One Last Shill For The Clarion Blog-A-Thon

Today’s the last day of the Blog-A-Thon, and I’ll be posting the climactic chapter of my novel-in-progress today for all you lovely $10 donators.  If you want to win prizes by Neil Gaiman and Catherynne M. Valente, today’s your last chance to donate!
But wait.  You don’t like my prizes?  Why not check out Victoria Griesdoorn, who’s also got some amazing prizes, also for the lowly donation of $5?  She’s got a lot of prizes from stellar authors like Ellen Datlow, Ellen Kushner, Scott Edelman, writer-blogger-he-man Chuck Wendig, and more  – and more impressively, she has five copies of Scrivener, the writers’ word processor of choice, ready to go!
She’s done a hell of a lot of work, and she wants to get to $1k in donations.  Check out what she has – it’s a hell of a lot of work she’s done, getting them all in line – and if you like it, donate.

In Which I Predict The Future of FOX

The good news is that after a tense negotiation that felt more like cops trying to talk a hostage out of a cheap motel than, you know, government workings, we finally got the debt ceiling raised to prevent financial meltdown!  That’s good, right?
Well, as it turns out, Standard and Poor still downgraded America’s credit.  What did they say?

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.

I’ve heard a lot of liberals saying, “That’s it.  This lays the problems with America’s finances, as seen by one of the top financial companies in the world, at the Tea Party’s feet.  Now they have to own it!”
Not so fast, folks.  I will now put on my Amazing Kreskin hat and tell you what the conservatives will say!

• The problem is that we didn’t cut enough.  This only shaved about $2 trillion off a projected $28-trillion deficit (or whatever the actual numbers are)!  If we had managed to reduce our spending to the bone, we’d get America’s house in order!
• Besides, Standard and Poor is just one financial company out of three.  The other two didn’t downgrade America.  So what’s wrong with Standard and Poor, huh?  Why do they hate America?  Let’s look at their history and find out all their scandals!
• They’ll hammer on this quote: the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability. Our opinion is that elected officials remain wary of tackling the structural issues required to effectively address the rising U.S. public debt burden in a manner consistent with a ‘AAA’ rating.

You kidding? An approach that involves cutting spending and raising takes on the super-wealthy?  That’s crazy.  They’ve got so much spin, you’d think they were a washing machine.
In other news, I agree wholeheartedly with this article, “The Real Confidence Crisis,” which includes the following money quote:

The real confidence crisis doesn’t lie with corporate America. It belongs to the Democrats. They are the party of government, and they should face it, and boldly advocate to use government to solve our problems. Instead, ever since the chaos of the ’60s and ’70s they’ve tried to insist they don’t like government any more than the Republicans do — and no one believes them. Maybe the dishonesty about their core values contributes to Americans’ lack of trust.
Democrats have helped Americans live in a dream world where their success is their own: Real Americans don’t get government help. This is a lie. The activities of government, going back to the days when it “purchased” North American land from other European powers and/or cleared it of its original inhabitants, created the conditions for American prosperity. In our own time, the invisible hand of government created the great middle class. The government has made all kinds of things possible through the tax code: the home mortgage deduction, for instance, isn’t in the Constitution, and only two other countries have it. Our supposedly “private” system of healthcare, pensions and 401Ks was likewise created by government, again allowing companies and individuals to avoid paying taxes on those employer “benefits.”

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.

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.
 

Help Organize Our House!

Those of you who’ve watched our kitchen remodelling know that La Casa McJuddMetz has gone through a lot of changes lately: last fall, we repainted and redecorated, and then last month we redid our whole kitchen.
Our problem: the dining room.
So in order to Intarwebz-brainstorm it, my wife has posted pictures of our house and now asks your help in figuring out what to do with our dining room.  If you’re an interior design kinda person, go help!  And if not, well, you can look at some mightly lovely pictures of our new and stylish house.
 

Clarion Blog-A-Thon: The Final Week

The Clarion Blog-A-Thon ends this Sunday, and thus far I have raised $1,500 for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop.  I would really like to get to $2,000 before the week is over.
But I’ve already got a fabulous signed limited edition Neil Gaiman print to offer, as well as sneak peeks at my (now-completed) dystopian science-fiction novel – what else can I offer to inspire you to donate?
How about fabulous hand-made jewelry from World Fantasy Award-nominated and New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente?
And not just any jewelry, mind you; themed jewelry. Choose a book of Cat’s – any book, from the YA goodness of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland to the Russian WWII action of Deathless to the sexy map-making of Palimpsest to the old post-modern fairytaleism of The Orphan’s Tales.  Or heck, even choose a short story!  No matter what it is, she will create a necklace based on that work, just for you.  (You’ll also receive a signed copy of the work in question, you lucky dog.)
How do you get in on this action? Simple. Just donate at least $5 to the Clarion foundation. At the end of it, I’ll choose one lucky winner from the folks who’ve donated, and they will get the necklace.
But wait!  There’s more!  I realize that not everyone who’s donated will have a need for jewelry, and this gift is sufficiently special that I want the person who gets it to want it with all their heart.  So if the first “winner” of the prize turns out not to want a necklace, I will instead purchase for them one Catherynne M. Valente book of their choosing, so they may catch the wave of Valente-inspired goodness.  (I’ll be doing this out of my own pocket, so to save my bucks I’ll say that I’ll do this up to four times.  Not that I think I’ll get to four times.)
If you’d like to see what kind of jewelry Cat makes, you can check out this lovely Sherlock Holmes-themed piece she made for my wife, or this other necklace she made as a gift.
So what does being in the Blog-A-Thon get you?  Let’s reiterate:

• A $5 donation will get you entry to a raffle, for both Cat’s jewelry and this limited-edition Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli print (worth $100) are the prizes.
• A $10 donation will get you access to the clarion_echo community, where I am currently live-blogging the writing of my dystopian YA novel where an orphaned child is growing up in a world where science has solved this whole “death.” (I do a fuller job selling the novel here.) I’m not just blogging the chapters I’m writing – I’m dissecting each chapter as I write it, in an attempt to give you some of what a professional writer sees when he’s looking at his own first draft.
• A $25 donation given in time will give you the remaining story critique, where I will professionally crit your short story, assuming you want one. I’m kindly brutal. Or perhaps brutally kind.
• A $100 donation will get you something absolutely crazy, albeit not during the Blog-A-Thon: when the novel is done, I’ll write a story according to a prompt you give me. You will not own the story – your idea + my sweat makes it mine – and I can’t promise timeliness or publication, but anyone who donates $100 can provide an idea and see how it sparks in the hands of someone else.

To help, just click this link and donate. (If you want in to the clarion_echo, send the receipt for the donation to theferrett@theferrett.com, along with your LJ user name – and I’ll make you a member of this friends-only community. (I think I’m caught up, so if I haven’t added you, please contact me and accept my apologies.)  And remember, I’d love to get to $2,000 at the end, so even if you don’t want all of these lovely prizes… I’d still appreciate your help.