And away we go

It's late, and I'm tired, but the story's comlete, the rewrite finished and copies neatly stacked for the Turkey City eviceration tomorrow. But before I take my leave, I want to take this opportunity to indulge in a little bragging on my kid sister, competing in the Aggie Invitational Archery Tournament:

COLLEGE STATION, Texas- Freshmen Anna Stratton (Bend, Ore.) and Cassie Raffaelli (Bartonville, Texas) sit in first and second place in the compound division after the first of two days of competition at the Aggie Invitational being held at the Student Rec Center Archery Room this weekend. Sophomore Candice Blaschke (Columbus, Texas) is in third with a score of 560.

My brother, John, was an All-American archer and two-time World Champion in the compound bow division a few years back. Me, I'm not so good. But I've got a really sweet recurve that I really need to take out and shoot more often.

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News from Nebraska

I just got a couple of emails from the University of Nebraska Press that the final page proofs for Voices of Vision have been completed by the production department and are even now, as we speak, speeding my direction via the modern-day Pony Express known as Federal Express.

Or are they? A nagging suspicion at the back of my mind said, "No, they've sent the pages to Bastrop, just like they did with the original proofs." Bastrop, you see, is where my in-laws live, and the address I used for a time when the Temple house had sold but the New Braunfels house hadn't been built yet. I have informed Nebraska about this change, oh, four or five times now, but it never quite manages to get to the folks in shipping. So the in-laws have been alerted to be on the lookout for suspicious packages, and I'll be making a run up there in the near future.

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A story for the political season

Eileen Gunn is the enormously talented editor of Infinite Matrix as well as a cracking good writer in her own right. Her newest book is the short fiction collection Stable Strategies and Others, and I just happen to be the lucky editor who is running Fellow Americans on RevolutionSF this week in observance of the train wreck known as the presidential election.

He raises his hands above his head in the familiar double V-for-Victory salute to acknowledge the applause, then gestures for quiet.

"Thanks for the hand, folks." His voice is deep, quiet, and sincere. "You know, I needed that applause today." A catch in his throat. "Right before the show, I was on my way down here to the studio...." He shakes his head slightly, as if contemplating the role that Chance plays in Life. "An elderly lady came up to me, and she introduced herself, and then she said, 'Oh, Dick, I'm so pleased to meet you, you know you were my all-time favorite presidential candidate...." He lets the compliment hang there a second, as if savoring it. "...after Jack Kennedy, of course."

The audience laughs, appreciating the host who can tell a joke at his own expense. When the laughter has diminished, but before it stops completely, he continues.

"Speaking of politics, why is everybody picking on Dan Quayle these days?" He looks from face to face in the audience, as if for an answer. "He hasn't done anything." An artful pause. "And, as I know from my own turn at the job, he probably won't get to do anything in the future, either." More laughter, stronger.

It is, of course, an alternate history, road-not-taken piece. Which, naturally enough, I'm fixating on at the moment with my own writing. But despite the obvious opportunity for cheap jokes and absurdity when dealing with an alternate version of Nixon, Gunn treats the material with a steady hand. Ultimately, the story mixes equal parts comedy and tragedy. Nixon had the potential to be one of America's leading presidents, but undermined all of his positive accomplishments with arrogance, hubris and paranoia. It's fitting that this story of an alternate Nixon be tinged with an air of sadness.

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It's finished--for true, this time

My simple short stories are never as simple and straightforward they pretend to be when they insinuate themselves in my mind. Prince Koindrindra Escapes evolved from a make-it-all-up lark to a research-intensive labor pretty quickly. And the short, punchy sections grew to be significantly larger than could readily be considered "short." All in all, the whole thing blew past my original length target by more than a thousand words. That's my story as a writer--I never met a short-short I couldn't turn into a novella.

It was the gravest of sins to defy the king. Koindrindra was many things, but he was not depraved.

Koindrindra’s younger brothers Rakotondrandria and Siferanarivo--the twins had not yet grown into their proper names--argued that these Europeans held great power in their guns and their ships and their numbers. That they were more worthy than the loyal and brave Malagasy.

Koindrindra’s brothers were fools.

General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck swept through Portugese East Africa with an army of only 30,000, routing the French and Portugese before him. The Germans were celebrated by the natives as a liberators, and 50,000 Portugese, French and South African troops fled the mainland to Madagassikara.

The good news is that the first draft is complete, and I have a viable story to subject to humiliation at Turkey City on Saturday. I'm curious to see how Bruce Sterling would rewrite this into something completely different. I even managed to so some light rewriting here and there, planing down some of the extremely rough edges. A consistent tone is still the most elusive aspect of this story. I'm going to have to make some serious decisions over the next day or so, but no matter what I do, it's still going to be an extremely silly alternate history piece.

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Feeling overwhelmed

You know that deer-in-the-headlights feeling you get when deadlines are looming, and you suddenly realize you've over-committed yourself to too many projects? That's what I'm feeling right now.

The trip to College Station over the weekend for the Colorado game really threw me a curve. The whole weekend, Friday through Sunday, was a wash. Not that I've got second thoughts, mind you. I hadn't been able to make a game since back when I was still a sportswriter, and I had a great time. But those three days were days I'd planned to finish up Prince Koindrindra Escapes, and devote the bulk of this week to working on those additional Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Themes entries. So now my schedule's jumbled. I'll finish Koindrindra tonight, but it's very rough. I don't know if I'll have a rewrite opportunity between now and Turkey City. SFFS is holding its annual masquerade ball on Thursday, and as the staff advisor, I'm honor bound to attend and watch over things. The fiction at RevSF doesn't edit itself, and of course, there's the whole Halloween thing coming up, which is a big deal in the Blaschke household.

In all honesty, I've gotta stop putting myself in these positions.

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Innocence lost

While driving Calista to school, our morning conversation somehow came to the subject of fire drills. Last week they'd gone through the whole fire drill routine, she informed me. And also a poison drill.

Poison drill?

A railroad track runs right near the school--a hundred yards away, give or take. Union Pacific has had an inordinate number of derailments in and around San Antonio lately, and this summer a toxic cloud of chlorine gas killed a number of people after one pileup. So if there's a train derailment that releases toxic chemicals, all the students go to one particular room, which the teachers then seal up with duct tape around the door so they don't all die. Bear in mind she's telling me this with a combination of matter-of-fact and breathless enthusiasm that only a five-year-old can muster. Naturally, the spectre of a clorine cloud rolling over the school wasn't an image I was particularly taken with.

Then she told me about the "bad guy" drill. Explaining the step-by-step process the kids and teachers are supposed to go through was chilling for me to hear. Obviously, the lessons of Columbine have been taken to heart by the school district. And the counter-terrorism actions they have in place are good ones. But that doesn't make it any less troubling.

My generation grew up in a different time. Kids in the 70s and 80s didn't have to face a major war that killed or scarred ourselves or classmates. The Cold War was too abstract a concept to grasp. Terrorism only happened in other countries, and school shootings weren't an issue. We practiced fire drills every year, and very occasionally tornado drills. That was it for excitement. We had it good, relatively speaking, and had hoped the same for our children. But now they're facing the 21st Century equivalent of "Duck and cover." I'm not happy about that, but such is the world we live in.

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Where did the weekend go?

I survived the game at Kyle Field, and the Aggies did indeed emerge victorious, but the overtime thriller I could've done without. Sure, give me a tight game for the first half, but once the third quarter starts, I want a blowout under way. Why does Colorado always play us great in College Station? This was the first loss the Buffs have suffered there in three tries, and was almost a win. I don't get it.

Also retrieved my taped copy of Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars from my in-laws. Wow. When David Kemper said they condensed the entirety of season 5 into a four-hour miniseries, he wasn't fooling. I could see how the mini could've been played out over a dozen episodes, easy. They shoehorned in a lot. No telling what they left out. The mini wraps up the major loose threads nicely, and I can't wait to see what future Farscape projects the Henson company has in store.

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