When I wear my non skating official roller derby hat it isn’t new wheels or skates or socks that make me go squee. It’s stopwatches.
My Oslos arrived today. One is in Lightning Fist of Science purple. The other is in dark pink. Oh sure it looks like red, but pink is the color of WFTDA NSOs and I’m sure it’s just a very dark pink.
Now I can stop lusting after the ones Wizard of Laws uses.
My throat is tired from reading my novel out loud all day. The novel is better for it, even if I am not. When I ran out of puff reading my novel I wrote a postcard to a friend and that revived me.
Last night’s roller derby practice was a lot of fun. I’m not a very good hitter, but at least I’m getting better and making contact.
At one point the person I was trying to push off the track came to a standstill and so did I. People were yelling push her out, but it felt so much like a direction of gameplay penalty that I froze. I was stationary, she was stationary, and while our bodies were engaged it felt like I’d be initiating new block. It felt so wrong!
They were yelling, “Push her out, push her out”
I was yelling “I can’t!”and making a C signals that probably looked like flailing.
I don’t know how much of my inability to push her out was mental and how much was physical. I tried to try, but I just couldn’t make it happen. All the other times I failed to push Ms Rottentail out it was certainly my body that failed me. She is small and mighty.
It was a great practice and I look forward to scrimmaging on Sunday.
Today I worked on query letters and my synopsis. I started reading my novel out loud, but I only got up to page 25 and had to stop.
I encountered an inconsistency in my use of the alien number systems (they have three). I needed to think through my use of base 5 and 6 through the whole novel and where my usage had changed and why. I’ve made it consistent now, and it should be more intuitive for human readers.
I was hoping to get through reading it out loud faster than this and now I have to eat food and get ready for Roller Derby practice. My alter ego, Betsy Nails, needs to get out on the track, no matter how much I would like to slug about on the couch.
When I wasn’t writing I was trying to restore my den to some semblance of sanity – vacuuming up sawdust from my latest modification of my standing desk, tidying up and trying to fix things as a prelude to throwing them out. I now have so much super glue on my fingers that my touchpad struggles to recognize me. Next time I get a cut I am tempted to glue it shut, gorilla glue is powerful stuff!
I have been tagged in The Next Big Thing, a branching pyramid-of-prose where authors discuss their latest release or WIP. I was tagged by Caren Gussoff a super smart lady, a lyrical and literary speculative fiction writer.
The Scent of Memory.
By going on a long journey. A bit of madness and a lot of composting.
This novel started at Clarion Writers Workshop in 2009. I wrote a short story for week 4 that fell flat on its face, it was a novel crammed into 6,000 words. The story didn’t work, but people liked the space-otter alien protagonist. My Clarion did something that no Clarion had done before (and possibly since) and we worked on novels in week 6. In week 5 I went a bit mad and turned in two stories, one for Monday and then another one on Friday.
This meant that I had a weekend to write a novel pitch. I took my short story and radically changed the setting from a far future space station to post-contact Australia 50 years from now.
On the Monday we critiqued covering letters, Tuesday and Wednesday we did outlines, Thursday and Friday we critiqued the first 10 pages of our novels. I wrote like a maniac, figuring out the story and building the world in a desperate flurry. I wrote the opening of my novel twice and submitted both versions because I was still figuring out the voice and POV.
By the Friday night party I was an empty husk, so tired I couldn’t eat and scarcely capable of doodling on the sidewalk with a small child for company. But I had a novel outline.
A year and a half passed. I revised stories I wrote at Clarion. I wrote some new stories, received many many rejections and sold a few stories.
I decided it was time to write a novel and dusted off the outline I’d written. I explored the world, wrote scenes, struggled with POV decisions, struggled to fit in the backstory and finally realized I was telling the wrong story.
My aliens didn’t do first contact in any of the standard ways, and that was giving me a lot of trouble. I had a first contact situation that was unique and went against standard conventions… I realized that first contact was the most interesting and unique part of my world.
So I abandoned everything I had done and told the real story. On the surface of things this novel has nothing in common with its origins. If you compared the start with the finish, you wouldn’t recognize them.
Science Fiction – though I would be very happy if it could reach a general fiction audience.
This question was so hard and time consuming!
It’s an ensemble cast with many of the characters from a diverse made up country in Melanesia. The pictures cascading down the right of the page are the best I could do with a week’s notice. This question made me wish I’d seen more movies. It was cool to find out what Aaron Pederson’s been up to. He’s one of my favorite Australian actors.
Some actors I may have tried to squeeze in a little gratuitously… Sylvester McCoy isn’t the first person you might cast in the role as a senior Australian diplomat and it’s not exactly how I imagine Malcolm, but that’s the delicious indulgence of an imaginary movie.
Aliens come to earth and people determine what humanity will be and what it will become.
Once I have finished editing and fine tuning my novel I shall send it out to agencies.
It depends on your definition of first draft. I’m more of a lacquering, layering, cutting as I go kind of gal. I’ve been writing and re-writing this novel for a while now and it’s finally in a shape I can love. Taking on a novel this ambitious has been overwhelming at times.
Inspiring and drawing strength from is a kind of comparing, right?
Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson have been my comfort reading while I’ve worked on this novel. They’re both ambitious science fiction writers who explore their worlds.
Ursula Le Guin’s Science Fiction normally explores more distant futures and planets, but her bold visions and thoughtful characterization inspire me. She is elegant and accessible in the way she explores her worlds and concepts. I like to see her influence on my writing and I hope I can be part of her lineage.
Nalo Hopkinson‘s language and world building also inspires and comforts me. I feel that she treats creole/kriol languages with the respect they deserve. It’s been interesting to see the cross-overs and differences between Caribbean language systems and Austronesian languages. I love how gutsy and fun she is.
I like looking at the edges of things and I like juxtaposition, so I’d like my book to be compared with anything if it was a good conversation! Like they say for school essays, discuss, compare and contrast?
Telling this story I wanted to explore, language, complexity, resilience. I wanted diplomats to be on first contact teams!
I wanted scientists to be smart and collaborative. I wanted a first contact story that was not centered around America. I wanted the UN and multilateral agreements to play a significant role. I wanted the science to be as hard as I could make it, but MORE importantly I wanted the social sciences to play a significant role.
I wanted the world to be as diverse and interesting as it really is. I wanted to explore how we can find ways to bridge gaps of understanding and how we can make terrible presumptions when it comes to communication. It’s a story about alien-ness in all senses of the word. It’s about belonging, the human experience and how we find meaning.
During the most despairing times the thing that kept me from throwing the novel in the trash was a beautiful scene when Abua Kamsing comes home and his young son is eating custard apples under a tree. Aliens, asteroid strike, micro-tsunamis, global responses, but it was a scene of trust, love and non verbal communication that kept me loving my novel.
Humans helped me stay inspired. Many humans helped, but especially Chapters Without Borders co-working writers. Special thanks my first readers Kath Nyborg and Cat Rambo. Thankyou for believing in it and thank you Cat for getting me to finish this draft by Christmas.
The book is told from multiple human third person points of few and from the view of an alien child. If you like character driven stories I think you’ll enjoy this one.
… and look, more pictures of actors!
And now it is time to say, tag! You are it! It was really hard to pick three authors, there are so many people pursuing their passions right now. These three are some of the people helped shape my novel, way back in 2009 at this crazy 6 week workshop thing. They critiqued my short stories and beginnings of a novel, but just as importantly, they worked their guts out and let me learn from their work. Grady and Heather will answer these questions next Wednesday and you will get to experience Shauna’s blog post early in the new year:
Wow! It’s December! DECEMBER! Time for a lightning quick catchup round. Reviews, Musical Foreplay and Roller Derby!
Anywhere But Earth reviewed by Cosmos Magazine
coeur de lion’s enormous science fiction anthology was reviewed by Cosmos Magazine (you’ve gotta love a mag who’s tag line is “The Science of Everything). It’s great to see a science magazine that regularly reviews fiction. Imagination, creativity, wild experiments, willingness to be wrong and just play are all important parts of science. Fiction is a fun, cheap and safe way to be wrong, play and explore ideas.
My short story Maia Blue is Going Home was reviewed favorably. It makes me happy to see Maia Blue getting some love and it gives me thrills to see my name next to Margo Lanagan‘s:
there’s some beautiful writing in the collection – prime examples are the rhythmic beauty of Liz Argall’s “Maia Blue is Going Home” and Margo Lanagan’s disturbingly sensual “Yon Hornéd Moon”.
-read on at Cosmos.
Musical Foreplay
In November I didn’t blog here, but I did write a blog post on Musical Foreplay for Horrific Miscue.
Yes, when I’m gearing up to write I listen to They Might be Giants, Pink and Hiphop. The comments are still open and I’d love to hear what you listen to. I love exploring other people’s music… spotify will be the death of me, I keep wandering through everyone’s playlists.
ROLLER DERBY
This will be my third season as a non skating official with the Rat City Roller Girls (and I’ve just started skate with Potential Fresh Meat, a non-affiliated group of awesome). When my Roller Derby hat is on you can call me Betsy Nails.
Thinking about the intensity, speed and skill I see at practice every week I think 2013 is going to be great… so Seattle folks (and Seattle visitors) now is a great time to buy tickets.
The first bout is Saturday, January 19 where we will see the Throttle Rockets take on the Sockit Wenches and the Derby Liberation Front take on Terminal City Rollergirls’ Faster Pussycats.
The full 2013 Event Schedule looks amazing. Rat will be playing London, Montreal and Gotham!
Good things to you and yours.
Liz
Strange Horizons are a terrific online magazine who published my story The Rugged Track, a rollerderby fairytale. Their staff are volunteers with a professional attitude and they pay their fiction writers professional rates.
To continue as a non profit magazine that pushes the awesome, actively encourages diversity, values creators, and brings to the world some of my favorite fiction they have to raise funds.
October is the month of give Strange Horizons some money and you go into the draw to win nifty prizes. You could win a book from Mary Robinette Kowal… THE ONE THAT HASN’T COME OUT YET!… not that I’m excited about her latest book. In the listing there’s cool art, books by new and established authors and new prizes added to the long list every week.
You want to tell your Mum/Mom or Best Friend how great they are? This might be the perfect letter. You want to send a big love letter to zoo keepers or zebras, the Things can do that too :-)
So go to, go to! I hope you win a nifty prize. The Things don’t often write letters, so this will be a rare thing.
Strange Horizons is a registered 501(3c) non profit, so yes, your monies will also be tax deductible.
Machine of Death
Machine of Death 2 will be launched at Comicon next year, but right now I’m even more excited about the French translation of Machine of Death. If you go to the French website they have a working MOD Machine. It’s kinda awesome. I think you get to pick the category of death you are told and I think I chose silly death… or on fire. My French consists of counting to 20 and listening to Geek Girls Rule when she says it’s La Revolution, not Le Revolution.
Google translate tells me “You will die like the man in Alaska who amused himself throwing a stick of dynamite that his dog, well trained, hastened to tell him.”
How did it know?! :-) Check out La Machine à écrire la mort and if you want to share your fortune cookie in the comments that would be super dooper awesome.
“Dear Ms. Moon” is one of my favorite stories to read out loud for people and now it is going to be brought to life as a staged reading for Pulp Diction 4, part of the Fertile Ground 2013 Festival of New Work.
Yesterday I spoke to Director Sarah Peters about her vision for “Dear Ms Moon” and she sounds like an amazing lass bubbling with ideas. It’s always cool chatting to someone who is creatively brilliant in ways so different to mine. So much of my process is about doubt and listening and feeling with my body, stripping it down, closing my eyes and listening for the resonant note. Sarah (from what I know so far) is a dynamo, is “I read your story and I saw all these things and had all these ideas and boom!” which is the best thing to hear from a reader and an essential skill in a director. I don’t know what this performance will be like. My experience of collaboration inclines me to believe it will be beyond my anything I could imagine, radically different to what I envisage and wonderful. I trust her to honor the characters and I’m so curious. I’m sure I will learn things about my own text when it comes to life – and that is one of the gifts of collaboration.
Bunny FeelingsI have created over 50 comics over at Things Without Arms and Without Legs! 50!! That is a nice round number and thank you everyone who’s been reading, sharing, liking and commenting. It’s a fun, challenging, sometimes scary, cuddly, kind, stretching, peaceful process that reminds me to breathe more often than not. And my superficial self, or with kinder words my self that likes to be of service and likes to be heard, feels little thrills of delight when the page hits go up and makes me more determined to keep this thing going and feel like I’m doing something good.
My Things website is the opposite SEO optimized, I keep forgetting to put typed words on the page, but the good thing about this is that it’s only been really nice search terms that find my site. My number 1 search term (at a whopping 7 searches over this history of the site), “Jokes about Art.” The only search term that has hit my site in the last two days? “Bunny Feelings.”
Bunny Feelings! I love that someone was searching for information about bunny feelings (and they are sensitive souls who can experience a lot of social anxiety). I love that their search took them to a bunny that hangs out in a shoe and enjoys a friendly rivalry with a sock.
Dirt, work and hands – Casanova Clay is now live at Apex.
You can read Casanova on his own.
You can purchase the entire e-book.
… I hope those bunnies on the cover are ok. BuNSOn Hoppydew might get worried.
I neglected to mention, but early this month I updated the Clarion blogs, journals and other linkey things collection.
My November update links to words by Val Nolan, Michael Underwood and the Leonard Pung Memorial Scholarship.
Please post in the comments or e-mail me if there are other posts to add to the collection. It’s now at a point where it’s hard to find journals through normal searches.
Music, Things and poetry news.
Musical challenge complete!
I have written a love song to a baked good, or more precisely a Lament for Pie. The lament ended up getting a lengthy introduction as I decided to write the synopsis for an over the top musical about food. And wow! That sparked imaginations.
Jeffrey has been inspired to write the opening number of the musical and EJ read the lyrics and got the song stuck in her head. She was earwormed by a song she had never heard! She read the lyrics and spontaneously made up her own addictive tune.
As you can imagine I thought this was all sorts of wonderful and asked EJ if she could record her version of the song and send it to me. You can now listen to both versions on the Lament for Pie page, although you’re welcome to not listen and send me your recording of what you think it should sound like.
I exploded with a bunch of Things comics last week. 42 of 130 comics complete, only 88 to go. I haven’t drawn as much this week, I’ve been making good progress on a new novel and submitting short stories to publishers. What’s with that? I have some drawings that need to be turned into animated giffs, but technology and I continue to argue. One of the reasons I am drawing on the iPad is because I don’t have access to a scanner or a computer set up to manipulate graphics. Hopefully I will overcome these technological hurdles soon. I also need to update the archives page. Does the archives page work for you in its current format? Let me know if it doesn’t.
My poem will be appearing in Apex Magazine on Tuesday, not late 2013! I am excited. They’ve also changed the layout of their website and I keep clicking the rotatey image bit at the top of the page. I get to see pretty art and the names of authors I like go round and round.