girlyunderwear

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uclick/redmeat/~3/dY4zrJpkthk/26

http://www.gocomics.com//redmeat/2012/05/26

I’ve done next to nothing today but eat Subway and watch a documentary on some guy who killed retarded children on Staten Island in the early 80′s. I meant to finish something, but whatever—there’s always tomorrow, well unless I die in my fucking sleep. But even then, I don’t think it’d matter anyway. Oh an I also found this, which makes me laugh uncontrollably. I don’t know why but the stupidest shit makes me laugh now. I’m going mental at age 29. Maybe Andre Rand will come and murder me soon.

I’ve been quiet here as I’ve been slogging through the usual Seasonal Depression, but I did post two essays over at FetLife (TheFacebookforkinksters) that you may be curious about:  “Depression. Fucking. Depression.”, which deals with how depression affects my sex life, and “Ropeweasels,” which deals with the issue of me being tied up. (There’s also “Fireplay and Me,” an oddly poetic musing on setting women aflame, which I don’t think I linked here but maybe I did.)

In addition, my humor essay “So I’m Going To Become A Dom” may be my most popular essay ever, with 612 comments and 965 loves.  I guess it’s all about the specificity.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

Back in The Day, when I had infinite people reading me on LiveJournal, I’d post an entry and the comments exploded.  I’d hit “post,” and five minutes later I’d have fifteen comments.

Now, I make a big ol’ important post and sometimes I don’t get a comment for half an hour.  That used to unnerve me – is this a bad entry? Did I say something wrong? – until I realized what was happening.  English LiveJournal is slowly dying.

What used to happen was that the LJ friends page was like Twitter or Facebook now – so constant a stream of data that you just refreshed your friends’ page and wham, new entries.  Maybe you didn’t check it twenty times a day like I did, but the friends page was a ritual where my latest entry popped up in real time.  I was a part of the info-stream.

As LJ use has declined, though, the traffic patterns have changed for me.  People no longer read my blog as part of a daily pulse; it’s in their RSS feeds, or bookmarked separately, or they wait for me to post the interesting links to Twitter (since I don’t Tweet-spam every post).  I still get roughly the same number of comments, but as opposed to arriving in one explosive comment-dump, they now arrive scattered over the course of two days, like late passengers departing a red-eye connection.  I’m read at their convenience, not the convenience of LJ.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is a little weird.  Some days I post a SRS ENTRY and then wait until I get one comment just to ensure someone’s listening.  By the time I get out of the tub, I have like three comments, which used to be the sign of an entry falling on its face.  Now, I’m patient; the user feedback will arrive in due course.

If you write it, they will come.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dorktower/comic/~3/pp9p4EGxzCo/

http://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=7208

I should probably be asleep right now, but I’ve always had a hard time sleeping since I was a kid. It’s gotten worse the older I’ve become. I can never stop my mind from racing and coming up with more fantastical things that I could possibly be doing. All the things I’d rather be doing than sleeping. I hate sleep, I wish I never had to sleep and could just work on art, play video games or watch all the fantastic videos that youporn has to offer. I don’t try and make myself go to sleep anymore, I just wait for it to come to me at this point and work until I pass out from exhaustion.

So far I’ve managed to color 3 pages of the rest of the Jesus comic which is quite the achievement for me since I loathe using photoshop to alter my images. I don’t know what it is, but when I see all these people who do things (some of which are amazing) I just cringe because I have certain level of disdain for people who need to use photoshop, illustrator or manga studio to create art. I’m not saying that the digital medium isn’t a valid option, I just hate the fact that for so many people it’s become the only way that they can create anything these days. I see these kids coming up on Deviant art and the stuff they’re doing on their computers is amazing, but then when you look at their pencil and ink work it’s putrid. I love drawing comics and feeling the pressure of my pencil tip work into a pad of paper and can’t imagine not doing things the old fashioned way. But I think traditional illustration is becoming a lost art in comics especially.

I hope at some point comics revert back to creating shit with pencils and ink and not using Wacoms and computer programs to mask artists weaknesses. But looking at the racks and racks of utter shit that’s on comic book shelves these days I seriously doubt we’ll ever get another Jack Kirby again and it’s a fucking shame. For people who don’t draw I’d liken it to the auto tune craze that seems to finally be dying out. How many shitty overproduced songs do we have to get in a row before people finally throw up their hands in frustration and just demand that people knock that shit off and demand that motherfuckers learn how to actually sing? It’s the same thing with comics, all these overproduced garbage and digital manipulation is the auto tuning of comics.

I just want people putting pencil to paper and drawing their fucking hearts out until their hands cramp and fingers go numb. I want to see the passion in every pencil line and the frustration in every drop of white out on an illustration board. I want my art to have a fucking soul. I want people to have to figure out if they screw up inking a page, there’s a way to cover it up and fix it without hitting an undo button and not learning from the shit that they’re not good at doing.

I think it’s why I stay away from Marvel and DC books. It’s all hyper manipulated crap that doesn’t tell me anything about the artists soul. There’s no personality in a perfect illustration. There’s no growth in mistake free art. I love that there’s still some people out there who are doing really awesome shit and I think people should support more independent, unmolested artistic endeavors. Check out Jim Rugg’s Street Angel trade paperback, pickup Rob Schrab’s Scud: The Disposable Assassin, marvel at the lines in Jeff Smith’s Bone and wish that you could create something as beautiful as Craig Thompson’s Blankets. For every 100 hunk of shit comic books being churned out there’s always a few books out there that are mind blowing and really make me re-think what I’m doing within my own little nook of comics and it’s not because they’re hiding behind a computer.

"I would just like to state that the law is written in black and white. It should not and cannot be enforced in the gray for those that are in the thin blue line."

The Seasonal Affective Disorder is really fucking with me this year.  I’m on medications, which helps, but not really.

See, the Paxil means that it’s not slamming me for ten days.  I’m feeling okay for a day at a time, and then the SAD slips in and WHAM.  The whole afternoon vanishes because I’m just sitting here crying and breaking down and I don’t know what to do.

With the old SAD, it sucked, but I got used to it.  A constant suck was horrid, but I could adjust, keep working, get everything done.  This is a horror show where I’m okay, I’m okay, then suddenly I’m through the trap door.  And I can’t handle this.

I’m struggling harder now that it’s lessened.  I honestly don’t know what to do.  And I guess maybe that’s not what a blog is for, but I try to chronicle my existence and today I was about to get back to work and then I was all like, “I shouldn’t be trying to sell The Upterlife.  I’m reading Saladin’s book, it’s so much better, I’m an awful writer, no agents are interested anyway and it’s just going to be a long slow haul to the inevitable stop of my talent, yes I lucked out once with the Nebulas but this book isn’t it and it sucks and I should just toss it away and hope the next one is better and oh God why am I bothering it takes so much fucking effort just to get anything halfway decent.”

How can I work like that?  When I’m just assaulted by ghosts?

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

So I’m 30,000 words into a new novel, and this weekend I realized that I have to throw out everything except for the first 600 words.  The last two months of work?  Completely erased.  Hit “Delete” and kiss that effort goodbye.

Normally there’s something to be scavenged from a manuscript collapse, but this is a total implosion.  My protagonist used to be a harried, frightened nerd, prone to punching when cornered; in this new novel she will become a nerd-king, the kind of super-popular high-school kid that has yet to realize that she’s peaking and that things have already begun to slope downwards.  The villain in my old book was a charming, well-meaning rogue; now he’s a sneering killer who’s only masquerading as human.  I’m reducing everything to such rubble that there’s nothing I can retain.

Such an exciting failure.

Failing is a good thing in writing; it means you’re taking risks.  But furthermore, it indicates you’re skilled enough to recognize that you’re writing something flawed.  Which is a sign of growth to be cherished.

A few years back, I would have looked at the scenes I’d written and said, “But those are good scenes!”  And indeed, they are; some of them are touching and beautiful and honest in a way that I’d never been capable of before.  There’s a scene where my protagonist faces down her reclusive, immature father to have to justify her expulsion from school – which was one of the subtlest and truest things I’ve ever written.  There was a lot of good stuff in that 30k, personal high-water marks.

Yet the novel as a whole wasn’t up to snuff, with character largely revealed through interminable interior monologues and backstory instead of action.  The fact that I recognized that was a sign of how far I’d come.  And figuring out how to fix it involved a combination of using every tool I’d developed as a writer and having the boldness to go, “No, this can’t be massaged back into position.”

Now, I’m trying a new technique: I’ve never outlined a novel before.  I’ve only written the scene that comes next, hoping my internal searchlight would find the correct path.  But in outlining, I’m having to use all sorts of techniques stolen from the theater – the three-act structure, internal versus external challenges, ensuring that character is revealed through action, explicitly raising the stakes with every chapter – and that’s a sweaty workout.

I’m learning so many new things that I feel revitalized.  This novel doesn’t feel like a slog any more, but a mountain to be climbed.  It’s tough, but there’s a certain masochistic satisfaction I’m deriving, a brisk slap to the face.

To which I say to you, dear readers, is that there are mundane failures and exciting ones.  The mundane failures you can’t learn from, you just did the same thing all over again.  But the exciting ones are the ones where you can break yourself and then reforge your shattered forearms into adamantium claw-laden superpowers.

What I encourage you to do is to fail big.  Write to the edge of your limits.  And when you realize you can’t pull off this tricky story you’re halfway through, don’t get depressed; take it as a sign that you’re recognizing flaws even if you don’t know how to correct them yet.  Writing’s full of invisible pitfalls where you think it’s brilliant, but your readers are unsatisfied.  Just understanding that something doesn’t work is a major accomplishment, one you should congratulate yourself for.

What’s important is not this story.  It’s your overall skill level.  And a failed story can teach you far more than that easy sale.

Today, I’m taking the first step in spending at least a month outlining my novel chapter by chapter.  Maybe it won’t work.  But I’ll learn, and if this collapses then it’ll be such a glorious failure that I’ll be harvesting new talent from the ruins.  Celebrate with me, people.  Go blast a story of your own.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

If you haven’t been paying attention, my wife Gini has committed herself to a mad project: riding 150 miles in two days to help fight Multiple Sclerosis.  She’s doing this because of her grandfather – read her touching essay on the topic - and because a friend of ours in town, Patti, has MS.

I wish you all could meet Patti, and if you live in Cleveland, you probably have.  Patti’s one of the sunniest, wittiest, cleverest women around, so much so that you occasionally have to remind yourself, “Oh, right, she has a disease that is stripping the motor functions from her body.”  She has good days and bad days, but retains her sense of humor.  Amazon.com once issued me an email that said, “People who liked [GINI JUDD] also liked [PATTI].”

As a way to fight this evil, Patti’s husband Mike has created the “Patti’s Paladins” biking group, which pedals out to a lighthouse once a year in a gruelling display of physical fitness.  Well, it’s not that hard for Mike, who is so fit that they literally had to give him amphetamines before surgery because his resting heart rate is below what a normal human’s heart rate is while sedated.  This, I believe, officially makes Mike a superhero.

Gini, however, was starting from scratch.  She wants to do this.  She’s been getting on her bike every day, pushing herself so hard she trembles the next day, reporting in: “Ten miles.”  “Fifteen miles.”  “Twenty, but I had to take a break.”  She’s up to forty-one miles, a three-and-a-half-hour sweatfest that left her wrecked, but she is determined to make it to the lighthouse.  For Patti.  For herself.  For all other sufferers of MS.

What she needs is sponsors.  Many, many sponsors.  As she says, “10 cents a mile is only $15 out of your pocket for 150 miles of my effort. Of course a dollar a mile would be quite lovely, but any pledge is money going straight to an important and worthy cause.”  So I would strongly request, if you can, to give some cash to my wife, who is straining her healthy legs and lungs and heart for those whose legs and lungs and hearts are slowly deteriorating.

It’s a good cause.  Help her, audience.  You’re her only hope.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dorktower/comic/~3/TaPiXlTYqd8/

http://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=7203

I’m back form Arizona & didn’t get deported! Hooray for me. Now back to the grind of drawing comics. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like I haven’t been very productive the last few months. So I’m gonna try and finish a page a day until I get caught up to where I think I should be—then I’m playing NBA2k12 or Madden for a week.

It’s strange that I’ve been working on new shit non-stop this year but I still feel like I could have done more. I think in terms of comics and maintaining my website I do far more than most of my friends, but I still look at what I’ve done these last few months and see all the shit I could have completed. I just want to pump out more and more awful comics for people to look at. Like the comic I’m doing now is a prequel to the next comic I’m doing but it still doesn’t feel like I’ve pushed myself hard enough to do better work. I always finish shit and look at it with a sort of sour taste in my mouth and wish I could have done better. I don’t know, is that retarded? I just want to keep getting better at shit but I’m never progressing as much as I think I should.

I’m still trying to get my coloring skills up to where I think they should be in this new wacom dominated era of comics, but the vision of where I want to be and the reality of where I am are just so far apart. I look at things like Mike Huddleston’s Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker and can’t ever imagine being able to pull off what he’s doing.

You should all buy that book by the way. It’s up there with Mahfoods “Grrl Scouts”, Schrabs ”Scud: The Disposable Assassin”, or Jim Ruggs ”Street Angel” in terms of influencing my work. I look at that book and it makes me want to get even better at my own stupid comics.

As someone who’s starting to get requests for autographs, I have to admit they puzzle me.  I’m not sure what an autograph is supposed to represent.

I mean, let me tell you that I have the entire Sandman trade paperback series scattered throughout my basement, a series I quite enjoyed.  I was also lucky enough to spend a week in Neil Gaiman’s company at Clarion.  And my friends routinely ask: “Why in God’s name didn’t you have him sign your books?”

I didn’t see a point.  Either I know Neil enough well enough to have him wave “hullo” to me at conventions, or I don’t.  If I know him that well, the signature is superfluous.  And if I don’t, well…

…there’s another author who I also spent a week learning from.  When the workshop was over, so was our relationship.  I’ve seen him/her at conventions at least six times since then, and despite a happy wave s/he has never acknowledged me once.  The single time I attempted to start up a conversation with him/her made it painfully obvious that s/he had bigger fish to fry than me.  Which is fine!  Not every teacher/student relationship needs to end in a happy acquaintanceship.  I paid my money, and got my value; series ended.

But I could have had his/her signature on a book, too.  It would have been a cold, sad thing, a timestamp to say, “We interacted here.”  Yet if that person doesn’t want to interact with me now, then what does that signature prove?  A mere co-location in time and space, coupled with a societal obligation to scrawl their name on a page.  That’s really not that much.

Yet despite the difference in our post-workshop interactions, both Neil and Unnamed Author would be a signature in a book.  And if the autograph is that useless in measuring how I know them, why have it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve asked for autographs myself, mostly as an excuse to make feeble conversation with someone I admired.  That’s something I understand, that need to have some reason to approach your Big Damn Writing Hero.  And it’s certainly a thrill to have a memory that you met someone whose writing helped to shape who you are.  Here’s the evidence that you had thirty seconds in the presence of your hero!  Wonderful.  What a way to stimulate fond reminiscences.  Because good authors will not just sign your books – they’ll look you in the eyes, ask a question, establish a brief connection so that for a moment, you feel like they were aware of your presence and let you take that home with the book and their name in it.

The autographs themselves, however, are just this weird dross.  An afterthought.  I’m always puzzled by people who show off their autographed books proudly, as if the signature was worthwhile in and of itself.  And there are autograph-hounds who patrol conventions, looking to get signature after signature, just plopping the book down in front of you as though this was some onerous task they have to get through.  “Just sign there, don’t make it out to anyone,” they say, thumbing to the right place, valuing your scribbled name over the potential time of interacting with you, then half-turning away before you’re even done.

I don’t get it.  I’m not bashing it – hey, if it makes you happy, it’s two seconds of my time, I can do it all day.  I just don’t get the idea that a signature is worthy in and of itself.  I’m the sort of person who’s of the opinion that an autograph isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on – what matters is the moments you have with people, commemorative or not.

Thinking the ink is more important than the smile just strikes me as being very, very odd.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

Most of my friends’ list has gone justifiably apeshit over author Seanan McGuire.  And why not?  Seanan’s got the list of skills it takes to acquire a maddened fan following: a monstrous and engaging imagination.  A deft hand at devising interesting characters.  And the ability to write so fast she can write three different series simultaneously, so every few months see more Seanany goodness delivered straight to your bookshelf.

But there’s a new kid on the block who, I think, also has what it takes to acquire her own rabid fan following.  Her first book in a much longer urban fantasy series, Nightshifted, has been published today.  If you’re smart, you’ll get in on the ground floor.

That woman is one Cassie Alexander, whose debut novel is available for a mere $7.99.  It’s the kind of book that made my bathtub run cold, as I read in the tub and usually get out before I run out of hot water.  But no, Nightshifted kept my ass in cold water, because I wanted to know what happened next.

The hookiness of Nightshifted is evident just in the description:

Nursing school prepared Edie Spence for a lot of things. Burn victims? No problem. Severed limbs? Piece of cake. Vampires? No way in hell. But as the newest nurse on Y4, the secret ward hidden in the bowels of County Hospital, Edie has her hands full with every paranormal patient you can imagine — from vamps and were-things to zombies and beyond…

What I liked about Nightshifted was that we have an imperfect protagonist.  Edie’s prone to having unsafe sex as a way of burning off steam, is too overprotective of her junkie little brother, and her attention occasionally flags when she’s been working an eighteen-hour shift.  She’s not a superhero but a genuine nurse, her flaws balanced out by a kind compassion that lets her connect with the monsters who have wound up within her ward.  The whole plot revolves around her willingness to do the right thing, even at a cost to her own life and soul – which makes her not super, but an actual goddamned hero.

Even the inevitable romantic triangle feels fresh, mainly because one of the romantic leads is a firefighting zombie, who’s one of the more unique takes on zombies I’ve seen recently.  He’s a sexy zombie who is still clearly dead, which is something you don’t see that often.

The biggest problem I had with Nightshifted, honestly, was that at times it felt too packed with interesting things.  Cassie’s dazzling imagination is on full display here, from debates on the proper tranquilizers to use on shapeshifters to the hinted origins of the shadow-monster puppeteers of Y4, to OH HEY HERE’S ANOTHER THING WE DON’T QUITE HAVE TIME TO GET INTO.  I know that this will all be explored in future series, but there were several moments where I was like, “Wait!  I hardly got to know you, and… Oh, you’re gone.”  Which is a strength, I suppose, since most books don’t even have one concept I want to see explored further, but still.

In any case, this is a book well worth reading, because Cassie’s driven.  She’s writing a book every six months, and if you liked this I happen to know there’s two more coming down the pike.  And today is her book birthday, a very important day to a first-time author… So if you’re interested, I’d buy Nightshifted now and help out someone who’s just starting out her career.

It’ll be worth it.  Cassie’s going places.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

• If you were wondering why all those people were protesting in Chicago, it has to do with, among other things, a deal to remain engaged in Afghanistan until 2024. (Remember?)


• Life Imitates Art, Mitt Romney Foreign Policy Edition


• SpaceX had a successful launch this morning. The capsule is set to rendezvous with the International Space Station Friday. The long flight is, in part, to help NASA and SpaceX conduct tests.


• Why the hell would Australia participate in wars in places like Iraq, where they have no vested interest? The answer is, they do have a vested interest: they need allies. More here. Things like this are a handy exercise to see what motivates US policies, too.


• I should feel worse about the Cubs losing this badly, but I'm still mad at Joe Ricketts over this shit, even if he did repudiate it.

• Believe it or not, Ron Paul's had a real impact in the Republican nomination process by capturing the majority of delegates in recent caucuses. He's not going to be the candidate, but he could push for changes in the GOP platform. Legalizing pot? Ending the wars? Probably not. Austrian economics? End the Fed? Maybe. For another POV, you can do worse than Justin Raimondo.


• Anonymous does more than just release ultimata and take down corporate and government front pages, you know. They also expose child pornography. They also do birthdays.


• More Birther silliness here. It's one thing to question the consensus. It's another to secede from reality altogether and form a brand new party line.


• "We will not do as we are told. Instead, we will do what is just." Thus sayeth the Catholic League. And these brave, bold words would be admirable, if what they wanted wasn't to deny women basic reproductive health care. Meanwhile, the RCC's bishops are investigating the girl scouts. All in the name of enforcing a male-defined model of womanhood. My advice on the matter: forget it, boys, the clock stops for no one.


• I need to post this more often on FaceBook.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dorktower/comic/~3/8h9WECDvzlE/

http://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=7200

Whenever I saw the Oscar losers saying “It’s an honor to be nominated,” I always envisioned gritted teeth and gut-roiling fury.  I mean, you just had your chance at the brass ring, and you came that close!  How could you be cheerful?

Yet I was grinning like a damn fool when I lost to Geoff Ryman.  As were all the other losers I talked to.  We had our pins, and our certificates, and our name immortalized in history, and the experience of being catapulted onto a much larger stage.

Who the hell could be upset?  There’s now one word that’s guaranteed to be in our obituary, and that word is “Nebula.”  We’ve made it.

It’s cool.

And it’s a weird bond; I spent the weekend hanging with my fellow nominees Jake Kerr, Rachel Swirsky, Katherine Sparrow, and Geoff Ryman – and there wasn’t an ounce of competition in there. It felt like an odd sort of club, one that contained only six people in the whole world, a once-in-a-lifetime bond: 2012 Novelette Nebula Nominee.  No one else will ever know what this is like.  We did lunch, we chatted in bars, we appeared on panels, we discussed our chances, and not once was there a bit of snark or anger.

(I met other nominee Charlie Jane Anders briefly after the ceremony, who seemed absolutely wonderful, but alas we got no time to hang and chill.  I hope to rectify this at a future event.)

I felt blessed to be in the company of such beautiful people.  I’d have been happy for any of them to have won.  And the man I was rooting the most for, my wonderful and compassionate
Clarion teacher Geoff Ryman, who had me sobbing on the airplane on the way to Clarion because his book Was is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever read?  Well, he won.  And when he walked back to his seat, I leapt out of mine to shake his hand and grin and pump the fist for him.  Because if there’s a man who possesses a cool grace and an ability to write straight to the vulnerable centers of the heart, it’s Geoff.

The weekend itself was a helter-skelter of events, and I’ll probably be posting anecdotes for the rest of the week, but here’s the ones I remember in a sleepy Monday muddle.

This Is The Panel That Never Ends…. It Just Goes On And On, My Friends….
Yes, there’s the irony of a panel on pacing going forty minutes overtime.  But there was no panel following us – and when you have such a fascinating topic as “How to get the rhythm of a story right,” and such fascinating panelists as Tom Crosshill, Rachel Swirsky, and Nancy Fulda (Nebula nominees all!), moderated by the vivacious radio host and Big Damn Author Ellen Kushner, you get a ton of feedback.

This panel was so good the audience didn’t leave.  It was like Writing 301, a bunch of advanced techniques we all used to figure out how to get the pacing of a story right – and our approaches were all so different, there was a lot of varying discussion as to how to nail it.  So we talked, and talked, and when at 2:15 we finally called the panel to a halt, half the audience walked up and kept the ball rolling.  Rachel Swirsky had to leave, but thankfully noted childrens’ author R.J. Anderson took her place, and next thing you know we had a long discussion on how to handle critiques.

It was really amazing.  My friend Ruby took a video of the “official” panel on her smartphone, and I hope it’s usable.  I’d love for you to see it.

Meet My Signing Buddy, Franny
The author signing was a first for me, since as an author of short stories I’ve never had anything I could expect anyone to sign.  You can buy books in the dealers’ room…. but if you want me to sign your copy of Asimov’s, you need to remember to bring it with you.  And frankly, I’m not that big.

But thankfully, Nancy Fulda created a Nebula Awards Weekend book with one of my stories in it, and so people could buy a book to sign.  So I sat at a small table.

Next to me was someone I didn’t know, so we introduced ourselves, and it was a woman called Franny Billingsley – who was remarkably fun to talk to!  She was a children’s author but it was her first sci-fi con, so I explained what this “Clarion workshop” was and she told me about what YA conventions were like, and it was a remarkably warm way of passing the time.

Even better, since I knew more people here, when they came to see me, I could go, “And do you know Franny?” and then all of us got into a discussion together.  So by the time I went to wander the floor and get my book signed, I left a merry discussion of writers.

Which was oddly convivial.  For now and forevermore, Franny will be my book-signing buddy, the two of us at the table as readers sporadically came up, book in hand, to ask for signatures.

And only later did I discover that Franny was so modest she didn’t even note that she was up, you know, for the National Book Award.

What a wonderful person.

The Night Before
There was a Nebula nominees reception the night before, where we were to be honored.  I didn’t quite know what that meant, but hey!  This would only happen once.  So I went.

What they didn’t tell us (which was a shame, because several of the nominees – including Charlie Jane – had wandered off) was that the reception was where John Scalzi would present you with your official Nebula nominee certificate and your pin, and then you’d be taken off for photos.

That’s when it became real.

Up until then, a part of my mind had been going, “Oh, no, this will be a mistake, they’ll probably take it away from you.”  But as I walked up to the podium and Scalzi handed me the blue folder with the silver stars, I opened it up and saw my name.  This was no dream.  This was my life, my blessed life.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

The Night Of
So for the Nebulas, I had to dress up.  And my lovely wife Gini helped me into my monkey suit:

Note the Nebula pin – which is a lot thinner and more losable than I’d have thought – and my Star Wars tie.  I kept telling people all evening that it was my TIE fighter.

Nobody laughed.

My wife, however, looked fucking stellar.  She kept joking that her job at the Nebulas was to be my arm candy, and oh boy was she:

When I got there, I was happily surprised to see Neil Gaiman, who was a last-minute addition.  And Neil, who’d been with me during my reformatary stages at Clarion, drew me into a warm hug that went on for longer than I thought and said, “Bubbeleh!”  He’s surprisingly, endearingly, proud of me.

When he said “Bubbeleh,” it felt like I was being welcomed to the next level.  That all of this hard work I’ve put into writing – the hours wandering in the garden figuring out the next scene, the endless rejections, the workshops and cons I travelled to – had finally paid off.  And that was a lovely thing to see.

Some pros told me, serenely, “You’ll be back.”  I don’t share their confidence.  For me, I struck lightning once.  But the fact that I made it once is enough, and that won’t stop me.  Because you know what real writing fucking is?

Jon Walter Williams held a three-hour intensive lecture on plotting and structure.  And when I looked around the room of twenty people, at least four of us had been nominated for a Nebula.  Here we were, being given one of the biggest honors in the field… and all of us had said, “No, there’s so much more work to do.”

That’s how you get to a Nebula.  I got here.  You can, too.  Because Neil told me, “You just need to write.”  And that’s what I did.

Now you.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uclick/redmeat/~3/Gy5Sdn6Bsm8/19

http://www.gocomics.com//redmeat/2012/05/19

THREE and a half years ago, on my 62nd birthday, doctors discovered a mass on my pancreas. It turned out to be Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. I was told I would be dead in four to six months. Today I am in that rare coterie of people who have survived this long with the disease. But I did not foresee that after having dedicated myself for 40 years to a life of the law, including more than two decades as a New York State judge, my quest for ameliorative and palliative care would lead me to marijuana.

• Judge halts indefinite detention of Americans on, among other things, First and Fifth Amendment grounds. The judge also rejected the stupid argument that enjoining this law would put an unconstitutional barrier on the President's absolute power.


• Minority births now outpace white births. Cue hysteria in three, two...


• Oh look, Israel is the hot issue in Egypt's Presidential election. Do note: the secular left that led the revolution doesn't like the occupation tactics of Israel any more than the Islamic parties do.


• Today's word is "Grexit," meaning, the quick abandonment of the Euro by Greece. More on this here. Yes, this will hurt the US economy, it will cause the stock market to dive, and it could determine the election. Let's see if Mittens really has solutions here.


• In the 80s, it was fighting for your right to party. In this decade, it's fighting for your right to locally produced pork, like this guy did. One has slightly more merit than the other.

All comments are, as usual, screened.  But let's do this, again, to entertain me on the road:

Tell me a secret.  Something you've been wanting to tell me, something you've been wanting to get off your chest, something you need to tell someone.  If you want me to respond to you personally, let me know and I will; otherwise, it will remain something between you and me.

So I’ll be leaving for the Nebulas today, and as such will be driving for eight hours in what is sure to be a cataclysmally boring car ride.  So I’ll comment-whore and ask y’all some questions to stir discussion:

This first one’s courtesy of fellow nominee Rachel Swirsky, who asked:

What illegal thing would you do if you could get away with it? (No violent crimes, please.  That’s icky.)

I like that one, because it encourages you to both get creative, and the “no violence” means that no idiot is caught making threats on the Internet.  Though I suspect the answers will be a depressing “I KIN SMOKES DRUGS.”  Which, you know, granted, but not exactly with the fun-making discussionwise.

Likewise, this second one’s courtesy of fellow nominee me, who asks:

If you could demand I do any one thing for myself, what would you have me do? 

The reason I say “for myself” is otherwise I’ll be spammed with a zillion “You should totally read my book/plug my CD/dance for my amusement!” comments, which aren’t nearly as interesting as you think.  But I’d be curious to see what, given the knowledge you have of me through my writings, what sorts of things you think I should do to make my life better.  Or worse.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dorktower/comic/~3/Y8SR43crA5c/

http://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=7183

FIRST OFF: Point of business. I’ll be at MAKER FAIRE, Bay Area, this Saturday and Sunday, with the Geek Dad crew! Seek me out! I am VERY excited about this one. I may be starting to become a bit of a convention recluse, but I had so much fun at Maker Faire, last year, I can’t wait to get back!

****

SECOND POINT OF BUSINESS: Between that, a small family vacation, and the Memorial Day holiday (May 28, for those of you not living in the US), Dork Tower will be udpated Tuesday-Thursday through the end of May. My apologies, but it was either that, or run repeats, which I really don’t want to do.

It will go back to Monday-Wednesday-Friday as soon as possible. Most likely the first week of July.

****

ANYHOO, main thing:

OK, so last week I did this. The conceit being, this is how I now see every single “Keep Calm” poster – parody or otherwise:

And some folks asked for a version they could print out.

SO…here you go: First off, a PDF version of it, as an 8.5 x 11″ poster:

And now: First off, a high-res JPG version of it, as an 8.5 x 11″ poster:

Have fun! I hope they work, and if they don’t, Keep Calm and Blah Blah Blah…

John

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dorktower/comic/~3/Y5G3vTF4ae4/

http://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=7180

• Antiwar.com needs your help to stay open!


• The new Imperial Groupthink in Washington is that ending indefinite detention without a trial would reward terrorists. How, exactly? If they're terrorists, can't you just, you know, put them on trial?


• The new third rail in Oregon politics is apparently the state's medical marijuana law. Ellen Rosenblum ran on her opponent's anti-medical marijuana actions as US Attorney, and crushed him nearly two to one. The Democratic Party might want to pay attention to this. Oregon is in the bag for Obama in 2012, but popular sentiment favoring medical marijuana is spreading in blue states and prohibitionist attitudes are on the decline. Eventually they're going to have to join the cause, similarly to the present shift on gay marriage. (Spoiler: I never smoked pot before and I don't smoke pot now, but my family history indicates that I might have very good reasons to start using medical marijuana in the future.)


• Deb Fischer scored a surprise win in the Nebraska Republican Primary for Ben Nelson's Senate seat, mostly on the strength of the Tea Party. Which makes me wonder whether they were aware of how much she benefits from Federal subsidies. Her opponent, former Senator Bob Kerrey, has an uphill battle. As of two months ago, he was losing to her by ten points according to PPP. On the bright side, he's got a boatload of money.


• Via a friend of mine, the Remote Control Flying Fuck. No, I do not have one. By implication, I cannot give one.

My Uncle Tommy’s blood didn’t clot very well, a disease known as hemophilia, so blood pooled up in his joints.  It ate away his cartilage.  Near the end of his life, when he moved his elbow, you could hear the bones rubbing against each other whisper-thin, like two dry crackers ground together.

So he walked slow.

So I walked slow.

To this day, Gini tells me I amble glacially – because I’m used to quietly keeping Tommy’s pace, not wanting to upset him.  Oh, I could have jogged on ahead; not that Tommy would have been devastated, as I was basically his son and he would have forgiven me the world.

But he had enough reminders that he was broken and frail.  He didn’t need another one from me.  So I crept at his pace, which only got slower as the years went by, and we passed the time as two humans.

This is what you do when you have a friend who’s disabled.

Let’s be blatantly honest and say that having disabled friends is often an inconvenience verging on annoyance.  They can’t get up stairs.  They cancel at the last minute because of unpredictable sicknesses.  There’s more planning to be find the right restaurant because of their diet.

If you think it’s an inconvenience to you, imagine how it feels to them.

Every day, the world wakes up and punches your pals in the fucking face, telling them “Hey, you know all those things you want to do?  You can’t.”

You can choose to be one of those blows.  Or you can be understanding and loving and help them to live a better life.

It’s that fucking simple.

They live in a smaller world because of something they don’t have control over.  I think a good friend will take that into account, and tread that fine line between “Yes, it’s an inconvenience and you may not always be able to come along” with a lot of love and understanding and bold attempts to make room for your friend because yes, they have a condition and it deserves to be accommodated whenever possible.

Because when you are that sick, you notice the way people cancel plans with you.  The way they quietly stop inviting you to parties.  The way you don’t defend them when other, healthier people, complain that they shouldn’t have to deal with your issues.

They’re sick, not stupid, and they feel their excision from your life as keenly as a cut.  One more cut in a life filled with them.

I’m not saying I was saccharine-sweet to Tommy.  I acknowledged the difficulty of his disabledness from time to time, because we were loving humans and that means being honest.  But I never made a big deal about the way we had to get to concerts half an hour early so he could get to his seat, or how we had to stay an hour late because the crowds might bump him too hard.

Instead, I used that extra time to talk to him, companionably walking at his cane-pace, as friends.  He must have noticed that his hyperactive teenaged nephew was walking slow.

But for a time, he had the ability to live his life as though nothing was wrong with him. And that was the greatest gift I could give him.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

Today I’m heading out to Arizona for a wedding. I have no desire to

A. go to Arizona because of the heat and the possibility of being stoned by primitive Mexican hating residents of the state. I hope all this money I’ve put towards skin bleaching will thwart the attempts of deportation I may soon face.

B. I hate going to weddings and if it were up to me I wouldn’t even attend my own nuptials in October when I get married.

So if you have Instagram you can follow me while I’m gone to see all of the wonderful rocks and red clay dirt that I’ll be sure to snap pictures of while I’m out there. Just look for Allstarkrew or Noir Amador and you’ll more than likely find me–or if you’re lucky someone with more talent.

Tomorrow the new La Musica Romantica will be up—unless you’re clever and click here and download it today. Then tomorrow the playlist will be posted.

007

So I put together number 007 in my Podcast/mixtape thing I’ve been doing. This one is a bit different in that it’s more hard rock influenced than the usually dancey shit that I throw together. I’ve just been listening to more rock lately and to be honest my musical taste is all over the spectrum in a way I can listen to Country shit and go to Metal then to Rap and then to Frank Sinatra without a problem. So this one here is should mos def have you rocking out with your cock out.

1. “Dues Culpa” Ghost

2. “Raised By Wolves” Falling In Reverse

3. “Dear Father” Defeater

4. “Division St.” Thursday

5. “Walk” Pantera 

6. “Curl of the Burl” Mastodon

7. “Stand By Him” Ghost

8. “Caves” Chiodos

9. “A Boy Brushed Red Living in Black and White” Underoath

10. “Doomsday” Atreyu

11. “Unretrofied” The Dillinger Escape Plan

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So here’s the last two pages of the book Ben Smash! that I made for Free Comic Book Day. The whole book was just a fun non-sensical thing that I put out with very little thought (or effort) put into story. That last two pages were drawn by my good friend Corey Bernhardt, because I wanted the jump from my comic art to a more realistic version of the store owner Ben. I think it came out really well and it makes me happy that I could get a few of my friends to do things in the book to hopefully get their stuff out there to the 5 people that check out this blog. I got Corey to draw the last two pages, my friend Nu has his pudgy face in the bottom corner of page 14 saying “Toasty” and my friend Junior Bruce did a pin up for the books back cover.

If you’re in the Sacramento area you can stop by Empires Comic Vault at: 1120 Fulton Avenue, Sacramento, CA  (916) 482-8779

There’s also really good suprises in the display box for people who grab the book for free. There’s 5 Super Limited Sketch Editions, 5 Limited edition prints of the box art I did & Bens werewolf head stickers tucked inside every book.

If you aren’t in the area and really want a copy let me know and I can throw some up on Etsy for a buck (to cover the postage and the fact that Esty and Paypal will take around 50 cents of each sale.)

Other than that, I’ve been really getting away from the grind of the blog and doing a lot of comic work because I’m just burnt out. I needed time to regain my sanity and for my hand to stop shaking when I go to ink a page. But I think I’m good now…so I’m hoping to be able to get shit up on here more often. Well after this weekend because I’m heading to Arizona for the weekend. I may be deported though because I hear they hate Mexicans there.

• The latest attempt to scam us into war with Iran.


• "A number of women have come forward to say they were discharged for 'personality disorders,' – which means no healthcare, no disability benefits — after they filed sexual assault charges with the chain of command against fellow servicemen." -- From this.


• Attempts to form a new government in Greece have failed, which means they will hold new elections. Yup.


• Yet another reason to get the hell out of Mississippi here


• More on our first really gay President - who was, most assuredly, James Buchanan - here. Lots of money quotes in this one, especially concerning the myth of America as the land of eternal progress. If it was, then what are we to make of men like Anthony Comstock? What Comstocks, both of the left and of the right, now lurk to hurl us back into the dark ages again?