Conferences and Conventions and Human Contact, Oh Boy!

Merry Monday, Internetizens!  The world is an especially bright and lovely place today (as it tends to be when you are backed by industrial-strength doses of ibuprofen and a healthy rage to live.) 

Three con-ish things:

1.  I've just now uploaded the preliminary schedule and class descriptions for DFWcon 2014 (scroll down there on the main page - you'll see three links).  If you are a writer who might be able to make it out to our neck of the woods in May, please check it out - this conference is my first love, and the literal foundation of all my success to date, and I can't recommend it highly enough.  You will hear me gushing more about it soon.

2.  A quick word to my fellow white people - more specifically, my fellow con-going, SFF-loving white people.  You know how at conventions, there tends to be a whole lot of ... you know, us?  Does it ever make you feel kinda weird to live in a city that is fully 50% non-white (as I do here in Dallas), and yet walking into the local convention hall is like entering a melanin clean-room? 

"Maybe", you might say, "but this isn't the first time I've heard about it, and I'm kind of tired of having to feel bad because I happen to turn pink in the bathtub."

 Well, *I* would submit that there is no need to feel anything but powerful, enthusiastic, and motivated - because we-the-converted are the carriers of the torch, the keepers of the faith.  We veteran con-goers KNOW how fun and cool and awesome a good con can be - and so we are uniquely equipped to help bring that joy to people who might otherwise miss out.  And (here's the part that's got me jazzed this morning): you can help diversify the con-going world just by doing what you normally would anyway.

"What?" you may ask.  "Which part?  Curating my collection of autographed Timothy Zahn novels?  Filling my life-sized TARDIS with handcrafted plush tribbles for my Dr. Who / Star Trek fanfic re-enaction group?"

Basically, yes!  Con or Bust is an organization dedicated to helping fans of color attend conventions - and all you have to do to support them is to buy from their auctions.  They have some amazing primo stuff, too - books, crafts, jewelry - autographed, limited-edition, out-of-print - and writers, sit up and pay attention!  They're auctioning off critiques from Tor editors, Hugo winners, serious heavy-hitting industry pros.  So if you want to score some amazing goods AND help bring new fans into the fold, get over there and shop your heart out.  (But do it fast - it's ending this Sunday the 23rd!)

3.  Okay, I guess that second thing was not as quick as I thought.  I'll make this third one brief:  I'm going to ConDFW this weekend, and it would be my life's delight to see you there!


We have many different beliefs, but today we must put them aside and unite. Gryffindor and Slytherin! Jedi and Sith! Jack Nicholson Joker and Heath Ledger Joker! This is our time to take what's ours... for tonight we dine in hell!

The Long, Dark Night of the Teeth

It started on Wednesday, with an achy, not-too-bad kind of pain on the left side of my upper jaw.  I thought it might be a sinus issue.

It got worse yesterday, and I was lucky enough to get an on-the-spot appointment with my dentist, who confirmed that no, actually, the root canal I had a few years back has gotten re-infected.  Better handle up on that ASAP.

Tomorrow (today), I have a 9:00 appointment with an endodontist to re-do the root canal.  But in the meantime, I'm up and blogging in the middle of the night, nursing a pain that the drugs can't even touch.

So here is a thought.  Wouldn't it be a different world if we could actually feel other people's pain?  Like, on an individual level, how many of the people that today will be dismissed by their doctors for "psychosomatic" (read: imaginary) distress would get real help?  And on a societal level, how much more quickly could we progress if we could actually feel the mental anguish of our fellow sapiens?  How fast would bigotry crumble if the average person KNEW the kind of pain that comes from having to live in a body that doesn't match your gender, or trying to suppress a sexuality that will get you shamed, fired, hurt, or killed? 

Maybe it would be a utopia of compassion and understanding.  But then you have to think about how that would change our manners.  Like, it's already bad form to go into the office when you're sick, because somebody else might catch what you've got.  How much worse would it be if you showed up KNOWING you'd inflict your pain on your co-workers as soon as you walked in the door?  And does the person who walks onto a crowded subway on the verge of a nervous breakdown become a commuter, or a terrorist? 

So there'd have to be social coping mechanisms.  It might become polite to shut yourself in at home when you're miserable, so you don't wound every random stranger you pass in the street.  Certainly you'd be expected to medicate yourself.  The chronic, severe, and untreatable kinds of pain might even require you to kill yourself.  So in the longer, Darwinian run of things, the people who survive and prosper would be those who are the least prone to pain themselves - mental or physical - and those who are the least affected by the pain of others...aka the bullies.

On the balance, maybe it's best that we stay over here in Earth 616.  It's not perfect - not by a long shot - but I like the idea of living in a world aligned to the virtue of striving to understand other people's feelings, rather than the necessity of scrambling to escape them.  (And on a selfish, vocational note, a good story is basically empathy in a can anyhow.)

All right.  It's 7:00AM.  Two more hours to go.  I can make it.  But it's a really good thing that I don't know where to score drugs on lower Greenville.

Oh, I’m in pain! I think this is what pain feels like!

Slow and Squeezy, or, A Tale of Two Ponies

Sorry it's been so long, you guys.  I've been really squished lately.

Y'know, it feels pretty good to break into this whole semi-pro gig.  ("Pro" in that people are paying me to make with the fictional writings, "semi" in that such largesse isn't yet enough to live on.)  But one of the things that continues to bum me out is that I am

so

damn.

slow.

Like really.  An amazing pace for me is writing 300 words an hour.  If I have to stop and look things up or hit a hard part, that number goes way down.  It is hard to feel good about that when your Twitter feed is full of people belting out 800 or 1000 words in an hour and then skipping off to bake cookies.

So you start trying to justify it to yourself.  Well, I'm slow because I'm actually writing WELL, you see.  This is what it takes to get that masterpiece-osity that I got complimented on that one time.  It's a tortoise-and-hare scenario.  Slow and steady wins the publishing contract.  

But then you think about all the years you spent being the slowest one in gym class, too, and how you weren't actually running "better" or "deeper" than anyone else - you were just miserably crap at running.  And how a lot of the people who can write like gangbusters are actually turning out really excellent work.  And how the tortoise is completely screwed if the hare doesn't slack off.

So if speed has no reliable correlation to quality, then you either have to figure out how to pick up the pace somehow, or else accept that you just have a really god-awful slow mental metabolism, and will have to work twice as hard as the average person to get the same results.  Not an enticing prospect if you're as insecure and lazy as I am.

You know what's really cheered me up, though?

Ponies.

Specifically, these ponies:

from mlp.wikia.com

I know, right!  They're like a dashing equestian barbership duet!

See, in the hallowed canon of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic don't you judge me, I swear to God, these guys are the Flim-Flam brothers.  They show up in an episode called "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000." Spoilers here follow.

Anyway, so these guys ride into town on the aforementioned Squeezy - a huge rolling contraption that automatically turns apples into tasty cider.  This does not bode well for the Apple family, whose homemade cider business is far too slow to keep up with local demand.

(You know you're in trouble when the Monsanto reps have their own catchy theme song.)

Things proceed as you might expect: a winner-take-all contest is set up, pitting the Flim-Flam brothers' super-modern machinery against the good old-fashioned methods of the Sweet Apple Acres team.  And of course, it's a kid's cartoon, so it follows a somewhat familiar plotline: the brothers actually win the contest, but the slop their machine turns out is so vile that they're run out of town on a rail, and goodness and decency and hat-waving old-timeyness carry the day. 

Here's what I like about it, though: the machine is superior in every measurable way.  It's not only enormously faster than old-fashioned horsepower, but also has a perfect quality-control sensor that weeds out rotten apples.  The Flim-Flam brothers lose not because their method is inferior, but because they turn off the quality control mechanism, turning rotten apples and garbage into cider in a last-ditch effort to produce more raw product and win the contest.

By now you see where I'm going with this.  At the end of the day, it's not about slow versus fast, or old versus new.  It's about whose integrity will buckle when the going gets rough, and whose won't.

And I can still win on that front.

So hopefully I can get back to regular blogging again in real short order (there is so much cool new stuff I am DYING to show you, believe me!)  But if I don't, it's because I'm still sorting the apples and turning the crank - hopefully with tasty-delicious results!


I have learned the meaning of self-loathing, and it is writing a sentence that you know is sloppy and starting another sentence.

Calvin and Hobbes and Onfim

You know what was cool?

Actually, let me back up: you know what was cool, if you read the comics pages of American newspapers in the eighties and early nineties?

Calvin and Hobbes.

And if you didn't, the short story is this: Calvin is a six-year-old boy with a stuffed tiger/best friend named Hobbes, and an imagination the size of a small galaxy.  They went on all kinds of adventures, and the strip would regularly switch back and forth from the lush, well-illustrated world of Calvin's imagination, to his rather less impressive reality.  Thusly:

© Universal Press Syndicate

It was a fantastic comic strip for so many reasons, but part of its enduring appeal is how it hilariously, astutely, lovingly renders a child's world.  It was a huge part of my own childhood, and I have no doubt that it's going to keep its place in our cultural memory for a long time yet.

Anyway, fast forward to today, when my Twitter feed (and my buddy Daniel Bensen, of Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen fame!) turned me on to this little gem here:

Image by Onfim of Novgorod, licensed by www.gramoty.ru under CC BY-SA

This is a replica of a birch-bark drawing done by a boy who lived in 13th-century Russia.  It's part of an article called The Art of Onfim: Medieval Novgorod Through the Eyes of a Child.  I'll let the author, Paul Wickenden, explicate this drawing here:

Onfim was being taught to write, but he was obviously restless with his lessons and when he could get away with it, he intermixed his assignments with doodlings. In this first example, he started to write out the first eleven letters of the alphabet in the upper right corner, but got bored and drew a picture of himself as a grown-up warrior impaling an enemy with his spear. To remove any doubt about the identity of the warrior, he even labeled the person on the horse as "Onfim."

This is without a doubt the sweetest, funniest, most touching thing I've seen in weeks.  I just can't tell you how it delights my soul.

Well, maybe I can.  Look at this one here:

Image by Onfim of Novgorod, licensed by www.gramoty.ru under CC BY-SA

This one has a spelling lesson at the left, with a picture of Onfim's mother and father at the center.  And to me it's just, like, massively enchanting to drink in all the little details.  Compare this drawing to the one above, and notice how they differ from our modern preschool/Crayola iconography.  Do you see how the nose is always a straight line, making a perpendicular cat-like connection to the mouth?  And how the hands don't look like little three-fingered brooms, but like rakes?  I'm no art-ographer, but I wonder if those outward bulges above the arms are shoulders - and I ADORE that horse.

So I guess if there's a point lurking anywhere in here, it's this: it's easy to understand intellectually that all societies have some things in common - that as long as there are people, there will be six-year-old boys who get bored and fantasize about having great adventures.  But it's not until you really see a little scrap of the past up-close and personal that the tiny, telling differences become apparent, and you can see that boy as his own separate, entire person - a human being in sharp focus, and a startlingly intimate connection to a world that no longer exists.

I want this.  I covet this.  I can't think of any greater success in storytelling than being able to bank-shot a character off of that backboard of differences - race or time or culture or gender or whatever - to land right back in the reader's lap.  And I'm starting to think that fantasy - be it ever so dinosaurs-in-fighter-jets humble - is a genre custom-made for doing just that.


These are the voices of the dead - an extinct culture - to which everybody is a little bit deaf.

The Joys of Being a Pre-Published Author

So I ended 2013 on a kind of a downer.  Not too long after, my good buddy Kyle wrote a blog post noting that a lot of new authors seem to be really in the pits about their chosen profession - that it seemed to be one giant skin-thickening, loin-girding, expectations-managing protracted flinch.

I would be lying if I said I were in a happy mental place at the moment.  But I think that has less to do with the world of publishing than the fear of losing control.  After years of working on this thing, the window of opportunity for changes and improvements is finally closing.  Soon it'll be fixed, unchangeable, all its flaws immortalized in amber, and my role will move from all-powerful author to diligent cheerleader.  The baby is going off to college, and who knows what'll happen when it gets there?

Anyway, I wrote an article a couple months back called Five Secret Advantages of the Unpublished Author.  I wanted to do something similar here.  Are you ready?

The Joys of Being a Pre-Published Author

1.  Legitimacy.

That's it.  To be clear, there's a million and one happinesses I could rattle off: receiving the ecstatic "we got one!!!" email; going out to dinner with agent and editor; dropping The Big News to friends and family one at a delicious, savory time; getting awesomesweet cover art; that first check in the mail.  But those are all fruits falling from one singular tree, called External Validation, otherwise known as My Writing is Officially Worth Something Now.

That's the gold nugget I keep in my pocket, the solid reliable center of this whole huge hurricane of insecurities and what-ifs and things completely outside my control.  Even if God visits Job-like misery upon me - even if my publisher goes broke, my agent drops me, my reviews suck, my book tanks, and my name becomes so toxic that I have to spend the rest of my life writing under a pseudonym - the fact remains that something I wrote was good enough that somebody wanted to represent it, and somebody else wanted to pay me money for it.  That is the one beautiful, permanent, no-takebacks talisman that will forever shield me from the insidious brain-spiders of doubt.

Thusly.

And man - for all of you guys who are striving on the traditional publishing path, let me tell you: having magic ego elf-water is AMAZING.  It is holy and potent and lasting, and I so hope that you will pursue your craft and persevere through rejections and doubt to get you some. 

(And for the record, this is why you will never, ever hear me slag off self-published writers.  To put yourself straight out into the world without needing someone else's prior approval, to sustain yourself on faith in your own ability - on the self-esteem equivalent of photosynthesis! - is a feat more amazing than I ever had the guts to attempt.)

Anyway - keep at it, fictioneers, regardless of your chosen form or flavor.  It's a hell of a quest, no matter where your road takes you.

Gilthoniel, A Elbereth!

A Writer of the Imminent Future

"Self," I said, "we really need to get a new blog post up.  The Prius thing is making us look like even more of a self-perpetuating stereotype than we actually are."

"I know, self," I said, "but if we don't knock out at least 1,500 words today, we're going to be in the Sad Zone again, and nobody wants that."

Then the phone rang: a very nice person was calling to tell me that my short story, "Hell Bent", had taken an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest. 

That in itself is not a world-changing event.  No cash, no Corvette, no tropical weekend getaway with Vanna White.  (Though I absolutely recommend the contest to any of you speculative fictioneers out there - it's fun and free, not to mention potentially lucrative, and has minted more titans of SFF than you can shake a Klingon painstick at.)

But damn, I am pleased. 

One of the things that really eats my self-esteem is that I write SO. DANG. SLOW.  Like really, unconscionably, Sarlacc-digestion-speed slow.  (That 1,500 words thing has been taking me five or six hours a day, and I'm still failing regularly.)  There are so many people at my kickin' awesome workshop who just knock stuff OUT - who have a new chapter to read every Wednesday without fail, who are constantly submitting this here and that there, while also revising three more stories at the same time and probably flipping omelettes while they type.  I even know a guy who's writing a short story a week.  Every week.  For a year.  And yet he somehow still has time to go out to the bar, and I KNOW that cuz I saw him there last week!

I know I need to pick up the pace.  I'm sure I'll get faster if I keep at it.  But in the meantime, it is awfully encouraging to know that this little thing - my one and only short story, the one I spent 100+ hours researching and revising and workshopping and polishing - actually got somewhere on the very first try.

Needless to say, thanks hugely to all of you guys who helped to sand down the edges.  I think I'll try to send the little darling somewhere else, see if it can't win a place in a magazine somewhere.

In the meantime, and just in case you're interested, the opening scene is below the cut.  (Write Clubbers, this will not be new to you, though I owe you immensely for your critique!)

Requiem for a Prius

I know.  I know.  Here's me with all my tooled-up Western website, my Texan schtick, my still-not-as-wide-as-the-barn-door-behind-me rustic author photo... and I'm just gonna come out and say it: I drive a Prius. 

*saloon piano music stops; hard-eyed stares commence*

Not sorry.  Around here, we like our Dr. Pepper, our big-ass belt buckles, and our even bigger-ass trucks... but I tell you what, that sweet white futuristic road-suppository was the best car I ever had.

Had, as in past tense.  It's dead now.  Insurance company declared it a total loss.  And I get why, after the Incident. $9000+ to resurrect a seven-year-old car with over 135,000 on it just doesn't add up. 

But man, I am just all kinds of cut up about it.  I LOVED that freaking car.  Delivered pizza in it (and boxes of thawing chicken parts, and more sheet cakes than I can count).  Drove back from the casino at 2 AM with a cute drunk girl puking down the side of it.  Spent the night in it.  Always took it in real regularly for all its services and tune-ups and what-not.  And I tell you what: in all those hundred-thousand miles I had it, it never once left me on the side of the road.

To be clear: I'm not one of those people who gives their cars names and genders and personalities and all that.  It's still just the white Prius in my mind.  But man.  I TOTALLY GET how people get attached to their rides - shoot, to their toys and keepsakes and inanimate objects of whatever kind.  It's almost like, the less actual mind and personality something has, the easier it is for you to imprint your own thinking on it.

You know what I mean?  There's all manner of classes and therapy and daytime TV programs invested in helping you to tolerate the well-formed proclivities of the intelligent hominid you married (to say nothing of the ones you subsequently progenated).  With little furry friends, you have a bit more room on which to write your mental fan-fiction version of their personalities.  By the time you get down to fish and turtles, you're pretty much stumping the whole thing.

So I guess it's not surprising that we can still see characters in the noble steeds of the 21st century.  Maybe it's kinda hard for your constant adventuring companion to avoid growing a little bit of a soul, whether it's well-gummed teddy bear or a two-ton road warrior.

At any rate, perhaps you will indulge me while I eulogize mine.

Goodnight, sweet Prius.  And flights of angels drive thee to thy rest.

Changes

You might have noticed that I made a couple of changes around here.

I resisted putting my photo online for a long time, and part of me still wishes that there was some magical way to avoid that.  I wish I could stay in the part of the Internet where we have to judge each other only on our words, because there's no name or voice or body to let us shortcut our reason by saying "oh, of course - s/he's one of those."  But that would mean never leaving my computer or going to any events ever, and I'm not willing to do that.  So now you can enjoy me as I exist in carbon-world: as Yet Another Squishy White Woman.  (And a damn fine example of the species, if I do say so myself.  Shout-out to all my fellow SWWs!)

I resisted using my given name for similar reasons.  It's hard to spell and pronounce and remember, for one thing.  But more than that, I always felt like the scariness that is writing and inviting the whole world to read it almost requires some kind of spandex-clad second identity, so the slings and arrows of outraged readers fall not on Bruce Wayne, but on Batman.  Because he can handle it.  Because he's Batman. 

Well, I've written what I've written, and I look the way I look, and I probably ought to get comfortable with owning all of that.  (Though I'll take it as a favor if y'all still call me Tex.)

But I'm not gonna lie, you guys.  I am scared out of my mind way more often than I'd like to be, and it's not just pre-publication jitters.

--I'm scared of putting my picture up, cuz I've seen what people do with them (especially if you're a gal who starts having unwelcome opinions.)

--I'm scared of using my real name, cuz I've also seen how clever the Internet can be in digging up your personal information and delivering the rape-and-death threats right to your doorstep.

--I'm scared of going to cons as anything but an attendee, because I've heard all the horror stories about creepers and stalkers, in addition to the more garden-variety "how 'bout you have a nice big glass of shut up and sit down, little lady" social misdemeanors.

--I'm scared of the regular old "your books suck, you suck, and you should probably just go die in a fire" reviews, comments, and hate mail that seem to be par for the course these days.

And you know what?  I bet that is not a drop in the freaking ocean compared to the racism, ableism, and homophobia that I'll never have to deal with. 

Anyway, none of this has actually happened yet.  And when it does, it won't be anything that hasn't happened to hundreds and thousands of other people.  It won't be anything that I didn't accept as a risk when I decided to get into this gig.  After all, if you play outside long enough, sooner or later you're going to scrape your knee.  For me personally, the thrill of the playground is worth the risk.  And I'm incredibly lucky to have made it this far.

I guess mostly I'm just going to miss this version of me.  The one who's never had a nasty encounter, who can go to cons all starry-eyed and bouncingly enthusiastic, who's never had to find out what does or doesn't qualify as justification for a restraining order or a harassment complaint.  There's already so much "except for..." in my love for SFF fandom and Internet culture in general, and it's going to suck to have to add to that.

Well, here's to 2014: the year I get out there and get dirty.  Bring it on.

Hold your head high, take a deep breath and sigh
Goodbye to Sandra Dee.

From 60 to Zero in 3.5

Well, it's like this: on Monday night, I got in my first actual for-real car accident.

I was doing about 60 in the middle lane of the freeway.  Then the fellow on my right careened into the guardrail, ricocheted off, and slammed into into the right front corner of my car.  It knocked me into the left lane (though fortunately nobody else was near me.)  By that time he was veering wildly all over the road, and I was so scared he was going to hit me again.  I sped up to get out of his way, but something was really wrong with my car, so I pulled over onto the left shoulder and threw on my blinkers.  He ended up spun out and smoking across two lanes.

I ended up in the back of a patrol car. 
(Did you know the seats back there are plastic?  True fact.)

Things got more orderly after that.  I called 911.  The police came, and some ambulances.  They towed my car, and dropped me off at a Whataburger, where my sister collected me and took me home.  I got a good telling-off from the Dude for not taking up the medical personnel on their offer of a once-over, but I didn't hit anything inside the car and the airbag didn't deploy.  (Weirdly enough, it's my foot that's been killing me here, three days after the fact.  I can't figure that one out.) 

So everything's in limbo at the moment.  Car's got at least a broken axle, but we're still waiting to hear the full extent of the damage.  Really REALLY hope it's not a write-off.  In the meantime, I've been thinking a lot about how much worse it could have been, and all the little advantages that add up in situations like this.  You know, living in a town where you have family and friends who can come get you when you're in a pickle.  Having full collision coverage, so you're not wringing your hands wondering if you just had a $10,000 bad day.  Having the means to walk over to the car rental place after the fact and get yourself some temporary wheels.  Knowing that you have medical insurance, so you're covered if you wake up the next day with your head on backwards.

But what's really killing me is that I don't know anything about that other car.  Was the driver hurt?  Did s/he have passengers?  Were they wearing seat belts?  What caused them to lose control in the first place?  I must have sat there for half an hour, talked to the police four or five times, and it never once occurred to me to ask.  I just didn't even think about it.

Regardless, the police report should be up by tomorrow, so hopefully we'll find out soon.  We still had a really good Christmas with the the Texas/New Mexico branch of Team Thompson.  And even if the car is a loss, it won't be an insurmountable one.

It's just really weird, you know, to suddenly find yourself in a place where your second-to-second decisions are the super-vitally-important ones.  Weirder still to look back after the fact and realize that maybe you're not exactly the kind of person you thought you were.

At any rate, I know the holidays are stressful for a lot of my friends.  Hope you guys got through it with at least one good thing added to your memory banks, and at least one more to look forward to.  Y'all stay safe out there, and think a good thought with me for driver #2 in the meantime.


We just had a near-life experience, fellas.

"One Night in Sixes" Available for Pre-Order!

Not gonna lie, y'all.  It's pretty freakin' exciting.

One Night in Sixes is available for pre-order on Amazon.com!

What I know so far:

--right now it's mass-market paperback only, but the ebook version will be forthcoming.

--big delicious version of the full cover (w/title and everything) is likewise still in the works

--the Goodreads page is live too!  (waiting for aforesaid big delicious cover, and then we'll add it there as well)

--it hasn't shown up yet on Barnes & Noble, but is populating to other retailers (and search works better if you put the title in quotes.)

--paper and ebook versions will officially launch on July 29th

I won't be doing the huge "hurry up and get you one!" sales push until things are a little more put together - but if it sounds like your kind of yarn and you do want a paper version, go put your name on it!  (And if you want me to put my name on it, I will even bring my own pen.  Hell, I will sign your ANYthing.)

Thanks ALL y'all who have already lent your attention and enthusiasm to this thing.  Soon, the lightning will strike and the current will arc and it will LIVE!
 

Don't know if I'm elated or gassy, but I'm somewhere in that zone.