OK, so May shot past...

Tinycat embodies my attitude

 ...but much was accomplished. May Madness. Mad May. May, May, go away. 

So in February, the first two books I ever wrote, Enemy and Outlaw, reverted. To me. Which I guess means they went out of print. 

Anyway, reversion means we can reissue! So we are doing that. The third book in that trilogy, Ally, had never found a home with the publisher, and we published it through JABberwocky. Now Enemy and Outlaw will also be published by JABberwocky. But in order to do that, we needed to get new cover art and new cover copy and people more technically savvy than I had to make epubs. 

So March and April were spent securing audio contracts and narrators and basically a lot of stuff that my agent and her assistant and the other folks at JABberwocky handled. I commissioned cover art (y'all, I cannot wait for you to see it) and wrote cover copy, the latter of which I like only slightly better than writing query letters and synopses. 

I also reread the manuscripts when they'd been set up as epubs, looking for stray formatting errors. I reread Ally, while I was at it, because it felt unfinished not to. (This was how I wrote them, too. I did that thing you're not supposed to do and wrote all three before I ever queried, because one way or the other, I wanted to know how the story ended. I also wanted to know I could finish three connected books.)

It was...odd. The experience of rereading, as more of a reader than a writer/editor. I mean, I know those books inside and out, right? I wrote them. I edited them. But I also haven't looked at them since they went into publication. I was half-dreading the experience--like, would I read and think omg, why didn't I--? and regret all my choices? Did I write something good, really? 

I did. I surprised myself in a few places, too, not with the unvarnished brilliance of my prose, but with little details or world-building things I'd done that I'd forgotten. Or even not so minor plot points. I am one of those people who can watch a film or a series and love it and then forget most of the important details almost immediately. Evidently I can do that with my own books, too. Ha.  

I learned that I still love those books. I love the characters. Part of that is nostalgia, sure--these were the books that got me an agent and my first publishing deal. But part of it is just loving that world and those people. (And the prose, which is jagged and fragmented and so very much not like the RORY books. NIGHTWATCH and WINDSCAR are closer in feel, but even they're more fluid.)

Anyway. The re-issue of On the Bones of Gods is in the final stages of production. Manuscript formatting corrected, prices and barcodes and ISBNs acquired. Now we're waiting on the fantastic Tan to finalize the cover text/placement (complicated by the fact of her wife's return from a business trip with COVID--she's fine, just miserable, and Tan's on single-parent duty in the meantime).   Stay tuned, watch this space--I'll make lots of noise when they're finally out in the world. 

AND, coda, postscript, lest you think I did nothing but read my own work and, like, teach and stuff--I finished the WINDSCAR edits early and turned in to my editor.  Copyedits are inbound, and I suspect they'll land the same time as 30-odd final portfolios for grading, which...could make the next couple weeks interesting. 

Fortunately, there is coffee.

Good DAY to you, 2021. I said--GOOD DAY!

Right, so--the year began with an insurrection and it's ending with Omicron, but in between there was a lot of writing--and teaching; I have a day job, and will for the foreseeable future--but I'm here to talk about the writing. I don't usually; there are writers out there who do, and do it well, and I usually figure I don't have too much to say that they haven't already. Also, the day job is teaching writing, so I do a lot of talking about the writing process, just not my own. But really, truth: I think "I can write about writing here on this blog, or I can, you know, go write." And I usually go write. 

Not that this blog isn't writing, but--oh, you know what I mean.

Anyway. My writing. My fiction. And 2021. 

I had a book come out: NIGHTWATCH ON THE HINTERLANDS, in October. It's a good book. I enjoyed the hell out of writing it. It's related to the RORY THORNE books--same multiverse, same arithmancy--but a different cast and a very different tone. 

Anyway. 2020 was a hard year for most of us, publishing and publishers included, and though NIGHTWATCH made its pub date on time, there were some bumps along the road. 

While we navigated those bumps, I drafted a set of proposals and accompanying sample chapters for what I thought would be the next set of books I'd be writing. Then the bumps became pits and mountains. The two books meant to follow NIGHTWATCH became one proposed sequel, and the third book was abandoned. (Not because it sucks or it got rejected--it never got submitted--but because I don't really want to write it anymore. I have other ideas that are more interesting.)

And here's where I start talking process. 

I don't outline. I don't plot. I get a couple characters with distinct personalities, I present them with a problem, a situation, and I set them loose to solve it. I have ideas, but no set path forward, no sequence of events that must happen. This is how I run my D&D campaigns, and this is how I write my novels. Character-directed. If I get stuck--I have this brain full of plot devices up there, so many tools in the box--and one of those will work. A misdirection. An explosion! Something unexpected. Whatever. 

Now, NIGHTWATCH is already a little unusual; I actually had a plot in mind. It's a murder mystery, see, among other things. The basic structure was already there, even if the details weren't. I even had signpost events along the way--this encounter, this discovery--because in a murder mystery, you need those.

So. 2021. With the sequel to NIGHTWATCH (let's call it WINDSCAR), I started with not one, but two synopses already written. Book two was meant to be more SF-horror, claustrophobic and harrowing. Book three was going to be the more epic battley one. And I had to condense  these into one synopsis, which I did. Which looked good, it made sense, and the publisher bought it. Huzzah! 

Now I just had to write it. And here is where I got cocky: this time, I had a synopsis before the zero draft. I had a map. A plan. I thought it would be easy. Write what's in the synopsis. It's right fucking there. 

So I did. I had a brutal drafting schedule. I had to write this whole book over the summer, June-September, because I wanted the zero draft done before fall quarter started so I could revise before sending the first real draft to Lisa. 

Fortunately no one had any travel plans this summer, and I am a natural workaholic. (It's my coping mechanism--when the world is a hot mess of shit and trashfires, and I can control almost none of it--I control what I can, and that's work. Anyway.)

I drafted. And drafted. And it was like breaking bones, that drafting, but I hit the marks on the synopsis and I even finished the zero draft of WINDSCAR early, beginning of August. I took a week off, but I already knew it was a hot mess. It felt forced, it felt contrived, it was too compressed and the pacing was crap--

Then I figured out why.

First, the synopsis that had looked good on paper was too much for any one book, unless I wanted to write 250K, which I did not. Which I could not, if I wanted to hit the deadlines. (It's due to my editor March 1, pub date October. It's already tight.)

Second, and more importantly: I'd been hitting my synopsis marks, but I hadn't given the characters any reasons to hit those marks with me. Their motivation was underdetermined, and even more underwritten. I typically draft as if I am experiencing the action along with the characters--what does X think? How is she feeling? What makes sense for her to do now? I think she should go--nope, no, she wants to go here instead  For WINDSCAR, I wrote more like I was a director. Go here! Go there! Do a thing! Feel this way! And it wasn't working. 

So there, now at mid-August, I was looking at 120K and throwing about 50, 60, maybe 70K away and rewriting the back half to two-thirds, and the summer was more than halfway over.

So...I did. I revised. I rewrote. Partway through that, my word processor crashed. As in stopped working. As in erase and reinstall. I decided I could lose a day (or more, if the reinstall failed for some reason) or I could just... use a different word processor, the one built into my OS. So I did that, and I kept to my schedule.

I finished draft 0.2 in September, just before school began. Essentially I NANOWRIMO'ed twice. The second draft was better, I could feel that, but it was also not quite done. 

But I was. 

I revised one more time, so that Lisa didn't have to look at my frankensteined horror of a draft. There was no time for my beta reader, so I sent it to Lisa in November, knowing it was missing an actual end, but also knowing I needed confirmation that the story held together enough to warrant an ending. And also knowing I needed a goddamned break from the thing, because at that point I was calling it That Fucking Book. 

I reinstalled the word processor. It went fine. I taught my classes. I baked, I knit, I cooked. I gamed--finished a long-running campaign I'd been DMing, made a new character for one that's starting in 2022. 

Lisa got WINDSCAR back to me in December, well ahead of our original schedule--which is great! Because I have about 15K more to write (she guesses 20K. I am in firm denial). I have spent the holiday break writing like it's summer all over again, although at least this time, I really am revising. And I would always, always rather revise than draft. 

So I guess the point of all this is... I don't write well to synopses. I am not likely to be a plotter. I suppose there could be a book someday where I am a plotter, but it's not my preferred headspace. 

I learned that I can write fucking fast when I have to. And when I am not trying to hit marks on a synopsis, I can write pretty well at that speed. I always underwrite, so the speed of production does not appear to affect that at all. I also learned that I hate to write that fast. It's not a long-term sustainable pace, even when there isn't a day job tugging my sleeve and demanding attention.

So I will start 2022 actually finishing WINDSCAR, writing that ending, and hopefully getting Lisa's eyes on it one more time before it's due. And after that...after that, I have nothing under contract to anyone. 

And I have an idea. I even have notes on how it starts. We'll see where it goes.

[insert a title here]

 ...or as my students might do, "a new post", because many of them think a title is the same thing as the name of the assignment/the prompt. And I get it. Titles are hard. How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge began as something else entirely, as did How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse. Only Enemy, Outlaw, and Ally kept their titles.  The manuscript currently on my editor's desk began as Tin Can Fun Fur, which my agent suggested, because it's a genre mash-up. We gave it a more sedate title for my editor, who may or may not like it; since she's the one who prodded us to come up with How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge, I am inclined to trust her instincts. 

I don't blame my students, though. This quarter--which began in October--has seen a pandemic, fire, civil unrest and mass demonstrations, their first national election (and oh, what an election. Guns at polling stations. A president who won't concede and who continues being...I'd say a brat, but he's more dangerous than that. Astonishment at their relatives' voting choices, when it's so clear to them that this can't go on. I feel this last one, students, right there with ya.) And, now, another fucking fire in the area, here in December. 

More personally, I had How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge release in October, with attendant publicity posts (to follow in another post, once I've got 'em all collected), a reading an a panel at World Fantasy, and a merit review observation--which, oddly, is done on the quarter the review is due, which is not a quarter covered in the review. So the letter that recommends whether or not I should get a raise is based on different teaching than everything else in my file. It was also a) remote and b) a new course prep and c) a new curriculum for that course. 

I mean.

And through all that, incredible good fortune, to have a university employer that listens to science and prioritizes the health of students, faculty, and staff; and the ability to work from home; and our collective excellent health (except Murdercat, who has a cavity that must be removed next week, but who is otherwise 13 lbs of solid muscle fine). 

And my students, many of whom are in their first quarter of uni, having just seen their senior year meltdown, are reading, and writing, and showing up in synchronous classes and conferences despite less than ideal internet situations, or homes in which to get quiet time to attend class, or, in at least two cases, sixteen hours of time difference. They're pretty great. 

...this post ended up in a nicer place than I thought it would, so yay? Yay. And I better quit there, while I'm ahead. Besides. I made a pumpkin pie, and I think it's finally cool enough to eat, and I need something to put the whipped cream on.

this year exhausts me

 As I am sure it exhausts most of us. And I recognize that to be exhausted, rather than, oh, evicted, unemployed, evacuated, homeless, sick, or dead is a privilege. I am privileged. I acknowledge that. 

But fuckssake.

This week, the exhaustion has been more physically literal, because it's been stupidly, dangerously hot in my state (which is also on fire). I am not one of those folks who functions well in heat. I can handle it, insofar as I don't get immediate migraines or pass out or sweat excessively. I do get more anxious and more irritable. We are privileged to have A/C, which we try and limit our use of, because the power grid and rolling blackouts and all that. We can survive here on the coast without it (we did, in graduate student housing, which is literally across the street). We turned it on this week, set to 80, and it felt good. Cool.

Climate change, y'all. This isn't weather. The middle of the country blew away with the derecho. (My cousin lost her home.) People are dying of COVID all the fuck over, while other people whine about their masks and their rights and send kids back to school so that... yes, they can get sick and put hundreds into quarantine. The post office is being dismantled.  My state is burning up. People are losing everything. The sky is red. The air up north is black; here it's not so bad, most of the time. But I am aware, with every beautiful, lurid sunrise, that things are burning.

My fall class is about the zombie apocalypse, which seems more applicable this year than it has in a long time. I used to teach zombies because they were trendy. Now, though? It resonates. The end of the fucking world, indeed. We're remote, at least. This university has sense.

The DNC happened. I didn't watch. I mean, they could run a half-eaten sandwich and some moldy cottage cheese and I'd vote for them. I am fine with Biden. I am delighted with Harris (I wanted her for president, or as Warren's VP, so...). Now I fret about whether we will be allowed free elections (post office!) or if we do have them, and we win, someone won't vacate the office. Or, if we win, the people who really do want everything to burn take steps to make it happen. So yeah, I have some hope. But I'm not at all complacent. I think you can't be, if hope means anything. Hope is uncertain, by its nature.

I don't have more profundity than that. Tinycat is demanding her lunch, which she gets now in an effort to get her weight up (which is working, though I don't think we've cleared 7 lbs. Her highest ever was 8. I'd be happy with somewhere around 7.5). So I am going to feed a cat.

le petit chat noir

scattershot

Y'all, I am not a super fast writer of nonfiction, and sometimes I take a couple days to think about how I want to address a particular topic. Except the breakneck idiocy of ::waving hands:: all this is such that the topics pile up until I don't write at all because other more eloquent, and speedy, people already have.

But let us be clear:

Black Lives Matter. Transwomen are women and transmen are men. Science is real. Wear your fucking masks. And this Portland thing? Armed and unidentified federal troops grabbing people in "proactive" arrests? That's straight up authoritarian toadshit. Gods both small and large, vote in November.

...Thus has passed July.

I had a birthday early in the month, in which I turned a firm corner into my late 40s.  It was an odd birthday, in that we went nowhere and did nothing and I cooked (sure, Nous would've cooked for me, but I wanted chili verde and I like making chili verde and so). I even made my own cake, which actually a blueberry buckle (I didn't even know buckle was the legit name of a fruit-pastry thing, but it is). It was in fact a day like most other days around here, which have been divided into D&D night(s), and Borderlands 3 nights, depending on the number of participants.

The Patchwork Terror, 1 year old

The Patchwork Terror also had a birthday. He is north of 12 lbs and still growing. He is as soft and plushy to touch as he looks, and also, that tail clearly belongs to a different cat.

I made yogurt for the first time, which was easy. I have acquired a very tiny ice cream maker, and made good matcha ice cream and fantastic strawberry frozen yogurt and an okay sorbet. Next up, coffee ice cream. I have not had this much full-fat dairy in my fridge in, like, ever. I don't care. I gave up beer except on D&D nights and I will have whipped cream and ice cream and full-fat yogurt if I want to.

I wrote the first fifty pages for one of the books we're going to pitch to my editor at DAW, and I think it's pretty good. We'll see if my agent agrees.

I resigned at the HS. I am sad as hell because I love those students, but I need more time to write. The pandemic has only reinforced my decision, because boy howdy, the reopening of schools is a scary prospect, and also, I cannot take another moment of Zoom.

I have a merit review file due right about the time school starts. Not difficult, but time intensive.

I have decided to teach the zombie apocalypse as my theme for the fall quarter, partly because it's relevant again, and partly because if I have to do a whole new syllabus and prep for a fully remote class, I might as well at least use texts I am familiar with, especially since I have that aforementioned merit review.

I refuse to start either of those last two things until August (although, truth, I have started them both. Just a little.)

still here

You would think, what with all this enforced home-bound-ness, that there would be more blogging. I am not however one of those people bored in my confinement, in need of lists of binge-worthy streaming series. I am probably working more, because online teaching is, in fact, a bigger PITA than one might imagine. There are reasons for this... the transmogrification of one's in-class, group-wide activities into asynchronous, single-person activities that teach the same skills (I tried break out rooms in Zoom for group work...once. And while I am usually a proponent of multiple tests before failure is declared, not this time, because the groups in which there was failure crashed so epically I can't do that to those students again. The end.). This means I end up modeling the writing, and since the uni class is about imitation as a vehicle for learning to write, that works on a pedagogical level in theory. In practice, eh. The writing is probably a little worse this quarter, on comparable assignments. We're about to start the edible auto-ethnography, which has remained stable since F19, so I have a much wider base for comparison. I predict it won't go as well as f2f quarters, but I hope to be surprised.

That said, my uni class surprised me by asking for synchronous classes, which saves me the work of a video, but is still more actual work than standing in front of a classroom. It's like... you know when you watch the late-night comedy hosts doing their shows from home? And there's those beats where there should be audience reaction, and a pause, and you can see the host pretending he's hearing laughter or reaction, and carrying on like he's totally gotten his feedback anyway? But that energy's not there. Colbert or Noah didn't get it. He's... guessing. Faking it. Acting on faith that people laughed and he can just go on without any of the micro-adjustments live performance requires.

Teaching online in Zoom is like that. Oh, you say, but you can see their faces! --You cannot, if their cameras are off, and many of them do that. Even if the cameras are on, you can't really see what is happening. Smiles, yeah, those are nice--but the blank looks, the confusion, when I know I'm not getting through and I need to change tactics--I don't get that feedback, either. I'm performing to a dead room. (Interestingly, even if they won't talk in Zoom, they will chat. So I end up responding to chats out loud. It's so...weird.) But that's what they want, so I hope they are a) learning and b) deriving some sense of normalcy and comfort from the ritual.

It's not all bad, and I am certainly grateful for a job, and I feel for my students. I don't mind my own discomfort if it's helping them (I mean, that's fucking teaching anyway). But I am just not as good of a teacher in this setting. One of my colleagues--another experienced teacher--likened it to publishing your shitty first draft. All the experimenting, no time to revise, no way to fix the ugly bits until next time...while hoping there won't be a next time, and feeling queasily certain there will be. Fall, at least. (I have a new course prep for fall, so that will be double fun. Zombies are about to make a comeback, I think, in my genre-centered syllabus. Most of the horror of them had been stripped out in recent iterations--zombies as metaphors, zombies as characters, not zombies as harbingers and victims of pandemic. Now that fear of infection is back.).

My poor high school class...so the district froze the grades. Whatever they had by March 12 is what they have, unless they raise the grades. We have to provide assignments that will let them do that, but we cannot penalize students for ghosting the classes. The directive from On High is to offer material that they want to show up for, which puts a shit-ton of pressure on us. If we're ghosted, then the failure is ours, right? Be more fun! I am fortunate: my class is D&D, and while we are not going to finish their home-brew collaborative adventures, we are going to do pick-up games for the next month during class time, during which yours truly will DM for whomever shows up. I kinda hope the ghosting continues, because I can do a game with 4 or 5, but if everyone decides to come, I will... um. Fake it.

But I have made some things. That bag of shredded up yarn has now become yarn. Soon it will become a rug. Order from beautiful chaos.

how are y'all doing out there?

Functionally, my life looks pretty normal. This pandemic and its accompanying stay-at-home orders came at the end of a quarter, which means 2 weeks or so at home (grading, planning, recharging, maybe day-tripping) before the next round. I'd've stayed home mostly anyway. The campus--we live in faculty housing--is a lot quieter, but it's like, oh, winter break.

The weird shit is the kids. Or lack of kids. Usually we've got a wild band of Nerf-gun toting 8-10 year olds pelting around the complex, screaming and yelling and generally being kids. Now... now there's no one. Nothing. It's creepy-quiet. There's hazard tape around the playground where the very small toddlers and their caregivers would appear during the day. It flaps and whistles in the wind.

I hear more birds, now. I see more birds, now.

Our Trader Joe's has implemented distance-measures. You wait in line outside for admittance, on your little purple tape X a careful six feet from the next person. Couples can wait together, but they can't go in until two come out. There's stuff on the shelves again, and in the frozen section. Not toilet paper yet, or paper towels. (I have instituted hardcore rag-bag in lieu of the latter. The former, fortunately, we'd just bought before All This Started(tm), so we're stocked.) There was actually flour this week, limit one. I snatched up a bag. It might be time to learn sourdough.

My college classes start next week, officially; we got a "soft start" rollout, which was admin's way of saying 'right, so, all online in two weeks, this might freak some folks out' and indeed, it has, and the people doing the heavy lifting with how to teach people to use Zoom and all the cool features on Canvas and whatnot are being heroes right now. I did not think we'd get a soft start, so I worked from about March 13, with a break for grading, to get my spring classes online (rewrite the prompts, redesign the exercises. how the fuck do I do group-work asynchronously??). Ferfuckssake, y'all, I made videos. Before March 13, I would have bark-laughed at you if you had suggested I put my face on a video, like, ever. Now I'm just doing it. One take. Stupid hair, stupid face, whatever, let's do this.

I'm still freaking out quietly that this quarter will suck, even if I am prepared. I am trying to be chill.

My cats are proving helpful. Everyone likes a cat video. And the Patchwork Terror (formerly known as the Kaiju-kitten; names evolve) is very photogenic.

The stupid yellow flowers are blooming around here. The pine trees are releasing clouds of pollen. Every scratch in the throat, every sneeze, every sinus-induced headache triggers an instant's paranoia, firmly smashed by reason. Nous and I are taking turns being the rational voice of no, you are not sick. You are fine.

The gym's closed, of course. We're running outside. There are a lot of hills in this neighborhood. I will be very, very fit in the next quarter, or I will have aggravated every old injury I ever had and be hobbling around.

I have sewn us masks from truly colorful, terrible cotton. I regret only that I have no more skull-tie-dye print to use.

My concentration is...spotty. Since starting this post, I have darted off to my UCI page, written an announcement, started some class-related housekeeping, forgot I was doing that, and came back here (repeat, repeat, repeat).

I'm glad I'm not trying to write something new right now. Revisions are challenging enough.

This pandemic has made my social circle wider, which is kinda funny. There is more D&D now. I'm running our long-term campaign online, which means we get to play more often when The Rat doesn't have to commute from 2 hours north.  And Nous and I started playing in another D&D game with work-friends; we all knew we played, we just never played together. And now we are, because some of us are over-working and some are underemployed and no one would be able to do this if we had to commute all over Los Angeles. So that's pretty cool, too.

Yeah. So. That's me.

like a duck...

...all serene and floating on the surface of the water
everything's just fine

while under the water

oh shit oh shit oh shit

it's total, churning chaos.

The university went all online for spring quarter early last week.

On Saturday, the high school went all online until mid-April. Fortunately in the latter case, we are in the group-project stage, and the groups can, in theory, collaborate on Google docs together. (Whether or not they do is not up to me. Online learning is bloody difficult, particularly if it is asynchronous).

The uni classes, though. Fuck me running. I had them built for face-to-face. Now I must rebuild and recast. I am not especially afraid of teaching with technology, and I can self-teach pretty quick (which is good, because besides two truly amazing colleagues, the university is largely expecting us to watch training videos and be autodidacts). But the conversion is time-consuming, and I had been rather counting on almost 2 weeks of break to revise the RORY manuscript coming out in October. Now I will be lucky to get one week of break.

(The manuscript is currently sitting in my word processor. I looked at it. I am having extreme anxiety actually doing anything with it, because I have half a class to finish converting (and two weeks to do it, which is FINE for fuckssake, because I converted four weeks of the course in two goddamned days already, except for pre-recorded videos, if I even do those). Anxiety is not rational. I should apply some donuts.)

So the conundrum is--synchronous teaching, which plays to my strengths, or asynchronous teaching, which is a lot more work on the front end but may free up some time later on?

And we had a leak in the bathroom wall this morning. Big old bulging drip in the paint, spreading like some bizarre D&D monster. Amazing how fast the weekend maintenance guys show up when you say "water leak." It was the upstair's neighbors' shower, and easily fixed. Evidently there's no drywall damage, so...good?

And in other positive news, today's Trader Joe's run (after yesterday's abortive attempt, which did net us donuts and cheese, not insignificant) yielded bacon, some sausages, eggs, and frozen peppers (no other frozen veg). I ordered another box from our CSA this week, too, partly b/c they can't do their usual farmers markets and partly because they have stuff in stock. So we're good on healthy stuff. We won't starve. We'll be fine. (The cats won't starve either. Or run out of litter.)

But there is good news. One of my students from fall quarter came dashing into the gap between my last two face-to-face classes this school year, damp from the downpour, to give me a stuffed bunny. She gives stuffed bunnies to her favorite teachers, but she thought I hated cute things (because my desk at work is populated with small rubber and stuffed lizards, frogs, snakes, an a small, plastic Godzilla), so she got me some lovely handlotion from Origins at the end of fall quarter. When she discovered that I do like cute fuzzy things, she promised me a bunny. And when they announced spring distance learning, she made sure to get the bunny to me so I would "have something cute on my desk."

("I did not get you a pink bunny, though, because I know you hate pink."
"I do not hate pink."
"...Oh. Well. I didn't get you a pink bunny anyway.")

And she did not. The bunny's name is Buttermilk, because that is what color she is, and she's currently on my desk at home, surrounded by the stuffed things (I have, among other critters, a krogan and Bill the Cat).

But here she is under my desk with The Patchwork Terror (formerly known as the Kaiju-kitten, but really, PT is more apt) because they both have little pink noses and are stupidly photogenic and maybe I'll just use them as my stunt doubles for live-streaming classes this spring.

Anyway, that bunny and that student were possibly the best thing that happened all year, y'all.

Stay healthy.

the trials of one's teens

Tinycat will be 13 in February. Since her check-up in June, she's lost almost a pound. That makes her Extra-Tinycat, now, at a mere 6.8 lbs. She's eating (as well as ever, which is to say not enough, but she's also a scarf-and-barfer, so we'd rather less that stays down than more that comes back up). She loves her treats. She's sassy and takes no nonsense from either of the boys. Coat quality is good. Eyes are bright. She's just...shrinking. 

Tinycat has no time for you

Obviously there is something not right, though we have no idea what. We took her in this weekend, because in the last two weeks she'd developed these big red bumps on her chin that seemed to be oozing. At first I thought Kaiju-kitten had popped her in one of their spats, but the proliferating bumps suggested something else. She's had autoimmune problems in the past, and coupled with her weight loss, we expected something dire. 

The vet took one look and said "cat acne" and proceeded to pop them all. She's home with a shaved, scrubbed chin and an antibiotic shot. The cat bowls are all stainless steel, so it's not a plastic allergy. (Well. Maybe. She licks plastic--the laundry basket is not safe--but she's done that her whole life.) The vet didn't seem as concerned about figuring out why kitty-zits as he did in why so skinny, so he drew blood and urine and we await results this week. Last time her bloodwork was done--6 months ago--everything was fine. Maybe that's changed. If not, we may be looking at an ultrasound. Something isn't right in there. Pix was voracious when her thyroid went whack, and she got super gaunt, but Tinycat's not showing the hyperactivity that goes with a hyperthyroid. Could be kidneys, if those numbers have tanked, but they were good 6 months ago. So we don't know. In the meantime, the tiny tyrant has been granted her fondest wish: baby food mixed with her real food. 

But in other teen news... we started playing D&D in the HS this week. We're using the Stranger Things starter-set, so all the characters are premade, magic-using (jhfc WoC. So much fucking magic), 3rd level. Also all good alignments. The kids did some customizing (we have a pet cougar named Tim now), names, genders, sexes, bonds and ideals and flaws, oh my. The idea had been to let them play their characters while taking turns DMing for the group. But attendance in high school is spotty, and I was not at all confident that a designated DM would be in class on their day. Hell, I still have kids who have not chosen a character, much less worked out their spell books. 

So I improvised. 

I grouped them by class and I DMed for them collectively. All the players of a particular class had to agree on an action and a spokesperson, and though there were a couple bumps with the stronger personalities dominating, it went... well. Surprisingly. I did bad accents and funny voices and kept the story moving (it's a pregen adventure that I've test-run before, but it's also pretty skeletally supported). They got to see real-time what happens when a DM has no notes in front of her to cover a player request ("We want to go to the infirmary to interrogate the wounded!" You...okay. Right.)  They cheered when I made the captain of the guard a non-binary human with obvious half-orc heritage named Bryce. The Wizards(tm) rolled at the end of the conversation to kiss this half-orc as a thank you for their help (player made sure to get consent first) and busted out a natural 20. "Bryce is into you," I said, while praying none of the administration came into the room. "With that roll, you can... you know. Whatever."

...which kicked off a flurry of speculation about what Bryce looked like, gods defend poor Bryce. All I said was "Bryce is cut. They're a guard captain and of muscular build." 

I fear for the fanfics I may've inspired.  

Next week: collective combat, while the students absent this week get up to speed on their spells. I have promised everyone they can play their characters individually when the groups write their own adventures to run for other groups, so that DMing duty is spread among all the group members. I look forward to the moment that I can intone, Gauntlet -style, "Cleric is about to die!" even if I'm the only one to get the joke. 

hello, 2020

these reprobates, napping after chaos

I woke up with a headache (sinus and weather, not excess aquavit, though, you know... that could've contributed) and cleaned up cat poop before I even got coffee this morning, so, you know... it's either an omen for the upcoming year or, like, another normal damn day.

I'm going with the latter.

School starts next week, both uni and the high school. I'm pretty psyched about both. The uni comp class has a new theme this year--food, of all things, after years of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Aristotle. The idea was...I want them to write, but I want them to feel like they have something to say. Food does that. Everyone (with one exception last quarter) has some emotional connection/story with a particular food or foods. Most of my students are international, and suffering language culture shock along with oh god, you want me to eat what? There's a lot of loving detail to be mined about grandma's jiaozu or stinky tofu or pie.

I feel guilty that the subject's not harder but... eh. I got some Pythagoras in there, translated by Ovid, and I'm still making them read closely and analyze texts. It's just a little easier for them. And I've gotten some of the best writing I've ever seen, so... I think it's fine. It's also a lot less work on my end. When I taught the hardcore texts, I had fabulous peer tutors attached to my classes. Like TAs, kinda, with dedicated office hours specifically for my class and assignments. Mine were exceptional. Both went on to grad school, one to be an actual teacher (and some school somewhere will be goddamned lucky to get her), and without them, there are not enough hours in the week to teach the hard texts, do all the commenting, and...write.

Because I am given to understand that writing is a job, too, and needs time, even if it sits third in my priorities. It shouldn't, but it has to most of the time. Students, y'all. Also the paychecks that actually pay the bills.

The high school class this semester (they're on semester; uni's on quarter. PITA) is basically D&D, which I have been playing and DMing since, oh, never you mind. AD&D and THAC0 and saving throw tables. That long. It's been a bit of a challenge to learn 5e well enough that I think I can teach it. I expect some of the students will already know how to play. Others will be brand new. It's going to be... totally uncharted territory, for me, teaching actual skills to these kids, instead of trying to expose them to all these different texts they won't get in their normal English classes. But this is going to be the last year, I think, I can teach there. Best I go out with the class I am most nervous and excited to teach.

Because... the writing. It does need more than third place. I have plans. I have ideas. I have so many stories I want to write, and no time to do it. I have one manuscript coming back from my editor Soon I Hope(tm), to be published in October, and another due to that same editor in June (currently with my agent, who said I'd leveled up with this book, which means I didn't underwrite it this time).

But after those...

I have an idea. I'm taking notes on it now. Will I outline? Eh. Maybe. Broadly. But for now I'm in the thinking phase--characters are starting to surface, conflicts, personalities. Themes. I would very much like this one to be a standalone, but we shall see. I need to write it first.

But today, actual New Years... I am going to play Borderlands 3 with Nous and drink imperial stout and eat tamales and probably more pepparkakor because my god that recipe makes a ton of them. Tomorrow is soon enough to work.

Happy New Year.

RORY THORNE and Kirkus and a podcast, oh my

So. Big news this morning. HOW RORY THORNE DESTROYED THE MULTIVERSE is on the Kirkus Best SF&F of 2019 list. 

This is... I mean... wow? Yeah. Wow. The other names and works on this list are some very fine company.

Also, here I am on The Great Big Beautiful Podcast, which was a lot of fun.

And since I'm here, blogging and all, I might as well catch you up.

October was obnoxiously busy but it's over now and hey, no matter how crammed full of stuff it was, last year we were moving, so by that metric this October was just fine. I went to my first convention, World Fantasy 2019, in which I met my editor and a bunch of cool folks with both my agency and my publisher, and also had a blood vessel burst in my eye (before meeting people! of course!). I didn't get to nearly enough panels and readings, because conventions seem to be scheduled at the worst moments of a teaching quarter, so that even if they are more or less local, one still cannot attend for the full time.

Now it is November. The holidays are thundering up on us, but for the moment: a respite.

Orion is happy in his sunbeam. May you all be similarly content.

I will be at Mysterious Galaxy in October

So, first ever book event, y'all.

I will be at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego on October 13 at 4:00 PM, talking about How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse and signing books and if you're close by, you should come!

(I promise to take more breaths in the actual talk. Or use commas.)

now is the autumn of your discontent

I am feeling cranky and at odds with... everything? Not really combative, more restless. Like I should be doing something but I'm not, and whatever I've forgotten/am neglecting is going to bite me in the ass. This is what happens when Type A personalities have nothing on the immediate agenda. I'm like a border collie without sheep. Pretty soon I'm gonna start chewing on the furniture and digging in the garden and okay, letting this metaphor go now.

Part of it's the university teaching quarter starts in 2 weeks, but the HS class already started, like, a month ago, and I'm in that limbo between working my ass off and having something to do one day a week for 3 hours. My just-finished novel (RORY TWO)  is off at my agent, and I haven't gotten the editorial notes on the first book (formerly SRP, now How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, aka RORY ONE). I'm not writing anything at the moment. Not that I don't have ideas. It's just I don't want to go launching into a new project when I know revisions are coming.

Instead, I'm spinning a lot of fiber (like that bagful on the right. It's, like, 4-5 hanks of compatible colorways all mixed up to be spun out at random).  I'm making Christmas socks (2.5 pairs of 5, or halfway done!) and bingeing Netflix and Prime series. (The Good Place has to be one of the best things in a long time.) We've gone hiking a couple of times, now that things have mostly stopped burning. But the last couple of weeks I haven't had anything I had to do except the HS class.

Maybe that's it. I'm freaking out because I'm not under any deadlines. I'm...taking a vacation. It feels weird.

okay, now it's done. Ish.

I finished the zeroth draft of the WIP (let's call it TGK for now) last week, reread the whole thing in order this week, discovered all the repetition and extraneous crap (when you are writing every other day while teaching 3 classes, you lose threads and get sidetracked and forget what you wrote two-three-eight months earlier) and now we have a functioning draft one, about 4k lighter than it was a week ago. There's still a Rat round to go--she's my first beta reader, always and forever, amen--and then it goes to my agent. I think we're still a couple of drafts from worth a damn. Kudos to the writers who produce super-clean drafts that only need copyediting because I am not one of you.

I test INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs test, which, you know, take with grains of NaCl and all that, but it's true I like things to be finished, not hanging in limbo. Except manuscripts. Then I get to the end and think of all the ways I could've gone with the narrative, all the choices the characters could've made, and I become certain I have written total shit, and if only I could go back and rewrite--but that way lies madness.

Now I need to plan two classes and re-sisal rope a cat tree. And finish a small pile of knitting projects. Cat tree first.

blue (balls) and fiber therapy

Grades are done (ish. Still to be submitted, after someone in admin fixes the fuck up so that I actually can submit them.) These fine blue balls are waiting for me. The amazing M, she who has so much fiber her husband does this little cheer when she gives it away to me (she's an indie-dyer, among her many talents, and she's always trying stuff out), gave them to me. Each of those balls is about 8 oz, or half a pound, and Arachne knows how much it'll spin out, but I bet it'll be enough to get me through season 3 Poldark for sure.  And then there's the 4-5 pairs of socks to be done by Christmas. So much knitting. But knitting is therapy. Knitting is "oh look, I am done with a thing, and the thing is objectively A Thing That Is Good."

Which is good, because oh, my various gods, this everything-since-January has sucked for so many reasons. A friend of mine, former officemate for years, died unexpectedly at the end of March. That was total toadshit. She'd just retired last year and while I missed her like hell at work, I knew she was out there being nona to her grandkids and adopting dogs and just, like, having fun and stuff.

Then, fuck you, April, we had two parental surgeries. First: Nous's dad, unexpected brain surgery (he fell. There was bleeding. They figured it out when he kept falling and having trouble walking). Second and third: My mom, knee surgery, the first for the actual fixing the joint, and second because it infected and they had to go back in and scrape things out. We didn't go back because, well, we're adjuncts and however good the benefits (we have them. That's something) and the union (until something crap comes from Janus, it's strong), we don't get actual sick time or vacation, so... anyway.  Nous's dad recovered nicely. He liked his time in rehab; he had a new audience for his jokes (he's the only extrovert in the family, poor guy). My mom is recovering, but her attitude is far wobblier.

The HS students give teacher awards. But I was provoked.

So...  I didn't have much left for students at the HS who were dealing with murdered friends and school shootings all over and general teenageriness. I had even less left for the ostensible adults in uni who sit in my office and explain that they just can't write this boring essay, they just don't do well on things they don't like, it's who they are. (While assuring me it's the class, not me, that they hate. I assured them back: I don't hate you either, okay? But your grade is sinking like a sinking thing, kid, so you better find it in yourself to adult and write the fucking essay. I didn't say fucking. That time.) There are moments when I feel like a crap teacher, which I know is, well, crap, because I'm good at this job and they have to meet me partway or it doesn't work. And there have been amazing students, too, just stellar. They are the reason I keep doing this job, right there.

And, and, I wanted to be done with the draft of the WIP by now, but HA. No. Even making wordcount on the days I scheduled for writing, no. I am at the stage where I am convinced it's totally awful, which, haha, is incidentally the place where I did trash a whole manuscript a couple years ago because it was total shit, so... this feeling is not without precedent or merit, though I don't think it will apply to WIP. I just have a much harder time dismissing feelings of failure with the writing than I do with the teaching.

So yeah. Looking forward to spinning my balls.

George Romero

Aww man. George Romero is dead. There are zombie jokes to be made (my spouse says: I am keeping my guard up until we're sure), yeah yeah, okay. But dammit. He made good horror.

Teaching my zombies class(es) this spring will be a little sadder now.

gratitude

Yesterday was the very first time, ever, that someone has said to me (and to Nous, who was with me), "Thank you for teaching our kids to write. It's important."

My instinct was to downplay it, because I am toadshit at taking thanks, and because I don't think I deserve gratitude for doing my job. I chose this profession. Besides, in context: We were at Trader Joe's doing the Sunday shopping, and while we were checking out (and bagging our own groceries, because that is how we roll) the checker asked how the quarter was going. Not done yet, I said, and the students are over it, and we are over it, and spring quarter's the worst. And then the checker one lane over laughed, concurred (I assume she's a student?) and it became a 3-way commiseration, oh, spring quarter, the cruelest, the worst, wah.

And into that, our checker says what she says, not ironically, not sarcastically, but sincerely.

We joke, Nous and I, that one does not do this job for the accolades. That one should not do any job for the accolades, except jobs for which accolades are the point, and maybe not even then.* Yeah, we get thanks from our students sometimes, and that's great--but the cards or the cookies or whatever aren't motivation. And clearly it's not the money, either. It's just... what we do. What we're good at. And yes, I do it in part because I think it's important work, teaching students to write, but I don't expect anyone else to notice, much less remark on it.

I am used to being professionally devalued by the public at large--teacher unions are evil, teachers whine, you guys get summers off (no! we are paid 9/12. Big difference). And sometimes there are shithead teachers, of course, just like in any other profession. It's also like we're supposed to do more with less, all the time, and we have to keep justifying our existence and apologizing for the assholes among us and defending our actual expertise (because those who can't, teach, amirite? oh har har). It's like...we have to explain to management why adding 4 students to a class is an actual burden of time, and deserves compensation. Because of course we will grade extra papers, and have extra conferences, and do the work like we do no matter how many kids are in the room. They know that. They count on that. They seem offended when we suggest remuneration for labor. And I can guess why that is, where the roots of assuming we just do this because of our feels, so we don't have a right to comment on our workplaces comes from (cough, patriarchy and traditionally female profession, cough). And Nous and I, we're doubly damned: adjunct instructors, not senate faculty. Same degree, half the salary, no tenure, more students.

So yeah, thanks is not something I'm used to hearing, or expecting to hear.

It was nice that someone noticed. Not gonna lie. But also weird and discomforting. It's not weird when a student says thanks, because they're directly experiencing the teaching, and presumably they reap the benefits. But a total stranger who does not (to my knowledge) have a kid in my class? Just a general, objective hey, what you do matters in the world, thanks?

I don't know what to do with that.


*My Nicomachean Ethics are showing again.

who wants to live forever?

We begin this post with a cat picture, as is the custom of the interwebz, and also because Skugga looks very grave and dignified in this instance (which took place about 3 seconds before he decided he needed to gallop around the living room).

It is that point the quarter where, as one can see by the gap in the posts, I've been slammed under endless student drafts. This is because I teach the entry-level college writing class, which means a lot of writing and a lot of commentary to be made on the writing. My students are not good writers. That's why they're there. It's no shame to them; most of them are international students, or generation 1/1.5. That they're taking college classes in a language they've been speaking for 4 years is a testament to their badassery. But they still need a lot of feedback, and that is where my energy goes.

It'd be easy to say my energy goes there because that's why I get paid. I mean, that's true--the university pays me to teach, and by all the good green gods, I will do that. They don't pay me to care, though. I do that for free. And because I care, and because my dedicated peer tutor cares, we spend maybe more time than is union-mandated doing the work for which we are paid. (I have never understood why people go into teaching if they don't love it. It's not a place for people who 'can't do anything else'. It's the place people go when they want to make a difference and get, like, zero fame and recognition for it, except from one's students and maybe one's colleagues.)

I choose to teach because I think the job fucking matters, and because I'm good at it. I teach this particular course and level of writer because I see the biggest improvements and evolution in student writing and thinking. There are other courses that are easier, from an instructor's perspective. This one's a constant push of writing and commenting. But when I read a Boss Fight draft, and see a kid who's gone from omg Nicomachean Ethics and Beowulf I don't get it to a cogent examiniation of courage in poem and philosophy... yeah. Okay. I feel pretty good.

And yeah. Aristotle and Beowulf. Because if it's hard for everyone--and it is--no one feels stupid, and at the end, everyone feels like they accomplished something (because they did). And also...I don't know when or where else a student's going to get any exposure to ethics, unless they seek it out in an elective. People are very good at talking about their hearts, and following their feelings, and jesus, okay, fine. But Aristotle emphasizes reason, and so my kids have to think about that, too: their motives for doing what they do, and whether or not those motives are noble, or under compulsion, or from passion, or whatever.

One of my students observed that a truly virtuous teacher, by Aristotelian standards, would kindly sacrifice her time to her students because it was noble to do so, and because she reasoned her efforts would have some result; the teacher who is kind from compulsion is not really virtuous, even if her efforts also bring results. I joke with Nous that I am the citizen-soldier of teachers, acting for honor's sake, because of the shame I would earn if I did not perform my duty. That's not true, though. I respond poorly to external compulsion of all varieties.

But my gods, if it's internal--if, like, I think I need to finish a project no matter fucking what because I don't leave things unfinished--I can make myself pretty miserable. Like, 93k words of miserable that just keeps going in the wrong direction compounding itself because I will get this done. If this WIP had been a sweater, or any other knitted project, I'd've frogged it. No. I'd've cut the yarn and thrown the whole damn thing out.

So I did.

I could simply pretend this toadshit comes from starting the project when I was carrying an extra course last spring and I proved simply unable to balance Teacher Brain and Writer Brain. There's even some truth to that. And yes, external stress didn't help--isn't helping, thank you election--because I started this story in a dark, low-contrast world of competing political world-views and morally ambiguous characters a protagonist who was not a hero and then I realized--oh. I've read this before. Like 100 times. Am I adding to this conversation about moral ambiguity? Am I elucidating some angle of the non/human psyche, or leveling a critique/observation about the real-world context? Am I just exploring motives and underpinnings for why someone acts like they do, the literary equivalent of making excuses?  I grew to like the characters. I just kinda hated their world. It looked too much like this one, even with aliens and spaceships and cyborgs. It was cynical. I'm tired of cynical.

I had my students read an essay last week discussing the changes made in the 2007 Zemeckis Beowulf movie from the original poem. My students were struck by the difference in Grendel's mother, between poem and film, from (arguably) scariest monster in her underwater lake who almost eats Beowulf, to Angelina Jolie in gold shiny skin with a tail. They liked that movie-Beowulf seemed more mortal, more human, in that he allowed himself to be seduced; but they were pretty convinced he was a damn fool for having done so, and they would never make that mistake. I posed to them this dilemma, then: make a deal now, for success your whole life, your life's dream, and then die, rather horribly, sometime around 60; or muddle along, doing your thing, for the next 80 years with no particular success or failure. Just, you know, middlin'. There were some wide eyes. There were some thoughtful stares. There was a sudden sympathy for movie-Beowulf.

(And I thought--yeah, okay. If you told me--trade the last 20 years of your life so that something you wrote lasted for the next thousand plus years and left a mark on the culture--like Aristotle or Beowulf--I'd have to think long and hard about that bargain.)

A fair number of my students condemn poem-Beowulf because his motive for killing the monsters is always his fame, his glory, his legacy; they want something more pure for his courage than even Aristotle's cold reason. They want him to be brave because it's just right. They want him to be a damn hero.

I think maybe that's the story I need to tell right now. A hero. Not an unproblematic one, maybe; but still, someone who actively tries to do good things because it is noble to do, and base not to do so, and that means a society that isn't so mired in cynicism that public opinion means something.

Maybe that's my fantasy.

Begone, Winter Quarter. Welcome, ARC of Enemy

In a perfect convergence of awesome, my quarter ended (read: grades done) the same day these arrived:

Well done, Ides of March. WELL DONE.*
*Yes, I know it's St. Patrick's Day. I'm posting all delayed-like.

Chaucer was so full of it

April is innocent. It's freakin' February.

Okay, Chaucer was all up about the weather, droughts of March, rains, blah blah. I would like to see that rain. El Nino in SoCal right now is a big no-show. I am not complaining (oh, yes I am) about nice weather. I am complaining about summer heat in February. I am not ready to yield up my long sleeves yet! No! It sucks to be a knitter in a place where you can wear a sweater, like, 2 days out of a year. I don't even wear socks most of the time. Fortunately Nous does, so he benefits. And Zero in Toronto gets sweaters.

But weather is not the worse offense, O February. No. That, we reserve for the day job. February is Crazy Times in the quarter anyway. It is the month of All The Drafts of that second paper the necessity of which I acknowledge, while at the same time regretting its complexity.

This quarter, I got a plagiarist. I am not happy. They don't happen often, but when they do, they take a lot of time to handle--means getting my boss involved, gathering documentation, etc, taking time I would rather spend commenting on drafts (oh, be honest: writing non-work things). But really, it's the betrayal. Don't imagine I'm stupid, kid, or that I can't tell you didn't write something. But really don't imagine I won't notice if you stole work from my former students.  And then, for the love of all that is good, don't skip the fucking meeting with me because you're too scared to own what you did.

The worst part of this one: there might be complicity on the part of the plagiarized. Victims...or accomplices. We have no way to know. I can guess, and I can believe, but I can't know. I hate not knowing. I hate that I  now wonder if I must missed some degree of perfidy in those kids during endless conferences and talks about their work, or if their bleeding-on-the-paper honesty was just...bullshit. Bullshit that I believed.

I am angry. I don't like being angry. I don't like being the Green Knight's Axe. I don't like the waste of energy and time. I don't like being reminded that people are shitheads. I mean I know that, but I let myself believe it doesn't happen in my classroom, where we read freakin' Nicomachean Ethics in week one. Clearly the lessons don't stick. (But they do, for many. I see the lightbulbs go off.) There's an intimacy to teaching writing: they come in broken, convinced they can't do this, and you show them otherwise. You encourage and excoriate, you read confessions and heartbreaks and triumphs, you watch their eyes light up when they realize they care about what they're writing for the first time in their lives.

Right. Hold onto that feeling, not the betrayed-sick-I AM THE AXE feeling. Onwards to March.