_

This is why, in my heart of hearts, I'm still a DC girl.

Right now it feels like my BFF is on the bad drugs, has robbed and hurt people, isn't admitting they're addicted or that there might be a problem, and has punched me and left me somewhere sketchy to find my own way home.  So I'm not interacting with them right now, for my own safety and mental health.

But I can't forget the good times, or stop hoping that maybe someday, they'll join AA.  Things might not be the same--they weren't perfect before by a long shot--but things could be better.  Maybe.  If they get their shit together.

Till then, I'm not seeing them or giving them money.  But I'll read my back issues and my fanfic and watch Marvel movies and work really hard to help make a culture where DC can get better again.

About a year ago, I wrote my first-ever picture book manuscript.  For quite awhile it appeared to be the only picture book I'd ever write, and I know nobody wants to publish a one-off, so after I worked really really hard on it and ended up with something I was actually pretty proud of, I shelved it.  I had novel work to do, and I'm definitely a go-the-distance girl where novels are concerned.

But once I'd written a picture book, I knew I could do it again, if I ever had any ideas.

I've had a few, but one arose from a teasing conversation at work.  There's a picture book series called Captain Flynn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, because the author knows what four year old boys want, and it was discussed that we could make pirates out of all kinds of things.  Somehow mermaids came up, and while we were laughing, we were also surprised we couldn't think of a single book--picture book or chapter book--about pirate mermaids.  (I know of one short story, but it's not aimed at children.  At all.)

Until today.

The manuscript's a mess, since I was still figuring things out as I wrote it, and it's a little long--I'd like to cut at least 35 words, 50 might be better--but there you have it.  I've written my second-ever picture book, and it's about pirate mermaids.

BECAUSE WHY NOT.

Final day of Nova Albion=as awesome or awesomer than the first two days!  (It's been a long day, okay?  Critique my grammar when I'm getting paid for it.)

The last day of a convention is always my BUY SHINY THINGS day, both because I will have had adequate time to peruse the vendor tables and because I'll have a good guess of what the con is costing me (there are always last-minute costs--or sometimes, surprising savings) and thus whether the money I have set aside is too much or, rarely, if I have more than budgeted.  I probably circuited the vendor halls two or three times before making any purchases; a few vendors to whom I returned several times obviously recognized me and my very fine hat.  Generally I try to buy from those vendors whom I've returned to again and again--both because hey, I've been ogling their wears and not purchasing!, and also because it's usually a good indication that I really do want whatever I've been eying, and will not regret the price tag.

So, morning vendor hall circuit and first purchase of the day, then three panels, including a fun writing-and-publishing-steampunk panel that nicely got down the business brass tacks and in which Gail Carriger (in her, I believe, third steampunk outfit of the weekend) kinda-accidently took over mod duties.  Notes and other fun-for-writer-me things resulted!

Then the panels I was interested in ended, and I was faced with decision time: last round through the vendor halls.  I made a pass through one and rejected two things I thought I wanted and ended up with another I didn't know I wanted.  At the last vendor hall, I got to chatting with a vendor from whom I bought new decorations for my hat (it is not finished yet; there is not enough stuff on it) and a fellow congoer at her booth.

Said fellow congoer was enthusiastic about my hat and my outfit.  We were chatting and discussing maker stuff and buying things at cons and I mentioned that I longed for a particular unique costume piece, but needed to save up because I work retail and costuming is not cheap.  He sympathized, having just made a large costuming purchase himself, and then proceeded to whisk me off to the proper booth and finance my purchase, including customization, of said costume piece.

!!!

I was stuttery and flabbergasted and probably red the whole time.  Said piece was not terribly expensive, as costuming goes, but well beyond my budget.  He was blithe and kind and very much a people person; upon hearing I was at the con alone, grabbed the next passing person he knew and introduced us, with a remarkable lack of awkwardness.  They in turn convinced me to go to Maker Faire, which is in ~two weeks, and which I've never attended.  We exchanged e-mail addresses, he asked after my DSF story, and with, again, a remarkable lack of awkwardness of any kind, finished the transaction and left to join his friends.

. . . I'm still in shock, a bit.

It's definintely proof than humans can't be taken in generalizations; we exist in all parts of whatever spectrum you can come up with, and probably off it, also.  For no reason at all beyond a passing acquaintance, he gave me a wonderful gift.

Not just the costume piece (though OMG), but a great story and a reminder to always pay forward that which we can't pay back.  I can't repay the experience.  One day, I trust, the universe will drop a similar situation in my lap, and I'll get to pay it forward.

Cons, for all their potential faults, have as many or more potential rewards.  They are remarkable in that they create an instant community, with incredibly strong bonds given the incredibly limited time, and at the best cons, people in that community take care of each other.

For every time I've gotten side-eyed as a girl/feminist/queer, for every guy who makes suggestive comments about women's costumes, for every panel that gets derailed, there are fellow activists, there are men who shoot those comments down, there are panels that do meaningful work and reach new conclusions and new people.

And apparently there are fairy godpeople out there, too, for the fan who dares to voice a wish.

Glasses raised to Maker Faire, WisCon, and the hope of a Nova Albion 2014.


PS: If you see this (you know who you are), thank you.

A real post will come soon, promise, but I just found this on tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/the+knitter

It's a community-based superhero story!!  Well, anti-hero.  He started out as an OC Batman villain and he's still sort of that but there's a whole world of heroes and villains and other anti-heroes growing up around him and people are adding to the mythos as fast as they can type/draw and I need sleep and I DON'T CARE because this is the coolest thing I ever seen happen, people.  Community-sourced superhero!  I'm beside myself.  SO COOL!!

. . . my roommate's way of speaking is infectious, shut up.

AT ANY RATE, the dragon book (Trial) is going well.  Not steadily, which is weird for my usual novel-writing, but I haven't successfully full-out written a piece of any length in a while, so I hope this is just--I dunno, getting-back-on-the-horse jitters.  I'm managing a chapter every time I sit down.  Because this is a shorter book than Skywatch, a chapter's between 1000-1500 words.  I can do more in a session (witness some of my lovely word counts on here), but so far one chapter at a time seems to be working.  It's messy and flaily and I can tell it's going to take a lot of cleanup--Eva and Scorch's voices are way too similar, I'm not sure my haphazard exposition makes enough sense, and for some reason I can't get any of the other senses engaged besides sight--but such can be fixed.  I need a draft to fix,so I am making a draft.

I'm doing alright so far switching POVs every chapter, but I can tell it's going to get tricky.  I've already had to move things from one chapter to another; I know there are probably chapters later where this becomes ludicrous, but that's a problem to tackle when I get there.  And even then, it's a problem to tackle in draft two.

Probably one of the most important things I learned from my creative writing degree and in the years since is that drafting is not just important to me, its essential.

( Writerly rambling. )

Five chapters down, twenty-one to go.

Do we still need First Girl Ever stories?

In the real world, these stories happen and are still happening, but we've been telling them for several decades--the Song of the Lioness quartet (Alanna), by Tamora Pierce, came out in the eighties, and I've read opinions that this trope is "tired and overused."  (To be clear, this isn't the only place I've read/heard that, Brennan is just very clear.)

While I definitely agree with Brennan in the article linked above, that I would love to see more Second Girl Ever stories, I'm wondering if there's still a need for the First Girl Ever story.  Is it still important?  There are girls making huge strides in male-dominated fields today, but as Brennan points out, they're largely in "field[s] that, while not exclusively male, [are] still heavily skewed that way."  Which makes the Second Girl Ever story all the more important.

So what do you think?  Is the First Girl Ever story tired and overused?  Or an important story that needs to be told, no matter how many times we've already said it?


(Crossposted, since I'm hoping to get as many opinions as possible.)

This will make more sense if you've seen the Syfy channel original television series Warehouse 13, but can, I believe, be read without that knowledge, as I make several points that are salient to speculative fiction/sci-fi storytelling and social justice therein in general.  It is also entirely my personal experience with and opinions about Warehouse 13, and I welcome alternate viewpoints.

SPOILER ALERT through the two-part season three finale, "Emily Lake" and "Stand."



So I didn't get into Warehouse 13 until its second season, which I'm convinced is a good thing.  That's because this is a show that took a while to find its feet.  I attempted to watch the pilot, but I was put off by two things: one, shaky plot and mediocre dialogue, and two, it was Yet Another Sci-Fi Show About Straight White People.  The main cast seemed to be three white people, two men and a woman, and a Magic Negro in the form of Mrs. Fredric and her appearing/disappearing act.  There was also Lena, the secondary black woman who ran the house where everyone stayed and was generally relegated to the background.

That is the definition of what I Do Not Want in my storytelling.

However, when clicking through channels I picked it up in season two and got hooked, for two reasons: one, the show had figured out what kind of story it wanted to tell and how to tell that story, and two, Myka and Lena had been joined by Claudia, geek girl and former mental institution patient, and Mrs. Fredric had become an actual person with agency and power.

Wow.  Suddenly a show that the pilot episode promised was about the white guys turned out to be about a group of people who included women, characters of color, and nonneurotypical characters as actual people, with story arcs and agency of their own, who drove and moved the plot and were not subservient to the white guy's plots.  That IS what I look for in my tv.

( Three seasons, issues and triumphs. )

Apparently, manuscripts with LGBTQ, disabled, and/or nonwhite main characters regularly get rejected by agents--or rather, get accepted, as long as the protagonist becomes straight, able, and/or white.

Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA

by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith

(Link goes to Publisher's Weekly blog, Genreville.)

Appalled is not too heavy a word to use for my reaction here.


ETA: minor link soup below.  I haven't read all these, but I intend to; this is mainly for my own reference.  Link soup will be edited again once I've had a chance to read about all sides of this, er, kerfluffle.

(also, I'm not re-linking the links in Elena's comment, but they're necessary reference, too.)

Cleolinda summarizes as of 9/16: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/993710.html

http://www.yahighway.com/2011/09/field-trip-friday-special-edition.html

http://www.malindalo.com/2011/09/i-have-numbers-stats-on-lgbt-young-adult-books-published-in-the-u-s/

ETA part the second: Having read Cleolinda's roundup as well as Kate Hart's on YA Highway, I'd say go read both and see what you think.

There's a multitude of links in both places; IMO, Cleolinda's post comes off pro-authors and Hart's pro-agents, but both are pretty calm and the posts themselves attempt to present all sides and fend off derailment.  Both also admit their own biases, which I appreciate.

Right now, as angry as I'm sure the actual people involved in this are (and boy, if I was on either side I'd be "never speaking to you again" pissed), I think the internet-community's response so far as been "The issue is that we need more LGBTQ YA fiction, so put your money where your mouth is as readers/writers/agents/editors."

Which I agree with.  So.  Let's go do that, and hope the internet doesn't explode over the weekend.

9/19 ETA: Apparently the internet didn't explode, but via_ostiense  did a good job of articulating some problems with the solution "buy more books".  And also ephemere , on the concept of "just business".

oyceter  on everyone pulling in harness, instead of putting the entire burden on any one part of this equation, and also intersectionality, which is incredibly important to me because it is the basic way I  approach this sort of thing as a writer and a reader--not "which" minority identity, but "how many."

ETA again, more posts to read, mostly discussing issues brought up by this kerfluffle, and all are meaningful and interesting and contain links of the own:

http://qian.dreamwidth.org/33422.html

http://holyschist.dreamwidth.org/242731.html


http://utsusemia.livejournal.com/51649.html


http://deepad.dreamwidth.org/67143.html
(I'm definitely going to read all the comments on deepad's at some point when I have time, because recs and anti-recs are useful!)

A friend of mine who also has an infrequently-updated but always entertaining blog (link off to the right on my sidebar) has just posted a really neat entry about advice on how to be a writer and when NOT to take it.

Check it out.

I do think that one of the things writing "rules" tend not to mention is that there's a good chance few if any of those rules will apply to everyone.  I know I have my own process that took me years to work out, and in many ways I'm still figuring it out (and I have a degree in writing).  What Elena has to say is smart and down-to-earth, and I agree with her--even if the very thought of trying to write the way she does makes me twitch.  My process is very different than hers, but we're both still writers.

Working working working.

Brought in my first paycheck, which is good!  It isn't enough to pay off the debts I incurred getting out here, which is less good.  At least I will (theoretically) be getting those paycheck thingies regularly, and they soon will amount to enough to pay off those debts.

In more exciting news, I read the rd of Skywatch for the first time!

( City in the Sky )

I am using my Sword and Sorceress icon today because I stayed late at work and couldn't face Skywatch, and thus I am working on a short story instead.

The icon reminds me that, for as excited as I was to see the cover (my story's going to be published in a book!  With a cover!  That people can buy in stores!), I was a little disappointed as well.  As far as I can tell (I might be wrong, someone please correct me if I am!), Sword and Sorceress has never had a woman of color on the cover.

On the one hand, I can understand this.  Like women who take hold of their own destinies, COCs are thin on the ground in sword and sorcery.  It's possible that there are no women of color in many of the anthologies.  But S&S is a feminist collection that's about breaking away from the sexist habits of sword and sorcery, and since all the characters in my story are of color, I admit to a faint hope that this would be the first collection to have a woman of color on the cover.

Alas.  Maybe next year.

In the meantime, it still has a woman with a sword!

UPDATE: I STAND CORRECTED!

It has been pointed out to me that I'm very, very wrong!  And I'm cool with that!  Take a look here, where I get schooled, and also follow the shiny link to S&S XXIV's cover, which I had never seen.