Mari Ness

I was typing up my con report when I paused to check Twitter and my friends list. Some information there reminded me of a story I debated telling, about something that happened on Sunday.

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I went into the first panel debating the future of print fiction. It was 10 o'clock, and I was pretty wobbly from walking that far down the hallway. A woman was sitting in the back row. I started sitting in the seat in that row, nearest to the door, so I could leave if I started having palpitations. (This had been happening.)

"Oh, you can't have that seat," said the woman.

The room still had seats available, closer to the panelists, and on the same row, on the other side of the room.

"I'd like to be near the door," I said.

"This seat is saved."

So I stumbled forward to the row in front of me.

A few seconds afterwards, an elderly man, with a guide dog, stumbled into the room. He was coughing, and clearly having problems walking and breathing. He, too, tried to sit in the back row. The woman argued with him. I turned around and helped guide him to my row, where he and the dog promptly fell asleep.

When the panel was over, the movement of people woke him up. I asked if he needed help, and he didn't seem to hear me. He left with the dog.

Charles N. Brown, co-founder of Locus Magazine.

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Frankly, my con report seems a bit inappropriate at the moment. I'll probably post it - and two related posts - some time tomorrow or Wednesday.

This is a test of the emergency blogging system. Had this been a real post, you would notw be seeing incisive, witty commentary on Readercon moving you to laughter and tears, a brilliant report on the panels about the future of print and online zines, followed by my own must read comments on the subject, and possibly a highly irritated post about disability, accessibility, diversity and ableist language. This is only a test. The blogging system may be restored once the blogging system has been returned to working cyberspace, which this isn't.

Regular blogging may return tomorrow or at least late next week.

Moderately recovering from yesterday's flight and the need for payoffs to Russian women. Alas, however, "available" internet service does not always translate into "free" internet services, so detailed updates, tales of said Russian women, and my decision to marry this bathroom (I know, I know, I was just declaring my plans to marry Haagen-Daas Five last week, but let's face it: my affections are often fickle, and not only does this tub have all kinds of nice helpful handles to let me get in and out of it and a REALLY completely adjustable showerhead, it also is nice and deep and has mood lighting) must wait a trifle until I find actual free internet services, which will probably be sometime Monday.

'Cause all the cool kids are doing it:

Wednesday: Fly up to Boston, head straight to hotel (Burlington Marriott), collapse.

early Thursday evening: dinner with friends.

Thursday, 7 pm: festivities begin, including a Goblin Fruit party that just came to my attention.

Friday-Sunday: con stuff.

Monday-Tuesday: Concord, MA (Concord's Colonial Inn.) Tea and little cakes will be involved.

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Just a quick plea for flexibility: I have a chronic and highly unpredictable illness, which is the main reason I'm not on any panels and keeping my plans minimal, though I'm hoping to see most if not all of you - congoers and New Englanders alike. Fortunately, since I'm staying at the con hotel, I'll be taking advantage of the proximity of my room for various rests, which should help, but if I have to cancel on you, it's not personal, and I'll be more disappointed than you will be.

See you at the con or afterwards!

Over the weekend while I was out watching fireworks, eating things that aren't remotely good for me, playing Munchkin (I love Munchkin) and watching This is Spinal Tap (possibly more about this later) the discussion of electronic versus paper submissions came up again.

My self absorbed take:

I haven't submitted to any of the Big Three (for the curious, this would be Asimov's, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) since 1994. I'm not sure I've ever submitted to Analog at all.

Now, granted, I didn't submit anything to a fantasy/science fiction market between 1994-2005. But when I did start submitting again, I submitted elsewhere, for two reasons:

1. The paper submission requirement. When you're working full time and writing and living in an area where every post office is crowded and slow, submitting via paper, even at a self-service kiosk in the post office, is time consuming – not to mention, shaving from $4 to $5 from the profits of the story. Not impossible, but burdensome. These days, I head to a much smaller post office with no lines whatsoever (because trust me no one knows this place is even there, as demonstrated by someone walking in saying, "I had NO IDEA this place was EVEN HERE," referring not just to the post office, but to the entire town of Oakland, which features mansions on dirt roads and old Victorian buildings and one of the tiniest and cutest post offices ever) which is awesome, but still requires charging up the trike, waiting for the sun and a survivable temperature, and riding the trike, not to mention the whole printing out thing.

Electronic submissions have their own minor hassles, mostly the need to check how that particular publication wants the submission (standard manuscript, standard manuscript but nothing in the header, absolutely not standard manuscript single space only, attachment, not attachment, and so on), but a few keyboard clicks usually solves this.

Some commentators are also crediting response times, but, in my experience, the response time for online submissions can be appallingly long as well – in more than one case well over a year – so for me that isn't an argument against paper submissions.

2. Feedback requirement. Here's what happened Sunday: friends asked how the writing was coming along, and I said truthfully that June was awful (it was) but that I'd had a couple of pieces published in July and I was feeling a little better. That evening, I got an email: "Creepy! I liked the God one better."

A few weeks back I was at Borders. I headed over to the science fiction section, then headed over to the magazine section on my way for the blueberry latte (which is kinda weird mostly because Borders puts lemon things on it and well coffee blueberry and lemons is an odd combination, but I digress) and took a look.

Analog. Not there.
Asimov's. Two copies – both old issues from 2008.
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Not there.

Thus the problem.

It's not that I refuse to submit to the Big Three; it's more that submitting elsewhere seems to be working, and even pro rates don't pay for the time I spend on most short stories. (Novels are a different bag altogether.) What I get for my time (aside from the satisfaction/enjoyment/need to write) is critical feedback and exposure – and that I can get from publications that accept electronic submissions.

To be clear, I'm not knocking print publications at all. "End of Time," my short story in Desolate Places, did very well for me, even if not everybody liked the story (sniffle), introducing me to several other writers and editors and providing excellent exposure. Of course, Hadley Rille accepts electronic submissions, and people were able to order Desolate Places and get a book in their hands within about a week or sometimes less. (I think it also helped me that the book also had stories from better known and more popular writers.)

Now, with all this said, pro and semi-pro editors are not in the publishing business to help me; they're in the business to entertain readers. But that may make electronic submissions even more important. As others have noted, the circulation rates of the Big Three are declining. This stems, I think, from multiple factors: the economy certainly can't be helping; the difficulty of finding these three zines in bookstores probably isn't helping to attract new readers; the fact that many readers seem be accessing newspapers and magazines solely through the internet/Sony readers/Kindles is possibly related; now that the Big Three are moving to Kindle, we'll see if that helps.

But I think a secondary problem is that by not accepting electronic submissions, the Big Three aren't just missing potential new talent but proven popular writers such as John Scalzi, which in turn may be making it more difficult for them to sell issues, which in turn may explain the Borders problem, which in turn makes their circulation decline which in turn means they have to watch costs ever more carefully which in turn – you can see where I'm going here. And John Scalzi in turn is proof that talented writers can become successful without the Big Three. And anecdotal evidence suggests I'm not the only writer choosing this route.

Oh, and since I mentioned it, Desolate Places is still available from Amazon.com, and even if the thought of reading my story isn't enough to tempt you, the book also has marvelous stuff from alaneer, camillealexa, suibhne_geilt, will_couvillier, bondo_ba, adele_cb and many, many, more, so go buy already.

Now go have fun.

I'm too cynical to be surprised much by politics (despite a tiny ongoing hope that Obama will surprise me and actually live up to his campaign promises on GLBT issues, but, let's face it, that is not looking too promising right now) but I freely admit that I'm surprised that Sarah Palin is resigning as governor of Alaska. My cynical side thinks perhaps this is because 1) a major, major scandal is about to break, 2) she's hoping to run on a platform of even less experience in 2012, or 3) she's figuring that since even Michael Jackson's death couldn't shut South Carolina Governor Sanford up, maybe this will.

ON that note, Governor Sanford, please, if you had any actual affection for your wife, your girlfriend, or the general American population, please, please, please, take this opportunity offered by Governor Palin and just shut up. Politicians sleep around all the time. It's not a career ender. Often they even get to become President or powerful Senators or regulars on Sunday talk shows. Heck, I can't even remember the name of the senator out west who was just caught sleeping with a member of his staff because, you know, whatever. But this is just humiliating.

This is an unpaid commercial endorsement for Haagen-Daas's new line of ice cream, Five. The Mint flavour and I have just entered into a serious, long term relationship and I expect an announcement of our marriage any day now. It will, of course, have to be an open marriage, by necessity, because, well, they also have a chocolate flavour. You can all understand this sort of thing, I'm sure.

So for Christmas, tgregoryt got me a little porch gardening thing, which according to the picture works like this:

The porch garden stands about five feet up on five sturdy plastic pillars.

The top of the porch garden (about 2 ½ feet by 2 ½ feet) overflows with flowers and herbs.

Tomato plants, loaded with tempting ripe tomatoes, dangle down from the top of the garden.

The bottom of the porch garden is filled with little pots (not included) of delightful herbs.

Cats remain at a respectful distance, staring at the porch garden in awe.

Many of you, of course, are reading this and thinking, hmm, Photoshop at work. In actual fact, the porch garden works a bit more like this:

1. Porch garden falls over.
2. Seeds in the top section are therefore wildly scattered, with the result that although things are certainly growing there (not flowers since we didn't plant those) we have absolutely no clue what said things are. Some may be weeds, and I'm hopeful that some of it is my mint since I like using fresh mint, but it's extremely difficult to tell.
3. Cats take abundant delight in small little pots and take every opportunity, including those not given, to zip out between the legs of the poor person attempting to water the porch plants so that they can have the joy of knocking things over.

The real problem, however, is with the dangling tomato plants, which according to the picture are supposed to be growing DOWN. Instead, in merry defiance of both gravity and the picture, they have decided to grow UP – more specifically, crawling sideways beneath the bottom of the porch thingy and then heading straight up, making the entire thing look like a major mess entirely unlike the picture. I showed them the picture.

"You're not following the picture!"

Sarcastic silence from the tomato plants.

That's not the only thing we have planted out there, and I'm delighted to note that mysterious things are spouting up in other pots, the new citrus plant is citrusing, and the one clearly identifiable plant not in the porch garden, the catnip, is growing with utter wild abandon even with the clear signs of little cat prints in the dirt next to it, and the distinct signs of little teeth. Alas, this has led certain small furry creatures to the conclusion that I should be spending my time opening and closing the balcony door so that they can bravely try to stop the catnip from taking over the balcony – they assure me they are willing to make sacrifices for this – and, of course, push over little pots along the way.

My flash fiction piece, "Creation," is up at Everyday Weirdness today. The story is marginally based on a poem I wrote back in college; sometimes, ideas just creep back into my mind, even when I thought them long dealt with and only memories and shadows.

My short story, "Wooden Apologies," is now up at Farrago's Wainscot. Well, less a short story, I suppose, than the retelling of a dream. A small attempt was made to expand it, but that failed, for some dreams resist expansion and explanation. This was one of them.

Much thanks to deborahb for providing the initial impetus to write this, and to selfavowedgeek and darinbradley for letting it shift from a dream to cyberspace, despite, cough, its shortness.

The issue features some other fabulous writers, including World Fantasy Award winner Forrest Aguirre and comic artist Paul Abbamondi, as well as Mike Keith's Nine Views of Mount Fiji, which manages to combine my love for Japanese art prints, structured poetry, word puzzles and unfortunate truths about politicians. I'm so not doing the work justice.

Go, read. It's cloudy here, making this the kind of day best spent by escaping to a land of dreams and poetry and strange tales for at least a short while.

This is interesting: A Swedish couple is attempting to raise their child outside gender roles, by refusing to identify if their child is a boy or a girl."

I don't know enough about kids to know if this has any chance of working or not - I'm guessing, and this is only a guess, that the child will end up choosing a gender after entering kindergarten and hanging out with gender-identified kids, and I have no idea if it's a good idea or not.

Haven't been feeling the blogging bug for the past few days for a number of reasons, so, as a filler, some random and not particularly great pictures that have been on my computer for awhile:

( Cut for large images. )

Alas, although I was at the Transformers opening, I cannot tell you much about the flick. This is more or less what happened:

1. People sat in line (or in our cases, on benches.)

2. We went into the theatre.

3. The managers announced that for contractual reasons and Warner Bros not thinking things through, Harry Potter in Imax will be released two weeks after the release of the regular Harry Potter, an announcement that was greeted by a chorus of boos and cheers. (That was not an audience of Harry Potter fans.) They also announced that some people had arrived at 6:30 am for the film, which struck us as mildly insane.

4. The movie started. Robots blew things up. I left the theatre and spent some quality time lying on the floor waiting for the planet to stop shifting, which it did not actually do for a solid 24 hours. I will say that the theatre manager was very kind and refunded my ticket without being asked and brought me some water. (Regal Orlando Pointe Cinema, to credit a business for doing the right thing.)

So instead of Transformers snark (since I never want to see this again) you get:

( Merlin snark! )

Now, they are taking over traditional Spanish sporting events:



Much thanks to gargoylerose for the link.

To continue the theme of anti-romance popping up all over my friends list this morning.

On the bright side, all of this anti romance has put me in the correct mood for dealing with the bureaucrats that I must call this morning, after getting woken up by a terrified cat at 4:45 am under the assumption that the only safe place to hide from lightning was under my butt. If I sound a bit growly today...I'm a bit growly today.

Apparently as a response to the declining economy, Florida has decided to provide free sauna services to anyone stepping outside today. The weather report keeps cruelly hinting at later rainstorms to cool the place down, but as so often happens, the weather report is currently lying.

My little Twitter story, "Eye-opening," just won third place in the Nanoism fiction contest. This is so cool since I never win things like this. You can read the story by following @nanoism on Twitter (my recommendation), or here.

Another mention of the robot squirrels. Alas, this is not the first time I have been forced to note this potentially apocalyptic research, but, you know, squirrels. Robots. It's gotta be blogged.