Jenn's World

You know you should go to bed when you find yourself reading Larry Niven's squicky, hilarious explanation of why Superman and Lois Lane could never actually physically have sex and you have an urge to write a story about an army of bullet-proof sperm taking over the world.

It's quite graphic. Be warned.

From Publisher's Lunch list of deals:

"Kevin Anderson's NIGHT OF THE LIVING TREKKIES, a mash up mixing a zombie apocalypse with the enduring mythology of Star Trek, to Jason Rekulak at Quirk Books, by Scott Miller at Trident Media Group."

Zombies and Star Trek? Wow.

I think the Brunching Shuttlecocks need to update their geek hierarchy (see above).

If you haven't read "Axe Cop" yet, you should. It's a web comic. The story is written by a five-year-old and illustrated by his 29-year-old older brother. If you've ever played pretend with a five-year-old, you know what interesting things they come up with.

The fusion of good illustration and crazy/nonsensical five year old thought is plain awesome. After all, where else can you see a space-flying dinosaur with machine gun arms?

Well, I finally plugged my nose and read my submission to Ender's Companion. You can tell reading it that it's not my normal clean, clipped style, especially with the frequent switching of tenses, but it's still not bad. Either they edited it to make it readable or I'm so amazingly talented, it shines even when I'm wasted.

WRITING PROMPT #13
Title: Inhibitions
Genre: Any
Type: Character

One of the side effects of alcohol is that it makes us do things we wouldn't ordinarily do--at least for most people. Some people live their lives exactly as they want, easily ignoring their inhibitions.

Sometimes, however, inhibitions shouldn't be ignored. Has your character ever done something in their past that they consider deeply shaming? Told their deepest secrets to a person who turned out to be an enemy? Had sex with someone they despised, or made promises to someone whom they later abandoned? It doesn't have to be because of alcohol. A moment of weakness, of despair, of foolishness. We all make mistakes, and some of them we regret for the rest of our lives.

What is the worst thing your character has ever done in his or her life? Remember, what you would consider the worst is different from what your character considered might consider the worst. Everyone has their own personal standards of honor. Mine are pretty flexible. I admit that I lie and cheated frequently throughout my education, because it seemed to be a victimless crime. Academia, for me, has always been a game, and it was fun to see what I could pull off. My sense of morality on that score is still pretty fluid, but on the other hand, there are things that matter to me. For instance, cheating by writing test answers on the back of my hand is no big deal, but the idea of plagiarism is abhorrent to me. I might lie to get myself out of trouble, but I would never make up a newspaper article from scratch, as one of my employees once did. For me, that is betraying a sacred trust.

Another example: most people my age pirate music, movies, whatever, and justify this to themselves based on "evil corporations." I pirated things in my day, but I never felt comfortable about it. I've since stopped the practice, because evil corporations are people too. And because my favorite thing to pirate was audio books, and I realized it was like stealing from my future self. Now I buy them legitimately.

But I've done other things that betray my own honor code that I'm deeply ashamed of. Things that really have hurt people, that I wish with all my heart I could retroactively go back and solve. The question is, what is your character's honor code? What is the worst possible thing he has ever done to betray it, and himself? Will his past mistakes come to haunt him in the present, or will they just shape him in a deeper, more meaningful way?

The cover art for local author Brandon Sanderson's new epic fantasy series Way of Kings is up on Tor's website. It's by Michael Whalen so it's, of course, beautiful. Sanderson read us excerpts from the book at LTUE, and the parts I heard sounded like good writing. Unfortunately, of course all the ideas I had while listening were blatant copies so I hard to discard them, which was too bad. Some of the ideas were quite good, I thought.

Still not sure whether I'll read the book, because it sounds like the formatting is weird and I hate books I can't finish in a single setting. He said this new puppy's over 400,000 words long, which is freaking ridiculous. Longer than the Gathering Storm. I like reading epic fantasy as must as the next nerd, but I don't like the carpal tunnel that is going to come with it if I try and pick up the hardback monster. Wheel of Time is bad enough for that.

There's also a second choice on the Tor web page. I like the composition better, because it has that classic s-curve which so delights the eye, but it doesn't work so well with the lettering. It surprises me that the lettering is done separately BEFORE. I always figured they decided on the lettering after they saw the cover art. When I decided newspaper layout, I did them both at once, and it's hard for me to imagine developing headline lettering without seeing the image I'm going to use first.

My favorite part of this cover is the sky. Which is incredibly gorgeous.

"To quote Mary Carillo’s former mixed-doubles partner, John McEnroe…”You cannot be serious!” NBC isn’t showing the second group of skaters because it needs to broadcast a feature about Carillo spending time with lumberjacks in Canada. And it didn’t break any ground, seeming like another excuse to put Carillo in a goofy outfit. Sorry skating fans, NBC thinks logs make better programming right now than skaters."

--From the NYT Liveblog of skating.

Wow. NBC did such a poor job of covering figure skating tonight, I'm not sure I'm ever going to watch their Olympic coverage again. That was ridiculous. Only showing the final group? Lara Lapisto must have had the skate of her life to make the jump from 10th to the top 6, given Rachel Flatt's clean program. Her free program score beat out Miki Ando and Mirai Nagosu. It's especially impressive because the NYT blog says she had technical difficulties. Akiko Suzuki managed to move up from 11th to 8th. They both must have had great programs. And what do we get? LOGGING. A few nights ago, they spent their opening ten minutes on a random plane flight. Because that's what we all tuned in to see, jokes about peanut packages.

WHAT WAS NBC THINKING????

Oh, and the people who've done the skating packages--those little clip films--need to be slapped. The riculous font ice dancing stuff was bad enough, but the whole "five days-three days-right now" thing was just dumb. Let's show a minute of people getting their pictures taken! Ooh! Exciting!

In the past, I've like the segments because they actually introduced us to people, but this year, they're just trying to get us all revved up with dramatic imagery and lame music. I don't know why NBC thinks it needs to turn figure skating into the superbowl.

And it's not as if NBC doesn't have multiple networks. Couldn't they pick one to show all the skating? They must not want to split the sponsors by dividing it between multiple networks. But since women's figure skating is like THE defining event of the winter games, the jewel of the advertiser's crown, why not show more of it? Showing so few skaters is just putrid. I mean, NBC just got smacked down by the Ol' Gray Lady, for goodness sake. And they deserved it.

Bottom line, I don't think I can wade through three hours of coverage about stuff I don't care about for figure skating anymore. I just can't. And I can't seem to download the software NBC tells me I need to watch the videos on their website, either, so they lose in multiple ways. I try to download it and it takes me to a blank page. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The only worse moment in NBC's coverage during this games that I can think of is the time they spent staying with a ski race when it was snowing. The entire time, the announcers said. "Well, fresh snow is death to the course, so none of these guys have a chance of medalling. Oh, there goes another guy, but he has no chance of medalling, either." And this went on for an hour...

Though of course, the lowest point EVER must have been when NBC barely covered the Hamm medal debacle in 2004. So I wasn't exactly enamored with their coverage in the first place. Too jingoistic.

It makes it worse because of the choice of skaters they showed. I get, they wanted to show it live for east coast viewers...but they chose to show the pre-recorded skate of Cheltzie Lee, who ended up in 20th, instead of the skater who was on the ice at the time: Kwak Min-Jung of South Korea, who scored almost 20 points better and ended up with the 12th best free program score. Perhaps because Lee's mother is American? One wonders why they bothered to show her score instead of another skater or...another logging segment.

This was the last straw. From one outraged figure skating fan to you, NBC: I hope the loggers paid you a lot for that little p.r. stunt, because you just lost any respect I had for you. And I didn't have much in the first place. Not even my beloved Scott Hamilton may be able to fix this wound...

ESPN is making a bid for the next Olympics. They say if they win, they'll show everything live regardless of what time it goes. Well, they've got my vote. Even if having the games in Sochi would put figure skating in the mid-afternoon, at least we'd get to see more of it. Bet they'd handle the online stuff better, too.

On the skating itself: The skates we did see went well. Kim Yu-Na rocked the house. I thought Rachel Flatt was underscored. If she'd been able to skate the whole program with the energy she showed at the end, it would have been even greater.

I wonder how long Kim Yu-Na will dominate? She's so young, and it doesn't seem like there are many skaters who can take her place. They talk about Mirai Negasu as a rising star...but when the 'risen star' is only a few years older, it's hard to take such talk seriously. Kim Yu-Na could probably take back to back golds, if she wants too.

I wonder what she does with all her money? That's the thing about getting by on $20,000 a year. The idea of getting $8 million a year just leaves me a little bemused. What would you do when you're too old to skate and have so much money sitting around? Would you work? Found a bunch of charities? Play golf all day?

Glad to see such stellar performances from the women last night. Of course, the ladies' competition is almost boring because the favorite is so strong, its' unlikely anyone will give her any kind of run for her money.

I love Yu-Na Kim's short program. I was happy Mao Asada skated so well, since she's had problems this year. I don't know what they were talking about when they said Yu-Na's draw order was bad. As a competitor, nothing drowns out the nerves like seeing your arch-rival excel. It lifts you up, gives you something to concentrate on the fact that a whole bunch of people are staring at you and do you have parsley stuck between your teeth?

Or maybe that's just me.

Speaking of draw order--what the heck was up with the ice dancing finals? It takes all the tension out of it when you have the leaders go before the end. I don't know why they aren't just doing it in reverse-rank order.

Anyway, one skater I wished would do better is Akiko Suzuki. She's actually my favorite Japanese woman on the ice. She skates with such beauty and musicality. I was sad to see her not do as good as I know she can.

My heart broke for Joannie Rochette. I can't imagine how hard that must be to have all the media attention on you at the same time you lose your mother. She handles it with grace. She is such a sentimental favorite, I hope she medals. The U.S. girls probably won't be able to crack the top three, but I can hardly blame them with such strong competition. At least, hopefully, they'll be able to claim high spots so next year we can send more girls. Only have two present is annoying.

I was confused by the fact the network didn't show Russian skater Anna Leonova last night, who has an adorable spunk and a great short program. She landed in 8th.

I'm also mystified to hear the announcers call things "controversies" that really aren't. Like the U.S. silver medalist not taking first at the U.S. championship. That wasn't a controversy. Protesting a bobsledder's helmet ridges as illegal is a controversy. Protesting an offensive aboriginal dance is a controversy. Pluschenko's website labelling one of his metals a "platiunum metal" is a controversy. A judging decision that seemed surprising is not a controversy, unless it involves bribery. It's merely a surprise. Anyway, I've heard the announcer use mis-word the word two or three times. Every time she does, I want to whack her with a dictionary.

Speaking of mystifying, a skater from Israel qualified for the olympics but her country didn't allow her to skate. Why? Because she didn't place in the top 14 at Europeans. Apparently, Israel only wants to send athletes to the olympics who have a shot at the top.

One wonders how they're supposed to climb to the top if they don't get all the international experience they can get, if they don't get the olympic exposure that might allow them to pick up more sponsors, and might draw new Israeli skaters to the sport because little kids look up at the tv and say 'I want to do that.'...

Here's the NYT article about Israel's choice. There is just a missing piece here that I don't understand. I feel sorry for her...all that work, that sacrifice, and your own government kicks you in the head.

I actually won something in a contest.

So unheard of, for me. I think the last time I won a random drawing was when I was in elementary school.

Goodreads, a wonderful website that's kind of like facebook for book lovers, is sending me a copy of "Battle Of The Network Zombies" by Mark Henry in the next couple of weeks, and I'll review it there. I signed up for the drawing because any books that feature zombies and journalism is probably right up my alley. Though they're sending it out before the book's official publication date to generate buzz, ironically it won't arrive until after. It's the third book in a series, so I'll have to jump in midway. I didn't notice that the author was a man until just now--I'm so used to reading paranormal romances by females that I'm surprised the author didn't use a pseudonym. It'll be interesting to see what it's like. It's also set in one of my adopted hometowns (Seattle). So that'll be fun to read.

Here's Publisher Weekly's snippet, as per Amazon:

Clever, fast-paced, and so delightfully trashy that it should have been printed on Hefty bags, Henry's third Amanda Feral novel (after 2009's Road Trip of the Living Dead) smartly skewers popular culture. Brilliant, bitchy undead diva Amanda is desperate for a fledgling reality show to succeed, because being paid to judge it is the only thing that can keep her financially afloat. When someone murders the show's host, a would-be playboy wood nymph, the show's contestants—a snooty Belgian ghoul, a werewolf drag queen, a pair of sirens, a down-home backwoods stripper, and a tentacled manicurist—are all suspects. Amanda's got to solve the case while attempting to rebuild a relationship with her werewolf boyfriend. Henry gleefully delivers a sharp-edged, snarky whodunit with some smart and funny twists.

---

In other news, I finally had the courage to open up the book I'm published in. Here is it. The Authorized Ender's Companion, published by Tor. I am the very first page of the Ender's Friends section on page 393.

I can't bring myself to read it, because I remember that it contains some very graphic, very personal information. I literally wrote the chapter on a whim when I was very, very drunk. This was before I was reconverted to the LDS faith, and I'm sure in the future I'll regard the essay as a very good reason not to mix alcohol and writing. You might accidentally end up published. Which is a fate no sane mortal wants.

But the parts of the book not written by me seem pretty good, and I'm learning things that not even a devout Ender-rite like me whose read the book so often that pages all have my inky thumbprints on them. So go out and buy it, if you're as rabid a fan as I am.

Well, looks like I got the top three pairs in the ice dancing right, if not the order. Davis and White's long program is good, but not quite good enough to beat Virtue and Moir. I'm okay with that, the Canadians skated well.

I thought the Russians' original skate was overrated. The nice thing about all the other skates was it caught the flavor of the folk dances they were doing, like Davis and White stepping right out of Bollywood, down to the delicate hand motions. On the other hand, the Russian's aboriginal dance looked like people who had never actually seen an aboriginal dance doing what they thought it might look like. At least they toned down the skin-color thing.

Meanwhile, I saw a PBS Nature Special on Beauties and Beasties, talking about various ugly and beauty creatures and why their appearances had evolved the way they did, and how the ugliness sometimes gave creatures functional advantages.

One of the species covered was the Viperfish, which has got to me about the ugliest, most terrifying-looking things in existence. Even though they're not human predators, waking up face-to-face with one of these would seriously freak me out.

WRITING PROMPT #12

Title: Beasts and Beauties
Genre: Any
Type: Description

Try to write descriptions of the Viperfish. They can be twisted into any context--maybe your land is being overrun by monsters with Viperfish faces. Try to isolate what makes them so ugly and terrifying. The thin yellow teeth? The large black eyes staring at you with their beastial hunger?

Use these pictures to inspire yourself to write a description that would make Stephan King shudder. Remember that human beings have evolved to find certain things instinctively frightening. Remember that, when it comes to creating creatures that can inspire your characters to greater heights of fear, and use your descriptions to terrify the readers as well.

Now in contrast, write a description from a Viperfish's point of view. When a Viperfish looks at an attractive Viperfish, what does he notice? The shimmer of her scales? The delicate ridges in her chin? Can you find the beauty in the ugliness? Can you convince your reader that this is the most fearful thing he or she has every seen, but also the most lovely?