The show went off successfully. Everyone “loved it,” which is proof-positive that you can’t trust an audience member to tell you if something is good. This was not. I’m not talking about professional-quality, which I wasn’t expecting by any stretch, I’m just talking about in the realm of summer camp shows. The script sucked and the acting wasn’t even wooden. It didn’t exist.

Ah well.

Speaking of camp. Rob is away at wine camp still (IPNC) He’ll be home tomorrow.

Well, they managed to do two run-throughs of the show without any disasters.

After that, I worked a very long wedding shift on the Willamette Star. I’m beat.

Finally. I finished writing Body Language at 2:00 a.m. I spent every spare moment today editing it and I’ve just posted it for critique. We’ll see what folks say.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, my kids–the good ones–really focused today and finished the set. I really didn’t think it was going to happen this time. I had to give one girl a really sound talking to, but I don’t think it made a difference.

And finally, I worked on the Portland Spirit tonight. Whee.

If you want to read Body Language (8900 words), drop me an email. Here’s a teaser for you.

Body Language
Mary Robinette Kowal

     Saskia knelt inside the giant man-eating plant checking the repair to the puppet’s control bar. The puppet stank. She never noticed the months of sweat impregnating the foam and fabric when she was performing, but the odor was overwhelming now.
     She could hear the muffled murmur of conversation. The techies probably wanted to know when she would clear the stage. One of them said her name, sounding like he had forgotten she was in the puppet. Saskia ignored him and opened the jaw to test it.
     As the giant puppet moved, he yelped. Saskia grinned. There were days when she loved her job. Then the techie said, “Saskia? There’s a detective here to talk to you.”
     Saskia almost dropped the puppet. Detective? As she clambered out of the puppet, she started running through the list of friends and family who might be in trouble, but came up blank.
     The techie stood next to a stocky man, maybe Indian, maybe South American; she’d never been good at guessing. The man wore AI interface glasses, which meant he had an Artificial Intelligence as an invisible partner. His crisp suit made Saskia acutely aware that she still wore the sweat-stained bike clothes she performed in. Her hair was probably a snarled rat’s nest.

I tried my plan for dealing with Mr. Uh-uh at camp today, and it worked. I gave him a model of the fire I needed built and told him to make a large version. When he got bored with that, I also assigned him to draw the plan of the jail, and that I’d get another kid to scale it up for him later. I told him to bounce between the two projects and he worked the whole class. I feel like a teaching god.

Of course, I had another student who decided to play darts with the colored pencils, but that didn’t last long.

Since I’ve finally finished the Lessons Learned project, I’m actually free to spend the afternoon writing. I’m shocked too.

Marlene and Peter sent us the nesting glass bowls that I coveted! Their excuse is that it’s a wedding present, despite the fact that Rob and I got married over three years ago.

Such kindness, and I really needed a pick-me-up after the battle with Mr. Uh-uh today. That and the increasing awareness that there’s no way we’ll get the set finished.

On the upside, I did finish the Lessons Learned project. Whew.

Sorry, I’ve been meaning to post the rest of the modeling shots since Monday. These, plus the ones I posted earlier, are apparently the ones that agencies purchased. Who knows what publications we’ll start turning up in.

This is the one we sent to our folks.

The other problem child is your standard, run of the mill, I-don’t-wanna but he’s making me crazy. Little Miss Snippy was much better today, which gave me more time to focus on Mr. Uh-uh. He doesn’t want to do anything, which would be fine if he would actually sit and do nothing. What he really wants to do is distract the students who are actually working.

The most frustrating thing is that when I sit down to talk to him, he’s interested, engaged and has good ideas. He just has no follow-through. His grandmother runs the camp and says that she doesn’t know what to do with him either.

Argh.

Tomorrow, I’m going to try giving him two things. One sample for him to copy, and the other a small scale drawing project. I’ll let him bounce between the two things when he gets bored.

I had a rough day at camp today. One of the little girls is selfish, obnoxious, manipulative and I don’t like her. The kids made stick horses, which turned out really cute. At the end of class I told them to put them all at one end of the room while we joined the rest of camp for snack time at the other end.

As I walked past the snack table I saw that little Miss Snippy had her stick horse, which she’d been waving in my face and everyone else’s, so I told her to put it away.

“But it’s all the way over there. Can you put it away for me?” she said.

“No, it’s all the way over there for me too.”

“But,” she whined, “you’re a teacher. It’s your job to help kids.”

Biting my tongue, I took a breath and then replied, “It’s my job to help children who are having trouble, not children who didn’t follow instructions in the first place.”

“But I’ll lose my place in line.”

“There’s no one behind you. You’re the last one in line.” I turned and walked away, straight into the teacher’s lounge where I announced that I didn’t like her.

I’ve had children who don’t pay attention, or are disruptive, but not one that’s so openly manipulative. She’ll be like this when she grows up, it’ll just be more subtle.

So, I was very grouchy on my way home, but when I got there I found a box. My dear friend’s in NYC who let me stay with them when I come out have a fantastically appointed kitchen. The last time I was out, I was helping Marlene in the kitchen and commented on her sets of mixing bowls. She has a set of nesting glass bowls that come in every imaginable size and a set of steel bowls that are perfect. I mentioned that I covet them.

Today, without any provocation, Marlene sent me a set of nesting steel bowls. So, very, very kind.

I teach Stagecraft at this summer camp every year. This year will be challenging because our enrollment is way down. Instead of two classes with fifteen students. I have one class with seven students–no wait, that’s four students. No. Ten students.

I don’t know how many I have because they keep pulling students out to rehearse and then send new ones back. This has never happened before.

Meanwhile, I fought with my computer to get it to send the final drafts of the Lessons Learned project to the printer.

Last night Rob and I checked out a flex car and drove down to the drive-in movie theater in Newburg. It was sold out, so we came home and rented a movie. While we were watching it, we heard a loud crash outside. I thought it might be a gunshot, but Rob thought it sounded like a car ran into a telephone pole. He went outside to check, at 11:02 p.m. (I checked) but didn’t see anything. So he came back in and we finished watching the movie.

It turns out we were both wrong. The sound we heard was someone running into our truck. We found it this morning as we were about to loan it to Wayne so he could run some errands that required a little more trunk space than the average Miata has. Rob has phoned the insurance company and the police, but neither of us have hopes of anything coming of it. It’s probably just enough damage to eat our deductible without actually getting the insurance company to pay for it.

I just wrote this up for a writer’s website, and thought you all might be interested in seeing what stories I have in the works.

Shorts In Submission

Some Other Day – Interzone: Josie’s father managed to rid the world of mosquitoes when she was little. The unintended consequences still affect both the adult Josie and the world.

Trip, Trap, Tripping – Quantum Muse: The three Billy Goats Gruff retold in a NY walk-up, with a single mother and her tap-dancing daughters as the goats, and the guy downstairs as the troll. (I want to do a series of these, but darn, where do I market them?)

This Little Pig – Asimov’s: Near-future. After the Oil Wars, private vehicles are largely considered taboo, but a young boy in the Netherlands covets a 1952 MG-TD. He starts work at a pig farm/methane factory where things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Coffee Sensibility – Story House: A five part serial. Jane Austen in a Pacific NW coffee shop.

My Friend Anna – Vestal Review: 63 word flash involving a tapeworm, bathtub and pregnancy.

Portrait of Ari – Strange Horizons: While pulling an all-nighter, an art major realizes that his girlfriend has been altering his memory to hide the fact that she is not human.

Horizontal Rain – Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet: A New York contractor discovers that his job in Iceland is being held up because the crew believes in trolls.

Birthright – Talebones: Near-future flash. In a world with severe birth control regulations, a couple has to decide whether to give up their birthright in exchange for enough money to finish college.

Death Comes But Twice – Glimmertrain: Epistolary short. A Georgian-era Doctor has discovered a cure for death, but it only works for twenty-four hours.

A Hand in My Colon – Full Unit Hookup: Bitter monologue by dying puppet.

The Promise of Chocolate – Atoise: An unhappy single mother makes cupcakes for her son’s birthday. One of them contains cyanide.

Changed Itinerary – Apex Digest: UFOlogist is abducted by aliens.

Salt of the Earth – WOTF: On a sodium-poor world, where every scrap of salt is saved, a salt merchant’s daughter is killed by a salt-overdose.

Awaiting Revision

Journey to the East: The Legend of the Monkey King YA Novel – Two American kids find themselves caught up in the oldest legend in China as they struggle to rescue their baby sister from the Bone Demon. (Book One in Series)

Virus Attached SF murder/mystery – Scott Huang and his AI partner Metta are trying to solve a murder, when Metta’s chasis (containing her memory) is stolen. She is rebooted from her last back-up, which occurred six hours previously. She and Huang must find her original version before the perpetrator can use it to hack into the police department and erase all evidence of his crime.

Works in Progress

Body Language : Near-future. Lena, a puppeteer, is called in to help solve a kidnapping because the only witness is eDawg, a toy for which she did the motion-capture work. The kidnappers demand that the ransom be sent in on eDawg, and Lena has to manipulate the puppet while pretending to be nothing more than a toy.

Waiting for Rain: In India, a farmer has beggared himself to pay for his daughter’s wedding and can no longer pay his weather bills.

Shades of Milk and Honey: Regency Romance, with fantasy. Magic is a woman’s art, like painting or music. Jane uses it to prove that Mr. Dunkirk is wooing her and her sister at the same time.

Good Housekeeping: Novel. Contemporary Fantasy. The Faerie Queen sent a human changeling, Grace, back to try to keep the old ways alive in the world. Grace uses the internet to manage a network of Goodwives who let brownies, elves and other housefolk live in their homes. But the Unseelie Court has decided to drive out all of the housefolk to diminish the Faerie Queen’s power. Grace has to try to save the Housefolk while adjusting to life as a human.

I spent today trying to write. I’m working my way through a new short story, and it’s slow going. I think I’m putting too much pressure on myself after how well Salt of the Earth went. I like this one, or at least the idea for this one, but I only got about 1000 words done today.

Besides that I also worked on Shimmer and a little bit of gardening.

According to Sue, owner of Lessons Learned, the folks she was pitching to really liked the concept. Which means my popups and cards were successful. She has to go out of town this week, so we won’t start working on it until Monday and the pilot workshop is a week from Friday. Yoicks.

I went to the WRW Writers’ On-the-air Workshop again last night, but need to get my hiney in gear and finish my script. It won’t be one of the ones worked on this time round, but it’s nice to have a deadline to work toward.

Rob and I both have tomorrow off. Hurrah!

I’ve been playing with pop-ups today for my little design gig. It’s been fun.

Yet another Portland Spirit day. I’m biking to and from work, so that’s twelve miles a day, plus running around fetching food, so by the time I get home I’m beat.

Rob and I went out to dinner tonight, thus eating a portion of my tips today, but I was too tired to cook. Since he had an audio gig today, he was also too tired. We went to the Irvington Corner Table. I was pleasantly surprised by the food. They have a real key lime pie, which was delightful. I’m a bit of a snob about key lime pies.