I think the last time I did a page conversion on Far Arena it hadn't finished converting. Or it didn't give me the right number. Or something. We are up over 700 pages, 12 pt Times New Roman, double-spaced. 180 000 words. *Whimper*.
posted by Anonymous at 21:55   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Received e-mail from the Heinlein Society earlier this month about the death of Ginny Heinlein, as Virgina Heinlein was known to her friends in the Heinlein Society. I never met her, but I had heard enough about her from David Silver of the Heinlein Society to make the loss just a little personal. The public obituary is now out on Los Angeles Time web site, quoting David Silver as spokesman for the Heinlein Society. The article is well worth reading. Robert Heinlein's portrayal of strong women seems a little patronizing and quaint from a modern perspective, but it was radical in its time. He portrayed women who were bright, brave, sexually alive and competent. Ginny is credited as the keynote inspiration for that. Some of the reasons for that appear in the article. It is well worth a read. And to Ginny Heinlein--thank you, on behalf of all women inspired by your life or Robert Heinlein's work, and all men who thought twice because of it.
posted by Lynda at 21:44   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
The next panel we spectated at, "Contracts: your rights as an artist, author, or musician", a one-woman show by Jennifer DiMarco of Windstorm Creative, followed by "To POD or not POD", featuring Jennifer ("Pods are evil!") DiMarco, Kevin ("Born of a POD") Radthorne, Dave ("Multipod") Duncan, and Jack Beslanwitch (whose alignment I am afraid I cannot recall). Though until I see one of those infamous machines in action, I'm not going to believe all the descriptions I get of it lining and binding without getting glue over everything! After that Lynda, Kevin and myself did "Developing your Creativity" with an abundance of writers in the audience, so we wandered cheerfully between into rituals, angst, and works in progress, as well as Where Ideas Come From. (I'm in favour of Pratchett's cosmic ray theory myself: in Wyrd Sisters he explains creativity as a sleet of particles of inspiration constantly bombarding the human brain - which every so often stops one or two. Certain unfortunate people - like the Dwarf playwright Hwel - have such high stopping power that they have difficulty finishing a sentence without having another idea.)
posted by Anonymous at 22:44   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
It was the best of cons, it was the worst of cons ... Well, maybe not, but it definitely had its ups and downs. Lynda's suitcase, full of copies of Throne Price and the Rustycon edition of Mekan'stan, failed to make the 20 minute tranfer in Vancouver between a delayed flight from Prince George and the on-time flight to Seattle. Lynda's end of the telephone inquisition required to connect her (not yet found) luggage to her gave her roommate (me) some morbid entertainment. The joys of Explaining Oneself to Officialdom - particularly when said officialdom don't have it together. Luggage reappeared mid Saturday morning, and Lynda undertook to divest herself of the contents in as many deserving directions as possible, on the premise that if it went awol on the return flight there would be nothing to lose!

Relskimmers never have this problem	Found and delivered
Lynda, with one precious book, in Atrium cafe	Those fascinating elevators in the Atrium (Lynda, I cheated: this is a photo from last year)

Lynda started out on Friday with "Making Characters Die" and "Writing a Sex Scene in SF", which was where I tracked her down after I rolled in at 9:30 pm or thereabouts, having taken the 506 from SeaTac, and not having lost my luggage. Though I discovered that while having carry on baggage searched was irksome, having to walk the length of Vancouver airport, retrieve my luggage from within a glassed-in carosel, prove it's mine, lug it through US Customs and Immigration, reload it onto a conveyer belt etc, was enough to convert me to the principle of carry on and only carry on until they develop Transporters.

My first panel was "Make those Characters Speak Up!" with: Lynda, Kevin Radthorne, who was showing off (cool plastic stand!) his novel The Road to Kotaishi, published by Windstorm press. He did the cover himself using Bryce, and if he is not being utterly disingenuous about his lack of artistic talent, I gotta have that program! Susan Matthews, who has finally produced another installment of her Judiciary series (so I get to [a] read about how Andrej Kosciusko finally gets to make his break with Fleet and his damnable - and I mean it literally - job as chief surgeon and inquisitor ... and lands up in even more trouble and [b] update my Medicine and Science Fiction page). After I went through my recitation of various subtleties of dialogue, learned largely from Bernard Grebanier's book Playwriting and my love of drama, she said cheerfully "I cheat," tossed off an example of the shorthand that the writer can use, taking advantage of modern cultures and assumptions, and then took the high road and described the intricacies of her polyglot, multicultural Judiciary universe.
[To be continued ...]

posted by Anonymous at 22:26   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

From: Michael Armstrong Subject: Congratulations Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:19:22 -0800 To: Lynda Williams Hey Lynda, This is way cool! North American release! Congratulations! Notch down shimmer and notch up gap and hang on as you skim across the crazy space of book distribution! And good on George for his support of small press initiatives. Michael.

posted by Lynda at 17:56   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments