David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

At Orycon I thought I was having a pretty good time, though I recognized that the con was passing in a blur because I was so heavily programmed. Seeing other people’s con reports afterwards, though, I realize now that I missed an awful lot of people… in fact, I feel like I practically missed the con. There were many people there I saw only in passing or not at all, I attended only two program items that I wasn’t on, and I had only two meals away from the con hotel: I walked down to the farmers’ market by myself for a quick lunch, and we had a very nice French dinner with friends from Seattle. Every other meal was either eaten in the noisy sports bar or snagged from Hospitality or the Green Room, because I didn’t have time for anything else.

Next time I will try to remember that panels are not my only Orycon program commitment. I was only on 6 panels, but in addition to that I had a reading, a writers’ workshop, auctioneering the Sue Petrey Auction, and Opening Ceremonies (which included a runthrough beforehand and the Endeavour Award ceremony). Jay Lake phoned while I was at dinner on Saturday to ask if I could help out with Whose Line, but I begged exhaustion. Orycon is my hometown con and I feel I owe them a lot, but next year I think I need to tell Programming to schedule me on only one panel-qua-panel per day to leave room for all that other stuff.

At the end of the con Kate was very low in energy and we left early. Our friend Lise is staying with us for a few days post-con, and we took her around for some touristing in Portland today, but Kate was pretty draggy all morning and after we got back from lunch she threw up and went to bed. She’s been sick as a dog all afternoon, poor thing. I hope that our Thanksgiving plans will not be affected, but she’s really out of it. Neither Lise nor I is affected, at least not yet.

Well, it’s been about two weeks since my last substantive entry, and, as is usually the case, when I’m not blogging, I’m also not writing. I did write a few hundred words on a short story last Tuesday at the coffee shop, but I don’t really feel like it’s going anywhere and I haven’t been motivated to continue it. I’ve been kind of mopy, downright depressed in fact on a couple of days, and beating myself up for being a failed one-shot-wonder has-been hack.

Today I reminded myself that I completed and submitted a novel — only my second — at the end of October. Perhaps this is post-novel ennui. In any case, I deserve a couple of weeks off, dammit.

It’s not like I’ve been idle in those two weeks, either. We went to Calgary for the World Fantasy Convention, which was very enjoyable. Good people, good conversations, good dinners. Calgary felt exactly like a cross between Dallas and Minneapolis: oil companies, friendly humble people, an emphasis on beef in the cuisine, and skywalks. I didn’t make any big deals during the con, but I did talk with some editors and I had a good time hanging out with my writing peers.

Something about the geology of Alberta is conducive to fossils: in addition to the oil and coal industries, it is home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, one of the finest paleontology museums anywhere. We rented a car on Thursday before the convention and took off for a day trip there with Ellen Klages, who made an excellent traveling companion. The Tyrrell features a very impressive collection of fossils, including no fewer than three T. Rexes, a whole herd of Ceratopsidae (e.g. Triceratops), two Plesiosaurs, and numerous other complete skeletons, as well as an excellent exhibit on the deeply weird creatures of the Burgess Shale (which is nearby in British Columbia).

One of the highlights of the museum was the quirky, informative videos starring this guy who seemed vaguely familiar (perhaps he was a member of Second City) and kept falling victim to amusing natural disasters. There was also one skeleton in the first major hall that looked to me exactly like the Utahraptor in panel 4 of Dinosaur Comics, but not one person to whom I noted this resemblance had ever even heard of the webcomic. Philistines.

The little town of Drumheller, where the museum is located, knows a good thing when it sees it and has gone completely dinosaur-mad. Every possible thing in town that could be decorated with dinosaurs is, and there are fossil stores galore (had to pass up the $40,000 Triceratops skull, alas, even though that’s only about $32,000 in US dollars). There were also a few cavemen in the decor, but I’ll try not to hold that against the good people of Drumheller.

Coming back from the convention we were surprised to find that our seats for the flight to Vancouver (row 13, seats A and B) were at the very front of the plane, facing backwards. Not only did they not recline; not only was there no tray table, no window, no underseat storage, and no overhead storage; not only did we have to play footsie with the people in the next row, but we spent the whole flight feeling like EVERYONE ELSE IN THE PLANE WAS LOOKING AT US! Exceptionally weird.

Upon return from the con I found two acceptances in my mailbox: one from Esther Friesner, for a humorous YA werewolf story in anthology Strip Mauled, and one from Cecilia Tan, for a gender-bending humorous erotica short-short in anthology Up for Grabs. Yay! Also a rejection from Asimov’s, to keep me humble. That story really wants to go to Strange Horizons next, but they are currently on hiatus, so I decided to hang onto it until January. The annoying thing is that if I’d been home when the rejection letter arrived I would have gotten the story to SH just before they closed for the year.

Also in the mailbox: the November Locus, with Gary K. Wolfe’s lengthy review of Space Magic. “An interesting portrait of a new writer who’s either impressively versatile, or still in the process of trying to define himself, or maybe just dealing with attention deficit issues.” I’d tell you what I think about this, but… ooh, look! A leaf!

The weekend after WFC was Wordstock, “Portland’s Festival of the Book.” This is the fourth or fifth year of the festival, but the first time I’ve participated as an author instad of just an attendee. Jay Lake and I had 25-30 people for our joint reading, and I had an absolute blast. They treat the authors really, really well.

The day before yesterday I did something I’ve been meaning to do since I retired, a little over a year ago: I went out and bought a new digital flatscreen TV (not enormous, only 26″) and a TiVo. I had some difficulty getting the TiVo to play nice with my WiFi network, but now it’s up and running. I’m impressed with the UI, as expected, though it’s a little on the busy and flashy side. And I was surprised to find that the new TV, hooked up to the same old analog cable, picks up nearly 60 additional digital channels, some in impressive HD. Too bad the TiVo HD can’t see them (at least, not without additional hardware which I haven’t yet sprung for). I have not yet found anywhere a comprehensive list of those channels, which include both the expected digital versions of Portland’s over-the-air channels and dozens of unidentified others.

Today’s newspaper included a couple of sentences from my letter to President Obama, which I’d cc’d to the paper. Unfortunately they were misattributed to one “David Levin,” but I’ll take what I can get.

This coming weekend is OryCon. Our friend Lise from New York will be staying with us for a couple of days before and after the con (the bathroom remodel was completed in time, huzzah!) and my programming schedule looks like this:

Friday:

• 1:00-2:00pm: First Novels: the road to the editor’s desk in Eugene with Mary Rosenblum, J.C. Hendee, and Mike Shepherd-Moscoe
• 4:00-5:00pm: Social Networking sites: the good, the bad, and the really, really ugly in Salon G with Petrea Mitchell, John Hedtke, and Phyllis Irene Radford
• 7:00-8:00pm: Opening Ceremonies in Salon E with Ginjer Buchanan, Harry Turtledove, Jeff Fennel, and Cecilia Eng
• 10:00-11:00pm: Erotica readings in Eugene with Edward Morris and Theresa Reed

Saturday:

• 10:00-11:00am: Ask Dr. Genius: Ad-Lib Answers to Audience Questions in Salmon with Alan Olsen, Rick Lindsley, Louise Owen, and Jim Kling
• 11:00am-12:00pm: Writers’ Workshop with Mary Rosenblum (not open to the public)
• 12:30-1:00pm: Reading in Salem
• 2:00-3:00pm: Discovering new planets — what are they like? Can we even tell? in Medford with Melinda Hutson, G. David Nordley, and Marilyn Holt
• 4:30-6:00pm: Sue Petrey Auction in Mt. Hood with Tom Whitmore

Sunday:

• 11:00am-12:00pm: A look back at 30 years of OryCon history in Eugene with Patty Wells, Debbie Cross, and Paul Wrigley

Hope to see some of you there!

Spent the evening among friends. We cooked a quiche, which was well received. One guy in the corner was filling out his ballot during the party and rushed out right before the deadline; I believe he did make it to the ballot collection location in time. When the election was called (we got the news from Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008) there was a big group hug and singing of patriotic songs. Then the champagne and single-malt came out.

I’ve been reading 538 obsessively for the last few months, so the election went pretty much as I’d been expecting it to. Which means that my main emotional note at the moment is a profound relief rather than anything more in the joy spectrum. But still…

Okay, let me give you an analogy, because that’s what I do. Right after I retired, I got rid of the last PC in the house, replacing it with a shiny new iMac. Since then my overall stress levels have been down noticeably, because I can ignore all the news about Windows patches, Windows bugs, and Windows viruses. I suspect the next year will see an even more noticeable reduction in stress, because I will no longer have to worry about what that asshole in the White House is going to do to us next.

It won’t be perfect. Obama will disappoint us in some areas. But all in all, it’s going to be much, much better than it has been.

Thank you, America.

California? Not so much.

Word count: 120224 | Since last entry: -435

My second novel, The Dark Behind the Stars, is complete and in the mail to my agent. We’ll talk soon about where he’s going to send it first. The -435 words shown above is a bit of a surprise; I’d thought it was up a bit since my last blog post. Whatever. It’s been see-sawing around 120,000 words for the last week, because even as I’ve been adding text (mostly deepening Rachel and the Anvilites’ religious lives) I’ve been continuing to try to tighten it. In many cases I was able to resolve a problem simply by cutting a paragraph or two. (For example: The Anvilites’ concept of the Devil was inconsistent — now it’s not mentioned at all.)

One of the key open issues was exactly what Rachel thinks has happened in the climax. Did she kill God, or just a powerful alien being? I had left that unspecified in previous drafts… I think I was hoping the reader would draw their own conclusions, but I see now that this was a cheat. But I now know Rachel well enough that for her to see what I see happening in the climax (yes, she killed God) is not in character for her. So I let her reach a different conclusion than I would have in her place (she killed a powerful alien being, who may or may not have been the God of the Old Testament, but there is still an ineffable something… still more to the universe than that which can be observed and measured.)

One other change is that a main character now dies onstage instead of off. The weird thing for me is that, even though I jumped straight to that page and just dove in and wrote it without even reading the scenes leading up to it, I still cried (a little). Shows how important it was to show the character’s death, I think.

I also spent a good hunk of the last two days trimming the 14-page synopsis down to 7 pages. I think it’s too choppy now, and leaves out too much, but I’m assured the previous one had too much detail. I accept that I am not yet good at synopses, and move on.

I’m not sure I agree with all of the comments I decided to do something about, but almost all of them came from more than one person so I think they were worth doing. I also ignored a lot of other comments. I did the best I could with some other comments, but don’t feel I’ve completely addressed them. I think the book is stronger than it was, but it’s still imperfect — abandoned rather than completed, as they say — but what the hell, it’s done.

Also done: the bathroom is now effectively complete. We’ve hung the shower curtain and everything. There’s still a few minor details, which will probably be taken care of while we’re in Calgary, but mostly now the ball is in our court (we need new bath mats, curtains, trash can, etc.). When we return from World Fantasy Con I plan to get the house professionally cleaned to get rid of lingering dust.

And finally: we voted. Oregon is 100% vote by mail, and I took my ballot to a voting party at a friend’s. We didn’t discuss the partisan races (just about all of them are no-brainers anyway)… the big discussions were around ballot measures, such as the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t Measure 57. No consensus on that one, but at least I feel I’ve made an informed choice.

Heading to Calgary tomorrow for WFC. You may or may not hear from me before I return. If not, Happy Halloween, and don’t forget to vote!

Word count: 120659 | Since last entry: -91

I think the reason this revision process is going so slowly and painfully is that I am trying to do something (specifically: get into the head of a religious character) that I know I tried to do in the first draft, and tried harder to do in the second draft, but the comments I received told me it wasn’t working, so I’m trying again, but I don’t really believe I can do it. This is the biggest problem the book has (several reviewers have commented on it) and I’m really worried about it sinking the book’s chances.

Wherever possible, I am trying to address specific comments either by removing the problem passage or rewriting it so that it is shorter as well as addressing the issue, which is why the word count keeps going down. This is good, but I don’t feel I’m being very productive.

The bathroom, though, is very close to complete. Today was a bit of a goat-rope, as the electronic exhaust fan timer the electrician had ordered when the first one didn’t work wouldn’t work either. (The first one required a neutral wire, and the second one didn’t but turned out to be for incandescent bulbs only.) We looked into a number of possibilities, including running an additional neutral wire (the relevant wall isn’t accessible from above or below) and putting the timer on a different wall (kind of a pain now, since the paint and stuff is already done), and finally settled for an old-style spring-wound timer which is not as pretty as the electronic one but works. All of this while the painter was trying to paint the trim in the same tiny bathroom.

Just a little more work to do — sealing the tile, painting trim in the hall, attaching door and window hardware, etc. — and we get our house back. This may or may not happen before we leave for World Fantasy Con (where, by the way, I am currently scheduled for a reading at noon on Saturday with Garth Nix) but should definitely be done by the time we get back.

Word count: 120750 | Since last entry: 20

Over the weekend I read Brother Astronomer, which was a lot of fun and gave me some good insights into the thought processes of a person of both science and faith. I really wish I’d read it with highlighter in hand, though, because I may not be able to find the best passages again.

At the coffee shop yesterday I had a lot of trouble getting started on incorporating what I’d learned from my reading into the book. I finally decided to write a stand-alone scene, about 500 words in a separate file, introducing Rachel and the Anvilites by showing her interacting with a non-Anvilite while loading the ship. The exercise helped me clarify my thoughts (much of this information is already in the book, though it’s scattered), but the scene was boring, static… it would be a much weaker opening than the one I have. That’s okay, I wrote it as an exercise anyway. (I know a lot of writers do this sort of thing all the time, but I generally don’t write text I intend to discard.)

Tonight I was able to take about half those words and integrate them into the existing opening. The overall word count only went up by 20 because I added the new material as a replacement for existing text, and also cut back the opening to speed it up, reduce false tension, and eliminate unnecessary detail. It’s funny how a scene I went through and cut just the other week can give up another couple hundred words of cuts on a second look.

I hope that this addition will address the comments I had about wanting to know Rachel’s backstory and the Anvilites’ beliefs in the opening chapters, though I know it won’t address the issue that the Anvilites’ theology isn’t well enough worked out or expressed. That will take more work, touching many chapters.

Bathroom is coming along well. You know how the first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% of the job also takes 90% of the time? We’re into that last 90%. Lots of fiddly little details, like installing the light fixtures and towel racks, and painting the trim. The new toilet is in, along with the sink and tub fixtures, though I’m holding off on showering in the new bathroom until the tile is sealed (next Monday). The tub got badly stained during its months in the back yard (the crap that got dumped in it by various workmen after it was installed can’t have helped), but an entire can of Zud and a whole lot of elbow grease have helped enormously. More scrubbing tomorrow.

Word count: 120730 | Since last entry: -281

Usually if I’m not blogging I’m not writing, and if I’m not writing I’m not blogging. In this case I have been writing, an hour a day or so, but the bathroom remodel and the election have been taking up too much of my mental energy to leave room for blogging. It’s gotten so stressful around here, with strangers banging about and making strange smells and all, that listening to the public radio pledge break was actually relaxing by comparison.

The above word count change represents a week’s worth of editing, incorporating comments from my agent and other first readers. Where possible I have been trying to address comments by taking words out rather than adding new ones, but I did substantially beef up a couple of scenes.

I hate editing, because it’s like trying to make a change in an assembled jigsaw puzzle. Even if all you want to do is change the color of one piece, you might also have to change several of the pieces nearby, and even other pieces halfway across the puzzle that might be related. Changing the shape or position of a piece is even worse. Everything is connected, on a word and sentence and paragraph and chapter level.

The big editing comments yet to do have to do with clarifying, deepening, and strengthening Rachel’s backstory and motivations, and the Anvilites’ theology, and I don’t really know what I can do about them. The problem is that I don’t know Rachel’s backstory and I don’t really understand the Anvilites’ theology. What the heck was I doing having my main character be a member of a contemplative religious community? I know nothing about that mindset. (I know how I got in this mess, actually. In my original concept of the story the religious people were the villains. But then one of them turned into a protagonist…) I will try reading Brother Astronomer this weekend to see if I can glean any ideas from it.

Despite frustration with the bathroom remodeling process, progress continues and it is supposed to be all done in less than two weeks. The tile work took almost a week longer than originally estimated, but it is almost complete now and looks phenomenal (see below). The lavatory is also very nice, a serene expanse of cool white that nicely offsets the busy detail of the tile. We had a lot of trouble finding a wall color that we liked; after buying three different sample quarts and being unsatisfied with all of them we decided that the green color of the sheetrock, of all things, was what we wanted. Hey, we knew it looked good.

I had a pretty good mail day on Tuesday: a countersigned contract for one short story, a check for another, and a check for audio rights (so look for “Sun Magic, Earth Magic” in audio format from Beneath Ceaseless Skies at some point in the future). Also a 41-day rejection from F&SF, alas.

Speaking of BCS, they have a message board where people can discuss my story. One of the readers ranted (his word) that it “relied too heavily on symbolism,” which I find baffling, but I’m sitting on my hands, not wanting to get into an argument. Now that the story has been published, it belongs to the readers.

Finally, as you may know, the website SF Signal has a regular feature called “Mind Meld” where they ask several SF writers to contribute brief essays on a single topic. I was honored to be asked to participate in the latest Mind Meld: “Which authors and books have most influenced your writing?”. Other participants include Joe Haldeman, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Dean Wesley Smith. Check it out!

Word count: 121011 | Since last entry: -562

I’ve finished with this pass through the manuscript. My attempt to cut 30,000 words has failed; I cut a grand total of 8162 words, and in the next pass I suspect the word count will go back up a bit as I add backstory and a few other things requested by my beta readers. But I believe all those words are needed. If a publisher asks for cuts, I’ll just ask them what they want cut. At least it is tighter than it was.

Work on the bathroom continues apace. The tile has been laid on all the walls up to and including the mosaic band all the way around, and a little bit of it includes the chair rail above that. It looks gorgeous, and will look even better once it’s been grouted. There’s still a couple of days’ work to do on that. This weekend we will pick out cabinet knobs and the paint color for the walls.

In other news: my story “Sun Magic, Earth Magic” is now available for everyone to read for free as part of issue #1 of the new webzine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The direct URL is http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/story.php?s=9. There’s also a discussion forum if you want to talk about the story with other readers.

Also, the schedule for Wordstock, “Portland’s Festival of the Book,” has been posted. Looks like Jay Lake and I will be appearing together on the Community of Writers Portland Stage at 10:30am on Sunday, November 9. I hope to see a bunch of you Portland people there.

Looking a little further forward, there’ll be a group signing by a number of local SF and Fantasy authors at Powell’s at Cedar Hills Crossing on November 20. Mark your calendars; more details will be provided later.

Word count: 121573 | Since last entry: -216

The bathroom remodel is driving me insane.

The cabinets were installed today, and we are not completely happy with them. The linen cabinet was over four inches too tall; we were able to have enough cut out of the middle that it fits under the ceiling, but some drawers are higher than we’d like. I think we’ll live with that. The medicine chest is too shallow and has no shelves and no mirror; one of the drawers in the vanity opens on the wrong side; some of the drawer fronts don’t fit properly. Those will have to be addressed. The cabinet installer, who is Ukranian like the tile guy, was heard to mutter something in Ukranian that included the English words “professionalism” and “idiots.” Also, part of the wallboard had to be torn down to move a backing block that was misplaced (it was supposed to be fixed before the wallboard was put up) and there are some chips in the tub’s enamel that I don’t think were there before.

We should not have to hover over the workmen to make sure that everything is built and installed according to the approved plans, nor to ask them to not damage the items that have already been installed. Grr.

But the sink is in and looks gorgeous. The tile floor is very nice (though we now wish we’d laid out the design rotated 90° from what we did). And the toilet is back, at least for tonight… though there’s no door on the bathroom. Still an improvement from the outhouse we’ve been using since Monday.

Also today we met with our financial guy. Our financial plan anticipated that there would be a couple of downturns during our retirement, but the size and timing of this one are unfortunate. However, unless things get much worse than he anticipates, I should not have to go back to work.

I put in an hour of work on the novel tonight but was not able to cut more than a couple hundred words. These climactic chapters are pretty tight (or else I’m just too much in love with them). There is one scene that I might be able to go back and cut if I really need to, maybe a thousand words’ worth, but it does contain some useful information and character moments I don’t want to lose. At this point I’m resigning myself to a final word count around 120,000.

I wish there was something we could do to relax that didn’t involve calories.

Word count: 121789 | Since last entry: -597

Spent about three hours at the coffee shop this afternoon, mostly reading over my own deathless prose. Unfortunately, all of it seems necessary, and I only managed to cut a couple of paragraphs here and there for a total of about 600 anti-words. Also, it sucks. (How can it suck so badly when every individual sentence is so brilliant? Ah, the gymnastics of the writer’s mind…) Nonetheless, I will soldier on and complete these cuts, followed by a few brief additions and tweaks to address some review comments, followed by another stab at the synopsis. With luck I will have a completed package ready to be elevator-pitched at World Fantasy Convention over Halloween weekend.

No, “elevator-pitched” does not mean “pitched down an elevator shaft.”

Vasily the tile guy has completed the floor and is now working on the wall tile, starting with the baseboard. The bathroom is looking better and better even as the bathroom project drives our daily lives farther and farther from sanity. Currently we are using a porta-potty in the front yard (and isn’t that fun when the need arises in the middle of a rainy night?), the clothes washer is not usable until the cement in the basement sets, and the living room is half-full of boxes of tile and the just-delivered cabinets (which are beautiful, but stink of fresh stain).

Did not watch the debate. Frantically refreshed various political websites for reactions and post-debate polls, though. Cautiously optimistic.