For anyone who enjoys travel reports, poletopole is writing these amazingly vivid, fascinating posts on their journey to the poles. Wow. Go here.

I posted this at the soulcollaging community and then figured, what the heck, I might as well post it here, too. There are more people reading this journal than that one at the moment who might actually be able to answer the question:

Okay, here's a question particular for those of you who are experienced at manipulating digital images.

What I really want to do in making a Community card for Fiona is this: I took her to the dojo and took a whole bunch of pictures of her spinning and kicking, in her birthday dress, using the mirror to capture reflections (Fiona LOVES to spin; she's done it for years). I want to layer the images, but I don't know how/don't have a program that will extract the images of just her figure and then layer them, transparently. I tried to do it with a very crude photo editing program I have, but it was very crude, trying to manually erase pixels, and extremely tedious, and the outlines are all blurring.

Anyway, these are a couple of the images I am starting with (and I have several others I'd like to layer in):

( Fiona spinning ) and

( Fiona spinning 2 )

This is my crude mock up first attempt. Anyone have any ideas of a program or technique I can use to achieve the effect I want to achieve?

( Rough draft of Fiona's soulcollage card )

(And apropos of nothing, isn't she damn beautiful?)

Check out Colleen Doran's post about her "Riverside" auction piece! What a nice person she is.

...is indeed broke. Foot is not.

There's nothing they can do about it, so I have been advised to tape it to the toe next door and let 'em be buddies for a while.

1. The flaming clowns from yesterday were dispatched through a number of clever devices built with skateboards, model rockets, roofing tar, marbles, and the old baby monitor. Once that was all taken care of, I managed another 3000 words to finish up this chapter, leaving only the wrap-up to go. There are a lot of loose ends to deal with in this book, but the fighting is done. Call it another 3-5K and I should have a third draft.

2. Ever repeat a word so much it starts to lose its meaning? Writing a book is like that, only with 90,000 words.

3. I need a little help from the LJ mind. In addition to the novel, I also told my German editor I'd try to write an introduction for my collection. The trouble is, I've got no idea what approach to take with this. So I thought I'd ask all of you. What sort of things do you like to see in the opening pages of a collection or anthology? What approaches bore you to tears? What special insights would you want into either the stories or the author?

4. In the first chapter of the latest Simon Green book, our hero shoots several demons with a gun that fires projectiles made of frozen holy water. It's a brilliant idea ... or rather, it would be, if I hadn't seen the "ice bullet" myth so conclusively busted on an episode of Mythbusters. Maybe this is supposed to be a magic gun, I don't know. But I think Mythbusters should be required viewing for would-be authors.

Remember how I said, the day after Tuesday's class (the one with 75 pushups and 300 crunches) that I wasn't particularly sore, and I wondered if the soreness would show up the next day?

Yeah. Well. It did.

Ow.

Today I deposited the latest MM cheque in the bank (at a decent exchange rate, huzzah huzzah!), and then went for lunch at Bread & Circuses before getting my hair cut at Upstairs For Hair.

In the end the haircut cost me $47 (including tip), but I love love LOVE my hairdresser and they give you free coffee. (There was also a bowl of fresh fruit in the waiting area, and when the receptionist wasn't looking I sneaked a banana into my purse for George. Come on... if they're getting $42 for a haircut, before tip, I think I'm entitled to a single piece of fresh fruit! ;-))

Afterwards I stopped at Gluttons and bought my personal version of crack cocaine 600 g of Mona Lisa Gouda. Then off to Foodfare, where frozen burritos were on sale (I stocked up on ten) and I was able to pick up some coarse kubasa for George, as well as a fly swatter (which he's wanted for quite a while) and a new plug for our bathtub (oh, what an exciting life!). On the way home I checked in at Pack & Post and discovered that they had my cheque from the latest HB graphic novel waiting (I have the publishing company FedEx it to them since we don't have a buzzer system in our apartment building).

Could the day get any better?

Yes! A few minutes ago we got a phone call from a FedEx driver waiting outside our buildng with another envelope, this one from my MM editor, full of CDs of color reference for the latest project.

Now I have to squeeze in a couple of pages of MM before a Full Moon Group inner court meeting this evening. One of our members just got a new dog who will be her service animal and I'm looking forward to meeting the puppy.

Take care, all...

1) In the department of "You use that word very often I do not think it means what you think it means" the subject line "Exchange your life" doesn't give me a good feeling, people (exchange it for what? An octopus? A set of Encyclopedia Britannica, the 1951 edition? A cool drink on a hot day?)

2) If you are going to sent me email telling me that my Windows Firewall expires soon and that I need to download an update... don't send the email from Panama. I live a couple of hours away from Redmond. I know where Microsoft is.

Sigh.

Project Valkyrie
TIME: 25 min.
DISTANCE: 3.0 mi.
TOTAL: 6.0 mi.
NOTES: Got up to 8 mph, but couldn't sustain it. 7 mph is pretty much where I stick.
SHIRE-RECKONING: We have crossed The Water.

---

So while I row to Mordor, I'm listening to Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works--or perhaps I should say kibbitzing. (Repeat after me: "Fiction with scientific principles in it is not Science Fiction." NOTHING YOU DO TO IT can make "The Pit and the Pendulum" science fiction, no matter how beautifully the idea slots into your argument.) Professor Rabkin earned my wrath very early on by asserting that Hamlet's meeting with the Ghost is in the first scene of Hamlet (Act I, scene v, thank you very much), and, well, honestly, I'm a pedant. I nitpick. If you're going to quote "The Walrus and the Carpenter," or "Jabberwocky," you should be able to quote it correctly. If you're going to make a foray into biography and talk about Lewis Carroll's intense fondness for small children, get your details right. Because it's not all small children. Carroll did not like little boys and said so in his letters. His adoration was given to little girls. Which maybe matters and maybe doesn't (that's why this is a nitpick), but if you can dig up the details about his nude photographs of children and why he destroyed them, you could surely find this. Also the great Victorian photographer is Julia Margaret Cameron, not Margaret Julia Cameron.

The devil is in the details.

That is, my right knee. I don't know what I've done to it, but seeing as I've had bad knees since I was 20, I'm not surprised, just annoyed. The pain is underneath the kneecap, and only present when I try to straighten my leg. It's also slightly uncomfortable and painful to walk, but as long as I keep my leg slightly bent, it's not too bad.

I expect that my lovely little bone spurs under the kneecap are rubbing again. All will be well, once the swelling has a chance to go down. Asprine is my friend today.

...That I May Now Feel Compelled to Write.

Someone was complaining about short fiction slush full of time-travel stories about people trying to kill Hitler and stories with titles that spoil the ending, so I suggested "The Cross-time Accountants Fail to Kill Hitler Because Chuck Berry Does The Twist."

And now, when I should be doing work, I'm thinking, "Okay, exactly how did Chuck Berry get mixed up with the Cross-time Accountants, and would it be better if it was Chubby Checker instead... improved twist but less exciting musician...."

Home now!

Well, I lucked out in that the Mac outlet in town actually had new MacBooks in stock. It's a small town, and there's not normally a huge selection, but the university is having freshman orientation this week, so they had ordered a lot of extras. (And they were selling like crazy. They sold two other MacBooks while we were there, so we were probably lucky we got one.) And we got the educational discount, a free printer, and a rebate for an iPod. The iBook was on its last leg but morfin got it to hold out long enough to do the tranfer to the MacBook. The new screen is nice but the text looks different. My worldview has changed! I'll get used to it.

We're just going to stay around here for the 4th. All the stuff I'm looking forward to, the new Hellboy movie, the new season of Stargate: Atlantis, Victory of Eagles the new Temeraire book by naominovik, the new issue of Black Gate, all comes out next week. So there's not going to be much to do this weekend.

My fellow DAw author jpsorrow invited me to his blog to do a riff. His posts explore aspects of writing, especially writing long, and many of his readers are fellow "fat fantasy writers." So I thought, rather than gas interminably about my own stuff, I'd open a question about being a fat fantasy writer--why, what it means to one, etc. Please go over, if you've any interest, and jump into the discussion: you don't have to be a writer. Talking about why you read it is welcome, especially if you like the works of the people who gather there.

I've been wondering for a long time whether I could write a comics script. All the cool kids are doing it. But can I?

livelongnmarry's auction has given me the strength to find out. It's for charity, after all, isn't it? And a charity my wife and I support wholeheartedly. (We were legally married in Massachusetts - in our backyard - before we moved to NYC. Your heart would break to hear our plaintive cries of "Now we're living in sin!" every time we cross the border, and our shouts of joy every time we re-enter that Blessed State. Wouldn't it be nice if California led the way in being another safe haven for our union - and a locale for many others'?)

Tongue only somewhat in cheek, I've been scribbling a shortish script* about the young Theron Campion's pre-Fall of the Kings enthusiasm to right an ancient wrong (that predictably enough involves a gorgeous young Riversider no better than he should be), plus his father, the Mad Duke** . . . It's called "A Riverside Marriage" and what I'm auctioning is your chance to illustrate the entire comic (Fan Use Rights only), and post the creative collaboration on my website.***

The amazing Colleen Doran would have liked to outbid you, but she's on deadline, so instead she's offering a single original illustration at the auction. (Thank you, Colleen, for supporting the cause!)

So if you can't draw, pay Colleen to do it for you! If you can, but you're short of the ready, put together a consortium of artist pals to share the drawing duty - and the glory (and expense)! Minimum bid is $75, but please get into a bloody bidding war with dollars and body parts flying everywhere. It's for charity, after all.

livelongnmarry's auction runs only through July 15th. And a good thing, too. The suspense would kill me.

*And may I say how much I love writing comics script? All I have to write is the dialogue!! Someone else does the description!!! Why didn't I think of this yeeeears ago?

**It's also got the Duchess Katherine, head in hand, going: "Oh, Theron..." a lot. blackholly said I should put that in, and who can deny her?

***I will also answer any questions you have while drawing it.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325752993/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/03/implied-spaces-free-download/

John Joseph Adams just let me know that Walter Jon William’s latest book, which I’ve been pimping as one of my favorite reads of this year so far, has a nice, large excerpt up on the Night Shade downloads page. It’s a scene where space zombies attack the main character.

Seriously.

Walter and I share geeky fascinations. I need to make sure I send him a copy of Sly Mongoose, which also features hard SF rationalized space zombies.

We are safely in Cardiff. I have asthma. This isn't unexpected, I am allergic to this whole country, and I know that, it happens every year. All the same, it's tiring and annoying. We're going to go down to the sea today, the lonely sea and the sky -- no, that's not what I meant to say, the lovely sea air full of sleep and quiet breathing, that's it.

The other cool thing we're doing is that we're going to show Z's girlfriend British history in order -- starting with standing stones, and making our way forward through the Celts and the Romans before getting to medieval castles. This is a plan.

My 'puter's dead. I'm using Em's right now. I'll get another soon, maybe something used, maybe one of the cheaper Asus EEE PCs. My monitor and keyboard should work with them, and I like the idea of leaving Apple and going to Linux.

Kind of wish the gremlins had found a gentler way to do this, though. But I'm grateful they didn't find a harsher one.

update: I'm now the proud owner of a miniMac. Tempted to put it in a suitcase and carry it to a coffeeshop someday, but I suspect I'll be getting a cheap ultralight instead.

Home again, home again.

Fabulous news, mine: I was very productive while away, and suddenly have nearly 18,000 words of book. All in a row, even!

And when one considers the false starts, all the stuff I wrote and discarded earlier in the year, and those patient bits of a short story that’s wandering around here somewhere, this means that I’ve now written more than I did all of last year, with most of that word count being generated in the last two weeks. And the best thing of all: I don’t hate what I’ve written. Oh, it’s definitely a draft, but I’m not throwing it away – not yet, anyway. Not even the scene that I kept muttering to Jana was only about being unable to buy, and later stealing, a sandwich (the now infamous “sandwich scene”).

I’ll just have to work to keep myself on track now that I’m back in the city with all its lovely and irritating distractions. And work on figuring out ... political things. (*Mutters darkly about the need for political things.*)

Fabulous news, not mine: while I was away, my friend Chris Szego (cszego) learned that she is this year’s Grand Prize winner in the Toronto Star Short Story Contest -- which, for those of you not local, is a very big thing, and comes with prize money in excess of the amount that you’d receive for a first novel contract. We’re all thrilled for her here (there was cheering and loud laughter), and until her story is published, I will recommend that you check out her short story “Valiant on the Wing,” published in Strange Horizons a few months ago.

Himself and I had a date* on Monday night, dinner and a movie. We went to see Get Smart, and was it good! Laughed out loud many many times. We both agreed, the scene in the airplane bathroom was the funniest of the entire movie (I'm sitting here laughing, just thinking about it).

And if you're a really big fan, you're going to need to buy or rent this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018723/

* now that he's working his new shift, 3:00 to 11:30 pm weekdays, we're not going to really see each other till the week-ends. We've decided that we're going to start going on 'dates' on either Saturday or Sunday nights, dinner and a movie.

(There was no Project Valkyrie today, as the weather was just too fucking gross.)

---

What I haven't been posting about, obviously, is the revisions for Corambis that are due at the end of the month. I haven't been posting about them mostly because this is the part of the process that is difficult to articulate in a way that makes it interesting to people who haven't read the book yet. You know, when your writer-friend tells you, "I moved the chunk where Gilbert finds the pruning shears in the abandoned mental asylum from Chapter Four to Chapter Two, and OMG it makes the bit with Tabitha and the two ormolu swans in Chapter Three look like I meant to put it there all along!" And you smile and nod and metaphorically pat your writer-friend on the head and try to insert something that looks like a conversation into the conversation.

You know how it goes.

And maybe later, when the book is published and you read the bit with Tabitha and the two ormolu swans in Chapter Three and realize that, yes, of course the chunk with Gilbert and the pruning shears had to go in Chapter Two, maybe you call your friend up and go "OMG the pruning shears! You were so right!" and the two of you shriek and giggle like hyenas who have just found the most sumptuous elephant carcase of their lives.

Maybe.

But my point is, this kind of revising is neither particularly intelligible nor particularly interesting from the outside, and of course the sentence-level stuff even less so. So I'm not posting about it. Just trying to get it done.

I'm also not posting about this head cold, and believe you me, you're grateful for it.

In response to this question on Yahoo! Answers, which asked "Is it time for christians to stand up for gays?"...

I think a christian summed this up earlier when asked "Is telling gay people they can have civil unions but not marriage, is it similar to saying yes, of course you can ride the bus?"

He answered.

"If you can't handle sitting in the back then you can walk"

... where do people like this COME from?

If it's not too hard for you to get to Burlington, Mass. (about 30 minutes from Boston), July 17-20, come to Readercon! It's right up there with Wiscon in my try-never-to-miss list. Who can resist a program with titles like Snape, Gollum, and Other Moral Linchpins, or What Has It Got in Its Apocalypses?, or The Aesthetics of Online Magazines . . . not to mention, ahem, a solo talk by yrs trly: Return to Riverside? And guests like Geoff Ryman, Suzy McKee Charnas, Andy Duncan, Louise Marley, Farah Mendlesohn, Barry N. Malzberg, Kelly Link, Paul Park, Michaela Roessner, John Kessel, Michael Swanwick, Theodora Goss, John Clute, Nancy Werlin, and, well, us?*

There will also be an Interstitial Arts Town Meeting, open to all.

Hope to see you there! Honest. Please feel free to use this post's Comments to troll for rides and roommates.

*A plethora of my favorite LJ authors will also be there, like Elizabeth Bear & friends - but I figure if you're a fan of theirs you already read all about it from them....

Johns Hopkins may = prison, but the corrections staff seemed to kinda like the parolee. Either that or they were happy to get rid of him...

I got to meet Dad's "nutrition guy" in person. Yes, the nutrition guy whose potential looming presence first got cvillette to keep a food journal. (Platypus'll tell you he did it because I browbeat him, but he's not nearly as scared of me as he says he is.) Lesson from this: really, there's no way to keep out of the way of one of Dad's guys once the subject comes up. It's a Dad thing. Don't even try.

I also had to help him pack. Any time you stay in one place for a month, you accumulate stuff, and though our monotreme travels light, he had a respectable collection of cards and prezzies. The wind-up toys are awesome.

I brought him his new Certifiable Mad Genius t-shirt to wear home, and, I quote, "an actual pair of pants without elastic or a drawstring THANK YOU BABY JESUS." I've never been conflated with the baby Jesus before. But I think it's a compliment. In this context, at least.

Nowadays hospitals seem determined to send you out of the building in a wheelchair. I think it's a liability thing. He gave the chair a Very Hostile Coyote Glare, but no one seemed to have the authority to make an exception, so he had to suck it up and take the elevator on his butt instead of his feet. The nurses's aide pushing his chair was hawt, had a nummy East Indian accent, and was a knowledgable Nine Inch Nails fan. So although he was a thwarted coyote, he was on his near-best behavior. *g*

He plopped into the passenger seat all by himself, though, and passed on my offer to come upstairs with him in case he needed help with anything. He's fully ambulatory and in good spirits. And I happen to know his fridge is packed with high-quality tasty heat 'n' eat food in case he's too beat to cook and doesn't want to call out for pizza, because Wabbit and I are incurable unapologetic busybodies.

Now I'm going to give the guy a little private time, to get reacquainted with the sensation of not having medical professionals following him around. Also, Alton Brown is doing pie tonight on Good Eats, and I don't want to interrupt. *g*

Usually when I sit down to write a blog entry, I have 3 or 4 topics I want to blog about, and I try to settle on the most interesting one. I never want for material--except over the last couple of days, when I've found I have nothing to talk about. I guess that's because it's summer. I'm taking advantage of the relaxed schedule and the nice weather to catch up on neglected errands and take the kids to parks and playdates and such.

Seattle absolutely bustles with outdoor activity in the summer. Driving around, you see it: the lake is covered with boats, parks and ballfields are swarming with kids, the sidewalks are full of dog-walkers and joggers and bicyclists. It's an example of what I call the Limited Resource effect. When you know access to something is limited, you take maximum advantage of it when you can, whereas if it's always available, you may completely neglect it.

For example, I live in Seattle, yet I've never done certain major touristy things like take a boat tour through Puget Sound, or visit Mt. St. Helens. Why? Because I could do those things anytime--which means I never do them. Whereas if I was up here for a short vacation I would make a point of doing them. The Limited Resource effect.

The point is, sunshine and pleasant weather are a limited resource in Seattle, so when they arrive, we take maximum advantage.

The writing is going nicely. I've been worried for a while, because the novel just went through its major transition point, and coming up are some action scenes where I haven't figured out the action yet. In 5-8 days, I was going to hit a wall, unable to proceed without getting past the "and here a miracle occurs" bit. But this morning, I had a breakthrough. I haven't figured out the miracle entirely--but I have a few pieces of it worked out, and I'm hoping from there I'll be able to work out all of it.

I always try to have the next 5-10k words of the novel fully plotted and visualized when I sit down to write. Otherwise I'm nervous and uncomfortable. I am not a seat-of-the-pants writer; in fact, it is impossible for me to plot and write at the same time. They are separate activities, and in the unfortunate event my writing outpaces my plotting, I have to stop writing and catch up.

"Soldier, Sage, & Vagabond" progress:

43000 / 100000 words. 43% done!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325182875/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/02/romantic-times-on-sly-mongoose/

Zombies. Interplanetary battles. Alien races. A hero that can destroy a city in a single bounce. What’s not to love? This is an edgy, engaging science fiction novel with a unique take on exactly which civilizations will represent humanity in our travels to distant planets. Light enough for a beach read, smart enough for bedside, this novel can be enjoyed on multiple levels.

So says the Victoria Frerichs of the Romantic Times Book Reviews on Sly Mongooose…

I like that last line. Kind of represents something I reach for.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325176782/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/02/audio-project/

As noted on The Whatever, by John Scalzi, I’m involved in an interesting project that I’m just now putting some finishing touches on at night (while by day I write the Halo book). It’s going to an audio project coming out from Audible. Each author will be writing a novella revolving around a central concept that will all be gathered together.

Right now the project has the working title of Metatropolis, although that’s likely to change before it makes its official debut. In this audio anthology, we look to a future in which cities have become something more than just cities — and what that means for the people who live inside them, and outside of them. The cities are not utopias or dystopias (that’s too easy), and they definitely won’t be the “future cities” imagined in the illustration accompanying this. What they will be is a different way of looking at the world.

Karl Schroeder, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, me, and of course John Scalzi will all be contributing stories to this, and it is anticipated it will come out in the Fall.

Yes, it is turning into an interesting Fall quarter for me.

-Tides From the New Worlds (short story collection) will be out
-Novella in this Audible anthology
-Sly Mongoose, my third novel
-Halo: The Cole Protocol, my fourth novel, November 25
-Short story out in Fast Forward 2

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325167108/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/02/crucial-taunt-review-of-crystal-rain/

Another review popped up last night, this very positive review of Crystal Rain on the website Crucial Taunt by John Markley:

From this set-up, creates one of the best adventure stories science fiction has seen in recent years. Buckell takes the reader across the world he has created, from a desperate midair struggle with an Azteca airship, to grim siege warfare at the walls of Capitol City, to the freezing North and the lost realm of the old-fathers. Starting with only the fragmentary understanding of the Nanagadans themselves, the reader gradually learns more about the awesome technology of the old-fathers, and about how the planet’s humans, Loa, and Tetol came to be where they are.

Nanagada itself is a fascinating creation, an array of peoples, cultures, and religions, drawn primarily from the people of the Caribbean, where Buckell himself grew up. Technology out of Earth’s late 19th century exists alongside remnants of a past that has become incomprehensible- the mammoth structures of Capitol City, alien creatures that are worshipped as gods, vast expanses of lifeless land that make those who visit sicken and die for reasons unclear to a society that no longer understands concepts like radioactivity and nuclear weapons. The disparities between technologies of past and present create a fascinating contrast of situations- grinding trench warfare fought with bolt-action rifles and steam-powered rail cars in one chapter, a struggle between a monstrous bioengineered alien and a cybernetically enhanced superhuman the next- that fit together naturally in the same story and setting. Buckell also provides tantalizing hints of what the wider universe is like as the story goes on, without going on at length about back-story.

This, apparently, is *real*.

How Not To Get A Girlfriend 101.

Just listen to those voicemails. Just LISTEN to them.

*headdesk*

UPDATE Heeeeee. Someone has FAR too much time on their hands... Loookee here... and here...

It's fame, Jim, but not as we know it... [giggle]

I just printed this comic out and hung it above my desk. Her work is so much fun.

HomeHomeHomeHomeHomeHome

Well, my wife and kids are off to the cabin up north. I'm alone in the house. If years of Hollywood education are to be trusted, I'll soon be embarking on all manne