Pig 'n a poke!




And, miracle of miracles, I managed to remember that in time to wear my Mystery Spot t-shirt. Now I just need to find some pie to properly celebrate Dean Winchester's birthday.



Oh yeah, and I did some work today: sent out two poetry subs, bringing this month's total to four. I also added 200+ words to my neglected fungus story, and I read a lot for another project. I hope to get back to novelling tomorrow. I swear, the closer I get to the end, time just seems to dilate... It's almost supernatural.

Edited to update pie status! And to note that there was a little too much "pig 'n my poke" in my should've-been-vegetarian breakfast dinner. :P  

I generally don't promote my work around awards time, but I thought this might be a good opportunity to share some poems that appeared in print-only publications last year. After all, it's difficult to subscribe to *everything* and if you're my friend, I want you to be able to read what I wrote, wherever it first appeared. I don't really care if you're nominating my work or not. And I am not eligible to vote for anything of yours. So this post is purely for the joy of poetry.

First, a long poem (~75 lines) that appeared in Strange Horizons in Jan 2011: "The Skin Walker's Wife." I've linked to it before, but just in case you missed it.

Now, the short poems, behind LJ cuts.


( Kyrielle for a Cloned Baby )

( In Defiance of Sleek-Armed Androids )

( Requiem for the Roboticist )

Enjoy!

Today I received a form reject from a literary magazine that began, "Look. We're all writers, too..."

Look?

Look is one of those words that starts to look wrong the more you look at it. Also, prefacing a sentence, it connotes exasperation.

"Look, I didn't mean to damage your toupee. I thought it was attacking you!"

"Look, they don't call me Roboslut for nothing!"

"Look, this is Iowa, we have 42 kinds of pizza in the frozen foods aisle, don't tell me to 'just pick something'." 

See?

This afternoon, one of Tweetie's classmates ran by us after school, being sure to say goodbye to her by name. I recognize him now because (a) he's one on the few other Hispanic kids and (b) he's one of the even fewer children brave enough to start a conversation with me. He occasionally appeals to me as Responsible Grown-up ("Those kids are destroying the stick fort") or reports to me on Tweetie's day: "She hurt her finger during last recess" or "She's still putting on her coat."

Today, once he was gone, Tweetie said, "That was nice, but I really don't like him."

Why not? I asked.

"Because at recess today, he threw me on the ground and threatened to kiss me."

O_O

Obviously, that's not "appropriate" behavior, but is it typical for seven/eight-year-old boys to do that? It seems both too childish (the throwdown) and too mature (the crush).

I'm delighting in this, our first real snowfall of the winter. It's been seriously, uncannily warm. Earlier this week we had record-breaking highs. Now we've got a good three inches to five inches on the ground, and it's still blowing around. It's reassuring. Also, it feels good on my feverish skin.

For about an hour now, this hawk has been hunched in our front tree, picking at a meal. I thought it might be a bird, the way s/he kept looking over its shoulder. (Incidentally, the house in the background looks almost exactly like our house, except we've got more going on in our yard.)



I sat watching and tweeting in awe until asakiyume asked if I had a camera. I took these photos from our front window because I worried if I opened the front door to get a good shot, the hawk would fly off. But the zoom let me get a better look at his meal. 


Looks like a rodent after all. And now hawk is gone, having stripped all the good stuff from the bones.

I caught a cold (or flu), so if I owe you an email or crit, please bear with me a little longer. I am shivering under a blanket, using up all the tissues, and hoping I bounce back fast enough that I still meet several February deadlines.

All the tissues.

 

Last week I watched Conan the Barbarian, Skyline, and Chrysalis. None of them would I recommend. I will note, however, that Conan was the first movie in a loooong time that squicked me hard enough I instinctively closed my eyes and turned from the screen. That, and I'm always amazed to see a horse get punched, which happens a couple times in Conan. Jason Momoa was the only thing right in that movie, otherwise. (Sorry, Ron Pearlman. I love you, but...)

This weekend I finished reading Black Coffee Blues by Henry Rollins. Extremely uneven book. The first section, "124 Worlds," started off interestingly enough but devolved to the point where all the worlds sounded the same, populated by the same three or four people, none of whom can speak about cops without using the term pigs and none of whom I wanted to spend much time with. Still, Rollins has a good eye and delivers many a sparkly gem, like this one from #26:

"A broken nose is a many splendored thing. This guy's face just exploded. It was like a rainbow--but all the colors were red."

And from #101: "The diamonds of his mind had been stolen by unseen hands. All things had turned to brass and tin."

Also, he speaks truth. From #77: "What the fuck is it about laundromats? When you go in there with your mate, you always come out of there in some kind of seething argument. Happened to me every time. It was easier to sneak out with the clothes and do the damn wash alone and not deal with all the petty bullshit. You could go in there at any time of the week and there would be a couple in there staring furiously at magazines, or watching the dryer like television. Hating each other's guts. I'd rather live alone."

The travelogue section, "Black Coffee Blues," was more interesting to me, partly because of his honest reactions to other countries and the people he encounters, both natives and fellow (tourist) Americans. The isolation also elicits honesties like this one:  "I don't work well up-close. I am abusive and I don't know when it starts or where it comes from." 

"61 Dreams" was excellent, reading like a set of surreal flash fiction pieces. My only quibble was that Rollins's relentless use of pigs to mean cops meant that Dream #2 made me laugh, until I realized that no, a hog was not making a pass at Rollins.

The book ends with the brilliant "I Know You," which is available as a spoken word piece on youtube. This version is decent, although the music annoys me (just because it doesn't need to be there) and there are errors in the text: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj-B42gXcoQ
 

On my bus ride home, I saw the most beautiful glitter-green 'Vette coiled curvy as a dragon in someone's dark garage. I thought it should be outside, preening in the unseasonably warm sunshine, but then, it might blind someone in all its viridescent glory.

Downtown, after my writing date with SarahP, I saw the crow-mitigation balloons and streamers in the trees of the Ped Mall. Some of the balloons already look deflated (beak stabbed?), but truth to tell, I can't imagine these things fool the crows even under optimum (for mitigation) circumstances.



The foil streamers are pretty, though. They look like jumbo versions of the tinsel I saw strewn in the grass near the curb on my street. The tinsel is inching away from a discarded Christmas tree, like shiny cilia seeking out a new home. I wish them luck!

 

After one too many accidents, I've moved my daily meds from the shelf that holds all our OTC meds. Every time I open my bathroom cupboard and see the prescription pill bottle there, it's like a slap in the face, but I couldn't risk taking my sertraline instead of plain old acetaminophen or ibuprofen again. I'd already done it twice this past week, so maybe I need the slap in the face.

Unlike years past, I've already purchased my annual organizer, this time all fret-free from my favorite local shop, White Rabbit. The organizer is made by the Slingshot Collective, and truth be told, what sold me on it, aside from ample writing space for each day's appointments and interesting trivia for each date, was the section "Tips for Dealing with the Police." (J teases that he feels reassured to know I'll now be prepared for my next women's retreat. He ought not tease.) I've already scribbled in most of the birthdays and anniversaries I wish to keep track of. 

I've downloaded Evernote so I can keep an up-to-date list of books and movies to look for when I browse the secondhand shops, library, and bookstores. My mind goes blank every time I set foot in their doors, and I got tired of not having the right notebook on me, or the list in my wallet, or whatever. So now I can compile lists on my laptop and they'll automatically synch up with the app on my phone. If I can just remember to take my phone when I leave the house...

I read about 32 books this year. It's hard to keep track, with all the co-reading I do with Tweetie.

Looking over the list, I suppose it was a bad year for nonfiction. With the exception of A Mind Apart by Susanne Antonetta, I don't have a lot of fond feelings for the book-length nonfic I read.

Adult fiction was better. Trick of the Light by Rob Thurman made me happy, and The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory has stayed with me. Zoo City by Lauren Buekes and Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson were also sturdy reads.

But this year, it was really MG and YA fic that thrilled me. The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban entertained our entire family, and I can easily see re-reading it every couple of years. Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi was an enormously ambitious adventure, with a rich cast of characters I cared about. Playground by 50 Cent was surprisingly effective and a lightning-fast read that I've already passed on to a friend.

But my favorite book this year, hands down, any category, was The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout. Meaningful action, inventive future, amusing and engaging characters, thoughtful commentary, and quite satisfying for the whole family. J read it on my recommendation, then he and Tweetie started reading it for bedtime, then while we were on vacation, Tweetie begged to be able to read it on her own on the iPad because the suspense was killing her, then once she'd finished it, I zoomed through it, and then I bought a copy for my niece and nephew for the holiday. Suffice to say, I want everyone to read it.

Tweetie's favorite book, ftr, is whatever she's just finished. :D

10 nanofic/poetry subs
6 sales/acceptances (This is not a percentage of the number above, since subs from one year can become acceptances the next.)
8 publications poetry/nonfic/nanofic (This number includes reprints, but not guest blog posts.)
5 or 6 publications pending
1 poetry sub pending

15 agent queries
12 responses
3 requests for full ms
0 offers (Obviously. :D If I'd gotten representation, you'd have heard me screaming.)

A draft of a poetry chapbook, Wholesome Childhood Tales. But now I think I'd prefer a collection to a chapbook.
About 80K on a new novel--nearly done with draft zero!

Do you remember Golden Super Shape Books? We have Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in that form. Here's a photo from an etsy seller's site:



The shape is pretty much the best part of this book, aside from the idea that one of the reindeer is charged with playing with the Christmas kittens in the lead-up to Christmas night.

Somehow, we got three media tie-in books in this batch of advent books: Plain and Peanut and the Missing Christmas Present (Yes, the M&Ms), The Care Bears' Night before Christmas, and Elmo Saves Christmas. Also in this batch, a weird board book: The Teddy Bears' Christmas Cake, which was so short and seemingly random, the three of us sat staring at the last page in bafflement.

The cream of the crop, IMO, were A Gift from Grandpa by David Mazel (Weekly Reader Books, 1981) and Little Benjamin and the First Christmas by Betty Forrell (Concordia Publishing House, Arch Books, 1964). I'm certain I've written about A Gift from Grandpa before, because I absolutely love it, and it is so sweet, it even brings a tear to JJ's eye. Grandpa Zalman Podkovnik, a garbage collector for 30-some years, takes his grandson Davie out on his route one morning, asking "How would you like to see me lift the world?" Grandpa describes a clothesline of sheets and shirts and socks as dancing together to keep warm, and Davie asks, "Are you a poet?" Grandpa says, "How else could I lift the world? Muscles alone aren't enough." At the end, Grandpa gives Davie a beautiful violin he found in the trash. His explanation about lifting the world is priceless, and because the author's name is David, I like to think that this is a true story.

Little Benjamin and the First Christmas is a retelling of Luke 2:1-18, but it's done with such a light touch and such mythic illos by Betty Wind, that I'm happy to share it with Tweetie, regardless of my atheism. For one thing, the story is told from the point of view of the innkeeper's son, who has long heard promises about the coming Prince of Peace--so long, in fact, he's become incredulous. When Benjamin is told by one of the visiting shepherds that the newborn in the stable is the long-awaited prince, Benjamin's first reaction is "O rly?" Unmentioned in the text but constantly at Benjamin's side in the illos is the family dog, who is not thrilled about all these new arrivals (presumably unpaying), especially not the "rough-looking" shepherds. As a side benefit, this book helped Tweetie contextualize the live nativity she saw at a local church, where she'd mistaken the angels for fairies.

Right now, she's watching ThunderCats. Sometimes I wonder how kids juggle all the stories they hear all day long...

 

I mistyped the subject line, so it originally said "Stone Telling 6 Is Love." That works, too. :)

This issue, science and science fiction themed, includes my review of Mary Alexandra Agner's poetry collection The Scientific Method, available from Parallel Press. 

Thanks to the wonders of Netflix streaming, I got to try out several shows I'd heard about but never watched, since we have the most basic of cable packages. (Really basic, just enough to ensure the local stations come through the static.)

First off, Tweetie is wild about Phineas and Ferb, and weirdly enough, I like it, too. It rewards kids for re-viewing and remembering, and it genuinely amuses me without ever becoming too "adult" (or suggestive, I guess I should say).

The Walking Dead puzzles me. Despite plot holes big enough to drive our rental car through, I keep watching. Mostly, I think, to see how a TV series handles a story of that scope. I dislike a lot of the characters. Some I *want* to like but can't, because the writers use them as plot devices (Darryl, for example, who is only a hothead until the writers need the story to move along, at which point, he concedes to whatever the Sheriff's plan is). I have mixed feelings about the racial elements of the show, too. But I guess sometimes I just need to see people being attacked by zombies and shooting the hell out of those disgusting walking corpses.

Twin Peaks is a rewatch for me. I can't remember, as a 14 yr old, watching many episodes after finding out who killed Laura Palmer mid season 2. Most viewers' enthusiasm seems to have been similarly defused, but now, as a writer, I find it fascinating to study the show and try to understand why it failed so badly at the soap opera format. When it was all about the Palmer murder, it functioned rather like a mini-series. Once the opening mystery was resolved, viewers seemed not to care much about the rest of the town's more mundane problems. Even the serial killer stalking Agent Cooper isn't too compelling. Personally, I love Audrey Horne and still enjoy the show when it follows her development. I'll probably finish this re-watch over the winter break.

Sons of Anarchy. I loved season 1. I seriously wept with gratitude at the season finale, which pulled together story elements I'd forgotten from early episodes to create a damn satisfying conclusion. I have kind of stalled out for the time being, however, because the rape storyline in season 2 is so upsetting to me. But I suspect I'll get back on the horse soon enough. I need a Juice fix, after all.  ;)

Still in the queue is Terriers. Only so many hours in the day, you know?