No Posts

...because I am writing hard.

More later.

See y'all!

SNOW DAY!!!

It's been snowing since before dawn here, and getting steadily colder and snow, at just before eleven, the university has finally called classes.

Yay!  Snow day!  More coffee and writing for me.

Sadly, however, HDD and I are out of food, having neglected to do the Southern Panic Thing yesterday (when impending snow is announced) of rushing out to buy milk and bread and ice.  We both teach all day on Wednesday & did not have time.

Oh, well.  Who needs anything but coffee anyway?

FanSci Updates!

New post by me!

Go read!

Cats in Space!

In case you missed this, over on i09.

Cats on the Vomit Comet.

Racefail Coda

I'm presenting my paper on racism in the SF world/in SF publishing in April at the PCA, and doing research for that paper in what few spare moments I can find -- anyway, today I came across this essay by Samuel Delany.

Read the whole thing, as they say, but here's a key paragraph:

Since I began to publish in 1962, I have often been asked, by people of all colors, what my experience of racial prejudice in the science fiction field has been. Has it been nonexistent? By no means: It was definitely there. A child of the political protests of the ’50s and ’60s, I’ve frequently said to people who asked that question: As long as there are only one, two, or a handful of us, however, I presume in a field such as science fiction, where many of its writers come out of the liberal-Jewish tradition, prejudice will most likely remain a slight force—until, say, black writers start to number thirteen, fifteen, twenty percent of the total. At that point, where the competition might be perceived as having some economic heft, chances are we will have as much racism and prejudice here as in any other field.

New Blog!

Hey look over there!

What's that?

It's a new blog!  FanSci!  Go see!

(Why, yes, I am one the bloggers!  Also Marilou Goodwin and Barbara Ann Wright, fellow writers and travelers.  Enjoy!)

I Know You've Been Waiting...

Martin Tuesday was delayed to Martin Friday this week, but here it is!

More Broken Slate!

I also have a book review of Liz Williams' latest novels up at Strange Horizons today, in case you can't get enough of me.

Spring 2011

I am, after snow delays and ice delays, back in the saddle for Spring 2011.

(Can you believe that year, btw? No jet packs or air cars, but we do have robot maids -- sort of --- and you will pry my iPad out of my cold dead hand.)

Teaching Chaucer, two sections of comp, and a fiction workshop this semester. I'm busy thinking of prompts for the first writing assignment for that last. Most of the students I had last semester so they know all my old tricks -- write a story of less than 1000 words from a POV you would never assume about something you would never write about; write a story about a crucial event in your life, but change one radical thing; write the story you will get in serious trouble for telling. I have to think up new tricks now. Anyone got any ideas?

Meanwhile, I am revising Martin's War to submit to new publishers, and trying to fix an ugly plot knot in the middle. It is keep me up nights.

But it is 2011! We are living in the future! A new decade! Surely we can still hope!

(I am trying this new approach, optimism. I'll let you know how it works out.)

(Update: Killing my attempts to be all cheery in the new decade -- Sarah Palin? Blood libel? I know she's ignorant as dirt, but really?)

(See also this, for a reading of Palin I'll admit I did not consider. So much for optimism.)

Snow

Oh, a bit of good news for once!

Snow, snow, snow here has caused the university to cancel classes tomorrow.

An extra day of winter break for me, me, me!  I can spend all day tomorrow writing instead of greeting freshmen!  Yay, yay, yay!

The kid is not as happy as I am, since she was hoping to visit her BFF, who lives near the university.  But I made her some brownie batter, which she is eating raw with a spoon (yes, at nearly midnight, I am an APPALLING mother) which has cheered her up.  A tiny bit.

Yay snow!

That Was Fast

Since Hanukkah arrived well before Christmas this year, I got my iPad in early December, as some of you may recall.  And from that point on, it went everywhere with me, since we could not bear to be apart.  (I loves my iPad!)

Everywhere I went, waiting room of the clinic, or hanging out in my office or over at the student union, people remarked upon it.  "Is that one of them Kindles?" was the comment I most often got, although, "Hey!  That's one of those electric books, ain't it?" was also a common question.

I would say yes, sort of, and sometimes, if they were actually interested, give them a tiny iPad commercial.

But now?  Post-Christmas?  No one notices and no one cares.  This is because, everywhere I go, everyone has their own Kindle, their own Nook, their own iPad.  I was at the orthodonist with the kid this morning, every parent there had one or the other.  (Though I was disappointed to find the waiting room didn't have free wifi.  I settled for reading Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter Crooked Letter, which I had downloaded last night.)

We're living in the future.

Put a Sad Face Here

Another rejection.

A nice one, at least.  She asked me to send her something else.  It's something.

Look! A Review!

A review of Crossed Genres, Y2, has been posted.  A nice one, too.

Also!  The anthology itself is on sale right now.

And!  A new issue of Crossed Genres, Opposites, is now available.  

General Observation

It's harder to write when the kitten has decided your lap is its best place to nap and your elbow is its favorite pillow.

The purring, of course, is just bait.

Rise Reviews

Awhile back, Bart Lieb, who you may remember as the endless bundle of energy who helps run CG, came up with another idea -- a site to review all the many works of in the SF/F which slid past, unnoticed, because most sites only review those titles which receive pro-rates (mostly, that is, a nickel a word or higher).

Skipping all the middle of this story -- ta-da!  Rise Reviews debuts today!  January 1, 2011.

Both Herr Dr. Delagar and I are among the many excellent folk writing reviews; but you should go on over and have a look, not at our reviews per se, but at the works being reviewed.  A lot of the best writing in SF these days is coming from this, literally, marginalized work.

Martin Tuesday!

If you have an iPad, you can read Chapter 10 of Broken Slate, now available on Crossed Genres, on your iPad!

I'm just saying!