Marie Brennan's Blog, page 245

medical/law enforcement questions

Do psychiatric facilities generally fingerprint their patients?

If cops were to get hold of bloodstained clothing, how long would it take to run an analysis on the blood? And what information would that give? How about analyzing non-visible blood residue on a knife?

(I'm trying to clear some written-but-not-revised stories out of here.)

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. (Or in my case, sweep the floor.)

There is a story.

It started out as a fanficcy little speculation on somebody else's world, and at that stage it lived only in my head. One day the seed attached itself instead to another idea, this one mine, and having done so, it grew.

I tried many times to write it as a short story. Seven times, according to my files, and of those, only attempt #5 was ever completed. But I knew it sucked, and that's why attempts #6 and #7 happened -- continual attempts to cram the narrative into the confines of a short story. Until one day I said, screw this; let's see how long it wants to be. Whereupon I wrote a twenty-two thousand word novella.

That being a useless length for a young writer with no publishing credits, the novella went into the drawer. Later I brought it out for critique, thinking I might try to sell it after all, but I never got around to revising it. My odds of selling it were too low, and I had this subconscious feeling the story needed more than just a polish. So back into the drawer it went.

Until I found myself with a reason to pick it up again, and a chance of maybe selling it, too. More than seven years after writing the novella, I brought it out for critique again, this time with the knowledge that I would probably do a ground-up rewrite: after all, one hopes I had improved in the intervening years. I knew I wanted to make substantial changes, but what I didn't know -- not consciously, not until one of my readers pointed it out -- was that the story had a fundamental flaw at its core. One that made most of the narrative action pointless and unnecessary. The kind of flaw you have to fix, or dump the story.

Tonight, while sweeping the dojo after karate, I figured out how to fix that flaw. And given the story, that was a very appropriate time for such an epiphany.

No, you don't get to know what the story is. Not yet. But I promise you'll know within the next six months, whatever the tale's ultimate fate will be.

Oof.

Got home last night from my family reunion the World Fantasy Convention, which was its usual splendid self. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's gotten better over time: a lot of people are con regulars, which means that it's easy to build up a community of people you know and look forward to seeing each year. Also, I've gotten less stressed about being there; I used to worry about the moments where I seemed out of gear, not able to engage with people the way I wanted to, Squandering my Valuable Time There -- but these days I just chill out, and lo, the issue resolves itself. Trusting that makes the whole thing a lot easier.

This one was especially good because it featured a lot of meeting up with people I know online, but have never really hung out with in person. time_shark , saladinahmed -- heck, I even met jimhines for realz! Not to mention many other wonderful folks I didn't know well at all, but had great conversations with nonetheless. Also, the location meant a bunch of my B-ton friends were able to come, whether from Indiana or the places they've scattered to since, and seeing them was especially nice.

And now my voice sounds like somebody raked it over a cheese-grater, because that's what WFC is to me: the place I go to talk all weekend long, often over the roar of several hundred other people doing the same thing. Then I come home exhausted and halfway to mute and happy.

It's my family reunion. Complete with hugs and drunkenness and the occasional bits of Personal Drama, and then we all scatter to the four winds until next year. Which in this case will be San Diego; I'm thinking of driving down. It would be a ten-hour drive by the coastal route, but if I can get a co-driver it might be worth it. Heck, I might even take an extra day, stop for the night somewhere along Highway 1, make a bit of a vacation out of it. We'll see.

Spending October at home is for the birds!

Tonight I leave on my third trip of the month, this one to World Fantasy. The weird thing is, it's the first time this month I'll be flying on my own dime; the first trip was my GoH gig at Sirens, and the second . . . last weekend, my publisher sent me here:

About a stone's throw from the Kodak Theatre, no less. But it isn't nearly as exciting as you think.

I was not there to meet with a high-powered Hollywood producer about how they want to pay me lots of money to film one of my books. I was there, instead, for the Southern California Independent Booksellers' Association annual meeting. This is an industry event that brings writers in to schmooze over dinner with staff from local independent bookstores. I'd never done one before, so it was interesting; the authors got fed beforehand, so we wouldn't have to choose between talking and eating (or end up talking with our mouths full), and then during everybody else's meal we got shuttled from table to table, chatting up the people there.

Serendipity was my friend at this event. Not on the travel side -- two-hour flight delay on the way there, three-hour on the way back, for a flight that's a little more than an hour long -- but with the new friends I made. I got to the hotel just in time to fling myself into nicer clothing and run downstairs, whereupon I got my registration and stood trying to catch my breath, wondering if I would have anything other than the basics in common with the other writers there. (They come from all corners of publishing, nonfiction as well as fiction, children's picture books to adult.) But lo, I was not standing a full minute before I heard the phrase "historical fiction" come from two women nearby.

I drifted closer.

Then I heard Newton's name.

I drifted closer still.

Ended up with two new friends. One was a writer of historical fiction, Laurel Corona, who's bopped all around the timeline even more than I have; her most recent book, Penelope's Daughter, is set in Homeric Greece, and her next involves an eighteenth-century mathematician, Émilie du Châtelet. The other, Deborah Harkness, is (if memory serves) a professor of history whose debut novel A Discovery of Witches will be coming out soon; it's about a researcher at the Bodleian Library who comes across an alchemical manuscript that gets her into all sorts of trouble. Oh, and Deborah's a giant Tudor geek, too.

Nah, we didn't have anything to talk about.

Best part was, Deborah was at my third table, and so were two women currently reading her novel and loving it. And the table host was a big SF/F fan. So I spent the dessert course geeking about alchemy and how Newton was a complete jackass. Friends, this is what we call success.

Anyway, that was my Hollywood adventure. Now I go off to the much colder environs of Columbus, Ohio. Send me warm thoughts . . . .

I suppose I should post a World Fantasy schedule.

I'm going to be a busy little swan this WFC. I've only got one official event:

The West Doesn't Exist, 4 p.m. Thursday
For all the world is round and most educated people in antiquity knew this -- Why is it that in so many fantasies, there are places on the map that you just can not go?

But I'm also part of a thirty-author group event at the OSU campus bookstore from 11-1 on Saturday, signing and doing a giveaway. Furthermore, akashiver is reading, and therinth is reading, and jimhines is reading, and and there's a giant mass Black Gate reading Saturday night, and I'm supposed to have dinner with my editor in there somewhere, and gahhhhh I can already tell I'm going to be running all weekend. (For values of "running" that translate to "sitting or standing around having fabulous conversations and then realizing I need to be somewhere else and crap how did I get through the whole weekend without ever finding the time to hang out with <insert various awesome people here>?"

So yeah: look for the braid, come up and say hi. Especially if you're somebody I don't see very often. (Or have never actually met in person -- jimhines , I'm looking at you.)

five things I want

1) I want to write a secondary-world fantasy, where I can Make Shit Up rather than having to bend myself around reality.

2) I want to write short stories again.

3) I want to move forward on some piece of the logjam of ideas building up in my mind.

4) I want to know what I'm doing next.

5) I really, really want to be done with this revision, so I can get on with my life.

the slow creep upward

Just noticed that as of last night's revision, With Fate Conspire is officially the longest Onyx Court novel. (144K and counting.)

I'm hoping the damn thing doesn't hit 150K before I'm done, but given the big honking change I'm thinking of putting in, I wouldn't bet the farm on that.

China Mieville is not your Facebook friend

When we say "identity theft," we usually mean something having to do with credit cards and the like. But at least when that happens, you can notify the various powers that be, and they'll do something about it.

Not so with Facebook. China Miéville has notified them several times of at least one person (possibly more) impersonating him on Facebook, and so far has gotten jack in the way of reply. Are his life savings being wiped out by this? No, of course not. But if you think this couldn't hurt him, think again. As a writer, he's a public figure, albeit a minor one; his ability to work depends partly upon his reputation. If the impersonator wanted to, they could tarnish that reputation, by sending messages or joining groups or otherwise doing things that would reflect badly on him. Even if they don't, they are in a fashion acting in his name, without his permission. Which is not something anybody should be allowed to do.

But Facebook doesn't care. As Deanna reports, their old system was that you had to be a Facebook user in the first place to complain about somebody impersonating you on the service; at least they've made the small step of changing that. But in general, their policy is still abysmal. No system of verification; no grievance process worth the name. Your ex could create a profile, pretend to be you, "like" a bunch of groups that make you look like a terrible person, and then when you apply for a job your prospective employer finds that profile and decides they don't want to hire somebody who's a fan of "Immigrants Go Home." And there won't be a damn thing you can do about it.

How obvious does Facebook have to make it that they don't give a shit about anybody -- their users included -- before people will stop using the service?

I canceled my account a while ago, when they went one round too many of "we're going to share info you thought was private! And you have to jump through hoops to stop us!" I tried not to proselytize too much back then, because I don't want to piss off people who are content to keep their Facebook accounts, but Jesus H. The flash games just aren't worth it, especially when the company is mining data about you and selling it to advertisers. As for getting in touch with old friends . . . there are other ways to be findable online. Seeing random updates about how somebody I haven't seen since graduation didn't get enough sleep last night is, again, not worth it to me. There are other ways to get in touch if you want to have a real conversation, and the more I see of Facebook's evil, the harder time I have understanding why anybody else should play along.

last one, I promise. (I hope.)

Does silver nitrate have a distinctive smell?

new chemistry question for your noses

How about sulfates? Do they tend to smell of sulfur, or not?

(This is what I get for deciding to put faerie science in my books. I have to figure out how the real science goes, then figure out how the fantasy version goes, then figure out how to describe the fantasy version, based on but maybe not identical to how I'd describe the real version. If I ever do this to myself again, somebody please kick me.)