The Tao of Taos

June 17

Rio Hondo. The stories people brought were almost all wonderful, and the critiques were very good, and I didn't feel hopelessly out of my league (though I was), and I think I gave reasonably intelligent and, I hope, helpful feedback. Most mornings, before crits, I sat in a wrought-iron chair by the river and wrote down my comments. There were thunderstorms on three or four of the afternoons, and I got to see lightning streaking down against a backdrop of mountains. There are almost never thunderstorms here in the Bay Area -- I miss them. I hiked a few times -- a lovely hike that crisscrossed the river several times, a slightly more grueling hike that culminated in a field full of butterflies and moths, and a hike that started at over 10,000 feet and just went up from there. On one hike, Ken Wharton led us into an old mine, which was wonderful; I'm the type of person who is constitutionally incapable of resisting the urge to explore an old mine.

Everyone was wonderful. I got to spend a good bit of time with Michaela, which was lovely. I hung out mostly with Susan Lee (who writes as Susan Fry), Daniel Abraham, Ken Wharton and (to a lesser extent) David Cleary. Maureen McHugh told me that we were collectively referred to as "the kids," as in, "Where are the kids?" "Oh, they went to get some pizza in Taos." We were aware of being the kids, too. It wasn't a sharp divide, but it was... well... an organizing principle, I suppose.

I was the youngest (by a fair margin), but never felt even slightly out of place.

Walter Jon Williams has amazingly good taste in movies. We watched several. I cannot recommend them highly enough -- Mr. Vampire (featuring the priest with one eyebrow!), Crazy Safari (starring the bushman from The Gods Must Be Crazy, in a role that entails being possessed by the spirit of Bruce Lee), and Masseur Ichi on the Road (one of the many, many films about Zato Ichi). Two of those are about Chinese hopping vampires, and one is about a blind swordsman. I have been profoundly influenced.

I read three books while at Rio Hondo -- The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill (very good), An Invisible Sign of my Own by Aimee Bender (very odd, but likable), and Carter Beats the Devil (nice enough, though not as good as I'd expected/hoped; like a blend of Priest's The Prestige and Chabon's Kavalier and Clay).

There you go. Bits of Rio Hondo. Expect more fragments in future entries.

More book news, because that's what the people want, right? Right. At least, it's what I want. The collection will most likely be called Little Gods. The editor doesn't like the "something and other stories" style of collection titles, and given that restriction, I like Little Gods as a title, and hey, it's plural (every story is a little god! Or something pretentious like that). It's a bit like naming my album after my one hit single, but that's not necessarily a bad strategy. I was thinking about titles I love, and I think my favorite is Sturgeon's best-of collection, Caviar. But I'm not lucky enough to have such a resonantly pun-able name...

If the collection were more resolutely downbeat, I'd want to call it Melancholy Shores. That's sort of tempting anyway, but I think it gives the wrong impression...

Michaela Roessner is going to write the introduction. Mikey was one of my Clarion instructors, and I hung out with her a lot at Rio Hondo. She's talented, smart, funny, and altogether wonderful. When I got the call from Heather about the collection, I turned to Mikey and said "I'm going to have a collection! I'll need someone to write an introduction." She said "Would you like me to do it?" I said "I'd love that!" And so it shall be, barring the unforeseen. (Maybe I should call my collection Barring the Unforeseen.)

The book will come out in both hardcover and trade paperback. The date is a bit more nailed-down now, too -- early 2004, rather than late 2003.

I'm still figuring out the table of contents. And that's the news on the book!

Major congratulations to Greg and Mike for selling their collaboration to Asimov's! Having collaborated with Mike myself, I know what a pleasure it is -- he has a talent for taking things well beyond the limits of the obvious. And I look forward to collaborating with Greg (on something other than a surreal story about weather written one alternating word at a time, that is). From the excerpt on Mike's site, it sounds very much like my kind of story. I look forward to reading it very much.

I wrote a beginning today and sent it to Greg. We've been talking about doing an urban fantasy about weird robots, so we're going to give it a try. It'll be the basket of flaming rodents variety of collaborating, I think -- you toss a basket of flaming rodents to your co-writer, let them juggle it for a while, and then they throw it back.

Further congrats to Karen Meisner, now a fiction editor at Strange Horizons! Speaking of which, I'm told (informally) that my poem "Ammut in Her Later Years" has been accepted by that magazine -- it's another "A Bestiary" poem. Yay!

I'd planned to write more -- I have more to say, certainly -- but I am profoundly tired, so this is all for now.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 67,050

Words written since last entry:
3,250 (since the last entry where I recorded a word count -- I didn't write much at Rio Hondo, actually, just a few pages. I took lots of naps, though.)

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