Go check out Ben Burgis’s pre-Clarion West story “Three Perspectives on the Role of the Anarchists in the Zombie Apocalypse” (ahem) over at Afterburn SF. (It has Ben’s fingerprints all over it.) Then go read Meghan Sinoff’s award-winning “Shift,” currently online at Asimov’s. Both tales are worth your while. Just a year ago — was it really so long ago? — I was in Seattle, hanging out with these people, drinking sangria and, Ben, what was that drink you bought me when I was reading “Lester Young” at the pub? Just a year ago, I was waking up with itchy …
Month: July 2007
Write-a-thon, Week 5
Another slow-starting week. Monday, I had an appointment in Seoul, and then some things to do. After a tiring day of errand-running in Seoul, I returned home and slept for a incredible 13 hours, though I was woken by Lime for a short while so I could eat something. Needless to say, I got no writing done on Monday. Tuesday… ….was a little more fruitful. I managed to draft a non-working, but perhaps fixable, ending for “The Truth About Mughals.” The end is a bit deus ex machina, but I think if I play with it, it might be less …
Read & Watched & Listened
This list spans June and the first half of July 2007. READ: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.Fascinating, disturbing, and surprising. It has the usual disclaimers from locals, but what I found unusual and particularly inspiring was her continuous reminders of the kind of horrific objectification that was forced on female slaves in America, on the downright moral and sexual depravity of white masters. What was striking was that she spoke less in abstract terms, instead slamming home her point with specific examples from her life, which were enough to turn my stomach. She wrote …
Write-a-thon Week 4, Completed
Saturday Update: The Innsmouth Fatwa: 895 words (draft complete at 5,515 words) The Truth About Mughals: 5,340 words Weekly Total: 15,076 words Write-a-thon Total: 64,146 words I’m not sure how far I’m going to get with To the Happy Country. I’m beginning to think it’d work better to draft the thing as five or six separate novellas and then stitch them together. However, in the meantime, I did bang out the end of The Innsmouth Fatwa (which I rethought during my mountain hike and expanded a little, though, yes, sometime it shall endure a thousand cuts, though hopefully not the …
Improperly Prepared Blowfish
I was waiting for the lineup to be announced on the website, typically timid, but hey, a little hype can’t hurt, and since a few others have announced their stories’ acceptances, I figure maybe it’s kosher, especially since I’m excited! I am happy to have sold a story to the very unique and bizarrely wonderful anthology Machine of Death, which is based on about the weirdest anthology concept I’ve come across in a while: The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to …
Ran Like a Bastard
I took Lime to the campus gym. 20 minutes on the treadmill, 15 minutes on the bike. She forced me to do more stretching than I usually do, but that’s good: I ought to. I also did some weights — mostly upper-body stuff, mostly to pass the time while I cooled down. Tomorrow, I think I’d like to hike the mountain instead.
Write-a-thon, Week 4
Slow day today. Lots of scratching in the dirt, not much progress. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to the novel. Here are Monday’s stats: “Jing the Quae”: 749 words Weekly Total: 749 words Write-a-thon Total: 49,170 Very slow day for me, mostly because Jing the Quae is almost as stalled as it was when I set it down a few months ago. We’ll see what I come up with tomorrow, when I turn my attention back to To the Happy Country…. But, on the other hand, I did hit the gym. Tuesday & Wednesday Updates: Tuesday stats: I didn’t get around …
Write-a-thon Week 3 Completed: That’s Me In The Corner, Overachieving
Not really, but it’s hard to keep up this rate of production. I worked hard on Saturday, but of course, my Internet connection was dead all weekend so I’m only able to post about it now. And now that I’mposting, it looks as if I’ve outdone my own foolishly naive overachieving goals to a moronic degree. To the Happy Country: 2967 words “The Empty Slough”: 3206 words (to finish the draft with with a total of 5346 words) Weekly Total: 17576 words Write-a-Thon Total: 48421 words I’m not sure I’d feel right banking words, though if I, were, I think …
Non-Write-a-Thon stuff…
Lately, my updates have all been write-a-thon related, so here’s something on a different tack altogether. I booked my tickets to Japan (but not to Russia — I’m considering using the trans-Siberian railway next summer instead, and seeing Vladivostok at that time instead, though I may take a brief jaunt up to Sakhalin Island from Hokkaido, if I can get the visa easily and things look doable. There’s a ferry, at least…). So instead of Far-Eastern Russia and Japan this summer, I’m going to do a little more time in Japan and spend the remainder probably here in Bucheon, reading, …
Walking
Went for a two-hour walk on the evening of the 4th with Lime, and a 1-hour walk on the evening of the 5th. We discovered a lovely little countryside-looking area right by the University — lots of stuff growing in fields, frog orchestras croaking like mad, trees all around. This is a good hint why the area is a lot cooler than usual. Anyway, LONG walks. We’ll be hitting the gym again soon, though.