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new blog post: art blog: rogue and dancer

new blog post on https://mizkit.com/art-rogue-dancer/

art blog: rogue and dancer

I did an art zoom last weekend.

I haven’t drawn anything in ages, partly, largely, from decision paralysis, but I had to draw SOMETHING for the zoom, so this is what I did. I feel very nervous and uncomfortable showing people. It’s about as good as I can do without trying digital shading or colouring, which I’m really bad at. I know the leg’s fucked up, but see above. :p

A couple days later, Stephen Blackmoore, who posts these ridiculous horoscope things, posted “Gemini: Today you will be possessed by the Spirit of The Dance and spread the sublime joys of polka across the land” and I misread it as “sublime joys of polka dots” and thought “ok I could draw that” but then I did something wrong and couldn’t draw on my layer anymore so this is as far as I got, and I posted it bc my friend Tade says it’s good for me.

Anyway so then today I was thinking about the upcoming art zoom and I remembered that a long time ago I had this drawing project I wanted to do, one which I still think has value for practicing.

The idea was to do 3 versions of a drawing: 1 freehand, 1 with a lightboard over the reference image, then the freehand again to see if the lightboard tracing, y’know, helped. I did a few, but it was a bother, because at the time, a lightboard was the only viable option for that sort of thing, shy of a projector. Because I’m old. But never mind that.

It just occurred to me, tho, that you can achieve the same ends with layers in drawing apps now tho, which is considerably easier than dealing with lightboards, so now I have to consider that as a possibility, especially if I’m going to be doing this art zoom with any kind of regularity.

I also think I should do more gesture sketchs, probably, if I want to improve, than trying to get it “right” like I was doing last week with the Rogue drawing, but in my defense, I was so decision-paralyzed it’s amazing I drew anything.

So. Um. Anyway. Yeah.

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new blog post: not dead! busy month, tho

new blog post on https://mizkit.com/not-dead-busy-month-tho/

not dead! busy month, tho

Iiiiiii…have been meaning to post, and just not doing it because I’ve been working, and don’t want to distract myself from work. But! I got an extension on the book so I’m going to take a minute to do a short blog.

I went to Eastercon the last weekend of March, and it was WONDERFUL, but I haven’t had enough time to blog about it. Hopefully next week when I’m done with this book, which…

I’m ALMOST done with the 6th Dublin Driver book. There I was, 60K into a 70K book, the end in sight, but…it was Messed Up. Not terribly badly Messed Up, but enough that I was really frustrated with it. I knew it wouldn’t take TOO MUCH to fix, and that I COULD do it in the remaining four days or whatever that I had, but I would be stressed and miserable. So I emailed my editor to ask for a week extension, which I had Zero Doubt she would give me (because it’s not like they drop everything to read the book the moment it lands on their desk), and then I spent the rest of last week…

…falling asleep over the manuscript.

GOD I hate editing, guys. It’s so boring. I find it so difficult to read my own work for edits. I don’t mind reading it for FUN (especially well after the fact), but for edits, when I’m trying to do a close read, looking for problems, my GOD it’s dull. Even if I’m like “Okay! Let’s do this! Lots of energy and mental preparation! It’s all good!” then ten minutes later I’m like “snxxxxxt.”

But I finally managed to get through it, and it really is mostly okay, which I knew. It’s just there was some stuff that needed shoring up and some other stuff that needed paring down, and a number of things that needed me to figure out what the hell I was doing, and I think I’ve done all that now.

So I’ve spent this week going through my notes again and again, gradually shoring up the storyline, figuring out where things could be shoved in, and I tell you what, guys, it always feels REALLY AWKWARDLY SHOVED IN when I’m finding places to add stuff, but then once it’s there I’m like “oh yeah that works fine.” I deleted about 2k from the book in one fell swoop, but have also put that much back into it with new/stronger/more useful scenes, so now that I’ve finally got all the support structure in, I’m actually a leeeeeetle beet ahead of where I was in terms of wordcount. I’m not any farther in terms of reaching the end, except now all the bits I need to make the end actually work are there, so I guess it’s all in how you slice it.

I’m going to try to finish it over the weekend, which will make the second weekend of this month I’ve worked, which is lousy, but I really want to finish so I can, er, you know, write another novella and a book proposal by the end of April.

Totally normal goals, guys. Totally normal.

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| cobble beach by laurenelainedesigns

| contains: ocean waves, distant talking

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reblog if you wear glasses. too many mutuals don't know they have glasses wearers in their midsts

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Omg this is like 800 metaphors rolled into one megaphor

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The last time we were on a long flight, my wife and I invented a game we call "Little Guy."

You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.

She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.

And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."

We're big Twenty Questions to kill time in a waiting room people, but Little Guy is more about the journey than the destination. It's got a different kind of sauce that's nice if "killing time" and "lowering anxiety" need to happen hand in hand.

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hey

hey friend

dont kill yourself tonight ok

you have a really pretty smile and i know its not always easy to manage one but itd be a bummer if we never had the chance to see it ever again

youre really important and you matter a lot so stay safe and try and have a nice sleep

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I'm curious. Reblog this if you know how to cook

I don’t even care if it’s macaroni, ramen or those little bowls you stick in the microwave. Please, I need reassurance that most of the population on tumblr WOULDN’T STARVE TO DEATH if their parents couldn’t fix them food or they couldn’t go out to eat. 

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by far the best part of grocery shopping is the little babies. i was carefully selecting mushrooms when i felt upon me a piercing gaze and looked up to see a very chubby and very red-cheeked baby staring intently at me from a grocery cart with a slightly furrowed brow, hand clutching an apple for dear life. i wiggled a mushroom at her and she gasped and kept staring. i turned back to the mushrooms and heard a shriek. i turned around and the baby stared in anticipation. i wiggled another mushroom and she shrieked again in delight. she looked down at the apple in her hand, considering it for a moment. fair-minded as she was, she decided it would only be right to wiggle produce at me in return, and she held up the apple and shook it with all her might. i think i could live forever now

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On April 8 we celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher, and remember all the lives she destroyed.

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maya angelou saying the funniest thing anyone has ever said about editing, which i can never let myself forget EVER AGAIN [x]

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The old school lack of transparency on tumblr is amazing because you assume the people you follow must all be equivalent to you and then you see someone write “I brought my youngest to college today” and someone else write “my mom wouldn’t let me listen to Ariana Grande when I was a kid” and then your head explodes

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REPOST : Roman stylus 70AD, in comon vanacular translates into “i went into the city and all i bought you was this lousy pen” , link and full translation in the comments [640 x 320]

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This mashup!! 🤣

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new blog post: ICFA: the last two days

new blog post on https://mizkit.com/icfa-the-last-two-days/

ICFA: the last two days

Let’s see. Friday I had a 10:30am thing, which I know because I couldn’t have breakfast with the family. Oh, yes, it turned out to be what Geoffrey Landis said might have been the most fun he’d ever had at an ICFA panel! laughs

It was a panel with myself and Kate JohnsTon, moderated by Novella, and Kate read an incredibly funny piece from the point of view of a genetically engineered modern T-Rex who was very, very horny, followed by two more very funny pieces, after which I read from my Pride & Prejudice pastiche, Magic & Manners, which was not nearly as funny and yet led, ultimately, to what arguably became the theme for the panel, which was…ejaculation. o.o

(See, in Austen, people don’t ‘burst out’ with words when they speak enthusiastically. Sometimes they exclaim, but very often they ejaculate, and given the whole horny T-Rex part of the panel… yes, well, it was very funny and poor Novella was just sort of sitting there with a hand over her face while Kate and I howled with laughter. It was AMAZING.)

Seriously, though, it was a great panel; the audience had good questions, the whole thing was obviously incredibly silly, and we had a truly wonderful time. Kate and I felt like kindred spirits immediately, and just, my god, yeah, it was really fun. I’m sure I could come up with more details (actually, the Magic & Manners stuff led into a pretty good, if brief, conversation about decolonization of fantasy), and I know we made Kate read more of her T-Rex book (which is actually a post-apocalyptic story based in a lot of science, and I’m really looking forward to it), but yeah, overall, it was great.

I think we went straight to lunch after that, where Mame and his wife, Woppa Diallo, who was the other guest scholar but was unable to attend in person, gave plenary speeches that ended with me having an entire LIST of non-fiction books to read; Mame (suffering, as he was, from imposter syndrome) kept saying he hadn’t even realized he WAS a scholar, but my god, the man is incredibly well-read, well-spoken, and insightful. We should all ‘not be scholars’ like he is. He and Woppa both spoke about ‘whimsy’ in African cultures, which was so interesting I may break it out into a short blog post of its own, and just…yeah, it was great.

Friday afternoon all the GoHs had a student caucus thingy that we went to in order to be available to answer questions specifically from students. Mostly there weren’t students in attendence, but the moderator (Andrew, from yesterday’s post) was great, and we ended up having a really good discussion, some great audience questions, and hopefully some insightful stuff was said. (Mary did end up asking me if I’d considered the possibility that I’d been a shaman in a previous incarnation, so, you know, things went a lot of places in that conversation!)

Ellen (Kushner, yes yes I’m definitely name dropping) invited me out to dinner on Friday with herself and Delia, and a couple of other people, including Kate of the T-Rex story, MaryAnne Mohanraj, who ofc I knew OF (we own one of her cookbooks, in fact!) but whom I’d never actually met, and a charming man named Will whose last name I’ve forgotten but whose reading I’d enjoyed earlier in the conference. Ellen apparently has a thing about finding good places to eat that aren’t right on the conference site, and we ended up going out for an Uzbek/Turkish meal that was almost impossibly delicious. We were partway through ordering when it became clear we were going to order half the menu, and the guy taking our order said, more or less “ok but you’ve got to order the to’y osh, it’s the house special,” and upon being reassured that we intended to, we just hadn’t gotten there yet, was satisfied. :D It was a wonderful, funny, delightful evening with absurd amounts of truly delicious food, and I’m extremely grateful for it. wibbly smile

Saaaaaaturday…oh, I hung out with MaryAnne Mohanraj in the morning for a bit, and…at some point? I had another panel? I think? With the other GoHs? And it was–well, for one thing, we were asked to read, which literally none of us expected, but Mame had his award-winning short story on his phone and Mary had a copy of one of her books of poetry with her AND she had a copy of URBAN SHAMAN!!! that she plopped in front of me to sign and, as it turned out, read from. :D And after that it was a Q&A that ranged from use of time in our various pieces (AGAIN, some really INTERESTING STUFF about African perceptions of time in storytelling that could probably use a post of their own) to copaganda, which as I’ve become aware, my stuff is rife with.

I went for a little walk after that and came back into the hotel to sit down and play Pokemon in the lobby, and after a few minutes Mame came by from a walk of his own and sat and we chatted, and then MaryAnne dropped by just as he had to leave, and then just as she was leaving, someone else she knew stopped by, so I was introduced, and as SHE was leaving, someone SHE knew stopped by–it was great, I felt like I was holding court. :D

I met–ah, man, I met so many cool people. I was sitting with the head of the conference’s fairy tale division at dinner one night, and at the banquet reception on Saturday she introduced me to her fairy tale ladies, who included a real genuine fan of mine (the woman who had asked about the copaganda, which was such a good question, honestly), so we had a lovely conversation and then they invited me to be in their annual picture. Obviously I said yes, and my fan, who is short but happened to be standing right next to me, when I said, “Should the shorter people go in front?” said, “I am short but I am not going anywhere. I am never moving from this spot ever in my whole life,” which was pretty cute. laughs She kept saying she was trying REALLY HARD not to completely fall apart, and she didn’t, and she was adorable and sweet and I loved her. :)

The dinner and awards ceremony were lovely–I, as were the other GoHs, was given an honorary award from the BIPOC committee, which made me extremely emotional–and post-dinner we all went out to the pool for an after-party, where I went with the express goal of “I’ll say good night and goodbye and that’s it,” and which took longer than the 90 minutes I’d expected it to (quite a lot longer, actually), but was a wonderful way to end the conference.

I could honestly write more and more and more about it all, but post-con writeups are taking up my “ok I have no brain to write fiction with” time, and I think by tomorrow I’ll be back to Able To Write, so I probably can’t spend the rest of my life waxing lyrical about the conference. :)

Me, Mary & Mame (picture by Mame): We had a great time. :)