Am going to see Flogging Molly tonight. Can't wait. I think this will be my first concert in three years. It'll be the first time I've seen them, although they've played Austin at least four or five times. Like many of the bands I like, they keep waiting until I'm flat broke to show up and/or selling out. Obviously, music shows aren't a huge priority for me. (Mostly I'd rather not deal with the crowds.) But Celtic music is a lot of fun live and this is Celtic punk/rock. So, I'm in. Dane isn't going. So, I'll be on my own for the most part. Hopefully, a few of you will be there too. Maybe? :)

Ever since Sarah Chorn (Bookworm Blues) asked me to write for her month long blog series Special Needs in Strange Worlds, I've been thinking on the subject in general. (A very good thing, that.) Yesterday after I'd finished writing for the day, I found myself tuning in to the History channel on cable and quilting for a bit. (I'm going to finish that star quilt very soon.) Sewing by hand is very zen. It helps me empty my brain and be quiet inside. A little like kung fu or meditation. Anyway, a program popped on about mysteries within history. They had a segment on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He's one of my favorite presidents to be honest. I think he did amazing things for this country -- things that continued to shore up the foundation of America long after he died, and hopefully (once the jack-asses stop screwing around with bullshit programs that don't work [cough] austerity [cough]) will again. He was an amazing person. He was also mobility impaired. According to history, FDR contracted polio at age 39 and that was what caused his paralysis. I always thought that a little odd. Poliomyelitis is mostly known as a childhood disease. The program last night postulated that FDR actually suffered from Guillain–Barré syndrome. Either way, FDR is a terrific example of someone in history who was disabled and yet, forged on. He hid his disability, by the way. He probably wouldn't have been elected president had he not done so. (Which is awful.) And the public didn't know of the extent of the problem until after he'd passed away. (These days that'd never happen. The press would've leaked it on day one of the election and used it against him.) Anyway, it started me thinking about characters in fiction, and how I might squeeze that into the current project. It's already a major theme in the novel, I just realized. (Nels, the main character, doesn't have magic -- at least not the kind that everyone else in his position has.) All in all, very inspiring. I love when this shit happens.

I've never met Mur Lafferty in person, and I'm looking forward to doing so at WorldCon in Chicago this year. We've been interacting on Twitter for a little while, and it's surprising how much we have in common. (For example, she's into martial arts, and her husband also works in the game industry.) Plus, like me, this is her first year of eligibility. Anyway, Mur is a lot of fun, has a great sense of humor, and I like her quite a bit. Here's hoping we're not thrown into a pit at WorldCon, given swords and then told there can be only One -- Highlander style. Because, you know, that would suck. Like, a lot.

Mur, how does it feel to be nominated for the Campbell Award?
Amazing and humbling. Big sense of "I don't belong here, but excited as hell to be here anyway!" 

I can so relate to that. Can you talk a bit about the work (2010-2011) which contributed to your nomination?
Although I've been releasing work via podcast and building an audience for years, my first pro sale didn't come until last year: a story in the anthology, Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities - Jeff VanderMeer asked me to write a story from the POV of someone interviewing Dr. Lambshead, and I decided to write about Lambshead's hatred for Louis Pasteur and how he had developed his own flask to indicate how the more innovative bacteria travel.  

Where can your work(s) be found?
murverse.com, and if people want a bigger view of my writing, I'm giving away all of my ebooks for free on the site. 

What book did you read as a child that made you into a reader?
I'd love to be all sciffy and fanty on you here, but to be perfectly honest, I realized I was a voracious reader when my Beverly Cleary books started falling apart because I was rereading them so much.

I remember the Ralf the Mouse books. Great stuff, that. How did you learn how to improve your writing? Did you study writing in school or attend writer's workshops?
I took some creative writing courses in college, and attended Viable Paradise in 2006. I'm currently working on an MFA in popular fiction from Stonecoast (U of Southern Maine low residency writing program)

I like music quite a bit and so am going to ask the obvious. Do you listen to music while writing? If so, what kind?
Tom Waits and The Matrix soundtracks (all three- say what you will of the movies, but the soundtracks were great) are my favorite background music that doesn't distract too much.

And now for the fun question -- the one we're all waiting for... if you were a super villain, what kind of secret lair would you have?
Hm. I'm torn between the manor perched atop a mountain, overlooking a cliff that just begs for minions to be pitched over, or a simple cabin in the woods that's secretly access to an underground lair bigger than a city. Do I have to choose now? I think as long as I have minions, I'll be happy.

Thanks, Mur!
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Hopefully, I'll be able to do a number of these before WorldCon. That way everyone can get extra exposure. Being nominated is quite an honor, and I feel that 2012's nominees are especially wonderful. (But maybe I'm biased. ;))

Just a reminder: I'll be reading/signing at BookWoman in Austin, TX on Friday, May 25th at 7pm. Drop in if you can. It'd be great to see folks. I'll be reading from And Blue Skies from Pain and/or Of Blood and Honey -- depending upon the whim of those who show up. Hope to see y'all there.

Soon, I'll be posting regularly over at the Moy Yat Ving Tsun Kung Fu blog -- hopefully, once a week or so. If you're interested in martial arts or martial arts philosophy, you should pop over and have a read. There's already some great stuff posted. My classmate, Mary, has done a great job adding her own thoughts to Sifu Aaron's. Next, I intend to get to work on some regular contributions over at SFSignal too. I just work better when I've a regular schedule. Besides, guest blogging elsewhere keeps me thinking about interesting things to discuss. I'm simply not interesting enough to do it all on my own. (I save that stuff for novels and rightly so.) All in all, I much prefer working with other people in this way. A nice synergy (if you'll excuse me for using the old buzz word) results. The Night Bazaar posts really helped me that way.

Speaking of helping, Dane gave me the boxed set of the first season of Castle last Christmas. I went through the extras on Monday, and that's when I fully understood why Kat Richardson said that dvds were tax deductible for professional writers, "When you watch dvds you're studying storytelling. Books, television, and film are all storytelling." I listened to the writers discuss how and why they wrote certain scenes the way they did, and it was really interesting. Mind you, writing for TV and film is not the same as writing for novels and short stories -- each has their own set of rules and tropes, but there is overlap. Character development as well as thinking about how much to reveal and how much to allow the reader/viewer to fill in for themselves, foreshadowing, what certain physical actions on the part of the actors might hint at to the reader/viewer... those kinds of things are great to think about. And since I'm a visual person, it's particularly powerful. (Thanks, Kat!) Unfortunately, the downside to Hulu is that you don't get access to the extras, nor, apparently, do you get repeated access to shows you've already seen. (Grrr.) I wanted to watch some season 2 Castle and just couldn't. Either the stupid menu system is arranged to make it difficult or you're just not allowed to do so even on Hulu Plus. Gimme a damned break.

It's a mid-May afternoon and 65 degrees outside. The weather has definitely gone a bit wonky -- not that I'm complaining. I'm not one of those people that enjoys Summer. Spring and Fall are more my thing. It's been raining quite a lot too. Everything is unusually green around here. It's as if I packed some part of Seattle when I left and brought it back with me. It's very nice. Here's hoping we have a short Summer this year. If the weather has to be weird, I prefer this kind of weird. I don't like seeing the trees die from lack of water. (I'm not sure anyone does, really.) Meanwhile, my herb garden is kicking ass. The chamomile seedlings are busting out and the basil is growing nicely. I also planted a few Butterfly Plant and some Morning Glory seeds along the fence. My mother had some Morning Glory vines that used to grow along our backyard fence when I was a kid. I love them, especially the blue ones. They're beautiful. I keep talking about this, but I never thought I'd be able to grow anything from a seed before. Now, it seems so easy. (Did I mention I used to kill everything?)

After being stuck, the new project is once again rocking along. It's that middle thing. I do it every time. Saw a quote not too long ago from a wonderful writer which amounted to "When do we just get to be great at writing?" and it made me smile. That's just how it is. Seems the more you write well, the more difficult it becomes, but I can't stop. That blissful moment when it's just me and the character and everything is happening... it's better than chocolate. It just is. So I follow the bread crumbs in the dark until I come to a path... or a bear... or Hannibal Lecter. :)

For those who feel conservative circles don't have anything against women, I give you this: “In the good old days, men knew that women are crazy and they knew how to deal with them.” This guy appears on Sean Hannity's show. Thanks, Fox "News." At this point, I don't know how any female can bring themselves to support conservative politics. It's against their best interest, frankly. Note that I believe women have a right to support whatever politics appeals to them. Women are people. Period. However, current events make me wonder how female conservatives can manage the mental math. It really sucks.

Sigrid Ellis talks about women's roles in history being deleted and a cache of fairy tales discovered in Germany. Interestingly enough, stories in which female heros were active, boys were passive, mothers lived and fathers weren't blind to evil were "lost." They also appear to be the tales of "...the genderqueer, the non-conformative, the challenging, the transgressive."

Ten ways to inspire women gearheads over at Jalopnik is after my own heart. I am a gearhead. I may not be as much a gearhead as some of my characters, mind you, but I am a gearhead. Racing school totally rules, let's just say. More women should race. Alas, it's expensive. (As you can imagine.) Otherwise, I'd be all over that. A lot. Like, every weekend I could manage.

Lastly, my friend Courtney Stoker's tumbler account had a couple of thoughtful points in it that I wanted to bring to light. The first is about racism discussions and the second is an unlikely connection between Star Trek Voyager, an actress' divorce from a controlling husband, and the election of President Obama. It just makes me smile.

Oh, okay. I'm just going to add this last link because I think it's important to think about. "Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85%" Repeat after me: negative reinforcement does not work the way you think it does. In fact, it is far less efficient than positive reinforcement. The proof is in the results. People are complex beings. Sometimes we forget that. When I hear about six year olds being arrested and booked for disrupting class it's proof that this whole "get tough" stance has failed. In addition, those corporations that make scholastic tests designed to discover how effective schools are? Yeah, funny thing. They're motivated by... profit. Yep. And suddenly there are more and more exams being required to determine the effectiveness of our school systems and the entire mess is collapsing. How about that? Capitalism is not the answer to everything, bats and ghouls. It never has been. Can we stop believing that government is useless now? Government has it's uses. Otherwise, it wouldn't continue to exist the world over. There is no easy answer.

Am back from the visit to Dallas-Fort Worth. My niece graduated from TCU with a double Bachelor of Science in Political Science and Special Communications. She graduated Magna Cum Laude in the Honors program with some sort of special academic award from the Poli-Sci department. (She wore a lot of academic bling in the ceremony-let's just say. :)) Am trying to encourage her to work in politics in some form or another. We need more female representatives in the U.S. government. (Clearly.) But we'll see. She's brilliant and driven and beautiful and just all around amazing. It's going to be interesting seeing what she's going to do with all of that awesome. She works hard too. I wish her the best. The little girl that used to dance in my truck to Skinny Puppy is gone, gone, gone. The young woman that took her place is downright incredible.

It was great seeing my aunt and uncle too. There was little to no screaming over politics. (That was a good thing really.) Dane was all kinds of prepared, though. My uncle loves to say crazy Tea Party shit just to see what kind of reaction he'll get out of us. It's a game he likes to play. He's far too smart to believe any of that crap--thank goodness. He is a conservative, though. He's just not a crazy conservative.

Every time we drive north to DFW the signage seems to get more and more filled with uber Christian panic-attacks. Like they expect the entire country to burn down overnight or something. One town claimed to be One city under One God! (Wow. Frankly, if you have to have a sign telling everyone about how Christian you are then you've sort of missed the point. Never mind that whole freedom of religion thing.) I'll be honest. It's a little more than disturbing. Personally, I think all Americans need to just take a deep breath, laugh, and chill out. Having a black president hasn't ended the world yet. I suspect everything will be fine even if we end up with another four years of black president.* Anyway, on the drive home Dane and I stopped at a DQ in Waco for a dipped cone. The clerk behind the counter gave me the Mother's Day discount. I was a little confused. "You're not a mother?" "Ah, no. Only if my cat counts." "I'm so sorry." "Don't be. It's okay." I knew she meant well, but wow, was the Mother's Day thing being pushed over the top. It was like a scene out of The Stepford Wives. Then we left and had the following conversation:

Dane: "Holy crap. Did you see that church sign? Let's just file that under "I don't think that means what you think that means.""
Me: "What did it say?"
Dane: ""Jesus is the only answer for America!" from the Spiritual Freedom Church."
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*More than fine, if you ask me, but that's me. [shrug]

Today's Jezebel article has me giggling. (Thank you Maureen McHugh. I needed a good laugh.) And now, an example with caption. ;)





















Having worked on my own cars for years, I can only stand next to the male working on my car and look confused... because he clearly doesn't know where the carburetor is. (For the record, this took two seconds to find. I searched for 'woman mechanic' and it was the first item to come up. Doubt me? Read this first and try for yourself.)

When I said I'd been working on a large number of guest posts and interviews I wasn't joking. It seems they all popped up at once. So, I hope you'll forgive me for another day of links. :) First, Sarah over at Bookworm Blues asked me to write a guest post for her blog series Special Needs in Strange Worlds. Definitely go through the other posts there. They've written some thought provoking stuff on the subject. (I just wrote about Liam's dyslexia and how most working class kids during that era dropped out of school at age 15 to 16.) And Amber Sistla over at Finding My Words interviewed me for her Writer Wednesday series.