As I mentioned before, I will be one of three Guests of Honor at next year’s Sirens Conference, along with Holly Black and Terri Windling. They’ve launched their new site, so go take a look; you can register, submit a proposal for programming (academic or otherwise), or just browse what’s already there. Everything I’ve heard about the conference has sounded utterly fabulous, so I hope to see some of you there.
Back from India. I definitely need to post pictures and thoughts eventually, but I’m not sure when I’m going to do it, because of the rest of this post . . . .
World Fantasy is this weekend. If you’re going to be there, you can find me at the big autograph session, or at the “Bad Food, Bad Clothes, and Bad Breath” panel on Sunday at 11 (the topic being the grittier and less-pleasant side of premodern life).
I will also be at the second group signing at Borderlands Books on Monday night. Assuming, of course, that I don’t end up eaten alive by my Very First Jury Duty that day.
Aaaaaaalmost done with book revisions. I pretty much finished before I left for India, so I could let the book sit and then tweak anything else needing tweaking. Well, kittens, it’s time for some tweaking. But that needs to get done before World Fantasy, so I can send the book off to my editor.
And then there are some projects I intend to dive into as soon as that’s done with. More on those later.
In other news, a new interview with me has gone live at I Am Write, where (among other things) I talk about how the Onyx Court books were almost an all-folklore extravaganza instead of focusing on faeries.
Now I need to convince myself not to crawl back into bed (curse you, jet lag!), but rather to knock some of these things off my to-do list. I haven’t been reading LJ at all in my absence, so if you or anyone else posted anything I should see, let me know . . . .
I’ve been given the go-ahead to announce a piece of delightful news: next year, I will be one of three Guests of Honor at the second annual Sirens Conference in Vail, Colorado. The theme will be “Faeries,” and my fellow GoHs will be Holly Black and <drumroll> Terri Windling.
Hoh. Lee. <faints before she can say the rest>
Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend this year (and my brother ended up scheduling his wedding for that weekend anyway), but judging by various con reports, this sounds like everything I love rolled up into one giant ball of awesome, and then dropped into a gorgeous location. Roundtables and salon-style discussions, a pleasant but not overwhelming degree of academicism, and a topic that’s focused enough to produce really great discussions, while broad enough not to limit things too much. It’s like ICFA plus.
I’m told they’ll have the website updated for next year’s conference on November 1st, so I’ll post a reminder then. In the meantime, the gist is that it will be October 7th-10th, Vail Cascade Resort and Spa, and I hope to see as many of you there as possible. It should be fabulous.
I have to make a decision.
Which I really don’t want to make.
There are two conventions I’ve never missed since I began attending them: VeriCon and ICFA. My involvement with the former began with the two years I was its guest coordinator (which also happened to be the first two years of its existence), and the latter when I won the Asimov (now Dell Magazines) Award. That makes for nine years of VeriCon and six of ICFA, respectively. And I very much enjoy both.
I can’t do that anymore. Because Harvard has changed its academic schedule, eliminating intersession, and causing VeriCon to migrate.
To ICFA’s weekend.
So now I have to choose. Which con do I go to? Yes, the thought of somehow trying to do both in the same weekend has crossed my mind, but no, it won’t work. I’d just end up not properly enjoying either one. The problem is, there are arguments for and against each one.
1) VeriCon puts me in front of a larger audience of readers, because I generally do at least two or three panels there, and all the panels generally have at least a couple dozen people in attendance. On the other hand, lots of those people are regular attendees of VeriCon, and I’ve been on the program for the last five years, meaning they’ve seen me plenty of times before. (My intent had actually been to keep it up until VeriCon X, and then to reconsider my schedule. Harvard’s forcing me to do so a year early.) I see lots of college friends there, since it’s a mini-HRSFA reunion, but I also have to put up with Boston weather — though that may have improved with the late January to mid-March shift.
2) ICFA puts me in front of a smaller audience, since I can only do a single reading, and those don’t usually draw more than a dozen people unless there’s a really big name on the three-person docket. On the other hand, it’s vastly superior for networking, as there are oodles of professionals in attendance — many of whom also count as friends, after six years of attendance. It’s more expensive than VeriCon, since I have to pay for a hotel room instead of crashing with a friend, and the luncheons and banquet cost money; but hey, the meals are good, and I get free books with them, plus a chance to dress up in some of the nice clothing I own and never wear. Since moving to California, I no longer have the screaming need for a dose of sunshine and warm weather in mid-March that I did while living in Indiana, but it still doesn’t go amiss. (Especially the chance to go swimming.)
I don’t know which one to choose.
And that isn’t really a decision anyone can make for me. But I’m open to arguments, if you have something that might help tip me off this fence. (Boston-area people should take note that I will be in town for Christmas, so I’m more than happy to arrange social time then.)
1) Don Morse makes a point every year of not just thanking the wait-staff who herd us through the luncheons and banquet, but thanking them by name. Which pleases me more than I can say, because I believe very strongly in greeting and smiling at and making eye contact with maids and doormen and other service personnel. They’re people, and they aren’t invisible. They should be treated accordingly. (In fact, I almost wish our room ninja steward on the cruise had been less ninja-like, because I almost never saw him to thank him. But it took only one day on board the ship before I grokked why cruises include substantial recommended tips for the staff. Those people earn them.) And it’s triply important when you keep coming back to the same place year after year.
2) On the whole, the poolside contingent is very good about doing introductions. If I pull up a chair next to someone I know who’s sitting with someone I don’t know, our common denominator will often take a moment to acquaint the strangers with one another before the conversation proceeds. I’m not as good about doing that myself as I should be, actually — I blame a pervasive self-doubt as to whether I have people’s names right, even though I know that self-doubt is groundless 99% of the time. But I appreciate other people doing it, since it helps smooth over the uncertainty of joining a group composed largely of people you don’t know.
It isn’t just the sunshine and the poolside and the random fascinating conversational topics. Those first two would be lonely, and that last one wouldn’t happen, if people weren’t conscientiously friendly to their fellow attendees.
Because it’s the only place I’ve ever been where I can spend a weekend talking about makeup in SF/F fandom, adulthood in modern America, Albanian sworn virgins, a myriad of foreign languages, my honeymoon, copyright law, medieval cathedrals, oral-formulaic theory, the Oxford English Dictionary, the perils of caretaking for capuchin monkeys, and Scurrilous Industry Gossip, and do most of it while lounging around a poolside in the sunshine.
There’s really no downside to this.
Except that I’m now five days behind on what the Internet’s been doing in my absence, and there’s no way I’ll be catching up. So if you did something interesting on the Internet since Wednesday morning and you want me to know about it, please link it in comments; otherwise, I’m just declaring Livejournal bankruptcy, and moving forward from here. (E-mail, I will be catching up with.)
Conventions have become my major reason for cutting my hair.
For those of you who don’t know: it’s down to somewhere in my waist-to-butt range, depending on when I last got it cut. It got that long because in high school I fell into a pattern where I’d forget to get it cut for, oh, a year at a time? I’m better now, but I still regularly go six months or more without thinking about it. And when I do think of it . . . yeah, it’s often because I’m about to go to a con and decide I should clean up the ends a bit.
Which is a wordy way of saying I got three inches whacked off today, and ICFA was the occasion. I head out on Wednesday, and am looking forward to poolside conviviality that legitimately doubles as work.
Between now and then, though — time for some work-work.
3 p.m. Pacific time — Gaming and Fiction
7 p.m. Pacific time — Reactionary Fantasy
All panels are message threads, so check that page for the appropriate posts shortly before the panel starts. You don’t need to register to participate.
ETA: Er, I’m going to stop pretending I know how the panels are being sorted out; it appears the gaming one is actually over on SFF Net, while the later one is over here.
In about forty minutes, I’ll be paneling on the topic of fantasy and history, and then two hours after that (5 p.m. Pacific time; adjust as appropriate for your zone) I’ll be live for an author chat.
Man, what is it with 2009 and me forgetting about upcoming cons? My excuse for this one is that it involves no plane tickets, no hotel rooms — in fact, I don’t even have to leave my house.
And neither do you.
Flycon, hosted this weekend by SFF Net, is a serious attempt at an international online convention — complete with panels (via message threads), author chats, and more. The schedule is jam-packed with events, literally at all hours of the day; with participants all around the globe, you don’t have to worry about being in the wrong time zone to join in on the fun.
If you want to catch my part of the fun, here’s the rundown:
Saturday, 6 p.m. EDT/3 p.m. PDT, “Fantasy and History” — how much history do we need to make historical sf and fantasy work, and for what types of readers?
Saturday, 8 p.m./5 p.m., author chat — come hang out with yours truly, and ask whatever questions you like.
Sunday, 3 a.m./midnight, “Historical Fantasy” — er, I’m not sure if we’re actually doing this one, given the overlap of topic with my first panel, and there’s only two of us signed up for this one. (The process of creating panels produced a little redundancy here and there.)
Sunday, 6 p.m./3 p.m., “Gaming to Fiction, Fiction to Gaming” — how do the two modes feed one another?
Sunday, 10 p.m./7 p.m., “Fantasy and Reaction” — It’s often said that because fantasy so often relies on monarchy, the writers want to go back to the glory days of yore. Is that true? What fantasy is reactionary, and what fantasy is subversive of traditional cultural assumption?
You don’t need to be an SFF.Net member to post (though you do have to give a name and an e-mail address). More info can be found on the LJ community, or just ask here and I’ll try to answer. Hope to see some of you (or at least your posts) there . . . .
VeriCon was lovely as always, with a smattering of enjoyable panels and many fine meals with many fine friends. I could, however, have done without the precipitous drop in temperature halfway through; I remember our discussions back in the day about whether to hold the con during intersession or spring break, and I still think the arguments for intersession are good ones . . . but man, late January is a brutal time to hold a con, especially in a building like Sever, where (despite years of our best efforts) people blithely ignore the “airlock” signs on the front doors and pass through them in such a fashion as to release gusts of freezing air upon the reg desk.
But I am, after all, a delicate southern flower.
I got to read “The Last Wendy” at Milk and Cookies, though, which pleased me immensely. I do so love stomping on people’s childhoods . . . .
***
While I was away, the ninja editors of Abyss & Apex put up their new issue, which includes the most melodramatic (and melodramatically-titled) story I have ever written: “Letter Found in a Chest Belonging to the Marquis de Montseraille Following the Death of That Worthy Individual.” It’s posted in its entirety for free, so enjoy.
#2 — freezing to death.
Jesus H. Christ on an ice floe, it got cold today.
#1 — all the static electricity that makes my hair almost impossible to brush. (Even with an anti-static brush.)
But I’m here, and I haven’t frozen to death yet, and my first panel is at 6 tonight, with Elizabeth Bear (matociquala, Catherynne Valente (yuki_onna), and Kim Stanley Robinson (is he on LJ? I doubt it).
Also, I’m signing tomorrow, at the Harvard Bookstore, at 1:45. And then another panel at 3.
Assuming I don’t freeze to death.
I’m on a cleaning-up roll around here, which means, among other things, closing down some browser tabs.
Fans of Jane Austen will either die laughing, or maybe just die from aneurysms.
If you review books on your site, Diana Pharaoh Francis has teamed up with the folks at Grasping for the Wind to put together a book reviewers database. Head over there for details; the gist is, they’re trying to collate sf/f/h review sites, the better to connect reviewers with publishers and authors, and vice versa.
Interesting thoughts from Boston.com on how cities affect our brains. I’m sure the data’s being presented in a light designed to support the conclusions, but I still think there’s interesting info there, about stimulation and the effect of greenery on our mental states.
Sunset on Mars. I looked at it, thought “meh,” then realized I was judging it against sunset photos, with all their colorful glory. This isn’t about colorful glory; it’s about SUNSET on MARS. omgawesome. I never knew that Martian sunsets were blue.
Also, Flycon. Still in the planning stages, but the idea is that it’ll be an online convention, with panel discussions and so on. An interesting experiment, and I’m planning to participate.
I think that’s it for now.
Today is sucking a little bit, because I’ve stopped taking medication. It’s a little masochistic, but a confluence of things over the last two months or so has had me downing a wide array of over-the-counter drugs, and I’m not real happy with that. So, time to detox. I’m moderately stuffed up and headachy and so on, but it’s subsided to a level I can live with, in trade for not pummeling my system with chemicals.
(Please note that I would not be doing this if I had in fact been diagnosed with strep; I would be taking my mold pills like a good little girl, because I am all about killing bacterial infections D-E-D, and in a manner which does not promote antibiotic resistance. But this appears to be a viral infection, so if I can live without clockwork doses of Advil, I will. I’m not feverish, just a bit achy.)
So. Lots of liquids is the order of the day.
I’m rather annoyed to have more or less lost my week to this business. I haven’t been completely unproductive, but the balance has swung much further toward that end of the spectrum than I’d like. Fortunately, my copy-edit for Ashes isn’t slated to arrive until early February, so I’ll have a chance to finish the things I wanted to do in January.
Oh! Speaking of which! I don’t think I’m on the website yet, but I will be at VeriCon at the end of the month. If you’re in the Boston area, come by Harvard for the fun.
Survived Day 1 of Conestoga despite getting up at 4 a.m. for my flight (having gone to bed after midnight, with only middling success at that whole “sleep” thing). Even managed to get 1099 words tonight.
Yay for Jack pov, at last. Yay for Antony’s wife getting to do something important. And if that scene doesn’t quite find the right note for resolving a certain problem, well, I can fiddle with it when I have functioning brain cells again.
‘Night!
I head off to Conestoga in Tulsa this weekend. For those who will be attending, here’s my schedule of events:
Fri 03:00 PM – Researching the Fantastic
Sat 09:00 AM – Teaching Science Fiction
Sat 12:00 PM – Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading
Sat 01:00 PM – Creatures: Faeries, Demons & Zombies
Sat 03:00 PM – Signing
Sun 11:00 AM – The Pen vs. the Sword
Sun 01:00 PM – Don’t Dumb it Down: Writing for Young Adults
This is the busiest con schedule I’ve ever had. I hope that by the end, I’m still capable of saying interesting things.
I have chosen my ICFA reading. And I’m getting good at eyeballing these things; my selection, when test-read, turned out to be twenty minutes on the nose.
For the record, everything in this selection will eventually be posted on my site as part of the teaser excerpt. But you’ll have to wait a while for it, so what you really want to do is get up at 8:30 in the morning on Friday to come hear me read it. Right?
Right?
Yes, that is officially my time slot. <sigh> Beggars can’t be choosers and all, but still — I’ll have to hope some of Alex Irvine’s and Judith Moffett’s fans stick around, or I’ll be reading to my co-panelists and Farah, who’s moderating.
(There are too many potential icons for this post, so you just get the swan.)
Attention anybody going to ICFA! I’ll be there, of course — proud attendee since 2003; I can advance both sides of my professional life by flying to Florida every spring, so what’s not to like? — and it turns out I’m going to be doing more than I thought.
At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday I’ll be donning my academic hat (and my legal name) and participating in an interdisciplinary panel about fan studies — a panel of the discussion type, not the “we all read our at best tangentially related papers” sort.
Also, at some point — I don’t know my time slot yet — I’ll be switching to writer-hat and writer-name, and reading in the creative track. I’ve been squeaked on to it due to other peoples’ cancellations, so I suspect I won’t be listed in the program, but they always post the errata next to the reg desk, so look for me there. (Yes, in my sixth year, the worst has finally happened: I’m on the program twice, under two different names.) I will, as you might expect, be reading from Midnight Never Come.
And lastly, I’ll be bringing some small number of ARCs with me, to sell in the book room. My ego loves the mental image of a slugfest over the last copy between a rabid fan and a dusty old academic in the narrow, book-strewn aisles, but since the universe is unlikely to oblige me with such a scenario, you can probably guarantee your receipt of one simply by looking early in the con.
Hope to see some of you there!
This past weekend I was on the following panel at WFC:
Urban Fantasy—Beyond the Usual Suspects
It seems as if most urban fantasy uses the familiar European myths. What other possibilities are there? Which authors have successfully exploited them?
A number of us had grievances with the direction the panel ended up going in, so I’m officially hosting Take Two right here. We hammered the “cultural appropriation” angle to death — again — so I’m not looking to hash that one out. Instead, here are some of the things I wanted to talk about and didn’t really get to. I’ll put my questions up front, then my personal views behind a cut (for length); feel free to respond to the questions and/or pose your own in the comments.
1) What are the benefits of going outside “the familiar European myths”? What do we gain, as writers or readers, by looking to other parts of the world?
2) What are the downsides? Aside from the issue of appropriation, what drawbacks or challenges result from going further afield?
3) I posited briefly in the panel that you can imagine a spectrum, ranging from American Gods-style globalized, multicultural cross-over, to setting-specific approaches that firmly ground the supernatural and mundane elements in a locality. Benefits and drawbacks? Preferences, and if so, why?
4) Who has done this well? What other cultures do they draw on, and why do you say they’re done well?
5) Who’s done it badly? Even if you don’t want to name names, what kinds of mistakes bug you?
6) If we’re moving away from European sources, where are we moving to? (We touched on this briefly at the end of the panel, but I’d like to discuss it in more detail.)
