It’s not easy opening a securely closed envelope while carrying the rest of the mail, a set of keys, and a plastic bag full of Chinese takeaway. But sometimes it’s worth it! Teasing open this particular envelope yielded me an acceptance letter from none other than The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, more commonly known as F&SF!

This sale marks several firsts for me. It’s my first fantasy sale ever, and my first novelette sale! (For those of you not up on our obscure lingo, that means it’s longer than my previous short fiction sales — over 7500 words.) It’s also my first sale to this excellent magazine.

The novelette in question is called “Small Towns”, and it’s set just after World War I in Europe. So I suppose it will be my first published historical fiction, as well! I am proud and excited — thanks to everybody who read this story and believed in it, especially my critique group and Ryan!

As soon as I know more about when this story is coming out, I’ll pass it on here. À la prochaine!

My good friend Kelley Caspari is a splendid sculptor, who’s been working hard on a project she wants to show at Worldcon. She doesn’t like stasis, which is a challenge for a sculptor. She’s taking it on by creating narrative in a bust: she chooses a pair of archetypical characters from stories and myth, and sculpts one bust: half one character, half the other.

Kelley’s an amazing artist and the attention to detail is pretty stellar.

Blind by Kelley Caspari
More angles and details (whose tail is that in the witch’s hair?) on Kelley’s Kickstarter.

This is just one of the two busts, the witch/king one. To see her siren/sailor piece, click on through to Kelley’s Kickstarter page. You can help her name that one, whether or not you donate to her project!

These sculptures are done, but they need to be cast in bronze so that Kelley can show them at Worldcon (imagine trying to transport hundreds of hours of your life in the form of mushy clay in crates), so that’s what her Kickstarter campaign is all about. I’m spreading the word about Kelley’s project because I love her work and I believe it should have a wider audience — even if you aren’t able to donate yourself, I hope if you like her sculptures, you’ll spread the word with a tweet or blog post or status update or what-have-you. She only has four more days to make up the last fourth of her goal! And that is my shameless plug for the month, if not the year.

Creepy kids in movies are a thing. I’d go look it up on TVtropes, except that I would lose hours of time reading TVtropes. So let’s just take it as read, as denizens of popular culture, that there are a lot of creepy kids in movies (and TV, and books.) They’re a horror cliché at this point, especially the female version — and why are they so often female? There’s another blog post there, don’t spoil it for me by being brilliant.

Anyhow, the creepy Feral Child in Road Warrior made me think of other movie children I have known, and try to set his creepiness amongst them. I must confess, I initially made this scale run up to a maximum of St. Alia of the Knife, but Ryan disabused me of this notion, arguing persuasively that the scale was recalibrated in 2002 if not earlier. So, feast your eyes on this SCIENCE!

In Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Ryan tried to attract my attention to a question of logistics. I could not answer, I was entranced by a pink box passing near me.

“Look, it’s a box of home!” I said.

“What?”

“That girl had a Voodoo Doughnut box!”

“Why didn’t you knock her down so I could take them?” Ryan said.

“You’re way bigger than me, why shouldn’t you knock people down in this scenario?”

“So I can have the donuts!”

I like to observe things.

Today’s catch: A twenty-something white man in Buddy Holly glasses with a hot pink skateboard strapped to his backpack. He was practicing the moonwalk at a bus stop in the rain.

I am not 100% sure the issue is on newsstands yet (it’s the May issue, with a cover story on Farmer’s Markets), but Portland Monthly Magazine has put their article about Portland Nebula Nominees Mary Robinette Kowal, M.K. Hobson and me online!

Here is the link! Article by our own Camille Alexa and photograph (complete with Marla face) by Michael Cogliantry.

I will cop to finding this pretty exciting!

Recently I’ve gotten my picture taken much more than usual. No great mystery why: the Nebula nomination. I think most of us are rendered uncomfortable and self-conscious by having photos taken, especially ones we know “matter” — no matter how many candids are taken of us as children by snap-happy parents, as adults most of us are anxious about the process.

My recent adventures in digital gaze actually began a year before the Nebula nomination, when I roped my dad into trying to take an author headshot for me. The light wasn’t great and I didn’t choose my clothes all that well, but we got something I can use and currently do. The big revelation, however, was that I am horrible at posing, and even at judging my own shots. Ryan says just about every shot of me looking “serious” makes me look bored — and he has a lot more experience with my expressions than I do.

I suppose posing is like anything else where your body has to produce an effect your mind doesn’t fully understand: you have to learn to trick yourself, and without a toolbag of tricks, you’re flailing around with little hope.

A few weeks ago I went to my first ever professional photoshoot: Portland Monthly Magazine wanted a photograph to go along with a column on local Nebula nominees M.K. Hobson, Mary Robinette Kowal, and me. This was incredibly fun: there were floating antique typewriters (converted from floatless models in Mary Robinette’s collection) and flying pieces of paper and cups of free coffee from one of my favorite Portland coffeehouses, Case Study. But at several points I was asked to look “angry”, intense, like I hated the camera. And I say at several points because the other two subjects only had to be asked once.

This is actually quite funny to me, because I think I play angry reasonably well — in motion and speech. I scared a fellow student once when we did the “kill Claudio” speech from Much Ado About Nothing for class (I was Beatrice, natch.) A fellow roleplayer in my first LARP went out-of-character to make sure his buffoonish character’s chauvinistic comments weren’t actually bothering me — he said I seemed actually livid. But in stillness, apparently, my hating the camera has little effect.

It was Mary Hobson who saved the day by saying “think about Marla from Fight Club!” How could she have known I had just rewatched Fight Club — and just lost my longstanding distaste for Helena Bonham Carter thanks to The King’s Speech? I tried Marla. She hates the camera with world-weary ennui, and has complete contempt for it. The reminders to look angry ceased and the fun continued.

The other day I had a solo portrait shot by a professional photographer for my high school alma mater‘s alumni magazine (I’m trying to keep this a secret from my mom, but if she’s reading my blog this regularly she deserves to find out!) After a few different sorts of smiles and some “serious” expressions (will I look bored in those?), the photographer told me to do angry. I summoned my Marla impression at once, and he shook his head. “Whoa! Too much.”

I’m learning!

My latest story in Asimov’s Science Fiction, “Apocalypse Daily”, is on shelves in the June 2011 issue! (Click the name of the story to read the first few paragraphs!)

This is what it looks like:

As you can see, the headlining novella is from Portland’s own Mary Robinette Kowal, Nebula-nominated novelist! Two Portland people! Don’t you just need a copy?

Getting a paper copy: Traditional newsstands often carry Asimov’s. Many Barnes & Noble locations carry it, but it’s best to call ahead if you’ve never spied it out at that particular store before.

Portlanders allergic to big chain stores can head down to Rich’s Cigar Store, which carries Asimov’s in their extensive magazine collection. The main store on SW Alder has the most copies. Also, the main store will ship magazines to out-of-town customers — call them up!

Digital versions will be available soon at Amazon, B&N, Sony, Fictionwise, et c. I will update this post as I discover these editions are available.

This is just a note to explain my sudden transition from prolixity to paucity here on the blog: we have found out we need to find a new rental house sooner than expected. With all manner of business coming up, and the Nebulas besides, we’ve been very focused on getting this dealt with as soon as possible. And we’ve been successful! We signed a lease on a new house and will be moving this week. Quite the whirlwind.

I hope to be back here bending your ear with more unsolicited advice and rambling musings soon enough.

I have had, and thoroughly enjoyed, two semesters of formal training in Latin. (In addition to a few private lessons from my retired Latin teacher grandma when I was ten.) This is just enough Latin to be dangerous: enough to, say, puzzle out the odd inscription or be confused by the differences between liturgical and classical. Enough Latin to see the bones lying under the skin of our own language.

I am also a perfectionist. A perfectionist of a particularly pernicious persuasion: a procrastinating one. This is often a problem for me, but in the most important sphere of my life, the writing one, I think I’ve made my peace with it. Writing can never be perfect, only as good as we can make it with the vision and skill we have available to us. Someday our vision or skill may be better, but now we have to surrender and give up our offering to the world, imperfect.

Or is it? We are so accustomed to thinking of perfect in its English sense, (OED definition 1a: “Of, marked, or characterized by supreme moral or spiritual excellence or virtue; righteous, holy; immaculate; spiritually pure or blameless”) but I prefer its Latin origins: per, through or throughout; and the past participle of facere, to do or make.

That which is perfect has been gone through; that which is perfect is thoroughly made. That, the shape of the word which I feel through the flesh of use and connotation when I heft it, I celebrate and do not fear. Perfection doesn’t have to be an impossible, theoretical absolute. All of us, perfectionists or not, can aspire to produce something that is rigorously, mindfully conceived and carried through with care: something that is thoroughly made.