Adam Rakunas's Blog, page 5

For your Hugo (and Campbell!) Award consideration, 2014 edition

So, I got a story published last year, and I quite like it. I hope you read it and liked it, too. I hope you read it and liked it so much that you’d consider nominating “Oh Give Me A Home” for a Hugo Award for Best Novelette. I also hope that you’d also consider nominating me also for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer, ’cause my little tale of family, farming, and miniaturized bison now makes me eligible for the glory that is the Campbell Diadem (with matching cheese board).

And now back to work.

Keeping Things In Perspective (And Keeping Cabinet Doors Closed)

This is an important day, and not just because of the ridiculous head wound I gave myself this morning.

I first got serious about writing and selling fiction in 2000. It took me eight years to make a first sale, and then another four more to make another. I joined one writing group, then another. I went to one workshop, then another. Every step, I felt closer to getting it, to understanding the work of writing, of telling a good story, of convincing someone to give me money for that story.

In 2007, I started my first novel and worked on it during my lunch hour. After I got laid off in spring of 2009, I worked on it every day until I wrapped up the first draft in a sweltering motel room in Arkansas. And then I polished. And revised. And got feedback. And had a good friend copy edit the crap out of it. And on and on and on until, late last year, I said it was ready as it would ever be and started to submit it to agents.

I did my research. I poured through AgentQuery.com and Publisher’s Marketplace. My friend Mez sent me the massive spreadsheet of agents and publishers he used when did his Ritual Query Mating Dance, and I just about threw in the towel because sweet Jesus there were a lot of entries there. Then the Stubborn Jackass part of my brain kicked in and said to suck it up and get to work. I got in my daily word count, then spent my evenings sending out queries. I despaired as the queries came boomeranging back as rejections or vanished down into oblivion. I started second-guessing myself, first wondering if my query sucked, then wondering if my book sucked, then wondering if Isucked.

And then, sixty or so queries later, I got an email from an agent who’d read my little story about little bison. He’d liked what he’d read. Did I have a novel? Why, yes! Then, two days later, one of my queries to a different agent turned into a request for the full text. Why, yes, again! All of a sudden, I didn’t suck. That was a great feeling. And then they made me offers to represent me, and that was an even greater feeling. After talking with both agents, their clients, my friends, and anyone else who would listen, I came to a decision.

And then I walked into a cabinet door.

Right above the fridge is a cabinet with a double door. One side opens against a wall and is at just the right height to nail a careless person in the head. This morning, after making my choice and walking out of the kitchen to get the freshly printed agency agreement to sign and fax back, I was that careless person. My forehead hit the door right on an inside edge, then the rest of me went down. I didn’t black out, but I sure as hell cried. I now have a lovely two-inch gash that will remind me of two things: slow down and pay attention.

My new agent, Joshua Bilmes, has already told me as much in the revision notes he sent along with the agreement: slow down a bit here, catch some of these errors there. Windswept is going to be a better book thanks to his input, and I’m very, very excited to be working with him and the rest of the crew at JABberwocky Literary. I just have to remember not to rush headlong into anything and make sure I have a clue of what’s ahead. One scar will be enough, thank you very much.

Two young men, a stack of intelligent sex toys, and a dream: The Right People, now for Kindle

Well, it’s about time I made my meager back catalog get to work, seeing how it’s done nothing since mid-2009. Yes, I’m chasing the Self-Publishing Dream and have put “The Right People” up on Amazon’s Kindle Store. You can buy it here for ninety-nine of your Yankee cents.

The process was a lot less painless than I thought it would be, though it now means my little story about the student body at Ronald Reagan High School has to fight its way through the brutal slush pile that is the Kindle Store, elbowing aside apocalyptic tales and vampire romances and all the other novellas about social networking, high school politics, and a closet full of Margaret Thatcher RealDolls. I have faith in Gene and G.R., though, and, hell, maybe this will get me to write the sequel, where the boys go to college. Hope you enjoy it.

If you’re Googling for “Adam Rakunas giro.com” then this is the link you want.

Hello. My name is Adam Rakunas, and this is my website. You’re likely here because of my story, “Oh Give Me A Home,” just published in the July/August 2013 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was my first pro sale, and I was, how you say, stoked beyond belief. So stoked, in fact, that I overlooked one teeny-tiny bit in the last copy edits: the URL of my website.

Giro.com is the home of a company that makes fine bicycle and snow sport equipment, including a helmet that kept my friend Leo Dirac from fracturing his skull. If you’re in the market for gear to protect your head, I highly recommend them.

I don’t, however, have a blog there. I should have caught the error during editing. But now we’ve both had a little adventure, and maybe you’ve decided to get some new gloves or bike shoes as a result of your wandering. You can also read my first semi-pro sale “The Right People” over at Futurismic, a website that I hope will be up and running once its publisher finishes his graduate work; you can also buy “The Right People” for your Kindle (all proceeds go straight into my Universal Taco Fund, which I will use to buy all the tacos in the Universe).

What else do I have going on, writing-wise? Novels, man, novels. Short stories are tough for me, because, once I start writing, I usually have a hard time shutting up. I have two in the can, one of which I’m working on getting published the traditional way (and, yes, I know all about self-publishing, and, no, I’m not going down that route yet). Check this space for updates.

Right. Thank you for coming here. Feel free to poke around. I need to go get breakfast.

Silence equals consent: a brief letter I sent to SFWA (or The First Officialish Thing I Did as a Member)

This will be brief because I’m pretty sure that you, the loyal members of my Korean fan club, won’t care. I just want to put it out there.

I just joined SFWA. I’m only an associate member, which means I get to read the forums but can’t vote for the Nebulas or for its officers (one day, baby, one day). I joined because I would like the organization that’s supposed to represent my interests as a writer (writing and getting paid for it, with a minimum of getting ripped off) not to be either a club for refugees from the Mad Men era of publishing or a platform for racist, sexist, homophobic dipshits. These are small things, I realize, but if I’m going to shell out some cash, I don’t think they’re unreasonable requests. Toward the former, I’m not sure what to contribute, but toward the latter, I’m following in Amal El-Mohtar’s footsteps and have just sent this email to Jim Fiscus, SFWA’s Western Representative, and the Board:

Dear Mr. Fiscus-

I am writing to you as my regional representative in SFWA, wishing to express my desire to see Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) expelled from SFWA immediately under Article IV, Section 10 of the SFWA By-Laws.

I applaud the Board for quickly deleting the tweet relaying Mr. Beale’s attacks on N.K. Jemesin from the sfwaauthors Twitter feed and for removing his blog from the feed. However, as long as Mr. Beale remains a member, I believe he will continue to use SFWA as a platform for his racist, misogynist, and homophobic views, none of which have anything to do with the business of writing science fiction and fantasy. I urge you to please represent my views to the rest of the Board. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Adam Rakunas

I have no idea what will happen, but I hope the result means a SFWA that is professional, diverse, and welcoming. Like Star Trek, but without the bodysuits.

Hail the Robot Army: iD by Madeline Ashby (or A Well-Placed Kick to the Head)

I love a book that kicks me in the head.

You know what I’m talking about: you open the first page, start reading, and some idea, some turn of phrase, something about the book rears back from the pages and smacks you in the skull, leaving you breathless and starry eyed and saying, “Oh, wow” for the next two hundred pages. It’s nice to have a comforting book, one that slowly pulls you in until you’re in way over your head, but, every now and then, I need the kick, and iD by Madeline Ashby is chock full of it.

(Disclosure: I have made buttons with Madeline’s words on them, much to our eventual consternation. I have hung out with Madeline. I would write all of this if I hadn’t, ’cause her work is so bloody good.)

iD is the sequel to vN, her debut novel about a self-replicating robot who eats her grandmother (complications ensue). If you dug Javier, Amy’s companion/foil/teacher/eventual partner, then you’re going to love iD, ’cause it’s all about him, where he came from, what he’s done, and where he’s going. There’s sex and violence and so many geek references that I had to stop myself from emailing her every time I came across one.

But that’s just the carbon skin over the aerogel muscle and diamond-lattice bone. iD cuts deep into questions of choice and free will and imperfection, and it hurts. Are the vN a reflection of humanity? Or are we the vN seen through a glass, darkly? How much of our own cultural and genetic programming drives our choices, makes us who we are? Would we be better off if we were nothing but a massive set of algorithms and processors? Can imperfect beings create perfect ones?

iD comes out late June, which means you’ll have enough time to get vN to prepare. Buy both. You’ll be glad you did. But wear a helmet. You’ll need it.

Miramar EIR Scoping Meeting (Or, We’re Going to Kick Michael Dell’s Ass And Eat Cookies)

Hello. Do you live in Santa Monica? If so, please read. Note: there is potential for you to get delicious, delicious cookies.

For the past year and change, I’ve been getting involved with two groups in Santa Monica that are working to stop a series of proposed massive hotel/condo/retail projects scattered around Downtown Santa Monica. The first of them is the Fairmont Miramar, the hotel on Ocean and Wilshire; its owner, Michael (Dude, You’re Getting A) Dell wants to tear down the current structure and replace it with a giant retail area, more dining space, less hotel space, and 120 condos all crammed into a 261-foot (21-story) tower. There will be some new underground parking, but not enough to cover the 800+ spaces that are required by city ordinance for staff, visitors, and residents, which means a lot of spillover parking in the surrounding neighborhood. Oh, and the current plan will also dump a parking entrance onto California Avenue, right in the middle of the bike lane. Plus, more traffic right at the California Incline, more pollution, and, I think, more crap that the edge of the city that we don’t need (like we need more high end retail? Isn’t that what Santa Monica Place was for?). I am not against the Miramar fixing itself up; I am against it turning into a condo development that’s being tacked on so the builders can start with their budget in the black, much to the detriment of the neighborhood.

This is the trial balloon, and if it goes forward, it’s going to set a precedent with the City Council and Planning Commission that it’s okay for more of these 20+ story developments in Downtown, with the potential for more scattered all over the city. Even with the addition of the Expo line in a few years, these bloody great towers are going to mean even more traffic, which is going to make riding our bikes that much hairier, and it’s going to mean the streets will be even less safe for our kids, and it’s going to mean the skyline from the beach will look more like Miami than Santa Monica. I think this sucks, and I want to stop it.

That is where you come in. On Thursday, May 16, there is going to be an important meeting at the Main Branch of the Santa Monica Public Library at 6.30pm to discuss the Miramar’s environmental impact report, which is a key step to getting legal approval for this monster development to advance. This is where we, the citizens of Santa Monica, the people who live here and run here and play here and eat tacos here, can give our public comments and tell the city that we want alternatives to the proposed condo/retail/bike-lane-interfering/dogs-and-cats-living-together scale. Anne and I are getting a sitter for Grace so we can attend and speak, and I would like to invite you all to attend. If you do, I will have cookies for you. Freshly baked, delicious, politically active cookies. All you have to do is show up and make your voice heard; or, if you can’t, you can send comments your comments to the City Council and Planning Commission, via the addresses at the bottom of this email. (Note: emailed comments may result in your cookies not be as fired up and ready to go as the ones at the meeting.)

Thank you reading. I hope you can attend. I hope we can kick Michael Dell’s ass.

-A.

To contact the City Council, just send an email to council@smgov.net. To contact the Planning Commission, you’ll have to contact the commissioners individually:

suehimmelrich@gmail.com

andersonsmpc@yahoo.com

jenniferfkennedy@gmail.com

richard@richardmckinnon.com

gnewbold@gmail.com

parryj@gte.net

Jim_Ries@hotmail.com

In your email subject, please say something about “Miramar EIR Scoping” (if you really want to know the nuts and bolts, email me and I’ll fill you in on all the gory process details). In the body, please tell the recipients who you are, where you live, how long you’ve lived in Santa Monica, that you are a registered voter in Santa Monica (if you are), and that you have concerns about the scope of the current Miramar development plans and that you would like the EIR to include alternatives that include a) doing nothing (ie keeping the whole place as a hotel of the same size), b) moving all large development toward Wilshire (instead of clustering it all along 2nd and California), and c) that you want studies of the impact of any development on the current bike paths on Ocean and California (apologies for sounding like a broken record, but I loves me some bike paths that don’t have driveways in them).

COOKIES OF JUSTICE AHOY!

Toward a Less Shitty Santa Monica

I want to get this out here now, while the coffee is still working.

What do I want this city to be like in five years? In ten? In fifty? What do I want to change right now if I could, cost and public wishes be damned?

Let’s start big and absurd and work down from there.

If cost and public opinion were no object, I’d lower the streets by two stories. I’d pay for every construction crew in the continental US to come here, dig down down thirty feet, moving pipes, wiring, the whole kit and kaboodle. I’d make it so every garage in the city had elevators or ramps that shot straight down to this magical network of trenches. All streets that lead into Santa Monica will turn into tunnels, descending into the rich bowels of the earth. Then I’d make double-decker underground streets, with all of the wiring and piping easily accessible, and cover them up. Housing, ventilation units, pedestrian paths, bike tracks, and tram tracks will go into this newly liberated space. The miserable hulking parasitic devices known as automobiles will be banished to the underworld. Bam. Traffic circulation, housing shortages, and unemployment solved, all preserving the urban village feel that I and the city’s marketing department like.

Also, since I am Benevolent Dictator With An Infinite Budget, I close the airport, rip out the concrete, connect it with Clover Park, creating a massive public space for all to enjoy, including cyclocross racers, because fuck you Parks Department, we’re riding our bikes on your grass and you’ll like it.

Also, all future Downtown development proposals that are more than three stories high will result in both the architects and the developers thrown into stocks that I will set up at Wilshire and Ocean, where they will be mocked for their greed and hubris by the public, who will be able to pelt them with scale models of their monster buildings made out of sponge cake.

What else that’s impractical yet would be awesome? No more chain stores. Montana, Main Street, and Downtown become Special Economic Entrepreneur Zones, where people can set up their pop-up stores, restaurants, boutiques, whatever. They have a year to make a go at it, rent-free, and the ones that have the most cash and votes from the public get to stick around, though they’ll now a) have to pay rent, though they’d know that would happen when they first moved it and would have planned for it and b) have to make the citizens of Santa Monica shareholders in their business. It wouldn’t be a huge cut, and the shareholders wouldn’t have voting rights, but they could choose to collect their dividends or sign them over to the city’s Public Awesomeness Fund.

Hotel taxes are tripled, except during the Rose Bowl, when they are quintupled, because I’m sick of all these Wealthy Midwestern Alumni strolling around the farmers market, getting in the way of my winter produce. Same with AFM, too, because you’re keeping me from the butternut squash, you badge-wearing wank.

What else? Well, since I have infinite budget, I’m going to finally solve the county’s homeless problem by providing proper goddamn mental health for a start, right at St. John’s, because fuck you St. John’s for your parking idiocy. So, everyone sleeping on the streets gets fed into a fully funded, professionally staffed facility that will set them up with recovery, meds, counseling, job training, all that. And, if none of that works, if all they want to do is drink or get high, then they can live out the remainder of their days in wet housing, which I will build in Beverly Hills, because fuck you Beverly Hills.

There. Now that I have my outrageous ideas out of the way, here are the less outrageous ones that could be enacted this year that would make the city a better place. No, I don’t want your input, because you did not talk me out of drinking this cup of coffee this morning.

Traffic sucks because there is too much traffic. How do we reduce traffic? By making it expensive and annoying. If you don’t live in Santa Monica and can’t bring yourself to ride a bike or take the bus or aren’t excited about the Expo Line because you like driving yourself and only yourself in your car instead of taking the time to get to know your fellow workers and carpool with them despite their cultural/political/personal space differences, you’re going to pay for it. Non-residential congestion pricing starts yesterday, suckers. Closed circuit cameras go up at every intersection on Santa Monica’s borders, and they are aiming right at your license plates. Optical character recognition software reads the plate and checks it against a DMV list of residential car registrations. If you don’t live here, you’re paying for it. We’ll say $5 a day, $4 if you buy a day pass the night before, $3 if you buy a block of twenty weekdays every month. All that money goes into the city’s transportation fund, which will pay for infrastructure and the Big Blue Bus. There will be income exemptions based on tax returns, though if you try and use any accountancy tricks to weasel out of it, the city will bring the hammer down on your ass. The city can’t do anything about state and federal oil subsidies, but it can sure as shit making driving into Santa Monica more expensive than bussing, training, or riding.

All future development follows the LUCE, period. No DAs except for current development, and that’s only after passing strict EIRs that show any redevelopment won’t have a negative impact on pollution, traffic, or any quality-of-life issues. Yes, DAs allow for flexibility in the case of disaster (if the Big One hits and One Wilshire collapses, I think they should be allowed to rebuild their current structure), but that flexibility comes with costs. Land is expensive in Santa Monica, sure, but there’s no reason except greed for getting us to subsidize developers’ bottom lines.

We do like Zurich did with parking and instate parking maximums. We crank up the parking rates at every structure and parking meter in the city. All the cash goes to bike infrastructure and the Big Blue Bus. Santa Monica will become a car minimalist city. Car culture is dying, and I’d rather it evolve into something healthy instead of having Road Warrior death spasms. Car dealerships: gone. No more business licenses for you, because cars have no place in the next hundred years of Santa Monica or any healthy American city. Parking prices change to meet demand and go up because they’re too cheap and YOUR CAR SUCKS. Ride a goddamn bicycle, you complaining, hyphen-abusing idiots on Patch; you’ll probably all feel better. Same for you, Bill Bauer. YES, BILL, I’M USING YOUR NAME; SEND YOUR SOCK PUPPETS AND SHOUTY MAN AVATAR AT ME, I DON’T CARE BECAUSE I’M FITTER AND SEXIER THAN YOU ARE.

High speed internet for everyone, subsidized. (I’m finally getting tired and running out of steam, so deal with it. Spitballing and bullet points from now on. Shut up. COFFEE.) Free wifi everywhere except at the big hotels, because see points above. City staff, city council members, city commissioners all have to eat their own dog food on every idea they present, so no free parking, no taking over red curbs, you all take buses or ride bikes or carpool to the max (which I know some of the city staffers I’ve met do, and I think you guys are awesome. I just want everyone to do it). Personal trainers have to pay for licenses to use any parks or beaches for classes or clients; the citizens of Santa Monica don’t create that much wear-and-tear on the grass nor bring boom boxes or shouts to the parks, kids. You want to use the land, you pay for it.

We will have a goddamn Santa Monica Triathlon. It will be a sprint, and it will be on a Sunday, and it will be awesome.

Oy, up in five hours, what else…

Oh, no more door hangers for menus, businesses, or political whatevers. Any PACs that spend money on any Santa Monica elections have to disclose the source of every cent, including names and addresses. Candidates may only campaign during the month of September, and then they shut the hell up until the Saturday before Election Day, when they’re allowed one more reminder campaign day. SMRR has to disclose their leadership, their funding, everything, as do every other group in the city.

DOUBLE PARKING IN THE BIKE LANES GETS YOU FINED SO MUCH THAT YOU’LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN I’M TIRED OF SWERVING AROUND YOU LAZY ASSHOLES.

The library gets to hire however many librarians they want. No, I don’t know where the money comes from, but the library is awesome and it gets what it wants.

Okay, I’m finally exhausted. Cars and tall buildings suck. Santa Monica shouldn’t. I love you. Good night.

A quick note, so I can come back to it in times of self-doubt and writing stress (ie all the time)

Midnight’s Children.

Desolation Road.

The Overheating Greenhouse Future.

You will put these things into your brain, and the book that you will want to read will be the result. Don’t stress. Finish your work, let it stew, have a curry. It will all work out in the end.

Coming Eventually: Oh Give Me A Home

Last night, I got an envelope from Hoboken, New Jersey. It was not the envelope I expected.

Hoboken is home to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I’d submitted a short story entitled “Oh Give Me A Home” back in September, and I’d included a self-adressed, stamped envelope, as per their guidelines. This was not my envelope. It had a printed address label. Maybe my envelope got soaked from Hurricane Sandy, I thought, though a tiny voice in the back of my head said, …or maybe not.

I handed the envelope to Anne. She opened it and looked at me with a big grin. “There’s a check inside,” she said, holding it up along with a contract.

Am I stoked? Hey, man, are fish tacos awesome?

I have no idea when it will be published, but I’ll be sure to let everyone know. And thank you to everyone who read and critiqued it; you helped me make a better story.

tl;dr Holy crap, I sold a story to F&SF!