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.)

My first day of the WOTF experience began auspiciously: I got dropped off at the wrong terminal at 830am.

Now, admittedly this was my fault—I got this ticket confused with the one I had booked for the next week to Chicago and said I was leaving from Pearson’s Terminal One (Air Canada) instead of Terminal 3 (US Airways).

D’oh!

I took the monorail (monorail, monorail…) to T3 and had plenty of time to check in and spend my 40 minutes to get through customs.

Once I’d checked my baggage I found my gate and Tony Pi, fellow Toronto winner (who’d got there at 730am—apparently I like to live dangerously when it comes to flight times, a theme which would repeat later in the week…), and settled in. Tony and I talked about what to expect, who of the writers would be there (Tony’s been in touch with quite a few via LiveJournal, Critters, Kathy Wentworth’s WOTF forum on SFF.net, etc.) We both agreed, once we had boarding passes in hand and were through security, that it seemed like this might actually be happening after all.

Wage checks to make sure he has his passport and ticket ready for boarding.
He doesn’t want to end up in GitMo, after all…

Our flight for Phoenix left on time and was pretty painless. Alas, Tony and I weren’t seated together (I think they must have shuffled Tony around to make room for somebody because I’m almost sure our e-tickets said we’d be sitting together the whole way there and back—ah well). Tony was up in row 16, while I was in row 22—the very last row in the plane; fine, except when you’d like to make a quick exit in Phoenix to catch your connection.

I had the window seat and while that was cool I felt badly when I had to get up to use the washroom. I was beside a guy who slept the whole flight (had to wake him up) and an elderly lady who had real trouble getting around and out of the seat.

It occurred to me that in the event of an emergency, despite being closest to the plane’s rear left exit, I was screwed.

Like I say, the flight was pretty painless, but US Airways…not the greatest airline in the world. I’d had breakfast, but our 4 ½ hour flight meant lunch aboard. After getting a look at the prices of a sandwich at Pearson ($9!) I decided to wait and get one on the plane ($5). But the attendant announced at the beginning that they only had a limited supply of sandwiches (why, I don’t know—you know it’s a sold-out flight over the lunch hour) and once they were gone they were gone, meaning that by the time they got to me…so hungee. I had two Cokes and hoped to get something in Phoenix.

But the other thing that bothered me about US Airways was their request that we slide down all window shades “for the benefit of our passengers trying to enjoy our in-flight movie—Shrek 3.” In the first place, it would take a lot more than total darkness to enjoy Shrek 3. And besides, I didn’t want to watch the movie; I wanted to read and look out the window as we crossed into the desert of the American southwest. I’ve never seen the desert and have always wanted to, so this request seemed a little unreasonable to me (or maybe I was cranky because I was hungry.) In any event, my window shade stayed up.

The desert really is amazing country and so unlike anything I’m used to or have seen before. There’s actually a very clear dividing line as you’re flying over the American plains and their rich agricultural land (below us for much of the journey were vast fields, laid out in huge, perfect grids, uninterrupted by lakes or rivers or any variation in terrain, like some great green chessboard for giants). One minute it’s all lush fields and then there’s a band of scrub transition terrain maybe only 50 miles wide and then the desert.

The earth itself looks different there. It’s all blasted land, red and khaki, with dark hills rising and rippling up from the desert floor; wandering tendrils of dried mud and salt halos show where rivers once ran. Dark dots of desert shrubs follow the contours of the land, finding their home in valleys and on ridges and without these little tufts of plant life it could almost have been mistaken for Arrakis, our plane powered by the beat of ‘thopter wings…

Once and while there would be another (much smaller) square of lush green farming below us, but it struck me at that point as an oddity and unnatural in that landscape. I couldn’t help thinking over and over again as we flew into Phoenix how much water it took to sustain such farms and such huge cities (Phoenix has a population of 1.5 million and stretches across the desert floor forever) in this arid place. The southwest finds itself in the middle of a huge population boom (Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the USA) while at the same time being caught in a terrible drought.

The Fremen in me was very upset.

One really cool thing about Phoenix is the desert art. Whereas at home they line highway on- and off-ramps with shrubs and trees, in Phoenix they have desert art pained or carved right into the earth. It looked to be Navajo or Hopi imagery, mostly of deserts birds and lizards.

We came down from
Carson and Springfield/
We came down from
Phoenix enthralled
– ‘The Celebration Of The Lizard’, The Doors

We landed in Phoenix and our brief exposure to the desert heat as we exited the plane via the gangway made me understand why the Navajo called Phoenix Hoozdo–literally “the place is hot.” It was like stepping in front of a full body hair drier, much as I imagined the arrival in Arrakeen to be like for young Atreides…

Are those the hills around Phoenix or the Shield Wall around Arrakeen?

I had just enough time to grab that longed-for sandwich ($7) before boarding for the up-and-down to Los Angeles. While Tony and I were seated together for this leg, I felt bad for him—the pressure differences of takeoff and landing really give him headaches, and like I said, Phoenix to LA is all up and down.

Coming into LA was impressive in a really gross way: you’ve heard of the LA smog? Yeah, it’s as bad as they say. The whole valley looked like it was covered in a thick fog and it was hard to see landmarks of any kind.

After landing and baggage claim (everything arrived!) we were met by Claude and his WOTF sign.

Tony and Claude

He took us outside to wait for the car (and curbside at LAX is so much crazier than curbside at any airport I’ve ever been at before). We got to talking and Claude informed us that Galaxy Press had just sold rights for a Turkish edition of WOTF 23! They apparently don’t get that many frees as part of the deal, but they promised to keep us informed and maybe work out some deal where we can get a copy of the Turkish edition cheap. Very cool.

Is there an Amazon.tr? 🙂

Soon we were met by our driver, Jason, and then whizzed around to one of the other gates to pick up Aliette de Bodard, the first WOTF winner from France! Aliette and I won in Q3 and had been e-mailing already (as had she and Tony) so it was almost as if we knew each other a bit to begin with.

We next met Hugette, a fellow Canadian (she’s from Montreal) and the week’s official photographer. She got quite good at finding me at almost every turn during the rest of the week (more on that later).

She took a few photos of us, and had Tony and I get out to fake a few shots of our arrival (because we didn’t want to fish our luggage out of the back of the mini-van, Tony and I tried to look casual as we had our pictures taken standing near the luggage of some guy who was waiting for a cab…)

Tony and I “arrive” at LAX…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Palm trees and American megalopoli still fascinate this Canadian boy.

Seeing this sight made me feel like I was in a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song…

As we drove down the 101 through LA and the 110 to Pasadena, Aliette regaled us with tales of transferring international flights at Heathrow. She had a two-hour layover and still barely made the plane after all the security, etc. Makes me feel pretty silly for being worried that 40 minutes in customs at Pearson was going to make me late…

After a brief stop at the 76 for gas (and witnessing a genuine California highway fender bender), we arrived at the Sheraton Pasadena. We were greeted at the check-in by Sarah Caruso, one of the Galaxy Press folks and our coordinator during our stay.

Sarah Caruso (in the foreground) and John Goodwin (over her shoulder).
This shot is actually from Monday. Note the binder Sarah is looking
through–she was never without it all week.

Sarah was fabulous all week–if you needed something done, you asked her and it was ready by the next break. I think she slept even less than the winners, because every time I was wandering the hotel corridors at 4am there was Sarah… I also think her clipboard-binder thing had been surgically grafted to her arm, because she was never without it. She did a great job keeping the wheels greased all week.

We were also greeted at the desk by John Goodwin, President of Galaxy Press. I’d e-mailed with him a number of times but it was great to finally meet him.

What I didn’t expect was for him to look like Superman–seriously, look at the guy. He doesn’t need those glasses. John Goodwin can see through walls.

Tony, Aliette, and I agreed to meet shortly to get some lunch and went to our rooms to drop stuff off.

I arrived in room 240 to find that my roommate’s stuff was already there, and soon in he walked. Douglas Texter–which is possibly the best last name for any writer ever–with whom I got along fabulously (as evidenced by his inscription in the book later in the week: “To the best WOTF roommate I’ve ever had” 😉

The view from our hotel room.

Doug is an English lit PhD candidate (specializing in utopian studies) and at one point had worked as a developmental editor for a textbook publisher in the US so he actually (unlike most people) understood what I did for a living. We talked shop for a bit (he once ‘Canadianized’ a textbook and was fascinated with the Toonie I had with me) and then there came a knock on the door–Hugette was looking for some photos of us meeting so we faked a few more for her.

Doug Texter and me “arriving” in our hotel room.
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Downstairs for lunch to discover that a number of the other winners who had already arrived were assembled ready to strike out in search of food in Pasadena. We wandered over to the open-air mall for the first of many trips. There was lots of talk about the contest, how many times people had submitted before winning (I think the highest was 12), and what to expect from the week (most people had pieced this together from the various web pages and blogs of past winners).

The courtyard the of the mall where we took most of our meals.

I just can’t get over my fascination with those hills…

As we returned to the hotel we discovered that the Miss Teen USA pageant was being held next door at the arena. Girls in sashes were thus to haunt over every move during the week. A very LA experience.

At 8pm in the hotel lounge we met up with the rest of the winners who had arrived (a few, like poor Andrea Kail, wouldn’t arrive until extremely early the next morning) and we were also introduced to Tim Powers and KD “Kathy” Wentworth, both of whom we came to love over the course of the week.

They briefly outlined what we could expect from the week and took our questions, which started off being about the week, but then quickly turned to other aspects of publishing, agents, etc. We were hungry for knowledge and success and it showed.

That disembodied arm to the right of KD Wentworth? Yeah, that’s me.
The lady in the red golf shirt by the mirror is Joni Labaqui, the contest organizer.
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Tim’s most salient advice that night for new writers?

1) If you’re at the WOTF you’re already one step ahead. You’ve shown you can sell a story. The workshop is to take you beyond the first sale.
2) Have a crappy part-time job so you can write. Make sure it’s crappy so that you don’t mind dropping it in order to write more.
3) Start smoking (* This last I think was motivated more by Tim’s disappointment that none of us smoked rather than its necessity to good writing. He had no one to hang out with on break and have a butt–and though I hate smoking I was tempted to take it up for a week just to hang out with Tim. Tobias Buckell told me before the WOTF to stick as close to Tim as I could, so…)

We were also exposed for the first time to Tim’s primary quirk. He was drinking a can of Coke through the whole introduction, and when he’d finished that one he pulled another from an inner pocket of his thin, black jacket. When Jeff Carlson asked him just how many he had in there he pulled out two more from what I swear were secret pockets in the lining. The weird thing is that you couldn’t tell from looking that he had four cans of pop concealed on his person. This wasn’t to be the last time Tim produced Coca Cola seemingly from thin air…

We were all handed itineraries and several books of Hubbard’s article on writing and received our first homework: read two specified articles before class at 9am.

I retired to the bar with a band of the other winners to talk writing, the contest, life, the universe, everything… Eventually we broke up and headed for our rooms to read the requested articles.

As I finally lay down to sleep I couldn’t wait for the WOTF week to really begin.

– S.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TOMORROW: Monday
– A new breed of SF writer shows itself
– Lessons on a traditional Thai weight-loss plan
– My brain gets full
– We learn that a human being’s maximum safe daily dose of caffeine is actually more a recommendation than a hard-and-fast rule…

(NB: This is a repost of an article that first appeared on 9 September 2007. You can find my rationale for this repost series here.)

Okay, okay–I know. My great plan to do a week-long series of posts about the Writers of the Future award week in August kinda got derailed somewhere in, oh, August 🙂

The original plan was to do a series of lengthy, day-by-day posts (with pictures!) about the experience of the award week so that you, as a reader, could get a bit of a sense what it was like.

I got as far as Thursday, which is ironic given that the biggest stuff happened Friday 🙂 The problem with my original plan was that I didn’t anticipate how long it would take me to do each entry.

See, in the months leading up to the award week I scoured the tubes of the internet for any information I could glean about the goings-on at the WOTF week from posts made by past winners and participants. I got a lot from the accounts of people like Scott Nicholson, Ron Collins, and I must credit the great journals by Mike Rimar (who I was also lucky enough to get to question in person at last year’s Ad Astra), and David D. Levine as my direct inspiration for the day-by-day breakdown.

(NB: I was also in touch via e-mail with many of these same folk in the lead-up to the week, asking for any advice they had on how to get the most out of the week, things they wish they’d done or not done, etc. Without exception the previous winners I was in touch with were friendly, helpful, and excited for me. The universal comment was “I wish I could go again!” and that really speaks volumes of the workshop, awards, and the people who put them on. By the way, some of the advice I got? Tobias Buckell very sagely told me to stick as close to Tim Powers as I could all week–advice I tried to heed, hence my flirtation with taking up smoking for seven days–and Jim Hines told me to keep my inner fanboy in check–advice I ignored only once, when I introduced myself to Larry Niven and, well, we all know how that went…)

So, having gotten so much from these posts I, too, wanted to write up something that would really be of use to people going to the awards and interested in what to expect, and to those considering entering and wanting to get a sense of what can happen.

But that took a lot longer than I thought it would 🙂

And now I see that all the winners from this year’s edition of the contest have been chosen…and I’m STILL not done posting about my trip to the awards. There’s a strange thrill in knowing that these people are in line for a truly life-changing week, and that amongst them is the person to whom I’ll have to pass the sash and tiara of Grand Prize Winner…

And so, if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to try and do what I set out to do the first time: starting today, Sunday Jan. 20, and running until this Saturday Jan. 26, I’m going to repost my series of journals about my WOTF experience and I’m actually going to finish the posts for the Friday and the Saturday & Sunday of the award week.

Now, I’ll add some new content to the old posts (consider these the digitally enhanced Special Edition 🙂 and I got a lot of positive feedback on the journal, so hopefully you’ll enjoy seeing what the Big Day and the rest of the weekend was like from my particularly stunned perspective 🙂

– S.

Hi all –

Found a great interview with literary agent Donald Maass over on Writer Unboxed. Maass and the agents at his Donald Maass Literary Agency represent some amazing clients, including Karl Schroeder, Jack Whyte, Jay Lake, Nalo Hopkinson, Anne Bishop, Elizabeth Bear and, of course, WOTF XXIII’s own Jeff Carlson.

Maass’ book, Writing the Breakout Novel, is actually already on my ‘how to write a novel’ reading list (along with William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade–recommended to me by WOTF judge Sean Williams–and Albert Zuckerman’s Writing the Blockbuster Novel–recommended to me by WOTF judge Dave Wolverton)

Part One is here, and Part Two is here.

– S.

What was that saying from the X-Files? “I Want to Believe.”

News today that several dozen people in the Texas town of Stephenville (coincidence? I think not…) witnessed a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it. One pilot who saw the object from the ground said the object he saw was a mile long and half a mile wide. “It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts,” he said.

Brody: You’re gonna need a bigger boat.
– Jaws (1975)

Now, I believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Big surprise as as a science fiction writer, I know.

I’m even willing to bet that some percentage of that alien life is intelligent. And, like I said, I’d like to believe that there are alien travelers and explorers capable of journeying across the vast gulf of interstellar space, even if all they seem interested in is buzzing rural townsfolk and mutilating the occasional cow.

The problem is that the laws of physics as we understand them seem to prohibit such travel between star systems in any workable time frame (like, say, your average human lifespan). Even exotic suggestions for getting around the universe’s cosmic speed limit, that of light (1,079,252,848.8 km/h–thanks a lot, Einstein!), like wormholes or propulsion systems like the Alcubierre drive and the Krasnikov tube either wouldn’t allow anyone to travel through the phenomenon, appear to require vast, if not infinite amounts of energy to make happen, or violate a whole host of energy and causality principles as we currently understand them.

But…

As I’ve said before, the history of science is the history of people being wrong about things. It was said at one time that no heavier-than-air machine could ever fly, that we couldn’t break the sound barrier, that human beings could never survive outside the atmosphere of the Earth, that 640K ought to be enough for anybody…you know–things we know are wrong now.

So I’m hoping that we, for all our genius, are wrong about the possibilities for interstellar travel and that the aliens have found some better, more space-commuter-friendly understanding of physics and actually can come visit and molest our cattle.

After all, like the man said: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. FTL travel may seem like magic to us now, but let’s just hope that alien civilizations have some pixie dust or ruby slippers that can get them (and maybe someday us) there and back again.

– S.

Hi all –

I know you, like me, are no doubt distraught that the Writers Guild of America strike has meant an end to the glitzy award shows that are so much a part of the Hollywood awards season.

But fear not!

There is a glitzy homegrown Canadian award ceremony awaiting your vote as we speak!

That’s right—nominations are now open for the 2008 Prix Aurora Awards, Canada’s highest award for creative work in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

As you know, I’ve had several publications this past year, and these are eligible for the Auroras in the category Best short-form work in English, which is defined in the contest rules as “a published novella, novelette, short story or poem in the English language by a Canadian writer released in Canada in the previous calendar year (2007).”

For those Canadians amongst you who have read my stories and would like to nominate me for an Aurora Award (sorry–only Canucks can nominate!) your support would be greatly appreciated. Please consider nominating my Writers of the Future Grand Prize winning story “Saturn in G Minor”.

While I’ve had three stories published this year, I’m suggesting “Saturn in G Minor” for the nomination because I think it’s my strongest piece, because it won the Writers of the Future Grand Prize this summer, and to avoid vote-splitting (hey—it’s happened to others…)

Any of you who haven’t read “Saturn in G Minor” please let me know and I’ll be happy to e-mail you a copy of the story for your consideration.

Any Canadian citizen (not necessarily living in Canada), or permanent resident of Canada is eligible to nominate works for the award, and there is no fee to nominate.

This year, for the first time, Canadian fans will be able to nominate and to vote on-line at the Prix Aurora Award website.

You can vote online here:
http://www.prix-aurora-awards.ca/English/AwardProcess/nominationForm.php

Please only vote once—I don’t need any ballot box stuffing getting me disqualified 🙂

I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that two of the anthologies my stories appeared in this year are also eligible to be nominated under the Best Work in English (Other) category:

Under Cover of Darkness, Julie E. Czerneda and Jana Paniccia, eds., Daw Books, Feb. 2007

Tesseracts Eleven, Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips, eds., Edge S&SF Publishing, Nov. 2007

The Aurora Awards will be presented at KeyCon 25, held May 16 to 19, 2008 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Nominations are open NOW and close March 17, 2008 (but why wait, right?)

Thanks gang,

– S.

Further to my point about gene therapy as the future of doping for athletes is this story from the BBC about gene therapy and ‘freeze-dried’ tendons.

All gene therapies being used (or considered) for doping by athletes and their coaches started off as legitimate therapies for legitimate conditions or injuries. Just a matter of time until somebody ‘repairs’ their perfectly good tendon to out-perform the competition…

You heard it here first 🙂

– S.

The 2007 Preliminary Nebula Ballot has been released and I couldn’t be happier for the five friends I have who have made the long-list in the various categories.

Perhaps most thrilling is Andrea Kail‘s nomination for her beautiful story “The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom”, which appeared in Writers of the Future XXIII. I couldn’t be happier for her!

Also nominated are:

Species Imperative #3: Regeneration – Julie E. Czerneda,
Rollback – Robert J. Sawyer,
Ragamuffin – Tobias Buckell,

“Sister of the Hedge” – Jim C. Hines,

Not only that, but Robin Wayne Bailey’s “The Children’s Crusade”, which appeared in Heroes in Training, the anthology Jim Hines edited last year with Martin Greenberg, was also nominated. Clearly Jim can spot talent when he sees it!

SFWA members will now vote on the works on the preliminary ballot, narrowing the field down to (usually) a final ballot of five works in each category. Special Nebula juries are permitted, but not required, to add one deserving but overlooked work to the final ballot in each category. SFWA members then vote on the final ballot and the awards will be presented in Austin, TX, April 25-27, 2008.

Well done to all of you! I hope you all make the final ballot.

– S.

=========================
Novels

Ragamuffin, by Tobias Buckell
(Tor, Jun07)

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon
(HarperCollins, May07)

Species Imperative #3: Regeneration, by Julie E. Czerneda (full PDF on Private Edition)
(DAW, May06)

Vellum: The Book of All Hours, by Hal Duncan
(Del Rey, Apr06 (Macmillan hardcover Nov05 (UK)))

The Accidental Time Machine, by Joe Haldeman
(Ace, Aug07)

The New Moon’s Arms, by Nalo Hopkinson
(Warner Books, Feb07)

Mainspring, by Jay Lake
(Tor, Jun07)

Odyssey, by Jack McDevitt (full PDF on Private Edition)
(Ace, Nov06)

The Outback Stars, by Sandra McDonald
(Tor, May07)

Strange Robby, by Selina Rosen (full PDF and hardcopy offer on Private Edition)
(Meisha Merlin Publishing Jul06)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling
(Scholastic Press, Jul07)

Rollback, by Robert J. Sawyer
(Analog, Feb07 (serialized in Oct06 through Jan/Feb07 issues; Tor book, Apr07))

Blindsight, by Peter Watts (free Creative Commons versions)
(Tor, Oct06)

Novellas

“The Helper and His Hero,” by Matt Hughes (link to Private Edition)
(F&SF, Mar07 (Feb07 & Mar07))

“Fountain of Age,” by Nancy Kress
(Asimov’s, Jul07)

“Stars Seen Through Stone,” by Lucius Shepard (link to Private Edition)
(F&SF, Jul07)

“Kiosk,” by Bruce Sterling (link to Private Edition)
(F&SF, Jan07)

“Memorare,” by Gene Wolfe (link to Private Edition)
(F&SF, Apr07)

Novelettes

“The Children’s Crusade,” by Robin Wayne Bailey (link to Private Edition)
(Heroes in Training, Martin H. Greenberg and Jim C. Hines, Ed., DAW, Sep07)

“A Flight of Numbers Fantastique Strange,” by Beth Bernobich (link to Private Edition)
(Asimov’s, Jun06)

“Things That Aren’t,” by Michael A. Burstein and Robert Greenberger (link to Private Edition)
(Analog, Apr07)

“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” by Ted Chiang
(F&SF, Sep07)

“Sister of the Hedge,” by Jim C. Hines (link to Private Edition)
(Realms of Fantasy, Jun06)

“The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs Of North Park After the Change,” by Kij Johnson (link to Private Edition)
(Coyote Road, Trickster Tales, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Ed., Viking Juvenile, Jul07)

“The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom,” by Andrea Kail (link to Private Edition)
(Writers of the Future Volume 23, Algis Budrys, Ed., Galaxy Press, Sep07)

“Safeguard,” by Nancy Kress
(Asimov’s, Jan07)

“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders,” by Mike Resnick
(Asimov’s, Jan08)

“Tonino and the Incubus,” by Peg Robinson
(Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, WS & LWE, Ed., Oct06 (Fall06 issue — #2))

“Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter,” by Geoff Ryman (link to Private Edition)
(F&SF, Nov06)

“The Fiddler of Bayou Teche,” by Delia Sherman (link to Private Edition)
(Coyote Road, Trickster Tales, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Ed., Viking Juvenile, Jul07)

“Not of this Fold,” by William Shunn (link to Private Edition)
(An Alternate History of the 21st Century, Spilt Milk Press, Sep07)

Short Stories

“Unique Chicken Goes In Reverse,” by Andy Duncan (link to Private Edition)
(Eclipse 1: New Science Fiction And Fantasy, Jonathan Strahan, Ed., Night Shade Books, Oct07)

“The Padre, the Rabbi, and the Devil His Own Self,” by Melanie Fletcher
(Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, WS & LWE, Ed., Oct06 (Fall06 issue — #2))

“Always,” by Karen Joy Fowler
(Asimov’s, May07 (apr/may07 issue))

“For Solo Cello, op. 12,” by Mary Robinette Kowal (link to Private Edition)
(Cosmos, Mar07 (Feb/Mar07))

“Titanium Mike Saves the Day,” by David D. Levine (link to Private Edition)
(F&SF, Apr07)

“The Story of Love,” by Vera Nazarian (link to Private Edition)
(Salt of the Air, Prime Books, Sep06)

“Captive Girl,” by Jennifer Pelland
(Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, WS & LWE, Ed., Oct06 (Fall06 issue — #2))

Scripts

Children of Men, by Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby
(Universal Studios, Dec06)

Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro
(Time/Warner, Jan07)

The Discarded, by Harlan Ellison and Josh Olson (script on Private Edition)
(Masters of Science Fiction, ABC-TV, Apr07)

Blink, by Steven Moffat (script on Private Edition)
(Doctor Who, BBC/The Sci-Fi Channel, Sep07 (Aired on SciFi Channel 14 Sep07))

The Prestige, by Christopher Nolan and Jonathon Nolan
(Newmarket Films, Oct06 (Oct 20, 2006 — based on the novel by Christopher Priest))

V for Vendetta, by Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski
(Warner Films, Mar06 (released 3/17/2006 — Written by the Wachowski Brothers, based on the graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd and published by Vertigo/DC Comics))

World Enough and Time, by Marc Scott Zicree and Michael Reaves (script on Private Edition)
(Star Trek: New Voyages, http://www.startreknewvoyages.com, Aug07 (Aired 8/23/07))

Andre Norton Award

Vintage: A Ghost Story, by Steve Berman
(Haworth Positronic Press, Mar07)

Into the Wild, by Sarah Beth Durst
(Penguin Razorbill, Jun07)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling
(Scholastic Press, Jul07)

Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog, by Ysabeau S. Wilce
(Harcourt, Jan07)