So… not that I’m hinting in GIANT LETTERS or anything, but the Hugo ballot deadline is today and I have this story on the ballot…

Votes are due in by Sunday, July 31, 2011, 11:59pm PDT.  That’s, um tonight.

Even if you waited until the last minute, you can at least read the short story nominees. There are only four of them.

• ‘‘Ponies”, Kij Johnson (Tor.com 11/17/10)
• ‘‘For Want of a Nail”, Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s 9/10)
• ‘‘Amaryllis”, Carrie Vaughn (Lightspeed 6/10)
• ‘‘The Things”, Peter Watts (Clarkesworld 1/10)

And the art. It won’t take long to go look at the portfolios of

• Daniel Dos Santos
• Bob Eggleton
• Stephan Martiniere
• John Picacio
• Shaun Tan

I’m back from Seattle, where I had a lovely time visiting with writerly type folks.  I took the train back. It was half an hour late pulling into Seattle, but made up time so we were only about fifteen minutes late arriving in Portland.

Now… let me explain why I take the train instead of driving to Seattle, or indeed, anywhere that I can take the train.

1. It’s a beautiful ride. This is true almost anywhere trains run. They tend to go through countryside that you can’t see from any other angle without hiking.
2. I am not driving, which means I can write. Finished a chapter on the way up. Halfway through one on the way down.
3. Better use of resources. It is way more efficient to use mass transit than to travel solo.
4. Really interesting conversations. And today’s is a case in point. The gentleman that was sitting next to me was on his way to Portland for a friend’s birthday.  We talked about my WIP, history, Jack Johnson, travel, AND he mentioned his daughter’s website.

Which turns out to be really, really cool. Those of you in Seattle, who aren’t already reading buschick.com allow me to encourage you to. I’ve just spent the past half hour trawling through it and reading about her car-free lifestyle. During the course of which I found this very cool video on an open-source “transit appliance” that the City of Portland uses.

The World’s First “Transit Appliance” from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

And that long string of things is why I like to ride the train. But in particular, it’s because of the people that I get to meet.  Today was a lovely example of that.

After a relaxing morning, I’m heading back from Seattle. Based on a picture of this pet, which author was I visiting?

I came up on the train today to be a Mystery Muse at Clarion West.  I didn’t want to mention that I was headed toward Seattle just in case the students — who should be writing — noticed that I was coming and guessed.

Nisi Shawl and I chatted with them for a little over an hour about some aspects of the business side of writing. Things like how to get on panels, how to start and end conversations, headshots, bios, and freebies.  Charles Stross, who was their sixth instructor, joined us at the end with some additional excellent advice.

Some of these, I’ll expand and get written up into Debut Author Lessons.  Meanwhile, may I just say to the 2011 Clarion Class that it was a pleasure meeting you. Congratulations on surviving!

I just posted the draft of Chapter 26 of The Transfigured Lady, for those of you reading along.

I’m in the process of writing Chapter 29 right now. In my outline, there are 31 chapters, but I’m looking at where I am and where I need to get and suspect that I will wind up inserting at least one more chapter. There needs to be an additional scene, definitely, but it might have to unpack to a full chapter.

Even though I’m an outliner, and get most of the structure problems solved through the outline, it’s still only a rough guide. I make discoveries and expand and contract parts of it in the same way I do when I’m writing short form.

For me, it’s a lot like sculpting.  I start with a frame and then build up from there.  I don’t start refining things until I have the whole structure roughed in and then I can start smoothing things out. But then, I tend to work in clay where one can be  both an additive and a subtractive sculptor.  I imagine my lens would be different if I worked in marble.

While I was at the Nebulas, Jean Marie Ward interviewed me about fiction, puppetry and Regency costumes.

Today I taught my first class via Google Hangouts and thought I’d share what I learned.

This is a workshop that I teach on reading aloud and I’ve done it often enough that I felt like it was a good test case for the hangouts since I know what “normal” is for it.

Registration — To begin, I posted that I would be hosting the workshop on [x] date at [x] time in [x] timezone. To register, I just asked people to post in the comments and I would take the first nine people. G+ hangouts can only handle ten people, so you can only have nine students. Go ahead and let people do a waiting list in case someone needs to drop out before the class.

Confirm registration – Post in the comments a tagged list to confirm is going to be in the class. I didn’t do this and should have.

Allow extra time – If the class is scheduled to start at 5pm, open it fifteen minutes early because it will take at least that long for everyone to get in.

Highlight the teacher – Since Google plus automatically flips to the person speaking, the first thing I explained to the students was how to click on one of the miniature pictures to keep that person focused in the large window. To release focus from the, you click them again.

People get dropped – Internet connections are wonky and folks will be kicked out. Don’t let that throw you. If you can do a brief recap, that’s great but don’t worry about pausing until they get back. They may have had a power failure for all you know. DO keep an eye on the comments for the hangout to see if they are having trouble. Along those lines, tell the students that if you get dropped to invite you back to the lesson, otherwise you might have trouble getting back in.

Raise your hand – Just like in the real world, raising your hand works to get the teachers attention BUT what works even better is to move your hand toward the camera so it is larger.

In the real world, putting your hand in the air makes you stand out from a sea of heads. With little tiny pictures, moving your hand closer to the camera changes your image enough that it makes it easier to spot who has their hand “up.” The trick is to not cover your face. Continue reading Teaching via Google+

Boy, it’s amazing how much faster things go when I finally cut the subplot that wasn’t working.  I’d really been bogging down and having trouble figuring out what the story was stalling on.  Thanks to my intrepid alpha readers* I spotted the problem, excised it and things seem to be clipping along.

Although I’m expecting to slow down again when I get into the last two chapters, just because it’s the end.

Meanwhile, here is Chapter 25 of The Transfigured Lady draft for those of you reading along.

Today’s research was into cussing again. Words that don’t mean what they used to: “widdle.”

*I can’t call them beta readers because the draft is so raw. They are lucky if I remember to spell check.

I know! It was a two chapter day, what can I tell you. Actually, one of the chapters  took crazy amounts of time to get where I wanted it but then today, I wrapped it and another chapter, so whee! You get both Chapter 23 and Chapter 24.

At Readercon, I read Chapter one and told folks that if they wanted to read the rest of the draft they could.  There are some ground rules though. Just read the introductory post and it will tell you how to get the password and read along.

Here’s where to find me at Readercon today. Assuming my flight isn’t further delayed.

8:00 PM F    Mastering the Puppets. Erik Amundsen, Gwendolyn Clare, John Crowley, Mary Robinette Kowal (leader), Barry N. Malzberg.Catherynne M. Valente uses the phrase “touching the puppets” as critical shorthand for protagonists–and, by extension, stories–interacting with fantastical elements rather than merely coexisting with them. Copious puppet-touching creates an inherently speculative story (e.g. City of Saints and Madmen), but plenty of stories with speculative settings succeed despite leaving the puppets relatively untouched (e.g. Star Wars, in which the droids could be people and the lightsabers could be swords without changing the story at all). What makes those stories work for speculative fiction audiences? What are the advantages and disadvantages to touching the puppets, and what drives an author to go one way or the other?

Check out my full schedule.

I had a productive day in D.C. yesterday working on next year’s 47th Annual Nebula Awards with Peggy Rae Sapienza. The Awards weekend should be a good deal of fun.

I’m staying at their home, which is lovely, and it makes me oddly homesick. I grew up in North Carolina in a neighborhood of the same age as this one. While the house has a very different floor plan, the views out the window are strikingly similar.  I also hadn’t realized how much I missed the sounds. Cicadas and whip-poor-wills and the wind in the trees.  There are cardinals here, which we don’t have on the west coast.

Today I’m heading up to the Boston area for Readercon. In theory.

My flight has already been cancelled and my new flight is delayed by two hours. I’ve gone from an 8:30am departure to a 1:15pm departure.