Archive for April, 2013

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Early reports on Shambling Guide to NYC, and other news

Orbit has informed me of some really interesting reviews about The Shambling Guide to New York City lately:

  • Kirkus Reviews: STARRED REVIEW AW YEAH: “The hip, knowing and sometimes hysterically funny narrative, interspersed with excerpts from the guide of the title, lurches along in splendid fashion. Combine wit, style and acute observation: The result is irresistible.”
  • Library Journal: STARRED REVIEW AW YEAH: “… Lafferty, a 2012 nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, introduces a spirited, indomitable heroine who is bound to be a favorite of urban fantasy devotees.”
  • Romantic Times: TOP PICK AW YEAH: “…a refreshing departure from the dark and sexy face of so much urban fantasy.”
  • Publishers Weekly: “A charming debut”

Funny thing is, although PW wasn’t a starred review (though it was quite positive), today I learned that SGNYC is on PW’s “Best Summer Books of 2013” list. Right beside Connie Willis’ new collection.  “Podcast host and blogger Lafferty is known for her sharp wit, which is in evidence here.”

O_O So, uh, yeah. Wow. All I gots to say is…

[NOTE- I don’t blog a lot about current events because I’m commonly raw, numb, upset, and withhold opinions until I have information. But my heart is hurting for all of the horror that the world has experienced this week, and I hope everyone reading this is as well as they can be.)

Personal

Our place

I’m angry today and I don’t have time to be angry. So I’ll blog about it and hope that will blow off some of the steam. Or blog off some of the steam. Whatever.

It’s 2013. And people are still trying to put women, and in particular to the points of this blog post, SF writers, in their place. Wherever that may be.

Item #1: prolific, talented fantasy and SF writer Seanan McGuire recently broke the record for the most Hugo nominations in one year. The woman has five. FIVE. Best Novel and Best Novella (under her psudonymn Mira Grant), Best Novelette (twice), and Best Fancast (the Squeecast, which won last year.)

I believe she also is the first person to get nominated for a self-published work, as one of her novelettes is from her blog.

So of course people are speculating about her skill, and whether she’s “really that good” and how she must have leveraged her fan base or self-promoted too much. The undercurrent is there is no way she earned all of those nominations, and she needs to be brought down to her place. I don’t even know how she is dealing with it (well, she blogged about it, but you know what I mean) – last year I was a gibbering mess whenever I saw a blog post stating how I was unworthy of the Campbell nomination. The thing is, I saw a lot of people, all of them men, doing lots of promotion for a Hugo nod. I did not see Seanan do that. But she is the one getting the shit.

I haven’t read her fantasy, but her SF is engrossing and fascinating and I’ve loved everything I’ve read by her. She’s got serious talent (she won the Campbell in ’11), and she’s prolific as hell.

And if you think just having a huge number of online fans is the clear track to awards, tell me why BoingBoing blogger Cory Doctorow hasn’t won a Hugo, or John Scalzi hasn’t been nominated for every book he’s written? Hell, I’ve got a larger online following than a lot of beginning writers and I came in 4th for the Campbell last year. So sure, Seanan has a lot of fans, but one needs more than that for awards.

(For the record, I think Cory and John are talented as hell, just saying that there’s a lot more to winning these things that just “lots of online fans.”)

Item #2: self-publishing sensation Hugh Howey recently had a blog post called “The Bitch from WorldCon.” (no, I’m not linking it.) This is a fascinating and bizarre blog post, seeing as how WorldCon was EIGHT MONTHS AGO. He tells a story about how a woman was rude to him when he said he self published. And I’ll agree, if the events happened the way he said, she was really rude. But his blog post is written so offensively that he ends up looking like the bad guy by the end. He uses misogynistic charged words like “bitch” and dreams of his Hugo speech where he tells the story of her rudeness, grabs his crotch, and ends the post with “suck it, bitch.”

Then he complains about the “PC Police” in the comments and claims he isn’t a sexist.

If you use these words to describe women, you are doing it to put yourself above them, imply their opinions and/or anger are irrelevant  and to put them back in their place (which his blog post was dedicated to, essentially saying how awesome and successful he was and how stupid she was for a) thinking self-pub was pointless, and b) not knowing who he was).

The amazing thing was, he started out as the sympathetic person here! He did encounter a rude person at WorldCon! He did get dismissed by her when she found out he self-published! And yet, by bringing in her looks, calling her a bitch, and the obviously sexually degrading crotch grab fantasy and “suck it, bitch” comments at the end, he has presented himself as so much worse than she was.

The blog post went out on the 3rd, but today is when it exploded.

 

 

UPDATE: So, in the middle of me writing this, apparently he has apologized. Some think it’s good. Some think it’s bad. Me, I can’t read it because his site has crashed.

 

 

 

All of this shows how deeply sexism is ingrained. No man stood up and said, “Seanan McGuire is too uppity, she needs to be taken down a peg like a proper woman,” or “I’m going to call that woman who bothered me eight months ago a bitch just so I can make myself feel good” – well, I am betting the second thing happened. But the language here, the commentary, the fury in how dare she get five nominations/speak rudely to me? It needs to stop.

Women are here and we’re writing and we’re getting nominated for awards and we’re going to keep doing outrageous things like building fan bases and having opinions and perhaps even being rude at conventions or even WINNING awards. The thing to do when you’re angry? Call someone out on their rudeness, right there. Don’t nominate or vote for the works you don’t think are worthy. It’s that fucking simple.

And if that’s not really the problem, if the problem is that you truly think that women should know their place in SF, then, well, fuck it. I don’t have time for you.

Courtesy of The Oatmeal. It just makes me so happy. And I need a happy.
Personal

Two-Ply

I’ve been doing that hiding thing again. I need to take some time off from blogging and podcasting because Ghost Train to New Orleans is due this month. [Insert HERE all clever remarks about how I have to hold off on I Should Be Writing, because I should be writing. Go ahead. I’ll wait.] And then lots of stuff happens in SF and I feel I should write/podcast about it. But the SHOULD takes a lot of mental weight and I just get tired and say nothing. Damn.

Included here because of awesome.
Included here because of awesome.

Anyway. In short: I’m writing a book. I got nominated for the Campbell award. The Hugo Award nominees were also announced, and people got real mad. Nightshade Books is in trouble and people are freaking out about it. Roger Ebert died. Iain Banks is dying. Leviathan Chronicles Season 2 was released with a lot of my content. The Torment Kickstarter ended, setting a record. The Shambling Guide to NYC started getting mainstream reviews. Last week it sleeted in NC, and now highs are in the 80’s. But what’s the stupidest thing in the world is the fact that what got me blogging again after a hiatus was toilet paper.

Baby, you should know I am really quite a sweet guy
When I buy you bathroom tissue, I always get the 2-ply
~Weird Al Yankovic

In a frugal attempt to save money, and I also think I was in a hurry, I grabbed some cheap toilet paper at the store. I didn’t think much about it, or how thin it was when I put it on the roll. Then when it came time to use the tool for which I purchased it, I was astonished that I could see through it, and then realized I’d need more than I had originally thought. (Hence the money saved is wasted on having to use more to do the job.) Then there was the texture. THE TEXTURE ON MY TENDER BITS. Seriously, you don’t think about this shit until it HAPPENS TO YOU. 2-ply is important. It’s vital. Without it, civilization can crumble, man. CRUMBLE.

I bought some 2-ply right away, crying to the toilet paper gods that I will never go back. Now the evil 1-ply sits as an emergency, “we’re out of TP” backup. It watches me. It KNOWS.

I was at someone else’s house when I discovered that they, too, had 1-ply. I was immediately torn. You don’t complain about your friend’s TP. But I wondered about the etiquette of carrying around your own roll for times like this. I remembered sharing a beach house with a bunch of friends, and when we discussed who was bringing what to stock the house, this friend always wanted to be in charge of the paper products (napkins, paper towels, and TP) because they insisted on “their” brand of TP. I thought it was a bit strange, but the honor of supplying the tribe with recently slaughtered paper products is not something I particularly covet, so they took that duty.

Heh. “Duty.”

Sorry.

But now I understand, and for a brief moment considered traveling with my own TP. The reality here is I can’t remember to pack my daughter a fucking coat, so I would likely fail at remembering the travel TP. And if I remembered the TP and still forgot her coat, then I might as well turn in my Mom badge and my gun. (Yeah, that joke isn’t funny anymore. It’s a metaphorical gun. That shoots guilt. And bees.) Also it seems downright rude or awkward to head to the bathroom carting my own roll.

Oh, it’s not you, it’s me. Polyps. You know.

And hell, it’s really not that important. Just so you know I’m not freaky about this. But it did get me thinking about characterization. This is a tiny bit of my life, the middle class white whine about 1-ply toilet paper. But in fiction, this is the kind of thing that can define characters. Insisting on, eg, 2-ply, or brand name products, or the newest gadget when the old one works fine, can say things about a character without you having to say “Kevin was an upper middle class American.” Instead, maybe, “The first time Kevin felt 2-ply TP, he knew there was no going back. He’d go so far as clean adult book stores for the financial right to wipe his ass in comfort.” Not to mention a character always carrying her own special TP to the bathroom with her can say a lot about her view of the world, and her desperate need to control.

When you’re thinking about “how would your character have reacted to Kennedy being shot?” or “The waiter spills water down your character’s back, how does she react?” you can think, “what kind of TP do they buy? Are they a coffee snob? Generic or brand name? Boy shorts or bikinis? Target, Wal-Mart, or Belk?”

I just wrote 800+ words on middle class whining and toilet paper. I think I should probably stop and get to writing or something…

Also, I do realize what I am saying about MYSELF that I thought this much about toilet paper, and I blame book stress.

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