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On my way home! Killing time in Sea-tac waiting for my last flight, having wine & celery in the Alaska boardroom. Had a SPLENDID trip. (Oh the bacon! I mean, uh, company!) Apparently while I was away someone drove their car through my front yard, through my fence and totalled my front steps. Classy! My wonderful tenant got pictures, the city will have towed the car OUT OF MY FRONT LAWN by the time I get home, and I'll just have to deal with.. ICBC I guess? Or my homeowner's insurance failing that, to get uh.. access to my front door again. A classic Canadian disaster: extensive property damage, no one hurt. So Miss Amy, you can stop fretting, I have the disaster corresponding to our pleasant weekend covered. Hee hee hee.

If they took out my monkey tree, fuckers are replacing it, I tell you what!

running on latkes and sugar
I suspect it's not a good sign (or at least, a sign of overambitious activity level from the weekend) to wake up Monday morning and immediately burst into tears because OMG so tired.

Also, while it was a good weekend, on the whole, and full of good and worthwhile things... it turns out that holiday times are inherently stressful on the recently separated and tend to push particular emotional buttons. Go figure. :-} More on that later, probably, but under a filter.

Thus, last night I blew off everything productive I'd meant to do after 10pm, and went to bed early. (Which means I should have gone on to do about 2.5 hours' worth of work tonight once I got home, but hey.) And, indeed, this morning was better.

But I think I still need a vacation. Preferably one involving hot sun and froofy drinks. :-) I had moderately froofy drinks with dinner and dancing tonight (which was kinda restorative, though not quite the dancefulness we'd all been anticipating somehow). And then I came home and baked cookies. And now it's kinda getting on for bedtime again already.

... Fifth night of Chanukah already tonight. Wow. Chag sameach, y'all.

Also, I keep forgetting to retweet this from almost 2 weeks ago, but: Hey, all you book designers (and print designers generally).

queue's company is looking for people. "Don't necessarily need to have educational book design experience [but] magazine experience or the like might be useful." The relevant entry is friendslocked, but the rest of you can still go ping him to ask about it.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: The GrooveBarbers, Glory

Aliens
.
I am watching the original director's treatment of Aliens, courtesy of her mystery gift-giver. Woo! (and with many "making-ofs" to follow!)

with booze!

Why I don't trust the Man
The Man and the Woman were away much of the evening, and the Girl wasn't home yet, and the Boy was mostly keeping his door closed, so I had to amuse myself as best I could-- napping, mostly. When the Man and the Woman came back, he gave me dinner (never enough, though!). She took off those pieces of stuff the humans all use instead of fur and went into the small room where they do MUCH too much with water. Then she went into their room and lay down, and the Man sat down on a chair next to her. When he does that, if I want to go lie on the Woman's chest and lick her face and knead her blankets and do her hair, I have to go around the other side of the bed, or else climb around behind him through lots of different kinds of stuff he keeps putting there. Lately he's been getting testy when I do that and something falls down, so I decided to just watch for a while from near the door.

Well, he was moving things around and he reached down on the far side of himself, and suddenly he was making horrible loud shrill noises that hurt my sensitive ears (I hear much better than they do, poor near-deaf things), and he was starting to jump up in my direction. You can bet your last catnip banana I was out of there before he took a second step.

I don't know what set him off like that, but I think I caught a glimpse of the Woman's plushy bag, the one where she keeps a lot of the thread she tries to stop me from playing with. It would be perfect for kneading, but the one time I tried, it bit my paw! Maybe that has something to do with all the thin shiny things inside along with the thread.

Awhile after that he went out, carrying the big stick he likes to walk with. He's back now, sort-of-kneading the flat black thing with a changing window on it. I'm sitting next to him, and he doesn't seem to mind -- in fact he just stroked my head -- but I wish he'd feed me some more.

Current Mood: refreshed

Arisia Schedule
My tentative panel schedule for the upcoming Arisia is:

Fri 8pm Poly 101 (mod)
Sat 1pm Poly 201 (mod)
Sat 5pm Flirt Like a Pro!
Sat 7pm Must-Read Stories (mod)
Sun 3pm Introduction to Kaiju
Sun 5pm Charisma is Not a Dump Stat! (How not to be a jackass author.) (mod)
Sun 6pm Gundam: A Historical Perspective (mod)
Mon 11am Who Watched the Watchmen? (mod)

(Note: I'm not on any gaming panels this year because there aren't any to speak of. I'm of two minds about that.)

Now that's a show
The English Beat and Fishbone ... the night before Marscon ...

I am SO there.

Happy birthday,

ladysprite!

BTW, the new art looks wonderful :)

Current projects, December 2009.
Well, here we go: the final current projects post of 2009. When next I prove that I don't sleep, it will be 2010, the last year of the first decade of the new century. It's a little boggling to realize that, well, I just frittered away an entire year, measured out in coffee spoons and word counts. And now here we are again. This post and its kin are the reason I scream like a lingerie-clad blonde in a horror movie every time someone asks me "What are you working on?" The answer takes too long to actually deliver. Anyway, this is the December list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed, is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor. Not only that, but my page proofs have been finished and returned. You'll see this bad boy again when it comes rolling off the presses! Discount Armageddon is off the list because the first draft has been finished, and it'll be a little bit before revisions start.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out! )

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: OVFF 2005, "Modern Mystic."

Called Home
Televangelist Oral Roberts has passed away at the age of 91.

You know how I feel about the man and his work. But... an old man, a fellow human, has died. May he rest well. Condolences to his family and friends.

Tor.com Starts Podcasting

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/15/tor-com-starts-podcasting/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9387

Tor.com, that groovy online site dedicated to science fiction, fantasy and other such wacky things, is inaugurating a weekly podcast, in which the folks there will discuss what’s new and notable on the site, and audio fiction will unspool, alternating between new fiction, and fiction already on the site. For the debut podcast, the fiction they’re featuring is mine — an audio version of my story “After the Coup,” set in the Old Man’s War universe and read by me. If you missed it the first time it was up, here’s your chance to check it out, along with the rest of the podcast. Enjoy!

Fannish Advent #15: Cambrian Christmas.
Title: Cambrian Christmas.
Rating: PG.
Fandom: Primeval.
Synopsis: What are Abby and Connor up to on Christmas?

( What are Abby and Connor up to on Christmas? )

Today's fandom suggested by raelee. To suggest a fandom, pairing, or situation for tomorrow, please comment on this post. Only comments on THIS POST will be considered for tomorrow.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Tori Amos, "Past the Mission."

bonus socialness
last wednesday: indian food and stilting and ice cream with

moominmolly and

blk and

xuth!

money quote: "i'm worried the ice cream place might get a little annoyed if we walk into the store on bouncy stilts."

xuth: "well, they've never complained about it before..."

last night: drinks with

coraline. the world always seems like a more manageable place after talking with her. :)

Okay Then, Don't Use Priceline
You people never believe me, so I'll finally concede: do it your way and don't ever use Priceline to book hotel rooms. After all, it would be terrible if you scored a 2.5 star hotel room in Times Square during the holiday season for $100 on a busy weeknight. A cushy en suite room near the subway with complimentary breakfast and free wifi for $100 is no way to travel. That would be utter suck.

No, I think it would be better if you did 10 hours of exhaustive online searching for affordable travel digs until you reach tears of frustration and consider canceling the trip, and then settle for a $100 cot in a shithole hostel shared with vomiting-drunk sorority girls from Indiana or gamboling Scandinavian roughnecks on tour, where your wallet will be stolen from your backpack and you'll be kept awake all night by incessant chanting of "IF YOU LIKE IT THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE PUT A RING ON IT." Alternately, you could stay in a microtel for $149 a night and enjoy the warm fuzzies of sharing a one-seater bathroom with 11 other guests. You're right and I'm wrong, that's definitely the way to go.

But under no circumstances should you trust William Shatner to find you a dirt-cheap, clean, secure, and very likely posher than you could ever dream of affording at rack rate room. We just keep making that mistake over and over, and suffering the resulting horror of lux amenities like fully-equipped in-room kitchenettes, complimentary artisan soaps & shampoos, free fair trade coffee.... it's been hell, I tell you. And Priceline is to blame. Don't go down that route, whatever you do.

_{Off to New York Thursday for a quicky trip. I trained my wuzzle well, and he was the one who scored the Priceline deal this time. Back on the weekend!}

What Can Brown Do For You? Not Much....
I spent this year's bonus on a new laptop and a new desktop. Both were scheduled to arrive yesterday.

The laptop was delivered (by FedEx) without incident. The desktop... not so much.

The first indication of a problem was that when I did a check of the UPS tracking page, it claimed that a delivery attempt had been made. I called

starmalachite (who had gotten the FedEx package earlier, and was on the alert for the arrival of the other one) to see if something was wrong at home. Everything was normal -- but there had been no doorbell ring or knock (the bell had rung for the earlier delivery, and she re-confirmed that it was working), and there was no delivery-attempt notice on the door.

I called UPS to find out what the problem was. They insisted that a delivery attempt had been made, the lack of note notwithstanding. The kicker: when

starmalachite left the house that evening, there was a UPS failed-delivery note on the door (much too prominently for her to have simply overlooked it earlier). I can only assume that my complaint was relayed to the driver, who directed his efforts to ass-covering (i.e. putting up the note) rather than customer service (i.e. knocking/ringing at the door to deliver the pacakge while he was MAKING ANOTHER(?) STOP THERE ANYWAY).

Allegedly, UPS is making another delivery attempt today... but the latest info as of 1:15 PM still shows nothing later than yesterday's "failed delivery attempt". We'll see....

Current Mood: irritated

Boskone short sets
I'm looking for a couple of people to do ten-minute filk sets at Boskone. That's time for two to three songs.

If you're interested, reply in a comment or send email to garym [at] mcgath [dot] com.

The Big Idea: James Swallow

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/15/the-big-idea-james-swallow/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9382

As the proprietor of The Big Idea, every once in a while I get to pull rank and pop up a book that’s of personal interest to me, and here’s one that is: Air, by James Swallow, which is an adaptation and novelization of the first three episodes of Stargate: Universe, which is, of course, the TV show I am the Creative Consultant on.

Science fiction writers and readers have varying opinions on novelizations and what they mean in the genre, but leaving aside that discussion, I think one thing that’s often overlooked in the discussion is the professionalism of the people doing the novelizations: Here are folks who have to take a script, bump it up to novel length, get it done usually in a short amount of time — and get it right. Yes, that’s work.

In the case of Air, it was brought to my attention when James contacted me during his writing, asking me questions about the show so that what ends up in the TV series is also what ends up in the novel — basically, doing the behind-the-scenes legwork and research that often gets taken for granted by readers (and sometimes, other writers).

I was happy to help him then, and right now, I’m happy to give him the floor to tell you a little more about what it takes to adapt and expand a script into novel form.

JAMES SWALLOW:

“I guess it’s not like you had to do a lot of work, really,” said the guy at the bookseller’s table, with a sniff. ‘I mean, it was pretty much all done for you already, yeah?”

Uh, no.

No, not at all, actually. See, when I was hired on by Fandemonium Books to adapt ‘Air’, the first three episodes of the new television series Stargate Universe, what they asked me to deliver was a novel. That’s why they call it a novelization. Your standard sixty minute teleplay script? You’re looking at under ten thousand words, right there. I had three of ‘em, and I had to turn that into a book that deserved an eight buck cover price. I had to take what I had and, at the very least, expand it to three times its size. And not in the whipped butter kind of way, where they froth it up and pump air into it. No. I had to do it with words and prose and narrative, pitch and moment and drama – and all without breaking the story that had already been created.

I had to fill Air with, well, stuff that wasn’t just air. This is a bit about how I did it.

Air wasn’t my first novelization – I adapted The Butterfly Effect a few years back, getting to put back a lot of the stuff that had been cut in order to get Ashton Kutchner on screen as early as possible. That was a fun experience for me, memorable as it not only introduced my writing to a whole new demographic – teenage high school girls – but because it also got me more fan mail than anything I’d written before. A lot of it was from people asking me how I felt about the movie they had made of my novel.

The way I made Butterfly Effect and now Air work for me was linked to the way that I write. I see my stories unfold in my head like a feature film, and when I’m making notes I use script shorthand to set scenes; I try to write the prose equivalent of whip pans or contra-zooms, wide shots and medium shots. In short, I’m directing it in my head. I took this approach with Air, imagining myself doing the job that episode director Andy Mikita did in the real world – which is a lot more than just adding ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ to the end of Brad Wright’s and Robert C. Cooper’s dialogue.

In some ways I lucked out, because SGU’s producer Joe Mallozzi had a blog full of images from the show in production and of the actors they had cast, so I knew how Air was going to look and what the voices of the people in it would be. But then I was also up against the knowledge that I didn’t know everything about these characters, so I couldn’t lay in nuances and subtle clues that would pay off down the line, and anything new I brought to the party ran the risk of being utterly contradicted by the ongoing show.

And I didn’t have was any opportunity to see the finished cut and edit of the episodes until several weeks after the manuscript had been delivered. While I worked from the three episodic scripts that made up the pilot, I was a good way through the writing before I discovered the drafts I had were months old, with key details that differed from the final versions; it was only thanks to the help of a certain creative consultant that got solved (thanks, John)… The challenge was to paint inside the lines but still deliver something with originality.

So what did all this leave me with? In the end, Air the novel isn’t ‘Air’ the TV episodes, and I’m happy that it isn’t. After all, what would be the point of reading a book that slavishly follows every tiny element of the TV stories? What the novelization brings is what made me read novelizations as a kid – an internal viewpoint for the characters that explores them in a way that TV just can’t do, a seamless story experience that broadens out the scope of the narrative, and a chance to see the bits of plot that were cut for time.

The latter is the kind of thing that DVD extras bring us now, and in no small part I imagine that’s why then novelization is something of a dying art; but back in the day the book of the film was the only place where you saw that kinda thing, like, say, Alan Dean Foster’s tense adaptation of Alien with the chilling cocoon scene still in place. So I put back in Rush’s monologue about the origins of the starship Destiny and the confrontation between him and Jack O’Neill; but I also added new stuff and expanded out what was already there, lengthening scenes and deepening motivations.

There’s a perception that tie-ins are bereft of originality, that they’re a straight-jacket for creativity, and a haunt of lazy writers, but that kind of commentary largely comes from people who don’t read them; generally, from sniffy lit-snobs who complain that tie-ins are stealing all the shelf space in stores and think that all other media are barren artistic wastelands.

In a larger sense, writing a tie-in is no different from the work of TV scriptwriters working on a series that they didn’t create; and when you think about it, writers who adapt a book into a movie are eligible for an Academy Award, while writers who adapt a movie into a book (which requires considerably more writing) are often labeled as hacks.

But the fact is, a great part of telling a tale in one of these fictional worlds is that a writer actually has to work harder under these constraints, and that challenge can inspire you not only tell a tale that fits the texture of the world you’re writing in, but also to bring your own unique authorial voice to bear on it. Plus, you get to play with cool stuff, like Stargates.

—-

Air: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Powell’s

Visit James Swallow’s LiveJournal.

List of foods I sometimes forget are really amazing:

sweet potato, mashed: so bright orange and sweet and *flails*

pretzels: so much better than even the very best potato chip!

List of foods that I never forget are really amazing:

yogurt: yummy & makes my tummy feel better when nothing else works

kefir: so conveniently drinkable, also see above

dark-chocolate-covered molasses chips: best combo of sweet and salty invented so far

baby pumpkin with garlic and sugar sauce: so incredibly yummy

Obviously this is just all I can think of right now. More later?

THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY, or Book View Press Goes Punk
Steampunk, that is. The Shadow Conspiracy: Tales from the Age of Steam is the latest release from the authors of Book View Café, the Internet’s largest professional author cooperative.

The stories of The Shadow Conspiracy revolve around the premise that something... else happened on the stormy summer of 1816 at the gathering of poets, far beyond the creation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. These tales focus on the dreamers, experimenters and engineers of this alternative timeline who work their mechanical and metaphysical magic both for good... and evil. Edited by Phyllis Irene Radford and Laura Anne Gilman, authors include Judith Tarr, Sarah Zettel, Steven Piziks, and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. The collection will be available for the Kindle, Sony eReader, B&N Nook and a wide variety of smartphone reader apps.

To celebrate the launch, BVC will be holding a twitter fic contest from the 15th through the 17th. The subject of the contest is machines and monsters. The first place winner will receive an ebook copy of The Shadow Conspiracy and a hardcover edition of editor Laura Anne Gilman’s Flesh and Fire. Second place winner will receive an ebook copy of The Shadow Conspiracy and a hardcover edition of P.R. Frost’s Faery Moon. Details can be found at the BVC twitter fic contest page (http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/News/BVC-Twitter-Fic-Contest-9-The-Shadow-Conspiracy).

(h/t

sazettel)

Any new books, stories or fic you'd like to tell us about? Stuff you're written, stuff you've read -- link 'em up.

Blogging for Penguin.
Hey, y'all, I'm the guest blogger for Penguin USA this week. Wander by the site to learn about my approach to holidays, discover why I think Santa Claus is the son of Persephone and Hades, and convince the nice folks at Penguin that having me blog for them is a worthwhile exercise.

Pretty please?

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Lilly complaining about the cold.

Trust in Congress at all-time low
According to the Gallup Poll, public trust in members of the House of Representatives is at an all-time low, with 55% ranking its members as "low" or "very low" in ethical standards. This is the lowest trust level of any (legal) profession.

Members of the Senate did slightly better. They're more trusted than car salespeople.

Update: Actually, the most distrusted category is "members of Congress," which is odd, because the Senate is broken out separately but the House isn't. Many respondents may have read "members of Congress" as "members of the House," as I did at first.