'm not really blogging today. You just thought I was. But here, how about a picture of the cutest baby in the world?
Friday, October 24, 2008
Come follow me
If I have any friends out there that aren't completely saturated with web 2.0, or is it 3.0 now?, social networking and SEO (search engine optimization), here's another thingy for you. Google Blogger now has a "followers" feature. If you're following someone's blog and they have turned on that function and checked the "show my followers" box, then your little pic or avatar will be on their website.
Why should you want to do this? It's more cyber real estate, of course. So all you bloggers who use Google's Blogger, aka blogspot blogs, come follow me. :) And I'll return the favor if you have a similar site or one that interests me.
While musing over an article for work yesterday, I made an interesting observation. It was about resolving personal conflict. What struck me as I sat staring at the screen trying to come up with a list of meaningful bullet points was this:
People struggle with each other over seemingly trivial matters because of their need to be:
right
in control
validated
noticed
Have I missed anything?
Another observation that I made is that the things that we're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table: money, politics and religion, are the very same things wars are fought over. Those and power, which translates into land and conquest on the grand scale and meddling on the personal one.
I'm having fun with Horace. He's the (first) main character in Awesome Lavratt. He's the main character in a sequel I'm working on now. I have so much fun making him squirm. Poor guy...
I'm almost finished with the fantasy novel, Shadowbridge, by Gregory Frost. I'll probably have it finished tomorrow. I'll be reviewing it at Mostly Fiction along with its sequel.
Next up is editing a ms for a friend and critiquing more of same for OryCon. I got a picture of myself holding my book yesterday in the mail. I had completely forgotten about it. Joe Collins took pictures of the authors in attendance at SpoCon and sent us a copy to keep and a copy to sign and return. And a third copy goes up on a wall at U of W. Pretty cool.
Why should you want to do this? It's more cyber real estate, of course. So all you bloggers who use Google's Blogger, aka blogspot blogs, come follow me. :) And I'll return the favor if you have a similar site or one that interests me.
While musing over an article for work yesterday, I made an interesting observation. It was about resolving personal conflict. What struck me as I sat staring at the screen trying to come up with a list of meaningful bullet points was this:
People struggle with each other over seemingly trivial matters because of their need to be:
right
in control
validated
noticed
Have I missed anything?
Another observation that I made is that the things that we're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table: money, politics and religion, are the very same things wars are fought over. Those and power, which translates into land and conquest on the grand scale and meddling on the personal one.
I'm having fun with Horace. He's the (first) main character in Awesome Lavratt. He's the main character in a sequel I'm working on now. I have so much fun making him squirm. Poor guy...
I'm almost finished with the fantasy novel, Shadowbridge, by Gregory Frost. I'll probably have it finished tomorrow. I'll be reviewing it at Mostly Fiction along with its sequel.
Next up is editing a ms for a friend and critiquing more of same for OryCon. I got a picture of myself holding my book yesterday in the mail. I had completely forgotten about it. Joe Collins took pictures of the authors in attendance at SpoCon and sent us a copy to keep and a copy to sign and return. And a third copy goes up on a wall at U of W. Pretty cool.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Balancing Act
Three weeks into the new job I'm finally starting to get to my novel, the sequel to Awesome Lavratt. Before this week, I'd been spending my spare time, what little I had left, tying up loose ends - projects I promised people and book reviews. It feels good to be writing about Horace again. I'm still searching for the rhythm though. It's so hard to find and so easily lost.
I console myself with the fact that I am writing for a living, and writing every weekday. Now to make the daily novel writing happen... I need to be accountable. That's what deadlines are great for. I find that my own self-imposed deadlines are easily alterable. Because, after all, if it's not tied to a contract, it's ... here it comes ... wait for it ... my new word that needs to get in the dictionary in 10 months' time ... PROCRASTINATABLE. Was it worth the suspense?
Brent Anderson was the guest speaker at the local SF club I'm in. He shared some comics and graphic novels in various stages. He handed out copies of a couple of comics to the group, and of course, I had to give him a copy of Awesome Lavratt. I asked him to have a look at it with the idea of creating a graphic novel version. We'll see...
I'm making plans for OryCon. So far, all my SF writing buddies that are closer to Portland than I am aren't going. I do have a new buddy coming from WA, though. It will be a whirlwind trip as I'll be arriving in Portland at 5PM and back again Sunday night, late. Hopefully, the guest list will be posted soon on their website.
I'm doing some beta reading, writing a book jacket and doing some editing on the side. I've quit my last critique group. Hopefully, I'll find some willing honest souls to tap to beta read for me when the time comes.
Anyone looking to teach spec fic in CA? I found this over at my friend, Mallory's blog on LJ. Senior Position in Science Fiction/Speculative Fiction/Related Genres in the Department of Creative Writing
I console myself with the fact that I am writing for a living, and writing every weekday. Now to make the daily novel writing happen... I need to be accountable. That's what deadlines are great for. I find that my own self-imposed deadlines are easily alterable. Because, after all, if it's not tied to a contract, it's ... here it comes ... wait for it ... my new word that needs to get in the dictionary in 10 months' time ... PROCRASTINATABLE. Was it worth the suspense?
Brent Anderson was the guest speaker at the local SF club I'm in. He shared some comics and graphic novels in various stages. He handed out copies of a couple of comics to the group, and of course, I had to give him a copy of Awesome Lavratt. I asked him to have a look at it with the idea of creating a graphic novel version. We'll see...
I'm making plans for OryCon. So far, all my SF writing buddies that are closer to Portland than I am aren't going. I do have a new buddy coming from WA, though. It will be a whirlwind trip as I'll be arriving in Portland at 5PM and back again Sunday night, late. Hopefully, the guest list will be posted soon on their website.
I'm doing some beta reading, writing a book jacket and doing some editing on the side. I've quit my last critique group. Hopefully, I'll find some willing honest souls to tap to beta read for me when the time comes.
Anyone looking to teach spec fic in CA? I found this over at my friend, Mallory's blog on LJ. Senior Position in Science Fiction/Speculative Fiction/Related Genres in the Department of Creative Writing
Monday, October 13, 2008
Review - GUD (Greatest Uncommon Denominator)
I met the editor of GUD over at LinkedIn and scored a review copy of GUD. It took me a while to get through the pdf version, as I'm an ink and paper miser and don't like reading on the screen. But, at long last, I've finished it.
GUD bills itself as: "GUD (pronounced "good") is Greatest Uncommon Denominator, a print/pdf magazine with two hundred pages of literary and genre fiction, poetry, art, and articles."
First off, I'd have to say that GUD could just as easily stand for Gloomy Utter Doom. Of course, if that's what you're into, it's a veritable banquet. Now that I've peeled myself off the floor and listened to some Blues to pick me up, I'd like to tell you more about it.
The issue I reviewed is the Spring 2007 issue. It's chock full of stories, poetry, and art. It also has a couple of non-fiction pieces. I won't go into the poetry as I'm not the best judge of poetry. I'll stick to what I know. The stories were, as I said, very dark. But they were also well written and unique.
John Mantooth's "Chicken" was so full of emotion as to make me almost gasp. His treatment of a young man's bravado, fear and regret overlaid onto a troubled alcoholic seeing another troubled young man who is frighteningly past caring was a moving, credible symphony of bitter memory.
I enjoyed Jason Stoddard's "Moments of Brilliance". He set the bread crumbs along my path. I knew where they led, but it made me want to run there all the more. Besides, I'm a sucker for the musings of how other beings or even robots might think. The gradual awareness, the piecing together of the various visual and aural input to decipher its surroundings and the meaning of life. Can't say more...
In AB Goelman's "4 Short Parables Revolving Around the Theme of Travel", I found a welcome respite from the doom and gloom and a fun time travel romp.
"Cutting a Figure" provided a bit of comic relief while still making some social commentary. Charlie Anders had me hooked with his dual duty breast implants. Need I say more?
Last, but not least, I'd like to mention "She Dreams in Colors, She Dreams in Hope" by F. John Sharp. His well-rounded characters deal with sweat-shop socialism. The man who seems the most resistant, lets another man's dreams invade his own and imbue him with hope that he carries into the waking world.
If you don't buy the magazine to experience it for yourself, I suggest you head over to their website, if for no other reason than to check out the cover art by Konrad Kruszewski. He also has another very striking image within.
GUD bills itself as: "GUD (pronounced "good") is Greatest Uncommon Denominator, a print/pdf magazine with two hundred pages of literary and genre fiction, poetry, art, and articles."
First off, I'd have to say that GUD could just as easily stand for Gloomy Utter Doom. Of course, if that's what you're into, it's a veritable banquet. Now that I've peeled myself off the floor and listened to some Blues to pick me up, I'd like to tell you more about it.
The issue I reviewed is the Spring 2007 issue. It's chock full of stories, poetry, and art. It also has a couple of non-fiction pieces. I won't go into the poetry as I'm not the best judge of poetry. I'll stick to what I know. The stories were, as I said, very dark. But they were also well written and unique.
John Mantooth's "Chicken" was so full of emotion as to make me almost gasp. His treatment of a young man's bravado, fear and regret overlaid onto a troubled alcoholic seeing another troubled young man who is frighteningly past caring was a moving, credible symphony of bitter memory.
I enjoyed Jason Stoddard's "Moments of Brilliance". He set the bread crumbs along my path. I knew where they led, but it made me want to run there all the more. Besides, I'm a sucker for the musings of how other beings or even robots might think. The gradual awareness, the piecing together of the various visual and aural input to decipher its surroundings and the meaning of life. Can't say more...
In AB Goelman's "4 Short Parables Revolving Around the Theme of Travel", I found a welcome respite from the doom and gloom and a fun time travel romp.
"Cutting a Figure" provided a bit of comic relief while still making some social commentary. Charlie Anders had me hooked with his dual duty breast implants. Need I say more?
Last, but not least, I'd like to mention "She Dreams in Colors, She Dreams in Hope" by F. John Sharp. His well-rounded characters deal with sweat-shop socialism. The man who seems the most resistant, lets another man's dreams invade his own and imbue him with hope that he carries into the waking world.
If you don't buy the magazine to experience it for yourself, I suggest you head over to their website, if for no other reason than to check out the cover art by Konrad Kruszewski. He also has another very striking image within.
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