Jay Lake: Writer

[writing] Sunspin progress redux

2,500 more words on Sunspin last night. I finished section two (of three) of book one, Calamity of So Long a Life. That makes 71,500 words on this section and 131,200 words overall. So I’m pretty much on track for wordcount.

Starting today, I will drag back through this section, do some line editing and rewriting. Some time next week it will go off to first readers. At that point, I’ll do some revising and updating on the outline. Then a week or so away from Sunspin while I bat cleanup on some short fiction invitations and generally ratkill writing/career stuff that’s been awaiting my attention.

After that, I’ll probably move into revising Kalimpura, because it’s due to Tor in June, and I don’t really have time to write the next tranche of Calamity beforehand.

So Sunspin will be in the drawer a bit before going on. Ah, life. I’m fairly pleased with the project thus far.

To celebrate, here’s a bit more WIP:
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Books, Calamity, Kalimpura, Process, stories, Sunspin, wip, Writing

Posted: 4:45 am Fri March 25 2011 | Comments(0) |

[photos] Your Friday moment of zen

Your Friday moment of zen.

Door detail at Fort Point, San Francisco, 2007. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: California, Photos, zen

Posted: 4:39 am Fri March 25 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad is lonely out in space

Biomedical news in brief — Brief, interesting qquibs about autism and cancer, among another things.

The Bowery: 1905 — Mmm, trains.

The Future of Air Travel — Ca. 1910, at any rate.

Criggo on helicopter tours — What a business model! The flight is free, but the landings cost extra.

WAG Rage — Language Log on some peculiarities of British sport culture.

Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s the Only Choice

Media Coverage of the Fukishima Nuclear Reactor Crisis

The Ego Advantage — David Brooks of The New York Times on Qadaffi’s decades-long grip on power.

Who’s in hell? Pastor’s book sparks eternal debate — Nice religion you people have there. Proud of it, are you?

Indiana Prosecutor Encouraged ‘False Flag’ Assault On Walker To Discredit Wisconsin Unions — Nothing to see here, citizen, move along.

Smaller government, smaller dreams, smaller people — We seem to have become a small-minded people obsessed with smaller government, smaller visions, smaller aspirations — a crimped, cramped people from whom it seems unimaginable to expect or ask for this kind of hard work and investment and long-term foresight. Regardless of their own rhetoric, that is observably the conservative vision in a nutshell. “To each their own, and those who don’t have enough deserve what they didn’t get.” One of the most important reasons that I’m a liberal-progressive is that I profoundly oppose the divisive closing of the American spirit that the GOP has been driving us towards all my lifetime.

?otD: Is Mars cold as hell?

---

3/25/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hours (2,500 words on Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (interrupted)
Weight: 250.4
Currently reading: A Bard’s Eye View, ed. Michael A. Ventrella; Honeyed Words by J.A. Pitts

Tags: Cancer, Culture, Funny, healthcare, Japan, labor, Language, Libya, Links, media, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, Tech, trains

Posted: 4:38 am Fri March 25 2011 | Comments(0) |

[cancer] Seeing it from the other side

I have a friend here in Portland who is in his mid-60s. He’s going through a very similar cancer course to mine, albeit significantly more severe, as his primary cancer had already metastasized when first detected. Yesterday I had planned to visit him at his house, mostly to listen, and also to talk about strategies for surviving chemo with heart and mind and body intact.

Yesterday, he was admitted to the oncology ward of his treating hospital for severe complications from chemotherapy. So I visited him there instead.

Without too much detail, he’s lost about thirty pounds in the past eight or ten weeks. He looked dreadful. After two months of chemotherapy, he was worse off than I was at the end of a six-month course. I sat with him for about an hour and half while his family ran errands, and mostly we talked. Slowly, on his part, and listening on my part.

The tiny, hospital smelling room; the infusion pumps gently clicking; the beeping of alarms in the hallway; even the look of the bed — this is his journey, not mine. But I’ve been on a very similar journey, and have even odds of getting my ticket punched for the chemo trail again in the near future. Being there put me in a very odd, fragile mental and emotional space.

Did I look like this? I don’t think so, but I never saw myself from the outside. Did I have the cognitive disconnects he was going through? Absolutely.

I realized anew yesterday how frightening my chemo course must have been to the_child, to calendula_witch and shelly_rae, to my family and friends. I realized anew how frightening it was for me.

He’ll probably be ok, my friend. The complications have been stabilized, they’ve identified the reason for the weight loss and are remediating that. Me, I walked out of there weeping for him, for me, for all the lost years and lives that cancer steals from the living and the dead.

Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Child, family, health, healthcare, Personal, shellyrae

Posted: 5:42 am Thu March 24 2011 | Comments(4) |

[books|publishing] Tales for Canterbury

New Zealand’s Christchurch experienced a debilitating earthquake on February 22, 2011. Since then, editors Cassie Hart and Anna Caro have done an amazing job of pulling together Tales for Canterbury, a fundraising anthology to benefit the victims of the earthquake, with all proceeds going to the New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake Appeal.

The line up contains a variety of authors and a fantastic blend of stories, all of which focus primarily on the themes of survival and hope. Authors include Brenda Cooper, Neil Gaiman, Gwyneth Jones, Jeff Vandermeer, Sean Williams, and me, among others. Here’s the full list of contributors.

Tales for Canterbury is now available for pre-order as an ebook (in pdf, mobi, and epub format) and as a paperback. It should be published in April, so you won’t have long to wait for it. For more information, see the anthology’s blog.

Tags: Books, New Zealand, Publishing, stories

Posted: 5:32 am Thu March 24 2011 | Comments(2) |

[photos] Your Thursday moment of zen

Your Thursday moment of zen.

Door detail at Fort Point, San Francisco, 2007. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: California, Photos, zen

Posted: 5:26 am Thu March 24 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad contemplates dentition

GBS Update: The Settlement Is Dead; Long Live the Settlement Negotiations! — Scrivener’s Error with more on the banal evil that is the Google Books Settlement. Perhaps the witch will stay underneath the farmhouse.

Copyright Troll Opens Floodgates to Mass Reposting — Righthaven set out to punish bloggers who reposted articles, but a federal judge just ruled nonprofits have exactly that right. I love the fact that the word ‘troll’ is in a headline from MIT Technology Review.

What does the filler text “lorem ipsum” mean? — Etaoin shrdlu!

The Griffin Book — This is kind of interesting. A bit about casino blacklists.

Radical Screw-Propelled Vehicles — Dark Roasted Blend with a cool photoessay on one of the weirder solutions to transport problems.

Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (or Not) — Ah, convergence.

Brown Dwarfs and Planets: A Blurry Boundary — Mmm. Sunspin.

Steve Buchheit on radiation exposures — A tricky topic.

Libya: More questions than answers — Slacktivist on just war and Libya.

Evolution Made Us All — A Sunday school hymn parody. Hahah. (Via willyumtx.)

Huckabee: “I’d Love the World to be Led by People Who Have a Biblical Worldview” — As Ed Brayton says, “[H]istory shows that those who hold to a Biblical worldview don’t generally do anything but fight against equality for everyone else.”

Gay marriage a right — not a poll question — In extolling the fact that the majority now approves same sex marriage, do we not also tacitly accept the notion that the majority has the right to judge? Try to imagine for a moment the consternation upon some woman’s face if a story in the paper announced that “X” percentage of Americans now favors allowing women to work outside the home. Try to picture the brisk dialogue that would ensue if you informed some Jewish man that you now supported his right to practice his religion. Speaking of Biblical worldviews and oppression…

?otD: Do you have any human teeth in your possession?

---

3/24/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,500 words on Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (interrupted)
Weight: 251.0
Currently reading: A Bard’s Eye View, ed. Michael A. Ventrella; Honeyed Words by J.A. Pitts

Tags: Cool, Culture, Funny, gay, Japan, Libya, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, Videos, weird

Posted: 5:24 am Thu March 24 2011 | Comments(1) |

[interviews] Time for a new reader interview with me – taking your questions

Well, the last reader interview went pretty well. In case you missed it, see here [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ].

Now it’s time to do another one. I’ll take questions in this comment thread to assemble into an interview in the next week or two. So ask me about writing, cancer, parenting, life, myself, whatever. Be creative!

Extra credit if your question is in the form of a photo, haiku or something else unusual but still intelligible.

Tags: interviews

Posted: 5:31 am Wed March 23 2011 | Comments(8) |

[writing] Sunspin carries on

After two days’ break, I was back on Sunspin today. Knocked out 2,600 words yesterday afternoon, then got on with the rest of my day. Today I have another full day of day jobbery, then I’m visiting a friend with a cancer very similar to mine in the afternoon. More Sunspin this evening.

A bit of WIP for you from Calamity of So Long a Life. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Books, Calamity, Cancer, Sunspin, wip, work, Writing

Posted: 5:25 am Wed March 23 2011 | Comments(0) |

[photos] Your Wednesday moment of zen

Your Wednesday moment of zen.

Art at Crissy Field, 2007. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: California, Photos, zen

Posted: 5:21 am Wed March 23 2011 | Comments(1) |