My debut novel, THE OUTBACK STARS, was published in 2007 and is currently a finalist for the Compton Crook award. The sequel, THE STARS DOWN UNDER, is available now. Both books are about love, duty, handsome sergeants, heroic lieutenants, and really big spaceships. My stories about sexy firemen, unhappy ghosts, gay superheroes and more have appeared in many national, small press and online magazines. One story made the Tiptree short list. Others have received honorable mentions in Year's Best anthologies. My master's degree is in Creative Writing, and the best workshop I ever attended was Viable Paradise. In July I'll be at the fabulous Readercon . All the rest of the dirt is at Sandra McDonald.com.

What I've been reading this week: the Asimov's anthology (continued). Read Connie Willis's story "Cibola" at the car wash and enjoyed it. A Hawaiian Reader, with a forward by James Michener, for research, first published in 1959. The entirety of Judy Blume's Deenie, about a teenager with scoliosis. Written in 1973 and didn't quite work for me, though I love her other work. Also the New Yorker, Real Simple magazine, Jacksonville's Folio Weekly, Blue Heaven submissions, some Sandra Brown, Heather Sellers's Page by Page, and Robert Masello's Writer Tells All.

Speaking of submisisons, sent off a bunch. Current points: 15. (1 short story out there = 1 point, one partial ms on an agent or editor's desk = 3 points, 1 full ms on an agent's or editors desk = 8 points). I have 1 full out there and 7 short stories.

Must write faster! Must read faster! All those words out there.

Two thumbs up for the federal government! My new passport arrived 10 days after I sent off the old one. 10 days! I was expecting months of anxious wringing of hands. Of course, I generally expect that of anything. The new passport is thicker than the other, because of the electronics in the front cover. I hear those can be hacked. No worrying. Now that I am free to leave America and see the world, I feel so much better.

Two thumbs down for Comcast. In a fit of weakness the other night, I tried to order broadband. I had to enter my address four times, went through the set-up, and got sent to Jonel the customer service guy as the final stage in the ordering process. Jonel was a problem, however. He lost my order, then told me the promo didn't apply to me, then said he'd look at another fee, and in between all this he would disappear for 3-4 minutes on end. I think he was stuck in a cubicle somewhere witih a hundred customer chat windows open. I said "forget it" and closed the chat, and now I've ordered DSL.

Went to the Cummer Museum yesterday during free hours. The Cummer is Jacksonville's main art musuem. It's smaller than the parking lot at the Golden Corral all-you-can-eat-buffet, but it has an interesting collection and this month has a photo exhibit of Cuba in the 1930's by Walker Evans. The museum has some very lovely gardens that were even lovelier before a bridge for 1-95 was erected practically on top of it. Very nice oaks and a commanding view of the river. Come to Jacksonville and we'll go visit.

Somehow I managed to twist my knee while sleeping the other night. Ouch.

Happy Day-After-Mom's Day! My mom and I went shopping and Wii'ing and out to eat on Saturday, and yesterday we ordered in pizza. Lots of casual fun. My mom is one of my best friends and I love her lots. Even if she did whip my butt at Wii bowling with 7 strikes in a row . . .

Today is all about writing. 3,000 is a good goal. Word by word.

9 days until the Memorial Day Mystery Trip! Okay, it's not a mystery to me. I know where I'm going. It's going to be a blast, but I'll blog more when I get there.

Here's the prologue from THE STARS DOWN UNDER, illustrated by the wonderful Paul Abbamondi pabba. I think he did an outstanding job with the colors and conflict. Paul's done the first 3 chapters for me, and they'll be appearing here this summer. The first three illustrated chapters of THE OUTBACK STARS are over at theoutbackstars. Enjoy.

New lj icons for May. New goals, new plans. Shaking the dust off. Not that I procrastinate much, but after a solid year of dithering about I finally got my passport renewal off into the mail; let's see if they can get the darn thing back to me before World Fantasy Con in October. I also cleaned out the tupperware that's been kinda moldy for 2 months and I may tackle the bathroom floor today, though let's not go crazy.

Today's icon is for Cliff, who was kind enough to show up at my booksigning Saturday. He likes these icons :-) The signing was a blast and I want to also thank Norman, Deborah, Joan (with cookies!) Kristin, Katherine, Al, Steve and Doris, Rebecca who organized it and of course my mom, who was a trooper.

Meanwhile stephanieburgis posted a nice review of THE OUTBACK STARS in her blog - thanks, Stephanie! I'm glad you enjoyed it. And boy do you read quickly :-)

Watched "Primer," which is a smart odd indy film about time travel. Lost me three-quarters through, though. Also watched "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," which I've never read or seen before, and which ABC interrupted only seven hundred times for commercial breaks. Watching network television is a sucker's deal. Against all odds, my favorite character is Edmund. Susan only has to loosen up a little, Lucy remains the starry-eyed child of wonder, Peter swings his sword around impressively, but Edmund screws up a lot and is all the more interesting for it. Now I'm looking forward to the big screen sequel.

And looking forward to Iron Man! And Indy IV. Any others I'm forgetting?

John Joseph Adams emailed to say his brief interview with me is live at SCI FI Wire. Thanks, JJA!

Steve Nagy reviewed THE STARS DOWN UNDER here and THE OUTBACK STARS here, with the tagline "Naomi Novik Without Dragons." I love that! Thank you, Steve.

otterevil reviews THE STARS DOWN UNDER here, with a user icon I adore. Thanks, Evil!

This week's reading includes THE TRAVELER'S GIFT, one of those uplifting shmaltzy New Age books that you buy in airport gift shops for the business people in your life, or give to your business boss at Christmas because you can't think of anything better. (I once gave one of my Hollywood bosses "Leadership Secrets of Atilla the Hun." He's now one of the producers of Desperate Housewives.) The only part I really liked was about having a "decided heart," which I think every author needs when scrabbling to hang in there in the publishing world. Or every slightly out-of-shape sorta-past-thirty-five (I only celebrate anniveraries now) needs when her trainer makes her do mountain climbers, which should be banned by the Geneva convention.

Also reading the Asimov's 30th Anniversary Anthology, which I picked up in the bookroom at ICFA and made Jim Kelly and Sheila WIlliams autograph. I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Lethem and was properly creeped out by the first half of "The Happy Man," though the last half not so much. It only took a few lines for me to recognize John Varley's "Air Raid" as the basis for the Kris Kristofferson/Cheryl Ladd movie "Millenium," which is the best Kristofferson/Ladd movie ever made. Varley's story is brilliant. Stephen Baxter's "The Children of Time" was good if not exactly my cup of tea; I'm in the middle of Lucius Sheppard's "Only Partly Here" and adoring it, but had to stop to put Grant in time-out for jumping on and try to wrestle Leia. He thinks that by meowing his little feline heart out he'll cut his sentence halved, but he's wrong.

Netflixed "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and laughed all the way through. It's stupid but it's dead-on satirically stupid, and John C. Reilly is perfect. I like the extended version better than the theatrical cut, what with the cameos from Cheryl Tiegs, Cheryl Ladd and Patrick Duffy. The Beatles LSD sequence is perfect and the trampoline -- don't get me started on the trampoline. And the extended recording session with the didgeroos. My favorite line: "Of course I have faith in you. I just know you're going to fail." For whatever reason the movie tanked, but now that I've sent it back, I wish I'd ripped a copy - er, bought my own.

Also, this is the funniest thing I've read on the web in weeks. It's about Dan Brown and the upcoming release of a revised The DaVinci code, which the publisher says will fix some minor errors that got through the production process:

"It’s true that I let a few little mistakes go in the first edition," said Brown. "Factual errors about Biblical history, early Christianity and Judaism, Catholic theology, Egyptian mythology, Mithraism, the origins and language of the New Testament and Gnostic Gospels, the Nicene Council, Emperor Constantine, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts, the history and modern organizational structure of Opus Dei, the history of the Vatican, interpretations of Leonardo’s Last Supper and Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s sexuality, the history of the Knights Templar, the history and architecture of Rosslyn Chapel and the Church of Saint-Sulpice, the history and geography of Paris, the location of Versailles, the position of Curator of the Louvre, the design of the Louvre Pyramid, the French education system, the French language, Andorra’s rail system and propensity for seismic activity, the geography of London and the procedures of the Metropolitan Police, the astronomical position of Venus . . . "

read more here, at 101 Reasons to Stop Writing.

Congrats to all the Nebula winners! In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't make the final ballot and haul myself and Thad to Texas. There I would have sat, all dolled up and wearing uncomfortable shoes, stabbing my martini olive with a toothpick and thinking, "Chabon! Sure he's brilliant and charming and a literary tour de force, but where are the aliens? Where's the hyperdrive?"

From the mailbag, Hg wrote a nice note about my gay superhero story in Lone Star Storiesright now, and Sara J. let me know she'd reviewed THE OUTBACK STARS right here at Jumpdrives and Cantrips. Thank you both for your nice notes.

Went to the annual library bash this weekend. As with last year, they put in a big show with lots of writers. Unfortunately, most of them were non-fiction, self-help or self-published. Fiction lovers had Steve Berry, Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey and (for the kids) R.L. Stine, but no sf/f writers at all. Last year's festival had dozens of fiction writers, so I was disappointed.

In other news, Happy Birthday, Harper Lee!

And here's a lovely story by Theodora Goss called The Rapid Advance of Sorrow, as recommended by nihilistic_kid in his discussion last week of fantatwee (well worth reading).

From the mailbag, Jeff from St. Augustine noted he was happy to see THE OUTBACK STARS listed in Entertainment Weekly recently as one of the top 20 best-selling paperbacks. Entertainment Weekly! I hadn't heard that. Obviously Thad, my personal assistant/pool boy/publicity sidekick, had fallen down on the job. Off I went to the library. Unfortunately it was closed because of budget cuts. Luckily for me, I practiced wall-scaling in boot camp. The security system was harder to disarm but never underestimate a determined genre writer. The trickiest part was coming down through the skylight a la Mission Impossible, because my legs and arms were flailing everywhere and I boinked my head on self-checkout machine. Eventually the ninja librarians caught me and the police were called in, but everyone was so delighted for my success that I'll probably only have do community service rewinding the videotapes people turn in without, you know, rewinding them.

Ah hem. Anyway. Entertainment Weekly, April 18th issue. The chart is actually the Top 20 paperbacks from Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore in Minneapolis but there I am with Jim Butcher, Ray Feist, Kelley Armstrong, Sharon Miller and Steve Lee, and many others. Minneapolis is now my new favorite city.

If anyone has a copy of that issue, I'd be obliged :-) The new one is on the stands I checked.

Netflixed "The Mist," based on Stephen King's book, and was disappointed. First off, I would have thrown Marcia Gay Harden's character out the loading dock door within five minutes of her opening her mouth. It was pretty obvious that sticking a bunch of lights at the front of the supermarket was bound to attract bugs, don't you think? How come the other little bugs didn't skitter up everyone's legs? But most importantly of all, the ending totally stinks. Horror is not about people being afflicted with random bad fate; it's about bad fate earned or unearned *and* the struggle to free oneself of it, usually culminating in even worse fate due to human flaws other than just stupidity. At least, that's what I look for in horror. Many of King's favorite themes are on display in the movie -- religious mania, collapse of civilization, fear of the military - but it grew tiresome very quickly.

This week's reading includes Suzanne Brockman's Hot Target, which is escapist and fun and showcases her gay FBI agent Jules Cassidy, and a collection of David Sedaris's essays called Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Sedaris's stories are often funny and appalling at the same time -- smart, sharp, soft, frail, all wrapped up together. I adore him.

Hugo-nominated author Vera Nazarian wrote an essay that provoked a bit of controversy right here last week. Some of it I agree with, some of it I don't. I do find the whole post-Buffy-school of fantasy writing to be a bit tiresome. One of my favorite essays about the fantasy and science fiction genre is Barbarian Confessions, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. One of Rusch's key assertions is that not enough sf today is like Star Wars: stories that allow readers to escape their mundane realities and follow heroes on journeys that will end triumphantly. Stories that are entertaining, not just clever. Definitely an essay worth reading.

This weekend's mail brought very nice notes from Jim B. and Ray H. Jim, who stayed up late at night to finish THE STARS DOWN UNDER, says, "Just because you planned this to be a trilogy doesn't mean you have to stop at three. And I hope you don't." Thank you for your kind words, Jim. I'll be sending you my editor's home phone number in a few minutes. Ray writes that he's looking forward to book 3 and my answering questions such as, "What will happen to Jodenny and the *****? What about Free-not-Chained and her *****? Was Osherman **********?" Of course, Ray used real words but I didn't want to give away spoilers. And yes, I'm answering all those and more in book 3, with the kitchen sink and Millenium Falcon thrown in for good measure :-)

Yesterday I wrote 4000 words but today I am paying the procrastination tax, as in running around trying to get my taxes done. Which is just the preview of actually paying the taxes tomorrow. Nothing like waiting until the last minute -- me and millions of other Americans. But I have valid excuses. I had to write the conclusion to what happened to Jodenny and the ******.

Seen via oldcharliebrown, Jason Stoddard pokes fun at the boring design of the SFWA web site and talks about losing the negativity in sf. (Though I don't agree with his definition of negativity.) I wish he didn't have light brown letters on a beige background, however. His blog is here.

Last but not least, here's number 12 of 12 comic strips done by the very talented Paul Abbamondi pabba for THE OUTBACK STARS. Later this month, I'll start showcasing the ones he did for book 2. This strip is one of my favorites because it highlights a key character -- Koo, the gecko! -- and because it marks a shift, in the book, in my mind at least, between the first act and second act (screenplay terms, but useful in thinking about prose too).



Paul's not only a talented artist, he's an up and coming writer as well -- he's sold 4 short stories this year so far, so keep an eye out for him!

This week's reading includes HOUSE LUST, by Daniel McGinn -- a fascinating look at Americans and their houses over the last few decades, including the rise of HGTV (house porn), real estate agents, Zillow and more, and how the average square footage per home built has tripled, quadrupled, basically soared. It was written just before the subprime blowout but it's an easy, fun read, and definitely worth looking at if you're house shopping now.

I'm also reading Suzanne Brockman's ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, and here's a story about that. Recently I met Ms. Brockman at the local RWA conference, but I felt awkward because I hadn't read her work and really had just stopped by to say hi to my friend Terry O. At the library a few days later I saw this novel by her on the shelf and picked it up. Some girl named Jules, an FBI agent, was getting married in Boston, and wacky hijinks ensue, and there's something about SEALS, and okay, that's worth a second look. And then I realized Jules was guy! Marrying another guy! Somehow I missed the phenomenon of NYT bestselling romance writers publishing slash. This is a prime example of how my expectations of about romance writing can be confounded by actually reading romance instead.

Terry O. was also telling me about the Harlequin NASCAR romances, which can involve no on-page sex at all and are not allowed to use the names of real racers. She said she learned a lot about racing, though.

I saw the Harper Collins things about not paying advances to writers, and can't see how this could ever be an acceptable deal for authors. Advances are often the only money some writers see, even if a book sells through. I know writers in my field who have never seen royalty statements from their small press publishers, despite numerous requests. When people ask me how my books are selling, I cast runes. The only royalty statement I've ever seen was for the period ending June 07, and it was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." * But this is not unique situation; it's a problem that spans the industry.

In other news, Grant's favorite new toy is a half-full roll of toilet paper that he chases down, kicks with his back feet, and then carries around like the injured prey that it is. Right now it's under the kitchen table. If it tries to roll off on its own, Grant will pounce on it immediately. My brave warrior kitty.



*thank you, Douglas Adams. I miss you.

This week I've been reading SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA by Lynne Cox, who started long-distance ocean swimming when she was a child and broke the world's record for the English Channel when she was fifteen years old. Since then she's broken many other records and swum in many exotic, freezing locales, including the Bering Straight, the Straits of Magellan, and Antarctica. It's a great book and really brings to life the determination, focus and drive necessary to be a long-distance swimmer.

In one part she describes swimming in the shit-strewn, dead-rat-infested Nile River off Cairo in the mid 1970's as part of an international competition. She was committed to her goal so much that she swam with sewage in her mouth and dead rats bobbing off her shoulders.

Are you committed to any goals that much?

The nice thing about the book is that it also drives home how important it is to phrase your goals effectively. It's an ineffective goal to say "I will win the Pulitzer Prize this year." Why? Because the prize is decided by outsiders. But it is an effective goal to say "I will swim the English Channel this year" because that's entirely within my power: I can train, go to England, hire a pilot and an official race judge, and there I go into the cold, treacherous currents. (Whether swimming the English Channel is a reasonable goal for me is an entirely different matter.)

It's not an effective goal to say "I will be published this year" unless you self-publish. Otherwise, too many outside people and factors beyond your control can block that goal. But it is effective to say, "I will finish my revisions by June, contact my top 10 dream agents, and keep looking for representation until I get a great agent who can put this manuscript into the hands of top editors."

Meanwhile, welcome to April! My story "The Hero of Ward 6" is live at Lone Star Stories, along with fiction from Terry Bisson and Jeremy Adam Smith. This is the story I wrote while lunch merrily burned in my kitchen. I was particularly intrigued by the idea of a superhero who couldn't spell, and why/how that could happen. So I hope you enjoy it.

Everyone can benefit from feeding the brain but I think it's especially important for creative professionals, because we give and create and give and create and give and create, and if the brain is mush the creation is mush. This week I finally got myself to the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) though I'm not a big fan of modern art. The Warhols were okay, the Picassos were Picassos, but what really knocked me over was an exhibit of the works of Haitian-born artist Edouard Duval Carrie. I would love to see part of his "Altar to 9 Slaves" as a fantasy novel book cover:



Meanwhile, I got a very nice request to do a book signing at a local bookstore, and New York's Strand bookstore has this to say about my Aussie book 2: "The Stars Down Under" is a science fiction novel of the highest order."

It's Friday and I've written 25,000 words so far in March. My goal is 2,000 words a day for the next 4 days. But that won't happen if I don't get off lj, so have a good weekend and see you next week --

Congratulations to my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden pnh on his Hugo nomination and my former teacher David Anthony Durham on his Campbell nomination! Very nice.

Despite having the Cold of Doom (tm) that is sweeping the nation, I am off to visit the ICFA con down in Orlando. I am bringing Afrin, Nyquil, a roll of toilet paper, and four tons of cough drops. Last night I feverishly dreamed that I presented the Juan Fucha Academy Award (your guess is as good as mine) to Ben Browder, but by mistake I announced him as John Crichton. This is what you get when you spend your sick day watching disaster movies such as "The Sky's on Fire," in which Ben plays a pilot called Racer who must help detonate an ozone-replenishing bomb above solar-ravaged Los Angeles. I kid you not.

Here's hoping the Easter Bunny brings us all candy and chocolate, and a year's supply of cold medicine.

It's a boy! Isn't my sergeant handsome? There he is in my icon on the cover of THE STARS DOWN UNDER, aka Aussie book 2, which is officially released today. It's available in all the usual places plus tabby333 spotted it at Target.com, and malkingrey saw the paperback of book 1 at Wal-Mart, so there's no reason readers across America can't rush out and get it this morning. That's assuming, you know, that people haven't been partying all night at the release parties . . .

I don't read reviews because it'll only end in tears and bingeing on boxes of Ring Dings at two in the morning, but little birdies sometimes send me snippets:

Booklist: "A satisfyingly dramatic successor to The Outback Stars."

Don D'Ammassa: "... the big attraction for me was the characters themselves, who are fleshed out dramatically...Hopefully this is a sign of even better things to come with the next in the series."

Library Journal: "...Ably combining military adventure with mystery and political intrigue, with strange artifacts thrown in for good measure, this fast-paced story should appeal to military sf as well as hard sf fans."

Panda Baby: I love the way McDonald writes - a combination of matter-of-fact space travel and unexpected intrusions by powers beyond the control of any human being. I love the way her characters struggle to keep their plans and their lives on track in the midst of being thrust into events that change everything."

:-)

I do have 3 2 hardcover copies for anyone who want them. The catch is you can't have gotten one from me before and you have to post a review, good or bad, in your blog and Amazon, before the end of April. Respond below or send me an email with your snail mail addy -- samcdonald (at) mac.com and I will drop them in the mail. (P.S. If you have gotten one from me before, have a friend sign up instead!) I don't gather names and emails for some mailing list -- I just mail them.

Two thumbs up for the Douglas Anderson Writer's Festival, hosted here in Jacksonville this past weekend with a great line-up of authors including former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. I was there to soak up stuff for my writer's brain and soak I did, in workshops about poetry and short fiction and more poetry.

First off, Billy Collins himself was droll and fun, and I very much enjoyed his reading of "Questions About Angels." Able Rae, a local author who can be heard on NPR, was a delight - I adore her Georgia accent. (In which despair is pronounced as "despire," and "that" suddenly has two syllables ("thay-at").) William Trowbridge, who teaches at the University of Nebraska low res MFA program, gave a great little workshop on writing humorous poetry. I have to look at my notes to remember who it was that spoke of writing poetry as an act of imagination vs. an act of will -- if you begin with the ending already in your head, you're writing from will and not imagination. Which is an interesting way of thinking of fiction as well.

The poet, playwright and actor Al Letson was my absolute favorite speaker of the day -- really knocked my socks off. His performance poetry struck me like a thunderbolt. The force-fed poetry in my own MFA program made me doubt I'd ever listen to a contemporary poet again (with the notable exception of Baron Wormser, whose "Carthage" poems skewer Bush in a painfully brilliant way), but now I'm a convert. Al brought energy and wit and passion to the stage. He performed "The Ball, the Rim and Him." I tell you, if science fiction conventions had readers with half his energy, we'd have a lot more people show up for the readings.

Here he is performing that same poem on Def Poetry:



Did you watch? Did you like?

Two pieces of good news this week. First, my story "The Hero of Ward 6" was accepted by Lone Star Stories. Eric Marin, who funds and runs Lone Star on his own, has published some great fiction and poetry over the years by authors such as Elizabeth Hand, Tim Pratt, Sarah Prineas, Greg van Eekhout, Jay Lake, Jo Walton and more. Lone Star stories have gone on to anthology reprints and award nominations and all sorts of great things. Thank you, Eric, for all your hard work.

Secondly, THE OUTBACK STARS has been named a finalist for the 2007 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall award for best first novel. This award has been given every year since 1983 by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Last year's winner was Naomi Novik, and past winners include Elizabeth Moon, Wen Spencer and Holly Lisle. The prize? They fly you to Balticon and give you a nice cash award. I'm absolutely delighted. Thank you, BSFS! The book was a lot of fun to write, but it's even more fun when people like it. The winner will be announced at the con on Memorial Day weekend.

Also, fellow Floridian and veteran Tia Nevitt interviewed me over at Fantasy Debut, and I had a great time with her questions. (Thanks for keeping my secret, Tia!) It's true there's one scene in THE OUTBACK STARS that I absolutely hate and could not make work, but wild dingoes and Meryl Streep couldn't drag it out of me :-)

I love books, obviously, and especially books about writing. I have at least twenty of them on the shelf. I'm long past the stage where I think the key to writing a successful novel is hidden, like a forgotten bookmark, between the dusty and fragrant pages of someone else's how-to tome: there are no shortcuts to success, nor any hidden secrets. Writing a book is no more difficult than racing barefoot across the Great Plains to wrestle down one bison out of a herd of thousands, day after day after day. Some days you get the bison and some days it gets you.

Recently, from the library, I picked up the anthology "The Spirit of Writing," edited by Mark Robert Waldman. Stephen King's essay talks about how much money he made on a story he sold to Playboy years and years ago, and how little he netted after his agent's commission, federal tax, state tax, etc:

"All the same, you don't do it for money, or you're a monkey. You don't think of the bottom line, or you're a monkey. You don't of it in terms of hourly wage, yearly wage, even lifetime wage, or you're a monkey. In the end you don't even do it for love, although it would be nice to think so. You do it because to not do it is suicide. And while that is tough, there are compensations . . . you don't do it for money; you do it because it saves you from feeling bad."

That pretty much sums it up for me. Love and not feeling bad.

His first novel, Carrie, got a $2,500 advance. Bag of Bones got an $8 million dollar advance. I hear Duma Key, his latest, is great, and it's on my Amazon wish list.