Tricia Sullivan's Blog, page 7

and some very good links

The little I've been online, I've been impressed with these:

Rochia Loenan-Ruiz on Decolonizing as an SF writer   at Kate Elliott's blog.

In a similar vein, the World SF Blog has a Roundtable Discussion on Non-Western SF in two parts.

And another great guest post over on Kate Elliott's, by Tansy Rayner Roberts.  I wish I'd read this before the Heroism panel!

...and now I am late to pick up my kids :Q

random goodness

* Steve has gone to Birmingham so I have snuck on LJ via his computer

* I have been writing SF.  Am using my invisible writer stick to battle the demons that tell me it's substandard and not actually going anywhere and why am I not doing 5000 words a day, btw? Fear the stick, demons.

* In today's post I received two moleskine notebooks and a package of uniballs and other pens. I would like to thank my anonymous source.  I don't want to say the person's name lest I expose my powerful connections in the murky underworld of stationary. Thank you, Mystery Benefactor.

* I am the proud possessor of no less than seven years worth of maths exams and solutions. Now I just have to...er...work them.

* I am listening to Diesel & Dust which is one of my favourite writing albums of ALL TIME.  I associate this music with SO MANY DEADLINES but have not heard it for years. I think I could be channelling my younger & perkier self.

What goodness have you got going on?  If you haven't got any, I will waft some of mine your way. Sing it with me!

Sometimes you're beaten to the call
Sometimes you're taken to the wall
But you don't give in.

small victories, purple ink, revenant ideas, heavy bag

I may have been absent from the internet lately, but I've got the best possible excuse: I've been working! I really don't know how writers who blog and tweet seriously manage to do both. All respect for that, but it's outta my range. I can't be online when I'm writing seriously.

Yesterday I finished off another round of Shadowboxer. I have lost track of how many times I've recrafted that book to satisfy this person or that person.  This time the changes that were suggested really made sense to me, and although I had to take out a lot of plot to make the book work, I think it does work now. I hope so.  Bloody hell. I reckon I've invested more heart in this story than in anything I've written in the last fifteen years. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing; everything to do with it feels incredibly personal and intimate, even though there's nothing autobiographical as such in the novel at all.

Of course I have a huge stack of things that need doing, and my sense of duty nearly had me plunging straight into sorting out the shed. But I remembered the wise advice of Stephanie Burgis: Celebrate, she said. So today I went into Shrewsbury, bought each of my kids a book at Waterstone's and decided to treat myself to a new notebook and new pen because I will soon resume my assault upon the untitled SF novel whose protagonist is called Pearl. Well. I normally buy the cheapest available pens and paper.  I buy big boxes of cheap biros and reams of cheap copy paper to write on. None of your £13 moleskines for me--yikes, I could fill an entire moleskine with angst about my toenails on any given day, and then where would I be?

But today was special, because Shadowboxer, w00t! I went to Paperchase and compromised my budget with a cheap moleskine knockoff that lies flat. I found a Pilot pen that writes in purple ink!  I sat down in Starbuck's to write a long-overdue card to Kaz Mahoney with the purple pen. Wrote one card. Then opened the notebook and wrote half a page. I glanced up and my friend Yumi happened to be walking past, so I leaped up, we waved at each other through the window, gesticulated a bit, and I sat back down.  THE PEN DID NOT WORK. It took me a couple of minutes to resuscitate it, in the process of which I observed that the ink had already gone down by about 10%.

Friendslist who are stationery fetishists like me, I ask you: how can this be acceptable? It was a Pilot pen, not some dinky thing from The Works. So disappointed.

Anyway, I then went for a lovely walk by the river in Shrewsbury. And as I was soaking up the genteel Shrewsbury vibe I recalled a recent trip to Chester with Steve. As we walked around the top of the old Roman walls and took in all the different perspectives on the city, I kept thinking that it all seemed too perfect. 'Steve,' I said after we'd passed about the twentieth neat thing, 'This place isn't for real.  It has to be run by vampires or something.'

So today, in Shrewsbury-which-is-architecturally-not-unlike Chester, I was thinking about this and I remembered a novel that I dashed off when Rhiannon was a baby. I had it up on my website for a while. It was a YA fantasy about a girl who can't see ghosts in a world that's ruled by ghosts.  My then-US-agent sent it out and it got a nibble from one editor, but I let it go for reasons that have no bearing on this post. I stuck the novel up on my website for a bit and then pulled it down in shame, because to be honest it wasn't very good. I'd written it hastily and without a lot of conviction.

But I always liked the idea.

Today in the car on the way home a new version of the story unrolled at my feet like a...ok, maybe not quite like a magic carpet but like something that's good.  A Twister mat?  A picnic blanket?  A fruit roll-up? It unrolled, damnit, and now that can be added to the long list of ideas that need to be fully developed, fleshed out and realised. I scrawled down some notes and a few paragraphs of narrative. We'll see if anything comes of it after I've worked it a bit more.

Then I went out and sorted the shed. There was a lot of post-flea junk out there. Steve had cut the heavy bag down to make room, so I cleared everything and we put the bag back up. I punched and kicked the bag. I love bags.  You can hit them and they don't hit you back!  How fun is that?

I'm on the last chunk of math and soon I'll be studying for the final.  I make it that I've been studying continuously since November of 2010, so having the summer off school will be heaven.

post post Eastercon post

Yeah, I know this is really late.  Like I said, things went a bit pear-shaped last week…then I had to plunge back into a big pile of work…and also, I think, I may have turned a bit introverted after all the glamour and social performance over Easter weekend. I’m not feeling terribly articulate, but I will try to make this post because it’s silly late.

First of all, huge thanks to the con committee for inviting me.  I had the best time imaginable.  I didn’t see nearly enough of the many people I wanted to see and it all felt very rushed at times, and I didn’t sleep much because I was so over-stimulated.  I think my dark circles were halfway down my face by the end.

I loved it.

At the closing ceremonies I mentioned Philippa Watts, who was a brilliant guest liaison, and Zoe Sulma—without whom I’d have been lost and confused much of the time.  The Green Room folk were also lovely, and the guys from Ops were brilliant, doing some last-minute printouts for me—and huge thanks to Alex McClintock for getting my flash drive back to me when I left it in the con’s computer! Whew.

I’d never done a con before in the full-on sense.  I went to Worldcon in Winnipeg in 1994, where I knew no one but still managed to get in the same room as Anne McCaffrey and also harass poor David Brin into giving me a blurb for my first novel.  I went to Glasgow Worldcon in 1995 when LETHE came out, but I still didn’t really know anyone.  I can’t remember much about it and I don’t think I was on the program.  Last year I popped into Eastercon but couldn’t get on the programme despite having a novel on the BSFA shortlist.  In the bar I seem to recall shedding tears upon both Darren Nash and Anne Clarke over the wretched state of my ‘career’ (sorry about that, guys).

This is why Olympus 2012 was a whole new world for me, and after spending so many years surrounded by nappies and uncooperative novels, the star treatment that I got was unbelievable.  I don’t think I could possibly articulate how uplifting it was to sit in a kaffeeklastch for the first time (not only was it FULL, but  Justina Robson and Freda Warrington showed up!) and speak with readers about my work.  Massive ego boost!

I should mention that of my ten published books, nine are out of print (and yes, I know I need to do something about the e-books).  Because of this I was very surprised to find that Forbidden Planet had copies of DOUBLE VISION and someone in the Dealer’s Room had hardcovers of LETHE (with that unfortunate cover).  I went into author signings fully expecting to sign nothing while George got mobbed, but readers  brought me things to sign.  And Zoe talked to me.  It was lovely.

I was busy, but in a good way. I didn't get to attend many panels that I wanted to because I was on lots myself.  It sounds like I missed some great stuff, but I enjoyed every single panel I was on, even the scary ‘Occupy the Metaverse’ with Farah and Adam being all erudite as they are--and speaking of Farah, she really seems to have got the best out of me in her interview.  I only wish there had been space for it on the con’s ustream site. 

The one panel I was worried about (Heroism) seems to have been survived by me—it certainly wasn’t as bad as I feared; I was sweating bullets beforehand.  I’d like to thank the friends who talked to me about it beforehand (you all know who you are) and injected me with the necessary chutzpah.  I muffed some figures about warfare because I wasn’t expecting the discussion to go in that direction and was talking off the top of my head.  When I talked about battlefield studies, I managed to conflate a figure roughly estimated at 10-15% of soldiers firing with intent to kill with the quite different statistic estimating 2% of the population that are ‘natural born killers’. They are two different numbers, and the 10-15% is only a guesstimate; but the point is that armies have to train their soldiers to kill.  It doesn’t come naturally for most. 

On natural born killers https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/a80806fbebea8dd285257015006e1943/09613ff986b2a86885257599001505c1?OpenDocument

And an interesting video as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Ozno7HMGE

So, lots to think about when we use the word ‘warrior’ especially the bit about a lot of the kills occurring when the enemy was running away. 

I talked about the peak shift effect.  Here’s a little bit more about that.  http://clicks.robertgenn.com/peak-shift.php

I don’t know how well my Bionicles illustrated it at long distance, but I think it’s interesting that our tendency to exaggerate obvious features in artistic representations can be pinned down with a bit of science. 

The other thing that I mentioned but didn’t get to concerns the function of the reticular activating system in how we see what we want to see.  Here’s a little bit about that. http://www.sourcetext.com/sourcebook/essays/scotoma.html

And on the line between fantasy and reality, have a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G1ApUEXcbo&sns=fb

But enough about that.  My reading is here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/21718512.  I read the beginning of the untitled SF novel and also the beginning of YA novel Shadowboxer, which I’m still working on.  People asked me afterward when these books were coming out.  Neither of them is under contract and at the moment I don’t have an agent, either, so! I just don’t know! What will happen! I do know that the encouragement I received at Eastercon will go a long way toward fuelling me on with my work.

To everyone I met over the weekend, to everyone who attended panels or readings with me: THANK YOU.

I am happy.

(Never fear. I’m sure normal whining will resume here before long.)

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I was so sure I'd get an Eastercon blog up on Friday!

hahahahahahahahahahahhahaha....nnnnnNo.

The new cat had been Frontlined and left outdoors to be fed by our landlord/neighbour.  Soon after we got back and cuddled him, fleas started biting the kids.  I asked vet for another Frontline, but she refused and said, ominously, 'I'm afraid they're IN THE HOUSE.'

Yesterday Steve ran interference with the kids and went on various flea-related missions while I hoovered and and flea-sprayed every single crack in every single floor of a wood-floored barn conversion that is characterized largely by its profusion of CRACKS.  I spent hours in the launderette washing duvets and putting sticky notes in Greg Egan's 'The Clockwork Rocket' that I'm meant to review right about...now-ish, for Vector. (Astonishing book, btw).  Twelve hours of hard graft yesterday, and I still have a boot room full of black plastic bags of clothes and bedding that need cleaning, plus we are meant to hoover every single crack for seven consecutive days.

I also ignored the vet's assurances and re-Frontlined the Cat, so there. Thanks to the advice of perlmonger , I shall be into the hardcore of Frontline-resistant flea treatments if this doesn't work, but for now I've restrained myself.

And sorry if I've been zooming on and off Twitter and FB and being crap about responding. I really have appreciated the lovely comments and retweets of late. I will try to catch up with everybody soon.

All of which is my long-whinged way of saying, I need to put up a proper Eastercon post but this ain't it.

My Eastercon schedule

We don't have a working alarm clock (with a 5 year old you usually don't need one) but this morning Tyrone has to be up at 5:30 to get on the coach to London for his school trip.  Last night I found an online clock and set it to play Reveille at ear-splitting volumes. Turns out I had it set so loud that some sort of random alert noise woke me at 3 and I've been lying there anticipating trumpet blasts ever since.

So I am UP! And I will now inflict my Eastercon schedule upon you.

Friday

12 Noon DESIGN A DR WHO MONSTER I am excited about this. We will invent our own monsters and draw them, maybe make up a story about them. Then we will interrupt George RR Martin's reading with a monster invasion. Tell your kids! There will be prizes!

2 PM KAFFEEKLATSCHE I have never done a kaffeeklatsche and have never attended one, either. It is a nice word, though. I hope some folk will turn up and show me the ropes. I promise not to sing.

4PM OPENING CEREMONY I will be at this, too. Guest of honor and all that. Woot.

6:30 PM JUST A MINUTE Paul Cornell is running this game and it will be Pat Cadigan, Donna Scott, Jo Walton and I. I'm excited to be meeting Jo! Maybe she will be jetlagged and off her game. As you all know, Cadigan and Donna are extremely quick on their feet so I reserve the right to carry a water pistol. Seriously, not being a radio listener I have only the vaguest idea how to play and so will probably utter a long string of random words like 'turtle' and 'defunct' just to get through.

Saturday

11 AM READING FOR CHILDREN I have written a children's story especially for this event and I will be reading it. I would say it's best for ages 8 and up because younger ones might get bored, but my 5 year old son will be there so please don't feel you can't bring small ones.

1 PM INTERVIEW WITH FARAH MENDLESOHN Farah has kindly agreed to interview me, for which I am very grateful. I don't know precisely what we are going to be talking about, but I will be so excited to be there that I'm sure I'll have lots to say on most every subject, even the ones I know nothing about. Which, when you think about it, are the majority of subjects.

5 PM HOW NOT TO SUPPRESS WOMEN'S WRITING I think this one speaks for itself. With Penny Hill, Amy McCullach, Juliet McKenna, Ian Sales.

Sunday

10 AM OCCUPY THE METAVERSE Farah, Paul Graham Raven, Adam Roberts.  This is about the politics (specifically from the perspective of social class) of contemporary SF. I am thinking it could get quite crunchy.

1 PM YOUTH AND YOUTHFULNESS IN SF Aliette de Bodard, Janet Edwards, Tom Pollack, Farah. If you don't know Jan, she has a first novel coming out in August and it seems to sit right on the YA/adult border. I love this topic. Can't wait.

3PM AUTOGRAPHS With the other GoHs.  I've published 10 books and sadly only one is in print, but if you can get hold of one and want it signed please do come, or come and chat with me if you like.

5 PM THE NATURE OF HEROISM With Joe Abercrombie, David Anthony Durham, George RR Martin, Genevieve Valentine.  Somebody bring the duct tape. I may need to be muffled as I have only six or seven thoughts on this one but they are very LOUD thoughts. I'm tempted to bring along some of my sons' action toys for illustrative purposes.

6 PM BSFA AWARDS With Donna Scott and John Meaney & the other GoHs. If last year is anything to go by, Donna will be witty and gorgeous. I'll be presenting one of the awards, with great delight. Provided John doesn't hypnotise me into acting like a chicken.

Monday

11 AM WHEN SCIENCE MEETS SF With Jaine Fenn, Caroline Mullan and Nik. I will buy roses for science. I think science and SF should get together more often.

2 PM READING But what will I read? is the question. I am undecided.  I read the opening of my new SF at Picocon and it seemed to go down well, but I don't know if I should repeat this.  If there is audience overlap it'd be a swizz to read the same thing. I may read something completely different from that book, or I may read a bit of SHADOWBOXER. Or maybe something else...hmmm...

4 PM CLOSING CEREMONY

And now it's an hour later, my poor sleepy son is up and staggering around, and I must go find shoes and water bottles, and so forth. If I've forgotten anything, I'll edit this laters....

blah blah blah

OK, I'll post but it's all very blah blah blah. I've had two stupid colds in the last month.  Or is it three? I'm losing count. At the moment I have red devil eyes from conjunctivitis and I shouldn't even be on the computer, but I'm too scared of my math to look at it this early.

Training has fallen by the wayside, just as I was starting to like the Tabatas.  Really. (Almost).  At the moment if I take a deep breath I go into convulsive coughing fits, so urg for that and urg again. I want to train! I need my endorphins!

The kids are doing well at their new school. I try to use the extra driving time for thinking, so it's not too bad apart from the petrol cost.

Rhiannon has adopted a stray cat.  We thought it was a female (even our neighbour, who is a vet, thought it was a female, so it's not like I'm blind) and rushed to the vet only to be told, dryly, that it is a neutered male. It seems odd that someone would go to the trouble of neutering an animal and then not collar or microchip it--or report it lost, for that matter--but we haven't found the owner.  Rhiannon adores the cat and has named him Whisper. He sleeps on her Hugglebuddy.

I am looking forward to Eastercon. Steve and I haven't figured out exactly how we're going to work things with the kids--how much of the con they will come for, and what he will do with them to keep them out of my hair. We are in discussions on these weighty matters.

I can't wait to see everyone!

My eyes are now stinging so I'm outta here. Sorry for non-reading of LJ in the last week, but I'll be back soon.

coincidences & cats

I had to take 3 days off work for Tyrone's birthday celebrations and other obligations, and now I'm so far behind with everything I'm about to be lapped by a single-celled organism with no roller skates.

Rhiannon is at home with a fever. She has also adopted a stray cat.  I have to go buy Frontline and make vet arrangements and all the other cat things.

The odd thing is that the cat turned up a couple of days before Tyrone's birthday and followed the kids home from the end of the drive.  We had to euthanise Percy (my Manhattan rescue-cat who came through quarantine) in traumatic circumstances about 4 days before Tyrone was born.  It's been ten years almost to the day since we had a house cat. I was not looking for this but Rhiannon is madly in love, which means I'll do whatever it takes.

The calculus in particular I was whingeing about last time is in Calculus 2 for Dummies, although there are a lot of topics in Calculus for Dummies  that we haven't covered thanks to the mysterious ways of the OU.  The author of Calculus for Dummies makes colourful remarks about sticking hot pokers in your eyes and 'even easier than string theory' which helps to soften the humiliation and glassy-eyed expression of the desperately clueless, ie ME.

I need to go running and write but all I want to do is take a nap. Or solve a problem. Please cats & dogs could you help me solve a math problem????

Forgive me if I'm not around/unresponsive? I shouldn't even be taking the time to type this but I had to step away from the integrals for a bit because they're driving me batty.

not yet but maybe someday

Been underwater.  As I write this I’ve just finished yet another session of calculus in which I make a variety of mistakes, and have another go, and make more mistakes, and have another go...I like to quit my work sessions on a positive note so that I’ll go back in strong, but lately I’m quitting out of mental exhaustion because there are no positive notes.  I know I will master this, but at the moment there’s no sign of that happening soon.

The only tiny bit of encouragement comes in the fact that others are struggling, too.  There are only three people who attend the local tutorials and one of them has dropped out, while the other is even farther behind than I am and confessed she had entertained thoughts of chucking it in.  We agreed that the eight-hours-per-week advertised for this course is completely ridiculous unless you’ve had prior exposure to A-levels math.

I have all the books for the physics course I’m taking in September.  I’m supposed to be studying them early, which is a hilarious thought. 

I mentioned a while back that we were having problems with the kids’ school.  After a lot of palaver & kerfuffle (downmarket Abercrombie & Fitch?) we ended up moving them.  It’s a long commute, expensive on petrol, but they are doing well so far.  Fingers crossed.  Meanwhile the Ofsted report for our old school has just been given to parents, and it is a complete disgrace from a leadership standpoint.  I feel terrible for everyone in the community, especially the kids.  There are a lot of wonderful staff members at that school, too.  So discouraging to see what’s gone on there.

I believe the word is draining.  Too many emotions, I suspect resulting in a low-level brain fog blocking my calculus-fu. I’ve had insomnia, a cold, and some work-related wrestling matches with other humans and my own demons.  No training of any kind for weeks now, and I’m sure that’s creating a vicious cycle with insomnia.  I need to knock myself out.  Sometimes the only way I can shut my head down is by sweating the darkness out of myself.

But!  There are signs of life.  Spring is coming, and it’s most welcome here.

I’m a little in love with the book I’m writing, even if it has me in that swoopy place of not knowing what the hell I’m doing and doing it anyway.  It would be impossible to overstate how grateful I am for that Scrivener file, scruffy treasure and touchstone that it is.

I’m going running now.  I need sky.

Alison Sinclair SF/F author and scientist in the house

She is alixsin and I'm delighted to see her on LJ. Alison wrote some terrific (and Clarke-nominated) SF novels in the late nineties. She has various hardcore science and medical degrees and now writes fantasy with the heavy-duty worldbuilding. I had no idea she had a blog here, but it turns out she posted this fascinating piece 'Who is Qualified to Write SF' in connection with a panel involving papersky over a year ago.

This particular piece is resonating a lot with me right now, both because I'm studying science myself (albeit at entry level) and because I've got a copy of the new(ish) Greg Egan novel to review.  The Egan is making me think about the scientist-writer relationship in all its swerves and particularities.

I would love to see Alison Sinclair produce more hard SF.  Would love.