Jay Lake: Writer

[writing|photos] Rio Hondo continues

I awoke this morning from dreams of loss, conflict and Walter Jon Williams. This may have something to do with the excellent gumbo he cooked last night, followed by bananas Foster.

Donnie Reynolds (@dratz of Waterloo Productions) left yesterday. He was kind enough to finish cooking my momos Wednesday night when my feet gave out, but more importantly, interviewed me yesterday morning, then filmed the critique session for “Rock of Ages”. It was good critique, a combination of solid criticism and some important story points, along with validation that the story was doing enough of what I wanted it to do.

My two regrets here at Rio Hondo are that my feet continue to be troublesome, and that my trailing sun sensitivity issues courtesy of my friend Vectibix have not only prevented me from hiking (which given the state of my feet is probably a bad idea anyway) but even from going outdoors at all. I continue to wrestle with the emotional fallout from the recent diagnosis, but being here at the world’s greatest Writer Camp is allowing me to parse it in small bits while immensely enjoying my days.

Oddly, I’m not getting much writing or WRPA done. This done not bother me. I am on vacation, after all. I’m spending hours each day immersed in manuscripts and critique, and hours more in fascinating conversations about everything from Age of Sail combat to social media personae for authors. Not to mention publishing gossip, convention horror stories, plotting sessions and all the other things writers get to talking about when you cram us alone together in a few small rooms for a week.

Meanwhile, a few more photos of the faces of Rio Hondo:

The marmot what hangs out in the lower parking lot — I did not have my 300mm lens on the camera body at the time, unfortunately

Donnie Reynolds prepping the critique shoot

David Levine, of whom I finally got several good shots

Rick Wilbur pretending he doesn’t notice the camera

Kim Zimring, reading

Daniel Abraham, reading

Diana Rowland and her Girl Power t-shirt

Jim Kelly going for the high angle shot

Oz Drummond, thoughtful

The entire Rio Hondo crew, thanks to Donnie Reynolds piloting the camera

Photos © 2013 Joseph E. Lake, Jr. and Donnie Reynolds

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

Tags: documentary, events, friends, New Mexico, Photos, stories, Writing

Posted: 6:17 am Fri May 24 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad parties with the pros in San Jose

“Into the Gardens of Sweet Night” by Jay Lake — A review of my 2003 Hugo-nominated novella.

Stone Age Cinema — This is cool.

Brain Stimulation Can Boost Math Skills — The study was small-scale and is not something that should be replicated at home, because of the possibility of harm/ Ya think? (Via David Goldman.)

Farm Equipment That Runs on Oats

Huge Rock Crashes Into Moon, Sparks Giant Explosion

Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds — Of more than 4,000 academic papers published over 20 years, 97.1% agreed that climate change is anthropogenic. Reality’s well-known liberal bias is not an inherent property of the physical universe. Rather, it’s an emergent property of conservative privileging of ideological thinking over evidence-based thinking. Conservatives would serve themselves and the country as a whole a great deal better if they relied less on arguments from authority and more on arguments from reality.

Justifiable Cause — The Obama administration is making the case for conservatism better than Mitt Romney ever did. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The Great Benghazi Conspiracy and Republican Forgeries — As I said on Twitter and Facebook yesterday, GOP makes up fake White House Benghazi emails, cons news with fakes, now can accuse White House of covering up when real emails are released. Classy. The worst part, it works. Keeps their white men angry over outright lies.

QotD?: Have you handicapped the Nebula ballot?

5/18/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (WRPA)
Hours slept: 4.25 hours (solid, but yikes!)
Body movement: n/a
Weight: n/a
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, climate, Cool, history, Links, Personal, Politics, reviews, Science, space, stories, weird

Posted: 6:01 am Sat May 18 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad wonders how it can dance when our earth is turning

JayFest — Sci-Fi Book Fair & Group Signing — My friends at Powell’s are hosting a group signing in support of my cancer journey, book sales to benefit the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund. The evening of June 13, 2013, two days before JayCon, at Powell’s Cedar Hills in Beaverton, OR.

Almost All the Way Home From the Stars: Seven Science Fiction Stories — An ebook of my collaborate work with Ruth Nestvold is now available. Includes the story we had in SCI FICTION together.

Vintage Book Jacket Art — (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Two uncomfortable truths: New Merida looks a little whorey. Fewer people care about this than you would think.

Brain Training Helps Clear Cognitive Fog Caused by Chemotherapy — The mental fuzziness induced by cancer treatment could be eased by cognitive exercises performed online, say researchers. I play sudoku online rather obsessively when I am in chemo, as a form of cognitive self-check.

Ranbaxy: Looking Under the Rock — Why generic drugs do not always stack up. (Via David Goldman.)

Eyeball — A throwable building-mapping sphere from Bounce Imaging was recently chosen by PopSci for a 2013 Invention Award. The “throwable, expendable, baseball-size probe,” in PopSci’s words, “has a shock-absorbing shell embedded with six cameras, plus clusters of near-infrared LEDs to light up dark rooms (for the cameras).” Wow.

Opportunity Breaks NASA’s 40-Year Roving Record

Danish Teenager Makes Rare Viking Find — Cool!

Thrilling video of Portland PD high-speed chase… wait for it… — Ah, Portland.

Survey of 12,000 studies finds strong agreement on climate change — We already knew 97% of climate scientists backed the scientific consensus. It’s amazing the lengths liberals will go to in order to spread their climate change lies, even to the extent of using reality-based “facts” and “data”.

GOP raffling AR-15 “Sandy Hook”-type rifles as macabre pro-gun stunt — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.

CBS: It was congressional GOP who faked Benghazi email — Conservatives can almost never win on the facts, so of course they lie. That’s the entire idea behind FOX News. And the Bush administration. (WMDs in Iraq, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) Why should it be any different in the GOP congressional delegation? Water is wet, too.

QotD?: How do we sleep while our beds are burning?

5/17/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 revisions on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space, plus WRPA)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 249.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cancer, climate, Cool, events, Funny, guns, health, healthcare, Iraq, Links, Mars, media, Personal, Politics, Portland, Publishing, Science, stories, Tech, Videos

Posted: 4:36 am Fri May 17 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad knows there’s no love inside the icehouse

Rick Novy interviews me

The Canadian Who Won’t be Returning From the Stars — specficrider on a joint project of ours.

Will insurance cover genetic testing, preventive surgery? — Women who discover they carry a hereditary gene mutation that dramatically increases their risk of breast and ovarian cancers face big decisions and the possibility of tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs. This story is a version of what I went through.

12 Tips from 12 Years Sick — Yep. I’m only barely into year six, but, yep. (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

Star Trek: The Search for Science — The Bad Astronmer is much with the hilarity.

The secret laser-toting Soviet satellite that almost was — Here’s a little Cold War alt.hist for you.

Billion-Year-Old Water Found in Canada Holds Clues About Ancient Life — You really need to read the expiration dates on those gas station water bottles.

Hunting Pesky Pigs in Paradise — Ham sandwiches on the hoof, where they don’t belong.

Terahertz Image Reveals Goya’s Hidden Signature in Old Master Painting — Darkened varnish obscures Goya’s signature in a 1771 masterpiece, according to a new analysis using terahertz waves

The Spies Who Blundered — Alleged undercover CIA agent Ryan Fogle is one of many spies to bungle the job.

My Despair — Another of those sad, strange posts on Feminist Mormon Housewives where someone of apparent intelligence and progressive sensibilities finds their common sense and observations of the real world in profound conflict with their faith. If I were a faith-holder, I don’t think I could tolerate that much cognitive dissonance.

When did you choose to be straight? — Heh.

Christian denominations and marriage equality: A simple quiz — Slacktivist Fred Clark makes a point that many anti-gay bigots in pietist clothing would prefer to ignore. Christianists find it so much more comfortable to hate inconvenient people than to actually pay attention to their own morality.

What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’ — In a world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check “black” on the census, even the argument that racial labels refer to natural differences in physical traits doesn’t hold up. Ta-Nehisi Coates is far more elegant than I ever could be on this topic.

Tullahoma father being reckless when baby daughter shot, police say — Because guns make us all safer. Without the smiling protection of the NRA and the GOP, this dad wouldn’t have been able to exercise his theoretical defense of essentially liberties by blowing away his own child.

QotD?: Can you remember getting any older?

5/16/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 revisions on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space, plus WRPA)
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Books, Cancer, Christianists, climate, Funny, gay, guns, health, healthcare, interviews, Links, Movies, nature, Personal, Politics, race, Religion, Science, stories, Tech, Videos, weird

Posted: 5:20 am Thu May 16 2013 | Comments(3) |

[awards] Sturgeon Award nomination, also, “When shall we three meet again?”

I am quite pleased to note that my Sunspin novella, The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future“, originally published at Subterranean Online, is a finalist for the 2013 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

I am quite amused to note that of the four major awards I have been nominated for this year, all in the novella category, I share the nomination in all four cases with Aliette de Bodard and Nancy Kress. Clearly we three shall need to meet at dawn upon a field of honor. Perhaps fountain pen nibs at ten paces. Nancy and I have been teasing one another about it since the Hugo nominations came out.

Aliette, we’re coming for you.

The lists, which make for interesting consideration:

Nebula Award finalists, Best Novella [ source ]

• On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
• “The Stars Do Not Lie,” Jay Lake (Asimov’s 10-11/12)
• “All the Flavors,” Ken Liu (GigaNotoSaurus 2/1/12)
• “Katabasis,” Robert Reed (F&SF 11-12/12)
• “Barry’s Tale,” Lawrence M. Schoen (Buffalito Buffet)

Hugo Award finalists, Best Novella [ source ]

• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)
• The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)
• On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
• San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, Mira Grant (Orbit)
• “The Stars Do Not Lie”, Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012)

Locus Award finalists, Best Novella [ source ]

• “In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns”, Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s 1/12)
• On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (Immersion)
• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
• “The Stars Do Not Lie”, Jay Lake (Asimov’s 10-11/12)
• The Boolean Gate, Walter Jon Williams (Subterranean)

Sturgeon Award finalists[ source ]

• “Things Greater Than Love”, Kate Bachus (Strange Horizons 3/19/12)
• “Immersion”, Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld 6/12)
• “Scattered Along the River of Heaven”, Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld 1/12)
• “The Grinnell Method”, Molly Gloss (Strange Horizons 9/3/12 & 9/10/12)
• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Taychon)
• “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future”, Jay Lake (Subterranean Spring 2012)
• “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species”, Ken Liu (Lightspeed 8/12)
• “Mono No Aware”, Ken Liu (The Future Is Japanese)
• “Nahiiku West”, Linda Nagata (Analog 10/12)
• Eater of Bone, Robert Reed (PS Publishing)
• “The Peak of Eternal Light”, Bruce Sterling (Edge of Infinity)
• “(To See the Other) Whole Against the Sky”, E. Catherine Tobler (Clarkesworld 11/12)

You can read my two nominated novellas online:

“The Stars Do Not Lie”
“The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future“

Tags: Awards, friends, Funny, Publishing, stories, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 5:23 am Sat May 11 2013 | Comments(39) |

[links] Link salad is hopelessly devoted to you

In which it is announced that I am a Sturgeon Award finalist — For my Sunspin novella, “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future“, published by Subterranean Online.

Joss Whedon’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Will Bring Marvel Universe to TV

Big-Bird Brain — Children watching clips of Sesame Street inside fMRI scanners yield unprecedented insights into the functioning of their brains.

Side-By-Side Photos Illustrate Inequality in America — Wow. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Portland, Ore., is magnet for gay couples wanting babies — I am so proud of us.

Oregon Insurers vying to lower premiums because of Obamacare — What do you know? Obamacare is enabling market forces by forcing carriers to compete on a level playing field.

Climate Milestone: Earth’s CO2 Level Passes 400 ppm — Greenhouse gas highest since the Pliocene, when sea levels were higher and the Earth was warmer. Nothing to see here, citizen, move along. Just some more liberal “facts” and “data”, no cause for alarm.

No Need to Worry About Global Warming, Folks: More Carbon Dioxide Will Be Awesome

Global Warming: We are halfway to a mass extinction event — We could try to do something about this. Or we could just stifle the science and political discourse on the topic. Which course has Your Republican Party chosen?

Proposed bill that would regulate NSF research funding faces backlash — Scientists not amused, bill’s backers appear confused. Republicans confused about science? Really? The party of Creationism and climate change denial? Also, this just in: water is wet, sky is blue.

IRS targeted conservative groups, official says — Organizations seeking nonprofit status were improperly singled out for extra scrutiny, a top agency official says. This is seriously wrong. Infuriatingly, it’s also a rare piece of validation that further fuels the endless bizarre conspiracy thinking on the Right. Sigh.

QotD?: Ever seen Grease?

5/11/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA, editing METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 7.25 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 251.8 (!)
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Awards, climate, Cool, gay, healthcare, Links, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Science, stories, television, weird

Posted: 4:59 am Sat May 11 2013 | Comments(1) |

[awards] 2013 Locus Awards Finalists

Our friends at Locus have posted their list of 2013 Locus Awards Finalists. Congratulations and good luck to all the finalists, including the many friends of mine who are on the list.

I am pleased and proud to note that my Asimov’s novella, “The Stars Do Not Lie”, is on this ballot. That makes the third award nomination for this work, as it is already on the final ballot for both the Nebula and Hugo awards for Best Novella. If you’ve not yet read the piece, Asimov’s is currently hosting it as a free download here.

By many measures, this has been my most successful piece of fiction ever. It has received multiple Year’s Best reprints, a fair amount of positive critical attention, and now a trifecta of award nominations. Like most writers, I am always surprised at which piece of my work do well, but this is a story I like a great deal, and so seeing it succeed in the world beyond even my high expectations is a great deal of fun.

Though I’d love to take home an award (or three), the magic has already happened. Given the trajectory of my life and health, I’m lucky to see this year of recognition for my work. I’ll be at the Nebula Awards Weekend, I’ll be at the Locus Awards Weekend, and health permitting, I’ll be at Worldcon in San Antonio for the Hugo Awards Ceremony.

So thank you. Thank you for reading the story, thank you for writing it, and thank you for supporting it. It doesn’t matter what happens at the ceremonies. I’ve already won the prize that counts.

Tags: Awards, Conventions, events, stories

Posted: 5:28 am Thu May 09 2013 | Comments(29) |

[links] Link salad wakes up in a different, shorter world

2013 Locus Awards Finalists — My Nebula- and Hugo-nominated novella, “The Stars Do Not Lie”, is also a finalist for the Locus Awards as well. I am quite pleased

A reader reacts to Escapement — They didn’t like it so much.

Ultraconserved words? Really?? — Language Log responds to the recent “ultraconserved words” story.

Sky Crane — A gorgeous photo of the construction of One World Trade Center.

Ridge could be piece of Pangaea — Speaking of ultraconserved.

First Quantum-Enhanced Images of a Living Cell

San Francisco gives up on cell phone warning stickers — Reuters’ reporting makes a hash of the science.

Changing U.S. Racial Demographics — This one pretty much explains itself.

Heritage: We Have Nothing To Do With Racial Immigration Study — This is the quality of conservative intellectual discourse. These are the people who produce it.

A former religious extremist explains how radicalization happens {plus, a theory of how suspected Boston Marathon bombers were radicalized} — The enemy is fundamentalism because fundamentalism is very attractive to people looking for Definitive Answers. Extremist religion provides a rigid, black-and-white framework for understanding the world. Much the same could be said of contemporary conservatism. Conservatives proudly “don’t do nuance“, and have explicitly rejected critical thinking and sneered at the reality based community. How different is that from religious extremism with its comfortingly simple answers? (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

On gun fatalities and terrorist fatalities — In the last 30 years, there have been 30,000 to 40,000 gun deaths in the United States per year, more than 900,000 people. In the last 40 years since 1970, there have been about 3,400 terror-related deaths. What would the response of a rational society be? Here in America, we will never know. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

10 Things You Can’t Do and Become President

QotD?: Are you going to do something wonderful today?

5/9/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (stress)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 246.8
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Awards, Books, Christianists, Cool, Escapement, guns, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, Religion, reviews, Science, stories, Tech

Posted: 5:04 am Thu May 09 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad marks the calendar and sighs

2013 Hugos: Best Novella — A reader offers capsule reviews of the Best Novella Hugo ballot, including my own “The Stars Do Not Lie”.

‘Stoned wallabies make crop circles’ — Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite”, a government official has said. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Invisible, unhealthful toxics in Portland’s airshed need immediate attention — “Airshed” is a new word to me, though I immediately parsed it correctly as a back-formation from “watershed”.

Congress finds it hard to let Federal Helium Program run out of gas

Climate Change or Global Warming? Both. — This whole thing with Fox would be funny if it weren’t so damaging. A lot of people only watch Fox News, and while it’s easy to mock Fox for being so reality-deficient, so clearly wrong so often, the fact is for millions of people Fox is their sole news source.

QotD?: What does this day mean to you?

4/28/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 hours and 800 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, 0.5 hours WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 8.5 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (foot still hurts)
Weight: n/a
Number of FEMA troops on my block helping welfare recipients buy cell phones and big screen tvs: 0
Currently reading: The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Awards, Links, media, nature, Personal, Politics, Portland, reviews, stories, weird

Posted: 6:43 am Sun April 28 2013 | Comments(3) |

[writing] Juvenilia

More or less literally juvenilia, in this case. In the various excavations of my basement, some very old manuscripts have turned up. I don’t have time to re-key them, but I have scanned a few things to .pdf for your delectation. Some of the scans are a little hard to read, but this is a problem with the source material more than with the scanning process.

Untitled high school poetry — Overwrought and anguished with the desperate importance that informed the world for me in my teen years. Probably 1980.

Untitled SF short — Something from about 1980 that is inexplicable to me now.

Untitled SF short — Something from about 1981 that is also inexplicable to me now.

“Hempkill” — This is the first real short I have any recollection of writing. It was a class assignment my senior year in high school, dated June, 1982.

Canyon Dam Narrative — Apparently I wanted to be a blogger even in 1983. A narrative of my near-drowning in a boating accident.

Enjoy!

Tags: Fiction, Personal, stories, Writing

Posted: 5:41 am Fri April 26 2013 | Comments(9) |