Musings

I spent the morning dealing with issues with Western Minerals and Oil and lunging Pi. After eating leftover BBQ (and there was a lot of leftoever BBQ) we headed out to the lectureship. Portales is a very small town on the south eastern edge of New Mexico. It’s surrounded by farms growing winter wheat and peanut farms and dairy farms. We’re out on the great eastern plains and it’s as flat as Texas. The man we were gathering to honor had arrived in NM via covered wagon in the early twentieth century. His family had homesteaded and Jack Williamson grew up on a working ranch and dreamed about the stars.

Portales is the site of Eastern New Mexico University. Jack was an English professor at the university, and he was a vibrant force on campus. The liberal arts building is named for him, and the library houses the Williamson collection which is a large and varied science fiction collection. I decided that I wanted to donate my papers to ENMU because of Jack and all the other terrific people at Eastern. So in addition to our luggage Ian’s trunk held five boxes of first drafts of novels and scripts, spec pilots, spec movies, character sketches, etc.

We arrived at the hotel in the late afternoon, and were chatting with Ed Bryant in the lobby when Connie swept in from teaching a class. She immediatly asked me “if anything had happened today”. I didn’t realize she was talking about _in the news_ so I said, no, my day was pretty quiet. Connie was so funny because she waved that off and declared. “Oh, I don’t care about your day. Did anything happen in the news!” I had to tell her that sadly, nothing appeared to have happened. Something you must understand is that Connie, Parris and I are political junkies, but those first two make me look like a piker. We are all united in our distrust and disgust with George Bush and this administration and Republicans in general. I realized I was going to have to find a nugget to offer Connie that would return me to the ranks of political maven.

Then it was time to head out for the traditional pre-lectureship lasagna dinner. This year it was hosted by Gene Bundy, the university’s librarian and his wife Geni who is also a professor on campus. We had a great time with great food. (The spinach lasagna was awesome), and we discussed plans for the following day, and began the discussion of how to continue the lectureship now that we had lost Jack. After the long drive we were tired so it was an early night — not a common thing when many science fiction writers gather together.

As I said earlier Portales is a _small_ town. There are only a few restaurants. It is also very rural and very conservative. We gathered at Mark’s Diner for breakfast, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the worthies of Portales made of Connie’s magnificent collection of bumper stickers. One was an Impeach Bush, but my favorite was a Sinclair Lewis quote. “When fascim comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

Inside the waitress took one look at this large and rowdy crowd and put us in the back room. That usually only happens when Gardner Dozois is with us, but I think he was there in spirit. Emily Mah, a member of Critical Mass had invited a young man from Los Alamos who is attending Eastern, and is an aspiring writer. Stephen was great. We had expected more members of his newly formed writers group, but it was only Stephen and an older woman who taught school in a near-by town. We all chimed in to set out rules and techniques for running a crit group that after long testing at Clarion and Milford and Rio Hondo have been found to work.

We lingered at Marks until past 11:00 am and then we had to get over to the campus for the lectureship luncheon in the ballroom of the student union. (Another thing you have to understand about the good people of Portales. They _never_ want you to go hungryl. We just sort of float from meal to meal to snack to meal.) It was the usual set up with Connie, and Rick Hauptman, Jack’s bibliographer and Eleanor Wood his agent, and Patrice Caldwell who is the vital force behind the lectureship and who team taught with Jack seated at the head table. The rest of us were arrayed at round tables scattered throughout the room. Steve Gould was typing up his impressions of the luncheon on his Palm and fold out keyboard. He noticed that there were seven of us at the table and eight delicious frosted brownies so he imagined the rumble that would ensue over that extra brownie. As usual we were bad kids and all sat together. I was at the table with Ian, Walter Jon, Steve and Terry and one lonely lady from the campus who seemed confused by us. I took a lot of photos because I noticed when I unpacked after moving into my new house that the pictures that meant something to me were the pictures of people, not the beautiful scenes from England or Italy.

After an appropriate amount of time to eat the folks at the headtable talked about Jack and what he had meant to our field and more importantly what he had meant to us. I kept expecting to see him sitting up there as he had for all the many years before, and I felt that hot prickle behind the eyelids. Another wonderful bit of information that Rick Hauptman imparted to us was the Jack invited the phrase the “prime directive” when he wrote THE HUMANOIDS. Connie talked about how while we have his writings and our memories the best has been lost.

After lunch I dropped off my boxes at the library and then we settled down for a couple of back to back panels. Connie moderated the first which was a look at Science Fiction in the past and Jack’s place in that. On the panel with her were Ed Bryant and Eleanor Wood, and a gentleman who owns a small press. Connie was a perfect moderator, keeping the conversation moving, and eliciting great comments from her panelists while not monopolizing the conversation. Ed made a wonderful point that really what all literature does, including science fiction, and maybe more so with science fiction, is reinterpret myth. I know this is probably old news to readers with an English lit background, but I’m a music and history major, turned lawyer, turned writer, and I found all of this fascinating.

We broke for punch and cookies (yes, snack time), and the punch was very welcome because they are repairing the airconditioning in the library, and the multiple fans were trying hard and failing miserably. Then it was our turn. My panel was about what is being written now. Where are we going? How do we write? My panelists were Ian Tregillis, Emily Mah, Walter Jon Williams and Eleanor who could set us all straight since she has been selling our books for a good long time. We had a lively discussion about how do we train ourselves to look at the new technology and see not so much stories based on that technology, but how it is going to affect how human’s live and react. Jack was a master at that.

Emily writes Y/A science fiction which really hasn’t been done since Heinlein with a few notable exceptions like Steve Gould’s brilliant book, JUMPER. I pointed out that while Heinlein was teaching about math and the solar system in HAVE SPACESUIT he was really giving us a lesson about courage and loyalty and about a young man becoming a man of honor and integrity.

With both panels we had a lot of questions from the audience and there were a lot of students in attendance. I really liked this format. In the past the formal lecture had always been in the theater on Thursday evening with the special guest and Jack moderating for as long as he had the energy. It was very nice, but rather formal, and we had more older people from the town rather than the students that I think we really need to reach. We finished our discussion around 4:30. Some of the gang went off for the traditional visit to the Dairy Queen while the rest of us took the opportunity to rest before attending the Faculty Picnic at the President’s house. We also plotted how to button hole the president and try to convince him that continuing the lectureship was a good idea.

So, more about the amazing ENMU steel band, how Walter Jon is a great dancer, and wine and chips in the breakfast room of the Holiday Inn Express tomorrow.

Melinda

Hi, All,

I’m back from Portales and an afternoon continuing to play hookey from work and responsibilities. I’m probably going to have to report on these past few days in bits and pieces because so many wonderful things happened, and so many fun, poignant, thought provoking, fascinating and funny conversations took place that it’s going to take awhile to marshall all the thoughts and memories.

Wednesday was a bit crazy making. I headed down to Albuquerque early in the morning, and ran errands (picking up Quick Books for Mac) before heading to the dentist’s chair. Three small fillings later I met Walter for lunch at a favorite Indian restaurant, and he laughed at me as I tried to eat when my lip was so numb that I was hard pressed not to eat the inside of my lip or drool chai down my front. After lunch I headed to Powdrell’s, our favorite BBQ joint, and ordered way too much food. If I believed in this stuff I’d have to say I was a Jewish mother in a previous lifetime. Nobody leaves my house hungry, damn it! I had an interesting chat with one of the Powdrell daughters while they put together the massive order. She was talking about the interesting people who frequent the restaurant, and I learned that one of the premier repair and restoration shops for violins, violas, cellos and basses is in Albuquerque. People bring their priceless 18th century instruments to Robert’s Violins. Who knew? And I’m a singer and grew up in Albuquerque.

I came racing home, and had hoped to sneak in a ride, but Connie Willis and Ed Bryant called and they were only thirty minutes out from the house. They arrived, we had a brief visit and they had a bit of time to decompress from the long drive and then it was time for the party to start. Let me give you the run down. We had George R.R. Martin and his lady, Parris, Steve Stirling, sadly without his wife, Jan. She was a bit under the weather because they had just returned from a wedding in India the day before. I was amazed Steve joined us, but it was great to have him. Daniel Abraham, his wife Kat and baby Scarlet. Walter Jon Williams, Emily Mah Tippets and her husband Trevor, Steve Gould and Laura Mixon-Gould, Terry England, Sage Walker and her SIG Hank Messenger, Ian Tregillis, Ty Frank and his wife Jayne.

The roar of conversation and shouts of laughter soon filled the house. Everyone had brought delicious side dishes for our feast, and I was left flying around making sure everyone had enough to drink, plates, washing forks, guiding people to the trash sack vs the recycling sack, making coffee, and then at 8:00 pm I gathered those of us with submissions to critique and we retired into the library. We did some good work, and we had some terrific submissions, but it was hard to be responsible when waves of laughter would come rolling down the hall and we would all look at the doorway and wonder what we were missing.

We finished around 9:30, and rejoined the party. Things broke up around 10:00 pm until just Connie, Ed, George, Parris, Carl and I were left. There had been great stories and sharp zingers exchanged earlier in the evening, but now things because rather serious and very thoughtful, and a discussion began that I think is fascinating and worth reporting about in some detail. The topic had turned to the decline of the short story magazines and George said rather sadly that people didn’t want to read short fiction now and he wondered why. I suggested that it was due to how we are entertained today — movies and television and that even movie going isn’t a stand alone experience anymore. We love Spiderman, and we know there will be another Spiderman movie along in a year of so. And television is all about falling in love with the characters and the setting and wanting to visit with those people in that place week after week.

George considered that, and pointed out that when the novel began it was just that — novel. In a world where you never travelled beyond the confines of your small village and you followed your father into his trade, and you married the girl next door and eventually you died and were buried in the same place where you were born; people wanted to read about the life they could never have. They wanted to follow Tom Jones to London and meet eccentric characters along the way, and be taken away from the safe, known confines of your world.

Connie then elaborated on this theme, presenting the idea that in our completely frantic, fragmented world readers want a safe and familiar place to which they can retreat. And hence the power and popularity of the series, or at least a known universe where you can count on seeing the characters you love and live in a world that seems more comforting (even it it’s sometimes dark and dangerous) than our own chaotic lives and times.

Then with my head full of this conversation and many other we all called it a night and adjourned to bed. And now I think I’ll tie this up and continue tomorrow with the trip to Portales.

Melinda

Well, I wrote for hours today while the wind howled and I opted to keep typing and not go ride Pi. (Now I’m feeling horribly guilty). I’m trying to get the house cleaned, and prepare a cake for the first Santa Fe Connie Con that’s happening tomorrow night. You see, a number of us are heading off to Portales NM for the Williamson Lectureship. Sadly we lost Jack in November 2006, but those of us who loved, respected and were in awe of Jack are making the trip to Portales to commemorate his life. If you don’t know Jack’s work may I recommend With Folded Hands and Darker Than You Think. Jack also added a number of words to the English language. Terraforming, genetic engineering, humanoid, and psyonics.

Connie Willis was a dear friend to Jack, and she and Ed Bryant are driving down from Colorado tomorrow. We had thought we’d try for a small dinner, but everybody wanted to see Connie so we’re doing a potluck at the house tomorrow. Eighteen people plus a baby. And in the midst of this we are holding a meeting of Critical Mass. To add to the chaos I have to go to Albuquerque tomorrow to get a filling.

Thursday I’m off to Portales to visit with those good people. I’ve also decided to donate my papers to the Williamson’s Collection which is has an amazing science fiction collection at this small college. So in the car will be three boxes of first drafts of novels and scripts and notes on tv series ideas, etc. etc., my luggage, and the patient friend who is giving me a ride since I have a tiny car.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to drag along the laptop. What am I saying? I probably will. I get nervous when I’m away from the writing for too many days, and I want to keep building on the momentum on the Wild Card story.

Melinda

Home again, and Carl and I are doing _Projects!_. Staining the last bit of baseboard where it curves around the kiva fireplace in the bedroom. Cutting cement board to form a backsplash behind the cook top. We have all this left over glass tile from building my Roman tub so we’re going to use it behind the cook top so it’s time to play with mastix and grout. There is still some wood that doesn’t have urethane on it. I’ve barely touched the outside of the house. I just got the aspens in the ground (which reminds me, they need water), and I’m trying to get some quotes lined up for drip irrigation. Once those lines are in from the cisterns and the grey water system I can really start planting. Nobody panic, it will all be low water use, native plants.

I made the trip up to Farmington for a well review with my pumper. The good news all the compressors, and pistons and wells are working beautifully now that the winter is over. There were just a few minor fires to stamp out. The best part of this trip was that I got to spend two nights and basically a day at the ranch in Regina. I drove to Regina on Wednesday, and Sage and I prepared a lovely vegetarian pot pie with a chesse sauce filling. (A warning, you’re going to hear a lot about food and cooking here. I love to cook.) There was chopped chicken liver pate and lavosh bread. The wind was howling around Sage’s little one room cabin. It’s up almost on stilts and when you look out through the large windows it feels like you are on the deck of a ship sailing toward the beryl green meadow dotted with yellow and purple wild flowers, and the darker green shadows of the pine trees climbing the shoulders of the mountain.

Thursday morning I got up early and drove the hour and half to Farmington where I was the business woman Melinda. Then back in the car and a return to the ranch for left over pot pie, and an afternoon spent reading submissions for writer’s group, and completing the first interstial section for BUSTED FLUSH. There was the buzz of an engine over the roof of the cabin, and the owner of the ranch came in for a landing on the grass airstrip down in the meadow. His bright red and white Cherokee looked like an exotic insect exploring the wild flowers from my vantage up on the crest of the hill.

Sage prepared a lovely hollendaise/hazelnut sauce that we put over braised chicken breasts. I was in charge of vegetables, and how to jazz up a bowl of pasta, and cooking the chicken. During this flurry of cooking there was a lull when I walked down to the large lake. (In wetter climates this would be a pond. In NM we call it a lake. ).

Water is a precious commodity here, and we had a good winter with lots of snow. The owner of the ranch has water rights, the right to capture the snow melt off the mountain and fill this cascading line of ponds that run down the valley. I’ve been going to the ranch for several years, and last summer the pond was a muddy hollow with some green slimed water in the very center. The mud was pocked with the footprints of racoons digging in the mud for dying crappie, and the ravens hopping about, and stabbing into the mud with their razor-like beaks and emerging with a skewered fish. There was a wooden dock, the wood gone silver with age, that thrust mournfully out over the cracked mud.

Well, this year the lake is full. The water is lapping a foot below the dock. When I arrived a sunset the water looked glazed with gold, and the mountain and the trees were reflected with crystal perfection in the water. It was a moment in NINE PRINCES IN AMBER where Roger described the Avalon that was floating in the sky made of moonlight. I could look from the reflected mountain to the real mountain and have a moment of confusion. A pair of ducks came sweeping in overhead, and came in for a landing with that wonderful upright position, wings beating desperately as if they’re afraid to hit the water, and then a ballarina’s landing without scarcely a splash on the surface. I watched silver v’s fan out behind them as the mallard and his lady sailed gracefully away toward the willows on the far bank.

It was back to cooking then, and a reflection that I had a better understanding of what my dressage coaches are talking about when they say a downward transition on a dressage horse should feel like a duck landing on water.

Dinner was a long and lingering affair. I got Fred and Sage to start talking about their years in Taos, and in the midst of my laughter I realized there was a television series in this. I’m totally jazzed and Sage got totally jazzed and I’m going to pitch it to my manager and see if it’s worth developing. It’s the Northern Exposure for the 21’st century, but with a lot more cultural fragmentation. It would be so fun, and now that NM has become Tamalewood (I’m not kidding, that’s what they call us in California) we could shoot this sucker here. That evening the pilot light on the furnace blew out, and we hadn’t lit a fire in the stove because it had been a pleasant day. Shivering, I hopped out of bed, and put on a sweatshirt. It was like sleeping in a tent at Chaco Canyon and watching the frost form on the roof of the tent.

I drove home Friday, and now we’re doing Projects. I wish I could return to the ranch.

Melinda

Well, we finally have a real movie theater in Santa Fe. Fourteen screens, stadium seating, high back seats that rock, and screens that aren’t the size of postage stamps. For three days all the movies, drinks and popcorn are one dollar so Carl and I decided to give it a go. We ended up going to see THE ASTRONAUT FARMER at the late show. I’m a space junkie, and have been trying to sell a NASA/space show with my friend Mike Cassutt. (If you don’t know Cassutt’s work I recommend you try to find RED MOON in particular and his NASA books, MISSING MAN and TANGO MIDNIGHT. He also wrote the biography of Deke Slayton and the bio of General Stafford, WHO’S WHO IN SPACE, and he’s even been to Star City.) Anyway, we’re working on a movie proposal — cannibalizing from a mini-series version — that combines the private space ventures and Nasa and a thirty year old mystery. All this as a preamble for why I went to see this movie. Also, it had gotten pretty good reviews.

It’s basically FIELD OF DREAMS, one of my favorite films, but it’s not structured as seamlessly as FIELD. You can see the cracks between the acts and the scenes, and the emotional interplay between the husband and wife feel like it’s dictated by a Sy Field screen writing course rather than growing logically out of the events. Okay, it’s time for them to have a fight now. Check. Done that.

There are some effective moments, and Billy Bob Thorton turns in a very nice, understated performance, but I felt like the movie was endless. I was sure it would have been three hours, but when we left the theater we discovered it hadn’t been quite two hours. There are also some hilarious goofs. Like launching a rocket with ten thousand pounds of fuel from a wooden barn, and having the barn still standing there after the launch.

I came home and found myself lying awake and trying to analyze that fine line between knowing the format of a particular form — movie, one hour tv episode — but trying to make the format seem invisible or not present. I’m going to do some more cogitating and perhaps I’ll have some ideas when I get back.

I’m off to Farmington to be an oil and gas maven, and I’ll be staying over at the ranch so I won’t have internet for a couple of days.

Melinda

Good thing I went and had a really great ride on Pi this morning, because the afternoon was pure hell. It’s tax time. I’m a victim of the Alternative Minimum Tax. That scumbag Cheney pays far less in income tax as a percentage of his income than I do. Yeah, the Bush tax cuts have been great for me. So, I spent the afternoon with my stock broker selling funds and robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of funding my IRA.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a republican. I don’t mind paying taxes because a.) it means I’m making money. And b.) it’s what a moral society does to try and care for the less fortunate in that society. Of course right now my taxes are going to fund a disasterous and probably illegal war in Iraq and to make sure that the fabulously wealthy don’t have to pay their fair share. I would pay more if I was getting something for it — like health insurance, but it feels like I’m pouring my hard earned money down a rat hole.

The downside to life intruding is that it has kept me from writing today and I _like_ to write. Perhaps tomorrow will be better. I’ll get to bracket actually mailing the checks with riding and writing. Yes, tomorrow will be a better day.

Melinda

I couldn’t check in yesterday because it snowed most of the day, and the snow covered the satellite internet dish, and then the snow turned into a sheet of ice on the dish blocking any hope of connection. It made for a good day to write, however. I built a fire, and settled into the Chair of Sloth, a cup of tea at my elbow, and the laptop. One wall of our living room is glass so I alternated between the computer screen, and the flow of clouds and curtains of snow passing through the valley below.

All in all it was a very good day, but it’s strange how cut off you feel when you lose your internet connection.

Melinda

So, I wrote most of the day, and watched the clouds climb over the shoulders of the mountains, like froth boiling over the top of a pot, and watched the rain turn to snow, and watched the doves and the finches gather at the feeder and sip water from the birdbath.

By now I was stir crazy so Carl and I went into Santa Fe on a search for coke, but not just any coke. Okay, confession time. I’m a cokeaholic. I love the stuff, but I don’t love the overly sweet crap that has become the staple in America now that they’ve changed from sugar to corn syrup. Before Passover I tried to find Passover coke. I got on the internet and searched for a kosher store. The nearest one was in Denver, and then it struck me. I live in New Mexico. We have Mexican markets. And sure enough I found coke made with sugar. I’m a happy woman.

Of course I only allow myself coke on rare occasions, but now I’ve got the good stuff and I didn’t have to travel to Europe or Canada to get it. Next time we put a movie in the DVD player and I make popcorn it’s going to be great. I’m a simple person, with simple pleasures. Well, not really, but it sounds good.

Melinda

So, George RR has made his decisions and I am writing the interstial sections of our next Wild Card book BUSTED FLUSH. George has been reading my posts and has remarked that they are very evocative. He was wondering why my prose didn’t have the same immediacy, (though in my defense he has only read the 13,000 word, three part story I wrote for the last Wild Card book. He’s unaware of how often my colleagues in Critical Mass have boxed my ears about not enough sensory detail, and I’m getting much better.) But enough of the big aside. George’s theory is that my posts have more texture because I am writing in first person, and he suggested I should write my story in first person. I’ve done this once before in a short story I sold to PulpHouse, and while it was fun it was also very difficult.

I thought about it for a few minutes and realized that writing has to be about challenging yourself and getting outside your comfort zone. For a variety of reasons this would actually help sell the journey my character is taking, so I agreed. I started this morning on the first section, and it’s strange — I don’t find the intrusion of the smell of mown grass, and the sound of a dog barking, etc. to be such a boring intrusion when it’s in first person.

I’m still a bit wary of this because it is a difficult form, but I’m going to read some Roger Zelazny — he was a master at first person — and do the best I can. All in all I think it is going to be fun. I’ll keep you posted on how long this stays “fun”.

Melinda

So I ran away from home and worries this weekend to the mountains around Cuba, NM. A friend owns this jewel of a ranch nestled at the foot of the moutains. To get there I drive north and then west across the top of the Abique dam, and then through meadows and forests until I reach a tiny town called Regina. On the drive I enjoyed slashes of sun, snow, rain and hail. In other words a typical spring storm in NM. Oh, and the temperature was hovered around 33 degrees farenheit.

My friend Sage Walker, goes to the ranch and stays in a small cabin she has renovated. In addition to being a brilliant writer, Sage is also an incredible cook. So, after I brought in arm loads of wood, and got the stove going in the big house, and took a walk when the sun peeked out, I returned to the house to find she had set out a proper british tea. We had scones and rhubarb and strawberry jam, mock clotted cream, fruit, and these delicious little meat pastries. Sage take left over pie dough, rolls it out, spreads on dijon mustard mixed with brown sugar and cloves then lays on a few slices of proscuitto, rolls it up, slices the roll and bakes the little rounds. Delicious. (One tends to rave about food when you’ve been with Sage.)

I had taken my laptop computer, but I never turned it on. Instead I watched the play of clouds and sun over the mountain, and the way the light in the valley changed and affected the shades of green of the grass and the pines. Saturday night all the clouds rolled away. I stood on the porch and listened to a coyote give a couple of dogs what for, and gazed up at the stars. There was no moon so the stars held center stage. It’s interesting, but as you stare at them it’s like more layers keep getting added. It’s just your eyes becoming adjusted to the dark, but the effect is as if someone is secretly flinging out another hundred million stars every few seconds.

I built up the fire, crawled into bed, and around 2:00 am the rain came. It was wonderful. You’ll notice that any of us New Mexico folks will wax rhapsodic about rain. We want our snow in the winter to build up the snow pack so the farmers can irrigate through the summer, and the forests won’t burn, and we get to go camping, but we _love_ rain. It rained off and on all night, and through much of Easter Sunday. I got up at 5:30, and hoped the elk had returned to the valley, but some moron had been firing off shots at random the day before, (another NM tradition, you celebrate major holidays with gunfire) and the elk stayed up in the mountains. Sage and I baked apple muffins, and then I got her talking about Taos in the late 1960’s. It was fascinating. We talked about the choices career women had to and have to make. (Sage was a a doctor and I was a lawyer).

Then, reluctantly, in the late afternoon I headed back to Santa Fe. I met Carl in town at Maria’s, a famous Mexican resataurant that opened in the late 1940’s, and we shared a plate of fajitas. (Those are not traditionally New Mexican, but when you want protein they are great.) That was my weekend, and I couldn’t post because there is no internet service at the ranch, and my cell phone doens’t work, and that makes it all the more perfect. So, now I’m rested and ready to face a medical test tomorrow, and the never ending battle with the evil contractor.

Melinda