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I made an executive decision to stay at home this weekend while the husband ran off to Minneapolis to game with friends. Two old age problems are getting me down: I have a dodgy left hip. If I stretch and use the hip, eventually it settles down, and it’s fine, but things like 5-hour car trips, of which I’ve had several lately, aggravate it, so I thought I’d give the hip a chance to heal. It helped some. I’m reminded of when I had plantar fasciitis. It feels like a muscle thing, so I’ve been stretching more.

And the condition that shall not be named is more readily taken care of when you’re not on the road, so I stayed home and did that too. This Friday we’re going to take a looksie and see if the condition that shall not be named can actually be named.

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Blood test reveals high cholesterol of a minor sort as always, but as I age, the number does creep up. More exercise? Yes. The heat tends to get in the way, but I will make more of a concerted effort. Walked for an hour yesterday, for example. Should also really start considering the effects of red meat, cheese, eggs, etc on my diet more than I do. So I shall.

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Bookwise, got a lot done. Friday I wrote 3000 words Saturday I checked student papers. Boo! I sort of forgot to figure that into my schedule I suspect that was a Freudian slip. However, Sunday, I started to do some vital character work, and I read a huge chunk of an excellent book on Venice.

The best part of me staying home is that I’m not starting the week at a chore deficit. Just jumping into my Monday in the usual way. This’ll be an interesting week full of dietary restrictions and tests. I will disappear about Thursday night, and we’ll talk again probably on Monday.

And that’s what I got.

Don’t bother me kid. I’m writing almost all day today.

And a good chunk of this weekend. This is the silver lining side of staying home while Bryon goes to play games in Minneapolis.

See you after racking up much word count.

As in mine aren’t working right.

I am not inserting disgusting details here. There will be appropriate medical testing next Friday, and I sincerely hope some diagnosis for something I can change. No one is worried about anything serious here, but we have to treat it like it might be serious and do the maximum testing first. The doc has a few theories, among which are infections, conditions, and plumbing.

The fun part of all of this is that I get in for testing so quickly because no one wants to get tested on Friday the 13th. I suspect that if I have a problem of any sort, I’d still have it on the 12th, or the 14th. Honestly, I’ll never know for sure, but I have my suspicions.

Watch this spot for a diagnosis. Meanwhile, I continue to distract myself by writing and reading and working. Like Karaba the sorceress in Kirikou and the Sorceress I will not tell anyone what is wrong with me, but I would like to have the thorn that is deep in my back removed.

…today I am SMOFette.

Jim did an interview on what being a SMOF is, and I’m the SMOF he interviewed. Check me out, trying to imbue Iowa fandom with legitimacy on a certain level. 😛

We also talk about inclusivity at cons, an important issue near and dear to my heart.

Check it out.

There I was, parked in front of my typewriter, notebook, and nook yesterday, plotting out the rest of the first Klarion book, which I am no longer certain of the name of, since the first one has split into two, thinking that I want to tell these stories, regardless of whether I can get the first one published or not.

Abigail Rath Versus Blood-Sucking Fiends was a break. It was once upon a time a very popular short story, and I wanted to see if I could write a book. Which I did, and I could write a few more books if it came down to it. But I am not, at this time, so motivated as to want to see the entire story if that book didn’t sell as an anchor. I could spend the next several years writing Abby and her friends, but I don’t have to.

This other story, though, I want to write it all. Truly if my focus is not about publishing, but is about telling the stories I have to tell in the best way I can tell them, I should do what I want.

So I will. 😉 And I will dutifully send them all out, making them all stand alone books in a series, but I will write them all nevertheless. For me. Because it’s what I want. It is my artistic vision.

And yes, I will. Because I am the same person who took two years to make a Caterina Sforza suit for her master costumer status. Because I am the same person who took three years to write her dissertation. Because a thing worth doing is a thing worth doing. Because you do art for a lot of reasons.

You may look for me, then, to be the novelist in the background writing and writing and writing. I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not. Things get sort of knotted up sometimes, but in the end I guess I am the same person.

No more hand wringing about publishing and agents. More joy in the artistic effort in 3…2…1…

I think I finally understand that I am in the sticks. For real, not for joking.

Recently, there’s been a small kerfluffle regarding a SMOF zone sign at LoneStar 3 that seemed to some members of the con to want to keep regular fans out of a business meeting. Another us versus them moment. And Jim Hines got caught in the cross hairs of that. And I am sure that it was a moment of indecisiveness for some, like my friend Kathryn Sullivan.

I think that conventions are highly charged atmospheres right now, and we do want to watch how welcome we make people, given a lot of the conversation regarding exclusivity. But I have a confession to make. In Iowa, I might be Papa Smof. Well, Mama SMOF, but you get the idea.

Mindbridge, the organization of which I am the board president, puts on three conventions a year: AnimeIowa, Icon, and Gamicon. We are NOT the only organization and the only cons in Iowa, but we’ve been doing this for a heck of a while. There are certain other SMOFS in our area who “man” convention committees, tirelessly work con suites, and so on. SMOF for us, around here, in the sticks, can mean at its worst definition: “sucker who does nothing but run cons every year” and at its best definition: “person who works hard to give us a good time and is willing to put in hours to do so.”

Is there a power side of SMOFing? Yes. Pretty much everyone does what I suggest for the cons and so forth. But with great power comes great responsibility, and we try not to use our power for evil. Except, perhaps when two other SMOFs are not treating each other respectfully, and I have to pull out the Evil Eye to get them to reconsider their actions. Hey, organizations are hard to manage.

Our SMOFS have done a few good things. We fund charitable events as well as our conventions. We give out scholarships. We try to make it possible for other fans to have a good time three times a year.

But we never have a SMOF meeting. We call our meetings Mindbridge meetings. This week, we have a Mindbridge Board meeting, and that’s SMOF-y, but people can come if they have a need, or if they’re curious. In general, board meetings are pretty boring. Occasionally, there are grievances among members, and those meetings are closed while we plan for adjucation and discussion.

Then we have a general membership meeting where we keep folks abreast of events, convention votes, and equipment approvals, and have a bit of a social life. This week it’s geek food contest. Bryon and I will be making the graboid cups tomorrow.

All of these meetings are transparent, with notes placed on the Internet.

So, what am I saying? First of all, I gotta wrap this up because I am working on my manuscript today. Secondly, we know that a volunteer base is a valuable commodity, so we want as many Secret Masters of Fandom as possible in Mindbridge. All that means to us is nice people who want to make a good time happen. Heck, we’re not the Masons or the Scottish Rite Temple or something! We don’t even have a secret handshake.

The point is this: you can present something to be inclusive or exclusionary. We prefer inclusive. We didn’t call ourselves SMOFs first, but when people found out we were a board, we were labelled SMOFs. And you know, as long as no one presumes a package that comes with the word, we’re good, because I suspect the kind of SMOFS we are are not the kind who wouldn’t let anyone in to help. God, we need people to help us. Please help us.

So, just throwing that out there. Because semantically, when you get involved in making assumptions, it’s always a bad scene.

Let’s make no bones about it: Hot Fuzz is the best Pegg/Frost/Wright film. Yes, it is. You might think Shaun of the Dead is, and I respect the parody high points and just general cluelessness of Shaun, but by the time Wright reaches Hot Fuzz, he has parody down to a science. And the ending between the two films? Honestly, no contest. I’ll pay to see elderly British villagers turn into hardcore criminals every time.

The World’s End is not as good as either of Wright’s previous efforts, but it’s not bad. What is interesting about The World’s End is it’s much more act-y than the other two films. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz treat characters at best as a genre nod, at worst as parody, and the characters exist only to serve their function in the film (hero, idiot, villain, zombie, etc). In The World’s End, the story is a personal one: five friends from grammar school get back together 25 years later to do a pub crawl, and the film is about their relationships. Heck, the first half an hour is all about relationships, until the strange blue paint incident in the bathroom at about the 4th pub. It’s funny, but the film is much more like, say, The Big Chill or Peter’s Friends than its predecessors.

This changes radically as the film takes on a fantastic edge. It not only is a film about the epic journey of Gary King, the low rent who wants to relive his glory days of youth with his friends, who have all moved on as adults (and don’t we all know a Gary King), but it is also a film about what it means to grow up and what friends owe each other. Yes, against the backdrop of alien invasion. But still, that’s a day at work for a SF/F writer. Or it should be.

So, while I recognize the craft in the other films and find it better, I appreciate the effort of this film as Wright stretches as a director.

The actors are wonderful. Pegg and Frost completely switch personas, as in this film Frost is the one who is competent and real, while Pegg is the blow off. Other strong actors such as Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, and Eddie Marsan round out the group of friends nicely

My only complaint is this: while the ending grows organically out of the story, it is such a radical change in tone, and contains a great deal of exposition. It is truly incongruous.

Get a chance to check it out if you’re a fan of the other two films.

As expected, things are finally beginning to click on the new book. Having writing time and being hot to write the darned thing help. I’m not saying that I am still not very much in the first draft stage. I am laying pipe. BUT, I am beginning to see the story that this can be under there, and that makes me excited.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is recapturing the feel of the original stories, that Shirley Jackson/ Edward Gorey kind of vibe. I’m not there, and that will take an overlay. But after thinking about it, I’ve decided to pull a Patrick Rothfuss. I’m expanding my pool of reader readers.

What I understand from Rothfuss at a convention is that there are two types of readers that can help you out. There are writer readers, where your writing peers give you advice and suggestions on how to improve the craft of the book. And there are reader readers, who are looking at the book experimentially. It is awfully hard for a writer reader to be a reader reader. Heck, even with books I like and can escape into, I’m looking at them with my writer brain. If you don’t believe me, see yesterday’s post.

With this in mind, then, I actively solicited some very good readers from a few years ago when I began posting thinly disguised Klarion fiction on a sight that welcomed fan fiction. And they’ve agreed. So, that brings my pool of reader readers to five. If Mark is still in, I suspect six. I want to test drive this story to see if it’s a train that they can’t get off.

My plan at the moment is to finish up the first part and leave it rough, and then write as far as I can based on the fallout of the first quarter. When I run out of momentum there, I will pen the ending. Then I will look at the tent poles I plan to have in the books, and write the rest of the scenes accordingly. I will be revising the manuscript after that, deeply and thoroughly. That is the revision I will begin sharing with my readers.

Once more I am engaged with process and the spirit of the book. Whether published or no, this I believe increasingly matters to the exclusion of all else. I don’t know if I’ll be lucky enough to get published or not, but I am determined that this will not be my fault if that is the case.

All right. The day job beckons.

It took me a very long time, comparatively speaking, to read the Young Miles omnibus by Lois McMaster Bujold. I enjoyed the omnibus so much that it made me interested in reading more of the series, so I’ve been cruising the book stores for used paper backs, and I’ve been hoarding them away for down the line, dutifully, in my desk row of books to be read. Few books skip the line. Books for the book club and books by friends do, but otherwise I chug along. I’ll get there eventually.

It took me a long time. There was a lot to do at work, my own writing, and just plenty of social activity to be had. But time is a relative thing. The other night, I started in on last year’s World Con books. Like I said, about a year. So, I began reading Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig last week.

The epiphany? I figured out why I personally, and perhaps you, other writers, need rejections. I’m not so sure Chuck Wendig would appreciate the gift he’s given me, but let’s unpack that.

The thing about Wendig’s book? It’s sick, evil, twisted and wrong, but I couldn’t stop reading the book! I read the book preferentially to all things. I dug through my stack and found the sequel, also published at the same time, and began it immediately. I wrote dutifully on my own material yesterday, and finished off a hunk of Wendig last night.

As I was working with my writing group on Skype last week, I said that this was the problem. This is why my books aren’t being published. Wendig’s book is a tension juggernaut. Ain’t nothing stopping this book. It moves forward like a bus in Vietnam (Did you know in Vietnam, there is no word for brakes in the language?) My book stops and starts. There are good action scenes in my book, but there are also quieter scenes, and there’s some tension in those scenes, but not enough, perhaps, to keep a reader in the game from start to finish.

I have read other books like this. Machine by Jennifer Pelland comes to mind this year. Fair Coin by E.C. Myers. These are books where you sit down, and you reluctantly leave the book. What is it about these books, and Wendig’s that move you forward?

***

1. Action. There’s a great deal of plottiness–things that happen that the heroes have to address.

2. Characters. You want to ride along with the mains. You can identify with them or their problems, and you want them to succeed, or to change.

3. Relationship tension. If you check out Blackbirds, you’ll see that Wendig pairs Miriam, his psycho unstable main up with a mellow, nice guy, shakes that up in a martini blender, and watches the jumble that comes out. Ethan’s problem in Fair Coin is that he’s displaced dimensionally, and each new incarnation of his friends becomes a situation he has to negotiate. And well, you just have to read Machine. A lot of that relationship tension comes from who the main was versus who she is becoming.

4. The rising action builds into the character’s relationship tension. The scaffolding and the way the characters and the plot are all interconnected make the reader focused on seeing what happens next. Miriam is in a situation. She reacts to it, and something happens, and then that builds a new situation, and she reacts to it, and something new happens, and so it goes. Like a snake eating its tail.

***

None of this is stuff aspiring writers don’t know. But newsflash for me, and perhaps you. Your book may have a great idea and interesting characters, but how does the whole thing interlock? How active are these characters? How much do they affect the universe around them? How much tension is there in the relationships around them?

Pelland and Wendig are helped by having some seriously broken main characters. Myers’ main is not broken, but he is a classic young hero who is more resourceful than many. This isn’t about likeability or about brokenness. It’s about tension and the main interfacing with the plot. Forward movement.

All right. I can see it. I understand it. Now, can I do it? Because Abby Rath is a good book, but it’s no out of control train. You probably could put that book down. How do I write you a book you can’t put down? How do I put you on a runaway train? Until I figure this out, I expect the rejections will continue.

This is why you should study the successful art of those that have come before you.

Happy Friday morning.

It’s been a wild ride here at the college this week, constant student need married with faculty tension. Wednesday was a low point. On Wednesday my boss was having a hard day and she yelled at me as I was on my way to the doctor’s. So, that happened, but I sent her some flowers because she needed something in that day to brighten her up. I received a very gracious written apology and a tearful oral one the next day. It’s been a hard few weeks on everyone for a variety of reasons, but I still believe that Allison is a class act, and you know, I wouldn’t want her job, and I admire her for doing it.

The doc gave me all sorts of useful thyroid information, which I’ve already posted about. And I also checked about another difficulty I’ve been having since my return from jungle climes. We won’t talk about it, except to say that samples have been gathered for The Test That Must Not Be Named for The Condition We Won’t Discuss. That really made my Wednesday awesome too.

Two more blows came early in the week. One of the fulls I had out was a no. That seems to be about the highest I can climb at the moment, and my store of inherent optimism was used up dealing with work. Financially, we’ll be fine, but we paid for some tree work, and have yet to pay for new tires and some serious roof repair. My glamorous diamond buying lifestyle is done for a bit. You can see why I want to sell a book!

***

But yesterday was awesome. I felt so good about turning the work situation positive. I turned in all my lab stuff. I have a wonderful husband with a sympathetic ear who took good care of me Wednesday. I chatted with writer friends last night. I realize that regardless of the outcome, I am again writing a story I enjoy.

And then there’s next year’s Icon. I should tell you about that.

Mind, this year’s Icon is pretty cool. All this action will be mid-November. We have Greg Frost, Nancy Kress, Jack Skillingstead, Jim Hines, Joe Haldeman, and Ellen Datlow. It’s like a serious quorum of SF/F from the past, present and future, right here in Iowa!

Besides our guests, we have some awesome YA and local writers coming for a big signing Thursday at Barnes and Noble (including yours truly. I’ll have some Hulk Hercules and Cucurbital 3 with me). On Friday, before the con gets rolling, we have an author event for high school kids. We Paradise Icon people will use Friday for workshopping (we are five strong, and hoping for more of you to join us!). And then all sorts of awesome con stuff and panels on the next days.

All I can say about next year at this point is that we have confirmed Jim Hines again as our toastmaster. Jim, I can’t say enough how much you bring to our con, and as Mindbridge President I am grateful we’ve been able to get you back for three years running! I have a feeling this gig is yours for as long as you want it.

I’m also very excited to say that we have writing super couple Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch confirmed as our Writing Guests of Honor. Wow. That excites me very much. I mean, two of the hottest SF/F writers in the US right now. Not too shabby, little Iowa con. Adding Jim in, three of the hottest SF/F writers in the US right now. Not too shabby indeed. And…we’re still working on our artist guest. The name that’s being tossed around right now is a great one, also very hot, and one of my faves, so we’ll see how that works out.

No, it is NOT my fault that the guests seem to be writers I am friendly with. I don’t lean on the con comm as MB pres. I just have a giant list of suggestions, and things seemed to go my way. I have been very lucky.

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This weekend, Bryon and I are taking some large boxes of collectibles up to the Minneapolis Geek Society in preparation for their Geek garage sale. Yes, we are old enough that some of the geeky things we once thought were cool we now think someone else might enjoy better. That’ll be seven boxes of stuff we won’t have to move later. I am hoping we can winnow more, and not necessarily the geeky stuff.

It doesn’t help, however that I too have sunk into toy collecting, and that my Monster High students commandeer almost a whole room of their own. Curse you, plastic mongers!

***

I intend to have a fun afternoon writing. I hope you have a great weekend. Tell your friends about both Icons. Better yet, come. What else were you going to do with your November anyway?