R. Lee Smith's Blog, page 22

Checking In From the Big EasyR

God, I love this town.

The food, the music, the people, the architecture, the ghosts, the energy…this place is just amazing. Everyone should come here at least once.

 

Oh, and the RT Convention is cool too. I’ve been to lots of workshops (The Last Hour of Gann was mentioned in a panel once!!!) and done so much sightseeing, but I am not even close to ready to go home. There will be some longer, more interesting blog posts when I get home to a real computer, but I did want to check in and tell anyone who might be reading this that I will be in and out of workshops on Friday, but there’s an hour open between 12:15 (Urban Fantasy: Beyond the Old Dark House) and 1:30 (Romantic Suspense: Wrestle A Gator, Save the World) if anyone wanted to meet up. I also plan to cruise the French Market on Saturday morningish if that’s more convenient. So far, I have actually been recognized and even gushed over a little bit, which is most extremely awesome, but I would love to meet any of my readers who are in the area. Just let me know quick, because my internet access is extremely limited on the road and I have no way of checking this blog or email once I leave for the hotel.

If It’s Not One Thing, It’s a Bunch of Things

Lord, how did I let another whole month escape me without a blog post?

Oh.

I’ll tell you how. The RT Convention is in less than a week and we’ve had so much last minute drama…hoo boy. I ran out of time and money and didn’t get as much swag as I’d initially planned, but that’s okay, because the table we were supposed to have?  We aren’t. We wouldn’t have anyplace to put all that swag anyway.  I had to drop everything (again) to do some “paycheck” work, so The Land of the Beautiful Dead didn’t get finished in time, but that’s okay too, because apparently, I had to sign up in order to put my books in the Freebie Room (???) and I missed the sign up date. No problem. Moving on. Just gives me more time to edit anyway.

Oh, and on the subject of TLotBD, it went from being a 45,000 word novella to 85,000 and climbing. Still not done yet! Hopefully, it will be published by the end of the summer, but don’t get your hopes too far up because–

I’m moving. Yup, buying a home, putting my huge collection of skulls in boxes, driving them three hours away and putting them in a whole new house. Yay. This is a good move for a lot of reasons, prime among them getting the (expletive deleted) away from this town, which consists of a train station, an oil refinery, and a stockyard, and our house is less than two blocks from all of them. My brother in law, who picked this house, swears none of them were noticeable when he bought it. He lived here alone for well over two months while we sold the last house. I was here less than ten seconds before I noticed them and I haven’t stopped noticing them in the five years I’ve been living here.

But now we are moving. The new house is comfortably rural and tree-y, nary a refinery or a train in sight, although there are a few cows. I can live with cows. I’m quite excited about the move, actually, but it is a royal pain to do the moving part, particularly when it intersects with a ten-day excursion to New Orleans for the RT Convention. And when the convention is over, I will find myself temporarily homeless as the present home is packed up and the future home is not yet ours to inhabit. I will be staying with my father and other sister for about two weeks and then I’ll be moved up to the new house, where I will live without internet or a washing machine for another two weeks, all alone, until the rest of the family joins me. They may well find me dressed in animal hides, crouching on my haunches around a carved stone idol of a laptop, offering human sacrifices for wifi.

Don’t panic.

 

I swear I will be better about posting on this blog when things settle down and yes, I know you’ve heard that out of me before. I mean it this time. I promise. I will even try to post about interesting things instead of string of excuses about why I haven’t been posting.  In the meantime, here is a small piece of the bit I just wrote for The Land of the Beautiful Dead, which you will NOT find in the Freebie Room at the RT Convention in New Orleans, nor will you find it on my (non-existant) table in the swag hall, but which will be available later this year, I swear. I mean it this time. I promise.

* * *

Of all the rooms in Azrael’s palace, or at least those where Lan had been, if she had to choose a favorite, it could only be the library. The sheer size of it, reaching up and up on every side, marvelously open and yet lavishly closed in. Every surface was in some way beautiful, from the rich carpets over the polished floors to the elaborate tiles and cornices on the ceiling and everything in-between. She could stare at just the windows all day, imagining stories to go with the pictures that had been set so colorfully inside them, and if she ever got bored doing that, she could always ride the ladders.

The library was the only place that made Lan glad Haven existed, because it meant that room had been spared when all the rest of the world had fallen down. It made her happy, a little, to think it might survive even if humanity did not, and at the same time, it made her sad for the same reason, because no one else would ever look at those windows the same way, with the same wonder.

So it should have been a good thing that Lan had to go to the library every day, except that the reason she had to go was to meet with her tutor. It wasn’t really that either, because the tutor wasn’t so bad, for a dead man. It was just that Lan hated reading. She could see the sense of it, but only in the same way she could see the sense of glazing or smithing; it was a useful skill for a community to possess, not an individual, much less many individuals in the same community. The very fact that there was someone whose sole function was to teach reading made it completely unnecessary for anyone else to learn.

She said as much, but her tutor simply told her all complaints had to be submitted in writing.

* * *

 

Lost By Three Votes

Yup. Three.

Now if you’ll excuse me, me and my misties and, like, ten boxes of Thin Mints have a date with destiny.

 

Thank you to everyone who voted.

Okay, for real this time…Remember to Vote!

So, when I last posted, I did not know they were spreading out the first round of the tournament into sets, so I told everyone to vote when they literally couldn’t.

 

But now you can! Today only, from noon to midnight, you can vote for The Last Hour of Gann. Just go to dabwaha.com or click the dabwaha button in the sidebar to the right and vote! If I win this round, there will be other rounds, so consider this a practice run. Remember THIS is the vote that counts, so even if you think you already voted, if you didn’t do it today, March 21, between noon and midnight, it won’t be counted toward THIS ROUND.

 

Last I checked, I was 47% to Hero’s 53%, but it’s early yet. If I win this round, I will host a giveaway on my blog for a signed copy of my new book, The Land of the Beautiful Dead (coming soon!). If I don’t win…well, I guess I’ll lie in bed all day, watching MST3K and eating Girl Scout Cookies, just like I did when Heat failed to win me an award. I mean, I’ll live, but I’d sure be happier with a win. So be sure to vote and tell all your friends!

Don’t Forget To Vote!

The Last Hour of Gann is up for best sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal, so please head over to dabwaha.com and vote. Time is limited, just today and tomorrow (March 20-21) and please remember, this is a tournament, so even if you think you already voted, you have to do it again during this time period or it won’t count. (If Gann wins this round, you’ll even have to vote again! Isn’t this exciting?)

The Nominations are In!

Yesterday, I was notified that The Last Hour of Gann was a finalist in the DABWAHA Tournament! Behold!

Dear R. Lee,

Congratulations on being nominated for the DABWAHA, the tournament of romance novels run by The TBR LLC, Dear Author and Smart Bitches. We’re kicking off our tournament on March 23, when readers and authors can make their bracket selections, but the announced categories are available at Dabwaha.com. Currently, Last Hour of Gann has been nominated in the Paranormal/Scifi/Fantasy bracket.

Let the fine tradition of trash talking begin. Congratulations again!

Best of luck, Amanda

Yay for me! What does that mean, you ask? Don’t be embarassed, I had to ask too. DABWAHA stands for Dear Author Bitchery Writer Award for Hellagood Authors and every year, they nominate some books and run them in a kind of Month-that-rhymes-with-Larch Madness tournament. There’s still time for readers to nominate the People’s Choice Pick in each category, by the way, so click here to get in on that if you’ve read a really good book last year.

Anyhoo, The Last Hour of Gann was nominated in the category of Fantasy/Paranormal/Science Fiction and as a self-pub with no marketing skills, I could use all the help I can get. So if you liked my book better than the others on the list, please pay attention to the tournament schedule and remember to vote as often as they’ll let you. Get your friends to vote. Shave your beard, change your name and vote again. Let’s Tamminy up the joint, but please, no trash talking. Some fine traditions deserve to die out.

 

Interspecies Relations Part Six

The last snippet from my Confluence 2003 Short Story Contest Entry!

* * *

INTERSPECIES RELATIONS part 6

Nix plucked at its stockings, fussed briefly with its garters and finally said, “We will make much honey, then.  This moon and every moon.  Yes.  Your daughter will be a good wife to me. And I will be a good wife to her.”

Hannah and her mother both snapped to rigid attention.  “Wife?” they yelped in unison.

Nix flinched, chittering.

Hannah’s mother recovered first, rounding on her daughter.  “Did it just say wife?” she demanded shrilly.  “I knew it!  I knew it when you cut your hair!  I told you it made you look like a lesbian and you rolled your eyes at me and now look at you!  Oh thank heaven your father didn’t live long enough to see his baby girl pitching for the other team!” She broke off there, grabbing at her chest. “You are pitching, aren’t you?  Hannah Winnifred Fuller, you look your mother in the eye and tell her that thing does not pitch in this relationship!”

Hannah had been experiencing a growing sense of unfettered doom.  Now, desperate, she flung her arms out and pasted on a huge, ridiculous-feeling grin.  “But hey!  Where are my manners?  Mom!  Let’s go chew up the cardboard!”

Nix perked up, stretching out its feeler-hands in a clumsy parody of human invitation.  “Yes!  To make pulp?  Yes?  Together?”

“You want me to eat cardboard?” her mother gasped, backing slowly towards the door.

“Oh, we’re not going to eat it,” Hannah said soothingly.  “We’re just going to spit it on the bed.”

Nix hopped a little closer, snapping her blood-bright mandibles in what it probably thought was an expression of optimistic goodwill.  “And then we mate.”

Mrs. Fuller smashed into the door twice before she managed to unlock it and run into the mob of reporters.

“Oh dear,” said Hannah.  She closed the door.

“Distress,” offered the translator as the Tharku washed its eyes.

“Listen, I’m…I’m really sorry about the things she said.”

Nix stretched out a feeler-hand and patted Hannah’s shoulder, as if for comfort.  “I understand this, my wife.  Mothers are the great Universal.  Yes.”  Nix patted her again, somewhat uneasily.

“Well,” said Hannah slowly, “I’m glad you understand.”

“Yes.”  The Tharku scratched again at its fishnet stockings and stood there, clicking nervously.  “Mine will arrive in six days.”

* * *

Re-reading this story has been like opening a time capsule for me. It was so tempting to rewrite and edit as I posted it here, but I restrained myself. Hopefully, you all (ya’ll? Do I still say ya’ll? Where is my copy of the Idiot’s Guide to Midwestern Patois?) enjoyed it as much as I did. It’s a pity I don’t have copies of the rest of the stories I submitted to fanzines and such lo those many years ago. Floods and fried computers have claimed much of my early writing, but if I come across anything else, would you like to read it here? Let me know what you think and I’ll try to come up with something else to post about next week!

Interspecies Relations Part Five

More from my Confluence 2003 Short Story Contest Entry!

* * *

INTERSPECIES RELATIONS part 5

Hannah and her mother stared at the alien’s legs.  Eventually, Nix contorted its chitanous body so it could look as well.  At last, and with difficulty, Hannah managed to wrench her eyes away only to clap her hands over them completely.  “Nix!” she wailed.

“Is it…not appealing?”  Nix’s feeler-hands twitched as though longing to wring together.  “Our research has indicated that appearance modifications such as these heightens sexual attraction among humans.”

Hannah heard her mother make a sound never before heard in nature.

A quiver ran along Nix’s antenna.  The Tharku scratched nervously at the stockings with its foreclaws.  “We Tharkan believe a strong sexual relationship is an important foundation to a lasting marriage.”

Hannah’s mother made the sound again.

Nix tried once more.  “I wish to begin this marriage with a pleasurable sexual exchange, yes?  It is the…moon of much honey?” Nix clicked uncertainly in Hannah’s direction.  “I presumed that to be a euphemism, yes?  Much honey?”

“Much honey,” Hannah moaned into her hands. “You got it, Nix.  All the honey.  God.”

“Yes.”  Reassured, Nix approached Mrs. Fuller with cautious bobbing and extended a feeler-hand.  “Perhaps you will wish to witness?  Yes?  No?”

Hannah’s mother said, “…” and pronounced it perfectly.

Interspecies Relations Part Four

More from my Confluence 2003 Short Story Entry!

* * *

INTERSPECIES RELATIONS part 4

Hannah briefly considered, but discarded, the highly attractive urge to fling herself out the bathroom window and escape.  She opened the door.

The inestimable Mrs. Henry Fuller stood bordered by Secret Service men in black suits.  Under her suspicious glare, Hannah found herself toeing the carpet, making up excuses and thinking of all the reasons she’d left home in the first place.

“Um, phone cut out.  Strangest thing.”

“Oh, just let me in before that crazy lady from Channel 5 takes my eye out with a microphone.”  Her mother dismissed her entourage with a royal wave and marched into the foyer.  Hannah shut the door.  Locked it.  Leaned against it.

“And I don’t know why you couldn’t just stay in your old apartment.  Not good enough for the bug, I suppose.  Had to have his own little dung ball to roll around.”

Hannah scowled at the door, wishing she dared to answer that.  The truth was, the Tharku emissaries had in fact refused to allow X’sizza’’ryk’n’a’’a’nix to live in the middle layer of a citizen hive.  There had been discussions concerning a penthouse suite until the aliens learned that even those living on the top floor still had to obey the building supervisors.  Hence the house. Which was a very nice house in an intimidatingly upscale community, with all the things that should have made her mother very happy, like a heated pool and a walled garden and even a meditation room, but if she brought them up, she knew her mother would eventually twist them around and get her to admit that yes, she only had them because Nix’s people had insisted, and that made the Widow Fuller’s only chick and child a kept woman. To a bug.

Mrs. Fuller had her hands on her hips, the better to survey the meager lump of Hannah’s possessions strewn among the great heaps of Tharkan furnishings.  “All right, where is it?” she demanded.  “I brought fly paper.”

“Mom!” Hannah groaned.

“Well, you’d better get used to it.  These are the problems you let yourself in for when you marry a bug.”

“Don’t talk like that in front of Nix.  We’ve both had a hard day, and –”

“You’ve had a hard day!  Did you see your daughter on the morning news coming out of the courthouse after getting married to an alien? A courthouse, Hannah! You weren’t even wearing white and the whole world saw it!”

“—and,” Hannah continued resolutely, “you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with your alien in-laws.  Nix comes from a very high-ranking family.  Only the ambassador has more authority here on Earth.”

“Well, they’ve already carried off my firstborn, I fail to see what more they could oh my god!”

Hannah considered the expression of horror as it manifested on her mother’s face, took a deep breath, and turned around.  Nix was striding towards them from the bedroom, waving its antenna and bobbing its head in cheerful greeting.  Its mandibles had been painted fire-engine red with lipstick, and it was wearing a lace-edged apron and two sets of fish-net stockings.

Interspecies Relations Part Three

More from my Confluence 2003 Short Story Entry!

* * *

INTERSPECIES RELATIONS part 3

“A cockroach, Hannah?  A cockroach?  What happened to that nice young man you met at the health club or Mrs. Branigan’s boy?”

“Don’t call it that, Mom.  Nix doesn’t even look like a cockroach.”  She peeked out the curtains at the Tharkan ambassador again.  “More like a preying mantis.”

“Oh, it’s a good thing your father is already dead, because this would kill him, Hannah, it would just kill him.  Like a big can of Raid.”

Hannah pressed the heel of her hand into her temple.  “Mom!”

“When were you even planning to tell me?  Or were you planning to tell me at all?  Maybe you were hoping I’d see it on the news and have a massive coronary!”

“Disaster.  Terrible.  Severe impediment.”  Nix bounded up to her in the foyer, wringing its feeler-hands and waving its foreclaws with hysterical abandon.

“Calm down,” Hannah urged.  “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” her mother howled as the Tharku keened and the translator stated, “There is a bed in that room.  Horror.”

“No, mom, please just hang on a sec.”  She covered the phone with her hand and said, “What’s the matter with the bed, Nix?”

“It cannot be a bed, my wife.  Trouble.  Grave obstacle.  We must have for ourselves a sleeping pod.  Disaster.”  The Tharku doubled over in a little distraught dance of doom, clicking and whirring and washing its eyes.

“Calm down,” Hannah said mechanically, suppressing another sigh.  “Keep looking.  Surely your people knew you’d need a…pod.  The movers probably just put it in a different room.”

“Yes?  Yes.  Perhaps.”  Nix bounded off.

Hannah steeled herself and put the phone back to her ear.  “—even say that when you know what I’ve been through with my knees and the trouble I’ve had with the pipes in the basement, and now this!  That I should live so long to see aliens landing on the White House lawn and my only daughter–”

Nix came leaping back through the room, gripping an oblong, shiny package in its foreclaws.  “It was beside the water heater, my wife,” the translator called back to her.

“—showed you on the six o’clock news in that horrible purple sweater—”

Nix peered around the corner, antenna trembling hopefully.  “Perhaps there is newspaper packed amongst my wife’s devices?  Yes?”

Hannah rubbed her eyes.  “I think so.”

The Tharku began cautiously prodding at the boxes stacked in the middle of the room.  “Perhaps we could chew this material also?  What is your preference when forming pulp, my wife?”

The dull roar of the reporters had taken on an odd stereo effect in Hannah’s right ear.  Frowning, she said, “Mom, where are you?”

“We’re just pulling up.  Honestly, look at the size of this place.  Much too big for just the two of y—You’re-not-pregnant-are-you-god-forbid?”

Hannah flung herself at the curtains and peeled one corner back in time to see the black car slide through the barricade of newsmen.  Her mother was still theatrically gripping her throat in the back seat.  Hannah punched the *end* button on the phone and swung on Nix, hissing, “My mother’s here!”  Hide! she wanted to add.

The Tharku shook out a pile of jeans and sweaters and carried the empty box towards the bedroom.  “Do not worry, my wife.  I have studied the customs of your people in great detail.  I will present myself to your parent as a good mate.  Yes?  We will all chew pulp together.”

The doorbell rang.