Sheila's LiveJournal

The day of Ashura by the Islamic calendar fell on December 27th this year. On this day we commemorated the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali in the battle of Karbala, about 14 centuries ago.

I am an outlining writer. Even as non-outlined as this novel is -- my outline consists of 2-3 sentences per chapter -- it's still somewhat outlined.

I've always known that while I may outline, I still discover things along the way, and that makes the journey interesting for me, and keeps me writing.

What I've realized in the past few days is the nature of my discovery. I know the action arc. I know the things that happen. That's what the outline shows. What I'm discovering while I'm writing is the emotional arc of each character. And this, truly, is why I ended up having to write all three novels at the same time: I didn't know where the emotional arc of these character would end. I knew they had to end up balanced. I didn't know what that looked like.

This morning I resolved the action arc, got that figured out in my head (how they're going to take down the bad guy.) I'm still struggling with the emotional arc for this character. He's always been the most difficult character for me. His magical ability is passive. I make him active by having him make decisions but his core essence is passive. Somehow he has to accept his role. I'll get there.

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Happy Birthday in advance, underpope Dec 31, secretmasters Dec 31, and oldcharliebrown Jan 1!

I'm pleased to announce that Jaime Lee Moyer is going to be the 2010 Rhysling Editor. Jaime has been the poetry editor for Ideomancer Speculative Fiction for the last five years. She has published more than eighty of her own poems in both literary and speculative venues, including Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, Dreams and Nightmares, and Goblin Fruit. Jaime was awarded the 2009 Columbus Literary Award for fiction for her novel, Delia's Shadow by the Columbus Arts Council and Thurber House. Her novels are represented by Tamar Rydzinski of the Laura Dail Literary Agency in New York. Jaime lives on the banks of a river in Ohio with the two cats who own her.

Rhysling nominations can be mailed or e-mailed beginning on January 1st. The deadline is February 15th. You must be a member of the SFPA to nominate and only poems first published in the year 2009 are eligible. You may not nominate yourself. You may nominate one short poem (1-49 lines) and one long poem (50+ lines) but are not required to make a nomination in both categories.

Unobtainium - really?

Tuesday Celebration: The last installment of the "sneak preview" of HASTUR LORD is up on www.bookviewcafe.com Read and enjoy -- and also the blog on how the book came to be written. The chapters will magically disappear at the end of the month, so you can run out and buy the book.

Well, I've taken the paltry leverage that Teddy Bears and Tea Parties's Nebula votes have afforded me and converted it into a few introductions and approaches to more established writers that I already knew vaguely in passing.

Instead of taking what seems to be the traditional tack and asking for their vote, I asked them about the Nebula award: what are the social pitfalls, how to pursue it without burning bridges, if there's any way at all to help my chances, what help there is out there, etc. Basically an unofficial and very unscientific survey of opinions about the Nebula. And people answered. I am grateful to all of them for corresponding with me, and I appreciate every bit of their advice.

Short summary of the results: I'm a bit disillusioned with the Nebula, and so are a lot of others.

Answers ranged the gamut: from getting my hand bit once for daring to ask, all the way to a suggestion that the Nebula is hopelessly corrupt and that I should consider turning down the nomination if I got it. Most opinions were somewhere in between.

The only common thread was that everyone disliked the Nebula and believed that the only way to win it "fairly" was to not campaign.

So now I find myself in a strange Catch 22. I am new -- with no "platform", no "following", precious little "political capital", and almost ZERO "name recognition". Even in a powerful, well-circulated magazine my story is likely to be skipped or quickly dismissed. So, without campaigning (the sin beyond sins!), how do I increase my visibility?

This feels like one of my Taiji teacher's riddles. How do you campaign without campaigning?

Perhaps, like the sound of one hand clapping, there is no answer. But I will continue to smile and think positively. Because there's no harm in dreaming the big dream.

Apparently a new anime con is starting up in Chicago and has chosen, through either ignorance or hostility, to be the same weekend as Windycon. It is hard to say which since their website does not provide any information about who is actually running it.

XKCD rocks!Gravity Wells.

I'm home until Saturday when I take off on a direct flight to Naples FL, getting back Thursday night, the 7th. That'd be great, but Pitt classes start the 6th. Oh, well. Not much I can do about that now. Have to cancel my first classes.

I have some new Christmas pictures up on my Facebook page.

I'm ordering nicotine patches for myself because they're said to cure a different medical condition that has nothing to do with smoking. Geez. The anti-smoker in me has gritted teeth over this but, whatever works, eh?

I still don't have my teaching assignments for Sinclair CC for the winter session that starts on the 4th. When asked, the person doing the assignments promised that I'd know what I'm teaching by the end of tomorrow. Way to keep a person hanging. For The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I know nothing. Someone is "supposed to contact me" --that's all. Classes begin the 11th of January.

Flat Acting turned out to be a great game. I'm ordering a second copy.

Seeing Diana Botsford yesterday (and her husband) was amazing. She brought homemade gourmet cookies, made us turkey curry and filled our heads with dreams and stories. Love her. She'll miss the Jan SHU-WPF residency, but come visit during the June one when her Stargate SG-1 book is out. The Jan residency starts on the 8th.

The open public lecture at Seton Hill University will be Tuesday, January 12th.

7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Guest Speaker: S. J. Rozan
Cecilian Hall "Genre Writing, Trash, and Skimmed Milk"
8:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. Book Signing/Reception
(She's a mystery writer with 11 novels and many awards.)


New mentors this year are Kathe Koja (YA writer--I haven't read
anything of hers but I just ordered _Headlong_.), Lucy Snyder (Gray
Braunbeck's wife and awesome person), Valerie Wilson Wesley
(don't know who this is), and a friend and former SHU student Will Horner.

The Jan PARSEC meeting is on the 9th--Barry Luokkala talking about the Physics of Science Fiction. (Free, open to the public, at the Squirrel Hill Branch of the Carnegie Library, 2 PM.)

So, what New Year's resolutions are you considering? I'm going to eat healthy and exercise more. Yeah, I know, boring. But oh, so necessary. Agave nectar instead of honey. Organic foods. Whole grains. Cripes, I even bought dandelion greens for tonight. I seriously used to pick those as a kid for our family to eat. Yes, in my yard. It seems so odd to buy them with actual money.

Makinglight and Whatever now have twitter feeds. I don't follow too many people. Wil Wheaton is always fun. Toby tickled my fancy with his note about how his kid peed on him. A quintessential tweet.

What am I reading? _How to Build a Time Machine_ by Paul Davies.

Enjoy the snow!

Thanks to friends who hunt, we have some pounds of ground venison.   The thought of venison leads to the thought of venison chili.    I used to make venison chili with venison sausage (a combination of venison and pork sausage ground together)  so, looking at this ground venison (lean is an understatement) I took about a third of a pound of pork sausage, cut it up into bits, and mixed it with the venison while starting the venison.  Then a big fat yellow onion, chopped, and six cloves of garlic, chopped, went into a Dutch oven to saute while the meat partly cooked in the iron skillet.  Then combined the two in the Dutch oven, with the packet of chili spices I like, a can of Ro-tel original and a can of plain diced tomatoes, and set it bubbling away on the back of the stove.  A couple of hours ago I ate a few spoonfuls  (good, but not quite there yet.)   I think it could've done with a bit more pork sausage--it's been several drought years and none of the deer are carrying much fat.  Still...good stuff for a cold night and predictions of more cold tomorrow.

baying cry
paws scratch wire mesh
homeless hound

***

My daughter volunteers at the local humane society. I was inspired to write this haiku when my wife and I picked her up this past Sunday afternoon. As we sat waiting, I listened to the shelter dogs barking, baying, and howling. Some of them sounded so sad that it touched my poetic soul. I just had to write something about the experience.

The Iranian opposition demonstrators are starting to fight back. There is footage of demonstrators surrounding a group of Iranian police and forcing them to say that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a bastard. There are reports that seven prominent opposition leaders have been taken into custody, along with three advisors of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi. The fact that security forces have fired on demonstrators, especially on Ashura, has outraged many of the traditionalists. The body of Ali Habibi Mousavi Khamene, the nephew of Mirhossein Mousavi, had been reported to have disappeared, but not police say they have it in custody as the death is deemed "suspicious." There is unrest in Qom, Shiraz, Isfahan, Najafabad, Mashhad and Babol, as well as Tehran.

I am in deep, deep trouble. Gayatri "She Who Sings" usually limited her attentions when I am trying to write to crawling on my chest and butting her head against my chin. She has now discovered the attractions of the cursor. She's been staring at it, following it with her eyes, for the last 10 minutes. No sign of losing interest. Just as I began this post, she embarked on trying to pin the tantalizing thing down -- with her claws. On my monitor screen.

We must have a talk. If I can herd her out of the mudroom back into the house, surely there must be hope?

Surely I jest.

Happy Birthday in advance to lpetrazickis (Dec 29)!

Ah - Christmas is over and now, except for the Annual Report, I can rest...

Augh! Lent! Lent! Lent!

(runs away)

 As mentioned before, Wayne got me a SmartPen for Christmas.

I do a lot of my writing by hand, but the pen doesn't seem well suited for that, since you have to use special paper for it.  But I have used it for planning and found it useful.  I sat down and generated a list of 100 possible ideas for the Phat Fairy series with the pen, and then used it to go back and expand on some of the notes by adding audio notes.

This seems one of the best uses for it to me, to annotate text, and it's been handy with this exercise, which I'm now using the results of to plot out subsequent books in the series. I've also taken an exercise I use in teaching fiction, looking at first paragraphs of stories to see what they set up, and used the pen with that, doing an analysis of two Kurt Vonnegut openings.

It's here, at last!

An exciting new anthology of cutting-edge literature
of the fantastic to awaken your sense of wonder...

Sky Whales and Other Wonders

edited by Vera Nazarian




More details over at norilanabooks...

Only have a few minutes online before heading out again. I finished chapter 14 this morning. It was a little short (4600 words maybe?) however, I already know where I'm going to rewrite it longer in a couple of places. I'm immensely satisfied with the emotional arc of this character. The chapter changed slightly from when I first plotted it out, but in a really good way.

This afternoon or this evening I have to take some time and sit and plot out the next chapter. I can't write it until I do. I have a one sentence description of the chapter (basically, take down the bad guy.) It's part of that "something brilliant happens here" plotting that I do occasionally. I will think of something brilliant, I always do.

I just have to do it today.

Only three chapters left before the novel is finished. Six days before I return to Seattle. I can do this.

Over the past several days there has been widespread unrest in Iran, and the security forces are meeting the demonstrators with violence. According to the opposition, at least ten people are dead, include the nephew of Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. His body is missing. The demonstrations are for Ashura, the death of Shi'ite Imam Hossein, the grandsonof Mohammad, and for the seventh day observance of the death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. It also occurs during Moharram, when the use of violence and force by followers of the Prophet is supposed to be haram, forbidden. The demonstrators have begun comparing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei to Umayyad Caliph Yazd, the ruler during the time of Hossein, who is held up in Sh'ia Islam as the symbol of cruelty and corruption.