Did anyone else see the Time magazine article a couple of weeks ago in which George R. R. Martin was declared the "American Tolkien"? A startling and delightful thing to read in a magazine like that.

UPDATE: The article at Time.com is premium content, but I found a copy of it online here, at what seems to be a wholly unauthorized Time mirror site. Read it while it's still around!

I am greatly relieved, as I prepare to plow into both A Storm of Swords and A Feast of Crows, to have discovered a site that provides detailed synopses of all the books in the series. I read (and loved) the first two books when they came out, and I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be completely at sea if I jumped back in unprepared.

Before it opens, I wanted to mention that Laura and I saw a preview screening of The Passion of the Lion last week. No, wait, I meant Narnia Wars Episode II: A New Hope. No, that's wrong too....

However you slice it, the movie version of the first (or second, depending on how you reckon it) of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is a reasonably engaging piece of entertainment. It's acted well, the special effects are in many cases astonishing (and sometimes not), and it must be said that Tilda Swinton makes for a scarily alluring White Witch, especially in her shaggy barbarian battle getup toward the end of the film. What it wasn't was particularly memorable. It sort of fizzed during viewing and evaporated outside the theater.

I'm not sure why this is. Probably to many fingers in the (fairly faithful) screenplay, and not a sure and compelling enough directorial vision. I was not a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies (which makes me something of an an anomaly in SF circles), but I will say this for Peter Jackson—I probably remember the sights and spectacle of The Fellowship of the Ring better four years after seeing it than I remembered TCoN:TLtWatW after four days. That said, I certainly wouldn't steer fantasy fans away from seeing it.

I had two interesting thoughts while watching the film. First is that, with all the outreach Disney has done to Christian groups, I wondered whether hard-core Christians would be a) more friendly toward fantastic literature after seeing it, or b) severely disturbed at the portrayal of such pagan and Bacchanalian figures as fauns and nymphs as good and friendly creatures.

My second thought was really more of an aside, but one that Laura shared. When the White Witch rides onto the climactic battlefield in a chariot drawn by two polar bears, we both saw that as an in-jokey slap at vociferous Narnia-hater Philip Pullman and the good polar bears of His Dark Materials.

The religious believer finds consolation, and relief, too, in the world of magic exactly because it is at odds with the necessarily straitened and punitive morality of organized worship, even if the believer is, like Lewis, reluctant to admit it. The irrational images—the street lamp in the snow and the silver chair and the speaking horse—are as much an escape for the Christian imagination as for the rationalist, and we sense a deeper joy in Lewis’s prose as it escapes from the demands of Christian belief into the darker realm of magic.  [full article]

Confessed hobbit-lover Anthony Lane gets in some good digs at the expense of The Passion of the Lion in this week's New Yorker:

And so to the conceit that, for decades, has stirred both the souls of the faithful and the loins of professional Freudians: first Lucy, then Edmund, then all four children feel their way uncertainly through the folds of a deep, furry passage and into another world.

And later on:

And, if there is Deep Magic, as Lewis called it, in his tale, it resides not in the springlike coming of Aslan but in the dreamlike, compacted poetry of Lewis’s initial inspiration—the sight of a faun, in the snow, bearing parcels and an umbrella. That is kept mercifully intact in Adamson’s movie, its potency enriched by the shy, unstrenuous rapport of his two best performers: Georgie Henley, as Lucy, and James McAvoy, as Mr. Tumnus the faun. The dark joke is that Mr. Tumnus invites Lucy to tea only because he must turn his guest over to the enemy. Thus does Lucy, over toast and honey, learn the lesson known to the heroine of every horror flick: Don’t answer the faun.

By the way, as an antidote to all the recent media attention for The Chronic(what?!)cles of Narnia, Salon's Laura Miller has written a profile of Philip Pullman for the current issue of The New Yorker.

I just turned on the TV to discover a documentary on Frank Frazetta on IFC. It's called Frazetta: Painting with Fire, and it will be on again at 6:00 am tomorrow, not to mention several other times this month.

Two more older stories have gone on sale at Fictionwise.com this week, by the way: "Colin and Ishmael in the Dark" and "Divided by Time." Get 'em! They're cheap!

Richard Bowes's short story "There's a Hole in the City" was very likely the best work of short fiction published on the Web in 2005. It's currently in the running, with nine other stories, for the Million Writers Award for Fiction.

Never heard of this prestigious award? Neither had I. But you can still help Rick's story win! All you have to do is vote. Few enough people have voted that your ballot will make a difference. But only vote once! The award administrators are very cranky.

Electronic copies of two more new old stories have gone on sale at Fictionwise this week:

• "Stalin's Candy" (Realms of Fantasy, 1999)
  
• "The Diagnostic Feast" (Beyond the Last Star, Sherwood Smith, ed., 2002)

Electronic copies of two more new old stories have gone on sale at Fictionwise this week:

• "The Veil Beyond the Veil" (Realms of Fantasy, 2002)
  
• "The Day Pietro Coppino Spoke to the Mountain" (Realms of Fantasy, 2003)

I am confirmed as a program participant for L.A.con IV, the 64th World Science Fiction Convention. I don't know yet what I'll be doing on the program, but I will be at the con in Anaheim all five days, from August 23rd to 27th. I hope you will be too. (A lot of people don't like L.A. much, but I love it, as only someone who moved far away as a young child can.)

As a program participant, I get complimentary memberships for me and my wife. But since I had purchased one before getting added to program, I now have one Worldcon membership for sale. It can be yours for $175, which is exactly what I paid for it.

Electronic copies of two more new old stories have gone on sale at Fictionwise this week:

• "Two Paths in the Forest Toulemonde" (Science Fiction Age, 1994)
  
• "Why I Think I'll Be Staying Home Tonight" (Electric Velocipede, 2004)

The user icon for this entry is taken from the illustration that ran with "Two Paths" on its initial publication in Science Fiction Age over twelve years ago.

So tomorrow afternoon I fly out to Ohio for eight days of novel-critiquin' good times. This space will likely be pretty silent in the meantime. Looking forward to it, ccfinlay! (And all you other Blue Heaveners out there.)

Though I've been involved with local writers' group on and off in the time since, I hadn't attended a formal away-from-home writing workshop for nearly 21 years—well over half a lifetime, and all of my professional writing career. So it was with excitement and some trepidation early this year that I accepted Charles Coleman Finlay's invitation to attend Blue Heaven 2006 on Kelleys Island, off the Ohio shore of Lake Erie.

Excitement because this would be a peer workshop focusing on SF and fantasy novels, and I was having definite trouble transitioning from short fiction to longer work. And also because I'd be hanging out with some first-rate writers and rising stars.

Trepidation because, for all that I sometimes get worked up online and probably don't come across as bashful, I'm fairly reserved in person and don't usually say much in a new group until I'm comfortable, if then. And also because I'd be hanging out with some first-rate writers and rising stars.

The immediate benefit of Charlie's invitation was that it sparked me to write a hundred more pages on my novel Inclination in something under a month, which for me qualifies as a blistering white heat. The next benefit was the chance to read the first fifty pages of ten other nascent novel manuscripts that ranged from cool and fun to fucking awesome.

But the real benefit came at Himmelblau House on the island itself, which I reached the morning of May 13th together with Toby Buckell, who had very kindly put me up at his place the night before. Himmelblau, a B&B owned by Dagmar Celeste and operated by Marvin Robinson, sits maybe twenty yards from the island's eastern shore and only a stone's throw or two from its airstrip, and that's where, sometimes interrupted by the drone of an arriving or departing mail plane, we tore into one another's manuscripts.

I don't mean to conjure any negative image with that verb. We thoroughly talked over the strengths and weaknesses of each novel in turn, but in a collegial way that underscored the notion that we were all there to make each book the best and most saleable it could possibly be. Even with the one or two works I was initially cool toward, the tenor of the discussions awakened an enthusiasm in me that made my critiques better, or at least helped me put them across in a better way than I might otherwise have.

A lot of the credit for this has to go to Charlie Finlay, who's about as thoughtful and generous a writer as I've met in this biz. He's not just serious about craft and about business; he's serious about putting good heads together so that everyone involved can get the most out of the deal. I had observed this online in some of the SFWA discussion forums, and I was not disappointed in my expectation that this would carry over to the workshop. Charlie has put a lot of thought and hard work into Blue Heaven, and I think a lot of its success comes from the tone—serious but fun—he set for the group.

No less credit to Paul Melko all his effort helping to organize this year's shindig, and for wearing the mantles of focused, incisive, practical critic and indefatigable quipmaster both with equal aplomb.

Here's how it worked. For the first four full days of the workshop, we gathered in a circle each morning in the Himmelblau sitting room to critique one or two first-fifties. After a lunch break, we did one more. The critiques were Clarion-style, and focused on shaping the best possible opening chapters to submit with a novel proposal.

For the next three days of the workshop, we met in smaller groups to discuss full manuscripts (or what existed of them) in more depth. Each of us had been assigned to read two other novels, though we were free to read more than that and sit in on the respective discussions if we had the time and inclination.

I think everyone both gave and received excellent feedback on the work that was turned in, and speaking for myself it was on target and invaluable. I went into Blue Heaven somewhat clueless about the process of composing a novel, and here on the far side I feel I have a much better grasp. I also have an eagerness and enthusiasm for the work, and better than that: a deadline and a plan for finishing my book. For that, I'm profoundly grateful.

Of course, there was more to Blue Heaven than just work. I doubt the group's yin would have functioned as well as it did without the yang of the camaraderie we found outside the workshop sessions. But I've gone on long enough for now, and for that I'll have to make another post later.

Is it possible to be nostalgic for something that only happened a week ago? Laura and I were sitting out back in the dusk last night, me with a beer, she with a cigarette, the dog with a chew toy, and I was telling her about how if I felt this way after only a week at Blue Heaven, I must have been a complete mess at 17 coming home from six weeks at Clarion.

For a few days I've resisted sitting down to write up the social side of the workshop, figuring the ground has already been covered pretty thoroughly by others. But the idea wouldn't let me go, so here (rapidly and possibly incoherently) I go.

paulmelko picked me up at Port Columbus on the afternoon of Friday, May 12th. Cathy "Chance" "Jaded Reader" "secritcrush" Morrison, having arrived earlier that afternoon and checked into an airport hotel, was with him. I almost immediately supplied the first running gag (or "callback") of the week when Paul, pulling out into traffic, said, "So your plane was a little late."

"I thought we landed early," I said, looking from my watch to the dashboard clock. "Is that the right time? 4:20? I set my watch back an hour when I got on the plane."

"We're still Eastern time in Ohio," Paul said.

"Oh." My inability to place Ohio in the correct time zone would end up fueling more than one joke before the end of the week.

I had met Paul on a couple of other occasions and traded quips with him online, not to mention having gotten into a small bidding war with him at the SFWA reception in November over which of our novellas would get the cover for the April/May Asimov's. (asphalteden fooled us both and pocketed the cash.) (No, not really! No money traded hands.) Anyway, I liked Paul already, and Chance would soon reveal herself as possessor of a wicked wit as well.

Then it was off to Chateau Melko for a cookout with his charming wife Stacy and delightful kids. Toby Buckell joined us with his charming wife Emily, and Charlie Finlay eventually made it too, with his two sons, though the rest of us were long done eating by then. Charlie's kids were great, listening attentively and laughing to everything that was said, and laughing hysterically when someone zinged their dad. It was great to see they had the kind of relationship with him where they could razz him about his surfer hair and he would take it good-naturedly.

After dinner I rode to Bluffton with Toby and Emily and crashed at their place, having completely forgotten to book a hotel room in the flurry of preparations. The next morning Toby and I set out for the island. I'd met Toby before at various conventions, but it was great to get a chance to talk with him one on one on the drive. We both reminisced about our exotic childhoods (his in the Caribbean, mine in Mormondom) and had a good chat about writing and religion and atheism.

After a ferry ride to the island, Toby (a returning BHer) found Himmelblau House without much trouble. It was locked, Marvin not yet having arrived to set the house in order for the season. We drove over to the other side of the island, near the huge quarry, to drop in at the Eagle's Nest, the B&B where the women would be staying. Along the way we dutifully stopped at all the stop signs that warned us to look both ways for low-flying aircraft.

At the Eagle's Nest, the proprietor Robin showed us where a freak fire had destroyed half her deck the week before. Paul showed up soon with Tim Pratt and Chance in tow—and at least one other person, though now I'm starting to lose track of who arrived where when—and Robin told us where to find the keys that would let us into Himmelblau House. So us menfolk convoyed back across the island and undertook a manhunt for the hiding place of the keys. I found them at last and we were home! The four of us set about claming our rooms.

By the end of the evening, everyone but Brenda Cooper had made it to the island. (She would be arriving the next day.) Our first activity as a group was to hit a bar and grill called Captain's Corner, one of the few restaurants yet open for the seaon, for dinner. I had dolmathes and "Nero's gyro," and inaugurated what was to be my unfortunate practice on the island of eating way too much. I finished up with coffee because I hadn't had any that day and a raging caffeine headache had set in. The coffee made it better, though, and I was able to sit up somewhat late at Himmelblau that night bullshitting with the guys.

Charlie and I roomed together, and unfortunately the alarm on my watch (a fairly new watch which I still don't understand entirely) went off at midnight and woke him up. This led, the next morning, to much merriment around the breakfast table re: my inability to properly set or control my watch. It went off again during our late-night bull session that night, but by the next evening I had quite accidentally managed to silence that alarm. much to everyone's disappointment.

Mornings went more or less like this: No matter how late I'd been up the night before, the sunlight and birdsong would rouse me abruptly sometime between 6:45 and 7:15. I would shower and head downstairs to start reviewing the manuscripts we'd be doing that day. If Paul Melko wasn't already up, he would be soon. Marvin, the proprietor, would get up next, and his wonderful dog Sela would bound into the dining room to greet us. While Marvin prepared coffee and breakfast, Charlie would wander into the dining room, and then Tim. Greg van Eekhout would arrive barely in time for breakfast, at least at the beginning of the week. By week's end he had advanced in the rotation to beat Tim downstairs, as his Arizona-time-zone brain adjusted to the Central Eastern demands of the hostelry. Toby, a real night owl, would arrive for breakfast after the rest of us were finished.

Marvin's breakfasts deserve special mention. A treat for the senses! Greg developed the uncanny ability to predict what Marvin would prepare for us the next morning, though the final Saturday change-up of eggs Benedict with smoked salmon on top at last broke Greg's streak.

The woman would start trickling over to Himmelblau as we finished up breakfast, and by 10:00 am we were ready to start the group critiques. After two manuscripts we would break for lunch—Marvin's lunches deserve special mention—then do one more in the early afternoon. Then we were on our own to do what we liked until dinner time.

Afternoons variously entailed hikes in the woods to see various cool geological features like the famous glacial grooves, trips into town to access the cheap beer and free wi-fi at the Village Pump, or just hanging out by the lake shore near the house. Sela loved to hang out with the pack, and Greg and Tim were the first to discover her strange penchant for fetching thrown rocks. She was particularly diligent about it the first day, but by the time I finally witnessed this behavior Sela was turning her nose up at most of the of rocks we tossed into the lake for her. Oh, she would run through the water toward the splash and maybe stick her head down in the water, but rarely did she raise it again with a rock her mouth. And if she did, it was never the only that had been thrown. Obviously we silly primates were not supplying the correct rocks for her nefarious purposes. (Greg did emerge as Sela's favorite rock-throwing primate, though. And he mastered the art of throwing the rocks in such a way that Sela could not catch up with them fast enough for them to fall on her head.)

The lake shore had snakes a-plenty as well, which drew not just Sela's but everyone's fascination. One snake was spooked down a cistern with no way out, so Charlie and Paul rescued it with a hoe (leading to this remarkable photo of the Gandalflike Paul warning bystanding canines away). Charlie also rescued a grackle from the screened-in porch, leading to the expection that he would attempt to qualify for the Order of the Chordate by saving one member of each of the five major classes of vertebrate. (He didn't make it, though he gamely tried. Maybe next year.)

I missed some of the nature walks for the sake of catching up on the full manuscripts I needed to read for later in the week, but I never missed an opportunity to travel with the gang down to the Pump to get online. This is where we were gathered late in the week when Tim received the Very Good News he has alluded to elsewhere, which a large group of us celebrated with a bottle of the Pump's best sparkling white (the closest thing they had to champagne). Way to go, Tim!

This is also where, on our last day, the SF-readin' bartender Russell bought a round of shots for Toby and me. Stormclouds—amaretto, 151, and a splash of Bailey's. This looks like a swirling brown gas giant in a shotglass, and it goes down very easy. Yum.

Evenings the routine varied. We tried new restaurants on the nights when restaurants were open, which mostly meant the weekends. The Kelleys Island Wine Co. gets the nod for the best food on the island (next to Marvin's!), and I developed quite a fondness for their Glacial White. We went there twice. Less successful was our evening at the island's brewpub, where we attempted to conceal the sour faces elicited by what Tim, I believe, eventually dubbed their "Gherkinbrau." It was only the waiter standing behind me, rubbing my shoulders without permission, that pressured me into ordering a second pint.

Other memorable evenings included the Monday night reception at the Eagle's nest, with delicious sandwiches and finger foods provided by Robin, at which I was finally inveigled into telling the story of my Canadian felony arrest. It was a little scary without Laura there to tap my elbow when I started digressing and losing the audience, but it seemed to go well enough, and I got through the story in less than an hour. Then there was the evening we watched Memento on VHS, and the evening we played Balderdash (zumbooruk, anyone?) and I repeatedly fell for Tim's definitions. But that was okay, because he falling for mine. We were each other's bitches. And Toby probably had the best quip/definition of the evening:

facula  n.  vampires with tenure

And the people. Everyone there was wonderful—Brenda bring a paradoxical ray of sunshine from the Pacific Northwest; Chance who can cut you down to size with a word and make you like her for it; Charlie who despite his worried only woke me up one with his snoring; Greg with his love of Norse mythology, karate and prog rock; Mary whom I've known the longest by far, with whom I attended Clarion those 21 short years ago; Paul with an ever-ready quip; Sandra who puts the lie to any stereotypes of military women; Sarah with the perennial smile, who can consume a startling amount of beer for someone so thin; Tim who despite his scarily formidable writing chops is a great, funny, regular guy; and Toby, who tells a mean story too and who's more winningly analytical about marketing than anyone I've met.

And we can't forget Marvin, who had us all rolling with his stories of being mistaken for Al Roker. And did I mention his food?

In short, the only thing wrong with Blue Heaven was that my wife and dog weren't there. And that, to paraphrase Greg, we're all so scattered around the country now that it's over. Big ditto on how stupid that is.

Thanks for listening. Now I can get back to work on real writing. Bort!

So I keep putting off my Worldcon report because I'm busy and it seems so daunting. So I'll break it up by day.

So Wednesday, after landing at LAX, Laura and I rented a car and negotiated the freeways to Anaheim without too terribly much difficulty. We managed to get checked in and parked at the Marriott fairly quickly—and yes, in that order—and then we met Craig Engler and Scott Edelman for a rather late lunch by the hotel pool. Just before our food arrived, though, Craig was summoned away by a Battlestar Galactica–related phone call with the New York Times, and his Turkey "Off the Rack" Sandwich went uneaten, except by flies, at least for as long as I sat there.

Lunch was enlivened by the sight of Robert Reed flexing by the adjacent pool.

Sadly, Laura and I both had to abandon Scott at the lunch table before Craig returned, since I had a panel at 4:00 pm. Laura left first, and after wrangling with Scott over the check (I lost) I joined her. We raced over to the convention center—me decked out in the clothes Laura chose for me—picked up our badges in the Green Room, and ran into tnh outside our panel. She commiserated with me about having to serve as moderator, and kindly examined the list of other panelists to tell me what she knew about each.

I moderated that panel, "The Future of Journalism," and discovered that most all the preparation I'd done with steelbrassnwood (thanks!) was for naught, because no one really cared to discuss the actual future of journalism. Of course, that's probably typical for any given panel topic at any given convention, so I don't feel too bad. One of the other panelists, Paul Fischer, recorded the whole affair for a future podcast, so you may actually be able to hear it someday. The panel was pretty well attended for a Wednesday afternoon.

At 5:30 I had another panel, on fantasy and science fiction in theater. This one was not as well attended, but there were still maybe 15 or 20 people in the audience. Keith Kato moderated, and he did a nice job of it. I tried to take notes on his approach for the SF theater panel I would be moderating the next day.

After that panel, Laura and I rushed north, braving the freeways again, to visit our excellent friends Gordon and Jane in West Hollywood. The drive reminded me how much I love L.A. and hate the freeways. Gordon and Jane moved to L.A. just a few months ago from Queens, and already they have an amazing apartment not far from Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I told them that the smell of their bathroom—which I quickly reassured them smelled fine!—took me back to my own early childhood in L.A. My relatives all had bathrooms that smelled exactly the same. Maybe it's something to do with the water.

Gordon and Jane took us for a drive along Sunset Boulevard. We ended with a visit to In-N-Out Burger, where Laura was all prepared for us to order from the secret menu. I was all brave and went first, ordering my Double-Double animal style, and my fries well-done. The cashier didn't bat an eye. Laura got a Neapolitan shake. It's cool to be in the club.

We hit no parties that night. By the time we got back to the O.C. and rolled into the hotel, we were bushed. We'd been up since 3:00 am.

Laura and I got up reasonably early Thursday. We were just sitting down at our table in the Marriott restaurant when something hit me in the back of the head. I looked down. A sugar packet lay on the floor at my feet. I looked around. Scott Edelman, Hurler of Sweets™, looking innocent, was sitting at a table in a nearby section a couple of feet higher than ours, behind a low wall. We went to the wall and said hello. Scott introduced us to his tablemate, Robert Silverberg, and we proceeded to have a pleasant little conversation over the wall with the tops of Scott's and I-Can't-Quite-Bring-Myself-to-Call-Him-Bob's heads. Eyes, but no mouths. And me mostly tongue-tied, being a Silverberg worshipper. (Who isn't?)

Before they left the restaurant, Scott and "Bob" (okay, I'll call him that) stopped by our table and we were able to have a conversation with their entire heads. "Bob" told us how he grew his goatee in 1957 after seeing a priest sporting one at Christmas mass. (Why he went to Christmas mass as a Jew was hinted at but left tantalizingly unexplained.) He told us he had worn his ever since. The goatee will turn 50 next year. Then we all took pictures of one another. (Laura took the one of Scott and Bob.)

While Laura ran some errands, I went to a panel Bob was on, "Creating Believable Aliens." I slipped out a little early to get to the dealers room for my scheduled hour autographing (and hopefully helping to sell a subscription or two) at the Asimov's/Analog table. On the way I ran into Brenda Cooper and Toby Buckell, two of my Blue Heaven bandmates. Then I stopped at a nearby table where John Kessel and Jim Kelly were signing copies of their slipstream anthology, Feeling Very Strange. I said hello, bought a copy, and had them personalize it. John Kessel wrote: Handsome, smart. I hate you.

I didn't sign many autographs at the Asimov's/Analog table, but a couple I did were memorable. One fellow had not only a copy of the April/May 2006 Asimov's but also one of my most obscure little publications, "Celestial Mechanics" in the March 1996 F&SF. (Not that the magazine is obscure, but that story sure is.) Also, a very nice fellow named John Remy stopped by and introduced himself as a podcast listener, an aspiring SF writer, a returned missionary, and a recovering Mormon. Laura had been out distributing little William Shunn postcards around the con, and John had me sign the back of one for his wife Jana, with whom he produces a podcast called "An Atheist's Prayer." He promised to attend my kaffeeklatsch the next day.

Otherwise, it was just fun to hang out at the table with Sheila Williams, asphalteden, and Trevor Quachri. John Kessel dropped by to chat for a couple minutes more, and I promised to head over to his reading at the Hilton after I was done at the table.

Head over to Hilton I did, though I was waylaid en route by Scott Edelman, who was chatting with a group that included the funny, articulate, and fearless Ben Rosenbaum, someone I'd heard many stories about at Blue Heaven but never met. Next I got lost in the Hilton and never did find my way to the Kessel reading, though I tried. (Sorry, John!)

For lunch I headed back to the Dell table and tagged along to the Marriott Starbuck's with Brian and Trevor. There we discovered the amenities of what is surely the best Starbuck's in the world: one with a refrigerator containing beer, wine, and Ben & Jerry's. All but the Ben & Jerry's was consumed along with our lunch.

As Laura was lounging by the pool, I went off in search of programming. Almost by accident I stumbled into a screening of the Special Edition of Free Enterprise, a film I had seen at least twice already, and got caught up all over again.

The rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur—working backward, I'm sure this must be when I first ran into paulmelko at the con, though it's hard now to remember the order of things—but Laura and I changed into clothes that we hoped were both appearing-on-a-panel and going-to-Disneyland appropriate. At 5:30 I moderated a panel called "Adapting Science Fiction and Fantasy for the Stage," which demonstrated that perhaps two panels on SF theater at one convention was one too many. Two of the panelists didn't even bother showing up, and still the number of audience members (including Laura, who had to come) equalled the number of panelists, at least until two more people showed up and sat in the back very late in the hour.

Promptly at 6:30 it was straight back to the Marriott lobby where we met Brian and Trevor, hopped in the car, and headed to Disneyland for four hours of hilarity. As Brian has noted, we rode pretty much everything we had hope to ride, and we even managed to walk onto the Haunted Mansion right at the end of the evening, getting on in the last group. I look forward to seeing Brian's photos from the Happiest Place on Earth, especially the ones in line at Space Mountain, because apparently Laura and I didn't take any ourselves. D'oh! Anyway, Disneyland was probably the highlight of a great con.

After Disneyland, we ended up at an In-N-Out Burger in Fullerton, where we taught those Dell guys how to order animal-style, since we were now old pros at it. Laura and I split one order this time, though, hoping for a little more Out than In.

For a change of scenery, Laura and I went over to Hilton for breakfast. It was a touch better than at the Marriott. Then it was upstairs to the Lido rooms for my hour-long 10:00 am reading. But on the way we ran into—surprise!—our friend Gordon, who had mentioned something Wednesday about wanting to come down from L.A. to the con for the day but not being sure he could. It was very cool of him.

There were maybe eight or nine folks in the audience. Laura and Gordon, of course, and Scott Edelman and Paul Melko, plus a few folks I didn't know. What I read was an unpublished novelette called "Not of This Fold," a near-future story about Mormon missionaries assigned to a large space station at L2. A woman in the audience kept smiling at different missionary references, so I assumed she was or once had been Mormon. Partway through I began to realize that I was in trouble. I was feeling a little emotional, and was very worried that I would get to the climax and choke up. Well, that's just what happened, but I think it was only ten or fifteen seconds before I got it together enough to finish the last few pages. (Scott dropped me a very nice note about the story later, and Melko kept giving me shit about it the rest of the weekend—which of course means he was being supportive. <g>)

After the reading, the woman introduced herself as Diane. She said she was ex-Mormon, a podcast listener, and also the girlfriend of John Barnes—and that she had missed the John Barnes reading next door to hear mine. Good thing she liked the story!

Paul and I both wanted to say hello to John Barnes, so with Laura and Gordon we hung around outside the reading rooms waiting for him to finish signing books for the dealers with wheeled carts who seemed to keep appearing from nowhere, as if summoned by sympathetic magic, to replenish the line. I told him that his novel Mother of Storms had been the reading that got me through the physical upheaval of moving from Utah to Seattle to New York in 1995, shedding my Mormon beliefs along the way. Barnes joked that I was abandoning wives in cities across America as I went.

Gordon and I went to see the "World Government" panel at 11:30. I don't recall what panel it was Laura went to, but I think I remember it was supposed to be funny. At any rate, it was a little after noon during the panel that I checked my CrackBerry and discovered that Shana, back home dogsitting for Ella, was trying to reach us. She wanted to know how best to get Ella to the emergency vet.

Gordon and I pulled Laura out of the panel she was attending, and Laura immediately got on the phone with Shana. Turns out Ella had, according to Dan the Dogwalker, a terrible ear infection, and that she yelped when her ear was touched. She had also, according to Shana, beshat the entire apartment a couple of times over. As Laura flipped back and forth between consulting with Shana and consulting with Dan and calling our vet back in New York, Paul Melko happened along with a group headed for lunch. Laura forced Gordon and me to join the lunch group and leave the dog-worrying to her.

(And it all worked out fine. Our friend Colin readily agreed to drive Ella and Shana into the city, and steelbrassnwood picked them up again. Everyone involved has our immense thanks for helping take such good care of our dog while we were away.)

Our lunch group accreted more and more members as we rolled from the convention center to the Hilton restaurant. Along the way we ran into Cory Doctorow, who had been messaging me about having lunch Saturday. Cory had been scheduled to sign at the Asimov's/Analog at the same time I was the day before, but partway through had to rush off to take a call. We'd crossed paths a couple of times since and been unsuccessful arranging a time to hang out. This time, though, I confirmed in passing that Saturday lunch would work fine. Then I was dragged along by the gravitational well of the Friday lunch group.

I can't remember the names of everyone at our lunch table, but by the time we reached the Hilton there were over a dozen of us, and more people kept showing up, requiring chairs to be wedged in ever closer together. There was Paul Melko, Paolo and Anjula Bacigalupi, Craig Engler, Blake Charlton (whose upcoming novel Spellwright sounds utterly fascinating), Stephen Eley of Escape Pod, and many, many others whose names and faces I woefully find myself unable to shake out of medium-term memory.

Word came from Laura that Ella was safely off to the vet, and after lunch Gordon and I hit a panel on "Blogs & the Media" (featuring The Two Craigs: Engler and Newmark). It was one of the better panels I saw at the con. Gordon headed home after that, and I met Laura and headed over to my kaffeeklatsch in the "Spaceport Lounge" at the convention center.

The kaffeeklatsches (in one of the worst-planned aspects of the con) were held in a curtained-off area adjacent to the performance stage, which meant that the klatsch part had to compete with very loud music. Not only that, but there was no kaffee! However, there was a helpful con volunteer who said she could get me a free coffee from the food stand. I gave her a twenty and asked if she would get coffee for both me and my one signer-up, John Remy. (Actually, Brian Bieniowski and Laura were both there for the start of the kaffeeklatsch, but neither of them could stay long.) John and I had a marvelous conversation about SF, Mormonism, missionaries, writing, atheism, and the difficulties of leaving the church when you've raised your young children in it. He promised to send me a copy of his Sunstone fiction contest winner from a few years ago, "Ojichan's Funeral." (Which he did!)

Next, Laura and I met Craig Engler and Chris Cohen (of the Virginia Kidd Agency) in the lobby of the Marriott. I drank a Laphroaig more quickly than I wanted to, and we set out for the fabled Harper party at a "nearby" hotel. It was supposed to be a walk of three blocks, but it turned out to be more like three leagues. We were all intrepid East Coast walkers, but come on. Craig and I were manning our CrackBerrys like tricorders, trying to figure out where the hotel really was. On the way, we ran into Gordon Van Gelder coming the other way. He had tried to find the party but given up, convinced he was going the wrong way. We convinced him to come with us, and after maybe another fifteen minutes spied the hotel in the distance. We tried to cut through another hotel's parking lot, at my suggestion, but were stymied by an unbreachable fence. We did get there eventually, though.

At the party, marvelous SF writer and Harper publicist Jack Womack made us all take free books. We saw Geoff Landis and Mary Turzillo there, and Joe and Gay Haldeman, and again more people than I could name. Paul Melko arrived with his agent, Caitlin Blasdell, and then our fellow Blue Heaven alum Tim Pratt arrived with his wife Heather Shaw, who was a delight to meet and hang out with. Laura and I never moved far from the entrance to the party—our little group that accreted there was too fun and interesting to abandon. Scott Westerfeld happened past and regaled us with tales of lost-luggage woes.

Oh my, I'm getting exhausted just remembering that evening. From the party, Craig, Chris, Laura and I took a cab directly to the restaurant where Craig was hosting a dinner, Mr. Stox. Cory Doctorow and his friend game designer Raph Koster met us there. For some reason I was the only one man enough to brave the wine list, and the sommelier became very respectful when I (by guesswork and chance) ordered us a DuMol syrah. I sat by Raph, who is a very nice, smart, funny, and interesting fellow. We were soon joined by Gardner Dozois, Susan Casper, Nancy Kress, Ellen Datlow, and Pat Cadigan. Much merriment was had, and some naughtiness. The food was amazing, far and away the best meal we had on the trip. I ordered the halibut. I hope Laura will post her impressions of the meal.

After a cab trip back to the Hilton, we ran into Sheila Williams just taking her daughter Juliet (in her lovely princess costume) back to their hotel room. We hit the Dell Magazines party, where I was immediately hit in the back of the head by some manner of sweetmeat. Edelman, of course. Laura and I were, expectedly, bushed, and we didn't stay long. We did, however, grab a big piece of carrot cake to carry back to our room. That would be Laura's pre-run power meal the next morning.

Laura and I didn't take many photos at World Fantasy, but luckily the irrepressible John Klima did.

Klima and his Spilt Milk Press are bringing out my chapbook in May, but in the meantime you would be well served to snap up a copy of their first chapbook, The Sense of Falling by Ezra Pines. That link is to an old pre-order page, but rest assured that this slim volume is out and available and well worth your five measly bucks.

Had a great time in Austin. Laura and I caught up with several New York friends who have decamped to Texas in the last couple of years, saw Idiocracy (at last) at a movie theater that serves beer, drank more Shiner Bock than we ever hoped to in our wildest dreams, attended a plethora of great readings, managed to get lost more than once on the Capital of Texas Highway, ate ourselves silly, and at least met great folks like Evan McClanahan and Trent Hergenrader in person. I was very sorry to have arrived at the bar too late Sunday evening to meet up with ShunnCast listener Andrew Langston—my deepest apologies!—but I did arrive in time to meet by chance an editor who spoke enthusiastically about the novel proposal for Inclination that is on her desk.

So all in all, a splendid weekend, and I thank Laura for, as usual, keeping me out of the hotel room and on track.

Scott Edelman just sent me some photos he took at World Fantasy, one of which fairly screamed to be posted here.

It's always a lovely thing to find someone saying something nice about one of your stories, but when it's a story that was published thirteen and a half years ago it's even nicer. Part of jamietr's very interesting project of reading through the full run of the late, lamented Science Fiction Age from the beginning.

I have cast a new novella, "Cast a Cold Eye," written in collaboration with and at the instigation of Derryl Murphy, out upon the postal waters. Sail, little ghost story! Sail swiftly to your destination, and on those leeward shores find fertile soil in which to put down your pulpy roots and bring forth blossoms. Sail, and thrive!

Man, I really need to get out of the office today.

I've just sold my early, early story "Colin and Ishmael in the Dark" (Science Fiction Age, September 1993) to Escape Pod's new fantasy podcast that will probably launch sometime in July.

This story grew out of a writing exercise in one of my college writing classes. We were supposed to write a page in class of only dialog. I wrote three pages, then set the result aside for a couple of years. When I took it out and read it again, I knew how the story should end and wrote the rest very quickly.

I'm excited to hear "Colin and Ishmael" read aloud. I'm very fond of it. I think it will be best to listen to it in total darkness.

I finally made it back home yesterday to my lovely wife and fuzzy dog after eight days away at the Blue Heaven workshop. I'm delighted to be home but nostalgic for the workshop. It was an extraordinarily helpful, intense, and fun week, maybe even moreso than last year. I don't want to be a namedropper, so I'm not going list all the terrific skiffy writers who attended. Suffice it to say that the week was professionally and personally rewarding, filled with learning, insight, humor, collegiality, friendship, food, beer, free Stormclouds, animal heads, turkey vultures, TNT explosions, Totally Outrageous Behavior, quips that can never be repeated without someone choking almost to death, and Old Gregg. My novel Silvertide was critiqued by two sharp readers who restored my confidence in it, and I hope I served as useful a function to the three embarrassingly talented scribes whose novels I critiqued in full (or nearly so).

Too many good times to recount them all, or even to pick a handful. I leave you with my entry in the Blue Heaven 2007 Raunchy Limerick Challenge, posed by a fellow workshopper who shall remain nameless, for reasons that will remain unstated. The challenge was to compose a limerick employing the words pump, rump, and Cockney.

Down at the Village Pump

A barmaid of bonny sweet rump
Set empty beers down with a thump.
    "Don' just sit and watch me,"
    Said this comely Cockney.
"You want some, get back 'ere and pump."

I've sold a book! Well, half a book, anyway. A dark fantasy novella, to be precise.

According to my records, it was over four years ago that Derryl Murphy dropped me a note that said:

I've had this idea rattling around in the back of my head for few months now, but the starts have been all false, and a little voice has been telling me for a while now that I should contact you. You interested in doing a short story together? It involves photography and spirituality, sorta, which might make for a nice blend between us.

We hammered out a basic plot, based on Derryl's initial idea and some moody photographs of graveyard statuary, and then started tossing the manuscript back and forth—veeeerrrrry slowly, since we both had a lot of other big projects going. But earlier this year we finally had a final final draft, novella length, and it was time to send the damn thing out.

I told Ellen Datlow about the novella at a birthday bocce party for Craig Engler, and she asked to see it just for the hell of it. She was very enthusiastic about the story but had no current project it would work for. Still, this gave us hope. A couple of other markets didn't pan out, but then Derryl queried PS Publishing. Pete Crowther said to send the manuscript on over.

The response came pretty swiftly, and the upshot is that our little novella, Cast a Cold Eye, is scheduled to be published by PS as a self-contained book in Spring/Summer 2009. We are beside ourselves.

If you're not familiar with PS Publishing, you should be. These are the folks who put out Joe Hill's collection before Joe Hill's secret identity was widely known, and also the Robert Charles Wilson novella that is currently one of my competitors on the Hugo ballot. And their books, as objects, are just beautiful.

So, a Canadian-American collaboration to be published in England. Pretty darn cool, if I do say so. And I think Derryl would agree.

I am not long back from my trek to Andersonville to see Alaya Dawn Johnson read from her new novel Racing the Dark at the Women and Children First bookstore. The trip was an hour and a half each way on the sad excuse for public transit we have here in Chicago (which is otherwise a terrific, loveable town), but it was worth it to hear a great reading in a great bookstore, and to support a friend and colleague.

But don't take my word for it. Let Time Out Chicago fill you in on why you should check out this novel. (Let me tell you, it was rather strange to arrive home from my epic journey and find Alaya in the issue of Time Out I had brought inside from the mailbox as I was leaving for her reading.)

I keep meaning to post a World Fantasy report, by the way, but I want to note here that I'm glad I wasn't so drunk at the Johncon 3 party that I forgot Alaya telling me about her Chicago reading.

(Speaking of drunkenness, as I write this I am sipping from a bottle of Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout. I can't say I'm truly enjoying it, but since I was unable to finish the last bottle of it I opened, I am bound and determined to conquer this one. It is like drinking a syrup distilled from the walls and ceiling of an old cigar bar. Though the web site says BCBS is 11% alcohol by volume, the label on the bottle says 13%. I am choosing to believe the bottle.)

I'm delighted to see that my short story "Colin and Ishmael in the Dark" will run on PodCastle on October 24th, just a week before Halloween. The story is mostly dialog and takes place in pitch darkness, and I've always thought it would play best as an audio work, so I couldn't be more excited to hear it. I haven't heard who the reader is, but I know M.K. Hobson is doing the introduction, which should be a hoot.

The story was originally published by scottedelman in Science Fiction Age in 1993—Jesus Christ, Scott, that's fifteen years ago!—and it was only my second professional sale.