So, seanan_mcguire  was regaling me with stories of her local cupcake shop and how they have maple bacon cupcakes. Portland does not, to my knowledge, have any cupcake shops, but Seattle sure does. (Relative population of hipsters deeply effect the number of cupcake shops in a given urban area.)

So on our day out, triskelmoon , sarapada , and I went to Wink on Queen Anne Hill, a scant few blocks from where I grew up. As soon as we entered and I glimpsed the menu, I turned to the girls and said:

"Aw, but now we'll be all disappointed because they won't have maple bacon flavor."

And the cute guy behind the counter sort of cocks his head and goes: "Maple bacon, you say?"

And I explain how my writer friend in San Francisco goes to a shop that has such fabled things. He and the baker exchanged meaningful looks and asked me to describe said confection.

"Come back tomorrow. We'll have them."

"Really?" I said. I mean, I've been trained to believe that customer service means don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

The baker shrugged. "We have bacon. We have maple syrup. Why not?"

And so I did go back the next day, and Reader, a miracle had occurred.



And they were completely delicious. Sweet and moist and a little salty, the buttercream thick and light. Perfect. (Apparently they were huge sellers. The next day these were all they had left when I got there and said cute guy introduced me to the other people in line as the suggester of the yum.) The thing about desserts is--if it's interesting or weird or I've never had it before, I'm so much more excited about it than otherwise. That goes double for ice cream, and triple for cupcakes, which honestly, I never eat, because they don't interest me. Chocolate is not enough. But when I'm presented with these small packages of unique flavors, I get ridiculously excited. Give me something I've never had before and you have my heart. (Part of why I was so excited to eat at the Night Kitchen, which serves up all kinds of unique things that thrill me.)

So forever and ever, this shop has won my devotion, when once more I visit Seattle. Though I still really want to go to Seanan's shop, which presumably has a name that is not Seanan's Shop, though said name I will likely never acknowledge.

Go team sweet and savory!

I am back from Seattle and a bit laid up--not feeling well at all. Headache, whatever my foot issue is is acting up, and I'm all over in achy-pain. Yuck. But that means posting time! I have many stories from the trip to share. Also I missed my kitten and my boy so much. justbeast  was so kind to me last night. When I was exhausted and hurting he unpacked my suitcase for me, so I could feel at home. Might not mean much to anyone else, but so often there's no point in unpacking, since I'm leaving again soon anyway. (Speaking of, I'll be at ConBust at Smith College the last weekend of March! Yay for more feminist cons!)

But first, I gotta do the writer thing. Hang in there?

The Hugo nominations close this Friday. There are a whole lot of amazing things to nominate and all I'm saying is: Palimpsest is eligible. It is a strange and offbeat book full of sex and subtextual criticisms of fantasy in general. It would kick ass if it were on the ballot, and if you liked it, just give it a think. If you're eligible to vote and want a PDF, email me and I'll send you one for free.

The Nebulas are in actual voting mode now, so if you supported Fairyland by nominating, please consider voting for it to get the award. I don't expect that to actually happen, but it would be silly of me not to put out the word.

The Locus Awards are also accepting votes right about now, and Palimpsest is on there too, along with two of my short stories. Head on over and check out the ballot, since it's basically a list of what you should be reading. In addition to my stuff, there are two other nominees I feel really strongly about. (Anyone can vote, though unfortunately non-subscriber votes only count for half a subscriber vote.)

First, best editor: please consider voting for Juliet Ulman. She was my editor for The Orphan's Tales and Palimpsest and is one of the best in the field. She also got laid off from Bantam just before Palimpsest came out. Yet her books have still appeared on all kinds of ballots this year. She deserves it, hands down.

Second, my favorite novelette of all time, each thing i show you is a piece of my death, is up there. And what's better, time_shark  has made it available to read for free. Download it here, fall in love, like I did, and vote.

Finally, Wiscon is taking nominations for their 2011 Guests of Honor. Since I love Wiscon like my own mother, I'm very excited by this. Its our chance to have a say in a momentous thing like the GoH--I don't know any other con who takes fan input on that. So email your suggestions to newsletter34@wiscon.info and check out this post for details.

Phew! I am done with the linking. I must ingest coffee now, and then I will post about the Night Kitchen, cupcakes, and Russian singers!

Well, the travel gods hate me this morning.

Contintental Airlines wakes me up at 6:30 in the morning to tell me my flight times. Awesome. At no point in the recording does it tell me that my flight and all Continental flights out of Newark HAVE BEEN ACTUALLY CANCELLED so thanks for that pointful bulletin, guys.

I get to the airport, and am informed of this by the taciturn counter lady. Weather is apparently apocalyptic in New She says: 

"I can get you on a flight from Boston to Atlanta, Atlanta to Seattle, getting in at 8:30."

Me: "Um, how do I get to Boston?"

Taciturn: "Get yourself to Boston. There's a bus."

Me: "Seriously?"

Taciturn Gets All Sarcastic: "We don't control the weather. If you insist on flying out of Portland I might be able to get you out on Friday."

Me: "Ok, do I pay you? Does the bus pick up here?"

Taciturn: "Take a cab."

Wow, customer service for the win! No shuttle to the bus station, no getting you on another airline, no voucher for the bus and cab fare ($40), no kind smile or anything to make this easier, just "Get yourself to Boston."

So I'm on a bus to Boston. I will now be traveling 11 hours instead of 5 today and get into Seattle if I'm lucky at 8:30 tonight. I've had no coffee, I'm exhausted, and now I get to go through Logan security instead of nice, small Portland security. And Continental couldn't care less.

Thanks a lot, guys. What a way to make travel pleasant, and flying still in any way viable as a method of transportation. This is gonna be a great day.

Zo! As I said, I am leaving for Seattle in the morning.

I am reading at the Night Kitchen on Thursday night at 7pm. I am super excited, as I've been dying to eat there. Please, please come if you're in town! (cmpriest , maybe? I miss you!)

So the question is, what shall I read? It's LJ's choice--leave a comment with your suggestion. Anything off my hard drive--Fairyland, Deathless, old school CMV Prime novels, short stories. Name your pleasure.

And come have awesome food and hang out! Very rarely do I read in my home town. It's quite likely I won't be back for a year or more.

So talking with kythryne  inspired me to try to spin yarn again. I have a beautiful wheel I got for my birthday but I can't quite figure it out by myself, and there is no one here to help me. (Will trade weekend in Maine for spinning wheel teachings--though what I'd really like to do is have a spinning weekend up here this summer, and anyone up to like 4-5 could bring their wheel and I'd cook and learn and we'd watch Fraggle Rock.) So I have all this beautiful roving people sent me and no knowledge of how to use it.

So I got out the drop spindle. Which Kyth says is unbalanced and shouldn't wobble like that. So I ordered a new one, but didn't want to wait to try this bastard hobby again. And I'm actually kind of ok with it. Not great, obviously. But by the end of half of the roving (the other half is a slightly different colorway, more purpley) I was regularly making something that really did look like yarn. My inner thighs ache from parking and drafting. My fingers are sore. 

I feel like a fairy tale princess, for reals.

Anyway, here is my first yarn. I was talking to seanan_mcguire  (who has a book out today, go buy it!) about horror movies while I was spinning it, so I call this yarn: Final Girls Union Local 666 in her honor.



As you can see, it's kind of crappy, and very fuzzy when I started out, so parts aren't so great. But I'll get better. I set the twist and hung it to dry and everything. I'm determined to make something with it--I have no idea what. Even with the other half of the roving, which as I said isn't quite the same color, I can't think it's more than 80 yards. Maybe a hat?

I don't like spinning as much as knitting--I don't feel as much like I'm accomplishing something, since one stil has to knit to make a Thing. It's also faster than knitting, at least with not a ton of roving. It's WAY meditative. Like, nirvana thinking about nothing empty vessel meditative, where knitting is like meditating on a koan. My brain just when blank and peaceful, and that was really nice. I've been struggling with a lot of depression and exhaustion lately, and brainlessness was welcome. I really want to use my wheel, though. I just don't think I'm ready.

Since I haven't posted any knitting pics lately, I thought I'd show you my current project (well, I have a lot of current projects--I'm working on this and these modified to be fingerless gloves, too.) which is a scarf for justbeast , who promises not to lose this one. He's just learning to knit and is very sensitive to the softness of yarn, so he picked this one out himself, after falling in love with a luscious Great Adirondack blue variegated yarn at the fair and buying his very first skein. It's a merino/silk/bamboo blend and super soft. (Even regular merino is too rough for him. What refined tastes my boy has!)

I love this pattern even though it's a pain. Every right side row is cabled like nine times, so it takes a lot longer than any other pattern I've done. But oh, it is so awesome, and makes me go: I have come a long way, that this is my easy relaxifying project!



And that concludes our fiber geekery for the day. I'm flying out to Seattle tomorrow, so I'll have lots of plane time to knits. Right after I finish writing this story about Mars, and stay up too late reading the awesome new Peter Straub novel, which is like The Secret History done right. It's not going to be a deep-in-my-heart book, but it's such a pleasure sinking into an author who can write a sentence like good whiskey and nobody's business.

Brain is hard, and likes to make the unhappy chemicals. But life is good, and I have a Maine coon, and a whole lot of yarn.

Ok, seriously? It just happened again.

If I turn on Lady Gaga, October appears. No matter where she was in the house, she instantly appears at my side and insists on some hardcore cuddling RIGHT NOW OH MY GOD I LOVE THAT SONG. She's now done it to Love Game, Poker Face, and Bad Romance. No other music fazes her.

What are you trying to tell me, child? I am not going to bedazzle you. You cannot haz armadillo shoes.

She was so insistent this time that as I typed she actually very delicately picked up one of my fingers off of the keyboard and pulled it over to her--not biting, just moving the magical human hands. It is not time for tippy-typing, it is time for GAGA, yo.

I...have no explanation for this phenomenon. Except that my cat is unexpectedly glam.

Yesterday October decided that our golden retriever, Sage, was a toy.

She rolled around in her fur, attacked her tail, and repeatedly popped her in the face with her paws to try to get her to play.

Sage, for her part, lay very still and patiently, as she does. She raised Grimm, a hyperactive German Shepherd, who continues to bite her in the face every day as a show of happiness and love. She was just pleased to be a jungle gym for one rapidly-growing maine coon.

And then October made this face, while tangled up in Sage's tail. And I got in on camera.



This is the greatest expression ever. It needs a macro, but I just can't think of the right one (other than that she looks like the alien with the big mouth that used to show on the Old Trek credits--anyone remember his name?)

I'm still laughing at this, actually. Break out your photoshop, kids. What's Toby saying? (Man, I probably need a Toby icon...)

So we saw Up in the Air last night after a lovely day of yarn shopping and Duckfat-nomming with justbeast  (who knits now!), kythryne , and Amy who I think has no LJ. And I figure that after a scathing review I owe a good one. Of course, if I didn't breathe fire from time to time, you wouldn't know whether to believe me when I say something is good.

I think justbeast  said it best: "My standards for movies have gotten so low that whenever anyone onscreen says anything wise or subtle, I'm shocked."

And it's true. This was a surprisingly good and subtle and uneasy movie, and I really liked it--even to kind of wanting to watch it again. And there were no robots or anything! Which I say as a joke because as bankrupt as much of filmed genre work is, relationship dramas and rom coms are a million times worse and it's been awhile since I've seen anything approaching a believable human in "realist" film. Or books, really. I empathize with the Terminator far more than Julia Roberts, dig?

Anyway. What really struck me about the movie was how familiar it was. See, we travel. We travel a lot. I recognized most of the airports used before the subtitle went up, because I've been there, I've walked those long corridors, I've stopped at each of the shops. The whole sequence with his smooth, routine passage through security was awesome because that's how I am. I don't get treated like Clooney's character does because I'm a 30 year old woman who dresses like some kind of Victorian wastrel-cum-torch-singer half the time, but I know that ghost country. That liminal space that airports are, belonging to no state or time, endless, mammoth, constantly in transit, in motion, a place where you blink, and go somewhere else. The closet between worlds, purgatory, nul-space. I know what it's like to live half your life there. Of course, we often drive, and that is gentler, less abrupt, and we do it together, we always have each other's company. We have, literally and figuratively, matching suitcases.

And the hotels, too, the conventions, the cities you never see because you're on a panel in a ballroom talking about magical realism. The suitcase you never really unpack. Obviously, my experience is a small version of the film, and I'm traveling not to fire people (oh, man, those were hard scenes to watch!) but to talk about my books. But still, it hit me with the force of recognition.

So too the "backpack" stuff, which mad me realize that motivational speakers are simply hawkers of metaphor. They choose one--backpack, parachute, secret, etc, and ask: does this metaphor help you understand yourself? No? How about this one? It's fascinating to think about--they really are writers of fiction, a kind of fiction that uses the most basic narratives it can in order to appeal to the most people. In this case, it could have so easily been about boring male commitment issues and a loathing of ever being tied to anything in life, and it skirted that, but never quite fell in. He didn't learn a heartwarming Scrooge lesson and get the biggest goose in the window. And at least this male was a grown up in the sense of being good at his job, polished, competent, charming, and looking like George Clooney, instead of the spate of Apatow-schlubs we've been so enamoured with as a culture lately.

Is it perfect? No. It's possibly the most depressing and ambiguous ending I've seen in an ostensibly comedic movie. But that's fairly appropriate, given the material, and the underlying horror of the endless firings, which, you know, we live in Maine, which could have been one of the places Clooney visited (I winced at each city, because I knew how many layoffs there were in such places. It was so painful, and familiar, given our own year of joblessness) and there was a lot of uncomfortable, half-cathartic laughter in the audience.

I'm not wild about the reveal with regards to Vera Farmiga's character, as I think it's a bit problematic and not fully explicated, and undermines her for me in a way I don't really like at all--plus I want to know what she does for a living that she travels like he does despite the reveal--but I adored her through most of the movie. Her quiet awesomeness, and the scene with the younger woman which is probably the only believable scene I've ever watched that tackles generational issues head on. I felt for both of them so much--especially because my generation falls between those two, with concerns and fears all our own that are rarely part of any film, so I could understand both their points of view. What I was going to be by the time I was 23, and what actually living your life after 23 does to your expectations. I'm not that young girl who followed a boy anymore, but I'm not Farmiga yet either, and so I felt literally stretched by the scene where two women were talking to each other about their desires and heartaches and the guy just looked on and nodded and didn't feel the need to break in every five seconds. Like, in real life, that never happens. Maybe this was science fiction after all.

It was beautiful and sad and upsetting and uncomfortable and funny and I am in love with Vera Farmiga from now until forever. Part of me wants to be her (until the reveal). Part of me knows how hard that life is and how it takes me so long to psychically recover from periods of insane travel like that. I guess I maybe don't know what I want to be when I grow up yet. I guess a movie that makes me think about that and not want to stab myself is a damn good thing. 

So, several of my friends are eligible for the Campbell award this year. This is for new writers in the first two years of publishing professionally. I would be thrilled for any of them to be on the ballot.

But I've never seen a writer come out of the gate like seanan_mcguire , with two multi-book series at once and more on the way. She's done as much on the scene as some writers do in their careers. I may not be a particularly loud champion of urban fantasy, and it's not a genre often recognized by the Hugo crowd, but you gotta stand up and recognize the sheer awesome of this girl.

So. She's eligible. Consider this my endorsement. Also she can sing and draw, as envinced by...


It's really not fair for one person to be so damn good.

Allow me to say upfront, in case it was not clear:

I am not Russian, nor do I play one on TV. I have not the smallest drop of Russian blood in me.

I am, however, married to a man who grew up in the former Soviet Union, and thus spend a lot of time with him. I also spend a lot of time with his family, all of whom lived through some pretty dire parts of the 20th century in Russia. I speak very terrible Russian on the level of a toddler. Rather notoriously, I've traveled to Russia, and most recently written an entire novel set in Leningrad, and thus done more research than you can shake a red stick at. Russian culture features extremely prominently in my life these days. I say this so that you will understand how frustrated I have become over the last two days, but not make the mistake of thinking I'm talking about my own culture.

I just finished reading Yellow Blue Tibia.

Oh my fucking god, you guys.

You know how sometimes (all the time) American movies and books will flip the R in the title to indicate one out to HOLD UP, THIS SHIT IS RUSSIAN, YO? Like so: ?. This is, of course, maddening, no less than using a Greek lambda for an A when it is patently not an A. ? is not an R, it goes: "ya." Incidentally, the cover of Yellow Blue Tibia is the single worst offender I have ever seen in this category, as it goes to bizarre lengths to make every English letter into some freakish version of a Russian one, including putting a line through a ? to make an A, because I guess the Russian A--you know, A--wasn't Russian enough. I know the author isn't in charge of this, but I should have known, because the novel is the literary equivalent of this exact phenomenon. 

Is it a bad book? On its own merits I'd say no worse than mediocre. The plot: Stalin hires a bunch of SF writers to create a believable alien threat to unite the Communists against something other than America, which he assumes will fall within 5 years. The things they wrote then start coming true. Roberts is going for a Bulgakov meets Foucault's Pendulum sort of thing, with conspiracies that turn out to be true and a lot of madcap running around Moscow with clever asides and "incisive" satire on the Soviet system, but it doesn't really come off as clever or madcap or even very conspiratorial. When you have to have characters comment on how funny a protagonist is, he's not really that funny. If in a workshop I'd say that we get all of ten pages to care about the conspiracy these guys write, and pretty much no information on what it is besides "radiation aliens" + blow up Ukraine, so we have no investment in whether or not it's real. An on the sentence level almost every line is tortured and too full of clauses and robbed of any spirit by endless commas. But I had to do some breathing exercises to even analyze the book on that level because literally every cultural note in this entire novel is wrong.

I cannot even being to explain how much this book did it wrong. I'll give you the most glaring examples, not even getting into the little things that niggled once I gave up being immersed in the book and started actually thinking about why anyone would assume no one in 1940s Russia would speak French or how living in gaga-grad as a euphemism for crazy is not really a Russian-ism but an English-Russian-ism and not that funny anyway and ooh, I want to listen to Lady Gaga anything to get away from this thing. The fact is that the book would have been a lot more believable with all the names changed and set in England or America.

Firstly, Roberts has just ported the entire contempt for science fiction writers from the West right into Russia, with nothing changed, not even considering that there is a different culture of literature there and writers, even of SF, had a pretty high position that the protagonist would have no reason to hide with shame purely because of the genre he wrote. Yes, there is Soviet pulp, but the constant asides about how despised SF is and passive-aggressive defenses of how awesome it is, really, were meant for a Western audience, not authentic to Russia where fantastika has a long and rich tradition of not being spat on. Of course, one of the more egregious problems was that it seems not to have occurred to anyone in the editorial process that "science fiction" does not begin with SF in Russian, much less ??, as the protagonist makes much of while analyzing Josef Stalin's name to somehow contain the initials for science fiction. (In the Latin alphabet, Jehovah begins with an I...)

Then there's the names. Oh, the linguistic hugemanatee at work here! The main character's name is Konstantin, but his friends call him Konsty. Not, you know, Kostya, which is the actual diminutive and not even remotely hard to find out if you've ever read a Russian novel. Stalin makes fun of one Jan Frenkel for having a Slavic first name which he actually changed to Ivan, but seems to be cool not only with his German-Jewish surname, but the protagonist's surname, which is actually Czech. The one actual Russian word that's used is actually not correct at all, but an inexplicable mangling of the word for "dead." One character actually refers to the "x"s in the Russian alphabet, in a passage with so many things wrong with it it beggars the mind. (There aren't any. And yes, he meant x as in the English x. Oh, I know it looks like an X. But it goes: "ch" and is not an X, much like our friend ?.)

The title itself makes me want to punch something. I actually said in the beginning of this book: "justbeast , the title better not be some stupid pun on ???? or I'm just going to kill myself." justbeast  assured me this could not possibly be the case. And he was right. It's much worse. You might think it has to do with alien physiology, but you'd be wrong.

The title allegedly is a phonetic English version of "I love you" in Russian. I love you in Russian is ya tebya lyublyu. So, um, I guess if you  have THE WORST PRONUNCIATION IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and are an idiot, it kind of almost works. Except no, no, it doesn't. Instead it's the worst pun in the universe. Then, to make it better, the American love interest says it to Russian people and they understand her despite the emphasis and ACTUAL VOWELS being completely wrong. I used to think this was an awesome intriguing title. Now I hate myself and all living things. This is why we can't have nice things, kids.

Oh, what else? Konstantin, in 1986 Moscow, decides he's an alcoholic and stops drinking, is concerned about the effects of tobacco on his lungs. Awesomely, at one point, without any irony whatsoever, while being detained by the KGB, Konstantin loudly claims that he must be charged with a crime or released, since that's the law! Really? Would you like your Miranda rights read to you, too? How about your one phone call? The KGB and local police have to do precisely shit for you in Soviet Russia, and this isn't even a tough research bit--it's like rule one in the totalitarian handbook, and given how cynical and experienced our hard-boiled protag is supposed to be, I just can't even finish this sentence for how stupid this is.

And then we get into factual problems. Because honestly, the cultural notes aren't just wrong for Russia, they're wrong for the 80s. And sometimes offensive. One of the characters, Saltykov, has Asperger's Syndrome. In 1986. Asperger's was not diagnosed by that name in anyone until 1992. And of course Saltykov is just literally the most annoying person ever born, and exists purely to block the protagonist and cause problems with his hilarious syndrome and be comic relief, sort of, even though his symptoms are pretty much classic OCD and not Asperger's. And the American woman is, of course, fat. Not just fat, but constantly described in the most grotesque terms possible, that she has to collect her flesh and haul it into a car--she practically has no character other than to be fat and American. And a Scientologist. I'll get back to that in a minute. Eventually, of course, it dawns on Konstantin that skinny bodies aren't so awesome in post-war Russia and he falls in love with her for no reason and she with him, even though she's in her thirties and he's in his late sixties and horrifyingly scarred. Their main topic of conversation seem to remain, however, how fat she is. I've never used the word fatphobic before, but there it is. Literally, she can be stabbed with no damage because she's so incredibly fat--did you hear how fat she is? SO VERY FAT.

Oh, and she's a Scientologist. I know the Church was around then (though since Hubbard died in 1986, literally a month before the action of the book, and the Scientologists never mention it, but the Soviet authorities are all over that, I can't even say this rings right) but really, Scientology and Asperger's and alcoholism and the evils of tobacco are concerns of today, not of 1986. It just feels wrong. And there's no reason for them to be Scientologists, it doesn't matter to the plot, except in that they necessarily believe in aliens. No one has cell phones or email, but other than that it might as well be 2010. In America (or England, I know the author is British), since every single cultural reference the protagonist makes is a Western one. I swear I am more Russian than this guy.

And then there's Chernobyl, which you'll be happy to know is a cute joke having to do with the alien conspiracy and just a nice set piece, which really I'm not at all cool with, given the rest of the painfully inept cultural appropriation going on here. The much-vaunted satire in the novel's blurbs is just one-note lol Russia sux nonsense, and I think it's telling that the acknowlegments thank a plainly not-Russian friend for her childhood memories of having once visited Kiev and Moscow. Because that's what this reads like. The dim memories of someone who might have once seen a movie about Russia.

I agonized over cultural details while writing Deathless. I didn't even feel right making it a first person novel for that very reason--which YBT is. It shocks me as much as a nude author picture would, to see any cultural accuracy just flung to the wind, and this ugly pastiche, a Westerner in redface prancing around an amazing idea for a book that got totally lost in endless chase scenes, guns, and tell me the truth/you can't handle the truth! exchanges. The entire central 200 pages of the book are filled with that, such that aliens and conspiracies barely register.

I heard so many good things about this book. I went out of my way to get it from the UK. And really, I might as well have just added -ski to every word in this book and treated it like Communist Mad Libs for all that it had any point whatsoever, or any authenticity at all. Apparently cultural sensitivity just doesn't apply to those evil, evil Russians.

Yeah, I know, that's harsh. I mean, I could gripe about the cover design, too (not all books involving Russia have to be red, actually). But I have to call them like I see them, or else what's a blog for?

When I left junior high--I graduated high school at age 15, so junior high was pretty much my high school--my guidance counselor signed my yearbook, because I was just the kind of dork who made friends with all the teachers and wanted them to sign her yearbook. I still remember what she wrote:

My hope for you is that you wear something interesting to the Oscars.

You must understand, I was a painfully awkward kid who exhibited a lot of enthusiasm but not a lot of volume control or grace or adeptness with pretty much anything except writing, for 15 year old values of  adept-at-writingness. The idea that a grown-up not only thought that I would somehow, someday, end up at the Oscars, literally her only concern for my future self was that I wear something interesting. To you that might sound odd, but to me that meant: she knows I'm gonna turn out ok. She's so sure of it that her only worry is that I might wear something too conservative when I inevitably go to the biggest event ever. It filled me with confidence and pride, which were in short supply for teenage Cat, I assure you.

Now, as a grown-up girl, I know that it is highly unlikely--though never say never--that I will ever go to the Oscars. I mean, sure, Gaiman gets to go, but he's a superstar and that's what superstars do. And even if I did go someday, the bar for interesting is set so high these days I can't touch it on my tiptoes.

But I've been nominated for a fair number of awards. And they're pretty much all like the Oscars to me. They're not televised, they don't have a red carpet, but they're pretty fabulous all the same.

This fallen world gives us so few opportunities to wear ballgowns and jewels in one's hair, I jump whenever I get the chance. Frankly, I think we should all up the fashion factor at SFF awards--is this the future or isn't it? Glam, baby. Go glam or go home. I loved the mini-red carpet at the Hugos, it was completely awesome. (It actually occured to me this morning that I have this giant "We're really sorry" Expedia credit and could actually go to Australia for Worldcon this year.  Except I promised myself last year that I wouldn't go to any more Worldcons unless I was nominated for the Hugo, as the price is equivalent to about 3-5 local cons and I just can't justify it--and I don't think I've a snowball's chance at the Hugo this year. But it's nice to think I really could go.)

It doesn't have to be space-glam or elf-glam. But I would love to see awards costumes get seriously spangled. When I was little I thought being grown-up was a never-ending parade of glittery dresses and champagne, and part of me still thinks that should be so. I don't think there's very much chance at all that I'll actually win the Norton, but goddamned if I'm not going to be there in my orange brocade dress (oh yeah--thanks to jaborwhalky  for hooking me up) grinning from ear to ear. Clothes matter. They make us feel different, make us enter another space where we can be anything. We tell the world how we want to be seen by the clothes we wear. It's a beautiful and complex system of codes, fashion, and men do it, too, don't you think they don't. The next time a guy says he doesn't care about clothes, offer him a pink shirt and see how fast he starts caring about black. (And yes, I know the anxieties pink signifies--but that only proves my point, that clothes are the letters we write to the world, and they all speak. Loudly.)

So I won't be at the Oscars. But I'll be at the Nebulas, and I'll think about Mrs. Weetman, like I always do. I wore a sparkly dark blue torch singer dress to my first loss at the World Fantasy Awards, a tiered burgundy Victorian thing to the Tiptree ceremony--and I'm gonna be a cleavagey spangled pumpkin-girl at the Nebulas. Hell, I might wear this thing on the beach for the shuttle launch. I hope it counts as interesting. I hope I've done Mrs. Weetman proud.

First off, happy birthday to s00j , my sister and shipmate, whom I love more than mangoes.

Second! Due to the magical connections that s00j effects, I have been working on a secret project for awhile now. It seemed like a good day to announce it.

I wrote a children's book--specifcally, for pagan children, illustrated by W. Lyon Martin and published by her Magical Child Books press, the same that did s00j 's book, Rabbit's Song. They're doing a series to teach the wheel of the year, and I picked Mabon.

Smoky and the Feast of Mabon is available here for pre-order, and it's all lovely and illustrated and full of weird CMV bits, despite being for quite young readers. I'm particularly pleased with the image of Smoky herself on the cover--not all pagan kids are white, and I love her sweet face.

It comes out in August, and I hope those of you with kids will enjoy it!

So, I am coming to Seattle for five days.

Arriving March 3rd, leaving March 8th. By the way, flying from Portland to Seattle involves some annoying flight times, I tell you what.

My schedule is looking like this:

Wednesday (3rd): free after I land
Thursday: Jewelry lesson with elisem , then I'm reading at the Night Kitchen at 7:30. Please to be coming to this! I'll take requests as to what I read in the comments. Anything on my hard drive, it's yours. I'm super excited to visit the Night Kitchen restaurant and thrilled they want me to read!
Friday: hanging out with triskelmoon  and sarapada  (right, guys?) in some form and duration.
Saturday: Totally free, day and evening. I would really love to see my Seattle friends, so please let me know what your schedules are!
Sunday: I am going to see this:



Because I love Anna Vasilevskaya and her music and it is Necessary. (You can listen to it on the internet). I've been invited to the after party, which makes me shriek with fangirl delight. So I'm free during the day up until the concert (which is of course open in case anyone else wants to go.)

I didn't arrange for a car as some of you said you could help me out in that arena? So, please let me know if you can pick me up from the airport (I'll be staying at stealthcello 's house, though it will be sadly bereft of a stealthcello ) and/or give me a lift at any point over the weekend. Seattle driving is scary, yo.

I really hope to see you guys--my train and circus family, my Seattle darlings. Ping me!

I received a small package the other day.

Inside was this.

elisem  made it, back in January, and I fell in love with it, because it seemed to be me, pouring myself out into all these projects, all these commitments, all this living and working and trying so damn hard for everything, and sometimes I get so empty, with all of that trickling out of me, and in the midst of novel deathmarch that feeling can get intense. Sometimes I get like that. Like the hippo in the icon with this post, an image will grab me and feel so emblematic of where I am and what I'm doing, what I'm winning and what I'm losing.

The pendant came, just as I finished the book. Elise tells me it's from "anonymous friends and fans."

I don't know who did this for me, but thank you so much. It looks like Auryn, from the Neverending Story, when I wear it. So big, resting on my chest. I've worn it just about every day, as a talisman, to fill me up again.

Thank you, thank you, Anonymous. I treasure it so. I am in awe of your generosity and love.

(I love that hippo because it says to me: I may not have been built for this life, like all those fancy horses with their plumes and their golden bridles, but I am big and I am strong and I will bear my knight into battle as nobly as any of them, for I am an Extraordinary Monster.)

I'm not sure I can express in type how much this means to me.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is a finalist for the Andre Norton award!

Thank you to everyone who nominated it, I am so terribly grateful. This is the definition of an underdog book, and I am so excited and thrilled and honored to have it up there with the big kids. It won't win and I don't care. Just to have it counted is a win for me. Especially thanks to maryrobinette , who discovered it was eligible and alerted me, without whom I'd never have even considered it a possibility. Mary, for those of you who don't know, is a Hero of the Revolution, making SFWA awesome one step at a time.

Thank you, everyone. I'm giddy over this. When I got the call I bounced like a Tigger. And congratulations to all my friends who made the ballot, cmpriest , zakbar , saladinahmed , kijjohnson , rachel_swirsky , scalzi , Paolo and Jeff. It's a beautiful ballot and I'm proud to be on it.

And I can't wait to see what this will mean for the world of crowdfunding.

Because this is the hybrid approach I meant. A book that doesn't exist in print yet on a major award ballot--but one which will be printed in a beautiful illustrated edition that will add so much to the online story. Not either, both.

I'm not entirely sure what the level of "firsts" here are. It's definitely the first electronic-only book to be anywhere on the ballot, but it might well be the first e-only on a major genre award ballot at all. It's got to be the first crowdfunded project nominated for a major award, since crowdfunding is pretty new. If anyone has any info on this throw it my way.

We will be going to the award banquet--because it is in Cape Canaveral, and it coincides with a shuttle launch, and it has been justbeast 's dream to see one, he's been trying to make it happen for years. I would probably sit home with ice cream and happily lose from afar, but for him I want to make it down, so he can sit on the beach with so many of his science fiction heroes around him, and watch a space shuttle fly.

Which means I'll need a dress. I rather think it'll have to be orange.

That knitting group I mentioned at the awesome Seaport Yarn on Fore Street in Portland is tonight.

I hope some tiny portion of you who read this and are local will come--even if you don't knit, hey, they have free wifi and I'll teach ya. (I think we'd all like to see chang3002  wielding the needles.)

I will come bearing cookies. I'll even wash my hair for the event.

In other news, I will be in NYC the weekend of March 20th for a fabulous trio of events surrounding the launch of Chicks Dig Time Lords, the book of Doctor Who essays by female fans that I am in. We're doing a reading, we'll be on Hour of the Wolf, and some other yet to be determined Thing.

As our roomies are big Who fans, I would like to bring them along. Can anyone in the big city put up four friendly souls?

(Seattle is still happening, I'll be there from the 3rd to the 8th.)

So! Over here are the Rose and Bay Awards, which are in their first year, recognizing excellence in crowdfunded fiction.

Go, look, read some amazing work--there are several categories, and some stellar art in all of them.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland is nominated for Best Fiction.

And I'm here to ask you...not to vote for it.

Fairyland has gotten more attention than any crowdfunded project in recent memory. It's getting a print edition, a sequel, articles on so many sites. It has a strong fandom and wonderful fanart, and all sorts of other exciting things, some of which I can't even tell you about yet. It will have many more opportunities to shine than most online fiction, when it hits bookstores. I'm so grateful for everything that has happened. I could not ask for more. And though I have a platform on this blog that can do wonders, I don't want always to be asking for them for myself.

There are crowdfunded projects struggling for readers and for donations, who don't get that kind of attention. I would like to ask, if you might have voted for Fairyland, to instead read one of the other nominees. More than one, if you have the time, but all I'm asking for is one. Vote for them, if you enjoy it. But the important part is for you to read or see the very deserving projects there.

Thank you to everyone who has supported Fairyland--let's spread it around a bit.

Nothing but excitement at Casa October!

So our staircase to the second floor kind of winds around the living room and up one wall, and there's a small space on the upper landing--very small--that just opens up onto air and the very hardwood living room. Important to know.

So we're playing Rock Band and jamming along, and I hear some scrabbling noises from upstairs on the landing. Out of the corner of my eye, I see small white paws.

And then, with no warning at all, October fell off the landing and into free fall from one floor to another.

I stopped playing, took one step forward--

And caught my kitten in mid-air.

It was a great catch, around the torso, no pulled fur, she just plopped right into my hands. In my personal kitty Super Bowl, I made the winning catch and she did not break her leg, but instead looked calmly at me and snuggled my fingers and in general had no idea what I could possibly mean by: "Just because there's a space there doesn't mean you have to squeeze into it and terrify us all."

I dialed back my heart attack and blocked the offending area. Good grief, Toby!

CATS FALLING FROM THE CEILING. MASS HYSTERIA.

So one of the amazing things that happened at ConFusion was that a certain jacket arrived at my hotel. You know I have such a thing for costumes. I wanted this to be a surprise for those who came to s00j  and stealthcello  and my final concert, and since I thought of the surprise so late, I was sure it was impossible.

Well. Never say impossible to the Mythpunk Army.



That is a very gentle-hearted green smoking jacket, made from scratch in just a few days by the astonishingly awesome cluegirl (who bears a startling resemblance to intelligentrix !). It was thick and luxurious and perfect. You might glimpse also a sparkling orange-jeweled brooch in the shape of a key as well, and that would be courtesy of the magical arianhwyvar .

This picture was snapped right before the concert as I lounged tiredly before the show--if the shot were wider, you could see that I had one shoe on, and one shoe off. It does not escape me that the pillows are orange.

Yes, Reader, I read from Fairyland and s00j  sang September's Rhyme and it was the first time we'd performed from that book together. Afterward courtcat 's daughter asked to make September ribbons for Penguicon, so look out!

It was wonderful. People laughed. I read it off my iPhone because I have no physical anything of this fairy-book. And it all came together thanks to some amazing talented women. Thank you, both. I'm so very grateful.

I promise, this is the last you're going to hear from me on this subject.

Today is the last day to vote on the Nebula ballot, and by extension, the Andre Norton award. Voting closes at midnight. Fairyland is eligible for the Norton and making a strong showing for the ballot. It  might actually happen, but it's a close thing right now. It will not be eligible for anything the year it comes out in print. (The sequel will, but this year is the first appearance in print and that's how eligibility rolls.)

It's hard to get an ebook read on the same level as a NYT bestseller, or even a solid midlist YA book. It just is. Fairyland has a lot going against it. But I hope that if you are a SFWA member and eligible for voting, you'll consider giving Fairyland a nod--obviously I'm biased and it would mean a lot for me, but it would also be a huge deal for crowdfunded art and indie artists, to have an unconventionally published work nominated for a major award. That hybrid world I keep talking about.

It's doing well in the Norton category, so I'd ask that if you do want to support it with a vote, nominate it there rather than the regular novel category, where it has no chance at all.

There are a lot of other awesome works up for awards, and I've voted, for the first time--because they've made it easy and because I loved a lot of things last year. This is a great time to be a writer, believe it or not.

If you haven't read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, it is available here in its entirety.

And now, for reading through all of this even though 90% of you aren't SFWA members, I give you October--who is dubbed EditorCat:

I posted this essay on Valentine's Day last year. It is everything I want to say on the subject, and I want to say it again this year. So here is the re-post, which will likely be annual from here on out, until everyone stops calling it a Hallmark Holiday. Here's wishing you all a happy Geoff-day.

***

I have never understood the desire to stomp all over Valentine's Day and snuff it out. Every year I look over my friends' list and it's a litany of "This is a fake Hallmark holiday and no one should celebrate it" and "I hate this day, who's with me?" and my personal favorite guilt trip: "If you REALLY loved your partner, you'd treat them specially every day."

I don't get it. I don't understand the fervor to destroy a holiday. To force others to see it through the same black glasses. To shame anyone who celebrates the 14th with anything other than bile, vitriol, and the occasional superior sneer.

I know that most of us were shunned on Valentine's Day in school. Believe me, my little cubby was empty, just like yours, and I yearned for a construction paper heart from boy after boy--and never got them. I understand that there is a history of trauma, and the standard geek reaction to past trauma is to organize the world so that there is no chance of that trauma re-occurring. Thus, Valentine's Day must be killed.

But here's the thing. This world is a beautiful place, but it is also often dark, and cold, and unfeeling, and life slips by, not because it is short, but because it is so difficult to hold onto. Holidays, rituals, these things demarcate the time. They remind us of the sharpness of pleasure and the nearness of death. They tell us when the sun leaves, and when it comes back. They tell us to dance and they tell us to sleep. They tell us who we are, who we have been since we lived on the savannah and hoped to taste cheetah before we died. I know we're all punk rock rebels, but the paleolithic joy of fucking in the fields and dancing around a fire doesn't go away just because certain of us would like to think we're beyond that. This world needs more holidays, not less. More ritual, the gorgeous, flexible, non-dogmatic kind that isn't about religion but about ecstasy in the sheer humanness of our bodies and souls. More chances to reach out, to sing, to love, to bedeck ourselves in ritual colors and become splendid as the year turns around.

And no, I'm sorry. It doesn't work to say "make every day special." First of all, most of you know damn well that you don't shower your partner with gifts and adoration and that most precious of things: dedicated, mindful time every day of the year. Even the best relationship is not a 24/7 orgiastic festival of plenty and perfect moments. No human can sustain it. If every day is special, none of them are. If every day is special, specialness becomes monotony. What makes days special is the time between, the anticipation of a the day, the planning, the surprises, coming together, cooking, playing, reveling in sheer time, watching the dedicated colors and rituals that wire our brain for pleasure spring up in the world to remind us that we live in it. The entire purpose of holidays is that they are a kind of otherworld we step into, full of special symbols, that informs and shapes everyday life--and some of life, no matter how some bloggers would like to deny it in their Grinchitude, is always everyday.

We celebrate the harvest. We celebrate the spring. We celebrate birthdays and death-days and the beginning of the year and the end of the year. We celebrate our parents and labor and Presidents. What in the world is so terribly wrong with celebrating love? I know not all of us have partners, but it is a rare soul who is without love of any kind. What kind of shrunken, sour heart does it take to insist that everyone else stop delighting in ritual and love? So few of us post about the magic of holidays--I think they're ashamed to. It's not cool to take unabashed pleasure in the silly and the soft-hearted.

As for the commercialism of it--well. It is commercial. So is every holiday, yet somehow we don't stomp all over Easter the way we tar and feather Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is no more a fake holiday than any other. If I hear someone call it a Hallmark holiday I'm actually going to scream. I'm only going to say this once:

Valentine's Day, boys and girls, entered the Western mind in Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, fully-realized as a day to celebrate love via an obscure saint, with red hearts and everything. Yes, celebrated in an allegorical bird-nation, but guess what? That makes it even more awesome. I will take a holiday my buddy Geoff invented over almost any other. If I had my way, we'd start exchanging bird-themed gifts and ditch Cupid.

This is a great holiday. It's pure physical, sensual pleasure, divorced from any dogma at this point. Saint whatever. Pass the sex and food.

And as a medieval holiday, it has quite a long pedigree, thank you very much, even if you don't count in the Lupercalia (which you really shouldn't, unless wolf skins play a large part in your personal celebrations. If so, more power to you). The fact is, some human made up every single holiday there is. They're ALL fake. No one is more real or authentic than any other. At least this one was invented by a broke poet instead of a bunch of sex-starved priests. We live in a postmodern world--everything is what we make it. If Hallmark wants to force mainstream kids to buy jewelry they can't afford, they're more than welcome. I don't have to care about that, or take part in it. But I also don't have to get up on a soapbox and crush their joy in it. I know better. I know this day is an act of literature made flesh. But their world is not less valid for being Geoff-less.

And more than Geoff--think about it for a second. In the midst of winter, we are encouraged to come together and have sex (let's not be coy.) To escape the snow and ice in each others' bodies. The colors are red and rose and white--the colors of fire in the winter, of blood, of flesh, survival even in the barren times. We exchange hearts, the very vital core of our bodies. It is the last holiday before spring, to remind us that the fertile world will come again, with flowers and sweetness and love. Even surrounded by death, by blood on the snow, be it St. Valentine's blood or your own, life will win out. The traditional food is chocolate--which can be preserved through the winter and does not rot, full of sugar and fat which keep our bodies going through lean times. This holiday is as old as time: o world, even in the freezing storm, come together, make love, make children, feast, smile, and know the sun is coming soon.

Seriously, you have to stop trying to take that away. If you remove ritual from the world, you leave it greyer, and sadder, and all you have in its place is the triumph of having ruined something another person loved, which is a shallow and bitter triumph indeed. Get down off the soapbox, have a little chocolate, look out at the melting snow, and say something kind to someone you love. To be human is to take part in ritual, to demarcate the time with feasting and song and vestments and ecstasy. Life slips by, so very fast. Spend it in the practice of joy, not the destruction of it.

Happy Valentine's Day. Geoff bless us. Every one.

Last day for this.

I really think, honestly, that Valentine's Day needs a little better PR. And some better traditions. Maybe a new color. It's gotten so much flak now people feel ashamed for celebrating it, and that ain't right.


Get your own valentinr

This is made of purest awesome, from beatonna :

I'd like to start doing local restaurant and other shop reviews here, though I know there are many sites for that sort of thing. I'm hoping that I can find a few more Portland people who live here, and start building an online community in my city, and also I love reviewing things, secretly. (Seriously, if you want me to review something, leave a comment!) So here's the first, a double review--I hereby pledge that when I have something negative to say about a place, I will say something positive about another one to balance it out.

First, Paciarino on Fore Street. This is a Milanese Italian restaurant that makes its pasta fresh daily, has a beautiful rustic atmosphere, and a fantastic little shop with lots of bruschettas and sauces and kitchen supplies. I've been there for dinner and thought it was lovely, if a little to traditional for my tastes. The thing is, I'm an Italian woman. I can make Italian food at home, and I'm very good at it, so if I'm going to go out I want a little adventure. There is a whole lot of pomodoro sauce, that's all I'm saying.

Paciarino was part of a write up in the New York Times on Portland restaurants, for lo, we are a known foodie paradise. I just have to assume that reviewer didn't go there for lunch.

I went to lunch there yesterday. I walked in, only to be stopped at the counter by a waitress who showed me a blackboard and insisted I order while still standing there in my winter coat with my heavy briefcase over one shoulder. The place was empty, there was no reason to put me on the spot and make me stand there while she showed me dry pasta shapes. The menu only had five choices, four of which were a tomato-based sauce over plain pasta or cheese ravioli. The fifth was pesto ravioli with a butter sage sauce that unfortunately I know from experience I do not like--too much butter in anything is not at all to my taste, and drizzling butter on pasta is just kind of like ruining a nice lace tablecloth by coloring on it in yellow crayon to me. If you like butter sauces, I'm sure it's excellent, but I wasn't going near it. There was once small side salad available.

So I ordered tagliatelle bolognese, which I never do because I can and do make a killer bolognese sauce at home, but since she wouldn't seat me til I ordered, I was a bit flustered and taken aback. And it was the only thing with meat in it. I like to actually sit down and relax if I go to not-a-pizza-bar, and there was no relaxing here.

I asked for bread. The waitress brought me five small pieces the size of my thumb and a dollop of the same sauce my pasta would come in. Though the bread was fresh and truly delicious, there was so little of it I almost laughed. Then the pasta came.

I think it's easy to rest on the fresh pasta thing--fresh pasta is undoubtedly better than freeze dried and if you're making it every day I understand if that's your selling point. But you gotta dress it in something nice or it's just dough. In general, I think Paciarino could do with some experimentation, but seriously, how do you make bolognese disappointing? Well, don't use much meat, no salt, and don't even offer me parmesan of my own because it comes with the powedered stuff already on it (this is a high end restaurant with a cheaper lunch menu, but I still don't expect the powder, or at least I'd prefer my own shaker).

The very Ragu-like flavor was not exactly what I was hoping for. There was realtively little pasta on the plate and I left--fourteen minutes after entering--still hungry and feeling very strange about the whole thing, so markedly different from my pleasant dinner date there. I can honestly say I have never had such a poor, awkward lunch experience. It is the only Portland restaurant I've been to so far that I wouldn't call excellent.

On the other hand, Seaport Yarn is the best thing ever (and they have a store in NYC, guys, so check it out there! They also sell online.) and I might move in there. (See, long stringy things! It's a theme!)

We walked in last week and babymonkey  said: "This is like Cat's own yarn store." And it's true. They carry a lot of funky, sparkly art yarn which I love, in addition to all the usual suspects. They have a nice selection of Blue Heron metallic DK, which is my favorite yarn ever and if family or friends are reading this and wonder what to get me for gifts--any color of that yarn rules my school. I discovered Seaport because I was looking for Blue Heron online and realized the store I was browsing was actually in Portland. It has a mildly terrible location--but perfect for us, as it's right next to the ferry.

They also carry a whole mess of locally-cast pewter buttons that are just beautiful--and since I make a lot of things that need buttons, I'm always frustrated by how few LYSs carry any interesting ones. And if all that wasn't enough, the wonderful woman who runs it said casually that if we just called in she'd put our yarn order on the ferry for us.

Yarn. Sparkly yarn. Delivered to our island. My total store loyalty was won. And since Portland hosts a phenomenal seven yarn stores in the downtown area, that's saying something.

The yarns are all beautifully organized and easy to browse, there are three rooms, one full of pattern books and fun fur type yarns, the main room with the rest, and the back room, where they have a nascent knitting group on Thursday nights from 5-8. The store stays open til 8 as well on Thursdays, which is awesome for 9-to-5ers.

We really would like to take over this group, as right now it's only the owner, one other woman, and us. It's perfectly situated for our issues with the ferry and we love it. I don't know many local knitters, but I'm putting this out there (chang3002 , I know you have to know a few knittaz!) in hopes that some local or semi-local folks will join us in building up a group full of young(ish), awesome folks! Anyone? Bueller?

They also have free wifi (what? what yarn store does this?) so you can bring non-knitters and we can all chill. If we can get even one new person to next week's group through this post, I'll bring homemade cookies. I'll even teach you to knit, if you're local and don't know how.

This has been your brief tour of the Other Portland. Come visit!