Category Archives: Journal

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The Fix reviews Warrior Wisewoman anthology

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So there’s a new science fiction anthology series called Warrior Wisewoman, from the fine folks at Norilana who also bring us Sword & Sorceress books. The book is edited by Roby James, and it’ll be out in June. The book looks gorgeous and I’m really excited about seeing it.

Kimberly Lundstrom of The Fix enjoyed the anthology and gave it a positive review. About my novelette, “Christmas Wedding,” she said:

A post-apocalyptic setting won’t spoil Mel’s “Christmas Wedding” in this poignant story by Vylar Kaftan. Corie and Mel have long planned to marry, but Corie suffered a traumatic brain injury the day Yellowstone erupted and the world changed. They have traveled hundreds of miles, finding danger along the way, as well as love and support from an unexpected source. Despite all they have been through and their current struggles, the women are determined to marry.

This is the moving and well-told story of the survival of three women, banding together to build a new life amidst the ashes of the old.

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Disarm published at Abyss & Apex

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Disarm is up at Abyss & Apex.

I’ve written two stories using this method, both of which have sold.

Pick a song you love, preferably not one that’s widely known. Perhaps something by one of your favorite bands.

Play the song over and over and over. And over. Until you know every word.

Now start writing a story from the mood the song inspires in you. Use fragmentary bits from the song as inspiration. BUT (here’s the catch) the RIAA will come sue your butt if you actually use any lyrics or any traceable imagery. So you have to mutate the phrases and reword them in such a way that no one can ever connect them to the song. Change details, change angles, change settings, whatever you’ve got to do to be sure you’re covered. When you’re done, the reader shouldn’t be able to tell what song you were using. But if you told someone what song to listen to, they’d see the secret connections.

It helps to put the song on repeat while you draft, once you’re to the point where you’re not really listening anymore.

And it’s got to be a song you totally love.

I need to do this again. I know exactly what song to use, too.

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WisCon schedule

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Writers workshop, Friday morning 10 AM – 12 noon.

Panels:

Title: Juvenelia: What We Wrote Before We Were Writers

” A panel of professional writers reads bits of what they wrote in junior high and high school. Guaranteed to be revealing, entertaining, and a hoot and a half. ”
Friday 4-5:15
Senate A

M: Betsy James, Vylar Kaftan Joyce Frohn

Title: LiveJournal and WisCon

“You’re on LiveJournal (LJ). Like a lot of the people at WisCon, you enjoy keeping in touch with your WisCon friends through this powerful tool for connections. You might even have come to WisCon for the first time because you heard about it from LJ friends who share your interest in feminism and sff. You relish the chance to engage in discussions year round about the topics that make you passionate–gender, race, power and privilege, writing, etc. But all of a sudden, you’ve made someone on LJ mad–*really* mad. More than that, lots of people you don’t know are mad, now that your comment has been linked. What do you do now? Jump in, cave in, bow out? How do you respond at all and keep a measure of your privacy, given that the people blogging may know your real name, your sexual orientation, the details of your marriage and your relationship with your parents, and are in a position to share a lot, online or offline, with the untold numbers who now think they know what an ig!
norant person you are?”
Friday, 8:45-10:00 P.M.
Assembly

M: Vylar Kaftan, Bill Humphries, Lilian Edwards, Candra Gill

Title: What Can’t We Forgive?

” SF/F fans can be forgiving sorts; we’ll let violations of physical laws go by without too much notice, permit battles with armies too large to be supported by their populations, and so on. What won’t we forgive and read on? Some people won’t forgive Orson Scott his personal politics, while some won’t forgive the moral worldview of his fiction. Some won’t forgive Anne McCaffrey her tent-peg hypothesis, while others won’t let Heinlein get away with any of a wide variety of sins. Some people can’t forgive China Mieville’s preaching, or Samuel R. Delany’s depictions of underage sex. Where do people draw the line, either with regards to an author’s work or their personal behavior, and what does it mean when we can’t forgive? ”
Saturday, 4:00-5:15 P.M.
Capitol A

M: Steven Schwartz, Susan Palwick, Judith Moffett, Ian Hagemann,Vylar Kaftan

Title: Time To Put Down The Laptop?

“Everyone and her sister/brother/dog seems to be blogging these days. Do you find blogging a waste of creative energy and a bane to more polished fiction? Does talking about your process keep you from engaging in it? Counting your words rather than crafting them? Or do you think this is a false economy of scarcity? Does blogging actually help you write more, better, faster, better-crafted? If so, how? ”
Sunday, 10:00-11:15 A.M.
Caucus

M: Alan Bostick, M.K. Hobson, Naamen Tilahun, Cecilia Tan, Vylar Kaftan

Title: Taboo

[A transgressive reading. In other words, we’ll be reading dirty, nasty stuff. Good thing my parents aren’t coming to WisCon this year…]

Sunday, 1:00-2:15 P.M.
Conference2

M.K. Hobson, Jennifer Pelland, Rachel Swirsky, Vylar Kaftan

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Books for WisCon drawing

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Dear WisCon attendees (or whoever feels like answering),

I will be reading in the “Taboo” reading along with Jennifer Pelland, Rachel Swirsky, and M.K. Hobson. We’ll be reading some of our most edgy and dangerous work. Mine involves rather a lot of fecal matter.

As part of the reading, we’ll be holding a drawing for a few lucky winners. We’re each going to bring a book or magazine that we have a story in.

My question: Would you rather win a copy of Bandersnatch or Paper Cities?

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Movie post: final stats

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I watched 56 movies and 35 episodes of TV shows. That’s more movies than I’ve probably seen in the last five years or so.

My favorites in order of viewing: Planet Earth, The Secret of Roan Inish, Singin’ In The Rain, The Road Home, A Walk in the Clouds, Chicken Run, Waking Ned Devine, Stranger Than Fiction, The Illusionist, Princess Tutu, Antonia’s Line, Children of Heaven.

But there were lots of other great films. I liked almost everything I saw, which is rare for me. You guys rock.

These movies remain in my queue for later (along with the other movies I already had there):

Baran
Gosford Park
Lantana
Il Postino
Fried Green Tomatoes
Steel Magnolias
10 Things I Hate About You
Girls Just Want To Have Fun
Mad Hot Ballroom
Notting Hill
Meet the Robinsons
Wives & Daughters
Little House
Top Hat
A Room With a View
Hero

One last request. When people made suggestions, I skimmed through the summaries and added the ones I thought looked best. If you recommended something and it’s not listed, but you really really really think I’d like it, let me know and I’ll make an effort to see it.

Thanks, everyone. I’m feeling much better, and I really appreciate your help with movie selection!

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Movie post #9

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This will be my last movie review post. I’m down to occasional movies now; mostly I’m trying to catch up on everything else I left undone. Many movies remain in my queue.

Wallace and Gromit – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: An nutty inventor and his overworked dog fight the Were-Rabbit that’s eating all the local vegetables. A couple of you said that I might like this more than the three adventures I saw first. It was better, but still not quite my thing. It wasn’t really as funny as I’d hoped for. As mentioned before, I’ve probably been watching too much Futurama and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, so my taste in animated humor has become rather extreme. I always feel so sorry for Gromit, too. Shannon and I have a theory that Gromit is actually dead and in doggie hell and Wallace is his punishment.

The Darjeeling Limited: Three brothers try to have a “life experience” and become closer friends while traveling through India. Definitely odd. It alternated between bizarre humor and tragedy in a very disorienting way. I think my problem with the film was that it was neither plausible nor completely unhinged; it landed in this weird spot where I wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. I did like the characters involved and thought they were fun to watch.

Bagdad Cafe: A German tourist teams up with a small-town Nevada motel owner to start a magic show. This was totally not what I was expecting, since for some reason I assumed it would be set in Baghdad. I liked the story and the characters, but the pacing was way off on this movie: slow for the first hour, then everything gets crammed into the next 20 minutes. I liked watching the motel owner panic at the sight of lederhosen and German toiletries.

Love Actually: 10 couples form and break romances in a series of interconnected scenes. I loved this. It was delightful and sweet and made me deeply happy. The 10 stories interweave with each other in clever ways–for example, the girl from one couple is neighbors with the girl from another, and the British politician is the brother of a housewife who’s married to a man who’s the boss for a different girl… you get the idea. It made for easy transitions between the stories and everyone connected in different ways. My favorite mini-story was the little kid whose dad helped him tell a classmate that he liked her. Highly recommended.

Much Ado About Nothing: Classic Shakespeare comedy in which trickery and shenanigans keep lovers apart, but then draw them together again. You know, I’ve read a bunch of Shakespeare but somehow hadn’t gotten to this one. I like the tragedies better. Very good film. Kenneth Branagh is extremely talented. No idea if it’s faithful to the original, but I trust Branagh to do a pretty good job of that.

Gregory’s Girl: A shy high-school boy asks his younger sister for help in how to talk to the girl he adores. This wasn’t quite what I had hoped for; maybe if I’d ever been a teenage boy, or a shy person, it would have resonated more. It was sweet, though, and I liked the surprise ending where he gets something other than what he intended and realizes it’s better anyway. I really liked the protagonist and wanted him to find happiness, so it was very satisfying.

Children of Heaven: A Iranian schoolboy loses his sister’s shoes and enters a footrace to win a new pair. This was awesome. It was a great example of plot revolves around characters having something at stake–and that can be anything, as long as it’s critically important to the characters involved. I have never seen such dread and drama over a lost pair of shoes. But when your dad has no money to buy you new shoes, and you’re afraid to tell him that you lost your sister’s only pair, and she can’t go to school without shoes… well, you share your shoes with your sister, even if that means a frantic race for her to get home in the morning and give you back your shoes so you can sprint to afternoon sessions. The twists are very well done (what do you do when you see your missing shoes on another child’s feet… and that child is clearly even poorer than you are?) This was one of my favorites I’ve seen recently.

And with that, I’ll bring the movie reviews to a close. I watched some Simpsons but we don’t need reviews of that. Final stats coming up.

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Movie post #8

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For those late to the game, I took recommendations from folks about what movies I should watch while recuperating from illness. I’m pleased to report that in the last week, especially the last few days, I’ve felt considerably better and I’m extremely excited about that. I’m watching fewer movies now, but I’ve kept recommendations in my queue. I’ll try to catch up on these movie reviews.

The Blues Brothers: Two Chicago musicians try to get their band back together and avoid getting arrested. I hadn’t seen this in ages. Time to watch it again. I love the music and the dancing. I especially love Ray Charles and “Shake a Tailfeather” is one of my favorite parts. Also, I like watching police cars smash together into giant pileups. Shannon tells me that the Chicago PD was upgrading their whole fleet right when the movie was filmed, so the studio was able to buy hundreds of cop cars for a very low price. If I could buy hundreds of cop cars, I’d go out into the desert and build Cophenge with them.

The Illusionist: A Victorian stage magician loves a woman he’s forbidden to see. Okay, everyone. I have reviewed many movies. I had never heard of this one before. This is one of the best damn movies I’ve seen in ages. Absolutely stellar. I can’t believe this wasn’t more widely known (or maybe I missed hearing about it?) Anyway, the acting is superb, the setting is authentic, the magic is gorgeous, and the ending has to be seen to be believed. Go check the summary on Netflix and then add this to your queue.

Without a Clue: In an alternate version of the stories, Sherlock Holmes is a total ninny and John Watson is the brains behind the whole thing. This is the very first movie I watched, but I forgot to list it. It’s one of Shannon’s, so we own it. Definitely fun to see Holmes bumbling around and Watson saving his butt (but never getting any credit, of course.) It was fun, but not my sort of thing. I did get some good laughs though.

Ten Canoes: Australian aboriginals tell stories within stories about their lives. At first, I was very confused. I don’t speak enough Yolngu Matha to understand. Actually, I speak no Yolngu Matha at all, I’m sorry to report, although I have some rusty skills with German and Russian buried in my brain. Anyway, once we figured out how to get the subtitles up, the movie got a lot better. (I have no idea why the normal subtitle button didn’t work.) This film really grew on me. The narrative structure was not what I’m used to from American/Western films, and it was disorienting but really cool. In fact, I want to watch this again sometime. With subtitles.

Princess Tutu: An anime series about a dancer trying to save her prince from forces of evil. This series is great for people who like ballerinas, princesses, fairy tales, ducks, and being on drugs or feeling like they’re on drugs. All of which apply to me. This rocks! It’s got some great metafiction devices, and I really like the way that no one is strictly good or evil–the characters are all shades of gray, and form and break alliances with each other depending on what they’re trying to do. And there’s this weird ballet teacher who’s a large gray cat and he keeps threatening to marry the girls when they don’t obey him. Marriage appears to be the ultimate weapon of social obedience in this world. Anyway, I’m not usually into anime, but I really like this series. I’ve got a bunch more to watch.

The Muppet Show – Milton Berle, Rich Little: I saw a lot of Muppet Show as a kid, but these episodes didn’t seem familiar. I do think Rich Little isn’t nearly as good as Kevin Spacey when it comes to impressions.

Antonia’s Line: A mother and daughter start a new life in post-WWII Holland. This was lovely. A multi-generational saga of women building a quiet, loving, feminist/matriarchal community in a small village. We get to meet all the women born into the family, or adopted into it, and the men they love and share their home with. Be warned that there is some violence, primarily a rape scene and subsequent violence to the rapist. The movie was so good that it didn’t bother me too much, but take note. Highly recommended. I’m still thinking about this one.

More movies to come.

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Trying to implement changes…

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Anyone had to make major lifestyle changes for health reasons in a very short period of time? Have you had trouble sticking to a plan even though you know it’s not really optional?

I could use some help here. I know what I have to do, and some days I just can’t make myself do it. I think the biggest problem is that I’m trying to make health changes NOW that would normally take a person months or possibly years to achieve. And while normally there’s some room for slacking off, I get really sick when I screw up. So I don’t have the luxury of easing into this.

Anyone have an inspiring story for me? You can post, or drop me a note privately if you prefer at any of my email addresses. Or you can use w e b AT vylarkaftan DOT n e t to reach me.

P.S. Like I said before, I’ll be fine long-term. But I do have to change my diet and exercise habits to achieve that.

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Library book meme

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From stopword: What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

56 attempted, 45 completed.

[Hmm, I can’t seem to get underlines right. I will bold & asterisk the ones I read for school. Or in some cases, italicize and asterisk…]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses [I’m scared of this one]
*Madame Bovary
*The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
*Jane Eyre
*The Tale of Two Cities [It’s _A_ Tale of Two Cities!]
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies [but I really want to read this]
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
*The Iliad
Emma [I did see the movie, but it’s one of my less-favorite Austen stories so I never read it]
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
*Mrs. Dalloway [I read it for school AND I didn’t finish it AND I wrote a paper on it anyway.]
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books [And I’m really glad I did.]
Memoirs of a Geisha [on my shelf, waiting to be read]
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
*The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
*Middlemarch [This is one of the most boring books I ever read.]
*Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
*The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) [I read part of it for school.]
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility [I loved the movie and really ought to read the book.]
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
*To the Lighthouse [I took a college course on Virginia Woolf, only to discover that I hated Virginia Woolf’s work. Maybe I wasn’t ready for it yet…]
Tess of the D’Urbervilles [Always thought I should try this one.]
Oliver Twist
*Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables [Yes, the whole thing.]
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [This was excellent.]
Dune
*The Prince
The Sound and the Fury [I really like Faulkner but I’m scared of Joyce. No idea why.]
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon [Not really excited about trying this.]
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces [Also on my shelf, never read it.]
A Short History of Nearly Everything [I thought this was awesome.]
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion [Yet another movie I loved where I really ought to read the book.]
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers