Some People Think It's Okay

"The Magician's House" is on the Million Writer's notable story list for 2008!  Lots of other great stuff on there -- We Love Deena by my dearest Alice Kim, for instance, and a great reprint from M. Richard Butner.  Oh, and ditto Richard Larson on having mad enjoyed "Pittsburgh" by Meghan Austin.

In other news: have some cute dog pictures.  The little white one looking somewhat RCA-doggish is Sadie.  My downstairs neighbor is the photographer, and she got to model for free. 

Love,
Meghan

A propos of my last entry, I should add that I keep up kinda-sorta well with this Twitter business.  Oh, I was so suspicious.  But oh, it really is kinda fun.  Je tweet, tu tweets, on tweet, etc.

Love,
Meghan

It seems my last blog entry was... three weeks ago?  Allow me to confess I'm not entirely sure how that happened.  I mean, I only figured out on, say, Thursday, that I actually did have to do my taxes this weekend because there were no more weekends after that.  April 13th wha?

Oh man, but doing those taxes helped to remind me how the internet works.  Namely: you have to sit in front of a computer all day.  You must do this because you have some sort of unpleasant obligation on this computer.  But -- oh my! -- there all sorts of other pleasant things to see on this same computer.  Hell, not even pleasant, but at least informative.  Or even angry-making.  So, in between bouts of required unpleasantness, you roam far and wide and become angry and informed and... pleasant-ified?

Anyway.  I no longer sit in front of a computer all day, or for even a few hours a day.  In fact, I don't sit.  And, because New York is fantastic and/or crazy, after work I end up going out four or five nights a week.  I'm not saying I don't read the internet.  I have been a devotee of the internet since I was 12 and am hardly stopping now.  But since I'm catching it in large, strangely-timed gulps, I feel much less a part of the conversation, if that makes a lick of sense.  So I listen, but have less to say.

(I have less to say in writing in general.  I've spent the past few months revising and re-revising a 2,500 word story.  Clearly, I am not in a lively blogging kind of place.)

This weekend I met someone I've known for a couple years online.  It's this specific, awkward-yet-delicious experience, putting together pictures and pieces of texts and emailed secrets with the voice and mannerisms and funny stories you are now encountering.  Personal connections made on the internet have a specific quality that I'm extremely fond of, and I hope my silence doesn't cause those to dry up.  I suppose what I'm trying to say is I still love y'all; I'm just going to be a terrible correspondent for awhile. 

Love,
Meghan

I have been avidly following this year's Tournament of Books.  First of all,  I love me a good competition.  Also, due to this whole "working in a bookstore" thing, most of the books were already on my radar, and it's totally fun to see them matched up in random, sometimes absurd ways.  Plus, the randomness has lead to some fascinating discussions.  A huge amount of discussion has focused on a book I read and thoroughly enjoyed last year, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.  Its initial dismissal was textbook how to suppress women's writing, but that dishonor has lead to a lot of great discussion since.  I just weighed in with my (lengthy) thoughts.  Now I wish we'd made a bracket for this tourney at work -- I have no idea how my basketball bracket is doing.

Love,
Meghan

Seeking Avalon sums it up beautifully, and damningly:

RaceFail 09 started because I dared to point out to a White Author that she didn't have it all right when it came to race and representation in her own books and that the words she was giving to new writers and her current readers were blind and filled with holes that would lead to stereotypes (examples given) and set back communication.

And then things exploded and various PoC online learned that professional SF&F was not ready to have people who are not white, telling them where they're messing up.

*******

Also: Don't call it drama.  Don't call it a flamewar.  Don't say "both sides are wrong, we need to communicate, blah blah."  This is serious shit, and marginalizing POC in order to defend your privilege is wrong.  Despite all odds, good things are coming out of this.  Start here: verb_noire .

I read a lot of articles like this one.*  (Why?  Perhaps I enjoy misery.)  I don't like blogging about work, and I don't name where I work because we have very little web presence.  Having my rambling and occasional swearing become the number six google result would not help anybody.  But all of these doom articles assume outright that Amazon & Barnes and Noble have the superior business model, end of story, and that is dead wrong.  In fact, before I started working at my tiny bookstore, I had no idea how dead wrong these articles were, and got all frowny-faced with everyone else.

An independent bookstore requires a community.  More specifically, it requires a neighborhood or a town with lots of independent businesses.  Affordable rents also help.  If you don't live in such a place, you probably don't have an indepdent bookstore already.  I grew up in the suburbs and just spent two years living in rural New Hampshire.  I get it. 

The things a good independent does well are no-brainers: 
1. Indie stores look nice.  Good design, good layout, neat shelves.  (It makes a difference.  I wandered into a Borders in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philly last weekend and couldn't believe what a disaster area it had become.) 
2. Indie stores have a knoweldgeable staff who work there because they love reading.  So if you need a beach book, a sad book, a book for a 3-year-old or an 83-year-old, or just something awesome to read next, they will help you find it.
3. Indie stores cater to their community.  More interesting features, specialized stock, readings, newsletters, book clubs, house accounts, dog treats, etc etc.

The things independents do AS WELL as a chain or Amazon are less well-documented.  They can:
1. Can get in any book for you, very often the next day, for free.  Let me repeat that: next day shipping, free. 
2. Many will do things like wrap, ship, deliver, take phone orders, take email orders, import, etc etc.
3. If they use house accounts, any order can be added right on -- like one-click, but on index cards.  To be cute about it.

The things independents don't do as well as Amazon or a chain are:
1. Search.  Amazon is the most useful way to track down a book online, for now.
2. Discount.  Though we do not charge shipping, which cuts into Amazon's discount quite a bit.
3. Ubiquity.  Obviously.

What I'm trying to say is, bookstores are businesses, not charities to be supported out of the goodness of your heart.  They actually do want to sell you things, and work hard to determine the best way to do so.  The only element of consumer responsibility is to decide that you would rather call up the neighborhood store or take the ten minute drive instead of defaulting to what is corporate and known.  But, again, that decision will end up being a rewarding one not because you will feel like you are on the right side of a battle, but because you will have a better experience. 

Love,
Meghan

*Also, as a footnote, I am of this "online only" generation and, really?  We are not aliens whose internet-addled brains causes us to hate old men with framed letters by Dorothy Parker.  We grew up in a heavily homogenized, corporate consumer culture, and for many of us the first crack in that facade was discovered on the internet, not at the mall or the Union Square Barnes and Noble.   Can you blame us for continuing to check there first?

PPS: article via Gwenda.

Guys, I wrote a book.  It's all about dating.  No, seriously.  Like, life seems really complicated?  But it's actually really simple and covered by blanket statements.  Here's the table of contents:


1. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Asking You Out......... 3

2. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Calling You......... 17

3. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Dating You....... 23

4. He's Just An Asshole If He's Not Having Sex With You......... 25

5. He's Just An Asshole If He's Having Sex With Someone Else........77

6. He's Just An Asshole If He Only Wants To See You When He's Drunk......... 56

7. He's Just An Asshole If He Doesn't Want To Marry You............ 108

8. He's Just An Asshole If He's Breaking Up With You............117

9. He's Just An Asshole If He's Disappeared On You.......... 128

10. He's Just An Asshole If He's Married (Or Other Insane Variations of Being Unavailable)......... 139

11. He's Just An Asshole If He's A Selfish Jerk, A Bully, or a Really Big Freak........407

12. Haha, J/K Ladies, You Are Worthless And It's All Your Fault..............756

13. Afterword To The New Edition: Being a Lesbo Is No Excuse............815

Love,
Meghan

This week I discovered two more words I'd been spelling wrong all these years.  I was totally convinced it was "moustache" and "omlette."  OK, so "omlette" didn't really look right, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

*******

For the past three years, I've managed to find a different way to scam advance review copies.  Method number one was live within walking distance of Matt Cheney.  When that fell through, method number two was serve on the Tiptree jury.  That only lasted so long, however, so I had to move to the city and get a job at a bookstore.  Now I can actually call up a publishing representative and ask for my OWN advance review copies.  That's right.

Last week, without even asking, we got the review copy for blackholly  and castellucci 's anthology Geektastic.  The anthology doesn't come out until the summer, so I'm not sure how useful it is for me to say so, but guys, it's a huge amount of fun.  It's also weirdly comforting to read stories set at internet meetups and superhero conventions and quiz bowls.

But I am mostly making this post now because one of the stories contained an extremely useful phrase.  David Levithan's story is the one set at a quiz bowl tournament, and the main character, a guy, has a crush a fellow teammate, also a guy.  Except the main character is not even aware he has a crush, exactly.  He just really wants to be hang out with his teammate.  Be near him.  Make him laugh.  This is, as far as I can tell, a pretty classic coming-out thing, but not something particularly visible in the larger culture.  Levithan called it an "unarticulated crush." Which is funny, because as far as I knew the phenomenon had no name.  I.e -- it was unarticulated.

Love,
Meghan

So I glanced at the Locus Recommended Reading List a few days ago, noted many good things on it, and moved on.  I only thought to look for anything I wrote in the short story section, however.  Apparently, I actually wrote a novelette?  So, anyway, it turns out The Magician's House is on the recommended list.  Huzzah!  (edited to add: and you can vote for it in the Locus Reader's Poll.  No need to subscribe, etc.)

Also, Clarkesworld is running a poll asking readers to name their favorite short story.  My story Tetris Dooms Itself is on there, as well as many fine others.  If you dug something, go vote!

I just made a bunch of lentils with coconut milk.  It's good, but I mean, really.  A lot of lentils.  And a lot of couscous.  At least I know what I'll be eating for the next week?

Love,
Meghan

Hey SF people -- y'all know all about this, right? (Edited to add: I mean, of course you do, but.)  I don't have much to say about it that hasn't been said much better by others.  But let me chime in to add that if someone said, "Write me a textbook example of how liberal, intellectual posturing can be used to entrench white privilege," I could not have done better.  I'm disgusted, and embarrassed for a community that claims to define itself by friendliness and inclusion.

I'm screening comments, because I have to go out into the world and can't patrol my blog, which apparently is a consideration (Hi Haddayr!).  But those with smart things to say, do say them, and I'll unscreen when I can.

Love,
Meghan

I walked to work today in my work shoes.  The sidewalks were snow-covered and slushy.  The gutters were gray, half-frozen swamps.  My feet were very wet.  I was very angry.  I walked back in my snow boots, which I had accidentally left at work the last time it snowed.  A lot of the slush had melted away, diminishing my triumph, but I marched through what remained.  My feet were warm.  I was happy.

I live in a Gossip Girl house, which is great because I fucking love Gossip Girl.  Three roommates + one visitor sat down to watch it on Monday, as per usual.  Except this time our disco ball, leftover from Saturday's dance party, was still installed, so we watched with the lights half-dimmed and the disco ball spinning above us.  It weirdly made up for the fact that it was a rerun. 

Love,
Meghan

Today is my birthday!  I will celebrate by drinking flavored vodka and eating red velvet cake and selling someone my favorite book in the world.*  I am 26!  This is serious business.

Love,
Meghan

*not all at the same time

Lately I had been feeling like I didn't really "live" in New York.  This week has solved that problem.

Monday: Slumdog Millionaire at BAM.  (lame movie, great theater)
Tuesday: park hang with Sadie
Wednesday: Free Los Campesinos Show at Sound Fix + delish polish food
Thursday: Fake blood sparkle dance party
Friday: missing a lecture at Cabinet, befriending fellow late arrivers, and taking them to watch bocce at Union Hall
Saturday: absinthe at The Black Rabbit
Sunday: two playoff games and one gigantic meatloaf chez my friend in Crown Heights
Monday: walking with Sadie to Choice, procuring scones, and proceeding to spend the day lazing about in bliss

The only thing that could have improved this is if the Eagles had gotten their shit together.  The Cardinals?  Really?

Love,
Meghan

Guys, I'm not going to lie: I think 2009 is going to have some rough moments.  But I'm going to put on a hot dress and cook some fancy food and make French 75's and celebrate the good moments coming our way, too.  See you on the other side, loved ones & internet buddies.

Love,
Meghan

This year I started keeping track of the books I read.  Nothing fancy, just a running list on my desktop with dates. I thought I was pretty good at keeping track of what I read, but in reality I recall a few books that burn brightly, and lose track of the rest.  (Sorry books.)  This list-making made me much more aware of patterns in my reading, as well as my pace, in a way that was both useful and maddening.  For a few months towards the end of the year I also instituted a regimen that went like this: contemporary adult fiction --> contemporary kids lit --> classic --> nonfiction (lather, rinse, repeat).  This broadened my reading; it also may or may not have exacerbated the madness.  Usually I read by following obsessions, and switching to a system that encouraged me to jump between wildly different books was, um, disorienting. 

In August, I started working in a bookstore.  So instead of reading like it was my job, reading was my job.  (Yes, English teachers need to read, but, honestly?  Not this much.)  Plus I started spending hours in a room full of books, sandwiched by an hours on the subway.  This does not quite equal the focused awesomeness of last winter, where  I finished teaching at 12:30 and had no internet in my apartment and was reading for the Tiptree, but it's pretty damn motivating.  

Anyway.  Here's my full list.  My favorite run, I think, is #'s 43-45. 

( BOOKZ )

I've post about some of my most favorite books on that list (Strange Toys what!).  A quick list about a few I missed:

-- I have sold a large number of Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao.  It is on the counter, which helps.  It also helps that the book is really fucking good.
-- If I were still a teacher, I would teach The Disrepuatable History of Frankie-Landau Banks in a hot second, if only to get a large number of kids to read it and talk about it at once.  I have some issues with it, but they'd also be fun to discuss.  I have contented myself with selling it to anyone I can.
-- Holy crap Octavian Nothing.  Holy fucking crap.  I cried on the subway.
-- While we're on a YA beat, my favorite thing about Pretty Monsters (besides turning people in Brooklyn AND the UES on to it) was reading the secondary-world fantasy stories.  I'd missed them in anthologies, and I love their richness.
-- The Tiptree bio was an absolute knockout.  My college roommate agrees!
-- I do this stupid thing where, if everyone loves something and raves about it, I avoid it until the hubub dies down (see: the wire).  This is my way of saying I finally ready Kavalier and Clay after asking a friend for a book that was "engrossing."  I was engrossed, but moreover I was moved.  No one told me this was a beautiful book.
-- Great Expectations?  So great!
-- In Search of the Blues & Blues People come at the same subject -- the evolution and construction of African-American music from its roots in the rural blues -- from wildly different perspectives.   Both are fascinating, and Blues People is downright essential.
-- The Hunger Games is an extremely smart book.  It uses the setting (a reality television show) to engineer a plot so punishing it would be absurd except for the fact that that is the very logic of reality television itself.
-- 13 Clocks reissue!  Read that shit.
-- Personal Days is another extremely smart book.  I can't recommend it highly enough if you've had a terrible office job.  Park use two different tricky POV's to construct a story full of delicious digressions that never lags for a second.  The POV choices also capture the weird hazy timelessness of office life in a way I didn't totally think was possible.

I should note that none of the picture books I read this year are on this list, since I read them all at work, where there was no list-making to be made.  I summed up my favorites here.  Also, I've been reading A Public Space, One Story, and Tin House pretty consistently.  They are great. 

Love,
Meghan

Last night, I was lying in my stiff king-sized bed at a Motel 6  (dog friendly!) when my phone rang.  I am on vacation with my mother, sister, and aunt in Charleston, SC, visiting my cousin who goes to school down here.  We've had about eleven storms this winter so far.  I found this article fascinating -- and a bit close to home.  I have video to export, so I finally gave in and spent time surfing around LJ reading about this whole Open Source Titty Grab thing.  Man, I wish I were just a little bit either nerdier or badassier so I could actually use that phrase with aplomb.  I spend the winter fantasizing about vegetables.  Andy kidnaps me at 11:12 PM.  Via a great illustration blog with a great name, Sci-Fi-O-Rama, I found a site with every F&SF cover ever.  Over the past week and change, I have finally applied myself to the task of "getting settled" aka "unpacking shit."  A week ago.  Just got word that "The Magician's House" will be appearing in Rich Horton's Fantasy: Best of the Year.

That adds up nicely, I think.

-----

In other news, I've had this blog for about four years now.  Nice job, blog.  Though it seems that somehow my last entry was at least two weeks ago. What have I been doing?  Recommending books for a 4,5,6, and/or 25 year old, wrapping them Christmas and/or Hannukah paper, drinking fine champagne, recovering from karaoke-induced hangovers -- um.  Perhaps I saw a movie in there?  Yes.  I saw the new print of Amarcord at Film Forum.  Man.  Now I am guarding a batch of these cookies, which seem like they will never actually congeal, from my dog.  Merry has returned from Paris, and we celebrated by baking.  Except we screwed it up either by using hippie sugar or hippie peanut-butter, so they are still wet and squishy.  Lesson: if the recipe comes from the Depression, don't use granulated all natural $5 sugar.  Don't worry: I am still eating them.  They are still delicious.

Love,
Meghan

Just got word that "The Magician's House" will be appearing in Rich Horton's Fantasy: Best of the Year.  Go go little story!  Medium-sized story, maybe.  You know.

I actually had this hilarious moment where googled to see if there was anything to link to about this anthology, and I came across a full TOC for 2008 that they were waiting on approval "from one author."  And I was like, oh shit, that is me!!!  But then I figured out that it was the TOC for last year.

Love,
Meghan

A dear friend of mine is a producer at ABC, and she's working on this really cool show called Earth 2100.  Lynn describes it as focused on the "utopian future" -- basically, it is using a combination of expert interviews, graphic-novel segments, and user-generated content to envision a world where we've triumphed over our environmental challenges and used technology to better our world.  So, all you positive science fiction people out there -- ABC is looking for videos from people like you!  It's a really awesome opportunity to increase the visibility both of SF and of the types of debates we've been having around these here internets for years now.  The deadline is coming up soon, so get to it!  If you have any more questions, drop me a line.

Love,
Meghan

I've gotten emails from people, so I guess it's all official-like: my story The Magician's House will be included in this year's Best SF & Fantasy of the Year!  Which is, you know, cool.

Love,
Meghan

It is getting cold in this here New York City.  The wind whips through my coat and freezes my sadly (foolishly) glove-less hands as I grasp my morning coffee.  My toes shiver in my sneakers.  Talk of long underwear is being bandied about.  I lived in some kind of fantasy world where winter would cease to exist once I left the confines of the great state of New Hampshire.  This is not the case.  I find myself wondering what I hoped to achieve by leaving New Hampshire at all, if I still need to break out the pom-pom hat and winter coat and dog sweater in November.  Then I look at a picture like this*:



And I feel better.

Love,
Meghan

*my former front door, drowning in snow.  This was not a one-shot thing, but an accurate portrayal of the state of affairs from December to April.