Mari Ness

What with the holiday yesterday I completely failed to notice that Tor.com posted my latest blog on Oz, this one about The Patchwork Girl of Oz.

I maintain all of this happened because we started Thanksgiving too early. Thanksgiving should not start unti at least 10 am. It is known. Anyway.

1. Day before: tgregoryt, who should know better by now, warns me of the morning start. Despite this, spend time making the vegetable dish that my mother has insisted on, using my genius for creating unhealthy foods to transform spinach into the single most high calorie, high fat, high cholesterol food at the table. While making dish, discover that the eggs are utterly possessed and refusing to do what eggs are supposed to do. Blame anaisis who had the identical problem earlier this week and has clearly cursed my eggs in revenge. Take comfort in my two types of gleaming, beautiful homemade cranberry sauce which will save my culinary reputation.

2. Wake up at an unholy hour for Thanksgiving and gather things into the car while playing my happy version of Dona Nobis Pacem.

3. My custard is leaking. This cannot bode well.

4. The leaking custards bode quite well for two cats who suddenly decide that they love and adore custard and should absolutely, positively have lots of it and cry when I insist on cleaning the custard from the floor. (I'm weird that way.)

5. Finally get leaky custard, scooter, sweet potatoes, wine, materials for pies, tennis rackets, tennis balls, and board games into car and pick up SD. Notice something missing from that list?

6. Two miles later, hear the happy sound of flashing sirens.

7. Pull over. Cop asks for registration, insurance and – in an alarming touch – for both tgregoryt's and SD's drivers licenses.

8. Sit. And sit. And then, for a change, sit.

9. Cop returns. Apparently, the state of Florida suspended tgregoryt's driver's license three days before, naturally, not bothering to inform him of this exciting little detail. Further inquiries show that his license was suspended for failure to pay a ticket in New Mexico, which, as it turns out, according to his credit union, he did, in fact, pay. In Florida, facts are messy things, and he is given a December court date and wished a very happy holiday.

10. Ah, the joy of Thanksgiving.

11. So now we have three people in a stick shift car, only one with a valid license. Naturally, that one would be the one with the least experience with driving stick. Question whether or not the cop would actually check my license and decide that now isn't the time to risk that.

12. SD starts driving the car, with a twist – the last time he drove a stick shift was back in India, where, of course, the steering wheel and the gear shift are on the other side, so he keeps trying to use his left hand to shift a non existent gear shift.

13. Return to the apartment. Move leaky custard, scooter, sweet potatoes, wine, materials for pies, tennis rackets, tennis balls, and board games into SD's car. Still fail to notice something missing from that list.

14. Evveeeeennnntttuuuaaaallllyyyyy arrive at my mother's, where we realize that we have forgotten the two types of cranberry sauce that will restore my culinary reputation. I let other people begin the great cooking while I lie down, lots.

15. My mother, a very, very enthusiastic football fan (she watches high school, college and pro) decides to start teaching SD the intricacies of football rules. I surprise everyone by making not one, but two correct statements regarding pro football. (Do not be alarmed, my readers: this sudden knowledge is, I assure you, an aberration.) I decide to lie down lots more.

16. gargoylerose and chattycatsmeow arrive for dinner. The menu: turkey, Amish stuffing, mashed potatoes with cheese, curried sweet potatoes, spinach strata, roasted potatoes and figs, and cranberry sauce from a jar, not from the two types of cranberry sauce.

17. This is far, far too much food for six people. All of it, however, is excellent.

18. Everyone does, however, decide that we could just possibly make room for dessert. Overall, despite the morning excitement, a most excellent Thanksgiving.

19. Eventually leave to discover that between our arrival and now, winter has arrived. COLD.

20. Collapse in bed. After moment of indecision, two small cats decide that it is too cold to hold grudges over the cruel removal of custard from little cats and the even crueler abandonment and failure to feed them turkey, and crawl beneath the covers. Hello, winter.

This is a lot of cranberry sauce.

Happy Thanksgiving to all - including non-Americans! No reason why you can't have a marvelous day!

And for those of you in feline households, my cats would like to remind you all that this is an Official Feline Appreciation Day, which means that they want some turkey!

Squirrel versus dog.

Thanks to ysabetwordsmith for the link.

You're expecting a song, aren't you?

But no. I'm breaking a long standing habit and superstition by announcing that yes, I have sold a story to Jetse de Vries' Shine Anthology, forthcoming from Solaris Books in 2010.

(The superstition stems from four children's books, a French fry vending machine, fbhjr and malterre's wedding, a certain publisher in the greater Atlanta area, a duck, and the Miami Herald. It has, you see, deep meaning. And history. Not to mention the duck. It's a tragic and terrible saga, really.)

But I have two reasons for breaking this rule now: one, as of now, the book is available for preorder from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, and two, Jetse de Vries is planning a competition. Keep an eye on his blog for more details. And I'll have more about this anthology and my story as we edge closer to the publication date.

(Now let's just hope I haven't doomed the book with this announcement!)

From technomensch and matociquala:

"Shadows on the Reef" continues, as the marine biologists head out to one more survey before winter conditions make diving completely impossible.

(That part isn't mentioned in the article; when this section was originally written I had vague thoughts of summer/early fall in mind which ended up not working with the real life publishing realities. Later bits have been slightly readjusted to correspond somewhat more closely to the actual calendar. And if you are thinking that diving the North Atlantic in November is evil and cruel regardless, well, yes. Cthulhu!)

For the curious, the stuff about the corals is more or less accurate. The stuff about the dolphins...

:: cough ::

As always, blame Cthulhu for any technical inaccuracies.

The Little One has a message for you this morning:

( Cut for large image: )

The most recent Oz post, where I get exasperated with a certain fairy calling herself the ruler of Oz, is up here.

This was actually the book that started up this series of posts. Reading the call for horror fiction based on Oz drew up the vague memory of one of the incidents of this book. The story was already in my head, itching, but before I let myself write it, I forced myself to reread this book, just to make sure I'd remembered it correctly.

Sure enough, I had remembered the Fuddles correctly. But I had not remembered the rest of the book as well, and I found myself reading it with a growing sense of stark horror. It was, and was not, the same book that I read as a child, because in the intervening years, I had changed - and so had the way I read the book.

More thoughts in the post.

Sigh. I feel uncomfortable with doing this, but since I got nudged about this, and since everyone else seems to be doing it, you can find a list of my Nebula eligible works here. Basically, everything except for "The Fuddles of Oz" (originally published in Canada) and the poetry since July 2008 is eligible. Since most of them appeared in out-of-the-way venues, though, and the ones that appeared in larger venues were overshadowed by (in my opinion) better stories by considerably better known authors, I think my chances of appearing on the Nebula ballot are about 0.0001 percent. I may be overly optimistic. (Which is why, incidentally, I'm uncomfortable with this post...I'd be more gung-ho about this if there was a chance in hell, but of course, I probably wouldn't be pimping myself like this if I did have a genuine chance, because I wouldn't need to. Hmm.)

(For the curious, works that originally appeared in Hub Fiction are considered eligible since they made their first appearance in electronic format, which means that they are treated as if they were published in the United States, even though Hub is based in Great Britain.)

For what it's worth, if I were nominating me, I would probably nominate the experimental Pogo Stick, possibly the most original thing I published this year. But I am a notoriously bad judge of my own work, so feel free to dispute this. (Actually, this was already disputed - the nudger in question was more excited about Colors and Playing With Spades. So there.) A more detailed post chatting about this year's publications (including the poetry) and what I thought about them will probably be appearing in late December/early January if I don't forget, and I'll probably be using that post for the probably inevitable upcoming Hugo/other awards post so that readers who just come here looking for movie/television snark (by far the majority of you) don't get overly bored by things like this.

I will say, however, that I sincerely hope Nebula voters and readers will be checking out and focusing on some of the awesome work appearing in Clarkesworld Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Abyss and Apex and any of the anthologies printed by Norilana Books, Small Beer Press, Hadley Rille Books and Morrigan Books. Because some seriously good stuff is appearing there. Go check them out.

Edited to add:

Also recommended for online fiction reading:

Apex Magazine, horror/fantasy/science fiction.
Cabinet-des-fees.com, Fairy tales/fantasy
Ideomancer.com, mix of multiple genres.
Tor.com, doesn't just publish awesome commentary on the Oz books, but fiction once or twice a week.
Everyday Weirdness. Obviously I have a bit of a bias here, but I really do like this site - a little twist of the extraordinary and weird on a daily basis.

And oh, yeah, full disclosure, some of the above places have or will publish me.

Back by popular demand, I snark episode two of V, "There Is No Normal Anymore."

( Seriously, what is it with this priest? )

Everyday Weirdness has my short story, A Twisted Light, up today.

This almost inspired me to write something about horror and writing and genre and the differences between the genres I usually read and the genres I usually write (there's less overlap than you would think), but I'll just leave you with this story instead.

Yesterday:

9:30 am Confirm that we (my parents and I) actually are doing the whole shuttle thing. Startle a cat with squawk of joy. Realize that this means clean clothing absolutely but absolutely must be found.

11:15 Pass through Christmas and wave at the giant alligator. No matter how many times I do this, this never fails to amuse me on a deep and utterly silly level.

11:40 Arrive at US 1 to begin the great quest for a parking space.

11:41 First space is a) $20, and b) has cars parked so tightly together that we cannot squeeze my shiny new small sized wheelchair through it. Decide to continue on.

11:42 Second space is a) free, b) conveniently near (wheelchair distance) a free public bathroom and c) a McDonald's. Continuing on for the win.

12:00 General argument as people try to figure out which of the two launch pads Atlantis is on. One launch pad has a crane; the other has flashing lights. General consensus that it must be the launching pad with the flashing lights.

12:30 pm Mullet!

12:35 Butterflies. Even if the shuttle doesn't go up, I've had nature.

1:20 Wheeled out to the fishing dock for unparalleled view. Not just of the two potential liftoff points, but of the cleavage of the woman in front of me who has taken the happy position that shuttle events should be viewed in a push-up bra and very little else.

1:21 Another general discussion about which launch pad we should be watching. General agreement that it is leaving from the one where everything is flashing.

1:25 Behind me, two teachers from California – one teaching 7th and the other 1st start loudly chatting with a helpful engineer.

1:28 Engineer clearly begins to regret this conversation.

1:31 More mullet! Unclear if this is just general mullet jumpiness glee or if they are sensing that they're about to get blasted with a lot of noise and want to enjoy the noise free air while they can.

1:45 Plane takes off over the Cape and flies around.

2:06 Plane returns. It looks like we are a go. Yay shuttle!

2:10 Engineer patiently explains that the shuttle can't go to Mars because it isn't carrying enough fuel. Response: "So, Mars is too many light years away, I guess?"

2:11 Shocked silence when everyone realizes this statement was made by the 7th grade teacher.

2:11:30 Seven year old manages to answer. "Mars isn't LIGHT YEARS away! It's the second closest planet after Venus. Which you can't go to because you can't breathe on it and it's poisonous."

2:11:45 "I don't think Mars is the second closest planet, son. That's Jupiter."

2:12 Spirited debate about the order of the planets follows, wherein we learn that a 7th grade teacher from California a) has no idea of the order of the planets, b) does not believe that Mars has moons, c) does not realize that you need a telescope to see Neptune, d) does not actually know where Neptune is.

2:13 Seven year old's faith in adults permanently crushed.

2:13:30 Woman in front of me begs for the use of my iPod to prevent further brain cells from melting.

2:14 I decide that Pluto should be a planet again.

2:25 Everyone looks anxiously at the still present cloud cover. Iphone users assure us that the countdown is still on.

2:28 Atlantis blasts off – from the launching pad without the flickering lights.

2:28:01 WOW.

2:29:15 Ok, that's loud. Loud enough that the rumblings actually go right through you.

2:29:20 "Look at the water!" someone gasps. Sure enough, the sound is loud enough to actually move the water of the Intercoastal Waterway. I've occasionally seen this with liquids in wine glasses, but never in water deep enough for dolphins.

2:30 Atlantis continues to climb as huge clouds of smoke billow below.

2:31 Realize we can now add "sounds of a space shuttle launching" to the list of "things that make me dizzy." But it's ok.

2:35 I know I keep blogging about this. And there's a reason: It doesn't matter how many times you see this, or from where you see this. This is the COOLEST THING EVER.

Partly it's the brightness – that's a lot of fire – and the realization of just how much energy and effort is needed to get into space. (Pictures don't do that justice.) Partly it's the sheer beauty of the shuttle against the sky and the clouds. (Pictures don't do that justice either.) When you're close enough, it's also the sound and the vibrations.

Mostly it's just watching people leave the planet, in a bright cloak of fire.

2:40 Realize again that however impractical and pointless and expensive the trip might be, we still have to go to Mars in my lifetime. Even if that means we have to extend my life for this.

Dear Emusic.com -

Cyndi Lauper is NOT a guilty pleasure.

- me

(Destiny's Child and some Michael Jackson and Liza Minnelli songs might well be, though. Not that they're in my music library for me to verify at the moment.)

And just to show that I'm not entirely negative about this year's television shows:

1. Really enjoying Castle, to the point where I must admit to a bit of heresy – I may – just may – be enjoying Nathan Fillion as Castle more than I did as Mal. Gulp. I know. I submit myself to your judgement.

(Not that the characters are all that different, really. Also, loved the return of Mal for Halloween moment.)

2. Also sucking me in: Flashforward, admittedly mostly because of the ongoing cliffhanger endings, which, let's face it, I'm an absolute sucker for (Lost! Come back to me quickly, Lost!). Also, the kangaroo. I am seriously hoping that in the season finale, we find out that This Was All The Fault of the Kangaroo, who, as it turns out, is a Evil Scientist Mastermind.

(Let's face this, too: if you're going to be an Evil Scientist Mastermind, why NOT turn yourself into a kangaroo? You have just enough strength in your paws to operate all of your dangerous evil scientific equipment, and when the bad guys show up, you have a wealth of options: look adorable, cute and helpless, the sort of kangaroo that would never hurt anyone; leap away, leading off a wild chase through city streets which, awesome, because, kangaroo; or alternatively, use some harsh kangaroo kung fu kicks on your enemy. But I digress.)

Also enjoying the show's willingness to play with the inevitability of time and the future and questioning the concepts of fate and destiny.

I do have some quibbles: several episodes in, I still don't like most of the characters, except Demetri, which is not good for keeping me sucked in long term, and not surprisingly the show hasn't been able to keep up the intensity of the first couple of episodes. But they have me hooked for now.

3. And one advantage to watching V and Stargate: Universe is that I am now regarding the insanity that is Fringe in a much kinder light.

They still need to get rid of the cow, though.

And what better way to celebrate than with a clip of this:



Ok, ok. For those of you looking for a nice nostalgic moment whose minds were just broken, try this:

Erk.

So, for the majority of you that have not been watching this show, here's how it works. Most of the episodes so far feature a bunch of rather depressed and angry people realizing that yet another component of their incredibly old and decrepit spaceship is falling apart, and watching said rather depressed and angry people run around like mad trying to fix things while snapping at each other and being Really Mean until yay, the ship manages to rescue itself making all the humans look kinda dumb and petty. This is all a lot more fun than I'm making it sound and gloriously cheesy and stupid. Love it. I would love it even more if I had any way of distinguishing the characters beyond "angry one," "angrier one," "seriously angrier one," "hey, that chick from ER," and "oooh, breasts," but I digress. Also, occasional sex, so, yay Stargate for, um, breaking boundaries, I guess.

(I live in serious hope that another ER veteran will show up, so I can go, "Oooh, that chick from ER! No, that one!)

And then there's the rest of the show. Because by an incredible coincidence, the people happen to have brought along some stone thingies that let them switch minds with people back on Earth. The immediate question that leaps to mind (er, excuse the pun) is that if minds can be switched and, um, brought back, why can't bodies, and the second question is, why does mind switching make everybody so cranky and mean, and shouldn't someone be investigating this phenomena? But I digress. The point is, when this happens, the show gets Very Serious and Deep, and not incidentally, morally questionable and pretty disturbing.

( Cut for mild spoilers for the most recent episode and a brief reminder of what rape is. )

So, as I mentioned, this weekend we headed off to the Florida Aquarium. The drive to Tampa is, alas, not all that exciting except for the appearance of rather incongruous and unrealistic looking dinosaurs, which I must, but must, visit some day. It wasn't this weekend, because my companions are not dinosaur people. "It doesn't look very interesting," said A.

"Fake dinosaurs!"

This did not encourage anyone else to stop.

Fortunately, the Florida Aquarium has Utterly Cute Otters, along with many other species of varying levels of cuteness and utter disgustingness (and, cardinalximenez and fizzgig_bites: cichlids! Lots of cichlids!) and things to touch and some birds. It's quite well done - informative but not overly educational or technical. Plus, otters. If I do have a negative note about the Florida Aquarium, it is this: the disabled accessibility. The disabled parking – well, in fairness, all of the parking – is no place near the entrance; the ticket booths are too high for most wheelchair users; getting into the bathrooms with a scooter was extremely difficult; and reaching the top exhibit on aquaria, accessible to most users through the wetlands exhibit area, required leaving the general exhibits, going back to the elevator, heading outside and going around on the roof, and then reaching the exhibit.

( Cut for pictures. )