Sorry I've been absent lately. I'm still in a bit of a ping-pong state of mind, even though I think I've settled on what to write. And I had to think all last week at work and that takes a lot out of a person. And unfortunately for my writing, there's a lot of stuff I want to watch on television. My obession with "So You Think You Can Dance" is a bit embarrassing.

Well, it's official, I'm a Critter!

Greetings fellow bloggers! You might have noticed I made some changes to the "Links" area (to your left.)

If anyone would like to add something in any category, or suggest a new category, please let me know. I don't want to be the only one who can pick links!

Everything in the "Resources" area (so far) is part of the Critters Workshop site. Their Submitting to the Black Hole page and the article "Query Etiquette -- or How Long is Too Long?" are helping to maintain my sanity regarding my Asimov's submission. Tomorrow it will have been 3 months . That's when, according to their guidelines, if you haven't heard you should consider it lost and resubmit. The maximum response time "Black Hole" lists for Asimov's is 174 days, which is almost 6 months (for a rejection.) That's a welcome grain of salt.

As for the next story, "The Daily Grind," I'm planning on joining Critters & submitting it for critique, which means also getting stories to critique by e-mail. They* say writing critiques is as valuable as getting critiqued. Athena's critique was very helpful, but I think I want a lot of opinions on this one! It's been through some revision since Athena, Cyn, Mom, and Michael-in-LA read it, and I'm not done yet. The trouble is preparing a submission to Critters is about as much work as a submission for publication. They* say it's worth it. After that comes "Best Laid Plans," which I think has Stanley Schmidt's name all over it, but it's still fairly early in its first draft.

* Who are they? Why, the Critters, of course!

Hooray! Cyn is back!

I love the idea of you writing from your real inner hillbilly voice! Go for it!

I think, I think I just might know what I'm going to work on next. I think I shall give all this historical stuff a break and just get back in the groove with my tried and true characters, I think there's a story I very much want to tell about them. Again, I think. I've probably written exactly one sentence since I had that nasty stomach flu (outside of work, of course. Just who's coaching your kids? Could an eco-friendly house help save the earth and save you money? Where can you get your news and weather anytime you want?)

I took a short visit home to deliver a present to my aunt (five hours down, three hours for dinner and five hours back) and got back in touch with my inner-hillbilly and I feel the need to speak in my real voice (even if it is someone else's)

I started researching tide pools after I decided my story "Best Laid Plans" might take place in one. The very first google hit on "tide pools" included this quote:

"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again."
John Steinbeck, from The Log from the Sea of Cortez.

So my research on "Best Laid Plans" led me directly to the author of Of Mice and Men.

Turns out he wrote about tide pools in Cannery Row too.

I finished Cannery Row yesterday. Loved it. This morning I woke up and looked at Yahoo headlines on my way to the weather report, and found a story about how John Steinbeck's son Thomas is working on his first novel at 61, after publishing a book of short stories at 57, his first book.

I'm having, like, this Steinbeck synchronicity thing.

A great big welcome to new contributor redbisons! She appears briefly in "Career." A virtual bouquet to the first to identify her appearance!

For a reality check, went back to the Asimov's listing on the Submitting to the Black Hole page on Critters.org. Average response time is 63 days, with plenty of rejections well over 76 days. So I can put the possibility that my manuscript got lost in the mail or fell behind the desk out of my mind, along with this submission in general. I'm already working on 2 other sci-fi stories, with another one warming up in the bull pen. Plus the re-collection project.

For perspective on "women's sci-fi" I should probably get hold of A Woman's Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and About Women, an anthology of short fiction edited by Connie Willis and Sheila Williams. I've already read at least one of the stories in it, but I'm sure the editors have written a preface or introducion that sums up the subgenre as they see it.

I don't pretend to be at all literate in the world of "feminist sci-fi." My image of it is A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I know Sue (Lange) has been called "the new Johanna Russ" and that J.R. is considered to be feminist sci-fi, but I haven't read anything by her. Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy and Utopia seems a somewhat ponderous site, but I'm sure it's very instructive on the subject.

I read some user reviews of A Woman's Liberation on Amazon.com expressing disappointment, because the title was misleading. The title story is by Connie Willis, and apparently didn't live up to some people's expectations.

Anyway, when I talk about "women's sci-fi" I don't mean feminist sci-fi, exactly. I mean "by and about women" as in the subtitle of the anthology, but I think I mean a little bit more than that. I mean sci-fi presented through the medium of women's experience, however each individual author defines that. By the way, I don't want to exclude men, necessarily. When Stephen King writes about characters like Dolores Claiborne and Liz Garfield in "Low Men in Yellow Coats" in Hearts in Atlantis, both of whom are, I believe, based on his mother, Ruth Pillsbury King, he's doing it, in my opinion. (Except Dolores Claiborne isn't science fiction, though I'd say "Low Men" is.)

I recently read the article "Toward a Working Definition of Steampunk" in the current issue of Apex Digest, and that made me think there should be a cool name for the subgenre I'm talking about.

I thought of another author to include in my ill-defined category of needs-a-better-name "women's sci-fi": Deborah Coates, author of "46 Directions, None of Them North" in Asimov's Science Fiction March 2006.

So what's the opposite of writer's block? 'cause I think that's what I got. I can't decide which of my ideas to start and I'm going a little goofy ping-ponging back and forth between them. I've started a paragraph each of four different things and I'm really struggling on where to go. All my characters are shouting so loud I can't concentrate on just a few.

The reason I mentioned "The Meateaters" by Sue Lange and "Babysitting" by Christine W. Murphy as influences/inspiration is to me those stories are a kind of women's sci-fi, though maybe not by the usual definition. In "Meateaters" all the characters are women who work in a meat processing plant, in a world where men seem peripheral. Why they're peripheral was one of the many questions the story left me pondering, though not really the most interesting one. "Babysitting" is IMHO about a deliciously brutal feminist justice. I'll add to those "Nano Comes to Clifford Falls" by Nebula and Hugo award-winning Nancy Kress, in July Asimov's. It's the strong working class woman's voice of the narrator that makes me include this story in my women's sci-fi category.

In my stories "The Daily Grind" (in progress) and "The Enemy" I'm going after something I believe these 3 authors achieve. I've been envisioning for quite awhile a collection of short sci-fi and/or horror stories, each with a different aspect of women's experiences, mostly to do with work, as a theme.

Hmm, is this a subgenre? What can we call it?

(I said some of this in a comment on the post about writers who influienced us.)

After I read "Anatomy of an Underwear Drawer" by Susan Weiner (I think this may be her blogspot page) on the Inspirations page of Moondance, I understood better how my piece fits with the BITCH theme. It's about coming to a sense of resolution about something that's been a problem for many years, finally getting a handle on something that always seemed out of control before.

Whether you came to a resolution in reality, or just in your essay is another question.

Congratulations to Athena for "An Odd Day in I-Forgot" being included in Best of Apex 2005 Volume II.

I mention this now because only today did I reach page 99 of the current Apex where the "Best ofs" are plugged.

Here's what blows me away. The theme for this issue of Moondance is BITCH, which stands for Being In Total Control, Honey.

I sit down to write the absolute literal truth about the most intractable aspect of this mess that is my life, and they publish it in the Being In Total Control Honey issue.

There's a lesson for me here, an important one. I must study it.

Maybe it's because I didn't say anything about our current finances.

I checked Moondance, and it's up! They've published my essay "Career" in the Summer Issue as promised. Hurray!