New Kelly Fic and follow-up on the weeing on Whedon convo

imageKelly’s story “Two Year Man” is out today! It’s  her first appearance in Asimov’s, and it is gentle yet thoroughly hair-raising. The August issue just hit newsstands; the virtual edition is available, and there’s even an interview with Kelly and some other Asimov’s first timers, by James Patrick Kelly, that you can browse for dessert.

Yesterday’s Joss Whedon post was something I’ve been cogitating awhile, and when I got the first few thinky grapes off the vine I took it to Kelly and the ingenious Linda Carson for a good stomp. It was an effective creative ferment, and I’m pleased with the essay. But things got said and thoughts got aired that didn’t quite make it into the final draft, which is why now Linda has tackled another piece here, in her essay: “Cutting Edge Doesn’t Mean Solo.”

The Joss essay is part of something larger. I am seeing signs, here and there, that a hearty portion of my corner of the Internet–in other words, the SF and fantasy writing community–is open to finding ways to counterbalance the online expression of ancient, vicious human behaviors. These are things that have been around forever: silencing, bullying, shaming, pile-ons. There’s some talk of developing tactics that take us beyond snark. Joshua Choplinksy, for example, lays this out:

That’s not to say snark can’t be done well. Kurt Vonnegut could be a pretty snarky motherfucker. But snark was just a single tool in his well-furnished kit. And let’s not kid ourselves with comparisons to a master.

I feel that this, which comes to me via Doug Lain, is the essence of an article I no longer have to write. I love a good snarky piece as much as the next guy, but it’s hard to write a piece of that kind without giving lots and lots of energy and attention to the thing or person you’re against. It’s a reward for bad behavior that also acts, fundamentally, as a tactic of escalation.

As I’ve said, I’d love to see a flowering of sharp, hilarious, infinitely readable clickbaity articles that didn’t involve taking someone down a peg. It’s harder to make praise or kudos or approbation interesting and giggle-worthy. I know this, because I write book reviews. Believe me, a brilliant novel is much harder to write about than an interestingly flawed one. But making up the word noises is our primary skillset. If snark has a comedic polar opposite, we’re up to the task of inventing it.

Setting aside the specific issue of pointed responses to oh-so-deserving stupidity online, I’m also seeing conversations whereby people are gathering up How-To articles on the healthy responses to trolling, bullying, and other kinds of internet pile-ons. (If you have a good resource, let me know and I’ll send it to the compilers of same.)

As for me, I’m hoping to get up some kind of Troll-Starving 101 post in the near, after I’ve had a few lovely ferment-style conversations with people at Readercon, and hopefully drawing on work that has already been done. My basic working concepts will probably be something like:

Instead of buzzing like a kicked-over hive of bees about the assholes, the assholes, OMG, the assholes, minimize attention to the bullying/trolling behavior and its perpetrators. How little can we actually say about or to them, whoever they are, whenever they arise, without descending into vagueblogging?

Meanwhile, maximize positive attention to targets of aggression. Find out what they need and give it to them. Post about how awesome they are. Offer to be the guy who reads their Twitter feed for them for a week and compiles a Block/Report list so they don’t have to take the poison in directly. Write about how they changed your life that year they taught at your Clarion. Repost the thing they wrote last year that rocked your world.

Where possible, feed the thing the trolls fear. Is someone pissing on Chuck Wendig this week? Is one of his books is going for $2 in the Kindle Store? Can you buy it, or give to his favorite charity, or something?  Awesomesauce!

The Greatness of Friday, with Pirates

CD705BB0-1279-4611-A3E6-503A5977A6B9Brain Food: Kelly and I spent a few hours at the Royal Ontario Museum‘s Pompeii exhibit, checking out the mosaics and the lava, the buried household goods and statuary, the centuries-old flash-preserved olives and figs and the plaster casts of victims’ bodies. Afterward, we went upstairs to Viva Mexico and marveled at the intricacy of the weaving and embroidery.

Kudos for the Deserving: There are some good reviews and kudos out for Kelly’s “Waters of Versailles,” here at SF Signal’s Women to Watch and at Quick Sips. There’s also a James Patrick Kelly editorial in Asimovs, about Kelly and some other people who’ve broken into that magazine lately. It’s called meet the firsties.   It’s meant, among other things, to remind aspiring writers that they might be… nextie!

Still Seeking Scenius: My regular writing date with Gemma Files and Madeline Ashby had a special guest star–author Charlene Challenger, whose The Voices in Between
is currently on the Sunburst and Aurora Award ballots for English Language YA. We went to a new-to-me place, the Istanbul Cafe, which was a completely lovely working environment, and where they played every hit of the Eighties that I ever wanted to sing along and/or boogie to.

My Teenage Cheeseball Obsession: The very best thing that happened this week was that I giggle every time I walk down to Queen Street, because the local shrine to vinyl here on St. Patrick, a store that often has some hilarious blast from the past in its window, had this:

pirate movie

And now this is happening to you, oh yeah:

Friday pleasantries…

(null)Uno: I have the pass proofs for A Daughter of No Nation! This means I am one careful read-through away from being able to call this book … well, it’s already a book. And it’s already done. Medium rare? Even more done?

On a related note, a few metrics have come in that make it clear to me that more than one of you bought Child of a Hidden Sea and Among the Silvering Herd last week when many lovely folks were pushing the idea of buying Tor books and authors  for all the reasons. I want to thank you all for supporting me, my fellow Tor authors, and my publisher.

Due: The most recent round of feedback from my UCLA Novel Writing III students was extra-wonderful. They had a good time, they learned much, they loved each other, and they said glowing things about me. The feeling was mutual–they were an exceptionally hardworking and dedicated group, and there were some great breakthroughs.

These comments come in the form of anonymous comments on a survey, with numerical ratings. I don’t see the answers until final grades are posted. There’s no kiss-up factor, and often where there is a critical comment, it’s about something I can address before teaching the same class the next time. But it was extra nice, in a week with germs and other challenges, to get a perfect score. The student happiness with the most recent course was also gratifying because I have been restructuring these courses all year–UCLA changed its classroom software–and what I think this means, at least in part, is that after wrangling with Canvas for three terms, I’ve found the best way to teach, me-styles, within this new course shell.

Tre: I have the world’s most ridiculous reason for being excited about Ant-Man. Which is that it’s being released on Kelly’s birthday. (I do also like Paul Rudd.) Clearly anything associated with Kelly’s birthday is already a brilliant thing, covered in sparkly, and best accompanied by some delicious Prosecco.

Also, I think one of our oldest friends is coming to town that weekend. Hmmm, I should write to her.

(This is an experiment – @KellyRobson)

Three great things about this week

imageSusan Palwick has begun a practice (inspired I believe by Terry Windling) of posting the three best things about her day on Facebook. I don’t think I could do this every day, especially not this week, but here are three lovely things about some random weeklike period before my cold germs set in.

One: Kelly came home with sushi last night so I wouldn’t cook, and dinner was therefore not only consumed but cleaned up by five o’clock. We immediately hopped up and hauled our butts to the Art Gallery of Ontario, even though it was closing at half past, and spent twenty glorious minutes getting acquainted with Silke Otto-Knapp, who paints eerie monochrome and low-contrast watercolor images on canvas. Haunting stuff–check it out! They booted us out when they closed;  we snuffled around the store and came home. We’d had a full day and a sublime artistic experience, and there were still had four hours of evening left to us.

When we moved to Toronto, we were in search of many things, including the shortest possible commuting time, for Kelly, from her job. This, in a nutshell, would be why.

Two: A call to boycott my publisher, Tor Books, for spurious political reasons has spawned a simultaneous buy-cott. The Twitter hashtag #TheTorYouKnow is filled with recommendations for great books by many terrific writers. If you want to support Tor or its authors and are flat broke, you can! Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014 is available in the Kindle store for free. It’s got my story The Color of Paradox in it, along with so many other great things.

As you’ve probably noticed, I fucking love it when people turn their backs on any kind of hatred, conflict or wankage and instead channel their attention, positive energy and in this case cold hard cash in a concrete and helpful direction. I’m betting and hoping that after this particular surge of activity subsides, we’ll all  expand the conversation, so we can talk about great non-Tor authors and publishers who also deserve our clicks, tweets, eyeballs, rave reviews and money. This hashtag, and this buycott, are necessarily about the thing going on today. The wider conversation… well, it encompasses more of us, and I don’t think anyone has forgotten that.

Three: I like to think I’m an optimist, but I’m perilously cautious. I didn’t believe marriage equality would happen in my lifetime… until about three minutes before it was obvious I ought to start planning a legal wedding. Every time the world gets better, in some ephemeral or quantifiable way, part of me is a little surprised. Hoping for the best while keeping expectations low is self-protective, I know. Anyway, the first episode of Sense8 surprised me. There are things about Nomi Marks and her relationship with Amanita that reflect my queer life in ways I’ve never seen on TV. I never expected to see Pride and the gay community, as I’ve experienced it on the flicker box. Blow me down, folks.

Feel free to share if anything rocked your week.

Domestic Blintz

CD705BB0-1279-4611-A3E6-503A5977A6B9Being a round-up of things that have happened lately, none of them deserving their own blog entry and hopefully numbering more good items than not:

Awesome: you all know that Kelly has a novella up at Tor.com, right? An artfully luminous historical fantasy called “Waters of Versailles?” You didn’t know? Oh, hey, I strongly urge you to go read it there for free. For bonus hugs next time we see you, post a comment on the Tor site!

Good: Boots, boots, the musical fruit! A little boon this month means we have the dosh to see Kinky Boots live this Saturday at yet another of the theaters that is a ten-minute walk from our front frickin’ door. Why did we move to Toronto? Not just this. But also: yeah!

Humph! After six months of very careful rehab, I was seeing some very nice healing in the soft tissue injury on the top of my left foot. Then I made a sincere attempt to turn my ankle last weekend. All the usual rehab remedies and yoga modifications will continue for the foreseeable.  It’s not quite as bad as last time, thankfully.

Also, I have a cold. (I bundle this into the thing about the ankle so that I only have to remind you guys once that I’m one of those who really doesn’t want unsolicited medical advice.)

Good! 23 sleeps until Readercon. OMG OMG, OMG! Our last true vacation began 285 sleeps ago. Yes, I have an app that counts these things. Peter Straub will be there. Eeeeee!!!! Boston, I cannot wait to be in you!

Good: I make really great burritos.* I made them for friends on the weekend, and they agree. The lurkers support me in their tummies, so there!

Pretty Good: The new Avengers movie holds together better the second time through. I’m not saying it isn’t still problematic, clunky, and in need of a good tune-up, but it’s more watchable on the next go-round. (Your mileage may vary, but I would argue that the opposite is true of Guardians of the Galaxy.)

Neutral: Our building air conditioner needs a bit of a rebuild and the parts didn’t come in March when they were supposed to, so we are going to be without global AC for approximately ten days. After pretending for a little while that denial would get us through, in an apartment that regularly cracks 90° in the afternoon in April (we get a lot of late-day sun through our glorious, beautiful windows) we went out and got a movable AC unit. It just seems smarter than not sleeping for a week and eventually running the cats to the veterinarian for heatstroke.

We will try to recoup some of the cost by throwing it at Craigslist and Kijiji when the building HVAC is back in service. If you are in Toronto and want a next-to-new AC unit at a steep discount, drop us a line.

Smugness: Speaking of my apartment, I drafted this post last night in the building hot tub.

A little sad: My grandmother Joan’s birthday is today. Gone two years now, still very much missed.

Damn, I want to end up on an up note! I love my pajamas! I love my hair! I love my whole house! I love my wife and my cats and daytime decongestants! I got my OAC Works-in-Progress grant app in on time! The smash-hit comedy Hannibal is finally back on the air! Funniest thing on TV, folks–get your yuks right here!

Okay, this is ridiculous, and if I use any more exclamation marks today, someone’s going to start charging. Back to bed.

 

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*My  highly inauthentic family recipe draws upon the finest traditions of 2nd-generation Italian immigrants living in Reno, Nevada.