Action is more interesting than inaction.

If you feel I never post any more, I do more regularly mention ephemera over on facebook. However, that is not a substitute, and I will be getting back to longer, more thoughtful posts here as I start work on the next project. And news, of course!

Saturday is the inaugural night of the Wayward Coffeehouse's new monthly “Sci-Fi/Fantasy Author Reading Series” featuring local authors reading excerpts from their works. Meet the authors, get books signed, talk about writing, and enjoy stories read by the authors themselves.

This Saturday it'll be Kij Johnson (that would be me), Lancer Kind, and Tim McDaniel.

I'm a Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy-award nominated author whose stories have been published in Analog, Asimov’s, and a number of Best of anthologies. My books include Fudoki and The Fox Woman. I'll be reading a new flash and "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss," which was a finalist for this year's Nebula and Hugo awards.
www.kijjohnson.com

Lancer Kind received honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest. He is an award-winning short-story author who also writes novels and publishes comic books.
www.lancerkind.com

Tim McDaniel is the author of the “Lonesome Planet Travelers Advisory” which offers advice to aliens visiting Earth. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF, and multiple anthologies.
web.mac.com/timmcdaniel1


SATURDAY, May 16
READING: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Author Reading Series
8 pm - 10 pm, free
Kij Johnson, Lancer Kind, Tim McDaniel


Wayward Coffeehouse, it's better than a plan
8570 Greenwood Ave N, Seattle WA 98103
www.waywardcoffee.com

The Wayward Coffeehouse is a science-fiction coffeehouse in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. Starting at 8 this Saturday, I'll be reading with SF writers Lancer Kind (http://lancerkind.com) and Tim McDaniel. The Wayward's going to be trying to make this a monthly thing, so come offer moral support!

Monkeys didn't take the trick, alas. On the other hand, I've been nominated for the Nebs twice now, and for World Fantasy twice, and then there's this year's Hugo nom. It would be nice to win one of them, but I can't complain -- well, not and be taken seriously, even by myself.

She gave me this splendid userpic.

After seventeen years, you formalize what we all have always known, that you are made for one another.

The Nebula Awards Showcase 2009 is out, and "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" is in it. Powell's Books has it, or check your local bookstore.

I have been writing, but it's the second week running of appointments, other peoples's catastrophes and eucatastrophes, deadlines, and weird health glitches. I feel as though I have all sorts of trouble focusing on anything lately, but work gets done, a lot of it. But not enough!

I ended up cutting 3K words out of the first 14K, and am as finished with that section as I can be until I finish this draft. Tomorrow I head into a sequence that I have majorly rewritten twice in the last six months, which you would think would mean it's in good shape, except that you would be wrong.

It was so breathtaking a day that after working for a while, I took bread and cheese and tea and Daniel Defoe to the Locks, where I sat under a barely-budded tree and watched a little white dog toil up and race down the terraces. I rediscover Defoe every year or so, and am always blown away, again, by his writing. It's A Journal of the Plague Year right now, again, and it's still just magnificent.

Interesting statement in the Penguin edition's introduction by Anthony Burgess:

When post-Wellsian science fiction presents its collective horrors -- either in words or on film -- Defoe is somewhere in the background. Robinson Crusoe and the Journal are the prototypes of all imaginative works that show man, individually and collectively, facing the horrible and unexpected.

These and Moll Flanders -- Defoe is so much of what I love in writing -- his vivid pragmatic characters, the way he builds his stories from incidents instead of arcs, his clean prose. And then it turns out, on top of it all, he was a spy? He's my new dead BF.

Diane Severson gives the story a charming reading here.

It's strange and wonderful to hear someone else's voice reading something I created.

Cat is cute, happy and healthy and eating everything I put down in front of her.

Fridge is full of manchego cheese and fresh anchovies -- not a meal to eat inside, or with anyone you don't know extremely well, or maybe anyone at all. I hope tomorrow is nice enough to deserve a picnic like that.

Lots of thinking about the next set of scenes to be rewritten, and I am looking forward to them. Still more cutting! I am admitting to myself that there's going to be yet another pass after this one.

Computer is having some problems. I took it in to the Genius Bar today where they fiddled with some stuff, and if it's still giving trouble next week I'll take it back in. The guy who was helping me is a classical clarinetist and his hand can span a twelfth on the piano. He told me about writing Top 40 radio-station jingles, and I told him about climbing. People are fascinating.

Absolute paydirt at Goodwill: half a dozen new heavyweight silk shawls and scarves, for $1.29 each. And a Ballard tee. I've been wearing a lot of that brown that is almost black lately, and I managed to find a J. Jill jacket in that color.

Neck is getting better. Tomorrow I'll go for a long walk and/or climb, and do a bunch of stretching.

I brought in the hammie girl's cage from the car where I left it after taking her to the vet: everything still in it, water still in her bottle. I'm not sad about her but remembering her with affection, and thinking of all the ways and people and things we love in a lifetime.

Not a lot of words, but I solidified the first 8K of the rewrite enough that from here on, the start will only need tweaking for resonance and theme. I passed it off to the cohort, lanerobins and gwyndolin. I didn't get more done because I have had a lot of energy going elsewhere today, but tomorrow should be more focused.

I have a complicated relationship with printers -- okay, it's not complicated: printers fail for me a lot. And by "a lot," I mean "all the time." The semi-solution corwynofamberworked out for me last week when the printers (both of them) failed, has now failed. It's not the printer(s), it's not the driver, and so I fear it must be the computer itself -- and that's why I bought the ultra-mega-uber service contract. This will be the third or fourth time I've taken it to the Genius Bar and had them perform arcane passes over it.

I have never written without many many printouts while I am in progress, and this "no paper" thing feels strange.

I rewrote most of a scene that still isn't working properly, though I think it will tomorrow. I did manage my minimum daily word count for this rewrite, currently 700 words. It's a very cumbersome rewrite.

I see the Rolfer tomorrow. I jacked up my neck Monday and it'll be good to get rid of the pain, get a good night's sleep, and be mobile again! I am so seldom in back or neck pain any more that I forget how debilitating it is. Good to be reminded every so often, but okay, lesson learned.

Peanut butter cookies and then hulu, I think.

I took out 300 words and added 600, which doesn't seem like that much when I write it down baldly like that; at the time, it felt like making a toothpick by chewing down a tree. I have one more big scene in this section to revise, but I think I'm not sharp enough to do it tonight.

The trouble with small-batch baking is that it's really hard not to, say, make some cookies just because I can, even though I made scones earlier today just because I could then, too.

Revised about 1100 words of Kylen. I seem to be removing a scene I like a lot, because I just can't work it into the pacing at the book's start, dammit.

Figured out most of the applicants for the novel workshop, but I am still awaiting some last answers from people.

Staggeringly beautiful day: sunlight and cool air. Spent an hour at Stone Gardens and got a move farther on a project there, and then cricked my neck.

Tatsuko still hasn't eaten much since her surgery last week, but she does drink water off tuna and chicken now. I got her to lick wet catfood off my fingertips this afternoon, but she needs to suck it up and start doing her own eating. She's so skinny! I worry about her.

See, this is why I haven't used LJ much lately. Life well-lived can be pretty uninteresting to read about. I'd like to think I am saving it all for my Art, so you feel free to think that, as well.

I think I'd get Rove's and Cheney's dossiers and an open connection to the outside world.

To be honest, I would get more pleasure from knowing what exactly they had on one of my friends, who in college got into what you might call a spot of trouble with the Feds.

Ever since finishing the draft of Kylen at the end of February, I have had a terrible time getting refocused on writing. The rewrite is a huge project, because the book was written over years and I changed the voice, plot, and characters as I worked on it. So, even though I just did a ton of work? I have tons more to do, and it feels almost as daunting and impossible as finishing the first draft did.

There's also a lot of stuff I need to be doing that is professional but not the book itself. I am reading applications to the novel workshop I'm teaching this summer, and I have work I need to do for the Sturgeon Award anthology that the Center for the Study of Science Fiction wants to do. I also have a brutal piece of flash fiction I've been working on. And I have the Tor book I want to start. And I have other books I might or might not want to pitch that I need to think about.

Beyond this, there's the rest of my life, both happy bits and irksome. It's spring! There's climbing. There's socializing. I (reluctantly) job-hunt, because I have to for unemployment benefits. And there's always something one-off, something that can't really be scheduled around: the 'flu I caught in mid March (and I am still not quite over) and Tatsuko and traveling. Right now it's Tatsuko again, who may need to go back to the vet tomorrow, because she's not drinking much yet.

So: not writing needs to change. I need to be able to finish Kylen and organize the rest of the many things I want to write. The class and my responsibilities to the anthology need to be balanced with this. And I need to run around in the sun and feel good and climb and goof off.

papersky just started logging daily progress on her newest project. I myself did that here years ago, and I think it's probably worth doing again. So here's the skinny for the day. I did not work on Kylen, but for an hour or so, I did poke and prod a late draft on a short story. It's my first horror story in twenty years and taking a lot longer than 1500 words should, but I don't want it to be just visceral. I did some reading for the novel class.

And then I went to the locks and sat in the sun and read Cold Comfort Farm. Guess which part of the day I liked best? Loved the book, which is charming, with a perfect, surprisingly complex ending.

Tomorrow will be more disciplined. But I sure hope I don't have to take her to the vet.

eta: Sirens galore, and the local 911 reports intriguingly lists the response type as "Rescue Rope" and gives as address the corner outside my apartment. The game is afoot. eta2: I am guessing someone fell off their patio into the Sound.

Thank you for the books from Amazon, Lane! ::cracking Cold Comfort farm, even as I type::

I need the correct term for the fallacy that goes:

If X could happen, it would already have happened. Therefore it can't happen.

If X hasn't happened, it's because X can't happen.

I have found divers websites and wiki pages on fallacies (and very amusing it has been, to be reminded of them all), but no one is telling me this. It's an inversion of the appeal to probability (Murphy's law): If X can happen, then it will. But it's not the same.

Happy birthday to my dear arian1! With much, much love.

She mostly slept, anymore, so I didn't see much of her. She had moved outside the little wooden house she used to sleep in, into a vast pile of fluff that just seemed to get bigger with time. She came out for water a couple of times a day, but her new nest was so close to her food that sometimes she would just push her face out and grab a mouth full of seeds before pulling back into the fluff.

I hadn't noticed that what I had thought was fat was growing bigger and getting lumpy. In retrospect, there was another sign: Tatsuko's interest in her changed a couple of days ago, from treating her as a mildly interesting television channel, to crouching beside the cage for hours.

She rearranged her fluff last night and I found blood smeared in it, more than a cracked claw would cause. I pulled away the stained fluff and replaced it with clean, and then offered her a pine nut, her favorite treat. Eyes tight closed, ears pressed back, without moving, she took it but didn't eat it, only tucked it into her cheek pouch. When I pulled away a bit of the fluff immediately beneath her, that was stained as well.

So I took her in to the vet this morning. I didn't want to distress her by moving her into a unfamiliar box, so I put her entire ten-gallon tank into an IKEA bag and carried her that way. I wasn't sure whether putting her to sleep was the right thing -- maybe it was just fat after all, you know? maybe she just needed a diet -- but I reached down to touch her and her hip was hard and bumpy, as if she were storing sunflower seeds there, too. She barely opened her eyes then, either.

So the vet gave her a shot in her tummy and she fell asleep, and they tucked her into a pile of blankets. Fifteen minutes later woadwarrior, who's a tech there, checked on her and said she was gone. It was clearly a huge tumor. He also told me her cheeks were full of seeds. I had given her some pine nuts last night, so I assume they were in there, too.

***

She was my favorite of my rodents: mostly amiable, engaged with her world, and curious. She had a +1 Ball of Speed Magnification™ that she loved. If I left her to it, she would happily spend more than an hour exploring my apartment that way, and would refuse to come out of the BoSM when I finally took her up. She could not get enough of the corner of my kitchen where I keep the trash.

She was fascinated by the cat, and would chase her in the BoSM until Tatsuko hopped onto the couch. I remember a day when Tatsuko was following me for a treat, and the hamster followed her, bumping against her hocks and making her skip; and I laughed until I had to sit down. With some wariness, but knowing how sanguine the hamster was about the cat, I put her tank on the ground. The two of them would interact through the glass: Tatsuko more excited about the hamster than anything else in her life, the hamster clearly teasing her.

Other people could pick her up, but I was usually too nervous to. She nipped me once, when I first got her and I accidentally dropped her, and I didn't want to do that again. She would let me stroke her, and would come into my hand when I opened the BoSM.

weezlgrrrl often babysat her for me when I was out of town for more than a few days, and then hammie-girl would be packed up and sent to Issaquah to live with a thousand strange animals and two boys. They fed her a much higher quality of treats than I did. She liked all that, too.

***

weaselmom understands all about small animals, what they do for us, what they mean to us. She said, "It’s excellent that she had her pouches full of treats. She was a smart girlie who was ready for her trip."

My dad bought our first computer, a $3400 pile of chips and boards from digital group, in 1975. For a dollar an hour, I helped solder the chips in place, and pretty much as soon as the fumes had cleared he started to teach me Basic. I typed in programs I found in early magazines, but I wrote little programs all my own as well, to do simple math or just insult whoever I could talk into loading them. After a few years I stopped doing this, alas; and by college saw computers as a tool (I got an Osborne just after my senior year), and science as something men did.

Back then, most of what I learned about women in science is that there weren't many. The women who did science were following trails set by their husbands (Marie Curie) or fathers (Anna Freud) or brothers (Carolyn Herschel). Or they worked in new, marginal -- according to the scientific establishment -- fields (Dian Fosse). Or they were nurses (Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton). In thinking this, I did all these women (and many others) and their sciences a great disservice, and I know better now. But back then, where was I going to educate myself? I grew up in a small town in Iowa. On the Internet? Not yet, not for decades yet.

But I knew of two other women in science, because of my dad and that dg-8080: Admiral Grace Hopper, a mathematician and programmer critical to UNIVAC and COBOL -- and by extension to language-based programming languages-- and Ada Byron Lovelace, the first programmer and the first person to see that computers might have an application beyond calculation. The Internet would have been helpful here, too; because now that I can read about them in detail, I realize that they were extraordinary thinkers, strong-minded, articulate, and intellectually curious. If I had known more about them then, I would have wanted to grow up to be them.

The good news is, there are a lot of women in science; there always have been. Only now it's easier to learn about them. There's an Internet now, and these two women are a huge part of why that's true.

***

Learn a lot more about Ada Lovelace and Ada Lovelace Day at findingada.com.

Want to know about other women of science?
Findingada.com lists hundreds of posts made for Ada Lovelace day, about Ada and other women in science.
Try the The San Diego Supercomputer Center's list of sixteen.
Or read the biographies linked from about.com.
See how far back it goes at 4000 Years of Women in Science.