Wishbone Cover
My first novel-length work to hit publication is now available from Torquere Books.
This calls for an excerpt. Why look. Here’s one now.
Jan 132010
Jan 092010
I introduced my readers to my most recent sweater project earlier.
I’ve added the sleeves to the knit-in-the-round body as Elizabeth Zimmerman describes in Knitting Around. I will continue to knit upwards, reducing stitches at the points where the sleeves meet the body, until I’ve shaped the shoulders.
sweater assembled
You read or hear about it all the time. One half of a couple feels that their sexual needs are not being met. One way to deal with this issue is for the unsatisfied person to find another person to get, er, satisfied with. Sometimes open relationships are involved, but often people skip that part and just cheat on each other, with resulting drama.
All of my needs in that department are met, thank you very much. But I have another source of dissatisfaction. I’d like to go to parties in my area once in a while, and my spouse finds socializing to be the source of much anxiety.
I’m putting out feelers for someone who would like to be a party escort. Actually, I thought of posting something along these lines to CraigsList just to see what happens, but I’m not sure I could handle the hilarity.
Looking for one person living in the greater Boston area who wants to enjoy the occasional pool party or group outing with me. Gender is irrelevant. Applicants must have car and must not smoke. In return I will make sure you have a good time, and will reciprocate with baked or knitted goods and a split of gas money.
And if anything particularly funny results from this quest, I’ll be sure to blog it without names or identifying information. If nothing funny happens, I’ll try posting to CraigsList just for the LOLZ.
You know, I thought I published this two days ago, but maybe I didn’t. Given the spelling, it’s just as well.
I’ve been focused on the problem of evil and how it would fit into the universe of project I’m working on.
If you don’t know your way around theology, be sure to go read up on the problem of evil, natch.
So I have a world with two populations, each with an internally consistant cosmology that completely conflicts with the other.
Population A has a cosmology familiar from earth, namely qualified monism. God created the world. The agent responsible for evil in the world is a son or other emanation of god. God has other emanations rather like angels from more familiar contexts, but here would be considered lesser gods, servants of the Great God, who humans address with their prayers and consider responsible for giving laws. The nature of evil for this part of the world is disobeying the laws laid down by God’s servants.
Population B has believed that the universe is not unique (though there are arguments about whether other universes are equal to their home one or are lesser shadows. Gods are local phenomena of a universe. They aren’t taken as lawgivers and such, just immensely powerful beings on the top rank of things that can be summoned and bargained with. The bottom rank would be occupied by strong and weak elemental entities. For the B guys evil is not something that has to do with gods. Evil is the measurable ill effects of a spell cast with unkind intention, or the residue of a spell cast by evil means (like cutting out peoples’ hearts or the like). Evil is to be avoided, largely because it is unpredictable and leads to misery, no matter what initial benefit accrues. Good mages strive to clean up evil, while evil mages make use of it.
I wonder how much of this I could fit into a book without boring people?
Jan 032010
The NYT has an essay on sex in mainstream novels from Updike to David Foster Wallace with interesting twists of observation. I can imagine my high-school senior English teacher getting a kick out of it.
…when someone writes fanfic based on your fiction.
This was a nice change from the usual Google Alert, which thinks I need to know about women hiding bombs under their burkas.
This alert was about a Yuletide Fanfic that someone wrote based on Mate. I’d never heard of this fanfic custom, so Cecilia Tan explained thusly:
It’s basically a humongous Secret Santa fest run annually on livejournal. Say you are a fan of various things. You put up a “Dear Santa” request like “I would like a fanfic written for me in either the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, or Star Trek universes.” (I think you have to list at least three.) Then a fanfic writer becomes your secret santa and writes something to fit the requested spec, picking one of the fandoms listed.
You can see the resulting story here. For me it was a fascinating look at how people see my writing.
As always, you can buy the original collection in various places.
Jan 012010
There’s sex in the news all the time, but this is a bit more newsworthy than most. The Boston Globe has an article on polyamory. I think I know most of the people interviewed in it.
Kneel to Me
Mate: And More Stories from the Erotic Edge of SF/Fantasy
Up for Grabs
Wired Hard 4
Wishbone