Just a quick jot ...

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It's Saturday morning and I'm blogging from the Safeway (Oh brave new world! that has such breakfast nooks in it.) Today the con begins in grim seriousness. I'll be pontificating about steampunk and sharing my thoughts on "fun reads" (I'm tempted to say something like, "Fun?! Reading is grim business, sirrah!" but shan't), reading Poe's "The Raven," arguing about Urban Fantasy, and doing who knows what else. It should be fun.

Yesterday, I saw Zoran Zivcovic meet Darrell Schweitzer for the first time ("Darrell! At last!"), was chatting with Lizzie Lynn when she asked, "Do you know Grania Davis?" and then, rather than tell me an interesting story, as I expected, revealed that Grania was sitting beside her, plotted future publicity with my editor, signed literally hundreds of books, heard lots of gossip, learned lots of news, and . . . well, I could go on like this for hours.

Nobody's commented on the Google settlement thing. But I talked with some industry insiders last night and learned that it's even worse than I made it sound. People Who Know were using phrases like "The total destruction of the publishing industry." And not rhetorically. Literally.

Anyway, that's where things stand right now. Right now, it's back into the fray. I just wanted to keep you guys posted.

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My Change of Careers

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The World Fantasy Con is a great place to meet old friends again -- Jeff Ford, Stan Robinson, Beth Gwinn, Terry Bisson . . . oh, the list is too long to even begin. But it's also a business event, and as such a great source of information.

Some of which can be alarming.

Above: The Google Books Settlement panel, discussing the agreement by which Google (whose motto is famously: "Some Men Rob You With a Gun. Others With a Fountain Pen"), and the Authors Guild (I don't even know who those yutzes are) agreed that Google could offer my work for sale on the Internet without my permission. Or anyway, that's the version I'd heard.

I'd been feeling guilty because I'd missed the opt-out date. Turns out that the the opt-out option was never intended to be workable. Every edition and every separate publication of a work is treated as a separate entity, see, and has to be listed with detailed info -- including specific page numbers -- or else it belongs to Google.

Last night I dreamed that somebody had broken into my house and stolen all the rugs, and was selling them cheap at a yard sale.

What the hell could that mean? I puzzled over it for a long time. And then it came to me:

I should get into the rug business.

So let this blog serve as public notice: I am claiming the right to sell any rugs or carpets belonging the the CEO, owners, and all employees of Google. There will be bargains galore! You need a 10 X 10 silk bakhara for your living room? I'm prepared to sell it to you for eight hundred dollars. Wow! And the former owners won't be left out in the cold either. They'll get a full five percent royalties, capped at sixty dollars maximum per rug.

Anybody who wants to opt out of this arrangement can contact me with the type, location, thread-count, and country of origin for each rug by, oh, let's say December 13.

And that goes for the Authors Guild, too. Whoever they are.

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Literary Lions of the Sea

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I've got several friends in San Francisco who would be ticked if I said that the above are my favorite mammals in their fair city. But, oh man, the sea lions at Pier 39! They just moved in one day, some years ago, and as of yesterday there were 1,651 just hanging out, fifteen feet from the tourists. They laze, quarrel, brag, loll, fight, play, and (mostly) goof off. The noise they make is extraordinary.

And the smell! Wet dog ain't even in it. More like rancid cheese. If the rancid cheese in question weighed two hundred pounds and invited fifteen hundred of his friends to join him.

Absolutely charming.

The signing at Borderlands was an enormous success (as it should have been!) and I got to chat with David Drake and to meet Garth Nix, so I was happy. Then into a bus -- imagine what a bus loaded down with writers sounds like; yeah, sort of like sea lions -- and off to San Jose.

The con begins tonight. I'll keep you posted.

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San Francisco

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I'm in San Francisco, doing a quick, late-night blog at the King George Hotel. After a long and uneventful flight, Marianne and I were met by our pal Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Publications, who swiftly and efficiently drove us into town. His wife Rina was not there because she was busily driving truckloads of books about town -- apparently the gimme bag at the World Fantasy Convention is going to be something spectacular.

Tomorrow, a day of wandering around this beautiful city, two hours autographing at Borderlands Books, and then off to San Jose!

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Winter -- er, World Fantsy Con -- Is Coming!

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So how did you spend your weekend? I spent mine rewriting the first 16,000 words of my novel to make them into a stand-alone story, and then cutting, cutting, cutting, so I can read it within the hour given me at the World Fantasy Convention this coming weekend. And I am still cutting. We'll see if I can manage it in time.

Why am I putting myself through this? Well, when I do a reading, I prefer it be something which is a) unpublished, and b) a complete story. Especially when the con makes me a Guest of Honor, as the WFC has.

Have I mentioned that I'm a Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Con?

Oh yeah, and I also went to Kyle Cassidy's and Trillian Stars' fabulous wedding celebration. That's the happy couple above. May they live longer and be happier than Marianne and me. But may she and I first live a million years and always be as happy together as we are now.


If you're going to the World Fantasy Convention . . .

. . . where, as I may not have mentioned, I'm a Guest of Honor . . . here's my schedule to date. Things will doubtless be added, and if I have time and can get wi-fi in primitive, distant San Jose, California, I'll add them. But this is what I have now.

If you see me, say Hi. I'll be busy as hell. But I won't have anything better to do.

Wednesday

Autographing at Borderlands Books in San Francisco - a group signing of authors who've come to San Jose for the WFC and are making themselves available for those who'd like an autograph but don't want to buy a convention membership and spend a weekend having a good time to get it. A good deal and a great location: Borderlands Cafe.

Borderlands Books and Borderlands Cafe are at 866 - 870 Valencia Street between 19th and 20th Streets in the Mission District.

Thursday

5:00 PM Opening Ceremonies - sa short ceremony opening the convention and introducing Guests of Honor Jay Lake, Richard Lupoff, Garth Nix, Lisa Snellings, Donald Sydney-Fryer, Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, Zoran Zivkovic -- and me.

Friday

10:00 AM Tachyon Table Signing - in the huckster room.

2:00 PM Reading - "The Pearls of Byzantium," if it's finished by then.

4:00 PM Signing - of Hope-in-the-Mist, presumably in the hucksters room.

8:00 PM Group Autographing- a group signing for all the authors and editors attending the convention. Rather informal. Good time to strike up a conversation with a few of your favorite authors.

Saturday

10:00 AM Why Steampunk Now? - a Steampunk panel with Charlie Jane Anders, Deborah Biancotti, Liz Gorinsky, Ann VanderMeer and yours truly.

1:00 PM Urban Fantasy as Alternate History- a panel with Jon Courtenay Grimwood, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Paul Park, Bill Willingham and yr humble correspondent. Kind of difficult to explain. They say it'll be good.

2:00 PM What We Read Just for Fun - what is sounds like. With Jay Lake, Richard Lupoff, Garth Nix, Jeff VanderMeer, Zoran Zivkovic and, well, me again.

5:00 PM Multi-Author Reading of The Raven - "Four authors will read Poe's famous poem, each in their own style and idiom Leanna Renee Hieber, Garth Nix, Michael Swanwick, Donald Sydney-Fryer. What is my style and idiom? I guess we'll find out.

Midnight – Weird Tales Party- the party starts earlier, but they're planning something called a "Midnight Invocation,” with various folk reading or reciting very short pieces. I'll be reading “Hush and Hark.”

Sunday

1:00 PM World Fantasy Awards and Banquet - I'll be there! Along with all the other Guests of Honor (Jay Lake, Richard Lupoff, Garth Nix, Lisa Snellings, Donald Sydney-Fryer, Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, Zoran Zivkovic).

And that's it for officially scheduled stuff. The picture to the right? Trillian Stars and Kyle Cassidy cut their wedding cake! After which, they did not stuff cake into each other's faces. A very elegant couple, Kyle and Trillian are.

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"Hello," Said the Stick

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I still have a Theo Gray book to blog about, but I'm putting it off 'til next week because The Drabblecast has just posted an audio podcast of my short story, "Hello," Said the Stick.

So how did I come to write that story in the first place? I'm glad you asked. It began when I went to a reading by a friend whose name I shall discreetly elide. Mere minutes into the reading I had discovered two facts:

1) That I already knew the piece, since I'd read it in manuscript, and

2) That my friend was the single worst reader I'd ever heard in my life, bar none.

For a time, there was some entertainment to be had from determining whether or not a verbal fumble and correction would be made in literally every sentence read. But then it became clear that, yes, it would, and boredom set in. I started word-doodling in my notebook, creating neologisms and writing down odd sentences. One of which was: "Hello," said the stick.

Huh, I thought. That's intriguing. It would make a good first sentence for a story.

So, while the reading droned on, I played around with the notion. By the end of the evening, I had a couple of paragraphs and a good idea of the plot. I borrowed the idea of mercenaries fighting with weapons well below their culture's technological level from Larry Niven's "Night on Mispec Moor," and his clean, lean, stripped-down prose style as well.

The next morning was a Saturday. After breakfast, I said to Marianne, "I think I'll spend the day writing, if that's okay with you."

"Have fun," she said.

So I went to my office, wrote the story, and dropped it in the mail to Analog before the post office closed at 2 that afternoon. From original conception to actual submission in a grand total of eighteen hours -- and I got to sleep in late in between!

Oh, yeah, and it made it onto the Hugo ballot.

There is no moral to this anecdote. But, oh, if only everything I wrote came half so easily!

You can find The Drabblecast here or go straight to the podcast here. The podcast also includes "Eat the Dog," by Reverend John Sleestaxx

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The Dark Side of Being a Writer

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In the mail yesterday was my contributor's copy of The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, fresh out from Tachyon Publications to celebrate the 60th anniversary of F&SF. And there I am! Alongside the likes of Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut. These guys are the heroes of my youth, to say nothing of being icons of American literature.

Are you impressed yet? No? Then let's look at individual story titles: There's Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts," James Tiptree, Jr.'s "The Women Men Don't See," and Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon." These are some of the best and most famous stories our genres have ever produced. And my own "Mother Grasshopper" is among them!

So you'd think that nothing -- nothing! -- could possibly kill the pleasure I felt, right?

Man, you don't know editors.

Pictured above is the letter Gordon Van Gelder enclosed with the book. Read it and weep.

Pictured to the right is the cover of this still-extraordinary anthology. That little dot alongside it is my once-robust ego, rendered to scale.

[Whoops. I accidentally took in a couple of the blog's readers. My bad. Gordon was joking, as he frequently does. As indicated by the fact that Bester died in 1987. Though it would be great if he were still around.]

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