I’m home for my Dad’s 70th birthday, which was supposed to be a surprise, but Grandma leaked it. Although, as it turns out, Dad was expecting me to come home anyway, so when Grandma asked what time my flight was getting in, he thought that it was just something he’d forgotten.

But you’re surprised. Aren’t you?

I fell asleep before the plane even left the ground and slept most of the way home. I woke up about half an hour before we landed and amused myself by reading Zoe’s Tale. Yes, I know that makes some of you jealous and it should, because it’s a darn good book.

Since my flight had been delayed by about two hours, it was about 1:30 when we got in. I opted for a cab instead of taking the bus. I picked up a lot of books while I was gone¹ and a plaque.

Despite having food poisoning, Rob had managed to get flowers for me and had them waiting on the dining room table with a note. Made me all weepy.

Today, I had planned on working on the springer spaniel, but didn’t wake up until ten o’clock and then took a nap later today. I had trouble sleeping the entire time I was at altitude and I think my body really grooved on having enough oxygen at night.

Anyway, I’ll be diving in to building the dog this week and will hopefully have some process posts for you.

1. Mainspring, Ragamuffin, The Opposite of Life, Children of Amarid, Heaven’s Bones, plus a bunch of astronomy books [↩]

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 [↩]

• Waiting for the train at South Station and they want $7 for an hour of internet. Insulting. #
• What is rabbit tobacco? #
• @neutronjockey thank you! I’m on the train with a sporadic wi-fi signal. #

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.

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.

Alas. We could not fit all of the gear on the bike and leave room for me. I will be in town this weekend after all. Rob headed off safely.

Rob and I are embarking on a four-hour motorcycle trip. I’ve got my cellphone, but coverage is spotty.
I will be without internet access until Monday. So, while I’m gone, here’s a question for you.

If you could have your ideal retreat, what would it include?

Me? Clean, cool, quiet. Wi-fi, plenty of outlets, good food and a massage therapist.

I made it home with no problems and no chance encounters with editors in transit. I would worry that my streak was broken, except I spent a week of this trip at the Codex Writers Workshop and Retreat with Ellen Datlow. Surely that maxed out my quota for the month.

I will do a full post, with photos of the retreat. It was an amazing experience and went surprisingly smoothly.

At the moment though, I’m going to pet the kitties and spend some time cuddling with my husband. The cats are getting first dibs simply because Rob is out at the moment.

Oh, and did I mention that there’s a moose head in my hallway?

After two fun-filled weeks of writer’s retreat and a medical emergency, I’m heading from one home back to the other. I’ll see Rob tonight and get to spend two days with him, before we begin a month of out of town trips, each of which has us poised to arrive back in NYC on the day that the other one departs.

See you in transit

• 19:33 In the Charlotte airport on the way to Chattanooga. The flight was easy and I got the Giant Battle Scene written. One chapter left. #
• 19:41 Mental note: Next time, when packing lunch for the plane, don’t forget to pack a napkin as well. I have Wasabi Mayo on my face. #
• 20:46 And now the Happy Reunion scene has happened. Yay! #
• 22:07 Have arrived in Chattanooga. Mm. Humidity. #

The flight from La Guardia was completely without incident. We sat on the runway for a while, but I just read one of the stories I’m supposed to critique for the workshop.

What?

Would you really have finished them all before you got there? I didn’t think so.

Plus! I finished the Giant Battle scene in the novel, which means that I have one chapter left. I’m only coming on line long enough to let you know that I’m not dead.

Nancy Fulda has an excellent post about her theory on Why Modern Readers are Less Tolerant of Description, which rings totally true to me.

One hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, the average reader did not travel widely and did not have access to full-color photographs or television. They had never seen pyramids, or elephants, or tropical rain forests. Many people had also never seen a prairie, a pine forest, a stretch of English farmland, or an industrial city. This means that the reader’s repetoire of pre-conceived images was not as vast as the modern reader’s.

I think much of her post is also true for dialects in fiction. Once upon a time, not only was it possible for someone to have never heard a German accent, but it was also likely that they would be called upon to read that passage aloud. So writing dialects phonetically helped the reader. Fashions and readers’ expectations change.