David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 92583 | Since last entry: 0 | This month: 1533 Friday, continued: I arrived at the bar to find Jay Lake, Laura Anne Gilman, Keith R. A. DeCandido, and Janna Silverstein already set up and ready to go for the Two Beers And A Story Challenge, along with a number of onlookers and supporters (including Aynjel — who would have been my Clarion East classmate if I hadn’t gone West — and Jay’s agent Jennifer Jackson). The rules of the Challenge were simple: write a complete short story in the time it takes to finish two beers. If you know me, you’ll know that I can usually finish a novel more quickly than I can finish a beer. But in this case we had the cheering crowd shouting “Drink!” every minute or two, and by the time I reached the end of my 864-word opus, a Bradburyesque little horror tale titled “Moonlight on the Carpet,” I found I had downed a full pint of Sam Adams and two-thirds of another. Not to mention participating in the singing, trash-talking, telling of rude jokes, and other miscellaneous hilarity (including the mating call of the Giant Clam). We were having way more fun than the whole rest of the bar put together, from the sound of it. Janna, alas, suffered a Macintosh meltdown and had to compose her story on Aynjel’s Palm Pilot, which added to the stress with a wonderfully intuitive user interface (Command-Q to save?!) and a battery that threatened to expire at any moment, but nonetheless she finished her SF erotica story. Laura Anne’s battery did give out before her story did, but she still produced 1000 words of a peachy SF action tale. Jay was the first to finish, with a bizarre story of whales invading the land, but Keith’s story, all in dialogue, was the longest. We read them all aloud at the end and I was amazed that in that raucous atmosphere we had produced five stories that were not merely entertaining, but actually good — maybe even salable. Jennifer suggested we should produce an anthology to benefit the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, but if that doesn’t happen I think I’m going to send mine to F&SF. We shut down our computers and repaired to Frank Wu’s party, still going strong, but I was tired and tipsy enough that I decided to bail out after a fairly short time. I thanked Frank for his hospitality, ate one last chocolate-covered pretzel (love ’em), and went to bed. Saturday I breakfasted with some of my Writers of the Future classmates (Carl Fredrick, Pat Rothfuss, Tom Brennan, Jae Brim, and Ari Goelman) at the Trident Bookstore/Cafe, while Kate ran off to Neil Gaiman’s reading. My WotF class is a great bunch and I predict you will hear these names again. We spent a couple of hours chatting over pancakes and omelets, and on the way back to the con we stopped and talked with Jenn Reese and Greg Van Eekhout as they ate at a sidewalk cafe. In the afternoon I attended one panel, called “Is It Fair?” with Carl moderating editors Scott Edelman, Shawna McCarthy, Sheila Williams, and author Resa Nelson in a discussion of who gets published in the magazines and why. It was a fairly standard panel, but I attended because I had never met either Shawna (Realms of Fantasy) or Sheila (Asimov’s) before and I wanted to gain any insights I could about what they are looking for. Shawna mentioned that she doesn’t like stories about talking cats, but I pointed out that she did buy one from me about a talking giraffe. I introduced myself to both editors after the panel; Sheila looks like no one in particular, but Shawna has the most intense eyes. After that I headed off to the Hugo rehearsal, which for the nominees was really straightforward: if your name is called, you come up to the stage this way and leave the stage that way. “It may seem simple, but the only person last year who didn’t practice it was the only person who stumbled as they came on stage.” So I did. And it was at that moment I began to be nervous. Up until the rehearsal I’d simply assumed that I wasn’t going to win, but standing on that stage in front of all those empty chairs I thought there might perhaps be a chance. I talked for a while with designated Plokta accepter Caroline Mullan before running off to my next panel, “Great Cliches in SF and Fantasy.” I was the moderator for this one, which meant I had to hurry to the green room to pick up the table tents before the panel started. Don D’Ammassa, Craig Gardner, and Josepha Sherman all did their parts, but S.M. Stirling, despite being somewhat ill, was the star of the panel, illuminating the discussion of cliches old and new (they do have their uses — especially if you are aware of them and use them to twist the reader’s expectations rather than letting them take control of your story) with plenty of examples from history. I learned a lot from him. When that panel ended it was 3:00 and I hadn’t had a thing to eat since pancakes at 10, so I took myself over to the food court in the adjacent shopping mall and, in a sudden attack of machismo, ordered chicken vindaloo. It was hot enough that it made my stomach a bit upset, a problem I don’t usually have and really didn’t need right before the Hugos. Fortunately I had enough time to dash back to the room and take some Pepto-Bismol before my next panel appearance: “Bad Con Advice for Newbies” with Sandra McDonald, Laurie Mann, and Pricila Olson. This was a really humorous mix of actual congoing advice couched in negative terms (e.g. “if anything goes wrong, yell at the volunteers — they appreciate the feedback”) and convention horror stories. I got a great laugh by saying, in the middle of a comment from the audience, “Don’t interrupt!” — and, a minute later, “Don’t interrupt again!” After that it was time to change for the Hugos. But Lyda Morehouse had offered to sneak me into the Ace party and introduce me to her agent, an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. So I wandered through the habitrails of the shopping mall to the Marriott, where I talked with Lyda, Leah Cutter, and several other keen author-type people as well as the agent, Martha Millard. She said Lyda had said many nice things about me, for which I am thoroughly grateful. But I couldn’t hang around long. I hurried back over the skybridge and through the mall to my room, where I changed into my Nervous Suit. (Whenever I wear this tux, no matter what I’m doing — getting married, attending the Hugos, or Writers of the Future — I feel nervous. It’s gotta be the suit.) Kate wasn’t back yet, having gone to Cambridge for the afternoon, but somehow I managed to dress myself without help (hey, you think French cuffs are easy?) and headed down to the Hugo reception, where I found Paulette Rouselle and Amy Sisson from my Clarion class, along with Amy’s husband Paul and every glittering star in the science fiction firmament. I munched very good hors d’ouvres and drank Kaluha and cream, my tipple of choice when someone else is paying, while talking with authors and editors and agents and big-name fans, all wearing their spiffiest outfits except for Gordon Van Gelder, who was dressed as a “working editor” in a blue-collar shirt. He advised me to think about who I wanted least to win the awards I was up for and imagine they had already won it — after that, whatever happened would have to be an improvement. Fellow Campbell nominee Tim Pratt introduced me to his agent Ginger Clark, and the photographer from Locus made sure to get pictures of everyone. We all trooped down to the auditorium and took our seats in the nominees’ section. Kate and I (she had showed up during the reception, as promised, looking great) wanted to sit next to Jay Lake but wound up in front of him, in a pair of seats in the very front row with an empty space (for a wheelchair) marked out in tape on either side. At one point someone from the committee tried to boot us out of the front row to make room for Fredrik Pohl, but Charlie Brown of Locus told him Fred wasn’t coming. I owe him one. And then… the awards ceremony. Neil Gaiman was a wonderful emcee, but what I remember most is that my hands were cold as ice and I probably did serious damage to Kate as my grip tightened before the winner in each of my categories was announced. Jay was a real mensch; he thanked me in his Campbell acceptance speech, which was well above and beyond, and put his hand on my shoulder during that endless trembling moment before the Short Story Hugo announcement. So how do I feel about losing two Hugos (even though one of them wasn’t really a Hugo)? As I said to many people the next day, “Apart from the bitter, clawing jealousy and rage I’m just fine.” (And when Jay was in earshot I added “…and I’ll get that bastard Lake if it’s the last thing I do.”) But it really is an honor just to be nominated — even though I was just about ready to smack the 50th person who said that to me the next day. And I did come in second on the Campbell, which is nice. All of us Hugo Losers were ushered to the top of the Sheraton, where a suite had been decorated all in white, with faceless white masks hanging from white helium balloons and slide projectors flicking SF quotes on the walls and ceilings. It was, frankly, bizarre. But the food was good, and I had a nice talk with George R. R. Martin and Michael Swanwick among others (hey, wait a minute, he’s a Hugo Winner — who let him in here?). When that party got too crowded we adjourned to the Baen party at the other end of the floor, where we met Ted Cogswell’s daughter and her husband, artist David Mattingly, and looked at 3-D pictures until we fell over about 1am. By the way, here are my notes for my acceptance speech: Pat Murphy – Gordon Van Gelder – David Hartwell – Jonathan Strahan – Candas Jane Dorsey – Jim Van Pelt – James Patrick Kelly – Lyda Morehouse – Clarion West class of 2000 – Writers of the Future class of 2002 – Lucky Lab Rats critique group – and, always and forever, Kate Yule. Sunday we decided on a quick breakfast in the hotel, but when we couldn’t even get someone to seat us in the hotel restaurant we gave that up as a bad idea and settled for a latte and muffin at Starbuck’s instead. There we ran into writer Mary Rosenblum (meeting there with her agent, Martha Millard) and Diane Duane & Peter Morwood, who told us all about raising Hermes scarves for fun and profit. After breakfast I attended a couple of panels, on titles and books that died despite everything, then went off to my Kaffeeklatch. I didn’t have high expectations for this — I’d put all my self-publicity efforts into my reading — and I wasn’t surprised to find that no one had signed up for it. But while I was waiting for the table to be cleaned I met someone I knew — Marcia Lambert and her husband. Marcia and I went to the same university, though in different colleges; we didn’t meet until our 20th reunion when we sat next to each other at dinner. As long as there was an empty table with my name on it, we sat down at it to chat, and after a little while two more people joined us: Tricia Liburd, a new writer from Toronto whom I’d met at Torcon, and a complete stranger. So the kaffeeklatch turned out to be a success after all. In the afternoon I talked with Ctein and with Seattle fan Dave Howell, who used his artist ribbon to get me past the line of people waiting to get into the art show when it reopened after the auction, then gave me a whirlwind tour. If he hadn’t done that I might not have seen the art show at all, because I soon had to run off to my final panel, “The Great Character Swap.” Which was, frankly, lame. But it still had a decent crowd, as did all of my panels, so I shouldn’t complain. After that I met up with Kate and with Tom Brennan, Lyda Morehouse, and techie Hugh Daniel (“How many wires are there in a wireless network?”) for tapas. Tom, from Liverpool, thought at first we were proposing a “topless” restaurant, and Lyda, from St. Paul, had never had tapas before, so it was a bit of an adventure, but the food (tapas, in case you don’t know, is Spanish for “many delicious little appetizer-like fiddly bits”) was excellent, as was the conversation. As we walked back from dinner, Lyda and I quizzed each other and determined that neither of us knew of any cool pro parties. We went to her room, met her roommates, and called several people in search of the cool kids, but it seemed that none of the cool kids were throwing a party this evening. So Kate and I went to the SFWA suite instead. It had been so crowded and noisy the night before that it had been shut down by con security, but on Sunday night (possibly because of the previous night’s fracas, or maybe just because everyone was still at the Masqerade) it was quite pleasant — neither jam-packed nor empty. I talked with fellow Hugo loser James Patrick Kelly about how Jay Lake’s careers and mine have paralleled each other; he compared us to Silverberg and Ellison (without saying which was who) and offered to blurb my collection when I have one. I also talked with Shawna McCarthy again, but this time in her agent hat. Eventually we left, to wander the halls and check out the bid parties, but they were all Too Full (Montreal) or Too Empty (SFF.Net). Carl Fredrick ran into me in the hall and said it was probably for the best that I hadn’t won. Finally we landed in the bar, where we talked with some of the Writers of the Future folks (Pat Rothfuss said he’d recently had his best Internet shopping day ever, buying a strait jacket, a Latin textbook, and eight pounds of granular caffeine) and Tor assistant editor Liz Gorinsky as well as Tall Duane from Seattle’s University Bookstore. But, at last, fatigue set in and with many hugs and fond farewells we toddled off to bed. Monday. Packed. Ran into Clarion grad Diana Sherman in the lobby, otherwise saw no one we knew until we got to the airport, where we found Portland fan Ariel Shattan and her family, Lyda Morehouse, and Lyda’s friend Tim were all on our flight (Lyda and Tim got off at Minneapolis). Kate rented a DVD player for the trip; I slept, and finished reading Heaven by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart. I really should have written something on the flight, but my brain was too full. I also noticed I had a bit of a scratchy throat, which I hoped was just from dry air and too much talking, but by the time we got home there was no doubt I had caught a mild case of Convention Crud, and the next morning it was clear that Kate had too. At least it didn’t get in the way of the con itself. And then Tuesday morning, bright and early, the remodelers came and tore out the kitchen. But that’s a story for another day.

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.