I know a lot of people refuse to admit their age, which has always struck me as a little silly since surviving another year is a good thing. Of course, the fact that Grandma is 105 and still sharp does tend to skew my perception of what “old” means.

You know, I’m still a decade away from middle age given my family.

All in all, 40 was a really fantastic year on the fiction front. Sold 2 novels, 10 short stories, made the Hugo ballot, and my 1st short story collection came out. I’ve been doing less puppetry over the past year, which gives me an identity crisis but nothing world-shaking.

In personal life, Rob and I moved back to Portland and it’s a lifestyle that suits us better than NYC. I miss my friends back there and, strangely, the subway, but I like getting enough sleep.

I look forward to seeing what 41 brings. It’s starting off well. Mom and Dad sang to me first thing this morning and I get to spend the evening with Grandma.

I spent the day at Grandma’s for her 105th birthday party. It was a lot of fun seeing all the relatives and catching up with folks. Grandma was in good spirits and excited to see everyone. Here she is with her birthday cake.

As we were getting ready to go, Mom was getting out of her chair, which is a little slow since she’s got a brace on her leg. Grandma looks at the effort it’s taking and with just a hint of a smile says, “Do you need to borrow my walker?”

I love my Grandma.

I had a completely stress-free travel day and arrived in Chattanooga this afternoon. Mom is in really good shape and it is quite clear that the hard part of her healing process will be convincing her that it is okay to sit down and relax.

Here’s a simple Meme…answer the following questions:

1. What Book Are You Reading Now?
2. Why did you choose it?
3. What’s the best thing about it?
4. What’s the worst thing about it?

Here are my answers…

1. Storm Front: Dresden Files #1 by Jim Butcher
2. I’d heard good things and he’s also represented by my agent.
3. The character, Harry Dresden, tells the book in first person. He’s a cynical, damaged man with a sense of humor and gallantry that makes him charming.
4. The magic system feels like it totally makes sense, except for the pseudo-Latin. I don’t understand why it’s that, although Harry Dresden does make a crack about the fact that it’s pseudo-Latin so he’s self-aware of it.

(via SF Signal)

I’m heading out of Grand Haven today, driving to Grand Rapids and then catching flights to Chicago, Charlotte and Chattanooga.  See you later.

Grandma turned 105 today and I’ll actually be in Chattanooga in time for her birthday party on Sunday.  She is a remarkable woman and the inspiration for my novelette First Flight.

I had been on a panel about research we were talking about the importance of primary sources.  One of the panelists said, “Of course, you can’t get a primary source if you want to talk about the Spanish Flu epidemic.”

It suddenly occurred to me that I could, because Grandma was born in 1905. It started me thinking about all the things she had seen in her life. In the story, the main character says:

I’ve lived through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Collapse. I lived through race riots, saw us put men on the moon, the Spanish Flu, AIDS, the Titanic, Suffrage and the Internet. I’ve raised five children and buried two, got twenty-three grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren with more on the way.

I’m not making any of that up (although I am losing track of the number of cousins I have).  I mean, the things she’s seen and the way the world has changed in her lifetime is staggering.  She’s an amazing woman, still sharp and interested in everything. I can’t introduce you to her for real, but the story comes pretty close.

The last couple of days have been really good ones. I’ve been recording Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue, which I’m having a great time doing.  I really like October Daye, the main character, and since the book is first person it’s fun to “be” her for a couple of days.

Yesterday evening, I went out with M– one of the fine folks at Brilliance, who also turns out to be a writer. She and I hung out a Jumpin Java and wrote for a couple of hours. It was a very nice break from the routine.

After work today, I went out to dinner with J– at Kirby’s and it was so nice to just hang out and shoot the breeze. It helps with the whole mental fatigue that comes from reading for hours.

It is surprisingly tiring. I mean, on the face of it, all I’m doing is sitting in a chair and talking, but I have to be word perfect and that requires a weird sort of concentration. I’ll do a post at some point about what that focus is like.

For the moment, I’m heading to bed. We’ll wrap up the book tomorrow.

I’ve seen some speculation floating around about the Macmillan/Amazon thing that the Amazon response on the Kindle forum was not official.  Apparently… it was.

See, this weekend I sent this message to customer service.

I am deeply dismayed by Amazon’s removal of Macmillan books from their catalog. Since this covers a significant number of books I read as well as books I’ve written, I can’t see the need to maintain a relationship with Amazon.com anymore.

How do I delete my associate account??

Today, I got response and I thought you’d be interested in the way it opens.

Hello,

Thanks for sending us your comments. We will e-mail you when these titles are available again, which we hope will be soon. For more information regarding Macmillan books, please see the latest update posted here:

http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/?cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx2MEGQWTNGIMHV

However, if you still would like us to close your Amazon.com Associates account…

So apparently, the key word in the original response was the word “ultimately” as in, “at the end” but not now.

Last Friday, my mom took a tumble down the stairs. I’d mentioned this in a couple of private forums, but with Mom’s okay am actually blogging about it. She’s going to be fine and it’s not the sort of fall that require surgery, but she’s got a cast on that’s keeping her pretty immobile.

I’m flying to Chattanooga on Saturday to help my folks out for a couple of weeks. I am, I think, going to try to teach my dad to cook.

I know.

But he’s clever and it’s just like mixing emulsion for silk screening, but not poisonous. Usually. We haven’t decided how long I’m going to stay yet, but I wanted to keep you up to date on which time zone I’m in.

I just had an email from David Hartwell, requesting permission to reprint “The Consciousness Problem” in The Years Best Science Fiction #15, to be published in the spring as a mass market paperback original by Harper Eos.

Naturally, I said yes.

And then jumped up and down in the hotel room for a bit wishing I had someone to squee with.

Remember how excited I was when Shades of Milk and Honey became available for pre-order on Amazon.com? It no longer is.

Why can’t you pre-order my book on Amazon.com?

Because on Friday, amazon.com stopped carrying all the Macmillan books. My publisher, Tor is an imprint of Macmillan. You can still buy some through third parties on Amazon.com, but no new books, which means you won’t be able to buy Shades of Milk and Honey there.

How did this happen?

According to Macmillan CEO John Sargent:

This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.

Basically, Macmillan wanted to be able to control their pricing of e-books and offer them in a dynamic price range from $14.99 to $5.99. Amazon wants to cap e-book prices at $9.99.

Now, Amazon is perfectly within their rights as a company to decide what they will and won’t stock.

I also have the right to decide where I send my website traffic, so I’m swapping out all the links to books to point at Powell’s Books, which is after all, my local independent book store. Meanwhile, I also changed my author bio on amazon.com to explain why you can’t buy my book there.

For fuller analysis of the situation, I recommend the following links:

Tobias’s Buckell’s “Why My Books Are No Longer Available on Amazon.com”

Charlie Stross’ “Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight”

Edited to add: You can pre-order Shades of Milk and Honey from Borders!

Hey! My latest column is up at AMC and I take a look at the “elderly” in fantasy film.

My sense of what it means to be elderly is wildly skewed since my grandmother will be 105 next week, is sharp as a tack and still lives on her own. Sadly, fantasy has a narrower view of the elderly, and they get short shrift when it comes to adventuring. Fantasy ageism posits that old people have either had their turn, or exist to support the youth who are really getting things done. Thus, if you have gray hair in a fantasy flick, you probably fall into one of three camps.

Read Call the AARP! Middle Earth’s Ageism Needs an Intervention – SciFi Scanner – AMC.

One of the reasons I was cast to do the novel I’m reading right now is because I grew up in North Carolina. Of course, the story is set in South Carolina so I have the wrong accent.

Yes. Yes, there is more than one Southern accent.

To complicate matters, my parents are from East Tennessee which is entirely different from either of the  Carolinas AND I was surrounded by folks transplanted to the Research Triangle Park so while I can sound authentically Southern, it’s a weird hybrid. To someone from South Carolina it won’t sound fake, but it’ll sound like I’m from some other part of the South. Because I am.

I also had little to no accent growing up which we blame on two things, the abundance of transplants in Raleigh and a speech impediment when I was little.

See a sizable part of southern accents is the dropped R. I couldn’t pronounce the letter at all and had it trained into me when I was little. But there are things that betray my regional origin. Words that, because I don’t have an accent, sound like I’m just mispronouncing them.

Two of them, I learned when I was reading A Local Habitation. I’ve said “unfortunately” and “definitely” wrong my entire life.  Since I’m using a southern accent for this other book, I called home to find out how my folks pronounced those two words.

The same way I do, which means it is a regional variation.

I’ve always said “unfortunantly” and “definently.”  Which explains why I’ve never been able to spell either word… It also means that I should switch pronunciations depending on if I’m reading the narrator or a character. That should be fun.

Accents… they fascinate me.

I’ll be in Grand Rapids Haven until February 6th, recording more audio books for Brilliance Audio.  I’m narrating Home in Carolina (Sweet Magnolias) by Sherryl Woods and Rosemary and Rue: An October Daye Novel by Seanan McGuire.

Edited to add: Um. I’m actually in Grand Haven. I flew into Grand Rapids.

I meant to post this a week ago, but it remains funny so nothing is lost. If you do not already follow Dr. Eldritch, you really should.  However, this particular issue might be my favorite. For obvious reasons.  Here’s the start of this storyline, but you should read the whole thing.

I know exactly how Mr. Puppeteer feels. In fact, there are parts of this conversation that could be a direct transcription of my life.