Category: Personal

Good news! We took our kid in for a pressure test to assess the state of his glaucoma, as we do a couple of times per year… and for the first time we didn’t have to do it under anesthesia. He’s old enough now for us to talk to him, explain to him what’s going on, and reassure him, so we decided to try it with his opthamologist in the office. He did beautifully — didn’t cry or freak out at all, or even seem particularly afraid. His pressures are well within normal range, which is fantastic news. So what’s normally an all-day ordeal with going to the hospital in San Francisco, waiting for doctors, getting him anesthetized, waiting for him to come out of anesthesia, etc., was instead accomplished in less than an hour at the office a few miles from our house. This is a huge benefit for us. (And, also, vastly cheaper, since we don’t have to pay an anesthesiologist.)

One eye seems stronger than the other, so he’ll have to wear an eyepatch for a few hours a day for the next few months, at least, to make his other eye stronger. But it’s a lot better than surgery, eye drops, etc., which we’ve endured often enough in the past.

Since he was so good, I took him to the zoo, where we rode the train, and various kiddie rides, and looked at camels and zebras and giraffes and meerkats and so on. He’s sitting on the couch now with his zoo map, pointing out all the stuff he did. Such a cutie.

EVERYTHING.

I’m home with my sick kid again. He’s still got a slight fever and cough and a nose that runs like a faucet, but for all that he’s pretty cheerful, especially with some baby tylenol — or “red medicine” as he calls it — in him. Too sick to go to preschool, though, so here we are, watching Dora the Explorer and playing with little toy cars.

Like his mother, my son is oddly beautiful when he’s sick: skin very pale and luminous, eyes bright yet shadowed.

Here’s a set of recent photos of the little guy, from the past couple of weeks. No beautiful pallor here, though — healthier times!

I got up at 7:30 am with the boy on New Year’s Day. So far: 2011 is rainy.

Yesterday we went to Wal-Mart to spend some gift cards. Not something we do often, and an odd way to spend the end of 2010. The Wal-Mart closest to us in a mall, though — further proof we’re Berkeley People, now, as the Richmond Wal-Mart is closer than the Oakland one — and so there were mall-type things. River got to ride a carousel, and attempted to ride several little cars/jeeps/rocketships/helicopters, but half of ’em were broken, and the other half were “too scary.” He did like the fire truck, once we convinced him to give it a try.

We got a new TV (yay for post-Xmas sales) to replace our old ailing one, which we acquired years ago secondhand on Craigslist, and which only worked right if you wiggled and propped up the various cables, as all the inputs were slowly dying. So now we’re finally living in the Flatscreen Future!

It’s not an objectively gargantuan TV — a 42″ widescreen — but it does constitute an unimaginably vast improvement over our old one. I can actually read the text in video games on screen now. Incroyable. And River is quite enamored of Giant-Sized episodes of Dinosaur Train.

All was not sunshine and roses, though, alas. The TV box was so large it could only fit in the car if I removed the kid’s car seat and wedged it in the back seat, so I drove it home while my wife wandered the mallabyrinth with the boy. She was unthrilled about being stranded at the mall near dinnertime while I drove the 20 minutes home and 20 minutes back, as I’d blithely assured her beforehand that I thought the TV would fit fine. My utter lack of any spatial sense will be a subject of my wife’s mockery for years to come; like it wasn’t already.

(I mean, I thought: “A 42″ TV? Sure, that’ll fit in the trunk.” And the TV itself would, easily… but it comes in a giant padded box, of course. Which I rather failed to account for. And unpacking the TV in the parking lot and driving it home un-padded seemed, um, inadvisable. Anyway, I made it up to her by offering to get up with the kid and letting her sleep in this morning, even though it’s my turn to sleep in.)

Not that we can afford a new TV, really, but there’s a fair bit of fiction money coming in soon, and my wife’s financial situation is stabilizing a bit in the new year, so the expense shouldn’t linger overlong on my credit card. It’s definitely an indulgence… but I have few enough of those that I don’t feel bad.

And if I did feel bad, I would let the light of my new giant TV soothe me.

So how was 2000-2010 for me? (I know, the decade was 2001-2010, but the transition is more striking if I start a year earlier.) Well, you know, it’s kinda when my adult life began…

In 2000 I was 22 years old. I’d graduated college and subsequently attended Clarion the year before, and was full of the fire to be a writer, but I’d only sold three stories, to ‘zines and e-zines that paid maybe $20 a pop. I was still writing poetry very seriously — indeed, I was more successful as a poet. I’d published twice as many poems as stories, and it’s expected that poetry won’t pay much, so that was okay. I was working in the in-house advertising department of a big company, writing sales copy about objects. (By local standards it was a fantastic job — indeed, I’ve never had a day job that paid so well since, even living in vastly more expensive California — and if I’d kept on working there, I’d have a nice house in the mountains of North Carolina by now, probably.)

But I wasn’t happy, so in August 2000, I kissed my girlfriend Meg goodbye, loaded up my silver Nissan Sentra, and drove to Santa Cruz to crash with my friend Scott and figure out what to do with my life. Got a job at a disability advocacy company, hung out in coffee shops a lot, ate good Mexican food frequently, and had a nice if somewhat lonely life. So ended 2000…

In the decade since then I:

Wrote my first published novel, The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl; sold two story collections and a poetry collection; produced (by a conservative estimate) about 2 million words of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry; wrote 11 more novels; sold four books in an urban fantasy series, which was subsequently optioned for film and has been continually under option since then (I just had lunch with the producer on Tuesday); had that series dropped by my major publisher; despaired; self-published a sequel, which turned out pretty well; sold a bunch of work-for-hire and small press novels; sold my first anthology; spent nine years and counting working at Locus magazine, where I’m now a senior editor (I never thought I’d have the same day job that long); reviewed hundreds of porn movies and dozens of science fiction books (for, er, different venues); sold well over a hundred stories, many to pro markets I’d been reading since I was a kid, and about 40 poems; got reprinted in heaps of year’s best anthologies, including twice in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, which I’d always read religiously; worked as a poetry editor for two publications (Speculon and Star*Line); co-founded and co-edited and closed a ‘zine called Flytrap that ran for 10 excellent issues; attended my first science fiction convention and many more subsequently; got to attend professional invitation-only writing workshops; rode the coattails of the podcast revolution, with more than 30 stories and/or poems (original and reprints) adapted for audio, bringing me to a whole new audience; published many well-received chapbooks by myself and other, more awesome writers; won a Hugo Award, a Joshua Norton Award, a Rhysling Award, an Asimov’s Reader’s Poll, a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award; was a finalist for a Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, Sturgeon Award, Campbell Award for Best New Writer, a couple of Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, a Stoker Award, and a Seiun Award.

But more importantly than the writing and career stuff: Met my wife (through mutual acquaintances in science fiction), fell in love with her, moved in with her in Oakland, proposed to her, married her, honeymooned with her in Hawaii, had a child with her (and became a father! Whoa!); and had an ongoing awesome life with her, my favorite human, my very own Person of the Decade: Heather Shaw.

It makes me hopeful for the next ten years. It’s a long time. A lot can happen. And in 2020, I’ll only be 43. I have time.

I love the end of the year and the start of a new year. I know as milestones go it’s all rather arbitrary, but if I didn’t believe symbolic things had actual power, I probably wouldn’t be a fantasy writer. 2010 was problematic in many ways, but vastly better than 2009. Let’s hope 2011 continues the upward trend.

Here’s what I accomplished in 2010, in literary terms anyway.

• Wrote a dozen stories. Short stories “Mommy Issues of the Dead”, “Cinderlands”, “Shark’s Teeth”, “At the Monkey Party”, and “Rangifer Volans”; novelettes “Antiquities and Tangibles” and “A Void Wrapped in a Smile”; and four flash pieces, “De Gustibus,” “Luminous,” and two pieces for the Alphabet Quartet collab. All but “A Void” were sold. (Well, “Monkey Party” was for charity, so not sold exactly.)
• Wrote three books: Broken Mirrors, my Wizards of the Coast project, and my middle grade fantasy novel The Deep Woods, plus 55,000 words of a pseudonymous novel I started near the end of 2009 (and which was published earlier this year). Oh, and a 6,000 word detailed outline for a work-for-hire novel I just sold.
• I self-published Broken Mirrors as a donation-funded serial online, and the support from readers exceeded my wildest expectations. I was stunned by the positive response, and it still makes me grin happily when I think about it.
  

• As alluded to above, I sold some books. Broken Mirrors to Merry Blacksmith, which did the print version after I finished my online serial self-publishing experiment. That Wizards of the Coast book. Briarpatch to Chizine Publications. Another pseudonymous novel, and another work-for-hire book, both sold quite recently. And I self-published my science fantasy kid’s adventure novel The Nex. So, pretty good.
• I saw some of those books published, and also saw publication of my first anthology, Sympathy for the Devil.
• I sold some stories, too, though I can’t remember how many offhand, and was sloppy about keeping records for those this year. (I mean, it’s all in my e-mail somewhere….) I published very few stories this year, though — some flash pieces, reprints, audio originals, an anthology story or two. There are some stories in line for publication next year, though.
• I dove into e-self-publishing, and have made decent money from Kindle editions (and pocket change from Apple and Barnes & Noble) for my couple of self-published Marla Mason books. Sales are now declining a bit after months of increases, but the e-books are still bringing in enough to pay my kid’s preschool tuition most months, so that’s awesome.
• My total paying words for the year, including non-fiction: just a hair short of 370,000. I considered pushing it and hitting a nice even 400K, but frankly, taking the last two weeks of the year off writing has been a nice break. Video games are wonderful things.
• I read about 140 books. (But maybe a quarter of those were collections of comics or graphic novels, which I read quickly.)

Mmm crunchy numbers. Some other highlights:

I wrote a poem for my wife for Valentine’s Day; it was subsequently read on Escape Pod and thus heard by tens of thousands of people. That was cool.

Did some good readings. I love doing readings.

I got nominated for a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, which is awesome. Sturgeon’s my favorite story writer. I lost, but I’m used to that.

I worked on finishing the Alphabet Quartet, the series of 26 flash pieces written with my wife Heather and our friends Greg and Jenn, which will be published in both print and audio next year.

I’m sure there are other things. But I’m sleepy. This is enough. In a day or two I will probably revive the Tropism Awards, discussing Stuff I Liked in 2010. (I know; you wait with bated breath.)

tl;dr: I wrote a bunch, and read some stuff.

Christmas was fairly epic. The boy rose at a semi-reasonable hour. I made the traditional massive pan of scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, and sausage for breakfast. (And some meatless eggs for my wife.) My sister and mother-in-law and nephew came over and we had a pleasant hour tearing open packages and oohing and ahhing.

River loves opening wrapped gifts, so we got him lots — though many were of the Dollar Store persuasion, acquired so he could have more boxes to unwrap. He got many many legos, and a Thomas the Tank Engine train that drives itself around following a special light you can shine on the floor (the future is weird), and a toy vacuum, which was rather inexplicably his MUST HAVE toy for the season. (When he met Santa and asked for a vacuum, Santa was rather bewildered, but the fat man came through in the end.)

Heather’s big gift for me was four pieces of beautiful old Fiesta dinnerware — cups and mugs in assorted colors. I’m not a serious collector by any means, but I have a few nice Fiesta pieces, and now I have EVEN MORE.

My mother-in-law got me an Xbox 360, of all things, much to my astonishment and delight. (It was a combined birthday/Xmas present, but still!) So she’s to blame for any major drop in my productivity in 2011… Heather conspired to make sure we had games, too: Bioshock 2 and Fable 2. I’ve already begun killing drug-addled maniacs with drills and lightning. Fun. (The nice thing about getting a gaming system years after everyone else? Many awesome games available for cheap. Any recommendations? I’m not much for playing with others; I prefer solo experiences. I like stealth action games and survival horror and the occasional weird puzzle game…)

I also got the final volume of the collected Theodore Sturgeon, completing my set. Looks very nice on my shelf. Still my favorite short story writer. I got lots of other goodies, too — clothes, books, wind-up dinosaurs, and an awesome print I need to hang on the wall soon.

Then we had the big dinner. I made turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy (best gravy I’ve ever made), cranberry relish that turned out a bit boozier than intended; but that’s okay. There were many, many casseroles. Heather did stuffing and two pies, apple and chocolate. Yum yum yum yum yum. My sister-in-law’s boyfriend joined us for the meal. Very pleasant. The afternoon passed in a languorous stupor, except for the kids, who were in a toy-fueled frenzy. We watched White Christmas and drank wine. Pretty mellow.

And on Boxing Day, we cleaned up. All good things have their price.

YAWN. Happy Christmas. The boy got up around 7 a.m., and found a pile of gifts to dazzle him. We’re not doing present-opening and so forth until my sister-in-law, nephew, and mother-in-law get here later this morning, but we let River open a couple of things from Santa to appease him. He’s been waiting a looooong time for Christmas — this is the first year he really understood the holiday in a way that allowed for anticipation — and he’s pretty much a squealing mass of pure delight.

My turkey is trussed and awaiting the kiss of flame in the oven; potatoes are chopped and wait only to be boiled and mashed and made creamy; and cranberry relish and gravy can wait. That’s all my culinary responsibility for the day… apart from the massive artery-clogging breakfast of sausage, eggs, and cheese I’m about to compose. A world of yum.

Happy day to all, whether you celebrate something or not.