I have three stories that will appear on Sharable.net over the next three days. They are examining what it might be like to make a film in a future with an economy based on sharing and cooperation.  Each story can stand alone but hopefully you get more out of them when they are read as a whole.  It’s the first time I’ve tried to write a mosaic story.

Here’s a teaser of the first one.

A Type of Favor

Like most of the co-operatives that sprang up after the Oil Wars, the Broadway co-op had a specialty. While other co-ops might focus on medicine or music, the Broadway members created and exported films to the commercial world. In exchange for pooling their time and resources they were able to have a higher standard of living than any independent artist. But of course, even an economy based on sharing and cooperation demands sacrifices…

Jenn stared at his chin, focusing on the stubble and hoping that her distaste didn’t show. Why had she borrowed Harold’s tools? Now she owed him.

Harold’s request to borrow one of her typewriters for the film he was making was perfectly reasonable, but this did nothing to keep the sour taste out of the back of her mouth. When she’d traded borrowing points, she hadn’t thought the typewriters would be in danger. No one used them anymore. She’d thought she was throwing skills or tools into the communal pot when she immigrated to this co-op. At her old one, no one cared about the typewriters. Was there a way she could say “No,” plausibly?

Read the full story at Sharable.net

Oh, and it has pictures of our actual typewriter collection.

What we have here is a short film in which Michael Winslow (Man of 10,000 sound FX from Police Academy) “recites” the history of typewriters.  Watching him listen to the sound of a typewriter and then recreate it is strangely compelling.

History of the typewriter recited by Michael Winslow from SansGil—Gil Cocker on Vimeo.

(Thanks Saladin!)

I think I have recovered enough from traveling to catch you up on the last couple of days.

Saturday I arrived in Seattle about a half hour before the Locus Awards banquet was due to start. I’d changed clothes on the train and was wearing an seasonally inappropriate Hawaiian print sundress and cute strappy heels.  I say this because Seattle was cold.

Normally there’s a line of taxis waiting at the train station and my plan was to catch on to the hotel. I’d waffled between that and taking the bike but didn’t want to arrive sweaty and have to change at the hotel. A cab would be faster.

If there were cabs.

Unfortunately, Saturday was a marathon and all the cabs were taken.  The Amtrak representative said that the people in line in front of me had been waiting for half an hour and he’d called four places already. I headed for the bus, figuring that could get me there faster.

If the bus line I needed weren’t on the marathon route.

At this point, I began calling every cab company I could. None of them had cars. I started walking back to the bus route, figuring I could follow it  while calling and eventually we’d get out of the marathon route.

Then my phone died.

About this point a pedi-cab came down the hill and I flagged him down. I asked if he could take me out to the hotel. He hesitated and said, “I gotta tell you that’d be $30 or $40.”

I was standing in downtown Seattle in a sundress, strappy sandals and now had fifteen minutes to get to the hotel. I was also cold. $40 sounded like a bargain. He thought it would be a twenty minute ride and I said, “Done! Let’s go.”

And a cab pulled up.

The pedicab driver actually flagged it down, apologizing as he did so. “Sorry. I didn’t want to climb that hill.”

I was totally fine with that. So, into the cab and away to the hotel where I arrived moments before the festivities started.

And let me tell you, Locus knows how to throw a party.  Everyone was in Hawaiian shirts or dresses for the Memorial Hawaiian shirt competition. Connie Willis is a hillarious M.C. and roundly harassed everyone who wasn’t in Aloha-wear. It was great fun.

By this point, the Locus winners list has been propagated through the internet, so I’ll just link to it.  My hearty congratulations to the winners, but in particular to Peter S. Beagle who won the novelette category for “By Moonlight.”  I was pretty sure that he was going to win and am glad to see him honored for such a lovely story.

After the awards we went over to the SF Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony for Octavia E. Butler, Richard Matheson, Douglas Trumbull and Roger Zelazny was really lovely and quite moving.

I got to meet Mr. Trumbull who has been a huge influence on my puppetry life because he’s the one who pioneered the real-time cgi backgrounds for Book of Pooh. That technology’s existence led to the cgi world we worked in for Lazytown.   Plus he created so many other fantastic developments in the world of FX.  He was also totally charming.

Sunday was mostly about traveling back to Portland. Jeremy Lassen gave me a ride to the train station, which is good since Seattle was swamped for the Gay Pride parade and the bus line was again missing.

My train home was filled with girl scouts who were extremely loud.

Yesterday I napped, wrote, and then went to the recording studio to work on the Shades of Milk and Honey audio book.

• 15:25 At the airport to go home to Portland. I will be home for less than 8 hours then go to Seattle for the Locus awards. #
• 15:57 Man, JFK is brutally hot and smells like the subway. That, at least, has working a/c. #
• 16:54 Is anyone going from Portland to Seattle tomorrow? I am being rerouted and will arrive without my dress for the Locus awards. #
• 17:16 My flight is now delayed AND oversold so there’s no telling what will happen to me. #
• 18:35 Actually boarding my scheduled flight. Of course we are leaving an hour and a half late, but that is no big deal. #
• 18:52 I had to gate check my bag again. I wonder if my underwear will arrive this time. #

—

My luggage was unrifled. I spent six hours at home. Rob made waffles and took me to the train station. I came to Seattle for where I am now.   I will report on the Seattle trip tomorrow. For now? Sleep.

I’m sitting at JFK and there is some question about if I will be flying out tonight. The flight is oversold and late. They are offering me a voucher and to fly me straight to Seattle tomorrow, in time to arrive for the Locus awards. We’ll see what happens with that.

Before I left I recorded an interview with Jim Freund for Hour of the Wolf which will be broadcast tomorrow morning (Saturday) at 5AM EDT on WBAI 99.5FM in NYC or you can listen to it streaming at http://stream.wbai.org/

We talked about audio books, e-book readers, radio theatre and I read part of the first chapter of Shades of Milk and Honey.

Why did I think that two weeks would be enough time to be here?

Last night, after I returned from Philadelphia, I went to Henson Alternative: Stuffed and Unstrung with Jodi, Emily and Delia. It was loads of fun and some pretty impressive improv.  With Muppets.

Then this morning, I went uptown to meet with Bob Howe, who is the incoming secretary for SFWA, to do some training on his new duties.  This was fun because we spent a lot of time catching up.

From there I came back to the apartment briefly to take a nap then off to Labapalooza. Sadly, due to a train mixup I wound up missing the first piece by Serra Hirsch. Naturally, this was the one that I had gone intending to see. Annoying.  On the plus side I ran into an old friend that I haven’t seen in years who was there with someone else that I’d met during the auditions. The world is a very tiny place.

Tomorrow I’m doing an interview/reading for Hour of the Wolf with Jim Freund. The show will be this Saturday. Normally, it’s live but we’re recording it since I’m going home.  In fact, I’ll be heading straight to the airport after we are done.

I did not actually manage to see everyone I wanted to this trip so it’s lucky that I’ll be back in about two weeks.

At some point, I’ll spend more than two weeks at home with my husband. Who I miss.

I’m giving away a copy of Shades of Milk and Honey on Goodreads.  The drawing ends on July 20th and I will send the copy the moment I have it in my hot little hands so that some lucky person will get the novel before it hits the stores.

Don’t worry if you aren’t a member of Goodreads (although it’s a fun place) there will be other giveaways later.

I spent yesterday evening and part of today in Philadelphia, meeting with Stephen Segal to wrap up the layout on Weird Tales. This issue is a transition between his art direction and mine to make things smoother.  I only have one more large thing to layout and then I think it’s off to the races with it.

The only thing I didn’t like about the visit was the humidity. So much worse than NYC. At one point last night the only intelligent thing for us to do was to take an ice cream break. I just have to ask how the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were ever drafted while the founders brains were melting.

I certainly lose my ability to make intelligent design decisions with a melting brain. Thank heavens Stephen has practice at working here. I think this issue will look good.

The National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neil Theater center is one of my favorite things. It’s a ten-day intensive workshop focused on performance and the development of new works. At the end there are performances.

This is from a couple of years ago and a fine example of puppeteer humor. Every person at the O’Neil had a control attached to this marionette. We all focused on the puppet and moved our controls with careful intensity but our goal was to not move the puppet. At all.

Trust me. If you are a puppeteer, this is hilarious.

I should probably explain a little bit about what happens after an audition. In fiction, when I submit a story I will eventually hear back from a market with either an acceptance or a rejection. With auditions, you only hear back if they want to invite you on to the next level.

So the thing I do when I walk out of an audition is to close the door behind me. As a metaphor, think of it as leaving things tidy so the flies don’t get in, flies being the “what ifs” that can buzz around in my brain.

I’m pretty clearly not moving on to the next round for the big horse, but that may or may not mean anything for the colt track.  There’s no way to tell and it’s too easy to go crazy waiting to hear.

So I try to close the door and move on. If it opens and I get to go back in, that is awesome.  Meanwhile, it’s nothing to fret about.

I think I mentioned that Tor.com had released their nominated fiction for free on various platforms. This included my novelette, “First Flight”
Apparently, it hit the #4 slot on Amazon for free downloads. Not for free SF, but for overall fiction.

As you can see, three of other Tor downloads are also on there, which is pretty awesome. I’ve been told that this means that 60,000 people, on Kindle alone, downloaded the stories in the first week.

This boggles my mind.

It’s also available for the iPhone now, if you have one. (also, check out this screenshot.)

This is what it looks like on the iPad’s Kindle app.  Many thanks to Dierdre for sending that over to me.

I just downloaded it to my Nook and I have to say that it is very nicely formatted. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the story on the Nook, but it’s nifty to have there.

Have I mentioned how very odd I find the whole thing. In part, I suspect, because I just finished these auditions where the act of creation — even an audition performance — is so directly linked to the audience reaction, which makes the connection between writer and reader seem… I mean, it’s just really hard to get my head around how many people have this story now.

From the June 15th edition of Library Journal comes this really lovely review of Shades of Milk and Honey

Readers will be disappointed only when they finish this enchanting story, which is suffused with genteel charm. The author’s judicious and effective changes to aspects of daily life clearly communicate how similar but different this world is from ours. With the grace of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, a touch of classic fairy tale magic, and an action-packed ending, this debut novel by an award-winning short story writer will appeal to fans of Jane Austen, Jane Yolen, Patricia Wrede, Susannah Clarke, and even Jasper Fforde.

You know how you can tell when someone on tour has gone insane? It’s when they make something like this.

So hard to look away…

These are not the horse puppets you are looking for…

It turns out that thinking of this as a callback wasn’t quite accurate.  This was really for a different part within the same show, I think, since I was the only woman there who had also been tried on the big horse. The group was multi-ethnic which was really nice to see especially since the play is set in France and England in WWI.

The colt is significantly harder in many ways that the big horse.  Though with fewer moving parts, the small size meant that I had to bend at the waist to reach the front legs, which is less comfortable than standing straight up.  The legs also aren’t attached to the puppets body and rely on the puppeteer to make the connection. So you are working to keep things lined up and act with it as well.  Doable, but it takes a bit more thought than the big horse who is built to move like a horse.

Once you get the hang of him though he is gorgeous. One of the other teams on the colt did this fabulous rearing thing with him. And his head is just… I mean these are really beautiful and very evocative puppets. I am a total geeky fan girl here and am pretty sure I had a ridiculous smile on my face the whole time I was there.

We also did some work with paper people, which were close to lifesize puppets made for the workshop.  Those were fun three-person figures. I actually spent more time working those than on the colt.  One of the teams I was on really clicked I thought and felt very much in sync.

After that, we were sent off to read in a more traditional audition format.  As you might guess, I do mostly puppet auditions and had serious nerves going in. Fortunately, everyone is extraordinarily nice.  It went mostly okay. I had one place where I thought I had jumped to the wrong part of the scene but hadn’t… sigh. Anyway, I asked if I could start again and the second try went better.

My one French line came out clean and with emotion, which was a relief. All things considered, I felt like I presented myself well and that everything else is stuff that is out of my control.

I’m skipping stuff since basically the report is: I had fun. The colt puppet is beautiful. I have no idea about anything beyond that.

I’m off to my audition. It isn’t until 3pm but I want to allow an hour to get there — love NY — and figure I’ll spend the remaining time at Central Park watching the carriage horses. Also, sitting still is really no longer an option.

I spent the evening working on the scene with Jodi, in English. Then Sam, who grew up in the Congo, helped me with the French. I am NOT going to try to act the scene in French, but I feel comfortable reading it aloud at least.

This morning I’ve alternated between running lines and watching videos of foals.

And then, in a fine example of what my life is like right now, I’m going out to dinner with my fabulous literary agent, Jennifer Jackson, and one of my erstwhile first readers, Michael Curry.

And did I mention that I get to play with an amazing puppet for an hour?