No Pizza for You!

Or me, either.

A new pizza place opened up in Saskatoon recently, and a co-worker recommended them. they offered a 50% off coupon for your first delivery, so I thought we'd try pizza for supper last night. I downloaded and printed the coupon.

Oops, sorry, we don't deliver to the west side of town. No pizza for you.

Call back a few minutes later, "Maybe I could pick it up?" "Sure, but you can't use the coupon." "But you won't deliver to me." "Sorry." Still no pizza for you.

So, a co-worker and I decided to have their pizza for lunch today. go back, download the coupon. Hmm. While it's still offered on the site, it says it expired yesterday. "I just downloaded your coupon, but it says it expired yesterday." "Yes, that's over." But it's still on the front page of your website." "Sorry". Still no pizza for you.

The sample I had from the co-worker seemed like good pizza, but now I suspect I'll never know.

One does not simply stroll into a vietnamese restaurant looking for dessert

In which we discover a delightful dessert in a most unusual place

Between assorted appointments on Tuesday, Victoria and I had a gap of a little over an hour, so stopped to try a new spot for lunch. "Vietnamese Roll Restaurant," is a pretty unassuming, if descriptive, title for an eatery, so our expectations were fairly level. The restaurant is clean and nicely laid out, with a variety of booths, tables, and a high seating bar at the windows. It is not very wheelchair friendly, since the tables have large bases, and are tightly placed, nevertheless, the owner quickly sprang to make room, and Victoria soon had a comfortable spot.

The menu was pretty standard for such restaurants, with the exception of "and homemade desserts" tacked on after "Special vietnamese foods." Victoria ordered a bun with vietnamese roll and I a stir fry of mixed vegetables in black bean sauce on rice noodles. The food came quickly and was fresh and good quality with generous portions. The one oddity in my meal was that the plate (which could have been a "second", or could have been designed to make the plate look more full) was convex in the centre, so that everything had a tendency to slide towards the outer rim. Hardly an inconvenience, but curious. The restaurant was dotted with photos of homemade cakes, and we had recently had the final in a series of disappointments at Traeger's that caused us to decide to stop going there, we decided we had an obligation to check out the deserts.

Fortune was smiling on us. Those who had the luck to have had Traeger's desserts in the 80s, 90s, or even a few years into the 21st century, will recall desserts made with care and attention. Thick butter creams and precisely layered confections that were worth a premium because of their beauty, as well as their taste. Here we'd discovered a worthy replacement. While the offerings at Tragers have slowly gotten more and more average while retaining, and even increasing, their premium cost, the desserts at "Vietnamese Roll Restaurant" have retained the appearance of having been prepared by someone who cares, and prices that would not have been out of place a decade ago.

Victoria had an orange Vanilla cake, and I a triple chocolate, buth were multi layer with a dense butter cream filling and were made with a precision and cleanliness-of-line that is notably lacking in a lot of cakes these days. Also, they were under $4.00 on the menu, a price that's hard to find in a restaurant brownie, let-alone a well prepared cake.

Final verdict, excellent, and a pleasure to discover. We'll be back.

Vietnamese Roll Restaurant
#6 - 215 Stonebridge Blvd

Interview - Anne Bishop originally posted on mcnallyrobinson.com

Interview - Anne Bishop by Kent Pollard - Friday, Mar 14, 2008 at 9:41pm

Two of the highlights of March's schedule for us booksellers are the appearance in pocket book size of Anne Bishop's Belladonna as well as the release of her new Realms of the Blood book, Tangled Webs, featuring Surreal SaDiablo. It also marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of her first novel, Daughter of the Blood,. With nearly a dozen books in ten years, her fans are fortunate in having an author who can keep them satisfied, while keeping them guessing. I'm fortunate that Anne has agreed to do an interview with me, via email, which I'm pleased to share with you below.

KP: Anne, thanks for chatting with me today. I'd like to start by asking a bit about what brought you to writing as a career. When and why did you begin writing, and was there any particular catalyst that started you writing?

Anne: I began learning the basics of writing stories before I ever put stories down on paper. As a child, I would insert a “Mary Sue” character into a favorite TV show and replay the show in my head with my character being one of the heroes. From there I advanced to writing teenage-girl-and-her-horse stories, as well as ghost and horror stories. (The “Twilight Zone” was a strong influence in terms of showing me how to take a walk on the weird side, and we do tend to write what we like to watch and/or read.) After graduating from high school, I stopped writing until I was 30. Then the Muse came knocking, and I opened the door. I haven’t closed the door since that day.

KP: There is a strong mythological component to the Blood books, and to a lesser extent in Ephemera. Did you have a particular interest in myths as a child?

Anne: I don’t think I separated stories into categories during childhood. Was there a difference between Jason and the Argonauts and The Black Stallion? Or between learning about Greek and Roman mythology and absorbing the information that there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow? Asking when I developed an interest in myths is like asking when I first started liking dogs. My answer has to be, “Was there a time when I didn’t?”

KP: Do you manage to make a living from your writing full time, or do you rely on other revenue?

Anne: I can support myself with my writing these days, but I still work part-time as a proofreader because I like my co-workers and I like the work. The biggest change in the past couple of years has been scaling back to part-time at the day job, which gives me more time for writing.

KP: What are you reading now, for fun, and/or research?

Anne: Recently I binged on J.D. Robb, Patricia Briggs, and Charlaine Harris. I’m also dipping into the work of Donna Andrews, Kat Richardson, and Carrie Vaughn. As for research, if I need to know a specific thing—what if X happens to Y—I either look it up or ask someone who works in that field. Most of the time, my idea of research consists of simply paying attention and making notes of sights, sounds, images, or tangible things that blip on the Muse’s radar as potential. An example: In a PBS “Nature” show, an octopus moved through a small-diameter pipe in order to get from one tank to another. That piece of imagery helped shape the Eater of the World in the Ephemera books.

KP: I think many of your readers would like to know a bit more about the writing process, and how it works for you. Is writing always smooth for you, or are there particular aspects of the process that you find more difficult than others?

Anne: Drafting is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that has a rough pencil sketch of the finished piece as a guide, some pieces in full color for the scenes and information I know, and blank pieces for all the bits that are unknown. I think about characters and place, the reason for the story (what is happening or about to happen to these people), the culture(s) and the world. Pieces get put together and work or don’t work. Ideas about how the world works get added or discarded. Then comes a moment when I hear that internal “click” and the world and people are set. I have the who and the where. When I know as much as I can know, there are still big gaps and blank spaces, but those can’t be filled in until I begin the journey with these characters. I learn the story as I write the story. I know the destination, but there are a lot of ways to get there, and that’s what I discover as I write.

First draft is to catch action and emotion. The second draft is where I try to fill in the details and record the scene I see in my mind. The hardest draft for me is the Editor’s Revisions because that’s where I’m trying to smooth out whatever rough edges are left or spots where the details didn’t make it to the page.

KP: Do you write to any sort of time or word-count schedule?

Anne: I have four writing days in each week. When I’m drafting, the goal is to hit 6000 words each week. When I’m doing second draft or revisions, I put 20 hours into the writing. That’s usually as much as I can do well, and it gives me time to ponder what needs to be pondered.

KP: Do you ever run into problems moving forward with a story and if so do you have any favorite technique for getting past it?

Anne: There are several reasons why a story can block for me: physical or mental fatigue, input overload, something else absorbing the creative energy, a shift into left-brain-let’s- do-filing-mode, or a piece of the story puzzle is missing and I can’t go forward until I figure out that piece. Fatigue is solved by getting enough sleep or taking an evening to do nothing. Input overload is solved by quiet time. If other kinds of storytelling (either reading or watching movies) is absorbing energy instead of feeding the creative well, I’ll avoid those things for a few days. Since Left Brain usually kicks in when the creative side is tired, some days it’s just smarter to close up the computer and do busywork. And story puzzles are solved by “musings.” That’s when I just ponder on the page, thinking about the characters or the story, what is happening or needs to happen, and how the characters might get from point A to point B.

KP: Do you find yourself itching to write something outside of the fantasy genre, or is it more of a comfortable home for you?

Anne: I did write a story a few years ago for the Mossy Creek series of books. I love that series, so it was great fun to write a story in someone else’s sandbox. (For those who might wonder, that’s the “Laurie and Tweedle Dee” story.) But I like the magic and wonder of the fantasy genre. For me, it is a landscape with tremendous scope, and there is no type of story that can’t be written within its boundaries. Romance, mystery, thriller—these are being blended with the traditional imagery of the genre. So more than being a comfortable home, fantasy is the most natural fit for my particular creativity.

KP: Do you do a lot of traveling to promote your work, and do you generally find travel invigorating, or is it a tiring process and do you find it inspirational, or does it tend to interfere with your writing?

Anne: My Muse works better within the confines of routine, so I don’t do much traveling. Being somewhere new and visiting with people is fun and invigorating. The actual traveling is exhausting and usually requires a fair bit of recovery time.

KP: Next I'd like to ask a bit about your philosophy of writing. How do you see the role of the author, in general, and the fantasy author in specific?

Anne: The Storyteller holds up a mirror that shows us a reflection of the world. And in that reflection we are entertained by events and people that let us laugh, let us cry, let our hearts pound with excitement or fear, or let us look at emotional truths that would be hard to look upon in the world we live in. Stories are the soul’s bread. The Storytellers are the bakers.

KP: The rise of the Internet has redefined many author's lives, with the rapid access to research material and, at the same time, distractions. Do you find it has been a help or hindrance to your efforts?

Anne: E-mail and discussion groups available through the Internet have made it possible to be in contact with readers in ways that weren’t possible before. Having a website means readers can find out about new releases and read excerpts of a new book. But because there is so much information available, I reach overload a lot faster on the Internet than I do browsing through a few books, so I don’t spend much time online and rarely surf the net.

KP: Now I'd like to move on to your work. It's ten years now, since the first of the Black Jewels books was published. You continue to explore the world and its people, and I wonder if the world has always been complete as it is now, for you, or if there were things you've discovered about the world as you write that were not part of the original concept?

Anne: The culture was set by the time I started writing the first book, and that hasn’t changed. The Blood are the Blood. So the world doesn’t change, but I continue to learn new things about the people and their history.

KP: Your latest novel, Tangled Webs, is out this month. Is this a story that has always been at the back of your mind to tell, or did it come up more recently?

Anne: It’s a more recent idea—as in the past 2-3 years. I like reading mysteries, and I started wondering what it would be like to write a locked-room mystery. Then I pondered writing a getting-trapped-in-a-haunted-house mystery. Then I wondered, “What would happen if someone like Surreal got trapped in a haunted house?” From there I began to gather thoughts about how that could happen, and by the time I finished writing the Ephemera books, the idea had enough shape for me to start writing the story.

KP: Do you have any favorite characters in the Blood? Perhaps characters that are particularly difficult to do damage to in the stories?

Anne: As a group, it’s the SaDiablo family, but edging out the others just enough to be the favorite favorite is Daemon. Is it hard to write the scenes when one of them gets hurt? Oh, yes. Especially when the damage can’t be fixed.

KP: Have you noticed a clear favorite among your fans?

Anne: There are four that seem to have equal weight among fans: Daemon, Lucivar, Saetan, and Surreal. There is also a fair amount of interest in Karla.

KP: Surreal is front-and-center in Tangled Webs. She seems to strike a chord with a lot of people. Do you have any theories on why that is?

Anne: She’s a strong, scary woman with a lot of sass and attitude (not to mention sharp knives). She also cares about people, and she’ll put everything she is on the line if that’s what it takes to protect someone. And she has some vulnerable spots. That combination makes her a lot of fun in a story.

KP: Many writers find that they can't look at earlier work without wishing they could go back and do it over again. In light of your time spent preparing for the newer Black Jewels book, if you had to do the original series over again, would you change anything?

Anne: I would consider whether the life spans of the long-lived races should be quite that long. Other than that, I wouldn’t change anything about the world or the characters.

KP: The stories in Dreams Made Flesh fill out some important and interesting details for the original series. Are these stories you always hoped to tell, or have they grown out of readers' interest in the background?

Anne: The embryo for two of the stories—Lucivar and Marian’s courtship and Zuulaman—were part of the original trilogy and were stories I knew I would write one day. And I, like many readers, wanted to see Daemon and Jaenelle get married. Happily, I had the opportunity to write those stories.

KP: The Realms of the Blood are dark and dangerous, yet you manage to convey that without resorting to the prolific shock images that have become so prevalent in the entertainment industry. Do you have any comment on that?

Anne: Atmosphere and attitude. The darkness and the danger are inherent to the people and the place, so there is nothing that the Blood do that isn’t steeped in atmosphere and attitude. I’m not a fan of those shock images you mentioned, so I prefer to imply a lot or show the results of the violence rather than the violence itself. The exception is when not showing a graphic scene would cheat the story. While I don’t pull any punches when I do write that kind of scene, I also don’t see any reason to say more than is necessary.

KP: Do you have to do more books about the Blood in the future, or are there other projects drawing your attention?

Anne: I would like to go back and do more stories in the Ephemera and Tir Alainn worlds, but those stories are still gestating while the Blood are clamoring for attention. In fact, I just turned in another Black Jewels book, which goes back to the Realm of Terreille and has a connection with the characters from The Invisible Ring..

KP: Is there anything else you'd like to share with the readers?

Anne: The enthusiasm readers have felt for my work has been a wonderful experience. I hope I can continue to entertain people—and offer some emotional truths in the process—for a long time to come.

Interview - Walter Jon Williams Originally Posted At mcnallyrobinson.com

Interview - Walter Jon Williams by Kent Pollard - Thursday, Jul 17, 2008 at 9:39am


Walter Jon Williams has been successful for over twenty years in writing mostly hard science fiction while many of the genre's authors have turned to fantasy to satisfy readers. Part of that success has come from looking for places that no one else was writing, and finding, or creating a gap to fill. From his early cyberpunk-esque work Hardwired and the related novels, through the complex fantastic science-fiction of the Metropolitan series and the galaxy-spanning Dread Empire books, Walter's work has consistently asked us to look at how our philosophy shapes the world we live in. Nowhere is that more true than in his latest book Implied Spaces, new this month from Nightshade.

KP: Walter, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to chat with me. I'd like to leap right off the start to your newest book. Implied spaces reminds me very much of the feeling I got when I read Voice of the Whirlwind 20 years ago. Was there anything intentional in that, or is it simply a natural progression of interest?

WJW: I wasn't deliberately looking back to Voice, but I'm pleased you thought the books had the same feel. Voice is one of the books I'm most proud of.

That said, I'm not sure what Voice has in common with Implied Spaces; aside from the fact that they're both relatively short, at least as compared with my other books. Of course they're both by me, in which case I'm glad you stayed around as a reader!

KP: Implied Spaces is one of the most enjoyable post-singularity books I've read, and has attracted some nice comments from Vernor Vinge and Charles Stross, among others. It treats machine intelligence in an unbiased fashion, allowing machines to truly be their own intelligent life form, rather than being an emotionless stand-in for some ideal human. Did that attitude come quickly for you, or has it developed slowly over the years you've been writing?

WJW: I think it?s a logical development of the type of machine intelligence that I envisioned for the book. Given that the AIs in Implied Spaces were very large computing platforms with a high degree of autonomy, they would over time develop their own interests and a degree of personality. Given that they were hardwired to obey human commands and forbidden to harm humans, and given as well that humans had more or less "colonized" them and were living on and inside them, they would have evolved personalities that were capable of interacting with humans.

The character of Bitsy, the protagonist's companion, is a special case. In that case the AI suspects that Aristide has the keys to its freedom, and has evolved a personality meant to be pleasing to Aristide. The fact that Aristide is perfectly aware of this adds a sophisticated dimension to the relationship.

I also have to say that large, unknowable, incomprehensibly intelligent AI make poor characters in fiction. They're fine for sitting in the background--like God--but when you want your characters to interact with them, they should have more quirks than mere omniscience.

KP: Do you think that machine intelligence is close, and do you think that we will be ready to identify it when it emerges, or will it simply slip under the radar?

WJW: SF has a tendency to envision large general technological advances that have broad applications across the spectrum of human behavior. For instance, SF created the idea of humanoid robots that would be jacks-of-all-trades, and largely ignored the idea of specialty robots that only did one thing, be it weld auto frames, aid bomb disposal teams, or bake bread on kitchen table tops.

Likewise, our fiction tends toward giant non-specialized AI, a sort of AI-of-all-trades that can rationalize city planning, answer complex sociological questions, command the military, plot courses between the stars, and diagnose us when we're ill.

We?re ignoring the specialized AI that's already here, and that does a lot of these things already, just not everything at once.

KP: Implied Spaces, as with so many of your books, requires the protagonist to take a hard look at philosophy and how essential our philosophy is to the underpinnings of society. My personal feeling is that with few exceptions, genre authors have invested more energy in commercializing their fiction, robbing the genre of these chances for introspection. Do you have any opinion or comments on whether you think philosophy is given short shrift in most modern commercial fiction? Do you have any other, related, comments?

WJW: People write about what interests them. Philosophy has always been the interest of a minority.

That said, I'd like to point out that SF and fantasy are tailor-made for discussion of all the Big Questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? One of the reasons that Star Trek and Star Wars had such an impact on our culture is that they both openly embraced these issues.

If you ask a fictional character his purpose, and his answer is, "I'm here to entertain the reader," you really can't complain, but on the other hand you're entitled to lament a certain lack of scope.

KP: I'd like to move away from your work now, to you and what brought you to writing. When and why did you begin writing?

WJW: I've been compelled to write as long as I could remember. Before I could even read, I dictated stories to my parents, who wrote them down for me.

KP: Do you manage to make a living with your writing, or do you have to supplement that income? If so, what do you do for supplemental income?

WJW: As of January 1, 2009, I will have made my principal living from writing for 30 years. I've written fiction, I've done graphic novels, I've written for computer games, and I've done movies and TV. On occasion I've taught, but 99% of my living has been through fiction of one sort of another.

KP: Could you share a bit about the writing process, and how it works for you?

WJW: I'm a systematic writer, and I prefer to do a lot of planning ahead of time. Some of my projects--Aristoi is a good example--were in the planning stage for years before I ever wrote a line of the actual novel. It's not that I'm not open to surprises when I write, but that I very much prefer to know where the story is headed before I begin. It enables me to keep things in focus as I write.

In the case of the Dread Empire's Fall books, I knew the last sentence of the third book before I ever wrote the first sentence of Book One. That way, I was able to aim every piece of the work at that ending, and I'm pleased to say that the ending has a lot of impact as a result.

When I'm working on one project, I'm thinking about the next, or often the next half-dozen. I'm gathering material, trying out ideas, doing research, trying to fit things together. Because I work my way into the material intuitively, the process takes a fair amount of time, but it saves a lot of work in the end. I don't experience a lot of false starts, and I don't write a lot of superfluous material that later has to be discarded.

Writers who enter a work without a plan frustrate me, because it's usually obvious when they do it, and their books end up bloated and wandering. I've often thought that I've missed a career as an editor--I'd like to get out a cleaver and chop those 450-page monsters down to a nifty, neat 200 pages.

KP: Has writing always been fairly smooth for you, or are there particular aspects of the process that you find more difficult than others?

WJW: I always know the beginning before I start, and I know the end. The middle part is hazy, however, and that's usually where I run into trouble.

KP: Do you write to any sort of time or word-count schedule?

WJW: When my deadlines are severe I'll impose that kind of discipline on myself, but generally I don't care for it. I'm naturally a slow-but-steady sort of writer, and usually I enjoy writing, so I'd prefer not to have to be hard-nosed and just enjoy the process.

KP: Do you ever experience "writers' block" and if so do you have any favorite technique for getting past it?

WJW: I've only been blocked for a few days at the most. I've learned that when I'm blocked it's because I've taken a wrong path, and my subconscious mind is telling me so. So when I can't seem to progress, I know to knock off work and let my subconscious sort out the problem for me.

KP: Many genre writers feel restricted by the categorizations. Have you found the SF label restrictive, and are there specific actions you have taken to get around such restrictions?

WJW: What I'd prefer is for the chains to have a "Really Good Books" category, and then they could put my stuff there.

I haven't felt the constraints of the genre until relatively recently. SF sales fell dramatically in the 90s, and American publishers responded by becoming a lot more conservative in what they chose to publish. When I consider the kind of wild extrapolative explosions that happened in the field in the 60s and 80s, and compare that with what the major SF lines are doing now, I can't help but lament the wild flights of fancy that I know I'm missing, because nobody's putting them in print.

Fortunately the smaller presses are doing a pretty remarkable job of picking up the slack. Night Shade, for example, picked me up, which I can't help but think is a good thing.

KP: Could you share a few of the high points in your life that you feel have helped make you who you are, both personally and professionally?

WJW: Well, I got kicked out of grad school, which didn't seem like such a high point at the time, but it made me concentrate on writing, so it was positive in the end.

I never wanted to be one of those writers who spent his life staring at a wall, and who ends up knowing nothing but what he read in books--or, more latterly, online. I wanted to be engaged with existence. So I learned small-boat sailing, and took up scuba, and earned a fourth-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate. I try to take a trip abroad at least every other year.

And I'm married to a wonderful woman who puts up with all of this, and who likes travel as much as I do. I get to share a lot of the high points with someone else, and that is very nice indeed.

KP: Do you do much traveling to promote your work, and when you do, do you generally find that invigorating, or is it a tiring process?

WJW: My one and only signing tour was two days long, so I didn't have a lot of opportunity to get bored with it. Generally speaking, I envy all those writers who complain about the endless drudgery of their signing tours--at least their publisher is taking an interest.

I attend a few SF conventions every year, mostly to see my friends. Though I do signings, readings, and other promotional activities at cons, and though I live ever in hope, it has to be admitted that most con fans don't have a clue about who I am. Though I certainly have a readership, they don't seem to be the sort of people who turn up at signings and cons. Some day I'd like to meet them.

KP: You've taken a lot of risks with your career, pushing your writing in directions that are frequently untraveled by many other writers. Have you ever regretted the decision to generally avoid the more commercially accepted paths?

WJW: Shows you what I know! I've always thought my ideas were totally commercial! Of course I have a terrific imagination, possibly a better imagination than most publishing PR departments.

The one chance I thought I was taking was with Hardwired, which I figured would find an audience of about twelve people in a sweaty-walled underground jazz club in Prague or someplace. But then, before I finished the novel, Neuromancer appeared, and was a huge artistic and commercial success, some of which rubbed off on my work, and I was off and away.

KP: Do you manage to read very much yourself, and what are you reading now, for fun, and/or research?

WJW: I seem to have fewer and fewer opportunities for reading for pleasure. Most of what I read is research, or manuscripts for our local critique group, or a novel-of-the-moment that I feel obliged to read in the name of keeping up with the field, and which I usually want to edit with a hatchet.

Right now I'm reading Gore Vidal's Hollywood, one of his series of inter-nested historical novels that began with Burr. It's an absolute delight. One of the advantages of reading someone with such a lengthy career is that you can always find one of his books that you haven't read before.

Sort of like Jack Vance, now that I think about it.

KP: Are there any new authors that you have found particularly interesting?

WJW: I'm always wary of providing these kinds of lists, because there's always someone I inadvertently leave off who's going to get offended. So I'll confine myself to books I've read in manuscript.

Daniel Abraham's The Long Price Quartet is absolutely wonderful. The must-read fantasy series of the decade, if you want to know.

New writer Ian Tregillis has a terrific alternative-history series coming up called The Milkweed Triptych. Watch for it.

Melinda Snodgrass, who it must be admitted is not exactly a new writer, has a new series out beginning with The Edge of Reason. I believe it's been called The Left Behind series for rational people, which should intrigue you, I hope.

And S.M. Stirling, who is not new either, has a winner in Courts of the Crimson Kings. More fun than a barrel of meth-crazed monkeys.

KP: Is there anything else you'd like to share with the readers?

WJW: Because I keep reading books I want to edit with a hatchet, I started a writers' workshop which actually teaches plotting. No one else teaches this stuff, to my knowledge, because it's too freaking hard. ("Because they're idiots!" screams the Creature from the Id.)

Last year we had a wonderful time with Connie Willis teaching and a special appearance by George R.R. Martin, and this year we've got Kelly Link and Stephen R. Donaldson.

And we do it all in a lodge in the mountains above Taos, amid the aspen and ponderosa, with a mountain stream trickling by and occasional glimpses of deer, bighorn sheep, and bear.

And there's a hot tub. What more do you want?

Check it out at Taostoolbox.com.

Prix Aurora Awards for 2010

2010 Winners from the

Prix Aurora Awards website

BEST NOVEL IN ENGLISH:

• WAKE by Robert J. Sawyer, Penguin Canada

MEILLEUR ROMAN EN FRANÇAIS ( Best Novel In French):

• *Suprématie. Laurent McAllister, (Bragelonne)

BEST SHORT-FORM WORK IN ENGLISH:

• PAWNS DREAMING OF ROSES by Eileen Bell, Women of the Apocalypse. Absolute Xpress

MEILLEURE NOUVELLE EN FRANÇAIS ( Best Short-Form In French )

• Ors blancs Alain Bergeron, (Solaris 171)

BEST WORK IN ENGLISH (OTHER) :

• *WOMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (the Apocalyptic Four) Editor, Absolute Xpress

MEILLEUR OUVRAGE EN FRANÇAIS (AUTRE) / (Best Work In French (Other)):

• Revue. Joel Champetier, éditeur, Solaris

ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT :

• Dan O'Driscoll, Cover of Steel Whispers, Bundoran Press

FAN ACCOMPLISHMENT (Fanzine):

• Richard Graeme Cameron,.WCFSAZine

FAN ACCOMPLISHMENT (Organization) :

• David Hayman for organization Filk Hall of Fame

FAN ACCOMPLISHMENT (Other) :

• Ray Badgerow, Astronomy Lecture at USS Hudson Bay

Interview - Julie E. Czereneda

October was the tenth anniversary of my coming to work at McNally Robinson, and the 23rd anniversary of my becoming a bookseller at Saskatoon Bookstore in 1985. In celebration, I've been doing a number of interviews this year, culminating with an interview with Julie E. Czerneda.

Julie first came to my attention when Publishers' Weekly ran a story 7 years ago about Julie being one of the first authors to use Palm's new [then] software that allowed authors to sign their e-books. When I discovered that she was Canadian, I began to stalk her online, regailing her (and the hundred or so other active members of her newsgroup) with an assortment of bad witicisms and worse haiku.

Apparently, stalking pays off, since Julie (while wearing her other hat as Editor-of-Anthologies later purchased my first professional sale Uncle Ernie was a Goat, for her Fantastic Companions anthology. While I have, to date, failed to turn that and the subsequent short story sale into the lucrative-career-to-rival-that-of-Stephen-King to which I aspire, it has never-the-less provided me with much consolation during my onging mid-life crisis.

The following interview is set to appear on mcnallyrobinson.com around November 16-20. for those who don't want to wait any longer, here it is:

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It's difficult to discuss Canadian science fiction these days without referencing Julie E. Czereneda. From her home in Orillia, Ontario, Julie has turned out success after success, first in nonfiction, where she has an amazing string of science related texts, and more recently, in science fiction, where her carefully researched and lovingly detailed aliens, and alien worlds, has earned her a solid place in the hearts of traditional science fiction fans world wide. Julie's first novel appeared a little over ten years ago, when A Thousand Words for Stranger marked the beginning of the Trade Pact Universe. September of 2008 featured the publication of a new book in the same universe, Riders of the Storm, the second in a new trilogy which reveals some of the history of the alien clan, first met in the Trade pact stories, ten years ago. I'm pleased that Julie made time in her busy writing schedule to answer a few questions for us.

KP: Julie, thanks for agreeing to chat with me. I wonder if you could start by sharing a few of the high points in your life that you feel have helped make you who you are, both personally and professionally?

JEC: Hi Kent. My pleasure.

Interesting question. I have to pick?

Personally ... those would have to be cumulative small things. I can't isolate this or that moment. We moved frequently when I was a child and our summer holidays were always a car trip from Nova Scotia to Winnipeg, via Niagara Falls, to visit family. Maybe that's why I'm restless. I'm curious about living things. My parents indulged my desire to "bring it home" as long as I can remember. I love reading and words. I was indulged there too. I believe the best in others. There was never a locked door or anyone turned away from our home. Okay, maybe I could list the incredible highs of marrying my best friend, Roger, and our raising two wonderful children together. But I was who I am by the time I was ten. The rest is all living that way.

Professionally ... I've been a voracious learner all my life, so I was one of those people who loved school of any kind. I'd be there now if I had time. I leap into new things, sometimes without looking too closely, but everything I do teaches me. I suppose a high point was when I wrote a sample for a textbook publisher and was invited the next day to write several chapters, though I had no idea then what it would entail. I worked my way through all the various levels of publishing, from warehouse stocking to art direction. I was curious and they indulged me. Another high point -- definitely when I discovered conventions and kindred spirits. Okay, and the best, when Sheila Gilbert [kp: Senior editor at DAW books] called me to buy A Thousand Words for Stranger. That was incredible. And the day someone had me sign their copy, though it had fallen in the bathtub. I was in a bathtub! That's book love.

KP: Do you recall what got you interested in sf and fantasy?

JEC: The "N" shelf of Owenwood Public School's library. It was the highest I could reach, and I was reading everything on it in order. I came to Star Rangers by Andre Norton. (It was reprinted later as The Last Planet.) Wow. I hadn't noticed there was "science fiction" as a kind of story until that moment. It was everything I'd been missing. Other kinds of stories left me restless, you see. And curious. I hold the record at the local town library for the number of times I reread everything in their SF/F section. That was back when you wrote your name on the card, so the proof's still there someplace.

KP: I believe you did a significant volume of non-fiction writing before you turned to science fiction. Was it always in the back of your mind to write nonfiction, or was it a bit of a surprise to you when you started?

JEC: My reaction at the time was "you mean real people write that stuff?" A friend and classmate of ours had become a teacher. He was approached by a textbook publisher looking for writers and gave them my name -- I wrote stories, didn't I? Not expecting much but being between jobs while I looked after the babies, I wrote a sample. The next day, they contracted me to write as many chapters as I wanted. A job I could do at home that used my brain? It was terrific. I kept doing that from 1985 through to 1999, some two hundred books or so. There was a bonus -- our kids grew up knowing textbooks were written by real people. They even used mine.

KP: Your books are solidly filled with your background in science. Do you still do a lot of research for your writing, or is it more of an internal process now?

JEC: Thanks! I do try. It's both, in fact. Everything I've learned finds its way in, of course, and I'm constantly learning. I keep aware in a general sense, but happily dive into more detailed research if something twigs my fancy. Plus there's always something to look up even after the writing starts. For REAP and RIDERS, I researched Romanian rural gardens, decay at high altitudes, multi-dimensional physics, bridge construction, social insects (always fun), language and literacy, dyes from plant sources, and will likely need some time on bug sex.

KP: What are you reading now, for research and/or for fun?

JEC: One and the same! But I know what you mean. Hmm. While I'm writing, I don't read as much. But I just finished a couple. The Future of Life by E. O. Wilson. A book about Darwin's life (fascinating and very much like that of a writer today). I recently read Lois Bujold's Sharing Knife books (enjoyed) and Hidden Steel by Doranna Durgin (wonderful fun). I've the latest McKillip on my reward shelf, along with Adrienne Kress's first novel, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. I did reread Riders of the Storm and quite enjoyed it. That's a rare thing -- taking time to reread my own stuff in print.

KP: Are there any new authors that you have found particularly interesting?

JEC: I'm eagerly anticipating Lesley Livingstone's first novel. Like you ::watches Kent blush:: I had the pleasure of buying her first short story for my anthology Misspelled. I've read other of her works and she's amazing. Otherwise, I haven't been reading— the aforementioned writing takes its toll.

KP: Do you care to comment at all about the process of setting up Star Ink Books?

JEC: Sure. That would be one of those moments when I leapt without perhaps looking as closely as I should have. Sharon Fitzhenry was extraordinarily kind to offer me an imprint of my own, like the one run by Robert J. Sawyer, with her company, Fitzhenry & Whiteside. FW makes wonderful books and I'd worked with them for a while on the Tales from the Wonder Zone and Realms of Wonder anthologies. The problem was timing. Aware of that, I worked out a schedule and began projects that would let me publish the required titles for the first year, while staying sane enough to complete my own work. The first was the anthology Polaris: A Celebration of Polar Science, which won the Science Writer's Association of Canada's award for Science in Society writing (Youth). Next up was a reprint of superb quality of one of my favourite books, Dun Lady's Jess by Doranna Durgin. Those came out very well. However the amount of time they required from me was far more than I had to spare and, as it turned out, F/W didn't want the other projects I had lined up that year, putting me in the position of hunting manuscripts. Under other circumstances, that would be no hardship at all, but I was fully committed to contracted novels for DAW and realized I couldn't possibly give the imprint the time it deserved. Once Jess was printed, I ended my arrangement with Sharon most amicably. My family really enjoyed seeing the name in the books, though. Starink was my maiden name.

JEC: I think many of your readers would like to know a bit more about the writing process, and how it works for you. Has writing always been fairly smooth for you, or are there particular aspects of the process that you find more difficult than others? Has that changed over time?

KP: Fairly smooth, but there's the Plod and the EEK! to overcome. "Plod" is, for me, the first 35 000 words of a novel. Sometimes less, but it's gone for sure after I hit that point. It's like a critical mass of story I need to get behind me before I'm fully in charge and roaring along. You know, the part where I need to explain what happened previously (for a sequel), introduce characters, describe things, basically get everything in place before the fun starts. Make up names. Work out technology. I'm getting better at it. One trick I learned with Reap was to collect names beforehand. That way, when my character walked into a roomful of people, I had names ready to use. It was very helpful. And not a bad way to use up spam.

JEC: The EEK! is what every writer lives with. There's the fear of sounding like an idiot. There's the fear of losing the next few months of life to a novel. There's fear of Plod and computer crashes and Real Life intrusion. Some is useful stimulation; some is not. I deal with EEK! in various ways, to varied success. I ignore it. I pat myself on the back for trying. I check my shelf to see that yes, I did it once before. Sometimes, I just walk away and do something else for a while, ideally with sweat involved. Experience (and being a mom) has taught me a certain patience with myself. Things do look better after a good night's sleep. Then the phone rings. EEK!

KP: Do you write to any sort of time or word-count schedule?

JEC: No. I make tight deadlines for myself so I pretty well write as much as possible every day I can till it's done. It works better for me to be immersed. (With reasonable EEK!) In terms of proofing, revising, etc., the novel-closest-to-print takes priority and I do those tasks as promptly as I can. In between I laze around.

KP: Do you ever experience "writers' block" and if so do you have any favourite technique for getting past it?

JEC: No. I have tricks to be more efficient, to start faster and work longer. I exercise before I write. That's vital. I do my utmost to forget the rest of the world, to become thoroughly self-centered and calm. That occasionally requires percussion and the subwoofer. But if I've a chance to be writing, I'm writing.

KP: Many genre writers feel restricted by the categorizations. Have you found the SF label restrictive, and are there specific actions you have taken to get around such restrictions?

JEC: No. (Egad, you must think me negative by this point. I'm really not. Oops.) I love the SF label. It's the least restrictive thing imaginable. I'm madly proud of it. Look! ME!!! I write this glorious STUFF! Plus, that way I know I've readers who will get what I'm doing. SF READERS ROCK! We will, I'm quite sure, save the world.

KP: You do a great deal of traveling to promote your work. Do you generally find that invigorating, or is it a tiring process?

JEC: I love it. I love new places, I love meeting people, and I come back so refreshed and stimulated I usually jump back into writing on the way home. I'm thoroughly grateful to all the conventions and other organizations who pay my way and try to deserve their kindness.

KP: Do you feel that being Canadian has contributed anything specific to your writing?

JEC: A preponderance of 'u's'? Just kidding. I take those out before sending it to my publisher in New York.

Everything about a writer contributes to their work. Being Canadian is integral to mine. Check out the winter storms in Riders! The hockey. The names. (I have our astronauts.) The complications and compromises. The bizarre interplay of manners that allow cultures to explore one another without eating one another. I'm proud of us and I'm certain that shows. Don't get me started on the landscapes and living things here ... I had such pleasure extolling those in Survival, Migration, and Regeneration.

KP: You've been incredibly encouraging of genre writers toward other would-be authors, from editing a number of anthologies yourself, to an amazing online presence in your active newsgroup at sff.net. Is that gregariousness simply a part of who you are, or does it require an effort to carry on such a large number of relatively close relationships?

JEC: Thank you. It's who I am, I suspect. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people sparkle. Doesn't matter why or how. Imagine my joy when they let me volunteer throughout the years our kids were in school! What could be better than introducing children to fungi? They're still running the natural history walks I started for them. When I entered the publishing world, that didn't change. (The fungi, though less frequent, made their appearance. Chapter 3.) It's all about creative people, working to crazed schedules, trying to make something new. You have to depend on one another and help wherever you can. I remember making changes to film at midnight, with the publisher and senior editors. There may have been wine.

Genre writers as a whole have this wonderful pay-it-forward ethic. When I entered the fray of the hopeful, there were hands held out to me immediately and I remain utterly grateful. There was never a question in my mind that I should do the same.

But it's not, to me, just about paying back those who helped me. It's about sparkle. Seeing a new writer catch fire, seeing people believe in their passions.

Nothing makes me happier.

KP: If I have it correctly, you were pretty solidly and successfully established in the academic science field when you sold your first novel. Does that remain the case, or do you find that the bulk of your activities are now connected to your fiction?

JEC: I was. In fact, to switch full time to fiction meant quitting my job as senior science editor for a major publisher, with an instant 80% plunge in income. The family agreed to trim back but we all knew it was a risk. I had to write enough -- and write well enough -- to make fiction pay. Not to mention love it once I was writing that much. Modesty aside, I'm an excellent non-fiction writer, but it was always work. Writing stories -- isn't work at all.

JEC: The presentations and workshops I do on scientific literacy and science fiction satisfy my itch to do non-fiction nicely. Every so often I'm asked to do a little something for a book. If it looks fun, I say yes. Most recently I did features on SF film and biotechnology for a college text, and cute little interest boxes for an intro to science book.

KP: Do you intend to keep doing more academic titles, like the "No Limits/ Packing Fractions" resource?

JEC: For years, I've wanted -- badly -- to do an updated version of No Limits. I've been collecting all the materials I've produced while consulting for Science News for Kids, as well as my workshops. We'll see. No Limits is still in print and I'm proud of it. There's a need for the approach and resources. Maybe one day.

KP: Now I'd like to move on to your recent and future work. Your latest novel, Riders of the Storm arrived in September. This is the second in the precursor works about the early clans from the Trade Pact stories. Have you found revisiting the history of something already published to be difficult?

JEC: Yes. (Aha!)

It was difficult in several ways, one of which I hadn't expected. There was the responsibility I felt to the readers who loved the existing books. Nothing I wrote should diminish that pleasure. I hate it when that happens as I read something new about characters I enjoy. There was my own love to consider. I wanted to do justice to the characters for myself too. Then, there was the research -- I had to know everything I'd already written, to be sure it all flowed seamlessly from prequel to finale.

What I hadn't expected was how difficult it would be to write in the same voice as Thousand. That was a long time ago in a galaxy ... well, you can imagine. Part of me resisted mightily. After all, wasn't I a better writer ... hadn't I improved? Part of me wondered if I could find that flavour again, because I liked the flow and lightness of it. It took about four months of hard work to finally be confident I had the voice. I'm still working on the seamless flow part. Will readers like what I've done with *their* story and characters? I hope so.

KP: Have you learned things about the universe that make you wish you could revisit the original books?

JEC: No. (You knew that was coming.) I'm very much a "that's done, move on" writer. Probably all that time writing/editing non-fiction. Plus one of the challenges of writing new material to fit was dealing with all the funky stuff I'd tossed in -- mostly in Thousand since by To Trade the Stars I knew I was going to do the prequels etc. Things like having Sira and her sister refer to "Ossirus" are inconvenient in that I have to figure out why/how that would come about -- but when I do (yes, still working on that one) I know I'll be ridiculously satisfied.

KP: When can your readers look forward to the Reunification Clan finale?

JEC: 2010? What I can tell you is that I'll write all three in sequence, as I have "Stratification" so there won't be unnecessary delay between them. Otherwise ... I've been waiting to write my first fantasy novel for a very long time, so that comes first. Of course, Rift in the Sky, the final book of "Stratification," will be out in the meantime. July 09, in fact.

KP: When can readers expect to see your fantasy novel?

JEC: [Waves her hands nebulously about her] In the future. First I have to write it, and 2009 is my big year for travel so that will delay things. Second, DAW will need longer than usual to produce it. Why? No one knows me as a fantasy author. They'll want more time with the finished book in hand to solicit reviews, pitch to other and larger markets, all that good stuff. No guarantees, of course. It's a risk for them. My part is to do my best and have a good time, and I will. Everything else will depend on what others think of it. It's scary being new again, in a nice way.

KP: Is there anything else you'd like to share with the readers?

JEC: My appreciation. My bookmarks (we've made a nice one for Riders of the Storm and I'd be happy to autograph and mail one to whomever asks).

And my joy. This is a wonderful time to be a writer. There are great stories being told -- and still to tell. There are fabulous new voices arriving every day. As a profession, we are a model for mutual support -- in practical ways, too, for what writer isn't a reader? More than this, though. Story is how we communicate fundamental ideas to one another. In a world increasingly complex and challenging, our kind of stories have a vital role to play. Having fun too is definitely a bonus.

My thanks, Kent, to you and McNally-Robinson for this chance to talk to you and to readers. I'd better get back to writing now. Time flies!

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Julie E. Czereneda maintains a strong online presence where she encourages writers and would-be-writers. You can find out more about her through her website, (where you can find out about the latest in her writing or life and email her to request a bookmark), and through her active newsgroup/forum at sff.net.

Taking Healthcare for Granted - Part II - Operation Mexico

As I wrote earlier on the blog at my employer's site (Taking Healthcare for Granted Part I) many of us, myself included, fail to appreciate the horror of uninsured life in a country without universal health care. That hit me in the face again recently, when Stephen K. Brust (the subject of the earlier article) and a couple of his friends began blogging about a trip to Mexico for a hernia operation.

On the Words, Words, Words Dream Cafe web log, author Stephen K. Brust and his friends write about his trip to Mexico for a hernia operation. As an uninsured American, the operation would be $30,000 at home, while he can have the work done in Mexico for $3,000, a mere 10% of the U.S. cost.

While he and they make light of the trip, how many of us would tremble at the idea of having, even a simple, surgery done in Mexico in order to save $27,000 because we can't afford to have it done at home?

Canadians take universal health care seriously, as indicated by the differing view points and money and energy that we have put into studying and improving it. Whether it is the more socialized version of health care, as outlined by the Romanow report Building on Values: The Future of Healthcare (PDF linked to title) which was prepared at the behest of the Canadian Government a few years ago, or the more conservative approach of medical savings accounts as proposed by Canadian expatriate Dr. David Gratzer in his book Code Blue: Reviving Canada's health.

A couple of years ago the husband of one of our booksellers was not able to get a hernia operation here in Saskatoon, because the doctor he was seeing didn't have hospital privileges. This individual waited six months then drove about 2 hours to a hospital in a small town to get the surgery done.

While such examples are typical of the health care horror stories we use to make fun of the failings in the Canadian system, they pale in the face of driving to another country, and not one we would consider synonymous with high-grade health care, because we can't afford to have the surgery done in our own country.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.... (or "When is that book coming?"

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time

Macbeth -- William Shakespeare

Shakespeare had something completely different in mind when he wrote the above, but it nicely fits the feeling of readers when their favourite author's new book is delayed. I found myself wondering recently, just who it is that suffers the most when a book doesn't arrive as expected.

The question came to me regarding Walter Jon Williams, whose brilliant new title Implied Spaces (I'm allowed to say that, being fortunate enough to have read an advance copy for review) has been delayed due to press problems. I was also fortunate enough to conduct an interview with Walter at the end of March. Lately, I'd been starting to feel a bit of frustration, having spent some time preparing the interview and now having to make decisions about running it when the book isn't available, or delaying it until we can be sure the books will be here. It occurred to me that my problems were nowhere near the top of the chain. There are all kinds of people who have been inconvenienced by the delay, and my worries about when to put an interview online are pretty near the bottom of the list. In no particular order, here are some of the things that occurred to me:

• Publisher: has prepared catalogues, hopefully generated some press releases, contacted various bibliographic agencies and large booksellers in order to make sure the information is available to any fans looking for the book.
• Author: May have done his own publicity, certainly has contacted a number of his regular readers and has possibly spent time and energy doing an interview with a keen bookseller. More importantly, probably has rent due at the end of the month which depends not only on this new book, but on increased sales of his earlier books that may rise out of renewed interest. In addition, many contracts specify that part of the author's advance is due "on publication", so a large chunk will be held back until the book ships to stores.
  
• Booksellers: Having planned to devote a display, interview, review space, are now forced to use non-relevant materials (since they don't have books to sell) or fill in the space with something else they hadn't planned, and hope they can find a place for their pet project later.
• Fans: While fans may not suffer extensively, they still experience a bit of perfectly reasonable disappointment when a promised title they've been looking forward to fails to materialize.

In the case of Walter Jon Williams, and Implied Spaces, we can hope the delay is minor, a few months of extra anticipation (current bibliographic information indicates publication has been pushed from April to July). Imagine the poor fan who is waiting for the next mammoth book in a series and it is a year late, or two, or more. In this case, hopefully the delay is not long enough for stores to return his earlier titles which they'd ordered in anticipation of interest around the new book. Hopefully it won't even spill over into delaying royalties sufficient to cause the author financial stress a few months down the line. Hopefully the publisher didn't have to assume a large cost over the press problems that causes them financial distress. At best, such issues could cause them to think twice when the author's next book is ready; at the worst, small publishers have collapsed over similar problems, leading to the author never receiving any royalties, along with other suppliers and authors.

At the end of the day, it's essential for all of us to remember that books are a partnership, not just between authors and publishers, but also between them and the booksellers and readers. Without readers, the book industry has no significance. On behalf of authors, publishers and booksellers everywhere, we appreciate your patience.

Launch results

If you missed it, I like to think I'm a writer. As of this writing, I have sold two short stories to professional markets, and have several others complete or nearly complete, with 3 novels in various stages of research/completion.

On April 1st, 2008, the second anthology which contains one of my stories released. The April 1st release date was no coincidence. Misspelled is a collection of 14 short stories about "spelling errors". Specifically, magic going wrong, or in an unexpected way do to a mistake on the caster's part. My contribution was A Perfect Circle, a story of assumptions, philosophy, and magical failure because of a spelling error in the original.

That night, I did a launch reading in the restaurant of McNally Robinson Booksellers, the store where I have my real job. It was well attended (About 40-50 people showed up specifically for the event, and there were another 20-30 in the restaurant I can't be sure of since I didn't recognize them.), and the reading was well received. I'm going to reproduce below most of what I said that night.

Penguin Canada, who distribute for DAW, had provided money for ads in the local paper and some for handing out cookies (Perfect Circles) and coffee and punch. I spoke/read for about 25 minutes, then chatted and signed for another hour. We sold 34 copies of "Misspelled" during the event.

Below is the prepared content for my speaking, including about 700 words from an abandoned (for now) novel. What is below was followed by 2100 words from A Perfect Circle I won't quote that, since it's a bit big for publishing in a public forum. If anyone is not able to get the anthology and would like to see it, I can email you the chunk privately, just let me know.

It should be noted that in the parts where I talk about things, rather than reading the story material, I actually diverged quite significantly from what is written here:

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Good evening. I want to thank everybody for taking the time to come and listen. It's not often people voluntarily come to listen to me talk. At least, not those who know me. Usually I have to trap them in a corner.

If you need to look at your watch, I forgive you in advance. Every time I tried to make this shorter, it got a bit longer and now it is probably a bit over 25 minutes.

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I'm here to introduce to you all my short story A Perfect Circle from the Misspelled anthology. Before I get to that, since I can't read you the entire story and still sell books, I want to set the mood a bit by reading something else. But, before I do that, I want thank a couple of people and I'll start that by explaining part of why I'm thanking here.

While it might not be intuitive, short fiction represents an entirely different kind of world from novels. In a lot of ways, it is easier. Because we are working in a restricted space, we are allowed to cut a few corners, leave a few things unexplained or less than perfectly defined. The plot has to be fairly straight forward and the cast, limited, so there is less for the us to track and sub plots are essentially non-existent. When the story is part of an anthology with a number of other authors, we are allowed to rely on the fact that the reader is expecting something in particular. In this case, the reader is expecting a story that involves magic that has gone awry. I can count on the reader knowing that this is a fantasy setting, that my world will violate some of the laws of the universe we live in, and that they need to watch for a mistake.

Despite those advantages, short fiction imposes a lot of restrictions that cause many authors to avoid them like the plague. We have fewer words to develop a sense of place for the characters and to develop the characters themselves. Each chosen word becomes more important for its economy of ideas. We are permitted no preface, to discuss and set up the concept and its origins. And, to get to the point, from a social point of view we aren't granted the same freedom to acknowledge those who have contributed to the final result. No acknowledgement, to bring in all the people who help make our writing what it is.

Reading in public is one of the few opportunities we are given to correct that deficiency in a public fashion, so that's what I'm about to do. When I launched my previous story, "Uncle Ernie was a Goat" I was able to acknowledge some of the people who have contributed to making me the person I am, to shaping me into the writer I am today. I think that bears repeating, since it is a core part of who I am. My wife, Victoria, who inspires me every day with smiles in the face of adversity and Pat Derbowka and Rene Baxter the two teachers who I feel exerted the greatest positive influence on my youth. In the case of "Uncle Ernie...", there was less specific input. Because I wrote it quickly and didn't really show it to anyone before submitting it, I had no specific people to thank for its creation. In the case of "A Perfect Circle,"however, I asked a number of people to look at the story before it went out. So, besides the general people who make every day a little bit easier, I'd like to thank a few people who specifically contributed to helping me make the story what it is. My co-workers Kim and Jon, who read the story before anyone but Victoria had seen it, (and who both asked a few questions that needed to be asked) and the members of my regular Saturday night gaming crew, Al, Sue, Doug, Lorne, and in particular, Gary Gregor who suggested a change that became instrumental, not only in the final layout of the story, but in its very title. So tonight I'm giving him a special thanks for his input.

To set the mood for A Perfect Circle" I'm going to read a piece of trash:

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From the incomplete novel Blood Wall

(As a bit of background to what I'm reading here, if we had approached this from another angle, we would already know that we are looking at Ash, a slender, pale not-quite-human male who has been alive for at least 1500 years in a world completely unlike ours. Our last site of Ash was as an eager, thoughtful young man, serving as apprentice to Saermund, a highly principled wizard who sacrificed much of his adult life to a potent spell in the distant past, in order that he would be able to help when a great evil returned in what was his future. Now, hundreds of years later, we see Ash standing on a platform at the top of a hill, behind another man, his left hand gripping the other tightly by the hair, his right holding a long dagger that is covered with fresh blood. The man he holds is heavily sedated and offers no resistance.)

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Bone weary. There was no other way to adequately describe what Ash was feeling. For nearly ten years he had laboured at this spell every full moon. There was nowhere left in his compound that he could go to escape the stench of death. Thousands of sacrifices spread over interminable years had left him numb. He glanced at the red dagger in his hand and wondered, again, for just a moment, about simply stopping.

As he paused, he noticed his assistant was looking at him with confusion. Ash shook his head wearily and continued. Fifteen centuries of fighting had built an inertia of purpose he couldn't overcome—not even to save his sanity.

He knew he was becoming emotional of late. He'd long since lost the detached sense of purpose he’d begun with. Every new death cut into him like the knife that caused it. He’d once expected it to be the other way and, to a degree, it had—in the beginning. The second hundred deaths had been far easier than the first hundred, or even the first one, and the second thousand easier yet. Now though—the ghosts he’d made crowded his every thought, their cries gnawing at his sleep, the stench of their cast off bodies filling his mind at every waking moment. A numbness filled his body with lead as he struggled to raise his dripping knife. As he braced to pull the razor knife through the next throat in line, moisture welled in his eyes.

He steeled himself and suppressed the forming tears. With a precision born of years of practical experience, the knife sliced cleanly. The sacrifice, fastidiously positioned in life, in death obligingly fell forward to join the other corpses as part the loathsome pile on the ground below. Ash was proud that not a drop of its blood touched him as it died or fell. If he'd learned little else in ten years, he'd become very good at avoiding the blood. The words of the spell followed without conscious thought. He didn’t think it would be possible to kill without the words anymore. Nearly ten thousand times he’d repeated the ritual and he could hardly stop now.

The next sacrifice was placed in front of him and up came the knife again. Slice--Drop--Speak. A drop of blood on his sleeve caught his attention and irritation spiked at his carelessness but was quickly suppressed. Slice-- Drop--Speak. Slice--Drop--Speak. He was an automaton of death carrying out its program.

Moments later, when no new sacrifice appeared he stared stupidly at his assistant Gaernon.

“That’s all m’lord. You are done until next moon.” The man took him gently by the shoulder and steered him into the hall. “Time for a rest before supper”

Relief was the one pleasant emotion left to him. It washed over him like an orgasm, leaving him tingling and drained. It took a conscious effort to release the dagger from his tense grip. It slipped from his long pale fingers and clattered to the platform as he reached up to rub the death smell from his nose. It was a compulsion now, every moon he rubbed, every day he failed to remove the smell.

As he followed Gaernon back into the hall, the perfume of hundreds of cut flowers assaulted them, but could not drive the corruption out. Completely docile, he was lead to his sleeping chamber and put onto his bed. Four women came forward and began to rub his body with scented oils, straining themselves to relax his taught muscles and distract him from his pain. Though he wanted to be interested in them it was beyond him. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt, after all these years, Gaernon still put so much work into finding and training them. The feeling passed quickly. As fair and pleasing as they were, he just couldn’t be interested any more. And if he had any guilt left to feel, it had a more painful target

As his consciousness slipped downward to the cruelty of nightmare laced sleep, his angry thoughts drifted outward “Where are you Saermund? I know you are out there, watching. Where are you hiding? When will you finally make your move?” As he felt the beginning of the blackness, his thoughts focused for a whisper. “At least the stench hasn’t reached my dreams.”

------

It doesn't, I hope, seem like garbage, yet it is. I wrote nearly 15,000 words on the book it comes from, before deciding it was unpublishable, worse, not worth having published. It reflected a number of essential errors that new writers make, and simply didn't have a good reason for existing. It proved valuable, though, by teaching me some things about myself and my skills. Aside from valuing it for that, I think it provides a good backdrop for talking about today's launch.

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So, underneath my story, lies two ideas. Perfection and Evil.

Of Perfection, one of my favourite descriptions was delivered by Antoine de St-Exupery when he wrote

“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

Regarding Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote:

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

Perfect. It doesn't seem like a tricky word. Something much desired yet rarely found. Wouldn't it be nice....to live in a perfect world?

In a perfect world, I would have a perfect life, the perfect job or hobby or whatever other entirely unnecessary way I choose to occupy my perfect time. It wouldn't be writing. Writing is about a few things, none of which are necessary in a perfect world. No need to record facts, everyone is perfect and comes into the world knowing everything they need or want to know, and they never forget it. No need to spread new information for the same reason. No need for fiction, what point fiction in a world where everyone is already right, and understands the far reaching consequences of their every action without prior thought? Everyone already knows why they do things, why things are the way they are. Perfection precludes disharmony, pain, fear, anxiety, errors. In a perfect world everyone is, well, perfect.

But can we, or more importantly, should we, achieve perfection? If Mozart creates the perfect composition, then what need have we for Mendelssohn or Madonna. If the Sistine chapel is perfect, is there any need for Monet to pick up a brush?

The struggle to get closer to heaven is one of the key characteristics that separate us from the rest of life on earth. It is humanity's nature to prove that we are worthy of perfection. It isn't so clear whether we know when we have come as close as we ought in a particular endeavour.

We have reached a point where we create entire universes for our own education and entertainment. In our efforts to make those universes mimic reality as close as we may, we strive for perfection in those creations. A perfect simulation of defeating evil (which certainly seems a noble cause) requires the perfect simulation of evil.

If, as an Egyptian proverb holds, “a beautiful thing is never perfect,” then what IS perfection? And can we create the exemplification of evil, in order to defeat it, without doing evil at the same time?

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I'm going to read now from the beginning of "A Perfect Circle. I'll trim a few paragraphs, to keep as close as I can to the twenty-five minutes I promised, so there might be some gaps in what I read here. And I definitely won't be reading the whole story, so you'll still have to read it to find out how it ends.

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[2100 word excerpt from "A Perfect Circle"]

Writerly Beginnings and Humility

(First written for posintg to Julie E Czerneda's newsgroup on sff.net, August 11, 2007)

I'm spending the weekend cleaning up some of the 116 boxes of stuff that I stored at a friends after our flood in June. Clamped into a three ring binder I found some writing from the summer I turned 12. It was the first time I wrote something because I wanted to, for myself, and was during summer vacation, barely a month after I turned twelve (roughly 32 years ago this month). If I recall correctly, it was partially inspired by visiting my closest cousin in age, Lisa, over vacation and partly by having watched a James Bond movie that week. At this writing, despite it being 1975, I had never heard of Star Trek. As will be apparent from the piece, my reading to then was primarily kids adventure/mystery, (Hardy Boys, Enid Blyton and the like) with a fair chunk of mythology thrown in. A month later I got into grade 7, and gained entry to the junior-high portion of the school library. Within days I discovered “Tomorrow's Children” and anthology of science fiction edited by Isaac Asimov. I never looked back.

Here, then, the first writing I ever did out of my own desire. I'm not doing any touch up, other than the fact that the original only had three apparent paragraph breaks (though it's hard to tell since it is written on a 3 inch wide notepad). I'm even leaving the grammar and punctuation flaws as they appear on the original. If you find it painful to read, you can begin to imagine how I feel to expose it to the light.

---
The small car pulled off the gravel road into the shade of a group of trees. In the dim light 2 figures got out of the car and walked over to a large evergreen at the side. One of the two reached up into the tree and a click could be heard. The figure peeled back a section of the bark disclosing a dimly lit panel of buttons. Adept fingers punched in a series of keys then waited.

“I.D” said a softly whispered voice from within the tree.

“627” said the first figure in a female voice, placing her thumb against a small square of glass on the panel.

The glassy square glowed briefly then darkened. “Confirmed” came the voice from the tree again. The woman returned to the car and the other figure stepped up and entered a series of numbers.

“ID?”

“624” a man's voice this time. Again the process was repeated and the man returned to the car. After a moments delay, a humming became audible and the car dropped slowly out of sight. After dropping about (30 or 80) feet, the platform stopped and the drove into a small concrete tunnel. As they left the platform it began rising behind them, smoothly pluging the gaping hole.

The small foreign car slid smoothly (Hey! cool, I didn't even know what alliteration was at this point) forward into the tunnell and around the corner into an underground parking lot. “Hey! great Lee's here” (my favourite, and several years older, cousin) said the man, “I hope theres time to talk to him.”

After parking the car the two walked over to a steel Door and entered a small cubicle. (This would be where “Get Smart”'s influence appears.) Again the womman went first, standing on a square steel plate and facing a small video screen. Out of nowhere came a voice. “Weight 68 kilos height 187 cm Confirmed,” (woe unto the agent who gains weight while out on assignment.) A beam of light shot into her eyes “retinal match 99.985% confirmed ID 627 Confirmed”.

Now the man stepped forward “Weight 72 Kilos height 185cm. retinal scan 99.992% confirmed ID 624 Confirmed. you may both enter.”
Whith (sigh, 32 years later and sometimes I still put an “h” in “with” when I'm writing quickly.) a series of clicks and whirs a heavy steel door opened on the other side of the room. As the 2 strolled down the long hallway they Held a whispered conversation.

“You know uncle Vern Ken. The girl said.

“Ya.
---

I know there was more than this, but I apparently no longer have the rest.

Kent

A book, a branch, and 610.5 pounds of ice later...

(First written for Julie E. Czerneda's Newsgroup on sff.net, July 21, 2007)

....Harry Potter is essentially behind us. OK, it wasn't so much a branch as 40-50 artificial trees and plants of assorted stripe.

First off, it was primarily a success because of volunteers. People who haven't worked at the store for 5 years, along with their children, came to make it work. Harry Potter nights have never been technically profitable for us as we sell the books at a steep discount to keep up, then spend thousands of dollars hosting a party. Without those volunteers, it would have been a far less exciting affair, and far more chaotic.

We estimate that 3500 people wen t through the store last night between 10:00pm and 1:30am. Others merely came by the tent outside to pick up their copy of the book and slipped away, but there was no way to quantify the overlap.

We had some power issues in the tents, none of which proved overwhelming. I heard no complaints, so assume that it went well.

The big hit (other than the book itself) was the Haunted Forest on the second floor, with about 150' of narrow twisty paths between cloth covered shelves and an assortment of artificial Christmas trees, cedars, ivys, ferns, potted palms and few things even I didn't recognize. Partway along that path, the kids got a good look at a brilliantly executed Tom Riddle's tomb, created by the grace of our extremely artsy (and crafty!) children's manager Ann Pisio. (I can't recall if I mentioned that I interviewed for the position, but I am happy Ann got it, she is energetic and creative and is already doing a great job.)

Also on the top floor, a couple of volunteers read tea leaves and palms to the delight of many.

McMaster's seemed greatly pleased with the 70 odd "groups" ( 1-5 people) who had potter photos done. They had a gorgeous faux stone background and plenty of costumes and accessories, including a well executed owl that could be positioned as though perching on someone's shoulder.

As ever, the sorting hat was particularly popular with the younger crowd. A concealed accomplice activated a tape for a few seconds at a time to provide a very thoughtful voice to the hat which was suspended by fish line above a high wooden stool.

Another big hit was Ann's Penseive. An antique finished urn with a mixture of lights, liquids and dry ice that would give Warner Brother's special effects team a run for their money.

Outside, Ollivanders was a hit. 1500 wand had been made by volunteers and proved very popular, running out well before midnight even though they were not free as I had thought.

Shortly before midnight, I hooked my laptop into the sound system to start the crush with a playing of Big Ben striking twelve. It was amazing. Loud enough to vibrate some things, and lead to a shout of excitement that spilled out through the parking lot and I am sure was heard for a few blocks around. Hopefully the neighbours will forgive us.

Again, the tent that traded pre-sold certificates for books worked like a charm. I'm guessing we handed out just under 1500 books in 31 minutes, which is nearly double what we did in 20 minutes with the last book. The only down side there was that the line watchers were not clear on their raison d'etre, and when the line vanished at 12:31 we had far too many books out of boxes, and the boxes had been flattened and put in a recycling bin. I climbed the bin to recover about 50 so that we could re-tape them and repack around 600 books that shouldn't have been unpacked. That actually took longer than the unpacking and handing out had.

I managed to stay for tear down until about 2:00am, at which point I sat for a couple of minutes to talk to a former co-worker who volunteered for the night and immediately stiffened up too much to function. I left about a quarter after, while many were there until 4:00am.

Anyway, at about 11:00 this morning I dragged myself out to haul the 600+ pounds of melting ice out of the back of our van (I'd parked with the back downhill so it could safely drip all night). It is piled at the side of our driveway with "free ice" signs and is slowly being whittled away by passers-by.

Now, Harry Potter is done, and I can move on to weeding the garden which I've ignored since before the flood in June.


Kent

Happy 100th, Robert A. Henlein: July 7, 2007

One of the So-called "Golden Age" authors of hard science fiction, Robert A. Heinlein certainly made the field his own. Together with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, he made up part of the "Big Three" in the field, influencing several generations of readers. From the introduction of the word "waldo", to our language, to the initial descriptions of water bed (which was denied patents in the U.S. based on prior art because of his descriptions), Heinlein's influence has continued into the 21st century, with the creation of Groklaw.net, aimed at making it easier to comprehend the law as it relates to open computing.

The first science fiction novel (as opposed to short stories) I recall reading was Robert A Heinlein's "Star Beast" subtitled "Love me, love my Lummox" about assumptions and their consequences, one of a long string of juvenile novels Heinlein published through Putnam in the fifties and sixties. While the novels were designed to be rather formulaic, following the format of the, well established, boys' adventure stories but set in space, he imbued them with a great deal of originality and salted them with a healthy skepticism of authority while mostly leaving his politics at the door.

It was, however, his adult fiction, that allowed him great freedom to share is rather libertarian brand of politics. Asked about his most well known and influential novel, today's younger readers are apt to answer "Starship troopers, with it's solid right-wing, pro-military message. However, to an entire generation plus who came of age in the sixties and seventies, it was all about "Stranger in a Strange land," his story of the return of the prodigal son, a human child, thought lost with his parents, but raised by aliens then sent back to earth to comprehend it on behalf of his alien foster parents / teachers. "Stranger..." and it's hero Valentine Michael Smith, with the concept of "Grok" (an understanding of others so deeply that they can no longer be separated from self) spoke volumes to the counter culture of the day.

As with many of the authors from the Golden Age of SF, much of Heinlein's work is dated by terminology and attitudes (in the narrative of "Stranger...," homosexual men are referred to as confused or misguided), but the stories generally hold up since, at their core, they are as much about the people of his time as they were about any future.