"One of the very real dangers to our North American civilization is our worship of conformity. In almost every walk of life the person who conforms most pliably [sic] to the accepted standards of dress and behaviour is most likely to succeed. We must recognize that this enforcement of conformity will finally result in universal mediocrity. New ideas, especially in human relations and often even in science, come from those who refuse to conform."

Huzzah. And if you don't know who Omond Solandt is . . . shame!

JSR

About a month ago my wife and I passed a bicycle memorial on the side of Queens Boulevard. The bike was chained to a pole and the whole thing spray-painted white and covered in flowers.


I passed my second bike earlier this week, this time on the corner of Houston and LaGuardia. Like the first one, it was spray-painted white and covered in flowers. I did a bit of googling and found the Street Memorial Project.



It’s common enough to see flowers on the sides of highways, but the rate of automotive travel tends to quickly put these memorials in the background. Walking down the street is another matter. You get to spend time with someone’s sudden unexpected death.



I definitely feel some attachment to these two guys, Derek Lake and Asif Rahman, even if only in the barest, “it could have been me” sense. One guy made movies, the other guy made music. How different is that from writing every night and putting the stories in the mail? Both of them were probably thinking about something else when they were killed.

Is that the way it goes?

F/SF writer and blogger Paul Jessup recently interviewed me about my new online fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, asking lots of thorough questions about my vision for the zine and what types of stories I’m interested in. You can read the interview on his blog. It’s great timing because we open to public subs this Friday. Thanks, Paul!

Yesterday afternoon I drove home to Western Mass from TNEO on NH highway 101. It was a rare, beautiful day stuck smack in the middle a week of downpours and violent thunderstorms. The past week, wherein my only opportunity to go outside was the walk from dorm to classroom and back (failed to do enough crits ahead of time, fool of a Took), had left me thoroughly stir-crazy, but also exhausted (didn’t get a lot of sleep at TNEO either). The brown “Pack Monadnock” road sign by the trailhead in Peterborough seemed to be laughing at me. But I knew there was no way I’d make it up Monadnock and back before dark in my current state. I drove on for a couple miles, the desires for a good long walk and a good long nap vying in my head. The walk won, and I veered abruptly off the highway at a sign for the Edward MacDowell Reservoir.

This was a core of engineers project in the 50s, designed for floodwater control after the Peterborough Flood of 1938. The fortuitous chronological gap in the satellite data above shows what the lake looks like when full in winter vs. low in summer. I circumambulated it in about two hours, counter-clockwise from the dam at bottom. The trails don’t go all the way around; I had to veer off the dirt road near that hooked inlet on the northeast side and find my own way through the marshes. Amphibious bushwhacking! Not for the faint-hearted.

I found an early-industrial ruin on the east bank of Nubanusit Brook, overgrown with oak and black birch, about 100 feet from Richardson Road. It looks like they diverted the brook for power or cooling or both–there’s a hundred feet of iron piping, four feet in diameter, which passes through two different brick-and-stone building foundations before emptying into a hundred-foot fieldstone spillway, 12 feet deep, 12 feet in diameter. You can sort of see it in the southwest edge of the 1900 USGS Topographical Survey map of Petersborough, just below the 55′ mark. There’s a little dam, and the brook splits in two for a short distance. And I found a big iron flue a few hundred yards downstream, so I figure it must have been a forge. Fun. Moss all over everything. Sorry there are no pictures–but it’s just as well. My camera would have gotten destroyed if I brought it.

I climbed an embankment onto the Spring Rd bridge, crossed the brook, then cut back into the woods through the grounds of a nuevo-colonial manse, heading south again towards the lake. I waded through some enormous ferns, stepping-stoned my way over some swampy ground, then followed an abandoned dirt road for a quarter mile before it disappeared again beneath hazed-golden marshland, when I reached the edge of which a crowd of blackbirds took off from the reeds.

The woods were dense with undergrowth along the shore, but I could see where they thinned out beneath tall pines on the far shore. The mad notion came upon me of wading across a narrow section of marsh rather than going all the way around.

My folly first became apparent when I stepped off the overgrown bank into that windy little stream you can see on the satellite photo. I sank in up to my waist, and the muck at the bottom nearly swallowed my walking stick. So I slogged through chest-high reeds for a while, looking for a shallower route. It was only after about five minutes of this fight that I paused for a rest and became aware of a singular, stinging-hot pain overwhelming my knees, shins, wrists and forearms. I looked down at myself to discover that most of my exposed skin was covered with crisscrossed scratches turning an angry pink, as though I’d received significantly more than forty lashes with a serrated noodle.

I jumped into the water again and stood there waiting for the pain to recede.
I had not, until this point, been aware that sawgrass could grow anywhere but in salt marsh habitats. Lesson learned.

The current dragged against the backs of my knees. An impossibly red flower grew beside me. I gazed at it, thoughts absent.

Rather than expose my shins to any more punishment, I opted to wade upstream for awhile, carrying my sneakers tied around my neck with my map and wallet stuffed inside, until I found a place to climb ashore. There, under the pines, I found the trail.

I hiked barefoot over roots and spongy pine needles for another mile or so. Along the way I encountered a wealth of bizarre and delicious-looking mushrooms: indian pipes, chanterelles, russet boletes, white russula, yellow coral. Eventually I found my way across the causeway and back to the car. I stopped at the public beach, had a quick splash about in the deep, mineral-red waters at the foot of the dam, then headed home.

It’s pouring and thundering again now outside my window, and the cherry trees are lashing back and forth like seaweed at rip tide.

As part of my weekend of relaxation and recovery from finishing the revisions on my dissertation, I watched Bubba Ho Tep.  I'd read the Joe Lansdale story years ago, and saw the film in the theatre and on DVD, but my lady was very good to me and bought me my own copy.

I know many people didn't like this film.

I love it.

Its absurd, wild, sad, and redemptive all at the same time. How could it not be? Its about a geriatric Elvis Presley and an old black man who thinks he's JFK fighting a soul sucking mummy in a rest home. And it has Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis! The story is one of my favorites from Lansdale. Its the best of his skills burning at all cylinders. And the soundtrack is awesome.

So, I thought I would include an excerpt from an essay Lansdale wrote on Bubba Ho Tep from his great collection Writer of the Purple Rage. Apparently, he wrote the story during one of the hardest years of his professional life, when people of good intentions were telling him to stop writing what he loved and make the leap into writing bestseller fiction. The results were rotten. But as soon as he started writing for himself again, he started to produce, at a very fast pace, some of his very best work. Bubba Ho Tep was an example. Here's a the quote I keep on my wall. Hope you enjoy it.

“I don’t want to live in a Pollyanna universe, but I do know this. Love and enthusiasm for what I do has always carried me through, and I hope to goodness it continues to do so. And, hey, if that love and enthusiasm lead me to a Bestseller, I can deal with that. So my motto is the same as always. Be true to yourself. Do what you love and the good things in life will come to you. But don’t ask me for a loan.” Joe R. Lansdale, Writer of the Purple Rage Story Notes.

Cheers,

JSR

Yesterday, I finished a story. This may seem like no great shakes, but I had taken a month off from writing fiction so I could focus on the dissertation. I was worried about skills going rusty and the loss of momentum. I'm pretty disciplined about my craft. I really had not taken a break from writing since 2004, due to very dire financial circumstances. But for about four years now, I've kept a pretty dedicated pace. One reason was that when I took that break four years ago,  it  did hurt my writing. I lost my rhythm. I was writing bad stuff and couldn't seem to get excited about anything.

Much has changed since then. I survived Odyssey. I worked hard to become a better writer. My craft developed. I challenged my self to improve in a host of ways. I wrote a story a week for three months. I've had some good publishing success so far this year.

Yet the fear remained. Until I finished the story.

 I didn't feel rusty or out of step or anything. In fact, I found a better way to end the tale. The ending to this story had eluded me for months as I banged my head against the keys. But stepping back, coming at it when it was nowhere near as close to my mind, turned out to be an advantage.  And it sure beat grinding myself into frustration.

This doesn't mean I won't get back on the horse and try and keep the same "go go go" Ridler attitude that has served me so well in the past. I still think I do better when I keep busy. The more you write, the more you learn. But I won't worry about easing the gears now and then. Sometimes walking away for a blip gives you the strength you need to finish. Just don't use that as an excuse not to work hard!

JSR

So. Steve (the greenbottle fly, if you remember him) continues to persist. I think he's even gotten most of the coffee off of his body.

Brief update, mostly for a couple of links. WoW friends will appreciate this, courtesy wired_blogs: "From MMO to CEO", a rather belated article covering the transfer of leadership skills learned in online game guilds to the workplace. When I presented "Warrior Queens of the Cyberworld" at Immersive Worlds last year, one of the questions from the audience had to do with precisely this -- whether workplaces are beginning to recognize the immense leadership skills necessary in managing massive online guilds. It looks like they are. Future resumes will list typing WPM, educational training -- and how many wipes it took your team to take down Onyxia.

My last contribution to Inside Job at the Escapist went in last night. I think it's a good one. It's been a very interesting ride. Perhaps more thoughts on this on Friday, if I'm not dead (I think I may be picking up jsridler's cold).

Between Settlers, other writing commitments, work, and visa-related real life garbage, I managed to get into a serious crunch for about the past month, a side effect of which was aggravating the mild RSI in my left neck/shoulder. Saw a massage therapist for it on Tuesday, and am in for apparently multiple more such sessions, but after a couple of days of soreness I'm finally feeling a bit looser. I hadn't even realized how much mobility I'd lost in my neck. The therapist asked if I had trouble driving, with turning my head, and I said no, I didn't think so -- but my neck now turns significantly easier and farther than it did on Tuesday. Yikes. I think I am too young for this shit still.

cristalia has posted eloquently on writing business and why stories like Michael Cisco's should be shared. Obviously, I tend to agree. This was actually the main reason I came over here to post in a timely manner, in case I'm reaching anyone who hasn't already read Cisco's account with Prime Books. I, too, have heard a similar experience with some of the folk there, and have been trepidatious as a result.

It's a complex thing. There is so much fear, in writing and in the games industry, of taking action that may threaten one's career. The thing is, and this applies equally to both, when you really get down to it, there are enough GOOD people working in both businesses that it is never worthwhile to hide or sabotage yourself in order to avoid offending a lousy employer. It is the Sanders thing in a new iteration, though certainly less clear cut. But the principle remains the same. Anyone telling you to shut up just for the sake of shutting up probably has a less-than-noble motive for doing so. Keeping lousy treatment (or, in yhlee's case, truly egregious coffin-nailing wackjobbery) silent because speaking up Just Isn't Done is a great way to perpetuate said lousy treatment. Kudos to Cisco for taking the uncomfortable step and sharing his experience, here's hoping that the full truth comes out. And for those who truly wonder whether speaking up can jeopardize a career, I can tell you that all it does is cut you off from people you really shouldn't be working for in the first place. I actually find it a rather excellent sorting mechanism.

We are all worth more than this.

I've read the third collection of Ed Brubaker's series Criminal: The Dead and the Dying. Fantastic stuff. He's weaving the characters into a noir fable that is slick and smart. Part of his method is focusing on characters that seemed tangential or secondary or just background filler in prervious stories. Brubaker's work proves something I've often felt: that almost anyone can have a compelling story to tell.

I think Brubaker is weaving a fine tale that proves this point clearly. All too often, I read stories with template heroes doing template hero things, and wonder if maybe the bartender or the cabbie or the bookstore clerk had the more compelling story to share with the reader. In Criminal, Brubaker is weaving an essay on this point. Can't wait until the next collection.

JSR

In his book on filming the Satyricon, Federico Fellini talks about his desire to create a science fiction film set in the remote past. Not one where the dinosaurs have spaceships, but one in which the ancient world is shown to be as startling and alien as any futuristic depiction.

I blame him for everything that follows.




From wikipedia: "In December 2006, archaeologists discovered the world's earliest artificial eyeball. It has a hemispherical form and consists of a very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime (as opposed to placed within her corpse). The woman was near 30 at the time of her death. She was also 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than the ordinary women of her time and region. Her skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE."

The site also gave us the world's oldest known backgammon set.

I am somewhat obsessed with this woman and who she might have been. She has been called the "astrologer" in some articles, but I suspect that is more a romantic notion cooked up by modern day reporters. Not that she wasn't extraordinary in some ways. Her height makes her something of an anomaly and raises the question that she might have migrated to the city, while the eye was probably manufactured in the city itself, since Shahr-i Sokhta (aka The Burnt City) was known for its jewelry production.



Of course, I've started to write a story about her.

Settlers is done. Not yet submitted, but done. The excitement begins.

I have been largely underground and thus was remiss in not mentioning a couple of things, though those of you that read the other Homeless Moon journals already saw this.



The folk at The Homeless Moon and I -- that would be jsridler, scott_h_andrews, boonofdoom, and the_slow_train -- decided last year to put together a chapbook of our work. Most of them are being much more clever in their descriptions of this undertaking, but it's 2:30am and I want to go to sleep. So I'll just say that some of the initial proposal for the chapbook was to show what we could do to the big ol' world, but mainly we just wanted to put together some stories and appear in the same publication, something that, barring blackmail or other unsavory tactics, was not likely to happen fast enough for our chum-like impatience.

John Klima very kindly blogged about the chapbook on the newly-revealed Tor.com -- looks like a snazzy site indeed, breaking many a mold for previous expectations of online speculative fiction fare.

Anyway, re the belatedly mentioned chapbook, I'm honored to be sharing page-space with these stories, and you can, as the site page says, download an electronic copy of the chapbook for free if you weren't lucky enough to snatch a copy at ReaderCon.

Speaking of which, I was not there. I neglected to mention that here, and in particular I owe an apology to elenuial, whom I conned into applying for Odyssey and should just now be recovering from the shell-shock of the six week experience. I'd intended to go to ReaderCon and harass various folk -- lesser_celery, cristalia, time_shark... I shouldn't have started to name names, there are many more. But. 2am. Visa issues and Canadian Immigrations put the abrupt kibosh on this plan, causing jsridler and I to forfeit our already-paid-for Pricelined hotel, and more irritatingly to miss the con and the opportunity to see rarely-seen folk and hang out with the HM guys for a few days. We are also not at TNEO due to the chaos of preparing to move out west. Next year, however, all of this will be corrected. I understand ReaderCon was pretty cool, as always, and congratulations to those who pulled Rhyslings or one of the new shiny Shirley Jackson awards.

More updates when I have had sleep. A parrot update is long overdue, with photos of Smeagol's semi-new cage. Vasya is in her annual summer super-molt, but recently began voluntarily taking baths, almost, and has polished up her beak. I wonder who she's trying to impress.

A particular greenbottle fly has been buzzing around here for the past three days, being generally annoying and doing its fly thing, bouncing off monitors, chasing food, etc. About an hour ago I heard a persistent buzzing; it had kamikazed itself into my coffee cup from this morning and was in the process of noisily drowning. A-ha, I thought; nature at work. The stupid irritating buzzing will be no more.

Then in about two seconds I sighed and realized I was not in fact going to let it come to a messy end in stale coffee and non-dairy creamer. So, without much help from the fly itself, I fished it out on a second attempt with the end of my pen.

It has been fastidiously drying its wings, perched on a copy of Julian Dibbell's Play Money, for the last hour. I have named it Steve.