I’ll be at Potlatch this weekend. Here’s my schedule:

Saturday 2:30-2:50pm Reading Governor Room
[I’m probably reading Through the Cooking Glass and Scar Stories (from Bandersnatch). If the crowd seems giggly I might switch the second one to Dinner Made Willing.]

Saturday 4-5:15pm Coming Out as Atheist Main Ballroom
In a recent Gallup poll, 53% of Americans said they would not vote for an otherwise well qualified candidate for president if they knew that person was an atheist. That was the worst score of the survey. Is it possible that Americans don’t trust or like atheists because they don’t know they know any? Do we need to come out of our closet and campaign for acceptance for *this* despised and distrusted group? What are the implications for the sf community? Panelists: Ulrika O’Brien, Jay Lake, Vylar Kaftan, Mary Kay Kare.

Just signed for “Christmas Wedding” to be published in Warrior Wisewoman from Norilana Books. The series is the science fiction version of the Sword & Sorceress books.

I LOVE the cover art.

I’m really pleased to place this story because I think it’s a strong one and it deserves a good home. It’s a novelette about three women who marry each other in post-apocalyptic Miami. The anthology comes out in June.

I like crossword puzzles. Usually.

I have 1000 puzzles from the New York Times on my Nintendo DS Lite. Portable puzzle fun, easy to erase and correct my answers, and it’ll even give me hints. Yay!

I like the way they get me thinking about things I haven’t thought about in years. It’s like putting some Shake & Bake on my brain and mixing things up. In the last week I’ve thought about Leave it to Beaver, angel investors, tic-tac-toe, and Frank Sinatra (who, I’m sad to report, does not have a song called “Meet Me at the Colo”).

For those unfamiliar with the puzzles, Monday has the easiest ones and they get harder over the week, culminating in the dreaded Sunday puzzle.

My skill level is moderate. I can whip out a Monday or Tuesday puzzle pretty quickly, but the Sunday one usually leaves me bashing my head on the wall. I’m not sure “fun” describes how I feel about the Sunday puzzles. More like “this thing will NOT defeat me.” Or maybe “I cannot stab you hard enough, Sunday puzzle.”

You can see why I keep doing them.

Anyway! While I admire the contestants in Wordplay, particularly the guy who can do a Monday puzzle in 5 minutes(!), I will never be one of these people. I’m far too right-brained to think like this. I keep getting distracted by how nice the letter G would look between a bunch of non-curvy letters, or coming up with surreal answers that I wish were true, or wondering how certain words feel about being overused (and presumably underpaid). If I were an actress, I’d change my name to Ada or Elle or Ama just so I could get free publicity in the NYT crosswords.

I also regret the lack of twistedness in the puzzle clues. Many of my answers are kind of pervy, and half the time I think they’re more interesting than the real answer anyway. Sometimes the clues have a certain smarminess to them, like “Ooh, we are SO witty.” That drives me nuts.

My super-secret crossword power is long single-word answers. Like if the clue is “Voiced” and the word is 9 letters, I can glance at it and say, “Oh, that’s ‘announced’.” I don’t mind clues like “City in Siberia” that I’ll probably never get unless I look at the internet. I consider those fair. The ones I really hate are the deliberately ambiguous ones where they are trying to hide the answer from you. Where they want to show off how cleverly they can hide the fact that the answer is “cat”.

I also hate the ones where they do something unfair. Like the one where every time the letters IN occurred in a word, you wrote them in a shared box, like I/N. Or the ones with numbers, like “4thelove”. These puzzles make me extra-wrathful. I suppose if I were better at them I would enjoy the challenge.

But I do like all the interesting things they make me think about (and what they teach me). Plus I enjoy doodling letters into their boxes, like putting office workers in their cubes. Crosswords are fun, but I like Scrabble more (and I’m better at it). I think the right-brain bendy thinking helps more when I’m trying to unscramble words.

I just went to Pantheacon and received my award. Second place and $250 for “Black Doe.” Yay! There were over 300 entries, ranging from science fiction to romance to urban fantasy.

First place went to April and third place went to Deborah Blake. All finalists will appear in the Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction, available in September.

Here’s the finalists:

“The Bitter Herbs of Camelot” by A.C. Fisher Aldag
“Black Doe” by Vylar Kaftan
“Dead and (Mostly) Gone” by Deborah Blake
“Draw Down” by Alex Bledsoe
“From Our Minds to Yours” by C.S. MacCath
“A Nose for Magic” by Eugie Foster
“The Rune Hag’s Daughter” by Linda Steele
“Seabird” by Paula R. Stiles
“Selk River” by Melodie Bolt
“Silkie’s Diary” by A.C. Fisher Aldag
“Under a Double Rainbow” by Sophie Mouette
“A Valkyrie Among Jews” by April
“We Have Come Home” by A.L. Waldron

Just signed for “Galatea” to be podcast at PodCastle, the new fantasy-themed podcasting site. It’s a cousin of the well-known sf podcast Escape Pod.

It will be broadcast this summer, most likely. It’s currently scheduled for my birthday–July 8. There shall be cake.

When we make brownies, my husband cuts a long path around the pan’s sides and eats all the crusty edge pieces. Thus leaving the delicious, goopy, underbaked middle just for me.

I love you, Shannon. 🙂

I just saw the strangest thing.  As I was driving in a parking lot, I saw a fluffy brown Maine Coon cat squeeze out from a sewer grate.

Yes, really.  He slipped out from that gap between the curb and the grate, then darted in front of the car. I slammed on the brakes.  When I parked, I went back to find him.  He looked sleek, plump, and well-fed — not at all the way you’d expect a cat who came out of the sewers.  I looked for a collar but he wasn’t wearing one.

I hope he finds his way home.  Unless he lives in the sewers with a bunch of mutant cats, and he’s their surface-level spy.  In that case, we’re probably safer if he doesn’t go back home.

After watching this clip of Salvador Dali on “What’s My Line?”, a thought occurs to me.

A surrealist is one who sees YES in every situation.

The nurses won’t do more allergy shots until I talk to the allergist. Apparently mono-like symptoms after every shot aren’t supposed to happen.  Especially on these weak early shots.  They might try to find an alternate treatment.

This is from wordweaverlynn. I’m a sucker for the “getting to know people” memes. As she says:

1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance, like a lyric to your current favorite song, your favorite kind of sandwich, or maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.

2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.

3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.

*****

She has asked me the following:

1. How did you acquire your interest in barbering large Asian ungulates? (I think yaks are ungulates.) Seriously, what is “shaving yaks”?

Yak shaving is quite well-described here, but in my own words, it’s the process of opening a matryoshka doll of tasks, none of which can be completed until the core is found and resolved. Yak shaving is common during the revision process, where in order to fix a story’s ending, you have to fix the beginning, then the middle, then the mid-beginning, then the title, then the beginning again before you understand how to fix the end correctly.

2. What does your dream house look like, and where is it located?

My dream house is sunny and light. It has open space, is sparsely furnished, and has plenty of room to dance in. It has a large and well-arranged kitchen. It maintains a well-regulated temperature and has a dark cold basement for my husband to escape to when he needs Introvert Time (something I rarely require). It is currently located in my fantasies, and I’m hoping it materializes into the Elemental Plane of the San Francisco Bay Area for a reasonable price in about 5 years when we’re ready to buy. I also want a hypo-allergenic cat, good health insurance, and a bejeweled pony.

3. Do you believe in love at first sight? how about hate or antipathy/

I believe that the human mind can detect subtle behavioral signals on a subconscious level. This means that often we can’t explain how we know something, but there’s an underlying cause which we don’t recognize. In other words, we can pick up a surprising amount of information about someone else in a short encounter.

Love and hate are broad umbrella terms, and I think it’s accurate to say that I believe in some kinds of love and hate at first sight, but the most pervasive and lingering kinds take time to build.

4. What qualities do you look for in a good game master?

I’m going to answer this question plus a variation on it. I’ve always been a better game master than player. I’d like to think I’m a good GM, based on responses from dozens (hundreds?) of players I’ve had in my games. Much like relationships, there’s multiple good ways to GM, as long as both GM and players are on the same page and want similar things. Things I look for in a GM: creativity, storytelling skills, and willingness to make sacrifices for the Good of the Story. Things I strive for as a GM: spontaneity, originality, and giving the players what they want FROM the game but making them struggle for what they want IN the game. I’m a good GM for people who like wild creativity and a poor GM for people who want tactics and numbercrunching.

As an interesting side note, I wouldn’t necessarily be a perfect GM for myself. What I want from a GM is not necessarily what I provide.

5. Can you translate Mahna mahna! (do-doo, de-do-doo)?

Yes. It’s the dull roar of the masses crushing the spirited individual. It translates, simply put, to: “Our society cannot comprehend your ideals. Please, cease troubling us with them. If you persist in forcing them upon us, you will have to leave our society and call a frog from a phone booth.” See for yourself.