Category Archives: True Stories

Anecdotes from my past and present.

Back at work!

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As you were probably all able to deduce from the photos, Kelly and I spent the past couple of weeks visiting family all over Alberta before swinging west through the Crowsnest Pass so we could explore Nelson. We wrapped up our time off by spending two glorious nights at Tinhorn Creek Vineyards and a few low-key days at home.

 

I’ve restricted my work activities over this stretch of time to teaching and answering a few of the most urgent e-mails, so the pile on my desk is rather mighty this morning. But I will start mowing through it today. If you have been waiting on me for anything, it should be headed your way quite soon.

 

Voicemail from the Parade of Death

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An old friend of my family’s died the night before last. He and my mother were extremely close–she’s pretty shattered–and my father was rocked, I think, when I wrote him in China to tell him what had happened. Rick was in one of Bear’s earliest crop of drama students. My first memories of him are as a giant-sized guy who built sets in the theater where I spent a lot of my early childhood. He tolerated having a four-year-old underfoot pretty well; he came from a big family, with lots of sibs.

Because he and his partner were tight with Barb, I’ve seen a bit of him over the years since. I knew he’d had leukemia quite a few years ago, and got a bone marrow transplant that sent it into remission. Miraculous, that, but the cancer came back recently and he didn’t survive the second round of treatment.

So I’m a little sad, and a little thoughtful, and this is also why I haven’t managed to blog about the Powell’s reading or all the fabulous things I did in Portland with M.K. Hobson and Rebecca Stefoff and others. Where, I’ll have you know, I took 350 pictures. Let’s see if I can post one from my current location:

And there may be a little more radio silence. I have an enormous paperwork monster to slay this afternoon, and a bunch of little things to wrap up today and tomorrow. Once that’s done, K and I are off on a big sweep through Alberta to see our loved ones and collect even more pictures.

 

In Portland!

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My dreamed-of WiFi workathon with view got a bit of a trim this morning: I was going to hop aboard an Amtrack train at the crack of dawn and write about seven billion things by the time I got to Portland. However, the train gods decreed that something was wrong with the track. Amtrak told us mudslides in Everett. CBC says protesters in White Rock. Anyway, they herded us onto buses and cleverly filtered us as we went: the peeps going on from Seattle got an express bus, while the folks going to a zillion points between Vancouver and King Station got a slow boat.

The best part of this development was that I got to Seattle an hour earlier than expected, with plenty of time to go to Zeitgeist Coffee. Kelly and I had been here in 2009 when we went on the Tucker Family Cruise-o-rama and we love love loved it. They have boiled eggs and fruit along with caffeine and bready things and Intrawebs.

 

The bus was completely full and though the guy next to me was nice enough, and also mostly comatose, he was taking up his entire seat, which meant I didn’t have the extra elbow room I’d have needed to break out the keyboard even if there’d been somewhere to put it. So I spent the first half of trip making myself just a leetle bit carsick by reading a book. It was a good book, and enjoyable enough to justify the nausea.

Oh! And I got a very jolly border guard.

 

After the coffee I got on the train, had no seatmate, and yay, the WiFi was working. Prose ensued. I got to pause thoughtfully and admire the view several times, and took many questionable pictures of same. I fancy this one is quite arty. I’m probably wrong.

The train got in and I walked to my hotel, which is all of three blocks from Powell’s downtown. After nine continuous hours of sitting, I desperately needed a real walk, so I hoofed off in the direction of the bookstore. What I didn’t know was that the Powell’s is right next to a Doc Marten’s outlet.

Some of you know I’d generally rather have arrows shoved through my cheeks than go into a shoe store, but I’ve been thinking about summer footwear lately. Thinking lots. There’s stuff about my heels, and stuff about my toes, and the general Shoe Law of Me states that all shoes must be good for at least a five kilometer walk, at the end of which they must look presentable enough to pass for girly grownup work shoes. Being shoe picky is fine if you like shopping for the things, but in my case it’s rather ridiculous.

But, having now gotten myself a pair of Docs that’ll do a 10K day and a pair of Fluvogs that’ll go that far, too, I’ve decided I prefer the Docs. So in I went, and what did I find but these?

 

Pretty, huh? They have the not-open back that my heel needs, and the holes in front that mean stretch–I wanted this so my toes can spread out, ducklike, in the front. And they’re pink! Pink pink Barbie camper pink!

I had other adventures, and much fun just walking around downtown Portland, a city I’m so very fond of visiting, and a pretty decent supper, but I think I’ll shelve those for now. Tomorrow I will have more adventures, with wonderful lovely people, and there will be even more pictures. Some will almost certainly be of Xerxes. How lucky am I?

Bug Wars, Wars of Bug

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I seem to have finally won a long, frustrating, anguish-inducing war against the hackers who kept slipping malware onto my site and trying to infect people with same as they came in to learn about my books. I had to bring in mercenaries: specifically, the fine folks at Sucuri Sitecheck, who run a service that scans your site for you for free, and another service that keeps it uninfested for $90 bucks a year. After weeks of flailing attempts at DIY and instructions from my site host that were so simple they required a computer programming degree to comprehend, and promises from same host that now the site really was clean, honest, when it just friggin’ wasn’t, Sucuri had me squared away within twelve hours.
Now that I’m not dumping my non-existent free time into fighting the malware wars, I have taken the advice of a couple extremely savvy friends (writer Matt Youngmark and artist Racheal Ashe, if you must know) and started a newsletter. The Join button is on my site and my plan is to issue chatty notes that you’ll all enjoy reading–the sort of stuff that goes into the letters I write, all too infrequently, to all the lovely peeps I aspire to keep up with. Plus, also, whatever photo I’ve taken lately that I’m most proud of, exclusive sneak peeks at works in progress, bragging about my UCLA students who’ve sold fiction and links to the latest courses and me stuff. Try out the join button or just let me know if you’re interested.
And when I get an issue out, if you think it’s missing something, let me know that, too.

Win both of the Books of Chantment!

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My publisher, Tor, is giving away five copies of Indigo Springs along with advance reading copies of Blue Magic. Details are here: you have until March 23rd. And do spread the word!

(I’d meant for this to be a low-key, personal post, but of course with the book out in twenty days, the excitement is building… there’s lots to post about.)

Kelly and I have been living in the current apartment for almost eleven years, which is about three years longer than I’ve lived anywhere in my entire life. I had something of a bounce-around childhood, and university was university–moving’s what you do. Then there were three places after the move to Vancouver: Chez Michel, Chez Frank, and the current Chez Dua.
So a couple years ago, around the time that we passed that longest-time-ever threshold, a bit of an itch developed. Some reflexive ‘isn’t it time to move?’ instinct scratches at the back of my consciousness. K’s got it too.
But moving’s not necessarily the right choice, so we’ve been trying to put a little effort into the house. Like Badger, I’ve been decluttering. I’ve sunk some cash into swoopy new gadgets that’ll do things like get us Netflix and let me use the TV in the living room as another computer monitor, if I please. We bought the footstool that is a (small, narrow) guest mattress, and allowed it to develop a healthy coat of cat hair. There’s a faint shadow of hope that the bathroom reno, which got stopped midway (I blame exhaustion brought on by the Parade of Death) might get wrapped up this year.
And windows! Yesterday, the stompy-boot guys who are putting new glass in all the suites in our building got started on installing new, non-moldy and allegedly noise-reducing windows in our place. To that there is only one thing you can say, and it is basically “Frabjous Day!”

Soon there will be pictures. In the meantime, an old reno photo.
Bathroom Reno 09