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.

This weekend, I'll be attending the launch party for the Writers Dojo in Portland, Oregon.  

When :   7pm Saturday, January 12, 2007.
Where:   Writers Dojo,  7518 N. Chicago Ave. in Portland, Or. ( tel. 503-706-0509 )
Why :      Because something in the water around these parts churns out some mighty fine writers.  Other attendees will include the delightful and talented mkhobson , Diet Soap's douglain , lots of other people I have never met and, of course, Chuck Palahniuk and Chelsea Cain.

I'm determined to set aside my namby-pamby social ways and talk to people without fear.  Wish me luck.

 
I'm reposting this page from Littlebird Blue because I have no idea who you are, but you get virtual kisses from me:

Hey you! Whoever nominated my story The Clone-Wrangler's Bride in the Preditors & Editor's Poll for the category of Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Story of 2007! You are too cute! Thank you, from the bottom of my mechanical silver heart.

Anyone who is unfamiliar with these awards should definitely check them out. Voting is totally free, the site totally safe, and the results completely public (not the voting -- that's anonymous). There are many categories encompassing areas of writerly, publishing, and editorial excellence.

Voting ends on January 15th, open to everyone, everywhere.

http://www.critters.org/predpoll/

I begin the new year on LiveJournal with an apology:  my life is simply not that interesting. Certainly not my writing life.  Sorry.

Wellllll. . . it's rather exciting to me, from time to time, but I can hardly expect it to thrill anyone else.  You've all got your various issues and acceptances and rejections.  It's editorial I'm referring to with this last one, not personal.  I love you.

Examples of recent excitement in my writing life:

Indomitable powerhouse editor of 2007 

ericreynoldshas posted the table of contents for one of the latest Hadley Rille Books anthologies, Desolate Places.  I'm incredibly proud to say my story "Flying Solo" is included in what is bound to be another excellent collection.  I've recently finished reading my contributor copy of  RUINS Extraterrestrial, with my story "Inclusions."  It was fabulous, and I'm proud also to be a part of that fabulosity.  "Beyond the Wall" from RUINS Extraterra has been nominated for a nebula award.

I've just sold my story "Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths" to Escape Pod.  Looking forward to that one!  Which brings me to my second online apology of the new year (may there be fewer than last year!):  to those LJ friends who read my blogspot, thank you twice over and sorry.  Like I said, there's just not that much excitement around these parts.

Also, my hair is bluer than ever, I expect totally hip houseguests this weekend, and I'm loving Steven Utley's [impatientape]  The Beasts of Love.  

Okay, maybe a little excitement.

 

   Happy and Merry and all that is good to everyone, please.

 ...which isn't to say, of course, that a character cannot be flawed.  Characters, good ones anyway, make bad decisions, have weaknesses, sometimes commit horrible acts. Villains are often the most compelling characters, and complex, even dark or twisted, protagonists often the most interesting.

I'm just saying I want to be invested in what happens in a story, and that starts, for me, with characters rather than external events. 

I've recently seen several writers (of varying skill levels, all interested in SF & Fantasy) frame literary discussions with the assumption that plot is the most important element of a story, trumping character development and prose in importance or relevance.

This leaves me baffled.

For me, at least as a reader*, plot takes a distant back seat to prose and character, to pace, to voice, to worldbuilding.  One author can have a storyline or plot idea so "original", it makes no sense to me or is totally unrelatable (hello: boring), whereas another author can pen an entire story about two Neanderthal children playing with sticks, and it can be pure magic to the last word.**

I didn't mention I sustained a con-related injury over the weekend (an actual real! live! physical! injury -- not agonizing mortification or acute, terminal embarrassment or a bruised ego).  

I was attempting to juggle hot tea and free books while sneaking two minutes late into the "Research for alternate history: Mining history for good fiction" panel.  You know those bars?  That go across industrial doors instead of a doorknob?  That you press when you want to leave?  I caught the edge of one right across what some of you would probably impolitely refer to as the 'muffin top'.  I was a little distracted the whole hour, rubbing the palpable rising lump on my hip though my clothes.

So: the thing has darkened to about the colour of a rotten eggplant. It has shrunk (yes!  shrunk!)  to the size of...oh, let's say an extra-large free-range nesting hen's egg.  No, two smallish eggs, side by side. 

Maybe I need vitamins?  Yikes.

... and I cut off all my hair.  No, those things are not related, but they are the two things which linger after a weekend at OryCon. 

I had a good time reading at the Broad Universe Rapidfire (did not get booed off stage for reading poem : yay); I loved loved loved hearing Vonda N. McIntyre read her work (took my breath away -- seriously).  Also heard Ursula K. LeGuin read her work and express regret that an upcoming Studio Ghibli movie of her Earthsea stories will not be as she would have hoped.  Got to hear the indomitable

jaylakeread his work, and he brought every single person attending his reading a free copy of Trial of Flowers.  I also got to hang out with my friend Ian Rose, editor of 1097 Magazine.

And then I cut off all my hair.

 

I heard on the local news today (<side rant start> I listen to public radio when I clean house:  after all those years in Texas, I finally have  a Real! Live!  Jazz station to listen to, and not whatever sorry pap passes for Jazz on the radio in Austin.  Even Dallas has superior Jazz stations.  And THAT, folks, is the last time you will hear me say Dallas has anything better than Austin ... oh, except Rapid Transit ... and maybe public art  ... and housing prices ... GARGH!  I despise Dallas.  Why does Austin -- a lovely town -- have to get so many things so terribly wrong!?!?!  <side rant end>) that the local animal shelter is overstocked on cats.  That's right:  All Cats Must Go.  To facilitate this they're running a special!  Adopt one cat at regular price, get a second cat FREE.  

I'm not making this up.  Hie thee to thy Portland shelter and get two lovely spayed/neutered cats for the price of one.  If you're coming into town for OryCon 29 this weekend, please say hello...

...And then go pick out a couple kitties to take back with you.  They are fuzzy and make great souvenirs.

I just wrote three different posts for this, and didn't post a one.  I'm such a <i>chicken</i>!