More on the Fabulous Writing Life!

Got my check last week for my Year's Best sale and cashed it yesterday. Yippeee!

Friends and relations, however, were rather horrified to learn that the going rate for a Year's Best anthology sale is... about $100.

I could say that nobody writes for the money, but actually, I now write for a living. So, let's say: nobody writes *fiction* for the money.

Except maybe Dan Brown and Stephen King. Maybe Danielle Steele. And I think JK Rowling has so much money now that money is just a moot point.

Pirate vs. Ninja

For Travis... (to clear up a terminology dispute)

Your Score: Modern, Cool Nerd

60 % Nerd, 56% Geek, 39% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

Congratulations!


Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test

----------------------------------------------------

See, I may be a nerd, but I scored NEARLY AS HIGH on geekery!

If Only the Rest of Life Were as Simple as This Label....

(Click here for more fun at the Asian market...)

The Mists of Avalon

No, I've never read the book. No idea why. Just never could get into it, which is sort of sad, you know, being a feminist SF/F writer who's never read it.

But I did manage to sit through the 3-hour miniseries, which I'd heard was really awful, so I wasn't expecting much.

All right, no, it's not a perfect movie. By any stretch. It's of the same calibur as any other just-more-than-B-budget SF/F movie. There's some cheesy lines and awkward pacing and a lot of plot holes and I think that over the years Angelica Houston has just started playing One Character (an interesting character, sure, but still just one character). And yes, the slow-mo INCEST and continual INCEST flashbacks (INCEST... Did you know there was INCEST??) get really annoying and creepy. But.

But when you actually sit down and watch a movie where everybody sitting around and talking is a woman, all the major characters are women, and all the people running the plot are women... it's one of those eye-opening experiences where you realize, once again, "Oh, hey, yeah, women don't actually *do* much in other movies, do they?"

Some people have issue with the whole "evil women" thing. Yes, there are some evil women in the show, and it's said that all the evil is cause of the women's own damn fault, but honestly, I'd rather these women were actors than passive victims, you know?

I was also really happy with the take on the whole Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot triangle (why wasn't there more THREESOME slow-mo flashbacks? Mmmmmm THREESOME flashbacks. Sorry, where was I?). I've always like the idea that Arthur knew what was going on and was totally for it cause he loved them both.

I always thought that idea was pretty hot.

Sadly, like any other just-above-B-grade movie, there's a lot of cheese. I'll say that whoever played Morgaine fucking rocked. Arthur was OK and Lancelot was hot but in a boring way, and Guinevere was kind of sappy, but Mordred was cool, if slightly over the top.

I mean, you give this thing a better screenplay, switch out a couple of the actors, move the Merlin character to an even smaller bit part, and cut out all the slow-mo INCEST (and add in more slow-mo THREESOME sex! Umm... sorry) and it might have been about four times more entertaining.

As it was, some of the evil women were a bit one note, I would have liked less of the guys all together (I felt like they were trying to add more of them than the story actually needed in order to draw in a larger audience; could be wrong, but that's what it felt like), a mother Goddess figure who wasn't so much just one-note hippie-incest and a hotter lifemate for Morgaine, who rocked.

Did I mention that Morgaine rocked?

Must Be About That Time...

... time to print out the book again!

Wheeeeeeee!

Ya'll have no idea how great it'll be to get this fucker out the door.

One for the Road

Unreal Tournament

The guys at work tend to get together for LAN parties on occasion, so I figured I'd pick up some first-person shooter games and try my hand at it so I could join in. This is definately one of those games that, after a certain point, you just have to play with other people, otherwise it starts to get real old real fast.

OK, that's not really fair. I'm having far too much fun, actually. This is the reason I do not, as a rule, play a lot of video games. They can eat my life. But you know, when you can't go out kickboxing for real, there's nothing better than blowing up your enemies into tiny bits.

Also, there are butch badass women to choose from; in fact, quite a few female characters to choose from, and I always appreciate that. Also, there are fun gaming lines in here, and it makes for good research. That's write, I'm doing *research* for game writing, yo.

Plus, blowing up my enemies into tiny bits.

Mmmm delicious.

The Mod Workshop

Some people collect comic books. Some people collect GI Joes. Some people collect those little fake knights that you paint.

I collect.... well, MLPs. I also create pony mods, an art with a short but glorious history.

Steph and the Old Man have a big basement, and Stephanie has set up a nice little quilting corner on her side of the basement for herself:



And on my side of the basement... well, I set up my pony modding workshop and was finally able to display all the ponies (mods and standards) that I've had to keep boxed up because I didn't have any shelves for them (Friday was my first Real Money pay day since, you know, I was laid off in December).



Why yes, those are ponies in various states of disassembly there on the table:




I haven't been at this very long, so I'm not up to making stuff like this, this or this, but I'm working with what I've got, and I have a lot of fun with it. When you get really good, pony mods go for anywhere from $20-$110, but if you try and break it down in time and materials, believe me, it's not a real investment. It's like writing short fiction, actually.

A few where the pics actually turned out:

My Nyx Mod





Misc.:







In my actual collection, I have some goodies (flutters w/wings - $20 a pop if they're in good condition):



But I'd wager the whole collection isn't worth more than $600 or so, as I don't have a $500 collection of these (though I wouldn't mind one).


So if you were every burningly curious about what I do when I'm not working, writing, learning French, applying for jobs at the UN, watching Netflix movies, reading books about middle eastern history and violence, playing video games, or obsessively hitting my "Stumbleupon" button, well...

Wonder no more.

Fuller Hips = Fuller Life!

Peace Be With You

... Toward a Morality Based on Honesty and Consent

They hate themselves for wanting what they want and doing what they do . . . so they preach against it, and propose legislation against it, and do everything in their power to relocate their guilt out in the world instead of inside their own treacherous minds and bodies. They may even feel that, in fighting the scourge of homosexuality or whatever, they’re somehow making up for their own misdeeds. I even have some compassion for them, although I’d have a whole lot more if they weren’t screwing things up for the rest of us.

And this is just one more reason we need to work for a new sexual morality – to shift it away from a guilty freakout over which tab goes in what slot, and towards a morality based on honesty and consent.

State of the Gimp

"Wow, that's a really great hematoma you've got there!" my podiatrist exclaimed.

"Um, yeah."

"How did you do this? You did a really great job on this."

"Ummmm....." Scaling the Great Wall of China! Bungee Jumping! Saving a small kitten! "Running to catch the bus," I said.

"No kidding?"

Yeah. So, it'll be another 3 weeks in my air cast, which isn't so bad because I can walk in it and I don't need crutches anymore, and I'm hardly taking any Ibuprofen anymore. The bad news is, 3 more weeks (at LEAST) with no kickboxing classes or up-and-down step exercises like the elliptical here at home. She recommended I take up yoga and pilates in the meantime, which is great, but I pay $89 a month for frickin' kickboxing classes that I now can't take until after Switzerland.

Blast.

Basically, she said that I did some severe trauma to a couple of my tendons, and if I jumped back into anything too quickly - like kickboxing - that I'd end up snapping the tendon and have to do something really fun like, you know, tendon surgery.

And you know: I've had enough of hospitals, thanks.

In the meantime, I'm watching a lot of movies, working at learning some new video games, and getting my pony mod workshop in the basement set back up now that all the ceiling tiles have been ripped out.

It could have been a lot worse, I know. I'm just glad I didn't break anything and all my tendons are intact.

Also, all this time lying around the house means those fucking edits got done, and the latest version of the book will get out the door to the appropriate editor and agent by the 31st.

Sometimes it takes a kick in the ass.

P.S. It's also worth noting that, according to the podiatrist, my sprain was healing up "right on track." Being a diabetic means that stuff usually takes a lot longer to heal for us than other people, so it's a testament to my 1) great numbers 2) relative youth that it's healing up just like it's supposed to. Stuff like this is one of the reasons I strive to have really great numbers, and why I'm so strict about what I eat (people love to give me shit about all the stuff I avoid, but... well, this is why).

Better Than an iPhone

For me, anyway. And if they can make an iPhone, they can make one of these. It's not hard, yo.

(thanks, David)

And to Think I Loved Her

Bloody brilliant.

The Writing Push

I've finished all the GW edits for this push, so now I get to start my week of writing vacation; things may be a little quiet here, too. My brain's pretty fried, but the book's better, and after a week to set, I'll read it over one last time and get it out the door just before I leave for Switzerland.

And now... a week-long writing break full of French lessons and Netflix movies and video games.

Mmmmmmm.

Mystery Solved

I ran out of vicoden, so I switched to the massive Ibuprofen prescription the doctor gave me. Sometime during my yawning and eye-rubbing sessions today after getting over 8 hours of sleep last night, I looked at the fine print on the prescription bottle and read that "may cause drowsiness" warning.

Man. You know, the vicoden didn't hit me this way; I guess my body has no love for high doses of Ibuprofen.

Rough Cut

OK, adding that war scene in Azam? Far too much fun, and might be just filler, but it means I can write things like this added excerpt from God's War:

------

Rhys heard a low whine start up from outside, too high for the muezzin. He cocked his head. He knew the sound, but couldn’t place it.

Anneke turned to look out the window, and Khos pushed himself away from the wall.

“Fucking incoming!” Nyx yelled, and before Rhys had time to understand what she was yelling about, he was on a pallet on the floor with Nyx on top of him.

A heavy thud and whump shook the whole house, and something rained against the unfiltered glass.

Anneke scrambled across the floor in front of him toward a gear bag stowed against the far wall. Nyx pulled herself off Rhys, and he realized his face was wet with her sweat. His whole body tingled. There was some bug in the air, something… He looked toward the window and saw centipedes crawling along the outside.

“Anneke!” Nyx said, and she had pulled off her burnous and pulled a duel-barreled acid rifle from one of the gear bags.

Anneke threw Rhys a scattergun.

Rhys shook his head. “I don’t –“

“They’re coming in ground!” Nyx said, her shoulder pressed against the gauzy window frame, one eye on the world outside.

“Ground?” Rhys said.

“Means Nasheenians are in the city,” Anneke said, scrambling past him, shotgun slung over her shoulder, sniper rifle in hand.

Khos said, “You see them?”

“I’ve got a scout in the alley,” Nyx said. “Cancel that. He’s waving his fucking squad through. Fuck.”

Khos pulled both pistols.

Rhys’s hands were shaking. He raised one arm, closed his eyes, looked for a swarm. Several responded. Four wild, and two locked and specialized. Whatever squad was coming down the alley, they had at least one magician with them.

“Don’t fire unless I call it,” Nyx said.

“Boss?” Anneke said.

“They’re Nasheenians. Don’t fire without my call.”

“Nyx – “ Khos said.

“Nyxnissa,” Rhys said, opening his eyes. He saw the sweat beading her forehead, her glistening bare arms. The gun was heavy, and as she stood against the window frame in her short tunic and knee-high trousers, baldric too tight, he saw the power in her arms, the muscle under her flesh. He had felt it when she pushed him to the floor, the weight of her.

She turned to them, outlined in the blue haze of the coming night, and in her face, the hard jaw and suddenly flat, fathomless eyes, he saw the woman who had burned at the front. He was suddenly breathless.

“I said you don’t fire without my call. Those are my boys,” Nyx said.

------------------

Sometimes I just can't help myself.

Conferring Status

Why do so many forms in Ohio ask for my "marital status"? Is this something I'm just noticing now because I've been to so many doctors the last year, or is this something you see more often in Ohio?

Maybe I'm just annoyed at the idea of describing myself based on a legal relationship. I mean, I'm not planning on getting married, so does that mean I'll be perpetually single my whole life? I don't mind this, of course, since I do live an effectively single life (minus some important bits, obviously), but I don't see what my marital status has to do with the current state of my health or the symptoms I'm suffering from.

When I went into the ER for my ankle, the admitting nurse asked me if I was "currently in a living situation with people I trust." This seems to be a better question to ask someone receiving care than whether or not they're single. Just because they're married doesn't mean they trust or live with their partner, and just because they're single doesn't mean they don't live with and/or don't trust their partner (and I have no idea what bearing "divorced" or "separated" would have, either and especially).

And no, it's not under the "insurance" heading, so I can't really see what the purpose is.

Dear Internets:

Why am I so bloody fucking tired?

Discuss.