September 2005

Or actu­al­ly, is it Literature?

I’ve start­ed a short sto­ry that I think will end up being sub­mit­ted to the lit mags when (if) I fin­ish it. The title is “Sons and Daugh­ters of the Builder”, and the first para­graph (still first draft) is 

When­ev­er peo­ple ask me if my father is God, I say no. I learned a long time ago that the true answer—“maybe”—was an open­ing for any num­ber of fur­ther ques­tions, ques­tions I did­n’t have the answers to.

I have no idea where it’s head­ed. Well, that’s not true; I have some ideas, but I haven’t picked a direc­tion yet. My biggest fear is that it’ll wind up being too spec.fic. for the Lit­er­ary Jour­nals, dahling, but too lit.fic. for the SF pulps, dude.

Sid­ing con­tin­ues apace. The south wall is now blue from bot­tom to top again; sof­fits & fas­cia will go up tomor­row. Then the only part left to tack­le will be the west wall, up above the kitchen roof. We hope to be done by the weekend.

On the oth­er hand, Greg Knauss’s Dev­il’s Dic­tio­nary v2.0 defines sched­ule as A fairy tale with a hap­py end­ing, told by the opti­mistic to the igno­rant. So I’m hes­i­tant to be too firm about end dates and ETAs and et ceteras.

Lat­ers, gators!

We’re break­ing for the week­end; then we’ll be in the home stretch. We’re at the point where we need the scaf­fold­ing to be fif­teen feet high. The the­o­ry is that while we’re up there, we’ll put in the sof­fits & fas­cia too.

My wife and I are going to the Big City this week­end. (And what’s that say about where I live, that a city of 600,000 or so is the Big City?) Just a break from the house, and the end of my vaca­tion. Mon­day I’m back to work, so siding—for me—will be rel­e­gat­ed to evenings, before sundown.

How’s every­one else doing?

The down­side to sub­mit­ting sto­ries to poten­tial mar­kets elec­tron­i­cal­ly is that you can get reject­ed pret­ty damn fast. The upside to sub­mit­ting elec­tron­i­cal­ly is that you can get reject­ed fast, so you’re not sit­ting for three months, wondering.

Neo-Opsis did­n’t want “Out­side, Look­ing In”. Appar­ent­ly the sto­ry was too sneaky and underhanded:

[It] seems to be done in an art­sy style that keeps the read­er guess­ing about what is real­ly hap­pen­ing. This style can make it dif­fi­cult for some read­ers to get into a sto­ry. Often read­ers need some thread to hold onto, some­thing they can under­stand and relate to, that will take them through the unusual.

Well, that’s kind of my style. I like to play my cards close to my vest, as they say.

Oh well. On to the next one.

Lat­er—Sub­mit­ted to Son & Foe. Hope­ful­ly it goes well…

I’ve sub­mit­ted “Out­side, Look­ing In” to Neo-Opsis. Wish me luck!

Well, a new ver­sion of an old sto­ry. I’ve been revamp­ing “Fim­bul­vetr”, and parts I‑III are up here, with part IV yet to be com­plet­ed. Let me know what you think. (Gabrielle, if you’re still out there, you might like this one…)

Out­side, Look­ing In has been reject­ed again. Lenox Ave. had nice things to say (“Hon­est­ly, it’s a beau­ti­ful­ly told sto­ry”), but it did­n’t quite match up with what they’re look­ing for. On to the next one.

Is it bad form to write a thank-you note for quick turn­around and kind com­ments? I hope not, ’cause I did.

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Tomor­row we should be able to start putting sid­ing on. Tomorrow.

I’ve final­ly fin­ished Acceleran­do, Charles Stross’s nov­el. For those that want a look, it’s avail­able via a Cre­ative Com­mons license—just click on the link.

It’s the sto­ry of four gen­er­a­tions of the Macx fam­i­ly (I think; things get a lit­tle tan­gled, what with the clones and the eigen­fam­i­lies and the ghosts and what­not) and their var­ied adven­tures, on Earth, in the out­er sys­tem, and flit­ting ‘twixt the stars, on either side of the Tech­no­log­i­cal Sin­gu­lar­i­ty. I enjoyed it. It was a fast-paced sto­ry, full of breath­less momen­tum and nudge-nudge wink-wink ref­er­ences for the übergeeks that are most cer­tain­ly the book’s tar­get audi­ence. (I think I fall at the mid­dle of this par­tic­u­lar geek spec­trum, some­where in the range of vis­i­ble light in the elec­tro­mag­net­ic ana­log. I get most of the jokes, and I con­tributed to the wiki for the book. (A low-end geek would know about the wiki; a high-end geek would have cre­at­ed the wiki.))

What’s it about? Well, it’s about 150,000 words. Beyond that, words fail, but I’ll try. It’s about Man­fred Macx, his IRS audi­tor-cum-fiancée-cum-dom­i­na­trix-cum-wife-ex Pamela, the music mafiya, the con­tin­u­ous­ly upgrad­ed robot cat Aineko, a time-shar­ing semi-par­a­sitic bor­gan­ism, slav­ery in Jupiter orbit, the Vile Off­spring, lob­sters hack­ing the Uni­verse, the next gen­er­a­tion of eco­nom­ics (and the one after that), and a raft of oth­er ideas. It’s a com­plex tapes­try* of ideas, in fact, a dizzy slide of ideas and con­cepts that threat­ens to over­whelm any thread of sto­ry, but nev­er quite does.

I enjoyed it. I plan to hunt down Stross’s pre­vi­ous nov­el, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Sky, and see what it’s like. Some­day, too, I’ll re-read Acceleran­do, pos­si­bly on my PDA, more like­ly in tree­ware form, so that I can see all the lit­tle things I missed on my first time through.

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Cur­rent­ly read­ing: The Last Light of the Sun, by Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s set about 1,000 years ago, in a North­ern Europe only thin­ly dis­guised by slight­ly dif­fer­ent names for peo­ples and places (Erlings for Vikings/Norsemen, Anglcyn for the Eng­lish, Cyn­gael for the Welsh, for instance). So far it’s inter­est­ing; I’m about a third of the way in, and it’s hold­ing my inter­est well. There are pre­cious few “fan­ta­sy” moments so far, just an encounter with a fairy and a pre­mo­ni­tion of psy­chic pow­ers in one char­ac­ter. Oth­er­wise it’s a pret­ty straight-ahead view of what life must’ve been like in 1000AD in the north of Europe. Gabrielle, if you’re read­ing this, you might like this one.

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I’m itch­ing to re-read The Dark Tow­er, espe­cial­ly the last few pages, where… well… where fif­teen years of read­ing cul­mi­nat­ed for me in a scene that brought me near to tears. Even just think­ing about it, I’m get­tin’ misty. (Well, not real­ly. But it’s still a big emo­tion­al moment.)

Any­ways. That’s enough for now. More sid­ing updates in the days ahead, I predict.

À bien­tôt!

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* “The word ‘tapes­try’ as used here means ‘An ugly piece of cloth too thin to be used as a blan­ket and too large to be used as a hand­ker­chief’.” —Lemo­ny Snicket