Category: Personal

current affairs

A Plague On Both Houses…With A Pastoral Addendum

Listening to election news lately is like keeping track of a Roller Derby game.  They keep going around the same circle, bumping into each other, occasionally shouting unsubstiated things—at each other and the audience—and by and large just getting in each others’ ways.  If you like that kind of sport, it can be entertaining.  Otherwise…

So I’ve been working on new fiction and playing with photoshop and basically tuning it all out.  As much as I hate to say it, I already know that I’m not going to vote for any Republicans, and most of the Independents are seemingly farther right.  As much as I agree that spending is out of control, voting for the Republicans right now also brings a whole bunch of other nonsense into play that I just can’t tolerate.  (I know, I should be tolerant, but after a while, stupidity is unsupportable, in the name of anything.)

What we seem to be seeing a lot of right now is some kind of principle that should have a name, basically a principle that half-measures are worse than leaving something alone.  The health care “overhaul” is unpopular.  Some of it deservedly so, but polls are showing that people are cherrypicking it—there is a lot that they like, but the total package sucks.  So they think.  Of course, premiums were heading no where but up, so most of us are about to end up without health insurance anyway, so you would think the cry would be for more controls, not less.  (Is anyone still so naive as to think that deregulation is a good idea?  Don’t most people understand that the current economic fiasco is the direct result of NO REGULATIONS on key parts of the financial sector?  How is it they can come up with a thesis that says less will work any better?)  But it is fair to say that the compromises that resulted in the current law hamstrung it so badly that it may well be worse than nothing.  If Obama had forcefully backed single payer…

Of course, that scares people of a certain mindset even more.  Single payer!  That’s Socialism!  Well, somewhat.  And so what?  If the end result is to provide good health care for as many of our people as possible…

But there’s no point going over this again.  People may not say it, but they act as if they would rather die bleeding in the street than have the government in any way involved in their (nonexistant) medical care.  If we got the way the Republicans want to, that’s pretty much what will happen.

Mind you, if people in general were willing to say “Let them die” if they can’t pay for their own health care, then there would be some spine to the Republican position.  But we’re not.  We take of people when we find them in serious straits.  And pass the cost on to those who can.  Increased premiums.  Why isn’t this seen as a form of Socialism, only privately funded?  Why do we think Big Business has more moral authority in this than our elected officials?

Be that as it may, I don’t much care right now.  I’m listening to all the campaigns and feeling more and more like Mercutio.  They either haven’t the brains, haven’t the guts, or haven’t the ethics to represent me.  But I will vote.  Oh, yes.  I believe that if you don’t vote you don’t get to bitch.  And I intend to bitch.

Meantime, I’m playing with fiction and photographs.  After such a bit of spleen, here’s something more pleasant to contemplate.  Enjoy.

cascade-as-cloud-copy.jpg

Art

On The Road Part Two

A quick follow-up to my abbreviated MadCon report just past.  Harlan Ellison arrived at the hotel Thursday evening, around eight o’clock.  Only a few of us were in the lobby.  Allen Steele, Peter David, Donna, and myself.  Peter David’s wife Kathleen and their daughter (who Harlan “terrorized” to our surprise and her later delight).  From that point on it became a really good experience.  All the rumors that had been floating around about Harlan’s imminent demise proved exaggerated.  Though he didn’t look his best—clearly he has been ailing—and he arrived wearing a sweatshirt and pajama bottoms (Pierre Cardin, as he repeatedly joked, since he wore them all weekend), as the weekend progressed he came more and more alive.

I have a couple of photographs of Harlan.  I will not post them.  Harlan has developed a deep antagonism toward the on-line postings that pass for “news” on the internet.  He loathes the practice of recording and uploading on the spot.  Someday, maybe.  The pictures are for Donna and me.

But I do have a shot—a bit blurry, not great—of one of my panels.

panel.jpg

From left to right, that is  Gene Wolfe, John Krewson (of the Onion), Allen Steele, and Yours Truly.  I believe this was the panel on how we all got into writing science fiction in the first place.  Or just writing.

Saturday morning Donna and I drove down to the capitol, downtown Madison, for their semi-legendary farmers market.  It was brisk, but a bright, lovely morning, and we walked around among all the vendors.  I have a couple of shots from that, but not yet ready to post.  They will likely end up in my Zenfolio portfolio.

On the way home, however, we stopped a couple times to take shots of the sunrise.  We left the hotel at 4:15 AM and drove south into a wonderful morning.  At one of the first rest stops, I shot this.

trucks-at-sunrise.jpg

Not the greatest work of art ever produced, but there are elements of it I quite like.  I may work on it further.

Anyway, it was a fine trip, in the best company.  Maybe I’ll say more.  Later.

Or maybe not.

blog

Home Again

We are returned from the wilds of Wisconsin.

In the last post I mentioned we were attending MadCon 2010 in Madison, touted as the last convention Harlan Ellison will ever do.  Much speculation runs rampant over the internet about this and his own presentations at the convention will doubtless throw gasoline on the inferno.  Having spent more than a small amount of time in his company this past weekend, I will report only that the rumors are pretty much exactly that.  Those who know him, know what’s more or less going on, and those who don’t, unless they were present at MadCon and heard what he had to say, do not know what is going on, and after a few conversations with the man I will not post about it here.

I will say that he holds the most desolate of opinions about the internet possible without becoming a complete luddite (which he is not).

We sat at the banquet table Saturday night with Gene Wolfe and his wife and a nicer man would be hard to find.  I’ve always liked Gene, have had too few opportunities to talk with him, and this past weekend I got to sit on two panels with him.

Likewise with my good friend Allen Steele.  We have been at several conventions together over the years and always manage to not be on panels together.  Admittedly, some of this has to do with our slightly divergent interests in certain aspects of SF, but not entirely, so this weekend made up for a long-running deficit.

We also met new people—a shout out to Pat Rothfuss, Tim Richmond, Rich Keeny, John Klima (of Electric Velocipede), Maggie Thompson, Nayad Monroe, Mark Rich, and others.  It was a quality weekend.  I have a huge load of work to do this week before Archon this coming weekend, but having had this occasion and first-rate block of time with Donna, I can tackle it all handily.

There will be many reports (and “reports”) about what occurred at MadCon.  All I will say about it here is this:  it was one of those “you had to be there” events.  Otherwise, only your prejudices will be tickled—scatology will reign where truth is absent.  But then, that seems to be the way it always goes when it comes to Harlan.

blog

On The Road

Tomorrow morning, probably before the sun is up, we will be on the road to Madison, Wisconsin.  We’re going to attend a little convention called MadCon 2010.  When you click on the link you will see a note explaining that the guest of honor, Harlan Ellison, will not, due to illness, make it.  Well, that’s changed, apparently.  Harlan says he is feeling up to it and will be getting on a plane tomorrow and will appear.

Last time we saw Harlan was in 1999, at a convention called Readercon (which is a genuinely spiffy excellent convention because it is ALL ABOUT BOOKS—no movies, no anime, no costumes, none of that, just BOOKS) and he was in great form and we had a marvelous time.

By a series of odd coincidences, about two years ago, I became better acquainted with Harlan.  We’ve spoken on the phone and written to each other a few times and while it would be the height of hubris for me to claim that we are friends, we are at least on first name friendly terms.  (It’s funny how, with certain people, sometimes you seem to have to “save up” stuff to talk about before calling them, because what you very much want not to do is bore them.  I’ve never quite known how to recognize the point past which that concern no longer matters.)  I wrote a piece about the documentary, Dreams With Sharp Teeth, both for this blog and cross-posted to Dangerous Intersection.  I was impressed with the film and have always been impressed by its subject, so I took a few minutes to alert others to its existence.

Much to my dismay, Harlan got word to me that he had seen it and wanted to thank me personally.  I called him, we talked, we’ve conversed on occasion since.  I’ve been looking forward to this trip for over a year.

Naturally, when word came down that he might not make it, we were bummed, but still intent on going.  The news today is heartening, to say the least.  I will write about it when I get back.

I’m doing some panels at the convention, a couple of them with a good friend, Allen Steele, with whom I’ve done far too few panels since we met way back in the early 90s.  Others will be there that I look forward to seeing again or meeting for the first time.  (The estimable and excellent Gene Wolfe will be there.)  But even so, I’m going as a fan.  Harlan’s work has meant a very great deal to me.  He is unique.  Worth a read, to be sure.

So till next week sometime…adieu.

Absurdity

Didn’t They Throw The Tea In The Harbor…?

Christine O’Donnell is one of those public figures that emerge from time to time that make any writer of fiction envious of reality.  Only a truly gifted writer could make someone like this up and then sell her as a plausible character.

At the heart of it, she is the problem with the Tea Party.

Here’s the thing I’ve never understood about the far right: fiscal responsibility is well and good and certainly we could do with a lot more—we could have used some for the last thirty years, certainly, a period during which Republicans (and by inference conservatives) have been largely in control of Congress—but how come is it we can’t seem to get candidates who are just about that without dragging all the social issue crap along with them?  I for one am tiring of having my alternatives clipped because some whack-a-do who may well have a sound fiscal policy in mind is also hell bent on “correcting” the lax, immoral, godless state of the country.

Now we get right down to the basic issues with Ms. O’Donnell: jacking off.  It’s destroying the country.  People are going blind from this, divorce rates are record high because selfish people are doing themselves at the expense of the shared relationship god intended they have.  Abstinence means all of it!  Tie those peoples’ hands behind their backs!  Put those genital safety belts on those young fellows who can’t leave johnny alone!  Why, if we root out the evil of self-pleasuring, we’ll be on the road to sound financial policy and security in no time!

Then of course there’s the usual slate of absurdities—she’s a young earth creationist.  (What, may I ask, does this have to do with fiscal conservatism?  Well, in her case, apparently, a difficulty with basic math…)  Naturally she opposes abortion and since she’s so down on pud pounding, we may presume she hasn’t much use for birth control of any kind, sex education, or possible female orgasm.

She is that perfect contradiction of modern far right womanhood—someone who probably thinks women’s place is in the home who is attempting to establish a powerful political career in order to legislate herself back into a state of chattel bondage.

And then there’s the Libertarian wing of the Tea Party that basically believes people ought to be free to choose their own lives without interference from anyone, especially the government, and eventually they will create the fissure in opposition to the Talibaptist contingent who want more than anything to tell people how to live decent lives.

It may do this country good to elect some of these folks into public office so we can see, really see how they perform.  How they make their philosophies mesh with what most Americans really want.

It’s a sad time for American politics.  We’re in a depression (why they insist on continuing to call it a recession is purist political cynicism), Obama has not miraculously fixed that, and people are pissed off.  They are in a “Throw the bastards out” mood, but unfortunately they have little to choose from.  The Republican Party, self-deluded that they may ride this tide back into power for “all the right reasons”, has so bankrupted its credibility right before, during, and since W that even conservatives must hold their noses to vote for them.  The Democrats have failed once again to define an American Ideology behind which the people can get and although right now they are probably on the right track fiscally, it will take time for their actions to result in anything fruitful.  (Didn’t Obama say all along it would take a long time?  Didn’t he say this would not be painless?  Didn’t he say a lot of work would have to be done before things started drifting back to something good?  Didn’t he?  But he’s been in office 19 months!  My god, just how long is a long time?)  They haven’t “fixed things” so people don’t like them either.

So there’s the Tea Party.  This is bottom of the barrel time.  These are the screeling, apocalyptic, neo-revisionist, founding-principled-though-illiterate gang of conspiracy theorist candidates who have gained momentum through sheer quality of nerve, who intend to save the country from our foreign-born Muslim president and the anarcho-socialist intellectual elite.  They are the ones who wish to remove all the interfering laws and restrictions that hamper the marrow-deep entrepreneurial American essence and allow people to make millions on their own or starve in the gutter with their families because while Darwin was wrong about biology he was right about economic policy and the weak ought to perish so the strong can dominate.  These are the folks who would free us to be dominated by Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banking, and Big Insurance.  These are people who believe corporations are people, too, and back the American dream nurtured in the heart of every kid who wants to grow up to be a corporation.  Or an oligarch.

But first, they have to curtail masturbation.  The country has had enough of people jacking off.  Time to get them back to work.

career

ConText

Returned home yesterday, around two P.M.  Scads of emails in the hopper, mail in the box, laundry to do, a dog to pet.

I had a good time at ConText.  The Doubletree where it was held was in a a kind of commercial court with several good restaurants and a multiplex movie theater (which I did not go to).  It was a smallish con with some good guests (Toby Buckell, Lucy Snyder, Paul Melko) and a decent program track.  More about the books than many cons with which I’ve become familiar, which is refreshing.

Diana Dru Botsford, who serves on the Missouri Center for the Book with me, was able to premier her first novel at the convention.  Four Dragons, a Stargate SG-1 novel.  Watching her, I was envious.  The excitement of having your first novel out is unlike anything else.

I was able to link up with my good friend Tim Esaias.  He taught workshops almost all weekend, so we didn’t visit as much as I’d liked, but it’s always good to see Tim.  We now have something that I do not believe previously existed—a picture together.

tim-me.jpg

I’ve known Tim now for…23 years, I suppose.  He very early on encouraged me to continue writing.  He’s been a solid critic, a good editor, and a terrific friend.  He’s teaching now himself, at Seton Hill in Pennsylvania.  Diana was one of his students.

Tim is one of the Good Ones.  Those who know him understand what I mean.  Occasionally such people should be acknowledged.  Tim helped me.  Effectively.

Enough of that, now.  Time to go back to work.

Personal

Conventioning

In a couple of days I’ll be heading for Columbus, to attend ConText.  My first time at this convention and it’s long overdue.  I should have gone years ago.  I attended another convention in Columbus once, at the suggestion of my then-publisher who had been invited as a publisher GoH.  When we got there we realized that it was the wrong con for a book release party, which was what he had in mind.  It was almost entirely a media con.

Leafing through the program book I came across an ad for ConText, with the tagline:

“The convention for those of us who actually read the stuff.”

Oops.  Now I’ll make up for my negligence, even those this is not a great time for me to be going to conventions.  I have nothing coming out, no books at least, and it’s been some time since my last one.  (Yes, I’m working on it, I’m working on it.)

But this should be fun.  One of my best friends is conducting a couple of workshops, as is a newer friend, and there are a couple of people there whom I’d like to meet and some others I haven’t seen in some time.  We long ago started using conventions to keep up with friends.

This will be the beginning of a long fall of events.  A lot of stuff happening.

End of this month, MadCon 2010.  The week after that, Archon.  The week after that, The Big Read (here, in Clayton, MO).  On the 23rd, the Celebration of the Book.

As to that last, please consider attending.  We’re doing a smaller one this year, but 2011 ought to be considerably larger.  But we need to start building this up.  The registration form is here.  I’ll be blogging more about this as the time nears.

For now, I must clean house, choose clothes, brush up on my social skills (such as they are).  I’ll say something about how it went when I return next week.

blog

A Week’s Worth of Stuff

This past week some things have moved forward which please me.  The Missouri Center for the Book is about it have a new Facebook page.  I made the decision to put it up now, in advance of the total website make-over, because I think it will be necessary to get the upcoming Celebration promoted more efficiently.  That event will be October 23rd, again in Columbia.  Barring other avenues of advertising, I think this one will be essential.

It’s happening.  Also, the new website design is coming along quickly and when that is up there will be regular blog posts, and a special section from the state poet laureate.  When that happens, obviously, I’ll post about it here.

On a personal front, I’ve gotten the preliminary schedule from Context in Columbus OH and they’ve put me on at least three panels and given me a kaffeeklatsch.  The latter will be interesting.  I’ve done a couple of these, but with less than amazing results.  One of these days I hope to have a dozen people show up and make me feel like a real honest-to-goodness writer type person.  But the panels look interesting.

More short fiction.  I am forcing the hindbrain to put out.  I will do more short stories.  I’m coming to grips with an old one that almost didn’t work but now seems to be moving along nicely.

I went to the gym Friday and had a decent work-out (650 lbs on the leg press, not too shabby for an old man) but I’m feeling a bit drained today, so I’m putting off going back till tomorrow or Tuesday.

Although many things are still in limbo, curiously I’ve been feeling good about things this past week, like everything will work out fine.  I am not given to groundless optimism or airy prognostications.  “Oh, it will all come out fine, you’ll see,” is not a working philosophy for me.  But you can only control so much on your own.  You can do the best you can with what you have in hand and if the next step depends on Other People, well, you can’t let their lethargy, inertia, or recalcitrance depress you.  It does depress you, because, well, if they don’t do X, Y, or Z then what you want to do doesn’t move forward, but there’s not much you can do about that short of going to them personally and being persuasive.  Like that would work.

So you shift gears and work on something else.  You enjoy a good meal.  Watch a movie, read a book, contemplate the heavens…

cloud.jpg

In my case, the physical heavens, as the supernatural variety holds no charm for me.

Having said that, I note that Christopher Hitchens, earnest, sharp, intellectually stimulating transplanted Brit who lectures and debates on atheism among other things, is in dire straits.  He was diagnosed recently with esophageal cancer, a nasty form that has a low survival rate.  His father apparently died of it.  I saw him recently on an interview with Anderson Cooper and most of his hair is already gone from the chemo, but he was quite stoic and lucid.  He was asked about the possibility of a death-bed conversion and he said emphatically that as long as he was himself, no, but there’s no guarantee that he won’t be someone else if he’s too far gone in pain and medication.

Life is what it is.  I know intellectually that it isn’t fair.  It isn’t anything pro or con in terms of justice or equality or anything else.  It is what it is.  Fairness is a concept of our invention that we bring to the enterprise.  But because it’s ours, we tend to invest it with merit and get angry when things don’t go according to an expectation we impose.

Still, I wish him well and will regret his death.  He fearlessly pokes into the dark corners and writes about what he finds and people like that are worth more than can be assessed.

Another mixed bag of a week, then.  Can’t wait to see what next week has in store.

Art

New Fiction

I’ve been working this past few months on short fiction.  You wouldn’t think this would be such a hard thing to do, given my rate of production in the last ten years (almost fifteen novels, scores of book reviews, a few assorted nonfiction pieces, and all the blog entries, both here and on Dangerous Intersection), but short fiction is peculiar.  Hell, anything is peculiar.  If you’re used to writing one form, switching to another can be very difficult.  There are some writers, I know (and some I know) who have no trouble moving between forms, but for whatever reason I do.

I feel as though some time in the last several years I’ve forgotten how to write a short story.

So after completing my last novel (the murder mystery) I opted to go back to short fiction.  I finished The Drowned Doll in late March.  Here it is nigh unto to the end of July and finally I’m doing short stories.

Last month I finished a story for Lee Martindale for an anthology she’s editing, got it in the mail, and she took it.  Amazing what a sale will do for your spirits.  This past week I finished the rough draft of a novelette and this morning I have begun another new story.

These last two are interesting in that I have no idea where they came from.  Writers get asked with such numbing regularity “Where do you get your ideas?” that it seems to me occasionally I should print up small cards with the various answers to hand out.  There is only one true answer—I have no idea!

Once in a while I can trace the germ of a story back to a couple of sources—an overheard comment, an article, something on television or the radio—and in the case of anthologies, it’s a bit simpler.  The anthology is about X, ergo the story will be about X.  The unique feature will be the way it’s about X, and that’s the whole point.  The real guts of a story is in the execution, the approach, the viewpoint.  Ideas are easy—so easy we often don’t even know we’ve had them until we start writing the story.

What you do with your ideas is where the action is, and that’s where the work comes in.  That’s why when someone approaches us and says “Hey, I’ve got a great idea for a novel.  I’ll tell you what it is, you write it, we’ll make a fortune” we usually laugh.  Thanks.  Got plenty of ideas, friend.  What is required is lots and lots of hard work!  You do half the sweating, you get half the money.

Case in point is the story I just finished and the one I just started.  In both instances, all I had was a title.  The title of the completed one was a phrase I jotted down at the Dante reading group we attend.  It just sounded cool.  So a couple weeks ago, I sat my butt in my chair, opened a new file, typed in the header, and put the title up.

And stared at it.

About an hour of that and I came up with a first sentence.  That sentence had the seed of the rest of the tale.  I just started writing.  With a few pages I had the basic concept fleshed out.  I laughed, too, because I still have no idea where this idea came from.

Now, it’s a first draft and I already know it won’t survive the rewrite.  But I needed to get this stuff down and out of the way before I could get to the meaty stuff.

So while Donna goes over it with her vicious red pen, I decided to write another new one.

Again, I opened a file, put all the top matter in, and typed a title:  Decadence.  (I know where that came from, there’s a copy of Jacques Barzun’s Dawn To Decadence right in front of me.)  Okay, catchy title.  Now what?  There’s a lot to say about that subject, a lot has been said.  I want to write a science fiction story below that title.

Stare at the screen.

Hell with it, walk the dog.  We did almost two miles this morning.

And I sat down and wrote the first sentence:  Lew heard them talking.

I know what the story will be now.  I just have to build it.  (No, I won’t tell you what it is, you’ll just have to wait.)  But I couldn’t tell you where it came from.  There are galaxies of loose-floating factoids in my brain and when I require them to they collide, join, recombine, coalesce.  Sounds mysterious and miraculous, doesn’t it?  Again, though, it’s sweat.  I work hard to gather all those bits so that when I do need to come up with a story there are plenty of them available to at least start.

If I finish this one, I’ll start to feel a bit better about my program to recover my short story skills.  It’s always a work in progress, a construction project.

construction-remains.jpg

So, on now to the task.