The Steampunk Panel that I was on with Holly Black, Liz Gorinsky and Sarah Micklem is now available for your listening pleasure at the Steampunk Workshop.

io9 covered our panel on steampunk design.

One of the most interesting panels at this year’s Readercon was an exploration of the steampunk design movement, as it emerged into the mainstream with May’s New York Times Style article. Writer/puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal, YA fantasy novelist Holly Black, Tor editor Liz Gorinsky, and speculative fiction writer Sarah Micklem gathered to show off their steampunk creations, discuss steampunk’s literary origins, share their favorite steampunk websites … and, of course, to design a Gibson chair for the fannish masses.

I told someone that I had been tempted to take an easel and pad and draw the chair as we designed it, using a Morris Chair¹ as the base. Ha! Like I’d have been able to do that and participate in the discussion at the same time.

But… I did do it this morning over breakfast, after a commenter in the thread at io9 suggested that such a thing might be made if only there were a design.

1. The title of the panel relates to Gibson Girls, William Gibson and the Morris Chair [↩]

I spent the train trip alternating between writing a new short story and reading Ekaterina Sedia’s Alchemy of Stone. I say “alternated” by which I mean that I took a break from writing the story, read half of Alchemy and then we were in NYC.

The apartment is empty without Rob, again, but he left me a note¹ and dinner in the fridge.  I caught up on SFWA stuff over cold sesame noodles and now I’m headed off to bed.

1. No. That’s private [↩]

Saturday I went to fewer panels and spent more time hanging out with friends.

The morning started with the Codex breakfast, which featured a completely different group of Codexians than we had at the retreat. It was good to see Elaine Isaak, Doug Cohen, Joy Marchand,¹ Cat Rambo, David Walton, Erin Underwood and Will McIntosh, who brought his lovely wife. We also had the special guests Kris Dikeman and Justine Graykin² joining us. It’s fun to catch up with writers who I know online but only get to see at cons.

After that, I headed for a panel, walked into the room which was FREEZING and decided to go get a sweater and, um, took a nap instead of returning.

Had lunch with Amy Tibbets, John Joseph Adams, Chris Cevasco, Doug Cohen and then two people whose names I should remember in full because I really liked both of them. Amy Eastment, the mask making engineer, and John the horror writer. ³

I listened to Ekaterina Sedia talk about how she wrote Alchemy of Stone. The book sounded fascinating so I picked up a copy and the first chapter is great. I’m looking forward to continuing the book on the train trip home. The main character is a mechanical girl! Sweet.

I also got to spend a lot of time hanging out with David Anthony Durham,⁴ who is one of my new favorite people. On Friday he hosted an interesting discussion about crossing over into SF. The gist of which is that there’s not that much difference between writing a historic novel and a fantasy novel, in that you are still having to let the reader know about customs and lands with which they are unfamiliar. Still have to create compelling characters and dynamic plots. The difference comes in how it’s marketed.

Let’s see… Sunday I went out for coffee with Mary Hobbson and Genevieve Valentine then headed off to the panel on the Aesthetics of Online Magazines. They spent way too much time talking about the market forces of online magazines. Granted, that informs the aesthetic, but I wanted to hear more about the aesthetics of content and form.

My panel on podcasting was similar, I think. We covered some interesting topics, but mostly it devolved into a “please use your microphone responsibly”⁵ with some brief flourishes of “this is where podcasting can go.” Liz Gorinsky had some good things to say about how other fields handle podcasting, but we kept tangenting away from those points so I’ll have to find her later and see what she had to say that we skipped.

On the whole it was a grand time. Highlights include: sushi with David Anthony Durham, drinks with Jenn Jackson and Michael Curry,⁶ the Codex breakfast, reading with my Tabula Rasa group — who had rocking stories that I’d never heard, and Friday’s steampunk panel.

Tomorrow, I leave all this behind and build that springer spaniel.

1. Did not get enough time with Joy [↩]
2. who was in Shimmer’s Pirate issue [↩]
3. I should start taking notes, because I am such crap with names. [↩]
4. Campbell nominee and author of Acacia [↩]
5. I am guilty of causing one of those tangents [↩]
6. not the award-winning puppeteer [↩]

Well the kaffeeklatsch went well. I was with Scott Edelman, who was delightful. We had a nice group of people visiting with us. Whose names I remembered earlier, but my brain is a sieve now.

The Tabula Rasa reading also went well. I only stumbled once, ironically not in one of the place where I rewrote as I was reading.

… I just realized that I’m only going to say that things were good because I’m too sleepy to offer critical commentary.

I somehow wound up on the nursery train on the way up. There were fifteen children, though I didn’t realize this until enduring most of the trip with occasional outbursts. I suspect that on the whole each child was well-behaved and only cried once but the cumulative effect was of a constant stream of cries. They seemed to know when I was about to drop off into slumber and target their cry then.

This is the third time I’ve come to Readercon sleep-deprived and I’m coming to think that it must just be the way the con is supposed to be for me.

I’m heading out to catch the train.

On today’s schedule:
Friday 12:00 Noon
Vinyard: Kaffeeklatsch

Friday 1:00 PM
VT: Tabula Rasa Group Reading

Friday 5:00 PM
ME/ CT: Steampunk and Beyond: What Would a “Gibson Chair” Look Like?

See you all shortly.

We spent the last two hours or so catching up and hearing the stories of the film shoot. He’s taking a nap now and I’m going to finish the last of my packing. Heading up bright and early to Readercon tomorrow to be there for my kaffeeklatsch at noon.

I’m still up and, thinking about how often and easily I stay up this late, I’ve decided to take the 3:15 a.m. train to Readercon on Friday.  I miss Rob (just in case you couldn’t tell from the schmaltzy posts this week) and would rather be tired during the con than miss seeing him by an hour.

This plan may change if he calls me in the morning and says that they are extending the shoot.  Which, given the French Farce of our travel plans, seems likely.

I talked to Rob very briefly tonight.  The area he’s in gets spotty cellphone coverage, at best, so I’ve had one text message from him, but otherwise it’s been radio silence.  He found a place tonight where, if he didn’t turn his head, I could hear him.  le sigh. I miss him.

Which is absurd, when you think about it. I mean, I worked in Iceland for six months without him.  For the first three years of our marriage we spent about half of it apart due to our varying schedules. Being separated is not a new thing.

But, it’s the first time I’ve been alone in the apartment without him and all the near misses of our schedule for the next month are comic.

We just had the realization that even if I take the last train from NYC to Boston, it will still depart before he arrives back from the film shoot.  So now I’m trying to decide if I want to take an early train on Friday or just give in and go up Thursday without seeing Rob.  I say again, le sigh.

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Friday 12:00 Noon
Vinyard: Kaffeeklatsch
Mary Robinette Kowal and Barry B. Longyear
This is my first kaffeeklatsch. Here’s your chance to ask me questions about writing, puppets, SFWA, Iceland… Come chat with me!

Friday 1:00 PM
VT: Tabula Rasa Group Reading
Readings by members of the New York-based Tabula Rasa writer’s group, including Saladin Ahmed, Christopher M. Cevasco, Barbara Krasnoff, and me. I’ll be reading “The Deacon of Dark River” a retelling of an Icelandic ghost story.

Friday 5:00 PM
ME/ CT: Steampunk and Beyond: What Would a “Gibson Chair” Look Like?
Holly Black, Paul Di Filippo, Liz Gorinsky, Mary Robinette Kowal (L) , Sarah Micklem

Steampunk, originally just an sf subgenre, is now also a burgeoning underground design movement. There’s precedent for this: modernism was not only a literary movement, but had artistic, musical, architectural, and design wings as well. Is the steampunk design movement an essentially fluky outgrowth of our fascination with all things retro? Or could other f&sf subgenres sprout their own design branches as well? Could the creation of actual, useful, physical objects lead to better-imagined literary art? How close is the relationship between the visually striking artifacts of steampunk and the literature that spawned them, anyway?

Sunday 12:00 Noon
RI: Podcasts of Mars.
Jim Freund (L), Liz Gorinsky, James Patrick Kelly, Mary Robinette Kowal, Cat Rambo

Podcasts like Escape Pod and Free Reads from James Patrick Kelly are presenting audio discussions, short stories, and even entire books in a free portable format. We’ll take a critical survey of what’s out there and discuss the future of this new medium. Is it possible to model the podcast on the science fiction convention, which also includes discussions and readings? Could new technological approaches allow the podcast to go places that earthbound discussions can’t?

I’m only home for fifteen days this month. Yesterday was the only full day that Rob and I will have together until August 11th. He’s leaving to go to Canaan for a film shoot today and returns the 17th, the day that I leave for Readercon. We might overlap that day, but likely not.

I return from Readercon on the 20th, which is the day Rob leaves to go to the IPNC. We won’t overlap that day.

He returns from IPNC on the 30th, which is the day I leave for Launchpad. We might be able to see each other at the airport. I’m not kidding.

Launchpad and Worldcon are back to back and I return on August 11th.

All of which is leading me to think that I should go up to Canaan with Rob today and spend the night. BUT, I have twelve days left this month in which to build a realistic wounded dog puppet¹ On the other hand, I haven’t received the petty cash to purchase supplies yet and if I don’t do that today, then it will be Monday before I can work. Ten days to build a dog. Doable, but only just.

1. This is a side effect of having a dead dog in one’s portfolio [↩]

Since I have all of these new folks stopping by to look at the typewriter mod, maybe one of you will have an idea of how to do the other nifty thing I want. I want a USB carriage return. You know? I mean, how perfect would that be to be able to plug that in for those occasions when I need a hard return.

On the whole, I must say that having this at Readercon is very strange. I had it out today because I needed to print out the story for my reading, and people stopped with a double-take, pointing, because they had seen it on BoingBoing. (For my regular readers, be patient, the surge in traffic will die down shortly.)

I’m heading up to Readercon for the weekend and will be taking the Kowal Portable Typewriter and Adding Machine with me. I’m already getting double-takes from passersby as I sit at the coffee shop, so I think it is a success. That, plus the sudden surge in website traffic…

That’s right, we don’t yet have internet at the apartment. We get it next Friday, you know, while I’m away at Readercon. Until then, postings will be somewhat sporadic I’m afraid.

We spent yesterday cleaning and unpacking. The bedroom is assembled and has no boxes. Yay! Rob has disassembled the stove and is deep cleaning it. It’s a nice old Welbilt, which has thirty plus years of grease buildup on it. We shudder.

The living room is starting to emerge from the chaos of boxes, but it will take awhile.

I have to give a huuuuuuge thank you to Emily, Jodi and my brother, Steve, for their help moving us in.

Here are some photos from moving day.

Arrival in NYC

Sometime in the last week it started getting dark at night again. Last night I slept without an eye cozy for the first time (excluding my trip to Boston) for months. I still haven’t started seeing stars again, but seeing dark outside our windows keeps surprising me.