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The Printer Saga

The installation of my new printer has become a sort of saga, marked with bouts of passive procrastination. It all began nigh a month ago, when I realized I needed to buy an electrical strip in order to plug in the printer, TV, and Xbox simultaneously.

Thus, I journeyed forth to Office Max and purchased the required electrical strip — only to discover that the electrical outlet is a two-prong outlet and will not accept my three-pronged plug of my strip. *le sigh*

Verily, I adventured into Home Depot and discovered an adapter that would allow me to use my three-pronged electrical strip in my two-pronged outlet. After a struggle to shove the three-pronged plug into the adapter, which resulted in a war wound in the form of a bruise on my thumb, the printer worked!

And one would think my story would be done, but no!

During set up, I came to realize the printer did not come equipped with a USB cable, as the wireless setting was standard… I do not have wireless… Hey, don’t look at me like that.

Thus and verily, I hath ventured into the wilds once more and have obtained a USB cable of my very own.

I will learn tonight whether this saga is finally at an end.

What I’m Reading

Six-Gun Snow White by  Catherynne M. Valente, which like most of her writing is lush and complex. I love how she keeps the fairtale tone, while mixing in the old penny western tone. Neato.

What I’m Writing

Let’s just pretend I was productive this week. Agreed? Agreed.

Goal(s) for this week: Enjoy my time at FogCon. If I manage to get something written, then awesome. If not, well I have an excuse.

What’s Inspiring Me Right Now

Honestly, I don’t know. For some reason, I’m finding it a challenge to list something here each and every week, as I tend to find inspiration in random insignificant things of everyday life and can never remember them when I need to write these posts.

Where I’ll Be

March 6-9: Floating around FogCon, talking about books and writing and generally having a good time.

March 26: I’ll be a featured performer at Cito.FAME.us. I’ll share the link, when I have more info.

Linky Goodness

Heather Web writes on The Science of Creating Authentic Characters.

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FOGcon Followup

I’ve been meaning to do a wrap up of FOGcon 4 with a detailed account of the panels I attended like I did with Day One (mentions a panel discussing rape), but I have not had the time or energy to pull it off. I also have to play catch up with two movie review posts that are long overdue, so I’m going to present you with the FOGcon short version here, which is:

It was fabulous.

The honored guests, Seanan McGuire and Tim Powers, were both great. Seanan McGuire was hilarious and nearly had me falling off my chair laughing at some points, and she’s also powerful in the way she passionately speaks on subjects she cares about. Tim Powers was funny and wonderful in entirely different ways. It’s always great to meet the authors you enjoy reading, especially if you find them delightful.

FOGcon also featured an Honored Ghost: James Tiptree, Jr. and there was a panel dedicated to her memory. Moderator and panalists, Debbie Notkin, Bradford Lyau, Pat Murphy, and Naamen Gobert Tilahun were wonderfully passionate and knowledgeable about her life and work, making it a wonderful panel to attend. I haven’t read any of Tiptree’s work, but now it’s clear I’m going to have to.

In fact, throughout the event I found the panels and discussions entertaining and mind-opening.

Also, I picked up some lovely books.

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Book grab include:

  • The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow by Cory Doctorow
  • The Science of Herself by Karen Joy Fowler
  • The Wild Girls by Ursula K. Le Guinn
  • Report from Planet Midnight by Nalo Hopkinson
  • Links: A Collection of Short Stories by Kaylia M. Metcalfe
  • Not pictured: a short story mini-chapbook called “Rats!” by Brett James, as well as a copy of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Realms of Fantasy

The “Plus…” series of books are very cool, because in addition to including a novella, they also include essays and interviews and other goodies.

The entire experience of FOGcon left me feeling inspired and joyful and wanting to get back to writing, which is exactly the feeling I need right now.

FOGcon 5 (2015) will have the theme “The Traveler” and will have Kim Stanley Robinson and Catherynne M. Valente as honored guests (OMG!), which sounds so amazing. The dates will immediately go into my calendar and I just hope that I don’t have any work trips that will conflict with the event.

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#FOGcon – Night One

Trigger Warning: General mention and discussion of rape.

When I pulled into the hotel parking lot this evening, all I wanted to do was sneak up to my room and hide. I knew there were still FOGcon panels and such going on

It happens. Sometimes the idea of being social is just too much and I just need to be alone in a quiet room disengaging until I’ve recharged.

So, I spent the first hour just relaxing and looking through the panels to see what I wanted to do tomorrow. Along the way, I learned that there was a late night panel, called “When is Your Heroine Finally Going to be Raped?” with Seanan McGuire, Sasha Pixlee, and Karen Williams, with Alison Moon as the moderator.

The panel was inspired by this blog post by Seanan McGuire, in which she describes her reaction to one of her fans asking the above question — her answer: never.

I remembered reading that blog post when she first put it up (I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of rape culture) and I was curious about the discussion.

Also, it was based on the desire to see and possible meet Seanan McGuire that I gathered myself up to come to FOGcon in the first place this year, so it seemed like such a shame to sit in my room. So, I found myself finding the energy to get out of my pajamas and back into real clothes, so I could go to the panel.

It was a heavy topic for my introduction to this year’s con, but it was fascinating and everyone on the panel was great.

Here are a few thoughts and quotes that came out of the discussion:
Continue reading “#FOGcon – Night One”

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Off to FOGcon

Welp, I’m off to FOGcon, a small-scale scif/fantasy convention, where I will listen to panels on all the geeky things I love and chatting with some of my writerly friends and other good things. It’ll be nice to escape reality for a while.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a lovely, lovely weekend!