S#61: Wake-Up Call
In accordance with the laws of awesome, I just changed the wake-up alarm on my phone to Beethoven. Just one more way to make sure I wake up confused.
Eeeeexcellent.
On Friday I’ll be launching my steampunk twittertale “Zeppelin Jack and the Deadly Dueller”, AND Steampunk Earth Day for 30 October (similar to Earth Hour, but longer, and with better outfits).
Speaking of confusion, here’s another cute not-yet-robotic kitty:
Coming soon:
Surprise date
Bad movie night
Diet coke and mentos bombs! Yep, there’ll be video.
#50: No plans
I think you all know, at least in theoretical terms, how awesome today’s awesomeness is.
I’m not doing anything today.
I’m not going to work.
I’m not seeing anyone (unless it happens spontaneously).
I’m not doing any exercise.
I’m not even cooking dinner (I have leftovers prepped).
It’s startlingly complicated to prepare for a day of nothingness. I’m proud to have done it. Please do play along at home, if only for an hour.
Here’s some things to get you appreciating the nothingness.
This article is safe, but the blog is PG or so for mentioning unpleasant things every so often.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/09/party.html
http://geekologie.com is just great. I dunno what the rating is – I’d guess PG or G.
For inspiration, try Donald Miller (PG for frequent Christian stuff), eg this post: http://donmilleris.com/2010/04/30/if-youre-life-were-a-movie/
Finally, the not-PG-but-generally-positive-with-a-bit-of-metalish-horror-etc Steff Metal post that’s influenced so many blog entries here (this entry is G):
http://steffmetal.com/101-ways-to-cheer-yourself-up
I also just stumbled across a rather long but interesting article on why there is Christian fantasy, but very little Jewish fantasy. It’s child-safe, and it’s here: http://www.jewishreviewofbooks.com/publications/detail/why-there-is-no-jewish-narnia
The best part is this opening paragraph, which made my day:
Although it might seem unlikely that anyone would wonder whether the author of The Lord of the Rings was Jewish, the Nazis took no chances. When the publishing firm of Ruetten & Loening was negotiating with J. R. R. Tolkien over a German translation of The Hobbit in 1938, they demanded that Tolkien provide written assurance that he was an Aryan. Tolkien chastised the publishers for “impertinent and irrelevant inquiries,” and—ever the professor of philology— lectured them on the proper meaning of the term: “As far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects.” As to being Jewish, Tolkien regretted that “I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”
Today’s geekologie robot-ish pic:
S#100: Hug someone
This one’s definitely recommended for playing along at home. Hugging and eating chocolate do have similarly relaxing results, so yay for that.
In writing terms, this week has been thrillingly exciting.
No, nothing actually happened. This is the writing life we’re talking about.
The high-octane action adventure began as I received an email from Publisher D (my shiny new contact, who just received the beginning of book 2 of my kids’ trilogy). She said she’d received it, and she’d let me know when she’d read it. She also asked where I’d published the first book (having misinterpreted something I’d said).
I wrote back and said the first book was on Publisher B’s slushpile, and had been for nine months. I added that although they were fine with me sending it elsewhere, I valued their comments and chose to wait – and besides, Publisher D had requested and rejected an earlier draft of the first book a few years ago.
She wrote back and said that she could only read the first book in a series, so she wouldn’t read anything until the first book was ready.
I took the permission she’d technically granted, and sent her the beginning of book 1. Zap! Pow!
All this happened in lightning speed during a single afternoon.
So what, kemosabe, does it all mean?
It means:
a) I’ve been given permission to resend book 1 to Publisher D (which is, I think, a better book – and of course my own natural choice for first book to reach publication) – and I’ve sent it. I won’t hear a final answer for 6-12 months.
b) Book 2 is now free for a smaller publisher – like Publisher I, who I wanted to send something to after hearing them speak in Melbourne.
c) I have an excuse to not only write to Publisher B (again), but to sound good when I do, since Publisher D did technically request it (which implies they’re the same publisher I pitched to in Brisbane, which is not at all the case since I was horribly rejected in Brisbane).
So! I took my good-sounding excuse and wrote to Publisher B (this time cc-ing the email to my original contact) – precisely one hour ago.
My original contact is on holiday, as her autobot informed me.
My usual contact just replied (yay!) and said that both books are now with independent readers for further evaluation.
This is GREAT news. It is the second-last rung of the ladder (the last rung is the aquisitions meetings). The independent reader will be fresh (a boon for two re-submitted novels), and their job is READING, which means they’ll be a whole lot faster than a publisher or editor (who often only actually have about two hours of reading time a week, since it’s not their main job).
In fact, “Stormhunter” was once “unconditionally recommended” by a freelance reader for Publisher A. My contact there (an editor) was so excited that she emailed me to let me know it was with “the aquisitions editor”. Two weeks later, I had my answer. It was a no, sadly – but the reason it was rejected was because of an unmarketable plotline which I’ve since removed.
So! It’s moved up. Progress! I’m pretty confident freelance readers will like what they see (whether they’re blown away is another matter), and I know my twittertales and blogging and so forth do help at acquisitions meetings (plus I’ve already met at least one of the people who’ll be sitting at that table – which means they know I’m not visibly deranged*).
The down side is that December is coming, and everything slows down then. I reckon I’ll hear back in either November or February/March next year – since it’s two books, next year is more likely. I won’t email again until at least January. Apart from anything else, it’s no longer in the tarry hands of my main Publisher B contact.
I’m too excited to go find a picture at present (also, I need to go to work, STAT!) but I will tell you that the story beginning on October 1 is called “Zeppelin Jack and the Deadly Dueller.” Yep, it’s steampunk time.
Still, here’s a link to a fan-made transformers movie that looked like it had robots in it (I don’t know what the rating is):
http://www.geekologie.com/2010/09/russian_fanmade_transformers_m.php
*I’ve been to writing conferences and met other writers, and believe me – writers, hobos and serial killers are indistinguishable.
S#42: Exercise
Yesterday, I went for a 1-k swim for the first time in about a month. It hurt (not the swimming, the physically getting into my swimmers part), but I did it. I’m on my way back into the healthy weight range lost to me when I decided to schmoozequest.
I wish I could figure out why chocolate is such a big deal. Why can’t CJ – or better yet, God – be the reason I get up in the morning? CJ is way nicer than chocolate.
I guess it’s the self-destruction aspect of chocolate that CJ lacks. So once again my thoughts circle and circle and end up at the dead end of mental illness.
I’m still glad to be eating healthily, despite the feeling of utter futility it brings on. Chocolate doesn’t erase the futility, it just gives a brief illusion of pleasure and/or the false anticipation of pleasure. But even the sane despair when faced with dieting. For a crazy person, I’m doing marvellously. I’m sure I weigh less (for my height) than the average Australian woman my age. Which means I still suck, but not as much as others do.
In other news, I’ve just finished re-reading “Heroes of the Valley” by Jonathan Stroud. It’s young adult adventure fantasy, and it is excellent.
There are three main elements of every story – characters, plot and theme. The two main characters in this tale are Halli and Aud. Halli is a rather stumpily-built second son of the local Arbiter, who longs to be like the mighty heroes of old, who slew the ferocious Trow and laughed at danger and death. Too bad he lives in a time of peace – and isn’t much of a fighter, either. Aud’s fate is to be married off, and she’d rather be eaten by a Trow (not that she believes they exist). She’s smart, brave, and can even appear to be well-bred when she chooses.
I won’t talk about the plot, because it’s best to just read the book. Trust me: it’s exciting and surprising. The theme is heroism – what it looks like from afar, and what it looks like up close. I was bound to love the book for the theme, if not for the excellent writing.
It’s also very, very funny – the heroic tales each chapter are not just a highlight, but part of the ongoing tale. It’s wonderfully macabre – Halli’s nurse tells him blood-chilling tales just before telling him to go to sleep, and there are hundreds of brilliant one-liners, too.
Recommended for: Anyone who can handle fairly mild horror (say, Buffy level). Especially storytellers, or people like me with a secret longing to be a hero.
Rating: PG for violence and horror violence
Speaking of horror and violence, here’s another geekologie robot pic (unfortunately, yes it IS real):
S#101: Talk to Steff
Today is Tuesday. That means Publisher B might reply. It’d sure be nice, since they have two of my books – one of which they’ve had for sixteen months. (3-6 months is a normal response time – although two other big publishers have taken 9 months just for the first few chapters – which, by the way, they rejected without requesting more and without giving comments).
For most of this year, I’ve sent a polite email to Publisher B just once every three months, and my contact person has replied within 24 hours with vague (but nonetheless useful) assurances that the books are, indeed, still under consideration. In August I emailed as usual – no response. Two weeks ago I emailed again – still no response.
Steff Metal and I originally met because of a mutual connection to Publisher B, so I wrote to her with my woes, hoping she’d have some insight. She wrote back. What follows is her response, but with chunks taken out and names changed. And I admit, I feel hugely better. This email says a whole lot about the writing life that I wish wannabe writers knew BEFORE they started writing novels (that, and the news that successful full-time writers tend to earn around $10,000 a year – non-successful writers tend to earn negative amounts).
Hiya!
Urgh – that’s a very awfully long time. I’ve never gone through [the specific person].
I think they’ve lost your email somehow, if they don’t reply. I would email after two weeks, because it’s out of their pattern and you have a history with them. Just a polite email saying you sent an email before but you don’t think they received it.
[Details of various frustrating things happening with her steampunk novel, including a very vague rejection – their advice was to write another book – and another publisher not replying to her emails.]
We haven’t been emailing much, have we! I think it’s cuz we read each other’s blogs so we kinda feel caught up. The writers conference sounds amazing. I need to go to more of those – more networking. Swooning with jealousy at all those contacts you made – you were so brave! I’m gonna start when we move to Germany – there’s huge conferences in the UK.
Why do we do this to ourselves, again?
xx
Steff
————–
And here’s a picture of my new favourite cat EVER
How much do YOU love the internet?
Ubergeeks John Scalzi and Wil Weaton have done something wonderful. This:
Other than writing stuff themselves, they had various other (in)famous people contribute, plus they ran a competition (based on the picture). Which I didn’t win.
The book itself is, technically, free. You can go read it at http://unicornpegasuskitten.com/. But since the whole point of the thing is to raise money for lupus sufferers (Wil and John paid for everything out of their own pockets), see if you can donate $5. Or maybe more.
Because sometimes, it is lupus.
However, here’s the story I wrote. All things being equal, the stories from the book are better than this. So go click on the link and enjoy.
“Kitten Spit”
I woke as my face was scraped raw by warm sandpaper coated in slime. Something monstrous had found me, and its spit dissolved my skin. I opened my eyes to a view of needle-sharp teeth, and gagged at the stench of salmon as the thing yawned.
“Good kitty,” I croaked.
It was taller than me, even without the wings spreading from its shoulders. Since my cave had a prudently small opening, only its head could fit inside – if it angled itself so the horn on its forehead didn’t scrape the roof. I scrambled back before it could lick me a second time. Blood dripped down my neck. I healed myself by magic before the thing attacked again.
“Where did you come from?” I said aloud.
“Well,” came a voice from outside, “when a unicorn and a pegasus and a cat all love each other very much –”
“No I meant—oh actually, that does answer one question. May I ask who you both are, and what you and your – er, noble steed – are doing here?”
“Are you the orc magician?” The voice was curiously flat, as if the man was mortally exhausted.
My heart sank. Even among other magicians, that question always led to an awkward conversation followed by an even more irritating battle. I had thought living on an active volcano would discourage further inquiry. “Just because I have green skin, pointy ears, and incredibly well-developed muscles doesn’t mean I’m going to kill you.” Under my breath I added, “Like all the others.”
The kitten retreated as someone tugged on its reins. Not for the first time, I was glad I slept in full armor.
A human stood by the lava river outside my cave. Other than his sweater, he was unarmed.
I took an involuntary step backward and hit stone. “That’s –”
“Yes,” he said, looking away. “The clown sweater. I need you to kill me.”
I looked at his young face and saw the deep worry lines of a man possessed by the most diabolical fiend of our time. “But. . . you’re immune. And besides, we’ve just met.”
“I’m Wil.”
“John. But –”
“I’m not immune.”
“Then how?”
“Sometimes, it sleeps.”
“Can you take it off?” I asked. “Can someone take it off you?”
His eyes glittered, but he held himself together. “I used to have three brothers.”
“Ah. So I’m dead then.”
“No! Kill me first and save your life. And she’s not a monster. She’s Petunia, and she just likes to play.” He pulled down a golden spear from her back. “Take it!”
“Don’t make me do this. Killing people is so. . .”
All colour fled his face, silencing me. “It’s waking up. The clown. It’s coming! Help me!” I saw his eyes turn mad just before he leapt onto Petunia’s back. He lifted the spear and smiled the serene smile of the deranged.
The awkward-conversation part of our friendship was at an end.
I grabbed my axe and shield and ran outside. Wil seemed decent. The least I could do was sever his head from his body.
Petunia leapt into the air and bore down on me with her claws splayed. Magic filled me, sparking from my fingertips. I jumped straight into Wil and we both tumbled to the rocks. Petunia crouched to watch us, switching her horse’s tail from side to side in excitement.
“Unicorns,” I thought frantically, searching for a weakness. “Good for looking picturesque with virgins. Not helpful right at the moment.”
Wil leapt at me, drooling with fury. I parried and his spear clashed against my armored shoulder.
“Pegasuses,” I thought. “Pegasi? Good for traveling long distances fast. But flighty.”
Petunia’s eyes glowed with mad kitten joy. Her pupils darkened and she waggled her rear end, ready to spring.
Wil spun with impossible speed and I ducked just in time. His foot connected with my head, but I magically dismissed the bright stars of concussion before they got me killed.
“Kittens,” I thought. “Nice to look at, if you like that sort of thing. Attracted to shiny things. Also a source of pure, unadulterated evil.” I blinked, and knew what to do.
Luckily for us, Petunia was already in the mood to play.
Wil lunged for my throat and I didn’t have time to dodge naturally. My magical defenses shot me fifty feet into the air. I had time to look down as I fell, curious to see if gravity would get a chance to kill me before the rest. Or perhaps I’d think of some further magical brilliance. Either way, I looked forward to finding out what happened next.
Petunia sprang at me. She batted me sideways in mid-air, knocking me into my cave. I landed on nice soft armor and watched with quiet surprise as magical sparks healed my broken legs. With one hand, I pointed to Wil. Pretty blue sparks danced an irresistible pattern on the clown’s red nose.
Petunia took the bait. She pounced and pinned Wil to the rock with one paw, biting into his sparkly chest as he screamed in pain and rage.
She spat something white and red and grinning into the lava river, where it dissolved. Then she sat on Wil’s legs and licked the hole that used to be his chest.
I staggered outside, dragging up what magic I had to try and heal him. Sparks flew off me into him, building new organs, growing new skin, and filling him with new blood.
It was no use. Petunia’s saliva ate through him faster than I could build him back
Wil didn’t move.
“The sweater is dead,” I said, falling on my knees beside him. “Long live the sweater.”
Petunia yawned emphatically and touched him with the tip of her horn. “Unicorns,” I thought. “Handy for fixing poison. Does that include kitten spit?”
THE END
PS This piece of awesomeness comes free of charge. Your regular schedule of Daily Awesomeness will continue tomorrow.
PPS Please do spread the word about this book. If you’ve ever had a disease of the immune system or known someone who has, you’ll understand why.
#103: Hug the Internet
If I ever want to REALLY waste time, there are two places I love – tvtropes and cracked.
Warning: NOT suitable for children (but probably okay for most young adults – a lot of very unpleasant things get mentioned, especially on cracked, and some rather MA stuff is shown on occassion).
Warning: You will be sucked into a never-ending vortex of informative hilarity.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AirplaneOfLove
And from geekologie.com (which I highly recommend), another killer robot:
S#91: Signature Cocktail
“Pull all the liquor bottles out of your cabinet and line them up on the bench. Now, go to the fridge and pull out all the liquids and fruits. Do the same with the pantry. Now, line up all your shot glasses and start mixing! You’re searching for the perfect signature cocktail. This involves lots of taste-testing. Be daring, be crazy. Give your drinks a wacky name.” -steffmetal.com
Here’s what I found:
Alcohol: Cask cooking wine (red), butterscotch schnapps, blue curacao, and a rather strong ginger dessert wine.
Mixers: Milk, lemonade, diet coke.
Good ideas: Lemon juice, vanilla essence, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg.
Bad ideas: Custard powder, sweet soy sauce, glucose syrup, 3/4 dodgy banana from several days ago.
I screwed my courage to the sticking-place and started with the red wine – mostly because I don’t like it.
Step one: Taste wine. Result: Still don’t like it.
Step two: Add butterscotch schnapps. Result: instant stomach cramps.
Pause.
Step three: Add lemon juice. Result: Coughing, sticking out of tongue as if to scrape off the taste.
Pause.
Step four: Carefully heat glucose syrup (the stickiest substance known to man) in a small dish until it’s actually a liquid.
Pause.
Sigh.
Step five: Realise putting glucose syrup in the delicate wine glass will almost certainly result in destruction (or glucose highlights to every future drink from that glass). Instead, as the glucose re-thickens (highly reminiscent of the Terminator, fyi), pour the wine over it and mix as well as can be hoped.
Sigh. Roll eyes. Wrap the resulting mixture around the end of a spoon and eat it.
Result: Very like a sour lolly with 90% of the flavour surgically removed.
Conclusion: I don’t drink. . . wine.
Name of creation: Savignon Blerg.
After a brief recovery period, I moved on and blended together the banana, milk, custard powder, and more schnapps – with a sprinkling of nutmeg on top. It was like drinking a banana milkshake, eating a butterscotch lolly, and enjoying a flour-top bun, all in one harmonious mouthful (it’s the raw custard powder that gives it the sense of a flour-top bun).
Conclusion: This was a win.
Name: Naughty Picnic.
I moved on to my next adventure, which I’d already named “Black and Blue”. See what I mean?
Step one: Try some blue curacao. Result: It tastes of blue. Like really, REALLY blue. Sweet and fake as a girl you pay to be your friend.
Step two: Feeling tender, you add vanilla next. Vanilla goes with everything, right? Result: Wrong. So very wrong. One extra iota of sweetness was more than Miss Blue could handle. I like sugar, really I do, but this tasted like sugar after it had been thrown up for being too sugary.
Step three: Hastily add coke. Coke will make it better. It has to. Result: It did. Who knew? Coke – especially diet coke – has such powers of disgustingness that it can absorb almost anything. Bizarelly, I think it tasted better with blue curacao and vanilla essence in it, as if they filled in the blanks taken out when it became a diet drink. Odd.
Ah, if only the tale ended here.
Step four: Add sweet soy sauce. Result: The drink suddenly has a meatiness to it, as if it wasn’t quite solid before. The soy sauce, while adding to the cloying sweetness, gives the drink a dark and brooding presence, much like Sauron’s enormous burning eye in Mordor. . . watching. Waiting. Killing.
In this metaphor, the vanilla essence represents the friendship of the fellowship (the one small good thing), the blue curacao represents the false/fragile goodness of the parts of Middle Earth where the killing hasn’t started yet, and the diet coke represents Sauron’s power – omnipresent, all-consuming, and Just Not Right.
Finally, I moved on to arguably the riskiest endeavour of the night: the ginger wine.
Step one: Gird loids.
Step two: Taste ginger wine.
Step three: Feel manly for not coughing this time. Congratulate self. Wish CJ had been in the room to see.
Move on.
Step four: Heat honey in microwave until it’s very runny. Mix with the ginger wine. Result: Just like that, the sucker punch of the ginger wine appears to be neutralised. It’s more like those lemon and honey concoctions grandma made when you had a cold. Realise you put in too much honey. Move on.
Step five: Add lemonade. Result:
Pause.
Step six: Sip it again. And again. And a bigger sip.
Pause.
Smile.
The darn thing’s delicious! It’s like ginger beer! The experiment has yielded a positive result!
Yay for ginger winebeer. I have a friend called Lee, so I named it Ginger Lee in her honour.
Step seven: Sprinkle cinnamon on top. Result: Meh. Better without, but it’s still delicious.
Step eight: Call CJ. Smile ominously as he tries everything. Smile proudly as he enjoys the Naughty Picnic and Ginger Lee.
Conclusion: Win and win.
I apologised for putting too much honey in the Ginger Lee.
“It IS like ginger beer,” he said happily. “Made by bees.”
I put more wine and lemonade in it, and he drank some more, but said he really liked the honeyer version. Then he discovered more honey in the bottom of the glass.
In more ominous news, I saw “Predators” last night (I say “saw” – in reality I watched perhaps half of it, and had whispered conversations with CJ about what was going on the rest of the time). It was quite stressful, and I was quietly impressed.
Then I came home, and it was night, and I had to take the rubbish out.
I moved the wheelie bin near our front door for easy access, glad that we recently replaced the sensor light out the front.
I went and gathered all the rubbish.
I opened the front door – and RIGHT THERE BEFORE ME was an animal face looking at me from pure darkness; pure black pupils and white fur and silence.
Darn cat sat on the darn wheelie bin waiting for me until the darn sensor light turned itself off. (But WHY?!?!)
And with that thought, here’s today’s killer robot, and yes it really is from geekologie.com (a site I now love – go look at them and you’ll see why):
S#34: Krieg up your wallet
It was steffmetal.com that inspired the project of awesomeness you see before you. Which is interesting, since Steff Metal is primarily a heavy metal blog, and this. . . isn’t.
However.
Here we are.
To this day, I’m not entirely sure what krieg is. (Perhaps, given my musical taste, that’s the point.) But I have a notion Tim Burton is krieg.
So here’s my new wallet (and some daisies. Are daisies krieg?)
And here, celebrating another day in the life of everyone’s favourite killer robot cat, is something from geekologie (I think – I really should check that), that is krieg, brOOtal, and trOO):
Maybe being krieg has more going for it than I realised.
Felicity Banks 