Thanks to my parents for a great and dangerous childhood

In honor of Time Magazine's November 30th cover story about overprotective parenting, I would like to thank my parents for allowing me to do the following (whether they knew about it or not):

• Climb trees.
• Ride my bike.
• Jump off playground equipment.
• Do what I liked with my free time.
• Go camping.
• Help neighbors sell girl scout cookies in distant neighborhoods.
• Climb trees.
• Use a bow and arrows.
• Play dodge ball.
  
• Hang out once homework was done.
  
• Go to the park and play on the merry-go-round, witch's wheel, monkey bars, and tornado slide.
• Shoot a Bebe gun.
• Do community theater.
• Play football in gym class instead of being forced to do a unit on "jumping rope."
• Climb trees.

Anything you'd like to thank your parents for letting you do as a child that might be considered dangerous by modern over-protective parents?

Why I adore Kristen Britten's First Rider's Call:

• The imperfect main character just keeps going until she can't go anymore, trying to do the right thing. 
• The main character respects herself enough not to get entangled in an affair with the guy who likes her (who she likes) who can't marry her.   (Rock on.)  
  
• She's decently smart and determined and stubborn. 
• She's surrounded by other great characters.

Waiting for death

I waited 17 months for this character to die. 

It's not like I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.  I probably forgot about it within a week of reading the last volume back in July of 2008; that's just how my book memory works, but when this volume came, I decided to brush up on how that last volume ended, since I knew it had been quite some times since its release.  Of course, that little catch-up made me want to read the whole series again, but I have job applications to work on, and I do have some self-control.  Sometimes.

I waited for most of the whole volume for him to die.  I was in agony. 

Maybe they'll surprise me, I thought.  Maybe I'm forgetting something; it has been a while.  Maybe I'm misremembering the absence of this character from the book's present in earlier volumes.  I can't keep all these characters straight, especially when they're supposed to look like each other!  I tried so hard to convince myself that he wasn't necessarily going to die. 

As the end of the story arc neared, it looked like I might be right.  They survived the dicey situation, and everyone was planning relatively-happily-ever-afters, sort of, and then it happened.  I knew he would die on the next page.

I wouldn't turn the page.  I didn't want to see.  I didn't want to cry.  I had another book to read next.  I didn't want to be right.  But I couldn't just stay stuck like that.  I couldn't leave the book unread.  I owed it to the character to see his life through to the end even though I didn't want to be right.

But I was.  Sometimes I hate being right.  A lot. 

It didn't make me feel better that this revelation about the past helped the more recent past and the present make a lot more sense, that it explained some mistifying behaviors logically and powerfully and with quite an emotional impact.  I just didn't want him to die, dagnabbit.  I liked him.  I didn't care that the logical conclusion of his beliefs, the acting out of his ideals, the very integrity that made me like him necessitated his demise in the world of this story.  I just didn't want to lose him. 

It's a good thing writers don't always give us what we want.  I would have been disappointed if he had survived after all that set-up.  I would have felt betrayed by the author, would have thought her weak for being unable to follow through this time, would have been irritated at this missed opportunity to tie up some niggling, bothersome loose ends/plot holes.  I hated being right, but the alternative would have been worse.


Can you remember any books like this?  Any times you really wished you had guessed wrong about the fate of a character?  If you were the writer, do you think you would have been able to find a way to save the life and somehow make the story have integrity, too?  (Or is that why you don't want to be a writer? :)

Sci Fi and Memory

One of the things I love about science fiction is the way it can explore things like human memory from an outsider's perspective.  Heading off to the imaginary future and throwing in some robots or something is still a viable way to make us consider the value and nature of our own humanity in the present.

One series I read lately has androids who only remember the last 22 years of their lives.  Sometimes, there are memories they want to keep, and their torment as that 22 year deadline approaches got me thinking.  As a writer, would I want that kind of clear and detailed memory completely accessible to me for 22 years and then irretrievably gone, or would I rather have my increasingly spotty memories that come and go seemingly as they please, unbound by time?

Another series (recently named one of Publisher's Weekly's top comics of the year) deals with the consequences of creating artificial intelligence in our image, making rules to protect them and us, and then breaking them.  What happens when we try to forcibly remove memories?  Would it be better if we could get rid of the memories that haunt us?  Or is dealing with them part of what makes us human?

Ah, speculative fiction.  The older I get, the more fully I appreciate questions like these as my stock of memories I wish I could retrieve and destroy grows.  :)


How about you?  Any good science fiction that got you thinking about the nature of memory?  Any thoughts on what you wish you could do if you could control your memories?

Is lack of rejection similar to acceptance?

At this point, I haven't heard back from any magazines or journals I've sent work to.  Right now, I'm fine with that.  If they haven't actually sent me a rejection, then it's as if I haven't been rejected.  Even if I sent them a self-addressed, stamped envelope.  Seriously.

What is with this trend of rudeness, I wonder?  I've encountered it a lot as I've been searching for jobs.  They don't even bother to tell you to give up hope.  It's probably because they're too busy sorting through all the applications they're inundated with because of the high unemployment rate, but I still feel like there are standards of common courtesy.

Oh, well.  There's not much I can do about it except keep sending out work and hoping that someone will send some acceptances instead.  :)

Why Lois McMaster Bujold Is Awesome

I was having a rough week.  A really rough week.

I came home to find an email from Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite authors for the last seventeen years or so.  She'd been cleaning out her work room and stumbled across something I'd given her at a signing event a couple of years ago, and she went to the trouble to write me a note and to let me know that there is a new book coming out in time for my next birthday.  (!!!!!!!!!!)  She didn't, of course, know that it was in time for my birthday, but I did.  :)

She was funny and self-deprecating and told me about her own experience with chronic pain and about a pain textbook writer who used a Miles quote in a textbook to head up a section about pain management.  Hooray!

She was responding because of an essay I wrote that was basically made possible by Miles.  I had been having trouble with my writing because chronic pain and sleeplessness were taking their toll on my concentration, and I could no longer create the longer form essays I wanted. 

With the help of "Miles Quotes" written by Lois McMaster Bujold in her Vorkosigan series and a wonderful professor who encouraged me to create my own essay form, I was able to create an essay about my helplessness and some of my experiences with pain.  It was held together by quotes about pain, most of them from Miles Vorkosigan, a wonderful con-man with a lot of experience with pain.

I included a note telling her I wasn't looking for comments or criticism; rather, I just wanted to thank her and show her how important her work has been in my life.  That's why I was so surprised to discover a response.

If I ever become an author, I will remember this.  If I can make someone as happy as this favorite author made me, I would like to do so.

Now, you should all go read her books.  They are wonderful.



Do you have a favorite Miles book?  A favorite series?

Quote about poems

"A poem seeks equilibrium, interaction between sense and sound."

from "Tritones"
by George Stein
Salmagundi Spring-Summer 2009
page 51

This fabulous essay features a debate between a musician, a mathematician, and a poet.  If you're any of those three or are interested in such an argument, be sure to check this piece out.  It has a little Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid energy going for it.


Do you agree (with the quote)?  (It's much more striking in context. :)