I’m in tech this week, so you’ll have to bear with me as my posts descend into Twitter updates.

• 14:01 The perfect blood spatter turns out to be from a nasal douche. #
• 19:20 Waiting for the train that will not come. #
• 19:27 Of course, as soon as I commented on the lack of train, it materialized. #
• 19:31 OMG The Dessert Truck is close to the Puppet Kitchen tonight. Rivington and Essex. #
• 19:36 On today’s shopping list: 2 machetes, minty fresh blood, english muffins. #
• 21:05 See Mary. See Mary install a mechanism upside down. Fix the mech, Mary, fix it. See Mary install the mechanism backwards. Curse, Mary curse. #
• 21:34 Making a sledge hammer while the dog’s head mech is drying. #

I’m in tech this week, so you’ll have to bear with me as my posts descend into Twitter updates.

• 13:01 There is a certain cognitive disconnect about shopping for squirt guns while it is snowing. #
• 20:34 Sewing the dog’s pelvis on. #
• 22:04 We’ve decided the spatter pattern is not as good from the squirt gun as from the spray bottle. I may need to darken the blood for impact. #
• 01:42 We’ve started watching season 4 of BSG. It is very, very hard to stop after the first episode and go to bed. #

My twitter fiction is up at  Thaumatrope: “When shall we three meet ….

I’d love having a reader or two look over this one before I send it out. It is 7300 words of science-fiction. It’s in a password protected post, but you can drop me a line and I’ll tell ya.

The teaser:

Mary Elois Jackson stood inside the plain steel box of the time machine. It was about the size of an outhouse, but without a bench or windows. She clutched her cane with one hand and her handbag with the other.

Her corset creaked with every breath. She’d expected to hate wearing a corset again but there was a certain comfort from having something to support her back and give her a shape more like a woman than a sack of potatoes.

A gust of air puffed all around her and the steel box was gone. She stood in a patch of tall grass under an early morning October sky. The caravan of scientists, technicians and reporters had vanished from the field where they’d set up camp. Elois inhaled with wonder that the time machine had worked. Assuming that this was 1905, of course.

Even if you don’t have time to read it, I’ve got a title question.  My working title was “Time-travelling Grandma” which I’m sort of tempted to go back to.  Thoughts?

I’m reposting from Beth Wodzinski, Shimmer’s editor-in-chief.  This is a great magazine to work with and a really fun team.  Plus, good parties at conventions.

Shimmer will be relaunching soon (just a few weeks!) with a new site design, some new staff, and a fantastic new issue. We need two more staffers to help get things off the ground: a slush reader, and a web assistant.

The slush reader will read an average of 1-2 submissions per day, and either reject them, or forward them for further consideration. I’m looking for someone who can be fast, friendly, and whose approach to stories is somewhat similar to mine.

Web assistant: Our site is based on WordPress. Our redesign will be done shortly, and we’ll need help moving our current content into the new layout, and maintaining it going forward. No programming or other heavy lifting required–just some skill with WordPress pages and posts.

We’re an all-volunteer staff, but fun to work with, and I’ll buy drinks if we’re ever at a con together. If you’re interested (or want more information), e-mail beth AT shimmerzine DOT com.

via Beth Wodzinski: Shimmer: Help Wanted.

For years, while I worked at Tears of Joy, and then after, Lance Woolen was my Technical Director. The man is brilliant. Even today, living in NYC, if I run into a question of how to build something, I call Lance. If he tells me something is not possible to build, then it’s not. But it’s very rare that he can’t find a way out of the impossible. This week, for my AMC column, I interviewed him about the work he did on Coraline.

This week, readers, allow me to introduce Lance Woolen, a career puppeteer and one of Coraline’s puppet builders. He’s giving us a look at the immense amount of work involved in translating Neil Gaiman’s book to the silver screen.

via Go on by and read what Lance has to say. It’s good stuff, I promise.

I’m in tech this week, so you’ll have to bear with me as my posts descend into Twitter updates.

• 19:53 Firing water pistols down my hall to check range and spatter pattern. #
• 20:23 You know. Life is really good sometimes. Today is one of those day. #
• 23:33 The nice thing about visiting my husband at work, is that it is a winery. He’s provided me with a glass of champagne while I wait for him. #

I spent two hours today to drive six miles to Hoboken, pick up a chair, and drive back into the city.  If I never have to drive in New York again, it will be too soon.

Besides that today consisted of meetings, and then another meeting, followed by another meeting, plus some puppet building and prop construction.

I have been going to the eye doctor since I was very small. But it\’s been years since I\’ve had my eyes dialated. It is impossible to focus right now, which I find disturbing and yet intriguing. I am totally touch typing, because the letters on the screen are so blurry. It is different than just having my glasses off, because my distance vision is still intact. Maybe this is a preview of getting old.

Actually, it turns out that John Nichols posted all of the stories we read in neatly discrete chunks. Very exciting!

My stories:
Nails in my Feet
Trip, Trap, Tripping
http://ljsummit.com/wordpress/evil-robot-monkey-by-mary-robinette-kowal

Things we read together:
Denise Jones, Super Booker by John Scalzi
The State of Super Villiany by John Scalzi

Scalzi, solo:
Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternative History Search Results

If you swing over to the blog “Things of interest to Lisa and John” you can listen to my short story, “Trip, Trap, Tripping”  which audio from when John Scalzi and I were at Borderlands.  It’s a little over 8 minutes long.

Trip, Trap, Tripping by Mary Robinette Kowal

You can tell that I’ve got some adrenalin going because I’m just flying through the text at the beginning before I catch myself and slow down.

My favorite bit is about at 4:20, when some guy’s cellphone goes off.  I shot him a look and the text of the story obliged me with a totally appropriate phrase.  Very satisfying

I taught a puppetry class on Friday and am reminded, as always, at how much better 1st graders are at following directions than adults. In general, I find that adults tend to think that they know how to do something or can figure it out on their own and will jump ahead without waiting for instructions.

Kids will also do that, but with them it’s more a matter of being so excited about the project that they just want to dive in immediately. But they’ll actually stop and listen to the instructions. And if they don’t know how to do something, they’ll let you know instead of being embarrassed about their lack of knowledge.

Now, in general, I’m a big believer in showing kids how to do a thing and then letting them do it on their own. Frequently, they’ll say, “I don’t know how,” or “It’s hard.” Grownups will do the same thing. But kids… if you tell a kid, “Yes, it is hard, and it was hard the first time I did it too. It just takes practice,” then they’ll actually try it.

Grownups tend to get disgusted and give up faster and they should really know better. Plus, you know, when a grownup misbehaves, you can’t give them a time out, no matter how much you might want to.

I got stuck in the elevator again today.  Granted, it wasn’t long this time, but I did just sort of start laughing.  

I was heading out to go to the Puppet Kitchen and decided to drop the trash off in the basement on my way.  The thing about the basement is that there’s not another way to get to it except by the fire escape outside, which isn’t really an option.  I got to the basement, put my trash in the bin and got back in the elevator to go back up to the first floor. The door closed and nothing happened.

You know how it is. You push all the buttons, hoping one of them will work. What was interesting this time was that I was next to the routing machine and could hear it clicking as it reset everytime I pushed a button.

I rang the bell. Then I twittered.  And then I called Rob. 

Pretty quickly this time, I heard people through the shaft trying to figure out where the elevator was stuck.  They got me out in about ten minutes. It’s a little silly.

On the other hand, it’d be a great setting for an elevator pitch.