November 23, 2008
November 11, 2008
November 9, 2008
Quandary
(NOTE: My faithful PowerBook has been in the shop all week for a RAM upgrade and a bigger hard drive, and since that’s where my incredibly temperamental and precariously calibrated scanning software resides, I can’t typecast until I get it back. Poor thing doesn’t even know that Obama is president. It’s gonna be so happy.)
So for the past five years, I’ve been very casually writing a novel that’s set in the 1950s and is an homage to flying saucers, pulp sci-fi, and duck-and-cover paranoia.
So when she was in town to promote Balticon this summer, my favorite science fiction writer, Connie Willis, told the audience that she’s working on her next novel, which will be set in the 1950s and is an homage to flying saucers and duck-and-cover paranoia.
So yesterday at the Baltimore Writers’ Conference, Larry Doyle told the audience that his next novel will be set in a parallel universe in which everything is an homage to the 1950s and pulp sci-fi.
So should I:
1) Try to hurry up and finish my novel so that reviewers can say I’m just another hack who’s trying to hitch a ride on the bandwagon?
2) Let the novel come out in due course so that reviewers can say I’m just another hack who missed the bandwagon?
Go.
November 8, 2008
Live-Blogging BWC
4:10: Wrapping up for the day. The last session has begun, and they took the coffee out of the room at lunch so there’s not much left to do. So, signing off!
2:25: Lunch was great, we had fun chatting with a couple of conference attendees. I was struck by how universal the experiences of writers are, no matter the age or background. Much nodding of heads and sympathy.
12:06: First chance to type all morning. Very busy! Lots of signups, one new membership, and Gary scored a big order of anthologies for the Towson bookstore! Can’t check e-mail for whatever reason. Nice crowd, lots of conversations. Larry Doyle was a funny keynoter.
More soon…
November 5, 2008
Go (O)Bama! Roll Tide!
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Right now I am still bleary-eyed from staying up to absorb every last drop. Every moment of the advancing electoral map throughout the evening. Every sweeping shot of the cheering crowd in Grant Park. When President-Elect Obama (Lord, how I love the sound of that) stood at the podium and summoned history in service of the future, suddenly, somehow, he was not alone on that stage anymore.
We didn’t want to go to bed. And even after we finally did go, Mrs. Sotto Voce and I kept breaking out into spontaneous giggles for a long, long time.
There’s going to be a lot of talk about last night’s two speeches. While President-Elect Obama’s was one for the history books, I found Senator McCain’s farewell address to the troops to be every inch the gracious and classy exit that I had hoped the old lion would make.
But as Sen. McCain left the stage and disappeared behind history’s curtain, the music that accompanied him off sent a message — and a quite surprising one — all its own.
Music, you ask? What music?