O Hell.

July 13, 2008 Progress Notes:

Saturnalia

Words today: 400.
Words total: 1000.
Reason for stopping: It's late.
Munchies: Sourdough with cheese and sundried tomatoes.

Darling du Jour: Pretty, of course. It didn't matter that he was fat and forty; Gregory had a knack for a pretty piece of ass. Redhead, the kind too bright to be natural. Pale white freckled skin. The blue on her nails probably polish; too bright against the candlelight to be cold.
"We can't feed her," [NAME] said shortly, and gave it the fuck up.


Mean Things: End of the woooorld!
Research Roundup: Janus, frock coats, guitar strings and weather (and general guitar maintenance), the side effects of methamphetamine addiction.
Books in progress: Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
The glamour: A great deal of shuttling around the city visiting various family members.

---

I still have four characters and only two names, but it's two now instead of one, and Janus is right right right, from the second it finally floated into my head to the actual significance it holds. Change; doors and gateways; the past and the future. That's our Not!Trent, all right.

(Okay, five characters and only two names. Mister Nameless up there in the darling notifies me that his guitar has a name too. Do we know what it is? Of course not.)

Two names. And the contents of the prologue, more or less, and a plan for the first chapter, and the opening of the second, and the image -- even if it's a metaphor, and I think it is, and know not yet for what -- that is how they might save the world. And then the epilogue, on Front Street.

O Hell. I think this train is rolling again. Watch out. :p

Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it, getting their schedule and posting it, posting it--

My Readercon schedule, I show you it:


Friday 2:00 PM, Salon G: Panel

What Has It Got in Its Apocalypses? John Joseph Adams, Jedediah Berry, Leah Bobet, Elizabeth Hand, Faye Ringel (L)

Cormac McCarthy's _The Road_ never identifies the cataclysm that has destroyed society. So the novel is clearly not at all about any specific Bad Thing that might happen to us; rather, it uses the post-apocalyptic setting as an amplifier of human nature. To what degree has this always been true (if not quite so overtly) of the post-apocalyptic novel, whose history goes back to well before the Bomb? Why have authors sometimes explained the Bad Thing in detail anyway?


Friday 3:00 PM, VT: Group Reading (60 min.)

_Clockwork Phoenix_ Group Reading Mike Allen (host) with Laird Barron, Leah Bobet, Michael DeLuca, Cat Rambo, Ekaterina Sedia.

Readings from the first volume of a new annual non-theme anthology (subtitled _Tales of Beauty and Strangeness_) edited by Allen and just published by Norilana Books.


Saturday 3:00 PM, Salon G: Event

The Rhysling Award Poetry Slan. Mike Allen (MC) with Leah Bobet, Richard Chwedyk, Andrea Hairston, James Patrick Kelly, Joy Marchand, Hildy Silverman, and Sonya Taaffe

(A "poetry slan," to be confused with "poetry slam," is a poetry reading by sf folks, of course.) Climaxed by the presentation of this year's Rhysling Awards.


Sunday 10:00 AM, ME/ CT: Panel

The Aesthetics of Online Magazines. Leah Bobet, Ellen Datlow, Ernest Lilley, Nick Mamatas (L), Sean Wallace

Online magazines are a growing section of the speculative fiction marketplace. But is there more to an online magazine than simply publishing in pixels stories that would otherwise be printed on pulp? How have online magazines adapted to the new medium in terms of story subjects, story length, design, and the attraction and maintenance of audiences? How do these choices differ from those made by print magazine producers? If the medium is the message, then what is the message of Internet-based magazines?

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Normally I'd say that otherwise, I'll be in the bar? But upon looking over the panel lists for this con when I was selecting my top choices for panels I wanted to do, I won't. I'll be in panels. :)

(Except when I am out at the Summer Shack eating lobster.)

Hope to see you there!

Honoured

In other announcementy news! I took a look at Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual at work on Friday, and "The Sorceress's Assistant", which showed up in the Fall 2007 issue of On Spec, has received an Honorable Mention.

I'm a little puzzled, as it's a fantasy story, but chuffed. :)

What had me more chuffed, though, is that three Ideomancer stories also got Honorable Mentions! Yoon Ha Lee's (yhlee's) "Screamers", Ted Kostmaka's "Deadnauts", and Ruth Nestvold's "Far Side of the Moon".

I could not tell you why it's a bigger thrill to see the stories you acquired as an editor do well than it is with the stories you wrote yourself. But it is. So yay to Yoon, Ted, and Ruth!

Garden, Abbreviated, at the Ides of July

Today is apparently my day to spam LJ. Behold my produce pictures!
( You put the seed in the potting soil and water it all up )