Running Low On Time

Between my bees and my writing and my Blog-A-Thonning, I am absolutely swamped today.  I was hoping to dash off a quick entry on Why Science Fiction Is Harder To Read Than Fantasy, inspired by some early critique on The Novel of Doom, my early reaction to China Mieville’s Embassytown, and the three attempts it took me before I could get through the first four chapters of Dune, but…. it shall have to wait.

However, as the Clarion Blog-A-Thon ends tomorrow, I’d like to remind you about it.  I got about $200 in donations yesterday (thanks in part to the new fabulous prize offered up by Ms. Valente), but that still leaves me with about $300 to go to get to my donation goal of $2,000 – which is about what it takes to send a single person to Clarion.  I now have six professional sales under my belt, a status I could have only dreamed of four years ago – really, Clarion changed my life in a lot of ways, showing me that really, hard work can turn a fairly average fiction writer into someone publishable.

I want others to continue to have that experience.

So if you can, please donate.  There are prizes from Neil Gaiman and Catherynne M. Valente, and access to a novel-in-progress.  You will be doing a good thing, and I’m doing what I can to make it worth your while.  Even a couple of bucks will help.

Thanks so much, either way.  I know the journal tends to become the Blog-A-Thon Central during these six weeks; I appreciate your patience and care.  But, you know, it’s even better if you donate!

In a non-Clarion brief note, holy shit is the soundtrack to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson a work of brilliance.  President Andrew Jackson re-envisioned as an emo rock star, with all the soap opera bits taken straight from real life?  I can’t stop listening to this damn thing.  Highly recommended.

 

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

An Iron Stomach, Or No?

I have a doctor friend of mine who occasionally tells the story of the time I walked around for three days with a burst appendix.  She tells it to other doctors.  The punchline is, “…and he lived!”

So yeah.  Should be dead right now, but the burst appendix was a window opened for me to look at my rather freakish physiology, which I’ve always taken for granted – but apparently, I have a ridiculously high pain tolerance and an iron stomach that can devour just about anything and not get sick.  In fact, I hate it when I get the flu, because I’m always stuck for hours in that horrific position where the body tells me, Everyone else is firmly in favor of ejecting all the food in your body, except for the stomach.  He is the lone holdout.  Talk to him, sir, we’re all suffering here.

So I’ve been slowly learning that not everyone else does things.  This morning was another, and so I ask:

Occasionally, if I don’t finish a glass of milk at night, and accidentally leave it out, I’ll drink the leftovers the next morning.  Waste not, want not, say I.  It’s a little warm, but tastes fine otherwise – I’m not crazy enough to drink sour milk.

My wife, however, thinks this is just another symptom of my freakish immune system.  If she did that, she’d get ill.  I assure her it doesn’t taste bad, but that’s not the point – it’d still give her food poisoning.  I point out that people on the frontier had to drink warm milk and they didn’t die, and she in return points out that we’re not really living on the plains of Kansas.  Point.

So I ask you folks: could you drink a swallow or two of milk that smells fine that’s been left out overnight?  Would you?  Am I just sufficiently able to shrug off such stuff that I’ve never noted the weaknesses before, or is it something that’s normal (if not, you know, polite) and most people’s systems can handle it?  I’m curious.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.