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New ficlet — “Jenny, who is a dog”

So I cre­at­ed a new ficlet this morn­ing, called “Jen­ny, who is a dog”. For those of you that haven’t run across Ficlets, here’s the idea: You go to the Ficlets web­site, sign up or sign in, and then you can cre­ate a “ficlet”. A ficlet is a short-short sto­ry, or more accu­rate­ly a part of a sto­ry. You have an upper bound of 1024 char­ac­ters* to tell your sto­ry. Any­one can add onto it by cre­at­ing sequels or pre­quels. Every sto­ry on the site is licensed using a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Share­alike license.

So here’s my lat­est snip­pet of fiction:

Jen­ny, who is a dog, came into the liv­ing room, sat down on the floor, and spoke. “What sup­per?” she said, tail thump­ing on the hardwood.

I stared at her. “Beg par­don?” I was shocked enough that I actu­al­ly respond­ed. To a dog. You see the state of mind I was in?

Sup­per. Food. What?”

Uh–” I’d been mak­ing my own dog food, these days. Jen­ny was old, and store-brand food was­n’t doing her any favours. “Liv­er and rice, for you,” I said. “I think piz­za for me.”

Good. Liv­er good,” she said, and trot­ted off to the din­ing room.

I went into the kitchen and got a beer out of the fridge. As I twist­ed the cap off, my phone rang.

Y’el­lo?”

Doug?” It was Lisa, my girl­friend. “Uh, Doug, I did­n’t know who to call–”

Calm down,” I said. “Deep breaths. What’s up?”

Mr. Kit,” she said. “He’s–” She could­n’t go on.

He’s talk­ing?” I said, and there was silence on the line. I knew I was right. Mr. Kit, who is a cat, was talk­ing too.

Jen­ny came into the kitchen and sat on the floor. “Jen­ny good dog,” she said.

And all day it kind of fes­tered in my head. I kept think­ing, what’s next? Where do we go from talk­ing pets?

So I’ve decid­ed to expand it into a short sto­ry (some­thing more like 2,000 or 3,000 words, I’m think­ing). Inter­est­ed? Let me know in the com­ments, and when it’s com­plete, I’ll email you a link to read the whole thing.

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* Which works out to about 200 words.

Lesson Learned

When you have an ear infec­tion, and can’t hear very well out of the affect­ed ear, and you tend to sleep on your side, sleep­ing with the bad ear up makes it rather hard to hear your alarm clock.

The farm

Just in case I nev­er get here again:

The Farm (zoomed)

I want­ed to take a picture.

This is where my grand­par­ents lived. I’ll say more lat­er, when it’s not quite so raw. The thought of not going back is enough to make the tears well up a little.

Grandpa

Grandpa

On the Tues­day before Hal­lowe’en, at 11:20 at night, my phone rang. Through the won­der of call dis­play, I saw that it was my sis­ter in Win­nipeg call­ing. That time of night, it’s prob­a­bly not going to be good news.

My grand­fa­ther had died at 11:00 that night. He was 88 years old, and he went, like Grand­ma in April, qui­et­ly in his sleep.

Grandpa and Grandma

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Grand­pa”

I’m such a slacker

Ok, so here’s the sec­ond half of the William Gib­son Week­end sto­ry. Told as a Thurs­day Thir­teen, because that way I can kill two birds with one stone.

Signed copy
  1. That same night, there was a mul­ti-author read­ing, titled “Encoun­ters”, on the Main­stage. Six authors were on the dock­et, though one could­n’t make it.
  2. Quot­ing from the programme:

    Lawrence Hill and Lin­da Lei­th move char­ac­ters through chang­ing land­scapes. Bren­da Hasiuk, David Char­iandy, and Marie-Claire Blais [who was the no-show, IIRC] gath­er inter­sect­ing char­ac­ters in one space. William Gib­son hooks these two ends of the spec­trum and com­pli­cates it with vir­tu­al dimensions.

  3. They ran three authors, then had an inter­mis­sion, fol­lowed by the last two authors. As things were get­ting set up I saw Gib­son come in and sit in the audi­ence, over the in corner.
  4. The first three authors read from their works: Lin­da Lei­th from The Desert Lake, David Char­iandy from Soucouyant, and Bren­da Hasiuk from Where the Rocks Say Your Name. All were inter­est­ing; I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked Char­iandy and Hasiuk.
  5. At the inter­mis­sion, I went up onto the stage, and had a chat with David Char­iandy, who is per­haps my age. He’s a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at SFU (Simon Fras­er, not San Fran­cis­co). He was polite and enthu­si­as­tic. I also told Bren­da Hasiuk that I’d enjoyed her read­ing — her descrip­tion of rid­ing around a fron­tier town in a pick­up truck rung true, and I could almost feel the fab­ric of the seat­belt as she read.
  6. After this I glanced down into the audi­ence. William Gib­son was still sit­ting there in his chair, and there was still no one around him. What the hell, I thought, and went down into the row in front of him. I intro­duced myself, told him I’d always enjoyed his work — I read Count Zero when I was fif­teen or so, and it told me there was a whole new kind of sci­ence fic­tion, some­thing I’d nev­er read before. It hooked me.
  7. We had a brief chat, most­ly cen­tered on a) me try­ing not to say “Ohmy­godIlovey­our­work” over and over again and b) how Gib­son’s work has come clos­er and clos­er to the present.
  8. Con­sid­er: The Sprawl tril­o­gy was set in what I assume would be the 2080s or so, giv­en lit­tle hints in the nar­ra­tive. The Bridge tril­o­gy was prob­a­bly clos­er to about 2030 or so, if I had to guess. But his two lat­est works — Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion and Spook Coun­try are set in the present. The past, in fact: Spook Coun­try takes place in late 2006.
  9. Gib­son made the point that, real­ly, the world we live in now is at least as sci­ence-fic­tion­al as any­thing he’s come up with in his nov­els. Con­stant per­son­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty, the world-wide web and the Inter­net it over­lays: it reads, in some ways, like some­thing out of Neu­ro­mancer. Just add some hus­tlers and an unhealthy dose of street drugs.
  10. (True sto­ry: My sis­ter bought me Ting Ting Dja­he gin­ger can­dies for Christ­mas one year. They looked and tast­ed exact­ly as I’d expect­ed from their descrip­tion as Julius Deane’s can­dy of choice in Neu­ro­mancer.)
  11. Gib­son was very gra­cious, and I sure hope I did­n’t come across as a rav­ing fan­boy. He was very approach­able, and I kind of wish I’d have stayed longer, talk­ing, but I did­n’t want to wear out my wel­come. So I went back to my seat, and wait­ed for inter­mis­sion to end.
  12. McNal­ly Robin­son had a table set up, sell­ing the books from the authors that night, so when he came up to read, Gib­son just grabbed a copy of Spook Coun­try off the table. He reads in a bit of a monot­o­ne, some­thing I knew to expect from hav­ing seen him read on TV. What I was­n’t ready for, though, was his accent: soft and South­ern. After all, we may claim him as a Cana­di­an, but he was born in South Car­oli­na and grew up in Virginia.
  13. And that’s my William Gib­son story.

Whirlwind Weekend

This week­end I: saw, and had a brief chat with, William Gib­son; did nage-no-kata with the head of the Cana­di­an Grad­ing Board for judo, and also had a brief intro to the first set of ju-no-kata; drew Darth Vad­er in Cray­ola cray­on; and heard the cutest ver­sion of the ABC song I think I’ll ever hear.

Fri­day
I took the day off, since I want­ed to be able to get to the read­ing at 2:30 PM. I left town about 11:30 AM, a lit­tle lat­er than I meant to, but isn’t that always the way? Bar­reled down the high­way, got into the city at about 1:15 PM or so, then made my way through the tail end of the noon rush to Portage Place. The read­ing was at the McNal­ly Robin­son book­store on the main floor, in the lit­tle eatery there. I got into the store, and the food smelled so good. I regret­ted eat­ing at McDon­ald’s in Portage, but I’d been hun­gry.

There weren’t any tables free. There were, how­ev­er, quite a few tables with one per­son at them, and most of them looked like they were there for the read­ing. I was just try­ing to fig­ure out who I was going to approach when two women got up from a table direct­ly in front of the read­ing area and said they were leav­ing, and I could have their table if I want­ed. Uh, yes. Thanks.

So I sat down, and the wait­er came around, brought me a water and a menu. I ordered a root beer and wait­ed. It was 2:00 PM, half an hour yet to go. A girl showed up, look­ing like she need­ed a seat, so I offered her a spot at my table. We chat­ted about writ­ing for a while, then the read­ing began.

William Gibson and John Havelda
William Gib­son (L) and John Havelda 

Gib­son read from his lat­est book, Spook Coun­try, which I fin­ished read­ing last week, and thor­ough­ly enjoyed. It’s set in the present day; as he’s said in recent inter­views, the present is pret­ty much sci­ence fic­tion these days. After he and the poet John Havel­da did their read­ings, there was about a half an hour Q&A with the audi­ence. Some good ques­tions were asked, on the nature of lan­guage (both authors like to play with lan­guage; Gib­son, after all, coined the term cyber­space back in nine­teen-eighty-what-have-you, and Havel­da is (IIRC) a Hun­gar­i­an poet, raised in Eng­land, now liv­ing in Por­tu­gal with his Por­tugese wife), on the future of books, and the like. After­wards I was one of the first in line, and I got my beat-up old copy of Mona Lisa Over­drive* signed by Gib­son.

to be continued…

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* I could­n’t find my copy of Neu­ro­mancer.

The three most frustrating words in the TV world…

…are to be con­tin­ued.

Watch­ing an episode of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, my one TV addic­tion, and all the play­ers are in place: The Cylons have arrived, the humans are on the ground, about to be over­run by the ene­my, and in orbit, Galac­ti­ca has six nuclear weapons aimed down at the planet.

And the screen goes black and those three lit­tle words appear at the bot­tom of the screen.

Gaah!

Thin Air

…is the name of the Win­nipeg Writ­ers Fes­ti­val, and this year one of the speak­ers is William Gibson.

I ful­ly intend to be there for at least one of his events.