Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 64

Friday Cat Blogging Special Saturday Edition.

Four cats in the sun. Bliss!



Do you think there will be cake? Waiting for Gateaux.



Solar-powered laser eyes at 70%.



I iz contpe…cotemp…Thinkin'!



Why yes, I am the walrus. Goo-goo-gatcho, etc.



Nobody is going anywhere. The suitcase stays where it is.

R.I.P. Joel Rosenburg

via Peg Kerr's LJ and his own website:

"On Wednesday afternoon, June 1, 2011, Joel had a respiratory depression that caused a heart attack, anoxic brain damage and major organ failure. Despite the very best efforts of the paramedics and the team at Hennepin County Medical Center, Joel was pronounced brain dead at around 5:37pm Thursday June 2nd, In accordance with his wishes, he shared the gift of life through organ and tissue donation.

He is survived by his daughters, Judith Eleanor and Rachel Hannah, and his wife, Felicia Herman. Today, June 3rd would have been his 32nd wedding anniversary."

I Must Be Reading the Wrong Books

Now romance novels are, according to this, as addictive as porn. Seriously, kids?

Sean's WisCon report

WisCon was great for me this year, though not long enough.

When is it ever long enough?

This year, though, it was foreshortened for me because I had to work Saturday morning, so I didn't get down to Madison until about 7:00 pm on Saturday night, then unloaded and hit dinner with Doug. After wandering up and down State Street for a while, we settled on a little lounge named Paul's Club, which had great, classic American fare at a decent price, with wood paneling and black velvet paintings straight out of the Sixties. Definitely going back there. Crispy, beer-battered french fries FTW.

Then I changed and headed up to the party floor (UP? NOT DOWN? That was strange all weekend, and I was perpetually headed the wrong way. But the Fourth Floor is perfect, and also a repeat), where I finally got to see many of the folks I was looking forward to seeing--Ben and Steph Zvan, James Hall and Sarah Rouner, and Marguerite Reed, and Haddayr Copley-Woods, and... and... too many to name all y'all, so I'm just going to stick to those folks who I don't get to see very often, or who I got to meet. If we hung out at WisCon, though, it was awesome and I'm really glad we did!

I was introduced to Brad Beaulieu (though I didn't end up making it to his reading, which I heard was awesome), to Saladin Ahmed, (dude has a serious man crush on Jonathan Coulton, or they are long-lost doppelgangers from the neck up), and I'm looking forward to reading both of their books. And I pounced on Scott Lynch, who I've supposed to have met almost a dozen times, but we keep missing each other; he was good to chat with in the brief time we had to talk, and I'm hoping we get to see more of him in the near future.

I was up late (surprise) talking (surprise), and finally hit bed around 2:45 am. Six moderately restful hours later, I was awake--and not hung over. In fact, not only did I find it surprisingly easy not to drink, but I was thrilled by how easy it was to get going in the morning, even with the con late nights.

Sunday morning kicked off with coffee from Michaelangelo's and a quick search for four-leaf clover on the capitol lawn. I left the hotel lobby at 9:06 am, leaving Lynne and Michael Thomas to hold down the lobby. At 9:23 I came back with coffee and clover, to Michael's surprised comment "You found one already?"

"No," I replied. "I found two."

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That's become a bit of a tradition for me, I'll admit, and one I like. It's part of who I am, finding four-leaf clover, and it is easy and instantly recognizable.

Anyway, at 10 am we had the "Being in a Writing Group" panel, where Naomi and I both represented the Wyrdsmiths. I want to note how much I love being on panels with my fellow Wyrdsmiths. There's a casual report that we all have from spending so many years talking together, and a shared set of stories and conversations that we can reference and tap into at a moment's notice. It was a really good panel, and my only scheduled panel of the con.

More on that later.

Then, after chatting in the second floor hallway with the regular cadre of folks, I headed out for my last long training run before the marathon in three (two and a half) weeks: 20 miles. I was going to run a loop around Lake Mendota. After getting lost on the roads a couple of times and getting directions from undergrads who clearly have never left their neighborhoods, I found my way to the eastern shores of the lake, where I got stuck in a nature preserve. The shared bike/walking path became a walking only path, followed by a hiking trail, following by patches of mud in an ever more dense forest, which disappeared into fallen trees and dense underbrush.

If you are quite a ways from home, at a science fiction and fantasy convention, and the forest tries to eat you, you back away slowly and go back the way you came.

After calculating that even if I could find my way out to the main roads and complete the circuit of the lake, I would have run six or seven extra miles in the process, and that would have been far too much for my training regimen--detrimentally so. Disappointed, I ran back to the hotel for a round trip of only 10.5 miles. But I found another four-leaf clover, so it wasn't a total loss.

After that, I flyered the hotel with Wyrdsmiths Party Posters, then met up with a bunch of folks headed to Brocach's for dinner. Lynne and Michael Thomas and I waited for an author who was getting their papers in to the NIU archives, which took significantly longer than we'd all expected. We didn't get to Brocach's until about 6:15pm, and I needed to be back by 7:00pm to get the party room set up.

No worries. Michael now says I am "a WHIRLWIND of eating." The food arrived along about 6:35, and by 6:47, Kelly and I were paid and headed back to tackle the party room.

Aside from cleaning up the previous night's party, everything went smoothly. We both did room layout and furniture, then I handled the food prep while he (and then Doug as well) set up the coolers for beer and non-alcoholic drinks. Wyrdsmiths always has a great beer selection, though I think Naomi hit it out of the park with something like sixteen different selections of great beers--there were comments on that all night. Meanwhile, I didn't want people to enjoy the food. I wanted to flatten their expectations: we had stuffed grape leaves, pita points with both garlic hummus and roasted red pepper hummus, pita chips, four different kinds of olives, baklava, and a cut fruit tray with seven kinds of fruit.

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It was awesome. People were surprised and delighted and TALKED ABOUT IT ALL NIGHT. Between us and the Whedonistas Party (which rocked, and which thrown by the dynamic duo themselves, Michael and Lynne, and which had a raffle that hundreds of people entered but I WON-woot!), there was a steady stream of people eating our food and beer, getting their mixed drinks, and then swinging downstairs for a turn at the GenderFloomp dance party, before cycling the whole thing again.

I got comments on my "The Writer's Dillemma" t-shirt, which was fun, since I'd designed it to wear to cons.

Doug and I finally shut it down between 2:30 and 2:45am, though people were still poking their heads in even as we were closing up the trash bags.

Of course, I ended up staying up later (surprise) talking (surprise), and didn't hit bed until about 3:45. But aren't those conversations what we're all there for? Those connections that keep the sense of a wider writing community alive and flourishing in our minds in the times we spend away from each other?

Five hours of sleep later, I was up and off to Michaelangelo's for more coffee. Doug informed me that there was no way with serious allergies and five hours of sleep that he was going to make his 9:00am panel on "Being a Resilient Writer." Yes, we made the necessary jokes. I went to inform the other Wyrdsmiths on the panel, Eleanor and Kelly, who suggested that I could be a ringer fro the audience. Five minutes later, when I entered the conference room where the panel was being held (and which was hellafulla people, damn!), Kelly pointed to a chair up on the panel. And to Doug's name placard, which now read "NOT/Douglas Hulick/SEAN M. MURPHY".

And thus I was on a second panel for WisCon. With no coffee in me, five hours of sleep, and 35 seconds of foreknowledge.

It was a ridiculously good panel. The audience was great. Eleanor shared a ton from her wealth of experience. The Wyrdsmiths rocked the show, being three fourths of the panel. People asked good questions, and we did our best to respond. It was the kind of panel you look back at and think about the good ole' days.

After tha, I hung with Doug and Kelly at the sign out, then Doug and I cleared the room and packed up the cars. After a round or two of goodbyes in the hallway, I hit the road back to the Twin Cities.

I'm already plotting what food we'll have next year. Gotta top this year, right?

Bits (or Two Bits, At Least)

According to its editoral, Clarkesworld Magazine is now available for subscription on Amazon.com for the Kindle. The editoral is an interesting discussion about the on-line magazine business model.

Also, you don't have time to READ science fiction? How about listening to it? Lightspeed Magazine has a podcast.

To Blog or Not To Blog

Have blogs given way to social media?

I know that if you want to catch up on the latest things that are going on with the majority of the Wyrdsmiths, you'd have a much better time of it following any one of us on Facebook or Twitter than checking here on a regular basis. I'm probably the only notable exception. I actually prefer the long-form, that is to say, the blog, over the sound byte-ness of Twitter, especially. (I actually prefer Facebook to Twitter or foursquare or "whatever the kids are into these days", but that might just be because I'm old.)

I used to look forward to everyone's detailed con report after the weekend, but now I'm expected to catch a play-by-play in 140 characters or less as it happens.

I'm so old school I still work pretty hard to keep up on a nearly-daily basis on my livejournal. I don't know that most of us bother any more. So my question is: do people (besides me) blog any more? Do people still find it useful? Your lack of response will speak volumes, no doubt.

Friday Cat Blogging

Hey Baby, wanna see mah etchings?



That's mah enthusiasm. I sneezed it up.



Bobblehead cat says look at mah tiny feets.



I sleep therefore don't close the window.



I can bend water with my mind!

Sean's WisCon Schedule

I'll only be down for about half of the con this year--got stuck at work through mid-day Saturday, so I won't get down to Madison until Saturday evening. That said, here's my schedule for the con--I decided to take it light this year.

Being in a Writing Group
Sunday, 10:00-11:15 am, Conference 5
S. N. Arly (Moderator), F.J. Bergmann, Deborah Lynn Jacobs, Naomi Kritzer, Sean M. Murphy
How do writing groups work? What are their pros and cons? How does one handle envy and excessive competition? How does one maintain one's one vision, when the rest of the group does not agree?

Wyrdsmiths Publication Party
Sunday, 8:45 pm-Monday 3:00 am, Room 634 
Celebrating the Publication of Among Thieves: A Tale of the Kin by Douglas Hulick, Resurrection Code by Lyda Morehouse, and Almost Final Curtain by Tate Hallaway
Eleanor A. Arnason, Douglas Hulick, Naomi Kritzer, Kelly McCullough, Sean M Murphy
Members of the Wyrdsmiths writing group are going to publish four novels in 2011. Join us as we celebrate this, and especially celebrate the publication of Doug Hulick's first novel.

Doug's WisCon schedule

If the following looks familiar, it's because my WisCon schedule is exactly the same as Kelly's. Not to fear, though: I have no plans to shave my head, and am still somewhat taller than Kelly, so the odds of confusing us for one another at these functions remain small. :)


Sat, 1:00–2:15 pm Great Lakes Urban Graverobbers, Inc. Reading, Michelangelos
Saladin Ahmed, Will Alexander, Barth Anderson, Douglas Hulick, Kelly McCullough
Readings by writers from the shadowy hoodoo-holes and soggy nether-reaches of the Upper Midwest.

Sun, 8:45 pm–Mon, 3:00 Wyrdsmiths Publication Party: Among Thieves: A Tale of the Kin by Douglas Hulick and Resurrection Code by Lyda Morehouse, Room 634
Eleanor A. Arnason, Douglas Hulick, Naomi Kritzer, Kelly McCullough, Sean M Murphy
Members of the Wyrdsmiths writing group are going to publish four novels in 2011. We'd like to celebrate this, and especially celebrate the publication of Doug Hulick's first novel.

Mon, 10:00–11:15 am Being a Resilient Writer, Conference 5
Moderator: Eleanor A. Arnason, Douglas Hulick, Kelly McCullough, Catherine M. Schaff-Stump Writing is a line of work full of setbacks. What are these setbacks? How does one bounce back and keep writing? How does one find ways around setbacks and blocks in the road?

Mon, 11:30 am–12:45 pm The SignOut, Capitol/Wisconsin
Alex Bledsoe, K. Tempest Bradford, Richard Chwedyk, Alan John DeNiro, Moondancer Drake, Timmi Duchamp, Pamela Dean, Carol F. Emshwiller, Matt Forbeck, Valerie Estelle Frankel, Hiromi Goto, Anna Black, Eileen Gunn, Andrea D. Hairston, Jacqueline Houtman, Douglas Hulick, Deborah Lynn Jacobs, Vylar Kaftan, Ellen Klages, Josh Lukin, Kelly McCullough, Neesha Meminger, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Sarah Monette, Nancy Jane Moore, Pat Murphy, Nnedi Okorafor, Mark D. Rich, James P. Roberts, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Mary Doria Russell, Catherine M. Schaff-Stump, Fred Schepartz, Nisi Shawl, Jennifer Stevenson, Kathryn Sullivan, Lynne M. Thomas, Sheree Renée Thomas, Amy Thomson

Naomi's WisCon Schedule

WisCon really sneaked up on me this year.

Being in a Writing Group
Sunday, 10-11:15 a.m., Conference 5
S. N. Arly (Moderator), F.J. Bergmann, Deborah Lynn Jacobs, Naomi Kritzer, Sean M. Murphy
How do writing groups work? What are their pros and cons? How does one handle envy and excessive competition? How does one maintain one's one vision, when the rest of the group does not agree?

Fiction Writing in the Age of Fast Information
Sunday, 2:30–3:45 pm, Caucus
Fred Schepartz (moderator), Gwynne Garfinkle, Theodora Goss, Andrea D. Hairston, Naomi Kritzer, Ann Leckie
You're sitting at your computer writing your novel or short story. A question comes to mind. In days of yore, you would head to the library to get your answer. Now, you just Google it. A treasure trove of information is right there at your fingertips, but does it ever become a barrier to good writing and storytelling? Will writers skip the process of exhaustive research before they write a single word in favor of a process done on a need to know basis? Is that a problem? And with so much readily available information, are writers in danger of loading their work with trivia that adds little to the actual story?

Is Science Fiction the New Reality?
Mon, 10:00–11:15 am, Caucus
K. Tempest Bradford (moderator), Richard Chwedyk, James Frenkel, Naomi Kritzer, Shira Lipkin
Star Trek offers a vision of the future that includes personal, networked communicators, talking, intelligent computers, and the tricorder, a portable, hand-held networked computing device. Today we have cellphones, IBM's Watson,and the iPad. Are we already living in the science-fiction future? What does this mean for writers of speculative fiction?

There's also:
THE WYRDSMITHS PARTY
Sunday night, 8:45-ish until the last Wyrdsmiths standing says, "OK, everyone out. I wanna go collapse into a bed."
Eleanor A. Arnason, Douglas Hulick, Naomi Kritzer, Kelly McCullough, Sean Murphy. (Lyda, alas, is not going to make it.)

I'm not going to the Sign Out; I decided two years ago that I would bypass it until I once again had something to sign. I do, as it happens, have two self-published short story anthologies ... but they're e-books. (I've heard discussion of how it might be possible to autograph an e-book but in a "they could do it THIS way" context.) Anyway, if you want me to sign something, just flag me down and I'll sign whatever, whenever (but not at the Sign-Out because I won't be there.)