Contract signed

I received and signed the contract for The Stonecutter, which will be appearing in Electric Velocipede! John Klima is really a great editor to work with. He’s got a good eye for the detail, and the changes he requests, while minimal, are always absolutely essential. Or so they seem to me once he’s found them. Here are my thoughts upon receiving them:

1. My story is completely broken! WAAAAAAH!
2. Wait, I can fix these with tiny line edits! My story is made of awesome! YAAAAAAY!

I had these thoughts more or less simultaneously.

I’m reading The City and The City by China Miéville

Actually, technically speaking I’m stealing floatingtide‘s new copy of the book and reading it in furtive dribbles when she’s not paying attention. The basic premise is.. frankly, it’s too weird and wonderful for me to spoil it for you here. Go read it. You owe it to yourself.

I’m writing again

Betcha didn’t know I stopped. Well, I didn’t really completely stop, but I wasn’t writing at my usual levels for a while. Life got too busy and hectic, so I gave myself a brief vacation to Get Shit Done. And the Shit? It got Done. Mostly. We do still need a new bathtub and a new car (no, the two problems are not related in any way).

New car?

Yeah. Our old one needs a couple thousand dollars of work on it. It’s a great BMW, and whoever buys it off us and puts in the work will have a seriously kick-ass car, but we don’t need a kick-ass car. We actually need a nice and simple family vehicle, which we can buy for the cost it would take to refurbish our ridiculously over-powered street racer disguised as a sedan.

New bathtub?

Tree roots in the walls. Let me say that again: Tree roots. In the walls.

That’s what we found growing in the gap between our old tub and the plaster. We had to rip the tub and a good chunk of the walls out. We decided we want to replace the tub with a nice claw-foot while we’ve got the opportunity, but it’s a big pain in the ass, and we had to wait for a long time while the roots in our goddamn walls dried up and died. Well, they’re dead now, so I guess it’s time to get crackin’.

Exercise

Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back to your man. Now back to me. I… am not Isaiah Mustafa. But I have been working out, and it’s beginning to show. I bicycle a lot, which keeps me more-or-less trim, but I was beginning to have lower back pains again, which only go away when I’m getting enough upper body exercise. Being tall is a mixed bag. Sure, I can reach the top shelf, change the ceiling light, and annoy the guys behind me in the movie theater when I sit up straight, but I also have the odd back and neck trouble, and I probably hit my head more than is healthy, strictly speaking.

In any event, I’ve been hitting the gym again. If enough people request it, I will post photographic evidence thereof. Perhaps I will wear a towel, like Mr. “Old Spice Guy” Mustafa.

Baby due December 19th

I have mentioned I’m going to be a dad again, haven’t I? Well, I am. We’re expecting our second daughter in December. Now you know, internets!

OK, I think that’s about it for now. If my real life is too boring, feel free to provide some additional details of your own devising in the comments below.

But I had something of an epiphany. I read a transcript of an interesting Twitter conversation on science and science fiction, and found myself wishing I could have chimed in. Because gosh darn it, I had some things to say on the subject. I wanted to be part of the conversation.

And that’s when it dawned on me. Twitter isn’t a good blogging tool, but it’s an excellent conversation tool. Twitter status updates can be treated as miniature Facebook updates, and for the ADHD set, I’m sure that’s all they are. But those hash tags (#) can turn Twitter into public chat rooms anyone can pop in and contribute to. You’re not going to get the depth of discussion you’ll find from friends on, say, LiveJournal, but you will get morsels from people who are interested in the same topic, friends or not. If you tag a post with #avocadomilkshakes, anyone else in the world who shares your disgusting gustatory interests can chime in.

Of course, this leads me to a new dilemma. I now have a WordPress blog, a LiveJournal account, a Google Buzz account, a Facebook account, and now a Twitter account. It’s getting cumbersome and unwieldy to manage.

After putting some thought into it, I’d like a client or system that allows me to do as follows:

• Blog: I would like to add posts to my blog. Duh.
• LiveJournal: I would like to synchronize my blog with LiveJournal.
• Google Buzz: I’d like to synchronize my blog here as well, but also want to use it to directly post shorter thoughts and status updates that aren’t really suitable for the blog, but are too long for Twitter.
• Facebook: I’d like my blog to show up as Facebook “notes,” and standalone Google Buzz posts to show up as status updates. What I don’t want is Buzz posts that were created from my blog to show up, which would be unnecessary duplication.
• Twitter: I want to use this primarily for conversations. It would also be nice to selectively update my Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook statuses simultaneously if I have something short I want to post in all three places.
• LiveJournal/Facebook/Buzz: It would also be nice to be able to make longer posts for in-depth discussions that don’t show up on my primary blog but do show up in these three locations simultaneously.

Has anyone figured out a system to get all this working with a minimum of fuss? My ideal solution would be a single client application I could write my content in, with checkboxes for where I want it to go. Right now I’m using a hodgepodge of WordPress plugins, Facebook notes syndication, and selective Buzz updates.

For extra credit, it would be very, very nice to be able to synchronize all my friends’ various feeds too, and read them in one feed that de-duplicates the content, so I don’t have to jump around from site to site. But I’m sure that’s a pipe-dream.

After all, scientists have already demonstrated that simply by reducing the speed at which DNA structures called “telomeres” shorten, they can make worms live 20% longer. Studies are already under way on telomerase, and other gene therapies that at least theoretically counteract some or all of the effects of aging.

Of course, there are other paths life-extension technology could take. We don’t even have to wait for the day limb replacements get better than the real thing; that day is already here.

I wanted to share these thoughts with someone. I considered using my portable network terminal to engage in instantaneous verbal communication with someone — that someone could very well be anywhere on the planet — but decided against it. Such conversations are a little rude in close quarters such as the conveyance I was sitting in.

So I kept it to myself. However, the towering heights our collective technological genius has reached left me feeling dizzy all day, from the moment I used a magnetized strip embedded in polyvinyl chloride acetate (a credit card) to purchase breakfast, to the moment I decided to use a large-screen portable network terminal to write this essay and simultaneously share it across half a dozen different virtual network locales (websites).

What would our burgeoning sciences look like to species on other worlds (some of which we can now take actual photographs of)? When I visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories, I met a man whose job description is basically “drives robots on Mars with his phone.” We must appear to be getting fairly high-tech to the little green men now, if they’re out there.

In some ways, this is something of a bittersweet thought. The science fiction I read when I was a child has been outstripped by a reality I couldn’t have imagined back then. And the pace of improvement keeps increasing. Sometimes I’m afraid any story I write will be obsolete by the time it’s published. Writing fantasy has frankly become easier, because no scientific advancement will ever render stories set in magical worlds any less realistic than they already are.

But… We’ve won. And by “we,” I mean science fiction writers. We’ve dreamed of futures filled with spaceships and robots and computers and everything else for so long, those dreams have affected the reality we live in. Scientists and inventors look to science fiction for inspiration, and find ways to turn it into science fact.

We live in The Future, and it’s goddamn awesome.

Namely, it loses its signal when you hold it.

Now, Apple has responded in several different ways to these reports:

• This problem doesn’t exist. The iPhone 4 is not plagued with any signal degradation from holding the phone.
• Even if the problem is real, other phones have it, too. All your past experiences to the contrary, holding any cellphone results in a loss of signal.
• But the iPhone doesn’t have a signal problem, even though we just said that all cellphones do.
• And this problem (which, again, doesn’t exist) only happens when you hold your phone wrong.

To normal human beings, this sounds like a defect, whatever Apple says. And it’s especially bizarre for Apple to tell customers who suffer signal degradation that they’re holding the phone incorrectly, when Apple’s advertisements and demonstrations of the iPhone 4 all depict it being held the “wrong” way (otherwise known as the way someone who holds phones in his left hand, like me, would hold a phone). Engadget has a helpful pictorial.

But to my astonishment, there are Apple customers defending the phone and even arguing that this isn’t a problem. People who agree with Apple on the topic, regardless of their own past experiences with other cellphones that — let’s be honest — can in fact be held without dropping calls. This knee-jerk defense of what seems like a serious design flaw has left me scratching my head.

Here are the basics of the problem: The iPhone 4′s antennas are integrated into the body of the phone as thin metallic strips on either side, one for the GSM connection and one for wifi and bluetooth. The rest of the edge is also metallic, but separated from the antennas by thin rubber buffers. When someone holds the phone in the normal phone-holding position with their right hand, there’s no problem. But a left-handed grip bridges the gap between the antenna on the left and the other bit of metal at the bottom. For a lot of people, this results in a loss of signal and dropped calls.

Now, the science fiction writer in me wants to pick this apart. Why do people’s egos get wrapped up in the quality of a piece of technology they’ve purchased? Why defend an obvious flaw, or pretend it doesn’t exist? Why willingly change personal behavior, such as how one holds a phone, to overcome that technology’s shortcomings, without admitting those shortcomings exist? What do they gain?

I can understand partisanship for or against a particular company’s products. But that doesn’t require the complete dismissal of any facts that cast the technology I’ve chosen to use in a negative light. I use Linux rather than Windows, because I find its features more in line with what I need, and the price for equitable features in Windows is too high. I think Linux is simply a better operating system for most tasks.

But that doesn’t mean I regard Linux as the One True Operating System, perfect and error free. It has its problems, one of which is the way application developers for Linux will sometimes put out non-beta software of beta quality (I’m looking at you, Amarok 2 and Audacity 3). I stay with Linux because I find those problems less frustrating than the ones in Windows, but I don’t pretend those problems don’t exist.

So… Technology cultists. People whose senses of ego and self-worth seem to be tied to having made the “right” technology decision, and reject any facts that render their chosen technology less than perfect. I’m trying to wrap my head around it.

There’s got to be a story in there somewhere.

EDIT: I’ve made some adjustments above for clarity, and wanted to promote this really well-crafted analysis, care of dsmoen.

EDIT 2: Well, that was fast. According to the Houston Press blog, there’s now a class-action lawsuit.

It’s fun and frustrating at the same time. Fun, because I get to tie up some loose ends from the previous story and deal with a big leftover problem that I hadn’t even realized was there until the idea for the sequel came to me. Frustrating, because the story needs to be able to stand on its own merits, without requiring readers to go back and read the first one. That means finding ways to fill the reader in on the events of the first in a way that comes across as back-story instead of a full (and poor) retelling of the original.

I’m normally skeptical of sequels on general principles — to use a movie example, for every Matrix, there’s a Matrix Reloaded. But damnit, this is a story I want to tell, and it doesn’t make any sense as anything but a sequel. So that’s what I’m doing.

On a side note, thanks for all the well-wishing after my last two self-pitying mope-fests, but what I really needed was someone to smack some sense into me. Oh boo hoo, I don’t have time to finish my novel before my self-imposed deadline that matters to no one but me. Waaaah, the news is depressing so I can’t write optimistic science fiction. I wanna go back in time, just so I can say, “Man up, Nancy” to myself.

I’m a published author, with more stories on the way. I have a happy and healthy family. Life is good. So Mopey-Me can have a nice, tall glass of STFU.

But I’m not feeling very positive right now.

I’m back from my news fast, to find a world in which BP has created the worst oil disaster in U.S. history, several states are trying to follow Arizona’s racist lead, Israel has made some very bad choices, and… well, let’s just say not very much good news seems to have happened over May.

My thoughts, in no particular order:

• The ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is astonishing and horrific. There are no words.
• Israel made a terrible, monstrous mistake when it raided the Gaza-bound flotilla of humanitarian aid. The Israeli government needs to make amends, and quickly, lest it alienate a world that by and large supports it.
• Speaking of Israel, I’m very tired of right-wing lunatics telling me I’m anti-Semitic when I don’t support the government of Israel. Those teabagging nutcases don’t get to accuse other people of racism when they continue attacking President Obama’s legitimacy with racism thinly veiled as claims of a foreign birth. And accusations of anti-Semitism are particularly hilarious coming from a crowd that supports segregationists like Rand Paul. If they don’t understand — or choose not to — that it’s possible to be critical of a government’s policies without giving two shits about the religious beliefs or ethnic makeup of that government’s members, then I don’t see any reason to talk to them.
• I’m boycotting anything made in Arizona.

So… I’m back from my news fast, but feeling a bit pessimistic about the state of the world. I’d like to write some positive science fiction, so feel free to counter my pessimism with some positive news stories I may have missed over the month of May.

I haven’t written more than three lines in it for a week. Obviously, this isn’t working. With DayJeorb, family, house, and medical things going on, writing has become an occasional, if-I-feel-inspired-for-five-minutes-on-the-bus kind of thing. The only time I get a solid two hours to write — a basic minimum for me to be productive these days — is on the rare evening off. Looking at my writing folder is getting depressing.

Here’s what my average weekday looks like:

• 5:30: Wake up, get dressed, brush hair, and so on.
• 6:00: Do some dishes, eat breakfast, get bicycle ready.
• 7:00: Out the door.
• 7:45: Get to the office, prep for DayJeorb
• 8:00: DayJeorb
• 11:00: Get lunch, eat, write if possible with remaining time (this never happens)
• 12:00: DayJeorb
• 5:00: Get on bicycle, go home.
• 5:45: Relax for a little bit (thank you, Loreen!)
• 6:00-ish: Various combinations of family activities, dinner, playtime with Bee, and everything that can’t happen during the work day. At the end of it all, I read Bee some stories and put her to bed.
• 9:30-ish: Time in which I could write, if I had any brain power left (this never happens).

So, what to do when you need to write, but simply don’t have the blocks of time you need to write the novel you started the year so desperate to finish? I’m entirely open to suggestions. For the time being, I’m going to go back to my old sentence-a-day rule, so that if nothing else happens on any given day, I’ll have written at least one sentence of new prose. It’s something, if not ideal.

Beyond that, I’m kind of stuck.

And that feels great.

As I mentioned previously, I’m taking a news sabbatical. It’s been difficult, and a few things have slipped in by way of social media, but by and large it’s been a successful endeavor. I’m writing more, I’m reading more, and I’m sleeping more. All very healthy for me. Ahhh.

On a related note, I had the strangest dream last night. In it, all my friends and family were suddenly very sad, but no one would tell me why because they knew I was avoiding the news. I finally learned that the president had died suddenly, of some sort of heretofore undiagnosed malady, but when I tried to read about it in the newspaper and online, I couldn’t because all the news outlets were hiding their content from me to enforce my news sabbatical.

Very thoughtful of them.

I’ve got a lot going on right now, all of it important. I’m trying to write a novel. I’m trying to finish upgrades on my house. I’m trying to be a good parent, a good husband, and a good friend. And I’m recovering from surgery to correct my deviated septum. (Long term prognosis: I’ll be able to breathe! Short term prognosis: Oh god, my face!)

So, I’m going to spend the month of May abstaining from several psychologically unhealthy habits.

First, I’m taking a news sabbatical. This especially applies to political news, which tends to suck me in and slaughter any spare moments I have in the day, moments better spent writing.

Second, I’m going to refrain from an activity I’ve been thinking of as “exhaustion surfing.” You know that nighttime moment, right around 10:30, when you think to yourself, “Self… You ought to be in bed, Self.” And then you stay up another hour surfing the web without any real direction or purpose, and gain absolutely nothing, not even mild entertainment, from the wasted time and lost sleep? Yeah… No more of that.

Third, I’m going to strictly limit what I do on the internet in daylight hours. The internet is a useful tool, but I’m not using it as one right now. I’m using it to distract and exhaust myself. So for the month of May, I will use it as a writing research assistant, and a communications medium. That’s not to say I will avoid all other uses of the web entirely — for instance, to watch a show on Hulu one must go to hulu.com — but what I won’t do is surf aimlessly. Too much of that is wasted time, night or day.

Finally, I’m going to read a book. I’ve gotten out of the habit, and reading is good for my writer brain. Failing to read is a bad habit all by itself, and it’s high time I broke this one.

One of the challenges I had with this novel in its first draft is that one of the most important characters is off-screen for much of the story. Her scenes and activities are conveyed in summary form after the fact, interspersed throughout the novel. There wasn’t any help for this at the time. I had to get the story out from the main protagonist’s perspective first. But now that it’s done, all that summary is just a godawful drag on the story, and needs to go.

So I’ve been taking those summarized details, and expanding them into full scenes that shift the point of view to the secondary character. And as I do this, I’m converting the info dumps that exist in the first draft to drama that actually appears on the page. The protagonist’s chapters are beginning to shrink to manageable sizes while these new chapters grow.

In essence, I’m writing the novel again from the secondary character’s perspective. It will be shorter, with fewer overall chapters — right now the pattern seems to be working out to one secondary character chapter for every two primary — but it still feels like writing the novel again. And I’m finding that to be a good thing: I’ve recaptured the excitement of writing it in the first place.

It’s very liberating. I don’t feel any stress over ripping out huge swaths of talking heads and info dumps, because I’m going to make those into shown-not-told scenes for the secondary character. And I don’t feel any need to wax loquacious with the new chapters, because everything else is already in the first draft chapters. Can’t say for sure this will work out in the end, but so far so good.