Posts tagged as “We Call It Living”

It was a good weekend …

Published May 28, 2014 by centaur

… and not just because I sold 22 copies of my books at Clockwork Alchemy. Though that was a big part of it, the sales themselves aren't what really mattered to me; it was that 22 copies of my books are in people's hands, and they were in people's hands because for the very first time, I had an author's table.

For the four days that I sat behind that author's table, behind a fort of my books and my postcards and my wife's steampunk gears and shelves and even a small tiger, I became part of a community of people - and not just even the wonderful people at the Clockwork Alchemy author's alley, whom I hope to see again for years and years to come.

No, I became a part of the broader community of science fiction authors, connecting with their readers through science fiction conventions, the way I myself first really connected with the science fiction community, after many years of reading alone. I've been a published author for years, and written in a small community for longer, but now I feel connected as never before.

This is a new level of interaction, a new level of connection, a new opportunity for a whole family to create an author's delight by buying their books and holding them over their heads like mouse ears. Somehow, everything feels more real to me, and I am more inspired than ever before to keep writing and to get the ideas in my head out … and into yours.

I hope we both enjoy it! God bless,

-the Centaur

Sunday’s Events at Clockwork Alchemy

Published May 24, 2014 by centaur

Today's talk on Real Women of the Victorian Era, led by the redoubtable T.E. MacArthur, went well. In a weird bit of synergy, an audiobook I was reading, Victorian Britain in the Great Courses series, had a section on Florence Nightingale which was not just directly relevant … it played just as I was driving up to the hotel. Perfect.

Tomorrow, Sunday, May 25th, I will be appearing on the panels Avoiding Historical Mistakes at noon in the Monterey Room (it is rumored that Harry Turtledove will be on the panel as well) and Victorian Technology at 2pm in the San Carlos room (not 1 as I said earlier), and giving a solo talk on The Science of Airships at 4pm also at San Carlos.

The rest of the time, I will largely be at my table above, which will look more or less like you see it above, except I may be wearing a different outfit. :-D

-the Centaur

I Have Landed at Clockwork Alchemy

Published May 24, 2014 by centaur

I have landed at Clockwork Alchemy. (Technically, I arrived yesterday). In 11 minutes, I am appearing on a panel on Real Women in the Victorian Era, even though it is not listed on my personal schedule.

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Oh, and I almost forgot: this is my very first booth of my own!

The Weird Experience of Marketing Yourself

Published May 21, 2014 by centaur

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This Memorial Day weekend, I will be at the Clockwork Alchemy conference, appearing on three panels (Real Women in Victorian Times Saturday at noon, Avoiding Historical Mistakes Sunday at noon, and Victorian Technology, Sunday at 1) and giving one talk (my old standby, The Science of Airships, Sunday at 4).

Since I won't be at my table the whole time, I decided to print up a series of postcards for all of my books using the service at Moo.com, which I and my wife have found to be great for printing customized business cards with a variety of artwork on the cover. I decided to do one for each book, showing the cover on one side and a blurb on the back.

But then I discovered that, just like for the business cards themselves, while you can have many different covers on the front, you get only one choice for the back. So what should go on that single back cover? What should it market? Then I realized: I don't have a book coming out right away. These cards actually have to market … me.

Ulp.

More precisely, the cards have to market my work. But I'm not a single-series author; I can't (yet) pull a George R. R. Martin and just say "author of Game of Thrones," especially not at a steampunk convention when my most prominent series, Dakota Frost, is actually urban fantasy. "Anthony Francis, author of Dakota Frost - who? Author of what? Ok, fine … but why is he here?"

So I have to list not just one series, but all of them, and not just list them, but say what they're about.

After some thought, I decided to use some of my own comic art that I'd previously used on my business cards as a backdrop, but to focus the content of the cards on my writing, not my comics (sorry, f@nu fiku and Blitz Comics … there just wasn't enough room on the cards or poster), unifying all of my books under a theme of "The Worlds of Anthony Francis". I feel like breaking out in hives when I write that. It sounds so damn aggrandized and pompous. But strictly speaking … it's accurate.

One of my worlds is the fantastic space of the Allied universe, where genetically engineered centaurs hop from world to world like skipping stones in the river (collected in the anthology STRANDED). Another is the hyper-feminist alternate history steampunk adventures of Jeremiah Willstone (collected in the anthologies UnCONventional and DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME). And yet another is the world of Dakota Frost, Skindancer, and the magic tattoos she can bring to life (FROST MOON, BLOOD ROCK, and the forthcoming LIQUID FIRE). And I hope you choose to read all of them! Enter the worlds, indeed.

But if I want people to read them, I need to tell people about them, in terms that make people, I dunno, actually want to read the books. Normally it's a publisher who writes that copy, but they're generally marketing a book, not me. I don't yet have a publicist, and even if I did, the entire point of me is to do as many of the tasks of creative production myself as is practical, so I can speak at least quasi-intelligently about the process - case in point, the graphic design of the postcard above, which will be a blog post in its own right. But this isn't about that part of the process; it's about the feeling.

One thing I've learned is that no-one knows that you write unless you actually tell them about it, and no-one buys what you write unless they know it can be bought. SO I have to do at least the first stab at this all by myself (not counting help from cats). I have to try to summarize my work, to bite the bullet and actually sell it, and to package that sales language up in ways that get it out to people - starting with a series of postcards to put on my table. And oh, yes, to blog it: to finally lift my head far enough above the waters to shout, yes, world, I am here, and no, I don't need a life preserver: I need you to buy some of my books.

It still feels weird saying that.

I guess I'll have to get over it.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the back of the postcards I printed for my table, featuring my own art; me, in a potential author publicity picture; and Gabby, helping me organize my book files and promotional materials.

Victory again, my friends

Published May 2, 2014 by centaur

SO yet again I've completed a challenge to finish 50,000 words in a month … this time the April Camp Nanowrimo challenge. My goal was to write 50,000 new words in the 4th Dakota Frost book, SPECTRAL IRON … and as of April 30th, I did it:

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Normally I write a lot about how this happened, bla bla bla. But the big thing that happened with this month is that it has gotten me ahead of the game for a change. I've had breaks, of course, in the past year and a half, but no matter how easily I breathed, I always had two almost-finished novels hanging over me (LIQUID FIRE and CLOCKWORK), and chunks of several more half-finished novels waiting in the wings (HEX CODE, SPECTRAL IRON, and MAROONED).

Now both of those books are at the publisher, my editor and I aren't going to talk until after Memorial Day … and I, for once, feel like I'm starting to get caught up.

If you see me wielding a stick, it's to beat off new projects with.

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The last thing I learned is that I can basically write 50,000 words of rough draft material in approximately 20 days, and that's with having serious work responsibilities and personal responsibilities I have to put first. It's a push, but it isn't an impossible push, and that means I can seriously start looking at other projects and start figuring out where to wield that hammer.

First up, the frontispiece for LIQUID FIRE. Then, my upcoming talks at Clockwork Alchemy. Oh, and the next version of Blitz Comic's Survival Guide. Lots of projects … but all were on the plate before. Now I just no longer have a giant sword of Damocles hanging over them; I instead have Thor's hammer, ready to strike.

-the Centaur

UPDATE: actually, first up, was an image for Blitz Comic's Free Comic Book Day Creator's Kit. But that's still Blitz. So it's OK.

A 2 meter exhaust port just beneath the main port

Published April 27, 2014 by centaur

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I had decided to take out Aprils to do do Camp Nanowrimo, but as you can see, this was thwarted by my work to finish LIQUID FIRE, which spilled over into the beginning of the month. So since then, I've been racing uphill to try to get back on track … and as of a few days ago, I think I can at last say I'm almost there.

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What's even more amazing is that I was able to keep up this pace even when I was out for Easter … and THEN after I caught the cruds on the flight home and ended up spending two days out sick. And it wasn't even crashed out sick, either; we had some internal deadlines at work that I needed to keep moving forward, so I spent most of my sick days working from home, sitting on the front porch bundled up in a blanket with my work laptop on my lap, trying to massage a tricky chunk of data through our pipelines while I watched surreal scenes unfold around me, like one of our elderly neighbors getting taken to the hospital.

But I've grown good writing in the margins, over lunch and at dinner, whenever I can, in the corners. (I'm writing this blogpost at dinner at a nice Irish pub right now, itself squeezed in between afternoon writing group meetings and Sunday evening prep for work). So I was able to, somehow, put in my time each day massaging that data, then still spit out the chunk of words I needed, and not kill myself, or at least not make myself any sicker than I was. And by the end of the week, we had the candidate chunk of data we wanted, I had the words I wanted, and I was out a lot of cold medicine and cough drops.

The weekend was even better for me, with a great swathes of time spent Friday late night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday lunch and early evening chasing that 2 meter exhaust port just below the main port. Allmost there … now I'm just 300 words away from begin caught up. Hopefully, I'll close that final gap late tonight. Wish me luck!

Oh yes, an excerpt:

“Dakota,” Terrance said, not turning his head towards me, eyes guiding the pointer on the screen. “When you guys go back to see this,” he said, reaching his head aside to puff at his air tube to rewind the footage, “I so want to be there.”

My heart fell. I didn’t think it was safe to take a quadriplegic into a war zone. But perhaps that was just me trying to shield him; we could work the security arrangements out. I opened my mouth to warn him of the risks, but just then, he puffed, and the video played.

“There,” Terrance said, the red crosshair of his eye tracker active again. “Watch for it!” At first I saw nothing, and grimaced as my yapping mug nattered on. I was rapidly growing tired of seeing this. Then the black form moved behind me—and in the red circle Terrance had laid out with his eye tracker … I saw the tail of my Mohawk brushed aside.

“Jesus!” I said, fear clutching my heart. “It touched me!”

Oooh … buggedy.

Now let's blow this thing and go home!

-Anthony

Weather spotty with increasing chance of progress

Published April 17, 2014 by centaur

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Overall I'm making some progress, but each day has its ups and downs. Today was one of the downs (more because I spent a great deal of the day cracking a problem at work, then following up with a nice dinner date with my wife), but hopefully I'm going to get caught up over the next few days and through the weekend, when I've got some long plane flights to write on.

No excerpt: a lot of reorganizing today to get pieces in place so the story flows forward smoothly. I do write out of order, quite a bit, but the pieces must all make sense in order so that when I sit down to work on one the past concepts all build to and constrain the current moment, and the current moment supports the future concepts going forward.

Oh, okay, maybe one excerpt; I may have actually shown this before, but now I've written up the backstory for this:

“Here, Cinnamon,” I said, reaching for her with the Santa Claus cap. “Wear this—”

“No,” Cinnamon growled, jerking away. “I ain’t wearing no Santa Claus shit.”

I blinked. Most children I knew loved Santa Claus. Loved Christmas. So did most people, for that matter. Sure, I knew a few grinches, but not even they would have turned down a Santa Claus cap, much less snarled and swatted at it. This was something more.

“I’m guessing,” I said gently, “it isn’t disgust at his square fashion sense.”

“New word’s jank,” Cinnamon said, wrapping her arms around herself, turning away.

I put the hat down and walked out onto the porch, sitting on the sofa, stretching my long arms out over its back and my long legs out to the bottom rungs of the bannister. After a minute, Cinnamon joined me, curling up next to me, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Sorry, Mom,” she said. “Santa Claus is a son of a bitch.”

That is all for now.

-the Centaur

From my labors, I rested

Published April 6, 2014 by centaur

So, at long last … I have sent LIQUID FIRE to Bell Bridge books.

Phew.

This has been a long time in coming; the book that became LIQUID FIRE started with some florid philosophizing about the nature of fire and life by my protagonist Dakota Frost - 270 words written way back in 2008:

Liquid Fire

A Dakota Frost, Skindancer Novel

by
Dr. Anthony G. Francis, Jr.

Started: 2008-04-19
Rough Draft: 2012-09-26
First Draft: 2012-10-23
Completed Draft: 2013-10-19
Beta Draft: 2013-11-01
Gamma Draft: 2014-04-05

Along the way, the story became something very different, an exploration of Atlanta and San Francisco and Hawaii, of learning and science and magic and mysticism. My obsessive attention to realism led to endless explorations and quite a few set pieces.

Now it's in the hands of Debra Dixon, who's already started to send me feedback. Feedback I'm going to do my best to shelve until May 1st, so I can focus the rest of April on SPECTRAL IRON, which is due early next year. Aaa!

But for now, my labors, I rest. If only for a little while.

-the Centaur

P.S. This is is my fifth completed novel, and the third Dakota Frost. Only 18 more Dakota Frosts to go in the main arc!

On Their Way…

Published November 18, 2013 by centaur

In only tangentially related Nano news, the beta copies of LIQUID FIRE are on their way to beta readers, and signed copies of DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME are on their way to the winners! Huzzah. I hope you enjoy them!

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Not that things are going poorly. They're actually going quite well… UPDATE:

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Quite well indeed.

-the Centaur

Life Intervenes

Published November 15, 2013 by centaur

I'm still ahead on National Novel Writing Month, again on the skin of my teeth. Only by being already ahead. Because after I had dinner with my wife last night, after she retired to her art studio and I was just sitting down to finish my word count …

A disoriented older woman showed up on our street, unable to find her way home - and speaking no English.

Our neighbors found her first, and came by for help. We took her to our front porch and tried to calm her while the police were on their way. Slowly her English returned, and slowly we drew out her story: she'd been sick for a long time, she didn't know where she was, and she just wanted to go home … to a mother and father who in her clearer moments she remembered were dead.

The police arrived, we all tried to comfort her, and then the presence of the police cars attracted the attention of the woman's husband, who had been driving around the neighborhood looking for her. He confirmed what we suspected: his wife had Alzheimer's, and could no longer remember her street address, or even her married name.

A moment's nodding at the couch watching television, and when he looked up, she was gone, out in the street wearing slippers with her shoes in her hand. Alzheimer's patients often have disrupted sleep or activity schedules, moving when other people expect them to be still - so this experience was by no means unusual.

For the record, report the loss of a loved one to the police immediately, so it will show up in the system if someone finds them.

She ended up safely home. Our prayers go with her.

Sometimes, writing must come second.

-the Centaur

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Why do we get ahead? So when we slip, we don’t fall behind.

Published November 10, 2013 by centaur

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So my wife returns from a month long business trip, and the day after she gets back, we go hiking. Actually, we went to lunch, went shoe buying, went hiking, and then book buying, shop walking and dinner eating in Santa Cruz.

So zero writing got done yesterday.

"And that's why I try to get ahead!" Because I know from experience with Nano that there are days that writing just can't get done. Work catches up with you, life catches up with you, wife catches up with you. You're too busy, or having too much fun, or too sick, or whatever.

Even if you do as I do and refuse as many events as possible during Nano, you can't get life down to zero.

So it's super important not to stop at 1,666 words a day. If at all possible, try to get a notch more - a few hundred extra words a day. Even if you get just 250-300 extra words a day, by the end of the week you'll have enough buffer to take a day off. Not that I recommend you take a day off in Nano - but you'll have the buffer if you need it.

So I'm back on track today - it's 3 in the afternoon, I've finished my daily quota, and thanks to being ahead before, missing a day yesterday has left me merely on track, rather than behind. And I have at least two more writing sessions today, so I may get even further ahead. No excerpts today - writing near the end, all too spoilery.

Onward into the deep!

-the Centaur

The DOORWAY opens at last…

Published August 26, 2013 by centaur

At long last, DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME is released! (Well, tomorrow morning, anyway):

http://amzn.com/1937053725

In our busy world of meetings and microwaves, car radios and cellphones, people always wish they could get an extra hour in the day. But what if they could? Doorways to Extra Time is an anthology that explores ways to get extra time (be it an hour, a day, or a decade) and the impact it would have--whether upon a single life, a family or an entire world.

I'm very proud of this anthology and all the great stories and authors: the proactive Erica Cameron, the across-the-pond Martin Feekins, lil ol me, pastcracker L.M. Graham, timekeeper R.E. Gofstein, catwizard Melina Gunnett, the learned Walter H. Hunt, my friend Betsy Miller, Susan "In the nick of time" Mittmann, timemaster Brenda Moguez, mysterian Jenny Moore, demonkeeper Ira Nayman, time twister Errick A. Nunnally, the estimable Jody Lynn Nye, the not-photoshopped Kate Saturday, my other good friend Gayle Schultz, Rich "The Closer" Storrs, gameplayer Keshia Swaim, not-for-sale Aimee Weinstein, and my coeditor and friend Trisha J. Wooldridge … whew!

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Trisha, my coeditor, commissioned the above awesome piece of stained glass from Renee Goodwin at Stained Glass Creations and Beyond … isn't it beautiful? We'll be raffling it off at the DOORWAYS release party, Sunday, September 1 at 1pm at Ray's in the City in Atlanta … just up the road from the Hyatt, one of the main hotels of Dragon Con!

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After Dragon Con, we're having a panel reading by our Bay Area authors at Books Inc in Mountain View:

I'm sure there will be more events, giveaways, and so forth in the coming weeks and months. Like or share our Facebook and Google+ pages for more information, or just go to Amazon and get a copy.

Phew. 2 years of work, and 2 minutes to the cafe closes. So … enjoy!

-the Centaur

Wasting an Hour (Not in an Offhand Way)

Published July 15, 2013 by centaur

One of my favorite songs is Pink Floyd's Time, which begins with the lyric:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

As a youth I felt that keenly, and feared the biting lyric at the end of the second stanza:

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

Well, now I know what it's like to find ten years have got behind you. And I don't regret the motivating force that that Pink Floyd lyric had in my life … but now I know it's not all of the story. And so, on purpose, I did something today I haven't done in a long time: "wasted" an hour … just reading in a park.

I'd dropped my wife off at the airport, run some errands, gone to the great Bell's Bookstore in Palo Alto, ran some more errands … but was still an hour early for my dinner reservation at Nola's. I knew they'd probably seat me early, but it was a spectacular day … so I took the book I'd gotten from Bell's, sat down on a bench, and read. I did more than that, of course; I observed the world, watched the passersby, came up with story ideas, took pictures of my environment, watched the cars, called my Mom to see how she's doing (a day before her birthday, but without mentioning it, so hopefully the flowers I've sent her will be even more of a surprise).

And I reflected on all the sources of false wisdom I've heard, or more charitably, advice masquerading as wisdom, useful to certain people at certain times during their development, which may not be as universally wise as it first appears. I don't want to find ten years have got behind me without knowing it … but for me, that's led to years and years of pushing, pushing pushing. Sometimes, it's good to just stop and smell the magnolias.

To cultivate slowing down and watching time pass … and all that passes through time around you. -the Centaur

Moving on and turning back

Published July 15, 2013 by centaur

Well, DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME is on its way to the printers. Now it's time for me to move on to new projects, and to turn back to old ones. I'm still planning out a large new unannounced project (some of the information for which you see piled above) but my primary focus is going to be LIQUID FIRE.

DOORWAYS in Galleys

Published July 13, 2013 by centaur

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DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME is coming down to the wire. My coeditor, the typesetter and I are working weekends, but we're really close now - still, it looks like it will be coming out the 27th, not the 13th. I'm not sure what this does for our plans to do a premiere at Dragon*Con; we'll have to see, as it was cutting it fine regardless even with the old date.

Editing an anthology is a LOT more work than I thought it would be, but it's still very rewarding.

Almost done! Then back to LIQUID FIRE.

-the Centaur

I love me some books

Published July 10, 2013 by centaur

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Totally appropriate, as I'm spending all tonight working on DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME (plus some spot formatting on my coeditor Trisha's novel THE KELPIE) after which I will be returning to LIQUID FIRE. Aaaaa….

-the Centaur

Pictured: my Library.

Happy Freedom Day

Published July 5, 2013 by centaur

fireworks at the end of the street

Recently, I had a potentially bad interaction with a powerful person. I didn't lose my head in the encounter, and I didn't lose my head as the result of the encounter. What's even better, both of us were in the encounter because we wanted to be: neither of us were trapped by vassalage or nobility. Both of us were free to walk away at any time. So ultimately I did the right thing in that situation, and ultimately they made the right decision required by the situation and we both walked away winners.

That's the kind of thing that can happen when people are free.

So yesterday, while our cats were hiding under the bed because of the rumblings echoing through the valley, my wife and I paused our preparation of our holiday dinner and went outside to watch the fireworks sparking at the end of the street … beyond the end of the street … and in all directions around us that we could hear or see.

Fourth of July is an American celebration, and yes, technically it's a celebration of our independence from England, but the idea behind the celebration is far more important than that history. We're celebrating freedom: the right for each individual to do what they want with their lives as long as they're not directly harming anyone else.

And that's an idea which belongs to everyone in the world.

It may be a long time before freedom is implemented for everyone in practice, equitably, with sensitivity to each culture's unique sensibilities. It's tricky, because many people in this world think that they have the right to control others, or think that they're being actually harmed when someone else's choices simply make them feel uncomfortable. We have a lot of work to do.

But we knew all that. The Fourth isn't a time to mourn for victories not yet achieved; it's a time to celebrate, and cherish, the victories we have in hand. So hugged, and smiled, and watched the fireworks, and then went inside and called our neighbors to make sure they'd left their garage door open on purpose (they had; they were also watching the fireworks, just up the street). Then we had tabbouleh and vegan crab cakes and watched a Doctor Who story about haunted houses, time travel and love.

It was a good day to be free.

-the Centaur

My Labors Are Not Ended

Published June 26, 2013 by centaur

lenora at rest in the library

But I am going to take a rest for a bit.

Above you see a shot of my cat Lenora resting in front of the "To Read Science Fiction" section of my Library, the enormous book collection I've been accumulating over the last quarter century. I have books older than that, of course, but they're stored in my mother's house in my hometown. It's only over the last 25 years or so have I been accumulating my own personal library.

But why am I, if not resting, at least thinking about it? I finished organizing the books in my Library.

lenora at rest in the library 2

I have an enormous amount of papers, bills, bric a brac and other memorabilia still to organize, file, trash or donate, but the Library itself is organized, at last. It's even possible to use it.

How organized? Well...

Religion, politics, economics, the environment, women's studies, Ayn Rand, read books, Lovecraft, centaur books, read urban fantasy, read science fiction, Atlanta, read comics, to-read comics, to-read science fiction magazines, comic reference books, drawing reference books, steampunk, urban fantasy, miscellaneous writing projects, Dakota Frost, books to donate, science fiction to-reads: Asimov, Clarke, Banks, Cherryh, miscellaneous, other fiction to-reads, non-fiction to-reads, general art books, genre art books, BDSM and fetish magazines and art books, fetish and sexuality theory and culture, military, war, law, space travel, astronomy, popular science, physics of time travel, Einstein, quantum mechanics, Feynman, more physics, mathematics, philosophy, martial arts, health, nutrition, home care, ancient computer manuals, more recent computer manuals, popular computer books, the practice of computer programming, programming language theory, ancient computer languages, Web languages, Perl, Java, C and C++, Lisp, APL, the Art of Computer Programming, popular cognitive science, Schankian cognitive science, animal cognition, animal biology, consciousness, dreaming, sleep, emotion, personality, cognitive science theory, brain theory, brain philosophy, evolution, human evolution, cognitive evolution, brain cognition, memory, "Readings in …" various AI and cogsci disciplines, oversized AI and science books, conference proceedings, technical reports, game AI, game development, robotics, imagery, vision, information retrieval, natural language processing, linguistics, popular AI, theory of AI, programming AI, AI textbooks, AI notes from recent projects, notes from college from undergraduate through my thesis, more Dakota Frost, GURPS, other roleplaying games, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, more Dakota Frost, recent projects, literary theory of Asimov and Clarke, literary theory of science fiction, science fiction shows and TV, writing science fiction, mythology, travel, writing science, writing reference, writers on writing, writing markets, poetry, improv, voice acting, film, writing film, history of literature, representative examples, oversized reference, history, anthropology, dictionaries, thesauri, topical dictionaries, language dictionaries, language learning, Japanese, culture of Japan, recent project papers, comic archives, older project papers, tubs containing things to file … and the single volume version of the Oxford English Dictionary, complete with magnifying glass.

lenora at rest in the library 2

I deliberately left out the details of many categories and outright omitted a few others not stored in the library proper, like my cookbooks, my display shelves of Arkham House editions, Harry Potter and other hardbacks, my "favorite" nonfiction books, some spot reading materials, a stash of transhumanist science fiction, all the technical books I keep in the shelf next to me at work … and, of course, my wife and I's enormous collection of audiobooks.

What's really interesting about all that to me is there are far more categories out there in the world not in my Library than there are in my Library. Try it sometime - go into a bookstore or library, or peruse the list of categories in the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal System Classifications. There's far more things to think about than even I, a borderline hoarder with a generous income and enormous knowledge of bookstores, have been able to accumulate in a quarter century.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

-the Centaur

Everyone’s fooling people by taking their laptops to coffee shops, and here I am just editing anthologies

Published May 18, 2013 by centaur

So this is me, with my laptop, in a coffee shop, editing the science fiction anthology DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME, listening to an author reading by John Scalzi, author of YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE WHEN YOU TAKE YOUR LAPTOP TO A COFFEE SHOP.

I read Scalzi's blog Whatever and was pleased to hear he was coming to my favorite bookstore / coffeeshop combination, Books Inc. in Mountain View and the attached Cafe Romanza. It's right up the street from my work, so I dropped in to the coffee house, got a copy of REDSHIRTS for signing (never having read his fiction, it seemed a good place to start since the book he's promoting is a sequel), got coffee, got permission from the staff to set my laptop up at a small table above the signing, and camped out.

I edited. Friends dropped by. We chatted. The room filled, and then Scalzi showed up...

...and he's even more entertaining in person than he is on his blog. He read from his latest novel THE HUMAN DIVISION, a little side tale about aliens and churros (I've never had any, but they're kind of like Spanish doughnuts, apparently), and from his blog the hilarious and insightful post "Who Gets to Be a Geek? Anyone Who Wants to Be."

When it got to Q&A, I didn't ask any questions: everyone asked all my questions for me. It turns out Tor approached him about serializing his books, and THE HUMAN DIVISION came out of that conversation. I'm jealous; I and my publisher are still negotiating how to serialize THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, which I wrote with the design for it to be serialized.

After the talk, I waited for the line to die down before getting REDSHIRTS signed. Scalzi and I talked about the irony of me editing my anthology on my laptop in a coffeeshop while the author of YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE WHEN YOU TAKE YOUR LAPTOP TO A COFFEESHOP was reading, and he pointed out that there's two types of people who take their laptops to coffeeshops: those who go to write, and those who go to be seen.

He asked about the anthology, and I told him about DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME: an anthology that asks the question what would you do if you really could get an extra hour in the day. Oddly enough, Scalzi had the same answer about what he'd do with that hour as one of my barista friends in the coffeeshop: both said they'd use the extra hour to catch up on sleep.

I think John Scalzi and that barista must be two of the smartest people in the world.

-the Centaur

P.S. What's this, Google+? You can animate several pictures taken together, even when I didn't tell you to in advance? Really? We're not living on the moon, but we are living in the future. That's awesome. UPDATE: Apparently it only works by default on Google+, as I don't see it on my blog that way. Still, the downloaded image has all the frames, so I could fix it up in Photoshop real quickly if I wanted to. Still the future. UPDATE UPDATE: May be a Ecto upload issue. Will fix later. Regardless, future. UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: I managed to manually upload it, but it took a little squeezing in Photoshop to make the image manageable.

And Now I Know Why He Hates the Sound of the Rain

Published April 26, 2013 by centaur

Readers of this blog know I'm a cat lover, and the favorite of our cats is Gabby, a loquacious gold cat that followed us home as a kitten and now is a fifteen pound fur monster. One of his quirks is to follow you into the bathroom when you take a shower, and then to meow plaintively during the whole time you're running the water. If you peek out of the shower at him, Gabby has what can only be described as an expression of concern on his furry little face, meowing harder. When you get out of the shower, he stands up and reaches for you with his paws. This behavior was mysterious until I had a brain flash the other day: we got Gabby when he followed us home … after two weeks of heavy rain. Clearly he'd been cared for, as he knew people very well --- but we could never find his original owners. Then it all clicked: he lost his family in the rain … and doesn't like the sound of the shower because he's afraid he'll lose us too. Don't worry, Gabby. We have no plans to leave you. -the Centaur Pictured: Gabby and me, standing in front of my wife's art. Update: well, this isn't really an update, I'm just testing a Facebook integration feature.