Rob is listening to Jake Shimabukuro’s live album and his rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller just came on. Oddly, it makes me more aware of the musicality of the piece than all the zombies did.

Behold! Here are photos of the Midwinter Feast that the Oregon Regency Society threw this year. They had a photographer on hand, Michael Linn, who took some gorgeous photos of the evening.

Just click to start playing the slideshow.

There’s even a photo of Rob smiling. I know!

Apex is now offering the full content of Issue 20 FREE on their website.  This is pretty nifty.  Here’s a teaser of my story “Tomorrow and Tomorrow.”

The moment Tuyet walked into the Dagenais’s compartment, she knew something was different. The usual pack of dogs swarmed around her, distracting her, before she figured out that the compartment smelled different. Not bad–not like the times they had left everything piled in the sink for her as if they were having a contest to see who could goad the other into doing the dishes. Nor the time they’d fired the dog walker and didn’t bother to walk the hoard of dogs that Hélène kept. But they paid her to come once a week to wipe their counters, load the dishwasher and tidy the compartment. So she’d kept her head down, asked herself what Kant would have done, then said screw the philosophy and wiped up the dog shit and urine.

Kant would not have done that.

The rest of “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”  is at Apex Magazine.   If you enjoy what you read, do consider supporting it by purchasing the issue so Apex can continue buying fiction from authors at pro rates.

While I was in Utah, I had occasion to visit the home of the Tayler’s.  Knowing that they have four children, I brought along The Broken Bridge, my tiny little puppet show. Sandra has written a charming account of the afternoon spent playing with her children.  With pictures!

“Tra la la!” said Mary as she made the little shadow puppet move behind the back lit screen. In front of the screen my four kids sat spell bound, watching the surprisingly life-like motions of the little shadow man. A second player entered the stage and Mary gave this character a distinctly different voice. “Is this the road to London?”

Read the whole thing at One Cobble at a Time » Shadow Puppets with Mary Robinette Kowal.

While I was in Utah, I had the opportunity to be on the Writing Excuses podcast with Eric Flint.   Howard Tayler and Dan Wells hosted us for a discussion of writing Alternate History. The three areas of Alternate History that we covered were:

• Our history, but with a key change occurring (the “branching point.”)
• Our history, but with a time-traveler going back and changing something (aka “duck, Mister President!”)
• Our history, but with magic (usually with said magic being the key change at our branching point)

Listen to the whole episode of Writing Excuses 5.21: Alternate History » Writing Excuses.

I’ve recently moved to a standing desk, which I accomplished by placing several reams of paper under my laptop. So far, I think I like it. I need to raise the monitor some, but otherwise, I find it quite comfie.

The biggest problem comes from my chair. I have a very small office area, so just pushed the chair back and stand in front of it. Sometimes I do want to sit, so I want it around. It’s just that my cats… they’ve realized that they can sit in it and get my attention.

So I’ll be working away at a story, and suddenly I’m being goosed by a cat. It’s… disconcerting.

Edited to add: I see by the comments that I’ve left the wrong impression. This isn’t a case of me sitting in a chair occupied by the cats. No, no. This is the cats sitting in the chair, and actively goosing me with their little noggins.

Last summer, I went down to L.A. for an action-packed week for some pre-production work on Rose: the 3-D Puppet Zombie Musical. It’s an independent feature film. In 3-D! It’s written by John Skipp and has one of the weirdest and most compelling scripts I’ve run across in awhile. Allow me to just refer you again to the subtitle of the film: Puppet Zombie Musical. In 3-D!

My role in the production will, if all the pieces come together, to design the sets and puppets.  But… the independent part is where you come in. That’s right, it’s fund-raising time. If you can pitch in, that would be all kinds of awesome. You can do it for a number of different reasons such as:

1. It’s a cool project. (Seriously, I love the script)
2. Cool donor gifts. (Want a puppet? A zombie puppet?)
3. You will help make sure I get a paycheck. (What? Puppeteers gotta eat.)
4. Zombie. Puppet. Musical. In 3-d! (You need more of a reason?)

Check out the video that they’ve put together and then head over to Kickstarter if you can chip in.

On Saturday, Rob and I attended the Duchess of Beaufort’s Midwinter Feast, hosted by the Oregon Regency Society.  You might have noticed that my blogging has been somewhat thin for the past week. That’s because I was busily making an outfit for Rob and retrimming my dress for the event.

Yes.  Rob went in costume. May I just say that my husband makes a dashing Regency gentleman.  He’s always said that his hair is “timelessly messy” which is the perfect look for the period.

We left our camera but the society had a photographer there, so I’ll link  to photos as soon as they are online.  For the moment, since I’ve been threatened with death asked nicely by several people for photos of my dress, I thought I’d talk about the process of dressing for the dinner. Continue reading Trimming my gown for the Midwinter Feast

I guest blogged at Apex today, talking about the genesis of my short story “Tomorrow and Tomorrow.”

Stories come from the strangest places. Way back in 2006, I was working as a puppeteer in Iceland on a television show called Lazytown. As part of a way to deal with the physical stress of the job, we had a massage once a week. It was a beautiful thing.

via Finding Tomorrow and Tomorrow :Apex Book Company.

I’ve often felt that one of the way writers differ from other artists is that we tend to jump into trying to create finished products without working on the individual skills involved in that finished product.

For instance: An artist will practice shading without working on a picture.

A writer very rarely sits down and decides to just practice description, or dialog, or plot, without worrying about trying to create a story at the same time.

To me, it’s always seemed like asking an artist to learn to draw a portrait without first learning to hold a pencil.

In art school, the techniques are broken down into individual components and we practice those so that they become natural. For instance, drawing pencils are graded B – H with 5H being the hardest and lightest. In drawing class, we shaded from dark to light with each of those individually, then did a larger shaded area using all of them, switching when appropriate. The goal was to understand which pencil does what so that we know what to reach for when drawing an object. The goal wasn’t to have perfect physical control, and certainly not for the sake of control, but to have internalized the techniques so thoroughly that we didn’t have to think about the craft and could focus on the art.

I think writers can benefit from the same approach. Continue reading Exercising your story telling techniques

Woot! Escape Pod has accepted Jaiden’s Weaver for their podcast. I love Escape Pod.  It’s my go-to audio fiction source when I’m building puppets so I’m delighted that “Jaiden’s Weaver” is going to appear there.

Originally, this story appeared in Mike Brotherton’s Diamonds in the Sky anthology and you can read the entire story there. Or you can wait and listen to it.

Here’s the teaser.

I was never one of those girls who fell in love with horses. For one thing, on our part of New Oregon they were largely impractical animals. Most of the countryside consisted of forests attached to sheer hills and you wanted to ride something with a little more clinging ability. So from the time I was, well, from the time I can remember I wanted a teddy bear spider more than I wanted to breathe.

The problem is that teddy bear spiders were not cheap, especially not for a pioneer family trying to make a go of it.

Mom and Dad had moved us out of Landington in the first wave of expansion, to take advantage of the homesteading act. Our new place was way out on the eastern side of the Olson mountains where Dad had found this natural level patch about halfway up a forested ridge, so we got sunshine all year round, except for the weeks in spring and autumn when the shadow of our planet’s rings passed over us. Our simple extruded concrete house had nothing going for it except a view of the valley, which faced due south to where the rings were like a giant arch in the sky. Even as a twelve-year-old, angry at being taken away from our livewalls in town to this dead structure, I fell in love with the wild beauty of the trees clinging to the sheer faces of the valley walls.

The last day in Utah was a good deal of fun. It started with breakfast with Eric James Stone, Beth Wodzinski, and Sean Markey. In the afternon, Beth, Sean, and I repaired to the Tayler home lured by promises of homemade scones.

I had never encounted the Utah version of a scone.  This is a deep-fried bread that is astonishing in its yumminess. Astonishing, I tell you.

We were joined by Dan Wells and his family, none of whom are serial killers, and Peter Ahlstrom and his family.  The number of adorable children was beyond counting.  At one point I performed The Broken Bridge for them, but mostly the adults just sat around and talked while consuming astonishingly yummy scones.

Someone made a crack about my travel home, joking about “if” I went home that night. I was assured that I would be safe because I was travelling with a yeti.  Moments after this, my phone rang.

It was my airline.

I started laughing even before I answered it.  The automated voice alerted me that my flight was delayed by an hour. The timing was astonishing. Truly, I could not have gotten away with that in fiction.

The flight wound up being delayed by an hour and a half, but I was upgraded to first class so I think it all balances out.

This was the second day of the Superstars Writers Seminar and I’m really glad I came.  I have to admit that the name makes me giggle a little, even though I recognize the impressive track records of the instructors. I think because I associate superstars with the 80s show Star Search.  I keep having pictures of spandex and sparkles which is so not what this workshop is.

It’s a really hardcore workshop about the business of writing.  Chockfull of helpful advice.  Sure, there are topics that look like things I already know but in every single one, there’s been at least one thing that’s new to me and makes total sense.  Plus there’s getting to meet a bunch of new people.  In other words, it is well-worth being here.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

I spent the day hanging out with Howard and Sandra Tayler, which was a great deal of fun. Knowing they had kids, I tossed the Broken Bridge into my bag and took it to their house.  Not only did I perform the show, two of their children got excited and started doing their own performances on the screen.  I loved it. Super-nice kids.  Plus I got a giant collection of Schlock (eligible for Hugo) Mercenary while there.

Afterwards, Howard and I went to the booksigning, picking up Dan Wells (::cough::  Campbell eligible ::cough::), author of I Am Not A Serial Killer, on the way.   Dan had an ARC of his latest book, I Don’t Want to Kill You for me.  Not that I’ve been anxious or awaiting this or anything, but I did sort of snatch the copy out of his hands. Squeeing fangirl, that I am.

The signing was fun. Oddly, it was nice that I had the puppet show along because there were a couple of small children there with their parents and I wound up doing the show two or three times.  It’s very, very short, but it did get kind of silly.  The staff at Sam Weller’s Bookstore, by the way, are really, really lovely people.

Then a group of us went out for dinner afterwards, which was fun.  It’s so nice to be able to shoot the breeze with other writers.  Such fun.

If you are in the Salt Lake City area come to Sam Wellers Book Store for the Super MASSIVE BOOK SIGNING.  In attendence will be authors Jessica Day George, Tracy Hickman, Dave Farland AKA Dave Wolverton, Kevin J Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Larry Correia, Eric James Stone, Brad Torgersen, Brandon Sanderson, and me.

The signing is from 6-8 pm.  I hope to see some of you there.

Sam Wellers Book Store
254 S Main St (Broadway (300 South))
Salt Lake City, UT