My Ideal Nyx

My first pick for the movie version of Nyx was always Michelle Rodriguez, but she's a bit short for the role (5'5), and notoriously a lot of trouble on the set.

A far better pick, I discovered (while watching Rome) would be a buffed-out Zuleikha Robinson (who clocks in at nearly 5'8, which is closer to Nyx's 5'10/11), who's apparently picked up a gig on Lost and some other tv shows since I first saw her in Rome. Maybe I can convince her to do the audio book version?

Interview

Interview up with me at The Daily Femme! Check it out.

WIP: Iron Maiden

In the beginning we were a Legion of 500 worlds – intrepid warriors, travelers, seers and mystics.

The first world to fall was Moswen, along the Outer Rim, swallowed by a foreign sun at the edge of known space. The second was Jung Mei. She fell from the Core – spinning, breathless, screaming – and tried to turn home, too late. She was last seen orbiting a dying star. Then the Valente clipped the Ken’ichi on the Inner Rim, and lost her inertia. The Legion listened to her dying beacon for a hundred years. Her voice faltered, then faded… then died. There was no place in the Legion for the wounded, the stragglers. We had not yet reached the Edge.

It was the Edge that broke us. When we came to the Edge we saw nothing ahead of us but blackness. We had lost nearly a hundred worlds by then – to stardust, collisions, failures, insurrection, and blight.

But that was nothing compared to what was to come.

Because when we went over the Edge, something came over with us.

- Addendum 176, The Annals of the Legion, 442 AD

1. Zahrah

I do all my dreaming in the dark. That’s all it is out here - a world of darkness. The old bottom world mechanics who work for my mother say they heard stories from their folks about a time before the darkness, when you woke up to the bright burst of light that was the Edge. But to me, the Edge is just another point of light that helps the Legion navigate the darkness. It’s the big smear we point our sextants to in nav class. The last gasp of a dying galaxy.

My mother’s in charge of our family’s worlds in the Legion - the Katarzyna worlds. Her mother and her mother’s mother boarded, mobbed, and manned the Katarzyna 1 and 2 back before I was born. They pounded them so good that nobody’s even sure what they were called before that. It was my mother who took the neighboring worlds, Aatai and Sjorka, and made them Katarzyna 3 and 4. That’s us. Our family. Katarzyna. And it’s a name that’s feared and respected all along the Outer Rim. My mother says it’s the name that will unite the Legion. I’m pretty proud of that.

My mother’s proud, too. She worked hard for it. She once brought me out to the great docking hall and opened up all the bay doors with her big iron fist. The shields were all intact, of course, but it was still thrilling, standing there at the edge of space and looking into the black. From the docking hall you can see the nearest of the Outer Rim worlds – Katarzyna 2-6, Dima, Matrona, and the two FA satellites. If you look deeper, you can see The Tern, the big world they hijacked from the Core forty years ago, and out past that, a hint of the Jagadev and the Naabhi worlds, and then – the Bhavaja worlds. All four of them.

“All this is going to be yours, Zahrah,” my mother said, sweeping her iron arm out toward the worlds slowly spinning in the darkness around the Core, the black well that keeps us together as we push farther and farther from the Edge.

She reached toward the dim shape of the nearest Bhavaja world, so it looked as if she cupped it in her palm. Then she closed her iron fist around it. I heard the metal grind and creak – solid metal skinning a heated organic core. I had seen her crush men’s heads with that hand.

“But you’ll have to fight for it,” she said. She shook out her hand, as if to rid herself of the dust of the shattered world. “Just as I did. And my mother before me. Everything here on the Outer Rim comes with a cost. You understand that?”

“I know what keeps the worlds spinning,” I said. I looked up at her. She’s taller than me by a head. Every time I see some short, umber-skinned sub-captain or petty lord, I wonder if he was my father.

Everybody on the Katarzyna worlds - the Aatai and Sjorka refugees, the indentured castes in the lower wards, even the mechanic’s guild and grower’s union and the man who was my father – they all pay a fealty tax to my family in blood or bone. That’s bodies for our grinder, genetic material for kids like me, or labor to keep the world running and the armies moving. And we have a lot of armies on the move these days, now that the Bhavaja are on the move again.

My mother looked back out into the spinning worlds in the darkness. “It’s more than just the Outer Rim,” she said. “A seer prophesized it.”

“Which one?” I asked. I know most of my mother’s seers, the spidery crones and broken old men who make a living off our family’s offal down in the sludge hall.

“She came to me before you were born,” she said. “Never told you about her. I wanted you to see me take Aatai and Sjorka, first. I wanted you to know what’s possible.”

She pointed her metal hand out toward the hijacked Core world, The Tern. It didn’t quite sit right in space. It wobbled more and more with every rotation of the Legion. Forty years it had been out there, my mother said. Someone or something had brought it up out of the Core back when my mother was born, thinking they could escape the Legion and chart a new course. But some other world had crippled it on the way out of the Core, or maybe it’d clipped a world out there, or they’d killed or maimed whatever group or thing had hijacked it. Now it hung out here on the Outer Rim, deceivingly dark, like some derelict. But it wasn’t a derelict - not yet.

“Every year I assault The Tern. You know why?” my mother asked.

“It’s part of the Outer Rim. It should be Katarzyna,” I said.

“You need to think bigger than that, Zahrah. What use do I have for a Core world?”

I watched the jagged black hull of The Tern. It was easily a hundred thousand jumps from where I stood, but I always hoped I’d see some sign of life – a flicker of light, the reflection from a survey pod, the shimmering umbilicus of a resource-strapped space walker.

“I’ve been watching that world my whole life,” my mother said. “And in the eight assaults I’ve made on The Tern, I’ve brought in no pods, no refugees, no fighters. That defense grid is automated. There’s nothing alive in there. All we need to do is wear down the grid and take the world back.”

“Back?”

“Back to the Core,” my mother said.

Nobody talked much about the Core out here. It was the first time I heard her mention it. We’re Outer Rim people - the fittest, the strongest, the keenest. It’s our sacrifices that have kept the Legion together this long. We’re the first and last line of defense. Controlling the Outer Rim meant controlling the Legion, everybody said. They couldn’t survive without the goods we brought in. They’d never survive the terrors we protected them from.

To reach the Core, you had to go through the black spaces of the Outer Rim where world after world fell had fallen among the stars, then through the Inner Rim worlds, navigating the debris and deitritus of four hundred lost and broken and embattled worlds. Then deeper, into the Rim where the worlds got bigger and the spaces between them got smaller. And finally, through the dark, shimmering Fade that protected the Core worlds. Nobody had been through the Fade, not since the Legion had reached the Edge.

Nobody but The Tern, anyway. And they were headed the other way.

“We take the Core, we take the Legion,” my mother said.

“I thought owning the Outer Rim meant owning the Legion,” I said. I come from a line of conquerors. Why hadn’t I thought of taking the Core?

My mother grimaced. “That’s a cheap story we tell ourselves to make this life mean something. No.” She heaved her big metal arm out toward the worlds of the Outer Rim. “If I wait until we’ve broken the Bhavarja to mount an assault on The Tern, it could be another decade before we’re in a position to take it again. With The Tern, we can cripple every Bhavaja world from here to the point.”

She turned and met my look. Hard face, grim as some dead spacer. Her eyes met mine. It’s always hard to meet my mother’s look. Her pupils are enormous. They swallow all the color in her eyes, even in bright light. Like most of us, she wears goggles when we navigate the inner core of the world.

She pushed her metal fist into my chest. The metal was warm. “We can take it all, Zahrah,” she said. “But we will have to sacrifice everything to do it. You understand that?”

I took a shallow breath. “I trained my whole life for this,” I said.

I wake up every morning in the darkness, for this.

My mother pulled her hand away. My chest was still warm where the metal had touched me.

“Tomorrow you come of age,” she said. “Tomorrow I give you an army. Tomorrow we take The Tern.” She crossed her arms, flesh and metal. “And then – the Legion.”

New Digs!

All settled into the new digs. Check it out! (everything here but pics of J's room, which he's still putting together a bit)

(Click here for full set)

Twilight Vs. Buffy

You know what Buffy did when she had to choose between the guy she wanted and saving the world? She fucking killed the guy. Duh. Sometimes you have to kill what you love to save the world. That's a real story. Ripping off your shirt to show off your sparkle and cliff diving because you can't live without a guy is fetishized 50s porn. When the sum total of your choices is - should I screw this guy or should I screw this guy? - you're living in a pretty boring world.

C'mon now, people. Where's my backlash against the backlash?

2010

A little stunned that the first woman to win Best Director won in 2010.

That's two-thousand-and-ten, people.

At least this happened before the flying cars?

Oh, How I Love Thee....

J. and I have nearly finished the first full season of Farscape. Last night, he looked up some actors on IMDB to see what else they'd done, then came back into our room and said, deadpan, "Did you know that most of the actors are Australian?"

Oh, J....

Looking forward...

... to spring.

Whip It

Nice little feel-good movie with all the right cliches (for most of the movie, I felt like I was watching Bend it Like Beckham) - but it nicely jettisons the not-so-nice cliches. This is a girl power movie, and it doesn't mistake itself for a rom-com (thank god). It may be the only movie I know where the girl tells the guy to shove it (and he's not explicitly a bad person) and her consolation prize isn't another guy... it's to just keep living her life on her terms. It's a movie about a woman finding her voice, her confidence, and reveling in her own physical strength while forming strong friendships with other women. You don't see that often... usually it's "I found a man and it solved my life!" Not so, here. 

What I really came away with was just how physical these women get to be. When you watch them knocking each other over, wrestling, hitting each other on the back, jumping around, horsing around, what you realize is how meek and soft and non-threatening women are trained to be, and how rare it is to see this. It was cool to see how things could be really different, and what women's culture could be like if we moved just one step to the left.

Moving Daze

The move to the new digs is beginning. We pick up the keys next weekend, and have started packing today. Or, in my case, cleaning up all the fucking stacks of paper in my room to *prepare* for moving. Figure we'll get keys next Saturday, spend Saturday cleaning the place up, Saturday night and Sunday moving smaller boxes, and then do an official move-in weekend March 6th.

We decided to do this mainly to cut down on utility costs, since we'll be paying for both places during March. Better to clean out the big house, jack it down to 50 and stop running the space heaters, and jack up the other house to 65 and sign up for budget billing, which is $100 per month (last month's gas bill for this house was a whopping $371).

So... here goes.

Fitness Update

I made it a point to work in some pilates and a nice long walk with my niece while I was back in the PNW. This wasn't tough, as the weather was great. I ended up eating a piece of French bread too many while at home, and the numbers during my first day or two traveling weren't great (but that tends to happen anyway, when I travel). Overall, though, my average BG has gone down a few points (from 144 to 138 - which corresponds with a 5.9-6 A1c), and my morning readings have gone down about 20 points, on average. Still a ways to go - I'm looking for an average number of 120-125 (which would get me a 5.5-5.7 A1c).

Eliminating all that coffee cake and low-carb (read: almond flour) treats after dinner also allowed me to drop 6 lbs, which gets me closer to my maintenance weight again.Still, the last few days of traveling churned over some of the good work I've done, so it's good that I'm back in my routine.

Now that the eating part is back on track, I realize that much of what led to this sudden jump in weight over the holidays wasn't just coffee cake: I haven't ridden my bike to work since early December (cold and snow), and our twice-a-week workouts at the day job were canceled back in November. That means I'm getting at least 2.5 hours less physical activity every week, and that adds up. 

Winter is holding on - we're expecting more snow this weekend - but the new house is a little further from work, so when biking weather arrives again, I'll be putting in a little extra. Not sure what to do about the lack of midday workouts. I'm considering switching my tough workout to the morning and the pilates to the evening to ensure that I get in the tough workout (I'm more insulin resistant in the morning, so it makes sense to workout more then. One of the big obstacles I face with evening workouts is low sugar).

Overall, I'm feeling a little better, but still doughier than I'd like. Would love to take up boxing again when/if i can afford it. We'll see how much we can sock away once we're settling in our new digs.

Dinner

Propaganda

More here.

Dangerous Thoughts!

God's War Finds a New Publisher!

I am uber-pleased to announce that God's War and its sequel, Infidel, have been accepted for publication by the ever-awesome Nightshade Books.

Most of ya'll know that GW got lost in the shuffle at another publisher last year, so I'm pretty pleased to find it a home again - and a pretty awesome home at that.

The best part being, of course:

THE COVER WILL NOT SUCK (you can take a look at some Nightshade covers here). 

Looking like GW will be out the first half of next year (2011), so the wait is still on (publishing is a very slow business), but it's got a home again. Progress is being made. Huzzah!

Stay tuned.

Yes, Ohio Drivers Really Do Suck

Every time I come back to the PNW, I'm struck by just how well everyone drives.

Yes, yes, I know we have a hatred for drivers in every state (everyone's a bad driver who isn't us!), but after living in Ohio and Illinois and driving around Indiana a lot, I learned a new appreciation for PNW drivers. But how much of this was just my own bias? So I decided to look up the states with the top 10 worst driving records. AND LO AND BEHOLD....

Here are the states with the worst rate of traffic accidents, in order:

1.) Pennsylvania
2.) Michigan
3.) Illinois
4.) Ohio
5.) Georgia
6.) Minnesota
7.) Virginia
8.) Indiana
9.) Texas
10.) Wisconsin

See, I am not just biased! Ohio and Indiana really *are* full of bad drivers! 

Back in the PNW

I'm back in the PNW (Pacific Northwest) for my grandmother's funeral this weekend. I'd have much preferred being back in the PNW on a happier occasion, but since I'm here, I'm trying to make the best of it.

The air here is different, did you know that? Clear and clean; tinged with evergreen. I love it. I miss it. I miss the big trees and the water and the 40-50 degree "winter" weather. I miss eating fresh fish.

I do not, however, miss the cost of living.  I stood in the grocery store this afternoon suffering from quite literal sticker shock. Stuff here was often $1-2 more than I would have paid back in OH. Gas was 30 cents a gallon more expensive. But you know what? Folks are a lot more friendly. And they know how to drive as if there may actually be other human beings in those big hucks of metal they share the road with.

I'm sitting in bed now with the window open, listening to the frogs in my parents' pond out back gettin' on their early-spring song in the otherwise silent night, and man... I do love the PNW.

But who can afford to live here?

In any case, here's a picture of my niece, Kaylee, who is training to be a carpenter or perhaps an engineer, as you can see from how skillfully she removed this slat from one of the kitchen chairs. I anticipate getting her some overalls with a teddy bear patch at some point.

With a career like that in her future, she will have no trouble getting along in the PNW!

Yes, Book 2 is Done, Yo

Quote of the Day

"Don't smell like sunsets and baby powder. Smell like Jet Fighters and punching."
- Old Spice body wash ad

(I shit you not!)

Quote of the Day

"(on the creation of gendered fantasy genres in bookstores).... one which is full of boys' stuff like blood and killing, which is for boys and which boys should read, and one which is full of stuff that girls enjoy, like blood and fucking, which is for girls and which girls should read."

I'm not sure if graduating from "romance" to "blood and fucking" is an improvement (Twilight, best I understand, doesn't have much of either. It's pretty straight romance), but put in those particular terms, it does remind me that there's a primed but largely untapped "blood and fucking" market (Joe Abercrombie's "Best Served Cold" is a good example of a true "blood and fucking" book). I know this, of course, but every time somebody passed on GW because they thought it was "unmarketable" really threw me for a loop.

Book 2 Revision Progress, in Pictures

What Book 2 SHOULD look like: 

What Book 2 looks like right now:

New Digs

After much wringing of hands and moaning over our $900 rent payment and crazy utility bills, J. and I decided to downsize.

We can afford our current place perfectly during the summer and passably during the winter, but we're looking for a place we could afford should one of us lose our jobs. Crazy economy, and all. We also wanted something with a slightly more efficient heating system (no more radiators!), a fenced yard, a garage, and a liberal pet policy that would let us have a dog.

Enter our solution: $665 a month. Slightly better neighborhood. 2 car garage. Forced air heat. 700 sq feet smaller. Still has 3 bedrooms. Lacks a shower upstairs, but has one downstairs. Needs some extra 3-prong plugs upstairs, but we've got them in the kitchen and upstairs in what will be J's office (I have no problem using converters. He shudders at the thought).

We'll still be paying out the ass for utilities during Dec/Jan/Feb, but the furnace is more efficient and total sq ft is smaller, and I've learned my lesson about the whole "put plastic sheeting over the windows" thing. I detest the white trash idea of "winterizing" my house with plastic sheeting. But then, I grew up in the PNW, where it doesn't generally get below 40 degrees for very long. Winterizing is still a foreign idea. We're def. doing it next year.

We've filled out all the paperwork, so we'll see how it turns out. Move date would be around March 15th.

Click for full set.

What I'm Doing Today: Lunch and Line Edits

Regenerative Medicine

Not as far off as you might think (also, unsurprisingly, using the battlefield as its testing ground).

Things That Need Doing

Stepped on the scale today for the first time in, what, six months? When I was living at my old apt, I was very good at weighing myself once a month and making adjustments accordingly. It kept my weight steady and my clothes fitting and all was well. Now that my house is so damn cold, I'm less inclined to strip and step on a scale. So I've avoided it since at least October when the house started getting chilly.

I knew I'd put on 10lbs or so since J. and I moved in together. I actually managed to get that back down to +5 before the holidays. Then came the holidays, and winter, and tax season, and this really great website with low carb coffee cake recipes...

Despite getting up at 5:30 in the morning to do 30 minutes of exercise and another 20-25 minutes 3 times a week when I get home, it just hasn't been enough to make up for the coffee cake and cold house. They've also cut the workout program at work, which means no more twice-weekly strength training sessions and no more gym membership.

What happened is just what I suspected would happen when I ceased being vigilant - I've gained a retarded amount of weight since J. and I first met a year and a half ago - most of which I've put on in the last 4 months of coffee cakes and cold houses. Nobody believes me when I say this is what happens when I stop paying attention.

What actually moved me to get back on the scale was my crazy sugar numbers. My blood sugar has been a lot harder to control, and far more frustrating. I wanted to know if the weight gain was indeed substantial enough that it may be causing insulin resistance. And oh yes, dear reader - it is.

There are some quick and easy changes I'm making right away: no more low carb cookies and coffee cakes, for one (do you have any idea how many calories are in almond flour?), and sticking to the lunch I bring into work instead of adding snacks from the free salad bar at work. I did manage to eliminate my peanut butter/low carb English muffin fix way back, which is how I curbed the initial weight gain and got things back under control. But now there's that coffee cake thing...

My 20 minutes pilates/15 min free weights workout each morning is pretty solid. What I need to work on now is getting at least 30 minutes 5x a week of cardio instead of the current 20-25 3x a week. A lot of the problem with getting this in is wonky sugar numbers. Some days I turn my insulin off at 3:45 and I can workout for 50 minutes. Other days, I turn it off at the same time and I can only workout for 20 and then my sugar crashes and I start to tremble and all the energy goes out of me and I have that intense hunger spike and desire to burn the world to the ground. I need to get this timing right if I'm going to workout properly every day after work.

I'm also working toward doing at least 40 more minutes on Sat or Sun to get me to 6 days. 6 days a week of 30-50 min a day is pretty much the only thing that moves me. It's just a really tough routine to put into place during the best of times, and right now the house is cold and I've got a crazy day job and personal deadlines.

But. The alternative is very bad. This is a good reminder of what happens to me when I don't stay on top of maintaining my weight with monthly weigh-ins. I know some folks thought this was odd - if you're happy with your weight, why be so vigilant?

Here's why: because aside from that whole immune disorder thing, I have great genes. I'm very good at packing weight away, and when you have aforementioned immune disorder, this is a very bad habit to get into. I have been displeased with my numbers, and not feeling well to boot. Now I have a better idea of why. I'm still quite pleased with how I look (I spent a long time learning how to like myself, and reorienting how my self worth was measured in a society with weird ways of measuring worth, particularly in women), but my numbers are bad, so I don't feel as well, and I'm not throwing out my wardrobe because I'd rather eat coffee cake.

So, here's what we're going to do to get back to maintenance:

Monday/Weds/Friday

Workout: 20 min pilates. 15 min free weights
Breakfast: 2 eggs w/spinach
Workout: Bike to work (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Lunch: Leftovers. No more salad bar additionals.
Workout: Bike home (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Workout: 25-30 minutes elliptical
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

Tuesday/Thursday

Workout: 20 min pilates. 15 min free weights
Breakfast: 2 eggs w/spinach
Workout: Bike to work (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Lunch: Leftovers. No more salad bar additionals.
Workout: Bike home (if not snowing, more than 20 degrees out)
Workout: 25-30 minutes elliptical. 25 minutes circuit training.
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

Saturday

Breakfast: Low carb pancakes (no almond flour makes a big difference)
Workout: 40 min circuit training
Lunch: Soup/sandwich/leftovers. No more "it's a special occasion" carbs
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

Sunday

Breakfast: Low carb pancakes
Workout: 15-20 minutes elliptical
Lunch: Soup/sandwich/leftovers. Ditto above carb curb.
Dinner: Entree and side. No more tortillas/low carb bread
Dessert: Yogurt and berries

This eliminates the low carb bread/tortillas I've been snacking on and low carb/high calorie coffee cakes and cookies I've been making. I think this alone will make a big difference. I'm telling you, I could live on low carb coffee cake forever.

I'm not terribly happy with this, but I'm less happy with my sugar numbers right now. If I'm going to do some of the things I'd like to do this year, it's also very important that I get into some semblance of fighting shape. And all this happy-happy-joy-joy stuff has aided me in becoming a bit doughier than I'd like.

Thing is, you want to be a certain kind of person, you have to start living like that kind of person, no matter how frustrating it may be. And there's a certain type of person I'd like to be. And she works out a lot more than I've been able to the last few months. It's too bad she doesn't eat as much coffee cake as I'd like, either, but them's the breaks.

Imagination

Oh, Syfy, tell me this is not the real ad for Caprica

Barf. Seriously?

SERIOUSLY??

Former NASA Engineer's Comments on a Very Old Story

Old, but relevant, to me and many others my age. I remember watching this happen, and it turned me off becoming an astronaut forever:

"Well, the question was, did the cold weather (because it was a very, unusually cold day) affect the performance of the O-rings? Everyone was saying, “No, no, no!” because they were covering their rear ends. Richard Feynman, who was the Nobel Prize winner in physics, was on this commission. He took an O-ring and he stuck it in a glass of ice water, took it out, and snapped it. Then nobody could deny it. But all up the line, the management had just ignored the evidence. The reason is because Ronald Reagan was supposed to be doing his State of the Union speech that night. He wanted to be able to say, “We have civilians in space!” There was a lot of pressure to launch it. So they said, “We’re going to go ahead and launch it even though the weather’s too cold.” So, they went ahead and launched it, and it blew up. I felt like we had blown those people up—like we at NASA had failed those people. That completely took the wind out of my sails."

I get so angry when politics trumps coming fucking sense.

Tonight's Song, Stuck on Repeat

This is War
30 Seconds to Mars
(from here, naturally. Tho it's on repeat for writing-related reasons!)

A warning to the people
The good and the evil
This is war
To the soldier, the civillian
The martyr, the victim
This is war

It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie
The moment to live and the moment to die
The moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight

To the right, to the left
We will fight to the death
To the Edge of the Earth
It's a brave new world from the last to the first

To the right, to the left
We will fight to the death
To the Edge of the Earth
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world

A warning to the prophet, the liar, the honest
This is war
To the leader, the pariah, the victim, the messiah
This is war

It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie
The moment to live and the moment to die
The moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
From the last to the first

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world

I do believe in the light
Raise your hands up to the sky
The fight is done
The war is won
Lift your hands
Towards the sun
Towards the sun
Towards the sun
Towards the sun
The war is won

It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie
The moment to live and the moment to die
The moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
From the last to the first

To the right
To the left
We will fight to the death
To the edge of the earth
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world
It's a brave new world

A brave new world
The war is won
The war is won
A brave new world

I believe in nothing
Not the end and not the start
I believe in nothing
Not the earth and not the stars
I believe in nothing
Not the day and not the dark
I believe in nothing
But the beating of our hearts
I believe in nothing
One hundred suns until we part
I believe in nothing
Not in satan, not in god
I believe in nothing
Not in peace and not in war
I believe in nothing
But the truth of who we are

Too much day job

Not enough freelancing.

Yes, Girls Play Video Games

Oh, the Alistair love!

BioWare writers do know how to woo the geek girls (me included. I did, uh, in fact, do a google search on this topic which led me here for, uh, personal reasons?). We're always around playing your games, you know, you just don't hear about it until we finally get something that's, you know, actually made for us.

Donutman767: i never realized so many girls played this game until i read the comments
kingkarlone: You can thank Allistair for that.

Alistair Dragon Age love here.

Everybody's a Critic

"A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it."

— The Economist

Tonight's Agenda

I'd rather it snowed another 6 inches so I could work from home tomorrow, instead of just another 2, which will make it annoying and slow to get into work, but not annoying and slow enough to work from home.

Etc. It's a rough life.

Anyway, new project in the works tonight, already outlined and chapter one'd. Will post excerpt soon.

That's Why You Suffer!

Nice.

Don't Fail: On Turning 30

Failing in obscurity is easy. Failing in public is hard.

There was a lot I wanted done by the time I turned 30. Like, you know, publishing a book (or three). I expected to “be a writer” by the time I was 24. When 25 came and went with no book sale, I quietly hunkered down and got back to work. When I signed a 3 book deal at 28, I figured I was golden. I’d have my first book published before I was 30! Then the contract got canceled, and I haven’t been sure at all what to do next.

I traveled all around the world in my 20s. England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand. I’ve lived in Alaska and South Africa and Chicago. I learned how to throw a passable right hook. I started building a career as a copywriter and communications manager. I got an Associate’s Degree, a Bachelor’s Degree, a Master’s Degree, and started a Marketing Management degree. I went to Clarion. I accidently got married, which is supposed to be a Great Life Event, but which was never really on my “to do” list, so I don’t consider it an accomplishment, just a fortuitous partnership. My 20s was a screaming good time, sure, but also a time of terrible fear and uncertainty. I got diagnosed with a chronic illness, one that has left me permanently dependent on insulin (insulin or DEATH, yay!). I went crazy, dated crazy folks, spent far too much time flying in and out of New York City and Indianapolis, became all but homeless, acquired massive amounts of student loan and credit card debt, got said debt under control, and wrote three or four books.

That’s all fine and good, but it’s not enough for me. It’s never enough for me. And, to me, I see more of the failure there than the success. It’s just how I’m wired. The failures just sit there and gape at me. The last few years have been full of failure, of pulling myself up out of failure, of building some kind of life from the ashes of crazy misery.

I wanted to have traveled the whole world by 30. I wanted Egypt, China, Peru, Japan, India, Puerto Rico, Easter Island, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Australia, and far more time in New Zealand. I wanted to have 3-4 books in circulation. I wanted to be a passable boxer. I wanted to be regularly running three miles. I certainly didn’t want to be living in Ohio.

I will go to all those places, in time. I’ll get the books out there. I’ll be a passable boxer. I’ll run regularly. And I will get out of Ohio.

But not today.

Not today.

And that, to me, feels like some kind of failure on my part. Lots of folks are struggling with the publishing industry right now. It’s remaking itself, and what I thought of as success when I was 12 may not be the kind of success I end up creating. Being a writer is going to look different in the future (after all, despite the cognitive dissonance that such a date causes for me, it IS the year 2010). Traveling looks a lot different too: both in costs and sheer ease of travel.
Getting on a plane just isn’t as fun as it used to be, and that won’t change for awhile. Traveling is rougher when you’re lugging around insulin, too. Not impossible, not impractical, but… different. And I’m still trying to figure out who I am now that I feel so totally disconnected from the crazy screaming terrified person I used to be.

I know all of this. I know the world is different. I know I am different. But it doesn’t keep me from thinking I’ve failed at 30, the same way I thought I’d failed at 24 because I wasn’t “a writer.”

Yet, here I am making a living as a copywriter, with full benefits (uncertain as the job market may be for everybody – including me - right now). My personal writing is stutter-start-jerk-jitter-squee, but it does crank along – painful word by painful word. And that’s another huge change: I never expected that my personal writing would ever be so incredibly painful and difficult. I’d heard about this happening to other folks, these 6 months-to-a-decade writing slumps, but I never imagined it would happen to me. I *had* to write. Writing kept me sane.

Thing is, I’m not nearly so crazy anymore. And that means I don’t *need* that outlet with the same crazy desperation I used to. More and more, writing is something I do to pay the bills, not something I do to relax or unwind.

And that’s been a problem.

Cause see, despite my long, un-done to-do list, despite my wretched embarrassment about not doing more before 30, despite all the writing that isn’t getting done, despite the house I can barely afford to heat…. I’m strangely happy.

Sometimes I attribute all of the writing block to the weird saneness, all the happy-happy putter-putter bubbliness that is my personal life.

But this weekend, while cleaning up my room, I found a box my editor had sent me after the God’s War contract was canceled. It contained several copy-edited copies of the manuscript with page inserts and a bit of typesetting for the intro bits. And I opened the box and my heart sank. I got that weird, heavy lump right there in the pit of my stomach that makes my breath feel heavy. I spent a few minutes going through the box. At first, I resolved to work on the copyedits right then. I'd resolved to do this months ago when the box first arrived. But somehow.. somehow... lost the will to do it. But I had the whole day to myself today. Why not check this off this to-do list? Why not --

Then the feeling passed, just as quickly as it had risen. And I re-packed the box and put it back under my desk, willing myself to forget about it for another week, or another month, or another six months.

And maybe that’s the trouble. Everything I associate with my personal writing right now is profoundly negative. I keep picking up the critiques from my first-pass readers for Black Desert, and all the negative stuff just leaps out at me. And there’s this profound depression that comes over me, and I think, “It’s not going to get any better. I’m going to work on it and it will get worse.” And then I pack those letters away again, too.

I’ve rewritten Black Desert once now, and need to print it out and copyedit it to make sure I caught all the big plot changes I made the second time through. But I don’t. I just open up the draft on occasion and rewrite a scene or a paragraph and then pack it away again.

There’s just no joy in it at all for me. And I don’t know what to do about it.
Everything is supposed to be OK when you sell a book. Certain things are supposed to happen. Then they don’t. And though I’ve gotten slightly more productive the last few months, the book depression is still there. I have a feeling I may need to start a new series entirely just to get away from the negative feelings that get dredged up every time I open this one (at least until I resell it).

I’m starting to wonder if that may be the trouble with my life, really. Or, rather, not my life but my *feelings* about my life. I’m still judging myself on what I used to want and who I used to be. And I still don’t know what it is that *I* want *now.*

I know what I love. I love my partner. I love our life together. I love the big old house we’re renting (tho I would like to be able to afford to heat it). I love reading. I love school. I like my career. I like my job. I like traveling, still. I like to get in the car and go. I love just being still.

Stillness. I still revel in absolute stillness.

Some days I wonder if I’m suffering from a mild form of PTSD. Three years seems like a long time to crave stillness, even after the crazy that was chronic illness/Chicago crazy/unemployment/homelessness.

Stillness.

There are a lot of stories I’d enjoy telling, I know. But some days even opening up a Word file causes a deep, sinking feeling of depression. I open it and think, “What’s the point?”

And that may be the trouble, too. Because I don’t have the answer to that question. I don’t know what the point of anything is, really. I just know I want to live. I love life with a sickening, bubbly rush of sweetness. I love it because I know how close I am – all the time – to losing it. Staying alive – while maintaining my quality of life – is really hard work for me.

I only have so many spoons.

And I’m just not spending them on things that don’t make me bubbly-joyful anymore, not unless those things are absolutely vital to survival.

There are things about my old life that I was happy to part with.

There are things about my old life that I want back.

We'll see how much I get back and how much I never needed in the next 30 years. I know something needs to change, soon. I just don't know what it is.

Quiet

My long "holiday" was, well, a working holiday. My life is full of Day Jobbe right now, and not a lot else.

More as it happens.

Avatar

Did not suck.

What a relief.

Woman, Domesticated

Oh, how I love The Onion...

"A valuable commodity with seemingly endless uses, the woman has played a crucial role throughout human history," noted historian Alan Helbling said. "Not only could she be trained to perform a variety of tasks, but once her spirit was broken and her energies reined in, she could be taught to come whenever she was called."

Blood & Women & Swords, OH YEAH

Why yes, I'm a sucker for women with swords... isn't everyone?

One of the big issues I have with a lot of ye olde Sword & Sorceress type stories is that the women hauling around the swords just aren't that scary. I can't explain this except to say that, you know, I'm a fan of the cheesy awful that is Conan, and... I'm looking for a heroine that can kick the shit out of him.

Best Served Cold's heroine, Monza, is that heroine.

This book was an easy sell with the cover, but not so much the first few pages. The first 11 or 12 pages are kinda dull, really. Insipid people, insipid conversations, completely generic fantasy lite setting. Seriously, the setting was making me yawn. But according to the cover copy, this was a pretty solid rampaging revenge story, so I stuck it out.

I was not disappointed.

By page, what, 36? you're going, "OH HOLY FUCK YO!" and Abercrombie gives you the big book opener you need to have to drive a revenge plot. You know, the thing that somebody does to you that's so terrible that it can drive the whole bloody book all the way through. And trust me, it's tough to justify the blood in this book. The big book opener goes a long way toward getting you there.

This book isn't for everybody. It's savagely brutal (I'm not making apologies for GW gore ever again). The people are decidedly unlikable. They're the types of people who would survive and thrive in a world at perpetual war, and that means they are NOT NICE. So if you're looking for nice people in bad situations, well. This isn't it.

But they're *interesting* people, and that's what kept me reading. The cast is classically well done (reminded me of when I read my first Dragonlance novel... in a GOOD way). Folks are always backbiting, backstabbing. There are constantly shifting alliances and folks trying to play people off other folks. Old wounds and past events come into play. They're wacky, driven, crazy folks, and I enjoyed watching them bicker (that said, there were some rather useless "fan fiction" scenes which added nothing but character squee. But not so many that I threw the book out. Just enough to roll my eyes).

I loved the main character, Monza, our sword-wielding heroine, primarily because she was not nice or honorable, and she was very, very scary. She's out for herself. There's no huge realization or change at the end. Just sort of a slow ebb and flow that made the ending satisfying but not syrupy. I loved, loved, loved the reversal between her and her initially optimistic sidekick. I found the fact that she's supposed to be very good looking rather annoying (I do wonder how truly model-looking anybody in this world would look, but then, attractiveness is relative, so who knows what her face really looks like out there?), but Abercrombie made up for this with a few very nice, telling details about what it's like to be a woman leading men (no easy comraderie with your men, who might take a pat on the back as come-on; always have to be the hard ass to keep from seeming too soft and having guys take advantage; always careful who you sleep with [if you sleep with anyone at all], etc.).

And that brings me to another plus for this novel. At one point, the team on board for the revenge plot has three women and three men. The balance shifts as the book goes on, but I was genuinely startled to realize that there was an entire scene central to the plot (a torture scene, no less!) which consisted entirely of female characters (our heroine, a mercenary, a poisoner, and a courtesan). Yes, it sucks that something like that is so surprising. But still neat when it happens. You just don't see it a lot in fantasy epics.

The book was plotted like a dream, and I keep paging back through it to look at what Abercrombie did with this plot. My biggest complaint, as noted, was the bland fantasy lite setting. Incredibly disappointing with a well-plotted story like this with such great characters, brutality - and have I mentioned the plotting?

So, if you're looking for new weird, this is not your cup of tea. But if you like strong female heroes, bloody battles, complex and twisted anti-heroes, and... if you just want a good, page-turning romp with cool but nasty folks, this is definitely the book for you.

Recommended, with aforementioned reservations.

Dance & Etc.

Back At It

Up at 5:30 this morning to add 20 min of pilates onto my 15 min morning free weights routine. *Damn* I am out of shape.

This thing with having a chronic illness is that you just notice more when you're lazy about taking care of yourself. During the last couple of weeks of sporadic workouts and weird food, I've been experiencing some mysterious aches and pains - especially in my core - and inflammation. There is likely also weight gain tied to this, as my clothes aren't feeling so hot on me, either. I just can't get away with letting things slide for a few weeks. I just feel it too much now.

Not that there's been complete fail, mind. I still bike to work 5 days a week, do my morning weight routine 5 days a week, and even during last week's laziness, I still worked out for 20 min on the elliptical twice that week. It's just that... well, it's not enough for somebody with a sendentary job and wonky immune system.

A couple of weeks of pilates and getting back on track with my after-work workouts on the elliptical should help. 5 days a week pilates, 4 days on the elliptical - in addition to weights and bike riding commute - should do the trick.

I've also been combating some hunger issues. I'd been getting wacky-hungry at work between 9-10am and vainly searching for food. Some of this is just stress eating, but it's stress eating triggered by mild hunger. I went ahead and added a little more protein to breakfast - two scrambled eggs w/spinach in the morning instead of just one egg - and that seems to have done the trick (an extra 70 calorie egg in the morning beats a 350 calorie english muffin with peanut butter at 10am).

As we head toward the holidays, I'm being more mindful of what I eat. One of the drawbacks to getting the pump is that it made me a lot less careful with what I ate - and my #s and my body are paying for that. It's time to stop. I'm a carb addict, which means it's incredibly hard to change my habits when I get used to indulging again. Too much "well, it's the holidays!" means shitty sugar numbers, shitty health, and shitty mood.

And you know, I'd like to stick around those extra 15 years.

I've Got a Lot of Holiday Cheer... But Here's Some Folks Who Could Use Some

There have been a lot of people hard-up for money this year. And without fail, I found that I could, in fact, afford to give to those really hard up. Not a lot: $10 here, $20 there ($50 in one case, but there was a kid involved!). It's going to continue being rough out there for a long while yet.

A couple months ago, the rug got pulled out from under me when our insurance company pulled a smash and grab and “accidently” revoked our health insurance for three and a half weeks. It was a rough time, and looking rougher as things wound on.

But UHC did eventually fix the issue, J. got a part-time job in addition to his full-time school, and my day job continues to pay for things like $90 a week in groceries and the roof over our heads. If things are a little cold and lean sometimes, it’s because we chose to rent a big old 1850s house that we knew came with a lot of excess utility bills, and I’ve got a lot of student loan debt clawing at me. The good news is that the reason it's clawing at me is because I *can actually afford to start paying on it* now that I paid off over $10,000 in credit card debt. Things are lean because I'm paying off old debt and correctly managing my money. Correctly managing one's money always feels lean to me. Growing up, I thought that being "poor" meant not getting everything you wanted. I have since actually tasted what poor is like, and understand that this is nowhere near that.

It’s been a good year. I’ve done some traveling back at the WA coast to visit family, had a fantastic Florida vacation with J, and continue to enjoy the day job. My biggest complaints right now are that we can’t afford to heat the house above 55 and I have to wait until I’ve saved the money to buy the digital camera I want (been working hard not to rack up that credit card debt again). I mean, c’mon, really? Boo hoo, life is rough because I don’t have a flat screen tv…?

Yeah.

I’m comfortable, just not comfortable enough to stop trying to hustle up writing jobs as they come in, because heating the house and actually saving more than $50 a month would really be nice. Not totally necessary, but nice.

Anyway. There were lots of folks who offered to help me out when the health insurance thing was looking scary. Here are some far more deserving folks for your hard earned dollars this holiday season (they are certainly getting some of mine, and as noted, mine have been a tad lean).


Clarion West
SF/F writing bootcamp. Changed my life. But it’s a bitch to dredge up the money for this. I got lucky, and solicited friends and family, who collectively paid my way to Clarion. Not everybody has that kind of support network to draw from. To be honest, I didn’t think I did either. I begged for money in desperation. I was incredibly lucky folks were so generous. Be one of those generous folks for another writer.


Planned Parenthood
Keep women’s reproductive services easy, convenient, safe, and confidential. Good luck getting that from a lot of women’s clinics these days. PP is constantly under siege, because they do some of the most incredible work. I’ve been a client since I’ve been having sex, and they’ve always been a literal godsend.


Kiva
This is actually a micro-loans site. I love this idea. Basically, you give small loan amounts of $25+ to entrepreneurs all over the world. Sometimes it takes as little as $100 for a woman to start her own small business in her home village/neighborhood/community/city. And it completely changes their lives. I’m partial toward giving to women entrepreneurs, of course. It’s traditionally harder for women to get the money and support together, and it’s a huge ego/status boost when you become the primary breadwinner. It also means you don’t have to put up with so much crap from men with money. Skip the lattes for a week, and give somebody the ability to support themselves.


And a particular individual
J. is a cancer survivor (two years cancer-free in May). We met a few months after he finished his chemo/radiation combo. I knew going in that there's a chance it can recur, just as he knew about my own chronic illness and those 15 extra years - on average - that I won't have. So this one hit a little close to home. If it hits home for you (or if you’re simply a good soul), please do help her out. Cancer and other long, lingering illnesses take incredible courage, tenacity, and huge amounts of money to surmount (as I know with my own chronic illness, particularly in that first year of recovery/adjustment after four days in the ICU). We all battle dragons, but whether or not we win or lose, there’s a lot of wreckage and rebuilding that needs to take place when all is said and done. $10 to assist in rebuilding lives sure beats downloading an album you don’t need from iTunes.

Paypal address is: johanna_mead AT yahoo.com

Thanks to all.

Quote of the Day

On Being a Mother and an Artist

70-80% of art students are women.

70-80% of art in galleries is by men.

Why?

What I'm Up To

Drowning in Day Jobbe work. This will be the state of things until the end of January or thereabouts. Hard push for the next 6 weeks.

I'm also working on cobbling back together a good workout routine. Regular workouts are great, buy my sugar numbers have suffered. Lots of lows this week as I work hard to recover my sugar from Thanksgiving excess. It's certainly "allowed" to relax my restraint for a day or two, but man, I pay for it later. I'm starting to think the occasional slice of apple pie and sedentary days just isn't worth the resulting 3-4 days of achiness, inflammation, depression, and rocky sugar numbers.

Yeah. I'll be skipping the excess at Christmas, I think.

Also, I'm reading a damn bloody book, which I'll be blogging about soon.

The Protagonist Gets a Tree

Happy Holidays!

(and thanks to Stephanie, our wingman, for all the great photos!)

Happy Thanksgiving

NOM NOM NOM

Quote of the Evening

"I don't want to survive. I want to LIVE."
- The Captain, WALL-E

Thankful

I have a good many things to be thankful for, but it really hit home today as I was browsing through these blog archives.

The last five years have been nothing short of... harrowing? Amazing? Harrowing and amazing, perhaps. In any case, it's made me even more incredibly thankful for where I'm at right now. 2006/2007 is a particularly bitter and amazing year of archives. When you read about just how bad things had gotten, it's nothing short of a bloody fucking miracle that I'm where I'm at now.

I'm awestruck at how things have turned out.

Thanks to all the regular readers who have shared this incredibly weird, rocky, wild ride. And thanks for sticking with me as the beat goes on.

Here's to another (hopefully less harrowing) five years...





























Remember, as I oft-repeated at the end of every blog post:

"Tomorrow will be better."

Branded: The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.

New guest blog post up at Ecstatic Days: Branded: The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.

HealthCare Concerns

Is anyone else really concerned that the latest "health screening reversals" have targeted women? See mammograms, and pelvic exams. I have yet to see the "let's stop screening men for prostate cancer" and "forget the colonoscopies" announcement.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Short animation based on the Ray Bradbury story of the same name.

In Case There Was Any Doubt About Who's Creating Your Media...

... and why it's still assumed that every audience member is straight, white, upper-middle class, and male.

WGA report examining employment and earnings trends for writers in the Hollywood industry:

2009 Executive Summary (.pdf)
2009 Hollywood Writers Report (.pdf)

(via deadbrowalking)

Book Rejection Bingo

In conversation, a writing buddy of mine expressed interest in tracking down a "book rejection BINGO" card. I'm startled to say that, after much searching, I failed to find one.

So.... I made one!