God's War: Excerpt

Chapter 19

Nyx blew out of Punjai and hit the radio a couple of times with her palm, but all she got was misty blue static.

It was going to be a long ride.

She spent the night in the bakkie after making good time, about halfway to Mushtallah. She kept as far off the road as she dared and was up before dawn and back on the road, out past Mushtallah and the central cities. She landed another night on the road, then climbed over the low mountains that divided the coast from the interior.

As she came up over the other side, the terrain began to change. Sandy scrub gave way to rocky soil. The desert bled away and turned into long-needled pine trees, then tall oak hybrids with leaves the size of Nyx’s head, low ferns with thorns, tangles of wild roses, snake maples, amber ticklers, patches of low-spring wildflowers.

Nyx found it all pretty claustrophobic. The trees were so big they blocked the big sky, the sun. She couldn’t see beyond the turns of the road. That made her nervous. She started checking her mirrors more often.

She came out of the mountains and onto the rolling veldt of red-tipped wheat, the broad pastureland that kept the big, hairy, shoulder-high omnivores they called pigs. Farmsteads dotted the landscape. Swarms of locusts, red flies, and ladybirds mobbed the fields, tailored to devour the less friendly bugs and fungi that ruined the staples.

Nyx found a motel that night at a crossroads. She parked her bakkie out front alongside flatbeds and rickshaws and a cart hitched to the front end of a converted bakkie.

She splurged on good food and a bath. The only upside to coming out to the coast was all the water. Sweet, sweet, water. All the water you could soak in.

Nyx lingered in the bath, rubbing at old wounds that had started biting and aching again. It got colder on the coast, and the cold would only make the aching worse.

She missed the desert.

When she crawled into bed, her sheets weren’t full of sand. The floor was made of wood, and swept clean.

She couldn’t sleep.

Nyx grabbed her pillow and moved to the floor, spent long hours staring at the roaches scuttling along the ceiling. A couple took flight, landed on her head, her arms. She flicked them away.

There was a call box downstairs, but she had no one to call. If she called Kine, it was likely her sister would tell her not to come. If she called the Keg, she could make small talk with Taite or Anneke about defense, but she’d be repeating herself, and they’d see through it.

Nyx got up and went to the bar.

The motel had an “honor” bar, the kind with liquor bottles affixed to the wall upside down and a little book to record how many shots you’d pulled so they could bill you for it later.

Nyx took out her dagger and pried a bottle of whiskey from the wall and went out and sat on the front porch. The sky was big, and the stars were the clearest she’d seen since she was a kid. She drank, leaned back in the chair, and tried reading the constellations. Tej had been good at that.

A noise from the parking lot drew her attention. She went still. The night was clear, but the big bloody moons were at the far end of their orbit, meaning they looked about as big as her thumbnail in the night sky. A year from now, they would look about three times the size of the sun.

But that didn’t help her out much now.

The figure was dawdling next to Nyx’s bakkie. She’d parked close to the motel so she could keep an eye on it. The figure crouched for a long while, then rose and moved off. As Nyx watched, the figure shrank, dwindled. She heard a sneeze, and then a white bird was flapping off toward the road.

Nyx swore. She took a last pull from the bottle, returned it to the bar, and held out the rest of the night in her room with the door bolted. She slept in front of it.

The next morning, an inspection of the bakkie turned up an ignition burst and a cut brake line. It looked like Rasheeda had tried to cut open the main hose connecting the pedal mechanisms to the engine as well, but only nicked it. Some dead beetles and organic fluid had pooled beneath the bakkie.

Nyx disarmed the ignition burst. She opened up the trunk and took out one of the toolkits. She patched the leak, replaced the brake hose, and got back onto the road.

This time, she kept an eye on the road behind her the whole way.

She stopped at a dusty station just past a couple of farmsteads at the foot of the coastal hills and filled up on bug juice.

The woman who popped open her tank was a soft, fleshy, coastal type with big dark eyes and a plump mouth.

“You come in from the desert?” she asked.

Nyx wondered where else there was to come in from. As the woman pumped the feed into the tank, Nyx gazed out at the road. She saw a bakkie crawling along around a bend in the road, coming in from the direction of the motel. Following her?

She turned her face away, but noted the movement of the car in the station windows. The car slowed as it passed the station, then sped up again. Nyx saw three figures. She slumped in her seat, wondered if they’d open fire.

But the bakkie sped on. She looked after it.

“Friends of yours?” the attendant asked. She capped the tank.

“I hope not,” Nyx said. She leaned over, opened her pack and rolled a couple of bursts onto the passenger seat. Just in case.

She paid the woman and got back onto the road.

Three kilometers on, she saw the bakkie parked at the side of the road.

Waiting.

Fuck.

She switched pedals, kicked the bakkie a little faster. The other bakkie turned out onto the road after her.

Nyx didn’t know the country well, and unlike the cities, the place was all wide-open, no cover. About all the cover she had were the hills, and some woods, if she could find them. She switched pedals again, reached for the clutch. She hadn’t had to use the clutch in a long time. She wondered if it still worked.

The dark bakkie kept just within her rearview mirror view. They knew they’d been seen. Either they didn’t know where she was going and wanted to pin her there, or they were waiting for a good turn in the road to take her out.

She sped up. They sped up.

She watched the image of the dark car grow bigger in the mirror.

She fucked with the clutch. It made a nasty grinding sound.

“Come on, you fucker,” she said.

It flipped.

She switched pedals. The bakkie shuddered. The speedometer climbed. She saw a turnoff on her left that went up into the hills. Nyx did a neat break, twisted the wheel, and hit the speed as she came out of the turn.

The bakkie screamed under her. She caught the smell of burning bugs, death on the road. She glanced back and saw smoke and dead beetles roiling out from the exhaust. The way was narrow and twisted, and as she climbed, the grasslands turned to a forest of oak hybrids. She took the turns too fast.

Nyx kept checking the mirror. She spent a moment too long looking and nearly lost herself on a narrow turn. She’d seen the other bakkie.

They were still behind her.

She kept a sharp eye out for turns off the main road. She didn’t want gravel tracks or logging roads. The bakkie would get stuck, and she’d be for shit.

The black bakkie was right behind her. She could just see their faces now. The big woman in the driver’s seat was definitely Dahab. Not a doubt in her mind. Dahab had a new team with her, not bel dames, from the look of them.

Nyx twisted around another curve. Raine had taught her to drive when she was nineteen. It wasn’t a skill magicians taught to boxers. Raine had gone to boxing gyms for years to recruit young blood from the front. She’d started out like all of his crew – as a driver.

Nyx heard a shot, and ducked. Checked the mirror again. The woman riding shotgun with Dahab was doing what people riding shotgun did.

Nyx dared not take her hands off the wheel. Even if she could clip off a couple shots with her pistol, the odds of her hitting anything in that bakkie were slim.

She hit a crossroads. Right was back up into the hills. Left was down into the coastal valley. Down meant she would have to put a lot of faith in her repair of the breakline.

Fuck it.

She veered left and barreled down the hill. She disengaged the clutch.

Heard another shot.

Something exploded against her back window.

That wasn’t good. Organics. A fever burst? Or something worse?

She grabbed at one of the bursts on the seat next to her and lobbed it out the window. Heard a satisfying pop as it exploded on the road.

The bakkie squeezed around another narrow turn. The cover of the woods was thinning out. She saw a house set back away from the road. If she couldn’t lose them, she had to fight them.

Fight Dahab.

Nyx ignored the house and kept on down the road.

She came down a long stretch and turned. The road abruptly changed from pavement to gravel. Logging road.

The bakkie skidded on the sudden raw stretch. Nyx hit the far left and far right pedals, and all four wheels twisted sharply, got her some traction.

She looked back. Missed a turn. She spun the wheel and tried to recover, but she was trying to recover on a graveled road.

The car slid clean off the road.

For a long, hopeful moment, she thought she’d be all right. But as she braked and twisted the wheel, she saw she wasn’t going to avoid the big tree in front of her.

The bakkie smashed into the hybrid oak with a loud crunch. Bugs exploded from the hood. A rain of leaves dropped onto the windshield. Nyx’s torso thumped into the steering wheel, knocked the breath from her.

The sound of hissing beetles filled her ears.

Adrenaline flooded her body. She pushed at the door, couldn’t find the handle for some reason. She leaned over and reach for one of the bursts on the floor.

The barrel of a very big gun pointed in at her through the passenger side window.

“Don’t fucking move,” Dahab said.

"Ten ways you know you're reading a story of mine"

1) It opens with something like: “The Heroes took wing from a dark, raw field the color of blood.” And you know exactly what you’re in for. This isn’t going to be a “happy” story.

2) Somebody loses something - an eye, a finger, a limb, a head, a womb - at some point

3) Big women with commitment issues go around killing things and trying not to care about people.

4)Skinny men - usually described as looking like or acting like dancers (hey, I used to have a thing for a dancer) - act as the loyal sidekick to above strong woman.

5)There are a lot of bugs

6) Wars are going on and shit is blowing up

7) Somebody’s carrying around a big gun that shoots acid.

8) The traditional “one man, one woman,” happy hetero pairing is very sweet – and you’re not reading about it.

9) Getting pregnant isn’t a good idea. And if the women are going around having sex (and oh yes, they are), you’ll get an explanation as to why she ain’t pregnant.

10) The civil war’s just the subplot

Weird Habits For La Gringa

Five weird habits:

1) I talk to myself. I picked up this habit while living by myself in Alaska, and South Africa. It’s a pretty constant streaming narrative of what’s going on in my head (“I need to do this, then this. Fuck. I forgot that thing. That’s lame.”). So when I’m alone in the house I turn on movies and music. I used to constantly run a DVD in my computer in South Africa when I was home so I didn’t feel so lonely. I’ve been doing it this last week, as well, as K is out of the house and Jenn doesn’t come home until after I’m in bed.

2) When I don’t write for about three or four days, I get emotionally weird. This is because I channel my emotions into my writing. It enables me to keep up a calm façade out in the real world. When the writing doesn’t happen, the emotion tends to build up, and explosions over small issues happen more regularly.

More writing: less craziness!

3) I’m claustrophobic. I can put up with small spaces if I have to, but if it’s for prolonged periods or I’m not 100% mentally or physically well to begin with, I’ll start to lose it and wack out.

This is probably why I need to have moving air in my room when I go to sleep. Preferably, I’ve got a fan going all the time, but if one’s not available, I need to have an open window. I won’t die without it, but it’s something I do automatically if I’m in a hotel by myself – I try to open the windows. This also means I have more trouble going to bed when I’m too warm than when I’m too cold. Lord knows how I managed to live in Durban.

4) I often put on perfume before bed. I have no idea why I do this, since 98% of the time, I go to bed alone anyway.

5) I drink whiskey straight. A lot of it. That may not sound weird to some people, but I’ve gotten startled looks when I tell people to serve me my hard liquor straight. Whiskey is my preferred “I want to get drunk now” beverage. In fact, that sounds like something I’ll indulge in tonight.

Break

I'll be taking a blogging break for some time. There's a lot of personal stuff exploding right now that needs to be taken care of, and it might be a month or so before it's worked out.

Everything in my life feels broken.

I'll be back in a while.

Befuddled

I only put in one earring this morning.

I had a dream last night that I had an affair with Bill Clinton.

I also had a dream that I was playing a high-stakes game of Cossaks a la Ender's Game.

In other news, I've signed up me and B for Wiscon, and I'm going out to get some coffee. Looks like I need it.

"It's Not Really Science Fiction": Sackhoff on Playing Starbuck

Is Battlestar Galactica "not really" being science fiction something like saying, "I believe in equal rights for women, but I'm not a feminist"?

heh.

In any case, an interview with Sackhoff about the "flak" she's gotten for playing Starbuck.

And what's with actresses playing "strong" female characters wanting to get in the whole "I wanted her to strong, yet vulnerable" line. I've never heard a male actor say he wanted his character's "vulnerable" side to come out in a performance.

And why does an interviewer who interviews an actress playing a strong female character feel it's important to mention that the actress actually has a "delicate physique" and "favors fashion more in the style of Audrey Hepburn than her alter-ego's flight suits."

For fuck's sake. It's one step forward, two steps back.

I do like that people are fighting over whether or not she's "hot." The fact that there's a debate says a lot about what kind of sex symbols we're "allowed" to pine after in this culture.

Her response to the original actor's bashing of her character is probably the best bit, though:

"That's what I said in rebuttal to that (the bashing by Dirk Benedict of a woman playing "his" character). But I never really tried to match it. But once that started happening, I was like, look, at the end of the day, I've now played this character longer. And at the end of the day, it's a TV show. We're not curing cancer, people. I wish we were, but we're not. It's entertainment. So ... tit for tat. Shut up."

And Now My Printer's Broken

It's just been that kind of a month.

Firefighter Gives Birth, Aces Promotion Exam

Despite just giving birth and getting only two hours sleep, Kent got 104 out of 110 on the test and expects to return from maternity leave in March as a captain.

Because that's just what you do, people.

(thanks, B)

WisCon Panels:

Discuss.

The Fat Trap

A SURVEY today suggested that most women would rather be thick and thin than brainy and fat.

There's already a bias in your surveyor's assumptions if they're only asking women this question. That says a lot about what they're looking for.

(via BFB)

Dear Ladies at the Gym:

You can lift more than 15-30 lbs without looking like the Incredible Hulk.

I promise.

I've been sicker than a dog for the last few weeks, so yesterday was my first day back at the gym since the holidays. I have, however, been doing my daily free weights routine and taking the stairs everywhere, as usual, so there wasn't much guilt on my part about missing the gym. What I missed had nothing to do with guilt. I just missed getting to the gym. I liked the routine.

I cleaned out my closet the other night and got rid of all of my baggy pants, the sort that would literally fall down if I didn't wear a belt. I got rid of some shirts that I looked like I was swimming in, too. At the back of my closet I found a part of shorts I'd worn at Clarion five years ago, and found that they slipped right on.

So after three years of beating my head against a wall, the last year has seen me fall back to my set point with very little head-beating at all. Hooray for 30 lb free weights and tossing out dieting. I'm very happy at a size 14/16. I don't like being too small these days, though when I was a kid I obsessed a lot about being small and fragile and bullshit like that. Now I enjoy having some intimidating bulk. It makes it easier for me to yell at assholes on the train who try and harrass me. But I don't like being a size 20 because you can't find clothes anywhere and everything seems to look terrible on me unless it comes from Old Navy.

To be honest, the best part about being back to my old weight is that I *can* go to more stores and buy actual clothes there. One more size, and I can actually go shopping with size 4 Jenn at the shops she goes to and expect to find something there in my size, too.

That pisses me off, really. Why the fuck couldn't they have sold stuff in a size 20? I would have bought it. Think of the money they'd make! But then I'd be shopping with size 4s, and some of those women might find that really intimindating. Or something. I don't know what's up with that. Heaven forbid a size 2 woman get caught dead wearing the same style clothes as a size 20.

Pisses me off.

For now, it's nice to recognize myself in the mirror again. It took me three years to put on the weight, and three years to take it off. I guess that's fair.

My concern now is keeping 2 sizes of clothes in my closet instead of 4.

Sometimes I wonder if it's weird to gain and lose as much weight as I have in my life. And then I wonder if that's normal. And then I wonder if the problem's always just been the fact that I always thought I was too "big" for a girl and kept trying to diet and got lost in a binge and purge cycle that's kept me yo-yoing for years.

I want to get off the yo-yo.

I'm spending a fortune in clothes.

What I Plan To Do This Year

Because resolutions involve stuff like, "I'll join a gym and go until the end of January when I get burned out," and "I won't eat anymore chocolate until I go crazy and binge on it."

Plans are much more practical.

1) Move to NYC at the end of July

2) Pay off my credit card so I can put said moving-to-NYC costs on it

3) Find an apartment in NYC that costs less than the monthly income of an average two-person household (this is going to be tricky)

4) Buy a new computer under $1500 with a 3-year warranty (after paying off credit card? Because I'm currently word-processing on an ancient back-up laptop that wieghs 20 lbs, has a broken space bar, and can't connect to our wireless network)

5) Get a new job (in NYC) that pays me about as well as I get paid here

6) Apply to Viable Paradise, which I technically can't afford to pay for right now, but if I get accepted, I don't have to find the money until July. I need some new eyes to look over some of my work, and I need to hang out with other writers again. I'm starving for it.

7) Apply to Brooklyn College MFA Program (must be done this week. I put it off way too long and apps are due Feb 1)

8) Sell 3 short stories

9) Finish draft of God's War by March. Have revised and ready-to-hawk version by December.

10) Finish revised (for the bazillionth time) version of The Dragon's Wall and send to Agent by October

11) Get back to work on book two of the fantasy saga (Over Burning Cities) so I have a draft by June of 2007

12) Begin preliminary research and outline for my next stand-alone fantasy book about a feisty girl-turned-resistance-fighter and abused peace-pursuing man clawing out their own versions of an ideal country from the wreckage of a nation butchered by a Rwandan-like genocide. Currently untitled.

13) Finish reading the 20-odd books I'm currently in the middle of

14) Rescue the music stuck on all of my dead computers

15) Consolidate my student loans

Yea, I'm Alive

And I have a lot to do.

So it goes.

Desire & the Pill

It is no secret that some women who take birth control pills lose interest in sex. They have been reporting this side effect to their doctors since oral contraceptives came into wide use 40 years ago.

I'm so happy I have an IUD..

Oops - We're Excluding Our Best Candidates!

Weight limits designed to screen out unfit Army applicants are excluding some of the strongest candidates and will be relaxed, the MoD says.

Under previous regulations, men with a body mass index (BMI) of over 28 were barred from joining the military.

The threshold has been extended to 32 - two points above the World Health Organisation's definition of obesity.

The kicker?

This "relaxation" of the "rules" only applies to men:

Meanwhile, the limits for women will remain the same at 28.

This was *after* they realized that "bigger" people were often stronger, and could perform a wider number of roles. Hence, recruiting "bigger" people was in the UK Army's best interests.

I guess "big" women are just a lot scarier than "big" guys....

(via bfb)

Healthcare in America

I finally went to the doctor to see what the hell's wrong with me. Basically, she said, she had no idea. She gave me some antibiotics, some super cough syrup, and some kind of inhaler to help the inflammation in my chest.

So, $150 later, all I know is I was pretty sick, I'm getting better, and nobody's sure why.

At least I got some drugs, eh?

Oh, Dear

There's nothing so disheartening as receiving an email from a new project manager that reads like it's been written by somebody who's barely literate.

Doesn't exactly inspire much faith.

Fat: Still a Feminist Issue

In classrooms around the world, girls swap tips on how to eat less, how to ratchet up their exercise and how to mimic those perfect bodies they see staring out at them from music videos, TV, the catwalk, magazines and billboards.

Somewhere, they know that these bodies aren't quite real - that they have been enhanced by surgery, lighting, camera angles and digital manipulation. But no matter. The deluge of visual images that wallpapers our world has seeped into every consciousness. It has changed the way we view our bodies and what we can and should do to our bodies, including those of our children.

Read the Rest

On Writing the Female Protagonist

In the course of my writing "career" (such as it is), I've run across quite a few male writers who've told me that they have a lot of trouble writing female protagonists, and it was something they had to actively work on. I always found this fascinating because though my short stories are often female POV (though not always), my novels always have mixed POVs, men and women, and I never gave it a second thought.

One of my most exciting character POVs in book 2 of the fantasy saga is the POV of a rational misogynist, a guy who really does believe women are infantile and inferior; and the trick has been to make him interesting if not sympathetic and have him carry a POV instead of just being a spear-carrier. I'm having lots of fun with it. And I don't find it terribly tricky. I know really great guys who are closet misogynists and can rationalize those feelings from here until Sunday. So it's not like I don't have examples to draw from.

So what's up with the male writer fear of writing up female protagonists? Or is it only strong female protagonists that are scary?

I dunno. I set down my free copy of Hickman's "Mystic Warriors" when the protagonist's wife "purred" at him on page four (this was the fourth time she'd done something stupid like that in as many pages). I don't know how many male writers' SO's "purr" at them, but my guess is: not many. So I don't know where this guy's ideas about all that came from. Maybe he thought it made for a more exciting opening scene.

Maybe this has to do with the old, "We're all used to reading books about men," thing. You know, the old saying that boys and girls will read books about boys, but only girls will read books about girls, because reading books about girls is "Girly." Being a woman, I have no trouble writing about women, and reading a lot of books with male protagonists, having male friends, and generally moving in male-dominated circles fills in the other half, so I have no trouble writing about men. I listen to and talk to men all the time.

But I just don't buy that men don't hang out with women. I mean, don't men have female friends besides their SOs? Don't they read books with female protagonists?

Then what's so difficult about getting into the female POV without it all coming out like Heinlein's robotic-sounding Friday or any of his other cardboard female characters? I mean, women are just people. What's so tough about writing about people?

I don't think you have to have an intimate knowledge of cramps, tampons, and hair products in order to write good female characters.

Elyce Deconstructs "Fight Club"

What is even more interesting re the gaze than how the film plays it out is how it turns it around. Instead of having a narrator constantly gazing at his femme fatale or sex object (a la Hitchcock’s Vertigo, for one), Fight Club has him gaze at his hypermasculine alter ego, Tyler Durden. Both the protagonist and the camera linger over Brad Pitt and his buff bod—as well as over the many other men who must strip to the waist when they fight and the pumped up army dudes. This goes even further as the film fetishizes blood, scrapes, and bruises (and I’ll get to kinkiness presently), but first…

It Ain't Easy Being a "Pale Male"

Yea, right.

On the contrary, men at Fortune 100 companies commonly complain that due to diversity goals, women actually have an unfair advantage. "Every company I've worked at goes out of its way to hire or promote women to senior level positions," says an upper-middle manager at a major food company. He adds with a sigh, "It's not easy being a 'pale male' in today's corporate world."

Where do these guys get these impressions? Not from the stats:

Yet recent research and statistics tell a different story, suggesting that the glass ceiling remains firmly in place. It's been 10 years since the U.S. Government's Glass Ceiling Commission released its findings that while women had 46 percent of America's jobs and more than half the master's degrees being awarded, only 5 percent of all senior manager positions were filled by women. What's more, female managers' earnings were on average a mere 68 percent of their male counterparts'.

And, some reasons for it, which I see everyday here in Grande Latte Enema Land:

- Different standards are used to judge the performance of women and minorities.

- Their corporate culture assigns lesser value to women and minorities.

- The "good old boy network" is the biggest discrimination barrier to career advancement.

- Because women and minorities are less willing to play the political game, many choose to leave the corporate world entirely.

Not really new stuff, but fascinating that men's impressions of women's levels of seniority in the workplace are a lot higher than the actual levels women achieve. It's that old 1/4 rule. Anytime a room is composed of 1/4 or more women, people will say that at least half the room is "full" of women.

Read the rest

It Gets Better & Better

HONOLULU -- A state lawmaker has suggested Hawaii's public schoolteachers be forced to weigh in as part of the fight against obesity in students, KITV in Honolulu reported.

Because teaching kids it's OK to discriminate is cool.

This gets into all those tricky arguments about who decides what "fat" is, and what about medical conditions and... and... oh, forget it! Just oust the fatties.

Note that they're not advocating testing cholesterol levels or resting heart rates. It's never really about health. It's about all that nasty, disgusting fat.

Next up: plastic surgery for teachers who don't appeal to Aryan beauty standards!

The Writing Game

As mentioned earlier, I heard back from the Agent about my fantasy novel, The Dragon's Wall. She's incredibly enthusiastic about the whole project, thinks it'll make a great series, but thinks it needs a total overhaul.

Now, that might sound really great, but I had to hide in my room for two days getting over the initial "rejection" part of it before I could think clearly and re-read the e-mail again with a cooler head. When somebody tells you your book really doesn't hit its stride until page 200 and she's fully expecting it'll be about a year's worth of edits, well, you're going to cringe. You're going to cringe quite a lot.

But for all that, she really likes the book. And I ran into her at a con, and I really liked her. I'd love to run the whole series with her. So there are a lot of positives.

Yet I honestly had to sit down and have a mental conversation with myself about whether or not I was going to do this. I had to ask myself: am I just being delusional? Is it worth spending another five years on this book, potentially taking away time from other books that I might work on? Am I just fooling myself? Should I just move on to something else?

Which is a dumb question to ask about a book you've already invested five years in. Escalation of commitment. You just have to keep going.

Because the thing with the first book in a series is that if you can nail that one, if you can sell that one, and it sells well, you've got a series. It's possible you can lock it in, so long as they don't all suck. You may even be able to support yourself for a couple of those years (if you're lucky) on writing alone. And, of course, you may wow everybody and have 500 people show up to all your signings and have huge fan clubs and be able to buy a big house.

I mean, there's that.

But let's be rational, shall we?

One of my writing buddies agreed to look at the book again, and I think I'll haul it to a writing workshop sometime this year. It's a lot of time and attention, but it's my baby, and I want to get this one out there. Maybe I really am delusional to sink so much into it, but really, what else am I going to do besides write? This is what I do. I'd be bored otherwise.

I wrote up a response to said Agent and said she should expect to see a heavily revisied version of the book sometime later this year - after I'm done drafting God's War, of course. GW has about 100 pages to go (yea, I've discovered my max fiction rate appears to be 100 pages a month). My computer's broken again (it keeps automatically restarting everytime it gets to the "login" page"), so who knows how things'll go, but that's what they make those yellow legal pads for.

So here we go again, playing the writing game, gambling that if I do good rewrites, Agent will like them, then Agent will find Publisher(s) who like the book (or require, of course, MORE REWRITES), and you just keep writing, and keep hoping you're getting better at it, and hope that sometime, somewhere, something will roll over and it'll all just hit.

Of course, it may just be a continuous upward slog, but I really hope there's a hilltop somewhere that I can get to the top of and something, somehow, some aspect of the game, will get easier.

I'm not counting on it, though.

Working Computer

Jenn got my computer hooked up to her old PC monitor, so I now have a working computer. I was starting to go a little nuts with the other half-baked solution I came up with. I haven't even finished paying this little number off, and the LCD screen up and died on me.

This monitor's a lot bigger, though. Makes for better computer playing, though the setup looks a little ghetto...

What I'm Doing This Weekend

Writing like a mad woman. I've got that damn God's War draft to finish, and I'm going to look over some of those rewrite suggestions for the fantasy saga that the Agent gave me, and see if it's salvageable.

If I can get that damn fantasy saga right, well, it's a great investment. It's seven books.

Wouldn't that be sweet?

State of the Union

Ah, the pissing gallery:

Straw feminists (I am not a real feminist and I cater to men's opinions of me)

Ide's Place (I'm just a reactionary idiot)

It always makes me sad when I upset long-term posters I respect, like Ide Cyan, and likely many more who haven't been vocal about how upset they are that I seem to have posted an opinion that that doesn't appear to be hard feminist left.

Here's my deal, though:

I believe people are inherently good. I believe people can have civil discussions. And I think we can do it all together. Maybe that's old-school hippie talk.

Ide asked me if I'd gone nuts and burned my Joanna Russ books. Quite the contrary. The horror of Russ's story, "When It Changed," is that the only way women will ever be seen as fully independent human beings is if men are dead. And that when and if men ever come to a women-only world, that they'll still see women as infantile, as objects, as children.

That's pretty fucking horrible to think about.

And it's offensive to both men and women.

It assumes men will never see women as people. And so it assumes feminism will fail.

Because it's not only women's minds we need to change, women we need to educate, but we need to engage with male friends, lovers, fathers, brothers, etc. and teach them what rape culture is, that sexist jokes aren't OK, that sharing household work and looking after the kids is part of being an adult, not a woman. There's already a general shift in men's attitudes toward women. If you look at how men over 40 treat you and how men under 40 treat you, whoa boy, yea, there's a differece. Try it out. I know I've noticed it.

We need to raise feminist women *and* men, because we can scream at the top of our lungs about how shitty it is to be oppressed, but until we start educating people - men and women - about what that means to us, we're screaming in the dark.

So when I see a blog that was open for general discussion start talking about exclusion, about limiting its audience to "radical" female feminists only (who gets to decide who those women are?), I get pretty worried. And that's OK for me to express that opinion. And it's cool to be challenged on it.

For me, it's not an issue of one thread on one blog. I took that idea and I ran with it. I'm a fantasy writer. That's what I do. I take an idea and I see how it could possibly effect everything else. And the ramifications worried me.

I got through an abusive relationship with a man, and then I recreated myself and found a voice. And I'm all about encouraging other women to do the same. And educating men about how that shit just ain't OK.

There was a fascinating question on one of the threads about whether or not I'm homophobic, which I found pretty funny, because I'm mistaken for a radical feminist lesbian boxer by people on the far right.

I think each side is going to paint you into a box of who they think you should be, who they see you as. And I'm not going to win that one. People see you how they want to see you.

Am I a feminist? Do I believe in the equal rights of women? Equal pay for equal work? The elimination of the rape culture? Do I believe in encouraging women to be strong and smart and speak in loud voices?

You fucking bet I do.

And if you think I don't because I saw where limiting a general discussion blog to a small "in" group could lead, because I thought about all of the future reprecussions (this is what I do), then you don't know much about me at all.

I think my fascination kicks in when I realize just how much this pissed people off. It was just another rant, for me.

What nerve did I hit with this one?

Still Sick

Still sick, but working stuff out. I think the combination of house stress, writing stress, sickness stress, a bad reaction to some DayQuil that made me feel like I was in an aquarium, and the fact that really, truly, while being this sick I really, truly, shouldn't be at work just got to me.

I mean, hey, every one in my house has had a nervous breakdown at one point or another. It was my day to collapse. I spent the whole time sleeping and trying to eat mostly whole foods (been eating a lot of soup). Turns out I didn't have a fever, which was good. In a word, I felt utterly hysterical (if I was a guy, what would I call this, I wonder? Hm).

I'm just finishing up a few writing passages for ye olde writing contracte work, which'll get sent out tomorrow. I have a long post about novels that I'll be posting shortly, too.

Hope everybody's feeling better than I am...

In Which the Protagonist Has a Nervous Breakdown

I'm sicker than a dog (persistent, full-body, hacking cough, runny nose, headache, trouble sleeping), it looks like I've started running a fever, just got back an email reject from the Agent about the book (to be fair, it was very nice, and another request for a revision rather than a total reject), I am having trouble eating, I keep bursting into crying fits at work (me, yes ME), and I want to curl up into a ball and die. And my period is starting.

And I'll be 26 next week.

I'm going home now and drinking tea and watching mindless television.

Of course, even that may be more than I can bear right about now.

Note to Self

If you choose to write a writing contract piece on the origin of hamburgers, you must be prepared to spend the rest of the day craving hamburgers.

In Which the Protagonist Actually Stumbles Into Work On time

Sicker than a dog. Doing lots of novel writing. Pausing to do some writing contract work that's due Friday. My computer is still dead.

I am craving some chicken noodle soup.

Ug ug

What I'm Doing For New Year's:

Sleeping. Lots and lots of sleeping.

Well, and some writing. But that's a given.

The Old "Separate But Equal!" Argument

Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff over at Alas, A Blog has proposed creating women's-only threads there. Well, Radical Feminist Women's Threads, anyway.

Because that's what feminism is all about: creating a women's-only treehouse so we can sit up there and throw eggs at the men's-only treehouse.

Yea. That'll be real productive.

Leaving the whole "What's a radical feminist?" thing alone for now, I've gotta say, I was pretty shocked to hear this.

There are just so many anti-feminist posters here. There are way too many men here, and too many of them seem to be here for the express purpose of making feminist discussion unlikely to impossible.

"There are way too many men here" WTF??

Wow, we're in trouble.

Now, I support women's only spaces. When you're counseling women who've been abused by men, the last people on earth they'll want to deal with for awhile will be men. If they have the right counselors, that hopefully won't last more than a year or so.

Because I hate to break it to everybody: the world is composed of men and women - and even some people who are in-between - and we have to deal with all of them out here on the bus, on train platforms, at bars, in restaurants, on the street, on the plane, at work (oh yea), and at home.

Even the trolls and the assholes.

And if you can't deal with them in cyberspace, how the hell are you going to deal with them in real life?

If you're having such a terrible time with trolls and anti-feminist posters, somebody's not moderating properly. Take some advice from Teresa, and take back control of your boards.

Sure, I have a smaller audience than Alas, but I don't have trouble with trolls. Outright assholes just get deleted. I've only had to delete an asshole's post three times before he headed out for greener pastures where he could find some "radical feminists" to argue with. There are things I'm not going to engage with, stuff like "I think homosexuality is a birth defect" and "Come to my website! Feminists give the best head!"

Why would I put up with that crap? One asshole breeds more assholes.

I'll delete to my heart's content: it's my blog.

But one thing I will NEVER do is ban "all men" from my blog. That's as bad as what men do with "men's only" clubs and exclusive "boys only" military schools and "boys only" at the front ideas. Reverse sexism, silencing men's voices, is just as bad as silencing women.

I try to be a good moderator. If two people start a flaming argument, I tell them to cool down and get back on topic. I'll do that twice if it happens (yes, it's happened a couple of times), and if they don't do it, I'll tell them to go cool off and come back when they want to have an intelligent conversation. If the flaming continues (and it hasn't, yet, I have very good readers), then I start deleting (I really outta do TNH's disemvowling thing, but I haven't reached a point where that's neccessary).

Because here's a wake-up call to everybody in the blogworld:

People are going to disagree with what you say. They're even going to hate you for it. I'm sure I have "regular" readers who come over here just because they hate me so much (a lot of people on the Baen boards certainly did).

There it all was in familiar detail, the same dynamics I've seen play out over the years on so many boards where feminists have attempted to gather: the trolling, the misogyny, the endless diversion,the ongoing defenses of indefensible anti-feminist, anti-woman behaviors, and always a tiny number of dogged and persevering radical feminist militants who are relentlessly baited and goaded, to the point they respond decisively, vehemently, passionately, even angrily and (gasp) stridently, at which point all hell breaks loose, they end up accused of being "bullying" or "silencing" or "overbearing" or "domineering" or "rude" and "uncivil," to the point that, as with Ginmar, they end up leaving the boards entirely (or being banned).

Yea, it's called life. Sucks, doesn't it? The same thing will happen if you're in a group of frat boys or radical conservatives. In fact, it'll likely happen if you're in any of the southern states or 98% of the midwest. If you're the lone "feminist" (let alone "radical feminist" - whatever the hell that is, what, the ones who want a world without men? What's that mean, "radical." I don't think free healthcare, equal pay for women, better laws against rape and etc. is all that "radical") you're going to get harrassed about it. What better place to cut your teeth than online? There's less threat of physical violence, there's usually fewer people trying to attack you at once, and you have time to sort our your reply before you make a fool out of yourself.

Of course, if you choose to hang around a place where everybody thinks, acts, talks, and behaves just like you, you won't have any experience with debate, with a free range of ideas. You won't really be forced to think. You can all sit around and smoke cigars (or knit. Something tells me some of these "radical feminists" she's talking about are likely big on the knitting) and thump each other on the back for being so good-natured about being repressed by "the system." Which, of course, they won't feel they have to engage in because they have their own club.

After all, who needs to engage with the other half of the population?

What's the point of talking to men? All those men so set in their ways.... what's the point of engaging them with your ideas, getting their arguments, creating one of your own? I mean, if they can out-argue you, maybe you'll realize you need to go back to the drawing board and refine the way you speak about things, and what a lot trouble that would be!

Which means, of course, that the radical feminist voice and presence is ultimately silenced, erased.

Well, they weren't so radical then, were they? If you can't argue or ignore flamers, you must not have much of an argument.

The world is not full of sugar and spice. And worse than that - you make feminism a "woman's space" and you cut out half the people who have help move feminism forward. Cut them out and they won't see it as anything that effects them anyway. Why should they care? They aren't even allowed to talk about it. You think they're going to take it up in a locker room?

Ha.

Let's just shut down all the feminist blogs and boards to "women's only" spaces, only let women talk about "women's issues" like, say, equal rights (fooled me. This only effects women?).

Seperate spheres doesn't solve anything. It just drives us all further apart. It drives yet another wedge between the sexes, both of whom - guess what? - are human.

I hope the feminists at Alas aren't forgetting that. If they are, they're no better than the old boys.

The solution is proper board moderation, not cutting out half your audience.

I Didn't Realize Women Still Did This

So, what's up with douching?

I always thought it was a kind of vagina-hate type of thing. Like, "My parts are sooo gross no one will like them unless they smell baby-fresh." (which might say something right there. Yuck). I grew up hearing it was basically something that ruined the natural cleansing mechanism of your vagina, and so caused infections and etc.

Looks like Moms was right:

But health professionals generally advise against douching because it's thought to raise the risk of certain health problems, including bacterial infections and pregnancy complications like preterm birth. Though it's not clear that douching is the cause of these problems, experts believe that the practice may disturb the normal balance of beneficial bacteria in the vagina.

I just never understood the practice. I like my vagina. I think it's neat. I quite like the way it is. I don't see guys going around looking for something to stop themselves from ejaculating cause it's "gross" or to change the consistency of their ejaculate to a more "acceptable" texture. Sure, they may eat a little more pineapple on weekends, but c'mon, if your partner thinks your parts are gross, you need a new partner.

(via Twisty)

Secrets

I've been working out for awhile now, and dropped some of my stressed-in-South-Africa weight, which is nice. But beyond getting back to a comfortable size, a lot of people work out to get specific body results.

My secret I-want-it-to-look-better spot isn't my abs or my breasts (the myth still persists that if you do enough chest exercises, somehow your breasts will look bigger. They may hold out on sagging a little longer than usual, but that's about it. I've also never been a big breast person. I'm quite happy to have breasts that don't get in the way and are easily contained for jogging). My look-better spot is my collar bones, shoulders, and that thumb-sized imprint at the base of the throat. I always thoughht that women who had these areas clearly defined were terribly sexy.

This morning I put on a new thin black shirt with one of those wide collars, and was startled to see that I could see a bit of defined collarbone and some nice trianglar trapezius muscles there along my upper shoulders and the back of my neck. Not bad.

I've been thinking a lot about how I was killing myself last year living on 1700 calories a day and doing morning weights and intense workouts twice a week and pilates on Saturdays and wondering why I felt like I was going to die and my waist size stayed the same. But every "Women's Fitness" type magazine you pick up will give you meal plans for 1400-1700 calories a day. The eye-opener was when I read Hers, a women's body-building magazine, and they said 2-2500 calories a day was totally OK if you were working out and wanted to build muscle.

And whoa boy, what a difference it's made. I bumped up into that range and I feel fucking great. Now, granted, I'm pretty big. I'm the height and weight of the average guy, and telling a *guy* to live on 1700 calories might tick him off(there's a great study about a "starvation" experiment where twenty men or so were put on 1700 calories a day for sustained period. They became irritable, lethargic, and after a time started freaking out in the you're-kind-of-crazy way). For people who are smaller than me, this might work. For me, it doesn't.

I think it's pretty criminal to go around saying women should starve themselves, and I think it's what keeps us binging and purging. First we're on a diet where we can only eat eggs and salad, then we give up and live on donuts and pasta for three months, then eggs and salad, and yo-yo all over the place until we break our metabolism.

We've got to find sustainable programs. If I was doing something, some routine, that I didn't believe I could sustain, I'd be in trouble. Instead of 5 days a week at the gym, I decided on two, and five mornings a week of weights. That was doable. I also cut out exercises at the gym that I hated and/or dreaded doing. Sometimes I would skip the gym because I couldn't handle the idea of spending half an hour on the elliptical machine. I switched to half an hour on the bike and I feel much better about it. Same thing with some of the machines. I had a terrible time with one of the leg extensions, and cut it out after a couple of weeks. I hated it.

And I think that's how it has to go. You can't tell somebody "Here's the only way to do it." You've got to start with a program, sure, but then add and subtract according not only to the results you want, but how much you enjoy it.

And that'll keep you working out long after the New Year's resolution gym rush has died down.

Cool

I just got a 4.5% raise.

There's no other place I could work that would pay me this much to do what I do. I'm stunned.

heh

The Olympics: On 800 Calories a Day

The 25-year-old Mariash has been a runner for nearly as long as she can remember, and began competing in triathlons in 1998. Like many female athletes, she strictly limited her food -- dipping as low as 800 calories a day -- to improve her performance by losing weight.

But her results were just the opposite.

"I used to wake up really tired," she said. "I used to take a lot of time off training because I was so exhausted."

No shit. Holy crap! 800 calories???

"In high school track, we all starved. That's not how you get to the Olympics," she said. "Now I can train harder, farther. Things I was afraid of, like a four-hour bike ride, are easy now."

Read the rest

In Which the Protagonist Returns

Got back home to Chicago after reasonable airport delays and promptly fell into bed. I caught my mom's cold, and it's a crappy one. Had a great time spending Christmas at the Oregon Coast, at the Goonie beach.



It was incredibly relaxing, which is just want I needed. I was pretty burned out on everything. Got to catch up with a couple friends and did a lot of shopping. All my clothes are too big, and a belt will only get you so far.

Looks like I won't quite reach my book deadline, but I blame that on the fact that my computer crashed and I'm now using a backup laptop whose internet connection doesn't work for some reason, and swapping files back and forth without gmail is a bitch. Wrote out the final outline for the last part of the book so I have a map that ties up all the loose ends. Should bang out a lot this weekend.

Anyway, back to Chicago, piles of half-melted snow, but at least it's 30 degrees out instead of 10. Sorely in need of sleep and grocery shopping tonight.

Because of the dead computer, things may be quiet here until I can get it fixed or get a new one.

So it goes.

Off to the West Coast

I'm flying into Portland tonight for a holiday with the folks in WA.

Good wishes to all.

Modern Love

Thus Collins elegantly demonstrates the power of public perception in determining whether or not we manage to be happy in love. If, at the start of a century when women allegedly have it all, everyone is having the same arguments that were going round when women did not even have the vote, then progress is obviously not going to come from changing the law. We will have to change our minds instead.

Russ Appreciation is Up

My appreciation for Joanna Russ's story, "When it Changed" is up.

Check it out.

Computer Death

My laptop has died.

That's the third computer I've killed in the last 5 years.

I really need to start buying those stupid fucking warranties. I'm getting ultra screwed.

Let Me Tell You About Bravery... Ah, Those Sweet Gay Cowboys

The media seem to be running with a recurring theme around this movie: (Brokeback Mountain) the “bravery” of the actors playing the roles, the “courage” it took them to do it, and the “speculation” about whether America is ready for a “gay cowboy movie.” Certainly not a position a liberal would take, so it befuddles me how the media is labeled “liberal.” Because the media has all but compared these two to war heroes for their portrayal of two closeted cowboys in a story of unrequited love and personal deception...

Now, there can be no doubt it took awhile for this movie to be made. And there can be no doubt there was a lot of fear surrounding it. And that’s what the media should be talking about. Instead of playing into the homophobia about how courageous it is to play gay, the media should be examining why it’s OK to play a rapist, a demon, a vampire from hell, a serial killer who eats his victims with fava beans and nice chianti, or any of the hundreds of sick, warped, twisted characters Hollywood puts out and we gobble up. Why do studios green-light films all the time that have gruesome plots or despicable characters, and why did this film languish for years? ...

And to all you straight actors who want pats on the back for playing gay: Until you’ve lived gay, until you’ve been denied a job because of it, or had to hide in a Hollywood closet; until you’ve had your jaw smashed or watched a generation of your friends die of a disease while government did nothing (like in the Reagan era), don’t speak to me of courage.

It takes courage to be gay and out, not to play it.

Read the rest

I was flipping through the channels last week and found a Fox "talking heads" segment where they gave airtime to some nutjob who thought Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal gettin' it on on the range was promoting "the gay agenda." When asked what this gay agenda was, he responded that it promoted anal sex and the destruction of the family.

When asked if he'd actually seen the movie...

Well, no, of course he hadn't.

But come now my fellow straight women and gay boy buddies and romantic straight boys who sigh over love stories: all politics aside, how the hell can you pass up a movie where Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are gettin' buck nekid in the tall grass?

I intend to pay money for that.

It's a romance movie, people. With hot guys. Get over it.

And I Would Just Like to Say

I'm really happy Christmas is coming up and I've got a week off work (sort of. I'm working remotely for an hour every weekday morning so I can run our daily reports. Partly because I'm too lazy to teach someone else to do it and partly because I don't have the PTO hours to take a "real" vacation. Maybe next year).

I'm very happy we're doing our family beach trip to Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast (the "Goonie" beach, you know), and I'll be really glad to get away from my weird house for a week.

I leave for the west coast from work here on Thursday. Jenn's leaving today (she's orginally from California), and K's out tonight. I'll have a couple good nights to myself at the old place, anyway.

I have a shitload of writing to do.

No, I Don't Want to Be Your Friend

Mr. Grande Latte Enema has given all the admins a bottle of wine for the holidays. When I saw the bottle on my desk, I had a surge of affection because I thought it was from Blaine or Yellow, you know, the guys I actually know and work with. Instead, it was the new mucky-muck office head sent straight from corporate who's been having a hell of a time making friends with all us cynical bastards.

As with last year, when Juan the closet misogynist gave all the admins Godiva chocolates, I am vaguley annoyed. It's like, if it was from somebody I actually had a working relationship which, it would be cool. I'd be delighted to get a bottle of wine from Yellow. But getting a gift from the office head who you never speak to is like getting a Valentine's card from the popular girl in school who you know only gave you a card because her mom made her give *everyone* a card. There's no affection behind it, no relationship, only something that feels uncomfortably like it's either obligation or a like-like-me present, or both.

Eh, at least it's red wine. I was worried I'd have another bottle of white cooking wine on my hands.

News From the Trenches

Just in time for Christmas, I got back word today that my story, "Wonder Maul Doll" has been accepted for the war anthology "From the Trenches," to be published next year.

I am really, really happy about this.

15 Things About Me & Books

1) The first time I had sex was in a bookstore

2) The first best friend I ever had was a kindergardener who sat in front of our first grade class and read us a fourth-grade level book. He read all the time during class, and our friendship was based on the books we recommended to one another.

3) The sexiest present I ever heard of anyone getting was Kelly Link: on her thirtieth birthday, Gavin Grant gave her thirty books, each individually wrapped.

4) For the last two years, I have lived with a woman who has a book fetish. She counts our books and encourages my book-buying frenzies.

5) Buying books makes me feel good.

6) I enjoy reading books as foreplay

7) The book by my bed that I'm constantly re-reading is Michael Cunningham's _The Hours_. The book I've read the second-most is Cunningham's _Flesh And Blood_.

8) The first fantasy saga I ever read was not the Lord of the Rings (which I've never read). It was the first three Dragonlance books. At the time, I thought it was the coolest thing I ever read.

9) I own almost all of the Howard Conan novels. And I enjoy them. I find them deeply funny.

10) I considered trading, giving, borrowing, and recommending books to other people a bonding exercise. That is, if I really like you, I will buy you books.

11) I have never read _The Left Hand of Darkness_. But I feel really bad about it.

12) I would rather write like Joanna Russ than Ursula LeGuin. Unfortunately, this may mean I will die poor. On the other hand, if I can figure out plot, the world may be ready for bloody brutal women fiction now. You never know.

13) I would like to own at least 5,000 books.

14) I own 30 years worth of National Geographic magazines. I consider it Travel Porn.

15) I would like to buy a bouse so I can stop culling my books every damn time I move.

Off to NY

Off to NY for the weekend. Happily, as I could use the rest and it appears my household is imploding.

I need a vacation.

And After All That...

Good things, for once. Morning weights, writing, gym, sensible food, short walks at work, chatting with my writing buddy Patrick, credit card minimum payments are paid, good stuff in NY this weekend, and I'll be at the Oregon Coast next week. Sweet.

Big, deep, breath.

Anyway, back to writing, then dinner.

And guess what I got for Christmas? The regional VP gave away 30 years worth of National Geographic Magazines in the collector's hardbound covers. I got all of them.

They are fucking sweet.

And fucking heavy.

I've been dragging them home one at a time for nearly a month. Almost done.

They make me very happy.

It's That Time Of Year Again

Time for some Bad Sex.

(thanks, B)

Amusing Forward of the Month

An English professor told his class one day: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me.

"The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was turned in by two of his English students, Rebecca
and Gary.

THE STORY:

(first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the
atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)
Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of filtered TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)
filtered

(Gary)
filtered

(Rebecca)
filtered YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!

(Gary)
Go drink some tea - filtered.

(TEACHER)
A+ - I really liked this one.


(thanks, Ian)

Uncomfortable, Isn't It?

A gallery has replaced a painting of a naked man with a female nude after it received dozens of complaints.

Sure is a good thing nobody complains about female nudes!

I mean, naked men are soooo scary.

This Site Makes Me So Happy

So, so happy.

Damn, This is Tough

Down about 15 pages from the page count goal I had for today, but hey, writing 34 pages in 7 days still isn't bad.

Stuck on some plot points, and doing some more reading elsewhere to get myself out of the bind. Should pick up again tomorrow.

Day job still sucks.

Also, it's snowing like crazy here and I have no winter boots.

What's up with that?

The CIA Sabotage Manual

For overthrowing governments at home at abroad!

Here's What's Happening

Despite appearances, I am still alive. Working a day job that suddenly has me, you know, working, which means little to no blogging. It'll be awhile before this lets up.

Finished wrapping all my Christmas presents today. It's the first year I can afford to get everybody presents, and it feels really good.

Sitting here drinking whiskey, listening to Edith Piaf, and working on The Book That Will Get done.

I've still got that Russ appreciation to write, two credit card payments to make, and a lot of books to read. Have finally made it back to the gym. I'm increasingly impressed with my arms. They are just buff. It's great.

Ah, my body project. Someday I will be uber-buff and scary. For now, I'll settle for strong.

Someday, I'll also be making my living entirely from writing.

Just you wait.

It's my New Year's resolution.

Must Have Had His Grande Latte Enema

Wow. The more time I spend at the office, the more I feel like Edward Norton.

It Happened Again on Friday

Somebody else asked me how I was "getting so skinny."

These people baffle me. I start moving into a size 14, and everybody thinks I weigh 150 lbs or something.

Weird. I haven't weighed 150 since I was like 12 years old.

It's all relative.

The Trouble With Writing

This isn't the first time my writing has interfered with my relationships. I'll spend a good deal of time doing research, writing a few pages a month, and then the bucket will tip over and for a couple of months, I'll do nothing but write, and think about writing, and talk about either writing in general or my latest book in particular.

I write on the bus, at work, at lunch, at home before and after making dinner. I think about my book, about the next scene, bits of dialogue, at the gym, just before bed, while doing reporting at work. I keep a notebook next to me so I can get dialogue down, little scenes, before I forget them.

I want to finish this book by Dec 31st, which works out to writing about 7 pages a day. I want to finish this book. I've been working on it, writing, researching, for year. I already have my next project in mind. I'm a writer, and this is what I do.

What the people close to me soon learn is that when I get like this, there isn't room for much else for awhile. I get easily distracted. I'm always somewhere else. I'm only really happy when I'm writing. It's another reason I spent six years avoiding the idea of having a lover. My writing became an issue in my last relationship. He said I never had enough time for him. I was ignoring him. For nearly six months, I stopped writing all together, and nearly killed myself.

No joke.

So this time around I want to find the right balance. I want to be able to give myself over to this passion, to this thing that consumes my life, but I don't want to neglect the relationships in my life with friends and lovers, and that's hard, that's really fucking hard.

Where Are All the Female Magicians?

Susanna Clarke does a Q&A about Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

There was an interesting question about where all of the female magicians were in Clarke's book. And I have to admit, that question never crossed my mind. I felt Clarke was writing a certain sort of book, set in England during an alternate 1830s-ish sort of time and narrated in a written-in-the-1850s sort of way (I always read the narrator as male, though Clarke says that in her head the narrator was usually female). So the role of women in the book, as characters, would be pretty traditional. A male narrater wouldn't be much interested in what they did, or ask the question about where all the female magicians were. It wouldn't come up. When you have an opening about the boys' club of pseudo-magicians meeting together with the "boys only" sign on the treehouse door, you don't expect to see any women trying to knock it down when they're stuck wearing corsets and haven't had anything like a Seneca Falls convention and the entire book is about proper upper-crust sorts of people who wouldn't dare think to upset that particular status quo. Though magic may be another matter.

Sure, you'll have some female rebels in every society, but that's not what the book was about, and I think that concentrating on female rebels would have made it another book entirely, and that wasn't the book Clarke was set on writing.

So... no female magicians? Didn't bother me. She's apparently got some in a short story of hers - they just never fit in the book.

Because of the story she wanted to tell, and the way she wanted to tell it, I can forgive Clark for not going into the subject of female magicians.

However, forgiving the lack of relevant female Jedi in every single goddamn Star Wars movie? Especially the first three where there are tons of rebels, the perfect place for a rise in fighting women?

Not so much.

(via Meghan)

Because the Best Way to Win Hearts & Minds is to Make People Feel Manipulated

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - The military acknowledged Friday in a briefing for a ranking Senate Republican that news articles written by American troops had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi news media and not always properly identified.

Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters after receiving a 25-minute briefing from officials at the Pentagon that senior commanders in Iraq were trying to get to the bottom of a program that apparently also paid monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi journalists.

Strindberg's Preface to the play Miss Julie

"Miss Julie is a modern character which does not mean that the man-hating half-woman has not existed in every age, just that she has now been discovered, has come out into the open and made herself heard. Victim of a superstition (one that has seized even stronger minds) that woman, this stunted form of human being who stands between man, the lord of creation, the creator of culture, [and the child], is meant to be the equal of man or could ever be, she involves herself in an absurd struggle in which she falls. Absurd because a stunted form, governed by the laws of propagation, will always be born stunted and can never catch up with the one in the lead, according to the formula: A (the man) and B (the woman) start from the same point C; A (the man) with a speed of, let us say, 100 and B (the woman) with a speed of 60. Now, the question is, when will B catch up with A? - Answer: Never! Neither with the help of equal education, equal voting rights, disarmament, or temperance - no more than two parallel lines can ever meet and cross.

"The half-woman is a type who thrusts herself forward and sells herself nowadays for power, decorations, honours, or diplomas as formerly she used to do for money. She is synonymous with degeneration. It is not a sound species for it does not last, but unfortunately it can propagate itself and its misery in the following generation; and degenerate men seem unconsciously to select their mates among them so that they increase in number and produce creatures of uncertain sex for whom life is a torment. Fortunately, however, they succumb, either because they are out of harmony with reality or because their repressed instincts erupt uncontrollably or because their hopes of attaining equality with men are crushed. The type is tragic, offering the spectacle of a desperate struggle against nature, a tragic legacy of Romanticism which is now being dissipated by Naturalism, the only aim of which is happiness. And happiness means strong and sound species."

Boys are great.

Jonathan Carroll, On Too Much Self-Reflection

Ah, there's nothing better than the book about the writer who can't sell a book!

(thanks, Patrick!)

The MZB Heroine, Or The Sword & Sorceress Generation

So, while dinner cooks and the novel prints out for the second round of line edits, I got to thinking again about the MZB heroine. You know, the Marion Zimmer Bradley heroine. The Sword and Sorceress anthologies?

Anybody who's old enough to remember MZB's fantasy magazine before it went defunct probably knows what I'm talking about. MZB was the first mag I submitted to, back when I was 15. She always gave personal rejects, which ended up being more encouraging than I think she actually wanted, and when she didn't personally comment, her back-up did a fair job.

After a couple of rejections, I decided to try to get into the S&S anthologies. I mean, shit I was *writing* strong-women-heroines-with-swords fiction, why couldn't I get into these anthos?

I tried my best to ape the style of the S&S heroine. That means spunkiness as illustrated by her desire to kick someone, tug her braid, chew her lip, and lesbianism, if not an outright no-no, shouldn't come up much. She should have been through a Profound Emotional Experience that she needs to get over. And there should be some sort of earthy psuedo-magic god or goddess that she either worships, scorns people for worshipping (and is later converted), or she's a priestess in some kind of snake cult.

My problem with getting trying to get accepted into that antho (besides the major one - I was fifteen and couldn't plot my way out of a paper bag), is that I never really liked the anthologies. Hated them. Bought two of them, tried very hard to mimic the style, generic setting, generic plot, never really came away with anything. This may be because I've only recently learned how to write anything at all like a plot.

I had a tough time.

As I've gotten older, I've stopped reading a lot of the generic female-heroine fantasy and opted for Russ (who will smash your face in), and Martin (whose characters will all smash your face in, regardless of sex), and deadly courtesans like Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel (or Louise Marley's books). I've tried very hard to read people like Elizabeth Haydon, Kristen Britain, Sarah Zettel, and other women writers with purportedly strong female heroines.

But I just couldn't get into it. Setting falls away in favor of a thin but workable plot, and the interchangeable female heroine can just sort of get dropped into any of these worlds and chew her lip and kick somebody if they irriate her without changing much about the plot (you could also make the argument that this is what many of the Robert Jordan heroines have devolved into, though he gets points because at least the setting's pretty rich). The worldbuilding often feels so thin that I'm uncertain as to why or how these women rose to power in their respective societies except that these are books written in the 21st century, and women running around with swords in feudal societies is considered the Thing to Do. Now, I love myself a good sword-weilding heroine, but you better be really clear about what you're doing.

There have always been women crossdressers in armies, and women are great for making up the ranks of rebel groups (just remember that, historically, once the fighting's done, they're pressed/invited/feel good going back into their more traditional roles). So if you've got a feudal society that's shown as being no different than, say, ancient Greece or Europe circa 1100 ad, I want to know how your woman came by her sword and kept it. And don't give me the cop-out by changing all the names of the countries and saying, "But it's fantasy!" when you've changed absolutely nothing about your pseudo-medieval world except the names and the fact that your woman gets to lead the warrior life baby-free without having access to reliable contraception.

Make me believe you. Please, try. Fantasy or no, worlds have rules.

This is the problem I ran into while reading Naomi Kritzer's Freedom's Gate. Our Heroine, daughter of a freed slave, works for a guy as his errand-runner, basically. She learns to ride and handle basic weapons, self-defense. But I have no idea if she's some kind of anomoly in this society or not, which is called "Greece" and has some djinn and alternative historical bits to it that make it not-Greece. But, basically, it's Greece.

She goes on to join a group of, basically, amazons. An all-female group of rebel fighters, which worked for me. I'm not sure why we needed to get 100 pages of filler in the middle of the book where they spend a bunch of time training without having much to do with the plot, but I guess you have to get a three-book series out of this plot somehow. Extended training scenes help.

The feel of the book felt very familiar to me, and I hopped over to her site and saw that she had, indeed, sold a story or two the S&S anthologies.

And that got me to thinking about how MZB may have nurtured a generation of women writers who all write the same sort of heroine, the same sort of plot, the same sorta-like-X-but-not setting. The same heroine-finding-her-inner-spiritual-strength plot.

No doubt these are quick read books with likable characters and a solid if simple plot. They're marketable. But they're quickly forgettable. I've actually forgotten the main character's name in Freedom's Gate already. I will never forget Martin's Arya even if he ends up killing her. She's that dynamic. And she's a part of a dynamic, complex setting and plot.

Maybe that's the difference between candy trilogy fantasy and true epic fantasy: depth and complexity of setting and character. When I read, I want a whole lot more going on than sorta-like-but-not-really. I get bored with the generics. You can give me a classic trope, you can give me a scullery maid or plucky horsewoman, but she better be *more* than "the plucky horsewoman."

I've already read that book, and it bored me the first time.

I think it's a matter of pushing a book, a plot, characters, concepts, to the next level, and not settling for the easiest way to write the story. It might be comfortable, but it's not memorable.

Finally, the Fucking Weekend

Wow, the day job is shit right now, as my lack of blogging all week aptly illustrates.

Anyway, moving on.

I Wrote 100 Pages of Fiction Last Month

This month, I want to double that.

I Believe in Magic

And I intend to have a very Merry Christmas, thank you, despite my credit card balance.

heh heh

Someday I'll figure that shit out.

One More Reason to Make a Living Writing

So I can stay out late on a Wednesday night and see a political play about Indira Ghandi and eat Thai food with local writers.

You know, I wouldn't have to get up at 5:30 the next morning.

Bah. This fucking job.

Food for Thought

I've been having a lot of dreams about food. I don't feel like I'm depriving myself of anything. I think it's my body's craving for more protein. It's the morning weight routine that does it.

Having a tough time getting back to the gym after the Thanksgiving break. Isn't that always the way?

Sat down and consumed some beef on the way home and thought about how hard I work, every day, every damn meal, to not revert to bad habits. I can say, "This is fine, today. Tomorrow, it's not." And you've gotta be on yourself every day about it, because otherwise you'll revert back to type, default.

Sometimes I'm sad that my default isn't the best one for me.

What an easy life I'd lead!

How boring that would be.

Note To Self

Though eating that processed cheese may be good, it doesn't leave you with much energy. I want to nap now.

Yes, I'm Busy

Work is busy, book is busy, plane flights are busy, shopping for holiday gifts is busy.

Eating far too much processed cheese, too.

It's good.

I'll be back later. I'm just massively swamped.

Dayton

So, Dayton.

Yea.

Managed to get both my friends sick and nearly poisoned Ian, who has allergic reactions to stuff like perfume and body spray.

Oops.

Ian did cook me three pies, though, which I thought was quite good of him, considering.

I'm Certain There Was Something To Say

Yea, I have a number of things to blog about, but I have a bit of a cold, tons of writing to do, and some great time off I need to enjoy.

See you all on the other side of the holiday.

Off to Dayton On Wednesday

I do get around.

Once More Around the Mulberry Bush

The HR Manger stopped me in the hall this morning and asked, how I'd "gotten so skinny."

Now, anybody who's met me or seen me at a Con can tell you I'm not exactly a skinny person. Never have been. I'm a size 16, moving back into a 14, and this is the weight I've been at most of my life. Two years ago, though, I was coming out of grad school binge eating and binge drinking and over-stressing, and was 20 lbs heavier when I started this job. So, I guess that in comparison, I'm "skinny"(er), anyway.

It's odd that I get annoyed when people make any sort of reference to my weight, now. I don't mind the gee, you seem a lot stronger comments, but the "gee, how did you get so skinny?" comments grate on me. Mainly because 1) I'm not skinny 2) I've been losing and gaining the same 40 or 50 lbs my whole life. I know how transitory this is. 3) I know there's no secret.

Basically, I told her I'd stopping trying to starve myself and started working out more. 20 minutes of free weights 5 mornings a week, two days a week at the gym, two 15 minute walks a day while at work; I take the stairs everywhere. I still drink calorie-laden drinks at Starbucks. I just get the small size. Instead of denying myself everything, I let myself have stuff, which means no binging later.

And I'm still not a small person. That's certainly not my goal. Being "average" and "proportionate" feels very good to me, and that's where I feel I'm at. Right now I'm working toward being stronger. That's the biggest thing for me. As far as weight goes, I'm quite comfortable at this weight. I've been here most of my life. Dropping to a 12/14 would be the furthest I'd ever take it. I physically can't get below a size 10 even if I ever wanted that - my hips, the actual bones, are too big for that. My lowest size barring concentration-camp chic is a 12, and that's going to take more years of training to hit, if I hit it again (likely, I will, if I can take boxing more seriously and get back into it).

I was watching "Supersize Me" this weekend. It's a very slickly made documentary, and it's also one of the biggest modern propoganda peices I've seen in recent years. The fat=unhealthy equation was used throughout, though none of the (mostly women) overweight people he talked to went through the same blood tests he did, so though we could see they were above average as far as pounds go, they could have been healthy as horses. I was a little startled that the graphic and stats he used to illustrate how fat America was was the image of a teenage girl, the average of which is now taller and fatter, of course, than the average woman 50 years ago, who also wore a girdle and didn't participate in any sports.

The best part of this documentary, the one that I was glad got included, was the one about the school lunch programs. In the "real world" adults have lots of choices, and if they want to eat a half pound of fries, great. But school cafeterias get lots of perks from junk food companies, and let me tell you, if I was given the choice between cheetoes and soda and some of the shit that gets dolloped onto cafteria trays, I'd choose the cheetoes. The real kicker? Comparing that food to the organic, healthy choices given by another school that cost the same amount. If it's not a cost difference, what's the deal?

The deal is that big corporations want to get their products into schools. So we live on chips, sodas, and candy bars in school. I remember one of the great things about the cafeteria in college in Alaska was that we had a salad and sandwich bar in case the "hot food" option sucked that day. I lived on a lot of salads and sandwiches. And it was cool to have that choice available.

Watching our protagonist stuff himself silly on McDonald's food that his body obviously didn't want and not walking - in New York City, no less! - in order to achieve the results he was gunning for was a little over-the-top. There were some fantastic points made, but in the end, it was a propoganda peice whose ultimate goal seemed to be to get rid of McDonald's, which is silly. Eating a cheeseburger and small fry a couple times a month isn't going to kill you. An extra 20 lbs on your frame won't even kill you. Overeating nutritionally-devoid foods and lying around on the couch all day might. If nothing else, you'll suffer from malnutrition, which he was, and that's going to cause your body to go into binge mode, which it did.

Eat what your body craves, stop eating when you're full, and exercise. Walk, walk, walk, and you'll feel better. The surprise is you may not ever be thin while doing this. And you know what? That's OK.

But then, it's never really about health. That's not what we're gunning for, and that's what's getting us into trouble.

Off to the Big Apple

Well, I'm off to NY tonight for a nice, relaxing weekend. Spending my time until then going through about 200 pages of line edits and getting some more handwritten stuff transcribed.

Type-a type-a type-a type-a.

This is why there will never be a writing reality show.

Hollaback

Tell me what you hollered back. Don't take his picture.

Tell me what you said. Tell me you told him he was a "limp dick."

Tell me you got into a fight.

I Am a Little Drunk

Good times, good times.

At the Gym

So, I was at the gym tonight, and this huge guy, I mean, broad, not tall (not much taller than me, anyway), with that amazingly defined triangular shape, the huge shoulders, walked up the stairs ahead of me.

And I was transfixed.

Not in a "Wow! That's hot!" way (I tend not to like overly butched up guys) but in a "Wow! I want to be that buff!" way.

Funny.

In Which the Protagonist Drinks Whiskey & Is Happy to Be Alive

Beautiful night. Cold, but good. Just got back from the gym. Jazz playing. Roommates cooking dinner and chatting in the big kitchen. Drinking some whiskey, transcribing some writing work I did this afternoon. Getting ready for a great weekend in NY.

Doesn't get much better.

On Being Better

It's been some time since I talked about being better. I guess you could say I've been too busy working at it to reflect on it.

To be honest, I'm not really sure where I'm at with it. I'm writing like a maniac, at lunch, on the bus, on the train, at home. I'm switching out notebooks soon because this one's full. I have a marketable book that's halfway done. I'm about to drop another waist size as well (in a good way), and my biceps have gotten bigger and denser after many weeks of neglect. I'll be in NY this weekend, and Ohio next week to visit a very, very good friend of mine who I've know for more than a decade. I'm going home for Christmas, paying my own way totally this time. I'm moving to NY next year, and moving again a year after that.

My job pays me a living, I like the people I work with, and I have a bit of breathing time this week before I get dumped with another whirlwind of "real work" terror in December. That's pretty fair.

I'm working out regularly and getting work done. Though you may not think it's on the list, I'm also glad I've had some time for blogging.

There are still things I desperately want, but I'm at the point where I'm actively working toward all of my goals, so there isn't much to complain about except, "Gee, it takes a lot of time to be the person you want to be." And that's not much of a criticism at all.

I am still in constant wonder at the way things are turning out.

I think I'm getting far more than I hoped for.

Thoughts On Meaningful Work

I went out ot lunch today at a local place that sits on the first floor of one of the buildings in our corporate complex. I haven't been here since I had the flu, because after eating their baked potato soup, I promptly went home and vomited.

I've been coming here for two years, and the turnover in the waitstaff is predictable. Most people try to stay out of food service if they can, or use it to pay bills to get through school or divorces. For some, a very few, like, say, my parents, it becomes a career. But not always because you want it to.

It's not usually you're first choice.

You don't sit around in fourth grade and say, "I want to be a waitress with I grow up." And if you do like the work, you're not supposed to.

I've always had a terror of these sorts of jobs, likely inspired by my parents, who dreamed of something like what I've now got: my ability to walk out of college and at the very least get myself a 401 (K) plan, health benefits, enough money to pay rent in a decent town, time to pursue other passions, holidays off, paid vacation.

They didn't want me to spend my relative youth the way they did, working 12-hour shifts, weekends, holidays, coming home smelling of burger grease and french fries.

The irony, of course, is that my parents did achieve that comfortable white collar life, the dog and the big house and the (mostly) college educated children, a little something for retirement.

And they did it flipping burgers. It got them where they wanted to be, just a little later in life than they probably wanted.

But when I'm here at lunch, watching a handful of the servers still working food service, paying bills, I wonder - do they have a plan? Do they want to run this place? Or is this enough? And are they OK with that? Am I? Because some people are OK with it.

I wasn't.

Certainly, there are things I like about all of the jobs I've had. I worked harder as a waitress and had less freedom than the job I have now, and I make twice as much money now, only the labor we exert in serving others is seen as a lesser labor than sitting on our asses typing out words and numbers and running paper reports about actual work done by others.

I take some comfort in the fact that the tower crews whose work I report on make more money than I do. You know how they get up those 200 ft cell phone towers?

They climb.

I think I have some guilt about how I work. I have some guilt about being on the other side of the table. I don't understand money. I don't understand the value of work. I look around at what everyone else makes for what they do, for how hard they work, and it boggles my mind at how undervalued the people who actually do things are. We pay managers six figures to run reports and bitch about how they don't know what's going on in the field. You want to know what's going on in the field? Put on a hard hat and get into the field. I spend all day reviewing tower audits, and I've never been to a cell site.

I remember, while working in the corporate office at the burger joint, when the VPs realized the company had grown so big that over half the office staff hadn't come up from behind the grill. They'd never seen a deep fryer up close. My mom helped spearhead a campaign to encourage office folks to get their food handlers' cards and go and help out in one of the burger joints for a day.

For paper pushes, it was an eye opener.

And, I think, for some, deeply satisfying.

We get so divorced from real, tangible work, hunched at our desks, making up reports, fielding information. But at day's end you have nothing to show for it but a paycheck.

For me, hey, that's really all I need.

But I must say, there are days when I'd like to learn how to climb a 200 ft tower and replace an antenna.

They'd pay me more, too.

I'm Going to Lunch

It occurs to me why, after a while, writers don't read reviews.

I'll take my trusted critiquers over random slapdash any day.

"When You Fall in Love With Something..."

Kariya, a former All-American in field hockey at the University of Maine, knew she was going to be a boxer from the first time she stepped through the ropes to spar. It was the typical trial by fire for a fighter at the KO Boxing Gym in Toronto, but with an added twist – since she was a female, she wasn’t particularly welcome in the club.

“They didn’t want me in the gym,” she remembered. “They wanted me to have a try at it and go. I got punched right in my face and I just wanted to get right back at him. Ever since then I knew that I loved it. I’ve always been intrigued by watching boxing and I’ve always been a boxing fan, so going in there, trying it, and understanding the discipline it takes and how difficult of a sport it really is, I wanted to really be the best at it.”

And yea, they've got a mention about her looks (sigh). But let's be happy it was a half-sentence throw-away line, and not the subject of the whole damn article.

Gamer Girl Action

Video games, by and large, assume that whether you’re playing a female character or not, you’re going to want to have sex with a female character, or at least be sexually attracted to a female character (or monster).

Women

In Liberia, when their sons were kidnapped and drugged to fight for rebel factions, and when their husbands came home from brothels and infected them with H.I.V., and when government soldiers invaded their houses and raped them in front of their teenage sons, these were the women who picked themselves up and kept going. They kept selling fish, cassava and kola nuts so they could feed their families. They gave birth to the children of their rapists in the forests and carried the children on their backs as they balanced jugs of water on their heads.

These are the women who went to the polls in Liberia last week. They ignored the threats of the young men who vowed more war if their chosen presidential candidate, a former soccer player named George Weah, didn't win. "No Weah, no peace," the boys yelled, chanting in the streets and around the polling stations.

The women in Liberia, by and large, ignored those boys and made Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who is 67, the first woman to be elected to lead an African country. I wasn't surprised that Mr. Weah immediately said the vote had been rigged, although international observers said it had not been. In the half-century since the Europeans left Africa, its men have proved remarkably adept at self-delusion.

Heidi Fleiss Intends to Open a Brothel For Female Clientele

Fleiss plans makeover for Nevada brothel

LAS VEGAS - Former "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss says she's bound for a brothel in the southern Nevada desert that she wants to help remake into a resort featuring male prostitutes serving female customers.

"I am moving to Crystal," Fleiss said Wednesday of a desert crossroads 20 miles north of Pahrump and about 80 miles outside Las Vegas. It features two bordellos and little else.

"I am opening up a stud farm," Fleiss declared from her Hollywood home overlooking the Sunset Strip. "I am going to have the sexiest men on earth. Women are going to love it."

Joe Richards, who owns the Cherry Patch Ranch and Mabel's Ranch in Crystal, said he sent a "courtesy" letter Tuesday to inform the Nye County Commission that Fleiss will work for him.

"She's going to be madam hostess of Cherry Patch Ranch," Richards told The Associated Press by telephone. He called her an employee rather than a partner.

There's one possible problem, though. County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said that because Fleiss is a convicted felon, she could be banned from the county's legal sex trade. DeMeo sits with the five county commissioners on a six-member brothel licensing board.

Fleiss, 39, was released from a California prison in 1999 after serving 21 months for money laundering, tax evasion and attempted pandering.

Fleiss was convicted in 1995 of running a prostitution ring in which models-turned-prostitutes were flown around the world to meet wealthy actors and clients who paid as much as $10,000 for a single meeting.

DeMeo said he'd heard several reports in his three years as sheriff about Fleiss' plans, including a failed proposal by an Australian firm that hired Fleiss in 2003 to promote a 50-room brothel-hotel.

"This is different," Fleiss insisted Wednesday, describing movers packing her belongings and her plan to arrive in Nevada later this week. "I'm moving."

Nye County is among 10 rural Nevada counties in which prostitution is legal under county and state oversight. Prostitution is illegal in Clark County surrounding Las Vegas, and Washoe County around Reno.

If she really wantes to make money, she'll have male and female prostitutes, and she'll stick to that "women clients only" rule with an iron resolve.

Sucks that she's working for a man, though. Which is why I think the whole thing will come to naught. She's just another Charlie's Angel.

What's So Bad About Being Called A Lesbian?

The girls' soccer team at Immaculate High School celebrated a goal that helped them win the championship game. A copy editor for the local newspaper placed a caption beneath a picture that stated they were actually celebrating one of their teammates coming out as a lesbian. The caption was considered offensive and unprofessional.

While the copyeditor was lying, and so violated journalistic principles, what he (?) was lying about shouldn't have been an issue. Yes, it's stereotyping female atheletes, but you know, some women athletes are lesbians. So are some fashion models. If "lesbian" wasn't a "bad word" would people have reacted so strongly?

The day when calling somebody a "lesbian" is considered a statement of fact and not an insult will be a good fucking day. Why's "lesbian" have to be a curse word?

I enjoy being mistaken for a lesbian. Doesn't bother me a bit. Why should it?

Only 37?

"Strong drink."

- Daniel Handler, author of the Limony Snicket books, when asked how he kept his confidence in his first book through 37 rejections

If Only I Could Type a Little Faster

A bit of a hunger night. Should have gone to the gym. Was bloody fucking cold, and I wasn't dressed for the walk home, dammit.

I'm going to seek out some yogurt and type a little faster.

I've got to finish this book.

This Just May Be The Weirdest Article I've Ever Read

Huh?

That is all.

But How Will I Type?

Fell on the stairs coming up from the train platform yesterday. I smashed the hell out of my right middle finger. I didn't think much of it at the time, but when I woke up this morning, it was pretty stiff and and sore. It's not puffy, though, and I can bend it easily.

But getting up last night, realizing it hurt, and not being able to see what was going on with it, I had this suddnen, terrible fear:

"But how will I type?"

The answer, of course, is two-fingered typing.

But it's funny how worried I was about that. My entire livlihood, from dayjob to writing work, hinges on my abillity to get words down on a keyborad quickly.

I have nightmares about people cutting off my fingers.