Through the Cooking Glass was a finalist for the Washington Science Fiction Association Small Press Award for Short Fiction. The story originally appeared in Raven Electrick, edited by Karen Romanko. The award will be presented at Capclave, which is the WSFA’s yearly convention.
I’m pleased and honored. 🙂
I didn’t finish a story last week (week 3 of my “8 stories in 8 weeks” plan).
I’m okay with that. Maybe I’ll finish two this week, or maybe I won’t. I had some very good reasons for not finishing a new story last week.
What I’m most proud of is that I’m content. I’m not feeling like a failure. This is good progress for me on my new project, “Stop Beating Up My Inner Puppy.” In other words, I’m learning to be as kind to myself as I am to others, and I’m making progress here.
When I was in college, I took Russian. In third-semester, our instructor
decided that we’d try Russian Scrabble, just for fun.
Russian has 33 letters (compared to our 26) and an entirely different
distribution. So the tiles are given points based on their frequency. There
are 6 different “rare” tiles in Russian worth 10 points each, like our Q and Z,
and several more that are rare enough to be worth 8 points.
There were 8 of us in the class, and we split into 4 teams of 2. We drew
letters and prepared to play.
I should note: You don’t know Scrabble hell until you’ve got a rack holding a
“shch,” a “ya,” and an “ui.” (this is probably funnier if you hear it out
loud).
We all stared at our racks. For a very long time. Someone asked if we could
use a dictionary. He said sure.
Eventually, I won the game… by being the only person who could make any word
whatsoever. I made a three-letter word that meant “whose” (feminine gender).
(I did get the double-word value for starting on the center square.)
It took me twenty minutes to come up with it.
Oddly enough, we never tried Scrabble in class again.
I got this from Sam Henderson.
I will send a gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment here on my blog.
I don’t know what that gift will be yet, but you will receive it within 365 days (likely sooner than later). This may end up being almost anything. It could be a gift box, a hand made craft, a thrift store/garage sale find, a holiday oriented fascination, a poem, a book, a photo, or something else I find. Anything.
The only thing you have to do in return is “pay it forward” by making a similar agreement on your Journal.
[Note: This isn’t a trick to get people posting here. It’s just an excuse to send my friends prezzies!]
Today I saw Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Way late, but at least I finally saw it. I just about cried at the poor guy whose retirement savings went from $348,000 to $1,200, while the execs granted themselves bonuses. Shannon wants to piss on Ken Lay’s grave, but I think that’s too pedestrian. I plan to eat an entire bag of black jellybeans and then make electric green poop on his headstone.
Take THAT, Kenny-boy.
Two stories are now drafted, of the eight I plan to complete in the upcoming weeks.
“Kill Me” will appear in an upcoming issue of Helix. I’m extra-pleased because “Kill Me” was my Clarion West submission story, and I reworked it based on what I learned at the workshop. I’m glad to see it get published.
Donald Schneider reviews “Lydia’s Body”:
“I find Ms. Kaftan’s handling of difficult and disturbing subject matters to be most competently and effectively managed within the confines of Clarkesworld’s restrictive length limitations, largely accomplished by virtue of her crisp and lucid writing style. I can find no fault with this taut, imaginative effort. Five stars out of five.”
Not much except for Turkey. Hint: If someone wants to park the Trojan Horse near the building you’re guarding, JUST SAY NO.
Vylar Kaftan 