Several things have happened in the last week. Here’s the updates:

1) I just sold a novella to Asimov’s! I’m really excited about this. “The Weight of the Sunrise” is an alt-history in which the Incan Empire survives into the 19th century. That’ll probably be out sometime in 2013.

2) The Suicide Witch is now available at Daily Science Fiction. The story is about a woman held prisoner so she can fend off angry ghosts of suicides. You can comment on the story on DSF’s Facebook page.

3) What President Polk Said has been podcast at Toasted Cake, which is Tina Connolly’s podcast. This is a short one, about 8 minutes long, and it’s one of my favorites to read aloud. You can also read the text if you prefer reading over listening.

I just joined Facebook (finally, after much foot-dragging). I managed to invoke its CAPTCHA blockers within the first hour.

“We don’t believe you could possibly have this many friends!” 🙂

Hopefully I’ll get into this and build some cool stuff on the timeline and whatnot.

Skin Deep is published at Redstone SF. What happens when sentient body armor forgets there’s a human inside? Nothing good…

Need some cheering up? 21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity.

I’ve been too busy to think, much less post. I have three trips in close succession: WisCon, a writing retreat in Denver, and Kij Johnson’s novel workshop in Kansas. I figured out, before all this started, that it meant 51 days of travel within a 65 day period.

I’ve done WisCon and Denver, but not Lawrence KS yet–I leave this weekend. It’s amazing how things pile up at home when I’m not around to do them.

Add to this the fact that I got myself horribly overcommitted at the end of April, and it adds up to absurd levels of work. Technically my own fault and I won’t do that again, but I underestimated a few projects, plus the timing on another has been terrible.

So that’s why I haven’t posted much. I expect things to be somewhat easier for me by mid-July and much better by about September.

WisCon was awesome, as always. I had an even better time than usual. It felt like I just wandered from meal to meal in good company and had a permanently active social circle that I could find whenever I wanted. I wish I could recreate that in my everyday life. Alas, the curse of the extroverted writer.

So, the silver lining about my terrible trip out here is that it makes the trip home look better. I’ve been working since about 8 PM, and I’m going to continue working til about 3 AM. See, our shuttle for the airport leaves at 4 AM, for a 5 AM flight. I figured since I didn’t even go to bed last night til 3 AM, I should just stay up all night. Which I never ever do, seriously.

So, I’m writing. I feel like I’m in college again. Bet I don’t feel that way about 12 hours from now, when I’m too exhausted to move. 🙂

Back to work.

After my adventures getting to Madison, I was thrilled to keep my original plans of local touring. Anaea Lay picked us up, and we enjoyed brunch with apple mimosas at La Brioche. Then we went to the Forevertron and the Circus Museum, both in Baraboo.

The Forevertron is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world. It was way cooler than I expected and the pics don’t do it justice. It looked like a giant playground set for kids who’d had their tetanus shots. There was a metal bird orchestra and some giant cherries which needed a Pac-Man. Lots of the sculptures have windchimes, which jangled when the wind blew. There wasn’t much signage for this place, so it felt like a big secret. We all thought it was awesome.

After that, the Circus Museum was pretty close by, and it was equally but differently cool. It was a lot bigger than I expected. In three hours, we saw about half of the place. They had normal museum exhibits about circus history, and they also had old circus wagons–some of them very old. There was a collection of costumes that you could actually touch, and a model train of all the circus cars. My favorite part was the Theatre of Illusion; the magician was very good and his jokes were hilarious. He liked to pretend he was screwing tricks up a lot (of course he wasn’t). We also saw a Big Top show, and the trained Pekinese dogs were cute. The contortionist passed his body through an unstrung tennis racket, which I might have been able to do when I was less than four feet tall. 😛

We ended by picking up Mike Underwood and going for South American food at El Rincon Tico. Oh my god, it was _fabulous_, and I can forgive the slow service and too-hot dining room, because that is the best meal I’ve had in ages. I had a caipirinha, a bean empanada, the vegetarian curry, and Holy Crap Fried Plantains with some sort of caramel sauce. Okay, they weren’t officially called Holy Crap, but I hereby dub them so.

I decided that all the good things from yesterday drained into today, and that was why yesterday sucked so much.

Looking forward to WisCon!

Well, I’m stuck in Dallas for about six hours, and possibly overnight. I have to sit in the airport til 8, when I find out if there’s magically room on this flight for which I’m on standby. If I’m stuck, AA (in theory) should pay for my hotel room.

But if you saw my twitter, I am infuriated about this–not so much about the delays, because these things happen. This isn’t even the worst thing that’s ever happened to my travel. (That was my multi-day flight to Moscow which included an extra country along the way.) This is, however, possibly the STUPIDEST thing that has happened in my travels.

Shannon and I got up at 4:45 AM and caught our shuttle for a too-early flight. We were supposed to go San Francisco/Dallas/Madison, arriving at 5 PM. We had a 90 minute layover. Our flight boarded normally, then sat on the tarmac for 70 minutes from mechanical failures (a cascading series of messes and paperwork). They kept promising we’d “be moving in a few minutes,” which I stopped believing.

So once we’re in the air and approaching Dallas, it’s pretty clear that we will be landing with 20 minutes to make our connecting flight. I’m a fairly experienced traveler and reasonably able-bodied. I knew I could make a 20 minute connection, even across the airport… except I was sitting in the back of the plane.

I went to have a long, long talk with the stewardesses. I told them that on several other airlines (Alaska and Southwest come to mind), I have heard them issue a request when we deplane, along these lines: “We have six passengers with a connection of less than 30 minutes. Please allow those six to deplane first, and then the rest of you can go.” I have seen this, and everyone respects it.

The stewardesses argued with me: no, that would never work, no one will listen. I said, I have SEEN THIS and it works. This polite discussion went on for a long time, because there were 10 people in my same situation and I really wanted us all to make the connections. Eventually I had to give up, because they refused to believe this might be possible.

So, when we landed, it went like I expected; by the time I got off the plane, I had 7 minutes to make my connection. At this point, I assumed I’d missed it. But just in case, I rushed up to the gate agent and said, “We’re making the Madison connection–have we been rebooked, or should I run?” She looked at her paper and said, “Run. They know you’re coming.” I said, “Are they holding the plane?” and she said, “They know you’re coming.”

So we ran, as well as one can do while laden with luggage. We took the skytrain and then sprinted toward our gate.

And found out they left one minute before we arrived. Why the HELL did they tell us to run if they weren’t going to hold the thing?

So there I am, exhausted and sweating, listening to them saying they’ve put us standby on the only other flight to Madison, six hours later. And now we’re in Chili’s and I have a margarita and things are sort of better. If we’re stuck here, the agent already promised to cover a hotel (we’ll see if that happens.)

But COME ON. There were several ways this could have been solved. If the stewardesses had only listened to me and just made that announcement, the 10 of us who had a chance of making connections (us to Madison, eight people to Jacksonville) would have made them! But okay, let’s say that was an unreasonable request, even though other airlines do it and it works. They could have possibly held our plane five minutes, if that would not have delayed other connections. (I mean, they “knew we were coming.”) Sure, that might be unreasonable too.

But the real stupidity here was telling us to run for it when they weren’t actually helping us in any way. That. Was. Stupid. I almost hurt myself trying to get through the airport with all this luggage–and there wasn’t even any goddamn reason, since they were going to shut the doors in my face if they had to.

I mean, I was going to let all the stupidity about repacking our bag slide (they made us move a bunch of stuff from checked to carryon)… I expect that crap from airlines.

Well, later tonight I get to find out whether I get into Madison tonight or not, and whether I have to cancel my fun touristy plans tomorrow or not. Now on my second margarita.

ETA: I am touched by the people who’ve offered help. Thanks, but I don’t think there’s anyone who can help. I would need a hotel most likely anyway, due to allergies. At least AA should pay for it (in theory), and there’s a chance I can get to Madison tonight still.

A while ago, I did an interview with Mur Lafferty, editor of Escape Pod. In the interview I said that I’ve used a magic formula for many of my stories, and it works amazingly well. I promised to post the formula, and then totally forgot. Well, here it is, in the form of a writing exercise.

Write a 2400-3600 word story with the following constraints:
–Your protagonist has a problem that needs fixing, with serious consequences if left unfixed. They need to do something about it.
–Three characters. Your protagonist (A), your antagonist (B), and your catalyst (C). (A catalyst is a character that changes or alters the problem in some way.)
–Three scenes, each one consisting of 800-1200 words. Scene 1 presents the problem. Scene 2 makes the problem worse and/or raises the stakes. Scene 3 resolves the problem. All three scenes should contain the protagonist plus one other character, either B or C.

The formula comes out of Three-Act Structure, although I was doing this before I knew what Three-Act Structure was. Sometimes you can repeat the “making things worse” part of the formula so that you have a longer story. You can go from a problem in scene 1 to escalation in scene 2, and then escalate again for a third scene, before resolving things in the final scene.

You can also make each scene/section longer, maybe up to 2,000 words each–but be careful to keep them balanced and don’t let them sag. Generally I think newer writers do better with keeping their stories shorter and more focused; the challenge is good for learning economy. Lastly, you can vary the formula by adding very-short intros, transitions, and that sort of thing–which helps the stories be non-formulaic.

A surprising number of my stories are built on this structure. Some basic examples:

Prashkina’s Fire (the bandits function as character B)
Fulgurite (the unicorn functions as character B)

A longer-scene story, still with three scenes:

She Called Me Baby

To see a four-scene story, try these.

Three-Legged Bird
Disarm

As always, feel free to ask questions.

In a previous post, I asked folks to ID some lyrics from American folk songs. I needed to know which set of lyrics was the most recognizable. The three I listed were Oh Susannah (the Niners variant), The Old Chisholm Trail, and Buffalo Gals. Buffalo Gals was the most recognizable, closely followed by Oh Susannah despite the odd lyrics, and not many people knew The Old Chisholm Trail.

So let me explain why I was asking, and how I learned way more than I intended about American folk music.

I just finished a short story about a Pony Express rider and his very annoying talking alien-pony. In the last line of the story, the pony bursts into song. I was looking for the most recognizable, song-virusy, Western-themed tune possible. The story takes place in 1860. The “cowboy era” of American history is roughly 1840-1890.

When I drafted the story, I wrote, “Oh give me a home…” which is of course Home on the Range, which I think most of us know. I didn’t check the year on that because, you know, it’s freaking Home on the Range. A smart reader caught me; turns out that the poem which became the song wasn’t even _written_ til 1873. And the song itself was written in the early 20th century. I thought about leaving it as-is, because it’s the perfect song. But I like history, and I couldn’t stand to write an impossible anachronism. (As a friend put it, “I admire your dedication to pedantry.”)

So I went to look for a different cowboy/Western song for the alien-pony to sing. Turns out that almost any cowboy song you actually know wasn’t written until after the cowboy era was over. Many cowboy songs were written for Hollywood films in the 40s and presented as “authentic cowboy songs.” The old tunes are mostly forgotten. I found a huge archive of cowboy song lyrics which appeared authentic… but I knew three tunes out of maybe 60 listings, and they were pretty obscure. And those few were all written later than 1860. So even the “authentic” songs didn’t really exist in 1860; they were written for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. In short, we didn’t get nostalgic about the Wild West until it was almost gone.

This sent me looking for early 19th century folk songs. Once again, I had heard some of these titles but didn’t know the tunes (and thus I expect most readers wouldn’t either). I had only a few plausible choices. Oh Susannah had potential; it was essentially the “Who Let the Dogs Out” of the 1850s, written by Stephen Foster. Using the Niner variant (with a washpan on my knee…) definitely gave it a Western feel, and it was the unofficial theme of the California Gold Rush. The Old Chisholm Trail might have worked, though its history is murky; the trail itself wasn’t named til 1867, but the tune is older. And of course Buffalo Gals might work, and it calls to mind the Le Guin story (not a bad plan, in a story with a talking alien-pony). Buffalo Gals was written in 1844 by John Hodges.

I tested those three songs out on you guys, with surprising results. A lot of people said they recognized Oh Susannah even with unfamiliar words, which I’m sure a linguist specializing in lyrics could explain to all of us (maybe the words are similar enough to wake the brain-part that plays music?) I didn’t know the Niners version was so unusual. I grew up learning both versions almost equally; I wasn’t sure which was “authentic” til later. The Old Chisholm Trail was not very recognizable. I think more of you know The Old Chisholm Trail than you think… it’s just hard to recognize the tune from the written word. I’m surprised that Buffalo Gals is the best known. I had never heard that song before the Le Guin story, so I looked it up and listened, and said, “Nope, never heard that song until now.” Everyone else seems to know this song, apparently from It’s A Wonderful Life.

Thus, the pony now sings, “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight…”

If you have ever wondered, “How hard does Vylar Kaftan work for accuracy in her stories?” …now you know. Please send Advil and vodka.