This challenge for February by Mary Robinette Kowal is charming. I am very tempted, but I think I need to stay focused on finishing my novel. It’s gone way over the schedule I originally set for it, and I am close to the end. I feel like I am walking a tight rope and if I look away I’ll fall. Taking up a project, even one as simple as scribbling a postcard a day, would be looking away.

However, if you write to me, I promise I’ll write back. I love postal mail and at one time was a prolific pen pal-er. Drop me an email for my postal address (cathshaffer at gmail), or look me up in the SFWA directory. (If you have a paper one. The online version doesn’t seem to have postal or phone contact info, much to my bafflement. Never mind, I have no idea why I was having trouble with it before.)

Have fun writing letters, everyone.

I got a lot of laughs and encouragement pitching my novel-in-progress to various people at Confusion, and I realized I couldn’t think of any good reason not to share it publicly with all five of my blog readers. I did think of a bad reason, which is that you might steal it from me. But honestly, I really think you’d need to live inside my twisted brain to bring this story to life. Anyone who would try to steal it would be better advised to steal one from a more normal (and more successful) novelist instead. Besides, I have a 60,000 word head start on you.

So here it is:

This book is Hannah Montana Meets Clan of the Cave Bear!

Teen pop idol Mina Barber gets lost 114,000 years in the past during the production of a reality television series/archeological expedition. Finding herself 7000 miles from the rendezvous point, she has six months to get there, on foot, guided only by her computerized artificial pancreas, Pammie, before the team is scheduled to be whisked back to her future home time. Mina joins up with a ball team making roughly the same journey at the invitation of a trash-talking intercontinental migratory bird. The whole group runs afoul of an empire of fur-bearing cannibalistic hominids, and are enslaved in its undiscovered ancient stone city. In book one, Mina and her companions must escape to the relative safety of a tribe of peaceful, seagoing hominids who will help them on their travels. Additionally complicating Mina’s life is keeping Pammie safe, as Mina is a Type I diabetic who will die without the insulin and blood sugar monitoring that Pammie provides. Pammie, it turns out, is very shiny and attractive to fur-bearing cannibalistic hominids. My dog, Courage, plays the role of a brain damaged baby dire wolf who is along for the ride. There will be three books in the completed series.

My goal with the book is to make it as outrageous as possible without violating any known science. It’s a bit challenging as prehistory is a moving target. Please ignore the giant tapirs. I couldn’t resist.

I had a great time at Epic Confusion in Troy, Michigan, this weekend. In keeping with its Epic theme, there were more pro guests and more random pros than any Confusion in recent memory. That’s great for us pros, although I did hear some grumbling among fans that the fannish side of the con was a bit anemic. Not sure if that’s true or if it was just grumbling, but it was a great time for me. I also spent more time at the con than ever before, commuting up for Thursday evening, and then arriving early in the day on Friday thanks to a day off from work. That allowed me to avoid the slushy rush hour drive that tends to have me arriving at 8 PM and full of adrenaline.

Some highlights of the convention, in stream of consciousness order, include:

Picking Cat Rambo up from the airport at 1:30 AM–she was delayed a total of ten hours in her travel. I took her home instead of the hotel. If you want face time with an author, I highly recommend this sort of airport abduction. Much easier than trying to elbow through convention crowds or waiting in an autograph line. She was so tired, she didn’t even mind the duct tape.

Spending lots of time with Jay Lake. He is a font of wisdom about writing in an amiable, charismatic package.

A ukulele/iphone ocarina Radiohead singalong led by John Scalzi and Anne Harris, respectively, during a convention panel.

Hanging out with the Usual Suspects among the Michigan writer/fan community.

Making some new friends, including a student of Anne’s and Saline author Carrie Harris.

Being present for one of my best and oldest writer friend’s first Toastmaster gig. (He rocked it.)

Getting quite a lot of positive feedback on the elevator pitch for my novel-in-progress. (If I hear, “I love it already!” enough times, I start to believe it.)

Catching the Buckell twins in their costumes in time to snap a photo before they retired for the evening. I also had fun chatting with their Dad, Whatsisface, who hopes to be as popular as his girls one day.

Ironically, the Epically bad taco lunch buffet provided at a discounted rate by the hotel, which provided a great deal of conversation fodder and general agreement about the importance of guacamole.

Getting to sign an actual book at the actual mass author signing. All of my anthology publications are several years old, so having someone show up with one of them was very exciting for me.

I don’t know very much about the running of conventions, but from my outside perspective, it seemed like Confusion had the best concom it has ever had, and I definitely feel like Dave Klecha knocked it out of the park with lit programming. All of the panels I was on were really great topics, and I actually came away with some good ideas from a couple of them.

This article in the Huffington Post has been getting a lot of play in my social networks, and each time I see it posted, I feel a little sad. There’s a lively internet community of mothers of young children. It turns out blogging is on the short list of hobbies that are compatible with the full time parenting lifestyle, and it’s also a satisfying way to reach out and connect with others. However, parenting a very small child (or multiples of them) can give you tunnel vision, too. The Mommy Wars are particularly hard on moms of infants and toddlers, at times turning them into Very Defensive people with tunnel vision.

That leads to turning an innocuous comment like, “Enjoy every moment, the time goes by so fast,” into this:

- “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!”

 

Come on, now. Really? Are we sixteen years old that we are still so sure the older generation can’t possibly understand us? Or is it perhaps possible that the senior citizen accosting us with the “Enjoy every moment, the time goes by so fast,” message may actually be sharing something new, something that is hard to perceive or understand when you’re in the midst of the day-to-day, minute-to-minute challenge of caring for small children.

First of all, let’s consider the idea that this older woman doesn’t know or forgot how difficult it is to raise children. Is that realistic? We are talking about someone who parented somewhere between the 50′s and the 70′s–a time when there were no disposable diapers and fathers were not expected to help out much, if at all. In fact, even as late as the seventies, many fathers took pride in being clueless about child care. I know some Moms of the older generation who can entertain a crowd with stories about the ONE TIME their husband tried to take care of the children. Not every mother of the 2010′s gets help from a supportive partner, but it is frowned upon for Dads to be clueless and uninvolved. Plus, many of those women had far greater numbers of children than is customary in our time.

My maternal grandmother raised nine children. At one point she had seven children under the age of eight. And she worked full time as a nurse. I have been told that she would often disappear into the bedroom with her door shut to read a book, leaving the kids to fend for themselves, Lord-of-the-Flies fashion. Raising kids was no walk in the park for her.

But grandma was gaga for babies, and I am pretty sure I have heard her say “Enjoy every minute.” This is not a judging message. It means something else, something that’s hard to understand if you’re feeling harried and defensive, but true nonetheless.

The truth is that you lose your babies. Sure, they are replaced by adults with whom, if you’re lucky, you’ll have a rewarding relationship. But when they are small, you get very attached to them AS babies and small children. At first, you don’t feel the loss, because each advance in independence and maturity makes life a little easier, and because each stage is cuter than the last.

But at some point, when your child is, oh, say, twelve-and-three-quarters, just to grab a totally random example off the top of my head, you realize that your baby and your cute preschooler is gone. You may realize it when you hear a strange man’s voice in the house and realize it’s your “baby.” Or you may realize it when your daughter asks for the car keys. Whatever. But it happens to every parent.

And when that happens, it hurts.

If you ever wonder why most grandparents have so much more patience for your little monsters than you yourself, or why they are so indulgent or so darned happy, it’s because they lost all of their babies, and are now enjoying every moment. They are trying to share this hard-earned wisdom with you, as well as a little bit of the pain of their own loss. If you can process that perspective, it will make the wait until bedtime easier.

Jim Hines did a great job commenting on the posing of female fantasy cover models through his own brand of performance art. However, by his own admission, Jim was not flexible enough to execute all of the poses. Proper execution of the poses is crucial to encourage public discussion and social change. Therefore, I have recruited some cover models who demonstrate the needed flexibility to attain and hold those sexy cover poses. Prepare yourself for the awesomeness that is Strike a Pose II: The Kittening.

Here Simba the Cat shows how you can achieve the needed spinal curvature and hip thrust with proper foot alignment while still maintaining the casual, almost careless, grip on his sword. Simba’s gaze is directed demurely downward, and he keeps his abdominal muscles relaxed to prevent strain in the lower back. Thanks, Simba! (photo by Brent Shaffer)

Courage knows he’s not a cat. But he volunteered for The Shape of Desire cover shot because he has the same feelings in his heart as the pretty lady on the cover. The feelings he has in his heart are that something bad is probably going to happen to him, because it always does. And, oh yeah. Hungry. Deep in his heart he is hungry, and won’t you share your sandwich with him? Also, he would like some calf-height leather boots. Not because he wants to shred them and suck all of their delicious leather juices. That would be wrong. (Photo by Catherine Shaffer)

Look at that lucious rear end. And he’s got textbook Sad Kitty Eyes ala Puss n Boots (Shrek II). Wouldn’t you like to give him some tuna? (Photo by Catherine Shaffer)

Diamond? Diamond?!? What are you looking at? We’re doing sexy fantasy cover images. Get on the bus. What do you mean you don’t want to do it? It is NOT demeaning. Look at Jim C. Hines. Do you think he demeaned himself by showing off his sexy, sexy abdomen to demonstrate how exploitive and unrealistic typical fantasy artwork can be? What?!? Well, I guess you’re entitled to your opinion. But I will note that some quadrupeds in this household are team players. You don’t want to be known as the one who sits in the bathtub waiting for mice to emerge from the drain, do you? (Photo by Brent Shaffer)

Here’s Titus doing “Vicious Grace.” Once again, the feline spine shows its flexibility. His hip thrust is perfect. Also, although the young lady at the right and Jim posed with bare torsos, Titus chose to do the shoot totally in the nude. It was an artistic choice on his part. Don’t think about the fact that he’s only three months old. Well, in human years, he’s more like ten years old. Just look at the art and don’t think about how wrong it is. (Photo by Brent Shaffer)

Athena is here to say that not only is this pose doable, it is easy. She can even do actual magic while she’s in the pose.

I hope we can all agree that the real problem with these book covers is that none of them have cats on them. The fact that they feature women who are uncomfortable and possibly in pain, even levitating, when they are supposed to be fighting evil is beside the point. This message brought to you by the cats of the internet. (Caturnet)

My blog has been hit by an avalanche of spam comments. They’re coming in at a rate of about one every four minutes and I’ve been deleting the notifications from my inbox all day long. I get very few legitimate comments here, and tons of spam. I’m frankly tired of it, so comments are gone. And I certainly don’t have time to ride herd on a “comment community,” should I be so lucky as to attract a lot of people who would like to do that. For the very, very few people who comment here, I’m really sorry about that. Feel free to drop me an email or chat with me on Twitter or Google Plus. I’m cathshaffer everywhere, and honestly I am not hard to find on the internet. Google keyword tells me that people are even able to find me with heinous mispellings of my name. (Google keyword also tells me it’s time to delist my phone number and address from the public listings, because some of the things you people are looking for in combination with my name are just not right. Eeeyikes.)

Speaking of Google keyword searches, to the person who searched, “it’s not a good idea to give up drinking as a new uears resolution?” I call bullshit. Own your crap and get sober, dude. If you think you might need to quit drinking to the point that you’re doing google searches, then every day is a good day to do it.

Jim Hines very amusingly parodies poses of female models on a set of fantasy book covers, aided by the photography skills of his wife, Amy Hines. In so doing, he shows us just how badly he wants the Best Fan Writer Hugo, as suggested by Catherine Schaff-Stump.

Okay OKAY, Jim. You’ve got my vote. You don’t have to take off any more clothes! Please vote for him, friends. I can’t be responsible for what he might do if he doesn’t have a rocket on his shelf by the end of the year.

I discovered yoisthisracist.com via Twitter last night, and have already read through 90 pages of it. (It just goes on and on.) The idea behind it is that a self-described, non-white person is answering questions from readers about situations that may or may not be racist. Unsurprisingly, the answer is usually, “Yes, that is racist as hell,” or some more vulgar variant. Because, if you have to ask, then, yeah, it probably is.

I’m immensely enjoying the humor, and I even feel rather enlightened. In spite of the heavy use of vulgar language, it’s a much gentler and more lighthearted approach to educating people about racism than many similar conversations on the internet. It’s a difficult topic, and difficult to pull off with charity and grace, as its author, Andrew Ti, does, so hats off to him.

Most of his answers agree with my own instincts, but I also appreciate than when something is new to me, the humor helps me feel like we are all on the same side. Example: in a couple of places, Ti refers to Long Duk Dong, a character from the movie Sixteen Candles. I have not seen Sixteen Candles in quite a long time. It came out in the eighties, when I was in high school. Although I grew up in a very multicultural community where people probably had a better-than-average understanding of racism, at that time most people believed that Asian-Americans were sort of immune to racism. The stereotype was that they were successful, and so were considered pretty fair game for that type of humor. So I never really thought of that character portrayal as racist before. It was a big blind spot for me.

But coming across it in Yo, Is This Racist, I immediately thought, “Oh, God, he’s right, that is horribly racist!” A much better way to be introduced to the concept than, say, to be ambushed when I mention that I liked the movie. “Oh, how could you, it’s so racist!” “What?”

There are some real gems of wisdom to be found, there. My favorite is, “At the end of the day you’re still white, right?”

And of course it’s just plain fun to watch him making fun of white supremicists.

Courage has been disruptive at night for a long time. We’ve never been able to consistently keep him out of the bed. He knows that if he intrudes on my space, I will throw him out, but if he sneaks in on Brent’s side, Brent won’t notice. He also has a habit of getting up in the night and wandering downstairs. He can’t climb the stairs alone in the dark, so when he wants to come back up stairs, he sits at the bottom of the stairwell, where his voice will echo maximally, and cries until someone comes down to help him up. (Helping consists of standing next to him, waving your arms, and saying something like, “Go on.”) This happens frequently around 5 or 6 AM.

We’ve grumbled a lot about his behavior, but we’ve managed to adjust to it. The arrival of kittens pushed things over the edge. Suddenly, Courage couldn’t settle in his stolen sleeping spot on the lower half of Brent’s comatose body because a kitten could pop up anywhere at any time, with its erratic kitten behavior and its sharp kitten claws and its total lack of kitten sense. So the sneaking in bed, going downstairs, crying to come upstairs cycle was repeated over and over again, with added anxiety barking whenever Courage happened to look out the window and observe…I don’t know…that it was night time.

After a particularly bad night Sunday/Monday, we decided that it was time to crate him at night. I’m a huge believer in crates for dogs, but with our 1300 sq ft home, I just haven’t wanted to sacrifice the floor space necessary for two giant-sized crates. Chewie doesn’t need a crate, though, so we just needed one, and that would do–marginally. It’s obtrusive, and cost us nearly $200 with the plushy doggie bed for inside, but I told Brent it was a small price to pay for a decent night’s sleep. (I might add that Courage’s intrusion on Brent’s sleeping space has not done any favors for his back.)

I had high hopes, but sadly Courage spent his first night in his crate crying. I was driven to dig up a mismatched pair of earplugs from the basement, which sort of kind of blocked out most of the noise, if I also slept with my head under a pillow. Brent was driven from the room and spent the night on the guest bed, which also sorta kinda worked.

If we were zombies yesterday, we are zombies on quaaludes today. When the alarms went off, I opened the crate where Courage was still whining softly and he heaved himself into the bed with a sigh. “OMG you forgot to let me go to bed all night I’m SO tired.”

I hope he can get reconciled to his crate soon. Like tonight. I’m going to dose him generously with benedryl, as well. It can’t hurt.