BETWEEN THE LINES

In DFW, loitering near Gate C17. Flight down was uneventful. I did find some lunatic fringe Christian spam in comments on jlake.com, which I deleted. Not sure that was quite the right move, because it wasn’t technically spam so much as rant, but I don’t have time right now for pointless rhetorical combat with someone who confuses faith with facts.

Given my recent adaptation to a toilet-based lifestyle, I’m spending a lot more time in airport men’s room stalls. (Yes, this is almost over — the antibiotic course is working well. But it’s not over yet.) I’ve been ranting about the lack of outlets in airport lounges for a long time. Here’s a thought: why are stalls designed as if no one ever carries luggage? Have you tried maneuvering a roller bag and a computer satchel into one of those things. Rant, rant, rant. It’s like the good old days on this blog! I must have woken up feisty.

Just now loaned my cell phone to a Marine sergeant passing through on his mid-tour home leave from Iraq. He needed to call some of his family and was messing with some nearby payphones. I have a very strong negative view of the war, but I don’t for a moment confuse corrupt and venal Republican policymaking with the dedicated service of the men and women in uniform. (That was one of the great errors of the Left during Vietnam — inhumane, inhuman, and simply mistaken.)

Off to forage for food shortly.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

Article serie: Building Jay Lake’s Colon — More from the indomitable Mary Robinette Kowal.

stacia_kane on how to be a sex-writing strumpet — Some pretty good stuff on writing sex and erotica. (Thanks to calendula_witch.)

Newspaper Misspells Own Name on Front Page — (Thanks to danjite.)

World’s Oldest Bible Pieced Together — Interesting story, but the story-behind-the-story looks even more interesting.

Portuguese team makes first paper based transistor — Whoa. Serious cool potential here. (Thanks to lt260.)

Fish pedicures — Um, right. (Thanks to lillypond.)

A disease called “previous cesarean” — Another triumph of market-based healthcare finance. Speaking as someone with the mother of all pre-existing conditions, my interest in, and anger with, the distorted system of healthcare finance in this country only mounts. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I have compassion and sympathy for the 40 million uninsured, and the 40 million more underinsured. What I don’t understand is why the Republican Party, the AMA, and so many conservative voters do not. HSA’s (a long time Republican panacea) are meaningless to the unemployed, the underemployed and those on or near minimum wage. I had one in a previous insurance plan, and it was damned near meaningless to me. There’s an underlying unspoken social assumption that the poor somehow have earned their lot (residual Calvinism perpetuated by the GOP and other social forces, I think), combined with a spoken social assumption that if they’d only work a little harder they’d be fine. That’s an opinion which speaks very poorly of Americans’ human nature. Is it good social policy to force people into $1,000 ER visits because they don’t have the insurance coverage or the cash for a $120 doctor visit? It’s not like the market-based system has produced a viable outcome, not when you look at American life expectancy (42nd worldwide) and infant mortality rates (34th worldwide) — two very basic measures of healthcare success. (Thanks to dinogrl.)

Amanda Peet apologizes for calling vaccination protestors “parasites” — She goes on to explain her position. Very long time readers of this blog will recall I am passionate on this subject. the_child has a disease-specific immune disorder which means she is a lifetime carrier (asymptomatic and healthy) of a rather nasty viral disease which part of the ordinary childhood vaccination course. Almost half her kindergarten class were unvaccinated due to a high prevalence of vaccination protestors among the Waldorf population. Several parents suggested my daughter not be included in the class because of the health risk she presented to their children. My child, who was completely unresponsive to a widely-available vaccine, was considered a health risk by parents who were one clinic visit away from medical safety. You can imagine my response to this at the time. It’s an iteration of the free-rider problem, but basically, anti-vaccination parents are banking on all the parents around their child doing something they would not do to their own child in order to protect their child from communicable diseases. I’m sorry, “parasite” might have been a poor word choice, but Amanda Peet was right in the first place.

Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power — An investigative report from Salon on domestic spying. Nothing to see here, citizen. Move along smartly, now. (Thanks to my Aunt M.)

Maryland State Police spying on peace activists — Because, you know, all the great American terrorists of recent years have been leftie peaceniks. Like Eric Rudolph! And Timothy McVeigh!

Why you should vote for McCain — Straight from the Great Orange Satan, whom I don’t usually bother to link. (I rather imagine that most of you already read Daily Kos, or you don’t care.) But this is very funny, because it has the benefit of being objectively true, as opposed to editorial opinion.

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7/24/08
Time in saddle: n/a (airport walking today)
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: Green by Jay Lake

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

"I've coined new words, like 'misunderstanding' and 'Hispanically.'"
-- Radio-Television Correspondents Association dinner; Washington, D.C.; March 29, 2001


How very strategery, you sly dog, you.


181 days to go!

markbourne's recent review on Catherine Deneuve's and Sophia Loren's plush, glossy released multi disk set at film.com got picked by Catherine Deneuve and posted at her myspace page. Yes, he wishes this meant they were now friends. Sure, it more likely means her publicist grabbed the review and posted it, but still, it's very cool. I hope I look so awesome at 64!

I think we all have soundtracks in our heads—heck—with the way we're bombarded everyday by sound I'm not surprised we aren't born with our own MP3.

Characters are born in my head that way. I see them as anime and they just percolate, sometime before I write them, and then sometimes as I write them. Darren McConnell (yes the last name changed) is one of those "in process" characters.

And just now—I found his theme.

I officially declare this an open questions thread. Ask me anything. I make no promises about the answers, of course. (Response times may be delayed due to travel and other events.)

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

Well, I’m off again at the crack of doom. Heading back to Seattle for tomorrow’s signing with Brenda Cooper at University Books. (Dinner to precede, meet at 5 pm on the corner by the book store, or call me.) I’ll work from the home of the lovely and talented on Friday, then make my way toward the Clarion West party that night before returning home to Nuevo Rancho Lake on Saturday.

Got editorial feedback on “In the Forests of the Night”. Somewhat to my amazement, the feedback was positive and quite minimal. I’ll be a lot tougher on myself in the rewrite, frankly. All good. Meanwhile, Green continues apace. This is a pretty good book, truth be told.

I’m tired as heck, and the antibiotics make my mouth taste like pennies, but otherwise I feel rather myself tonight. As usual, expect continued light blogging through Sunday.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

I'm off to Conestoga Convention tomorrow.  If you're headed that way, you can find me on Friday wandering the halls, the bar, and in other meander-friendly places.  On Saturday I'll be at these panels and events:

  9:00  The Elusive Snark
10:00  First Book in a Series
  3:00  The business of Writing
  6:00  Author Speed Dating 

Hope to see you there!

REMINDER:  There are still a few free samplers left.  If you missed yesterday's journal entry, the sampler is an awesome collection of first chapters from Ace/Roc writers, and I'll mail one to *you* free!

Just send your mailing information to:

devon underscore monk AT yahoo (dot) com

Witchblade! Witchblade is coming to DVD!!

Yes. I am a fan. Yancy Butler was a sort of model for Zoë. In the early incarnation.

http://warnervideo.com/witchbladedvd/

I just got something that wasn't a query at all. It was someone wanting to know if I would read their book and review it on my blog. How unexpected (to me anyway -- maybe I shouldn't be so surprised?). And somehow surreal. So, I had to write them back and tell them that I didn't really review books on my blog and the books I tended to promote were by my clients.

Meanwhile, blogging is likely to be a bit light over the next few weeks. Between conferences, I find myself juggling to a great degree, and it appears that blogging falls low on the triage list. And substantive blogging even lower (or perhaps that's a function of being too busy to hear myself think). I will try to keep up with at least the query wars. And I'll plan another Agent Manners session once things get a bit calmer. Thanks everyone for reading and hanging out here. I particularly appreciated all the comments on the right agent, the right author entry.

Feel free to let me know if there are other topics or features you want to see addressed when I have the opportunity to post entries with more depth.

If you haven't read Twilight and you plan to you shouldn't read this.  Or maybe it won't matter, I haven't finished the book and if you don't know that it's about a HS girl and a vampire you've been living in a cave.

I've started reading Twilight, which I borrowed from our neighbor.  Every female, of every age, seems to be or have read it, so I thought I should too.Awesome neighbor Dawn read it in a two day frenzy, and forgot to pick up her children at school. Austin's girlfriend is reading it in a steam heat. There must be something wrong with me.

First, I don't think it's well written. This is not a sin, I didn't think the Harry Potter books were well written, but they engrossed me, they still do. A tale of forbidden love, which is what Twilight is, as far as I can tell (I'm not done with it yet) it should certainly be a good read. The setting isn't real for me, and seriously, if you can't make the Olympic Peninsula real, what the heck? For me, it's not enough to describe a Sitka Spruce (and what about the majority of the trees, those Western Red Cedars, or the Alders?) but the forest has a smell all its own, as does the beach. As far as I can tell, no one in her world has a nose.

It also requires everyone in the book to be an idiot. She's stupid, her vampire lover is dumb as a door nail for someone who must be very old (and really, he's going to fall in love with a 17 year old girl and why is he going to high school? Really? I hope she makes that clear) and everyone in the town, especially her father, is an idiot.

Perhaps I wouldn't know if vampires walked among us. Probably not.  I suspect I would know if I went to school with one in a small town of a few hundred people where they'd been living for more than a century and the kids on the rez all know about it. Seriously, you think they don't talk to other kids? Really?  My credulity is aching.

I'm about half way through, but it isn't gripping me. I can see rivets and bolts and things clank in the night. Maybe I'm too old for young love. But Jeez, she has a whole chapter where she wastes words on words and not only does nothing happen, we don't learn anything new about any of our characters. Have mercy and just rip it out.

It's interesting enough I'll finish it, but it's a chore.

FWIW, neighbor Dawn got the sequel. She can't read it.  It has bored her already.  I think that's a sign.

We went to see Streetcar Named Desire last night. It was superb. Well worth going to if you are in Seattle. Very excellent. And we over ate first at Roti. Also excellent, but shouldn't over eat. What I like about seeing something good, really good, is that a good movie, or a good performance leads to long discussions afterwards.  I love that. I wish, on occasion, someone would give me beautiful dialog to say like Tennesee Williams gave his characters.  My words are just ordinary, but not his. Oh no, on occasion, they speak poetry. Oh for a writer to craft my dialog.

Yesterday I got the most amusing rejection.  Mostly I look and see if it's a yes or no and mark it off.  Last night I chuckled. The London William Morriss Agency caught my attention with a very chatty rejection that started off with: Dear E, and then went on to describe how they'd all sat around a big round table and read the ms and discussed it, but only some of them loved and it and has to be 100% consensus to take it, and it was so chatty and tea and biscuits it made me laugh.  It was a rejection, but seriously, I don't care about those. It was that informal, Dear E, as if we'd known each other for years. What a hoot.

And today I go to the zoo and fling pooh with scarlettina, no wait, we watch monkeys fling pooh. I keep forgetting we don't do the flinging of pooh ourselves.  I best put the paper bag back. Dang.

Jonathan Strahan comments passim on Green and Escapement [ Powell's | Amazon ] — He asks a question I’ve wondered about myself. Also, bonus kenscholes mentioned.

“Mind Meld” from SF Signal on worldbuilding — In which I was invited to play.

will-couvillier with news about the return of James Gunn’s online writing workshop — Go check it out.

Mary Robinette Kowal builds me a new colon — She has the technology. She will make me stronger than I was before.

Cake Wrecks — Hahahahahah. (Thanks to danjite.)

APOD with another astonishing image of Martian terrain — The post is titled “High Cliffs Surrounding Echus Chasma on Mars.” I want to put a city in that crater.

Global Warming distortion from the right wing noise machine — An overview at Cocktail Party Physics (Hat tip to Bad Astronomy Blog, which has been on a roll lately.)

The US Military’s sleep reduction program — (Hat tip to Freakonomics.)

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7/23/08
Time in saddle: n/a (20 minute walk instead)
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: Green by Jay Lake

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

Last night I dreamt that ericjamesstone and I were hanging out. (Which would be fun if it happened IRL.) We’d had lunch and gone walking in a greenspace on a college campus, talking politics. He went to his car to get something, and I was mugged by a drunk homeless guy and his dog while Eric was gone. I was mortally afraid this idiot would punch me in the gut, where my surgical seam is, so I ran into a classroom building, where I met Vonda McIntyre. Moments later I was in a seminar room full of Pacific Northwest writers — brendacooper, Jim Fiscus, Jerry Oltion, a bunch of other folks. I’d been scheduled to moderate a panel on shared world building, and was utterly unprepared, and even unaware.

Is this the writer equivalent of the college anxiety dream about having to take the final exam for the class you thought you’d dropped before the semester started? I woke up laughing at myself.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

According to my e-Mail backlog, I've picked up several new friends/readers over the past week or so. To all y'all, I bid a big "Howdy!"

If you're so inclined, throw out a comment and tell me what brought you here.


(I suppose that also goes for anyone else who's bored and looking for something to do.)

July 21st:
"Governor, thank you very much. I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport."
-- Arlington, Virginia; October 2, 2001


So, uh...you know...duck.


July 22nd:
"I think younger workers -- first of all, younger workers have been promised benefits the government -- promises that have been promised, benefits that we can't keep. That's just the way it is."
-- Washington, D.C.; May 4, 2005


Smell that? It's the refreshing odor of honesty, baby. Of course, he stumbled over that part of the text on the teleprompter, so he missed the next line...the part that read, "So, suck it. Kneel before Zod, bitches."


182 days to go!

FedEx was here, FedEx was here!  They left me a big box of samplers!

When I heard MAGIC TO THE BONE was being included in the Ace/Roc sampler (available in the wild at a convention near you) I was so excited, I completely forgot to ask who else was in it.

But now I know!  The sampler is chock full of the first (and sometimes second!) chapters of:

NIGHT CHILD - Jes Battis
INTO THE STORM - Taylor Anderson
THE IRON HUNT - Marjorie M. Liu
BREAK OF DAWN - Chris Marie Green
BLOOD MEMORIES - Barb Hendee
MAGIC TO THE BONE - Devon Monk

       
Can I just say wow?  WOW!  That's amazing company, and I'm honored to be included in the mix.  

These will debut at Comic Con--so be sure to stop by the Ace/Roc table and score one.  Not going to Comic Con?  I'll have some available at Conestoga Con.  Not going to Conestoga Con either?

I got you covered.  I will mail 13* of these (yes, internationally) to the first 13 people who email me their mailing information at:

devon underscore monk at yahoo dot com

Go, go, go!  Be the first kid on your block to score a free taste of this delicious treat!


*why 13?  Lucky, that's why.  :o)

I got two today:

"Working hard will make you live a happy life."

Well, at least until I get laid off.


"Your luck has been completely changed today."

Carrying on from the last thought, our hero looks around for the pink slip in his cubicle, when the intercom flares to life:

"Ward, the coach wants to see you. Bring your playbook."



Whoops.

#4 on the list I posted earlier; revised some pitches and sent them off to the developers this morning. Time to get cracking on the query letter and the novel revisions!

Courtesy of another e-Mail group. Remember, boys and girls: There's no backspace key at the tattoo parlor.

The L Magazine: The 10 Greatest Misspelled Tattoos