The latest issue of Crossed Genres went live this evening. It is an LGBTQ special. It includes an article by me and an interview with Kate Bornstein.
Personal
Sorry, are they English?
I am occasionally asked why I describe the place where I live as “Darkest Somerset”. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that the place is practically invisible to the rest of the country, especially the media. They don’t quite know that it is here.
How do I know that? Well, Sky has made a big fuss about their coverage of the Twenty20 Champions’ League. All three games so far have been shown in full. Today an English team finally takes center stage. But it is Somerset, so Sky is not bothering to show the game.
Of course there is a full program of international soccer and Heineken Cup rugby to worry about. I wouldn’t expect cricket to supplant that. But Sky has four sports channels. Somerset’s match against the IPL champion Deccan Chargers is apparently of less importance than a minor European golf tournament and a netball match between England and Malawi.
I’m actually quite pleased for the netball team, because UK sports broadcasters are notoriously sexist. But this should give you a very clear idea of how little notice folks in London take of my part of the country.
Fortunately Sky appears to have allowed Eurosport to show the game, so I may be able to watch some of it.
Hooray for September
It goes like this: because I spent a couple of weeks in North America around Worldcon I got hopelessly in a hole with paid work and have had to spend much of the past two weeks getting that done to meet end-of-August deadlines. But because I did that I got hopelessly in a hole with all of the post-Worldcon stuff. Now it is September, August deadlines are done with, and I can start digging my way out of hole #2.
I just hope that doesn’t involve the creation of hole #3.
Today is actually quite busy. There’s a new Clarkesworld due out, I have Open Alliance Pride Day to do (more on that later) and month end invoicing and backups. However, Damien Walter has saved me one panic because he has postponed Support Our Zines Day until October. Thank you, Damien, and good luck with the event.
A Good Day Out
I spent much of today in Bristol. We had a useful visit to the BristolCon site, which I may say more about once I have done some necessary writing. I also got to buy books. Sadly O2’s internet access was down most of the day, so there was very little twitterage. Book covers will be tweeted later.
But first, I have a Mind Meld to write, and books to talk about, and a convention review to finish.
On the Subject of Photos
I think this one is rather better. It was taken by Eugene Byrne at Kim Newman’s birthday party earlier this year. It shows Cheryl in her native habitat of Darkest Somerset engaged in stereotypical Cheryl behavior – tweeting. (It also shows my speccy New York jacket, purchased on 42nd Street, no less.)
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No Miracles Here
I suppose it is possible that a photograph taken by a top-flight professional can make you look stunningly gorgeous when you are not, but if so he’ll probably need plenty of time and the help of a good makeup artist. Kyle Cassidy’s fan photo shoot at Worldcon had neither. Kyle was getting through people very quickly because he had a lot of customers. So the end result is that I still look fat and craggy, because I am overweight and old. But at least I was wearing my speccy Camden market dress, which hopefully helps a bit.
Photo under the fold, and the full set (including some much more attractive people) on Flickr.
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I Can Haz Hugo?
Apparently so. This, as best I can remember it, is what I said on stage.
My thanks first of all to my friend Neil Gaiman because I forgot to thank him last time I won one of these, even though he was standing next to me on the stage.
Thanks also to Dave Langford for being such a charming and honorable opponent all these years. I am so glad to have beaten him at last.
Special thanks to my dear friend Kevin Standlee, without whose love and support I would probably not be alive today, let alone winning a Hugo.
And finally thank you to John Scalzi for not being in the contest this year. There is no way I would have beaten him. I would like to echo something he said in Denver: next year, give this to someone else. I love winning these things, but my plan for next year is to win one with Clarkesworld.
What I forgot to say, and am now kicking myself over, is:
Merci bien, tout le monde.
Showing Weakness
I don’t know, 11:00pm and I’m thinking of packing it in for the day. And I’m only just producing this sorry excuse for a blog entry. Whatever is the world coming to?
Still, today has been productive in that I’ve done lots of work on the paying job, and on the current sekrit projekt. Also ConReporter now has 25 people offering their reports from Worldcon, with another 3 promised. I think we’ll be providing some pretty comprehensive coverage between us. I now need to try to do a bit of software work to make it easier to use.
But right now I am going to read Kari’s Living with Ghosts, which I am starting to find addictive. G’night.
Work in Progress
You may guess from the number of books listed in the “Currently Reading” section on the sidebar that I owe you a few book reviews (or at least opinions – I don’t write proper reviews much these days). You would be absolutely right. I also you a pile of material about Finncon and the Diana Wynne Jones conference. This is all in progress. I also have a lot of other web- and convention-related projects in progress, and after such much time away I have a lot of paid work to catch up on. I know this is a dreadful excuse. I will get you your reading material (and photos and video) as soon as I can.
Charles Brown, R.I.P.
Today I made my way back to Darkest Somerset from Finncon. I kept up with Twitter a lot of the way, but it is hard to maintain a connection on a moving train, and while I was traveling south from Bristol the news broke that Charles N Brown, co-founder, editor and publisher of Locus, had died. Charles had been on his way home from Readercon.
It is impossible to have been involved in science fiction over the past few decades without getting to know Charles. He has won an enormous number of Hugo Awards, and his magazine has been the journal of record for the community for longer than I have been reading it. When I first started Emerald City I hoped that one day I might write reviews as well as Locus‘s star reviewer, Gary K Wolfe. I never dreamed that one day I would meet Gary, or Charles, let alone be invited to their homes, and to write for Locus myself. However, one thing that I learned very quickly is that if you established any sort of presence in the field then Charles would find you, because the science fiction community was his life and he made it his business to know what went on in it. If you had something interesting to say about books, Charles made it his business to seek you out and talk to you.
Why did he do this? Why do any of us do what we do for science fiction? Why have I traveled to conventions in Ireland, France, New Zealand, Australia and Finland already this year? We do these things because we love science fiction, because we want other people to love science fiction, and we want to encourage talented young people who are taking an interest in the genre.
Charles did this for a lot of people. He tirelessly promoted writers through Locus, he attended many conventions, and he sought out critics who were starting to make a name for themselves such as Graham Sleight, Karen Burnham and myself. Charles and I didn’t always agree about books, but we could always guarantee a good conversation about them. He bought me dinner far more often than I returned the favor, at least in part so that we could have those conversations.
I’m delighted to see from the official announcement at Locus Online that the magazine will continue to be published. Liza and her team have a huge task ahead of them. I have no doubt that they will continue to produce a great magazine. Reproducing the enthusiasm that Charles had for the field will be somewhat more challenging. He devoted his life to his favorite literature. Had anyone asked him how he wanted to go, I suspect that he might have said that he’d like to die quietly, in his sleep, on his way home from a very successful convention. Having seen various people’s reports from Readercon, I am sure that Charles will have come away thinking that the community he loved was doing very well, and continuing to produce great fiction. I will miss him very much, and I’m sure he had a whole lot of unfulfilled plans, but I think also he will have died happy with a sense of a job well done. It is certainly something he deserved.
Is It That Time Already?
It appears I am being a bad blogger. It is almost midnight here in Merrie Olde Englande and I haven’t done a post all day. This is only partly because I have been watching rugby. I have also been doing web site work, and having conference calls. There’s nothing much I can tell you about that except that the World Fantasy Convention and Clarkesworld are moving forward. The fruits of my labors will be made public in due course. In the meantime my apologies for the lack of entertainment.
Friends In Need
Very few writers make enough from their craft to support themselves, let alone a family, and in these difficult economic times the support systems that they rely on to keep them going can fall away. But, being creative folks, they often come up with good ideas to keep the cash coming in. Cat Valente is one of my favorite authors, and she’s just come up with a new project. I’m sure it will be worth reading, and I hope that some of the people who read it will want to help pay for it. More details here.
Meanwhile my good friend Jay Lake is having a difficult time with a another unpleasant enemy: cancer. Jay is a fabulous writer, and I’m looking forward to seeing many more books from him in the future. What he needs most right now is our friendship, and the knowledge that many, many people out there are wanting him to pull through. Spare a thought for him, please.
Heading North
I’ll be heading out to the airport shortly and will be on planes and trains for the next day or so. Don’t expect anything from me until Thursday evening, UK time (Thursday morning US time). I’ll tweet when I can.
The trip has been great fun. It has, of course, been a financial disaster, but I hope I’ve managed to avoid wingeing too much about that. The last few weeks have also been very bruising psychologically, often for things not connected with the trip. And of course this amount of traveling is very tiring. However, I have got to meet, or re-connect with, a whole bunch of wonderful people, attended two good cons, and see a lot of two very beautiful countries. I have eaten too much good food, and got a fabulous new coat at a bargain price. I also, very unexpectedly, got to laugh at Australians about cricket. I can’t ask for more than that.
Hopefully the information I have been gathering about travel down here has proved useful, and will encourage more people to make the trip next year. There is a lot more to come, and it will appear slowly over the next week or so as I get time to write/edit/post it all. If you do find it useful, please link to it. There are lots of fans who don’t read my blog and who have no idea I’m doing this.
I’d like to give special thanks to Carolyn & Tasha, and Daniel & Kelly, for being so kind to me in NZ; to Terry, Sally & Alan and Medge & Bean for making me welcome in Melbourne & Adelaide respectively; to Donna, Russell and Julie & Roger for being great company at both conventions; and to both convention committees. Also a huge thanks to Hilton who gave me free upgrades for all four stays I had with them.
And now, it is time to finish packing and check out. After that: Sydney, Singapore, London.
Auckland – Day 4
I spent yesterday looking around Auckland harbor with a friend. It was a bit cold due to the wind, but clear and bright and absolutely beautiful. Hopefully I have lots of good photos, but it was kind of difficult to keep the camera steady in the wind.
Finding a decent Internet connection continues to prove difficult. We tried a few free wi-fi places yesterday, but they all proved to have really poor connections that would not allow me to download the ton of email I have piled up on the server. My apologies if I am not answering something important.
This afternoon I am off to Wellington where I will hopefully get to see Kelly & Daniel. However, leaving Auckland is going to be a wrench because my friends here have three young kittens who are absolutely adorable. They are tiny bundles of fluff, but also very energetic and determined to master the arts of killing sofas, swinging from curtains and climbing trees (or in the absence of trees, people’s legs). I have some video, but that will need editing and uploading so in the meantime you’ll have to make do with this picture taken from my iPhone. That’s Polly telling me that under no circumstances am I allowed to move from the sofa without her permission.
Oh, and the cats are all very keen to learn typing. I’m sure they will be on Twitter soon. They grow up so fast.
Not Dead
Urk, I’ve just realized that I haven’t posted anything here all day, and it is almost midnight in the UK already.
OK, so I have been busy doing other things. Today I’ve been editing an article for the next Clarkesworld, and doing the real world job, and helping run the Hugo Award logo contest, and working on plans for Internet coverage of Worldcon, and helping a UK event find some SF authors for a panel. There have also been several SF Awards Watch stories today. This one was particularly pleasing.
Sooner or later I hope to write something about this year’s IPL. It is a measure of how busy I am that I haven’t been blogging each Royals game the way I did last year.
But I do have one piece of actual content, so I guess I should get on and post it.
Home from Home
So, here I am somewhere else in the world. Still in the UK, but elsewhere. A rather interesting elsewhere. Because for the next few weeks I shall be living in Heather Shaw.
Tim, calm down please. I did not say I would be living inside your wife. I shall be living in a street named after her, that’s all. I’m willing to bet that she didn’t know there’s a street named after her in Wiltshire, but there is. I shall photograph the street sign tomorrow to prove it.
There’s not much to add to that, save to say how happy I am to be once again in a house that is festooned with bookcases. And there’s a cat too. Very civilized.
Update: The photographic proof is now on Twitpic.
Hermit Crabs R Us
I’m moving home today. Temporarily, again, of course. One of the times when not having a home of your own really hits home is when you are trying to pack everything you’ll need for the next couple of months into two suitcases and a rucksack. Of course it doesn’t help that I’ll be doing a lot of traveling in that period, and I need clothes for places than will be both much warmer and much colder than the UK. But that’s my own fault.
Anyway, I shall be out of Darkest Somerset for a while, and hopefully I’ll be able to do something about trying to sort my life out. I’m closing down the office now, and will be offline except for Twitter until this evening.
May Day, May Day
Pagan Festival, international day of workers’ solidarity, distress call – the first of May means many things to many people. And consequently it gets picked for other things as well.
Overnight some folks in New Zealand were writing for Blog Against Disablism Day – an effort to get folks to treat disabled (or handicapped) people with more respect. I have a lot of sympathy here. Disabled people face many of the same issues that trans people do – that is they have been defined by society as being somehow medically inferior to the rest of humanity. As a consequence they get condescended to a lot. It can’t be much fun.
Elsewhere May 1st has been declared Buy Indie Day – a day on which you are supposed to buy a book from an independent book store. Which reminds me that I still need to look into the Indie Bound affiliate scheme.
Book Nerds Fight Malaria
Over the weekend one of the more constructive uses of Twitter was to scare up donations for the Madness Against Malaria charity. This is an online contest for teams to see how much they can raise. The team I’m rooting for is the Twitter Tornadoes, which includes the very wonderful Juliet Ulman, editor extraordinaire and all round wonderful person.
The contest is basically a knock-out. In each round you need to raise more money than the opposing team to progress. Juliet’s team has won 2 rounds so far, and is in the last 16. More sponsors are needed to make it through to the quarter-finals.
Colleen Lindsay explains moree of the process here (post written prior to the end of Round 2), and you can see the contest web site here.
I do have one small complaint – the stupid web site would not let me pay in US$ because it detected that I was logging on from the UK. As most of my income is in US$ I’d prefer not to have to pay two lots of exchange fees just to make a donation. So I have been waiting until I can bug Kevin to make a payment for me. Having done this post, I shall go and do so. Hopefully some of you will contribute too.
Process, Process
The trouble with spending time away is that I get hopelessly behind on everything else. I think I’m now up to date on the really urgent stuff, so I can head out to the London Book Fair again. Profuse apologies if anyone is waiting for something from me and I haven’t done it yet.