Archive for May 15th, 2011

The life of a repo man is always intense

The month of May has been busy so far and promises to get even more so, with things getting even more interesting in June.

Briefly:

  • There’s an interview with me in the May issue of Locus, with a full-page photo, and my picture on the cover even! (Though it’s just one of the postage-stamp-sized insets on the right-hand side.) You can read some excerpts from the interview online.
  • The Breaking Waves charity anthology is still going strong, with all proceeds going to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
  • I have my Wiscon program schedule and it is awesome:
    • Friday morning: Writers’ Workshop (closed).
    • Saturday 4:00 pm, Michelangelos: Space Fairies from Beyond. A reading by Seanan McGuire, Sarah Monette, Catherynne M. Valente, Pamela Dean, and me. Did I say awesome already?
    • Sunday 10:00 am, Assembly: About the “Writing the Other” Workshops. I’ll be moderating, with fellow panelists Ada Milenkovic Brown, Nisi Shawl, and Cynthia Ward talking about the book and workshops.
    • Sunday 1:00 pm, Room 629: World-Building as a Spectator Sport. Amy Thomson, Deirdre M. Murphy, Paul Rehac, Benjamin Rosenbaum and I improvise an alien world using suggestions from the audience. This was a real hoot last year.
    • Sunday 4:00 pm, Senate A: I’d Object, If I Weren’t Invisible. I’ll be moderating again, and discussing bisexuality with fellow participants Betsy Lundsten, Jennifer M. Nissen, Julia Rios, and Alberto Y%26aacute%3B%26ntilde%3Bez.
  • In Locus Online, Lois Tilton reviews the June Analog, including my story “Citizen-Astronaut,” and calls it “pretty good stuff.”
  • I presented a half-hour talk before Hand2Mouth Theatre’s production Uncanny Valley. I blathered for half an hour, without hesitation, deviation, or repetition, on the subject of science fiction for a fairly large and polite audience. Got a few questions, and a couple of people came up to me with compliments after the show. It was fun! The show itself was… well, not a “play,” per se, more of a performance piece with music, movement, and words on the topic of memory. But if you kind of squinted you could see that in the world of the piece there was a technology of some sort that used motion, music, and objects to evoke lost memories. I talked with the director afterwards and discovered that in earlier versions of the piece (it’s constantly under development) the science fiction aspects of the show were much more overt. But audience members got angry when they broke the rules they’d established, so rather than becoming more consistent they made it vaguer. Oh, well. Would have liked to have seen the earlier version.
  • Just for a lark, I signed up with a casting service in hopes of getting cast as an extra on Leverage. Wish me luck! I’ve already gotten one call (not for Leverage) but I was not available when they needed me.
  • I had two stories due (one final, the other a draft) on May 15. I got both of them done in time, and I’m pretty happy with the way they both came out. Now we wait.
  • I had a colonoscopy. (Happy 50th birthday.) The preparation was no fun at all, but the procedure itself was a complete non-event. By which I mean that, although I was apparently rather chatty while under sedation, I have no memory of it whatsoever. My memories go straight from the doctor starting the IV to talking with Kate (plainly in the middle of a conversation) in the recovery room, with no sense of lost time in between. Weird. They found and removed a couple of small polyps, which were non-cancerous, and I don’t have to do that again for five years.

I am now at the airport awaiting my flight to Albuquerque for the Rio Hondo writing workshop. From there I’ll proceed to Milwaukee (rendezvousing with Kate at Phoenix) where we’ll spend a few days with my dad before heading to Wiscon. Basically, I won’t be home until June.

I’ve also received a couple of very good writing opportunities in the last couple of days, which I will have to work fast, hard, and smart to properly exploit. It’s all good stuff but a lot of it requires work and a lot of it I can’t talk about yet.

Boarding soon. Whee!