But Enough About Me!

CA Supreme Court strikes down ban on same-sex marriage

The quote, I believe, is MLKjr.

Just a final reminder that by registering to receive the newsletter at the Tor Books Watch the Skies you can, for the next two-three days, download Spirit Gate for free. Next week's free download is Starfish by Peter Watts. It's quite a good sf near future novel--I read it a couple of years ago and definitely recommend it.


And while I'm at it, check out this post on Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's blog about an anti-princess rant which is itself a link from a different blog, you know how that goes, but anyway the anti-princess rant post mentions her excellent novel Zahrah the Windseeker.

The term I've read that best encapsulates (for me) the military dictatorship's course of action toward its own people, those affected by the cyclone that devastated the coast, is "malign neglect." Power matters more to them than lives.

Here's a WashPost story : Burma on the brink of a public health catastrophe.

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres was already in Burma and according to their website is trying to expand their relief efforts, although even getting visas to bring in more trained people is difficult--maybe impossible--only time will tell.

In Bogaley, a district of 100,000 people heavily hit by the cyclone, thousands of people have been killed and many more are homeless. The hospital of Bogaley is still functioning, but seven out of the eight health centres in the area have been destroyed. MSF started distributing food and providing medical care to the people in the district following the cyclone and trucks with food, relief items, and medical material for the hospital have followed.

However, the MSF team in Bogaley is being imposed increasing constraints by the authorities. As a result, the team is unable to provide as much assistance as they could to respond to the enormous needs in terms of food and medical care.

You can find information on their relief efforts at their website.


And just because, I want to mention two other organizations whose work I really admire:

Partners in Health, co-founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, focuses on health and social justice. Twin B and I heard him speak at University of Hawaii, and I was deeply impressed with his humility, his intelligence, and his passion for social justice. PiH specifically works as a partner within communities, not as an organization that comes in and does things for people.

Women for Women International helps women survivors of war. Besides working to get women on the road to economic independence so they can rebuild their lives, WfW also offers a platform for women to speak about what has happened to them. When women are forced to live in silence they are forced to live in shame. I try never to take for granted the opportunities I have had in life to use my voice.

aberwyn is back online after a long absence, and if you're not reading her lj, you might find it of interest because, among other things, she is Katharine Kerr, the author of the excellent Deverry novels as well as other books.

Check out today's post, Pink diaper baby, on growing up with a grandfather who was, for a time, a member of the Communist Party.

When sufficiently fueled up with the water of life, he would discourse upon the failure of the Revolution. My grandmother, who harbored no illusions about him or the CP, normally would ignore the rants. One day, however, when we were all sitting in her kitchen, she had had enough.

I have nothing to say but I wanted to offer up two great links.

First, msagara has a fabulous post on Why Being a Mother is like Being a Writer.

9. When you go out with your child, and your child is now under public scrutiny, people will randomly review you. They will tell you what you are doing wrong. They will tell you that if you were a good parent your child would wear his hat/walk in the stroller/eat all the food on his plate/obey you without hesitation/and never ever have a tantrum in a public place. They will also tell you that if you were a better parent and did what all the other parents do, your child would be popular, and if he or she is not, it is your fault. This can be discouraging.

But it is best not to engage with reviewers. It is best not to say "but if you truly understood my child, you would see things differently" because, in the very long run, it will be up to your child to foster that understanding, and in the end, not everyone who views him will arrive at it. You do. Sometimes, you cling to that with whatever faith you can muster, and you continue.

Read the whole thing!


Second, via Mike Brotherton's blog, a link to unbelievably amazing photos of an electrical storm (and photos of people affected by the eruption) associated with the recent volcanic eruption in Chile.

As a writer, I get heavily involved in my landscapes both physical and cultural. Because I like fiction that immerses me in a different world than the one I live in, I like to write that kind of fiction as well.

One of the things this means is constructing societies--or perhaps I should more accurately say variations on societies found here on this Earth--that have enough depth and breadth and authenticity (whatever those words mean) to "feel" on some level as if they truly might exist. Because, honestly, the real world we live in and which has preceded us historically (and prehistorically as far as that goes) is far more complex than what we can get across on the page or "invent." And I do not believe that any fantastic landscape is invented out of whole cloth; I think it is always informed by this world.

I'm sometimes tempted to use a "we" formulation here, as in "we all do this and we all do that" but after all I know I can only speak for myself when I say that *I* can only unfold a landscape in my fiction based on what I know and comprehend and am aware of. So I am limited, in that sense, to my own experience, my own research, my own conversations with others, and so on, and it is incumbent on me, given what I try to do, to continually attempt to extend my awareness.

When I try to describe a social system that is not meant to replicate, say, the 21st century O'ahu one I'm living in right now or the rural Oregon I grew up in, I have to use the terms available to me to describe social structures and interactions. Those terms have developed over decades, even centuries; and indeed, I often accept how those terms are used without necessarily questioning all that much where they come from and how they are being applied. So I'm always always looking to expand on what I (think I) know and how I know it.

That's why I was pleased to stumble across this article online: Talking about "Tribe": Moving from Stereotypes to Analysis.

In this paper we argue that anyone concerned with truth and accuracy should avoid the term "tribe" in characterizing African ethnic groups or cultures. This is not a matter of political correctness. Nor is it an attempt to deny that cultural identities throughout Africa are powerful, significant and sometimes linked to deadly conflicts. It is simply to say that using the term "tribe" does not contribute to understanding these identities or the conflicts sometimes tied to them.

Articles like this keep me thinking about what terms I'm using and why I'm using them and if they are the right terms to use as I, as a writer, try to translate across a fictional setting the images I have in my head.

I walk in from going to the gym and sit down at the computer with my Starbucks chai latte (I know, I know); literally, I sit down, and my gChat chimes.

Spouse is IMing (he doesn't know I've just got in, but I left my gmail open so it appears as if I am online).

"Wow. just has a big earthquake" he IMs.

I check cnn.

Nothing.

Did I mention: he's in Guam**.

So, your breaking news here: 6.6 earthquake this morning in Guam.




** he's supposed to be in South Korea, but the plane broke down and was being fixed at a glacial pace and now they're flying in a new plane.

***Added: He's fine. I forgot to mention that originally because there was never any feeling from his chat that he might not be fine, it was just an amusing conversation on IM. Later news reports suggest there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, and no tsunami warnings.

I would have a difficult time creating a full time online persona for myself--that is, a daily blog presence--because I go through so many mood shifts some of which involve thinking that I don't have anything to say and others of which involve simply being too focused on my work to think of anything outside of the novel I'm working on and also because every once in a while I am just too busy having a life beyond the screen of my iMac.

So, you may ask, what have I been doing?

Writing. Today: one step forward, three steps back. I discovered that the scene I had hoped to quickly finish up in order to get onto a New Section (always exhilarating in the sense that one feels one is Finally Moving Forward) contained in fact an entire restatement and therefore repetition of a Major Important conversation two characters had already had. So I had to go back and rewrite the earlier scene, move the first half of the later scene, and realize that in fact I would not today get to the New Section at all nor even make my general daily allowance of 2000 words a day (first draft, quick and dirty to get everything laid down before major rewrites).

What's good is that the rewritten scene is, naturally, stronger than the original version.

That's what I have to say.

Meanwhile, on the interweebs, msagara could pretty much be speaking for me with this post:

I've said before, and will no doubt say again, that I like LJ because it's like one big, rambling, splintering conversation. It's hard, however, to just stand like an eavesdropper at the edge of conversation without eventually feeling that you're taking without giving. . .

. . .So I had to give myself permission to be boring. I had to give myself permission to be irrelevant.

Elsewhere, not on lj (as difficult as that may be to believe), Bankuei writes on Disengagement Tactics:

So, here’s the thing- how do we operate online and create spaces where we’re not constantly subjecting ourselves to foolishness? The big push I’ve seen in the last few years in terms of the way many of us are dealing online is a certain set of tactics for disengaging from the crazy.

(link gacked from Naamen at Words From the Center, Words From the Edge)

Curiously, one post is about Engagement and the other about Disengagement. Some kind of cosmic balance? You decide.



Back on the fantasy ranch, a solidly positive review of Shadow Gate at The Wertzone.

Finally: what about that mention of a free book?

Spirit Gate is this week's free download at the new forthcoming Tor mega-site

How cool is that?

All you have to do is to go there and sign up.

This interview with Michelle Sagara West is well worth reading.

I don't feel the need to invent a new and interesting way to kill people, because I think the tragedy of death, and the way in which we're scarred by the things that don't kill us, don't require the All New Interesting Death option. What I do want, though, is some sense of the emotional aftermath of actions, because it's our -reaction- to tragedy that illuminates who we are.

AND (added):

Mildred Loving died. The case brought forward in the name of her and her husband Richard--whose 1958 Washington D.C. interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia, where they lived at the time--went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in a 1967 ruling, miscegenation laws were overturned.

No, not the title of a fantasy story.

This special exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts is simply phenomenal. Indeed, it is overwhelming, such that chibicharibdys came up to me when we were about 2/3s through and said, "I can't absorb any more; can we leave now?" We agreed that, since it's here for another three weeks and we get in free due to the family having museum membership, we would come back and finish another day before our brains melted due to the intense heat of iconographic overload.

The New York Times has an excellent article here on how the exhibit came about.

The painted and textile thangkas with their bright colors and complex imagery are particularly mind-blowing. And that's not even getting into the videos of the dance (unfortunately I missed the actual events that included actual Bhutanese monks actually dancing, more fool I).

It is touring to several other locations after it leaves Honolulu, but the only one I could find reference to is the Rubin Museum ? in New York.

If you have a chance to see this exhibit, do.

I know, I know - we fight about stupid things and argue over whose sub-genre brand is more harmful to the field or more full of mediocre hack writers - but hey, are you kidding me? People all over argue about stupid things.

Meanwhile, autopope announces The New Eclectics: Embrace and Extend!

while discussion rages in matociquala's lj over a recent Richard Morgan post

while tammy212 has two really worthwhile posts starting here and continuing here with important, honest, and strong, discussion about feminism and WoC following in each case

as along elsewhere skywardprodigal posts POC in SF Carnival #9: What I Heard About You and What that Meant for Me. I gakked it from ladyjax who has also just posted about some interesting new books she is reading or going to read.

and meanwhile Scalzi Hearts YA

cmpriest's novel Four and Twenty Blackbirds is available as a free download at the upcoming Tor.com

jaylake blogs about why you need scoping

and this is just mostly on lj and in the last 24 hours or so and merely what I am aware of (as opposed to the totality of what is out there) and had time to link to before I have to Get To Work on my various Howling Deadlines.

What I see is that people are excited and lively and thinking and talking. Which is far cooler than being incurious and apathetic and talking without thinking (although that happens with me, too, at times).

Yes, the sff community has its flaws (and ongoing issues like racism and sexism that, in parallel with overall society have to be battled over and over again) but overall I think almost anything can at least be addressed at least somewhere, and really, for me, how cool is it that you can get such a huge range of discussion most of which I'm not even touching on by people who are passionate (and occasionally insightful!) about ideas, about technology and how it is changing, about the human condition and society, about writing?

Oh, yeah, I forgot to put up a writing/craft link in the above:

Here's papersky on Fast and Dirty Fantasy Names.

Go forth and multiply.

Embrace and Extend!

My conversations over the years with my various writer friends have had a huge influence on me on several levels: they've provided comfort, feedback, reflection, teaching and learning, laughter, an outlet for complaints, and sometimes a simple reality check: "Yes, when you were in the middle of the first draft of your last book you *also* thought it was the worst thing you had ever written because that's the cycle you go through when you're writing." But the latter is the subject of another post!

Recently my friend and fellow writer Constance Ash read my current novel Shadow Gate. Our emails back and forth on the subject continue years of discussing various issues that have vexed and engaged us.

Now a portion of that discussion is online at DeepGenre as Writers Talk Writing: Constance Ash and Kate Elliott Discuss Shadow Gate

Warning: it's long.

Laura Quilter posts on cultural appropriation, property, rhetoric, acknowledgment: thoughtful and long post, impossible to summarize or even excerpt because it is itself a kind of summary, so herewith a single quote because I loved it so:

Culture is promiscuous.



I contribute to SFSignal's weekly MindMeld feature this week: Which SFF Books Have the Best/Worst Endings? My answer for a great ending? Hint: almost the first two words are: Nalo Hopkinson's . . .

chibicharibdys has an Etsy site for selling fine arts prints up at Etsy.com, and also a site with Chu called Studio IroIro

Daniel Abraham bram452 has a Hugo-nominated story up on the web for your reading delectation: "The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairytale of Economics."

For those who like science in their science fiction, Mike Brotherton's blog has science as well as science fiction because he wears at least three different hats: scientist (astronomer), sf writer (most recently Spider Star), and educator (assistant professor in the department of astronomy and physics at UWyoming). What that means, at least to me, is that he can explain things well.

coniraya tagged me with this. I don't usually do memes (too overwhelmed!) but I love me my iTunes and couldn't resist this one.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to.

1. "Balance" Sara Tavares (check out the awesome video on YouTube)
2. "Yamore" Salif Keita
3. "Yuhi Chala Chal" (from the movie Swades, score by A. R. Rahman)
4. "Mirror in the Bathroom" The English Beat
5. "Through the Veil" Jamshied Sharifi
6. "Monochrome" Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex (score by Yoko Kanno)
7. "I Am a Stranger in This World" Azam Ali


Choosing 7 other people to tag is too stressful for me. I'd love to hear what folks are listening to. Consider YOURSELF on of the seven people I've tagged.

Whew.

Reader KT kindly pointed out to me that in the interview I did with Robert Thompson at Fantasy Book Critic I reference Danish king Vladimir when in fact, of course, his name was Valdemar. As a person of Danish-American ethnicity I know this, and yet it slipped right past me and my lying eyes. Wah.

Also, in the comments section of my slightly tongue-in-cheek recent post at SFFNovelists on My Manifesto, I broke Rule #3 of the Interwebs: Never make any statement about Robert Heinlein or his work that could be remotely construed as derogatory. Gee, any one of you could have guessed how that would turn out!

However, in the words of the immortal Donald Rumsfeld, free people are free to make mistakes.

Meanwhile, I am working in my slow and crawling way and preoccupied thereby.

My discussion of the Big Idea(s) in my Crossroads series is up over at John Scalzi's most excellent blog, Whatever. Boy, did he write the perfect introduction, or what?


But wait! There's more.

Over at SFFNovelists I post My Manifesto: But after much thought I’ve decided I do have a manifesto to share with the world, however unlikely it is that the world cares.

First I have to say that an hour ago there were over 340 emails in my inbox because that happens sometimes. There are now 36, although I admit that half a dozen were moved into one of several "To be Answered" folders I keep for replies that will take more than 2 minutes which I haven't dealt with immediately.

Go, me!

Second, the more germane to youse guys, I mentioned previously that this interview is up at Fantasy Book Crtitic.

Among other things, the interviewer Robert Thompson asked

Are there any preconceived notions that you’d like to dispel about being a female speculative fiction author?

To which I replied: I don’t own or lease any cats. Nor am I owned by any cats. Other than that I’d be interested to hear what your readers think are the preconceived notions relating to female spec fic authors.

However, no one bit over at Fantasy Book Critic.

So -- what are the preconceived notions relating to female spec fic authors? Don't by shy. From the mild to the provoking, what have you personally heard and what do you think is floating around out there?

I'm also interviewed--and it's a long interview--over at Fantasy Book Critic.

I can usually tell when I'm sent questions by someone who has read my books, as is the case here. Rather than the generic, these are particular, and particular questions engage me more than generic ones (which is not to say I do not understand the circumstances in which someone would need to ask more generic questions).

I have not been posting here much due to preoccupation with writing and life, but I have a lot to say in the interview if you've been missing my nattering.

A thoughtful--and positive!--review of Shadow Gate at FantasyBookCritic.

The Orbit (UK) edition is currently available. The Tor (USA) edition is due on bookstore shelves next week (April 15).