This is terribly exciting. In 2008, I attended a workshop hosted by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Sheila Williams was the guest instrutor. While at the workshop we had to write a story and I wrote one which prompted Dean to say that he fell asleep reading it. Not my most inspiring moment.

Sheila mentioned the opening scene as very vivid and months later asked if I had done anything with it, because she’d liked that scene so much. I had trunked it, in fact. So I pulled it out, tossed what wasn’t working and wrote an entirely different story retaining parts of that scene.

Today, Sheila accepted it for Asimov’s. Woot!

We are having company tomorrow, so I’ve made Pistachio Cupcakes with Raspberries.

I just tried one and am prepared to declare it quite tasty.

Hello allergy season.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you and I have to say I’m not sure I’ve missed you.  In New York, despite all the things that bloomed in the spring, despite the exhaust and grime, you didn’t come around. In Iceland, there weren’t enough flowering things for me to see you.

But in Portland, in Portland you have a special treat for me and I will spend the next two weeks with the constant reminder of your presence. I will have to relearn the skill of keeping my hands away from my face. I will have to remember to pack tissue when I leave the apartment. I will once again sleep with a damp cloth over my eyes.

No, my dear, dear allergy season, I regret to say that I have not missed you.

Yours,

Mary

We just got home from a production of King Lear, in which Sam A. Mowry portrayed a very fine Lear. This has always been one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays  and I actually memorized chunks of it, back in the day.

The way Sam was playing his Lear, made me aware of the number of times Shakespeare sets up a happy ending and then yanks it away. Lear and Cordelia reconcile; she’s got an army with her. All he would have had to do was to let her win the war. Does he? No. Edgar has all the pieces to restore his father and destroy his lying brother. Does he get to? Almost! And then his father dies.

I think that’s why this is such a successful tragedy, not because of the horrible things that keep happening to Lear, but because Shakespeare keeps teasing the audience with hope.  It’s like that moment in a horror film where you think the protagonist has made it safely through the door, only to realize that she’s locked the demon inside with her.

There’s only so far you can beat someone down before they have nothing to lose. Shakespeare was doubly cruel because he kept promising to restore order to his characters but only so he could cut them down again.

Note to self: Horror and tragedy work better when there’s something at stake and the possibility of surviving.

We had dinner guests tonight, Deb Chase and Mick Doherty of Oregon Shadow Theatre. I hadn’t seen them since we moved back into town. I knew that they lived close by but couldn’t quite remember where. It turns out that we are three blocks away. How silly to have not seen them yet.

Dinner menu

Fig and blue cheese ravioli with blanched watercress and olive oil

Green salad with pears, walnuts and a white balsamic vinegrette

Roasted broccoli

Dessert: Pear Ozark pudding, served in ramekins

I do enjoy having dinner guests.

The new/old stove is a little cantankerous and we need to fiddle with the adjustments some.  The oven rocks, but the mix on one of the range’s burners is clearly not right since it gouts flame that would be more at home in the laboratory of a horror film.  The ones that are correctly adjusted are a dream though

Joe Sherry says very nice things about Scenting the Dark and Other Stories over on Adventures in Reading. Here’s an excerpt.

There are only eight stories in this 80 page collection from Mary Robinette Kowal, but there is not a wasted word here. The stories of Scenting the Dark and Other Stories should delight readers as much as they delighted me. With two novels and more short fiction pending, you’ll want to pay attention to Mary Robinette Kowal.

via Adventures in Reading: Scenting the Dark and Other Stories, by Mary Robinette Kowal.

In 2008 I attended Launch Pad and it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had. What is it?

Launch Pad is a free, NASA-funded workshop for established writers held in beautiful high-altitude Laramie, Wyoming. Launch Pad aims to provide a “crash course” for the attendees in modern astronomy science through guest lectures, and observation through the University of Wyoming’s professional telescopes.

I highly, highly, highly recommend this. Applications are open through March 31.  Do not hesitate. Just apply. Now.

via Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop – Improving Science Literacy through Words and Media.

A reminder to myself. Be specific.

When I’m cleaning up my stories, I go through and search for the word “looked” because I frequently use it as shorthand for generic body language.

For example, “The AI looked genuinely unhappy”

Okay… what specific piece of body language does my POV character recognize as looking genuinely unhappy? If I take a moment and picture the scene in my head, I can pick one element and describe that to create a more specific image. For instance, “The droop of the A.I.’s eyes drew a portrait of genuine unhappiness.”

Another example from a different story. “She looked away.”

Uh-huh… what exactly did she look at? “She pressed her face against the mattress and would have counted every fibre in the cotton ticking rather than face him.”

It’s way too easy to let the generic stuff slide because it isn’t actually broken but it also isn’t working as hard as it could.

I feel like I should frame this, the way people do with My First Pair of Shoes or My First Blanket.  My First Amazon Review is for my collection Scenting the Dark and Other Stories. How is the review?

First, let’s discuss short stories a bit. Short fiction is hard for me to review. Simply put, I don’t care too much for it.

Okay, he really does say that, but then! Then he goes on to say a whole bunch of nice things and wraps up with:

High-five, Mary. You made me like short stories again.

Whew.

I have a soft spot for Apex Magazine because Jason Sizemore has been incredibly supportive of me and my writing since the moment we met.  I’ve sold more stories to Apex than to any other magazine, in fact.

So when Jason asked me if I’d be interested in being featured in a single author issue of Apex Online, I said yes without thinking twice. This month, Apex Online features two new stories from me and two stories that Jason sweetly calls “classics.” This makes me giggle.

So if you go over there, what will you get to read?

Novelette: The Bride Replete

When the matriarch announced that she was sending the sixteen members of Pimi’s small-family across the ocean to settle in Repp-Virja, Pimi thought it the end of her life. For though she had seen only seventeen full years, Pimi considered herself ready to fill her crop and begin the social rounds, seeking a mate. Her mother and the matriarch felt otherwise, though how they could expect her to find a mate in a strange, sideways land like the colonies was beyond Pimi’s understanding.

Short story: Beyond the Garden Close

Lena rocked back and forth, feet aching from standing so long, as if the metal floors were harder in the auditorium than anywhere else in the ship. The paper bib she wore rustled as she shifted. The waiting that the high-holy put the prospectives through made Lena nervous. Which was part of the point, of course, and Lena tried not to let her nerves show. There were nine prospectives this quarter, standing in a cluster. Lena knew the other women, but maintained the ship-standard illusion of privacy by ignoring them.

Short story: Scenting the Dark

Lifting the stopper from the vial to his nose, Penn inhaled slowly. Against the neutral backdrop of his ship’s cleanroom, he picked out aromas of quince, elderberry, and bright Martian soil that hinted of blood, with undercurrents of cinnamon and Zeta Epsilon’s fragrantly sweet longgrass. He sighed, blowing the scents out again. The perfume was still out of balance.

Short story:  Horizontal Rain

Maxwell Sanders pressed the phone closer to his ear as if that would somehow bring comprehension. “Did you say trolls?”

While you’re at Apex Online, do check out the other issues because they’ve got some great fiction there.

I got in last night around 11:00 and Rob came out to the airport to greet me. I have missed him terribly. Coming home was so strange because the season turned while I was away, a fact particularly emphasized by spending the last week in snowy Grand Haven. Here cherry trees are in bloom and the apple trees in our courtyard show signs of following suit. There are daffodils by the path up to the apartment.

In the apartment itself, Rob had two beakers of irises waiting for me. These are the flowers that we had at our wedding so very sweet. The cats were indifferent and needy in the way that only cats can pull off. Rob had also baked some of his famous chocolate tart cherry bran muffins. So tasty. And what had he baked them in?

This.

I’m just updating my events and this will have more details later. I’ll be at Readercon this year.

Rob’s parents live in Hawaii, but in Aiea, which is way up on a ridge so I’m not actually worried about their house. And yet…it’s hard not to be fixed on the news.

State officials in Hawaii have activated their emergency response plans to prepare for a possible tsunami caused by the massive earthquake in Chile, an official said Saturday.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning — its highest alert — for Hawaii, where incoming waves topping out at six feet could cause damage along the coastlines across the island chain. A warning was also in effect for Guam, American Samoa and dozens of other Pacific islands.

The first waves were expected to arrive in Hawaii at 11:19 a.m. Saturday (4:19 p.m. EST).

What is amazing is how much warning they have now that the wave is coming.  I just hope that people are paying attention and there aren’t too many stupid people who decide to go to the beach to watch.

via Hawaii under tsunami warning, emergency response plans underway – washingtonpost.com.

I’m sitting in the airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan waiting for my flight home. I’ve been on the road for a month and last night Rob said the sweetest words to me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I’ve been gone longer than this before, but we usually know that I’ll be gone for months and you can prep for that, emotionally. This time, we thought it would be a week and a half. We do manage to talk almost every night, but a month is still a long time.

So the fact that I will see Rob, tonight, makes me a very, very happy girl.

I’m at Brilliance Audio again, recording and had two funny slips of tongue that I thought I’d share. When reading aloud, you have to scan ahead a little to see where the sentence was going in order to know how to inflect it and what word to say next. Sometimes, my brain will grab a word from the next line and move it up.

For instance, today the like was “a member of a lofty family,” but I said, “a family of a lofty member.”

Ahem

The other one was a Spoonerism that I committed not once, but twice, “his naze garrowed.”