David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 92583 | Since last entry: 1533 | This month: 1533 Teresa Neilsen Hayden famously said of the San Antonio Worldcon that it had too much white space. This con wasn’t like that, at least not for me: it was quite comfortably packed with content from margin to margin, all in neat rows and columns. Everywhere I went I found keen people to talk with and interesting things to do, and all the scheduled items happened exactly where, when, and with whom they were supposed to. (Admittedly, I didn’t go to the Masquerade.) Wednesday was our travel day. On our flight to Minneapolis, by chance we found ourselves in a half-row just abaft of First Class, with tons of legroom, a handy little cupboard for our carryons, and our own video screen. Later, in conversation with Duane (the 6′ 6″ manager of Seattle’s University Bookstore) I discovered this is called a “bulkhead row” and giving it to a person as short as me should be a crime. But it was terribly pleasant, and I got almost 700 words written on my novel. We arrived in Boston without incident, to find the airport under construction (so what else is new?) and there was no clear indication where to catch the shuttle to our hotel. But we did eventually find one, complete with a couple of fans already on board, and soon arrived at the Sheraton, where we stood in the short Starwood Preferred Guest line and got a room with a great view on the 25th floor. Kate was a little guilty that we got such a nice room by virtue of traveling a lot, but I pointed out that anyone can become a Starwood Preferred Guest just by filling out a form — it’s free. Maybe we didn’t really belong in that line? Once we had dumped our bags in the room, we went off in search of dinner and soon found nearby Steve’s Greek Restaurant, and Bay Area fans Spike Parsons and Tom Becker and their friends Ruth and Ian. The waitress very kindly reconfigured the tables to let us all sit together, and the food was delish. Then, on returning, we ran into my Writers of the Future twin Carl Fredrick in the lobby. While we were standing there talking, we were joined at various times by Amy Sisson from Clarion, Tom Brennan from Writers of the Future, Ariel Shattan from Portland, Janice Murray and Alan Rosenthal from Seattle, Hope Leibowitz from Toronto, and many others. As I explained to Tom, whose first Worldcon this was, this is my typical Worldcon experience: getting about six feet in the door (of the hotel, dealers’ room, party, bathroom, etc.) and immediately becoming engaged in a two-hour conversation with an ever-mutating group of friends old and new. Eventually, though, that conversation broke up and we went in search of parties. First we hit Lise Eisenberg’s traditional before-the-con-even-gets-started room party (where I got a great laugh off the old line about “separate dishes for milk, meat, and trayf — and another set of each for Passover,” but had to explain what I meant by “a rood screen for dogs”), then wandered down to the Japan in 2007 bid party, where we saw a modern working replica of a hundred-plus-year-old Japanese tea-serving robot doll. This explains much. Thursday started off with breakfast at Charlie’s Sandwich Shop, a tiny ancient crowded diner with the best turkey hash I have ever dreamed of eating. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at Flour, a delightfully decadent bakery/cafe, and walked through picturesque residential neighborhoods, all brick and stoops. We caught a cab to the marvelously eclectic Isabelle Gardner Museum, a grand old mansion filled with art and antiques, including a large collection of famous people’s letters. We saw a letter from cadet U.S. Grant complaining that his West Point report cards were being sent to the wrong address, and another from John Quincy Adams sending some magazines from London to a publisher in Washington — in effect, a two-hundred-year-old LoC offering The Usual. After we tired of the museum we walked through the fens of the Fenway neighborhood (yes, famed Fenway Park is named after a swamp), then took a bus home and a brief nap before hitting the convention proper. As it turned out, the first two program items we saw were solo presentations: Gary K. Wolf on the history of Roger Rabbit (the book, the movie, the phenomenon) and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on the literary genre known as Mary Sue. I pointed out that the New Testament could be considered the oldest and most extreme example of an Author inserting himself into his Creation. Walking out of the Mary Sue panel we engaged author Jo Walton (Tooth and Claw) and blogger Rivka (Respectful of Otters) in conversation, and proceeded with them directly to a fine dinner at the nearby Atlantic Fish Company. After demolishing our share of crustaceans, Kate and I went for ice cream at the famed Emack & Bolio’s, finishing up the evening at the First Night carnival and Mary Kay Kare’s LiveJournal/blogger party. The carnival felt a little desperate to me at times, but it certainly performed its intended job of getting everyone to mingle together; the party was a huge success (though, as I’ve only been on LiveJournal for three days, I knew few people by username and even fewer by sight). Friday we hiked back to Flour for coffee, yogurt, and possibly the best pain au chocolat I have ever eaten. But it was much farther from the con than we’d remembered, and we barely got back in time for the Thackeray T. Lambshead reading, where the authors were having entirely too much fun. After that Kate and I separated. I hung out for a long while in front of the SFWA table in the dealers’ room with Jay Lake, Ellen Klages, Tom Brennan, and various others, eventually wandering off for lunch at Au Bon Pain with Seattle writer Brenda Cooper. Then I had a nice long talk with Davey Snyder at the NESFA Press table before I had to run off for my own first panel: Introduction to Worldcon for Neo-Pros. The panel went well, with SMOFs Pricila Olsen and Janice Gelb, editor/fan Toni Weisskopf, and author/fan me. I compared attending Worldcon to dating — by which I meant that that you have to be interested in order to be interesting — but Janice pointed out that some people have been on a lot more bad dates than I have. From there the panel devolved into a collection of horror stories about Pros Behaving Badly (“kids, don’t do this at your con!”) but I think it got all the important points across. I had printed up 25 copies of the “Worldcongoing” article from Making Light, and all but 3 of them were picked up. After my panel I wandered back to the dealers’ room — for some reason I tend to gravitate there at Worldcons when there’s nothing specific to do, though I rarely buy anything — where I talked with artist Ctein and writer Tobias Buckell (whose first novel will be coming out soon!) before heading off for my reading. I’d been handing out business cards with the time and room number of the reading on one side and my at-con contact info (hotel, cell phone, email, and LiveJournal username) on the other, but this was the first time I’d tried doing a reading without a bribe of chocolate and I wondered how many people would show up. On the way there I ran into novelist and fellow fraud Lyda Morehouse (we bonded a few cons ago when we were both on an “I Feel Like A Fraud!” panel) and her friend Tim, and persuaded them to accompany me to my reading. As it turned out, there were about a dozen people there — including two people who didn’t even know me, one from Wednesday’s airport shuttle and the other a complete random stranger! I read the first two chapters from my novel (its first public reading) and got a great round of applause at the end. Lyda said “I want to write slash in your world” and recommended her agent, Martha Millard. I was grinning like a fool. Kate and I took the T to North Beach, where we listened to old men yelling at each other in Italian, nibbled on cannoli and excellent pastries, and had a fine dinner at Piccolo Venezia. I was astonished how few cars were on the streets. We got back to the con in time for a nap before the Rumor Mill gathering in the bar, but I stayed in the bar chatting with Clarion compatriot Amy Sisson rather than going up to the Klingon Birthday Party with the rest of the Millers. While Amy and I were talking several other interesting people joined us, including Ken Brady from the Wordos in Eugene, and Ken and I eventually decided to wander off to the Writers of the Future and Frank Wu parties. Frank’s party was smaller, but had better food and no Scientologists. But I couldn’t stay long — I had to head back down to the bar for the Two Beers And A Story Challenge! TO BE CONTINUED…

Word count: 91914 | Since last entry: 1272 | This month: 4488 A very good day’s writing, and I went to the gym and got a bunch of other chores done as well. We should ship a major release more often. In the last couple of days I’ve written three and a half scenes that point out exactly how bad the situation has become. 1. Clarity has to deal with the human governments wanting to know what the hell is going on; 2. the Green Hills clan begins evacuating to orbit (and Clarity fears that they secretly control the orbital lasers and will take the plague back to the homeworld); 3. Clarity argues with the other Council members about whether a suicidal attack on the Green-Hills-controlled launch Platforms would be entirely futile or just mostly futile — that last is the half-scene, because the argument is interrupted when 4. Raptor, chief of the Green Hills clan, calls to complain that Clarity has misinterpreted his actions (dodging all requests to explain his real motives) and to threaten serious reprisals for any attempt to recapture the Platforms. And there’s more violence, destruction, and betrayal to come before the chapter’s out. Whee!

Word count: 90642 | Since last entry: 1054 | This month: 3216 Today didn’t go exactly the way I’d thought it would. I took the train to work, thinking I would get plenty of time to write on the way there and back. But we shipped a major product today (ePolicy Orchestrator 3.5, which is what I’ve been spending most of my time on for the last year) and there was a celebration at a restaurant downtown. I got a ride there, and a ride home from there, so no writing in the afternoon. And then, for a variety of stupid and inexcusable reasons, I didn’t even sit down to write again until about 10:30. But now it’s almost midnight, and I look up and I see I’ve written over a thousand words. And there’s more good news. The VP of my division announced that, in further celebration of our accomplishment, everyone gets tomorrow off! So I hope to get much more writing done tomorrow… was well as several other chores. Congratulations, us.

Word count: 89588 | Since last entry: 13 | This month: 2162 Hiya! I’ve been away for a while, I know. Kate and I did a new issue of Bento, which took up most of my non-work time, and tonight I worked on a new engine for my novel journal — it’s based on Blosxom and it’s pretty cool. The most important thing is that it will reduce the size of the files, which have gotten appalling (almost 300k each for the two “all entries” pages); it also supports other cool stuff, like user comments, which I’ll be adding later as time permits. I will be running the two blogs in parallel for a while, the old one at http://www.bentopress.com/sf/journal and the new one at http://www.bentopress.com/sf/journal/index.shtml. The new one is mostly identical in appearance to the old one, except that it has a calendar you can click on to navigate among the entries. Check it out and let me know if you have any problems with it. The new blog has its own RSS feed, at http://www.spiritone.com/cgi-usr/dlevine/blosxom.cgi/index.rss. If you use RSS, please try it and let me know if it works properly. I really should have spent the evening working on the actual novel, since I missed the last critique group deadline (due to Bento) and I really need to get back on the stick. I’ll do that tomorrow.

Word count: 89588 | Since last entry: 953 | This month: 2149 I have two weeks to finish this chapter. I also have the same two weeks to write an entire issue of Bento. So I spent this evening (and too much of it; it’s nearly midnight) revising a short story. I had an excuse. I got a revision request from Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF on the Jupiter story, and that’s an opportunity not lightly set aside. I finished the revision, and I’m going to print it out and look it over tomorrow before putting it in the mail. With any luck I’ll get a response before the Worldcon. With any more luck, it’ll be an acceptance. I’ve never gotten a rewrite request from Gordon before, so I don’t know what the odds are…

Word count: 89588 | Since last entry: 1196 | This month: 1196 No writing today, but I did get 1200 words written on Friday and Sunday, comprising the first scene of chapter 8. It’s always hard for me to get up and running on a new chapter, what with having to load everything I know about the alternating viewpoints back into my brain after having forgotten it for a few weeks. This problem should go away in a few more chapters as the two viewpoints converge. I have the same problem, on a smaller scale, whenever I pick up after finishing a scene. I should really be doing what several writers have advised: stop before the end of a scene, so you can more easily pick up the writing the next day. I had originally outlined this section as a fairly intellectual stand-off in which the villain withdraws to orbit. It’s coming out as an armed rebellion, with ornithopters getting shot down by lasers and bodies in the streets. Probably better this way. I recently realized that, unless the remaining 5 chapters are very very short (not likely!), the book’s going to be at least 120,000 words, not the 100,000 words I’ve been thinking of. So I’m not as close to the end as I’d thought. But if I keep writing a chapter every 3 weeks I will be done by November. However, it’s going to be a challenge for me to finish this chapter in time, since during the same 2 weeks my wife and I have to write a whole issue of our fanzine Bento. We always do a new issue at the last possible minute before the Worldcon. Which this very nearly is. In other news, I got my contributor copies of Talebones #28 with my story “Where is the Line.” This story is also being offered as a free sample at www.talebones.com (click on “Preview” near the top of the page, then “Fiction” on the left). Check it out! Let me know what you think!

Word count: 88392 | Since last entry: 2027 | This month: 9744 Another heroic writing day. The chapter is done and printed. Yay! It’s also almost ten thousand words long — by far the longest chapter yet. Boo! Now, there’s no particular reason a chapter has to be a certain length, but I really do feel this one may be too long. Perhaps some of the incidents should be shifted to other chapters, perhaps it’s that there’s way too much of Jason brooding and computer neepery. (Certainly the whole last half of the chapter takes place almost entirely in Jason’s head.) I did trim the worst of yesterday’s computer neepery, but then I added a thousand words more today. Well, at least it’s done, and having a draft that needs trimming is better than not having a draft. If it doesn’t work, my critiquers will tell me so. I have blown off a lot to finish this chapter in time. I’ll have to catch up on all those things now, and not let myself slack off on the next chapter (like I did this one for the first couple of weeks) either.

Word count: 86365 | Since last entry: 2171 | This month: 7717 Took the train to work today, back home by way of a haircut, and dinner by myself, all of which contributed to today’s truly heroic wordcount. Wrote a couple of complete scenes: one showing Jason getting off from his shit job and learning of the effect of the plague on the human and Tauran populations, and the other showing Jason and Sienna playing with their new datappliances. I must confess I had entirely too much fun with the computer neep stuff (which is part of why this chapter is already almost the longest one yet), but my readers seem to like this sort of thing when it’s done right. I’m also skating on the edge of what I know about computer security; I’m sure most readers will find it perfectly convincing, but I really should get someone at work to look at it. I had hoped to finish the chapter today so I could print it off at work tomorrow. That didn’t happen. But there’s just one scene left (or two short ones); I might write it/them at work tomorrow, or maybe I’ll just print what I’ve got and do the rest Saturday morning. Either way I should have the chapter done in time for crit group. Whew. Oh, and I still have to vote for the Hugos.

Word count: 84194 | Since last entry: 1033 | This month: 5546 A productive evening’s writing, and we watched “The Message,” one of the two Hugo-nominated episodes of Firefly. So far it’s got my vote. Wrote a long scene in which Jaon and Sienna, holed up in a squalid hotel in New Jersey, watch the news on a pornography-infested hotel TV and learn that Clarity has become CEO of the Corporation. Jason is troubled, but Sienna tries to take his mind off the news. Is she being too obvious? But Jason does need to get suspicious enough to take serious action by the end of this chapter.

Word count: 83161 | Since last entry: 263 | This month: 4513 Spent the weekend at the Oregon Coast, at the Strange Horizons Workshop Reunion at the Colonyhouse. It was like a very small con, or a three-day party, with ten cool writer-type people. We did critiques in the afternoons, and otherwise just hung out in the house, or walked and did martial arts on the beach, or ate. I tried my hand at kendo, but I have no coordination whatsoever. It wasn’t a good environment for writing — too many keen people to talk with — but I did do a little, and a little more today. I went back and wrote the “Jason reacts to the events of the day” scene, which required a tweak to the following scene to remove some things that had already been covered, so the word count change doesn’t reflect the effort I put in. Still, I need to really crack down in the next few days if I’m going to have the chapter done by Saturday. Kate wasn’t there, though she was supposed to have been. She came down with a fever late last week and decided she’d rather just hang out at home. When I got back she was feeling better, but was afflicted with some kind of rash. She saw the doctor today and got some prescription drugs, which seem to be helping, but I feel bad for having run off without her. She assures me she was just as happy staying home. At the Colonyhouse I asked for advice on a problem I’m currently having, which is that I don’t know how to keep Jason from leaving Sienna as he begins to suspect she has betrayed him. One of the other writers suggested that Sienna should get pregnant. This floored me — it is so not the kind of thing I would have thought of (which is, I suppose, the point of asking) and it does solve some other problems as well. But it completely invalidates one of the things I was trying to do with Jason: that he is gay, and is tempted by a woman (who is all wrong for him), but in the end he returns to his male lover and is happy. It probably won’t happen that way now — the original concept has changed a lot in the last year and a half — but I still resist the conventional plot of “gay man is redeemed by the love of a woman and becomes a happy father.” At the moment I’m leaning in the direction of not doing this, but if I don’t I will still have to find a solution to my original problem. And I’m worried about exactly what happens at the climax. I know in broad terms what has to happen, but the devil really is in the details and it would be easy to get wrong. In other news… the issue of Talebones with my story “Where is the Line” is back from the printer and should be in subscribers’ mailboxes shortly; the editor is also going to put up my story on the Talebones web page as a sample of the issue. And I’ve gotten my program schedule for the Worldcon:

• Friday 1:00pm: A Worldcon Orientation for SF Professionals
• Friday 3:30pm: Reading
• Saturday 2:00pm: Great Cliches in SF and Fantasy
• Saturday 4:00pm: BAD Con Advice for Newbies
• Sunday 12:00 noon: Kaffeeklatsch
• Sunday 5:00pm: The Great Character Swap (what would happen if various SF characters were dropped into other universes’ stories?)

It’s a good schedule — busy but not insanely so. I’m not really expecting anyone to sign up for my Kaffeeklatch, but I’m glad the committee thought it was worth a try. And I’m really glad they gave me a reading. Don’t forget to vote in the Hugos! Deadline is July 31. (You must be a member of the Worldcon to vote.)