Theodora Goss's Blog, page 58

Sunday at Wiscon

I'm so tired!

I'm home from Wiscon. I woke up at 3:00 this morning for a 6:00 a.m. flight. And of course I had parties to go to last night, so I got only about two hours of sleep. As soon as I came home, I went to bed. Now I'm sitting here listening to S.J. Tucker's Blessings, about which more later. And catching up on this blog.

On Saturday night, I went to the Fairyland party. Here are some pictures from before the party itself, when we were setting up, and when people first started coming into the room.

Once the party began, the room was absolutely packed. What do you expect, when S.J. Tucker and her friends are singing? The party ended with Seanan McGuire singing "Wicked Girls," which as you know is my personal anthem.

I'm happy to report that both of the dresses I brought did get worn. See? (Yes, these are photos in the bathroom on the first floor. I find my full-length mirrors where I can.)

Notice that with the second dress I wore flats (sacrilege!). That's because on Saturday, I injured my foot. No, I didn't kick anyone. Somehow, I pulled the muscle right behind the ball of the foot, the one that you use as a dancer to go up on your toes. (At least, I always feel it there in dance class.) By Sunday, I was limping. So this picture isn't entirely accurate. In the evening, I actually walked around with one shoe on, carrying the other in my hand. And I spent as much time as I could with my foot on one of these:

After my relaxing Saturday, Sunday was very, very busy. In the morning, I had a reading with Haddayr Copley-Woods, Mary Rickert, Marguerite Reed, and Kat Beyer. I was surprised at how many people turned out that early. It was a very good reading and gave me another chance to read from "Pug," which is currently out in Asimov's.

That afternoon, I had three panels back to back. The first was a panel on anthologies moderated by Sharyn November. Advice to new convention goers: if Sharyn November is on a panel, go! I learned so much simply from being on that panel and hearing her speak. My second panel was on how being able to access research so quickly has affected writing, which was quite interesting. It turns out that I'm not the only one who writes with the internet available, so I can go over and quickly research what the characters would be eating for lunch at a pub in Cornwall. But we also talked about the need for more extensive research, when you're writing a novel and you need to establish a firm understanding of the world your characters are going to be moving around in. The final panel was on "indigenous" American fantasy, and I was the moderator. We talked about what indigenous means, why Native American mythical and religious figures and themes don't appear more often in fantasy, that sort of thing. It was one of the most interesting panels I think I've ever moderated. And if you ever have a chance to moderate a panel with Andrea Hairston, know that it's going to be easy: she always has such terrific points to make. It's good when a panelist has strong opinions but is also thoroughly informed. That's the best kind of panelist, I think.

Then I got ready for what I always think of as the banquet but is actually the Tiptree Ceremony and desert salon. That's where I wore the burgundy velvet dress. And then, there were the parties.

So now you know what I did at Wiscon. Two more things, though.

First, I bought the most beautiful painting, by the artist Ingrid Kallicki. It's called The Green Man's Final Hours.  I saw it in the art show and knew I had to have it.

I wish I could have gotten a better photograph of it. It's absolutely beautiful, acrylic and oil on top of a graphic print, I believe. I actually ran into the artist, in the same bathroom in which I took the pictures of my dresses, of all places. I would have liked to talk to her more, but I was between panels, rushing. That's the one thing I splurge on at conventions: art.

I also bought one other thing: the CD Blessings, by S.J. Tucker, which has one of my favorite songs on it: "Witch's Rune." Here it is. If you like this blog, I think you would like this song.

That's my Wiscon report. And that's all I can write at the moment. I'm back, but quite sick, and need to go lie down again. So I can get some rest.

One final thought. Catherynne Valente and I were talking about blogging, about what our blogs provided, what made them appeal to readers. She said that what her blog provided was sincerity, which I think is absolutely right and an important insight to have. Cat's blog is always absolutely sincere. That started me wondering: what does my blog provide? I'm not entirely sure, but I hope it provides at least a bit of enchantment. You can come here to see or learn about something beautiful, like Ingrid Kallicki's paintings or S.J. Tucker's music. And then, you can incorporate those things in your own lives.

Saturday at Wiscon

On the way to Wiscon, as I was going through airports, there was a game being played on Twitter. It used the tag #lessinterestingbooks and it involved people suggesting book titles. Like the following:

Fatigue in the Afternoon

Jude the Obvious

The Reasonably Bearable Lightness of Being

The Moped Diaries

To Hurt a Mockingbird

Fried Eggs and Ham

Animal Farming

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Commerce

For Whom the Bell Rings

The Welder in the Iron Mask

The Old Man and the Swimming Pool

The Maltese Sparrow

The Once and Future Shift Manager

The Pilgrim's Impasse

A Tale of Two Suburbs

Ten Habits of Fairly Effective People

The Girl With the Temporary Tattoo

Gulliver's Staycations

The Average Gatsby

Lord of the Files

Good Expectations

Peter Hamster

I thought this game was actually very interesting from a writing perspective. In the workshop I led on Friday morning, I commented that a couple of the proposed novel titles were not very interesting. And I wondered what makes for a powerful, interesting title. Of course, what the #lessinterestingbooks titles do is deliberately undercut the power of the originals. But there's a lesson there.

In keep with my theme for this Wiscon, which is not pushing myself too hard, I had a very easy today today. Lunch with Mary Rickert (during which I had my first bento box), then talking with various people. Tonight I will be at the Fairyland party (for The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which by the way is a wonderful book title). It's almost time to get ready, so I'll leave you with one more lesson, if you're a writer. The Fairyland trailer is the best book trailer I've ever seen. If only all of them were this good:

Friday at Wiscon

Last night, I was up late again finishing my critiques for the writing workshops. I finished them around 4:00 a.m., then slept a few hours, got ready, and workshopped. It went well. It always does when you have a group of talented writers and critiquers.

Afterward, I was so tired that I had to rest, so I actually got some sleep. I've never been quite so tired at Wiscon before. I think it's because this has been such a tiring year in general. I haven't had time to recover yet. When I get home, I'm going to spend a couple of days sleeping. After finishing my revisions, I mean.

When I woke up, I went down and walked around the book room, and took a few pictures.

At the Small Beer Press table, I saw David Schwartz and Genevieve Valentine.

And here is Genevieve's book, which just came out.

Genevieve and I got into a fight. Yes, right there among the books.

But then we made up and started to tango.

Afterward, I went to dinner with Catherynne Valente, and Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders from io9. We ate Nepalese. And then, I skipped all the parties. I know, it's Wiscon. But I'm tired, and I've been to enough conventions now to know that when I want to rest and be by myself, I should.

So tonight I'm going to rest.  There are plenty of parties tomorrow.

My Tribe

This is what a writing life looks like.

Last night, I was up until 4:30 a.m., finishing what will probably be a next-to-final round of revisions to the Secret Project. The final round of revisions will probably take place as soon as I get back from Wiscon. I slept for three hours, then got up and packed.

Then I got on a plane, flew to Milwaukee, and then to Madison. And here I am, at Wiscon. By baggage claim, I ran into one of my roommates, Catherynne Valente. My other roommate, Seanan McGuire, will arrive tomorrow.

After we had checked in and brought our bags up to the room, with a larger group of people because that's what happens in the Wiscon lobby, people just grab you and then you end up being part of a group, I took some time to go out by myself, walk along the main street that leads to the capitol building, remember how much I like Madison. And get a bowl of spicy noodles, which I'm eating as I write this.

Here, by the way, is a picture of Traveling Dora. Looking tired but sensible, as though she could handle a train through Siberia or elephants in Indonesia. With the gray shawl that kept her warm on the cold, cold planes.

In the airports and on the planes, I finished reading the stories I need to critique in the writing workshop tomorrow. I still have to write up my comments for the workshop itself. Conventions are fun, but when you're a writer, they're also work. So tonight I'll be staying in, writing up my comments, doing the work I'm supposed to do.

And then I'll be spending tomorrow with my tribe, the tribe of writers and editors and publishers and illustrators. The people who make stories happen. I think of it as a very special tribe. These are the people who will laugh when I post a picture of Cthulhu Pikachu.

Or get this joke with peer reviews, which I will include at the end of this post for those of you who don't like to click links. This one is for the academics, and there's one academic I'd like to share it with in particular, because I know it would make him laugh. If you read this, you know who you are, professor.

Being here makes me think about what I want in my life, now. Love and friendship, first. There are so many people I lost touch with because I was focused on the work. It always came first. But I've missed my tribe, my people. It's time to start reconnecting. Second, writing and creative work. I'm already working on that, already writing stories, essays, poems. But there are so many projects I have planned, so many I want to undertake. And finally, a place where I can make all of these things happen, where there is beauty and comfort and peace. Some of these things might take me a while to find, but I'll get there. I have – not always confidence, but a kind of faith.

All right, here's the joke. Go ahead, laugh at me for thinking this is one of the funniest things I have ever read. Especially the peer reviews.

Q: How many historians does it take to change a light bulb?

A (by Dr. L): There is a great deal of debate on this issue. Up until the mid-20th century, the accepted answer was 'one': and this Whiggish narrative underpinned a number of works that celebrated electrification and the march of progress in light-bulb changing. Beginning in the 1960s, however, social historians increasingly rejected the "Great Man" school and produced revisionist narratives that stressed the contributions of research assistants and custodial staff. This new consensus was challenged, in turn, by women's historians, who criticized the social interpretation for marginalizing women, and who argued that light bulbs are actually changed by department secretaries. Since the 1980s, however, postmodernist scholars have deconstructed what they characterize as a repressive hegemonic discourse of light-bulb changing, with its implicit binary opposition between "light" and "darkness," and its phallogocentric privileging of the bulb over the socket, which they see as colonialist, sexist, and racist. Finally, a new generation of neo-conservative historians have concluded that the light never needed changing in the first place, and have praised political leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for bringing back the old bulb. Clearly, much additional research remains to be done.

– Response by peer reviewers

Dear Dr. L,

We regret that we cannot accept your historian joke in its present form . . . . However, a panel of anonymous reviewers (well, anonymous to YOU, anyway) have reviewed it and made dozens of mutually contradictory suggestions for its . . . improvement. Please consider them carefully, except for the ones made by a man we all consider to be a dangerous crackpot but who is the only one who actually returns comments in a timely fashion.

1. This joke is unnecessarily narrow. Why not consider other sources of light? The sun lights department offices; so too do lights that aren't bulbs (e.g. fluorescents). These are rarely "changed" and never by historians. Consider moving beyond your internalist approach.

2. The joke is funny, but fails to demonstrate familiarity with the most important works on the topic. I would go so far as to say that Leeson's omission is either an unprofessional snub, or reveals troubling lacunae in his basic knowledge of the field. The works in question are Brown (1988), Brown (1992), Brown (1994a), Brown (1994b), Brown and Smith (1999), Brown (2001), Brown et al. (2003), and Brown (2006).

3. Inestimably excellent and scarcely in need of revision. I have only two minor suggestions: instead of a joke, make it a haiku, and instead of light bulbs, make the subject daffodils.

4. This is a promising start, but the joke fails to address important aspects of the topic, like (a) the standard Whig answer of "one," current through the 1950s; (b) the rejection of this "Great Man" approach by the subsequent generation of social historians; (c) the approach favored by women's historians; (d) postmodernism's critique of the light bulb as discursive object which obscured the contributions of subaltern actors, and (e) the neoconservative reaction to the above. When these are included, the joke should work, but it's unacceptable in its present form.

5. I cannot find any serious fault with this joke. Leeson is fully qualified to make it, and has done so carefully and thoroughly. The joke is funny and of comparable quality to jokes found in peer journals. I score it 3/10 and recommend rejection.

I know, I'm a nerd.  But I sat there in the airport, laughing and laughing.

YA Challenge Addendum

I'm so excited that so many of you have expressed interest in joining the YA Novel Challenge!

So, this is how it's going to work for me, but feel free to change and adapt for yourself, however you would like. Because after all, this is supposed to help us, right? And we probably each need to be helped in different ways.

1. The challenge will run June 1st to August 31st.

2. The goal of the challenge is to write or revise a YA novel, or part of a YA novel.

3. To meet that goal, set smaller goals for yourself: words per day, pages revised per week, etc.

4. If you would like, blog about your progress. Remember that failure is as important as success.

5. Anyone can join or leave the challenge at any time. It's always OK to start or stop.

If you plan on blogging about your progress and would like me to link to your blog, sent me the URL you would like me to link to and the name you would like me to use. I'll link to it under YA Novel Challenge (on the sidebar). My email address is tgoss@bu.edu.

I was excited to write a YA novel this summer, but I'm so much more excited now that I'm not doing it alone! I'm looking forward to starting on June 1st.

The rest of this post is going to be about Wiscon, which I'm preparing for tonight, so if you don't want to hear about which dress I'm thinking of packing for the banquet, you can stop reading now.

On to the dress.

There is one banquet, and two possibilities. The first is a long burgundy velvet dress that I bought in a thrift store.  (By long, I mean that it goes down to my ankles.)

The second is a black velvet tunic with a skirt of gray net over tulle. I don't remember where I got the tunic, but it comes with a long black velvet skirt, which is particularly useful on nights when I want to look like a vampire. The gray skirt was from J.Jill, bought years ago because I couldn't resist anything so subtle and beautiful.

I know, neither of these outfits look like anything on the hanger. I chose them because they're warm and comfortable. When you have them on, they drape around your body and look quite different, shaped rather than boxy.  I don't know why, but this particular Wiscon I want whatever I'm wearing to drape around me, almost like a hug.

And then there are the shoes, again two possibilities. First, the shoes in which I can stand for thirty minutes without pain.

Then, the shoes in which I can stand for two hours without pain.

Nevertheless, I will end up wearing whichever pair I choose all night. Both of them go with my favorite evening purse.  (I will probably take the second pair.  Just like the dress, I want my shoes to be comfortable.  Well, relatively.  If it's a party, I want to be wearing heels.  Otherwise, attending a party is like being in a well, since I'm almost a foot shorter than the John Joseph Adams and Gavin Grants of the world.)

And of course there is the jewelry. I probably won't decide on specific pieces until the last minute, but this is the selection I'm probably taking with me.

Sorry, I know that's blurry. I still haven't had time to put together my new camera, so I'll have to take the old to Wiscon. And these particular pictures were just snapped on my phone.  But it includes pearls, marcasites, intaglio, and garnets.

So which outfit should I take? Maybe I'll take both of them. There are going to be a number of parties. I can wear the black velvet tunic with jeans, the gray net skirt with a black t-shirt and ballet flats. I have so much more work to do tonight, and I haven't even started packing. But I'm so looking forward to this!

YA Novel Challenge

This is my two hundredth post! Can you believe it? I'm proud of myself for posting on this blog almost every day, and you know, it's changed my writing in ways I could never have imagined. I write more easily now, more quickly. And I think the quality of my writing is actually higher.

I set myself that challenge last fall, when I began this blog: write a blog post a day. If you look at my statistics from various months, you'll see that there are months when I didn't do that, months in which I couldn't keep up. But for the most part, I did. It feels like an accomplishment. Now I'm setting myself another challenge. In June, July, and August, I have to finalize my dissertation: write the introduction, make final revisions to the three chapters. But I want to do more than that.

I want to write a YA novel.

And I'm not the only one. I've set myself a challenge, and two other people are setting themselves the same challenge: write a YA novel, or at least part of a YA novel, in three months. Those two other people are Nathan Ballingrud and Alexandra Duncan, who are both wonderful writers. We've barely had time to talk about the details yet, but I think this is what it's going to look like. We're each going to set goals for ourselves and try to meet them. My goal will be to write 1000 words a day, every day. That goal is based on the fact that a YA novel is typically around 75,000-100,000 words long. It's also inspired by Holly Black's statement that she wrote Black Heart in 81 days. Those three months will give me 92 days in which to write a YA novel. Well, at least the first draft.

I don't yet know what Nathan's and Alexa's goals will be. I'm going to ask them tonight. We've talked briefly about getting together to critique our manuscripts, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to do that in person at least once. Which means flying down to Asheville, North Carolina, where they both live, later in the summer. Asheville is one of my favorite places, and I haven't been there for years, so I'm very excited.

The novel itself will be based on a story of mine that was published on Strange Horizons: "The Mad Scientist's Daughter." The story won the Strange Horizons Readers' Poll for best story, it was one of the storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and it's now a Locus Awards finalist. So I get the sense that people respond to it, and I think what they respond to most are the characters. Well, I want to write the further adventures of some of those characters. I'm not going to give you any more details now, because I have a lot of other work I need to get done tonight, before I leave for Wiscon on Thursday. But I'll start giving you more details when I get back.

Why am I telling you all this, rather than keeping it a deep, dark secret? First, because I'm going to be posting about my progress. Word counts, perhaps excerpts, certainly thoughts about what I'm doing. I'll try to post about my progress at least once a week. Hopefully, Nathan and Alexa will decide to do that as well, and I'll be able to link to their posts. Second, because I know that many of you are writers and might be interested in doing the same thing. So if you want to take up the YA Novel Challenge and write a YA novel, or part of one, in the next three months, please feel free to tell me about it, let me know how it's going. Just if you want to, you know. (But wouldn't it be fun?)

I'm writing this a bit prematurely because there are a lot of things Nathan, Alexa, and I still need to discuss, but I wanted to get this post up tonight because I have a feeling that tomorrow night is going to be one of those mad packing nights I often have before conventions. When I will be trying to find a clutch to go with my dress for the banquet, and that sort of thing. (I think the dress will be a burgundy velvet dress I found at a thrift store. The sort of dress that Jane Morris would wear to the Wiscon banquet. I still need to pick out the jewelry, but I have some garnets – somewhere.)

So there you are, the YA Novel Challenge. Will I succeed? I will certainly fail at various points along the way. I'm expecting that. But I'm very excited about this project.

I think it's finally summer.

Do you know how I can tell? The lilies of the valley are almost done blooming. I cut several today and put them in a vase. They smell heavenly.

But also, I have two summer projects that I'm looking forward to: finishing the dissertation, and this one. I can't wait to start.

Your Favorites

I'm sorry, I really will start posting longer, more serious posts again soon. I'm so tired this week that it's difficult for me to focus on writing posts like those. And later this week I will have something to announce, so watch for a post to be called YA Novel Challenge. I leave for Wiscon on Thursday, so I've been trying to get a lot of things done that I need to get done before I leave. That's why it's been difficult for me to post. And as I said, I'm tired.

Today, I'm going to tell you about something you may have noticed above: I'm working on a new page for this website. It's called Favorites (see the menu bar), and it's a page on which I'm listing the twenty posts that readers seem to have liked the most since I started blogging here. In case you're interested in what those posts are, here you go:

Value Yourself

Wicked and Lovely

Write Every Day

On Blogging

Mythpunk

Finding the Joy

Go Tonight

Thoughts on Love

Vampires!

Becoming Yourself

Thoughts on Writing

Choices and Consequences

Being a Snail

How to Revise

Why Go to Conventions?

Being a Brand

Writing Tired

What Terri Said

Love and Squalor

Incorporating Failure

On the actual page, you will see short excerpts from each post. I think there's a reason these particular posts are the favorites. Most of them are posts that offer something to the reader, something the reader can take away and apply to his or her own life. Which makes me think that we're all searching – trying to figure out better ways to live, to work, to write. Ways to make ourselves more fulfilled. Ways to find more joy.

That makes me both sad and happy – happy in that we're all searching for that I believe to be important things, sad in that we're all still searching. Is life a constant search? Or will we find a place where we can sit down, say yes, I have found the place, I have found home? The place where I can be creative, at peace with myself? I think perhaps the answer is, yes, both. There are places we can find, there are homes we can make for ourselves. At the same time, the search also continues. We are always seeking, always becoming. And I suppose that is what makes us what we are – human beings. The universe's way of thinking about and understanding itself. At least, that's one way I like to think about it.

A Train of Thought

I sat up late last night, watching a documentary on Christopher McCandless. I think it was a documentary called The Call of the Wild. There's also a movie called Into the Wild, but I don't think I want to see it. I don't want the romanticization of McCandless' life, which is what I assume the movie would be. It can scarcely avoid being anything else.

If you haven't heard of McCandless, he's the college graduate who spent two years traveling around the country, sometimes working, sometimes living off the land. He had read a lot of Thoreau and Tolstoy. Finally, he traveled up to Alaska, hiked into the wilderness, survived for 113 days, then died of starvation. He story was told in a book called Into the Wild, which was made into the movie.

There were several things that interested me about the documentary. First, McCandless was born in the same year I was, 1968. He came from my generation. Second, he came from the same place I did. He went to high school in Annandale, Virginia. I went to high school farther out, in Loudon. But we both came from the wealthy suburbs of Washington D.C. And I think in some ways we had the same response to it. He strikes me as someone who was looking, almost desperately, for the authentic. I remember feeling that way as well, and I think the area had something to do with it. We were all supposed to wear the right clothes. Go to the right schools. He went to Emory, I went to the University of Virginia (which was a state school, and therefore much less expensive, although one of the best schools in the country). He gave away the money set aside for law school. I had no money set aside for law school, and got through Harvard on grants and loans – mostly loans. (I repaid them in three years. That's how much money I was making as a corporate lawyer.)

I think it took a great deal of courage to live the way he lived, traveling around the country. And a great deal of stupidity to go out into the wilderness unprepared. You can fight other men and win. You can't fight nature.

But I understand and admire the search.

I was a girl, and obedient, and I did what I was supposed to do. He declined membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Of course I accepted. I went on to law school. And continued to do what I was supposed to do for a long time. And now I find myself at an age that is a mirror image of the age at which McCandless died: 42 rather than 24. Thinking about authenticity, about what life is, really, underneath everything we pretend it is. But I think my particular journey isn't out there, but in here. It's into my self, trying to figure out what is inside. Instead of driving, I write.

McCandless had with him a memoir by Louise L'Amour called Education of a Wandering Man, which contains an excerpt from a poem by Robinson Jeffers called "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours." Here is the poem:

Wise men in their bad hours have envied

The little people making merry like grasshoppers

In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking

Backward but never forward, and if they somehow

Take hold upon the future they do it

Half asleep, with the tools of generation

Foolishly reduplicating

Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too,

Groan against labors, wars and partings,

Dance, talk, dress and undress; wise men have pretended

The summer insects enviable;

One must indulge the wise in moments of mockery.

Strength and desire possess the future,

The breed of the grasshopper shrills, "What does the future

Matter, we shall be dead?" Ah, grasshoppers,

Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made

Something more equal to the centuries

Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.

The mountains are dead stone, the people

Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness,

The mountains are not softened nor troubled

And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.

And here is Jeffers reading it:

This is the sort of poem that poets write, assuming they are among the wise men. And we can criticize it for that, for being in a sense elitist and consolatory. And yet – it does not tell us that we are grasshoppers. We can choose to be among the wise men, or attempt to be wise men. We can approach life with strength and desire, at least attempt to make something more equal to the centuries than muscle and bone. And hope that our thoughts will endure, as the mountains endure.

I went into my own small patch of wilderness today, the Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge. I took these pictures:

And here I am, in my small patch of wilderness, with the water and reeds all around.

This train of thought isn't really going anywhere, to any great conclusion. It's just what I was thinking as I walked along those trails, with the Purple Martins wheeling overhead.

The Chihuly Exhibit

Confession: Objectively, I'm doing well.  Yesterday, at 3:00 a.m., I finished and submitted the revised first chapter of my dissertation.  That means all three chapters have been revised and submitted. This should allow me to plan for the fall, and for a dissertation defense. I hope. I need to spend the rest of the summer putting the final manuscript together, making final edits and most importantly, writing an introduction. But it means that things are happening.

Subjectively, not so well. I'm exhausted, on some sort of edge most days. I think the last two months have been too much. Too much work, too much loss, too much sorrow.

Yesterday, I couldn't work anymore, so I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit. If you're not familiar with him, he's probably the most famous glass artist working now. I will also confess that his art isn't quite to my taste. While walking through the exhibit, I thought, This is the Las Vegas version of Fairyland. I went to Las Vegas once, for a conference on the eighteenth-century American writer Charles Brockden Brown. I was giving a paper. I think the conference organizers had selected Las Vegas because the hotel was inexpensive (as long as you didn't gamble). To get to the rooms where we were presenting papers, we had to walk through a casino. It was interesting and surreal to see academics, in their gray and black clothes, walking among the slot machines.

But back to the Chihuly exhibit. I took pictures, so I'll show you some of it, more or less in the order I walked through it.

Upstairs, by the courtyard, there were cases of jars (I can't quite call them vases) with designs based on Native American blankets. (I know this because I saw a PBS special on Chihuly's techniques and latest projects.) That's me, in one of the pictures.  I look so dark because flash is not allowed in the museum.

In the courtyard there was a green glass tower and outside, orange curls of glass. You can see me taking a picture in one of the windows.

But the real show was downstairs. I hope you'll see what I mean by a Las Vegas version of Fairyland.

What I did like were the smaller jars based on Native American baskets, displayed with Chihuly's basket collection. And the large jars displayed here on a slab of wood. They were quite delicate, and looked almost like natural objects.

Here it is, the Las Vegas Fairyland. This was not my favorite room. And yet, I liked some of the individual pieces. It was just them all together, the lack of restraint. To my eyes, they ended up being garish. Yet I liked the large glass balls. If you could put one into a garden, surrounded by grass or plants, it would be lovely. Chihuly sometimes sends glass balls floating down streams, and then they look magical.

The next room had a ceiling with glass shapes. It was rather interesting, looking up. But again, too much for me.

And finally, there was a room filled with chandeliers, which are some of his trademark pieces. I only photographed two because my battery ran out, right at the end of the exhibit. But I think you get a pretty good idea of what it was like?

So that's what I did yesterday. Today I am back to work, making it through. But feeling on edge, as though something might break. Like glass.

The Barsoom Anthology

I promised that I would tell you who murdered Amelia Price today, but it's been a long day for me, and I'm very tired. I hope you won't mind if I tell you tomorrow. I want to write about reading protocols in that post as well, and right now I can't think all that clearly – not clearly enough to write about something so complex. (In case you can't tell, I've been working on revising a dissertation chapter. There are days when I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through this summer.)

Instead, I'm going to repost an announcement that came out today from Simon & Schuster. This was the press release:

SIMON AND SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS TO PUBLISH NEW ANTHOLOGY BASED ON THE CLASSIC JOHN CARTER OF MARS SERIES BY EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

New York, NY, May 19, 2011

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing announced today it will publish a new original anthology called The New Adventures of John Carter of Mars, edited by John Joseph Adams and based on the characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Publication will be in the spring of 2012 and will coincide with the 100th anniversary of A Princess of Mars, the first book to feature John Carter. The anthology envisions all-new adventures set in Edgar Rice Burroughs' fantastical version of Mars (known in the series as "Barsoom.") This anthology not only imagines new or the lost adventures of John Carter, but also explores the other characters and niches not fully explored by Burroughs. David Gale is the acquiring editor, and Joe Monti of Barry Goldblatt Literary Agency brokered the deal. Simon & Schuster holds World English rights.

Celebrated fantasy writer Tamora Pierce will write the foreword to the anthology, and John Joseph Adams will write the introduction and header notes. The collection will include stories by Joe R. Lansdale; Jonathan Maberry; David Barr Kirtley; Peter S. Beagle; Tobias S. Buckell; Robin Wasserman; Theodora Goss; Genevieve Valentine; L. E. Modesitt, Jr.; Garth Nix; Chris Claremont; S. M. Stirling; Catherynne M. Valente; and Austin Grossman. There will also be a "Barsoomian Gazetteer," a who's who and what's what on Barsoom, written by science fiction author and noted Barsoom expert Richard A. Lupoff. In addition, each story will feature an original illustration by noted artists such as Charles Vess, John Picacio, Michael Kaluta, and Misako Rocks.

At the same time, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers will publish John Carter of Mars, a bind-up of the first three John Carter books: A Princess of Mars, The Warlord of Mars, and The Gods of Mars, with all-new illustrations by Mark Zug, Scott Fischer, and Scott Gustafson.

"I still vividly recall the summer as a teenager that I read all eleven of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels in one enthusiastic gulp," said Jon Anderson, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Books for Young Readers. "The opportunity to revisit that experience with new stories from this stellar roster of authors was too much to resist!"

Doesn't that sound like fun? I saw the announcement on IO9, and then I saw a blog post about it on Cinerati. In that blog post, the Christian Linke wondered what sorts of stories this specific lineup of writers would come up with, since they (we) are such a diverse bunch, and specifically said, "I have no idea what Theodora Goss' version of planetary romance is."

Well, I'm not going to tell you anything about my story yet, other than the title: "Woola's Song." But it's an interesting question, isn't it? I think that I am, actually, becoming known for a certain type of story, for a certain sort of literary fantasy. And so you would wonder what I could come up with in a John Carter universe. I will say that John Joseph Adams asked me to participate in this anthology after reading my story "Child-Empress of Mars" in Interfictions, and this story is absolutely nothing like that one. Nevertheless, it's very much the sort of story I would write. I can't wait for people to read it and tell me what they think.

I'll tell you more about it when the book comes out, but you know, I'm interested myself: what did Peter Beagle, Genevieve Valentine, and Catherynne Valente come up with? They are not at all the sorts of people I would associate with planetary romance either. I can't wait to see . . .