Fine sifting and fall plans

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I am reading through the Blue Magic page proofs this week (196 days until it’s released!) which means I am going through printed pages that are laid out as the book will be, looking for any small errors. I’ve already gone through the copy-edited manuscript, where all the big errors and inconsistencies have been found and vanquished.

After that, my current plan is to have a hard look at a short story that’s all but done. It’s provisionally titled “Losing Heart among the Tall.” As titles go, I’m not convinced that’s perfect. This polish is half about actually finishing the story, and partly to reacquaint myself with the details of the setting, a place called Stormwrack, which also appears in a number of other things I’ve been working on this year. This includes a story called “Among the Silvering Herd” that I’ve sold to Tor.com. (I’ll let you know when it’s gonna be up, as soon as I know myself!)

This weekend, I’ll be hopping off to VCon to rub elbows with fabulous people like the latest denizen of the Twitterverse, DD Barant, Mary Choo, and Julie McGalliardon. On Saturday evening, at our 9:00 p.m. group reading, I’ll read from my story “Wild Things,” which takes place in the Indigo Springs universe, between the events of the two novels.

Once “Losing Heart among the Tall”‘s events and details are fresh in my mind, I’ll dig into the other stuff set in Stormwrack, for all of October.

Finally, if that goes well and I can wrap up by Halloween, I’m thinking of joining a number of my Nanowrimo buddies-in-crime in November by setting myself a goal of 50,000 words of new short fiction. Since I mostly write novelettes in the 7500-8500 word range, that’d make for six stories. I thought another squid story about Ruthless, perhaps, to go with “The Town on Blighted Sea,” another Stormwrack story for sure, and I have a few other ideas. But I don’t as yet have six ideas, and I thought I might throw the floor open for prompts, requests, challenges, a contest… somesuch thing.

Have any of you done this, either opened the floor to challenges in this way or contributed to a call for prompts? How did it work? Was there a prize? Were you happy with the result?

Ambling, lunching, couchsurfing, all the weekend sports

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We had two days of warm and muggy weather and on Saturday K and I made the most of it, ambling through the Farmer’s Market at Trout Lake (first time all season I’ve made it there!) and from there south beyond Kingsway, just for the walk. It was an uphill climb–my walking app claims we ascended about a hundred feet–but finally the hot and the damp were overpowering, and so we caught a bus on Kingsway to Mink.

My new flowery Doc Martins and my feet seem pretty happy with each other. After a careful breaking in period, I’ve done several 5K-10K walking days in a row, and the shoes have even made it through a number of rainstorms without carrying me home soaked. So they have won the coveted honor of being my winter boots. How fabulous for them and me, mmm?

Boots!

After many failed attempts to find them open, we also finally got to Crumpler–I wanted to look at their bags, but the Answer was not there. I am beginning to suspect that the Answer is for me to have my own personal valet/Sherpa. Then we went on a sandwich-hunt that turned into a spontaneous visit with Barb. Finally, surprise! We wound up at Cafe Calabria.

Now the rain has come back and I’m wondering if it’s chicken-baking weather.

The new TV season continues to occupy my remaining free time and free brain space: The Mentalist started surprisingly well, but seems to have found a way to cruise back in the direction of their formula, so I’m not sure if I’ll keep on watching. Prime Suspect, meanwhile, is doing Realism, big time. Which isn’t always my favorite thing, but the first episode’s script was very tight and Maria Bello turned in a fascinating performance. The story was all about Jane Timoney and departmental politics and not so much about the murder of the week. It didn’t seem entirely divorced from the original and oh so amazing Prime Suspect, and the feminist heart of that series–the stuff about a woman trying to make it in a male-dominated profession–was very in-your face. For some reason, I thought that material would be downplayed or excised entirely.

I’m still enjoying 30 Rock, too, though the high school reunion episode was too mean for my liking.

What’s bad out there in TV-land? I will not be watching Blue Bloods this year. Last year’s finale was Far Too Cheesy, cheesier even than a quattro formaggio sauce with extra cheese on top, served on cheese-stuffed tortellini. It may in fact have been the most howlingly tasteless thing to cross my flickerbox since Kiefer Sutherland solved 24 hours worth of his personal and professional problems by taking an axe to… well, I won’t spoil you just in case. Either you’re blissfully unaware or you’re cursing me for reminding you.

Exquisite Words likes the short stuff

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This is from a very short story called “Fairyland,” by Darin Bradley. You can read the whole story here at Coffinmouth.

Here’s the snippet. It’s a terse little stream of images that add up to a quite clear picture before easing into character stuff:

A valley. Pastures, which had gone bad. Empty. Haze obscured the surrounding hills. It was what Gil had expected of The Bomb. An Indian Summer twinkling radioactive ejecta. Refracting sunbeams like farm dust or smog. Or burning magnesium. He thinks of his own ghosts, and wonders if they burned up somwhere else, in the past. Maybe the whole world was dead already. Maybe we were all eaten up and spat out in radioactive chunks.

(The story originally came to me via Snuffy‘s twitterfeed.)

Things with wings and Angelfail

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The cold I complained about last week is in the rearview, mostly, though I’ve been using it as an excuse to baby myself a bit this week. Summer, too, is almost out the door. It’s dark when I wake up at five-ish, and I’m finding that strangely welcome. I love everything about autumn here on the West Coast: the rainstorms and the gusting wind, the way the rain pounds the color out of fallen leaves, stamping their images onto the pavement. I love the way the orb weaver spiders kick into high gear… even though it means sometimes watching where you walk if you don’t want an arachnid on your face. At this time of year, we can play ‘count the spiders’ on our walk along the Cut, and marvel at how enormous some of them get.

I’m less enchanted with the big honking moths of fall, but as long as they’re on the other side of a thick pane of glass, I can appreciate how marvelously they’re put together.

Let me in!

Another sign of autumn is Vancouver’s SF convention, VCon, and I will be reading with DD Barant, Mary Choo, and Julie McGalliardon on Friday September 30th, as well as doing the writers workshop on Saturday. Are any of you going to be there? Look me up.

Turning to TV: kelly-yoyoKelly and I managed to watch ten minutes of the Charlie’s Angels reboot before it became obvious that not even the promise of a taste of childhood could offset the bad writing, acting, and directing. We tried Revenge instead, and that seemed promising. We thought we’d recognized the lead as Haley Bennett, who played Cora Corman on Music and Lyrics. It turns out, though, that she’s Emily Van Camp and we’ve never seen her in anything.

The flickering same old same old…

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The new TV season is upon us and so far I’ve watched the Ringer pilot (as mentioned earlier) and two returning shows from last year. I watch Castle in spite of its scripts, because the cast and especially Captain Tightpants are funny and charming. Sadly, the premiere was a Serious Episode of Seriousness, and thus contained little of either. Next week, maybe…

Glee … mmm. I loved a couple of the numbers, and I’m always happy to hear something from Hairspray, but they were essentially pushing pieces around a board as they assemble the season three group. And while they were assembling, we had lots of Rachel–who’s not my favorite–and a bunch of noisy Will/Sue conflict, which I’d like if it ever went anywhere except the Same Damned Nowhere.

Why watch? There’s some funny. There’s some charming. There’s gay kids in love! It’s a musical. And the Tom Jones number (should we rename Daren Criss Cadet Officer Tightpants right now?) offset a lot of boredom.