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.

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.

Are you a SFWA active or associate member? You have cast your ballot for the Nebula Nomination Period, haven’t you? I mean, today is the last day.

The biggest reason I hear from people who haven’t is that they just haven’t read much this year. I understand that. But here’s the thing, if you read anything that you really liked this year you should put that on your ballot. Maybe it won’t make the final ballot but maybe your nod will be the one vote needed to push it into the running. And if you’re the only one who votes for it? It will make that author’s day just to have the story listed on the tally.

So, participate. Please?

Online Ballot: http://www.sfwa.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=626

You must cast your nomination ballot by tonight, Feburary 15th, 23:59 PST.

To login, you’ll need Your Name, with spaces, as it appears in the SFWA Directory.

If you need your password you may reset it here:
http://www.sfwa.org/forum/ucp.php?mode=sendpassword

If you have any questions or need additional help please let me know. And if you have already participated, thank you. Now please, guilt one other person into doing it too.

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!

I have a 5600 word fantasy story that I’d love to have some readers for.  If you have time to give a read and offer feedback, please drop me a line and ask for the password.

The teaser:

A Piece of Valiant Dust

Harloyd walked through Loveman’s department store, swinging his brass thurible from its chain. A fine dust of fern, stream-smoothed stone, willow bark and all the other little things that made up a chilling spell fell from the tiny holes in the cone and drifted to form patterns of cool in the air.

His dark blue uniform, with its double row of shiny brass buttons and neat brimmed cap, marked him as Loveman’s heating and cooling magicker. As he went, the patrons smiled gratefully at him for keeping the venerable building comfortable. Sure, lots of folks bought ready-made cooling powders for their homes, but the temperature always fluctuated as the dust settled out. Only Loveman’s had heating and cooling men working to keep an even temperature, so folks tended to come in to shop more than at other stores.

It had gotten so Harloyd couldn’t walk to catch the streetcar home from downtown Chattanooga without someone tipping their hat to him and saying, “Evening, Mr. Varnell.” Some days he felt like everybody in town knew him. His wife joked that he should go into politics.

His rounds took him onto the ladies’ floor, where gleaming cases of walnut and glass held the latest in jewelry and cosmetics. His wife, Addie, worked in the evening wear section helping the most notable society ladies find the right dress for whatever event they needed. She was with one of her regulars, young Miss Priest. Harloyd just tipped his head at the ladies and kept walking with his thurible. While it made him proud to see Addie working here, there was always that worry that her powder might wear off while she wasn’t paying attention. Loveman’s didn’t let the colored in. Not that Addie had more than a touch of the paintbrush, but there was no telling what they’d do to her. Him either, since mixed marriages were a illegal in Tennessee. For all that, the day she’d come into his life, looking for a spell to help her pass had been the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Just a reminder, or a head’s up for those who don’t know, the official Campbell site is displaying all the eligible authors that they know about.  The key here is the phrase “that they know about.”

If your first pro-sale has appeared in print in 2008 or 2009, make sure you contact them to get included on the list of Campbell eligible authors.

My dad called me today to tell me that he had spent some time with my grandmother and had taken Scenting the Dark with him. We talked about the three stories he read today and it was interesting because he read drafts of the first and third but I guess never got to see the finals.

One of the things I found interesting was that on “Some Other Day” he said that the first time he read it he focused on the mosquitos and that this time he focused on the love story. The difference? I’m fairly certain I didn’t add a word. But I rearranged them. In the draft Dad read, I started with what is now the second scene in the story. It was really hard to decide to move it because it has one of the best opening lines.

“The summer the mosquitoes died began as the best one in Josie Landon’s childhood.”

I hated losing that opening line, but as my Dad has noticed, it puts all the emphasis on the mosquitoes.  The published opening is “Josie Langdon leaned back from her microscope and rolled her neck to ease the kinks.”

While this opening line isn’t as attention grabbing, it sets the scene, tells you that she’s been at it a while and that she’s some sort of scientist. Two lines later I introduce the boy and this puts the emphasis on the love story by making it the first source of conflict I introduce.  All by flopping the first and second scenes.

This is an example of fixing the ending of a story by changing the beginning and I’d totally forgotten that I’d done that until Dad called today. Pretty cool, huh?

As you know, the Hugo nomination period is open.  I thought I’d post a list of my stories published in 2009.  Just a reminder, I recused myself from SFWA Nebula eligibility this year, so none of these are Nebula eligible.

I’ve bolded my favorites. If the story title has a link, you can read the story online.

Short Story

The Conciousness Problem — Asimov’s, August 2009

At the Edge of Dying — Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

Jaiden’s Weaver – Diamonds in the Sky (February, 2009)

Ginger Stuyvesant and the Case of the Haunted Nursery — Talebones #38

Prayer at Dark River — Innsmouth Free Press

Novelette

First Flight — Tor.com

Body Language — Intergalactic Medicine Show #15