I must confess to being a bit daunted about jumping into the next book, which I won’t do until April. It’s already half-written, I only owe myself another 100,000 words of first draft to nail down volume two, but the overall project is so filling my head right now that I feel as if it will leak out my ears.

Meanwhile, I have two short fiction rewrite requests on my desk to fulfill, a book review to write, and ambitions to make more progress on the synopsis of Little Dog. Given that I have the rest of the month in which to do these things, I am feeling pretty good about my goals.

Próba Kwiatów – Jay Lake — A mixed review, in Polish, of the Polish edition of my novel Trial of Flowers.

SF in SF — Just a reminder that this coming Saturday, 2/11, I will be at SF in SF with K.W. Jeter and Rudy Rucker. If you’re in the Bay Area, come on down.

10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy — He’s talking about ad copy, not fiction, but this is still interesting and worthwhile stuff. (Via Curiosity Counts.)

Kill the Local News — Writer Jeremy Tolbert on sensationalism.

Mindful Eating as Food for Thought

Scale of the Universe — Another fun take on the “powers of 10″ meme. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

What did people do: in a Medieval City? — (Via danjite.)

Self-Cloning Seagrass May Be World’s Oldest Living Thing

Mars-bound NASA rover carries coin for camera checkup — This is cool and kind of poetic.

Mapping the Road Ahead for Autonomous Cars

Turing’s Enduring Importance — The path computing has taken wasn’t inevitable. Even today’s machines rely on a seminal insight from the scientist who cracked Nazi Germany’s codes. An interesting article, although I wish in mentioning his suicide it had acknowledged the disgusting way Turing was treated by his own people.

The State of Gay Marriage — Being a handy map to show you where bigotry has triumphed, and where respect for basic human rights is gaining ground.

The Single Most Powerful Quote From California’s Prop 8 Ruling — “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.” Like opposition to interracial marriage forty years ago, Prop 8 is bigotry, pure and simple, a combination of narrow-minded religious privilege and typically unfounded conservative alarmism. Like opposition to interracial marriage today, forty years from now people will be ashamed to admit in public what they once voted and for and believed.

The Business Case Against Karen Handel — John Scalzi with a very sensible take on the (surprising to me) resignation of Karen Handel from the Susan G. Komen foundation. For my own part, I’ll observe that as usual when the Right tries strong-arm tactics, they only see unfairness when they get caught out.

Planned Parenthood’s Deep Bench — Ta-Nehisi Coates with some interesting thoughts on the fight that Komen picked when they decided to show their true conservative colors.

Why the Energy-Industrial Elite Has It In for the Planet — Social and political commentary on the funding impetus behind the intellectual fraud of climate change denial.

Jesus versus the GOP — The man from Nazareth would have been appalled by the “Christian” Republican candidates. The only thing I have to say to political Christianists is “Matthew 6:6“.

‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World — The declining influence of the US Constitution overseas.

Republicans Finally Realize They’re Helping Obama — Like their counterparts from 16 years before, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last year filled with revolutionary zeal, assuming that they could leverage their hold over one branch of Congress into sweeping changes in the national agenda. And like their predecessors, they blundered into high-profile confrontations with a Democratic president and suffered prolonged and deep damage in their public standing, with each new defeat slowly leeching the fanatical determination out of them.

Santorum Upsets G.O.P. Race With Three Victories — I really can’t decide who would be the bigger disaster for this country, Senator Frothy Mix or Governor 1%. Our last Republican president set an extremely low bar for destructive incompetence, something the GOP electorate seems to have very conveniently forgotten.

?otd: How was your Tuesday?

2/8/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.25 (solid)
Weight: 230.8
Currently reading: n/a (between books)

For my own part, I think the best of these is my Sunspin novelette, “A Long Walk Home”, which has been selected for Year’s Best Science Fiction volume 29. If you’re a Hugo or Nebula voter, I hope you’ll give it consideration.

Anyway, here’s the list.

Novels
Endurance (Green, volume 2), Tor Books

Novelettes
“A Long Walk Home“, Subterranean Online
“The Decaying Mansions of Memory”, Untold Adventures

Short Fiction

“The Blade of His Plow”, Human for a Day, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Jennifer Brozek
“A Critical Examination of Stigmata’s Print Taking the Rats to Riga” The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists, ed. Jeff and Anne VanderMeer
“‘Hello,’ Said the Gun“, Daily Science Fiction
“A Place to Come Home To” (with Shannon Page), When the Hero Comes Home, ed. Gabrielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood
“They Are Forgotten Until They Come Again”, River, ed. Alma Alexander
“Unchambered Heart”, ChiZine
“You Know What Hunts You“, The Edge of Propinquity

(Note this is first draft, the raw stuff, and because of the decision to cut it, I haven’t cleaned it up at all.)

Queen Margot of Bourgoigne

My son is a fool.

I will not say this, of course, because servants repeat everything they hear, especially those ill-chosen words that even a person of my quality might utter in a moment of extraordinary frustration. My husband’s courtiers are worse, more dreadful gossips than the starlings that swarm in the rafters of our great halls.

For this foolish boy, I have labored to give him every advantage, every possible assistance to make his way to his way to his father’s throne. I would not have it said that he profited only from the circumstances of his birth. I myself rose from humble, tainted beginnings to one of the great thrones of Europe by dint of sheer force. My young prince should be honored and feared just as much as I, not laughed at behind disloyal hands for toddling to a crown and scepter he had not earned.

Nothing but the best for him, and I made sure everyone around Puissant knew his worth before the child himself had come to any such realization. I gave him everything, paved his way to self-reliance and strength on the whipped backs of a hundred servants, the carefully secured loyalties of dozens of courtiers.

And how does he repay me? By leaving the court, by making mock of my rightful ambitions for him. By becoming a hedge knight lurking in the slums of the sun-raddled south.

I was borne in a bothy high in the Pyrenees. I was raised in my earliest years amid the shit of sheep and the foolishness of a mother too stupid to understand who had raped her into pregnancy and what a gift he had given her. When my father in his blood-dyed cap had come calling in my seventh year, to lay claim to his child, people fought and were slain out of sheer, ignorant terror.

He claimed me, and took me to the caves where ancient forges still made weapons that had won battles in the morning of the world. The fae knew the secrets of steam and iron long before the Romans or the Arabs had begun to unlock those doors of knowledge. Once my father’s people and their lesser kin had held dominion over the fields and hills of Europe, binding my mother’s people like cattle and driving them to their masters’ will.

From my mother I had learned how to shear sheep and make bad mutton stew. From my father I learned the history and ways of power, and the tale of how the fae lost their power and became creatures of shadow and night, hiding among leaf and branch when the clatter of horses’ hooves arises.

I learned that we could and would be greater than that once more. I resolved that I would do my part to bring our power back to the days of its glorious zenith.

At fourteen I set out, a girl who had been raised in a cave by monsters and was herself already the height of most ordinary men, to find my way to the top of this world we all must live in.

And I succeeded.

Think you how many mothers would covet a king’s marriage bed for their daughter. Imagine the fierce competitions waged in ballrooms and salons and behind the curtains of women’s quarters the length and breadth of this continent for the sake of putting a girl within seduction’s distance of a crown prince. I, with no one to sponsor me, no family or monied connections or favors from aunties and old friends from boarding school, climbed that mountain surely as any conqueror of old atop his hill of skulls.

All of this to produce my son, to bring into the world his bright smile and broad shoulders and ogre’s blood, that one of the Old People might rule again, and so crack open those doors of opportunity and power that our cattle had slammed in our face a hundred generations past.

I married and mated with one of those cattle to produce that son.

And the fool betrayed me for the life of a knight errant, bedroll and hard tack and bandit arrows his lot.

What a waste. Could any sane man want this for himself, when he had waiting for him everything I had prepared?

Yet there is another chance. A small kingdom, doomed by fae jealousy and the petty scheming of the seasons, soon to fall prey to a curse that such a one as my son fancies himself to be could hardly resist riding toward in hopes of winning honor by succoring the needy.

If he is anything, Prince Puissant is a romantic. I will make sure when the time comes that he learns of the unfortunate fall of Talos, and I shall use that to draw him back to his rightful place in life.

And my father, his grandfather, shall see his own seed rise to the highest places a man – or fae – can go in this modern world.

A reader reacts to Visitants, ed. Steve Jones — Including comments on one of my stories.

Not So Wild Review: Schlock Mercenary — I’ve said before that I think Schlock Mercenary is some of the very best long form SF around. This reviewer frames his praise differently, but seems to share my same fundamental opinion. (Via @howardtayler.)

Release the hounds! — Miranda Suri on learning to outline novels. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

I Greet You in the Middle of a Great Career: A Brief History of Blurbs — Heh. (Via @legalnomads.)

How Do We Get There? — Cat Valente asks about the development of post-scarcity societies.

An obsessive history of The Elements of Style and what makes it a cultural treasure. — Even unto being wrong on a number of points of grammar and usage…

Indie Game: The Movie — For those interested in that sort of thing.

Space voyages shouldn’t become politically incorrect

Komen Reverses Decision on Planned Parenthood Funding, Is Still Likely Full of Shit — Komen blatantly, obviously, and deliberately targeted Planned Parenthood. Their board room is still staffed with conservative donors and at least one vocal anti-choice politician. They’re still a conservative political organization masquerading as a feel-goodery for people who just want to help cure cancer.

Komen May Continue to Fund Some Planned Parenthood Grants — A pro-life site accuses Planned Parenthood of being “dishonest thugs”. This coming from the political movement that operates “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” (profound dishonest fake clinics meant to deceive and entrap desperate pregnant women) and actively encourages the murder of doctors (unconditional thuggery)? Project much? Of course you do, you’re conservatives.

Komen backlash: Public turns fury on vice president Karen Handel

The big backlash against bullying women — Sadly, conservative America controls the discourse, and profits politically and culturally from the bullying of women. It’s not going to stop.

Indiana backing away from bill allowing creation “science” into classrooms — Many similar bills are introduced in state legislatures each year and, in cases where their sponsors speak to the press, they tend to reveal a great deal of ignorance regarding both science and the law. In terms of science, they tend to misunderstand the meaning of the term “theory,” think that there are multiple scientific explanations for life’s diversity, or suggest evolution is a theory for life’s origin. The Indiana bill’s sponsor, Dennis Kruse, appears to get all of these wrong. It’s tough getting ahead when you’re flat fucking wrong in terms of both reality and the law, but conservatives will persevere. And they succeed far too often.

Romney’s political success is a mixed blessing for Mormon Church — His presidential candidacy could be a breakthrough ‘JFK moment for Mormons,’ but it could also stir up more negative publicity for the church. I was sympathetic to Romney on the issue of religious criticism until he made it clear he wouldn’t have a Muslim in his cabinet.

Chris Christie and the Nation-State Project — Ta-Nehisi Coates on conservative ignorance of history. Many of the actual people who were beaten and killed “in the streets”–Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, for instance–were attempting to secure the very right which Christie, bizarrely, believes they should have exercised. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know what the Civil Rights movement actually was.

As Romney’s slip-ups show, gaffes nearly unavoidable on modern campaign trail — Nush mostly just babbled. Romney’s gaffes are golden soundbites for his opposition.

?otd: Ink much?

2/4/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (busy with tattoos and Dad time)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (solid)
Weight: 229.8
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor

That was followed by dinner in the bar, where someone, and I have no idea who, picked up my bill from afar. Thank you, unknown benefactor. I then went off to my panel on Gender, Race and Class, which I wound up moderating. It went unusually well for such difficult topics. The rest of the evening I spent in the bar floating amongst Doselle Young, Saladin Ahmed, John Scalzi and various others. As a result, I may be writing a short story called “The Transubstantiation of Chocolate” featuring a conquistador named Juan de Scalzo and an Aztec demon name Chocolatl. Such are the perils of conventiongoing.

I have a reading this morning, a panel this afternoon on trilogies, and a signing this evening. Otherwise I shall be in the bar today, which is very congenial here. My schedule being what it is, I suspect I’m going to have to take a bye on writing for the day, but I’ll make up for it tomorrow whilst traveling home.

Have fun, be well, and see some, all or none of you here at Epic Confusion.

You can imagine my profound relief. It doesn’t really matter if this story is good or not — well of course it does, of course, but not in this context. It matters that I wrote and finished it. I started last Monday, and seven days later on Sunday I was done. With two days off along the way.

I produced it, start to finish, at a respectable rate of output, and I like it.

This is me, back on the horse, and the horse continues.

The manuscript is out to first readers now. I’ll have to find some time to revise sometime in the next few weeks. But tomorrow, or possibly Tuesday, I’m on to Sunspin revisions. (As it happens, the_child has a basketball game tomorrow, which is why I may have to wait til Tuesday to get going.)

This is who I am. A writer, writing. Damn, am I glad to be back.

the_child

kylecassidy

At the same time, my dinner date cancelled due to the flu, which was a mild bummer for me and a much bigger bummer for her. More importantly, yesterday I learned of two recent deaths. An old friend of the family — of my parents’ generation — died of complications from a severe stroke. And a young writer friend of mine died of complications from metastatic breast cancer, leaving behind her infant daughter. In neither case was the death especially surprising in a larger sense, but in both cases it was unexpected by me.

I don’t walk around in a depressive fugue or anything like that, but I find myself a lot more sensitive to mortality issues these days. As I said to another friend recently, talking about personality changes under extreme stress, the biggest change I see in myself over these past 3.75 years of dealing with cancer is that I’ve utterly lost my once boundless optimism. I don’t think I’ve become sour or withdrawn, I just have no faith in my future. I’ve been shot down way too hard too many times in the past few years to feel like flying high any more. Neither of these deaths are about me in any way, and I wasn’t especially close to either of the women who passed away, but I still feel them like a leaden cloak upon my bent shoulders.

the_child

thirdworld

This weekend I want to finish, or at least make serious progress, on the current short story project. I’m aiming for 10-12,000 words. Also, planning to spend a bunch of time helping the_child with math homework and a paper she’s doing for her eighth grade project. I did have a dinner date tonight, but my friend has come down with the flu, so we have postponed.

That’s about it. Writing, parenting and relaxing this weekend. What’s a weekend for, anyway?

Day Jobbery yesterday was productive if lengthy. At home, if I get tired (and fatigue is still very much an issue), I can go sit in my easy chair for 15 minutes and read work email from there. No such option in the office, where you’re pretty much full on the entire time you’re in. It’s the little things that are wearing. Still, I’m holding up and doing well.

On the home front, the_child did another high school visit yesterday. We are coming to grips with her choices for next year. And though some subjects are definitely harder than others for her, she remains diligent in her assignments, while playing hell for leather on the girls’ basketball squad. She makes me proud every day.

In my own world of assignments, I got another writing session in after work. 2,400 word in an hour on “You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens”. Plus the plot sort of did this origami lurch and I now see what my subconscious was foreshadowing the other day. Fred, the little man inside my head, is way smarter than me. I’m sure glad he’s in there. Doubtful there will be writing today due to my work and social commitments, but there will be more tomorrow.

And a little bit of WIP…

“We will forge our outcome,” she said, turning back to the tank. “The fluid is almost steeped enough to host she who will be my daughter.”

“You cannot,” he almost squeaked. “Only a child of your body can inherit the throne.”

“So far as the world knows,” the queen replied calmly, “she will be the child of my body.”

“What does his highness say to this plan?”

This time her voice was sad, distant, echoing from an exile’s distance. “So far as Grimm knows, she will be a child of my body.”

“My queen,” Father Brassbound said slowly. “I serve you in all things so long as I do not betray the church and my faith in God to do so. I… If need be, I, I can stand beside you and bear false witness to the court in this matter. But I cannot… cannot betray the king.”