Alexander Jablokov's Blog, page 6

The Big Move

Right now, I'm in the midst of packing to move. A huge proportion of my possessions are books, even in this electronic era, and those are mostly packed. Still, those are what makes this more of a trial than it needs to be.

Some of my books

I moved to this apartment when my marriage ended, four years ago. Now I'm buying my ex-wife out and moving back to the house, and she is moving to her own apartment. Don't ask me if this is a wise financial decision. There is a lot of sentiment involved, perhaps a bit too much.

Interestingly, though I am moving from an apartment to a house, the quality of my writing area will decrease. Right now my office is a weatherized porch on the second floor, just off the kitchen. It's a smallish room with good light, and just enough room for my desk, a table for the printer, and a bookshelf.

More of my books. Not my worst habit.

The house has no real space for a separate office. I'm not ready to confiscate a bedroom from one of my two kids, even though one of them is off at college. So it will either be back to the basement, where I worked for so many years, or in a space in the dining room. My dining room gets more use than some, because I like having people over, but maybe I'll turn the space into a hybrid library/office/dining room. It does have a nice sliding glass door opening out on my garden, which is currently an overgrown mess. Bringing that thing back to life is my first goal.

I used to have a big garden party in the late summer for all of my writer and writing associated friends. My then-wife never liked it, and I missed a couple, and then moved out. I don't know if I can manage to schedule one before the weather cools down and gets too unpredictable.

This is what passes for exciting news in the life of a writer! Packing. Dismantling things. Fretting about where the moving truck is going to park. Yeah, you have no idea.

My Boskone panels

I’m at Boskone In a couple of weeks. I’m moderating the Noir and Marketing panels, something I like to do—I like to think I’m a solid, mildly authoritarian moderator who keeps things moving. And the Marketing one will reveal to me all the things I still don’t know about how to promote myself as a writer.

If you go, be sure to look me up.

Angels in Speculative Fiction

16 Feb 2018, Friday 15:00 - 16:00, Marina 4 (Westin)

Angels in fantasy, science fiction, and horror aren't always what you migh...

My Arisia panels

One of my local cons, Arisia, is this weekend. I like cons, but they quickly tire me out, so I prefer the ones I can leave and go home from.  I have four panels from this one, on topics I managed to persuade myself, and them, that I could speak usefully about.

Arisia panels are appallingly long, over an hour. The ones at 10 pm (piece of advice:  look at the panels they've assigned to you some time before it's too late to say you don't want to do one without being rude to hard-working con staf...

Who cares about climate change?

Do liberals actually care about climate change? Or is it just a weapon in the eternal political war everyone seems to find so interesting?

As a good liberal, I'd like to think it was the former, but most available evidence indicates that it is the latter.

Long-time readers will know how interested I was in Washington's Initiative 732 during the election, It was a revenue-neutral carbon tax that hoped to provide a pragmatic path to carbon reduction that would appeal to the right as well as the...

Colonoscopy without sedation

Being old, I recently went in for my second colonoscopy (the recommended interval for those not of high risk is every 10 years, starting at age 50). The first time, I just went in without doing a lot of research, and got knocked out by whatever anesthetic they used, and came to later, woozy and sick, not remembering anything.

This time I asked for a sedation-free procedure. Everyone in the GI department at Somerville Hospital was accomodating--they clearly didn't think it was the best idea, b...

Workshop technique: submitting an outline for review

I've been a member of the same peer speculative fiction writing workshop for decades now. In addition to the usual stories and novels, we've commented on plays intended for the stage, plays intended for historic sites, essays, and other forms of prose.

A couple of our members like submitting outlines of something they are planning to write. These pose some specific challenges to a workshop, so I thought I'd run through some suggestions on how to get the most out of your workshop if you feel l...

Images of the past: The Epic of Man 2

(this is my second post on images in the LIFE book The Epic of Man. Part 1 here)

Another culture the editors of The Epic of Man covered was Shang dynasty China.  Two images from that chapter particularly stuck with me.

One shows a dinner party.

"So the termite says, 'is the bar tender here?'"Everyone is having a good time, and the tradition of laughing heartily at the lame jokes of your social or economic superior is already well established. Even in my youth, I thought the exaggerated big yu...

Images of the past: The Epic of Man 1

I became interested in history almost as I became interested in anything. It's hard to point to anything in my early childhood that led to this interest, and it is not shared by anyone else in the family. Or among most of my friends, for that matter.

One early fascination was one of those big books from Time Publishing (later Time Life): The Epic of Man. It was a compilation of articles that appeared in LIFE magazine between 1955 and 1957. Back then, big middelbrow national magazines had a st...

Trying to take advantage of insomnia

For many people, insomnia involves not being able to get to sleep. Mine, when it manifests is in the form of early morning awakening. Its incidence comes in waves. Sometimes I have no problem for weeks at a time. Then there will be a period when I do wake up at 3 am or so, but fall back asleep almost immediately. Then comes a period, such as the one I'm going through now, when I wake up at 4 or 4:30 am or so. My usual wake time is 5:30.

So, this week, I've been hitting the writing chair way e...

Death threats from vegans

Being a jerk seems to be some kind of survival mechanism--and everyone seems to be struggling for survival. I'm confused as to why.

A few weeks ago, the guys on one of my favorite podcasts, Slate Money made some kind of mild joke about vegans. The result was rage, denunciation, and resolutions to stop listening to the podcast. Jordan Weissman had to take some time in the podcast a bit later make a point of apologizing for angering everyone.

Then I read an article on Clean Eating.

Before we go...