A Writer's Paradise

Sightings, Happiness, Focus

I haven't even seen the April/May 2008 issue of Asimov's, but a friend who subscribes has already seen it.

And there's this review at As If... Uhm. The positive part of the review is "satisfying." Yay! That's the second review I've gotten in my lifetime that claims that I satisfy. I am... satisfied with that.

And I promised myself I wasn't going to look for reviews...

A wonderful event in my life has occurred, one that I have alluded to but not celebrated, and it starts with the fact that about thirteen years ago or so, someone built a connector between my current library and my old library. (I remember the construction. I was a sophomore in college, and there were bats. The End.) And about a week ago, someone else opened a coffee shop in my old library. So now, the sun can blaze and the winter can... winter, and I can get chai tea and almond croissants and Greek salad and tempeh sandwiches whenever I want without going outside. Just two floors up and three floors down....

Yeah, so, I almost burned down the coffee shop yesterday, but that's a different story. (Croissant? Meet bagel toaster. Bagel toaster, why won't you let the croissant pass through? Argh! Stop billowing smoke and shooting flames at me! Awk! My croissant! Oh, phew, the barrristas saved the day and gave me a new croissant. The End.) But for the most part, it is deeply awesome to have a place to eat in my building. Ish. It's a deep source of happiness, regardless of the fact that it's not quite IN my building.

I finally may have caught on to this focus thing. Possibly, just possibly, forcing myself to open the same files over and over may have helped. I don't know. That's not all of it. That's probably not even the biggest part of it. But it's something.

In any case, novel is clipping along, short story is short storying along, and I'm dealing with only working on two projects and the SAME two projects rather well. However, I'm probably two or three weeks behind where I wanted to be on those, because I've spent a LOT of my time psyching myself out and up on this one. But I think, finally, it has caught. And that's all I'll say...

Writing Update

Another easy thousand words tonight.

Dudes... I'm very much afraid I'm writing a Dirty Book. For the YA market. In theory.

I'd wonder if I were doing it wrong... except that I'm going to do it anyway.

Rejection Junction

A super-speedy 21-day rejection from Asimov's... not only super-speedy, but also super-nice. ("The Girl-Prince": too much of a fairy tale for Asimov's but it was well-written, etc. Which I knew going in (too much of a fairy tale), but I thought, maybe, just maybe there were enough space-suits and super-viscous fluids, so I thought I'd let the editor reject me instead of doing it myself.)

I was pondering the next market and as I opened up Duotrope to report the rejection, the random magazine listing was... Realms of Fantasy. Thanks, Duotrope! Your suggestions are golden. It's absolutely the market I would have come up with after some searching, some dithering, and some weighing of the pros and cons.

In other news, I saw "ACCEPTANCE" in my inbox today and got very excited. Then I realized that it was just a response for a meeting someone agreed to come to. Stupid Microsoft Office...

Remiss & Reading

I thought for certain I'd posted to this journal since LAST TUESDAY. But apparently not.

Regardless, it's time for a reading post.

I have been reading entirely for pleasure of late. That is to say, there has been no obligation reading, no research reading... nothing that I haven't been salivating to read and salivating during the reading of. This has included Buffy: The Long Way Home, which I won't count as even a graphic novel because it's not quite long enough, but I did enjoy that muchly, too. And, it was my Valentine from my husband.

Okay. The list:

5) V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (graphic novel)
6) Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey (fantasy)
7) Reader and Raelynx by Sharon Shinn (fantasy)
8) Austenland by Shannon Hale (chick lit)
9) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (fantasy)

Not my usual sort of analysis after the cut.

Okay, so, a leetle beet of my usual analysis to start with V for Vendetta. I came to this graphic novel (and it is a novel) via the backdoor of having seen the movie first, then reading the novelization of the film (egads!) and then reading the original, the graphic novel. I could just as easily pretend the novelization doesn't exist, so I think I will. The movie and the comic are all that really exist for me, and I really do adore them both. I still read them both as a love story. Not a Romance, but a story about love, unconditional, pure love for other humans, the choice of man's humanity to man over man's inhumanity to man. The politics that get screwed up in the movie? Don't actually matter to my reading of the story. Anarchy is not the opposite of fascism. Love is. It's like The Bridge of San Luis Rey for the comics set. I am incapable of rational articulation on V for Vendetta. But there's my irrational articulation for you.

I think the next thing is to take Twilight and Skin Hunger together. Twilight is Anita Blake for Girl Scouts. Skin Hunger is Harry Potter for the Young Kafka Readers' Society.

Both are well-executed young adult fantasy. Skin Hunger is probably the better book, in terms of fresh territory and style and technique and a whole slew of things that writers certainly care about. But I read it with a faint feeling of dissatisfaction, even when I was reading it compulsively to find out what happens next. I don't think it is YA, not in the way I want to read YA. There is a distinct nihilistic streak to the book which makes it exactly the sort of thing I would never re-read wittingly. Compare this to the perfectly clear, perfectly competent Twilight that reeks of wish-fulfillment so deep that a couple of times I was blushing because I was enjoying the wish-fulfillment so much that I was kind of sighing and murmuring to myself a little. Yes. Out loud.

Of Skin Hunger, I read a brief review somewhere (apologies for not knowing where) that said something like, "I wonder if this is the sort of book for kids that adults like but kids don't." I wonder that too. I know how adolescent girls react to Twilight, because I live with an adolescent girl who ate all three available volumes in about a week, and nothing, not even Harry Potter, ever got her to read that much that quickly. And all of her friends have done exactly the same thing.

If it seems I am damning Twilight with faint praise at any point here, let me assure you, I am not. Twilight carries with it an extremely well-executed extended metaphor equating food/hunger with sex/lust. I am constantly amazed by the author's twists and turns on the conceit, and hell if I know if her tropes are breaking new ground or not, but they feel fresh to me.

My only concern is that Twilight is All About the Boyfriend, but honestly, bookworm-writer-theatergeek-feminist high schooler that I was, I was (or would have been) All About the Boyfriend, too, and I really can't get fussed about that. It's great if you were the girl who wasn't. But plenty of girls were. And it wasn't just Society's Great Patriarchal Influence at fault--it was also the hormones and the mystery. If I were still on the potent combo of hormones and mystery, I'd still be just as boy crazy now as I was then. Further, I really identified with Bella pre-Edward, and even post-Edward, too. She's detached, reserved, self-sacrificing, and completely undervalues herself--she's the perfect portrait of an only child who's been raising her mom since she was born.

I'm not sure what has provoked this impassioned defense of Twilight; it's selling well enough on its own. Perhaps it is my innate distrust of the popular, which I know a lot of people (but not a majority, OBVI) share.

In any case, I'm certainly not saying read Twilight over Skin Hunger. I am saying read both.

Reader and Raelynx... I was half-way through this before I realized it was more or less going to wrap up the Twelve Houses books. I just went looking, and if Shinn writes a fifth book, it looks like it's going to follow a character outside of our main six. (Insert cry of dismay here. Why can't Tayse and Donnal get their own books, exactly?? I know Aj agrees with me.) All the same, it was a nice ending. I look forward to re-reading this series in the relatively near future.

Austenland is So. Awesome. Here, go read the plot summary. Back? Good. Shannon Hale, who subverted every expected trope in her YA Princess Academy made me like chick lit again. Competent, intelligent heroine! And witty, too! The book was simply too short; I wanted to stay much longer in Jane's world. Not necessarily in Austenland, but in Jane's head. If you have been disappointed by much or most of the Austen-based fare out there, this is a sure remedy.

Can't talk, writing.

Lots of things I could say, about organizations I don't belong to, about goals that I've met and goals that I haven't met.

I would easily spend an hour sifting through my thoughts. It would be an hour I wasn't writing. So. Not today.

This is mostly just to explain radio silence. Sometimes it's important to blog. For me, this is not one of those days.

Lunchtime Meme

Hey! You know how TiVo is a godsend and I love it? TiVo also sucks! It especially sucks when you watch, say, Lost only on weekends, and so the Lost discussion group is spoilering your spoiler while you're eating your leftover stiffado and trying to read the newest Sharon Shinn book! So, I'm back at my desk, exiled to the Land of Meme.

But it's a good meme, for it is a book meme, and it was snurched from Gwyneira, so. Here goes.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

Oh, lots of things. Almost anything Arthurian-based. Almost anything really literary that's been published in the last ten or twenty years.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can't die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for a while, eventually you realize it's past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?

Eh. I can get through anything eventually, boring-wise. It's an issue of badly-written for me. There are things that could kill me with their badly-writtenness.

Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you've read, when in fact you've been nowhere near it?

Back before I finished the Harry Potter series, I found it expedient not to mention that I hadn't been keeping up with it, on several occasions. It was just not worth the discussion.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realize when you read a review about it/go to 'reread' it that you haven't? Which book?

Yes, but nothing anyone has heard of.

You're interviewing for the post of Official Book Adviser to some VIP (who's not a big reader). What's the first book you'd recommend and why?

Srsly, not a good question. It depends on the VIP. But I'd probably start out with something in pop non-fiction. Like Everything is Miscellaneous.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?

Oh, Japanese. Definitely. Maaaaybe one of the Chineses. But something I'd never be able to spend any real time on for learning myself.

A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?

I think that fairy came by, and we already agreed on Pride and Prejudice.

What's one bookish thing you 'discovered' from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art – anything)?

I've found lots of books this way--most recently, Austenland by Shannon Hale.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she's granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leather-bound? Is it full of first edition hard covers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead – let your imagination run free.

What a ridiculous question! She's obviously granting me Powell's bookstore. DUH. All the branches thereof, too. I'll have a sleeping cot in the YA section, and we'll set up the kitchen in the cookbook store. (I see no reason not to just move in. With a library like that, who needs a house?)

Rutting with Wolves

Here's what I sent to mah husband yesterday. I got comics in return this morning.

Happy Valentine's Day! Or Happy Lupercalia. Whatever floats your boat.

I wrote some this morning and then did yoga. Considering I went back to bed for twenty minutes when my tummy hurt from my breakfast, I did well.

Excelsior Update, and a Story

Tonight we had about half the anticipated attendance at Excelsior, which was fine, because with just four of us, we eased up on the rules a little and everything went fast anyway. It was quick, fun and productive. All the things a writing group meeting should be.

Of course, by my attendance at Excelsior (on what was a surprisingly easy drive to Canton--well, easy once I got out of Ann Arbor), that meant no Write Club with Julie. That we do next week instead. We think we'll give Bert's Cafe a try for a venue, since it's in the building (library) that connects Julie's and my work buildings, has a cafe (yay), and when we're done eating, if it looks like we're pressed for space, we can branch out into the library and still have drinks. And electrical plugs.

Of course, next Wednesday is the grand opening of said cafe, so perhaps we will not start at Bert's that day...

Anyway, back to Excelsior. Everyone is far too nice to me in that group. I wish there would be more pointing out of embarrassing typos. I live for a good typo.

I feel that this has been an incredibly dull post, so I will share a nearly-amusing anecdote.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, which happens to also mark the sixth year since my husband proposed to me.

Now, he largely proposed to me on Valentine's Day because it was convenient cover to do something romantic and then Unexpectedly Propose. I think that was his reasoning, anyway. You'd have to ask him.

However, prior to this, over the many years of our romantic relationship and even during our friendship before that, he had insisted vehemently many, many times that Valentine's Day is a crap holiday. You know the type of vehemence I mean. "It's all the card companies' doing." "I don't need a special day to say I love you." Etc. Not that we never did anything for Valentine's Day, it's just we never did much that was super-official or very exciting. Our first Valentine's Day, in fact, I think I took him to a concert and gave him a CD and he was both stunned and chagrined because he didn't get me anything. Some one or two times I think he managed to send flowers or whatnot--certainly, I've managed to send him flowers and whatnot several times too--but mostly, the day is marked with a kiss and a card, both brief, and perhaps a chocolate something.

It is, and was, never that big a deal. I've never been a consistent traditionalist with any holiday, let alone Valentine's Day. Sometimes I want a fuss, sometimes I don't, and that holds true for Christmas as much as Groundhog Day.

So, it didn't even seem that out of the ordinary when he decided to make a fuss that fateful Valentine's Day back in 2002. Other than that there'd been a mysterious answering machine message from a jeweler, so I had my suspicions. He took me to a movie. And didn't propose. He took me to a super fancy restaurant. And didn't propose. And it was getting on towards 11:30 at night, and the anticipation was building, and I had finally told myself that if he was, in fact, intending to propose, he was deliberately waiting until it wasn't Valentine's Day so that I would never, ever have an excuse to celebrate it on a regular basis (as our Engagement Anniversary).

I was so convinced, in fact, that at 11:45 when he pulled out a ring and asked me to be his wife, I said:

"You idiot."

And then said, "If you'd just waited fifteen more minutes, then Valentine's Day wouldn't be our Engagement Anniversary!"

There was some blinking. "Engagement Anniversary? That's not a thing," he told me.

(Sometime shortly thereafter, I did agree to marry him, and then got all sappily teary-eyed, even. I do have a gushy center. It's just surrounded by a big, double-thick layer of irony.)

This year, after several years of Not Doing Much for Valentine's Day, I sent him a bouquet of roses and wrote on the card, "Happy Engagement Anniversary. It is TOO a thing."

He sent me a cameraphone pic of the bouquet and message that said, "It is NOT a thing."

The debate rages on.

(Our love is so pure because we bicker.)

Here's a Pretty Picture to Distract You

So, how did it go with my priorities this week?

The answer behind the cut.

Well, not so good. In part because I didn't sit down to write as much as I should have--other things kept cropping up, in the time-honored way of slackers and dilettantes everywhere. (In part, my mom was here, and I had to panic about that a little beforehand, too. In other part, because I chose to socialize once when I should have been working. In part, because I slept in three out of five mornings last week. In part because I finally have all the new component pieces of my computer assembled and in one case, and I have been doing things like offloading old pictures to Flickr (see above) and getting my music all on one drive, and, uh, finally playing that Sims 2 expansion pack I got a year ago.)

So, yeah, it's all on me, oh, yes, it is. Me, and February. I really hate February. Basically, any time of the year when you will clobbered by cold, dark, and grayness for days and days at a time is a loser of a month. And that's practically the whole winter in Michigan.

But enough about blaming it all on winter. It's still my fault. Winter didn't make me fire up the Sims.

I got about 2k of my 5k goal done. This included rewriting the first thousand words about three times, so technically, I did write 5000 words. However, for the purposes of our exercise here, that doesn't actually count.

I wrote nothing on the story I meant to be writing. I started another one instead. WHY? Because I SUCK.

And because it was cold. And dark.

Okay, so. What didn't work this week? First, having a houseguest sincerely didn't work. There's not much I can do to control this--short of saying I never want to see anyone ever again, and that's not going to fly. I did manage to write, successfully, for about an hour last night (maybe two), and I had the opportunity to write yesterday afternoon, but I couldn't make it work. (That was stuff I rewrote, and I knew I was sucking as I wrote, so I gave up and played Sims and organized photos instead.)

Basically, it's an issue of me not being able to summon the right mindset as soon as I have that hour to sit down and write. It takes just a little too long to swing into said mindset. I need a better way to focus. So. Duly noted. I think I'll try to use the Write Now meditation podcasts for writers to get better at this.

My mom may leave tomorrow, or she may leave on Thursday--it's up in the air right now, depending on how many clients she gets--so, my office is inaccessible for one to three more mornings and one to two more evenings. Planning around this just involves either writing in my bedroom (at night) or at the kitchen table (in the morning), so that's solved, I guess--unless, of course, she's awake at those times and wants to talk. The point of my mother visiting is that we visit, after all.

Without the anticipation of a visit, though, I expect to be back on the horse as soon as she's gone, though. This weekend must and should be highly productive.

Okay, that's enough babbling. I've more to think about in terms of goals and priorities and such. My goals for this week are identical to last week:

My writing goals are:

• to write 5k of ≥ by next Monday review
  
• to write at least 15 minutes a day on the short story

I'll let you know, one way or another.

A certain kind of funniness

Isn't it funny--in the "incongruent" sense of the word--that the more work you do on a novel, the more confidence you lose about it?

I'm definitely at the "wow, this was a DUMB IDEA" stage.

Grrr. Argh.

So that's what my story is about...

Merrie Haskell, making her Asimov’s debut, posits that life might not be so easy under the employ of benevolent interstellar rulers in “An Almanac for Alien Invaders.”

It's on its way!

Edited to add this whole next bit

Sharp-eyed co-Codexian David W. Goldman caught that I (and a couple other Codexians, including my fellow Milford 2005 alum, Ian Creasey) are mentioned in Sheila Williams's editorial.

Sheila says:

It might seem as though it could be easy to become complacent about buying stories for Asimov’s and rely solely on the work of the established professional.

And (or rather, "but"):

New writers are the lifeblood of the magazine. Rarely does an issue go by that doesn’t include at least one person’s first sale to Asimov’s. There are cases (such as Edward M. Lerner, a long-standing Analog author, whose first story for us appeared in our last issue), where I’m already familiar with the work of the author from his or her previous sales to other SF outlets. Others (such as Merrie Haskell and Nick Wolven, whose stories are appearing in our next issue) will be authors whose work is completely unknown to me. In each instance, though, these stories caught my attention and held it all the way through. They were tales that I enjoyed and believed you would find rewarding as well.

Yay! I really like Sheila's ways of thinking as expressed in her editorials, but I REALLY like that paragraph. :)

Anyway, it's an interesting editorial, about how much she publishes of new writers, and she really has something to say about the "odds." "The odds can be very discouraging, but writing a story and sending it in to a science fiction magazine is not the same thing as buying a lottery ticket." Check it out!

Day One...

I promise, this isn't going to become a daily word-count blog. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and maybe my content isn't any more scintillating than that, either, but we're just not going there. I don't have the patience.

But it should be noted that I did manage to:

• wake up right at 6AM and did not snooze
  
• wake stepdaughter and make her breakfast (okay, I microwaved some French toast sticks, but I did put the syrup out, too)
  
• consume half a muffin
  
• watch the weather
  
• unload the dishwasher, load it, take out the garbage, sweep the floor, wash the undishwasherable stuff, wipe the counters, take out some of the recycling, and refill the sugar bowl
  
• make tea
  
• start writing by 7AM
  
• stop writing at 8
  
• spend 24 minutes on an exercise cycle at the gym ("small hills" program)
  
• catch the 9:40 bus and get to work 8 minutes early
  

In short, I did the morning exactly the way I'm supposed to, but too often fail to.

I did, however, write only 319 words. But they were good words, and I'd rather have 319 good words than 714 bad ones. (714 should be my daily goal to attain 5,000 words a week. But mostly, I figure that if I'm writing for an hour on a weekday, the triumph there is so large that I cannot get fussed, and can just catch up on the weekend.)

At the gym, I also read a chapter of Austenland by Shannon Hale, which I'm SERIOUSLY ENJOYING. Shannon Hale, you are a goddess.

(I can normally read more than a chapter on the elliptical. However, I learned that reading on a recumbent exercise bike makes me a little seasick.)

First Monday of February

My two priorities for February:

• novel: ≥ (no really, that's my title)
  
• short story: currently untitled fairy tale retelling for the CatsCurious thing

I have other items on my Feb. agenda, of course, like Excelsior! writers meet on the, uh, 13th, and I'll need to crit for that, and I have a secondary goal of keeping everything in circulation come hell or high water, and some secondary priorities, like rewriting those three shorts I listed earlier today--but all of this either on unplanned-for free time (like lunch hours or breaks) or after I've put in at least two hours a day on the other projects.

Not that I'm going to be able to put in two hours a day every day; my goal is to do 1 hour for the novel and 15 minutes for the short story. (Also, the novel is really a novella, and the short story is really a novelette. Just so we're clear.)

My weekly review:

Well, I'm not reviewing last week, basically.

My writing goals are

• to write 5k of ≥ by next Monday review
  
• to write at least 15 minutes a day on the short story

I plan to use an hour of writing time at 6:45am (after the kid gets on the bus, before I go to the gym), and about an hour between 9-10pm. Anything else will be a gift. Further, at some point, perhaps even this week, Julie and I may resurrect Write Club, which will be an unfettered evening of writing between 7:30 and 10:30. (I can't guarantee that'll be this week, because I haven't discussed it with her yet.)

Anyway, any more blathering about this, and it will just be catwaxing. I'm done.

Phew. I feel like a real writer again.

By taking "The Girl-Prince" out to the post office on my break, I am back up to having six items in circulation. Even though two of them are reprints, I at least feel like I'm back in the saddle.

I have pulled the following stories from circulation (as of, like, last autumn) for rewrite or possible trunking:

• "Lawncare in the Afterlife"
  
• "The Lonesome Dark"
  
• "Sticks and Bones"
  

Hm. It's actually a shorter list than I thought. I have no significantly large sellable inventory anymore! Which is a pity, because I always sell something when I have thirteen or more stories in my inventory. No lie. I mean, I occasionally sell when I don't, but once I hit thirteen, I inevitably sell one in short order.

Focus, and the Like

It's no question that I lack focus. I lack it, lack it, lack it.

Stick with me, that becomes important later.

In conversation with Julie the other day, I realized--I might not actually be ready for real novels yet. Not full-length, 90,000-word novels. Follow my logic.

My early writing efforts aside (those halcyon days of junior high and high school, and even late elementary school, when I used latch-key kid-dom to my advantage by writing solidly for hours a day), since I have buckled down for the Serious Writing (ie, mid-2003 and on), I've been writing longer and longer pieces. I started out with 2,000-4,000 word short stories. I even experimented with flash (even published something only 187 words long). But slowly, I started writing longer and longer works. My last few short stories have all been novelettes, technically, with one or two exceptions where I squeaked by into short story territory by a couple hundred words. It's not something that keeps me up at night, in spite of the few markets for things like the 15k-word monstrosity that is "The Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443." Not a few of my stories have been rejected in part because of their length, or because I'm trying to fit too much into too few words. All of this has made it clear to me that I need to move on to novels. I have some big ideas. Pretending they aren't big is silly and wastes everyone's time.

But the jump between 15k and 90k is pretty damn huge. Especially since I've never done 90k before. That's right. My only completed novel (completed as an adult, anyway) to date is a 60k YA novel.

I have dallied with rewriting that first novel, but too often it becomes clear to me that the thing is deeply, deeply flawed, and I don't yet have the objectivity to gut it completely and start afresh. Plus, as much as I'd learn while rewriting it, I'd learn far more finishing a new novel. Hence the now epic number of begun-but-not-finished novels in my drawer. I have 50k of a Regency romance done, 20k of another, 30k of an urban fantasy based off of "Dead Languages," 25k of a crazed second world fantasy, 10-30k of about six different versions of the same science fiction novel.... More than that, even, but I really don't want to go looking.

Did I mention I lack focus? "Lack it, lack it, lack it."

Thing is, I'm chock full of ideas. Full to the rim. I start on one project, and other ideas swarm to the surface, trying to take me down. Like giant mansquitos. (Yeah, I said mansquitos. Look it up.)

But I read an article just this week! Focus on two priorities, one month at a time. And I read this other article! About weekly reviews of progress and goals and everything. And I think, wow, if I can apply these two methods for just a few months, I'll probably get somewhere I need to be, and soon. And maybe, along the way, I'll learn the fine art of focus.

So, I'm hauling out the calendar and writing down some goals, and I promise that I will faithfully report back here on a weekly basis.

I'm going to start on Monday, though I'm unofficially starting today. This weekend is a jump-start, a quick kick-off, a sprint out of the starting gate. On Monday I'll see where I am, set the goals for the week, and the following Monday, I'll report in. And I will do this for each subsequent Monday until April 10th (which is my birthday. And for my birthday, I've promised myself a novel). And if it works great, I'll be continuing, and if it doesn't, I'll be trying the next thing, but either way, I'll have a stack of MS pages at the end.

Anyway, that's what's going down over here. Stay tuned. If you dare. I don't promise there won't be mansquitos.

The House of Scott Westerfeld Fans

My stepdaughter was thrilled beyond measure to get Uglies and sequels for from her dad for her birthday, and even more thrilled when she realized I'd gotten them signed for her.

Today, when I asked her how she was liking Uglies, she said, "It's really good!" And then told me how she's the envy of seventh grade--she flashed around her Scott Westerfeld signature to some friends and had to swat their hands away. But the real icing on the cake was the "What would Tally do?" ribbon that Scott was giving out as his guest of honor ribbon at Confusion, which I had been really grown-up about and not added to my badge but rather tucked into Uglies for her.

"I don't even know what it's for," she admitted. "But it's cool, and everyone is jealous." So I found my con badge in the mess on my desk and showed her. She looked at the ribbons, and a very non-thirteen-year-old gleam of "ooh, shiny!" came to her eyes.

"Do you want my con badge?" I asked.

"Yes, please*," she said, holding out her hand.

A true geek in the making. She thinks con badges are cool!

* Her "yes, please" is a spot-on imitation of Alexis Bledel from The Gilmore Girls. Say what you will about television in general and the CW in particular, but TV and the CW and The Gilmore Girls have taught someone, somewhere, actual manners.