Drowning Nor Waving

I am sickdaying today, after some hardcore food poisoning Wednesday night and a really sad aborted attempt to stick it out at work this morning (yeah. I lasted an hour). I am going to bunker a bit with some nice, bland noodle soup, get myself horizontal, and try to get over this dizziness thing before my movie plans tonight. I really want to go to that movie.

In other news, I have a Readercon schedule:

Thursday 8:00PM, Salon F
I Read This Book, So I Started a Band -- Leah Bobet, F. Brett Cox, Paul Di Fillipo, Glenn Grant, David G. Shaw (m)
… painted this picture, directed this film, made this work of art. The Normal's "Warm Leatherette" is a condensed song version of J.G. Ballard's Crash, as is Jawbox's (more oblique) "Motorist" and Gary Numan's (more genteel and derivative) "Cars." Many of the ‘80s synth-pop pioneers (The Normal's Daniel Miller, The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, John Foxx) cite Ballard as a seminal influence, but you can find other artists influenced by Dick, Gibson, and Burroughs. How prevalent is the channeling of influence from speculative fiction into another art form? Why is it that the dystopian end of the sf spectrum seems to be more influential, and can we think of optimistic or technophilic counter-examples?

Thursday 9:00 PM, ME/CT
Speculative Poetry Workshop. Mike Allen with participation by, Leah Bobet, Gemma Files, Shira Lipkin, Ken Schneyer.
What is speculative poetry? How do you write it, why would you want to, and which editors will buy it? Come prepared to write on the fly.

Friday 4:00 PM, ME/CT
How Electrons have Changed Writing and Reading -- Cecilia Tan with discussion by Inanna Arthen, Leah Bobet, K. Tempest Bradford, Barbara Krasnoff, K. A. Laity.
Ebooks, the Internet, social media networks, Paypal -- have these really changed the writer/reader relationship forever? Not surprisingly, sf readers are early adopters of new tech and sf publishers are leading the way in new content delivery. Is it really possible with new tech for a writer to cut out the publisher and still make a living? Is the writer who wants to "just write" doomed to obscurity now? Writers, what forays into the new frontier of electronic publishing have you made and what did you find out there in the wild lands? Readers, what have you enjoyed and sought out, what would you welcome?

Saturday 11:00AM, ME/CT
The New and Improved Future of Magazines, Cont. -- John Joseph Adams, John Benson, Leah Bobet, Robert Killheffer (m), Sean Wallace
After last year's "The Future of Magazines" panels, participant K. Tempest Bradford wrote: "The magazines and anthologies that I love tend to have editors who have taken the time to examine themselves or their culture, to expend their knowledge of other people and ways of being, to open their minds. These magazines and anthologies contain far more stories I want to read by authors of many varied backgrounds. As I said, it's not fully about print vs. online, it's about better magazines and books." This time, creators and proponents of both print and online magazines collaborate on determining ways that any genre magazine can create a brighter and better-read future for itself, using Bradford's comment as a launching point.

Saturday 2:00 PM, ME/CT
Great War Geeks Unite -- Victoria Janssen with discussion by Leah Bobet, James L. Cambias, Don D'Ammassa, Debra Doyle, Walter H. Hunt, Barbara Krasnoff, Barry B. Longyear, Alison Sinclair, Howard Waldrop, Paul Witcover.
Have you written a story or novel set during World War One? Read fiction of the period, or set in the period? Do you have a love for trench warfare, poison gas, and puttees that passeth all understanding? Then this is the discussion group for you to geek out with. What is the imaginary speculative WWI novel you'd most love to read?

Saturday 3:00PM, Salon G
The Rhysling Award Poetry Slan -- Mike Allen (MC), Erik Amundsen, Kate Baker, Leah Bobet, C.S.E. Cooney, Amal El-Mohtar, Gemma Files, Francesca Forest, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Shira Lipkin, Caitlyn Paxson, Darrell Schweitzer, Sonya Taaffe, Cecilia Tan, Catherynne M. Valente
The Rhyslings are the annual awards of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and Readercon is proud to be their ongoing annual host. (A poetry "slan" — to be confused with "slam" — is a poetry reading by sf folks. If you don't get the in-joke, ask an sf fan above a certain age).

Sunday 12:00PM, VT
Reading
I'm not sure what I'm going to read: could be something new, could be something forthcoming. Most likely I'll just take requests.

Sunday 1:00PM, ME/CT
The Pun We Had -- Leah Bobet, Daniel P. Dern (m), Lila Garrott, Greer Gilman, Graham Sleight
John Cleese's three rules of comedy are, famously, "No puns, no puns, no puns." But some of our favorite works of speculative fiction are built around puns — think of Severian being the New Sun/New Son, or Greer Gilman taking the meanings of "clod" as both "cloud" and "hill." And if, in Kelly Link's "Flying Lessons," hell lies somewhere past the southernmost stop on London Underground's Northern Line, does that make it a post-Mordern fantasy? When does a pun stop being a bad joke and start revealing something deep and interesting about language?

Aside from that, I will also be found at an assortment of interesting panels, knitting in my friends' readings, and possibly crashing the kaffeklatches of my nearest and dearest. And as always, in the bar.

Got home yesterday to my contributor's copies of the Spring 2010 issue of On Spec, which contains fiction from wistling, tinaconnolly, Kate Riedel, several authors I haven't had the pleasure of acquaintance with yet, and "A Thousand", which is a story about paper cranes, Vancouver, bad communication, and the subtleties of cultural-social expectations. It has an especially lovely cover this quarter.



I take this to mean that if you, the reader, wish to purchase this fine assemblage of wordstuffs, you can probably get it at your local magazine concern around...now.

Otherwise? The sprained ankle is a lot less swollen today, and actually held up for walking home from the movies last night, which is no small feat. It's still bruised, and so is my knee, which appparently isn't happy about the whole scene either; we got yer damaged soft tissue here. I'm going to try to hold off on any overly walky errands until at least the weekend, to give it time to calm down a little more. This renders me lazy and useless, which I hate, but Management recognizes that there's really not a lot to do about it. Except the filing, which can be done from a seated position. :p

Hopefully an update that contains wordcount this evening.

Cleaning house today, in preparation for the inspection they're going to do tomorrow of what needs to be fixed in here before I move out. This would have been easier if I'd had water this morning, or yesterday night, or Friday morning, but we do what we can with the tools that we have. Also: the way the pipes in this building suck goats, rocks, and something vegetable will shortly no longer be my problem, because I am moving, and so there.

Otherwise? It is sunshiny here in La T-Dot. The horrific busy season of the Dayjob ended officially on Thursday, and I have had more sleep and fun and nutritious food in the past three days than I've had in the past three weeks. I feel stupidly, wonderfully better for it. Have, since Thursday afternoon, been to Mother's Dumplings (nom), hung out with the horror types at CZP's summer titles launch party, saw Cory Doctorow at the Merril, walked home at midnight in the kind of light rain that's nice and not icky, had fresh-squeezed lemonade, embarked on a shopping expedition for ridiculous sparkly things with ksumnersmith, saw Splice (predictable movie, but not bad movie) and had Vietnamese with theshaggy, and most importantly, slept in.

It appears to be summer.

I also have a colossal sunburn on my back from going out to the island for the Dayjob Annual Staff Picnic on Friday and getting sunscreen everywhere but said back. You can see the exact line of my sundress painted out in red on my back. It doesn't actually hurt at all, so I don't mind too much, but we may revisit that opinion if/when it starts peeling.

We wandered off from the picnic in the afternoon and took a walk through Centreville, which for the non-Toronto types is a little kid's amusement park and zoo in the middle of Centre Island. They have a lot of giant aggressive ducks in Centreville. Take a look at this mean bastard and the squint in his eye.



Also, they have peacocks. Which are beautiful, and have a cry that sounds like a small child yelling "Help!". This is maximally freaky, especially when you aren't expecting it.



It was hot out. We couldn't find ice cream, which is what we'd gone wandering looking for. But we were on the beach, and the lake was warm, and so.



I cannot explain to you how good that felt.

And these are the fables on my street.

May 12, 2010 Progress Notes:

"Stay"

Words today: -450.
Words total: 8600. Alllmost there.
Reason for stopping: I'm losing all perspective here. I need to take a break and come back at this tomorrow.

Books in progress: Ian Tregillis, Bitter Seeds.
The glamour: Today we fought dust. Who would have thought the place could have so much dust in it? Also, wrote an MAS post, critted a bit, and bagged up eight (8!) bags of clothes that I no longer wear and/or no longer fit me to go to the Oasis clothing bank. And that actually ate up the better part of the afternoon.

OTOH, my lunch was pierogies and fresh spring greens salad with sprouts, avocado, radishes, walnuts, and maple sesame dressing. And that was an unqualified and peerless win.

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Busy day! Lots of things leaving the building, including old clothes, crap, junk, recycling, dust, dust, and dust. I am not quite making the headway on the list that I would like, but considering how long some of this stuff is taking and the fact that it's already Wednesday night and they make me go back to work Monday morning, I think maybe the list was ambitious. Like, a lot ambitious.

If so, that would be, er. In character.

At this point, I figure I'll get done as much of it as I can. Hopefully the momentum will carry through into next week and mop up the rest.

There might be one or two more things I can do around here before bed. Maybe I'll put on Castle and try to find them.

May 10, 2010 Progress Notes:

"Stay"

Words today: -400.
Words total: 9050.
Reason for stopping: That's a sentence-level pass. And that's not going to get this story down to where I need it to be, so tomorrow we're ripping up the floor and going into the structure.

Books in progress: Ian Tregillis, Bitter Seeds.
The glamour: Nothing but. For my first day of vacation, I clocked a buttload of laundry, some preliminary kitchen-cleaning, a bunch of general tidying (why do I have receipts from 2008?), replied to the oustanding Ideo rewrites, shelved my books, ran an errand or two, and wrote two posts for MAS. Tomorrow will not be this intense. Tomorrow I have an apartment to look at and coffee with a friend I haven't seen since high school.

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I have been tired. I don't know if I got how tired I have been. But after three nights in a row of 10+ hours sleep, I finally feel like doing something besides staring at the walls blankly. And y'know, it's still a bit of a near thing and I'm still zoning out a bit here and there, but hey. Improvement is improvement.

Six days left of Les Vacances What Are Kind of a Working Vacances. It frightens me how short that feels. :p

I'm going to bed to read. Y'know. In defiance of.

Tonight after work I went for dinner on Spadina with Lindsey of No Fixed LJ and then we went to the Merril Collection for their vampire panel discussion, at which I saw some of the usual suspects (ie, cszego, who was the moderator; msagara; delta_november and jo_etal) and learned a thing about early vampire folklore. During the Q&A there was an option to get a small tour through the (very restricted!) Merril Collection stacks. Which we so did.

I so got to see an Amazing Stories #1 and a first edition of Dracula tonight. Oh man. I think I got so excited about that many books in one place that my hands started to flutter. Eyes big as saucers, people. For serious.

And now I am home and in a sort of pajamaed state, nosing about the internets trying to get a price range on two-bedroom apartments in the Annex (yes, I am planning a move and a roommate, and wow, they make some really nice apartments these days). Also, trying out some vanilla amaranth drinking chocolate acquired from the farmers' market that the workpeople hit on our lunch yesterday afternoon. It's neat; a bit green vegetable-tasting, but not in a bad way, and I cut it with some goat's milk besides, so that's probably mellowing it out. Once it's finished I am crawling into bed to read a bit and doze off. And then tomorrow it will be beautifully warm, if the forecast isn't lying to me, and I plan to have my lunch out on the front lawn, in the sunshine.

Sometimes it occurs to me that my life is actually pretty damn cool.

April 22, 2010 Progress Notes:

"Ache for Pomegranates" (or "The Imperative of Pomegrantes" or something like that. I haven't decided yet.)

Words today: 250.
Words total: 250.
Reason for stopping: Finally got this as close as it's getting without some outside input, after about a month of chipping at it.

Research Roundup: Pomegranates in mythology; the Song of Solomon; a reread of "To His Coy Mistress".

Books in progress: David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
The glamour: Home sick today. And after I called in sick (around 8:30 this morning) I slept like the dead until 2:30pm without being woken up by the jackhammers that have been living under my floor for the last month and a half or so, so clearly my sick day has been approved by the universe.

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Formal poetry again. It took about a month to stick together, between the tweaks and rhythm decisions and fussing endlessly over the title I'm still not done fussing with. The last formal poem is still sitting in a folder on my hard drive. I dunno what's wrong with me here.

It is beautifully sunny outside.

I do not have any juice, orange or four-berry or mango or otherwise, in this apartment. I don't know why it's not here, but I don't approve.

Still feeling kind of woozy, even after the application of Advil and the bonus! six hours' sleep, but may well attempt some writing tonight. Stay tuned.

April 5, 2010 Progress Notes:

"The Closet Monster"

Words today: 800.
Words total: 7200.
Reason for stopping: I have been summoned out to patio time. It being a lovely day, surely I would be a fool to say no.

Books in progress: Keri Hulme, The Bone People.
The glamour: Not huge! Mostly got up, perused my internets, had lunch, and settled down to write.

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I could honestly keep going right now: the momentum seems to be back on this one, and I know where it's going and I know where it's been, and if I can keep my brainpan clear of other business I might even be able to wrap up the draft this week (and wouldn't that be nice?).

But y'know, it's 22 C outside and a holiday, and really, what am I doing in here before sundown?

More verbiage later. After I catch some sunshine.

Laptop Debtkilla:

13400 / 17000 words. 79% done!

So the new motherboard has been purchased and is winging its way here, but really, I am to be damned for a traitor and a gadabout if I just sit around for another week and wait for it to show up. So yesterday after work I made epic journey to half the computer parts stores in the downtown to score an external hard drive enclosure. And eventually did. And stuck my hard drive in it, and then fiddled a lot with Outlook then and this morning and this afternoon (including one tech support call), and the upshot is that pretty much everything important that was on that hard drive is now on this laptop and I WIN.

(Yeah. It still ate my whole week. Shush.)

I'm pretty sure the Ideomancer staff aren't as happy about this, since we managed to have a major computer breakdown and still not miss slush day, but hey. :)

Upshot:

--Homicide alert downgraded to yellow;
--Anything you're expecting from me is back to "pending";

...and anyone writery who has time to read a draft of "Stay," aka 9k of wendigo-filled crunch with an end that's deeply dubious, drop me a line? :)