“Hello computer…”

With news today that laser bombardment can transform aluminum into a material that looks, absorbs, and reflects light like gold, can transparent aluminum be far behind?

– S.

Hi all –

Thanks go out to my evil twin Tony Pi for spotting Rich Horton’s review of the slate of DAW anthologies published in 2007–and I’m highlighted in his ‘best of’ list!

As he says here:

“The best stories I read in DAW anthologies this year were…”Borrowed Time”, by Stephen Kotowych (Under Cover of Darkness)…”

I’m in good company, too: he also liked stories from Tanya Huff, Eugie Foster, Jay Lake, Mike Resnick, and James Patrick Kelly.

Cool!

Hi all –

A very distressing article from Saturday’s Globe & Mail here. (These links tend to disappear quickly, so I’ve copied the article into this post…)

As somebody who works in publishing I can tell you that everything this report cites is the truth–especially the fact that “If an Indigo buyer decides not to carry an individual book, the publisher of that title effectively loses half of the Canadian retail channel.”

– S.

==================

Canadian book industry ‘flat’ as titles flood market

JAMES ADAMS

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

February 2, 2008 at 2:01 AM EST

The retail book business in Canada generates annual sales in excess of $1.5-billion, much of them through one company – Indigo Books and Music – but overall sales through traditional book retailers are “flat” at a time when Canadian publishers are releasing more new titles than ever.

Those are just some of the key findings of an ambitious, 102-page study of Canada’s retail book sector conducted for Canadian Heritage. Prepared for the federal department last April through July by Turner-Riggs, a Vancouver market-analysis company, the study provides a panoramic survey of the industry. Released late last week on the Canadian Heritage website, The Book Retail Sector in Canada is likely to become essential reference work for both the beleaguered industry and policy makers.

While Canadian readers and publishers are turning more to online sales and so-called “non-traditional retail channels” such as Costco Wholesale, visits to commercial bookstores “still account for the majority of book sales,” the study says. And it’s here that Toronto-based Indigo, with more than 230 stores nationwide, is king: In 2006, it accounted for 44 per cent of domestic book sales – 67 per cent if one excludes online and mail-order sales and sales at university and college bookstores.

One result? “If an Indigo buyer decides not to carry an individual book, the publisher of that title effectively loses half of the Canadian retail channel.” Generally, though, the study says, “chain stores are playing an important role in presenting a wide selection of Canadian titles to consumers.”

What the study defines as independent bookstores – and this includes Quebec’s two regional chains, Archambault and Renaud-Bray – accounted for a 20-per-cent market share nationwide. (Within Quebec, the two francophone regional chains, which together have almost 50 stores, held a 44-per-cent share.)

The arrival of the Chapters chain in 1995, the subsequent creation of Indigo, and Indigo’s takeover of Chapters in 2001 have revolutionized the retail industry, the study says. The chains initiated a decline in the number of independent booksellers, prodded publishers to lower their wholesale prices, and introduced radical discounts on the list price of many of their major titles.

“Such discounts are now firmly entrenched as a marketing strategy,” the study reports. Indeed, they’ve been reinforced by the discount gambits practised by Costco, Wal-Mart and Amazon.ca, with the result that “purchases are more informed by price and less by the unique aspects of the individual book, including its literary or artistic merit.”

Discounting, moreover, has contributed to the phenomenon of “more sales for fewer books.” For instance, sales tracker BookNet Canada, which surveys an estimated 70 per cent of the market, reported that 373,402 titles sold at least one copy in Canada in 2006 – but it was the top 10,000 titles that accounted for 64 per cent of unit sales.

Are there too many books, especially new books, in the market? The Turner-Riggs study suggests that may be the case. While Canadians, unlike Americans, continue to be book buyers and readers (average time spent reading: 4.5 hours a week; average number of books read each year: 17; percentage of Canadians who buy at least one book a year: 81), they have been faced with a steady increase in the number of new Canuck titles available to them. In 1998, Canadian publishers – including wholly foreign-owned companies such as Random House Canada that, the study says, now account for at least 59 per cent of domestic sales – published close to 12,000 new titles. Six years later, that total was almost 17,000.

“The net effect is that a growing number of books are contending for the attention of roughly the same number of book buyers, a situation amplified,” the report notes, by the growth in stores selling used and remaindered books (out-of-print or overstocked titles sold at steep discounts), the growth in online sales, and “an increasingly saturated media environment.” One result is that “both the average sales per title in Canada and the average print runs in many title categories have been falling in recent years.”

Faced with concentration in the retail sector and onerous pricing policies, Canadian publishers, meanwhile, have been looking more to non-traditional channels and e-commerce as outlets for their wares. But so far, according to the study, these options account for no more than 24 per cent of sales. In fact, the Association of Canadian Publishers observes, only 30 per cent of its 125 members have e-commerce-enabled sites – a sign, perhaps, that publishers don’t wish to aggravate their relations with Indigo, other online services, or independent booksellers for that matter.

The Turner-Riggs report also comments on the impact of the appreciation of the Canadian dollar in recent years. Federal statutes require that the list price of a foreign-published book imported to Canada by a Canadian company or the branch plant of a foreign-owned firm “not exceed the Canadian-dollar equivalent of the foreign-currency list price by more than 10 per cent.” However, “if the Canadian price exceeds this point, a Canadian bookseller is permitted to source the book from outside Canada.”

The rise of the Canadian dollar – it was pegged at 95 cents (U.S.) in the concluding month of the study – has been laying the groundwork for that to happen more and more.

An Edmonton or Fredericton bookseller who relies on increased foreign sourcing undermines the territorial rights of the Canadian companies that bought those titles, the study observes. It argues, too, that price deflation on imported titles “creates downward pressure on list prices for titles originally published in Canada, which further squeezes the margins of publishers and booksellers alike.”

Every once and a while I come across a pithy or inspirational quote about writing, and I thought I might as well start sharing them for the benefit of those writerly types amongst you.

Therefore, quoth Edgar Allan Poe:

“Most writers…prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at the true purposes seized only at the last moment — at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view — at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable — at the cautious selections and rejections — at the painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting — the step-ladders, and demon-traps — the cock’s feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.“

– Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition“

Okay–here’s where things might get a little fuzzy.

See, all week long before turning in for the night I’d made notes about the goings-on of the day because I knew I wanted to blog about it when I got home, and I have a terrible memory sometimes.

Now, there are parts of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday that I’ll never forget, but I confess some of the small details might have escaped me. So what follows is my best recollection of what happened Friday with the caveat that, as things either occur to me and/or I’m corrected by my fellow WOTFians, this may be subject to revision…

By Friday morning I was broke.

By Friday night I was rich.

Weird.

I’d brought about $300 US knowing that we were to provide most of our own meals. I was down to around $50 bucks and with two more days before I headed home I didn’t relish the idea of paying $25 for breakfast (as I’d been doing most of the week).

Instead, I decided to see what the grocery store on the next block had in the way of breakfast.

I bumped into Kathy coming out of the store and said good morning.

“So is this where everybody’s been having breakfast all week?” she asked.

“Not me,” I said. “I’ve been eating at the hotel but now I’m broke.” This comment would be mentioned again later that night…

I bought what was (I soon discovered) the world’s worst croissant and headed back to the hotel. Poolside I found Randall, Doug, and Tim Powers finishing up breakfast. I tried to pawn off the heavy, doughy croissant on one of them but they were having none of it.

At 9am the writer and illustrator winners all piled in to cars and we were off to Caltech for rehearsals. I was in the car with Joe, Andrea, and Kim and related the previous night’s Niven Disaster to them.

The Athenaeum where the event was held is Cal Tech’s faculty club and is a gorgeous building and grounds. It puts the University of Toronto’s faculty club to shame, I can assure you. This is the kind of building I always imagined a university faculty club to be like.

When we were dropped off our only instructions were to go “out back” where the stage was being prepared, and with no one to greet us or guide us we ended up wandering through the club looking for “out back.”

Out Front of the Athenaeum
(Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

The front entrance

The view from the top of the front steps

Looking left from the top steps

The Athenaeum’s foyer. You know: it was an okay place… 😉

The main salon

Out Side of the Athenaeum on the terrace

Out Middle of the Athenaeum. This courtyard was
being prepared for the post-awards reception.

On the other side of the curtains is the stage.
Geir Lanesskog, one of the Illustrator winners,
decides he’d like to give his acceptance speech
from behind the shrubbery.

Ah hah! Out Back of the Athenaeum at last!

The rehearsals were a lot of fun and not nearly the arduous endless sitting around that previous years’ winners had warned us about. We all had a good time practicing how to walk up the stage steps without tripping, accept our statues (which we mimed—it was interesting how as one person after another went up the air statues kept getting bigger and bigger…), turn to the camera and smiled until we were given the thumbs up, and then give our speech.

Here we are milling about, waiting for the rest of the
winner to arrive. They were probably having trouble
finding Out Back, too…

The fake speeches were also a lot of fun (I thanked all the little people I had to step on and crush to get where I am today…) and somehow we got on to singing the national anthems of all the international winners as they ascended the dais. There was a rousing God Save the Queen for British Steve, and an O Canada for Tony, but when we started singing La Marseillaise for Aliette she warned us not to sing when she actually went up later that night (in a way that made us feel our very lives may be in danger should we try—pretty impressive for such a petite young French woman).

“If you knew what you were singing,” she said, “you would not sing it.”

For reference, the English translation of La Marseillaise:

Let’s go children of the fatherland, The day of glory has arrived! Against us tyranny’s Bloody flag is raised! (repeat) In the countryside, do you hear The roaring of these fierce soldiers? They come right to our arms To slit the throats of our sons, our friends! Refrain: Grab your weapons, citizens! Form your batallions! Let us march! Let us march! May impure blood Water our fields! Sacred love of France, Lead, support our avenging arms! Liberty, beloved Liberty, Fight with your defenders! (repeat) Under our flags, let victory Hasten to your manly tones! May your dying enemies See your triumph and our glory! Refrain We will enter the pit When our elders are no longer there; There, we will find their dust And the traces of their virtues. (repeat) Much less eager to outlive them Than to share their casket, We will have the sublime pride Of avenging them or following them! Refrain

Okay. Maybe I can see what she meant…

John sings I Feel Pretty (you probably think I’m joking…)
Note the sheaf of paper on the podium…

One of the funnier moments was when we realized there had been a major security slip-up by the show runners. On the podium where we were all giving our faux speeches was a stapled sheaf of paper. As we were all milling about, somebody started flipping the pages, noticing that what was scrolling by on the teleprompter in the podium was, in fact, written down on the sheets.

“Is that a script?” someone asked. A crowd started gathering around the podium. Seems most people were just interested in seeing what was going to be said that evening.

Flip to the end, flip to the end! I thought to myself. I was up for the Grand Prize and, while I was sure I wasn’t going to win, I wanted to know who did (I don’t hate surprises, rather I hate the uncertainty caused by anticipation of a surprise you know is coming).

“Let me see that…” said one of the show runners. He flipped a little farther and when he realized the script revealed both the writer and illustrator Grand Prize winners he sheepishly said: “Yeah, that’s a top secret document…”

“You left THE WHAT up there!?” she said…

We were assigned seats so that when we were called up we’d be in order.

“Duck…Duck…Duck…GOOSE!”

What I heard later was that one person did have the presence of mind to peek at the end and at least saw the name of the writer Grand Prize winner. This person (who shall remain nameless) did a great job of not telling a soul the whole rest of the day, resisting a temptation to blab which must have been intense and which I’m sure would have broken me. So yeah—kudos 🙂

We were picked up around 11am when the judges arrived for their rehearsal (which was a welcome change to the schedule, which said our rehearsals would be done at 3pm) and returned to the hotel.

We milled around a bit waiting for the cars to
come get us. Here, Damon with Tim
and Tim’s breakfast Coke.
(Photo courtesy Steve Gaskell)

We were free for lunch until 1pm when we were to have a meeting about how to give an acceptance speech.

Sweet relief–an egg roll instead of a burrito!

As a bit of a change-up, for lunch we went to the Chinese place right next door to the Mexican restaurant we’d otherwise eaten at every day. It was tasty and (even I will admit) a welcome change.

Once back at the hotel there was some unstructured time before the meeting and I ended up wandering. I found Aliette and Eric James Stone (a past winner from WOTF 21) sitting in the lobby, and soon we were joined by Tony. I asked Eric for any advice on the acceptance speech and his main suggestion was to keep it short. He asked if I’d written a Grand Prize acceptance speech yet and I said I hadn’t planned to, given that I was almost certain I wasn’t going to win. He and Tony both (wisely, it turned out) counseled me to write the Grand Prize speech.

It was counsel I promptly ignored, for a two-fold reason. Mainly, I was convinced I wasn’t going to be the Grand Prize winner. Statistically, okay, I had a 1-in-4 shot at the Grand Prize. But, not having read any of the other stories, after spending a week getting to know the other first place winners I could see how any one of the three of them could win the prize. Each had far more impressive credentials than me already and having arrived in California essentially convinced that there was no chance of me winning I hadn’t (to my mind) seen or heard anything to dissuade me from that opinion.

And yet…

And yet I had a 1-in-4 shot at the Grand Prize. Sure, statistics can be used to prove anything (14% of all people know that) but a 25% chance at the Grand Prize was, in some ways, nothing to dismiss. So a secondary concern (far less rational than the first) was fear of the jinx. If there was any chance of me winning the Grand Prize, it was (in my mind) sure to be quashed by the presumption of writing a Grand Prize acceptance speech. You weren’t going to get me to write anything like a Grand Prize speech. No sir. I wasn’t going to jinx myself. Unh uh.

So the Grand Prize speech remained unwritten, to hilarious effect later that night…

At 1pm we all assembled for the last time in our little conference room (*sniff*) to hear John Goodwin’s talk on what makes a good acceptance speech. The gist of it was “keep it short, keep it on topic.” John cautioned us about going on too long, or like feeling we needed to go on longer to fill time. One to two minutes is what he recommended, with the reminder (later borne out to be true) that once you got on stage and starting giving the speech, it was going to feel a lot shorter than it actually was. He also cautioned us against trying to be too funny or cute, saying that most such attempts failed (though I think a few people had some good lines and got the laughs they deserved. For instance, British Steve–who was a published finalist this year and who thus gets to keep entering the contest–jokingly thanked all of us in his speech for writing short enough stories that there was room for his story in the collection.)

John’s other comment was to keep the speech about the contest and the award and not take the opportunity to vent about politics, religion, anything controversial, etc. I think this was sound advice (not that I think anyone in our particular group would have done so anyway) but I think it was also motivated by what I’ve heard has happened in previous years: people getting up at the podium to accept their award and slamming the contest, other winners, Hubbard, etc.

Now, somebody doing that strikes me as rude, ungrateful, and hypocritical and I was actually shocked to hear such things had happened when some of the judges and past winners told me about it. Why would you submit to the contest, win, accept the trip, week-long workshop, prize money, and trophy and then show such ingratitude and lack of professionalism?

I understand why John felt it necessary to say that, but I feel very lucky that I was with a cohort of winners who I knew were all far too classy to pull a stupid stunt like that.

During the course of John’s talk is when I started to get really nervous. Looking back, I suppose it was anxiety over lingering uncertainty about the Grand Prize that had me (as doubtless my roomie Doug Texter will attest) freaked out. Luckily, that problem would soon be solved for me…

We were dismissed around 130pm with the instructions that we were to be ready to depart in the first limos at 430pm and that we were all to report to Sarah’s room for hair and make-up by 3pm.

Now, I’ve worn stage makeup before in high school plays, but didn’t realize we’d be wearing it to the award ceremony. Why did we need make-up? Oh yeah, they were going to be filming and taking scads of photos.

Tension mounted.

Doug and I returned to our room to work on the speeches. Doug turns out to have been on his high school debate team and his skills in rhetoric are head-and-shoulders over mine. He wrote a very eloquent speech.

Mine was more of the “I’d like to thank the Academy” variety…

At 3pm, our speeches written carefully on 3×5 recipe cards, Doug wandered down to Sarah’s room for make-up and I had a shower.

When I got to Sarah’s room, a number of the ladies were just finishing up and they all looked fabulous. Lorraine Schleter in particular said she didn’t recognize herself, but as I said when I saw her: “Hubba, hubba.” 🙂

While British Steve and Doug got their make-up done, I was sent off to wash my face with special cleanser pads the make-up artists insisted we use—my shower was not enough, apparently.

Doug blushes when told he has perfect skin…
(Photo courtesy Steve Gaskell)

Here, the make-up artist attempts to mind meld
with British Steve. “My thoughts to your thoughts…”
(Photo courtesy Steve Gaskell)

Upon my return, I sat in the make-up chair and asked: “What’s it going to take to make me look like Brad Pitt?”

The make-up artist (who normally did make-up for Hollywood features) said, without missing a beat: “20 million dollars and more time that you got.”

Oh! Snap!

Within five seconds of looking at me the make-up artist had my skin type down, and listed off issues that I have (I have a dry T-zone, I’m told). The resulting make-up job was very good. I didn’t look like Brad Pitt (sadly) by the end, but rather a prettier, less blotchy, less tired-circles-under-the-eyes version of me—kind of an ideal Platonic form of me 🙂 And the best part was unless you were really really close, you couldn’t tell that I was wearing make-up (which, I gather, is the ultimate goal of make-up).

Then it was back to the room for tuxs. I love wearing suits and don’t have much opportunity to do so (the day job dress code is pretty laid back) so I was looking forward to dressing up and think I looked pretty good in the penguin suit. Again, though, Doug out did me—that man was born to wear a tuxedo.

Around 4pm or so we started to congregate in the lobby to await the limos to the Athenaeum.

British Steve regales us with “Tutte le feste al tempio”
from Rigoletto (he’s a wonderful tenor) while, behind,
Damon–a master of the tango–cuts a rug with Alethia…

See what I mean about Doug? Born to wear a tux.

Swedish Steve and Alethia

Kathy, me, and Jerry Pournelle. If you look closely in
Pournelle’s eye, you can see the hints of a plot forming…

Other guests in the hotel (including the hot British stewardesses) were wandering through checking us out—though we cleaned up well, they doubtless thought they’d happened upon a bunch of people headed for some really nerdy formal…and they weren’t far off.

However, the absolute best case of mistaken identity that evening belonged to Damon, who was riding down the elevator, dressed in his tux, with one of the Miss Teen USA contestants’ mothers. Their pageant was going on the same night as ours and in his tux Damon looked like someone official.

“Oh, are you here for the contest?” she said, meaning the beauty pageant.

“Yes,” said Damon, meaning the Writers of the Future. “I’m one of the winners.”

I’m told the mother went white as a sheet, doubtless wondering just what kind of pageant she’d let her daughter enter…

L to R: Randall Ensley, me, and Damon Kaswell, Miss Teen Oregon 2007

There were many pictures taken (though, for some reason, Tony and I neglected to get a shot together) and then we all piled into various limos for the short ride to Cal Tech.

Jeff Carlson: novelist, father, hitman.
Standing next to him is Jabba the Tux.

Tony and Rod

This is how we roll.

Two guesses why the Steves tried to get in this limo…
For a complicated set of reasons I didn’t make it
into this one, and took the next limo there.

As we were climbing into the limos, Jerry Pournelle
was heard to shout: “Remember Caesar—thou art mortal!”

Our crew en route.

When we arrived back at the Athenaeum there was what could be described as a ‘cocktail hour’ except that, as we soon discovered (to general dismay), this was to be a dry event. Some people found some bottled water somewhere, and Tim arrived in tux with both his wife Serena and three or four cans of Coca Cola (you think I’m kidding but I’m not, I swear). Other than that we mainly just milled about the salon and the terrace for an hour or so while people arrived and the staff finished setting up the dining room.

Jeff and his wife with British Steve
on the terrace of the Athenaeum.
(Photo courtesy Jeff Carlson)

Joe Jordan and me on the terrace.
(Photo courtest Steve Gaskell)

And what occurred during this faux cocktail party was one of the stranger episodes of my Writers of the Future experience…

There I was, freaked out as hell already about the evening to come, when who should walk over but Jerry Pournelle and Yoji Kondo.

Now, Jerry Pournelle needs no introduction: he’s a NYT best-selling SF author, and has co-authored such classics as Footfall and The Mote in God’s Eye with Larry Niven. And Yoji Kondo is a really impressive guy: he’s a NASA astrophysicist who also writes SF under the name Eric Kotani.

And they walked over to talk to me. Like I wasn’t nervous enough already…

“You wrote the Saturn story, yes?” asked Prof. Kondo.

I think I nodded, dumbfounded that he even knew who I was.

“I’m curious,” he said—“did you give it to any scientists to read before you sent it in?”

Uh oh, I thought. This is either going to be really good or really bad.

I explained that I had tried to get somebody from the Cassini team to read it but that he declined, citing his need to keep the findings secret until his article in Nature came out…

“Ah,” said Kondo, “I didn’t think so. Because I liked your story very much but it would never happen that way. All your science is wrong.”

Shit.

“Yoji is probably one of five or six people on the planet who could tell you that,” said Pournelle. “When I read it I thought ‘Well, I don’t think that could happen…’ but it was only when I talked to Yoji that I was sure.”

Suddenly I was two inches tall.

At this point I think I babbled something incoherent, trying to explain (i.e.: beg forgiveness for) my ignorance of hard science. I think I even used as a defense that I’d studied the history of science and not actual science.

Pournelle and Kondo’s response, rather than to offer absolution for my having committed the cardinal sin of hard SF, was to chide my lack of calculus (pointing out how easy it is) and to insist that as penance for my transgression I ought simply to teach myself. This reminded me of a possibly apocryphal story of one of my MA profs teaching himself to read Dutch over the course of a weekend in order to study some primary sources (I say ‘possibly apocryphal’ because if anybody could possibly do that it was this particular professor who, it was generally agreed by we grad students, was a robot).

While I didn’t say anything at the time, I thought that if either Pournelle or Kondo had seen my Grade 11 math marks they would simply have patted me on the head, wondered where my helmet was, and inquired what time the short bus was coming to pick me up…

I clung desperately to Tim Powers’ advice that our stories should be plausible rather than accurate, if plausibility served the story better than actual accuracy. The thought that I had almost fooled Jerry Pournelle sustained me for the next few minutes.

“I voted for your story,” said Kondo. “I liked it as a story, but I sent a note with it that explained this could never happen.”

Well, at least he liked it…

“Who did win the Grand Prize?” Kondo asked Pournelle, as if I wasn’t standing there. The question presupposed that I hadn’t won so it was a weird mix of curiosity and disappointment that I felt hearing this conversation (in fact, I wondered for a split second—until my nosy side thought better of it—whether I should even be within earshot as they talked).

And then Pournelle told him who had won (not me, I assure you) as if I wasn’t even standing there.

“Sorry to be the one to tell you,” said Pournelle.

It was a simultaneously thrilling moment—getting to know (or so I thought) the Great Secret before (just about) anyone—but at the same time mildly disappointing.

I say mildly because, like I said before, I hadn’t expected to win anyway. So things were playing out much as I had anticipated (though I hadn’t anticipate this particular conversation…) The entire week I realized over and over just how lucky I was even to be at the WOTF week, so I knew that I’d already had an experience far more valuable than I could ever have hoped.

A real benefit of Pournelle and Kondo’s trick was that I immediately achieved a Zen-like state of calm. I had been worried about the Grand Prize but knowing that I no longer had anything to worry about meant I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of the night. I don’t really have a problem addressing crowds (performing in a lot of high school plays broke me of that fear a long time ago) so I was looking forward to my first-place quarterly win speech.

Dinner followed shortly and I was seated at a table with Doug, Andrea and her husband Mike, Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, Doug Beason and his wife, and Scott Brick (who is an actor who does a lot of audiobooks, including Kevin’s Dune prequels and the audiobook version of Writers of the Future XXIII) and his girlfriend.

The dinner gong sounds and we shuffle into the dining hall.

Foolishly not realizing that it was assigned seating, I had to fight through the crowd headed for the dining hall and back to the foyer to get my place card. In fairness, I’d arrived so early that the table with the cards and attendants hadn’t even been set up yet. But when I asked the lady behind the desk to check my name off the list she actually recognized me.

She was one of the Galaxy Press people (one we’d not met during the week) and said how much she’d enjoyed my story. Very cool! But even better, she had a question about a plot point in my story. Even cooler! Her question was about a part of the story that I’d really worked hard on. I wanted to it be ambiguous and leave the reader wondering and as I had a number of people ask me the same question that weekend I guess it worked.

Just as I was leaving with my card, the lady behind the check-in desk flagged down a friend of hers. “This is the guy who wrote the Saturn story!” she said. The other lady got all excited and asked me, unprompted, the same question. Very, very cool.

Oooo…Fancy! (Photo courtesy John Burridge)

The meal was lovely—chicken and beef, with fingerling potatoes and veggies. I really would have liked a glass of wine, though…

Conversation was wide-ranging: audiobooks, the “lessons of the Worm”—a reference to the Tyrant, the god emperor Leto II from the Dune series, not to a bottle of tequila—and Doug Beason and I had a conversation about Quebec separatism.

I offered my opinion that Quebec separatism isn’t as much a concern for Canada now—a lot of steam has gone out of la cause patriotique since the narrow referendum loss in 1995 (aside: it’s a not a night soon forgotten when you watch your country almost be voted out of existence on television…)—as is Alberta’s new-found oil sands wealth mixed with Western Canadian alienation.

I suggested that Alberta seceding as some kind of independent oil emirates was a bigger worry for Canadian unity.

After dessert we moved out into the courtyard and the warm California night to begin the Big Event…

The Big Screen. All of our names would flash up here at some point,
and the camera far at the back of the outdoor venue would show
us up there while we gave our speeches.

The stage all lit up. It looked very impressive.

Check out the lights! It was like we
were in the outfield at Wrigley.
(Photo courtesy John Burridge)

I won’t go into too much detail about the ceremony itself as the Writers of the Future website and blog have extensive posts about it here and here.

Joni Labaqui, the Writers & Illustrators of the Future Contest Director,
was the Mistress of Ceremonies for the evening and did a great job.
(Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

John Goodwin officially released the book with the debut of the book trailer for Writers of the Future XXIII. It was really slick and well produced and looked just like it was for a movie. Even Andrea and Mike (both veterans of the New York TV industry) were impressed by the production values–clearly Galaxy Press had gone all out. (I was told later that the marketing firm who produced it was the same one who had done marketing for Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code).

But don’t take my word for it: watch it yourself on YouTube!

What followed was a speech about the venue (many of the people involved in the early days of atomic research and the Manhattan Project had stayed at the Athenaeum at one point or another, and one room overlooking the courtyard had been used for a time by Einstein when he was visiting CalTech–I stared at that window for a while, I confess), an appreciation of the role science fiction has had on pushing scientific innovation and space exploration (given by Allen Sirota, who we’d met as our tour guide the day before at JPL), the presentation of the NAACP Award of Excellence to the Contest, and announcements (which we’d been let in on earlier in the day) that WOTF XXIII was to be the first volume in the series to be an audiobook (available through Audible.com) and a Science Fcition Book Club hardcover edition.

Needless to say we were all incredibly thrilled by this news.

Andrea doesn’t seem to find the old ‘pull my finger’
routine nearly as funny as Ed or her husband Mike do…
(Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

Then came the presentation of the awards to the illustrators, followed by the presentation of the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award to Charles Brown. Charles gave a great speech (punctuated by his peering into the large, mug-like trophy to see whether there was any booze in there…)

(Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

This was followed by the presentation of the awards to we writers.

We all lined up in order (Joe and British Steve first, as a winner from the last volume and published finalist, respectively, and the rest of us by quarter we’d won in), as we’d been instructed that morning. Our bios (including those of Karl Bunker and Corey Brown, the two winners from this year who were unable to attend) and were read out by the various WOTF judges who were presenting our trophies to us and then, just like we’d practiced, we climbed the stairs, shook hands, accepted our awards and made our way to the podium for our speeches. Things went off without a hitch, seemingly, and no one tripped up or down the stairs 😉

Steve Gaskell

Joseph Jordan

Tony Pi

Jeff Carlson

Damon Kaswell

Douglas Texter

Kim Zimring
(Photo courtesy Jeff Carlson)

Aliette De Bodard
(Photo courtesy Joseph Jordan)

And then came my turn.

Rebecca Moesta and me.

Another funny proof how the mind plays tricks
on you when under stress: you’ll note Tim Powers standing
off to the side of the stage waiting to present an award to Andrea…
I swear he was sitting in the audience and that I made eye contact
with him as I gave my speech…

“I’d like to thank the academy…”
(Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

My acceptance speech for my first-quarter win (and, at this point, the only one I thought I’d have to give) was scribbled out over seven of the little recipe cards we’d been provided:

I’d like to begin by thanking my parents. When I told them in third grade that I wanted to be a science fiction writer they were very supportive and never tried to dissuade me–even though my stories had (as my dad would say) “all those weird names in them.”

I’d like to thank Robert J. Sawyer. Unfortunately he couldn’t be here tonight, but Rob has been kind of my writing Yoda, and his support and encouragement has a lot to do with why I’m here tonight.

Tim Powers and Kathy Wentworth put on an unforgettable workshop. I know that what I learned here this week will make me a better writer. And I’ll always remember their series of inspirational quotes, including: “Good is bad” and “I’m principled–but not that principled.”

I’d like to thank my fellow winners–the Writers and the Illustrators. You’ve been a fantastic bunch to hang around with this week and I feel very lucky to have met you all. I’d especially like to thank Randall Ensley, who did such an amazing illustration to accompany the story–it looks WAY cooler than what I pictured when I wrote the story. I feel like the story is half his now.

And of course I’d like to thank L. Ron Hubbard for endowing this fantastic contest, all of the judges, and everyone at Galaxy Press. They’ve been so kind and generous and have really made this a week I’ll never forget. Thank you all!

Andrea’s husband Mike was kind enough to take some photos of me while I was on stage. Here’s one of me descending the stage, apparently looking for John Connor, but finding John Burridge instead.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

John Burridge

Ed Sevcik

Andrea Kail

Then came the announcement of the Illustrator of the Future Grand Prize Winner…Lorraine Schleter!

Watch her acceptance speech on YouTube! (She was just as stunned as I would be moments later…)

…Followed by the presentation of the Writers of the Future Grand Prize.

…And the winner is…

The judges look on as the envelop is opened…

Holy @#$% it’s ME!

Here’s the publicity shot of me winning…
(Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

…and here’s a photo of the same moment taken for me by Aliette. I include this one because it’s a more accurate representation of what was happening: the photo is a bit blurry and a little shaky but that’s how I was experiencing the world just then…

Neither these photos or the YouTube video can really portray what it felt like to win. It came (obviously) as a complete shock, and not simply because I’d be told I hadn’t won.

The moment Lee Purcell said “Saturn” my first thought was “Oh my God–it’s ME!” My whole body went numb and I became so dizzy I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand up.

I was terrified.

You’ll see in the video that in trying to get up I leaned heavily toward Aliette, sitting on my left. That’s because my legs didn’t follow what my brain was telling them to do. By the time they responded I was already pushing poor Aliette half out of her chair. I thrust my camera in her hand and said (not asked) “TAKE PICTURES!”…which she did, bless her heart.

I don’t remember the walk up to the stage, nor do I remember hearing the applause or seeing the standing ovation. I don’t remember being handed the trophy. I remember Lee Purcell grabbing my left arm quite tightly–a good thing, too, as she’s the only thing holding me up at that point.

Somehow I remembered we had to look at the camera and smile. I recall Tim saying “Cool, very cool” a couple of times and Lee reminding me to breathe. Then the thumbs-up came from Hugette and I turned to the podium.

I do remember setting the trophy down on the podium–suddenly aware of just how heavy it was–and I recall Joni handing me the cheque.

Then I had to say something…

I wasn’t joking in my speech about feeling like I was going to pass out. I’ve never blacked out before, but I was sure that the numbness I felt all over and the extreme dizziness was what it must feel like just before you keel over.

I suddenly remembered what Doug and I had referred
to as the Doug Texter Method of Award Acceptance:
get nervous, lock knees, fall over…except I couldn’t
recall if that had been a joke or what
I was supposed to do just then…
(Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

I will take issue with John Goodwin on one aspect of speech giving: he’d said that the speeches would seem faster than they actually were, and that’s was true for the first place acceptance speech I knew I had to give. However, I can assure him (and you) that when you unexpectedly win a Grand Prize sans acceptance speech it feels like you’re up there for a million years.

Ironically, until I saw the speech on YouTube I didn’t recall most of what I had said. I remember thinking “I should thank the judges” and I will be forever pleased with myself that I remembered the names of the other first-place winners–I doubt I could have told you my name at that point. However, I keenly recall every “Uhh…” and “Umm…” as each one lasted five minutes in my mind. You’re dying up here, went the litany in my mind. Get off the stage—you’re killing these people with how long you’re taking…

My whole speech took exactly 58 seconds. It felt like I was on stage for 5800 years. Shows how one’s perception of time can be affected by, oh, say an intense rush of fear hormones, endorphins, and adrenaline.

Why is he still talking? Somebody get the hook!

I don’t remember the walk back to my chair, but I do remember wondering if I could make it down the stairs without falling…

From the sudden whole body numbness I went within about two minutes to feeling like I was going to throw up. I assume this is some weird physiological reaction to the bizarre and unaccustomed soup of chemicals rushing through my body. If I thought about feeling nauseous too much the feeling was worse and I was genuinely concerned I might barf then and there.

I needed water.

I needed whisky.

I wondered if Charles had found any booze for his mug…

After I staggered back to my seat there was a brief wrap-up of the ceremony (I have no idea what was said) and then it was time for pictures. The other writer and illustrator winners came over to congratulate me and I must surely have looked as ill as I felt. “You okay?” I remember John Burridge asking. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”

When we headed for the stage I was in such a daze that I wandered off without my quarterly trophy (which I’d placed under my chair). Somebody started yelling at me to take it with me and I came back to myself momentarily.

Though I managed a smile in all the photos, I’m green underneath all that stage make-up and mostly thinking: “I can’t believe this is happening. Don’t puke on the podium. This is unbelievable. Don’t yak on the trophies. This is just incredible. Don’t throw up on Lorraine…”

The Grand Prize Winners

The Illustrators of the Future

The Writers of the Future

The Writers and Illustrators of the Future

The Writers and Illustrators of the Future with the Judges

When it came time for the photo of the writers with the judges Jerry Pournelle sat in a chair close to the podium. I leaned over and said, “You tricked me!” With a mischievous look in his eye he said, in his Louisiana drawl, “Yeah, I did do that didn’t I?”

And that was that.

At one point when photos were being taken of just Lorraine and me, she gave her camera to someone so that we could get a gag shot of us giving the old Vulcan salute. I couldn’t figure out how that same shot ended up in the October issue of Locus as part of their coverage of the awards until I saw this photo taken by Jeff Carlson:

Amelia Beamer, an editor at Locus, ensuring
Lorraine and I live long and prosper…
(Photo courtesy Jeff Carlson)

And after the pictures, the maelstrom.

Just behind the curtains of the stage was the courtyard we’d seen being set up earlier in the day. Instead of empty tables, however, there were now tables stacked with books for us to sign, tables packed with food and drink (including a chocolate fountain–always a sure sign of a decadent party, I think ;), and shelves around the perimeter which held all those old pulp magazines which we’d seen the other day. As well, each framed piece of art was set up on a table along side the official appreciations that Galaxy Press had secured for each winner from hometown mayors, Congressmen, and (in Tony and my case) Members of Parliament.

Oh, and there were about 600 people crammed into the courtyard, too 🙂

The writers and illustrators took up seats around the central table and the guests crowded around to have us sign their books.

I was finally able to grab a bottle of water (which I downed in a single gulp, I think, and which really helped calm my stomach and nerves–I got another) and set my trophies down on the table to get to work signing autographs.

Remember this table from the morning?
(You can also see the empty
bookshelves there behind the pillars)

Twelve hours later it looked like this:

John tries to figure out how to forge my signature…

“Yeah, I’m in the book. No, really–I swear.”
The woman in the gold dress behind me
is Tony’s cousin who lives in California.

But my signing wasn’t to last long! One of the things they didn’t tell us is that the Grand Prize winners don’t actually have a lot of time that evening to sign autographs. Lorraine and I were ushered around to be introduced to various big shots (lots of Hollywood folks there), have our pictures taken, and be interviewed for promotional purposes. I even had to sign a release form.

Like I was going to say no after they’d just given me all this money, right?

Here I demonstrate the approved way of
holding up the book for a promotional shot…

Me with the Grand Prize trophy and my framed letter from Jack Layton, my MP. They got me to get in position holding these things and then for some reason the photographer started talking to somebody and didn’t take the photos. Now, that trophy weights about ten pounds and I’m only holding it with my sweaty, greasy fingertips…

On my way across the courtyard I was stopped by this fellow (whose name I don’t recall unfortunately) who did the redesign of the interior specs for the WOTF volumes, starting with ours. They’d been using the same interior specs since the contest started in the 1980s and the new design looks fabulous. He told me they’d used the same margin ratios as used in the Gutenberg Bible–go with the classics, I guess 😉

After all this, I was sent for a video interview. They had two stations set up to do interviews with the winners and guests. I went to one and filled out a form and was sitting waiting behind two other people for my interview when someone with the event showed up and said “Oh, we’ll take him to the other station–he’ll get done faster there.”

Okay. So I go to the other station with him, which was right near the plant Geir hid behind that morning on the other side of the very crowded courtyard. I fill out another form (don’t know why–I tried to tell them I’d just done one…), and waited for Charles Brown to finish his interview. But just as he’s wrapping up, somebody with the production brings over Carina Rico, a singer and one of the presenters.

“We’re just going to take her quickly,” the person said, and ushered her in front of the camera, where she proceeded to talk for twenty minutes. And I don’t even know what was so interesting, as the interview was in Spanish.

Anyway, eventually I did my interview and part of that is what you see at the end of my YouTube video. Some people have asked me if that was scripted or if it was something I was asked to say specifically. I guess that means I sounded kinda polished 😉 The answer on both counts is ‘no’: what I said was completely off the cuff and from the heart. The Contest really had been fantastic to me and to all of us and I think that appreciation showed in what I said.

(I will confess to secretly being very proud of the “not if but when” bit at the end–pithy!)

After that it was finally back to signing books for the rest of the evening.

Ain’t no party like a west coast party, cuz a west coast party don’t stop…
(Photos courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF)

After an hour or two, when things had quieted down a bit, Kathy came over to congratulate me. “It was so hard not to tell you this morning when you said you were broke,” she laughed.

“We took a vote,” said British Steve, shaking my hand. “Breakfast is on you tomorrow.”

Eventually it was time to head back to the hotel, and I shared a limo with Ed, British Steve, and Rome Quezada, Chief Editor of the Science Fiction Book Club. Steve helped me to my room with the trophies and plaque. Then back down to the bar where I’d offered to buy drinks…only to discover the bar was CLOSED!

Charles Brown and Amelia Beamer were there, and just as we arrived Rome and Sean Williams retired to their rooms. “Come have a seat by me,” Charles said to me. Cool.

Though the bar was closed, Amelia turned out to have snuck in a micky of Hennessey, which we drank out of dirty glasses.

It tasted like victory.

Ed soon turned in, too, and Steve, Brian Beus (one of the Illustrator winners), and I all ended up in the 24-hour business centre e-mailing and Facebooking about the night. When we stopped and thought how ridiculous it was that three guys in tuxes fresh from the most amazing night of their lives rushed to check their e-mail at 2am…well, we had a good laugh at our own expense.

Given that I was still too keyed up to sleep or think straight, British Steve suggested a walk around Pasadena. At 3am. To calm me down.

Like I said, I wasn’t thinking straight.

We walked over to the mall/plaza thing where we’d spent so much of the week and wandered toward the library.

As we talked about all sorts of things (including how strange it would be to go back to the real world in two days time) I realized, award-winning writers or not, neither British Steve nor I were very bright at that moment.

Picture the scene: two foreigners in tuxedos walking alone down half-lit American streets in the dead of night. British Steve needed to withdraw some US cash so we stopped down the block at an outdoor ATM with floodlights lighting the place up bright as day (I know the purpose is probably to make it so bright muggers won’t want to risk accosting you, but at 3am I think it mostly just serves as a beacon highlighting you to would-be robbers in the local area). And in the left breast pocket of my tuxedo I had a cheque for $5000 US.

Walking toward the library we passed one, then a second, and then a third cluster of yoots. They seemed to have been drinking and I don’t think they were that far from, hmm, shall we say getting into shenanigans?

By the time we passed the second cluster, British Steve and I had come to the same realization that this walk had been ill considered. When one of the guys in the third group called out to us (something about our tuxes, I think) we decided we were both idiots, ducked into the Spanish courtyard of City Hall and made for home.

The fountain by day Tuesday and by night Saturday

On our way we did encounter three more drunken folks (two women and a man, all in their 30s) who were not only much less threatening, but far more entertaining. As they helped prop each other up, they looked us over in our tuxes.

“Are you guys aliens?” the drunken man asked (I kid you not).

“No, we just write about them,” I answered.

“Do you know where the Hilton is?” he asked.

Steve turned around and pointed at the silhouette of a tall building a few blocks away, at the top of which glowed a bright sign reading ‘HILTON’.

“I think it’s that way,” he said.

“Never mind,” said one of the drunken women, pointing at the Hilton in the distance. “It’s over that way.” And she led them on into the night.

We returned to the hotel around 4am and I finally decided to try sleeping. I think I finally managed around 5am.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Tomorrow: Saturday & Sunday
– The Summer of Steve
– “How do I not screw this up?”
– I learn a new way to tell time
– I learn that I don’t know how to pronounce my own last name
– Proof that, despite the accolades and awards, I’m still an idiot…

Thursday began with reading over breakfast–I still had the three stories to finish and comment on before class.

When I got poolside (I never get tired of saying that) I found Doug and Randall finishing breakfast. Turns out Randall illustrated both our stories (wonder if that’s why they made Doug and I roommates?)

The morning session was a critique of the three stories, and was much like the critique session for my writer group, the Fledglings, except that we only got one minute to give our salient points (John keeping very close eye on the time) and any other comments were written on the story.

In general, like a Fledglings meeting, people had many of the same things to say about each story, but it was interesting to hear everyone’s different perspectives on the stories on offer.

Tim Powers had an interesting take on critique sessions: that they were of more benefit to those doing the critiquing and he often thought the author should wait outside while their story was being discussed.

I take his point–that it’s in critically examining a story, seeing what works and what doesn’t and why, that we as authors learn the most about storytelling and technique–but I know that I always find it helpful to hear what others think and pick up on, even if I ultimately decided to ignore their advice.

Tim’s other good piece of advice is to get non-writers to act as first readers so you get a more genuine reader’s reaction (writers who read are often critiquing in their minds the whole time–at least I know I am). So Darrell–I’m looking at you.

The three stories we read–those by Tony, Andrea, and Joe–were all good, and even more so knowing that they’d been written in 24 hours. I know Tony already has his out on the market (more on that later…) and I’ll venture a guess to say that you’ll see them all in print rather soon, as I hope you will with the stories the rest of us wrote, too.

Following the critique session and a short break, we heard from Steve Savile–“Swedish Steve”, a winner in WOTF 19 and now very successful author of media tie-ins, including some Doctor Who books–about what to expect after the Writers of the Future week. (I gather the Sean Williams was meant to speak to us at the same time, but the jetlag from Australia hit him like a ton of bricks and he was in the early stages of a nasty flu so he had to lie down for a bit, I think).

Though Steve’s talk was cut a bit short (on account of us needing more than the 20 minutes that had been scheduled to actually get and eat lunch) his talk was really reassuring and inspiring.

He spoke first of the “impostor syndrome” which I’d heard some other WOTF winners comment on and which I was already feeling a bit myself–the feeling of “What have I done to deserve this?”–and which I was to feel most keenly starting Friday night. Steve said he didn’t write anything for nearly six months after returning from WOTF, a similar kind of fallow period to the burnout I’ve heard some alumni of Clarion talk about post-workshop after their return to home and the real world.

I think in many cases this inability to write is caused by a combination, on the part of the author, of raised expectations (“Well, I’ve been to this fabulous workshop so naturally my stuff will be/has to be way better than it was before…”) and heightened self-doubt (“But maybe that was just a fluke…Why isn’t this new stuff I’m writing suddenly brilliant?!”)

So Steve’s advice for overcoming this impostor syndrome was to keep writing and to plan on the same kind of rejection you had before. Solid advice, and a bit easier to take given Tim and Kathy’s assurances the day before that all first drafts suck.

And Steve knows of what he speaks: he said he used to be a three short story a year writer, and then after WOTF went to selling over 1 millions words inside four years–including a series of Warhammer books, each one written in 7-10 weeks.

As someone once said: “Impressive. Most impressive.”

Back at Rubio’s. Steve and Alethia were nice enough to join us,
and Steve continued to impart wisdom over burritos.

After lunch was out long-awaited trip to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I’d been looking forward to this since I’d first read about it on the WOTF Blog. See, not only am I the kind of person to whom a trip to JPL appeals on about nine levels of geekiness, but my WOTF story, “Saturn in G Minor”, is based on findings from the Cassini probe…which was built at JPL.

Now that’s symmetry.

We were driven to JPL in a convoy of cars and British Steve and I ended up in one full of illustrators–my illustrator Randall Ensley, Pasadena native son Marcus Collins, fellow Ukrainian (okay, I’m only 25% Ukrainian, still…) Yuliya Kostyuk, and soon-to-be-Illustrator-Grand-Prize-winner Lorraine Schleter (two guesses why the Steves picked this car to ride in…) The illustrators were a lot of fun and it was nice to get to know some of them a bit better, having been around mostly the other writer winners since Sunday.

Ours was also the most international of the cars in the convoy, I think, for when it came time to show our ID to gain access to JPL we confronted the guard with three American driver’s licenses, and a British, Ukrainian, and Canadian passport.

Driving very quickly by the main gates…

Here’s the dish where they receive those secret alien messages…

Assembled in front of the visitor center, we were met by a number of the WOTF judges, including Kevin J. Anderson and Dave Wolverton (aka David Farland), and were checked off the master list of expected guests and given info folders of JPL bumpf…all except me, of course.

Tim Powers and Kevin Anderson.

See, for some reason, my name wasn’t on the pre-approved list for our tour. Access to JPL is tightly controlled (lest any rogue state steal plans for a probe to Saturn…) and without my name on the list, well, I wasn’t going anywhere…This might have had something to do with the short-notice I had with my passport number (I got it a week-and-a-half earlier) but Joni had given them all that info and couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t been included.

So while everyone else from our group milled about outside, I was at the reception desk trying to talk my way past security.

Waiting for the damn Canadian to get approved for the tour.

“No unscreened foreign national is allowed on a tour of the facilities,” said the thick-necked ex-Marine looking fellow behind the security desk.

Foreign national?

“Come on,” I said, trying to sound as just-between-you-and-me as I could, “I’m Canadian. I’m not that foreign. We’re like your cousins. We built the Canadarm for the Space Shuttle–we’re all friends…”

Thick Neck was having none of it.

That’s Thick Neck behind the desk…

Andrea pointed out that her husband Mike was on the list but wasn’t arriving until later in the day and that I could pretend to be him. It was a good idea and if I’d been smarter and not already pleaded my “but I’m Canadian” case to Thick Neck I might have tried it. Having identified myself to security, though, I decided not to chance being shipped to Guantanamo Bay.

Tony and Jeff scheming to take over the world…

Back (in red): Steve Savile; Middle (L to R): KD Wentworth, Dave Wolverton aka David Farland, Dave’s wife (whose name I missed…); Front: Kim Zimring and John Burridge

At this point a very kind JPL employee (whose name I wish I could remember) stepped in to help. He tried reasoning with Thick Neck (there wasn’t) to see if there was some way around this requirement (there wasn’t) and what we could do to get me approved pronto. This guy took down my passport info and dashed across the JPL campus to the security office to have them run the numbers and prove to Thick Neck that I wasn’t an enemy combatant.

A tale of two Steves…
Photo courtesy of Joseph Jordan

Half an hour later I had my badge and bumpf folder. Take that Thick Neck!

Permission finally obtained, it was time for the tour to commence. And there was much rejoicing. Doesn’t this remind you of the album cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Given that Damon’s hand is right over my head, I guess that means I’m Paul…
Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF

The tour itself was wonderful. JPL’s campus is pretty good looking and the toys they have to play with are second to none.

Robo-Dome!! How cool is that?!

These astronomy robots are part of JPL’s Distributed Spacecraft Technology program. Part of the program’s aim is to create semi-autonomous precision formation flying deep space probes which could work in concert to detect distant stellar pheonmena and planets.

Attracted to our camera flashes, the robots turned and started to come after us…

The Mars Science Lab is where the Spirit and Opportunity rovers were built and tested.

This is the test bed (with steep incline left) where they simulate the Martian surface and test movement scenarios before sending the commands to the rovers on Mars.

Oh, those wacky robot engineers.

By far the coolest (yes, even cooler than the Mars Rover) were the three ATHLETEs–All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer. You can find out more about them here.

The ATHLETE–All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer

Take special note of some of ATHLETE’s abilities:

“Traverse almost any terrain, including vertical rock faces or sandy slopes at the angle of repose by using a launchable/releasable grappling hook” and “Large payload capacity of 450 kg per vehicle, with much more for multiple ATHLETE vehicles docked together.”

This is what Batman would do if he built @#$%ing Voltron!

Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF

I wish to apologize to Stanley Schmidt right now, because after seeing this we all started shouting out ideas for stories involving ATHLETE that we could send to Analog. So, Mr. Schmidt–I’m sorry if you suddenly see a dozen stories involving hex-legged robots on the Moon…

The authors having turned their backs momentarily,
ATHLETE turns to silently stalk its unsuspecting prey…

The ATHLETE can fold its legs up and rest its chassis on the ground.
That’s actual Moon dust on its joints…well, not really.

The engineer in this photo told John you could put a soccer ball-like dome on ATHLETE and very easily have a mobile habitat on the Moon which you could program to drive anywhere on the lunar surface while you slept.
“I want one!” said John.
“You trust robots way more than I do,” said the robot engineer.

We were walking around the campus for a couple of hours and it was fantastically hot–JPL is surrounded (as is seemingly everything in southern California) by hills so there was no wind and the merciless day orb (inside joke) beat down on us from the cloudless sky.

As we passed the JPL cafeteria Andrea Kail led us in a water revolt, bless her. Being Canadian I would have suffered in polite silence, but I really admire New Yorkers–they cut through all that crap.

Remember that scene in The Ten Commandments when the Hebrew slaves raid the temple granaries? It was like that with us and the JPL cafeteria, but with bottled water.

Fully hydrated, we were able to finish our tour.

Sorry this photo is blurry–it was taken on the sly. This is NASA’s prototype
time machine and they don’t want people knowing about it…

“Deer…in…SPAAACCCCEEEE!” Apparently these deer wander the JPL campus
and can even be fed by hand. Sadly, I’d left my deer feed back at the hotel…

Once back at the hotel it was time for the reveal of the artwork which accompanied our stories in the anthology. We walked into this little room and there were the illustrators, standing by framed prints of the illustrations they’d done based on our stories. The moment was made all the more special knowing that we would be getting those frames prints to keep.

Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF

Photo courtesy of Joseph Jordan

The image that Randall had done for mine was very cool–it was from the beginning of the story and looked way cooler than the visual I had in my mind when I wrote that scene in the story. Thanks for making me look good, Randall 🙂 I’d been wondering since I won in October what scene he would pick–I tend to see scenes quite vividly in my mind as I write and I could think of a number of parts that might have made for good visual storytelling. I like the moment that Randall chose, but you have to give the guy credit: he works in pointalism and chose what had to be one of the most work-intensive s scenes–one set in deep space.

I’ll remind you that space is black and that Randall works in tiny little dots.

Most impressive.

Yuliya shows me her portfolio. “Your face,” she said “reminds
me so much of Ukraine.” I’m not sure exactly what she meant…
Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF

Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta

After the art reveal, the writers returned to our little conference room for a presentation by Kevin J. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta. I’d heard from Steve Savile that this was one of the real highlights of his WOTF experience, and Sean Williams said he always looked forward to hearing the presentation, finding it inspiring and energizing.

I gotta say, I agree.

The presentation was a lot of fun and there was some great advice…but I don’t need to tell you that because you can experience it for yourself! Adventures in Scifi Publishing was there recording the whole thing as a podcast (hence the fancy microphones) and you can hear it for yourself here.

After that Charles Brown, the editor of Locus and this year’s recipient of the Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award, spoke to us about SF as a family and I think he has a funny (and often incriminating) story about nearly everyone who is anyone in SF.

Charles Brown
Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF

He also spoke to us a bit about what it takes to succeed in the industry.

“Most of you will fail. Most of you won’t make it,” he said, to some nervous chuckling from the writers.

In talking about this later with people, what Charles said had clearly shocked and frightened some. All week we’d been hearing positive, supportive, reinforcing messages…and this wasn’t any of those.

Sean Williams and Steve Savile later told me that reactions amongst their cohorts had been the same, with many people shocked by what Charles had to say. They said we’d actually had kind of a gentle version of his usual speech–perhaps he was tempering things this year given his impending award.

While this continued to trouble some over the next few days, others (myself included) were able not to dismiss it but, in essence, be determined that we’d prove Charles wrong.

I’d heard Harlan Ellison give this same warning years ago on the old show Prisoners of Gravity. They’d done a whole episode on what it takes to become a SF writer, including a ten-point list of traits you needed (which I wrote down and pinned to my bedroom wall when I was eleven). Ellison’s advice was that anyone who can be dissuaded from becoming a writer should be dissuaded, as it’s hard, lonely work, and most who attempt it fail.

Since I heard that at age eleven and it hasn’t stopped me in the last seventeen years, I don’t think it’s going to stop me now.

The point I remember most from that ten-point list is “Make sure you need to be a writer. If you can be happy doing anything else, do that instead.” For a long time I wasn’t sure that I had that kind of need, but as I get older and have tried a lot of what else I thought might be my passion–grad school, working for a living, etc.–I find the one thing I keep coming back to is writing. And as Kevin Anderson, Rob Sawyer, and others have told me, it’s often the most persistent writer that succeeds in fiction.

So there’s some hope for me, I guess 🙂

After Charles finished his talk it was time for the barbeque…the “barbecue.” I gather this hotel didn’t have an outdoor BBQ facility (i.e.: an actual barbeque) so we had a faux BBQ in their normal banquet hall. But the food was hardly the point. As it was made clear to us, the point of the BBQ was to meet the judges and schmooze, network, whatever you want to call it.

The chow line. Come an’ git it!
Photo courtesy Galaxy Press/WOTF

I grabbed a seat at Aliette and British Steve’s table. We were joined by Charles Brown, Steve Savile, Alethea Kontis, and Sean Williams, who I managed to sit next to.

Sean asked me about my writing and whether I was working on a novel. I confessed that I was intimidated by the idea of a novel and was unsure whether I had any novel length ideas. He said when he’d come to the WOTF as a winner back in the early 1990s he’d been in the same boat, and he recommended William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade as a good guide (though it’s about screen writing, it talks a great deal about plotting, drama, storytelling, character, etc.)

Sean explained his 10 ½ Commandments for Writing, but the best piece of advice he gave me was to be aware of your technique as you write–if you’re aware of what you’re trying to do as you write and you get stuck, you can more easily figure out why you’re stuck and get yourself out.

Sean’s advice put words to something that had been itching the back of my mind since Monday. Before I went to WOTF I’d been a very intuitive writer, just writing and seeing what happened and where the story took me. If a scene had some kind of emotional resonance or the story some kind of overarching theme I must confess it was accidental. If I noted it when I started doing revisions I’d maybe try to beef it up a bit, but it was often a surprise to me.

But when I got stuck I was stuck. And it wasn’t writers’ block (I don’t believe there’s such a thing) but that while I knew there was a problem I could see no solution or way out.

Both Tim and Kathy–who had largely divergent styles of plotting and writing–each clearly had an awareness of what they were trying to accomplish in plot motion, stage setting, and emotional content of each scene more or less as they wrote. Tim said he worried about theme later on, and I have no doubt that they polished and honed as they reworked in later drafts, but a fundamental difference between the pros and me was that they were conscious of what they were doing (or at least attempting) as they were doing it.

That kind of self-awareness as a writer is something I need to strive for from now on. No doubt it will become easier with time and practice.

After dinner I took the opportunity to introduce myself to Kevin J. Anderson and thank him for the talk he and Rebecca gave. He seemed surprised that I remembered his Gamearth Trilogy of the late 1980s-early 1990s and genuinely stunned when I told him that was the first trilogy I’d ever read as a kid–and it’s true. I read and loved the Gamearth books before I finished the Lord of the Rings (I got halfway through The Two Towers and, being an easily bored nine-year-old, put it down and didn’t pick it up again until high school), the original Dune books, or the Foundation trilogy.

(I’d even worked out a RPG based on the Gamearth books, but got upset when my friends didn’t play along the storyline of the books…but I digress).

Turns out Kevin and Rob Sawyer are friends and had each broken into the business around the same time, so I was able to talk to Kevin about Rob for a while. He then said he and a few people were going for drinks after the BBQ broke up and asked if I’d like to come along.

Hmm… New York Times bestselling sci-fi author asks whether I’d like a drink… Guess what I said?

So having a few minutes before we were to leave I decided I’d chickened out long enough and, taking my copy of Under Cover of Darkness in hand, walked over to Larry Niven.

Yeah. Larry Niven.

Now, I’d seen him interviewed plenty of times on Prisoners of Gravity (which, growing up in Kingston as the only SF fan I knew, was kind of my lifeline to the world of people who I could look at and say: “Hey–these people like the same stuff I do…”)

But he’s LARRY freaking NIVEN.

Ringworld—Mote in God’s Eye–Grand Master–Living Legend–Larry Niven.

It had taken me about and hour and a half to screw up the courage to talk to Larry Niven, and it took me less than forty seconds to completely blow my first meeting with him.

Here follows what I affectionately term the Niven Disaster. But I would like it noted for the record that it was nothing Mr. Niven did or didn’t do, but rather entirely my fault that our first meeting went south, and quickly at that.

I sidled up to the group where Larry Niven was standing (I believe Kim and Andrea were there) and very sheepishly proffered my hand.

Now, I realize in retrospect that when I’m nervous I not only am at a loss for words (being paralyzed by hyper-awareness of my own awkwardness, likely blowing it out of proportion–this came into play the next day when I won the Grand Prize) but I tend to speak quietly.

I learned later from others like Sean Williams, and Kevin Anderson, and Rob Sawyer and his wife Caroline, that Larry Niven is the sweetest, most gentle person you’d ever have the pleasure of meeting. But he’s apparently also quite shy and somewhat hard of hearing.

See where this is going yet?

Here’s how it played out in my mind, in real-time:

“Mr. Niven,” I say, “my name is Stephen Kotowych–I’m one of the writer winners.”

He gives me a look that said: “Why is he bothering me?”

Oh God, I think. He hates me.

I hold out my copy of Under Cover of Darkness. “Would you mind signing this for me?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Do you have a pen?”

I offer the one I’d taken from my hotel room–the complimentary, cheap-as-hell, piece-of-crap pen from the hotel room. I blame the nerves for my not thinking straight.

“Here you are,” I say.

Larry Niven takes the book and the crappy pen, and searches for his story.

“You know,” I say, having geared up for this oh-so-perfect ice breaker for months, “I’m in this book with you.”

Niven says nothing.

Oh God, I think. He doesn’t care. He’s Larry freaking Niven! Of course he wouldn’t care. Who am I–lowly worm!–to expect attention or appreciation from the Master himself?

Niven finds his story in the book and starts to write.

Or rather he tries to write. For the pen, that complimentary, cheap-as-hell, piece-of-crap pen from the hotel room isn’t writing anything.

“We’re not off to a good start,” he says, looking exasperated and handing the pen back to me.

I’m three inches tall at this point. The look on Larry Niven’s face says: “Who is this idiot and why is he bothering me?”

I scribble madly on the title page of the book, a near-by table cloth, and then on the back of my hand nearly rubbing through the skin until at last, mercifully, the pen works.

I hand it back to him and try to smile. He finally manages to sign the book and hands it back to me.

Offering my thanks, I slink away to commit seppuku. I’m in desperate need of that drink Kevin offered–I’m only glad I spoke to him first, as I don’t think I would have had the courage to introduce myself to him cold now.

Though I have my signature, I regret having bothered Niven, and know I will never forget the shame and embarrassment of my first meeting with him.

So that’s how I thought it played out. After talking with some people and trying to reconstruct events in my mind here’s a closer approximation of how things actually went:

I sidle up to Larry Niven and, shoulders hunched, offer my hand, which he shakes.

I mumble something which is barely audible, even to me. Had we the subsonic hearing abilities of elephants, we might have made out the words: “Mr. Niven, my name is Stephen Kotowych–I’m one of the writer winners.”

Larry Niven, shy about being approached by a stranger (as I would be as well) looks at me and thinks: Did he say something?

Suddenly a copy of Under Cover of Darkness is thrust toward him and there’s some more subsonic muttering.

Niven raises a confused and expectant eyebrow. What did he say? Niven wonders. My hearing isn’t so good–did he say anything at all? Nervous Guy’s lips seem to be moving a little… He’s a pro, though, and been around a long time–he realizes that this painfully nervous mumbling fellow seeks an autograph. Happy to sign, Niven asks: “Do you have a pen?”

The mumbler shoves a pen into Niven’s hand, and the Grand Master looks for his story in the book, not noticing–how could he without looking directly at the mumbler’s lips to see them move?–that the fellow has said something else. If he were to review a security camera tape of the scene later, Niven might be able to make out the words on the young man’s lips: “You know, I’m in this book with you.”

Trying to write, Niven finds that the pen doesn’t work.

To break the tension and put the young man at ease Niven jokes: “We’re not off to a good start.” He smiles and hands the pen back to the stricken-faced young man who proceeds to scratch the pen furiously on every nearby surface until ink starts to flow.

The mumbler hands the pen back to Niven with a twisted rictus on his face. Niven signs the book, and the young man makes some awkward motions before he runs–not walks–away, nearly knocking several people over in the process.

So my only real hope is that, should I ever get a chance to meet Larry Niven again, he won’t remember who I am and we can laugh as I recount watching that hopeless young man ask for his autograph that time…and I’ll claim that hopeless young man was one of the illustrator winners.

Staggering around, stunned, at this point I was greeted by Dave Wolverton, who was extremely nice and very friendly. He asked where I was from and then recounted how he himself had almost been Canadian (his family nearly moved to Canada at one point). He asked me how I was feeling about the Grand Prize and I was honest with him: I said I was scared to win and scared to lose.

After this we were off to the pub. It ended up being Kevin Anderson, Swedish Steve, Alethea, British Steve, and myself. I think Sean Williams was supposed to come, but he was still dealing with the jet lag and the flu.

I don’t think I managed to say much during the evening (except to recount the Niven Disaster–which I was assured by Kevin couldn’t possibly have been that bad because Niven is really sweet, but shy and a bit hard of hearing…)

I sat mostly in rapt attention as Swedish Steve and Kevin talked about the industry, agents, editors, media tie-ins, the WOTF contest, writing, and editing (Steve and Alethea co-edited the 2006 science fiction and fantasy anthology Elemental, a benefit anthology for children who survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that includes work by Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, David Drake, Jacqueline Carey, Martha Wells, Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman, Eric Nylund, Sherrilyn Kenyon (writing as Kinley MacGregor), Stel Pavlou, Michael Marshall Smith, Sean Williams, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, and others.)

It was a fabulous experience and I was floored by the things I was hearing (some of this was clearly industry insider gossip that was just fascinating) and I remain grateful to Kevin for the invite.

We decided to walk back to the hotel (which wasn’t far and the night was beautiful, as doubtless many California nights are) but in the process we almost lost Kevin to the Palm Tree of Death.

See, the streets in Pasadena are lined with palm trees but the planters are actually sunken below the level of the sidewalk. Consequently, they have these decorative metal grates covering the top of the planter, making them level with the sidewalks.

The palm tree on the right is planted like the one I mean

But as we were walking and talking (and not looking at our feet) none of us noticed that one of the palm trees had recently been removed, along with its grate. There was, therefore, essentially a six-foot by six-foot eight-inch deep unmarked hole jutting out into the middle of this dark sidewalk in downtown Pasadena.

Kevin was one moment recounting a story and the next falling into this seemingly endless hole. It happened too fast for any of us to catch him or anything, but his recovery was one of the most impressive self-catches I’ve seen. He ended up with a scrapped knee, but I think it could have gone much worse given the size of the hole and how unexpected it was. And if it hadn’t been him (he was out front, being an avid hiker and thus very fast on level ground) I’m sure one or another of us would have taken a spill.

Luckily none of us had to go back to the hotel and explain to the contest or his wife how Kevin Anderson, New York Times bestselling sci-fi author, had been killed in a bizarre palm tree accident.

Having had enough excitement for one day, I retired to my room when we got back to the Sheraton. Tomorrow was the award ceremony which I knew would run into the wee hours, and since we were free until 1030am I decided to let myself sleep in for the first time that week…

– S.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TOMORROW: Friday
– The Day of Days
– “I Feel Pretty”
– “This Isn’t About Saving the Whales”
– The reason why I studied the HISTORY of science and not actual science
– And the winner is…

(NB: This is a repost of an article that first appeared on 10 October 2007. You can find my rationale for this repost series here.)

Wednesday was simultaneously one of the longest and shortest days of my life.

In bed at 130am, I was up at 5 am when Doug’s cell phone alarm went off. We’d agreed we’d get an early start and I actually found I wasn’t that tired (my body always does pretty well with the three hour time difference in California—it tricks my body into thinking it doesn’t need as much sleep. I always feel like I can get so much more done in a day in Cali…)

The next hour or so was spent writing, then Doug and I went off to breakfast. Well aware that there wouldn’t be time for lunch today (even breakfast was a bit of a luxury—we should have spent that time writing!) we got the buffet and ate our $20 each worth.

Then back to the room for the completion of our marathon.

There’s not that much to report in terms of events for the next eight or so hours—Doug and I basically sat in our room (me in the armchair, him on his bed) writing as fast as we could.

Doug was definitely the faster—speedwise he out wrote me 2:1 and was actually done his story around 2pm, giving him time to revise. But Doug was a great roommate the whole week and was a good guy to be cooped up with for a whole day writing.

The only breaks came when I went to get ice (for the Dr. Pepper, which along with the tortillas and salsa I’d bought on Monday, sustained me until nearly 10pm that night), and when (guess who?) Hugette came by to get some “action shots” of us writing.

Here’s my action shot. It’s actually 2pm and bright
and sunny out, but because I was sitting in front of the
window we needed to draw the blinds…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

I also popped down the hall for a bit to see how Tony was doing. He and his roommate John (who’d MacGyvered himself a writing desk out of a collapsible laundry stand and a towel) were working feverishly, and Tony was not only confident in his ability to finish in time, but had in fact broken the story into thirds and was budgeting time to work on and complete each section. Needless to say, I (who was worried I’d be the first-ever WOTF participant not to finish the 24-hour story) was impressed (and a little intimidated) by this kind of scheduling. I was also envious of Tony and John’s balcony!

Tony and I stepped out for 5 minutes on a Starbucks run. While I don’t drink coffee, Tony has an uncanny ability to sense how far he is (in meters) from the nearest Starbucks. While most humans are 70% water, Tony is actually 70% iced decaf triple grande five pump soy no whip Mocha…

It turned out that Pasadena was the place to be in California that week. In addition to the Writers of the Future awards and the Miss Teen USA competition, they were filming part of an episode of Heroes down the street from the Starbucks. Ah! I loved the first season of Heroes and it would have been fun to go lurk around the set and maybe catch a glimpse of one of the principles…

But, instead, it was back to the room and back to work.

I kept pounding out the words all afternoon. Tony and John stopped by later for about five minutes to check on Doug and I but otherwise it was a mad dash to the finish for me while the hours rushed past. As I said, this was one of the shortest longest days I’ve ever experienced.

Writing until 545pm (with a 6pm deadline) I managed to finish a draft and ran to the business center to print. I bumped into Andrea and British Steve doing likewise. After Andrea worked some magic with the USB interface on the hotel computer (I think being yelled at to work in that New York accent of Andrea’s was the computer’s cue to do whatever she said if it valued its continued computing existence…) we three had printed off our tales and handed them in on time.

I have to say, we all looked a little rough for the experience but I think it was universally enjoyed. We looked forward to some dinner and then to bed…

But no!

Despite our collective hollow, zombified gaze, we were to have more class. Okay–Tim and Kathy want to talk revision with us. That makes sense; I know my story will need some major work to get it into shape (but I was happy with the basic story, which was surprising after only 24 hours with it…)

And their thoughts were really interesting and engaging–which shows you how good Tim and Kathy are, given how tired I was. I think Tim and I seem to work in a similar fashion during revision, but hearing how Kathy works (which is a bit different) was really intriguing–I like a variety of perspectives so I can maybe try new things myself.

This is the point at which I realized where I’d stopped working, thinking that the story was “done”, is where the really hard, important work on a story should start. This is something that I know I’ll have in my mind ever after when I’m revising, and one of the (many) insights from the week that I’ll always to grateful to Tim and Kathy for helping me realize.

But class didn’t end there!

Then the Galaxy Press folks spoke to us about promotion, book signings, and doing media.

First, to impress us, they brought in about six file boxes full of old pulp magazines in plastic sleeves. They laid these amazing magazines out (had to be a hundred or more) over all the tables and let us look at them for a while. They were all the magazines that L. Ron Hubbard had published in (his story was often the cover story) either under his own name or one of his numerous pseudonyms. But his wasn’t the only recognizable name: Heinlein, Van Vogt, Sturgeon, Poul Anderson, Asimov…the list went on.

Impressed we were.

John Goodwin with a copy of Astounding Science Fiction from February 1950. This blows my mind–my father would have been three months old, and my mom wasn’t even born yet.
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Here’s a close-up of the same magazine
John is holding–this one isn’t in nearly as good
shape, though.

Many of the pulps were in fabulous, near-pristine condition and a rough estimate was that there was more than $100 000 dollars worth of pulps in that room.

To see and hold these relics of the Golden Age was an amazing experience. Some of the covers were pretty garish, but there were so many colorful, interesting, and exciting ones…I think if SF magazines had some of these covers today (okay, maybe not the ones with space robots kidnapping topless young women) they’d sell more copies on the newsstand.

Next, Kim Catalano from Galaxy Press spoke to us about how to set up book signings, in-store promotion, and the press kit that we’d be sent once we were home.

Peter Breyer followed to talk to us about blogging and driving traffic to your site via keywords, content distribution, and ‘pinging’.

Peter Breyer gave a talk on blogging–this ping’s for you!
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

And finally, John Goodwin spoke to us about doing media and press, which included us doing fake interviews with our twin (this came in handy almost immediately, as Tony and I were both interviewed two days later by the Adventures in Scifi Publishing podcast).

At 930pm (fourteen hours and counting…) we were mercifully released for the evening, having been given the three stories–Andrea’s, Joe’s, and Tony’s–we were to read for the critique session the next day.

Tuxes had arrived and Sarah was handing them out. Mine was great except the jacket was a size too large (the tailor had guessed my size and had guess a bit big) but Sarah assured me they’d have a new one for me the next day.

After that I joined Andrea, Kim, and Damon for dinner at PF Chang’s. We were joined by past WOTF winners Eric James Stone (WOTF 21) and Steven Savile (WOTF 19), along with Steve’s girlfriend (who is also an author) Alethea Kontis. While dinner wasn’t that great, the company certainly was as Eric and Steve (soon known as ‘Swedish Steve’–for while he’s British he now lives in Sweden…and we already had a British Steve) regaled us with tales of WOTF weeks past, and offered their advice to we new winners. I actually feel really lucky that I got this time to talk to Steve as we got on well and because his actual presentation to us the next day (on much the same topic) was cut a bit short due to scheduling problems.

On the way back to the hotel, Kim pointed out (jokingly) how she didn’t like a “wicked Canadian” in the running to “steal our American trophies.” I challenged her to a game of hockey to decide the matter. She thought she had the upper hand, pointing out that an American team (the Anaheim Ducks) had won the Stanley Cup this year…until I pointed out that most of the players on the Ducks (and on most NHL teams) are, in fact, Canadians…and that most of the rest are Europeans, with only a “token” American or two playing.

Us damn immigrants, eh? 😉

We got back to the hotel at 1130pm (sixteen hours and counting…) and it was time to read the stories…but I decided that had better wait until the next morning when, after several hours of sleep, I might manage to say something intelligent.

– S.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TOMORROW: Thursday
– Bing…Bing…BINGBINGBING!
– JPL and the Shifty, Untrustworthy Canadian
– “Most of you will fail.”
– The Niven Disaster
– Kevin J. Anderson and the Palm Tree of Death

(NB: This is a repost of an article that first appeared on 24 September 2007. You can find my rationale for this repost series here.)

I take in a lot of live music and last night a friend and I went to see a triple-bill: Louis XIV, Hot Hot Heat, and Editors.

There seem to be a lot more triple bills lately in Toronto (not sure why) and they can be kinda hit and miss. In this case, even though Editors were the headliners (they’re the hot new thing from the UK, apparently) I was there to see Hot Hot Heat–a great Canadian indie act who put on a fabulous show, despite some technical difficulties with the lead singer’s keyboard.

Louis XIV were okay, though their songs seemed to be just getting started when suddenly they’d end–they had no peaks or dynamics and little in the way of changes or drama. But I do give them props for singing mostly about sex and evil: two founding concepts of rock n’ roll that have been overlooked of late in the whiny-teenage-nobody-loves-me-I’m-so-dark-and-complex-you-couldn’t-
possibly-understand-me nouveau emo and pop punk chic that’s been dominating the scene of late.

Is it any wonder that music sales are down?

And Editors left me less than impressed. The crowd was clearly full of big fans but their songs all ran together into a pretty bland sound, to me. And their sound was Coldplay-meets-The Killers (which means that they really wanted to sound like U2) with a singer who was doing his best Ian Curtis impression.

What was clear is that the British like their rockers prettier and more clean cut than we seem to in North America: Editors were all thin, well coiffed, in matching black-and-white outfits (down to their instruments), and apparently don’t perspire (hard to do when one doesn’t really move from his place on stage during the course of the show, lest the lights not find him). You could have substituted anyone of them for any member of several Brit rock bands (including Chris Martin of Coldplay, who would have been right at home on stage, given that not only the light show but also his trademark piano had been snatched by lead singer of Editors) and likely no one would have noticed.

Louis XIV (from San Diego, CA) and Hot Hot Heat (from Victoria, BC) were sweaty, hairy, unkempt rockers with nary a matching instrument or piece of clothing amongst them. Far more rock n’ roll.

I will say this for Editors, however: great merch.

While still in the club’s foyer, and having never heard a song by Editors, I nabbed this t-shirt (given that my day job is as an editor I couldn’t resist):

Everybody at work wants one now, too 😉

– S.

I woke up around 5am (which was really 8am my time) freaking out about having an apple as my inspirational item.

I’d started writing down ideas the night before, kind of brain-storming, word association, etc. but they all seemed really clichéd to me. The apple is just so done in our culture, isn’t it? Right from Genesis on down.

At some point I got thinking about another story I’d submitted to the WOTF about a tree museum (inspired by a Joni Mitchell song–points if you can tell me which song) and started thinking about apple trees. Hmm. Okay. Maybe I’ll reuse that idea. Kathy had written a note on the story saying that it was more like an outline than a real story–maybe I could resurrect the idea like I’d always meant to.

Knowing that today was to be the day we interviewed our stranger, I decided to wear blue. One of the few things I remember from my first year into to psychology class is that people wearing blue are perceived as more trustworthy, and I certainly didn’t need anyone thinking I was some weirdo asking questions (even though I was).

And blue brings out my eyes 🙂

We had a short class about research and interviewing–appropriate given our plans for the afternoon. Along with Tim and Kathy’s thoughts we read some of Hubbard’s articles on research and specifically on interviewing strangers. These were interesting–his main point being, rightly, that by talking to people who do what you’re writing about or who have lived through events you’d like to describe, your portrayal of same in the story will have the ring of truth about it even if it is fiction.

However, our interview was to be a little different. Unlike Hubbard, we were not to inform the person we were talking to that we were a writer seeking information for a story. We were simply to pry and pry and keep prying…until they called the police (which I’m told almost happened once…)

Then it was the walk to the library.

Here we are in the hotel lobby before heading to the library. That’s me center in the blue shirt–see what I mean about it bringing out my eyes? These informal hallway sessions are where we really learned. Just after this photo was taken, Tim showed us all the secret Masonic author handshake that guarantees access to the inner sanctum of sci-fi success… I mean…No he didn’t. Didn’t show us anything. Nothing at all.
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

On our walk to the library. Here is Pasadena City Hall
(which has a lovely Spanish courtyard and fountain).

Hugette took a number of pictures of us outside (she kept having to run into the dark of a doorway because the glare of the sun meant she couldn’t see the digital display on her camera–but that left us all withering in the heat).

A good lookin’ bunch. I’m in the back thinking: “I’m melting…Oh, what a world!”
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

At one point a random stranger tried to jump into the picture with us and started cracking jokes as he did so. He was covered in tattoos and looked pretty tough.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I bet he’s an ex-con. Maybe out from San Quentin. Wonder if I could interview him? That would make for an interesting story…”

“You should have mutilated those cattle on the very first page.”
– KD Wentworth

No sooner had my thought finished than pictures were over and we were set free until 5pm to do research in the library and interview our person. I turned to see where San Quentin had gone but Jeff Carlson was already walking down the street with him, talking.

D’oh!

(It turned out that they guy was an ex-con from San Quentin, on his way to see his parole officer. Ah, California).

I spent the next hour or so wandering through the stacks of the Pasadena public library, a beautiful building. I decided that the first order of business was to find and interview my random stranger, since I assumed that would be a lot harder than looking up books.

“This book–once you put it down you can’t pick it up again.”
– Tim Powers

My first potential was a guy I noticed in the basement (warning sign #1) sitting on the floor in the corner (warning sign #2) working intently taking notes on something. I casually picked a book from the shelf (I was in the biography section and spied a bio of Douglas Adams–fitting, I thought) and tried to suss out a little more of what he was doing in hopes of finding an in to a conversation.

Now closer I could see that he had a collection of items piled around him: a sleeping bag, a ladies’ change purse, some shopping bags, odds and ends. He had a bushy beard and wiry, unkempt hair.

Okay, a homeless person.

He looked up at me with a wild look that you’d not expect from your average library user.

Okay, a crazy homeless person.

When he saw me looking at him he muttered something (to me or himself I wasn’t sure)…and then reached down and zipped up his pants (WARNING SIGN #3! WARNING SIGN #3!) He had, it turned out, been scribbling intent notes about the Bible (the copy he held might have been his own, as certain passages were highlighted) and, getting up, he walked to the end of the stack where he stood, waiting for me to leave.

Afraid if I stayed any longer this man might eat me, I obliged him and went (ran) back upstairs.

“These people should be hospitalized.”
– Tim Powers

Next, I found a fellow I dubbed Samurai Man. He too was sitting on the floor reading, but as I casually wandered closer he seemed normal–no stack of worldly possessions, no muttering or frothing at the mouth. He was maybe a few years older than me, Latino, dressed pretty hip, and had his black hair pulled back into a topknot that reminded me of a samurai hairdo. Okay, interesting. But best of all he had one of those metal briefcases that spies carry. Ah ha! Perfect! That case alone could hold my whole story. Ever seen Pulp Fiction? What’s the macguffin they have in there?

Okay, now how to strike up conversation?

“Excuse me,” I said.

He looked up, annoyed at having been interrupted.

“If you don’t mind me asking: where did you get that briefcase?” I asked. “I’ve always wanted one like that.”

Then he named some intersection.

“Oh, is that here in town?”

“No. In LA,” he said, and not only went back to reading but turned his back to me. Now, I’m no expert in body language but I’m pretty sure that mean “Piss off, buddy.”

Strike two.

I wandered upstairs again, this time to the main floor and the periodicals reading room. Walking through I noticed a guy just sitting there in a chair, no reading material, but who had on a really nice gold watch. We made eye contact and he kinda smiled at me. I kept walking but only to seem casual. I doubled back, grabbed a National Geographic, and took up a seat near enough to him that we could talk.

I’d decided that the gold watch was to be my in.

Flipping through the magazine, I waited for a couple of other near-by people to leave before approaching the man. I didn’t want to disturb these folks, and I suppose part of me didn’t want to look like some nosy freak (though I felt a bit like one…)

But at that moment who appears but…Hugette! She sees me and starts snapping away with that giant camera. And not just a few photos–she spent what had to be 10 minutes taking shots of me from all angles. When the flashes started going off people starting looking up, no doubt wondering who I was, why I was having my picture taken, and what kind of crappy brand of anything would have such a homely model…I tried to pretend none of this was happening.

Me, attempting to look casually disinterested
in the giant camera taking flash photographs
of me in the library…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Eventually she moved on to find others. Soon after that (perhaps deterred by the flashes) the other people near us left as well.

“Say, that’s a nice watch,” I said.*

(* Now, you have to understand that earlier in the day we’d had a hilarious discussion in class about dialogue, and one of the examples of bad dialogue Tim used was Terminator 2. He (rightly) pointed out that when the T-1000 walks up to the motorcycle cop and says “Say, that’s a nice bike” the officer should have known that he was talking to a homicidal shapeshifting robot from the future and driven away as fast as he could because only a homicidal shapeshifting robot would ever say something like that. Having just done so, however, I felt intensely awkward and hoped that this guy didn’t think I was a homicidal shapeshifting robot from the future.)

“Oh yes,” he said. “My ex-wife gave it to me for my birthday.”

And such was my introduction to Billy Bland of Hunstville, Alabama. Billy was an interesting guy. Divorced, with two kids in college, he’d been down on his luck for many years, and had moved out to Pasadena to be near his children. He was staying at the Mission down the street but was planning a trip to Fiji in the winter as the heat was good for his arthritis. He was apparently well-traveled, having been to Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, all over Europe, and even up to Greenland (“Because I wanted to see it for myself,” he said). Mostly, though, he liked the Caribbean and the South Pacific (having been to Fiji fifteen times). The highest compliment he could pay a place he had visited was to say that he liked it because it was quiet. He also had an uncanny ability to know and recount every route of every transit system in every city he’d ever visited.

I suggested lunch so we could talk more and Billy knew a sandwich place nearby. We’d just got our order and were going to sit down when who should appear?

Yup. Hugette and her camera. She “just happened” to be passing by.

No doubt 🙂

Billy and me. He was very gracious about having his
photo taken by a complete stranger while having
lunch with a complete stranger.

(photos courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Billy and I parted ways after lunch. He gave me his address and asked me to write. I wished him well and promised I would.

On the way back to the library I passed the Jackie Robinson
Memorial. He grew up in Pasadena–who knew?

I returned to the library to finish my research and bumped into some of the others, a few of whom were still having problems finding someone to interview. I recommended against venturing to the basement.

Still fixated on reusing the tree museum idea I grabbed a stack of books on trees, forests, and greenhouses. Amongst these were some kids’ picture books and simple science books, which Kathy recommended we look at sometimes for good, basic descriptions of things.

And as I was researching trees I was approached by an elderly gentleman who wanted to know if I was an arborist. Now some stranger was interviewing me. I decided to interview back.

His name was Bob (this was my day for meeting ‘B’ people, apparently). He was an 88 year-old retired marketing director for Dow Chemical and used to travel a great deal for his job. His interest in trees was based on a curiosity about which kind of pine was out front of his condo (we eventually decided it was a Madagascar pine).

And that’s when Hugette found me again. She kept more of a distance this time, and I was able to point out John Burridge near-by and she went to photograph him instead (sorry, buddy 🙂

“Okay, now point to the book and pretend we’re talking about something…”
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

John and I left together, bumping into Andrea and Joe on the way back, and traded stories of our interviewees.

When we reassembled at 5pm we had a brief discussion of the afternoon, then a quick chat with our twin about what we’d decided to write about and our research and interview. After hearing my stuff Tony wasn’t convinced by the tree museum idea–he didn’t see how what I’d found from my interviewee was going to fit. Part of me had to admit that he was right.

“Still on about the trees, eh?”
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Tim and Kathy gave us a run-down of what we were expected to do for the 24-hour story, and at 6pm we were dismissed to begin our writing odyssey. Heading back to our rooms, as we stepped off the elevator Tony said, sagely: “Don’t be too attached to your tree idea.”

The tux fitting was at 730pm in Sarah’s room, which was set up as the WOTF command center for the week. I met Marcus Collins and Randall Ensley, two of the illustrator winners, for this first time in the hallway outside. Randall was the artist who illustrated my story and is a really nice guy–and funny as hell. He wouldn’t give me any hints on what the drawing he’d done was though…

“A man. A woman. A lonely road. What will become of them?”
– KD Wentworth

As we waited to get in for measurements, John Goodwin asked me about what had inspired Saturn in G Minor and I met Sean Williams, one of the judges for the contest. Sean was wonderful the whole week and would later give me some very good advice about making the transition to novels. He turned out to be one of the judges for my quarter and said that he enjoyed my story and thought it very original. I always take “original” as high praise because I’m usually worried about how hard it is to do something new in SF. This was very nice to hear.

Just as my measurements (36-24-36) were being read off by the tailor
to his assistant everyone in the room went quiet and listened intently…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

After the fitting Doug, Jeff, and I went for (more) tacos and then quickly back to work. Tony’s words had echoed in my mind all night and when I sat down at 8:50pm to “think at the keyboard” as Tim had advised I realized Tony was right. After some quick brainstorming I realized that the material I’d gathered from Billy wanted to be told as a fantasy, not science fiction. I dashed down to the hotel’s (thankfully) 24-hour business center and did some quick Wikipedia searching on geomancy and ley lines. Things fell into place quite quickly and I knew (roughly) the story I wanted to tell.

I even knew how the apple would fit into the tale.

By 130am–when I could no longer key my eyes open–I had 500 words written.

I would be up again soon, though…

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TOMORROW: Wednesday
– Marathon Man
– Discovery of coffee-based life forms
– “Blogging–it’s so cool.”
– Kim Zimring and I agree to a steel cage death match…on ice!

(NB: This is a repost of an article that first appeared on 19 September 2007. You can find my rationale for this repost series here.)

Monday began early…

Poor Wage–he has the boozing capacity of one of the brownies from Willow. After his bender the night before in the hotel bar he’s seen here recovering. Poor little guy didn’t fell well enough to enjoy the rest of the week and mostly stayed in bed.

Damon Kaswell, John Burridge, my roomie Doug Texter, and I were all in the hotel exercise room before 7am Monday morning. Clearly a new breed of SF writer was at hand–let’s see Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, or Ellison run 5 miles first thing Monday morning.

(One could point out that they’re too busy writing best sellers to have time to run 5 miles…and one would be right in doing so. And you can also note that this was the only morning I managed such a feat…)

It was at this point that I began to realize we were not in just any hotel. One by one, in came blond British girl after blond British girl. Then I put it together: the flight crews in slightly retro uniforms we’d seen the night before in the lobby…these British girls coming to workout…Ah hah! This was the lay-over hotel for Virgin Atlantic crews! Every other day a new crew arrived either from Heathrow or Sydney on their global circumnavigation in service of Sir Richard Branson.

Whenever you went out to the pool the rest of the week there were invariably Virgin flight crew (men and women) clogging every deckchair, their sun-worship done with a kind of reckless abandon given the grayness of their native land. (British Steve would later complain that there are no more good looking women in England because they are all Virgin Airways stewardesses and constantly out of country…)

After getting ready for the day, next was breakfast downstairs in the hotel restaurant (*cough*robbery*cough*). Though we’d discovered a rather large supermarket at the mall the night before, I didn’t want to risk missing the start of the meetings.

I saw KD Wentworth having breakfast over in the corner and briefly thought about joining her but chickened out. Soon I was joined by fellow winners John Burridge and Damon Kaswell, the two winners from the Wordos–the Eugene, Oregon writer’s group that is some kind of advanced training program for winning the WOTF (past winners from the Wordos include Eric M. Witchey, Leon J. West, and Jay Lake)–Steven Gaskell from Brighton, England (who was quickly rechristened ‘British Steve’); and Ed Sevcik, gentle giant of our group, who’d just recently moved to Haifa, Israel.

We all spent too much on breakfast (especially John, who had a cup of tea and one of those little boxes of Raisin Bran from the Kellogg’s variety pack for $14) and when the waiter, who was from Thailand, came to clear away our plates (some of which weren’t polished clean) he regaled us with the traditional weight-loss method of his homeland–which consisted mainly of a diet of butter, steamed vegetables, and going a week without eating now and again.

Not exactly Atkins.

It was getting near 9am by the time we managed to extricate ourselves (though I was wondering if that could count as our interview of a stranger) and made our way to the little octagonal conference room where we’d spend our workshop hours.

From the front of the room. Left panel…

…Centre panel (note the appearance of the day’s first can of Coke)…

…Right panel.

How our desk spaces were laid out: ice water (with lemon), a mint, notepad, pen, a copy of The Master Storyteller (a book of Hubbard’s pulp magazine covers, some of which were really cool), and a copy of WOTF XXII (which included Joseph Jordan’s story “At the Gate of God,” which Publisher’s Weekly called an “excellent story of faith lost and found.” Joe couldn’t make it to last year’s workshop so we were lucky enough to have his company for our week.)

The Whole Gang Part 1: Kim Zimring (front), Jeff Carlson and Joseph Jordan (middle), Andrea Kail (back), Steve Gaskell (getting coffee)

The Whole Gang Part 2: (Somehow Kim and Joe made it in to the photo again…)
From L to R: Aliette de Bodard and Ed Sevcik, Doug Texter and Damon Kaswell, John Burridge and Tony Pi.

The bulk of our workshop lectures and discussions were held Monday. We’d have other sessions Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday but they were always interspersed with other events or guest lectures. So Monday was the major (to borrow a term) info-dump day.

KD Wentworth and Tim Powers–our gurus for the week.

And what an info-dump it was. I took 15 pages of notes and it was all gold. I won’t go into extensive detail about what was said (partially because I don’t think it’s mine to tell–it is Tim and Kathy’s presentation after all–and because such a summary is available elsewhere on the net).

By 11am Monday, Tim had demonstrated that the “lethal dosage” levels of caffeine were more a suggestion that a hard-and-fast rule…

In general, however, some of the things I learned:

– Where I had been stopping work on stories thinking they were done is the point at which the real work on them needs to begin
– The story is not the words
– Leave out the bits readers skip over
– Ask questions of your characters and plot (Why? But why really?) but also ask random questions (How is this like cutting down a tree?) to see what information they might throw up for you to use
– If you as the author know something completely you can leave it out and the reader will be able to figure it out
– Dialog can be too helpful. Chop it up, have people mishear or misunderstand. Speech starts and stops; thoughts and words are broken.
– Hiring an agent who is less than the perfect fit for you is like hiring “a blind Sherpa on Everest.”

“I swear Carlson, I’m gonna belt ya…”

Advice from Tim and Kathy was interspersed with reading Hubbard’s articles about art, writing, plot, suspense, etc. and discussing these with our twin.

Our twin was the person who we were sat beside the first day and with whom we were to discuss the articles and later our story idea. I was paired with Tony (I guess they wanted to keep the Canadians together, lest we frighten the Yankees with our “a-boots”, “ehs?”, and our drinking Labatt 50 from stubbies). Tony was a great partner, later bailing me out of a major dead end with my story. I don’t know that I was as helpful to him as he was to me. He seemed to have a much better sense of his story from the get-go.

On a break, Kim takes it easy. Joe demonstrates a traditional Bosnian chair samba, much to Andrea’s amusement. Meanwhile, British Steve is fascinated by his name tag–a cutting-edge American technology yet to be exported to Old Blighty.

Though the language in Hubbard’s articles was a bit old fashioned and a bit ‘purple’, as they say, on the whole his advice was solid and got me thinking about things like suspense and character development in ways that I’d not previously thought of them–so all in all quite useful.

Intently reading, my twin by my side…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

And Hubbard’s thoughts echoed other things I’d heard from people like Robert J. Sawyer, Orson Scott Card, Ben Bova, and now from Tim Powers and Kathy Wentworth.

We broke for lunch at the grocery store we’d found the day before and I took the opportunity to stock up on snacks for what I knew would be the Wednesday writing marathon–tortilla chips, salsa, and a 2L bottle of Dr. Pepper.

After lunch I went briefly to my room to drop off my supplies and discovered that someone from Galaxy Press had been in to drop off a WOTF t-shirt.

Then back to class for the afternoon.

On a break, I appear to be doing some kind of Dr. Evil
impression, much to Andrea’s amusement…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

By the end of the day I’d forgotten that this was only Monday–we’d taken in so much and as I could feel my thinking and approach to writing changing as I listened part of me was sure we’d been there learning for several days already. In a good way, though 🙂

The last thing we did Monday was receive our inspirational item from Kathy. She, quite wisely, had decided on all new inspirational items for this year given that all the old standard ones have been revealed and discussed on the internet.

This was mine:

A red apple fridge magnet.

I must confess I was initially a little freaked out because everyone around me seemed to have instant flashes of inspiration from their object and, well, I didn’t. I looked at it for a while and considered it’s various features, hoping for that flash–it was red, wood, had a shine mark that looked like an ‘L’. It still wasn’t doing anything for me. Tony and I talked a bit about it and then class was dismissed.

Dinner was (not for the last time) Mexican food from a place in the mall called Rubio’s. The evenings were gorgeous in Pasadena and we ate outside (again, not for the last time) in the courtyard.

I had a great time all week with this gang–they’re a very smart, very sharp, very funny bunch. We spent about 20 minutes discussing the semiotic implications of the near-by movie poster for Shoot ’em Up…and by ‘semiotic implications’ I mean Monica Bellucci’s corset, how none of us could take Paul Giamatti seriously as a hitman (Kim wondered if he’d gone over to the dark side after someone made him drink some @#$%ing merlot), and what exactly he was holding.

You can see the poster in question in this shot from earlier in the day.

I think SF writers are kind of a self-selecting group and so we were bound to have much in common and (probably) have similar personalities, so maybe it’s not surprising that such a good time was had. And two weeks later I do find myself missing the gang.

We wandered the open air mall looking for one of those beer helmets as a gift for Tim. We figured since he drank so much Coke we might as well give him the ability to drink from two cans simultaneously while leaving his hands free. Sadly, we didn’t find the helmet…but we did stumble upon a place called Cold Stone Creamery which has some of the richest ice cream I’ve ever eaten.

Trying to get a picture of the hills at dusk I instead ended up with two Miss Teen USA contestants wandering into the shot. You thought I was kidding about girls walking around in sashes, didn’t you?

John was able to ascertain the position of Arcturus in the sky and guide us all safely back to the hotel. A few of us went for a quick drink but we were mostly exhausted (and full of ice cream) and retired soon after.

I fell asleep with visions of apple fridge magnets troubling my mind…

– S.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TOMORROW: Tuesday
– Blue brings out my eyes
– Hugette plants a tracking device on me
– I do battle with Samurai Guy and Jeff Carlson does 10 to 20 in San Quentin
– Did you know there is a species of albizia in Malaysia that can grow more than one inch a day?

(NB: This is a repost of an article that first appeared on 10 September 2007. You can find my rationale for this repost series here.)