Missing Cousin, Other Things

Setember 4

So, the important, dreadful thing: My cousin Rachel is missing. She's 14, and she ran away from a treatment center in Missouri. Her mom received a letter from her last week, so we know she was okay then (well, "okay" being a relative term that means "not dead or incapacitated"; there's a wealth of ways in which this kid is not actually "okay"). I don't know if I have any readers in Missouri, and even if I do, I know it's unlikely that they've seen her... but follow the link, check out the picture, and if you have any information, contact the authorities listed.

This is a bummer. I haven't seen Rachel in a few years... I'd like to see her again, you know? She's a messed-up kid, but I don't want her to get any more messed up. I worry. My whole family worries.

So, other things... I didn't have quite the writing-fest that I'd wanted to this weekend. It wasn't a wash, though-- I wrote about 10,000 words, altogether, and the Rangergirl total stands at 17,000 words. Not too shabby, huh? Only about 80,000 more words to go. Many of them simple words like "the" and "of" and "gunshot." No problem!

More important than word-count is the psychological aspect; the log-jam is busted. I have good momentum on this book, now. It's a living, breathing, strutting bad-ass of a book. It gets cooler with every page.

The time spent not writing over this long weekend was spent in a variety of other pleasant ways... I read Jonathan Carroll's Outside the Dog Museum, which I liked quite a bit-- his books always make me think, even when they infuriate me. I also started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (borrowed from the lovely Susan Marie, as part of our great Two Household Book Exchangearama). Currently tandem-reading Jim Monroe's Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask. Oh, and I recently finished Powers's first novel, Forsake the Sky/neé The Skies Discrowned. Pretty good. Especially when I consider that Powers got it published when he was 23 years old. My authorial/biological clock is ticking, yo...

I had a couple of fabulous breakfasts with Heather, and we watched good stuff on television, and we cooked together... we watched Tombstone, and then I read to her from one of my history books about the real Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. I've always been fascinated by the differences between legend and historical fact... that's one of the things that comes up in Rangergirl-- there's a scene later in which Marzi and Lindsay and Jonathan watch Tombstone (one of Marzi's favorite flicks) and argue about the importance of legends, about whether something has to be "factual" in order to be "usefully true."

(See, I know exactly how that scene goes, and if I were M'ris I'd go ahead and write it now, actual placement in the book be damned-- but I'm no non-chronological anarchist of linearity! Oh no! Straight-through the book, that's the path for me!)

Timprov sent me this link. Just go. Play it. It cannot be described. It must be experienced.

Once more, I'm a bridesmaid at ChiZine (I will not link to them! They get a link when they buy one of my stories! Though you could always get there from my links page, I suppose). Out of 250 submissions, mine was in the top ten, but they could only buy four, and so on. Sigh. In some ways, coming close is worse than getting flat-out rejected; it stings.

But then again, in other, important ways, coming close is a hell of a lot better. I don't lack all perspective, here.

Work is good good good. A Certain Magazine won another Hugo this year for best semi-prozine (and if that doesn't reveal, at long last, the true name of my workplace, well, I don't know what more I can do, without being totally open, which would lead to search engines stumbling onto these pages when hapless souls search on the name of A Certain Magazine, and we don't want that, so). I took the picture of the staff and the award, which will run in the next issue, though I'm not in the picture-- reasonably enough, as I had el zilcho to do with production of the magazine last year. Next year, though, if we get the Hugo again, you'll see my smiling face... assuming you're subscribed to the magazine, or buy it off of newstands, which really you should do, if you're at all involved in sf. I mean, your subscriptions, they pay for my feta cheese omelettes, you know? They pay for my vanilla lattés and my shampoo and my pants.

And on that mercenary note, I bid you adieu.