Day in the Life of an Idiot

"Remiss" is one of those words like "Abide" that I think I should try to make an effort to use more often. Alas, one of my other favorite words is "Asunder," and that's hard to work into casual conversation. "Remiss" I could probably sneak in here and there.

Do you have favorite words? Words you just like the sound of? Or how they look on paper? For good looking words, I'd have to vote for "Quixotic." That's just cool looking, don't you think?

Speaking of words, I wrote some for Bitter Empire. I should have a review of THE BOOK OF STRANGE NEW THINGS out tomorrow, but today I'm talking about Vox Day/Theodore Beale's reaction to John Scalzi's book deal. Mostly, I talk about envy and jealousy. I suffer from both quite a lot. I have to admit that when I first read about Scalzi basically getting to stay in the business and make a decent living for ten more years, I privately emailed a writer friend of mine and just wrote: "I hate my life."

Because, for me, that's the thing that kills. OMG I would have loved that kind of commitment from my publisher. Scalzi says he's got the ideas for fifteen (or however many) books. You know what? SO DID I. No one took a risk on me, even when the risk was fairly minimal (and I would have cost them SO MUCH less). My computer has at least a dozen proposals that I wrote AND WERE REJECTED for the continuation of series that I thought were doing fairly well and had hoped to continue: the Garnet Lacey Series, the Vampire Princess series, AND the Precinct 13 universe. But, to be fair to Scalzi, I don't/didn't sell anything like he does. Not even close.

C'est la vie.

Publishing is like this.

But Day/Beale's reaction to all of it is fairly obviously jealousy smothered in envy sauce with a high dose of WTF thrown in. So, it seemed ripe to comment on.

If I follow Beale's logic I'm fairly sure that one of the reasons I fail at self-promotion/life/publishing is because I'm not nearly snarky enough for the Internet. This article is a case and point. I have this bizarre tendency to take people seriously and respond in kind.

Did I ever tell you that I met Vox Day/Theodore Beale? I probably have his business card upstairs in among all of the contacts I was collecting back in the day. He was a guest at a HarMar Barnes & Noble science fiction event because he had written a book with local author Bruce Bethke. Beale was selling his game and generally talking up his work. I'm a huge fan of Bethke, so I'm sure I bathed Beale with similar awe. (Look, okay, I was still desperately trying to break in; I bathed anyone published in a kind of unfiltered awe, and it's not like he walked around and said "Hi, my politics are horrible.") I was there interviewing Lois McMaster Bujold (how I got that gig I'm not sure, maybe via Eric Heideman?) At any rate, my interaction with Beale was only memorable in that I found him enthusiastic and friendly. He had a cool punk haircut at the time, if I remember rightly.

The person he's become is so... "Odious" is really the best word for it.

I probably shouldn't take him seriously (considering he doesn't think that, as a woman, I should have any rights, not even the right to vote), and, yet, I kind of went point by point through his blog. I'm sure I would have been slightly more entertaining had a piled on the snark, but I failed. Other people, I'm sure, will pick up the slack.

Thing is, even people you stridently disagree with sometimes have a point. I'm jealous of Scalzi too. Beale never just comes out and says that, of course, but it's pretty clear.

So I guess we have a thing in common.

Yikes.

In other news, my family is back from a lovely trip down to LaCrosse to visit my folks. It was my dad's birthday and also, of course, Memorial Day weekend. We spent a lot of time catching up and hanging out, so, in my mind, it was damn near perfect. Mason and I tried to scale Hixon Forest's bluff, which we have done before, but erosion and age made it more difficult. Mason is finally at the age where he can well and truly visualize falling off a cliff face and so we got to a spot where the handholds were sparse and he was like, "NOPE." But, we got really pretty far, all things considered. I think, somehow, we were off the official path, though, so that may have had something to do with our lack of success.

I tried to take some pictures, but our camera may have finally given up the ghost. To be fair, the camera is nearly as old as Mason himself. And, yes, it's an actual digital camera, not a PHONE. So, you know, good luck replacing that. (Although maybe they still make them.) I'm disappointed if only because I took some shots of a lovely flower growing on the bluff and I was hoping to use the picture to help identify it.

So, that's me. How's by you?

When I was a kid, I remember going to some university library (probably my father's) and seeing the WHO'S WHO books on the shelf. Even before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I had those fantasies I think everyone secretly has about wanting to be famous. I remember pledging that SOMEDAY (as God is my witness!) I'd get into the WHO'S WHO.

Well... guess what? Yep. Cambridge WHO'S WHO finally wrote the "please fill out the form, because you're going to be included" letter. Again, I'd worry this was a scam, except there was no "and for only 29.99/mo you can buy all seventeen million volumes" or any of that. Just a request to go fill out an on-line form (or send in their post-paid deal.)

I kind of feel like it's a dream come true.

So, if were Neil Gaiman twittering I could write: "Coffee's gone cold; Got into Who's Who."

Sorry. Did any of the rest of the locals see the article in the Star Trib about Twitter and Neil? Oy. You know I love him, but more often than not I'm DEEPLY jealous -- envious, I guess, technically.

In other breaking news, if you want to read about my alter-ego talking about promotion and what I eat for snacks, you can check out the interview on Writerly So.

I still haven't figured out if I'm going to MiniCON. I probably should, if we're in town (still need to ask Shawn about that), if only because I'm definitely not going to WisCON this year. This year's WisCON is likely to be really exciting, but, right now, we just can't afford it. This year is turning out to be very strange financially... like I'm selling and writing like mad, but the checks just aren't arriving (yet, at least.) Watch everything end up coming all one month so my taxes will eat half of it.

Oh, I almost forgot mythicalgirl did a nice, albeit short review of FALLEN HOST on her LJ "Voices in My Head" here. It always makes me do a little happy dance when people discover my books now, when they've been out of print for so long.

Speaking of... must... write... prequel.