Modern Felicity

In Which I Am Interviewed

2009-06-24T11:44:12Z

I got interviewed by Jordan Castillo Price of Packing Heat! Listen here.

ann_leckie @ 2009-06-19T15:28:00

2009-06-19T20:52:15Z

Been a while since I posted!

Wiscon was fabulous, even more fabulous than usual and therefore insanely exhausting. Met zillions of people I wanted to meet, and met zillions of people I hadn't known I wanted to meet until I met them, talked to zillions of people I had met before but wanted to see again. Bought the rest of the Marq'ssan Cycle from Aqueduct, along with a stack of other books. Sang Sacred Harp and had free, second-hand clothes thrust upon me. Did panels. Ate at the fabulous Tibetan place twice. Rode the magical gold elevator to that sacred precinct that is the Governor's Club. Finally kept a two year old promise to take Paidhi Girl to the noodle place. Walked down to the lake so my traveling companions could watch boats and throw stones in the water. Talked to more people. Sunday after supper I went up to my room intending to rest a few moments and essentially collapsed until Monday morning. Drove home. Got up and went to work the next day. Boy was I glad when the school year was done.

In other news, Clockwork Phoenix 2 will be officially out July 1. But Amazon and Barnes and Noble say they have it in stock. Publishers Weekly gave Clockwork Phoenix 2 a starred review recently. One of those "16 wonderfully evocative, well-written tales" is my story "The Endangered Camp."

Wiscon Schedule

2009-05-05T19:39:32Z

I can haz panels at Wiscon!

TYRANNOSAURS IN F–14S!!!! Fri 9:00 - 10:15PM Conference 5

Vicki Rosenzweig, E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Ann Leckie
"This is so cool!" "This is so stupid." How can a book or a show or a movie be incredibly awesome to half of the audience and incredibly dumb to the other half? Does turning everything up to eleven automatically mean risking total failure? What separates the gleefully over–the–top fun of, say, Hot Fuzz, from the cliche–ridden kitsch of Snakes on a Plane? And how can you tell if something you're working on is only awesome to you? Is it all just subjective, or can awesomeness be deconstructed and quantified?

So You Want to Be Published? Are You Your Own Biggest Roadblock? Sat 8:30 - 9:45AM Wisconsin

Liz L. Gorinsky, Lori Devoti, Ann Leckie, Jack McDevitt, Jordan Castillo Price
Is it possible you are doing something to keep yourself from selling? Come discuss what we do that keeps us from writing, submitting and ultimately selling—or selling again.

What Gender Is Your Roomba? Sat 10:30 - 11:45PM Assembly

Heidi Waterhouse, Hari Mirchi, Ann Leckie, Madeleine Robins
Why do so many robots and androids have a gender? Is this phenomenon more prevalent in fiction or reality? Was this always the case, or has it changed since the appearance of the first real and fictional robots? Is it all about the name, the voice, the looks, the attachments? Is it different across cultures? Does an otherwise genderless robot 'default' to male? Find out what pronoun you should be using to talk about your Roomba.

The SignOut Mon 11:30AM - 12:45PM Capitol/Wisconsin

*****
This is the first year I've been able to stay for the Sign Out. Every year previously I'm up with the sun and on the bus back home.

Happy Belated IPSTP Day!

2009-04-24T13:09:21Z

Whoops, missed the day.

I haven't got anything new, but I do have "Footprints." I sold it to Postcards From Hell: The First Thirteen a while back. It's one of my few very short pieces.

Footprints
by Ann Leckie

The ground was a soft, springy mat of blue-gray mosslike something. Cooper's boots left shapeless dents. He could poke a finger into it, and make a hole that closed over immediately. And he could push a torn and empty ration carton down into it and it would slowly re-emerge full, as though it had never been opened. It was unnerving. But it had kept him alive.

"How far?" he asked the little girl walking beside him. He'd asked before.

"A long way," she said, and smiled and tilted her head, blond curls swinging. He'd found her the day after the crash, sitting on the endless blue-gray plain, tattered Mr. Bear in her lap. When he'd asked her name, she had frowned, not understanding. She couldn't possibly be human, and why she appeared to him as she did, or was able to communicate with him, Cooper didn't know. But he was grateful--she had taught him about the moss. He might have starved otherwise.

"Tell me about the tooth fairy again," she said, eyes wide.

"He'll lie again," said Mr. Bear. One button eye hung precariously from a worn thread.

The damn bear. Or not, just like the girl wasn't a girl. They were the only beings he'd encountered since his crash-landing. It felt like he'd walked halfway around the planet with them.

He turned, even though he knew there was no way to gauge the distance he'd walked. Behind him were the dents their feet made, except... "There's only one set."

"Of teeth?" asked the little girl, stopping as he stopped.

"Of footprints." The double set only stretched back a few yards and then suddenly were a single track. "But..." His own seemed to disappear.

"I want to hear about the tooth fairy," the girl insisted. "Does she have wings? Does she wear a pink dress and ballerina shoes?"

"There's no tooth fairy," said Mr. Bear. "We pulled out every last one, and none of them grew back."

The little girl held the bear in front of her, arms straight. "They did."

"Not the way he said. And no coins either." It hung motionless in her grip. "I liked the screaming, though."

Cooper had found the bear unnerving from the moment it had first spoken. He ignored it. "Listen, honey, I really need to contact my people. I need to tell them where I am."

"We know," she said. "We're taking you."

"It just seems like it's an awfully long way."

"It is an awfully long way." She tucked the bear under her arm head first and started off again.

"I'm hungry again," said Mr. Bear, upside down and backwards.

Cooper caught up with them in a few long strides. "What does Mr. Bear eat?" he asked.

She put her hand in his. "Does the tooth fairy have a pony?"

"A sparkly pony with long, pink hair," said Cooper. "And lots of teeth."

The little girl laughed. "I like you. You're funny."

"And delicious," said Mr. Bear.

ann_leckie @ 2009-03-06T07:25:00

2009-03-06T13:58:57Z

I'm a very small fish, in the SF world. I don't expect my opinion to mean much. For that reason, I've delayed commenting on the drama that keeps lurching up out of its shallow grave. For that reason, and partly because my non-internet life has been...stressful.

I've seen a few people say things like, "Well, there was bad behavior on all sides, so my position is the morally unassailable refusal to take a position, because I'm so above that." I say--screw that crap. It makes me think of people who say things like, "Well, the left is no better than the right! I mean, there's Michael Moore!" As though one Michael Moore equaled Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin and...

And as if a few bad actors outweighed the rightness of an argument. As if a few lost tempers in comments--I have seen no actual flames in original posts by, say, coffeeandink--was the moral equivalent of institutionalized racism. Or outing someone and exposing them to danger, despite being told what it is you're doing. Or deliberately directing readers to malware instead of the actual evidence of your behavior.

And as if that's not just one more variant of the tone argument. "You're not being nice enough. If you were, then I'd deign to listen to what you're saying." Like the school bully telling you he'll stop slugging you if you ask him politely. Somehow, it always turns out that he won't believe he's really hurting you if you're not yelling. And when you yell, why, he'd listen to your request to not be beaten ever so much more attentively if you were only polite about it.

Folks, racism is wrong. Which these days everyone knows, or at least says. But if you're saying to yourself, "But I'm not racist!" then you are part of the problem. If you are speaking or acting in a racist manner, the purity of your intentions is meaningless. The purity of your intentions becomes malice, when you refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that you've done wrong. Whether you meant to do wrong or not. And when I say "you" I also mean "I." Because I'm a white girl raised in this culture, and I fuck up sometimes.

The current iteration of The Undead has left me disheartened. The astonishingly malicious behavior exhibited by a few professionals in this field is appalling. I find such behavior entirely unacceptable, and am horrified to be even tangentially associated with it.

Sol Invictus, people, a little introspection! A pause to consider the mere possibility of your possibly being in the wrong, here.

ann_leckie @ 2008-12-20T12:02:00

2008-12-20T18:37:06Z

The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun is upon us, and I guess it's time for the year in review. I've seen a few folks doing it over the last week or two, but I figured I'd wait until I'd gotten whatever replies I was likely to get before 2009 arrives.

So. Stories published this year:

"The God of Au" in Helix (and also Transcriptase)

"Clickweed" in A Field Guide to Surreal Botany. (Aweseome book trailer here)

"Marsh Gods" in Strange Horizons

"The Nalendar" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #36

"Needle and Thread" (with Rachel Swirsky) in Lonestar Stories

"Bury the Dead" at Podcastle

And, by the way, several of my published stories are available at AnthologyBuilder.

Stories that sold this year but have not yet appeared:

"The Endangered Camp" sold to Clockwork Phoenix 2

"The Unkown God" sold to Realms of Fantasy

"The Sad History of the Tearless Onion" Which actually sold before this year, but supposedly it will run at Podcastle early next year.

I'm down to three stories in inventory. Which is making me twitchy, but it also makes me twitchy to not be working on the novel, so there you go. It's one or the other.

Sale

2008-12-15T22:29:09Z

For reasons that are probably obvious to regular readers of this journal, "The Endangered Camp" (my postapocalyptic dinosaur story from week 5 of Clarion West) never ran on Helix.

I just got an email informing me that it's been accepted for Clockwork Phoenix 2. I'm very pleased. The first Clockwork Phoenix was pretty cool, and I'm kind of excited to be in the next one.

Squeeage!

2008-12-04T17:19:32Z

So, yesterday I got an email saying Rich Horton would like to put my story "The God of Au" in Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2009 Edition.

Woohoo! And surfing around in the past day or so, I see I'm in good company--Jay Lake, Beth Bernobich, and Mary Robinette Kowal are in the TOC as well. Awesome.

Then today, I read Mr. Horton's review of "Needle and Thread," a story Rachel Swirsky and I wrote together and that was published in last quarter's Lone Star Stories:

I also enjoyed Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky's "Needle and Thread", about a dressmaker charged to make a gown to turn a princess beautiful--but such magic is illegal. And, perhaps, wasted--the prince is not so interested in beauty. The characters are well done, the idea clever, but it flattens into a somewhat conventional morality fairy tale; not quite what I've come to expect from either of these excellent new writers. Still, it does what it aims to do quite well.

Excellent new writers! Did ya catch that part?

As for the "conventional morality tale" part, well, all I can say is, it's a fair cop.

!!!!!!!

2008-11-05T03:04:11Z

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been afraid to say it. I'm still afraid to jinx it.

!!!!!!!!!

Voted!

2008-11-04T12:54:14Z

Just got back. The household's voters arrived twenty minutes before the polls opened, and there was already a very respectable line. It was still long when we left.

My vote is cast, now it's just waiting.

Vote!

All the Cool Kids AreDoing It

2008-10-31T19:27:00Z

Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you're in a non-same-sex marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by those who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

How dense is Ann?

2008-09-30T00:16:57Z

Very dense.

Yesterday, and this morning, I kept reading folks on my f-list talking about their YBFH honorable mentions. "Wow, cool!" I thought. "My f-list rocks! But how do they know? The book doesn't come out until Tuesday."

Then I saw jimhines mention amazon's "Search Inside" function.

D'oh!

I only had one story published last year. It was "The Snake's Wife." It got an honorable mention.

Hooray!

Sold!

2008-09-09T23:10:50Z

Just received word that Realms of Fantasy wants "The Unknown God."

Yes, another gods story. That makes...goodness, I have to count them...five in that universe. And it's the last one, at the moment, and likely to be the last for a while while I novel for the next several months. At the least.

General Announcement

2008-09-08T21:33:34Z

From here on out, I'm going to be f-locking posts about the family. That won't matter to most of the people who read here, but if you're watching this journal without an LJ account (I know there are a few of you) and you want to read pointless posts about family things (those few of you might or might not) you might want to get an account and shoot me an email. But I suspect not all of you are interested, and those who are, I see in real life anyway.

Writing posts and such will remain public. Sorry if it's an annoyance--I'm finding the need to do so annoying as well.

ASIM #36

2008-09-08T21:26:44Z

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine Issue #36 is now available, in print or PDF format.

Fiction
Piper . . . Cat Sparks
Purrgatory (sic) . . . Cathy Bryant
A Drowning . . . Aimee Smith
The Robber King and the blood orange tree . . . Maggie Della Rocca
The Amazing Story of Dominic Lazar . . . Rachel Swirsky
Halfway to Dead . . . Lisa Mantchev
The Nalendar . . . Ann Leckie
Too Hot . . . Janeen Samuel
Apart . . . Grant Stone
Homemade Autumn . . . Shane Nelson

Poetry
Working for a Greener Narrative . . . Lee Battersby
The Problem Was . . . Michael Merriam

Special Features
An Interview with Greg Egan . . . Simon Petrie
Book Reviews . . . Simon Petrie, I.E. Lester, Dirk Flinthart

Labor Day

2008-09-01T18:12:08Z

PICT0019
Originally uploaded by hautdesert

So, Mr. Leckie has some cousins who have some land in the country, with a lake, and a barn with a stove and some bunk beds. They have a Labor Day BBQ/hanging out kind of thing. The kids were excited at the prospect of fishing, but when we arrived and Uncle Joe said Paidhi Boy might be allowed to drive the golf cart (the primary transportation between the barn and the lake), Paidhi Boy nearly lost his mind with joy. He spent the rest of the day hitting golf balls into the water, fishing, begging for another chance to drive up the hill (of course Uncle Joe said yes!), and floating in the lake with a lifejacket. Oh, and there was a rowboat, too.

Paidhi Girl spent the entire day, except for lunch, fishing off the dock with a stick and a string. And a package of hotdogs. We did bring worms, and she used them occasionally, but she essentially spent the entire day using hot dogs to pull fish out of the water at an astonishing rate. She does own an actual rod and reel, but has been obsessed with the whole stick and string setup for some time, and had been looking forward to this trip as primarily an opportunity to test its effectiveness. One of the fish she caught was a twelve inch bass. With her stick, string, and a bit of hot dog. Said bass was admired, photographed, and then returned to its home after some effort on my part--I had to lie stomach down on the dock with the fish in the water and gently untangle the freaking net from its jaws, but everyone managed to come out of the experience unhurt.

A few more photos--including the bass Paidhi Girl still hasn't stopped talking about--here.

ann_leckie @ 2008-08-19T15:31:00

2008-08-19T20:38:18Z

In non-writing news, today seems to be Cooking Day. Paidhi Boy has just made some chocolate lolipops (you know, you buy chocolate melts at the craft store, and molds and sticks, and microwave the candy and put it in the mold, put it in the fridge...it's something I keep around because it's so insanely easy and very immediately rewarding.) They all have very bumpy backs, and thin coronas of chocolate around the outside, where the mold got missed, but they're chocolate so who cares?

Paidhi Girl is busy designing a cake for Mr. Leckie's birthday tomorrow. (Shhh! The cake is a surprise!) We've got the cake part, and it's covered with chocolate icing, and now it's time for the Wilton colors and the custard cups and the white icing..Paidhi Girl is putting tips on pastry bags. "It's kind of tricky," I said, remembering last year's disaster. If you squeeze the bag wrong, it all comes out the top and gets all over your hands instead of ending up in your nice design on the cake. If one is in the wrong frame of mind, achieving the right grip can induce frustrated tears. "Do you need help?"

"Mom!" says my daughter, indignant. "I think I know how to frost a cake."

ASIM!

2008-08-19T20:08:25Z

Just got my contributors copy of Issue #36 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and it's very, very pretty! I don't think it's actually available yet, but I'll certainly post when it is. There's fiction by:

Lee Battersby
Cathy Bryant
Me!
Lisa Mantchev
Michael Merriam
Shane Nelson
Maggie Della Rocca
Janeen Samuel
Aimee Smith
Cat Sparks
Grant Stone
and Rachel Swirsky!

It's very exciting. I love selling to web-only venues, and love being able to link to stories so readers can find them easily, if they want. But at the same time, there's something about an actual, paper magazine that's just...viscerally satisfying.

"The Nalendar" is another god story. I was kind of on a streak with them for a while, there's another one out doing the Editors' Desk tour right now.

Two Conversations

2008-08-11T22:35:09Z

This afternoon:

Paidhi Girl: So I'm reading this story in The Starry Rift and it's really good.

Me: So who's it by?

Paidhi Girl: I don't know.

Me: What's it called?

Paidhi Girl: I forget.

Me: What...is your favorite color? No. I mean, what's it about?

Paidhi Girl: It's about...this guy? And some people bring him somewhere? And now they're talking to him.

(Paidhi Girl is really enjoying The Starry Rift. It's one of the few books I've given her that she started reading right away and hasn't abandoned. Usually there's some resistance when I suggest a book, or give it to her. I assume the stories are good, but I also suspect that it had something to do with it not looking much like a kids' book, something she commented on very soon after I gave it to her. "This looks like a book you would read," she said to me. Well, you know, it pretty much is.)

******

This evening:

Paidhi Girl: Look at Paidhi Boy's Scratch project!

Me, observing a large human-shaped thing being bombarded by noisy red lines: What does it do?

Paidhi Boy: You shoot this giant.

Me: I can see that. What does it do?

Paidhi Boy: The giant is evil, and you shoot him. With lasers.

Me: What do the lasers do to the giant?

Paidhi Boy: Oh, nothing.

Paidhi Girl's Rice Ball

2008-08-09T00:08:16Z

Paidhi Girl's Rice Ball
Originally uploaded by hautdesert

So we've been on a rice kick the past few days, triggered by our trip to San Sai and Paidhi Girl's desire to make sushi.

This afternoon, she made this rice ball.

I've been browsing bento sites, and she was inspired by the pics she saw. She designed and made this all by herself--I wasn't allowed in the kitchen. The eyes and mouth are hot dog, the nose is carrot, and the whiskers are made of nori. Oh, and the ears are bits of leftover chicken.

Oh, the third thing!

2008-08-06T15:49:10Z

Forgot to put in the last misc. post.

Paidhi Boy has developed an enthusiasm for San Sai. Not for the sushi, but for the kids' chicken and rice bowl. Which he always asks for the chicken and the rice to be in separate containers. The other day some sauce accidentally got on his rice, and, he informed me, he tasted it and "it was kind of delicious." I was not surprised, and told him so.

So then Paidhi Girl wanted to know how to make sushi. A few googles and a trip to the store later, we attempted it, and it fell apart. Ah, well, it tasted good. Maybe the right equipment would help, so we plan on asking for a sushi kit for Cthulhumas.

I figured rice balls might be a way to use up the rest of the sushi rice, and easier to make. Which they are. Paidhi Girl now wants to pack rice balls in her lunches.

If you're interested in making rice balls yourself, I'm here to tell you that it's extremely easy, and chopped up hot dogs with a little squirt of ketchup make a surprisingly good filling for them.

Misc

2008-08-06T01:59:28Z

It's been insanely hot for two days, but a thunderstorm is rolling through. Just now, the power flickered, flickered again, looked for an instant like it was going out...and then was back on.

Moments later, Paidhi Boy comes over to where I'm sitting on the couch, his prized Dodge Challenger cradled in his arms. He sits down, stroking it. "Don't worry, Challenger," he says. "You won't go out. You don't run on electricity--you run on gas!"

He then informed me that the Challenger was afraid of thunder, but his other cars weren't.

****

While I was browsing the Straight Dope Message Board, I discovered that there's an LJ community devoted to menstrual cups. It's called..menstrual_cups, appropriately enough. I read a few posts, I put it on my list.

There have been something like four posts there today. It's an active community! And very informative.

Green Thumb

2008-07-31T15:51:48Z

So, one may, if one wishes, order copies of A Field Guide to Surreal Botany.

Check out the illustrations! This is a lovely book, with contributions from many fine botanical investigators.

Go, buy!

Transcriptase

2008-07-31T13:40:02Z

So, I didn't request that my stories be removed from Helix, cause I have contracts.

However, those contracts give Helix a non-exclusive right to archive the stories. I can do anything else that I want with them.

If you want to read some of the great stories that were on Helix, but don't want to visit Helix, check out Transcriptase. Stories by N. K. Jemisin, Yoon Ha Lee, Beth Bernobich, Vylar Kaftan...poetry by Ada Milenkovic Brown, Rachel Swirsky, Elizabeth Barrette...to name a few. There's a lot of great reading there.

Misc

2008-07-21T02:06:35Z

Lone Star Stories is buying "Needle and Thread," a story by rachel_swirsky and me. For more information, including publication date, watch this space.

****
I was really enjoying Dr. Horrible till I came to the end. I like bellatrys's ending much, much better.

*****
Any of my readers who menstruate--Mon.thly.info will, after you give it a few pertinent dates, send you reminders.

*******

I thought I had a fourth thing, but if so I've forgotten it.