David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Editing continues apace. I’m about 1/3 of the way through on this pass — things are going much faster now that I’ve answered some of the hard questions in the early chapters — with a total word count increase of around 800 words. It’s coming along nicely (though perhaps not as great a change as might have been hoped) and at this rate I should have no trouble finishing by World Fantasy Con. Speaking of which, I got my program schedule for WFC. One panel, “A Maze Demands a Minotaur”, at 8pm Sunday. No reading, alas. I’m starting to get really conflicted about missing Orycon for WFC this year. I had hoped to be able to talk up my newly-sold novel at WFC, but once again I have a major convention and it’s still in limbo. And I’m going to be missing a lot of friends at Orycon… and Kate, too, of course. Waah.

Sorry about that. The day job rose up and swallowed my life. You know that scene in Broadcast News where Holly Hunter the producer is leaning over Bobby the technician, who is editing the tape for tonight’s broadcast, and saying “C’mon Bobby-bobby-bobby-bobby…” because it has to be finished by, like, five seconds from now? That was my life for the last couple of weeks. I was Bobby. I finally heard some more from the editor on my novel. He’s still excited about it, but the publisher is less so, and the editor would like me to make some changes to make it more acceptable to the publisher. I consulted with my agent about it, and he says that if I think the novel would be improved by the suggested changes I should go ahead and do them. Which, since some of the problems the editor has identified are also problems I’ve been fighting the whole way through, I’m going ahead and doing. So I spent the whole weekend revising, making the aliens more alien and increasing the friction between the aliens and the humans. Thanks to Mary, Sara, Nalo, Jim, and Denny for brainstorming assistance. I’ve rewritten the first 50 pages so far, including fairly significant changes in Clarity’s introduction and the funeral scene. Mostly what I’ve been doing is adding exposition — a sentence here, a paragraph there — and rewriting a few scenes to make them more dramatic and conflict-y. The total word count change so far is only about 600 additional words. In other writing news, the January 2006 issue of Asimov’s, including my story “The Last McDougal’s,” has been reviewed at Tangent Online. “Levine paints the future with a clever brush…. His down-to-earth and realistic portrayal of family and the dynamic between two distant generations is refreshing and timely.” Watch for the issue on newsstands or in your mailbox soon.

I haven’t seen a copy yet, but I just learned that Greenberg anthology All Hell Breaking Loose, including my story “The Curse of Beazoel,” is now available at Powell’s and other fine booksellers (it got five stars from Harriet Klausner). Also, issue #26 of Tales of the Unanticipated, including my story “A Book is a Journey,” will arrive fresh from the printer on or about November 4. If you order now, your copy will be in the mail before it cools off.

“Titanium Mike Saves the Day” is now complete at just under 5000 words, and off to my critique group. It’ll be critted next Saturday and I hope to get it in the mail to Analog shortly thereafter. My first new story since March, and my first new solo story since… crikey, last September. Really need to get on the ball. Speaking of which… in response to the recent meme that’s been going around, here are the opening paragraphs of the just-completed “Titanium Mike” and a few other stories in progress (“in progress,” in this case, means that they were completed a year ago or more but are now high on the list to be revised next). Titanium Mike Saves the Day (Hard SF) “Gramma, I’m scared.” The poor girl wasn’t just scared, she was terrified — tense and shivering and speaking in a breathy whisper her helmet mike could barely pick up. Behind a faceplate fogged with rapid breaths, her skin was pale and clammy and her sapphire-blue eyes twitched like small frightened animals. Helen wasn’t exactly calm herself. “Don’t fret, Sophie,” she told the child, but her own voice trembled. She muted her mike and took a deep breath to settle herself, the sound echoing loud in her helmet until she felt under control. “We’ll be safe here.” For a while, anyway, she added silently. The shelter’s single dim light was already beginning to fade. Moonlight on the Carpet (Horror) “Vrrm, vrrm,” said Liam as he ran the little wooden car across the Persian carpet. It was summer, a hot humid Midwest summer, and there was nothing else to do. Daddy and Mommy were away again. The blue and gold pattern, a thing the shape of the big black card at the top of the poker deck, could be Laclede Island where they went every month at this time. Liam ran his car along the causeway — a long curve of blue and red and black, and through the stripe of bright white moonlight that crossed it. The little golden hairs on the back of his hand glinted in the light. Across the causeway and along the bay, the little car sped. Liam imagined himself in the back, leaning his chin on the back of the seat, peering out at the streetlights that flicked past one after the other. But above them all would loom the moon, the full moon, outshining them all. Mommy and Daddy never took him out to the island when the moon was full. Interview with the Photographer (Hard SF) We called ourselves the Trillion even then, though in those days it was a proud and overweening boast, not the vast understatement it is today. Those were heady days, early days, days of energy and promise when anything could, and did, happen on a daily basis. In those days a person could say something like “I think we ought to take Jupiter apart and build something useful out if it” and be greeted with cheers. How young we were! Let me tell you a thing to impress upon you how different those times were from these: I was given five names when I was born. It was a formality even then, of course; the UniTag was already two hundred years old, but my parents still held to the old ways and tried their best to give their child a unique spoken name. They were old-fashioned with my genome, too, which definitely explains my stodgily symmetrical appearance and probably explains why I have been too stubborn to change it. But I’m slave enough to fashion to go by just Jonquil now. Night Mail (Fantasy) Nate Richmond loved estate sales. The mundane thrill of searching for bargains, with the slight ironic tang of a second-hand encounter with death, had always been exactly what he needed to distract himself from his cares. Besides, they were cheap entertainment. So on a crisp sunny Friday afternoon in May, when Nate’s cares were particularly big and his wallet equally empty, he strolled down 43rd from his apartment on Belmont to see what he might find. Nate was a thin young man of 23, with white, white skin and black, black hair. His chunky shoes and his pants and his denim jacket were also black, as was his T-shirt, which bore the name and logo of the industrial band Bauhaus. The only article of clothing that wasn’t black was his socks, red cotton decorated with white skulls. Around his neck he wore a small silver ankh. The decedent at this particular estate sale had been a woman with size 8 feet and extremely practical taste in shoes and clothing. Emerging from her closet, Nate found his way blocked by two large, burly men, the proprietors of the sale, who were disassembling the mahogany sleigh bed that dominated the bedroom. As they levered the box spring out of the bed frame, Nate noticed a rectangle in the thick dust underneath. “What’s that?” he said. The older of the two men bent down and picked it up. “Looks like an old desk set.” It was a large flat rectangle of embossed leather with brass hinges and fittings, maybe twenty-four by sixteen inches, wrapped all around with yards of yellowed cellophane tape. In the Joy Business (Fantasy) “Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” — C. S. Lewis Monday. The angel Umiel was trying to finish writing a Customer Research Report when her screen beeped. Again. It was an e-pistle from Ganiel, her supervisor: would she please update her monthly budget figures? Today? By 11:00? Umiel looked at the clock in the corner of her Illuminated User Interface — the big hand was on the X and the little hand was on the IV — and sighed. She considered asking Ganiel if this budget thing were absolutely necessary, but she knew what the answer would be: all priorities are top priorities, it’s your job to manage your own time, et cetera, et cetera, et blah blah blah. Ganiel would probably quote at her from The One Second Manager, or whatever management book she was proselytizing today. She set the report aside and opened the icon for the budget. It took her ten minutes to find her department — they’d “rationalized” the budget spreadsheet again — and properly record her paltry expenditures for the month. Then, when she returned to her own report, she discovered she’d lost her train of thought. The morning was not going well. She decided to take an ambrosia break.

Well, on top of the F&SF rejection the other day I got my first review of “The Ecology of Faerie”, by Dave Truesdale in Tangent Online, and it could be summed up as “Eh.” Usually I can get at least one quotable phrase out of any review, but this one… not so much. Sigh. But! I did finish the first draft of “Titanium Mike Saves the Day.” Okay, I’m not at all sure this one works — in fact, I’m not certain it’s really a story. But it’s done, at about 5000 words, and I’ll send it to my crit group after a quick editing pass (probably Tuesday, since we have symphony tickets tomorrow). Then on to the next. I really need to build up my inventory, which has fallen to just a few stories. Writing is hard. But I persist.

Gordon Van Gelder didn’t buy the rewrite of the Bigfoot story. No “alas” in the rejection, but he also included his assistant editor JJA’s comments and they started with “Eh.” Which if you ask me is worse than an Alas. Oh well, it goes off to scifi.com tomorrow.

Took the train to work today, saving gas and getting a little time for writing. Added about 300 words to the space opera folk tale story and edited a bunch of the existing words. Also did some critiques. And as for that reopened bug? Turned out the submitter wanted to talk to me because the problem was really subtle. It’s a mental model problem — the user has a consistent mental model of what the software is doing, but it doesn’t match the software’s behavior. It would be easy to say that the user is wrong, but others also have the same incorrect mental model, which means that the software isn’t doing enough to educate the user about how the system actually works. I need to find a way to gently persuade the user to think about the problem in the right way. Not yet sure how to do this, but I’m accepting the reopened bug as an indication that something needs to be done. Tomorrow: off to Foolscap!

After a somewhat annoying day at work, when just before leaving I discovered that a UI bug I’d closed as “as designed” had just been reopened without any explanation as to why, I settled down for some writing. 750 new words on the space opera folklore story, and the second of four scenes is done. I don’t know if it’s really working as a story, but I’m happy with the amount of emotion I’m managing to pack into the plot part of each of those little scenes. I’m really relying the reader’s knowledge of one of the Standard SF Universes to build up the situation in each with just a few words — if they aren’t already familiar with Niven and Heinlein I’ll probably lose them. Well, I’ll just finish the story and let my crit group tell me whether or not it works. Still no word on the novel. I called my agent and asked him to nudge the editor for me. I fear that no news is bad news, but I strive to be patient and optimistic…

About 675 words tonight on the space opera folklore story. That’s most of the first real scene. Terribly old-fashioned, but the interleaved bits of future folklore will give it a postmodern twist. I’m sending it to Analog first, anyway. I am concerned that the story’s going to be too long… around 4000 words at this rate. I’d be happier if it were much shorter. Well, once it’s done I can try to cut it.

Just a couple of minor bits that I should have posted earlier… One is that we had a successful yard sale last Saturday. It did start raining at about 11:00, but I had bought some tarps at the last minute and we quickly got everything covered. By 12:00 it became apparent that the rain (never more than a light drizzle, but still more than you’d want on your books) wasn’t going to let up, so we moved everything onto the porch. The amazing thing is that we sold enough between 9:00 and 11:00 that we could fit all the rest on the porch! By the time we were done, we’d gotten rid of between 2/3 and 3/4 of the stuff we’d started with (by volume) and taken in about $220 — a lot better than I’d been anticipating, frankly. It was work, but fun. The best part was seeing people happy to walk away with our unwanted stuff — a boon to both parties. Now we have about eight boxes of unsold stuff to donate to various charities. The other is that on Tuesday I was the guest of honor at the SF book group that meets at Powell’s in Beaverton. The book under discussion was Hartwell and Cramer’s Year’s Best Fantasy 5, including my story “Charlie the Purple Giraffe” among other fine stories. We talked about the craft and practice of writing as well as about the book itself, and I got to talk with the SF buyer, who invited me to contact him when and if I have a novel and want to do a signing. Also, I see that I now have 181 people reading my LiveJournal. Goodness. Hello, people!