60 Completely Unusable Stock Photos

I like the guy sleeping on the birthday cake, and the young maiden Hitler eating bread.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any crazier in Wisconsin:

Abusing Open Records to Attack Academic Freedom

Any of you folks in academia, either private or public, will really want to see this. The WI Republican party is targeting Professor Bill Cronon, who wrote a NYT op-ed about WI politics that asked some uncomfortable questions. They’re requesting to see all his emails for the past few months under an open record law. This law was designed so that citizens would have transparency in government activity, but instead this law is being used to discredit and intimidate the professor.

Well worth reading. For those who don’t know, I was born and raised in Wisconsin and my parents are still there. In the past, WI has been a very progressive state (to a degree that surprises some people on the coasts), and this current nightmare leaves me heartsick.

1) How do you distinguish between laziness and burnout? (For yourself, anyway.)
2) Do other people tell you that you work too hard? Or not hard enough? Or do you rarely hear anything one way or the other?

For the most part, I like who I am.

But there’s a little part of me that’s envious of some of the great bloggers I have on my friends list. I don’t know how you guys do it. Multiple times a week, you have thoughtful posts about politics, writing, science, sociology–it just amazes me.

I occasionally write a longer post, but it takes a lot out of me. I never liked writing nonfiction in school, and I wonder if that extends to blogging. Maybe it’s just my low attention spa–ooh shiny!

Anyway, thanks for all you do. I like reading the thoughtful posts. And as for my own blog–at least I’m always myself here. Even if that means mostly surreal one-liners and weird links.

I haven’t posted in a while because my brain has been… foggy. 🙂

But here are some updates from the last few weeks.

1) FOGcon was awesome. I had as much fun as I do at WisCon, and I was running the thing! I figure that says something good. I don’t usually do convention reports–some part of me really hates detailing what I did each day, even if it was interesting. But my favorite parts of the con were the people I saw. Rachel Silber said to me, “It’s like a reunion with friends I hadn’t met yet,” and I thought that was brilliant. (I knew a higher percentage of people than she did, but I still made some new friends, which was wonderful!) The programming was also stellar–though personally I needed to blow off steam, so I was glad to do karaoke instead.

2) I have a lot of thank yous to write this week. I’m afraid to count.

3) I spent last week hiding from the world and recovering. I watched a ton of cool documentaries and played Dragon Quest IX. It’s 100% normal for me to have a huge emotional crash after a big event concludes, so I expected it and planned for it. I think I’m okay now, but I really needed those days to myself, where I didn’t have to do any tasks for anyone.

4) Somewhere in the last few months, I got myself overcommitted to Life and Everything and possibly the Universe. It started with house-buying in September and I think I still haven’t adjusted to my new life. What I really want to do is clean this house top to bottom and buy storage shelves for all our crap, but that task is daunting, so I’m trying to break it down into smaller ones. I’ve reclaimed the living room at least, and I feel tons better when I sit there and relax. Also, I need to look at how I’m committing my time. I don’t think I’m doing too many things, but I bet I could “work smarter” and waste less time. Something needs to change–I can see that much.

5) Health problems continue to aggravate all of the above. This is peak allergy season, and I’m still having unusual reactions to my allergy shots. Put it this way: for most people, allergies are annoying. Mine are disabling from March to May (and serious the rest of the year). These upcoming months are always the hardest for me in terms of productivity, mood, energy, and social life.

6) Therefore, right now I’m torn between pushing to revise my novel before the Nebula banquet (tough but doable) or truly resting and relaxing so I’m ready to work my butt off after WisCon. What I _don’t_ want to do is go halfway on it, because then I end up all stressed out AND without a finished project to show for it. There are other ideas, like short stories and so on. I’ve got to think through what will be best for my career and my health and my enjoyment of life at this point.

That’s about it. Also, I have dye-free citrus gumdrops and they are really good. 🙂

zomg you guyz! starting a new convention is haaaard!!!1!eleven!!

(but worth it! It’s going to be SO good. I love this concom team!)

Hero-Mother is published at GigaNotoSaurus. Some of you may know this as the drillporn story. If you like weird alien sex, this might be a story for you…

A CEO, a Tea Party member, and a union member are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies. The CEO reaches over, takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea Partier, and says, “Look out for that guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.”

Many thanks to Kate Schaefer for digging this out of her email archives. I knew I’d written Reno for the Clarion West Write-a-thon fundraiser, but I couldn’t remember which year. The following email was sent to a small group of my friends on July 14, 2006.

The story for Week 4 has an interesting origin. Three seemingly unconnected things suddenly linked in my mind, and I saw a story in them.

First, this week I read a book about Einstein and relativity, and (I’m ashamed to say) I finally get it! My physics class completely failed to cover this topic, and relativity was one of those things I knew I was supposed to understand but never did. Better late than never, I guess. So the concepts of relative time and motion were sinking into my head.

Second, I got the new Cirque du Soleil CD, called Ka. There’s a particular song that for some reason reminds me of the way moons orbit planets, which orbit the Sun, which moves along with the Milky Way–everything spinning, moving, constantly in motion. It’s a very romantic melody and I find it inspiring.

Finally, the title. Sometimes I write down titles that I think are neat, but I have no idea what story belongs with them. This particular title has been in my files for a while. I started a version of it a while ago, but the story I wrote didn’t seem to match. I took the title back and used it for this week’s story instead.

“I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” is a love story between two people who just can’t get in sync. When one wants to be lovers, the other wants to be friends, and then they change their minds again. Add to that the time adjustments caused by nearly-light-speed travel, and they’re got a lot of problems.

It needs a lot of work, but there might be something in this one. I’m going to let it rest for a while and see what it looks like in a few months, when I have some perspective. By then I’ll be able to see what to do with it.

Thanks again, everyone, for all your kindness and support of my work in the Write-a-Thon!

I know I sat on it for a while, because I didn’t send it to my critique group until April 16, 2009. I sent it to a few markets and picked up a few rejections. (Writers take note: rejections are part of the process. A few years ago, Kill Me picked up 18 rejections before selling, and then got six Nebula recommendations.)

Sean Wallace was _very_ excited to purchase it, and at first I thought he wanted it for Fantasy Magazine. Then I heard he was starting Lightspeed Magazine, and he wanted my story for the first issue. I was thrilled. Once it was published, I got a lot of fan mail about the story. As a bonus, it’s one of the few stories I’ve written that’s (almost) Grandma-safe. I can’t say that about most of my work. So it was nice to have Grandma able to listen to one of my stories.

It’s been podcast and it’s going to be reprinted in another language (details when I sign the contract, as usual).

Last bit of trivia: if the Big One hits California, and Shannon and I get separated, our plan has always been to get out of the Bay Area however we can. We’ll try to meet in Reno at a specific place. The title came about when I was thinking, “What do I tell him if I need to convey as much as possible in a few seconds of phone/radio/voicemail connectivity?” My other possible message to leave him is, “Not zombie yet. Have baseball bat.”

And so here we are. Hooray! 🙂

YAY! I’m so excited. “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” has been nominated for a Nebula Award. I’ll be in DC for the ceremony in May.

Nom nom nom!

Short Story
“Arvies”, Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine 8/10)
“How Interesting: A Tiny Man”, Harlan Ellison® (Realms of Fantasy 2/10)
“Ponies”, Kij Johnson (Tor.com 1/17/10)
“I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno”, Vylar Kaftan (Lightspeed Magazine 6/10)
“The Green Book”, Amal El-Mohtar (Apex Magazine 11/1/10)
“Ghosts of New York”, Jennifer Pelland (Dark Faith)
“Conditional Love”, Felicity Shoulders (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine1/10)

Novelette
“Map of Seventeen”, Christopher Barzak (The Beastly Bride)
“The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 7/10)
“The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”, Christopher Kastensmidt (Realms of Fantasy 4/10)
“Plus or Minus”, James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine12/10)
“Pishaach”, Shweta Narayan (The Beastly Bride)
“That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made”, Eric James Stone (Analog Science Fiction and Fact 9/10)
“Stone Wall Truth”, Caroline M. Yoachim (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 2/10)

Novella
The Alchemist, Paolo Bacigalupi (Audible; Subterranean)
“Iron Shoes”, J. Kathleen Cheney (Alembical 2)
The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
“The Sultan of the Clouds”, Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 9/10)
“Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance”, Paul Park (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1-2/10)
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window”, Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Magazine Summer ’10)

Novel
The Native Star, M.K. Hobson (Spectra)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Echo, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
Despicable Me, Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud (directors), Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul (screenplay), Sergio Pablos (story) (Illumination Entertainment)
Doctor Who: “Vincent and the Doctor”, Richard Curtis (writer), Jonny Campbell (director)
How to Train Your Dragon, Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders (directors), William Davies, Dean DeBlois, & Chris Sanders (screenplay) (DreamWorks Animation)
Inception, Christopher Nolan (director), Christopher Nolan (screenplay) (Warner)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Edgar Wright (director), Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright (screenplay) (Universal)
Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich (director), Michael Arndt (screenplay), John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, & Lee Unkrich (story) (Pixar/Disney)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy
Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
White Cat, Holly Black (McElderry)
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press; Scholastic UK)
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
The Boy from Ilysies, Pearl North (Tor Teen)
I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)
A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)