Amazing Adventures in Writing

October 2

Hello, lovelies!

Yesterday evening Timprov came up to see me, hurray. We haven't hung out together much at all lately, so it was good to have coffee and bitch about writing and the publishing business and muse over (theoretical) oddities like geriatric nudist poets.

And, on a related note, Speculon is up, with poems by dear Mary Anne, and sweet Heather, and Erin Donahoe (who is becoming one of my favorite poets), and the ever-fascinating Seanan McGuire, and the accomplished (and super-nice) Marge Simon. Also fiction by my old friend Scott Nicholson, and by people I don't know. Go and read and tell me what you think of the poetry.

(If you're coming into our program in the middle, I'm poetry editor at Speculon, autocratic whim-haver and verse-purchaser. I'm happy with this issue's selection)

So, there's some good stuff for you to read, so go read it.

After you read my entry.

*******

I'm still (slowly) reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and it is just really damned good. Reading it reminds me of how very far I have to go as a writer.

But thinking about that doesn't depress me. Oh my, no. It excites me.

I've got a long way to go, and it's gonna be a fun trip.

*******

I planned to write a review last night, but I didn't. All I managed to get done was writing a (solicited) blurb for a small-press horror novel (that I liked very much), and about 250 words of a new story that I think will be quite lovely, about psychopomps and kindness to animals and unusual things being haunted. It's a Marla Mason story, for those of you who follow along with my few series characters (there's Marla and Mr. Li and, um, I guess technically Madisen & Samaelle, and Sarah Davé. Wow. That sounds like a lot. Of course, if I have two stories with the same protagonists, I call them "series" characters-- the designation truly only applies to Marla and Mr. Li, about whom I expect to be writing for some time). It's fun, and I'm going to work on it a bit more tonight. It's fun to be in the middle of a short story-- something where the end is in sight. As opposed to the long-view that is necessary when I work on Rangergirl (which I'm working on, though I'm not talking about it too much here; it's coming along nicely).

So, it's all writerly and good around here, tra la.

*******

Allow me to rhapsodize about my job: I go to work in the morning. I spend a couple of hours doing layout stuff, which I love. I scan some pictures, reading a Ted Chiang story while the humming and buzzing of the scanner is going on. In the afternoon, I drive my boss around-- my boss, who's a famous science-fiction type guy and all-around font of fascinating knowledge. About once a week, I go with my boss to some really nice restaurant (he knows all the really nice restaurants) and we have lunch. I get to talk to publishing-types. I get to look at all the even remotely SF books that come out.

I love my job.

End rhapsody.

*******

I have so much work to do. It's fun work, but there's a lot of it.

May this be a trend in my life. May my biggest problem be all the good fun work I have to do.