Escaping the Trunk

Unless you’ve been on an Internet cleanse, you’ve probably already heard this news. Still, I feel like commemorating it here, mostly because I CALLED IT, and I get a healthy squirt of dopamine when the things I predict come true. Dave feels the same, and has a post on the subject with a snazzy photo from the ceremony.

Welcome Squid Overlords, indeed. Peter, come home soon.

NOTE: Mom, you can read the winning novelette here. I must confess I totally misread this story during its workshop stage. Luckily, Peter had the good sense not to listen to me.

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From Toronto

Photographing tall ships, getting sunburned, and coming home for our annual re-watch of JAWS.

Oh yeah, and finishing the re-writes of my novel. The latest iteration now rests comfortably in my agent’s inbox, and I would have done a celebratory dance of some sort once I clicked “send,” had it not been a quarter to five in the morning. I took a four-hour nap before we headed out to look at the tall ships, I’m exhausted, and my skin is far too pink, and I’m sure I’ll have some sort of sender’s remorse later. For now though, I have an air-conditioned bedroom.

The Bebop re-caps will re-commence very soon.

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The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

I ganked this from Tavi Gevinson, who I just adore. She featured it because, well, she has fantastic taste. It’s sort of her job. More like a calling, actually. I honestly can’t wait for the moment Tavi takes control of the world, because it will be a far fairer and more beautiful place.

Kubrick said this in an interview with Eric Nordern for the September 1968 issue of Playboy, probably in promotion (or explanation) of 2001. Apparently, Playboy used to have great interviews, along with their great fiction. The moment my mother told me that all my favourite writers were once published in Playboy is etched permanently in my brain, such that when my freshman roommate received a subscription as a joke, I made her save the magazine so I could go through it.

“These women all look the same,” I remember saying.

“Are you done, yet?” she asked, looking pointedly away.

“The fiction submission guidelines aren’t listed anywhere!”

“I can’t believe ____ sent that to me. He said he would, but I didn’t believe him.”

“He likes you. Jamming a Playboy in your mailbox is like sticking gum in your hair. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

…Or something to that effect. (Pro-tip: Unless your target is kinky, don’t try communicating your affection with an issue of Playboy. And even if she is kinky, an issue of Playboy won’t do it. Do some damn shopping, first, and try to get something that doesn’t have fold-open samples of AXE.)

I make fun of the magazine, but I should also mention that Hugh Hefner is one of the most polite Tweeters I’ve ever read. For a guy who almost never changes out of his silk dressing gown, fills his home with models, and basically enjoys the kind of life we all wish we had, his tweets are surprisingly sweet and normal. He talks about his favourite classic films, watches Jon Stewart, and sends out birthday wishes to Playmates old and new. He sticks by his employees, both current and former, and is a perfectionist when it comes to both layouts and punctuation. (Seriously, I defy you to find a misplaced apostrophe on his feed. This man had a stroke years ago, but he still disciplines his thumbs to text correctly. Think of that the next time you type “imma” for “I will.”)

In my dream world, Tavi and Hef actually meet, and afterward she designs the centrefolds each month and meets the models and asks them how their day is going and is in general the complete opposite of Terry Richardson. I know that this will never happen (I suspect it might even be illegal), but, well, consider Kubrick’s words. It’s our own responsibility to make beautiful things happen, no matter how unlikely they are.

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Just look at them.

From Toronto

I have been having fun with my new camera. I am writing a CFP. I woke up this morning, lifted weights, and washed my sundresses in bubble bath. Then I hung them out on the line and looked at my latest Tor.com post. And Peter is reading my book. Life is good.

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When I wrote this post, I had no idea the kind of response it would generate. It was just something I thought to do while we were driving home listening to “Carry On My Wayward Son” for the tenth time. I’m very lucky that the post was pushed through to the top of the Tor.com queue. It’s since been featured at Making Light and BoingBoing, and Peter himself linked to it in his account of Monday’s events.

In other words, a lot more people are reading my posts than usual, and I’ve been getting some really wonderful emails and comments here and elsewhere that I’m really very grateful for. It seems that readers really wanted a personal perspective on what happened Monday and what has been happening since December, and I’m glad I was able to provide a little of that. As I said in an email to Caitlin yesterday: “I am glad that there is some form of narrative out there that describes a little of what this chapter in our lives has meant for us. When I was a history major, descriptions like these always made the context of an event come alive for me and allowed me to situate myself within the culture.”

I honestly don’t know how I was able to communicate even a sliver of what we were all feeling, that day. I spent most of that afternoon feeling like my skeleton had left my body. But I do know that people have responded strongly to this particular version of events. And that, I think, is an example of why stories work: they let us stand up a little higher and get a better view of things. Anyone can read what happened in the public record. But it takes some storytelling to understand what it all meant. There’s a reason I always remember what I learn from well-researched fiction better than what I read elsewhere. Stories help us remember. They make the information sticky and harder to scrape off. So, if I can wiggle my baby toe in that tradition for even just a moment, I’m very happy.

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From Toronto

That sombre-looking fellow is Peter Watts, in case you didn’t know. He’s grimacing because he has a toothache. He’s worried that it’s a giant face-eating abscess, but I suspect it might be five months of nightly teeth-grinding coming home to roost. But the good thing is that he can come to a Canadian emergency dental clinic to be healed, and not a prison doctor, because he’s free.

Not free to visit the US, of course. Not free to visit his terminally ill brother. But home, safe, with us.

I wrote about it.

Now I can breathe. I can do some novel re-writes, finish a paper and a CFP, and actually mail my mom’s Mother’s Day gift. I can go grocery shopping. I can write an email to Peter without bursting into tears. We can do Squid & Squeak Watch Anime, again.

Spring is really here.

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From Food

This is the dinner I prepared after finishing the first draft of a novel called The von Neumann Sisters. My agent is reading it, my workshop is reading it, my husband is reading it. The title is taken from a comment Peter made in a Starship Sofa podcast, when talking about it. He mistook the title I had in mind, but when I thought about it, I realized it was a better fit. But that final moment reflects the beginning of the process: Peter’s the one who told me to write this one. I already had five chapters and a ton of research done on another novel, but that novel was fighting me every step of the way. In the middle of one of our afternoon anime and beer binges (did I mention that my life is great?), while we were talking about another short story I had written about robots, Peter squinted at me and said: “Why don’t you just write about them, instead?” When I told my husband about this conversation, he said: “You have something really special, here. I think you should do it.”

I am nothing if not highly suggestible.

That other novel is still in me, and I think about it every day. But it’s a big, rough book. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to tackle it, yet. There were moments writing vNS that stymied me completely. At one point, I had to turn right around and start over, editing from the first sentence on down until I could get my momentum back. This really hurt, because writing is the thing I do all the time, and if I don’t have a story with me I feel not just naked, but empty and alone. Since finishing this draft, I’ve got the DT’s: I’m alternating between the sense of my head clearing enough to get some damn homework done, finally, and the gnawing absence of what was once a regular, if not always productive, activity.

With that sentiment in mind, please enjoy this video:

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I’m not joking. Jetse de Vries, editor of The Shine Anthology of Optimistic SF is giving away free cognac, whisky, and wine if you guess the end of a sentence correctly.

No, really. How it works:

Below are fragments from all the stories that will appear in the Shine anthology. Each fragment has an ending sentence, for which four possibilities are given. Three are false (made up by me, or—in same cases—by the author), one is correct. Guess the correct answer. One point for each correct answer: so one can earn a maximum of 16 points with this.

Bonus points are given if one guesses the name of the author of the fragment correct. This way, one can earn another 16 points. So the maximum possible points one can earn is 32.

Example (this is from “Araby” by James Joyce):

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them,

A) gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

B) turned a blind eye to the boys’ noise.

C) kept on as usual, refusing to be distracted.

D) shuddered at the vibrant energy disturbing the quiet afternoon.

In this example, the correct answer is 1-A, and the author is James Joyce. So a competition entry would look like this: 1-A, Jane Doe; 2-B, Joe Sixpack, 3-C, Captain Nemo, etcetera until number 16.

So start clicking! Start reading! Start drinking! Start now!

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Thanksgiving, as I was exhorted late last night, was October 12th. It was, according to some, the only Thanksgiving that should count. However those of us with two countries to our names sometimes get double holidays. (Japan, it should be known, has the best assortment of holidays: Christmas is for lovers, New Year’s is for family, Valentine’s Day is for men, White Day is for women, Golden Week is a whole week long, and there’s Obon and Halloween. But I digress.) This means getting two Thanksgivings.

In other words, I’m boarding a plane later today for Los Angeles. There was a frantic pawing through my bureau this evening (yesterday evening, technically) for my bathing suit (I found it!) and I’ve charged up my mobile and borrowed an EEE. I’m going to see my mother’s family and my former roommate. This will be my husband’s first opportunity to meet some of them. (I considered making flashcards.) Since family is the theme of the weekend, I thought I’d share these trailers.

I’ll try watching this one tomorrow, if my last-minute shopping doesn’t get in the way. To me it’s the perfect family film.

I’ve also included this trailer, because it’s far more informative than the one floating around on television. That one just spits out the names Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson, George Clooney and Meryl Streep at you, without any context. This one actually gets at plot. And showcases Bill Murray as a badger with a thing for explosives. Which is a real winner, as far as I’m concerned.

In other good news, related pieces of which I shall divulge later on, Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic SF*, edited by Jetse de Vries, is available for pre-order. I wrote a story especially intended for it, and I was lucky enough to see it accepted. I’ll probably do some talking about it to the family members I don’t see very often, if they ask what I’m up to lately. Then we’ll just segue into killer robots, and all will be well.

*Yes, I know about the typo. The fine people at Solaris are on it.

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You can read my story, “Milk+” at The Orphan. Snip:

Braxtin had no need for the milk bar until a week after starting Milk+. By then, her breasts already felt stretched and sore, and a hot little knot of pain had tightened between her shoulders. But according to the pamphlet inside her free box of Milk +, her new breast milk contained a more even distribution of fats and sugars, thus eliminating the peaks and valleys created by conventional insulin release. Lev fed steadily, cried less, and napped more. Braxtin could have wept with relief.

Steadying Lev’s stroller with one hand with baby bag and her canvas grocery tote hanging from her other elbow, Braxtin swung the keychain before a card-sized black panel and stepped through the softly chiming doors. Like deer troubled by a passing car, the heads of three nursing mothers rose to watch her from their curved, ultra-modern sofas. Despite their differences in height and race, their breasts seemed disproportionately distended and heavy, as though a bad comic book artist’s Oedipal fantasy had come bizarrely and painfully true. Stretch marks like root systems began at their necks and climbed ever downward.

I’ve been wrestling with this story for a long time. Thankfully, Brendan Byrne was willing to adopt my li’l orphan and give it a home. You should check it out, if only just to see Molly Crabapple’s excellent illustrations. They’re creepy and juicy and gorgeous, and the illustration to the right of my story is a better companion for it than I could ever have wished for. Go take a look.

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