Spencer's Great Big Lies

For Now, Dear Reader...

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:09:00 +0000

Blogger is phasing out blogs like this one that don't fit the normal mold. I have myself a new blog, which I have whimsically entitled "Smurgle, all ye Wattabups."

It is spencerellsworth.blogspot.com

Or if you have a livejournal account, my blog posts also show up on spencimusprime.livejournal.com

I JUST FARTED

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:00:00 +0000

I am blogging this from a makeshift recording studio. We've got two, count em two, microphones set up on my drummer's set in our practice space. For those of you not familiar with recording-ese, this is definitely not the way to do it slick and stylish. This is the way to do it as cheaply as possible. I intend to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear... or is it the other way around?

Me and Chrissy have gotten to the point where we have to call who will write the funny Adia stories. I got this one.

Now that Adia is almost pottytrained, she does not like to admit when she has gone in her pants, even when she is wearing Pull-Ups.

We were in Mallard's Ice Cream and I smelled a stinky. I picked up Adia and asked her very quietly, "Are you poopy or did you just fart?"

"i just farted," she said.

I suspected she was not being entirely truthful with us. So I started to look in her diaper. She kicked and flailed her arms and screamed "I JUST FARTED! I FAAAAARTED! I JUST FARTED!"

Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:43:00 +0000

I've had two moments in the last few days in which I essentially realized:

"I know this person arguing politics with me on facebook is WRONG. Very WRONG."

"I really don't have time to comb through Google and find the information I read at some point that I half-remember that tells me they are WRONG."

For now, politics, I will miss you.

A Strong, United Urination

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:09:00 +0000

Adia has been having trouble with potty training. She hasn't quite picked up the cues from her body that tell her when it is potty time, so often she will spend an hour or so out of the day just sitting on the potty, trying to go, only to get up and promptly have an accident.

Last night she decided to sleep in underwear and keep the little plastic potty right next to her bed so she could use it.

Ten minutes after she went to bed, I heard her shriek, "Dad! Come here!"

She had done it!

We praised her for listening to her body and sang a song about how awesome potties are. You know, the kind of thing that makes you wonder if parenting is a special kind of insanity, because no grown adult should be this excited by pee.

Anyway. I think she really likes praise, because an hour later, as I brushed my teeth, I heard her in her room saying, "Mom, Dad, I'm using the potty!" After we went to bed, I think she may have fallen asleep on it.

Congratulations Adia.

Snobbery of the Literobbery

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:59:00 +0000

The other day I was submitting to literary fiction markets that pay ridiculously low amount of money or don't pay at all. Because that is what you do when you want to be an English professor. Publish in places with names that end in "review." The Indiana Review. The Bellingham Review. The View Review. The Fractions Review, not to be confused with its bitter rival, The Decimals Review, which publishes the same ideas expressed differently.

(Damn I'm good.)

These sites are, on average, 20% more wordy than your typical submission-guideline site. Instead of "Read the magazine to find out what we want" it's "we high recommend you purchase a copy of the Review and reading a sampling of our stories."

It bugs me that they didn't go all the way and use the word "Peruse" to describe the magazine. "Peruse our hallowed pages and glean insight into our acceptatory process."

Come into my castle

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:16:00 +0000

We live by a massive Catholic church Adia calls "the castle."

Today we fulfilled her dream and took her to Mass so she could go inside the castle. First question: "Where's the princess?"

She finally settled on a statue of St. Anne as a princess who had seen better days.

I am Desperate For Your Love

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:29:00 +0000

Hey all,

One of the places where I applied for my PhD has actually just told me they aren't interested in comic-book submissions. They told me to send them something else.

Poop.

So I want to write a historical novel about the Crusades and I am trying to get grants for it. This school is in England, so I might want to sell them on this novel as my thesis because, hey, easier to get to istanbul and Jerusalem from England than from Seattle. Better travel grants over there where their money is actually worth something, too.

i have the prologue written and it was workshopped once. It's still 2500 words, so it's pushing it a bit. I need people willing to take a quick read.

You got time for 2500 words?

You reading this on Sunday night and not Monday night?

Email me or leave a comment. I would love to get some quick feedback.

Crossing The Finished Finish Line

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:46:00 +0000

On Friday I finished the first draft of The Great Faerie Strike.

It ended up at 104k, 14k over my 90k goal, which was revised up from a 75k goal. New Year's Resolution: Use less words.

This book actually started when I was slushing. I was thinking about fantasy ideas that I never saw, and one,back in 2007, was Victorian fantasy, for all that steampunk was, ahem, gathering steam. I started writing queries that I would love to see and I wrote:

The Victorian upper class--of werewolves--has gone too far when they fire Charles the gnome. It seems that the new synthetic blood substitutes (readily available, highly nutritious, completely disgusting) have led these socialites to believe that they can run their factories on nothing but vampire labor. And though vampires are stupid, smelly and ponderously boring, they keep quiet, thinking they're getting a good deal.

Charles is lucky enough to have a friend among the unwashed vampires of London's Otherworld--an atypically bright vampire who still has all her teeth, Jane. Charles knows that street marches of elves, fairies and gnomes won't be enough to get their jobs back. He has to help Jane convince the other vampires to hold a strike, which means that he has to convince the vampires and the rest of the Otherworld to work together. In the process, he finds himself falling for Jane, complicating his life even further, and both of them are drawn into the vicious politics of the werewolf class. They don't have to worry about escaping with their souls, since they don't have any, but their lives--that's the question.

And I stood back and said, "I have to write that."

It started as a collaboration with Cat Rambo, but she had to pull out due to other commitments. Luckily, she quit after she had supplied all the good ideas. Thanks, Cat.

Oh, and this baby is proud of her racial heritage:

I know how to read, I swear it!

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:39:00 +0000

I READ BOOKS THIS YEAR.

This is harder than you think. Some of them had no pictures.

Loved:

The Green Mile by Stephen King: Oh my fat tears. They still stain the Bellingham Library's copy. King inserted an archetypal tale--the centurion at Jesus' crucifixion--into a place unique in history. The whole novel seems palpable with death, the guards on the Mile brushing up against it every day. It makes John Coffey's ability to call the dead back all the more stunning, and his death sentence more heartbreaking.

The Age of Unreason series by Greg Keyes: Ben Franklin is an alchemist. The King of France seeks to bring Halley's Comet down on London. FUN rich historical fantasy, with swordfights, gunfights, air and sea battles and a few steamy scenes. Plus, this is one of the few fantasy series where magic feels magical. So often magic is a set of weapons with rules and trained operators.

Only complaint: Keyes doesn't address the whole picture--when the world turns post-apocalyptic, he talks very little about crop shortage. The characters' rations are never affected. Ah well. Still a load of fun.

The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik: I love historical novels. I love fantasy. I LOOOOVE the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. Novik gets even more historical detail into this series, made all the more believable because she captures the mindset of the time. The debates over dragon's rights made the later books more interesting than the first.

Only complaint: She really skips the sex. As in, "And now, dear reader, we will draw a curtain..." I know she'll keep more of an audience that way, but it feels like a cheat. I don't want porny George R.R. Martin scenes--but I don't want to feel like I skipped a chapter, either.

Mehhed:

The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone by Greg Keyes: Rich detailed medieval fantasy, again with magical magic. The closest thing to George R.R. Martin you can get. But the last book got a little too carried away into Keyes' increasingly complex magic system, and the climax didn't have the power of Age of Unreason's poetic unmaking.

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville: Reading this book is like listening to the ten-minute drum solo on a Led Zeppelin record. You know it's supposed to be awesome. So why do you want to fast-forward? Miéville writes a thoroughly detailed and incredibly imaginative city as the main character, with the people in the city as incidental passengers. And he describes. Boy does he describe. The description is the star of this book. I missed the characters.

Tigerheart by Peter David: This book was so beautifully written that I couldn't understand why I kept putting it down. David has an idiosyncratic voice and a quirky sense of humor. I finally decided that he was too much in love with his own voice. If he had cut down the asides and in-jokes, he would have moved the plot along faster.

HateHateHate:

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King: The first two books were rambling drug trips, but that's not why I hated it. In the third book, Roland of Gilead, the archetypal Gunslinger, tells his fellow Tower-seeker Susannah to let a demon rape her for the sake of their mission. And she does. Because "sex can be a weapon."

Rape is rape, not a WEAPON.

2009 And A Chin

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:22:00 +0000

My sister told me the other day that everyone has a moment where they ask themselves: "Am I one of those people who has no chin? If I put on a few pounds, will I have a smooth ramp running up from my neck to my mouth?"

Not me. I have never questioned my chinuality.

This is a quality I share with a few select individuals, like Megatron.

May the chin live forever.

A lot of my friends have been posting a personal Year in Review, listing their writing achievements. I thought I'd do mine, but I'm going to try and dig a little deeper. I'm just going to say which goals I am the most proud of achieving. And one I didn't achieve, wah.

Proud Goal The First, With Backstory: At RadCon 2009 my buddy Ken Scholes advised us to write a short story every month. That seemed like a pretty good goal to me. I had already written a short story in February and done a fairly good revision in January, so I decided to go on with it.

And I did. One every month. (I didn't write one in December, but I wrote two in July so I counted the second one for December).

Proud Goal The Second: I kept at least seven submissions out to different markets all year long. I've been trying to do this for a long time and I finally broke down.

I realized that I couldn't wait any more for the "incredibly awesome" stories I had in my head to pop out. I could only submit what I had. And so I started submitting like mad. And I got me TWO SALES this year. That might not seem like much to some folks. To me it seems like it doubled my previous sales. And not so much seems like as it did. Double them.

Not So Proud Goal Because I Didn't Finish It: I really wanted to finish writing The Great Faerie Strike in 2009. It's not done yet. It's close--maybe ten thousand words close--but not done. And it will probably end up around 100k, which is 25k longer than I wanted it to be. Pfff. Why must I be verbose?

All in all, it was the most productive year in writing I've had... well, ever. Seriously. I suppose I might have written as many words in other years as I did this year. But nothing has been quite this diverse, with gobs of short stories, comic books and two very different novels. Self, I am proud of you.

Agenting Note

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:05:00 +0000

I deleted the account "sellsworthlperkinsagency@yahoo.com" that I used to use for all my agency emails.

There might have been stuff in there I didn't respond to properly. I'm sorry if that's the case. That email was flooded with spam for a while; up to 30 a day some days. Yahoo has a terrible interface with Firefox as well that made it really difficult to answer emails quickly. I did my best.

If you were expecting a reply from me on something, leave a comment. The only people who might need replies would be people who sent things to Lori Perkins or Jenny Rappaport and heard something from me then had their query/partial lost. Leave a comment if that's the case.

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:56:00 +0000

I said, I said ARG.

This novel thing is frustrating me.

I think NaNoWriMo is made for other types of writers, you know, the kind who have confidence to leave their firsty first drafts alone. My idea of a first draft is usually something I wrote a week ago and have had time to revise since. I have a hard time just opening the document and picking up where I started.

Damn you people for whom this is fun!

My old agent boss Lori Perkins has a really good post about NaNoWriMo. I always liked Lori. She is one of the most outspoken, fun and life-loving people I've met. She's also completely insane and works about 16 hours most days, wheeling and dealing for 8 of them and reading slush for 8 more. I like what she says here quite a bit and I recommend you read it.

I sense a little bit of backlash against NaNoWriMo, and sometimes I can't blame the people who do so. I mean, I've heard NaNoers talk about blatant tricks to raise wordcount, like having one character say, "I didn't catch that," so another character has to repeat it. (Okay, I actually have somewhat of a trick to raise wordcount. There's a goblin annotating the manuscript and writing footnotes. It's meta.)

But when you add it up, why is a burst of creativity from a ton of people a bad thing? If you want to be a writer, nothing will stop you. Go ahead and vomit 50,000 words onto the page and fix it later. As a teenager, I typically vomited 150-250k words per giant Robert Jordan imitation novel. I think I've done all right for myself since. The sales are slow, but they come. Also, I write the occasional 4k short story now. (It's a gradual recovery from Big Book Syndrome. This little 75k-er I'm working on now is part of the process.)

I do have a major problem when people say, "I have no time to read because I'm writing so much." Sounds like "I have no time to drink water because I'm hiking so much."

Another Day One Wishes For

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:10:00 +0000

I forgot to blog about this!

"We just adore this piece--it's funny,moving, quirky in all the right ways--and we'd love to publish it in Brain Harvest."

A rare piece of flash from me, Poster Boy For The Novelette.

Yesssss.

Should be up December 6th. It's called "Mount Rainier Considers Its Mental Health" and it's about, well, Mount Rainier considering its mental health.

:)

Sue You Mary

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:01:00 +0000

For your reading pleasure, the fanfic story that introduced the term "Mary Sue." Also, the Wikipedia entry on Mary Sues, which lists all the variations. Apparently Thomas Covenant is an Anti-Sue.

I am conducting a study of Mary Sues ever since someone critiqued one of the characters in my novel as "the biggest Mary Sue that ever Mary Sued." As much as it was an astute critique, I still think Mrs. Bella Sue Edward SparkleKins of Twilight beats this character. I mean, read that Wikipedia entry. Think about Twilight. Read it again. THAT'S A DESCRIPTION OF TWILIGHT.

Adia thinks every flying bug is a bee. So the other day a fly landed on her leg and just stayed there, probably throwing up or laying eggs or whatever flies do to delicious young children. Adia smiled and said, "Bee loves me!"

The writing goes slowly, despite the fact that my already paltry hours at work are being cut. However, yesterday I managed to crank out 4k to finish a short story that has been due at the writing group for about three weeks. They read the first half, y'see. This story had one false start in 2007, anther false start earlier this year, and now has a false bottom. Or something. In any case, it's really nice to end it. Now excuse me, I have to get back on my own false bottom (what, you didn't think a butt this good was real, did you?) and write some more.

Come on, Kick Me!

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:27:00 +0000

Conversation with the brain-damaged guy I work with, as we ate burgers yesterday:

Me: How's the burger, Steve?

Steve: It's great, Matthew!

Me: My name's not Matthew.

Steve: Yes it is, f*ckface!

He's great. Whenever he's in a good mood, he laughs and says, "Yeah! Come on, kick me in the ass right now!"

At some point I got in this weird side career of taking care of mentally disabled people. Nothing in my education points to this, but I got a job to help put me through college taking care of three mentally disabled men, and then I managed their house,. I've been working this stuff ever since. Whenever I need to pay some extra bills, I go out and find a job taking care of some disabled folk.

These guys can be hilarious. I'll share with you one more conversation, this time with a schizophrenic man and one of my employees as they walked by the Provo River.

Employee: Brandon, are you keeping it real?

Brandon: I'm not a gangster anymore.

Employee: Brandon, you don't have to be a gangster to be keeping it real.

(At this point a man with fairly brown skin of indeterminate ethnicity passes by.)

Brandon: (to passerby) I AM NOT A GANGSTER ANYMORE!

Mother Superior Jumps The Gun

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:13:00 +0000

Chuck Klosterman reviews the Beatles like he's never heard of them... and as if he's an idiot.

The Good Girl is Trapped in Her Words

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:46:00 +0000

The other day I asked Chrissy, "Which historical figure would you want to be?"

She thought about it for a while. "There aren't a lot of good girls," she said. "I mean, if I'm Joan d'Arc I get brutally executed, and if I'm Queen Victoria I get to be funny-looking and against women's suffrage." She thought some more. "I don't want to be some guy who had sex with lots of women, because, you know, I don't want to have sex with lots of women." She meandered over the possibility of Tycho Brahe, given that she would get a gold nose and a moose.

Then she got this weird good-Mormon-girl look and said, "Joseph Smith."

I said, "You might want to rethink that one..."

Starving Artist Has An Apostrophe

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:19:00 +0000

We took Adia to the beach again yesterday, so she could feed her rock-throwing addiction. After a solid hour of throwing rocks in the water (she didn't even quit when we offered her smores) she started chasing a seagull. "Look Daddy!" she said. "Duck!"

"Yeah, honey, a duck!" I said. I didn't want to disillusion her by explaining that it was actually a trash-eating flying rat. Luckily we didn't get too close or the seagull might have started swearing at her.

I hate vampires. This was a nice gift from Guide to Literary Agents back when I was agenting, to keep people from sending me faux cool black leather motorcycle sexy hanging out on streetcorners undead wanker stories and I want all those supposedly cool sexy vampires to go fall on a forest of sharpened stakes. Wankers.

But I am writing a novel with vampires in it. In my defense, they are all really ugly.

Here's a rough sample from the novel in which my main character, Jane, who is half-vampire, is faking her way through a confessional with an Irish vampire priest. Jane has never learned anything about her father, who is a vampire.

"Oh, I've had evil thoughts, sir. Many evil thoughts about men. Even about the gnome back there, and about trolls, and about--"

"Have ye acted on these thoughts?"

"They are such evil thoughts!" Jane said, rattling on, trying to keep it just boring enough but constant enough that he might drop off. "I think evil thoughts about badgebear men, Father. About their fur. I want to do--things with their fur! And--"

"Child, ye've been too hard on yourself," the priest said. "Our Lord the divvil has said many a time that 'tis no sin to be curious. But know that to fraternize with another, in a carnal manner other than devouring the innards, is a sin against Our Lord who has forbidden mixing."

"Really?" Jane asked. "It's forbidden for a vampire to mix with another?"

"Child, have you not been a-reading your Black Bible?"

"Not reading that is also a sin I am guilty of," Jane said. "I am so ashamed. Tell me about vampires mixing, Father. Tell me the words of the Black Bible, please."

"Well, the good Daemon Gurgus says it right there, he does, in the book of the Slurping of the Legions, and again in the book of the Gnawing of the Emperor's Liver. Vampires are a solitary people, the only true servants of the divvil, and to mix would be to deny that commandment." A curious edge came into his voice. "Are ye truly half-human, as they said?"

Of The Importance of Comments

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:30:00 +0000

I posted something a few posts ago that was probably offensive to some people. Although most people didn't seem to realize that I was quoting someone else. Anyway, I'm going to keep this blog more PG now, but I want to add something:

Please comment.

I had no idea that anyone ever read this except Rebecca. I just posted here because I post the same things in my livejournal account and I figure I might as well update it.

Please, I want to know who is reading this. If anyone still is...

Starving Artist Enters The Vietnam of Blackberry Picking

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:57:00 +0000

Actually, I didn't really get deep into the blackberry bushes and all scratched up and stained purple like I usually do. But I liked the title. So screw it. Yes, that's right. Screw it.

We went to the beach with Adia today. As usual, she threw rocks. In the water. I don't think you understand how FREAKING AWESOME IT IS TO THROW ROCKS IN THE WATER. Adia will tell you. Also, we saw crabs, who we identified as Sebastians. There is a Little Mermaid addiction in the house.

George R.R. Martin is teaching at Clarion next year. Whew. I don't usually apply unless I'm really taken with the instructors (I was shortlisted for 2005 with Octavia Butler and Gordon Van Gelder, but no one died, damn it) so I might have to next year. I love Martin's short fiction. Though most of his short fiction is still pretty long, so I'm not sure how he's going to do grading 4k stories.

I predict one of the writing prompts will be "Create a character you adore and kill them." Followed by "Write about something you always wanted to do with your sibling that you never did."

Writing update:

The Great Faerie Strike goes on. It's a lot of fun to write, and the one project that I don't get stumped on lately, not like the many short stories I've been doing. The idea for the GFS actually came from when I was agenting. I had gone through a huge batch of queries and I was, off the cuff, just trying to think of things I hadn't seen yet. One was, well, a great faerie strike in the Victorian period. Given that the 19th century was the founding age of real labor unions as we know them today, it seemed to work.

The Victorian upper class--of werewolves--has gone too far when they fire Charles the gnome. It seems that the new synthetic blood substitutes (readily available, highly nutritious, completely disgusting) have led these socialites to believe that they can run their factories on nothing but vampire labor. And though vampires are stupid, smelly and ponderously boring, they keep quiet, thinking they're getting a good deal.

Charles is lucky enough to have a friend among the unwashed vampires of London's Otherworld--an atypically bright vampire who still has all her teeth, Jane. Charles knows that street marches of elves, fairies and gnomes won't be enough to get their jobs back. He has to help Jane convince the other vampires to hold a strike, which means that he has to convince the vampires and the rest of the Otherworld to work together. In the process, he finds himself falling for Jane, complicating his life even further, and both of them are steadily drawn into the vicious politics of the werewolf class. They don’t have to worry about escaping with their souls, since they don’t have any, but their lives—that’s the question.

The Great Faerie Strike is a complete urban fantasy novel of the 19^th century at 74,000 words. (No, it's not, but that's how you end a query.)

(Yes, I know True Blood has a synthetic blood idea too. There's enough to go 'round.)

Kudos to catrambo , who helped me come up with nearly every aspect of the story through some brainstorming sessions.

Starving Artist Eats A Coke Float And Thus Gives The Lie To His Words

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:14:00 +0000

Idioms in other languages. My very favorites: Cheyenne:My tapeworm can almost talk by itself = my stomach is growling. Honorable mention for French: I have other cats to whip! = I have other fish to fry! - I have other things to do

Also, a 111-year old veteran of World War I died in England today, and Radiohead wrote a song about it. I was very touched when he talked about going to Germany to meet the oldest survivor from the other side.

I am sad to be missing Worldcon. Mostly because at Worldcon 2006 I stared at George R.R. Martin from across the room at a party, thinking I should really go talk to him, I'm sure he just wants to shoot the sh*t like anyone else, I should talk to him... This time, I would definitely go right up to him and say, "Where's the next book already?"

Oh, and "What was your relationship with your siblings like?"

After a full week of ze Frenchman and almost no movement on the writing, I sat down and cranked 4000 words on Monday, and around 3500 yesterday. Take that, Frenchman. Today, I made 2500, scattered among different projects. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm working on a story for jennifer_brozek 's anthology abouot alien urban legends, and I was pretty lost until I started thinking about the California Aqueduct, over by my house in Lancaster, CA.

We used to go up to that thing all the time, crawling through the drainage tunnels underneath it and always threatening to swim in it (there were tons of stories about people drowning in the aqueduct). It was such a weird place, all elevated high above the rest of the town, like this permanent reminder that people were never really meant to live in the Mojave Desert.Anyway, it turns out that musing on the aqueduct makes a story. Let's hope Jen likes it as much as I do.

Life is What Happens To You While You're Busy Making Other Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:51:00 +0000

Yes, that subject line refers to Adia. Among other things.

It shouldn't be hard to let go of the crazy ideas you had when you were younger, but it is like pulling teeth out of my bellybutton for me.

See, when I was thirteen or so, I decided I would concentrate on writing. I liked music, acting and art, but I decided, of course, to do the most pretentious one.

And I decided that, of course, me being brilliant and not ashamed to admit it, I would be a famous published writer to rival Stephen King by the time I was twenty. A generous estimate gave me twenty-five, though by then I kind of figured I would be getting read to retire.

Around twenty-five I revised the estimate up to thirty. I'm twenty-nine now, and though I'm closer than I was--and I also got the sense to send out everything I have instead of sitting on it--but it's actually causing a little bit of a midlife crisis for me to admit that I'm actually normal. Hell, I write less than a lot of people I know, and I have dry spells, which was never in the plan. It's been easier to be prolific lately because I don't have a job.

This is sort of weird to admit. And painful. And I feel the need to broadcast it to the Internet so that I can get it out of the way.

Old dreams die hard, I guess, even when they're kind of silly (twenty, young self? TWENTY?)

Starving Artist, Week SWEET SPAGHETTI MONSTER, IT'S HOT

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:36:00 +0000

The Scholes Clones Are Upon Us!

A thousand congrats. I'm very happy for them and their new transformed understanding of all things. Seriously.

(A quick PSA: There's this weird thing that some people do--oddly enough, the people who did it the most to me didn't have kids--when your child is first born. They love to tell you how you'll never get enough sleep, time to write, never have sex again, turn into slime molds... if you're tempted, please, for the sake of me at least, RESIST. It's meant in jest, but it drove me crazy, and I had to look really hard to find a place to bury bodies in Seattle.)

(Ahem.)

This week I FINISHED the story I was rewriting for Analog. Considering I've been sitting on Stan's note for three years, I'm very happy with myself. It's 16k, which even for me is long. (My standard length when I don't watch myself is usually 12k). Also, I wrote a story that is exactly 3930 words, because I was bound and determined to stay under 4k. This is the new, trimmer Spencer. My goal for my once-a-month stories for the rest of the year is under 4k. Can I do it? Can I shut up? Can I? Huh?

Work on the Vietnam-War-Meets-Paradise-Lost novel has officially stalled, though. The Frenchman is having a field day. "Ze boulders of life has damned ze noveleest's wellspring of sweet mocha-flavored wine zat once fed ze createeeveety and all he can get from ze wellspring ees peepee. Oh life. Oh peepee."

I had a blast--both metaphorically and a blast of heat--celebrating my 29th (holy crap) birthday with kehrli ,criada ,csinman, Rebecca The Owl, KikiBebot, and a bunch of former graduate students yesterday. We barbequed. For once in my life I let the briquets actually turn gray before I tried to cook on them. Keffy, Lisa and co. gave me Cherry Coke Zero and Peanut MnMs, which pretty much makes them the most thoughtful friends ever.

It's really, really, really hot in the Northwest. One of the few air-conditioned places in Bellingham is Starbucks. I plan to live there tomorrow.

maryrobinette 's beautiful pic of the Scholes babies, in case you haven't seen:

She can really work those baby photos.

Boobs, or How To Solve Your Problems, Realms of Fantasy

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:04:00 +0000

http://douglascohen.livejournal.com/189645.html

The latest controversy on the Internet, after Walter Cronkite killed Michael Jackson, is, in a nutshell, boobs. (Boobs don't fit in a nutshell, by the way, so don't try.)

K. Tempest Bradford says, with a good point, that Realms of Fantasy favors covers that are booby. Doug Cohen defends his decision to feature boobs on the latest cover and insists that he is not the kind of guy who just puts boobs on everything. If he were, he would probably have a nice set himself. (He didn't say this in the post, but I think it's probably true.)

Tempest wants to cut the level of boobs and maybe bring in some penii, some man-candy.

Now, I'm no expert on boobs, but it seems to me that there is another side we haven't considered that could solve everything. We could have boobs and not-boobs if we want. We don't have to be limited. Ken Scholes can write all the stories he wants about hot redheads with boobs (has anyone else noticed this is a major theme of his writing? I see you, Ken, wink wink, nudge nudge).

This is how we will solve this problem:

They have to go Amazon.

That's right. Every Realms of Fantasy story with boobs in it has to cut one of the offenders off. If your right boob offends you, cut it off, or if your left, etc etc. Just get rid of one.

Keep one for Doug, cut one for Tempest. Keep one for Robert Jordan's women to still cross their arms under. Cut one for Arwen to more realistically draw her bow. Keep one and you can still get a side shot in a Boris Valejo painting. Cut one and you reduce the cost of a chainmail bikini by one-fourth. Keep one, dye your hair red and Ken Scholes will describe it lovingly. Cut one and the scar will still be kinky in a Jacqueline Carey or George R.R. Martin novel.

Oh, wait, she meant to metaphorically cut down the boobs? Huh. Never mind.

(I apologize if this was horribly offensive. My wife always says I shouldn't be allowed to talk without a filter.)

Starving Artist, Week Three

noreply@blogger.com (Spencer Ellsworth) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:20:00 +0000

Some part of me wants to go get an honest job. NO... NO...

I don't know where this urge came from. I blame csinman , because he is the cause of most things that go wrong in the world. Just the other day he told me the meaning of life was sexual fantasies about Mormon missionaries. Yeah, if that's not a Doctor Faustus-style red flag, I don't know what is.

On that topic, I am so in love with The Cambist and Lord Iron. I listened to it twice. It's a rare story that makes me laugh out loud, but the ending of this one had me giggling while I was on my daily run. Which can make you swallow your spit and cough, by the way.

This has been a pretty good week, except I'm slacking a bit on the novel. It's just so... so... I don't know, I'm not excited about it this week. I did yank out a short story I wrote years ago and finished it, which is cool except I think the ending has problems--hence the leaving it alone for years.

I've also been working on the only story I ever got a personalized rejection from Analog for (as you know, Bob, personalized Analog rejections are generally invitations to rewrite unless they say otherwise). It's killing me. It's a whodunit with lots and lots of science involved, neither of which is my strength. I checked out some mystery anthos at the library today. I hope they'll help.

And now, a picture of Adia naked in a bathtub, which you can use to blackmail her when she's a teenager.