megwrites

I'm back from Florida and finally sitting down at my desk at home to take care of long neglected business. I'm suitably sunburned -- which actually happened because of the open-top carriage ride I took to and from the ceremony -- and now a married woman. For the curious, the ceremony went well and fun was had by all.

I now have to try to catch up on my writing before NaNoWriMo because I really do want to do that. But I also want Soul Machines finished. I suppose this means I will need to write like a fiend for the rest of this month and November as well. But I am somewhere around half way done, and I can probably get this finished.

For those wondering about the Query Score Card, it remains the same. In a couple of weeks, some of the other queries will start to time out based on various stated time frames given by individual agents. Which leaves it at:

Rejections - 7

Requests - 2

Timed Out - 2

Still Pending - 8

Going to see Neil Gaiman/Amanda Palmer last night was great fun. My only complaints were these:

a) the show started thirty minutes late and I have a punctuality fetish. I do not believe in wasting moments of anyone's life unless you have to. And since the main attraction was already there at the book store, there was no reason to start at 8:32 as opposed to the advertised 8:00 starting time. If this were a college class, I would have been within my rights to leave.

b) we weren't informed that the venue was, aside from the special tickets for the "tables", standing room only.

Now, the standing room only thing isn't a problem for me or the Boy, but we saw a lady with a cane with one of the staff of the bookstore trying to find a place to sit down and see the show, and she obviously hadn't bought one of the special tickets that accorded you a plastic chair and a table with the rough circumference of Lindsey Lohan's waistline, which is to say: very tiny.

That's one of those little ablist things that gets on my nerves, especially since it's so easy to take care of. If you can't provide for chairs for everyone - and this place could have had a little more seating - at least tell people this fact so they can make decisions accordingly. I don't know if the staff was able to accommodate the lady (I'm sure they were), but I'm sure she might have tried to buy a seated ticket or maybe phoned ahead to ask for an extra chair to be put out if they'd told people it was standing room only.

When you're not entirely able bodied, such information as "is there a bathroom" or "are there places to sit" or "is there enough room for a wheelchair" become much more important. Also, if you're pregnant or elderly, these questions become more important. Especially the bathroom one.

c) Someone brought their baby and it cried to beat the band. Eventually they left. I get annoyed at this not only because a crying baby makes it hard to hear and is annoying - but because the baby is crying because it's distressed. It's obviously very unhappy (maybe even scared or in a bit of discomfort) because the place is loud, filled with people, way too warm, there's clapping and loud music and wolf whistling and shouting. Why would you do that to your poor kid? Especially when the show runs from 8:00-10:00. I'm no parenting expert, but I think at that hour, your child would prefer being in their nice, quiet, comfy crib. Away from the sweaty, noisy, loud mass of strangers. I mean, hell, by the time we got home at ten past eleven, I was more than ready to crawl into my nice quiet bed and would have started crying if someone had dragged me out to a concert, too!

So, yeah, don't do that to your kids.

But anyway, besides these things (which were pretty minor as things go)...

( The very exciting goings on and happenings at the show. Cut for people who could care less. Which I imagine is most of you. )

Why do I love living in New York City? Because I get to attend things like this.

Tonight we made a trip down to the KGB Bar in the East Village to hear readings from Michael Kandel and Elizabeth Bear.

At least, I think we were in the East Village. My knowledge of city geography is woeful.

I think The Boy mostly went with me because in addition to monkeys, he has a strange fascination with all things Communist. He's not actually a communist, and his political beliefs run somewhere around moderate to liberal - but apparently big red flags and Russian guys saying "comrade" just does something for him. I blame his Ukranian heritage.

Though the bar was very crowded, we did get to hear from two really fantastic authors reading some wonderful stories. I was glad that they had a microphone because we ended up having to sit right by the door where the books where being sold, and as a result I spent a good amount of time apologizing to the people who had to squeeze by me to get in and out of the door.

I wish I had links to share, because the stories were fabulous. Not to mention chock full of funny. If you ever see them again in print, give them a go.

One was from Michael Kandel and it was a story called "Foosh" (I hope that's how it's spelled) and was about a very odd kind of pseudo-yoga. The Boy declared it was his favorite, and I enjoyed it immensely. I don't think I liked either story better than the other, because they were apples and oranges to each other, and I appreciate all sorts of fruit.

I think my favorite bit was about the book written on Foosh, and the credentials of the author (or rather, lack of). I'm trying to imagine what a Pharoah in Australia would've been like.

I also completely misunderstood the story for the first few pages and so, for about ten minutes, everyone else in the room was probably hearing a much different tale than I was.

I thought that somehow Mr. Guh was in a cage and that the people in question were students studying him and that it was in a future Earth where the history of mankind had been mostly forgotten and rewritten in an absurd way, thus people didn't know how to identify Mr. Guh's origins, especially when they started guessing everything from India to Oceania. The big mislead for me was the part when the story described Mr. Guh as not talking much and a linguist trying to identify what language he was spoke natively.

That's not even close to what the actual story was. Mr. Guh was an instructor in a kind of offbeat psuedo-yoga and his students just didn't understand him because he had an accent, and it was pretty much set in present day America.

I kind of liked my version of the tale, though.

I think I might have a gear loose in my brain somewhere, because every once and a while, even when someone feeds in some perfectly good data, it comes out very warped.

The other story was from Elizabeth Bear (aka matociquala) and was about old, has-been zombie rockers with interesting meta about life vs. art and a very valuable lesson about the word "fucking". The lesson being that fucking can be an adjective, an adverb, a noun, and a verb. Thus, linguistic vagaries are bound to happen.

In this instance, the phrase: She'd had enough of fucking rock stars . Although, given the story and what I got from it, all possible interpretations of that phrase are true. She could be tired of rock stars in general, or just tired of having sex with them.

The Boy insisted I should go over and say hello after the readings were over, and even maybe ask for a signing of the book I'd brought and the one I'd purchased (I got Whiskey and Water). However I vigorously shook my head and we left very quickly - only to encounter a Grade A fustercluck when the L-train decided to NOT RUN for more than half the line.

He's right - I do need to get over my fear of meeting new people and introducing myself to them.

There's a little matter of me having a paralyzing fear of ever appearing to be the least bit stalker-y or otherwise inappropriate in a way that makes people uncomfortable so that they take a step back and say, "Oooooookay, then" in that voice.

You know the one. The one that says, "I'm going to be *over here*. Please don't follow me and if possible, get further away because I now would really like to no longer be anywhere near you, you big big freak."

Because I can't help it. I just *know* that I'll screw up and across as horribly creepy and make someone think my next words were going to be: "So would you mind if I followed you home, camped on your lawn, started warbling Shakespearean sonnets to you through your window at 3am, and started a cult in your honor that slaughters goats and small children?"

I probably should have mingled more with the people there, but good lord, you try walking around the East Village and see how completely unsophisticated you feel. Especially if you're not a native New Yorker. All these people who are very obviously artists and fashionistas and whatnot are walking around.

And me? I feel like I have someone playing "Dueling Banjos" as theme music wherever I go.

Also in my possible defense as to not being so social, the room was very crowded and a bit cliquish. Not in a bad way, but when I got there, it seemed like there was a big group of people who all knew each other having very interesting, animated conversations. Thus, giving me the fear that everyone in the room knew something I didn't and that, as a result, somehow, I was going to end up looking like a complete idiot.

I just can't take myself anywhere. But the stories were good, and I'll definitely be making my way there next month for more. And I'll get there early so I can snag a better seat.