Glossolalia

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Million Writers Award notablation
“The Beacon,” my short story published in the August issue of Clarkesworld, made the southStory Million Writers Notable Stories of 2007 list! Yay!

The next thing that happens is the judges whittle the list down to ten, and the world gets to vote to decide the winning story.

Also, I managed to sleep eleven hours last night. I don't think that's related to the above, however.

Illinois earthquake
I woke up this morning to the things on top of the bureau near the bed rattling. It abruptly stopped right as I woke up. Earthquake was the first thing that came to mind. Nah, we don’t have earthquakes in Indiana I thought, and proceeded to be very weirded out. What would cause that? I finally concluded the cat had been doing something crazy, jumping in and out of the bureau like he sometimes does…but the drawers had been closed, and I knew he wasn’t in the room. It took me a long time to fall asleep again, I was so unnerved.

I was really relieved to find out this morning that there was a reasonable explanation for all that! It’s my first earthquake. The only thing comparable I've been in/near was the 1980 Mt. Saint Helens eruption when we lived in Seattle, but I was too small to remember anything about it. We still have ash from it, though.

Also, maybe that's why I've been thinking of earthquakes lately.

dear collective lj brain...
It's amazing that I've gone this long without one, but it's time to remedy that--I need a good book (or ten) on ancient, medieval, and early modern weapons, preferably with lots of diagrams. Anyone have recommendations? It can focus on just one or more of those time periods. Thanks!

When all aloud the wind doth blow
From age nine through twenty-two I lived on the shore of Lake Michigan where they get ‘lake effect snow’ (that is, plenty). This resulted in quite respectable winter landscapes, and Michiganders are not ones to quake at formidable conditions. Months of white and white-turned-brown/gray were assumed. Needle-sharp cold was assumed. Treacherous travel was assumed.

So I’ve been pretty dissatisfied with these warm, rainy, and in short lame, southern Indiana winters the last three years. I cannot abide 50 degree-days in December or January unless it is some truly bizarre fluke, something by which people are disoriented and befuddled, something about which people feel uneasy, even vaguely but indubitably apocalyptic. Going about one’s business in a jacket on a 50-degree January day is just perverse.

Southern Indiana’s recent moderate dumping-upon at least made it feel like a somewhat reasonable, recognizable season, rather than a displeasing pseudo-winter. But this evening I realized one of the things I need most from winter: danger. And I finally got it tonight driving on the slick icy roads when the temperature plummeted from 45ish to 15 while it was raining/icing. I wasn’t sure, for example, that my car was actually going to stop in time as I came up behind a mini-van at a stop sign.

And it was marvelous. That’s what I want out of winter—the sense that my life, my bodily integrity may be at risk. That I could be mangled if I don’t play my cards right. Navigating winter should require skill.

Indeed, I feel a little more satisfied with the winter of ’07-’08, having now at least questioned, if only for a millisecond, whether I was actually going to live through it.

~*~*~*~*
In additional news of a pleasing bent, I’ve discovered that my short story “The Beacon” has been nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award for short fiction (long list; here's the short list). How this came to be I do not know, but I am utterly floored. Damn.

We…monstrosities are easilier achieved than got rid of
Two years ago yesterday I finished my first novel. I discovered this fact by accident earlier today going through some old files.

I strikes me as a felicitous coincidence, then, that today, two years and a day later—I started writing my next.

emerging from the ether
Things going on, things going on. Broadly speaking, the past month post-doctoral exams has much consisted of remembering how to function in society, how to read for leisure, and how to relax. Some of this endeavor has been successful.

With the news that Gail Simone will be the regular writer for the new Wonder Woman series, I’ve decided to read it. I am not a superhero fan in the least--in fact, I find the genre somehow on the border of aesthetically displeasing. However, I say this having never actually read any superhero comics. I like the Invisibles, the little Global Frequency I’ve read, and Sandman, as well as Promethea (I think that the latter, as much as it perhaps draws on the superhero genre, is more a metaphysical meditation. Thoughts?). But. I’ve decided that I’m engaging in one of my own pet peeves: judging something I’ve not actually been exposed to (read: literature people who disregard speculative fiction, never having read any). So I’m giving the superhero genre a whirl. And...truth be told, I’ve enjoyed the first four issues of Wonder Woman, particularly for all the mythology worked in. Touché.

Here’s a blog post from Cat Valente that I promised

carpe_jugulum on steampunk, which might interest various Bloomington folk. I’d be curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on it. Also this on punk.

Finally, a refrigerator-related fiasco last night unearthed some ancient food lodged in a heretofore hidden, transdimensional region of the frig. I now know what shredded taco cheese and prosciutto refrigerated since mid-2002 look like. What bothered me about it, though, was when the cheese spoke to me in my head, and, like, knew my name. Fortunately last night was also garbage night.

Current Music: Cocteau Twins: Pandora

sundry updatery
R had ACL (knee) surgery inhumanly early Monday morning. The procedure went well (the surgeon cited his 6’9”-ness as being a boon), but he’s been in a fair bit of pain ever since. Walking, for instance, in the traditional sense of the word, is right out. And he has lots of staples in him. I’ve never been the primary caretaker for someone bed-ridden before, and I’m here to tell you it’s exhausting--on par with tending a litter of baby sasquatch. I’m guessing.

This past weekend’s main affair was the gorgeous wedding of

swan_tower and

kniedwz. I got to see

susansugarspun and meet Lis Maguda, another Strange Horizons articles editor. There were dear friends and shenanigans and origami shrimp and dancing (often simultaneously). A lovely time!

Speaking of Strange Horizons, coming a bit late but no less cool: now up is Bridgette Da Silva’s article “Medieval Mindsets: Narrative Theory and The Mists of Avalon”, which I edited. I’ve loved Bradley’s treatment of Morgan le Fey and Gwenevere since I first read MoA a decade ago now, and Da Silva has an intriguing feminist discussion of it.

Also, here’s the TOC of the New Weird anthology (forthcoming February 2008), where will appear my essay “Tracking Phantoms"--a kind of personal narrative that discusses the oft-questioned reality and chracteristics of the New Weird subgenre. I’m honored to be in such good company there.

Back to ~~baby-sasquatch herding (harder than cats!)~~ work.

catventure
We can now list “linen closet” under “roof during thunderstorm” in the list of places our cat Bran has spent the night.

We have a lot of towels to refold. And wash.

Because the world must know
Ladies and gentlemen and those who do not define themselves by normative categories such as those, I give you...

LOLTHULHU.

I can die happy now.

of gods and swamps
Um. You're not going to believe this. I'm having trouble believing this.

I just sold another story, to none other than Fantasy Magazine. They just accepted my swampophilic story "His One True Bride."

Egads! Somebody pinch me!

in the magic mothswarm of heaven
Except for some annoying health issues, things are lovely these days. Some folks have already heard this, but one lovely thing is that yesterday I sold my short story “Pearl in Shadow” to Ideomancer. Many thanks to folks of Scat Hardcore and CW who critiqued this at various stages in its long evolution--

akashiver,

coyotewatches,

initialdescent,

kitsunealyc,

moonandserpent,

moonvoyager,

ninja_turbo,

swantower, and

vylar_kaftan (:whew!:). I’m quite fond of Ideomancer, and I think the website is gorgeous. In fact, when I first saw the site I decided I needed to have a story there for that reason. Quite pleased to see that come to be.

A good thing about selling a story, besides that you’ve sold a story, is the celebration part. After I got home from

tooth_and_claw’s going away party last night, R came home bearing a veritable bucket of celebratory chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream--we'll probably we working through it for at least a couple weeks, hee!

Oh, and I got some responses to/reviews of “The Beacon,” which was a fun and new experience--I got a mention in a review for “The Sibyl of Tamarish” in TEL: Stories, but never so many as this time around. Some good/some panning at Tangent, but nice blurbs showed up here and here and here.

There are eleven wild turkeys walking around in the backyard right now. This is my goblin/“cat” freaking out about them. That's sort of how I feel right now. In a good way.

of lighthouses, mammaloid insects, and invented genders
My short story “The Beacon” has gone up at Clarkesworld Magazine!

I’m quite pleased about this! Take a gander if you’re so inclined.

Unfortunate Incident
Something happened to me tonight, and I feel the need to share it with the world. Here it is in handy poem form. Let it serve as a warning to all.

(ahem)

Curse of the Ceramic Turkey on Kirkwood Ave.

Do not take
the ceramic turkey from its perch
on the gas meter
in the alleyway.
There is something clammy on it

and squamous

that stinks
of cigarette butts
and disappointment

and the stink
will not leave your hand
for days.

~*~*~*~*~*

Okay okay, I can’t be sure about the ‘for days’ bit, but it’s been damn sticky and grotesquely stinking on my hand for a good ninety minutes. Also, the second smell wasn’t disappointment per se, but I prefer not to think any further about what it actually was, as knowing might require me to wretch and/or douse my hand with bleach several times.

I believe that turkey was misused.

Some linkety links
Ursula is a badass. According to Boingboing, Science fiction great Ursula LeGuin took great exception to Slate magazine's statement that "Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it." Here’s Le Guin's response.

Strange Horizons is running our now-annual fund drive. The magazine is run by a volunteer staff, but because we pay our contributors, we depend on a large chunk of our annual budget from the fund drive. If you enjoy Strange Horizons, please consider donating a bit to help sustain it. Every contribution, no matter how small, helps and is appreciated.

In case you missed the fanfare a little while ago, Jeff VanderMeer has moved his website over here. Take a look-—he’ll be blogging there, and folks can find info about his books, freelance services, and other stuff. And it’s purty.

Finally, if you’ve not seen Adventure Time, you might consider doing so, depending on whether you like or dislike the sensation of your sanity dribbling out your ears. Just don’t think about the gender politics too hard or your mind will be transported back in time. And to Mars.

:whew:

that certain whatever
When I’m working on a writing project but am having troubling getting into it or focusing, I have a CD I put on that puts me into the zone almost instantly. I used to listen to it when translating Greek, then introduced it into my academic-writing routine in grad school. Now it’s applicable to just about anything, and when I hear it, it instantly makes my subconscious go, “Okay, it’s time to work.” I can usually start to get things done after that. This is might be a little goofy, but it’s Michal Hromak’s Celtic Guitar album, and I think I've listened to it 2000 times or more. It's quite beautiful...and work-inducing.

I was curious if other writer-people have rituals or stimuli you've intentionally developed to kick you into ‘writing head,’ as it were (and more generally, if other creative- or academic-type people have such)? I’d love to hear about it.

Colorado
I just returned home from spending the last ten days in Colorado for my little sister’s wedding and a vacation. I got a horrendous sunburn standing up for my sis as she was married in Rocky Mountain National Park, and experienced white-out conditions in a snowstorm in Estes Park…within a 24 hour period. Putting aloe on my crispified back while it was snowing was certainly bizarre. The wind in nearby towns got up to 90 mph and was rather frightening as the house we were staying in sounded like it was going to blow over. All that night during the storm, I had half-conscious dreams that the winds were artificially produced by alien invaders to obscure a mass abduction of local townsfolk. I kept thinking/dreaming the bush scraping at the window was them breaking into the house, coming, coming for us.

Yeah, I read far too many books on UFOs as a kid than was good for my sanity.

Also, I’d forgotten how gorgeous that area is. Pictures don't really do it justice, but here are a few. Let's just say I'm envious of you people who get to live near mountains.

of dancing bellies and beer
::looks around:: It's been awfully quiet around here of late!

Though I regret missing WisCon, this weekend ended up being one of much needed relaxation. Saturday was my belly dance class’ hafla (dance party), where

rhiannon76 and

hecubuscathead's students performed. While I’ve danced in front of crowds before, it was always a spontaneous thing. This was preplanned and prepracticed, so for all intents and purposes, it was my first “real” performance. I find myself feeling kind of proud about that. And the hafla was a blast and very well attended.

(And I wore my snazzy 360-degree three-tier skirt that

hecubuscathead helped me make. It’s a nigh incomprehensible twelve yards around the bottom--Cat-Head, is that really possible? Anyway, as a result there was much swirling and swooshing. I’m not much of a seamstress—by which I mean not at all—but the experience of creating a functional garment out of yards and yards and yards of fabric in a few hours was satisfying enough to make me wish I took my mother up on the offer of sewing lessons all those years ago, instead of running in the other direction. Silly younger-me!)

After the hafla, I went over to where my spousling was having a 24 Hour Brew Day—his homebrew club started brewing at 8:30am Saturday and went straight through to Sunday 8:30am. Just how they came up with this madness I don’t know, but the twenty carboys full of freshly brewed homebrew they’d assembled by the time I arrived around midnight was an impressive sight. In the end, the seven or eight participants brewed up some 26 batches of beer, nine of which were produced by the spousling’s team. Yeah. No dearth of beer around Castle Anthrax for a while.

Oh yes, and Lynne Jamneck’s interview with Eugie Foster, which I edited, went up at Strange Horizons today--take a look if you like.

For Bloomingtonians...
Now this is cool--world class violinist Joshua Bell is coming to IU--permanently. And in case you missed it, here's the experiment he and the Washington Post conducted, Bell playing as a street musician in the DC Metro to see what kind of response he'd get from passers-by (via

carpe_jugulum).

parade of phantasms
This past week has flown by. I can’t believe it’s been almost a week since Ctrl+Alt+Del. Many folks in Bloomington heard about this event, but for those who didn’t—-it was an alternative/subculture aesthetic fashion show put on by the whiz-kids behind B-town’s local dance night, Axis of Evil. And it got a nod from Warren Ellis!

I modeled

laurelwen’s cyber-geisha kimono, a description of which necessitates more gushy superlatives than I have at my disposal. For one thing, it has an electroluminescent panel on the front that glows behind a cherry blossoms icon, and red lights on the bottom. The fabric was some kind of velveteen snake-skin print, I’m not even sure what. I do know Laurelwen is a genius.

by Saturn 5 Photography

I also like this one particularly (note the lights at the bottom), and this one shows the obi. (Under all that glowy kimono I was wearing these boots, which are made of 100% Pure Awesome.)

Much fun! Other impressive ensembles--and there were many--can be seen here and here.

Current book: Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas