The Friends of Celia May Hart

I’ve managed to get myself into an argument with an Intelligent Design troll over on io9.com. Yes, I really do know better. But there’s a really important point about Intelligent Design that most people seem to miss.

The concept of “irreducible complexity” lies at the heart of Intelligent Design’s attempted argument. Irreducible complexity essentially says that “since I can’t imagine how such a thing came about through natural processes, God must have done it.”

The statement is ridiculous for two reasons. First, it reflects the poverty of imagination of ID proponents far more than it reflects any realities of the complexity of the observable universe.

Second, it doesn’t address anything at all about that complexity, it just abstracts complexity from the observable universe to the unobservable deity. That solves nothing.

Which is why arguing with Intelligent Design trolls is deeply pointless. They proceed from unconsciously false premises, and are not subject to reasonable discourse in the first place.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

John Gillette at the Bettendorf Public Library cites Mainspring as an examplar of steampunk — In the same breath as The Difference Engine, even.

io9 accuses me of Intelligent Design — Not inaccurately, as it happens. Some nice analysis of me and Karl Schroeder over there.

3D Logic — Tetris meets Rubik’s Cube. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

More on vaccination protestors — Sorry, but your wilful misunderstanding of medical science does not trump my child’s health and safety. (Thanks to lt260.)

Cancer Test for Women Raises Hope, and Concern — Interesting article about the ethics of cancer testing. As a cancer patient, I was (and am) extremely interested in all possible data, even that with variable degrees-of-confidence. (Thanks to lt260.)

So, Yankee Stadium Takes This No Moving During “God Bless America”-Thing Rather Seriously — Right, because patriotism is about a song. Instead of, say, not starting pointless foreign wars which kills thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of other human beings. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

8/28/08
Time in saddle: 25 minutes (switched back to non-load-bearing exercise)
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: 238.0
Currently reading: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m currently reading an ARC of Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World (Knopf, September, 2008). It’s a hell of a book, I have to say.

It’s about what you would have gotten if Booth Tarkington and James Joyce had sobered up and collaborated on some post-apocalyptic cyberpunk.

Full report later when I’m done, but I strongly suggest you go pre-order this sucker from your local bookseller, or Amazon.com, because I think we have a winner here.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

Reprint sale of my short story, “The American Dead”, to Apex Digest.

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Together, we can make a difference in the lives of those with cystic fibrosis. Thank you for supporting the mission of the CF Foundation!

Kameron Hurley digs up some Mainspring fan art.

I blame arcaedia for drawing this to my attention. And it’s a damned good thing I don’t have an eBay account.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

Looking down the road apiece, I see a few things. I’m going mostly offline this weekend to work on some writing related program activities, prep for Tourbillion and catch some headspace. A blogging holiday, and mostly an email holiday. If that works well I may try to do it every couple of months.

Off to Omaha next week for Day Jobbe. Off to San Francisco the week after that for a trade show. The weekend after that I’ll be in Redmond, WA for Foolscap.

I expect to be back in Omaha three or four more times between Labor Day Week and the end of the year. I’ll be at FenCon in October, then World Fantasy at the end of October, then OryCon in November, which pretty much closes out the con season for 2008.

Next year I’m writer GoH at RustyCon, Toastmaster at RadCon, doing a writer-in-residence gig at an East Coast prep school, then going to China for two weeks in April with the_child, her mother and my parents. This will unfortunately cause me to miss Norwescon, which is the first time since 2000 I won’t be there.

I know I’ll be at WorldCon in Montreal and World Fantasy in San Jose, but my convention travel is otherwise going to be very limited due to the time and expense of the China trip.

There will eventually be a more official calendar, but all this is just in case you were wondering. You know.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

davidlevine on a particularly objectionable meal centered around andouillette:

“It tasted like something they took out of Jay.”

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One of the best moments at Denvention was when Howard Tayler, the mad genius behind Schlock Mercenary, drew me as if I were one of his characters. And he made me beautiful!

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I was recently in an email discussion about short story marketing, and I mentioned the old “start at the top” theory. This seems like as good a time as any to touch back on that topic, which is a true evergreen in that it evolves but it never dies away.

One thing a lot of aspiring and very new writers seem to do is avoid sending their stuff to the big markets first. I’m here to tell you, you don’t get credit for earning your way up. (And yes, that’s exactly what I did in my career.) You sell to any market because the story is good and it meets the editor’s taste. Hitting a bigger market just means hitting the right kind of good and that particular editor’s right kind of taste.

The thing is, you don’t know. The writer is the worst judge of their own work. Make it as good as you can, send it out, and keep it out when it comes back. You also won’t get demerits for accumulating rejections. The opposite, in fact, with some editors, who may begin rooting for you if they like something in your auctorial voice or style.

So what does “start at the top” mean? The answer is not as inherently obvious as it might seem to be at first blush. I break it down into three axes:

• Pay rate
• Prestige
• Career goal alignment

Pay rate is the easiest to understand, and it’s often where people will begin and end their analysis. The best paying non-invitational market used to be SCI FICTION. It may be Jim Baen’s Universe now, but I’m not certain any more. A number of markets cluster in the $0.050 - $0.070 per word range. This is a very valid way to evaluate markets, and absent other determining criteria, is a perfectly good decision driver.

However, prestige counts, too. A pair of simple examples of markets whose prestige is out of proportion to their pay rate: Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Talebones. If you went by pay rate alone, you might never look at either one of them. Yet if you dip into the year in review and honorable mentions sections of YBSF and YBFH, you’ll see stories from those markets very well represented. They get good critical coverage, and they are read in significant part by an audience of people already working in the field.

Career goal alignment matters, also. Analog pays well and is highly prestigious, but if you want to be an epic fantasy writer, and your short fiction runs toward the lesbian zombie airship pirate subgenre, Analog should probably not be your first choice of markets. The inverse is true of Realms of Fantasy — if your stories clank when they walk, maybe they don’t want to seek RoF as their natural market. This of course requires an understanding of the demographics and positioning of the markets you’re submitting to. The Locus year in review issue is useful for this, as are the aforementioned Year’s Best volumes, but in truth, nothing substitutes for reading the actual markets themselves.

[ ETA: As lordofallfools correctly points out, one of the best markets for aspiring writers is Writers of the Future. That market is by definition a one-shot (well, ok, a two-shot), but it can be real boost in all three senses outlined above. It certainly was to my career. ]

What this all boils down to is that your list of “start at the top” markets will have a lot in common with other people’s lists, but it will vary. As you submit more, and sell, your list will evolve — sending first to an editor who’s expressed interest in your work via a checkbook is both good business loyalty and plain old common sense.

Do you have a different take on starting at the top?

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

I really like living in a climate where a perfectly reasonable August day is lightly scattered clouds, sunny, with an intermittent breeze, and seventy two degrees for a high.

Just sayin’.

Signed,

Texas Refugee

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

I finally dug up my other post on novel outlines. See the earlier referenced post here.

There’s also one from last year here, with links to actual outlines of mine.

And here is a post of mine in response to the marvelous Justine Larbalestier on outlining and novel writing.

On re-reading those old posts, I don’t feel moved to seriously revise my commentary. I will add that the outlining process has become more interesting and enjoyable to me over time, and that probably feeds my joy at the novel writing process.

Also note that my outlining process is specific to me. Not unique, but specific. Other writers do things which would break me. (Justine, for example, approaches books in a way which would reduce me to wibbling tears.) And the examples I linked from in the second post above are just that — examples. I can readily imagine structuring the outline a different way depending on the needs of the book, how important certain aspects of it are (structure vs. character, for example), and my own view into the story.

See also blackaire covering some of the same ground in this post today. I don’t agree with everything she’s said, but that’s variation on experience and opinion, not a matter of right vs. wrong.

Hopefully this helps! What are your favorite resources on this topic, either from your own writing or elsewhere in the blogosphere/publishing advice world?

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

A few more photos of Sunday’s adventures…

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Some photos of the park…powerhouse photos to follow in another post.

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My new favorite sign:

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