littlebird blue

I imagine myself pulling a big, thick rope.  You know; the kind of impossibly big thick rope they use to fasten enormous ships to piers in old movies.  This rope has knots tied in it, and little flags of brightly colored rag dangling from various points, to mark the success of my heave and my progress against the resistance.  Surely, but surely, you've played Tug-O'-War?

So I'm at one end, standing over at the new Camille Alexa LJ, and all my friends are over here on the other end of the rope at Littlebird Blue.  I'm going to heave as hard as I can, and see how many of you I can get to topple over to the new LJ.

...And HEAVE...

---camillealexa

I'm leaving in a couple hours for Radcon 5 in Pasco, Washington.  If you see me there, wave.  If I myopically squint your direction, get up reeaaaal close and wave again.

Con info: 
February 15-17, 2008
Pasco, WA
http://www.radcon.org/news.php

I recently wrote a mundane SF story about a manned mission to Mars.

It's terrifying enough to picture being adrift on a tiny raft in the ocean. My stomach tightens at the thought. But to be flung or shot out into the vastness of space, with all of the Universe pressing on your soul; to learn after living with the same tiny crew for unrelieved months how utterly unlike your fellow humans you are, and also how alike; to struggle to return sane from an experience few will ever be able to understand...

Today I found this hour-long video of a lecture given by astronaut Daniel Bursch about his six months in the International Space Station with two other men. I'd written the story mentioned above after reading an article about underground Russian training facilities where they sequester people for months at a time to understand how they cope -- with fear, with stress, with depression, with each other -- in an enclosed, tomb-like area for months at a time.  Some experiments even use time-lag delays for communications with above to simulate the time-lag in communications with Earth from a Mars-bound vessel.

And what would it be like to return from such a voyage?  Bursch says he experienced intense nausea from vestibular distress after he landed.  When he asked his doctors about it, the phenomenon was described to him as "Kind of a protection mechanism that your body has:  if it doesn't understand, you know, what's going on, it assumes you ate a bad berry."

I'm going to blame lots of stuff from now on on bad berries.  Lots and lots of stuff.  Just wait and see.  

If you haven't yet done so, now's your chance to check out the excellent publication Diet Soap, brought to you by

douglainand mkhobson.

From their online submissions guidelines: 

" We want stories that defy genre distinctions because they seek to escape the confinement of ideology. We want essays that are personal and strange and full of passion without being sentimental, ahistorical, or bourgeois. We want art that confronts rather than comforts. "


The first Online Edition is available now : DIET SOAP.

My short story "The Beetle Eater's Dream" has been accepted to Space & Time Magazine for publication.

I really like this story. (Would it be heinous to confess some of my stories are more equal than others?  No?  Good.)  I'm extremely pleased for it to be appearing in such a lovely print mag.  Fiction editor Gerard Houarner thanks me in his acceptance email for my "wonderful, evocative story, and [says] welcome to Space and Time."

I like them already.

Details as they arrive.

Because I'm too damn lazy to write two whole journals (and because there is very little crossover in my readership), this is lifted directly from my Littlebird Blue blogspot:

Holy Freakin' Moly!

 

I decided -- totally randomly and without a meaningful thought in my sleep-deprived head (celebrated completion/send-off of two stories last night by staying up 'til 4am playing good ol' Age of Empires) to check the links on my Littlebird sidebar for functionality. 

 

I begin at the top of the list.  Escape Pod....WHOA!  Not only is it working, it leads DIRECTLY TO MY STORY.

 

It's hilarious, because I didn't think of this as a YA story.  Not really.  Not particularly.  But I suppose it is. I just wrote the story that wanted to be written at the time.

 

And it's amazing to hear your work interpreted by someone else!  When I read "Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths" aloud to myself, Carolyn is considerably more disgruntled, quiet, socially misfitty.  More like I was, I guess, though no parent wants to know the kinds of stuff I was doing at the age of 16.

 

So.  Check it out.  "Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths " on Escape Pod.


[edit: Thanks for the reading to Dani Cutler (of Truth Seekers and The Audio Addicts).]

So.  Now that I actually post to LiveJournal, I see how much vastly more convenient it is for all one's friends to have a name actually close to one's own.  Like, you know, mkhobson, or douglain, or ericreynolds. Or beth_bernobich.

I know they have a new way to buy name vouchers for $15 or so, but since I haven't been posting long, it seems easier to simply change my LJ handle to camillealexa, start posting from that.  Do you think that would be a good idea?   Would I be easier to find?  Please weigh in yea or nay.  Your vote counts.

I am astounded -- astounded -- that my little Clone Wrangler's Bride story seems to have come in at #7 in the Preditors & Editors Readers Favorites Poll.  Thank all of you who read my story and enjoyed it, and especially those who took the time to vote.


ericreynolds has now posted the ToCs for two of Hadley Rille Books' upcoming releases:  the Desolate Places anthology (with my story "Flying Solo") and Ruins Metropolis (with my story "Veilsight").  Several of you have already congratulated me in private or over at the Littlebird Blue blog.  I heart my friendses.

A whole slew of LJ folk will be joining me (hah! -- as though I'm playing hostess, handing out cocktails!) in the above anthologies.  I'll try to do a round-up post later.

I read stuff like this all the time lately:

". . ..two of the nation's biggest banks on Wednesday joined a growing chorus warning that the subprime mortgage mess is just the start of a sweeping lending crisis. And some fear that consumers falling behind on all kinds of loan payments could tip the economy's scale toward recession. . ."


Tipping toward a recession?  Anyone who thinks this country hasn't been in really rough shape for years and years has his (gender non-specific) head up a very dark place.

Watched that penguin movie yesterday back to back with a National Geographic episode about same.  Cried far too much for one relatively healthy adult.

Am tearing up now, remembering.