pennae aquilae

Picspam from other people (of me)

2008-07-21T19:20:59Z

So this weekend at Readercon, someone took a picture of me at one point (maybe it was me and Ellen Datlow? -- I'd gone to her Kaffeeklatsch as a fan, first time I'd gone to one in like 10 years, and it was very affirming to hear everything she had to say about life ,the universe, and editing) and when I asked if he'd send me the photo, he said it'd be up on Flickr.

Of course... now I've forgotten who took the photo, but I looked on FLickr. The picture isn't there, but I found, surprise surprise, all these OTHER photos people have taken of me at cons dating back to like 2002.

So here they are:

More photos of me on the Internet:

On a Panel at Readercon 2008, between Barry Malzberg and Rose Fox. The panel topic was "If All Men Are Tolerant, How Will You Shock Your Sister?"

At IN THE FLESH reading series in NYC, with Carly Milne, Amie Evans, Bob Smith, Aimee Herman, Rachel Kramer Bussel, and down in front Charlie Vazquez, Cris Beam

Competing in the Kirk Poland in 2006. That's Eric Van in front of me:

In the green room at Readercon 2006, with Shariann Lewitt (now aka Nina Harper). I believe I'm holding up a yellow M&M. Why? Because someone's taking a picture:

Me and Glenn Grant at Arisia 2006. yes, I'm wearing a hat with cat ears:

Me on a panel at Arisia 2006. I'm not sure what the panel topic is, but that's my New York Yankees hat on the table in front of me:

On a panel at Noreascon 4 with Tanya Huff, Charlaine Harris, Ellen Datlow, on vampires:

Competing in the Kirk Poland in 2005:
This one refused to let me hotlink to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmgold/25276416/

Doing a reading at Torcon (the Toronto Worldcon) in 2003:

Me in the Fabulous Purple Dress (and sunglasses!) at ConJose in 2002:

Another one of me in the Fabulous Purple Dress at ConJose in 2002. Where the hell did I get those glasses? And where are they now? Hm.

Live at the Fleamarket

2008-07-19T18:07:17Z

I'm at the Cyclorama right now and the air conditioning is blissful! Beats the heat and humidity I'd be suffering if I was at home right now...

For more info: nela_fff_news and http://www.nelaonline.org/fff.php

2 Tickets to Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium

2008-07-13T20:18:31Z

SOLD.

So I find myself with two extra tickets to the All-Star Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium, which is taking place Monday (tomorrow). The "workout day" starts at 5:30 pm, the actual Derby at 8pm.

corwin and I will be in seats 3 and 4. If you would like seats 5 and 6, please make me an offer on the tickets, which are face value $150 each.

Technology makes it easy. You pay me by Paypal and I can use Ticketmaster's Ticket Forwarding to email you the tickets to print out for yourself. No more trying to meet up before the game!

If you're interested PLEASE CALL and don't just comment here. My mobile phone is 617-290-9043. Thanks.

The participants:

National League
Dan Uggla (Florida Marlins)
Lance Berkman (Houston Astros)
Chase Utley (Philadelphia Philles)
Ryan Braun (Milwaukee Brewers)

American League
Josh Hamilton (Texas Rangers)
Grady Sizemore (Cleveland Indians)
Evan Longoria (Tampa Bay Rays)
Justin Morneau (Minnesota Twins)

What's curious is that although each of these players is a known homer threat, none of the classic sluggers in the game right now are taking part. Ryan Howard, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, etc... many of them didn't make the roster of the All Star Teams in the first place, some are injured, and is this a bit of the backlash against the steroid era poster boys who have won this contest in the past? (Sosa, Giambi, McGwire, etc...)

It should be fun anyway. I'd like to see the rookie Longoria do it.

My Readercon Schedule

2008-07-13T02:04:03Z

My Readercon panel schedule includes some nice, juicy, genre topics! Well, it always does because it's such a meaty convention. Yum.

I'm missing Saturday because I'll be onsite at the Fetish Fair Fleamarket, but I'l be there Thursday night, Friday (with my interns in tow!), and back Sunday to autograph.

Thursday 9:00 PM, Salon G: Panel

Snape, Gollum and Other Moral Linchpins. Michael A. Burstein (L), Elizabeth Hand, Yves Meynard, Cecilia Tan, Ann Tonsor Zeddies

The two most popular fantasies of all time portray a battle between pure good and absolute evil in which a morally divided character proves to be crucial to the plot. Was Severus Snape ultimately as successful a character as Smeagol / Gollum? What other fantasies have used this device? How is it that we as readers accept a morally labile linchpin character without questioning the solidity of everyone else? Or does moral grayness sometimes leak out from the linchpin to tint the otherwise black-and-white world?

Friday 2:00 PM, Salon F: Panel

Triumphing Over Competence. Matthew Cheney, Carl Frederick, Adam Golaski (L), Theodora Goss, Claude Lalumiere, Cecilia Tan

Jeff VanderMeer created an online ruckus with the assertion that today's short fiction market has been overwhelmed by "the triumph of competence." We can think of nothing less useful than a debate between those who agree with VanderMeer and others who feel we are in a Golden Age of short fiction, since the presence of both camps argues convincingly that any response to today's short fiction market is subjective. Instead, let's ask: what practical things can we do to make things better, regardless of how good we think they are now? What can we do to promulgate the writing of more (or "even more") great stories? And what can we do to help readers find stories they'll love, especially if they've been burnt out by over-exposure to the merely good?

Friday 6:00 PM, Salon F: Panel

If All Men Were Tolerant, How Would You Shock Your Sister? Paolo Bacigalupi, Rose Fox, Barry N. Malzberg, James Morrow (L), Cecilia Tan

Once upon a time "a glimpse of stocking" was a dangerous vision. What is the future of transgression and the shocking in a society that prides itself on its ever-increasing tolerance? What value do shocking and transgressive texts have? How do they read once their shocking element becomes passé?

Sunday 1:00 PM, Salon E: Autographing

Jonathan Lethem; Cecilia Tan

Live Long and Marry!

2008-07-02T20:29:25Z

If you haven't heard about this, fandom is having a fundraiser so hopefully Mr. Sulu won't have his marriage annulled by anti-gay changes to the California constitution.

Circlet is donating a package of autographed books to the auction, The Velderet, Best Fantastic Erotica, and Erotic Fantastic, a $55 retail value. Visit this post to bid: http://community.livejournal.com/livelongnmarry/149272.html

Bidding closes July 15th, which happens to also be when Circlet's current submissions reading period ends! Get your stories in please! (New writers guidelines can be found here: http://www.circlet.com/?p=92

Click the banner below for more info on livelongnmarry:

Technology sucks, and is great at the same time

2008-07-01T02:30:20Z

So I'm writing this from the Pooh Tree, an art landmark on my street -- it's basically Pooh's house, built into a dead tree stump with a sitting bench inside it. I'm sitting in the bench and enjoying some neighbor's open wireless network.

The net at me house is down because out firewall's hard rive died finally. Not something I can fix, and corwin's not back from Baitcon yet. Yeah, our network is held together with like 10-12 year old hardware and chewing gum and all I'm qualified to do is chew the gum.

So it's a beautiful evening, I have about an hour of battery power, and I'm sitting in the pooh tree listening to my portable XM radio and blogging, because the moment I go back into the house with no network I will suffer withdrawal symptoms. This after being essentially without network all weekend with my dead laptop in Cleveland. (I'm on the backup laptop now...)

Hopefully the new macbook will arrive tomorrow! (Fedex says its on the way...) And hopefully there will be network again! Until then, thanks Pooh.

Rock and Roll will never die

2008-06-29T15:40:17Z

I went last night to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I admit I was a little skeptical of whether the experience was going to be hokey or, well, Disney-fied (for lack of a better term). I'm here in Cleveland for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) convention, so the words "Hall of Fame" are something that hangs in serious contemplation, like the haze of cigar smoke in Tammany Hall back rooms. (For detailed posts about all the wonderful baseball history, stat analysis, and other fun stuff I did at the convention, see my baseball blog: Why I Like Baseball.)

Bt I'm pleased to say that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is great and well worth the trip. One of the first things you come to is a small theater where the doors aer emblazoned with a sedate warning that the following media presentation contains Mature Themes... oh, you mean, like sex, dugs, and rock and roll? Thank god the curators of the museum did NOT try to separate rock from that holy trinity and revere it without acknowledgement of the other two. Hallelujah.

One of the special exhibits up now is a showing of Mike McCartney's photographs of Liverpool in the 1960s. I'll let you guess whose brother he is. Quite a good exhibit both as photography and as documentation of an era. Mike's photos include shots of many of the performers he witnessed in the era, and those he played with (he was in a band, too), as well as Liverpool itself, his family, etc.

And of course there are artifacts, things like the actual guitars played by Jerry Garcia and Jimmy Hendrix. I got a purely erotic jolt from finding the costume jacket that Sting wore on the Synchronicity tour.

Another thing the museum does not turn a blind eye to, nor does it overly glorify, is just how many of its inductees and honorees are dead. Well, sure, lots of the relics in Cooperstown are related to ballplayers who have passed on, but there isnt the same sense of martyrdom that clings to a figure lke Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain. Many of the short films had clips of interviews from people like Pete Townsend and Joe Strummer, talking about how many people they knew who were "taken" by rock and roll. Townsend goes on about his generation, with Joplin, Hendrix, Moon, etc... But that 1960s group was far from a statistical outlier. I kept coming across my own idols, some of whom I'd nearly forgotten were gone, like Michael Hutchence of INXS. Or Andy Wood of Mother Love Bone, who was more obscure, but there nonetheless.

It was also illuminating to see and hear so much that reminded me that some rather hoary old figures in rock were once hot, young, angry, underfed figures. Ozzy Osbourne, Bruce Springsteen, Keith RIchards. Yeah.
I spent a full thre hours there, not including the time I was sitting in the cafe halfwy through, or he time shopping in the shop, which veru intelliently sells CDs! As well as T-shirts, etc. (Though I bought T-shirts and not CDs.)

I think there should have been more David Bowie in there somewhere. The Wall exhibit (Pink Floyd) is reall something. The letter written from The Damned to the Ramones after the Rmones visited London in 1976 is Really Cool. (Remember before the Internet? It's a handwritten letter.)

OK, time to leave CLeveland. See ou all when I get back and sorry again for the typos, but this WebTV interface is a bitch!

Hello from Cleveland

2008-06-26T21:35:05Z

Well, I am in Cleveland but my Macintosh is dead. It wouldn't reboot while I was waiting around at Logan Airport, and subsequent tries get it to a certain point in the booting process and then is hangs.

WHat I could not hear until I rtied again at the hotel room is the awful NOISE the hard drive makes. Uh oh.

O course, I did a backup of all the important stuff before I left. Which is good. And I got off the phone with a friend who works at the Apple Store a few hurs ago, having ordered my new one. It was time. The old one is like a car with high mileage on it. Plus it couldn't run certain web pages since it couldn't go higher than 10.3.9 nd so can't run Java 5 or 6. So, I'll have it when I get back.

Unfortuantely the only internet here is the busines center at $6 for 15 minutes, or what I am currentyl using, which is WEBTV for $10/day.

Livejournal is one of the few websites that this actually works with! I can't get at any of y web mail accounts (Yahoo or Gmail) -- it show about tenth of the screen and barfs on a lot of sites. It won't even wirk with TWITTER.

Sorry about all the typos. It's really hard to see the screen on the tv, the keyboard is awful, and the interface makes it a pain to go back.

I updated at www.whyilikebaseball.com with a post about what research presentations I saw today, if you're interested. Saturday inght I may go to he ROck & ROl Hall of Fame.

My apolgies if I don't answer comments. I'm not sure I'll lg in to this thing again... and if I d, if I'll be able to see and respond to them...

Final Reminder!

2008-06-18T20:20:35Z

Reading tomorrow at the In the Flesh Reading series in New Yawk City. 8pm, Happy Endings Lounge (302 Broome St, take B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com).

It's a star-studded lineup including trans advocate Cris Beam, former MADtv writer and standup comic Bob Smith, former sex-toy tester Carly Milne, retired burlesque and drag performer Amie M. Evans, underground scribe Charlie Vasquez, moi, and more. I think there are 9 of us in all. It's June, so Pride and GLBT night for it.

Blurb up at Flavorpill

Now to pick out a knock-your-socks-off excerpt to read... hmm.

Circlet Press call for submissions

2008-06-12T19:06:03Z

Circlet Press is now open for short story submissions of erotic sf/fantasy for our new series of ebooks!

We are launching a new series of erotic e-books of all original stories. The reading period ends July 15th, 2008. All stories for ebook publication will conform to the same standards of quality and sensuality as in all Circlet’s print books. Ebook only publications pay $25 per story, with an additional $25 for any book that goes into print.

There are copies details about what we want and the specific anthologies we are looking for, if you look here:
http://www.circlet.com/?p=92

Erotic vampires, erotic steampunk, erotic high fantasy, sf/f genderfuck, and more! Have a look and then submit!

Reading from White Flames in NYC June 19th

2008-06-11T21:35:18Z

Next week! I will be in New York City to read from White Flames at the In the Flesh reading series.

8pm, the Happy Endings Lounge, 302 Broome Street, and hosted by the fabulous Rachel Kramer Bussel!

It being June this will be the GLBT pride themed night.

I'm going to do the wacky thing of taking the Megabus down in the afternoon and taking it back at 11:30 at night. Total fare: $6 there, $4 back, plus a 50 cents transaction fee. And supposedly there is WiFi on the bus...??? If only Amtrak would do that.

Anyway, if you're in or around NYC, please come see me read. :)

JK Rowling at Harvard

2008-06-05T23:01:08Z

So, one of the great fun things about living in the Boston area is that cool stuff happens like J. K Rowling delivering the commencement address at Harvard. A friend who is a graduate student there arranged for us to have tickets to the "afternoon exercises" when JKR would speak (the "morning exercises" being the actual graduation ceremony that most parents and visitors are focused on).

Harvard would already be a great place to run a Hogwarts LARP (Sanders Theater would be perfect!) but never moreso than on a day when everyone is running around in their robes. Boston.com apparently ran an article today about 9 reasons why Harvard is like Hogwarts.

Harvard President Drew Faust remarked, in her "state of the university address," which preceded Rowling's speech, that "We have elms, but no Whomping Willow.... still, it falls to me as Muggle In Chief, before I turn the podium over to our esteemed guest, to mention that reading good books may be the closest we ever come to experiencing true magic."

She then went on a 45 minute long justification of the size of Harvard's endowment ($35 billion), which was preaching to the converted, but with Congress eyeing all that money as if it should be spent as wildly as the budget surplus that Bill Clinton left the US government with was when Bush took office... well, I can hardly blame her.

But then came Jo.

She first addressed the Harvard officers and alumni/ae who had invited her there to say "thank you," because in the many weeks of nausea and trepidation that led up to today's honor of delivering the address she had "lost a lot of weight." Much laughter. "A win-win situation." She said she was getting through by "squinting at all the red banners and convincing myself that I am at the world's largest Gryffindor reunion."

When preparing to write the speech, she said, she thought back to the commencement address of her own graduation day, which was delivered by noted English philosopher the Baroness Mary Warnock. She realized she could not recall a single word of Mary Warnock's speech.

As such she was greatly relieved to realize she was in no danger of influencing anyone to give up their budding career to become a gay wizard. MUCH laughter.

"And therefore, if all you remember years from now is the gay wizard joke, I will be one up on Mary Warnock."

The two themes she then went on to explore were Failure and Imagination.

Failure, she said, was probably not something most people at Harvard are familiar with. Indeed, your average Harvard alum's failure might be considered the average person's success. (Oh, that stroked the Harvard ego exactly the right way.)

Both her parents grew up in poverty and did not attend university. They feared for her ending up poor herself, and wanted her to study a vocational degree. Jo wanted to study English literature. They somehow compromised on Modern Languages, but, as she put it, no sooner had their car gone 'round the corner from dropping her off than she ran away from the German department and down the corridor to Classics.

She said her parents probably found out that she'd in fact studied Greek mythology and not modern languages at all... on her graduation day. But, "There is an expiry date for blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction." (This drew much applause from the parents in the audience.)

She went on to say that in her life she had experienced complete and utter failure. After her graduation, seven years later she found herself as poor as a person in Britain could be and not be homeless. She'd had a short-lived and failed marriage, had no job, a young daughter to raise; she had hit rock bottom. "And yet that became the bedrock of my life." Her greatest fear had come to pass, and poverty was not an ennobling experience. However having reached that point of total failure and realizing that she was still alive, still had a daughter she loved, and still had the will to direct her own life, is what allowed her to build on that foundation a totally new life.

Life is not a checklist of things to accomplish, she said, a point that really resonated with me--especially since I, too, have been saying since I was a small child that I wanted to be a writer, and the way I found the space and opportunity to pursue that dream was by stepping OFF the treadmill of expectation that I had been running on since my first days at school. Go to school, get good grades, get into a good college, get a good job... In 1992, when I quit my job and went to graduate school to get a degree in writing, I had checked all those things off my list and discovered I was miserable instead of happy.

Her next point resonated strongly with me as well, as she went on to talk about Imagination. As I have said many times about the reason I write alternative sex and sexualities, is because I believe FICTION is the one form of communication that truly has the power to change the way people think, because it allows people to experience things internally that they would not otherwise. Even a non-fiction account of something does not have the impact a fictional story does, because the reader can still hold themselves apart as an outside observer, whereas when they read a novel, they become immersed in the experiences of the viewpoint character.

JKR embraced not just fiction but the overall power of the human imagination, "the power to empathize with humans whose experience is different from ours." Humans can "think themselves into other people's place." This, she said, is a powerful force for change, because we can imagine a better world than the one we live in if we do not allow apathy or attitudes to close our minds. She put it better than that, illustrating her point with a description of how one of her few day jobs involved working in the office of Amnesty International. She recalled hearing a bloodcurdling scream from one of the offices, and then fetching tea for a man who had just been told that his mother had been executed by the government of his country because he had dared to speak out and expose the crimes that government was committing. It opened her eyes to how different things could have been, and how lucky she was to live in a country with a democratically elected government and a system of due process and law.

She pointed out that these young graduates are also largely going to be a part of the United States, the last standing superpower in the world, meaning that their voices and influence on their own government will in fact affect people far beyond the borders of the USA.

She closed with some last remarks about how the friends she sat with on graduation day are still the friends who sustain her today, and who have never once sued her for using their names for Death Eaters.

And so ends another Wiscon

2008-05-27T02:58:57Z

Now at O'Hare waiting to change planes and head back to Boston. Wiscon is over for another year and although I feel physically tired, I feel refreshed and recharged in so many ways. Science fiction is not dead. The book business is not dead. The reasons for writing and reading science fiction and fantasy are not dead. The convention was energizing in a way that I don't usually associate with science fiction conventions, but with activist conclaves like Leather Leadership Conference or the TrueSpirit conference.

Perhaps that's because activist energy does run through Wiscon and there is something sustaining about being part of a community made up of people who are not only like-minded on the world and issues but who feel empowered to DO something.

L. Timmel Duchamp, in her guest of honor speech last night, told the moving and horrifying story of her experience at university, in which she was barred from entering a program for undergraduate music composers because she was a woman. Despite having her pieces accepted to be played at various concerts, she was told by her advisor, as if he were doing her a great favor, that the only reason the young men were interested in playing her pieces was not because the piece was good, but because they were interested in going to bed with her. He then invited her out for a beer. (You may groan now.)

That was 1970. At that time I was only three years old. By the time I reached college, fifteen years later, "women's lib" was already seeming quaint, though some strange vestiges of the institutionalized sexism that was once the norm still persisted on some campuses. Boston University was trying to institute a curfew for female students (that would not apply to male students). The effort, of course, failed, and years later would cost the then-president of B.U. the governorship of Massachusetts, whose people preferred a liberal-minded Republican to a whack-job sexist who called himself a Democrat.

When I reached college in 1985, frat boys still felt it necessary to try to deface the pink triangle monument erected on the college Green every year for Gay Pride week. Fear about AIDS fed into homophobia but the first spasms of SILENCE=DEATH were occurring. You were finally able to say the word "gay" on television. By 1994 we were marching on Washington and the U.N. Now, in 2008, gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts and California, there are so many gay characters on television I have lost track of them, and fangirls and housewives everywhere find it fun and not always particularly transversive to "ship" Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy into gay romances (not to mention the characters in Supernatural, Torchwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and every other possible popular book, movie, or TV show).

People are still threatened by lifestyle choices they do not understand. BDSM, kink, and polyamory, are still reasons why people can have their children taken away from them by the courts. Which just shows the work is far from done.

I've always said that being able to imagine worlds that don't exist is a crucial trait for any activist. The feminist utopias of our foremothers (like Joanna Russ, and the writers in the eras before her, even, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman) make the reality of our still-not-equal but oh-so-much-better-than-it-was world so very plausible. And of course there is that very special fannish feminist utopia, which is Wiscon itself, which appears like Brigadoon, and then dissolves again as we each return home.

x-posted to my fic journal...

Late Night Wiscon Post

2008-05-26T07:30:17Z

Which means 3am east coast time... no wonder I'm yawning.

Just came from the Gaylaxicon party. Gaylaxicon, the sf con for gays, lesbians, queerfolk of all kinds, and their friends, will be in Washington, DC in October and I might go... I also got to read a short, sexy excerpt of my fiction at the Lethe Press party, part of my story in the PERIPHERY anthology, and had much fun.

But to recap from earlier, the Polyamory in Fiction panel went really well. Mary Anne Mohanraj, Katie Clapham, Moondancer Drake, Magenta, and I all turned out to be poly ourselves. (Sometimes you get a panelist who has a purely literary interest in the topic, but not this time.) The room was pretty much packed, and from the nodding heads in the audience I would say at least 90% of them were poly, too. Many of them shared personal anecdotes and things as we went along talking about representations of polyamory, good and bad, in things like Torchwood and Laurell K. Hamilton.

We started off talking first in the Green Room for panelists before the panel, trying to come up with some really recent examples of poly relationships in sf/f other than Torchwood and stuff in paranormal romance. We didn't come up with much. There's a lot of 1970s era stuff like Robert Heinlein and Marion Zimmer Bradley that has poly themes, but we were drawing a blank for recent stuff.

Once we got to the panel room though, we did come up with a few others, like Tanya Huff (The Fire's Stone was a ways back, but her Blood Lines series is more current), and Catherine Asaro. And Mary Anne recommended the online series "Tales of Mu."

The "pansexual" part of the panel description got dropped early on as the polyamory elements took most of our attention. Many of us feel polyamory may be the next alternative lifestyle to gain better acceptance, although horror stories like the polygamist sect that had institutionalized abuse and oppression set us back a bit.

Mary Anne talked about how she sold two books to a mainstream publisher, Harper Collins, the first of which was a set of 20 linked short stories called Bodies In Motion, which was erotic and one of the stories featured the beginnings of triad relationship. The second book was supposed to be a novel about the three of them, and yet it turned out her editor's idea of a "threesome novel" and her own were so drastically different that ultimately the book had to be pulled from the house.

Much discussion of how we'd like to see novels where polyamory is going on in the story but isn't the focus of the main plot. It's just part of the culture or the structure the characters have made for themselves. Mention of a doctor on Star Trek who was from a polyamorous culture and when his wife comes to visit him, he encourages her to have a thing with a crewman she is attracted to. (The crewman, meanwhile, can't wrap his head around the fact that this is ok...)

Discussion of Nepalese relationships where one woman may have multiple husbands, often brothers, as a strategy for maximizing the survival of children in a harsh living environment. Islamic polygyny. Tilda Swinton and Jada Pinkett Smith being poly. Like I said, wide-ranging. I'm afraid I have barely scratched the surface here, but...

It's nearly 2:30 now so I must get to sleep. Tomorrow is about checking out of the hotel and going home, so I must get up in the morning. :P

Wiscon, midday Sunday

2008-05-25T20:23:57Z

Back in the room now for a bit of downtime and more tea.

I've been living on hot tea today because allergies, blargh.

The con com is also going around sticking up signs everywhere saying "Stomach Flu Going Around Wiscon! Wash Your Hands!" I honestly think the hysteria created by the signs will probably result in more psychosomatic illnesses than the reminder to wash hands will prevent. It's a con after all. People are run down and tired and exposed to a lot of germs from people not from their native area.

I had the soup and salad bar for lunch in the hotel restaurant to combat the bug, because soup is like that. And tea, lots of tea, with lunch, in the green room, brought to the panel, and now I'm brewing a pot of it in the in-room coffee maker. tea tea tea. My sinuses feel perpetually dry and gunked up. Maybe I shouldn't have alcohol tonight. (All I had last night was about ¾ of a bottle of Guinness.)

So I forgot to write about last night's Earring Haiku Party. Elise Matheson makes a ton of earrings. You pick out a pair of earrings from the table, you show them to her and she gives you a title. You write a haiku using the title and earrings as your inspiration, and then you give her the haiku, and you keep the earrings. Here's mine:

LANDING BEACON

perfect rocketship
you orbit but you never
touch metal to soil

The blogging panel this morning was really fun, even though we were all "wah... not morning people..." Thing is, there were panels starting at 8:30 AM, so being at 10AM we had it relatively easy! I would have seriously had to beg off any 8:30 AM panel. As I told someone on programming recently: "Putting me on a panel at 9am is the same as putting a normal person on a panel at 6am." 10am isn't must better, but it's Central Time which saves me.

The general feeling at the blogging panel was that blogging did not, in fact, leach away creative energy from writing the "real" stuff (novels, etc.) and did help various members of the panel to get their energy up for writing in general every day. I realized something during the panel, though, which was that I have not kept a "writers journal" since ... well, at least since LiveJournal, but possibly longer than that.

I used to always keep a running journal in a word processor file, but I'd say about the time I left graduate school (i.e. around the time I became a really full time freelance writer), I switched from writing down story ideas and false starts on things and character notes and thoughts about writing in a single "journal." First of all, now when I get a story idea I start a new word processor document right away and usually it gets turned into a finished story within a short period of time. If it doesn't, and it becomes a false start, it just sits in the hard drive where I could still look at it again later. It's easier to look at the directory of files of seedlings like that than it is to go back and re-read old journals. I don’t' really write about my "writing process" anymore, except in blog entries sometimes, but not so much bc I'm figuring it out. I've figured it out by now. Character notes and stuff go right in the same word processor document as the original story draft and such. So there is no need for a "journal."

I do still hand write some things. There is a journal by the bed for inspirations that come in the middle of the night or for dreams, but I haven't actually written in it in a while. Maybe once a year on average. There are two universes I have in my head that I still make notes in their respective blank books, but it's because I know they are far from formed enough for their books to be written.

The panel was moderated by abostick59. We debated a bit the pros and cons of being on LiveJournal, having our blogs on a hosting site like Blogger, Blogspot, or Word Press, or hosting our own blogs from our own servers. You can approximate the convenience and ease of networking on LiveJournal by using Bloglines and Open ID to some extent, but it's not really quite there yet. vylar_kaftan has her own blog site run from home, but her LJ is a mirror of it. And she gets way more comments via LJ than she would just on her own site, which is positive feedback to keep doing it. mkhobson talked about having an "LJ" style journal name for years before finally renaming to something people could recognize and find more easily.

Which reminds me. If you met me here at Wiscon, and you friended me and want to be friended back? Please drop me a note since if your name is something like "dragongirl557" I won't necessarily remember who you are...

Lots more posts about feminism, anti-oppression, and science fiction at the blog of the one panelist I haven't mentioned yet, Naamen Tilahun, Words from the Center, Words from the Edge. And more about the con, too. (*looks for namechecks...*)

I also went to the panel on THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK! Moderated by Mary Robinette Kowal, and populated by Jeannie (aka F. J. ) Bergman and Steven Schwartz. Mary opened the panel describing the difference between ebooks and print books as being like the time when the camera came along. People thought painting would be done with because now with the camera people could have an accurate and complete representation of an image without having to paint it, but painting did not die or disappear. What happened was people came to understand and appreciate the things that were unique about painting and that couldn't be done in another medium. Ebooks may increase our appreciation for what the printed book can do uniquely and what qualities we value most highly in it. One member of the audience had a Kindle, one a Sony Ereader, and we ~~put them in a cage fight!~~ got to ogle both devices a bit. Among the points that came up--decrying the lack of a common format like MP3, the multiplicity of formats and platforms making it hard to get the books one wants and hard to determine how to enter the marketplace as a consumer, the limitations of the current technologies which don't do landscape formatted books very well (though new ones are coming), and so on.

And I prepped for the panel I'm moderating in 45 minutes, on "Pansexuality and Polyamory: The New Face of Romance in Fiction?"

The description reads: "Torchwood, The Anita Blake Series, The Merry Gentry Series, The Monroe Children of the Moon Series—notions of sexuality are broadening and alternatives to traditional pairings are emerging. How does the romance narrative manage to change to fit these new trends?"

Among the questions I have prepared for the panelists:

have you noticed that none of the examples given are actually romances?

do ideas like polyamory or pansexuality screw with the romance tenet of "true love"?

does a fantastical setting encourage alternative sexuality in a way that real world stuff doesn't? if so, why isn't there more of it than there is?

how to you compare the depiction of alt-sex/alt-relationships in sf/f media with reality TV like MTV's shows (Tila Tequila) or what can be seen on Jerry Springer and such like that? How does it compare with the treatment on CSI?

Can we expect people to get a better understanding through fiction than through other forms?

do you worry about "cultural appropriation" or the equivalent of it for sexual subcultures, in which it is "done wrong," just to titillate, or in a negative depiction, rather than the visibility or existence being validated as a way of striking a blow for freedom?

Is making the polyamory an imperative in the Anita Blake books cheating somehow? Anita swears she *wants* to just be with one guy, but she *can't* because of all these metaphysical crises and stuff. Is that OK?

I'm going to head down to the green room now to meet up with the panelists and hopefully stay awake.

x-posted in my fic journal.

I forgot how tired I am on Sunday of of a con...

2008-05-25T14:21:35Z

And this one keeps going! There's till parties tonight and stuff tomorrow, too! *groans*

Surely, I'll feel better after I eat something in the green room.

Meanwhile, here are the panel descriptions of the two panels I'm on today, and then tonight is the Periphery Party where I will be doing a rapid fire reading.

10 am Time To Put Down The Laptop?

Everyone and her sister/brother/dog seems to be blogging these days. Do you find blogging a waste of creative energy and a bane to more polished fiction? Does talking about your process keep you from engaging in it? Counting your words rather than crafting them? Or do you think this is a false economy of scarcity? Does blogging actually help you write more, better, faster, better-crafted? If so, how?

M: Alan Bostick, M.K. Hobson, Naamen Tilahun, Cecilia Tan, Vylar Kaftan

4pm Pansexuality and Polyamory: The New Face of Romance in Fiction?

Torchwood, The Anita Blake Series, The Merry Gentry Series, The Monroe Children of the Moon Series—notions of sexuality are broadening and alternatives to traditional pairings are emerging. How does the romance narrative manage to change to fit these new trends?

M: Cecilia Tan, Moondancer Drake, Magenta Griffith, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Katie Clapham

Allergies are bad again today, making the dark circles under my eyes even more extreme. Perhaps I should just give in and do a Janeane Garofolo eyeliner job.

Wiscon, end of Saturday post

2008-05-25T06:21:41Z

It's 1am here at Wiscon and I am going to have to make this semi-quick, since I am on a panel at 10am tomorrow, the topic of which is... get this.... "Time to Put Down the Laptop." Yeah, I know.

I've had another full and fun day, slowed only slightly by the fact that the period that I thought started last week but didn't... finally started today with a vengeance. I refer to this as the "bleeding like a stuck pig" phase. And yes, I'm at a feminist science fiction convention so I feel perfectly empowered to talk about my period, thanks.

I went to a terrific panel featuring Tamora Pierce, Sarah Beth Durst (Into the Wild), Mary Anne Mohanraj (lots of books but none YA, she was the moderator), Alma Alexander (Spellspam), and an editor of YA whose name I am blanking on, but who was very articulate and knowledgeable and I liked her in spite of the fact that she said she can't stand to read anything with explicit sex. (I suppose my polar opposite had to exist.) Bah, why can't I remember her name? For some reason I keep thinking of Sandra Hargreaves, but I know that's someone else.

My program book and notes are in the room, where my roomies are asleep, though. I'm typing this out by the elevators so as not to disturb them with clacking keyboard and screen glow. (I think they might be wearing earplugs, but it's rather pleasant out here, anyway.) The topic of discussion was about what boundaries you cannot cross in YA fiction. Much of the talk was about sexuality and how to handle trigger issues like incest and abuse, which even if not described graphically can be too much for some readers, yet desperately needed by others. Issues of death and violence. There are so many themes that must be wrestled with in a coming-of-age story, not to mention the fact that if your characters are teenagers there are going to be issues like puberty to include. It was a fascinating discussion. And if you've never seen Tamora Pierce speak, she's always a hoot. Sarah Beth Durst was really funny, too. She said, "So I go out and do these book events and people are like 'Oh, what age are your books for?' 'Er, well, I'm thirty-four...?'"

Had dinner with a large crew of people including many of my erotica writer friends, including lizardlez, catherinedlf, sacchig, oracne, and Rob Gates of the Gaylactic Spectrum awards.

Tiptree Auction was much fun and hilarity thanks to the Robin-Williams-like genius of Ellen Klages and the unpredictable nature of the sf/f audience. I had to leave 90 minutes into it to go be on the Slash and Fanfiction 201 panel.

This was a really terrific and fun panel. They did the Slash 101 panel yesterday, so this was a room of dedicated slash and fanfic readers who did not need it explained to them what a WIP is or what we mean by AU. The topics ranged all over from the importance of fests to trying to answer what it is that keeps us reading even a badly written WIP week after week like we just can't help ourselves. Answer for just about everybody was that when you find a story that hits one of your buttons or kinks, you just can't help yourself.... It was raucous and funny and there was much give and take between the panelists and the audience. It was a large panel, too. I think there were six of us--all women--and one man named Patrick was supposed to be there but he never showed up. Loser.

OK, gotta sleep. After "Time to Put Down the Laptop?" I am on a panel on Pansexual and Poly in Romance, which somehow I ended up the moderator of. This is a problem since I am pansexual and poly, but I don't really read romance. Hmm. Or maybe that's better since I can just be the one to direct the questions and flow of conversation and not have to have the answers myself... Yes, that's it.

Cross-posted to my fic journal.

America & the Madison Farmers market

2008-05-24T17:24:42Z

Haven't seen much con yet today since I spent the morning at the Farmer's Market which covers the whole square in front of the capital building here in Madison.

I didn't expect to cry during the Farmer's market, but I got hit with a triple whammy. First, I saw the two nice Midwestern PFLAG ladies sitting at a little table handing out flyers and free stickers and all. I went up to them intending to tell them about how as a judge for this year's Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation we read the manuscript for a children's book about the founding of PFLAG. All I could get out was "Thank you so much for being here," before I got too choked up to say anymore.

And the thing was, there was a bagpipe player right nearby, who had just broken into a rendition of Amazing Grace, AND just then the Peace Rally march caught up to me in the street.

Waterworks.

Well, and then it was over, but man, war is fucking upsetting, isn't it?

Earlier in my travels I had come across I guy giving away Pro-Obama buttons (and anti-Republican ones, like "John McSame" and "John McBush" etc...) so I had put one on, which maybe put me in the frame of mind of those long-ago pride marches in the 1980s when you couldn't say the word "gay" on television.

Holy crap we've come a long way.

Some more observations. Madison seems more diverse than it was ten years ago when I first came here. It's always been more diverse than a lot of the Midwest around it, being a college town and a liberal enclave and all, but I actually heard four languages other than English being spoken. Spanish (twice), Russian, Cantonese, and one language that I couldn't quite identify but I am going to guess was one of the eastern European languages like Czech. I bought bubble tea from a little cart run by a Chinese couple and for lunch I ended up having a bowl of green chile stew with tortillas from another cart.

Very spicy, which was yummy. I've been saying for years that the American palate is getting spicier and spicier and this is the proof. That and the Asian duck breast I had for dinner in the hotel restaurant last night, which was highly spicy, and that was without the three dipping sauces it came with (wasabi cream, tamarind date, and papaya habanero).

I ended up back at the hotel with a pound of unpopped "calico" popcorn, a stick of grass-fed organic beef jerky, a maple sugar candy lollipop, and a stomach full of cheese and sausage samples.

More on war and gay rights and America later. I'm off to a panel on "the boundaries of YA fiction." Or maybe to see Laurie Toby Edison's photos of women in Japan. I'll decide when I get down there.

X-posted to my fic journal.

World of Cocktails and Books

2008-05-24T15:24:14Z

So regular readers of this blog know that a few weeks ago, for the release of my new book of short stories published by Running Press, entitled WHITE FLAMES, we threw a book launch party at my house. It was a co-launch party with Nina Harper's SUCCUBUS IN THE CITY.

corwin invented a cocktail for each of them, but I realize I never put the recipes online!

I'll remedy that now while I tell you about the three very delicious cocktails being served at Wiscon parties last night.

First was the SMOKING PIGEON, which if you read the opening part of Jennifer Stevenson's hilarious and sexy romp THE BRASS BED you will understand. And this drink, literaly, smokes--or steams--or outgasses--or whatever the proper scientific term is for when a bit of dry ice is submerged in a potent mixture of tasty alcohol and makes it look like something Professor Snape would make Neville Longbottom drink. If you search LJ for "smoking pigeon" surely you will find someone who took photos of it...

The launch party for THE BRASS BED was a co-party, too, for Ysabeau Wilce's FLORA'S DARE, the second book in her Flora series, so she was serving a drink called the Flora Segunda. She said it was basicaly the same as an actual cocktail called the Flora Dora.

And then at the Carl Brandon Society party, Claire Light was pouring not B-52s, but C-52s. See the recipe below to find out the difference.

WHITE FLAMES

1 part unfiltered sake (like Momokawa "Pearl")
1 part gin
1 part lime juice
1 part sugar syrup
served with a lemon twist, in a martini glass

The universal comment at the party was "Oh, but I don't like gin drinks... (sips)... oh but this is really good!" Folks, gin is really tasty if you have good gin and especially mixed with lime. That awful taste you remember from gin & tonics? That's tonic water.

SUCCUBUS IN THE CITY

Limoncello
Cointreau
fresh squeezed orange juice
Grenadine (real grenadine, says corwin)
served with a pineapple chunk and a cherry, in a martini glass

Nina likes her drinks really sweet, and this one fit that bill.

SMOKING PIGEON

1 part vodka
1 part limon rum
1 part Rose's Raspberry Mixer (it's blue)
splash of blueberry juice
3 drops of absinthe
served with a candy cigarette and a chunk of dry ice, in a shot glass

When I described it to corwin on the phone he said... "That sounds awful." I assure you, it wasn't. This is the interesting thing about cocktails. You can't always predict what the flavors will be like when they mix.

FLORA SEGUNDA (from the Flora Dora)

gin
chambord (can substitue grenadine)
lime juice
sugar
ginger ale (the strongly gingery organic ginger ale is best)
served in a highball glass

This is almost exactly the drink I got just the other day at East of Eighth in NYC, when I invented a gin drink on the fly! I asked for a splash of soda, but ginger ale would be yummy, too.

THE C-52

1 part Bailey's Irish Cream
1 part Kahlua
1 part Grand Marnier
served with an M&M in the bottom of the shot glass

The M&M is of course the "C" element. The B-52 has to either be drunk "bomb" style (knocked back) or sipped carefully, because if the Bailey's and the grand mariner touch, the citrus in the GM will curdle the cream in the Bailey's, leaving you with a glass of alcoholic GOO. Which is tasty but must be licked out of the glass.

Now I'm off to the farmer's market, and then more of the con!

At Wiscon!

2008-05-24T02:10:09Z

So here I am at Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention, having a blast, as usual.

I will admit that in the years before I started coming to Wiscon, I was leery that feminism could be much fun. Most of my firsthand experience with feminists, of course, was with dour and/or victim-mentalitied proponents of the anti-sex movement back when I was in college. Brown had a women's studies building called the Sarah Doyle Center that I NEVER DARED SET FOOT IN until long after I had graduated and was invited back to speak as an alum.

But Wiscon is, happily, much more a Bastion of Fandom in all its Glory than it is representative of any branch of feminism.

And it is fun. And brainy. And brainily fun. And my brain is funny.

Arrived yesterday by puddlejumper and helped out stuffing the registration packets. Who knew that the summer job I had in a birdfeeder factory would come in so handy? I helped arrange the small assembly line and my line completed 200 packets in under one hour. Then went off with my two roomies for half-price margaritas and Mexican food at "Frida," the pretty good mexican place about 2 blocks from the hotel.

Madison is a college town, so within 4 blocks walk of the hiotel there is every kind of ethnic food to be had for cheap (including "Iowan," according to the con info, which is popcorn. There are three different gourmet popcorn shops. But the cupcake craze doesn't seem to have got here yet.)

Then went into A Room of One's Own, the terrific local bookstore with a feminist slant. Enjoyed looking at books in there. There was a reading by the con guests of honor going on in the back room but me and friends were too tipsy to sit through a reading, plus there were no seats left.

Had lunch today with Karen Healey, of Girl-Wonder.org: Because capes aren't just for boys, and her agent Barry. She's from New Zealand, has traveled all over, and had some very insightful views on the whole presidential election thing we have going on here.

She raved about something I had only learned about maybe an hour before: BookMooch. "Give books away. get books you want." Check it out at www.BookMooch.com. Bloody brilliant.

The main event of the afternoon is something called THE GATHERING, which was sort of like a carnival fair within the con, running all afternoon as people arrived and got caught up with friends. There was henna painting, and tarot card reading, and a knitting circle, and ballroom dance lessons and a clothign swap and a Make Your Own Curry Powder Stand run by Mary Anne Mohanraj.

At the Gathering, I got my Numerology done! According to Lettie, I am an "Architect," and I am in a building phase of my life, very much the builder of my own destiny, but when I am 56 this will change, and I might move on to traveling or something else, but probably not a quiet retirement. She said a bunch more that I can't quite recreate but it was all quite accurate for me.

At the clothing swap I acquired a very cute pair of silver slippers, sort of ballet-style slippers, suitable for wearing to con parties.

I also participated in a "show and tell" session on the stage for tattoos and I showed mine off and talked about how it is time to get a new one. Several people mentioned a good tattoo place here in Madison, Capital City Tattoos, so if I have time, maybe I'll get it done here.

Spent several hours in the dalers room looking at books, talking with writers and editors, and ended up going from there to dinner with Paula Guran, editor of Best New Paranormal Romance. Sadly, she won't be doing another edition of the book. We talked books and writing and erotica for many hours... and now I'm back in my room relaxing with a cup of tea and my blog before I go out to parties in about an hour.

Tomorrow I'll go to some actual programming. I'm missing a panel about LiveJournal right now... heh.

X-posted to my fic journal.

Mosaic memory and New York City: a sort-of restaurant review

2008-05-18T05:29:31Z

I've always felt at home in New York City.

Some of that's from being born here (I'm in the city as I write this), which entitles one forever after to always answer that question of "Where are you from?" with "New York." (The "city" is implied. Otherwise you would have said "upstate." Conversely, one can also answer with just "The City" and anyone in the Northeast or MidAtlantic states will know which city you mean. When I got to college in Rhode Island it was one of the phrases translated for people from other areas of the country in the orientation handbook.)

Of course that question, "Where are you from?" was one I heard a lot as a kid, prompted not by curiosity about my birthplace but as a code for "where are your genes from?" Looking at me, people couldn't decide what I was. Italian? American Indian? Puerto Rican?

Of course, the correct answer to the person who asks "Where are you from?" but who is staring at you in such a way that you know they mean "what ethnicity are you?" is: "New York."

I used to play with them. When they would get that answer, they would try another tack. "Oh, and where is your mommy from?"

Solemn, wise-eyed child. "Oh. She's from Upstate New York."

Others would try to be more specific. "I mean, where were you born?"

I would be more specific back at them. "Beth Israel... Hospital."

I was stubbornly, indefinably from New York and I knew it.

***

Walking through the city today I was thinking that when we lived in the suburbs, New York went from being like a parent, whom you lived with and who nurtured you, to being like the cool aunt or uncle who was really fun to visit. (The fact that I had a really cool aunt who lived in Greenwich Village probably explains this metaphor's existence.) Now that I think about it, though, the city is perhaps a bit more like a whole branch of the family that's fun to visit, but whose members one knows in varying degrees.

The variety that New York presents, the shreer overwhelming volume of everything means that "knowing" the city means knowing only certain pieces. And yet when you walk down a block you don't recognize... you suddenly realize that you do. You walked this block tht time in 1984 when your mother's friend's sister from Illinois was visiting and you were looking for that [fill in here: art gallery, restaurant, apartment she used to live in...] The memory of that block got filed away in the jumbled pile of postcards and snapshots in the big drawer in the filing cabinet in my head labeled "New York." Each time I go somewhere in the city, another file gets added. It's a mosaic that will never quite all be stitched together into one quilt, even if I lived my whole life here.

This is how I found the place I'm eating in now. I was walking down Eighth Avenue (down meaning south), and as I was approaching the intersection of 23rd Street, one of those postcards came floating out of my memory.

The memory of who I came here with (was it Romkey? And who else? Was it Sunday brunch? There was a bistro, near the movie theater... how did we know of it?) is vague enough I can almost believe I dreamed it. Except that if I did dream it, I must have very clear pregognitive talents. Because the Boston Chicken I knew was going to be there, was there. As was the fancy cupcake place.

But it seems even more dreamlike when I try to apply logic to the memory. Cupcake place? But, didn't cupcakes only become trendy like 2-3 years ago? If I came here with Romkey it would have been fifteen years ago at least? And yet, there's the bistro I've been expecting to see. Who would have thought the place would still be around 15 years later?

The place is called "East of Eighth" and it is exactly as I remembered it, an eclectic but not overly pricey or pretentious menu of fusion/nouvelle American/whatever you want to call it cuisine. Fifteen years ago raspberry chipotle anything would have been a typical example of such fare. Oh, how far we've come...!

The menu lists two specials which entice me: a split pea soup and "lobster and filet mignon stir fried rice." I secure a table for one, order both along with a serving of the "cumin-lemon marinated salmon," which I am told is "lox-like." Served with freshy marinated cucumbers and multi-grain toast points. Perfect.

The soup comes right away and is delightfully springy with pea flavor, with two excellent 'croutons' blanketed in melted cheddar floating in it. The bread basket has at least four kinds of bread in it. Eclectic mix, anyone? A single slice of each. A very good, crumbly and yet crusty cornbread, sweet and perfect when buttered, a focaccia, and two different diameters of baguette-like thing. In addition to the nicely soft butter, there is a spread made of pureed carrots with some sweet onion -- no wait, that's scallions and it's just that the carrots are so sweet. A touch of... curry powder in it, maybe? Not much, just a hint, nothing to take away from the sweet wetness of the carrots.

Oh, and my waitress is psychic. I just glanced up, upon hearing the cocktail shaker in the bartender's hands, and not two seconds later she is at my elbow asking if I want something to drink besides water. Yes, definitely. I am halfway through my soup and spring is in the air and... something with gin, please. I order gin, lemon juice, a shot of chambord, with a splash of soda. (This improvised drink will later appear on my bill as a "gimlet.")

The food arrived shortly after that, filling, delicious, and perfect. I find this one of my favorite ways to have lobster. The rice grains in the fried rice were just as they should be, al dente, and each one coated with oil. It was, well, like something I'd make out of leftovers at home--with the leftovers from a meal at, oh, Aujourd'hui, though. Tiny slices of snow peas, actual peas, and pea-sized cubes of carrots. Tied the whole meal together, I suppose, too, what with the peas and carrots.

***

Speaking of peas and carrots I had one of my more amusing eavesdropping episodes in a restaurant. A young couple were sitting in the front window of the place. The dining room I was in was on the second floor, and the whole front wall is glass. He had his back to the glass; she faced it. They were clearly on a date, but an early one, since it was only just 6:15pm when I sat down, and they had been there a while, judging from the state of their plates.

At one point, he turned to look out the window and spotted a group of their friends walking past the restaurant, then wondered aloud what they were all doing there. This led to him figuring out that they were getting ready to surprise him for his birthday. They girlfriend was very upset by having the surprise ruined (although he seemed highly amused and pleased about the whole thing).

"Why the hell were you looking out the window anyway?" she pouted. "You're supposed to be paying attention to ME."

"Well, but you were looking out the window, and your eyes got kind of wide, so I looked to see what you were looking at... why the hell did we sit over here if you didn't want me seeing?"

"Well, I thought it would be too obvious that something was up if I made a big deal about wanting to sit somewhere else! Besides. your back is to the window. Now really, I'm getting pissed off, you're still looking out the window instead of at me..."

"Look, there's Steve!"

"Robert! Don't you appreciate the things I do for you? I wanted you to be surprised!"

"I am surprised!"

"I don't think you appreciate how much hard work it was to put this thing together! It's taken a lot of finesse that I don't have!" A pause. "Quit looking out there already!!"

Book Party Friday

2008-05-13T18:56:09Z

A reminder that there will be a combination WHITE FLAMES (by yrs trly) and SUCCUBUS IN THE CITY (by Nina Harper, aka Shariann Lewitt) book party and reading this coming Friday at pandemonium_bks!

Friday, May 16th
7pm -9pm
Pandemonium
4 Pleasant St., Central Square, Cambridge

Books will be sold, autographed and read from.

Should we have cake? I was thinking of bringing a cake. Except I won't have a car and bringing one on the T might be kind of a challenge. If I order a cake, would someone volunteer to pick it up and bring it? I'll bring plates and forks... *ponders*

My Tablesetting Fetish

2008-05-12T00:33:29Z

I do not get to indulge it often, but I have something of a fetish for proper table setting. That means that, yes, I learn a new napkin fold pretty much each time I host a dinner party of larger than 6 people, and that I covet someday being able to have something other than the plentiful but plain stainless steel flatware I bought at Target.

Fortunately, this fetish of mine fits well with corwin's love of buying housewares, so now at least we have all the proper wine & drink glasses (red, white, champagne, cocktails, etc...) and he's never complained about my continual search for machine-washable but beautiful table cloths and table runners.

What follows is some picspam of the Easter Dinner table I actually bothered to take pictures of. Ironically, this is one of the table designs I've done where I did not use any of the fancy runners I brought from Hong Kong or have accumulated over the years.

It being Easter and Spring and all that, I wanted something with color, so I used our dark blue tablecloths on the bottom and then folded the lavender one into runner-width and used that. I then used the napkins that matched that one. I used the "candlestick" fold here, as it's supposed to look like candles standing up in the wine glasses, but most people assumed that, it being Easter, they were bunny ears. All art being open to interpretation... I'm fine with that.

One of the constraints of this art, of course, as I mentioned, is limited budget. So I really can not just go out and buy new cloths, candle holders, centerpieces, or whatever, every time I have a dinner party. I did spring for fresh flowers for this one, though, in purple, blue, and white, to match the colors of the cloths. Also, our nice china has a calla lily pattern on it, so a single calla lily, surrounded by bluebells and a blueish purple flower whose name we never quite figured out.

Alternating with the two groups of flowers are candle arrangements. I ended up making three such arrangements that consisted of three candles each, one plain white 'saint' candle, one short cylinder, and one floating candle in a martini glass with water and glass rocks, and then glass rocks sprinkled across each plate.

I had to play with the digital camera, of course, to see how the no-flash pictures came out. I like these photos a lot better! But then you can't see the pretty colors. The human eye was clearly the best way to appreciate the colors and the nice lighting of the candles, dimmer switches, and white party lights.

And of course one of the major challenges is we had twelve people to dinner, which is 2 more than will fit at the actual table, hence the diagonal arrangement of the table and the tacking on of the card table at one end. Fortunately I had plenty of cloths to extended the runner and color all the way to the end.

Motorcycle for Sale: Honda Shadow 1985 -- $600 as is

2008-05-09T19:55:28Z

Here's what I just put up on Craig's List:

The time has come for me to sell my beloved Honda Shadow. I'm just not riding it anymore and my backyard is not a great place to keep it. The bike has under 5000 miles on it, NOT KIDDING.

Bike runs but needs work -- needs new battery (this one works with jumpstart) and a tune up, plus cosmetic stuff. Weather has taken a toll, but I never rode it much and so it has really low miles.

It's a Honda and Hondas from that era just run forever, like HP laser printers.

* Facts: 1985 Honda Shadow VT500c
* V-twin engine
* shaft drive (not chain drive)
* cherry metallic red gas tank and trim
* includes original toolkit and spark plug puller!
* very easy bike to work on and maintain
* cruiser style, comfy seat
* 5' 4" shrimp like me puts both feet on ground easily
* great women's bike

This is the model of bike shown in the infamous "Dyke Bike Repair Handbook" which I will gladly give you a copy of with the bike if you want it. Along with extra spark plugs and some other miscellaneous accessories.

The story of this bike:

I bought this bike in 1992 when I was quitting my day job in publishing to go to grad school and write full time. I sold my Camaro and took the money from that and my final paycheck and bought this motorcycle. I bought it from a young couple in Derry, NH who were moving to Florida and they weren't going to bring the bike with them. It was "her" motorcycle, and although this was 1992, and the bike is a 1985, she had only put about 1800 miles on it. In fact, she'd never even changed the oil even once. (You should have seen it the first time I did it. Pure black sludge.)

Over the next few years I took it on a few trips, one to upstate New York, once to New Hampshire, once to the Cape. I used to meet up with a bunch of other motorcycle geeks from the NEDOD email list at the Bedford Farms dairy for ice cream on Friday afternoons.

The most infamous trip that I and the bike took, though, was to the funeral of gay leatherman and well-known writer John Preston in Portland, ME. I rode in full leather up to the funeral, which was a full Episcopal service. yes, I took communion in full leather, chaps, vest, jacket, the whole works. There was a whole contingent of leatherfolk there from the HarborMasters, the gay leather group that Preston helped found.

On the way home from the funeral, though, I had an accident. I was sitting at the stop sign at the bottom of the off ramp from I-95 at the rotary by the RMV in Reading, MA (at the time I kept the bike in my boyfriend's garage in Wakefield). I was waiting for traffic to clear enough to enter the rotary.

A large white Cadillac came sailing down the on ramp. I could see it in my mirrors getting larger and larger. The large white woman driving the car decided that she saw an opening in the traffic that she could make if she ran the stop sign.

Problem: I was still stopped at said stop sign. I realised I had a choice. I could jump out into the traffic and get broadsided, or I could hang on and let her rear-end me. I figured if I got hit from the side I'd probably get injured and it would be my fault. Whereas a rearender is the fault of the person in back.

Blam. She hit me, the bike jumped forward and fell over. I fell off but wasn't hurt and didn't even hit my head. Everyone in the rotary saw the accident and all jumped out of their cars to come help me. The bike wasn't really damaged either, other than cosmetic stuff and the front forks needed to be aligned. Her insurance company was pretty stupid, and the bike shop wheedled $2000 in repairs and upgrades out of them... even though I only paid $1800 for it.

I moved to Cambridge in 1995 and since then, the bike has mostly sat in the yard under a cover. I've gotten it running a few times, but just for tooling around town, and last summer never even took it out once. Three years ago I did bring it up to Bikeworx in Maynard, MA for an overhaul so other than the age spots and rust, it's in ok shape.

It's time for the bike to have a new home. Yours? Please come see it this weekend (May 10 or 11) if you are in the area. I'm asking $600 as is, cash please so no weirdness. Comment to get directions or call: 617-864-0492 and ask for Cecilia.

Photos from the Book Party

2008-05-04T04:49:31Z

So, lots of people took my digital camera and took photos of the party. As a result... I don't know the names of everyone in the pictures.

I put them up on Flickr, here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26277413@N06/

If I do this right, here are a few:

Varenka the Cat:

Here's me and Shariann (aka Nina) with our books:

corwin and some other guests (eric and phil):