There will indeed be a writers' workshop at Anticipation 2009, Worldcon in Montreal this August.

Entry fee is $20 plus $2.58 in taxes, Canadian. This cost is to defray costs of the workshop. You pay the fee when you're notified that you have a slot and not before. Instructions will be emailed to entrants directly.

There are a limited number of slots available and right now, it's one slot per customer, no multiple submissions.

Maximum length is 10,000 words, including any synopsis of the rest of a novel, novella, etc. Shorter lengths, including flash, are fine, even encouraged, but only one story.

Genre: science fiction, fantasy, horror, the usual for a Worldcon
Type: short story or novel excerpt
Language: English or French
We will also consider entries for critique of non-fiction critical essays on the subject of genre, same length requirements.

The entries will be distributed in advance so the window to get space in the workshop won't be open for very long.

Please link to this post or repost the information, even if you're not going to Worldcon this year. Someone on your f-list might be going and might have a story to be critiqued. Official details will be forthcoming on the website and other avenues of communication.

Oz Whiston
Creative Writing Track

On Friday night, it was sort of casual. I took Miss E and a friend to a pool, we ate at Wegman's after. I brought home my leftover chinese food for The Dude. He got home and you will see he didn't even get to change. The takeout box is on the table, a beer, and Miss E puts a puzzle in front of him. Ah, the simple life.

( simple life here.... )

Trash run today. Oh boy! We've reached the stinky, magotty, time of year. I have to remember to bring my gloves. I think I'd like not to have maggots on my gen ship. Not sure I get a choice though. They might be needed to break things down that we don't mention in polite company.

Sky is gray today, does that mean some rain? All mowing is done for this week at least. I did the final section on Wednesday evening and forgot to wear ear protection. Man was that noisy. An hour or so later and my ears were ringing.

Traci is in Tucson still, but leaving today. She got to ride again last night, this time on Khep. I'm all confused about this balance thing and who's carrying whom. I think I need comparisons between horses and more time in the saddle. Joan Vinge is there as well, having a lovely time, from all accounts. DHF runs one heck of a writing camp.

Traci sent this...Carma coming straight toward her.


And what appears to be a very muddy Camilla doing silly things after being sprayed with the hose and rolling in the mud. They call me War Mare.

If you're on livejournal and you haven't voted yet, please consider Kyle Cassidy (kylecassidy) as your candidate from the membership at large. He has excellent platform points about creating backups within LJ because what we post is part of our creative process and should be archived for emergencies.

Kyle Cassidy is a professional photographer who posts a lot of photos here. He's also deeply interested in speculative fiction as a fan. His current project is "Where I Write" photos of sf writers in their workspace. His platform and the necessary links to the voting community are here: http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/524052.html

Frog Out

ETA: Polls close at 4:30PM PDT on Friday June 26th. Don't delay.

Got up at my usual time. Did my usual thing. I kept watching the clock on the laptop...oh, 6:23, getting late; oh, 6:47, almost time; oh 7:35 need to let chickens out, it's almost 8AM and time for...what? Oh my. No schedule. There is no f'ing schedule for Wed, Thurs, Fri (except satellite folks on Thurs). Next week, art camp begins. But now that her testing is finished, E has no schedule for the rest of the week. So it doesn't matter when she gets up. She is now happily in front of the TV with a workbook of activities that review 3rd grade materials. (No, I don't know why.)

Her old friend in Leesburg called up Monday and wanted to come over. She's been here two days now and is coming again today. Hey, it's interaction with peers, something she needs. Aieee. A house overrun with arguing munchkins. I can't hear myself think. But arguing girls are part of the genship world, so I'm doing my best to cope.

And then I went for chicken feed and did half the mowing. Three hours of mowing. I wear earphones to cut the noise of the tractor, but I was still wondering just how loud it was on my gen ship and if it were this loud, this continuous, would I be able to cope?

The crop of blueberries is indeed tiny this year. So far, I've just been throwing them into my yogurt. They're all fat and lovely from the rain, but just not enough of them. Will there even be one pie?

And now, back to genships, where there aren't blueberries or blueberry pies. Pity.

Meanwhile, Traci is in Tucson (alliterative). And she's petting horses. And learning to scoop large litter boxes. Well, it's only 5 am, so not just yet. In another couple of hours. I am so envious. No horses on the gen ship, either. Or at least, not in this story.

Frog Out

Miss E had more testing this morning over at the school and while she was in a back room, I was sitting at a library table (somewhat of a smaller size) and working on putting my head inside a gen ship. Which was going pretty well with just some isolated teacher/librarian chit chat in the background.

And then, a parent sat down with one of the school people to discuss the intricacies of her child's homeschooling and occupational therapy. In a loud, carrying voice at the next table. Covering my ears discreetly did not improve matters. Life in space refused to take concrete shape, evaporated even. It could be that I'm sympathetic to the topic, to the earnest tone in which a mother is frantically trying to explain her child's accomplishments in OT, his use of a pencil grip, his formation of his Capital letters, how she has sat in on all of his speech and OT so that she can duplicate the work every day at home.

I think my heart went out to her. And also, it didn't, because I don't want to be reminded of those dark years when the deeply autistic boy in her kindergarten class was academically far ahead of my own child. And may still be, for all I know. And I don't want to be reminded that I'm in the middle of trying to find out if the county thinks my child is damaged enough to wear a label that says "I need a bit of extra help." The problem all along has been that she might fall through some crack as not quite this and not quite that.

Escapist fiction? You betcha. I write the stuff and I live it while I write it. But it escaped me this morning until they adjourned to a hallway.

And then E comes out, beaming, happy, confident.

Frog Out

In my filing cabinet folder of "Things That Don't Work" we have a new entry.

Bollywood Science Fiction movies.

I watched "Koi...Mil Gaya" Fri/Sat. Oh my. Three hours of I don't know what. About halfway through it with The Dude laughing over my shoulder as I watched, I reread the reviews on Netflix and started to understand them. I had decided to grab the film because it was the backstory for another film, "Krrrish" which has just arrived. Parts of the acting are decent. But the overall film and concept didn't work. Some spectacular scenery that made me want to see the mountainous areas of India.

Let's see if I can make you certain you don't want to see this. Ever. Some very bad musical numbers with children on mountainsides that look nothing like the musical numbers from "The Sound of Music" but seem to be trying. A movie about a mentally defective young man who is bullied by other young men in some very disturbing scenes that are ugly in nature and pretty in cinematography and seem to be presented as family fare. These scenes persist throughout the film. A very bad puppet alien named Jaadoo who's blue and powered by sunlight. A million rifs on "E.T." right down to the bicycle scenes. A few rifs on "Close Encounters" centering around the word "Om" presented musically. A basketball game out of Disney's "Flubber" movies that first came out in the early sixties. Super powers that are bestowed by the alien on the mental defective making him perfect in every socially accepted way, physically and mentally. Said powers are taken away when Jaadoo returns to his mother ship and the young man is found not guilty of any wrongdoing by reason of mental incapacity in a court of law. At which point, his powers are restored permanently in a deus ex machina visit by the mother ship to the upper atmosphere to say good-bye.

A review claimed the first 80 minutes were godawful but offset by the final 90 minutes of the film. Nope. All of it was godawful, not just the first half. One dance scene in a nightclub had Miss E's attention and she asked me to replay the number a few times. The actor, Hrithik Roshan, is fascinating to watch because he's long and loose-limbed but has tremendous control. Of course, he's also wearing a dance harness in some of the item numbers, which detracts from the overall athletic effect. Supposedly he's a heart throb matinee idol, but I wasn't seeing that. But then, I'm not the right age. Preity Zinta is her usual charming self in a very bad role.

Another review said it was a great film for kids...except for the part where the bullies are hitting the main character in the face with a basketball repeatedly. Umm, yeah, I have to agree. As an adult I found that scene difficult to watch. But overall, I'd say it has the problem of YA (middle grade or lower) written without thinking about its audience. One of the important aspects of YA is that the children are the focus of the story and the children solve the problems of the story. And those problems are focused close to home and family. The issues in this film are all solved by the adults, aliens, or by the main character once he's been "cured" by the alien and takes his rightful place as an adult, leaves his childish self behind. The child actors are pushed to the background, indicating that the director and writer failed to grasp what "E.T." was really about: the kids against the adults.

Frog Out

Btw, The Dude shaved that mustache off a while ago. It's been with him since he retired from the military almost 12 years ago...along with the beard he finally shaved off in 2005, thank goodness.

So it was Dude's Day around here. Miss E and I took Weatherdude on a mystery ride. Which meant, will he, nil he, I was driving. We did let him stop at CVS for stuff. They had everything except the shoe polish. They don't carry it anymore. I wonder who does.

I had planned to give The Dude a new alarm clock. He's been using an old one of mine that has a manual on switch and some nights he forgets to turn it on. Some mornings, he forgets to turn it off if he gets up earlier than the alarm. This clock has a large face, but a very annoying buzzer. And no radio. It also has a battery in case of power outages. The battery is usually dead though. We forget to put a new one in.

We went to Radio Shack which seemed to have a number of options. But nothing quite like The Dude wanted. And certainly nothing someone sleeping in close proximity to someone getting up at 3:50 each morning could live with. I was wanting some sort of combined alarm, two time settings, ipod dock or connection. An acceptable alternative was radio or weather radio, both of which I could live with waking me up. Because I tend to set mine to radio for 5:10 on the classical station.

So the first stop was a total bust and a bit of frustration where he said he liked having a buzzer alarm and I said then you'll be waking up alone. The Dude was all set to go to Target and try looking there, but I nixed that because of The Master Plan.

Our next stop was a local nursery. Miss E had chosen this as her gift when I offered her a choice. I had recently done a serious cleaning in the living room and had noticed that almost all of The Dude's house plants were pretty much goners. He had let the frost kill certain plants last fall on purpose because of bugs. I've lived with Teh Weatherdude for 30 years and we've ALWAYS had houseplants. Yes, we have the big out of doors now and it's very nice, thank you. We have lots of annuals and perennials and we love them all, but the air is better for house plants. I put up with the leaves and mess in exchange for things like breathing.

This was a much more successful stop on the mystery trip. The Dude was quickly in a zen-like state of plant acquistion. I wanted to try a hibiscus to replace the ficus we had had for 10 years. They had a staghorn fern in a hanging basket and I think that was for me, too. My parents had a staghorn fern and The Dude and I had two huge ones when we lived in Atlanta. Miss E was taken with some new guinea impatiens, but who isn't? And The Dude selected rabbits foot fern, boston fern, ponytail fern, asparagus fern, norfolk island pine...I'm forgetting something, I'm sure. We had fun talking to the owners and to the huge resident koi.

We abandoned Miss E's plan to play mini golf in favor of taking all this plant life safely home. At which point it was time to head out again to Leesburg's Del Rio restaurant which had promised a live mariachi band beginning at 5pm. Alas, no band, they were late. But the food was yummy.

Now we just need a lot more potting soil and a lot more pots...and more plants. We definitely didn't get enough even though Miss E shared the back seat with a small pine and a yellow hibiscus of size.

Frog Out

People (i.e. Weatherdudes) who move a half-empty old bag of dry dog food out into the garage should not be so surprised when they go into the garage at 7 am and the place smells quite strongly of skunk.

Not spray. Just that lovely, gamey, skunky, smell they have.

Just sayin, you know?

Frog Out

PS It's still lingering in there at noon.

To those of you further out on my f-list:

dancinghorse is having a mentoring sale through the 21st. She's a PhD from Yale, a former professor of novel-writing, among other things, at Wesleyan. She's an accomplished novelist in her own right, under three different names. And lest you think she's all about fantasy, Judy co-wrote a novel in Jerry Pournelle's War World series. With Steve Stirling and Harry Turtledove.

Details are to be found here: http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/187431.html

Judy was a writer in residence when I went to Clarion in 1996. While I heart every single one of the six writers in residence from that year, Judy and I hit it off really well. Along with Greg Frost, she continued to take a personal interest in my work after Clarion.

What I do with Judy is the world-building stuff. I like the way her mind works. My worlds take me years to create, all their nuances. The past few times I've been there for a private horse camp, Judy and I have discussed what if this and what if that for hours about one of the several worlds I've been developing. I can't give specifics, because hey, that's in draft still. But she sees how a social society would grow out of the paradigms I propose.

For example, you propose a specific fact: all the horses and other beasts of burden have been killed/were not brought along/died of disease on a particular colony planet. There are no machines to do the work of these animals (lack of metals or whatever). What happens? How does this colony evolve? Does it breed or develop humans that will be beasts of burden? Does it change how they deal with things that might be heavy? Does it restrict travel? Do they try to breed dogs or cats to be beasts of burden? She will play with the science, the social aspects, anything. So far, we've worked in my science fictional worlds, not my fantasy ones. But she does the same thing there.

For others, she reads and comments on novel drafts. She looks at whether your characters are coming off the page, how your pacing is, your emotional tone. She seems to be really good at pegging a recurring issue that keeps a writer from climbing to the next level. Whether you can hear and apply what she says is a different issue.

But overall, Judy adapts to what you want out of the process. She's not judgmental about the material itself. She doesn't think about whether it's to her personal taste. She just lets go and looks at it in and of itself.

Oh, and don't take my word for it. Go read what kateelliott had to say, for example.

Frog Out

I have just discovered another joy of using satellite access. Our transmitter is kaput. Or almost. Which will cost money to replace with a technician's housecall. But worse than that, time. As in sometime next week.

In the meantime, I have spotty internet access. We return to the days of dial up (maybe) and going to the public library for access.

The oddity is that I can access general web still. But I can't access any page that is secure or do any logins that require accessing a secure page. Only logins that don't go through a secure link. So right now I have lj and a few other things.

And yesterday I just had the satellite tv access guy out. The cables in the attic were apparently having difficulty supporting the extra load Maralton puts on them with more hours of tv. Local channels, which are higher frequency, have been kaput on one tv for days. Good thing it's all reruns right now. He replaced some of the cable, which he had told me before might need to be done. But actually, the connection into the box was bad and that might have been the specific culprit. Still, we've moved from R59 to R6 cable now for half of the access. To do the rest would require serious scrambling about in tight corners or just bypassing the attic altogether. But that tv still had all the channels and while Miss E watches a lot of tv, she doesn't watch local channels. Chat was still working yesterday morning and I was relaying everything he said to The Dude who was on a conference call at work. He approved that the gobbledy-gook the tech was spewing sounded reasonable to his engineering brain. He didn't spend four years at WPI for nothing, after all.

Oh the joys of living in the country.

Don't look for me on chat until next week. (Hey, Traci, I wonder if we burned it out the other night?)

And I shall be calling to check on DSL again. We've been told no more than once, but told to keep calling and asking. My neighbors have it, but they have different lines going to their properties.

Frog Out

ETA: Phone call. Service next Thursday morning. Argh. Can I say that again? Argh.

In which, for your amusement, I weigh the pros and cons of customer service...( Read more... )

The latter part of the spring has been cooler than normal and wetter than normal. It was so dry in the late winter/early spring that I had to look up the climate statistics to convince The Dude that we were above normal for rain in April and May. He was worried about drought. And every time it seemed to be about to get hot, it would get cold again. I think a lot of farmers are frustrated.

The upshot of this weather is that I've been ignoring the blueberries. They needed to bloom, to be cross-pollinated by the bees. Mostly I crossed my fingers. I checked once and we seemed to have some berry development shortly after the blooming. The Dude thinks not as much as other years. I have a better feel for that when I'm actually picking and seeing how many pints or quarts I'm getting each day. And that's still in the future.

Maralton told me yesterday that bush #1 was ripening and had some very ripe berries already. I checked this morning and yes, about 20% seems to be ripe. Good old bush #1. Because of the rain, the berries are particularly large this year, very sweet. So I picked a handful for my yogurt. She's right that some of them are very ripe and should be picked. That might mean a batch of blueberry muffins in the next day or so.

Frog Out

<------------------That's my horse. And no, that's not what this post is about. But that's Pandora.

So we went to the annual picnic at E's school and we met a family that will be redistricted into hers next year. It turns out they live relatively close, as the crow flies. And in the general conversation about enjoying the local fauna, The Peacocks came up.

We hear them every spring and then all through the summer and then they go silent. We're not that close to them, but the sound really carries. And this family lives even closer to them. The peacocks are on a property that has been in the same family for close to a hundred years, as far as folks can tell. We know about them though another neighbor. It seems this old area family is where the peacocks live, verifying something another neighbor had told us.



But wait. It gets better. We asked whether he knew what they did with the peacocks in the winter. Did they put them indoors? Did they kill them and start with a new brood each year? There were certainly more peacocks this spring.

He said that as far as they knew, the peacocks were feral and had been returning to that farm every year for as long as anyone could remember. Every spring they show up. And every fall they migrate away.

Fascinating, if true. Peacocks fend for themselves pretty well, much better than chickens do. And they would obviously go south for the winter. But looking peacocks up online, I can only get verification of feral populations in Florida and Hawaii, zoo escapees.

Some part of me says these folks that have the peacocks may not be telling the neighbors the truth. I can't help but think "thanksgiving dinner, xmas dinner, new year's dinner...."

Frog Out

I'll be on a flight east most of the day today, but you can still "talk" to me. I was invited to participate in SF Signal's Mind Meld recently. The question is what SF and Fantasy to suggest to a reader who hasn't read anything in the genre in 35 years, but still thinks they like SF and fantasy. In other words, they've read Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Tolkien.

My thoughts are in there, along with some most excellent other folks and some great suggestions.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/06/new-sff-recommendation-for-the-golden-age-reader/

Frog Out

It has been gray most of the day, which was a novelty to me. Dry as it was (humid to locals) I was extremely comfortable today. When we went out at 7pm to feed the horses (too windy to ride), the gusts suddenly swelled to about 30mph. It will take me weeks to get the dust out of my eyelashes. I hid behind a horse more than once. Not much brushing and grooming going on during that. The trees rustle and things flap and the mares get antsy.

The wind shifted, a storm blew through, a few drops of rain, the SMELL of rain. Judy can smell it coming before I can because I'm used not used to smelling tiny bits of moisture and she is. The wind died down and rain fell somewhere else, against the mountains in the distance, near Saguaro National Park, I think, if I've figured out my directional navigation correctly.

But with all that moisture in the air, guess what? Well, you can see what. The incredible sunset is what. Click through for more photos from this evening. Technicolor splendor.

( see what I mean? )

The stealth coon was around this morning when I got up. He wasn't as concerned as he had been in the past about my existence.

Water is my job. I fill water buckets and swish them out. Last night I took off fly masks and brushed horses that wanted brushing before dinner. Too windy to ride, the boss said. Not to mention both of us are exhausted by deadline stuff. I slept in the afternoon. I thought that would keep me up, but it didn't. I was asleep by 11. Up again at 5:30, pretty normal for me. Just west coast time. Should be interesting tomorrow night. I'll need to get to bed on east coast time.

Ephiny wanted me to brush her yesterday. She's not usually that interested in what I'm doing. But she kept coming back when someone else pushed her away. Ok. I got the message. Herd dynamics. It comes more naturally to me now.

Chopped up bits of the gen ship story. Some of the old writing was good enough to keep, has the right emotional level. Lots of it just has to go. You're not to know. I'm keeping you all in the dark as readers. Because I can. Well, no, not really. It's more because the inhabitants of the world don't notice what's different about their world. No referent.

Dogs to vet for shots today.

Frog Out

Alas, only 2 days left. Or 1.5 maybe.

But Worldcon has been dealt with for now. And that was the serious pressure point.

And while there are other things on my list, today is a day to look at a generation ship story. Judy and I had a lot of fun the other night playing with my gen ship, talking about the logical, possible, extrapolations from my "given" assumptions. Greg has been doing the same by email on a smaller scale. I like playing with my worlds. I like taking a premise as a "given" and then seeing what would flow out of that, what behavior, what characters, what events. Hmmm. Maybe I'm something of an "idea" writer.

Frog Out

This is what I call A NOSE!

An encore performance, and no, not on stage or in writing, though I've been asked to.

I heard a shout outside the house. I'd been on the phone with Miss E and The Dude and didn't realize it was horsie lunchtime at DHF. I looked out to see Judy grab a whip and proceed to get Pooka to Move About. Something had happened. And while she was working with Pooka, the others weren't getting fed. So it seemed like an "I can do that" opportunity. After all, I'd fed them all by myself the day before.

She was still making Pooka move when I got my shoes and sunglasses on. He was trying to get to his lunch and she was blocking him with the whip, making him trot off some energy. (And SUCH a pretty trot he has.) It was clear he'd had a testosterone moment. He'd had one earlier in the morning and I'd nearly been in the way. While I adore Pooka, I'm very wary of his hormones. And I'm not one of his girlfriends he makes goo-goo eyes at. No, I worship him just as I ought and I don't move into his space. I give him cookies when I have them and he takes them gently. But he is not a tame pet.

So with a quick check with Judy (waiting for her to have a second to look at me, as opposed to Pooka), I proceeded into the arena with the lunch wagon. And it went much like yesterday, though I was much cleverer about getting Carma her share, working my way out to the farthest bucket LAST. Yesterday, I did that one in the middle in a big circle and they pushed her out.

Is it my imagination or is Pandora acting just a bit more alpha than she was? She ended up near us by the gate once Judy came in. Normally, it's Capria there and Pandora is out further across the arena. Seems Pandora might have a reason to come hang out there now. Both her humans were there.

Life is exciting. Pookah has a hormone fit (he actually tried to bite the hand that feeds him as it fed him) and I get to be helpful. Really, truly helpful. I've also done some cooking helpful and dishes helpful, but I do that all the time. This was horse helpful, a new skill. Oh. And I now handle the water buckets in the morning, speeding up the morning chores a bit. I can fill and swish water buckets. I do that for the chickens at home. Transferable skills.

Frog Out

Today I am in charge. What's that? No, the horses are NOT in charge. I am in charge.

I am the lunch wagon lady. I am the scooper of a very large litter box and several small ones as well.

(I left Virginia for this? I have cat boxes at home.)

But no big white horses.

It's cloudy today. I've never been in the desert when it was cloudy from the moment I got up.

Frog Out

Some people like to hug trees. I have nothing against such people or against trees. But I like to hug really big white horses. Which is how I spent my evening as the sun went down and a bat came out to eat bugs.

Frog Out

I just received news through a caringbridge update that a friend and client who battled cancer this spring passed away not two hours ago.

I'm not the one to offer condolences to. No one I know on lj knew her. But she was part of my life for many years, from the time The Dude was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.

She had a distinctive speaking voice and was very down to earth. The mother of three children, she defended me at a dinner party when another wife asked why I didn't have any children. And I was the ranking wife at this party. This junior officer's wife wouldn't stop pressing me about why I had no children and I didn't consider it polite to ask her to stop, even though I was a major's wife. It was her gaffe, her issue, presumably from deep convictions. She was backing me into a corner, though. And Susan told her to lay off in that very frank way she had. Among other things, when a couple has been married 15 years and has no children, there might be a medical reason for the lack. In my case, there wasn't, but there might have been, and it was no one's business why. Susan saw that, despite her own love of children and desire to have more.

She was always late getting information to me, always casual about everything, very much an entrepreneur and extrovert. Her life was her home and her family, she was their heart and center. She was happy with that life, believed children should have a parent around while they were growing up, provided daycare to other parents so her kids had playmates. As they grew up and needed her less, she took on her own projects, remodeling the house and creating an eBay seller's empire. I talked to her once or twice a year, saw her once a year. And every time the meeting and the talk was a breath of fresh air. Susan was my polar opposite. And sometimes that fills a niche in your life, shakes your status quo in a good way. Susan shook mine every year.

I'm posting because I can. Because I'm a writer and words are my tools and my blog is a memory-catcher, catching and holding a small piece of Susan for as long as there's an internet archive of this entry.

Frog

Life in the almost-country. Birds, flowers, chickens, cats, raccoons, woodchucks, scuzzy deer, peace and sometimes quiet. And then carnage enters Eden.

It's difficult enough to keep Miss E focused on getting to school on time. I have to stay with her most mornings while she dresses because otherwise she just goes under the covers again. No matter how early I get her up. It's the way she's wired. And I've adapted to it. She'll get distracted easily and has no sense of the clock, far worse than mine is. Packing her lunch is then a last minute rush job as she eats breakfast with only teeth brushing left. 10 minutes to the bell. I zip into the pantry to get her cereal.

And I have a "what the heck is that, oh no, ewwwwww" reaction.

Someone has killed a female cardinal and with bizarre feline logic, not only brought it home, but placed it by the cat food dishes in the pantry. And after that, it appears several cats have mangled it a bit more. One seems to have tried to bury it under the throw rug. What? Are we not feeding you enough? (we are.)

Rainbow Tom: This is not the culprit. He's into his dry food. Big time. Though he might have mangled it or tried to bury it. He's too lazy to get his own, but he's not above poking what someone else catches.

PD: This is the "Look, it's Haley's Comet!" cat. He will steal what another cat catches and might move it to the food area, but he's not going to kill a bird.

Goliath: A suspect. Last seen running for the door with a live chipmunk in his jaws. I slammed the door in his face and he dropped his chipmunk. Which got away. And then Goliath got bored. So we know he can catch and kill things and we know he wants to bring his kills inside and we know he then gets bored with the whole process. Goliath is frequently bored. He walks around aimlessly from room to room, meowing. Especially if the weather outdoors doesn't suit him, i.e. rain.

Mrs. Gaines: The only girl cat in the house. Note this photo taken in the winter. She has inserted herself on RT's footstool closest to the heater. And he's too lazy to object, just puts his paw around her.

Note the "Who Me?" expression. Butter wouldn't melt in this cat's mouth. Last seen bringing a young bunny home clamped in her jaws, also entering the house with it. The bunny was eventually rescued and released to some unknown fate. This cat has been known to run along the rooftop, mouse, and yes, catch birds.

She's clearly a dangerous character. See? She can't even make eye contact with my laptop here. And see that notch in her ear? Clearly a sociopath in Eden, capable of avicide without remorse. And then leaving it for me to clean up. Ugh.

Once upon a time, we bought a 10 acre place. It already had a barn, a cabin, and fencing for sheep in both a paddock and a 5 acre field. The field is hay now and the paddock is partly used for the chickens. And irises and trees and E's house. It's on the back side of the house and is the direction most of the windows face, so this vista is the most important to us.

This post will be edited, because the photos are on more than one computer. The before photos were a trip down memory lane for me...some are in here just for fun. ( before photos )
Next up will be the "after" photos, but I have to do an edit on the other computer to add those...

My neighbor's quarterhorses got loose last fall (I was at Capclave with tcastleb and mindseas) and ended up in our paddock. The older one became upset (as horses do) when the little one was led away first. She panicked (as horses do) and attempted to jump the old fence in the corner where it stopped being board and started being wire. She ended up taking out the fence, swung around and headed for the chicken run. Her owner was right in the way, our neighbor Laurie. The fence was tangled in Gypsy's legs (the horse) and she ran by Laurie and the fence knocked Laurie flat, breaking her (Laurie's) leg at the edge of the knee cap. She's now walking with a limp and a plate and not going to be riding any time soon, as it was her left leg. So they paid G Dude to fix the fence and we paid the difference to have boards put up from the corner to the gate we still have. It looked so nice (but we were out of money) that we wanted to go all the way. This spring, I finally had enough money to finish the job.
( How the fence looks after G Dude finished... )

Ok, well I said G Dude was here. Mostly he was here to finish replacing the paddock fence, which was wire and wooden post, with boards. Far more Virginian and pleasant to look at. We've decided not to paint the boards black, the typical color here. At night, when we go down to the coop, the Dude and I don't use flashlights. On a dark night, it's nice to have this vague glow of the fence visible. It sort of lets you know where the gate is. Those photos come later.

For Mother's Day I asked for the fire pit I've been wanting for 2 years now, even since I saw one at a neighbor's. Miss E wants to have a camp out at my cabin and what's a camp out without the cook out part? I think it's too dangerous to have an open fire at certain times of year, hence the fire pit idea. A fire pit is supposed to be put on stones or bricks. So I needed G Dude to put something together. It started as your engineering square when I wanted a circle and there were all these arguments about how far away from the cabin, etc. The engineers won, much to my dismay, about the square shape. Then G Dude found these pre-fab pavers. Totally man-made in different shades and textures, but only one shape. However, the shape gets rotated to fit against itself. It's a puzzle and what you end up with is something that looks more organic than it really is.

Oh, and I wasn't satisfied with a fire pit circle, puzzled or square. Once I saw these I wanted a path and a place to put chairs in front of the steps...
( here be photos and occasional cat companion... )

No, that's not the house. It's my cabin, which does not have A/C. Until today, neither did the house. Well, half the house.
( saga of the HVAC )

Who knew? There are people out there with way too much time on their hands. I no longer feel guilty for my feeble attempts at blogging. Those of us who remember, remember that there was an explosion of music videos when the media was born. And a lot of them were "artsy." Like Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." What works about this is that they matched her voice pretty well. It's known as the "literal version" of the video. And it's a hoot and a half. Gracias to buymeaclue for pointing me to this bit of nonsense.



As a writer of speculative fiction, I found this work especially funny. Because, you know, we're often hindered by metaphors being literal. And I could just hear my editrix poking holes in the original video.

Now that I actually tweet, my blog entries don't seem to hang together very well. I keep thinking in terms of short bursts of information.

1. I've been working diligently on Worldcon programming for the writing track. Lots to do, lots to do. Deadline looms. I also have to get the web page up for the workshop.

2. I heard a barred owl this morning at 6am. This is nice because I haven't heard one recently. It was farther away than normal.

3. Dick Deadeye, a hen that is part of the original group that included Walkabout, is not doing well. Deadeye was attacked by a hawk that first summer and one eye was damaged. One pupil is fixed. But she's been a tough old bird all along. She and Gimpy are the only two originals left. Egg production is about 8 eggs a day, average. With 14 hens. So our population is aging. And some of those eggs show signs of stress. I prefer not to sell those.

4. I received my contributor's copy of the May issue of Esli magazine. Oh wow. Was that ever cool. Trying to find one's name in Cyrillic. Good thing I can look for "Oz" which comes out like "O3." Just imagine that 3 a bit smaller. Online http://esli.ru/jrn/archive/20090428154430archive.html there is a synopsis. Since the synopsis says Gale is "ungrateful" to her creator, I find the Russian interpretation of the story interesting from a writer's perspective. Maybe that explains the Finnish attitude, which translated as "so what?" You can run a translator over it to see how it translates into English. Two different translations with google and yahoo.

5. marshall_payne embarrassed me yet again by celebrating my birthday. I'm touched, but thoroughly mortified. Not because I'm a year older. No. I can't say I mind that, though the body isn't what it used to be. It's because I'm not comfortable when someone fusses over me.

6. I had to cancel going to Wiscon for financial reasons. This meant I could go to klingonguy's book launch for his first novel, Buffalito Destiny, at Balticon. Very nice. Lots of attention, lots of books sold with Laura Ann Gilman as his cashier. Val, unfortunately, was sick and stayed home.

7. Other Balticon news: The Dude did his own shopping at Larry Smith's bookstore. Lots of money spent. Miss E went shopping at "Undiscovered Treasures," her favorite stall in the dealer's room. She was pleased by the presence of a Wegman's, where we picked up Asian buffet bar for my birthday dinner. We met scottedelman in the hall as we went to get day badges and firmed up our lunch plans. Miss E was suddenly a toddler again, hiding in Mommy's skirts. I had hoped she'd outgrown that. But she was fine at lunch, except for the part where the grownups go "blah, blah, blah" all the time. Later that night she asked me if the man we met in the hall was the same man we went to lunch with. Apparently, she was shy enough that she never took a good look at him that first meeting. I had a nice time hanging out with Karen Wester Newton (and spouse), David Louis Edelman, Scott Edelman and Tom Doyle in the con suite after tomdoyle's reading.

8. Miss E pronounced the Embassy Suites as a suitable hotel for her needs. Which is good, because that's where we have rooms in Montreal.

Frog Out

A couple of days ago I blogged a conversation between myself and the Editrix. Well, she didn't like it. It seems that under that gruff (bitchy, demanding, cutting) exterior, she's quite sensitive to parody and ridicule. And since our relationship is fairly new, I decided to provide a more balanced version of our collaborative efforts.

It's process. My understanding is that novels may be different. And I'm quite sure that lots of short story writers don't have this kind of process; i.e. your results may vary. Heck, I didn't use to have this process. It's only a few months old. We've only edited two stories this way, Editrix and I. The rule is that each word in my short stories must be considered carefully, rather like writing poetry. It must be the right word, the right sentence. According to Editrix. Actually, I think this is Frost's fault again. Yeah, blame him, Editrix says. He gets blamed for lots of stuff and won't notice.

Frost read The Mouse King and said that a writer must only include what the reader needs to know, no more, no less. The Mouse King, according to Frost, had extraneous things in it that the writer needed to know, but not the reader of that particular story. Ok fine. I still haven't fixed that story. Mostly because while I understood what he meant, I didn't know how to do it.

So, I wrote "One Does What One Must" in a white heat while traveling for 7 hours. And then spent 4 days with Editrix. It went something like this:
Editrix: Why is this a stone vase?
Me: Not sure.
Editrix: Why is this a meat stew?
Me: Not sure.
Editrix: Why are you babbling on about mercy?
Me: Ummm, cause that was the line that started this?
Editrix: Is this doctor-guy important? What else does he do?
Me: Umm, I guess he's not. He doesn't have any other lines.
Editrix: Whose house is this?
Me: I don't know.
Editrix: So if she knows what was in the stew, does he?
Me: I don't know.
Editrix: So when does he go to the witch?
Me: Never? Is that an option?
Editrix: And does his wife go with him?
Me: I don't know.
Editrix: Is there a baby or isn't there????
Me: I DON'T KNOW!!!
Editrix: [asking the really hard one] What's his name? Her name?
Me: I hate names. Do I have to name them?
Editrix: Yes. The name will tell you something.
Me; Sounds like New Age garbage to me.

As you can see, Editrix is simply asking questions and I'm the dog in the manger about it all, not her. In the course of answering those questions, the final draft took shape. When I knew an answer, some aspect would become finalized. Such as how a scene looked. Or how it set up something that needed to happen later. And yes, I did have to find names for the characters. The rough draft calls them him/he and the girl/the wife.

Oh Great Editrix, keep asking your questions. (She knows when I'm being sarcastic, too.) OTOH, she's been kicking fairy butt all over "And From His Lips."

Frog Out