Caren Gussoff writer. geek. bon vivant. dot com

Yesterday, in my “quickie” post, I mentioned Eileen Gunn’s Hugo House class and reading (class = Sunday, January 25, reading = Monday, January 26, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.), but I realized I should have also mentioned this very cool panel:

“Online Publishing, Blogging and Marketing for Writers”
Hugo House’s InPrint Series presents a panel discussion with writers, bloggers and editors, including Rebecca Agiewich, Eileen Gunn and Ed Skoog, who have made the Internet work for them. 
Thursday, January 29th, 2009, 7:00 PM
Hugo House
1634 11th Avenue Seattle, WA
$7/$5 for Hugo House members

Like I said, I will be at the reading, and I’ll probably make it out for the panel. Wanna come with?

When I was a child, my dad was a Star Trek guy (I’ve referred to this before. He loves the original series and shakes his head in disgust at my preference to The Next Generation). Anyway, I have lots of happy memories attached to Star Trek and all the movies from the original series, and some of those more vivid memories are from Wrath of Khan. Adios, Khan.

I finished a draft of my academic-vampire story starring Nikola Tesla. It’s very uneven, even for a first draft, and as yet, untitled. I swear, I think I have to start with a title and then write from there, rather than try and pull a title from a draft. If I don’t start with one, I never find one I am happy with.

Eileen Gunn will be teaching and reading verrrrrry soon.  I can’t afford to take her class, but I will definitely attend the reading. Here are the details from Leslie and NWMediaArts:

Eileen Gunn Workshop for Writers – Wit and tragedy: writing the savagely funny story
Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:00 a.m. — 4:30 p.m. at Richard Hugo House Cabaret 
1634 11th Avenue Seattle, WA
See nwmediaarts.com for registration information or call Richard Hugo House at (206) 322-7030

Eileen Gunn Reading and Signing
Monday, January 26, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. at Richard Hugo House Cabaret 
1634 11th Avenue Seattle, WA 
$5 Donation

I finally hammered out my resolutions for 2009, which, although it is merely 14 days old, is not sucking nearly as much as 2008 (it is my year, I guess–the year of the ox). Anyway, here are my lofty resolutions:
Write something.
Write something that doesn’t suck.
Write maybe another thing that doesn’t suck.
Write 50 things that do suck, but whatever.
Limit my “I suck sooooo bad” thoughts to less than 25x/day
Submit the things that don’t suck and keep them in rotation until I conquer the world (or get at least a few more semi and pro pubs)
Spend more time on writing, being social, and meeting people and less time watching “Rock of Love Tour Bus”
Finish secret project which I will announce here when it is no longer secret (mysterious!)
Eat more fruits and vegetables

I’ve looked and studied all the information for the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. As much as I’d like to do it—I think I could commit the time and energy—I think the huge financial commitment it requires comes at a bad time for me. Plus, every time I mention it to anyone and ask if they’d do it with me, they politely say no.  So, I am hanging that idea up for “some other” year.

Also, Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the greatest cereal ever made.

1. We’ve had a hummingbird feeder up on our deck for months. Chris finally had me convinced that we’d never actually get any hummingbirds considering where we live, and so far, we hadn’t. I’ve been meaning to take it down for the past month or so, but am too lazy/busy/keep forgetting. Today, I was smoking a cigarette on the porch, freezing my ass off (it’s about 20 degrees out) and what comes buzzing over and sets itself down on the feeder? A hummingbird. Amazing! But it broke my heart because I’m pretty sure that the hummingbird nectar inside is frozen solid. It buzzed away pretty quickly. I yelled after it for it to come back, that’d I’m warm up the nectar for it, but I don’t think it heard me.*
2. Dear “Heroes,”
Now that the plot point about the formula is more or less done with as far as you are concerned, I have only one thing to say: really? No one ever thought to, you know, make a Xerox copy of the formula? Or memorize it? Yeah, it looked “complicated,” but aside from the fact that I’m sure someone could have a photographic memory superpower, there are regular folks who do. In fact, there are folks without photographic memories that memorize pi out to like a thousand decimal places just for the hell of it. So, really? Really?
And thanks to comments I’ve gotten on recent posts, I know I’m not alone. Shape up, plz.
Annoyingly yours,
Caren
3. My good pal Carlton Mellick III has one of his stories** in Vice magazine this issue. Vice has not only made the story available for preview, you can also hear it read by none other than Madelyn Burgess, who is apparently the nice lady whose voice you hear over the PA at Whole Foods. Freaking perfect.
4. My last post about why and how Angel gnaws at me (while I am simultaneously now addicted) had spurned a wide discussion among my friends, made me some new friends, and stirred up debate here at the homestead. The end result is interesting. One, I think I have finally figured out what my subgenre is within SFF. I’m not fantasy. I’m not soft SF. I’m not slipstream. I am science fantasy***, for which I swipe a quote from Rod Serling: “Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.”  Sounds about accurate.
The other result is that I am apparently writing a vampire story myself, trying to use possible science to explain vampires and all those mythos (without resorting to the Erythropoietic porphyria hypothesis, which remains, still pretty interesting). But no, I’m going a different way–leaning heavily on the pivotal word possible in possible science—it’s going to be hella speculative. But there shall be rules and logic, one freaking way or another.
5. It’s very interesting, now having 2 days jobs in which I work for myself and do not seem to get paid (heh). I’m working harder than ever, 16, 18 hour days fueled only by faith and a sense of complete and utter desperation.
Status on job one: every finished story I have is out making the round somewhere or another and I have not heard news.
Status on job two: 4Emphasis has its first client, and we are 75% complete on her project (yay!). I have become some sort of half crazed marketing cougar, cruising the internet looking for places to advertise or trade links or find work. So far, that’s like 12 hours work for less than a 1% return. But I am learning a LOT about marketing and SEO and crosslinking and how much freaking noisy garbage there is all over the web. To change that, I’ve decided that our front page will always contain some useful content for folks, even if they don’t hire us. If they make the trip over to our site, I will at least offer us some value.

 
*UPDATE: OMG he came back! He drank the new nectar. WTF are hummingbirds doing, though, flying around Seattle in December?
**I am especially please to say that not only do I freaking love the story they chose, but that it was one of Carlton’s Clarion West stories that I’ve seen from draft to completeness. It created a cultural mini-revolution in the CW dorm—read it and see if you can stop saying “lay-daaaaays” now.
***What’s fallen arbitrarily, as all these subgenre genre categories are as arbitrary as things can get, into science fantasy includes some big old shoes to fill. We’ll see how that goes. If nothing else, at least I have some answer for when I am at a con or CW party and someone asks, “So, what kind of SFF do you write?”

So, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been working my way through Angel on DVD. I never watched the series when it was on (shame on me–I also never watched Firefly when it was on the air and now it’s one of my favorites–sorry, Joss). I always knew I should, since everyone I know loved the series and it’s pretty well up my alley–vampires, yeah, but demon, hell yeah.

And I am totally enjoying the hell (heh) out of watching it*, but it brings to the forefront a very funny quirk of mine–the fact that I need everything to be logical all the time or it really bugs me.

This quirk is funny, considering what a fan girl I am and the fact that I write SFF. To be a fan and a maker of SFF, there’s a certain amount of suspension of disbelief that is immediately required above and beyond the usual suspension of disbelief required by other forms of entertainment. And my ability to suspend disbelief pivots precariously on a precipice of logic…
…which Angel consistently picks at with its inconsistency.

What I mean is, I don’t care of the rules of a world are real. Or possible. Or even probable. But goddamit, you’ve got to lay out the rules and obey them.

Like this: OK, he’s a vampire with a soul. Cool. But he’s still a vampire, right, so he’s dead, or rather undead, yes? He has no heartbeat, which means blood just isn’t pumping through his fine, brooding body. So, why does he bleed when he’s cut? And how in any reality does he get an erection? Or ejaculate live sperm which can impregnate a human and give him a son?

Magic? OK. But see, sometimes he bleeds, sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes the rules are followed, and sometimes they just aren’t.
There’s a lot I can actually just dismiss as being illogical without it bugging me overmuch (like the animal blood he keeps in the fridge? It’s have to be just plasma or it would coagulate into a scabby, gloopy mess…and nowhere in his gothy little apartment do I see a centrifuge or other such equipment, but hey, OK, cool).

But this is the same issue I keep having over and over with Heroes. I know the reality keeps changing, what with Hiro taking everyone back and forth in time (but WTF on why he doesn’t just go back in time and deal with the “formula” once and for all? It’s like a supervillian telling his whole evil scheme to the hero before killing him, giving the hero time to thwart said plan), and Peter Petrelli dinking around, and Gabriel’s turn-on-a-dime change of heart, etc, etc, etc. I still watch it, get involved, love it.  But I can’t fully accept it.

This is probably why I struggle so much with some of my fledgling story kernals. I have many infant ideas that I begin to work on, but as I move forward, I see gaping holes in the logic that I can’t bridge. Rather than leave them be, I tend to scrap the story entirely (worst case) or put in back in the hopper and hope I figure out how to make it make sense later. But I’m wondering if it’s just me, as a reader and a person, that puts so much emphasis on that aspect or whether I should just go for it, a la Angel and Heroes, and hope that my readers are seduced enough by the coolness of the ideas, the drama, and the characters to just not pick at scabs like I incessantly do?

*It adds onto my list of Things-in-SFF-I-Wish-Were-Real: a karaoke bar run by a fabulously gay demon who makes you sing for your fortune/life path. I would so be there, right now.

I’ve been lax in writing but with good reason, fair reader. Life has me, pretty much, locked in a tower and is feeding me thrice-daily kicks in the groin. Then there was, you know, that holiday on Thursday, which me and mine ignored this year as best as we could (although I did make a kick-ass baked ziti in lieu of a turkey, and my husband made some double peanut butter cup cookies that managed to eat through the very last of the enamel on one of my molars).

In-between my groin kicks and ziti-gluttony, I have been catching up on lots of movies I never managed to see the first time around—some bad horror flicks (like Candyman. Seriously? I remember when that came out being told it was scary-as-shit. Maybe I am just jadedly un-scareable these days?) and some embarrassingly bad new stuff like Hellboy 2: The Golden Army—which leads me to the point of this entry: Things I Wish Were Real and I Could Have from SFF Movies I Have Seen.

Nothing in Hellboy 2 fits this description, but many of the character designs (sorry, del Toro) reminded me of Mirrormask, which, while also problematic in several fundamental ways, yielded the Number One Thing I Wish Were Real and I Could Have From SFF Movies I have Seen–the wee little circus band that lives in a handy, pocket-sized cube that unfolds into a tiny stage for them.

Wee band!

Seriously. How freaking twee are they?
Beyond life-saving nano-technology, beyond time travel, all that stuff…I want a band of tiny creatures wearing horned helmets I can carry around in my purse.

I know you have something equally as ridiculous on your list. Don’t you?

is for you to milk Amazon for every dollar they have. :)

Clarion West has received a Challenge Grant from Amazon, so whatever money they raise before October 31, 2009, Amazon will match–up to $25,000. So every dollar you give Clarion counts double.

An incredibly good couple of days. Really. I just need a couple of hundred hours of sleep now.
I spent the weekend, as planned, with Pam, Maggie, and Chris R. Love them so much. They listened to me rant about Steampunk and helped me develop what I hope will take off as the newest sub-genre (with a hearty nod to Connie Willis, of course): PLAGUEPUNK*

We were also lucky enough to be invited along by Leslie (of Clarion West and NWMediaArts) to tag along on social time with Charles De Lint and Ellen Datlow. They were both really kind and easy to talk to. Charles giggled at my earnestness—and even a few of my jokes. I, of course, got him to sign my battered copy of Mulengro, because, well, OF COURSE.

More SFF spotting: Ted Chiang and Neile Graham.

Charles’ reading was really more of an entire-freaking-evening of entertainment. He read a wonderful novella, “Yellow Dog” (available only from Sub Press, I believe) and played guitar/harmonica and sang. I was waiting for a chorus line. It kicked ass.

I spent most of yesterday getting to know my first client at my new day job. She’s a wonderfully funny woman, very verbal, with a long litany of developmental disabilities. I’m excited to start working with her, although I can tell she’ll be quite a handful.

I then came home, zonked from the weekend and my day, so my Chris and I sat around and watched as many terrible horror movies as we could before passing out. I think we managed five. Two of the better ones were Hard Candy (which is more of an arty thriller than anything and not without its problems. Worth watching, though, just for the solid tweak of your expectations) and Devil’s Rejects (which I’ve managed to not see all this time, although I saw House of a 1000 Corpses in the theatre).

I’ve also begun a personal experiment, in conjunction with NaNoWriMo, and inspired by my good friend Shane Hoverston (who got it elsewhere, and so forth and on).  I am going to try and take 120 minutes every day and document what I get done, writing-wise, because keeping track of words is utterly useless in general for me (aside from NaNo, of which word trackage is the point). Thing is, some days, I wind up not writing many words, if any, but have spent time reading non-fiction or doing research or something…but then I wind up feeling like I have done NOTHING because I can’t empirically prove tangible results. If I take 120 minutes (not necessarily consecutive minutes), budget them into like, oh, 60 minutes writing/drafting  and 60 minutes writing/research, directed writing related activity—and physically keep track, I think I will get more done and feel like a better person. And! I decided that the days that I actually accomplish this (today was the first I got in the full time), I am tossing some small change or bill into a jar just for me for a prize (I’m still totally broke and shit, so we’re talking like 50 cents here). But it will add up, sometime. Eventually.

Of course, if (optimists in the audience will say when) I sell a new story, that would go into this magical pot of mystery prize awesomeness too.

*I have been reading up, actually, on the black plague and medieval technology. This was a far more progressively inventive time than most folks realize. I see vast untapped possibilities here. Watch for it. Plaguepunk will be the nextbigthingOMG1111111111, and you read about it here.

1. I am waiting impatiently for Pam, Maggie, and Chris R., three of my Clarion West fam, to arrive. They are in town for the Charles De Lint workshop this Sunday at Hugo House. I am hosting and getting some muchly needed f2f hive mind time.
Don’t know what we’re up to this weekend, aside from Sunday, when they are actually in the workshop. I am sure some philosophical discourse, some in-jokes, and quite a few drunk dials are in order.
I know I will be at Charles’ reading Monday evening:
Fantastic Fiction readings and conversation salon with Charles de Lint
Charles de Lint, author of “Moonheart” and “Dingo,” among others, reads and discusses his work. Co-sponsored by Richard Hugo House. $5.
 www.nwmediaarts.com
Cabaret
Monday, October 27th, 2008, 7:00 PM
W00t.
2. Aside from cleaning the house in expectation of said visitors, I have pretty much spent the day researching the psychology of colonialism and post colonialism for a story revision.  You know, because I like to write about happy stuff.
Ow.
I am also trying to grasp desperately at an idea for my NaNoWriMo project, which starts in like, oh, a week.
3. I have five stories actively circulating the markets. I can’t remember the last time I had that many out at one time.
Oh, yeah. Because I NEVER have before.
4. I’ve been really, really, really burned out on contracting in IT as a day-job, and full time, lately, has been UNpossible. But, I just found something very, super, uber part time.  I am VERY excited about it, because it will eventually lead to a new day-job career entirely—and the non-profit that hired me is really confident in my aptitude and willing to spend time training me…as a vocational coach for adults with developmental disabilities. I have my first client already and am supposed to start with her next weekend (the hours right now are Saturday – Monday. Not a dream schedule, but it’s a start).
5. I have my Halloween costume altogether: a paper “H” I will tape to my forehead*. Now, if I only knew of something to actually do on Halloween this year.

 
*Say it with me now: “GEEK.”
Don’t get the reference? Hrm. That means you probably had a social life in the 80s.
And hey, it’s better than the two consecutive years I went as a serial killer, dressed like I always do, because serial killers look just like everyone else. That was both geeky and lame.

Seattle writer discovers the awesome efficiency and cost-savings deliciousness* of brewing espresso in a macchinetta; loses main reason to currently leave house.

Oh, man.

Between this and the fact that I have started netflixing Angel** (yeah, you read correctly. I never watched it the first time around. Buffy, yes, though not religiously. Firefly, religiously), I don’t ever have to do anything that isn’t survival-related outside again***.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

*Seriously. It is really, really good. I know someone will argue me over the fact that “stovetop” espresso is different, blah blah blah. But I don’t care. I milk and sugar it up and it tastes spectacular. Plus, the low-tech of the whole thing amuses me to no end. It’s magic. MAGIC.
**I have also never read a Harry Potter book. Not one.
***This is not necessarily a good thing. At all. Being unemployed and having some rocky personal stuff tends to hermit me inside anyway, but now I don’t even venture farther than my stovetop, mailbox, or keyboard.

Neuromancer was published 24 years ago, today.

I read it the same year that I got my very first internet account (1995, if you want to play along at home). I had a 14.4k modem and an AOL account (yes, AOL–and within that very first screenname is the origin story of “spitkitten”). I had absolutely no idea how fundamental the internet would become in my everyday life…for a living, for socializing, in fact, so many things that I am at a total loss to list them.

That I read Neuromancer at the same time I first stretched my cyberlegs (cyber!) tickled some slumbering hippocampal spot that allowed me to eventually become the SF-loving/writing Web geek that I am today.

William Gibson, you are partially at fault for my present state of affairs.

Thank you.