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Writing

Nifty things

LEGO is making the LEGO Research Institute, and the scientists are women! There will be an astronomer, a paleontologist, and a chemist.

“When you can’t create you can work.” Writing tips from Henry Miller.

“Women in Science Fiction,” as portrayed in letters from the early SF mags, collected by Justine Larbalestier.

Cyborg, redux

This is a good reminder, and just as applicable to writing or any other creative endeavor as it is to game design.

Need some visuals to go with 2kg? Photographer Alex Wild has just the thing, including photos of a fungus mentioned in the story. I told you I didn’t make this stuff up.

I don’t really want to talk about cancer today, but I know that many people who care about me are using this blog to check in so I will give you a brief update. I feel good this week: the cold sensitivity has worn off, my energy levels are good, I shoveled whole piles of fluffy snow (we got 9 inches at my house), and I’ve been sciencing hard. Chemo Monday, but for now life is fine.

And, for the curious, and because I think it’s both kind of neat and very sciency, I’ll include a photo of my mostly-healed cyborg apparatus. The cyborg parts are working well, though my superpowers have failed to materialize (unless you count punning and botanical pedandry, both of which have been more apparent than normal on twitter lately). For the squeamish, I’ll put in some blank space first.

La

La

La

La

La

La

La

La

Ready?

One…

Two…

Three.

port

It sticks out more than I expected, because it’s in a low-fat and low-muscle area, and that style of port is pretty big. I also didn’t expect the tubing to be so prominent. But it works beautifully, and that’s the important bit. Too bad the stylish purple carapace doesn’t show. Up close, there are three little bumps apparent that help the nurse figure out where to put the needle. It hurts less than getting an IV, and is a whole lot less inconvenient than having all those bits dangling from your arm.

2013 fictional accounting

I could have sworn I submitted more stories in 2013 than ever before, but I’d be wrong.

Here’s the real tally.

Lifetime: 13 stories finished to an acceptable standard, 35 submissions; 5 sales, 3 on their first submission, others at #5 and #8.

2009 – 1, 1 new story
2010 – 4, 3 new stories, 2 sales
2011 – 6, 3 new stories
2012 – 13, 2 new stories, 2 sales
2013 – 11, 4 new stories, 1 sale (in 2014)

I have one story still out.

Interesting factoid: I only sell stories in even-numbered years.

BANG

BANG.

The crash was followed by the tinkling of broken glass on cement. Woody looked up from his midnight snack of pseudo-wine and formerly-cheese-like-substance and groaned. “Again? Really? That’s the third velociraptor this week.” Nobody was there to listen, he just liked to hear himself talk. Buzz wouldn’t be back from the future until next week sometime. Help with the velociraptors would have been nice, but Woody didn’t miss Buzz incessantly complaining about the food. It wasn’t Woody’s fault that shipping stuff through time made it taste funny. The special insulated capsules they used for people were far too expensive to use for food, except on special occasions: the birthday bar of chocolate, the New Year’s champagne and real cheese. Woody had tried shipping in a bar of chocolate by regular container. The smell of the orange slime had instantly convinced him to wait until his birthday in August.

Woody washed down the fluorescent green cheese with a last sip of perfectly clear wine. It still tasted like a merlot, but the alcohol had gone the way of the color. The cheddar? He actually liked the transported cheese better than the original, but only if he didn’t look at it. He was sure he’d seen it wiggle once, even if the boffins said that was impossible. Living things could only travel in the insulated capsules.

He put his empty plate and glass in the sink, then grabbed the spade that was standing by the door. Woody peered through the heavily-reinforced glass set into the heavily-reinforced door. Finishing his snack should have given the automatic systems enough time to take care of the velociraptor. Lately the defense systems had been leaving bits of the carcass behind, thus the spade. Buzz had utterly ruined a broom once; a spade worked a whole lot better, especially if you hosed everything down after.

He couldn’t see anything moving, and it was definitely time to clean the other side of the door. The glass was awfully foggy. Woody wished again that the garage had been as well-reinforced as the main living quarters. He was so tired of chasing critters out of it, or worse, shoveling them. Not that he wanted to chase velociraptors. They were only about fifteen kilos, but they were insanely fast, and those teeth were sharp. One of the first guys out had brought his dog. Woody had seen the video. The company had fought awful hard to keep it off YouTube, but if you knew what to look for you could find it. He thought it should be part of the official training, but the company disagreed.

Yep, there was the carcass, cut into several pieces and with that stupid tail sticking up. Woody unbolted the door and cracked it open. It had sounded like this one took out one of the windows, and something else could have come in. Not much that would fit through the window would follow a velociraptor, but so many things would come to the blood.

No sound, no movement. Looked like none of the little scavengers had snuck in yet, or any of the bigger ones either. Woody needed to get that broken window blocked off. What dimwit at the company though the garage needed windows, rather than reinforced steel? They were just about all covered anyway; maybe soon he’d be free of midnight velociraptors.

He traded the spade for a sheet of plywood. Getting the outside sealed out was more urgent than getting rid of the carcass. Woody got the window covered quickly, plenty of recent practice. He’d add some more screws in the morning, but that should do for now. It wasn’t going to stop anything determined, but should keep out the riff-raff. He’d have to request some steel sheet during the weekly conference call with the company, enough to cover all the windows.

Woody pitched the last spadeful of velociraptor out the door and sealed it. He’d hose down the floor and walls in the morning, along with the spade. He leaned it up against the wall by the slop sink, and only then noticed that his rosebush was missing. Not the pot, the improvised container and all its soil sat tucked behind the sink where it always had, out of the way so nobody would notice it, but near enough to the door that he could slide it outside for a sunbath when nobody was around. But all the greenery was missing, stems and all.

Woody bent slowly to retrieve a petal fragment from the floor. That bud never even had time to bloom. It would have been the first ever rose, the first flowering plant for that matter. He had smuggled a slip inside his pants, the thorns digging into his inner thigh for the whole interminable trip. Buzz knew, had gently touched the puncture wounds one evening before Woody switched off the light, but he’d never mentioned the plant itself. He did distract the company inspector once, though, drawing his attention to something on the other side of the garage when the inspector was looking too closely at everything.

The velociraptor must have eaten it. Right? Those sharp little teeth could chomp off a rose stem. Right? Surely nothing else came in tonight, nothing following the velociraptor, or leading it, nothing that would eat a rosebush, or drag it off outside, or introduce alien plants into a world they’d never evolved in?

Right?

Those were just stories, right?


It’s been a long time since I did a speed flash story. The game: I solicit ideas on twitter, then have an hour to write a short story that incorporates all of them. Sometimes it works remarkably well, sometimes (as today), it falls rather short. But it’s always fun.

Today’s prompts:

@evilrooster – a missing rose
@thc1972 – Woody and Buzz slash
@mishellbaker – a bump in the night
@marjorie73 – cheese, and a spade

I like the setting, but the story really needs to be longer than I had time for.

Miscellany

The tabs, they have been accumulating.

Very nice article on the Voynich Manuscript. I’m one of those quarrelsome list participants, despite being neither male nor over 50.

Adopt a Landsat Pixel: a citizen science opportunity, and a neat one. Take a set of photographs of a place. If possible, go back once a week for 6-8 weeks. Voila! You’ve supported a major scientific effort!

My media consumption is indeed insufficiently voracious. So. Many. Nifty. Things.

Stew in fantasy fiction has a long and troubled history. Stew is not road food. Stew is tavern food, especially cheap taverns. But what kind of stew? There are a lot of resources on medieval cooking now available, online and off. Referring to them can really spice up your worldbuilding.

Men, women, academia, having kids. I’m childless, but this still makes me so angry.

Medieval maps, with illustrations and info about a new book by P. D. A. Harvey, Medieval Maps of the Holy Land. (Related to my first link? Good question! When you figure it out get back to me.)

Finally, two neat Kickstarter campaigns: Grace from Outer Space, a science picture book for kids, and a neat project to encourage backyard gardeners.

And now, time to rush home before the rain. Speculating on whether my basement will flood for the third time in less than two weeks…

Also yes, still centered. I poked at the CSS to no avail. Someday I will figure it out, or switch themes, or something.

Latest adventure

The first story in a planned seriesx about Maggie Reichert, field agent for the Department of Supernatural Resources, and her friends was originally published in Nine: A Journal of Imaginative Fiction, but that magazine promptly folded, leaving Horn unavailable.

I thought I’d use it to experiment with self-publishing. I have the rights to the story, so why not? I’d like to have the skillset to do this, and how better to learn than by doing? (My motto, I suppose.)

Horn cover

Horn is now available through Amazon and soon Barnes & Noble.

Dan provided this apropos cartoon.


I’d hoped to have this up on Monday, to celebrate the third anniversary of my first fiction publication on my fortieth birthday, but the flooded basement adventure interfered with the timing of the self-publishing adventure, so it’s a Friday treat instead of a birthday/publication day treat.

(If you’re reading this at sarahgoslee.com, yes I know everything is centered, and no I don’t know why. Something is broken somewhere…)

How I spent my summer vacation

I took this week off work so I could write. I have a stack of unfinished stories, and a nonfiction book proposal to work on. Work has been eating my brain, so I’m not making much progress in the evenings, and weekends have been busy.

The best-laid plans of writers can be trumped by water flowing through the yard…

2013-06-27 17.21.04

…past the front door…

2013-06-27 17.20.53

…and into the basement.

2013-06-27 17.29.39

That was Thursday.

My vacation has been entirely devoted to moving damp things out of the basement, scrubbing up mud, buckets of bleach, and a whole lot of soggy. It’s under control now: the house isn’t going to rot out from under me. There are only a couple of nooks left to deal with. Which is good, because I utterly couldn’t face it today. My back is sore from moving all the things (Nick’s shop: many containers of heavy metal items) and scrubbing everything left over. There are still streaks of silt on the floors, but overall the basement is cleaner and better-smelling than before it flooded.

Doesn’t do much for the writing, though.

I spent today working on other stuff: catching up on neglected email and volunteer duties, back-ups, etc. And loading photos onto the computer so I could blog things. Not the most exciting day, but it didn’t involve a single drop of bleach, so I’m content.

The nature of the beast

Writing fiction is an odd activity: I’m very happy about a rejection letter I received today.

Yup, rejection. Why? Because it’s a good rejection!

This is what appeared in my inbox:

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for letting me see “[Story X].” The story is intriguing, but I’m afraid it’s not quite right for me. I look forward to your next one, though.

Sincerely,

Sheila Williams, editor
Asimov’s Science Fiction

That? Is not the standard Asimov’s form letter. I know this, because the standard rejection looks like this, and is very upfront about being a form letter (which I appreciate):

Dear Sarah,

Thank you very much for letting us see “[Story Y].” We appreciate your taking the time to send it in for our consideration. Although it does not suit the needs of the magazine at this time, we wish you luck with placing it elsewhere.

Please excuse this form letter. The volume of work has unfortunately made it impossible for us to respond to each submission individually, much as we’d like to do so.

Sincerely,

Sheila Williams, Editor
Asimov’s Science Fiction

Which means I’m improving. A personalized rejection. From Asimov’s. Asking for more stories!

Things to do: Send [Story X] somewhere else, since it appears to not suck.
Write more stories, better than [Story X], and send them to Asimov’s and elsewhere.
Celebrate my rejection. (Told you writing was a strange business.)

(Incidentally, I did sell [Story Y] eventually.)

Progress

I have four stories out right now, one of them brand-new. That’s a personal record. One is a story I feel strongly about, one is a story Nick feels strongly about, one is perfect for the venue I sent it to (in my admittedly biased opinion), one I’m not sure about but Nick likes. Submitting is the part I can control; publication is out of my hands.

Let the rejections begin!

If only I had four journal articles out right now… those take inordinately more time, but pay a whole lot better. (Salary, that is, nothing for the article itself, and often quite a lot of money in page charges. Academic publishing is almost entirely unlike fiction publishing.)

Edit: Yep, I now have three stories out. Nice rejection letter, though. (Enjoyed it, but can’t use it; please send more.)

Edit: Back up to four stories out, subtitled, or what’s a late lunch break for?

Monday bouquet

A collection of things for you:

Ada Lovelace Day was weeks ago. Um. Here, have a nice article on Rachel Carson from the NY Times.

Some advice on writing from David Brin.

Need something to read? Complete collection of OMNI magazine available online. Free.

Not new, but an article by Jo Walton on reading SF that is relevant to my interests, and quite possibly yours.