Frank and Sincere Talk About Goats

I'm in a good mood. I had a great day. We've started moving into the new Design Center, so I spent all day organizing the office space, in among eating pizza, eating peanut-butter-fudge, eating brownies, and eating bits of milk chocolate.

My co-workers are a generous people.

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Go read Mike Jasper's story "Crossing the Camp" at Strange Horizons. It's an excellent story, full of compelling moral ambiguities. Some of Mike's stuff reminds me of Tim Powers-- Mike's attention to detail is wonderful. He has a gift for setting scenes, including rich details that bring his settings to life. My stories often take place almost in a vacuum, and I always have to go back and add setting details, render what my eye sees, and I tend to do so somewhat clumsily, missing opportunities for enriching theme and character through the use of setting. Mike takes advantage of those opportunities.

Mike's got mad skills.

I'm going to meet Mike on Thursday, if all goes as planned. He's coming to San Francisco for work and driving down to Santa Cruz on Thursday night. I'll take him for some good food and we'll talk.

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I've been reading short stories tonight from the 1996 Year's Best Science Fiction, which I picked up in a used bookstore some time back. Great stuff here--Paul Park's "The Last Homosexual," Ian McDonald's "Recording Angel," and Blaylock's "Thirteen Phantasms." I've got lots more stories to read in there. I'm in a short-fiction mood, which is interesting-- lately I've hungered mostly for novels. I just finished Declare, which is a book unlikely to be bested in my esteem for a while, so maybe it's best I stick to short fiction for a bit. I want to read Powers's short-story collection Night Moves, too... I should order it.

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I bought two CD's tonight: The Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse, and In The Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel.

I am emo. Fear my sad hipness.

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Columbine's last entry addresses something I think a lot about in my writing of fantasy fiction-- what Columbine calls the "White Queen Threshold", what I've always thought of as the "Blot of Bad Mustard Factor"-- how much disbelief does a character faced with extraordinary situations have express before they can just get on with the plot? Scrooge gets over it pretty quickly, after his token protestation that Marley's ghost is just the result of "a blot of bad mustard, a bit of undigested potato." Some characters take a lot longer, and when I read those scenes-- which usually go something like "I must be dreaming" or "I must be going crazy" or "Either the world's gone mad, or I have"-- I always think: "Okay, okay, there are only two possible outcomes-- either the pressure of this experience will make you go totally nuts, or you'll accept its reality (if only provisionally) and get on with the action. So pick one!"

My writing has been criticized in the past (with some justification-- hell, significant justification) because my characters sometimes fail to react, or to react in a manner concomitant with the magnitude of what they're experiencing.

Part of that's failure on my part. Part or it's my impatience with the Blot of Bad Mustard Factor. Maybe it is more realistic for characters to agonize a lot over the reality of things they experience, I don't know-- certainly if they're only catching fleeting glimpses, or if they're in situations where there are many possible explanations, I don't mind them being unsure. But when the demon appears before you in the pentacle, or the djinn comes streaming from the cracked clay pot, or the angel swings his fiery sword, or the woman says "Burn" and a Cadillac bursts into flame-- I don't really think I'd stand there going "This must be a dream" or "Wow, that burrito I had for lunch is really f***ing with my head." I'd probably shriek and run away, but I wouldn't stand there gnawing my lip and wondering about the correctness of my perception. I trust my senses. I have no choice-- they're the only means I have of interacting with the world. Sometimes people are betrayed by their senses, and they are insane-- that may happen to me someday, who knows?

It occurs to me that I avoid this problem a lot in my fiction. My characters are often children, who are, in general, more open to accepting the bizarre and extraordinary. Or they're sorcerers or Seers or mystic shop-owners who've all dealt with their disbelief ages ago.

When I do have ordinary characters faced with things beyond the range of their experiences and expectations, I try to write them realistically, according to their personalities, taking it on a case-by-case basis. I don't know how well I succeed.

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Me and Meg have been chatting online for the past couple of days, to spare us the cost of long-distance phone calls. An excerpt from tonight's discussion follows:

Tim: Why aren't you in bed? It's past your bed time.

Meg: I should be in bed. I was just waiting for a lull to tell you I need to go to bed. I have to get up in 5 1/2 hours.

Meg: There has been no lull in the insults as yet

Tim: Meglet is tired

Tim: she should go to sleep soon or

Meg: Meglet is sleepy

Meg: or what?

Tim: she will be a goat.

Meg: Yes, dear, that's right.

Tim: That was a haiku. Haiku are supposed to be about nature, hence that part about the goat.

Tim: Goats are nature.

Meg: Goats are nature, you're on crack, and I'm going to bed.

Tim: That's some funny shit, what I just wrote there. I'm laughing so hard I'm crying.

Meg: You dork

Tim: "Goats are nature." That's classic.

Tim: "She will be a goat." I rule.

Meg: Suddenly I'm craving feta cheese

Tim: Aren't you glad you aren't talking to me on the phone? I'd be all "hee hee hee" in your ear in that annoying way I have.

Tim: Mmm. Feta cheese.

Tim: Go to bed, sleepy goat.

Meg: OK Crack head

Tim: I think I'll put that funny shit I wrote in Tropism tonight.