So, it’s been a fun 15 hours. It’s late spring (basically but not officially summer) in Baltimore, and while I am generally a fan of fuzzy animals, as befits my role as a singing-and-dancing bouncy optimistic Male Disney Princess, being a magnet to fuzzy creatures presents a problem when one doesn’t actually have the ability to control them.
And so, I give you THE CHRIPENING, a story of birds, horror, and sleep deprivation.
This latest death of a black person as a result of interaction with the police has caused always-simmering tensions in Baltimore to boil over once more. There have been protests, and in the last two days, more extreme situations have occurred, largely separate from the organized protests.
Baltimore has had problems with police misconduct for years, and Baltimoreans are very aware of the tensions and dangers this history engenders to black Baltimoreans.
Are You Okay?
Meg and I are fine: we live literally across from an elementary school in a largely residential partially-gentrified neighborhood.
What To Read
I’m not a reporter, and I haven’t been on the ground in these protests, but here are some pertinent links I think may be useful for getting a sense of what’s really happening in Baltimore and why. First off, know that numerically, the vast majority of the activity has been peaceful protest, and several protestor groups and individuals have put themselves between opportunistic agitators/looters and their targets. If all you’re seeing is video of looting and fighting, adjust your inputs. And remember how you thought about and framed video of uprisings in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere in the world.
Here are some links to give context and food for thought:
Kate Briquelet on disparate groups allying to protest police violence.
This awesome dude in a Punisher shirt de-escalating.
Baltimore Sun expose on police brutality in Baltimore (from 2014)
Orioles COO on the cancelled game.
Baltimore-born Ta-Nehisi Coates on Nonviolence as Compliance.
Helena Hicks talking about Institutional Neglect in Freddie Gray’s neighborhood.
Tyler Reinhard on riot-shaming.
Link roundup and resources at Baltimore Uprising.org
10 images and videos from Baltimore from outside the dominant media narrative.
Where to Watch
Twitter is my best source of what’s happening. To start, follow @Shaun King, @Nettaaaaaaaa, @Deray.
Read Baltimore’s City Paper (The Baltimore Sun is not doing a good job right now) and follow the sites of protest groups.
What You Can Do
The Maryland Food Bank is going to be facing a ton of demand this week as people’s lives and schedules are disrupted. Baltimore City Schools are canceled today, a place where many children get their only reliable meals. And many parents will have to miss work today to take care of their children.
Update 4/29/15
Last Friday, I donated my car, Spicy Orange, to charity.
I barely used the car anymore – my fiance has a car she uses for commuting, and I rarely need to drive anywhere, since we live near the center of town and I work from home. Parking in my neighborhood is a nightmare, and the car was approaching the point where maintaining it was more expensive than the car was useful. We also live less than .6 miles from no fewer than three ZipCar stations.
Spicy Orange had been with me for nearly 10 years, including around a year of very heavy use when I was a traveling rep. The car has driven entirely across the country – from Eugene to the coast, and then back from Eugene to Indiana, and Indiana to my house in Baltimore, mere blocks from the water.
This car, at times called Turbomobile Mk. II, the Xavicar, and most recently Spicy Orange, was the first car I owned. I was very lucky in that the car was bought for me outright by my parents when I went off for grad school in Oregon. It’s the car I drove to dance tango, my primary social outlet outside the house during my grad work. It’s the car that drove me to Clarion West in 2007. The car that drove me to meet Meg on our first date. It’s the first car that was mine, not a family car, and due to its bright orange color, it was always easy to find in parking lots, an asset which I cannot under-value.
I’ll probably get another car, at some point. I’d love to get an Electric car at some point, partially because they are one of the things that represents The Future in my head. In the meantime, ZipCar can cover me for whenever I need a car during weekdays.
So farewell Spicy Orange. You served me well, and I will miss you.
My home state of Indiana has been in the news a lot this last week for some of the worst possible reasons. SB 101 aka the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was signed into law last week despite some very vocal opposition. Personally, I think SB 101 is terrible.
Many folks will note that other states have similar laws, and that there is a federal law dating to the Clinton Era. This is not that law. There appear to be a couple of very important distinctions between IN’s SB 101 and for those other laws, and for those distinctions, I’ll point you to this article from The Atlantic.
As a result of the bill, there has been a campaign to call for a boycott of the state, including by George Takei.
I can’t make anyone’s decisions for them. But I disagree with the call for a blanket boycott of the State of Indiana. I’m also particularly upset by people dismissing and insulting the entire state due to the harmful actions of its legislators and officials. There are many in Indiana who oppose SB101, as is seen by GenCon’s letter of opposition, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard’s executive order reaffirming that businesses operating within the city must abide by its human rights ordnance, and this front-page editorial in the Indianapolis Star.
Rather than a blanket boycott of Indiana, I’d suggest a strategic and vocal boycott of businesses seen to use this law to discriminate against marginalized persons. Instead why not vocally patronize inclusive businesses?
And on top of that, fight to make sexual orientation a protected class for the entire state, and to get SB 101 overturned so a more reasonable protection for religious expression can be crafted and implemented.
Boycotts punish everyone, and tend to disproportionately hurt smaller business of those already marginalized.
Everyone has to do what’s best for them, especially folks who are likely to be at-risk because of this law.
Some have condemned GenCon for failing to make a more extreme move. I’ll remind folks that GenCon has a contract with the city and the convention center until 2020 – pulling out before that would likely be a disastrous cost. Possibly a ‘bankrupt the entire organization and ensure that there will never be another GenCon cost. Now if SB101 is still in place by 2021, I fully support GenCon moving to another state in order to ensure it is the welcoming, inclusive event that it strives to be.
And while I have your attention, other horrible stuff is going down in Indiana, too.
Disengaging isn’t really very likely to achieve positive change. Bringing more scrutiny to these laws, being very vocal in *not* patronizing businesses that choose to discriminate and instead patronizing their competitors who are inclusive? That strikes me as far more effective. The really big businesses are already making their statements. For individuals, the one or two orders placed with an inclusive business instead of a bigoted business can mean a lot. If you’re in a position where you would be patronizing an IN business, perhaps take the extra 1-3 minutes to find an inclusive business. And if you feel like it, the extra 1-3 minutes on top of that to let a bigoted business know that you’ve taken your money elsewhere in the state because of their discrimination.
2014 was a big year for my writing career, and I’m hoping that 2015 will be even bigger. Here’s how I’m planning on making that happen.
Going Hybrid
I’m planning on joining the growing ranks of authors who publish both traditionally and on their own, aka ‘Hybrid Authors.’ I’ve got a couple of options on how to pursue self-publishing, depending on how some things that are currently up the the air end up resolving.
Talking Shop
Last year, I got to talk about the business side of publishing at a couple of panels, to great acclaim. Like, kind of surprising attention. People are hungry for accurate, no-BS information about the industry, and I’m in a unique position to share that information, as a publishing professional with years of experience on both the staff and author side of the business.
To that end, I’m going to be focusing more of my blogging time on talking about the publishing industry in an organized fashion. This achieves several goals – it gets the information out there for people to use, and it helps me get the information down so that I can share it in multiple ways (see self-publishing ideas above).
I’ll also be proposing and hosting Business of Publishing panels at conventions across the year, starting with ConFusion next week in Michigan.
Books!
Ultimately, this is all about books and storytelling. I have one novel scheduled for this year, Hexomancy, the third Ree Reyes novel (fourth story in the series when counting Attack the Geek). The novel is written and currently with my editor. Hexomancy completes the first major arc for the series, bringing several storylines from the previous novels together for a geek-tastic plot-splosion.
But Hexomancy is not all you should expect from me in 2015, book-wise. More on that when the time is right. For know, be assured that what I’ve got in store will appeal to fans of my current work, while also moving into new ground in ways that I think are very cool.
If you want to keep up with what I’m doing for 2015, I’d point you toward my newsletter, which will be seeing more love, more exclusive content, and more giveaways this year.
Life
But that’s enough vague-blogging for now.
The biggest thing I’m doing in 2015 is getting married! This will also take up a fair bit of my attention, though my fiance and I are working on making the wedding celebrations suit our interests more than fulfilling the agenda of the Wedding-Industrial Complex. Goofy dancing, yes, zillion-dollar flower arrangements, not so much.
Here’s to 2015 and all of its promise.
Here it is, a big 2014 in review post. 2014 has been a hell of a year, in great and terrible ways, across most axes of my life. It is a year that will not soon be forgotten, that’s for damned sure.
The Good
Three New Books
I had three new book releases this year, all in ebook and audio, and one in trade paperback (my first print release). That’s pretty freaking amazing. If I’d accomplished nothing else in 2014, this would still be a win. I’d had one book out each of 2012 and 2013, so jumping up to three book releases was a huge step for me and my writing career.
Those three books, in case you’re new to the Mike-verse, are:
Attack the Geek: A Ree Reyes Side-Quest – a long novella in the Ree Reyes/Geekomancy series. It’s short, action-and-character-driven.
Shield and Crocus: A superhero epic fantasy set in a city built among the bones of a titan. It’s my attempt to combine my favorite parts of the New Weird and Superhero genres.
The Younger Gods: A supernatural thriller starring the one moral son in a family of sociopathic sorcerers who want to bring on the apocalypse.
Writing Breakthroughs
In addition to releasing new books, I was also writing new books. I wrote Hexomancy, the third Ree Reyes novel, as well as revising the releases for this year. I also wrote three novellas in a new series which I should be able to talk publicly about very soon *plotty fingers*. All of these were written very quickly (for me). I wrote the first draft of Hexomancy (72k words) in a month, which was a total process breakthrough for me. When I finished that draft, I was exhausted, depleted, but totally excited. The major question I had was this: Can I do it again? Or was this an aberration?
Then, in about six weeks from the very end of October through the first week in December, I wrote another 70k ish words for the rough drafts of the three novellas. That’s not nearly as fast as the Hexomancy draft, but this was a new series as opposed to a series I’ve been writing for multiple years. If I can consistently produce at the 70k in 6 weeks rate? That would be a total game changer for my writing career.
Outlining
One of the reasons why I was able to pull of these strong production schedules is that this is the year I made a major move along the Outliner/Pantser continuum. Thanks to books like 2K to 10K by Rachel Aaron, the videos/tutorials from the folks at the Self-Publishing Podcast, and Mary Robinette Kowal’s Writing on the Fast Track class, I changed my outlining and pre-production process, giving myself a much clearer outline to work from, as well as learning how to design more of the story ahead of time so that my first-drafting time was more focused on moving forward and less on having to stop and figure out what to do next. I’m still refining my pre-production process, trying to figure out what parts of the world and story I need to have at least penciled in before drafting begins. And considering the production schedule I’ve set for 2015, I’m going to need all of the help I can give myself.
Conventions
In addition to tons of writing, I went to a lot of conventions. Eleven of them, in fact. About half were for work, half were on my own as a writer. I met a bunch of cool people, connected with fans, plotted with fellow authors and with my Angry Robot peeps, sold a bunch of books at the consumer shows, and decided to expand my writing career into comics.
Also, I was nominated for a Hugo Award as part of the Skiffy and Fanty Show, which is amazing. We didn’t win, but getting to participate in the pomp of the Hugo Awards as a nominee was a total delight.
In those eleven conventions, learned a lot about what makes conventions work and not work, what I want out of conventions, and how to approach a convention in a focused way to pursue that agenda.
And More
I’m also planning a wedding, co-hosting a readings series, participating in a podcast, and geeking out as much as I can.
The Bad
I Was an Adventurer Like You, Then I Took An Arrow in the Knee
Well, not an arrow. My fiance and I moved across town to a new (awesome) row-home in February, but there was a price. As a result of a day spent tromping up and down stairs with heavy boxes and crawling over the center console of my car to drive back and forth (you see, the driver’s side door was broken because fun), I did something truly unkind to my knee. Walking more than a half-mile or so hurt, driving hurt, and the moderate-intensity exercise regimin I’d been doing was right out. Even using my treadmill desk as a standing desk hurt.
It sucked. I babied the knee for a while, and it got a fair bit better, but then I went and worked two conventions in two weeks, where I had to be on my feet and energetic for eight or so hours a day. And so when I came back, my mostly-better knee had gotten a lot worse. So I went to the doctor, I got an MRI, etc. And it turns out I’ve got a nice little bone spur on my knee that scrapes the tendons as I walk and move.
Sweet. No, wait, the other thing.
Anyway, I buckled down and went through a couple of months of physical therapy, which was incredibly helpful (I know know the terror and marvel of the foam roller. Oh, foam roller, my most hateful friend). I can drive more easily now, but it still hurts. I can use my treadmill desk again in a limited capacity, which is excellent. I’m hoping in 2015 I’ll be able to expand what I do for exercise and get back into some historical martial arts or tango, but it looks like the bone spur isn’t going anywhere unless I want to go get surgery, which I’d rather avoid if I can manage with PT and smart self-care.
The Ugly
The Summer of My Discontent
The knee thing was bad. What was worse is how summer went with my day job. Our owners decided to put the whole company up for sale, but we weren’t allowed to talk about it at all, under threat of losing our jobs. Which meant I spent most of the summer worrying about whether I was going to lose my job and having very little control over much of anything.
That was not fun. In fact, it was pretty miserable. For a lot of reasons.
Luckily, we found a buyer, we’re no longer beholden to the old owners, and the company is back, with grand plans for 2015, and my quality of life at the job is way better, and will be even better when our publishing program resumes in March.
Takeaways
So, that’s a lot. A lot of good, some not-so-good, and many lessons.
Here are my big takeaways from the year:
Looking Forward to 2015
Where 2014 was a big year in writing and life, 2015 is promising to be even bigger. I’ve got a lot of work planned to be completed in 2015, including some very exciting stuff. I’m going to get married in 2015 to the coolest, smartest, funniest woman I know, and we’re throwing (two?) parties to celebrate that marriage with friends and loved ones. And there’s a ton of books and movies and comics and TV I’m excited about enjoying over the next year.
2014, you’ve been instructive in a bunch of different ways.
Roll on 2015.
Today I remember Graham Joyce, one of my teachers at Clarion West, who passed away this afternoon after a long battle with cancer.
Graham was the instructor the week we critiqued the original short story version of “Shield and Crocus.” Graham encouraged me to go and write the story as a novel. He also taught me about dialogue and about how to break apart revision tasks in a way that made it seem doable.
He was with us for the third week of the workshop, when nearly all of us were locked into a somber routine of spending all of our time writing and critiquing. Graham gathered us up and took us out to the pub – he took us out pretty much every day that week, leading by example to show us how to build community as writers, how to balance work and play, to enjoy ourselves after putting a hard day’s work.
I got to see Graham last fall at World Fantasy in Brighton, along with several of my Clarion West classmates. As ever, Graham was warm, smart, and supportive, giving generously of his time to catch up with us.
Graham brought great work into this world, and his warmth and insights moved many in the community. He will be remembered.
If you’re not familiar with Graham’s work, I’d recommend The Tooth Fairy, which I read before heading to Clarion West. You might also try his recent The Year of the Ladybird.
Hi folks! The PROMONADO continues. I’m holding an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the active r/Fantasy community on Reddit. Folks are posting questions all day, and I’ll be answering live at 7PM EDT.
Please join in the fun! I’ve already got questions about tango, board games, and the current Amazon/Hachette situation.
I had the marvelous chance to appear on the Sword & Laser podcast for one of their Google+ Hangouts! We did the interview live on Hangouts on Air, and now the video is archived on YouTube:
I’ve been a Sword & Laser listener and sometimes participant on Goodreads for a few years now, so it was very cool and somewhat surreal to be a guest on the show.
Big thanks to Veronica and Tom for having me on!
Dear all,
I’m over the that’s-not-a-moon to announce that The Skiffy & Fanty Show, the SF/F Podcast I joined last year, has been nominated for the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Fancast. We’re nominated with a great slate of podcasts, and it’s a great honor to be among such company.