A Texas convention run by fen, attended by fen who read, and in a very nice, friendly hotel…pretty big convention, and panels full of people who read and enjoy sf. We were worried after our experience earlier this year, but I can say this is a convention worth driving long distances to attend. Next year’s guests will be Larry Niven and Cory Doctorow.
Had a stay with my brother—who’s prepping his house for sale. If anybody’s in the market, he’s on a little wooded hilltop cul de sac in a suburb of Dallas, a block away from a little playground, and a wooded creek, in an area with some very good schools. Two stories, multiple bedrooms, upstairs studio area or upstairs sitting room or kids play area, etc. House immaculate, new carpet, granite countertops. Easy commute to Dallas central, Plano, Frisco, etc.
The drive down was hard: the belt of fires across Idaho had smoke hazing the sky pink from Spokane to Missoula, to Billings MT, to Sheridan WY, through Denver CO, and southward. When we went over Raton Pass to reach Raton, NM, we got out of the smoke but into the allergens provoked by the rain they’d had—but when we drove the same route back, we hit more rain, beautiful cloud and light effects, and clear, clear skies in the Rockies. We saw nature in action: it’s pronghorn mating season, and the antelope are clustered in herds with hopeful bachelors roaming between and herd males really getting no rest, what with these frequent little standoffs. We’d wondered that sightings had been scarce, but they were clustered in a few places where late green persists, and where temperatures at night are in the fifties and forties. Aspen are going gold, and it was very pretty driving.
We ran into smoke again at Billings, and drove in it as far as Coeur d’Alene, where it noticeably lessened, and into Spokane, where we can see a low haze this morning, but nothing like poor Missoula, where it is so thick you can’t see the surrounding mountains. I know they’ve got to be anxious for that to move on. Let’s hear it for a nice Pacific rain system moving in…and hoping we find one!
The cats were great, except poor Shu, who had been a beast about trying to dive under the driver’s seat, turned up shivering, and we discovered the air conditioning was just too much for his little tropic bones: we got his fluffy blanket out of his cage, and a little one to put over him, and he just snuggled down on the passenger floorboards out of the draft and slept, comfy as could be. Poor Seishi, however, who fared better in that, was lounging on his pillow watching the heavy rain, when some damned fool hauling a work trailer passed us doing at least 85 on puddled road (speed limit is 75)—and inundated and blinded us for a moment (plus the four cars/trucks ahead of us). It made a terrible whoosh as the tidal wave hit the car, and Seishi sprang up—first I knew, he was walking on the windows on the way to the front—he’s a big, long cat—and reached me. I could only think: “Don’t let him hit Jane,” —she was driving—so I flung my arms about him and hid his eyes and patted him until his poor heart settled down. He’s a cattery cat. He’s never, ever had anything like that happen to him, and he was so scared he wouldn’t go back on his pillow the whole last day. OTOH, I’m hoping on the next trip he’ll have forgotten it or at least calmed down about it and go back to his sunny pillow in the back windows. My thoughts about the inconsiderate, self-important jackass that passed a sensible pod of cars like that in a driving rain hauling a trailer—are not printable in this forum.
Sounds like a lovely trip, except for the smoke! I’d heard a bit about that from someone in the same area recently. Sounds like a good convention, too. I hope to start going back to cons in the next couple years.
And Russ is home! He started his new job in Omaha last Monday. He’s been driving back and forth, but he needs a place down there for four nights a week. Just too much money and time for him to keep this up.
Hurrah for Russ being home! And here’s for him finding something reasonable!
WOL, are you near Oklahoma? Montana? WA? conventions in all those upcoming.
I am next door to Oklahoma (Tx panhandle), but I am on a “skin-tight” budget. A good month is when I have enough left over after paying bills and buying us food to buy an e-book or two. Unfortunately, I don’t see that situation changing in the near future.
Ah. Well, we will be at Soonercon in OKC next June, and maybe at least we could meet in the bar…schedule-dependent, but if you could get there, there’s no gate-guard on bars, public areas, etc. So we would be glad to see you there for an hour or so if you could.
Or if not, our usual route to OKC is through Amarillo, out of Raton and a chain of panhandle towns on our way. So maybe we could at least stop and meet at a local cafe. 😉
I wish fervently I could’ve attended the Dallas con. Maybe next year, things will have improved, and I can go out of the city. Not likely by then, but maybe.
Very glad the con and trip were so good.
Smokey, Shu’s cousin in spirit, is busy vying for attention (and being a brat; no, you may *not* chew on that cord, young sir!). Goober appears to have sought a quiet corner for a little while, probably avoiding said young sir. Goober is a month away from his sixth year with me at the end of October, and Smokey will mark his (gasp) third year in late December.
I’ll be watching some scifi TV tonight after writing and doing some design work. There’s a re-airing of the première épisode of a new CGI anime incarnation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, re-airing on Nickelodeon at 5pm Central. Then I’ll be watching two Doctor Who episodes.
Right now, I’m going to take a break and see if the weather’s fit out for the cats and I to sit in the backyard a few minutes and contemplate our navels (or whatever it is felines contemplate; it generally seems to involve sniffing every plant in sight).
I solved a plot point in a story idea and was surprised I hadn’t thought of the simple solution a while back. Feeling quite pleased with myself about that. I would still consider myself a rank beginner at story-writing, despite the small catalogue of poems and shorts at my site. Editing is light-years different than writing it. (I’m learning to turn off the editor perfectionist and just let myself imagine and write. Seems to work better that way.) I haven’t figured out whether I work best by outlining first or by seat of the pants method. I suppose if/when I get a full novel written, I’ll have some better idea on that note. … I have not yet managed to complete a full novel or another short. I’m not, by now, expecting to meet my self-imposed goal/deadline of one story in time for Halloween, but maybe I’ll surprise myself on it or something else. This year *has* seen a lot of progress toward writing goals, so I’m overall pleased, I guess. Just not fast enough to suit me or my budget. It helps mightily not to have the chaos in my life I’m still getting over months later. A “normal” life seems so…abnormal now, and of course, there are the daily vexations that go with life and with getting out of said prior situation. I’ve now looked at most of the stuff in my ideas and drafts folder, and concluded that some of it really is pretty good, but several things are bits and pieces, while others might fit into a larger whole or a few larger wholes. Just how, I’m not so sure yet. (As long as that shouldn’t be a large hole in the ground or a black hole, I suppose we’re good. Then again, a hole in the ground worked for hobbits, and a black hole worked better than anticipated in at least one movie, so…. 😉 Well, we shall see. (I would say that at least one story idea I have going is probably not conventionally marketable / salable to a publisher, so I’ll likely do it as a self-published ebook. If it were to sell to a publisher, I’d be (pleasantly) surprised.
I have pretty much confirmed, though, I still love writing and design. If I can just learn a couple of new programs and formats, I’ll be back up to speed again. Not, perhaps, mastery level like I was with the old program or two, but that’ll get there with practice. … Or at least, today I feel more optimistic about things. (Budget, be silent!)
Best Wishes!
One of these days, I would like to attend a convention. Never have. Want to. Haven’t ever been able to get the time, the money, and a means of transportation together in the same place at the same time. But I would like to attend a convention, preferably one that you and Jane are also attending. Sigh!
Everybody who can, come out next year and we can have a Wave Crest! (I’m lazy and selfish – I only live about 4 miles from the Con! LOL!)
BlueCatShip: What kind of design are you interested in getting back into? I primarily focus on stuff that can be realized IRL. There’s 3D printing, custom fabrics, wallpapers and repositionable vinyl wall art, designing for laser cutting (paper, leather, acrylic, wood, hardboard, PVA ‘fun’ foam, plywoods, and etching piled fabrics). I have designed for everything but 3D and have found designers happy to work with me to make models I can order… It’s a marvelous time to be designing things!
Hi, dhawktx! You know, custom fabric design sounds neat. I’ve drawn characters, and thus, clothing/costuming, but to be able to bring a textile or article of clothing to life, to market, would be amazing. I’m in Houston. (I grew up in an art and frame shop besides home. Turpentine and linseed oil, oil paints and crafts, remind me of home and childhood and my teens.)
My professional life was as a small contractor/consultant back when “desktop publishing” was the buzzword for doing typesetting, graphics, and layout with (heresy!) a computer, namely a Mac and laser printer. I haven’t done book publishing, though. So my mom and myself taught ourselves graphic design skills. I know and have done some the old hand-done way, and have done more with a Mac or Windows PC’s. my mom was a pro fine artist, oils primarily, but any medium. So I grew up around art/design. I did a little of everything. Editing, proofreading, writing ad copy or occasionally other things, vector drawings with Macromedia Freehand, lots with Word and PageMaker and a few earlier Mac programs.
I am trying to learn some alternative, now that Freehand is defunct. Illustrator bothers me, and I don’t yet feel like I’m near competency with it or Inkscape.
When the web came along, I taught myself HTML and early CSS and began doing web design. But I lack PHP and a couple of others. I volunteered for a while as a webmaster, doing story editing and prepping pages, mostly.
I’ve been learning about EPUB, since the publishing and design worlds are in the same kind of upheaval now as when I started out.
I say, “was,” because for several years now, I was a primary caregiver, until my grandmother passed away last November. So I was out of the pro work world for a long time.
I like working with words and images and the things that go with them. — Any other sorts of design, fine arts, crafts, interest me, even if I don’t know how to do them. So work in materials like you said is something I’d enjoy seeing and learning. I’m not terribly mechanically inclined, though, and I’m vision-impaired.
My educational background: I’m a mutt, in between the liberal arts where I started and the technical skills I also trained in. I’m a language geek. It’s one of the things I love about CJ’s writing. I’m rusty but still should be near some degree of fluency in French and Spanish, and I can make out a fair bit of Italian and written Portuguese and other Latinate languages from that. I was an English major before trying to switch to computer science, but before publication design and graphic arts were much taught on computers, and way before that Internet thing, which would’ve been an almost ideal fit. So most of what I know beyond college is self-taught.
For a long while, I wondered why my actual life was so different than what I’d thought it would be, until I woke up and realized, my whole personal and professional life had been in the skills I’d wanted to use, only the tools and market had completely changed all the while. (I had thought, in college, I’d train in computer science and do tech writing and translation to pay the bills, while working towards being a science fiction writer on personal time.) well, I ended up in writing and editing and design, then web work, and now I’m writing and retraining myself while the publishing and design world all undergo another seismic shift to ebook and online formats. Funny, when I first started out, the switch from traditional by hand methods to computer methods was in a seismic shift. So I suppose I have a hidden advantage, if I can just figure out the new terrain while it moves underneath me. Crazy time to be in my mid-40’s and just getting back in the work world, and needing to learn new skills.
So, mutt and feeling half-baked, here I am. (Hmm, mixed metaphor, there.)
Feel free to give me a shout! — you may also check out my website. Thay is and was primarily personal, but I will be adding things like artwork and examples of past design work as I go, building up a portfolio online.
http://www.shinyfiction.com/
BlueCatShip: Overwhelmed at thy awesomeness!
I’m coming at it from an artist’s point of view. Work has rarely, if ever, matched up with what I really wanted to do. Math is my enemy, which is why I love spreadsheets – you put the numbers in right the first time and they behave after that – you just have to get the formulas right!
I’m totally self taught – right now I do data analysis where I pull disparate info, build a key, and then dump it all into a small database where I can mine the info. My life has been a series of choices regarding opportunities that popped up rather than any ‘career ladder’ type choices.
Other than when I was laid off in ’02, I’ve never had the guts to actually try to live off of my artistic work, and it was going pretty good at first. I only failed then due to a perfect storm of negative situations: not enough business (yet), rental sold out from under me, had to go back to temp work when unemployment ran out; working, moving, creating stock and doing Fall craft shows all at the same time, not enough “me” to go around. My 40’s were pretty rough. My 50’s are going better, but now I’m stuck with a decent (though ultimately transient) paycheck and too many things I want to be doing. How to pick the right line to go with? How can I monetize the whole mess?
And when do I force myself to make time to write, on top of everything else? I’ve always had peeps who gave me blank books as gifts. I figured that meant they thought I had something valid to say. Need to get it said, neh?
I want my cj fix once a year for the rest of a long life. We are about the same age. So i know you know better than to have loose cats, or any thing else, in the car. You so deserve to be verbally spanked. If it does not go in a seat belt, don’t put it in the car. If you have to sudden stop to avoid trouble, the stuff, or cat, in the back window can hurt or kill you. Not to mention doing harm to your four legged masters. We would miss you waaaay too much. I’ll send you a cat carrier if you need one. If you start now, you can persuade them to accept using it before the next con. Cat carriers are just good to have handy for vet trips and rescues, too. Cat sitters could also be arranged, although i too hate leaving them behind.
And you think its hard getting cat-sitters? We used to keep mini-sheep in the backyard.
Glad the con was good. Glad the book is going well. Did you see jo walton reviewed Fortress in the eye of time on tor? She is going to do the rest pretty soon. While rereading your backlist,
I discovered my paperback copies of the chanur series are missing pages that have fallen out. Any chance of those books escaping contract durrance vile in the next few years? I would love to have them in ebook format.
Oh, they have carriers, seat-belted in the back. But not for a 4000 mile drive. We can do an emergency stop (and have) right well. I’m not sure how it would be for 80 lbs of dog, but the kittehs have their own braking system, which works quite well for them. We’re also good drivers, meaning we’re not the sort of one of our locals who shredded a car because, quote, there was a spider in the car.
And a kitteh freakout would not have happened with our dear old Ysabel and Efanor—we lost them to age and illness a year ago, and are still training this pair, who are still kittens, in effect. They’ve got nearly 9000 miles on the road—but Ysabel and Efanor had about 120,000, including being blown off the road by a fishtailing truck, having piece of truck tire fly back at us, and having a windshield cracked by, of all things, a flying tumbleweed…through it all, including the jerk who put what we call the Ysabel Memorial Scratch on the dash, they were pretty unflappable—in that case, Ysabel deployed her own brakes, and rebounded into the passenger-lap, to sit and disdainfully begin a bath. Generally Efanor rode in his carrier by preference with the door open, while Ysabel would get in hers if I just said, “Get in your carrier.” She was quite a cat.
And this time, when spooked, Seishi, young as he is, came to me from the back of the car—pretty fast, but he was willing to burrow in and be calmed, though I was worried he might keep on going. That’s a good reaction from him, and that means if anything weird happens, he’s either going into his carrier or coming to the passenger, which is the reaction we want. Most times they go to the anchored carriers, with open doors, but this was visually and noise-wise pretty spectacular, so he bypassed the carrier. Cats prefer, in crisis, to be in the smallest place possible, tucked up tight, and they’re very good about going to carriers once they’ve been through a few heavy rains or rough or winding roads. They already know to go to carriers when we verbally urge them in at the end of the day, for transport into the hotel, which is pretty fast learning.
We consider them actually a car safety device, because the humans driving the car restrain themselves from road rage against idiots and self-generated stupidity because we have that old farmer ethic: with animals aboard, sensible driving is the rule.
Chanur e-book is forthcoming on regular outlets from DAW. They’re just running from behind trying to catch up. And they’re on audible.com.
An ebook edition of Chanur being brought out soon by DAW is very good news!
On the previous thread: maybe it’s an idea to put a link to Sable’s site for the ‘Foreigner Movie in Audio’ project in the left sidebar among the blogroll? The link is at the bottom of the second page of comments, and thus not very accessible, while this will be a project of interest for some time.
A rousing second to LeAnn’s advice! New Jersey, where my daughters live, has a new law requiring restraint of pets in a car, either crated or harnessed. Just before the law was enacted, one of my daughters adopted a senior cat (in Iowa!) and drove home with the cat ensconced on my teenage grandson’s lap the whole way, even though they had a carrier for him. Apparently he slept or relaxed, purring, for about a thousand miles. Fortunately, no mishaps, and I restrained myself from lecturing my half-century-old daughter when I heard about it.
Personally, my cat rides in a carrier on the car floor for short trips to the vet. She’s never gone on a longer trip, but if she did I’d probably get her a larger travel crate that can be secured. She boards at the vet in a multi-level “cat condo,” loves it there, jumps in as soon as we open the carrier, and when I came for her last time she tried to hide at the back of the top level (we had to get her down with a stepladder).
My son’s puppy started out in a crate that fastened to a seat belt. She now (at 6 months) wears a harness, got it from Amazon, that clips to the seat belt. She has enough freedom to be comfortable, can sit and look out the window or lie down, but she’s safer and so are the humans. A fringe benefit: when the harness comes out, she knows she’s getting a ride, and is delighted!
Oh, the ebook editions of the Chanur books forthcoming, that’s very good news indeed.
(I check periodically for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and I click the “I’d like to see this in ebook” link when I do. So far, it’s still not available. Likewise, the Rolling Stones.)
—–
Had a bad, scary night, kitty misadventures caused an accident, but all is well, and it may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Link: Disaster narrowly avoided
The cats are fine, I’m fine, the house is fine. I’m just very frazzled and tired, sleep interrupted. But it turned out OK.
—–
Now that I’m not taking the cats back and forth between houses all the time, I think I’m going to try getting them used to their carriers, rather than fearing them. I can see I really need them to come when I call, too. They got too wary of, “come when he calls means a trip we don’t want to go on, in the carrier, even if it means being with the human.”
Baen has “The Rolling Stones” http://www.baenebooks.com/p-943-the-rolling-stones.aspx. They’ve been bringing out Heinlein’s work but haven’t made it to “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. They’re having contract problems with Amazon so you won’t see their ebooks on Amazon but they are available DRM free and in many formats on their own site.
I was wanting to re-read the Foreigner series before hitting the newest installment, but I can’t find e-books for #2 – #6? My bag is so heavy with the laptop and such that I prefer to leave the hardbacks at home.
I just looked for Foreigner #02 through #06 in ebooks again. Still not there yet.
However, *All* of them, #01 – #13, are now out in audiobooks from Audible.com.
Amazon is showing that #13, Intruder, will be available in paperback on 2012-04-05, when the hardback for #14, Protector is due to be released.
I’ve just updated my Foreigner fan site with the audiobooks’ availability:
http://www.shinyfiction.com/cherryh-fan/foreigner/books.html
I’ll add links to the upcoming Foreigner audio drama, once I have something ready and get CJC’s and Sable Jak’s OK on the additions.
Unfortunately, Audio books don’t do it for me nearly so well as reading. I find only rarely does the voice on the audio book fit what my ‘mind’s ear’ is saying it should be.
I am glad your approach works for you and yours. We all balance life’s risks differently. Which reminds me, did you hear about cow week? Somebody on the net, i can’t remember where, held Cow Week during discovery channels annual shark week, to highlight the irrational way humans evaluate risk. Fyi cows hurt more people than sharks do every year.
I am very glad chanur is coming to ebook. Those were the days before i could afford hardbacks. These days i save the hardback budget and shelf space for those classics and comfort books that i want around when the electric book reader dies. Which includes all of foreigner.
Ha, you don’t have to tell me about cows: I spent weekends on a farm, I used to take Old Bill out under saddle when I was about six or seven, and we had a few brush cows—the sort that had resisted being rounded up for several years running. Not to mention the boss sow, that ran the pasture. Sharks live far away from me. Cows—have been a bit closer.
I also am somewhat loath to do much hiking in the woods up here. Bears. I never trusted Teddy bears as a child. I simply would not have one in the room with me. 😉
But I’m pretty canny about risks. I’ve nearly drowned, gotten caught in a street riot more than once, nearly been flattened by a troop truck in Greece under the junta, and outrun a dog pack—best sprint of my life. Mostly I tend to be a cautious soul, because I believe in Murphy.
I, as Murphy’s long-time Poster Child, salute you! I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop…