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Posts Tagged ‘travel’

In San Diego, Cons are Conning

But up here in La Jolla, I’m sitting in a Peet’s Coffee after a hair-raising game of real life Frogger that involved me passing through a breach in a wire fence, crossing a freeway and a couple of six-lane roads in order to find a CVS and replace my long-suffering travel size can of shaving cream, which chose the worst possible moment to give up the ghost—that being halfway through a shave on the first day of Comic Con. C’est la guerre.

After five years of living in Boston, Southern California feels increasingly weird to me. The weather is perfect even at its most horrible, so, of course, you want to walk everywhere. Right? Only, good luck with that, unless of course you want to drive somewhere where you can walk. In Somerville, errands are a great way to spend a Saturday: you walk to one square to go to the spice shop, to another square for groceries, a third square because they have a bookstore you haven’t visited in a while. Not so, SoCal.

Then again, in late July, when Boston’s peaking in the high 90s with humidity, Los Angeles is mid-seventies, dry, and sunny. And in February, when Boston temperature plummets down to wickedness, even if it never reaches true depths of Michigan evil—well, in Los Angeles it’s also mid-seventies, dry, and sunny. So there’s that.

As for the con, well, I haven’t reached the floor yet, though I keep hearing joyful rumors—like that the Legend of Korra Season 2 will premier there on Friday, guys guys guys Season twooooooooooo at last it’s been so loooong. I can give only smatterings of evidence. In front of the Peet’s where I sit writing this, a man and two women all wearing black t-shirts and con badge necklaces are negotiating whose turn it is to drive their car. The guy’s black t-shirt has written in red, “I (snake) COBRA” where the (snake) is the logo of COBRA, the heinously ineffectual terrorist organization from GI JOE, only with a little dimple at the top to warp is silhouette into a heart.

On our drive from the airport last night, we passed the Ghostbusters mobile, like from the movies. A perfect reconstruction, just driving around the streets of San Diego, back brimming with movie-reconstructed props and plastic ghosts. What do they do with that the rest of the year, my host asks. I say, it’s probably like those 1930s trucks people drive occasionally around the waterfront in Boston—most of the year is a process of upkeep and repair, waiting for the weather to change. And now, here, the emotional weather is right.

Gods, Guest Posts, and Travel Recovery

I’ve made it back from the West Coast in one piece, and am now picking up the remnants of my life post-Tour. I have a handful of major events left in the year, in addition to holidays, and I continue to build steam on the New Book. No jet lag after our return from LA, at least none that I noticed; turns out that not getting any sleep the night before your flight really does help you get to sleep on the destination end. I’m running out the door to Take Care of Business, but I wanted to let y’all know that I have a post live at the Fantasy Literature blog, on Gods in fantasy novels. Here’s an excerpt:

Gods have a complicated relationship with storytelling. The first Western dramas emerged as a part of religious celebrations, and these plays tended to resolve with the emergence of a god to fix the human characters’ problems, or increase them unbearably. (Chick Tracts owe a lot to this old-school Greek dramatic structure, now that I think about it…) Deus ex machina is the name we’ve given to this sort of resolution, when a god of some sort steps in to end the story.

Storytelling, especially fantasy and science fiction storytelling, still uses gods and godlike beings aplenty, but writers and readers alike are wary of that deus ex machina ending, even as they thrill to the Force guiding Luke as he shoots proton torpedoes into the Death Star reactor shaft, or to Neo rising from the dead to defeat Agent Smith.

Drop on by Fantasy Literature to read the rest of the article and post your thoughts in the comments.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way – Aidan Moher at A Dribble of Ink posted an excellent overview of cool reviews of Three Parts Dead. He’s much more on the ball than I’ve been about finding them; I definitely need to update my reviews page.

Mountain View

Writing from scenic Mountain View, where I’ve just had a wonderful, productive day despite dealing with a rare cold. It’s been years since I was last in the Bay Area and I’d forgotten how amazing the weather is out here. I spent the day wandering around in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, carrying my Neo from writing spot to writing spot. I think I’ve been doing this writer thing a little wrong by working from home so much, Dear Readers—maybe once I’m back in Somerville I’ll try to ramble more. Plenty of good coffee shops in the Greater B Metro Area, and a body could get a decent walk moving between them.

To sum up: sick, yes, but having a great time. Remind me to tell y’all about Time Travel Jazz someday.

Last Week Overview

My pen did not explode on the airplane, but my bottle of ink did. Somehow, the cap remained intact and most of the ink remained in the bottle, but the ziploc bag around the bottle was ink-soaked anyway.

After five days, I managed to reduce a childhood’s full of books to six medium-sized boxes that will reach Boston sometime in the next few weeks. Making choices sometimes felt like tearing off a limb, but it was also a good exercise in letting go, and in life editing. Which of this box of classic SF novels do you keep? Which do you pass on to the next generation? Some of my choices were sentimental, but for the most part I feel better knowing that I’ve released books that helped me out into the world where they can help other people.

Only a few pages of writing done last week, but progress made nonetheless. Goals for this week: ship thank-you gifts, submit a story that’s been on my shelf for too long, and get back to ~1000 words a day.

Pen

Packing for my trip to Tennessee, I had a brilliant idea: bring an empty fountain pen, and a bottle of ink. The pressure change on an airplane makes filled fountain pens spurt ink, ruining pants and pockets and suitcases. Packing pen and ink separately (I thought) would shortcut this problem.

Unpacking after the flight, I discover that the pen made it through fine, but the (sealed) bottle of ink vented ink all over the (sealed) ziplock bag I packed it in. My clothes are safe, but that’s another theory sent back to the drawing board.

China Dispatch vol. 3 Cambodia Special Edition #1: Keys to the Kingdom

My apologies once again for my prolonged absence. Rumors of my whatever have been greatly exaggerated. It’s hard to come up with
stuff to write consistently when one is in situ in the countryside in
China, but when one travels, the juices get flowing again and there
are things that need to go down on paper. And right now I’m sitting
in an internet cafe in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where you take off your
shoes before you go into internet cafes. It’s about 27 degrees
outside (Celcius, you American schvine! About eighty degrees F.) , and
I’m hurrying this so I can get back and join Carl Dull, whom some of
you from my Sewanee days might know, for a bottle of beer and an
attempt to commandeer the guesthouse’s television so as to watch Six
String Samurai. This is the Kingdom of Cambodia.

We arrived around 8 or 9 last night, after what turned out to be
something like a seven hour plane flight, and got off the jet to feel
the air around us like a blanket. The visa issue was a non-issue;
US$20 and I got myself a shiny new Cambodian visa in my passport along
with all the China stamps. The people behind the visa counter were
small, and darker than Chinese. Some of the women had very wide
mouths, and everyone smiled a lot. They were joking, and seemed
relaxed and happy. One girl was off-duty, hanging out with her
friends and eating oranges.

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