Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Ten years ago this summer.

Ten years.

TEN YEARS.

I attended the 2004 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop at Michigan State University in East Lansing MI. It was the most amazing six weeks, the hardest six weeks if work I've ever done, incredibly hot and formed bonds with other writers that mostly have survived to this day.


Back Row: Dr. Phil (Hmm, must be Canada Day, 1 July 2004), John Schoffstall MD, Lister Matheson (Director), Peter Burtis, Arnn Hixon, Charles Schoenfeld, Author Andy Duncan (Week 4 Instructor), Al Bogdan.

Middle Row: Tenea D. Johnson, Rebecca K. Rowe, Nikki Kimberling, Boris Layupan, Brynna Ramin, Grace Dugan, Marjorie M. Liu, Njihia Mbitira, Sarah Gibbons (Assistant to the Director & Mistress of the Copy Machine Without Which There'd Be No Critiques).

Front Row: Gordon Van Gelder (Editor, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction), Trent Hergenrader, Owner of Archives Book Store, Mary Sheridan (V.I.P.), Amelia Beamer, Andy Wolverton, Eric Joel Bresin.

I have been wondering how to commemorate this momentous tenth anniversary and I was thinking of something along the lines of Where Are They Now? But I wasn't sure when or where to start. As usual, though, the Internet muse provides...

This is the FIRST in a series about my 2004 Clarion classmates.

-----

Njihia Mbitira was a writer from Kenya. He wrote smooth, achingly beautiful prose unlike anyone there. I recall reading stories I did not understand, yet enjoyed the flow of words.

Only every now and does Facebook give me a word from him. I haven't known what he's been working on since graduate school and Clarion. But he has a piece in The Revelator -- Dreams of Order, Visions of Chaos: An SF Childhood in Kenya. I highly recommend this essay, and even wish the longer paragraphs alluded to were included.

Those of us who read and write SF/F/H were all introduced to it one way or another. The title of this post comes from a line in Njihia's piece that I think was true for most of us. The books we sought were sequestered in the back. It made me flash to dozens of bookstores -- entering and making a beeline for the back, often with a large blue camera bag slung over my shoulder and partly on my back, trying not to knock into the displays and bookshelves as I made my way to the good stuff.

But much of the essay is a window into a very different world, yet one held in common by reading. I write of people on alien worlds and on great interstellar journeys, who are both in extraordinary situations, yet are still people nonetheless. Njihia's piece resonates with me. It's like watching Japanese anime and gaining a peek into the world of the Japanese schoolroom, very different from my experience.

Way to go, good sir.

Dr. Phil

Al Bogdan

Al and I keep doing dueling photographs at various places. As we sat in the corridor outside the ConSuite -- I was heading back to the room and the corridor, ConSuite and bank of three elevators all form a sort of chokepoint in the Doubletree -- I squeezed off a couple of shots. Though Vibration Reduction has greatly increased the odds of me getting pictures in all these low-light, available-light situations, autofocus efficiency is low and besides, with slow lenses and dim light you can't always keep track of whether you've got a nice facial expression.

Al was griping about the latter. Something about it being too easy to turn such multiple shots into animation. So I assured him, that if that was the case, I'd create an animated GIF for him. And the rest of the world.


Al Animated -- just because I can...
©2013 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

But here's a little reunion of the 2004 Clarion gang -- me behind the camera, Al and Sarah Gibbons.

Sarah and Al sitting in corridor chokepoint outside the ConSuite. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2013 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Sarah Gibbons

Sarah was our "copy girl". A grad student who slaved over the Clarion copier at MSU and turning our 115 stories and 385,562 words of deathless SF/F prose into reams of copies for the 18 writers, staff, archives and all the instructors. A very thankless and necessary task.


I kept running into, and running by, Sarah Gibbons -- so I finally stopped to get a picture, so I could mention that I saw her here at ConFusion. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2013 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)


After Sunday's "SF Radio" performance, Patrick Rothfuss signs one of Sarah's books. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2013 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Dr. Phil

An Unexpected Passing

After I'd broken out the laptop at ConFusion, there was a Facebook posting from Sarah Gibbons. Now a fellow itinerant college professor, back in 2004 she was a grad student at Michigan State and beloved by those of us at the 2004 Clarion workshop as "our copy girl". One can only imagine the hours she endured making more than two dozen copies of the 115 stories with a collective word count of 385,562.

On Friday she said that Lister Matheson had died the night before. Lister had been Director of the 2004 Clarion workshop.


Lister introducing Jeffrey Ford at a reading at Archives Books, 1 July 2004. (Click on photo for larger.)


Lister holding court in his kitchen at the Clarion BBQ 4 July 2004 -- it's a terrible picture but it was muggy, rainy and dark, and the flash-and-focus on my tiny Sony U30 got fooled.

Lister Malcolm Matheson Haslett, Michigan and Lochalsh, Scotland was born on May 19, 1948 in Glasgow, Scotland and died on January 19, 2012 of complications arising from a form of aplastic anemia. He was 63. Lister was the eldest son of Charles and Margaret Anderson Matheson (née Lister). In the United States he is survived by his son, Calum, and life partner, Tess Tavormina. In Scotland he is survived by his mother, his sister and brother-in-law Charlotte and John Barbour, his brother Calum, and cousins Edna Shoebridge, Robert Sinclair, Gordon Sinclair, Evelyn Topp, Ian Fraser, Malcolm Freeman, Susan Steward, Heather Marskell, Charles Findlay, Hilda Ross, Farquhar Matheson, and many nieces and nephews. At the time of his death Lister was Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Michigan State University (MSU), where he had taught since 1986. He was an alumnus of the University of Glasgow (Ph.D., 1978), and served as an Assistant Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary while completing his degree. From 1975 to 1986, he worked at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) as an Associate Editor of the Middle English Dictionary and Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature. His scholarly interests lay in the study of the languages and literatures of England and Scotland and especially in their medieval chronicles. His expertise and publication history were wide-ranging and authoritative. Lister's magisterial study of the Middle English Prose Brut - the legendary and historical account of the founding of Britain - is widely recognized by his peers as the definitive work on the topic. At MSU he taught courses in the history of the English language, Old English language, Old and Middle English Literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, Arthurian literature, medieval English drama, comparative epic, and Scottish history and culture. For several years he directed the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop in Lyman Briggs School at MSU. Lister's family and friends will treasure his memory as loving son and brother, devoted father and life partner, dedicated colleague and loyal friend, and esteemed professor and mentor to many undergraduate and graduate students. He was generous with his time, knowledge, and talents and was keen to spur on the intellectual growth and scholarly pursuits of his students. Lister was a natural host whose large heart, expansive soul, and mischievous sense of the silly and ridiculous endeared him to those who knew him and made strangers feel immediately welcome and appreciated. He was a gifted raconteur, actor, reader of poetry, singer of inspired and inane songs, and connoisseur of haggis and single malt Scotch. He lived a full life, travelled widely, and absorbed everything. He cherished his family and friends and was always the animating spirit around any crowded table, sharing good food, drink, and lively conversation. His family and a very large crowd of admiring friends shall miss him terribly. A memorial service for Lister will be held on the MSU campus this spring, at a time and location still to be announced. Lister's ashes will be interred in Lochalsh, Scotland and there will rest honorably in the company of many generations of Mathesons. The family asks those who wish to honor Lister's memory to contribute financially to the ARC Great Lakes Blood Services Region (please add "Blood Services" in the memo line), American Red Cross, 1800 E. Grand River Avenue, Lansing, MI 48912 or by donating blood at the Lansing Blood Donor Center of the American Red Cross, 1729 East Saginaw Street, Lansing, MI 48912 or at any blood donor center or blood drive convenient to them. The family is being served by Gorsline Runciman Funeral Homes, East Lansing. On line condolences may be made to www.greastlansing.com.

Published in Lansing State Journal on January 24, 2012

Anything In A Coffee Cup Is Coffee

Lister could be cantankerous, but it was clear he loved writing and writers. His field was more Chaucer than Tolkien or Clarke, but he saw the connections with Literature and SF/F. With Clarion moved to San Diego, alas I had no need to go to MSU for Clarion readings in the summer and we lost touch. Condolences and sympathy to all who knew or worked with him.

Dr. Phil

UPDATE 1/25/2012 Wed:

A public memorial service will be held on (Saturday) April 7, at 2 pm, in the MSU Alumni Chapel (we chose the date for reasons of family schedules, with regrets that it may conflict with religious observances of the Easter weekend and beginning of Passover).

One Year Ago...

... a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, destroying not only homes and lives, but a great deal of the infrastructure and government offices in the capital, thereby making rescues and recoveries all the more difficult. Much has been written about Haiti, the relief efforts -- I even heard the other day that the earthquake hit where the geologists weren't expecting it. Haiti was not a rich country before the event, and even the most optimistic predictions figure it will be at least another six months to get the most basic reconstructions in place.

While there is some frustration about where charitable contributions have been going and how fast, I think it fair to say that Haiti needs funds and resources and that there won't be just one NGO or charity which is going to go in and "save the day".

My Own Small Part

Shortly after the earthquake I ran across a submissions call for a charity anthology to support Haiti. Originally going to be an e-book, 100 Stories for Haiti, is available in multiple formats -- print, electronic, audio.

Naturally I'm invested in this, with my 2004 Clarion 800-word challenge story from Week 5 "Three Drink Minimum" making the cut.



Here's a nice piece on the British Red Cross blog about how quickly 100 Stories for Haiti was put together.

And a piece from the creative force behind the project, Greg McQueen, about six months later.

In September 2010, Greg was at it again, this time for Pakistan. By this time, some £4000 had been raised by the Haiti project, and 100 Stories for Haiti continues to sell and raise funds to this day.

Besides the book, I found that they also have T-shirts, bookbags and a coffee mug available via CafePress in the U.K. and U.S.. Just ordered a bookbag -- I'm always needing bags to haul papers to/from class. And a little advertising? It never hurts. (grin)

Dr. Phil

I Like Deadlines

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
----Douglas Adams

Self-motivation is fine and dandy for some of the time. It sounds lovely for the writer to say that they were driven to tell this story, forced by their inner muse to weave it into the best thing they've ever written. But for a writer, nothing seems to me to be better at making me finish the damn thing or get me over the hump of an undigestible paragraph or plot point than having a deadline staring down at you.

Alas, as a relatively new writer with only a dozen+ publication credits for short stories to my name, signed contracts with deadlines built into them are pretty scarce, so mostly I have to motivate myself to write, send out, revise, send out. That's why I like Writers of the Future, with its four quarterly deadlines, or some of the limited submission windows for anthologies and certain markets. Sure, the rest of the time it's also nice to have open submissions, so I can keep having a number of stories out to market at any given time. But I like deadlines, too.

Idiot

Of course, it helps to have the right deadlines. Somehow I was thinking I had two stories which had 30 June 2010 deadlines. And so I was sort of farting back and forth between them. Fortunately, when I am writing, I often (a) engage in cat-waxing and (b) do my due diligence for myself and recheck Submission Guidelines from time to time. That's when I realized that the story I'd been spending the most time on lately wasn't due for another six weeks. And the story which I had been avoiding because it had a thorny plot issue I had to resolve was the one I should've been working on. Dumb.

Worse, this second story was the one I was planning to submit for the Q3 2010 WOTF contest -- and I haven't missed a WOTF quarterly deadline since I started submitting to them on 30 June 2002. I wasn't about to miss this one.

Simplify

I have a tendency to write long. I know, that comes as a surprise to most people. (grin) I chose to start writing short SF fiction because I wanted to learn how to write short SF fiction. Yes, I intend to write long SF novels, but with 64 finished stories since 2002, I have been able to work out a whole lot of issues, especially with my main 29th century universe SF writing.

Fortunately, spending six weeks at the 2004 Clarion workshop and writing my 24 hour story at the WOTF XXIV workshop means that I know I have an overdrive gear to shift into. The key thing was to remember that I was writing a short story and not a novel.

That sticky plot point? I had already reduced it to merely a mention in this version of the story, then using it at a joke for one character to prod another. But in the end, it wasn't mentioned at all. It means I had to go through the limited amount I'd already written and strip out a couple of nicknames for characters which were no longer needed, but that was easy. And whether that sticky plot point is resurrected in the novelette or novel version of the story, who can tell?

Success?

So at 3am EDT on Wednesday 30 June 2010, I finished my quick editing of my completed first draft and produced my printer file -- in this case removing my name from the title block and page number header for submitting to WOTF -- and sent it off to the printer. At 3:30am, I could go to bed. That last bit isn't as bad as it sounds -- I frequently pack it in between 2am and 4am. But today was a work day which meant that I couldn't expect to have time to do any more revisions and still get it into the mail by 5pm. Also, I had to get up and dressed early as a crew was coming to start putting a new roof on the house. (grin) So I would've liked more than three hours sleep. (tired-grin)

Is this the story that I conceived of back on the 19th? No. In some ways it is better, and there are a number of things left off which would've been there if this was say a 12,000 word novelette. And far less detailed and suspenseful if it was a 100,000 word novel. Instead what I got was about 5600 words -- only five of the previous 32 WOTF entries were around this length or shorter -- but I think it works. Is this the best story I could submit to WOTF? No. This is the best new story I've written for the Q3 2010 WOTF contest, as I have about three or four others I started but chose not to finish for this round. Do I think it will win? No. I mean, I think all of my stories have the potential to win, or I wouldn't submit them. It really is up to the judges.

The truth is I'll be really happy for any result that isn't a straight rejection. But no matter what, my bottom line is that I made my deadline. I finished my story. If it doesn't win, I'll rewrite it and send it off to other markets. And maybe someday it'll sell. Or I'll stick it on my website and let people read it there, especially as I've written this cryptic posting about it -- you wouldn't want to openly talk about the story or even its title so as not to contaminate the judging. (fairplay-grin)

So I'm pretty pleased with myself. I made my deadline. I have a new story to play with. And I even have a nifty new LJ posting to show for it today. (evil-grin)

Dr. Phil

Thursday 4 March 2010

This is the date when the print version of 100 Stories For Haiti comes out from Bridge House Publishing in the U.K. The eBook version's release date isn't out yet. All proceeds will go to the British Red Cross efforts for Haiti. My story "Three Drink Minimum" is one of the 100 stories. The price is £11.99 + P&P (£2.30 for UK, £5.50 for Ireland and Europe, £10 for rest of the world), which for U.S. shipment came to £21.99 or US$34.78 conversion by PayPal.

Pre-orders for the paperback edition OPEN NOW!

100 Stories for Haiti is a unique collection of stories bound together by paper and glue and massive amounts of hope. This is no ordinary book. One morning a writer woke up and decided, "I must do something." Hundreds of talented authors worldwide sent him their stories and the result is an anthology that anyone can enjoy.

Proceeds go to helping the victims of the Haiti earthquake. So open this book and pick a page. There's nowhere to start and nowhere to finish. If you find one story, one page, one line entertaining: buy it.

Dr. Phil

One Good Forward Deserves Another

Via Andy Duncan, one of our 2004 Clarion instructors:

"Never underestimate the power of a good story"
Greg Frost alerted me to this fine commercial, via YouTube, for the French pay channel Canal+, a.k.a. "Canal Plus."

posted by Andy Duncan at 9:13 PM

Or else it's a French thing.

Dr. Phil

At The 21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards Last Night

Winner of the award for best LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR:

* Turnskin, Nicole Kimberling, Blind Eye Books

Raised in a remote farming community, Tom Fletcher knows little of his Shifter heritage and less about the dangerous lives that others of his kind lead in the city of Riverside. For Tom the big city is a daydream of opening nights and bright theater lights.

But when Tom meets Cloud Coldmoon-infamous and handsome heir to a criminal syndicate- everything changes. Suddenly suspected of murder, Tom must flee to the only city where his kind are common.

Filled with shapeshifters, con men, mobsters and ruled by the vengeful Coldmoon Family, Riverside is as perilous as it is alluring. Tom seeks refuge in the Turnskin Theartre, where his shape-changing skills can be put to good use on and off the stage.

Here he has a chance to fulfill his dreams of stardom and romance, but only if he can stay one step ahead of police and criminals alike, otherwise the next shape he takes could be his last.

Nikki is a superb writer, fellow classmate of the 2004 Clarion workshop and editor at Blind Eye Books, which published my story "Under Suspicion" in their anthology Tangle Girls. kimnik reveals her surprise at winning here.

Congratulations, Nikki, on your well-deserved award. And in the "Boy It Has To Be Tough To Be You" Category, it's such a shame you had to beat out another Blind Eye Books nominee: The Archer's Heart, Astrid Amara, Blind Eye Books.

Now we just need pictures from the awards ceremony. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Go Nikki!

Nichole Kimberling kimnik, fellow 2004 Clarion wayfarer, has her novel Turnskin on the short list for the Lambda Literary Awards. The Lambdas recognize excellence in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender literature. The awards will be announced on Thursday 28 May 2009.

Not only that, the independent press dedicated to publishing science-fiction and fantasy stories with gay and lesbian protagonists she runs with her partner, Blind Eye Books, ends up with two nominations for the current year. They had one last year as well.

Blind Eye Books publishes Tangle Girls, which includes the Dr. Phil short story "Under Suspicion".

LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR

* The Archer's Heart, Astrid Amara, Blind Eye Books
* The Magician and the Fool, Barth Anderson, Bantam Del Rey
* Wilde Stories 2008, Steve Berman, Lethe Press
* Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, Craig Gidney, Lethe Press
* Turnskin, Nicole Kimberling, Blind Eye Books

Anyway, congratulations!

Dr. Phil

The end of April 2006 brought with it two milestones. One just part of the usual -- the end of the Spring Semester. The other a mark that will appeal only to this audience -- the completion of my first year on LiveJournal.

A Long Haul

It has felt like a long and tough semester, my 42nd since I started teaching. In general I almost never miss class, no matter what. Yet I missed three, count 'em, three days this semester. Two from a flu which laid me low and one from a trip to the side of the road as my oldest, highest mileage Blazer broke at 307,000 miles.

While I'm sure most of my students don't care, I really want those three teaching days back. There's too much good Physics, too many good stories, to miss even one.

A Secondary Milestone

I started building my Science Literacy booklist in the 80s while in grad school. It's now happened that some of the "new" books from that period are older than my current students -- and in some cases it's beginning to show.

I'm going to have to spend some time this summer revising my booklist, methinks. What fun! (grin)

A Year Of Blogging

Haven't I always had a blog on LiveJournal? Apparently not. I meant to do something pithy on that anniversary day, but I was in end-of-semester mode. Due to Western's shift in the calendar in January, Finals came a week later this year, which is why I had time to start a blog last year. (double-grin)

Clarion is, of course, responsible for my blogging. slithytove, specifically. Though I'd run across LiveJournals before then, it was always individual entries found in a Google list. Thanks, John.

A May Milestone

And Saturday marked a real event in my science fiction writing career, as submissions number 99 and 100 were sent out. 37 stories sent out 100 times. The actual century submission was to Gordon Van Gelder and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which is fitting because Gordon was the guest editor at my Clarion and with fourteen submissions, F&SF leads as my top source of rejections. (triple-word-score-grin)

It'll take a while longer to get to the century mark in rejections, but it's coming!

Dr. Phil