The handy thing about twitter in situations like waiting in a hospital is that afterwards you can look at the datestamps to see how long things really took.  Here’s what our day was like on Monday.

• 05:57 Rob and I are heading to the hospital for his Carpal Tunnel surgery. About darn time. #
• 07:09 We are at the hospital and Rob is filling out copious amounts of forms. #
• 07:14 That was surprisingly fast. They just took him back. They say it’s a fifteen minute procedure. We’ll see. #
• 07:22 He’s back. Not finished, but because there are more forms to fill out. #
• 07:55 Despite the large signs saying “Do not eat or drink” the family waiting next to us has set up a breakfast area with coffee & bagels. #
• 08:03 They’ve taken him back again but say it’s just for ten minutes this time. #
• 08:19 He’s back. It was standard blood pressure and stuff. The doctor is in the building but there’s no indication of when he’ll go in for real. #
• 09:11 Two hours later, they’ve taken him back for surgery. I think. Rob says thanks for all the good wishes. #
• 09:47 The doctor is out talking to the family next to me about the same procedure. So, clearly, Rob has not gone under the knife yet. #
• 10:24 Heh. A family brought a balloon boquet and it is spontaneously popping, 1 balloon at a time. forunately, everyone seems to think it’s funny. #
• 11:10 Rob is out of surgery. The doctor said it went well and that Rob is awake and resting comfortably. They’ll take me up to see him shortly. #
• 11:42 On my way to see Rob! #
• 11:55 Oh, my. He looks very funny. There’s a giant block of foam strapped to his arm. #
• 14:33 To say “Thanks!” to everyone who sent their good wishes this morning, here’re photos of Rob & the Giant Block o’ Foam. bit.ly/3E4ioO #
• 19:41 I’m not sure that laughing at Rob every time he and the Giant Block of Foam enter a room is really helping. #

My friend’s nine year old daughter is making paper people. She’s not working from a pattern, mind you. She’s making this up.

me:Did you see the ridiculous traffic that post is getting?

Scalzi: Not surprised. Everyone loves foam.

me: The only thing that would be more popular is if I taped bacon to it.

Scalzi: I dare you to do the bacon thing.

me: Oh you are playing with fire there, mister.

Scalzi: It has to happen now.

me: It will be fakin bacon, since we’re vegetarian.

Scalzi: Doesn’t count.

me: Oh come on!

Scalzi: Nope. Has to be the real thing. It is an integrity thing.

me: Seriously? It has to be real bacon? That’s just prejudicial, man.

Scalzi: I think it does. I mean, among other things, using faux bacon would be to admit you HAVE faux bacon.

me: Yes? And there’s a problem with that? I could tape tofu to him. Or eggplant.

Scalzi: It must be thought upon.

me: Hm. I could carve it into bacon.

Scalzi: Ha! Possibly.

me: Although, I think that might be grounds for divorce in some states.

Scalzi: It may be.

Which is what led me to wander into the living room and say, “Honey, I have a favor to ask, without context.  May I tape bacon to your Giant Block of Foam?”

“Sure.”

Later….
me: That was only moderately successful.

Scalzi: He was resistant, I assume.

Me: No. The fakin’ was.

Scalzi: That’s why you need the real thing, baby!

me: Hmph.

So, the lesson learned here is that one should not question the judgement of Scalzi, the Baconical Wonder.

At Wiscon last year, Lynne M. Thomas approached me and asked if I’d be interested in having my work added to the Northern Illinois University SF Archives. In particular, she was interested in drafts and other things exposing the creative process. I was deep, deep in the throes of Impostor Syndrome and couldn’t figure out why anyone would be interested in me.

Lynne is persistent.

So, I’m pleased to announce that I have officially joined NIU SF Archives.

We’re starting with electronic files of works in progress and I’ll be dropping off a whole ream of hard-copy juvenalia and early drafts soon.

There’s nothing to make one quite so humble as realizing that photos of one’s husband with a Giant Block of Foam are more popular than links to one’s Hugo-nominated story.

That first surge is Evil Robot Monkey. The second is the Giant Block of Foam.

We’re home from the hospital and I’ve already had to chase Rob away from the sink, where he was trying to do dishes with one hand.

The surgeon came to let me know that Rob was finished around 11:00 but I had to wait another half an hour or so before they took me up to see him. In the recovery room, they had a row of chairs that would have looked at home on the Enterprise, all occupied with men dressed just like Rob. The only variation was which arm had the giant block o’ foam strapped to it.

After they released him, I helped him get his jacket on and we headed out to the pharmacy and then to lunch. At the moment he says that the pain isn’t any worse than during the worst days at the winery. Certainly, aside from the giant block of foam strapped to his arm, you’d have no idea that anything was wrong with him. He’s going back next Wednesday to have the stitches out, but is supposed to keep the GBoF attached to him for the next eight days. Also, no lifting of anything, but otherwise, he’s supposed to use the fingers to keep them mobile.

The GBoF should be interesting when he goes back to work…

And yes, we’ve already talked about what puppets I could make from it. It’s good dense foam. And in a giant block.

I just talked to the doctor who said that the surgery went well. They’ll take me up to see him in a bit. He is reportedly awake and resting comfortably.

They’ve taken him to the back twice, now. The first time he came back and had to fill out more forms. The second time, was to do standard blood pressure and the like.

We’ve learned that in addition to the shoulder block, they will also sedate him to keep his arm from “flopping around.”

Two hours after we got here, they’ve finally taken him back for the surgery.

Rob and I are heading to the hospital, finally, for his carpal tunnel surgery. I probably don’t need to go, but feel more comfortable with the idea of waiting there than waiting for him at home. It’s supposed to be a fifteen minute procedure. Both of us are expecting that the wait will be significantly longer because that’s the way things have rolled with this process.

I’ll keep you posted.

Aliette de Bodard lives in Paris, France, where she holds a job as a Computer Engineer and writes fiction in her spare time. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in venues such as Interzone, Realms of Fantasy and Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction. She was a Writers of the Future Winner in 2007. In addition to writing, she also reviews fiction for The Fix Online.

So what did you do when you were notified about the nomination?
I was waking up and preparing for a very intensive meeting at six in the morning, and decided to check my emails on a whim. What happened next was, in order: I stifled a scream not to wake up the neighbours, stood uncertainly for a split second before going to wake up my boyfriend and screaming into his ear (which was really a mean thing to do to him this early in the morning for which I’ll have to make up), and reread the mail to be sure I hadn’t dream the whole thing. Then I forgot about it for the whole day, because I couldn’t afford to be distracted by this.

That rather depends on the definition of “writing”, I suspect… I started writing in earnest about ten years ago, when I completed several embarrassingly bad novels, but I wasn’t really serious about it until four years ago, which is when I started submitting in addition to finishing drafts.

It’s actually not so difficult, because most of my reading also takes place in the same language, so the terms and ideas I refer to when I’m writing are already “pre-registered” in English in my brain. It did take me a few years to get to that point, though, so I suspect there is a fair amount of groundwork involved that I just don’t see anymore. The one advantage in writing in a second language is that it’s very much liberating. In French, I carry a lifetime of teachers smacking my fingers until I got the language down properly, until it’s pretty hard to actually deviate from the correct grammar and the correct phrasing: there’s a strong mental block that I’m aware of but have trouble overcoming. I feel more free in English to twist the words until they bleed, and that’s a great thing for crafting fiction. If the price to pay is the occasional gallicism, I’d say that’s more than fair.

Weirdly enough, no, it’s not really something that works for me. As said above, I actually have very little idea of what the vocabulary of speculative fiction would be in French; and most of my writing habits and style are actually in English. It’s amazing how little of that translates into my mother tongue. Again, I suspect I could overcome this with practise, but one language is already more than  enough to keep me busy.

I think that, if anything, it would be when I started taking it seriously: about four years ago, I made the decision that I would write and publish short stories so that I would have enough credits to get my novel published. That was when I started writing regularly and submitting to short fiction markets; and shortly afterwards, I made my first paying sales (to a since-defunct fantasy ezine called Deep Magic, and then to Shimmer). Of course, it later turned out that the novel that had started all of this was not publishable unless I butchered it, but by then I was in a position to write a much better novel anyway.

I’ve actually managed to whittle down the to-do pile to something manageable: I have one short story project I’m chipping at, and I’m wrapping up the first draft of an alternate-history thriller, Foreign Ghosts, which is set in a universe where China discovered America a century before Europe (it’s based on two stories published in Interzone, “The Lost Xuyan Bride” and “Butterfly, Falling at Dawn”).

I recently read Daniel Abraham’s awesome A Betrayal in Winter (and am looking forward to both sequels). Now the top of my reading pile is one non-fiction book about Chinese culture, and Powers by Ursula Le Guin, which I’m also very much looking forward to. I enjoyed the deceptive simplicity of both Gifts and Voices, the previous books in the trilogy, and I’m told this is the strongest of the three.

What I like most about speculative fiction is that it allows you either to create and sustain entirely new worlds with their own rules, or worlds that differ from ours in some important way: it could be several important scientific discoveries, or the fact that magic works, or a divergence from recorded history. As a reader, I love being immersed in such worlds for the sheer strangeness and wonder of walking the streets of a totally different city, or of seeing the landscape of a vastly changed world unroll before me, with all its idiosyncrasies. As a writer… working out and conveying the fundamental differences in mindset between the people of such a world and our own 21st-century world has to be, hands-down, the part that I prefer in writing speculative fiction.

• 02:57 I just called 911 to report screaming, slaps and sobs, echoing through the airshaft. Can’t tell from where, exactly. I hope they find her. #
• 03:11 Everything is quiet now. #
• 04:04 I’m heading to the radio station for the Hour of the Wolf from 5-7 AM today. Listen live or later on demand at hourwolf.com #
• 06:43 212-209-2900 if you want to call into the radio show. I’m here till 7. #
• 07:17 That was fun. If Jim Freund ever asks you to be on Hour of the Wolf, say yes. #
• 07:35 Well, I was planning on writing during the subway trip home, but I think staying awake will be a triumph. #
• 07:53 The fact that the train is stopping between stations is not helping me with the drowsy issue. #
• 08:16 I’ve made it home and am crawling into bed as Rob heads off to the winery. Our life looks like this a lot. #
• 15:04 Just picked up a cool gig doing sculptural set pieces for a dance company. Will need 100s of toothbrushes. #
• 15:29 Totally blew the zebra pickup. #
• 15:59 Watching rehearsal for “What of the Night.” I like this script quite a bit. #
• 17:27 Thoughtful post by @brendacooper on Web 2.0 and marketing for writers. YouTube. Vimeo. Twitter. Facebook. tinyurl.com/dk5a7n #
• 20:04 Scrubbing a database is about as much fun as it sounds. #

Bright and early Saturday morning, I will be on Hour of the Wolf at WBAI 99.5 in NYC.  You can listen live from 5-7 AM Saturday or later on demand at http://hourwolf.com

The host, Jim Freund has invited me to chat and do some reading.  We might even take listener calls.  I used to do radio theater and took radio broadcasting waaaaay back in college, but this is going to be my first author appearance on the air.  It should be fun.

So stop by to listen.

There’s a tiny view of what life working on “Where the Wild Things Are” over at Page 63 of your Manual: Where The Wild Things Are.

The monsters, if you don’t already know, are giant puppet suits that the actors wore, and I was one of three Refurb (refurbishment) techs on the film. Each day the monsters crashed through the bush, rolled down hills, waded into water or beat each other up, so each night, the standbys on set sent home the monsters who had been damaged by the day’s work where we would fix them up, put bandaids on their cuts and scrapes and send them back to set.

via Puppeteers Unite

My friend, Sean Markey, has his first pro sale up at Strange Horizons.  It is a dark and weirdly creepy story.

We kept our god under the sink, in an old aquarium, so it wouldn’t spill its web all over the house. We didn’t tell you because you were so curious. Our daughter: you are like an otter, or a hummingbird. How would you stand against such a monster as our god?

Read The Spider in You, by Sean E. Markey.

We’re celebrating Shimmer’s tenth issue by giving it away for free ! We’ve got twelve fantastic new stories and an exclusive interview with Cory Doctorow that you won’t want to miss — and don’t let your friends and family miss out, either.

Download your free copy today, or buy the lovely print edition and celebrate with us!