Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
From the guy with the busted computer:

======

Failed miserably to get online at all today. Razzing snazzing razzing
grumphumph dick dastardly, etc.

I wonder if Compuserve still has its Lynx-type text only internet browser
capability. I bet it has it somewhere, but not easily accessable from a
menu any more.

Lessee -- Well stuff...
.....

Jinx -- you know, as a young author, it seemed whenever I'd turn up at a
signing in LA there would be a gentleman with a camera and a tape recorder
at the back of the room, filming the procedings. "Don't worry," he'd say.
"I'm not stalking you."

And Michelle didn't make it to favorite stalker status because of her
cuteness or otherwise. She did it mostly from inventiveness. It's never
just books, with Michelle. It's license plate holders that she needs signed
and suchlike odd things. Which would be tiring if everybody did it, but the
occasional weird thing to sign is always fun.

(And I think I told my favorite things-to-sign stories on the late lamented
topic 73, so will not bore everyone by telling them again here.)

By the way, if there's anyone out there who's been reading the
Americangods.com journal and has any questions, e-mail them to Linda or one
of the other people who you see up on Inkwell.vue and they'll post them
here for me to answer.)

best

n
  

    
Jouni - Forgiven. I'll just have to find someone with art skills to
get you back. ;-P. Honestly, the hedge-trimmer pic is one of my
favourites ever. I may have to print it out for the Thingie Museum in
my BM Camp this year. 

Neil - heheh, you called Walker a 'gentleman'. Don't know why it seems
so funny, but it does. Probably the cold meds. Wait 'til you see what
you're signing this time around (don't worry, not the leg) O:-D

BTW, Bill (I think it was Bill) found one of the AG proofs up at ebay
already. Didn't take long at all!

squeaks, who will go back to being sick in bed now.
  

    
Neat! I'm a gentleman now!

Neil - Ok... well, I'm not a stalker, but I've been referred to as the
Most Polite Stalker... and one should never worry when a genial guy
says 'Don't worry... I'm not stalking you.' It's when that same guy
turns up in Florida, and Minneapolis... and when you suddenly remember
him from signings in Boston... and at ComicCon...

All right fine.

Michelle - I can be a gentleman. Honest... and there's nothing wrong
with Sharp & Pointies being taken everywhere.

Jinx - ...which... Denny's story? (Why am I afriad?)

<waves to all the other people he knows>

Oh yeah, I'm here!

-- Walker! --
  

    
Hi all,

I'm a fairly new reader of the conversation, and when I have something
more important to say, I will.  But just wanted to say hola and make
my presence known, in case one of you saw me reading from around the
corner and started to suspect that I was yet another stalker (which of
course, I am, but it seems that stalkers are less harmful if they
announce their presence).

  --  s  (going back behind his bushes)
  

    
There isn't anyone from the Cleveland, OH area here, is there? I need
to move somewhere more exciting. . . But Cali's expensive,isn't it?

Neil and Martha- I was just wondering: how old were you when you got
your first story published? Have you ever been rejected? I'm just
curious because I'm beginning to worry that I'll never get pubished:(
feeling abnormal and sucky . . .

Dan-yeah, the last time I went to Denny's I almost broke a tooth while
eating the steak (and I ordered it medium, even.)

Hi Seth.
  

    
An uncorrected proof of American Gods went up for auction on eBay
today. Rather fast, wasn't it? I recall from the AG site that they just
arrived the other day.

<http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1416761180>

Neil, does it bother you at all when things like this are sold?

I wonder how much this will sell for...

Tara
  

    
Well, I sold my first story when I was 26, having decided that not selling a
story by the time I was 15 meant I could never be Michael Moorcock.  But I
think R.A. Lafferty was in the neighborhood of 50 when he sold his first.
The legend is that he sent in a story as a young man and got a rejection
that said "Go live some more life, and write more stories after that," and
did just that.

My golly, who doesn't get rejection slips?  Still?  (Neil probably doesn't
still.)  The first dozen-odd stories I _sold_ all were rejected three or
four or eight times before I placed them.
  

    
Erynn - My roommate is from Cleveland.  "There's nothing interesting. 
The few things downtown that one might consider interesting aren't
worth all the one way streets.  If you can find coventry park near
shaker heights there's some good things along that street or at least
there were several years ago."  We now live in southwest Ohio.  Lots
more bookstores down here, which I find very exciting, but my roommate
informs me that that makes me borderline insane.  "Bookstores are all
well and good but you can't read constantly."  Now that my quarter is
over and spring break is here, I intend to prove him very very wrong.

Welcome Seth!

Happy belateds Linda!

Jen, who went to the library three times today.  
  

    
Again from the English person:

======

Got bloody Netzero working for the first time (normally it doesn't even try
to connect) -- god knows how -- so rapidly posted a blogger thing for the
journal about today.

& then the connection died. But there is hope.

Elise -- as you'll have gathered from Martha's posting the memorial
website, I'm afraid Jenna never regained consciousness. I believe they are
starting a fund up to pay her leftover medical expenses, and to help pay
for her younger sister's college.

Michelle -- you are much too kind. I don't get the rock star thing at all
(get in the sense of understand). The only times it's happened
unexpectedly, it's scared the living daylights out of me -- I remember
after a Tori gig in Blackburg Virginia walking Charles Vess back to his
car, and we nipped out through the stage door. And all of a sudden four
hundred girls started screaming "Neil! omigod it's NEIL!!!!" at me. Charlie
thought it hilarious, of course, but then, he is easily amused by my
discomfiture.

...

While I think of it: Darkling, in the meaning not of being dark but of
growing dark. It's in the dictionary, but Fowler frowns upon it. Any
opinions?

...

Jade -- yes. Speak up, speak clearly, project, slow down, and try and read
it like you hear it in your head. If you have a mike, use it to control
volume while still being audible. And work the pauses.

That's everything I know.

...

Jouni -- look forward to seeing it when I can get a reliable internet
connection.

...

Dan -- it might do. But it's a compuserve connection, and they usually just
work. (And it's the same number I dial to send this e-mail through an old
DOS pgm to martha soukup.) I'll try a few different CIS connections in the
area and see if they work.

Trevor --  AKA Walker -- welcome.

Erynn -- I was just 24, I think, when I sold my first story. I already had
a rejected children's book (memo to self, go into basement & find mss &
burn it) and a dozen or more rejected short stories.  I don't think I was
much good at the time I got accepted -- it was THE CASE OF THE FOUR AND
TWENTY BLACKBIRDS (in Angels & Visitations and also reprinted in the Second
Mammoth book of Comic Fantasy). I wasn't anything more than promising for
another three or four years.

Tara -- at least it's the UK edition, which isn't missing the last
chapter.  I was sad that it hadn't been read, though. And yes, it bothers
me a bit.  Not much that one can do about it at this point.

Martha -- I think Lafferty was 40 when he began writing professionally, 70
when he stopped. The astonishing thing is how fast he became Lafferty --
when you read the Early Lafferty stories, you read these perfectly
constructed tales which are just like anyone else's. Then, very very
quickly they grow magnificently, beautifully, astoundingly wonky.

There are two Lafferty lines in American Gods - not lines that he wrote,
just lines that feel like the way he used to think.

One is from the conversation in Cairo that goes:

"Depends. Back in my day, we had it all set up. You lined up when you died,
and you answered for your evil deeds and for your good deeds, and if your
evil deeds outweighed a feather we'd feed your soul and your heart to
Ammet, the Eater of Souls."

"He must have eaten a lot of people."

"Not as many as you'd think. It was a really heavy feather. We had it made
special. You had to be pretty damn evil to tip the scales on that baby."

and the other gives away too much plot to post here.

By the time I started selling stories I was painfully aware that Chip
Delany had published 8 novels by the time he was my age. And that four of
those 8 novels were brilliant.

I don't get rejection slips any more, but I only write about one story that
nobody's actually waiting for every three or four years or more (let's
see:  'Snow, Glass, Apples' in 1994, which I did as a chapbook, Dawnie
Morningside's story in 1995 or 6 which remained unpublished until SMOKE AND
MIRRORS, and the short-short last week, which F&SF took by return of
e-mail, and which I called 'Afterlife' and didn't like the title of, and
Gordon Van Gelder suggested calling it 'Other People', as he already has a
story called 'Afterlife'); and i have the other problem -- even if I write
something that doesn't quite work, editors are happy to take it because
they get to put my name on their book. Which means I'm never sure if it
really WAS any good.

Jen, of course you can read constantly. If you're dedicated it takes
walking forehead-first into more than one lamp-post to stop you reading
while walking in the street.

Seth -- welcome.

Linda, Jon & Dave, hope you don't get inundated with sudden questions and
such. You probably won't. If you do, um. Oops.
  

    
Me, I want Lafferty to have been 50 when he started.  Then I could still be
precocious.
  

    
Hello!  My computer is being nuts as well.  :(  Just thought I'd stop
by while I can (I'm on a computer at school...don't ask why I'm stuck
here at 3 in the morning), say hi, and welcome Seth and Walker.  Warm
fuzzies to all.

Angelina
  

    
I've been reading while walking down the street since elementary school,
which used to drive my mother batty.
Also, Neil, I think your friend finds your discomfiture funny because
embarrassed English people are inherently funny.
  

    
An effective reading-while-walking defense system can be created by
sweeping your feet in a gentle arc in front of you as you walk.
  

    
gorey - There must be some truth to your assertion about embarrassed
English people because I involuntarily smiled just reading your post.

I had to abandon the idea of reading constantly because I get
violently ill when I read in the car. And I've found that audiobooks
can either be incredibly good or painfully awful.

Tara
  

    
I've just sort of gotten used to the bruises I associate with reading
while walking.  I still have a nice dent in my leg from a couple of
months ago.  Picked up a Pinkwater book in the library, started
reading, and about 30 seconds letter slammed my leg into one of those
metal step stool things.  The only thing I find really hard is reading
while walking down stairs.  Anyway, Price is Right is on.  I have to go
watch Bob Barker torture a few poor souls.

Jen, who is trying to decide between Soldier of Arete and House of
Leaves for today.
  

    

Reading in a moving car makes me ill. Reading while driving just strikes me
as a bad idea, so needless to say I don't read all the time. (Wanting to get
paid for my work also threw a monkeywrench in the scheme.)
I finished Donnerjack last night (Roger Zelazny's penultimate book, finished
posthumously, cowritten by Jane Lindskald- I'm not sure if she finishes it
when he passed on or if they were cowriting it the whole way), and it was
really good. I know there are some Zelazny fans here so I thought I'd
mention.
I haven't decided what to read next yet. Need to pick it out soon, I have a
dentist appointment in 45 minutes and need something to read.
  

    
Erynn - Yes, it's entirely too expensive out here in Calif. At least
in the Bay Area. I'm paying $850 for a one bedroom apartment in
(admittedly a very nice part of) Oakland and I consider myself to be an
extremely fortunate person.
And why am I not that surprised to hear about your nasty Denny's
experience. More and more I try to avoid national chain restaurants.
There is so much good food to be had here, why go mainstream?

Neil - In my last show I got to play an impossibly romantic and
charming 16th century courtier and got screamed at by one teenage girl
after a particularly good night. It was a shade more discomfiting than
flattering (and I'm not even british...although I've been mistaken for
one of you lot on more than one occassion). So, let's see... take that
one experience and amp it up to 400 .... Sweet Shiva on a Skateboard...
I'm amazed you didn't turn tail and run!

Re: publishing stories - I'm probably taking the easy way out and just
publishing the few short stories I write on my site. Barely anybody
ever reads them, but more do than if I tried submitting them to lots of
places that would reject me. The only person who decides if its
rubbish or not is me... which is both a good and a bad thing.
Although, I've been posting short church skits that I wrote almost a
decade ago (it's a long story), and have gotten e-mail from a couple of
folks telling me that they're using them in their services... so I
guess my stuff can't suck too terribly.
  

    
The true secret to reading and walking is not holding the book too
high so that you can keep a watch on the upcoming scenery.  I would
constantly read in high school and have gotten pretty good at reading
while pushing my way through crowded hallways.  

My computer is feeling better!  Yay!
  

    

Thanks to <stagewalker> for the excellent pseud.
  

    
I think Neil meant this for here:

======

Puzzled in computerland says:

I've discovered one odd thing: if I'm on the notebook's batteries, and I
try and use dial-up networking, and hit the "Engine Already Started"
message that I shouldn't ever get under normal circumstances (according to
the helpful help screen), the battery immediately and completely
discharges. It did it last night and I thought, how odd, I thought I had a
couple of hours left. It did it today and I watched it go from a 98% full
battery (3 hrs and 10 mins to go) to an empty one in a second.

Is this weird, or what?
  

    

Yes, it's weird.


...I hope you weren't expecting anything more constructive outta me.
  

    
I remember recently riding in a car with my roommate and seeing
somebody walking along, reading and saying to him, "That's what I like
to see."  Think the last book I read while walking was a Pinkwater
book, although I can't recall and bruisings.
  

    

I used to read while riding a bike. This was a long time ago, back when I
was in middle school or so. One day I was biking home from my friend's
house- he lived at the top of a hill, and I at the bottom. So I'd cruise
down the hill, no hands, reading a book. Then one day I looked up and saw a
tractor trailor coming.

I resolved to pay a bit more attention at high speeds at that point.
  

    
Ha!  I got it to work (irritating Netzero again, which mostly doesn't
work, but if it does it doesn't wait 90 seconds and drop the
connection). I really just came on to make sure that no-one thought
that Martha had kidnapped me, for she hasn't. On the other hand, I
looked in the mirror today and realised I'd crossed the fine divide
between 'hasn't shaved' and 'looks a lot like Che Guevara'.

Out of interest, is anyone here going to be at ICFA in Ft lauderdale
next week?

And no, I don't expect anyone to solve the mysteries of my computer
for me. I was just commenting on the strangeness of the world we live
in.

No opinions about darkling? Or discomfiture? 

E-mail from my goddaughter's mum this morning with track listings for
the new album. It's frustrating to know I have to wait until probably
July when I'm in the UK to hear any of it.

Okay. Back to the Death script.
  

    

Darkling... I like the word. I know someone who goes by it in a role playing
context. But when I say I like the word I more mean I like the combination
of letters, as until your post I didn't know it had a real meaning. (I had
assumed my friend was using Darkling as a construction similar to Hatchling
and the like...)
So, chalk one up to improved vocabulary. I would have understood darkening,
but then I like tossing obscure words at people, so mark me down as
undecided.