Lyda Morehouse's Blog, page 18

Oh Joy, My Reading List for the Hugo's is Out

The novels I'll be reading as part of my personal challenge to read all of the spec fic award nominees now includes:

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
Lines of Departure, Marko Kloos (47North)
Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

If you haven't heard, there was a bit of a kerfluffle around this year's nominees. There has been a lot of reaction. Including, a detailed blog from someone who has declined their nomination. What is particularly egregious about this mess is that apparently these self-proclaimed "Sad Puppies" invited the yahoos from #GamerGate to crash the Hugos.

My personal response to this is go out an buy a supporting (i.e. voting) membership for the Hugo's. It's $40.00, which isn't cheap, but it means I can vote down some of the categories where it is clear that the entire category has been jiggered. If you are a voting member (or would like to become one), there is a "Puppy Free Hugo Award Voter's Guide" for you.

That being said, if you go to the voter's guide, you'll see there were several areas--including graphic novel--that were left untouched by this brouhaha.

The other advantage to my strategy is that the way that the memberships to the Hugo's work is that they are good for TWO YEARS. So, if people don't join now, the so-called "Sad Puppies" will have their way again, next year.

Despite advocating everyone go out and buy a membership now, I want to say that NORMALLY I'm NOT in favor of politicizing this process. Yes, there have always been politics involved to one degree or another, but one of the reasons I did not have a WorldCon membership previous to this weekend is that I actually believe that the Hugo should be nominated and voted on by those ATTENDING WorldCon. I think the idea of a supporting membership is a bad idea, because, in many ways, this is precisely the behavior it encourages (i.e. signing-up just to vote for your friends). The only times I've ever voted on or nominated for Hugo's are the years I went (and the years after, since the attending memberships are ALSO good for two years of voting.)

But trolling for help for your cause from the ranks of the GamerGate a$$holes? Not cool. Those are people who have doxxed and threatened women with rape and death. If you read the super-long blog from the person who declined the nomination this year, you can read some of the philosophy behind the Sad Puppy movement. The idea that SF should be fun and readable is one I might have agreed with (though how this has anything to do with race, creed, color, social economic class, sexual orientation, ability or gender, I've no idea), but WTF. That does NOT seem to be the real agenda here. Not if it appeals to the GamerGate folks. Moreover, if it were, these puppy-types would be happy with a lot of the previous award nominees/winners. There's nothing about any of Lois McMaster Bujold's books, for instance, that I think anyone, anywhere would label as literary naval-gazing.

Now, I'm about to go on record saying that even I have a tendency to shy away from anything touted on NPR as awesome science fiction (my review of THE GIRL IN THE ROAD is going to hit this idea.) But, I will also go on record saying, that pushing myself to read it, made me realize that I would have otherwise missed AN EXTREMELY AWESOME BOOK (which, btw, just won the James Tiptree, Jr. award.)

I probably wouldn't have picked it up on my own.

Awards can do this for a reader. This is exactly why I set this personal challenge for myself: I wanted to see a broader range of what the field had to offer. Thus, despite the abject ugliness of this current situation, I will be reading all the books nominated for the Hugo.

The worst part is that I'm absolutely sure Jim Butcher and Kevin J. Anderson write a good book. But I'm not sure how I can, in good consciousness, vote for them now. Perhaps my solution will be to write them a nice review for Bitter Empire. Maybe I'll cast a vote for one of them, if they're really that awesome.

I wish, however, I didn't have to feel gross about myself if I do end up loving one of those books. This is where I think the puppies have done a huge disservice to themselves. Kevin J. Anderson is a super-nice guy. I've been in an anthology with Jim Butcher. But thanks to polluting the water with the likes of the GamerGate thugs, I'm never going to be able to look at them the same way. I'm damn sure I'm not alone in this feeling.

That's a sh*tty way to treat authors you supposedly love.

Writing about Writing

Since I'm teaching again, I'm writing about the process of writing again.

Because my Tate Hallaway blog has been dead for some time, I directed my students to check-in over there to see what I have to say about various things. Basically, I promised them a slightly more coherent version of my lectures since I've long ago come to realize that my lecture style is best described as "organic," which can drive some folks fairly insane. I have this tendency to INTEND to talk about A, B, and C, yet actually talk about A, Z, B, Q, F, and C. I promised to remove Z, Q, and F when I write up my "notes" for them. I can't entirely say I'm 100% more successful, but forcing myself to write it down does often help keep me on track.

At any rate, if you'd like to follow along, I've got two writing-related blogs up right now:

"From Idea to Story"

"Emotion as Story"

In other news, I woke up to the sound of my child barfing. Mason's stomach is giving him trouble... maybe from the very rich Indian food we had last night. Because I'm teaching, we weren't able to go out to dinner on Shawn actual birthday night (Wednesday) so we went out last night. Our favorite place lately has been "Taste of India" in Maplewood. Mason decided to be brave and tried something new. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have agreed with him.

Poor Mason.

The only comfort to all this is that it's cold and gray outside at the moment and if there was any GOOD day to have to spend snuggled up in bed reading and recovering, this would be it. We have a couple of errands we need to do--our taxes have been done for some time and are awaiting our signatures, so I need to go collect those soon since April 15 is looming. And I had wanted to get fish for the big tank, finally. I have successfully kept our betta alive for months now, so I'm feeling confident enough to consider trying again in the tank of doom. I've been changing the water in the unoccupied tank as though there were living fish in it (so approx. once a week), so I'm figuring that whatever evil might have been lurking in there should be well and truly diluted by now. Fingers crossed, at any rate. Plus, I was thinking of NOT getting our fish from PetCo, but a decent fishery like World of Fish.

But, that certainly doesn't _have_ to be done today. Taxes is the only necessity, like so often said.

Plus, Mason can feel good about taking advantage of his spring break. We've already done a very awesome hike through Minnehaha falls.

A Review of a Book and a Con

First, a book review. I posted my review of Jennifer Marie Brissett's Elysium, or the World After up onBitter Empire. This is a book that 100% fits Tempest's Challenge, by the way, because Brissett is a woman, and, according to the bio in the back, identifies as a British-Jamacian American.

Here it is, Tuesday morning, and I'm mostly recovered from the one, 12-hour day I spent at Anime Detour. The thing that should be known about Detour is that the median age is 14. That means I'm approximately three times older than the average con goer, and SIGNIFICANTLY older than many, many others. This con is also very, very well attended, so much so that getting from point A to point B often involves a myriad of "excuse me!"s and "summimassen!"s as costume bits get jostled against you and there is a general press of bodies akin to walking against the flow on the streets of New York City during rush hour.

I am an extrovert, but I am not a fan of jostling.

Also, this year I wasn't in costume. We really only have the one. Mason says, we're like those three old women in the myths who share the eye. It's not even mine, I've been borrowing it from a fellow Bleach fan, Anna Waltz, for about three or four years now. (Luckily, she's pleased to see it so often used and is happy to continue to extend the loan.) Mason decided to go as pre-evil, pre-"hair lock" Aizen, so the only thing I needed to add to the costume was a captain's coat (a haori). So my friend Naomi and I did a little thrift shop hunting and found a silky bathrobe that only took a bit of removing of bits in order to passably pass as such. I painted on the appropriate number in Japanese (5) and Mason was good to go.

Mason as Aizen:



Aizen as Aizen:



Not a bad likeness, neh?

The five on the back, which you can't see here, pretty much cinches it for most Bleach fans. But, the nice thing is that Mason already has the hair and the glasses, as a kind of gimme, so he was very easily recognizable. In fact, in the first few minutes at con, Mason got the reaction I was expecting. I was taking his picture with an Ichigo (there is always more than one) and a stranger came up (like they do at cons) and exclaims, "Oh, I get it! It's all been part of Aizen's plan since he was, what, ten?" I corrected, "Eleven, but basically yes." Aizen, since most of you probably don't know, is that villain who is always saying, "Ah, so you see, every moment of your life up to this point has been planned by me!"

So, that was kind of the highlight for Mason's cosplay, I think.

We went with Mason's friend Molly who went as Kyubey from Madoka Magica. I saw a number of other Kyubey's but Molly was the only one who had the actual magical girl contract and soul gems for people to have. Most of the people Molly asked knew enough about the anime NOT TO SIGN THE CONTRACT. But she found a few to play along and those that did were really, really charmed by the soul gems she handed out (which I think were Lego gems or possibly beads).

Molly as Kyubey:



Kyubey as Kyubey:



Since I wasn't in costume and was mostly playing "mom," I ended up going to more paneling than I normally would at Detour. I went to two panels which were different versions of "What You Should Be Watching." The first one was run by a guy I instantly mentally labeled as "Anime Hipster" because, while these two things should be mutually exclusive, this was a guy who experienced anime the way hipsters experience everything: ironically. So, you know, his recommendations were all super-obscure and kind of arty in a way that didn't appeal to me because I am a rube who does not appreciate the finer things in life and how awesome irony is when its very IRONIC. For the most part I watched his recommendations with a lot of head shaking.

However, I did write down a live-action show called Aoi Honoo/Blue Blaze which is about a manga artist student in the 1980s.

The other panel like this I attended I actually ended up writing down a couple of recommendations. This person still had things on her list that I wasn't fond of, but Mason noticed right away that one of my favorite anime of this last year, "Barakamon," was on her list.

Of hers, the one I thought I'd be most likely to watch is called Hamatora. Mason pretty much loved all of her recs, but I only wrote down this one and one other, Akatsuki no Yona/Yona of the Dawn.

Though I think Mason and I have agreed to try Hamatora first, just because the action in the clip she showed us looked super cool.

Otherwise, as mom, I spent a lot of time hanging out at the manga library station because that was our designated "meet up" spot, and that way the kids could come and go from there as they pleased. I brought along GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE by Andrew Smith, which I'd been reading, and mostly just sat on a bean bag chair on the floor and alternated between people watching and reading. Even so, the press of people really wore me out.

A good time was had however.

No News, Still Recovering from Con....

I've been at Anime Detour and will post pictures and stories soon. But, honestly, I'm just trying to decompress. Detour is HUGE and jostling. Even an extrovert like me is overwhelmed when there are so many people that you can hardly go from point a to point b without getting accidentally touched by a hundred people. (Not much of an exaggeration, alas.)

But I had a lovely time and Mason's cosplay was fairly perfect.

Lofty Loftiness with Loft-sauce

Last night was my first "Mars Needs Writers" class at the Loft. I'm happy to report it's a nice size; there's an even dozen, (if you include me.) I was only expecting seven, so this is quite a jump.

It went well. VERY WELL.

The class seems willing to talk to each other and interrupt me and throw out ideas and share stories, so that's FANTASTIC. This is Minnesota, you know, so class participation can be sketchy. I like to know the lay of the land early, i.e., am I going to have to have a LOT of material prepared so I can monologue, or can I depend on some back on forth to help carry the lectures? I test the waters with the class' outgoingness by doing an exercise/lecture the first day that *can* work if I just talk the whole time, but also encourages participation if there's willingness. I ask for definitions of science fiction vs. fantasy. Obviously, I can just DO this by myself, but I always hope that someone will start throwing out thoughts, etc.

It always takes an explicit ASK and a few 'please, I won't judge's, but I had several talkers this time around, so this is going to be FUN.

Yay!

Plus I over-caffeinated, so I did the Lyda show with a lot of dork dancing and gesticulating. So I'm sure even for the shy ones, there was entertainment value to be had. I did promise them that the day after, I would post a slightly more coherent 'lecture' covering the important bits over on my Tate Blog. If you're curious about the content of my first class, you can read it here: "Woke Up Still Caffeinated...". Mostly the blog this time was me saying, "Oh, yeah, that thing said this guy said? It was actually this other guy."

So, should be good. Fingers crossed, anyway.

In other news, my second official review at Bitter Empire is out: Bullet Catcher's Daughter. Check it out!

Speaking of Bitter Empire, I got my first official review "assignment" and its a doozie! They've asked if I'd be willing to read and review some dinosaur erotica, which is, in fact, a Thing. I bought two of them. I will be reading them today. JUST TRY AND STOP ME.

One Week Accident Free

We've been teasing poor Mason that he needs to have one of those billboards like they do at industrial sites that say: "___ days accident free." So, today, as I dropped him off he waved me away with a cheerful, "One week accident free!"

My poor baby.

Around my household, we refer to these random stumbles, etc., as: nerdspasms. As I told Mason, he comes by it honestly (though possibly via osmosis), as I have a long and sordid history of such events. In my youth, I had been known to just fall while looking up at something in a tree or once, while stopped, I fell off my bike.

While.

Stopped.

We won't even talk about the time I was reading while riding my bike and hit a parked car. (The book was Go Ask Alice).

Speaking of books and accidents, it seems I briefly roiled up the whole discussion about Tempest's reading challenge on Facebook again. My friend and fellow Philip K. Dick award nominee, Minister Faust, is doing a podcast these days and he linked me to his latest, wherein he interviews Ms. Bradford about the reaction she got to her reading challenge.

OMG.

Instantly again.

I've been thinking about this on a more immediate level, because one of the things that Faust and Bradford discussed on the podcast (which is quite good, btw) is WHY does this happen. There are more and more articles appearing about why is it that people instantly freak out in discussions of race, gender, ability, and orientation that happen on the Internet.

In a seemingly unrelated note, I mentioned something innocuous about peanuts on my Facebook feed yesterday as well, and the VERY FIRST RESPONSE was someone admonishing my food choices as decidedly inorganic and politically fraught. Likewise, several months ago I made what I thought was a completely uncontroversial mention of mulching and I got several unasked for SCREEDS about how my mulch choices WERE KILLING ALL THE PUPPIES (that is only a slight exaggeration, seriously.) One person was so upset by the mulch I used that she wasn't satisfied just making her point on my FB feed, but also followed me on to my private message box and tried to continue the fight there.

Mulch.

Which, I think we can all agree is, ultimately, NOT AS PERSONAL as race, gender or orientation...

I've been thinking that, while there are obviously bigger, deeper social-economic/privilege-related issues going on in these discussions, people who use social media frequently, who are not even trying to say provocative things, often get inundated, seemingly constantly (because even when it happens once, it makes a very powerful, personal impact), with these kinds of finger-shakes from strangers. ("Damn it, I just wanted to say how much I loved my peanut butter!")

So there's that picture of Tempest. She's literally shaking her finger at us, the viewer of the picture, and bam! Everything goes down in the flame-y-est flame war in the history of flames.

I mean, yes, of course, a huge percentage of the reaction is from people who really need the rug of comfort/privilege yanked out from under them, but I think there's another percentage who are just unable to cope with finger-shaking without taking it personally. ("But I'm doing my best!" "Peanut butter is yummy!") And, I think even the best of us falls prey to that easily and our initial reaction is some kind of preschooler, "Nyuh-nuh! AM NOT."

I can't even tell you how many people on my feed started their reaction to my posting the podcast interview with, "Well, I haven't listened yet, BUT...."

It was the same when she posted her first article. Most people reacted without reading (honestly, also without thinking.) Kudos to Neil Gaiman who very publicly tweeted that he didn't care if they used him as a poster boy for successful white men. In fact, he encouraged it. He also implied that he could weather this "storm" because, frankly, he *is* a successful white man who is secure enough to let any one who wanted to read other books for a year. Thank you, anyway, but he was going to be fine.

We're all going to be fine.

Thing is, more people who buy books, the better it is for EVERYONE.

Yes, the economy is sucky for booksellers. Yes, as a writer, it's f*cking hard to sell books no matter who you are or what you write. But that's because people aren't buying books. Not because Tempest encouraging people to READ.

Also, it *is* possible not to take finger-shaking personally. It's hard. I can not tell you how IRRITATED I was by the mulch discussion on my FB feed because: OMG.

But the one thing I've learned from my time on the Inter-webs is that the more you let yourself react without thinking, the more you look like a dick. That's not to say you can't say what you feel, but take a breath before hitting "send." Seriously. Or go back and say, like I had to during the first giant discussion that erupted on my FB feed over this challenge, "Mea culpa. That was unnecessarily inflammatory. I mean what I said, but I didn't have to say it that way. I'm sorry."

Of course this is easy to say. So much harder to do. Especially since social media is all about call and response and instant gratification.

Okay, I'm going to shut up about this myself, because it's super-easy to get a rant on. I can't go to bed yet, someone is wrong on the Internet.

In other (but related) news, I finished CHILD OF THE HIDDEN SEA by A. M. Dellamonica (up for a Lambda in the SF/F/H category) and am on to GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE by the currently controversial Andrew Smith.

Monday, You Brought Me Snow. How... NICE.

I'm a Minnesotan. I actually don't MIND snow, but I was not entirely ready for the snow this morning and the cold. But, this is March, right? I guess that old saying has some merit: In like a lion, out like a lamb. Only this year it was in like a lamb, out like a snow-covered Siberian TIGER.

Also, it is Monday. So far today, I've dealt with at least one school issue and my cat's prozac prescription. Next on my list is getting myself an appointment to get my own prescription renewed (for an asthma inhaler, though I wouldn't necessarily turn down prozac, if offered, ATM. ;-)

The school is maybe fixed? Thing is, Mason's school has this required after school program hour, which they call 510. It extends Washington Technical's hours to 3 PM, which is nice, and provides a stable structure for all sorts of sports and theater and other enrichments. It's an elective, so students sign up for their own things. Mason's choices this year were 1) Baseball, 2) Krazy for Komputers (which is only open to people with a A or B GPA), and 3) Chess Club. When he looked at his schedule on Sunday, however, he discovered he'd been put in something called "Science Museum." He was disappointed. I asked, "Well, so what is 'Science Museum'? It sounds like it could be cool." Well, that's one of the problems. There are many, many things I love about Washington Technical, but this is an on-going problem: there are NO class descriptions to be found anywhere (not even available to the students from what Mason tells us) for these 501s. I mean, baseball seems obvious, but what is Science Museum? A series of field trips? Something more hands-on? He has NO IDEA. We can't find any info anywhere.

Now, I'm a big fan of staying out of Mason's business at school. I normally don't even ask him what he's signed up for because it's entirely up to him. But, if we can help him navigate the system in order to get into what he wants, that's my job as a parent--to advocate.

A back and forth with Mason's counselor got Mason into baseball, his first choice. But as part of that conversation we found out who normally is in charge of 501 assignments and... it looks like MAYBE (if we remember right) the person in charge of the assignments is in fact the very person running this mysterious 'Science Museum.' When I called Shawn to tell her all this, that gave us some pause, because, okay, so if the person in charge put Mason very specifically into her program.... well, is that because it's particularly suited to his interests?

One of the things I love about Washington is that there is a lot of coordination and teamwork among the teaching staff. They figured out that Mason needed to be not just in advanced 7th grade math, but advanced 8th grade math. He's been really, REALLY flourishing there. So, for the most part, I tend to trust their choices for him.

But that begged the question for us... is this the same sort of thing?

Well, I just got an email back from the coordinator. Turns out "Science Museum" is a placeholder because they're still coordinating things like who gets to be in baseball, etc. Our sense is that baseball is highly competitive (naturally) and they wanted to make sure that Mason would have somewhere to go, if he couldn't get in.

But... Ugh, okay, this part of the process is frustrating. I mean, I will bet you money they are getting INUNDATED with calls and emails right now. We know for a fact that Mason's friend Rosemary was complaining of "mistakes" in her 510, too. I just wrote another email thanking the coordinator for getting back to us so quickly with an explanation, but also wondering if it would be possible in the future for everyone to have better sense of this process--for their sake and those of the parents and students.

Also, why is it so hard to attach descriptions to some of these courses? I get that they change and someone would have to write them and update them and that's probably a big job, but this is where volunteers are super-handy. (I know for a fact that they have student workers who could probably do something to help with this or take over some other teacher's make-work duties so that she or he might have more time to devote to this. These are high schoolers and very smart. Some of them are very eager to have things for resumes, so you know, win/win.) Also why not have a course simply called "Placeholder" so students would be alerted they are in line for a high demand 501 and will just have to practice patience until things are sorted out? If they had a 501 course catalogue this could be explained, i.e., "If you see this course, 'placeholder' on your schedule please understand that you are in line/on the waiting list for a highly competitive course. Please check back in x many days."

Ah, well. The good news is, this is mostly sorted. And we now understand how it works.

I also had to call my vet today to try to get pills for Inky, because we've been using this liquid stuff and it's not only super-expensive, but he and I both HATE it. He hates it because, from his behavior, it's clear it tastes super-gross and is generally disgusting, and I hate it because it's clear he hates it and he ends up drooling everywhere and trying to throw it up. Weirdly, he accepted pills better.

And they were cheaper.

But I think I made my vet's office mad because we're basically asking them to give their money to someone else. I tried to explain that if there was a cheap, pill version IN HOUSE, we would totally take that. But, it doesn't seem there is.

So today so far? A lot of negotiating and back and forth.

I think I will leave off calling my doctor's office for a bit.

Also... did I mention? We have snow. It's a very spring-like snow, wet and already melting, but it is there. This Monday is being very Monday.

More Books for My GROWING list from Locus Online News...

The shortlist for the 2015 Norma K. Hemming Award has been announced. The Hemming Award is presented by the Australian Science Fiction Foundation (ASFF) to “mark excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in speculative fiction first published either in Australia or by an Australian citizen.”

The Female Factory, Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter (Twelfth Planet Press)
Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier (Allen & Unwin)
Nil By Mouth, LynC (Satalyte)
The Wonders, Paddy O’Reilly (Affirm)
North Star Guide Me Home, Jo Spurrier (HarperVoyager)


Also... The first YA Book Prize winner has been announced, presented by the Bookseller.

The winner, and nominees of genre interest, are:

Only Ever Yours, Louise O’Neill (Quercus)
A Song for Ella Grey, David Almond (Hodder Children’s Books)
Say Her Name, James Dawson (Hot Key Books)
Half Bad, Sally Green (Penguin)
The Ghosts of Heaven, Marcus Sedgwick (Orion)

Car Repairs and Comic Books

Our car is fixed.

It turns out to have been a very easy (and cheap!) repair. I even had my mechanic throw in an oil change, because otherwise it would have been under a hundred bucks.

That was awesome, but a tiny bit of a bummer, because I had decided that at Dunn Bros (which is kitty-corner from the shop and where I had planned to wait out any long repairs) that I would start working on a comic book script. I only got a page or so into it before I got that call that the car was done.

Thing is, I've written a comic book script before. That one is currently in the hands of comic book artist Barb Schultz. It's a 'some day' project for us. Sadly, some time in the 1990s she had asked if I had anything she could illustrate and I had no idea what to offer. Now that she's super-busy teaching at MCAD, I finally have All the Things. (And a grasp on what the hell is a comic book script thanks to my other comic book artist friend Christopher Jones. If only I'd had that then. Ah, well.)

But, after talking to Christopher at MarsCON, I decided that he was right (of course), when he asked: why not get serious about this? Why not write several scripts and see what could happen with them?

Writing comic books, if you don't know this about me, has been a dream of mine since I was twelve. Okay, probably if you had asked me at twelve I would have said either 1) I would actually like to BE a superhero, or 2) I would like do DRAW for Marvel. But, my art is... okay, but nowhere near good enough. My writing on the other hand, is provably "professional," even if not in this particular field. Other novel writers have made the cross over into comic books, so my giving it a try is not a completely unreasonable approach.

This year, by chance, I've also been invited to attend the Wizard World Comic Book Con Minneapolis. I'm going to be reprising the CONvergence Panel: "Loki Can Rule Me Any Day" at 4:30 PM, Saturday, May 2, in M100i. I apparently can have six panelist, but I may have to provide them myself? Having never done this con or a comic con before in my life, I have NO IDEA.It could be very... awkward if it turns out to be just me, but audience participation is a thing. Also, if you KNOW anything about this PLEASE LET ME KNOW. Also if you think you want to go to this and be on this panel with me PLEASE LET ME KNOW. It is possible that the wristband they are providing me can be extended to up to six people. So SERIOUSLY LET ME KNOW if you want to go to this thing and squee Loki with me.

At any rate, being a panelist provides me with a wristband so I intend to take advantage of it. Though I'm not sure what this event is even going to be like. From the looks of it, it's very commercial. But, who knows, right?

I will have to be elsewhere earlier in the day, if you remember. I double-booked this gig with a Loft First Pages in White Bear Lake. But 4:30 is plenty of time for me to dash from one gig to the other. (And the First Pages gig is a paying one, so I couldn't cancel it even if I wanted to.)

Anyway, this push to have a script written is so that if I'm asked, I can say, "Why sure, I have something I could send you."

Because nothing ventured, right?

Mason's Face and My Scheduling Snafus

First of all, for all of you following along, Mason's face is much better. He looks like maybe he spent St. Patrick's day in a bar brawl, which is only awkward because he's 11, but, you know... it makes for a good story. In fact, Shawn and I told him as we dropped him off this morning that the traditional answer to, "Dude, what did you do to your face?" is "You should see the other guy!"

Apparently, however, our truth-teller just told people, "I fell."

...which of course makes me half-expect child protection to be at our door tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I fail all the schedules. I managed to double book myself for a ton of things. First, work, which is totally the fault of the randomness of Mason's School and the fact that my dear wifi needs to be out of town on the same day, so I am essentially a single parent for the night anyway. Second, I forgot to put a con on my schedule and managed to double-book the Quatrefoil Library reading on that same day, and NOW I just got my schedule from the Minneapolis Comic Book Con and the one hour they scheduled me literally abuts my Loft First Pages gig at White Bear Lake. I had the whole day free otherwise, except from 2 to 3 PM, and they scheduled me from 1:00 to 2:15... which I could ALMOST swing, but not quite. They might just end up canceling me, which would suck many rocks, especially since I've never EVER been invited to a Comic Book Con in my life and it would be totally amazing to finally get to be at one.

And I hate these kinds of mistakes. Normally, I'm much better (or rather, I have so little going on that the likelihood of double-booking is SO NOT an issue.)

In other news my friend and Bitter Empire colleague Haddayr Copley-Woods wrote this wonderful advice column piece "Dear Bitter Butch: How Do I Talk to My Children About Heteronormativity?" which reminded me of a funny story that happened over the last weekend. Our neighborhood, as I've previously described, is often in flux. We have a lot of houses that are actually duplexes, etc., and so we get new people in and out all the time. There are several very stable renters, but there's a new family across the street with a boy who is quite a bit younger than Mason. At any rate, the neighborhood kids all play together in a very 1970s sort of way (often out of our sight, running around until we yell, "Mason, time for dinner!") At any rate, Shawn and I were doing yard work because it was amazing outside and our hill is a disaster and needs early attention. The new little boy comes tripping across the street on his roller blades to stand over me where I'm shoving last fall's leaves into a compostable bag. He says hi in that nine-year old way, and announces that he'd like to know which one of us is Mason's "REAL" mom. We tell him that neither of us is more 'real' than the other in the eyes of the law, but that we suspect what he wants to know is which one of us gave birth to Mason. In which case, the answer is Shawn. But, that doesn't mean that I'm any less 'real.' The young man listened carefully and then nodded and said, "So, Shawn is the real mom, then."

*sigh*

The best part of this story, though, is yet to come, because Mason comes over after they're done playing and says to us, "Don't be mad at {name}. He's only nine. At that age, they get their homophobia from the parents."

Yes, Mason, my son, you are wise beyond your years, I thought, but instead I said, "Good point. Also, he probably has never met anyone gay before, at least not that he knew to talk to." Then, we discussed how the poor kid was going to be in for quite the shock because our neighbors to the left are also lesbian moms (and a biracial family to boot) and two doors down the other way is a friend of mine who identifies as genderqueer.

Welcome to working class St. Paul.