I’m excited and honored to be appearing on four panels at this year’s Arisia 2015 science fiction convention, coming up this January 16-19. I plan to be there for every day of the con, and I’ll post a list of panels that I will be attending as an audience member later, once I’ve had a chance to digest the program.
Below are the panels I’ll be appearing on as a panelist.
The podcast The Writer and the Critic has reviewed both “We See a Different Frontier” and “Long Hidden” in their Episode 39. They discuss “Remembering Turinam” specifically as well.
The review was several months ago, but I figured better late than never. My response time to everything outside of work drops to almost zero during the school year!
Thanks for the review!
A long, long time ago… in a galaxy far, far away… [cue amazing, soul-electrifying fanfare]
It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil GALACTIC EMPIRE.
During the battle rebel spies managed to steal the secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the secret plans that can save her people and restore peace to the galaxy…
I think I must have been about ten years old when I first saw those words scroll across a television screen. Oh boy, was it awesome.
One week behind schedule for Camp Nanowrimo, I have finally completed a first draft novel, tentatively titled Red Soil Through Our Fingers! This is a major milestone for me. I’ve tried many times, via Nanowrimo and otherwise, to finish even one draft of a novel, but have never made it through the “murky middle”. Having made it to the other side, wow. It really does get better after roughly the 80% mark. Here’s what it means for what I’ve got and where it’s going.
Three days ago, I submitted my votes for the 2014 Hugo Awards. If you’ve never voted for the Hugos before, I highly recommend it. For $40, you get:
The Hugos are supposed to be a democratic representation of what the fans of the genre find compelling and worthy of praise. Say what you will about the state of the genre and how far we still need to go on many issues, but the Hugos are one way of making your voice heard. Don’t complain about what gets accolades if you don’t vote!
I didn’t submit votes for all categories, since I didn’t have time to read through everything. (You will recall, of course, that I was and still am working on finishing a novel draft this summer as well.) I also confess to voting for Best Novel based only on the first 1-2 chapters of each nominee. Here are my top ranked selections for each category that I actually submitted a vote:
I think the category in which I was most conflicted about my final vote was Best Novelette. Aliette de Bodard’s “The Waiting Stars” as well as Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling” were both lovely stories as well. I liked all three for different reasons. Kowal’s won out in the end I think because all else held equal, I think I’d rather promote a story about humanity looking outward into space again than anything else.
Can someone please explain to me what the HELL just happened? Twitter exchange on #clifi compiled below.
The publishers of We See a Different Frontier and Outlaw Bodies are putting together a new anthology that continues their social justice streak. The new anthology, Accessing the Future will explore “disability and intersecting nodes of race, nationality, gender & sexuality”.
From their Indie GoGo page:
This anthology will call for and publish speculative fiction stories that interrogate issues of disability—along with the intersecting nodes of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class—in both the imagined physical and virtual spaces of the future. We want people of all abilities to see themselves, as they are now and as they want to be, in our collective human future.
[…]
Accessing the Future will be a collection of speculative fiction that places emphasis on the social, political, and material realms of being. We aren’t looking for stories of “cure,” that depict people with disabilities (or with other in/visible differences) as “extra special,” or that generally reproduce today’s dominant reductionist viewpoints of dis/ability as fixed and a problem to be solved. We want stories that place emphasis on intersectional narratives (rejection of, undoing, and speaking against ableist, heteronormative, racist, cissexist, and classist constructions) and that are informed by an understanding of dis/ability issues and politics at individual and institutional levels. We want to hear from writers that think critically about how prosthetic technologies, new virtual and physical environments, and genetic modifications will impact human bodies, our communities, and the planet.
I just became a backer this morning. If you’re interested in expanding the diversity of perspectives within science fiction, this is a great opportunity to get behind a project on the front lines of imagining a more socially-just humanity.
Ok, so on the last day of Camp NaNoWriMo, my word count is pretty sad. (I’m currently at 26385). BUT! I plead giddiness, as for the past week or two most of my free time thought bandwidth has been taken up by the subject of the photo below.
I’m engaged!
(And yes, I do intend to continue trying to finish the novel).
Sandra McDonald’s story Fleet appeared in the post-colonial anthology We See A Different Frontier (along with my short story Remembering Turinam). My story received an honorable mention in the recently released 31st edition of The Year’s Best Science Fiction — Sandra’s went all the way and earned inclusion in its pages.
Congratulations Sandra! And I’m honored to have been included in the same anthology with you.
Recently, The Future Fire interviewed Sandra about gender, colonialism, and the story she wrote for We See a Different Frontier:
How we define, defend and debate gender in the U.S. is fascinating to me, and certainly there are clashes between cultures where gender is rigidly enforced vs where gender variety is protected. For years now i’ve tried to explore those schisms and honor the men and women who live outside the boxes we try to stuff them in.
You can check out the whole interview on The Future Fire editor’s blog. There’s a smattering of some Buddhist perspective in there too.
I’ve tried several of the minimalist word processors out there. For Windows only, I’d say Q10 is my favorite — clean, simple, and fast. However, I’ve been on the go a lot and find myself using all three major platforms (Windows, MacOS, and Linux) during the course of a typical day. If I want to sneak in a bit of writing at any moment, a cross-platform solution has turned into a must. I also realized that I do miss certain features that many “minimalist” word processors might consider extravagant.
I’ve fallen in love with FocusWriter for drafting new stories. It is not only cross-platform, but comes with a greater degree of control over the writing environment, without sacrificing the simple and clean approach to the writing itself. Put a different way, it’s actually not minimalist — it has everything that a fiction writer would want, and simply nothing more. Features: full-screen mode, instant word count, daily targets, session timers, scene dividers, and customizable themes.
Below is a screenshot of the custom theme I created to work on my Camp Nanowrimo novel, working title Red Soil Through His Fingers. Since the novel takes place on a Mars colony, the writing environment lends to the mood. (Don’t judge the writing sample too harshly… its a first draft idea dump…)
The background is a shot from one of the Mars orbiters, with blue-grey Georgia 16pt on 85% opacity black in the center. Ping me if you want the theme file.