![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Bootlog 2/8
Feb. 9th, 2010 | 09:23 am
I'm happier when I quantify my daily activity, so I'm gonna try to get back into the swing of it.
Words: ~1000 across two projects
Miles: 1.5
Book: Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. Brutal, funny, and full of fantastic characters -- epic fantasy transmogrified into a revenge flick and directed by Tarantino. And hey, blurbed by Junot Diaz. The sort of fantasy novel I'd recommend to people who tend not to enjoy fantasy.
Words: ~1000 across two projects
Miles: 1.5
Book: Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. Brutal, funny, and full of fantastic characters -- epic fantasy transmogrified into a revenge flick and directed by Tarantino. And hey, blurbed by Junot Diaz. The sort of fantasy novel I'd recommend to people who tend not to enjoy fantasy.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Sunday in Damascus
Jan. 31st, 2010 | 07:02 pm
Link | Leave a comment {3} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Handsome arrivals
Jan. 29th, 2010 | 01:45 pm
Link | Leave a comment {1} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Stories I Have Loved, 2009
Jan. 22nd, 2010 | 03:49 pm
I meant to post this toward the beginning of the month, but January's been so busy that I haven't been good for much more than 140 characters of frantic self-documentation at a time. Oh well. Here are, belatedly, a bunch of stories I adored in 2009. I dearly hope these get some love from the various awards and Year's Best anthologies in the next few months, so, you know, seek out and read if you're inclined. In no particular order:
Anthony Doerr, "Memory Wall"
McSweeney's 32
Genevieve Valentine, "Carthago Delenda Est"
Federations & Escape Pod
Tim Pratt, "Unexpected Outcomes"
Interzone 222
Shweta Narayan, "Nira and I"
Strange Horizons
Jay Lake, "To Raise a Mutiny Betwixt Themselves"
New Space Opera 2
Christopher Bird, "Scenes from an Alternate Universe Where the Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels' Generous Offer"
Mightygodking
Catherynne M. Valente, "Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy"
Federations
Kij Johnson, "Spar"
Clarkesworld
Yoon Ha Lee, "The Unstrung Zither"
F&SF (March)
Lucius Shepard, "Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life"
Other Earths
Suzanne Palmer, "Silence and Roses"
Interzone 223
Anthony Doerr, "Memory Wall"
McSweeney's 32
Genevieve Valentine, "Carthago Delenda Est"
Federations & Escape Pod
Tim Pratt, "Unexpected Outcomes"
Interzone 222
Shweta Narayan, "Nira and I"
Strange Horizons
Jay Lake, "To Raise a Mutiny Betwixt Themselves"
New Space Opera 2
Christopher Bird, "Scenes from an Alternate Universe Where the Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels' Generous Offer"
Mightygodking
Catherynne M. Valente, "Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy"
Federations
Kij Johnson, "Spar"
Clarkesworld
Yoon Ha Lee, "The Unstrung Zither"
F&SF (March)
Lucius Shepard, "Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life"
Other Earths
Suzanne Palmer, "Silence and Roses"
Interzone 223
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Dollhouse: After the Fall
Jan. 13th, 2010 | 05:27 pm
My recap/review of the last half-season of Dollhouse is up at Fantasy Magazine.
Well, all wildly uneven things must come to an end, and Dollhouse’s last couple months have been as twisty and unpredictable as its most recent episodes.
Read the rest here.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Turtles all the way down
Jan. 7th, 2010 | 01:49 pm
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Freshly Baked Terror
Jan. 6th, 2010 | 02:40 pm
David posted this in comments a few months ago, but I missed it until now. Think it deserves a signal boost.
Link | Leave a comment {1} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Links for the New Year
Jan. 4th, 2010 | 01:41 pm
- Dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons.' That phrase gives me shivers. In a good way.
- A little decadence. Why 2010 is the start of the new decade.
- David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in Hamlet. How the hell did I not know about this? I mean, it's probably for the best, as I might have CHOKED ON MY GLEE if I'd seen it, but damn. I wonder if there's going to be a DVD of the broadcast performance.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Shine TOC
Jan. 1st, 2010 | 07:29 pm
Fun news for the new year: Jetse de Vries has announced the final TOC for Shine.
- The Earth of Yunhe—Eric Gregory
- The Greenman Watches the Black Bar Go Up, Up, Up—Jacques Barcia
- Overhead—Jason Stoddard
- Summer Ice—Holly Phillips
- Sustainable Development—Paula R. Stiles
- The Church of Accelerated Redemption—Gareth L. Powell & Aliette de Bodard
- The Solnet Ascendancy—Lavie Tidhar
- Twittering the Stars—Mari Ness
- Seeds—Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- At Budokan—Alastair Reynolds
- Sarging Rasmussen: A Report by Organic—Gord Sellar
- Scheherazade Caught in Starlight—Jason Andrew
- Russian Roulette 2020—Eva Maria Chapman
- Castoff World—Kay Kenyon
- Paul Kishosha’s Children—Kenn Edgett
- Ishin—Madeline Ashby
He's also posted excerpts of my story and Jacques Barcia's "The Greenman Watches the Black Bar Go Up, Up, Up" at Daybreak Magazine, with more excerpts to follow as Shine's release date approaches. Jetse regularly publishes great full-length stories over at Daybreak, so you should definitely check it out if you're in the market for energetic, optimistic SF.
Link | Leave a comment {4} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
2010
Jan. 1st, 2010 | 03:09 pm
May we all evolve.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Varieties of Disturbance
Dec. 18th, 2009 | 04:07 pm
Liese woke me up in the middle of the night whispering, in her sleep,
"The ashes and the fire. The fire and the charcoal."
Over and over again.*
Then, this morning, a black cow showed up on our front porch.
A few hours later, the porch looked like this:
I'm not saying the Beast of Abaddon wakes now from its centuries of slumber, eager to inaugurate the era of a thousand hells.
I'm just sayin'.
* Apparently she was dreaming about the Mythbusters walking on coals.
"The ashes and the fire. The fire and the charcoal."
Over and over again.*
Then, this morning, a black cow showed up on our front porch.
A few hours later, the porch looked like this:
I'm not saying the Beast of Abaddon wakes now from its centuries of slumber, eager to inaugurate the era of a thousand hells.
I'm just sayin'.
* Apparently she was dreaming about the Mythbusters walking on coals.
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Sad Man Happy Man
Dec. 8th, 2009 | 10:11 am
Well, shit. Those twelve bucks are never coming back. And this should have been a slam dunk: a cozy, quirky guitar-and-cello album, meandering from songs called "How to Fuck a Republican" to Daniel Johnston covers. You get the sense that Doughty said, "Look, I'm just gonna hang with my cellist buddy and play some songs and if folks want to buy the CD, that's fine by me." I admire the hell out of that attitude, but I also doubt I'll listen to this record more than two or three more times. Its best songs don't hold a candle to the worst on Golden Delicious, which was itself an order of magnitude weaker than (maybe the album of the decade, from where I'm standing) Haughty Melodic. There's a warmth here that most Soul Coughing albums lacked, but Sad Man Happy Man indulges a lot of annoying old Soul Coughing habits: frequently boring, tuneless, repetitive lyrics over the same two or three chords, again and again and again. Fans who disliked his last two solo records seem to view this as a return to form--so if you're one of those, hey, go for it--but the best I can say is that I'll probably rip it to iTunes before selling it to the used CD store. Oh well.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Lao Tzu's Trucks
Dec. 5th, 2009 | 04:17 pm
From Stephen Mitchell's rendition of the Tao Te Ching:
When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.
The same passage, this time from Ursula K. Le Guin:
When the world's on the Way,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world gets off the Way,
they breed warhorses on the common.
When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.
The same passage, this time from Ursula K. Le Guin:
When the world's on the Way,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world gets off the Way,
they breed warhorses on the common.
I don't necessarily mind archaism in translation -- I remember one take on the Bhagavad Gita that described Krishna's "nuclear power," which I thought was cool and pretty apt in its context. But I'm fascinated by how badly Mitchell's modernization backfires here. There's a richness and a wryness to Le Guin's verse that's totally absent in Mitchell, who gives us this mechanical little formula, dry and humorless and a bit pedantic. The trucks themselves aren't a problem -- you could talk about pickups hauling shit for the fields and carry the tone of the Tao Te Ching wonderfully -- but Mitchell's so fixated on the lesson he finds important, on making for-damn-sure we understand this is relevant to us and our time, that he loses the spirit of the thing completely.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Hey
Dec. 2nd, 2009 | 02:57 pm
Anyone want to go to Asheville on Saturday?
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Last Night's Dreamin'
Dec. 2nd, 2009 | 08:56 am
I was the guitarist for Aimee Mann's national tour. As we were starting the first show, I realized that I hadn't practiced any of the songs and I'd misplaced the sheet music. I decided I'd just wing it, but the audience started booing in the first few seconds of the show, and I ran offstage in panic.
In later, apparently unrelated dreams, people would bring up Youtube videos of the Aimee Mann Concert Fail and laugh about how badly the guitarist had screwed up. They never seemed to know that it had been me, and I always laughed nervously along, afraid that they'd figure it out.
In later, apparently unrelated dreams, people would bring up Youtube videos of the Aimee Mann Concert Fail and laugh about how badly the guitarist had screwed up. They never seemed to know that it had been me, and I always laughed nervously along, afraid that they'd figure it out.
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
[sale] "The Earth of Yunhe" to SHINE
Nov. 24th, 2009 | 09:04 pm
Normally this kind of news would call for a bottle of mead and festive animated GIFs, but I'm still a little sick and probably shouldn't look at too many flashing lights. In any case, I've sold my story "The Earth of Yunhe" to Jetse de Vries for his Shine anthology from Solaris Books. The book looks like this:
(You can take a closer gander at the Amazon preorder page.)
Inside: over a dozen optimistic near-future SF stories, all imagining how humanity might grapple with twenty-first century problems instead of traipsing listlessly through another game of Fallout. The full table of contents will be revealed as part of a promotional contest on the Shine blog (check back there on November 30th for contest details), but several exceptionally cool writers' names are right there on the cover: Alastair Reynolds, Holly Phillips, Kay Kenyon, and Jason Stoddard. More details to come in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned.
Also:
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
November Sundries
Nov. 6th, 2009 | 09:14 am
Yesterday:
Saw a pretty good performance of Avenue Q, which was all the better for being a break from routine and getting Liese and I out of the house. (Even if the ticket office's definition of "front balcony" didn't quite square with my definition. We were in the last five rows?) I managed to catch it in London a couple years ago, but Liese had never had a chance, so I was glad that it came around here and that we were both off of work.
Everyday:
When I set out to write daily for two months, I kind of neglected to consider that November is my month of Big Important Applications. So in that spare time when I'm not yanking out my hair over work-related whatevers, I'm head-desking over letters of introduction and personal statements and all that nasty, dread-inducing jazz.* I feel loads more comfortable with this round of applications than the last -- which is to say, I feel more comfortable with the kinds of futures I'm applying to -- and I'm also perfectly aware that all hope for goodness and light on Earth doesn't hinge on my acceptance, but the whole process makes me into an even more constant pot of anxiety than usual.
Long and short, daily writing is going to fall (further) to the wayside for a little while, though I'd like to round out the last week or so of Month One before this month is over. I'm a slow writer in the best of times, and when I'm working on Letters and Statements of Great Import, my hourly word-count tends to look something like a kindergarten counting exercise.
*Which sounds like pretty sweet jazz, actually. If you're just listening to it.
Saw a pretty good performance of Avenue Q, which was all the better for being a break from routine and getting Liese and I out of the house. (Even if the ticket office's definition of "front balcony" didn't quite square with my definition. We were in the last five rows?) I managed to catch it in London a couple years ago, but Liese had never had a chance, so I was glad that it came around here and that we were both off of work.
Everyday:
When I set out to write daily for two months, I kind of neglected to consider that November is my month of Big Important Applications. So in that spare time when I'm not yanking out my hair over work-related whatevers, I'm head-desking over letters of introduction and personal statements and all that nasty, dread-inducing jazz.* I feel loads more comfortable with this round of applications than the last -- which is to say, I feel more comfortable with the kinds of futures I'm applying to -- and I'm also perfectly aware that all hope for goodness and light on Earth doesn't hinge on my acceptance, but the whole process makes me into an even more constant pot of anxiety than usual.
Long and short, daily writing is going to fall (further) to the wayside for a little while, though I'd like to round out the last week or so of Month One before this month is over. I'm a slow writer in the best of times, and when I'm working on Letters and Statements of Great Import, my hourly word-count tends to look something like a kindergarten counting exercise.
*Which sounds like pretty sweet jazz, actually. If you're just listening to it.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Election '09
Nov. 3rd, 2009 | 09:40 am
Voting. Today. Yes. I'd point my fellow Virginians to the Washington Post's endorsement of Deeds, which I think sums things up pretty well. Dude has run a totally inept campaign and just straight up isn't going to win, but he'd be a decent governor, and sure as hell better than the other guy.
While on the subject: FiveThirtyEight continues to be one of the few useful, thoughtful sources of political analysis out there. Here's their take on using today's gubernatorial races to gauge the national political mood. (Summary: it's not a very useful yardstick.)
While on the subject: FiveThirtyEight continues to be one of the few useful, thoughtful sources of political analysis out there. Here's their take on using today's gubernatorial races to gauge the national political mood. (Summary: it's not a very useful yardstick.)
Link | Leave a comment {1} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
[Sunflower 22] The Long Week
Nov. 1st, 2009 | 09:11 pm
New Words:
600
Total Words:
17,500
Forward Motion:
30mins on stationary bike
Music:
Danger Mouse, Dark Night of the Soul
Reading:
Canticle by Ken Scholes
Otherwise:
Long week with little writing, obviously. Ah well. There was a Live Action Zombie Game, and that's nothing to scoff at.
600
Total Words:
17,500
Forward Motion:
30mins on stationary bike
Music:
Danger Mouse, Dark Night of the Soul
Reading:
Canticle by Ken Scholes
Otherwise:
Long week with little writing, obviously. Ah well. There was a Live Action Zombie Game, and that's nothing to scoff at.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
[Writing] In the Kitchen
Oct. 27th, 2009 | 08:16 am
I'd let a few projects and obligations languish on the backburner, and I wanted to spend Monday cleaning the stove. Or something. Got a lot of stuff done, anyway.
New Words:
700 (non-fiction)
1000 (short story)
Forward Motion:
~3.8 miles
Music:
The groans of the zombie horde
Reading:
Canticle by Ken Scholes
Otherwise:
Further preparation for the Halloween Zombie Event. I possibly got in the spirit of things with a little Left 4 Dead. On the agenda tonight: pumpkins and knives. (!!!)
New Words:
700 (non-fiction)
1000 (short story)
Forward Motion:
~3.8 miles
Music:
The groans of the zombie horde
Reading:
Canticle by Ken Scholes
Otherwise:
Further preparation for the Halloween Zombie Event. I possibly got in the spirit of things with a little Left 4 Dead. On the agenda tonight: pumpkins and knives. (!!!)