Troubled by the election statement of SFWA Vice Presidential candidate Lou Antonelli, I have responded to his post on this topic. My comment is awaiting approval. Meanwhile, I'll paste it in below.

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Lou, I'm sorry to say I found your statement about adopting "Canine-American" children incredibly offensive. I, too, am a doglover, but I struggle for the words to tell you exactly how and why your flippant trivialization of the ethnic identity movement with this phrasing revolted me. I'm not sure I have the patience to explain what was wrong with saying what you did. I hope you do find someone who will do that work for you.

For the moment, please just know that I've shared my distaste with others, and had my assessment of the problematic nature of what you say confirmed. Also, while I'm impressed that you have offered to run for the position of SFWA Vice President, I won't be voting for you. I hope that you'll come to understand why.

Tags: fantasy, horror, science fiction, writing

For ease of reference:

"Pataki" at Strange Horizons, April 4 and April 11, 2011 (Part One) (Part Two)

"Race, Again, Still" at Strange Horizons, April 4, 2011 (nonfiction)

"Pataki" in Something More and More, May 2011, Aqueduct Press (reprint)

"Something More" in Something More and More, May 2011, Aqueduct Press

"Written on the Water" in Something More and More, May 2011, Aqueduct Press (nonfiction) (reprint)

"Because We Are All So Royal" in Something More and More, May 2011, Aqueduct Press (nonfiction) (reprint)

"How to Save the World, One Story at a Time" in Something More and More, May 2011, Aqueduct Press (nonfiction) (reprint)

Interview conducted by Eileen Gunn in Something More and More, May 2011, Aqueduct Press

The WisCon Chronicles 5: Writing and Racial Identity, May 2011, Aqueduct Press (editor)

"The Pragmatical Princess" at Fantasy Magazine August 9, 2011 (reprint)

"Just Between Us" in Phantom Drift, A Journal of New Fabulism, Issue 1, Fall 2011

"The Last of Cherie" in Steam Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk, November 2011, Torquere Press

"Beyond the Lighthouse" in River, November 2011, Dark Quest Books

"Black Betty" at Crossed Genres December 2011

"Otherwise" in Brave New Love, December 2011, Running Press

"Honorary Earthling" at Expanded Horizons, December 2011

I think that's it.

Tags: fantasy, lists, science fiction, writing

Maybe someday I will post here more again. For now, all I have been up to is tweeting such that those short bursts of text appear on my Facebook wall. Probably before I post here more again I'll figure out how to similarly transfer 140 character emissions to this site as well.

For the moment I'll only say that I plan to attend RadCon 6, February 17 - 19. See me there?

Tags: appearances

Home now from house sitting for Vonda. While I was there, Michael Ehart and I finished revisions on a story I hope I'll be able to tell everyone about soon. Cause it's gonna get bought. I hope.

Thursday I start another stretch of house sitting--this one for ten days, in Shoreline. I'll be watering plants and walking Betty, a Beagle. And trying to ignore the thought that one of my friends died in this house. He has given his surviving lover every sign of influencing events in this place from beyond. I will clean a little living area for myself within the house, using salt, and I'll sing a lot. He was a musician.

Tags: appearances, singing

I was in this wayside inn up in the Alps and during the night a bear broke in and climbed up to the floor where me and my friends were sleeping. All of us piled out of our rooms and stood aghast on the balcony encircling the common room and the bear came roaring toward us and I was closest! Me! And apparently the bear tooking a liking to me and I fell down as it approached and took me in its arms. I lifted my hands palm out to feebly fight back but one of my friends (you, King Rat?) said No, that will only make him mad so I did not strike out. And the bear snuffed at me and stuck its tongue in my ear.

And I woke up.

Tags: beasts, sex

I dreamt I was stung on the shoulder by a bee browsing the tiny oregano flowers Velma's young girlchild friend picked. There was no pain, just a mumbling bumbling sensation. When I woke up, the cramp that had inhabited that shoulder for days was gone.

Bees are very medicinal, especially in one's sleep.

I have a FaceBook account now. It was a professional necessity. Not for my writing, necessarily, but for the Clarion West work I do. Publicity, doncha know.

Apparently I have over 200 friends. This quantifying of friendship? I never looked at things that way before, not even with LJ.

Also now tweeting, for much the same reason.

I expect I will continue to post here mostly, when I mostly post. But you are welcome to connect with me these other ways too, if you want.

Oh, and Google+.

Tags: appearances

I live near Lake Washington, by Seward Park, a really nice place. Except when everyone else decides it's a nice place. Like this coming weekend.

Took a walk this morning and watched a Great Blue Heron preening on a dead log rising among lily pads, her claws gripping the white wood like the hands of a strong old man. Six young mallards swam away in close formation; a song sparrow perched trustingly low in a scrubby tree. Run! I thought. Swim! Fly! Get out of here however you can.

In two more days this area will be overrun with drunks and loud machines. They have these annual boat races here, see, and then these stunts performed by fighter jets. Really. Buses take hours to travel a few blocks down my street. Garbage and vomit roll freely over the grounds.

"Everyone loves Seafair!" proclaimed the clueless letter organizers sent a week ago. Then it proceeded to chortle about the coming weekend bringing out the child in all of us. Then, oh woe, it announced that this year we'd be treated to a special additional race run by *vintage* boats, in an event I shuddered to learn they're calling "Return of the Thunder."

Where will the little mallards go? The poor turtles? Maybe the far side of Mercer Island? Normally I see osprey and eagles every morning, but maybe they've headed out already.

I will be staying at Vonda's house till the Thunder has withdrawn to whatever marine Valhalla it left when it decided to Return. I'll hide out there till it's safe here again, and the hordes of drunks forget what a nice place this is.

Tags: beasts, birds

Clarion West is over. The Write-a-thon is over.

I met the mighty CW 2011 contingent and loved them. Met two of the instructors and rekindled neuroconnections with the four I was previously familiar with, and with many others I generally see primarily during the six weeks of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, what many of us refer to, a la Georgette Heyer, as "The Season."

Wrote what I needed to for the Write-a-thon. In moments I feel the happiness of completion. Then I look at the reviews I must edit, the revisions still owing, the endlessness of Basecamp milesones and other obligations, and the happiness sublimates into the atmosphere, becoming a high cloud. There, but wispy, and not so highly relevant to the ped-x push needed now.

And I do mean now.

Tags: clarion west, write-a-thon

Maybe two months since I posted here? Pre-WisCon 35, which was fabulous, absolutely. And really I need to write about that adventure.

Here's my main reason I haven't yet: In the six weeks since then I have had three story deadlines. That's three deadlines for stories, pieces of narrative fiction, which six weeks ago were completely unwritten.

I turned the last of these three stories in at 1:30 this morning. I feel like a super-being.

The first of these three stories I wrote in five days. The editor says it will be "one of the crown jewels of the anthology." Jack Skillingstead liked it, too. It is called "Beyond the Lighthouse," and it features a woman who flies at night disguised as a bird.

The second story took me longer: nine days. But it was nearly twice as many words. The editor commended me on the characters. It is called "Otherwise," and it's for a Sekrit Project and I can't tell you any more about it.

The third story took eleven days. It's not longer than the second story, but I did have to create a synopsis for a play that one of the characters wrote. I haven't heard yet if the editor wants it. It is called "The Return of Cherie," and is part of my steampunk-novel-in-progress set primarily in the Belgian Congo, Everfair.

So I have met my goals for the Clarion West Write-a-thon a week early, but if you want to make a donation in celebration of this triumph, you can do it here.

Tags: birds, clarion west, fantasy, science fiction, wiscon, writing