I would like to thank Lisa Spangenberg for finding the SFWA Harassment policy for me. I'm glad they have one.

Reproduced here:

The SFWA administration, employees, members, and volunteers are responsible for assuring that all persons who participate in SFWA programs and activities do so in an atmosphere free of all forms of harassment, exploitation, or intimidation. Sexual harassment is unlawful and impedes the realization of SFWA’s mission to inform, support, promote, defend and advocate for our members. SFWA will respond promptly and effectively to reports of harassment and discrimination of any kind and will take appropriate action to prevent, to correct, and if necessary, to discipline behavior that violates this policy. This policy applies to any events or spaces sponsored by SFWA, including but not limited to the SFWA discussion Forums, the SFWA website, the Nebula Awards Weekend, and the SFWA suite.”

That's well written. I think that now the part for SFWA to exercise is the part I've put in bold:

SFWA will respond promptly and effectively to reports of harassment and discrimination of any kind and will take appropriate action to prevent, to correct, and if necessary, to discipline behavior that violates this policy.

Part One: Done. I know many of the grievants have received notes from the SFWA officers. Part Two: I assume that is what is going on now. Organizational time can be a bit slower than what most people think is prompt.

But, it is clear that the gentlemen that wrote the column(s) are in clear violation of the organization's policy. I think that the organization will be more careful about what goes into the bulletin from here on out, and I would imagine correction would be the next stage.

Good luck, SFWA Board. Again, kudos for the policy. It's pretty flexible, and allows for almost all possibilities connected to your organization. Now, just get a link to it on the front page of your site! (Unless I am just a jet-lagged dork who can't see it. If so, nevermind.)

Here we go.

You might remember that I'm board president of the Mindbridge Foundation. This dubious distinction means that I often get to field pleasant and unpleasant conversation as a representative of the organization. It also means I get to make the meeting agendas. Yeah. It's a worthy thing. I also have an interest in organizations and visions because of it. So...let's talk about SFWA.

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I'm not even there yet, but I've had questions about joining SFWA when I do get there. First of all, I already belong to a freakin' huge union that gives me benefits to all sorts of wonderful support (and it is the NEA). Secondly, I may end up being a better fit in SCBWI or another organization, as I don't know if what I write when I have a writing career will be a good fit for SFWA. And thirdly, I have a tendency to wade into messes and try to fix them, so I may stay away from SFWA just so I don't have another item on my to do list.

And then there's the recent controversy regarding the Bulletin.

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Well, I'm back.

There are details from both Wiscon and the writing retreat that I was just on to catch up with, and I will as best I can, but I'm occupied now with getting ready to go to Vietnam and catching up with work so I can leave without leaving a black hole here. I will post as I can.

I had a great writing workshop, but I'm glad to be home with my husband at a lower altitude. Curse you mountains, why do you have to be so high?

Anyway, I suppose that I need to take a look at this SFWA thing. Because, you know, as head of a geek organization, I have a sort of interest. Post coming soon. It'll be fraught with policies.

Anyway, nice to touch base with all of you, if only for a second. Work continues. Writing continues. Nothing else to see here, except a trip to the camping store for serious DEET and to Menards for paintbrushes.

And now, debut author J.Kathleen Cheney shares her writing process.

Tamago: Do you have a regular drafting process, or does your drafting process vary from book to book. Can you describe it to us generally, or at least for one project?

Kathleen: I'll have to say that for the first couple of novels I wrote, I had no process. I'm now actually working on my 7th. By now, I'm finally forming a process.
1) I take a couple of weeks to do initial research and do my preliminary outline.
2) I start writing, more or less straight through the novel.
3) Once I reach the end, I re-outline, and then rewrite.
4) Once I reach the end, I re-outline, and then rewrite. (I do this twice.)
5) I let someone read it.
6) I clean it up, considering their input.
7) I submit it (to agent and editor).

Tamago: Is your writing process the same for short stories as it is for novels?

Kathleen: Surprisingly, not much different.

Tamago: Which part of writing--drafting, revising, critique from others--do you enjoy the most? Why? The least? Why?< ?em>

Tamago: Do you belong to a writer's group, or do you work solo? Why do you follow the approach that you do?

Kathleen: Sadly, I work solo. I am a member of several writers groups, but I don't have those people critique my work. It's difficult to find the right balance in critiquing. I did have a great first reader, but she passed away recently. So for now, I'm pretty much just running things past my husband, and then turning them in.

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And...tomorrow I'm leaving for Wiscon.

Where I'll see some good people that I know, hang out with some wonderful friends, get some books signed, belt out some karaoke, and eat, drink, and be merry.

Since I am busy working on a Vietnam thing with students, and actually have some panels planned for Convergence in July, I am keeping my activities for Wiscon pretty light. If you'd like to hear an excerpt from my new novel The Poison of thy Flesh (or as Julia Rios likes to call it, Sweet, Sweet, Sweet Poison), that'll be 10 pm -11:15 pm in Conference Room 2. You know, you can come all sweaty from the genderfloomp and take a break, and then go right back. There will be some book drawings and a wide diversity of things read.

And I'll be at the sign out Monday early, just in case you win my copy of Cucurbital 3.

But mostly, I'll be being social. So, see you there?

Catherine

Well, let's talk about Kindle Worlds, then.

In 2001, I graduated with my PhD in second language writing after seven years. Before I began those seven years of academia, reading a ton of stuff that wasn't about creative writing, I had this idea to become a novelist. And I'd had some nibbles, and then I went off to grad school (again!) and disappeared for seven years.

After grad school, I was rather keen to see if I could still write. So, I thought a safe arena to try this out in would be fan fiction. As it turns out, Harry Potter fan fiction. I was captivated by Book 3, The Prisoner of Azkaban. I also wondered how Rowling could build a character like Snape so he'd actually be like he was portrayed (I wasn't one of those change Snape women who wanted to put him in Argyll socks and wash his hair.) Mind you, this is weird for me. IF the author has done their job, I am usually pleased with what there is on the page, and I never feel the need to add a foot note. But here, there were too many questions that I wanted to answer.

One day I was thinking about this Snape problem, and a voice whispered in my ear. "Come over here," it said. "Let me tell you what happened." And it was NOTHING like what really happened, of course. But, this is me talking about why Kindle Worlds may not be such a good idea for you fan fiction writers--namely, you don't know what you're going to want in the future.

Read more, if you are so inclined.

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Lauren Teffeau of The Bluestocking was kind enough to interview me so I have a Taos Toolbox profile. Thanks, Lauren!

Last year at Icon, we held our first Paradise Icon, an event that is a writer's workshop, an education day, and a chance to attend a science fiction convention. We're going to do it again.

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This year at Icon 38, from November 15-17, we will be holding Paradise Icon 2! Our guest lecturers (so far) are Nancy Kress, Greg Frost, and Ellen Datlow. We may add one more to the schedule. On Friday, we workshop. On Saturday, we listen to lectures and ask questions. Sometime on Saturday, we get to read our own work.

If PI2 sounds like something you'd like to do, let me know. You do need to be a Journeyman writer--someone who has attended Clarion, Viable Paradise, Odyssey, Taos Toolbox, Orson Scott Card's Bootcamp, something like that. OR you need to send me a piece that I can evaluate that makes sure you're about that level.

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The cost for the event is $100. That gets you the workshop and the convention, plus valuable face time with some of our attending pros. Icon also has a very nice con suite.

Some of you are eager to pay and come. Register for Paradise Icon now on the Icon Registration Page!

Let me know if you have any questions. Membership is capped at 18. Hope to see you there.

It would be unseemly to write anything political the morning after ANOTHER tragic weather event, so I won't do that. I would like to extend sympathy to the people who have lost loved ones and their way of life.

Currently the news in our part of the world is doing a revisiting of the flood we had 5 years ago, which they called a 5000 year flood, or the kind of flood that is only supposed to occur every 5000 years, according to insurance statisticians. In 1998, the year my father died, we had a 1000 year flood. In 2003, another 1000 year flood. The weather, she is changing.

I know you have seen the statistics. Tornadoes are bigger. Windstorms are more violent. Hurricanes are larger and more dangerous and on the increase. There are more earthquakes. More drought. Cities are undergoing desertification. Places like Iowa will have droughts one year (last year) and floods the next (this year). The hot button issue of the middle 21st century will be WATER. We have begun to see climate refugees, leaving Oceania because their coastal homes are being swept away.

Regardless of why you think it happened, we've warmed up our environment, deepened our oceans, melted our ice caps. This changes the intensity of weather action, the direction of ocean drift, and the loss of land mass. Global warming does make the ocean hotter. That doesn't mean that if you have a cold winter, you have no global warming. That means that the warmer ocean is making your weather bigger, scarier.

How can we make sure that our population areas are safer? In Cedar Rapids, for example, we could stop dinking around and build a flood wall on both sides of the Cedar River, instead of just one side because FEMA will pay for it.

We can move people out of at risk climate zones as best we can. Yeah, this one is horrible. At the end of my life, projections are that Miami will be underwater, for example. No one wants to leave the place they love. But I suspect we won't have much choice in preserving life.

There are certain things we can't predict. A tornado is like Russian Roulette. So, what can we do to insure the safest tornado conditions we can? Like neighborhood shelters, roadside bunkers for people who are commuting? Make sure mobile home parks are equipped with safety areas.

We know that the weather is not going to get better, nor are things going back to the way they were. Mind, I'd be happy if they did. But we need to think infrastructure, and we need to think safety. We may just be spitting into the wind. I'd like to say we did something, though.

So, again, spare a thought for Oklahoma. Send some money to the Red Cross. And tell our government officials we need to be thinking about these things, as well as better bridges and roads.

Writers of the Future Winner and physicist Corry Lee rounds out the Taos Toolbox profiles. Enjoy!

Tamago: When did you know that you wanted to become an author?

Corry: I spent my weekends and vacations writing ever since I was a kid, but I first started thinking critically about writing in 2009 when I attended Odyssey, the Fantasy Writing Workshop. I'd been working on "a novel" for years before that, but the workshop experience--and choosing to focus on short stories for a couple of years to hone my craft--is really when I took my first big step toward becoming an author, rather than just writing for fun.

Tamago: I know that you write in more than one genre. Do you have a preference of science fiction or fantasy? What do you like about storytelling in those subgenres?

Corry: I love both fantasy and science fiction, but no matter what I'm writing, I have to love the world. It needs to be intricate and filled with characters I care about. I tend to like secondary world fantasy; if it's going to take place in our world, it needs to be a culture and/or time period I'm not familiar with. Science fiction is similar in that I don't like stuff too close to the modern day. I want to escape my comfort zone and explore!

The novel I'm working on right now is my first secondary world fantasy, and I'm having a lot of fun inventing a magic system that fits a society with a 1920s era technology level.

Tamago: Which writers are your influences?

Corry: This is a constantly evolving list, but some of my favorite authors right now--whose work I find both motivational (because it's awesome) and discouraging (because it's so awesome!) include... Brent Weeks (The Black Prism), N.K. Jemisin (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms), Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn), Ian Tregillis (Bitter Seeds), and Courtney Schafer (The Whitefire Crossing).

Tamago: How does having a degree in particle physics affect your writing?

Corry: People often expect that having a PhD in physics means I write hard science fiction... so far, not so much. The glib response in that writing hard SF is too much like work, but the fact is, I still feel so close to all the nitty-gritty (and not very interesting) details of actually *doing* big science, that I haven't come up with any story ideas that use any scientific "big ideas" in a plausible way.

The big intangible for me, though, has been that spending 7 years on a PhD forced me to be highly self-motivated, making daily, incremental progress on a big project with a nebulous completion date. It also taught me to expect that the first thing you try--or maybe the eighth--isn't going to work. Gosh, that sounds a lot like writing a novel.

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