Deirdre.net

Bye 2014, Hello 2015!

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HappyNewYear
This song played on iTunes this morning, and I think it’s awesome for today:

My Thoughts on Welcoming 2015: Go for Memorable

I’m just going to glarp this 2012 blog post, “Going for Memorable,” and post it below.
Kate showed me this video of an an audition.
Not just any audition. One where a comedian with a character as a geek gamer crashes a music video dance audition and acts like a goofball (and specifically asks for a rules exception). Despite no formal dance training (but impressive dance skill despite that), he gets the gig.
It’s about rules, about expertise, about genius, about knowing when to throw away something perfectly usable and go for memorable instead.
There are a lot of solid, good dancers in the audition. No question. One comment, though. When people ask what reading slush is like, I point to the guy who does a solo right before Keith at around 47 seconds in. Imperfect execution, some solid grasp of concepts, but not able to stand out from the crowd.
For both of these, may be NSFW due to adult themes, but worth watching when you can.

And the resulting video, clearly re-written to take advantage of their new dancer…..

Guinness World Record, and I Helped

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great-namaste
Remember in June when I participated in The Great Namaste? An attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the number of people simultaneously doing yoga.

We Did It!

I got this funny email from organizer Tyler Tervooren:

Well, for those last four months, the record was only technically broken. We’ve been waiting… and waiting… and waiting for them to give us the official nod. Kind of like when you’re really excited to get someone’s phone number, but you can’t get a hold of them so you leave a message saying, “Uh, it was really nice to meet you and I think you’re super cool so, um… call me back?” And then you sit and wonder if you had bad breath or crazy eyes or something as each week passes and they don’t call.
And that’s how it felt with Guinness. UNTIL TODAY!

official-certificate

The only thing that’s missing at this point is they haven’t updated the listing on the website yet, which is kind of like when you start dating someone new and realize they still talk to their ex on Facebook. We’re trying not to be jealous, though. We’re certain it will be updated soon.

And Here I Am

In the detail of the above photo….
namaste-detail

Greenland, I Love You, Let's Talk

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In viewing my map statistics for who’s visited my site, the single largest block of land on the planet from which I’ve had no visitors is Greenland.
Sure, it’s sparsely populated. I don’t think that’s a good reason.
I’ve pondered the flight schedules of Air Greenland, wondering if there were any way to make a trip work for me. So far, not yet. Alas.
Also, no joy with the various cruise companies that come during summer. Much as I’d love to, they just haven’t been in the budget.
Anyhow, if you visit my website from Greenland, and it shows up in my web logs that you have, AND you drop me an email (I’ve placed a handy contact form below), I’ll send you a signed copy of an anthology I was in to your mailing address in Greenland. I’ll also give you electronic copies of my two current releases (one of which is in the book I’ll mail).
It’s not the same as me visiting Greenland, but a girl can hope.
[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

Coming Soon: An Older Story, "The Duchess's Dress"

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My birthday’s on Wednesday the 9th, and I’m going to celebrate by doing two things.

  1. I’m going to release an old short story that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. More about that in a minute.

  2. I’m going to discount the pair of short stories I currently have on my site if you buy both directly from me. For a month, so July 9th to August 9th. Yes, the story will also be available through other outlets, including iBooks, Amazon, Nook, and Kobo, though it may take a couple of days to wind up there.

I’ve been thinking about the story because it is the only story I ever submitted to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and it received a personal rejection that said it had “no sense of wonder.” This was back before the myriad of forms Marion started sending in lieu of personal rejections.
My writing teacher said, “That’s her problem, not yours.” Yay writing teacher.
More stories of MZB’s infamous rejection letters here.
That particular rejection smarted. Did I think it was the best story ever? No, but it has some interesting stuff in it, and it remains a sentimental favorite of mine.
There are some structural issues in the story that aren’t solvable without killing everything I happen to like about the story.
I no longer read medieval fantasy, nor do I write it, which has left this story in limbo for many years. It was an offshoot of a fantasy trilogy that I never revised, instead writing a tangential book that fundamentally changed the nature of the world. The seer of this story also appears in that book in that new world—which still needs to shift again, orphaning this story even further. It can’t bend that far.
I wrote the first draft in 1992, then revised it lightly when I was in grad school (2001-2004), trying to keep up with at least some of the world’s changes.
Duchess-Cover-700

Too Many Things, Must Bail on Some

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When I agreed to be co-head of programming for Westercon 67 in Salt Lake City, it was before a book decided to bonk me over the head and say in no uncertain terms:

Deirdre, remember that careful timeline you had of all your writing projects? Eff that. I’m the book you should write NOW NOW NOW.

And yes, this book swears at me.
So I carefully figured out what it would all do to my projects, and re-worked everything. You know, like it was my actual day job. (Which it is.)
It looked like I’d have time to do Westercon programming.
However, the book is harder to write than I expected and it’s been fighting me (and I it), and I don’t have the mental space to do that and Westercon programming.
Then there was the heartwrenching trip to Canada to list my mother’s property for sale. (Now sold.)
While I was still fighting that valiantly, the MZB/Breen stuff landed in my space. Do I need to tell you that’s been time consuming and heartbreaking? Moira’s courage to speak has given me a renewed sense of vigor about my own projects. Thank you so much.
On top of that, a few days ago, I got quotes that my book was going to take longer to edit than I’d planned for. It’s not what I wanted to hear, and it was at a time where there was nowhere to cut — except Westercon.
So, even though Michael, Alison, and I have programmed conventions on short notice — I’m slammed, he’s been even more slammed than I am, and Alison’s got her own things going on. None of us can do it alone, so we spent last night, and we’ll spend tonight doing what we can, then the rest will be up to Westercon’s concom.

It’s Not Kate’s Fault

None of this is anyone else’s fault, okay?
I want to be clear that, of all the Westercon concom, Kate Hatcher has been the most amazing. She has kept in communication with people when I haven’t had spoons to, she’s a great person, and I sincerely want to see the best for her in life. I’ve enjoyed Skype chatting with her, and am looking forward to meeting her in person at con.
She came in wanting to do one thing and has taken on far more than that.
Also, my singling her out for praise shouldn’t be taken as criticism of anyone else; it’s not.
I had two immovable objects where, when getting closer to them, I needed to move one of them out of my space to tackle the other. That’s all.
Arguably, I should have been smarter sooner. I just know that I happen to work best under pressure, just sometimes I grossly misestimate how much pressure I’m under (and what the consequences of that are for me, yay fibromyalgia).

In Other News

Various factions have brought up the Samuel Delany/NAMBLA comments. They are googleable, and I don’t want to start a comment thread about that here, okay?
So here are my general statements.

  1. I consider the aims of NAMBLA abhorrent.
  2. That said, I’ve seen no evidence (doesn’t mean it’s not out there; I’m not trying to be willfully ignorant here) that Delany’s position was anything other than intellectual.
  3. He was responding to the contents of their newsletter, which may have been interesting and/or thought-provoking intellectual discussion for all I know.

I am perfectly fine with people discussing abhorrent things. Hell, crime writers do it all the time. Some people have abhorrent desires they don’t act on.
I feel quite differently about crossing the line into child rape.
This is a really horrible analogy, but I haven’t thought of anything better for it in the last week.

  1. I love chocolate cake. My preciousssss. I especially love the fluffy kind with gluten. Mostly I don’t like gluten-free chocolate cake because it mostly fails.
  2. It is bad for me. (celiac)
  3. My thoughts and longings about chocolate cake are not, in and of themselves a problem for my body or society as a whole.
  4. Eating chocolate cake, however, crosses the line.
  5. I had chocolate pudding earlier. It’s not the same thing, but I find it more satisfying than the kind of chocolate cake I can eat and better for me than the kind I can’t.

On Delany/NAMBLA, someone else is going to have to do the research on this because I just don’t have the bandwidth. [Edit: Will Shetterly did.]

Bonus Track: Vibrapshere, Forever Imaginary

This is cheering me up right now.

I'm Transferring fuzzyorange.com

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Note: I’m posting this because some of you happen to have a fuzzyorange.com email address for me deep in your archives.
It has already ceased to work.
I registered this domain in 2001, and had used it for a while, but it’s really just been a spam trap for me in recent years.
The more I think about what I want to do, the less the name fits.
The source of the name wasn’t, as you might think, related to our propensity for ginger cats (which, btw, is a coincidence, not a design). It was some smartass line about (stock) options trading back when I was studying financial derivatives.
There’s a Scottish consultancy that’s made a great brand out of the name Fuzzyorange, and so I offered it to them. I wasn’t looking for money. I just felt it fit them better than it fit me.
Also, no one pressured me, approached me trying to buy me out, or acted uncool in any way. Given the assumptions when bigger name swallows up an individual’s or small company’s domain name, I also wanted to say that.
For a while after our cat died, I used the following picture of Scruffy and Captain Jack on the site, so here it is again. I love this photo. Miss them both, our little fuzzy oranges.
Scruffy and Captain Jack

I Think My Guardian Angel Is on an Acid Trip

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This was my response to someone’s line about their guardian angel.
guardian angel 700x980

Available Now

On Redbubble in T-shirts and stickers.
On Søciety6 in prints, pillows, mugs, tote bags, wall clocks, and as a shower curtain. Styles for tech cases will be uploaded soon.
#3 Design element credits

Bonus

Feel free to spread around the image at the head of this post or the following earlier version:
acid-trip-first-700
It’d be nice to have a link back to desamo.graphics, deirdre.net, redbubble.com/people/desamos, and/or society6.com/desamo, but it’s not required.

Equal Marriage: Are We Really Halfway There?

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My friend Deana pointed out that, as of today, there are 18 states (plus D.C.) who offer equal marriage, and an additional 7 states where marriages are on hold pending appeals.
That’s half the states, folks.
Plus Illinois will start issuing licenses on June 1, and we’re expecting to hear from Pennsylvania tomorrow.
As a note, I prefer the term “equal” marriage to “gay” marriage or “same-sex” marriage as the latter two erase, among others, those who may feel like they have straight relationships, but their biology is complex.

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia

Conserving My Time and Energy

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I’m in the middle of one big project. I also have a medium project that may cause slippage past acceptable dates of my big project.
I have no extra time to spend. I blow time on Twitter when I’m between project bursts. That’s my outlet. I occasionally check in on facebook, though not every day, and I don’t see everything.

How I Work

I need large, uninterrupted swaths of time. Those are far rarer than you’d think.
I turn off notifications when I’m working. Therefore, I may not see whatever until I’m not working. I’m working almost all of my waking hours, seven days a week. That’s what I need to do.
What I need are asynchronous forms of communication right now: email, IRC, Twitter. That way I can deal with them when I can.
NOT Facebook chat. No phone calls. No text messages. And, especially, no voice mail. Most of the time, I delete voice mail without listening to it unless it’s from household members. This is especially true if the voice mail comes from an unknown number. Voice mail is a pain in the ass.
I sort my email into mailboxes. I read everything that’s left in my inbox every day. I will not necessarily respond to everything unless it actually requires a response. If you accidentally wind up in my (rather aggressive) spam queue, it may take 3-4 days before I check all my unread spam, fish out any false positives, and mark the rest read.
Please spell carefully. A friend said an email he’d sent recently went unanswered, but I hadn’t received one. You have to spell my first name twice in order to reach me. Correctly. (I’m also amazed at the number of people who do that, but then misspell my first name in the body of the email.)
Also, I am not your e-mail monkey.

I Have a Lot of Projects

I have these projects—books that you probably already know about. And this new site to focus on one project type. You probably didn’t know about this project. Though you’ve heard about these. (and some of you rolled your eyes, no doubt) And I mentioned this once, but forgot to mention the second thing I put up.
See what I mean? Taken together, it’s a lot of stuff.
Which I totally need to get back to. Later!