Epiphany 2.0

Sorry for the silence lately. Moved into a new apartment on Monday, and my life has only just begun settling back into sanity. Hopefully my new writing study will be configged by tomorrow, at which point I can finally resume work on BrightGod, which has been on hold for about a week. I’m itching to get back to it.

But!! Before I do, I must share the following. With extra exclamation points!!!

Those of you in New York City, or ever to visit New York in the near future — you must visit the Dessert Truck!! Before now, my favoritest dessert place in all the world was Boston’s Finale. And… well, Finale’s still up there, mostly because they do hot toddies and coffee/chocolate drink mixes that are to die for. (Mmmm… hot chocolate with Bailey’s.) But finally I’ve found someplace in my new hometown that’s just as good. And so unpretentious and inexpensive! Every one of the Dessert Truck’s items are $5 or less. But bottom line: the taste. I’ve had their Molten Chocolate Cake, their Creme Brulee, and — tonight — their hot chocolate. All three are stunning, but let me tell you about this hot chocolate. Think of the richest, finest, smoothest imported chocolate pieces you’ve ever had. (Imported because most American chocolate has issues.) Then liquefy it — but leave it thick, I mean molasses-thick, so heavy on the tongue that you actually have to stop and take a moment work it around in your mouth before swallowing. “Swallowing” is in fact a misnomer, because you can’t swallow this. Instead you have to sort of relax the muscles in your mouth and throat and let it find its own path to your stomach, which it does, but in its own good, thick, sweet time. But before it goes, it lingers awhile in your mouth, just kind of hanging out, kickin’ it with your taste buds. Your taste buds are all like, “YO!! I can’t believe this! I never felt anything like this in my LIFE!!” And the chocolate is all, “‘Sup.” And it grins and winks and leans back, knowing full well it’s amazing.

Like that.

I think this might be deadly. Thick rich gourmet chocolate is attacking my braaaain. Lord knows what it’s doing to me, but if I die, know, all of you, that I died happy. ::wistful sigh::

Also!!

I’ve been hearing about this phenomenal webcomic called Bayou by Jeremy Love, and I finally decided to check it out. It’s utterly brilliant. A fantasy take on life in just-post-slavery Louisiana, beautifully and powerfully rendered. Little Lee is trying to enjoy her childhood as the daughter of a hard-working sharecropper, though the ugliness of racism rapidly erodes what carefree innocence she had. After a day when she dives into the bayou to fetch the body of lynched child, Lee sees the child’s spirit in the act of transitioning into a supernatural, magical realm. Eventually she travels to that realm herself — a place that is home to talking animals, terrifying creatures like the carnivorous Jim Crows, and monsters. But not all of the monsters are terrible. Lee befriends a big green monster called Bayou, who has great strength but not much courage. Since Lee’s got courage in plenty, but she’s still just a little girl, they pair up and go off on a quest, hoping to rescue Lee’s friend Miss Lily (and in the process, also saving Lee’s father, who is in danger of being lynched for Lily’s disappearance).

The story is superficially a children’s tale, referencing everything from Alice in Wonderland to European faerie myths. But it goes deeper than that, retooling many African and Native American myths (and true stories) to meld seamlessly with the rest. The result is sheer beauty.

I’m not sure it’s really meant for children, though, given the amount of violence and ugliness in the story. It’s mostly stuff that really happened back in those days — lynchings, whippings, and worse — and it’s portrayed unflinchingly, with an artful starkness that’s both beautiful and shocking. I would show it to my kids if I had any, because this too is educational; I think all American children should know both the good and the bad about our country’s history. It would be a great springboard for discussion, IMO. But if any of you reading are parents, I’d advise you to read the comic yourself before sharing it with your kids, and decide whether yours are ready for it. Some of the stuff in it is gory and a bit scary, even for me.

All that said — let me reiterate. Bayou is brilliant. Quite frankly, it’s one of the most original pieces of fantasy I’ve ever read, period. Apparently others have figured this out too: DC Comics is going to be putting it into print. Yay for Jeremy Love! And yay for me, because now I’ll be able to read my new favorite comic on the train commute.

Go read it! Oh, wait, forgot. Go read it!!!!!!!!!!!!

I brought a camera with me to WFC, and of course completely forgot to use it 95% of the time. So the best photos I have from the con were actually taken by other people. The first is from Doselle Young, whom I met on Saturday night, along with his wife Janine. We were discussing an odd incident that had just occurred, in which a stranger had stared at me and then asked me whether I was Nalo Hopkinson. -_- Since I look nothing like Nalo (though our first names do share three letters!), I could only laugh about it — but then we found out my fellow writing-group member Alaya had been mistaken for me throughout the con. (We also look nothing alike.) At this point we started joking about all the other people we could be mistaken for, finally culminating in the great (but dead) Octavia Butler herself. So in the spirit of Halloween, here is me as “undead Octavia Butler”:

The night before this, there was the Signing Session, which was huge and a lot of fun. As I mentioned before, I completely lost it over meeting several of my favorite authors. Here’s me fangirling on Marjorie Liu, snagged from her:

I’m so geeky.

All that said… the mistaken-identity incident does bring home some realities in the wake of Obama’s victory. As powerful a symbol as he now is — and yeah, I’m thrilled — it doesn’t change a lot. People will still mistake the only two black women at a small convention for completely different black people. I will still have conversations in the bar with random strangers who insist that “you people” should stop complaining now that “racism is dead”. (Yeah, that happened too.) And racism won’t be dead, by any stretch — in fact I suspect it’ll get a little worse for awhile, as more people go into denial and decide that it’s no longer worth talking about or working to eliminate.

Just like a Democratic sweep doesn’t indicate some sudden progressive awakening among the American people, as the Prop 8 horror illustrates. So my feelings right now are best encapsulated by a fortune cookie message I got the night after I found out 100K would be published, and which I’ve kept as an inspiration: You had a great start! Now work harder.

We’ve still got a lot of work to do to fix this country.

Anyway, back to writing.

Tired, sick (caught a cold, bleagh), but happy.

For those who don’t know (I didn’t), World Fantasy Con is basically “the professionals’ con” of the spec fic field. It’s expensive as cons go, which unfortunately puts it out of the reach of most casual fans, but which results in a nice collection of pro authors, editors, agents, and reviewers all glomming together and enjoying themselves for a whopping 5 days. This year was my first visit to WFC, so it was all shiny and new for me.

And oh so much fun. I have to confess that I’d been very nervous about this con, having already imagined it to be full of distinguished individuals from the rarefied upper echelons of publishing. It was. But distinguished or not, these individuals’ favorite pastime seemed to be kicking back in the lounge with a beer (or three) and waxing eloquent about cheese. (No, really. The conversation got quite heated, as I recall, though I don’t recall why — something to do with substandard Gruyere. I’d had a few glasses of wine at that point.)

There were panels to, though I’ll admit I didn’t find these as much fun — I guess I’ve been spoiled by the nerdpunk panels of Readercon and the “anything goes” panels of Wiscon. They weren’t bad by any stretch, just not as thought-provoking/controversy-addressing/informative as I usually like. (Though I did enjoy the heck out of “The Language of Fantasy”, in which Farah Mendelson taught me two new words! …both of which I’ve forgotten. Gah. I have them written down, though, and I’m planning to order her book, which should teach me even more.) Was also amused by the “Stealth Halloween” which took place on Friday. WFC is a no-costumes con, owing to its professional nature, so there were several people in costume but not obviously so. There was an excellent Sarah Palin, and though I saw Mary Robinette Kowal that day, I didn’t realize she was dressed as Agent Scully. Excellent costume, just… well, stealthy. =)

I really enjoyed the readings, which introduced me to several new authors I’ve never read. But the real gem of this con was that I got the chance to meet so many people whose work I’ve enjoyed, or with whom I’ve only worked/interacted online. I can’t even list them all, but among them were Wendy Delmater of Abyss & Apex (I just bumped into her in an elevator), Jetse de Vries formerly of Interzone (who actually remembered my last submission and who I now apparently owe a grasshopper next year), authors Carol Berg, Marjorie Liu, and Kay Kenyon (all of whom I went fangirl on; it was embarassing, but I couldn’t help myself) and so many more.

My one regret is that I didn’t ask to do a reading this year, mostly because I keep thinking “Well, the book won’t be out for a year; who would remember?” But what I hadn’t realized was that because the folks at this con are pros, they understand the long timelines involved with publication, and they have correspondingly long memories. And there were a lot of people at the con who, for whatever reason, were looking for new voices via the readings, thus generating fresh buzz for the authors. So I missed an opportunity. =( Ah, well, part of the learning process. At the next few cons I attend, I’ll definitely be doing readings.

All that aside, though — ::happysigh:: So much fun.

Next up: packing and preparing to move to my new apartment! ::sigh:: Guess the fun had to end sometime.

My fantasy erotica story, “Red Riding-Hood’s Child”, is up today at Podcastle; download here if you’re interested. A warning, though — this story’s rated X, for good reason. If you like retold fairy tales, decontructed gender roles, sexual allegory, and (very) hairy men, download away.

Read by Rajan Khanna of my writing group Altered Fluid! Such a lovely voice that man has.

I think I’m falling in love. Wow.

I’ve been looking for A Braided World, which supposedly further-explores that interesting “dark matter plague” concept Kenyon covered in Maximum Ice, but my library doesn’t have it and I can’t find it in any local bookstores (it’s a bit old), so I’m going to have to try and order it from Amazon. But in the meantime I found The Seeds of Time, which I initially wasn’t interested in. Time travel, yawn. But then I started reading, and realized she was using time travel as a substitute for FTL travel — they can’t travel FTL, but they can travel backwards in time to a planet that at some point in the distant past was in the spot currently inhabited by Earth. OK, reticence about time travel cancelled. =)

Then I was uneasy about the very obvious, potentially heavy-handed environmentalist message of the book, set in a world that’s “graying” as the ecosphere collapses due to pollution and UV. It’s a message I agree with, but I don’t feel like getting beaten about the head with it for 400 pages. But again Kenyon surprised me. Though there’s some mention of the stock “street gangs taking over society” cliches (why does it never occur to people that when society collapses, gangs will probably collapse too? They’re just an alternative social organization model, equally dependent on a certain amount of material stability. But I digress — ), she keeps the focus of the story tightly on her protagonist, Clio, and Clio’s friends. Clio is the daughter of a lesbian couple in a society overrun by “the Sickness” — sort of AIDS on crack. This has caused rampant anti-gay hysteria as well as the enactment of some draconian laws; gay people are now preemptively “quarried”, or put into quarantine, never to be seen or heard from again. Shades of interment camps. Clio’s parents were quarried, and she could be quarried too for the simple crime of being related to gay people. Or she could be quarried for the much greater crime of using drugs (another group targeted by the laws), because she’s also one of the few human beings gifted with the ability to Dive through time. She’s close to burnout — something that eventually happens to all Dive pilots — so she uses the drugs to stay frosty. Her ability shields her somewhat, because time-diving may be the only way to save the graying earth; the ships that do the time-trips hope to find alien vegetation that’s capable of surviving in Earth’s nearly-inimical environment. So Dive pilots are desperately needed.

But to layer on the characterization, Clio is involved with Hillis, a gay man in hiding; she helps him by pretending to be his lover, but she actually wants to be his lover, because her rough life has left her emotionally damaged and she tends to hook up with men who are incapable of loving her back. Hillis is involved with Zee, a character who practically embodies race, class, gender, etc. privilege; much of the horror of this society is revealed through his rude awakenings as he discovers that America is no longer he mom-and-apple-pie dream he thought it was. (He was in grad school, is how he missed it up to now. I remember grad school. I understand.)

And all this is set against a hard-SF backdrop of exploring alien planets, Blade-Runner-esque urban dystopic worldbuilding, science-vs.-faith debates, and more. My head spins.

Y’know, if I can just find more hard SF like Kenyon’s, I may have to rethink my distaste for this subgenre. I’m now determined to work my way through her SF, then tackle her science-fantasy series that’s out currently. Can’t wait to see what she does with it.

Belated writing report! I’m up to 14,000 words on BrightGod, the tentatively-named sequel to 100K. (For the confused, “BrightGod” is Bright God’s Bane, and “100K” is The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Pay attention. I might spring a quiz.) Have also finally resumed regular submissions to short story markets. Got a rejection already from Apex Digest on my “aliens want our women” story, “Commission Report on the Establishment of Extrasolar Trade: Evaluation”. But I am undeterred! I made a special effort to write more science fiction this year past, and by gum I’m going to sell some of it. Eventually.

Reviewing! Spent this week’s train-commutes reading Kay Kenyon’s Maximum Ice, which I never heard of and only happened upon because the Brooklyn Public Library was doing a book giveaway as a promotion. I’ve never read Kenyon’s work before, but I really liked this tale, which was hard SF that had by far some of the best characterization I’ve ever read. The story was about a generation ship which comes back to Earth after 10,000 years to find it covered in “Ice”, a crystalline substance that has almost devoured the entire planet. The ship’s crew then has to navigate its own politics and those of the remaining Earth people in order to solve the mystery of Ice and figure out whether it can be — or should be — destroyed. Cool plot points (er, and spoilers): a) Ice turns out to be a massive crystalline computer, initially designed for its incredible information-storage properties because during the interim 10K years, Earth got hit by a cloud of dark matter which nearly killed all life on earth by stripping it of information (computers, of course, but also DNA). b) The generation ship is populated by the Rom/Gypsies/People of the Road, who fled Earth because there was a global epidemic and the gypsies got blamed for it (because they were immune), with the predictable result being concentration camps and genocide. c) The central conflict in the story comes down to two women — “Ship Mother”, a gypsy woman who serves as the living repository of memory for the generation ship, and “Mother Superior”, the leader of the Sisters of Clarity — an order of atheist nuns who rule the new Ice-covered earth. Mother vs Mother is a theme of the whole story.

It’s breathtaking stuff, and marks only the second hard-SF novel I’ve truly enjoyed in a very long time. (The other was Brenda Cooper’s The Silver Ship and the Sea, which has a sequel out that I need to get my hands on.) I can’t believe I never read Kenyon’s work before. Must check out more of it now.

Pimping! Fellow Altered Fluid member Alaya Dawn Johnson’s short story “Down the Well” came up at Strange Horizons well over a week ago, and shamefully I have only just now read it. But I love it — she’s so damn good at characterization and lyrical language, even in the midst of a grim tale about corrupt governments and playing God. Go read!

ETA: And a work colleague showed me this, which may quite possibly be the world’s most impractical Swiss Army knife. (It’s real, before you ask.) Just thought I would share.

Just got a Google Alert that cybersquatters have registered n-k-jemisin.info and a few other variations! That’s so cool. =)

From the latest Orbit press release:

THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS, by N.K. Jemisin, is a brilliantly original debut fantasy. A young woman vies to become the heir to the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and must bargain with the gods themselves to save her life – and her people.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get enough of seeing this in print. =)
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My story “Playing Nice With God’s Bowling Ball”, about a very smart little boy who has a very dumb friend, oh and there’s a black hole in it, is up at Baen’s Universe in the August issue! (I’m in the “Introducing” section, for new authors.) Go read it! (Subscription required.)